So Long as Men Can Breathe by Clinton Heylin

Not at all what I expected – I guess I should have looked at it a little more carefully before buying. Sometimes those of us who love books and reading as much as I do have our “auto-buy” module switched on when we see a title, an author, or a dust jacket that strikes us in a particular way.

The book was useful, and I am glad I added this bit of arcane knowledge to my bank. Heylin tells the story of the publication of Shakespeare’s sonnets. I always thought they were published under his direction, but apparently not. The author offers a plausible explanation for Shakespeare’s distance from the original collection.

Not for the everyday reader, but certainly for any professional who cares about Shakespeare as the grteat writer he really is. 4 stars.

--Chiron, 7/12/10

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

Imagine a whale – a great blue whale – then imagine examining every cell of the body of that whale. Following the whale is a 20 pound striped bass. Every once in a while, the striper passes near the eye of the whale, but it is hardly noticed. As we approach the tale of the whale, the striper appears and accompanies us during the last of the examination. That striper is the end of 2666. Furthermore, there are all sorts of threads and lines trailing off from the whale. These all lead to other novels by Bolaño.

This massive – 900 page – work is a puzzle of the first order. It begins with the story of four literature professors. Three of them hail from Turin, Italy, Paris, France, and Madrid, Spain. All independently discover and become obsessed with Benno von Archimboldi. They begin to appear at conferences, and slowly gather a tight-knit yet enthusiastic group of followers. Liz Norton, from London England, joins the obsession and becomes a close friend of all three.

Benno von Archimboldi disappears, but remains in contact with his publisher. Eventually, he becomes wealthy and is shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The professors decide to try and track down Archimboldi. They end up visiting a mysterious German in a Mexican prison accused of the murders of six women. This is part one (of five) of the novel.

Part two involves the life story of a Mexican pharmacist who is a book collector and also obsessed with Archimboldi. He appears briefly in part one to help the three critics. This book is his life story.

Part three is about a man named Fate. It details the death of his mother, and his confusion and lack of concern parallels Camus’ The Stranger. I am not sure how this part fits into the overall novel. I will have to read 2666 a second time, and take much more detailed notes. I think this book is an allegory for the whole novel and a philosophical discourse on fate – lower case.

Part four is a catalogue of crimes committed in the fictional town of Santa Theresa, Mexico. During the 1990s, 343 women were strangled, stabbed, raped, and mutilated their bodies dumped in various places around Santa Theresa – actually a stand-in for Juárez, Mexico near the US Border -- where 300 plus actual murders took place. Only a handful were ever solved, largely due to the incompetence, corruption, and lack of concern of the police. This part was difficult to read, and I kept asking myself why I was reading all this horror. However, I could not stop, even though I felt I would only read one more case.

Part five, entitled “The Part about Archimboldi,” details the life of Hans Reiter, born in Germany in 1920, Wehrmacht soldier on the eastern front, who survives the war and becomes a writer. He changes his name to Benno von Archimboldi because he believes the American and German police are looking for him. “Reiter” in German means “riddle.” Archimboldi, Hans Reiter, and Klaus Haas – the prisoner in Mexico -- are all described as tall, blue-eyed, blond Germans.

All these threads are carefully and cleverly woven into a thick, thick hawser that ties this story together. The novel is a gigantic puzzle, and will require at least one more reading to get a full grasp of its true meaning.

Roberto Bolaño died at the age of 50 in 2003. He frantically tried to finish the novel before he died. He considered it his masterpiece. The prose is engaging and the book is difficult to put down. The hyper detail Bolaño employs in his story is also curious. Sometimes he will use three words or phrases to describe something. For example, when Archimboldi began his search for a publisher, he notes one

“in Cologne, a house that from time to time published some novel or volume of poetry or history, but whose catalog mainly consisted of practical manuals that might just as easily provide instruction on the proper care of a garden as on the correct administration of first aid or the reconstruction of the shells of destroyed houses” (793).

The story has many, many digressions that seem to trail off the main story line, but the purpose of some became clear when I finished the novel. One digression is the story of a “shadowy Swabian writer…who knew quite a bit about contemporary German Literature” (18-22). He tells the four professors about meeting Archimboldi. The story is five pages, with only commas for punctuation. Bolaño wrote this in the style of someone trying to piece together the memory of an event he knows is of supreme importance to the listeners. Some of the other digressions trail off into art, literature, mathematics, and even Greek mythology. One interesting digression involves Giuseppe Arcimboldo, a 16th-century painter known for his bizarre portraits entirely formed by fruit, vegetables, plant material, and the occasional insect.

The characters also dream – all of them, all the time. A dissertation might be the best place to explore the significance of these dreams to the story line. Here is a fragment of one of the shorter dreams. Florita Almada is a television psychic who has visions of some of the murders:

“Sometimes she dreamed she was a schoolteacher and she lived in the country. Her school was at the top of a hill with a view of the town, the brown and white houses, the dusky yellow roofs where the old folks sometimes settled to gaze down on the dirt streets. From the schoolyard she could see the girls on their way to class. Black hair gathered in ponytails or held back with bands. Dark-skinned faces and white smiles. In the distance, the peasants worked on the land, reaped fruit from the desert, tended flocks of goats.” (456)

This truly is an epic masterpiece. It ranks up there with Joyce’s Ulysses and Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, incidentally by a reclusive writer who only contacts his publisher by mail. I want to read more of Bolaño, but I will need a seriously long break before I dive into more of his work. Ten stars out of five.

--Chiron, 7/10/10

Mama's Promises by Marilyn Nelson Waniek

I discovered this poet at the AP English Literature grading session in Louisville, KY this past June. The poem “The Century Quilt” had all the qualities of poetry I like to read and emulate. Most of the poems in the collection share these qualities. The poem is long, but the first two stanzas provide a good idea of Waniek’s work:

My sister and I were in love
With Meema’s Indian blanket.
We fell asleep under army green
Issued to Daddy by Supply
When Meema came to live with us
She brought her medicines, her cane,
And the blanket I found on my sister’s bed
The last time I visited her.
I remember how I’d planned to inherit
that blanket, how we used to wrap ourselves
at play in its folds and be chieftains
and princesses.

Now I’ve found a quilt
I’d like to die under;
Six Van Dyke brown squares,
Two white ones, and one square
the yellowbrown of Mama’s cheeks.
Each square holds a sweet gum leaf
Whose fingers I imagine
Would caress me into silence. (37)

Another good example of a clever, humorous poem is “A Strange Beautiful Woman”:

A strange beautiful woman
Met me in the mirror
The other night.
Hey,
I said,
What are you doing here?
She asked me
The same thing. (1).

A few are a bit obtuse and long, but I think a second reading might repair that view. So, I will hold back a star until I come around to these again. Four Stars

--Chiron, 7/7/10

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

In Tracy Chevalier’s latest novel, Remarkable Creatures, she has, once again, set her deft hand to drawing characters, situations, and landscapes to enthrall the reader.

This historical novel tells the story of Mary Anning, a poor girl during the Regency period in England. Her father, a cabinet maker, ekes out the barest of a living for his family. Mary has a unique talent for spotting fossils along the shoreline of southern England. She befriends Elizabeth Philpot, a spinster banished from London to Lyme Regis. Elizabeth, distraught at her removal as a “poor relation,” begins to wander the beaches and finds some interesting fossils.

Creatures is in opposition to Jane Austen’s stories with happy endings. In fact, Elizabeth chides her sister for living in the unreal world of Miss Austen. Elizabeth and her sisters – poor, unattractive, ungainly – have no hope of a good match, but they have learned to live with the disappointment, burying themselves in reading, gardening, and fossil hunting.

Mary and Elizabeth charge into the new, masculine world of paleontology and discover new species. Ironically, these women, “fossilized” by society, become famous for their fossils. The author also uses Brontë’s term, “creature,” to refer to the women in the story lending a double meaning to the title.

In the novel Girl with a Pearl Earring, Chevalier captured the feeling, atmosphere, and language of 17th-century Holland. She has done the same with England in the opening years of the 1800s. The chapters alternate narrators between Elizabeth and Mary, and Chevalier accurately voices Elizabeth, an upper class woman who is painfully aware of her circumstances and place in society, and Mary, the eldest daughter of a family struggling on the precipice of financial ruin and the workhouse.

Elizabeth says, “‘You must pardon my sister, sir,’ I said now. ‘Just before you arrived she had been complaining of a cough. She would not want to inflict her illness on a visitor’” (74). Right off the pages of Pride and Prejudice!

Mary, on the other hand sounds like this, “It weren’t just the money from selling the croc that changed things. It was knowing there was something to hunt for and I was better at finding it than most – this was what were different.” (111)

Unlike most of Austen’s Regency women, Mary pursues her passion regardless of the whispers of the townspeople, while Elizabeth is a bit more reserved, she does, on occasion, get her hackles up – a bit like Elizabeth Bennett of Pride and Prejudice.

For fans of Austen and Brontë, or readers interested in the early days of paleontology, or for those interested in period pieces set in 19th century England, or those who simply love a great story, this novel has something for everyone. Five stars.

--Chiron, 7/5/10

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

First of all, I will admit I am not, nor have I ever been, a fan of detective or “who-dun-it” genre fiction. If I thought really, really hard, I might come up with five or seven – absolute tops – titles I have read. This was a selection of a member of my book club, and I am glad it only took me a day to read it. I was antsy at the interruption in reading for my next review.

This novel is the “Adam and Eve” of every cliché in every detective novel or film noir of the 30s and 40s I have ever heard, read, or seen. I do like those old Marlowe movies with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. My wife and I are going to watch the film version of this novel tomorrow night.

I also have to admit the story had some level of interest, but it was cheesy. Do detectives and police officers and crooks really talk like that? “Her smile was as wide as Wilshire Boulevard” (10) and “The calves were beautiful, the ankles long and slim and with enough melodic line for a tone poem” (17) and “Hold me close you beast” (150). And what’s with the “okey”? Chandler also seems to have a thread of homophobia in the novel. He did attend British schools from the age of 12.

The one thing that never left my mind while reading Chandler was the film, “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” a paean to film noir that recaptures every cliché in scenes strung together from a dozen film noir classics and all hung on a story starring Steve Martin. I love that film!

Okay, alright, I liked it. But to paraphrase Miles (Paul Giamatti in “Sideways”), “I will not read any more detective who-dun-its!” Four stars

--Chiron, 6/29/10

The Subtle Knife: Dark Materials, Book II by Philip Pullman

This young adult novel is not nearly as popular as it should be. The story has as much power, interest, and excitement as Harry Potter -- only with a bit more adult politics, religion, and violence. Those who saw The Golden Compass as I did, and thoroughly enjoyed it, as I did, will want to pick up the sequel. My only regret is that I do not have volume three with me, since volume two ends on a figurative and literal cliff-hanger.

The story is thoroughly original, although it does have the typical fantasy tropes of heroes, helpers, evil beings, and an epic struggle between good and evil. The bad guys have only the thinnest of disguises, and I hope the issue of the good guys will be resolved in book three.

I find myself grading hundreds of essays for ETS, and that is the only reason it took so long to read. As soon as I get home, I am going to dive into book three. I will write more when I finish that volume. The series still has a solid five stars.

--Chiron, 6/15/10

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

When a novel nears a state of over-hyping, I lay it aside until the dust settles, so I can judge it on my own. Sawtelle fits this bill perfectly; furthermore, it deserves the hype. This near-perfect story ranks with Cold Mountain as beautifully written, with interesting characters, a great plot – but with an interesting twist: the story parallels Shakespeare’s Hamlet in many ways.

I have not read a single review of this novel, but about a third of the way through the 566 pages, I began taking notes. I pulled a file I use to teach Hamlet, and reviewed that. The more I thought about it and the more I read, the more pieces of this double-sided jigsaw fell into place. I only had to decide how the story would play out. When I finished, I checked out a few book review sites and found several who had also noticed the connection. This novel explains completely why I do not read full reviews before I read a book. I thoroughly enjoy piecing these things out for myself.

So, I am not going to give you any clues. If you are moderately familiar with the play, dig through Sawtelle yourself. If not, read the play – I promise it will do you no harm – take notes on the characters, then read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

I will, however, dip into a quote or two to demonstrate the fluid prose which meanders along like a slow river gradually building volume until the rocks appear, the rapids and the falls. You will not be disappointed. Wroblewski writes early on,

“When the night came on, she stood in the outer kennel run listening to the spring peepers begin their cacophony and the bats flickering overhead and she looked at the frozen oculus of the moon as it rose above the trees and cast its blue radiance across the field.” (33)

Despite its length, the pageant-like prose flowed over me, and as the tension built, I began to read in larger and larger clumps. It was that difficult to put aside.

Gar and Trudy operate a dog kennel with meticulous breeding records dating back to Gar’s father, John Sawtelle, who bought the farm and the surrounding buildings. Gar’s brother, Claude, sold his share in the business to Gar and disappeared for a number of years. Trudy wants a child, and after several failed attempts, they have a son, Edgar. The child immediately bonds with one of the dogs, Almondine, and the boy quickly becomes involved in the family business. A thread of magic realism wends its way through the story involving Edgar’s relationship with the “Sawtelle Dogs,” as they came to be known, and other figures from the past.

The young Edgar loved walks around the farm with his dad, and Wroblewski describes these rambles magnificently.

“Their route started behind the garden, where the fence stood just inside the woods’ edge. Then they followed the fence-post riddled creek to the far corner of their property, where an ancient, dying oak stood, so thick and massive its bare black limbs threw full shade on the root-crossed ground. A small clearing surrounded the tree, as if the forest had stepped back to make room for it to perish. From there they bore east, the land sweeping upward and passing through sumac and wild blackberry and sheets of lime-colored hay. The last quarter mile they walked the road. It wasn’t unusual for Edgar’s father to go the whole way in silence, and when he was quiet, each step became the step of some earlier walk (spray of water from laurel branches; the musty scent of rotting leaves rising from their footfalls; crows and flickers scolding one another across the field), until Edgar could draw up a memory – maybe an invention – of being carried along the creek as an infant while Almondine bounded ahead, man and boy and dog passing through the woods like voyageurs.” (68-69)

That phrase – “man and boy and dog” -- would make a perfect twitter post describing this story.

Only one minor flaw prevents absolute perfection in Edgar Sawtelle. Wroblewski has a tendency to – on occasion – do a bit too much “telling” rather than showing. Most annoyingly, he occasionally “shows AND tells.” Despite this, I cannot bear to take away a half a star, so this is rated 4 and ¾ stars.

--Chiron, 6/6/10

Time Among the Dead by Thomas Rayfiel

Secrets in every vase, crevice, and corner of a centuries old “Great House” – Upton Hall – inhabited by a crusty old grandfather, nearing ninety, a grandson, who might prove either a gold digger or an empathetic young man, and the usual cast of faithful servants all told in a genuine Victorian voice, add up to a devilishly interesting tale.

William, the seventh Earl of Upton, records his last days -- and decades of memories -- in a journal supplied by Seabold, his grandson. Pretty girls from a neighboring farm, a school chum of Seabold’s, and an old boat all play roles in this unfolding saga of a time in England long gone.

Surprisingly, this novel deals with quite a few philosophical questions of the 21st century. Permanent Press has done it again, albeit Rafiel has several novels to his credit. This novel has not yet been released, but should come out shortly.

The only flaw is two or three sentences which seemed quite awkward. However, those may be corrected in the final version. A ripping good yarn, eh what? 4-1/2 stars

--Chiron, 5/31/10

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

I have not read any Pynchon since grad school about 14 years ago, and this turned out a poor choice to pick back up – I barely made it to page 28 before invoking that most wonderful “Rule of 50.” The hard-bitten private eye, the beautiful, sexy, mysterious client, the smarmy, sarcastic LAPD cop, a murder, and guess who gets framed? I could not care less about any of these characters or what happens to them. I don’t care who killed the victim or why. The first 28 pages became one long boring cliché. Two stars just for the name and the glory of Gravity's Rainbow

--Chiron, 5/29/10

Thomas Jefferson: Author of America by Christopher Hitchens

This slim and interesting volume has Hitchens’ peculiar voice with occasional strident undertones leaking through. I don’t mind, because he is one of the best writers around today who criticizes the religious excesses our country founders in at this point in history. While most of the biography had a dry tone, the first chapter dealing with religion had the most meat for me. Four stars.

--Chiron, 5/28/2010

A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch

This novel puts me at half way through reading all of Iris Murdoch’s 26 novels. All of her characters are complex and interesting. Her stories are interesting, serious (mostly), poignant, unusual. A Severed Head adds to the mix with brilliant comedy at its drollest. Many times I actually laughed out loud to the consternation of the inevitable cat on my lap.

Martin Lynch-Gibbon runs a successful wine-merchant business. He married a beautiful, charming, sexy woman, Antonia, and he maintains a beautiful, charming, sexy mistress, Georgie. Add to this his best friend, an American psychiatrist, Palmer Anderson and his sister, Honor Klein. Martin’s sister Rosemary plays the role of mother to Martin. I understand Murdoch’s casts of characters much better now that I have read Conradi’s excellent biography.


What could possibly go wrong with this tangled gaggle of free spirits? Everything!

While the novel starts out with a “stiff-upper-lip” British tone, things do fall apart. As we top the hill, and the roller coaster rushes down, shocking and funny events made me read faster and faster all the way to the surprising ending – like the zigzags of the roller coaster for one last thrill as it pulls into the station.

Martin thinks he can have it all without consequences, but demons shadow him at every turn. While her style takes some getting used to, stay with it. Sometimes the beginnings do get confusing, but Murdoch’s marvelous prose will draw the reader deeper and deeper into the plot. Here Martin describes his wife, Antonia:

“Antonia has great tawny-colored intelligent searching eyes and a mobile expressive mouth which is usually twisted into some pout of amusement or tender interest. She is a tall woman; and although always a little inclined to plumpness has been called ‘willowy’, which I take as a reference to her characteristic twisted and unsymmetrical poses. Her face and body are never to be discovered quite in repose.” (17)



If you do not know Iris Murdoch, begin with The Bell, or her Booker Prize winner, The Sea, the Sea, or as I did with one of her last novels, The Book and the Brotherhood. You are in for hundreds of hours of delightful reading.

--Chiron, 5/23/10

Iris Murdoch: Letters and Diaries, 1939-1945 edited and introduced by Peter J. Conradi

After reading Conradi’s exquisite and thoroughly documented biography of Iris Murdoch, I thought I would have little to learn about one of my all time favorite novelists. But these insights -- directly from the pen of Murdoch herself -- reveal much more about her. Even with Conradi’s superb effort, these journals and letters reveal inside information about Iris’ life, loves, relationships, and early life. I hope this is the first in a long series from Conradi.

This volume from England -- not yet published in the US -- will appeal to devotees of Iris and should be must-reading for all serious students of her work.

If you have never read Iris Murdoch, you are missing out on one of the great novelists of the 20th century. She wrote 26 novels as well as a handful of plays, poetry, criticism, and philosophy. Murdoch is truly one of the most outstanding women of letters in the history of British literature. She ranks with Pope and only a smidgen below Dr. Samuel Johnson in my estimation. Start with her Booker Prize winner The Sea, the Sea, or The Bell, or, as I did, The Book and the Brotherhood. I am about half way through her novels, and this has inspired me to read A Severed Head next. 5 stars

--Chiron, 5/16/10

Pretend All Your Life by Joseph Mackin

Suspense/Thrillers are not really my thing, but I have to say, this 9/11 novel held my interest. While I should have seen the end coming, I didn’t and it was an unsettling surprise.

Richard Gallin is a successful New York plastic surgeon, who is spiraling downward since the loss of his son in one of the twin towers. He has an attractive girl friend, and he begins an affair with an art dealer who comes to his home to appraise some artworks. Encounters with a couple of other characters all complicate his life. This cast seems to weave a web of intrigue and danger around Gallin, but you will have to read this recently published first novel to find the who, what, when, where, why, and how for the resolution.

At first, I did not care for Richard -- he seemed not a nice person in several respects, but as Mackin peeled away the layers of his character, I began to soften. While I never completely sympathized with him, I did have a better understanding of his motivations.

Not, in my estimation a perfect novel, but then few are. A couple of bizarre coincidences also really annoyed me. 4 stars

--Chiron, 5/12/10

Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler

If you are lucky, sometime during your life, you will meet that one person you belong with -- to have and to hold from that day forward. If you are very lucky you get to be with that person for a long time. If you are extremely lucky, that person is the last you ever need to meet.

Anne Tyler is one of my favorite authors, and I haven’t read anything by her in quite a while. She revels in relationships made and broken, found at the oddest times, in the oddest places and sometimes solidified and lost in a couple of weeks.

Liam Pennywell is nearly 61. He has a job he loves and does well, but it was not what he prepared himself to do. He drives a used Geo, and he lives alone. His ex-wife is a librarian, and he has an acceptably good relationship with her because of their three daughters. One day he meets Eunice Dunstead, who faintly reminds me of Muriel in an earlier Tyler novel, The Accidental Tourist. Liam and Eunice bond almost immediately, and Liam even says, “You’re the woman I love, and life is too short to go through it without you” (230).

Alas, life is not so simple, and numerous complications crowd in on Liam and his solitary life -- strangers, family, a job -- and Liam reflects on his life in great detail. On Christmas day, Liam visits with his daughters and grandchild, but later, he opts for solitude. Tyler writes,

“It didn’t bother Liam that he would be spending Christmas Day on his own. He had a new book about Socrates that he was longing to get on with, and he’d picked up a rotisserie chicken from the Giant the day before (275) …

Before he settled in with his book, he put the chicken in the oven on low and he exchanged his sneakers for slippers. Then he switched on the lamp beside his favorite armchair. He sat down and opened the book and laid Jonah’s bookmark on the table next to him. He leaned back against the cushions with a contented sigh. All he lacked was a fireplace, he thought.

But that was all right. He didn’t need a fireplace.

Socrates said … What was it he had said? Something about the fewer his wants, the closer he was to the gods. And Liam really wanted nothing.” (276)

This novels has such a warm, sweet flow to it, I could barely put it down. It is a wonderful story, wonderfully told. I like Liam. I like Anne Tyler -- a whole great big whopping lot of like -- for both of them. Five stars

--Chiron, 5/5/10

Spooner by Pete Dexter

Pete Dexter’s new novel, Spooner, takes me back to the glory days of newspapers in the Philadelphia of my youth. The morning Inquirer and The Evening Bulletin, which my father brought with him every night as he came off the 5th street trolley from downtown, were sandwiched around the afternoon Daily News for the blue collar/sports-minded crowd. Pete Dexter wrote a column for this paper before leaving journalism to write fiction. This is his seventh novel along with a book of his newspaper columns.

Although originally from Michigan, Dexter has the voice of a Philadelphian when telling stories set in The City of Brotherly Love -- which is mostly true, except for when the Eagles, Flyers, Sixers, and Phillies host out-of-town teams. I remember one incident when sports fans booed Santa Claus and pelted him with snowballs during the final Eagle’s game of the 1968 season. Dexter’s characters have that quirky, interesting, volatile, and highly recognizable aura of Philadelphia about them.

Spooner kept me turning pages. As in all his works, Dexter sprinkles funny situations and comic utterances by his characters throughout, and let’s not forget his sometimes dark humor -- especially Chapter 85. The novel also has its poignant moments, however.

Dexter tells the story of Spooner, a misfit child whose father dies when he is quite young. Spooner’s mother remarries, and the novel largely revolves around the relationship between Spooner and his step-dad.

Near the end, Dexter writes,

“Spooner, a man by now of some reputation for going his own way, who had over the years taken pretty dramatic steps to be seen that way, craved the good opinion of his stepfather more than he could ever admit, and felt the chance to find out where he stood with him slipping away.” (442)

Dexter always takes me on a tour of familiar places in Philly -- Center City, the fictional, but all too recognizable “God’s Pocket district, and even Dirty Frank’s, a legendary bar near the Inquirer/Daily News building that was a favorite hangout of reporters. The narrator sounds like a cynical, observant reporter on the trail of an interesting story.

Although he denied being autobiographical during an interview when the book came out a few of months ago, numerous incidents in Spooner’s life match Dexter’s biography -- even down to the title of one of Spooner’s novels, Deadwood. The HBO series of a couple of years ago was based on Dexter’s Deadwood.

If you have never read Dexter, start with his National Book Award winner, Paris Trout. If you love newspapers and reporting as I do, you will want to read all of his works. Five Stars

--Chiron, 5/3/10

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

I dimly remember reading this back in the 60s when it first came out. I didn’t like it then -- as I did Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, and I have little additional regard for it now.

This postmodern piece of metafiction is somewhat interesting, but I think the antiwar message is muddled with all the stuff about the Tralfamadorians. I found the 100 plus uses of “So it goes” somewhat annoying. As a rule, postmodern fiction does little for me -- along with postmodern poetry, art, and film.

I read Catch-22 back in the 70s and took its anti-war message seriously. Years later, I re-read it and better appreciated the humor Heller infused into his story. Perhaps the TV series M.A.S.H., with its thinly veiled criticism of the Viet Nam war, influenced my second reading of Heller and Vonnegut.

Lately, I have been reading some of Vonnegut’s non-fiction, and when a member of my book club proposed it, I thought it might be the perfect time to re-visit Slaughterhouse Five. I am not giving up entirely on Vonnegut however, since I am going to read Cat’s Cradle soon. A trusted friend tells me it is his best. Three stars

--Chiron 4/25/10

The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt

About 140 pages from the end of this 675-page masterpiece – short-listed for the 2009 Booker Prize -- Byatt wrote, “They seem to me like coloured mosaics, with separate little pieces that fit together” (536). This perfectly describes this complicated, funny, sad, absorbing, sprawling story, which Byatt has skillfully interwoven with numerous historical events and figures: from Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw to Asquith, Kaiser Willhem, King Edward V, Tsar Nicholas II, and Queen Victoria, from the Fabian’s and anarchists of the late 19th century, to the last days of World War I.

If I pulled any one of the dozens of quotes I underlined, they would only provide a tantalizing glimpse of the whole – as if I held up a single piece of a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle and said, “Isn’t this a beautiful picture!” You simply have to read this novel and immerse yourself in this fantastic world created by the Booker Prize winner for Possession in 1990. I had the good fortune to meet A.S. Byatt at Baylor University when I was a grad student there. She delivered the Virginia Beall Lecture on Literature in 1994. She also sat in on a class I was taking – British Women Writers. Meeting her was one of the highlights of my graduate school experience. Her insights on writing, reading, and other English Women writers were priceless.

The Children’s Story revolves around five families. Basil Wellwood, a wealthy conservative banker and his wife, Katharina, and their two children; Basil’s brother Humphry Wellwood, also a banker – at first – and his wife Olive, a writer of children’s tales, and their eight children; Prosper Cain, widower and curator of a major museum in London, and his two children; Benedict Fludd, master potter, and his wife Seraphita and their three children; and, lastly, Phillip and Elise, orphans of poor working people.

Humphry and Olive give a “Midsummer Party,” and Byatt describes the attendees. “Their guests were socialists, anarchists, Quakers, Fabians, artists, editors, freethinkers and writers, who lived, either all the time, or at weekends and on holidays in converted cottages and old farmhouses…the children mingled with the adults, and spoke and were spoken to…They were neither dolls nor miniature adults. They were not hidden away in nurseries, but present at family meals, where their developing characters were taken seriously and rationally discussed, over supper or during long country walks” (31). These progressives had radical views on everything from raising children to women’s suffrage.

Byatt presents this foundational information and weaves a tale spanning about 30 years. Imagine the parties, the family crises, the current events, the intermingling of all these children with the arts – writing, painting, pottery, music, reading, education, the theater – well, you get the idea.

The most amazing thing is the fluid and beautiful prose Byatt has given the reader. If Possession has a revered place in your library and reading history -- and it should! -- you will become immersed in this marvelous story. The surprising and inevitable, shocking and unexpected endings will not fail to disappoint.

I would like to offer some tips which might make this a more enjoyable read. Make family trees of the five families and refer to it frequently. The children travel, party, and visit together frequently, and this helps keep the relationships in order. Also, I wish I had a detailed map of England in and around London, Cambridge, Canterbury, and Dungeness so I could follow the travels of these characters. One of my top reads of the year – 10 stars out of five.

--Chiron, 4/20/10

Ninety-Fifth Street; Sally's Hair; North Point North by John Koethe

The annual Beall Poetry Festival at Baylor University has become an event I eagerly await as each spring rolls around. This year was no exception, despite the fact I had only the slightest familiarity with only one of the three poets, Carol Frost. However, the poet that impressed and inspired me the most was John Koethe.

His poems tell stories, in plain language, with gentle strokes of humor, pathos, and intelligence -- all with profound insights into human nature and the creative mind. I even found an epithet for my own thesis, which Prof. Koethe enthusiastically gave me permission to use.

The epithet comes from the opening lines of the title poem of Ninety-Fifth Street. Koethe wrote,

“Words can bang around in your head
Forever, if you let them and you give them room.
I used to love poetry, and mostly I still do,
Though sometimes ‘I, too, dislike it.’ There must
be something real beyond the fiddle and perfunctory
Consolations and the quarrels -- as of course
There is, though what it is is difficult to say.” (72)

I was thrilled to recognize the interior quote as the words of Marianne Moore, the eccentric 20th century poet, editor, librarian, and teacher. Her apartment was moved from New York City -- following her death in 1972 -- and reassembled at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. So, I have a close personal connection to her work.

Like Moore, Koethe’s poetry is simple, yet profound with wit and irony. He tells stories and -- in the telling -- reveals philosophy and the inner workings of the human psyche.

Furthermore, a measure of irony lay in my selection of this epithet. To paraphrase Koethe, “I used to hate poetry, but now I mostly love it, although some I still dislike.”

The title poem from Sally’s Hair is a good example of the story-telling talent of Koethe. He writes,

“I took the train back from Poughkeepsie to New York
And in the Port Authority, there at the Suburban Transit window,
She asked, ‘Is this the bus to Princeton?’ -- which it was.
‘Do you know Geoffrey Love?’ I said I did. She had the blondest hair,

Which fell across her shoulders, and a dress of almost phosphorescent blue.
She liked Ayn Rand. We went to the Village for a drink,
Where I contrived to miss the last bus to New Jersey, and at 3 a.m. we
Walked around and found a cheap motel I hadn’t enough money for

And fooled around on the dilapidated couch. An early morning bus
(She’d come to see her brother), dinner plans and missed connections
And a message on his door about the Jersey shore. Next day
A summer dormitory room, my roommates gone: ‘Are you,’ she asked,

‘A hedonist?’ I guessed so. Then she had to catch her plane.
Sally -- Sally Roche. She called that night from Florida,
And I never heard from her again…” (69-70)

Hearing the poet read this poem impressed me with the power of his words, and his voice reinforced the story-telling nature of his work. I can only begin to hope to write something as touching, sincere, and emotional in my own work

Lastly, a poignant piece from North Point North, “The Little Boy.”

“I want to stay here awhile, now that there came to me
This other version of what passes in my life for time.
The little boy is in his sandbox. Mom and Dad
Are puttering around in the backyard.” (116)

I have to stop here, because memories of my own childhood are welling up inside, and I have gone on long enough. If these three samples don’t tempt you, you have not discovered the depth, the breath, the beauty of well-crafted poetry. 15 stars -- 5 each!

--Jim, 4/3/10

Pride and Prescience by Carrie Bebris

This novel was a quick read. Were I without distractions, I most likely could have finished it in a day. However, those pesky students keep writing essays I assign, so I must pay them some attention.

Bebris has created a spot-on imitation of Jane Austen in this "sequel" to Pride and Prejudice. Caroline Bingley becomes engaged, and she seeks Elizabeth’s advice in planning her wedding. Elizabeth, somewhat miffed that Caroline’s wedding follows so closely upon her own, responds, “With your own taste to guide you, I am sure your celebration could derive no further benefit from my opinions” (19). Classic Austen with the drop of acid she so ably inserted in her prose.

Only occasionally does a modern anachronism pop into the story. The physical relationships are also quite more detailed than Austen gave us. The reader glimpses a private scene between Elizabeth and Darcy. One night, “Darcy rolled over and spooned against her” (123). Several of these tidbits made me smile.

Bebris also slips in quotes from several of Austen’s novels. My favorite comes from Sense and Sensibility. In Bebris, Mr. Gardiner (also a character in Pride and Prejudice) discusses the library of Pemberley, Darcy’s elegant home. “But the library of a great house can never have too many books” (29). What a wonderful sentiment! The Augustan view of Americans and the colonies also provides a good bit of humor.

I won’t give away any plot details, but I will say I found the path to the end disappointing. Elizabeth and several of the characters embrace some rather silly hocus-pocus to explain the mysterious goings on a Netherfield. Woven into this nonsense is a perfectly logical and reasonable explanation of greed and human nature.

The novel mostly has the feel of a lost work by Austen herself, but I doubt I will delve any further into the series. Apparently this is the first of three -- so far. Lovers of Austen will enjoy this story. Four Stars.

--Chiron, 4/2/10

A Theory of All Things by Peggy Leon

Peggy Leon’s second novel is an original story, with an interesting cast of characters – all with different personalities and voices – yet all molded of the same stuff. Her story is way more than interesting, and kept me turning pages.

The story revolves around the six Bennett children, their father who suffers from Alzheimer’s, a mother who disappeared years before, and two young women in relationships with two of the sons. The story is told in diary form, with snippets of e-mails sprinkled in between.

Peter, the oldest, committed suicide sometime after the mother abandoned the family. Sarah, a photographer, and her twin sister, Ellie, a sculptor, live in New York and on an Aegean Island, respectively. Mary has stayed at home to care for Frank, their father, and even though she has an advanced degree in English Literature, she has never worked outside the home. She is also the anchor that holds the family together. Luke is the youngest, and he is a loner, who wanders the roads around Southern California and collects discarded soda and beer cans which he fashions into mobiles. Luke also collects Willow, a young woman with story-telling tattoos and piercings galore.

The sixth sibling – and the most interesting -- is Mark. He has a PhD in physics, and never misses an opportunity to apply scientific principles to every aspect of life. Somewhat dorky and relationship-challenged, he is dating Clare, a graduate student where he teachers.

With amazing skill, Leon has created unique voices for all these characters. I hope this novel makes it to the big screen, because the humor, the mild pathos, the tension all work together so well with these characters, I can see them and hear their voices as I read. This book is now available, and you want to get on the Peggy Leon bandwagon now! 5 stars

--Chiron, 3/10/10