Favorite Fiction--2016

Some favorite works of fiction I read during 2016,

FIRST READS

Sarah Orne Jewett:
                  The Country of Pointed Firs
                   --my first reading of her masterpiece.  Why did I take so long to get to it?
                   --this is on my must reread list.

                   A Country Doctor
                   --this one is a bit weaker than the first, but still an excellent read. and better     
                      than 90% of the other works I've read this year.


Joseph Conrad:  Suspense
 --an unfinished novel set in the Napoleonic era.
 --a traveler gets involved with a plot of Napoleon's escape from Elba.

Ray Bradbury:         Farewell Summer

--the sequel to Dandelion Wine.  The tone is different in this one.  The boy resists growing up.

Graham Greene:    The Human Factor
--a spy novel.  The unmasking of a mole in the British secret service, told from the mole's point of view.

Nathaniel Hawthorne:: The Celestial Railroad and Other Stories
--a collection of some of Hawthorne's most well-known short works.
--decided to leave this in the First Reads grouping as there were several short stories that I hadn't read before.


Kazuo Ishiguro:   The Remains of the Day

--a great novel of repression and fear of commitment, set against the backdrop of WWII.   

--his master is a Nazi sympathizer and the butler refuses to go against his master for he  is the master.

REREADS:


Jane Austen:
                   Lady Susan/The Watsons/Sanditon
                   Northanger Abbey
                   Mansfield Park
                   Emma
                   Sense and Sensibility
                   Persuasion
                   Pride and Prejudice

--as always, great reading.  This was my fifth? sixth? who knows how many readings I've had of her works over the years.  They are just as good, if not better, the fifth? time around as the first.

A. Solzhenitsyn:   One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
--the title says it all--one day in a Soviet Union era gulag in Siberia, based loosely on his time there.  I like to pair this one with Dostoyevsky's The House of the Dead, his experiences in a Siberian prison camp during the reign of the Tsars.  Forced to make a choice, I would choose life there under the Tsars.  The treatment was cruel but  much more humane than under the commissars. 


Dostoyevsky:   "The Gambler"
--Dostoyevsky's great novella depicting the downfall of an gambling addict.
--great character study of numerous Russians traveling abroad. sometimes just for travel and sometimes to avoid debt collectors back home.  Comic figures trapped within a tragic story.


Evelyn Waugh:   Brideshead Revisited
--Flashback:  an English army officer finds his unit stationed  on one of the grand   
   estates and recognizes it as the one that had a great influence on him, beginning with
   his stay at Oxford.

--there's a great BBC TV adaptation of the book.  After watching it, I went out and 

   got the book.


Herman Melville:  “Benito Cereno”

--Melville's great novella regarding the slave trade and a very naive American ship captain.


Nikos Kazantzakis:   Freedom or Death

--his powerful novel set in Greece during the time of the Greek war for independence.
--as usual his characters come off the page at you.


Oscar Wilde:   The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray
--This is the first and censored version of Gray's novel.  To be honest, I can not see anything that
   would be more offensive than anything in the published version.  A classic example of changing
    tastes, I will includ this among the rereads for I have read this several times.


There were a number of enjoyable works that I read during the past year, but these are the ones that stand out.  While there  appears to be a large number of first reads, equal to the rereads, one should note that Bradbury, Greene, Hawthorne, and Conrad are all favorites of mine from way back when.  These are works by them that I've never read before.

Only two of the authors in the First Reads Section are new to me:  Kazuo Ishiguro and Sarah Orne Jewett and are now on my reread list.  Coincidentally, I read two books by both.  The other book by by Ishiguro will appear on my Favorite SF novels of 2016 list.


P.S.
Forgot to mention, but if you have questions about any of the authors or books, please ask.  I may not know the answer, but it's worth trying anyway.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: "For the Good of the Cause"

I've read a number of Solzhenitsyn's works, and I find this one to be the most formulaic of the ones I've read. His characters are usually mixed, in that most have good and bad characteristics, and even in his prison works, there are good guards and administrators and bad prisoners. That doesn't happen in this novella, which makes me think that Solzhenitsyn was concentrating more on the situation than on a realistic portrayal of those involved.

It becomes obvious shortly into the work that there are good guys and bad guys in this work. The good guys are the faculty, staff, and students of the college and the local party secretary--the common people in this situation--, while the bad guys are upper echelon of the Party or the faceless, unknown members of various governing commissions in a distant city.

The setting is a small technical college somewhere in Russia during the Soviet era. The present facilities are small and inappropriate for a technical school which requires labs and workshops and various types of equipment. Moreover, the school is set in an out-of-way small town, so most of the students come from elsewhere. Since there is no dorm for the students, they must be put up in various, sometimes inappropriate or uncomfortable places. And, generally the stipend awarded is insufficient to cover the rent and other expenses.

The school has been given a piece of land in the town, large enough for putting up a dorm and a building for the college. The plans were carefully drawn and the building was large enough for classrooms and various labs and workshops. The overcrowding would be eliminated. As the contractors had problems getting laborers, the faculty, staff, and students volunteered to do the unskilled labor tasks, such as clearing the area of vegetation or digging the foundations during their free time and on weekends and holidays.

It took a year and the building was now ready for the final approval. Once they received the signed contract, the school personnel could begin moving into the new classrooms and labs. However, something was wrong. It had been several weeks since the request had been submitted to Khabalygin, the factory manager and nominal "proprietor" of the technical college, for his signature, but he did nothing. No one could understand the delay.

Well, no one could understand until an investigating Commission composed of bureaucrats from various Councils and Ministries (none of which really had anything to do directly with the college), led by Khabalygin arrived on the scene, just a few days before the new term was to begin. After "investigating" the old buildings, the Commission decided that the situation really wasn't that bad and that they could manage with the facilities that they had for a little while longer. The new building was being given to a "research institute of national importance."

Some investigating and discreet phone calls established that there was no hurry in finding a place for the research institute, as the plans for it had been put off for an indefinite time more than three months ago. In addition, there were a number of buildings in the small towns and the larger cities in the area that would have been appropriate, actually more appropriate. The new building had been designed to include labs and workshops as well as classrooms. Therefore, the building now needed to be remodeled for the research institute of national importance, at a cost of almost half of the original construction cost.

What happened? Khabalygin is a empire builder. Getting the research institute would put his town on the map and being the one who brought it here would enhance his reputation. Since it was in his jurisdiction, this also would increase his power and prestige much more than a small technical college would. When others protested this outright theft and reminded Khabalygin of all the voluntary work the faculty and students had put in, his response was that they should happy to be able to make sacrifices for the good of the cause.

What I found most interesting is that while this takes place in Russia, it could and does happen elsewhere, including the US. We have local government officials and, in place of the Party, we have the Corporation. Instead of communism being the weapon used against the people, we have capitalism. Local governments now have an expanded power of eminent domain. In the past, eminent domain could be used only if the benefit was to the entire community--highways, parks, government buildings, cultural institutions. Now eminent domain can be used to remove people from their homes simply to benefit a corporation which wishes to build a factory or office space or a retail outlet.

And recently, a congressman from an oil-producing state was upset because the federal government criticized BP for the oil spill and insisted that BP pay for the damage it had caused. This congressman argued that this was extortion, therefore a criminal action, and that one shouldn't criticize corporations--that it was un-American to do so. During the Soviet era, it was a crime to criticize the Communist Party and the Government in Russia. Today, in the US, some would argue that it's wrong to criticize a corporation.

Overall Reaction: very readable and with incidents that are found in any society--be it communist or socialist or capitalist.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn died today at age 89. He was probably the greatest Russian writer of the past century. Below is a link to a BBC news report about him.


http://tinyurl.com/5q7qwq