FICCIONES

Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges, Grove Press, 1962, 174 pp (originally published 1956 by Emcee Editores, Buenos Aires, Argentina, translated from the Spanish by Anthony Kerrigan.)

Sometimes you go on a first date and just nothing happens. I was anticipating a huge, great experience when I first opened the book. So many readers seem to revere this writer. I read the first "story," thinking I'd gotten the hang of enjoying short stories lately. That piece, entitled "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertuis" read like a foreign language to me, even though it was translated into English. I meandered through its 19 pages and arrived...no where. What did I just read?

At the rate of one a day, I pressed on. It was like being in a place where I did not, could not, know or read or understand the language. OK, I thought, as one sometimes does on a first date, who does this guy think he is?

After a few days I realized that these "stories" were more like essays or fictional book reviews about books and authors I did not know. Fine, so that is like being at a party where you are not hip to what everyone else is talking about. You just drink.

Finally I admitted that I was in over my head. I sent messages on Twitter to authors I follow who might be nice to me. They were. They offered some tips. I kept going.

I began to see a glimpse of what authors like William Gibson, John Updike, Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes have raved about. Borges, as some have said, "has read all the books." Books I probably will never read but books that formed a labyrinth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon wrote a four volume series of novels anchored by what he called the Labyrinth of Books. Labyrinths are a key image with Borges. I finished this collection of 17 stories and found three I especially liked: "The Form of the Sword," "Three Versions of Judas,"  "The South." I felt I had been through an initiation that might or might not have included ingesting certain substances. All I was sure about was that it had been an initiation.

Being a Leo, a feminist, a woman who asserts herself, I don't enjoy being made to feel dumb or inferior. Still, I had to admit I had been in the presence of an intelligence, insouciant for sure, but nobody's fool. Someone I could learn from.

I own another collection by Borges, entitled Labyrinths. It contains all of the stories in Ficciones plus other writings. When I get over myself, I will read that and see what else I can learn.

Because I know one thing for sure: many stories and novels are fairytales, designed to make us feel comfortable in the lives we think we are living. In a way, such literature is as much of a lie as what we get from advertising or politics. I suspect that writers like Borges had something else going on. I am interested in finding out more about that. We will have a second date.

BIRDS OF AMERICA

 Birds of America, Mary McCarthy, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1965, 344 pp

Never would I ever have guessed that I would love so much this novel from 1965. I should not have been that surprised. Mary McCarthy is one of my favorite female 20th century writers, so intelligent, such sharp humor.

Peter Levi is the son of a Jewish historian, the stepson of a Jewish scientist, the son of a thrice married Anglo Saxon Protestant mother who is also a world famous harpsichordist. He passed his younger years being shuttled between New England and Berkeley, CA. He was in love with his mother as a child. By the end of the book, when he is just 19, he still loves her deeply but is aware of her flaws.

I suspect that a great deal of why I was so taken is the time period. Peter grew up in the same years I did. My parents never divorced but my father was an armchair intellectual, my mother had been an aspiring organist. They were both liberals to the end and encouraged me to be well read, well educated, and intelligent.

Peter is a bit awkward socially. He studies philosophy in college. For most of the novel he is in his junior year at the Sorbonne in Paris. He loves the natural world, is in favor of the Civil Rights movement and agonizes continually about how to be. Most of all, he is against war, the Vietnam War in particular, and has the draft hanging over him, as did all the young men I knew at that age.

How do you write a coming of age tale that is emotional, political, philosophical, and traces so delicately the mother/son relationship, all at the same time? How do you create a woke young man in the latter half of the 20th century? How do you breathe life into such a worldly yet confused character? Read The Birds of America and learn.

SOLARIS

 Solaris, Stanislaw Lem, Harvest Books, 1970, 204 pp.

[Translation note: Solaris was written in Polish and published in Poland in 1961. The Harvest edition of 1970 was translated from the French by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox. Stanislaw Lem pronounced the French translation "poor." In 2011, Bill Johnston published the first and only translation direct from the Polish to English.]

Solaris is the third of three books I read in February that have a Polish connection. The first was the historical novel Poland by James Michener. The second was Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, set in a 21st century Polish village. Solaris is by a Polish author but is set in space. This little challenge left me giddy.

I read Solaris because it is an iconic sci fi novel published in 1961 just as the space race was taking off. I read the "poor" Kilmartin/Cox translation mentioned above, not knowing until the other day that there was a better one. That may explain some oddities I noticed.

If you are interested here are two links with more about Stanislaw Lem and the two translations.

Even so, it is an amazing tale about a station on Polaris, a planet orbiting two suns and covered mainly by an ocean, possibly a sentient body of something similar to water. This ocean functions as a sort of massive brain with the power to create psychological changes in the Earth scientists who come to study it.

The novel opens with the arrival of Kris Kelvin, a trained psychologist and astronaut, who finds the station in disarray with two of the remaining astronauts acting quite deranged and a third dead. Kris is a strong, no nonsense character, brave and deliberate. Soon enough he too begins to suffer from what may be hallucinations but may be something else.

I did enjoy and admire the story. It dawns on any reader who has read much science fiction that Lem did not write a standard sci fi tale compared to American works. His book is also allegorical, humanistic instead of militaristic, and satirical about the whole space project as it is playing out on Earth. He seems to be making an examination of what may lie beneath man's quest to find life on other planets.

Each character has brought his personal psychological baggage to space. The ocean on Solaris appears to have the purpose of revealing the suppressed emotional darkness of that baggage to the spacemen, causing what appear to be hallucinations of people from each one's past.

So very creepy and disconcerting but also exciting. You wonder who will succumb and who will survive. Kris Kelvin tells this story of how he came to penetrate the purposes of the ocean. Did he? Or did he go insane? The end of the story is a somewhat murky yet somehow satisfying conclusion.

Two movies have been made from this translation. One in 1972 by Andrei Tarkovsky and one in 2002 by Stephen Soderberg, starring George Clooney. I saw one of them, not sure which, several years ago and came away not understanding what I had just watched. I have requested the 1972 movie from Netflix. 

Now tell me of your Solaris encounters, if you have any.

AN AMERICAN DREAM

 An American Dream, Norman Mailer, The Dial Press, 1965, 270 pp

Norman Mailer. Was he just a bad man, misogynist, and curmudgeon? Or was he a deep thinker, great writer and possible genius? I think probably both. He was full of himself as a younger man and he liked to antagonize anyone he could. He certainly had trouble with females. Do I read him because it is sensible to know the enemy? No, I think he was so perceptive concerning American society. I aways get insights from his books.

An American Dream was his fourth novel and came ten years after his third. It is a day in the life of Stephen Richards Rojack in which he murders his wife, makes it look like a suicide, faces the cops, starts an affair with another woman, confronts his enormously wealthy father-in-law, while staying drunk the whole time and facing all his demons.

The story is gritty, violent, sexy and psychological in the extreme. I don't particularly recommend it to anyone, but perhaps some men who read it will see themselves and some women will go, umhum, yes, that is what we are up against. In other words, read it at your own risk.

AUGUST IS A WICKED MONTH

 August Is A Wicked Month, Edna O'Brien, Simon and Schuster, 1965, 220 pp

This review is a complete spoiler, so if you have not read the book and plan to, you might want to read it first. If you don't plan to, you can read this as a plot summary. 

I love Edna O'Brien so much. I just get her and I feel she gets me. She turned 90 on December 15, 2020. Just the other day.

This was her next novel after The Country Girls Trilogy. Ellen, formerly of Ireland, lives in London and is divorced. She and her ex share a son who is eight years old. He mostly lives with Ellen but has weekends with his dad. Oh how I remember those times with my boys and my ex. That did not turn out well for us but things went worse for Ellen. 

When the dad takes the boy for a week long summer camping trip, Ellen decides to go on holiday herself. A fling to assuage her sorrows and to celebrate her freedom. Wild parties on the Riviera with wild people.

Then disaster. She gets the news that her son was killed by a truck on the side of a road. She stays on the Riviera for a few more weeks. It is August. She enters into an orgy of sex, eating, drinking and swimming with a mysterious guy. That all ends when he disappears and she develops what she fears may be gonorrhea. Worst nightmare scenario.

She finally goes home and works it all out, lets go of loss and failure and resolves to move on. I remember resolving the same. 

THE ARM OF THE STARFISH

 The Arm of the Starfish, Madeleine L'Engle, Farrar Strasus and Giroux, 1965, 243 pp

I have been following the books of Madeleine L'Engle all through My Big Fat Reading Project. This one is a great tale. Set in the "near future" as of 1965, filed at my library as "children's literature" because as of 1965 there was no such genre as Young Adult. However, Adam is a 17-year-old heading off for a summer job in Portugal before his freshman year at Harvard. 

He intends to become a marine biologist himself. Dr O'Keefe, his prospective employer, is doing groundbreaking research on the regenerative tissues found in the arms of starfish. Adam finds himself in the middle of a battle between pharmaceutical companies for possession of O'Keefe's research.

This is YA like one rarely finds these days. No drugs, no swearing, no sex. There is a sexy girl, the daughter of one of the men who wants to steal the research for his own profit.

Was this eerie to read during the weeks different drug companies were racing to get their COVID vaccines approved? You bet it was.

I love how Madeleine L'Engle always grants her young protagonists so much intelligence and independence. In this one, Adam has to decide all on his own who to trust as well as who to kiss.

AWARD WINNERS OF 1965 PART TWO

 

This post covers the award winning novels from genres such as science fiction and mystery as well as the prestigious French literary prize, The Priz Goncourt.

The Hugo Award:

The Wanderer, Fritz Leiber, Tom Doherty Associates, 1964, 311 pp

The Wanderer earned Fritz Leiber his second Hugo Award. He won the first time in 1958 with The Big Time. I liked this one a good deal better.

An eclipse of the moon turns out to include the arrival of a rogue planet, four times the diameter of the moon and giving off a bloody and golden light. Humans name it The Wanderer. Once the planet consumes the moon, tidal surges and massive earthquakes make Earth a terror.

In addition to the apocalyptic horror of it all, I thought Leiber did a great job of showing the effects on various people around our planet as tides roll into cities and submerge the streets, as ships at sea try to navigate, as a group of flying saucer buffs come up against the space program, and as an astronaut on the moon is captured by the alien planet.

It took me a while to get used to all the characters and the shifts between their stories, but overall I enjoyed the book as a wild tale. I am discovering that it pays off to read older sci fi. I always think about how it influenced the sci fi of today. The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Anathem by Neal Stephenson, Octavia Butler's work, The Broken Earth Trilogy by N K Jemisin. I bet they all read this one when they were growing up.

The Edgar Award:

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John le Carre, Coward-McCann Inc, 1963, 256 pp

This was the #1 bestseller in 1964. The Edgar Award is for mysteries and sometimes thrillers. The movie starring Richard Burton came out in 1965 and has since been included in The Criterion Collection, as seen at the top of this page. My review of the book is here. It is sobering to post this today, just one day after the great John le Carre passed away.

The Nebula Award:

Dune, Frank Herbert, Ace Books, 1965, 473 pp

This award was given for the first time in 1965. I read the book for a reading group in 2018. My review is here. I have not read any of the sequels but I might see the movie version coming out in 2021. The book went on to tie for the Hugo Award in 1966.

The Prix Goncourt:

The Bond, Jaques Borel, Doubleday & Company, 1968, 479 pp (originally published by Editions Gallimard, 1965, translated from the French by Norman Denny)

The Prix Goncourt is known as the premier French literary award, probably comparable to the Pulitzer Prize in the US. It has been awarding French novelists since 1867! I decided to add it to My Big Fat Reading Project whenever I can find an English translation of the winner for the year, which one usually can these days but not so much in earlier years. I found a library copy.

The Bond is an autobiographical novel about a man's rather tortured but undeniably close relationship with his mother. Borel includes a vast amount of detail; in fact one reference I found on Britannica.com described the writing style as Proustian or Joycean. For a while I felt I might not made it through such dense and introspective prose but finally I just gave myself over to it. 

The son in the story was perhaps overly attached to his mother. You find out why as you read. Borel had kept a diary since the age of 14 and drew from it to write the book. 

He portrays France from the post WWI years through WWII and the German occupation, his life in Paris as a child and adult through to the death of his mother. Thus he gives a 20th century personal history of French life during years when France was quite different than it is now. I found this fascinating.

I got plenty of insight into what it takes to write about one's own life. Since I am attempting to do that, it was useful. Having read most of Simone de Beauvior's memoirs, which cover the same time period, I could compare the two. Borel studied at the Sorbonne, as did she. In fact Beauvoir won this prize herself for The Mandarins in 1954, a book which I have read.

AWARD WINNERS OF 1965 PART ONE

 

This weekend I will bring you some mini reviews of books that won the big prizes in 1965. Above is a 1965 Mustang, possibly the hottest car of the year, just to give you a bit of lore. For My Big Fat Reading Project, I always read the award winning novels of the year. These days there are over 20 such awards and it is impossible to keep up. In 1965 there were just 8 on the list. Below are the first four.

The Pulitzer Prize:

The Keepers of the House, Shirley Ann Grau, Alfred A Knopf, 1964, 239 pp

The winners are usually published during the year before the prize is awarded. This was a family saga spanning generations of the Howland clan from the days of Andrew Jackson to the 1960s. Abigail Howland is a seventh generation daughter. Her grandfather, also a central character, is an eccentric who still maintains the family's wealth and standing in his Deep South community.

It is extremely well written yet for all its literary quality is a page turner. Civil rights have become law in the nation but as we all know, that law does not penetrate into southern towns much, even to this day.

While William Howland is a fascinating character, his granddaughter Abigail was more interesting because of her increasing awareness as a woman, as a white woman, and ultimately as a fierce warrior for her own rights. How hard it is for people who have viewed life in a certain way for centuries to change those views!

The novel is a look at changing race relations from the white point of view. The entire gambit, from descendants of slavery to the violent men who join the Ku Klux Klan while carrying on with Black women to the "genteel" society white women must navigate is braided together in a gripping tale.

The Newbery Medal:

Shadow of a Bull, Maia Wojciechowska, Atheneum Books, 1964, 155 pp

The first of two major awards for children's books is the Newbery Medal, for books meant for kids aged 8-12. This is a wonderful story about bullfighting. Though it is not a sport I would ever want to attend, bullfighting is an integral part of the culture in Spain. 

Monolo Oliver is the son of the greatest bullfighter in all of Spain, who lost his life in the ring. It is expected that Monolo will repeat his father's success but the boy definitely does not feel any urge to fight bulls.

Still he tries to find his courage. Some of his father's friends teach him the sport and the day comes when he must face his first bull.

In a vibrant coming of age tale, Manolo figures out how to deal with the pressure and find his own way in the world. Wonderful writing and plot. Lots of info on bullfighting, including a glossary. Immersion into the culture surrounding the sport. 

The Caldecott Medal:

May I Bring A Friend?, Beatrice Schenk De Regniers, Atheneum Books, 1964, 48 pp

The Caldecott Medal is an illustrator's award for picture books meant for younger children. 

In this colorful story, a young boy is invited to tea by the King and Queen. He asks if he may bring a friend and they say of course! He brings a giraffe. A lovely time is had by all.

Next he is invited for six more days in a row and brings a different animal, or three, each time. The royal figures love every one.

The illustrations by Beni Montressor, exhibit a color scheme of many shades of purple, yellow, red and orange. A true feast for the eyes!

The National Book Award:

Herzog, Saul Bellow, Viking Press, 1964, 371 pp

Saul Bellow's winning novel was also #3 on the 1964 bestseller list. I reviewed it here and enjoyed it probably the most of the 1965 award winners.

I will be back soon with the remaining awarded books of 1965.

Have you read any of these books? In their own ways each one gives a feel for the mid 1960s.

GOING TO MEET THE MAN

Going To Meet the Man, James Baldwin, Dial Press, 1965, 249 pp

 This was Baldwin's first collection of short stories. Five had been published in magazines between 1948 and 1960. The remaining three were published for the first time in the book. 

From reading the David Leeming biography, I could see that many of them are based on incidents from Baldwin's life or on people he knew.

Each story is as powerful as any of his novels, well-formed and filled with descriptions that feel present and real, as does the emotional content. In fact, I have rarely read short stories as good as these, especially from that time period. 

The final story, which gave the book its title, could be a summarization of Baldwin's views on racism in America. He delves into the legacy of slavery and the complicated sexual connotations between white and black due to the abuse of slaveowners against black female slaves, which often resulted in mixed race children. He distills what could have been a major thesis into 21 pages of searing fiction.

I have long held an aversion to short stories. Do you like to read them? If yes, can you recommend your favorite short story writers? For me, as with poetry, it works to read only one short story a day. I am considering an attempt to write some of my own.

Mysteries and Thrillers: Mini Reviews

 Over the past weeks, I filled in my more serious reading with some mysteries and thrillers. I feel that this kind of reading gives us a sort of satisfaction because those that deserve it get what is coming to them. So I give you some mini reviews of the ones I have read.

The Fallen Angel, Daniel Silva, HarperCollins, 2012, 464 pp

I keep thinking I am going to get tired of Silva's formula. Well, not yet.

Gabriel Allen, the Israeli assassin, and his wife are living in Rome. He is getting some well deserved rest from his last mission, actually restoring a painting at the Vatican, a Caravaggio. 

Of course, someone dies, a woman, in St Peter's. It looks like a possible suicide but neither Gabriel nor the Pope's private secretary think so. It is a delicate matter so Gabriel is on the job again.

Involved are Hezbolla, the Vatican Bank, and a huge act of terrorist sabotage. As always in Silva's books, the plotting is superb. Though Gabriel is in no shape to attempt death defying moves, he can run the operation. A great plot twist just when the Office (Israeli intelligence) thinks they have won ramps the plot up even further.

I was glad to be back fighting terrorism with Gabriel and his team. I have been reading this series for a while and only have eight more to go.

High Country, Nevada Barr, G P Putnam's Sons, 2004, 301 pp

Once again, a best ever in this series featuring Anna Pigeon, National Park Ranger.

Anna goes undercover as a waitress at Yosemite National Park to investigate the disappearance of four young park employees. She sets off into the snowy wilderness only to encounter life threatening events. There is always a bit of romance in Nevada Barr's mysteries. Though Anna is now engaged she finds herself attracted to a chef in the kitchen of the famous Ahwahnee Hotel.

Extreme suspense but of course she solves the case, which boils down to drug dealers. I loved being in Yosemite with her since my husband and I have driven through the park and eaten in that famous restaurant. 

I read this one in two days. It is #12 in the series and I have seven more to go.

Count Zero, William Gibson, Arbor House, 1986, 246 pp

Count Zero follows Neuromancer as the second book in Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy. Sprawl is his term for a future mega-city stretching from Boston to Atlanta, connected by a cyber network populated by jackers, criminals and various semi-religious beings that include AIs.

As wild as this must have sounded in the 1980s, one gets the sense these days that such guys might actually exist in the world.

I liked this one even a bit more than Neuromancer because the main characters had more humanity to them. Like you can be a keyboard cowboy and still have a heart? Plus this time I felt more at home in Gibson's crazy world.

Count Zero is a new character, a misfit high school boy who wants to play in the cyber network and ends up helping Turner, the main character in the earlier book, out of his next hot spot.

 A good technopunk adventure.

Airs Above the Ground, Mary Stewart, Fawcett Publications, 1965, 255 pp

This one came from the 1965 list of My Big Fat Reading Project. It was nominated for an Edgar Award and I have been following her novels through a couple of decades. 

Vanessa March has agreed to escort her best friend's 17 year old son to Austria. Actually she herself is on a mission to track down her husband who is supposedly in Stockholm on business but is worryingly out of touch. Vanessa has just seen his picture in a newsreel story about a circus fire in Austria.

Naturally she fears the worst: that he is with another woman. She and the boy, Timothy, visit the scene of the fire at the circus and stumble into a web of stolen goods, international drug smuggling and the disappearance of a famed Lipizzaner stallion after his groom died in the fire.

In true Stewart fashion, we learn plenty about circus life, dressage and life in an Austrian village. Vanessa and Timothy, on the trail of the stallion, stay in an old castle, now a hotel. The atmosphere there is distinctly Gothic. The details of the horse with his ability to do the dressage movement called "airs above the ground" is woven into the story, which sometimes interrupts the suspense but it always gets back to the mystery soon enough.

I was captivated all the way by this page turner of a mystery.

Have you read any of these books or others by this author? What mysteries or thrillers have you enjoyed lately?

TOP TEN FICTION BESTSELLERS OF 1965

 Over the summer I completed reading the 1965 bestseller list for fiction. If you have followed my blog for a while you are familiar with what I call My Big Fat Reading Project. If you are new, go to the link to learn about why I read these best selling novels of long ago.

I have only reviewed three of the ten books here and I will provide the links to those reviews. Otherwise I will give you a brief synopsis of the other seven. The purpose of this post is to give my thoughts on how these books shed light on the events of 1965. It is my theory that in the 20th century the bestseller lists, which are based on sales, give evidence of the interests and concerns of fiction readers in any given year.

#1: The Source: Michener used the framework of an archeological dig at an ancient site in Israel to cover the vast history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Religious themes always sold well in the early years of the 20th century, but had not been as popular in the 1960s. I would think this one was of interest because of the growing tensions in Israel in the decade. 

Michener shows the connections between the religions and provides a history of their major conflicts. He made me think about religion, why humans need the idea of God, how religion had brought both order and chaos to our lives. An excellent read.

#2: Up The Down Stair Case: Bel Kaufman's book about her first year teaching in a public NYC high school is both hilarious and cautionary. The rules, the disorganization, the lack of supplies but most of all the challenges of making learning important to inner city teens, give what I was quite sure was an accurate picture of the scene. I wonder if LBJ's War on Poverty spiked an interest in this one.

#3: Herzog: This novel was also the #3 bestseller in 1964 and then won the National Book Award in 1965. It is his 6th novel but the first to make the top ten bestseller list. A middle aged intellectual is betrayed by his best friend who steals his wife. Bellow had cashed in on the midlife crisis plot before and since men still read fiction in the 60s, he did it again. 

#4: The Looking Glass War: The Cold War produced the spy fiction genre and Le Carre first hit the bestseller list in 1964 with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. By his own admission, after that success , le Carre wanted to tell the real truth about the state of British intelligence in the early 1960s. The novel is grim. He shows a nation no longer the world power it was. Intelligence has become a political endeavor inside the offices of the military and intelligence branches. He became the antidote to Ian Fleming and James Bond.

#5: The Green Berets: These guys were the sexiest of military intelligence operatives during the Vietnam War so it is no surprise that this revealing but patriotic inside look at how they did the job would be a bestseller. I was appalled.

#6: Those Who Love: Irving Stone's biographical novel of Abigail and John Adams and their roles in founding American democracy must have had high appeal to readers still reeling from the assassination of JFK. For me, reading it in 2020, it was an indictment of how we have failed to keep those ideals. To his credit, John Adams as portrayed here had his doubts about that very thing at the time.

#7: The Man With the Golden Gun: This was the final James Bond novel. It takes place in Jamaica, though begins with Bond being brainwashed by the Russians after his capture in the prior book, then being given electric shock therapy by MI6 to make him fit for another mission. Again, the Cold War makes for bestsellers.

#8: Hotel: Arthur Hailey made his career with this first top ten bestseller. It is set in a famous New Orleans hotel which has seen better days and is now facing a hostile takeover by a hotel chain. Racism plays a large part in the story and that made it ripe for the times in 1965.

#9: The Ambassador: This was Morris West's third top ten bestseller. The second book on this list set in Vietnam, it is a fictionalized account of the months leading up to the CIA backed coup and assassination of South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem. The CIA giveth and the CIA taketh away when their implanted rulers stop playing by US rules. The novel does a fair job at showing the complexities of Vietnamese politics at the time and the toll this took on an American ambassador to the country. It captures that moment when LBJ began to plan his major escalation of the war.

#10: Don't Stop the Carnival is one of Herman Wouk's whimsical novels. A Broadway promoter decides to get away from the constant pressure of his job and the harsh New York winter by buying a hotel on a fictional Caribbean island that feels a lot like Jamaica. What was it about Jamaica in 1965?. It is a rip roaring read with some cringe inducing views of the natives who of course are Black and the many gay people who have taken refuge there from the homophobia of America. 

So there you have it. Have you read any of these books? I felt they gave me a pretty good picture of some of the major issues and concerns in America in 1965. I am now reading the novels that won awards in that year and will create a similar post when I finish those.

THOSE WHO LOVE & A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

Those Who Love, A Biographical Novel of Abigail and John Adams, Irving Stone, Doubleday & Company, 1965, 647 pp

 

 

 

A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn, Harper & Row, 2015, 688 pp

 

 

 

Today I have two related reviews for you, because the first book led me to the next. I am ranting and I warn you that these are not cheerful reviews.

Those Who Love was the #6 bestseller of 1965 and took me eight days to read. Though it has a slant, Irving Stone did give a picture of the dreams and ideals of this couple as English settlers in Massachusetts. John Adams's dedication to create a balanced government of three branches that would ensure a true democracy was based on deep study of England and the history of other countries. He was trained as a lawyer, he put his wife through much hardship, she was a strong and understanding companion. He became the second President of the new nation, after George Washington, and already the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, on which he worked tirelessly with the Founding Fathers, was cracking at the seams.

The problem was they did not address all the issues. Only men who owned a certain amount of property could vote. The Adamses were not rich, they probably only squeaked by property-wise. They were not in favor of slavery but to get all the colonies to agree on the Constitution, compromise was in order. The rights of Native Americans, slaves, women and the workers of the new country upon whose shoulders the edifice stood, were left out.

I suppose that this is the trouble with a certain kind of idealist. They do not see or understand the 99% of humanity who do most of the work. To understand more about how we got to today, in the middle of a pandemic with a Federal government and a complete idiot of a President who appear to have no idea what they are doing, I decided to read the Howard Zinn book. In fact, I learned that John Adams was up against more than he knew.

I read A People's History of the United States by taking one chapter a day. It took me 25 days and some of it was a slog. He is not the greatest writer.

He does, however, tell the story of the forming and building of the American Empire from a different slant than Irving Stone; also a different slant than kids in school used to get in their American history studies.

In every chapter he contrasts the unrelenting drive of the monied class for expansion, growth, progress and more wealth with the realities of the lower classes. The crimes of our country are really no different than the crimes of any empire building country throughout history.

From reading historical fiction and also the Will Durant history books, I have been aware of what gets done when a nation has that drive towards power and aligns government with finance to achieve those aims. Since I was raised and educated to see America as the best and greatest country in the world, I don't think I ever until now truly confronted what my country has wrought to create that reputation. (I am also aware that not everyone would agree with what I am saying here.)

The other main point of Zinn's book is that the oppressed, be they Native Americans, women, Blacks, workers, immigrants or the people of other countries we have stolen land from or filled with our military bases or plundered for natural resources, will always tend to fight back. It might be inspiring to think that way, well actually it is. I, however, was left with the feeling that capitalism always wins, that our government is still allied with business and the rich, as it has been from its founding.

Perhaps because as I read the book, we were dealing with a pandemic that seemed to be worse here than in other places in the world, that was flattening but not lessening, I could not escape the idea that this is part of our payback, that we are hated by the people we have abused (called terrorism), that we have damaged the world almost to the breaking point (called climate change) and that if my fairly comfortable, deluded and ineffectual middle class goes on this way, we deserve everything that we have coming. I don't feel completely hopeless. I feel mostly enraged.

Sorry to be a downer. I advise reading Zinn's book, if you haven't, if for nothing else than to understand the actual mechanisms of power, money, the military and our politics. Mechanisms that keep us placated and unaware while the military/industrial complex and the bankers continue on their destructive path. He does a good job delineating how that works. I have wondered for a long time how those in power think that money will protect them if the world goes down.

So, I leave you with yet another quote from a Joni Mitchell song: "Who you gonna get to do the dirty work, when all the slaves are free?" The song is "Passion Play" from her 1991 album, Night Ride Home. You can find it on YouTube.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, EASTMAN WAS HERE AND LULLABY FOR SINNERS

THREE MINI REVIEWS

I have been reading like crazy in a wide range and sometimes a deep range. Here are three books I read in April, each of which took me away from it all in various ways. I apologize for the mashed up formatting. Sometimes Blogger has its limits.

From Russia With Love, Ian Fleming, Jonathan Cape, 1957, 268 pp

I don't know why I keep being surprised that each of these James Bond books gets better than the last. Most authors get better the more they write. It must be because the movies are so stupid, so lacking in what made the books great.

007 collides with SMERSH again (that is the Russian Intelligence branch) when they send a beautiful agent to seduce him and lead him to their assassin. In fact, the first half of the book takes place in the Soviet Union, setting up the lure, Tatiana Romanova, and the assassin, Red Grant, and the caper. All of that reminded me of Red Sparrow.

Even when Bond comes on the scene, he does not do much except meet and bed Tatiana in Turkey, and accompany her on the Orient Express as they travel to London. They pass through many Balkan cities, the very ones I have been reading about in Black Lamb, Grey Falcon.

Then in the last 20 pages the trap is sprung. Of course Bond survives to die another day. 

Eastman Was Here, Alex Gilvarry, Viking, 2017, 356 pp

I grabbed this off my Nervous Breakdown Book Club backlog pile in a fit of COVID19 angst. The cover was intriguing and it had blurbs from Tea Obreht and Gary Shteyngart.

I found plenty to enjoy. Alan Eastman is a cleverly created unreliable narrator, the kind of self-involved male who later showed up in Shteyngart's Lake Success, except that Eastman's story takes place in 1973.

He is a washed up writer with a disintegrating marriage. I had no idea while reading it that the character is loosely based on Norman Mailer. In hindsight, I see it. Self-centered, creates his reputation out of provocative statements and unique takes on contemporary issues, all the while tolerated with amusement by his male contemporaries and even a few women.

I have read quite a bit of Mailer and, aside from his views on women, have usually found him quite intelligent about American absurdities. In contrast, I felt sorry for Alan Eastman despite his infidelity (he maintains a mistress while going ballistic over his wife being unfaithful to him.)

When he goes off to Vietnam with an assignment to cover Saigon as the Americans pull out, he gets his comeuppance from a younger female reporter. I enjoyed that part the most!

Actually I enjoyed Gilvarry's dissection of the late 20th century older male who totally missed the point of mostly everything. The ending where Eastman and his wife try to work out their differences in front of their two young sons just made me sad.

Lullaby For Sinners, Kate Braverman, Harper & Row, 1980, 88 pp

I finished another volume of poetry. Last year I read Palm Latitudes, one of Braverman's novels, after learning that she had been Janet Fitch's writing teacher. I was impressed, so I decided to try her poetry.

Lullaby For Sinners is her second collection. It is stark with dark emotions, both beautiful and horrific images, and though I am no expert on poetry, it seemed to lie on the experimental side of the poetry spectrum.

I felt she was writing about the deep secrets of female emotional and mental trauma. Her poems reminded me of Sylvia Plath and Francesca Lia Block. Probably not for everyone but I liked it.

How has your reading been going? Today is Day 52 for me of staying home and I feel blessed to have everything I need (except a haircut) and so much time to bury into books. For others who have to work in dangerous venues or be stuck inside with small children day after day, I can understand how they must wish this would be over soon. 

THE GREEN BERETS

The Green Berets, Robin Moore, Crown Publishers, 1965, 430 pp

 

The #5 bestseller in 1965 was a tough read for me. In 1965, I graduated from high school. By 1967, I was a full-blown protester against the Vietnam War. When I started My Big Fat Reading Project, reading books from the 1940s, I found many antiwar sentiments alongside books about, and even glorifying, war.

 

For decades I embraced pacifism. Now in my 70s, I realize that pacifism is a fine ideal but does not work out in real life. All the way from what would you do if someone was trying to destroy a loved one to what if some country is trying to destroy your own. I have also espoused non-violence but observed that eventually most oppressed humans resort to violence. 

Robin Moore was a journalist who got permission to train as a Green Beret and then imbed himself with these Special Forces units in Vietnam to get first hand information on how and why they practiced guerilla warfare. He turned those experiences into fictional stories about some of the operations. According to him, JFK wholeheartedly backed the endeavor, including CIA involvement in some of the operations. The idea grew out of the realization that for Western nations to fight communism in the far east, it appeared impossible to win by conventional military manuevers. 

 

Having read the book, mainly loathing it the whole way, I understand those pressures better. I also learned how the US Military was at war with itself over these new approaches and how some of the top generals actually sabotaged the Special Forces. I felt fortunate to have read The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, in which I got the story of the conflicts within the Vietnamese governments. 

Fast forward to the present when the art of war has become even more complex. I don't need to explain. Just read the news.

I still believe that war is not the answer to human problems though it sure seems that to many it is just accepted as the way things are. I don't mean to discount the bravery, patriotism and commitment of soldiers but I do condemn the huge loss of human lives as the price we pay. 

I really do wonder, if any entity could do a correct poll or survey, what the majority of human beings think about the necessity or inevitability of war. What do you think?

Now we are fighting another war against little invisible things called viruses. War news has suddenly become almost absent but it is for sure war and human beings are not united in this war either. Of course there are plenty of courageous and dedicated individuals doing all they can to save lives, to do the right things concerning the spread of the virus; there are officials taking appropriate steps to protect lives. We will get through it somehow but again the result is huge losses.

I am sorry if this post brings you down. I pondered whether or not I should enter this review into the conversation today. Still, this could be a time for us to dedicate ourselves to becoming more educated and responsible for our fellow man, to consider alternatives to the past and what we as individuals, families, groups, can do for each other and our planet. Out of suffering and mistakes and destruction can come new understandings and intelligence and bright ideas.

Keep the wisdom!

THE HILLS REPLY

The Hills Reply, Tarjei Vesaas, Archipelago Books, 2019, 275 pp (orig published in Norway, 1968, translated from the Norwegian by Elizabeth Rokka in 1971 under the title The Boat in the Evening)

 

 

 Like many people who read books, I have for some years now been on a bit of a tepid quest to read more literature from countries beyond the USA, UK and the major countries of Western Europe. It is a quest fraught with non-comprehension, frequent naps while reading, and the dawning realization that storytelling comes in many forms different than what one becomes accustomed to in the above named locales.

Because I began this quest with the desire to experience life in cultures other than my own, I don't begrudge the difficulties. I am finding what I sought. Choosing what to read involves a mix of lurking on translated lit sites, paying attention to Nobel Prize recipients, and finding small presses dedicated to translating such literature into English.

One of the best of such presses is Archipelago Books, headquartered in Brooklyn, NY. I have read some gems published by this press so this year I opted for a one year membership. For $15 a month I get 12 brand new, beautifully bound paperback books with flapped covers, printed in the US on fine paper.

The Hills Reply was the first selection for 2020. I was thrilled to receive it as I had read a novel I loved by Tarjei Vesaas, The Ice Palace. However, The Hills Reply was Vesaas's last novel and something quite different.

In 16 chapters, the author contemplates various incidents in his life from boyhood to elderly man. Most of these chapters do tell a story but the writing is always like a prose poem. Here are the first lines from the first chapter, As It Stands In Memory:

"There he stands in sifting snow. In my thoughts in sifting snow. A father and his winter-shaggy, brown horse, in snow."

In that chapter the boy is working with his father to clear a logging road of snow. He counteracts the monotony, the cold and his "sharp-tongued father" with imaginings about animals.

Every subsequent chapter follows the boy growing up, going through his life's changes, working through his inner feelings and difficulties and challenges. He is usually walking or engaged in outdoor activities. He seeks answers and understandings through observation of the natural world.

It took me six days to read the book and to figure out at least some idea of what Tarjei Vessas was attempting. The man rarely traveled from his family's farmland but wrote many novels, short stories, poems, and plays. He is quite revered in Norway and has a worldwide readership. 

I spend many hours inside my house these days, reading and writing. When I leave my house, I spend most of my time with other readers. In spring, summer and fall, I work outside tending my big yard, watching it move through the seasons, observing the trees, the shrubs, the flowers, the birds, insects, and small animals with whom I share the property. When I travel it is most often lately with my husband by car to visit National Parks.

After reading The Hills Reply, I became aware that this author had put together for me an understanding of the inner life of my mind and imagination with the ways I solve my problems through my own experiences with life forms other than human. 

I claimed in my post about the books I read in February that this book was my least favorite. That was true while I was reading it but the book haunted me. I now feel it was worth the time spent grasping for comprehension among all its words. Once again I was reminded to spend time in and pay attention to the natural world as a positive healing activity. I will most likely read it again over the coming years.

I hope you are all as well as you can be in these times and that you enjoyed a nice long review from me this week.

READING LIST FOR 1964

I finally finished my reading list for 1964. As most of you know, in 2005 I began what I call My Big Fat Reading List. It entails reading the top 10 bestsellers, the award winning novels, and a selection of authors I chose to follow through the years. It is a huge, possibly impossible to complete, project which is the major part of my research for writing a book about my life as it relates to the literature of the years I have lived.

This list is one of the longest so far and it took me from April 2018 to January 2020 to get through it. I post the list for you here because I know some of my followers are interested in my project. In 1964 I finished my junior year of high school and began my senior year. It was a momentous year in the United States as well as around the world, but fiction tends to lag behind the news because it takes longer to write. So, no books about the Beatles yet!

BESTSELLERS

1.    The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John le Carre

2.    Candy, Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg

3.    Herzog, Saul Bellow

4.    Armageddon, Leon Uris

5.    The Man, Irving Wallace

6.    The Rector of Justin, Louis Auchincloss

7.    The Martyred, Richard E Kim

8.    You Only Live Twice, Ian Fleming

9.    This Rough Magic, Mary Stewart

10.                  Convention, Fletcher Knebel and Charles W Bailey II

OTHERS

1.                 PULITZER: No award

2.                 NEWBERY: It’s Like This, Cat, Emily Cheney Neville

3.                 CALDECOTT: Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak

4.                 NBA: The Centaur, John Updike

5.                 HUGO: Way Station, Clifford Simak 

6.                 EDGAR: The Light of Day, Eric Ambler

7.                 Arrow of God, Chinua Achebe-Nigeria

8.                 Black Hearts in Battersea, Joan Aiken

9.                 The Bloody Sun, Marion Zimmer Bradley

10.             The Book of Three, Lloyd Alexander

11.             Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl

12.             Clans of the Alphane Moon, Philip K Dick

13.             The Drought, J G Ballard

14.             Encyclopedia Brown Boy Detective, Donald J Sobol

15.             Farnham’s Freehold, Robert A Heinlein

16.             Flight of a Witch, Ellis Peters

17.             Flood, Robert Penn Warren

18.             For the Good of the Cause, A Solzhenitsyn

19.             The Garrick Year, Margaret Drabble

20.             Girls in Their Married Bliss, Edna O’Brien

21.             The Glass Cell, Patricia Highsmith

22.             Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh

23.             If Morning Ever Comes, Anne Tyler

24.             The Italian Girl, Iris Murdoch

25.             Julian, Gore Vidal

26.             A Kind of Anger, Eric Ambler

27.             Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby, Jr

28.             Little Big Man, Thomas Berger

29.             The Little Girls, Elizabeth Bowen

30.             A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

31.             The Old Boys, William Trevor

32.             The Old Man and Me, Elaine Dundy

33.             A Personal Matter, Oe Kenzaburo

34.             Queen’s Play, Dorothy Dunnett 

35.             The Ravishing of Lol Stein, Marguerite Duras

36.             Ribsy, Beverly Cleary

37.             The Shadow of the Sun, A S Byatt

38.             Shepherds of the Night, Jorge Amado

39.             The Silence of Herondale, Joan Aiken

40.             Sometimes A Great Notion, Ken Kesey

41.             The Spire, William Golding

42.             Star Watchman, Ben Bova

43.             The Two Faces of January, Patricia Highsmith

44.             A Very Easy Death, Simone de Beauvoir

45.             The Wapshot Scandal, John Cheever

46.             Web of the Witch World, Andre Norton

47.             With Shuddering Fall, Joyce Carol Oates

48.             The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe

What were you doing in 1964? Were you even born yet? Have you read any of these books?