Masters of Illusion(1994)by Mary Anne Tirone Smith

 1001 Novels: A Library of America

Masters of Illusion: 

A Novel of the Connecticut Circus Fire (1994)

by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

Hartford, Connecticut

Connecticut: 7/9

    My fear before I started the 1001 Novels: A Library of America is that reading 1001 Novels about America would prove tedious.  Simply compare the non-1001 Novels books from the past six months.  1001 Novels books are domestic tragedies about sad working class and middle class families.  Non 1001 Novels books span the globe and take in an incredible range of histories and life experiences.  Masters of Illusion: A Novel of the Connecticut Circus Fire is the first "tough get" on the 1001 Novels list.  The Los Angeles Public Library only has a single copy, which means you can't check it out.  I ended up buying a used copy on Amazon for five bucks.   The book that arrived was both a library discard and a large-print edition- a double loser.  Library discards are the bottom of the barrel of the used book world- their average value is zero cents plus whatever scarcity value the title has- thus me paying five books for my library discard, large print edition.

   In terms of the ability to describe the place- Masters of Illusion is a 10/10 if the place is the Connecticut Circus Fire- which was a real event that took place in Hartford, Connecticut in 1944, the proximate cause being an ill-advised decision to "water proof" the circus tent with a mixture which included paraffin and gasoline.  Over one hundred and fifty people died, over seven hundred were injured.  Since it happened during World War II, most of the victims were women and children. 

  The protagonist is Margie Potter, the youngest survivor of the disaster.  As an 18 year old high school graduate, Potter marries a handsome fireman, Charles O'Neill, who, as luck would have it, absolutely obsessed with solving the mystery of who started the fire.  Margie is swept away by a mixture of passion and a curious lack of ambition- part of her back story is her desire to forego college so she can "get married, have a bunch of babies and stay home and read."  

  I suppose it wasn't an unusual attitude for a working-class woman in Hartford Connecticut to have in the late 1950's early 1960's  Margie and Charlie have a daughter, Martha, and as Martha grows up she begins to question her father's obsession, which forces Martha to re examine her entire life with Charlie.   Masters of Illusion is 100% out of print- the hardcover sells for 80 bucks.  Of course, eBooks have changed the very idea of being "in print," but Masters of Illusion is the first out-of-print title in the 1001 Novels list thus far- over 50 books in!

2023 Booker Prize Shortlist Announced

 2023 Booker Prize Shortlist Announced

Sarah Bernstein, “Study for Obedience”
Jonathan Escoffery, “If I Survive You”
Paul Harding, “This Other Eden”
Paul Lynch, “Prophet Song”
Chetna Maroo’s “Western Lane”
Paul Murray, “The Bee Sting”

  The 2023 Booker Prize Shortlist dropped earlier this week.  I've read three of the books already: This Other Ede, The Bee Sting and Western Lane. I tried the Audiobook of If I Survive You but didn't enjoy it and only made it about 10 percent of the way through before abandoning the attempt.  Prophet Song isn't out yet in the United States. Study for Obedience is the one title on the shortlist I don't know anything about.  I'm surprised that Old God's Time didn't make the cut. 

  If I was handicapping I would bet on The Bee Sting or Western Lane for the win.

The Fraud (2023) by Zadie Smith

 Book Review

The Fraud (2023)

by Zadie Smith

    I haven't read much Zadie Smith- just On Beauty which was one of the last books from the original 1001 Books list.  The Fraud is her sixth novel, and I was intrigued by previews that indicated it was a work of historical fiction partially set in the mid 19th century milieu of literary London, with characters including Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank and a starring role for now-forgotten English novelist William Harrison Ainsworth, who actually out-sold Charles Dickens at certain points in his lengthy career but is now forgotten.  I knew from On Beauty that I could expect The Fraud to be well researched and clever, and I was not disappointed.    The narrator is Eilza Touchet, the cousin and sometimes lover of Ainsworth.

  Touchet is a classic Zadie Smith protagonist, multi-faceted and complex, determined to live her own life after the untimely, early death of her husband.  Much of the plot concerns Touchet's interest in the Tichborne Case, a cause celebre in 1860's and 70's London.  The Tichborne case involved a man who returned from Australia to claim that he was the long lost and previously thought deceased claimant to an English title.  Smith also develops the character of Andrew Bogle, the Jamaican born servant of one of the Tichborne's and a supporter of the Tichborne claimant. The relationship between Touchet and Bogle is well developed but to little impact- there is a hint of the possibility of any interracial relationship but it doesn't go anywhere.

   I gather the reviews have only been so-so, but if you actually are a fan of the literature of mid 19th century England- Dickens et al, then you can hardly afford to skip reading The Fraud.  Also worth noting- I checked out the Audiobook from the library and Zadie Smith herself narrates, which is a very mid 19th century author type of thing to do- Dickens loved giving public readings and doing the voices of his characters. 

Remote Sympathy (2022) by Catherine Chidgey

 Book Review

Remote Sympathy (2022)

by Catherine Chidgey

     The Guardian called this is an example of the newish genre of "Holocaust Literature."  I am a fan of the genre- unabashed, in the only the way a solo reader could be- hard to imagine plugging into a community of similar interested readers.  By my making, the foundational text of this genre- which are works of fiction written from the perspective of Nazi's, rather than works of fiction written about the Nazi's where the characters are either victims or onlookers- is The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littrell, published in French in 2006 and reviewed in its English translation by the New York Times in 2009.   The next major work in the genre is HHhH by French prankster Laurent Binet- that book got an English translation in 2010.  Since then there have been more- as witness the 2022 Guardian review of this book, which references it as a genre. 

    Remote Sympathy is itself an impressive achievement in the genre.  Chidgey takes a polyphonic approach- rotating perspectives- the Camp Commandant, who is being interviewed from prison in the 1950's, his cancer-stricken wife, whose voice is conveyed by her "imaginary diary" and Leonard Weber, an eighth-Jewish doctor with unconventional ideas about treating cancer with electricity (which is the source of the title).  Hahn, the camp commandant at Buchenwald, which was the concentration camp the Nazi's put in Weimar, reads about Weber's abandoned research, and has him transferred from the Eastern front to Buchenwald in order that he may treat Hahn's wife. 

   Chidgey stops well short of Littrell's relentless lack of humanity and is no where near as funny/clever as Binet (who is?) but I did find Remote Sympathy a compelling entry on the Holocaust Literature shelf.  Be warned- it clocks in at over 500 pages so it is not a light read. 

2023 National Book Award Longlist For Fiction/Translated Literature

   The Booker Prize announces it's shortlist tomorrow, which reminded me that I haven't posted the two National Book Award longlists I take seriously: Fiction and Translated Literature.   I was unfamiliar with almost all the titles on both lists, to the point where it's easier to talk about the books I know.  In Fiction I tried but didn't finish Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kame Adjei-Brenyan- I think that was a situation where I checked out the Audiobook and should have just read the Ebook, but I didn't care for it- even though it's a dystopian genre/literature cross-over which should be right up my alley.  This Other Eden by Paul Harding seems like a strong shortlist candidate.  Night Watch by Jaune Anne Philips was released today,  Blackouts by Justin Torres doesn't come out until October.  bois strong representation from African-American authors (Chain-Gang, Temple Folk, Holler, Child).  Ponyboy has a trans protagonist and there are two books with Native American themes, Drum Time and A Council of Dolls.   Loot, Night Watch and This Other Eden are all historical fiction of one type or another. 

   As one might expect, Romantic languages dominate the longlist for Translated Literature, Spanish (3), French (2) and Portuguese (1) comprise 60% of the list.    I already read This is Not Miami- which doesn't seem like a prize winner for me.  I'm excited to read Diop's new book- I loved his first one and I've got the other two Spanish language titles checked out from the Los Angeles Public Library.  Seems like an unadventurous list if you ask me- the only language that comes close to being exotic is the one Arabic language title.  I think the action in this area is bringing in new languages, not continuing to read books translated from Spanish, French and German.  No idea how to handicap either longlist given my present lack of familiarity with the books on both lists.

2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Fiction:

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars
Aaliyah Bilal, Temple Folk
Eliot Duncan, Ponyboy
Paul Harding, This Other Eden
Tania James, Loot
Jayne Anne Phillips, Night Watch
Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls
Hanna Pylväinen, The End of Drum-Time
Justin Torres, Blackouts
LaToya Watkins, Holler, Child

2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature:

Juan Cárdenas, The Devil of the Provinces
Translated from the Spanish by Lizzie Davis
Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny
Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur
David Diop, Beyond the Door of No Return
Translated from the French by Sam Taylor
Jenny Erpenbeck, Kairos
Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann
Stênio Gardel, The Words That Remain
Translated from the Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato
Khaled Khalifa, No One Prayed Over Their Graves
Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price
Fernanda Melchor, This Is Not Miami
Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes
Pilar Quintana, Abyss
Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman
Astrid Roemer, On a Woman’s Madness
Translated from the Dutch by Lucy Scott
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, The Most Secret Memory of Men
Translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud

Cosmic Scholar (2023) by John Szwed

 Book Review

Cosmic Scholar:

 The Life and Times of Harry Smith (2023)

by John Szwed

  It may be hard to imagine, but once upon a time, being cool took work.  As it turned out, I was one of the last people to grow up without access to the internet- I remember seeing the internet work for the first time in my freshman college dorm room.  I finished college and law school without possessing a lap top computer (I had a desktop computer in law school).  Back when I was a lad, discovering the counter-culture required physically travelling to bookshops- I went to Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and later, City Lights Book Store in San Francisco.  Learning about new music meant going to Amoeba and Rasputin Records in Berkeley.  These days, it's almost impossible to imagine the lengths I had to go to in order to learn about non-mainstream culture.

   How timely then that author John Szwed had written this biography of Harry Smith, best known for his Anthology of American Folk Music, generally credited with inspiring Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and literally the entire 60's music explosion.   Smith was known as an icon of the downtown New York art scene though it was unclear what, exactly, he was up to at any given moment.   The Anthology of American Folk Music was released in 1952 and it was created from Smith's amazing collection of 78 records, which he had begun collecting in the 1940's in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Smith's biography is more interesting than any fiction, reading Cosmic Scholar is more interesting than reading a dozen works of contemporary literary fiction.

   Each chapter is a different adventure: Smith starts in the Pacific Northwest, making field recordings of Native American songs before he had graduated high school.  Next he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he became a trailblazer in the world of be-bop jazz and experimental cinema.  Following San Francisco he relocated to NYC where he was an inspirational figure to the entire downtown art world through the 1960's and 1970's.   During this period he was mostly focused on elaborately insane art films, a chapter which reaches its apogee with his attempt to make an "animated" version of the Wizard of Oz (never completed). 

   He started doing drugs in the Bay Area- where he was smoking marijuana and taking amphetamines in the 1940's.  In New York he graduated to the hard stuff- by the 70's and 80's he became a regular user of cocaine and methamphetamine.  As Szwed points out repeatedly (you could call it the story of Smith's life) he was his own worst enemy and managed to burn through friends and patrons via a mixture of extremely uncouth behavior (frequent tantrums) and constant need for people to give him money (he never, ever had a job).  Szwed and others mention again and again that one of the marvels of Harry Smith's life is how he managed to even exist for decades in New York- making art and scenes, while never having a visible means of support.

   Frankly, he sounds like a trust funder, but Szwed provides enough information(like the fact that he never had a bank account) to rule this out as a possibility.   As an avowed experimental artist, much of what Szwed was trying to accomplish, artistically speaking, sounds ridiculous but his inspiration status can't be questioned.  How else to explain that his primary supporters at the end of his life were Allen Ginsburg and Jerry Garcia and that his papers were purchased by the Bob Dylan archive? 

  

Prophet (2023) by Sin Blache and Helen MacDonald

 Book Review

Prophet (2023)

by Sin Blache and Helen MacDonald

  I never read H is for Hawk, the 2014 falconry memoir turned surprise best-seller, but I darn sure saw it nearly everywhere- and still do, for that matter.  H is for Hawk is still in print, and its still selling.  As far as I'm aware (not very) all of her books have been non-fiction type stuff about birds.  So when I read- in the Guardian I think- that MacDonald's newest book was a techno-sci-fi-lgbt-thriller- I was intrigued.  Who had that on their 2023 bingo card:  Helen MacDonald sci-fi techo thriller?

   Not really a cross-over you expect to see at the highest level of literary fiction or literary fiction genre cross-over.  I have to say- the genre elements are quite strong here- if you look at the cover art, for example.  I listened to the Audiobook, and it sounds like a straight-forward, albeit bizarre, techno-sci-fi-thriller written by a top-flight author of non-fiction works about birds that have found a huge mainstream audience.    The essence of the book is the relationship between Sunil Rao- a self-destructive London born "human lie detector"- he is able to determine the truth value of any statement and Rubenstein- a steely Jewish-American jack of all trades for the CIA.

   The story begins in the fields of rural England, where a 50's style American diner has appeared in the middle of an English pasture on a US military installation located in the English countryside.  Rao, lately of HMS prison, is summoned by the American military to assist in the investigation.  There he is tasked a handler- Rubenstein- they've worked before. Rao has just, an incredible amount of LGBT back story- like it feels like half the book is Rao explaining himself and his backstory. 

  The thing they've invented for the novel- a drug (or is it a drug?) called Prophet- is a very interesting proposition and what starts out as a crazy drug turns into a substance that may cross dimensions and contain some kind of sentience.  There were plot elements that left me scratching my head, but in light of the obvious literary fiction pedigree any reader has to give the authors vast artistic license to diverge from genre bound expectations regarding plot development in the context of a sci-fi thriller type book.

   Maybe a Hugo Prize Winner?

The Bee Sting (2022) by Paul Murray

 Book Review

The Bee Sting (2022)

by Paul Murray

  The Booker Prize shortlist announcement is this week (9/21).  I got a tip from an acquaintance who served as a judge on the Costa Prize until it ended that The Bee Sting, by Irish author Paul Murray was a hot pick over in the UK so I prioritized getting my hands on the eBook and then reading that eBook (I have a pretty high percentage of NOT completing the eBooks I check out from the library).  This is the fifth book from the longlist I've tackled (Western Lane, In Ascension, This Other Eden and Old God's Time).  Of those five I'd say that this book and Old God's Time are both likely shortlist candidates, followed by Western Lane and that In Ascension (genre) and This Other Eden (white male American author) are both unlikely to make the cut.

  In fact, The Bee Sting could very much be the winner this year since it combines elements that Booker juries have prioritized in recent years: First and foremost, it's a good read- a book with interesting, sympathetic characters, a definite story to tell and a plot that rewards reading the whole book.  That's the main thing I've noticed from the last several years of Booker nominees- the shortlisters and winners tend to actually be entertaining books that reward the reader.  Like many books in this category, the description "An Irish family tries to deal with the fall-out from the 2008 recession," doesn't do the book justice.  It's also true that this is one of those books where an in depth review is likely to compromise the reading experience.   Indeed though, this book has the feel of a winner (as does Old God's Time).

Ascension (2023) by Nicholas Binge

 Book Review

Ascension (2023)

by Nicholas Binge

  I checked out the Audiobook of Ascension by Nicholas Binge after reading the the New York Times book review.  The mere fact of a work of speculative fiction getting a full length book review in the Times is unusual.  Ascension is also a take on the genre known as "cosmic horror"- pioneered by H.P. Lovecraft and his ilk.  I was intrigued.   As it turned out, Ascension was almost too faithful to the conventions of the genre.  Start with a clunky format- letters discovered by the relatives of a scientist who has gone mad after an expedition to a mysterious mountain that has just "appeared" in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean.   Add a healthy dose of the "nameless horror" situation as the crack team of soldiers and academics makes their way up said mountain.  Conclude with a prototypical white male narrator who spends most of the book regretting his emotional unavailability which caused him to split up with his ex-wife (who of course, is also on this same expedition).   It made, quite frankly, for a tedious Audiobook and I think the print version would have been a better experience. 

   On the positive side, Ascension does deliver a fun adventure yarn with a suitably mind-blowing conclusion-none if it makes a lick of sense, but that is cosmic horror for you.

The Good Thief (2008) by Hannah Tinti

 1001 Novels: A Library of America

The Good Thief (2008)

by Hannah Tinti

Salem, Massachusetts

Massachusetts: 11/30

 Finally an enjoyable entry on the 1001 Novels: A Library of America list, after a seemingly endless procession of books about mentally ill siblings and the family members who let them ruin their entire lives.  This, on the other hand, is a dark work of historical fiction set in mid 19th century "factory-land" Massachusetts.  For some reason the 1001 Novels project decided to place The Good Thief in Salem- which- unless that's supposed to be the location of the Dickensian orphanage where Ren is plucked by petty criminal Benjamin Nab- makes no sense at all.   I've spent plenty of time in Salem and it's not clear to me why you wouldn't select Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables- which is literally located in Salem and continues to exist as a museum.  My sense is that editor Susan Straight has stayed away from picking easy books that people already know about (although I see Moby Dick lurking on the 1001 Novels map) in favor of more recent books by a more diverse group of authors.

   Like McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh, another work of dark historical fiction set in19th century Massachusetts, The Good Thief is historical fiction with a modern sensibility.  There is plenty of R-rated content here, even though the story is told from the perspective of a child-orphan.   Of course, whenever a book is about orphans and factories and the 19th century the comparison on hand is Charles Dickens, but it's worth noting that when he wrote, Dickens was a contemporary novelist writing about contemporary issues, not a writer of historical fiction.  

  Basically these phrases should be enough to determine whether The Good Thief is right for you: historical fiction, 19th century, orphans, factories, Massachusetts, dark.