A Prayer for Owen Meany

A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving
read: circa 2002
Guardian 1000 Novels

I don't think any adaption of a written work has angered me as much as Simon Birch, a loose interpretation of A Prayer for Owen Meany and one of the worst films I've ever seen. I'm not sure who it was for; it starred child actors (dispensing with the parallel adult plot of Owen Meany) but dealt with concepts too mature for a kids movie, and anyone who read the book would despise the movie.

My other enduring memory of Owen Meany is the song "Four Strong Winds," a Canadian folk tune that pops up periodically.

Coraline

Coraline
by Neil Gaiman
read: 2019

Coraline wound up being the first non-picture book my son read. Well, there are occasional pictures, and I read probably every other page, but it counts.

I just watched the movie and while I think the visual feel was a great fit for the story, there were some changes I disliked. It seemed like they minimized Coraline's cleverness and resourcefulness at several points. In the novel, she finds most of the "ghost's eyes" through thoroughness and a keen eye; in the movie, it's more serendipity. In the book, she lays a shrewd trap for the Beldam's hand; in the movie, her neighbor Wybie (a character not found in the book) saves her.

Sandman

American Gods
by Neil Gaiman
read: 2019

I had a very Neil-Gaiman-y stretch in 2019 where I was reading Coraline with my son and Sandman on my own.  Sandman is interesting in that several of the story arcs barely involve the titular Sandman/Morpheus/Dream. Perhaps my favorite volume was A Game of You, where he appears only briefly. His diminished presence works in part because the character of Dream is tough to like: consumed by duty, grudge-bearing, moody, aloof no fun at parties. He's better when softened by his relationships with his sisters Delirium and Death or even his rare mortal friend like Hob Gadling.

American Gods

American Gods
by Neil Gaiman
read: circa 2008
Guardian 1000 Novels, Hugo Award, Nebula Award

My uncle lent me this book and I read it a decade back or so. I don't remember too much, other than the general setup: main character released from prison, wife died after (/during) having an affair, "old gods" in modern America.

Appointment in Samarra

Appointment in Samarra
by John O'Hara
read: 2019
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #22

The novel begins with an epigraph, a short story from W. Somerset Maugham from which the title is taken. A servant, seeing Death in a crowd and believing himself marked, borrows his master's horse to ride from Baghdad to Samarra. The master confronts death, who says he only expressed surprise at seeing the servant in Baghdad, for they had an appointment later that day in Samarra. Obviously with an preface like that, someone is going to die.

One thing I couldn't figure out was the plotline with Al Grecco. He was a major character for the first two-thirds or so but his storyline didn't really seem to resolve.

The Magus

The Magus
by John Fowles
read: 2019
Modern Library #93, Guardian 1000 Novels

I haven't been blogging much over the last year-plus because I haven't been reading much. I had a lot of space in my life a few years ago to read, between not having kids, long train rides, etc. That's not to make excuses; I just need to do a better job carving out time to read, and I haven't done it. And there haven't been too many books that grabbed me and insisted I not put them down.

Until The Magus, that is. Some of it was circumstance, having time off around the holiday, but some of it was a just ludicrous insane plot that kept me wondering and guessing through the end of the novel and beyond.

At some level, I was aware I was being manipulated, not unlike protagonist Nicholas Urfe. The older, mysterious Maurice Conchis, the titular "Magus," embroils Nicholas in a series of situations where it's unclear who people are, what they want, who is in league with whom, etc. It became nearly impossible to track the lies, double-crosses, alliances, and identity switches that comprised the bulk of the novel. This manipulation wreaks havoc with Nicholas. At some point, I realized that author John Fowles was manipulating me, the reader, in the same fashion. If Nicholas had any self-respect, I thought, he would end this insane pursuit. But then, I wasn't stopping reading, was I?

When I wrote about The French Lieutenant's Woman, the other Fowles novel I've read, I criticized the ambiguous ending as a cop-out. In The Magus, Fowles explains his preference for ambiguous endings, and it makes a lot of sense:

An ending is no more than a point in sequence, a snip of the cutting shears. Benedrick kissed Beatrice at least; but ten years later? And Elsinore, the following spring?

White Noise

White Noise
by Don DeLillo
read: 2019
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels, National Book Award

White Noise is fundamentally concerned with the human fear of death. Jack Gladney is obsessed with it, and he finds his wife Babette—whom he had assumed was too full of everyday concerns to similarly obsess about it—feels the same. Despite Gladney's career success and the variety of situations with his blended family and many children, death is never far from his mind.

I kept waiting for Gladney's friend Murray Jay Siskind to emerge as some sort of passive-aggressive villain, but he never really did—or did he? He does advise Gladney that to kill is to act counter to death, which isn't really great advice.