The Blind Assassin

  
The Blind Assassin
by Margaret Atwood
read: 2013
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels, Man Booker Prize, Orange Prize

In The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood deals with the written word itself, by embedding a story within the story - the title The Blind Assassin refers to a novel-within-the-novel written by the narrator's sister Laura. And within that story, the unnamed male creates stories of his own, crafting pulp and genre tales for the amusement of his lover (presumably Laura in a roman a clef). The novel is partially about storytelling, and how fiction can shape reality.

History is fluid, as Iris, the narrator, notes: "[I]s what I remember the same thing as what actually happened? It is now; I am the only survivor." As a youth, Laura is struck by a passage in The Bible where God himself lies, giving false prophecies. Ultimately, the novel-within-the-novel The Blind Assassin is a lie, written by Iris but published under Laura's name, but that lie becomes part of the fabric of reality, as Laura is adored in death, and symbolically misquoted in graffiti in bathroom stalls. The novel is cut with newspaper article that tell the story of what happens to Iris and Laura but is misleading or incomplete. Language cannot be trusted.

Iris pens the narrative itself for reasons she doesn't fully understand, and it is unclear whether it will even be read. She sums up the unreliability of language in the following quote:

In the beginning was the word, we once believed. Did God know what a flimsy thing the word might be? How tenuous, how casually erased?

Play It As It Lays

Play It As It Lays
by Joan Didion
read: 2013
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

I devoured this in two days. It's a very quick read, but it's also one of the most depressing novels I've ever read. Didion's prose, Like Flannery O'Connor's, is brutal. It's the sort of book you want to lend to someone after reading, but you're not sure if it's because you think they'd like it or because misery loves company.

The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor

The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
by Flannery O'Connor
read: 2013
National Book Award

According to the Wikipedia page for one of the stories in this collection, Flannery O'Connor once said:

 "All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal."

The collection contains stories about a family getting murdered by a serial killer, a 5-year-old who drowns himself, a father who so neglects his son that the child hangs himself, a one-armed man who abandons a mute girl at a diner, and many more. It's not hard to see why most would categorize them as "hard, hopeless, and brutal."

"Grace" is a difficult theological concept as it is (as defined by the Catholic Church), "free and undeserved." It's easy to feel that the central characters in O'Connor's stories are "undeserved." They are frequently short-sighted and act against themselves and their best interests, usually with tragic results.

O'Connor generally does not portray the artists in her stories favorably. In modern America, we often value the independent mind and spirit, the iconoclast, the maverick. O'Connor does not share this view. One example is "The Partridge Festival," where a young would-be writer returns to the hometown he disdains out of a fascination with a spree killer, who he sees as "a man who would not allow himself to be pressed into the mold of his inferiors." But when he meets the man, he finds a lunatic. He runs from his true calling, sales:

Selling was the only thing he had proved himself good at; yet it was impossible for him to believe that every man was not created equally an artist if he could but suffer and achieve it.

It's hard not to wonder how O'Connor felt about her own vocation, especially considering how laborious she found the writing process, as described by editor Robert Giroux in the introduction. Did she forsake some more natural grace? Or did she feel she was doing God's will with her writing? Maybe she was uncertain - one memorable story, "Parker's Back" tells of a man who is inspired to impress his very Christian wife by getting a large tattoo of Jesus on his back, only to have her throw him out of the house for idolatry. This is not an easy set of stories to read, and it sounds like it was equally difficult for O'Connor to write.

Death Comes for the Archbishop

  
Death Comes for the Archbishop
by Willa Cather
read: 2013
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #61

I like to think of myself as an enlightened person, but occasionally I find myself humbled. I didn't know anything about Willa Cather and assumed basically every female author from the early part of the 20th Century was writing novels about romance or family. I was surprised to pick up Death Comes for the Archbishop and find myself reading a Western. I was also blown away; it's an amazing book, one of the most beautiful, inspiring, multi-layered, and poignant novels I've ever read.

There are lot of different lenses through which to view Death Comes for the Archbishop. The friendship between Bishop Latour and Father Vaillant runs like a backbone through the novel and the scene where the Latour sends Vaillant away for the last time rings with poignancy. The two men display different models of faith, with Vaillant's unwavering while Latour struggles with doubt at times. The story is also an examination of the Southwest, with Cather painting the physical beauty of the environment and also the cultural landscape, as the various Spanish, Mexican, Native American, and American influences shape society. And while the story isn't a Western in the sense of cowboys and gunfights, the priests are portrayed as heroic, overthrowing corrupt priests and helping the poor and needy with little regard for themselves.

The most interesting thread running through the novel was the role of tradition and legacy and how it differed between the Indians and the Europeans. Bishop Latour observes the European tradition early on the novel, when sampling Father Vaillant's onion soup:

"I am not deprecating your individual talent, Joseph," the Bishop continued, "but, when one thinks of it, a soup like this is not the work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup."

The Bishop observes tradition in the Native American people, too. But while the Europeans share their gifts with the world, the Indians hide theirs:

It was said that this people had from time immemorial kept a ceremonial fire burning in some cave in the mountain, a fire that had never been allowed to go out, and had never been revealed to white men.

Bishop Latour learns this difference between the cultures, judging that "it was the white man's way to assert himself in any landscape, to change it," while "it was the Indian's way to pass through a country without disturbing anything." On returning to France late in his career, Latour decides he will spend his final years in the Southwest where "the wind made one a boy again." But while he notices that this pure, unspoiled quality "vanished after they were tamed by man," Latour is still a man of the European tradition, and in his great act as Archbishop builds a Cathedral in Santa Fe even though few seem to appreciate it. Is this a noble act for the future good of the Church and the people of the Southwest? Or is a selfish act for Latour's personal legacy, emblematic of the way the white man is destroying the unsullied nature of the land? Or both? The ambiguity reflects the complexity of the novel and Cather's empathy for all viewpoints.

Women In Love

   
Women In Love
by D.H. Lawrence
read: 2013
Modern Library #49, Guardian 1000 Novels

Women In Love is a sequel to The Rainbow, I guess. Strictly speaking, it picks up where The Rainbow left off, following the adventures of Ursula Brangwen in her quest to find love and meaning. It's quite a bit different in scope, though; while The Rainbow spans three generations, Women In Love all takes place in a year or two.

The first part of this book reminded me of the HBO show Girls, where the characters - all successful, employed, intelligent, attractive people - nevertheless find ways to make themselves unhappy. The later part of the story took a darker turn though.

Of the four major characters, we probably get inside Gerald's head the least, but I didn't appreciate his importance until the end. Gerald has the most interesting history - he killed his brother accidentally as a child, though the novel never directly addresses his feelings around that incident. His decision not to accept Rupert's love is really the moral turning point of the story and the most heartbreaking missed opportunity, and eventually results in his death. But during the tale he feels like the least-important of the four major characters. Perhaps there were subtle things I missed along the way, but I don't especially feel inclined to go back and read it.

It

It
by Stephen King
read: 2013

Professor Corey Olson, "The Tolkien Professor," talks about how Tolkien wanted to create a mythology for the British Isles, feeling that the lack of mythology was a cultural void for the English. If that's a gap in British lore, it's certainly a massive hole in American culture, which exists (except for the American Indians) entirely in the era of recorded history. If there's little English mythology, there's even less American.

I don't know if Stephen King imagined It as an attempt to fill in that gap, but there are certainly some elements. Despite the cover photo, it's not about a killer clown; it's about an alien force that's been there since "[t]wo hundred years ago ... that long, and only God knows how much longer." When the first settlers arrive in Derry, Maine, where It lives, they are wiped out in a mysterious event reminiscent of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, only the history books don't tell of this disappearance. Every 27 years or so, It returns, killing children and provoking men into acts of violence. It feeds on the faith of children: "... [T]he source of power is faith, not food. ... In Derry, power seems to be perpetuated and renewed by periodic ritualistic acts ..." It takes various physical forms, usually assuming the shape of Its' victim's greatest fears.

The novel posits a sort of American mythology, a timeless force of evil that lives in an undiscovered country "since the beginning of time ... since before there were men anywhere ..." and becomes the essence of the town itself. There is a good force that helps the protagonists, The Turtle, which created the Earth and "is the oldest thing anyone could imagine." It is a horror novel, but the mythological background makes it more interesting than your typical creature feature.

The Castle of Otranto

     
The Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole
read: 2013
Guardian 1000 Novels

So this book was considered scary at one point, I guess? People in the 1700's must have had wicked imaginations.

The Exorcist

      
The Exorcist
by William Peter Blatty
read: 2013

In The Crucible , characters are accused of witchcraft even though to a modern reader it's obvious there's no such thing. In The Exorcist, the characters assume there's no such thing even though it turns out Regan MacNeil really is possessed by a demon. Initially, the doctors are skeptical even of a psychological issue, preferring to focus on physical problems. Ultimately, a Catholic priest is called, but he too is a skeptic, struggling with his faith.

The theme that resonated me in the novel wasn't faith, however, but duty. Even though Damien isn't sure whether he believes in God, he takes his responsibilities seriously, barely sleeping, doing everything he can for Regan and Chris, pushing the church for an exorcism, and even helping the family cover up a crime. I was left with the impression that this sense of duty ultimately led to him finding his faith. At no point does he pray for guidance or the strength to do what he needs to do, but he receives it anyway. Ultimately, I think he realizes that.

The Crucible

     
The Crucible
by Arthur Miller
read: 2013

Rarely do I read something that actually makes me angry, but the injustices of The Crucible got my blood boiling as I was reading it. The events towards the end of the play were especially frustrating, as the individuals in charge already know (or have a good idea) that there's no witchcraft going on, but they demand a public confession and finger-pointing to validate the executions that have already happened. That's infuriating, but on the other hand I'm not sure there's much evidence it actually happened. Arthur Miller (by his own admission) plays fast-and-loose with historical truth in favor of a moral or emotional truth, but honestly I'm not sure he got there either.

House of the Seven Gables

    
House of the Seven Gables
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
read: 2013
Guardian 1000 Novels

Random thoughts that don't really have anything to do with each other:

Over the summer, I moved to Salem, Massachusetts, where Nathaniel Hawthorne is from. The House of Seven Gables is a prominent landmark, but there's scant reason to think it's the actual building Hawthorne was referring to in this book. In addition, Hawthorne had already moved to Western Massachusetts before writing House of the Seven Gables.

In television they have a concept of a "bottle episode," where all the action takes place on one set. House of the Seven Gables is almost a bottle novel, with virtually all the action taking place in the titular house. This also gives it almost a theater feel.

In The Crucible, Arthur Miller writes of the puritans who initially settled Salem, "These people had no ritual for the washing away of sins." This theme of original sin shows up generations later in this novel, as shown here in this description of Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon's character:

And allowing that, many, many years ago, in his early and reckless youth, he had committed some one wrong act,--or that, even now, the inevitable force of circumstances should occasionally make him do one questionable deed among a thousand praiseworthy, or, at least, blameless ones,--would you characterize the Judge by that one necessary deed, and that half-forgotten act, and let it overshadow the fair aspect of a lifetime? What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil which were heaped into the other scale!

The main theme of the novel as described by Hawthorne in the introduction is about sins of the past being visited on present generations. This takes added weight when you realize that one of his ancestors was a judge who presided over the Salem Witch Trials. Perhaps Hawthorne himself feared paying the price for his great-great-grandfather's sins?

The Scarlet Letter

   
The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
read: circa 1995
Guardian 1000 Novels

I think this was the first novel I had to read in sophomore high school English. I remember it was a couple years before the Demi Moore movie came out. That movie looked terrible.

Hawthorne was living in Salem, Massachusetts, where the Salem Witch Trial took place (and where I live now), while writing The Scarlet Letter. His great-grandfather was a judge in many of the trials. It's hard not to see a parallel between the injustices heaped on Hester Prynne and on the women accused of witchcraft.

The Child In Time

   
The Child In Time
by Ian McEwan
read: 2013
Guardian 1000 Novels

I became a father for the first time a little over a year ago. The Child In Time's protagonist sees his daughter abducted in the supermarket, and the novel deals with his struggles to cope with that tragedy. It was a tough read in a way that it wouldn't have been for me a couple years ago.

One of the themes in the book is the capriciousness of life and death. Aside from the kidnapped daughter, we see a traffic incident that narrowly avoids a fatality, a character commits suicide, and a baby is conceived. Life is fragile and death can arrive at any time. The titular "child in time" refers to a metaphysical encounter between the protagonist and his mother, where he appears to her as a small child while she is pregnant with him and contemplating an abortion. Without that miracle, would our hero have ever been born? McEwan sets up his incomprehensible loss in opposition to the improbability of existing in the first place.

Great book, well constructed, the prose is outstanding. As a dad though, it was painful at times.

The Rainbow

  
The Rainbow
by D.H. Lawrence
read: 2013
Modern Library #48, Guardian 1000 Novels

The Rainbow is a story that spans generations, and while I sometimes like that formula (as in Wuthering Heights and The Cairo Trilogy), here I had trouble pin-pointing a common thread uniting the generations of Brangwens. It was a tough read

One thing I did like was a running theme through the novel, particularly the first half, that the written word is limited in the emotional depth and resonance it posses. One example: "It bored her to write a letter to him. After all, writing words on paper had nothing do do with him or her." Later heroine Ursula, in describing her favorite and least favorite courses: "Most tedious was the close study of English literature. Why should one remember the things one read?" The characters judge written language as dull, shallow, and static. Contrast this with Lawrence's own prose:

So the Brangwens came and went without fear of necessity, working hard because of the life that was in them, not for want of the money. Neither were they thriftless. They were aware of the last halfpenny, and instinct made them not waste the peeling of their apple, for it would help to feed the cattle. But heaven and earth was teeming around them, and how should this cease? They felt the rush of the sap in spring, they knew the wave which cannot halt, but every year throws forward the seed to begetting, and, falling back, leaves the young-born on the earth. They knew the intercourse between heaven and earth, sunshine drawn into the breast and bowels, the rain sucked up in the daytime, nakedness that comes under the wind in autumn, showing the birds' nests no longer worth hiding. Their life and interrelations were such; feeling the pulse and body of the soil, that opened to their furrow for the grain, and became smooth and supple after their ploughing, and clung to their feet with a weight that pulled like desire, lying hard and unresponsive when the crops were to be shorn away. The young corn waved and was silken, and the lustre slid along the limbs of the men who saw it. They took the udder of the cows, the cows yielded milk and pulse against the hands of the men, the pulse of the blood of the teats of the cows beat into the pulse of the hands of the men. They mounted their horses, and held life between the grip of their knees, they harnessed their horses at the wagon, and, with hand on the bridle-rings, drew the heaving of the horses after their will.

This is one of the very first paragraphs in the novel. It's rich with sensual imagery, words like seed, intercourse, nakedness, supple, desire. Lawrence's characters decry the limits of the English language even while Lawrence himself is trying to transcend those limits.

Jane Eyre

    
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte
read: circa 1996
Guardian 1000 Novels

I liked Jane Eyre when I read it in high school, but by the time I read The Eyre Affair I didn't really remember the plot.

Wuthering Heights

   
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Bronte
read: circa 2005
Guardian 1000 Novels

Wuthering Heights is my dad's least favorite book ever. Maybe if I'd read it when I was 15 as required high school reading, I would have felt the same way, but I read it 10 years older than that and really liked it. It's almost perfectly constructed, it's emotionally powerful, and the prose is great once you get used to it being 150+-years-old.

The Wiki page says there's a role-playing game based on the novel, and you can find the rules here: http://unseelie.org/rpg/wh/. I really have nothing to say. I think I've been living my life incorrectly that I've never played this.

Pride and Prejudice

  
Pride and Prejudice
by: Jane Austen
read: circa 2006
Guardian 1000 Novels

When the last remaining suitor proposed to the titular Bachelorette in that show's finale a few weeks ago, she accepted with a breathless "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!" This got me thinking about how much I hate that phrase and sent me down an Internet rabbit hole looking for the first known instance of it, the better to direct my hatred towards the correct individual responsible. I didn't find anything conclusive (it's probably related to "A thousand times goodnight" from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet), but it was apparently said in the movie version of Pride and Prejudice from 2005. It fortunately does not appear in the novel, which is excellent.

Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust

  
Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust
by Nathanael West
read: 2013
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #73, Guardian 1000 Novels

One of the wonderful things about reading through lists like those linked above is finding hidden gems. I never read Nathanael West in high school or college - in fact, I never heard of him. His short, tragic life - he died in a car crash at 39 - likely provides part of the explanation; with only four novels published, he's maybe not considered as essential as more prolific authors.

I loved "Miss Lonelyhearts," the novella that opens this collection. The letters the protagonist receives are heartbreaking that both his retreat from reality and his co-workers' defensive humor ring true. The absurdity and sad tone reminded me a lot of Wise Blood. And while it's an entertaining story, it's also got deeper levels - the paths Miss Lonelyhearts takes to cope with the horror he sees parallel the paths we take in our search for meaning in modern society.

The Day of the Locust had some similar elements - sadness, absurdity, a parallel between the protagonist's struggle and the challenges of modern life - but is longer and has a more-developed plot. I saw some similarities between Faye Greener and Breakfast at Tiffany's Holly Golightly. It also features a character named Homer Simpson, possibly the inspiration for the cartoon character. I didn't like it quite as much as "Miss Lonelyhearts," but both stories show that West is a master author, one that until now flew under the radar for me and perhaps many other readers.

Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick

Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick
read: 2013

A lot of themes run through Philip K. Dick's work. Below is something of a reference for his Selected Stories collection:

Dick as horror writer / There is a secret, hidden world happening parallel with our world that we aren't even aware of: "King of the Elves," "Imposter," "Roog," "Adjustment Team," "Upon the Dull Earth," "Precious Artifact," "A Game of Unchance," "Faith of Our Fathers," "Rautavaara's Case"

Characters don't know what reality is: "Imposter," "Precious Artifact," "The Electric Ant," "The Exit Door Leads In," "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon"

Fatalism / Destiny: "The Minority Report," "A Little Something For Us Tempunauts," "Paycheck"

Memory / Manipulation of memory: "Paycheck," "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," "The Electric Ant," "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon"

Humanity creating things (especially robots) that it can no longer control: "Second Variety," "Autofac"

The Spy Who Loved Me

The Spy Who Loved Me
by Ian Fleming
read: 2013

The Spy Who Loved Me is unique among James Bond novels, written in first-person from the perspective of a young woman thrown into an unfortunate situation - which, of course, Bond rescues her from - with Bond almost a minor character in the story, first appearing more than halfway through. The story of heroine Vivenne Michel is interesting, but suffers from Fleming's misogynistic world view. Viv's best memories and regrets all have to do with her past relationships with men, and she can only be saved emotionally by encountering a Real Man - James Bond, of course - who treats her like a Real Man should. Fleming tried something different here, but it's not as successful as the standard Bond formula.

Ubik

   
Ubik
by Philip K. Dick
read: 2011
Time 100 Novels

After surviving an explosion, the characters in Philip K. Dick's novel Ubik find themselves dealing with an unknown threat disintegrating them one-by-one, and a world that seems to be crumbling around them. Or maybe they didn't survive the explosion at all? Dick is considered a science fiction writer, but I think he's as much a horror writer. Dick's brand of horror is insidious. Obviously we know there's no Freddy Krueger and there aren't zombies running around. But when Dick asks, "How do you know that reality actually exists and this isn't just in your head?," it's a horrifying sentiment that's more difficult to dismiss.

The Man In the High Castle

   
The Man In the High Castle
by Philip K. Dick
read: 2013
Guardian 1000 Novels, Hugo Award

Fatalism is a theme that runs through quite a bit of Philip K. Dick's work. "Minority Report" and "A Little Something For Us Tempunauts" are two examples. In the former, the protagonist creates a police branch that can prevent crimes before they happen by foretelling the future, and in the latter time travelers get stuck re-living the same stretch of time over and over. Both situations imply an overarching fate that people are trapped in.

The same device is present in The Man In the High Castle, an alternate-history fiction where the Axis won World War II. Several of the characters employ the I Ching to help guide their actions and predict the success they will have in their ventures. World views are often expressed in terms of inevitability of outcomes; for example, the Germans are described as hastening humanity towards its inevitable destruction. Towards the end, the book almost breaks the fourth wall (through the introduction of a "fictional" book-within-a-book where the Allies won WWII), and the narrative hand of Dick himself adds a level of fatalism over the entire novel.

The Man Who Loved Children

  
The Man Who Loved Children
by Christina Stead
read: 2013
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

This was tough to read. It was long, and it was painful. The Pollit family was almost entirely unsympathetic, and every moment of humanity was followed by two of selfishness, ignorance, or even cruelty. At first these foibles were humorous, but things became so unpleasant that after a while that it wasn't funny any more. It's not a bad book, but the dysfunction was so relentless that I really had to grind through it.

Thunderball

Thunderball
by Ian Fleming
read: 2013

I was going to write that Thunderball seemed to be the point where Fleming was consciously writing for the big screen ... but according to Wikipedia the screenplay actually came first for this one. Makes sense.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

 
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
by Muriel Spark
read: 2013
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #76, Guardian 1000 Novels

A short, odd novel that's funny and deeply tragic at the same time. I don't fully understand the betrayal that leads to Miss Jean Brodie's ultimately downfall. Was Sandy jealous of Brodie's personal charisma? Was it a necessary step to break free of her influence?

The Boys of Summer

The Boys of Summer
by Roger Kahn
read: 2013

I'm a long-time admirer of Jackie Robinson and his contributions to American sport, but The Boys of Summer took that admiration up another notch. Roger Kahn described Robinson as not just a pioneer, but a fantastic player with a huge competitive streak. There's an interesting scene where the Dodgers are having dinner, and the black players are spread out among the the tables because Robinson believed they should integrate more fully with the team rather than clustering together. Manager Chuck Dressen calls Robinson the best player he ever coached. Moreover, the Robinson Kahn describes is not a pacifist. Branch Rickey made Robinson agree not to fight back for the first two years, but after that his fierce, competitive nature came through. Robinson could be an angry man, and criticized teammate Roy Campanella for being an "Uncle Tom." He is a complex figure, but the stories Kahn flesh him out as a human being rather than just a symbol.

A Feast for Crows

A Feast for Crows
by George R.R. Martin
A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4
read: 2013

The first three novels of A Song of Ice and Fire move the plot forward continuously, but George R.R. Martin takes the series in a different direction for book four, A Feast for Crows. Several of the point-of-view characters from the first three novels don't appear here, and the story spreads out in scope to encompass some settings that had been largely ignored in the earlier books, notably the Iron Islands and Dorne.

We also see more detail on two elements that had been touched on in the previous books. One is religion. Arya takes refuge at a church of the Many-Faced God in Braavos, and the head there suggests that the Many-Faced God (death) is worshipped in all religions, for instance as the Stranger in the Faith of the Seven. We also get some insight into the Drowned God and the Storm God and the religion of the Iron Islanders. The leadership of the Faith of the Seven changes, and we see both Cersei and Brienne interacting with the new, more pious heads.

The role of the "common man" also comes to the forefront. The changes in the Seven are propped up by popular support, Doran Martell is very concerned with the popular reaction to his moves in Dorne, and Aeron Greyjoy calls a kingsmoot where the new King of the Iron Islands is elected by popular acclaim. "It is being common-born that is dangerous, when the great lords play their game of thrones," a character says at one point. By this, the fourth novel, the common folk are tired of being trampled on and less interested in who has the best "claim" to the throne than what is best for their well-being. It will be interesting to see if this populist movement continues in the remaining books.

For Your Eyes Only

For Your Eyes Only
by Ian Fleming
read: 2013

For Your Eyes Only isn't a novel but a collection of shorter James Bond works. "From a View to a Kill" and "Risico" are fairly boiler-plate Bond, but the other three stories have interesting angles that flesh out Bond's character a little more. In the title story, M uses Bond as an instrument for personal revenge rather than England's interests, and Bond ruminates some on the guilt of killing, even bad men for a good cause. "The Hildebrand Rarity" examines the lengths to which people will go when pushed, and Bond is more Nick Carraway than Nicholas Cage in it, uninvolved in the major action. "Quantum of Solace" is a story-within-a-story about marriage gone wrong and how cruel spurned lovers can be; it's curious that Fleming thought of it as a Bond story at all.

Invisible Man

Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
read: 2013
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #19, Guardian 1000 Novels, National Book Award

Invisible Man gets grouped with Native Son a lot, as Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright were friends and contemporaries and both novels deal with the travails of a young black man in a big city and what that says about larger society. So I expected Invisible Man to be a similar book, a naturalistic take on the sociological factors that oppress African-Americans. There's some of that in the novel, but there's also an absurdist element that wouldn't be out of place in Kafka, Pynchon, or Chesterton. Nothing that happens is fantastic in the strictest sense, but the opening sets the tone for the novel: our (never-named) protagonist / narrator is living underground, lit by 1,369 light bulbs powered by stolen electricity, constantly playing the same jazz record over and over. Through the course of the novel, the narrator travels with a white man to a wild black bar, gets experimented on as a patient after a chemical plant explosion, is taken in by a kindly woman with a cartoonish caricature bank of a black face, becomes a famous spokesman for the Communists, and becomes a hated figure and target in riots that engulf Harlem. The book teeters on the edge of sanity for its duration.

The narrator seems buffeted from by forces on all sides, never able to define who he is. Is he the good boy student that his college (and white society) want him to be? Should he throw in with the unions or the Communists? Should he rebel against white society all together? He is a symbol of the impossibility of a black man defining himself in an oppressive world, but part of his plight is in being a symbol, someone who keeps changing his identity according to the whims of those around him. Only when he disengages from all society, becoming invisible to all (including the blacks and the Communists) does he acquire his own voice.

Invisible Man is justifiably considered one of the great works in American literature, so I was fascinated to see what else Ellison wrote. However, it was Ellison's only novel, even though he lived another forty years. That's amazing.

Goldfinger

Goldfinger
by Ian Fleming
read: 2013
Guardian 1000 Novels

Ian Fleming is terrific at describing games and bringing out the tension and drama in competition. In just about every Bond book, there's a game of chance against a villain. In Goldfinger, there are two: the canasta game at the beginning (where Bond catches Goldfinger cheating) and the golf game in the middle. Fleming makes golf exciting!

Lord Jim

Lord Jim
by Joseph Conrad
read: 2013
Modern Library #85, Guardian 1000 Novels

The story of Lord Jim is told largely through a frame story, with Charles Marlow, an alter-ego of Conrad that appears in a few of his works, relating the tale of the titular character in person and, towards the end of the book, in a letter. Many works - Absalom, Absalom!, for one - employ the frame story as a narrative technique. Since the frame story embeds the main narrative as a story within a story, it often becomes a meditation on storytelling itself, prompting the reader to ask questions like, "Who is narrating? Why is he telling the story? What is he leaving out (by ignorance or intentionally) that might be germane?"

Marlow's narration consumes the first 80% or so of the story, at which point he has told the story as far as he knows at the time. At this point, Conrad seems to offer a meditation on unfinished stories:

... the last image of that incomplete story, its incompleteness itself, and the very tone of the speaker, had made discussion in vain and comment impossible. Each of them seemed to carry away his own impression, to carry it away with him like a secret ...  

Conrad then offers a take on the phenomenon of writing and reading:

That was all then - and there will be nothing more; there will be no message, unless such as each of us can interpret for himself from the language of facts, that are so often more enigmatic than the craftiest arrangement of words.

Marlow then proceeds to grace one particular listener (and, by extension, the reader) with the remainder of the tale via letter. This closes the loop on the main narrative and makes for a more satisfying story. Does it take away from the meta-fictional musings quoted above? Maybe philosophically, but I think they stand on their own.

In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote
read: circa 2007

I link In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song in my mind. In both books you have a murder as the central act, with the resulting investigation, trial, and execution rippling out from that death. Both are non-fiction books but written like novels. And both show the killers in somewhat of a sympathetic light. Neither Capote nor Mailer exonerates the murderer, but both show some of the factors that led them to that place and the humanity they display in facing their deaths.

The sympathy is especially interesting in In Cold Blood, as the murders were committed by a duo - Dick Hickock, the mastermind of the operation, and Perry Smith, who actually slaughtered the Clutters. Hickock doesn't have the stomach to kill himself, so he finds Smith, a murderer, because he knows he needs a killer to pull off the robbery. Smith isn't insane by the legal definition, but he's clearly mentally disturbed, even sociopathic. He has a disturbed sense of honor - he bars Hickock from raping Nancy Clutter, yet shoots her in the head minutes later. Capote ultimately paints Hickock, not Smith, as the real monster.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Breakfast at Tiffany's
by Truman Capote
read: circa 2007
Guardian 1000 Novels

I hadn't met my now-wife when I read Breakfast at Tiffany's, and, being single, I saw the relationship between Holly Golightly and "Fred," the narrator, as an unrequited romantic interest rather than a platonic relationship. That's also the tack the movie takes, but of course they had to go and Hollywood-ize the ending and ruin it. The film also features one of the most racist movie performances ever by Andy Rooney. I adored Breakfast at Tiffany's, and I'm kind of afraid to re-read it knowing that most critics believe Fred, like Capote himself, was gay, and so the whole lens through which I saw the story was wrong.

The Sheltering Sky

The Sheltering Sky
by Paul Bowles
read: 2013
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #97, Guardian 1000 Novels

There are books I go into with knowledge and expectations, and books when I have no idea what they're about. The Sheltering Sky is one of the latter, and even after reading it I'm not quite sure what to make of the novel. Is it a cautionary tale about the dangers of Westerners (Americans Port and Kit Moseby and their friend Tunner) exploring a world they don't understand (the Sahara)? Is it the story of the Mosebys trying to repair their marriage? There are so many themes here - mortality, fidelity, depression, exploration, civilization - that it's really hard to put this novel in a neat box.

Kit's journey over the last quarter or so of the book is particularly interesting and enigmatic. Is it a sign of what a human being is capable of under stress? A dark reaction to tragedy? A meditation on the role of women in society? Is it damning or appreciative of the North African world? What do her various romantic entanglements suggest when seen through a feminist lens? How do her actions relate to the omens she perceives in her depressive states earlier in the book?

One interesting aspect of Kit's story arc is the role of language in forming consciousness, as epitomized by the following passage:

In another minute life would be painful. The words were coming back, and inside the wrappings of the words there would be thoughts lying there. The hot sun would shrivel them; they must be kept inside in the dark.

Kit has found herself in a reality she is not willing to face, and by latching on with a nomadic group she does not have to face it. She falls in love (or thinks she does) with Belqassim despite being unable to communicate with him; maybe it's because she cannot communicate with him. She can turn off the language center in her brain, and by doing so avoid thinking about the tragedy that has befallen her and the desperation of her situation. Can a person really turn off her brain by eliminating words and language? I don't know, but it's a fascinating section of the novel.

Native Son

Native Son
by Richard Wright
read: 2013
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #20, Guardian 1000 Novels


It's hard for me, a white, middle-class man who group up largely with other white, middle-class people, to understand a character like Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of Richard Wright's Native Son. Bigger lives in a studio apartment with his mother, brother, sister, and, in the opening scene, a rather large rat. His life choices pretty much boil down to a life of petty crime or one of menial labor. Only when Bigger accidentally murders a white girl does a third option present itself.

Native Son is aware of the psychological factors that lead to the creation of Bigger and those like him. An early scene at the pool room highlights Bigger's mental state. To his friends, Bigger looks like a tough, a bully, a loose cannon - but underpinning his outward machismo is fear. He knows he can't back out of the robbery he planned, but he's terrified to go through with it, so he picks a fight with one of his friends to sabotage the plan. He lives in a constant state of fear, but cannot at any time admit that he is afraid. Ultimately, this same fear leads him to commit two murders.

The sociological factors loom even larger than the psychological ones, though. Bigger's fear does not come from nowhere, nor it unique to him. It is constantly reinforced through his interactions with white people, both seen and unseen. He lives in a crowded, overpriced apartment while apartments elsewhere in the city remain vacant, because the real estate moguls will only rent to African-Americans in the "black belt." He robs blacks but knows the penalties will be much more severe for robbing whites. He knows being alone with a white girl is grounds for accusations of rape. Even the kindness shown him by two liberal communists just reinforces the wall between Bigger and the white world:

[T]hey made him feel his black skin by just standing there looking at him, one holding his hand and the other smiling. He felt he had no physical existence at all right then; he was something he hated, the badge of shame which he knew was attached to a black skin. It was a shadowy region, a No Man's Land, the ground that separated the white world from the black that he stood upon.

The sociological factors are summed up in lawyer Boris Max' long, didactic monologue late in the book.

I see a lot of parallels between Native Son and Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. The plots mirror each other, and both Dreiser and Wright are much more concerned about what motivated the crime than the crime itself, and what those motivations say about society in general. It wasn't surprising to learn that Wright was a fan of Dreiser and the school of naturalism. Wright carefully avoids absolving Bigger for his actions, but neither does he hold society blameless. Native Son arguably is as significant a sociological text as it is a literary one.

To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
read: circa 2007
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels, Pulitzer Prize

Goodreads rates To Kill a Mockingbird in as the #1 book assigned to high school students, but my teachers never assigned it to me. I did read it a few years ago. I remember liking it, but this is definitely one I'll have to re-read at some point. Maybe the high school will assign it to my son someday.

A Storm of Swords

A Storm of Swords
by George R.R. Martin
A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3
read: 2013

Damn. What a bloodbath.

Dr. No

Dr. No
by Ian Fleming
read: 2013

Dr. No was the first James Bond book made into a movie. But c'mon, guys - you couldn't get the fight with the giant squid in the film?

A Clash of Kings

A Clash of Kings
by George R.R. Martin
A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 2
read: 2013

I started watching the HBO series Game of Thrones before reading the books in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, so I have the perspective of knowing some of what's going to happen. It's interesting where the book and series differ. The first season of the show tracks the first book A Game of Thrones, pretty well. Season 2, based on A Clash of Kings, deviates a bit more. I'd say there are two main impulses: 1) cutting on down on elaborate battle scenes, I'm guessing primarily for cost reasons but also because of time and maybe also because there aren't a lot of little person stunt doubles for Peter Dinklage, and 2) cutting down on the sheer number of characters in Martin's series. Rather than introducing a whole bunch of minor characters and historical characters throughout the series, it's just easier to ascribe actions to more-established characters so we don't have to constantly ask, "Wait, who is that guy?" There are enough characters, honestly. I would probably be pretty lost reading the series if I hadn't seen it on TV already.

Everything Is Illuminated

Everything Is Illuminated
by Jonathan Safron Foer
read: 2013
Guardian 1000 Novels

It's not that I didn't like Everything Is Illuminated ... it's just that it seemed very calculated, like it was trying to appeal to me. The humor, the epic sweep of history, the moments of emotional poignance, the family connections, memory, loss, love, tragedy ... it's all there. But it felt a bit contrived. It's the same problem I have with Zooey Deschanel.

A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones
by George R.R. Martin
A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1
read: 2013

Professor Corey Olsen, in his course on J.R.R. Tolkien, starts the class by talking about medieval literature. One of the characteristics of medieval literature is an affection for the past: modern life is decayed, corrupted, and generally inferior to days of yore. In George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, we see some themes along this line - the disappearance of dragons, the loss of magic, the softening of youth who have never seen winter - but it's impossible to argue that the novel glorifies this era. The world is dirty. Poor people eat raw rats. Even kings die of infection. Death by freezing, hunger, and exposure is everywhere. Incest, rape, and bastard children abound. We mostly see Martin's world through the eyes of the kings, lords, and knights, but we're reminded throughout that the poor are starving, freezing, miserable, and constantly at the mercy of those who play "the game of thrones."

Moral ambiguity also sets A Song of Ice and Fire, the larger group of novels A Game of Thrones is part of, apart from other fantasy worlds. There isn't a dark evil force that the good guys are battling. The Lannisters do some awful things, but Tyrion Lannister is one of the most sympathetic and likeable characters. The morality is a lot less black-and-white than in most novels of the genre, and that sets up some interesting dynamics, where characters the reader likes are pitted against one another.

From Russia with Love

From Russia with Love
by Ian Fleming
read: 2013

Apparently From Russia with Love was one of President Kennedy's favorite novels, which is kind of terrifying, especially in light of how he and his staff handled the Communist threat in Vietnam. Fleming paints the Russians as cold and calculating, in contrast to the English who can be swayed by human feelings and foibles (a bit ironic given how Americans often characterize the Brits). The scheming chessmaster Kronsteen explicitly notes the advantages of asexuality in secret service work, and we see this in Red Grant and in Rosa Klebb. No U.S. foreign policy was actually based on this stuff, right?

This was my favorite Bond film, and while the book and the movie lined up more than in Moonraker or Live and Let Die, there are some interesting differences. The first third or so of the book is entirely from the perspective of the Russians, and James Bond is only mentioned in passing. We're meant to appreciate the ruthlessness and cunning of SMERSH and Soviet intelligence. In the movie, SMERSH isn't even the enemy; Grant and Klebb work for SPECTRE. And the battle on the Orient Express is certainly more epic and memorable, though Robert Shaw isn't as physically imposing as the novel suggests Grant should be.

The Man Who Knew Too Much

The Man Who Knew Too Much
by G.K. Chesterton
read: 2013

The Man Who Knew Too Much is a collection of short mystery stories fitting the typical pattern: a crime is uncovered, numerous suspects appear, and a genius - title character Horne Fisher, in this case - pieces things together at the end. The stories in this collection have two twists on the normal formula, however. First, while Fisher is an expert in many fields, it's usually his understanding of human psychology that leads him to the criminal's identity, not his ability to spot evidence. In one story, he determines that a peasant superstition about a place is true and the modern skepticism false, noting "Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority." In another story, he determines that a famously bad shot fired the fatal bullet, as his shooting follies so absurd that Fisher concluded they could only have been done by a great shot pretending to be terrible.

The second difference that sets The Man Who Knew Too Much apart is that the wrong-doers are rarely brought to justice. Fisher walks in the circles of British high society, and frequently the killer is someone untouchable, someone where accusing him of a crime would damage England. This provides an interesting dimension to the stories and gives Fisher a world-weariness and cynicism that makes the character memorable.

The Known World

The Known World
by Edward P. Jones
read: 2013
Pulitzer Prize

The Known World, the second novel I read for Black History Month, has a great hook: apparently there were a small number of free blacks who owned slaves before the Civil War. The story centers around the plantation of slave-owning black Henry Townsend, both before and after his death. By making the slaveowner black, author Edward P. Jones forces us to confront slavery divorced from racism, something I'd never done before. To me, slavery was always something blacks did to whites, and I could draw a line from the dehumanizing oppression of slavery to the Jim Crow laws of the early-to-mid 1900's to the more subtle racism that exists today. The Known World forced me to consider the tragedy and absurdity of slavery as an institution. A runaway slave is stealing from his master; he's stealing himself. This point is made most absurdly when we see Broussard, a murderer, conducting the sale of the slave Moses from the jail cell where he awaits trial. The prisoner on death row has more rights than the slave; he still has near-absolute dominion over the slave.

One of the themes that runs through the novel is the psychological damage slavery does not just to slaves but to slaveowners, and even non-slaveowners in the community. Some examples: William Robbins, the wealthiest man in the county, loves his slave Philomena, but he can never really know if she loves him back. Robbins has a daughter by Philomena, Dora, and a white daughter by his wife, Patience, but the girls are denied sisterhood because of the barriers slavery erects. One of the many mini-narratives in the story involves a depressed man named Morris, who as a child staved off his sadness through his friendship with the slave Beau. But Morris and Beau can never be friends as adults the same way they were as boys. Even John Skiffington, who does not own slaves, sees his duties as Sheriff more and more consumed by chasing runaway slaves, to the detriment of his health and sanity.

Professor Amy Hungerford gives two fascinating lectures on some of the metatextual elements in The Known World: the left-to-right symbolism, the fragility of the written word versus the stability of the plastic arts, the power and failures of words to evoke imagination. The narrative voice is godlike and omniscient: it travels back and forth through time, takes a minor character and gives his life story in just a few paragraphs, explodes with minute details, peers into people's heads, and withholds judgement for all. I'm reminded of one of my favorite lines in poetry, Tennyson's "Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours / With larger, other eyes than ours / To make allowance for us all." The narrative voice has this feeling, of absolute knowledge, and understanding, and even pity.

In her final lecture Professor Hungerford describes how Jones worked on this novel for a long time, reading and researching and formulating and re-formulating the narratives and mini-narratives and minutiae, all while writing very little, so that by the time he finally put pen to paper he had entire sections virtually memorized. Professor Hungerford notes that Jones' mother was illiterate, and this suggested to a young Jones the mystery, power, and fragility that pervade the written word as a symbol throughout The Known World. Professor Hungerford wonders aloud at one point about how Jones must have felt carrying the weight of the novel around in his head. I have an idea for a novel myself that I've been thinking about for nearly a year. I think it's time I started actually working on it.

Diamonds Are Forever

Diamonds Are Forever
by Ian Fleming
read: 2013

So James Bond meets up with his female contact, and it turns out she's a smoking hot babe! Who saw that coming?

The fun thing about the books is that you get inside Bond's head a bit. As he's contemplating a life with Tiffany Case, he imagines that, due to being gang-raped as a teenager, her trust in the first man she sleeps with means things will have to be forever. At the same time, he realizes that, as a member of the secret service, he can only truly be married to "M." Bond never reaches a resolution, but glimpses like these into his mind give the character an emotional depth he doesn't have in the films.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
read: 2013
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been reading books on being black in America for Black History Month. The first two books I read dealt with slavery, and after reading those and books like Beloved and Black Boy, I had a conclusion: "Novels on the black condition," I told wife, "are all depressing."

Their Eyes Were Watching God is arguably depressing also; certainly protagonist Janie is beset by misery throughout her life. But the tragedy is different than in the other books I mentioned; it's not tragedy brought on by being black, it's the universal tragedy of love and death and loss and sacrifice and pain. This isn't a book where a black protagonist is oppressed by whites throughout her life. White people and white society exist outside the narrative, as a boundary condition almost, a natural force like the hurricane provides the novel's climax. Their Eyes Were Watching God doesn't ignore racism - we can see it in Tea Cake getting conscripted to bury bodies and in Mrs. Turner's contempt for those with darker skin - and the legacy of slavery still has ripples in the lives that the protagonists create. But those are just parameters within which the characters are trying to build a life and find happiness. Black culture has a life all its own. The guitar-picking, singing, dancing, cooking beans and cornbread, gambling, and other cultural affects aren't reactions to white society, even in spite of white society. They have nothing to do with it.

I think the male / female relationship in the story parallels the black / white one. Janie pretty much goes along with her husbands even in the face of mental and sometimes physical abuse, and she never really considers breaking out of traditional gender roles. She dislikes her second husband Jody and likes her third husband Tea Cake, but she is mostly subservient to both. Janie never transcends societal gender roles, but that is no barrier to her finding peace and fulfillment in her life. Her quest is apart from the constraints society puts on her.

The courtroom scene towards the end of the book, where Janie stands trial for murder, makes more sense in this light. From a narrative perspective, this is one of the book's most pivotal scenes, with Janie's life hanging in the balance, but Hurston relates it in just a couple pages. This seems out of proportion, but Their Eyes Were Watching God isn't the story of what happens to Janie; it's the story of her finding herself despite happenstance. Ultimately, the white women who assume her innocence and the black men who assume her guilt cannot judge her. The (all-white, all-male) jury - "Twelve strange men who didn't know a thing about people like Tea Cake and her were going to sit on the thing" - is even more incapable of judging her. Only God can judge, and in this life only Janie's own opinion of herself really matters. In that sense, the courtroom scene is given only the ink it deserves.

The Confessions of Nat Turner

The Confessions of Nat Turner
by William Styron
read: 2013
Time 100 Novels, Pulitzer Prize

I read William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner as the first book in a series of four I'm going to read this February for Black History Month. It's a curious choice, because it has something of a reputation for being a racist work. Nat Turner was a real figure in history, a slave who led a revolt in Virginia in 1831, resulting in the death of 55 whites (and more than twice as many blacks in retribution). "The Confessions of Nat Turner" is the official court document where Turner describes the planning and execution of the uprising and many of the scant biographical details we know today. Styron writes his novel from Turner's perspective, but, as he writes in the prefacing Author's Note, allows himself "the utmost freedom of imagination" in filling in the gaps in the story and Turner's life. It's a work of fiction, not history. The liberties he took have led to the novel's unsavory reputation in some circles.

Styron admits, in an afterword to the version I read, "Most people were, and are, racist to some degree but at least my racism was not conventional; I wanted to confront and understand blackness." I'm not qualified to answer the question of whether Styron succeeded in his goal - even Styron admits, "... [M]y stranger's perspective might not always ring true to black people" - but I tend to believe that he did not intend Confessions to malign or mis-represent African-Americans. Styron's view of Turner probably is wrong, certainly is incomplete, and is certainly influenced by Styron's whiteness, but this isn't because of racism; it's because "the very fact of a person's otherness to you means there is always something fundamentally hidden about them."

The article in Ebony linked above (an excerpt from a book most recently published as The Second Crucifixion of Nat Turner) suggests Styron wrote the book to paint blacks as dumb, subservient, and degenerate, and Turner himself as an impotent and ineffectual leader. Styron is taking liberties with some of his characterizations, but often they are in the service of showing the evils of slavery. Turner is disgusted at the way Hark submits to the whites, but notes that "the unctuous coating of flattery" is there to disguise a hidden anger. Slavery was evil, and one of its evils was to repress blacks, socially, spiritually, intellectually, even morally. The characters in Confessions are flawed, but their flaws can be read largely as a product of the dysfunctional society surrounding them.

That said, some of Styron's liberties do put a bad taste in my mouth. In the afterword, Styron views Turner as "a dangerous religious lunatic," but he doesn't "want to write about a psychopathic monster," preferring to "demonstrate subtler motives" and "moderate this aspect of his character." This is a fine line to walk. Artistically, he can do whatever he wants, but the very need to moderate and make more subtle strikes me as part of what distances Styron from the black community critical of the book. There are those for whom the scars of racism are fresher, the rage more justified, and Turner's actions are heroic. Turner himself does not show the regret Styron attributes to him, entering a plea of "not guilty" because he says he feels no guilt.

Finally, the imagined relationship between Turner and Margaret Whitehead, the only victim he personally dispatched, is a real stretch. Styron notes that Turner does not mention a wife in his confessions and attributes a pious celibacy to him, assuming an absence of evidence to be an evidence of absence. Styron's Turner finds love, grace, and repentance in Whitehead, though their relationship cannot be consummated (or even acknowledged) in this world. Styron himself says of his representation of the Turner / Whitehead relationship:

No decision I made shows so well the pitfalls waiting for the historical novelist who, however well-intentioned, creates a situation or concept repugnant to idealogues; at the same time, nothing so deftly illustrates the invincible right of the novelist to manipulate historical fact and pursue his intuition concerning that fact to its artistically logical conclusion.

What exactly is an "artistically logical conclusion?" In a sense, fiction is "truer" than non-fiction, because a fiction can be completely true within its imagined world and non-fiction always has to answer to the reality of this one. Styron is writing a world that may be true to itself, but its relationship to this one is dubious. Is that bold, artistic, dishonest, offensive? Probably some of each.

Frankenstein

Frankenstein
by May Wollstonecraft Shelley
read: circa 1997
Guardian 1000 Novels

Frankenstein is arguably the forerunner of modern science fiction, with the titular Victor Frankenstein conducting scientific experiments on the reanimation of human flesh. This has become trite horror movie fodder, but Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley paints neither Frankenstein nor his monster in an unforgiving light. The creature does terrible things, but they all stem from his frustration from being brought into a world that hates and fears him, with no hope of happiness. Frankenstein commits the novel's great sin, creating the monster in the first place, but he's no supervillain, just a man swept up in too much pride and ambition. Like all great science fiction, Frankenstein is concerned not just with the hypothetical science, but how humans affect and are affected by those scientific breakthroughs.

The Man Who Was Thursday

The Man Who Was Thursday
by G.K. Chesterton
read: 2013
Guardian 1000 Novels

I'd never even heard of G.K. Chesterton until the last year or so, when I noticed several writers I like quoting him. After reading The Man Who Was Thursday, it was easy to see why. It was written over one hundred years ago but the prose style is still fresh and unique. The story is of an undercover police officer who infiltrates an anarchist society, only to find some of the other members are also cops. Some of the scenes should be tense, but the mood is always comic and absurd. As the novel moves on more and more religious symbolism creeps in, giving it a deeper undercurrent. I enjoyed The Man Who Was Thursday and I'm looking forward to checking out more Chesterton.

Tree and Leaf

Tree and Leaf
by J.R.R. Tolkien
read: 2013

Tree and Leaf is not a novel but a collection of two of J.R.R. Tolkien's earlier works. Pairing them together emphasizes how the themes in the essay "On Fairy-Stories" resonate in the story "Leaf: by Niggle." Tolkien was a devout Christian. Today fantasy novels come under attack for being occult and against Christian values, but Tolkien didn't see it that way. He spells this out explicitly in "On Fairy-Stories," making the case for both the recreational value of fantasy and also its ability to expose the reader to wonder, wonder that ultimately can only come from God. He also makes the case implicitly in "Leaf," telling an allegorical story to prove the value of art and its role in helping people find faith and salvation.

These are the first readings in Professor Corey Olsen's course on Tolkien. I just finished Lord of the Rings, and it'll be interesting to see how he relates Tolkien's world view to his magnum opus, which is much longer and more subtle than "Leaf."

The Sword in the Stone

The Sword in the Stone
by T.H. White
read: circa 1994
Guardian 1000 Novels

The Sword in the Stone was one of the required books for summer reading heading into ninth grade. I remember that Merlin (apparently Merlyn in the book) perceived time backwards (so he remembered the future but didn't notice the past), which seemed pretty neat. I never read the rest of the Once and Future King series.

Moonraker

Moonraker
by Ian Fleming
read: 2013

So the novel Moonraker doesn't have Roger Moore in space, but it is still a bit silly. Hugo Drax is a classic Bond villain, and the scope of his villainy - the destruction of London!- is the sort that Dr. Evil mocked in the Austin Powers movies. Somehow the characters seem in less immediate danger than in Casino Royale or Live and Let Die, which gives things a Moore-ian feel.

Through three novels, I'm struck by Bond's relationship to the women in the stories. He's presented as a promiscuous playboy and a commitment-phobe, but he develops real feelings for the women he encounters. That has never really come through in the films for me, other than maybe the Daniel Craig Casino Royale.