Ethan reads 2014

[ethan]

Fiction

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Waverly - Walter Scott
Dona Perfecta - Benito Perez Galdos *
A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
The Flamethrowers - Rachel Kushner
The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico Garcia Lorca Ascends Into Hell - Carlos Rojas
The Cardboard Crown - Martin Boyd
The Ravishing of Lol Stein - Marguerite Duras
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Naked Eye - Yoko Tawada

Sodom and Gomorrah - Marcel Proust *
Old Filth - Jane Gardam
The Time Regulation Institute - Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
Fer-de-Lance - Rex Stout
Havana Red - Leonardo Padura
The League of Frightened Men - Rex Stout
The Women in Black - Madeleine St. John
The Lily of the Valley - Honore de Balzac *
Palace Walk - Naguib Mahfouz
The Wicked Pavilion - Dawn Powell *

Two Serious Ladies - Jane Bowles
The Edwardians - Vita Sackville-West
Fortunata and Jacinta - Benito Perez Galdos *
Speedboat - Renata Adler
Daniel Deronda - George Eliot
Beauty on Earth - Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz
The Fat Years - Chan Koonchung
The Rebel Angels - Robertson Davies *
Dept. of Speculation - Jenny Offill
Definitely, Maybe - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

The Good Life Elsewhere - Vladimir Lorchenkov
Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi
A Woman Named Drown - Padgett Powell
The Grifters - Jim Thompson *
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea - Yukio Mishima
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
The Captive - Marcel Proust *
The Double - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar
The Clown - Heinrich Boll

A Dreambook For Our Time - Tadeusz Konwicki *
The Girls of Slender Means - Muriel Spark *
An Unofficial Rose - Iris Murdoch
Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne *
Life and Fate - Vassily Grossman *
The Lifted Veil - George Eliot
The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy
Barley Patch - Gerald Murnane
The Days of Abandonment - Elena Ferrante
The Misfortunates -Dimitri Verhulst

What's Bred in the Bone - Robertson Davies *
Martin Chuzzlewit - Charles Dickens
The Comforters - Muriel Spark *
Senselessness - Horacio Castellanos Moya
An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter - Cesar Aira
Budapest - Chico Buarque
Faces in the Crowd - Valeria Luiselli
The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris - Leila Marouane
Robinson - Muriel Spark
The Duchesse De Langeais - Honore de Balzac

The Map and the Territory - Michael Houellebecq
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone - Sasa Stanicsic
By Night in Chile - Roberto Bolano *
Memento Mori - Muriel Spark
The Man in the Wooden Hat - Jane Gardam
The Fugitive - Marcel Proust
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad *
A Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert *
Oil on Water - Helon Habila
Absalom, Absalom - William Faulkner

Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
The Duel - Anton Checkhov *
The Mad and the Bad - Jean Patrick Manchette
The Magic Skin - Honore de Balzac
The Ballad of Peckham Rye - Muriel Spark
The Lyre of Orpheus - Robertson Davies
When Adam Opens His Eyes - Jang Jung-Il
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley *
Train Dreams - Dennis Johnson
All the Birds, Singing - Evie Wyld

The Bachelors - Muriel Spark
My Struggle Volume One - Karl Ove Knausgard
All That Is - James Salter
The Finishing School - Muriel Spark
Time Regained - Marcel Proust *
The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark *
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler
Aiding and Abetting - Muriel Spark *
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour - Joshua Ferris
Reality and Dreams - Muriel Spark

Antony and Cleopatra - William Shakespeare *
The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky *
Kokomo - Natsume Soseki
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark *
Varamo - Cesar Aira
All Souls - Javier Marias
The Hothouse by the East River - Muriel Spark
The Iliad - Homer
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
A Far Cry From Kensington - Muriel Spark *

The Public Image - Muriel Spark
The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell
Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann *
Palace of Desire - Naguib Mahfouz
A Difficult Young Man - Martin Boyd *
Not To Disturb - Muriel Spark
Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh
Dance Night - Dawn Powell *
The Lake - Banana Yoshimoto
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Haruki Murakami

The Abbess of Crewe - Muriel Spark
The Entail: or The Lairds of Grippy - John Galt *
Come Back to Sorrento - Dawn Powell *
Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh
The Only Problem - Muriel Spark *
Turn, Magic Wheel - Dawn Powell *
The Laughing Monsters - Denis Johnson
Agostino - Alberto Moravia
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
The Takeover - Muriel Spark

Dead Souls - Nikolay Gogol *
Outbreak of Love - Martin Boyd *
Lila - Marilynne Robinson
Mysteries - Knut Hamsun
Angels on Toast - Dawn Powell *
Conversations - Cesar Aira
A Little Lumpen Novelita - Roberto Bolano
Territorial Rights - Muriel Spark *
The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald
The Housekeeper and the Professor - Yoko Ogawa

A Father and His Fate - Ivy Compton-Burnett *
When Blackbirds Sing - Martin Boyd
Tristana - Benito Perez Galdos *
Last Friends - Jane Gardam *
Paradise Lost - John Milton
Sugar Street - Naguib Mahfouz
Doctors of Philosophy: A Play - Muriel Spark

The Blue Flower - Penelope Fitzgerald

The Flight From the Enchanter - Iris Murdoch *

Non-fiction

The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 - Margaret Macmillan
From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia - Pankaj Mishra *
The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust: A Critical Study of Rememberance of Things Past - Howard Moss
Sea and Sardinia - D.H. Lawrence
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne - Sarah Bakewell *
A Peace To End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East -David Fromkin
The Innocents Abroad - Mark Twain
How Proust Can Change Your Life - Alain de Botton
Domestic Manners of the Americans - Fanny Trollope
Voltaire In Love - Nancy Mitford

An Armenian Sketchbook - Vasily Grossman
Three Masters: Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky - Stefan Zweig
The Gray Notebook - Josep Pla *
When the World Spoke French - Marc Fumaroli
Capital in the 21st Century - Thomas Piketty *
Good-bye To All That - Robert Graves *
Imagining Characters - A.S. Byatt, Ignes Sodre *
The Missing of the Somme - Geoff Dyer
Lawrence in Arabia - Scott Anderson *
Reading For the Plot - Peter Brooks *

Prisms - Theodor Adorno
Experience - Martin Amis
A Motor-Flight Through France - Edith Wharton
Romanticism: A German Affair - Rudiger Safranski *
Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the SeventeenthCentury - Geoffrey Parker
A Ring of Conspirators: Henry James and His Literary Circle 1895-1915 - Miranda Seymour *
The Great War in Modern Memory - Paul Fussell
War and the Iliad - Simone Weil/Rachel Bespaloff
The Age of Empire: 1875-1914 - Eric Hobsbawm
Muriel Spark: The Biography - Martin Stannard

Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee--A Look Inside North Korea - Jang Jin-Sung
Stage Blood - Michael Blakemore
Tennessee Williams: Mad Pigrimage of the Flesh - John Lahr *
Muriel Spark: Twenty-First-Century Perspectives - David Herman (ed)
Napoleon: A Life - Paul Johnson

Caesar: A Biography - Christian Meier

Edited December 30, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

My general goals for 2014 are to keep reading recently published novels as well as 19th century classics while searching for neglected ones from the 20th century. I would like to read more non-fiction, only 20 last year of the 113 total.

 

Starting the year reading two 200 year anniversary novels from 1814 - Waverly and Mansfield Park. Also a history - The War That Ended Peace: The Road To 1914. June 28 will be the 100th anniversary of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand that helped trigger the onset of the Great War.

Edited January 8, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
This was my first Austen, and I was struck by the similarities to Henry James, both in her tight control of the material, and in her preoccupation with young people living a life of leisure in beautiful surroundings, wrapped in the cocoon of the marriage plot. The outside world barely encroaches. At one point the heroine, Fanny Price, does ask her Uncle about the "slave trade" and is met with a stony silence masking the fact that their sheltered, bountiful lifes are financed by slave labor in the New World. Fanny herself can frustrate with her timidity and severe judgements, although Austen goes far in her plotting to reinforce those judgements. She is redeemd by her devoted friendship (and love) for her cousin Edward, some very touching moments, even if the prospect of first cousins marrying gives me the shivers. Still, it's a very professional entertainment, and I can somewhat understand Austen's superstar rep.

Waverly - Walter Scott
By contrast, Scott is messy, sometimes turgid, and this novel lacks the rich humor of Ivanhoe, the only other Scott novel I've read. But there's something about Scott I really like, perhaps his exuberance and fair-mindedness (as well as a poet and novelist he was a life-long magistrate). And his hero here, Edmund Waverly, is odd, suffering from an identity crisis, torn between the romance of his Jacobite ancestry and his allegiance to the English King. There is a brilliant scene on the battlefield when Waverly, now a Jacobite rebel, watches as his former English commander, whom he highly esteemed, is brutally slain in front of his horrified eyes, and he recognizes for the first time with remorse and confusion "I suppose I am in fact a traitor to my country."
 

Edited January 14, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

Dona Perfecta - Benito Perez Galdos
My first terrific read of the new year. The kind where I sit back in my recliner, stare at the ceiling, and say to myself "ah, so this is why I do all this reading." Published in 1876, it's the story of a snarky city boy who travels from Madrid to a bigoted provincial town to claim his bride. Passions collide, mostly over religion, and tragedy ensues.  Fortunata and Jacinto (the other Galdos in English translation) has been on my wish list for years, only available in paperback in very small print. I may risk the eye strain, especially as I just discovered that three of my favorite Bunuel movies, Nazarin, Viridiana and Tristana were adaptations of Galdos novels.

The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 - Margaret Macmillan
Macmillan paints vivid portraits of the major (and minor) players, clears up much of the serpentine denseness, and keeps the suspense palpable. But otherwise this struck me as sloppy, perhaps rushed. She constantly grafts exact sentences and groups of sentences from a previous chapter to a subsequent one. Worse, in my eyes at least, are all the clumsy analogies she makes to more recent events  such as Serbian terrorists = al-Queda, the Kaiser's daddy obsession = Bush II/Iraq kind of thing.
 

Edited January 16, 2014 by ethan

[pontalba]

Great reviews, Ethan.  Dona Perfecta sounds, well, perfect.   (sorry, couldn't resist!)

[Paul]

Very nice reviews, Ethan. Waverly is still ahead of me and I still think I'll do it, but I'll be finding a different book for the road to 1914. Your reviews are on the mark for answering questions of reader interest and are therefore very helpful.

Many thanks for sharing your reactions,

Paul

Edited January 21, 2014 by Paul

[ethan]

The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico García Lorca Ascends to Hell - Carlos Rojas
The poet and dramatist Lorca was a huge celebrity and only 38 years old when he was executed by the Fascists in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. He finds himself post-death in an empty theater watching the events of his life play out on stage - Hell as memory. Rojas has some imaginative ideas- a Pontius Pilate-like interrogation by his captor, and a conversation between Lorca and a ghost of himself, as an old man, who had escaped capture, and lived on. Edith Grossman's translation is seamless, but for some reason I couldn't connect.

The Flamethrowers - Rachel Kushner
Kushner rambles about in time and space - motorcycle racing on the Bonneville salt flats, Red Brigade terrorism, exploitation of workers in the Brazilian rain forest, the NYC art world of the 70s. She did some impressive research but I felt she grafted a story around it, rather than researched her story. It doesn't help that her main character, a little girl lost in the treachery of life, isn't very interesting  and becomes a virtual onlooker in the last third, a real slog to read. I did enjoy the art scene stuff, it struck me as authentic, I wish Kushner had stuck with that.

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
Unique in its construction - a minor character in one chapter becomes a major character in the next chapter, and on and on. Egan uses a non-linear approach so we might see this new major character in past or future time. It's not as confusing as I'm making it sound, and it satisfyingly leads to a final chapter that has circled back to the first. So many sad stories of quirky characters doing tragic things, an overload of despair at times. The final two chapters (one written as a power point presentation) suddenly turn warm and cuddly, slightly hopeful. I chuckled at Egan's notion here of the Next Generation - no tats, no piercings, no cussin even, in thrall to texting and the GCD (Global Capitalist Dream).

From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia - Pankaj Mishra
I found this brilliant. Mishra lays out his argument so persuasively with compelling portraits of important thinkers most of whom were new to me. His theme is the ruinous effect of colonialism, and the general onslaught of Western modernity on the majority of the world's population. The star character for me was Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, a Persian intellectual of the late 1800's haunted by the demoralizing of the conquered, asking the questions "why are they (the West) so strong and why are we so weak?" and "what is to be done and how do we do it?"- to re-order ancient civilizations to compete in the modern world. Questions that linger even more powerfully today.
 

Edited January 26, 2014 by ethan

[Paul]

ethan, on 25 Jan 2014 - 11:35 AM, said:ethan, on 25 Jan 2014 - 11:35 AM, said:ethan, on 25 Jan 2014 - 11:35 AM, said:

From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia - Pankaj Mishra

I found this brilliant. Mishra lays out his argument so persuasively with compelling portraits of important thinkers most of whom were new to me. His theme is the ruinous effect of colonialism, and the general onslaught of Western modernity on the majority of the world's population. The star character for me was Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, a Persian intellectual of the late 1800's haunted by the demoralizing of the conquered, asking the questions "why are they (the West) so strong and why are we so weak?" and "what is to be done and how do we do it?"- to re-order ancient civilizations to compete in the modern world. Questions that linger even more powerfully today.

 

 

Ethan,

Immediately post 9-11, I came across some books asking those same questions, without significant answer.  It sounds from your review like From the Ruins of Empire will be very well worth reading.   Thanks again for another informative review.

Paul

Edited January 26, 2014 by Paul

[ethan]

al-Afghani alternated his answers to those questions, Paul, with a variety of approaches - secular Islam, pan-Islam, nationalism and some more, none of which he could gain ground with. Among his more interesting observations, vis-a-vis the Christian world, was that Islam had not experienced a Reformation, no Martin Luther, no Enlightenment.

[Paul]

ethan, on 26 Jan 2014 - 09:59 AM, said:

al-Afghani alternated his answers to those questions, Paul, with a variety of approaches - secular Islam, pan-Islam, nationalism and some more, none of which he could gain ground with. Among his more interesting observations, vis-a-vis the Christian world, was that Islam had not experienced a Reformation, no Martin Luther, no Enlightenment.

That survey of answers makes the book sound even more interesting.  Re no Reformation, et al, I think it best I keep a judicious silence, but historically it certainly seems so.

[frankie]

The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico García Lorca Ascends to Hell - Carlos Rojas

The poet and dramatist Lorca was a huge celebrity and only 38 years old when he was executed by the Fascists in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. He finds himself post-death in an empty theater watching the events of his life play out on stage - Hell as memory. Rojas has some imaginative ideas- a Pontius Pilate-like interrogation by his captor, and a conversation between Lorca and a ghost of himself, as an old man, who had escaped capture, and lived on. Edith Grossman's translation is seamless, but for some reason I couldn't connect.

This sounds fascinating! I think I will keep my eyes open for this one.

 

Great reviews, ethan!

[ethan]

The Cardboard Crown - Martin Boyd

Published in 1952, this is a fictionalized chronicle of Boyd's family, the first volume of a quartet. There's lots of genealogy to sort through, but once the novel settles down and focuses on his fascinating grandmother, it became a page turner. The family is torn between the openness of the land of their birth, Australia, and the elegance of their English ancestery, and their craving for European high society. They make frequent trips back and forth at a time when such trips were often treacherous. The grandmother is a strong matriarchal figure, benevolently ruling over a large clan, but is silently haunted by family secrets and dwindling funds. I'll definitely be reading the subsequent volumes.

 

The Ravishing of Lol Stein - Marguerite Duras

Lol is an eighteen year old girl who one night attends a town ball with her fiance. The scamp meets a new woman and spends the night dancing with her, while Lol watches in horror at her jilting, and descends into madness. Her best friend believes that Lol has always been mad, while the narrator, a future lover, doubts that she has ever been mad. Sexual attraction is depicted as becoming instantaneously spellbound, a fall into a kind of deathly abyss. Enigmatic, cryptic, disorienting are appropriate adjectives, but I got caught up in it and finished in one sitting. It has rekindled my latent nostalgia for the heyday of the European Art Film. I've seen a couple of Duras directed movies but I'm really hankering for the Duras scripted, Resnais directed Hiroshima Mon Amour which I don't think I've seen in, gasp, almost 50 years, but I remember it well.

 

The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust: A Critical Study of Remembrance of Things Past - Howard Ross

I chose this to kick start my reading of vol4, Sodom and Gomorrah. It's a beautiful book (Ross was the poetry editor of New Yorker magazine and won a Pulitzer for a volume of his own poetry), and I think it got the job done. The last chapter, a meditation on how time = memory, is worthy of a re-read. Many of his insights into the novels were recognizable to me, only Ross managed to feel them more deeply. I suspect I actually enjoy reading about Proust more than I do reading Proust. There were no spoiler alerts, and ironically it may be that old-fashioned thing called plot (I was surprised at some of what happens in the ensuing volumes) rather than the prospect of many more exquisite perceptions, that will keep me going.

Edited April 7, 2014 by ethan

[pontalba]

I've only read The Lover by Duras, and loved it.  Have ordered a copy of The Ravishing of Lol Stein.  Not to mention the kindle order I made for The Cardboard Crown.   Thanks.

[ethan]

Sea and Sardinia - D.H. Lawrence
Lawrence is living in Sicily post WWI, and decides to visit Sardinia, the large mountainous island off the west coast of Italy. He is such a cranky fellow, from the get go, and I wasn't sure what kind of trip this was going to be. His German wife, Frieda, travels with him, and is referred to as the "Queen Bee" at the start the "q-b" thereafter. She puts him in his place at points and I wish there had been more of her. But Lawrence is so good at chronicling the logistics of travel circa 1921, by ship, by train, by bus, some of it pretty suspenseful. His misanthropy keeps getting in the way, but  there are also compensations with lyrical passages of land and sea scapes. Even his crankiness began to seem funny if not quite endearing. The book ends, satisfyingly, with a magical description of a midnight marionette show.

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Propulsive story telling. I was previously only familiar with the Olivier/Oberon film classic which covered Book One and none of the Cathy/Heathcliff childrens story of Book Two. Heathcliff's sadism is raised to new levels in this section and I couldn't help wondering what he might have represented in Bronte's feverish 28 year old imagination. I also marvelled at the confinement theme, with little chance of escape from the woeful Heights, and even the happy (at times) Thrushcross Grange seemed a prison, isolated and remote. All to play out deadly family entanglements (I had to pause at times to sort out the various parentages) in a most creative manner.
 

Edited February 4, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne - Sarah Bakewell

An entertaining and informative biography, exuberantly free-wheeling apropos its subject. I can't imagine a better introduction to his work. Montaigne lived through the calamitous times of late 16th century France - Catholic/Protestant civil wars of unbelievable brutality; plague years in which Bordeaux while Montaigne was Mayor suffered 14,000 deaths one summer, one third of the population. Yet the essays celebrate moderation, curiosity, reflection, not taking one's opinion too seriously, learning how to live a full and happy life.

 

Montaigne was an ancestor of the Stoics and the Skeptics, and had little interest in abstract philosophy, or theology (which would in later times get the Essays banned by the Church for over 200 years even though Montaigne was a practicing Catholic in good standing during his lifetime). He was immediately translated into English, and most certainly read by Shakespeare. Scholars have pointed out passages from Hamlet and The Tempest that are nearly exact dupes of passages from Montaigne. I've downloaded a modern translation, all 1330 pages, of the essays, planning on reading a few a week.

 

The Naked Eye - Yoko Tawada

A Vietnamese high school girl travels to East Berlin in the waning years of the evil empire to deliver a speech on American Imperialism. She gets abducted by a West German student, eventually escapes to Paris where she becomes obessesed with Catherine Deneuve movies. She is sheltered by various good samaritans but never really makes an effort to return home, which was a major stumbling block for me, believability-wise. But the prose (Susan Bernofsky, trans.) is excellent, and if you like Catherine Deneuve movies (many connections made between the plots and the heroines struggles) it might be worth a try. Tawada interestingly wrote this in both a German and Japanese language version, this translation is from the German.

Edited April 7, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

Sodom and Gomorrah - Marcel Proust

I got along much better with this modern Sturrock translation than I had with the Scott-Moncriefs of the previous three volumes. Although I still at times put it down feeling a bit suffocated, it was more eventful, more Albertine, more humor. I've also reached the point (probably long since) of immersion, that lulls one in long, long novels, inhabiting a world that will be remembered vividly, the whole more satisfying than many of the parts.

 

.

Edited April 7, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

Old Filth - Jane Gardam
Failed In London Try Hong Kong, an acronymn for the main character, Edward Feathers. We follow him in his dotage as he surveys his life - from traumatized Raj orphan (based on Rudyard Kipling's experiences) to celebrated magistrate in the Far East. Gardam tells his story in a non-linear fashion which conveys much of the scope of the 20th century. Although many of the sub-characters are developed quickly and well, Feathers himself seemed incomplete. Luckily there are two more volumes (another trilogy!), one from the point of view of his wife, the third from the point of view of his wife's lover (whom Old Filth appears to be unaware of) to hopefully complete the picture.

A Peace To End All Peace: The Fall of The Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East - David Fromkin
Fascinating portraits of Kitchner, Churchill, Lawrence and especially Lloyd George. The story is told mostly from the British side appropriately as they were the main players in slicing up the middle east into countries we know today as Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Iraq. The chutzpah of much of their imperialistic thinking is stunning with little knowledge of or real concern for the peoples they were carving away at. Another truly enlightening history read, the section on Gallipoli is superb.

The Time Regulation Institute - Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
I found the satire of bureaucracy often inspired and hilarious. And that's with missing much, I'm sure, of targets familiar and resonant with Turkish readers. I thought the whole idea of a wildly successful government Institute that ensures and enforces that all clocks and watches are displaying the precise time to be irritatingly far-fetched, but research revealed that before Ataturk wrenched Turkey into a more efficient modernity, time was measured only by calls to prayer, it otherwise had limited meaning.

 

I kept having problems recalling the large cast, my memory for foreign names being weak. But I think also that Tanpinar overloaded each character with eccentricities, forming a sea of quirky behaviors, hard to tell one from another. The novel rambles a bit, occasionally plods, but there are some genuine moments of pathos. I didn't feel the masterpiece goose bumps that some of my betters did, but its humor and thematic richness made it well worth reading.
 

Edited February 23, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

Fer-de-Lance - Rex Stout

The first of the Nero Wolfe mysteries published in 1934. The series is an interesting intersection of the Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot brilliantly deductive sleuth (Wolfe, who never leaves his NYC brownstone), and the hard-boiled street smart detective (sidekick Archie Goodwin) who anticipates Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer.

Their debut includes an ingeniously imagined murder weapon (a deadly modified golf club) and an epic battle with a Fer-de-Lance (a giant venomous South American snake) in Wolfe's sacrosanct study. The relationship between Wolfe and Archie is often a battlefield itself- Wolfe crowing over his genius with "phenomena" while belittling Archie's lack of imagination, Archie seeing through all of Wolfe's pretensions and ethically dubious stratagems. But they also need each other in some compelling ways ( father/son, shared sanctuary from a disordered world) and that is what propels the novels.

.

Edited March 11, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

The Innocents Abroad - Mark Twain
Twain and sixty-five companions embark from NYC to the Mediterrean on an 1867 version of a cruise ship. They tour much of Europe although the main goal is the Holy Land. Twain can be so cynical and snarky that he often seems more a character of today than yesteryear. He delights in debunking romantic notions of exotic sounding places and is pretty much displeased with everything and everybody he encounters. Thankfully he is also very, very funny, at times reminiscent of a stand-up comedian. One has to look between the lines of the relentless schtick to glimpse the caring human that Twain certainly was.

The abject poverty encountered from Constantinople through the Holy Land and Egypt is stunning. Infectious disease (especially cholera) is feared, so the ship must endure a week of quarantine at many ports before passengers are allowed to go ashore. These facts add much to the flavor of the way the world once was, which Twain is very skillful at evoking. I was sad when the journey was completed as Twain had become the kind of friend you immediately miss, so I'll be reading Life on the Mississippi and Roughing It sometime soon.

Havana Red - Leonardo Padura
A transvestite is found strangled to death in the woods on the outskirts of Havana. A police procedural ensues but as this is a literary detective novel the genre stuff is mostly perfunctory. Padura is more interested in exploring the depths of male gloom, told in overheated prose, including one of the most ludicrously described sex scenes I've ever read, even after allowances are granted to middle-aged novelists sitting alone in their studies for too many hours.

You do get some rare glimpses (for me at least) of a society that seems stuck in a time warp. An interesting dilemma is faced - should I abandon the place (exile) or stick around to see if change will ever come. One of the characters is a world renowned dramatist who has been silenced because of his homosexuality. He chooses to stay and continues to write, without an audience, finding solace in the prospect that he and his works will be long remembered even as the sordid politicos are long forgotten.
 

Edited March 12, 2014 by ethan

[dtrpath27]

The Innocents Abroad sounds wonderful!  I'm a big Twain fan, but I haven't heard of this one before.  

[Athena]

The Innocents Abroad is on my TBR, nice reviews .

[ethan]

The Innocents Abroad sounds wonderful!  I'm a big Twain fan, but I haven't heard of this one before.  

 

Twain was only 32 when he made this trip sending back dispatches to a NYC paper. He was already famous for his columns and also for a short story called The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County which was a world-wide sensation by the time Innocents was published.

 

And thanks, Athena.

[ethan]

How Proust Can Change Your Life - Alain de Botton

Doesn't quite live up to its title but chock full of fascinating anecdotes and insights, inspiring me on to vol5, The Captive. I'm not convinced a book can change one's life but it can heighten one's perception of the world around us, as Proust's novels surely do. Botton's chapter on how Proust encourages us to recognize the beauty in the everyday and seemingly banal, of developing one's own sense of discovery, is a pip. If you ever get the urge to climb the literary mountain of In Search of Lost Time, Botton provides an excellent entry point. (thanx, frankie, for the recommend)

 

The League of Frightened Men - Rex Stout

When respite is needed from hi-brow stuff these mysteries are the ticket. Even William Faulkner reportedly was a fan. League is the second of the Nero Wolfe series, and includes the very rare occurence of the rotund and normally harsh, reclusive Wolfe leaving his brownstone and venturing out into the real world. All to save sidekick Archie who is quite touched by the unexpected concern. The finale is full of surprises.

 

The Women in Black - Madeleine St. John

Shopgirls struggling in 50s Sydney, employed (wearing black uniforms) in the women's fancy frock section of a fashionable department store. We have an unhappy wife with a clod of a husband, a panicky near-spinster, and a brilliant young temp whose father doesn't believe in women being educated. It's Christmas time and the workday world of the retail rush is expertly captured. Even more remarkable, St. John, in her first novel (published when she was 52), and in a festive spirit, warmly bestows happiness upon her heroines in satisfying ways.

Edited April 16, 2014 by ethan

[Janet]

I've got An Innocent Abroad on my kindle.  I'm glad you enjoyed it. 

[ethan]

Palace Walk - Naguib Mahfouz

Mahfouz was the first (and is still the only) Arab writer to win the Nobel Prize. Palace Walk is the first novel of his Cairo Trilogy. It's a family chronicle, set in the years immediately following WWI. Egypt is occupied by British forces who cause widespread unrest when they exile a popular Sultan for demanding independence. But this is at heart an intimate portrait of a middle class family ruled by an absolute dictator, patriarchal omnipotence at it's most extreme. Mother and daughters are virtual prisoners in their own house. The father is feared but worshipped, as the family members believe him to be benevolent at heart. He's also a hypocrite, enjoying a licentious personal life outside the conservative morality of his home. He may be a tough character to endure, but the novel is mostly absorbing, even though Mahfouz overloads the last 100 pages with too many momentous events.

 

The Lily of the Valley - Honore de Balzac

The other six Balzac novels I've read were feverish, but this entry in his Human Comedy is just plain crazy. A young aristocrat recovering from a dysfunctional childhood (Mama didn't love him) falls in love with an older married woman, a Duchess. She is saddled with a mentally unbalanced husband who verbally abuses her, and two sickly children. The love affair that ensues is otherwordly, as the lovers passion is never consummated while many years go by. Rarely has romantic obsession been so intensely portrayed, its destructiveness so powerfully revealed. Balzac has yet to disappoint me with his endings, this one is superb.

 

The Wicked Pavilion - Dawn Powell

Powell employs a deft comic touch, and a skillfulness in the art of irony, as a bevy of loosely connected characters, searching for something tangible in the ether of life, revolve around a soon to be shuttered, memory haunted Greenwich Village eatery. Powell is at her best in evoking the boozy zeitgeist of NYC circa 1940s-50s. There is a sweetness to her vision that I barely noticed in the other Powell novel I've read, A Time to Be Born. Highly recommended.

Edited April 7, 2014 by ethan