Books read January through December 1993
| Author | Bermant, Chaim |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981 |
| Number of Pages | 424 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | January 1993 |
A wonderful fictional biography of a Russian Jew coming to Scotland at age 16 in 1892 who makes his way in the world and raises his family, dying in 1947.
Nahum Rabinovitz works as a small transportation agent and broker. He changes his name to Raeburn when his advisors insist that he must in order to make his way in business. He falls in love with Miri, the daughter of Moss Moss, the chicken merchant. But she marries Yerucham, the hypocritical rabbi and philanderer and only marries Nahum many years later when Yerucham dies and she already has three children. They have three more.
The story tracks his rise and fall in the shipping business. He is betrayed by a cousin/partner who trades with the Germans in World War I, ships out, and leaves Nahum to take the blame. Later he rises again in the cinema business. The story also traces his loves, his relationship with his aunt, his two marriages, and his efforts for his six children, whom he loves.
All in all it is a very fine, beautiful story of an intelligent, sincere, humble man who tries always to do the right thing. I identified very strongly with Nahum and cried at the end when he died. It is also a very Jewish book. There is much feel for Jewish culture of that time and a very compassionate portrayal of Jewish people.
I recommended this book to Dave Kenton, a man at the National Library of Medicine with whom I had a number of odd conflicts but whom I did not want to treat as an enemy. I don't like to treat anyone as an enemy, even though he once told me he wanted to kill me because I was proposing software to NLM that could replace software that he managed. He was a man of very strong emotions, but not a violent man. At any rate, he was a pious Jew. He told me he loved the book.
It was a lovely book, appreciated by pious Jews like Dave, atheist Jews like me, and probably by non-Jews as well - though it should have special appeal to Jews who still know something of the old European Jewish culture and situation.
There is a very moving scene at the end. Nahum is in the hospital with his terminal illness. He is visited by an old rabbi. The rabbi offers to perform a little religious service for him, either in English or Hebrew. Nahum asks if one language is better than the other. The rabbi replies that God speaks both. Nahum chooses Hebrew. The rabbi says that he should first put his teeth in his mouth, but Nahum had just lost all his teeth as a result of his illness. He says, "I haven't got any." The rabbi responds, "Well, that's another matter" and proceeds to read the service in Hebrew.
At the end the rabbi, or maybe it was another patient in another scene, I don't remember now, says that he heard that Nahum Rabinovitch had died. What a prince of a man he was, not like the rest of us. Nahum does not tell the man that he is Nahum Rabinovitch and he isn't quite dead yet. He sees no reason to do so.
The book continues for a bit after Nahum's death in 1947. It speaks of his children and ends, if I remember correctly, with the death of a son in 1968. I don't remember the son's name or his specific role in the story. Yet oddly, dates stick with me.
| Author | Stout, Rex |
|---|---|
| Publication | Bantam Books, 1992 |
| Copyright Date | 1951 |
| Number of Pages | 246 |
| Extras | Introduction by David Handler |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | January 1993 |
Archie and Nero are engaged by the father of a young murdered woman to find the killer. She was an assistant editor in a publishing house who, apparently, was murdered because she had read a certain manuscript. Later the typist who typed the manuscript and a young law clerk who wrote it were all killed.
In the very end, the killer is exposed at a big meeting of all the suspects, the police, the dead girl's father, and all of the witnesses in Nero's office. The killer was a disbarred lawyer who had discovered in the book that the illegal things he had done to get disbarred had been revealed to the DA by a law partner. He resolved to kill the partner but first had to kill all those who would suspect him after the killing was done.
This is all very good Rex Stout, completely satisfying, written with S at the height of his powers.
| Author | Faulkner, William |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Vintage International, 1985 |
| Copyright Date | 1930 |
| Number of Pages | 267 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | January 1993 |
In the Bundren family, Addie, the mother, is dying in her bed in their rural Mississippi house. After she dies her husband Anse, sons Cash, Darl, Jewel, and Vardaman, and daughter Dewey Dell, set off across the countryside with wagon and casket to fulfill her wish to be buried near her parents in Jefferson. But the Bundrens do everything wrong. The bridges are out and their mules drown while attempting to ford a river. They show up in various places with a stinking casket and a crippled son Cash, whose leg is broken in the river crossing and is infected when they pour concrete on it to steady it.
The story is dark and mysterious. We are given hints of conflicts in the family, suppressed passions, secrets carried to the grave. The truths behind these dark hints are only revealed later - usually obliquely or in violent action.
The book is organized into chapters, each titled with the name of a character. Some of these chapters are stream of consciousness from that character's point of view, but not all.
For me, this book showed great talent and observation but was a failure as a novel. I could not see much development in my understanding of the people. Some even seemed out of character. I was not prepared for Darl to go crazy at the end. Cash, Anse, Vardaman, all of them really, seemed to be of the thinnest cardboard - which seemed only partially intentional. I also didn't like all of the dark hints. I wanted F to say what was going on. It's not that I don't wish to work in the reading, it's rather that I felt that hints were an artificial plot device to generate emotional tension over matters which could have been more interestingly and fruitfully developed had they been made clear.
Faulkner apparently liked this book. I didn't.
At one time I regarded William Faulkner as possibly the greatest American novelist. It was after I had read The Sound and the Fury and Light in August, books written just before and just after this one. Reading my notes from 1993 brings back how much I disliked this book, which seemed to me to treat its subjects with contempt more than humor.
A Wikipedia editor writes "As I Lay Dying is consistently ranked among the best novels of 20th century literature." Apparently I missed its great value. It's conceivable that if I read it again now, at my age, when I am less self-assured and more inclined to accept writing that I would have rejected in the past, I would have a different view of the book. Knowing that it has been so well received by people who know whereof they speak might influence me. It might induce me to look harder for the book's value. But at the time the novel struck me as a book that insults people. I don't care for that.
| Author | Pope, Dudley |
|---|---|
| Publication | Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1960 |
| Number of Pages | 381 |
| Extras | Illustrations, maps, diagrams, tables, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Naval; Napoleonic Wars |
| When Read | February 1993 |
The famous battle is described in considerable detail, starting with about a year of naval history leading up to it, a very interesting discussion of procurement practice and life in the navy, and some explanation of the politics and aims of the powers.
One of the French or Spanish captains summarized the difference between the two sides when he said that the English had been at sea since 1793, hardly ever out of their ships, while the French and Spanish had been bottled up all that time, unable to train their men and hence poorly prepared to handle their ships. The big surprise of the battle was thus probably not that the British prevailed with a somewhat smaller fleet, but that the French and Spanish, or most of them anyway, fought with such courage and determination in the face of superior British tactics, seamanship, gunnery, and combat experience.
This is the sort of book that I would have read and enjoyed at age 13 when it was written, and I enjoyed it today.
Pope treats the battle as the saving of England, like the Battle of Britain in 1940. Of course the large issues of war and politics were unexplored and much was made of the bravery and chivalry of the combatants on both sides.
It always bothers me to read about brave and honorable men killing each other. And yet I find these books fascinating too.
I have read many books of military and naval history and many novels on the same subjects. They fascinate me for reasons that I don't fully understand. Although my psychological motivations aren't always clear to me, I'm pretty sure that a main reason I read more about World War II than about other wars has to do with the last paragraph of my comment written in 1993. Killing German and Japanese murderers is much more palatable than killing brave and decent Frenchmen who are not murderers of innocent Jews, Poles, or Chinese. But that's a subject that goes far beyond the purview of this book and these notes.
I recall some knowledge of the battle of Trafalgar. The French and Spanish had 33 ships of the line and the British fewer, perhaps 28? The French and Spanish formed a crescent line. The British formed two columns and sailed straight into the enemy line, accepting terrible damage and casualties as all of the enemy guns came to bear while their own pointed useless to the side. Then they cut through the enemy line at two places and went to work with them now having the advantage of broadsides against their enemy's stems and sterns. The fighting was very intense and the French and Spanish fleets included some massive ships with well over 100 guns. But the constant British training and experience over the years gradually gave them the upper hand, after which their advantage got stronger and stronger, completely overwhelming their enemy.
Is this recollection from Pope's book or from another source? It's probably from Pope, but I don't know for certain.
| Author | Forester, C.S. |
|---|---|
| Publication | London: Michael Joseph, 1964 |
| Copyright Date | 1936 |
| Number of Pages | 239 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War I |
| When Read | February 1993 |
An exceptionally fine novel about a very stolid, unimaginative but brave and ambitious soldier who rises to become a general commanding an army corps in World War I. Herbert Curzon is a man with almost no family who obtains a cavalry commission in the British army in the 1890's. His parents die leaving him a small independent income (700 pounds a year) and only one relation, his mother's sister. During the Boer War his company is attacked and his commander killed. He is wounded but muddles through, leading the company to a position where they happen to fall on the enemy's rear. He attacks and wins the battle for the hard pressed infantry.
In the Great War he distinguishes himself again. He knows nothing of subtlety or modern tactics but he understands completely the British strategy of fight to the last man and win "at all costs". He spares neither himself nor his men. When his corps is overrun in the German offensive of 1918 he refuses to evacuate and instead rides to the front to share the fate of his men - where he is grievously wounded and crippled for life.
The General is a blend of a personal story of character, very well told, and a sociological and historical story about what happened in World War I and why so many men were killed. It works well on both levels. In spite of Curzon's limits we can't help giving him his due. We care about his stilted and yet successful marriage to Lady Emily. we support his military advancement. We almost buy into his view of the war and his duty. And we are appalled at the results.
A fine piece of work.
This book made a strong impression on me and I remember it very well. It captured a real dilemma in our thinking about people like Curzon. Is he a hero? Is he a fool? Is he a valuable officer or a failure who has done more harm than good?
The answers to those questions are not obvious. The situation is very complicated. My own personal reaction to the story was that the man was a fool and he had serious limits as a valuable officer. There were much better officers. But he was nevertheless something of a hero and a man deserving of personal respect. His failings were intellectual rather than moral. He was courageous and committed.
There is one passage in the book where Curzon is given an order to stand fast in the face of a German offensive. He is not an intelligent man but Forester says that this is an order that Curzon can truly understand. He doesn't know how to maneuver. He doesn't know how to analyze an enemy position. But he knows how to stand fast. Then in the end, when his division is being cut to pieces and his staff says they need to pull out, Curzon recognizes that he has failed. He takes personal responsibility. He mounts his horse and rides to the front, where he will be wounded and permanently crippled.
It is not possible for me to condemn such a man. He should never have become a general. He was not the right man for the job. But he deserves high credit for his courage.
| Author | O'Connor, Flannery |
|---|---|
| Publication | Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1962 |
| Copyright Date | 1949 |
| Number of Pages | 232 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | February 1993 |
Hazel Motes, a young man just out of the army with no living relations or friends or ties to any place, goes to a southern city. He buys an old junk car and does nothing much of anything. Soon he sees a phony blind preacher and becomes obsessed with confronting the man, not because he is a phony, but because he preaches the gospel of Christ.
Hazel becomes a preacher himself, preaching the "Church Without Christ", saying that Jesus does not exist and religion is a lie. But it's not an intellectual atheism, rather it's a sort of religious fanaticism of a negative sort. He rejects every human contact. he attempts to flee the city in his car but he has no license and a cop takes his car away. Then he retreats entirely into himself. He blinds himself. He puts stones and broken glass in his shoes. He wraps barbed wire around his chest. Finally, pursued by his landlady who wants to marry him for his monthly government medical pension, he gets thinner and sicker and finally dies.
This s a well written book with an interesting obsession behind it, but it's completely devoid of human feeling. There is not one single character out of perhaps a dozen with even a spark of concern for anyone else. In this bleak city of pessimism, selfishness, and stunted humanity, Hazel's warped fanaticism seems almost understandable.
How does someone come to write a book like this, and what sort of world does she live in.
I don't recall this book at all well, but I do recall how much I didn't like it. I'm not much interested in reading about an isolated, alienated, religious lunatic. Anything I have to learn from such a person seemed entirely negative.
I have read and appreciated many disturbing books. This one however seemed to be by a disturbed author, a different proposition. I haven't read any Flannery O'Connor since this book. I've never wanted to.
If I remember correctly, this too was a book club selection.
| Author | Leonard, Elmore |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Arbor House, 1983 |
| Number of Pages | 304 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery; Comedy |
| When Read | March 1993 |
Ernest Stickley, fresh out of Jackson Prison in Michigan, goes to Miami to see a prison buddy and joins him in a delivery of money from one drug dealer to another. However part of the deal is to deliver themselves to be murdered as a payback for a foolish move by the payer which caused one of the payer's men to die. Stick escapes but his friend does not.
Soon after, Stick becomes a chauffeur for Barry Stam, rich Jewish stock speculator who is constantly turning over stocks, making fortunes, and living for the action. He likes to surround himself with ex-cons for the excitement of that. Stickley humps Barry's wife and girlfriend, and his investment counselor with whom he falls in love. In the end he cons the old drug dealer out of $70,000 and plans to become an investment counselor himself but gets stuck with a lawsuit for back child support from his ex-wife that may take it all away.
Leonard's characters are each individual, exotic, and interesting. Barry, Kyle the counselor, Chucky the drug dealer, Nestor the Cuban dealer and killer, all have exotic qualities which are nevertheless imbued with an air of authenticity. Their world is repulsive and fascinating at the same time. It's a world of risk, high stakes, high energy, and wealth.
As always with Leonard, we are not disappointed. It's a genre that doesn't promise much but, for whatever it's worth, as John MacDonald says, "He gives full value."
| Author | Vargas Llosa, Mario |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Spanish |
| Translators | MacAdam, Alfred |
| Publication | New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1987 |
| Copyright Date | 1986 |
| Number of Pages | 151 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | March 1993 |
Two cops, Lituma and his boss Lieutenant Silva, in a small coastal town in Peru, investigate the murder of a local boy who had joined the air force. They have no resources, no help from the authorities, no physical evidence, no experts. All they do is interview the principals in the case. and although no one is willing to tell them the truth, Silva puts it all together.
It turns out that the boy, an uneducated, low class "cholo" (Indian), was in love with the Air Force colonel's daughter, who was officially, as it were, the girlfriend of a respected pilot/Captain, but who in fact loved the boy. Worse, the Colonel was committing incest with his daughter.
There is a special feel to this novel. There is the air of life in a small 1950's Peruvian town. There are minds, not only in townspeople but also in the two cops, which are different from what we would see in the U.S. and Europe. There is no thought of police procedure. Everything is ad hoc. And yet Silva figures it out anyway and finds the truth.
As with other VL books, we see a whole society presented in few words, but with considerable richness, depth and humor. Throughout the whole story, Silva is attempting to bed Dona Adriana, the old fisherman's wife, and that pursuit develops and comes to a climax in parallel with the murder mystery.
In the end, Silva submits his report. The Colonel kills his daughter and himself. Dona Adriana humiliates the lieutenant and stops his unwanted attentions. For their trouble, Silva and Lituma are sent to the Andes as a transfer and punishment.
A great story. (Are there characters here from The Green House?)
I no longer remember complete books as I did when I was very young. Maybe I didn't even remember them then but just now imagine that I did. But more than most writers, I remember Vargas Llosa's books. I don't remember details but to the extent one can remember one book among several thousand, read 22 years ago, I remember Vargas Llosa's.
I don't know what to make of Vargas Llosa as a person. He migrated from the political left to what some have described as the political right or center right. Was that a betrayal of the common people, or was it a legitimate response to corrupt, morally bankrupt, and anti-democratic leftist parties? Was it an endorsement of monopoly or even comprador capitalism, or solely an endorsement of freedom in both economic and political spheres?
He punched Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the face, knocking him down and bloodying him. I think of Garcia Marquez as a gentle man, certainly not prepared for a surprise physical assault. Was Vargas Llosa being a bully? Was he consciously indulging himself in a way that he wouldn't have dared to do against a younger and stronger man? Was he placing all of the blame on his erstwhile friend for errors that he had made in his own marital relationship? Was he even in possession of true facts about his perceived grievance? Or was this a spontaneous outburst against a deep and long held grievance, or even a justified administration of justice?
Be all that as it may, he was and is an extraordinary writer. He has written great books about the largest imaginable social issues and also extraordinarily nuanced books about deep and exotic psychological and sexual themes. He has written great tragedy and great comedy, great works of complex, experimental literary technique, and great works of the clearest and most transparent prose.
The XML format of these book notes was invented in 2011 (see notes in the diary entry for today, March 8, 2015.) This is one of those book cards in which the abstract was split with commentary in between. I have now decided to leave it as originally written and therefore put the last part of the explanation of the book in the comment field for this entry, preserving the original order of the paragraphs.
| Author | Hardy, Thomas |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Modern Library, 1950 |
| Copyright Date | 1885 |
| Number of Pages | 432 |
| Extras | Introduction by Samuel Chew |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | March 1993 |
Sometime before 1830 farm worker Michael Henchard and his wife and baby trudge into a village in Southern England where they will look for work. Michael gets drunk in a tent at the fair and, in a pique, offers to sell his wife for five pounds. A sailor takes him up on it and leaves with the woman and baby. 18 years later the sailor is presumed dead and the woman goes searching again for her husband, who has become a wealthy corn merchant and mayor of the town of Casterbridge.
Henchard is a good man who has stuck to a vow of temperance, but he is rough, blunt, jealous, given to rages and impulsive actions. He remarries his old wife and wishes to adopt his presumptive daughter without telling the girl, Elizabeth Jane, or anyone in the town. He also brings in a young Scotchman, Donald Farfrae, to help in his business.
All gradually goes wrong for him. His wife dies. Farfrae proves so clever that people think more of him than Henchard. Another woman arrives on the scene with an old claim on Henchard but she falls in love with Farfrae and marries him. Elizabeth acknowledges H as father but he learns that she is really the sailor's daughter. He spurns her. He is reduced to paupery in a foolish battle against Farfrae and goes back to caring for Elizabeth, the only person who still cares for him, only to have the sailor return. In the end he dies, bitter, rejected, alone, hating himself.
I didn't care for all of the plot turns and devices, the hidden knowledge on which 19th century plot twisters depended. Nevertheless, this is a significant book with keen and subtle observations, philosophical views and grand themes, intelligently handled. I liked it much more than The Well Beloved.
| Author | Douglass, Frederick |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Mentor Books, 1990 |
| Copyright Date | 1853 |
| Number of Pages | 40 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Race and slavery |
| When Read | April 1993 |
In Three Classic African-American Novels, ed. by William L. Andrews, pp. 25-69
This is the first novel published by an Afro-American, the first to take the daring step of fictionalizing the slave experience, in the footsteps of Stowe and the white authors who had done it, but without the authority of Douglass, an escaped slave.
It is a political polemic, a book written for white people by a black but using white narrators throughout to win the reader's sympathy and identification. An Ohio farmer traveling in Virginia overhears a slave plotting his freedom and is deeply impressed with the slave's courage, intelligence and humanity. He later helps him escape to Canada. Years later he encounters the slave again in Virginia where he had been recaptured after attempting to save his wife. The farmer meets him on the road chained to a gang about to be shipped to New Orleans. He slips the slave some files. Later, at sea, the slave leads a revolt which captures the ship and puts in at the British port of Nassau, where they are freed.
This is all based on a true story of a slave named Madison Washington who did lead a revolt and capture a ship, though little else is known about him.
The novel is written in a very sophisticated, unnatural language. D demonstrates his command of English and prefers to present an eloquent black voice that can impress whites rather than a natural slave voice which perhaps the whites were too comfortable in expecting.
For all its stilted expression and polemical language, this is nonetheless a book that captures something of the horrors of slavery and of the heroism of those who struggled against it.
One of the things that I long for, that I think almost all readers long for, in a book about injustice, is final justice, final redemption, even final retribution. We want the enslaved black, the oppressed Jew, the exploited working man or woman, to come out alive and whole. We want the bastards who hurt him to get their just deserts.
In the Holocaust literature, there are books like Exodus, Mila 18, The Wall, Defiance and If Not Now, When that achieve this in very small ways. So too in the literature of slavery there are a few books that gain some small measure of escape and of justice. This is one of them.
Large scale justice may happen, but it happens in a way that involves large external forces. The British, the Russians, and the Americans defeated Germany and smashed the Nazis and the Nazi system with overwhelming force. The Union Army overwhelmed the Confederate States Army and ended slavery in the South, though in spite of the victory, the whites reasserted their domination of the black community. It is satisfying. The black and the Jew, and if I may say so, the Palestinian, are gratified by it. But what we really want to see is the oppressed themselves beating their tormentors. That is what the perpetually oppressed long for.
We can't rewrite history. We know what happened. We know it came out badly for the oppressed. So we pick out small incidents. We tell the story of Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, the Warsaw Ghetto, the Bielski partisans in Russia. We fictionalize the stories because so many of the facts are lost. But in these stories, even if there is no ultimate redemption, there is at least some small but palpable and satisfying revenge.
In hoping to see the "oppressed themselves beating their tormentors" we can be hoping for different things. What I hope for is a recovery of strength and self-confidence. I want to know that the oppressed have arrived back at their freedom by means of their own actions, not the charity of others. I want the oppressors to see that the people they have oppressed are, in fact, their equals and sometimes even their betters. I want the oppressed to see that too and all of the bystanders to see it and gain or regain respect for those whom they despised.
| Author | Wilson, Harriet E. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Mentor Book, 1990 |
| Copyright Date | 1859 |
| Number of Pages | 81 |
| Genres | Fiction; Autobiography |
| Keywords | Race and slavery |
| When Read | April 1993 |
In Three Classic African-American Novels, ed. by William L. Andrews, pp. 285-366
A possibly autobiographical novel about a young girl of mixed white/black parentage who is abandoned at a white family farm at the age of six. She is brought up there as a kind of indentured servant. This is in Massachusetts before the Civil War.
Most members of the family treat her decently but the wife, Mrs. Bellmont, and the older daughter Mary, are tyrants, forcing huge amounts of work on her, beating her, abusing her verbally, making her eat standing up in the kitchen, ignoring her illnesses, and taking all their personal frustrations out on her.
She hopes that the oldest boy, James, will take her away, but James dies and the next boy, Jack, has problems and moves away. Mr. Bellmont and his sister are sympathetic and give some protection, but they are afraid of Mrs. Bellmont and do not save her.
Her health is destroyed by bad care and overwork. She leaves the family at 18 but is a broken person, living from hand to mouth on menial jobs and charity. This novel, besides being an attempt to tell her story, is a means to making some income and is accompanied by testimonials from whites urging people to help the author and buy the book.
It is a powerful book with a ring of truth and of considerable understanding of the problems of women as well as blacks in an oppressed society. It tells us much about the real America which lay beneath the surface of 19th century culture.
The Wikipedia says that Wilson, nee Adams, lived from 1825 to 1900. She was abandoned by her white mother, who could not support her. The child in the novel is apparently modeled on the real life of Harriet "Hattie" Adams. When Adams was abandoned by Wilson, and Wilson died, she could not support her own child and sent him to the poorhouse where he died at age 7.
We like to think of America as the "land of the free", but freedom has always had to be struggled for and there is much struggle ahead.
See also my notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin, Frederick Douglass' autobiography, The Invention of Wings, and The Heroic Slave read as part of the same collection as this story.
| Author | MacLean, Alistair |
|---|---|
| Publication | Garden City: Doubleday and Co., 1982 |
| Number of Pages | 244 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | April 1993 |
A very weak, lackluster story about a small group of people, supposedly Yugoslav Royalists in league with the Nazis on their way from Italy to a Royalist camp in Yugoslavia. Predictably, all the people turn out to be staunch anti-Nazi partisans who are working one way or another as undercover agents.
I would record the plot if it were worth recording, but it's not. Even the book jacket gets it wrong by attempting to state it in a way that would make it understandable to the reader and palatable to his politics. Suffice it to say that, in the end, the Nazis are foiled and the hero gets the girl.
This book is in the tradition of When Eight Bells Toll in that it is a simple adventure, but it lacks the technicalities that made that other story at least somewhat interesting.
What happened to the author of HMS Ulysses? What happened to the author of The Lonely Sea? Did he stop caring? Did writing become a simple trade? Nothing else I have read of his measures up to those two.
The Guns of Navarone and South by Java Head measured up. Maybe others did too. But they were early books. The Lonely Sea was published late in his career but the individual stories may have been written earlier. Perhaps writing became more of a job and less of a calling for him.
This is the last MacLean that I read. I'm unlikely to read others unless they are particularly well regarded.
| Author | Simenon, Georges |
|---|---|
| Publication | Sandiego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959 |
| Copyright Date | 1950 |
| Number of Pages | 167 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Maigret |
| When Read | April 1993 |
Chief Inspector Maigret investigates a report from an anonymous phone call that a man has been killed and his body burned in the furnace of a book binder's shop in Rue de Turrenne. Investigators find teeth in the furnace and arrest the bookbinder but are unable to find any other evidence. Later, Madame Maigret is waiting in the park outside her dentist's office, talking to a woman whom she has met there for the last several days. The woman suddenly runs away in a panic, leaving her two year old child, then comes back and gets the child and runs again.
Eventually Maigret unravels the whole case. The bookbinder was part of a passport forgery ring. They had a leader, a dangerous man who kills a countess to steal her jewels, then must kill her son-in-law who was in on the robbery plan but did not expect murder and now has cold feet. That is the murder at the book binder's. Later, the woman with the child, the wife of the killer, was with Madame Maigret when the killer recognized Mme from a magazine article and assumed she was onto them. So they fled in panic.
The plot is very complex with no chances for the reader to figure it out. Simenon withholds the vital clues from the reader that he gives to Maigret. But what is of interest here is Simenon's psychological observations - Maigret first and foremost, but also the other police and suspects. It is a very minor work but well written and with a number of small, satisfying bits of observation.
As of the date of this note, this is the last Simenon/Maigret book that I have read. I don't know why I stopped. I doubt that there was a particular reason. Perhaps I was reading more Elmore Leonard and Rex Stout for mystery fare. Perhaps I exhausted the local libraries' resources.
I have access to more of Simenon's novels now. They are fast reading. If I live another couple of hundred years I might read all of them. Barring that, I can't say whether I'll read more.
I read a couple more after making the above note.
| Author | Asimov, Isaac |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Doubleday and Co., 1951 |
| Number of Pages | 227 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | April 1993 |
In a far, far future, psycho-historian Harry Selden has produced a mathematical model of social, economic, and political development that predicts a breakup of the Galactic Empire based on Trantor to be followed by 30,000 years of chaos and anarchy, a kind of dark age. He also concludes that the intervention of a large enough group of people in the right direction, over a long enough period of time, can cut the period of the dark age to only 1,000 years. To that end he recruits 50,000 scientists and their families to settle on a planet on the galactic rim, ostensibly to compile a great Galactic Encyclopedia to preserve all knowledge. He includes no psycho-historians. They must do their best without knowing the future.
The book continues with four more stories, each an episode in the future of the Foundation, as the descendants of the scientists and others brought into its fold, work out various crises, preserving the Foundation against potential enemies and developing science, commerce and politics. They survive by intelligence and skillful manipulation of their adversaries, never resorting to violence, "the last refuge of the incompetent." Salvor Hardin, Linmar Ponyets, and Hober Mallow respectively lead in the various crises.
This was a leading book in the youth of American science fiction, much read and loved by young people. I read it at age 19 or so and re-read it today, 27 years later, still pleased with it. Perhaps I have passed from youthful ingenuousness to a harsher critical view, and back to some simpler expectations again in that time.
The book seems simple, optimistic, and very American today. But it has an enthusiasm about it that is still pleasing.
Science fiction has evolved steadily from its earliest roots in Jules Verne through its first period of real popularity in the 1920's and 30's. I don't know enough about the history of SF to speak Knowledgeably about it but it is my sense that this book was important. It became extremely popular. It initiated a series. It envisioned an entire galaxy and 30,000 years of history as its setting. It was a work of considerable scientific imagination.
John Tosh writes of the metahistorians, of whom he considers Marx to be the most fruitful, who attempted to interpret all of history as forming a project that could be seen as an understandable progression from one stage to another. Asimov has something of that in the series begun with this book. It doesn't have the theoretical impetus that Marx gave to his writing, but it's on a grand scale.
As a novel, or collection of stories, it was not outstanding, but it was a very interesting conception.
| Author | Moss, Robert |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990 |
| Number of Pages | 349 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| When Read | May 1993 |
A young Irish rake, living in London with a middle aged actress in 1761, leaves for the American colonies in the company of dreamy Lord Robert Davies who wishes to meet Indian spiritualists. The young man, Shane Hardacre, finds his cousin Johnson, chief Indian agent for the crown, and becomes an agent for him - attempting to hold off colonization, protect the Indians, and keep the Indians' loyalty in the war with France.
The book is in part a historical/adventure/romance, in part an attempt to shed some light on a period and a people who are not well known or understood today, and in part a not unsophisticated philosophical novel.
The plot is simply a string of events. Shane meets the Indians. Shane conquers a woman. Shane travels to Detroit. Shane conquers a woman. ... The womanizing is right out of adolescent (or is it old men's) fantasies. None of the characters are well developed but some are interesting none the less.
I found myself frequently stopping to admire little observations, little philosophical remarks. The intelligence of the author is apparent throughout.
Searching Amazon for Robert Moss I found multiple books about "active dreaming". I thought, there must be another man who is the novelist, so I added the title of this book to my search string.
The book came up. There were no reviews of it but it did apparently appear in several editions. Then I saw this biography at the bottom of the page.
"Robert Moss is the pioneer of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of shamanism and modern dreamwork. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming and a lively online dream school. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home."
There is quite a bit more but I'll leave it at that. The novelist and active dreamer are one and the same.
Well, this is too good to leave alone. Here's more from the Amazon page. It describes "Core techniques of Active Dreaming". Note that all odd grammatical constructions are direct quotes from the original.
'The "lightning dreamwork" process, designed to facilitate quick dream-sharing that results in helpful action; the use of the "if it were my dream" protocol encourages the understanding that the dreamer is always the final authority on his or her dream Dream reentry: the practice of making a conscious journey back inside a dream in order to clarify information, dialogue with a dream character, or move beyond nightmare terrors into healing and resolution Tracking and group dreaming: conscious dream travel on an agreed itinerary by two or more partners, often supported by shamanic drumming Navigating by synchronicity: reading coincidence and "symbolic pop-ups" in ordinary life as "everyday oracles". Dream archaeology: melding the arts of shamanic dreaming with scholarship and detective work to access other times and cultures and bring back fresh and authentic knowledge that can be tested and verified. Exploring the multiverse and the multidimensional self.'
How could I have missed all that when I read the novel?
Perhaps I need to get in touch with my everyday oracles and explore the multiverse. Do I need to master string theory and 10 dimensional geometry? Will it cure my constipation?
| Author | Leonard, Elmore |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Delacorte Press, 1991 |
| Number of Pages | 295 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | June 1993 |
"Big" Bob Gibbs is a Miami judge with a reputation for sending offenders to jail for long terms. This story is about him, not as a protagonist, but as a central figure about whom all other figures revolve. The other characters are Elvin Crowe, middle-aged twisted killer who plans to kill Bob and get paid for it by; Dr. Tommy Vasco, a son of a rich man, now living under house arrest for drug and medical violations and wearing a beeper anklet that keeps him at home; Kathy Diaz Baker, Elvin's parole officer, pursued by the judge but in love with; Detective Seargeant Gary Hammond, a cool and professional cop who is eventually killed by Elvin; and finally, Bob's wife Leanne, a schizophrenic or multiple personality who communes with and is possessed by the spirit of a 12 year old slave girl who died 140 years before.
Elvin becomes more and more reckless and destructive as he closes in on Bob. However Kathy puts it all together, understands that Elvin has killed Gary and Vasco's homosexual lover Hector, and goes with him with a hidden gun to Bob's house. There Crazy Leanne saves them all by shooting Elvin - and Kathy finishes him off.
All the typical Leonard characters and dialog are here. It's nothing special, and the deaths of Hector and Gary are upsetting. But he knows how to pull the reader into his stories.
There are a number of scenes that remain in my memory of this novel.
Leanne was working in some kind of a bar / resort job where she wore a bikini and swam in an aquarium when Bob first saw her. He was smitten by her looks and fell in love. He persuades her to marry him and buys her a Ford Escort (I remember that because Marcia bought one of those in the year that I, and she, read this.) After their marriage Bob learns what a fragile person Leanne is, but he stays with her.
There is one scene, I don't recall it well, where an alligator climbs out of the water behind Bob's house and scares the bejeezus out of Leanne. I don't remember what happens, but I seem to recall that Bob gets his gun and shoots the alligator. However Leanne is traumatized and isn't the same afterward.
In the final scene there is a showdown in the yard in front of Bob's house. Elvin is there holding a gun. Kathy is there with a gun in her purse but no certainty that she can pull it out before being killed. Bob is facing Elvin and about to be shot. Then Leanne steps out of the house in a trance like state with Bob's gun in her hands. She shoots Elvin, who goes down. Kathy pulls her own gun.
Bob tells Kathy, Here's what happened here. Elvin came to the house to kill me. You pulled your gun and shot him dead. That's all that happened.
Kathy and the reader had developed a growing anger at Bob throughout the novel. But both Kathy and the reader immediately realize that Bob was right. Leanne needed to be protected and he, Bob, was protecting her.
It was a satisfying ending of the book.
| Author | Duras, Marguerite |
|---|---|
| Original Language | French |
| Translators | Bray, Barbara |
| Publication | New York: Pantheon Books, 1985 |
| Copyright Date | 1984 |
| Number of Pages | 117 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | June 1993 |
An old woman living in Paris recounts the story of her first lover, taken at age 15, when she lived in French Indochina before the war. She (she never is named) lives with her mother and two older brothers. Her father is dead. Her mother, depressed and half mad, earns a meager income as a directress of a school. Her oldest brother, a leech, a gambler, a loafer, and a bully, steals from the family and squanders all the money.
The girl is approached by a rich 30 year old Chinese man whose father owns real-estate in Cholon, the Chinese quarter of Saigon. She goes with him every day after school to an apartment he keeps, where they make love. He falls in love with her but his father forbids him to marry "the little white whore." She denies any love for him. She tells him that she needs him for his money, to pay their way back to France - and eventually they go. However in the end, years later, she believes she really did love him.
This is a very psychological novel, almost devoid of action, observation, or dialog, but full of very intense feeling. It struck me as a being a woman's book in the old sense.
I read this for a book group.
Looking up Duras and The Lover (L'Amant) in the Wikipedia I find that it is based on Duras's actual experience. However she wrote and rewrote multiple versions of the story. In one account she says she only slept with him once and felt terribly violated when he kissed her. "The revulsion I felt truly cannot be described. ... I did calm down, however, and slid over to the end of the seat as far from Léo as possible. And there I spat into my handkerchief. I kept spitting. … Truly I felt a kind of aftermath of rape. ... Ugliness had entered my mouth, I had communed with horror. I was violated to my very soul.”
My own love life has been so simple and pleasant. I'm a lucky fellow.
| Author | Sabatini, Rafael |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Grosset and Dunlap |
| Copyright Date | 1921 |
| Number of Pages | 392 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | French Revolution |
| When Read | July 1993 |
A wonderful romance in the full sense of the word. Andre Louis Moreau, godson of the local seigneur and thought to be his illegitimate son, is educated and trained as a lawyer. At age 24, in 1788 (I think) a divinity student who is his friend asks for him to help him get the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr to pay restitution for his gameskeeper's killing of a poacher. He opposes his friend's democratic ideals but agrees to accompany him for friendship's sake. He also finds out that the Marquis is suing for the hand of Aline, the godfather's niece and childhood playmate of Andre Louis. Their appeals fail. The Marquis, deciding that A.L's friend is too eloquent a revolutionary, goads him into a duel and kills him. A.L. decides to take up his friend's cause, just to get back at Tour d'Azyr.
He gives several great revolutionary speeches. Then he must run and hide from the police. He hides among a wandering band of theatrical improvisers, soon becomes their leader, and plays the scamp Scaramouche in their Commedia dell Arte productions. He woos their pretty actress Climene and plans to marry her but again falls afoul of Tour d'Azyr who dazzles and debauches the girl. A.L. provokes a riot in the theater against the Marquis and again goes into hiding.
In Paris in 1789 he becomes an assistant in a fencing school. By skill and theoretical study he becomes a great master. Two years later he joins the popular assembly to help fight the nobles, eventually meeting but only wounding, Tour d'Azyr in a duel.
In the end it transpires that he is Tour d'Azyr's illegitimate son. They learn it while on the verge of killing each other. He saves the Marquis' life for which he must leave France. But he and Aline discover their love for each other.
S combines all of the elements of a traditional romantic tale with great intelligence, good writing, fine characterizations, and political and historical analysis. It is an extremely good read and a satisfying tale.
The "he" who must leave France is Moreau/Scaramouche, not Tour d'Azyr.
I must have picked this book up in the library. I did not find it among the old 1920's editions of Sabatini books that I have in my basement and the first book I read from the Gutenberg collection was in 1999. I don't know why I picked it up. It may have been because I loved the Errol Flynn movie of Captain Blood and read the book, and its successor, with great enjoyment as a boy.
Once I discovered the Gutenberg and had a Palm Pilot to carry books around on, I read more Sabatini and Stanley Weyman, a similar and at least equally good, if not better, writer of historical romance. I also have four old copies of Sabatini books that I found in the wonderful Wheaton library book sale, that I haven't visited in some years now since I've been reading all electronic books.
The books are fluff, but just the kind of fluff that an eleven year old loves and the eleven year old in me still appreciates. Sabatini and Weyman had enough credibility as writers that their appeal did not, at least for many of their books, disappear for maturing readers.
| Author | James, Henry |
|---|---|
| Publication | Oxford University Press, 1985 |
| Copyright Date | 1878 |
| Number of Pages | 81 |
| Extras | Introduction by Jean Gooden |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | July 1993 |
Published in Daisy Miller and Other Stories.
Frederick Winterbourne, a young American expatriate living in Geneva, goes to the resort town of Vevey on the lake to visit his aunt. There he meets Daisy Miller, a beautiful young American girl traveling in Europe with her mother, little brother, and a professional guide. The Millers are very wealthy but completely uneducated and unsophisticated. Mrs. Miller is seemingly incompetent to control her children and she just gives in to whatever it is that they wish to do.
Daisy is an innocent flirt. She enjoys the company of men and sees nothing wrong with going out with them, unchaperoned - which scandalizes the American society women in Switzerland and Rome, where the story continues. She spends all her time with an Italian social adventurer, for which she is ostracized by society.
Winterbourne's attitude is full of conflict. He appears sometimes as pursuer, even would be seducer; sometimes as protector. He tries sometimes to protect her as spokesman for convention; sometimes as one who is himself irked by convention. It is an inconsistent and not very honorable role.
In the end, Daisy goes out with her Italian companion to the coliseum at night where she catches the Roman fever (malaria?) and soon dies for her indiscretion.
This was a terrifically popular book in both Europe and America where it was taken in Europe as an explanation of the American girl, and perhaps in America as a kind of cautionary tale. I would have liked to see James stand up for Daisy and make her a more forceful and capable person, but that was not his interest in the story.
Interesting not as a character study but as a study of social conventions.
See the notes for the next book, Pandora.
| Author | James, Henry |
|---|---|
| Publication | Oxford University Press, 1985 |
| Copyright Date | 1884 |
| Number of Pages | 63 |
| Extras | Introduction by Jean Gooden |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | July 1993 |
This is from pp.85-147 of Daisy Miller and Other Stories.
Young Count Otto Vogelstein is on his way to New York on a steamer which also holds Pandora Day and her bourgeois American family on their way back from two years in Europe. He is fascinated by the girl's good looks and easy self-confidence but considers her to be far beneath him socially and fears any involvement with her. Two years later she appears in Washington where V is attached as undersecretary to the German legation. Now however she is clearly some sort of rising star and even sits on the sofa at a party with the President - where she asks some favor that V does not over hear.
While V pursues his dilemma and talks to her some more - it turns out that she has gone beyond him, marrying a taller, older, more handsome man who has just been appointed ambassador to Holland.
This is a kind of follow up story to Daisy Miller. It is as if James, having shown the shallow and naive side of forthright American character, was now concerned to let people know that even forthright American girls can also be very intelligent, competent and successful in society.
If Daisy Miller was one sided and lacking some conviction it was at least a serious attempt at social observation and analysis. Pandora however struck me as pure, transparent, polemic. I did not believe for a minute in the "self-made girl" that James presents.
James was a great writer working in a style that has generally not appealed to me - subtle, sophisticated, restrained, concerned with nuances of personal and social behavior in "society" that lead into what seem to me to be narrower rather than broader understandings of human nature. Nevertheless, the writers who can do what James does (Jane Austen comes to mind) teach us to see things that would otherwise fly right past a person like me. Because I am who I am and read what I read, occasional readings of Henry James, for all its narrow focus on the niceties of social behavior (and I admit that's an unfair characterization - he does more than that) actually broaden my outlook on life and literature.
On a totally different note, I checked the presidencies of the period and found that Chester A. Arthur was President when this book was published. It was presumably he or his predecessors Rutherford B. Hayes or the ill-fated James A. Garfield that sat on the couch with Pandora and appointed her fiance to be ambassador to Holland. Did James think about that? Did he have a particular president in mind? Was his notion of the president a positive or a negative one? I wonder. Somehow it seems appropriate to me that these least memorable of presidents should play such an insignificant role in the story.
| Author | Saylor, Steven |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991 |
| Number of Pages | 357 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Rome |
| When Read | July 1993 |
In 80 BC, Gordianus the Finder is hired by Cicero to find information exonerating Cicero's client, Severus Maximus, of the crime of parricide. Gordianus lives in a house inherited from his father with his slave woman Bethesda, who is also his mistress.
He investigates the scene of the crime, the rural town where Severus lived, Severus' cousins who profited from the crime, and the wealthy ex-slave Chrysogonous who profited even more and who has a direct connection to the dictator Sulla - who is embarrassed by all that Gordianus reveals.
In the end Cicero wins an acquittal by producing the facts and by adroit manipulation of the judges. But further facts are then revealed and we discover that Severus, whom we already know to be a molester of his daughters, did in fact kill his father and his younger half-brother too. In a final epilogue Severus is killed by an old lady, his daughters are saved, and a young mute boy who was left to his own devices is taken in by Gordianus.
This is a bit more sophisticated than Lindsey Davis' Silver Pigs. There is less affinity for manipulative plot devices and slightly more interest in the social relations of Roman society - though both are acceptable.
I find the historical aspects of these books to be more interesting than the murder mystery part. The writing is competent, especially for a first novel, and the thinking is interesting and worthwhile. I still wish for another Robert Graves but Saylor is a decent writer and I would read another some time.
I did in fact read another, though I very recently attempted, and then abandoned, Saylor's more ambitious novel, Roma.
A very significant part of American publishing consists of mysteries and war adventures, both of which have their reflection in books set in ancient Rome. These familiar genres satisfy an already well assimilated set of expectations in modern readers and they enable writers and readers to meet in the otherwise unfamiliar landscape of the ancient times.
| Author | Stowe, Harriet Beecher |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harper Classics, 1989 |
| Copyright Date | 1852 |
| Number of Pages | 451 |
| Extras | Introduction by Jeremy Larner |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Race and slavery |
| When Read | August 1993 |
Uncle Tom is a profoundly hoonest, religious, deep feeling man who is sold South by a master who has gotten himself into debt. He is bought first by a humane wealthy skeptic, St. Clare, where he looks after St. Care's little daughter Eva, a saint who is loved by all the slaves. But St. Clare dies and Tom is sold again to Simon Legree, a brute who works slaves to death and then discards them. Tom refuses to whip another slave, time and again refusing to do wrong. Legree cannot stand such courage and insubordination, such an example to the other slaves, and so tortures Tom to death.
Other characters are George and Eliza Harris, who escape to Canada; Miss Ophelia, a decent Northern cousin of St. Clare who learns that blacks are not merely to be treated fairly but to be loved as people; Topey, a slave child raised almost as an animal who becomes a human being; Chloe, faithful wife of Tom; Casey a strong passionate cultured slave who schemes to escape and drive Legree insane; and various slave traders, slaves, women sold into whoredom, preachers who preach slavery, and so on.
A remarkable book about the institution of slavery and its impact on the slaves. It is in a sentimental, melodramatic, didactic and religious style which could not be used today, but for all that, the book exudes intelligence, dep human sympathy, acute observation, and great understanding of what slavery was really about.
Whatever its literary limits and however naive its author's faith in Christian heaven and afterlife, this is still a very powerful and instructive book. It is guaranteed to destroy any illusions any reader might have that slavery was not so bad or that slaves did better as slaves than as free people. A historically important book still worth reading today.
I had read that, at the time of its publication and distribution, this was the most popular book yet published in the United States. It is said that this book did more to develop anti-slavery sentiment in the North than any other book up to its time.
I'm currently about 3/4ths of the way through The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. It is another outstanding book about slavery, but published in 2014 with a more contemporary outlook on who the slaves were, the role of religion, and so on. Its understanding of slavery is probably more sensitive to the nuances of feelings in both masters and slaves, but Stowe's book, like the autobiography of Frederic Douglass, is an important classic that can teach us things about the conscience and consciousness of those times that we cannot get from books written 162 years later.
| Author | Lawrence, D.H. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Alfred A. Knopf, 1993 |
| Copyright Date | 1928 |
| Number of Pages | 62 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Christianity |
| When Read | August 1993 |
See notes.
See notes.
There was a blank card for this book in my box of book cards. It had the author, title, and no more.
I remember how this came about. I had missed writing up the book card. Months later I was sure that something was missing and eventually figured it out. I created a blank entry to record that I read the book and thought I might go back and fill it in, but I never did.
I had to look at the Amazon reviews to see what it was about. It was a very short, total reinterpretation of the story of Christ. It don't think it attempted to interpret each of the stories that has come down to us in the New Testament, but rather saw Jesus as a man rather than as a risen God.
I don't know enough to say more than that.
| Author | Chesterton, G.K. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1963 |
| Copyright Date | 1908 |
| Number of Pages | 281 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | August 1993 |
The story opens on a poetry lecture in a pleasant "artists" neighborhood of London where anarchist Lucien Gregory holds forth and Gabriel Syme, defender of convention and order opposes him. From there it becomes a preposterous wild adventure as Syme reveals himself as a police agent who worms his way into the anarchist high council.
Seven anarchists named Sunday, Monday, etc., plan to assassinate the Czar and the President of France. Syme, as Thursday, is determined to foil the plot. Gradually, after many adventures, all the others except the leader, Sunday, are revealed as fellow police agents, spying on each other. The leader turns out to be the chief of the spies. There are romps through France, a sword fight, a high speed chase on horses and then automobiles. Another chase after Sunday in horse cabs, then on an elephant, then a balloon, and a final party at Sunday's country estate.
In the end it's all revealed as a poet's dream.
Although the story is absurd it's also funny, witty, and easy to read. A delightful book. An irreverent book.
| Author | Mack, William P. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Bantam Books, 1992 |
| Copyright Date | 1991 |
| Number of Pages | 372 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | August 1993 |
A World War II story about the Battle of the Atlantic, told from the American side, written by a retired U.S. Navy Vice-Admiral. The story opens with the sinking of an old destroyer in early '42, rammed by a merchantman while chasing a sub through a convoy. Lt. Alden 'Tex' Sorenson survives to be assigned as executive officer on another old four stacker, refitted for duty in the Atlantic with one boiler and stack removed to make room for the extra fuel. The O'Leary escorts convoys in the Caribbean, the coast of Africa during the invasions there, and the North Atlantic to England and Russia. As time goes by, electronics, airpower, code breaking, new weapons, and overwhelming numbers defeat the U-boats and the battle is carried all the way to the Bay of Biscay where O'Leary attacks, sinks, and is simultaneously sunk by, a new "Seawolf" class submarine armed with powerful guns and homing torpedoes. [According to Mack, the Americans were using air launched anti-submarine torpedoes as early as 1943. I had never heard that.]
In the end most of the men survive and return to sweethearts in Norfolk, their home base. Sorenson will continue in the Navy but as a rich man (his brother runs a huge ranch.)
All the elements of a good story are here but the writing is wooden and pedestrian, characters are flat. We read about love, war, bitter Atlantic winter storms, hatred of the enemy, but it's all so lacking in color and imagination that we feel very little of it.
A good, traditional sea / war story that has been told very well by authors like Monsarrat and Bucheim, but poorly here.
Looking him up, I see that Mack was the author of The Naval Officer's Guide and Naval Ceremonies, Customs and Traditions. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1937 and was Superintendent of the Academy from 1972-75. I presume that he fought in World War II and knows whereof he speaks from personal experience as well as from training. I'll cut him some slack. Maybe he wasn't a great novelist but he knew what he was writing about and, presumably, cared very much about the subject.
Assuming he fought in the war and didn't just command a desk in Washington (and it's my understanding that such desk sailors don't become admirals), then he's one of the people we owe something to, and maybe something to the desk sailors too.
| Author | Mosley, Walter |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1991 |
| Number of Pages | 284 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Easy Rawlins |
| When Read | September 1993 |
Easy Rawlins, having made his little fortune in 1948 (Devil in a Blue Dress), has bought some apartments in Watts and lives off the rents. He has an agent, Mofass, who collects for him and he does the janitorial work, pretending to be Mofass' employee instead of vice-versa. Then the IRS comes after him for back taxes and he's dragged into a deal where the FBI makes him inform on a Jewish communist in return for keeping the IRS off his back.
Several murders occur and, in the end, it turns out that the IRS agent was an extortionist who had been robbing black people and attempting to rip-off Easy.
The plot is complicated and sometimes hard to follow but the character of Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins and the settings and surroundings of Watts in 1953 are attractive and absorbing. Easy is a man who is constantly torn between what he wants to do and what he should do, what he wants to avoid and what he's forced to deal with. His choices aren't always right but he makes the effort and, when push comes to shove, (as it always does in these books), he tries manfully to do the right thing.
I like these books and will keep up with Mosley's output. See also diary entry.
The diary entry was for Sept. 5, 1993. It was of some length.
| Author | Denny, Robert |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1990 |
| Number of Pages | 294 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | September 1993 |
Two high school friends in a small Pennsylvania town wind up in the air force in World War II. One is killed. The other leads a large bomber force in the last days of the war to attack a German air base where Germany's best pilots have been gathered for a last ditch ME262 jet fighter assault on the American bombers.
Several themes are treated in parallel. As the war progresses, the social situation in Mahoning PA gradually evolves into much more of a melting pot. The English descended upper class and the Swede and "Hunkie" lower class begin to mix a bit and, to some extent, change roles. There are also some love stories, a story of a German pilot who is the main character's cousin and physical double, and an odd, out of place story of a strange co-pilot into kung-fu and eastern mysticism.
At first I thought the writing was wooden and the plot contrived. Gradually however I was won over by the one thing that saves books like this. Whatever his limitations, the author was writing from personal experience and deeply felt attachment to the men whom he fought with during the war. It shows and it makes up for a little heavy-handedness in the writing.
I have only the haziest recollection of this book but I still subscribe to the thoughts expressed in my comment. I think that in many cases a reader can tell the difference between a war adventure novel written for money and one written out of love and gratitude towards the people involved. Many books written about the events of the 20th century wars were written by veterans of those wars or, for example, the children of veterans or others with a personal connection to the war and the people who suffered and fought in it. It makes a difference in the writing.
| Author | Simak, Clifford D. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Del Rey / Ballantine Books, 1979 |
| Number of Pages | 282 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | September 1993 |
A conventional SF novel by an old pro about aliens landing in contemporary America. The aliens are giant black boxes who eat trees and expel cellulose in bales to be eaten by their offspring. For the most part they avoid humans and ignore human activity.
The story shifts from the Midwest landing sites in Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin to a newsroom in Minneapolis and to U.S. government meetings in Washington.
In the end, the intentions of the visitors and the outcome of their visit are left up in the air. They begin producing cars, superior to anything humans produce. Are they gifts? Are they payment for the trees? Are they an experiment or a manipulation? In the last pages they have been discovered to be working on houses. We don't know why. And in one of the houses, a moving shadow suggests that, maybe, they are duplicating people.
As the end of the book drew near I kept waiting for a wrap up. The visitors would fly away and leave the earth a better place. But S chose a downbeat ending instead.
Very conventional 50's era style of writing, very competently done. Nothing really to recommend it though.
I remember the book, maybe not very well, but I do remember it. I'm wondering now if my judgment was too harsh. Perhaps the message of the book was that there are more ways to live and more ways to be intelligent than we have imagined. Maybe the goal was not to suggest that we can look at humanity in an entirely new way, but rather that there may be ways of looking at humanity that are entirely outside our understanding and possibly entirely inaccessible to us. Maybe Simak was saying that he wouldn't be able to understand them any more than we, his readers, would, and we should not be too self-confident. We don't know what lies ahead.
| Author | Cather, Willa |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Vintage Books |
| Copyright Date | 1928 |
| Number of Pages | 39 |
| Genres | Fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | September 1993 |
This is a single short story from Five Stories by Willa Cather.
Sixty-five year old Anton Rosicky, a Czech immigrant farmer in Nebraska, has just been told by the town doctor that his heart is weak and he must stop all heavy labor. He returns home and settles down to lighter chores, letting his five sons do the hard work. Then at dinner one night he tells the story of his going to London at age 18 and living as a tailor in abject hunger and poverty, and then on to New York where he lived better but still felt he was missing what was important in life, and finally on to Nebraska where he bought a farm with not too good land but led a good life with his young wife and five children.
He is worried about what will happen after he is gone. His oldest son talks of leaving the farm and he fears that his daughter-in-law is unhappy and too well bred for the simple life that the Rosicky's have to offer. He goes to his son and daughter-in-law's house and works in their field, suffering a heart attack. The girl saves him and puts him to bed and he sees that she is a good person and is hopeful. Then he suffers a second attack and dies. He is buried in a country cemetery by his own field, on the open prairie.
Like others of the years before this, this story is a celebration of a fine, wonderful person, one who would never even be noticed except by those who are closest to him. It is a simple story. Others in my reading group found it too simple, too syrupy, but I liked it. I liked Rosicky and appreciate the writer who can write his story.
I don't know if I read the other stories in this collection or not. I probably didn't since I only wrote up this one. We had chosen it for our reading group and I may have been in the midst of other books and so just read the one chosen story.
I remember Rosicky. I pictured him then, and now, as a small, thin, old man, with gray hair and a bristly face, much as I am now. He was unassuming, perfectly ready to believe that everyone was worth more than he was, and yet not unhappy with that state of affairs.
At the beginning of the story the doctor tells him that his heart is weak. Most of us would be upset at such a diagnosis, but not Rosicky. He says something along the lines of, "Naw, I reckon my heart is okay." The young doctor insists that it's not and he must give up hard labor. Rosicky reluctantly agrees, more out of respect for the doctor than out of real belief that there's anything wrong with his heart. But when there's hard work that needs to be done, and it's not for him but for his son and daughter-in-law, that overrides any abstract concern about his heart.
Cather had a genius for understanding the fundamental decency of ordinary folk. A biography of Mozart or Einstein or Teddy Roosevelt would be expected to exhibit the shining character and human worth of its subject. That is expected and understood. Willa Cather could write a biography that shows the shining character and human worth of Neighbor Rosicky. It is unexpected and all the more uplifting for that.
| Author | Graves, Robert |
|---|---|
| Publication | Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964 |
| Number of Pages | 323 |
| Genres | Fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | October 1993 |
Divided into three sections, English, Roman, and Majorcan stories. My favorites included "The Shout", an intricate tale woven by a madman about his stone shattered soul and his ability to kill using an Australian aboriginal shout. "Epics are out of fashion" is about a Roman poet writing a brilliant epic of the civil wars who disdains to honor Nero in his works and competes against Nero's own epic. He and his family are killed for it while the narrator grabs all the money he can and runs for foreign parts.
G claims that most all the stories are true (presumably not the Roman ones.) Many are not in standard fictional form but are related as personal stories in which the author appears in his own voice and name.
G fought in the first World War, worked in England, then settled in the 30's in Majorca in Spain. The Civil War drove him out for 10 years in 1936 but he returned to live, study, and produce his remarkable multi-lingual output in 1946 up through the time of publication in 1964.
There is a clear lucidity and rationality to his writing, even to the stories of madness, that is very attractive. There is quick intelligence, almost universal knowledge of European languages, literature and history, and an enticing interest in the quirky, eccentric side of human behavior and in all types of people.
I don't know why I thought the Roman stories were not true. Re-reading my statement about "Epics are out of fashion" I consider it very possible that some record remains about an incident that could have inspired Graves to write the story. Graves wrote historical fiction but he did not, in a paraphrase of Marx, write it any way he chose. There was a historical reality that Graves strove to understand and reproduce and he did so about as well as any other writer of historical fiction.
I had already read Graves' major Roman and Byzantine novels when I came to these stories. Robert Graves was a favorite author of mine.
| Author | Defoe, Daniel |
|---|---|
| Publication | Signet Classic |
| Copyright Date | 1718 |
| Number of Pages | 297 |
| Extras | Afterword by Harvey Swados, bibliography |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | October 1993 |
As a young man Robinson Crusoe forsakes his father's business and mother's pleading and goes to sea to make his fortune and seek adventure. He goes through severe storms that seem like portents from God but after each scare his resolve firms up and he heads out.
He is captured by pirates off North Africa, lives as a slave, escapes two years later, and sails to Brazil where he becomes a successful planter. Then he embarks on a slaving expedition to Africa but a terrible storm blows the ship off course and wrecks it on an uninhabited island off the coast of Venezuela where he is the sole survivor, castaway for 25 years. There by industry and intelligence, he makes a life for himself, gradually becoming a serious Christian in his way. He makes failed, sometimes foolish attempts to get off. Then he is thrown into a crisis by finding a footprint on the beach.
The book does not end with the story of the man Friday and the cannibals and the rescue by catching mutineers on a ship. Crusoe sails back and lands in Portugal, then goes through Spain and the Pyrenees in winter with a whole little chapter on fighting a huge pack of wolves. He lands in England, goes back to Brazil to reclaim his fortune, and returns to England again.
I very much liked this book. It was one of the earliest English novels and is full of the religious, political and social limitations of its time. But it had an interesting character, interesting for himself as well as for what he tells us of the 17th and 18th centuries.
I seem to recall that Friday was essentially enslaved by Crusoe but notice that I didn't comment on that in my write-up of the story. I did mention that Crusoe embarked on a slaving expedition to Africa. Perhaps I thought that mentioning the "political and social limitations of its time" sufficiently covered the matter.
| Author | Shelley, Mary |
|---|---|
| Publication | Penguin Books, 1992 |
| Copyright Date | 1818 |
| Number of Pages | 215 |
| Extras | Introduction, chronology, appendices |
| Genres | Fiction; Horror |
| When Read | October 1993 |
This is a penultimate Romantic Gothic horror story about a man who meddles in matters where no man should and is punished for it. Victor Frankenstein, brilliant, sensitive, obsessed student of chemistry, creates a being who thinks and lives but is large, super human in strength, and so ugly that all who see him either run or attack him and drive him away. The monster vents his anger on F by killing F's brother and putting evidence on a childhood friend. Then he demands of F that F make him a mate. F initially attempts to comply but then fears to create another monster and destroys it. The monster then takes revenge by killing F's wife on their wedding night. F pursues him for years to the ends of the earth but dies in the arctic north. The monster pledges to kill himself and disappears.
The story drips with Romantic sensibility. F is constantly swooning and feverish with emotion. Key questions for a modern reader like, how is any of this possible, are completely ignored. S violates rationality over and over again. The interest here is in the key question of What is the monster? Is he human? What are F's obligations to him?
It would all work better if Frankenstein matched his swooning with some serious thinking about what he had done and what he could do for the monster.
Read with our book group.
As I recall, all of us in the book group felt the difference between this book and modern books on similar subjects. It was an early nineteenth century Romantic work, written by a 21 year old on a dare. I thought of her as something like a hippie of her time - unconventional, living a counter-cultural life that was "way out" by the standards of the day. But she was no fool. There was a lot of intelligence in the book and it has had a lasting impact.
| Author | Stout, Rex |
|---|---|
| Publication | Mattituck, NY: Aeonian Press, 1977 |
| Copyright Date | 1939 |
| Number of Pages | 191 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | October 1993 |
Two young women from Yugoslavia show up in New York, one of them claiming to be Nero Wolfe's adopted daughter from 20 years before. She is implicated first in a robbery, and then in the murder of a British agent.
In the end it turns out that the woman claiming to be Wolfe's daughter is the Princess Vladanka, a homicidal representative of the Donevitch family which was attempting to sell out Yugoslavian interests to the Germans. Her attendant turned out to be Wolfe's adopted daughter whom he hadn't seen since she was three years old. We don't know at the end whether she will stay in New York or have any further relationship with Wolfe.
This one was written on the eve of World War II. It had a bit more of Stout's progressive political viewpoint in it than usual and also a bit of the ethnic consciousness in it that characterized America before the war but slipped away afterwards.
As always, it is an absolutely consistent example of Stout's wit, charm, and inventiveness. He seems not to have written any bad books. This is the eleventh I have read. That leaves me about 33 to go.
As of this writing, I have read seven more Rex Stout books after this one, though one was not a Nero Wolfe story. So as of February 1, 2015, I've read 17 of 44. It doesn't look like I'm going to finish the series but it's possible that I will read a few more.
| Author | Crichton, Michael |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Ballantine Books, 1993 |
| Copyright Date | 1990 |
| Number of Pages | 399 |
| Genres | Fiction; Thriller |
| When Read | November 1993 |
A pop thriller about an amusement park stocked with dinosaurs created by retrieving DNA from biting insects stuck in amber. John Hammond, 75 year old entrepreneur, has put together a team of scientists with hundreds of millions in financing and bought an island off the coast of Costa Rica to develop his animals. However his backers are nervous and they send a representative with three scientists to independently determine if the park is safe. They find that nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong.
In the second half of the book the handful of adults and two children battle the predators, succumbing one by one to T-Rex, Velociraptor packs, Dilophosaurs, and little scavengers, before they finally restart their generators, raise their defenses and call for help.
C has made an effort here to educate us, not only about dinosaurs but also about the dangers of unregulated genetic engineering in the sole service of profit. There are numerous flaws in the plot mechanics, science, and in the human characters, but the story works. It is both educational and entertaining.
I'll be interested in watching the movie but, as always, I expect it to be less interesting than the book.
Having seen the movie I have to say that it was not less interesting than the book. It is, of course, impossible to compress 399 pages into a two hour movie. There are many losses, including losses of very interesting parts. But the movie was remarkably well done.
| Author | Tacitus, Publius Cornelius, 56-117 |
|---|---|
| Original Language | la |
| Translators | Mattingly, H.; Handford, S.A. |
| Publication | Penguin Books, 1987 |
| Copyright Date | 98 |
| Number of Pages | 176 |
| Extras | Introduction by H. Mattingly, revised by S.A. Handford |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History; Biography |
| When Read | November 1993 |
Agricola was Tacitus' father-in-law, an important Roman in the army and then in administration, becoming governor of Britain. T makes him out to be a paragon of virtue, courage, wisdom, and selfless devotion to the state. The short book includes the first account of Britain, not very complementary nor very convincing. There is also some very interesting material on the emperor Domitian, who died just before this was written. T considers him to have been a terrible tyrant who killed all those who stood up to him and forced the others, including T himself, to an abject, soul destroying silence. It was an eloquent description of life in a totalitarian state.
Germania is T's detailed description of the people and customs of Germany. T appears to have more respect for the Germans than the British who won no respect from T for being defeated by Rome.
The account covers region by region, tribe by tribe. Much of it is apparently very inaccurate, but other parts are more accurate and are our most important source of data on German customs.
I am no anthropologist but the impression I get is closer to that of American Indians than to Rome.
T wrote very eloquently and is worth reading for his own self as well as his subject.
I have recently read a couple of historiographies (John Tosh The Pursuit of History and Willie Thompson What Happened to History.) It would be interesting to read some of the classical histories again and compare them to more modern efforts. One obvious difference is the concern of the moderns to establish their sources. I should think that in the ancient world, before the printing press, it was not possible to cite canonical versions of texts, much less page numbers, and readers would have had very little ability to check sources.
Another difference is the need of modern authors to demonstrate more objectivity and, in some but not all cases, to avoid moral judgments.
I have often day dreamed about someone discovering a hidden trove of ancient texts. What if the librarians at Alexandria, anticipating the destruction of the library, spirited 100,000 of the most important texts into a hidden cave in the desert where they survived to this day. Since this is a day dream, why stop there? They spirited all of the texts into the desert and they all survived. Their discovery would both illuminate the ancient world as never before and restore to living memory the lives of tens of thousands of individuals who are now lost to us.
| Author | Fast, Howard |
|---|---|
| Publication | Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Co., 1946 |
| Copyright Date | 1943 |
| Number of Pages | 302 |
| Extras | Introduction by Carl Van Doren. |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| When Read | November 1993 |
This is F's fictionalized biography of a man he describes as the world's first professional revolutionary. Paine was the son of an English Quaker corset stay maker who, into his mid thirties, lived in England engaged in various manual, semi-skilled trades. He arrived in America, in Philadelphia, only just before the revolutionary events of 1775. He worked as a tutor and then, after losing some of his clients due to an ill-considered drunken, sacrilegious remark, got work editing the Pennsylvania Magazine, a new "shilling magazine" created as a private venture by a small publisher/printer who couldn't afford anyone more respectable than Paine.
Paine blossomed in this job. He interviewed travelers from all the colonies and educated himself as to the issues and conditions, thinking deeply about the whole question of monarchy vs. democracy. Finally he wrote Common Sense which demanded a break with feudal privilege and belittled the concepts of Lord and King. The book sold 200,000 copies (P got no profits) and helped spur the Declaration of Independence. He threw his heart and soul into the war effort and his self-sacrifices, his speeches, and his "Crisis Papers" aided final victory.
After the war he went to England where he published The Rights of Man to help start an English revolution. He barely escaped with his life and made it to France where he participated in the events occurring after 1789. He almost lost his life during the Terror but came back to the U.S. where his last book, Age of Reason caused him to be vilified and harassed until his death in 1809.
A most interesting book.
I see that I wrote up this book as if it were a non-fiction biography rather than a novel. I assume, or at least hope, that it was a veridical account.
| Author | Mann, Thomas |
|---|---|
| Translators | Lowe-Porter, H.T. |
| Publication | New York: Vintage Books |
| Copyright Date | 1911 |
| Number of Pages | 75 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | December 1993 |
Gustave Ashenbach, now "von" Aschenbach, a poet and writer in his fifties (or older?) decides to summer in Venice instead of at his country home in the mountains by Munich. He arrives eventually at his hotel where he gradually becomes obsessed with a young Polish boy staying with his mother and sisters at the hotel. He follows the boy everywhere, spying on him. Even though there is an epidemic brewing in the city, Aschenbach will not leave. He stays and watches, gradually becoming more and more degraded as all his dignity is sacrificed to his obsession for this boy. Finally he dies in a chaise at the beach, of the plague perhaps, while watching the boy play in the water.
"... He leaned back, with hanging arms, quivering from head to foot, and quite unmanned, he whispered the hackneyed phrase of love and longing - impossible in these circumstances, absurd, abject, ridiculous enough, yet sacred too, and not unworthy of honour even here; 'I love you!'"
As in Magic Mountain, we are presented with a complex, intellectual, but repressed person who finds himself the unwilling slave of a passion which surprises and overwhelms him, a passion which is beneath him but, in a curious sense, above him too.
The story is difficult and disturbing. Even Mann must have been partly unconscious, or at least inarticulate, about the dangerous pedophiliac tendencies described here. But it is a powerfully developed story with a great mastery over emotional nuance, plot construction, and character. It is a masterpiece of well constructed and deeply conceived story telling.
Aschenbach was certainly not a character that I would identify with, not in 1993, not in 2015, and probably not in any of the years of my life. At the beginning of the story he is a self respecting person of considerable personal dignity. He has no idea of what awaits him in Venice, no idea that he is or could be subject to the passions and longings that will seize hold of him in that city.
The boy's mother begins to notice Aschenbach. She steers the boy away from him. She gives him indignant looks. She behaves towards him as if he were the kind of nasty, depraved, person one might meet on the street - an image which, at first at least, he cannot imagine as applying to himself.
Before long, his dignity and self respect are slipping away. He can't help himself. He dies his hair a dark color. He wears clothing that doesn't suit a man of his age. He disregards the plague sweeping the town. He must watch the boy.
Mann was a writer with complex sensibilities. He combined a deep understanding of human character and human frailty with a rich background in the history of people and of ideas. I read most of his books, leaving only a few, maybe only one of his major novels, Royal Highness, to read in my older age. Death in Venice seems to have been the last of his work that I read. I've reached older age. Maybe it's time for me to finish the canon.
When I read this I don't think I noticed, or at least didn't mention in my notes, that just as Aschenbach is fatally attracted to a young boy, so too Adrian Leverkuhn of Doctor Faustus was so attracted. Perhaps Mann himself had a passion for young boys.
| Author | Mayer, Dr. Robert S. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Avon Books, 1991 |
| Number of Pages | 267 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Psychology |
| When Read | December 1993 |
Mayer is a therapist in New York specializing in multiple personality disorder. This book is an account for laymen of his treatment of five people who all appeared to have been ritually abused as children and who seemed to have very large numbers of completely organized and differentiated alters. Some reported 500 or more alter personalities.
His first such case was a man named Ned who, after two years of therapy, entered medical school and got freaked out while performing an autopsy. He had a flashback of cutting into a body before, as a child. Gradually he claimed to recall memories of Satan worship, torture, murder of babies and children, and cannibalism. M pushed Ned to recall more but Ned wound up committing suicide.
Of the other four patients, two got substantially better and appeared to "integrate". The other two made slower and more ambiguous progress but did appear to have been helped. M never knew whether the stories he was told were true. Some appeared clearly to be false, but many others were plausible even if disgusting.
I read this book to get a better insight into Marcia's work. I learned something about the people in therapy, MPD, the effect of trauma on children, the use of hypnotism in therapy, and so on. M impressed me as a sympathetic and flexible person who did his best to help his clients and learn from them.
"MPD" stands for "Multiple Personality Disorder", a term that has since been replaced with "DID" for "Dissociative Identity Disorder". "Integration" is the term for putting multiple personalities back together into a whole and unitary person - a goal that is extremely hard to achieve but maybe not so hard for some therapists to fool themselves into believing that it has happened.
Marcia still does a lot of work with DID clients. It seems to me that they make up just a few percent of her clients but take up 40% of her time. They are deeply damaged people, distrustful of everyone, often unable to account for their actions, and very needy of attention and help. Surprisingly to me, some of them function better than I would expect, but all are periodically suicidal and it is often all that Marcia can do to just keep them alive. All of them were severely abused as children, by which I mean that they were abused in ways that most of us can't even conceive of and would cause us to throw up or scream if we has to watch it on film. I think that some of the skepticism about MPD/DID is really due to the fact that the character of the abuse, and of the damage done to the children, is beyond the range of the imaginable for many normal adults, even including professional therapists.
| Author | Francis, Dick |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Fawcett Crest, 1991 |
| Number of Pages | 321 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | December 1993 |
Peter Darwin, a 32 year old member of Britain's foreign service (are all F's heroes 32 years old?) helps two old singers, Vicki and Greg, fight off a mugger in Miami. since he is on his way back to England anyway, the local consul asks him to accompany the shaken up pair on the way home. He takes them all the way to Cheltenham where he meets their daughter and to be son-in-law, a veterinarian specializing in horses. The young man, Ken MdClure, has had a string of seeming bad luck with eight horses dying who shouldn't have died. It is destroying his reputation and prospects for a career. Darwin stays on to investigate, meeting people he knew as a child and gradually piecing together the truth. In the end it turns out that Carey Hewitt, head of the veterinary practice, has been poisoning the animals in an insurance scheme, killing two other participants. There is a quick little ambush at the end in which Darwin is almost killed, but vanquishes Hewett, resolves the case, and marries the girl.
As always with F, the technical information (this time on horses and medicine) is well researched and interesting, and the plot moves along. If anything however, the characters are even thinner than usual, the love affair even simpler, and the twists and turns a bit less exciting than most of his other novels.
It's rather standard Dick Francis fare, acceptable but not up to his best efforts.
Perhaps books like this give us a way to re-create the experience of being 32 years old again. I never "lose myself" in the characters of a story and don't want to do so, but that's not to say that I can never appreciate the vicarious experience of the readers who do so lose themselves. I could, and surely have, written a lot about the relationship of reader to author and character. It's a complex subject that, in my opinion, is made more interesting by recognizing the complexities rather than by trying to ignore them.
| Editor | Norton, Andre |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Tom Doherty Associates (TOR), 1991 |
| Copyright Date | 1989 |
| Number of Pages | 354 |
| Extras | Introduction by Robert Bloch |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | December 1993 |
An anthology containing one story chosen by each of the eight winners of the "Grand Master" award of the SF Writers of America. Stores are: "Long Watch" 1948 - Robert Heinlein, a young engineer accepts a fatal dose of radiation to destroy nuclear weapons commandeered by a deranged fascist military officer. "With Folded Hands" 1947 - Jack Williamson, a new type of robot serves too well, reducing all people to helpless, enforced dependency. "Autumn Land" 1971 - Clifford Simak, a very strange tale of a man with photos of a catastrophe in the future who arrives in a timeless, changeless, autumn town - all unexplained. "A Gun for Dinosaur" 1956 - L. Sprague DeCamp, a time machine takes people back to hunt dinosaur and a timid little fellow dies in a heroic effort to save an asshole who endangers them all. "Lean Times in Lankhmar" 1959 - Fritz Leiber, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser deal with Fafhrd's religious conversion to acolyte of Issek of the Jug, a comic fantasy. "Toads of Grimmerdale" 1974 - Andre Norton, a young rape victim turns her suspected attacker over to an ancient evil race, then saves him. He is really not her attacker. "Transit of Earth" 1958 - Arthur C. Clarke, an astronaut stranded on Mars uses his last oxygen recording a transit of earth and moon across the sun, a poignant story of dedication and humanity. "The Last Question" 1956 - Isaac Asimov, in a hundred billion year struggle against inevitable entropy the descendants of men and their cosmic computer ponder the possibility of reversing it. In the end, the computer in hyperspace says "Let there be light.".
Simak's was the only story I didn't like and Norton's was one that didn't appeal to me. As always, Clarke's was the best _science_ fiction. Williamson and DeCamp were two I may read more of.
I might remember the Williamson story. It's hard to say. There are many stories with the same theme. But the two that I remember best are the Clarke and Asimov stories.
In Clarke's story the astronaut is stranded. There is no possibility of leaving Mars. His companions are gone. If I remember correctly, they chose to die a little earlier than they had to in order to leave a little extra oxygen for him. He uses the small extra time to carry out as much of the mission as possible. He will not allow the mission to have been in vain.
In the Asimov story, billions of years have passed. The universe is reaching its entropic end. Two descendants of humans survive. We don't know what form they have, only that they are talking to each other in some way, and also to their highly intelligent computer. They are dispassionate about their end. They have known for billions of years that it is coming. They will step into the void, as it were, with complete equanimity. Then the computer begins a re-creation.
Clarke and Asimov were men with deep scientific and humanistic imaginations.