Review: Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley

Boy was  this book different than I expected. The only book of Huxley's I had read in the past is his dystopian Brave New World, which this is a marked departure from (or maybe Brave New World is a marked departure from this). Gone is the futuristic setting, the omniscient, despotic government, the Soma. In it's place is a chattering group of wildly irritating British upper class characters who mill around, moving into and out of each others' lives.

The book is rather unstructured, mostly following around said characters as they drink, each, cheat on each other mercifully, and even commit brutal violence against each other. Oh yeah: and they philosophize. Oh boy, do they ever philosophize. During many points of the book, the dialogue degrades into what must be a vehicle for Huxley's own musings over various great, esoteric topics. While these are sometimes insightful and even enlightening, it gets to be a bit much when they stretch to more than a handful of pages. Anyone who has read Ayn Rand's fiction will understand what I mean. I don't know many people in real life who complete a fifteen minute monologue when surrounded by good friends.

Where this novel really succeeds is in its characters. Though they are all caricatures, Huxley creates such an amazing number of them and them manages to keep them all relevant throughout the story's entirety. This perhaps shows the social inbreeding that existed in upper-class British culture in the early twentieth century, but it seems like almost every character knows each other here. It is said that many of these characters are based on real people that Huxley associated during his lifetime. In fact, the only likable character in the entire novel is supposedly based on the author D.H. Lawrence.

While this is hugely different than Brave New World, Huxley's satire still cuts with the same sharp edge when dealing with the sheltered, filthy rich upper class as it does when castigating totalitarianism. As I said, these are not likable characters and I would put all my money down on betting that this is not accidental. They all seem to show a disdain for the poor (or even just the non-filthy rich), work, democratic government, and even each other. If Huxley wanted to show up that the rich were not good people, he has made himself loud and clear. There is no Great-like subtlety here.

I was on the fence about this one. I tore through certain sections of the book and then slogged through others. It's an interested, if flawed, book and I'm glad that I read it, but I don't believe that it has the staying power or accessibility of A Brave New World.

You'll like it if you like: social commentary, writing about early twentieth century England, sharp-witted satire, philosophical meanderings, excellently executed prose.

Review: Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

It's been awhile, but the RNG finally drew another Modern Library Top 100 novel, and this one actually wasn't terrible.

Sister Carrie follows a small town girl who moves to Chicago to escape the drabness and parochial nature of her tiny burg. She imagines glamour, excitement, and all of the other glitz that comes with the "big city". She moves in with her working class sister and her husband, where this vision falls apart. She struggles to find a job and, when she finally does, she abhors her long hours and terrible working conditions as a seamstress. Luckily for her, she is quite the looker and is snatched up and taken care of by an up and coming young man who has fallen in love (or something along those lines) with her immediately. She finally gets to enjoy the social life she dreamed of when heading to Chicago.

Of course, as she gets used to this lifestyle she can't leave well enough alone and seeks "better", in the form of an older, more established man with more money. In a flurry of events, her and this new man run off together, first to Montreal and then to New York City. The two have a difficult time getting on their feet, and live destitute for quite some time. It is at this point that she begins her upward ascent as an actress and he begins his converse path from a weathy socialite to unemployed to beggar. Carrie moves on and he moves to the streets.

The book was not terribly engaging, but it was a somewhat easy read. The characters are well developed throughout the novel, but not of them have an iota of likability surrounding them. The best part of this book, by far, is the description of Chicago and New York City. Everything from the build environment, to the street cars, strikes, women's (and men's) fashion, and the Broadway scene is amazingly detailed. The reader can almost picture him or herself walking through these newly booming metropolises (that's certainly an awkward word), getting lossed in the hustle and bustle.

It's not a terribly uplifting story and in some place is actually pretty depressing. While it's a relatively interested story, it doesn't dive deep into the social commentary like something from Fitzgerald would. Regardless, it's enjoyable enough and if you like period fiction concerning the rise of the cities or the early Twentieth Century, this one might be worth checking out. I give Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser six out of ten stars.

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I'm still a review behind since I just finished Plainsong by Kent Haruf, but I should have that one up soon. On deck after that is Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley. As always, thanks for reading!

Modern Library Challenge: #75 - Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Looks like I finally return to the Modern Library 100 list!

When the RNG chose another Evelyn Waugh book, I have to admit that I was a teensy bit less than ecstatic. I wasn't particularly impressed with Brideshead Revisited, the last book of Waugh's that I read. While reading and after finishing Scoop, though, I was happily surprised. The two books share almost nothing in common, which is just fine with me.

Scoop, as the title implies, is about journalism. To be precise, it is about the wacky shenanigans involved with reporting foreign news. In the obviously fictional African nation of Ishmaelia civil war looks like a certain thing. Despite knowing nothing about this insignificant country and the actors involved, the British media is scurrying all over itself to send foreign correspondents. One of these outlets, the Daily Beast, decides to send John Boot, an up-and-coming author, to Ishmaelia as a favor curried through John's benefactor. In the midst of the craziness of hammering out the plans, the orders to ship abroad are accidentally sent to William, not John, Boot.

Enter William Booth. William happens to be a far-removed cousin of John who works for the Daily Beast as a nature reporter. He lives with his extended family in a crumbling manor way, way out in the sticks. He loathes and fears London and submits all of his work through the mail. To say that he is not worldly would be quite an understatement. When he receives his orders to go abroad he at first thinks he is being punished and refuses to go. He finally caves, though, and the adventure begins. Just getting to Ishmaelia with his almost-literally ton of supplies of luggage proves to be an exercise in futility. Once he (and the rest of the gaggle of foreign correspondents) get there, the fun really begins.

Obviously out of his league, Boot has absolutely no idea where to begin. Through a strange bumbling series of mishaps, misdirection, Soviet scheming, and even a brief love affair, he somehow breaks the big story and vaults himself into the pantheon of journalistic brilliance. How he he gets from point A to point B is about 99% of the fun of reading this novel, so I won't spoil it for anyone.

Despite being written over seventy years ago, Scoop is still a brilliant piece of satire and is as relevant to foreign and war journalism as ever. This novel touches on several themes of importance, including war reporters crafting stories and manufacturing facts at a typewriter hundreds of miles away from the front. If you believe this hasn't happened in modern military conflicts, I have some beautiful swampland you may be interested in purchasing. Scoop also focuses on is the story creating the action (aka "life imitating journalism"). In this novel, the correspondents have no idea what they are doing or what is actually going on in Ishmaelia. Despite this, the newspapers needs to stories so the correspondents supply them, regardless of the factual validity of the reports.

As I said, Scoop a great piece of satire. In many ways, it reminds me of Vonnegut before Vonnegut had even written his first novel. The absurdity of the whole thing never ceases to entertain. Since I still have one more novel by Waugh left on the Modern Library list, I will hold out hope that it is of this caliber and not that of Brideshead Revisited.

Just one note of caution: there are some relatively racist pieces of dialogue in this novel. I'm not sure if it's a reflection of English sentiments towards Africans at the time or "Kipling-esque" feelings held by Waugh, but it does get offensive at times. Nothing over the top or anything, just a little surprising.

Despite all over my initial hesitation over this book, I give it four and a half out of five stars and recommend it to anyone interested in a hilarious rollercoaster of a novel, good satire, and those who like Abbot and Costello films.

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The RNG chose One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn next. Because it is short (and because I've been slacking with reviews), I have already finished it. I'll try to get a review up in the next couple of days. Cheers!

Review: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a book that I have come across everywhere, but never took the time to read. When I worked at a library, copies of it were always coming and going across the circulation desk. I read excepts of the novel in other media sources. I even came across a piece of it used as a reading section in a standardized test (either LSAT or GRE). Despite this, I never really considered reading it. I guess I just thought it would be boring. Despite all the awards and critics' praise it received, I left it alone.

Obviously, since I am writing a review of the novel, all of that leaving it alone came to an end. The mighty random generator picked its number and we were off to the races.

Invisible Man, which was published in 1952 and received the National Book Award in 1953, is one of the most well-regarded piece of literature written by an African American. It focuses on the unnamed narrator, who recounts his life from a young, idealistic individual to the currently jaded man who lives by gaming the system. The almost six-hundred page novel follows the narrator from life as a college student at an all-black college in the deep south to his search for work in New York City. In those pages, he stumbles from one catastrophe to another before he understands society and his role in it.

On the surface, Invisible Man deals with the plight of African American during the early to mid twentieth century. The plot focuses on the narrator's experiences as a young man in the south, black nationalism, and Marxism and its relationship with African American plight. All of these themes are dealt with rather explicitly and are never analyzed with the soft touch or subtlety that such complex issues need to be approached with. I also believe that there is a good reason for this. Despite the fact that this novel, on its surface, deals primarily with the plight of African Americans, it doesn't seem like Ellison wanted this to be the main theme the reader takes away from the novel.

The much deeper, subtle theme of Invisible Man is that concerning individuality and the way one interacts and fits within society. The title, oft-confused with H.G. Wells' novel, is particularly apt. The protagonist realizes by the time he is narrating the story that he can game the system precisely because no one realizes that he exists unless he wants them to. In the toil and bustle of New York City, he is part of the mass of moving bodies, not a separate entity on his own. When someone does look at him, what they see is either absolutely nothing or a reflection of the viewer's own conceptions. Because of this, his perceived image is merely a collection of stereotypes that those who see him hold. If everyone the narrator interacts with views him in a different manner, then who really is the narrator?

I feel like this is a theme that almost anyone can identify with today. With the rise of various social media platforms, we all have different, new venues to interact with others. Because of this, it seems that one may interact with many more individuals in a much less intimate manner. How do these people view you? How does how you are perceived by individuals on these platforms affect how you behave and what your identity is? Can you identify your "true" identity or is it an amalgamation of the identities others attach to you? It is certainly self-reflecting food for thought.

The prose Ellison used in Invisible Man is beautiful, as well. He conveys the life on the street in Harlem, the electricity in the air at radical rallies, and the internal workings of the narrator equally as artistically. Despite this, the novel is extremely readable.

Anyone can and should read this book. I am extremely glad I had the opportunity to do so. It is so tremendously important not just because of its examination of African American life last century (though this is important), but more so because of its approach to the examination of one's self. This is a theme which transcends race, class, sex, or any other categorization. I could not more highly recommend this novel. It is a great, readable work. I just wish I would have read it earlier.

I give Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison four stars out of five.

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The next book for review will be Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I knew literally novel about it, but it was on the Time Magazine list and apparently was made into a movie just this year. I'm a little under halfway through it already, so there should be a review up in less than a week, time permitting.

New Review: A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

There are a million reasons why I could never be a literary critic. The first, and perhaps most important, is that I don't want to be one. I love reading because it allows me to escape, to relax, and to be entertained. I don't want reading to have to be work; something I have to trudge through. When I see companion books to novels like Ulysses or To the Lighthouse, I shudder. It's not that I don't like the be challenged. Some of my favorite books, including the Modern Library 100's own The Magus, have pushed my literary comfort zone.

With that in mind, there is another very important reason I could never be a literary critic: I do not find the everyday lives of Englishmen and women interesting whatsoever. Tales of the challenging or fall of the aristocracy, of preserving one's chastity, or of summer homes in continental Europe do absolutely nothing for me. It's almost a formula for my eyes glazing over. I'll make it through ten pages and realized I retained absolutely nothing. I know it's probably heresy, but books like The Death of the Heart, Loving, Brideshead Revisited, and, yes, A Room with a View just are not enjoyable for me to read. I realize that they have merit and are appreciated by many greater minds than my own, but I think they're just not very good.

 

A Room with a View by E.M. Forster, as noted above, is one of those novels which deal with the banal details of English life in the early twentieth century. It is listed number seventy-nine on the Modern Library Top 100 list.

It focuses on Lucy, a young Englishwomen who briefly falls in love with George, a young, modern, somewhat uncouth guest at the same hotel she is staying at in Florence. She is confused by her feelings, which she believes are inappropriate, particularly because the rest of the "fancy" guests find George and his father distasteful and vulgar. She leaves Florence and her love to head back to England, where she settles in and gets engaged to an acceptable, traditional member of the aristocracy. She may not be entirely happy, but she is doing what she is supposed to and her life is calm.

As fate would have it, she is reunited with George and her feelings of love for him are sparked again. She wrestles with her feelings for him and the impropriety of them while she is engaged. Eventually, she picks - HA, like I'm going to tell you which gentleman she gets with - and they settle down. Fin.

Obviously, this book is about growing up and of being in love. If a reader couldn't tell this, I would question whether he or she could actually read. The deeper themes includes the cultural clashes of this time between the conservative culture and thought represented by almost all of the characters in the novel; the newer, more radical generation, represented by George and his father; and those caught in the middle (Lucy).

Is it a bad book? Like most of the novels on this list that I haven't read, no. It's just not my thing. I'm not sure I would recommend it generally, but for those fans of Victorian and other British literature, it should suit your fancy. It's relatively short and is very readable, so you're not making a huge commitment even if you don't enjoy it.

I give A Room with a View by E.M. Forster three out of five stars.

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Once I finished this novel, I used an internet random number generator to pick what I will read next. In one of the most pleasant and timely coincidence I could possibly imagine, the number it chose was 114, which is the number associated with Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. 

You couldn't even make this up (well, I guess you could). On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the random number generator chose what very well may be the finest piece of literature by an African-American author. It is actually on the Moden Library, Radcliffe Rival, and Time Magazine best novel lists. It was published in 1952 and was the only novel Ellison had published during his lifetime. It won the National Book Award in 1953.

I've read portions of this novel, but never the whole thing, so it should be a treat. It is only fitting that on this important day, I will be lucky enough to start a novel dealing not only with the difficulties facing African-Americans, but a novel which looks at what ones place is in society as an individual. I am very much looking forward to getting a start on this and will hopefully be back with a review for you all before long.

Changing things up!

So, as new as this blog is, I've already decided to retrofit the whole thing. This blog was created to be about whatever I felt like posting about on a given day. I probably should have seen it coming, but since books are such a large part of my life, that topic has sort of taken over the content. Seeing the reality of the situation, I've changed the title and url of this blog and it will be more pointedly book-focused going forward. I will still be posting about other, random things, but they will be in the background.

The other large change is that I will be taking on books other than those found in the Modern Library Top 100 novels list. As I noted in the original post covering the list, it leans heavily towards novels written by White, Western males. To help diversify the books I'll be reading and reviewing (and to preserve my sanity), I've added all of the books from Radcliffe's Rival 100 Best Novels, a companion list to the Modern Library one. It contains many of the books I felt were unjustifiably left off the ML list and includes many more women authors. I'm also going to be adding books that I would like to read just for the fun of it to the master list, so if you can think of anything that impressed you, please email it to me or leave a comment here. If it sounds interesting and I haven't read it yet, I'll add it to the list. The master list will be added next to the Modern Library list above, so keep an eye out.

How this will work now: I'm going to create the master list and add each book to a box (or hat, or whatever) and once I finish a novel I will draw another one at random. This will be a departure from the ordered method I used before, but it seems more fun and less of a homework assignment. Like I said, if you have recommendation, please send them! Keep an eye out for the changes and happy reading!

Modern Library Challenge: #80 - Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

One thing I have noticed about the Modern Library 100 list so far is that the folks who put it together seem to like British life. If a book portrays a particular view of British life that features aristocracy and/or drunkenness, even better. I'm sure much to the extreme satisfaction of the tweed-wearing men on the Modern Library board Brideshead Revisited is full up of both of these themes.

The opening of Brideshead Revisited finds Charles Ryder, an middle-aged officer in the British army during WWII, moving out from a camp and settling down in a new one. Something about this new camp seems familiar to Ryder and, after inquiring as to where they had stopped, a subordinate states "Brideshead".

With this response, the memories come flooding into Ryder, and with it, the main narrative of the story. The huge, run down estate requisitioned and currently occupied by the British army, twenty years earlier was the setting for a tale of friendship, love, piety, and social change.

The main narrative follows the young Charles Ryder, who has just enrolled at Oxford for schooling. After floundering socially for a bit, he meats the lovable, peculiar Sebastian Flyte. The two hit it off immediately and are essentially inseparable. The two have drunken shenanigans at Oxford, with a little less focus on the schooling. After a time, Sebastian invites Charles to see his home, the beautiful, extraordinary Marchmain located where else, but Brideshead.

The visit exposes a number of things, including the Flytes' dysfunctional nature, including Sebastian's disdain for almost his entire family. Despite this disdain, Charles Ryder becomes a regular feature in the household and almost an honorary member of the family. As Ryder grows closer to the rest of the Flytes, he begins falling away from Sebastian, who descends into drunkenness and self-inflicted exile abroad. From here follows love affairs, family crisis, and war. I won't explain more of the plot so as to not ruin it for anyone.

The themes of this novel are legion and interconnected. This relatively modest-sized novel examines the loss of innocence and youth, the fall of aristocracy, and the impact of religiosity on the characters' views and behavior. The religious element is ever-present in the story, from Charles Ryder's lack of one, to the five Flyte's varying degrees of it.

While this books is touching and thematically brilliant, the writing and prose gets slightly cumbersome at time. Waugh admits this himself in the introduction to the novel.

I will hesitantly give Brideshead Revisited  three out of five stars. I say hesitantly because, when writing this review and examining its themes, the book seems more powerful than when I read it and may warrant an additional star. Despite this, I am going to stick with my initial decision I came to after I finished the novel. The themes are brilliant, but their vehicle was at times heavy and awkward. I still believe I would recommend it, though. I just wouldn't put it in the top one hundred books written in the twentieth century.

The book can be purchased here and checked out of your local branch of the Cincinnati Public Library here.

Next up is A Room with a View by E.M. Forster. This is a short one, so it should only be a couple of days until I'm ready for another review.

Speaking of the Cincinnati Public Library, don't forget that from January 14th to the 17th, the Friends of the Library are holding a book sale at their warehouse at 8456 Vine Street. If you're a current Friend of the Library, you can come for a preview sale on the 13th and get at all the good stuff before the general public does.

More information can be found at: http://friends.cincinnatilibrary.org/.

Modern Library Challenge: #81 - The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

[Happy New Year to anyone reading this! I hope 2011 is a prosperous, fulfilling, and healthy year to you all!] /Back to regularly scheduled material

One thing I have noticed since I started working through this list is that my idea of what one of the best books published in the past one-hundred years is much, much different than the idea held by whoever put the Modern Library list together.

Is The Adventures of Augie March a bad book? No, not at all. The writing is tremendous, Augie is a very likable character, and the settings all felt authentic. Could the book have been two-hundred pages shorter? Yep. Could Bellow have done without all of the esoteric references to works of random antiquities? I say yes, but then again I am not a literary critic or a publisher.

Anyways, this novel is essentially about a Jewish kid (named Augie March, as you may have guessed) who grows up in Chicago and goes on wacky adventures. The just of the story is that Augie has an extremely difficult time telling people no, so he gets roped into all sorts of silly shenanigans. Even though the first one-hundred or so pages are spent explaining the characters in the Windy City who will appear and reappear through the novel, Augie finds the time to fall in love a handful of time (each with disastrous results), work countless menial jobs, work smuggling people over the Canadian border, become rich, then poor, then rich again, travel to Mexico as a bald eagle trainer, join the military, and become a well-off business man. All of this, I believe, before he is even thirty.

The problem is not the whirlwind of activity, but Bellow's ability to make none of it seem like it matters. Bellow's prose is just as grand for the passing of an uneventful day as it is for sinking of a military troop ship. There is just no differentiation, which is relatively frustrating. It becomes hard to sympathize with March when (another) awful thing happens to him, not just because he keeps asking for it, but because it almost seems Bellow doesn't care very much what happens to his lead, either.

It was slow reading, but it wasn't the best book I've ever read. Probably not in the top one-hundred either, which makes this another one of the disappointing reads I've made my way through so far. It was interesting at times and the writing is brilliant, so I can't completely dismiss it, but I probably not return to it ever.

I give The Adventures of Augie March three out of five stars.

Next up: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (I'm already one-hundred or so pages into this one, so I should be finished with it within the week)

Modern Library Challenge: #82 - Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

"Angle of Repose is a novel about Time, as much as anything--about people who live through time, who believe in both a past and a future. . . . It reveals how even the most rebellious crusades of our time follow paths that our great-grandfathers' feet beat dusty."
        -Wallace Stegner

Angle of Repose, to put it as simplistically as possible, is about Lyman Ward's efforts to write the history of his Grandmother and Grandfather's time as settlers in the West. Un-simplistically, it is a book about marriage, loss, regret, and longing. It is a touching book, to say the least.

The narrative flips back and forth between Lyman's struggles in his life in the 1970's and writing his Grandmother's history in the and excerpts from the book itself. The troubles he faces are myriad: a skeletal disease which confines him to a wheelchair; a mix of longing and contempt for a wife who left him when his disease struck; a son who wants to send him to a convalescent home; and the writing of the project itself. There is a great deal of introspection throughout the novel, even inserting itself as editorial in his Grandmother's history.

Speaking of the history: it focuses on Susan Ward a country girl - turned New York socialite, writer, and artist - turned pioneer wife. Throughout the novel, the latter two distinction - socialite and pioneer wife - are in direct, vicious conflict. Susan feels regret at compromising her professional and social career by moving West; regret which clashes with her loyalty and faith in her stoic, forgiving husband Oliver. As time passes and Susan grows into middle age, the regret begins to tilt the scale against loyalty and faith, which is reflected in their marriage. As of this tension builds to a heartbreaking climax that I am, of course, am not going to reveal to you.

Stegner's writing in this novel is tremendous. The wonderful description of the places in which they settle reflects the state of the Wards' marriage: from their beautiful, lively time in Mexico to the sterile, lifeless settlement later in their lives in Idaho. His transition between the two narratives is seamless and sometime both narratives run simultaneously. His portrayal of the West is easily the best I've ever read; escaping stereotypes both positive and negative.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone, not just fans of Western subjects. Really, though it takes place in the West, it is not a Western. The story of the difficulties of marriage and regret for what could have been could take place in any setting, in time or place. The prose is detailed, yet easy to read. Overall, just a great book. There's a reason it won a Pulitzer prize when it was published.

I give Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner four out of five stars.

Next up: #81 - Adventures of Augie March  by Saul Bellow

On deck: #80 - Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

The Modern Library 100 Best Novels Challenge

Between the time I moved to Cincinnati in May and started my job in July, I desperately needed something to do. This wouldn't normally be an issue, but since I was not yet receiving paychecks, I had to find something to do which was free. Enter the Modern Library 100 Best Novels.

This list was constructed by what I imagine is a bunch of crusty, old white men (in other words, publishers). By design, the list only includes novels from the 20th century.  It has been criticized relentlessly since it was released  for focusing too much on Western authors and, in particular, Western male authors. These criticisms are appropriate, but all "best of" lists are going to be somewhat arbitrary in their rankings and, due to societal constraints, a large majority of published writers in the early to mid-20th century were white men. I can only imagine how many literary masterpieces written by women and minorities were tossed in the dust bin because of racist and/or sexist publishers.

Regardless of all of the criticism, I decided that with all of the hours (and days) I had to waste, it was high time to start becoming cultured. I opened a library account and went to town. I actually started my first novel (#100: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington) and roughly five months later I am at #82. Some books have been amazing (Sophie's Choice) and others have been terrible (The Ginger Man). Most of the others have fallen somewhere in between. All in all, I haven't been tremendously impressed, but I'm hoping the quality will get better as I move down the list. At #1 stands my Mordor, my Mt. Everest, my final adversary: Ulysses. The thought of it horrifies me, but I still have plenty of time before I have to confront it.

Speaking of #82, it is Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. The story focuses on a paraplegic former history professor who is writing a biography of his grandmother. I know it sounds boring, but it's really not. I'll cover it in more detail when I finish it and type up a review. I only have 100 of so pages left, so it shouldn't be too long.

So that is the Modern Library 100 Best Novels Challenge. I hope some of you actually find this interesting and are willing to join me in this journey. Who knows? Maybe you'll find a new favorite book in this list. In the meantime, feel free to check out the books on the list. I've strike through'd those novels which I've already read.