Cigarettes

This is an unpleasant book about unpleasant people.

In my opinion, the key to enjoying a novel is to find a character you can identify with or at least relate to. It doesn't matter if the action is set in the past, present or future, whether it is in the United States, Russia, or outer space, whether the characters are male, female, or even human. There just needs to be a point of entry for our empathy. Harry Mathew's Cigarettes did not provide this point of entry for me.

The novel covers a span of 30 or so years and the action jumps around between decades as it focuses on the relationships between a large cast of characters, all of whom could be classified as the idle rich of New York and environs. While the plot revolves around a painting that unites the characters in one way or another, the book is really an opportunity for Mathews to explore the intermingled relationships between these self-obsessed and unlikable characters. Each chapter focuses on two of the characters (and are titled as such: "Walter and Elizabeth", "Allen and Maud", etc.). Their social anxieties, sexual practices, and personal failings are explored ad nauseum. The names were so similar I began to get confused about who was who (Allen, Owen, Pauline, Priscilla, etc.)

Evidently Mathews belongs to a French salon that experiments by using algorithms and other mathematical concepts in order to create plot structures. It is an interesting experiment, but to be honest, I could care less. The artifice is exposed when there is nothing else there to interest the reader (or, at least, this reader).

Mathew's style is very sparse. Large events are covered in a few sentences and there is relatively little dialogue. I felt like I was reading this book forever.

If I may borrow a joke from someone on another blog, Cigarettes was, indeed, a drag.

The Maltese Falcon

Here he is in his full glory: the hard-boiled private detective, a man of action and a man who follows his own code. While he may be a throwback, the character of Sam Spade epitomized what it meant to be a man in a man's world: drinker of liquor, fighter of men, lover of woman, and solver of crimes (and not necessarily in that order). I don't know much about the reaction to Dashiell Hammett's novel when it was first released, but I imagine that it was not considered proper literature in 1929. The book features a main character who is fairly non-plussed about the murder of his partner, is revealed to have been having an affair with that partner's wife, drinks, seduces young women, and routinely operates outside the authority of the police. In addition, there is a subplot that revolves around homosexuality and scenes that include Spade looking at nude women. No wonder this stuff was called pulp fiction!

The story itself follows Spade's attempts to figure out why so many people are interested in the titular bird, a sculpture that is clearly of value. It opens with the classic set up: a beautiful young woman enters the office of the private eye looking for help in something that she is none too truthful about. Double crosses, imminent personal danger, international miscreants and meddling cops come and go in this textbook plot. The real value of the story is the introduction of one of the most indelible characters in literature and film, Sam Spade himself. Although Hammett wrote other detective novels, this is the only one that features Spade.

Spade is almost symbolic of America's image of itself from the time it was written. Here was a new type of hero- one who rejected the old ways of doing things but still operated on a code of personal honor that was unwavering. While pre-World War I America may have been symbolized by the cowboy, the post war years could similarly be looked at through the prism of Spade; a maverick nation that bucked the trends and brought into being a new way of operating. In addition, Spade presented an ideal for American manhood and the American spirit. He was a solo operator who did things his own way, accepting the consequences for his own decisions. Obviously, Bogart defined the role for the silver screen and other authors and filmmakers have been following the template ever since.

Reading the book posed a challenge in some ways because so many of the plot devices and situations, which were undoubtedly new and fresh at the time, have become such hackneyed cliches it is almost impossible to read with a straight face. Still, if you can place it in its proper context, the novel is fast paced and suspenseful, and is a definite classic for anyone interested in detective fiction.

The Original Hardy Boys series

I'm sure that my experience with the Hardy Boys stories will be a mirror image of that of millions of other people who were raised between the 50s and the 80s. Although the Boys have been around since the 1920s, the books were overhauled in the 50s or 60s in order to get rid of some of the anachronisms that abounded in the earlier titles.

As most people with any interest know, Franklin W. Dixon was actually a nom de plume for a prolific hack writer who also birthed the Nancy Drew series. Only the first twenty books or so were written by the original author, after which they were produced from an anonymous stable of the publisher's writers. Think Brill Building for teen detective lit. The 'classic' series ran for 58 volumes, beginning with The Tower Treasure and ending with The Sting of the Scorpion.

It is easy for me to trace my love of reading back to the Hardy Boys series. As a kid growing up in the 1970s, I lived for these books. The stories had enough action and mystery to be engrossing, but were never frightening. The brothers, Frank and Joe, were just older enough to seem smart and independent without being total aliens to a pre-teen. Frank was sober and steady, Joe was impetuous and action-driven, giving all kids a behavior role model to look up to. Their friends ranged from Chet, the fat farm kid, to Phil Cohen, my first exposure to a Jewish character. I learned lots and lots of vocabulary from these books; words like 'sinister', 'jalopy', and 'estranged' entered my vocabulary.

My mom used to buy new titles for me as an allowance. Instead of cash for doing my chores, I was rewarded with a book. To this day I think of books as a special reward. Thanks mom! This series probably also was the root of my 'completist' nature when it comes to authors and artists.

My favorite titles? Danger on Vampire Trail, The Mystery of Cabin Island, and The Disappearing Floor. As time went by, I began to wonder how the guys could have solved 58 mysteries while still being 17 and 18. How many summer breaks and spring breaks did this school have? That was the beginning of the creep of cynicism that separates our childhood from the later years. I eventually sold the whole collection at a garage sale when I was 12 or 13, another milestone on the road to something. Still, I like to pick one up every now and then and reread it, and when I do, it still takes me back.

The Shining

Stephen King obviously needs no introduction. An amazing publishing phenomenon, King continues to produce a fairly consistent amount of work, even if he isn't quite as prolific as his 80s and 90s heyday. I have probably read just about everything he's written, with the exception of a few of the later books and the Dark Tower series. King is the source of controversy amongst literary types; his pulpy plots are a little too 'supermarket' for the snobs. Still, I count him as amongst one of the finest storytellers in literary history, and isn't that really what novels are all about? In addition, King's writing has grown richer and richer over the years as he's dabbled in many styles outside the pale of traditional horror.

The Shining was King's third or fourth novel, and arguably the best of the earliest part of his career. I won't go deep into plot details, as anyone with even a passing interest in King's work has probably read the book. Still, the creepy story of a troubled man and his family wintering as caretakers in a secluded Colorado hotel still has enough fright in its pages to keep me up at night. The book contains several hallucinatory and surreal passages and imparts a genuine sense of claustrophobia, much like what the characters in the story were experiencing. Stanley Kubrick's film version has its detractors, but I feel it holds up very well over time, even with Nicholson's over the top performance and the slightly different ending.

It is important to remember that authors like Dickens were often dismissed as hacks in their own time. I believe that King's best work will stand up over time in the same way as that of the most beloved storytellers from the past.