The Old Man and the Sea

I have to admit, I am absolutely dumbfounded at how little Hemingway I’ve read.  I read The Sun Also Rises a couple years ago (a copy I had purchased on my honeymoon in 1996 but had never bothered to read until recently) and felt like I got it; I figured out what all the fuss was about and why Hemingway was so highly-regarded.  Why I didn’t immediately line up the rest of his works in the queue is a mystery to me.  Hemingway’s ability to evoke imagery in the reader’s mind is unparalleled in my experience.

After some fits and starts and failures, beginning some books that didn’t resonate with me at all, I decided to go back to Hemingway, whose The Old Man and the Sea was perfect for my short attention span.  Not to mention that it won the Pulitzer in 1952 and was a driving force behind Hemingway’s receipt of the Nobel Prize.

The story tracks our hero, Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who has gone 84 days without catching anything.  He concocts a plan to go farther out to sea to try to catch the big one; when he actually catches a huge marlin, it drags his little boat even farther out to sea over the course of two days.  Hemingway tells the story of the epic battle between the two with such precision and with such detail to the specific tools Santiago uses and actions he takes that you can’t help but believe Hemingway himself was a fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico for thirty years.

This story is absolutely spellbinding, even if I wasn’t familiar with some of the nautical and angling terminology.  It was simply breathtaking to follow Santiago as his mental and physical limits are stretched beyond anything I’ll ever experience.  And the metaphor reflected by what happens to Santiago and the marlin is so moving and heartbreaking that I see it in every sad tale I’ve heard since, whether real or fictional.

You can bet your skiff that I’ll be lining up some more Hemingway soon.  I’ve decided that he will be the fallback whenever I hit a dry spell, because I know I can count on him.

That Book by Nabokov

After seeing that a survey of NY Times book critics had named Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, as the best work of fiction of the past 100 years, and knowing that I had heard Nabokov mentioned in song and that a band I like called Clare Quilty was named after a character in the book, how could I resist?  And that sort of sums up our narrator, Humbert Humbert, who is obsessed with young girls (whom he refers to as “nymphets”).

Nabokov is a good writer –  that many critics can’t be wrong.  However, the most striking thing about this novel is not Nabokov’s writing ability, but rather that the book was first published in 1955 in France and then in 1958 in the U.S.  The central point of the story is Humbert Humbert’s fixation on young girls, and eventually on one in particular, Dolores Haze (whom he nicknames “Lolita”).  While that concept may not seem particularly shocking today, I suspect it was as controversial as just about anything you could come up with during that era.  What a brave, gutsy venture by Nabokov.

Without giving the details of the story away (as if there’s anyone other than me who hadn’t read this before), suffice it to say that the things our narrator does to get close to Lolita are astounding.  And even more astounding is that as he rejiggers his entire life to be near her, the reader feels perversely sympathetic to him — he is our protagonist.  Yet stepping back, objectively, he is a disgusting human being who should be entitled to no feelings from us other than disgust, hatred, and anger.  And I imagine that is the beauty of the book and the reason the critics swoon over it — that Nabokov can essentially trick the reader into having feelings for this monster.

I honestly had a little bit of a struggle tracking the storyline here, knowing where our characters were and where they were going, but it didn’t really bother me.  I was turning pages as fast as I could to see where things were going.  And not — I repeat NOT — because I was excited to read some filthy pedophilic erotica, but rather because I was absolutely fascinated by this character (Humbert Humbert, not Lolita).  And the interesting thing to me is that there isn’t any “filth” in this book.  There’s conceptual filth, but not literal filth — there are no sex scenes per se, although conjugal relations are talked about — and so none of the words themselves are “dirty.”  And as I said before, it’s amazing how wrapped up you can get in such offensive subject matter without being offended, because of Nabokov’s gift for telling the tale through the eyes of our narrator.

I personally wouldn’t call this the best work of fiction of the last 100 years, but hey — I’m not a qualified critic.  I will say, though, that I feel a great sense of value and reward as I check the box on having read this one.

Update:  When we posted this, we didn’t know that Lolita was published on this date in 1958 nor did we know that it was “first book since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in the first three weeks of publication.”

The Leisure Seeker

Fancying myself quite a seeker of leisure, I couldn’t possibly pass up a book entitled The Leisure Seeker.  When you couple that title with the font used on the cover (which I’m a total sucker for), it was a done deal.

Written by Michael Zadoorian, this is a fascinating road novel that follows an elderly couple, John and Ella Robina, as they travel from Detroit to Disneyland via Route 66 in their old camper, called “The Leisure Seeker.”  That snapshot in and of itself might not sound that compelling, but the situation is a little more complicated:  John is senile and suffering from dementia, and Ella has late-stage cancer and a plethora of other illnesses.  Knowing that they may be nearing the end, John and Ella sneak off without telling their two grown children or their doctors, who they knew wouldn’t have let them go.

The story is told by Ella, and above anything else (including being classified as a “road novel”), this is a love story.  Not a mushy young love story, but a story about a love that has been going strong for sixty-plus years.  John is losing it at a rapid rate — often not remembering Ella’s name, where they are, or where they’re going — but he can drive and still has a valid driver’s license.  Ella is in almost constant pain and is severely overweight, and her narrative brings the reader into her world of pill-popping, never knowing what her body will be capable of accomplishing, and dealing with the frustration of not knowing at any given moment whether her husband might wander off onto the freeway somewhere.  But in spite of their troubles and ailments, it becomes clear that their love is a force, a bond, that goes without saying.  There is no question about it.  Even when they argue, you never think for one second that their partnership is in jeopardy or that it ever was.  It’s like gravity — unseen, not talked about, but always holding them in place.

As you might expect, John and Ella encounter their fair share of trials and tribulations as they trek across the country.  Health problems, strange individuals, a countless number of Route 66 Diners (all with James Dean and Marilyn Monroe decorations).  But they soldier on, stopping at different campgrounds to set up for the night, drinking cheap homemade cocktails, cheap wine, or cheap beer while they sit outside the Leisure Seeker projecting slide shows on a sheet to look back at their lives.  When they reach California, a peace comes over them — a sense of accomplishment that puts things into perspective for them (or for Ella at least).

This book is an easy read.  Zadoorian isn’t fancy with his language, there aren’t multiple storylines running at once, and you’re never challenged to understand where you are in the narrative.  That style lets the story itself come to the forefront, and it’s a good one.

Next

Next, by James Hynes, follows an arc that’s been used before — it’s told from our narrator’s viewpoint over the course of one day.  But don’t let that fool you into thinking this story is garden-variety in any way, shape, or form.

Our protagonist’s name is Kevin Quinn, and he’s in a place in his life where he’s just not sure what he should do next.  He doesn’t feel that he’s accomplished what he wants to or what he’s capable of, professionally and romantically, and is contemplating making a big change.  On the day in question, he flies from Ann Arbor, Michigan , to Austin, Texas, for a job interview.  He does this without telling his live-in girlfriend (who’s out of town).  He’s also not sure what he will do if he actually gets the job.  But he clearly wants to challenge himself and his status quo, at least in his mind.

Kevin’s journey takes place shortly after a terrorist attack in Scotland in which a man named Kevin Quinn blew up a train station.  Paranoia about a terrorist attack, coupled with Kevin’s fear of flying, put him on edge during his flight, although he’s quite distracted by the pretty young woman next to him on the plane.

He arrives in Austin several hours early for the interview, so he decides to prowl the city to look for the woman who sat next to him on the plane.  As he behaves like a tenth-grader with a crush, he flashes back often to give details of some of the formative moments of his life back in Michigan.  I personally enjoyed not only the flashbacks to Ann Arbor, but also his activities in Austin as he epitomizes the hopeless, hapless buffoon trying to get lucky.  Thoroughly enjoyable and relatable.

Then, as you’ll note from any other review you read of this book, the final 50 pages of the story take you to a place that you have probably never put yourself in before.  I won’t give any spoilers, but the last part of this book might just blow your mind.  Big ups to Hynes for being able to tell the last part of this story in such a compelling and downright terrifying way.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

What can I say that I haven’t said before?  As an engineering major who never had to take an English class in college, who then went straight to law school where all of my reading time was spent on cases and legal treatises (I’m doing you a favor by not posting reviews of any of those), I missed out on a lot of stuff that everyone else read.  And so it is that I just read Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

First published in the 1890′s, The Picture of Dorian Gray was the only novel published by Wilde, who was quite a dandy (as that word is often used today) Irish playwright and poet.  Wilde’s wild life has been the subject of much historical and literary commentary over the years, and so I won’t get into that, focusing instead on the story itself.

The title character of the story is a handsome young man that we are introduced to as the subject of a portrait being painted by Basil Hallward.  When  Hallward’s friend Lord Henry Wotton joins the mix and the three of them engage in conversation, the reader immediately recognizes three drastically different worldviews emerging.  Gray appears to be an innocent, naive, and impressionable youngster, Hallward a cautious, introverted conservative, and Lord Henry a flamboyant, opinionated soapbox philosopher.  Their discussion makes an immediate impact on Dorian Gray, who is deeply influenced by Lord Henry’s take on life, and the reader can instantly see the beginning of Gray’s transformation into a superficial, self-centered egotist (is that redundant?) who is focused solely on beauty, aesthetics, and art for art’s sake.  As part of this transformation, Gray realizes that his beauty will not last forever and begins to lament his fate, making a wish that he could retain his looks.

For those of you who don’t know (and I don’t even think I can call this a spoiler), when the portrait is finished Gray takes it home and begins to notice that the painting is changing and evolving while he himself is not.  Gray locks the painting away in an unused room in his estate so that his secret will be safe, and things seem to be set for him, right?  Well, not so fast.  As the story progresses, Gray begins to see the impact that his wish and his new worldview are having on those around him (including the woman he falls in love with), and his confidence and strength begin to wither.  One can guess where things will end up, and I’ll leave it to you to do so (or to read the story).

My critical commentary on the story really focuses on two specific elements:  Wilde’s use of dialogue to make social and philosophical commentary, and Wilde’s transgression into nowhere in the middle of the book.  As to the first, while I was completely enthralled with the conversation taking place in the beginning of the book — just completely floored by the depth of the statements made primarily by Lord Henry, dozens of which could each serve as the subject for a Master’s Thesis — it was also difficult to suspend disbelief while I read.  Did people really talk like that in the 1890′s?  Could someone seriously say that stuff extemporaneously?  Wow.

With regard to the second, there is literally (using that term literally) a huge chunk in the middle of the book that the reader could skip without losing anything; in this section Gray becomes a “collector” of beautiful things, and Wilde spends page after page describing the various objects and artifacts that Gray collects.  While I can understand the point of bolstering the character’s positioning as a lover of beauty, the rambling descriptions became tiresome.  If the story were made into a sitcom and the viewer didn’t have a DVR, that part is where I’d tell you to go ahead and use the bathroom or head to the kitchen to grab a snack — you won’t miss anything.

All in all though, I can see why this book has earned its position as an icon in the literary world.  Wilde is an incredible writer, and even though my understanding is that many of the theories espoused by Lord Henry in the book aren’t original to Wilde, the author’s ability to place them into dialogue/context is superb.  And Dorian Gray’s character is symbolic in so many ways that the reader cannot help but reflect on his meaning.

Elliot Allagash

Elliot Allagash by Simon Rich is an enjoyable, lighthearted read.  Rich has written for the Harvard Lampoon and more recently for Saturday Night Live, so I think that’s what you would expect.

The book is narrated by Seymour Herson, an unpopular kid at a not-so-illustrious private school in Manhattan.  The title character is an obscenely rich sociopath that Seymour befriends in Eighth Grade; Elliot has been kicked out of more schools than anyone can count, and this school appears to be a last resort for him.  They become friends solely because Elliot wants to test his own skills (and money) to see if he can make Seymour popular.

Hijincks and shenanigans ensue as Elliot concocts scheme after scheme, rarely revealing details to Seymour, instead just commanding Seymour to go along with whatever Elliot says.  Elliot uses his father’s wealth and connections, as well as his limo driver/jack of all trades “James” to lie, cheat, and buy Seymour’s way into the popular kids’ circle.

As Seymour’s star rises, though, he begins to question some of the collateral damage caused by Elliot’s plans, and tension mounts between them.  Suffice it to say that you don’t want to get on the bad side of anyone who can trick an entire school into liking the unpopular kid.

There aren’t any deep life lessons to be garnered from these pages, but the story is an easy and entertaining read.  I would rank How I Paid for College by Marc Acito as my favorite of these schoolyard coming-of-age comedies that I’ve read as an adult, but this one is no slouch either.

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Parker.  Not only are they three women who’ve never been in my kitchen, they are also three notable female authors that I’ve never read.  As a chapter in my ongoing quest to try to read many of the classics that the cool kids probably read in high school or college, I figured I’d investigate these three.  First stop, Sylvia Plath.

Plath herself is regarded as a tragic heroine, having found herself in a failing marriage to another poet, with two children, in a foreign country, struggling with depression and (I think) borderline insanity at times, eventually taking her own life in 1963.

The Bell Jar is her semiautobiographical novel about a young writer who battles depression and insanity while in college.  The term “the bell jar” is used by Plath in the book to describe the feeling of madness, as if a glass bell jar is constantly hovering over you, sometimes completely surrounding you and stifling you.  Critical note:  this reminded me of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Bauby’s absolutely spellbinding and emotionally riveting story of his life after suffering a massive stroke that left him fully functional mentally, but physically unable to move anything except one eyelid, circumstances he likened to a butterfly in a diving bell, unable to interact with the outside world.  Second critical note:  everyone should read Bauby’s book; if it doesn’t move you, you aren’t human.

Now that I’ve started down the path, I suppose I’ll continue to draw parallels between The Bell Jar and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  The most significant common thread to me is that both books are fundamentally legitimate.  Legitimate in the sense that the authors actually went through the circumstances described in their works, and so they both speak from a place that most of us have never been and will never be.  So, unlike fictionalized accounts of strange events, or fantastical tellings of difficult situations, as you read these works, you know that the authors aren’t making it up.  And that gives their writing so much more credibility and leads their stories to resonate with the reader so much more than they would if they were told from the third person by someone who hadn’t experienced these things.

With Bauby’s book, this is pretty easy to understand, as each of us can imagine — or more properly, can’t possibly imagine — what it would be like to be trapped in your body with no ability to move, but with full recognition of your surroundings, full use of your brain, full recall of your memories and experiences, etc.  Plath’s situation is more complicated to me, because plenty of writers have written stories told from the perspective of a “crazy person”.  But Plath is able to tell her story and describe the emotional rollercoaster, feelings of paranoia, and skewed perspectives of a person who is losing it from the perspective of a person who was truly losing it.  And so going in to the book, you can’t help but lend a much deeper sense of meaning to what she says.  It’s not a psychiatrist trying to discern what’s going on inside the mind of an unstable person — it’s an unstable person with a gift for prose describing it directly.

The story that takes place in The Bell Jar is not, in my opinion, in and of itself, a particularly ingenious tale.  While the story of a young woman from the Boston area interning in NYC for a summer and then finding herself up against writer’s block when she returns home and eventually being admitted to an asylum isn’t necessarily your everyday run-of-the-mill plotline, it’s also not as clever or unique as some other masterworks.  However, what you know about Plath, and the knowledge that she is really talking about herself and her own feelings pushes this to another level.  In other words, if you read this in a vacuum (i.e., without knowing anything about Plath’s backstory), you’d probably give it a B, if only based on her simple but engaging style of prose.  But when you know the whole story, you understand why this book has earned its place in history.

Tropic of Cancer

I was bored one day and decided to stockpile a bunch of “classics” in my Nook’s elibrary, one of which was Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.  I had heard of it, knew it was well-known for one reason or another, but didn’t know much about it beyond that when I decided to start reading it.  Had I known more about it, I might have been a bit intimidated or [gulp] afraid to give it a go, as much of the commentary on it would place it (in my mind) beside works by other authors that I’ve never had the wherewithal to even attempt (Joyce, Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace to name a few).  Thankfully my ignorance was a blessing and I forged ahead.

I’ve often criticized authors that I believe “overwrite” — showing off with adjectives and metaphor until they beat each and every scene to death and lose sight of what’s actually happening.  If Miller weren’t so ridiculously good at this, I would accuse him of the same.  But he is that good.

Tropic of Cancer is set in Paris, my favorite city in the world — that is a great way to start off on my good side.  However, this story doesn’t follow a traditional narrative arc; rather — and this is what would have scared the bejesus out of me had I known it — Miller writes with a very stream-of-consciousness style that pays more attention to the narrator’s thoughts and observations than to linking elements of the storyline together.  As Miller tells the “story” of his struggles as a writer living in Paris around 1930, which involves a rotating cast of ancillary characters and particular places in Paris, you are completely mesmerized by Miller’s ability to put down on paper such deep thoughts.  I was positively spellbound at his gift for language.

Mind you, Miller’s gift for language involves some fairly racy language.  This novel was first published in Paris in 1934 but wasn’t published in the U.S. until the 1960′s, as it was the subject of obscenity trials and the like, because Miller uses plenty of “bad words.”  Many of these words have become so commonplace in today’s vernacular that they might not raise an eyebrow, but from what I gather, he was quite the trendsetter in establishing authors’ First Amendment rights.  A further qualification — while Miller uses some terms that would be offensive in many circumstances, they are not the focus of the book; this is not a book about anatomy or sex, but rather about his life and thoughts in Paris at the time, many of which involved anatomy and sex.

Speaking of beating scenes to death, the thought of an author using four full pages to describe an “epiphany” would cause me to start preparing the slings and arrows.  But here, Miller does just that in such a descriptive and meaningful fashion that I actually tried to read the entire passage to my wife while she was in the midst of reading another book.  That didn’t go over so well, but my point is that I was so moved by Miller’s writing that I couldn’t contain myself.  I won’t ruin the surprise for those of you who haven’t read the book — I trust that you will know it when you get to it (I think it’s the crux of the book).  For those of you who’ve read and remember the book, it’s the scene when Miller goes to Miss Hamilton’s brothel with a young Hindu accomplice and reaches a new understanding about the meaning of life.

This book may not be for everybody, but I loved it.

The Illumination

I read Tim’s review of Kevin Brockmeier’s novel The Illumination, and it sounded like a fantastic concept.  For some inexplicable reason, at a point in time, everyone in the world’s pain begins to be evidenced by a shining light.  Think about the possibilities — you can’t fake pain, you can’t hide pain, and you can see when others are in pain.  Fascinating.

And the way Brockmeier opted to write about this world seemed kind of cool, too — a journal of one-sentence-a-day mini “love notes” from a husband to his wife finds its way into a series of people’s lives.  Kind of like a metaphysical Slacker, where the narrative thread goes from person to person in pursuit of this journal.

And the book itself started out very promising — Brockmeier’s a good writer with a good sense of wordsmanship.  For example, how many different ways do you think an author could describe the light emanating from someone’s sore spot before they started getting boring or repetitive?  However, Brockmeier manages throughout the book to use metaphor and simile thoughtfully and interestingly.

But that’s where the good stuff sort of stalls.  Contrary to my expectations about how the Illumination (as it comes to be known throughout the world) would impact people’s relationships and interpersonal dynamics, and without any real “plot”, the novel really kind of wanders aimlessly through otherwise unconnected stories without any real purpose or explanation that I could divine.  I kept waiting for stuff to tie back together, or for something to surface to explain why the Illumination was happening (like the last chapter in a Stephen King book), but nothing.  No explanation.  A random event, impacting random people, for a random purpose.  Which I found wholely unsatisfying.  And unlike Slacker, where the entire point was about randomness and how little things interact and touch people, and so the depth of the characters wasn’t important, I wanted to dig into these characters but couldn’t.  By the time I began to garner interest in one, the story moved on to another one.

Last comment:  the ending was awful.  Awful, dumb, and pointless in my mind.  The icing on the cake of a book that failed to meet expectations.

Brave New World

Please excuse (or thank me for, depending on your perspective) my extended hiatus.  It’s not that I was exiled to an island or anything like that; I simply hadn’t read anything that felt worthy of posting about.  I read at least one mildly entertaining book (The Know-It-All), but also started and bailed on countless books that for one reason or another didn’t do anything for me (Cutting for Stone, Skippy Dies, A Visit From the Goon Squad).  Then, as I’ve done before out of desperation and frustration, I decided to return to the classics, and to another one that I hadn’t read before — Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  What a neat book.

I had read George Orwell’s 1984 a few years back, and while it was a struggle for me at first to truly engage with that book, by the time I did I couldn’t put it down.  Orwell’s future and its depiction of the power of power and the dynamic between the different classes of society was so scary and so gripping that all one could do was to thank heavens it hadn’t come true.  Well, little did I know, but Brave New World was written about a decade and a half before 1984.  And while the two share little in common with respect to their stories, they both take place in a dystopian future in which the extent to which power and control are exercised over the masses isn’t obvious at all to the oppressed, for very different reasons.

In Huxley’s future, The World State exists in what seems to be perfect harmony.  Humans are genetically engineered through a process that assures they will fit into one of five types (Alpha through Epsilon), with pluses and minuses thrown in there.  Each class has a predestined role in society, and society has a predetermined set of values and objectives, and worships “Ford” (Henry Ford, the God of The World State).  Children are put through the “hypnopaedic process” to subconsiously train them of those values and objectives.  The result is a society in which waste is encouraged, because the more that is wasted, the more manufacturing is necessary to fill the gaps caused by the waste.  It’s sort of a societal perpetual-motion-machine.  Recreational sex is the norm, monogamy is not, and everyone thrives on soma, a government-supplied drug.

The story itself centers on Bernard, an Alpha-plus psychologist in London who seems to question the order of things.  In his efforts to woo Lenina, he takes her to a “Reservation” — an area that has been quarantined and in which the inhabitants, referred to as “Savages” (in this case Native Americans) are allowed to live as they please outside of The World State.  While there, they witness ceremonies and behaviors that frighten and intrigue them, and Bernard comes across a woman (Linda) and her son (John) that Bernard believes they should bring back to London with them.  The remainder of the story centers on how these two individuals and their values fit within The World State and the conflicts between our main characters and society.

I wouldn’t say whether this book is better or worse than 1984 — I think they are both “must reads”.  What I find surprising is how 1984 seems so iconic as a reference to the dystopian future, while Brave New World only seems to merit a passing mention.  A terrible shun in my opinion.

Check out this brilliant cartoon comparison of 1984 vs. Brave New World.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The blurb about The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid, sounded pretty interesting — a beared Pakistani man begins a conversation with an uneasy American man in Lahore, Pakistan.  The way it’s written, it’s almost as if you you, the reader, are the uneasy American that he is speaking to.  It’s told as a one-way conversation, and every now and then the narrator “responds” to a gesture by the listener and asks questions of his listener or otherwise changes the direction of his monologue.

The narrator tells his own story — a story of how he left Pakistan to attend Princeton and then took a job with a fancy firm in New York City, and then how events unfolded before and after September 11 that brought him back to the very spot he tells the story from.  Hamid is a very good writer, and his storytelling, in this structure, borders on frighteningly polite.  Our narrator speaks impeccable English and constructs flawless sentences, seemingly out of an urge to make the American listener comfortable through decorum.  And as he recounts the events of his life, he touches on incendiary issues related to religion, culture, and politics, from multiple vantage points based on his then-current station in life and perspective.

I’ll confess to feeling uneasy throughout the book, which I suspect was exactly Hamid’s goal — to make the reader put himself in the position of looking at these times through the eyes of someone impacted differently by them.  This is a well-crafted, riveting story that manipulates the reader in ways that few authors have the skill to do.

The Art of Racing in the Rain

I had seen the cover for Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain many times, and something about it always drew me back; I knew that I would have to read it at some point, and I just did.  And I’m glad I did.

The book tells the story of Denny, an aspiring racecar driver/driving instructor, his wife Eve, and their daughter Zoe, but most importantly it tells the story of Enzo, Denny’s dog.  And Enzo is the one who tells the story.  I know, I know.  Sounds odd, and kind of campy.  But I thought it worked.

Denny and Enzo were a couple first.  Then Denny met Eve.  Then Denny and Eve had Zoe.  Then Eve got sick.  Then other things happened.  And the book is told through Enzo’s eyes as these things happened.  Stein does a really neat job of telling things from the perspective of a dog who understands everything but can’t communicate back with words, and also of using racing metaphors to talk about how to handle what life deals you.  See, Denny realizes early on that Enzo likes to watch television, and so Denny lets him watch tv while Denny’s at work at the auto shop, often letting him watch the Speed Channel or videos of famous European races.  And sometimes when they’re watching together, Denny explains to Enzo how all of the various elements come together on the track to lead to success or failure.

Enzo has a mind like a steel trap — not only understanding what Denny tells him, but also never forgetting any of it — and is also quite the philosopher, even dabbling in musings on mortality and reincarnation as he grows older.  As Enzo tells of the events that unfold following Eve’s illness, he constantly goes back to brilliant little nuggets that he has learned, which help him to cope and to help him help Denny cope.

So in a nutshell, it’s a story told by a dog using racing metaphors and philosophy.  Which sounds kind of awful but absolutely isn’t.  Check it out.

Bel Canto

Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett, came highly recommended to me by a very literate friend of mine while we had lunch one day.  The story takes place in an unnamed South American country, and begins during a birthday party being thrown at the Vice-Presidential mansion for the president of a Japanese electronics firm that the country’s government is trying to woo into building a plant there.  Lots of important people are there from all over the world, including a world-famous opera singer specifically flown in to entertain the Japanese businessman, who is a huge opera fan.

Well, the wheels come off when a group of terrorists break in through the home’s ventilation ducts and take the entire group hostage.  Sort of like when the cops raid a Fraternity party, except kind of worse.  And when it turns out that the terrorists had only come to the party to kidnap the country’s President — who wasn’t there because he decided to stay home to watch his favorite prime time soap opera — even the terrorists’ plans go awry.

It’s an interesting concept of a novel, which examines the dynamics between the terrorists, the hostages, and the outside world, and which takes place entirely during the several months that the Vice-Presidential mansion is in lockdown by the terrorists.  I wasn’t crazy about the book, but I can’t deny that it was pretty well-written, and that over the course of reading the story I witnessed and could appreciate the development of many of the characters, particularly Gen, the Japanese businessman’s translator, who became the primary liaison between the various parties, most of whom spoke different languages.

My biggest issue with the book was the ending.  I won’t say what it was, but it was another one of those endings which, no matter how closely you paid attention during the book, you wouldn’t have predicted, because none of the underpinnings of the ending had been set down.  It was kind of a bait-and-switch, but not the kind that I like.  I’m a fan of a good twist, but only if you can look back and realize in hindsight that it could have happened based on what had transpired to that point; the denouement here was completely out of the blue.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

I had read a little bit about the film The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, but I didn’t realize that it was based on a book by John Boyne.   I hadn’t seen the film and decided to read the book.  As I’ve said in other reviews, Holy Cow.  What a marvelous, gut-wrenching book.

Like other books I’ve read and enjoyed (e.g., The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), this book is written with a child’s innocence; unlike those, this one is told in the third person.  The story focuses on our main character Bruno, a nine year-old German boy, and tells of the events surrounding the early 1940′s from his perspective.  And Boyne’s skill at portraying such a brutal period in human history through the eyes of a child is positively spellbinding.

Bruno’s father is in the German military, although Bruno doesn’t really know what his job is — just that he’s very important.  And after a visit from “the Fury”, Bruno’s father gets put in charge of “Out-with”, and uproots his family from their comfortable life in Berlin to live in a large house bordering the concentration camp.  Bruno is devastated at having to move and leave his best friends, and as he tries to find ways to occupy himself in his new environment (including getting along with his older sister Gretel), he is perplexed by the people he sees who live on the other side of the distant fence, all of whom wear the same style of striped pajamas.  Hearing the scenes and events told as they are seen and understood by a nine-year old innocent child is incredibly moving.  And when Bruno goes “exploring” along the fence, walking for an hour into the woods, he comes across a boy on the other side of the fence and the two become secret friends.  As the boys begin meeting on a daily basis and as they talk and relay their experiences through the fence – being uprooted to a new place they didn’t want to go to, etc. — the similarities might resonate to the untrained eye; however, knowing the horror behind Bruno’s friend Shmuel’s story brings tears to your eyes.

Like the film Life is Beautiful, this book is a moving tale about a horrific and tragic time, and anyone with a heart would be stunned by this story.

Serial

One of the neat things about the Nook is the access to some free stuff — works that are in the public domain, as well as new works that Barnes & Noble gives you for free.  Serial, a short story by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch, was one of the latter.  A quick, free, impromptu read before bedtime — not a bad deal.

The Overview of the story initially led me to believe that I knew what was going to happen.  It reads:

Remember the twin golden rules of hitchhiking?  #1 — Don’t go hitchhiking, because the driver who picks you up could be certifiably crazy.  #2 — Don’t pick up hitchhikers, because the traveler you pick up could be a raving nutcase.  So what if, on some dark, isolated road, Crazy #1 offered a ride to Nutcase #2 . . . .

Having read that Overview, and then having read the opening line of the book, “The hardest thing about killing a hitchhiker is finding one to pick up”, as our character Donaldson is driving down the road, I assumed that as soon as he picked up a kid at a Cracker Barrel parking lot, I knew exactly what was coming.  Well, suffiice it to say that I didn’t.

Apparently this little story, referred to as “the original horror novella” has been downloaded over 200,000 times, and so maybe I’m late to the party on this one, but it’s downright creepy and shocking.  And not in the way you think it’s going to be, even when you think you know what you think you should expect.  Go check it out.  I personally am going to check out the subsequent longer version that apparently picks up where this one left off.  But I might leave the light on while I read that one . . . .

(and it looks you can download it – legally – for free over here in PDF or ePub versions.

Ordinary Thunderstorms

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Stephen King was a hack right about now.  It was on his over-the-top recommendation that I got my hands on Ordinary Thunderstorms, by William Boyd.  The book tells the story of a climatologist in London who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and goes down a rabbithole of conspiracy, intrigue, danger, suspense, blah, blah, blah.  Or so Stephen King said in his review.

In truth, the book certainly starts out that way.  Adam Kindred is interviewing for a job in London and following a casual interaction with a man in a pub, he attempts to return the man’s forgotten briefcase to him.  A murder occurs, Kindred is the primary suspect, and so Kindred goes into hiding.  And with that stage set, the book just coasts to the finish (I won’t say the “end”, because frankly there wasn’t one).

I don’t know that I’ve consumed too many books that fall into the “beach read” category, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this one probably falls into that bucket.  It’s harmless, fairly well-written, evenly-paced, fiction.  Without any edge that I could discern.  And don’t even get me started about the utter lack of engaging suspense or the total lack of denouement.  I think the only “twist” that Boyd managed was to get you set up for all sorts of crazy stuff that could have happened at the end, only to trick you by not having anything happen.

If what I’ve described sounds good to you, then have at it — this one is perfect for you.  But I’m bored and annoyed and I think I’ll boycott Stephen King for a while.

Lord of the Flies

I’m certain that I read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies when I was younger, but not having any specific recollection of the details of the story (including the ending), I decided to re-read it.  And much like Jack London’s To Build a Fire, another story I had read when I was younger but couldn’t remember the details of, when I read this one again, all of the imagery was different from what I had remembered.  In both cases, even though I couldn’t recall specific elements, I had a vision in my mind of the respective settings, but when I read each of them again, the picture in my mind was completely different.  Maybe it’s just me, but that’s sort of strange.

But on to the details.  This is as intense a read as it gets.  First published in 1954, the book tells the story of a group of British schoolboys who are marooned on a deserted island without any adults.  As they try to sort out the roles and responsibilities necessary to sustain them and to maximize their chances of being rescued, they create the guiding principles for the society they create, but almost as quickly as they settle on their social contract and civil rules, their society begins to fracture and the boys begin to form alliances and devolve into a frighteningly primitive group of antagonistic factions.

A fair-haired boy named Ralph is the island’s first leader.  But as he and another boy named Jack begin to disagree over the group’s priorities, it becomes clear that a power struggle is sure to ensue.  Ralph works with Piggy, a fat, bespectacled boy, to try to govern the boys (including the “littluns”, the younger boys who cannot fend for themselves), while Jack and a group of the boys designated as “hunters” apparently make plans to govern themselves.  And the tension that builds between them and the ways in which it manifests itself are so wrought with suspense, fear, uncertainty, and confusion that the reader can’t help but be riveted to the turning pages.

The story itself is a metaphor that reflects human nature, good and evil, and the underpinnings of any human society.  But it is also filled with icons and imagery that serve to focus the reader on the fundamental nature of friendship, power, wealth/possession, adaptability, and the fragile nature of the human mind.  Piggy’s glasses, the “beast”, castle rock, the shelters the boys build, and the “lord of the flies” (the identity/description of which I won’t reveal here) each represent something that the reader is forced to define for him or herself.  And some of them represent things that are easily taken for granted until we are deprived of them.

This is a fantastic book.  While Golding’s writing style and word choice take a little getting used to, once you’re in, you can’t get out.

An aside: The NYT’s review of a new biography of Golding begins: “In the late 1960s, some 15 years after the publication of “Lord of the Flies,” William Golding confessed to a friend that he resented the novel because it meant that he owed his reputation to what he thought of as a minor book, a book that had made him a classic in his lifetime, which was “a joke,” and that the money he had gained from it was “Monopoly money” because he hadn’t really earned it.”

Ben Franklin

Once again digging into material that many of you probably read long ago, I decided to read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, since it cost a pittance on my handy new Nook.  Two quick points: (1) I loved this book, and (2) I blame my Nook for the brevity of this review.  I shall address each of these in more detail.

Having been born and raised in the U.S., I’ve certainly heard Ben Franklin’s name bantered about and therefore thought I knew as much about him as the next guy.  Well, a quick read through this short work proved that point to be utterly wrong.  As much as I thought I knew about how Franklin was an important historical figure in the history of this nation’s politics and diplomacy, the depth to which he was also quite the inventor, philosopher, and humorist (not to mention that he was apparently a highly-skilled printer — a trade that in modern times it might be easy to dismiss) was eye-opening to say the least.

Reading his recollections of traveling from Boston to Philadelphia reminds the reader of how difficult it was in those times to accomplish things that today seem trivial.  There were no guarantees on such journeys as to when you would leave, when you would arrive, or even if there would be enough food for everyone on the trip.  Yet old Ben didn’t seem to fret about those things.  Perhaps this was the case because his autobiography was written years later, when he knew in hindsight that everything would work out just fine; regardless, the way he recounts his trials and tribulations during the period when he was trying to find a vocation and establish himself makes clear to you that he was a special person, not just in how he did these things, but in how he tells about it.

He was a hard worker in his youth, both physically and mentally.  Without any requirement to do so (such as school), he spent every waking moment either working or engaged in self-study, trying to better himself mentally and psychologically.  And this hard work paid off, in ways that we continue to reap the benefits of to this day.

Now to point #2 above.  I had used the “highlight” function on my Nook to track bushels of mind-blowing quotes and anecdotes that I intended to share as part of this review.  Unfortunately, I’ve now learned that one of the issues with the Nook is that you can lose all of these highlights during a firmware upgrade of the device.  And I did.  And I’m too frustrated to go back and try to find all of those wonderful nuggets.  The Nook’s overall ledger is still on the positive side, but any more of that nonsense and I’m going to have to have a nice little talk with it.

But don’t let that dissuade you from reading this book if you haven’t already, or from re-reading it if you read it long ago.  Fascinating account of a fascinating individual.

Nook Update (in High Fidelity)

So the first book I finished on my Nook (which I was asking questions about after I purchased it) was High Fidelity by Nick Hornby.  I know, I know — as a self-proclaimed pop culture aficionado, why am I just now getting to this one?  Relax — I’m pretty sure I saw the movie a while back, so I’m not completely out of the loop.

(sweet cover art by Jacob Long – unfortunately not the “real” cover)

First things first — the Nook rocks.  Love it.  Completely.  Can’t wait to keep using it.

Second things second — I have only read one Nick Hornby book before, and didn’t dig it that much (it was A Long Way Down).  But, after reading about High Fidelity, I realized that if I’m gonna like anything by Nick Hornby, this would be the one.  And it is.

This book tells the tale of Rob Fleming, a down-on-his-luck record store owner in London whose girlfriend, Laura, has just broken up with him and moved in with another guy (who turns out to be the guy who used to live upstairs from them and whom Rob and Laura could hear making love for insane amounts of time).  So Rob is trying to make sense of his life and does so by thinking back through what he believes to have been the most important/meaningful relationships he’s had, and trying to figure out what he’s done wrong and what he’s done right.  Lots of things in Rob’s life are broken down into “Top XX” lists, including his relationships.  And including various musical facts, which he and the two guys he’s hired to work at his record store constantly compare.

The insights that Rob divulges are in fact pretty insightful, and the story he tells is pretty funny.  The whole notion of how foreplay was all he wanted when he was younger, and how it’s all women seem to focus on nowadays, but how it doesn’t seem to compute that when he was in high school he couldn’t get the opportunity to engage in foreplay with a girl and now he can’t seem to get anywhere is articulated in a pretty funny way.  Much funnier than I just articulated it.

I really want to see the movie again to see how it was translated into an American story (this one is very British).  And also because now that the book is fresh in my mind, I think that I’d have a pretty good appreciation for the movie — maybe as good as I have for the book.

Old School Politics

Unlike real, actual parties — where I’m always the first one there — when it comes to “literary” parties, I’m typically way behind the cool kids’ schedule. So it probably comes as no surprise that I just picked up Primary Colors, by Anonymous.  Primary Colors is THE hot political novel, giving insights into what makes the American political machine go.  In the early 1990′s.  Meaning last century.  As the old saying goes, though, better late than never.

I really liked this book.  I’m not active in party politics (although I have my beliefs and left-leanings), so what I know about politics comes from the mainstream media.  And this book, which tells the fictional story of a man named Henry Burton’s involvement in the Democratic primary campaign for Jack Stanton – governor of an unnamed Southern state – really opens the kimono on a political campaign, in what I thought was a believable way.  I seem to recall quite a bit of controversy surrounding this book when it came out, for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, the publishing of a book anonymously should stir controversy, or at least speculation, regardless of the subject matter of the book (it was later revealed that the author was journalist Joe Klein); secondly, the characters involved and the dirt that takes place on the campaign trail depicted in the book — even though it is a work of fiction — bore a striking resemblance to President Clinton’s 1992 campaign.

This book has it all.  There’s a love story, there’s a dynamic of our protagonist struggling with finding his true purpose, there’s lots of scandal, and there’s a real look behind what you see on tv and the strategizing that goes on to make you want to like a political candidate.  A real eye-opener, and a well-written read.