Before getting to the books I have completed, I must say a few words about one I'm still reading. My esteemed friend Mr. Hanberg sent me Harold Bloom's Genius, a profile of 100 literary figures from throughout history. I'm still just at the beginning, but I am thoroughly enjoying it and wanted to give it a quick plug. Bloom, in case you don't know, is one of the preeminent literary critics in America. His specialities are Shakespeare, Milton and the English Romantics, and after reading the introduction, etc. and the first several profiles, I have made an astounding discovery: Harold Bloom is smarter than me. I know, it was a shock to me too. There is, of course, the chance that he is not really inherently smarter than me, but merely vastly better educated and more well read. In either case, the insight he has demonstrated even through the 60-odd pages I've read so far is amazing. If you pick this book up, be advised that Bloom will not work to bring you up to speed. If you can't keep up with him, that's your affair, not his. But that's not a condemnation-just a warning. I would strongly recommend picking up this book if you get the chance. And now, some quick hits on the books I have actually finished reading.
A Farewell to Arms
I took a class at Carleton called 20th Century Literature. Although I didn't think about it at the time, the title was ridiculously vague. What the class really should have been called was Modernist Lit. In case you've forgotten what exactly Modernism is, don't feel bad. Aside from being able to tell you that it's generally seen as a reaction to the horrors of the first world war, I'm drawing a blank. But fortuneately for you, I have A Glossary of Literary Terms by the incomparable M.H. Abrams in my possession, and I just went out to my bookcase and got it. So let's see what it says...hmm. Ok, Abrams talks a lot in that book. Although there were precursors before WWI, the war caused a whole lot of really smart people to rethink "traditional bases not only of Western Art, but of Western cultuer in general. ...The catastrophe of the war had shaken faith in the moral basis, coherence, and durability of Western civilization and raised doubts about the adequacy of traditional literary modes to represent the harsh and dissonant realities of the postwar world." So they started to shuck the traditional literary forms. Some of these were more obvious than others-if you've ever read a book with a section that is stream-of-consciousness on paper, with no punctuation or anything, you've probably read a modernist work. The most famous writers of the early 20th century are almost all modernist to some extent or another.
All that was by way of saying that Hemingway was one of the authors we read in that class. His style, rather than taking narration to the extreme of telling you everything in the character's head, is to strip the narration down to its barest essentials. What comes through in Farewell is an extremely compelling look at war as seen by a young American serving in the Italian army as an ambulance driver. Hemingway stark presents the realities of the cost of the war through his descriptions of the columns of wounded soldiers slowly moving back from the front. The wholesale retreat described in the third quarter of the book is particularily brilliant, and scattered conversations about possible ends to the fighting indicate just how uncertain the characters (and Hemingway) are about this new form of war. All this is contrasted with Henry's (the main character is named Frederic Henry, which doesn't really come up all that much) love for an English nurse named Catherine Barkley. The ending, which I won't give away, is heartbreakingly appropriate in that it completes Hemingway's disillusionment by providing no hope for the future. Bloom says that great literature transcends it's age, and this book certainly does. I've found that appreciation of Hemingway will sometimes tend to break down along gender lines: men like him, women don't. But with our present militaristic atmosphere, this is definately a book I recommend you pick up, read, and think about. Because Hemingway's minimalistic style of prose demands reflection and consideration, since you need to see what he's leaving out along with what he leaves in.
ps A big thanks to Mr. Erik Hanberg for sending me this book for Christmas last year. I actually did finish it before having it for a full year, Erik.
Sandman vol. IX: The Kindly Ones
I'm not really going to review this in detail, since it's essentially the climax of the previous eight graphic novels of Neil Gaiman's opus about Morpheus, the King of Dreams. If you've never picked them up, the Sandman volumes are graphic novels (which, for those of you who don't know thing one about comics, are collections of comic books) that will totally sell you on comics as a storytelling medium at worst and an artistic medium at best. I would recommend Alan Moore's Watchmen first to someone who had never read comics only because it can be had in one single volume as opposed to ten. Gaiman, over the course of several novels, has proven himself a brilliant writer and storyteller, but Sandman remains his best work, and this volume brings everything together and Gaiman proves he has the skill to bring in all the existing plot threads, tie them up in a neat little bow and then cut them off with an axe. I highly recommend it (volume one is called Preludes & Nocturns, and you can order it on amazon).
Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams
Those of you who know me know that Adams is one of my favorite authors. Not only the Hitchhiker's Guide books, but his two Dirk Gently novels and other works as well (one of his best novles is a little read non-fiction book called Last Chance to See. Pick it up if you get the chance and are at all environmentally inclined or curious). This biography by M.J. Simpson is exhaustively researched (and footnoted!) and detailed. He shows how some of the most commonly told stories about Douglas, stories that Douglas himself told hundreds of times to reporters, are not entirely accurate. Simpson's intent is not to expose Douglas as a liar, but to give us an better understanding of how his mind worked: Douglas was, above all else, a storyteller, who meticulously refined his books (when his editors gave him the time). He also, though not consciously, refined the stories that he had to tell over an over again in the course of hundreds of interviews. I won't go into more detail, simply because, in this book, there's too much detail to go into. I would only recommend this book if you're a fan of Adams' work. I suspect that a casual fan may find this book slow at times. But if you're interested in him, and I recommend reading The Salmon of Doubt to whet your appetite, pick this up and you'll learn most everything you could possibly want to know.
Joy in the Morning and Jeeves and the Tie that Binds
(note: The UK title of ...Tie that Binds is Much Obliged, Jeeves. So don't buy both.)
The curse has come upon me. As I warned you it would, if I ever visited Steeple Bumpleigh.
You have long been familiar with my views on this leper colony. Have I not repeatedly said
that, what though the spicy breezes blow soft o'er Steeple Bumpleigh, the undersigned deemed
it wisest to give it the complete miss in baulk?
I learned P.G. Wodehouse existed through Douglas Adams. In the aforementioned Salmon of Doubt Adams cites Wodehouse as one of his greatest influences. So I decided to pick up something by Wodehouse. So the next time I was at B&N I went over the 'W' section. And there I found that Wodehouse had the entire lower shelf to himself. It was a sizeable shelf. So I went away defeated, since I didn't want to just buy something without some idea of what I was getting into. Some time after that I came across a copy of The World of Jeeves in a used bookstore, which purported to contain all of the short stories Wodehouse wrote about Bertie Wooster and his servant and savior Jeeves. I bought it, read it, and loved it. So much so that I sent a copy to my friend the Math Avenger for his birthday, and upon his completion he posted on his blog (linked in the sidebar) some insightful musings on Wodehouse and the volume in question which I urge you to check out. Anyway, in the aftermath of reading 34 short stories about Bertie and Jeeves I was left wanting more, and thus I picked up two of the eleven (by my count) novels covering the exploits of the original dynamic duo. Joy in the Morning is the better of the two, but that's in the way of praising it rather than putting down Tie that Binds. Both contain Wodehouse's immediately addictive style of writing and preternatural instinct for comic phrasing and timing, and Joy in the Morning triumphs only in that the situations Bertie finds himself thrown into are more fantastic than in the other novel. Both these books pick up on existing relationships that began either in the short stories or in other novels, so I highly recommend you at least read the short stories first, though if you don't Wodehouse does give you an update on previous event so as to not leave you out in the cold.
Since first reading Wodehouse, I find myself noticing quotes from people concerning the half-life of comedic novels. They do not age well, all the quotes say, unless the author's name happens to be Wodehouse. I thoroughly enjoyed these books and the short stories that preceded them. If you're looking for something to make you laugh that's well written with turns of phrase that will send you off your chair, look no further. Wodehouse is the answer.
So that's it for the books I've read recently. Right now I'm in the middle of The Name of the Rose, so I'll let you know when I'm done with that. I may take a break for a day or two, but I'll come back hopefully with some musings on MN's first big snowfall of the year, which happened last Friday.
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