Curse of the Blue Tattoo, L A Meyer, Harcourt Inc, 2004, 488 pp
In #2 of the Bloody Jack Adventure series, Jacky begins her days as a student at the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls in Boston. (The previous book ended with Jacky being found out as an impostor: a girl pretending to be a boy on an English Navy ship. She had a stash of money from a reward she received for helping to bring in a pirate ship. She was "released" from the Navy in Boston and her money put into the keeping of the headmistress of the above mentioned school. She also had to leave Jaimy, her one true love.)
Of course, Jacky is not really cut out for the life of a schoolgirl and continues to get into plenty of trouble. After each downfall she rises again and moves on. She makes friends wherever she goes and a few very dangerous enemies, including a Puritan minister who claims to want to save her soul but has much more dastardly intentions.
Curse of the Blue Tattoo was almost twice as long as the first volume and maybe a bit too long. Some of the incidents were quite improbable but I suppose that is part of the style in which he is writing. Overall I enjoyed the whole story.
I wish I was as intrepid as Jacky Faber, but then I almost was when I was younger. The question at the end of the book is: will she and her love Jaimy ever get to be together again?
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
PAINT IT BLACK
Paint It Black, Janet Fitch, Little Brown and Company, 2006, 387 pp
Paint It Black is a very satisfying read. It is a gloomy, sad tale as you might suspect from the title but has an under layer of uplift. White Oleander, Fitch's first novel, had more power but Paint It Black goes deeper. The characters have more complex issues which are revealed gradually, like a developing photograph coming into clarity.
Once again set in Los Angeles, the story of a less-than-privileged young woman learning about love, loss and art and the idiosyncrasies of the rich, has a Raymond Chandleresque sensibility, both because of the clash of class and because a mystery of sorts is solved. Josie Tyrell ran away from poverty and a dysfunctional family in the San Joachim Valley to make her way on the streets of LA. She works as a nude model for art students and as an occasional actress in music videos and indie films. She has found the love of her life, Michael, whose mother is a wealthy concert pianist. But right at the beginning of the book, Michael is found in a cheap motel in the high desert, dead by his own hand.
Josie's life, her happiness and her dream of a perfect love are all shattered, yet her toughness and artistic spirit keep her from drowning (one time literally) in her grief. She does not rest until she solves the mysteries of Michael's life and death.
One of Fitch's strengths is characterization. In Paint It Black, she again creates LA types but each is layered, complex and has a story that illuminates the whole struggle that is life in contemporary times. I was also pleased that since the story takes place in the 1980s, we are spared the technological materialism that characterizes Los Angeles these days.
Michael was a painter and poet, Josie a lover of art and music, Michael's mother and grandfather musicians, making Paint It Black affect the reader like a work of art. Janet Fitch has risen above the curse of the second novel and produced a strong piece of fiction.
Paint It Black is a very satisfying read. It is a gloomy, sad tale as you might suspect from the title but has an under layer of uplift. White Oleander, Fitch's first novel, had more power but Paint It Black goes deeper. The characters have more complex issues which are revealed gradually, like a developing photograph coming into clarity.
Once again set in Los Angeles, the story of a less-than-privileged young woman learning about love, loss and art and the idiosyncrasies of the rich, has a Raymond Chandleresque sensibility, both because of the clash of class and because a mystery of sorts is solved. Josie Tyrell ran away from poverty and a dysfunctional family in the San Joachim Valley to make her way on the streets of LA. She works as a nude model for art students and as an occasional actress in music videos and indie films. She has found the love of her life, Michael, whose mother is a wealthy concert pianist. But right at the beginning of the book, Michael is found in a cheap motel in the high desert, dead by his own hand.
Josie's life, her happiness and her dream of a perfect love are all shattered, yet her toughness and artistic spirit keep her from drowning (one time literally) in her grief. She does not rest until she solves the mysteries of Michael's life and death.
One of Fitch's strengths is characterization. In Paint It Black, she again creates LA types but each is layered, complex and has a story that illuminates the whole struggle that is life in contemporary times. I was also pleased that since the story takes place in the 1980s, we are spared the technological materialism that characterizes Los Angeles these days.
Michael was a painter and poet, Josie a lover of art and music, Michael's mother and grandfather musicians, making Paint It Black affect the reader like a work of art. Janet Fitch has risen above the curse of the second novel and produced a strong piece of fiction.
Monday, February 12, 2007
WORD OF THE DAY
crepitate
from The Mercy of Thin Air, by Ronlyn Domingue, page 5.
looked up in Webster's New World Dictionary Third College Edition
crepitate, vi. to make slight, sharp, repeated crackling sounds; crackle {from Latin, crepitare}
My sentence: She sipped from a glass of red wine as the fire crepitated and thought of better days.
What is your sentence?
from The Mercy of Thin Air, by Ronlyn Domingue, page 5.
looked up in Webster's New World Dictionary Third College Edition
crepitate, vi. to make slight, sharp, repeated crackling sounds; crackle {from Latin, crepitare}
My sentence: She sipped from a glass of red wine as the fire crepitated and thought of better days.
What is your sentence?
GIFTS
Gifts, Ursula Le Guin, Harcourt Inc, 2004, 274 pp
Continuing a week of reading Young Adult fiction, I read Gifts. Ursula Le Guin is a favorite writer of mine for several reasons. One reason is that she takes the world as we know it with its wars and inhumanity and morphs it into a fantastical faraway place where she creates stories of other possible ways for mankind to co-exist. Gifts does not disappoint with its tales of special abilities which are used for harm but could be used constructively.
Because of the potential for destruction two young people, a boy and a girl who have been friends since birth, decide not to use their gifts. Fraught with consequences, this decision brings them grief, alienation and uncertainty as they grow in insight and strength. The mood of the story is thus tense and full of sorrow.
My only difficulty was keeping track of the areas, clans and individuals. A map would have helped immensely. As always, Le Guin's writing is perfectly tuned to the story and location. She has a way of carrying you through the harshness and bleak emotions with writing so beautiful that it protects you and delivers you to the denouement safe from any lasting harm. There you are at the end with the hero and heroine, at peace with all the lessons learned.
Continuing a week of reading Young Adult fiction, I read Gifts. Ursula Le Guin is a favorite writer of mine for several reasons. One reason is that she takes the world as we know it with its wars and inhumanity and morphs it into a fantastical faraway place where she creates stories of other possible ways for mankind to co-exist. Gifts does not disappoint with its tales of special abilities which are used for harm but could be used constructively.
Because of the potential for destruction two young people, a boy and a girl who have been friends since birth, decide not to use their gifts. Fraught with consequences, this decision brings them grief, alienation and uncertainty as they grow in insight and strength. The mood of the story is thus tense and full of sorrow.
My only difficulty was keeping track of the areas, clans and individuals. A map would have helped immensely. As always, Le Guin's writing is perfectly tuned to the story and location. She has a way of carrying you through the harshness and bleak emotions with writing so beautiful that it protects you and delivers you to the denouement safe from any lasting harm. There you are at the end with the hero and heroine, at peace with all the lessons learned.
HOLES
Holes, Louis Sachar, Scholastic Inc, 1998, 233 pp
Crime and Punishment for kids. This is one of those books I wish I'd read sooner. Because it is set in Texas, you get that special wacky dysfunctional Texas flavor. Because Stanley Yelknats gets busted for something he didn't do, you get injustice. Because almost any correctional facility is deeply flawed, you get a philosophy of punishment. As Stanley says, "If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy. That was what some people thought."
Stanley has been sent to Camp Green Lake for stealing; except he didn't steal. The facility has some weird stuff going on and all the "campers" have to dig a hole five feet deep and five feet around every day. But Stanley has a generations long back story and so does Camp Green Lake and kind of like digging a hole to China, the back stories eventually meet in a totally cool way.
Wonderful heartrending truth telling.
Crime and Punishment for kids. This is one of those books I wish I'd read sooner. Because it is set in Texas, you get that special wacky dysfunctional Texas flavor. Because Stanley Yelknats gets busted for something he didn't do, you get injustice. Because almost any correctional facility is deeply flawed, you get a philosophy of punishment. As Stanley says, "If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy. That was what some people thought."
Stanley has been sent to Camp Green Lake for stealing; except he didn't steal. The facility has some weird stuff going on and all the "campers" have to dig a hole five feet deep and five feet around every day. But Stanley has a generations long back story and so does Camp Green Lake and kind of like digging a hole to China, the back stories eventually meet in a totally cool way.
Wonderful heartrending truth telling.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
BIG MOUTH AND UGLY GIRL
Big Mouth and Ugly Girl, Joyce Carol Oates, HarperCollins Publishers, 2002, 266 pp
This is Oates' first young adult novel. I didn't know what to expect but I should have known that it would be great because it is by Joyce Carol Oates. The setting is a high school in a Hudson River community not far outside New York City. The Big Mouth is Matt Donaghy whose life is ruined by being named as a suspect in a bomb threat at the school. Before the incident he was a popular, respected kid with a talent for writing and a reputation for being funny.
Ugly Girl is Ursula Riggs, whose successful and rich father does nothing for her socially because she has a big body and a prickly personality. She is an outcast at school, an athlete and an introverted teen yet she comes to Matt's defense though she barely knows him.
Throughout a semester of school. Matt and Ursula become friends and each grows because of the gnarly circumstances which they must live through. Oates deals with all the issues with just the right touch: teens vs parents, terrorism in the schools, identity, reputation and trust. A family of religious fanatics is unflinchingly portrayed for what they are and she even brings in some Germaine Greer feminism.
I was impressed because there is no glossing over of the way it really is in today's suburban high schools but she never overdoes it. And she tells a good story that keeps you wanting to know what is going to happen.
This is Oates' first young adult novel. I didn't know what to expect but I should have known that it would be great because it is by Joyce Carol Oates. The setting is a high school in a Hudson River community not far outside New York City. The Big Mouth is Matt Donaghy whose life is ruined by being named as a suspect in a bomb threat at the school. Before the incident he was a popular, respected kid with a talent for writing and a reputation for being funny.
Ugly Girl is Ursula Riggs, whose successful and rich father does nothing for her socially because she has a big body and a prickly personality. She is an outcast at school, an athlete and an introverted teen yet she comes to Matt's defense though she barely knows him.
Throughout a semester of school. Matt and Ursula become friends and each grows because of the gnarly circumstances which they must live through. Oates deals with all the issues with just the right touch: teens vs parents, terrorism in the schools, identity, reputation and trust. A family of religious fanatics is unflinchingly portrayed for what they are and she even brings in some Germaine Greer feminism.
I was impressed because there is no glossing over of the way it really is in today's suburban high schools but she never overdoes it. And she tells a good story that keeps you wanting to know what is going to happen.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
WORD OF THE DAY
cark
from Gifts by Ursula Le Guin, page 180
Looked up in Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition
cark (kark) vt, vi {Archaic} to worry or be worried
n. {Archaic} distress; anxiety
derived from ME carken
My sentence: The cause of her cark was too much to do and not enough time to get it done.
What's your sentence?
from Gifts by Ursula Le Guin, page 180
Looked up in Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition
cark (kark) vt, vi {Archaic} to worry or be worried
n. {Archaic} distress; anxiety
derived from ME carken
My sentence: The cause of her cark was too much to do and not enough time to get it done.
What's your sentence?
Monday, February 05, 2007
EXCUSES
A week ago I was claiming to be right on top of my next chapter. Well, that was a week ago. A lot can happen in a week.
Last night was the music performance and it all went off fine. Attendance was a little low due to it being Super Bowl Sunday, but us folk nerds had no idea until a couple days before hand. It was fun to perform again and I am happy to say that my set was pretty much flawless. But I am glad it is done and I can get back to reading and writing.
Today was a day off for me and I sat down, fully intending to polish up my chapter and get it posted here. The personal stuff about that year is fine but 1950 was the year the Korean War started and I know very little about that event. I found myself immersed in history books and here it is my bedtime. That is my excuse.
I've got two great history books to recommend though. Postwar by Tony Judt (subtitle: A History of Europe Since 1945) is an 851 page tome with small print but this guy really knows what he is talking about. I am only on page 40 and already I have had to actually learn European geography, pre-WWII and postwar. In fact, learning about all those Balkan countries makes me feel that someday I can get through Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, which is an account of her journey through pre-WWII Yugoslavia and which I tried to read back when I was reading the books for 1940, since that is when it was published. Postwar however is filling in for me where the Upton Sinclair books ended. Luckily by page 241 he will be up to 1953 which will get me through four chapters of my book.
For basic info on what happened when I was using A Pocket History of the United States by Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Commager, but that is one of those America can do no wrong history books, like the ones we all read in school and I knew I was not getting a full picture. I had been hearing lately about Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, so I picked it up at the library this weekend. While most history books tell the story from the perspective of rulers and wars, Zinn tells it from the viewpoint of the actual citizens of our country, which includes the workers, the women and various minorities. Let me tell you, that is a whole different story, possibly biased in its own way but at least giving me a more balanced look at it all.
Since I am doing this whole reading project because I want to learn about the world around me and how we got to where we are, there is no point in rushing things. I had the idea that I would keep my reading lists for each year and the chapters in consecutive order here on the blog, but that has caused these weeks when I post nothing as I struggle with a new chapter. So I am moving on. My New Year's resolution (I knew I needed one, but couldn't come up with anything until today) is to post something every day. When I get the chapter done I will post it. Meanwhile I have plenty of other books to write about as well as words of the day and we'll see what else I can come up with.
Now you must keep me honest and check back and see how well I am keeping my resolution. Please, comment away. I love those comments. It really keeps me going.
Last night was the music performance and it all went off fine. Attendance was a little low due to it being Super Bowl Sunday, but us folk nerds had no idea until a couple days before hand. It was fun to perform again and I am happy to say that my set was pretty much flawless. But I am glad it is done and I can get back to reading and writing.
Today was a day off for me and I sat down, fully intending to polish up my chapter and get it posted here. The personal stuff about that year is fine but 1950 was the year the Korean War started and I know very little about that event. I found myself immersed in history books and here it is my bedtime. That is my excuse.
I've got two great history books to recommend though. Postwar by Tony Judt (subtitle: A History of Europe Since 1945) is an 851 page tome with small print but this guy really knows what he is talking about. I am only on page 40 and already I have had to actually learn European geography, pre-WWII and postwar. In fact, learning about all those Balkan countries makes me feel that someday I can get through Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, which is an account of her journey through pre-WWII Yugoslavia and which I tried to read back when I was reading the books for 1940, since that is when it was published. Postwar however is filling in for me where the Upton Sinclair books ended. Luckily by page 241 he will be up to 1953 which will get me through four chapters of my book.
For basic info on what happened when I was using A Pocket History of the United States by Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Commager, but that is one of those America can do no wrong history books, like the ones we all read in school and I knew I was not getting a full picture. I had been hearing lately about Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, so I picked it up at the library this weekend. While most history books tell the story from the perspective of rulers and wars, Zinn tells it from the viewpoint of the actual citizens of our country, which includes the workers, the women and various minorities. Let me tell you, that is a whole different story, possibly biased in its own way but at least giving me a more balanced look at it all.
Since I am doing this whole reading project because I want to learn about the world around me and how we got to where we are, there is no point in rushing things. I had the idea that I would keep my reading lists for each year and the chapters in consecutive order here on the blog, but that has caused these weeks when I post nothing as I struggle with a new chapter. So I am moving on. My New Year's resolution (I knew I needed one, but couldn't come up with anything until today) is to post something every day. When I get the chapter done I will post it. Meanwhile I have plenty of other books to write about as well as words of the day and we'll see what else I can come up with.
Now you must keep me honest and check back and see how well I am keeping my resolution. Please, comment away. I love those comments. It really keeps me going.
Monday, January 29, 2007
FAVORITE BOOKS READ IN 2006
Well I actually did a rough draft of the next chapter of Reading For My Life. I know, you are saying, "Yeah, yeah." But really all I have to do is edit/re-write/etc. and you will have it.
Meanwhile, as promised, here are the books I liked most in 2006. They were not all published in 2006. They are culled from the books I read in 2006. I am proud to say that I read more books last year than ever before: 141. That is almost 12 per month. I impressed even myself.
THE LIST:
1. The Thin Place, Kathryn Davis. Magical, mystical novel about modern times.
2. Ursula, Under, Ingrid Hill. Amazing fictional history of a northern Michigan family and what America really is.
3.Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson. More historical fiction combined with modern techno realities.
4. With Billie, Julia Blackburn. One righteous biography of Billie Holiday.
5. The Dream of Scipio, Iain Pears. Historical fiction again but which addresses what it takes to keep civilization going.
6. The Patron Saint of Liars, Ann Patchett. Very real and deep fiction about being a woman.
7. Small Island, Andrea Levy. Lives of Jamaican immigrants in post WWII England.
8. The Big Sky, A B Guthrie Jr. The best western I have ever read, hard to find, try used bookstores.
9. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer. The only fiction about 9/11 that I could believe. The coolest kid in fiction today.
10. White Ghost Girls, Alice Greenway. Incredible writing about sisters growing up in the Far East during the Vietnam War.
11. The Tender Bar, J R Moehringer. This is what memoir should be.
12. Brick Lane, Monica Ali. More immigrants in England, this time from Bangladesh. A great story.
13. There Will Never Be Another You, Carolyn See. If you like this author (I do), this is one of her best.
14. The King's English, Betsy Burton. The story of an independent bookstore. Reads like a page-turner novel.
15. Gifts, Ursula Le Guin. Supposed to be Young Adult fiction, but whatever she writes, it is about how to have peace on earth.
Meanwhile, as promised, here are the books I liked most in 2006. They were not all published in 2006. They are culled from the books I read in 2006. I am proud to say that I read more books last year than ever before: 141. That is almost 12 per month. I impressed even myself.
THE LIST:
1. The Thin Place, Kathryn Davis. Magical, mystical novel about modern times.
2. Ursula, Under, Ingrid Hill. Amazing fictional history of a northern Michigan family and what America really is.
3.Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson. More historical fiction combined with modern techno realities.
4. With Billie, Julia Blackburn. One righteous biography of Billie Holiday.
5. The Dream of Scipio, Iain Pears. Historical fiction again but which addresses what it takes to keep civilization going.
6. The Patron Saint of Liars, Ann Patchett. Very real and deep fiction about being a woman.
7. Small Island, Andrea Levy. Lives of Jamaican immigrants in post WWII England.
8. The Big Sky, A B Guthrie Jr. The best western I have ever read, hard to find, try used bookstores.
9. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer. The only fiction about 9/11 that I could believe. The coolest kid in fiction today.
10. White Ghost Girls, Alice Greenway. Incredible writing about sisters growing up in the Far East during the Vietnam War.
11. The Tender Bar, J R Moehringer. This is what memoir should be.
12. Brick Lane, Monica Ali. More immigrants in England, this time from Bangladesh. A great story.
13. There Will Never Be Another You, Carolyn See. If you like this author (I do), this is one of her best.
14. The King's English, Betsy Burton. The story of an independent bookstore. Reads like a page-turner novel.
15. Gifts, Ursula Le Guin. Supposed to be Young Adult fiction, but whatever she writes, it is about how to have peace on earth.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
BOOKS READ FROM 1950, PART FIVE
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C S Lewis, HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1950, 189 pp
I must have read this book at least five times while I was growing up. It was one of those books, including Little Women, the first Nancy Drew book, etc., that I would read over and over, turning to it perhaps for security or comfort as life changed around me. It has possibly been almost 45 years since I read it last, but the magic held up. I read it with pleasure and was right there with Peter, Susan, Lucy and Edmund. In fact, I haven't been able to bring myself to watch "Narnia" because I am afraid they won't have gotten it right. I may have to finish re-reading the entire chronicles before I can watch the film.
Reading it this time, I noticed some new points as well. On the very first page it says that the children had been sent to the country and away from London, because of the war and the air raids. I hadn't remembered that and naturally it would have made no impression on me as a child because I didn't know what that meant.
Edmund's "punishment" for being selfish and beastly seemed overly lenient to me now, but when I was a child I was completely satisfied with the justice he received as a consequence of his actions. That says to me that children are quicker to forgive and believe in swift consequences as well as an easy re-acceptance of the guilty party once he has got what he had coming. I have decided that children have the right idea and that grownups are too serious and tend to hold grudges.
As far as Aslan, the Lion being a Christ symbol and all that goes, it is perhaps a bit overdone, but it did not bother me in the context of the story on this reading, anymore than it did when I was ignorant of the symbolism as a child. That Aslan came back to life because of "deeper magic from before the dawn of time" sounds just as plausible as that Jesus Christ arose from the dead because he was God's only son. I don't mean to upset any Christians by saying that, but I suppose I might.
Finally, my favorite concept when I was a child; that children could be gone to Narnia for years and come back to England to find that no time had passed, is still my favorite concept now. If only that were true when I emerge from a 500 page novel!
Now for the prize winners in 1950:
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD (NBA): This is the first year that this award was given.
The Man With the Golden Arm, Nelson Algren, Fawcett Publications Inc, 1949, 364 pp
Here is a quite dark novel about life in the gritty reality of postwar Chicago. Frank comes home from prison with bright ambitions to give up the life of a card dealer and drug addict and become a musician. Since he has come back to the same neighborhood where he got into trouble, he is soon embroiled in the same activities that put him in jail in the first place. It is only a matter of time before his drug dealer finds him and gets him hooked again.
By now, this is a familiar story but was undoubtedly new and exciting in 1950. Algren is a fine writer who creates the life of the streets and the thoughts in Frank's mind with great sympathy. It is a hopeless and depressing story but I was left feeling that many people's lives are just as desperate, except now we have welfare and anti-depressants.
PULITZER PRIZE
The Way West, A B Guthrie, William Sloane Associates, 1949, 435 pp
I am so glad that I read Guthrie's earlier book, The Big Sky first, as it is much the better book. The Way West brings back Dick Summers, one of the key mountain men in The Big Sky. He is now the trail leader of a wagon train headed for Oregon.
The rest of the characters are families setting out from Missouri for a new life in Oregon. It is the final wave of pioneers, but these people are not wild independent spirits. They are settlers, and while they are tough and determined, they are looking to bring civilization to the wild lands of the West, to ensure that America gets these lands and not the British.
Instead of memorializing the last of a breed, Guthrie is now writing about the beginning of a venture. The story centers on a particular family, but includes the usual suspects involved in a wagon train. There is hardship, personality conflict, religion and a bit of romance. Guthrie is a good writer and brings it all alive, so it is a good tale.
I can see why this one took the prize, rather than The Big Sky, because it is the pioneers that America loves. We are a little leery of those wild mountain men.
NEWBERY AWARD (for children's fiction)
The Door in the Wall, Marguerite De Angeli, Random House Inc, 1949
The Newbery Award Medal for 1950 goes to this story of Robin, a ten year old boy in England during the Middle Ages. His father is off fighting with the King against the Scots. His mother has gone as lady-in-waiting to the Queen, thinking her son to be on his way to the castle of Sir Peter to train as a knight. But Robin fell ill and cannot use his legs.
He is rescued by a monk from a nearby abbey and eventually they make it to Sir Peter's. Robin must learn to find other strengths and live as a cripple, which he does with the help of the monks, a minstrel and others. When the castle is besieged, Robin goes for help and becomes a hero.
A good story, never boring for a moment. I wonder if this is the type of story the Newbery awards or if all books for juvenile readers are of this story pattern. So far it has been true of most of the winners.
CALDECOTT MEDAL (for picture book illustration)
Song of the Swallows, Leo Politi, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949, 30 pp
This is a lovely story set in San Juan Capistrano at the small mission which is still there. It follows the seasons of the swallows, which come in spring and leave in late summer. Politi is also the illustrator. The tale conveys the love that children have for animals.
I must have read this book at least five times while I was growing up. It was one of those books, including Little Women, the first Nancy Drew book, etc., that I would read over and over, turning to it perhaps for security or comfort as life changed around me. It has possibly been almost 45 years since I read it last, but the magic held up. I read it with pleasure and was right there with Peter, Susan, Lucy and Edmund. In fact, I haven't been able to bring myself to watch "Narnia" because I am afraid they won't have gotten it right. I may have to finish re-reading the entire chronicles before I can watch the film.
Reading it this time, I noticed some new points as well. On the very first page it says that the children had been sent to the country and away from London, because of the war and the air raids. I hadn't remembered that and naturally it would have made no impression on me as a child because I didn't know what that meant.
Edmund's "punishment" for being selfish and beastly seemed overly lenient to me now, but when I was a child I was completely satisfied with the justice he received as a consequence of his actions. That says to me that children are quicker to forgive and believe in swift consequences as well as an easy re-acceptance of the guilty party once he has got what he had coming. I have decided that children have the right idea and that grownups are too serious and tend to hold grudges.
As far as Aslan, the Lion being a Christ symbol and all that goes, it is perhaps a bit overdone, but it did not bother me in the context of the story on this reading, anymore than it did when I was ignorant of the symbolism as a child. That Aslan came back to life because of "deeper magic from before the dawn of time" sounds just as plausible as that Jesus Christ arose from the dead because he was God's only son. I don't mean to upset any Christians by saying that, but I suppose I might.
Finally, my favorite concept when I was a child; that children could be gone to Narnia for years and come back to England to find that no time had passed, is still my favorite concept now. If only that were true when I emerge from a 500 page novel!
Now for the prize winners in 1950:
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD (NBA): This is the first year that this award was given.
The Man With the Golden Arm, Nelson Algren, Fawcett Publications Inc, 1949, 364 pp
Here is a quite dark novel about life in the gritty reality of postwar Chicago. Frank comes home from prison with bright ambitions to give up the life of a card dealer and drug addict and become a musician. Since he has come back to the same neighborhood where he got into trouble, he is soon embroiled in the same activities that put him in jail in the first place. It is only a matter of time before his drug dealer finds him and gets him hooked again.
By now, this is a familiar story but was undoubtedly new and exciting in 1950. Algren is a fine writer who creates the life of the streets and the thoughts in Frank's mind with great sympathy. It is a hopeless and depressing story but I was left feeling that many people's lives are just as desperate, except now we have welfare and anti-depressants.
PULITZER PRIZE
The Way West, A B Guthrie, William Sloane Associates, 1949, 435 pp
I am so glad that I read Guthrie's earlier book, The Big Sky first, as it is much the better book. The Way West brings back Dick Summers, one of the key mountain men in The Big Sky. He is now the trail leader of a wagon train headed for Oregon.
The rest of the characters are families setting out from Missouri for a new life in Oregon. It is the final wave of pioneers, but these people are not wild independent spirits. They are settlers, and while they are tough and determined, they are looking to bring civilization to the wild lands of the West, to ensure that America gets these lands and not the British.
Instead of memorializing the last of a breed, Guthrie is now writing about the beginning of a venture. The story centers on a particular family, but includes the usual suspects involved in a wagon train. There is hardship, personality conflict, religion and a bit of romance. Guthrie is a good writer and brings it all alive, so it is a good tale.
I can see why this one took the prize, rather than The Big Sky, because it is the pioneers that America loves. We are a little leery of those wild mountain men.
NEWBERY AWARD (for children's fiction)
The Door in the Wall, Marguerite De Angeli, Random House Inc, 1949
The Newbery Award Medal for 1950 goes to this story of Robin, a ten year old boy in England during the Middle Ages. His father is off fighting with the King against the Scots. His mother has gone as lady-in-waiting to the Queen, thinking her son to be on his way to the castle of Sir Peter to train as a knight. But Robin fell ill and cannot use his legs.
He is rescued by a monk from a nearby abbey and eventually they make it to Sir Peter's. Robin must learn to find other strengths and live as a cripple, which he does with the help of the monks, a minstrel and others. When the castle is besieged, Robin goes for help and becomes a hero.
A good story, never boring for a moment. I wonder if this is the type of story the Newbery awards or if all books for juvenile readers are of this story pattern. So far it has been true of most of the winners.
CALDECOTT MEDAL (for picture book illustration)
Song of the Swallows, Leo Politi, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949, 30 pp
This is a lovely story set in San Juan Capistrano at the small mission which is still there. It follows the seasons of the swallows, which come in spring and leave in late summer. Politi is also the illustrator. The tale conveys the love that children have for animals.
OOPS, I DID IT AGAIN
I have been notified by a couple readers that I am missed on the blog. Thanks for the nudge. On January 2, I started the new job at the bookstore. After a wonderful six months of not working, it was a shock, though I love the job. Have to get up at a certain time. Have to be gone to work for 24 hours a week, including driving. Plus my tutoring business suddenly filled up with kids who can't do their math.
When the going gets tough (and I fully realize that plenty of people work full time jobs and still get other things done), I get extremely anxious about my reading time. So besides religiously exercising off the holiday pounds and keeping my husband fed, all else I have been doing is reading.
And even my TBR pile has grown bigger because I got some great books for Christmas presents plus my new boss wants me to be well read in the Young Adult area. Phew! But thanks to some kind words from certain readers (I respond well to kindness), here I am at the computer on a Sunday morning composing a post or two for the blog. I haven't even read the NYT Book Review yet.
Today I will give you the final section of books read for 1950. A second post will be the promised Favorite Books of 2006. Then somehow this coming week, I hope to finish the chapter on 1950, in which my sister gets born and I learn about sibling rivalry.
How has your new year started off? What are you reading now? Comments are welcome.
When the going gets tough (and I fully realize that plenty of people work full time jobs and still get other things done), I get extremely anxious about my reading time. So besides religiously exercising off the holiday pounds and keeping my husband fed, all else I have been doing is reading.
And even my TBR pile has grown bigger because I got some great books for Christmas presents plus my new boss wants me to be well read in the Young Adult area. Phew! But thanks to some kind words from certain readers (I respond well to kindness), here I am at the computer on a Sunday morning composing a post or two for the blog. I haven't even read the NYT Book Review yet.
Today I will give you the final section of books read for 1950. A second post will be the promised Favorite Books of 2006. Then somehow this coming week, I hope to finish the chapter on 1950, in which my sister gets born and I learn about sibling rivalry.
How has your new year started off? What are you reading now? Comments are welcome.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
BOOKS READ FROM 1950, PART FOUR
World Enough and Time, Robert Penn Warren, Random House, 1950, 465 pp
This novel is really long, not as powerful as All The King's Men, but still a strong novel. Jeremiah Beaumont, son of a failed man, comes of age and tries to find justice in a corrupt world. The setting is Kentucky, the time is early 1800s. After the Revolutionary War, the new country had all lands to the Mississippi River. In the South, after 200 years of tobacco and cotton growing, the lands of the original colonies were depleted as well as crowded. Families crossed the mountains into Kentucky, cleared new land, fought off Indians and at some point Kentucky became a state. Then there was a financial crash and many farmers owed bank loans they couldn't pay.
So politics in Kentucky at that time was centered on what to do with all these indebted and impoverished people. One party favored a system of relief while the other party found that to be unconstitutional. Interesting to see the same old questions and the same old corruption way back then.
Jeremiah is a sort of innocent who believes in absolutes, who is looking for heroes and love in his life. But he is tricked by everyone because he can't get the knack of living in the gray areas. Once a woman gets involved, he is really sunk, especially because the woman, Rachel Jordan, has her own considerable woes.
Therefore World Enough and Time is a tragedy, but also an investigation into truth and justice. I was completely drawn into those ideas and also into the story. Some things I've read by other authors and critics suggest that Robert Penn Warren was not all that admired, but I disagree.
Helena, Evelyn Waugh, Little Brown and Company, 1950, 247 pp
The Empress Helena was the mother of Constantine the Great. In 313 AD, Constantine, as Roman Emperor, announced the toleration of Christianity in the Empire. Waugh has created in this book a fictional account of Helena's life and through her story has shown the conflicting forces of that age.
Helena became a Christian herself and after years of loneliness and neglect by her husband, set off on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. She was quite old for a woman of those times, but oversaw the building of churches at Bethlehem and Olivet (near to where Jesus was crucified.) She also had two pieces of the True Cross excavated and brought back to the Roman world where they became relics.
Waugh portrays her as a wise, no-nonsense woman who, by her intelligence and her faith, goes her own way. The book was a light and easy read even though the story dealt with such weighty issues. Especially ironic is that Constantine was the man who allowed Christianity to make its way into a mainstream religion, but himself had very little understanding of it.
I, Robot, Isaac Asimov, Doubleday, 1950, 272 pp
1950 is the first year for publication of large amounts of full length science fiction books. Many of the early sci fi books were collections of stories which the authors had published in the pulps during the 1940s and that is the case with I, Robot. According to Asimov in these stories, robots were first built only as machines but somewhere in the 1980s began to have something like sentience. Susan Calvin, Robopsychologist of United States Robots is about to retire at the age of 75, making it 2057 in the stories, and is looking back over her involvement with robots.
Humans and robots have had an uneasy relationship, even though robots were made by humans. Each robot was programmed according to three fundamental laws designed to prevent them from harming humans. Eventually, due to unions of workers and religious groups, robots were banned from Earth and could only be used in space.
Still situations came up, so Susan Calvin and other top executives and cyber-engineers of United States Robots had to troubleshoot those pesky robots. Each chapter is about one of those incidents. The writing and dialogue is about par for those days, but the humor and affinity for robots is great. I don't know where they got the screenplay for the movie version: it is nothing like the book.
I liked I, Robots immensely, especially the last episode, "The Evitable Conflict", where through robots and cybernetics, war has been eliminated by balancing supply and demand across the planet. The robots who do this are called "The Machines" and they even have a way of handling the greedy and the power seekers who would try to subvert them. Very enlightened concept.
The Man Who Sold the Moon, Robert A Heinlein, Signet Books, 1950, 167 pp
This crumbling paperback, which I found in a used bookstore, contains four stories from an unnamed "original edition". Some of the stories appear to have been first published in one or another of John Campbell's pulps.
The first story, "Let There Be Light", is about two scientists (a man and a woman) discovering how to harness solar power and sell it as energy. I was annoyed by Heinlein's attempt to write some kind of hip dialogue for the times.
"The Roads Must Roll" takes place in a future when rolling roads (something like the people movers in airports today, but much faster) have replaced cars and trains. A labor agitator causes big trouble.
"The Man Who Sold the Moon", long enough to be a novella, is the main piece and also a great story. Delos D Harriman has a dream to go to the moon. The government has dropped its space program, so Harriman decides to use his assets and those of any investors he can find to do it through private business. He is a consummate wheeler-dealer, a guy who never considers failure, someone not too worried about legalities and a man with a big purpose that includes the good of mankind. He pulls it off. He uses lawyers, PR men and audacity. But he doesn't get to go to the moon himself. He is trapped in the huge business he created because his investors are afraid it will all go bust if he leaves. Oh my, what a same-old story.
In "Requiem", the very short final story, Harriman gets revenge. I won't give it away, except to say that it made me feel like my own life has been worthwhile. How did Heinlein do that?
The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, Doubleday, 1950, 181 pp
My only experience so far with fiction about Mars was a book by that title by Ben Bova. The Martian Chronicles was something wholly different. The only similarity was the idea of people from Earth going to Mars.
Bradbury's Mars has something of a fairytale sensibility about it. Houses of crystal pillars, crystal walls, golden fruits, a fossil sea which was once red, desert sands which melt into yellow wax. Martians still exist with brownish skin, yellow coin eyes and soft musical voices. In a series of very short stories, earthmen come. At first their expeditions are wiped out by Martians but finally the earthmen prevail, stay and bring more people until a population grows while Earth becomes worse and worse, ecologically and politically. Mars becomes commercialized and changed.
The ending is apocalyptic yet wonderful, cool and sentimental all at the same time, which I think is Bradbury's signature style. He is an original and I liked the book.
Pebble in the Sky, Isaac Asimov, Doubleday, 1950, 200pp
This book was really great! It is sci fi, in the future. Earth is a little planet in the Galactic Confederation. There is a group of Earthmen who want their planet back and want the good old days, but they have an evil leader who has very bad ideas on how to achieve this. It involves viruses! In 1950 Asimov includes viruses in a story!
The story also has a racial angle. A scientist from another planet falls in love with an earth girl (an earthie) and has to confront his prejudices, though he had considered himself "progressive" and free of all that. A complex story with many threads and a bit of mystery, suspense and good heroes. Very exciting read!
This novel is really long, not as powerful as All The King's Men, but still a strong novel. Jeremiah Beaumont, son of a failed man, comes of age and tries to find justice in a corrupt world. The setting is Kentucky, the time is early 1800s. After the Revolutionary War, the new country had all lands to the Mississippi River. In the South, after 200 years of tobacco and cotton growing, the lands of the original colonies were depleted as well as crowded. Families crossed the mountains into Kentucky, cleared new land, fought off Indians and at some point Kentucky became a state. Then there was a financial crash and many farmers owed bank loans they couldn't pay.
So politics in Kentucky at that time was centered on what to do with all these indebted and impoverished people. One party favored a system of relief while the other party found that to be unconstitutional. Interesting to see the same old questions and the same old corruption way back then.
Jeremiah is a sort of innocent who believes in absolutes, who is looking for heroes and love in his life. But he is tricked by everyone because he can't get the knack of living in the gray areas. Once a woman gets involved, he is really sunk, especially because the woman, Rachel Jordan, has her own considerable woes.
Therefore World Enough and Time is a tragedy, but also an investigation into truth and justice. I was completely drawn into those ideas and also into the story. Some things I've read by other authors and critics suggest that Robert Penn Warren was not all that admired, but I disagree.
Helena, Evelyn Waugh, Little Brown and Company, 1950, 247 pp
The Empress Helena was the mother of Constantine the Great. In 313 AD, Constantine, as Roman Emperor, announced the toleration of Christianity in the Empire. Waugh has created in this book a fictional account of Helena's life and through her story has shown the conflicting forces of that age.
Helena became a Christian herself and after years of loneliness and neglect by her husband, set off on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. She was quite old for a woman of those times, but oversaw the building of churches at Bethlehem and Olivet (near to where Jesus was crucified.) She also had two pieces of the True Cross excavated and brought back to the Roman world where they became relics.
Waugh portrays her as a wise, no-nonsense woman who, by her intelligence and her faith, goes her own way. The book was a light and easy read even though the story dealt with such weighty issues. Especially ironic is that Constantine was the man who allowed Christianity to make its way into a mainstream religion, but himself had very little understanding of it.
I, Robot, Isaac Asimov, Doubleday, 1950, 272 pp
1950 is the first year for publication of large amounts of full length science fiction books. Many of the early sci fi books were collections of stories which the authors had published in the pulps during the 1940s and that is the case with I, Robot. According to Asimov in these stories, robots were first built only as machines but somewhere in the 1980s began to have something like sentience. Susan Calvin, Robopsychologist of United States Robots is about to retire at the age of 75, making it 2057 in the stories, and is looking back over her involvement with robots.
Humans and robots have had an uneasy relationship, even though robots were made by humans. Each robot was programmed according to three fundamental laws designed to prevent them from harming humans. Eventually, due to unions of workers and religious groups, robots were banned from Earth and could only be used in space.
Still situations came up, so Susan Calvin and other top executives and cyber-engineers of United States Robots had to troubleshoot those pesky robots. Each chapter is about one of those incidents. The writing and dialogue is about par for those days, but the humor and affinity for robots is great. I don't know where they got the screenplay for the movie version: it is nothing like the book.
I liked I, Robots immensely, especially the last episode, "The Evitable Conflict", where through robots and cybernetics, war has been eliminated by balancing supply and demand across the planet. The robots who do this are called "The Machines" and they even have a way of handling the greedy and the power seekers who would try to subvert them. Very enlightened concept.
The Man Who Sold the Moon, Robert A Heinlein, Signet Books, 1950, 167 pp
This crumbling paperback, which I found in a used bookstore, contains four stories from an unnamed "original edition". Some of the stories appear to have been first published in one or another of John Campbell's pulps.
The first story, "Let There Be Light", is about two scientists (a man and a woman) discovering how to harness solar power and sell it as energy. I was annoyed by Heinlein's attempt to write some kind of hip dialogue for the times.
"The Roads Must Roll" takes place in a future when rolling roads (something like the people movers in airports today, but much faster) have replaced cars and trains. A labor agitator causes big trouble.
"The Man Who Sold the Moon", long enough to be a novella, is the main piece and also a great story. Delos D Harriman has a dream to go to the moon. The government has dropped its space program, so Harriman decides to use his assets and those of any investors he can find to do it through private business. He is a consummate wheeler-dealer, a guy who never considers failure, someone not too worried about legalities and a man with a big purpose that includes the good of mankind. He pulls it off. He uses lawyers, PR men and audacity. But he doesn't get to go to the moon himself. He is trapped in the huge business he created because his investors are afraid it will all go bust if he leaves. Oh my, what a same-old story.
In "Requiem", the very short final story, Harriman gets revenge. I won't give it away, except to say that it made me feel like my own life has been worthwhile. How did Heinlein do that?
The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, Doubleday, 1950, 181 pp
My only experience so far with fiction about Mars was a book by that title by Ben Bova. The Martian Chronicles was something wholly different. The only similarity was the idea of people from Earth going to Mars.
Bradbury's Mars has something of a fairytale sensibility about it. Houses of crystal pillars, crystal walls, golden fruits, a fossil sea which was once red, desert sands which melt into yellow wax. Martians still exist with brownish skin, yellow coin eyes and soft musical voices. In a series of very short stories, earthmen come. At first their expeditions are wiped out by Martians but finally the earthmen prevail, stay and bring more people until a population grows while Earth becomes worse and worse, ecologically and politically. Mars becomes commercialized and changed.
The ending is apocalyptic yet wonderful, cool and sentimental all at the same time, which I think is Bradbury's signature style. He is an original and I liked the book.
Pebble in the Sky, Isaac Asimov, Doubleday, 1950, 200pp
This book was really great! It is sci fi, in the future. Earth is a little planet in the Galactic Confederation. There is a group of Earthmen who want their planet back and want the good old days, but they have an evil leader who has very bad ideas on how to achieve this. It involves viruses! In 1950 Asimov includes viruses in a story!
The story also has a racial angle. A scientist from another planet falls in love with an earth girl (an earthie) and has to confront his prejudices, though he had considered himself "progressive" and free of all that. A complex story with many threads and a bit of mystery, suspense and good heroes. Very exciting read!
HAPPY NEW YEAR
As was bound to happen, the New Year is here. I had the most fun, exciting and active holiday season I've had in a while. Lots of friends getting together for parties, food, music and talk. Despite all of the horrific events that the governments and media of the world prepared for our holiday depression, we managed to steer clear of too much political discussion and it was unanimously agreed that praying for peace, in whatever form each of us prays, was a good daily activity for all.
I have much to look forward to in 2007. Tomorrow I start a new job as a bookseller at one of my favorite local independent bookstores. If you are in the Los Angeles area, you can visit me there and buy lots of books from me. Once Upon A Time is located in Montrose, CA, just off the 210 freeway on Honolulu Ave at the corner of Ocean View. It is a comfortably packed store of fine literature and a huge selection of childrens and young adult books. In addition are scadillions of gift items from stuffed dragons to reader's toys.
I have also committed to playing a live show of my music in February. I am practicing guitar every day now and building up some new calluses while pulling my songs out of the oblivion of stored, no longer used items in my memory banks. I haven't performed for over two years and I am a little anxious about it but at "show time" I always come through.
Small self-promotion: If you want to check out my music, you can go to my music website: http://judykrueger.com. It is very out of date and all of the ordering information for my CDs is wrong, but you can email me directly from the site and tell me what you want. You can also find my first 2 CDs at CDBaby.com. My third CD was never marketed but can be ordered from me by email.
With all the new activity, I hope I can still get enough work done on my memoir, Reading For My Life, so that there is a chance of getting it done in this lifetime. I will have a lot of extra reading to do for the bookstore job, but I am encouraged to note that I read more books this past year than ever before in my life, so I am on a roll.
Coming up here on the blog are: The 1950 chapter of Reading For My Life.
My Top 10 (or more) List of Favorite Books from 2006.
Thanks so much to all of my readers this year. Your comments and feedback have been enjoyed by me more than I can express. Keep them coming!
I have much to look forward to in 2007. Tomorrow I start a new job as a bookseller at one of my favorite local independent bookstores. If you are in the Los Angeles area, you can visit me there and buy lots of books from me. Once Upon A Time is located in Montrose, CA, just off the 210 freeway on Honolulu Ave at the corner of Ocean View. It is a comfortably packed store of fine literature and a huge selection of childrens and young adult books. In addition are scadillions of gift items from stuffed dragons to reader's toys.
I have also committed to playing a live show of my music in February. I am practicing guitar every day now and building up some new calluses while pulling my songs out of the oblivion of stored, no longer used items in my memory banks. I haven't performed for over two years and I am a little anxious about it but at "show time" I always come through.
Small self-promotion: If you want to check out my music, you can go to my music website: http://judykrueger.com. It is very out of date and all of the ordering information for my CDs is wrong, but you can email me directly from the site and tell me what you want. You can also find my first 2 CDs at CDBaby.com. My third CD was never marketed but can be ordered from me by email.
With all the new activity, I hope I can still get enough work done on my memoir, Reading For My Life, so that there is a chance of getting it done in this lifetime. I will have a lot of extra reading to do for the bookstore job, but I am encouraged to note that I read more books this past year than ever before in my life, so I am on a roll.
Coming up here on the blog are: The 1950 chapter of Reading For My Life.
My Top 10 (or more) List of Favorite Books from 2006.
Thanks so much to all of my readers this year. Your comments and feedback have been enjoyed by me more than I can express. Keep them coming!
Friday, December 29, 2006
BOOKS READ FROM 1950, PART THREE
This and the next two posts will cover other books I read that were published in 1950 or won awards in that year. I make up these "other" lists myself, choosing authors I admire or have always wanted to read.
The Grass is Singing, Doris Lessing, Thomas Y Crowell Company, 1950, 245 pp
This is Doris Lessing's first novel; hard to believe because the writing is so good. It takes place in South Africa and is a dark, disturbing story having to do with race. The climax of the story, told in the first few pages, is the outcome of the twisted lives and emotions of both races, which is what gives the novel its power.
Mary, the main character, came from a poor white family where her father was a hapless drunk and her mother a bitter man hater. After escaping poverty for a while through education and a job in the city, Mary enters into marriage with an incompetent farmer and moves to the bush. As she had never grown up emotionally, she descends into a sort of female madness. Her biggest problem is dealing with servants, who are all black men and with whom she is forever dissatisfied, until finally she meets her match. Moses, a somewhat educated native, has enough intelligence along with wiliness, to make Mary his emotional slave. In the end he kills her.
It is a strange and terrible revenge for what the white man has done to his race. This is not a pretty story but the telling is superb and held me with a gruesome fascination. There is just no end to what kinds of ways mankind can find to torture one another.
Another Pamela (or Virtue Still Rewarded), Upton Sinclair, The Viking Press, 1950, 314 pp
Sinclair takes a break from Lanny Budd but not from social commentary. Pamela is a poor, religious girl who gets hired as a modern day parlormaid for a rich family in 1930s California. She is pursued by the nephew of the woman of the house. He is a young, dissipated and spoiled run-around who lives off his aunt's money.
Pamela sticks to her religion and values until the man gives up liquor, gambling and fast women. Only then will she agree to marry him. Meanwhile, as the story is told by Pamela through letters to her mother and sister, you get all of Sinclair's views. Madam is a bleeding heart for all the socialist causes of the times.
The conceit of the book is its parallel with the novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, written by Samuel Richardson in 1742. In fact, the Pamela of this novel is reading the Richardson novel and quotes from it in her letters. I found it a somewhat amusing read which held my interest because Sinclair is a good writer, but it was really a bit too cute.
Dark Green, Bright Red, Gore Vidal, E P Dutton & Co Inc, 1950, 307 pp
Vidal published two novels in 1950. In this one he writes a story of politics and revolution in post WWII Central America. General Alvarez is a deposed dictator, a man in his 50s, who has decided to reclaim his position. While the General had been in exile in New Orleans, his son had joined the US Army and befriended Peter Nelson as they fought together in WWII. Peter has now been brought to Central America by Alvarez to train his army of Central American natives.
The cast of characters also includes the General's daughter Elena, a priest and de Cluny, a washed up French writer who is acting as the General's secretary. The General has, he thinks, secured the backing of "The Company", a fruit growing and exporting concern run by an American businessman.
The story is brilliantly told, as Vidal brings all these elements of Central American politics and human aspiration together. Somehow I had not realized before reading this novel, that American governmental and financial intervention into the unstable politics of Central America was going on as far back as the late 1940s. Certainly Vidal must have been one of the earliest writers to make it the subject of a novel.
A Search For the King, Gore Vidal, E P Dutton & Company Inc, 1950, 255 pp
In this novel, Vidal goes far back into history to tell a tale of Richard, the Lion Hearted, though it is actually the story of Blondel, Richard's troubadour. As Richard traveled home from the Crusades he was captured by King Leopold of Austria who hoped to use Richard as a pawn in the game of Kings, Emperors and Popes for power. The only problem is that Richard never could be a pawn for anyone. In fact, though I don't know that much about him, Richard the Lion Hearted has always been one of my heroes.
Richard is a hard guy to get close to, as most heroes are, but Blondel is a true friend and is acknowledged by Richard as such. Blondel also knows how to be a friend to a powerful person. He wanders all over Eastern Europe in the dead of winter, keeping track of Richard's whereabouts. Finally he makes it back to France and England, where along with Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard's wife, he helps to arrange Richard's release. In the end, he gets to go into battle with his hero again.
During his travels, Blondel has encounters with all manner of legendary characters: dragons, werewolves and a vampire in an enchanted forest. He also experiences revelations and mystical phenomena, as befit a true artist. Through it all, he keeps writing songs and using his talents to get into and out of sticky situations. This is a finely wrought tale.
The Preacher and the Slave, Wallace Stegner, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1950, 403 pp
Wow! What a book! The slave in the title is Joe Hill, hero of the IWW (the Wobblies) in the very early days of labor organizing in the United States. The IWW was a big deal from 1905 to the early 1920s. The goal was to have One Big Union for all types of workers, but the movement finally fell apart due to schisms, communist influences and very bad PR due to a rather enthusiastic use of violence.
Joe Hill did not function as an organizer but wrote songs for the workers and the Wobblies were big singers. Every meeting involved singing, they had their own songbook and most of those songs were written by Joe Hill. He set his words to popular melodies; a tradition carried on by Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan.
Joe himself was quite a conflicted character: a Swedish immigrant, a bastard (literally), a loner with violent tendencies but a tender heart. At least that is the way Stegner portrays him, admitting in his forward that he created this fictional account around a scanty amount of actual available fact about either Joe Hill or the IWW.
Joe is clearly a doomed man from the beginning of the book and his life is a tragedy. His songs gave him just enough notoriety that government and business interests who wanted to squash the labor movement could use him as a scapegoat. He spends the last years of his life in prison while various lawyers try to prove him innocent of a murder charge which was probably trumped up. The whole case is a rallying point for the IWW and created the mythical stature of Joe Hill. I was captivated and educated by this earlier beginning to the many Guthrie/Dylan tales I have read.
The Grass is Singing, Doris Lessing, Thomas Y Crowell Company, 1950, 245 pp
This is Doris Lessing's first novel; hard to believe because the writing is so good. It takes place in South Africa and is a dark, disturbing story having to do with race. The climax of the story, told in the first few pages, is the outcome of the twisted lives and emotions of both races, which is what gives the novel its power.
Mary, the main character, came from a poor white family where her father was a hapless drunk and her mother a bitter man hater. After escaping poverty for a while through education and a job in the city, Mary enters into marriage with an incompetent farmer and moves to the bush. As she had never grown up emotionally, she descends into a sort of female madness. Her biggest problem is dealing with servants, who are all black men and with whom she is forever dissatisfied, until finally she meets her match. Moses, a somewhat educated native, has enough intelligence along with wiliness, to make Mary his emotional slave. In the end he kills her.
It is a strange and terrible revenge for what the white man has done to his race. This is not a pretty story but the telling is superb and held me with a gruesome fascination. There is just no end to what kinds of ways mankind can find to torture one another.
Another Pamela (or Virtue Still Rewarded), Upton Sinclair, The Viking Press, 1950, 314 pp
Sinclair takes a break from Lanny Budd but not from social commentary. Pamela is a poor, religious girl who gets hired as a modern day parlormaid for a rich family in 1930s California. She is pursued by the nephew of the woman of the house. He is a young, dissipated and spoiled run-around who lives off his aunt's money.
Pamela sticks to her religion and values until the man gives up liquor, gambling and fast women. Only then will she agree to marry him. Meanwhile, as the story is told by Pamela through letters to her mother and sister, you get all of Sinclair's views. Madam is a bleeding heart for all the socialist causes of the times.
The conceit of the book is its parallel with the novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, written by Samuel Richardson in 1742. In fact, the Pamela of this novel is reading the Richardson novel and quotes from it in her letters. I found it a somewhat amusing read which held my interest because Sinclair is a good writer, but it was really a bit too cute.
Dark Green, Bright Red, Gore Vidal, E P Dutton & Co Inc, 1950, 307 pp
Vidal published two novels in 1950. In this one he writes a story of politics and revolution in post WWII Central America. General Alvarez is a deposed dictator, a man in his 50s, who has decided to reclaim his position. While the General had been in exile in New Orleans, his son had joined the US Army and befriended Peter Nelson as they fought together in WWII. Peter has now been brought to Central America by Alvarez to train his army of Central American natives.
The cast of characters also includes the General's daughter Elena, a priest and de Cluny, a washed up French writer who is acting as the General's secretary. The General has, he thinks, secured the backing of "The Company", a fruit growing and exporting concern run by an American businessman.
The story is brilliantly told, as Vidal brings all these elements of Central American politics and human aspiration together. Somehow I had not realized before reading this novel, that American governmental and financial intervention into the unstable politics of Central America was going on as far back as the late 1940s. Certainly Vidal must have been one of the earliest writers to make it the subject of a novel.
A Search For the King, Gore Vidal, E P Dutton & Company Inc, 1950, 255 pp
In this novel, Vidal goes far back into history to tell a tale of Richard, the Lion Hearted, though it is actually the story of Blondel, Richard's troubadour. As Richard traveled home from the Crusades he was captured by King Leopold of Austria who hoped to use Richard as a pawn in the game of Kings, Emperors and Popes for power. The only problem is that Richard never could be a pawn for anyone. In fact, though I don't know that much about him, Richard the Lion Hearted has always been one of my heroes.
Richard is a hard guy to get close to, as most heroes are, but Blondel is a true friend and is acknowledged by Richard as such. Blondel also knows how to be a friend to a powerful person. He wanders all over Eastern Europe in the dead of winter, keeping track of Richard's whereabouts. Finally he makes it back to France and England, where along with Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard's wife, he helps to arrange Richard's release. In the end, he gets to go into battle with his hero again.
During his travels, Blondel has encounters with all manner of legendary characters: dragons, werewolves and a vampire in an enchanted forest. He also experiences revelations and mystical phenomena, as befit a true artist. Through it all, he keeps writing songs and using his talents to get into and out of sticky situations. This is a finely wrought tale.
The Preacher and the Slave, Wallace Stegner, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1950, 403 pp
Wow! What a book! The slave in the title is Joe Hill, hero of the IWW (the Wobblies) in the very early days of labor organizing in the United States. The IWW was a big deal from 1905 to the early 1920s. The goal was to have One Big Union for all types of workers, but the movement finally fell apart due to schisms, communist influences and very bad PR due to a rather enthusiastic use of violence.
Joe Hill did not function as an organizer but wrote songs for the workers and the Wobblies were big singers. Every meeting involved singing, they had their own songbook and most of those songs were written by Joe Hill. He set his words to popular melodies; a tradition carried on by Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan.
Joe himself was quite a conflicted character: a Swedish immigrant, a bastard (literally), a loner with violent tendencies but a tender heart. At least that is the way Stegner portrays him, admitting in his forward that he created this fictional account around a scanty amount of actual available fact about either Joe Hill or the IWW.
Joe is clearly a doomed man from the beginning of the book and his life is a tragedy. His songs gave him just enough notoriety that government and business interests who wanted to squash the labor movement could use him as a scapegoat. He spends the last years of his life in prison while various lawyers try to prove him innocent of a murder charge which was probably trumped up. The whole case is a rallying point for the IWW and created the mythical stature of Joe Hill. I was captivated and educated by this earlier beginning to the many Guthrie/Dylan tales I have read.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
BOOKS READ FROM 1950, PART TWO
Continuing with the bestsellers I read from 1950.
The Parasites, Daphne Du Maurier, Doubleday & Company Inc, 1950, 305 pp
The #6 bestseller in 1950 is the most contemporary of Du Maurier's books that I've read. The back story beings in WWI times when three children, Maria, Niall and Celia, are being raised in the theatres of Europe. Their parents are performers; the mother a dancer, the father a singer. They were successful and popular, so had a nurse/nanny to care for the kids.
Now those kids are adults but each one is a bit off in some way due to their unusual upbringing. Their lives aren't really working. Maria married a landed gentleman but after having three children returned to the stage, as she had been a famous actress herself. Now the marriage has broken down and Maria's husband calls the three of them parasites.
It wasn't a deep book and the writing is not her best, but I was intrigued by the odd life of these people. They loved their life as children because it was rich in adventure, fantasy and variation. They were never bored, but they got virtually no parenting and learned few social skills for handling adult life in England. When life becomes difficult for any one of them in terms of personal relationships, all they can do is turn to each other as they did in childhood and tragedy ensues. Since Du Maurier's grandfather was an artist and a writer and her father was an actor, I would guess that the book is somewhat autobiographical.
Floodtide, Frank Yerby, The Dial Press, 1950, 342 pp
The yearly bestseller by Yerby came in at #7. It is 1850 and Ross Pary arrives back in Natchez, MS, having spent some years abroad studying architecture and learning how to be a gentleman. He was born Under-the Hill amongst the brawling illiterate poor but now has plans to become a rich planter On-the-Hill.
His plans work out just fine. Ross Pary's trouble is women: Morgan, the beautiful but evil wife of the man who helps Ross the most in his social climb; Conchita, the fiery daughter of a Cuban revolutionary; Cathy, the homely yet fascinating daughter of another planter, who can run a plantation like a man herself.
We also have political and social change, as the Southern slaveholders fight against abolitionists and scheme to maintain slave holding as a way of life. Yerby's writing is getting better and so is his character development, which is a good thing since he has bestsellers every year until the mid 1950s.
The Jubilee Trail, Gwen Bristow, Thomas Y Crowell Company, 1950, 564 pp.
This is a quite good historical novel and was #8 on the bestseller list for 1950. Garnet Cameron is 18 years old, has just finished school and the only thing she has to look forward to is getting married to some young man from her rather wealthy class of people in New York City. It is 1844 and Garnet is a girl who craves adventure.
She meets Oliver Hale, a young prairie trader from the mysterious land of California. Since Oliver was raised in Boston, he knows how to play the gentleman. The next thing you know, he has won over the parents, he and Garnet are married and headed for the Jubilee Trail. From Independence, MO (the edge of civilization in those days) to Santa Fe, NM runs the Santa Fe Trail. From there to the village of Los Angeles, it is the Jubilee Trail. Huge trains of covered wagons, filled with goods to be traded, go back and forth across these trails every year. This year Garnet will go too.
Of course, another woman comes into the picture before Garnet and Oliver have even left New Orleans, where they have spent their honeymoon. Florinda Grove is a woman on the run. She has been a dance hall girl in New York and got mixed up in some bad trouble. In the way of historical romance novels, she ends up on the Jubilee Trail as well, where she and Garnet become great friends.
The whole book is adventure all the way. You totally get what it was like to ride those covered wagons and cross the desert. Reading about life in the early years of California was fascinating and when Garnet and Florinda are thrown together by tragedy, Bristow creates a realistic picture of what it was like for women in those uncivilized and wild times. The romances are pretty silly but the history is great. Here is another book I would never have read if I hadn't done this project.
The Adventurer, Mika Waltari, G P Putnam's Sons, 1050, 377 pp
One more rousing historical novel on the list for 1950 is The Adventurer, by the author of The Egyptian (#1 in 1949.) In Finland, early 1500s, Michael is about five years old, son of an unmarried woman, when his entire family is killed in a raid by the Jutes. He was raised a Catholic but the King of Finland is a conquering Dane and a Lutheran.
Michael grows up with a desire to be a priest and a scholar, nevertheless he spends most of his years in adventures all over Europe as a soldier and spy for various factions in all the many wars of the time. The book is a diatribe against religion, war and the hopeless nature of mankind though presented in a humorous light. It is all about men and their ways; the only females are the healer/witch who raised Michael and a courtesan/camp follower. Martin Luther comes off no better than the Pope. Good read and good history.
The Disenchanted, Budd Schulberg, Random House Inc, 1950, 388 pp.
The #10 bestseller starts out in Hollywood with a young writer, just hired by a movie studio. He is made the assistant/collaborator to Manley Halliday, a formerly famous novelist from the 1920s. Halliday needs money, has a nasty drinking problem which has devolved into diabetes and has taken this screenwriting job. The young hopeful writer is at first overawed by Halliday but as the story moves along and the older author's washed up condition outweighs his brilliance, things get extremely rocky.
The two writers are to work together on a vapid romantic comedy. The stereotypical studio head, Victor Migrim, drags them through a journey to the East coast college which is the setting for the movie. On and on it goes with Halliday steadily drinking and falling apart while telling his own back story as they go. The young writer is forced into the role of caretaker. After a while, the story begins to sound awfully familiar, so I Googled Schulberg and sure enough, Halliday is a fictional F Scott Fitzgerald, while Schulberg turns out to be the son a of movie studio head and had done a stint of collaboration with Fitzgerald back in the day.
I had no trouble reading the book which pulls you along relentlessly. The tragic downfall of a talented novelist was intermingled with incidents that ranged from comedic to slapstick, a combination which made me queasy. But The Disenchanted is a forerunner of many Hollywood novels, so stands as a historic volume of that genre.
The Parasites, Daphne Du Maurier, Doubleday & Company Inc, 1950, 305 pp
The #6 bestseller in 1950 is the most contemporary of Du Maurier's books that I've read. The back story beings in WWI times when three children, Maria, Niall and Celia, are being raised in the theatres of Europe. Their parents are performers; the mother a dancer, the father a singer. They were successful and popular, so had a nurse/nanny to care for the kids.
Now those kids are adults but each one is a bit off in some way due to their unusual upbringing. Their lives aren't really working. Maria married a landed gentleman but after having three children returned to the stage, as she had been a famous actress herself. Now the marriage has broken down and Maria's husband calls the three of them parasites.
It wasn't a deep book and the writing is not her best, but I was intrigued by the odd life of these people. They loved their life as children because it was rich in adventure, fantasy and variation. They were never bored, but they got virtually no parenting and learned few social skills for handling adult life in England. When life becomes difficult for any one of them in terms of personal relationships, all they can do is turn to each other as they did in childhood and tragedy ensues. Since Du Maurier's grandfather was an artist and a writer and her father was an actor, I would guess that the book is somewhat autobiographical.
Floodtide, Frank Yerby, The Dial Press, 1950, 342 pp
The yearly bestseller by Yerby came in at #7. It is 1850 and Ross Pary arrives back in Natchez, MS, having spent some years abroad studying architecture and learning how to be a gentleman. He was born Under-the Hill amongst the brawling illiterate poor but now has plans to become a rich planter On-the-Hill.
His plans work out just fine. Ross Pary's trouble is women: Morgan, the beautiful but evil wife of the man who helps Ross the most in his social climb; Conchita, the fiery daughter of a Cuban revolutionary; Cathy, the homely yet fascinating daughter of another planter, who can run a plantation like a man herself.
We also have political and social change, as the Southern slaveholders fight against abolitionists and scheme to maintain slave holding as a way of life. Yerby's writing is getting better and so is his character development, which is a good thing since he has bestsellers every year until the mid 1950s.
The Jubilee Trail, Gwen Bristow, Thomas Y Crowell Company, 1950, 564 pp.
This is a quite good historical novel and was #8 on the bestseller list for 1950. Garnet Cameron is 18 years old, has just finished school and the only thing she has to look forward to is getting married to some young man from her rather wealthy class of people in New York City. It is 1844 and Garnet is a girl who craves adventure.
She meets Oliver Hale, a young prairie trader from the mysterious land of California. Since Oliver was raised in Boston, he knows how to play the gentleman. The next thing you know, he has won over the parents, he and Garnet are married and headed for the Jubilee Trail. From Independence, MO (the edge of civilization in those days) to Santa Fe, NM runs the Santa Fe Trail. From there to the village of Los Angeles, it is the Jubilee Trail. Huge trains of covered wagons, filled with goods to be traded, go back and forth across these trails every year. This year Garnet will go too.
Of course, another woman comes into the picture before Garnet and Oliver have even left New Orleans, where they have spent their honeymoon. Florinda Grove is a woman on the run. She has been a dance hall girl in New York and got mixed up in some bad trouble. In the way of historical romance novels, she ends up on the Jubilee Trail as well, where she and Garnet become great friends.
The whole book is adventure all the way. You totally get what it was like to ride those covered wagons and cross the desert. Reading about life in the early years of California was fascinating and when Garnet and Florinda are thrown together by tragedy, Bristow creates a realistic picture of what it was like for women in those uncivilized and wild times. The romances are pretty silly but the history is great. Here is another book I would never have read if I hadn't done this project.
The Adventurer, Mika Waltari, G P Putnam's Sons, 1050, 377 pp
One more rousing historical novel on the list for 1950 is The Adventurer, by the author of The Egyptian (#1 in 1949.) In Finland, early 1500s, Michael is about five years old, son of an unmarried woman, when his entire family is killed in a raid by the Jutes. He was raised a Catholic but the King of Finland is a conquering Dane and a Lutheran.
Michael grows up with a desire to be a priest and a scholar, nevertheless he spends most of his years in adventures all over Europe as a soldier and spy for various factions in all the many wars of the time. The book is a diatribe against religion, war and the hopeless nature of mankind though presented in a humorous light. It is all about men and their ways; the only females are the healer/witch who raised Michael and a courtesan/camp follower. Martin Luther comes off no better than the Pope. Good read and good history.
The Disenchanted, Budd Schulberg, Random House Inc, 1950, 388 pp.
The #10 bestseller starts out in Hollywood with a young writer, just hired by a movie studio. He is made the assistant/collaborator to Manley Halliday, a formerly famous novelist from the 1920s. Halliday needs money, has a nasty drinking problem which has devolved into diabetes and has taken this screenwriting job. The young hopeful writer is at first overawed by Halliday but as the story moves along and the older author's washed up condition outweighs his brilliance, things get extremely rocky.
The two writers are to work together on a vapid romantic comedy. The stereotypical studio head, Victor Migrim, drags them through a journey to the East coast college which is the setting for the movie. On and on it goes with Halliday steadily drinking and falling apart while telling his own back story as they go. The young writer is forced into the role of caretaker. After a while, the story begins to sound awfully familiar, so I Googled Schulberg and sure enough, Halliday is a fictional F Scott Fitzgerald, while Schulberg turns out to be the son a of movie studio head and had done a stint of collaboration with Fitzgerald back in the day.
I had no trouble reading the book which pulls you along relentlessly. The tragic downfall of a talented novelist was intermingled with incidents that ranged from comedic to slapstick, a combination which made me queasy. But The Disenchanted is a forerunner of many Hollywood novels, so stands as a historic volume of that genre.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
BOOKS READ FROM 1950, PART ONE
Christmas is finally over and I can get back to something like normal life. I had hoped to write two more chapters of Reading For My Life by the end of the year. Alas, it will not be. But at least I can get 1950 done. Here then are the first of the bestsellers I read for 1950.
The Cardinal, Henry Morton Robinson, Simon and Schuster, 1950, 565 pp
At #1 is the story of a priest working his way up to Cardinal in the Catholic Church. Stephen Fermoyle, son of an Irish family in Boston, is a young priest returning from seminary in Rome to take up his first parish assignment at the opening of the story. Father Stephen is a Lanny Budd sort of character who comes through each challenge with his integrity intact. He has a deep call to the ministry, a quick intelligence, a love of people and a way with diplomacy. You are meant to admire him, though his struggles are a bit hard to believe because he is so flawless.
Since the story ranges from pre-WWI to WWII, the issues of the times are brought in and the views of the Catholic Church are promulgated: industrially created poverty, immigrants, the Depression, birth control, fascism, Communism are all addressed. While I don't hold with the patriarchal nature of the Catholic Church or with their views on women, I could see how a strong religious belief and practice are a stabilizing factor in a rapidly changing and unstable world.
It was interesting to learn how a pope is elected, how bishops run their areas and how the Catholic Church interfaces with secular concerns. I am quite sure the novel presents an extremely whitewashed version. Stephen, the Pope and the worldwide Church all come across as basically infallible.
The writing was typical for the bestsellers of the time and the storytelling kept me interested, but the style was what I became used to in the 1940s bestsellers. In any case, I was launched into a new decade of fiction.
Joy Street, Frances Parkinson Keyes, Julian Messner Inc, 1950, 461 pp
This was #2 on the 1950 bestseller list. Keyes's earlier books were all set in New Orleans, but Joy Street takes place in Boston during a similar time period to The Cardinal. Emily is from a rich, high society family and marries Roger, who has a good social standing but no money. He is just starting out at a law firm which is stodgy but has also recently hired a Jew, an Irishman and an Italian. It is Emily's and Roger's dream to be catalysts for all these conflicting elements and social levels.
Naturally it doesn't work out as planned. Emily's grandmother is the matriarch of the family and tries to control everyone, though she actually likes and helps Emily. Though there is no real sex in the book, there is plenty of sexual tension, affairs that almost happen and finally a happy and passionate ending for Emily.
Keyes has written a fairly good story though is a bit too wordy. The 1940s writing style again, but she is trying to be up-to-date in the details concerning the old ways giving over to the new post-war world.
Across the River and into the Trees, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950, 308 pp
Making #3 on the list is a writer who never did write in the style of his day, though I did not find this novel to be one of his best. Richard, also called the Colonel, who had been a General and got demoted, who had fought in WWII and become disillusioned, is taking a leave to spend some time in Venice. He is there to see his lover, to go on a duck hunt and, you begin to realize, to die.
Richard is 50 years old, he is a cynical old bastard and he has a bad heart. His lover is an eighteen year old Venetian princess from some ancient family. The ducks are mostly mallards. Granted that Hemingway paints a good portrait of the Colonel and conjures both Venice and love as well as a bunch of unique characters, but it was way too much a man's book for me and very repetitive. I found nothing near the power of For Whom the Bell Tolls.
The Wall, John Hersey, Alfred A Knopf, 1950, 632 pp
The Wall was the #4 bestseller in 1950 and I had heard so much about this book that I was excited to read it. I never really knew what it was about (the Berlin Wall maybe? the Wall of China?), but it would be mentioned in reverent tones so I assumed it was important. It is.
"The Wall" was built by Jews under Nazi orders in Warsaw, Poland beginning in 1939. In other words, after Hitler conquered Poland he got the Jews to enclose themselves in a ghetto. Eventually all the Jews in Warsaw and surrounding areas were forcibly ordered inside the wall, the entrances were guarded by German SS and finally the Nazis began to "relocate" these people, mostly to Treblinka, where the majority of them perished.
Though The Wall is fiction, it is written as the journal entries of a Jewish man named Noach Levinson, who recorded everything he could until 1943, when it finally became clear that the ghetto would be destroyed and he escaped along with a few others of the resistance.
The book is long, not very entertaining and it took me over three weeks to read it. I read other books in between, rarely reading as much as 100 pages at a time of The Wall. I started it when I had a stomach flu and finished it while I had bronchitis, so you see it was tough going. I had thoughts about life on planet earth being like living in a ghetto. I had other thoughts about how very difficult it is for human beings to get along, even in the same religion and about how it is the suppression certain humans perpetrate over others that makes that difficulty. I think it is important that Hersey wrote this story and was glad that I read it but it was very hard even for me who can read almost anything.
Star Money, Kathleen Winsor, Appleton-Century-Crofts Inc, 1950, 442 pp
One thing about the top 10 bestsellers in 1950 is the variety. Star Money was nothing like any of the four other books on the list so far. Winsor's second novel is half the length of Forever Amber, her 1944 bestseller, a blessing because the writing is quite bad. I suspected the story of being auto-biographical and learned that indeed it was. Forever Amber sold 3 million copies by 1949. It was banned in Boston for a while and is now considered the first bodice-ripper and a precedent for Peyton Place, not to mention other "racy" bestsellers about strong, immoral female heroines. Winsor divorced and remarried several times and was even married to Artie Shaw for a time.
In Star Money, Shireen Delaney is a bestselling author during WWII. While her husband is overseas fighting the war, she moves to NYC, sells her first novel, makes a pile of money, buys and decorates her own apartment and has several lovers. Shireen is ambitious, ruthless, self-centered, emotionally childlike and uses up men like disposable tissues. It is the emotional ridiculousness of the character that is so annoying as Winsor details Shireen's every vacillating thought. Now, I've read that sort of thing in Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, so it isn't the vacillating so much as the lame prose of Kathleen Winsor.
On the other hand, the talent, hard work and strength of Shireen are similar to Amber's. Women, including me, will always love reading about plucky heroines and the more ethically ambiguous the better. While reading Star Money, I was disgusted and fascinated at the same time.
The Cardinal, Henry Morton Robinson, Simon and Schuster, 1950, 565 pp
At #1 is the story of a priest working his way up to Cardinal in the Catholic Church. Stephen Fermoyle, son of an Irish family in Boston, is a young priest returning from seminary in Rome to take up his first parish assignment at the opening of the story. Father Stephen is a Lanny Budd sort of character who comes through each challenge with his integrity intact. He has a deep call to the ministry, a quick intelligence, a love of people and a way with diplomacy. You are meant to admire him, though his struggles are a bit hard to believe because he is so flawless.
Since the story ranges from pre-WWI to WWII, the issues of the times are brought in and the views of the Catholic Church are promulgated: industrially created poverty, immigrants, the Depression, birth control, fascism, Communism are all addressed. While I don't hold with the patriarchal nature of the Catholic Church or with their views on women, I could see how a strong religious belief and practice are a stabilizing factor in a rapidly changing and unstable world.
It was interesting to learn how a pope is elected, how bishops run their areas and how the Catholic Church interfaces with secular concerns. I am quite sure the novel presents an extremely whitewashed version. Stephen, the Pope and the worldwide Church all come across as basically infallible.
The writing was typical for the bestsellers of the time and the storytelling kept me interested, but the style was what I became used to in the 1940s bestsellers. In any case, I was launched into a new decade of fiction.
Joy Street, Frances Parkinson Keyes, Julian Messner Inc, 1950, 461 pp
This was #2 on the 1950 bestseller list. Keyes's earlier books were all set in New Orleans, but Joy Street takes place in Boston during a similar time period to The Cardinal. Emily is from a rich, high society family and marries Roger, who has a good social standing but no money. He is just starting out at a law firm which is stodgy but has also recently hired a Jew, an Irishman and an Italian. It is Emily's and Roger's dream to be catalysts for all these conflicting elements and social levels.
Naturally it doesn't work out as planned. Emily's grandmother is the matriarch of the family and tries to control everyone, though she actually likes and helps Emily. Though there is no real sex in the book, there is plenty of sexual tension, affairs that almost happen and finally a happy and passionate ending for Emily.
Keyes has written a fairly good story though is a bit too wordy. The 1940s writing style again, but she is trying to be up-to-date in the details concerning the old ways giving over to the new post-war world.
Across the River and into the Trees, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950, 308 pp
Making #3 on the list is a writer who never did write in the style of his day, though I did not find this novel to be one of his best. Richard, also called the Colonel, who had been a General and got demoted, who had fought in WWII and become disillusioned, is taking a leave to spend some time in Venice. He is there to see his lover, to go on a duck hunt and, you begin to realize, to die.
Richard is 50 years old, he is a cynical old bastard and he has a bad heart. His lover is an eighteen year old Venetian princess from some ancient family. The ducks are mostly mallards. Granted that Hemingway paints a good portrait of the Colonel and conjures both Venice and love as well as a bunch of unique characters, but it was way too much a man's book for me and very repetitive. I found nothing near the power of For Whom the Bell Tolls.
The Wall, John Hersey, Alfred A Knopf, 1950, 632 pp
The Wall was the #4 bestseller in 1950 and I had heard so much about this book that I was excited to read it. I never really knew what it was about (the Berlin Wall maybe? the Wall of China?), but it would be mentioned in reverent tones so I assumed it was important. It is.
"The Wall" was built by Jews under Nazi orders in Warsaw, Poland beginning in 1939. In other words, after Hitler conquered Poland he got the Jews to enclose themselves in a ghetto. Eventually all the Jews in Warsaw and surrounding areas were forcibly ordered inside the wall, the entrances were guarded by German SS and finally the Nazis began to "relocate" these people, mostly to Treblinka, where the majority of them perished.
Though The Wall is fiction, it is written as the journal entries of a Jewish man named Noach Levinson, who recorded everything he could until 1943, when it finally became clear that the ghetto would be destroyed and he escaped along with a few others of the resistance.
The book is long, not very entertaining and it took me over three weeks to read it. I read other books in between, rarely reading as much as 100 pages at a time of The Wall. I started it when I had a stomach flu and finished it while I had bronchitis, so you see it was tough going. I had thoughts about life on planet earth being like living in a ghetto. I had other thoughts about how very difficult it is for human beings to get along, even in the same religion and about how it is the suppression certain humans perpetrate over others that makes that difficulty. I think it is important that Hersey wrote this story and was glad that I read it but it was very hard even for me who can read almost anything.
Star Money, Kathleen Winsor, Appleton-Century-Crofts Inc, 1950, 442 pp
One thing about the top 10 bestsellers in 1950 is the variety. Star Money was nothing like any of the four other books on the list so far. Winsor's second novel is half the length of Forever Amber, her 1944 bestseller, a blessing because the writing is quite bad. I suspected the story of being auto-biographical and learned that indeed it was. Forever Amber sold 3 million copies by 1949. It was banned in Boston for a while and is now considered the first bodice-ripper and a precedent for Peyton Place, not to mention other "racy" bestsellers about strong, immoral female heroines. Winsor divorced and remarried several times and was even married to Artie Shaw for a time.
In Star Money, Shireen Delaney is a bestselling author during WWII. While her husband is overseas fighting the war, she moves to NYC, sells her first novel, makes a pile of money, buys and decorates her own apartment and has several lovers. Shireen is ambitious, ruthless, self-centered, emotionally childlike and uses up men like disposable tissues. It is the emotional ridiculousness of the character that is so annoying as Winsor details Shireen's every vacillating thought. Now, I've read that sort of thing in Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, so it isn't the vacillating so much as the lame prose of Kathleen Winsor.
On the other hand, the talent, hard work and strength of Shireen are similar to Amber's. Women, including me, will always love reading about plucky heroines and the more ethically ambiguous the better. While reading Star Money, I was disgusted and fascinated at the same time.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
INTERVIEW WITH ALICE ZOGG
Alice Zogg is a local author in Los Angeles. She is also a friend of mine. Alice writes mysteries in the style of Agatha Christie and PD James. She is a retired woman (though a very active sportswoman) who started writing after retirement and who writes for her own amusement, so she opted to use Print On Demand publishing rather than spend time dealing with the whole agent/publisher/promote yourself anyway scenario that confronts new authors these days.
Last month she released her fourth book, The Lonesome Autocrat. It features Private Investigator R A Huber, as have her earlier books. Alice has set this mystery in her native Switzerland, where Huber is visiting a childhood friend. When a murder is committed, Huber must switch gears and go to work finding the murderer since the victim is her friend's 84 year old father.
Otto Sonderegger was a hotel magnate whose sorrow in life was that none of his offspring chose to carry on the hotel business. He had been an overbearing and critical man, married twice and had affairs on the side. Any one of his heirs or lovers were thus suspect.
Ms Zogg depicts life in a Swiss mansion and nearby Davos, a resort town, with the skill of a travel writer. The discovery of the murderer involves a serious threat to R A Huber's life and a startling surprise to the reader. Though she writes in a traditional style, Zogg's characters are clearly of the modern world. Her strongest point is her plotting and I can never even guess who done it until it is revealed.
Bibliography:
Reaching Checkmate: 2003
Turn the Joker Around: 2004
Tracking Backward: 2005
The Lonesome Autocrat: 2006
All of Alice Zogg's books are available at either Barnes and Noble.com or Amazon.com
I had a chance to pose some questions to Alice about her latest book and her writing life and thought you might enjoy reading her answers:
KTW: Your earlier books all take place in California. What made you decide to set The Lonesome Autocrat in Switzerland?
AZ: I was born and raised in Switzerland and then moved to the United States as a young adult. Even though I made my home first in New York City and for the last three and a half decades in Southern California, I visit my native country frequently. When choosing the locale for The Lonesome Autocrat in the Davos resort area, I fulfilled nostalgia. I have skied in Davos numerous times.
KTW: R A Huber seems to have quite a bit of sympathy for Otto Sonderegger, yet I did not find him a likable character. Is he based on someone you have known?
AZ: I completely invented him, as I do with all my characters. R A Huber had a certain respect for the old tyrant, that is correct.
KTW: I like the way you let the reader into you private eye's thought processes as she goes about reasoning out the crime. When her husband Peter brings up the three basic types of motives for murder, it seems to help her sort out her evidence. Is that theory about the motives documented somewhere?
AZ: The three basic types of motives for murder; greed, passion and self-preservation; came "out of my head," I have to admit. There is no such theory documented.
KTW: Are there mystery writers whom you admire or feel have influenced you as a writer? If so, what do you like about them?
AZ: I have always been an Agatha Christie fan. Her plots are ingenious. P D James is another mystery writer whose intriguing and chilling tales I admire. Then there is Dick Francis who educates the reader about horse racing, while at the same time weaves a darned good murder story. Is it a coincidence that all three are British?
KTW: How did you become a writer?
AZ: A few years ago I went to the bookstore in search of new reading material. Having read all the mystery novels ever written by my favorite authors, I was planning to purchase works of more contemporary writers. I was out of luck and could not find any that appealed to me. I must have browsed the wrong shelves that day because I certainly have discovered many great books written by present day authors since then. (Elizabeth George, Parnell Hall, Christopher Reich-just to name a few.)
Anyhow, when I returned from the store empty-handed hours later, my husband asked, "Where are the books you bought?" After I explained my dilemma, he burst out mockingly, "Why don't you write your own stories since you're that picky?" I did not pay any attention to his banter at the time, but about a month later I thought, well why not? So I gave it a try with my first book and have not stopped writing since.
KTW: Could you talk about your decision to self-publish?
AZ: While I was plotting the first book, I bought several how-to manuals on publishing the traditional way. The more I learned about what was involved, the more I felt that it was not worth the headache and decided to self-publish. When I was writing my third mystery, an author I know got me all fired up about trying to get published in the standard manner. Then I did some soul-searching and came to the conclusion that there was no reason why I should put myself under the stress this would involve. I found this creative outlet called writing late in life and it gives me joy and fulfillment, but I am a retired grandma and want to avoid that kind of pressure.
KTW: What are you working on now?
AZ: In the manuscript I am currently working on R A Huber is back in California and will solve her next murder near Big Bear Lake. She will also have a side-kick in the form of a young, dynamic assistant. My previous stories are written in the first person from Huber's point of view. This tale I am writing in the third person, getting into each character's head.
KTW: Thanks, Alice. I look forward to the next book!
Last month she released her fourth book, The Lonesome Autocrat. It features Private Investigator R A Huber, as have her earlier books. Alice has set this mystery in her native Switzerland, where Huber is visiting a childhood friend. When a murder is committed, Huber must switch gears and go to work finding the murderer since the victim is her friend's 84 year old father.
Otto Sonderegger was a hotel magnate whose sorrow in life was that none of his offspring chose to carry on the hotel business. He had been an overbearing and critical man, married twice and had affairs on the side. Any one of his heirs or lovers were thus suspect.
Ms Zogg depicts life in a Swiss mansion and nearby Davos, a resort town, with the skill of a travel writer. The discovery of the murderer involves a serious threat to R A Huber's life and a startling surprise to the reader. Though she writes in a traditional style, Zogg's characters are clearly of the modern world. Her strongest point is her plotting and I can never even guess who done it until it is revealed.
Bibliography:
Reaching Checkmate: 2003
Turn the Joker Around: 2004
Tracking Backward: 2005
The Lonesome Autocrat: 2006
All of Alice Zogg's books are available at either Barnes and Noble.com or Amazon.com
I had a chance to pose some questions to Alice about her latest book and her writing life and thought you might enjoy reading her answers:
KTW: Your earlier books all take place in California. What made you decide to set The Lonesome Autocrat in Switzerland?
AZ: I was born and raised in Switzerland and then moved to the United States as a young adult. Even though I made my home first in New York City and for the last three and a half decades in Southern California, I visit my native country frequently. When choosing the locale for The Lonesome Autocrat in the Davos resort area, I fulfilled nostalgia. I have skied in Davos numerous times.
KTW: R A Huber seems to have quite a bit of sympathy for Otto Sonderegger, yet I did not find him a likable character. Is he based on someone you have known?
AZ: I completely invented him, as I do with all my characters. R A Huber had a certain respect for the old tyrant, that is correct.
KTW: I like the way you let the reader into you private eye's thought processes as she goes about reasoning out the crime. When her husband Peter brings up the three basic types of motives for murder, it seems to help her sort out her evidence. Is that theory about the motives documented somewhere?
AZ: The three basic types of motives for murder; greed, passion and self-preservation; came "out of my head," I have to admit. There is no such theory documented.
KTW: Are there mystery writers whom you admire or feel have influenced you as a writer? If so, what do you like about them?
AZ: I have always been an Agatha Christie fan. Her plots are ingenious. P D James is another mystery writer whose intriguing and chilling tales I admire. Then there is Dick Francis who educates the reader about horse racing, while at the same time weaves a darned good murder story. Is it a coincidence that all three are British?
KTW: How did you become a writer?
AZ: A few years ago I went to the bookstore in search of new reading material. Having read all the mystery novels ever written by my favorite authors, I was planning to purchase works of more contemporary writers. I was out of luck and could not find any that appealed to me. I must have browsed the wrong shelves that day because I certainly have discovered many great books written by present day authors since then. (Elizabeth George, Parnell Hall, Christopher Reich-just to name a few.)
Anyhow, when I returned from the store empty-handed hours later, my husband asked, "Where are the books you bought?" After I explained my dilemma, he burst out mockingly, "Why don't you write your own stories since you're that picky?" I did not pay any attention to his banter at the time, but about a month later I thought, well why not? So I gave it a try with my first book and have not stopped writing since.
KTW: Could you talk about your decision to self-publish?
AZ: While I was plotting the first book, I bought several how-to manuals on publishing the traditional way. The more I learned about what was involved, the more I felt that it was not worth the headache and decided to self-publish. When I was writing my third mystery, an author I know got me all fired up about trying to get published in the standard manner. Then I did some soul-searching and came to the conclusion that there was no reason why I should put myself under the stress this would involve. I found this creative outlet called writing late in life and it gives me joy and fulfillment, but I am a retired grandma and want to avoid that kind of pressure.
KTW: What are you working on now?
AZ: In the manuscript I am currently working on R A Huber is back in California and will solve her next murder near Big Bear Lake. She will also have a side-kick in the form of a young, dynamic assistant. My previous stories are written in the first person from Huber's point of view. This tale I am writing in the third person, getting into each character's head.
KTW: Thanks, Alice. I look forward to the next book!
Sunday, December 10, 2006
NOVEL
Novel, George Singleton, Harcourt Inc, 2005, 335 pp
I read this for one of my reading groups, who picked it from a list of my suggestions. It was not a hit with the group but I liked it just fine. Admittedly, it is odd; Southern but comical, a complete spoof on many levels, one of which is writers, writing, writers' retreats, etc.
Novel Akers, raised with his two adopted sibilings by eccentric ex-concert pianists, is now married into a completely inbred South Carolina family. He finds himself living in Gruel, his wife's hometown, writing his memoirs. After his mother-in-law's death, caused by a spark from her son's cigarette while she was breathing through an oxygen tank, the couple inherited the family home and a defunct motel. Novel's wife Bekah turned the motel into a weight loss spa called Sneeze 'n' Tone (excessive sneezing caused by various air-borne particles pumped into the air led to rapid loss of pounds), but she got bored with that and with Novel and left town. Novel next turned the place into a writers' retreat.
But many things in the town of Gruel do not add up, so the book becomes somewhat of a mystery, though even the mystery is a spoof. There is heavy irony being attempted here and I felt that for the most part, Singleton pulled it off. I mostly chuckled inwardly and sometimes laughed out loud. There is a boring part about midway through but overall the book was a relief from overly serious literary fiction.
I think many people, especially middle-aged women who like a good dose of heartwarming sentiment, could hate this book. Most of my reading group did.
I read this for one of my reading groups, who picked it from a list of my suggestions. It was not a hit with the group but I liked it just fine. Admittedly, it is odd; Southern but comical, a complete spoof on many levels, one of which is writers, writing, writers' retreats, etc.
Novel Akers, raised with his two adopted sibilings by eccentric ex-concert pianists, is now married into a completely inbred South Carolina family. He finds himself living in Gruel, his wife's hometown, writing his memoirs. After his mother-in-law's death, caused by a spark from her son's cigarette while she was breathing through an oxygen tank, the couple inherited the family home and a defunct motel. Novel's wife Bekah turned the motel into a weight loss spa called Sneeze 'n' Tone (excessive sneezing caused by various air-borne particles pumped into the air led to rapid loss of pounds), but she got bored with that and with Novel and left town. Novel next turned the place into a writers' retreat.
But many things in the town of Gruel do not add up, so the book becomes somewhat of a mystery, though even the mystery is a spoof. There is heavy irony being attempted here and I felt that for the most part, Singleton pulled it off. I mostly chuckled inwardly and sometimes laughed out loud. There is a boring part about midway through but overall the book was a relief from overly serious literary fiction.
I think many people, especially middle-aged women who like a good dose of heartwarming sentiment, could hate this book. Most of my reading group did.
WORD OF THE DAY
epicene-from Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner, p 55.
Looked up in Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition
epicene is an adjective meaning (in this context) belonging to one sex but having characteristics of the other, or of neither; specifically, effeminate; unmanly. (From the Greek word epikoinos, common.)
My sentence: The dancer's epicene build captured the attention of all the males in the room as well as the women's.
What is your sentence?
Looked up in Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition
epicene is an adjective meaning (in this context) belonging to one sex but having characteristics of the other, or of neither; specifically, effeminate; unmanly. (From the Greek word epikoinos, common.)
My sentence: The dancer's epicene build captured the attention of all the males in the room as well as the women's.
What is your sentence?
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
THE PLACES IN BETWEEN
The Places in Between, Rory Stewart, Harcourt Inc, 2004, 297 pp
The Places in Between is the truest thing I have read about the Middle East since 9/11. It is travel writing, memoir, political opinion, current events and extreme adventure all in one fairly slim volume. The writing is excellent: Stewart describes clearly and reports in a more emotional style than many non-fiction tales but doesn't overdo the emotion either.
On the other hand, this is not an easy read; not as hard as The Gate in the Sun, but not easy. Stewart walked across Afghanistan in January, 2002, shortly after the United States invasion drove out the Taliban but failed to find Osama Bin Laden. If you are not familiar with Afghanistan geography (who is?), read this book with your globe and your world atlas by your side. It is worth whatever you need to do to read this book if you truly want to understand the world we live in today.
After finishing, I was amazed that Rory Stewart lived to tell his story. Many times he almost did not. His knowledge of languages and dialects and his cojones pulled him through, not to mention the incredible dog he acquired on his journey. Just read it and let me know what you think.
The Places in Between is the truest thing I have read about the Middle East since 9/11. It is travel writing, memoir, political opinion, current events and extreme adventure all in one fairly slim volume. The writing is excellent: Stewart describes clearly and reports in a more emotional style than many non-fiction tales but doesn't overdo the emotion either.
On the other hand, this is not an easy read; not as hard as The Gate in the Sun, but not easy. Stewart walked across Afghanistan in January, 2002, shortly after the United States invasion drove out the Taliban but failed to find Osama Bin Laden. If you are not familiar with Afghanistan geography (who is?), read this book with your globe and your world atlas by your side. It is worth whatever you need to do to read this book if you truly want to understand the world we live in today.
After finishing, I was amazed that Rory Stewart lived to tell his story. Many times he almost did not. His knowledge of languages and dialects and his cojones pulled him through, not to mention the incredible dog he acquired on his journey. Just read it and let me know what you think.
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