1970's Literature: 1970-1972
The 1970's is really when literature starts to heat up from the perspective of a contemporary reader of fiction. You've got Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas from Hunter Thompson, Burroughs is still going, JG Ballard is publishing. Plus you've got a surge in books from places heavily impacted by World War II- both Germany and Italy really get back into the game of world literature starting in the 1970's. Meanwhile, in America both Toni Morrison and Philip Roth are writing. And this is only for 1970, 1971 and 1972! Also, I've continued to read books from this time period since the more-or-less completion of the 1001 Books project- Ursula Le Guin just last year- 1970 through 1972 was a breakthrough for her.
Published 6/9/16
The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1970)
by Peter Handke
Welcome to the 1970's!!! This 1001 Books Project has been a decade long odyssey, but now that I'm well into the 20th century it feels less like a project and more just like catching up on books I've always meant to read. And catching up on books I never would have read without the 1001 Books project to spur me on. Peter Handke is one of the most well known German authors of his generation, and he placed three books on the first version of the 1001 Books list. In 2008, he was reduced to two titles, and The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick was the book that got cut. The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is like a mixture of The Stranger and mid period Beckett, though Handke's Austrian nationality and tonal similarity makes comparisons to Kafka inevitable.
In recent years, Handke's reputation has suffered due to his high spirited support for the war-criminal heavy Serbian government during their disastrous series of regional wars in the past decade. He spoke at the funeral of Milosevic, in Serbian, and praised his regime. Handke was and is extremely prolific, with dozens of books and plays, many of which been translated into English. The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick was made into a film by Wim Wenders, and Handke later worked on the script for Wenders classic film, Wings of Desire.
This all goes to explain why Peter Handke is on the 1001 Books list in the first place, and with three titles he's in Thomas Mann or Gunter Grass territory for a German writer on this list. The 1001 Books editorial staff has certainly demonstrated that a support for fascist or totalitarian politics is no bar to inclusion on the list.
The Goalie mentioned in the title is an ex-goalie, recently unemployed, who drifts through small town Germany, near the border of then East and West Germany. He murders a woman after they have sex, for no reason at all. Later he murders a clerk for similarly vague reasons and maintains an affect that could charitably be described as "blank" and uncharitably as psychotic. The goalie isn't necessarily a bad guy, he just happens to murder two people as he is slowly losing his mind. In one memorable scene, the goalie is reduced to thinking in symbols, unable to summon the words to describe his simple hotel room-dwelling.
by Peter Handke
Welcome to the 1970's!!! This 1001 Books Project has been a decade long odyssey, but now that I'm well into the 20th century it feels less like a project and more just like catching up on books I've always meant to read. And catching up on books I never would have read without the 1001 Books project to spur me on. Peter Handke is one of the most well known German authors of his generation, and he placed three books on the first version of the 1001 Books list. In 2008, he was reduced to two titles, and The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick was the book that got cut. The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is like a mixture of The Stranger and mid period Beckett, though Handke's Austrian nationality and tonal similarity makes comparisons to Kafka inevitable.
In recent years, Handke's reputation has suffered due to his high spirited support for the war-criminal heavy Serbian government during their disastrous series of regional wars in the past decade. He spoke at the funeral of Milosevic, in Serbian, and praised his regime. Handke was and is extremely prolific, with dozens of books and plays, many of which been translated into English. The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick was made into a film by Wim Wenders, and Handke later worked on the script for Wenders classic film, Wings of Desire.
This all goes to explain why Peter Handke is on the 1001 Books list in the first place, and with three titles he's in Thomas Mann or Gunter Grass territory for a German writer on this list. The 1001 Books editorial staff has certainly demonstrated that a support for fascist or totalitarian politics is no bar to inclusion on the list.
The Goalie mentioned in the title is an ex-goalie, recently unemployed, who drifts through small town Germany, near the border of then East and West Germany. He murders a woman after they have sex, for no reason at all. Later he murders a clerk for similarly vague reasons and maintains an affect that could charitably be described as "blank" and uncharitably as psychotic. The goalie isn't necessarily a bad guy, he just happens to murder two people as he is slowly losing his mind. In one memorable scene, the goalie is reduced to thinking in symbols, unable to summon the words to describe his simple hotel room-dwelling.
Published 6/15/16
The Bluest Eye (1970)
by Toni Morrison
In 2016 it's hard to imagine a world where Toni Morrison didn't win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, where she isn't the beneficiary of an incredibly productive relationship with Oprah Winfrey, where she isn't synonymous with the elevation of questions surrounding race and gender to the forefront of societal concern. Approaching The Bluest Eye in 2016 is the experience of reading the first published work of an universally acknowledged master of the form of the novel. But if you get to the afterword she wrote in the Oprah Book Club version of The Bluest Eye that I read, you learn that The Bluest Eye was ignored when it was published initially. That's surprising, although Morrison was not the first female African American author, she was just far ahead of the curve to benefit from it when the rest of the world started to catch up a decade later.
Timing is everything, in life, in art. Morrison was well situated to reap the benefits of the wider trends society. The plot of The Bluest Eye deals with a neighborhood of African Americans living amongst a larger white population in Lorian, Ohio, an industrial suburb of Cleveland. The narrator is Claudia,a young African American neighbor of the Breedlove family, Pauline, the Mom, Cholly, the Father and Pecola, the teen age daughter. As Morrison reveals on the first page, Pecola is raped and impregnated by her Father. The rest of The Bluest Eye discusses the personal history of the Breedlove family, showing the childhoods of Cholly and Pauline, in an attempt to give depth to the horrific rape of Pecola at the hands of her own Father.
The title refers to Pecola's desire to be white, she asks a minor character, operating as a kind of faith healer in their neighborhood, for "the bluest eyes" so that she can be white. Pecola is awkward, ugly, ignored, the victim of persecution at the hands of other African Americans, and literally ignored by whites. The Bluest Eye is a startling work of art, and a good illustration of why novels are such an amazing art form. The novel is flexible enough to accommodate any story- not just those of hyper intellectual English/Western European elites living in the wealthy parts of the great cities of the world. And by reading these different perspective, the reader gains insight on the lives of people he or she may never encounter in real life.
Published 7/5/16
Rabbit Redux (1971)
by John Updike
If a first tier novelist is one who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, then John Updike is at the very top of the second tier. He won almost every literary prize except the Nobel Prize, including the Pulitzer (1982) and two National Book Awards (1964 and 1982.) He also achieved best seller status and the kind of literary celebrity particular to authors writing in the second part of the 20th century. But he wrote many novels, and forty years on, people really only read three- the first three of the Rabbit series, of which Rabbit Redux is the second.
The first Rabbit, written about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, ex-high school athlete, current downwardly mobile father and husband, was a fairly self contained affair. The running that Rabbit did in that book was from one suburb to the next suburb, with a return home to the first suburb at the end. The philosophy was a very recognizable American brand existentialism, not the existentialism of the urban intellectuals represented by the Beats, but the working class existentialism of the era that immediately preceded the capital S "Sixties."
Rabbit Redux, on the other hand, is the arrival of the Sixties in the universe of Rabbit Angstrom. Or rather, Rabbit Redux is a kind of microcosm of the 60's as reflected in the life of Angstrom and his immediate family. Rabbitt Redux culminates in a deeply disturbing take on the "summer of love" with Angstrom's wife absent, replaced by a winsome white teen runaway from Connecticut and a black Vietnam veteran. Another major plot strand concerns Angstrom's flaky wife and her affair with a used car salesman, and Angstrom's lax reaction, meant to stand in for the issues surrounding women's sexual liberation.
If Rabbit Redux hasn't aged well it's because Updike offers an unrepentantly privileged white male take on the issues of race, gender and class that defined the 1960's. It's a classic take, but in 2016 people are looking for different perspectives, and Updike is your Dad's take.
Rabbit Redux (1971)
by John Updike
If a first tier novelist is one who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, then John Updike is at the very top of the second tier. He won almost every literary prize except the Nobel Prize, including the Pulitzer (1982) and two National Book Awards (1964 and 1982.) He also achieved best seller status and the kind of literary celebrity particular to authors writing in the second part of the 20th century. But he wrote many novels, and forty years on, people really only read three- the first three of the Rabbit series, of which Rabbit Redux is the second.
The first Rabbit, written about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, ex-high school athlete, current downwardly mobile father and husband, was a fairly self contained affair. The running that Rabbit did in that book was from one suburb to the next suburb, with a return home to the first suburb at the end. The philosophy was a very recognizable American brand existentialism, not the existentialism of the urban intellectuals represented by the Beats, but the working class existentialism of the era that immediately preceded the capital S "Sixties."
Rabbit Redux, on the other hand, is the arrival of the Sixties in the universe of Rabbit Angstrom. Or rather, Rabbit Redux is a kind of microcosm of the 60's as reflected in the life of Angstrom and his immediate family. Rabbitt Redux culminates in a deeply disturbing take on the "summer of love" with Angstrom's wife absent, replaced by a winsome white teen runaway from Connecticut and a black Vietnam veteran. Another major plot strand concerns Angstrom's flaky wife and her affair with a used car salesman, and Angstrom's lax reaction, meant to stand in for the issues surrounding women's sexual liberation.
If Rabbit Redux hasn't aged well it's because Updike offers an unrepentantly privileged white male take on the issues of race, gender and class that defined the 1960's. It's a classic take, but in 2016 people are looking for different perspectives, and Updike is your Dad's take.
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| Cover of the first edition of The Wild Boys by William S. Burroughs. |
Published 7/5/16
The Wild Boys (1971)
by William S. Burroughs
I purchased The Wild Boys while in Paris a couple weeks ago, at the excellent English language book store, Shakespeare and Company. In between going to Euro knockout round soccer matches, I also got a chance to see the Beat Generation retrospective at the Centre Pompidou. The exhibit is a good reminder of just how enduring Burroughs was within the context of that literary movement. He is present in the beginning, via a Burroughs adding machine placed at the entrance, and he is present at the end, posed in front of a sign that says "Danger" as an established literary statesman.
You can trace the general trend of his books with the Pompidou retrospective. From the roman a clef/exploitation tales of Junky and Queer, to his experimental/science fiction/drugs/gay sex obsessed mid period, defined most notably by Naked Lunch and this book, into his late period of wholly experimental "cut ups" whose works are now mostly unread. So you can be an early Burroughs guy, a mid Burroughs guy but anyone who identifies a cut-up text as his favorite Burroughs books is a liar. And even though Naked Lunch dominates the attention paid to mid-period Burroughs, The Wild Boys is a solid second text. One which I read for the first time only in Paris. Despite having a good idea of what lay inside, both from the exhibit and my own reading of his other books, I was taken aback at just how ahead of his time he was in terms of a post-industrial dystopian landscape.
I actually paused mid book to look back at Phillip K. Dicks short story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep to confirm that it was published prior to the publication of The Wild Boys. The striking techno-dystopian science fiction is almost entirely overwhelmed by Burroughs relentless depiction of gay sex. It's not like that was a theme absent from his prior work, but man there sure is a lot of gay sex in a book under 200 pages. The Wild Boys is also one of those books with a profound impact on the Anglo-American counter-culture as embodied by music and pop-culture.
The Wild Boys is a step below works like Warhol's Soup Cans or the impact of Naked Lunch itself, in terms of impact on the popular culture but not by much; and that is especially clear if you read this book and then sit down and think about everything it anticipates. Finally The Wild Boys is another good example of how many works one associates with the culture of "The Sixties" weren't actually published until the 1970's.
Published 7/12/16
The Ogre/The Erl-King (1970)
by Michael Tournier
I had zero expectations for The Ogre, which is typically described as a memoir of a French P.OW. during World War II. That description doesn't do justice to The Ogre, which is a richly researched portrait of life in the innner sanctum of the Third Reich, with important portions of the narrative taking place in the Prussian hunting retreat of Hermann Goring, second in command of the Nazi regime. The Ogre refers to both the narrator and powerful characters like Goring. In one scene, Goring, who revelled in his role and title of being "master of the hunt," emasculates a slaughtered stack and holds forth on the visceral nature of taking a creatures testicles.
Tournier doesn't shirk from the more disturbing details of the Holocaust, with the late entry of an escaped concentration camp victim. The theme of pedophillia is present throughout- with the early portions of the narrative seeing the main character, Abel Tiffauges, charged with raping a child, and the related discovery of hundred of pictures he had been secretly taking of young children. The charges are dismissed due to the onset of World War II, and Tiffauges is quickly captured by the Germans, where he rises in importance by virtue of his extreme adaptability and lack of nationalist sentiments.
The end result is something like a World War II memoir written by Nabokov.
by William S. Burroughs
I purchased The Wild Boys while in Paris a couple weeks ago, at the excellent English language book store, Shakespeare and Company. In between going to Euro knockout round soccer matches, I also got a chance to see the Beat Generation retrospective at the Centre Pompidou. The exhibit is a good reminder of just how enduring Burroughs was within the context of that literary movement. He is present in the beginning, via a Burroughs adding machine placed at the entrance, and he is present at the end, posed in front of a sign that says "Danger" as an established literary statesman.
You can trace the general trend of his books with the Pompidou retrospective. From the roman a clef/exploitation tales of Junky and Queer, to his experimental/science fiction/drugs/gay sex obsessed mid period, defined most notably by Naked Lunch and this book, into his late period of wholly experimental "cut ups" whose works are now mostly unread. So you can be an early Burroughs guy, a mid Burroughs guy but anyone who identifies a cut-up text as his favorite Burroughs books is a liar. And even though Naked Lunch dominates the attention paid to mid-period Burroughs, The Wild Boys is a solid second text. One which I read for the first time only in Paris. Despite having a good idea of what lay inside, both from the exhibit and my own reading of his other books, I was taken aback at just how ahead of his time he was in terms of a post-industrial dystopian landscape.
I actually paused mid book to look back at Phillip K. Dicks short story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep to confirm that it was published prior to the publication of The Wild Boys. The striking techno-dystopian science fiction is almost entirely overwhelmed by Burroughs relentless depiction of gay sex. It's not like that was a theme absent from his prior work, but man there sure is a lot of gay sex in a book under 200 pages. The Wild Boys is also one of those books with a profound impact on the Anglo-American counter-culture as embodied by music and pop-culture.
The Wild Boys is a step below works like Warhol's Soup Cans or the impact of Naked Lunch itself, in terms of impact on the popular culture but not by much; and that is especially clear if you read this book and then sit down and think about everything it anticipates. Finally The Wild Boys is another good example of how many works one associates with the culture of "The Sixties" weren't actually published until the 1970's.
Published 7/12/16
The Ogre/The Erl-King (1970)
by Michael Tournier
I had zero expectations for The Ogre, which is typically described as a memoir of a French P.OW. during World War II. That description doesn't do justice to The Ogre, which is a richly researched portrait of life in the innner sanctum of the Third Reich, with important portions of the narrative taking place in the Prussian hunting retreat of Hermann Goring, second in command of the Nazi regime. The Ogre refers to both the narrator and powerful characters like Goring. In one scene, Goring, who revelled in his role and title of being "master of the hunt," emasculates a slaughtered stack and holds forth on the visceral nature of taking a creatures testicles.
Tournier doesn't shirk from the more disturbing details of the Holocaust, with the late entry of an escaped concentration camp victim. The theme of pedophillia is present throughout- with the early portions of the narrative seeing the main character, Abel Tiffauges, charged with raping a child, and the related discovery of hundred of pictures he had been secretly taking of young children. The charges are dismissed due to the onset of World War II, and Tiffauges is quickly captured by the Germans, where he rises in importance by virtue of his extreme adaptability and lack of nationalist sentiments.
The end result is something like a World War II memoir written by Nabokov.
Published 7/25/16
The Black Prince (1972)
by Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch isn't an author I associate with post-modernism or metafictional technique, but there is no other way to describe her 1972 novel, The Black Prince, which combines traditional Murdochian themes: sex, betrayal and psychology with un-Murdochian strategies like an unreliable narrator and four postscripts where several of the major characters weigh in with their thoughts on the events of the novel.
Bradley Pearson is the narrator, we are told early on that he has written the manuscript from a prison cell, where he is serving a sentence for murder. Pearson interrupts the narrative at several points to speak directly to the reader. It's a technique familiar enough to any 21st century reader, but not something you expect from Iris Murdoch, who is known more for thematic creativity than invention in her narrative technique.
Pearson is an unsuccessful writer and full-time agent, recently retired, so that he can focus on writing what he feels to be his "great novel." In the opening chapters, he is packing his bags and getting ready to head on an extended holiday. Fate intervenes in the form of his miserable sister, who has left her husband and appears near suicidal. Her arrival is compounded by the arrival of his hated ex-wife, her brother, looking for help from Pearson to ingratiate himself with his sister and the continuous presence of Arnold Baffin, Pearson's frenemy- a more successful author, his unhappy wife Rachel and their 20 year old daughter Julian.
Readers with even a cursory understanding of Murdoch know what to expect, furtive, unsatisfying sex, allegations of homosexuality, and complicated human emotions. Murdoch does not disappoint, and when it was published, The Black Prince was hailed as her best book in a decade.
The Black Prince (1972)
by Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch isn't an author I associate with post-modernism or metafictional technique, but there is no other way to describe her 1972 novel, The Black Prince, which combines traditional Murdochian themes: sex, betrayal and psychology with un-Murdochian strategies like an unreliable narrator and four postscripts where several of the major characters weigh in with their thoughts on the events of the novel.
Bradley Pearson is the narrator, we are told early on that he has written the manuscript from a prison cell, where he is serving a sentence for murder. Pearson interrupts the narrative at several points to speak directly to the reader. It's a technique familiar enough to any 21st century reader, but not something you expect from Iris Murdoch, who is known more for thematic creativity than invention in her narrative technique.
Pearson is an unsuccessful writer and full-time agent, recently retired, so that he can focus on writing what he feels to be his "great novel." In the opening chapters, he is packing his bags and getting ready to head on an extended holiday. Fate intervenes in the form of his miserable sister, who has left her husband and appears near suicidal. Her arrival is compounded by the arrival of his hated ex-wife, her brother, looking for help from Pearson to ingratiate himself with his sister and the continuous presence of Arnold Baffin, Pearson's frenemy- a more successful author, his unhappy wife Rachel and their 20 year old daughter Julian.
Readers with even a cursory understanding of Murdoch know what to expect, furtive, unsatisfying sex, allegations of homosexuality, and complicated human emotions. Murdoch does not disappoint, and when it was published, The Black Prince was hailed as her best book in a decade.
Published 7/27/16
The Book of Daniel (1971)
E.L. Doctorow
E.L. Doctorow is an author I firmly associate with the homes of my parents and their friends in the Bay Area in the 1980's and 90's. I remember seeing numerous copies of his 1989 novel, Billy Bathgate, to the point where I even tried to read it (I was in junior high) unsuccessfully. Doctorow had a hugely successful career in the United States, both in terms of art and commerce, with his films forming the basis for numerous films and a long-running musical (Ragtime). He didn't travel particularly well. If you look at the numerous literary prizes he won- listed on his Wikipedia page- you will see that they are all domestic awards.
The Book of Daniel wasn't his first novel, but it was his break through hit. Written while the author was teaching at the just created UC Irvine, The Book of Daniel is a fictionalized version of the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and the impact it has on their two children, Daniel- the narrator- and his younger sister, Susan. The Rosenbergs were famously tried and executed by the United States government for espionage meant to help the Soviet Union obtain nuclear weapons. They became iconic figures of the 1960's, martyrs to the "new left", even though they themselves were about as "old left" as they come.
Doctorow plays many "post modern" type tricks during The Book of Daniel- you've got switching between first and third person narration within the same paragraph, the introduction of invented academic texts about the historical events of the book, transgressive dirty talk about sex. There is also a lot of very specific talk about the trial of the parents. It was detailed to the point where it began to evoke my "this is too close to work" response that I often get when watching television shows about the criminal justice system.
The Book of Daniel is one of the first novels about the "1960's" the way we understand that period today. The post-modern/modernist techniques don't detract from the conventional narrative of a child trying to come to terms with the "sins" of the father. Doctorow's writing is undeniably strong and evokes the era, and the era before the 1960's in cinematic color.
Published 7/30/16
Mercier and Camier (1970)
by Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett wrote Mercier and Camier, in French, in the mid 1940's, but it wasn't until 1974 that he translated it into English and had it published (he published it in the original French in 1970.) There isn't much that is hugely notable about Mercier and Camier in relation to his other seven books on the first 1001 Books list, except for the appearance of Watt, the protagonist in his novel Watt, near the end. Mercier and Camier are two companions, struggling to escape a nameless city (which approximates Dublin). They are beset by "obstacles" of the sort one expects from a Beckett novel: It rain! They go into a pub! They talk to a prostitute. To be fair, one of them does murder a police officer near the end.
The most notable thing about Mercier and Camier were the lengths I went to find a copy- when I flew to Paris earlier this month, I made a beeline for Shakespeare and Company, the famous English language bookstore. Reasonably, I figured that if any book store in the world would carry a copy of Mercier and Camier, it would be Shakespeare and Company. And although they had nearly everything Samuel Beckett ever wrote, a copy of Mercier and Campier was not to be had. Eventually I resorted to having the San Diego Public Library pull it's copy out of storage- and was surprised to learn that it was a first edition of the original 1974 pressing by Grove.
That leaves one more Samuel Beckett title on the 1001 Books list- the 1983 "work of prose" Worstward Ho.
Published 8/11/16
The Atrocity Exhibition (1970)
by J.G. Ballard
The Atrocity Exhibition showcases the more experimental side of J.G. Ballard. The book is comprised of a series of previously published short stories which are "linked" through overlapping sets of characters. Calling each of the chapters a "short story" isn't very accurate, it's more like a series of thematically related prose experiments in the style of Burroughsian cut-up or the formal prose experiments of mid 20th century French authors like Bataille, Perec and Queneau. There are also echoes of William Burroughs more coherent passages in Naked Lunch and Ballard's own pioneering dystopia's of the 1960;s.
Many of the chapters echo the plot of Crash, which was published in 1972- the same years as Grove Press published The Atrocity Exhibition in the United States (the 1970 publication date is in the U.K.) It's clear from the thematic similarity of his collected stories: obsessed with the relationship between sex, death and consumer culture, that Ballard had a recognizable aesthetic as early as the mid 1960's. Ballard may have been the first writer of speculative fiction to take an antagonistic stance towards the future chances of the human species.
The Atrocity Exhibition (1970)
by J.G. Ballard
The Atrocity Exhibition showcases the more experimental side of J.G. Ballard. The book is comprised of a series of previously published short stories which are "linked" through overlapping sets of characters. Calling each of the chapters a "short story" isn't very accurate, it's more like a series of thematically related prose experiments in the style of Burroughsian cut-up or the formal prose experiments of mid 20th century French authors like Bataille, Perec and Queneau. There are also echoes of William Burroughs more coherent passages in Naked Lunch and Ballard's own pioneering dystopia's of the 1960;s.
Many of the chapters echo the plot of Crash, which was published in 1972- the same years as Grove Press published The Atrocity Exhibition in the United States (the 1970 publication date is in the U.K.) It's clear from the thematic similarity of his collected stories: obsessed with the relationship between sex, death and consumer culture, that Ballard had a recognizable aesthetic as early as the mid 1960's. Ballard may have been the first writer of speculative fiction to take an antagonistic stance towards the future chances of the human species.
Published 8/28/16
Invisible Cities (1972)
by Italo Calvino
I would be interested in having someone explain to me Invisible Cities. Undoubtedly profound in ways I simply failed to grasp for lack of trying, it takes the form of an imagined dialogue between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, with Polo describing a series of fictional cities. What begins as something like a straight forward fantasia morphs into a more sophisticated dialogue about language and narrative, as Khan first tries to take over from Polo by describing his own cities, and finally by Khan asking him about Venice, a very real city. Thus, Calvino discretely treads on the line between "realistic" and "fantastic" fiction.
Invisible Cities also continues the rigid schematic structure of The Castle of Crossed Destinies. There, the organizing/limiting principle was the inability of the characters to speak out loud, with the chapters organized by the cards. Here, divides the chapters into types of cities: Cities & Memory, Cities & Desire, Cities & Signs, etc.
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| Johnny Depp plauyed Rauol Duke in the movie version of Fear and Loathing Las Vegas |
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1972)
by Hunter S. Thompson
My high school and college self really loved Hunter S. Thompson. Not just Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 and even the Rum Diaries. Thompson represents the end of the 1960's counter-culture. One of the most prescient sequences in modern fiction is the scene in this book where Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo attend the annual conference of Drug Prosecutors and Police- capturing a moment at the very beginning of the decades long "War Against Drugs." Thompson is actually capturing the moment, in his own words, where the "high-tide" of the 1960's counter culture smashed against the shore and the tide began to recede back into the ocean.
If you consider that Thompson published Hell's Angels in 1966, two years before the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, you can make the claim that he was one of the first non-beats to fully appreciate the San Francisco "scene." Thompson clearly refers to his own attendance at the acid tests held by the Merry Pranksters, and he cites Kesey in the text of Fear and Loathing. Re-reading Fear and Loathing also made me consider the important role that magazine journalism, particularly Rolling Stone played in the development of the new journalism that Thompson epitomized.
Published 9/25/16
Troubles (1970)
by J.G. Farrell
J.G. Farrell is a tantalizing "what-if" of 20th century literature, a noted novelist who died very young leaving behind three novels. Two of them won the Booker Prize. Troubles won the so-called "Lost" Booker, awarded in 2010 in recognition of a change in the rules that omitted novels published during the calendar year of 1970. The Siege of Krishnapur won in 1972. Both books are part of his Empire trilogy, which are linked thematically to the subject of the British Empire and its impact on characters struggling to maintain the periphery.
Troubles, the first book in the trilogy, covers Farrell's home turf of Ireland, and specifically the plight of the Anglo-Irish landowners during the Irish War for Independence between 1919 and 1922. Englishman Major Brendan Archer, called "Major" throughout the book, returns from active duty on the Western Front of World War I with a mild case of post-traumatic stress disorder and vague promises to a "fiance" who is located in a decrepit resort hotel owned by her Anglo-Irish father on the west coast of Ireland. This hotel, the Majestic, is itself a memorable character, and the decline of the hotel grows in importance as the initial set-up, between the Major and his sick fiance, recedes into the distance mid way through the first act.
Troubles is both funny and wise. It embraces enough of the conventions of the British country house novel to make the reader comfortable, but subverts those expectations with a sophisticated critique of English imperial ambition, embodied here by Edward Spencer, owner of the Majestic and proud subject of the crown. Spencer is a monster, but he is a sympathetic monster who is constrained by the traditions he has internalized.
Published 10/16/16
In a Free State (1971)
by V. S. Naipaul
The Man Booker prize gave out its inaugural award for outstanding work of fiction written by a Commonwealth residing author in the prior year in 1969. It quickly established a reputation as the second most important annual literary prize in the world (behind the Nobel Prize for Literature.) As of this year, the Booker has opened up eligibility to English language books from all over the world (including the United States.) Unlike the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Booker is given for a specific work written in a specific time period (the year prior.) The overlap between the 1001 Books list (edited in England) and the Booker Prize winners list is close to 100%.
Naipaul won the award for 1971, the third award given out. V.S. Naipaul is from Trinidad and Tobago, of Indian parentage, the child of immigrants who came as indentured servants to work in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. Naipaul won a government scholarship to study at Oxford University in England, then moved to London and began writing in the mid 1950's. Naipaul's Booker Prize came several novels into his career. His Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded in 2001, came towards the end, and in between he pioneered the kind of world-straddling literary reputation that became a template for authors like Salaman Rushdie and Haruki Murakami.
Although In a Free State came several novels into his career, it's status as a Booker Prize winner cemented Naipaul's marketable reputation. In a Free State is not a traditional novel, rather it is two short stories and a novella paired to a framing narrative. In a Free State is the longest of the three stories, about two European expatriates who appear to be in an unnamed Uganda in the aftermath of Independence. The other two stories feature Indian narrators who are in the United States or England as immigrants. Naipaul shows exceptional range in his choice of narrators. The first two are Indian's of no formal education, the third a white European diplomat. Naipaul, a Trinidadian of Indian ancestry, was none of these things, but he captures all of his voices with astonishing verisimilitude, spanning a range between Toni Morrison and Graham Greene in a single volume.
In a Free State (1971)
by V. S. Naipaul
The Man Booker prize gave out its inaugural award for outstanding work of fiction written by a Commonwealth residing author in the prior year in 1969. It quickly established a reputation as the second most important annual literary prize in the world (behind the Nobel Prize for Literature.) As of this year, the Booker has opened up eligibility to English language books from all over the world (including the United States.) Unlike the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Booker is given for a specific work written in a specific time period (the year prior.) The overlap between the 1001 Books list (edited in England) and the Booker Prize winners list is close to 100%.
Naipaul won the award for 1971, the third award given out. V.S. Naipaul is from Trinidad and Tobago, of Indian parentage, the child of immigrants who came as indentured servants to work in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. Naipaul won a government scholarship to study at Oxford University in England, then moved to London and began writing in the mid 1950's. Naipaul's Booker Prize came several novels into his career. His Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded in 2001, came towards the end, and in between he pioneered the kind of world-straddling literary reputation that became a template for authors like Salaman Rushdie and Haruki Murakami.
Although In a Free State came several novels into his career, it's status as a Booker Prize winner cemented Naipaul's marketable reputation. In a Free State is not a traditional novel, rather it is two short stories and a novella paired to a framing narrative. In a Free State is the longest of the three stories, about two European expatriates who appear to be in an unnamed Uganda in the aftermath of Independence. The other two stories feature Indian narrators who are in the United States or England as immigrants. Naipaul shows exceptional range in his choice of narrators. The first two are Indian's of no formal education, the third a white European diplomat. Naipaul, a Trinidadian of Indian ancestry, was none of these things, but he captures all of his voices with astonishing verisimilitude, spanning a range between Toni Morrison and Graham Greene in a single volume.
Published 10/16/16
The Summer Book (1972)
by Tove Jansson
Tove Jansson is a Finnish author internationally known for her series of children's books about the Moomin Family. She also wrote several books for adults, The Summer Book, based loosely on her own experience living on an isolated island in Finland. There isn't much to The Summer Book, a grandmother, her son, her son's daughter, living in their summer house out on a small island. The closest there comes to "action" in The Summer Book is when the grand daughter climbs up a rock and is then afraid to come down, and when the grandmother and granddaughter break into the new home of a neighbor. Also, The Summer Book wasn't actually translated into English until 2003, so it isn't like people were reading this book in the US & UK in 1972.
The Summer Book (1972)
by Tove Jansson
Tove Jansson is a Finnish author internationally known for her series of children's books about the Moomin Family. She also wrote several books for adults, The Summer Book, based loosely on her own experience living on an isolated island in Finland. There isn't much to The Summer Book, a grandmother, her son, her son's daughter, living in their summer house out on a small island. The closest there comes to "action" in The Summer Book is when the grand daughter climbs up a rock and is then afraid to come down, and when the grandmother and granddaughter break into the new home of a neighbor. Also, The Summer Book wasn't actually translated into English until 2003, so it isn't like people were reading this book in the US & UK in 1972.
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| Canadian poet-novelist Margaret Atwood as a young woman. |
Surfacing (1972)
by Margaret Atwood
Surfacing is Margaret Atwood's second novel. Atwood started by writing poems in the 1960's, but it wasn't until the early 1970's that she emerged as a novelist. She is notable not only for her beginnings as a poet, but also for her nationality, Canadian, where she is the most well-known native novelist in the country. She is best know for her mid-career tour through speculative fiction. Her novel, The Handmaid's Tale, which explicitly explores a future obsessed with reproduction, is one of the better known works of 1980's speculative fiction. The Blind Assassin, published in 2000, won the Booker prize and was successful to the point where my copy of Surfacing has "Booker prize winning author of The Blind Assassin" written beneath her name on the cover.
Surfacing doesn't have the speculative angle of The Handmaid's Tale or the dazzling historical meta fictional tack of The Blind Assassin. Instead, it's a quiet work of regional (Canadian) fiction, that balances the personal concerns of her narrator (a youngish Canadian woman) with some larger issues about the relationship of Canada to America and women to men. Once you learn that Atwood was a poet for nearly a decade before she turned to fiction, describing her prose as "poetic," but it seems safe to observe that she writes about the landscape, here a remote island in northern Quebec, with an eye towards timelessness.
This is contrasted with the concerns of the main characters, the narrator, searching for her missing father, her partner and another couple, all of whom evince various degrees of anti-Americanism towards the sportsmen who are the main consumers of the wild life around them. There isn't much in Surfacing, besides the quality of the writing itself, to mark Atwood out for what she became, but Surfacing is an enjoyable read, and not too long at under 200 pages.
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| Elizabeth Taylor played protagonist Lise in the (forgettable) 1974 movie version of The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark |
The Driver's Seat (1970)
by Muriel Spark
The Driver's Seat is Muriel Sparks last of four titles in the original 1001 Books to Read Before You Die book. It was one of two books to be dropped at the first substantial revision of the list, along with Memento Mori. I think The Driver's Seat got dropped first because Sparks is a prime example of the category of "20th century British/English woman authors" who were dramatically over-represented in the first edition. Second, The Driver's Seat is at best a novella and so I think there was an argument to be made that The Driver's Seat shouldn't make it as a stand alone "book."
That said, The Driver's Seat is a nasty bit of work, and fans of psychological thrillers and detective novels should find interest here, if only because as a "Whydunnit," Spark reveals the death of her protagonist in the first chapter. The why of the matter is indeed worth the 120 page read, so if you can find a copy, it is worth a look. I'd like to see the 1974 movie they made with Elizabeth Taylor and Andy Warhol(!)
The Driver's Seat is Muriel Sparks last of four titles in the original 1001 Books to Read Before You Die book. It was one of two books to be dropped at the first substantial revision of the list, along with Memento Mori. I think The Driver's Seat got dropped first because Sparks is a prime example of the category of "20th century British/English woman authors" who were dramatically over-represented in the first edition. Second, The Driver's Seat is at best a novella and so I think there was an argument to be made that The Driver's Seat shouldn't make it as a stand alone "book."
That said, The Driver's Seat is a nasty bit of work, and fans of psychological thrillers and detective novels should find interest here, if only because as a "Whydunnit," Spark reveals the death of her protagonist in the first chapter. The why of the matter is indeed worth the 120 page read, so if you can find a copy, it is worth a look. I'd like to see the 1974 movie they made with Elizabeth Taylor and Andy Warhol(!)
Published 10/10/16
House Mother Normal (1970)
by B.S. Johnson
Experimental fiction is kind of a drag, until you stop reading any for a few months, at which point a certain nostalgia can attach, until you read another work of experimental fiction. Such was the case with House Mother Normal by famed English experimentalist B.S. Johnson. Johnson was more or less ignored during his lifetime, which ended tragically by his own hand at the age of 40.
House Mother Normal takes the form of a chronological stream of consciousness narrative from the residents of a nursing home. The level of cognition ranges from a comprehensible narrative to random phrases sprawled across the page in a non "literary" fashion. The viewpoints are diverse, ranging from a more or less happy, intact consciousness to a man suffering terribly from anal cancer and attributing it to his sodomy of a young boy when he was a sailor.
House Mother Normal is likely to make the reader contemplate old age and death and length.
House Mother Normal (1970)
by B.S. Johnson
Experimental fiction is kind of a drag, until you stop reading any for a few months, at which point a certain nostalgia can attach, until you read another work of experimental fiction. Such was the case with House Mother Normal by famed English experimentalist B.S. Johnson. Johnson was more or less ignored during his lifetime, which ended tragically by his own hand at the age of 40.
House Mother Normal takes the form of a chronological stream of consciousness narrative from the residents of a nursing home. The level of cognition ranges from a comprehensible narrative to random phrases sprawled across the page in a non "literary" fashion. The viewpoints are diverse, ranging from a more or less happy, intact consciousness to a man suffering terribly from anal cancer and attributing it to his sodomy of a young boy when he was a sailor.
House Mother Normal is likely to make the reader contemplate old age and death and length.
Published 10/13/16
The Breast (1972)
by Philip Roth
I remain skeptical of the merits of the "novella" as an art form. Too long to be a short story, too short to demand the attention required of a novel, it exists in an indeterminate space in the market-place and really only finds a ready audience in high school and college Literature class, where the length makes them preferable. The idea of spending money on a novella, 20 dollars for a book that is guaranteed to be under 150 pages, makes me cringe. The Breast is a firm 78 pages, and is basically the opening sentence of the Metamorphsis by Franz Kafka extended for an additional 78 pages.
The narrator, David Kapesh, is a college English professor who is mysteriously transformed from a human form into a similarly weighted (155 pounds) female human breast. He is, to put it mildly, not pleased with the situation, but is very limited in his options, being unable to move on his own and lacking limbs or sensory organs. The Breast rates about a five on the naughtiness scale. Much of the text deals explicitly with the impact his transformation has on his sexuality, and to get it into literally spoils the only plot point in the entire book.
The Breast (1972)
by Philip Roth
I remain skeptical of the merits of the "novella" as an art form. Too long to be a short story, too short to demand the attention required of a novel, it exists in an indeterminate space in the market-place and really only finds a ready audience in high school and college Literature class, where the length makes them preferable. The idea of spending money on a novella, 20 dollars for a book that is guaranteed to be under 150 pages, makes me cringe. The Breast is a firm 78 pages, and is basically the opening sentence of the Metamorphsis by Franz Kafka extended for an additional 78 pages.
The narrator, David Kapesh, is a college English professor who is mysteriously transformed from a human form into a similarly weighted (155 pounds) female human breast. He is, to put it mildly, not pleased with the situation, but is very limited in his options, being unable to move on his own and lacking limbs or sensory organs. The Breast rates about a five on the naughtiness scale. Much of the text deals explicitly with the impact his transformation has on his sexuality, and to get it into literally spoils the only plot point in the entire book.
Published 12/20/16
G. (1972)
by John Berger
It took the Booker Prize a few years to really establish it's identity as a purveyor of international British Empire based hits. The first Booker Prize was awarded in 1969 for Something to Answer For, by English author P.H. Newby. That was followed in 1970 by a Welsh winner (Bernice Reubens for The Elected Member. V.S. Naipaul winning in 1971 for In a Free State is perhaps the first glimmer of the future of the Booker Prize, but they immediately followed that book with this one. G. is a blend of picaresque and novelle de philosophe, with Berger taking pages away from the amorous adventures of the titular protagonist to introduce philosophical musings as they relate to sex and desire. This blend of fiction and philosophy was hardly novel in 1972, but it obviously struck a chord with the Booker Committee.
The success of G. was almost immediately eclipsed by the other book Berger published in 1972, Ways of Seeing, a classic non-fiction work about the impact of the mechanical reproduction of art on the experience of the viewer. Ways of Seeing continues to be a staple in high school and university literature courses all over the world. Unlike Ways of Seeing, G. has not maintained classic status, even as an early Booker Prize novel. In fact, when I saw G. was on the 2006 1001 Books list, I had to check to make sure it was the same John Berger.
Jacket copy to the contrary, I did not G. particularly magical or shimmery. Rather, it was like reading a novel written by a socialist who admired the books of Henry James and D.H. Lawrence before he obtained "consciousness" and then tried to integrate this love into his conscious fiction.
Nights and a Night (Arabian Tales) both in technique and the actual story itself.
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| The animated versions of the rabbit-characters of Watership Down, published in 1972, written by Richard Adams |
Watership Down (1972)
by Richard Adams
Richard Adams is a good example of a one hit wonder, an author who struck gold with a left-field hit of a first novel (Watership Down), who then spent the rest of his career trying to replicate that level of success. When he died on December 24th of 2016, there was almost nothing to say about him besides writing Watership Down. Watership Down was explicitly written as a children's book, and the author specifically denies any allegorical purpose, but the tale about a group of male rabbits setting out into the unknown with the purpose of starting a new warren, functions equally as a well as a ripping yarn for any adult who still digs stories about talking animals.
At 450 pages, stretches the definition of "children's literature." If it was released today it would no doubt be classified as "young adult," which is indeed how the Los Angeles Public Library has it classified. Watership Down has the quality of many hits across different artistic genres during the 20th century: It successfully evokes the tradition of the children's novel, while adding depth and complexity to the reading experience. I've read Watership Down before as a lad, and this time around I was taken by the craft of it all. For example, it is easy to see the influence of the Odyssey/Iliad and A Thousand Nights and a Night (Arabian Tales) both in technique and the actual story itself.
Adams grants the rabbits (and other animals) human level intelligence, but maintains a scrim by using an omniscient narrator, a story teller, if you will. The message is overwhelmingly one a contemporary reader will recognize as "environmentalist" in that humans play a limited and unsympathetic part in the proceedings.
Watership Down was famously told as a children's story by the author to his children, and was then just as famously submitted and rejected by several publishers before finding it's initial run of 1500 or so copies printed and distributed in the UK. US rights were then purchased and it proved to be a great hit in the United States, leading to renewed attention and of course, more sales. The book that Watership Down most resembles, and the book it is probably most often read alongside, is Animal Farm, by George Orwell. I'm sure Adams himself would reject the comparison, and maybe that accounts for much of the charm of Watership Down. The allegorical targets are vague to the point where it would be hard for anyone to take offense.
Watership Down also seems to draw inspiration from the early animated films of Walt Disney, with Bambi, released in 1942, which Adams, being a living human being, likely saw. Or perhaps both Adams and Disney were inspired by the same antecedents, English fiction going back to Alice in Wonderland and fairy tales before that. It is an undeniably rip roaring yarn, easy to finish in a day or so even given the length. Also if you've read it before.
Published 1/13/17
Group Portrait with Lady (1971)
by Heinrich Boll
Group Portrait with Lady is typically referred to as Henrich Boll's masterpiece. In 1972, Boll was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the accompanying Press Release issued by the Nobel Prize committee said, "Last in line comes his most grandly conceived book [,] Group Portrait with Lady, published only last year." (Nobel Prize Official Website) Later in the same statement, the committee refers to Group Portrait with Lady as his "crowning achievement." Unlike his other books on the 1001 Books list, Group Portrait with Lady is lengthy, just over 400 pages in standard hard back format.
Group Portrait with Lady takes the form of an investigation of the main character, Leni, the daughter of wealthy construction magnate (at the beginning of the novel). Leni lives in western Germany, and the spectrum of her experience in the wash of World War II ranges from people like her father who were Nazi's as a business opportunity to various Communists, Jews and Western Germany "separatists" who are trying to survive the war. The investigation consists of dozens of interview's with Leni's friends and family, the narrative takes the form of the familiar "oral history" beloved by publications like Spin and Rolling Stone. Boll is no stranger to a kaleidoscopic narrative with dozens of narrators, but in Group Portrait with Lady the introduction of a narrator/collector makes it much easier to read than his other books.
The format- a post-some-undisclosed-event investigation of the protagonist, assumes that Leni requires explaining, that she has done something bad in the present of the book, and this misdeed is barely hinted at, let alone discussed. This lends the narrative some weight, and unifies the dozens of separate interviews covering the whole of her life. It is rare to see such a straight forward relationship between a single work and the award of a Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel Prize for Literature has two major rules: 1. It doesn't award the prize for a specific work. 2. It doesn't award the prize to dead people. Thus, for the prize and a single book to be tied so closely together is a notable achievement in the field of 20th century literature.
Group Portrait with Lady (1971)
by Heinrich Boll
Group Portrait with Lady is typically referred to as Henrich Boll's masterpiece. In 1972, Boll was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the accompanying Press Release issued by the Nobel Prize committee said, "Last in line comes his most grandly conceived book [,] Group Portrait with Lady, published only last year." (Nobel Prize Official Website) Later in the same statement, the committee refers to Group Portrait with Lady as his "crowning achievement." Unlike his other books on the 1001 Books list, Group Portrait with Lady is lengthy, just over 400 pages in standard hard back format.
Group Portrait with Lady takes the form of an investigation of the main character, Leni, the daughter of wealthy construction magnate (at the beginning of the novel). Leni lives in western Germany, and the spectrum of her experience in the wash of World War II ranges from people like her father who were Nazi's as a business opportunity to various Communists, Jews and Western Germany "separatists" who are trying to survive the war. The investigation consists of dozens of interview's with Leni's friends and family, the narrative takes the form of the familiar "oral history" beloved by publications like Spin and Rolling Stone. Boll is no stranger to a kaleidoscopic narrative with dozens of narrators, but in Group Portrait with Lady the introduction of a narrator/collector makes it much easier to read than his other books.
The format- a post-some-undisclosed-event investigation of the protagonist, assumes that Leni requires explaining, that she has done something bad in the present of the book, and this misdeed is barely hinted at, let alone discussed. This lends the narrative some weight, and unifies the dozens of separate interviews covering the whole of her life. It is rare to see such a straight forward relationship between a single work and the award of a Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel Prize for Literature has two major rules: 1. It doesn't award the prize for a specific work. 2. It doesn't award the prize to dead people. Thus, for the prize and a single book to be tied so closely together is a notable achievement in the field of 20th century literature.
Published 1/21/20
A World for Julius (1970)
by Alfredo Bryce Echenique
Replaces: The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
Writer Alfredo Bryce Echenique could fairly be described as a "scion" of a wealthy and important Peruvian family, combining a wealthy Scottish merchant with the daughter of a Peruvian President in the same lineage (his great grandfather was the merchant, his mother the daughter of a Peruvian President. His father was a banker, though if Bryce's own life followed the path of Julius, he died when Bryce was a young child.
Described by the Wikipedia stub as a "post-modern" novel, A World for Julius might better be described as a modernist novel, since the overwhelming tendency towards a series of stream of consciousness monologues, often written from a third-person perspective, and rarely with any of the signaling that you would expect for a portrait of an extended, upper-class family. I guess it is post-modern rather than modern because it was written in Peru in 1970 instead of Paris in 1910, but I got heavy modernist vibes- I couldn't read more than 20 pages at a sitting, and I often had little idea what was going on.
AND, like 19th century English novels about the plights and perils of the upper-classes, I had trouble caring about anyone in A World for Julius, and kept up a rash and ill-founded hope that a Socialist revolutionary might show up at some point and blow everyone to bits, or at least to kidnap Julius for ransom. Alas, no. At least A World for Julius replaces The Passion of New Eve, another difficult to understand book by English writer Angela Carter- a multiple loser in the revised edition of 1001 Books.
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| Canadian writer Robertson Davies |
Fifth Business (1970)
by Robertson Davies
Replaces: Ratner's Star by Don Delillo
Here is another addition to the 2008 revision of 1001 Books who I'd never heard of before. Davies was an incredibly versatile and prolific Canadian author, He worked in fiction and non fiction, wrote novels and short fiction, plays and even has a Wikipedia section of his bibliography titled"fictional essays." The Fifth Business is the first book of his Deptford Trilogy, narrated by Dunstan Ramsey- later books would be narrated by the son of Ramsey's lifetime friend, Boy Staunton and Paul Dempster, Ramsey's childhood friend, who becomes a travelling magician. These days, most people don't read the whole trilogy, just Fifth Business.
Ramsay is a professor at a prestigious boys high school in Canada. He is a lifelong bachelor and spends most of his free time reaching the lives of Catholic saints, a field known as Hagiography. His best friend is Boyd Staunton, and together they share responsibility for a childhood snowball incident that resulted in the decline of Mary Dempster, the mother of the narrator of the third book- Paul Dempster. Boyd becomes a very wealthy businessman, first in sugar and then in a variety of consumer products. His business success is mirrored by an unhappy personal life, particularly his loveless marriage. Ramsay is often called upon to pick up the wreckage and this back-and-forth takes up the bulk of the middle of Fifth Business.
After Staunton's surprise suicide (he drives into the river, a rock clenched between his teeth), Dempster removes himself to Mexico, where he encounters Paul Dempster, now Magnus Eisengrim, a travelling magician. It is all very strange, but in a decidedly PG way that more resembles the literature of 19th century England than 1970's North America. Hard to believe that Davies was a contemporary of Roth. I wasn't bored, but the whole book seemed a little fusty- much like the actual copy of the book I read, a library hardback that looked like it hadn't been read in two decades.
It isn't hard to see why critics of the time might have celebrated Fifth Business and the Deptford Trilogy, but in 2020 it's very "inside baseball" something a would-be writer might get to, or a Canadian graduate student.
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| Austrian author and playwright Thomas Bernhard |
Published 8/13/20
by Thomas Bernhard
Early Thomas Bernhard- his third novel- but he was already hitting his themes: An insane obsessive, a grotesque death, an intellectual pre-occupation with esoteric. Here; the "action" picks up in the immediate aftermath of a horrific murder- Konrad- the protagonist, has just blown his wife's head off. The two of them live alone inside a Lime Works, which Konrad purchased as a home against near universal opposition, so he could "concentrate" and finish his masterwork, a definitive book on the subject of hearing.
What is introduced as an "unexplainable" crime, gradually becomes explained as Bernhard unravels the backstory of Konrad as an invalid wife. As per usual, financial ruin lays behind the decision. Unlike many of his later books there are many voices here- officials, salesmen, chimney sweeps, etc, all dedicated to reconstructing the circumstances leading up to the murder.
Published 1/23/21
The Third Wedding (1971)
by Costas Taktsis
Replaces: Chocky by John Wyndham
Greek author Costas Taktsis was a one hit wonder from an international perspective- The Third Wedding, his stream-of-consciousness novel written from the mind of Nina, the thrice married woman of the title, is a powerful document of a working-class (petit bourgeois?) existence in Greece during the turmoil of the 20th century. Almost every page takes the form of what you could call a never ending complaint about each of the three husbands and her various children, relatives and neighbors. I would be more interested in a similar book written by a woman because after all, what does this old white dude know about being a woman. Can't find a single book written by a woman from Greece to take this slot?
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| Cover of the Criterion Collection edition of Le Cercle Rouge (1970) d. Jean Pierre Melville |
Published 2/4/21
Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
by Jean Pierre Melville
Criterion Collection #218
I'm going through the Criterion Channel and knocking out all the Criterion Collection Editions- some of the movies are just the movie, whereas others have the goodies- including the commentary tracks and other apocrypha that I find particularly stimulating about the Criterion Collection. I am a big fan of Melville- ever since I took a Film Noir class in college and learned that art movies could be fun as well as...arty. I distinctly remember watching Le Samourai for that class and being wowed.
Melville died, more or less at the top of his game, when he was 55. Of his last four films, he made three classics, all noirs starring Alain Delon. Le Cercle Rouge is one, Le Samourai the second and the third, his last film, is Un Flic. Unlike Le Samourai, which largely focuses on the messy aftermath of a succesful "hit." Le Cercle Rouge is basically a heist movie, about a crew, led by Alain Delon, c con who was just released from prison, to rob a jewelry store of 20 million francs worth of jewelry (I think 4 or five million usd at the exchange rate back then.) The heist is almost impossibly elaborate, but Melville carries it off with a minimum of histrionics- his cool, quiet style distinctly recognizable just as it is in Le Samourai.
Yves Montand also shines as the third member of his crew, an alcoholic ex-cop who comes in as a marksman. The extras include parts of an episode of the French television show, Cineastes de notre temps, which interviews Melville in his Paris studio- Melville was the only filmmaker of that era of French film who had his own studio- and gives you another look at the ridiculous, oversized Chinese Lamp he kept on his desk.
Published 7/25/21
The Tombs of Atuan (1971)
by Ursula Le Guin
My quest for gender equity in the books I read this year continues apace. It now stands at 60/40- up from 70/30 when I started. This is the first year I've kept track, and what I've learned is that it is difficult to do, especially in the world of literary fiction, where a majority of woman-authored literary fiction concerns child rearing, intergenerational family disputes or both- sorry- I keep track in the New York Times Book Review, publishers weekly etc. I'm not saying I won't read a book that deals with those subjects, but if you add those factors to an upper-middle class, well educated white protagonist, I'm out. I try to compensate by looking for woman authors in non fiction and genre books- which has led me back to Ursula Le Guin, a canon level science fiction and fantasy author who interests me because she is from Berkeley and grew up as the child of Alfred Kroeber, a pioneering scholar of Native-American society.
Le Guin wrote two major universe-level series- the Hainish Cycle, which is her science fiction world and The Earthsea Cycle- her fantasy world. The Tombs of Atuan is the second book in the Earthsea Cycle- I didn't check out The Wizard of Earthsea, the first book in the series before I read Tombs because... I figured I could pick it up. The Earthsea cycle is firmly classified as "YA" since it was literally written and marketed that way- Le Guin has said that her publisher told her to write a series for YA and do whatever she wanted in that regard- as supposed to the Hainish trilogy, which I guess is technically "for" adults.
Like the Hainish cycle, Le Guin shows a solid grasp of the principles of traditional society and is able to create her alternate universe with authority. Atuan is a bildungsroman about Tenar, a young woman living in the anti-magic capital of this magical world. She is identified as the reincarnated version of a recently deceased high priestess of the eponymous tombs and whisked away from her small village a la how they do it in Tibet. Once ensconced as the high priestess of the tombs she is quickly put to the test when Ged, the wizard of the first book, arrives looking for this missing half of a magical ring.
Also like the Hainish cycle- which was written at the same time as the Earthsea books- Le Guin's fictional worlds are spartan, with a minimum of ostentation or exposition. That's a sure sign that a genre book is better than average- less exposition.
Published 9/8/21
The Farthest Shore (1972)
by Ursula Le Guin
I am struggling in my quest to reach gender equity in my reading this year. I think when I started keeping track it was a 70/30 split, currently I've got the split down to 60/40 in favor of men. There are three major areas I've identified to help bring my numbers up: Non-fiction, Genre fiction(Sci Fi, Fantasy, Crime) and Classics. Authors like Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler are good because they straddle two of the three categories, genre fiction and classics.
One of the interesting aspects of Le Guin's career is that she wrote her two main series, The Earthsea Cycle and the Hainish Cycle, at the same time. Le Guin started in 1966 with the first four books of the Hainish Cycle and then, at the encouragement of her publisher, she started the Earthsea series. Although she continued to publish at a ridiculous rate for decades afterwards, I think there is a good argument that you can start in 1966 with Rocannon's World and end in 1974 with The Dispossessed, with all of the main Earthsea titles in between. That is a solid eight book list. All the books are very manageable, it is interesting to compare Hainish vs. Earthsea and it avoids getting into the messy decades of short stories and children's books.
The Farthest Shore is set decades after the events of the first two books. Ged, the protagonist from the first two books, is the powerful Archmange of Earthsea. A mysterious malaise is spreading through the domain, rendering magic unusable and reducing the people to a semi-barbaric state. Ged sets himself the taks of putting things right...but at what cost. It seems clear that in 2021 the only people reading The Farthest Shore are going to be serious Le Guin fans. There is more of Le Guin's Taoist influenced philosophy in this book, and Ged's travels through the islands of Earthsea are the most expansive geography of any Le Guin book from the eight book Hainish/Earthsea series.
You would think both series would be ripe for "peak streaming" adaptation. I wonder who owns the rights.
Published 10/20/21
The Lathe of Heaven (1971)
by Ursula LeGuin
I spotted The Lathe of Heaven on a list of post-apocalyptic titles on Lithub. This is a stand alone LeGuin novel, about a man whose dreams become reality. He takes drugs to stop himself from dreaming, and at the beginning of the book he agrees to undergo psychiatric treatment with one Doctor Haber. At the beginning of the book, the reality is itself is semi-apocalyptic- George Orr- the protagonist, lives in a Portland Oregon where the rain never stops and people live on the edge of starvation because of over-population. Professor Haber quickly realizes that Orr is telling the truth about his power, and the rest of the book turns into a heavy cross between Groundhog Day/Edge of Tomorrow type time-loop sci fi and a dizzying Twilight Zone/Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors style "unintended consequences of time manipulation."
It basically goes like this:
1. Haber tells Orr to dream of an uncrowded world, six billion people disappear overnight.
2. Haber tells Orr to dream of a world at peace, aliens take over the moon.
3. Someone tells Orr to dream of a world where the aliens aren't on the moon, the aliens invade earth.
After that there is more stability and even some improvement, but generally speaking the lesson is that you can't come up with a world that works the way you want it to.
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| British-Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta |
Published 1/26/22
Second Class Citizen (1974)
by Buchi Emecheta
Buchi Emecheta was a trail-blazing author on multiple levels: in terms of her experiences as an immigrant to England, as a woman and in terms of her laboring class situation- Emecheta famously worked as a librarian and supported five children after leaving the abusive husband who is portrayed, the reader imagines, semi-fictionally in Second Class Citizen, her roman a clef about the experience of an African immigrant in 1970's England.
English attitudes towards race combine frequent and virulent racist abuse at a personal, legal and societal level with the leavening quality provided by the consequences of several centuries of British Empire building all over the globe. Many English had family members who served the Empire in some capacity, and travel to and from places like Nigeria, especially when you took into account English who worked in shipping or were in the Royal Navy- gave immigrants from those land a genuine reason to come to England.
Hopefully, in 2022 there wouldn't be much that would be surprising- see Steve MacQueen's remarkable series of films on Amazon Prime covering much of the same territory- but I can imagine how startling Second Class Citizen must have been for London literati in the mid 1970's- really what a trail-blazer.
Published 4/12/22
Ancestors (1971)
by William Maxwell
I only learned about William Maxwell last year when the New York Times book review published a lengthy re-appraisal which argued for Maxwell's canonical status as a 20th century writer. Maxwell published rarely while maintaining his post as the fiction editor for the New Yorker- could you imagine a better description of a "writer's writer." He also spread his bibliography in between literary categories, he wrote novels, short story collections, non-fiction and a couple of children's books. Ancestors is a book of non-fiction, somewhere between a family biography and the micro history of the small town in Illinois from whence Maxwell hailed.
I bought a copy of Ancestors at a small book store in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on a visit last year and since then it has languished, largely because the opening hundred pages offer a heavy helping of details about 18th and 19th century religion among newly arrived American immigrants, and the role his various forbearers played in those religions. I suppose, at some level, you could describe the debates between various evangelical Christian denominations in early American history as "interesting," but only in a historical sense, in a literary sense it was a bore and it took me nine months of Ancestors on my bedstand before I got past that hump.
After that Maxwell picks up the pace, and the chapters dealing with his parents and grandparents generations are legitimately interesting AND cover a time- the 1880's, 1890's, 1900's and place, American Midwest, where there aren't a ton of books that have stood up with the test of time. For some of those decades: the 1880's, for example, there isn't a tremendous amount of American literature period, so a book like Ancestors is useful for filling in some of the blank spots.
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