Arrowsmith: 11/20/09
It's been a decade or more since the last Sinclair Lewis book I read. I went through a spate in school reading everyone I could get my hands on. Arrowsmith wasn't one of them but my local library had a copy and feeling nostalgic for an old favorite author, I snatched it up.

Martin Arrowsmith, the title character, is a high spirited medical student, and later doctor. He's in constant fear of selling out while the women in his life wish for him to be a rich and famous doctor. Or at least successful.

The book covers his entire career from medical student, to resident, to country doctor, to researcher and his work down in Jamaica. My favorite part of the book by far was his time in college because Lewis managed to capture what college life is like in the sciences. Having been with my husband through his entire college education I saw a bunch of points of similarity between Arrowsmith's education (the lack of free time, the juggling of different papers, the research, the oddball advisors) that I was often laughing as I read through this section.

What fascinated me most though was how Arrowsmith compartmentalizes the different aspects of his life. There's Dr. Arrowsmith, world famous doctor, Sandy Arrowsmith husband, Martin the student and so forth. Throughout the book the plot pauses for Arrowsmith to have dialogues with the different aspects of his life and personality.

Like a typical Lewis novel, Arrowsmith ends without a pat resolution. Martin's life goes through good parts and bad parts as does his career and even when he finally has a huge success, becoming a household name, Martin Arrowsmith still isn't satisfied with himself or his skills. Thus the book ends with him just about to start another internal dialogue.

Other posts and reviews:

• The Book Review
• Roger Kraemer's Blog
• My Year in Litzs
• WestView
  
• Wikipedia
  

books | scifi | Sinclair Lewis | 1925

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Within a Budding Grove: Madame Swann at Home: Cheers: 11/20/09
Next week here in the United States it will be Thanksgiving weekend. As I will be too preoccupied with driving down to South Pasadena, eating turkey and basically enjoying spending time with my relatives, I won't be reading or posting about Proust next week.

I'm now through page 60 of the second volume of In Search of Lost Time, Within a Budding Grove (A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs) and this section has me thinking of Cheers, that old NBC sitcom that ran 11 years (1982-1993). I basically grew up watching it, being in elementary school when it started and in college when it ended.

Marcel now has gone from wanting to write but suffering from writer's block to just not wanting to write at all. So he spends his time listening to his parents shooting the breeze. Mostly he records his thoughts on the bullshitting sessions between M. de Norpois and his father. The escalating claims by M. de Norpois and the father's occasional tangential replies reminds me of Cliff and Norm who would spend nearly every episode of Cheers talking about stuff that had no practical use for whatever was going on in the bar or with the patrons or employees of the bar while drinking their beers. Despite being completely useless everyone seemed to like the two and M. de Norpois and Marcel's father seem to also be popular for no apparent reason. Now being French gentry, I doubt they're drinking the same cheep beer as Cliff and Norm but their conversations are just as off base.

Slipped into the middle of "Cliff" and "Norm's" bar talk, there are also more thoughts on the new Madame Swann. After much debate, the general consensus is that the marriage must be a joke. No one can take the Swann pairing seriously (apparently not even Odette as some gossipers speculate).

See you back in two weeks for my thoughts on pages 61-90.

Swann's Way posts:

Lisa's First Word, Baby Mine, I Sing the Body Electric, The Lady in Pink, Bleeding Gums Murphy, Caturday, Cherry Blossoms, Marge Simpson, Liana Telfer, Bender in Love, Margaret Dumont, Hyacinth Bucket, Rose, Mildred Krebs, Pepé Le Pew, Jack Harness, Cordelia Chase, Saffron.

Within a Budding Grove posts:

Nanowrimo, Cheers.

books | fiction | Marcel Proust | 1919

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