The Boys of Summer

The Boys of Summer
by Roger Kahn
read: 2013

I'm a long-time admirer of Jackie Robinson and his contributions to American sport, but The Boys of Summer took that admiration up another notch. Roger Kahn described Robinson as not just a pioneer, but a fantastic player with a huge competitive streak. There's an interesting scene where the Dodgers are having dinner, and the black players are spread out among the the tables because Robinson believed they should integrate more fully with the team rather than clustering together. Manager Chuck Dressen calls Robinson the best player he ever coached. Moreover, the Robinson Kahn describes is not a pacifist. Branch Rickey made Robinson agree not to fight back for the first two years, but after that his fierce, competitive nature came through. Robinson could be an angry man, and criticized teammate Roy Campanella for being an "Uncle Tom." He is a complex figure, but the stories Kahn flesh him out as a human being rather than just a symbol.

A Feast for Crows

A Feast for Crows
by George R.R. Martin
A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4
read: 2013

The first three novels of A Song of Ice and Fire move the plot forward continuously, but George R.R. Martin takes the series in a different direction for book four, A Feast for Crows. Several of the point-of-view characters from the first three novels don't appear here, and the story spreads out in scope to encompass some settings that had been largely ignored in the earlier books, notably the Iron Islands and Dorne.

We also see more detail on two elements that had been touched on in the previous books. One is religion. Arya takes refuge at a church of the Many-Faced God in Braavos, and the head there suggests that the Many-Faced God (death) is worshipped in all religions, for instance as the Stranger in the Faith of the Seven. We also get some insight into the Drowned God and the Storm God and the religion of the Iron Islanders. The leadership of the Faith of the Seven changes, and we see both Cersei and Brienne interacting with the new, more pious heads.

The role of the "common man" also comes to the forefront. The changes in the Seven are propped up by popular support, Doran Martell is very concerned with the popular reaction to his moves in Dorne, and Aeron Greyjoy calls a kingsmoot where the new King of the Iron Islands is elected by popular acclaim. "It is being common-born that is dangerous, when the great lords play their game of thrones," a character says at one point. By this, the fourth novel, the common folk are tired of being trampled on and less interested in who has the best "claim" to the throne than what is best for their well-being. It will be interesting to see if this populist movement continues in the remaining books.

For Your Eyes Only

For Your Eyes Only
by Ian Fleming
read: 2013

For Your Eyes Only isn't a novel but a collection of shorter James Bond works. "From a View to a Kill" and "Risico" are fairly boiler-plate Bond, but the other three stories have interesting angles that flesh out Bond's character a little more. In the title story, M uses Bond as an instrument for personal revenge rather than England's interests, and Bond ruminates some on the guilt of killing, even bad men for a good cause. "The Hildebrand Rarity" examines the lengths to which people will go when pushed, and Bond is more Nick Carraway than Nicholas Cage in it, uninvolved in the major action. "Quantum of Solace" is a story-within-a-story about marriage gone wrong and how cruel spurned lovers can be; it's curious that Fleming thought of it as a Bond story at all.

Invisible Man

Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
read: 2013
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #19, Guardian 1000 Novels, National Book Award

Invisible Man gets grouped with Native Son a lot, as Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright were friends and contemporaries and both novels deal with the travails of a young black man in a big city and what that says about larger society. So I expected Invisible Man to be a similar book, a naturalistic take on the sociological factors that oppress African-Americans. There's some of that in the novel, but there's also an absurdist element that wouldn't be out of place in Kafka, Pynchon, or Chesterton. Nothing that happens is fantastic in the strictest sense, but the opening sets the tone for the novel: our (never-named) protagonist / narrator is living underground, lit by 1,369 light bulbs powered by stolen electricity, constantly playing the same jazz record over and over. Through the course of the novel, the narrator travels with a white man to a wild black bar, gets experimented on as a patient after a chemical plant explosion, is taken in by a kindly woman with a cartoonish caricature bank of a black face, becomes a famous spokesman for the Communists, and becomes a hated figure and target in riots that engulf Harlem. The book teeters on the edge of sanity for its duration.

The narrator seems buffeted from by forces on all sides, never able to define who he is. Is he the good boy student that his college (and white society) want him to be? Should he throw in with the unions or the Communists? Should he rebel against white society all together? He is a symbol of the impossibility of a black man defining himself in an oppressive world, but part of his plight is in being a symbol, someone who keeps changing his identity according to the whims of those around him. Only when he disengages from all society, becoming invisible to all (including the blacks and the Communists) does he acquire his own voice.

Invisible Man is justifiably considered one of the great works in American literature, so I was fascinated to see what else Ellison wrote. However, it was Ellison's only novel, even though he lived another forty years. That's amazing.

Goldfinger

Goldfinger
by Ian Fleming
read: 2013
Guardian 1000 Novels

Ian Fleming is terrific at describing games and bringing out the tension and drama in competition. In just about every Bond book, there's a game of chance against a villain. In Goldfinger, there are two: the canasta game at the beginning (where Bond catches Goldfinger cheating) and the golf game in the middle. Fleming makes golf exciting!

Lord Jim

Lord Jim
by Joseph Conrad
read: 2013
Modern Library #85, Guardian 1000 Novels

The story of Lord Jim is told largely through a frame story, with Charles Marlow, an alter-ego of Conrad that appears in a few of his works, relating the tale of the titular character in person and, towards the end of the book, in a letter. Many works - Absalom, Absalom!, for one - employ the frame story as a narrative technique. Since the frame story embeds the main narrative as a story within a story, it often becomes a meditation on storytelling itself, prompting the reader to ask questions like, "Who is narrating? Why is he telling the story? What is he leaving out (by ignorance or intentionally) that might be germane?"

Marlow's narration consumes the first 80% or so of the story, at which point he has told the story as far as he knows at the time. At this point, Conrad seems to offer a meditation on unfinished stories:

... the last image of that incomplete story, its incompleteness itself, and the very tone of the speaker, had made discussion in vain and comment impossible. Each of them seemed to carry away his own impression, to carry it away with him like a secret ...  

Conrad then offers a take on the phenomenon of writing and reading:

That was all then - and there will be nothing more; there will be no message, unless such as each of us can interpret for himself from the language of facts, that are so often more enigmatic than the craftiest arrangement of words.

Marlow then proceeds to grace one particular listener (and, by extension, the reader) with the remainder of the tale via letter. This closes the loop on the main narrative and makes for a more satisfying story. Does it take away from the meta-fictional musings quoted above? Maybe philosophically, but I think they stand on their own.

In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote
read: circa 2007

I link In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song in my mind. In both books you have a murder as the central act, with the resulting investigation, trial, and execution rippling out from that death. Both are non-fiction books but written like novels. And both show the killers in somewhat of a sympathetic light. Neither Capote nor Mailer exonerates the murderer, but both show some of the factors that led them to that place and the humanity they display in facing their deaths.

The sympathy is especially interesting in In Cold Blood, as the murders were committed by a duo - Dick Hickock, the mastermind of the operation, and Perry Smith, who actually slaughtered the Clutters. Hickock doesn't have the stomach to kill himself, so he finds Smith, a murderer, because he knows he needs a killer to pull off the robbery. Smith isn't insane by the legal definition, but he's clearly mentally disturbed, even sociopathic. He has a disturbed sense of honor - he bars Hickock from raping Nancy Clutter, yet shoots her in the head minutes later. Capote ultimately paints Hickock, not Smith, as the real monster.