Books: Last Book You Read and Rate It

[Spring in Fialta]

The Suicide Club by Robert Louis Stevenson (1878) - A suspense/thriller story revolving around a prince seeking thrills who gets himself involved in a suicide club - where for a nominal fee men take part in a morbid game in which one suicidal member of the club murders another after a game of luck - and jarred by the existence of such a club, decides to take the president and profiteer of the enterprise to justice through unlawful means. The novella is written in an interesting manner, separating in three stories revolving around three, unrelated characters but who each serve to bring an end to the suicide club. While the prose can be annoying - very, very old-fashioned and uppity - it is very detailed and Stevenson was certainly skilled at building impressive sentences with many layers, while also bringing up some fairly interesting ideas in relation to the character's struggles. Sometimes a bit of a slog to get through despite the story's flamboyance, and the characters did feel a bit one-dimensional outside of the president, who does not appear nearly enough in the story - while never really leaving his presence felt when not appearing - which is a fault against what should be a suspense story. Still, I enjoyed the read but I've gotten my hands on The New York Trilogy (having only read City of Glass years ago) so I decided to get on with that instead of reading the other stories in the collection, which I suppose says a lot. Great premise to The Suicide Club, though.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

I figure I'll just review each story in The New York Trilogy as I go because they're all longer than short stories anyways.

City of Glass by Paul Auster (1985) - I had first read a french translation of City of Glass for a school assignment a few years ago and I had liked it, although I hadn't given it that much thought to it since and after having picked up The New York Trilogy at a book store, decided to give it another go. How it helps to read works in their original languages. No matter how good of a job someone can do through a translation, whenever I read a work in two languages, the original language - perhaps subconsciously - always feels more thorough, and the writer's voice seems to come alive far more clearly, and the vocabularly appears to be more personal than it does through the translator (I now wish I knew how to read German or Russian). No work I can think of benefits from that as much as City of Glass, and I kind of think it would end up pretty high among my lists of favorite books if I was able to make a decent list. Easy to read, yet not always penetrable, it's atmosphere is always gripping and you get such a strong feel of the setting despite it not being described in many details. The sense of mystery present lingers consistently, even as the plot comes to and end and you continue to read about Daniel Quinn's descent into nothingness. It's a bit harder for me to explain why the work resonates so much with me - I've always kind of felt that there was less than meets the eye to Auster's ideas in general, and I do think he rehashes some of his stuff - but his writing about loneliness and identity have never been as enthralling as they are here, as compared to Moon Palace (which I really liked) or Mr. Vertigo (which I didn't think much of) and perhaps this is because City of Glass was his first work of fiction, but they appear a lot more concise, simple and jarring than they do in later, and more sprawling works. Perhaps it's also because I'm a big believer/admirer of the novella (say 175 pages or less) and a strong novella seems to always resonate with me more than a strong novel does. They feel a lot more explosive, like small, rapid and rhythmic punches. The story itself doesn't flow seamlessly, but the book never clunks, with each incident and episode, whether related to the detective case or not, feel as if attached by a thin cord that is never in danger of breaking. Even when Auster pauses his story to reflect on an idea or theme - through say, a discussion about Don Quixote - you never feel as if you're pulled out of his book for some grandstanding (even if it might actually have been) but as if Auster is just letting his thoughts breathe, which should be difficult to pull off in a 155-page work, but fits neatly in here and also serves to as an explanation for Auster's interest in the work's themes in a less obscure manner. And it's funny, because that's something that I would probably fault on paper, but feels perfect in here, in-between the fog and the grimy.

 

[kihei]

How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig

How to Stop Time may end up being the most disappointing book of the year. After Haig's wonderful Humans, I had the highest expectations, but I threw in the towel on How to Stop Time half way through. Haig is a very good writer and he starts with a very good premise. The novel focuses on Tom Hazard who ages one year for every fifteen real years. In reality he is ancient, but he looks like a forty-one year old. He is forced to reinvent himself every eight years or so to avoid detection, but this gets very complicated because there is a secret society of people with a similar affliction that will do anything to protect the lives of its members including killing anybody who learns of their condition. So, among other things, falling in love is very dangerous to the loved one. This is a terrific idea for a book, but despite the novel being technically very well written, the narrative execution is the pits. The novel switches back and forth between 1599 and present day London, an effect that feels like a jolt too many times. But the real problem is the central character Tom Hazard. He is such a despondent, mopey Eeyore that he sucks all the fun right out of the novel. Perhaps his outlook improves in the second half. He is searching for his long lost daughter at the moment--maybe he perks up if he finds her. However, I no longer care what happens--I'll wait for the movie.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Ghosts by Paul Auster (1986) - I found it lacking in its prose, despite certain good moments. Very uneven and amateurish by moments, particularly in the beginning. I think it would have served the story better to be written in the first-person. The pacing also felt off sometimes. Despite all this, I liked the story and Auster has some interesting thoughts in regards to readership and authorship. But it was hard not be a bit bored by the inertia of the story, and character interactions are welcomed - and mostly well-done - when they arrived. With that said, it didn't come close to City of Glass and considering my experience with Auster, it's hard not to tag him as inconsistent in terms of execution, particularly plot and prose wise. His themes and thoughts are often still interesting, albeit sometimes a bit too foggy and obscure (which is funny considering this story has a passage which refers to how words can often obscure an idea).

 

[Ceremony]

Someone in the other book thread said they were interested to see what I thought of The Plague by Albert Camus. It took me a month to finish and bored me to tears every time I tried.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Someone in the other book thread said they were interested to see what I thought of The Plague by Albert Camus. It took me a month to finish and bored me to tears every time I tried.

It's one I like the least out of the Camus but I still thought it was okay. Just nowhere near as good as The Stranger, The Fall or Jonas, the Artist at Work

 

[kihei]

Cecile Is Dead, by Georges Simenon

Inspector Maigret investigates a murder that he feels partly responsible for letting happen. Dim, quiet Cecile wants to talk to him about something important, but he puts her off. Not much later she is found dead in a closet at the police station. It is a tricky case, and it takes longer than usual for Maigret to put the pieces together. Cecile is Dead is a very good, very well written mystery, a model of clarity and economy. We get a lot about Maigret's methods, some vivid characters and a conclusion that is impossible to predict. First rate work from Simenon which is no less than what I expect from him every time I pick up one of his mysteries.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Cecile Is Dead, by Georges Simenon

Inspector Maigret investigates a murder that he feels partly responsible for letting happen. Dim, quiet Cecile wants to talk to him about something important, but he puts her off. Not much later she is found dead in a closet at the police station. It is a tricky case, and it takes longer than usual for Maigret to put the pieces together. Cecile is Dead is a very good, very well written mystery, a model of clarity and economy. We get a lot about Maigret's methods, some vivid characters and a conclusion that is impossible to predict. First rate work from Simenon which is no less than what I expect from him every time I pick up one of his mysteries.

Simenon is great. I really would like to read more of him - I've only read a couple of Maigret short stories and Three Rooms in Manhattan. Mathieu Amalric made this great little movie a few years back based on one of his books called The Blue Room.

 

[kihei]

Simenon is great. I really would like to read more of him - I've only read a couple of Maigret short stories and Three Rooms in Manhattan. Mathieu Amalric made this great little movie a few years back based on one of his books called The Blue Room.

Here's my review of The Blue Room from 2014:

The Blue Room (2014) Directed by Mathieu Amalric 7C

The Blue Room is a hypermodern French anti-thriller that will impress some viewers and exasperate others. Julien (Mathieu Amalric), his marriage showing subtle signs of dissatisfaction, has a hot affair with the slightly predatory Esther, and it all goes wrong. Just how wrong we only find out second hand. So does Julien. Soon after an intense love making scene with his mistress, he is interviewed by the police, but we don’t know why and we don’t find out why until very late in the movie. A crime has been committed, maybe more than one, but Julien responds to the investigator’s questions as though his thoughts haven't quite caught up to his feelings yet. He appears almost certainly guilty of something but neither he nor we know exactly what it is. Or perhaps he is the victim of a crazy lover. It’s an unnerving movie, flat and matter of fact, a style that neatly complements the Georges Simenon novel that it is based on. Actor turned director Amalric provides assured, stylish direction (and a beautifully modulated performance), shifting time frames and parceling out bits of information that never quite make anything absolutely clear. His camera concentrates on faces rather than dialogue, and these faces have a story to reveal, but what are those eyes telling us? Judgement finally comes, but it doesn’t really satisfy. The movie is a heady experience if you like this sort of elegant ambiguity, but if you don’t, you are in for a very long night.

 

[kihei]

Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic, by David Frum

David Frum, a senior editor at The Atlantic, was born in Canada, but moved to the States a couple of decades ago and now has dual citizenship, I believe. In Canada, he was about as conservative as conservatives in Ontario get (despite the fact that his mother, Barbara Frum, the best interviewer ever to be employed by the CBC, was seemingly quite liberal). He is still a conservative in the States, but a highly principled one. In fact, he is one of the conservative voices who has spoken out most cogently about the threat that President Trump and his administration represents not to just conservative values but to the continued existence of the American republic itself. Trumpocracy is his case against Trump. The book is devastatingly comprehensive, unstintingly perceptive and scary as hell. Frum devotes twelve chapters to a dizzying list of the factors that helped Trump become President and how he exploited these conditions to gain power for his needy ego, to increase his and his family's personal wealth, and to undermine the very institutions that he was elected to protect. He dissects Trump's toxic personality and his feral instinct for corruption, but goes well beyond that to look at his enablers, his appeasers and his apologists. He devotes other chapters to the social changes and grievances that made Trump possible in the first place. In doing so he provides a convincing analysis of the dark corners of the American psyche, while, in a final chapter, offering some hope for the future through greater participation of the citizenry in defense of their own democratic values and institutions. Still a conservative, he does not turn a blind eye to the danger that he sees in conservatism:

Maybe you do not much care about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism, They will reject democracy.

Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic is the early non-fiction candidate for book of the year. I hope it finds the largest possible audience on both sides of the border.

Note: Political and social analysis is usually slow reading for me, even when I am engaged. Not this time. I read this book in two and a half days--on top of everything else it is literally a page turner.

 

[Thucydides]

I’ll check it out. Great review .

 

[Spring in Fialta]

The Locked Room (1986) by Paul Auster - The most straightforward of the three stories, which is a welcomed quality after Ghosts. Immensely readable and less obscure than the previous 2 - albeit I still hold City of Glass in higher regard - I greatly enjoyed this one, and I don't think there is a wasted word within this one. Lean and precise, Auster does a great job at delving into the character's head and creates a fascinating foil in Fanshawe, the main character's long lost friend who explodes into his life once again through his own literary talent, contrasting sharply with the main character's own short-comings who creates a brilliant background for the character who comes to dominate his life. The story also brings The New York Trilogy - and it's connecting themes - to a close, albeit I still get left with the sentiment that I'm not entirely sure what the purpose was for certain connections by the end of The Locked Room and what they were supposed to mean, such as certain characters being named (or using aliases) which appeared in the previous two works. Kind of leaves me itching.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

The first part of this essay kind of represents how I feel about the trilogy as a whole.

Paul Auster's Locked Room

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Forgot the book I wanted to start today at home and Notes from Underground by Dostoyevsky was in the bottom of my bag...read the 1st part again. God, how I love that little book. I think I'll always feel a kinship towards anyone who finds Dostoyevsky as humorous as I do.

 

[kihei]

Collected Poems, by Philip Larkin

Whatever failings he possessed as a human, which seem to be many, Philip Larkin was a poet whose work from 1945 until his death in 1985 spoke directly to his English readers as few poets have since. He writes about common things: love, marriage, worry, fear, death. His poems can be depressing in their effect, but, curiously, not in their delivery. In fact, once you get into his rhythm, Larkin is fun to read, perceptive and witty. The persona that inhabits virtually all his poems is very much all of a piece. His voice is of a man who has been fearful of death since his youth, but still unable, by deliberate choice or by an accident of temperament, to make lasting connections with other human beings. He has a decidedly chilly attitude toward marriage: "He married a woman to stop her from getting away. Now she's there all day;" a very dark view of life in general: "Time is the first thing I have understood; time is the echo of an axe within a wood;" a definite distaste toward children, not so much in terms of who they are but whom they are destined to become: "Man hands on misery to man. Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself;" an attitude toward sexuality that is decidedly the grayest hue of utilitarian: "SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles;" and "Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes;" and a lifelong preoccupation with death: "That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round."

For all his anxieties and distastes, it is easy to see how Larkin resonates with his English audience. Many of his poems made me think of Paul McCartney, the McCartney of "She's Leaving Home" and "Eleanor Rigby"--songs that are little short stories about average people's lives. Larkin's poems are far more intellectually sophisticated, but they inhabit the same general region of "little" England, everyday lives spent in toil and seldom noticed. The fears, prejudices, problems, and feelings that Larkin delineates are familiar to most of his countrymen whether they share his particular predilections or not. And they are familiar to us, too.

 

[Ceremony]

Following a sport via the internet as I do the NHL it can be strange to consider how I relate to the sport and my team and the players on it. Over the past two seasons this became easier as I subscribed to NHLTV and watched every game, but what is such a large aspect of my life only really exists for 2-3 hour periods a few times a week. When the game is done that's it. Maybe I'm online and post about it on a message board occasionally but that's not the same as watching a game and all of the things which go into that. Hockey isn't there where I live, there's very little mention of it, there's definitely nothing Avalanche-related.

Even in watching a game, how can I relate to the players? It's not like seeing a sporting event or any other kind of public performance live where you can see in person someone who you enjoy endlessly in your own privacy. If I go and see a band live I can see the sweat dripping off the people on-stage, see how they move about, interact with one another. People who I identified with intimately are now more real, more human to me and I gain a greater appreciation of what they do. Same goes for sports. When you're there in person you see and experience them in a way which is different, and you feel more intimately connected with them.

Aside from formulaic, identical interviews there is none of this in my NHL-following life. I might feel as if I know Nathan MacKinnon intimately after all of the first star interviews he has this season but even with that in mind, he's not the most expressive person I've ever seen. Every interview follows the same pattern - as if in every response to a question his brain is trying to think of the least objectionable sequence of words which will let him get back to the locker room as quickly as possible, then a burst of excitement as he finds them and then his mouth tries to get them out all at the one time. It almost mirrors his playing style, when he gets the puck and just goes. Perhaps fittingly for this metaphor, in those moments too, he is untouchable.

So how, then, is the regular fan to feel any sort of connection to these millionaires playing a game for a living on a different continent to me? How is anyone to do that, when they grow up dreaming of playing for their team but only dream of the playing part, none of the life which goes along with it?

It appears I have found the answer in a book published nine years before I was born, about an NHL twenty three years before I knew what it was. The Game by Ken Dryden seems to be followed by the tagline "The best sports book ever" and while the North American use of "sports" is always hilariously myopic and insular, there's a decent case for this one in particular to be accurate. A unique set of circumstances allowed someone like Dryden to play hockey and be capable of noting its nuances and chronicling them in the way he does, but that's really part of the book's charm. That's what he notices all the time through his career, on and off the ice, whether it's the people he sees outside the rink, the things his teammates say and do before games or how he plays in certain buildings.

I like The Game for more than just the observations he makes though. And even for more of describing an understanding of the NHL which is completely alien to me - this is pre-Gretzky, remember. Above all else, this is a human book. I'm sure watching Dryden and the Canadiens in the 70s there would have been no doubt that they were invincible, unquestionable, and that the players mirrored that. But they aren't. They weren't. Dryden, for his incomparable statistics, definitely wasn't. The day-to-day insights into how the Canadiens were run are interesting on a basic level. I have no idea how NHL teams are/were run, so to learn first-hand from someone who was there is simply an enjoyable addendum to something I follow daily.

Beyond that though having the insight of someone who knows the game so well - but not completely as he'd be at pains to point out - from someone who's so measured and thoughtful about the world outside of hockey as well is a brilliant combination. The off-ice stuff is as interesting as the on-ice, of what it's like to juggle studying law with being the best goalie in the world, what it's like to be and feel like an outsider in a place where you're revered, it's all done so well it never feels too self-effacing, which it could have done if Dryden wasn't as good at writing as he proves to be.

So much of what he describes ends up being in the unsaid, unquantifiable that it doesn't really make sense to try and describe it too much but I pretty much don't have a bad thing to say about it. It's interesting to me to read about the NHL from this perspective considering expansion and lockouts and butterfly goaltending and Europeans and everything else since 1979. As much as his final season was a time where Dryden felt personally that change was inevitable, the amount that there's been in the NHL as a whole since then provides an interesting comparison to have in mind throughout. When he writes about playing, you appreciate the pressures and nuances in a way you might never have before. And if nothing else, there's the right mixture of confidence and doubt to make him consistently sympathetic, which when coupled with the thoughtful nature of his observations just makes it an easy, yet rewarding, read.

I have the 30th anniversary edition with two post-scripts, one about the changes the NHL has seen since his retirement and 2003, the other about the day he got to spend with the Stanley Cup. Both, particularly the latter, are appropriate additions to the things he wrote about originally. You'll probably shed a tear at the second one, when you see first hand what hockey can and does mean to people.

With everything positive I've said the only complaint I have is that this book will probably ruin my expectations of athletes and journalists. I read Blood Feud a month or two ago and it's nothing compared to this. And every hockey player I've seen, none of them will have insights like this which I feel I can relate to. I suppose that's how I'd sum up The Game. Dryden takes what is unrelatable and makes it so, while freely admitting at times that he doesn't quite know what that is. That's a talent beyond many successful writers, and about the best compliment I could pay him.

 

[kihei]

^^^^^
I read it at the time of its release, and parts of it I have reread since on a not infrequent basis. I still think it is the best hockey book ever written. To have the insightful, thoughtful Ken Dryden as a guide was immeasurably valuable to me.

 

[kihei]

The Fall, by Albert Camus

Short though it is, lucid though it is, The Fall is a devilishly hard book to summarize. Here's my version, which won't be exactly like anybody else's version because it seems no two summaries are alike. Clamence, a former Parisian lawyer, meets a stranger in an Amsterdam bar incongruously called Mexico City and starts up a conversation with him. It is not really so much a conversation as it is a monologue, a monologue that takes the form of a confession. This confession unfolds over several meetings in a five day period. Each meeting reveals a little more about Clamence's downfall and about the extremity of that fall and what the grim philosophical implications are for not just Clamence but for all of us. According to Clamence, he once was a man who was charitable, altruistic and courteous though for all the wrong reasons. His attentiveness to others masked a sense of superiority that he deigned to keep hidden but felt nonetheless. Then something truly horrifying happens. Camus beautifully describes this event: Clamence hears the splash into water of a young woman who has jumped from a bridge and her subsequent screams but he fails to act to help her. He hesitates until it is too late and then he moves on. Though his egotism has protected him to this point in his life, the memory of his inaction breaks through his haughtiness. As a result, his life dramatically changes as all his carefully built facades crumble into dust. He goes through a period of debauchery, but even that cannot help him forget his terrible realization about himself and about the nature of being itself. Along the way, he traces the philosophical implications of his new awareness, coming to some desolate conclusions about innocence, guilt and the nature of judgement itself. In the process, he also eliminates neatly any hope of a God. In the end Clamence sees his role as being a "judge-penitent" which he carefully explains. In other words, he hangs out in seedy bars waiting for opportunities to tell his story to strangers, knowing that he will implicate them in the guilt he feels because that guilt is an inescapable part of the human condition.

Along with Camus' clever use of Christian symbolism and his ability to transform Amsterdam into a stand-in for the circles of hell, one of the most impressive aspects of the novel is how Clamence seduces the reader to take over the role of the unnamed person hearing his confession. Camus in effect holds up a mirror and asks the reader: how different from Clamence are you really? Again it is a short book but one that can and should be read several times to get its full implications and to sort out a philosophical discussion that sometimes appears convoluted, if not downright contradictory and paradoxical. But this intellectual flailing is not a flaw. Rather it underscores the agony of Clamence whose mind twists and turns trying to make sense of his elemental betrayal. Novels don't get much bleaker than this one. Or much more thought-provoking. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I would say that The Fall is one of the titanic works of 20th century literature.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

The Fall, by Albert Camus

Short though it is, lucid though it is, The Fall is a devilishly hard book to summarize. Here's my version, which won't be exactly like anybody else's version because it seems no two summaries are alike. Clamence, a former Parisian lawyer, meets a stranger in an Amsterdam bar incongruously called Mexico City and starts up a conversation with him. It is not really so much a conversation as it is a monologue, a monologue that takes the form of a confession. This confession unfolds over several meetings in a five day period. Each meeting reveals a little more about Clamence's downfall and about the extremity of that fall and what the bleak philosophical implications are for not just Clamence but for all of us. According to Clamence, he once was a man who was charitable, altruistic and courteous though for all the wrong reasons. His attentiveness to others masked a sense of superiority that he deigned to keep hidden but felt nonetheless. Then something truly horrifying happens. Camus beautifully describes this event: Clamence hears the splash into water of a young woman who has jumped from a bridge and her subsequent screams but he fails to act to help her. He hesitates until it is too late and then he moves on. Though his egotism has protected him to this point in his life, the memory of his inaction breaks through his haughtiness. As a result, his life dramatically changes as all his carefully built facades crumble into dust. He goes through a period of debauchery, but even that cannot help him forget his terrible realization about himself and about the nature of being itself. Along the way, he traces the philosophical implications of his new awareness, coming to some desolate conclusions about innocence, guilt and the nature of judgement itself. In the process, he also eliminates neatly any hope of a God. In the end Clamence sees his role as being a "judge-penitent" which he carefully explains. In other words, he hangs out in seedy bars waiting for opportunities to tell his story to strangers, knowing that he will implicate them in the guilt he feels because that guilt is an inescapable part of the human condition.

Along with Camus' clever use of Christian symbolism and his ability to transform Amsterdam into a stand-in for the circles of hell, one of the most impressive aspects of the novel is how Clamence seduces the reader to take over the role of the unnamed person hearing his confession. Camus in effect holds up a mirror and asks the reader: how different from Clamence are you really? Again it is a short book but one that can and should be read several times to get its full implications and to sort out a philosophical discussion that sometimes appears convoluted, if not downright contradictory and paradoxical. But this intellectual flailing is not a flaw. Rather it underscores the agony of Clamence whose mind twists and turns trying to make sense of his elemental betrayal. Novels don't get much bleaker than this one. Or much more thought-provoking. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I would say that The Fall is one of the titanic works of 20th century literature.

Brilliant review. Thanks a lot. For me, I always thought the physical altercation at the red light to be the more telling passage in regards to his hypocrisy. There's some brilliantly funny moments too. Clemence speaking of insulting poor people and tipping his hat to the blind people he helps to cross the street got a big laugh out of me. Everyman by Philip Roth is next on my list but I think I'll read The Fall again after that.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1929) - I had read this one in 10th grade, 10 years ago. A beautiful and deeply humanistic work, although I do have slight reservations in regards to its execution. While the prose is moving, the pace is sometimes a bit off through the short paragraphs and I did feel that sometimes it veered a bit too much into melodramatic poetry, which can feel off, especially in regards to war - despite the novel's definite pacifying stance - and I thought that the narrator's character was far too much of an observer without much of a personality of his own as compared to his fellow soldiers, who are brought to life more vividly than the main character and the reader is given more reasons to care about minor characters as opposed to its narrator, despite his omnipresence. With that said, Remarque offers brilliant analysis about the common soldier and the contrast with his youth and brutality of the war around him while trying - and mostly failing - to preserve his humanity despite the horrors he suffers through and sometimes partakes in. What I also thought was brilliant and deeply insightful was the dynamics between civilians and solider. The most rewarding part of the story, to me, was when Paul Baumer pays visit to his hometown during the war and is deeply detached from his surroundings, finding no joy in his previous interests. I think it gave a jarring, dooming effect to the consequences of far which can last far beyond the length of conflict and become impregnated within human beings. It was recounted perfectly by Remarque, and was the only moment where it felt the main character felt fully realized outside of certain too-short anecdotes, like the sharing of a bird between the main character and his friend Kat. Fantastic book though, and highly deserving of the long-lasting impact it's made on literature and particularly, on the humanity or lack thereof in the art of war.

 

[Ceremony]

Of all the collections of short fiction produced in F. Scott Fitzgerald's lifetime, and those since, only one has ever taken its title from a story contained within it. Part of me hoped that Babylon Revisited would have proved to be a somewhat stagnant affair allowing me to point to this as proof that there's only one story in it worth reading, but clearly I've been away from Fitzgerald too long for doubting him so.

After looking at the wikipedia entry for this collection though it seems I've read something else entirely. That version of the collection has all of his biggest hits, mine contains the title story and an assortment of others from the 1930s, obviously as Fitzgerald was on the downswing of his career and sadly, life.

Of course, the downside of the lifestyle he and his peers lived is what makes Fitzgerald incomparable and for the most part he captures it perfectly here. The title story is often cited as one of his best and in a way it's deceptively simple. Recovering alcoholic goes to see his daughter who lived with his in-laws after his wife died, his past catches up with him, nobody goes home happy. The true joy as ever is in the composition but for the most part the stories here retain a classic sense of humanity and vulnerability. Whereas in the 20s this characteristic in Fitzgerald's writing marked him as more observant of the world he was in, the consistency beyond that time makes it more poignant. He's not resentful or mournful about what has past, because he recognised it at the time.

There are some stories which have the distinct whiff of being fired out quickly in order to be sold. Looking at them as I type here there's two I don't remember a thing about. There are quite a few stories set in Hollywood and I believe that if Fitzgerald had lived longer and become more firmly entrenched in California he would have carried on being an astute observer of the place. The fleeting nature of success and beauty, the sharp contrast between the highs and the lows are capuired well during stories like Crazy Sunday, Financing Finnegan and Last Kiss. He spent the twenties writing about bright-eyed young women trying to be something. Hollywood is surely a natural fit.

In this collection there are a few unfinished and previously uncollected stories. Even among those previously published though there are a few experimental examples which I found interesting. The Fiend was in 1935's Taps at Reveille and it's short and, frankly, weird. A man goes to visit the killer of his wife and son in prison, exacting mental torture as his only means of vengeance. I like it because it's so different to the rest of Fitzgerald's short fiction. The same goes for Afternoon of an Author, a first-person semi-knowing wink to the reader which seems much more mature than the impression history would give you of him. From what I can gather the fact that this collection seems a bit less conventional than normal explains the inclusion of stories like this, but they fit well.

In a 1939 letter to an agent Fitzgerald wrote the following: "I know that is what's expected of me, but in that direction the well is pretty dry and I think I am much wiser in not trying to strain for it but rather to open up a new well, a new vein. You see, I not only announced the birth of my young illusions in This Side of Paradise but pretty much the death of them in some of my last Post stories like 'Babylon Revisited.' Lorimer seemed to understand this in a way. Nevertheless, an overwhelming number of editors continue to associated me with an absorbing interest in young girls - an interest that at my age would probably land me behind the bars."

If self-awareness in a generation unaware of themselves was the hallmark of Fitzgerald's writing at its peak, it's a mark of his ability as a writer that he was able to turn this reflectiveness on himself and continue to put out work of this quality, even as it seemed he was no longer able to. Whenever I read Fitzgerald, for a multitude of reasons, I'm left with a sense of uneasy melancholy that I've read something which is aware of how I think in ways I didn't know of. The majority of the stories here are no exception.

The collection I read was published by Alma in 2014: https://almabooks.com/product/babylon-revisited-stories/

 

[kihei]

Beautiful Losers, by Leonard Cohen

I think by far the most significant thing about Leonard Cohen's second novel Beautiful Losers is that he never attempted the form again. Two shots and out. And I for one am happy with that. Beautiful Losers is a brilliant work, but in the manner that recalls to mind how brittle the complement "brilliant" can be. I'm sure the novel is still a fixture of Canadian Studies and Canadian Lit courses--academics gonna be academics. Granted, there is an impressive and often playful mastery of language and literary techniques in evidence in much of the novel. In lieu of a plot there are goings on, of sorts--the two primary subjects of interest are, first, a weird menage a trois between an unnamed narrator who is a folklorist, his dead wife (an odd attempt at suicide gone wrong), and a strange friend--part teacher, part visionary, part Parliamentarian, part revolutionary--who is now dead as well. The second topic of interest, mixed in with the relationships, deals with a major fixation shared between narrator and friend concerning Catherine Tekakwitha, an Indian saint who lived and suffered (mostly suffered) in 17th century Quebec. Although we get a history of the saint in fits and spurts (emphasis on spurts, trust me) the menage a trois doesn't move much from point A to point B. Actually nothing about the novel matters much. What we do get is a lot of stream of conscious rambling focusing very often, way too often, on bizarre heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual sex. There is a great deal of imaginative sexuality here, imaginative, but, dear god, the furthest thing removed from erotic that it is possible to get --that is, unless other readers' tastes' run far more avant garde than my own (ear f***ing, anyone?). Cohen seems like a real smart kid showing off in this novel. I'm glad that he abandoned this kind of dated experimentation and took up poetry and song writing instead.

 

[GB]

I can imagine Beautiful Losers being much more of a slog if it wasn't for Cohen's talents with memorable phrases.

 

[kihei]

District and Circle, by Seamus Heaney

With a lot of modern/contemporary poets, it is usually a question of how many readings I need to complete before I am ready to review the collection. Certainly it is always more than one. With me it takes a few readings to figure out what the guy is saying and then a few more readings to figure out what I think about it. With the best poets you never really finish a poem, and Heaney is certainly among the best poets. He comes with what one might call a down-to-earth degree of difficulty. Often obscure, at least to anyone who wasn't an Irish farm boy fifty years ago, and studiously oblique, he can be a tough one to draw a bead on at first reading. But I find that if I stick with it, there is almost always something there, something important. He speaks of two worlds. The first is a rural world of the past of which he is still fond, a world of mundane objects and of simple, no longer attainable pleasures. In the world of the past and of memory, he can turn a skillet lid or a horse collar or a country fence into something of beauty, importance and worth. He can also baffle me with more one syllable words that I don't know the meaning of than I ever could have dreamed existed: greave (a piece of armour to protect the shins); sledge (a sled); verge (an edge or border); hames (having to do with a draught horse's collar); ruck (a mass of ordinary people or things); scrims (coarse fabric used for heavy-duty lining); kesh (still don't know); plash (liquid being struck by something); jag (a sharp projection); haw (the red fruit of the hawthorn); and whin (a yellow shrub of the pea family)--and so on. The end result, though, isn't frustration but a very precise recollection of how reality once looked and felt, the apprehension, like no other writer in existence, of a very specific memory or sensation. His second world is of the present, the modern here and now--equally oblique and equally insightful about the sort of things that hide in plain sight: the range of sensations within a subway station; closing a gate for the night; a moment of existence in a birch grove. Heany is a poet who makes you feel life. Direct and Circle is as refreshing as a pint of Guinness on a front porch at the end of a long and confusing day.

 

[Ceremony]

I don't like writing reviews of things soon after finishing them because I find it works better when I've had time to digest it enough to decide what I think about it. In this case however I get the horrible feeling I'll be too preoccupied with other things over the coming week. Plus, for the first time in a long time it took me two days to read a book, which I'd suppose is a good thing.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer is an account of his experience climbing Mount Everest in 1996. It hit me near the end that his group's summit ascent was on the 10th of May. Maybe it was fate that I decided to pull this out of the cupboard to read now.

Krakauer, a journalist by profession who enjoyed climbing, was tasked to climb the mountain by a magazine who wanted him to report on the present state of the mountain, namely the fact that there were multiple competing groups which set up expeditions to climb it with the help of guides, for a cost. An exorbitant cost as it turned out, as guides and the Nepalese government discovered that fees weren't really a deterrent as they could rise by tens of thousands of dollars year on year and people would still sign up for it. A more indoorsy journalist than Krakauer may have left it there and said Everest had become too commercial, but no, up he went.

As there were multiple guided (and other) groups trying to climb Everest at the time, the storm and resultant disaster which befell them which Krakauer recounts took several lives, and as he writes his own recollections and those of the other survivors he interviewed he tries to balance a description of what happened with his own feelings and actions.

Is the fact I read the book in one go an endorsement of it? Probably. There's no doubt that this is a man who can write well, as evidenced by when I last read Into the Wild. It would probably take more skill to make an account of climbing the world's largest mountain in the middle of a blizzard boring, admittedly. It's probably a background in journalism and writing for magazines which makes it as readable as it is but still, every detail is essential and nothing is drawn out. My only complaint would be that sometimes the lists of names of people on the mountain can be overwhelming, along with the names of other mountains in the range and some climbing terminology. For the most part though this is a story of... well, a story. An assortment of words about things which happened and the people they happened to, which can be relayed and understood by just about anyone.

Although Into the Wild was about a young man who had abandoned his life and belongings and gone to live in the, er, wild, Krakauer was able to muse about the reasons which would motivate someone to do this while including his personal experience as an example. The same happens in Into Thin Air, where an activity is as starkly communal as it is isolated. Pretty much everyone climbing Everest is dependent on everyone else around them, especially in a group containing less than experienced climbers, and definitely especially at such high altitude where moving, breathing, thinking is an exertion which could kill you. But beyond that the struggle is personal, within yourself to keep going or even to stop, because if you're twenty feet from the summit but there's a storm coming in you need to stop, or you'll die. Krakauer is at pains to point out how bravery, will, whatever you call it, is about surviving much more than it is going up.

As you might expect given these perspectives, trying to come to terms with surviving when so many people died is difficult. Especially when they were more experienced than you, or didn't seem to be in as desperate a state. I suppose if I left it longer I might be more confident in stating whether or not Krakauer is sufficiently self-pitying but purely on the face of it I'd agree with the sentiment that expecting anyone to be able to do anything in the sort of physical state they were in at the time is too much. Krakauer wrote that the popularity of guided routes up Everest made the ascent seem less appealling, too easy, too commercial. It isn't though, and it probably never could be.

With only this account - and the second edition with a postscript responding to criticism of the first - and minimal secondary reading I can't say if this version of events is completely accurate or fair, although it's unquestionably thorough. I think it's interesting that what was intended to be an investigation into something tangible devolved into musings about human spirit and motivations. The opening question was whether Everest had been devalued or undermined by guided groups taking climbers up. As the book goes on, this is barely ever mentioned. It doesn't have to be.