Books Read and Reviewed 2008.1 (Jan.-Feb.)
Submitted by JohnnyW on Wed, 02/06/2008 - 08:35
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- 1/7/08: P. C. Wren/Beau Geste (1924): Beau Geste helped popularize the perception of the French Foreign Legion as a refuge for the criminal, the fugitive, and the wrongly dishonored, all thrown together into a crack fighting unit and shipped to the most hellish locations of the French empire. Beua Geste and his brothers are wrongly suspected of stealing an invaluable sapphire, the Blue Water, and so leave their beloved England and join the Legion. They find themselves in the Sahara, fighting off both vicious natives and fellow legionaires who believe they have the gem.
- I found a few things particularly interesting. One was the origin of the Blue Water, stolen from India decades before by an unscrupulous Englishman during the long struggle to colonize the country (a plot point very similar to that of Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone). Another was the depictions of non-Westerners in the book. Wren condescends to all non-whites, but he veers between depicting them as docile and stupid--sub-Saharan blacks and some Arabs--to cruel and unreasoning--the nomadic Arabic tribes. Because of these portrayals, Beau Geste, written in the 1920s, can also be read as a time capsule of imperialist views at a time when the British empire was swiftly heading towards decline.
- 1/10/08: Anthony Hope/The Prisoner of Zenda (1894): The classic switcheroo, as Englishman Rudolf Rassendyll, a look-alike of the King of Ruritania, has to take the place of the king when his evil and ambitious brother, Black Michael, takes him prisoner. As Rudolf and the king's loyal men plot to rescue their sovereign, does Rudolf prove himself both a better leader for Ruritania and better suitor for the princess, Flavia? Thrilling action sequences and vivid characters (especially Black Michael's villainous henchmen, Rupert of Hentzau, who would get his own sequel).
- 1/23/08: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch/Venus in Furs (1870):Mannered and cold account of a man's quest to be dominated by a woman who could replicate the image of the cruel Venus he holds in his mind. His "Venus in furs," Wanda, resists his perversion of natural order (women, not men, are meant to be dominated, she tells him), but she indulges him out of exasperation and eventually comes to relish her cruelty, ignoring him, slighting him, and whipping him at a moment's notice. Her ultimate betrayal of him is predictable, but the plot and characters are not nearly as important here as are the carefully cultivated atmosphere and exploration of the inequality of the sexes. Recommended for those who enjoy Swinburne's poetry...
- 1/27/08: Victor Hugo/The Toilers of the Sea (1866): This was my first experience reading a Victor Hugo novel, and I truly believe Hugo to be a genius after finishing it. The Toilers of the Sea is almost indescribable, as it opens with a lengthy, idiosyncratic section on the Channel Islands--their culture, their weather, their landscape--and then moves into the story of shy, resourceful Gilliat, who takes it upon himself to salvage the steam engines of a wrecked ship stuck upon a dangerous reef--all for the love of the steamship owner's daughter. Hugo unfolds the story lyrically and languidly, spending whole chapters on the nature of attraction and the attractions of nature, all the while tossing out the tiniest hints of the heartbreak to come. Impressionistic sections devoted to raging storms and that strangest of sea creatures, the octopus, only add to the atmosphere of a world in which emotions and the people who experience them are transient. The sea both comforts and triumphs in this masterpiece, as the final line of the novel makes clear: "There was now nothing but the sea."
- 2/1/08: Robert Louis Stevenson/Weir of Hermiston (1896): One of more notable unfinished novels of all time, and all the more tragic because many believe it was Stevenson's masterpiece, although the remnant we have is less than half of its intended length. One of Stevenson's most Scottish books (read the dialogue aloud to decipher it), yet written in his hilltop house in Samoa.
- Archie finds himself banished to the family estate when he dares speak out publicly against his father, an infamous "hanging judge" in Edinburgh. While in exile, he listens enthralled as the manor house's overseer, Kirstie, spins tales of her family, a family of border bandits and smugglers. Archie soon finds himself in love with Christine, Kirstie's niece, but the secret relationship seems to be careening towards a dark complication when the novel ends in the middle of an argument between the two lovers. Stevenson left notes on how he intended to finish the book, and I am saddened that he died only hours after writing the last few paragraphs here--what could this work have become?
- 2/4/08: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle/The Mystery of Cloomber (1889): Ironic that the creator of literature's most famous rationalist, Sherlock Holmes, always had a fascination with mysticism and the supernatural. This account of a man who committed an atrocity half a world away in England's lust for an ever-expanding empire perfectly demonstrates Doyle's beliefs. Eastern mystics, who, as the narrator tells us, have advanced centuries beyond the West in the use of the mind and spirit, methodically and (perhaps) justifiably exact a torturous vengeance upon the old man even as he seeks refuge at a remote spot on the Scottish coast.
- Shares similarities with Dracula and mummy stories, as an inscrutable evil from a foreign land finds its way into the heart of a Christian Britain that has made itself vulnerable by inserting itself into scores of pagan lands.
- 2/9/08: Robert Louis Stevenson/The New Arabian Nights (1882): New Arabian Nights, Stevenson's first short story collection, consists of two story cycles and four stand-alone tales. The story cycles, "The Suicide Club" and "The Rajah's Diamond," both involve the adveturer-cum-detective Prince Florizel of Bohemia. In "The Suicide Club," he devotes himself to destroying the sinister, murderous club of the title and its president, while in "The Rajah's Diamond," he recovers and ultimately disposes of one of those mythical jewels so prevalent in Victorian fiction, stolen or swindled from India and which brings out the worst in so many. "The Pavilion on the Links" also involves a shadowy secret society, the Italian Carbonari, and their determination to kill an old businessman who lost their money and has holed up in a lonely house on the coast of Scotland.
- Not a major work, but certainly Stevenson at his most charming. Romance and adventure at their best.
- 2/10/08: August Wilson/Fences (The Century Cycle) (1985): Troy Maxson is as tragic a figure as has appeared in American literature. Now in his fifties, Troy seethes with bitterness over his current life as a garbage collector and his responsibilities to his family when he had it in him to be a major-league baseball player, only to be excluded by the color barrier of baseball. Despite his love for them, Troy methodically alienates his son, his wife, and his best friend through his anger and stubbornness, and it is left to those he hurt to make peace with his memory as, in the last scene, they gather once more for his funeral. Powerful.
- 2/13/08: Gaston Leroux/The Phantom of the Opera (1910): This book was a bit of a letdown even though the concept of someone investigating and compiling information about an infamous "ghost" sounds fascinating. It does get quite a bit better in the second half, especially when Christine is kidnapped in the midst of her performance, and the Viscount and the Persian work their way down through the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the great opera house. Some echoes of Frankenstein's monster here, as Erik is denied the normal life he desires by the prejudice of those who encounter him, and also some interesting Orientalist passages when the Persian describes how Erik learned so much of his inventive and appalling cruelty during his patronage by Eastern despots--especially when he was required to entertain the sickening little sultana with her thirst for blood...
- 2/19/08: George du Maurier/Trilby (1894): The book that contributed the myth of Svengali, a type of Pygmalion who specifically shapes and controls a musical artist. Svengali, who is a borderline-offensive Jewish stereotype, uses hypnosis to transform Trilby, a Left Banke model, into the singing sensation of Europe. Despite this intriguing subplot, the majority of the book focuses on Little Billie, an English artist making his way in Paris' Latin Quarter and who also falls for Trilby.
- The failings of this book lie in its attempt to capture the fin-de-siecle mood of the times--plot often gives way to pages and pages of Little Billie and his bohemian compatriots walking about Paris, eating at various restaurants, and hosting dinner parties for ex-pats streaming in from all over the continent. What would have been a compelling shorter novel drowns in "atmosphere."
- Fittingly for the time of the title villains of Dracula and The Phantom of the Opera, Svengali also comes from the "poisonous East--birthplace and home of an ill wind that blows nobody good"--to spread his corruption in the civilized West.
- 2/25/08: George Orwell/Burmese Days (1934): I've seen Burmese Days compared several times to A Passage to India (even on the back of the book), and the two novels do share quite a bit. Both depict Brits living in far-flung outposts of an empire in eclipse, and both have a central character who is too chummy with the natives for his fellow Westerners' comfort.
- For much of Burmese Days, Forster's shadow looms too mightily over the book, but in some passages, Orwell's first-hand experience in Burma shines through. The scene where Flory and Elizabeth, wondering if they have a future together, hunt and kill a magnificent and terrifying leopard stands out. The grace of the animal as it glides out of the brush, as well as its horrific death throes as it writhes on the ground, still deadly, stayed with me. By the end of the novel, Orwell decisively breaks with Forster; ten or twelve pages before the end, I suddenly saw what was coming, and I wished I had the power to stop reading before it happened. What begins as well-written melodrama in an exotic setting ends powerfully, with a despairing but emotionally honest conclusion.
- 2/28/08: Herman Melville/The Encantadas (1854): Melville's novella The Encantadas is a series of impressionistic sketches of the Galapagos Islands (also called The Encantadas, or Enchanted Islands). Only rarely does a narrative surface, but when it does, as in "Sketch Eight," which recounts the tale of Hunilla, a young Peruvian woman marooned on one of the uninhabited islands when her brother and husband die in a fishing accident, the details serve to heighten the uncanny atmosphere of desolation and mystery. Melville broods over deserted huts and crudely carved water basins in the rocks, mutineers and castaways who descend to chaos--"riotocracy," to use his wonderful phrase--and the great lumbering tortoises who have made the chain famous. His anecdote of laying awake all night below decks and listening to three of the captured beasts dragging themsleves about the deck overhead is fantastically vivid and eerie.
Author Comments:
For awhile I've been frustrated by the idea that after I read a book, it begins to fade from memory. This is an attempt to keep a sort of reading log, but with impressions as well as titles.
This is utterly fabulous. I've added The Toilers of the Sea and Phantom of the Opera to my to-read list. I really hope to be reading more of your reviews.
Thank you! For a long time I've wanted to write my impressions of the books I read so I can remember them better. Listology seemed like a natural place to do that. Plus, I enjoy looking at all the "Read in 200-" lists that people put up, but I'm always curious about what they think about the books they read. I'll definitely try to keep this going.
Because both Toilers and Phantom are translated works, I don't how large a role the translations played in my feelings about the books. I read the Modern Library version of Toilers of the Sea, which is a new translation, and the signet edition of The Phantom of the Opera, which I'm pretty sure (but not positive) is an older one.
I'd love it if you wrote up some short reviews for your reading as well--I'd probably find some books to put on my to-read list also.
Johnny Waco
I've just been looking at your lists, and I see you do put up reviews--I'm going to look more closely at your "Books That Actually Got Read..." list when it's not quite so late;)
Johnny Waco