StevenTX's 2014 Reading Log - Vol. II

On the Reading Shelf
These are the books I'm planning to read over the next few months. My goal is to read an average of at least one book from each category per month. The cover you see here is not necessarily the edition I'm reading.

Classics of Western Literature
Reading chronologically, re-reading works I read more than 20 years ago. In some cases I will be reading only selections from the "Complete Works" shown below.

       

Science Fiction
Reading chronologically, taking most ideas from Anatomy of Wonder.

       

Fantasy, Horror, Decadent, Surrealist and Gothic Fiction
Reading chronologically, taking ideas from a variety of sources.

       

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Reading chronologically from the list.

       

LT Group Themes
Themed selections for groups such as Literary Centennials and Reading Globally. Selections are taken from the "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" list whenever possible. This category is highly subject to change.

       

Books in Progress and Books in Series
Finishing books and series that I've already started but don't necessarily fit any of the categories above.

       

Index to My 2014 Reading
The book titles link to the work page; the date read links to my Club Read post and discussion.

Anthony, Piers - Eroma - August 9
Aristophanes - The Acharnians - January 18
  - The Knights - February 3
  - The Wasps - August 31
  - Peace - September 7
  - Thesmophoriazusae - September 8
Azuela, Mariano - The Underdogs - August 2
Banville, John - Kepler - August 25
  - The Newton Letter - September 6
Barbusse, Henri - Under Fire - March 18
Beckett, Samuel - How It Is - August 17
Blatnik, Andrej - Skinswaps - April 29
  - Law of Desire: Stories - May 1
Brown, Charles Brockden - Wieland - September 3
Cervantes, Miguel de - The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda - May 29
Chevallier, Gabriel - Fear: A Novel of World War I - April 10
Coover, Robert - The Origin of the Brunists - April 18
  - The Brunist Day of Wrath - June 10
Defontenay, C. I. - Star (Psi Cassiopeia) - June 29
Díaz del Castillo, Bernal - The Conquest of New Spain - July 16
Euripides - The Suppliant Women - January 22
  - The Phoenician Women - September 14
  - Rhesus - September 16
  - Orestes - September 17
Fielding, Henry - Shamela - August 8
Fuentes, Carlos - The Death of Artemio Cruz - September 1
Godwin, William - Things As They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams - January 23
Grimmelshausen, Hans Jacob Christoffel von - The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus - September 13
Hale, Edward Everett - The Brick Moon - August 16
Herodotus - The Histories - January 12
Jancar, Drago - The Tree with No Name - May 26
Jiménez, Juan Ramón - Platero and I - January 29
Levé, Edouard - Works -
Mofolo, Thomas - Chaka the Zulu - February 21
Montalvo, Garci Rodríguez de - Amadis of Gaul: Books I and II and Amadis of Gaul: Books III and IV - April 27
Paskov, Victor - A Ballad for Georg Henig - August 7
Paz, Octavio - The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings - June 2
Perce, Elbert - Gulliver Joi - May 27
Radcliffe, Ann - The Italian - May 13
Rhodes, Richard - The Making of the Atomic Bomb - March 7
Robbe-Grillet, Alain - A Sentimental Novel - May 14
Rojas, Fernando de - La Celestina - January 2
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques - Julie; or, The New Heloise - July 19
Roussel, Raymond - Locus Solus - January 11
Rushdie, Salman - Grimus - February 28
Sand, George - Laura: A Journey into the Crystal - August 10
Sarmiento, Domingo F. - Facundo: or, Civilization and Barbarism - January 4
Seaborn, Adam - Symzonia: A Voyage of Discovery - January 23
Shahnour, Shahan - Retreat without Song - September 4
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus - March 1
Thucydides - The History of the Peloponnesian War - August 19
Torva, Lucretia - Sex!: The Punctuation Mark of Life - April 28
Trueman, Chrysostom - The History of a Voyage to the Moon - July 13
Tucker, George - A Voyage to the Moon - March 19
Verne, Jules - From the Earth to the Moon - July 22
  - Around the Moon - July 25
  - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - September 19
Wells, H. G. - The World Set Free - March 20
Witkiewicz, Stanislaw - Insatiability - August 5
Woolf, Virginia - Night and Day - January 7
Zola, Émile - The Belly of Paris - February 20

2013 Index

2014 Statistics

Summary of Books Read
66 - books read
49 - novels
9 - plays
5 - history
1 - memoir
2 - short story collections
1 - essay collections

Authors
54 - different authors
31 - authors new to me
56 - books by male authors
7 - books by female authors
4 - books by anonymous or unknown authors

Books Read by Author's Nationality
13 - French
12 - English
11 - Ancient Greek
10 - American
5 - Spanish
3 - Slovene
3 - Mexican
3 - Irish
1 - Argentine
1 - Lesothan
1 - Indian
1 - Polish
1 - Bulgarian
1 - Armenian
1 - German

Books Read by Original Language
25 - English
14 - French
11 - Greek
9 - Spanish
3 - Slovene
1 - Sesotho
1 - Polish
1 - Bulgarian
1 - Armenian
1 - German

Books Read by Decade of First Publication
11 - Classical era
1 - 15th century
1 - 16th century
3 - 17th century
1 - 1740s
1 - 1760s
4 - 1790s
2 - 1810s
2 - 1820s
1 - 1840s
2 - 1850s
3 - 1860s
4 - 1870s
1 - 1880s
1 - 1900s
5 - 1910s
2 - 1920s
2 - 1930s
1 - 1950s
3 - 1960s
1 - 1970s
4 - 1980s
2 - 1990s
4 - 2000s
5 - 2010s

2013 Statistics
2012 statistics

I'm belatedly beginning a new thread for the new quarter and hoping to get back into the reading groove now that our house redecorating project is winding down.

THIS SPACE FOR RENT

(accidental duplicate message)

Fear: A Novel of World War I by Gabriel Chevallier
First published 1930 as La Peur
English translation 2011 by Malcolm Imrie
Review of an ARC provided via NetGalley

 

"Would you like to know the chief occupation in war, the only one that matters: I was afraid."

What sets Fear apart from most other autobiographical war novels is the author's stark and unapologetic admission that he was afraid, not just at the most intense moments of combat, but all the time. Nor was he in any way different from his fellow infantrymen. "We were cowards and we knew it and we could be nothing else. The body was in charge and fear gave the orders."

The narrator of the novel, Jean Dartemont, is a 19-year-old student when he is called up for military service late in 1914. His initial feelings of mixed apprehension and curiosity soon turn to disgust for the mechanical and irrational aspects of military life. Nine months later, its training complete, Dartemont's unit is marched down endless dusty roads into the combat zone. "We had just marched over the crest of a hill, and suddenly there before us lay the front line, roaring with all its mouths of fire, blazing like some infernal factory where monstrous crucibles melted human flesh into a bloody lava."

Dartemont serves the entire rest of the war as a private in the French infantry. His experiences run the gamut from front line combat, to boring rear area duty, to special assignments. At one point he is wounded, recuperates, spends a few days leave at home, and is then sent back to the front. The author's description of trench warfare is as intense, harrowing, and grisly as any you will find. Throughout it all there is fear, but most especially during intense artillery bombardments. "Every explosion of the bombardment hits me in the chest. I am ashamed of the sick animal wallowing in filth that I have become, but all my strings have snapped. My fear is abject. It makes me want to spit on myself."

The narrator's attitude toward war and those who make it is equally frank. Speaking of the beginning of the war, he says "In a few short days, civilisation was wiped out. In a few short days, all our leaders became abject failures. For their role, their only role that mattered, was precisely to prevent all this." Dartemont also blames the Church for "ordering me to kill my brothers," he blames women who insist that their sons and lovers come back as heroes, he blames flag-waving patriots who shame others into dying for empty causes like "national honour," and he blames the industrialists who make war for profit. But ultimately the fault is with mankind itself. "Men are sheep. This fact makes armies and wars possible."

Gabriel Chevallier did not publish his fictionalized war memoir until 1930, by which time memories of the horrors of war were fading into nostalgia and Europe was rearming for another war. His strident anti-war novel met with a cool reception, and was eventually removed from publication lest it impair French morale. Its subsequent obscurity is unfortunate, for Fear is one of the most powerful, vivid, and convincing war novels I have ever read.

Fascinating!

Another rewarding entry here. Great find on NetGalley. Glad you survived the housework.

Fabulous review of Fear: A Novel of World War I, Steven. Sounds like one to add to the list.

Wow, I had never heard of Fear: A novel of World war I. Great review Steven. Interesting to learn that it has been left to slide into obscurity.

>1 StevenTX: Interesting collection of books! Looking forward to your thoughts on the Paz book.

>6 StevenTX: Sounds like a great book. (The "grisly" might be too much for me though.) Interesting that they stopped publication unless it "impair French morale." Powerful stuff. Who can argue with his list of people, et. al. for war?

>6 StevenTX: Terrific review of Fear: A Novel of World War I. I might have to add it to my ever growing wish list of books related to the Great War.

Excellent review. The idea that the author actually addresses why the men who make up the armies continue to be complicit in battle is reason alone to read this book: Men are sheep. This fact makes armies and wars possible, but that he also addressed the sheer terror as well, makes him someone to not just read, but to also absorb.

Great review of Fear. I'll definitely be reading this one at some point.

>11 avidmom: Actually I probably understated the violence and gore. "Horrific" might be a better term than "grisly." There are scenes and smells of blood, viscera and excrement throughout, as well as gut-wrenching depictions of suffering on the battlefield and in the hospital. And even this is a feeble understatement.

>13 SassyLassy: The author put most of his anti-war diatribe in the first chapter, which probably wasn't the best approach. It's an unproven thesis until you've read his experiences of three years of war. I couldn't help but compare this book with the other famous French war memoir, Under Fire, which I had recently read. Henri Barbusse, writing at mid-war, was at least optimistic that the horrors of WWI would convince humanity never to do it again. He put the blame on the structure of human society, something that could be corrected. Chevallier, more pessimistic, blames human nature itself. He sees that there will be no end to war and inhumanity.

Fabulous review of Fear, Steven!

Just adding to the acclaim. That was a great review of Fear, and certainly makes me interested in reading it.

The Origin of the Brunists by Robert Coover
First published 1966

 

The Origin of the Brunists is a novel which uses bizarre events to illuminate the lives and ideals of commonplace people. It is set in the 1960s in the town of West Condon, somewhere in the American Midwest. West Condon is a blue collar town with a high proportion of Italian immigrants. Its chief source of livelihood is a single coal mine, Deepwater Number 9, but the coal industry is in decline, and so is the town. A few days after New Years, tragedy strikes: There is an explosion in the mine. Hundreds of panicked workers rush for the exits. Most make it out alive, but 98 are trapped. Days later, rescuers reach the trapped miners. All are dead from burns or asphyxiation but one, Giovanni Bruno, and he is comatose.

When Bruno regains consciousness, his first words are of having been saved by an apparition in the form of a white bird. His vision seems to coincide with that of another miner, a Nazarene minister, who left a cryptic dying message for his wife. A local mystic sees these visions as confirmation of spiritual messages she has received prophesying the end of the world. Before long, a cult is born which calls itself the Brunists. Within weeks the cult's existence becomes an issue which tears at the social fabric of West Condon.

Robert Coover tells this story through the eyes of a number of West Condon residents, but principally two: the skirt-chasing former athlete who now edits the town newspaper, and an aging mine foreman who fears he will never find work again if the mine doesn't reopen. The stress of the mine disaster and the cult seem to bring ordinary events into sharper focus: children rebel against their parents, teenagers clumsily explore sex, politicians and businessmen maneuver for power, ministers strive to control wavering congregations, husbands and wives have extramarital affairs, and gossip continuously feeds the fears, attitudes and prejudices of the community.

The Origin of the Brunists is an outstanding novel which illuminates the individual lives of its characters to produce an excellent composite portrait of an American small town. Yet at the same time it also examines the psychology of religious cults and movements and shows us America's media culture in its formative stages.

Robert Coover has just published a sequel to The Origin of the Brunists (48 years after the original!) titled The Brunist Day of Wrath.

Other books I have read by Robert Coover:
Pricksongs & Descants
Spanking the Maid

Enjoyed your review of The Origin of the Brunists. I read this after reading Coover's The Public Burning and was struck in both instances by his style. The follow up, after 48 years as you say, should be interesting. Thanks for adding that bit, I didn't know of it.

I've never read any Robert Coover, but The Origin of the Brunists sounds interesting.

Great review of The Origin of the Brunists, Steven.

The Origin of the Brunists sounds like it does well what The Age of Miracles did very poorly: uses bizarre events to illuminate the lives and ideals of commonplace people.

Excellent review of The Origin of the Brunists. I won't be tempted by this as it's not on any of my lists. A bit of a change of style for you or did you not realise that the book was written in the mid 20th century.

Are you still reading Amadis of Gaul

>23 baswood: - Yes, I slipped up and actually read something written during my own lifetime, didn't I? It wasn't in my reading plans, but I got curious when I saw that fannyprice was getting a lot of interesting books as free advance reading copies from something called NetGalley. I looked into it and, even though I wasn't sure I'd meet their criteria as a "blogger," I decided to give it a try. I put in for four books, thinking I'd be lucky to get one of them. They sent me all four. Fear: A Novel of World War I was the first one, and a perfect fit for this year's WWI theme in Club Read. The second was The Brunist Day of Wrath, the sequel to The Origin of the Brunists which I owned but hadn't read. So that's why I read it just now. Only yesterday did I realize that the sequel I must now read is 1100 pages long. But it will be fun.

Yes, I'm still reading a couple of chapters a day from Amadis of Gaul. It's a much more sophisticated narrative and more interesting story than I expected. I can see why Don Quixote was such a big fan. It must be its length (1400 pages) that has kept it from being as popular as the Arthurian romances. I'm almost 2/3 through. Amadis has just killed the fire-breathing monster Endriago and reclaimed the Island of the Devil for the Emperor of Constantinople, winning lavish praise from the Emperor and his daughter Leonorina (a very beguiling 8-year-old). But Amadis is still pining for his secret love, Oriana daughter of King Lisuarte of Great Britain and the most beautiful woman in the world. He would be even more distraught if he knew that at this very moment Patin, the Emperor of Rome, is approaching British shores intent on claiming Princess Oriana as his bride.

Every time I read about Amadis of Gaul in your thread I get closer to actually reading it. I've already looked where I could get a copy. What you write about it definitely sounds intriguing!

>24 StevenTX:, Steven, I had exactly the same experience with NetGalley. I thought, "there's no way I'll get any of these books!" so I requested like 35 books. I got most of them. Ooops.

Amadis of Gaul by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo
First published 1508 in Castillian
English translation by Edwin Place and Herbert Behm 1974
Published as Amadis of Gaul: Books I and II
and Amadis of Gaul: Books III and IV

   

Anyone who has read Don Quixote should recognize the name Amadis of Gaul. He was Quixote's role model as the perfect example of a chivalrous knight-errant. By the time Cervantes wrote his novel, the story of Amadis had been in print in Spanish for over a century, and parts of it in a more primitive form had existed in Spanish and other languages since the 14th century. Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo collected and translated the early Amadis texts--which consisted at the time of three books--modified them and added a fourth book entirely of his own invention. He died in 1504, leaving his Amadis to be published posthumously in 1508.

The story of Amadis takes place at a time several generations before that of King Arthur. There is still a Roman Empire, as well as a Byzantine Empire, but Great Britain, Gaul and Spain are independent kingdoms. The tale begins with the meeting of Amadis's parents, King Perion of Gaul and Princess Elisena of Brittany. They have a secret moonlight tryst, then separate. Elisena becomes pregnant as a result, but manages to hide her condition from her parents. When she gives birth to Amadis, her maid takes the baby, puts him in a boat along with a note, a ring and a sword, and shoves him out to sea. He is found (of course), and reared by foster parents in Scotland who call him just "Child of the Sea." Years later Amadis's parents actually get married, but Elisena doesn't tell her husband about the child she bore and abandoned.

The Child of the Sea, having remarkable good looks, physical prowess and moral rectitude, desires nothing more than to become a knight. He finds a patron in King Lisuarte of Great Britain, and falls madly and permanently in love with the king's daughter Oriana. Just as Amadis is the most perfect knight in the world, Oriana is the most beautiful woman in the world. Amadis goes on one adventure after another, fighting other knights, rescuing captives, slaying giants, and doing battle with a fire-breathing monster. Along the way his parentage is disclosed, he learns his real name, and he finds that he has two brothers--both of them exemplary knights. His travels take him to the shores of Bohemia and the isles of Romania (obviously Montalvo's geography was a little fuzzy) and as far as Constantinople. He is aided from time to time by the mysterious sorceress Urganda the Unknown, and tangles more than once with her arch-enemy Arcalus the Enchanter.

Amadis pines constantly for his lady love, Oriana, who loves him just as much in return. They keep their affections secret from all but their closest friends, but when Fortune gives them a night together they make the most of it. Oriana gets pregnant, secretly bears a son named Esplandian, and in trying to hide him accidentally loses him in the woods where he is nursed by a lioness, then reared by a hermit. He is destined, as we are told many times, to become an even greater knight than Amadis and eventually Emperor of Constantinople.

The overriding theme of Amadis of Gaul is the institution of knight-errantry. A knight is expected to go in search of adventures which will add to his glory and honor. His first duty is to help maidens and matrons in need, but he is also to aid and defend the poor and downtrodden of either gender. He is devoutly religious and displays proper Christian virtues, but he fights for personal glory, not the glory of the Church. He also seeks to be worthy of his lady love, if he should have one. Those knights who do not have a lady are free to enjoy the bed of any willing maiden, but once a knight-errant has fallen in love--even if it is his own secret--he must be true to his lady, no matter how many years it will take him to win her. A knight's martial prowess reflects his moral worth, for God would not have made him strong unless he were good. This leads to a system of justice based on trial by combat. Even a beauty contest is decided by a joust, with the damsel whose champion emerges victorious being crowned most beautiful.

Knights-errant usually go about in full armor with their helmets secured, thus keeping their identity hidden. Inevitably this leads to several accidental battles between brothers, friends, father and son, etc. Amadis especially seems to make a fetish of secrecy, using assumed names on most of his adventures. (One wonders how he expects to earn glory if no one knows who he is.) In this and other respects, knights-errant are the precursors of our modern-day fictional costumed superheroes. In their less noble aspects they resemble Wild West gunfighters.

The first book of Amadis of Gaul consists of a series of loosely connected short adventures, some of which readers of Arthurian legends will easily recognize as having been borrowed from the exploits of Lancelot, Parzival, Tristan and Gawain. The second and third books, however, appear to have been heavily re-written by Montalvo to weave Amadis's adventures and those of his friends and brothers into a larger, more coherent story. The author keeps several quests going at once, shifting scenes to maintain the suspense. In the fourth book, which is Montalvo's own, action is on a much grander scale, as Amadis and Oriana are the focus of a clash of empires.

The novel regularly addresses several moral and emotional dilemmas. Are we obliged to sacrifice our personal honor for the general good or the welfare of our friends? (Amadis refuses to.) What do we do when our personal honor and our duty to our sovereign are at odds? (Amadis puts his pride before his king, and is praised for doing so.) And how do we handle that moment when we realize that we are past our prime and it is time to let the next generation take the spotlight?

The writing in Amadis of Gaul is the least stylized and formulaic of any of the romances of chivalry I have read. This is not to say that it is the best, or that the language is modern, but that the dialog and feelings of the characters are the most natural, and the actions are the most believable. This is especially true of the many combat scenes. Montalvo writes like a man who has been there. Every joust and every battle is distinctly different and filled with believable and vivid detail.

Montalvo followed up his Amadis with a volume called The Exploits of Esplandian (which he shamelessly plugs throughout Book IV). Other writers of various nationalities followed it up with their own sequels until, by Don Quixote's time, the Amadis franchise consisted of at least 24 volumes. The sequels, however, are markedly inferior to the original four books of Montalvo's as Cervantes himself tells us in Don Quixote. The only complete modern English translation is the edition in two volumes by Edwin Place and Herbert Behm, which is the one I am reviewing. It appears to be a very literal translation, preserving the occasional long and ornate phase at the expense of readability. For a work of such size and antiquity, there are surprisingly few explanatory notes or other aids. Robert Southey's 1803 translation is also widely available, but the prudish poet removed the few references to sexual activity and the female body, as well as some moral asides by Montalvo that he thought were boring. Southey's translation was published in three volumes, but it does contain all four original books. Sue Burke is publishing a translation of Amadis of Gaul on her blog in biweekly installments, but is only about half finished. If you want to sample the story, you can do so at http://amadisofgaul.blogspot.com/.

I found Amadis of Gaul to be often entertaining and occasionally moving or suspenseful even though the leading characters, as is typical of medieval romances, are unbelievably perfect. It would certainly be more widely read if it were shorter, but its length of 1400+ pages no doubt has intimidated translators, publishers and readers alike.



"The Knight-errant" by John Everett Millais shows what could be a typical scene from Amadis of Gaul, the rescuing of a damsel in distress. Amadis finds at least one damsel tied to a tree by a would-be rapist, but her state of dress isn't specified. Note that Millais's knight is wearing armor from a period later than Montalvo's. His moon is also impossible--for the crescent to be perpendicular to the horizon the sun would also have to be in the sky.



This painting, "I Am Sir Launcelot du Lake" by N. C. Wyeth, is probably a more accurate depiction of the armor worn by Amadis than the Millais painting. The helmet did not have a hinged visor, so it had to be unlaced and removed to reveal the knight's face. The body was covered mostly by chain mail, with armor plate in the more exposed areas, but this appears to have varied according to the wearer's wealth and taste. The fallen horse in the background is typical, as horses suffered a higher casualty rate than their riders, mostly from high-speed collisions, but also from errant sword strokes hitting them in the back of the neck. Every knight was also accompanied by one or more squires, as you see in the background. They carried his provisions, extra lances, etc., but were not allowed to participate in combat against knights. On the other hand, if a common thief or other lower-class villain appeared, only the squire could fight him. Knights were prohibited from fighting non-knights except in self defense.

Great review of Amadis of Gaul. I think I will be one of those readers put off by its length.

Interesting to see those pictures of knights in armour. The Wyeth painting looks much more realistic; the armour actually looks heavy in that picture as it must have been in real life.

>27 StevenTX: Steven, Your review of Amadis of Gaul is excellent. Very interesting.

I agree with Barry's first paragraph!

OH! So that's who Don Quixote was trying to be! Cool!

Fascinating illustrated review. I wish the knight in Millais' painting would keep his eyes on what he is doing. Lots of potential for inadvertent injuries!

>27 StevenTX: kudos Steven - great review and congrats for reading the entire thing.

>18 StevenTX: this review of The origin of the Brunists leaves me so curious. How does it tie into the historical Giovanni Bruno, and does it take the freedom of science of approach, the pantheist approach, or some other parallel or not so parallel approach? Might need to keep this one in mind. Good luck with the sequel.

>33 dchaikin: Dan, I think the historical person was Giordano Bruno, not Giovanni, but the parallel of names is interesting.

>33 dchaikin: - I'm sure you were thinking of Giordano Bruno, as Rebecca said, but the association of the two by readers is inevitable, therefore it has to be considered an intentional choice by the author. There is also the fact that Giovanni Bruno is the Italian equivalent of John Brown, another historical martyr figure. And there are a number of aspects to Bruno's experience which parallel that of Christ, such as the fact that he was entombed for three days before being rescued and "rising from the dead." What I think Coover is doing is showing how we construct meaning out of cultural association, even to the point of redirecting our lives on the basis of what is actually only a coincidence. There is one example after another in the book where people who are looking for spiritual direction find "signs" in ordinary or random events that they have just chosen to interpret as pointing them in the direction they already wanted to go.

I'm not sure if that answers your question about the author's approach. Here again, what we take from the book depends on what we brought with us. I see it as a satire of all religions, but a Baptists might come away with the message to "beware false prophets," while a Catholic just sees that those crazy Protestants are at it again. From the little I've read of the sequel, however, it appears to be a broader and more vicious satire of religion in general--but it's too early to be sure.

>27 StevenTX: Great review, putting the book in context.
How did you learn about armour?

On another note, I would agree that Coover is satirizing belief, but I also found a strong association between the subjects of his satire and the less advantaged of the town. That just made the line about the poor being always among us pop into my head. Coover certainly wasn't a hopeful writer. No wonder the townspeople were looking for signs of a better life!

Sex! The Punctuation Mark of Life by Lucretia Torva
First published 2014
Review of an ARC provided via NetGalley

 

Sex! The Punctuation Mark of Life is an autobiographical work focusing entirely on the author's sex life. Its purpose is to present "real stories with real men, and women... not some made up fantasy that is highly improbable," to demonstrate that sex is not only fun, but is important to our physical, emotional and spiritual health. She condemns the "puritan, or guilt-ridden point of view" that only "leads to more perversions and addictions." The stories are taken from her own life, are presented in chronological order, and appear to have been fictionalized only to the point of disguising the identities of Torva's sex partners.

The stories span the author's entire adult life from age 18 to the very recent past (she is now in her 50s). Most of the episodes deal with her first experience with a particular sex act or combination of partners, including bisexuality and group sex, and are quite explicit. Romance is noticeably absent. With only a single exception, her encounters are with casual acquaintances or, more recently, with men and women whom she meets via the Adult FriendFinder dating service. She limits herself to one or two meetings with any single partner to avoid stale, long-term attachments. Torva promotes sex as a form of recreation like bridge or tennis, not as the culmination of a love affair.

Unfortunately the author's message is clouded by some of the few details she gives us about her life outside of the bedroom. She had two failed marriages followed by a long period of dependency on anti-depressants. She needs alcohol to release her inhibitions before having sex, and not long ago was celibate by choice for several years. These admissions seem to contradict her claim that an adventurous sex life has brought her emotional and spiritual well-being, or at least to beg for further explanation. Still, she makes a good point when she says "I feel that I need to be uncomfortable with regularity whether it's about sex or business or art or whatever. I don't grow without being uncomfortable."

The language in which the book is written is youthful, casual and conversational. Interjections like "Tee hee!" and "Yum!" aren't to my taste, but some readers will enjoy them. What I found more objectionable is that the author includes only her adventures where everything goes perfectly, so while these may be "real stories" they aren't all that different from the "made up fantasy" of flawless bodies and uninhibited pleasure typical of most erotic fiction. Getting drunk and going off to have sex with a stranger, as she does more than once, is also not a wise thing for a woman to do. So while this book's ideal audience may be a young person who needs some erotic instruction or a pep talk on getting the most out of his or her sex life, it could lead both to inflated expectations and risk-taking if taken too seriously. The author's claims regarding the therapeutic value of recreational sex may be true, but her memoir is best treated as erotic entertainment only.

Interjections like "Tee hee!" and "Yum!"

Bleargh! Urgh! Yuck!

(teheeheehee...)

That book sounds like it demonstrates the opposite of what the author intended. And that, at least, is funny.

>36 SassyLassy: - How did you learn about armour?

I'm no expert on the subject--there's just a lot of realistic detail in Amadis of Gaul. For example, the knight's shield was actually hung from his neck with a sling, not just held in his hand, and his sword was attached to his wrist with a lanyard. Both of these were so he could retrieve them if they were knocked from his grasp while on horseback.

One of the most memorable scenes was a large battle in which eager, undisciplined knights in the rear ranks kept pushing forward until the opposing front lines were so crammed together that there was no room to swing a sword. All the knights on the front line could do was grapple the enemy by hand and try not to be crushed or thrown to the ground. Montalvo says that they were in far more danger of being trampled to death by their own side than of being killed by the enemy. John Keegan's landmark study The Face of Battle describes just such scenes from medieval warfare, which tells me that Montalvo was a man who had participated in knightly combat himself and whose descriptions can be trusted.

Thanks for your comment about Coover's view of the lower classes. His sympathetic look at poverty and the despair of unemployment is yet another aspect to the novel that makes it worth reading. The sequel seems less sympathetic (so far, at least). Many of the Brunists seem to be more dimwitted than disadvantaged.

>39 StevenTX: very interesting. Although I doubt I will ever read Amadis of Gaul, The Face of Battle seems within the realm of possibility. Whether I do or not, I always learn something from your thread, Steven. Thanks

Skinswaps by Andrej Blatnik
First published in Slovenian 1990
English translation by Tamara Soban 1998

 

Skinswaps is a collection of short stories, most of them using skin as a motif and often as a metaphor for identity. The stories have various settings, including the author's native Slovenia which, at the time of his writing, was still a part of Yugoslavia but had a growing independence movement. Political themes are obvious in several of the stories.

In the chilling story "His Mommy's Voice," a boy sees a horror movie in which a killer deceives a child by pretending to be its mother. Coming home from the movie, the boy becomes convinced that his mother is an enemy in disguise. It isn't difficult to warp the innocent so that they fear what they should love and love what they should fear.

Several stories, like "Two," are abstract and metafictional. "I can feel the animal lick my hand hanging over the side of the bed," the narrator begins, but does it exist? Does it exist only because he is thinking of it? Does the animal want him to keep on thinking of it until it is strong enough to kill him? Or is the animal thinking up the narrator too?

Other selections are about people who have walled themselves off from social and interpersonal relations, retreating into the private shells of their skins. In "Actually" it is a writer who has withdrawn into his writing to the extent that everything that happens to him in real life is immediately transposed into a story he is writing. He never moves from his desk, typing every word he speaks or that is spoken to him as it is being spoken.

Perhaps the most disturbing story is "The Taste of Blood," which deals with the aftermath of violence and oppression when any uniform is something to fear. A lonely young woman named Katarina comes upon the body of a drowned girl on a riverbank as two policemen are waiting for the hearse to remove it. Katarina is fascinated by the sight. The policemen tease her, then proceed to making sexual advances and threats. Not long ago, policemen such as these had killed her father. They laugh and reassure her that they mean her no harm, but can she believe them? Does she even want them to be bluffing? Or has the taste of blood entered her system to where she needs violence and coercion?

Skinswaps is an excellent collection with a mix of settings, moods and themes. Though most of the stories are darkly ironic, there is enough humor mixed in to provide relief when it is needed.

I was curious as to how you came across this title, and looked up the publisher. I got all excited when I saw that it was part of a series called Writings from an Unbound Europe. Sadly, I then read the following in a blog entry by Chad Post at Three Percent:

The editors of Northwestern University Press have decided to end the run of Writings from an Unbound Europe, the only more or less comprehensive book series devoted to translated contemporary literature from the former communist countries of Eastern/Central Europe. The final title in the series, the novel Sailing Against the Wind (Vastutuulelaev) by the Estonian Jaan Kross (1920-2007) will appear in a translation by Eric Dickens some time in 2012. With that title Unbound Europe will have published 61 books since its inception in 1993. Among the highlights of what has been published over this twenty-year period are the first English-language editions of David Albahari, Ferenc Barnas, Petra Hůlová, Drago Jančar, Anzhelina Polonskaya, and Goce Smilevski. By far the best selling title in the series is Death and the Dervish (Drviš i smrt) by the Bosnian writer Meša Selimović (1910-1982), which has sold close to 6000 copies since it appeared in 1996. In recent years, however, changes in book-buying habits and diminished interest in Eastern/Central Europe in the English speaking world have led to significantly lower sales, even for masterpieces by such major writers as Borislav Pekić and Bohumil Hrabal. I would like to thank the series co-editors Clare Cavanagh, Michael Henry Heim, Roman Koropeckyj, and Ilya Kutik as well as several generations of Northwestern University Press editors and directors for their work on this project. Most of the books published in the series remain in print and will continue to be available on the Northwestern University Press backlist.

Andrew Wachtel
General Editor

It's such a shame that translated fiction gets such short shrift in the US.

Nevertheless, I will start looking for titles in this series.

>42 labfs39: That's a shame about the Writings from an Unbound Europe. I've read several in that series and have a few more on the shelf I haven't gotten to yet.

I should probably explain why I read this book now when it isn't related to any of my current reading themes. I actually bought it more than a year ago when Reading Globally was doing a theme on Eastern Europe, but I didn't get to it before the quarter ended. Then, earlier this month, I joined NetGalley and saw a new book by Blatnik listed, a collection of stories titled Law of Desire. I put in for it and got it, but I decided to read his earlier work first as background. Law of Desire will be published in August by Dalkey Archive as part of their Slovenian Literature Series, which has nine titles so far.

Sex! The punctuation mark of life. Are you sure NetGalley is such a good idea.

>44 baswood: - Are you sure NetGalley is such a good idea.

I'm just going to be more selective from now on. After all, look at the other books I've reviewed or received: Fear: A Novel of World War I, The Brunist Day of Wrath, and most recently three books from Dalkey Archive Press.

I wish I read on a device. It sounds as though you are able to find some real gems and from interesting presses too.

>46 labfs39: I wish I read on a device.

I just happened to notice today that Kindles are on sale for Mothers Day. The Paperwhite, their best e-reader model, is just $99.

I'm tempted. Yet I am still so fond of possessing the books I read that I fear I would want to then buy in paper those books that I read and enjoyed electronically. Also, my desire to read e-books is mostly because of the availability of free and inexpensive versions, which contradicts my desire to support and help sustain the publication of paper books, especially those in translation, and bookstores.

>42 labfs39: >43 StevenTX: I see that I have two unread titles from the Writings from an Unbound Europe series (one of them the best-selling Death and the Dervish), but the whole series sounds intriguing. How disappointing that they're discontinuing it.

Wonderful review of Amadis of Gaul.

Skinswaps sounds like a very cool collection. I think that one's going on my wishlist.

Law of Desire: Stories by Andrej Blatnik
First published in Slovenian 2000
English translation 2014 by Tamara M. Soban
Review of an ARC provided via NetGalley



Law of Desire is a collection of fifteen short stories about people struggling to understand and communicate their needs and wants. The settings are typically modern, some of them in regions of recent conflict such as the war-torn countries of the former Yugoslavia, others in the United States or unspecified urban locations. The characters are typically troubled and insecure, often wanting nothing more than to be understood, but finding it the most difficult of all to obtain.

In "What We Talk About," a young man and woman are attracted to each other, but their relationship can't get past their awkward fumbling for something to talk about.

"When Marta's Son Returned" describes a mother's frustration in trying to break her son out of the shell into which he has withdrawn since returning from a war. She finally uses music to get him to talk, but what he says leads her to a conclusion that is a gut-wrenching and unexpected statement about war and society.

"Electric Guitar" takes us inside the mind of an abused child whose father is trying for force him to learn the accordion. His attempts are hopeless, but while he is being punished for his failures he secretly dreams of playing an electric guitar. (The electric guitar is a motif in several of the stories in the collection.)

In the chilling "Letter to Father" the protagonist is not a single character, but Mankind itself writing a letter to its god: "Father. Are you there? Are you listening? I'm tired, Father. I can't tell your stories any more. I've forgotten my own."

And in "Just As Well," a man comes home early to find his wife in bed with his best friend. He can't decide whether to shoot his friend, his wife, or himself. None of his options is good, but things can't just go back to the way they were, can they?

Blatnik's stories range in mood from dark comedy to bitter irony. Among other things, they demonstrate how our failure to achieve our desires is often because of the obstacles modern life seems to throw in the way of simple communication.

How do you think this collection compared to his last? Which would you recommend first?

ETA: I forgot to say thanks for a compelling review.

>53 labfs39: - Skinswaps, the first collection, was more to my taste because of its absurd and metafictional aspects. Its stories also dealt more with political issues than with interpersonal relationships. Law of Desire: Stories includes an interview with the author in which the interviewer asks if the trend in Blatnik's fiction reflects a general trend in writing "towards a literature of the conflicted individual as opposed to a literature of social beings in conflict." Blatnik responds that writers from Eastern and Central Europe "had to fight for the existence of a literature that does not necessarily serve a specific political or national idea. Most of the writing in our region in the last few decades was primarily meant to serve a task other than a literary one." He says that the literature of his region has "achieved a new freedom--the freedom to be 'just' literature... now literature's subject is the politics of everyday life."

So to give a long-winded and ambivalent answer to your question, I would say which one you choose to read is a matter of whether you prefer more conventionally-written stories that are relevant to everyday life (Law of Desire) or edgier stories with more of a political message (Skinswaps). In between these two books he also published a collection titled You Do Understand, which sounds similar to Law of Desire. All three collections are very short, by the way, under 125 pages each.

>54 StevenTX: interesting post about the interview with Andrej Blatnik. I suppose it's not surprising that writers in the Eastern bloc would be pushed into writing more about social conflict.

Excellent review of Law of Desire: Stories

>27 StevenTX: That is one fantastic review of Amadis of Gaul!

>56 OscarWilde87: - Thanks! I was afraid my review was too long, but I decided this was a book hardly anyone else is likely to read, but one that some might like to know about, so a longer review was justified.

Just to add more thanks for your review of Amadis of Gaul, and the erudite comments on armour and warfare.

I was told that foot armour had long toes was because some sneaky bunch of foot soldiers, I've forgotten which, would drive a pike through the foot of an armoured opponent to stake him in place before hacking him to death. Big long armour feet made the actual foot a less certain target. Unless the foot armour could be shed like a lizard's tail I don't see how the long empty toe helped, but that's the story they tell at Hampton Court Palace.

>58 Oandthegang: Apparently the long toes were just a matter of fashion and were not used in actual combat situations. I don't recall anything being said about footwear in Amadis of Gaul.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabaton

Works by Edouard Levé
First published in French 2002
English translation by Jan Steyn 2014
Review of an ARC provided via NetGalley

 

"1. A book describes works that the author has conceived but not brought into being." Edouard Levé's Works opens with a succinct description of itself. Works is not a novel, but a list with brief descriptions of 533 artistic projects in various forms: text, photography, painting, sculpture, film, and live performance. Some are practical, and a few have no doubt already been executed by someone. Others are merely exercises of the imagination. Here are some brief examples:

"14. The floor of a cage is littered with pages from the Old Testament. For a month, a record is kept of the words upon which a hummingbird comes to rest. A text is written using only those works."

"92. A drawing is made on a score for a piano piece. A pianist performs the piece, playing only the notes pierced by lines from the drawing. He then plays only the untouched notes."

"107. Someone tries to speak two separate texts simultaneously: the first one out loud, the other in sign language. Video."

"148. The wings of a stuffed pheasant are made from glued-together bees."

"256. An anamorphic etching of a stag, hidden inside an alto sax, is visible through a peephole installed in the instrument's neck."

"346. Silent moments in a film are shown in their order of appearance. The piece has the same title as the film."

"506. A house with its walls, furniture, and fixtures made out of white marshmallow, deteriorates as visitors lean against its walls, sit on its couches, handle its objects, scratch its surfaces, or eat them."

At first glance, Works is just a long list of silly ideas, but several themes run through the book that describe not only the nature of art, but how we perceive and understand the world. One is the deliberate or random juxtaposition of one image or concept upon another and how it changes our ideas about the subject. Another is how our understanding of something is shaped by the medium we use to describe it. And yet another pervasive idea is the way our idea of the world is shaped by our preconceptions and narrowed by the way we choose to focus our thoughts and senses.

Works is a strangely absorbing and surprisingly thoughtful book that will especially appeal to those who enjoy experimental fiction such as the works of Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, and David Markson.

Amadis of Gaul continues to have the power to inspire...

This morning I went to Home Depot to purchase, among other things, a tree pruner. As soon as I had in my grasp that stout eight-foot pole, tipped with its menacing saw, it became a mighty iron-tipped lance. My cart became my steed. Aisle by aisle, we charged, knocking from his mount any knight who dared to challenge us. Coming to the grill department we did battle with a fire-breathing monster. Finally we came upon a damsel in distress--tied to an oak with her own garden hose, her tears of despair raining down upon the petunias. I released the damsel and made off with the monster's treasure: five bags of golden mulch!

>61 StevenTX: :) That is some great inspiration!

I was going to say that the armored footwear in post #59 reminds me of the feet of one of the Dr. Seuss characters.

I have read something along the same lines as Works, Edouard Leve but can't remember what it was. It did not inspire me to the same thoughts that you had about Leve's book.

I also have one of those tree pruners, but..................perhaps Levy's book has more of an influence than Amadis of Gaul

>61 StevenTX: Ha!

>60 StevenTX: Your description reminded me a bit of an NYRB book I have on my shelf called Novels in Three Lines by Félix Fénéon.

Novels in Three Lines collects more than a thousand items that appeared anonymously in the French newspaper Le Matin in 1906—true stories of murder, mayhem, and everyday life presented with a ruthless economy that provokes laughter even as it shocks. This extraordinary trove, undiscovered until the 1940s and here translated for the first time into English, is the work of the mysterious Félix Fénéon. Dandy, anarchist, and critic of genius, the discoverer of Georges Seurat and the first French publisher of James Joyce, Fénéon carefully maintained his own anonymity, toiling for years as an obscure clerk in the French War Department. Novels in Three Lines is his secret chef-d’oeuvre, a work of strange and singular art that brings back the long-ago year of 1906 with the haunting immediacy of a photograph while looking forward to such disparate works as Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and the Death and Disaster series of Andy Warhol.



Brandy he thought. Actually it was carbolic acid.
Thus Philibert Faroux, of Noroy, Oise, outlived
his spree by a mere two hours.

Must have been a doozy to translate and capture both the humor and the rhythm.

They remind me of Barry's book haikus.

The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
First published 1797

 

The Italian is one of the classic Gothic tales of horror, suspense and romance. The principal setting is Naples where, in 1758, Vincenitio di Vivaldi first sees and instantly falls in love with Ellena Rosalba. Vivaldi is the only child of a proud, cold nobleman the Marchese di Vivaldi and his scheming wife the Marchesa. Ellena is a girl of uncertain parentage and dignified but meager circumstances. As soon as Vivaldi's parents learn that he is romancing a woman unworthy of his family, they demand that he cease all contact with Ellena. Vivaldi, a noble and honest but tempestuous youth, refuses and declares his intention to marry her.

The Marchesa consults and conspires with her personal Confessor, a sinister monk who calls himself Father Schedoni. Eager to secure his own advancement by aiding a powerful family, Schedoni employs his own ruffians and fellow monastics to scare Vivaldi away from Ellena. Failing that, he arranges to have the innocent girl slandered and then kidnapped. Eventually his machinations will involve the dreaded Inquisition.

Radcliffe takes us repeatedly through moonlit scenes of crumbling ruins where ghostly apparitions appear, into castle towers and dungeon cells, and along narrow and dangerous mountain paths and forested trails. At the same time she waxes eloquently over the beauty and majesty of Italy's mountainscapes, seashores, idyllic lakes and peaceful pastures (all places the author herself never saw but knew only through contemporary works of art). Though many of the terrors that Vivaldi and Ellena face appear to be supernatural, Radcliffe eventually gives everything a rational explanation. What would be harder to explain is the series of extraordinary meetings and unlikely coincidences that serve first to cloud the picture, then bring all the dark secrets of everyone's past to light--but this is standard fare for the fiction of the age, especially the Gothic.

Many early Gothic works are anti-Catholic and especially anti-monastic. Radcliffe's villains are all either monks or nuns or those counseled by them. But she appears deliberately to soften the picture by presenting a good Catholic example to balance every bad Catholic. Where one convent is nothing but a prison and place of torment, another is a quiet, contemplative and joyful refuge. Likewise there is a good friar and a compassionate inquisitioner. But Radcliffe makes it clear that God is to be found in Nature, not in the Church, which she refers to as "the awful veil which obscures the features of the Deity, and conceals Him from the eyes of his creatures."

The Italian is entertaining and suspenseful, but I didn't find it as enjoyable as Radcliffe's most celebrated work, The Mysteries of Udolpho. Ellena Rosalba is particularly disappointing as a heroine, for she is meek and passive even by the standards of the time. Her archenemy the Marchesa is much more interesting: how badly will she hurt her son in order to protect him from a bad match? Is a family's reputation worth the price of her soul?

The edition I read was the one contained in the Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe. Delphi's ebook collections are normally of high quality, but this was an exception. There were typos throughout the work, especially in the second half, mostly where the "long s" in a scanned early edition of the work had been read as an "f," turning words like "sold" into "fold."

Nice review of The Italian, which I hope to read off my tbr one day.

A Sentimental Novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet
First published in French 2007
English translation by D. E. Brooke 2013
Review of an ARC provided via NetGalley

 

At the age of 84, just a few months before his death, Alain Robbe-Grillet published a novel so extreme and controversial that some critics said he had gone insane, and it took years to find an American publisher willing to put forth a translation. A Sentimental Novel is a story based on sexual fantasies Robbe-Grillet said he had nurtured, with very little change, since the age of twelve. It is also an homage to the French tradition of libertine, decadent and erotic literature beginning with the Marquis de Sade.

The central character is a 14-year-old girl named Angina, or "Gigi." She is being raised by her wealthy father in a secluded estate to be both his sex toy and his partner in sadistic revels. Their world is not ours: It is a curious combination of 18th century manners and furnishings with 21st century technologies. The government collaborates with their adventures, arresting pretty girls on the least pretext to sell them to buyers "for all uses," which can include torture. There is even a display put on of torture as an art form as in Octave Mirbeau's 1899 novel The Torture Garden, only the victims in this case are all young girls.

Robbe-Grillet writes in his signature cinematic style devoid of authorial comment or judgment. There are a few playful elements suggesting this is all just a macabre satire, but near the end there is a brief remark by one of the characters which suggests that the author may be expressing his bitterness that modern society expects even one's fantasies to comply with safe, politically acceptable norms. A girl complains that "in the so-called 'normal' universe where they used to live, before being sold as objects of pleasure, everything fun is banned."

Other works I have read by Alain Robbe-Grillet:
Jealousy and In the Labyrinth
The Erasers

Kudos for getting through A Sentimental Novel and for posting an excellent review. I think I might avoid Ann Radcliffe's The Italians.

Sounds creepy!

The Tree with No Name by Drago Jancar
First published in Slovene 2008
English translation by Michael Biggins 2013
Review of an ARC provided via NetGalley

 

Janez Lipnik is an archivist employed by the Slovene government to sort and classify document and to do research. In a collection of documents from Slovene expatriates in Australia he comes across a remarkable journal in which an unidentified man recorded his sexual affairs with over 400 women. But aside from the journal's obvious prurient appeal, what captures Lipnik's attention is that the very first woman mentioned, identified only as a schoolteacher named Zala D., appears to have been Lipnik's own teacher when he was a young boy in the years shortly after World War II. Lipnik becomes obsessed with the idea of verifying this theory to the point that he neglects his job and his wife and gradually loses touch with time and reality.

Lipnik is a man in his 60s, and it is the year 2000 when he comes across the libertine's journal, but the focus of the novel is the confused and violent period in Slovene history during and after World War II when various factions were contending for power. There were the Axis occupying forces, first Italian then German, and the Home Guard, their local allies. Fighting against them and each other were the communist partisans, Serb nationalists, and Yugoslav royalists. Zala D. was one of many women who would be called to account for having loved someone on the losing side. But she will be tormented even more by her own memories, as was Lipnik's father, a partisan who was arrested by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz.

The novel is told in non-linear fashion, much of it interior monologue. Lipnik comes to see himself, not just as an archivist, but as an archive. All of history is present in his consciousness, all of it taking place at once, and he is living all of it. He has "looked into the abyss and beyond wakefulness into dreams, and beyond dreams into the past, beyond his birth." Lipnik loses all contact with the trivial present. "History," he says, "flows through me like an invisible, noiseless river." Events of his own life are magically interwoven with those of Zala D., her mysterious lover, and Lipnik's own father. They are also mixed with elements of Slovene folklore, such as the mythical tree which gives the novel its title.

The Tree with No Name is a mesmerizing confrontation with history, the shameful as well as the heroic, and a reminder that the past will always be a part of us.

Sounds fascinating, Steven.

Finally catching up and thoroughly enjoying your intriguing reviews.

The tree with no name sounds good. Did the time shifts work well enough not to cause too much confusion for the reader, because many people (and I don't include Rebecca or Lisa) would not be familiar with the history of that period.

>71 rebeccanyc: I think you would enjoy it.

>73 baswood: The time shifts themselves aren't a problem. The book actually starts with a dream or hallucination sequence, and the first chapter is numbered something like 89. After a few chapters we come to the beginning of the story (Lipnik's discovery of the manuscript) with Chapter 1. What might be more confusing than the time shifts are the various groups contending in the mid-1940s for control of what was then part of Yugoslavia and is now Slovenia. There is an afterward by the translator which explains much of this, though it also discusses a central event in the book which some might consider a spoiler.

The time shifting in this novel is a kind of circling of the central event, revisiting scenes over and over with new detail and perspective. In this respect the author's technique strongly reminds me of that of Arundhati Roy in The God of Small Things.

>74 StevenTX: What might be more confusing than the time shifts are the various groups contending in the mid-1940s for control of what was then part of Yugoslavia and is now Slovenia.

I can well imagine, because it was confusing in 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning, about events in Croatia.

Gulliver Joi by Elbert Perce
First published 1857

   

Gulliver Joi may have been the first book in history to depict a rocket-powered spaceship. Centuries earlier Cyrano de Bergerac had described his voyage to the moon in an open sled powered by skyrockets, but Cyrano went only partway under rocket power. His sled fell back to earth, and he was drawn the rest of the way to the moon by the attractive power of bone marrow he had smeared on his body. Gulliver Joi, however, uses an enclosed cylindrical craft powered by a solid rocket fuel and controlled by a throttle and steering vanes. Midway en route to the planet Kailoo he reverses his craft so the engine nozzle is pointing to his destination and gently throttles back to slow his descent for a soft touchdown.

The rocket ship is the one bright spot in this otherwise unremarkable and often laughably unscientific early work of science fiction. It describes the three voyages of Gulliver Joi, a rather irresponsible young New Yorker who decides, as soon as his overbearing father has died, to sail off and see the world. Crossing the Pacific he is shipwrecked on a barren but hollow rock. Inside the rock lives a strange old man who has invented a rocket ship but is too infirm to fly it himself. He shows Gulliver a beautiful planet in his telescope and sends him on his way.

The planet Kailoo is just like Earth except that its days are two hours long. Its inhabitants live proportionately faster and shorter lives. They keep satyr-like creatures as slaves, and the only serious discussion in the novel is a brief exchange about the evils of slavery.

Somewhere high above Kailoo is the land of Hydrogenia where a race of enormously fat men and skinny women breathe hydrogen and sail on seas of air. They fish for Kailooans using jewels as lures and keep them as pets in vases of air like fish in bowls. Gulliver lets himself be caught so he can rescue his beloved Martha who has been taken by the Hydrogenians.

Gulliver's third voyage is back on earth to the previously undiscovered island of Ejario. It is a land ruled by women thanks to a magic spell cast by a fire-breathing dragon. Gulliver arrives in time to witness a great battle in which opposing lines of female warriors, armed with gigantic knitting needles, hurl volleys of spiteful gossip at each other. Gulliver helps turn things around and put men back in charge of the island's affairs, for which the women are meekly grateful.

Elbert Perce seems to have delighted simply in creating topsy-turvy worlds. There is no satire here, and only a little bit of humor. The astronomy is barely medieval, and the science often worse. By the end of the novel he's writing fantasy, not science fiction, with dragons, enchanted dwarfs, and magic potions. This is a short, mildly amusing novel that will appeal chiefly to those who want to see the state of science fiction writing just before Jules Verne came on the scene.

Interesting, but I think I'll skip this one.

Well, I plan to read Gulliver Joi at some stage, just for completest sake. Hope I enjoy it more than you did. Perhaps it is one of those books that deserves its obscurity.

>76 StevenTX:, >77 janeajones: What Jane said.

The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda by Miguel de Cervantes
First published posthumously 1617
English translation by Celia Richmond Weller and Clark A. Colahan 1989

 

Cervantes considered The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda to be his best work, and for at least the first century after its publication most readers agreed with him, even though his Don Quixote had been highly popular.

The story follows a brother and sister named Periandro and Auristela as they make a much-interrupted pilgrimage from somewhere in northern Europe to Rome. We learn immediately that these aren't their real names, however, and that they are actually a betrothed couple. Auristela has made a vow to make this pilgrimage to the seat of the Catholic church before she gives herself to Periandro, though their reasons for concealing their identities and relationship is not revealed until the final chapters of the novel.

The novel consists of a series of adventures and encounters as the pair (who are often involuntarily separated) travel mostly by sea from the islands of the far north to Lisbon, then overland through Portugal, Spain and France to Italy. The opening chapters are especially chaotic, as every ship they board is either wrecked or taken by pirates. And at every turn they meet other travelers or exiles who have their own stories to tell. One castaway, for example, had been kidnapped in Italy and flown to the northern wastes on a magic carpet by a witch who turns out to have been a werewolf. There are also sea monsters, sorcerers, and cannibals. Cervantes drew much of his inspiration from the History of the Northern Peoples, published in 1555 by Olaf Mansson (also written as Olaus Magnus), and his descriptions of Scandinavia are bizarre to say the least.

Once the travelers reach Portugal the adventures into which they stumble are more conventional, usually involving jealous lovers or girls running away from forced marriages. Auristela stirs up quite a bit of jealousy herself, because she is the most beautiful woman in the world, according to the narrator. Periandro is also extraordinarily good-looking as are all the young people who have become their friends along the way and are taking the pilgrimage with them. Their physical beauty reflects both their noble birth and their goodness. As one character put it: "Never, or very rarely, do high virtues find a place in lowborn people, and the beauty of the body is often an indication of the beauty of the soul."

The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda is a product of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. We are told repeatedly that the northern countries have fallen into error and heresy, and Catholicism is no longer perfectly practiced or understood. Auristela is making the pilgrimage to perfect her understanding of the Catholic religion. The novel is both pious and patriotic, as Cervantes never fails to praise the Church or his native country. Though the novel is sprinkled with wit, it is on the whole a serious work with a message that was designed to endear Cervantes to the establishment.

For modern readers there are some subtle themes running through the book that make it worth study. One of them is Cervantes's curious treatment of sexuality. When we first meet Periandro and Auristela they are each dressed as the opposite sex (and each considered remarkably attractive in such guise). There are several other episodes of cross-dressing in the novel. The name "Periandro" itself suggests an uncertain gender, and Auristela is not the only female character to assume an assertive role while a male takes the passive. There is even a confession of lesbian love.

Another undercurrent is found in the author's repeated comments on the nature of narrative itself. Cervantes not only tells us the story, but also tells us how he is telling it and why. He frequently digresses on the art of storytelling and at one point even asserts that books teach us more than reality. "But lessons learned in books often teach us more about things than is known by people who have actually seen them, since a person who reads with care thinks over and over again about what he's reading, while a person who looks without paying attention observes nothing, and so reading can, indeed, surpass seeing."

As a novel The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda can not begin to compare, of course, with Don Quixote. There is no development of characters--they are perfect from beginning to end--and its message is a product of the religious climate of a different age. But it is a novel by Cervantes, and that means it is peppered with his wit, wisdom and invention. The translation I read by Weller and Colahan did an excellent job of preserving the atmosphere of a 17th century text while using clear, modern English, and was enhanced by very useful end notes.

Nice review, Steven. This book is of course on my tbr (in Spanish) but I won't turn to it for probably many years, yet.

Well done for posting the first review of The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda I would have thought Cervantes would have wanted it published during his lifetime if it is such a panegyric on the catholic church. I was wondering whether the authorial intervention is on the same scale as in Tristram Shandy, perhaps, however it is not so sardonic as Sterne's interventions and limits itself to digressions on story telling. Does Cervantes also address the reader directly concerning the heresy of the northern countries?

I enjoyed your excellent review.

>82 baswood: - Cervantes apparently worked on the novel for a long time, but realized he was dying as he was finishing it. I don't think it was his intention to withhold publication. At the conclusion of a brief prologue he forecasts his own death for "this Sunday at the latest" (he actually died that Saturday). He attributes his forthcoming death to excess drinking, but says "I just can't give up the pleasure of drinking all I want, for it almost seems I was born to it." He concludes "Goodbye, humor; goodbye, wit; goodbye, merry friends; for I am dying and hope to see you soon, happy in the life to come!"

There is nothing quite as inventive in the novel as we find in Tristam Shandy. Cervantes occasionally uses the device of pretending he is translating or retelling another writer's work so that he can comment on the narrative technique he is using.

Does Cervantes also address the reader directly concerning the heresy of the northern countries? Actually he seems rather reticent to mention Protestantism as such. Instead he refers to the northerners as Catholics who have fallen into errors in the manner of their Catholic faith. There are also northern pagans (cannibals, werewolves and such), and he may have intended the pagans to represent the Protestants. There is nothing said at all about theological questions or what "errors" Auristela finds she had fallen into. There is plenty of symbolism, though, of ice, darkness and solitude representing estrangement from Catholicism.

That's a good story about Cervantes drinking himself to death.

Great review of The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda, Steven, and I enjoyed your subsequent comments about the book and Cervantes. I'll look for this book soon.

Very interesting, now I am interested to see him handle northern heresy, crossdressing (and an aspect Shakespeare didn't give us except that his actresses were of course crossdressed) I've added it to my basket. But also his wit as you suggest. I recently read the first canto of Childe Harold which is a progress of a northern European, perhaps less perfect, across Portugal and Spain sometime later, so this alternate perspective intrigues me.

The city where I live has just been named the most boring place in Texas by the national real estate blog movoto.com. I wasn't named personally in the article, but my wife thinks this was simply an oversight on their part.

#87 - Ha ha ha ha ha!

>87 StevenTX: Thank you for the laugh!

The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings by Octavio Paz
Essays first published 1950 to 1979
English translations by Lysander Kemp, Yara Milos and Rachel Phillips Belash

 

Octavio Paz is considered Mexico's most important modern poet, but his best-known work--at least in English translation--is this collection of essays. "The Labyrinth of Solitude," first published in 1950, was an multi-part essay examining the Mexican national character. The other, later essays in the collection expand on that theme. "The Other Mexico" looks at the Aztec component of Mexican culture. "Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude" is an interview in which he reassesses his original work. "Mexico and the United States" contrasts Mexico's culture and world view with that of its neighbor to the north (a subject prominent as well in "The Labyrinth of Solitude"). And "The Philanthropic Ogre" looks at Mexico's unique single-party system of government.

The root of Mexico's unique identity, according to Paz, is a synthesis of Spanish Catholic forms with a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican world view. Mexico, he says, is the "most Indian" of Latin American nations. "In the Valley of Mexico man feels himself suspended between heaven and earth, and he oscillates between contrary powers and forces, and petrified eyes, and devouring mouths. Reality -- that is the world that surrounds us -- exists by itself here, has a life of its own, and was not invented by man as it was in the United States." There are a number of other ways in which the author contrasts Mexico (communal, fatalistic, collectivist) with the United States (Puritanical, individualistic, self-assured). One of the best examples of contrast is seen in the fact that the North American spends his money acquiring personal possessions, while the Mexican spends his on public fiestas.

Paz also contrasts Mexico with the other countries of Latin America. Mexico, he says (writing in 1969), "lives in a post-revolutionary period while the majority of the other Latin American countries are going through a pre-revolutionary stage." This observation has certainly proven true, as nearly every Latin American nation has, since that time, undergone violent civil wars or military dictatorships. Mexico's (at that time) single-party system of government is unique, according to Paz, in that it is a structure of power without an ideology. While Mexico has political violence and corruption, it has avoided terror; public expression is unimpeded as long as it does not directly threaten the ruling party. This freedom has made Mexico City a haven for decades for refugee intellectuals from Europe and Latin America.

The Labyrinth of Solitude is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in Mexican history and culture, but Paz's observations have a wider relevancy. His outsider's view of American culture, for example, is very interesting. And his description of Mexico's single-party post-revolutionary state of the 1970s has many parallels in today's post-Maoist single-party China.

Great review of The Labyrinth of Solitude, Steven. I have a few others of his books (In Light of India, The Other Voice: Essays on Modern Poetry), but would like also to find this one.

O! very interesting about The Labyrinth of Solitude That sounds worth reading.

Great review! I haven't read the entire collection of essays, but did read a few of them - and the few that I did really impressed me.

Just trying to catch up from my slacking. Looks like quite a few good reads here and wonderful reviews. The Labyrinth of Solitude sounds so very interesting.

Fabulous review of The Labyrinth of Solitude, Steven. I've owned the same copy as you have for several years, but I haven't read it yet. I'll move it much higher on my TBR list now.

>87 StevenTX: LOL! However, I do take mild issue with the suggestion that a town with a small minority of young people (19-34 yo) is necessarily boring, now that I'm a card carrying AARP member.

This is a fun thread to catch up on. The Labyrinth of Solitude sounds maybe dated but very interesting. And I was happy to read your really nice review of The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda.

Hi Steve, Reading through your thread just now fills me with regret that I was away from LT for so long. Wonderful missed reviews and conversations . . .

>97 Poquette: Thanks, Suzanne (and Linda, Barry, Susie, Kevin, Darryl and Dan), and welcome back. I've been away for just a few days for a quick trip out of town, and it seems impossible to catch up even from that.

The Brunist Day of Wrath by Robert Coover
Published 2014
Review of an ARC provided via NetGalley

 

The Brunist Day of Wrath is a sequel to Robert Coover's very first novel, The Origin of the Brunists, which he published in 1966. The sequel is set in the same place, a run-down mining town named West Condon somewhere in the American Midwest. It has many of the same characters and takes place five years later.

In The Origin of the Brunists there is a coal mine explosion at West Condon which kills dozens of men and traps almost a hundred miners. Only one of the trapped miners is found alive, a man named Giovanni Bruno, and he appears to have suffered brain damage. But his seemingly miraculous survival, and the cryptic nature of the few words he manages to speak, lead to the founding of a new apocalyptic cult of Christian evangelicals, the Brunists. They see the mine disaster as the first step in the coming end of the world.

Now, in The Brunist Day of Wrath, the Brunist sect has spread nation-wide, and many of its members are converging on West Condon for the fifth anniversary of the rescue of Giovanni Bruno and the founding of the church. But along with them comes a loosely associated motorcycle gang calling itself The Wrath of God, and they are descending upon a town already riven by ethnic divisions and a local power struggle.

The events in The Origin of the Brunists are key to what happens in the sequel, but they are recapped so that you do not need to have read it--or read it recently--to enjoy the later work. But I do recommend that you read The Origin of the Brunists first if at all possible. The Brunist Day of Wrath is 1100 pages long. If you're going to invest that much time and effort in a book, why would you not want to read its 400 page predecessor so you can get as much enjoyment out of it as possible?

There is a large cast of characters, and the novel shifts the point of view every chapter--and often within chapters--so as to tell the story from every possible side. One character, a brash college student named Sally Elliott, can be considered the author's voice. She makes a study of the Brunist cult with particular attention to the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance--holding beliefs that contradict each other or the observed facts. Her observations apply to all religions, not just to extreme sects like the Brunists.

The events in The Origin of the Brunists were plausible, if unlikely. That isn't the case with the sequel, which is way over the top in violence, sex, and general craziness. It can be read as a searing satire of religion and the ignorance which nurtures it, but the novel is more than that. Its constantly shifting points of view show us the same events from different perspectives, demonstrating that what we call "facts" are simply impressions built upon the observer's preconceptions and biases. The road from "facts" to "truth" is a difficult path for which logic alone may not suffice. A saying repeated in the novel is that when you stretch things, they become more transparent, and sometimes it is necessary to stretch the truth to see it better. So the novel, in this sense, is a massive justification of itself and of the craft of fiction as a path to understanding.

The Brunist Day of Wrath is a huge and hugely entertaining work filled with memorable characters and insightful observations about religion and human nature. It is a deeply humanistic work that is sympathetic to even its most violent and ignorant characters as products of their environment. If this turns out to be Robert Coover's final novel, it will have been a worthy culmination of his career.

Other works I have read by Robert Coover:
The Origin of the Brunists
Pricksongs and Descants
Spanking the Maid

I saw one of these billboards just two days ago--a reminder that millennial cults like the Brunists are very much with us.

Not surprisingly you are the first to review the 1100 page the Brunist day of Wrath Tremendous review by the way.

Quite something for an author to write a sequel recently to a book published in 1966. Was it obvious the sequel was by the same author and could you trace any differences in style, as I know you read both recently.

Very interesting point about the development of facts into truths, especially as it is not at all clear what are the facts in the first place, so many differences of opinion on some of the most basic events.

Not sure I will be around to witness Christ standing on Mt Olivet at noon on August 2, 2027

I mentally put The Origin of the Brunists on my wishlist after you reviewed it earlier this year, and I definitely think I should try that before attempting 1100 pages, despite the recap you describe!

>100 baswood: - The style of the two books was very consistent, as was the structure. It would not have been difficult to believe they were written back-to-back rather than 50+ years apart. The principal difference was that the sequel took things to greater extremes (as sequels often do). It also had a more direct authorial voice through the character of Sally Elliott. She is just a minor figure in the first book.

>102 rebeccanyc: - Yes, by all means read The Origin of the Brunists first if at all possible. But the recap is nice in case you don't want to read the sequel immediately, as it will refresh your memory as you go along.

That road from "facts" to "truths" was explored by Coover in another work, The Public Burning where we have Richard Nixon, Roy Cohn and the Rosenbergs, all narrated by Nixon himself.

Your review has tempted me to read The Brunist Day of Wrath, as I actually read The Origin of the Brunists and the image of Bruno has stuck with me.

Star (Psi Cassiopeia) by C. I. Defontenay
First published in French 1854
English translation 1975, revised 2007

 

Star is a unique and remarkable work of utopian fiction--the epic history of another world. "Star" is the name of that planet, and while it is awkward in English translation to have a planet named Star, this was not a problem in the original French (where it is "Star" and not "Étoile"). The author, Charles Ischir Defontenay, was a physician and a pioneer of plastic surgery. Star is his only known work of fiction.

A prologue describes how the manuscript we are about to read fell to earth in the Himalayas enclosed in a metal box which was encased in a meteorite. After years of deciphering and translation, it proved to be the proud history of the planet Star and its inhabited moons. It is a history presented in several forms. Prose narrative alternates with verse, and there are two complete plays embedded in the work as well as a lengthy prose poem.

The Starian solar system is very different from ours in that it has four suns. There is a large central star comparable in size and brightness to our own sun. A much smaller sun orbits it closely, a third shines from beyond the orbit of Star, and a fourth tiny sun circles the planet Star itself. "Four suns of diverse size and coloration, four bowers of celestial light, enamel the sky and sparkle from different points on the horizon." With each sun a different color, rising and setting in complex patterns and combinations of infinite variety, the landscape of Star is an ever-changing kaleidoscope of tints and shadows. Its firmament is also adorned with four large moons, one of which is translucent: "Elier is the diamond in which all the fires of suns, moons and stars play, cross each other and are reflected." The beauty of its sky is echoed in the vegetation and animal life of Star and in the language in which it is all described by Defontenay.

The people of Star are human, but there are races which differ fundamental ways. On one moon, for example, the people are all hermaphrodites. On another they are transparent (as is everything else), and on a third moon the inhabitants are immune to aging and disease, but "Death" haunts them in the form of a species of corporeal predators. In this last society the greatest heroes are those who have done battle with the Deaths, killing them by the score before succumbing. Did Defontenay the physician picture himself as one of their number?

These human variations and the history of their development are the vehicles the author uses to present his ideas on society. Early in their history the Starians dispense with religion, replacing it with a cult of beauty that venerates the marvels of nature and works of art. They allow no family to own more land than it can cultivate, and thereby control covetousness and eliminate class distinctions. Without the stress of religion and class, they are able to eliminate war and all forms of civic violence. Orphans, the disabled, and the aged are generously supported by the community out of a sense of pride and duty. The more prosperous Starians channel their wealth into the sponsorship and collection of art. It is art, in fact, which becomes the supreme goal and symbol of Starian civilization.

There is a dark side--from our perspective at least--to Defontenay's utopia. The Repleus are a race of sub-humans described as being to Starians what the donkey is to the horse. They are capable of speech and understanding, even love, but, left to themselves, descend into savagery. They are the ones who do the menial and unpleasant tasks while the Starians pursue the arts and sciences. Did Defontenay mean to suggest that a European utopia could be built on a the basis of keeping other races in perpetual servitude?

Defontenay's science is a mixed bag when it comes to plausibility, though clearly some of his concepts (like the transparent world) were meant to be allegorical rather than practical. His conception and description of a multiple star system are marvelous optically and aesthetically, if not astronomically. Starians travel between their planet and its moons on "abares," ovoid vehicles containing their own air supply and plated with a material that is opaque to gravity. (This was not a new idea. An American, George Tucker, had written of it in 1827. H. G. Wells would imagine a similar space vehicle almost 50 years later in The First Men in the Moon). And Defontenay wrote the following five years BEFORE Darwin published On the Origin of the Species: "Their first moralists and philosophers attributed the original creation or generation of mankind to ancient transformations of animal species, that happened when some individuals, by chance, gave birth to superior types which formed a new stock."

In a concluding poem to this beautifully written book, Defontenay writes:

Myself, I’d much rather see the intuition
Among us of destinies which, in future eras,
Will send us soaring toward celestial shores
And will, at last, lead us in our migrations
From one globe to the next as so many stations
To the Heaven foreseen by the inspired soul,
Where humanity, transfigured and beautiful,
Will find voluptuousness, perfection, joy.

And he closes with this apology:

Under a great subject I bow almost crushed:
But what does that matter!
If I’ve done badly, I’ve attempted much.

Much indeed! If only he had written more. Star is not a novel with plot and characters, but it is a thoughtful and poetic work of fiction that will appeal to those who enjoy books such as Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon.

Excellent review of Star (Psi Cassiopeia, which sounds like a real discovery. It is not mentioned at all in my Faber Book of Utopias, but it does get mentioned in Anatomy of Wonder. Nice idea about the different solar system and their Utopia does not appear to be so bad as long as you are not a Repleus. How were the Repleus treated by the Sarians was it akin to a slave and master society?

I am enjoying your reviews of utopian/science fiction books. Even though (or maybe especially because) I know I will never read them, I appreciate being introduced to them.

Catching up here and finding your reviews highly intriguing. Like Rebecca, I will probably never get to reading these books so I feel like I am dipping into the NYTBR.

>106 baswood: How were the Repleus treated by the Starians was it akin to a slave and master society?

Early in their history some Starian societies did brutally enslave the Repleus. This led to a number of revolts and the establishment of a separate Repleu state. But without human guidance the Repleus degenerated quickly into savagery. Once the Starians attained a more perfect society, their treatment of the Repleus was benevolent but paternal, and the Repleus accepted their natural role as servants and laborers. They are described as being "owned," but never as being sold.

The only tension remaining was sexual. In keeping with the horse/donkey analogy, a Repleu female could bear the child of a Starian male, but it would be sterile. (The reverse pairing is described as too shameful to be thinkable.) The offspring of such unions were called Cétracites and, as they had more intelligence than Repleus, were placed in positions of trust as valets, overseers and such. One of the plays included in the books is about a Cétracite who dares to fall in love with his master's daughter.

Whether Defontenay actually approved of slavery or serfdom on our earth is impossible to say, but his humanistic ideals make it seem unlikely. I'm treading on thin ice here because I know very little about 19th century philosophy, but I suspect he was influenced by Positivism, which opposed slavery but would have supported the idea of using each race or species in a role suited to its nature and abilities.

It's interesting, though, how many Utopias (including Thomas More's) still require an underclass to do the dirty work.

Star by Defontenay sounds fascinating, although I have a knee-jerk aversion to utopian fiction in general. Your review is excellent and actually tempts me!

>109 StevenTX: What you say about the underclass is part of the problem with utopias in general, I fear.

>109 StevenTX: Sort of enlightened slavery. Thanks for that additional information, I can see that I am going to have to read that book.

The History of a Voyage to the Moon by an unknown author writing as Chrysostom Trueman
First published 1864

 

In a brief prologue to this novel, an English clergyman named Crystostom Trueman tells how he found the manuscript we are about to read sealed in a metal box encased in the stone of a meteorite that buried itself in his garden one night. It is the story of a pair of young men, Stephen Howard (the manuscript's author) and Carl Geister, who built a spacecraft and journeyed to the moon. Finding themselves unable to return, they shared their remarkable story by placing the manuscript in a metal case and dropping it into a lunar volcano just as it was about to erupt.

Howard describes how he discovered a 17th century manuscript in which a Spanish monk relates an expedition into the uncharted mountains of New Spain. Besieged by hostile natives, the Spaniards dig a moat and erect a barricade in front of the cave where they have taken shelter. Suddenly a portion of their barricade simply flies up into the air and disappears.

When Howard tells his friend Geister about the monk's tale, Geister immediately conjectures that the Spaniards have stumbled upon an outcropping of minerals which, when mixed, acquire the property of repelling the force of gravity. Geister eventually locates the minerals near what would now be the southwest corner of New Mexico, and resolves to use this discovery as the means to realize his long held dream of flying to the moon.

Anti-gravity material had already been used to propel spacecraft in several previous 19th century novels. What the anonymous author adds to the genre is the means of providing fresh air for the long voyage to the moon and back (realizing that there may be no breathable air on the moon itself). Geister's spaceship, the "Lunaviot," is a huge, self-sustaining biosphere which its builders nickname the "Flying Greenhouse." We are even shown the equations by which Geister computed the amount of soil and vegetation needed to sustain two travelers.

In previous science fiction novels the moon (or other previously unexplored world) is the setting for one of two things: a farcical satire or a utopian discourse. The History of a Voyage to the Moon is of the latter category; the author even uses the term "Utopia." But this moon is not so much a model community as a Garden of Eden where the reincarnated souls of those who had suffered tragic lives on earth could have a second chance at happiness. It is a world devoid of disease, hunger, violence and jealousy. The theology behind this lunar paradise is rather vague, but there is no suggestion whatsoever that we could remake our own world after its pattern. It could only be the work of God.

Up to the point when our adventurers reach and crash-land on the moon, theirs is an adventure story worthy of the pen of a Jules Verne or Edgar Rice Burroughs, and I couldn't help but wonder why it wasn't more widely known. The problem is that the people of the moon are constitutionally disposed to be perpetually happy just making music and painting landscapes. Good for them. But reading about an unchanging world devoid of conflict, romance or danger is, frankly, dull and pointless. It's a shame that the author wasted such a promising beginning on a story that falls so flat in the end.

(Note that the pseudonymous author's first name is spelled "Chrysostom" in the book itself. The ebook "cover" spells it "Crystostom" (deleting the H and adding a T). Amazon's catalog listing adds another O, spelling it "Cryostostom.")

Not surprisingly you are the only person to own this book. I presume it is one of those books edited by Ron Miller, Fascinating to read about it, but I think I can pass on this one

I seem to be going around LT this afternoon saying "ditto to what Barry said," so I'm agreeing with "fascinating to read about it, but I think I can pass on this one."

The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz del Castillo
First published posthumously 1632.
English translation by J. M. Cohen 1963.

 

In 1519 Hernán Cortés burned his ships to eliminate the possibility of retreat and set off with an army of 400 men to conquer a mighty empire with a population several times that of his native Spain. Bernal Díaz was one of those 400, and he left a gripping account of one of the most extraordinary episodes in history.

Díaz had sailed on two previous expeditions under other leaders to explore the mainland of what is now Mexico, landing both times on the Yucatan peninsula which was dominated by the Maya. He returned to Cuba, which by now had a substantial Spanish population, and joined a third expedition which elected Hernán Cortés as its commander. They returned to the Yucatan, where they learned of an empire to the northwest that was rich in gold. The Spaniards sailed on, landing and establishing a base at the site of the modern city of Vera Cruz.

The Aztecs (who are referred to in the book as the Mexicans) were a warlike people who were fairly recent arrivals to central Mexico. They had conquered their neighbors and quickly established a large empire of tributary city states. The tribute was paid both in gold and in young men and women who would be sacrificed to the Aztec gods. Díaz gives us a vivid and horrifying picture of these sacrifices and ritual cannibalism, which he says were practiced daily in every major city. By focusing on these barbaric rites, Díaz is able to portray the Spaniards as liberators and humanitarians, though he doesn't hide the fact that they were constantly impressed by the Indians' sophistication in arts, architecture, craftsmanship and warfare.

Cortés skillfully took advantage of the internal divisions within the Aztec empire to win allies, but only after several desperate battles against overwhelming odds. The Indians soon lost their fear of the Spaniards' horses and muskets. He was also aided by a prophecy which had told the Aztec emperor Montezuma that his empire was destined to be ruled by men with beards who would come by ship from the east. After a year of wars, truces, mutinies, betrayals, and shifting alliances, Cortés and his allies finally conquered the city of Mexico. Most of his troops had died in the process, as had Montezuma--ironically stoned to death by his own people after having been taken captive by Cortés but eventually becoming his friend.

Díaz's portrayal of Cortés comes close at times to hero worship. Cortés was a masterful leader but a fair and compassionate one. He always preferred to make peace rather than fight the Indians. He demanded only that they accept the King of Spain as their master, that they stop the practices of human sacrifice, cannibalism and sodomy, and that they permit the teaching of Catholic Christianity. But Díaz is harshly critical of Cortés's greed for gold--though it seems that greed was the chief motivation for all of the Spaniards including Díaz himself. He infers on many occasions that Cortés appropriated more than his portion of the plunder, then tricked his soldiers out of their meager shares.

In addition to gold, the Spaniards were also after women. Most of the soldiers came as colonizers, never expecting to return to Spain, but hardly any of them brought wives with them. The Indians often made gifts of women to the conquistadors, and when capturing a town the first thing the Spaniards did was to round up all the pretty women and girls. Díaz himself became a favorite of Montezuma when the latter was under house arrest, and boldly asked the emperor for a pretty girl in exchange for his friendship. Montezuma gladly gave him the daughter of one his chieftains. Unfortunately, Díaz never tells us what became of her during the subsequent battles and retreats.

Díaz was an ordinary soldier whose plain and simple Spanish translates very well into modern English. He gives us a remarkable and vivid picture of brutal warfare in an alien land. There is, for example, the battle fought under a cloud of swarming locusts where the Spaniards mistook insects for incoming arrows and arrows for insects, sometimes with fatal results. There is the initial peaceful entry of the conquistadors into the city of Mexico, a city built on the water like Venice and so magnificent and ornate that many of the Spaniards thought they were in a dream. And there are the desperate and nightmarish day-long hand-to-hand battles fought outside the city with it's towers looming in the background atop which captured Spanish soldiers were being sacrificed in full view of their countrymen, all to the deafening accompaniment of gigantic drums and horns.

The Conquest of New Spain is no doubt a biased work and subject to the inaccuracies you would expect of a man writing about his experiences of years past, but it is the source most respected by historians. It requires no background on the subject, and is thoroughly entertaining and often suspenseful. The translation by J. M. Cohen which I read is slightly abridged. There are passages where Díaz disputes the accounts of his contemporaries; Cohen has opted to summarize these passages rather than give them in full.

The Conquest of New Spain sounds like a very interesting primary source. I'm sure that it was a helpful resource to understand the motivations of the Spanish better. Sometimes it's easier to see long ago events as black and white issues of wrong and right. That usually goes away when you read primary sources like this.

Brilliant Review of The Conquest of New Spain That one definitely goes on my to buy list

Fascinating. I probably won't read this, but your review was illuminating.

The Conquest of New Spain sounds really interesting. Great review!

Julie; or, The New Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
First published 1761
English translation by Philip Stewart and Jean Vaché 1997

 

Julie; or, The New Heloise is an epistolary novel of forbidden love and seduction that serves as vehicle for many of Rousseau's ideas on morality, religion, and social justice. The subtitle refers to the medieval lovers Abelard and Héloïse, whose published letters tell a similar tale.

The story takes place in the 18th century in western Switzerland in various locations around Lake Geneva. Julie d'Étange is the beautiful and well-mannered daughter of a baron. The Baron d'Étange hires a tutor to complete her daughter's education, but the two fall hopelessly in love. The tutor's name is eventually given as St. Preux, but we are told this is an assumed name to conceal his identity in their secret correspondence. Julie's saucy cousin and best friend Claire is her confidante and the lovers' go-between. Eventually, after St. Preux has seduced Julie, the two make their passion known to Julie's father. In a rage, he banishes St. Preux from his house, declaring that Julie will marry a man of his choosing who is suitable to her station in society.

The novel continues for some dozen years with correspondence between Julie, St. Preux, Claire, and a friend of St. Preux's. Among the subjects addressed are the decadence of Parisian society, the contrast between Catholicism and Calvinism, and Rousseau's ideas on such diverse topics as aristocracy, household management, education and gardening. The author uses footnotes to make sure we know when one of his characters is expressing an opinion with which he agrees or disagrees.

The principal theme of the novel is of a morality of conscience rather than one of convention, and Julie is its exemplar. Rousseau was at this time a Calvinist, but an unconventional one. He maintains that a life well-lived will be rewarded, even if the outward signs of religious devotion are omitted. Julie's seduction, however, is not excused. Quite the opposite--it is the burden for which she must atone the rest of her life, a form of Original Sin. Rousseau is quite prudish, in fact, when it comes to sexual matters, and eventually appears to be endorsing the Baron's idea that all marriages should be arranged parings between social equals. Chastity, however, is upheld as the purest form of existence.

For a thinker who is considered a revolutionary, Rousseau's ideas in Julie; or, The New Heloise are disappointingly mild and conventional. He speaks against some aristocratic privileges, but not against the aristocracy. He recommends humane treatment of servants and peasants, but never suggests eliminating class distinctions. He favors educating girls and giving wives an active role in the management of estates, but only in subjects that are considered appropriate to a woman's interest. He excuses sexual misconduct by men, but a woman who has been adulterous or promiscuous is shamed for life and defiles those around her. He encourages religious toleration, but condemns atheism as he does Catholicism.

There are a few fine and moving moments in the novel, but overall it oozes sentimentality. St. Preux's whining and Julie's preaching are annoying and interminable. The one breath of fresh air is cousin Claire, whose playful but pragmatic letters are a delight to read. The chief benefit from reading the book, however, is the historical insight into Rousseau's potpourri of ideas, many of them considered radical at the time, but from our perspective merely a first step toward modern egalitarianism and secular liberalism.

The modern English translation by Steward and Vache is an excellent edition containing illustrations from the original French edition, a glossary, summaries of each letter, and copious notes on the text and the historical and biographical context.

Yes I have always been deeply suspicious of Rousseau. He sometimes talked the talk but did not always walk the walk. His finest hour was probably his idea of the Noble Savage, but I am not sure that holds up today.

Yes he was seen as radical at the time and he did influence the politicians involved in the French revolution, but there were those who made a more lasting contribution I think. I have his Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau on my shelf and have never been tempted to take it off.

Your review of Julie; or, The new Heloise was very interesting.

Sounds like a book to miss ("oozes sentimentality") but your review and thoughts were very interesting. Rousseau didn't come off to well, if I recall correctly, in Citizens by Simon Schama.

>121 baswood: Reading Rousseau's The Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin of Inequality in college was a life-changing experience for me, so I had high expectations from this novel. I still have his Confessions on the shelf and will give it a try before long, but for now Denis Diderot is my new Enlightenment hero.

Oddly enough, Julie; or, The New Heloise has much in common with the Utopian novels I have been reading recently. Much of the second half of the novel, instead of being a love story, is a description of the ideal country estate, a microcosm of the ideal society envisioned in the Utopias. Unfortunately I don't have a country estate, so I was unable to benefit from Rousseau's advice on how to keep my maids from having sex with my gardeners. (But Hobby Lobby might pick up some tips on managing its employees.) His system of a barter economy, however, would appeal to many (especially those who want to get out of paying taxes).

I was unable to benefit from Rousseau's advice on how to keep my maids from having sex with my gardeners.

Oh, I've read a naughty novel or sixteen like that. The solution is usually "if you can't beat them, join them", or even "join AND beat them". :)

Confessions ought to strike you by some interesting contrasts to Julie... (agree entirely with your assessment, btw). I'm looking forward to your opinions.

>> He sometimes talked the talk but did not always walk the walk.

Not quite with you there, Bas. After all, Rousseau did style himself as a walker, as in Reveries of the Solitary Walker.

Maybe you mean he is more of a man of thought, than of deed...

Yes indeed Edwin. Steven has reminded me that I must get to Denis Diderot

>124 LolaWalser: I've read a naughty novel or sixteen like that. Me too, but so far no one has noticed that my book count in Msg 3 is higher than the number of reviews I've posted. ;-) ...join AND beat them. Now you've got me trying to visualize taking Rousseau and his Julie on a tour of the Marquis de Sade's "ideal" country estate.

>126 baswood: Before someone else mentions it I'll admit that Diderot didn't exactly "walk the walk" when it comes to hanging out with Catherine the Great, but his writings are certainly delightful to read and have aged much better than Julie.

>127 StevenTX:

Sade had read quite a bit of Rousseau...!

Re: "walking the walk, talking the talk", Rousseau frequently comes across as a big ole hypocrite, at least to a part-time casual reader like myself. The "do as I say, not as I do" type.

There's his notorious abandonment of his five children to the orphanage, anonymously, as they were being born--but his modernising, "enlightened" treatise on child (boy) education was one of his biggest bestsellers!

He loved theatre fanatically, but proscribed it to other people, who might be misled by the "illusion". He was slavishly dependent on women all his life, economically and emotionally (with some pretty major masochistic inclinations in evidence), but denied them ability, political equality, and any education other than that necessary for domestic service. (Well, the woman he kept returning to--but also running away from--was a half-idiot of some kind, incapable of learning to read or tell time.)

His aim with Confessions was to give an autoportrait unprecedented in sincerity and exactitude, and yet it reeks of self-serving deception.

Perhaps it's useless trying to understand how his life chimes with his ideas, or unfair, I don't know.

Intriguing review of Julie; or, The New Heloise. Having just finished Flaubert's Sentimental Education, which was written almost exactly a hundred years later, I am intrigued by the social and political ideas as they evolved in France, and especially as spouted by the denizens of Flaubert's novel. Rousseau's novel sounds like it might be a relatively painless way to imbibe some of said ideas straight from one of the earlier horses' mouths!

From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne
First published 1865
English translation by Lewis Page Mercier

   

Around the Moon by Jules Verne
First published 1870
English translation by Lewis Page Mercier

 

I read these two books (which really comprise a two-part novel even though they were published five years apart) over the past week during a driving trip through southern Louisiana. I'm too tired to compose a coherent review, so these are just some observations.

The basic outline of the story is probably well-known: A group of American arms manufacturers, having nothing to do after the Civil War has ended, conceive the idea of building a cannon that can fire a projectile to the moon. The idea of making it hollow and putting men inside comes later, thanks to a French daredevil. Their goal is simply to hit the moon with the projectile. The passengers, if they survive, will have no way to return or even to communicate with the earth. They are hopeful of finding breathable air and life on the moon, but realize this is unlikely. The lunar cannon works, but because of the gravitational influence of a passing meteor, the capsule misses the moon, makes a circuit around it, and returns to earth (following the trajectory used by the Apollo 8 mission a century later).

Verne's science is impressive given the limitations of the time. He understood such things as escape velocity and orbital motion. Where he goes astray are in the extremes of scale. His cannon, even at 900 feet long, couldn't have attained the required muzzle velocity. His aluminum projectile would have been melted by air friction even as it left the cannon's mouth, and of course the passengers would have been smashed by the g-forces of acceleration like squirrels hit by an 18-wheeler, notwithstanding his ingenious hydraulic shock absorber.

The moon is very accurately described as a dead, gray landscape littered with craters. Two of the selenauts follow the conventional wisdom of the day by assuming the craters are volcanic, but the third, the Frenchman, suggests that they are caused by meteoric impact. They find no evidence of air or life on the moon, but they refuse to rule out the possibility that the moon may have been a living and inhabited world in the past.

I've read a number of pre-Jules Verne novels that feature voyages to the moon. In every one of them the moon is inhabited, and the author's description of lunar civilization serves as either a satire of earthly society or as a Utopian vision. Jules Verne seems to be the first to have confined himself to the science of the day (as he understood it), and to have written primarily for purposes of entertainment. I think this is the basis for considering him to be the father of modern science fiction.

Not that his work is without satire in his depiction of American society. He makes us laugh at Americans' unlimited ambition and brash confidence, but there is also a sense of awe at the country's industrial might and collective resolve. He's pretty far off base, however, when it comes to what he describes as "dishes peculiar to the Southern States." I can assure you that "stuffed monkey" is not a regional staple.

From the Earth to the Moon is highly entertaining. Its sequel is somewhat less so because of its lengthy descriptions of lunar topography, but it completes the story and resolves the mystery of why the projectile missed the moon. It's also interesting to see the parallels between Verne's moon mission and the actual Apollo missions (also launched from Florida with a crew of three), and to note the things Verne got right about space travel and those that are laughably wrong. Overall I found Verne's concepts quite impressive and far-thinking. It's no wonder that this novel inspired future scientists as well as generations of writers.

Enjoyed your reviews of From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon. A couple of things struck me when I read A Journey to the centre of the Earth were; that the quality of the writing was good and that he took time out to develop a little his scientific theories, so much so, that they probably sounded convincing in the 1860's. He was also good at describing the landscape of Iceland in a way that made it sound quite real.

I look forward to reading more stories by him.

The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela
First published 1916
English translation by E. Munguía, Jr.

 

The Underdogs is a story of the Mexican Revolution, told by a man who participated in it. Mariano Azuela was a physician who joined the army of Pancho Villa full of liberal idealism and enthusiasm. Eventually, however, he became disillusioned, moved to the United States, and wrote The Underdogs to express his frustration.

The novel follows Demetrio Macías, a peasant who becomes a renowned guerrila leader. He and his followers are, at first, focused on the cause and true to their principals. But gradually numbed by death and violence they evolve into nothing more than bandits, preying upon the very people they once sought to liberate.

"I hoped to find a meadow at the end of the road," one of them confesses, "I found a swamp. Facts are bitter; so are men. That bitterness eats your heart out; it is poison, dry rot. Enthusiasm, hope, ideals, happiness--vain dreams, vain dreams."

This is not a particularly well-written novel. Its message is delivered with a heavy hand and sometimes childish dialogue. But the scenes and characters it presents, coming from the author's own experience, are vivid and memorable. And what Azuela has to say about the Mexican Revolution no doubt applies to any prolonged conflict where idealism gives way to self-perpetuating violence.

>132 StevenTX: And what Azuela has to say about the Mexican Revolution no doubt applies to any prolonged conflict where idealism gives way to self-perpetuating violence.

As happens all too often. Interesting review.

Just googled to see how far away from the Mexican border you were and was surprised that it is over 530 miles.

>132 StevenTX: If you like Mexican-Texas histories, you might like Cortina by Jerry Thompson. It's in my TBR, so I can't say one way or another if it's worth a read.

>134 baswood: Yes, Texas is slightly larger in area than France, and Dallas is located in roughly the same relative position as Paris, so a trip from my house to the Mexican border would be comparable in distance to a drive from Paris to the Spanish border.

>135 lesmel: Thanks for the recommendation. I've heard of the name Cortina, but don't know anything about him.

The Underdogs sounds like a very interesting way to get inside the Mexican Revolution. I'm making a note . . .

Insatiability by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz
First published in Polish 1930
English translation by Louis Iribarne 1977

 

Insatiability is an Absurdist vision of the author's native Poland at some point in the future when Poland sees itself as the last bulwark of heroic fascism in a world being overrun by Chinese Communists. The protagonist is a young disinherited nobleman, Genezip Kapen (known as "Zipcio"). He progresses rapidly from being a naïve innocent, through a period of sexual debauchery, until he finally becomes a remorseless and fearless killing machine. His transformation parallels that of his country, where a decadent aristocracy is losing power to a crude but charismatic military dictator while the country's intellectuals wallow in increasingly abstruse and irrelevant experimental forms.

Insatiability is by no means, however, just a novel about Poland. It is rich in philosophical ideas (citing Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Bergson for example), full of commentary on music and theater, and sparkling with multilingual wordplay much like the novels of James Joyce. It is also an incredibly daring novel for its time with its free use of profanity and its frequent and often explicit references to sex and reflections on sexuality. The ideas brought forth in this dense novel range from such things as Taylorism (the scientific management theories of Frederick Taylor) to a cult of drug-fueled Eastern mysticism that seems to foretell the 1960s.

Those who are up for a challenging but mind-stretching reading experience will find Insatiability something of a cross between The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil, with its philosophical ruminations on national destiny and individuality, and Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, with its complex conspiratorial fantasies and dark eroticism.

Wow! Speechless apart from that.

>139 SassyLassy: Ditto! Where do you find these books?

>140 rebeccanyc: Where do you find these books?

Insatiability is one of those 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. In the "1001 Books" group there is a group challenge underway to have at least one group member read every one of the books on the list. I volunteered for this one. The book itself was a lucky find at my local used book store, as it's rather expensive online.

That's a very nice and inviting summary of Insatiability, which I regularly see described as daunting. I've read some other stuff by Witkiewicz, and I reckon he's not an author easy to enjoy, let alone love. Have you read Witold Gombrowicz? They were close friends and stylistic "cousins"--something very similar in their tone.

>138 StevenTX: You deserve a thumb for reading it, as it sounds daunting. You were lucky to come across it in a used book store. It has a great front cover.

>142 LolaWalser: I've read Ferdydurke, Cosmos and Pornografia by Gombrowicz. None of these is particularly similar to Insatiability (but then they're quite different from each other as well). I enjoyed the novel, but it was still very heavy going, and at times all I could manage was about 10 pages at a sitting. It didn't help that the edition I was reading was in tortuously small print.

Maybe it's the absurdist, madcap cast of Witkiewicz's plays (which is what I read--the early ones) that make him sound like Gombrowicz to me.

I welcome the hint that Insatiability's different. I like zany, but I also like story.

I just read about Witkiewicz in The Delighted States, and I have Ferdydurke on my wish list. But Insatiability sounds like it would fit with my tastes even more.

A Ballad for Georg Henig by Victor Paskov
First published in Bulgarian 1987
English translation by Robert Sturm 1988

 

In this short, poignant novel the narrator tells how, in his youth, he and his family befriended an aging Czech violin maker named Georg Henig living in Sofia, Bulgaria. Henig is on the verge of starvation when they discover him. The boy, named Victor like the author, adopts Henig as his grandfather and helps him make one last violin once he has regained his health. In return, Henig teaches Victor and his family the simple lesson that what is important in life is not what you own, but what you are. Nothing is as fulfilling as putting your best and most patient effort into perfecting your art, whether it is music, writing, craftsmanship, or some other talent. And it does not matter whether anyone else appreciates or even knows about it.

The setting is communist Bulgaria, and there are some bleak scenes of tenement life in the capital, but in its commentary on materialism the novel can be read more as a critique of post-communist society. Poverty is a relative term, and those who have less will always consider themselves impoverished when compared with those who have more. What Georg Henig warns against, however, is the spiritual poverty of making one's possessions the measure of one's life.

A Ballad for Georg Henig is a brief and simple novel with a clear message. It would be a suitable and effective reading experience for teenagers.

Eroma by Piers Anthony
First published 2011

 

In the "Author's Note" at the end of Eroma, Piers Anthony explains that he had a number of sketches on file for erotic short stories, but none of them worked well on its own. So pulled them together into a novel, using them as scenarios in a virtual reality game. Competitors enter the game via avatars and participate in a series of challenges involving sex acts. The game is broadcast in full detail to television viewers worldwide. Two competitors, Pedro and Fotina, find things get even more challenging when they fall in love in the game world and resolve to get to know each other in real life.

While the idea has promise, the execution is lacking. Surprisingly for such an accomplished writer, Anthony's prose is lifeless and his dialog is wooden. There is almost no erotic appeal to the emotionless sex between computer-generated images, and the plot provides little suspense and few surprises.

Other works I have read by Piers Anthony:
Battle Circle (trilogy)
Orn
0X
Omnivore
Rings of Ice

An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews by Henry Fielding
First published 1741



For those of you who have slogged through Samuel Richardson's Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, here's your reward: you get to read Shamela.

In his epistolary novel Pamela, Richardson presents a pretty and vulnerable servant girl who stubbornly guards her virginity against attacks from her master, Mr. B, until desperation drives him to defy convention and marry her. While the novel was presented as a moral fable, Richardson's critics were quick to point out that Virtue's "reward," in Pamela's case, was decidedly material rather than spiritual. She might have been accused of being, in modern terms, a gold digger.

In Fielding's parody we are told that the book Pamela was all ghost-written after the fact, and what we are about to read are the actual letters that Shamela (her real name) sent to her mother. In them we see that Shamela shamelessly set about to seduce and entrap Mr. B (who is called by his full name here, Mr. Booby), while concealing the fact that she was simultaneously carrying on an affair with the local clergyman by whom she had born a child two years earlier.

Shamela's letters are delightfully candid, wicked and bawdy. Fielding's little novel, his first, makes the perfect dessert (or antidote, if you will) for a reading of Pamela.

Other works I have read by Henry Fielding:
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

Laura: A Journey into the Crystal by George Sand
First published 1864
English translation by Sue Dyson

 

The narrator of Laura: A Journey into the Crystal is a young student of mineralogy named Alexis who is being tutored by his uncle. Alexis is an indifferent student with no firm plans for his life. He is often at odds with a cousin nearly his own age named Laura, also a ward of his uncle's since her own father disappeared somewhere in the Near East.

One day after Alexis has received a lesson on geodes--stone spheroids with a hollow crystalline interior--he senses Laura behind him. "Quickly, quickly, friend, let us leave for the fairy regions of the crystal. I am running towards them, follow me, if you love me!" Alexis sees Laura suddenly appear, running, in front of him. He faints and falls, and wakes up in a luminous world of gigantic crystals: he has fallen into a geode! Laura appears again, and becomes his guide through this marvelous new world of gems and light. He sees her in an entirely different manner than before: beautiful, wise and enchanting.

Alexis wakes up on the floor, surrounded by the shattered pieces of the mineralogy display case he had broken as he fell. Did he really journey into the crystal with Laura, or was this all a fever dream? Laura's answers are coy and enigmatic.

After Alexis has had other similar experiences, he encounters Laura's long-lost father, Nasias. Nasias has just returned from Persia and urges Alexis to accompany him on a journey to the North Pole. Nasias is convinced that the earth is simply one gigantic geode, and that at the poles are openings that lead to its fabulous crystalline interior. The aurora, he insists, is proof of this, as it is nothing less than the gleam of multi-colored crystals shining up through the polar fissure. The author does a wonderful job of keeping the reader in doubt whether Alexis's journeys inside the crystals and to the North Pole are dreams, realities, or occurrences in some parallel plane of existence.

Eventually Alexis's relationship with Laura becomes the focus of the novel. She has become two persons for him: the ordinary girl he knows in real life, and the magical goddess of the crystal. He wants to marry her, but she first cautions him "...as I leave the crystal world with you, I sense that I am leaving my glamour there. You have always seen me as tall, beautiful, eloquent, almost magical. In reality, you will find me as I am, small, simple, ignorant, a little middle-class.... Viewed through your magic prism, I am too much; through your disillusioned, tired eyes, I am not enough." How true this is of romantic relationships; we fall in love with an ideal we have constructed in our mind, inevitably to be disillusioned by the reality. But, difficult though they may be, Sand shows us that it is these relationships which enrich our lives. No matter how bright and rare they may be, gems and the wealth they represent are nothing but cold, cruel and unfeeling stones.

>147 StevenTX: etc. A Ballad for Georg Henig sounds intriguing, as does the Shamela book (but do you think you have to "slog through" Pamela first?).

>151 rebeccanyc: Actually I wouldn't call Pamela a slog, but that seems to be the general view. I don't think Shamela would mean much on its own, though.

A ballad for George Henig. It would be a suitable and effective reading experience for teenagers. If they are reading anything at all it will probably be The Fault in our Stars.

Laura: A Journey into the Crystal. Could this one be said to have elements of fantasy? perhaps knocking at the door of the fantasy and science fiction genre. Might she have read Symzonia

Excellent reviews as always, a real treasure trove for the would be reader.

>153 baswood: Anatomy of Wonder and the SF Encyclopedia* both say that Laura: A Journey into the Crystal was inspired by reading Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth in manuscript. But the idea of a polar opening isn't in Verne. It is, however, in other novels including Symzonia, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, and Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. That's not to say George Sand couldn't have come up with it independently.

I would be inclined to categorize Laura: A Journey into the Crystal more as fantasy than science fiction because there is no rational explanation offered for Alexis's journeys into the crystal or Laura's strange dual existence. But the two genres obviously overlap, and this is an example.

* The SF Encyclopedia entry on George Sand says that the two explorers (Alexis and Nasias) travel to the North Pole by balloon. This is wrong, and I've reported the error to them.

Interesting books and reviews, here. I may pick up Insatiability a bit sooner, after reading your review. I should probably re-read Shamela, and guess I should finally get round to reading George Sand, sooner or later.

Your reading is always so interesting. I really want to read Tom Jones and now you've added Shemela to my list.

The Brick Moon by Edward Everett Hale
Serialized 1869-1872

 

Edward Everett Hale is best known for his short story "The Man without a Country," but he also has the distinction of being the first writer to describe a man-made satellite in his novella The Brick Moon.

The tale begins with the narrator and two fellow students discussing the perpetual challenge of navigation: how to measure one's longitude. They come up with the idea of launching a large object into a polar orbit such that it passes continually over the same two lines of east and west longitude. Mariners could then calculate their longitude by measuring the artificial moon's angular height over the horizon just as they calculate latitude by measuring the elevation of the North Star. They reason that it must be at least 200 feet in diameter to be seen from the earth, but then come the problems of getting it into orbit and keeping it from burning up from atmospheric friction during the ascent.

A cannon with a bore of 200 feet being out of the question, they decide to launch it by dropping it between two gigantic flywheels. (The concept is the same as that of a modern pitching machine.) These wheels would be powered by hydraulic force like giant mill wheels, and would take years to get up to full speed. The artificial moon would be made of fired brick (anticipating the ceramic brick heat shield of the space shuttle) so as not to melt or burn up during launch.

The students abandon their project because if its enormous cost, but years later, after one of them has made a fortune on government contracts during the American Civil War, they find they have the means to make their brick moon a reality. After years of construction, the mostly-hollow satellite is almost ready for launch when tragedy strikes. Two of the designers and their large extended families have taken shelter inside the brick moon during a torrential rain, when the ground shifts, the supports fall away, the moon is dropped onto the flywheels, and they are launched into space.

Scientifically, The Brick Moon is a combination of brilliant insight and ludicrous error (as is much of science fiction in hindsight). The idea of a satellite-based navigation system anticipates today's GPS systems, but Hale makes a shambles of the laws of physics. But the author seems to take his story less and less seriously as it goes on. The final chapter becomes a satire on the need of his contemporaries to feel in touch with events around the globe just because modern technology (the undersea telegraph cable) makes it possible to do so. The 37 inhabitants of the brick moon (who not only survived their accidental launch, but thrived) discover that they are much happier on their tiny world than the people of our large and troubled one.

It all sounds quite fascinating, but did you think it worthwhile to read The Brick moon?

>158 baswood: did you think it worthwhile...? Sorry, I guess I've gone to far in trying to be descriptive rather than judgmental in my reviews. The Brick Moon is definitely worthwhile for those wanting to trace the development of ideas in science fiction, but while it's entertaining and occasionally funny, it's not something I would recommend for general reader. Jules Verne is better.

How It Is by Samuel Beckett
First published in French 1961
English translation by the author 1964

 

How It Is was Samuel Beckett's last novel before turning his focus to the theatre. It is a radical experiment in prose writing, consisting of text passages separated by blank lines and varying in length from one word to about a dozen lines. Everything is run-on as a stream of consciousness, and there is absolutely no punctuation. For example, here are the opening three passages:

"how it was I quote before Pim with Pim after Pim how it is three parts I say it as I hear it

"voice once without quaqua on all sides then in me when the panting stops tell me again finish telling me invocation

"past moments old dreams back again or fresh like those that pass or things things always and memories I say them as I hear them murmur them into the mud"

Through constant repetitions and variations we learn that the unnamed narrator is a man crawling face down in the mud. He wears no clothing, but has a sack tied around his neck that contains canned food and an opener. He crawls slowly for "vast stretches of time" until he meets Pim. The book is divided into three parts, before Pim, Pim, and after Pim. This Pim is another naked man face down in the mud, but he is temporarily immobile. The narrator, having lost his sack of cans, steals Pim's sack and torments him with the can opener, plunging it into his ass and then hitting him on the head. Eventually the narrator moves on, only to be tormented in turn by another man. In the final section of the novel we get the nightmare vision of a million men lined up in pairs in the dark mud, each either tormenting his partner or being tormented in an endless panorama of absurdity.

There are a few passages that suggest the infinite mud plain is a form of afterlife. The narrator refers to things that happened "above." In particular, there are passages that indicate he had a wife with whom he at first had a healthy sexual relationship. Then it deteriorated, and they tried to revive it through anal sex. When that failed, she killed herself by jumping out a window:

"love birth of love increase decrease death efforts to resuscitate through the arse joint vain through the cunt anew vain jumped from window or fell broken column hospital marguerites lies about mistletoe forgiven"

But the endless mud doesn't appear to represent Hell. Statements about God are ambiguous, such as this one which is describing Pim's beliefs:

"God on God desperation utter confustion did he believe he believed then not couldn't any more his reasons both cases my God"

Instead How It Is appears to be more of a metaphor for the way we cling to the patterns of life in the face of the absurd, but it's also likely that Beckett was more concerned with language and form than with meaning. It is a novel that will appeal to those intrigued by experimental fiction. The regular repetitions make it easier to read than it would at first appear, and one soon adapts to the absence of punctuation. For those new to Beckett it would probably be best to start with one of his earlier works such as Molloy or the play Waiting for Godot.

Other works I have read by Samuel Beckett:
Murphy
Waiting for Godot
Molloy
Malone Dies
The Unnamable

>160 StevenTX: Seeing a whole slab of text without punctuation would put off many people I think, but your review of How it Is makes it seem not so daunting. Another book that has escaped me and one that I will look forward to. Could it fit into the category of Dystopia I wonder?

>161 baswood: Could it fit into the category of Dystopia I wonder? I think it's too abstract to be called a dystopia. There's no suggestion that we are looking into our future, nor is there any political meaning. But there are other layers of meaning that I didn't touch upon. The torturers (like the narrator), for example, are mute, while the torturees (like Pim) can speak. When they reverse roles in another pairing, they gain/lose speech respectively. The tormentor, meanwhile, communicates by brutally scratching words into the back of his victim. I'm sure Beckett is saying something here about language and communication.

Reading How It Is is an experience like reading poetry. The cadence of the words can be hypnotic to the point that you begin to overlook the meaning. In reading verse you have to strip away the structure in your mind to find the natural sentences. With How It Is, you do the reverse, but it's something you easily adapt to. It was slow going at first, but I read the final two-thirds (100 pages) in a single sitting. At first glance it may resemble Finnegans Wake, but reading it is child's play by comparison.

The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
Written ca. 400 BCE
English translation by Richard Crawley 1876
Modified and annotated by Donald Lateiner 2006

 

"A possession for all time," is how Thucydides characterized his unfinished history of the war between the leagues led by Athens and Sparta--a war in which he had fought as an Athenian general. The war lasted from 431 to 404 BCE, involved most of the Greek world, and was fought on land and sea from the Black Sea to Sicily. The fighting was not continuous--there were years of truce and some long periods of inactivity--but it was brutal. A number of cities and towns were destroyed, and their entire male population put to the sword, while defeated armies and fleets often suffered the same fate. Several major cities, including Athens, also underwent bloody internal upheaval as a consequence of the war. The war has been called the suicide of Greek civilization.

Though Thucydides was an Athenian, he prided himself on his impartiality. He interviewed men from both sides and took pains to analyze the motives of the participants and the factors which went into their decisions. Our modern view of the era tends to see Athens as a paragon of culture, democracy and freedom, while Sparta is seen as a backwards, militaristic regime. But Thucydides has no qualms about showing us that his Athens was also a ruthless imperialist power. It had few willing allies; most of the cities in its naval empire were forced to pay yearly tribute or be punished. Sparta's coalition, in contrast, was an alliance of independent states which accepted Spartan leadership on the battlefield but managed their own affairs. Most, but not all, of Athens's subject cities were ethnic Ionian and had democratic governments like Athens. Most, but not all, of Sparta's allies were ethnic Dorian and were ruled by oligarchies of the landed gentry. But there were rival democratic and aristocratic factions in almost every city, and it was often easier to foment revolt in an enemy city than to besiege and capture it. Thucydides does an excellent job of portraying this complex political landscape and showing how it caused the war in the first place, and continued to influence military strategy for both sides.

Thucydides gives a strictly chronological account, jumping from place to place as necessary when events are happening concurrently in different theaters. His focus is on political, diplomatic and military events. He does not give us background stories about people or places that would disrupt his timeline. Nor does he romanticize his history with unnecessary descriptive language. But his depictions of battles, whether on land or sea, are models of clarity, insight and detail. It takes only a little imagination to picture the desperate struggles, the deeds of valor, and the fear and suffering on the battlefield.

Unfortunately Thucydides doesn't tell us his sources, so we don't know which events he witnessed first hand and which he may have reconstructed from unreliable accounts or conjecture. One of the hallmarks of his writing is that, before every major decision by a political body, he presents speeches by politicians or ambassadors representing the opposing views. While they do an excellent job of giving the reader a balanced picture of the issues, it's impossible for us to believe that the author did not himself compose most or all of these speeches.

While Herodotus is justly considered the Father of History, Thucydides should be considered the father of modern historical technique. Instead of just reporting hearsay, he analyzed his sources and gave us what he felt to be the true picture of events. He focused on his subject and eschewed extraneous detail. He sought the true causes and motives for actions, not just what was claimed. And he discounted--even ridiculed--the idea of divine influence over human events.

Richard Crawley's translation has endured because it is considered one of the most accurate yet still quite readable. Donald Lateiner revised the translation in only minor ways, he says, by breaking up a few overlong sentences and substituting more accurate terms like "trireme" where Crawley had used "galley." He made other changes to convert Crawley's British English to American English. I found the language easy to read and understand, and the reputed difficulty of Thucydides to be much exaggerated. Most of Lateiner's many footnotes seemed only there to "clarify" something that Thucydides had already made perfectly clear, so I eventually stopped referring to them.

The History of the Peloponnesian War is worthy of its status as one of the great classics. It is our best source of information about one of the most pivotal conflicts in Western history, and is a seminal example of fine historical analysis and writing.

Wow! Brilliant review of The History of the Peloponnesian War I will probably never get to read it, but at least I can speak about it as though I have (however unlikely any body will ask if I have read it).

Great review! I have the Landmark Thucydides on hand to read later this year, if I ever manage to finish Herodotus!

Kepler by John Banville
First published 1981

 

Johannes Kepler's life began in Austria during the promise and intellectual flowering of the Renaissance, but ended midst the darkness and horrors of the Thirty Years War. His love was mathematics, but he often made his living as an astrologer, casting fortunes for the rich and powerful. Though he made one of the most important discoveries in astronomy, his eyesight was so poor that he relied upon data collected by other observers, most notably his one-time patron Tycho Brahe. He struggled his entire life against his own prejudice against disorder. Like Copernicus and others before him, Kepler believed there must be some underlying, symmetrical and harmonious geometric arrangement to the heavens. He was as dismayed as anyone when he came to the realization that the orbits of the planets were not perfect circles, but ellipses.

John Banville's biographical novel focuses on Kepler's personality, his family life, and his public difficulties over religion and money. Kepler was a highly focused man, irascible, egotistical, but introspective enough to realize all of this. He was as quick to atone as he was to offend, but stubbornly steadfast on matters of principle, be they scientific, religious or monetary. He was the prodigy of a poor and unlettered family. His mother was tried for witchcraft. His first marriage was a loveless arrangement with a fat, twice-widowed merchant's daughter. He flirted with danger by loving his stepdaughter more than his wife. His religious unorthodoxy made enemies of the Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists even while his growing international fame led to his appointment as Imperial Mathematician by the Holy Roman Emperor.

Kepler, the novel, was preceded by Banville's novel Doctor Copernicus. Reading the novels in sequence is recommended, not only to trace the advances in celestial theory, but because Kepler reflects upon one of the major themes of Doctor Copernicus. Nicolaus Copernicus did not necessarily believe that his heliocentric model of the universe was true in the physical sense, but only that it was a model which better fit the observations. Johannes Kepler, however, believed he was describing a reality you could touch as well as see. In the novel he says, "No longer satisfied, as I believe astronomy has been for milleniums, with the mathematical representation of planetary movement, I have sought to explain these movements from their physical causes. No one before me has ever attempted such a thing; no one before has ever framed his thoughts in this way." Whether Kepler's statement is strictly true or not, Banville's emphasis on this point shows us what a huge shift science had to make in the 16th and 17th centuries away from the mindset of trying to describe phenomena within the framework of a preconceived ideal. Even Kepler doubted himself, wondering "Was his pursuit of the forms of physical reality irredeemably vulgar?"

Not only does Banville tell us an important and insightful story, but he does it in language that is often stunningly beautiful. When Kepler takes a walk: "He gained the common. The evening rested here, bronzed and quietly breathing, basking like an exhausted acrobat in the afterglow of marvellous exploits of light and weather." The novel defies chronology in places--one chapter is a long series of letters in reverse date order--but is otherwise easy to read. No knowledge of astronomy or mathematics is required. I highly recommend Kepler, ideally after you have read Doctor Copernicus.

Other works by John Banville I have read:
Doctor Copernicus
The Sea

Thank you for introducing me to John Banville and his books on Copernicus and Kepler. You have exposed a blind spot which I hope to correct. Onto the wish list with both of them.

Excellent review of Kepler. I was surprised how much I enjoyed Doctor Copernicus and so I will definitely read Kepler.

I bought Doctor Copernicus a year or so ago after you read and reviewed it but have yet to read it. Now you make me want to get to it sooner so I can read Kepler too.

The Wasps by Aristophanes
First performed 422 BCE
Anonymous English tranlslation 1912



Like Aristophanes's other early plays, The Wasps is a satire attacking Cleon, the general who ruled Athens at the time and was considered by Aristophanes and other conservatives to be a demagogue and warmonger. This subject of this play is the law court which was one of the tools used by Cleon to maintain his power by eliminating his enemies. Elderly men were paid nominal sums to serve on juries which rubber stamped Cleon's judgments, sentencing Cleon's rich opponents to death or exile and seizing their assets in the name of the people.

Philocleon (whose name means "lover of Cleon") is one such juror, or "dicast," who is addicted to the pleasure of sitting in judgment over others--something which makes him feel useful in his old age. His son Bdelycleon ("hater of Cleon") wants to prevent his father from attending another court and has cast a net over his house to prevent the old man from escaping. Philocleon first tries to escape through the chimney. When Bdelycleon asks what is making all that noise, his father replies "I am the smoke going up." Philocleon tries several more avenues of escape with no success until finally his fellow jurors, in the form of a Chorus named "the Wasps," shows up to help him.

A debate ensues in which Philocleon agrees to give up the law courts if his son can make a convincing argument against them. Bdelycleon then quotes facts and figures to show that the jurors are being paid a pittance for a service which rakes in a fortune for Cleon and his cronies--money that isn't being used for the benefit of Athens or its people. Philocleon agrees to stay home, but what is he to do with himself? Bdelycleon solves this problem by setting up a household court with Philocleon presiding. His first case is to try the dog Laches for stealing a piece of Sicilian cheese. (Laches was an Athenian aristocrat put on trial by Cleon for a military failure in Sicily.)

In the last third of the play Aristophanes seems to wander off topic, attacking a variety of targets including his rival playwright Euripides. Though it has some humor and ribaldry, The Wasps is less relevant to modern readers than the author's anti-war plays. It is interesting and amusing, but my least favorite of the seven plays I have read so far.

Other plays I have read by Aristophanes:
The Acharnians
The Knights
The Clouds
The Birds
Lysistrata
The Frogs

Nevermind The Wasps you still have a few more Aristophanes to read'

Ironically I was on the patio yesterday afternoon reading The Wasps while grilling steaks when my granddaughter came running out to announce that there was a wasp in the house. She wasn't very interested in what I had to say about Aristophanes. Fortunately her big brother dispatched the intruder.

>172 StevenTX: LOL!

It seems like a coincidence, but I have recently made an abrupt turn in my reading focus and have decided to go back to the classics. I am in the middle of Herodotus at the moment, but I have it in mind to reread a lot of the Greek plays that I read in college, and I am going to really hone in on Plato after I get through Herodotus and Thucydides. Thus, I am really enjoying your reviews in this area and it is good to know there is a kindred spirit on hand.

The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes
First published 1962
English translation by Alfred Mac Adam 1991

 

From his death bed Artemio Cruz reflects upon the episodes in his life: his revolutionary battles, his great lost love, his disillusionment, his loveless marriage, his rise to power, his triumphs and tragedies, and now his cynical old age. The novel is structured in alternating sections--a scene from the past followed by the thoughts of Cruz as slips closer and closer to death. The episodes from his life are not in chronological order but leap from period to period as memories do. His deathbed thoughts and sensations are in the form of a stream of consciousness that grows steadily more fragmented and incoherent as the end approaches.

We very quickly learn that Cruz was a soldier allied with Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution, but at some point he compromised his ideals, married for money, became a landowner and then an industrialist. He rose to power by bribing officials, controlling the press, and making deals with exploitative American corporations. Artemio Cruz is representative of the ills of Mexico as a whole--the idealism of the Revolution corrupted by the violence of the Revolution itself into greed and conflicting interests. Eventually the corruption spreads into every facet of society until the revolutionaries become the very people they were trying to overthrow, and the disenfranchised gain nothing but new masters.

The episodes from Cruz's life take the reader on a vivid tour of Mexico's history, cultures and landscapes, from jungles to deserts and from hovels to mansions. Attitudes about Artemio Cruz himself are likely to be ambiguous, for the novel raises some good questions about self interest versus idealism. The Death of Artemio Cruz is a gripping and moving novel about 20th century Mexico and about the fate of social revolutions in general. I highly recommend it.

And five stars for The Death of Artemio Cruz. I take it that some knowledge of the History of Mexico would add to the reading experience.

I've been meaning to read more Fuentes since reading Terra Nostra some years ago, and this sounds like it would be a good place to start. Great review.

Wieland; or, The Transformation: An American Tale by Charles Brockden Brown
First published 1798

 

Wieland is considered the first American Gothic novel. It is a story which begins in Saxony with the narrator's grandfather whose surname is Wieland. His son, the narrator's father, emigrates to America with the intention of founding a new religion based on the beliefs of the Albigensians. He settles in Pennsylvania on the banks of the Schuylkill River where he eventually abandons his missionary endeavors in favor of farming. He marries and raises a family in prosperity while continuing to pursue private religious studies in a temple he has built high on a bank above the river. But one night a bizarre light illuminates the temple, and Wieland suffers injuries both physical and psychological which send him into a steady decline, ending in his death.

The temple continues to be the focus of strange events--unusual lights, prophetic voices, and sudden warnings. These bizarre phenomena increase in frequency and occur in other locations after the appearance of a mysterious stranger named Carwin. He is homeless and shabbily dressed, yet articulate and strangely compelling. The Wieland family befriends him at first, but then begins to suspect that he is connected to the supernatural events. Eventually fear, sexual tension and suspicion come to dominate their lives as they descend unawares into a maelstrom of terror, insanity and violence.

We are well into the story before realizing that the narrator is a woman, Clara Wieland, the daughter of the temple-builder. While the novel reflects conventional 18th century attitudes toward women (e.g. "The gulf that separates man from insects is not wider than that which severs the polluted from the chaste among women."), Clara has more pluck and intellect than most Gothic heroines and should appeal to modern readers. Another area in which Wieland differs is in its attitude toward religion. Instead of being anti-Catholic or anti-monastic, as many contemporary Gothic novels were, Wieland is a cautionary tale about religious mania in general.

Wieland has moments of spine-tingling suspense and some truly shocking scenes. The narrator's formal language may be difficult for some readers, and others may object to the ending which leaves some important questions unanswered, but I found Wieland hard to put down once the tension began to build and one of the best Gothic novels I have read.

Wieland must be one of the earliest American novels still in print and as such is probably worth reading because of that. Great review, but I am not tempted by this one.

Noticed your book list at the start of your thread and you have some great reading ahead of you.

Like rebecca, I read Terra Nostra some time ago and always meant to get back to Fuentes. The Death of Artemio Cruz sounds like just the right vehicle.

Do you suppose Charles Brockden Brown influenced Robert Coover? It sounds as if there could be parallels. I really like Gothic novels, but haven't read any American ones. I'll look for this too.

>178 baswood: - Yes, Charles Brockden Brown is considered the earliest American novelist whose works are still being read, yet he wasn't being taught when I was in school--or even mentioned that I can recall. Basic American literature courses typically begin with Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. His omission wouldn't, I think, have been because of any disdain for the Gothic--Irving, Hawthorne, and of course Poe were all very much part of the Gothic tradition. Wikipedia has a nice, rather scholarly article about him and calls him a "writer's writer" who was much more popular with his peers than with the general public.

Now that the grandkids are back in school my reading pace has picked up a bit, so I reconstructed my "reading shelf." I'll try to stick with it this time.

>179 SassyLassy: - That's an interesting observation about Coover. Perhaps so. There have been plenty of events during Coover's lifetime to stimulate an interest in religious extremism, but what intrigues me is that this is the subject Brown chose in the 1790s when organized religion was at a low ebb. Perhaps that's the very thing that allowed a highly individualized religious fanaticism (as depicted in the novel) to arise.

The article I mentioned above says that Brown was influenced by William Godwin and influenced, in turn, Mary Shelley. In the novels of all three one can see the common theme of the solitary outcast doomed unjustly to wander the earth.

I agree that Brockden Brown is a very interesting American author. I have Wieland, or the transformation and Memoirs of Carwin, the biloquist on my TBR. Many years ago, I read Edgar Huntley or, Memoirs of a sleepwalker, which I enjoyed a lot.

I have recently started reading Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. It is a novel which is also classified with Gothic literature. I think you might like reading it (it is tagged 1001). I picked it up because of the bi-centennial birthday of Le Fanu.

I like what I have read of it sofar, because a large part of the gothic effect is psychological rather than through standard props. I think it might fir with your reading of The Italian and other Gothic novels.

>181 edwinbcn: Uncle Silas is coming up on my September reading queue. I'm glad you are reading it too.

Retreat without Song by Shahan Shahnour
First published in Armenian 1929
English translation by Mischa Kudian 1982

 

Retreat without Song is the story of a young Armenian man named Bedros who has left his home in Istanbul, Turkey, to start a new life in Paris in the 1920s. A talented photographer, Bedros takes the French name Pierre and is soon immersed in a world of glamour and sexual freedom he could not have imagined. Prostitutes, actresses, and even society women have him take their nude portraits. Girls offer themselves to him, but the woman he falls in love with is his employer, Madame Jeanne, a beautiful but older woman with a hidden past.

The author, Shahan Shahnour, had a background similar to that of Bedros/Pierre, so the novel is largely autobiographical. It is a universal story of a difficult love affair, but also a picture of the cultural dislocation of emigres like the people of the Armenian Diaspora. Bedros and his Armenian friends are torn between the seductive attractions of Paris and their feelings for families they may never see again. It is difficult for them to know how to feel about a troubled homeland most of them have never seen at all. Unfortunately Shahnour was writing for Armenian readers, so an understanding of Armenian culture and history is taken for granted. The English translation has no introduction or notes.

The novel is told entirely from Bedros/Pierre's point of view, often in stream-of-consciousness form. The characters are well-developed, and there are some episodes of exquisite emotional tension. Unfortunately the author's or translator's language can be awkward and unnatural at times. For anyone with a particular interest in the Armenian Diaspora, Retreat without Song would probably be essential reading. Other readers will find it a good portrait of immigrant life in Paris in the 1920s and a poignant love story, but not exceptional on either count.

Retreat without songis perhaps one of the 1001 books that you volunteered to read that no one else wanted to.
Still it does not seem entirely without merit.

Fascinated by Wieland.

>166 StevenTX: wondering if Banvilles's Kepler was Brahe's poisoner. Hopefully I'll read these sometime.

>184 baswood: - Yes, that's why I was reading it just now. It may not have been that no one else wanted to read it as that no one else could find it. The only English translation is a 1982 edition by a minor press specializing in Armenian translations, the print looks like it came out of a typewriter (remember those?), and my copy was one that was withdrawn from circulation by the Belfast Public Library (without, I would guess from its faded but otherwise pristine condition, ever having circulated).

>185 dchaikin: - Banville's Kepler had a love/hate relationship with Brahe but was devastated by his death.

The Newton Letter by John Banville
First published 1982

 

My first reaction as I started reading The Newton Letter--after having read Banville's superb biographical novels Doctor Copernicus and Kepler--was disappointment that it isn't really about Isaac Newton. But it turns out to be a wonderful short novel on its own right, closely resembling Banville's masterpiece The Sea.

The narrator, a historian, begins by telling us he has abandoned his book on Newton and temporarily withdrawn from life. After working for seven years on the book, he explains, he had felt it necessary to leave Dublin and go into seclusion at a quiet place in the country where he could finish his work. He chose a decaying estate called the Ferns where a small lodge house was available for rent. But the lodge, it turns out, is so close to the family house that he can't help but be caught up in their lives. He is drawn into a passionate love affair with one of its members even as he struggles to unravel the secret he is sure the family is hiding.

Late in his life, Isaac Newton suffered a nervous breakdown, was accused of insanity, and gave up his scientific studies in favor of religion and the occult. This is mirrored by the narrator's abandonment of his Newton book in a paroxysm of self-doubt. Events will lead him to question his ability to understand and judge people, himself included. Likewise we must learn to question the narrator's version of events. The Newton Letter is an excellent, captivating and unsettling work. A cover blurb calls it "The best introduction to Banville," and that may be the case.

I think Newton was always into religion and the occult, just not publicly. Anyway, glad I read your review because I hope to read this and now have a better idea on what to expect. It sounds excellent.

The Newton Letter by John Banville; that's another one for the wish list.

Peace by Aristophanes
First performed 422 BCE
Anonymous English translation 1912

The Peloponnesian War between the leagues of Athens and Sparta had been raging for ten years when Aristophanes wrote his hopeful play Peace. Athens's warmongering demagogue and Aristophanes's great enemy Cleon was dead, as was Sparta's greatest general Brasidas, both killed in the same battle. Truce talks were under way, and the playwright was in a mood to rejoice with a bright, celebratory piece.

The Athenians who had suffered most from the war were the farmers. Almost every year the Spartans invaded Attica just before harvest time and devastated the crops. Athens could still import grain from its Aegean empire, so the city didn't starve, but the farmers were reduced to poverty. Trygaeus, one such farmer, is the principal character of the play. He decides to fly to Olympus and convince Zeus to put an end to the war before the Greeks destroy one another.

Trygaeus might have used Pegasus, the winged stallion, for his quest, but he couldn't afford to feed him. Instead he feeds a dung beetle until it grows large enough to carry him aloft. He argues that this is the affordable choice because "my beetle devours again as filth what I have eaten myself." Aristophanes continues his scatological humor when Trygaeus takes off and calls to the people of Athens:

"You, for love of whom I brave these dangers, do ye neither let wind nor go to stool for the space of three days, for, if, while cleaving the air, my steed should scent anything, he would fling me head foremost from the summit of my hopes."

Trygaeus arrives at Olympus only to find that most of the gods have vacated it for other heavens, leaving Ares in charge. The god of war is busy looking for a mortal and pestle with which to finish grinding the Greek cities to dust. The farmer learns that Peace has been buried beneath a pile of boulders, and he works to convince the Chorus of Athenians to help him dig her out.

Aristophanes's chief point in the play is to expose the classes of Athenians who work against peace for private gain, all the while claiming patriotic motives. They are the arms merchants and profiteers who still seem to govern most of the world. Aristophanes got his wish, and a peace treaty was signed between Athens and Sparta only months after Peace was performed. It was a fragile peace, however, which gradually fell apart until the two alliances were once more back at war. The conflict would last 27 years in all and result in the defeat of Athens and the permanent decline of Greek civilization.

Peace is a festive and hopeful play full of satirical jabs and Aristophanes's usual sexual and scatological pranks. It's not the most thoughtful or instructive of plays, but the message is timeless and certainly as relevant today as it was then.

Yes that message does seem timeless.

Thesmophoriazusae by Aristophanes
First performed 411 BCE
Anonymous English translation 1912

In his previous comedies Aristophanes would often poke fun at his contemporary Euripides, but here he devotes an entire play to him. Euripides has learned that a group of Athenian women gathered to celebrate the Thesmophoria--a festival commemorating the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone--will attempt to enact some form of revenge against him for having portrayed women so negatively in his tragedies. No men are allowed at the Thesmophoria, so Euripides tries to recruit the renowned poet Agathon to pass as a woman and infiltrate the meeting to see what the women are planning to do to him. Agathon refuses, so Euripides turns to his own father-in-law Mnesilochus. Mnesilochus, a rather batty old fellow who can't keep his mind off of sodomy, agrees without thinking. So Euripides shaves his father-in-law's beard, singes off his body hair (to the old man's great distress when it comes to the pubic region), and dresses him in a woman's gown.

Mnesilochus infiltrates the meeting and hears the women declaim against Euripides, saying "Does he not style us gay, lecherous, drunken, traitorous, boastful? Does he not repeat that we are all vice, that we are the curse of our husbands? So that, directly they come back from the theatre, they look at us doubtfully and go searching every nook, fearing there may be some hidden lover.... It is because of Euripides that we are incessantly watched, that we are shut up behind bolts and bars, and that dogs are kept to frighten off the gallants." But Mnesilochus can't keep silent and counters a very illuminating catalog of the various schemes Athenian women use to deceive their husbands and consort with their lovers.

Eventually word reaches the women that there may be a man in disguise among them. Mnesilocus is soon suspected, disrobed, and the cry goes up: "Hullo! what do I see there?"

But there is more fun to be had still, as Euripdes attempts to rescue Mnesilochus and the result is a series of parodies of famous scenes from the tragedian's plays. Thesmophoriazusae is hilarious, ribald entertainment that will especially appeal to those who have read some Euripides. Unlike most of Aristophanes's other works, there is no serious anti-war message or political satire, just good, dirty fun watching a great writer caught up in the battle of the sexes.

The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus by Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen
First published in German 1669
English translation by George Schulz-Behrend 1993

   

The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus is a picaresque novel set during and after the Thirty Years' War. While it contains much that is light-hearted and fantastical, the novel is chiefly read for its depiction of the lawless chaos which reigned during the religious wars of the 17th century. The author's personal experiences as refugee, captive and soldier formed the basis of the story of Simplicius.

Simplicius is a German farm boy who has been raised in such ignorance and isolation that he doesn't even know his own name, nor has he seen anything of the outside world until a troop of cavalry descend upon his farm, torture the men, rape the women, plunder the stores and burn the buildings. He eventually escapes into the woods where he meets and is taken in by a hermit. The hermit teaches the boy to read and makes a devout Christian out of him. Simplicius is happy alone in the woods with his tutor until the hermit finally dies, and need forces him into the company of others.

Simplicius is at first a pure-minded observer of the sins and follies of the age, but he is gradually corrupted until there are few sins that he, himself hasn't committed. In his wanderings the boy becomes a court jester, a soldier, a guerrilla leader, a bandit, a doctor, a con artist, a pilgrim, a merchant, a galley slave, and a farmer. His sexual escapades are numerous and include being the erotic plaything of a masked French noblewoman. He travels from Germany to France, Switzerland, Poland, Russia, Korea, Macau, Istanbul, Egypt and Italy. He also makes an epic underwater journey to the kingdom of the water sprites at the center of the earth. Finally, Simplicius writes his memoirs after being shipwrecked and learning to survive on a desert island in the South Atlantic (a half century before Robinson Crusoe).

During his military career Simplicius switches sides so often that it is difficult to keep track of whether he's fighting and looting for the Imperial (Catholic) or Swedish (Protestant) side. This casual attitude toward allegiance was widespread, and Grimmelshausen means to show us that it was a symptom of the general amorality of the age. The violence, lawlessness and licentiousness don't end with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, but continue unabated in new and more devious forms. In the end The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus delivers a strong lecture on faith and morality, but only after entertaining us with the hero's immoral misadventures.

The modern translation by George Schulz-Behrend is highly readable and appropriately annotated to explain references to historical persons and events. The translator chose to abridge it slightly, giving us only summaries of some long chapters that are incidental to the main story line. I found the early chapters to be both highly entertaining and vividly informative, as Simplicius gives us a naïve view of the conflict that is ravaging Germany. But the young man seems to learn too much too soon, and his matchless prowess at swordplay, banditry, subterfuge and lovemaking makes Simplicius a less likable character and his adventures less amusing. I would recommend the novel chiefly as a first-hand account of life in Germany during the Thirty Years' War.

---

My copy of this book has an interesting history of its own. I bought it several years ago at a used book store either in Dallas or Austin. Only when I started to read it did I see that it was incribed: "To my esteemed colleague Edgar Polomé with good wishes for a speedy recovery--and a little entertainment. G. Schulz-Behrend, 27 Sept. 1993." The translator was, at that time, a professor of German at the University of Texas, as was Edgar Polomé. Prof. Polomé apparently did recover from his ailment, but died seven years later. Obviously the contents of his personal library were sold or donated at some point, winding up in public circulation.

That's a great story about the history of your book!

I was surprised to see some other reviews of The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus

Great to have a copy of the book with a dedication by the translator and it makes it also part of your local history.

The Phoenician Women by Euripides
First performed ca. 410 BCE
English translation by George Theodoridis 2012

The Phoenician Women is the story of Oedipus and his family, focusing on the battle in front of Thebes in which his two sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, kill each other. The title refers to the chorus, a group of Phoenician women who happen to be in Thebes on their way to Delphi. They serve as the voice of horrified bystanders, but play no significant role in the drama. The same story was told from a different angle by Aeschylus in his play Seven Against Thebes.

The play begins with a nice recap of the history of Oedipus: Ignorant of his true identity, in an episode of road rage he accidentally slays his own father, Laius, the king of Thebes. Oedipus then solves the riddle of the Sphinx and frees Thebes from her depredations. He is rewarded with the hand of Laius's widow, Jocasta. Only after she has born him four children does he discover that she is his mother. Oedipus blinds himself and relinquishes the throne to his two sons. The two brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, agree to share the throne on alternating years, with Eteocles going first. But when Polyneices returns to take his turn, Eteocles denies him. Polyneices, in the meantime, has married the daughter of the king of Argos, so he shows up with an army of Argives to take Thebes by force. This is where the play begins.

The Phoenician Women seems to lack focus; it has no tragic hero in the traditional sense. The text includes interpolations by subsequent authors, and may not have been written by Euripides in the first place. The central character is Jocasta, who sees her two sons kill each other, then kills herself. But the principal theme is the idea of putting the welfare of one's city before that of oneself. Both Eteocles and Polyneices claim to be doing so, but the final judgment comes down against Polyneices for leading an army against his homeland.

This play must have been pretty grim but timely viewing for an Athenian audience in 410. The city had suffered terrible losses in its decades-long war with Sparta and had recently experienced internal rebellion. The key figure of the time, Alcibiades, was an Athenian general who had been accused of impiety, gone over to the Spartans, and recently come back to Athens. Euripides may have been comparing him to Polyneices. The Phoenician Women is one of Euripdes's weakest plays, but it provides an excellent recap of the Oedipus story. The translation I read by George Thedoridis is available free online. The language is clear yet appropriate in tone. The only deficiencies are several careless errors in names where a character says Eteocles but clearly means Polyneices, or vice versa.

Sounds like you are scraping the bottom of Euripides' barrel. Nice to be reminded of the story of Oedipus (road rage indeed)

Here is that road rage scene from Pasolini's Oedipus Rex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVYAqTtfwuc

>197 baswood: Weird film. Both Sophocles and Euripides failed to mention that Oedipus killed his dad with an oversized potato peeler.

# 193 - Despite the flaws you mention, this seems to be a very entertaining book. I never heard of von Grimmelshausen (what a name!), but he seems to have been ahead of his time and a bit of a mix of Don Quixote, Phileas Fogg and Gulliver. And who would have thought that 17th century writers could make their characters travel from Germany to France, Switzerland, Poland, Russia, Korea, Macau, Istanbul, Egypt and Italy. He also makes an epic underwater journey to the kingdom of the water sprites at the center of the earth.

# 196 - I've never heard of this particular story by Euripides, but I envy the fact that you seem to tackle those authors systematically.

Your excellent reviews have made me more aware of the fact that I need to read all those marvellous classics. Thanks for bringing them to our attention.

Rhesus by Euripides
English translation by Richmond Lattimore

Rhesus is believed to be the oldest surviving play by Euripides, though both its date and authorship are still in dispute. It is a short tragedy depicting an episode from the Iliad. After years of war, the Trojans have finally gained the upper hand, and the Greeks are huddled along the shore behind their defenses hoping Achilles will finally quit sulking and lead them into battle. One night the Trojans notice that the Greeks are stirring and appear to be gathering around their ships. Hector, the Trojan commander, thinks they are trying to get away and is all for ordering an immediate attack. But Aeneas, fearing one of Odysseus's tricks, talks him into sending a spy into enemy lines instead. Hector reluctantly agrees, and Dolon volunteers for the dangerous mission (but only after haggling over the reward he will receive in return).

A short time later a shepherd arrives to tell Hector that the Thracian King Rhesus has just arrived at the head of an army to join the Trojan side. Overconfident, Hector scornfully says of Rhesus "He is here for the feasting, but he was not there with spear in hand to help the huntsman catch the game." He is all for sending the Thracians away when Rhesus himself shows up and explains that he was late for the battle because he had another war to fight first. Grumpily, Hector agrees to let the Thracians join his forces. But the goddess Athena has decided that Rhesus will die that very night, and Odysseus and his companion Diomedes will be the tools she uses to achieve her purpose.

Rhesus, the play, has a Homeric feel to it. The gods are in complete control and have ordained the outcome. Athena appears on the battlefield in person to tell Odysseus "You must not go beyond what has been destined for you." But Euripides has added his typically iconoclastic touch, showing these legendary figures to be capable of human weakness and folly. This is especially true for Hector, who is so dense you wonder how the Trojans have lasted so long if he's the best they have. Aeneas jibes him, "I wish you could make plans as well as you can fight. But so it is; the same man cannot well be skilled in everything."

While it is a relatively minor work, I found Rhesus to be very entertaining in the translation by Richmond Lattimore and a fascinating perspective on the familiar characters of the Iliad.

On this krater Athena points out the sleeping Rhesus to Diomedes, who is about to kill him, while Odysseus, below, steals Rhesus's famed chariot horses.

Great review of Rhesus and wonderful picture on that Krater.
Are all the translations you are reading by Richmond Latimer?

>201 baswood: No, they're by lots of different translators. Most of the plays I've read come from a series of "The Complete Greek Tragedies" from the University of Chicago Press. The volume I'm reading now has four plays by four different translators: Lattimore, Frank William Jones, William Arrowsmith, and Charles B. Walker.

Orestes by Euripides
First performed 408 BCE
English translation by William Arrowsmith

"On and on it goes, strangeness to strangeness succeeding, horror to horror." Euripides's last known play is by far his most bizarre, yet in many ways his most relevant to his own time and ours. It tells the story familiar from the Oresteia of Aeschylus: Agamemnon returns to Argos from leading the Greeks to victory in the Trojan War only to be murdered in his bath by his wife Clytemnestra and the lover she has taken during his ten-year absence. Their son, Orestes, and daughter, Electra, in turn murder Clytemnestra to avenge the death of their father. Orestes was egged on to the deed by the god Apollo, but that doesn't keep him from being punished by the gods, who assign the Furies to hound him with fits of temporary insanity.

Euripides, as usual, brings his characters down off the pedestal of myth and into his world of 5th century Greece. Orestes and Electra, in addition to being judged by the gods, are to be put on trial in public court. And instead of being tragic hero and heroine, they are weak, vacillating, and spiteful, especially Orestes. He first repents of the murder of his mother and longs for death. But on reconsideration, he blames Apollo. Chastised for the facile excuse of putting all the blame on the immortals, he insists he was only dispensing justice. Then it's the fault of Helen, his mother's sister, who started all the trouble by running off to Troy. Then it's the fault of Menelaus, Helen's husband. He even goes so far as to blame Tyndareus, the father of Helen and Clytemnestra, for having raised the woman who made a murderer out of Orestes by forcing him to kill her. Finally he tells the people of Argos that he did it for their own good, for if his mother had gotten away with adultery and murder then no man could rest easy going off to war and leaving a wife behind--yes, he did it in the name of National Security.

The Argives aren't buying any of this, and sentence Orestes and Electra to death. At first the siblings are resigned to their fate. They share a final embrace that suggests incestuous feelings, if not deeds. But moments later, ever changeable, they concoct a bizarre plot to murder their aunt Helen and take her daughter Hermione hostage to force Menelaus to let them escape the city. Only the intervention of a deus ex machina prevents a general bloodbath.

Euripides wrote this play at a time when Athens had been at war with Sparta for a generation and had recently suffered a succession of regime changes in the aftermath of a catastrophic military defeat. Everyone was blaming everyone else while generals and politicians switched sides freely in fear of their lives. This is the fratricidal atmosphere Euripides was trying to depict, showing that it could come to no good end. Clearly no god was going to come down from the rafters on a wire and rescue Athens and Greece from their self-inflicted woes.

Much of what happens in Orestes is evocative of today's issues of terrorism, religious extremism, moral relativism, and perpetual blame casting. This strange, unsettling play has never been very popular, but seems particularly relevant just now.

Very interesting reviews, Steven. I always get an education when I read your thread.

You're really zipping through Euripides, Steven. Like Colleen, I'm getting an education.

I like what you said about the relevance of Orestes

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
First published 1870
English translation by Lewis Mercier 1873



20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a novel best appreciated when read with the sense of wonder of someone who has seen nothing of the sea but its shore, and whose only acquaintance with marine life comes from the fish market. I won't bother summarizing the plot--the Disney movie most of us have seen is a good approximation of the novel in that respect, and its representation of the principal characters is quite accurate. But the real "star" of the novel is the sea itself, with all its mystery, its fecund variety, and the daily drama of life and death. Surfeited with television documentaries, it is difficult for us to imagine how Verne's novel must have impressed and educated its 19th century readers.

Verne's submarine, the Nautilus, shows impressive foresight in its design. It is only slightly smaller than the American nuclear submarine which, less than a century later, would bear the same name. Its top speed is nearly identical and, like the later Nautilus, Captain Nemo's ship would best demonstrate its capabilities by an epic journey under polar ice. Where Verne was most off base was in his power source. His Nautilus generated electricity from batteries powered by sodium and seawater, and the submarine could travel an entire year on a single charge. He also greatly overestimated the depth of the world's oceans, having his submarine travel to a depth of 16,000 yards, which is almost 4 miles deeper than the Challenger Deep. (The "20,000 leagues" in the title, by the way, comes from the horizontal distance traveled during the novel, not the depth. The French league is, according to Verne, equal to 2.16 English miles, so the Nautilus traveled 43,200 miles in 10 months, a very believable 144 miles per day.)

Captain Nemo's identity, nationality, and the source of his misanthropy are destined to remain a mystery, but his motives will resonate with modern readers. He has a strong ecological ethic, and while he takes fish for food, he deplores the hunting of whales for oil and of seals for fur. He predicts the extinction of several species of whale while doing what he can to prevent it. And though he disdains direct contact with humanity, he works to redress the growing divide between rich and poor, harvesting gold from shipwrecks to provide aid to the underprivileged.

The English translation I read is the one in public domain by Lewis Mercier. It is considered flawed in comparison with modern translations, but I still found it quite entertaining and readable. While at times it does resemble an endless inventory of marine life, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is an entertaining and at times thoughtful adventure.

>207 StevenTX: Jules Verne's most popular book according to LT stats. I will be making that voyage soon, but will probably read a more modern translation.

>207 StevenTX: your review of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea makes me want to re-read it. I recently did a re-read of Around the World in 80 Days and found Verne's vision pretty amazing.

As if to thumb their noses at "Banned Book Week," a school district in the nearby suburb of Highland Park has just announced that that they are banning these seven books from their high school classrooms:

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

What makes this remarkable is that Highland Park is one of the richest, most highly educated communities in this part of the world. It's a town of multi-million dollar mansions where more than 75% of adults have college degrees. (The remaining 25% are probably their live-in maids and nannies.) Yet they think that by banning Nobel prize winners they can keep their precious teenagers safe from all knowledge of sex, poverty and injustice. Unbelievable.

>210 StevenTX: That is unbelievable. I wonder what they think their kids are doing on those computers and iPads and iPhones?

Siddhartha? Because we just don't want to know there are any religions out there other than fundigelical?

>210 StevenTX: They banned The Art of Racing in the Rain ?!?!?! I assume it's because of its reincarnation theme. But REALLY???? I consider myself a pretty conservative Christian (obviously, I don't believe in reincarnation); but I absolutely loved that story and recommended it to my son (who checked it out of the library).

What idiots!!!!! *sigh* Best word I can think of.

I've read The Glass Castle and The Song of Solomon, and have no clue why those would be banned, much less why they would be two of only seven books banned. Strange.

> no clue why

Banning books is rarely rational, as fear is not rational.

If books are banned then I immediately want to read them, lets hope those children do exactly that.

...The primary objection to the books were sexual references and promiscuity: Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain, and John Green's An Abundance of Katherines each took the ax last week. Parents cited explicit passages and promiscuous content. Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes and Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower had already been removed from the list earlier this summer after coming under parental criticism...

...In addition to sexually overt rhetoric, two of the banned books also feature prominent minority perspectives: Nobel prize-winning author Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Sherman Alexie's National Book Award-winning The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian...

... two suspended selections tell stories of poverty and financial hardship: Pulitzer-prize winning journalist David K. Shipler's The Working Poor: Invisible in America and Jeannette Walls' memoir, The Glass Castle. Oddly enough, Walls is scheduled to appear at the Highland Park Literary Festival in February...
-- via http://bit.ly/1DxjIXI

Hmm, that author appearance might make things a little awkward. I waffle on the idea of banning/suspending books from reading lists. It's not like those books are suddenly not available to read, they just no longer show on the list of 250+ books the school district suggests. I'm sure the school district has a tidy little paragraph (courtesy of their legal department) that mentions the books on the list are not an endorsement or support for the ideas in the books. Do I think books should be banned? No. Do I think it's effective? No. Do I think this was a case of book banning? No.

I do find it funny that the book list was 250+ titles long; and some parents objected to these seven titles. Why not just mark out the titles you don't want your kid to read? Oh, and tell them they can't read those books? I'm sure it's about as effective.

>217 lesmel: so it sounds like the books aren't banned from school libraries, but have been removed from some sort of recommended reading/teaching list? I guess that's a little less offensive to me, but it's still an odd list. I've only read The Glass Castle and Song of Solomon. Both have some powerful and controversial themes, but nothing that a high school student shouldn't be able to handle in my view. And isn't that the point of reading? To stretch your mind and beliefs and views?

My kids are only 4 and 1, but I'm so interested to navigate the school world with all its positives and negatives. I have a feeling it will be an interesting time.

The news reports on this book banning issue haven't been very specific. What they originally said was that teachers were prohibited from using these seven books as required reading or from discussing them in class. They would, however, remain in the school library. This list of 250+ books is one prepared by the College Board as recommended preparation for its English Advance Placement test. The school district didn't prepare the list, but they do have a copy on their website. I compared their list with one I found elsewhere, and the books have indeed been deleted from the copy the school posted.

My library shared this on their FB yesterday; I like what this guy says. (It doesn't hurt that I love Captain Underpants either.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA6_yp2CvlU&feature=youtu.be

I am reading Black Beauty now, a children's classic, and wonder if it was ever banned. In the first few chapters there's a scene of an animal being hunted and killed, a man falling from his horse and dying, a horse being shot, and a scene of animal abuse. You'd think someone at one point would have gotten upset about that. My senior kid in AP lit often wonders why sex scenes, cussing scenes are considered so "horrible", but bloody murders, etc. seen on most cop shows, you know, not a problem.

The schools my kids attend if they're watching a certain movie or reading a certain book that may be "questionable" for some parents, simply send out a permission slip. I had to give my son the OK to read To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn.

ETA: I looked it up. Black Beauty was banned: "This touching story of a horse's adventures in 19th century England was banned by South Africa's apartheid regime at one point simply because it had the words "black" and "beauty" in the title." (http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/50-books-that-were-banned)

Wow.

#217 - Do I think this was a case of book banning? No.

No, you're right. They aren't technically banned. But that's the short hand the media uses for these acts and it gets people's attention.

As for Siddhartha being struck from the list for "sexual references and promiscuity" that just shows that the people involved in this have no clue. If that's their take away from Siddhartha, they did not understand the book. Which is the problem with these actions--someone focuses on one aspect of a book and completely misses the point. Or thinks they are protecting the innocence of not just their child, but all children. Don't read Beloved because bad things happen. And probably a swear. Don't read True Diary of a Part-time Indian because he talks about masturbation, and no teen needs to learn about that!

I love the comment from one of the parents: ...Aimee Simms, another parent, urged the English Department to use classics rather than young adult books that “dumb down” literature. She said classics can address complex topics, such as poverty, with fewer sexual references and curse words...

"Classics" were popular, contemporary fiction/nonfiction at one time. And I'm pretty sure there were comments about literature being "dumb down" then, too.

Let's not make reading and literature accessible. At. All...she mutters behind her manga copy of Les Mis

>221 Nickelini: Don't read True Diary of a Part-time Indian because he talks about masturbation, and no teen needs to learn about that!

Back when I worked in college science textbook publishing (the early 80s), the company I worked for had a school division as well as a college division, Texas had a statewide decision-making process for choosing school textbooks and so had an oversized influence on school textbook publishers. I remember learning that the board that picked the textbooks didn't want sex discussed in the books because they felt that reading about sex led teenagers to have sex!!!!!

#222 - Lesmel -- Sounds like Aimee hasn't read that many classics. Oh, and Siddhartha is a classic.

#223 - Rebecca - the stupid, it hurts.

the board that picked the textbooks didn't want sex discussed in the books because they felt that reading about sex led teenagers to have sex!!!!!

How in the world did the human species procreate before the advent of the printing press then?

>225 avidmom: If they're that squeamish about sex in books they should ban the Bible. Very frank sex talk in the Song of Songs... ;)

I've started a new thread, probably the final one for 2014, so come on over for more sex, perversion, anti-establishment opinions, and books no one has ever heard of.