Lucky Jim

Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis
read: 2014
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

Humor has a hard time holding up over even a decade or two, much less the 60 years since Lucky Jim was written, but it's easy to imagine the events of the novel in a half-hour sitcom. In one scene, Jim wakes up at his boss' house, hung over, to find that in his sleep he has damaged the sheet, blanket, bedside table, and rug with a lit cigarette. But in classic sitcom fashion, he tries to cover up the damage rather than fess up to what he's done. It's the sort of madcap situation that's just as funny today as it was in the 1950's.

Amis' prose adds to the humor. When a paper Jim writes is accepted by an academic magazine, he concludes, "Perhaps the article had had some merit after all. No, that was going too far." This dry British wit and deep cynicism pervades the novel. The humor also helps the reader understand the class struggles that undercut the novel. It's not always easy to relate to British social politics, but it's easy to side with Jim against the rich, pompous, useless blowhards that make up his world, and to take joy in him undermining them with pranks and other small measures of revenge.

A Dance With Dragons

A Dance With Dragons
by George R.R. Martin
A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5
read: 2014

There's some stuff that happens in this book, like the introduction of "Young Griff," that makes me think George R. R. Martin might be making things up as he goes along. That doesn't bode well for him finishing the series.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Memories of My Melancholy Whores
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
read: circa 2007

Gabriel Garcia Marquez' last novel (really more a novella), Memories of My Melancholy Whores was written almost two decades after Love in the Time of Cholera, but shares some of the same focus on aging. The protagonist is a man who is given a virgin prostitute for his 90th birthday, but the story is more touching than creepy. It's not his magnum opus, but it's a fitting final tale to a great writer's career.

Love in the Time of Cholera

Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
read: circa 2003
Guardian 1000 Novels

I liked but didn't love One Hundred Years of Solitude, but I adored Love in the Time of Cholera. Part of that was the time when I read it; in my livelorn early 20's, the struggle of protagonist Florentino Ariza really resonated with me. Now, his obsession kind of smacks of the classic Onion headline "Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested."  Really, asking a woman out at her husband's funeral?

Aside from the love story, the novel has a number of passages of what it means to grow old. There's one passage about Dr. Juvenal Urbino and his memory of being able to urinate long distances in a tight stream, and how that contrasts with the present indignity of having to sit down like a woman to pee. It's a silly detail that's stuck with me because of how evocatively it captures aging's effects on even the most mundane activities.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

    
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
read: circa 1997
Guardian 1000 Novels

This was one of the assigned books before senior year of high school, world literature. One of the quotes on the back of the book was "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race." I read the novel and liked it, but that praise seemed overblown to me, and my senior year English teacher told me once he felt the same way. Still, I always felt like I was missing something.

Under the Volcano

Under the Volcano
by Malcolm Lowry
read: 2014
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #11, Guardian 1000 Novels

I'm not a lover of stream-of-consciousness novels, but Under the Volcano uses the technique to great effect, putting the reader in the mind of consul Geoffrey Firmin as he descends into alcoholic destruction. Time sometimes jumps to simulate an alcoholic blackout, disorienting the reader, and the narrative swirls between the present and the past, obscured with a haze of beer, tequila, and the devil mescal.

Cat's Cradle

    
Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut
read: circa 1997

Cat's Cradle is an almost wistful post-apocalyptic novel.