The Good Soldier

The Good Soldier
by Ford Madox Ford
read: 2011
Modern Library #30, Guardian 1000 Novels

"This is the saddest story I have ever heard."  I was flipping through a few of the Modern Library Top 100 books (having downloaded several of the free public-domain ones), looking for something that grabbed me, when I came across that opening line to The Good Soldier.  Needless to say, I had to read the book after that.

The most notable aspect of The Good Soldier is the narrative voice.  The story is narrated in first-person by  John Dowell, an American whose wife Florence was having an affair with Captain Ashburnham (the title character), who is also married (to the somewhat-manipulative Leonora).  Dowell is often used as an example of an unreliable narrator, but what's interesting to me is what the imperfect narration does to the tone of the novel.  The story takes on comic elements at times, as the reader is plainly able to see what is going on even as Dowell remains ignorant.  But The Good Soldier is not a comedy; true to the opening line, it is tragic.  This tension between the comedic and tragic elements make it an interesting read.

The Great American Novel

The Great American Novel
by Philip Roth
read: circa 2002

What a crazy book.  I've read quite a few Philip Roth novels, but The Great American Novel wasn't like any of the others.  It's not an rich, internal dive into human psychology; it's a romp through a silly fictional baseball league.  I don't remember much of the plot, but I remember quite a few of the images and situations:

• Casts of misfits that put the Major League movies to shame, like players with missing limbs or a superstar player whose father insists he bat ninth to teach him humility
• A near-perfect-perfect game, as pitcher Gil Gamesh tries to register 27 Ks on 81 pitches
• The owner's son taking over the team with his spreadsheets, eschewing bunting and calling for constant hit-and-runs, which along with (now-manager) Gamesh's intense style carries a crappy squad to .500 ball
• Narrator "Word" Smith calling women "slits"
• The umpire rendered speechless by an intentional pitch to the throat, seeking his revenge years later

Is The Great American Novel great literature on the order of American Pastoral?  No.  Is it a really fun book, especially if you're a baseball fan?  You bet!

A Room with a View

A Room with a View
by E.M. Forster
read: circa 2008
Modern Library #79, Guardian 1000 Novels

A Room with a View is as close as a man gets to writing Jane Austen.

A Passage to India

A Passage to India
by E.M. Forster
read: circa 2010
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #25, Guardian 1000 Novels, James Tait Black Memorial Prize

I've been in India this week (hence the sporadic posting)!  It feels appropriate to review E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, his thoughtful criticism of the Imperial British presence in India in the early part of the 20th century.  I say "thoughtful" because Forster sets up a tale without real good guys and bad guys; the major characters come to realize that the bad intentions they ascribe to each other are sociologically ingrained; they are rooted in a fundamental distrust between Indians and British imperialists.  The story walks a fine line, suggesting that on an individual level, Indians (such as Dr. Aziz) and British (such as Mrs. Moore and Mr. Fielding) can relate as equals, and show mutual affection and respect, but the shroud of imperialism that hangs over everything will poison any efforts to really become friends.

Naked Lunch

Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs
read: 2011
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

Naked Lunch doesn't make any sense, but there's no pretext of it making sense at any point.  There are sort of some characters but not really any plot to speak of.  I'd probably liken it more to something like T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" than any novel I've read; the book is full of impressionistic scenes of decay, addiction, perversion, and paranoia.  It's an interesting read.  I'd also recommend the movie version, which is a David Cronenberg film and appropriately David-Cronenbergy (including typewriters that turn into metallic beetle-like creatures).  It's just coherent enough that it's a movie while keeping the spirit of the novel.

On the Road

On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
read: circa 2006
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #55, Guardian 1000 Novels

On the Road is the latest novel Professor Hungerford discusses in her class on the American Novel since 1945.  Her lectures on the book are interesting; she discusses, among other thing, the novel as a (platonic?) love story novel between Jack Kerouac / Sal Paradise and Neal Cassady / Dean Moriarty, the role of consumption capitalism in Kerouac's American Dream (as represented by the stunning quantity of pie Paradise eats), and the beat language.  But the thing that's always fascinated me about On the Road is whether it is really fiction at all; Kerouac's first draft used his name and those of his beatnik partners-in-crime (Cassady, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, etc.), suggesting it is really more autobiography.  Professor Hungerford expresses some cynicism about the literal truth of the story, almost in passing, and I wish she'd gone into that in a little more detail.

If we assume that the bulk of On the Road is, after some basic find-and-replace functions, literally true, there are interesting questions to ponder.  What does it tell us about Kerouac's life?  Is he living the way he's living because he needs to do so in order to write the way he wants to write?  Is he writing the way he is because he's mixed up in this crazy life and feels the need to document it?  Or are both the way he's living and his need for writing caused by some third drive, and inescapably intertwined?  Did Kerouac know what a vivid character Cassady would make?  Is that part of what drew him to Cassady in the first place?  How blurred is the line between On the Road as an autobiography and On the Road as a novel?

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
by John le Carre
A George Smiley novel
read: 2012
Guardian 1000 Novels

Mystery stories are funny; you almost can't evaluate them until you're done reading them.  I linked to an article a few weeks back suggesting that readers (and, for that matter, writers) do not need to finish books, but that mindset clearly doesn't work for a book like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.  There's a mole in the Circus (British Intelligence).  But who is it?  Well, if you never find out, it's not much of a story, is it?  The conclusion to a great mystery has to be foreseeable in hindsight but far from obvious.  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy does a fine job here.

The story is more complex than The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the other le Carre novel I read, with a bigger scope and more characters.  The ending is perhaps not quite as satisfying, but I think that is part of what makes the book interesting.  The various "good guys" characters have different reactions to the ultimate ferreting out of the mole, but whether they are angry or sad or relieved, none of them are happy.  None of them feels like, "Yeah, we just nabbed the bad guy!  Woohoo!"  That's one of the elements that make le Carre novels a bit deeper than your run-of-the-mill thriller.