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 The Gutter and the Grave (1958)
by Ed McBain
217 pages - Hard Case Crime
This pulp mystery novel was originally published under the pen name Curt Cannon and titled I'm Cannon - for Hire. The current title was the one preferred by the author. The story follows the adventures of Matt Cordell, who used to be a successful private investigator, but after a series of tragedies he's just another wino hanging about in New York City's Bowery. An old acquaintance tracks him down and pretty soon he is caught in a web of murders and affairs and corrupt cops.
Probably the best thing to do with this novel is to go in with lowered expectations. The main character is supposed to be a homeless alcoholic, but still every attractive woman he runs into comes on to him, and he's able to fight back against toughs, as well as of course solve the convoluted mystery. It's basically full of cliches, but not in a way that I found very entertaining.
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 Author J.G. Ballard died yesterday. Looking back on it, it's surprising how many of his books I've actually read: the short story collections Memories of the Space Age, Vermillion Sands, The Best Science Fiction of J.G. Ballard, the semi-autobiographical Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women, and the novels High-Rise, Hello America, and The Atrocity Exhibition (which was an 'experimental' novel that I didn't like at all). I wouldn't say he was a master fiction writer, as a lot of times his writing wasn't as strong as his ideas and imagination. I think my favourite work of his is the short story "The Man Who Walked on the Moon" from Memories of the Space Age, which is very sad and bittersweet and has a definite Ray Bradbury vibe. A couple of notable films were made from his works. Empire of the Sun by Steven Speilberg is great, and features some definite Ballardian moments. Crash by David Cronenberg was something I enjoyed when I saw it, but I'm not sure how I'd react to it now. I do think it captured the feel of Toronto though. On another note, I think I will try to start-up writing reviews again, try for one a day until I get caught up.
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| 2009-03-22 21:36 |
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I've decided to put this journal on 'hiatus' for a bit, as I haven't really been keeping up with any entries on my f-list for about a month now, and at the same time making entries for the books I've read has started to seem more like a chore than a pleasure. And I've been thinking that I want to slim-down my daily obligations.
So, I'm gonna take a little break from this journal, where I definitely won't be reading the friends list, and probably won't be posting anything either. For an indefinite period.
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 The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome (2007)
by Tony Attwood
397 pages - Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Asperger's Syndrome is a neurological condition that is considered to be on the Autism spectrum, and has only been recognized widely in the last decade or so. People with this condition generally have difficulty with social interaction, as well as other quirks such as clumsiness, trouble making eye-contact, and usually an exceptional talent or deep area of interest - though the nature of the condition is that it shades into 'normalcy' without any definite defining line. Because it is a neurological condition, it's not something that develops or that can be cured, but instead is life-long and stable. That also means that any treatments for it are focused on adapting to the condition.
This book is aimed at a general audience, with enough references for professionals, but easy enough to read for the general public. Its main goal seems to be summing up what is known thus far, and in that it does a good job, but even though it is meant to be a complete guide it's very noticeable that a majority of the material concerns children with Asperger's. I think this is because this is where most of the resources of psychologists are focused, and where they have gathered the most information. The main reasons for this are probably because most public schools are forced to care for all children that are brought to them, and the parents are likely to have extra health insurance that pays for things such as extensive counseling. There's much less information, in this book and in general, about adults living with the condition.
I read this mainly because I suspect I have Asperger's. After reading this (and viewing some videos), I suspect that if I do, it's somewhere on the borderline between this and normalcy. I'm not sure about the value of putting myself through a formal diagnosis (especially being that 'formal' doesn't seem to be that formal). I found it interesting that a lot of people think that this condition has been around basically as long as people have been around, and that it's likely that a lot of leaps forward have been due to it, as accomplishments like that require people that see things differently from the majority, as well as extreme focus, etc.
Though the stereotype is that Autistic people are good at math, to the point of being seen as human calculators, a lot of them actually have trouble with it. The general separation is between those who are math-inclined, and those who are visual thinkers. I know we shouldn't curse or take for granted the gifts that we're given, but I can't help sometimes feel like it would be much easier to be math-inclined, as there seems to be a much greater utility for those sorts of people.
Reading this, one of the things that kept running through my mind is the wonderful narration at the start of Little Dieter Needs to Fly: ""Men are often haunted by things that happened to them in life, especially in war or other periods of great intensity. Sometimes you see these men walking the streets or driving a car. Their lives seem to be normal — but they are not."
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 The Confession (2004)
by Domenic Stansberry
218 pages - Hard Case Crime
The narrator of this novel treats everything in it as his 'confession', which he is writing out, but how much he is actually confessing is, in the end, left up to the reader to determine. Jake Danser is a forensic psychologist living and working in the suburbs of San Francisco, married to a wealthy slightly older woman, and with the personality of a real jerk, complete with ponytail (I think it's a rule that any male urban professional sporting a ponytail is a grade-A ass). He acts as a witness for the defense in the case of a man accused of strangling his girlfriend, but soon the events move much closer to home when he is accused in the similar strangling death of his own mistress. The plot thickens when his estranged wife re-ignites her relationship with the prosecuting attorney in the case.
This novel is a lot different than many of the Hard Case Crime books, as much of the action is internal, dealing with the various thoughts and emotions and possible evasions in the narrator's account. Some people may find that indulgent, but I enjoyed it very much, and even with the occasional references to psychological theory or metaphysical and religious philosophy, I never thought it got too pretentious. Quite a good read, and I liked the writing style enough that I'll keep my eyes open for more of the author's work.
This was the winner of the 2005 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original.
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 Consolation (2006)
by Michael Redhill
469 pages - Anchor Canada
'I doubt a four-foot piece of the True Cross would be enough to stop work on a site in this city. You find a three-week-old potato chip in Montreal, they raise a velvet rope around it and have a minute of silence. But here, no.' (pg.281) This novel proceeds along two separate time-lines. One narrative takes place around 1997, when the Air Canada Centre was undergoing construction. A local historian is convinced that the original plates of a complete photographic survey of Toronto from 1856 were sunk in the harbour during a storm on their return from England, a site which over the years was filled in as the shoreline moved outward, and would now be buried on the site where they are excavating for the arena. But the historian is suffering from a fatal illness and commits suicide, leaving his family to try to discover if he was right or just making things up, as his colleagues believed.  The second narrative takes place in 1856, and concerns a pharmacist who arrives from England, leaving his wife and children to arrive later, and starts operating a pharmacy his family purchased. However, business does not go well, as the city's economy is stagnant and he can't compete with already-established pharmacies. A change occurs when he begins to supply chemicals to a photographer, and he finds himself entering a life in conflict with his English upper-class preconceptions. This novel won the City of Toronto Book Award for 2007, and was long-listed for the Booker prize. And I think the best way it can be described is that it feels very much like the sort of thing begging for a Booker. Not a lot happens story-wise, and the writing often becomes overly precious. I did like the narrative in the past a bit more, while the present-day story was mostly filled with unlikeable people (and the corporate-historic interest face-off felt like it was manipulated for dramatic effect, and I doubt things would occur that way in reality. Not that bad things wouldn't happen, but not in that way.) I think I wanted to like this more than I actually did. There's some great pictures of old Toronto in this thread. 'I had a thought: he and I were as real as those other people had been, who lived there once. And our being alive and their not being alive somehow wasn't that much of a difference between us. (pg.445)
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 The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception (2000)
by Emmanuel Carrère, translated by Linda Coverdale
191 pages - Picador USA
'I thought that writing this story could only be either a crime or a prayer.' (pg.191) Jean-Claude Romand was, to everyone that knew him, an average if somewhat boring upper-middle-class success. Everyone knew he had a job with the World Health Organization, a wife and two small children, and elderly parents. But when his house caught fire and he was the only one rescued alive, the real facts came out - he wasn't a doctor, he'd never finished medical school; the investments he took from family and friends didn't go into a high-yield account but only served as his personal income, and then when the truth was about to be revealed, he killed his own parents and his wife and children. Carrere approaches this story in a very personal way, inserting himself and his thoughts and emotions into the story, plainly explaining to the reader the places where he has difficulties and doubts. It's a story that's both fascinating and horrific, and it's told without showy ornamentation, in a clean, plain style. Ultimately, it's the study of someone so obsessed with maintaining the outer image of themselves, so obsessed with trying to make a favourable impression and being liked, and so afraid of taking a genuine look inside and genuinely mourning that his entire self has been lost, perhaps for good.
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 Crime and Punishment: A Novel in Six Parts with Epilogue (1866)
by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky
564 pages - Vintage Classics
Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is a former student, having dropped out before finishing his studies, who currently lives in a small garrett apartment, and is barely scraping by without much hope for the future. A plan occurs to him to murder an old woman who works as a pawnbroker, but complications occur as he tries to carry out his plan. Inter-weaved with the plot of the killing is the story of Raskolnikov's mother and sister arriving in Petersburg so that his sister can be married (strictly because they are in need of money), and as well another thread where Raskolnikov gets to know a drunkard civil servant and his chaotic family, which includes an eldest sister who has become a prostitute to support them.
 This was my second time reading this much-praised story, though it was the first time I read this translation. The first one I read was by Constance Garnett, who is criticized for making all the authors she translated sound the same, like late-period Victorians. That was my first read by Dostoevsky, and went to read most of his works (many in translations by Pevear & Volokhonsky) and I suppose he became one of my favourite authors. But in reading this particular work in the more faithful translation, I have to say it was a bit of a slog, and I didn't thoroughly enjoy it, though I'm not sure if that's because of the rough and scattered style of the original, or simply because time has moved on. Dostoevsky's style has always been very frantic and a bit disorganized (with often noticeable changes in focus over the course of a novel, the result of having originally been published in serialized form), and I did feel like he perhaps could use a good editor like Garnett. The sweep and final resolution of the novel is still very affecting, but I can't say the novel as a whole lived up to my previous memories.
'Do you know how I regard you? I regard you as one of those men who could have their guts cut out, and would stand and look at his torturers with a smile--provided he's found faith, or God. Well, go and find it, and you will live. First of all, you've needed a change of air for a long time. And suffering is a good thing, after all. Suffer, then. Mikolka may be right in wanting to suffer. I know belief doesn't come easily--but don't be too clever about it, just give yourself directly to life, without reasoning; don't worry--it will carry you straight to shore and set you on your feet. What shore? How do I know? I only believe that you have much life ahead of you. I know you're taking what I say to you now as a prepared oration, but maybe you'll remember it later and find it useful; that's why I'm saying it to you. It's good that you only killed a little old woman. If you'd come up with a different theory, you might have done something a hundred million times more hideous! Maybe you should still thank God; how do you know, maybe God is saving you for something. Be of great heart, and fear less.' (pg. 420)
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 The Wisdom of Father Brown (1929)
by G.K. Chesterton
200 pages - Penguin Books
 This book contains 12 stories featuring Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton's Catholic priest who always finds himself in the midst of some crime, mystery, or puzzle, and proceeds to uncover the truth about events which leave others confused and befuddled. Though there are some crimes involved, other cases are simply misunderstandings, and some others are apparent curses that are eventually debunked.
I think my favourite story here is "The Purple Wig", which is told in the form of an article that an editor is reviewing for publication, and you not only get the story in the piece, but Chesterton makes some funny and apt observations about editors trying to shape and mold the general public's view of reality. Not every story here is fantastic, but enough of them are good enough to make the book a quality read overall. There are some wonderful passages of prose that made me realize what a good writer Chesterton was. Also, these are the sort of mysteries that allow the reader to make an educated guess as to what the solution is, before it is revealed at the end, and that has always been my favourite type of mystery story (as opposed to say, the Holmes stories by Doyle which, for all their other merits, often only present the key clue to the reader at the same time that Holmes is providing his final conclusion).
As an example of the fine writing, the opening paragraph of "The Head of Caesar": "There is somewhere in Brompton or Kensington an interminable avenue of tall houses, rich but largely empty, that looks like a terrace of tombs. The very steps up to the dark front doors seem steep as the sides of pyramids; one would hesitate to knock at the door, lest it should be opened by a mummy. But a yet more depressing feature in the grey façade is its telescopic length and changeless continuity. The pilgrim walking down it begins to think he will never come to a break or a corner; but there is one exception - a very small one, but hailed by the pilgrim almost with a shout. There is a sort of mews between two of the tall mansions, a mere slit like the crack of a door by comparison with the street, but just large enough to permit a pigmy ale-house or eating-house, still allowed by the rich to their stable-servants, to stand in the angle. There is something cheery in its very dinginess, and something free and elfin in its very insignificance. At the feet of those grey stone giants it looks like a lighted house of dwarfs."
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 Fade to Blonde (2004)
by Max Phillips
220 pages - Hard Case Crime
 Ray Corson moved out to Los Angeles following his dream of being a writer, but ended up just getting one or two roles as an extra in films, and then working some odd jobs, including being a bodyguard, before settling in on being a sort of handyman. But his life changes when an odd-looking blonde, Rebecca LaFontaine, seeks him out and hires him to deal with a gangster who's been bothering her - deal with him by killing him, if necessary. But Corson wants to investigate more first, and ends up moving through dope parties and gangster-run clubs and other fixtures of 1950s California. This book won the 2005 Shamus Award for best paperback original.
The author Phillips is apparently more of a 'literary' author who wrote this novel for reasons I'm not sure of, but are probably easy to guess. And there's signficant skill displayed in the prose; in sharp, well-drawn descriptions of people and places, and the noir-style wisecracks that are peppered throughout ("Her hair was done Kim Novak-style and blonde enough to hurt. You could have sterilized a cut by running your fingers through that hair." pg.151). But unfortunately it's all in the service of a plot that's not just ludicrous, but entirely incomprehensible in the way it plays out. I have no idea why any of the things happen, or why the characters act the way they do. Someone hires you to 'stop/kill' another person, and so you start investigating every scrap of paper you come across, join a mob and start into the drug trade, get all Dirty Harry on brothels, etc? Maybe I just missed something, but the motivations didn't make any sense to me at all. Which ruined the enjoyment of what could have been a good read.
There was also a definite air of mean-spiritedness that didn't sit right with me, and wasn't necessary merely to be faithful to the characters and their world.
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 The X-Files Book of the Unexplained: Volume II (1996)
by Jane Goldman
351 pages - Simon & Schuster
 This second and final volume in the series takes the episodes of the second and third seasons of The X-Files as a starting point from which to examine various subject matter from voodoo and conspiracies to freakshows and, of course, alien abductions. I think this second volume is even a bit stronger than the first, as it pulls less punches and presents more facts, even when some of them are a bit cringe-worthy (such as the section on scientific experimentation on captive or uninformed human populations).
 There's lots to learn in here, such as the relationship between witches, the drugs they took, and sitting on broomsticks, or the case of the woman who found her partially-formed parasitic twin to be pregnant, as that was the one her husband usually had sex with. Or weird things falling from the sky, such as frogs or one specific species of fish, or even perfectly legitimate banknotes that no one has reported missing or stolen. The most fascinating chapter is probably the one on lightning. Some people (or even generations of families) seem to attract it to a remarkable degree. And ball lightning is fascinating, at times seeming to move in an intelligent fashion, and until recently dismissed by scientific minds as entirely fictional (a fate it shares with things such as meteors).
On a related note, since I saw it in the summer, I was among the biggest detractors of the latest X-Files movie, but after seeing it again recently on DVD, in the slightly-longer, and slightly-smoother cut, putting away any judgmental attitude as best I could, I have to say...I didn't hate it. It didn't really belong on cinema screens, but I have to say that it's okay.
Dr. Blockhead: Twenty-first century genetic engineering will not only eliminate the siamese twins and the alligator-skin people, but you're gonna be hard-pressed to find a slight overbite, or a not-so-high cheekbone. You see, I've seen the future, and the future looks just like him! [points to Mulder] Imagine, going through your whole life looking like that. That's why it's up to the self-made freaks like me and The Conundrum to remind people.
Dana Scully: Remind people of what?
Dr. Blockhead: Nature abhors normality. It can't go for long without creating a mutant. Do you know why?
Dana Scully: No, why?
Dr. Blockhead: I don't know either. It's a mystery. Maybe some mysteries are never meant to be solved.
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So, summing up 2008, it was...er, a year. Let's leave it at that. Here's a top-5 for the year:
5) Seven Storey Mountain - Thomas Merton
4) Enchanted Night - Steven Millhauser
3) The Captive Mind - Czeslaw Milosz
2) Bread and Wine - Ignazio Silone
1) The Perennial Philosophy - Aldous Huxley
For 2009 I'd like to...read more, lol. Actually, I do have a few reading goals written down as my birthday/New Year's resolutions, but I think I'll leave them private for now. After all, I still need to finish up some books I intended to read in 2008.
Happy New Year, everyone!
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 By the Time You Read This (2006)
by Giles Blunt
308 pages - Random House Canada
John Cardinal is a police detective in fictional Algonquin Bay, Ontario, an obvious stand-in for the city of North Bay. At the start of the novel his wife, who has a history of severe depression, is found to have fallen from the roof of a tall building, and everyone except Cardinal considers it suicide. Then Cardinal starts receiving taunting anonymous mail, which leads him to suspect that his wife has been murdered. But everyone else thinks he is just going through stress related to her suicide. At the same time, one of the other detectives in the department is tracking down a lead consisting of some internet images of child abuse that may have taken place in Algonquin Bay. This is the fourth novel featuring detective John Cardinal, but it's the first I've read. Some UK editions of this book use the title The Fields of Grief (why? did they think *that's* the title to turn it into a bestseller?).
 The author was apparently a writer for Law & Order, among other TV shows, and the novel gets off to quite a strong beginning, and the characters of people in the police department are drawn very well. I'd say it's an above-average mystery novel up until the last third, when it really takes a nosedive as the methods of the various villains are brought to the forefront. One of the main problems in both investigations is that it seems that very obvious pieces of evidence are ignored or not followed up on until the plot calls for them. Also, the villain behind the rash of 'suicides' is just not believable the way he's portrayed (even though the narrative goes out of its way to mention a real-life figure who was the obvious inspiration). Also, I think the child abuse/pornography subplot is a cliche right up there with having a subplot with a wiser older character who was a holocaust survivor (which seems to be on the back of half the books on the remainder shelves). I don't have anything against exploring these topics in an in-depth or original way, but when inserted into a thriller they're usually just a lazy way to try to stimulate people's emotional responses. And the way the author goes into details of the child abuse, it seemed to be there either to titillate or otherwise existed on almost a parody level, since it went on for unnecessary pages.
But I don't think that's what the author was trying to do. He probably wasn't trying to do much of anything other than tell a story to take up some time, since if you think of some of the issues that are brought up, such as suicide or therapy or depression, the novel has really muddled views that wouldn't bear much scrutiny. It does start with some promise, but all you need to know about the level of cliche it descends to is that in the end the detective leaves the police station all alone to arrest his wife's murderer, not even calling for backup when he finds a dead body, and personally carries the one convincing piece of evidence along (presumably before any copy of it has been made), so he can dramatically brandish it in the one-on-one show-down finale.
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 The Vengeful Virgin (1958)
by Gil Brewer
220 pages - Hard Case Crime
Jack Ruxton never accomplished much in his life, and now runs a small home electronics sales and repair shop in Florida. One day he's called over to install some televisions and an intercom system in the home of an old sick man whose only caretaker is his eighteen-year-old stepdaughter, the smouldering Shirley Angela. Pretty soon the house-bound teen and the dim-witted repairman have a plan in place to knock off the old man and keep the contents of his bank account.
There's some promise in the early set-up of the story, and Brewer certainly knows how to use his powers of description to make a woman an object of lust. But the biggest flaw is that Jack the narrator is dumb as a post. The plot he devises is obviously full of many things that can go wrong, and then when things start to happen, he seems oblivious to even the most basic details (as in, not having a clue what would happen with the estate after death, not realizing that there would be a funeral - though the author seems to be aware of these faults in thinking). And then, what happens in the last 20 pages or so really doesn't mach with the way the characters have been built up in the novel.
I will say, though, that that is probably the most fetching book cover I have seen.
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 The X-Files Book of the Unexplained: Volume One (1995)
by Jane Goldman
352 pages - Simon & Schuster
 The X Files, in its nine season television run, explored many mysteries in fictional form, from UFOs and government cover-ups to monsters hiding in forests and new diseases. This book takes the episodes of the first season and expands on the subject matter by exploring various myths, allegations, and confirmed events. Areas covered include ghosts, extrasensory perception, human physical anomalies, legendary beasts, UFOs, and even profiles of some real-life 'experts on the unknown' (one of them points out how nonsensical a term like that is).
 The author takes a relatively neutral view, being somewhat on the materialist side on most of the subject matter, except in the area of UFOs and government cover-ups of said activity, where she presents a lot of evidence both in favour of the phenomenon and various admitted untruths put forward by the government, the military, and NASA. Though the book does not go into very much depth on each subject, a very welcome inclusion is a bibliography at the end of each chapter, so you can continue reading if you want to know more.
There's some really interesting stuff in here, like the people who only shed their skin once a year, like a snake, and various cases of setting fire by psychic power that have landed people in jail even in just the last few decades. In 1990, a law was passed in the state of Connecticut that protects realtors from disclosing the haunting (or, legally speaking, 'psychological impacting') of a property to potential buyers, unless presented with a formal written request.
Sometimes, when reading material like this, your imagination can start really running away from you, which is both thrilling and slightly unnerving.
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 Town House (2007)
by Tish Cohen
276 pages - HarperCollins
Jack is in his middle-thirties, and living off the royalties of his father's recordings, a rocker in the Ozzy Osbourne or Alice Cooper mould. He's divorced and still living in his childhood home, a townhouse in Boston which he shares with his teenage son and a cat deformed by an accident. And he has severe agoraphobia, to the point where he is afraid to venture out to the sidewalk in front of his house. He's pushed out of his comfort zone when he can no longer make his mortgage payments and the bank decides to sell his house from underneath him.
I decided to read this book without knowing too much about it. It was featured in one of those occasional lists of recommendations the library puts out, and I thought to myself, 'Hmm, a book about the son of a rock star who never goes out of his house, written by someone living in Toronto, sounds interesting.' Unfortunately it's really pretty bad. I guess this is what they call 'commercial fiction', and it turns out that the movie rights were sold for the novel even before it got a publishing deal. I also looked at the cover art and thought 'Hmm, it looks a tiny bit like a chick lit novel, but it can't be, right, with the story about a guy and his son, and rock music, old houses, etc... But I think this actually comes pretty close, as it turns out that Jack's passion is creating paint shades for interior decorating(!) and the son is so obsessed with trashy 70s fashions and accessories that from the way he dresses and acts, even an anti-bullying workshop might take time out to beat him up.
I think this book could have been successful if it was just more something. Maybe more funny. Or more caustic. More brief. More in-depth. Everything's really shallow and lacking in weight (especially for a novel about a hardcore agoraphobic, who you would think would be tortured with self-loathing, or loathing the world, or something), and I have to agree with the amazon reviewer (one of the few reviewers out there who I assume isn't a friend of the author) who says it's basically 'television in book form'.
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Foods that Fight Cancer: Preventing Cancer Through Diet (2005)
by Richard Béliveau & Denis Gingras, translated by Miléna Stojanac
214 pages - McClelland & Stewart
As the title states, this is a book that's focused on foods that are scientifically proven, to one extent or another, to fight cancer. The authors are two researchers in Montreal who have done a lot of pioneering work in the role of diet in health, both as it relates to cancer and just in general. It's an area that's not very well funded because nobody can put a patent on broccoli.
The first part of the book describes what's currently understood about the way cancer functions. To be honest this is the weakest part of the book, as the authors describe things in kind of a confusing way, and bring in a lot of information that isn't very relevant. I've read much better summaries elsewhere. The second part is the meat of the book, which concentrates on foods such as cabbage, garlic, onions, soy, green tea, berries, dark chocolate, and red wine. It's structured so that each chapter gives you some information about a food, but it doesn't really provide comprehensive information about a diet (they recommend another book for that, and I think the follow-up to this book, Cooking with Foods that Fight Cancer, takes a wider view).
So, the book is fairly good, but it's really just a starting point, and is probably more technical and less practical than would be ideal (how much of the audience is going to benefit by molecular diagrams?). It's also interesting how the authors incorporate full-colour and quotes and lots of historical details about legends and stories regarding each food - I could never imagine anyone from Ontario writing a medical book quite like this.
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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
by Muriel Spark
128 pages - Penguin Books
Miss Jean Brodie is a teacher at a girls' school in Edinburgh in the years before the Second World War. This short comic novel follows the lives of a particular set of girls, six girls who become known as the 'Brodie Set', who have her as a teacher for two years between the ages of approximately ten and twelve, and then still carry on a relationship with her as they attend the school into their late teens. Brodie is a very idiosyncratic teacher, as she keeps track of the school day in order to know what textbooks her students should be pretending to be studying from as she regails them with stories of her past loves, and the way the fascists are straightening out and improving Italy and Germany, and instructs the girls on how they must always recoginze their prime, in order to be the crème de la crème.
It's hard to point out a particular plot as such, and this can probably be categorized more as a character study. A very, very funny and witty and clever and observant character study. It made me laugh more than a few times, and if the second half hadn't slowed down a bit from the brilliance of the beginning, it might have been the best book I'd read all year. I hadn't read anything by Spark before, but I did enjoy her writing style very much, and the way she jumps from the present day to events far in the future (sometimes the moment of the character's death) before going right back into the narrative, or the way that she depicts a character interacting in the world while at the same time living out some imaginary scenario in their own head.
I think one of the things that makes the novel so successful is the enigmatic figure of Miss Brodie. On the one hand she is the kind of teacher you would love to have, who only teaches enough of the curriculum to get you by on tests, and otherwise spends the time talking to her students more about life and the world and just plain injecting a bit of life into the classroom. On the other hand, it's quite obvious that in the end Miss Brodie is intended to be a negative example, something the student Sandy ultimately reacts against, though Brodie has given up to despair in a much more vibrant and eccentric way than most of the world around her. In the end, I think that what this novel is about is also the title of the book Sandy writes later on in life, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Allow me, in conclusion, to congratulate you warmly upon your sexual intercourse, as well as your singing.
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Beneath the Wheel (1906)
by Hermann Hesse, translated by Michael Roloff
216 pages - Bantam Books
This is the story of young Hans Giebenrath, who is an accomplished student in a small German town, and gets chosen to take special exams in order to be enrolled in a special academy that will mean a bright future for him with a career either in the church or academics. As Hans progresses further on, he feels more pressure from all sides - his father, schoolteachers, prominent townspeople - and life becomes less and less meaningful and enjoyable. After a series of events at the academy, Hans begins to fall just as quickly as he rose, unable any longer to resolve his alienation and disconnection from the people around him. This novel has also been published under the title The Prodigy.
A lot of people consider this Hesse's spiritual autobiography, as well as an attack on the educational system, and in about a hundred years it's clear that not much has changed. Hans is full of potential, but he's thrust into a system which is designed to take the dull and thick-skinned average student and turn them into relatively productive members of society, while any sign of uniqueness or difference is usually seen as a threat by the teachers. As another saying goes, the educational system turns coal into diamonds, and diamonds into dust. Even the pastor who counsels Hans is someone striving to be modern, and concerned with textual interpretation and historical truths, while evidently not even believing in the Resurrection or the living presence of the Holy Ghost. Hans later on tries to simply become a craftsman, but his intelligence and sensitivity means he can never fully integrate himself into the world of manual labour.
In some ways this novel is not that ambitious, and so it's not usually counted as being among Hesse's great works. But there are some sequences which are wonderfully evocative, and really spring to life. And there are also some fantastic passages describing the natural world. I actually think it's the best traditional 'novel' I've read by Hesse, as a lot of his other works seem overwhelmed by ideas, whereas here the guides are character, story, and atmosphere.
One point of interest is that in the little biographical sketch at the back it mentions that Hesse attempted to commit suicide before he became a writer (an event mirrored somewhat in the novel), and it does seem to match an uncanny pattern where if you look at the biography of a lot of great writers, an incredible number of them either attempted or seriously contemplated suicide at some point in their formative days. 'A schoolmaster will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in his class than a single genius, and if you regard it objectively, he is of course right. His task is not to produce extravagant intellects but good Latinists, arithmeticians and sober decent folk. The question of who suffers more acutely at the other's hands--the teacher at the boy's or vice versa--who is more of a tyrant, more of a tormentor, and who profanes parts of the other's soul, student or teacher, is something you cannot examine without remembering your own youth in anger and shame.' (pg.113)
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Silence (1966)
by Shusaku Endo, translated by William Johnston
294 pages - Taplinger Publishing Company
After a time of openness, in the 16th century Japan started closing itself off to foreign influence, and among other measures outlawed Christianity, which had been spread by missionaries and taken root in the local population. By the 17th century, when this novel is set, there was heavy persecution of Christians, who by the thousands were expelled from their homes, tortured and killed. The main character of the novel is a Portuguese Catholic priest, Rodrigues, who hears that an old mentor of his who has travelled to Japan has apostatized and begun working against Christianity. In reaction to this, Rodrigues and another priest board a small boat and sneak into Japan, where they begin ministering in secret to the Christian communities that exist in hiding, evading the persecution of the authorities. But Rodrigues is eventually captured and knows that the authorities will begin pressuring him to publicly deny what he has devoted his life to.
The chief appeal of this novel is that it is written from a unique perspective, as the author Endo was ethnically and nationally Japanese, as well as a Catholic. So there is insight and sympathy for many sides in the tragedy that unfolds.
Near the end of the book, the main dilemma is presented, a sort of nightmare scenario that nobody would want to deal with, and in which you can never be sure how you would react: do you publicly declare your deepest beliefs and truths to be wrong and evil, if it means that a several otherwise innocent people will cease being tortured? It's no-win situation. But the book goes a bit further than that, and seems to take the view, which becomes a realization of several of the characters, that Christ would have done the same, and would have decried his own message if it would save the lives and sufferings of several others. Now, assuming Catholic doctrine to be correct, and that Christ is the Son of God and an aspect of the Trinity, Christ nullifying his own message would essentially cancel out the very reason for his being. At this point you start playing around with words in an academic way, and get further and further from any genuine reality. But, you'd have to say, if God's highest goal was for people to simply live their lives with as little discomfort and suffering as possible, Christianity and indeed most acts motivated by a religious impulse would be contrary to that.
The novel as a whole does suffer from that sort of emphasis on formalism, on words and symbols related to religion, while showing very little of the inner illumination in these lives. To take on such an immense and heavy theme as God's seeming silence in the face of human misery and suffering leads the reader to have increased expectations, and for myself this book mostly fell short. Even for a book set in such a tumultuous time, there's an excessive emphasis on misery and deprivation, and it's up to the reader to fill in what would motivate priests to learn an entirely different language and then sail halfway around the world to minister to strangers, and why the peasants hold to their beliefs to the point of martyrdom.
Martin Scorsese has been planning to make a film of this book, and it is tentatively scheduled to be produced for a release in 2010. I wonder what he has planned.
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