Sirens of Titan

    
Sirens of Titan
by Kurt Vonnegut
read: 2014
Guardian 1000 Novels

Vonnegut was one of the first "literature" authors I got into, reading books like Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five when I was in high school. He's a natural bridge into more serious stuff for someone like me who grew up reading science fiction almost exclusively, as his books often have sci-fi elements. He also has a conversational narrative style that's easy to read. Sirens of Titan was written in 1959, but the prose still feels fresh because it's written in the same style modern authors like Jonathan Safron Foer use today.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

   
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
read: circa 2005, re-read 2014
Modern Library #3, Guardian 1000 Novels

Stephen Dedalus, the protoganist of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is one of the more insular characters in literature. There are other characters in the novel - his father, some of his teachers, a few classmates - but their threads are vague and mostly irrelevant to the narrative. The story is about Stephen's interior journey, from star pupil at a prep school, to frequenter of whore-houses, to guilt-wracked religious zealot, and finally to the titular artist.

Stephen is drawn to language early in life, not just the meaning but the sounds of the words themselves, even commenting that the lines in his spelling book "were like poetry." When he ultimately writes a villanelle, his experience is that "the liquid letters of speech, symbols of the element of mystery, flowed forth over his brain." James Joyce is known for his use of language for rhythm and sound as well as meaning; we can see some of the foundation for that here.

Galveston

Galveston
by Nic Pizzolatto
read: 2014

Galveston is True Detective creator / writer Nic Pizzolatto's first novel. There are some similar themes to True Detective: it's ostensibly a crime novel, though protagonist Roy is on the wrong side of the law. It takes place in the same general area of the country, spilling from New Orleans to Galveston, Texas, and back. Most significantly, it features a hard-boiled character over a long period of time. In both Galveston and True Detective, Pizzolatto uses the passage of time to ruminate on the phenomenon of storytelling. Once events have passed, they exist only in the stories those who remember them tell. An ex-girlfriend of Roy's tells him:

"Listen to me," she said. "The past isn't real." This struck the center of me like a pickax. She said, "you remember what you want."

At another point, after explaining how he got into a life of crime, Roy thinks, "It was true, but the story didn't feel correct. It didn't really explain anything, did it?"

This is how Pizzolatto's worlds are built: on a shaky foundation of stories. The past is malleable, and since in the long run everything is past, all of reality is ultimately subject to the biases and vagaries of those who live to tell about it.

EDIT: That said, Pizzolatto isn't making the case that there's no such thing as objective truth; in fact, the objective truth is important to the characters in the story. Late in the story, Roy is confronted with the choice to tell his story to a new generation or let it die with him, and he elects to keep the truth alive.

The Color Purple

The Color Purple
by Alice Walker
read: 2014
Guardian 1000 Novels, Pulitzer Prize

The Color Purple is written in letter format. In the first chunk of the book, each letter is addressed to God. Later, Celie begins addressing her letters to her sister Nettie.

DEAR NETTIE,

I don't write to God no more. I write to you.

What happen to God? ast Shug. 

Who that? I say.

The novel doesn't have an atheist perspective, but more of a spiritualist one. The final chapter is addressed "DEAR GOD. DEAR STARS, DEAR TREES, DEAR SKY, DEAR PEOPLES. DEAR EVERYTHING. DEAR GOD." Celie's faith essentially carries her through periods of her life where very little good happens to her, whether that's faith in God, faith in Nettie, faith in her friend (and sometime lover) Shug, or just an irrational faith that things will somehow get better.

I was predisposed to dislike this novel based on Ralph Wiley's comments on it in Why Black People Tend to Shout, but I found I enjoyed it. Wiley objected to the portrayal of black men in Walker's world, but by the end of the tale some weight was given to the environmental factors that shaped Albert, Harpo, and even Alphonso. They aren't excused for their sins, but they aren't unredeemable either, and Albert in particular makes great strides to atoning for his wrongdoing.

The King In Yellow

The King In Yellow
by Robert W. Chambers
read: 2014

I've already mentioned my interest in HBO's True Detective, and like many folks watching the show I saw the article pointing out "the Yellow King's" literary heritage. I've already read most of H.P. Lovecraft's works, so another set of creepy stories along those lines sounded pretty appealing.

The King In Yellow is a funny collection, though. The first four tales are full of Lovecraftian darknesses, featuring the titular play which drives anyone who reads it insane. The rest of the stories are more mundane, culminating in two longer romance stories set among art students in Paris. It's a jarring contrast to the insidious science fiction of the first four stories.

Song of Solomon

Song of Solomon
by Toni Morrison
read: 2014
Guardian 1000 Novels

The names in Song of Solomon stand out right away - Milkman, Guitar, First Corinthians, Macon Dead, Pilate - but while they sound nonsensical, there's a method to Toni Morrison's madness. The names African Americans have is distorted by slavery and oppression, as Malcolm X notes in the following conversation:

The protagonist's given name is "Macon Dead III," but he's called "Milkman," a nickname given to him by a neighbor who glimpsed him breastfeeding at the age of four. For most of the story, he doesn't know the origin of his name or the embarrassing implications. But "Macon Dead" is no better - it was given to Milkman's grandfather by a registry board, who asked for his place of origin ("Macon") and his father's occupation ("dead"), and erroneously filled them in the first and last name boxes. The first Macon Dead, originally named Jake, was encouraged to keep the new name by his wife Sing, herself having shortened her name from its original Indian name, Singing Bird. His last name is unknown, but his father was Solomon, whose name in corrupted form provides the town of Shalimar its name - or is it Solomon that's a corruption of Shalimar? The names characters have is a series of accidents and mis-steps, which reinforces the lack of identity African-Americans have in a world dominated by the white man.

Milkman's sisters are named based on random words in the Bible, as is his Aunt Pilate, who keeps her name (the only word her illiterate father ever wrote) folded up in a gold box dangling from her ear. It's not until late in the book that Milkman understands the power of names and why Pilate treasures hers so much:

How many dead lives and fading memories were buried in and beneath the names of the places in this country. Under the recorded names were other names, just as "Macon Dead," recorded for all time in some dusty file, hid from view the real names of people, places, and things. Names that had meaning. No wonder Pilate put hers in her ear. When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do.

Milkman doesn't own his name - his given name is washed away by his nickname, his family name was washed away by the bureaucrat's error, and undoubtedly his true African name was washed away by slavery. Because of this, he has no sense of who he is or where he came from, and during the final part of the book he realizes that this has more value than the gold he's seeking that could set him free financially.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

On Her Majesty's Secret Service
by Ian Fleming
read: 2014

In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond finally finds (and marries) a woman who is willing to take him for what he is:

I wouldn't love you if you weren't a pirate. I expect it's in the blood. I'll get used to it. Don't change. I don't want to draw your teeth like women do with their men. I want to live with you, not with somebody else.