The River Why

David James Duncan
Quote:

That was the thing about Nature: make one lousy rule to describe it and it’ll contradict you even if it has to transmogrify and metamorphosize and bust its ass to do it. And so what? If anybody grew wise enough to grasp the real immutable laws of Nature, Nature’d only rear back and strike ‘em dead before they got anybody to understand them.

I recalled sentimental paragraphs wherein authors bootlessly lament departed fisher friends; I recalled adventures where some angler meets his death by some unfortunate outdoors accident, or, more frequently adventures wherein some angler hears of another angler who heard of an angler who met his death by some unfortunate outdoors accident, thus keeping the Grim Reaper at a pleasant distance while we readers, like overstuffed cattle in the slaughterhouse corral, ruminate the cudlike morals Death’s victims leave as their legacies to Angledom—pithy maxims like: “Don’t make Fred’s mistake: wear a life jacket” or “Don’t pull the fatal boner Arnold pulled: carry that compass in the woods at all times”

I don't think I have ever read a book more exactly in the style of writing I like than The River Why. But I am putting it up here for more than its style. The River Why has good thought in it too. I thought about comparing it to Walden, but the only way Thoreau could have written something like this was if he had been about twenty years younger and high as a kite. I think a hundred and fifty years of social relaxation and retardation have also helped to produce The River Why instead of Walden. Whatever the case, there are always stories of men who cannot stand that great invention we call civilization. These men usually get angry, retreat in a girlish huff to some remote area--almost always within a few miles of the thing they got huffy at--and discover that they didn't hate civilization at all. With the exception of Daniel Quinn, who apparently does hate civilization, these hermits end up ruminating their minds off and finally slapping their knees with jovial hands as they say, By Golly, I miss Mom, Pop, and little Jimmy.
The River Why spends a good deal more time than these others though on the metaphysical topics. Retreat from society to discover the self, retreat from civilization to discover the metaphysical. The lens Duncan uses to look at metaphysics is definitely the mystics, but if you are up to a discussion of shadows as twins and Garden Worlds where Garden Angels all burst into white flames at the sight of a Queen, well then, you might just be able to enjoy The River Why.
Duncan will surprise you though, no matter what you come looking for: humor, love, Zen, Daoism, and some fishing; environmentalism, psychology, mentology, emotionology, drunkenness and human nature; bartering, home-made whiskey, dogs as philosophers, philosophers as dogs, God, salmon, and five-year-olds' confidence. The wandering and wondering journey Duncan takes you on covers more ground than a river in a hundred years, about as much as the quivering wavering trickle of water down your windshield, asking that great question of its changing path and unlike both streams, ending in a place that will likely surprise you. For instance, one of the best personal adds I've ever read:

Will the girl who ran from the guy who recited Izaak Walton in the tree please contact Gus on the other river he named. He has your rod and fish and wants to return them. He is totally harmless, but urges you to bring a loaded gun if frightened, as long as you come. Thank you.

One last rumination of my own: I think thought about metaphysics sometimes is very like climbing a mountain on a cloudy day to look at the sun. There are about as many mountains as there are people who would like to climb them. And along the way, almost everyone gets a good peak at the burning sun. Some end up hiking above the clouds for quite a long time, while others only get caught in the fog and don't see much more than a luminescent brilliance. But none of them ever get to the sun because they climbed the mountain. It may help them get a better tack on the sun, figure out where it's shining, perhaps even what the sunlight feels like, but the mountain never reaches the sun. The River Why is a hike up a mountain, not an especially tall mountain, but I guarantee you will get above the clouds.

In Dubious Battle

John Steinbeck

Burton sighed. “You see? We’re going to pile up on that old rock again. That’s why I don’t like to talk very often. Listen to me, Mac. My senses aren’t above reproach, but they’re all I have. I want to see the whole picture—as nearly as I can. I don’t want to put on the blinders of ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ and limit my vision. If I used the term ‘good’ on a thing I’d lose my license to inspect it, because there might be bad in it. Don’t you see? I want to be able to look at the whole thing.”

Steinbeck. I am starting to wonder if I am not blinded by my admiration of his writing; I have yet to read something written by him that I did not enjoy immensely. There is always a point in his books where I let the book slip down and stare at the wall or out the window for a while. He has captured, not perfectly but piercingly, what it is to be human.
In Dubious Battle is not the sort of book that would normally catch my interest--being the story of early communists at work in depression era America. But when Steinbeck tells the story, my preconceptions are broken in moments. Though In Dubious Battle sounds like propaganda at times, it is more realistic than anything else--not realistic in the documentary sense, but realistic in the mythological sense. Though the men and women in Steinbeck's books move about like great raging furies, orchestrating and living such drama as is fit for the gods, they have the meaning of reality. That men will take advantage of whatever system they live under, that men are often cowards and often enjoy evil, that men will sooner betray a friend than face a fear, that men are capable of God's good.
In Dubious Battle is not about Communism or Socialism or Labor Rights or Capitalism--it deals with nothing else. But these things are merely the stage upon which a much greater theater is performing--the performance of strangers having a conversation, of friends sitting in silence together.
If you do read it, pay especial attention to the character of Doctor Burton. Almost all of Steinbeck's novels have this sort of weary character; his voice often is the quietest, sometimes the strangest, almost certainly the wisest. He is a character who will scare you, but he will also make you wish you were strong enough to be him. He says, "We fight ourselves and we can only win by killing every man. I'm lonely, Jim. I have nothing to hate."

The Origin of the Brunists

Robert Coover

The illusion of having solved the Great Mystery, simply because the parts seemed to fit.

I do not recommend this book, especially if you are Christian. I have read no more condemning, no more insidious criticism of faith than this book. Perhaps I have taken it wrong, perhaps I am too personally interested, but Coover's The Origin of The Brunists seemed to scream mockery of Christianity at almost every turn.
It is the story of the founding of a small cult and its various lunacies as it destroys the village it was based in. There is little in The Origin of the Brunists that will make you smile, particularly because Coover is a good writer. He depicts perversion and insanity with such guile, you will see yourself in some of the most revolting characters.
The Origin of the Brunists is a great ode to circumstance, a triumph of coincidence and the determinism of a life doomed by spinning atoms ten billion years ago. Humans are little more than mindless units of matter spinning about without much reason at all, driven by what most would consider vile or animal lusts and going just about nowhere.
I read The Origin of the Brunists because Coover plays havoc with traditional form and narrative structure. He does wonderful things along this line, producing fresh forms without being confusing.

The Life of Pi

Yann Martel

I put a message in the bottle: 'Japanese-owned cargo ship Tsimtsum, flying Panamanian flag, sank July 2nd, 1977, in Pacific, four days out of Manila. Am in lifeboat. Pi Patel my name. Have some food, some water, but Bengal tiger a serious problem. Please advise family in Winnipeg, Canada. Any help very much appreciated. Thank you.'

I have read no other account of a castaway upon the sea as incredible as this one. Martel is a master, Pi is a hero. The Bengal tiger, Richard Parker, is the supreme friend to be stuck in a lifeboat with for 277 days on the Pacific. And when you include various other exotic animals, fish, storms, carnivorous tree-algae, and of course a mad French cannibal cook, you find a story unparalleled in human history. Outrageous you say? Every next breath we take is an outrage, that this globe should go on spinning a supreme act of defiance. It makes them no less true.
The Life of Pi is surely a story which needs to be read more than once. It begins and you will suspect it to be some philosophical work, perhaps a bit ponderous and somewhat pretentious, but in very little time you will forget about all the metaphysical ruminating and be caught up in the very life of the story. Living in a small lifeboat while a hyena and orangutan duke it out and a Bengal tiger sleeps leaves you little brainpower left for theological questions. And just when you think you've got a handle on this story and it hasn't any more to surprise you with--after a floating land of meerkats who eat mysteriously dead fish--The Life of Pi savagely turns on you and slaps you several times in the face. Martel deftly sets up a scene that is not only hysterical, but a brilliant summation of the book. The interrogation scene between the two Japanese men and Pi in Mexico is beautiful dialog--better than any I have read in a good while.
Martel writes very well, but he thinks even better. You will spend many days thinking about The Life of Pi after you finish it. As will any book with such lines as: "Isn't telling about something--using words, English or Japanese--already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?"

Saturday

Ian McEwan

There has to be more to life than merely saving lives.

Theo came up with an aphorism: the bigger you think, the crappier it looks. Asked to explain he said, "When we go on about the big things, the political situation, global warming, world poverty, it all looks really terrible, with nothing getting better, nothing to look forward to. But when I think small, closer in--you know, a girl I've just met, or this song we're going to do with Chas, or snowboarding next month, then it looks great. So this is going to be my motto--think small.

And it's at this point he remembers the source of his vague sense of shame or embarrassment: his readiness to be persuaded that the world has changed beyond recall, that harmless streets like this and the tolerant life they embody can be destroyed by the new enemy--well-organized, tentacular, full of hatred and focused zeal...The world has not fundamentally changed.

This is the first book I have read by McEwan and it will be my hopefully be my last. I was captured by the middle quote above about thinking small--the idea intrigued me, but Saturday is far too big in its dusty boldness to be concerned about anything small. McEwan's writing is good enough, and the book flows wonderfully well with moments where you will be flipping pages faster than philosophical quips go through the main character's mind--which is fast.
I almost felt this was a tired attempt at coming to terms with all the baggage we seem to have developed for ourselves in our modern age--McEwan fills pages with interesting and witty ponderings on such topics as the war in Iraq, terrorism, materialism, and even a little bit of poverty and socialism. But I never felt that McEwan believed there to be any answer hidden behind all this. He clearly wants there to be an answer, but he simply cannot get beyond the wonderful sense of melancholy his jaded view offers up. There are moments where he shamelessly indulges in deep fits of self-loathing mixed with self-pity--afterall we are such a screwed up world, it is almost dramatic. McEwan, like the vast swath of modern western humanity lusts deeply after anything great. Give us great accomplishments, great good, great sadness, great tragedy, give us great bad even, only do not for the love of life, give us normalcy.
McEwan seemed to be writing a novel about the normal lives of people who think about the same things you and I do, but he couldn't help make the father a philosophical neurosurgeon parent to a famous and young poet daughter and an equally famous and young blues musician son. Did I mention their grandfather was a distinguished and cantankerous poet himself? Aiming for normalcy in thought, McEwan couldn't resist grandeur in fact.
But for all that, McEwan still had his brilliant moments. Such comments as: "Only at work is he single-minded; at leisure, he's too impatient" and "For the humanities generally, misery is more amenable to analysis: happiness is a harder nut to crack" are so perfect--they were the deciding factor in whether or not I wrote about him here.
Saturday pissed me off. Maybe an older mind would recognize the weariness in McEwan's voice, I confused it with an exuberant attempt to imitate that dark world-worn experience which is so in vogue--and which also happens to be a lie.

Jesus the Heretic

Conrad Noel

The commonwealth of God’s dreams and our desires was some day really to come to us all here, and we must be impatient to bring it to pass. If we waited complacently until we departed this life, it was unlikely that we should be fit to inherit it hereafter, and especially unlikely if we were comfortably off, and not extremely uncomfortable and impatient about the misfortune of the workers for which our class was largely responsible.

I am not very knowledgeable of church history, but reading Jesus the Heretic has inspired me to learn much more. Noel discusses many aspects of the early church (basically everything from the very beginning when Peter was still alive to the split of the Reformation), and in doing so he raises many questions about the changes the church has gone through and the current state it is in. While he is very optimistic, he points his finger at many a damning characteristic. For example he briefly discusses the change in the church's attitude towards interest--something which is difficult for modern day Christians to discuss, seeing as our economy functions off of this concept. Originally and for a long time after that, the church viewed taking interest on a loan as mortal sin. Noel posits that the only reason the church changed its view was out of selfishness. Not something many of us would want to hear.
He also gives quite a bit of space to the idea of socialism (as it existed in the 1930s) and how he feels it to be particularly compatible with Christianity. I have some issues with how he argues, but there is a certain urgency in his argument especially with concern to the poor and poverty. He has a defensible, if radical (by our standards) view on what the Kingdom of God truly means and how we as Christians enact it right now.
There is a large portion of the book, somewhere in the middle, that is devoted to issues specifically pertinent to his pre-WWII world. But these chapters still hold interest for current issues since he philosophizes quite a bit about things like pacifism and programs for peace. And I will warn, some of his ideas sound wacky: he has a slightly different view of the Soviet Union than we who have seen it fall apart and been influenced heavily by such books as The Gulag Archipelago, and Noel also submits an idea for "air mines" which will make you laugh. But I don't feel that these moments of what might be called foolishness are any more serious than our own inability to predict the future. Give Noel some grace for still being human, he's a good deal more human than many of the philosophers and theorists we have today.
In Jesus the Heretic there is also much to do with relations between the Anglican and Catholic churches and some talk of how to resolve their differences and once more unite the churches. Noel's optimism and enthusiasm for Christian unity is something that will rub off on you. He says, "The divisions of Christendom cause great scandal to the world, and the reunion of the Church is urgent" but he is under no illusions about faults of Roman Catholicism--particularly when it concerns the power of the pope and what he sees as too-much-Romanism in the Catholic church. He will give you some moments for pause in thinking of Roman Catholic tradition.
But my favorite thought from the book was this; speaking of the Kingdom of God, Noel says, "It is to be sought not only beyond death but upon this earth, and its essential property is social righteousness." We haven't any excuse to be sitting around waiting for the Second Coming, we're supposed to be doing everything humanly possible to prepare this place and maybe more.

The Long Walk

Slavomir Rawicz

When I first heard about this book, I could not believe it. When I read it, I had no difficulty believing it--but only because it is told so bluntly. Someone told me of this story about a Polish political prisoner in Russia right before World War II broke out. The man, Slavomir Rawicz, with five other friends and one tag along walks his way out of Northern Siberia all the way to India.
Think on this for a while.
They leave the prison camp in the middle of winter because it is the only time they have to escape. They are already malnourished and suffering from the heavy labor they have been working at. They are ill-equipped--I'm sorry this is an understatement--they have nothing. Only small bits of food, horrible clothing, in short, they should all have died.
But they don't.
Rawicz retells his story of marching through the snowy Siberian forests, along lake Baikal, into Outer Mongolia, across the Gobi desert, into the high Himalayan plateau and finally through the Himalaya themselves to India. By far the most incredible part of the story is their endurance in the Gobi desert. Talk about hell...
But Rawicz has such a matter-of-fact voice in relating his story, you would think he were doing nothing more adventurous than going for a hike or maybe just talking a walk in the neighborhood park. The man is flirting with death, going for weeks without food, days without water, suffering the worst the elements have to cast down on him, and he simply says they kept walking. The quiet title does justice to this book.
On a different note, there has been some controversy as to the authenticity of the tale, which Rawicz vows to be a truthful account of personal events. Several famous mountain climbers have commented on the impossibility of these escapees' feat as well as the fact that the amount of time given for certain portions of the journey are simply impossible. And the little bit about the yetis in the Himalaya is of course bound to spark criticism. Damn people don't understand that the Yeti is real...
But do not let this last little disclaimer taint the book for you. Whatever the case, Rawicz is a man to be admired.

Madame Bovary

Gustav Flaubert

No matter: she wasn’t happy, and never had been. Why was life so unsatisfactory? Why did everything she leaned on crumble instantly to dust? But why, if somewhere there existed a strong and handsome being—a man of valor, sublime in passion and refinement, with a poet’s heart and an angel’s shape, a man like a lyre with strings of bronze, intoning elegiac epithalamiums to the heavens—why mightn’t she have the luck to meet him? Ah, fine chance! Besides nothing was worth looking for: everything was a lie! Every smile concealed a yawn of boredom; every joy, a curse; every pleasure, its own surfeit; and the sweetest of kisses left on one’s lips but a vain longing for fuller delight.

There isn’t a bourgeois alive who in the ferment of his youth, if only for a day or for a minute, hasn’t thought himself capable of boundless passions and noble exploits. The sorriest little woman-chaser has dreamed of Oriental queens; in a corner of every notary’s heart lie the moldy remains of a poet.

If a man were to rewrite Don Quixote, and this man were French and alive some 500 years later, he probably would have come up with something very much like Madame Bovary. Eyes that are always seeing a dreamworld, hearts which are always grasping after the only thing which is truly unattainable--unattainability itself: this is the stuff which composes both novels.
I'm tempted to start some sermon-like thing about never being content and the modern disease--something that would go on for paragraphs about always wanting what we do not have only because it has the magical property of not being ours. But I am not sure I wouldn't be indulging in a little of the thing I'm criticizing.
If you like a story which is mostly depressing, Madame Bovary is the thing for you. There surely is not much to redeem any of the characters, save perhaps the hope of the blind man who Flaubert describes with such clinical relish. The story begins with such happiness, maybe even joy, but it does not take one long to realize that the beginning was the high point--from here on out it's a downward spiral.
As you read about the adulterous Madame Bovary's slide into complete betrayal of her husband and child, you will be surprised by very little--only if you step back and think will you notice how terrifyingly smooth is her slide. She moves from pleasant young wife to seasoned woman of the world to suicidal slut without some violent action or dramatic event shaking her off her placid course. It is as simple as being alive.
I wonder if Flaubert shouldn't have ended with some warning such as: Beware! This could be you! But at the same time, the novel is about much more than that. Though I neglected him above, I wonder if Charles Bovary is not a very hopeful character indeed. Sure his life is ruined, he is cuckolded, betrayed, bankrupted, broken, driven to madness, and finally killed by his wife, but how wonderfully he deals with it all. Most of the time he is oblivious--and though it may seem this way, it is not because of a lack of love. He loves his wife to a fault; he loves her as a goddess rather than a human, but his love is entirely human. His adoration of her while she lives, his sorrow while she dies, his anger when he finds she has betrayed him--these are all passions any heart is capable of, although most characters in novels fail to embody them.

De Profundis

Oscar Wilde

It seems a very dangerous idea. It is—all great ideas are dangerous.

Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation for the extraordinary amount of suffering there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul.

When I began this book, it was mentioned to me that it many deep things in it, things to ruminate upon for hours years. When I was halfway through, I scratched my head because I had not really seen anything that was worth thinking about. I thought perhaps I was not looking hard enough or in the right way.
But there is no denying that the majority of this letter--it is really one long letter to Wilde's former friend and lover--is a very personal complaint. It made me more than uncomfortable, as if I were witnessing some domestic scene which would have been best acted out behind closed doors. There is something very personal about this letter, personal enough to wonder why you are reading it.
There is a story about this letter which adds much to its understanding. First, you would do well to acquaint yourself with the circumstances of Wilde's imprisonment and the scandal surrounding it, but that is your job. I read that when Wilde wrote this in prison, he was only allowed one sheet of paper at a time. He composed the entire 80-plus printed pages letter being only able to write one page at a time. When you read it you will notice how smoothly it flows and how he makes references to things which he has already said. I heard that he never saw the entire letter together. Wow.
But just as I was tiring of his seemingly endless list of complaints against his friend--who to judge from this letter alone was a genuinely selfish fiend--I found a gem amongst all the dreary if eloquent fluff. The only problem is I still cannot tell whether this gem is real or spurious.
He launches, seemingly for no reason, into a sermon about Christ which points out more aspects of Christ and Christianity than I have seen in one place in a long time. I think part of what was so revolutionary for me was that he seems to be an agnostic and yet has a very deep faith in Christ. Understand that all I say here comes only from the understanding I gained of Wilde from this work. I am not relying on anything else I know about his life, nor any of his other works that I have read.
This sermon has such amazing statements as the one on love above, several on poverty, and this:
"But in a manner not yet understood of the world he regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy things and modes of perfection." I do not understand this statement. It is one of the reasons I am so skeptical of the sermon on a whole. The other reason is that he seems to move from this sermon back into another lengthy complaint against his friend. I could not quite justify his complaints against his friend with this sermon.
But there are things here which will refine you if they do not break you. So persevere through all of Wilde's sadness and outrage, but be careful--don't let your opinion of him disarm you, his words still carry heavy weights.

The Decay of Lying

Oscar Wilde

Bored by the tedious and improving conversation of those who have neither the wit to exaggerate nor the genius to romance, tired of the intelligent person whose reminiscences are always based upon memory, whose statements are invariably limited by probability, and who is at any time liable to be corroborated by the merest Philistine who happens to be present, Society sooner or later must return to its lost leader, the cultured and fascinating liar.

Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterizes modern thought, but Hamlet invented it.

One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.

The fact is that we look back on the ages entirely through the medium of art, and art, very fortunately, has never once told us the truth.

Wilde's small dialog on the title's subject is what you would expect--a very witty and intellectually stimulating conversation on the nature of art. Actually, it should probably be Art. But if you take some time with it, I think there is more going on than the above quotes imply. First of all, Wilde was cagey enough to not put the most damning words in his own mouth. He invents a dialog in which he could just as easily be the unwitting man who does not understand this idea of lying as the liar himself. This is the first warning sign: when an author is unwilling to let you know where he stands, be careful lest you believe what he says.
But these warnings are to be intensified when we are dealing with such a subject as lying. It is the same case with Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost, he is the deceiver, so when we hear him talk we have to wonder if he has stopped deceiving yet. So with the brilliant argument composed by Vivian in Wilde's dialog. We have to wonder: if a man is in such admiration of lying and liars would he have any qualms about lying for persuasive purposes?
These questions in our minds, the Decay of Lying is an adventure. I have only read it once, I don't think I got half as much out of it as I will when I read it again. It purports to give us a logical argument for deceit and yet there were times when even Wilde did not sound as if he believed the words he was giving to his characters. It was difficult at times as well since Wilde referred heavily to his contemporaries--some of whom have been buried by the drifting sands of time.
If you feel like a close encounter with very heavy but deft sarcasm and a good deal of cynicism, I would refer you to this little piece. If not, you might read it anyway, but it won't make you very happy--unless it converts you.

Pastures of Heaven

John Steinbeck

When they saw it was a beautiful baby, they did not know what to say. Those feminine exclamations of delight designed to reassure young mothers that the horrible reptilian creatures in their arms are human and will not grow up to be monstrosities, lost their meaning.

"Helen, every man must some time or other want to beat a woman. I think I'm a mild man, but right now I want to beat your face with my fists." He looked into her dark eyes and saw that he had only put a new tragedy upon her, had only given her a new situation to endure.

The people of the valley told many stories about Junius. Sometimes they hated him with the loathing busy people have for lazy ones, and sometimes they envied his laziness; but often they pitied him because he blundered so. No one in the valley ever realized that he was happy.

Once again, I am in awe. There are times when the thing you read is no longer a set of black lines on white page, no longer words and symbols of images far away, no longer even vivid pictures of good things going on right before you; instead the words become a mirror into your own self--a picture of your heart which only you would have recognized in the first place. Steinbeck has an uncanny knack for catching what is in your heart exactly and then sending characters out dancing before you, clothed in your deepest being. It can be startling, but it always makes you surge forward with the recognition of yourself.
Pastures of Heaven is like some less frolicking version of Tortilla Flats and Cannery Row. Yet, it is by no means dark. The word I think which summarizes it best would be solemn. With Steinbeck's usual attachment to the earth and its hearty biology (which no human is free from) is especially present. And as he tells the half melancholy, half joyous stories of the inhabitants of this blessed valley, you cannot help but walk beside the characters.
There are many memorable persons who haunt this book. Every chapter, though linked tightly to all the others, is the story of a separate family in the valley. And every family has its separate burdens, desires, dreams and struggles. I cannot do justice to all, or even one, but cannot help but mention the chapter on Junius and his son. I have never seen a more idyllic portrait painted of poverty and wisdom. While I am almost sure such an existence could never be, Steinbeck has me doubting my certainty.
There is a deep meaning in this tale which I do not yet understand. I think I could just barely smell it, see its shadow coming around the corner. There is something about being content, something about peace, something about living with the world. And it is strange that it takes words of heaven to speak of this. Heaven is what it is. As long as we are refining it, molding it, shaping it to be ours, we will not ever reach it.

The Sheltering Sky

Paul Bowles

Port laughed abruptly. "And now you know it's not like that. Right? It's more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don't even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it's nearly burned down to the end. And then's when you're conscious of the bitter taste."

And Port had said: "Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that."

I read The Sheltering Sky because a professor recommended it as one of the best books of this century. I cannot say that I agree with this professor. However, give me fifty years and I may be brought round to his point of view. The Sheltering Sky is a very tired book. Had it been only this, I might have had much more respect for it. Instead, it grows frantic in its exhaustion and in my mind spoils it all.
Bowles writes well and he notes a good deal about life which is often felt but rarely said. The book reads fairly smoothly and is believable...something you will no doubt be surprised at by the end. But there is also something very dirty about it. I cannot put my finger on it, but Bowles is too disgusted with life to remark the disgusting aspects of it. He tries, I think. There are many disgusting scenes, many dark and revolting thoughts in his characters minds, but Bowles the author is too present in these thoughts. I do not mean to say that he peaks out from behind his characters, like an actor breaking character in the middle of a play; instead it's something like a play in which all the actors have the same mannerisms and give away the fact that there is really only one actor up there.
And I could not bring myself to accept the ending. Without spoiling it, it was too outrageous to believe. I enjoy outrageousness in stories, but Bowles is too caught up in disliking it to allow for the amount in his story.
There is a large portion of The Sheltering Sky though which I do not believe I am qualified to address: love. More than anything, I got the feeling that this book was about love and the contortions people go through in its name.

The Wayward Bus

John Steinbeck

Back in the bus he had felt, in anticipation, a bursting orgasmic delight of freedom. But it was not so. He felt miserable. His shoulders ached, and now that he was relaxed and stretched out he wasn't sleepy. He wondered, "Won't I ever be happy? Isn't there anything to do?" He tried to remember old times when it seemed to him that he was happy, when he had felt pure joy, and little pictures came into his mind. There was a very early morning with chill air and the sun was coming up behind the mountains and in a muddy road little gray birds were hopping. There wasn't any reason for joy, but it had been there.

And another. It was evening and a shining horse was rubbing his lovely neck on a fence and the quail were calling and there was a sound of dropping water somewhere. his breath came short with excitement just remembering it.
And another. He road in an old cart with a girl cousin. She was older than he--he couldn't remember what she looked like. The horse shied at a piece of paper and she fell against him, and to right herself she put out her hand and touched his leg, and delight bloomed in his stomach and his brain ached with delight.
And another. Standing at midnight in a great, dim cathedral with a sharp, barbaric smell of copal smarting his nose. He held a skinny little candle with a white silk bow tied about it halfway up. And like a dream, the sweet murmur of the mass came from far away at the high altar and the drowsy loveliness drew down over him.

I find that when I read Steinbeck, I tend to quote large chunks of him. This is well though, for if anyone were ever worth quoting it is this man who knows so well the human heart. Perhaps the one thing which keeps drawing me back to Steinbeck is this ominous feeling I get during certain descriptions of his--I feel as if he were described my inmost soul, those feelings that you think are yours and yours alone which no one else ever sees. Steinbeck knew his own heart well enough to capture simply and accurately on paper the feelings, the great wellings of emotion that every person is subject too.
The Wayward Bus is less well known than other books he has written but still deserves acclaim. It operates off such a simple and beautiful plot, one would have thought it never needed telling--indeed many of the stories Steinbeck tells never actually need or even deserve telling; it is the manner in which he goes about telling them that makes essential stories about life--there is a small bus station in the middle of a large valley of farmland. Few characters mingle here and there is the daily run which the bus driver must make down to the town. Who would have imagined such a story could become an intriguing, gripping, even startling tale?
Reading The Wayward Bus is like shoving your hands deep into moist dirt and pulling up handfuls of the stuff to let it crumble away and be ground into your fingers. Steinbeck is one of the few authors of the twentieth century who has not forgotten that he is dust and to dust he shall return. Steinbeck has a more intricate link with the soil, the leaves and bugs than any other writer I have read. It shows in his writing--his characters are often more primeval than we find in our day.
The Wayward Bus is a quick read and it will be pleasant. It can be a long read and teach you more than pleasantries. Be careful though, Steinbeck might turn you into a dryiad or a fawn, or worse, a man who can feel the dirt and smell it and take joy in this.

Cup of Gold: A Life of Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, with occasional reference to history

John Steinbeck

I know it's a sad thing to a man to be leaving a girl and running off to sea. Haven't I left hundreds of them--and all beautiful? But here's another cup to you, boy. Wine is better to a woman than all the sweet pastes of France, and a man drinking it. Wine makes every woman lovely. Ah! If the homely ones would only put out a little font of wine in the doors of their houses like holy water to a church, there would be more marriage in towns. A man would never know the lack they had for looks. But have another cup of the grand wine, sad boy, and it may be a princess, and you leaving her behind you.

He is still a little boy and wants the moon. I suppose he is rather unhappy about it. Those who say children are happy forget their childhood. I wonder how long he can stave off manhood.

I am changed. The Henry Morgan you knew is not the Sir Henry Morgan who sentences you to death. I do not kill ferociously any more, but coldly, and because I have to.

When I first embarked upon this book, I imagined I was reading some children's tale of pirates and romance, but the depth of the words and how they lie quickly made me reconsider. The reader, whoever you may be, would do very well to remember that Steinbeck does not always tell the truth. Indeed, beware of what he says. Never give him easy access to your mind, and never imagine he fancies himself a truth-teller.
It may be especially pertinent to this story, but Steinbeck plays on all the lies in human nature when he paints us the picture of Henry Morgan, Buccaneer. As usual Steinbeck rises to great poetic moments which are worthwhile whatever the story, but the story here is good too. The great unsettled heart of Captain Morgan hangs in the air like a heavy balloon, puffed by the wind. It wanders and wanders, but never lands.
And also in keeping with what other works of his I have been privilaged to read, Steinbeck startles you with dark thoughts and darker characters. These characters skip happily up to you out of the sunshine as beautiful little children but when their faces become clear evil grins and mottled scars are all you see. In this way, I guess Steinbeck paints portraits as true to life as ever they can be. And truly you will get the sense as you slip through these excellently composed pages that you are listening to a great dirge, a magnificent funeral air for some drowning humanity.
Humanity is the one word I would apply to anything written by Steinbeck. He may strike you at first as a mystic but he is a humanist before all else, only sometimes he deifies it and so begins to sound like a mystic. Henry Morgan will tear your heartstrings out despite his evil nature and will leave you like the foam of a passing wave, to drift and float upon a raging sea. 8/10

The Road

Cormac McCarthy


I unfortunately do not have a quote from this book, perhaps it is for the best though. To take any line out of the narrative would be like showing only a single bullet flying through the air from an action movie. I have read a few books which latch on to you and pull you through them with great force. Generally they are quite terrible and there is some point where you become aware that you are merely cruising on because you want to get to the end of the book; somehow the actual reading has lost its enjoyment.
The Road is like this but better than such books. It is a book which you read to get to the end, but it does not sacrifice itself in the process. There were a few times when I looked up to catch the time and flipped absently at the pages to the right, gauging how much longer I would be at it, but these were not often. There were far more times when I flipped to the next page hurriedly because the narrative was burning me up.
McCarthy executes a style of withholding information which others would do well to learn from. It seems incredible that he could set up such a world full of complex fears and horrible, evil darkness and yet never actually let you see them. The whole book gives us the effects, but only rarely do we see the causes--and for good reason.
The Road is a dark book, darker than most I have recently read. As dark as any Stephen King. And I am glad he refrained from indulging his imagination enough to fully tell us why his characters are afraid. Set in some vague post-apocalyptic future, we see a world of floating ash and dreary desolation. But so much more depressing than the world are its few and deranged inhabitants. The Road marks the journey of a lonely father and his son across the vastness of this sad world towards some safety, some end. McCarthy captures very well the dynamic between these two strange figures as well as their mutual terror and scramble for survival. I do not recommend it if you are looking for something to uplift your spirits. It is morbid. But none the less, if you do pick it up you won't put it down. 6/10

Francis of Assisi

G K Chesterton

To this great mystic his religion was not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love affair.

In typical jester-like form, Chesterton doesn't so much review Francis' life in this book as he uses Francis to make piercing insights into the modern world and how it has changed in the last thousand years. There were perhaps a few points where I began to wonder if I could patiently handle any more complete logical reversals--a trick which Chesterton is too adept at--but if you do not allow his almost overly-witty style to hinder your mind from floating about, the read will be rewarding.
If for no other reason, read this book to catch the heart of Saint Francis. While Chesterton does not focus on Francis as a biographer would, he does focus on him as a friend would. He tried not so much to peer into his mind or psychology as he does his spirit--and I believe Chesterton achieves at least a little of this.
And in the process we find that Chesterton reveals a good deal of what is in his own spirit, something any self-respecting Christian would be happy to get the chance to mull over. There are numerous, tiny gems of spiritual insight which will catch your eye as you pass through these pages. Hopefully in doing so they will trip up your mind long enough to let your heart forget many of the lunacies of our day. And you might also find a good deal of revolutionary thought within the cover of this book--not revolutionary as the word is fashionably used, but revolutionary as the word really means.
Take the time to read this book and you'll definitely gain some respect for Saint Francis, perhaps even a little understanding of Chesterton, and who knows, you might even find that some of the things you took to be true enough to not need consideration are actually the most rotted parts of your mind. 8/10

The Man Who Was Thursday

G K Chesterton

I read this book mostly for its title, however I finished this book because of the plot. Chesterton weaves a story which at times seems blatantly see-through, but does it with such panache that even those aspects which you thought you saw coming from miles away turn out to be things he had every intention of you seeing much earlier. As you read Thursday you may be inclined to believe you have seen where all this can go...you would be wrong.
The story seems to want to be a thriller almost akin to the terrorist filled excitement of our day, but is at the same time full of something much deeper. Chesterton loads the story with spiritual allegory and it becomes something more fantastical than dramatic.
However, there still was something about the book which didn't settle well with me. I cannot tell if it was the ending which undoubtedly feels a little forced, if inevitable or if the allegorical nature of the book did not lie well with me. Assuredly it is out of the modern mode and something many readers today would find odd or even childish. It is strange to think that this last would likely have leased Mr. Chesterton quite a bit.
As a side note, I couldn't help but remark the curious similarity between the villains of Chesterton's day and the present targets for ire; we speak of terrorists and our drama is full of their evil cunning, even if we dress it up a bit with some false sense of fairness--Chesterton had his anarchists who were terrifying and easily stereotypical. I wonder however if anyone in our current day could have written something quite so revolutionary about terrorists.

Chaucer

G K Chesterton

A certain break or sharp change in history can hardly be sketched more sharply, than by saying that up to a certain time life was conceived of as a Dance, and after that time life was conceived as a Race.

If it is superstition to venerate the bones of a great man killed by a tyrant, is it anymore intelligent that millions of clerks should go down and merely gape at the Sea, without having even the sense to worship Neptune?

For those who are more than not familiar with Chesterton, it will come as no surprise that he was an admirer of Chaucer. It will also not startle you that he should write an entire book about the man, nor that such a book be more about how modern society has misunderstood its past than Chaucer's biography. Despite Chesterton's over-willingness to diverge from his topic and speak in broad, often critical terms, of his world and the world around him, there are actually quite a few insights into Chaucer in Chaucer.
If you are a person who feels a vagueness when others mention the 14th century, if you find that your ability to conceive of this amazing period of history often involves taking everything you know about life now, primitivising it and putting it in clothes of some goofy looking court jester, I would recommend a perusal of this easy-to-read tome. Chesterton will give you a much more respectful insight into these misunderstood times and perhaps suggest to your mind the possibility that people were wiser, maybe even happier in those days. It is also a possibility that Chesterton will enlighten you to some of the ridiculous conceits we have about ourselves as the highest yet reached rung on this mighty ladder which is civilization.
As a problem with the book it cannot be denied that Chesterton over-indulges in his often paradoxical and rhetorical mastery. There are times when the reader would like it if he would stop playing such fanciful word games for a moment and get down to the business of saying things outright. There is a bit too much of the bending back on itself in Chaucer.
But it is not to such an extent it will keep you from reaching the end or understanding his meaning.
Read Chesterton on Chaucer and you might just end up becoming a medievalist. 6/10

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil

George Saunders

"What you need to do," said someone with great authority from over by the Cafe, "is tax them."

George Saunders should be commended for his incredible elan when it comes to explanations. If he chooses to say that his characters were strange amalgamations of metal brackets and livers he is allowed to do so blissfully and without descending into any of the nitty gritty of just how this might come to pass. His Reign of Phil startles you by the ease with which you can accept its outrageousness. When presented with the strange and very thinly veiled allegories of Inner and Outer Horner, I notably did not stop and wonder how the hell the Former President of Outer Horner came to have 18 mustaches and three legs. This is part of the beauty of Saunders's writing as I have discovered it thus far.
But when we turn to the allegorical aspect of the novel, I am not as sure that I can compliment Mr. Saunders. While I myself enjoy a good solid ideological tour de force, I could not help but feel that the idea was the only thing driving this book and that Saunders used a good bit of absurdity to hide what is otherwise an absence of depth. It was a fast read.
If you are someone who enjoys the more flippant conversational tone of modern fiction, this may be a book for you, otherwise it is something to put further down the reading list. 6/10

The Defense

Vladimir Nabokov

You aren't a lecher are you?

As a warning, you should know that I have been interested in Chess as of late and so it is probable that I would be more than inclined to enjoy a book about chess. But regardless of whether or not you enjoy chess, The Defense has enough redeeming qualities to make it worth the read.
Nabokov's Luzhin is one of the greatest worst protagonists I have ever witnessed. He almost makes the live at home when thirty, video-gamer phenomenon of our day look good.

Despair

By Vladimir Nabokov

Tum-tee-tum. And once more--TUM! No, I have not gone mad. I am merely producing gleeful little sounds. The kind of glee one experiences upon making an April fool of someone. And a damned good fool I have made of someone. Who is he? Gentle reader, look at yourself in the mirror, as you seem to like so mirrors so much.

There are few novels I have read where it seems that the author is not out to entertain the reader, not attempting to enlighten or convince, but is in fact seeking out and and attacking the reader. Such has been my first experience of Nabokov. It is startling how he reaches out into your mind as you slip through his pages. He seemed to be doing what many authors might write about others doing, but few have the balls to actually act out. That he would not only be attempting to gauge the reader's reaction, but is in turn playing off that reaction and then informing the reader that he is playing him, all for the sake of...what?
While Joyce may have been one of the first paragons of the stream of consciousness (as someone has seen fit to so dub it) Nabokov has explored a wholly new possibility in it with his fusion of the author and narrator and character into one being behind which he (Nabokov) hides poking out only so much as one might imagine him to be exposing himself in reality or in the pages of fiction. It seems impossible to be able to pin down exactly where Nabokov begins from the twisted mess of his character Hermann--perhaps only in the forward...if even there.
As you read this mystery, never forget that the voice speaking to you is not some benign author laying bare before the heart of one of his characters, but rather a book as written by a manipulative character for your confusion and consumption. It seems that Nabokov has genuinely made me aware of his transcendence of the first person novel into a state which might be described as author as character.
While it may not strike you with the same force, the story is well worth the time you may choose to spend on it, if only for the glorious procession of what can only rightly follow (despite all the standards of a glamorous dramatic tradition. 8/10

Of Human Bondage

W. Somerset Maugham

Art, he continued with a wave of the hand, is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

Whatever happened to him now would be one more motive to add to the complexity of the pattern and when the end approached he would rejoice in its completion. It would be a work of art, and it would be none the less beautiful because he alone knew of its existence, and with his death it would at once cease to be.

Maugham paints a picture of humanism in Of Human Bondage which repeatedly places the glories of humanity before the reader before spitting upon them and grinding them into the ground with his nicely polished shoe. After each glory which might signify something greater and more grand going on here than the rutting and rooting about of so many animals, he finishes with an exuberantly sunlit picture of humans reveling in the beauty of being alive in an ugly world.

It is strange, almost mindboggling (of course only when you actual slip away from Maugham's insidious grasp) to notice how incredible happy the man is about his morbid discoveries. At one point he comments joyfully that he would have long ago dealt himself a murderer's death if he weren't so "damned flippant." It seems that in Of Human Bondage life in losing it's meaning, gains some other (greater?) thing. Asceticism? The hedonist glory of living because we are not dead?

But beyond the perhaps questionable philosophy in Of Human Bondage, I once again must spend some moments talking about his excellent craftsmanship. I do not know that I have ever before encountered an author who works in English with so much beauty. Maugham's writing, regardless of those pedantic people who imagine it too stylish, like some fop or dandy--garish in their fashion--is perhaps the best put together of any English author's.

For example, one interesting phrase, "Oh life where is thy sting?" might strike some as a childish twist on a much venerated and perhaps overused rhetorical idea. But I have not yet become so like Maugham's characters as to be unable to enjoy a cliche when used rightly. Like a Dairy Queen burger at the right moment, such a style can be as great a pinnacle as any.

The Problem of Pain

C. S. Lewis

He never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.

And here is the real problem: so much mercy yet still there is Hell.

There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else.

This is the ultimate law--the seed dies to live, the bread must be cast upon the waters, he that loses his soul will save it. But the life of the seed, the finding of the bread, the recovery of the soul, are as real as the preliminary sacrifice.

As usual, Lewis adroitly sidesteps almost all my misunderstandings and roadblocks to faith, mapping out with clarity and simplicity the most difficult problems of Christianity. I never cease to be amazed by Lewis's willingness to admit when he is uncertain, his very assurance in standing on his own shaky soil. Yet it always seems that he carries so much more wisdom than the experts he conscientiously defers to.
In The Problem of Pain he turns to the fundamental paradox of a good and loving God who allows pain and suffering--often times looking like the source of this pain and suffering. Lewis doesn't explain away every difficulty, nor do I believe that was his original purpose. He merely (as if anything this man did was "mere") sheds light upon so many of the silly and childish misunderstandings Christians of our day still labor under. While he may not solve all the issues at heart in the aforementioned paradox, he sure does a famously good job in resolving many of them.
But beyond this, beyond the philosophy and theology that slides out from between the pages, you get a sense of the deep emotion which ran through this man. If ever I have come across a man who means what he says, C. S. Lewis is that man. In the simplest and calmest of statements he does nothing more than mean the full and truest sense of what he says--and in this, he shatters your supposed understanding of everything.

Blindness

Jose Saramago

That night the blind man dreamt that he was blind.

I had heard much about Saramago concerning his lack of punctuation and paragraphing, but was pleasantly surprised that despite such conveniences, his book was still easy to read. I rarely lost track of who was speaking even though the switches between various characters and the narration are often only noted by a capitalized letter. Whatever Saramago withholds in punctuation he makes up for in the logical flow of conversation.
As far as the story goes, I thought Blindness was a brilliant idea. A disease of blindness which robs an entire city (or perhaps more) is one of the most terrifying things I can imagine. Saramago demonstrates very clearly how dependent we are on sight. I tried to rethink the story with different senses being absent but the most chaotic has to be a loss of sight. Although we imagine we have a healthy respect for how much we rely on sight, Saramago's Blindness opens the door to the true inner workings of our minds and how much of a role the input from our eyes plays.
But while the concept of Blindness is staggering and awesome, concepts are not enough to make a story. Blindness lacks much of what makes a real story step out from the common mass of tales. Once the concept is laid out, the story progresses as most could have worked out in their own minds. There is little in Blindness beyond its guiding concept which really sends the reading into contemplation. While gripping in many parts, particularly because of the pathetic willingness of many of the characters to accept abuse--like so many dumb inhuman sheep--the story only rises to impressiveness in instances. And the same can be said of Saramago's narration. He has his moments of rhetorical genius, but they are moments only in the many pages.
I am not yet certain what to make of the ending, but I wish that Saramago had toyed more with the idea of blindness with perfect eyes. He only ever hints at this idea and in the last moments of the book explodes it, but more could have been done throughout the book to challenge just how much we who are not blind actually see. Whatever the case, the book is worth a perusal, perhaps more.

Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace

'So tonight to shush you how about if I say I have administrative bones to pick with God, Boo. I'll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I'm not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I, Boo.'

One of the things sophisticated viewers have always liked about J. O. Incandenza's The American Century as Seen Through a Brick is its unsubtle thesis that naivete is the last true terrible sin in the theology of millennial America. And since sin is the sort of thing that can be talked about only figuratively, it's natural that Himself's dark little cartridge was mostly about a myth, viz. that queerly persistent U.S. myth that cynicism and naivete are mutually exclusive. Hal, who's empty but not dumb, theorizes privately that what passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naive and goo-prone and generally pathetic, is to be in some basic interior way forever infantile, some sort of not-quite right-looking infant dragging itself anaclitically around the map, with big wet eyes and froggy-soft skin, huge skull, gooey drool. One of the really American things about Hal, probably is the way he despises what it is he's really lonely for: this hideous internal self, incontinent of sentiment and need, that pules and writhes just under the hip empty mask, anhedonia.

David Foster Wallace (and I use the whole name here because the author of a work as sprawling and massive as Infinite Jest must needs be referred to by all three names) has done justice at least to one of Shakespeare's lines. If you choose to launch out into the muddy and vast waters of Infinite Jest, be assured that you won't find your way home any time soon. But the book is not a difficult read, only slow. David Foster Wallace throws the meaning of entertainment at his readers every page they flip. Whether directly through the films of the deceased J. O. Incandenza (one of the most important dead characters I have yet come across) or through the various addictions of Infinite Jest's characters, the question of what entertainment is and how we choose to sell our freedom for it is never far away.
For such a large and at times rambling book, readers might find the ending frustrating, incredibly frustrating, but keep the title and purpose in mind and it's abruptness may not be so disturbing as it first seems. Whether I am insane when I think this or not, I couldn't help imagining that David Foster Wallace was poking fun at us by writing an hugely entrapping book of huge length about addiction to entertainment. Addiction is going to be so large a topic in your head as you read this, you'll forget that it might be exactly what it is about.
In addition to the sheer magnificence of the abstraction behind this work, I found the actual storyline to be almost as intriguing. Any story which involves the Quebec Seperatist movements, an artsy film maker with such titles under his belt as "Annular Fission for Everyone," "Pre-Nuptial Agreement of Heaven and Hell, "Zero-Gravity Tea Ceremony," "Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators," and "Blood Sister: One Tough Nun" simply must be interesting. But David Foster Wallace takes it many steps further with his inclusion in the plot of such treats as a terminally beautiful woman, subsidized time (think year-numbers turned commercials), Found Drama (read the book), and almost a hundred pages worth of pointless notes provided purely for the reader's entertainment (think about this for a little while). And of course there is the title piece of the book, a work by that same J.O.I. which is supposedly fatally entertaining. I don't know if David Foster Wallace was inspired by the Monty Python bit about the fatally funny joke, but it doesn't really matter in the long run.
I won't attempt to continue about the book's plot any further since it is so muddled and complex it would be terribly difficult to expound upon it here and not crash blogspot's website. But there is also a simplicity about Infinite Jest which links everything back and around and into itself. I have the feeling this is one of those books which needs to be read several dozen times before anything near a full understanding of it can be approached.
And finally there is David Foster Wallace's style. He writes with a spoken verbosity which often disregards the conventions of grammar but is rarely confusing. He includes a sort of uncertainty which lends immense depth to the novel, making it seem as if he can't quite see into the hearts and souls of his characters. In the spirit of Catch-22 and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, David Foster Wallace is playful and dances about with his words.

Uncle Fred In the Springtime

P G Wodehouse

"They're all potty."

While this is the first Wodehouse review I'm putting up here, I've always been a huge fan; you might even say that next to Calvin and Hobbes, these books have shaped my mind more than any others. While Wodehouse is most famous for his Jeeves and Wooster books, Uncle Fred is a part of a different series which intersects only once or twice with Wooster and his crowd.
I cannot attempt to do justice to Wodehouse lighthearted style, but if you find yourself looking for a jolly romp through the buffoonery of early twentieth century English aristocracy, Wodehouse is your man. With such literary traditions as the evil and devilish Aunt Agatha, the pompous and over prim hostess Lady Constance Keeble, the hen-pecked Lord Emsworth content to potter around with his pig, and various other classic characters, Wodehouse will make the time pass faster than most.
And for those of you who enjoy a spot of the complex plots which twist and turn and get so muddled up resolution seems to be impossible--yet inevitable, Wodehouse can deliver yet more for you. Wodehouse has a knack for weaving love stories which have twice as many twists and dual storylines as any Tarentino movie. By the end of this little tale you will only be able to shake your head and wonder how he does it. Not only does Wodehouse plant little seeds in his storyline which develop into life-saving trees later on, but the reader can always see these things happen and yet never be able to guess where they are heading or how crucial they will turn out to be.
And finally, perhaps the most glorious touch of the whole thing is Galahad. Galahad is to these stories what Jeeves is to Wooster, only Galahad is a dashed sight more rambunctious, humorous, and classy. Wodehouse's Galahad even makes his savior-like namesake seem frowzy and damaged goods. If you read the book for no other reason, read it for Galahad. 7/10

All The President's Men

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

The President said, "I want you to know that I have no intention whatever of walking away form the job that the American people elected me to do for the people of the United States."

While not the best written book, All The President's Men is remarkable in the least for its incredible story. Woodward and Bernstein tell the very personal account of the struggle they went through to develop and prove their coverage of the Watergate fiasco. The story itself is incredible, but I found myself irritated by their inability to write it well. This was especially evident in Woodward's conversations with Deep Throat. While there is much to be said for journalistic taciturnity and objectivity, when writing a book it always help to give a little bit of description. It seemed that Bernstein and Woodward were always reluctant to include any sort of physical or mental descriptions. While there is plenty of factual documentation and evidential descriptions, the colorful stuff that actually makes reading enjoyable was almost entirely lacking. However, the story is incredible enough to make up for all of this. It is not often such a convicting account of politics is brought into the open. I warn you that All The President's Men may taint you on politics for a while--it's hard to trust any of our current officials when you know that this is their heritage.
Some people have suggested to me that the book is difficult to follow because of all the various players and the many names, but I did not find this to be the case. The book flows very well and reads fast. While I wouldn't recommend it as an occasional read, it doesn't require a map to follow the course of events. 6/10

Heretics

G K Chesterton

Posting a letter and getting married are among the few things left that are entirely romatic; for to be entirely romantic a thing must be irrevocable.

And under all this vast illusion of the cosmopolitan planet,with its empires and its Reuter's agency, the real life of mangoes on concerned with this tree or that temple, with this harvestor that drinking-song, totally uncomprehended, totally untouched.And it watches from its splendid parochialism, possibly with a smile of amusement, motor-car civilization going its triumphant way,outstripping time, consuming space, seeing all and seeing nothing,roaring on at last to the capture of the solar system, only to findthe sun cockney and the stars suburban.

I apologize to the rationalists even for calling them rationalists.There are no rationalists. We all believe fairy-tales, and live in them. Some, with a sumptuous literary turn, believe in the existence of the lady clothed with the sun. Some, with a more rustic, elvish instinct, like Mr. McCabe, believe merely in the impossible sun itself. Some hold the undemonstrable dogma of the existence of God; some the equally undemonstrable dogma of the existence of the man next door.

I did not intend to use so many quotes to introduce this book, but Chesterton is one of the most quotable people I have ever read. Not only continually state the most shocking things as if they were obvious to a three year old, but he usually goes on to prove that they are indeed this obvious. I do not know how he works he wonders with words, but wonders deserve to be read none the less.
Heretics is an expansive discussion of early twentieth century thought, from the perspective of one of the last men who really understood ancient thought. Chesterton has an eye for pointing out in Heretics the many assumptions our often pompous sense of being modern has hidden from us. While it is primarily concerned with specific issues of English society in the 1900s, Heretics manifestly applies to our own current situation as well.
Some people might find his confidence to be prideful, but it is nothing more than the confidence of a man who thinks he is right. And as Chesterton explains in towards the end of Heretics, any man who rights better damn well think he is right or else he is merely wasting everybody's time. In addition to a broad discussion of issues, Heretics also addresses the beliefs of such authors and thinkers as H. G. Wells, G. B. Shaw, and Rudyard Kipling, just to name a few. Chesterton is wonderfully correct in his outright criticism of them, so much so that one finds oneself slipping from kind, gentlemanly words of deference and outright praise to sudden contradiction and accusations of confusion (if not idiocy). Chesterton has a way with addressing people without ever letting you guess that he intends to sacrifice them to his cause in a few minutes.
Lastly, one of the aspects of Chesterton's writing which I admire most is his love of paradox. Throughout Heretics he continually confronts the readers with things which are contradictory and yet which we know to be true. Chesterton also loves to lead you on with a sentence which should, as you imagine, end a certain way, but will inevitably spring a complete switch on you just before the period. While this is unsettling, it only makes the reading better. Heretics will make your brain hurt, but it will also make you a wiser person.
9/10

Rickshaw

Lao She

Experience is the fertilizer of life. When you have certain kinds of experiences you become a certain kind of man. You can't grow peonies in a desert.

So, you think getting along on your own is best, do you? The old man gave his judgment of Hsiang Tzu's story. "Who doesn't think that way? But who gets on well? My body and bones were sound and my character was good when I started out, and I came straight on down the road to where I am now and ended up like this! Sound body? Even men of iron can't get out of this snare of a world we're in. So you have a good character. What good is that? 'The good are requited with good, the evil with evil.' There never was any such thing! When I was young they called me a zealous fellow. I took everyone else's problems for my own and did it do me any good? None at all. I've even saved lives. People who jumped in the river, people who'd hanged themselves, I saved them all. And did I get anything for it? Nothing at all! I'm telling you, I'm not the one who decides what day I'll freeze to death. I figure it's perfectly understandable that any poor guy who thinks he can succeed by himself will find it harder than going to heaven.

Rickshaw is one of the more famous novels to come out of the New Culture Movement of the early twentieth century, and it is not a bad read. I have heard comparisons drawn between Dickens and Lao She, but while I can understand how someone would be inclined to make such a connection, I don't think they are that apt. Lao She is much more realistic and blunt with his language than Dickens. It's been a while since I've read Dickens, but from what I remember he always put a sanitized coating on his stories of horrible circumstances; Lao She leaves this off entirely.
If you are looking for an uplifting tale, Rickshaw is not your cup of tea. At the heart of the story is the rickshaw puller Hsiang Tzu, what everyone might call a young, hopeful, idealistic, and honorable man. Time after time he is beaten down by different circumstances, but Lao She doesn't leave any room for passing the blame off on society. When it comes down to it, Hsiang Tzu's "Individualism" (a word Lao She uses often to mean Selfishness) is the cause of almost all his woes. Hsiang Tzu continually tries to pit himself against whatever odds are piled up against him, but it is always himself versus.
Lao She's writing is very fluid--in the translation I had. He weaves his own commentary nicely into the narrative of Hsiang Tzu's life and knows the perfect moments to allow emotion to grow beyond his normally objective tone. I never felt that Lao She was contriving or forcing his story out, which may be its most impressive quality. The story flows wonderfully well and reads fast--you'll be done before you have remembered you started. 7/10

Waiting For Godot

Samuel Beckett

Pozzo: (Suddenly Furious.) Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? (Calmer.) They give birth astride a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. (He jerks the rope.) On!

It is safe to say I did not understand this play, but I also got the feeling from that understanding wasn't the issue. I haven't yet read any commentary on it beyond the dust-jacket, but judging from the ambiguity of the play, I bet there is plenty of commentary to be had. What really made me happy, in some confusing way, was how the play resembles a circle. Composed of two acts, the first could just as easily be the second and the second the first. There are certain moments in the first act which seem very confusing at the time, but once you get to the second act, you begin to understand. It works out as a beautiful circle. Each act, which is an evening, melting into the next and melting back into itself. Whether you want to read this as some sort of meaningless of time or perhaps the aimlessness of life, I'm not going to hazard a guess. Look for clues to this neat little trick of Beckett's when you read Waiting for Godot.
Another very interesting aspect of the play is everyone's incredible ignorance or stupidity. Memory is incredibly faulty, to the point that the characters seem feeble at the best and infantile at worst. Beckett is working at some point with this, although I am not sure what. I couldn't help but imagine that when you take a step back, we must seem the same way to the impartial observer. Really, we cannot remember things which happen mere minutes ago, much less the day before.
And of course there is the confusion around waiting. I did not find difficulty imagining that this whole ponderous, expansive, and as yet unfulfilled waiting which is the whole play was really a thinly guised metaphor for the second coming of Christ which so much of the Christian world is "in waiting" for. The language characters use to talk about Godot is anything if not suggestive.
I also was enthralled with Beckett's thin usage of characters and props. Five characters, one of which is a very small part, is the total cast. I have heard that Beckett is known for his minimalist sort of productions, and once I read Krapp's Last Tape which might have been the culmination of this. While I doubt that just any person can carry off this sort of sparse play, Beckett does. As well as the minimalism, I thought the dialog flowed faster and more smoothly than most. This might have been because I was reading and not watching, but this isn't a theater blog, so I expect this will inspire only to read Godot, if anything.
But the most puzzling aspect of the whole play, the thing which I am almost wholly uncertain on is Pozzo and Lucky. These two characters make their way back and forth across the stage, one of them has the longest speech in the play, the other the most despicable character, and I have no clue why they are in the play at all. I wouldn't say that they are any Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but only that I am lost when it comes to them. 7/10

The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death-battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience, merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.

I had never before read a manifesto, so not only was this my first foray into the realms of communist literature, but also manifestos. However all this is mere background. I am surprised, though I shouldn't be; for some odd reason I expected the communist version of Thomas Paine--this expectation was without logic, but none the less present. I figured that this as a "manifesto" would be a fiery work with all sorts of pulls at the heartstrings and what not. The only really propaganda-like line of the whole work is its last, "Workers of the world, unite!" Perhaps I found to it be lacking in passion because I did not agree with it, but I have read other things which I disagreed with yet still felt them working their emotional magic on me.
Really, aside from Marx's desire to abolish the family, the current societal system, religion, and others, I found it to be less unreasonable than I imagined. I don't know that I want to venture into anything near political commentary, so there is not much more to say. But if you happen to be interested in Communism, I thought this was a pretty good introduction to what it looked like in its earlier forms--although you can hear the echoes of the Communist Manifesto in Soviet and Chinese communism, but only the echoes.

The Moon and Sixpence

W. Somerset Maugham

So far as I could make out, he painted with great difficulty, and in his unwillingness to accept help from anyone lost much time in finding out for himself the solution of technical problems which preceding generations had already worked out one by one. He was aiming at something, I knew not what, and perhaps he hardly knew himself; and I got again more strongly the impression of a man possessed. He did not seem quite sane. It seemed to me that he would not show his pictures because he was really not interested in them. He lived in a dream, and the reality meant nothing to him. I had the feeling that he worked on a canvas with all the force of his violent personality, oblivious of everything in his effort to get what he saw with the mind’s eye; and then, having finished, not the picture perhaps, for I had an idea that he seldom brought anything to completion, but the passion that fired him, he lost all care for it. He was never satisfied with what he had done: it seemed to him of no consequence compared with the vision that obsessed his mind.

Every once in a while I have the wonderful surprise of stumbling blindly upon some amazing author whose existence I had never even imagined. Such was the case with W. Somerset Maugham. I simply happened upon a small book by the title of The Moon and Sixpence which turned out to be the best book I've read this year.
As far as the book though, this novelette is a picture of the mythical painter Charles Strickland. From the outset, Maugham's dry wit and subtle surprises come to slap you in the face at the end of many a sentence. But it is not for the priceless wit which I find myself championing this book. Maugham also has an insight into the human soul, particularly the artist's soul which I have rarely seen paralleled. With this sort of philosophical tone, I entered into this book with the expectations of another Thomas Hardy society work, incredibly dry and pompous in its abstraction. But I found Maugham to be some darker, more experienced version of P. G. Wodehouse. Perhaps a conversation from the book would help to illumine this:

‘Hang it all, one can’t leave a woman without a bob’
‘Why not?’
‘How is she going to live?’
‘I’ve supported her for seventeen years. Why shouldn’t she support herself for a change?’
‘She can’t.’
‘Let her try.’”

This conversation comes almost directly after the first great movement in the book, in which the mild-mannered and entirely dull Strickland up and leaves his wife of seventeen years. What may come across as the callousness of the main character is never denied by the author although he gives you plenty of reasons to excuse it. Truthfully, Charles Strickland is still a mystery to me. As an artist he represents complete devotion in search of perfection but twinged with the ties of humanity which prevent him from ever attaining his aesthetic goals. Maugham depicts the world's battle against itself in this man, and his terrifyingly stoic death leaves a distaste in your mouth not likely to soon dissipate. Maugham raises the question of Beauty as opposed the human condition of being unable to recognize it. I don't know if the ending of this book will irritate you, but I imagine those less inclined to think while they read will find it a let down.

But while the character of Charles Strickland is impressive in its incongruity and mystery, it is my personal feeling that Dirk Stroeve is far more interesting. A man who is cast upon the wild ocean of life with no more than a feeling that he wants to like people and that he wants people to like him. He suffers the innumerable buffets of a cruel world, feeling their piercing pain and yet is incapable of shielding himself, not so much because he lack means, but because he cannot find it in his heart to be anything but so entirely bare before humanity. Dirk is the character of a man who has incredible insight but is blind to the rock he is about to stumble on; he is a man who has the mind capable of wrapping around all the intricacies and devilries of human society yet cannot get this into his reality. He is the pinnacle of tragic heroes because no one can see him as aught but an ass, he is the height of tragedy because his pain makes us laugh. He is the most depressing, sad, and pitiful of characters because he comes across as nothing short of a joke.

But while art is painted in many ways by Maugham, in the true testament of his understanding, his depiction of art transcends itself and steps into the broader world. From the battle in a man's heart between adventure and comfort to playing with the dynamic between writer and written about--between the man immersed in the world so much he lives great tales to be told my a man understanding of the world enough to relate these stories and this man. The interaction between Strickland and the narrator made me stop to think for a moment.

Maugham is worth whatever time you spend on him, but I recommend the Moon and Sixpence as an interesting story in itself, not to mention an excellent question into art and beauty. 9/10

The Battle of the Books

Jonathan Swift

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it. But if it should happen otherwise, the danger is not great; and I have learned from long experience never to apprehend mischief from those understandings I have been able to provoke; for anger and fury, though they add strength to the sinews of the body, yet are found to relax those of the mind, and to render all its efforts feeble and impotent.

Swift deserves credit alone for the title piece of this work: “A Full and True Account of the Battle fought last Friday Between the Ancient and the Modern Books in St. James Library.” The little bit about being fought last Friday is wonderful, especially since Swift faithfully preserves a epic style in his narration reminiscent of Homer and Virgil. Not only does he mercilessly rake those people he considers his ideological enemies over the coals, but he also quite a few telling points in man’s continual struggle with a belief in progress and evidence to the contrary.

The Battle of the Books is the closest thing I have yet read to a fair and unbiased conversation about ancient and modern thought—and by fair and unbiased I do of course mean blatantly on the side of the Ancients. He paints his contemporaries and those whom he sees as trying to place themselves above those titans of ancient thought as utter buffoons lacking manners, intelligence, beauty, and common sense. Overall a very damning approach to them and theirs. 6/10

Gulliver's Travels

Johnathan Swift

He hoped, when we returned to England I would oblige the world by putting it in paper, and making it public. My answer was, that I thought we were already overstocked with books of traveler: that nothing could now pass which was not extraordinary, wherein I doubted some authors less consulted truth than their own vanity or interest, or the diversion of ignorant readers. That my story could contain little besides common events, without those ornamental descriptions of strange plants, trees, birds, and other animals, or of the barbarous customs and idolatry of savage people, with which most writers abound. However I thanked him for his good opinion and promised to take the matter into my thoughts.

While there certainly are many, many satirists of note in this world, I have as yet not encountered any with as much wit and insight as Swift. Not only does he cut apart his contemporaries and their times with the most innocent of tones, but he further places the whole of the human race on the dissecting table and does not cease until our exalted vision of ourselves lies in tiny little pieces, only worth so much dog meat. While this may sound a bit harsh to you, I assure you, I'm not conveying the half of the criticism Swift levees on the human race so breezily in his Gulliver's Travels. But I also wonder if Swift didn't trap himself, perhaps like Mark Twain, into a narrow world of only being known as a satirist. I have seen many different works of Swift and they all have this same innocence which belies a deeper, darker and more knowing fury attacking the stupidity of humanity. While he is a wonderful writer in this vein and perhaps in others, and no doubt is brilliant, after Gulliver I felt I needed a goodly break before I returned to his sort of style.
I would be tempted to describe satire as a sort of addiction, a drug which draws you in and while you quickly become disgusted with it, you simply cannot stop. But beyond these sorts of morbid views of satire and whatnot, Gulliver's actual story is quite interesting. Swift never wastes times putting Gulliver alone in a strange and artfully constructed world. Usually it only takes him a few pages to go from peaceful family life to shipwrecked in a world of giants. The various peoples and cultures he meets with along his wanderings are all unique and interesting in their own right, besides their satirical value. If anything would be helpful though before you start to read this one, get a brief history of the political situation in which Swift was writing. I have a feeling this would make the entire story much more meaningful. 8/10

The True Story of Ah Q

Lu Hsun

This time he did not feel particularly irritated. He supposed that in this world it was the fate of everybody at some time to be dragged in and out of prison, and to have to draw circles on paper; it was only because his circle had not been round that he felt there was a stain on his reputation. Presently, however he regained composure by thinking, "Only idiots can make perfect circles." And with this thought he fell asleep.

But he did not really faint. Although he felt frightened some of the time, the rest of the time he was quite calm. It seemed to him that in this world probably it was the fate of everybody at some time to have his head cut off.

The True Story of Ah Q holds more meaning in its few pages than many novels of longer length. Not only is the character one of the better mixes between allegory and reality I have come across, but from what I know of the political situation in China at the turn of the century, it seems Ah Q is also a very cutting satire. Lu Hsun works his way into the story through the use of a very frank introduction so subtly that you miss the point at which the story begins and his voice fades out. And throughout the entire tale, his voice can be heard sneaking in and vanishing again, leaving the very curious sound of Ah Q's muddled conception of reality.
However you take the political elements of the story, there is no denying that Ah Q is also a fitting portrayal of some of the more disreputable elements of human nature. The life Ah Q lives in his mind as opposed to his life which is reality, remind me of certain tendencies in my own life to spend a little mental power and beautifying an otherwise ugly outlook. Ah Q carries this to a whole new level though, retreating to such a deep level of mental remodeling of reality, that he can go to his own death feeling things really aren't quite as bad as they actually are.
I must admit, I am scared by how much I find Ah Q's dellussional habits to be not so bad a way to live. While this may have been written for a turn of the century Chinese audience, Ah Q has just as many implications for an American. Given the small size of the book, I would say this would be one of the more efficient reads you have. 8/10

Riddley Walker

Russell Hoban

He said, 'Wel no I dint make it up you cant make up nothing in your head no moren you can make up what you see. You know what I mean may be what you see aint all ways there so you cud reach out and touch it but its there some kynd of way and it come from some where. That place Hagmans Il I use to wunner about it every time we come by it til finely that story come in to my head. That story cudnt come out of no where cud it so it musve coe out of some where. Parbly it ben in that place only the idear of it come to me there. That dont make no odds. That storys jus what ever it is and thats what storys are.'

The cover of the edition I read had the quote "Attempts the impossible...and achieves it" on it, but I would only agree if the impossible is getting such a ambiguously composed book published. Sometimes an author makes the decision to be adventurous, this is the case with Riddley Walker. Unfortunately the story does not have any of the adventurousness of its author. The entire tale, related in the first person, is composed in some phonetic dialect which is not always as clear as it could be. Indeed it took me some time to figure out that it was set in a post-apocalyptic world and not the distant past. While Hoban's choice to use such a unorthodox style gives the entire book a sense of mystery, it's not the kind of mystery which keeps a reader turning pages--it's the type which makes the reader through up his hands in disgust and leave off reading the book all-together. While it seems at times that Hoban was reaching for some life in his narrative, some mystery and a very colloquial feeling, he is no James Joyce. At least the incomprehensibility of Finnigan's Wake had some real brilliance behind it. Not so for Riddley Walker.
While I must admit the reason I picked out Riddley Walker rather than any other book was that it was written with such a unique voice. But the problem was that this unique voice got in the way of the plot. I still am not sure about quite a few points in the book. I will say that it was a very pleasant feeling to understand things and realize the many witty allusions as I went along. But I don't think I realized near as many of these are there were in the book. If you choose to read Riddley Walker expect to get a good mental workout and leave the scene with a whole bunch of questions (mostly about unnecessary things, but they will plague you all the same). 4/10