O Pioneers!

O Pioneers!
by Willa Cather
read: 2015

Immigration is something of a hot issue in the news, so it is interesting to read a novel like O Pioneers! which deals with new immigrants from groups that are now long-established. The Bergson family are Swedish-Americans that inhabit frontier Nebraska in the early 1900's, but they still have memories and traditions from their homeland. The French, Swedish, and Romanian immigrants of the time and place all have their own culture but are working together to make it in a strange, new America. It's a nice reminder that we were all aliens here once.

One of the themes of the novel is the relationship between mankind and nature. Protagonist Alexandra says at one point, "There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years." The first part of that quote is the novel's most famous, but I think the second part is just as interesting, implying that in many ways people are hardly different from birds. The land provides sustenance for Alexandra and her family, and her life is inextricably tied to the land, but she wants her younger brother Emil to be able to transcend an agricultural existence and experience more of the world.

Cather's empathetic, all-seeing eye reminds me of Faulkner or Toni Morrison, She has sympathy even for those who do wrong, and seeks to explain rather than condemn.

The Old Wives' Tale

The Old Wives' Tale
by Arnold Bennett
read: 2015
Modern Library #87, Guardian 1000 Novels

Oh my God! We are totally like the girls in The Old Wives' Tale! You are such a Constance, and I am such a Sophia!

Occultation

Occultation
by Laird Barron
read: 2015

This is a creepy collection of stories to read, having moved into an old house and having a three-year that has nightmares every night. The final tale, "Six Six Six," about a couple that moves into a house that is literally and figuratively haunted, was especially a bad choice for me right now.

All of these stories are creepy, but "Strappado" and "Lagerstätte" are unusual for Barron in that they may not even be metaphysical.

Almost all of these stories have love as a backdrop. In "The Broadsword" and "Six Six Six," the lack of trust between romantic partners becomes an issue. Lack of trust is even more dramatic in "--30--," where two ex-lovers find themselves at each other's throats while in isolation on cursed land. "The Forest" is about terrible forces that doom all of humanity, but it's also about rediscovering lost love. In "Catch Hell," the occult elements are just a backdrop for a marriage torn asunder by the death of a child.

The past returning also shows up again and again. The protagonists of "Mysterium Tremendum" and "The Broadsword" are each haunted by a death witnessed years ago. The heroines of "Lagerstätte" and "Catch Hell" deal with grief over dead relatives. In "Six Six Six" the husband inherits his Satanic family homestead and returns to a life he believed left behind.

The Imago Sequence

The Imago Sequence
by Laird Barron
read: 2015

I don't think the high points in the The Imago Sequence were as insidiously creepy as some of the high points in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, but it had some standout moments. The sad, paranoid ending of "Probiscis" sent a chill down my spine. I liked the threads that tied some of the stories together: the Mina Mounds, the idea of portals between parallel worlds in Parallax and the title story. Like H.P. Lovecraft, Barron keeps you in the dark as to what the horror is, but by tying the stories together into the same mythology, you get to feel multiple parts of the elephant .

The Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses
by Salman Rushdie
read: 2015
Guardian 1000 Novels

I described Midnight's Children as "rich," and the same applies to Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, but I'd argue the latter text veers into incoherent at times. There are many plots and many characters, and the two main characters change from good to bad and back during the story, making it hard to follow or have a rooting interest. I don't think I really have the background to appreciate some of the religious elements or some of the experiences of an immigrant in the Western world, but at times things did resonate with me, such as Chamcha trying to reconcile with his father.

Big Sur

Big Sur
by Jack Kerouac
read: 2015

I once had a music blog and a few years ago I reviewed One Fast Move Or I'm Gone, an album by Son Volt's Jay Farrar and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard, built around the words of Jack Kerouac's Big Sur. I panned the album at the time, but came to love the poetry of the lyrics and the moroseness of the music. Since that review, I moved to the Bay Area (and back), visited the City Lights bookstore and the Beat Museum, and traveled to Big Sur. It was strange reading the novel and having lines like "I'm just a sick clown and so is everybody else" or "I am going to die in full despair - Wake up where? On second breath in life the atmosphere is dearer maybe closer to Heaven" and have a melody spring into my head reflexively. It enhancement my enjoyment of the novel and forced me to pay closer attention to the prose than I do normally.

Kerouac's accounts of his drinking binges are tough to read in light of his alcohol-related death prior to the age of 50. He does not glorify his alcoholism, describing how the physical ills of a hangover are intertwined with a spiritual despair. In this light, his life's end was truly sad.

The Wings of the Dove

The Wings of the Dove
by Henry James
read: 2015
Modern Library #26, Guardian 1000 Novels

I often enjoy quiet novels about interpersonal relationships, events, and attitudes, but I essentially slept through much of my reading of The Wings of the Dove. James kept expounding for page after page on a minute shift in one character's perception of another and the novel might have been more readable if some of that was omitted.

James changes perspectives in the narration. The reader sees the first few chapters from the perspective of Kate, establishing her motivations to soften James setting her up, ultimately, as the story's villain. Much of the rest of the first volume focuses on Milly, but the second volume zeroes in on Densher and his moral dilemma. Despite struggling with the prose, I did find the story compelling, with James keeping me in suspense until the very end.