Orrin reviews Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th Century
In spite of its very numerous qualities--it is, among
other things, a kind of technical handbook, in
which the young novelist can study all the possible
and many of the quite impossible ways of telling
a story--'Ulysses' is one of the dullest books ever
written, and one of the least significant. This is
due to the total absence from the book of any sort
of conflict.
-Aldous
Huxley
OK, I never read Ulysses from beginning to
end, but then again, neither, I believe, has anybody
else, including most of the writers and scholars
who declared it the greatest English-language book
of the century in that Modern
Library list last year. I have read the first one hundred pages at
least
three times, and then, longing for a story, I never
got further.
-Richard
Bernstein, book critic, The New York Times
Okay, before we start, I know you've never read Ulysses--sure you've dabbled or read the first 100 pages, but no one's ever actually read it--so pay a quick visit to Ulysses for Dummies and then we'll continue. There, wasn't that easier than muling your way through the entire crappy book?
I knew I wouldn't be able to read this beast--I've tried & failed three or four times--but I figured I'd read some criticism about it. Well, the critics have such overblown & grandiose interpretations of the book's meaning & Joyce's importance that they were alternately making me laugh or become violent.
But last night I had an epiphany. It occurred to me that Ulysses is the greatest hoax of the century, ranking with Conan Doyle's Piltdown Man. Surely, Joyce must have realized that Ulysses was the inevitable & fitting conclusion to the Romantic Age. Art, cut loose from the mooring of God, had steadily drifted away from the universal & towards the personal. Ulysses is the culmination of this trend--a novel that could only be read, understood or enjoyed by its author. Spare yourself.
GRADE: Hard to give a low enough grade to the single most destructive
piece
of Literature ever written, try (F x Googolplex)
[N.B.--see the review of The Death of a Joyce Scholar: A Peter McGarr Mystery (1989)(Bartholomew Gill 1943-) for an excellent analysis of both Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake.]
WEBSITES:
Encyclopaedia
Britannica: Your search: "james joyce"
-Work
in Progress: The Writings of James Joyce (Temple University)
-International
James Joyce Foundation
-James
Joyce Resource Center (primary reference source for anyone interested
in Joyce studies)
-In
Bloom: A James Joyce Homepage
-James
Joyce (1882-1941)(Kobe University)
-The
Brazen Head: A James Joyce Public House
-OVERVIEW:
James Joyce 1882-1941 (Brown University)
-IQ
Infinity: The Unknown James Joyce
-The Writings
of James Joyce
-James
Joyce Web Page
-World
Wide Dubliners
-Literary
Research Guide: James Joyce (1882 - 1941)
-Wallace
Gray's Notes for James Joyce's "The Dead"
-PROFILE:
Top 100 People of the Century: James Joyce (Paul Gray, Time)
-ANNOTATED
ETEXT: Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
-ARTICLE:
The Fate of Joyce Family Letters Causes Angry Literary Debate (CARYN
JAMES, NY Times)
-ARTICLE:
NEW EDITION FIXES 5,000 ERRORS IN 'ULYSSES' (EDWIN McDOWELL,
NY Times)
-ESSAY:
Dublin Journal; 90 Years Ago, Leopold Bloom Took a Walk . . .
(JAMES F. CLARITY, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
MIAMI J'YCE: LOVE WALKS RIGHT OUT OF A 'ULYSSES' SYMPOSIUM (Brenda
Maddox. NY times)
-ESSAY:
JOYCE, NORA AND THE WORD KNOWN TO ALL MEN (Brenda Maddox. NY
Times)
-ESSAY:
COULD NORA COOK? PORTRAIT OF THE WIFE OF THE ARTIST (Brenda
Maddox. NY Times)
-ESSAY:
Richard Ellmann: The Politics of Joyce
-ESSAY:
LITERARY FOOTNOTE; ELLMANN REJOYCING (Richard Ellmann, NY Times Book
Review)
-ESSAY:
A Fine Madness (Dr. Joseph Collins, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
James Joyce's comic messiah (Robert Alter, American Scholar)
-ESSAY:
James Joyce's Zurich (PAUL HOFMANN, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY: Whose Life Is This, Anyway? (James Atlas, NY Times Book
Review)
-ESSAY:
A Not-So-Lit'rary Bloomsday (FRANCIS X. CLINES, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
Virtually A-Wake (Robert Sullivan, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
James Joyce by H.G. Wells The inventor of science fiction defends the
experimentation of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. (1917, New
Republic)
-ARTICLE:
Terence Killeen traces the history of a manuscript which offers nothing
less than a glimpse of Joyce's incredible creativity in progress (Irish
Times)
-REVIEWS:
New York Review of Books Archive
-REVIEWS:
New York Times Archive
-REVIEW
: Review of the new edition of Ulysses, by James Joyce, with an introduction
by Richard Ellmann (Anthony Burgess, June 19, 1986, The Guardian)
-REVIEW:
John Banville: The Motherless Child, NY Review of Books
James Joyce by Edna O'Brien
-REVIEW:
of JAMES JOYCE By Edna O'Brien (Robert Sullivan, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of `Reading Alcoholisms: Theorizing Character and Narrative
in Selected Novels of Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf,' by
Jane Lilienfeld. (Shelley Cox, Library Journal)
-REVIEW:
Richard Ellmann: The Big Word in 'Ulysses', NY Review of Books
Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition by James Joyce
-REVIEW:
Robert M. Adams: Yes, NY Review of Books
Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom by Brenda Maddox
-REVIEW:
Robert M. Adams: Scrabbling in the 'Wake', NY Review of Books
Shakespeare and Joyce: A Study of Finnegans Wake by Vincent John Cheng
-REVIEW:
Michael Wood: Joyce's Influenza, NY Review of Books
James Joyce in Padua edited by Louis Berrone
Afterjoyce: Studies in Fiction After Ulysses by Robert Martin Adams
"In the wake of the Wake" edited by Elliott Anderson and David Hayman
The Consciousness of Joyce by Richard Ellmann
-REVIEW:
Stuart Hampshire: Joyce and Vico: The Middle Way, NY Review of Books
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY
The Exile of James Joyce by Hélène Cixous and translated
by Sally A.J. Purcell
Ulysses on the Liffey by Richard Ellmann
Closing Time by Norman O. Brown
-REVIEW:
Matthew Hodgart: Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Adulterer,
NY Review of Books
Giacomo Joyce by James Joyce and with an Introduction and Notes by Richard
Ellmann
FILM:
-REVIEW:
Denis Donoghue: Huston's Joyce, NY Review of Books
The Dead a film directed by John Huston and based on the story by James
Joyce
-REVIEW:
Richard Ellmann: Bloomovie, NY Review of Books
Ulysses produced by Walter Reade and directed by Joseph Strick
GENERAL:
-REVIEW: Robert M. Adams: Mulligan Stew, NY Review of Books
A Colder Eye: The Modern Irish Writers by Hugh Kenner
I reread this one immediately after seeing the list, because I couldn't believe it was #2, a classic American novel sure, but number 2?
It is undeniably well written, but the story still leaves me unmoved. Jay Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy Buchanan (& the wealth with which to win her) is apparently supposed to represent the more general striving for the American Dream and his fall would then be a cautionary lesson to those who would pursue the dream.
But the underlying assumption is that the American Dream consists of nothing more than gaining great wealth. Perhaps in the first blush of Marxist Socialism it was possible to so misread man's motivation as being merely materialistic. However, as the Socialist Century ends, we've surely seen that man is motivated by a dream of Freedom, not a lust for wealth.
Thus, the real tragedy of Gatsby is not that he is destroyed pursuing the American Dream, rather it is that he pursues an empty dream.
GRADE: B
WEBSITES:
-F.
Scott Fitzgerald Links
-Enchanted
Places: The Use of Setting in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Fiction
-USC: F.
Scott Fitzgerald Centenary Home Page
-FIRST
CHAPTER: The Great Gatsby
-ONLINE
STUDY GUIDE : The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
(SparkNote by Brian Phillips)
-ESSAY:
Was Gatsby black? A professor claims that only an African-American
scholar could spot Fitzgerald's secret meaning (Elizabeth Manus, Salon)
-ESSAY
: Fitzgerald's 'Radiant World' (Thomas Flanagan, NY Review of
Books)
-REVIEW:
of Trimalchio: An Early Version of ėThe Great Gatsbyķ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Adam Begley, NY Observer)
-REVIEW:
of Trimalchio & Flappers and Philosophers by F Scott Fitzgerald
(Julian Evans, New Statesman)
#3) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)(James Joyce 1882-1941)
Literature is filled with wonderful coming of age tales. Many of them touch us & remind us of the confusion we all face as we leave childhood and become adults. The Catcher in the Rye, Red Sky at Morning & To Kill a Mockingbird spring to mind as examples of the genre which we return to over and over again because the characters win a place in our hearts. Then there's James Joyce...
The worst part of reading this top 100 books is the presence of three Joyces on the list. I started with this one because it's at least approachable. Joyce was just beginning to experiment with his profoundly annoying word games & stream-of-consciousness psychobabble, so you can usually understand this book (unlike Ulysses & Finnegans Wake).
However, who cares if you can understand it? Who cares about any of these characters? Why would we care about them? There's noone we empathize with &, therefore, no reason to care what happens to them. Reader pass by...
GRADE: F
WEBSITES:
-Encyclopaedia
Britannica: Your search: "james joyce"
-Work
in Progress: The Writings of James Joyce (Temple University)
-International
James Joyce Foundation
-James
Joyce Resource Center (primary reference source for anyone interested
in Joyce studies)
-In
Bloom: A James Joyce Homepage
-James
Joyce (1882-1941)(Kobe University)
-The
Brazen Head: A James Joyce Public House
-OVERVIEW:
James Joyce 1882-1941 (Brown University)
-IQ
Infinity: The Unknown James Joyce
-The Writings
of James Joyce
-James
Joyce Web Page
-World
Wide Dubliners
-Wallace
Gray's Notes for James Joyce's "The Dead"
-PROFILE:
Top 100 People of the Century: James Joyce (Paul Gray, Time)
-ANNOTATED
ETEXT: Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
-ONLINE
STUDYGUIDE : A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
(Spark Notes)
-ARTICLE:
The Fate of Joyce Family Letters Causes Angry Literary Debate (CARYN
JAMES, NY Times)
-ARTICLE:
NEW EDITION FIXES 5,000 ERRORS IN 'ULYSSES' (EDWIN McDOWELL,
NY Times)
-ESSAY:
Dublin Journal; 90 Years Ago, Leopold Bloom Took a Walk . . .
(JAMES F. CLARITY, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
MIAMI J'YCE: LOVE WALKS RIGHT OUT OF A 'ULYSSES' SYMPOSIUM (Brenda
Maddox. NY times)
-ESSAY:
JOYCE, NORA AND THE WORD KNOWN TO ALL MEN (Brenda Maddox. NY
Times)
-ESSAY:
COULD NORA COOK? PORTRAIT OF THE WIFE OF THE ARTIST (Brenda
Maddox. NY Times)
-ESSAY:
Richard Ellmann: The Politics of Joyce
-ESSAY:
LITERARY FOOTNOTE; ELLMANN REJOYCING (Richard Ellmann, NY Times Book
Review)
-ESSAY:
A Fine Madness (Dr. Joseph Collins, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
James Joyce's comic messiah (Robert Alter, American Scholar)
-ESSAY:
James Joyce's Zurich (PAUL HOFMANN, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY: Whose Life Is This, Anyway? (James Atlas, NY Times Book
Review)
-ESSAY:
A Not-So-Lit'rary Bloomsday (FRANCIS X. CLINES, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
Virtually A-Wake (Robert Sullivan, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
James Joyce by H.G. Wells The inventor of science fiction defends the
experimentation of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. (1917, New
Republic)
-REVIEWS:
New York Review of Books Archive
-REVIEWS:
New York Times Archive
-REVIEW:
John Banville: The Motherless Child, NY Review of Books
James Joyce by Edna O'Brien
-REVIEW:
of JAMES JOYCE By Edna O'Brien (Robert Sullivan, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of `Reading Alcoholisms: Theorizing Character and Narrative
in Selected Novels of Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf,' by
Jane Lilienfeld. (Shelley Cox, Library Journal)
-REVIEW:
Richard Ellmann: The Big Word in 'Ulysses', NY Review of Books
Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition by James Joyce
-REVIEW:
Robert M. Adams: Yes, NY Review of Books
Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom by Brenda Maddox
-REVIEW:
Robert M. Adams: Scrabbling in the 'Wake', NY Review of Books
Shakespeare and Joyce: A Study of Finnegans Wake by Vincent John Cheng
-REVIEW:
Michael Wood: Joyce's Influenza, NY Review of Books
James Joyce in Padua edited by Louis Berrone
Afterjoyce: Studies in Fiction After Ulysses by Robert Martin Adams
"In the wake of the Wake" edited by Elliott Anderson and David Hayman
The Consciousness of Joyce by Richard Ellmann
-REVIEW:
Stuart Hampshire: Joyce and Vico: The Middle Way, NY Review of Books
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY
The Exile of James Joyce by Hélène Cixous and translated
by Sally A.J. Purcell
Ulysses on the Liffey by Richard Ellmann
Closing Time by Norman O. Brown
-REVIEW:
Matthew Hodgart: Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Adulterer,
NY Review of Books
Giacomo Joyce by James Joyce and with an Introduction and Notes by Richard
Ellmann
FILM:
-REVIEW:
Denis Donoghue: Huston's Joyce, NY Review of Books
The Dead a film directed by John Huston and based on the story by James
Joyce
-REVIEW:
Richard Ellmann: Bloomovie, NY Review of Books
Ulysses produced by Walter Reade and directed by Joseph Strick
GENERAL:
-REVIEW: Robert M. Adams: Mulligan Stew, NY Review of Books
A Colder Eye: The Modern Irish Writers by Hugh Kenner
#4) Lolita (1955)(Vladimir Nabokov 1899-1977)
Humbert Humbert is a European émigré intellectual, who
since losing his first love at the age of twelve, has found himself in
the thrall of nymphets. When Humbert goes looking for a place to live,
he finds a rooming house where the landlady's daughter, Dolores Haze, is
the living embodiment of his lost love.
Of course, she's only twelve, but our intrepid hero plots to marry
& murder her mother & so gain access to his "Lolita". When
an accident removes the mother, Humbert Humbert & Lolita set off cross
country on a motel jumping jaunt, until finally Lolita escapes with another
pedophile. Humbert now plans the revenge which lands him in prison,
where he writes this memoir.
Since it's initial publication (abroad because no American firm would
touch it), Lolita has been plagued by scandal. Indeed a recent movie
version could not find a distributor. And this is entirely appropriate.
It should be difficult to publish a work about pedophilia. However,
this is undeniably a great work and deserves to be widely read by adults.
Humbert Humbert's obsessive passion may be for young girls but Nabokov's
is for the English language. The verbal pyrotechnics, puns,
word plays, etc. are brilliant & the language is luxuriant (at
some point I'll have to read an annotated version, because it's impossible
to catch all the allusions).
Having read the book several years ago, I listened to the Audio version
this time. It is read by Jeremy Irons and, while there are no obscenities
in the book, his reading is so sensual & his enjoyment of the language
is so evident, that I would urge folks to give it a listen (one caveat,
it is 11.5 hours long).
GRADE: A
Other recommended books by Vladimir Nabokov:
-Pale
Fire (read Orrin's review; Grade:
B)
WEBSITES:
-Vladimir
Nabokov (1899-1977)(kirjasto)
-ENCYCLOPAEDIA
BRITANNICA: Your search: "vladimir nabokov"
-Life
& Times : Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) (NY Times)
-ESSAY
: The Art of Translation (Vladimir Nabokov, New Republic)
-REVIEW:
of The Silence of the Sea, by Hilaire Belloc (Vladimir Nabokov, NY
Times, 1941)
-REVIEW:
of Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre (Vladimir Nabokov, NY Times, 1949)
-REVIEW:
of AUDOBON'S BUTTERFLIES, MOTHS AND OTHER STUDIES. Compiled and Edited
by Alice Ford (Vladimir Nabokov, NY Times, 1952)
-REVIEW:
Vladimir Nabokov: Rowe's Symbols, NY Review of Books
Nabokov's Deceptive World
by William Woodin Rowe
-ESSAY:
Nabokov's Butterflies (Vladimir Nabokov, The Atlantic)
-ESSAY:
Vladimir Nabokov: On Translating Pushkin POUNDING THE CLAVICHORD, NY
Review of Books
-ESSAY:
Vladimir Nabokov: TRANSLATION, NY Review of Books
-ESSAY:
Vladimir Nabokov: LUNAR LINES, NY Review of Books
-STORY:
"Cloud, Castle, Lake" (Nabokov, The Atlantic, June 1941)
-STORY:
The Aurelian (Vladimir Nabokov, The Atlantic, June 1941)
-STORY: Vladimir
Nabokov. The Assistant Producer (1943)
-STORY:
Vladimir Nabokov. A Forgotten Poet (1944)
-STORY:
Signs and Symbols Vladimir Nabokov
-STORIES:
Vladimir Nabokov: Two by Nabokov, NY Review of Books
-Literary
Research Guide: Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977)
-FEATURED
AUTHOR: Celebrating Nabokov's Centenary (The New York Times)
-OBIT:
Vladimir Nabokov, Author of 'Lolita' and 'Ada,' Is Dead (ALDEN
WHITMAN, NY Times)
-OBIT:
Vladimir Nabokov: 1899-1977 (R.Z. SHEPPARD, TIME)
-100
Years Vladimir Nabokov (Random House)
-Zembla
-the
international vladimir nabokov society
-The
Nabokronology: a guide to Vladimir Nabokov's life and works
-{
w a x w i n g } the vladimir nabokov appreciation site
-Ardis
Picture Archives: Nabokov
-Soapbox
Collage: Vladimir Nabokov
-Nabokov
Under Glass: The Nabokov Archive in the Berg Collection at the New
York Public Library
-CNN
In-Depth Specials on Nabokov: "Beyond Lolita: Rediscovering Nabokov
on his birth centennial"
-Vladimir
Nabokov
-ESSAY
: Reading Vladimir Nabokov (Keith Gessen, Context)
-ESSAY:
The gay Nabokov: The novelist never could face the secret that
cost his brother his life (LEV GROSSMAN, Salon)
-ESSAY:
Vladimir Nabokov and William Shakespeare (Philip F Howerton,
Jr., Winter 1990 Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter)
-ESSAY:
The Nabokov gambit : They failed with Lolita (twice) and now
they've failed with The Luzhin Defence. Why do the novels of the great
prose sorcerer Vladimir Nabokov always defeat the film-makers? (Steven
Poole, Books Unlimited)
-ONLINE
STUDY GUIDE : Lolita (Spark Notes)
-REVIEW:
of Speak, Memory Evidence of the Hunt, Clues of a Past (ELIOT FREMONT-SMITH,
NY Times)
-REVIEW:
D.J. Enright: Nabokov's Way, NY Review of Books
The Waltz Invention by Vladimir
Nabokov
The Eye by Vladimir Nabakov
Despair by Vladimir Nabokov
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography
Revisited by Vladimir Nabokov
Escape Into Aesthetics:
The Art of Vladimir Nabokov by Page Stegner
-REVIEW:
The Reality of the Past: Book review of 'Speak, Memory'
(JAN. 20, 1967, TIME)
-REVIEW:
of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov The Tragedy of Man Driven by Desire
(ELIZABETH JANEWAY, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of Lolita (Orville Prescott, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (Charles Rolo, The Atlantic,
SEPTEMBER 1958)
-REVIEW
: of Lolita (complete review)
-REVIEW:
To the End of Night: Book review of 'Lolita' (SEPT. 1, 1958, TIME)
-ESSAY:
The Lolita Case (Time, 1958)
-REVIEW:
of Pale Fire In an Elaborate Spoof, Nabokov Takes Us to the Never-Never
Land of Zembla (GEORGE CLOYNE, Sunday, May 27, 1962, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of Pale Fire (Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin)
-REVIEW:
V.S. Pritchett: The Magician's Trick, NY Review of Books
The Enchanter by Vladimir
Nabokov and translated by Dmitri Nabokov
-REVIEW:
V.S. Pritchett: The Supreme Fairy Tale, NY Review of Books
Lectures on Don Quixote
by Vladimir Nabokov
-REVIEW:
John Bayley: The Novelist as Pedagogue, NY Review of Books
Lectures on Russian Literature
by Vladimir Nabokov
-REVIEW:
Robert M. Adams: Nabokov's Show, NY Review of Books
Lectures on Literature:
British, French, and German Writers by Vladimir Nabokov
-REVIEW:
V.S. Pritchett: Nabokov's Touch, NY Review of Books
Look at the Harlequins!
by Vladimir Nabokov
Strong Opinions by Vladimir
Nabokov
-REVIEW:
Michael Wood: Tender Trousers, NY Review of Books
Transparent Things by Vladimir
Nabokov
-REVIEW:
V.S. Pritchett: Genesis, NY Review of Books
Glory by Vladimir Nabokov,
translated by Dimitri Nabokov
The Scorpion God by William
Golding
-REVIEW:
Jack Richardson: It's About Time, NY Review of Books
Mary by Vladimir Nabokov
and translated by Michael Glenny
-REVIEW:
Matthew Hodgart: Happy Families, NY Review of Books
ADA or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
by Vladimir Nabokov
-REVIEW:
William H. Gass: Mirror, Mirror, NY Review of Books
King, Queen, Knave by Vladimir
Nabokov
Nabokov: The Man and His
Work edited by L.S. Dembo
Keys to Lolita by Carl R.
Proffer
-REVIEW:
Edmund Wilson: The Strange Case of Pushkin and Nabokov, NY Review of
Books
Eugene Onegin A Novel in
Verse by Alexandr Pushkin, translated by Vladimir Nabokov
-RESPONSE:
Vladimir Nabokov: LETTERS: THE STRANGE CASE OF NABOKOV AND
WILSON,
NY Review of Books
-REVIEW:
Harry Levin: A Contest Between Conjurors, NY Review of Books
The Nabokov-Wilson Letters:
Correspondence Between Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson, 1940-1971
-REVIEW:
Robert M. Adams: Nabokov's Game, NY Review of Books
The Defense by Vladimir
Nabokov
-REVIEW:
of Nabokov's Congeries (Anthony Burgess, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (1995, John Updike, NY Times
Book Review)
-REVIEW:
Robert M. Adams: The Wizard of Lake Cayuga, NY Review of Books
Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years by Brian Boyd
-REVIEW:
V.S. Pritchett: Nabokov's Game, NY Review of Books
Nabokov: His Life in Part
by Andrew Field
-REVIEW:
Denis Donoghue: Absolute Pitch
Nabokov: His Life in Art:
A Critical Narrative by Andrew Field
-REVIEW:
of V E r a ( Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov ) BY STACY SCHIFF
(MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, Salon)
-REVIEW:
of Vera by Stacy Schiff Behind the Mask of Mrs. Vladimir
Nabokov (Katherine Knorr, International Herald Tribune)
-REVIEW:
of NABOKOV'S BLUES: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius
By Kurt Johnson and Steve CoatesThe Ardent Collector (Donald Smith,
Washington Post Book World)
-ESSAY:
The Year of 'Lolita' (Brian Boyd, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
"Lolita," My Mother-in-Law, the Marquis de Sade, and Larry Flynt: Reflections
on art, pornography, and censorship, after the taboos have all been smashed
(Norman Podhoretz, Commentary)
-ESSAY:
PERSONAL BEST: Lolita (MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, Salon)
-ESSAY:
PERSONAL BEST: Lolita (AMY TAN, Salon)
-ESSAY:
Vladimir Nabokov: A personal centenary salute (John Yewell, MetroActive)
-ESSAY:
F.W. Dupee: Nabokov: the Prose and Poetry of It All, NY Review of Books
#5) Brave New World (1932)(Aldous Huxley 1894-1963)
Welcome to a future where everybody's happy. Independent thought and feelings have been banished and genetic engineering, brain washing and drugs keep the population docile and comfortable. But several characters dare to ask the question, "Wouldn't you like to be free to be happy in your own way?"
Huxley has isolated the fundamental conflict in Human History--the conflicting impulses towards Security and Freedom. In the Brave New World, the impulse towards Security has won and there is no Freedom.
The problem for advocates of Freedom is that it includes the freedom to be unhappy. For this reason, many find it unattractive and the fight for Freedom is always an uphill struggle. At the time that Huxley and George Orwell were writing, it seemed entirely possible that Socialism, Communism & Fascism and all of the ism's that promise Security would vanquish Freedom. We are fortunate to live at a time when Freedom is resurgent, but Brave New World is a cautionary tale about what's at stake in the struggle.
GRADE: A
WEBSITES:
-Aldous
(Leonard) Huxley (1894-1963)(kirjasto)
-ENCYCLOPAEDIA
BRITANNICA: Your search: "aldous huxley"
-ENCYCLOPAEDIA
BRITANNICA: Huxley, Aldous Leonard
-Aldous
Huxley - soma web
-ALDOUS
HUXLEY (Perennial Philosopjy)
-Spiritwalk
Teachers: Aldous Huxley
-KNOWLEDGE
NETWORK: Great Writers: Aldous Huxley
-Aldous
Huxley (1894-1963) (Bohemian Ink)
-Aldous
Huxley's Island
-BRAVE NEW
WORLD
-Literary
Research Guide: Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963)
-ONLINE
STUDYGUIDE: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (SparkNote by Selena Ward)
-STUDY
GUIDE: Brave New World (Classic Notes, Grade Saver)
-Plot
Summary : Ape and Essence & Brave New World (Keith Mason)
-ESSAY
: Which are the most overrated authors, or books, of the past 1,000 years?
Continuing our series, the critic and author John Sutherland nominates
Aldous Huxleyķs Brave New World (booksonline uk)
-ESSAY:
Themes in Aldous Huxley's Life and Literature (Brock Bakke)
-ESSAY:
Science and the Story that We Need (Neil Postman, First Things)
-ESSAY:
Big Sister : Orwell and Huxley foretell late-20th-century sexual mores
(JOHN O'SULLIVAN, National Review)
-ESSAY:
Fatalists and Utopians (John O'Sullivan, Hudson Institute)
-ESSAY
: Did these books foretell? Was Aldous Huxley a visionary? (GAIL H.
WEISS, Charlotte Sun Herald)
-ESSAY:
Five and a Hal Utopias : Despite its dismal record, the utopian impulse
is by no means extinct. An eminent physicist looks at several of the guises
in which utopian thinking is likely to appear during the century ahead
- and at the perils that lurk behind each one (Steven Weinberg, The
Atlantic)
-ESSAY
: Uplift and Suspicion : How Aldous Huxley Managed to Avoid the
Temptations of His Time (CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, LA Times)
-ESSAY
: Darwin's Brave New World (Roberto Rivera , Touchstone)
-ARCHIVES
: "aldous huxley" (NY Review of Books)
-REVIEW
: of Brave New World (John Chamberlain, NY Times, February 7, 1932)
-REVIEW:
of Aldous Huxley Brave New World Ż(1932) (Leon R. Kass, First Things)
-REVIEW
: of JACOB'S HANDS By Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood (William
Ferguson, NY times Book Review)
-REVIEW
: of Huxley in Hollywood By David King Dunaway (Herbert Mitgang, NY
Times)
-REVIEW
: of Huxley in Hollywood By David King Dunaway (Kathleen Quinn,
NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
Aldous Huxley: A Biography by Sybille Bedford Huxley at Home (Robert
Craft, NY Review of Books)
-REVIEW
: of Aldous Huxley: Complete Essays Volume I: 1920-25 and Volume II: 1926-29
(Richard Buell, Boston Globe)
-BOOK
LIST : Modern Novels, the 99 Best (Anthony Burgess, NY Times
Book Review, February 5, 1984)
FILMS :
-FILMOGRAPHY
: Aldous Huxley (Imdb)
If you liked Brave New World, try:
Chambers, Whittaker
-Witness
Clavell, James
-The
Children's Story
Min, Anchee
-Red
Azalea
Orwell, George
-1984
-Animal
Farm
Pipes, Richard
-The
Russian Revolution
Power, Richard Gid
-Not
Without Honor : The History of American Anticommunism
Seymour, Gerald
-Archangel
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr
-One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
-The
Gulag Archipelago1918-1956 : An Experiment in Literary Investigation
#6) The Sound and the Fury (1929) (William Faulkner 1897-1962)
This was an excruciating reading experience. An uninteresting story, badly written. Memo to the reading public: do not get on a plane to L.A. with only this book to read.
GRADE: F
If you want to read some decent William Faulkner, try:
-The
Reivers
-Big
Woods: The Hunting Stories of William Faulkner
#54) Light
in August (1932) (read
Orrin's review, Grade: B-)
WEBSITES:
-Yoknapatawpha
County: William Faulkner on the Web
-William
Faulkner: Life and Works (includes synopsis of Light in August)
William
Faulkner on the Web
-William
Faulkner Centennial Celebration (Vintage Books)
-THE WILLIAM
FAULKNER FOUNDATION, FRANCE
-The
William Faulkner Society
-Southeast
Missouri State University's Center for Faulkner Studies
-Faulkner's
Page: Tour of Oxford
-William
Faulkner: The Myth Of The South (from Let's Find Out)
-Faulkner
and Racism (ARTHUR F. KINNEY, Connotations)
-Frederick
Crews: The Strange Fate of William Faulkner (NY Review of Books)
-ESSAY
: Mister Faulkner Goes to Stockholm : In six short years, William Faulkner
went from salaried Hollywood script doctor to winner of the Nobel Prize
in Literature. How had this seeming miracle occurred? (October 2001, Smithsonian)
-ESSAY:
Book of the Century : The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner
(Books Online, UK Telegraph)
-REVIEW:
of WILLIAM FAULKNER: AMERICAN WRITER A Biography. By Frederick R. Karl
(John W. Aldridge, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of William Faulkner: American Writer A Biography By Frederick R. Karl
)(Michiko Kakutani, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of WILLIAM FAULKNER The Man and the Artist. By Stephen B. Oates (Louis
D. Rubin Jr, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of William Faulkner and the Tangible Past The Architecture of Yoknapatawpha.
By Thomas S. Hines (Henry Taylor, NY Times Book Review)
-William
H. Gass: Mr. Blotner, Mr. Feaster, and Mr. Faulkner Faulkner: A Biography
by Joseph Blotner (NY Review of Books)
-Marvin
Mudrick: The Over-Wrought Urn REVIEW of William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha
Country by Cleanth Brooks (NY Review of Books)
-Terry
Southern: Just Folks REVIEW: of Faulkner's People: A Complete
Guide and Index to the Characters in Faulkner by Robert W. Kirk and Marvin
Klotz (NY Review of Books)
-Personal
Best (JOAN SMITH, Salon)
#7) Catch-22 (1961)(Joseph Heller 1923-99)
Captain John Yossarian is a bombardier for the 256th Squadron, stationed on the island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean. He's sick of having people try to kill him. He 's finally realized that anyone willing to fly into the face of enemy fire must be crazy, so he wants to go home, but there's a catch:
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which
specified that a concern for one's own
safety in the face of dangers that were real and
immediate was the process of a rational mind.
'That's some catch, that Catch-22, he (Yossarian)
observed. 'It's the best there is,' Doc Daneeka
agreed.
And so he's stuck flying more missions (and ever more as the number of missions required keeps getting increased.)
Serving alongside him in the 256th are:
Col. Cathcart--who continually volunteers his men for the most dangerous missions.
Doc Daneeka--who's outraged that his draft board would not take his
word as a
doctor that he was 4-F.
Chief White Halfoat--who is out to revenge himself on the white man.
Captain Flume--who lives in constant fear that his tentmate, the Chief, will slit his throat.
Major Major Major Major--"Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three"
Hungry Joe--who has a recurring nightmare that one night a cat will sleep on his face & suffocate him.
& Milo Minderbender & Nately & Nately's whore & Nately's whore's little sister & so on.
One of the funniest novels ever written, it earns a high rank on this
list because of its more serious message. It is at heart an antibureaucratic
polemic. While the specific target is the military, the attack is
universal.
It is especially interesting that this is a novel of World War II. One of the more vacuous tribal drums that is beating beneath today's culture is for the cult of the Depression/WWII generation, or as Tom Brokaw's book call them, the Greatest Generation (see Orrin's review). There's this quaint myth that somehow the folks who lived through the Depression and fought in WWII were an especially selfless or patriotic crew. They certainly look good in comparison to the wholly self-centered Baby Boomers, but books like this and the works of James Jones & Kurt Vonnegut offer a welcome antidote to the notion that they marched happily off to a war to save the world without a thought for themselves.
GRADE: A
WEBSITES:
-Joseph
Heller Archive
-A
Conversation with Joseph Heller . . . author of Now and Then
(Random House)
-INTERVIEW:
(Book Ends)
-ESSAY:
Looking Back at "Catch-22": Celebrants of the late Joseph Heller,
and of his brilliant comic novel, remain determined to sanitize its message
( Norman Podhoretz , Commentary)
-Essay:
Deadly Unconscious Logics in Catch-22 by Robert M. Young
-REVIEW:
of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller The Logic of Survival in a Lunatic World
(ROBERT BRUSTEIN, New Republic)
-REVIEW
: of Now and Then: A Memoir from Coney Island to Here by Joseph Heller
(Ian Hamilton, booksonline uk)
-REVIEW
: of Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man by Joseph Heller (Lewis Jones,
booksonline uk)
Other recommended books by Joseph Heller:
-God
Knows
-Picture This
If you liked Catch-22, try:
Cozzens, James Gould
-Guard
of Honor
Jones, James
-From
Here to Eternity (Read
Orrin's review, Grade: A+)
Kesey, Ken
-One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
(Read Orrin's
review, Grade: A+)
Kosinski, Jerzy
-Being
There
McKenna, Richard
-The Sand Pebbles
O'Brien, Tim
-Going
After Cacciato
Orwell, George
-1984(Read
Orrin's review, Grade: A+)
Pearce, Don
-Cool Hand Luke
Vonnegut, Kurt
-Slaughterhouse-Five
Waugh, Evelyn
-Scoop
Wouk, Herman
-The
Caine Mutiny
#8) Darkness at Noon (1941)(Arthur Koestler 1905-1983)
This one is deservedly Top 10 (although it is a translation from the German). It is the story of Rubashov, an aging revolutionary in an unnamed Revolutionary State (obviously the Soviet Union). He is arrested & repeatedly interrogated, until he finally admits to a series of crimes against the State, which it is obvious to us and to his interrogators that he could not possibly have committed.
Koestler, a former Communist, examines how dedicated Communists were brought to the point where they confessed ridiculous crimes in Stalin's Show Trials of the 1930's. In so doing, he also demonstrates that once you convince youself that the ends justify the means, you should not be surprised when those means are turned against you.
GRADE: A+
WEBSITES:
-Arthur
Koestler Project
-ESSAY
: "DARKNESS AT NOON": THE ECLIPSE OF "THE PERMANENT THINGS" (Peter
Kreeft)
-REVIEW:
of Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind by David Cesarani The 'Casanova
of Causes' (JOHN LEONARD, The Nation)
-REVIEW:
of ARTHUR KOESTLER The Homeless Mind By David Cesarani Arthur Koestler,
the West's Most Famous Anti-Communist Intellectual (Thomas W. Simons Jr.,
SF Gate)
-REVIEW:
of ARTHUR KOESTLER The Homeless Mind; By David Cesarani Like
a Rolling Stone (JOHN LUKACS, LA Times)
-REVIEW:
of STRANGER ON THE SQUARE By Arthur and Cynthia Koestler. Edited and
introduced by Harold Harris (Hilton Kramer, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW
: of ARTHUR KOESTLER: The Homeless Mind, by David Cesarani. (Jacob
Heilbrunn, Wilson Quarterly)
If you liked Darkness at Noon, try:
Chambers, Whittaker
-Witness (Read
Orrin's review; Grade : A+)
Clavell, James
-The
Children's Story
Min, Anchee
-Red
Azalea
Orwell, George
-Homage
to Catalonia
-1984
-Animal
Farm
Pipes, Richard
-The
Russian Revolution
Seymour, Gerald
-Archangel
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr
-One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
-The Gulag Archipelago
#9) Sons and Lovers (1913)(D.H. Lawrence 1885-1930)
Paul Morel grows up in The Bottoms, a community of coal miners in Nottinghamshire. His mother, Gertrude Coppard Morel--whose family were burghers until they went bankrupt, & father, Walter, have had a horrible marriage since she realized, six months into the marriage, that he was of a significantly different temperament than she:
There began a battle between the husband and wife-a
fearful, bloody battle that ended only with the
death of one. She fought to make him undertake his
own responsibilities, to make him fulfill his
obligations. But he was too different timber. His
nature was purely sensuous, and she strove to
make him moral, religious. She tried to force him
to face things. He could not endure it-it drove
him out of his mind.
Things came to a head when he cut off their oldest sons curls: "This
act of masculine clumsiness
was the spear through the side of her love for Morel."
And so, Paul grows up the mollycoddled son of a smothering Mother. As he grows to young manhood he becomes an artist and begins to have relationships with women: Miriam Leivers, a religious good girl, and Clara Dawes, married but estranged from her husband. Of course, his mother's looming presence overshadows these relationships and they end badly.
Meanwhile, when his mother contracts cancer, Paul murders her with morphine. The novel ends with him striding confidently towards a golden future, borne up by the continuing support of her love for him.
My, what a tower of crap hath Mr. Freud wrought.
At the time Lawrence was writing, it was tres chic to accept the ridiculous prattling of the Freudians as gospel. And so, this semi-autobiographical novel would have seemed to be an expression of a universal condition; of course, he so loves his mother that it warps his development, it's the same for everyone. But as we look back, we see that he in fact is depicting a pathological condition. The best art should be timeless and universal. Instead, Sons and Lovers is a tedious artifact of a moment in human thought, when a pernicious philosophy, Freudianism, had won temporary ascendance.
GRADE: D
WEBSITES:
-D.H.
Lawrence
-D.H.
Lawrence Grove
-University
of Nottingham Library: D.H. Lawrence Links
-Literary
Research Guide: D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence (1885 - 1930 )
-ONLINE
STUDYGUIDE: Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence (SparkNote
by Rebecca Gaines)
Instead of Sons and Lovers, try:
James, Jaimie
-The
Music of the Spheres : Music, Science, and the Natural Order of the Universe
Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff
-Final
Analysis : The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst
Webster, Richard
-Why
Freud Was Wrong : Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis
#10) The Grapes of Wrath (1939) (John Steinbeck 1902-1968)
Tom Joad has just gotten out of prison for manslaughter. He returns to his family's Oklahoma cotton farm only to find the farm deserted and the region devastated by the Dust Bowl. When he catches up to the family, at his Uncle's farm, the whole clan heads to California in a Hudson Super-Six truck, hoping to find work, which they hear is plentiful there, picking fruit. On the road some family members will die, some will desert, all will experience hunger, the resentment of locals, the harsh contempt of police & exploitation by growers. Tom is forced to leave the family when he kills a strike breaker, but he pledges to preach the word of man for man and how the poor must band together to obtain their rights. More disasters befall the family, including the loss of his sister's baby, and the novel closes with the Pieta like scene of her suckling a starving man.
The sincerity and heartfelt nature of Steinbeck's masterpiece is unquestionable, but 60 years later, we have to face the fact that he, like many intellectuals of the day, was profoundly wrong about where the poor's salvation lay. In fact, the Depression ended when the huge industries were fired up to provide war material and, with little interruption, since then we have a seen an economy that is driven by the concerns of the upper and middle classes, but just as a rising tide lifts all boats, the poor have benefited from this progress.
Even more mistaken is his image of the noble poor. As we have seen, even in our age of Welfare reform, the problem of the underclass is extremely intractable; some folks just won't work, even to better their own lives. Steinbeck was deluded by the Depression, a stark aberration in the long march of Capitalism, which made millions of people desperate, who would otherwise have been gainfully employed.
The result is a beautiful & moving, if overlong, artifact of it's time--which loses some of it's impact in retrospect. Compare it for instance to his great novella Of Mice and Men, a universal tale of friendship and heroism, or Winter of Our Discontent, an eerily prescient story of America's moral decline. I personally would have preferred to see Of Mice and Men on the list.
GRADE: A-
Other books by John Steinbeck
-Of
Mice and Men (1937) (read
Orrin's review, Grade: A+)
-The
Grapes of Wrath (1939)
(read Orrin's review, Grade: A-)
-East
of Eden
-Travels
With Charley : In Search of America
-The
Winter of Our Discontent (1961) (Read
Orrin's review, Grade: B)
WEBSITES:
-ENCYCLOPAEDIA
BRITANNICA : "john steinbeck"
-Nobel
Laureate 1962 : John Steinbeck (Official Nobel Site)
-ARCHIVES
: "steinbeck" (NY Review of Books)
-Center
for Steinbeck Studies
-The National
Steinbeck Center
-Literary
Research Guide: John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968)
-ESSAY
: The Author, On 'Grapes Of Wrath' (NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY
: Return to Cannery Row (Herbert Gold, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY
: Travels with Steinbeck: An American classic offers a subtle and
prescient account of the dangers of expanding corporate power. (Brooke
Shelby Biggs, Apr 26, 2001, Mother Jones)
-ONLINE
STUDYGUIDE: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (SparkNote by Ross
Douthat)
-ONLINE
STUDY GUIDE : Grapes of Wrath (Spark Notes)
-REVIEW
: of Grapes of Wrath (NY Times, April 16, 1939)
-REVIEW
: of The Grapes of Wrath By John Steinbeck (CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT,
NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of Winter of Our Discontent (London Sunday Times)
-REVIEW:
THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT and TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY, by John Steinbeck
(July 1961 and August 1962, The Atlantic)
-REVIEW
: of WORKING DAYS The Journals of ''The Grapes of Wrath,''1938-1941. By
John Steinbeck. Edited by Robert DeMott (William Kennedy, NY Times
Book Review)
-REVIEW
: of JOHN STEINBECK A Biography. By Jay Parini (Terry Teachout, NY
Times Book Review)
-REVIEW
: of THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF JOHN STEINBECK, WRITER. By Jackson J. Benson
(ANATOLE BROYARD, NY Times)
-REVIEW
: of THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF JOHN STEINBECK, WRITER. By Jackson J. Benson
(Kevin Starr, NY Times Book Review)
GENERAL :
-ESSAY
: The Dust Bowl Myth (Charles J. Shindo, Wilson Quarterly)
#11) Under the Volcano (1947)(Malcolm Lowry 1909-1957)
I first read this one in college, at the urging of Joe Doggett and Guy Bolton, and I still can't decide, some twenty years later, whether I like it or not. I do still maintain that it is not the equal of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in the "great American novel of Mexico" category.
The Consul, Geoffrey Firmin, is an alcoholic living in Mexico.
He has divorced his wife, Yvonne, who had an affair with his half-brother
Hugh, a journalist & supporter of the Communists in the Spanish Civil
War. Now Hugh & Yvonne have returned, separately, to visit him
on the Day of the Dead. By the end of the day, the Consul has been
murdered by Mexican security forces who think he's a
spy.
I'm still not sure I understand what Lowry's trying to say, but I'll take a stab at it. It seems that the Consul represents the West, paralyzed by neuroses and unable or unwilling to come to the aid of those in need. The volcano of the title would seem to represent the specter of Fascism that looms on the horizon. This image of impending doom recurs in the movie at the local theater, Los Manos De Orlac or The Hands of Orlac--the classic film about a pianist who receives a murderers hands in a transplant. Orlac would be Germany, a great culture turned murderous.
Lowry does a great job of rendering this sense of doom and, in the Consul,
gives us one of the great fictional portraits of a drunk in all of literature.
However, the book ultimately adds up to less than the sum of it's parts.
GRADE: C- (or B+)
WEBSITES:
Malcolm
Lowry's Under the Volcano
The
Malcolm Lowry Homepage
-INTERVIEW
: A conversation with Jan Gabrial : The one-time wife of brilliant,
tortured novelist Malcolm Lowry discusses her controversial new memoir
of their tempestuous relationship (Stephen Lemons, Salon)
#12) The Way of All Flesh (1903)(Samuel Butler 1835-1902)
Butler finished this book in 1884, but then like Isaac Newton, left it in a drawer for twenty years and it was only published posthumously. It tells the tale of the unhappy upbringing of Ernest Pontifex; unhappy because his parents aren't nice to him & his father insists on a strict theology. The critics, Shaw, Pritchett, etc., hail it as the novel which destroyed the Victorian facade of the happy family. I guess noone had read Dickens or Trollope.
I honestly don't get it. I know that the elites loathed Victorian England, but it's intellectually dishonest to pretend that contemporary authors, like Dickens and Trollope, didn't question the pretensions and conventions of their day. They act as if there was a huge conspiracy of silence and everyone believed life was perfect, until books like this one exploded onto the scene. This is patently untrue.
Butler seems more important as a key figure on the road to the interior or psychological novel. It's easy to see the debt that authors like Joyce owe to him. Pretty much nothing happens and the whole book turns on Ernest having crappy parents.
Tom Wolfe is giving hundreds of interviews right now decrying the psychological
novel and begging authors to go out into the world and observe the life
and energy of the country. We can only hope someone's listening.
GRADE: D
WEBSITES:
-Encyclopaedia
Britannica: Samuel Butler
-ETEXT:
SAMUEL BUTLER: The Way of All Flesh
#13) 1984 (1949)(George Orwell 1903-1950)
see review at Brothers Judd's George Orwell page
Robert Graves is one of the few writers to put an entry on both the Top 100 Fiction and Top 100 Non-Fiction lists. His WWI memoir Goodbye to All That made the latter list; his excellent historical novel I, Claudius made this one.
The great task facing any writer of historical fiction is to render his subjects accessible to a modern reader without sacrificing the authenticity of his period setting. Graves set a standard for other authors to shoot for with I Claudius. His Claudius manages to speak to us in a voice that we can readily comprehend even as we are transported to the Rome of the Caesars.
Claudius, afflicted with numerous physical ailments, seemed to his peers to be something of an idiot. Graves makes the case that these very infirmities, and the underestimation of his abilities by all but Augustus, enabled him to survive the mayhem and bloodshed of the reigns of his predecessors. Upon Caligula's assassination, Claudius was elevated to emperor almost as a joke, but he turned out to be one of the most capable of the Roman Emperors.
Graves tells the story of the years leading up to his ascension to the throne with great wit and verve in this archetypal historical novel.
GRADE: A+
Other recommended books by Robert Graves:
-Sergeant
Lamb's America (1940) (read
Orrin's review, Grade: B+)
WEBSITES:
-Robert
Graves Trust, Archive and Society
-Focus
on Robert Graves and His Contemporaries
-etext
of FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS (1918) by ROBERT GRAVES
-De
Imperitoribus Romanis: An Online Encyclopedia of Roman Emperors
-History
of Western Civilization
-I,
Claudius the film as history
-I
Claudius.com
If you liked I, Claudius, try:
Gibbon, Edward
-The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire : An Abridged Version
Langguth, A.J.
-A Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian and the
Struggle for Rome
Pressfield, Steven
-Gates
of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae (read
Orrin's review, Grade: A+)
Sienkiewicz, Henryk
-Quo
Vadis?
Wallace, Lew
-Ben-Hur
Whyte, Jack
(The Camulod Chronicles)
-The
Skystone
-The
Singing Sword
-The
Eagle's Brood
-The
Saxon Shore
Yourcenar, Marguerite
-Memoirs
of Hadrian
#15) To the Lighthouse (1927)(Virginia Woolf 1882-1941)
Okay, I read a bunch of criticism to figure out why this book is on
the list,
never mind why it's so high on the list. As one would expect, the critics
are
awash in psychoblither. But there's one thing I didn't see, and it's
the
obvious one, Virginia Woolf was consumed by penis envy. What the hell
else
could the title of the freakin' book mean?
Let's parse the phrase:
A noxious blend of James Joyce, Sigmund Freud & feminism, it's all interior monologues & mini-epiphanies. No worthwhile human being could possibly live a productive life while having these banal, self-important soliloquies running through his head--we'd still be in caves.
GRADE: F
See also Orrin's review of:
-A
Room of One's Own (Grade : C+)
WEBSITES:
-ENCYCLOPAEDIA
BRITANNICA: "virginia woolf"
-ESSAY:
The Movies and Reality by Virginia Woolf Anna Karenina and other
literary excursions into the new medium of film. (1926, New Republic)
-EXCERPT:
From Virginia Woolf's A Room Of One's Own (Thineownself)
-EXCERPT:
from ''The Diary of Virginia Woolf,'' Vol. 5, by Virginia Woolf, edited
by Anne Olivier Bell (NY Times Book Review)
-FEATURED
AUTHOR: Virginia Woolf (NY Times Book Review)
-Virginia Woolf
Web
-The Virginia
Woolf Society of Great Britain
-The International
Virginia Woolf Society
-Lotta's
Virginia Woolf Page
-Women.com
Brings You 100 Women of the Millennium: #36 Virginia Woolf
-Virginia
Woolf on Women and Fiction (created by Joel Rich and Nancy Henderson)
-Mrs.
Dalloway's London
-Virginia
Woolf and To the Lighthouse
-To
the Lighthouse Study Guide
-ONLINE
STUDY GUIDE: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (SparkNote by Selena
Ward)
-ONLINE
STUDY GUIDE: A Room of One's Own (Matilda Santos, Spark Notes)
-STUDY
GUIDE: Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929)(Professor Catherine
Lavender, The College of Staten Island of The City University of New York)
-Virginia
Woolf, "A Room of One's Own"
-CHAT:
Virginia Woolf Lecture Hall (mobydicks)
-WEBRING:
Virginia Woolf Webring
-LINKS:
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)(about.com)
-ESSAY:
Virginia Woolf : The Quiet Revolutionary (Michael Cunningham, Salon)
-ESSAY:
VIRGINIA WOOLF: "MIND" AND "MATTER" ON THE PLANE OF A LITERARY CONTROVERSY
(Wyndham Lewis)
-ESSAY
: World Wide Woolf (Brenda R. Silver, author of Virginia
Woolf Icon)
-ESSAY
An Introduction to A Room of One's Own : THE FATE OF WOMEN OF GENIUS
(Mary Gordon, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
Virginia Woolf, Her Inner Circle And Inner Self (HERBERT MITGANG, NY
Times)
-ESSAY:
HOW MRS. WOOLF FELT ABOUT MR. JOYCE (HERBERT MITGANG, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
Way Behind Every Great Man . . . (Emily Eakin, NY Times Book
Review)
-ESSAY:
ENCOUNTERS; A Literary Critic and Truths About Incest (ERIKA DUNCAN,
NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
The Stain on Vanessa Stephen's Dress: Virginia Woolf suffered
not from the "patriarchy" but from everything she embraced in opposing
it. (Elizabeth Powers, Commentary)
-ARCHIVES:
"woolf" (NY Review of Books)
-REVIEW:
of To the Lighthouse (Louis Kronenberger, NY Times)
-REVIEW
: of Flush by Virginia Woolf : Tail of two cities : Virginia Woolf's
story of a spaniel, set in London and Florence, is as much social comment
as dog biography. In short, a veritable canine classic, says Justine Hankins
(The Guardian)
-REVIEW:
of THE WIDOW AND THE PARROT By Virginia Woolf. Illustrated by Julian
Bell (Wendy Martin, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of LUGTON'S CURTAIN By Virginia Woolf. Illustrated by Julie Vivas (Wendy
Lesser, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE ESSAYS OF VIRGINIA WOOLF: Volume I 1904-1912. Edited by
Andrew McNeillie (John Gross, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of The Essays of Virginia Woolf Vol. II. 1912-1918 Edited by Andrew
NcNeillie (NONA BALAKIAN, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE ESSAYS OF VIRGINIA WOOLF Volume Two: 1912-1918. Edited by Andrew
McNeillie (Peter Ackroyd, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE DIARY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, Volume IV, 1931-1935. Edited by Anne
Olivier Bell, assisted by Andrew McNeillie (Mary Cantwell, NY Times Book
Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE DIARY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF Volume Four. 1931-1935. Edited by Anne
Olivier Bell. Assisted by Andrew McNeillie (Robert Kiely, NY Times Book
Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE DIARY OF VIRGINIA WOLFE: Volume 5, 1936-1941. Edited by Anne
Olivier Bell, assisted by Andrew McNeillie (ANATOLE BROYARD, NY times)
-REVIEW:
of A PASSIONATE APPRENTICE The Early Journals, 1897-1909. By Virginia
Woolf. Edited by Mitchell A. Leaska (Isabel Colegate, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of Congenial Spirits The Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf Edited
by Joanne Trautmann Banks (HERBERT MITGANG, NY times)
-REVIEW
: of Lives: Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicolson (Carol Peaker, National
Post)
-REVIEW
: of Lives: Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicolson (EILEEN BATTERSBY, Irish
Times)
-REVIEW:
of VIRGINIA WOOLF By Hermione Lee (Daphne Merkin, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of VIRGINIA WOOLF By James King (MICHIKO KAKUTANI, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of VIRGINIA WOOLF : A Writer's Life. By Lyndall Gordon (Carolyn Heilbrun,
NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of VIRGINIA WOOLF. A Writer's Life. By Lyndall Gordon (Michiko Kakutani,
NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of A Very Close Conspiracy Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf By Jane Dunn
(MICHIKO KAKUTANI, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of "Virginia Woolf" by Hermione Lee This absorbing biography tackles
Woolf's dramatic life -- feminism, friendships, lovers, recurring bouts
of madness -- and work. (Elizabeth Judd, Salon)
-REVIEW:
of THE LETTERS OF VITA SACKVILLE-WEST TO VIRGINIA WOOLF Edited by Louise
DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska (Thomas Mallon, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of LETTERS OF LEONARD WOOLF Edited by Frederic Spotts (Leon Edel, NY
Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of Letters of Leonard Woolf Edited by Frederic Spotts (Herbert Mitgang,
NY times)
-REVIEW:
of Great Books My Adventures With Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other
Indestructible Writers of the Western World. By David Denby (Joyce Carol
Oates, NY times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE HOURS By Michael Cunningham (Michael Wood, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of BEYOND EGOTISM The Fiction of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and D.H.
Lawrence By Robert Kiely (Michael Rosenthal, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of "The Hours" by Michael Cunningham Michael Cunningham's new novel,
"The Hours," is neither an homage nor a sequel to "Mrs. Dalloway." It is,
rather, an attempt at osmosis with the spirit of Virginia Woolf. (Georgia
Jones-Davis, Salon)
-REVIEW
: of Virginia Woolf: Penguin Lives Series By Nigel Nicolson Viking and
The Measure of Life: Virginia Woolf's Last Years By Herbert Marder
(James King, Globe and Mail)
BLOOMSBURY GROUP:
-ESSAY:
WHERE BLOOMSBURY FLOWERED (Quentin Bell, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of Bloomsbury Recalled By Quentin Bell (Janet Malcolm, NY Times Book
Review)
-ESSAY:
IMAGINE A NEW KIND OF TV SOAP: BLOOMSBURY COMES TO DALLAS (Jill Johnston,
NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of BLOOMSBURY/FREUD The Letters of James and Alix Strachey 1924-1925.
Edited by Perry Meisel and Walter Kendrick (Peter Stansky, NY Times Book
Review)
-ESSAY:
Bloomorama! Bloomania! Bloomsburiana! (Bruce McCall, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of ON OR ABOUT DECEMBER 1910 Early Bloomsbury and Its Intimate World
By Peter Stansky ( MICHIKO KAKUTANI, NY times)
GENERAL:
-The Orlando
Project : An Integrated History of Women's Writing in the British Isles
-VICTORIAN
WEB: (George Landow, brown.edu)
-REVIEW:
of NO MAN'S LAND The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century.
Volume One: The War of the Words. By Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar
(Christine Froula, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of MARRIAGE AND MORALS AMONG THE VICTORIANS Essays. By Gertrude Himmelfarb
(Neil McKendrick, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
LITERARY FEMINISM COMES OF AGE (Elizabeth Kolbert, NY times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE WRITES THE BOOK (Ursula K. Le
Guin, NY Times Book Review)
Theodore Dreiser is considered to be the leading American practitioner of Naturalism--which consists of writing about sex and violence in the lower classes in order to reveal what I gather were supposed to be shattering truths about the bleak aspects of modern industrial urban life. To that end, Sister Carrie tells the story of a pretty small town girl who uses her feminine wiles to sleep her way from the factories and saloons of Chicago to the New York stage. Along the way, the tavern owning married man who stole to fund their escape to Chicago, kills himself after being abandoned by Carrie and ending up in Bowery flophouses. Meanwhile, An American Tragedy tells the story, based on a sensational true crime, of a young man who is working his way towards the American dream and refuses to let a pregnant former girlfriend stand in the way of his chance for romance with a wealthy woman. He takes the slattern out in a boat & clobbers her, but is tried and executed for the crime.
It is an open secret that even critics who admire Dreiser, consider him to be a horrible writer technically. American Tragedy has been called "the worst-written great novel in the world" and the otherwise loathsome Garrison Keillor has an amusing column about how bad he finds Sister Carrie on rereading it. His books have all the literary grace of the phone book.
Thus, his reputation rests solely on the agreement of Left wing critics with his hatred of American capitalism. Well, 100 years on, I think we can safely say that the American system has served us pretty well and the Sister Carrie's of the world are not simply insignificant but, worse for a writer, uninteresting.
GRADE: F
WEBSITES:
-International
Theodore Dreiser Society
-ONLINE
STUDY GUIDE: Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (SparkNote by
Selena Ward)
-PAL:
Perspectives in American Literature: A Research and Reference Guide
-Literary
Research Guide: Theodore Dreiser (1871 - 1945)
-etext
of Sister Carrie
-WHY
DID THEY EVER BAN A BOOK THIS BAD? (Salon by Garrison Keillor)
Well, we have a new contender for worst choice for the Top 100 of the Century. This dismal book is the story of a flock of Southern losers and misfits in the 1930's. The characters lead uniformly desperate and joyless lives, depicted in a story unleavened by humor.
It's the sort of book that contributes to the caricature of Southern authors as suicidal drunks.
GRADE: D
WEBSITES:
-Encyclopaedia
Britannica: Your search: "carson mccullers"
The Carson
McCullers Project
-REVIEW
: of Clock Without Hands by Carson McCullers (Charles Rolo, Atlantic
Monthly)
-REVIEW
: of Illumination and Night Glare by Carson McCullers (Atlantic
Monthly)
-REVIEW
: of Carson McCullers : A Life by Josyane Savigneau (Frances Kiernan,
Atlantic Monthly)
-REVIEW
: of Carson McCullers : A Life by Josyane Savigneau (Penelope
Mesic, Book)
-REVIEW:
of Illumination and Night Glare: The Unfinished Autobiography of
Carson McCullers, by Carson McCullersThough elusive about the events
of her life, Carson McCullers's memoirs shed fresh light on her work (Graham
Christian, Boston Phoenix)
If you liked The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, try:
Bradford, Richard
-Red
Sky at Morning
Lee, Harper
-To
Kill a Mockingbird
Salinger, J.D.
-The
Catcher in the Rye
#18) Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)(Kurt Vonnegut 1922-)
I suppose that once upon a time, this novel must have seemed terribly arch or ironic. Perhaps it is simply a function of living in the Decade of Irony, but now it just seems fairly sophomoric.
Billy Pilgrim, a WWII vet & optometrist, has come loose in time. He pops back & forth from Dresden during the fire bombing, to the planet Tralfamadore--where aliens have placed him & film star Montana Wildhack in a zoo, to the future where he is assassinated. This all provides Vonnegut with a hip & trippy way to comment on life, but becomes pretty tedious. Vonnegut is one of those authors, like Robert Ludlum, where the first book of his you read is always your favorite & you gradually realize that every subsequent one you read is identical to the first--we'll call this the Ludlum Factor.
If you're going to read one Vonnegut, this one should be it, but there is no way this book should be #18, if it should be listed at all.
GRADE: C
WEBSITE:
-FEATURED
AUTHOR : Kurt Vonnegut (NY Times Book Review)
-WRITERS
ON WRITING (by Vonnegut from the New York Times)
-The
Vonnegut Web
-Welcome
to the Monkey House!
-Literary
Research Guide: Kurt Vonnegut (1922 -)
-ESSAY:
BRILLIANT CAREERS: Mad Humanist: In Kurt Vonnegut's world, free will is
an open question, life is poignant and pointless and kindness is appreciated
above all else (FRANK HOUSTON, Salon)
-PROFILE
: Net prophet: Kurt Vonnegut (Bloomsbury Magazine)
-ESSAY
: History and Memory in Slaughterhouse Five and Time's Arrow (V. Archer)
-Vonnegut
and Slaughterhouse Five
-REVIEW
: of Slaughter-House 5 (March 31, 1969, NY Times)
#19) Invisible Man (1952)(Ralph Ellison 1914-1994)
I am an invisible man. ... I am invisible, understand,
simply because people refuse to see me....
When they approach me they see only surroundings,
themselves, or figments of their
imagination--indeed, everything and anything except
me.
So begins Ralph Ellison's wildly uneven, overlong, emotionally excessive & oft-times hysterical, 1953 National Book Award Winner, Invisible Man--a book that's desperately in search of an editor.
From it's opening scene at a Battle Royale, where young black men fight until only one is left standing, to it's closing scene in a Harlem riot, Ellison is always going over the top. As one can see from Irving Howe's 1952 review the book's shortcomings have been obvious since it was first published, but that same review makes clear the struggle of the white establishment to treat it honestly. The result is, I think, a book whose reputation outstrips it's merit.
GRADE: C
WEBSITES:
-Encyclopaedia
Britannica: Ralph Ellison
-Featured
Author: NY Times Book Review
-OBIT:
Ralph Ellison, Author of 'Invisible Man,' Is Dead at 80 (RICHARD
D. LYONS, NY Times)
-ONLINE
STUDYGUIDE: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (SparkNote by Selena Ward)
-TEACHERS
GUIDE: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (Vintage Books)
-"American
Culture is of a Whole": From the Letters of Ralph Ellison (from New
Republic)
-Black
Boys and Native Sons (by Irving Howe in Dissent)
-A
Critical Look at Ellison's Fiction & at Social & Literary
-ESSAY:
Decoding Ralph Ellison (Gerald Early, Dissent)
-Profile
of an American Artist (John Corry)
-REVIEW:
Invisible Man (Wright Morris, NY Times 1952)
-Saul
Bellow Review (from Commentary)
-Student
Webpages on Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
-Literary
Research Guide: Ralph Ellison (1914-)
-ESSAY:
What Happened to Ralph Ellison: All honor to a novelist who elevated
art far above ideology; but honor for what, exactly? (Norman Podhoretz,
Commentary)
-INTERVIEW
: with Robert O'Meally, editor of Living with Music: Ralph
Ellison's Jazz Writings (Jerry Jazz)
-REVIEW:
of TRADING TWELVES : The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison And Albert Murray
Edited by Albert Murray and John F. Callahan Being Geniuses Together
(Jabari Asim, Washington Post)
Bigger Thomas is a 20 year old black man with an 8th grade education. He lives in a one room apartment in a tenement with his mother, brother and sister and spends his days hanging around a poolroom, planning robberies with his friends. "As long as he could remember, he had never been responsible to anyone. The moment a situation became so that it exacted something of him, he rebelled. That was the way he lived; he passed his days trying to defeat or gratify powerful impulses in a world he feared."
As the novel opens, Bigger is about to be handed a golden opportunity. The Dalton family hires him as a driver at a salary of $25 a week, plus room & board & the option of completing his education. Bigger takes the job but disaster ensues.
On his first night on the job, Bigger is to drive the Dalton's daughter Mary. She has him pick up her boyfriend Jan, who is a Communist, and they make Bigger take them to a restaurant where they can experience black people food. They are impervious to how confused & uncomfortable they are making Bigger in their effort to partake of the black experience.
At the end of the night, Bigger helps a drunken Mary to her bedroom. When her blind mother enters the room, Bigger fears what will happen if he's found there & covers Mary's face with a pillow to silence her. Realizing that he's smothered Mary, Bigger beheads & incinerates her & tries to shift suspicion towards Jan.
This murder has a liberating influence on Bigger. "He felt he had his destiny in his grasp. He was more alive than he could ever remember having been; his mind and attention were pointed, focused towards a goal. The feeling of being always enclosed in the stifling embrace of an invisible force had gone from him."
Feeling this new found power, Bigger involves his girlfriend in a plan to demand ransom for the "kidnapped" Mary. But he ends up killing her too, to ensure her silence.
Bigger is eventually discovered and after a huge manhunt is put on trial.
His conviction and execution are, of course, inevitable, but during his
time in jail Bigger confronts ministers, Communists, the Daltons &
his own family. Looking back on the chain of events that lead him
to where he is, Bigger determines that lashing out in violence against
whites was the only course open to him. As his
attorney says in closing arguments, "It was the first full act of his
life; it was the most meaningful, exciting and stirring thing that had
ever happened to him. He accepted it because it made him free, gave
him the possibility of choice, of action, the opportunity to act and to
feel that his actions carried
weight."
Let's just concentrate on this one quote because it reveals the two great weaknesses of the book and of Wright's viewpoint.
First: The murder didn't happen to him; Bigger murdered.
Wright feels that overwhelming societal forces crafted young men like Bigger
into murderers. They have no choice but to react to the oppression
of White society with violence. Free will is gone; psychology, class
& race determine human action. This view, largely though not
exclusively a product of Freud and Marx, is extremely
pernicious. The Left has done an enormous amount of damage to
our society, and to those they claim to want to help, by absolving them
of responsibility for their actions. Humans determine their own actions,
not world historical forces.
Second: Why was the murder, and not the job, the great empowering event of his life? Bigger would have been making $1200 a year at a time when the vast majority of Americans, white and black, were making less than $1000 & supporting families. He would have had a decent place to live, freed food and a chance to get an education. Shouldn't this have been the liberating force in his life?
The book is obviously one of the pivotal texts in the history of Black fiction and makes for a quick read; it's pulp fiction elevated by the earnestness with which Wright descries the plight of blacks.
GRADE: C+
WEBSITES:
-Richard
(Nathaniel) Wright (1908-1960)(kirjasto)
-Richard
Wright--A Web Page
-Richard Wright:
Black Boy (PBS)
-Literary
Research Guide: Richard Wright (1908 - 1960)
-PHOTOS:
(pbs)
-MWP:
Richard Wright (1908-1960)(Mississippi Writers Page)
-Wright,
Richard (Africana.com)
-Writing
and Resistance>> Authors>> Richard Wright
-Richard
Wright, Mississippi writer, A project of Starkville High School
-Mark's
American Author Report: Richard Wright
-WHO
IS AFRAID OF RICHARD WRIGHT ? (Julia Wright, Statement to the
Duval County Committee reviewing Black Boy)
-ESSAY:
"Black Boys and Native Sons" (Irving Howe, DISSENT Autumn 1963)
-ESSAY:
Self-realization in the Novels of Richard Wright (Alexander Detrick)
-ESSAY:
Richard Wright: His Literary and Political Impact (Tim
McRae)
-Review
of Black Boy (Daniele Fleming, Starkville HS)
-REVIEW:
Richard Wright Early Works: Lawd Today!, Uncle Tom's Children, Native
Son (HERBERT MITGANG, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of RICHARD WRIGHT Early Works: "Lawd Today!" "Uncle Tom's
Children." "Native Son." (Alfred Kazin , NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of EXILED IN PARIS Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett
and Others on the Left Bank By James Campbell (CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT,
NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of EXILED IN PARIS Richard Wright, James Baldwin,
Samuel Beckett, and Others on the Left Bank. By James Campbell (Deirdre
Bair, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
C. Vann Woodward: The Mississippi Horrors, NY Review of Books
Dark Journey: Black Mississippians
in the Age of Jim Crow by Neil R. McMillen
-ESSAY:
Too Honest for His Own Time (Arnold Rampersad, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
ON REREADING 'NATIVE SON' (David Bradley, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY: Crime and Punishment and Explanation in
Full (Peter Monro Jack, NY Times)
http://search.nytimes.com/books/search/bin/fastweb?getdoc+book-full+booknews-arch+34711+19+wAAA+%28%22Richard%7EWright%22%3Afull%29
-The
Works of Richard Wright, as Written (ELEANOR BLAU, NY Times)
-REVIEW
: of Hazel Rowley's Richard Wright: The Life and Times (Paul Evans,
Book)
-REVIEW
: of 'Richard Wright: The Life and Times' By Hazel Rowley
(Megan Harlan, SF Chronicle)
If you liked Native Son, try:
Himes, Chester
-If
He Hollers Let Him Go
(Coffin Ed Johnson & Gravedigger Jones Mysteries)
-Cotton
Comes to Harlem
-The
Real Cool Killers
-The
Heat's On
-The
Crazy Kill (Read
Orrin's review, Grade: B)
Mosley, Walter
(Easy Rawlins Mysteries)
-Devil
in a Blue Dress
-A
Red Death
-White
Butterfly
-Black
Betty
-A
Little Yellow Dog
-Gone
Fishin' (Read
Orrin's review, Grade: B)
#21) Henderson the Rain King (1959)(Saul Bellow 1915-)
Eugene Henderson wants. In fact, a voice inside him keeps saying: I
want, I want. But what's left to want when you're a blue-blooded American
millionaire? He wants more out of life and to escape death. So for
some reason he goes off to Africa & finds a guide, Rimilayu, who takes
him to two tribes; the Arnewi, who are plagued by frogs, & the Wariri,
where he is befriended by King Dahfu.
In the allegedly "madcap & zany" adventures that follow Henderson
learns about life & himself.
What he learned escapes me. I honestly didn't understand the point of this whole exercise. It mystifies me that this is considered a great book. I have read other Bellow stuff, like Seize the Day (1956) & Dangling Man (1944), and while I didn't love them, I at least understood what he was trying to do.
There's a moment in Sophie's Choice when Stingo, Styron's alter ego, reads Dangling Man and has an epiphany where he realizes that the coming decades will be the domain of the Jewish novelist. Sure enough, Bellow won the 1976 Nobel Prize Winner, placed two books on this list and has won three National Book Awards, but I have no idea why.
GRADE: D
WEBSITES:
-Saul
Bellow (1915-) (kirjasto)
-FEATURED
AUTHOR : Saul Bellow (NY Times Book Review)
-AUTHOR
PAGE : SAUL BELLOW (1915-) (The Guardian)
-Saul
Bellow Society and Journal
-EXCERPT
: Chapter One of Ravelstein
-ESSAY
: Saul Bellow's Introduction to 'The Closing of the American Mind'
-Choosing
the Necessary: Remarks by Saul Bellow to Padgett Powell's
Graduate Class in Fiction Writing at the University of Florida, Gainesville,
February 21, 1992
-INTERVIEW
: Saul Bellow seizes the day : A near-fatal dose of food poisoning
has given Saul Bellow a new sense of urgency at 81. He talks to Desmond
O'Grady about his latest novel (Electronic Telegraph)
-INTERVIEW
: The Full Bellow Treatment : At 84, novelist Saul Bellow has two new
progeny: an infant daughter and a controversial novel. Friends say the
new book is a paean to his friend Allan Bloom; foes say it's a malicious
outing. (Sandra Martin, , April 29, 2000, Books Reporter)
-INTERVIEW
: Fathers and sons : Martin Amis discusses art, death and family relationships
with his mentor and kindred spirit, Saul Bellow (Electronic Telegraph)
-INTERVIEW
: with Saul Bellow (Joanna Coles, September 10, 1997, The Guardian)
-ESSAY
: With Friends Like Saul Bellow : His support helped to make Allan
Bloom a famous cultural conservative. But now that Bellow has written a
roman á clef revealing that Bloom was gay (and possibly died from
AIDS), his critics are crying betrayal. He fears they may be right. (D.T.
MAX, April 2000, NY Times Magazine)
-ESSAY
: A Bellow Novel Eulogizes a Friendship (DINITIA SMITH,
January 27, 2000, NY Times)
-ESSAY
: Bellow's betrayal blots his copybook : Nobel laureate forced to repent
over the 'outing' of Thatcher's favourite author (Ed Vulliamy, and Vanessa
Thorpe, April 23, 2000, The Observer)
-PROFILE
: The wordly mystic's late bloom : He is one of our greatest novelists
and has a Nobel prize to prove it. Married five times, he describes himself
as a serial husband. Now, at 84, after a near-fatal illness, he has produced
a vibrant novel and a baby daughter. James Wood, April 15, 2000, The Guardian)
-PAL: Perspectives in American Literature:
A Research and Reference Guide: "Chapter
10: Late Twentieth Century: 1945 to the Present - Saul Bellow (1915 - )"
-Herzog:
Essay Topics and Critical Commentary
-MARTIN AMIS:
Between the Influences of Bellow and Nabokov (Victoria N. Alexander,
The Antioch Review Fall 1994)
-Shame
and Saul Bellow's "Something to Remember Me By" (Saul Bellow Journal)
-ESSAY
: Saul Bellow, Allan Bloom, and Abe Ravelstein (Robert Fulford, Globe
and Mail, November 2, 1999)
-ESSAY
: Fictional characters and their real-life models (Sanford Pinsker,
Special to N.J. Jewish News)
-ESSAY
: Poison Ivy (David L. Kirp, American Prospect)
-ESSAY
: Wrestling in the Halls of Academe (Michael Miner, Chicago Reader)
-ESSAY
: Death and the Men of Letters : Measuring Roth and Bellow by the Way
They Handle the Final Question (MARK KRUPNICK, The Forward)
-LINKS
: Saul Bellow (The Guardian)
-ARCHIVES
: Allan Bloom (Upstream)
-ARCHIVES
: "Saul Bellow" (Find Articles)
-ARCHIVES
: "Saul Bellow" (Mag Portal)
-Mr.
Bellow's Planet (from Commentary)
-The
Quest for the Self in Bellow's Henderson
-Saul
Bellow (from Nobel Prize Site)
-INTERVIEW:
A CANDID TALK WITH SAUL BELLOW (D.J.R. Bruckner, NY Times Book
Review)
-ESSAY
: The Great American Augie : Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1976, but the great novel that set him on the course for the prize had
been published 23 years earlier, in 1953. The peripatetic hero of The Adventures
of Augie March spoke in an idiom entirely new to American literature--an
astonishing mix of the high-flown and the low-down. (Christopher Hitchens
, Wilson Quarterly)
-ESSAY
: So, Charlie Chaplin and Jean Cocteau walk into a bar ... Unpredictable,
startling and mysterious meetings (Robert Fulford, National Post)
-ESSAY:
Bellow at 85, Roth at 67 (Norman Podhoretz, Commentary)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Michiko Kakutani, NY Times)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Jonathan Wilson, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein by Saul Bellow (complete review)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Barton Wong, Spintech)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein by Saul Bellow (Floyd Skloot, SF Chronicle)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Louis Menand, NY Review of Books)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein ( J. Bottum, Weekly Standard)
-ESSAY
: Saul Bellow's Ravelstein (J. Bottum, The Crisis)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Christopher Hitchens, London Review of Books)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Lorin Stein, Salon)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (George Walden, This is London)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (James Wood, April 15, 2000, The Guardian)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Gary Giddins, Village Voice)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Mark Greif, American Prospect)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (The American Enterprise, Leon Aron)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Adam Mars-Jones, The Observer)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (John Mullan, The Guardian)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Zachary Leader, Independent uk )
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (John Leonard, The Nation)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Stephen Mitchelmore, Spike)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (PAUL GRAY, TIME)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Chris Wood, Richmond Review)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (JOSHUA PERRY, Harvard Advocate)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Bob Wake, Culture Vulture)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (The Gaping Void)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (Cornel Bonca, Orange County Weekly)
-REVIEW
: of Ravelstein (ROBERT WEIBEZAHL, Book Page)
-ESSAY
: Robert Fulford's column about James Atlas & Saul Bellow (The
National Post, December 12, 2000)
-ESSAY
: Bellow: the novelist as homespun philosopher by Robert Fulford (The
National Post, October 23, 2000)
-ESSAY
: Stephen Moss assesses the critical response to Saul Bellow's long-awaited
Ravelstein (The Guardian)
-REVIEW
: of It All Adds Up: A Non-Fiction Collection by Saul Bellow
(Peter Conrad, The Observer)
-REVIEW
: of The Actual by Saul Bellow (Grey Gowrie, Electronic Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of Editors: The Best from Five Decades Saul Bellow and Keith Botsford
(George Walden, This is London)
-REVIEW:
Mr. Bellow's Planet: Trailing clouds of glory, The Actual caps a career
of fictional soul-making (Hillel Halkin, Commentary)
-REVIEW
: of Collected Stories of Saul Bellow (Paul Gray, NY Times Book
Review)
-REVIEW
: of Collected Stories of Saul Bellow (Stephen Amidon, New Statesman)
-REVIEW
: of Saul Bellow's Collected Stories (Alex Clark, The Guardian)
-REVIEW
: of Collected Stories by Saul Bellow (Jenny Shank, Rocky Mountain
News)
-REVIEW
: of Bellow: A Biography by James Atlas (Richard Poirier, London Review
of Books)
-REVIEW
: of Bellow : A Biography of Saul Bellow (Frances Kiernan, SF Gate
Books)
-REVIEW
: of Bellow : a Biography by James Atlas (Lawrence Rainey, Independent
uk)
-REVIEW
: of Bellow: A Biography. By James Atlas (EILEEN BATTERSBY , Irish
Times)
-REVIEW
: of JAMES ATLAS: Bellow: A Biography (Richard Stern, The Nation)
-REVIEW
: of Bellow by James Atlas (James Wood, New Republic)
-REVIEW
: of Bellow by James Atlas (Edward Neuert, Salon)
-REVIEW
: of Bellow by James Atlas (Hywel Williams, The Guardian)
-REVIEW
: of Bellow by James Atlas (Adam Mars-Jones, The Observer)
#22) Appointment in Samarra (1934)(John O'Hara 1905-1970)
At the end of every year, Brian Lamb talks to three authors on a special Booknotes on C-SPAN. Last year one of the guests was Shelby Foote & he said that he was reading some great American authors who folks had sort of forgotten. One of them was John O'Hara. Now I've seen dozens of his books at book sales, so I knew two things: one, he sold a ton of books; two, folks aren't reading them anymore. So I picked up From the Terrace, Appointmentm in Samarra & a couple collections of the short stories & loved them all. It was very heartening to see that he made this list.
Appointment tells the story of Julian English, a WASP nervously perched atop the social heap in Gibbsville, PA. At a Christmas party in 1930, he throws a drink in the face of the town's leading Catholic businessman and thus begins his downward spiral.
O'Hara etches very sharp portraits of characters from the varying strata of society & presents a vivid tale of an America & it's establishment shaken by the oncoming Depression and the rise of new Ethnic groups.
GRADE: A
Other recommended books by John O'Hara:
-BUtterfield
8 (1935) (read Orrin's
review, Grade: B+)
-From
the Terrace
WEBSITES:
-REVIEW:
of APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA By John O'Hara (MARGO JEFFERSON, NY
Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of COLLECTED STORIES OF JOHN O'HARA. (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, NY
Times)
-REVIEW:
of THE LIFE OF JOHN O'HARA. By Frank MacShane (Anatole Broyard, NY
Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE LIFE OF JOHN O'HARA By Frank MacShane (Alfred Kazin, NY Times
Book Review)
-ESSAY:
Book Ends; O'HARA, JOHN (Herbert Mitgang, NY Times)
-John
O'Hara's Study at Penn State
-MUSICAL:
Pal Joey 1940
-ARTICLE:
A Body of Evidence on LI: When a fashionably attired corpse washed
ashore, the DA and the press knew what to do (Steve Wick, Long Island History)
-ESSAY:
John O'Hara's Protectorate: Revisiting Gibbsville (Benjamin and
Christina Schwarz, The Atlantic)
-ESSAY:
THE BEST CONVERSATION IN AMERICA (Frank McShane, NY times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
READING ABOUT THE RICH (John Kenneth Galbraith, NY Times Book
Review)
-ESSAY:
ONE TOO MANY FOR THE MUSE (J. Anthony Lukas, NY Times Book Review)
-MODERN
NOVELS; THE 99 BEST (Anthony Burgess, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
PRINCETON'S SMALL WORLD OF BIG WRITERS (GLENN COLLINS, NY Times Book
Review)
-ESSAY:
In and Out of Storyville: Jazz and Fiction (Vance Bourjaily,
NY Times Book Review)
My sympathies lie with the private in the front line
against the brass hat; with the hodcarrier against
the strawboss, or the walking delegate for that
matter; with the laboratory worker against the
stuffed shirt in a mortarboard; with the criminal
against the cop.
-John Dos Passos
This is my last review for the Modern Library Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. I intentionally left this one for last because I've tried reading the trilogy before and, quite honestly, find it one of the most putdownable books on God's green Earth. Dos Passos uses a variety of techniques to try to capture the panoramic sweep of America early in the Century, including inserting short biographies of historical figures like Eugene V. Debs and pasting in actual newspaper headlines. But between these continual interruptions and the sheer number of characters and storylines he pursues, it is a story that becomes horribly segmented and jerks to a halt whenever its building up some momentum. There are some excellent set pieces and some of the interludes are pretty interesting, but the whole work does not really flow to well. Stylistically, it is an experiment that goes awry.
However, Dos Passos real importance is not as a stylist. Instead, it is the way in which his career arc tracks that of Western Man over the course of the Century. In many ways he is the American Orwell (see review of Homage to Catalonia). At the start of the trilogy Dos Passos is an angry young man, dreaming of the paradise that will arise when the "Workers of the World Unite", railing against Big Business, etc. But he gradually realized that the organized workers were merely another big bureaucracy, and he loathed institutions of whatever stripe. He also received a rude awakening during the Spanish Civil War when his friend Jose Robles was arrested and murdered by Stalinists. In a conversation with his wife and Hemingway he threatened to return to the United States and tell the truth about the situation in Spain. Hemingway warned him that if he did the critics would "bury" him. To which Mrs. Dos Passos responded: "Ernest, I never heard anything so despicably opportunistic in my life".
This began a long drift to the right which did in fact result in the critics dismissing his later works and by the time of the Vietnam War, which he supported, he was viewed as a reactionary hack. We see the first inklings of this political shift in the final sections of the trilogy as the tone becomes increasingly pessimistic as regards "the Movement", with scenes of Party infighting and the increasing impression that the very individuals and organizations that started out to improve the lot of the working man will now be merely another source of oppression.
On balance then we end up with a book that doesn't truly succeed but which is emblematic of the times. It almost has to be on the list, but I advise skimming.
GRADE: C
WEBSITES:
-BIOGRAPHICAL
ESSAY: John Dos Passos, 1917-1928 (Erin Templeton)
-John
Dos Passos (Web Page with Links)
-John
Dos Passos - an amateur appreciation page
-BIBLIO:
PAL: John Dos Passos (1896-1970)
-ARTWORK:
Colors That Will Not Fade Rare John Dos Passos watercolors on exhibit
at USC McKissick Museum
-EXCERPT
from: Writers on the Left by Daniel Aaron CHAPTER FIFTEEN
-- THE ADVENTURES OF JOHN DOS PASSOS
-U.S.A.:
Agitprop or Masterpiece? (Civilization Magazne)
-EXCERPT:
John Dos Passos on Randolph Bourne (from U.S.A. 1946)(Disability History
Project Web Site)
-EXCERPT:
SAN FRANCISCO LOOKS WEST The City in Wartime By JOHN DOS PASSOS
-ETEXT:
One Man's Initiation: 1917 A Novel By John Dos Passos
-STUDENT
GUIDE: for "The Body of an American" John Dos Passos (1896-1970) Contributing
Editor: Robert C. Rosen
-ESSAY:
Reading Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer (Erin Templeton)
-ESSAY:
Dos Passos, the artist by Teri Tynes
-ESSAY:
The Intellectual (Howard Fast, The Daily Worker 1956)
-REVIEW:
of USA by John Dos Passos A continent-sized book (Edward T. Wheeler,
COMMONWEAL, April 11, 1997)
-ESSAY:
JOHN DOS PASSOS - ODYSSEY OF AN OPTIMIST (John Chamberlain, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
Dos Passos and the Many Lives of 'U.S.A.' (Richard Gilman, NY
times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of 1919 by John Dos Passos When Life Became Journalism
(John Chamberlain, NY Times Book Review, March 13, 1932)
-REVIEW:
of DOS PASSOS: A Life By Virginia Spencer Carr (Kenneth S. Lynn, NY
Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
DOS PASSOS: A Life By Virginia Spencer Carr (Herbert Mitgang, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
Thomas R. Edwards: Dos Passos Divided, NY Review of Books
The Fourteenth Chronicle:
Letters and Diaries of John Dos Passos
Dos Passos' Path to U.S.A.:
A Political Biography 1912-1936 by Melvin Landsberg
-REVIEW:
Thomas R. Edwards: Outsider, NY Review of Books
John Dos Passos: A Twentieth
Century Odyssey by Townsend Ludington
-LETTER:
JOHN DOS PASSOS: A LETTER FROM THE FRONT (NY Review of Books)
-LETTER:
Edmund Wilson: Letters to John Dos Passos
GENERAL:
-ESSAY:
The Other Vietnam Generation (Douglas Brinkley, NY Times Book
Review)
-ESSAY:
WHEN INTELLECTUALS DO BATTLE (David M. Oshinsky, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
When Writers Think They're Politicians (Greg Mitchell, NY Times
Book Review)
-ESSAY:
MALICE AND REUNIONS (Edmund Wilson, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
AMERICAN WRITERS SEEN THROUGH A SOVIET GLASS (THEODORE SHABAD, NY Times
Book Review)
-REVIEW:
Irvin Ehrenpreis: Teacher, NY Review of Books
The Twenties: From Notebooks
and Diaries of the Period by Edmund Wilson
-REVIEW:
of AN AMERICAN PROCESSION By Alfred Kazin THEY SHAPED OUR
LITERARY SENSIBILITY (Marcus Cunliffe, NY Times Book review)
-REVIEW:
Denis Donoghue: The Return of the Native, NY Review of Books
An American Procession by
Alfred Kazin
-REVIEW:
of DOUBLE LIVES Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War of Ideas
Against the West. By Stephen Koch Communism of the Rich and
Famous (Maurice Isserman, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of Double Lives: Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War of Ideas
Against the West By Stephen Koch (CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
Denis Donoghue: Cummings and Goings, NY Review of Books
Selected Letters of E. E.
Cummings edited by F.W. Dupee and George Stade
-OBIT:
Malcolm Cowley, Writer, Is Dead at 90 (ALBIN KREBS, NY Times)
#24) Winesburg, Ohio (1919)(Sherwood Anderson 1876-1941)
This collection of stories is not truly a novel. In fact, most of the stories were published separately, in magazines. They only seem to be unified by their setting in Winesburg (based on Anderson's hometown, Clyde OH), their depictions of small town Americans as victims of various personality pathologies and the recurring character George Willard (Anderson as a young man).
Anderson's original title for the collection was "The Book of the Grotesque". Malcolm Cowley's introduction, in the edition that I read, argues that the characters are grotesque in so far as they are isolated from mankind by their inability to communicate. He says that George Willard, a young newspaperman, recurs in the stories because the characters hope that he will communicate for them.
I have no argument with this interpretation, but I do oppose the condescending attitude that it, probably correctly, attributes to the author. Anderson, like Sinclair Lewis & Theodore Dreiser & many other writers of the time, seems to have believed that the people of small town America must have been leading lives of quiet desperation. As if it was impossible to believe that their lives were satisfying and fulfilling. Actually, it seems like intellectual elites always assume that most people must be unhappy with their lives, when in point of fact, it is they who are dissatisfied.
I'm afraid I side with the critics of the book, who Cowley says called it "pessimistic..destructive..morbidly sexual". I would instead urge readers to try Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine (see review).
GRADE: C-
READER RESPONSE :
Good day,
I stumbled across your critique of the Modern Library's top 100 list,
and while I do agree with you on certain works, I must say that I strongly
disagree with your comments on Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. You stated:
"Malcolm Cowley's introduction, in the edition that I read, argues
that the characters are grotesque in so far as they are isolated from mankind
by their inability to communicate. He says that George Willard, a
young newspaperman, recurs in the stories because the characters hope that
he will communicate for them. I have no argument with this interpretation,
but I do oppose the condescending attitude that it, probably correctly,
attributes to the author. Anderson, like Sinclair Lewis & Theodore
Dreiser & many other writers of the time, seems to have believed that
the people of small town America must have been leading lives of quiet
desperation. As if it was impossible to believe that their lives
were satisfying and fulfilling. Actually, it seems like intellectual
elites always assume that most people must be unhappy with their lives,
when in point of fact, it is they who are dissatisfied."
While I haven't read Mr. Cowley's introduction, I agree with the introduction of Irving Howe in a different edition. The work is most likely a commentary on the universal human condition, and not specific to small-town America. As Alice Hindman says in the story Adventure, "many people must live and die alone, even in Winesburg." This interpretation is supported by Anderson's statement in his novel Poor White that "all men lead their lives behind a wall of misunderstanding they have themselves built."
Winesburg, Ohio is not about the struggles brought about by living in a small town, rather it is a work concerning human struggles which simply occur in a small town. That is after all the setting that Anderson is most familiar with, and I don't see how his tone is in anyway condescending.
I appreciate your site, keep up the good work, it is always nice to come across the opinions of someone so well-read as yourself.
Ben Campbell
Orrin's response :
Thanks for the feedback; is it okay if I add your comments to the site?
Those Modern Library reviews were the first ones I did and kind of the impetus to get the site started. Some are therefore inadequate. From what you say, I may well have allowed myself to fall into what I soon discovered is a real trap, which is to read a book as it has been read by critics rather than to read the text afresh. As I've read some stuff by Sinclair Lewis, it's seemed to me that he's far less the scourge of Middle America than critics would have us believe. I'll have to reread Winesburg and see if the same is true of Anderson.
Thanks again; glad you enjoy the site,
OJ
WEBSITES:
-Stein,
Gender, Isolation, and Industrialism: New Readings of Winesburg, Ohio
-The
Sherwood Anderson Page
-Sherwood
Anderson (Most Web)
#25) A Passage to India (1924)(E.M. Forster 1879-1970)
Miss Quested and Mrs. Moore are good Brits in turn of the century India. They have the best intentions and want to meet real Indians and see the real India. When Dr. Aziz takes them to visit the Marabar Caves, they seem to be penetrating deep into the heart of India. However, Miss Quested is overwhelmed by the caves & accuses Aziz of attacking her & for all their good intentions, they are shown to be just as incapable of understanding Indians as the worst of their fellow Brits.
This is certainly the best of Forster's novels. The clash of cultures
makes for interesting reading. However, after a century of decolonization
and independence, it's legitimate to ask whether places like India are
better off today, as independent nations, than they were in 1900, as colonies.
Forster
makes the point that the English will never understand the Indians
& can never be friends with them, but will Hindus ever understand Moslems
& can they ever be friends? More importantly, even if the English
never could befriend the Indians, wasn't their governance, at least, enlightened
& constructive?
Whereas, the Hindus who feel actual hatred towards the Moslems (&
vice versa) have governed in a backward and destructive manner? Should
ethnicity be the deciding factor in who governs a country or are governing
principles (democracy, capitalism, religious tolerance) more important
to the welfare of the population?
It seems to me that Forster & his ilk bet on ethnicity & events have shown them to be catastrophically mistaken.
GRADE: B
WEBSITES:
-E.
M. FORSTER 1879-1970 (A future entry in Beachams' Encyclopedia of Popular
Fiction)
-only
connect (a web site dedicated to EM Forster)
-A
Passage through Forster: EM Forster: his life and works
-ESSAY:
Connecting with EM Forster (Sidney Perkowitz, The American Prospect)
If you liked A Passage to India, try:
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer
-Heat
and Dust (1983 Booker Prize)(see review)
Mistry, Rohinton
-Such
a Long Journey (1992)
Seth, Vikram
-A
Suitable Boy : A Novel (1993)
Dennis Barlow: Through no wish of my own I
have become the protagonist of a Jamesian
problem. Do you ever read any Henry James,
Mr. Schultz?
Mr. Schultz: You know I don't have the time for reading.
Barlow: You don't have to read very much of
him. All his stories are about the same
thing--American innocence and European experience.
Schultz: Thinks he can outsmart us, does he?
Barlow: James was the innocent American.
Schultz: Well, I've no time for guys running down their own folks.
-Evelyn Waugh (The Loved One)(see Orrin's review)
There is no more disheartening experience in all of reading than to finish a page of a Henry James novel and turn to the next, only to be confronted by the massive paragraphs lined up ahead of you like enormous blocks of granite. Completing one of his books is truly a task worthy of Sisyphus.
Now before you say that I have a bad attitude, let me remind folks who have been following along that I looked forward to reading Wings of the Dove. I have heard very good things about it and it has a terrific plot set up. Kate Croy is a socialite on the edge. The family money has gone to pay off her father's blackmailers. This, combined with her parents fairly disreputable marriage, leaves her especially reluctant to reveal her passionate affair with Merton Densher, a mere journalist. But when Kate befriends the wealthy but fatally ill heiress, Milly Theale, she sees a way to solve all of her problems. Densher will feign a great love for Theale, who will reciprocate by making him her heir. Then Kate & Mert can marry & live happily ever after.
Pretty good, no? You can just imagine the movie, with a script by Raymond Chandler, based on a James M. Cain story and directed by John Huston or Alfred Hitchcock; Barbara Stanwyck plays Milly Theale, of course.
But, oh no. That's not what you get here. Instead you get a soul deadening 500 pages of elliptical navel gazing. None of the characters are sympathetic--although, you inevitably end up rooting for Kate, just because you want Milly to die. Well, actually, you just want someone to die. Hell, you just want something to happen. By page four, you want the tiger to come tearing out of the cage & end your misery.
This revival of Henry James has to stop. I can not put this any more plainly: his books are not good.
GRADE: D
see also reviews of:
-#27) The Ambassadors (1903)
-#32) The Golden Bowl, or actually,
The
Turn of the Screw (in lieu of The Golden
Bowl)
WEBSITES:
-etext:
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
-Henry
James (1843-1916)(bio & biblio)
-Adrian
Dover's Henry James Site
-Henry
James: An American Master At Work
-Determining
One's Fate: Henry James's Autobiography (Victoria Alexander)
-James,
Henry - Heath Instructors Guide
-the
Henry James scholar's Guide to Web Sites
-The
Henry James Review (requires subscription)
-Henry
James and the Atlantic Monthly (The Atlantic)
-ESSAY
: The American Woman : What Henry James knew. (Lauren Weiner, Weekly
Standard)
-REVIEW:
of Henry James: A Life in Letters (New Statesman)
-Cher
Maitre: The Other Sides of Henry James
-Library
of America: Henry James (excerpts, reviews, notes, order)
-Etexts
by Author: James, Henry, 1843-1916
-the
Internet Public Library: Online Literary Criticism Collection: Henry James,
Jr. (1843 - 1916)
-etext
of: Henry James, Jr. by William Dean Howells
FILM
-Review: 'The
Wings of the Dove' is soaring cinema (Carol Buckland, CNN)
-Rough
Cut Review
-REVIEW:
(JOE BALTAKE /NATIONAL CRITICS, Sacramento Bee)
-Film
Scouts Guide
Dennis Barlow: Through no wish of my own I
have become the protagonist of a Jamesian
problem. Do you ever read any Henry James,
Mr. Schultz?
Mr. Schultz: You know I don't have the time for reading.
Barlow: You don't have to read very much of
him. All his stories are about the same
thing--American innocence and European experience.
Schultz: Thinks he can outsmart us, does he?
Barlow: James was the innocent American.
Schultz: Well, I've no time for guys running down their own folks.
-Evelyn Waugh (The Loved One)(see Orrin's review)
Lewis Lambert Strether, a middle-aged widower from Woollett, MA, has
come to
Europe at the request of Mrs. Newsome, who he hopes to marry, in order
to fetch
her son Chad home to help in the family manufacturing business. Finding
Chad in
Paris, Strether realizes that he is not being corrupted, but is rather
being
improved by his experiences. In fact, Paris awakens something in Strether
too,
& he urges: "...don't forget that you're young-blessedly young;
be glad of it on
the contrary and live up to it. Live all you can; it's a mistake not
to. It
doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have
your life.
If you haven't had that what have you had? ... This place and these
impressions-mild as you may find them to wind a man up so; all my impressions
of
Chad and of people I've seen at his place-well have had their abundant
message
for me, have just dropped that into my mind. I see it now. I haven't
done so
before-and now I'm old; too old at any rate for what I see." He also
finds that
Chad has fallen in love with Mme. de Vionnet, a woman of quality &
he agrees not
to force Chad to return home.
Meanwhile, Strether has become enamored of Maria Gostrey & she of
him, but he
refuses to marry her & returns to America as a kind of penance
for not forcing
Chad to leave.
Strether: I must go...to be right.
Maria: To be right?
Strether: That you see, is my only logic. Not, out of the whole affair,
to have
got anything for myself.
Maria: But, with your wonderful impressions you'll have got a great deal.
Strether: A great deal. But nothing like you. It's you who would make me wrong!
Thus Henry James.
What is there that a repressed (or closeted homosexual), who loathed
his own
country, has to tell us, that we need to hear? I think nothing. I sort
of
liked Turn of the Screw & I'll review it in lieu of The Golden
Bowl & I'll give
Wings of the Dove a shot because it actually has a decent plot, but
I am just
mystified by the Henry James revival. His characters are so emotionally
constricted and warped that reading him is like climbing into the closet
with
him. It's an experience I encourage you to avoid.
GRADE: D
Other books by Henry James:
-The
Turn of the Screw
WEBSITES:
-etext:
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
-Henry
James (1843-1916)(bio & biblio)
-Adrian
Dover's Henry James Site
-Henry
James: An American Master At Work
-Determining
One's Fate: Henry James's Autobiography (Victoria Alexander)
-James,
Henry - Heath Instructors Guide
-the
Henry James scholar's Guide to Web Sites
-The
Henry James Review (requires subscription)
-Henry
James and the Atlantic Monthly (The Atlantic)
-ESSAY
: The American Woman : What Henry James knew. (Lauren Weiner, Weekly
Standard)
-REVIEW:
of Henry James: A Life in Letters (New Statesman)
-Cher
Maitre: The Other Sides of Henry James
-Library
of America: Henry James (excerpts, reviews, notes, order)
-Etexts
by Author: James, Henry, 1843-1916
-the
Internet Public Library: Online Literary Criticism Collection: Henry James,
Jr. (1843 - 1916)
-etext
of: Henry James, Jr. by William Dean Howells
It is often said that every writer has, at least, one good book in him. Sadly most of them only have one. This certainly appears to be the case for Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby, while flawed (see review), is nonetheless a great novel. Gatsby is a tragic figure motivated by a self destructive pursuit of his vision of the American dream. Dr. Dick Diver, the central character of Tender is the Night, on the other hand, is naught but a dissipated wastrel. As his wife, who he met while he was working as a psychiatrist & she was interred in an asylum, gains mental stability & some kind of shaky personal wholeness, he descends into drink & carnality & ends the novel roaming from town to town practicing medicine briefly before moving on. Diver is the kind of insipid navel gazing character who has plagued the Century's fiction.
Tom Wolfe, touring in support of his new novel, has launched himself on a jeremiad against the Modern novel & novelist. His central point is that novelists need to stop looking inward and look without. He's saying, Go out into America & tell the wonderful stories that you find there. There are wonderful stories, waiting to be told, but our greatest novelists are cloistered in Universities, Manhattan apartments, etc., picking at the scabs on their own psyches & the vomiting forth their internal monologues. Tender is the Night seems to be a victim of this Modernist disease, too autobiographical & self absorbed to tell us much of value about the wider world.
GRADE: C-
Other books by F. Scott Fitzgerald:
-The
Great Gatsby
WEBSITES:
-Enchanted
Places: The Use of Setting in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Fiction
-F.
Scott Fitzgerald Links
-USC: F.
Scott Fitzgerald Centenary Home Page
As the trilogy opens in 1916 Chicago, young Studs Lonigan is a horny lazy 15 year old anti-Semite racist punk. Over the course of this and the succeeding volumes, we watch him brawl, drink, smoke & carouse his way to an early grave. Yeah? Whooptyflip. It's supposed to be about how hard it is to be an American Irish Catholic; a point that might have had greater weight had not a young man of Stud's generation been rising towards the Presidency even as Farrell whined.
Start with an author in the thrall of Dreiser and Anderson, add in the influence of both Proust and Joyce, and you have one of the least interesting, most technically annoying books on the list. Plus, I couldn't find a cheap copy--strike three.
Grade: D
WEBSITES:
-REVOLUTIONARY
NOVELIST IN CRISIS (From The New York Intellectuals, by Alan M. Wald.
pp. 249-263)
-REVIEW
: of Chicago Stories By James T. Farrell, Selected and Edited by Charles
Fanning (James Diedrick, Authors' Review of Books)
For a much more enjoyable reading experience, set in the same milieu try:
Powers, John
-The Last Catholic in America : A Fictionalized
Memoir
#30) The Good Soldier (1915)(Ford Maddox Ford 1873-1939)
The novel tells the story of the 9 year friendship between two couples.
The Good Soldier of the title has a "bad heart" and a wife he doesn't love.
The narrator's wife has a "bad heart" also and when the two couples meet
in Europe they seem to form an ideal foursome. However, as the story
unfolds, the
narrator reveals that none of these people are who they seem to be
on the surface.
The writing is very witty & the novel is structured almost like a mystery. But as with a number of other books on this list, it is hard to like any of the characters &, therefore, hard to care what happens to them.
GRADE: B-
N.B.--I wrote this review in Fall '98, it was one of my first. But I recently reread the book (for Ford's birthday) and this edition had an Intro by Ford that caused an epiphany and tied into my recent review of Madame Bovary. Please take a look at that review, specifically the note following it, for more on The Good Soldier.
Thanks; OJ (12/17/99)
WEBSITES:
-Ford
Maddox Ford
-Malcolm
Bradbury: 'Nothing But a Writer' REVIEW: of Ford Madox Ford by Alan
Judd (NY Review of Books)
-REVIEW:
of Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life by Max Saunders (Julian Barnes,
NY Review of Books)
-REVIEW:
of The Fifth Queen by Ford Madox Ford (R.W. Flint, NY Review
of Books)
-BOOK
CLUB: Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (1915).
(Presented by Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World)
#31) Animal Farm (George Orwell 1903-1950)
See review at Brothers Judd's George Orwell page
It would be cruel and unusual punishment to actually trudge through the three Henry James novels that made the top 100. I did read The Ambassadors and sort of want to read The Wings of the Dove, but instead of The Golden Bowl, here's a review of the one thing he wrote that I actually liked--The Turn of the Screw. In this virtual horror tale the twisted emotional dementia that mars his other works actually aids the tale.
A young governess is hired to look after two seemingly angelic orphans--Flora and Miles. Seemingly, but why was Miles dismissed from school? and who are the strangers who the governess sees at windows? As in most of James' work, these questions are raised but not answered. However, in this novella he is presenting a gothic mystery, so the open ended questions are appropriate.
Apparently Turn of the Screw was controversial when James wrote it, because of it's presentation of children as potentially wicked. In the era of Littleton, I don't think there's anyone left who will argue that children are incapable of evil.
It's just a good creepy little tale.
GRADE: B
WEBSITES:
-Henry
James on the Web
-ONLINE
STUDYGUIDE: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (SparkNote by
Selena Ward)
-Turn
of the Screw (e-text)
-REVIEW:
of Henry James: A Life in Letters (New Statesman)