My Reading Obsession

The other day in the library I picked up something that seemed interesting. The title is 13 Women, Parables from Prison.  One page in it was obvious that the editor, Karlene Faith really, really, really didn’t believe in prison.  Uhmmm….at one point she said that only serial killers should be incarcerated–as in if you kill one person, you need help, not prison.  Well, I may be a bit liberal and believe that the prison system is a complete disaster, unfairly executed and actually makes our country worse, but this is ridiculous!

I’ve always been interested in prisons.  I don’t watch the half-hour specials on the news channels like ‘Locked Up’ or anything, but I do watch documentaries on the subject pretty religiously.  There was even one that I saw that I thought worked pretty close to the way a prison should work.  Maybe that’s why I got the book.

Each woman was either interviewed or wrote about their experiences, including sort of a life story.  I think I really understand the saying, ‘Where you end up usually depends on where you start,’ but I think the prisoners took more responsibility for their actions than the author was willing to rest on their shoulders.  If you’re poor, then you’re going to commit crime.  If you’ve been mistreated, then you’re going to commit crime.  If you commit crime, you’re going to do it again.  These are not always true.

However, I do think we over imprison.  I believe that a non-violent offender sentenced to prison will leave prison more likely to commit violent crimes.  I believe that your race and socio-economic status play a role in whether or not you are sentenced to prison, how long your sentence is, and just how much of that sentence you serve. That is not right.  While I understand that prisons must be awful experiences in order to keep prisoners and guards safe, there are many prisoners that would be perfectly happy to keep themselves, fellow inmates, and their prison in a humane way.

Well, I didn’t read all the book. Frankly, it was a bit dull and seemed repetitive.  Because most of the stories took place in the 70’s, it seemed out of  date, even though it was edited and put together in 2006.  The most interesting story was of a woman who had been physically abused by her husband for years. She left him, traveled across the country to California to get away from him. He followed and as soon as he found her, beat her again so badly that she ended up in the hospital–with him in jail.  He was released the next day and went back and beat her again, and was picked up by the police.  They drove him around for awhile and brought him home!  So she’s in a restaurant with her husband eating a steak, and he attacks her in the restaurant!  As he beats her, she takes her steak knife and stabs him twice, killing him. This is all in public, right?  What kind of sentence would you expect?  I mean, self-defence, right?  10 years.  She spent 10 years in prison for that.  I could not believe it!!!

The good part is, it did make me think again about how I feel about prison.  I do think it’s overused.  The prison sentences for marijuana are ridiculous.  Sending non violent druggies to prison just makes them worse.  The judicial system should be fair.  There should be a chance at rehabilitation. Prisoners should be safe from violence of all sorts.  Will it ever be fixed? The subject could fill pages and pages, and I have no experience and a very minor knowledge of it.   All I know is, I think I could handle prison, but those strip searches are just too much!

I finally finished Mrs. Dalloway a few days ago.  It is the first Virginia Woolf novel I’ve read.  A day in the life of Clarrisa Dalloway, a member of British soiety, as she prepares for a party she is throwing that evening is the subject.   The stream-of consciousness Woolf uses to describe and explore the day jumps from Clarrissa, to those around her, and also gives us some of the thoughts of Septimus Smith, a war veteran with mental difficulties caused by his experiences in the war and the loss of his best friend there.  The juxtaposition of Clarrissa, who is not without thought and feeling, but feels as if her only contribution to life is to offer up a good party with Septimus, who is so wracked with pain and yet viewed as just out of sorts, or a bit anxious by his peers and doctors gives an idea of just what was important at the time and exactly who was not.

Its a testement to Woolf’s skill in the technique that by reading this thin volume, with only the current thoughts of the characters that we come to understand Clarrissa’s life,  how her choices shaped her, and exactly what she might have missed out on.  As a youth, she loved, and even passionately kissed her outrageous friend Sue, who is now a settled homemaker with  five sons, and she turned down the marriage proposal of another friend who didn’t fit, Peter to marry her staid and respectable husband.  Peter hasn’t necessarily turned out to be a sucess, which might make it seem as if Clarrissa was right in her choice–instead, I couldn’t help but think of what the two of them, outside the society box, might have made of themselves.

Meanwhile, Septimus, struggling for his sanity, ends in jumping out of a window, killing himself.  Clarrissa hears of this at her party, where the prime minister has deemed to attend, and feels proud of Septimus.  He’d made a statement, and a choice, after all.  This line of thought shows that Clarrissa is more than the sum of her ability to meet societal expectations.   Although she feels as if a good party is all that she has to offer, it is not.  At the time however, it was what was valued.

Reading this book has made me want to read more Woolf, and more about her.  After googling her and reading what I’ve found, I’d like to know even more.  It’s funny how the women who write about home and society are discounted as meaningless, and yet their novels have the ability to really show us what life was like, and delve deeply into the minds of characters dealing with lives as complicated as any we know.

And we all know what that means!  Re-read, of course.  Now I used to re-read starting at 1 and going through them, but I didn’t do it this time. In fact, I wasn’t going to read it again at all, as I read it in October, expecting the movie to come out as expected in November.  BUT IT DIDN’T!    *%^#$@$$%!!   So my mom asked me, when we drove to Oregon in June to read The Half Blood Prince aloud to her. Of course I got into it, so when she finished, I picked it up again.  This is absolutely one of my favorites.  I know when Goblet of Fire came out some parents felt that Rowling shouldn’t have let a kid be killed, but I didn’t agree. Good doesn’t always win, does it?  And so, with this book comes an even bigger tragedy, one that sets Harry off on the quest alone.  Not quite alone, I guess, but with no guiding star.

I am so excited for the movie. We have tickets for 12:01pm on Tuesday night.  Amy, Jude, Ryan, big Bronson, and I are going, and will probably go very early and wait in line for good seats. Can’t wait. It’s a school night for me, so I wont’ be able to go as early, but still!  Jude can’t wait either. He came in the other morning to tell me that he wanted to be there super early, because he’d been waiting for this too long to get a bad seat.

The only bad part is knowing that only two more movies stand between us and no more Harry Potter.  Depressing thought.  Once in awhile Jude will get all sad and sigh, and I’ll say, what’s wrong?  He always says something to the effect that he thought to himself that he couldn’t wait for the next Harry Potter book and then realized there were no more…..I can’t help but feel the same.