Books read January through December 1980
| Author | Sartre, Jean-Paul |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | Alexander, Lloyd |
| Publication | London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971 |
| Copyright Date | 1938 |
| Number of Pages | 238 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | January 1980 |
An extraordinary novel in the form of a sort of diary - though more a narrative with the trappings of a diary - of Antoine Roquentin, an independent man of about thirty who had settled in the city of Bouville [?] to write a biography of the Marquis de Rollebon [?].
Roquentin's personality practically dissolves. He looks out a window and loses track of what he is seeing. Is it a collection of instants? A whole only appearing to be sequential? He is overwhelmed by raw existence, by the mere fact of existence, by the absurdity of so many things existing with no reason except existence itself. he cannot accept the world or himself or find any place for himself. His historical research is an attempt to get outside existence into the past - a formal rather than tangible reality. It fails. He tries to embrace existence in his former lover Anny (or rather he is pulled completely out of his alienation by an unreasoning love for Anny), but she no longer loves him. Finally he comes to some kind of terms with reality - resolving to write, placing himself in the past as it were, enabling him to treat his own work with some distance, acceptance, respect.
I cannot accept the subjectiveness of existentialism, its treatment of existence as somehow behind and apart from the world of science. Yet S's writing is magnificent. He makes it work. He dissolves the personality of the reader. He gives us a tour de force of brilliant observation of the impressions of things, and makes much effective social and psychological criticism.
My thinking about these questions today is still about what it was when I wrote the above lines. I can dissolve my consciousness in the astonishing reality of existence. Or to put that another way, I can feel astonishment when I think about the overwhelming size and complexity of the universe and of its complete independence from me. Looking at my desk right now I see a keyboard, monitor and computer, every kind of paper, pens, a stapler, a hand exerciser, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a Spanish-English dictionary, a pocket knife, a pair of headphones, a pencil sharpener, a blown capacitor removed from a heat pump, and on and on. Why are all these things here? Why are they the same as they were yesterday? How could all of the forces of nature and man come together to construct the objects out of the far flung sources of raw materials?
But the problem is only overwhelming when we look at the objects intensely and allow our minds to get lost in the complexities. Then we are astonished. But when we pull back, organize our thoughts, think of the relevant first principles of the things we understand about all this from the periodic table of elements to the history of technology to the economic transactions of world trade, it all comes together in an orderly fashion and we realize that, it is true that we don't know everything, it is true that we can't trace it back forever, it is true that we can expect to expand our knowledge for the indefinite future without exhausting all questions, but it is also true that we know a lot and our understanding keeps increasing. Understanding reality is a gigantic problem but we have the brains and the tools of science and logic to make steady progress in solving it.
So I can understand the existentialists. I can sympathize with them. but I remain a rationalist who believes in the application of logic to all things, and an empiricist who believes in studying the evidence of our senses.
This is not a rejection of Sartre. I was tremendously impressed by his book. Let's say that it is an offsetting approach that, if it doesn't solve the problem Sartre raises, it at least alleviates the pain and make progress towards solutions.
| Author | O'Brian, Patrick |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Stein and Day, 1979 |
| Copyright Date | 1978 |
| Number of Pages | 276 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Naval; Napoleonic Wars |
| When Read | February 1980 |
An odd sea story, one of a series of "Jack Aubrey" stories. In 1811 or thereabouts, a 50 gun ship leaves England for Australia to deliver prisoners and transport Captain Bligh (of the Bounty mutiny) back to England. The Captain is Jack Aubrey - a man into foolish gambling and speculations on shore but at home on the sea. Ship's doctor is Stephen Maturin, doctor, nationalist, and British spy out to confound a woman spy from America.
They travel south. An epidemic breaks out and many die. They encounter a Dutch 74. After a long chase they shoot off a mast with a lucky shot in a severe antarctic storm and the enemy ship founders and sinks. Later they hit an iceberg and struggle fiercely to save the ship. The first mate abandons with many seamen. The rest bring the ship safely to Desolation Island - where they repair the ship and the Americans leave on a whaler with Maturin's false papers. That's it.
The writing is in 1811 dialect - not just the dialog but the narrative too. It isn't bad at all. The technical detail is also quite competent. The odd thing is the story - it isn't just that it doesn't work, it's as if O'B hadn't even decided what it was to be. The spy stuff is right off the wall. There isn't the faintest information given about what it's about. The long ship to ship battle is well developed and then ends in a single shot and a sentence. The crew deserts and is never heard from again. There is no idea of how the voyage ends. It's not a story at all. It ends almost by accident.
Twenty years after reading this, my son-in-law Jim convinced me that O'Brian had much merit, and I did read some more of his books. It is still my impression that he is a writer with great strengths in some areas and great weaknesses in others.
| Author | Clarke, Arthur C. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973 |
| Number of Pages | 303 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | February 1980 |
A very nice scientific SF tale set in the year 2131. The United Planets Spaceguard service setup to monitor asteroids, meteors and other junk that might collide with earth, discovers a high speed object, soon identified as an artifact, to be heading towards the sun. It is pursued and boarded and determined to be a gigantic spaceship which is at first assumed to be dead but later found to be sort of alive and, in any case, fully under control
The book is a tour de force of very good science, more so than other S-F authors I have read. There is a continual unfolding of evidence and theory, all within the laws of physics as we know them with only a few deviations - all carefully plotted and plausibly introduced. There are no outright violations and no concessions to mystery.
The story itself was most absorbing. All the characters are pretty much alike - intrepid spacemen and hard thinking scientists, but still the plot is well done and the world of Rama made most interesting and absorbing - as is its exploration.
I'll have to read more of Clarke's books.
This is the first book by Clarke in my box of book cards. The last sentence of my comment seems to confirm that it is the first book I ever read by Clarke. I have read 17 more since then. I've read so many, he was such a staple of my earlier reading, that it seems as if my acquaintance with Clarke should have extended much further back in time. Perhaps it does. When I look at the book list from my teenage years I might find more.
I think there was a significant distinction between the earlier and later books by Clarke. I think of this book as falling on the dividing line between his earlier and his more mature work - though I suspect that's not actually right and some of his early work, especially the earliest Childhood's End were pretty sophisticated.
I read three more Rama books after this one. I think that was all that were written by Clarke, though his sometime partner Gentry Lee wrote at least one more.
| Author | Schulberg, Budd |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Random House, 1947 |
| Number of Pages | 343 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | March 1980 |
Eddie Lewis, a sports writer and would be playwright works as a press agent for gangster Nick Latka. They pick up "Toro" Molina, an Argentine peasant of enormous size and strength, and begin a national campaign to make him a heavyweight contender through hard training and fights with prearranged victories. They build him up to a nationwide sensation, get him beat to a pulp in a championship fight, and leave him with nothing.
Eddie suffers tremendous guilt feelings. His girlfriend Beth constantly demands that he quit and finish his play. But in spite of his love for Beth, his guilt, and his yearning for the respect and sense of self worth that he has lost, he cannot bring himself to give up his high salary and 5% of the profits.
Much of the story, indeed all of it, is an expose' of the characters and the tricks of the boxing game. There are the gangsters at the top like Nick - a hard, ambitious, practical, intelligent, and determined man. There are countless broken down fighters, seedy trainers, a "doc" who is self trained but very capable, Nick's wife, the beautiful but stupid and malicious ex-showgirl, etc.
In the end, Eddie's degradation is complete. He fails to save Toro, fails to finish his play, fails to hold on to Beth, fails to leave Nick, and winds up in the arms of Shirley - an ex-fighter's girl who sees her old love in all of the beaten pathetic men who come to her door.
Decently written, honest and moving. The Bogart movie version forced an upbeat ending that didn't belong in the book.
I think it's possible to date some fiction by the themes, characters, language, and style of writing. This book had the dark, noir feeling of the 1940's. It used the language of the street but, unlike the early books in this style, it seemed more authentic, less "hip" as they might have said in the 50's. There was nothing hip about this book. I liked the book a lot and read two more by the same author over the years. This one, probably because of Bogart and Hollywood, is the one that sticks most in my memory.
| Author | Khouri, Fred J. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1968 |
| Number of Pages | 436 |
| Extras | appendices, notes, map, index, bibliography |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History; Politics |
| Keywords | Israel |
| When Read | March 1980 |
A political study of the Middle East conflict by an American born professor, apparently of Arab extraction. There are several chapters of history followed by problem oriented chapters discussing the Palestine War, UN truces, Jerusalem, Arab refugees, Sinai war, June war, and the requirements for peace. K is particularly sensitive to the Arab position in the conflict, but is not insensitive to that of the Israelis. He calls for a peace based on mutual recognition, compromise, reconciliation, and return to pre-1967 territorial boundaries.
He criticizes U.S. policy as being inflammatory, aimed at domestic audiences, creating a paper wall against free information, etc. He condemns the major arms shipments to both sides.
The book includes 17 of the historically important documents from the McMahon letter and Balfour Declaration up to UN resolution 242. There is also a useful "map of Israel's changing boundaries', and tables showing population changes among Israelis, Arabs, and refugees. Very extensive bibliography and good index.
[No comment.]
In 1968 Israel still had a social democratic Labor Party however, technically, all of the surrounding Arab states were still at war with Israel. The options for peace seemed mostly to be about making peace between Israel and Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. That all changed after this book was written. Peace between the states was achieved but the Palestinian / Israeli conflict was exacerbated.
1968 was 49 years ago. We still haven't solved the problem and I think we may be farther away from a solution than ever. I was reading a lot about this problem in the 70's and 80's but I don't read much today. It just seems so hopeless that I spend my time reading about more solvable problems.
| Author | Dean, John W. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 415 |
| Extras | photos, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics; Biography |
| When Read | March 1980 |
D, Nixon's counsel during the Watergate period, relates the story of his rise to power in the White House, his perceptions of the illegal activities of the administration, his participation in the cover-up, and the aftermath of hearings, trials, and serving time at Fort Holabird.
The title sums up D's attitude and that of many of the others in the administration. He was after glory, money, power, women, everything he could get, and at 31 was dizzy with success.
It is intriguing to see how completely amoral all the top figures in the administration were. When they backed away from any of Liddy's more hair raising schemes it was only because they thought they were too expensive, too flaky, or not worth the risk - never because they were wrong. Nixon also comes across as downright incompetent, a man who couldn't get the top off his pen very easily and would move back and forth from friendliness to withdrawal, lucidity to very deep irrationality. Many of the others, particularly Haldeman and Liddy, were very strong but equally amoral. Liddy was flaky. Haldeman quite rational but a thoroughgoing bastard. Erlichman no better and Mitchell somewhat better but still corrupt. Only Hubert Humphrey was ever mentioned as a man above the dirty tricks and lies.
How many people born after, say, 1960, know the names I've mentioned above? Are G. Gordon Liddy, Bob Haldeman, John Erlichman, John Mitchell, Hubert Humphrey, and John Dean still recognized today? Will anyone reading this after my death understand it? If they do, will the names conjure up images of the men?
To make their job easier, I'll just mention that all of these men except Hubert Humphrey worked in the White House of Richard M. Nixon, the neurotic and dangerous man who was President from 1969 to 1973. Humphrey was the Vice-President in 1968 who ran as the Democratic Party candidate against Nixon and lost.
I'd like to believe that Nixon's administration was the worst, most neurotic, and most corrupt of my lifetime, though I think Donald Trump is giving him a run for his money.
| Author | Clarke, Arthur C. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harper and Row, 1965 |
| Number of Pages | 241 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Science; Essays |
| Keywords | Space science |
| When Read | March 1980 |
A collection of essays written between 1960 and 1965.
It includes ten essays on space and spaceflight, five on communications satellites, and nine assorted essays on science, electronics, literature (SF), and his own experience as a writer.
The scientific essays are very readable, non-technical explanations of topics which most people never consider. C takes a strongly historical stance. Space flight is coming. So are robots, AI, universal communication, solar system colonization. etc. He also regards it as virtually certain that other intelligent beings, probably superior to us, exist elsewhere in the universe - there are probably many civilizations. And he is a complete rationalist. There is no room for UFO's and other nonsense in his world view.
The essays are informative and stimulating. He shows that the moon is an important staging area for space colonization. Escape energy requirements are 1/20th of that of earth. Logically, it makes more sense to mine fuel and resources on the moon for our large space stations. There are fine essays on distance, time, solar wind, even space sports.
I loved it.
Good popular science writers, and I'm thinking here of people like Clarke, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, etc., often show us that many of the things that we though were beyond our understanding or inaccessible to us are not. Sagan showed us, for example, that we can perform all kinds of calculations to estimate the probability of intelligent life in the universe or in the Milky Way. Are these calculations right? We don't know. But they are plausible. And if they're off by a factor of 100, which is a pretty good margin for error, it's still the case that extra terrestrial intelligence is pretty likely. Clarke could do that sort of work too. They teach us that rationalism can be employed to think intelligently about some surprisingly difficult problems.
How did Clarke's predictions do? Here's my analysis. Space flight - at an early stage, not a lot done, but enough to say we're doing it. Robots - We've made a good start. We even have humanoid robots that can climb stairs, walk around obstacles, carry things, and do much more. We're at a very primitive stage, but we're not at the absolute beginning. AI - also still at a primitive stage. Progress is much slower than was projected in the 1950's but I think there has been some. It will take a long time but, for good or ill, I think it will eventually take off and become self-sustaining. Universal communications - we've nailed this one with our cell phones and our Internet. Solar system colonization - a long, long way to go but we can at least see the possibility of progress.
| Author | Gans, Herbert J. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Basic Books, 1974 |
| Number of Pages | 179 |
| Extras | notes, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Society |
| When Read | March 1980 |
Gans considers and rejects four arguments intended to show that popular culture is harmful. These are 1) that it is commercial, 2) it is a threat to high culture, 3) it adversely affects its audience, and 4) it encourages mindless inattention to public affairs, if not downright fascism. He argues that, in fact, it is largely what the majority of people want, that they won't accept high culture in any case and are not prepared to understand it.
He also claims that the differences are essentially matters of taste and while high culture is objectively better, it is not better for the mass audience. All tastes have an equal right to be served.
Finally G argues for what he calls "subcultural programming", the creation of separate cultural materials for the numerous subcultures, including those who are not now served because they have no money.
The arguments are not entirely convincing. Mass culture is full of lies (but then perhaps much of high culture is too.) G in effect is saying that the masses don't need anything much better than what they've got. That is hard to accept.
I have become more tolerant over the years and less likely to criticize mass culture. There are several reasons for that. Perhaps if I were asked about it on a different day I would produce different reasons but here they are: I am older, more cognizant of my own foibles, failings, and age induced degeneration. That makes me more tolerant of everything in general. Secondly, there are people that I greatly respect, not least including my father who loved popular music, and my mother who loved popular novels. I could never criticize them for that and I have to admit that I liked at least some of the same music and novels. Thirdly, I have witnessed, via the media, the awful assault on popular culture by ISIS and the other Muslim extremists. When I see young people dancing and celebrating pop music I want to grab Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (well, not really him since he is beyond any argument, but perhaps some of his young followers) and say "Look! These are people having fun. What is wrong with that? Why aren't you doing it too?" That's not really right since I know what their answer would be ("They are violating God's law!"), but I hope I've conveyed an idea of how pop culture can be liberating and pleasurable.
| Author | Chekhov, Anton |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Bristow, Eugene K. |
| Publication | New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1977 |
| Copyright Date | 1903 |
| Number of Pages | 64 |
| Extras | in Anton Chekhov's Plays |
| Genres | Theater play |
| When Read | April 1980 |
A social satire about a family of deeply indebted landowners met to save or sell the family estate - a large cherry orchard and mansion. The mother had fled the home, abandoning her daughter and stepdaughter and squandering her fortune on a worthless man. Her brother Gaev is a fool who can do nothing but sentimentalize and babble about billiards. The young daughter Anya (age 17) romanticizes her future but, in fact, is about to be abandoned again.
Everything works out to its logical conclusion. All is lost for the family. The son of one of their serfs, Lopakhin, buys the land and clears the orchard to make suburban tracts. Each player heads off to his fate.
The play is a social commentary. C is strictly rational and unemotional in his presentation. There is little sympathy and little antipathy expressed. The mode of portrayal is, if anything, comic. The landlord class is shown as foolish, and above all, weak. It cannot cope with modern life and is about to be swept aside.
I also read some other stories in this anthology - "Ionitch", "Lady with the Dog", "A Misfortune", "The Bishop", "Horse Stealers".
These are generally subtle, often touching stories. Beautifully done with sparse but perfect prose. Excellent use of both description and explanation of psychology - all denied him in the play form. I loved the stories, especially "Ionitch".
I don't remember "Ionitch", though I probably would if I saw it again. I just downloaded a collection from the Gutenberg website and have read about half. It's very good.
Chekhov was a favorite of mine but I went through much of his work and haven't read any more since 1989. I also read a biography and learned something of his methods of writing. He had a real gift as a writer.
| Author | Chandler, Raymond |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969 |
| Copyright Date | 1942 |
| Number of Pages | 152 |
| Extras | Reprinted in The Raymond Chandler Omnibus, pp 317-469 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | April 1980 |
Another of the successful Phillip Marlowe stories. Marlowe is hired to find a gold coin believed to have been stolen by a wealthy woman's errant daughter-in-law. He encounters three murders, blackmail, and solves a murder of eight years before. However he covers up two of the crimes because he either thinks that the murder was partly justified, or that no good will come of exposing them.
A trademark of C's writing is the extensive and detailed description of scenes and people. They are often pedantic and out of character for the hard boiled Marlowe (who relates all in first person), but still marvelous to read. One of my favorites:
"Mr. Pietro Palermo was sitting in a a room which, except for a mahogany roll-top desk, a sacred triptych in gilt frames, and a large ebony and ivory crucifixion, looked exactly like a Victorian parlor ... little cups in fine China, little figurines in glass and porcelain, early American set of salt cellars, stuff like that."
The last phrase is either a joke on the reader or on himself.
Some others are better but I couldn't find them.
It's easier to find things in an e-book than in a paper book because I can leave bookmarks anywhere and I can easily search for words or phrases. I don't need to stick little pieces of paper into a book or use a pencil or highlighter to markup passages - something I always hated to do.
I have a sense that my reading in the 1980s included more classic writers than today. Now, 35 years later, I've already read most of the work of people like Chandler and Hammett, as well as the serious classics of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Thackeray, Melville, Faulkner, etc. I'm also reading more books now so that the percentage of classics is probably lower. Or maybe not. Maybe it's just that now, in 2017, it's easy to see who the classic writers were back then. But no, I knew who they were back then too.
| Editor | Harding, Lee |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979 |
| Number of Pages | 189 |
| Extras | Forward by Roger Zelazny |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | April 1980 |
A collection of SF short stories by six Australians, three Americans, two British, and one Japanese writer.
To my taste the best ones are: "Indifference" by Brian Aldiss - a philosophical story of three "clone brothers" sent to a far planet to build a powerful brain to reside there and help populate the universe with intelligence. One dies in an accident, one is killed in a feud over a woman with other humans who have settled there to escape the religion of "theomanity". The brain tells the third that neither God nor the Universe fully exists yet but are coming into being. "Our Neighbor" by [... something missing from the card here] "David Copperfield" by Gene Wolfe is a fine conventional story, not really even SF, about a scientist in Victorian England who experiments with hypnotism but whose real subject is the lack of social consciousness in society. "Collaborating" by Michael Bishop is about two heads attached to one body. A woman falls in love with them but one brother breaks up the affair because he believes she can never love them equally. They can never succeed in life but they bravely try.
Some other fair stories are "In a Petri Dish Upstairs" by George Turner, "The Falldown of Man" by Cherry Wilder, and maybe "Pie Row Joe" by Kevin McKay and "Savage Mouth" by Sakyo Komaten [Komatsu] - a sick story of a man who eats himself.
Some very poor, fantasy / wish fulfillment / self-indulgence stories were by Phillipa Modern and Ian Watson's title story.
Surprisingly, I still remember at least two of these stories. "Indifference" ended with a giant brain on the shore of an ocean. It was constructed by the three brothers, for whom the development of this advanced intelligence was the mission and meaning in their lives. But the brain was quite indifferent to their fate. It was entirely concerned with thinking about something at a level far above human beings, something that neither the brothers nor we the readers could possibly understand.
I remember the two headed story, but the other story that stayed with me was "Savage Mouth". The main character of the story ate one of his legs, than another, then his arms, and so on, until the only things left were whatever he needed for basic metabolism. It was a repulsive story but the kind that impressed itself on the mind of the reader by its essential obscenity. I tried looking up the author in the Wikipedia and found Sakyo Komatsu as the author of "Savage Mouth". Either I transcribed it incorrectly into my book card (quite possible), or the translator used some other romanization of the author's name than the one in the Wikipedia.
| Author | Hesse, Hermann |
|---|---|
| Original Language | German |
| Translators | Mannheim, Ralph |
| Publication | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971 |
| Copyright Date | 1915 |
| Number of Pages | 114 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | May 1980 |
Knulp is a kind of gentle tramp. Intelligent, kind, attractive, he is greeted by friends and admired by women wherever he goes - though he is without job, money, house, or any possessions. He spends his life wandering the towns of his native region, often sleeping outside. He is refined and sensitive, not above telling a false story, but never to exploit others. He especially admires the beauty of passing things, flowers, sunsets, girls, youths - the emotion heightened by the sadness of inevitable loss.
In the first tale he stays with a tanner friend, leaving to avoid the attentions of his friend's wife. In the second he is tramping with the narrator. They discuss philosophy of life. He leaves the friend without a word, perhaps piqued at his friend's getting drunk one night. In the last he is dying. He tramps the woods, hiding from the hospital, reliving his most important memories and reflecting upon his life. Just before death he sees God. He reproaches himself to God for not making anything of his life and talents. God comforts him by telling him he is His own child - a free creature meant to give a little yearning to his fellows.
A very delicate, romantic, and introspective book. It shows some of the promise of H's later work and is a fine story in its own right.
I am not alone in my attraction to books with characters who are like me. Reading such books, if they are good, sheds some light on my own situation and condition.
Knulp is not like me. Books about people who are very different from me sometimes turn me away because I get annoyed by the behavior of the character. But that's not always the case. I'm not like Knulp. I was probably annoyed by him when I read the book, I don't remember. However apparently I was not turned away. Hesse, through Knulp, taught me things that I could not have experienced myself. It was an interesting book.
| Author | Vonnegut, Kurt |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Delacourte Press, 1959 |
| Number of Pages | 313 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | May 1980 |
Billionaire playboy Malachi Constant is used by chronosynclastic infundibulated Winston Niles Rumfoord in his plan to launch an invasion from Mars of kidnapped earth soldiers whose memories have been wiped out and brains controlled by radio receivers. Later, he escapes from Mars as "Unk" with the black man Boaz. They land on Mercury and spend three years in deep caves. Boaz stays to play music for the harmoniums. He lands again on earth to be a hero to the new Church of God of the Utterly Indifferent. Finally, he is sent to Titan, the moon of Jupiter, where he meets Salo, the Tralfamadorean messenger who, in his lost days, returns Unk to earth to die at a bus stop with a beautiful vision of his dead friend Stony Stevenson.
The book is a satire of horror and indifference. Unk goes through one tragedy after another, emerging terribly scarred and beaten from each. He loses his fortune and his memory, he kills his friend and leaves another on Mercury, he rapes the woman Beatrice, and he is rejected by his son Chromo. One is thankful at the end for the 30 second dream given him upon his death. It is the only imaginable thing left for him.
V spares no feelings.
It is a strange book, strangely written, but with V's wonderfully outrageous prose.
V rated this book "A" in Palm Sunday. He wrote it in the same fantastic (as in fantasy, not as in marvelous) style that he used for Slaughterhouse Five, even using the Tralfamadoreans in the later book. I appreciate it. I think it was very original and imaginative. I think he used it successfully, but I have only been lukewarm to the downbeat pessimism that pervades his comedy. Although his reputation is small compared to Vonnegut, I think Robert Sheckley may have done a better job with this sort of comedy.
| Author | Deighton, Len |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979 |
| Copyright Date | 1978 |
| Number of Pages | 344 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II; Alternate history |
| When Read | May 1980 |
In November 1941 Douglas Archer, Superintendent of Detectives of the "murder team" of Scotland Yard, is working under SS General Kellerman in a Britain occupied by Germans. The Nazis had decided to invade Britain rather than Russia. Archer is called in to investigate the murder of a man who turns out to have been a nuclear scientist. Many groups become involved in the ensuing investigation and intrigue, including two competing branches of the SS, Abwehr (army intelligence), the resistance, and the U.S. government. Two main plots develop, one to steal atomic secrets, the other to free the King from German custody. There are plots and counterplots leading to a very logical conclusion - at least a well supported one.
D has done a fine job on a difficult subject. It succeeds as a mystery story, a spy thriller, and an attack on the Nazis. He gives a real feeling for the poverty, degradation, and fear experienced by occupied countries and for the way in which people are co-opted into working for the occupiers with little control over their own destiny - especially if they fail to make a personal commitment.
I like almost any World War II novel if it takes its subject seriously. For me, that generally requires that it recognize the evil of the fascist enemy and the courage and decency of those who fought against them. I think Deighton always did well.
| Author | Clarke, Arthur C. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1957 |
| Number of Pages | 238 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| Keywords | Submarines |
| When Read | May 1980 |
Seventy-five years in the future (c. 2032), ex spaceman Walter Franklin is trained as an undersea warden for the Bureau of Whales, an organization which raises whales for food. His work is partly occupational therapy for severe "astrophobia" which led to his abandoning his wife and children on Mars (because he could no longer travel there without going berserk.) He rises through the ranks acquiring more and more responsibility until he finally becomes director of the bureau. In the end he flies in the face of the entire bureaucracy to support a Buddhist inspired vegetarian, anti-whale killing movement.
Plenty of adventure - a fight of sub against shark to protect a whale, capture of a giant squid, search for a sea serpent, underwater earthquake, all told with the attention to scientific education which marks C's writing. A delight to read.
C is also a humane and civilized man. His conceptions of honor, courage, friendship, love, ethics, though not terribly subtle, are nevertheless sound and civilized. He is a concerned writer. He aims to educate in the social as well as scientific fields and does a good job of putting society in the context of future history.
If I remember correctly, Clarke was a scuba diver as well as a scientist and a writer of science fiction. He had already written a number of novels featuring space travel and the expansion of humans into the solar system and outer space and would write many more. This book was an effort to show his readers that there were interesting, futurist, explorations to be made right here on earth. There is unexplored space beneath the surface of the sea as well as beyond earth's atmosphere. I think he was quite successful.
| Author | Doyle, Arthur Conan |
|---|---|
| Publication | London: John Murray, 1963 |
| Copyright Date | 1913 |
| Number of Pages | 84 |
| Extras | Published in The Professor Challenger Stories, pp 217-301 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| Keywords | Sherlock Holmes |
| When Read | June 1980 |
A novella with the exact same characters and same style as The Lost World. Professor Challenger has correctly interpreted a shift in the spectrum of stellar light and a wave of sickness in Indonesia as a passing of the earth through a belt of poisonous ether. (Was the ether theory still in vogue then?)
Reporter Edward Mallone, adventurer Lord John Roxton, Prof John Summerlee, Challenger, and Mrs. Challenger meet at C's house to observe the death of the world. They are equipped with oxygen tanks which enable them to survive one day - only to find first that the poison has passed and now they can breath again, and later that everyone wakes up. They were not dead after all but only cataleptic. Mallone scoops the world with his story of the remarkable events.
The story is five people - all caricatures to be sure, facing first the death of the world, then their own. They quarrel and behave somewhat pettily yet all face the future well. D gives us his conception of high minded men facing total loss with equanimity and courage.
Not really very serious but not bad either. Written in D's effective story telling style.
Deciding that I liked Conan Doyle's writing, I went through a number of the non-Sherlock Holmes books. This may have been the best of his Challenger books. I don't recall enough, but I think The White Company might have been better than any of the Challenger series.
| Author | Le Carre, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Coward-McCann |
| Copyright Date | 1968 |
| Number of Pages | 304 |
| Genres | Fiction; Spy |
| When Read | July 1980 |
British counter spy Alan Turner is brought to Bonn to help locate Leo Harting, a German employee of the British Embassy who has disappeared with highly embarrassing secret files. The story is told in a series of interviews with other staff members - all of whom helped Harting in one way or another and each of whom gives a somewhat slanted or at least misguided view of the matter. In L's way, apparently distantly related events - a German crypto-Fascist revival and a German police investigation - are gradually brought into center stage as critical factors in the plot. In the end, it is revealed that Harting is not a traitor but a man who discovered that the leader of the new fascist movement is a war criminal and that the British knew it but did nothing in order to be able to blackmail him if he attained power. Harting has set out to murder the leader and the German police to murder Harting before he can either kill or talk.
As with The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, L reveals the sordidness of official life - here politics and diplomacy as well as the more obviously disgusting spy trade. As with Alec Leamas, Alan Turner is a capable man with some shred of integrity left who is drawn in and used but rebels.
Not quite as gripping as The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, but still well done.
Having written about Le Carre many times, I won't add anything new here.
Blabber mouth that I am, I will add something. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold taught its readers that spying is deception, deceit, amorality, and cruelty. It was a lesson that was relatively new in literature. If I remember correctly there was a new lesson in this book too, though it could have been in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy about interrogations. The lead character interviews a man who worked for the Circus (i.e., the British spy agency). The interviewee knows a lot but is dishonest and will change his account to protect himself. The interview lasts for many hours as the interviewer refines his understanding of the story he is told and keeps probing, slowly but surely uncovering the truth. It made me feel that I had never read a realistic account of an interrogation before.
| Author | Knight, Damon |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 307 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | August 1980 |
22 short stories published from 1949 to 1973. The first few are very decent classic SF. The rest, particularly the later ones, are high quality stories that would compare well with any genre.
Most of the stories are pessimistic and brutal in their outcomes. In "The Analogues" a man discovers an evil plot to control minds by creating "analogues" - imaginary people tailored to each person's need - but he can only explain it to his own analogue. "Man in the Jar" is about an evil human tormenting a decent alien for his own amusement. "The Enemy" is a horrible alien that helped a nice human girl only to have him kill her and escape to threaten the universe. "Mary" is an old fashioned love story set in a civilization beyond love - but with a sweet upbeat ending. "Semper Fi" is another psychological threat to the world, unprevented. "Masks" tells of a bionic man who no longer can tolerate the thought of crawling, festering, "purulent" chemical life.
As the years pass, K's ability to characterize grows. He draws powerful sketches and strongly unified stories and writes about telling themes. I'd have to rate him in the upper ranks of S-F.
I don't remember the stories any more but Damon Knight is a memorable name. Any American Sci Fi fan of the 50s and 60s would certainly know the name. He continued writing at least until 1996 and died at age 80 in 2002.
| Author | Beach, Edward L. Jr. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Holt Rinehart Winston, 1978 |
| Number of Pages | 348 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Naval; Submarines |
| When Read | August 1980 |
Postwar adventures of "Rich" Richardson, Keith Leone, and Rick Williams of B's WWII submarine stories.
In 1960 the three receive nuclear training with Leone and Williams made sub skippers in Richardson's squadron. After extremely intense training, one is sent in a nuclear missile sub to study the possibility of firing missiles from the arctic. He stumbles into a secret Russian missile base and is rammed by a Russian sub. Another sub sent to rescue them eventually sinks the Russian, blows up the missile base, and rescues most of the crew of the missile boat before it sinks. There's also a subplot of the men's wives.
B's treatment of women is shallow and the Russians are wooden caricatures. But again, as with his earlier books, the technical detail is authentic and the writing acceptably good. The death scene of Keith Leone, trapped in a sinking sub, is quite moving.
Beach was a WWII war hero, a post war nuclear sub commander, and a serious writer too. I respected the man and liked his books.
| Author | Hemingway, Ernest |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Charles Scribner's Sons |
| Copyright Date | 1937 |
| Number of Pages | 262 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | August 1980 |
Harry Morgan, owner of a small boat based in Key West, makes his living running fishing trips for wealthy sportsmen or, when times are bad, by smuggling between the U.S. and Cuba. He is tough and resilient, always doing whatever has to be done, regardless of the risk, to keep himself and his family solvent. Starting with a fishing scene (made famous by Bogart) H relates Morgan's harrowing experiences interspersed with the meaningless petty scenes of life among wealthier Americans.
Morgan is the paradigm individualist. Although fair to others and unwilling to hurt people for no reason, he basically has no use for others. He strikes out on his own. His three main scenes are: killing the Chinese refugee merchant to avoid killing the refugees, coming into port with a shattered arm from a liquor smuggling trip, and taking and killing four Cuban revolutionaries when it is clear that they will kill him - which they do anyway. He dies with a last word about how no man alone can make it.
This is not one of H's best books. It's sketchy and sometimes given to caricature. Still it is a significant book of the depression.
Whatever memory I have of this story comes from the movie with Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, and Lauren Bacall. It is those images that come to mind. However, looking up the movie I see that it is only vaguely related to the book and, although the main character is named Henry Morgan and he captains a fishing boat in the Caribbean, there's not much else that appears to be the same.
This appears to be the first book by Hemingway for which I have a book card, though I know I read a number of books by him before this, including The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea. I'll try to make entries for them when I finish all the book cards.
| Author | Tawil, Raymonda Hawa |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980 |
| Copyright Date | 1979 |
| Number of Pages | 265 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics |
| Keywords | Israel; Palestine; Women's rights |
| When Read | September 1980 |
T is an Arab woman of the upper classes, born in Palestine, raised in Israel, and living her adult life in Jordan and on the West Bank - first under Jordanian and then under Israeli rule. Her education and outlook are Western. Her book is an autobiographical account of her life under, and struggle against, the two oppressions of Arab sexism and Israeli nationalism.
She is a courageous person, forthright in her insistence upon seeing the good on all sides as well as the evil. A staunch Palestinian patriot and defender of the PLO she nevertheless openly professes her admiration for Israeli and other Western societies where women (and also men) are far freer than among Arabs. While struggling against the Israeli authorities, she still makes many contacts among Jewish and Western progressives and has strong words of support for their efforts. She fights for a more sophisticated Arab resistance movement which utilizes the press, Western and Israeli opinion, and progressive forces in any country that can help. She fights against the naive politics of the Arab majority and the terrible oppression of women - far worse than anything in the U.S.
For her efforts, T has suffered house arrest, temporary imprisonment, and even beating at the hands of Israeli cops. Her account is part of her struggle.
I grew up in a Jewish household in an American Jewish community. Support for Israel was more or less taken for granted and, until the aftermath of the 1967 war (I was 21 at the time of the war) I was strongly pro-Israel. I don't remember when my views on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict changed. I was heavily involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement, was in close contact with many leftist students and professors, and began to rethink many of the political positions I had taken for granted when I grew up. I remember that, sometime around 1972, I gave a speech in the University of Illinois Student Union building calling for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, resulting in a lot of Jewish students apparently forming a new and negative opinion of me.
I don't really remember this book but I know that by the early 1970's I was reading books like this in an attempt to understand all sides of the conflict in the middle east.
Tawil, born in 1940 to a "prominent family of Palestinian Christians" is apparently still alive. She fled to France after some sort of attack on her but later came back and lived next door to Arafat. There is an article about her in the Wikipedia and photos of her on the Internet with Yasser Arafat and Ruth Dayan(!)
| Author | Dunmore, Spencer |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Coward MCann and Geoghegan, 1979 |
| Copyright Date | 1978 |
| Number of Pages | 256 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | September 1980 |
A very young flight engineer on a night bombing mission over Germany is shot down in a snowy forest in December, 1944. A working class boy with no social sophistication, he finds himself with a badly wounded squadron leader. They make it to a house where they meet a German officer in hiding after the plot to kill Hitler. The squadron leader is left behind for medical attention and the boy and the German try to escape. They run into the German Bulge offensive, are taken by resistance units, eventually steal a plane, and fly to England. There they are shot down and the German dies.
The plot is completely improbable and told as a simple adventure thriller, but Dunmore does throw in a very nice characterization of Ron Pollard, the sergeant. He is frightened to death, a babbler and chatterbox, an inconsequential person given to self-denigration and denigration by others. Not at all a hero. He is nicely handled and very sympathetically portrayed.
As in Bomb Run the technical flying details are highly authentic - though they are not a major part of the story.
| Author | Clarke, Arthur C. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1953 |
| Number of Pages | 216 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | October 1980 |
An unusual SF story emphasizing the tremendous possibilities of the universe and the very small role of man.
A giant spaceship arrives over earth in the late 70's in a mission of what at first appears to be the promotion of peace and prosperity. The "Overlords" in the ship impose internationalist government, eliminate war and crime, but also prevent all further space exploration. Then, at a certain point, all of the young children on earth are transformed into a new, merged, consciousness that eventually leaves earth, destroying it in the process, to become part of the "Overmind" which rules the universe. The Overlords, though vastly more intelligent and capable than mere humans, are nonetheless only insignificant servants of the Overmind - which is so far above them that they cannot understand it at all.
I presume that C's concept of a consciousness based on pure energy is impossible, but the presentation is nonetheless both stimulating and disturbing. More than most writers, C understands that our 20th century human consciousness does not even begin to apprehend the reality or the possibilities of the universe. We are in a stage, perhaps an extremely primitive stage, of the development of intelligence. We are not yet advanced enough even to know where intelligence ought to lead, to know what would be good and what bad.
This was an extraordinarily ambitions novel, perhaps the most ambitious novel by any science fiction author that I have read. In my memory, it rivals anything by Stanislaw Lem, Greg Bear, Olaf Stapledon, or Isaac Asimov. Clarke would have been 36 years old when he published it.
I remember a surprising amount of it. The Overlords were 12 feet tall and had wings. Not a few humans thought they were angels or devils sent by God or the Devil. They ruled from orbit, almost never revealing themselves, but one came to earth to talk to the central human character in the book, whom he transported to some other worlds to see what the universe was like. At the Overlords' home world the character was frightened half to death by being taken to perches which were no problem for creatures with wings.
The human children all had dreams that the adults were incapable of having and which the Overlords too were excluded from. The dreams, originating in the Overmind, exposed the children to forms of intelligence that were inaccessible to adults with their fully developed brains, or to Overlords who were just not evolved in a direction that was compatible with the Overmind. Even more than the humans, the Overlords were interested in hearing the children explain their dreams so that they, the Overlords, could learn more about the true nature of the universe. One of the dreams was about a planet that the Overlords had always assumed to be devoid of intelligent life but were revealed by the children to contain dancing patterns on the surface of the world, a sign of something above and beyond anything that adult humans or Overlords could ever comprehend.
I don't know whether Clarke's view of the possibilities of higher intelligence made sense or not. I'm sure I didn't know 36 years ago when I read the book. However he did argue very successfully, I think, that we must look way beyond simple extensions of our perception of the modern world if we are to open ourselves to the possibilities of a wider universe.
| Author | Lesch, Ann Mosely |
|---|---|
| Publication | Washington DC: Middle East Institute Special Study 3, 1980 |
| Number of Pages | 113 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Politics |
| Keywords | Israel; Palestine |
| When Read | October 1980 |
A well documented study, based largely on analysis of newspaper, radio transcriptions, etc. of Palestinian perceptions of the Middle East conflict - especially of the occupation and of desirable futures for Palestine
[No comment]
I have no recollection of this book. I'm sorry I didn't write down more about it.
| Author | Doyle, Arthur Conan |
|---|---|
| Publication | Garden City: Doubleday and Co., 1974 |
| Copyright Date | 1890 |
| Number of Pages | 130 |
| Extras | Introduction by Graham Greene |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | October 1980 |
A good Sherlock Holmes tale, far superior to A Study in Scarlet. Holmes and Watson help a young woman whose father disappeared ten years before and who has been receiving a pearl each year, just received a strange note, and so on and so forth.
Holmes is made into something of a human being, a man who lives for "brain work" and injects cocaine to dull his idle hours. A small but significant part of the story is given to him for philosophizing about himself and his work.
The story, like others of the series, has an overly complex plot with motives leading out of a far fetched tale of the Sepoy rebellion. The chase and capture has Holmes' extraordinary deductions - though most are kept within some bounds of reasonableness and there are some mistakes.
I enjoyed the book for its characterizations and occasional passages of intellectual play.
Sherlock Holmes stories were a kind of reading candy for me. Short but satisfying, they were a delight to read. Unfortunately, there were only four that attained to minimal novel length. After I gulped down all of those, the Rex Stout Nero Wolfe stories filled that niche in my reading.
| Author | Cather, Willa |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. |
| Copyright Date | 1913 |
| Number of Pages | 308 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | November 1980 |
An earlier story, set in the same country as My Antonia, of the first settlers in the high table land of Nebraska. Only a few chapters are given to the first years, the rest are devoted to the prosperous years after the turn of the century.
A young Swedish woman, Alexandra Bergson, holds her family together after her father dies. She mortgages everything to buy more land and works her brothers night and day. After a few tough years they all become rich and she then sends her youngest brother off to college.
The story progresses several years at a time, finally developing the love stories of middle aged Alexandra for wanderer Carl Linstrum, and college boy Emil for the married Marie Tovesky Shabata. Emil and Marie are killed by a jealous husband and then Alexandra and Carl wed in spite of all disapprobation.
The writing is not yet as coherent and well sustained as in the later works. C is groping for the story, not totally certain wherein it lies. The senseless murder is extravagant and awkward. The passages of time are forced upon the reader - dragging him from poverty to riches without a proper development.
Still, the fine Cather sensitivity to humanity is there. The deep sympathy for ordinary folk and the discovery of the importance of ordinary life - for the novel and the reader - are very strong.
I liked this and all of Cather's books. I seem to recall a fine poem at the opening of the book, one that I read and re-read many times but it isn't in the Gutenberg edition. I finally recalled enough words to find the poem via Google. It's titled "Prairie Spring". It has much about it that represented this book for me.
| Author | Crichton, Michael |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 193 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| When Read | November 1980 |
This is a fictionalized retelling of what purports to be a true story of a sophisticated Arab traveler who, against his will, was taken to Scandinavia by a party of 12 Northmen who needed a 13th man to make up a lucky party. They eventually arrive at a troubled land having a serious blood feud with some sort of primitive tribe from the interior called the Wendol.
Much of the story is Ibn Fadlan's fascinating anthropological observations of the Northmen, with the rest being terrible fights with the Wendol - ending in much loss of life and the killing of both the "mother of the Wendol" and Buliwyf, the Norse hero. The Wendol are depicted as extremely primitive - possibly even Neanderthal.
A good Crichton type story - straight story with considerable historical instruction throughout. Nothing noteworthy about the writing except that there are some successful archaisms in the diction.
In 1996 I read a version of Beowulf and, when I read this book again in 2000, I understood that the story was a retelling of the Beowulf tale written, according to the author, on a dare from other English professors who told him that nobody could make Beowulf interesting to undergraduate students.
My write-up in 2000 is better than this one.
| Author | Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | McGuire, Patrick |
| Publication | New York: MacMillan, 1978 |
| Copyright Date | 1966 |
| Number of Pages | 319 |
| Extras | Introduction by Theodore Sturgeon |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | December 1980 |
A collection of twenty separate but related stories all on the general theme of space exploration, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, the development of science and society, and the development of the human being.
The stories begin with the first baby born on Mars in the 21st century and conclude in the 22nd. Each story is independent, yet many common characters move through them. The men are all typical Strugatsky heroes - as further developed in the later novels. They are bright, humane, inclined towards childlike foolishness and bravado. They are all involved in existential dilemmas and in a search for deep commitments.
The stories are striking for their scientific imagination as well as their spiritual quest. Three men test out an "embryomech" - a programmed device that can be dropped on a planet and will build, out of local materials, whatever it has been programmed to do, buildings, spaceships, whatever. A "spacer" returns from a visit to a planet emitting radio waves and meets a man tagging marine animals with radio devices - he never says so outright, but worries terribly that he has been tagged by an alien race. Some people land on "a planet with all the conveniences" and find that it is a biological land in which an advanced civilization lives by genetic rather than mechanical or electrical engineering. The earth people decide that they are not equipped to properly represent the human race and so immediately depart.
All of the stories are good. The characterizations are fairly simple and the plots never come to any conclusions, but the themes and the imagination are very powerful/
I remember bits and snatches of these stories. The "spacer" referenced above discovers that he is emitting radio signals. He is examined carefully with scanning equipment but no transmitter can be found. It seems that his body itself is emitting the signals in a fashion that cannot be further localized. It is deeply unnerving because this technology and its purposes seem as far advanced over him as his technology and its purposes are to the lower animals that he has tagged. He wants never to go back to the planet and can't help being at least a little anxious back on earth.
Some science fiction goes out of date quickly. Books by the Strugatsky's don't do that. These stories were all originally published between 1960 and 1966.