The Avignon Quintet (five novels)
Monsieur
Livia
Constance
Sebastian
Quinx
The following quotation from Constance provides a glimpse into the workings of The Avignon Quintet.
"If real people could cohabit with the creatures of their imagination--say, in a novel--then what sort of children would be the fruit of their union: changelings?"
Lawrence Durrell
"The Avignon Quintet" (aka The Quincunx)
The following is my reading of the structure of "The Avignon Quintet." I don't know if it will make sense to anybody else, but it helps me keep the characters and events of the Quintet straight. FL is the abbreviation for Fiction Level.
FL0: Lawrence Durrell, the Person.
FL1: Lawrence Durrell, the Novelist. I read somewhere that the Person creates a fictional construct who is the writer, sometimes referred to as the second self or the implied author. So, Lawrence Durrell, the Novelist, is a creation of of Lawrence Durrell, the Person, and it is this fictional construct who wrote "The Avignon Quintet." One might wonder about the common practice of pseudonyms or aliases adopted by many writers in this context.
FL2: The Avignon Quintet:
Monsieur, the first novel, has a unique structure. It has five parts. These five parts constitute the external or the Durrell Monsieur. I call the first four parts the internal or Blanford Monsieur. These four parts contain the story of Piers, Sylvia, and Bruce. The fifth part of the Durrell or external Monsieur introduces the reader to Aubrey Blanford, who has "written" the internal Monsieur.
The
remaining four novels tell the reader of the lives of Aubrey Blanford
and those around him. As the readers go through these four novels, they
see how Blanford has modified and combined the personalities of the
people he knows and the events of their lives to create the characters in the
first four parts of Monsieur.
Major Characters in the Avignon Quintet: Aubrey Blanford, Constance, Hillary, Sylvia, Sam
FL3: Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness (the internal or Blanford Monsieur)
This is the internal novel "written" by Aubrey Blanford. It takes up the first four parts of the external or Durrell Monsieur. The three most significant characters are Piers de Nogaret, his sister Sylvie, and Bruce Drexel, the narrator of the internal novel. The three share a long, complex, and intimate relationship.
Important characters: Piers, Sylvie, Bruce, Sutcliffe, Pia, Toby,
What is most confusing is that the reader encounters FL3, the internal Monsieur, first and, moreover, doesn't realize what is going on until Part 5 when Aubrey Blanford is introduced. At this point the reader then moves from FL3 to FL2.
But, these fiction levels are permeable. Characters from FL3 frequently cross the line and interact with characters in FL2. Some examples--
FL2: Aubrey Blanford talks to Sutcliffe, the novelist he created in Monsieur, the internal novel. At times it's difficult to determine whether Sutcliffe is only Blanford's sounding board, existing only in his mind, or whether Sutcliffe has somehow become an independent person at Blanford's level. However, in Constance, the third novel in the Avignon Quintet, Constance meets Sutcliffe and Pia, who have now moved from FL3 to FL2.
FL3: Sutcliffe, a character in Blanford's internal novel, says he wrote a novel about Bruce, Piers, and Sylvie. His novel begins with the same words that Blanford begins his novel, the internal Monsieur in FL2.
While reading the Quintet, I couldn't help thinking about Philip K. Dick, the SF writer who delights in creating works in which the boundary between reality and fantasy blurs and frequently disappears.
To add to the fun, Durrell sends several of his characters to Alexandria during WWII and also brings in several characters from The Alexandria Quartet: Pursewarden and Melissa, while two members of the British military in Egypt, Maskelyne and Telford, make brief appearances. The two series, The Alexandria Quartet and The Avignon Quintet, overlap chronologically, both taking place during WWII.
Some of the themes and issues brought up in The Avignon Quintet
--the German occupation of France during WWII
--Gnosticism
--the Knights Templar and their lost treasure
--various forms of love
--Provence and Alexandria, although Provence is the place where most of the novels take place
--Freud and psychoanalytic theory
I find The Avignon Quintet a complex and, at times, a confusing work, which may account for much of my interest in it. I've now read it at least twice, and possibly three times now. No doubt, I shall reread it in the near future.
I hope I haven't confused you too much.
Showing posts with label novels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novels. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
Friday, May 19, 2017
Lawrence Durrell: Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness
Lawrence Durrell
Monsieur or Prince of Darkness
Book 1 of "The Avignon Quintet" (aka The Quincunx)
Please do not expect an organized, coherent, illuminating post on this work; instead, you will find some random, chaotic ramblings about a work I am fascinated by. It is probably this fascination that keeps me from stepping back and objectively looking at Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness.
I have now finished Lawrence Durrell's Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness, the first book in his "Avignon Quintet." This is a reread, but it's been some time since I last read it, and therefore I remember little aside from the general overall structure of the Quintet.
The title can be misleading. Monsieur is ambiguous for it could refer to any man, but the subtitle clarifies it. There are those who believe that to say the devil's name out loud will act as a summons and the devil will appear. Therefore, to prevent this, certain agreed upon circumlocutions are used, and "Monsieur" is one of them. However, the rest of the title, The Prince of Darkness, makes it very clear who is meant because that is one of the devil's titles, along with The Prince of Lies and The Lord of Flies.
My overall reaction was that of meeting an old and familiar friend, one very comfortable to be with. This, of course, is strange because I remember little of the book so far. I think that familiar, comfortable feeling comes from just having recently finished his "Alexandria Quartet. As I turned the pages of Monsieur, certain similarities came to mind between it and Justine, the first book in the "Alexandria Quartet."
To begin with, the first novels of the two sets, Monsieur and Justine, are first person narratives, and, therefore, we will see all from that limited viewpoint. Of course, one significant difference is that we don't learn the name of the narrator until the second book in the Quartet, while we learn the narrator's name on the first page of the first book in the Quintet.
Both works include considerable flashbacks, works involving memories as they intrude upon and influence the present. Characters in both are mentioned with little or no introductory information as to who they are and why they are important. That will be revealed later, sometimes much later. In both, within the first three pages, the reader learns that someone has died, and that is all that the reader is told. That this person must be important in some way is suggested by being mentioned so early in the work.
In Monsieur, several of the characters are members of the diplomatic corp of France and England, or are attached in some way to French and English embassies. This is also true of characters in Justine.
Again, in each work, a novelist is mentioned and quoted frequently. But, again, it is later that the reader is given more information about the writer and his relationship with the narrator. And in both novels, that writer is dead at this point in the novel.
Alexandria, the City, is a significant character in the Quartet, so important that the human inhabitants seem to be only puppets controlled by the city.
" 'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays."
-- The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XLIX
In this case, read Alexandria for "Destiny." I am only guessing about Avignon at this point, but the treatment of the city suggests that it too will be an important character throughout the work.
Because of the above, I wasn't too surprised to find myself, along with many of the characters, in Alexandria at the beginning of the second part of Monsieur.
SPOILERS
However, there exists a complication which I haven't mentioned yet. The structure of this, the first book, is a novel-within-a-novel. And, this we don't find out until the last chapters, when we suddenly emerge out of the internal novel into the external novel, or the frame. Actually, it isn't much of a frame as the frame only appears at the very end of this book. The internal novel is also called Monsieur, which illustrates the link between the "two" novels.
In the last few chapters, we meet Aubrey Blanford, who claims to have written the internal Monsieur. Future volumes will then tell the story of Blanford's life and his relationships with his wife, his friends, and relatives. In those volumes we will see how Blanford changed and modified what he knows about the people and events of his life into the characters of the internal novel.
After finishing the first volume, it appears as though this is a novel about writing a novel. And no, it isn't dismal at all. I dislike those sorts of novels, but Durrell does it so well that I really don't notice it. Perhaps my dislike for this meta-fictional cliche is the result of finding that it is so often poorly done, and that may be my argument with it.
One more note: sometimes "The Avignon Quintet" is called "The Quincunx." A quincunx is a landscaping feature of five trees. Four of the trees are placed at the corners of a square, while the fifth tree is placed exactly at the center. The first book of the quintet, Monsieur, is placed at the center with the other four at the corners, a suggestion of the relationship among the five novels.
I now regret only waiting so long to revisit "The Avignon Quintet."
Monsieur or Prince of Darkness
Book 1 of "The Avignon Quintet" (aka The Quincunx)
Please do not expect an organized, coherent, illuminating post on this work; instead, you will find some random, chaotic ramblings about a work I am fascinated by. It is probably this fascination that keeps me from stepping back and objectively looking at Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness.
I have now finished Lawrence Durrell's Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness, the first book in his "Avignon Quintet." This is a reread, but it's been some time since I last read it, and therefore I remember little aside from the general overall structure of the Quintet.
The title can be misleading. Monsieur is ambiguous for it could refer to any man, but the subtitle clarifies it. There are those who believe that to say the devil's name out loud will act as a summons and the devil will appear. Therefore, to prevent this, certain agreed upon circumlocutions are used, and "Monsieur" is one of them. However, the rest of the title, The Prince of Darkness, makes it very clear who is meant because that is one of the devil's titles, along with The Prince of Lies and The Lord of Flies.
My overall reaction was that of meeting an old and familiar friend, one very comfortable to be with. This, of course, is strange because I remember little of the book so far. I think that familiar, comfortable feeling comes from just having recently finished his "Alexandria Quartet. As I turned the pages of Monsieur, certain similarities came to mind between it and Justine, the first book in the "Alexandria Quartet."
To begin with, the first novels of the two sets, Monsieur and Justine, are first person narratives, and, therefore, we will see all from that limited viewpoint. Of course, one significant difference is that we don't learn the name of the narrator until the second book in the Quartet, while we learn the narrator's name on the first page of the first book in the Quintet.
Both works include considerable flashbacks, works involving memories as they intrude upon and influence the present. Characters in both are mentioned with little or no introductory information as to who they are and why they are important. That will be revealed later, sometimes much later. In both, within the first three pages, the reader learns that someone has died, and that is all that the reader is told. That this person must be important in some way is suggested by being mentioned so early in the work.
In Monsieur, several of the characters are members of the diplomatic corp of France and England, or are attached in some way to French and English embassies. This is also true of characters in Justine.
Again, in each work, a novelist is mentioned and quoted frequently. But, again, it is later that the reader is given more information about the writer and his relationship with the narrator. And in both novels, that writer is dead at this point in the novel.
Alexandria, the City, is a significant character in the Quartet, so important that the human inhabitants seem to be only puppets controlled by the city.
" 'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays."
-- The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XLIX
In this case, read Alexandria for "Destiny." I am only guessing about Avignon at this point, but the treatment of the city suggests that it too will be an important character throughout the work.
Because of the above, I wasn't too surprised to find myself, along with many of the characters, in Alexandria at the beginning of the second part of Monsieur.
SPOILERS
However, there exists a complication which I haven't mentioned yet. The structure of this, the first book, is a novel-within-a-novel. And, this we don't find out until the last chapters, when we suddenly emerge out of the internal novel into the external novel, or the frame. Actually, it isn't much of a frame as the frame only appears at the very end of this book. The internal novel is also called Monsieur, which illustrates the link between the "two" novels.
In the last few chapters, we meet Aubrey Blanford, who claims to have written the internal Monsieur. Future volumes will then tell the story of Blanford's life and his relationships with his wife, his friends, and relatives. In those volumes we will see how Blanford changed and modified what he knows about the people and events of his life into the characters of the internal novel.
After finishing the first volume, it appears as though this is a novel about writing a novel. And no, it isn't dismal at all. I dislike those sorts of novels, but Durrell does it so well that I really don't notice it. Perhaps my dislike for this meta-fictional cliche is the result of finding that it is so often poorly done, and that may be my argument with it.
One more note: sometimes "The Avignon Quintet" is called "The Quincunx." A quincunx is a landscaping feature of five trees. Four of the trees are placed at the corners of a square, while the fifth tree is placed exactly at the center. The first book of the quintet, Monsieur, is placed at the center with the other four at the corners, a suggestion of the relationship among the five novels.
I now regret only waiting so long to revisit "The Avignon Quintet."
Monday, February 1, 2016
Favorite novels read in 2015
The following is a list of the novels that I had read in 2015 that impressed me the most among all the others I had read.
NEW READS
Anthony Powell: A Dance to the Music of Time (twelve novels)
Sarah Orne Jewett: The Country of Pointed Firs and Other Stories
Harper Lee: Go Set a Watchman
Tsao Hsueh-chin: Dream of the Red Chamber (aka The Story of the Stone)
REREADS
Dostoyevsky: The Gambler, The Double, Notes from Underground
Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
Balzac: The Black Sheep
Mikhail Bulgakov: Heart of a Dog
It doesn't appear to be a long list, but Anthony Powell's series consists of twelve novels.
Monday, August 3, 2015
Anthony Powell: A Dance to the Music of Time--the dance is over.
Sad to say, but I've finished Anthony Powell's magnificent work--A Dance to the Music of Time. The music has stopped, the lights are dimming, the musicians are slowly putting away their instruments, and the place is slowly emptying out. But, soon the lights will come back on and the musicians will return and, once again, dancers will gather on the floor for the ritual goings and comings, arrivals and departures, losings and findings.
As I have mentioned before, this is a four volume work. Each volume contains three novels, approximately 250 pages in length. The first two volumes cover the period between WWI and WWII. The third volume covers WWII and the four is of the post-war period, up until the 80s perhaps. Powell is not very good at providing dates.
I have seen several different names applied to the volumes: one is Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. I had found a well-used copy of Spring and purchased that on the strength of the BBC adaption of the work. I finished the first novel and decided to get the complete set. I found a new set, in which the volumes were labelled 1st Movement, 2nd Movement, 3rd Movement, and 4th Movement. This new labeling scheme seems more appropriate considering the musical nature of the title.
A Dance to the Music of Time is a first person narrative, the voice that of Nicholas Jenkins, Nick to friends and relatives. The work is not solely about Nick, but about Nick and his friends, relatives, and acquaintances. In the first novel, Nick is in his last year of school and we meet him and those about him, mostly his schoolmates as they look forward to moving on to the University the following year.
As in the real world, Nick loses track of some of his friends but maintains contact with others. He also meets and makes new friends and friends of friends and relatives, both his and those of his friends. We also meet some of his teachers. This is the format of the work: Nick meets people, loses some, gains others, and then, some who have gone, suddenly return in unexpected ways, and places. Some change, some seemingly do not as Nick goes through the university and then into the world to establish his career as a writer, and in the various occupations to support himself. This continues through his military commitment as WWII breaks out, where he meets old friends and relatives in the military.
After having read the work, my impression is that Nick is a rather ordinary person who knows some original and unusual people, the strangest of whom is Kenneth Widmerpool. No matter what Nick does and where he goes, Widmerpool always manages to appear in some way. Widmerpool is one of the most fascinating characters I have ever encountered in English fiction. There may be others whom I haven't met, but for now, Kenneth Widmerpool stands alone.
I may be doing Nick Jenkins a disservice, but when I do the next reading, I will spend more time observing Nick to see what I missed. But, it just may be that Powell deliberately keeps Nick at a low level because he wanted the focus to be on those around Nick. If Nick were too striking a character, readers may be distracted and miss Powell's theme of the recurring or cyclic nature of life, or perhaps a spiral would be more apt than a cycle. For while various characters appear, disappear, and return in Nick's life, they have changed and while their interactions may resemble past interactions in many ways, they are never the same.
This is about all I can say at the present, for there's too much here for me to make more sense of it and this, at best, can't be more than a superficial commentary. Perhaps after a second reading, I may be able to be more intelligible and coherent. For now, let's end this with the penultimate paragraph of the final novel.
Powell concludes with a quotation from Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. Although it isn't initially apparent, it is appropriate because Nick has been writing a book about Burton and his works and because there's a shift in tone at the end of the paragraph. At first, the quotation consists of a series of lists, but then it changes into something quite different. The quotation is all in paragraph form, but when I think there's a change in tone, I change the format:
"Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees. . .trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays . . . treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of Princes, new discoveries, expeditions;
now comical, then tragical matters.
Today we hear of new Lords and officers created,
tomorrow of some great men deposed,
and then again of some fresh honours conferred;
one is let loose, another imprisoned,
one purchaseth, another breaketh;
he thrives, his neighbor turns bankrupt;
now plenty, then again dearth and famine;
one runs, another rides,
wrangles, laughs, weeps, &c."
-- Robert Burton --
from Anatomy of Melancholy
Does this sound familiar to you?
As I have mentioned before, this is a four volume work. Each volume contains three novels, approximately 250 pages in length. The first two volumes cover the period between WWI and WWII. The third volume covers WWII and the four is of the post-war period, up until the 80s perhaps. Powell is not very good at providing dates.
I have seen several different names applied to the volumes: one is Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. I had found a well-used copy of Spring and purchased that on the strength of the BBC adaption of the work. I finished the first novel and decided to get the complete set. I found a new set, in which the volumes were labelled 1st Movement, 2nd Movement, 3rd Movement, and 4th Movement. This new labeling scheme seems more appropriate considering the musical nature of the title.
A Dance to the Music of Time is a first person narrative, the voice that of Nicholas Jenkins, Nick to friends and relatives. The work is not solely about Nick, but about Nick and his friends, relatives, and acquaintances. In the first novel, Nick is in his last year of school and we meet him and those about him, mostly his schoolmates as they look forward to moving on to the University the following year.
As in the real world, Nick loses track of some of his friends but maintains contact with others. He also meets and makes new friends and friends of friends and relatives, both his and those of his friends. We also meet some of his teachers. This is the format of the work: Nick meets people, loses some, gains others, and then, some who have gone, suddenly return in unexpected ways, and places. Some change, some seemingly do not as Nick goes through the university and then into the world to establish his career as a writer, and in the various occupations to support himself. This continues through his military commitment as WWII breaks out, where he meets old friends and relatives in the military.
After having read the work, my impression is that Nick is a rather ordinary person who knows some original and unusual people, the strangest of whom is Kenneth Widmerpool. No matter what Nick does and where he goes, Widmerpool always manages to appear in some way. Widmerpool is one of the most fascinating characters I have ever encountered in English fiction. There may be others whom I haven't met, but for now, Kenneth Widmerpool stands alone.
I may be doing Nick Jenkins a disservice, but when I do the next reading, I will spend more time observing Nick to see what I missed. But, it just may be that Powell deliberately keeps Nick at a low level because he wanted the focus to be on those around Nick. If Nick were too striking a character, readers may be distracted and miss Powell's theme of the recurring or cyclic nature of life, or perhaps a spiral would be more apt than a cycle. For while various characters appear, disappear, and return in Nick's life, they have changed and while their interactions may resemble past interactions in many ways, they are never the same.
This is about all I can say at the present, for there's too much here for me to make more sense of it and this, at best, can't be more than a superficial commentary. Perhaps after a second reading, I may be able to be more intelligible and coherent. For now, let's end this with the penultimate paragraph of the final novel.
Powell concludes with a quotation from Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. Although it isn't initially apparent, it is appropriate because Nick has been writing a book about Burton and his works and because there's a shift in tone at the end of the paragraph. At first, the quotation consists of a series of lists, but then it changes into something quite different. The quotation is all in paragraph form, but when I think there's a change in tone, I change the format:
"Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees. . .trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays . . . treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of Princes, new discoveries, expeditions;
now comical, then tragical matters.
Today we hear of new Lords and officers created,
tomorrow of some great men deposed,
and then again of some fresh honours conferred;
one is let loose, another imprisoned,
one purchaseth, another breaketh;
he thrives, his neighbor turns bankrupt;
now plenty, then again dearth and famine;
one runs, another rides,
wrangles, laughs, weeps, &c."
-- Robert Burton --
from Anatomy of Melancholy
Does this sound familiar to you?
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Anthony Powell: A Dance to the Music of Time: Vol 1, Spring
Anthony Powell
A Dance to the Music of Time
Vol. 1, Spring
A Question of Upbringing
A Buyer's Market
The Acceptance World
One of the most common adjectives applied to this work is "monumental." It's also been used to describe other works, but this is one of the few times when it is applicable and fitting. A Dance to the Music of Time is now published as a set of four novels: Vol. 1 or Spring, Vol. 2 or Summer, Vol. 3 or Autumn, and Vol. 4 or Winter. Each volume consists of three novels, for example the three listed make up Vol. 1. In all there are twelve novels, one for each month of the year.
When I get around to rereading the set, I shall begin on the first day of Spring of whatever year that happens to be and then cover one novel a month. Perhaps then I shall do a more in-depth look at the work. For now, the best I can do is a brief overview of each of the volumes.
Rather than stumble about trying to describe the overall theme of the work, I'll let Powell do it. Jenkins musing is brought about when he gazes at Poussin's painting, A Dance to the Music of Time.
(click on the painting for a larger image)
The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: on breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.
The first novel begins shortly after the end of WWI, with four young boys: Nick Jenkins, Kenneth Widmerpool, Charles Stringham, and Peter Templer. They are finishing schooling, preparatory to entering the university. At the university, Nick Jenkins, the POV character, meets other students and faculty members who will play a role in his future. At the same time, his close association with the other three begins to weaken.
The second and third novels provide a picture of university life and the decade after leaving the university as they attempt to establish themselves in the larger world: to find their own places in the social world as well as developing their careers, in the world of the arts, business, and government. The world they live in is the world of the English middle class. The third novel ends with the four characters in their early thirties and in the early 1930's as well.
Jenkins encounters at varying stages the other three young men as they struggle to establish themselves, as well as some of the faculty from the university. The various encounters he has with those from his past also bring forward others who will play a role in his future. He is frequently surprised to find that his earlier judgements of people prove wrong or incomplete as he sees them succeeding in their ventures or slowly disintegrating as the struggle for existence takes its toll on them.
This is a complex work and will require time to fully appreciate it. It's not a work to be picked up now and then for 15 or 20 minutes at a time. Perhaps one novel a month might be the wisest schedule.
A Dance to the Music of Time
Vol. 1, Spring
A Question of Upbringing
A Buyer's Market
The Acceptance World
One of the most common adjectives applied to this work is "monumental." It's also been used to describe other works, but this is one of the few times when it is applicable and fitting. A Dance to the Music of Time is now published as a set of four novels: Vol. 1 or Spring, Vol. 2 or Summer, Vol. 3 or Autumn, and Vol. 4 or Winter. Each volume consists of three novels, for example the three listed make up Vol. 1. In all there are twelve novels, one for each month of the year.
When I get around to rereading the set, I shall begin on the first day of Spring of whatever year that happens to be and then cover one novel a month. Perhaps then I shall do a more in-depth look at the work. For now, the best I can do is a brief overview of each of the volumes.
Rather than stumble about trying to describe the overall theme of the work, I'll let Powell do it. Jenkins musing is brought about when he gazes at Poussin's painting, A Dance to the Music of Time.
(click on the painting for a larger image)
The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: on breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.
The first novel begins shortly after the end of WWI, with four young boys: Nick Jenkins, Kenneth Widmerpool, Charles Stringham, and Peter Templer. They are finishing schooling, preparatory to entering the university. At the university, Nick Jenkins, the POV character, meets other students and faculty members who will play a role in his future. At the same time, his close association with the other three begins to weaken.
The second and third novels provide a picture of university life and the decade after leaving the university as they attempt to establish themselves in the larger world: to find their own places in the social world as well as developing their careers, in the world of the arts, business, and government. The world they live in is the world of the English middle class. The third novel ends with the four characters in their early thirties and in the early 1930's as well.
Jenkins encounters at varying stages the other three young men as they struggle to establish themselves, as well as some of the faculty from the university. The various encounters he has with those from his past also bring forward others who will play a role in his future. He is frequently surprised to find that his earlier judgements of people prove wrong or incomplete as he sees them succeeding in their ventures or slowly disintegrating as the struggle for existence takes its toll on them.
This is a complex work and will require time to fully appreciate it. It's not a work to be picked up now and then for 15 or 20 minutes at a time. Perhaps one novel a month might be the wisest schedule.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Some novels, stories, and poems that I revisit regularly
The following is a short list of some novels, poems, and short stories that I reread irregularly for the most part. There's no particular order or schedule to this. One day I will get the urge to read something once again, and so I dig it out, settle down in my recliner, surrender to the cat's demand for some lap time, and leave this world for a while. There are others whose names I can't come up with right now, but sometime tomorrow or the next day, week, month, year, I will see one in my bookcase or read a comment by somebody about it and that's it--time for a another visit.
J. R. R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings
These three books are the ones that I have read more than any other work on my reread list, which is strange because I prefer SF to fantasy. Right now, I am slowly reading The Silmarillion and expect to get to the others this year.
Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain
This may be the second most reread book on my list. I first read it while an undergraduate sometime during the years 1958-1961. It was for a lit course, and I had to choose a novel from a list provided by the professor to write the outside paper on. I choose this one, probably because of the title, and I haven't stopped reading it since. I am now on my second hardbound copy as the first one is falling apart.
Life in a TB sanitarium doesn't sound that enthralling, but once begun, I found it impossible to put down. It's partially based on a true experience. Mann's wife went to a sanitarium for several months because of a lung complaint. While visiting her, Mann underwent some testing and, like his hero Hans Castorp, was told that it would be a good idea if he signed himself in. Unlike Castorp, he refused and, instead, wrote a novel about the experience.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment
I've reread this a number of times, perhaps as often as The Magic Mountain, or close to it anyway. I consider this book a very significant work because it first introduced me to Dostoyevsky (I think I've read everything of his that's been translated into English), secondly it introduced me to Russian literature, and thirdly it was my introduction to foreign literature. Moreover, I may not have selected Mann's The Magic Mountain a year or so later. and instead. I might have gone with an English language work instead.
Raskolnikov believes himself to be a superior person who is not bound by the laws of human society. The average person is someone who, if he kills someone, is caught and punished. On the other hand, superior people, such as Napoleon, can be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and are seen as one of the Great Ones. He kills a pawnbroker, someone useless and odious, to prove that he belongs among the elite.
Jack Finney
Time and Again
Simply the best time travel novel ever written. Time is a mental construct, and the mind can be fooled into traveling into the past if the environment is appropriate and if the individual can be convinced that he or she is actually living at that particular time. It's a mystery and a romance, and Finney provides sufficient information, along with appropriate photos, to make this a special work, and one that leaves me wishing this was real.
Umberto Eco
The Name of the Rose
A marvelous amalgam of mystery and history and religious conflict is all that this is. Brother William of Baskerville, a monk, has been called to the monastery to act as a mediator and a witness between two conflicting religious ideas of importance. While there, he is persuaded to investigate a series of murders in the monastery, and his name should provide a vital clue as to his methods. If he is unable to solve the murders, the Inquisition will be called in, and nobody wants that. Adso or Adson of Melk is his amanuensis. The novel is supposedly an edited copy of Adso's recounting of their stay at the monastery.
PD James
Anything
I've read all of her mysteries a number of times, even though I have figured out the villain shortly after getting into the story. The plots and characters are complex, carefully drawn out. There seldom is the expected denouement at the end where Commander Adam Dalgliesh gathers all the suspects in the drawing room and slowly works his way around the room, pointing his finger at each in turn. Instead, the process is a slow one, developing throughout the novel as each suspect is considered and then dismissed until it's a matter of uncovering the final bit of evidence rather than uncovering the identity of the guilty party.
Jane Austen
Everything including her juvenilia.
I tried reading Pride and Prejudice several times, but I always stopped reading. Then at age 42 I returned to graduate school in the English Department. In the first course I took, the reading list included Sense and Sensibility. I groaned a bit and then settled down to read it. I loved it and then went out to read everything else by her. I guess I had to mature a bit before I was ready for her. If I was forced to list my favorites among her works, I would say Persuasion would be No. 1 and Mansfield Park would be next. The others follow closely behind. It's been a while since I read them all, so I shall probably dust them off and settle down once again.
Russell Hoban
Riddley Walker
This is one of my favorite post-holocaust novels, thanks to a Chaucer course I took a year or two prior to reading the novel. In the Chaucer course, we had to read The Canterbury Tales in Middle English (the language it was written in). I struggled mightily because I had always hated reading something that wasn't written in Standard English. I really didn't want to pay attention to the language; that was too much work. However, at the end of the course, leaving the classroom for the last time, I felt as if I had lost a world somehow that I would never return to.
A year or so later, I had to take my qualifying exams and The Tales was on the list. I decided to play it smart and bought a modern translation and settled down to read. However, something important was missing, and so I got out the Middle English text and happily reread it in Middle English.
What has this to do with Riddley Walker? The answer is simple: Russell Hoban has written the novel in what he speculates English would be like maybe 500 years from now after a nuclear war and during that period most people have been illiterate. Those few who could read and write learned from their predecessors and not from teachers or texts which would have kept the language unchanged. If I had not learned to accept non-standard English texts from the Chaucer course, I never would have finished the novel. The following is the opening paragraph. If you read it out loud, as you should do with poetry, you will find it much easier to read.
"On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he weren't all that big plus he lookit poorily. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and make his rush and there we wer then. Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, 'Your tern now my tern later. . ."
I've made some other posts about Riddley Walker and some other works by Russell Hoban. You may want to check them out. Russell Hoban is a unique writer, with a wild imagination. Reading anything by him is well worth the time spent.
Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
This is another of my favorite post-holocaust novels. It too is set hundreds of years after a nuclear war. The locale seems to be somewhere in New Mexico, where monks at a monastery manage to survive as monks did during the so-called Dark Ages perhaps almost 2000 years earlier. And, along with their farm duties (they have to be completely self-sustaining) they also are dedicated to keeping records of the achievements of the past, even if they don't know what it is that they are painstakingly copying. They have faith that some day human knowledge will increase to the point that these arcane books and schematics and diagrams will be not only intelligible but also help to spark a resurgence of human learning.
Their task is much like that of the Encyclopediasts in Isaac Asimov's "Foundation series." However, the monks of the Order of Blessed Leibowitz do not have high tech aides and spaceships to travel about, but only sandals, and if they are lucky, a mule. The novel is really three novellas, set roughly centuries apart, with only monastery and the monks' task of preserving knowledge to link them. Well, there's always Benjamin, but he really can't be the Wandering Jew, several thousand years old, could he?
Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
I'm never certain about whether this is a short novel or a long novella, so I will guess this time and call it a novel. It's the work by Conrad that I've read most often for I find it fascinates me, both in its description of the countryside, the inhabitants, and the Europeans who plague the inhabitants. It's a biting indictment of the treatment of the black Africans by the white Europeans who have come there supposedly to civilize and bring the benefits of European civilization and in reality end up brutalizing them in search of profit.
The POV character is Marlow, but the center of the novel is Kurtz Marlow has taken a job as the captain of a steamer on the Congo River. Far up the river is a trading outpost run by Kurtz, who has been amazingly successful in obtaining ivory for the company. Suddenly all shipments stop, and after a few months of silence, Marlow is ordered to take the steamer up the river to Kurtz's trading post. He is accompanied by the district manager and a group of ivory hunters and treasure seekers, along with a crew consisting of a few cannibals. Marlow becomes obsessed with the idea of Kurtz and only slowly does he realize that Kurtz is not only at the heart of darkness, but also he is the heart of darkness.
The film, Apocalypse Now, is loosely, very loosely, based on the novel--more of an adaptation than a recounting. The film is set in Vietnam during the war. Captain Willard, of the US Army, is sent up the Nung River into Cambodia to find Col. Kurtz and assassinate who has set himself up as a god among the local tribes people and is conducting his own brand of guerrilla warfare against the Viet Cong. While much of the novel has been changed for the film, I still found the film to be very close in capturing the tone or atmosphere of the novel--the absurdity and arrogance of the white invaders.
Something happened that I did not account for. I initially said that this would be a short list, something around ten, maybe even fifteen, but the list keep growing. I'm now at ten and I still have the same amount left. I guess I will end this here and continue with the rest on Part Two. I hope this doesn't turn out to be similar to those fantasy trilogies that reach double digits.
J. R. R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings
These three books are the ones that I have read more than any other work on my reread list, which is strange because I prefer SF to fantasy. Right now, I am slowly reading The Silmarillion and expect to get to the others this year.
Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain
This may be the second most reread book on my list. I first read it while an undergraduate sometime during the years 1958-1961. It was for a lit course, and I had to choose a novel from a list provided by the professor to write the outside paper on. I choose this one, probably because of the title, and I haven't stopped reading it since. I am now on my second hardbound copy as the first one is falling apart.
Life in a TB sanitarium doesn't sound that enthralling, but once begun, I found it impossible to put down. It's partially based on a true experience. Mann's wife went to a sanitarium for several months because of a lung complaint. While visiting her, Mann underwent some testing and, like his hero Hans Castorp, was told that it would be a good idea if he signed himself in. Unlike Castorp, he refused and, instead, wrote a novel about the experience.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment
I've reread this a number of times, perhaps as often as The Magic Mountain, or close to it anyway. I consider this book a very significant work because it first introduced me to Dostoyevsky (I think I've read everything of his that's been translated into English), secondly it introduced me to Russian literature, and thirdly it was my introduction to foreign literature. Moreover, I may not have selected Mann's The Magic Mountain a year or so later. and instead. I might have gone with an English language work instead.
Raskolnikov believes himself to be a superior person who is not bound by the laws of human society. The average person is someone who, if he kills someone, is caught and punished. On the other hand, superior people, such as Napoleon, can be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and are seen as one of the Great Ones. He kills a pawnbroker, someone useless and odious, to prove that he belongs among the elite.
Jack Finney
Time and Again
Simply the best time travel novel ever written. Time is a mental construct, and the mind can be fooled into traveling into the past if the environment is appropriate and if the individual can be convinced that he or she is actually living at that particular time. It's a mystery and a romance, and Finney provides sufficient information, along with appropriate photos, to make this a special work, and one that leaves me wishing this was real.
Umberto Eco
The Name of the Rose
A marvelous amalgam of mystery and history and religious conflict is all that this is. Brother William of Baskerville, a monk, has been called to the monastery to act as a mediator and a witness between two conflicting religious ideas of importance. While there, he is persuaded to investigate a series of murders in the monastery, and his name should provide a vital clue as to his methods. If he is unable to solve the murders, the Inquisition will be called in, and nobody wants that. Adso or Adson of Melk is his amanuensis. The novel is supposedly an edited copy of Adso's recounting of their stay at the monastery.
PD James
Anything
I've read all of her mysteries a number of times, even though I have figured out the villain shortly after getting into the story. The plots and characters are complex, carefully drawn out. There seldom is the expected denouement at the end where Commander Adam Dalgliesh gathers all the suspects in the drawing room and slowly works his way around the room, pointing his finger at each in turn. Instead, the process is a slow one, developing throughout the novel as each suspect is considered and then dismissed until it's a matter of uncovering the final bit of evidence rather than uncovering the identity of the guilty party.
Jane Austen
Everything including her juvenilia.
I tried reading Pride and Prejudice several times, but I always stopped reading. Then at age 42 I returned to graduate school in the English Department. In the first course I took, the reading list included Sense and Sensibility. I groaned a bit and then settled down to read it. I loved it and then went out to read everything else by her. I guess I had to mature a bit before I was ready for her. If I was forced to list my favorites among her works, I would say Persuasion would be No. 1 and Mansfield Park would be next. The others follow closely behind. It's been a while since I read them all, so I shall probably dust them off and settle down once again.
Russell Hoban
Riddley Walker
This is one of my favorite post-holocaust novels, thanks to a Chaucer course I took a year or two prior to reading the novel. In the Chaucer course, we had to read The Canterbury Tales in Middle English (the language it was written in). I struggled mightily because I had always hated reading something that wasn't written in Standard English. I really didn't want to pay attention to the language; that was too much work. However, at the end of the course, leaving the classroom for the last time, I felt as if I had lost a world somehow that I would never return to.
A year or so later, I had to take my qualifying exams and The Tales was on the list. I decided to play it smart and bought a modern translation and settled down to read. However, something important was missing, and so I got out the Middle English text and happily reread it in Middle English.
What has this to do with Riddley Walker? The answer is simple: Russell Hoban has written the novel in what he speculates English would be like maybe 500 years from now after a nuclear war and during that period most people have been illiterate. Those few who could read and write learned from their predecessors and not from teachers or texts which would have kept the language unchanged. If I had not learned to accept non-standard English texts from the Chaucer course, I never would have finished the novel. The following is the opening paragraph. If you read it out loud, as you should do with poetry, you will find it much easier to read.
"On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he weren't all that big plus he lookit poorily. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and make his rush and there we wer then. Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, 'Your tern now my tern later. . ."
I've made some other posts about Riddley Walker and some other works by Russell Hoban. You may want to check them out. Russell Hoban is a unique writer, with a wild imagination. Reading anything by him is well worth the time spent.
Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
This is another of my favorite post-holocaust novels. It too is set hundreds of years after a nuclear war. The locale seems to be somewhere in New Mexico, where monks at a monastery manage to survive as monks did during the so-called Dark Ages perhaps almost 2000 years earlier. And, along with their farm duties (they have to be completely self-sustaining) they also are dedicated to keeping records of the achievements of the past, even if they don't know what it is that they are painstakingly copying. They have faith that some day human knowledge will increase to the point that these arcane books and schematics and diagrams will be not only intelligible but also help to spark a resurgence of human learning.
Their task is much like that of the Encyclopediasts in Isaac Asimov's "Foundation series." However, the monks of the Order of Blessed Leibowitz do not have high tech aides and spaceships to travel about, but only sandals, and if they are lucky, a mule. The novel is really three novellas, set roughly centuries apart, with only monastery and the monks' task of preserving knowledge to link them. Well, there's always Benjamin, but he really can't be the Wandering Jew, several thousand years old, could he?
Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
I'm never certain about whether this is a short novel or a long novella, so I will guess this time and call it a novel. It's the work by Conrad that I've read most often for I find it fascinates me, both in its description of the countryside, the inhabitants, and the Europeans who plague the inhabitants. It's a biting indictment of the treatment of the black Africans by the white Europeans who have come there supposedly to civilize and bring the benefits of European civilization and in reality end up brutalizing them in search of profit.
The POV character is Marlow, but the center of the novel is Kurtz Marlow has taken a job as the captain of a steamer on the Congo River. Far up the river is a trading outpost run by Kurtz, who has been amazingly successful in obtaining ivory for the company. Suddenly all shipments stop, and after a few months of silence, Marlow is ordered to take the steamer up the river to Kurtz's trading post. He is accompanied by the district manager and a group of ivory hunters and treasure seekers, along with a crew consisting of a few cannibals. Marlow becomes obsessed with the idea of Kurtz and only slowly does he realize that Kurtz is not only at the heart of darkness, but also he is the heart of darkness.
The film, Apocalypse Now, is loosely, very loosely, based on the novel--more of an adaptation than a recounting. The film is set in Vietnam during the war. Captain Willard, of the US Army, is sent up the Nung River into Cambodia to find Col. Kurtz and assassinate who has set himself up as a god among the local tribes people and is conducting his own brand of guerrilla warfare against the Viet Cong. While much of the novel has been changed for the film, I still found the film to be very close in capturing the tone or atmosphere of the novel--the absurdity and arrogance of the white invaders.
Something happened that I did not account for. I initially said that this would be a short list, something around ten, maybe even fifteen, but the list keep growing. I'm now at ten and I still have the same amount left. I guess I will end this here and continue with the rest on Part Two. I hope this doesn't turn out to be similar to those fantasy trilogies that reach double digits.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Some great books I read in 2013
As I had mentioned in my previous post, I lost considerable information regarding books I had read. This will therefore be a partial list of some interesting books I had read during 2013 and some I might read again.
Nevada Barr: Track of the Cat
This is actually the second book I had read by Nevada Barr. The first was The Rope, the prequel that was published in 2013, which I read for a f-2-f mystery group. It wasn't bad, just highly improbable I thought, but other members assured me that many of her other works were much better. So, I grabbed this one which had been the first in the series. I found it to be a much more enjoyable read and consequently I will go on to read others in the series. I also found that being familiar with the park the book is set in just adds to the fun.
Harry Beston: The Outermost House
This is from my post last year about this book: "Beston had had a cabin built on Cape Cod, not far from the Atlantic shore of the peninsula. In September of 1924 he went to the cabin, planning on spending only a few weeks there. Instead he found himself reluctant to leave. His two-week stay eventually lasted a full year, in which he took copious notes about the seasonal changes occurring there to the beach, the weather, and the birds, plants, and animals that were his neighbors. The Outermost House is the result of that unplanned year on Cape Cod." This was my second reading of The Outermost House, and I doubt very much that it will be the last.
Giles Blunt: Until the Night
Until the Night is the sixth in the Canadian police procedurals in his series featuring Detective John Cardinal. It's hard to find Blunt now in the US, so I have to check his website and hit the internet to buy his books. Blunt is one of those few whose books I always buy, if I can't get them in the library. He does include some issues that involve Cardinal away from his job, but he doesn't let them intrude into the main flow of the work, which is a police procedural. His plots tend to be complex. Occasionally we are told the identity of the killer(s) early on, and the focus is then on Cardinal and his fellow officers' attempt to solve the crime and the killers who are trying to remain hidden. If we don't know who the killer is, then the plots are complex, and I don't remember guessing correctly until later on near the end.
Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent
Contrary to many of Conrad's earlier works, The Secret Agent is set in London England. A foreign government, which appears to be Russia, attempts to influence the English government to rescind its policy of being a safe haven for those suspected of terrorist acts against other governments. One of the foreign government's tactics is the use of an agent provocateur to encourage the terrorists to become active in England and thereby eliminate England's tolerance of them. Verloc is one of those employed by the foreign governments, but they are unaware that he is a double agent, for he is spying on the local anarchist group for the London Police. It all goes wrong when he is persuaded to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. (The novel is based on a true incident.)
Joseph Conrad: Mirror of the Sea
One of two autobiographical memoirs by Conrad that relates to his years as a seaman, officer, and captain. He talks of various ports, captains, storms, and perils of the sea. In Conrad's own words, "I have attempt here. . . to lay bare with the unreserve of a last hour's confession the terms of my relation with the sea, which beginning mysteriously, like any great passion the inscrutable Gods send to mortals, went on unreasoning and invincible, surviving the test of disillusion, defying the disenchantment that lurks in every day of a strenuous life; went on full of love's delight and lover's anguish, facing them in open-eyed exultation without bitterness and without repining, from the first hour to the last." He writes for us landlubbers, with little technical terminology. It's an eye-opener from a seaman's point of view.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The Demons or The Devils (aka The Possessed)
This novel is Dostoyevsky's satire of various political ideologies and specifically of Turgenev's earlier novel Fathers and Sons. Turgenev is satirized by Dostoyevsky in the character of the writer Karmazinov, who attempts to win the favor of the Russian Western/European-leaning social critics. The novel, published in 1872, is almost prophetic as it depicts the revolutionaries as favoring the use of terror to cow the population and the creation of three person cells to protect themselves from government infiltrators. The contrast of conflicting ideologies of social democracy and radical totalitarianism is depicted in the differences between Stepan Verkhovensky, the idealistic social democratic reformer, and his son Pyotr Verkhovensky, the nihilist terrorist (the descendents of the social reformers), and therefore Dostoyevsky's version of Fathers and Sons.
Karin Fossum: The Caller
A disturbed boy plays mischevious and sometimes malicious tricks on his neighbors. For example, he sneaks into a neighbor's house and spills blood on a sleeping infant. The parents, of course, are panic-stricken until they learn it was a hoax. Now, they are angry. The boy commits a number of these acts as a self-appointed messenger attempting to disturb their complacency. However, some of his victims are determined not to let it pass, once his identity is known. This is where Inspector Sejer gets involved. Again, a great novel from a author whose works I get without even thinking about it. It's automatic.
Hermann Hesse: Magister Ludi
Hesse, who, in his previous novels, argued for the superiority of the spirit, the mind, the intellect, creates a small province in which certain inhabitants are able to live the life of the mind, the intellect, without concern for the necessity of earning a living. They are supported by a government subsidy and the only requirement is that they provide teachers for the rest of the country. But, here in what should have been the Eden that characters in his previous novels had searched for, Hesse turns his back on his previous beliefs and argues that the life of the intellect must be meshed with the material world, the world of striving and getting, of achieving and earning, and of greed and power.
Drew Magary: The Postmortal
The following is from my post last year about The Postmortal: "Drew Magary's The Postmortal is probably the best SF novel that explores the theme of an extended life span that I've read in decades, if not ever. It attempts to realistically depict the effects of the development of an anti-aging medical treatment on society. A researcher accidentally discovers a gene that controls aging and eventually comes up with a treatment that shuts down the gene. Those given the cure (as it is popularly known) immediately stop aging and remain at whatever physical state they were in when given the treatment. It is not immortality. They can still die from accidents, disease, etc., but they will remain physically the same for an unknown length of time. I read it twice last year and will read it again.
Walter M. Miller, Jr.: A Canticle for Leibowitz
This is another reread and one of my favorite post-holocaust novels. It is really three novellas, which focus on a religious order of monks who initially were followers of Leibowitz, a scientist. Leibowitz gave his followers the task of preserving whatever scientific knowledge they could find. Like the monks of the Middle Ages, they spent their lives copying out whatever written materials they could find. The three novellas take place several hundred years apart, going from a subsistence level of existence in the first part, to a society that is now rich enough to permit some of its members to do something other than bring in food in the second section, to a society that has developed science once again to the point that they now have nuclear weapons.
Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
A very complex telling of an adulterous relationshipA: the initial stages, the emergence of the relationship into the open, and the gradual disintegration resulting from the characters of the two people, and the effect on them of the responses of the people about them. This is my third reading, and it well repays the time spent.
Nevada Barr: Track of the Cat
This is actually the second book I had read by Nevada Barr. The first was The Rope, the prequel that was published in 2013, which I read for a f-2-f mystery group. It wasn't bad, just highly improbable I thought, but other members assured me that many of her other works were much better. So, I grabbed this one which had been the first in the series. I found it to be a much more enjoyable read and consequently I will go on to read others in the series. I also found that being familiar with the park the book is set in just adds to the fun.
Harry Beston: The Outermost House
This is from my post last year about this book: "Beston had had a cabin built on Cape Cod, not far from the Atlantic shore of the peninsula. In September of 1924 he went to the cabin, planning on spending only a few weeks there. Instead he found himself reluctant to leave. His two-week stay eventually lasted a full year, in which he took copious notes about the seasonal changes occurring there to the beach, the weather, and the birds, plants, and animals that were his neighbors. The Outermost House is the result of that unplanned year on Cape Cod." This was my second reading of The Outermost House, and I doubt very much that it will be the last.
Giles Blunt: Until the Night
Until the Night is the sixth in the Canadian police procedurals in his series featuring Detective John Cardinal. It's hard to find Blunt now in the US, so I have to check his website and hit the internet to buy his books. Blunt is one of those few whose books I always buy, if I can't get them in the library. He does include some issues that involve Cardinal away from his job, but he doesn't let them intrude into the main flow of the work, which is a police procedural. His plots tend to be complex. Occasionally we are told the identity of the killer(s) early on, and the focus is then on Cardinal and his fellow officers' attempt to solve the crime and the killers who are trying to remain hidden. If we don't know who the killer is, then the plots are complex, and I don't remember guessing correctly until later on near the end.
Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent
Contrary to many of Conrad's earlier works, The Secret Agent is set in London England. A foreign government, which appears to be Russia, attempts to influence the English government to rescind its policy of being a safe haven for those suspected of terrorist acts against other governments. One of the foreign government's tactics is the use of an agent provocateur to encourage the terrorists to become active in England and thereby eliminate England's tolerance of them. Verloc is one of those employed by the foreign governments, but they are unaware that he is a double agent, for he is spying on the local anarchist group for the London Police. It all goes wrong when he is persuaded to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. (The novel is based on a true incident.)
Joseph Conrad: Mirror of the Sea
One of two autobiographical memoirs by Conrad that relates to his years as a seaman, officer, and captain. He talks of various ports, captains, storms, and perils of the sea. In Conrad's own words, "I have attempt here. . . to lay bare with the unreserve of a last hour's confession the terms of my relation with the sea, which beginning mysteriously, like any great passion the inscrutable Gods send to mortals, went on unreasoning and invincible, surviving the test of disillusion, defying the disenchantment that lurks in every day of a strenuous life; went on full of love's delight and lover's anguish, facing them in open-eyed exultation without bitterness and without repining, from the first hour to the last." He writes for us landlubbers, with little technical terminology. It's an eye-opener from a seaman's point of view.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The Demons or The Devils (aka The Possessed)
This novel is Dostoyevsky's satire of various political ideologies and specifically of Turgenev's earlier novel Fathers and Sons. Turgenev is satirized by Dostoyevsky in the character of the writer Karmazinov, who attempts to win the favor of the Russian Western/European-leaning social critics. The novel, published in 1872, is almost prophetic as it depicts the revolutionaries as favoring the use of terror to cow the population and the creation of three person cells to protect themselves from government infiltrators. The contrast of conflicting ideologies of social democracy and radical totalitarianism is depicted in the differences between Stepan Verkhovensky, the idealistic social democratic reformer, and his son Pyotr Verkhovensky, the nihilist terrorist (the descendents of the social reformers), and therefore Dostoyevsky's version of Fathers and Sons.
Karin Fossum: The Caller
A disturbed boy plays mischevious and sometimes malicious tricks on his neighbors. For example, he sneaks into a neighbor's house and spills blood on a sleeping infant. The parents, of course, are panic-stricken until they learn it was a hoax. Now, they are angry. The boy commits a number of these acts as a self-appointed messenger attempting to disturb their complacency. However, some of his victims are determined not to let it pass, once his identity is known. This is where Inspector Sejer gets involved. Again, a great novel from a author whose works I get without even thinking about it. It's automatic.
Hermann Hesse: Magister Ludi
Hesse, who, in his previous novels, argued for the superiority of the spirit, the mind, the intellect, creates a small province in which certain inhabitants are able to live the life of the mind, the intellect, without concern for the necessity of earning a living. They are supported by a government subsidy and the only requirement is that they provide teachers for the rest of the country. But, here in what should have been the Eden that characters in his previous novels had searched for, Hesse turns his back on his previous beliefs and argues that the life of the intellect must be meshed with the material world, the world of striving and getting, of achieving and earning, and of greed and power.
Drew Magary: The Postmortal
The following is from my post last year about The Postmortal: "Drew Magary's The Postmortal is probably the best SF novel that explores the theme of an extended life span that I've read in decades, if not ever. It attempts to realistically depict the effects of the development of an anti-aging medical treatment on society. A researcher accidentally discovers a gene that controls aging and eventually comes up with a treatment that shuts down the gene. Those given the cure (as it is popularly known) immediately stop aging and remain at whatever physical state they were in when given the treatment. It is not immortality. They can still die from accidents, disease, etc., but they will remain physically the same for an unknown length of time. I read it twice last year and will read it again.
Walter M. Miller, Jr.: A Canticle for Leibowitz
This is another reread and one of my favorite post-holocaust novels. It is really three novellas, which focus on a religious order of monks who initially were followers of Leibowitz, a scientist. Leibowitz gave his followers the task of preserving whatever scientific knowledge they could find. Like the monks of the Middle Ages, they spent their lives copying out whatever written materials they could find. The three novellas take place several hundred years apart, going from a subsistence level of existence in the first part, to a society that is now rich enough to permit some of its members to do something other than bring in food in the second section, to a society that has developed science once again to the point that they now have nuclear weapons.
Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
A very complex telling of an adulterous relationshipA: the initial stages, the emergence of the relationship into the open, and the gradual disintegration resulting from the characters of the two people, and the effect on them of the responses of the people about them. This is my third reading, and it well repays the time spent.
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