Miss Lonelyhearts/The Day of the Locust

Nathanael West produced only four novels during his short life. The best of the two are Miss Lonelyhearts (really a novella at 58 pages) and The Day of the Locust. I bought them packaged together in one book and read them back to back.

Miss Lonelyhearts is widely regarded as one of the finest works of the twentieth century. Set in early 1930s New York City, Miss Lonelyhearts is a man who writes an agony column for a daily newspaper. The hopelessness and hard luck that crosses his desk every day has begun to wear on him in significant ways. As he drifts through life in an alcohol haze, he vainly tries to find meaning in life, mostly through an attempt to embrace Christianity. His hard case boss Shrike and would be fiancee Betty offer contrasting views for him to latch on to. I had a mild hangover when I read this story, and the descriptions of drunkenness were tough to handle. The action is somewhat surreal, and as a look at the role of Christianity in an increasingly detached world, Miss Lonelyhearts works very well.

I enjoyed The Day of the Locust more of the two, however. What Miss Lonelyhearts did for (or to) New York, The Day of the Locust does in spades for Hollywood. West had moved to Hollywood to work on screenplays shortly before his death, and apparently he had a rich experience in a short time if this book is any indication. This novel captures the desperation, shallowness, and depravity of early Hollywood in all its glory. Tod Hackett is a young set designer with artistic ambitions who is hopelessly smitten by Faye, a wannabe actress. The story revolves around Tod and his fellow suitors (Earle, the cowboy, and Homer, the midwestern transplant) and their relative success in obtaining the unobtainable. In many ways Faye represents Hollywood in all its fatuousness: beautiful to look at, entertaining to be a part of, but ultimately hollow. The scene of mob violence at the end is truly evocative, and the book stands as an indictment as well as a strange celebration of the insanity of the place and era.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Sometimes experimental fiction works for me, sometimes it doesn't. I loved Jealousy but disliked Cigarettes. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler falls squarely in between.

Italo Calvino's late 1970s novel is a considered a stone classic by most, but I had a very difficult time engaging with it. It was interesting and I admire his adherence to the conceit of the novel, but that wasn't enough to make me truly enjoy it. It's like a museum exhibit of interesting rocks- kind of nice to look at, but in all honesty, I could care less.

The novel is framed by the relationship between The Reader and the Other Reader and their attempts to finish a novel. Each time they become engaged with a story, a publishing error or some other problem thwarts them and they end up starting another story. And just as that story becomes special...... you get the picture. The ten novels the readers begin are all included here, all in different styles and genres. By the way, YOU are the reader and are addressed as such throughout. It's a bravura performance, but one that ultimately didn't work for me.

Sometimes, I just don't want to work this hard at reading a book.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Sherlock Holmes is probably the most famous sleuth in history. While I prefer Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe and Perry Mason, Holmes is the template that they are all drawn from. With his skills of inductive reasoning, devoted sidekick, and his character tics, Holmes is the gold standard for whodunnit detectives.

The main issue with 'early' mysteries is that the puzzles are not terribly puzzling. None of the Poe or Arthur Conan Doyle stories can match the complexity and cleverness of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, or P.D. James, but they are very entertaining nonetheless. In The Hound of the Baskervilles particularly, Doyle is able to set a mood that is gothic and terrifying by letting his plot straddle the border of mystery and supernatural. Had Hawthorne written mysteries, this would be what they would be like.

The plot is fairly well-known. Wealthy family is haunted by a curse in which a hound from hell roams the misty moor that adjoins the family property. Now, Sir Charles Baskerville, a wealthy philanthropist, has been found dead, apparently frightened to death and surrounded by large paw prints. The new lord of the manor is moving over from Canada and Holmes takes it upon himself to unravel the mystery and protect the new Baskerville heir. The action is written in the first person by Watson, who shows his own bravery and cleverness a few times. A very fun read for a rainy weekend.

Disgrace

I had previously read J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello which I found to be dry and dull- basically a treatise on animal rights and the writing process, both of which are interesting topics, but not when handled in the 'novelesque' form used in that book. Disgrace was much better.

Coetzee, a South African and Nobel prize winner, writes here about David Lurie, a divorced professor whose affair with a student goes spectacularly wrong and who finds himself unemployed and at very loose ends. He decides on an extended stay with his daughter Lucy who lives alone on a relatively remote farm plot which she shares with Petrus, a black man with his own ambitions. Lurie has just begun to re-establish a relationship with Lucy and to understand her choice of lifestyles when the two are brutally attacked by a trio of young men. The heart of the novel lies in the various responses to this event by the main characters.

I really liked this novel because Coetzee is masterful at making the emotional barriers and distance between the father and daughter palpable. It is also an engaging meditation on the complexities of racial interaction in South Africa, post apartheid. The style is descriptive but economical, and Coetzee isn't afraid to feature a protagonist who is, on many levels, unlikable. Compelling.

Siddhartha

On a recent trip to Shakespeare and Co. Bookseller in New York, I picked up several Dover Thrift Editions which averaged about $1.50 each. One of these was Herman Hesse's Siddhartha.

Siddhartha tells the tale of the title character, a young Indian who lived in the time of Buddha. Siddhartha decides to leave his family to become a wandering ascetic and monk. Siddhartha is on a quest for enlightenment, but has a natural skepticism of teachers and teachings. He believes in discovery by the self. He meets a lovely courtesan who teaches him about material possessions and sensual pleasures. After many years, Siddhartha sees the pointlessness of his existence and returns to wandering, not knowing that he has impregnated the courtesan, Kamala.

Siddhartha meets a ferryman who inspires him to 'listen to the river' and Siddhartha begins yet another voyage of self-discovery, which is changed when confronted with his son after Kamala's death.

What saved this book from being too inward looking to bear is Hesse's very lyrical writing style. It reads like an ancient fable, but was actually first published in the 1920s. I'm glad I read this book when I was in my 40s. The themes of searching, of life as a cycle, and of the relationships between fathers and sons is something I feel I can truly appreciate at this time of life. For a book that I didn't enter into reading with any particular gusto, this was excellent.