WoTD: ne plus ultra

Definitions:
1. The highest point, as of excellence or achievement; the acme; the pinnacle; the ultimate.

2. The most profound degree of a quality or condition.

Arnold aspired to greatness. He worked long and hard at perfecting his craft and even harder at self promotion. His single minded obsession to gain fame earned him a reputation and notoriety amongst his peers. He longed for more, for recognition from the everyday man, the person in the street who mixed in circles other than his own. The ne plus ultra was for Arnold DiSilva to be a household name like Da Vinci, Picasso and Van Gogh. But his peers could see what he could not. If he achieved fame for anything, it would be for his arrogance and ego, not for the talent that he lacked.

BR: Immortality (Milan Kundera)

A friend loaned me this book, confiding that it's one of her favourites and taught her a lot about the meaning of life.

The back cover reveals little about the novel, instead -- as is the modern style -- it features snippets of reviews as if to say 'these people think the book is great, so will you.'

I found an overview online, At least this gives part of an impression of what will come.

Synopsis (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/k/milan-kundera/immortality.htm):

Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose; to explore thoroughly the great, themes of existence.

The book started well; the prose poetic, longing, rich and detailed with a tainted worldiness that hooked me in. Divided into seven parts, I worked through part one with a heady sense of wonder, luxuriating in the complexity of the author's mind and delighting in the philosophical wanderings of a writer whom blends himself into his work. The female character engaged me and I sympathised with her. She wasn't around long enough for me to connect.

Part two began to bog down, but I persevered, aware that the fictional nature of the work had crossed over into the realm of non-fiction, yet without going all the way there. I felt that the author held strong views about life, love, human connectedness and the ongoings of select historical figures but lacked the determination to pursue them other than in idle daydreams.

As the book progressed, I laboured forward. I felt trapped inside the author's head, locked in a theatre of his mind with his theories, his values, his moral questions and hypotheses. The characters lusted and toyed with each other in a bitter orgy of misplaced emotions and deviant motivations.

Yes, in places the author's insight impressed me. I thought outside of the square, but as the chapters laboured on and the same themes repeated in different ways, I grew bored.

This novel best suits academia where students can pore over the words, compare the text with other masters and engage at great length in discussion about the meaning and intent. It is well written and obscure enough to appeal to intellects who long to unearth its secrets. As a writer, however, I approach reading from another angle, not from the intellectual challenge it might bring but from the emotions it can evoke. This story tells a story and offers up a paradigm shift in how the reader might view their relationships and lives, but it doesn't offer an experience, a sensory world between the written lines. I seek that.

I acknowledge that I wouldn't make a good academic intellectual. I don't read to learn, I read to feel, and through feeling, to become more than I am. This isn't my type of book, but that doesn't make it bad. In fact, it's not. Maybe in another time I'll give it another try. Maybe.

WoTD: arcanum

definition:

1. A secret, a mystery.

2. Specialised or mysterious knowledge, language, or information that is not accessible to the average person (generally used in the plural).

Pop once said that the secret of life lay not in the living of it, but in the study of those who came before. He lived that advice, reading volume after volume of historical text in preference to stepping out to live his own. I long thought he did it because he could not walk, but then I saw him hurry down his back steps to shoo the neighbour's cat from out of the yard. Then I figured he did it because he feared life beyond the safety of his front gate, until I happened across him at the local library, chattering away to the librarian as though he had known her his whole life. In the later years he hosted clandestine meetings in his basement for men who wore dark clothes and carried dusty old tomes. I wondered if he were a cult leader, but what kind of cult would my grandfather lead?
As I grew into adolescence and my grandfather into old age, I wearied of trying to figure him out. He was an arcanum and I lacked sufficient wisdom and persistance to figure him out. 

WoTD: fructuous

definition: fruitful, productive

The stakes, over two metres high and set into the ground at regular intervals across the length and width of the paddock, supported an intricate trellis of wire and netting. One foot high seedlings dotted the tilled earth like an army of forest green cow pats. Twenty thousand dollars and the future of two familes rested on those herbaceous clumps and so very much could go wrong.
George leaned on the strainer post and rubbed his back. Eddie did the same to his own though no amount of rubbing could ease the deep ache.
"Should have hired someone," George said.
"Couldn't afford it."
George bent a little as though the weight of the field and all it represented rested on his shoulders. He nodded, resigned. In the distance as two tanned, slow moving dots, Norma and Eloise finished the last of the stakes.
"If this is anything other than a fructuous endeavour, we lose everything. You know that."
Eddie's skin prickled. "Yeah. I know it."

WoTD: fractious

definition: 

1: tending to cause trouble, unruly.

2: irritable; snappish; cranky.

My moods take me, at random, to squarish places in windowless rooms. Inside those confines, I war against a fractious enemy, a despicable, angry warlord consumed by venom and spite. It wages against me, tireless and irrational, ever yapping like a rabid Chihuaha on a monster's leash, all fangs, froth and torment. Respite, heavy and numb, comes with slow regard, unwrapping leaf by leaf, strip by strip, taking me apart in pieces, separating and reassembling, making me whole again. I am savoured -- saved -- until next time. Random.