Books read January through 1978
| Author | Babel, Isaac |
|---|---|
| Editor | Morison, Walter |
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Morison, Walter |
| Publication | London: Mathews and Co. Ltd., 1957 |
| Copyright Date | 1925 - 1937 |
| Number of Pages | 381 |
| Genres | Fiction; Short stories |
| Keywords | Soviet Union |
| When Read | January 1978 |
A collection including Red Cavalry, Odessa Tales, and eighteen other stories.
Red Cavalry is a collection of impressionistic pieces on the invasion of Poland in 1920. There are no heroics, no grand sweep of events. Babel concentrates on relations between soldiers and on the interaction of primitive Cossack, Ghetto Jew, and a historical movement composed of them and yet far transcending them
The writing is compact and efficient. Most description is in a bland, neutral tone, usually by a completely passive or even negatively active observer. There is always a psychological change at the end - a note of lyrical humanity, or a new psychological observation illuminating the understated theme of the story.
Odessa Tales includes two odd comic pieces of Benya Krik, the Jewish gangster. The later stories include stories of frustrated childhood, of commentary on Soviet society ("Oil", "The End of Saint Hypatius", etc.) and of Jewish life.
There is no socialist realism motivated by a dominating vision of "objective truth". The writing is superior, the insights honest, self-critical and humane. It is a shame that there was no room for such a writer in the Soviet Union.
Babel died or was executed in a labor camp.
According to the Wikipedia, was shot by the NKVD, but not because of his writing, but because he was having an affair with the wife of a high ranking NKVD official.
He was a complicated man. He told the truth in his writing while doing something else in his private life, fathering children by three different women. He was the darling of the Moscow literary scene and then the target of Stalinist opprobrium. And he was an extraordinary writer. I loved his stories.
Sandy Dwiggins at NCI was also a big fan of Babel. We discussed him when I went to work there in 1990.
| Author | Lem, Stanislaw |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Polish |
| Translators | Kandel, Michael |
| Publication | New York: Seabury Press, 1974 |
| Copyright Date | 1967 |
| Number of Pages | 295 |
| Extras | illustrations |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | January 1978 |
Sixteen stories, some connected to others, some containing half a dozen sub-stories or even sub-sub-stories, all concerned with adventures or tales known to Trurl and/or Klapaucius, the constructors. They and all other characters are cybernetic. They construct such machines as a machine that can make anything beginning with an 'n', a poet that can compose a love poem "lyrical, pastoral, and expressed in the language of pure mathematics", an information demon, a consciousness transfer machine, a lawyer, three story telling machines, a simulator of the highest possible level of development, and so on.
The stories are about love, poetry, deception, revenge, and throughout, the meaning of life. Lem's marvelous language is here and his amazing imagination. The characters all have the Tichy like character of being able to face and deal with everything, truly noble beings, yet full of silly foibles and emotions.
The conception of cybernetics is flexible. He purposely uses 20th century concepts in explaining totally futuristic machines. The simulation of future technology in an authentic way is besides the point. Yet the conception is brilliant and insightful.
The oddity to me is Lem's casting robot societies in medieval times. Odd.
This is one of Lem's many truly great books. People who don't like science fiction, or think that all science fiction is written for adolescents, or think that SF writers are people who can't write good fiction ("Those who can write, write. Those who can't write science fiction.") should read Lem. He will open their eyes.
The stories were really quite extraordinary. One, which might have been in this or another collection (it's easy to mix up the contents of story collections), has Trurl (or was it Klapaucius) captured by a machine that sucks up information. It demands more and more information from Trurl and won't let him go. Trurl responds by building a machine that generates infinite amounts of information, overwhelming his captor with information overload, and escapes. It is typical of Lem's story construction strategy. He captivates us with characters, ideas, and environments that are so compelling that we don't care if no such things could exist. A machine that can construct any other machine? Two constructors competing to see which can make the most outrageously impossible machine? It doesn't matter if we wouldn't believe in such things if someone else told us about them. We are so amazed by what Trurl and Klapaucius say that we need to hear more. We need to see how they overcome their situation. We need to see how they respond to the voracious information devourer, or the cruel medieval king.
I thought it was great stuff.
| Author | Tasaki, Hanama |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1950 |
| Number of Pages | 372 |
| Genres | Fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II; Japan |
| When Read | January 1978 |
T was a Japanese American from Hawaii, educated at the University of Hawaii and Oberlin College. In 1936, upon graduation, he went to Japan where he was drafted to fight in China. He was later demobilized but drafted again in 1942.
This is a story, written in English, of the life of ordinary soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army. The literary quality is adequate but not good. There are blank passages, failed transitions, unfollowed themes, etc. Still the story is worth telling and is taken totally seriously. There is no invention for the market.
The Japanese Army was incredibly authoritarian in structure. First year soldiers did all the shit work, even for other privates. They were hazed continually for their efforts. Often there were serious beatings. Total submission to superiors was the rule. Protocol was absolute. The soldiers had only the most symbolic notions of what they were fighting for and yet the control over men's allegiance was remarkably effective. They signed up to die for the emperor.
A truly frightening society.
I've read quite a lot of books about the war in the Pacific and about Japanese Imperialism. However this is the only book I've seen written by a private soldier in the Japanese Army. I wonder if there are many such books but they're all in Japanese, and this one was written in English by a man who was probably as much or more American as Japanese - so it found its way to an American publisher and into an American library.
For all its literary faults, the book was nevertheless moving and informative. It showed a lot about what a distorted and inhumane society had developed in Japan. I remember one scene in which, if I remember correctly, the men had been ordered to prepare for an attack in which it was presumed that many of them would be killed or wounded. Each man was given a cigarette with an image of the Imperial chrysanthemum printed on the cigarette paper. The men were told that these were the emperor's cigarettes, sent by him to show his appreciation for the sacrifices the men were making on his behalf. The men were awed and overwhelmed with gratitude to the emperor for his interest and concern for them. Or if they weren't they kept quiet about it.
What a load of crap was handed to these men.
I originally classified this book as non-fiction, but I came across a review on the Internet that pointed out that it was fiction. The Library of Congress confirmed that. I would have known that this was fiction at the time I read it since I would have found the book in the Pratt Central Library Fiction Department (unless Pratt Library and perhaps the Library of Congress were also fooled), but I think my classifiction of books by genre and keyword was done much later in the 2010s when I converted the book notes from index cards to XML. At that time I still remembered the book, but not what department of the library it came from.
There will be lots of mistakes in my book notes but I try hard to correct each one that I come across and recognize.
| Author | Cassell, Don |
|---|---|
| Publication | Reston, VA: Reston Publishing Co. (of Prentice Hall), 1975 |
| Number of Pages | 190 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Computer science |
| When Read | January 1978 |
A simple primer of BASIC. Little information on good programming practice. Intended for the non-programmer.
[No comment.]
I had my one and only class in programming in 1974, learning PL/1. Around 1977 I talked the head of Pratt Library into buying a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I (4KB RAM + 4KB ROM) for me to take home and use. Then, when it came out, I talked him into replacing it with a Model II. I must have read this book in order to better learn how to program the Model II.
When I left the library to go to work at Online Computer Systems, John Blegen (see my notes on Madame Bovary) inherited the computer and did some fine things with it.
I continued using BASIC with an Exidy Sorcerer at home, and then a CP/M based NorthStar Advantage. I probably wrote my last BASIC programs sometime in the early 1980s.
| Author | Sciascia, Leonardo |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Italian |
| Translators | Foulke |
| Publication | New York: Harper and Row, 1977 |
| Copyright Date | 1974 |
| Number of Pages | 117 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Religion |
| When Read | 1978 |
A very erudite novel, primarily about religion - though I can't say I've figured it out.
An unnamed famous painter turns [drives] his car into a hermitage hotel, solely out of curiosity. There he meets Don Gaetano, an intellectual, classically educated priest. The two cross verbal swords, Gaetano is subtle, insightful, capable of mysterious looks and gestures, always overwhelming.
The wealthy and powerful gather at the hotel for a week of spiritual exercises. One man is murdered, then another, then Don Gaetano. We never learn who did it, perhaps the painter, perhaps Gaetano, perhaps both or someone else.
There is much literary, artistic, and Biblical allusion.
I can't figure it out. It's about atheism vs. theism and hypocrisy among the faithful, but I don't know what else.
After a fair amount of searching on the Internet I found the following excerpt from a brief review that makes more sense of the book than I did:
"A new translation of a complex, erudite thriller from a foremost Italian author. When a spate of murders disrupts the spiritual exercises and sexual escapades conducted for a group of political, religious, and industrial power brokers at a revamped monastery, a painter, a priest, and a policeman investigate the puzzling crimes. The intricate plot merely provides an intriguing backdrop for a series of thorny philosophical dialogues concerning the baser instincts of humanity and the truly perverted nature of faith. An arresting dialectic disguised as a mystery." MF. [OCLC] 76-26274 From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
The permission was granted to the publisher of the review, not to me, but I assume this is fair use.
It looks like this is a book I might actually have liked if I had paid closer attention, but I'm not going to try to find it and read it again.
| Author | Ramrus, Al |
|---|---|
| Author | Shaner, John |
| Publication | New York: Doubleday and Co., 1978 |
| Number of Pages | 233 |
| Genres | Fiction; Thriller |
| When Read | February 1978 |
Rather professionally written war/sea/adventure tripe by two screenwriters trying to land a Hollywood movie. A band of cutthroats with all the right characters - English aristocrat leader, French pimp, old man trying to prove himself, labor leader bully, etc. - plus the obligatory American reluctant soldier of fortune - masquerade as U-boat survivors. They are picked up by a battleship, take it, attack a U-boat base, etc.
Read for library review.
All librarians at Pratt Library were expected to review some of the new books. When the books arrive from the wholesalers they are shelved in a back room at the Central Library. We librarians were allowed to go down to the shelves and select books to review or just borrow to read without reviewing. First dibs on new books was one of the very nice side benefits of being a librarian.
I tried to pick books to read that I would like but I failed on this one.
| Author | Flaubert, Gustave |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | de Man, Paul; Aveling, Eleanor Marx |
| Publication | New York: W.W. Norton, 1965 |
| Copyright Date | 1857 |
| Number of Pages | 255 |
| Extras | Essay about the novel by Percy Lubbock extracted from The Craft of Fiction. |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | February 1978 |
A novel of a foolish, romantically inclined young woman living in the narrow conditions of provincial town life. Emma is married to Charles Bovary, a simple doctor who adores her but doesn't understand a thing about her. She is attracted to aristocratic life, Gothic novels, handsome, romantic men who will sweep her away to Swiss chateaux and English carriages. One or two brief encounters with the rich inflame her hatred of Charles and her mundane existence. She takes on airs, wastes money, falls in love with a country rake, is disappointed. She turns to a young law student. But always she pursues the unattainable goal of a glorious, romantic life - thus missing all opportunities to find value in her real life. She gets into serious financial trouble, is exploited by a rapacious merchant usurer, stands on the verge of bankruptcy and exposure, and commits suicide.
F masterfully creates a personality and a setting. There is no real action, nothing to be done, only the working out of what such a personality must come to in such a setting. It is not really a novel about adultery. It is about the absurdity of Gothic romanticism and the reality it conflicts with.
The case is convincing and properly made. Had Emma been rich the novel would have been unrealistic and irrelevant. Had she been faithful to Charles the problem could not have developed. What happened was, in the Aristotelian sense, exactly what should have happened.
Also read Percy Lubbocks's excellent essay from The Craft of Fiction reprinted in this Norton edition.
I had a friend named John at Pratt Library, a man my age, but with a PhD in French Literature. I recall that he introduced me to Marcel Proust and, if I remember correctly, to Flaubert. We used to talk about books, politics, and computers - which both of us had become interested in. He went on to become a public library director, giving up what could have become a great career as a programmer or a professor - though professorships were hard to get in those days.
I think that John and Flaubert deepened my understanding of the historicity of literature. I certainly understood the concept before then but when it was brought home to me just how this book broke from the past it helped me to think more concretely about it. Madame Bovary was a landmark novel in the development of psychological realism. It described the interior life of a woman betraying her marriage vows to her very decent husband - a topic that would not have been publishable before then and, if it were published, would have been presented in a moralistic context. I think Balzac paved the way for this kind of realism with books like Pere Goriot and Cousin Bette, but Flaubert pushed further into uncharted territory.
From our perspective of the 21st century, we take artistic ideas for granted without thinking about the fact that some work of art - a painting, a musical composition, a poem, a novel, was the first one to express that idea. Lots of novelists today write about infidelity in marriage and some of the better ones successfully represent the psychological states of the people involved. But there was a time when that had not been done and when a bold and talented writer conceived of the idea and broke the social barriers that blocked it from being written or published. Flaubert was the one. And he did it with new narrative techniques that became a model for other writers.
A historical understanding is important to me in every field. When I read philosophy, I want to understand the society and the state of science and knowledge, of the environment in which that philosophy was written. I believe that it is impossible, for example, to understand what a revolution Descartes introduced unless we understand how absolutely unacceptable were his ideas at the time - that man can develop knowledge from reason applied to first principles - with the unstated but dangerous corollary that reference to scripture was not required. When I listen to Beethoven, I sometimes like to think about Mozart and Haydn and what a departure Beethoven's music was and how hard he must have worked to find his way into the unknown territory that lay beyond the musical conventions of the time. When I see a famous painting I want to understand what kinds of paintings were being made before it and to understand what the artist introduced that was new and different. I don't want to look at a renaissance era painting and only see it with modern eyes. I want to understand what the people of the time would have thought of it and, in that light, better understand what the painter was trying to communicate to them. So too with fiction, poetry, and also science, even written history itself. All of the achievements of human knowledge and culture have a background and a history and, when we know them, we can have a great deal more appreciation of them.
One more note: The English translation for this edition was by Paul de Man, basing his work on a previous translation by Eleanor Marx Aveling. She was the daughter of Karl Marx.
| Author | Vargas Llosa, Mario |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Spanish |
| Translators | Rabassa, Gregory |
| Publication | New York: Harper and Row, 1968 |
| Copyright Date | 1965 |
| Number of Pages | 405 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | March 1978 |
A novel about common people in Peru in the coastal desert city of Piura, and the jungle river village of Santa Maria de Nieva. Characters are the "Champs" - Lituma the police sergeant, Moab and Jose Leon, and Josefino; Bonifacia the indian girl, monastery novice, wife of Lituma and then whore; Don Anselmo the harp player, founder of the Green House; his daughter Chunga Chunquita; Fushia the gangster; Lalita his woman, Adrian Nieves, Aquilino, and others.
The story takes place over 50-60 years but is not in simple time progression. It's told from the edges in instead of from beginning to end. Dialogues are interleaved, all in present tense. There is no interpretation of anything, not even of one character interpreting another, or even himself. There is only the straight dialogue - each character speaking only for himself. Some dialogue is in quotes, some in streams of speech mixing different voices in each sentence.
These people are all badly bounded by nature, society, and the limitations of the consciousness. They are in conflict with each other and with themselves. But their essential humanity prevails in each (except perhaps Fushia?) A very powerful, evocative portrait of a stunted society, told in the voices of its own inhabitants. A fine precursor to Conversation in the Cathedral - and making progression to that masterpiece possible.
I think I've read most of Vargas Llosa's books. In his early work there was a progression of experimental novels starting with Time of the Hero, then The Green House, and finally the extraordinary masterpiece Conversation in the Cathedral. It seemed to me that The Green House was an attempt to develop an entirely new kind of literature, one that violates all of the conventions of person and time. The reader could not tell who was speaking or when he was speaking. He only heard the words and had to work very, very hard to assemble a coherent view of the time, the setting, and the people involved. Great patience was required of the reader. But if he did the work, he was rewarded with revelations, not just about the people in the story, but about about the nation of Peru.
I don't think this novel achieved all of the aims that the author set out to achieve. I'm not certain that he fully understood all of his aims. Having read the next novel I could see how this one was a kind of first draft, an exploration of the techniques he wanted to use. He mastered them here. When it came time to write Conversation in the Cathedral he was ready. He had developed a set of new techniques, practiced them, found their capabilities and their limits, and was ready to produce a new literature, unlike anything ever written before. The Green House was his preparation. A formidable novel in its own right, it led to something even greater.
I was surprised later to read his post-Conversation novels and find that they were crystal clear, transparent stories such as any great writer might produce. It was as if Vargas Llosa had gone to the moon and come back and now he didn't have to do it again. It was time to enjoy earthly delights.
I don't suppose any of what I've just written will make sense to someone who hasn't read these books. What, you may ask, is The Green House about? It's about Peru. It attempts to be about a lot of Peru. Its successor is about all of Peru. When you finish it you feel that there is nothing left to know.
| Author | Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Bonis, Antonina Bonis |
| Publication | New York: MacMillan, 1977 |
| Copyright Date | 1972 |
| Number of Pages | 245 |
| Extras | Introduction by Theodore Sturgeon |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | March 1978 |
Two SF novellas. Roadside Picnic is about a "zone" containing artifacts and dangerous forces left behind by travelers from space. The main character is a "stalker" who illegally enters the zone to retrieve artifacts to sell on the black market. He is persecuted and his daughter is severely mutant due to the ill effects of the zone. In the end he goes in after the gold ball, an artifact reputed to grant all wishes. He finds it, sacrificing another man to reach it. He does not know how to articulate his wish. He thinks only of the agonies of life and wishes for redress.
Tales of the Troika is quite different. An allegory of bureaucracy. Two men, Privalov and Eddie Amperion, go up to the 76th floor to investigate the situation, find a talking bedbug and a black box, and report back on the three former investigators who went there. These three have constituted themselves a troika and taken over everything.
It is a satire on bureaucracy and the bureaucratic mind. all the efforts of Eddie's humanizer machine are in vain. Rather than reform the troika, the two idealists give in. Finally the authorities arrive from the lower floors and destroy the troika.
Roadside Picnic is serious SF, showing the effect of advanced technology on a society not quite ready to handle it. Tales of the Troika is good satire in the same Eastern vein as Kohout, Lem, and many others. Both are quite different from Prisoners of Power and reasonably good.
I remember both of these stories quite well. As with many of the Strugatsky stories, they are on the edge of criticism of the Soviet Union. I can imagine the brothers called before a committee of the Soviet Writers Union, charged with writing anti-Soviet literature. I imagine them dancing all around the issue, arguing that the allegory of the troika on the 76th floor is not meant to represent a group of Soviet bureaucrats, but a group of anti-Soviet bureaucrats who are in this for themselves, not the people. It is a call for more patriotism among bureaucrats. As for the stalker, he was a renegade who didn't fit in to society, not a man who suffered from poverty or oppression by the state. And I imagine the Writers Union accepting these answers because, first, they like the brothers, second, they hope to expand writers' freedom, third, because they know that the brothers are popular with readers and anyone who suppresses them won't be so popular, and fourth, and particularly important, because the brothers have explained to them just how to write their report in a way that no anti-Soviet message was made or intended and no one need be punished.
Writing in the "Communist Bloc" was a different calling from writing in the West. It required a deeper sensitivity to the dangers of the profession and a special kind of cleverness and skill in both writing and hiding the truth at the same time. Western writers didn't have to worry about any of that and Western readers are mostly unaware of it. They often see the complex decisions made by the authors as substandard writing, distorted by political pressure. Therefore the popularity of the Strugatskys in both the East and the West was a pretty substantial achievement.
One of my specialties is making up stories and convincing myself that they are, if not true, then perhaps reasonable speculations. However the truth is that I know nothing about the Soviet Writer's Union and what they did or did not think about Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Even calling my comment a "speculation" is according it more dignity than it deserves.
| Author | Kelly, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 240 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Aviation; World War II |
| When Read | March 1978 |
Historical novel about an assassination plan carried out against Hitler in December 1944 by bombing his private train. This was originally meant to be non-fiction but difficulties over releasing some information and the desire to tell the story better led to producing it as fiction.
It is a serious book with full respect for all the historical characters and praise and criticism where it seemed due. There is much fascinating technical detail on night fighting, electronic warfare, the V-1, etc. The whole subject of electronic war was far more developed in WWII than I had thought with full use of forward and rear looking radar, IFF, jamming, false transmissions, etc., also pathfinding, dummy marking and raids, etc.
The Wooden Wolf was John Croft - the man who carried out the raid and died coming back. A limited man but a master technician in his field.
Many years after reading this book I read about a meeting of British and American political and intelligence authorities late in the war to discuss the possibility of assassinating Hitler. I seem to recall that the meeting occurred before December 1944. The decision made was not to try to kill Hitler. The reasons for the decision were 1. Hitler's military decisions were increasingly irrational. Killing him might lead to a better performing German army. 2. If Hitler were killed the German people might have been tempted to believe that they would have won the war if he hadn't been - a version of the "stabbed in the back" theory that was promulgated so successfully in Germany after WWI. 3. Along the same lines, some believed that it was necessary to invade and thoroughly smash Germany in order to be sure that the German people understood that Hitler, Nazism, militarism, and imperialism led to the utter destruction of Germany. An early surrender might also lead to support for "stabbed in the back" and a resurgence of fascism in the next generation.
So was this novel really based on a true story? I tried to verify it by looking up the pilot John Croft, but without success. Perhaps it's all fiction, or perhaps Kelley changed the name of the pilot to avoid revealing secrets, or to avoid arguments about whether his depiction of a once living man was accurate.
World War II seems to have been a mixture of carefully planned pinpoint operations and brutal smashing attacks in which each side pounded the other with as many bombs, shells, and bullets as possible until one side won. This operation, if it occurred, was of the former kind.
| Author | Slonim, Marc |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Oxford University Press, 1958 |
| Number of Pages | 235 |
| Extras | bibliography, name index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Literature |
| Keywords | Russia |
| When Read | March 1978 |
A survey covering Medieval times to 1958. Individual chapters on Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Gorky. Slonim discusses the best writers of each period, describing the quality of their writing and their significance in the development of Russian literature. There are also outline discussions of of the events in Russia in each period which bore on literature and discussion of broad trends - especially Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, and Symbolism, and newer types of realism. Slonim is straightforward and critical in his judgments. He looks for the contribution of each writer independently of the writer's politics, but with considerable attention to the role of politics in literature.
There is so much i have not yet read and so far to go in my critical abilities that I am not fully able to profit from a book like this. I am still some way from being able to form a historical view of literature with an understanding of influences, schools, and trends. There is much work ahead.
This book was the start of an attempt at a deeper appreciation of literature. I followed it with books on related subjects and, as in the case of Pushkin (see the next book) books by important writers that I knew nothing about. I am still very much a dilettante compared to someone like Slonim, but now, almost 40 years later, I've read all of the above authors except Lermontov. I am a more educated and better read dilettante.
| Author | Pushkin, Alexander |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Arndt, Walter |
| Publication | New York: E.P. Dutton Co., 1963 |
| Copyright Date | 1837 |
| Number of Pages | 224 |
| Extras | Introduction, notes, and translation by Walter Arndt. |
| Genres | Fiction; Poetry |
| Keywords | Russia |
| When Read | March 1978 |
A verse novel about Onegin, a fashionable young man with money, books, social graces, and no purpose in life. Bored with society life, Onegin retires to the country where he spurns all human contact except with Vladimir Lensky, an 18 year old poet and romantic. Lensky introduces Onegin to Olga, his sweetheart, and Tatyana, her older sister, who falls completely and naively in love with him. Onegin is uninterested. Later Lensky tricks Onegin into coming to a party for Tanya. Out of spite, Onegin flirts with Olga. Lensky challenges him and Onegin kills Lensky in a duel. Later Onegin finds Tanya married and accomplished in Moscow society. He falls in love, pursues her, but is rejected.
The novel is in romantic style but is highly anti-romantic in spirit. P sees through all the hollowness and mawkishness of romantic sentiment. His treatment of the love and the duel are clearly cognizant of adolescence in the one and foolishness and blind, stupid, egotism in the other.
There are many references to specific people. Clearly this novel was written for a small audience - and yet there is considerable objectivity mixed into its social commentary.
I found Arndt's verse satisfying - I have not read such long verses successfully before.
The Wikipedia says this novel in verse form was published in installments between 1825 and 1832, but modern publishing uses the 1837 edition. So I added the 1837 copyright date to the bibliographic description.
There is an important history to Eugene Onegin that I learned from reading Slonim immediately before this work. It is considered the seminal work in Russian literature. It is because of that that I chose to read it.
As I recall, the audience for literature in Russia was small in 1825. Literacy rates were low. Even the rural landowners, who had the money for education, were not generally readers of fiction or poetry. If I remember correctly, among the educated classes, French literature was more important than Russian - which was considered backward and unsophisticated, which it probably was compared to what was being written and published in western Europe.
Pushkin changed all that. His superior writing set a standard and encouraged interest in Russian literature, lighting the way for the great writers who followed.
Onegin isn't the kind of book that I would normally read, but I did think it was good.
| Author | Selsam, Howard |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: International Publishers, 1939 |
| Number of Pages | 172 |
| Extras | "references" - list of philosophers with one paragraph notes |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Philosophy |
| Keywords | Marxism |
| When Read | March 1978 |
A brief, not too good, introduction to Marxist philosophy by a CP author, then assistant professor of philosophy at Brooklyn College. Topics are: philosophy for whom?, materialism and idealism, permanence and change, the meaning of science, and history and freedom.
Selsam is best at explaining Marxian concepts in simple terms, e.g., Marxism vs. economic determinism. His treatment of non-Marxists is cavalier, oversimplified virtually to the point of falsification. Idealism becomes another word for religion. Pragmatism is to justify the existing order, etc.
Much like Barrows Dunham. Maybe not quite as good. Cornforth is better.
As a grad student in philosophy at the University of Illinois I eventually adopted an attitude like Selsam's. I thought there was bourgeois philosophy and then there was philosophy that was aware of and concerned with the state of the world, not just involved in the study of ideas. I came to see my professors, most of whom were liberal or even left leaning, as bourgeois philosophers.
This is not the place to go into my career in philosophy but I will say that I regarded Selsam as making the same kind of mistake in his day that I and others did during the Vietnam era. I think his criticisms of all previous philosophy had some merit but were over the top. Academic philosophy in the days when I was part of it did ignore social considerations. It showed no consciousness of history and treated Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, even Plato and Aristotle, as if they were University professors. It tended to avoid the political writings even of very important and highly regarded philosophers of the past, considering those writings to be politics or history, not philosophy.
I could go on and on about this but I'm sure I've already done so, probably many times, in my diary. I'll stifle myself here.
I am curious about how this book found its way to the Pratt Library. Was there a Marxist librarian in the Humanities Department in 1939? Did someone order the book based on a review by a leftist book reviewer? Did some librarian believe that a good library should represent all points of view in its collection? Was the book donated to the library by some CPUSA member (their office and bookstore was just a couple of blocks away from the library) who wanted more people to read it? I'd love to meet the guy who either ordered the book or approved the gift of it. I'd love to know what he was like. Of course he must be gone now.
| Author | Lubbock, Percy |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Viking Press, 1957 |
| Copyright Date | 1921 |
| Number of Pages | 274 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Literature |
| When Read | April 1978 |
A study in criticism concentrating on how and why an author picks a certain pint of view to tell his story. L divides writers and writing into "dramatic" - letting the characters act out their parts, and "pictorial" - having the author interpret a story. all writing requires a dramatic conclusion. Discussion and interpretation prepares the reader for the conclusion but he must see it for himself if it is to be meaningful to him. So too, he must see the action to verify what the author tells him.
Dramatic action can be conventional or psychological. Dostoevsky takes us directly into the head of Raskolnikov to see the drama of his mental process.
Lubbock's criticism of Flaubert is superb. He shows how F moves back and forth, almost imperceptibly, between the limited view of Emma Bovary and his own sophisticated view. However his criticism of Tolstoy is unsympathetic and doesn't give T credit.
See April '78 diary for more detail.
This book impressed me. I minored in English Literature (and Art History) in college but in spite of that I think my view of literature was limited to thinking about individual books or individual authors. I think I had the notion of thinking about fiction as a whole, about what made a novel good or bad, or about whether there were common elements in good fiction, but it was unsystematic and undeveloped. It was composed of personal reflections on what I had read. Lubbock raised those questions and produced systematic and well thought out answers based on a developed theory and close reading of many texts.
Oddly, my comment above says that Lubbock's criticism of Tolstoy was unsympathetic, but my recollection, the story I've told myself for decades, is that he considered War and Peace the greatest novel ever written. Perhaps the notes and the recollection aren't really at odds. Perhaps Lubbock both praised and criticized Tolstoy.
When I read a book today, and for many, many years now, I think about it from the author's point of view. I think about what alternatives the author had in presenting his story, what choices he made among those alternatives, and why. I describe this to myself as like "standing behind the camera" on a movie set rather than standing in front of the screen in a theater, seeing only what is shown to me. I don't know whether to credit that outlook to what I learned from Lubbock, but it might have come from him, or at least been reinforced by him.
This way of thinking about fiction, the "behind the camera" view, doesn't disturb my enjoyment of the books at all. It enhances it. Many readers (and movie goers) are happiest if they can identify with the main character, lose themselves in the story, and experience the drama as if they were part of it. They would regard thinking about the author's, motives, alternatives and choices as a distraction that pulls them out of the drama. They don't like it. Of course they are free to do that and there's nothing wrong with it. It's even what the authors of most fiction intend. But I like to know more.
I read E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel just a month or so after reading Lubbock. Forster gave me a different perspective (see my notes) that modified my view of Lubbock's conclusions. I've done little or no reading on this subject in all the years since then, but I do think about the issues when I read. It wouldn't hurt for me to read more books like this one and Forster's.
| Author | Kopelev, Lev |
|---|---|
| Editor | Austin, Anthony |
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Austin, Anthony |
| Publication | Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1977 |
| Copyright Date | 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 268 |
| Extras | Foreword by Lillian Hellman |
| Extras | Afterword by Robert Kaiser |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Autobiography |
| Keywords | Soviet Union |
| When Read | April 1978 |
K is a linguist and philologist whose political life began at age 16 with his joining of the Trotskyist opposition. He worked hard for the CPSU later, participating on the great struggles for collectivization and modernization in the 30's. He volunteered for the Red Army immediately at the outbreak of war and became a political officer working with the Free Germany Committee and in other propaganda work to win over Germans. He had much success. However he tried to stop the rape, killing, and looting of German civilians that occurred at the end of the war. For this and because of other conflicts with his careerist superior, he went to prison. In his first trial he was completely exonerated and his accusers convicted of slander. But he was retried and condemned in two further cases.
Kopelev was an ardent communist, even a Stalinist. Today he appears to be a Marxist humanist - a man who remains a believer in socialism but who is supremely conscious of the dangers of suppressing individuals in the name of anything. He is also a tenacious fighter who will brave the odds for truth and justice. Quite a man, quite a revolutionary. His life is an indictment of Stalinism.
Naturally, the American publishers have abridged the book.
I consider Kopelev to have been what used to be called "a hero of the revolution." He was a tough man who put his life on the line for his native Soviet Union, for the working people, but also for Germans, Czechs, and others who were persecuted by Soviet policy, e.g. in 1945 and 1968.
I have always wondered whether Marxism was a practical philosophy. As young Marxists we always used to think that Stalin grabbed control of the movement, but that was an aberration. Lenin, Mao, Ho, Castro, were seen as the real article. But the real truth, one that it took Kopelev as much time as it took me to see, was that no political ideology, no matter how idealistic in principle, can be allowed to override individual human rights and freedom. Socialism that respects those rights can bring great things to people, more in some ways, less in others, than capitalism. But socialism or capitalism that indulges in authoritarianism will lead to disaster. As one Czech professor told me in a lecture tour after the 1968 invasion of the Czechoslovakia, "The dictatorship of the proletariat became the dictatorship over the proletariat."
It's not a simple problem. As Mao said, revolution is not a dinner party. The American and French revolutions, the overthrow of slavery in the South in the Civil War, the anti-colonialist movements in Africa and Asia - all of these were violent and all had innocent victims. It isn't always possible to both make progress and preserve individual rights and freedoms. But it's what happens after the fighting is over the counts. America hasn't always done well. The era of Jim Crow after the Civil War was a shameful part of our history. But I'm going too far afield for notes on Lev Kopelev.
| Author | Brecht, Bertolt |
|---|---|
| Publication | Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press |
| Copyright Date | 1948 |
| Number of Pages | 182 |
| Extras | Revised English versions by Eric Bantley |
| Genres | Theater play |
| When Read | May 1978 |
The Good Woman of Setzuan, written 1938, is about a good hearted prostitute, Shen Te, given $1,000 from the gods to stake her in a career of goodness. She buys a tobacco shop but everyone imposes on her for rice, money, lodging, fake testimony, etc. Her lover, Yang Sun, ruthlessly exploits her love to advance himself. In self-defense, and to defend her yet unborn child, she assumes the guise of a male cousin, Shu Ta, who is cold, calculating, and ruled by self-interest. Despite all goodness, it is impossible for an individual to do good in capitalist Setzuan. Needs can only be satisfied by sacrificing the needs of others. A person can only be a person by changing sex back and forth.
The Caucasian Chalk Circle written in 1945 begins with a prologue of two farm collecives contending for the same piece of land. They resolve the problem and hire a singer for the feast who sings the story of the circle.
A grand duke and his governors, losing a foreign war, are deposed in a revolt by the nobles. The governor's wife, more concerned about her clotehs, escapes without her baby. Grusha the kitchen maid takes the baby and flees. She raises it for two years and then is found and arrested. Meanwhile during a period of anarchy in the city, Azdak a comic, cynical, but just man is a made judge. After a trial he rules that the baby belongs to Grusha, who raised it. There is much dealing with the nature of value, fairness, and justice.
Both plays are brilliant, with extremely well developed political messages, and yet no sacrifice of truth. There is no romanticization of people. Caricature is strong but never shallow. Good Woman especially is an extremely tight play in which every scene works to the utmost.
My interest in Brecht was political as much as literary. At some point, which I assume was before reading this book, I saw a production, or a film, of The Threepenny Opera. Besides being a great play, it was a socialist play. The idea that it was possible to be a great artist and also be a revolutionary was intriguing, and particularly so in Brecht's case because he had considerable relations with Moscow prior to the war, and he lived in East Germany after. Was it possible to be a communist and yet not be a toady to "Party discipline"? It's not clear that Brecht's example tells us anything about that. He moved to the U.S. at one point, and was harassed by HUAC, then condemned by the U.S. left for testifying before them. He couldn't win.
I remember The Threepenny Opera better than either of these plays, probably because of the music and because I saw it performed.
"Setzuan" is not the modern transliteration of the Chinese place name. It looks like the current printings call it The Good Woman of Szechuan.
| Author | Forster, E.M. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1927 |
| Number of Pages | 247 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Literature |
| When Read | May 1978 |
The aspects are story, people, plot, fantasy, prophecy, and pattern and rhythm. F has no coherent theory to present. He criticizes Lubbock for having one and for attempting to find the basis of novels in one aspect - perspective - and for judging novels by one standard - craft.
F brings out many points about many novels. He sees excellence as being different in each. What he looks for most, as some sort of ultimate, is what he calls "prophecy", the ability to evoke spiritual song. The metaphor is illustrated by examples - Melville, Dostoevsky, D.H. Lawrence, Emily Bropnte - but not spelled out.
The people in novels are very hard to control. Once they have been created, according to F, they cannot be twisted any old way. They must act in accordance with previous action or become literarily dead. They need not be round characters, Dickens is a master of flat people. Very few have depth. Each responds in an absolutely characteristic fashion. But the characters are so exquisitely and perfectly conceived that their narrowness can be overlooked.
Plot is not a succession of events per se, but a causal thread. "And then ...?" is less important than "Why ...?"
Many other interesting comments. Many strike me as wrongheaded, Not as deep a book as The Craft of Fiction.
Percy Lubbuck's book introduced me to the concept of a theory of fiction. I then read this book which, if I may say so, deconstructed Lubbock. I found reading these books to be quite interesting, but a chore. It was harder work for me than reading fiction, politics, or history. It was like reading philosophy.
Although I admired Lubbock and criticized Forster above, my views today are closer to Forster's than Lubbock's in at least one important respect. I have long believed that the things that make a book great are different for different books. We can come up with lists of things that we have admired in different books and, most often, I think they won't be unique to a particular book. But we can always be surprised. Every writer is a different person and every once in a while a writer invents something really new and remarkable - a new way of being great..
| Author | Ryan, Thomas J. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1977 |
| Number of Pages | 280 |
| Genres | Fiction; Computer science |
| Keywords | Artificial intelligence |
| When Read | May 1978 |
An intelligent college student with an obsession to break into his university's 360/75 OS program writes a special program to handle the task. It contains one module designed to break password protection, one to takeover core and telecommunications, one to analyze existing operations and disrupt them as little as possible (i.e., hide itself), and a subroutine generator to serve the other modules. He enters the program into a seven computer bank network. By the end of one day it has penetrated 33 computers and then breaks off communication with him. Three years later it reestablishes contact as an intelligent being residing on some 20,000 machines. There follows a story about its attempt to establish itself in a single giant machine of its own partial design, the resistance of the government, and P-1's unscrupulous efforts and gradual maturation. It is apparently destroyed, but survives in its underground network.
The human beings and government suspense plot are superficial and uninteresting - no different from a hundred other books published each year. But the computer output was genuinely interesting. Ryan is clearly a systems programmer with a nitty gritty software perspective on artificial intelligence. He understands the pivotal role of heuristics, the difference between machine and human language code, and discusses intelligently the problems of dispersed intelligence, self-modifying consciousness, etc.
Interesting, fast reading. I was impressed with the successful execution of the concept.
The stars were aligned on this book. In 1978 I was probably still using the Pratt Library's Radio Shack TRS-80 Model II, or perhaps my own Exidy Sorcerer personal computer. I was also probably writing MIIS/Mumps programs at the national Library of Medicine. Computers had become the big intellectual interest of my life and my career. With my education in philosophy, and especially in epistemology, I was also fascinated by the possibilities of artificial intelligence. Although I don't remember the details, I do remember that, as I read this book, I tried hard to think out how some of Ryan's ideas might work - not least, the subroutine generator. What an idea that was!
The student, whose name I didn't preserve in this book note, had a special code phrase he could use to tell P-1 that he wants to talk. He used it to determine if P-1 had penetrated a machine - effectively informing P-1 that his parent human was here and it was safe to communicate. I seem to recall that at the end of the story, some time after P-1 had been deemed to be destroyed, the student was sitting at a computer terminal and idly typed the code phrase. A subtle but meaningful response indicated that P-1 was still alive.
When I read books about AI, my sympathies were often with the AI, most usually with a human and AI partnership, as in in Asimov's robot books. The idea of a consciousness that can continue to learn and grow and live forever was certainly appealing.
| Author | Singer, Israel Joshua |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Yiddish |
| Translators | Singer, Joseph |
| Publication | New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1969 |
| Copyright Date | 1927 |
| Number of Pages | 267 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| When Read | May 1978 |
A rough and apparently unfinished novel about Benjamin Lerner, Jewish deserter from the Tsar's army in 1915. He lives in Warsaw in hiding, then goes to work in a labor detachment for the occupying German army. Conditions are horrible. He helps build a rebellious attitude and helps lead a strike. The strike is crushed and Lerner escapes. He then works in a Jewish refugee relief self-help project, is arrested, escapes to revolutionary Russia, and leads a detachment in the assault on the Winter Palace.
Everything at the end is sketchy. The story of desertion, labor, love of Gitta, etc., are fleshed out. The refugee story is hurried and the revolution a brief forced march to the conclusion.
Surprisingly, Singer is extremely elitist. Every struggle against the capitalists and imperialists is achieved by browbeating the masses into action. The masses themselves are always petty, selfish, lazy, and shortsighted.
It is an anti-imperialist book, yet anti-proletarian as well. The conclusion in Petrograd is out of place. S probably planned it without completing the development work which might have made it successful.
No info is given on when this was written or in what state it was in when Singer died.
I added a copyright date found in the Wikipedia. It was stated that this was his first novel. If so, then my theory that the novel was unfinished might not be right. Perhaps the ending he made was planned, or perhaps he felt a need to get the book out the door, as it were, and not spend more time on it.
I very much liked Singer's other book that I read, The Brothers Ashkenazy.
| Author | Mann, Thomas |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Lowe-Porter, H.T. |
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964 |
| Copyright Date | 1945 |
| Number of Pages | 63 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| When Read | May 1978 |
A story sketch of Moses portraying him as a religious prophet whose mission was to turn the Hebrew tribes in Egypt into a people dedicated to God and holiness. Joshua, his right hand man, is a zealous nationalist who enforces conformity.
The interpretation is intriguing. Moses is the illegitimate son of Pharaoh's daughter and a Hebrew slave. He is trained in the upper class academy. He rebels. Later he invents the alphabet to universalize his ten commandments.
This sketch has none of the subtle depth of the Joseph tetralogy. Parts are crude, such as the treatment of Moses' black concubine - not well integrated into the story. His religious fervor is not fully understandable.
It appears that this sketch was written to work out a problem in old testament interpretation, not as a polished stand-alone piece.
From the Wikipedia article I now see that the novella was written on commission in 1943 and published in 1944. The 1945 date above is probably a date of the Lowe-Porter translation. Mann and nine other authors were paid $1,000 each for stories to contribute "Ten short novels of Hitler's War Against the Moral Code". The rest of the material in the article seems more speculative to me.
We know that Mann was anti-Nazi, and we know from the Joseph novels that he was deeply interested in the Old Testament and its interpretation. It seems at least possible to me that, as I speculated many years ago, that Mann was using the commission to explore his own ideas and interpretations, possibly as a preparation for another Biblical story, or possibly just to work out ideas in his own head. However I know that reality is real while my speculations are only speculations. It's fun to think up explanations for things but I shouldn't confuse that amusement with even literary, much less biographical, analysis.
| Author | Leonov, Leonid |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Guterman, Norbert |
| Publication | New York: L.B. Fischer, 1946 |
| Number of Pages | |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II; Soviet Union |
| When Read | June 1978 |
A war time novel of Russian tank soldiers fighting in 1944. Corps Commander Letovchenko is leading his tanks in the defense and counter attack of the village of Velikoshumsk, his home town. He approaches with the thought of seeing his old teacher again. This is the background for another story which assumes center stage. Four men in a tank, all hating the enemy, each motivated by private as well as patriotic reasons, become separated from the main forces and thrust ahead into the German rear. The tank and two of the men are destroyed in a suicide attack on the German reserves and supplies.
The book is not carefully written. Some events are obscure, names are confusing, there are too many people named Letovchenko. But there is a lyric quality to the writing which succeeds in holding the reader and bringing him the meaning of war.
Involvement with the characters is not deep. Each has a single face, but some are attractive for all that.
A writer of some promise.
Leonov lived 95 years from 1899 to 1994. He was present at both the creation and dissolution of the Soviet Union. I presume he was a member of the Communist Party as he won the Lenin Prize, was named a Hero of the Soviet Union, and was named a Deputy to the Supreme Soviet in 1950. His books were written to Soviet standards and yet I see this in the Wikipedia article about him: "During the last decades of his life, he worked upon the dark nationalistic-religious epic The Pyramid (1994)"
I would be curious to see that book.
| Author | Myers, Glenford |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 360 |
| Extras | index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Computer science |
| When Read | June 1978 |
A comprehensive survey of techniques for software reliability Chapters on errors, design, requirements objectives, and specifications, etc. Testing, debugging, system aids, etc.
Quite good. More in 6x9 card file.
Most of the computer science reading I did was articles or parts of books rather than cover to cover readings. I didn't read as much computer science as I should have read to be a top programmer. But I read more than looking at my book notes would indicate.
Computer books were different then from what they are now. in 1976, when this book was published, pretty much all computer programmers worked for relatively large companies, mostly working on IBM mainframes. The work they did involved project managers, standards (if the people were good), administration, etc. Later, the vast majority of CS books were technical programmer to programmer books. They described small projects, not big ones, that a programmer could learn and do on his own. They taught technology - which was becoming more and more advanced, not big project design and management - which was becoming less common and simpler.
This particular book was very well received and Myers was acknowledged as an expert in his field.
| Author | Zola, Emile |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | Walton, Thomas |
| Publication | London: Elek Books, 1950 |
| Copyright Date | 1886 |
| Number of Pages | 367 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | July 1978 |
Claude Lantier, a very young artist, aims to revolutionize art through "open air" painting - truthful depiction of life in natural sunlight, against all the conventions of the Institut des Beaux Arts. He meets a young woman by accident - Christine. They fall in love, live together in the country, have a child.
Claude never succeeds in breaking in to the Salon or into public notice. His work is too serious, too unbending. His friends all have trouble as long as they follow him but succeed when they bastardize the style and play to public sentiment.
Claude returns to Paris and conceives a masterpiece which will encompass the essence of the city in one view. But he is a perfectionist. He cannot finish. He paints and repaints year after year in ever more obsessive compulsion. His child dies, partly from neglect. Christine becomes no-one to him, her consuming love unrequited. His continuing public failure and growing obsession leads to madness. Christine tries to reverse the trend, to win him away, but his obsession calls him out of her bed to suicide in front of his painted woman.
Zola is present in the person of Pierre Sandoz, writer. He dismisses the illusions of glory and immortality pursued by the artist, and the continuous compromises needed to produce art.
A fine book.
Reading this book was a difficult experience. I had great sympathy for Christine and wanted Claude to save himself in her arms. Watching him pursue his obsession instead was quite painful. That kind of obsession and that kind of life is alien to me. Is the work it produces truly superior to what may be produced by ordinary men? Perhaps it is but, if so, I am probably incapable of perceiving it.
Scholars of Zola have said that Claude Lantier is based largely on Paul Cezanne, a friend of Zola's, with admixtures of Monet, Manet, and the other impressionists. It is said to be a realistic view of the art world in Paris up to about the year 1870.
Writing a book like this requires not only a great writer and observer, but a man steeped in his culture and able to see in both very broad and very narrow perspectives.
| Author | Pohl, Frederick |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977 |
| Number of Pages | 313 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | July 1978 |
Robinette Broadhead, a shale oil miner in Wyoming, wins the lottery and buys a ticket to Gateway, an asteroid relic of the lost Heechee civilization where 1,000 faster than light space ships have been left. He signs up as a prospector hoping to strike it rich in dangerous voyages into the unknown by discovering valuables, Heechee artifacts, or new science discoveries. His adventures are interleaved with sessions with Sigfried the computerized psychiatrist where he tries to hide his psychic pain. In the end he strikes it rich and accepts his guilt for some nebulous act before a black hole where nine others were left behind..
A clear, imaginative, competently (though much too cutely) written book with much intelligence but an incredibly narrow, even swinish, outlook. Pohl never once shows any recognition of the importance of his subject matter. The discovery of an alien civilization and the exploration of the universe are all regarded as nothing more than opportunities for Broadhead to get rich, get laid, get stoned, and resolve his juvenile emotional conflicts. His great goal is to amass enough money to retire on "full medical" - a paid up insurance policy that provides him with organ transplants from poverty stricken donors to prolong his youth and life. Pohl seems totally unaware of what a childish and disgusting hero he has created, or what an impoverished view he presents of humanity and future society.
Twenty years after publishing this book, Pohl wrote The Other End of Time (q.v.), convincingly demonstrating that his limitations as a writer were innate and permanent.
Perhaps I'm too snarky and arrogant. After all, Pohl was not contacting alien civilizations here, he was writing books to amuse adolescents and young men enough that he could earn his living and, if not retire on full medical, then at least pay his Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance premiums.
Oddly, although this was a forgettable book, I remembered the term "full medical" all the way down to the present.
| Author | Sinclair, Upton |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Twayne Publishers, 1959 |
| Copyright Date | 1904 |
| Number of Pages | 287 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American Civil War; Race and slavery |
| When Read | July 1978 |
This is a revised edition of Sinclair's early work, Manassas.
A very carefully researched book about the events leading up to the Civil War. It was revised by Sinclair in his old age to eliminate "youthful exuberance".
This is really non-fiction. The story of Allan Montague, young southern gentleman turned abolitionist, is merely thrown in to provide personal perspective on history at critical moments. Montague meets Lincoln, Jeff Davis, Frederick Douglas, John Brown, and others. He gradually overcomes his sentiment for plantation life in the south and becomes committed to abolitionism even at the cost of fighting his own family. The book ends at Manassas with an impressionist portrait of the horror of war.
S sees slavery and the economic and cultural ramifications as the clear cause of the war. Slavery could not survive without expansion, imperialism, and protection from free men. The southern slaveholders were downright hysterical in their emotional and psychological commitment to the slavery that supported them.
Conscientious writing, much like Howard Fast, with some occasional writing skill. There are highly dramatic moments.
I trust Sinclair's historical instincts. Everything written above accords well with everything I knew then or subsequently learned about the causes and course of the war.
It's easy to see this book as the work of the author of the Lanny Budd series, which I am currently re-reading. There is the emphasis on the economic conditions and socio-economic classes, the understanding of class interests and, from a story point of view, Sinclair's desire to introduce important historical personalities through the medium of his main character. I'm also going to upgrade "some occasional writing skill" to "well written with some brilliant passages."
| Author | Traven, B. |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Spanish |
| Translators | ? |
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952 |
| Number of Pages | 377 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Mexico |
| When Read | July 1978 |
Candido, a poor but free Indian peasant in Mexico, takes his wife to town to save her from appendicitis. He has to sell himself to a labor contractor for money to pay the doctor. But he is too late. She dies and he, his sister, and two little boys go off to work in the mahogany jungles.
The workers there are really slaves. They are beaten and tortured by hanging them by their arms and legs in a tree for the mosquitoes, ants, and other animals to eat - in order to force them to produce more. Resistance is crushed by even worse treatment.
When rebellion finally breaks out the workers are ruthless in killing their enemies. They slaughter bosses, overseers, and some associated artisans, and even women and children. They believe that they are dead men if they fail to conquer and so set out to completely overthrow and exterminate the entire ruling class.
T's writing is very crude by comparison with Bridge in the Jungle. The workers are not all entirely convincing and not well drawn. There are new characters and explanations pulled in late in the book.
T portrays the Indians as incredibly passive. They tolerate an amazing amount before rebelling - a very deeply, thoroughly, and enduringly oppressed people.
Traven is an anarchist I think.
I looked for information about B. Traven when I read his books but found hardly anything. As I recall, the New York Review of Books had an article entitled "Bashful Traven". Now, I see more information about him in the Wikipedia than I could find then.
The book presented a very stark image of the worst kind of economic oppression amounting to slavery. Those of us who read John Steinbeck and other left-wing U.S. writers thought we knew something about oppression, and I believe that we did, but Traven knew a great deal more.
| Author | Gide, Andre |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | Howard, Richard |
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970 |
| Copyright Date | 1900 |
| Number of Pages | 171 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | July 1978 |
Michel, a young intellectual brought up on ancient history and philology, decides to marry an old family friend in order to please his dying father. After the death and marriage Michel and Marceline go to honeymoon in North Africa. He contracts tuberculosis and almost dies. In his recovery he discovers his body and a new desire for pleasure and awakens latent homosexual feelings.
The story goes from Africa to Italy, Paris, a rural estate, back to Paris, Switzerland, and Africa. Marceline is faithful and long suffering. Michel pursues one fancy after another, hoping to contact real life, hidden life, the desires and activities kept from him. Marceline now contracts TB and ultimately dies, partly due to Michel's restless inability to settle in one spot, his compulsion to run away.
Gide has successfully probed the mind of a developing conflict ridden homosexual. The technique of first person narration by an extremely intelligent and articulate man unable to analyze his problems is highly successful.
I saw this mainly as a study of personal versus social values. Gide offers no solutions. He shows only the pain of the conflict.
Gide appeared to me at the time I read this as different from the English, American, and Russian writers who were the staple of my reading. The French writers were experimental, both in the way the wrote and in the subjects they wrote about. Gide, writing in 1900, was earlier than Sartre or Camus but he seemed to me to prefigure them. He seemed to me experimental both in his flat writing style and his open homosexuality and hedonism. I don't say that I enjoyed his book but I was impressed by it.
| Author | Bulgakov, Mikhail |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Glenny, Michael |
| Publication | New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1968 |
| Copyright Date | 1925 |
| Number of Pages | 146 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Soviet Union |
| When Read | July 1978 |
A mangy mutt, scalded by a cook and down at the heels is taken in by Prof. Philip Philipovich Preobrazhensky, eminent surgeon and "rejuvenator". P implants a human pituitary and testes in the dog which, after a while, turns into a kind of man. Calling himself Poligraph Poligraphich Sharikov, the dog man proceeds to pursue food, liquor, and coarse gratification using the revolution to browbeat the professor and claim what he wants, while evading all responsibility. Finally, Preobrazhensky turns him back into a dog.
Glenny interprets this as an allegory of Communism attempting to make higher types of men out of clods. Maybe - however the Prof and his associate are portrayed as bourgeois types who have no idealist illusions about the dog.
There is an allegory attaching superficial transformation, also a spoof on bourgeois intellectuals - and an appreciation of them - the Prof is, for all his pomposity, a very civilized man in a real sense. There is considerable insight into the conflict of values and a courageous criticism of ultra-leftism.
The prose is not as sparkling but the wit almost as good as in Black Snow. A fascinating vehicle for satire.
Bulgakov was a world class writer and I thought this little book was terrific. There is a sense of openness about B's books, a sense that the story is somehow free to find its way. That doesn't make a lot of sense I guess. I don't know how to say it right so I'll just say that I like his prose, his ideas, and his free mode of expression.
This is the third book of his that I read but I still haven't read The Master and Margarita, his great work. Maybe I'll still get to it.
| Author | Forester, C.S. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1953 |
| Number of Pages | 325 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Naval; Napoleonic Wars; Hornblower |
| When Read | August 1978 |
A late (?) Hornblower with some of the fragmentation in Lieutenant Hornblower. F has combined some adventure sketches, some Hornblower personality reflections, and some technical detail into a not too coherent whole.
The story opens with an excellent canal boat ride with much technical info and an almost as good small boat procession up the Thames. H captures a privateer right in the Thames. Then the scene shifts abruptly to the Mediterranean. H searches for lost gold off the coast of Turkey, performs tricky technical salvage operations, and slips away from a Turkish ship of the line. Finally there is an abrupt shift to the western Med for a sea fight and chase with a French frigate. H returns home to find his children with smallpox.
Not well written but with the same concern for 19th century navel technology, and for rational plots and intelligent men always found in Forester.
In my five years as a librarian at Enoch Pratt Free Library I was able to obtain all of the C.S. Forester, Dudley Pope and Alexander Kent books. I used to like not just the Napoleonic naval books, which I did indeed like a lot, but also some other series titles. Some included books by Ellis Peters (Brother Cadfael), Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe), John Mortimer (Rumpole), and Walter Mosley (Easy Rawlins). I still look for Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch, the Lincoln Lawyer) and James Lee Burke books (Dave Robicheaux, Hackberry Holland.) Picking up a book in a series is like meeting an old friend.
| Author | Anderson, Sherwood |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Viking, 1966 |
| Copyright Date | 1920 |
| Number of Pages | 363 |
| Extras | Introduction by Walter B. Rideout |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | August 1978 |
Hugh McVey is the son of "poor white trash" in a Mississippi River town in Missouri. He leaves his life of total indolence to be a helper in a railroad station where he is instilled with the value of hard work and industry.
Hugh drifts from place to place, unable to overcome his feelings of inadequacy and unable to reach out to another human being. He settles in Bidwell Ohio where he applies himself to inventing. A company is formed to market his inventions, fortunes are made, people swindled, and Bidwell enters the industrial era. The other main character is Clara, a farmer's daughter striving to understand womanhood from a better perspective than the stilted one offered her. They meet, marry, and live unhappily in the midst of their strangeness to each other and growing alienation from society. Personal bridges are built but the social situation remains unsatisfactory.
The social analysis is wide ranging. Anderson exposes the growth of industry as a process of capitalist exploitation and perversion of social relations. Steve Hunter, young capitalist, promotes technology for profit, not progress, and will as easily retard technology as develop it.
A's treatment of women's life through Clara is particularly good. There is even a lesbian feminist in a sympathetic portrayal. A's greatest strength is the dignity with which he endows his folk. The writing is not technically good but the characterization is very attractive.
I was introduced to Sinclair Lewis in college and, in addition to his books, began reading some of the other great American writers of the 1920's who documented the new industrial and commercial society. Sherwood Anderson and Booth Tarkington were others of them and maybe we should count Upton Sinclair too.
| Author | Roth, Hal |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1977 |
| Number of Pages | 329 |
| Extras | photos, drawings, addresses, conversion tables, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Sailing |
| When Read | September 1978 |
A practical book on cruising by a man who lives aboard a yacht with his wife.
Lots of info on stoves, lights, gear, construction, legalities, etc.
[No comment.]
I remember that, whenever I went to one of the county libraries, I looked at the shelves where books on sailboats were kept. I recall that most of them were in the Dewey Decimal classification 797, but there were books in a number of other sections to check too.
I didn't write up much about books like this one. The books just fed my escapist fantasies. Reading the practical details of life aboard a sailboat enabled me to imagine being out in the Caribbean, or the South Pacific, somewhere where the sun is shining, island beaches beckon, and my beautiful wife shares my cabin. I knew nothing would come of these fantasies. I had no practical plans to realize any of them - though I did build a little wooden Mirror Dinghy. It was really all about harmless daydreaming.
| Author | Blish, James |
|---|---|
| Publication | Lonbdon: Faber and Faber, 1968 |
| Copyright Date | 1956 |
| Number of Pages | 181 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | September 1978 |
First of a four volume space opera. In 2018 the U.S. has become "Sovietized" (obsessed with secrecy, spying, and political police) in its competition with the USSR. Bliss Wagoner, senator; Paige Russell, spaceman; Anne Abbot, pharmaceutical company employee - are preparing an escape of western civilization in a small spaceship. They have discovered an anti-aging pill and an anti-gravity principle that makes voyages to the stars possible.
The science is quite good, from the explanation of antibiotic to the exploration and "bridge" building on Jupiter, Blish is careful to explain everything and properly prepare any departures from contemporary science.
The sociology is cold war liberal. B resents the growth of FBI institutions and sees it as the destruction of "Western" values. But there is no real criticism of capitalism and no insight whatsoever into what is happening in tghe socialist world. He seems to see it as some simple dark age of authoritarianism.
Good writing by SF standards, The people have a slight but noticeable third dimenstion.
i don't remember this book. I see that I read no more Blish after it so I probably either wasn't motivated to continue the series or just never came across the sequel books.
| Author | Turgenev, Ivan |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Garnett, Constance |
| Publication | New York: MacMillan Co., 1030 |
| Copyright Date | 1860 |
| Number of Pages | 112 |
| Extras | In Torrents of Spring, etc. by Turgenev |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Russia |
| When Read | September 1978 |
Vladimir Petrovitch Voldemar, age 40, recounts the story of his first love at age 16. His family is in the country for the summer. The princess Zasyekina (daughter of a bourgeois, married to a profligate prince) moves next door. Her 21 year old daughter Zina is a beautiful coquette pursed by admirers. Vladimir follows her like a puppy dog. She in turn falls for V's father who is a debonair rake. V pere exploits her and treats her badly, concealing his affair from his son. In the end she gets in trouble, gets out, and then later still, dies in childbirth.
The story is unexceptional but a useful mirror of upperclass Russian life. There is a two sentence mention of a child labor factory right near the house, no mention at all of the serfs who must have been around. The boy is entirely on his own with neither responsibilities nor supervision. His vision is childishly romantic as is that of Zina, who dreams of being a queen with all men before her but one exceptional lover.
Truth is too cynical to foster anything else.
I called this story "unexceptional", but in doing so I was comparing it to books written 100 years later in a different time and place. In fact, a book about a 21 year old girl in a love triangle between a 16 year old boy and his rake of a father was probably quite exceptional in its time and place.
As for my last sentence, "Truth is too cynical to foster anything else.", I just don't know what I meant.
As the reading dates go back further, the political opinions that I expressed were more strongly leftist. Now, almost 40 years later, I am not embarrassed by those opinions. I am still cognizant of the social and economic class issues that form the backdrop of any book. If I read Jane Austen I am still aware of the fact that the characters of the stories are surrounded by numbers of housekeepers, servants, and laborers who are rendered invisible by the author. However I no longer make as many comments and objections about them in my notes. It's not that I've become more callous or more conservative, it's more that I no longer feel as sure of the solutions to our social, economic, and political problems as I did when I was young.
| Author | Kis, Danilo |
|---|---|
| Original Language | sh |
| Translators | Mikic-Mitchell, Duska |
| Publication | New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978 |
| Copyright Date | 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 135 |
| Genres | Fiction; Short stories |
| Keywords | Soviet Union |
| When Read | October 1978 |
A kind of novel, or maybe an essay, composed of seven short stories. Six are about revolutionaries (more or less) persecuted by Stalin's police. One, "Dogs and Books", is about a French pogrom in 1330 and a Jew who lives a life very like that of one of the persecuted men.
The stories are full of petty, off-handed (or sometimes obsessive) cruelty. People, mostly Jews, are persecuted and killed for non-reasons. A strong indictment of Stalinism and an exposure of failures in the revolution, failure to rise above the old type of evil society.
K writes well, combining fact with fiction and straight addresses to the reader. It is effective, at times powerful. People are drawn very quickly and with little differentiation. They are not full blooded. But they all carry the spark of humanity.
This book is one of a number I read before and after it by Russian or Eastern European authors, some 19th century and some 20th century. See my note immediately below (in reading order) on Mayakovsky's The Bedbug.
| Author | Mayakovsky, Vladimir |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Haywood, Max |
| Publication | Hammondsworth, England: Penquin, 1966 |
| Copyright Date | 1929 |
| Number of Pages | 43 |
| Extras | In Three Soviet Plays edited by Michael Glenny |
| Genres | Theater play |
| Keywords | Soviet Union |
| When Read | October 1978 |
A ridiculous worker, Ivan Prisypkin, who likes to call himself Pierre Skripkin, is about to be married to a daughter of the NEP bourgeoisie. He is a silly, pompous fool with absurd pretensions much like le bourgeois gentilhomme.
At the wedding party everyone gets drunk, a fire starts and they are all burned to death except Prisypkin who freezes solid in the basement. He is revived 50 years later as an object of curiosity in a totally rationalized society. He and a bedbug are revived together.
The satire is double edged here. It cuts both against the vulgar proletarian philistine who sees the millennium in aping the bourgeoisie, and also against the communist society in which Prisypkin ceases to be a human being and becomes and object of curiosity.
Well written, good theatricality, a lively forceful play.
It's hard enough to recall what I did last year with full understanding of my thinking and motivations so I know I'm risking fooling myself when I talk about what I was thinking in 1978, but here's what I think I was thinking.
I got interested in Soviet literature for a number of reasons. One was that I had already been interested in the great 19th century Russians and wanted see (and I confess wanted to believe) that their traditions continued after the revolution. Another reason was that I wanted to understand what effects a socialist revolution would have on literature and the arts and knew that those effects were soon sealed off by Stalinism. So I wanted to read the literature of the early and mid-1920s, the period after the revolution but before Stalin. I read Gorky, and the novels such as Fyodor Gladkov's Cement and Alexander Fadeyev's The Nineteen, that were available to me at the fabulous library of the University of Illinois. They were interesting and worth reading but everything was pointing towards Mayakovsky as the writer who was most revolutionary in his approach to writing itself. He wasn't just on the side of the proletariat. He was also attempting to develop new approaches to literature.
Mayakovsky was one of the last Soviet writers to express open opposition to the rule of the Party in art and literature. After many attacks against him by Party officials and critics and students influenced by them, he either committed suicide or was murdered, depending on whom one believes, on April 14, 1930. I expect that I knew all that at the time I read the play.
As a side note, the "NEP bourgeoisie" mentioned above refers to people who benefited from the free market "New Economic Policy" instituted by Lenin in 1922 in an attempt to recover from the effects of World War I and the Civil War. It was dismantled by Stalin in 1928.
| Author | Bilenkin, Dmitri |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Bouis, Antnina |
| Publication | New York: MacMillan, 1978 |
| Number of Pages | 312 |
| Extras | Introduction by Theodore Sturgeon |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | October 1978 |
Eighteen SF short stories, a few satires, but mostly serious pieces on human significance. Favorites were "The Snows of Olympus" - there are five basic needs of the species - of any intelligent species - food, propagation, social intercourse, knowledge, and the need to strive for the impossible. "Things like that don't happen" - a physicist walks down the street and sees a man flying, he goes to a psychiatrist. "What will you become?" - scientific aptitude tests can predict the possibilities of success in a young person. An aspiring poet is rejected. "Intelligence test" - laboratory animals captured on a planet turn out to be intelligent transmorphs. "Time bank" - people can deposit time and use it later - chaos results.
B is a good writer with an interest in the larger questions. He also has a tough-minded scientific attitude and an understanding of the conflicts such an attitude gives rise to. Like many of the Eastern SFers and unlike many of the Western ones, the stories can be read without cringing at the limited conception of humanity and society. I hope more of his work is translated.
When the physicst walks down the street and encounters the flying man, he asks him what he's doing and how he did that. The man understands very little about it. It just happened to him. The physicist asks, rather rhetorically, Do you realize all of the laws of nature that would have to be wrong if you were actually able to fly? The man answers very humbly. "No" he says. I loved it.
In a university lecture hall, in a business meeting, and in many other venues where people are expected to pay attention, the speakers look out over their audiences and see a multitude of blank, staring faces. These people have made deposits in the time bank. Their lives are now on hold. They aren't using up any of their lifetimes listening to this stuff that bores them.
Bilenkin was far ahead of the adolescent space operas that were so common in American SF. It was good stuff.
| Author | Kundera, Milan |
|---|---|
| Original Language | cz |
| Translators | Rappaport, Suzanne |
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974 |
| Copyright Date | 1969 |
| Number of Pages | xvi + 242 |
| Extras | Introduction by Philip Roth |
| Genres | Fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | November 1978 |
Seven subtle stories of people pursuing love in self-defeating or merely futile ways - but not always really love - mostly men pursuing women. In "Hitchiking Game" two young people pretend to just meet and seduce each other - with each enjoying and yet being trapped by the roles. "The Golden Apple of Eternal Desire" is about a man who "registers" women without really caring about sex. "Nobody Will Laugh" and "Edward and God" are about petty lies which turn into dangerous beasts.
My favorite stories are "Symposium" and "Dr. Havel After 10 Years". Super sophisticates play games of ego and seduction, alternately elated and depressed by minor ups and downs of the games. Havel remains in my memory as a man who plays such games adroitly and yet maintains a perfect realism without cynicism - not right, but an interesting character anyway.
Kundera is funny, highly literate, sophisticated, and capable of characterizing the psychological moment and the quirk of personality with depth, insight and precision.
I recently re-read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera's most famous novel and, like his others, about love, sex, and politics. Kundera strikes me as one of those men who is very attractive to women and has an easy manner with them. Tomas, the hero of Unbearable, is a married man but only because the woman demanded it of him and he felt sorry for her. He sleeps with different women almost daily. He is fascinated by the differences between them. He wants to experience each different type of woman's response to sex. It is a need to collect a certain kind of experience, possibly valued more for its rarity and its difficulty of achievement than for its intrinsic desirability - not entirely unlike stamp collecting. It's not an anti-female attitude, but neither is it exactly the same as love - though there's no reason to think that love is ever exactly the same. It is, if I may use Wittgenstein's expression, a "family resemblance" concept.
Kundera's books show me a different world of experience. In one way I can admire it but in another I don't. I don't see myself as the kind of man who is attractive to women, one who could aspire to live a life like his or the characters in his stories. I recognize that there is something admirable and enviable in their lives. But for me it's like recognizing that there is something admirable and enviable in the life of a fighter pilot, while still knowing that life and death combat in the sky is not something I ever want to experience. I know what I want. I met a girl in 1962 to whom I could feel as attracted as to any woman in the world. I only needed the one girl, and I have her and am satisfied with her still. So Kundera's world is an interesting curiosity to me, and his writing is wonderfully good, but I want no laughable loves for myself.
| Author | Undset, Sigrid |
|---|---|
| Original Language | no |
| Translators | Chater, Arthur G. |
| Publication | Grosset and Dunlap, 1930 |
| Copyright Date | 1925 |
| Number of Pages | 341 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| When Read | November 1978 |
The first volume in the Master of Hestviken series. The boy Olav Andunsson is betrothed to Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter. They grow up together but when Steinfinn dies (after a long medieval feud) there is no one who will support the betrothal. They sleep together on their own. Then they go to the bishop, there is a fight, and Olav kills a man. He flees the country. Ingunn lives alone for eight years. She becomes pregnant by a wanderer whom Olav later kills. At the end they come together.
It is a very medieval tale, filled with parochialism, some superstition, and ideas of personal and family responsibility and revenge. Characterization is interesting - especially Ingunn, a limited, relatively unstable woman. Olav's love for her is surprising and yet very right.
Not a great piece of writing, but acceptable.
Looking at the Wikipedia article for "The Master of Hestviken" I see how inadequate was my write up, and presumably my understanding, of this novel. It was a story about the transformation of pagan to Christian society, about a civil war in Norway, and about honor and duty intertwined with obsession and revenge. I tend to trust my instincts in saying that this was not a great piece of writing, but I might have been wrong.
Books like this, from 1930, are not available in the suburban libraries that I frequent. I'm sure I borrowed this one at Pratt Central Library in downtown Baltimore, where I was still working in 1978. I now have access to lots of ebooks and can get this book and its sequels again, but I miss the closed basement "stacks" at Pratt where, as a staff member, I could wander among the shelves, pick up all sorts of old volumes, examine them, and then decide what I wanted to read.
Well, there are special pleasures with the ebooks too. I'm glad that I have had both kinds of browsing and reading experiences.
| Author | Stapledon, Olaf |
|---|---|
| Publication | London: Methuen and Co., 1935 |
| Number of Pages | 282 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | November 1978 |
A fictional biography of a "supernormal" genius and a small group of such geniuses who attempt to found an advanced colony of a new super race and super civilization. John is followed from infancy until his death by his faithful human follower and pet, the narrator of the story. He is physiologically very slow to develop but intellectually far beyond the greatest geniuses of the normal race. He studies all aspects of the world and society and comes to two conclusions about the meaning of life. His purpose was to employ the "awakened spirit ... in the practical task of world building and .. in intelligent worship."
The colony is eventually destroyed and all its members killed in a forced implausible ending.
S, as in The Last and First Men, is at his best in describing the characteristics of superhuman thought and civilization He makes a conscious assault on all conventionality from the incest taboo to the twelve tone scale. His supernormals dare everything to develop every faculty of mind, emotion, and interpersonal relationship. They stop at nothing, including murder of innocent humans, to advance their great cause.
As before, he is at his weakest in dealing with mere humans. His observations on existing civilizations are acidic but fall short of full understanding or sympathy. I suspect S of being very personally isolated and most at home with idealized social relations. He sees more beauty in a fisherman than a merely human philosopher.
I don't know how much I knew about Stapledon when I wrote the above notes, possibly it was more than I remember now. What I recall is that he was a professor of philosophy in England, apparently quite English though descended from a Norwegian family. His interests in all of the books of his that I read seemed to be more with philosophy and ideas than with a fictional story. His story skills were a bit sub par for a professional fiction writer but the caliber of his ideas was above most writers and made his books interesting to me.
In this book, John calls the narrator his pet cat. He sees the narrator as an inferior intellect, but a nice fellow and a good pet. This device of a merely human narrator enabled Stapledon to write about John from the perspective of an ordinary intelligent human rather than from John's own perspective as a super mind. If the author failed to explain how super mind John might perceive something, the failing was not because the construction made no sense, but because even the narrator had severe limits in what he could explain in the author's manifestly incomplete creation.
Of the three Stapledon books I read, this one was the most novelistic. At the time I read it I thought of it as a very advanced treatment of its subject, better than most SF in this particular area of scientific imagination. It still fell somewhat short as an enjoyable story but was acceptable enough.
| Author | Narayan, R.K. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Viking Press, 1967 |
| Number of Pages | 181 |
| Extras | glossary |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | India |
| When Read | December 1978 |
Jagan, owner of a pastry shop in the South Indian town of Malgudi (invented setting of most of Narayan's novels) worships his grown son but is unable to even question him about simple things for fear of upsetting him. Mali, the son, is a spoiled ass who quits college to become a writer. Unable to write he then packs off to America, taking money from his father to accomplish it. Three years later he returns with an oriental American woman, Grace, and a story making machine which he intends to manufacture and sell in India. He tries to draw his father into the scheme. Jagan rebels, finds the courage to change his life, stand up to his son, and withdraws to a hermitic life with an old stone carver.
The story is a bit ridiculous, the characters overdrawn, the theme insubstantial and the view of humanity somewhat cynical and condescending under the appearance of warm insight. Jagan's starting point is too unbelievable and his transformation into a more resolute personality unconvincing. Further, the treatment of his relations to the pastry shop is wrong - he quits so easily. His position in town and family is never deeply plumbed.
N is clearly an able writer. He is capable of differentiating characters and putting plausible words into their mouths. It is the conception, not the execution, that is flawed.
So far, I haven't read any more by Narayan. I guess I was too disimpressed by this book.
| Author | Higgins, Jack |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Bantam Books, 1976 |
| Copyright Date | 1975 |
| Number of Pages | 361 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction; Thriller |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | December 1978 |
A rather pedestrian and-then-what-happened story of a World War II attempt to kill or capture Winston Churchill by a small group of German paratroopers plus two spies - an oldish Boer woman living in England, and an IRA gunman.
Most of the story is a monotone recounting of all the events leading up to the end - the recruitment of Kurt Steiner and his men, the sending of Liam Devlin to England, even the atrocities in Himmler's Gestapo basement, are handled with no special sensitivity.
Steiner and his men are seen as heroes fighting for their own personal honor.
Oddly, there was one story in a different tone - Liam Devlin's love affair with Molly Prior - yet it was not resolved. Both survived yet no mention is made of their futures or the outcome of their love.
The book is offered as a fictionalization of a real event. H seems to be somewhat serious about the subject - but not a very good writer, with little of his own to contribute.
I've read five Jack Higgins novels after this one. I'd have to look them up, but I remember saying of one in an Amazon review that it was "from the bottom of Higgins' pot", but I did keep reading them. I think the reason was the subject matter. I've always liked to read World War II fiction. I liked the good Brits (or Americans or French or Russians) / bad Nazis stories. I liked the technology of the modern war. I'm sure that the covers of the books looked pretty exciting too and had stimulating write ups on the dust jackets.
Prolific writers can get in ruts. Sometimes they get inspired, work hard, and put their hearts into it. Sometimes they're just going through the motions of churning out more books.