Sobbing on the Highway

Ever heard of "Metamorphosis" by Kafka? The other night I was listening to Book Radio on Sirius and they were playing an adaptation of it. The man doing the voice of the main character, Gregor Samsa, put so much into his performance that he made me feel so deeply for the man, and by the end I was full-on crying. Did I mention I was driving? And it was NIGHT?? On the interstate???? Those responsible for my despair and recklessness are "Night Kitchen Radio", who are now part of Yorinks Theater Group (found here).

Gregor Samsa awakes one morning as an insect. His family can't understand him, but try to protect him, at first. His sister seems to care the most about him, bringing him food and talking to him, but eventually just brings food, and then sometimes seems to forget. The family eventually has to all go get jobs, because Gregor was actually taking care of all of them. A word on that: their son/brother becomes a giant insect and all they can do is whine about their finances. And they actually seem to be mad at Gregor, like HE PURPOSELY BECAME A FUCKING INSECT!!!!! HEY I'M GREGOR I THINK I WANT TO BE TRAPPED IN MY ROOM AND FEARED BY MY FAMILY, JUST FOR SHITS AND GIGGLES!!!!

So they get jobs, start renting out some rooms, and largely try to forget him. His room is a sty, and he's not in good health. (During an earlier misunderstanding his father threw apples at him and one is stuck in his back. Not only is it an injury that is never treated, but also the apples rots and creates more infection.) One night he hears his sister playing violin, and she's talented, and it's beautiful, and he creeps forward a little from his room to listen. And then he actually crawls into the room behind her, and he's thinking about how he wanted to send her to school, to study violin, but the insect thing happened before he had a chance. When he's spotted, a raucous occurs, and his sister ends up screaming to his parents that they have to get rid of it, the "it" in question being her brother. She says that their lives are ruined enough, and the thing is not her brother because her brother would have left them ages ago to spare them this difficulty. Gregor hears this, and agrees, and he goes into his room and he dies. The story continues a tiny bit further, but I do not care to write about how his parents and sister cope with his death. I'm still angry with them. I first heard this story a week ago, and I still get a little choked up when I think about it. The guy doing Gregor's part just reads it as so.....pitiful. I don't know why this struck such a chord with me. It just.....makes me want to help him.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

I read this on my phone, and I'm not entirely sure I got a legitimate copy, so some of the things I bitch about might not be actually in the book. Like the author's insistance on giving way too much detail on things which did not advance the plot. In my version Blomquist (I have no idea how to spell that) loads up a program to create a database for all the Vonhamm family members, and Larsson spends a lot of time telling us all about the two guys who invented this program. For all I know that was added later by whoever created my digital copy, like a free advertisement or something.

If it was included in the actual book, then what the hell, Larsson? Did you sell ad space in this thing???

Isn't Larsson dead, though? Perhaps all those way wordy passages were kept because Larsson himself wasn't around to edit these books. I will never know, because I'm not going to research it.

So, this book starts as a painful exposition of Blomquist's legal troubles, but eventually gets to the point: Blomquist is hired by an elderly gentleman to write his biography/history of his family, and also to solve the mystery of Harriet, the man's neice who went missing at 16. SPOILER: She's alive. She ran away because her brother and father were serial killers. Blomquist solves the mystery of the disappearance, solves the mystery of the killings (which no one even knew about before he started digging) and eventually solves his legal troubles. He does all this solely because he is fortunate enough to become aquainted with the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Lisbeth Salander). She's a punkish, tiny woman with incredible hacking abilities and a photographic memory. I totally understand why these books are popular and why everyone loves her so much. I kind of want to be Lisbeth Salander, too.

This took me awhile, because I kept getting bored during all the boring parts (and there are many) but overall I liked it. I'm definitely going to read the other books, eventually.