The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne

   1850; 190 pages, not counting the 40-page Introduction called “The Custom House”.  New Author? : Yes.  Complete Title: “The Scarlet Letter: A Romance”.  Genre : Highbrow Lit; Classic Literature; Romance; Historical Fiction.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

    The Puritan colony in Massachusetts is caught in a moral dilemma.  What should they do about one of their citizens who has fallen into sin?  Hester Prynne recently gave birth to a baby girl.  Unfortunately, it was out of wedlock, and scripture condemns that.  Even worse, Hester refuses to say who the father is.  That's a sure sign that she hasn’t repented.

    All the Puritans agree that Hester needs to be disciplined, but exactly what would be appropriate?  Execution by stoning seems a bit extreme.  One of the colony’s older matrons has suggested branding Hester on the forehead, but that seems like geezer jealousy showing through.

    Still, something must be done to prevent the fine upstanding citizens of Boston from being led astray by Hester’s waywardness.  The last thing the godly settlement needs is for more illegitimate babies to start popping out.

    So let’s force Hester to embroider a big red “A” on the garment covering her bodice.  And let’s tell every good citizen to shun her like she has a contagious disease.  Which is kind of the truth anyway.

    Now we just have to figure out what to do with the child.

What’s To Like...

    The Scarlet Letter is, as everyone who’s ever taken a high school English Lit class, the epitome of American highbrow literature.  It was a smash hit when Nathaniel Hawthorne published it in 1850, undoubtedly helped in no small way (according to Wikipedia) by being one of the first books to be mass-produced in America.

    The main themes of the book are sin, guilt, and religious hypocrisy.  The fact that these were major topics in mid-19^th century was a pleasant surprise to me, and of course, Hawthorne is further pointing out that they were equally prevalent in the Puritan days, when America was in the habit of burning people, especially women, at the stake in the belief that they were witches.  I enjoyed The Scarlet Letter from a historical fiction angle as well.  Hawthorne’s world in the 1840’s was quite different from mine, and his portrayal of Massachusetts life 200 years before that was equally eye-opening.

    I knew the rudiments of the storyline going in, but ran across a lot of events and characters that were unfamiliar to me.  I wasn’t aware of Hawthorne’s complex character development of Hester’s daughter, Pearl.  Roger Chillingworth was totally new to me, as was Mistress Hibbins, who I found to be very intriguing.  Yes, this is fiction, but how could a “freethinker” like her survive, and even thrive, in a Puritan settlement?

    The writing is masterful, complex, and at times difficult to grasp.  Reading Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way a couple weeks ago (reviewed here) was a good way to “get in shape” for Hawthorne.  The book was a lot shorter than I’d always assumed, just 24 chapters covering the 190 pages of the main story, plus a 40-page introduction by Hawthorne which I skimmed briefly, then skipped.  There are some footnotes, presumably added by the modern-day publishing house's editor, to help you with the archaic terms.  But they aren’t “Discworldian” witty, so I mostly ignored them.  You have very few characters to keep track of, and the only setting is Boston in the years 1642-1649.

    The ending (Chapter 23) is dynamic, and includes a bit of a plot twist, which was another pleasant surprise.  Chapter 24 is essentially an epilogue, and I thought it was powerful too.  There’s also a romance angle of course, but not to where male readers will be tempted to quit the book.  And the book isn’t meant to be a mystery either; the identity of Pearl’s father is revealed about halfway through.

Kewlest New Word ...

Nugatory (adj.) : of no value or importance; useless or futile

Others: Contumaciously (adv.); Irrefragable (adj.); and a bunch of archaic words as well.

Excerpts...

    “Worthy Sir,” answered the physician, who had now advanced to the foot of the platform.  “Pious Master Dimmesdale, can this be you?  Well, well, indeed!  We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straitly looked after!  We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.  Come, good Sir, and my dear friend, I pray you, let me lead you home!”  (pg. 142)

    Heretofore, the mother, while loving her child with the intensity of a sole affection, had schooled herself to hope for little other return than the waywardness of an April breeze; which spends its time in airy sport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion, and is petulant in its best of moods, and chills oftener than caresses you, when you take it to your bosom; in requital of which misdemeanors, it will sometimes, of its own vague purpose, kiss your cheek with a kind of tenderness, and play gently with your hair, and then be gone about its other idle business, leaving a dreamy pleasure at your heart.  (pg. 162.  One sentence, 12 commas, 2 semicolons, and a period)

“Be true!  Be true!  Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!”  (pg. 231, and cited by the author as the moral of this story)

    Hawthorne’s writing style, although excellent, takes some getting used to.  Like Proust, he goes batshit crazy with commas, an example of which is given in the excerpts, above.  He also seems obsessed with the words “tremulous” and “preternaturally”.  If you decide to read The Scarlet Letter on your Kindle, it would be interesting to see just how frequently these two words appear.  I read it in paperback, so couldn’t check on this.

    Hawthorne also uses a lot of “period” vocabulary and spellings, such as: trode, betokened, fain, betwixt, subtile, adown, bedizen, clew, plash, agone, veriest, cumber, gayety, betimes, ledst, animadversion, galliard, practicable, and tost.  I’m not sure how much of this is 19^th-century lingo, and how much is from the 17^th century.  I note that of those 19 words, spellchecker is okay with all but six of them.  Maybe I’m just vocabulary-deficient.

    7½ Stars.  I’ve been meaning to tackle The Scarlet Letter since last Christmas, when my son pointed out that it is a much shorter novel than I thought.  Serendipitously, when I discovered a local “Free Little Library” in our neighborhood a couple months ago this was one of the few books it contained.  I took it as a cosmic omen.

    One other note.  The Goodreads rating for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is 3.39.  The Goodreads rating for E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey is 3.67.  This tells you something about the literary tastes and sophistication of 21^st-century American readers.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

   2009; 319 pages.  New Author? : Yes and Yes.  Genre : Classic Literature; Mash-Up; Humor.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

    Hey, why don’t we liven up Jane Austen’s acclaimed-but-boring (at least to us guys) novel, Pride and Prejudice by adding a bunch of zombies to the story?  That’ll give it some gore and violence, to say nothing of killing the undead and eating BRAINZ!

    While we’re at it, let’s throw in some Ninjas, a Shaolin master, and a team of kick-ass kung-fu girls too.  And some vomit.  Yeah, that’s the ticket!

    And to top it off, let’s add cauliflower eating!  Awesome!!

    Wait.  What was that last one?

What’s To Like...

    I’ve been wanting to read Pride & Prejudice for some time, but not Jane Austen’s version of it, so Pride and Prejudice and Zombies seemed like the logical choice.  It did seem prudent, however, to read the plot synopsis in Wikipedia beforehand, and that really helped in understanding what was going on.

    This is really more of a mash-up than a smooth blend of two genres.  ANAICT, Seth Grahame-Smith uses Jane Austen’s verbiage quite a bit, and then tosses zombie scenes in for the heck of it at various spots.  It works better than you’d think, although some of the (presumably) Austen text sometimes made for slow reading.

    The titular themes of pride and prejudice are studied in depth through the two main protagonists – Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy.  But a lot of other topics are here as well – “Regency” manners and upbringing; the importance of money and status; the learning of the social graces and civility; and last-but-not-least, the absolute necessity of improving the position of one’s family by marrying for money or gain in social standing.

   In addition to the zombie fighting, there are lots of other neat things in the story – the game of Kiss Me Deer, the Seven Cut of Shame, and some way-kewl illustrations in this particular edition.  There is also the recurring double-entendre concerning “balls”, and apparently, back in that day, marrying one’s cousin was NBD.

    The ending is well done, although I suspect we have Ms. Austen to thank for this.  Be sure to read the section, “A Reader’s Discussion Guide” in the appendix; it’s quite excellent.  And reportedly (per Wikipedia), P&P&Zit is being made into a movie, due out in the summer of 2016.

Kewlest New Word ...

Propinquity (n.) : proximity; the state of being close to something or someone.

Others : Phaeton (n., and not a Star Trek weapon).

Excerpts...

    “Pride,” observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, “is a very common failing, I believe.  By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed.”

    Elizabeth could not help but roll her eyes as Mary continued.

    “Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously.  A person may be proud without being vain.  Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”

    At this point, Elizabeth let out a most palpable yawn.  (pg. 19)

    “When they all removed to Brighton, therefore, you had no reason, I suppose, to believe them fond of each other?”

    “Not the slightest.  I can remember no symptom of affection on either side, other than her carving his name into her midriff with a dagger; but this was customary with Lydia.”  (pg. 227)

“Spoken like one who has never known the ecstasy of holding a still-beating heart in her hand.”  (pg. 44 )

    The 800+ reviews at Amazon tend to fall into two major categories.  In one camp are those who have read the Jane Austen classic version, love it, and think Grahame-Smith’s undead take-off is a crime against literary humanity.  In the other camp are those who have read Austen’s book, hated it, and hail the zombie version as a refreshing new slant to a yawn-inducing classic.

     Since I haven’t read the Austen version (I strive to avoid highbrow classic literature like the plague), I’ll take the middle ground on this.  The mash-up worked, but still felt awkward.  But Grahame-Smith’s close adherence to the original storyline and Austen’s text and style means I got a good feel for Austen’s Pride and Prejudice without undergoing the drudgery of actually reading it.

    7 Stars.  It’s rather obvious, but add 1 Star if you hated reading Austen’s opus; subtract 1 Star if you read it and loved it.  And if you’re one of those devotees who likes to go on a literary retreat called a “Jane Austen Weekend” (such things really exist), I don’t know whether to pity you or be in awe.

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

1891; 244 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Classic Lit; Gothic Fantasy.  Overall Rating :  9*/10.

    Dorian Gray is a young man of exceptional beauty, whose likeness is exquisitely captured by an artist friend of his.  But upon viewing the finished work, Dorian is sad, and even jealous, because while he'll grow old and lose his beauty, the portrait will remain forever young.  He wishes he could trade destinies with the painting.  And somehow this causes Fate to cruelly grant him his wish.

What's To Like...
    The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's only novel, caused both a sensation and a scandal when it was first published in 1890.  On one hand, Wilde gives some poignant observations on love, society, and morality in general; and in particular the upper classes of Britain and American women.  Moreover, it's the best piece of Gothic literature since Edgar Allan Poe.

    OTOH, the first version of TPoDG had overt allusions to homosexuality, which the 1890's Victorian society found highly offensive.  Wilde was forced to tone down and/or delete some of the more blatant passages before the 1891 printing, which is usually the version published nowadays.

    Dorian Gray is a great character study and reminds me a lot of Dostoevsky's Prince Myshkin, in the recently-read The Idiot.  Both start out fetchingly naive and filled with ideals  and good intentions.  Both gradually become tainted: Prince Myshkin by Russian society; Dorian by his own guilt and sin.

    Finally, the central "scapegoat/sin-eater" theme is a great one.  If you could have something else absorb the responsibility for the ugly, sinful wrongs you commit, how would it affect your actions?  And what role would your conscience play?

Kewlest New Word...
Jarvies  :  Plural of jarvey, the driver of a carriage for hire.

Excerpts...
    "I make a great difference between people.  I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.  A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.  I have not got one who is a fool.  They are all men of some intellectual power and consequently they all appreciate me.  Is that vain of me?  I think it is rather vain."  (pg. 13; Kindle 3%)

    Society - civilized society, at least - is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.  It feels instinctively that manners are more important than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef. (pg. 138; Kindle 63%)

"Dorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself."  (pg.20)
    I thoroughly enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray, and I am not a fan of Classic Lit by any means.  Outside of one stretch of philosophizing, the rest of the novel was superb.  The pacing was good, the premise was original, and the Faustian horror would make Poe smile.  There was some subtle ironic humor seasoned in, and Wilde's jabs at society are numerous, sharp, fascinating, and spot on.

    The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde's only novel.  After this, he turned to writing plays, and then got embroiled in a series of legal suits/countersuits, trials, imprisonment, and deteriorating health.  By 1900, a short 10 years after TPoDG was first published, Oscar Wilde was dead.

    9 Stars. This is a free download for the Kindle at Amazon.

Three Men on the Bummel - Jerome K. Jerome

1900; 207 pages. New Author? : No. Genre : Claasic Lit; Humor. Overall Rating : 8*/10.

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Three Men on the Bummel is the sequel to Jerome K. Jerome's incredibly successful Three Men in a Boat, which was reviewed here. This time our intrepid trio, instead of boating up the Thames, go bicycling around the Black Forest region of Germany. This precludes the dog from accompanying them, but the usual humor, mayhem, and narrator's insight are here.

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Bummel is a German word, and doesn't really have an English equivalent. Jerome gives his definition late in the book. "Stroll" is close, but implies walking and of a short duration. This outing lasts more than a week, and involves riding on bicycles.

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What's To Like...

Besides the entertaining wit, 3MotB again offers an enlightening glimpse of life in Europe at the dawn of the 20th century. Transportation entails horses, trains, or walking; but now bicycling has become a recreational craze, and leisure time is increasing. Even an average British citizen can afford to cycle around Europe.

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3MotB spotlights Germany, and was written after Jerome and his wife spent some time there in 1898. Jerome gives us a lot of commentary on the German psyche, some of it eerily prescient of their World War One (and WW2) mindset.

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But for the most part, Jerome speaks kindly of the Deutschlanders. And he still has his self-deprecating ways - our trio get into countless pickles - especially ones involving language and directional issues - when the natives often have to help them out.

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Kewlest New Word...

Droshky : an open, 4-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage.

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Excerpts...

"If nobody ever tried a new thing the world would come to a standstill. It is by-"

"I know all that can be said on that side of the argument," I interrupted. "I agree in trying new experiments up to thirty-five; after thirty-five I consider a man is entitled to think of himself. You and I have done our duty in this direction, you especially. You have been blown up by a patent gas lamp-"

He said: "I really think, you know, that was my fault; I think I must have screwed it up too tight." (pg. 34)

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Your German likes the country, but he prefers it as the lady thought she would the noble savage - more dressed. He likes his walk through the wood - to a restaurant. But the pathway must not be too steep, it must have a brick gutter running down one side of it to drain it, and every twenty yards or so it must have its seat on which he can rest and mop his brow; (pgs. 97-98)

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Shakespeare and Milton may have done their best to spread acquaintance with the English tongue among the less favoured inhabitants of Europe. (...) But the man who has spread the knowledge of English from Cape St. Vincent to the Ural Mountains is the Englishman who, unable or unwilling to learn a single word of any language but his own, travels purse in hand to every corner of the Continent. One may be shocked at his ignorance, annoyed at his stupidity, angry at his presumption. But the practical fact remains: he it is that is Anglicizing Europe. (pg. 164)

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...if a woman wanted a diamond tiara, she would explain that it was to save the expense of a bonnet. (pg. 24)

Three Men on the Bummel is a light, fun, wit-filled book; which almost, but not quite, measures up to its acclaimed predecessor. Some think this is due to the dog being absent; or that it lacks a unifying theme, such as the Thames was in Three Men in a Boat. It is always hard for a sequel (except for the Mad Max movies) to measure up to the original.

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Personally, I thought the problem is that Jerome's focus is now external. Before, he poked fun at his own English culture. Now, he's critiquing someone else's - the Germans. If I laugh at myself, everone laughs with me. If I laugh at others, someone will no longer find it as humorous.

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Anybody who loved Three Men on a Boat will also like Three Men on the Bummel. But if you are going to read only one of these, choose 3MiaB. 8 Stars.

Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome

1889; 195 pages. New Author?: Yes. Genre : Classic Lit; Humor. Full Title : Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog!). Overall Rating : 9*/10.

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Three chums, convinced that they have every one of 107 maladies save one (the only one they don't have is "Housemaid's Knee"), decide it would be therapeutic to spend a fortnight boating up-then-down the Thames River. A terrier named Montmorency joins them, and misadventures arise.

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What's To Like...

Despite his contemporary critics sniffing at it for being lowbrow, Three Men In A Boat was an instant hit with the Victorian reading crowd. Jerome K. Jerome (that's his real name) deftly combines (via his narrator) head-scratching (il)-logic, quaint understatement, absurd anecdotes, and the characters' self-delusion into a witty story that still holds up nicely today. Jerome gives some beautiful descriptions of the scenery along the Thames, as well as some of the rich history (such as the signing of the Magna Charta at Runnymede) that took place in the area.

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There are 19 chapters, each with a helpful outline at its beginning and some awesome drawings that I presume were in the original edition. Jerome offers some delightful discourses; some tongue-in-cheek (such as odiferous cheeses and camping in the rain), others quite wistfully serious (such as the hustle and bustle of the 19th Century and the thrill of sailing on the River). Indeed, at one point he speculates about whether everyday items from his time (specifically, a tacky porcelain dog) will become prized antiques in the year 2000. He was uncannily accurate.

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There really isn't much action, which disappointed some readers. So the book rests on the quality of the the narrator's tangential stories and pratfalls that befall our hapless hypochondriacs. IMNSHO, Jerome pulls it off wonderfully.

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Kewl New Words...

Beanfeast : an annual dinner party, given by an employer for his employees. Weir : a low dam across a river to raise its level. Riparian : relating to the banks of a river. Mouch (n) : Freeloading. Here : "...to come and mouch round the lock with their dogs, and flirt, and smoke...". Gramercy : an interjection expressing gratitude. Dosshouse : a cheap lodging; a flophouse. Baccy : tobacco leaves. Bally : euphemistic for "bloody". As in "what a bally/bloody/flaming idiot".

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Excerpts...

From the dim woods on either bank, Night's ghostly army, the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering rearguard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from her phantom palace, lit by pale stars, reigns in stillness. (pg. 14-15; an example of Jerome's descriptive talent).

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In the church is a memorial to Mrs. Sarah Hill, who bequeathed &pound, 1 annually, to be divided at Easter, between two boys and two girls who "have never been undutiful to their parents; who have never been known to swear or to tell untruths, to steal, or to break windows." Fancy giving up all that for five shillings a year! It is not worth it. (pg. 140)

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It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.

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And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn't a finger mark on it. I take great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do. (pg. 152)

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He would go out in a November fog and come home with a sunstroke. (pg. 53)

Jerome originally set out to write a serious travelogue about the sights and history of the Thames. Luckily for us, he changed his mind and went the humorous route. His comedy was ground-breaking, and influenced British humorists (such as P.G. Wodehouse and Douglas Adams) for generations to come.

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TMIAB could stand on that alone. But it also captures the "spark" of the late-Victorian era, and gives us a wonderful look at life in 19th-Century English life : before the age of planes, cars, and MacDonalds. What a literary delight! 9 Stars.

The Stranger - Albert Camus

1946; American translation by Matthew Ward - 1989. 123 pages. Awards : Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. Genre : Classic Lit. Overall Rating : B..

    There is a plot, but really The Stranger (better translated as "The Outsider") is a philosophy/character study, where the events serve merely as background. The spotlight here is on Absurdism, and you're welcome to read the Wikipedia article on that here.

   .The central character is Meursault (his first name is never given) and his approach to life can be seen in a couple of quotations :

"...my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings..." (pg. 65)

"My mind was always on what's coming next, today or tomorrow." (pg. 100)
    .In a way, Meursault reminded me of Homer Simpson, albeit without any comedy. "To be or not to.... oooh, look! Doughnuts!" He must have been a handsome devil, because he certainly didn't have a romantic bone in his body. When his GF Maria asks him if he loves her, he says :

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"I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so. She looked sad." (pg. 35).
     Well d'uh!, Meursault. Shortly thereafter, Maria asks if he wants to marry her (she's a slow learner), and he replies, "I said it didn't make any difference and that we could if she wanted to." (pg. 41). Yeah, we have a real Romeo here.

What is Absurdism?
    The central theme of this philosophy is that the world is absurd. Not as in Three Stooges absurdity, but in the sense that it is an indifferent, uncaring universe. There is no such thing as karma; good things happen to bad people, and vice versa.
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    If this is so, Camus offers three reactions; two of which he regards as unsatisfactory. First, you can commit suicide ("life isn't worth living if there isn't any meaning to it"). Second you can embrace a theological rationalization ("if there is no God, I guess I'll have to invent one to bring meaning to life").

   .The third alternative, adapted by Meursault and the only one advocated by Camus, is to be indifferent to the events in life. Thus, Meursault has little or no reaction to his mother dying, and likewise little or no reaction to his boss's proposal of a key promotion involving the desirable perk of moving to Paris. These are no more important than the sun beating down on his head, or him eating something because he's hungry. Alas for Meursault, this means he is equally indifferent to killing a man, which results in his trial, conviction (he is an absurdly incompetent defendant), and sentence to death via guillotine.

   .At the end, Meursault becomes aware of his impending demise, and in the last couple pages, breaks out of his indifference. Personally, I would've liked the narrative to continue right up to the point where the blade is about to fall, but I suppose Camus knows better than I when to end a story. This is a very interesting book, but only when you're in the mood for philosophical musing, not an event-packed storyline.

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What is Existentialism?
    Absurdism is an offshoot of Existentialism, and The Stranger is frequently said to (also) be an existential story. Everything I know about Existentialism comes from reading Waiting For Godot and Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead, and the philosophical outlook in those two plays is markedly different. Beyond that, Existentialism is a vaguely-defined entity that no two people seem to agree on ("Progressive Music" is like that, too), so we'll have to wait until I re-read (or someone else reads) WFG or R&GAD for a lively discussion of that.

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

1939; 581 pages. Genre : American Literature. Awards : 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Novels. John Steinbeck received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature. Overall Rating : A.
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    Steinbeck's masterpiece, which chronicles the journey of a family of sharecroppers who, having been forced off their Oklahoma farm, travel Route 66 t0 California, in search of the Promised Land.

What's To Like...
    What can I say? The book is worthy of the accolades that have been heaped upon it. Steinbeck demonstrates his storytelling skills in the chapters dealing with the Joad family; then demonstrates his writing skills in the intermezzo chapters that step away from the narrative and give you a more direct relating of what was going on in America during the Dust Bowl era.
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    I especially liked the attention Steinbeck gives to minor characters. Like the cook and waitress (Al and Mae) at a nondescript truck stop in Chapter 15. Any other author would've just given them cursory attention, but Steinbeck makes them come alive. Indeed, the character development throughout TGOW is superb. These aren't two-dimensional people; they change and evolve throughout the book. Pa may lead the clan at the beginning, but by the end, it's Ma who is holding the remnants of the family together.

What's Not To Like...
    If you're president of a bank or own a thousand-acre farm in California, you probably won't like this book. Indeed, such people raised a furor when TGOW was first published. It was banned in some places, and burned in others. Which is of course ironic, since it is well known that public interest in a book is directly proportional to the number of times it is requested to be banned.
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    Also, you can tell after 50 pages or so, that this is not a sunshine-and-puppy-dogs, happy-ending book. Finally, at 581 total pages, this is not a book to start on Sunday night, when you have a book report due on Monday morning.

What makes The Grapes of Wrath something special?
    In 2009, it will be 70 years since TGOW was first published. It isn't showing its age at all. The poor and the displaced are still with us, and are still getting shafted by the rich and the powerful. And those who help the have-nots will receive their share of the oppression.
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    Casy the Preacher in the story gets labeled a Socialist and/or a Communist (and loses his life) merely for trying to organize the farm workers. Steinbeck got called the same things in real life in the 40's. Curiously, in the 60's, it was the left who called him a turncoat because he was sympathetic to the war effort in Vietnam.

   .In truth, Steinbeck was a populist. He supported the powerless, and whatever it took to enable them to live decent and happy lives. The personal cost was enormous. Besides being slandered and labeled a Commie, the FBI kept tabs on him for years.

   .In the end, things haven't changed much in 70 years. If you stand up for the little people, you must be prepared for the inevitable smear campaign. You will be called a Socialist, an elitist, an Al-Qaeda operative, a Muslim, an Arab, and a collaborator with revolutionaries. Just ask our president-elect.
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    To close, this is a great book. It spotlights the plight of the have-nots, provokes thought, encourages activism, and oh-by-the-way is a literary masterpiece. Highly recommended.

Galileo - Bertolt Brecht

1966; 150 pages {8-41 : Introduction; 42-129 is the play itself; 133-150 : "Writing The Truth - Five Difficulties", an essay by Bertolt Brecht}. Genre : Dramatic Play. Overall Rating : C+ (the play rates a "B"; the rest rates a "D").

   .The book's plot centers around Galileo's invention (or more accurately, his plagiarism) of the telescope, and the impact this had on himself and on various institutions.

What's To Like...
    Brecht gives a very even-handed presentation of Galileo-the-scientist, and Science-the profession. Being a chemist, it was interesting to me to see these two topics in such a light. In the play, there are a wide variety of responses to the introduction of the telescope.

    .For Galileo, it starts out as simply a money-maker. He is told about the Dutch already producing small telescopes, and he duplicates the design and sells it to the city of Venice as if it were his own idea. Later, he uses it to observe the moon and planets, and discovers that Aristotle was wrong - the earth revolves around the sun; not vice versa.

   .The city officials are only concerned with its marketabiity. It is seen as an amusement at best, or else a device for Peeping Toms. The government sees it as a military breakthrough - they will now be able to spot enemy fleets hours before those fleets see them. The church couldn't care one way or the other, unless it contradicts Scripture, and their interpretation thereof. The latter of course leads to a sharp conflict between the Astronomer and Rome.

What's Not To Like...
    In a word, the Introduction, written by one Eric Bentley, sucks. Here's his first sentence :

    "Brecht was all wrong about the seventeenth centruy in general and about Galileo Galilei in particular."
    Wow! That really makes you want to read the book, eh? Bentley then spends 40 more boring pages, using Miltonesque verbiage, telling you why he's miffed at Brecht. In the end, it boils down to this : Brecht's Galileo isn't noble enough for Bentley. This one is a plagiarist, naive, and when it comes to facing the Inquisition's "methods", quite the coward.

    .Sorry, Eric. In Galileo, Brecht is exploring the inevitable tension between dogmatism and the search for truth. It's not meant to be historically accurate, any more than, say, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Get over it.
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    Oh, and the epilogic essay by Brecht is boring too.
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A word or two about Bertolt Brecht...
    Brecht (1898-1956) was born in Germany and was a lifelong Marxist and outspoken anti-Fascist. The latter appellation became hazardous to his health as Hitler came to power in the 1930's. So he chose to emigrate, but Hitler kept invading countries, necessitating multiple moves by Brecht. He went from Germany to Denmark, then to Sweden, then to Finland, and then to the USA. Here, as a self-proclaimed Marxist, he ended up being a target of the House of Un-American Activities. So his final move was (back) to East Germany. All because of his beliefs. Which is quite sad. Freedom-of-thought is ever the bane of dogma.
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    But I digress. I enjoyed Galileo, and even read it twice. Partly to better grasp the themes of the book, and partly cuz it was only 80 pages long. If you believe the Pope is infallible, or that Seeking After Truth is as noble an endeavor as you can have (and I fall into that latter category), then this book will challenge your beliefs.

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

1971; 200 pages (216 if you include the biographical note). Genre : Autobiographical fiction. (Is that an oxymoron?) Overall Rating : A-

  ..The Bell Jar was originally published in early 1963, and is Plath's only novel. It is a thinly-veiled autobiography of her summer internship at Mademoiselle Magazine in 1952, followed by her mental collapse when she returns home.
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What's To Like...
This is a beautifully-written novel, which is a rare treat. We have lots of great story-tellers nowadays (Dan Brown, James Patterson, Steve Berry, etc.); but frankly, they're not good writers. Plath paints stunning images, even when describing mundane things. A couple examples :
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"He had a big, wide, white toothpaste-ad smile." Kewlness. Or :
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"It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction - every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller, and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles an hour."

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    The 200 pages are divided into 20 chapters, and they almost all are exactly 10 pages long. One wonders if Ms. Plath also suffered from OCD.

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So what was Sylvia Plath's problem?
    Some think she was manic-depressive, but I doubt it. She had no "up" periods. Those who think she was clinically depressed are on the right track. Here's a glimpse (from page 2 of TBJ) into her world, describing her summer in NYC :

."I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus. I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn't get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
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    In the whole book, I never found Plath to "feel" anything. At one point, she remarks that she hadn't felt happy since she was nine. She supposes she'll fall in love and get married someday, but you can tell she's never going to feel "love". She enters into her first sexual encounter the same way she approaches electro-shock therapy : "Let's get this over with." Indeed, those five words might sum up her entire outlook on life.
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    Sadly, although I felt like I grasped Plath's mental issues, I can't think of a solution for them. The electro-shock therapy seemed to help, but subsequent events prove this either was an illusion, or was temporary. While "playing the game" of getting well, she discusses various methods for killing oneself with her similarly-afflicted friend, Joan. And when Joan hangs herself in the woods, you still don't get the impression that Plath "feels" anything.

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    To close, The Bell Jar is a fantastic read, but it is broodingly dark and sad, without an uplifting paragraph anywhere in it. It gave me a great deal of insight into the world of depression, but I still can't say I understand it, nor would I know how to talk someone who's depressed out of suicide. The world was too soon deprived on Sylvia Plath's literary excellence, and 45 years later, we still don't have any answers for her plight. In February 1963, one month after The Bell Jar was first published, Sylvia Plath turned on the gas, and stuck her head into the deepest part of her oven.

A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean

Overall Rating : C-.

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73-year old Norman Maclean's debut novella was an instant hit. A semi-autobiographical (I love that term. It means, "I'm gonna write about my life, but I get to lie at times.") story about the family relationships, primarily between Norman, his dad and his younger brother. The setting is ...erm... fly-fishing. Pure and simple.

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Being only 104 pages long, ARRTI is bundled with two other Maclean stories - one about a summer he spent in a logging camp; the other about a year he worked for the US Forest Service.

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What's To Like...

Maclean has a nice, poetic style. If you like your storylines heavy on the drama and light on the action, you'll love ARRTI. I don't think anyone before Maclean ever thought to use fly-fishing as a metaphor for life.

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Personally, I liked the two "add on" stories better. They have a bit more plot, a bit more action, and best of all, give a glimpse into what being a logger and a ranger was like 90 years ago. Daily life was a lot different then, and it's enlightening to get insight into it. In that respect, it reminded me a lot of Isaac's Storm, which was reviewed here.

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What's Not To Like...

Did I mention it's light on action?

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In truth, ARRTI is devoid of action.Plot-wise (PWP), little brother is self-destructive, and the 30-something author can't figure out how to help him. He asks his Dad, he of zero parenting skills, who also has nothing to offer. A lazy bum of a brother-in-law shows up, who at least puts the "fun" back into "dysfunctional" by boinking the town whore and drinking everybody's beer. The Maclean women's sole activity is nagging the Maclean men.

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All-in-all, pretty uninspiring stuff. Alternatively, those who loved ARRTI call the book "dark". Oh, the book was made into a movie, starring Robert Redford, and my carpool partner (who has excellent movie tastes) says it's a yawner too.

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Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it...

Judging from other reviews, I am in the minority when it comes to ARRTI. They gush about the poetry, the philosophy, the metaphysics, and the key to life, the universe, and everything else. Here's one example :

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(ARRTI is) "detailed descriptions of fly-fishing and nature to engage with a number of profound metaphysical questions". Whoa! Way deep, huh?

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El toro poo-poo. Maclean wrote about fly-fishing cuz it's one of the few things he knew something about. Anything can be hyped into being a metaphor for life. For instance, here's a quote from yesterday at MSNBC.com, coinciding with the advent of the baseball season :

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"Bart Giamatti, the former commisioner of baseball, wrote eloquently about that journey that begins with the batter standing at home, trying first to leave it and then to get back - to be safe once again at home. For him, it was a grand metaphor of life, this circuituous journey that could be fraught with danger and obstacles, that could demand daring and bravery to complete."

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Wow! More way deep stuff, eh? IMHO, they're both ridiculous, unless you happen to be a baseball or fly-fishing fanatic.

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But I digress. For me ARRTI was a ploddingly slow read, lacking any plot and action, and saved only by the two add-on tales. I must admit it's well-written; now if Maclean could only have thought of some sort of storyline to drape his flowery philosophy around. If you want to see this sort of genre done much better, try The Thin Place, by Kathryn Davis, which we'll review in the near future.

The Ides of March - Thornton Wilder

Overall Rating : C+.

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Thornton Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He won Pulitzer Prizes for The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) and Our Town (1938).

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TIoM is one of his later works, and frankly was not a big seller. It deals with the 6 months or so leading up to Julius Caesar's assassination ("Et tu, Brute", and all that). At 191 pages, it was an opportunity to read something "high brow" for a change, without too much of an investment in time.

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This is not a historical novel - Wilder makes that clear from the beginning. He 'borrows' a number of things that actually occurred 5-15 years earlier, and time-shifts them to 45-44 B.C. for the sake of his book.

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What's To Like...

The style is wonderfully unique. There's a high-falutin' word for it : epistolary. Basically, the story here is written as a series of letters from/to the various characters - Caesar, his wife, a lady named Clodia, Cicero, Cleopatra, etc. You can read more about this style here. It works. I'd enjoy trying to write a story in this mode.

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Being a series of letters, there's always a convenient place to stop if you're a late night reader like I am. Overall, Wilder divides TIoM into 4 "books". They are not chronological; instead, they deal with different themes. Book 1 introduces the characters; Book 2 deals with Love; Book 3 focuses on Religion; and Book 4 details the events that lead up to Caesar being perforated 23 times.

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The book provides some delightful glimpses into the daily thoughts and activities of people living at the height of the Roman Empire. Okay, actually it's all just Wilder's opinions as to what these would have been, just like Shakespeare did in his play. But it's still quite interesting.

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The central theme of the book is the "human-ness" of us all. Slave or emperor; ancient Roman or modern reader; we all put our pants on one leg at a time. Inspiring? No. But can you relate? Absolutely.

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What's Not To Like...

PWP? For the acronymically-challenged, click here. If you're looking for an action-packed storyline, you're better off with Gene Wilder than with Thornton. Ditto for hoping for any humor and/or surprising plot twists. This book can drag at times, especially if you have to plod through a verbose diatribe by Cicero or some flowery prose by Catullus.

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What Makes Thronton Wilder Worthy of a Pulitzer Prize...

I've read The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and will comment on it at some other time. And I've had to sit through Our Town at least once a long time ago, as it used to be the default choice for every High School Drama Club director who found himself with a limited budget and a dearth of talent.

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There are recurring themes in Wilder's works. First and foremost is the focus on our humanity. We may aspire to have the world revolve around us, but the truth is, God makes the rain fall on every man.

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Speaking of the Deity/Deities; Wilder doesn't seem to have a high regard for theism of any sort. At its best, the concept of God(s) serves to give us inner comfort and inspiration; at its worst, Religion exists to be manipulated for self-serving purposes.

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So what is important to Thornton Wilder? Love. Pure and simple; and in all of its aspects. We live; we die; and in a couple generations, no one remembers us. But to love, and be loved, makes it all worthwhile.

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Ah, but I digress. The Ides of March is a decent book, if you're in the mood for something philosophical, rather than a thrill-a-minute tale. We'll give it a C+ and snort condescendingly to indicate we've read something high-brow. We'll recommend it to others, but I don't think this will motivate me to pick up anything by Nathaniel Hawthorne or Elizabeth Browning.