A Handful of Dust

As much as I enjoyed Vile Bodies, I enjoyedhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust even more. Ever since I tore through the works of Agatha Christie as a kid, I've been fascinated by the British upper class of the first half of the 20th century.

A Handful of Dust tells the tale of Tony and Brenda Last. Tony is landed gentry who struggles mightily to keep up with his eroding estate, Hetton Abbey. Brenda is a young thing who is struggling herself with rural boredom and the raising of the couple's son, John. Add to the mix John Beaver, an avid social climber who has no particular purpose in life other than sponging off of his well-to-do friends.

After young John Last is killed in a riding accident, Brenda becomes more and more distant from Tony and establishes herself in a London apartment where she enjoys the whirl of the London social season and an affair with Beaver. This leads eventually to a planned divorce, but as Tony finds the stipulations untenable, he decides to embark on a Brazilian safari instead with unexpected and unforgettable results.

Waugh specialized in scathing attacks on this class of people, and this novel is a perfect example of the form. At times laugh out loud funny, it is an entertaining reminder that even with all the trappings of our material lives and our often banal personal triumphs and pitfalls, in the end we are all the same.

Life

So....it's been awhile! I started this blog as a personal reading diary, and although I haven't stopped reading, I did lose some enthusiasm for writing about reading. However, now I've got a great backlog to post about and I'm glad to resume. So far, all of the books I have covered have been fiction, but I thought I'd reenter the fray with an autobiography, Life by Keith Richards.

I've read dozens of music biographies and autobiographies from the sublime to the ridiculous, and I have to say that this is probably my favorite of the lot. Part of that is because of the breezy, conversational style it is written in, and part of it is because there is absolutely no one more qualified to write this type of book.

While the book basically follows a chronological timeline, Richards is quick to expand on topics and go sideways. He covers his relationships with the other band members, and it is easy to see that he still holds a great deal of contempt for Brian Jones and a great deal of love and respect for Charlie Watts. Bill Wyman is treated mostly as an afterthought (which, I suspect, sums up his 30 years in the band). Most interestingly, it is his relationship to Mick Jagger that feels like it causes him the most angst. While he acknowledges that they are like brothers, he admits they haven't hung out in over twenty years, coming together only to record or tour.

And then there are the drugs. I found it interesting that Richards is able to account for his iron constitution by writing that he was excellent at maintenance and knew how to never overdo it. This is probably why so many contemporaries are dead and Keef rolls on. Still, he admits he was addicted to heroin and describes his many attempts to quit. While never advocating drugs, he also writes without a glimmer of regret.

As a musician though, the best part of this for me was his overarching love for music and for the guitar. It is something that is almost impossible to put into words, and yet Richards achieves it. During all of the drugs, women, and tour debauchery, his love for the medium shows through, from the Chicago blues that first inspired him to his collaborations with Bobby Keyes, Gram Parsons, and his beloved crew of Jamaican players in Steertown.

As in most autobiographies, Richards rarely takes blame for anything. I'm sure that others could write forever about sitting around in recording studios waiting for him to turn up and about being on the wrong end of one of his red rages. Still, he comes across as an affable pirate soul who, more than anyone else in the history of rock and roll, was born to the roll. He IS the definition of rock and roll cool, but not because of the image. Rather, it is his genuine love and affection for the music after 50 plus years that attracts people to him.

The Handmaid's Tale

This is the second novel from Margaret Atwood that I've read and she is quickly becoming one of my favorites. The Blind Assassin was a great book I read earlier this year and I finally got around to following it up with The Handmaid's Tale. And while this novel lacks the plot complexity of the former, the writing is still first class and the story engrossing.

Set in the relatively near future, The Handmaid's Tale is a first person account of the dystopian society the United States has become after the assassination of the President and Congress by a fundamentalist religious group. Subtext informs the reader that fertility has become a major issue and so society has become very strictly ordered, with women not only being stripped of all rights, but becoming subjugates to the will of the ruling order of men. One strata of this new class system is the 'handmaid', women who are still fertile and are given as concubines to influential men ('commanders'). The wives of these commanders naturally resent the handmaids, but are a full part of the ceremony that takes place with the goal of procreation. Our narrator, Offred, slowly unfolds not only the lot she has been reduced to, but also gives a general history of how things came to be this way. A postscript sheds further light, but many Offred's ultimate fate remains somewhat of a mystery.

The novel raises a number of questions that could provide the grist for many meaningful conversations. One could argue that this is a feminist novel while another might argue that Atwood was trying to show a possible extreme reaction to feminism. I have no doubt that this book is a staple in Women's Studies and Women's Literature courses all over the world. I enjoyed this novel very much for its suspense, original plot, and for the way it made me think.

Another issue this book raised with me is the question of what constitutes science fiction. I noted in an earlier post that Atwood does not think of her novels as science fiction, and I think I understand that position with this book. While it is set in the future, does that automatically make a book fall within the 'science fiction' genre?

This novel was made into a film in the mid 90s starring the late Natasha Richardson.

In a Glass Darkly

If you are a fan of Edgar Allen Poe, you will probably enjoy this collection of five short stories and novellas by Sheridan Le Fanu. Tied together by the idea that each of these 'case histories' come from the files of a deceased doctor who specialized in the paranormal, each is capable of giving the reader the creeps.

'Green Tea', 'The Familiar', and 'Mr. Justice Harbottle' all revolve around the idea of paranormal visitation: the main characters are visited by something or someone that others can't necessarily see. And while I enjoyed each of these stories, it was the last two that make me recommend this for fans of horror and the occult.

'The Room in the Dragon Volant' is the longest of the stories and plays out more as a mystery story with supernatural overtones. It would have made the basis for a great Sherlock Holmes story and is truly suspenseful and eerie. While most readers will pick out that a double cross is in store for the narrator, it is hard to tell where it will come from.

'Carmilla' is a frightening tale of vampires that might pre-date Dracula. Le Fanu does an excellent job with description and pacing. Some of the descriptive writing ranks up there with Hawthorne from the same general time period.

The full text of these stories can be found here.

Vile Bodies

I am a fan of British humor. To me, the Brits have mastered the nifty trick of mixing the absurd with the very, very dry. Peter Sellers, Monty Python, and Ricky Gervais all come to mind. Evelyn Waugh, best known for his novel Brideshead Revisited, has also tapped into this reservoir of English comedy in his second novel, Vile Bodies.

Set in the years after the first World War, Vile Bodies centers on the character of Adam, a down on his luck writer who undergoes a series of reversals of fortune. He is in love with Nina, but alternately does and doesn't have the money to marry her. And while their up and down love affair is the focus, the novel is really a sharp lampoon of the 'jet set' of the day and their follies and foibles. Characters such as Mrs. Melrose Ape, the evangelist, Mr. Outrage, the Prime Minister, and the Drunken Major are on hand to act as a canvas for Waugh's broad swipes at British pre-war culture. All of the latest fads and fancies are on hand: zeppelins, motor races, parties, film making, and more parties. The juxtaposition between the old who are still trying to embrace Victorian morals, and the young, who are portrayed as vapid, yet resourceful, is one of the things that makes this novel stand out.

A particularly thoughtful point for me was the ending, which finds Britain at war in Europe, and the various fates of our characters seem fitting for the action that has preceded. Great stuff. The book was adapted into a film by Stephen Fry.

The Last of Mr. Norris

This Christopher Isherwood novel was picked randomly off the list. I was intrigued when I found it on Amazon as they had one used copy in fair condition for $5 and two first editions for over $900! You can probably guess which I bought. I found out later that it can be found fairly readily as part of a two book collection called The Berlin Stories.

The cover of the version I have shows a man sitting on a couch with lots of young people around him engaged in some heavy petting. The blurbs on the cover promise lots of smut, orgies, and S&M, 1930s style. It turns out the book is very tame in regards to titillation. It is actually a pretty light spy/double cross/crime novel set in Berlin in the early 1930s. And while the title character does enjoy a little light bondage, most of the perversions promised on the cover are only hinted at in the text. Our narrator, Bradshaw, an English teacher in Berlin, meets Arthur Norris on a train to Berlin. They become fast friends and Bradshaw becomes intrigued by the effete, shady Norris. Slowly he becomes entangled in some of Norris' scams revolving around the nascent Communist party in Berlin and the rise of the Nazis. More interesting than the novel itself is the fact that this book and his subsequent Berlin stories were the basis for the famous musical and film Cabaret.

As a political thriller, it is fairly second-rate, although it is interesting to read a contemporary account of Berlin in between the wars from the English perspective, especially when the reader knows full well what will happen in a very short time. While this novel wasn't terrible, I'm not really sure how it merited making the list.

Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord

Louis de Bernieres might be best know for Captain Corelli's Violin, a novel that was turned into a film starring Nicolas Cage. I haven't read that book, but it's a sure thing I will after having read Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord. This novel epitomizes the style of magical realism that is often associated with Latin and South American writers. The only catch is that although this book is set in South America, de Bernieres is actually British. One can assume that a teaching stint in Colombia led him to set his first three novels in that location.

Dionisio Vivo is a philosophy professor at a University in an unnamed South American country. He has begun to gain renown for the letters he sends to the local paper decrying the coca trade and its grim byproducts in his country. The local coca lord takes umbrage and makes several attempts on Dionisio's life. Through a series of mishaps, some extremely comical, Dionisio not only survives the attempts but earns a reputation as a godlike figure who is unstoppable. The coca lord lives in mortal fear of him, which only causes him to redouble his efforts to kill Vivo. Throughout all of this, Dionisio is courting a beautiful young woman, Anica, who is the daughter of a shady arms dealer who has kept the coca lord well stocked with weapons throughout his reign of terror. Anica is ultimately faced with a very difficult decision, which has tragic consequences for all involved.

This is my favorite book I have read in quite some time. The story is excellent, but it is the writing that leaves me wanting more. De Bernieres' prose takes the reader through the ecstasy of new love to the depths that lead a major character to attempt suicide. Meanwhile, the whimsical and sometimes magical world he creates is populated with memorable characters such as Ramon, the policeman who protects Dionisio, Lazaro, the tragic leper, and the motley band of women (Las Locas) who create a camp on the edge of town with the sole purpose of bearing Dionisio's children. The novel grows darker in the final third, and the magical elements step fully to the forefront. A very brief epilogue points out the tragedy of coca trade in South America and brings home how difficult the situation is. Laugh out loud funny and startlingly poignant, this one gets a very high recommendation from me.

The Brothers Karamazov

I hadn't been in the mood to tackle a long classic for quite some time, but early in August I decided to read Dostoevsky's last novel, The Brothers Karamazov. I've actually owned it for some time, but it has sat on the shelf as I waited for an opportune time to read it. I'm generally a very fast reader, and the book isn't that long (700 some pages), but it took me the better part of a month to get through it. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it however....

The book explores the lives of four brothers and their somewhat repulsive father, Fyodor Pavlovitch. Dmitri, the oldest, is a sensual being who is betrothed to one woman but in love with another. Unfortunately, his father is also smitten with this woman and is actively hoping to steal her away. Ivan is the intellectual, a deep thinker, and remote emotionally. Alexy is a spiritual young man who holds in highest esteem not his own father, but his spiritual father, a monk at the local monastery. Finally there is the servant and cook Smerdyakov, who is probably Fyodor's bastard. While the main plot of the novel centers around the murder of Fyodor Pavlovitch and the investigation into which son killed him, Dostoevsky's epic aims much higher than being a basic crime novel.

Dostoevsky was shooting for nothing less than a dissection of the modern (at the time) Russian man and his uneasy place at the intersection of politics, law, and religion. His use of psychology predates Freud and anticipates many of the Austrian's basic tenets in regards to the relationship between fathers and sons. There are long discourses on duty, responsibility, honor, religion, justice and everything in between interwoven into the main action. And while this causes the book to drag in places, there is no denying Dostoevsky's grand ambition. He clearly meant The Brothers Karamazov to be his crowing glory, and while I didn't enjoy it as much as Crime and Punishment, his reach did not exceed his grasp.

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.