The Sun Also Rises (1926) By Ernest Hemingway

 

Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises, has recently been reprinted by the Library of America. I thought it would make a good re-read. On second thought, I think I read it before, now I am more inclined to believe it was assigned when I was in high school, but I probably watched the movie instead of reading it. 

The novel is one of the classics of American literature, penned by perhaps the greatest of the Lost Generation writers. The Sun Also Rises takes place in France and Spain in the years between the World Wars. Significantly, The Lost Generation was a working title for Hemingway’s book.

There are two primary characters. One is the narrator Jake Barnes, an American army veteran who stayed in Europe after World War I working as a foreign correspondent. He lives in the Montmarte neighborhood of Paris and has a large clique of writer friends, some successful, some not, all of whom could be categorized as alcoholics. 

The other primary character is Lady Brett Ashley, an English woman who was a volunteer at the hospital where Jake was treated for his war injuries. They had fallen madly in love, a relationship never to be consummated as a complication of his injury and recovery. After the war, Lady Ashley returns to England and marries. 

The action in the story begins a few years later when Brett returns to Paris to escape her abusive husband. With her is a man named Mike whom she intends to marry once her divorce is finalized. He was also in the hospital at the same time as Jake during the war. Brett and Mike (also severe alcoholics) already know many of Jake’s friends – each of whom are charmed by her. There is soon a new arrival into this group of ex-patriots, the recently divorced Robert Cohn, a writer and old friend of Jake’s. He immediately falls for Brett, and they have a fling. The crux of the story then becomes how Brett handles each of these people who are in love with her, and how they compete for her attentions – not the least of whom is Jake. 

These machinations climax when they all attend the Fiesta de San Fermin (Running of the Bulls) in Pamplano, Spain where Brett falls for a 19-year-old matador named Pedro Romero. Long story short, a jealous and taunted Robert, a middleweight boxing champion when he attended Princeton, knocks out his good friend Jake, flattens Brett’s fiancée Mike (who is aware of the fling), and seriously beats up Pedro the day before his big bullfight.

While the above plot synopsis matches what I remember about my initial read (?) of The Sun Also Rises in say 1970, there is one important aspect of my reread 50 years later, that I had no recollection of: a significant streak of antisemitism. I remember the infighting and name-calling between the guys – they were all in a fierce competition for Brett – yet, now I note that the put-downs of Robert were repeatedly expressed as antisemitic slurs and stereotypes. The biggest culprit of this was Brett’s fiancée Mike, but all of the characters – including Brett -- are seen to routinely concur. This is so blatant that there is no way I could have NOT noticed it, which is why I think maybe I did not read the book.

When I finished my “reread” I decided to re-watch the 1957 movie made from the book. It is a classic in its own right, starring Tyrone Power as Jake, Ava Gardner as Brett, and Mel Ferrer as Robert.  Sure enough, none of the antisemitism from the book is in the movie (I have not watched the 2007 remake).

So, my unanswered question is this: Is this antisemitism a reflection of Hemingway, or is it a case of Hemingway observing antisemitism in the 1920s and exposing it (as in Christopher Isherwood)? I am not a Hemingway-scholar, I do not know the answer.

Recommendation: Yes to the 1957 movie, it is excellent. As for the book, it is a classic and I am not going to say don’t read it. I will however say if you read the book you must also watch the 1957 movie and take note of what has been edited out.  

Fiela's Child (1984 in Afrikaans, 1992 English Translation) By Dalene Matthee

 

Earlier this year, I blogged a book by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart.  In the blog post I admitted that I have read very few books by native African writers and asked for recommendations.  I received several, one of which was Fiela’s Child by Dalene Matthee from South Africa. It is an excellent read.

Set in the mid-1800s, the book tells the story of Fiela, a “coloured” woman living in rural South Africa with her husband and their children; and a three-year-old Caucasian boy who shows up alone on their doorstep one night. When there are no reports of a missing child, they will name the boy Benjamin and raise him as one of their own. Fiela, a deeply religious woman, considers Benjamin her “hand-child,” handed to her by God to care for. 

Enter the outside world.  Nine years later, census takers sent to the countryside by English colonial administrators note that one of Fiela’s children is white. They begin to ask questions.  Weeks later, they will return to claim Benjamin as possibly the long missing child of English loggers who live in the mountainous forests between the farmland and the coastal settlement of Knysna.  

When the census takers return, they convey Benjamin, now twelve, to the Magistrate’s office in Knysna for a hearing. At the hearing, the white mother and father who had lost their child are brought in to see if they recognize the child as their own. The mother claims to, claims he is her son Lukas. They are given custody and take the terrified child back home with them to the forest where they will “teach him to be white” again.

While the above is the beginning of the novel, it is not the full story by any means.

The novel is about the power of love and upbringing, the racial and economic caste system in Nineteenth Century South Africa, the geographic landscape of the country, the colonial system, the divide between the “Cape Coloureds,” Afrikaners, and the English administrators, and the differing viewpoints people have of the natural environment.

As I was reading Fiela’s Child I was imagining what a great movie it would make, turns out there have been two movies. The first, made in 1988, ranks as one of the worst movies (acting and production quality) I have ever tried to watch. In 2019 a second movie was made based on the novel. I understand it is quite good, though I can’t locate a link to it.

Recommendation:  YES, as a social justice treatise, an environmental essay, a partial history of South Africa, or just as a good novel, absolutely.

The Last Summer of Reason (1999 French, 2001 English) By Tahar Djaout

 

Tahar Djaout was an Algerian writer, poet, and journalist whose work reflected support for secularism in his country, and a disdain not of Islam, but for religious fundamentalism. In 1993 he was assassinated by members of the Armed Islamic Group because of his growing notoriety. The Last Summer of Reason was published posthumously from a manuscript discovered in his personal papers.  Its title refers to a family's last summer vacation prior to a bloody civil war.

The primary character in the fiction novel is Boualem Yekker who lives in an unnamed country clearly patterned on Djaout’s native Algeria. He is a lover of poems written in Arabic, and world literature. He makes his living as a bookseller, buying and selling hard to find books for people who appreciate them. The novel is a series of progressing personal essays on how the country is changing as a result of the growing presence/dominance of religious fundamentalism in the country’s post-colonial politics. That presence is encapsulated in a group of men collectively known as the Vigilante Brothers (VBs).  They are thugs, not unlike Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood or Algeria's Armed Islamic Group. 

They “convert” the general public to their cause and make life miserable for those who don’t sign on, eventually even recruiting Yekker’s wife and children.  The children join the VBs, not because they are “true believers,” but because they want to belong to something, and the Vigilantes have equated and merged their religion with the post-colonial nationalism. His wife signs on because life will be easier if she’s not thought to be a holdout. Yekker sees what is going down, but adamantly resists.    

Eventually, Yekker’s family will move out of his house and disown him. Deserted, he develops nightmares. In one such nightmare he dreamt his son had become a VB enforcer, and turned in him.  In the dream, Yekker kills his son. 

Back to the waking hours, the Vigilantes close down his bookstore, having already scared away his customers and burned his inventory in the street. Their mantra is that only “one” book is needed.  They post a note on the store door telling Yekker they have changed the lock and he should not try to enter. It informs him they will “be in touch” to let him know what, if any, of his belongings he may remove.

Without his family, and now locked out of his own store, Yekker further slips into a dreamworld, his dreams being the only avenue left to him of the way things were before all this madness began, not knowing if the country will ever return to the way it was.

Recommendation: Yes, for students of history (and although this is technically “fiction” be there no doubt this is Algeria).

The Cold Millions (2020) By Jess Walter

 

Aside from being a phenomenally good read, The Cold Millions published last month includes a hidden gem: its Acknowledgements.  I have definitely never said that before, ever. In fact, I seldom read the Acknowledgements section of any book.

Written by bestselling author Jess Walter (Beautiful Ruins), The Cold Millions is a fictionalized history of union and “Wobbly” organizing in the mining and timber industries of the Pacific Northwest (Washington State, Idaho and Montana). “Wobbly” is the slang term for members of the Industrial Workers of the World. The novel is an understandable lesson on labor vs. industrial robber barons in American history.

The reason the Acknowledgements section is so great is because it is a “how-to” manual on writing historical fiction.  Walter did his homework, studying local history (the book is set in Spokane, where he lives) and meticulously researching relevant events in labor organizing in the first decades of the Twentieth Century; and key figures from the movement, one of the most prominent of which is Elizabeth Gurley Flynn – the protagonist in the novel -- better known to history as one of the founders of the ACLU and later as a member & Chairwoman of the American Communist Party.

Rebel Girl Song (written by Joe Hill)

Walter took these events and fictionalized versions of several real individuals -- Flynn, Acting Spokane Police Chief John Sullivan, labor lawyer Fred Moore, and many others -- and tied them altogether with a completely fictional cast of characters: showgirls Ursula the Great (the original and her successor), and the Dolan brothers -- Gig, and his younger brother Rye who serves as the primary narrator in the book.  The result was action packed and convincing novel, with a compelling Epilogue.

Recommendation:  Yes, a great reminder of a largely forgotten period of American history.

My Cat Yugoslavia (Finnish 2014, English Translation 2017) By Pajtim Statovci

 

My Cat Yugoslavia is an amazing and strange book. While not particularly an easy read, it is an excellent read.

The author Pajtim Statovci is a now 30-years old war refugee, born in Kosovo, living in Finland.  My Cat Yugoslavia, his first novel, is semi-autobiographical. He’s written two other novels, Crossing and Bolla, all three have won literary awards. 

How does one begin to talk about this book? 

Let’s start with the two main narrators: Emine, a girl first introduced to the reader as a teenager; and then leaping ahead twenty-some years, her son Bekim. Their lives are as complex as Yugoslavian history. 

They are ethnic Albanians from a village outside Pristina, the provincial seat of Kosovo, then a part of the Republic of Serbia, which became a part of Yugoslavia – a nation “created” from “leftover countries” by mapmakers in the aftermath of World War I (Paris 1919, Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan). Yugoslavia contained three ethnic groups, and several erstwhile Republics.  By the end of World War II it had evolved into a communist country held together by Prime Minister, then dictator, Josip Tito. The book begins at the time of Tito’s death, which lead to multiple wars including the war between Serbia and Bosnia, the politics of which is well beyond my ability to simplify.

While still a teen, Emine is married off to a man from a neighboring village, who turns out to be abusive to her and their children. When the war breaks out the family flees Kosovo, eventually becoming refugees living in Finland. There are multiple topics crafted together in this novel: the issue of war refugees, the treatment of immigrants, the generational divide between immigrant parents raised in the old country and their children raised in the new country, abusive family relationships, and the impact all of this has on one’s ability to navigate one’s own life. 

With that as an overview, let me explain why I used “strange” to describe the novel.  There are other characters who play a role in the book: Bekim’s pet boa constrictor; and “The Cat,” a human with a cat persona that Bekim picked up in a gay bar and who became his first live-in relationship -- the cat and the snake do not like each other; and finally, a real cat who Bekim befriends near the end of the book while visiting the village where he was born back in Kosovo. 

Three or four chapters into reading My Cat Yugoslavia I was so confused I had to stop and start over. A helpful hint from my friend Daniel who sent me the book, clued me in that my difficulty was discerning when, from chapter to chapter, the first person narrator changed, which was frequently, as did the year and place the action was occurring. Forewarned, on the second go around I had little difficulty.   

Recommendation:  Highly recommended. This will definitely be a re-read in a few months after I’ve had time to digest it.

The Man Who Planted Trees (1954) By Jean Giono

 

A couple of months ago I blogged about the descriptive mastery of French author Jean Giono in his novel The Horseman on the Roof. Problem was the topic of that book was a cholera pandemic. I believe I used the word “ghastly.” I wondered then about applying his descriptive powers to other, more pleasant topics. With that in mind, I picked up a short story of his that is right out of the naturalist genre: The Man Who Planted Trees.

The story is similar to the American folklore classic Johnny Appleseed. Though, instead of planting fruit trees for a growing nation, Giono’s story is about replanting oak forests in the Provence region of SE France in the foothills of the Alps Mountains. The protagonist is a shepherd who after the death of his wife takes on as a personal mission the task of planting a hundred acorns each day in areas abandoned by early settlers who had harvested and destroyed the natural environment which enticed them to settle there in the first place. This book answers my question about utilizing Giono’s writing skills on a more pleasant topic.  He was the perfect writer for The Man Who Planted Trees.

Animated Film Adaptation

In 1988 an animated film adaptation of the book was released. The 30-minute film won the Academy Award for Best Short Story.

Recommendation:  Yes, both book and film are booster shots for humanity, there is yet hope for planet Earth. 

This Blinding Absence of Light (French 2001, English translation 2002) By Tahar Ben Jelloun

 

In 1972 a military coup against King Hassan II of Morocco failed.  The military officers who organized the attempted coup were executed.  The soldiers who were just following the orders of their commanding officers when they forced their way into the King’s palace, were tried and sentenced to prison.  Author Tahar Ben Jelloun tells of their plight in his award-winning novel This Blinding Absence of Light.

The soldier-prisoners were hooded and taken from their cells and thrown into a back of a truck which sped off into the night – they thought to certain death.  No notice was given, no family member was informed, no records were kept, they just disappeared.  They had been transported to Tazmamart, a secret facility for political prisoners in the Atlas Mountains in the southeast of the country.  They were surprised that they were not killed, but soon realized their punishment was worse.  Each was put in a solitary cell, with ceilings so low they could not stand, and without windows or any other source of light.  They could die, and most did, but they would not be killed. 

The book is narrated by a prisoner named Salim, and as hard as it may be to believe, it is not entirely depressing.  It is a story of the personal mechanics of survival, including working out a communications network with neighboring cells, and is steeped in faith and philosophy.  It is in fact a compelling read (and even includes several incredibly funny passages (i.e. the telling of A Streetcar Named Desire).  

Through negotiations with the guards – who like them were merely following orders -- they were finally able to establish minimal contact with the outside world.  Through one such contact they were able to get word to Amnesty International of their existence in this secret gulag.  Years later they would be freed as a result of international pressure on the government of Morocco.  One released prisoner eventually managed to get smuggled out of the country to France where he met and told the story to Ben Jelloun.

While that story outlines the cruelty mankind is capable of, and you know how it’s going to end, and you also know it isn’t going to be pretty, you keep reading it because of Salim’s wise and unfathomably good heart.

Recommendation:  Great Read

I’ve blogged two other books by Ben Jelloun, A Palace in the Old Village and Leaving Tangier,  both were excellent.

The Horseman on the Roof (French 1951, English 1953) By Jean Giono

 

Jean Giono is considered one of France’s greatest writers.  His mastery of narrative description is remarkable.  If the topic is beauty, valor or honor, the reader is sure to be enthralled. There is a downside to this skill however, and it is on shocking display in Giono’s classic The Horseman on the Roof: the story is set in the southeast of France during a cholera outbreak.  The visual of the narrative is ghastly, page after page of real life and death brought to your eyes and nose.  That said, it is a compelling read.

The story is about a young Italian man named Angelo Pardi.  He is a cavalry officer and a gentleman, son of nobility, elitist, yet fighter for revolution.  There is a lot of contradiction in that sentence, which makes Angelo an interesting character.  He has had to flee to France where he works to organize other exiles and let them know they’ve been sold out by the latest alliance change among Europe’s endlessly warring states.  It is France’s post-Napoleon era. 

Angelo's flight to France soon becomes a nightmare as the cholera epidemic begins to spread from person to person, village to village. The horror of the epidemic, with people trying to survive, and turning on each other, blockades at city gates, and mandatory communal quarantines of out-of-towners – is impeding Angelo’s work.  At one point, to avoid capture he ends up crawling on the tiled rooftops of a village – hence the title of the book.  In his escapades, he meets a young French noblewoman, who herself is trying to survive.  They will travel together, ever eastward trying to stay one step ahead of both the epidemic, and the French military.

FULL MOVIE (French, with English subtitles)

In 1995, a movie based on book was released starring Olivier Martinez  as Angelo, and Juliette Binoche as Pauline, the noblewoman.  It is largely faithful to the script – which makes its cholera scenes a bit much.  I prejudged the movie assuming it would be your typical “beautiful people” among the world’s ugliness re-write.  I was wrong on that front. There are many political asides in the book that are lost on readers without a background in French history (like me). The movie does a fairly good job of explaining this history for an international audience. 

Recommended.  Yes, both book and movie.  Though, not for the squeamish.

The Edible Woman (1969) By Margaret Atwood

 

The Edible Woman was Margaret Atwood’s first book.  Published in 1969 it has been categorized as belonging in almost every literary genre one can list. For me, I’ll call it feminist, though from reading interviews of Atwood I’m not sure she would completely agree.

The lead character is a young woman living in Toronto.  Her name is Marian.  She works for a marketing firm writing survey questionnaires.    

Marian is single.  Early in the book she will become engaged to her boyfriend Peter because that is the expected next step in her life.  Peter is what would have been called at the time “a good catch,” a handsome, up-and-coming professional. He, without a clue, treats her as nothing more than an accessory in his professional advancement. Peter though clearly a schmuck, is not necessarily an evil one. Her realization of this is the main plot of the book.

Ainsley is Marian’s roommate.  They have little in common.  Marian’s character is buying into what is supposed to be “a woman’s role” in society. Ainsley is having none of that.  Ainsley’s subplot is her decision to have a baby, without a husband.  She picks out an old friend of Marian’s to be the father, then waits until her pregnancy is confirmed before telling him his role is complete; he is no longer needed.

Then there is Duncan, without competition the most bizarre character in the story.  For most of the book he is referred to as “the laundromat guy.”  From scene to scene he is either a very insecure geek, or a complete jerk … sometimes both.  Duncan, and his two roommates, are English Literature Masters students – and Atwood’s depiction of the trio is priceless, not to mention spot on.  Through Duncan, Marian will realize she needs to bail from her “a woman’s role” trajectory.

Throughout the story, Marion develops increasingly severe eating disorders, all stress related.  How she deals with these is the source of the book’s title and makes for a hilarious conclusion.

Recommendation:  Highly recommended

Cat's Cradle (1963) By Kurt Vonnegut

Chicago Tribune photo

Kurt Vonnegut's fourth novel was Cat's Cradle, written in 1963. It is perfectly bizarre, I loved it. As bizarre is that I didn't read Cat's Cradle until this week. I was aware of it back in my high school days, I just never read it -- probably because it wasn't required reading (unlike Slaughterhouse-Five). My loss.

The novel is a combination of pure sarcasm, science fiction, biting political commentary, and equally biting "comparative religion," with a touch of Mad Magazine thrown in to hold it all together.

The story's narrator is Jonah, a free-lance writer. He's working on what he hopes will become the book that will make him famous, about what important Americans were doing on the day the first atomic bomb was dropped, on Hiroshima, Japan. He will title it: The Day the World Ended.

On his list of people he hopes to write about is (the fictional) Dr. Felix Hoenniker, who in the book is the "father of the atomic bomb." He's a poorly paid scientist subcontracted by the Department of War.  Hoenniker however is deceased, so Jonah sought to interview his three children as to what their father was doing on the day the bomb was dropped.  Was he apprehensive, guilt ridden, or did he celebrate what would end World War II, and his role in it?

Jonah was able to interview two of the three children. Newt a "midget" who is the youngest child; and his sister Angela, who largely took care of the family after the death of their mother. Missing was the oldest son Frank who disappeared after his father's death, and is presumed murdered. Jonah does however uncover that Dr. Hoenniker was working on another secret invention, called ice-nine, at the time of his death, but appears to have taken its details to the grave with him.

After giving up on the book for awhile, Jonah receives an assignment to write a magazine piece about San Lorenzo, "the barracuda capital of the world" located somewhere in the Caribbean.  On his flight to the island-country, he discovers that Angela and Newt are also onboard, on their way to brother Frank's wedding.

Through an endless series of hysterical circumstances, Jonah will discover the secret of ice-nine, and garner first-person documentation for The Day the World really Ended.
    
Recommendation:  Yes, completely fun.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Last week, to take my mind off of current events (pick your news nightmare), I re-read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, one of the best known of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Published in 1902, and at just 249 pages, the cultural shelf life of this book is beyond phenomenal. 

The case to be solved in this book is to uncover the true story behind a "supernatural" hound that has become the curse of the Baskervilles, an artistocratic British family with a hereditary estate – Sir Charles Baskerville has died mysteriously, and the new heir is Sir Henry Baskerville, who had been living in Canada.  The estate, Baskerville Hall, is quite remote, in the moors of the west country.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s output of Sherlock Holmes novels (4) and short stories (56) is impressive enough, but the Sherlock Holmes franchise, now in its second century, also includes countless republications in countless languages, audiobooks, radio programs, theater productions, television shows, and an exhaustive list of movie adaptions – and still growing, having lost none of its popularity. The books are now in the public domain, so there will be more.  When I finished reading the book, I watched the 1983 movie version on Amazon Prime starring Ian Richardson and Donald Churchill which was well done. I'm also a fan of the Sherlock Holmes series on Netflix.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are two of the world’s best-known fictional characters – along with the likes of David Copperfield and Huck Finn.  There is a reason for that, people, including me, like them.

Recommendation:  Yes, fun and relaxing.  

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) By Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut was one of the “cutting edge” authors of my teen years, and beyond. His novel Slaughterhouse-Five was literally required reading. However, I was never that into his writings – my reading interests back then were almost exclusively nonfiction. This year, I’ve been revisiting some of his many other works: Galapagos during my winter vacation; and now God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

This novel is set largely in fictional Rosewater County in Indiana – for the record, Vonnegut was raised in Indianapolis. Generations ago the Rosewater family settled the county and built and grew their business, (a sawmill and other profitable businesses) making them exceedingly rich, and easily the most prominent citizens in town. Their status in the Hoosier state was not unlike the (real life) Ball family of Ball Industries (glass jars for food canning) in Muncie where Ball State University is located, or even the fictional Magnificent Ambersons, portrayed in Booth Tarkington’s classic also set in Indianapolis.  

The Rosewater accumulated fortune went into a charitable foundation, control of which has been passed on to Eliot, the grandson of the company’s founder.  How proper control of the Foundation is viewed is the subject of the novel. Does one have buildings named after the Rosewaters? Does one bankroll important philanthropic causes? Does one buy fire trucks? Does one just give money away?

The plot details an attempt to wrestle control of the Foundation away from Eliot by having him declared mentally incompetent.  The novel is deeply and deliciously cynical, with a just and quite funny ending. 

Recommendation:  Yes, definitely a thought-provoking book, particularly for those of us who spent our careers working in nonprofit organizations.

Things Fall Apart (1958) By Chinua Achebe

Heinemann Publishing founded the African Writers Series in 1962 to facilitate bringing an international audience to African authors.  The first novel they selected to print was Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe a Nigerian who wrote in English. It is the first book of his African Trilogy, which collectively tells of the impact of European colonization on the Africa continent. The other two are No Longer at Ease (1960), and Arrow of God (1964).  Achebe was presented with the Man Booker International Prize in 2007 for his lifetime of achievement.  He passed away in 2013.

Achebe opens his novel with an overview of village life, its family hierarchy, its belief structure with multiple Earth gods, and customs – seen through the eyes of Okonkwo, a leading Igbo warrior and farmer.  Some of the customs may seem barbaric today, but they worked successfully as a societal structure for generations.  When the Christian missionaries arrive (the “advance team” of colonization), things slowly, then quickly, begin to change, or as the book title put it, “things fall apart”. 

The novel is a remarkable piece of history-based fiction. I will read the other two books in the Trilogy.  The theme of Things Fall Apart parallels closely with a memorable book set in Tasmania that I read and blogged about several years ago: Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World, by Mudrooroo.

I’ve read only a few books by African authors, including Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih (Sudan) written in Arabic; Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) also written in Arabic; and A Palace in the Old Village, Leaving Tangier, The Last Friend, all by Tahar Ben Jelloun (Morocco) written in French. Dalene Matthee’s Fiela’s Child (South Africa) is on my summer reading list. As you can see, I've read next to nothing by sub-Sahara authors. Recommendations of other African authors will be appreciated.  

Here is the list of books published in the African Writers Series.

Recommendation:  Definitely.

At the Mountains of Madness (1931)By H.P. Lovecraft

Occasionally I pick up a book to read for purely escapist reasons. These are often adventure books such as The Bounty, or Voyages of Discovery, with themes of exploration. With that in mind I selected a collection of H.P.Lovecraft’s tales (an author I was unfamiliar with) because it included At The Mountains of Madness, a book written in 1931 which I thought was about Antarctic exploration. Surprise! 

Well not completely, the book is in fact about a geological expedition to Antartica, but it eventually turns into a book of science fiction.  And as I would find out later, is considered by many as the first publication of some key concepts/theories which are a staple of the sci-fi genre.  During the expedition, a side trip not on the original itinerary is made to an unexplored area of the continent named The Mountains of Madness.  The entire group of scientists on the side trip disappear from the communication grid. When found by a search party, it becomes clear they’ve been killed, not by weather, but by some unknown and decidedly unhuman entity.  The official journal of the expedition mentions nothing of this.  The purpose of the book, an addendum to the journal, is to dissuade a new exploration from taking place.

Embedded in this story are a couple of sci-fi creation myths “fathered” by Lovecraft now used and expanded on by numerous other sci-fi writers.  These include The Call of the Cthulhu, about the occupation of Earth by intergalactic beings at war with each other; The Elder Things, which went underground in the aftermath of the wars; the Shoggoths, created to serve the Elder Things (and includes six-foot penguins); and the Necronomicon (aka: Book of the Dead) an ancient history text. All of these myths are also plot topics in several other Lovecraft short stories from the 1930s included in this Library of America collection of his works.

This short animated video is not bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wLC_vByu0k

Recommendation:  Yes, fun.

Ulysses (1922) By James Joyce

For decades Ulysses has been on my reading list, I have started it numerous times, never getting beyond the first hundred pages. With the assistance of retirement and a pandemic shelter-in-place order, I have now succeeded in completing what is considered by many a literary masterpiece. Like most “Lit geeks” I would like to claim bragging rights for finishing the book. Instead, I am just happy to be done.

I completely understand why it has won its place in the English language canon. Parts of the book are brilliant. It documents Joyce’s command, his sheer mastery of literary styles. He has few rivals. Impressive as that may be, it is also perhaps the reason I feel disappointed. It is not a novel. It is a textbook on various writing formats. A good textbook mind you, but one which lacks a compelling story.

While Joyce’s mastery of prose is on display, his storytelling is not. Yes, he can write a scene, but if one is expecting a beginning, progressing to an end, look elsewhere. What Ulysses delivers is a start and a stop. Not a finish, a stop. Yes, Joyce can write. Wilde, Dickens and Shakespeare could also write, but they could also tell stories at the same time. Call me a traditionalist.

  

Why one should read Ulysses? – video

The plot, if one wants to be generous and call it that, is a day-in-the-life of three main characters, Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly Tweedy Bloom.  A friend who has read the book described Stephen as a “horndog,” a not inaccurate term. I could never understand how a book first serialized in 1914 and not published in book form until 1922 could be banned, now I do (though book banning is not something I will ever approve of).

Ulysses is not an easy read.  It begins with Stephen’s morning shave and continues on through 768 pages of one digression after another, which seldom return to the topic at hand. That this is a truthful representation of a day-in-the-life story, while not necessarily inaccurate, is all the same sad and, frankly, uninteresting.

Recommendation:  No, I did not find it worth the investment of my time. I will however recommend two of his other books: The Dubliners, and Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. Both were excellent.  I’ve yet to read Finnigan’s Wake

Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939) By Katherine Anne Porter

Two of my recent reads have been set during pandemics: They Came Like Swallows and Death in Venice. They were of interest because they recorded details about how people reacted to health crises a century ago absent effective drug treatments, against how we as “a people” have been facing the challenges posed by Covid-19 today.  I have now added Pale Horse, Pale Rider a short story by Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980) to this genre. 

Porter’s story is based on her own experience as a victim of the 1918 Spanish Influenza. A survivor, her recovery was never certain, and very painful physically and mentally. She was hospitalized for months.  

In the book, the protagonist is a young newspaper reporter named Miranda who has fallen in love with Adam, a young soldier temporarily on leave awaiting orders to ship out for Europe to do his part in World War I. Their relationship cannot help but be impacted by the threat of death from influenza, or on the frontline of battle. Miranda falls ill and is hospitalized. Adam is not able to see her because the hospital has barred all visitors during the epidemic. When Adam is shipped out, he can only notify her with a letter left with hospital staff, a letter he does not even know for sure Miranda will ever see.

   

Porter’s personal pain and near death as a patient is apparent in every thought the character Miranda has. It is equally clear the author has experienced the kind of pain only love can cause. 

Pale Horse, Pale Rider is the first work of Porter’s I have read. It was published in 1939.  In 1962 her only novel Ship of Fools was the top-selling book of the year. Three years later, with the publication of her Collected Short Stories, Porter won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Recommendation:  Yes. Though this was my introduction to Porter, it definitely will not be the last of her stories that I will read.

Death in Venice (German 1912, English 1925) By Thomas Mann

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann is a literary classic I am almost embarrassed to say I had never read before this week; nor had I ever seen Luchino Visconti’s film adaption of it, considered by many an Art film masterpiece.  Still controversial today, Death in Venice most have been explosive when first published in Germany in 1912, even as carefully written as it is.

The story, in an oh so brief summary, tells the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a famous author (composer in the movie) living in Munich who has writer’s block and is in poor health.  His friends and doctor order him to take a sabbatical.  He tries a number of locales but ends up taking a holiday trip to Venice.  He arrives during a “scirocco,” a late summer storm.

 

There are two major plots: his obsession with a beautiful teenager, and a cholera epidemic in the city.

Aschenbach checks into the luxurious Grand Hotel des Bains on Lido, Venice’s offshore beach resort. At the Hotel he notices a blonde and slim teenage boy, the very definition of the ancient Greek “classic beauty” [I disagree]. The boy is vacationing in Venice with his mother and siblings.  Aschenbach, a widower, becomes obsessed with the boy, whose name he finds out is Tadzio, and begins to follow his every move.  Tadzio notices, responding at first with nervous curiosity, and then with seductive teasing.  Importantly, they never connect or even speak.

When I say the book, published in 1912 is carefully written, I mean Mann’s narrative, considered semi-autobiographical, is that Aschenbach is enchanted by the boy as a personification of artistic beauty, not as a sex object.  Today, one would lean toward calling him a pederast.

Aschenbach is also concerned about growing old, and worried about his health.  When he notices people beginning to die suddenly, and sanitation notices going up around Venice he begins asking the hotel staff and local merchants what is going on.  They all recite the party line, that “these kind of orders are issued all the time to combat the ill effects of the heat and scirocco."  Finally, a manager at the  currency exchange recites the party line, but then pulls him behind closed doors to whisper to him that the city is experiencing a cholera outbreak and tells Aschenbach that he should leave town immediately.  Asked why the authorities are not informing people, the manager tells him that to do so would be bad for our tourist economy.  He decides to leave.

 

Death in Venice 1971 Movie Trailer

When Aschenbach returns to the Hotel he decides to must tell Tadzio’s mother she must take her family away from Venice as quickly as possible.  But by the time he works up the nerve to risk talking to Tadzio's mother, he discovers they are already preparing to leave.  All will depart at Noon.  Aschenbach goes out to the beach to pass time until the launch will pick him up and take him to the train station.  In a very memorable closing movie scene, Aschenbach dies in his beach chair while watching Tadzio walking into the water.

Recommendation:  Yes, for literature buffs, both book and the 1971 movie.

They Came Like Swallows (1937) By William Maxwell

In 1937 William Maxwell penned a book about the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic mostly as seen through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy named Bunny, and his twelve-year-old brother Robert. The story was set in small town central Illinois, where Maxwell grew up. The book, They Came Like Swallows, is short at 124 pages, but captures a hugely significant story. The title is inspired by William Butler Yeats’s classic poem Coole Park because it encapsulates the boys’ mother so perfectly.

                They came like swallows and like swallows went,

                And yet a woman’s powerful character

                Could keep a swallow to its first intent,

                And half a dozen in formation there,

                That seemed to wheel upon a compass point,

                Found certainty upon the dreaming air.

I read this book several years ago, although beautifully written, I basically cast it off as “ancient history” and forgot about it. Today, it re-reads as “current events.”  The course of the Spanish Influenza ran from 1918 through 1919, killing an estimated 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 Americans, 5-times the death toll of US soldiers who died in World War I, which ran concurrently.

Today (April 24, 2020) just over a century later -- and only 3 months into the Covid-19 pandemic – 2.8 million people have been diagnosed worldwide, with 202,000 having died.  In the U.S. 52,234 people have already died.  After the first wave of infections, if history repeats, a second wave of the pandemic will occur, and absent a vaccine, will be far more deadly.

The effectiveness of Maxwell’s book is that he did not write to shock the reader with statistics, he wrote about one family, in one small Midwestern town. 

Of pointed significance in the book is that some of the actions used in 1918 to effectively slow the epidemic are being used again today, and meeting the same resistance, such as school closings.  When Bunny becomes ill, his mother’s lament is “If I’d only taken Bunny out of school when the epidemic first started.”  When Robert is told that he can’t leave the yard, his response “What good was having school closed?  What good was all the time in the world? So long as he had to stay in his own yard, what good was anything.”  The rumors spreading through town then was that the influenza was sent to the U.S. by German submarines.  Today, it is the Chinese.  And ministers, ordered not to hold public services, then like now, complaining about religion being more important that some disease, and God will protect them.

Recommendation:  Absolutely.

Seven Gothic Tales (1934) By Isak Dinesen

My definition of “gothic” leans toward horror stories, i.e. The House of Seven Gables.  But Gothic literature is much broader, characteristics of which include: “death and decay, haunted homes/castles, family curses, madness, powerful love/romance, ghosts and vampires” and all things supernatural.  In a manner, Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dineson touches on all of those, with a heavy dose of religion.

A collection of short stories, Seven Gothic Tales was the first commercially successful book written by Isak Dinesen, better known for her biographical book Out of Africa, and later in her career Babette’s Feast – both more famous today as movies, than as books. 

Isak Dinesen, was one of the pseudonyms used by Karen Blixen-Finecke (1885 – 1962).  She was born and raised in Denmark and spent 20 years of her married life in Kenya.  She was multi-lingual, and largely picked her pseudonym based on what language she was writing in/publishing for.

Included in the collection are:

The Deluge at Norderney has a meandering plot set during a severe late-season storm centered at a seaside (Baltic) resort hotel.   Guests attempt an escape via boat as the town is flooding.  In departing they come across a woman and her children standing on a barn which is rapidly being submerged by the water.  Several volunteers on the boat swap places with the family, agreeing to risk the night staying in the barn awaiting rescue in the morning.  The characters include an aristocratic woman, a Catholic Cardinal, and others.  Their secret identities and pasts are the tale.

The Old Chevalier set in 1874 Paris, tells of a young man walking home after being dumped by the married woman he’s been having a several months affair with.  Depressed and drunk he meets a young lady on the street and takes her home for a one-night stand.  After she leaves in the early morning, he realizes that he can’t live without her, he spends all of the next days searching the streets for her, with no success.  Fifteen years later, he comes across an artist’s painting of her, but is still unable to find out her identify.

The Monkey clearly fits the gothic elements of supernatural, with a heavy religious subset.  A young man has come to visit his aunt, the Virgin Prioress of Closter Seven, a Lutheran convent.  He seeks her advice on marriage, and she instantly takes charge of finding him a suitable bride.  She arranges to hook him up with a young woman who will be the heiress to a neighboring estate.  Following his aunt’s advice, the arranged date goes horribly astray (he pounced, as Sally would say in Cabaret), though not near as horrible as the confrontation they have with the aunt in the morning.

The Road Round Pisa is long-winded, convoluted, and dumb. A man has been given a small “smelling bottle” with a heart-shaped drawing of an idyllic country estate on it by his maiden aunt.  Throughout his childhood he has heard romantic stories told by his aunt with the estate being the setting.  After her death, he travels to Italy in search of the estate painted on the bottle.  A coach accident leads him to make a dying woman a promise to find her daughter before she dies.

(My favorite) The Supper at Elsinore takes place on the NE coast of Denmark (as a reader of Hamlet would be able to tell you).  There, the DeConink family has kept a large old home near the harbor for several generations. A caretaker lives in the home.  The only remaining members of the family, two unwed sisters now into middle-age, have moved to Copenhagen.  They have/had a brother who went to sea on the eve of his wedding day and is rumored to have become a pirate.  He is presumed dead.  In the story, the caretaker has seen his ghost in the old house and gone to Copenhagen to fetch the sisters back to the old house for a conversation with him.   

The Dreamers is interesting, yet another long-winded tale.  It takes place in 1863 aboard a dhow (a small craft boat) off the coast of Zanzibar.  The boat’s passengers are an escaped political prisoner and his friends who are secreting him back to Tanzania to seek revenge. To pass the time on the trip, they begin telling stories, each trying to one-up the others.  This takes us to Europe and a story about three different men, each of whom have met and fallen for a mysterious woman who then disappears on them.  Each man believes the woman has ditched him to escape a sinister “Old Jew” who is following her – described by each with the stereotypes of the time.  Spoiler alert, he ends up being the good guy.  The stories end as the sun begins to rise and the dhow is approaching shore.

The final Gothic tale is The Poet about a wealthy older man who takes a young poet under his tutelage.  In the story the older man decides to marry a poor young widow who resides in one of the homes he owns.  Unbeknownst to him or the young woman, the young poet is in love with her.  Because of this, he decides he must leave Denmark after the wedding. He visits the young woman on her wedding’s eve to tell her his intention.  The old man, who had been hunting nearby, overhears the conversation, and ends up dead.

Recommendation:  For Lit majors only, with the exception of The Supper at Elsinore.