You may be wondering what happened to me these past few months, but then when you see that I’ve been reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace you’ll more than likely, sigh and think to yourself, “What has that Idiot gotten himself into this time!”

Or effects along those lines.

My first foray into the works of Mr. Wallace, before reading Infinite Jest, was a few years ago walking by this book at book stores and knowing by the Cover of Infinite Jest and the ‘Vibe’ of the book that  it was popular.

Unhappily, as it turns out, I finally did buy the book to read after learning somewhat belatedly that Mr. Wallace had committed Suicide.

In the Forward of this book (Noted Author Dave Eggers) Writes:

Page by Page, line by line, it is probably the strangest, most distinctive, and most involved work of fiction by an American in the last twenty years.  At no time while reading Infinite Jest are you unaware that this is a work of complete obsession, of a stretching of the mind of a young writer to the point of, we assume near madness.

Mr. Egger’s is the author of “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” a book that I’ve not read but those words and that title could be the title of a Biography of Mr. David Foster Wallace, as his untimely departure has significantly expanded the memory as to his work into the realm of the Unknown.

Wallace committed suicide on September 12, 2008, as confirmed by the October 27, 2008 autopsy report.

In an interview with The New York Times, Wallace’s father reported that Wallace had suffered from depression for more than 20 years and that antidepressant medication had allowed him to be productive. When he experienced severe side effects from the medication, Wallace attempted to wean himself from his primary antidepressant, Nardil.

On his doctor’s advice, Wallace stopped taking the medication in June 2007, and the depression returned. Wallace received other treatments including electroconvulsive therapy. When he returned to Nardil, he found it had lost its effectiveness.  In the months before his death, his depression became severe.

Numerous gatherings were held to honor Wallace after his death, including memorial services at Pomona College, Amherst College, and on October 23, 2008, at NYU — the latter with speakers including his sister, Amy Wallace Havens; his agent, Bonnie Nadell; Gerry Howard, the editor of his first two books; Colin Harrison, editor at Harper’s Magazine; Michael Pietsch, the editor of Infinite Jest and Wallace’s later work; Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker; as well as authors Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith, George Saunders, Mark Costello, Donald Antrim, and Jonathan Franzen.

Completely Original Infinite Jest does remind one of Gravities Rainbow, not so much in tone or circumference but in it’s complete and utter original voice.  One doesn’t just read Infinite Jest, One is Read By It.  There it sits over in your book corner while you’re going about your life, and for the life of me it won’t let go.  I started reading Infinite Jest 2 months ago and really took my time, at first I was hoping to be able to read it quickly, but then I realized that that wouldn’t be happening.  I gave up and literally read 10 pages a day, something which I haven’t done since Proust.  Only during the last 400 pages of Infinite Jest did I begin to read 20 pages a day.  So, you see, do pick it up with a serious mind.

First off, Infinite Jest is 981 Pages of sheer Audacity.  This book is Audacious with a Capital A.  Here is a writer who has a powerful and singular voice and it does amaze a reader that at times, through his stories of his small cast of characters you can find yourself deep in the rhythm of Mr. Wallace’s great story-telling ability.  It’s as Rare as Hell, to be able to write as an actual Story-Teller.  It is astounding to find a work like Jest in this world where Pablum is the Goal and Repetition the Rule.  Under the command of Mr. Wallace Infinite Jest begins to weave a very unique spell.

There is in Infinite Jest a singular family, a family that appears to have creativity at its core with a number of young sons who are athletes, especially Hal Incandenza… the father of this clan, Jim Incandenza, is a erstwhile Director/Creator of  quirky off-beat films, this father seems to have a cloud over all the participants of this family, in that, he the father, is long dead in the present tense of the novel and Author Wallace does make it very clear that the late father (suicide by Microwave!) is nearly a haunting presence to this family of young men and tennis prodigies.  The Mother of the family, Avril Incandenza, is still alive however and she is an Administrator at the Enfield Tennis Academy (”ETA”), where much of the ‘action’ of Infinite Jest takes place.  During the book there is a mysterious Video Tape created by the late father Jim Incandenza that seems to have a paralyzing effect on viewers essentially rendering them into living vegetables… this tape is investigated by a governmental agency to some very odd effect… the tapes title is Infinite Jest.  There is really no resolution to these plot points and I’m only putting them down, because as you delve deeper into Mr. Wallace’s Infinite Jest you may not like what your reading, there are a lot of things about the book to hate, but you will surely not be untouched by it.

Mr. Wallace has another part to the book that stretches from beginning to end.  The obsessive compulsions of addiction are in evidence.  Most everyone in Infinite Jest are substance abusers or seriously ‘Bent’ in one way or another.  Mr. Wallace is so matter of fact about matters though, that he doesn’t seem to care one way or another what you think.  A bit later in the book Mr. Wallace introduces us to Don Gately, a former thief and demerol addict, who now works for The Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, which appears to be just down the street from the Enfield Tennis Academy.  Don Gately is a massive man who is a rabid member of AA at the Enfield home, and as we learn of him we see that he is finally clear of the drugs and binging that has plagued his life.  These ‘Gately’ sections of the book, are to me the more telling, than the tennis and Incandenza portions of the tale.  Mr. Wallace is so proficient in his understanding of drugs and usage that one is drawn very realistically into Gately’s life story which is heartbreakingly ordinary in its American Brutality.  Let’s face it, this nation isn’t a comfort to the disenfranchised and unfortunately there isn’t yet a Religion, that addresses anything near the emotions, needs and desires of a huge population of America’s ‘throw-aways’.  It’s a huge population of ‘do-it-yourselfer’s’ without a hand or hope in Hell of ever getting ahead of the monster that has become America’s Gentry.  The Alka-Seltzer majority that talks a game but, in the end isn’t interested in America’s troubled Inner-Core.  These fall through the crack people are generally fine individuals in the end, and have amazing survival skills, as does Mr. Wallace’s Gately a behemoth that is very recognizable to Americans of this nation that don’t live with a laugh track.

Don Gately’s story is the vibrant core of the book and indeed, could have been the entire thing.  As you are reading Infinite Jest you’re never quite sure exactly where Mr. Wallace is taking us.  He is so in command though, that it does surprise.  You don’t feel the feeding masses hurtling along with the mind of Mr. Wallace.  His world is entirely his own.

In the Forward by Mr. Eggers, he does state a wish of  the Publisher, Little Brown and Company, of Infinite Jest; the need to show others that the book is at least approachable.  That it can be read by Anyone.  Which in fact is amusing because I’m sure it would be nice to sell more copies, and surely the imprint is honored to have this book as one of its own, who wouldn’t be?

Yet Infinite Jest is not an accessible work.  It’s in fact, very unapproachable, even though the good Mr. Eggers does go on about it’s readability, one realizes while reading it that you’re either 100% into it or not at all.  Mr. Wallace doesn’t exactly demand our participation, he could give a damn, but it’s your choice…

Infinite

Jest.

How this book will live on and how it will influence generations to come will be something interesting to witness.  I don’t think that Mr. Wallace has yet found his true audience, yet, sure, College Students and Academics are in the know, but it well may take a new breed of man or woman to unlock it’s popularity and characteristics… yet as an artifact, Infinite Jest is such that it should shine beyond the usual Fray of more ordinary works.  It’s a Keeper alright, but just what kind of Keeper is yet to be known.  Mr. David Foster Wallace, his life and death, such a thing, to end life of its own accord, we must respect Mr. Wallace’s decision, those of us who don’t know him, and let his essence, for now, be Heart-Breaking.

Indeed A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius describes Infinite Jest and Mr. Wallace very well.

Kafka On The Shore is our fifth Haruki Murakami book reviewed here on By The Book, and it does amaze me that Haruki Murakami is fairly well trenchant in his perspectives. Most writers tend to move onto territory that we as readers can’t put from one book into the next, yet with Mr. Murakami we do tend to see many of the same verbiage and tones that his previous tomes have elicited. As a fine writer, however, Mr. Murakami is able to keep things very interesting, something that 99.9% of writers on this world would be unable to fathom. Amazingly Mr. Murakami seems to actually bring back his fantasy world from Hard Boiled Wonderland At The End Of The World, into Kafka, it’s an albeit short trip this time, we didn’t care for Mr. Murakami’s fantasy in Wonderland, but I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps Mr. Murakami had a Lucid Dream of this ‘After World’ of his.  That would be an interesting question to ask Mr. Murakami, so College Students jot this down next time Mr. Murakami is visiting Harvard!

Let me not get off track.  Kafka On The Shore begins with a young 15 year old boy, Kafka Tamura, who has changed his name to Kafka.  Kafka is a troubled young man who feels that there is something missing in his life especially pertaining to his father a noted sculpture artist in Tokyo.  Kafka runs away from home and his adventures throughout the novel are a major part of it.  There is another story however on the odd numbered chapters of the book, this one about an older gentleman, Nakata, who, as is explained in the book, was involved in an unexplainable event with about 20 other children when they were school age, which has left Nakata a bit slow.

As things progress Kafka travels to Takamatsu, to a special private library, where he meets up with Oshima a transsexual gay male!  Oshima then introduces Kafka to Miss Saeki, who is an eerie but beautiful woman who we learn was once a famous singer of a one hit wonder, when she was a teen.  We also learn that Mrs. Saeki is in perpetual mourning for a ’sensitive’ ’soul lover’ she once had who was murdered at an early age.  Right here you see, we have a Murakami book at our fingertips!  These are certainly Murakami characters!  The fun though is to see what Murakami will do with them and how he will end it.

Meanwhile, Nakata, who calls himself ‘Dumb’ quite a lot is living on his government stipend and does the off job of capturing lost cats, who he can actually talk to.  Yes, Nakata can speak to the cats, and this is how he gets into a bit of trouble and ends up somehow entangled in Kafka’s life through an unfortunate meeting with Kafka’s very own sculpture father.  This is an eerie part of the book, and one wonders exactly what is in play as these events are occurring.  Be that as it may Nakata is rather ’spiritual’ to use that too often used word, he can make fish fall from the sky as well as leaches.  Mr. Nakata decides to leave Tokyo after his encounter with Kafka’s father and meets up with a young truck driver, Hoshino, and a quest develops among these two to find The Opening Stone, which opens a very unique world.

There are many interesting things going on here, as Nakata looks for this Stone it brings him and Hoshino closer to Kafka.  Kafka working at the library meets a young 15 year old likeness of Mrs. Saeki, in a dream state, and seems to fall in love with her… and we begin to learn that Nakata’s Father had some unusual premonitions about him.  And yes, what would a Murakami book be without the woods!  Kafka is taken there to ‘hide out’ by Oshima in a Cabin that Oshima and his brother own.

As the book continued into these strange worlds and ways of thinking I was starting to prefer the tale of Nakata and Hoshino to that of Kafka’s.

Well all this may sound a bit confusing to you!  But maybe that’s for the best to prepare you for this work which you won’t really be able to put along side of say, War And Peace, as a straightforward novel.  No, one must step a bit differently in a Murakami novel.  Here, Mr. Murakami has stretched his time honored tendencies into a workable whole that is satisfying and Beguiling… that’s in caps.  I suppose Beguiling isn’t a bad way to describe the work of Writer Haruki Murakami.  If this is going to be your first Murakami novel then it’s a good one for you to choose.

Kafka On The Shore is successful and intricate fabrication and fact.

The 'Beguiling' Mr. Murakami

Written by Clay Scott Brown

I was taken a bit off guard by No Man’s War, I’d seen Mr. Scalzi’s name whilst tramping about at the Science Fiction Awards Watch Website. I noticed that Mr. Scalzi wrote this book mostly online then sold it as his very first work.  Zoe’s Tale is the fourth book in this saga, and I see that it has been nominated for the Hugo this year, so I have at least three more of this epic to look forward to.  I say I was taken off guard because Old Man’s War is a very fine work!  I read the whole book in just three days.  Mr. Scalzi has a very good sense of character, in many ways it is ‘what he leaves out’ that distinguishes him.  He keeps the book at a good clip and doesn’t waste our time with superfluous embellishments that lesser writers of the Genre tend to fall for.Old Man’s War begins with essentially an old man, John Perry, who is 70 or so and a widower, he lives on an Earth that has the ability to colonize the star systems of outer space.  The catch here is that to enter into that outside you have to be old and you have to leave the Earth, for good.  You can’t come back.  There is an interesting separation from the CDF (Colonial Defense Forces) and Earth, the CDF is in charge of the entire outer space colonization and doesn’t share anything with Earth.  This is an interesting twist as one can imagine that Earth wouldn’t be happy with such an unknown operating without its jurisdiction!  Once an old person joins the CDF they are given new bodies and this is what John Perry does… but with the sad note that his beloved wife ‘Kathy’ has died, as they had planned to join up together.  The just of this ’second life’ is that you get a whole new life with the ‘nothing to lose’ attitude.  Scalzi doesn’t go into the dimensions of this choice… he just has John Perry on his way to the CDF, where he will get a new body (green) and will have to fight for ten years a host of alien invaders for Planets to colonize.  The just of this is that it’s not a safe environment out in space, with a number of other life forms all interested in a relatively small collection of planets.  So to earn his new body and life John Perry has to join this war.

Little Brother is essentially about the effects of fear and its unhappy results to one young man, Marcus Yallow, who attempts to ‘fight’ his own government, Homeland Security to be precise. As a young man of about 17 Marcus is a computer guru to many of his peers. Writer Doctorow goes to some lengths to demonstrate Marcus’ ability to thwart the governmental security measures at his high school. This is a future where students are tracked within the school at all times by their very movements. All people in fact must have special cards that are used by the DHS to know the whereabouts of each individual in the city of San Francisco. There are agents that arrest the various people who are ’suspicious’. So this is a future where life in America has become untenable. Interestingly Mr. Doctorow calls this a ‘teenage novel’, I didn’t know that Little Brother was geared towards youth until a few minutes ago as I was looking through the Internet about it. But I do understand now, in that, the tone of the piece was understated.

As the book proceeds Marcus is shown to be a natural leader, one who can gather his friends and others into a meaningful direction. His core of friends are heavily involved in computer games that are also played in real life and life goes on as usual in this environment. That is until there is a terrorist bombing of a large San Francisco Bridge… not the Golden Gate, but another bridge that kills about 4000 people or so. Marcus and his young friends happen to have been playing hooky at the time and are ’rounded up’ by the DHS to be held on ‘treasure island’ which is Alcatraz, which has been modernized. It is here where Marcus is kept prisoner without many rights apparently. He is eventually released and he begins his quest to gain some revenge on Homeland Security.

Marcus finds a new girlfriend and a number of adventures occur wherein Marcus stages a number of events to gather his friends. Mr. Doctorow is pretty good at showing a young person who has some growing up to do. In fact I was pretty surprised that Marcus is a ‘white’ person. I was sure that he was black but he is explained as being white… interesting. There are a number of things that are missing that would have given Mr. Doctorow’s work a bit more depth. A bit more plot or some more surprise would have been wiser in my estimation. Yet I was pretty surprised to see this content since there is little protest in this nation to it’s ‘outer arms’. There is truth here though, in that a mass of people afraid and trusting in their government allows said government to abridge it’s constitution, to the demise of it’s own purpose. This isn’t far fetched in the least, as we have already seen that our government is well on its way to the torture of others as portrayed in the book.

This sort of Ignorance isn’t anything new and we will surely be seeing something like this in the future of this nation, still in my respective opinion, things will likely be much worse than Mr. Doctorow’s interesting little book.

Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is our next book.  The book has won the Hugo and Nebula awards as well as many prizes for fiction.  The book itself concerns an alternate future wherein the Hebrews didn’t claim Israel as there own and a Jewish settlement is placed in Sitka, Alaska of all places.  Into this landscape Mr. Chabon places his characters, hard bitten types who just so happen to be Jewish.

Our hero in this thriller is Meyer Landsman a down and out police detective who is investigating a murder at his hotel.  The man murdered, Emmanuel Lasker turns out to be the son of a highly prominant Rabbi in Sitka. Working with him is his beefy life long friend Berko who is a detective as well.  Together they begin an investigation into who might have murdered Emmanuel Lasker, who oddly enough is described as a candidate to be The Messiah!   There are a number of subplots one involving  detective Landsman whose divorced wife becomes his commanding officer.

It’s all very intricate stuff in this novel.  I was wondering if Mr. Chabon was actually going to write a mystery, but in the end I don’t think there is much mystery in the book.  Indeed, Mr. Chabon has called this work a very difficult one, and I must admit that I had some trouble reading it.  I couldn’t quite grasp what he is or was getting at, and honestly I did read his Pulitzer prize winning novel Kavalier and Clay and I couldn’t understand that one much either!  I believe that perhaps I’m simply not meant for this writers work.  With so many lauding his efforts I have much difficulty in realizing his great merit.

Yet there are good words here, but I think the tone of this work strikes me as something waiting to happen.  I wasn’t ‘drawn in’ to it like perhaps more emotional and agreeable readers might have been.  I don’t get caught into subject matter that may be instantly recognizable and perhaps that is what we are witnessing here.  After all there is no surprise to the endless reliving of WWII where everyone is supposed to react to that war like pavlov’s dog, slobering at each easy entry point.   In fact Mr. Chabon states that he destroyed his first 600 page draft of this novel, which he reveals was an entirely different one.  In the end I believe I literally felt that weight a bit myself!  The whole novel moves along pretty nicely but the actual landscape feels a bit picture postcard to me, not enough to go on and then too much to take in.  I’m beginning to believe that Mr. Chabon is a writer who may be an acquired taste.  Like Saul Bellow or John Cheever, perhaps age and time will relax him a bit into the writer that all these awards are promising us.

Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer

Sarah and Don Halifax are the main ingredients to Rollback a Science Fiction novel by Robert J. Sawyer. When we first meet them they are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary, both are in their 80’s. Rollback isn’t a very long book to read and its tone and state are generally quick and easy to understand and get through. As we proceed through Rollback Mr. Sawyer does a pretty good job in expressing the aged married couple.

We soon learn that there is something pretty special about Sarah, Don’s beloved wife, in that she is a scientist who worked closely with SETI (The Alien Seeking Governmental Agency) and decodes the very first message sent to us by aliens about 30 years ago. Well after sending back a reply (30 years ago) a return message from the aliens arrives and Sarah and Don are given a chance to “Rollback” their elderly state. A wealthy industrial Billionaire, Cody McGavin, is putting up what the book states is over a billion dollars for Sarah Halifax to be Rolled Back, in other words her DNA is Scrubbed and Shined and a Rollback occurs by degrees making the person young again. In the book Sarah demands that her husband Don must be Rolled Back as well and this is agreed to by Mr. McGavin, who of course has had his own Rollback, even though it is stated that he was in his late 40’s or early 50’s when he did so. The reasoning for Mr. McGavin’s very generous offer is that he believes that Sarah can decipher the alien’s message and he further believes that he can profit from it.

At any rate the rollbacks are completed on Sarah and Don and something does indeed go wrong. The procedure doesn’t work for Sarah. She continues to be old as Don gets younger and younger which is the crux of Mr. Sawyers tale. In fact the whole book is really about Don more than anything else as he grows to accept that his very loved wife (the one who the rollback was for) is going to die leaving him young and lonely! Not a bad premise. Unfortunately Mr. Sawyer does slip up a bit in my view in that I doubt highly that a billionaire would just give anyone these expensive treatments, the reasons, the deciphering of the new alien transmission just isn’t good enough reason for me to believe that the Industrialist would do so. I mean if say, Barack Obama were 99 years old and with cancer and ready for his final fling then yeah, I could see a Bill Gates stepping in and becoming a hero, but this gift from Mr. McGavin seems fanciful and he actually agrees rather quickly to do the same for Don! In about 3 minutes at the cost of a billion dollars! I just don’t think billionaires are that nice!

Yet I’m surely not dismissing the work done here as Don does carry the book. He’s a good guy of that there is no doubt as Mr. Sawyer shows us the typical good guy demeanor of the Male Mammal. Don’s emotions and feelings for Sarah are pretty touching at times and luckily Mr. Sawyer doesn’t go for the syrup too often, after all this is sci-fi, which concerns the alien message. Still Rollback is set within the near future and it’s interesting to have Mr. Sawyer bring up a time and place in which I myself was old enough to remember, he mentions the 80’s through Don. Don does indeed have an affair with a young colleague of Sarah’s, Leonore who is in her 20’s… I won’t divulge too much more. This is pretty lite reading though and isn’t going to keep you up all night, but I felt that Mr. Sawyer has a pretty good touch with these characters, although I felt that the depth of the piece was not what it should be.

Decisions made to quickly litter the book a bit too much. Rollback is a brief novel a little over 300 pages and somewhat fanciful. I can see some people feeling pretty good about this book but I doubt that many will consider it a lasting testament to the cannon of Science Fiction.

Written by Clay Scott Brown

Now we come to yet another of Haruki Murakami’s works: South of the Border, West of the Sun. This is a short work by Murakami about 240 pages or so. Unlike Hardboiled Wonderland and The End of the World (The Link is Broken! But scroll down about 6 or 7 reviews to find it.) which we found dreary, this latest book puts Murakami back on his game.

South of the Border is a very typical book by Mr. Murakami, his male characters are all rather straightforward in their desire for ’something more’ in life. They usually do quite well in life or seemingly so but are unhappy and dissatisfied by their lives for some reason. This is the crux of Mr. Murakami’s many works. The basic yearnings in a Murakami work are his women. Usually very unusual women who these singular men have met under beguiling circumstances. There seems to be the loss of these women that propel Mr. Murakami’s Men to dire emotions or consequences.

Here in South of the Border the main character is Hajimi who is described during his youth in a small town in Japan. He meets Shimamoto a strange young girl who has to drag her leg because of Polio. The book is in large part about their brief but very passionate friendship before age and duty take over and they stop seeing each other as they move on into the higher forms of education and then work and so forth. Hajimi although finally comes to marry and have two children and a healthy business owning two bars.  It is during this time that he suddenly spots a young woman who he believes is Shimamoto walking the street. He follows the mystery woman who disappears.

Eventually the two meet and it is clear that Hajimi is in love with Shimamoto and vice versa. This relationship continues during the course of the book endangering Hajimi’s family life. It’s a well told piece of work and Murakami reveals this territory to good effect. I can’t say that it is a very satisfying story as Mr. Murakami isn’t one for happy or pat endings, indeed this ending did seem more favorable to his lead, Hajimi who just might have a life afterward.

South of the Border, West of the Sun is good reading. Quick and the point comes across.

Writen by Clay Scott Brown

Arthur C. Clarke and Frederick Pohl are two of the Giants of Science Fiction.  2001 A Space Odyssey is one of Mr. Clarke’s works and Gateway by Frederick Pohl is one of my favorite books.  I still remember when I was a youngster being blown away about Gateway.  So now these two fine creative men have joined together for the first time.  That can be a good thing, yet it can be a bad thing as well, when two writers put heads together.  Writers aren’t known for being ‘easy to get along with’, and collaborations, especially at this level are prickly at best!  These two have never written together before so I went into this venture (The Last Theorem) with a hopeful attitude.  To be honest I’m a bit mystified by the whole thing.

Two Great Writers... Are two heads better than one?

Ranjit Subramanian is introduced to us as a young man just barely of college age. He is described as somewhat as a loner but appears to be highly regarded by those who know him. Ranjit appears to be uncomfortable in his college and with his college classes. He does consider himself to be a Mathematician and has some difficulty with his other courses and teachers. Ranjit’s best friend, Gamini is well off and the two are even described as having a sexual realtionship. This was interesting to me as Science Fiction usually has some trouble with this particular subject, and coming from these two masters of the craft I was beginning to wonder if they were gonna, “go for it”, as it were. I must mention also that the action takes place in Sri Lanka.

At any rate the writers let us know rather quickly that Ranjit is obsessed with mathematician Pierre de Fermat’s famous Theorem which he wrote in the margin of one of his books that he proved. Ever since then Mathematician’s have raced to discover the actual proof of Mr. Fermat’s Theorem. It’s quite clear that Fermat did know the answer to proving his Theorem but realized that it would be long which is why he mentions on the margin that it was long. Hence Fermat’s Theorem has been proved in real life and only recently by Andrew Wiles in 94, which was about 150 pages.

So therefore, in the book, Ranjit eventually is able to solve the Theorem in 3 pages! He is lauded as a Genius. That’s actually the crux of the entire book as far as the main character goes. There is also some scant mention of the “Grand Galactics” a omnicent race who appear to want to exterminate humanity. This odd inclusion into the book is often only a paragraph or two at the end of each chapter. I suppose this was the Science Fiction part of this book.

Oddly enough the book ‘feels’ promising for the first 60 or so pages, you sort of expect something interesting to happen to Ranjit and something does happen, but it’s a really poor trick on the reader as Ranjit is kidnapped for a number of years. This suffering is used as a device, in this case, to denote the time needed for Ranjit to solve Mr. Fermat’s Theorem. This is a cheap trick and way beneath such writers as these! I was pretty surprised as the writers really weren’t able to bring Ranjit into the actual light as it were. It’s actually difficult to have much feeling for him as this happens, then that, then this… it’s as if a lot of typewriting is going on between these two writers.

The writing itself, of course, is top notch, it’s really quite fine to reconnect with two old souls of the craft, Clarke and Pohl, they simply have a way of clarity and purpose that is beyond the ordinary mortal writer. Even a laundry list from these two would make it to a bestseller list! So it is rather unhappy for me that I have to down this work in this manner. The Last Theorem is a book that doesn’t work and I can only steer you away from it.

Now onto our latest book Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I had seen this book cover in the fantasy section of many bookstores but for some reason I didn’t read it, even though it was a big bestseller. But on my recent travels to the library I decided to pick it up.

I must say that this book is not an ‘ordinary’ read by any means. It is actually very old fashion in scope and dimension, Mrs. Clarke has really reminded us of a time and place where life was a bit more civil. Reading this book is almost like picking something up by Dickens or H.G. Wells.

The book is about two magicians, Mr. Norrell is the older of the two and he is a practitioner of Magic, he has learned his craft with books only and is quite completely at odds throughout the book with other so called Magicians who he believes are fraudulent. His main thrust seems to be to destroy other Magicians into admitting that they aren’t Magicians at all. He, Mr. Norrell, considers himself the only true Magician in England and he wants it to stay that way. He buys up every magical book that has ever been and his library is often the only place where he dwells. During his trials Mr. Norrell travels to London, his dream is to make Magic respectable in England and to do this he enters into society with politicians of the day, the prime minister and other ministers… most notably Sir Walter Pole a Cabinet Member with a pretty wife who eventually succumbs to sickness and dies. Mr. Norrell uses his magic to bring Mr. Pole’s wife back to life and that is how he is able to enter magic into government.

The second main character in the book is Jonathan Strange, a young man who has a talent for magic who in due course becomes an apprentice to Mr. Norrell and learns a great deal while under his tutalige.  There is a great deal more to the book, it is long (over 700 pages) and as you go through it you must be patient as Mrs. Clarke is in no hurry whatsoever.  Her writing is really very interesting in that it generally flows rather well but takes a long time to reach fruition.  You must at least read a 100 pages before deciding if you like the book.  To her considerable credit Mrs. Clarke really does have a fine sense of character, I was struck at how she revealed the ‘baser’ qualities within people in general.  Her tone is really rather matter-of-fact about the sometimes ugly in humanity and I found her dimensional approach to be refreshing rather than tepid.  She isn’t trying to be popular in her book.

As fantasy Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is not terribly exciting.  I felt that she could have revved up the telling of this tale a bit.  The scope is pretty massive but for the most part she puts all the pieces together really rather well.  It surely is an alternate England where magic is not scorned by the christian church and the people in general… it’s kind of hard to go along with, considering the fears of religion that greet the imagination daily.  Mrs. Clarke is actually the daughter of a Minister in real life and that ‘moral sensibility’ is seen throughout her work here.  She’s does best when she describes her characters and the underlying history of the various magicians in England’s past.  There are actually footnotes throughout the book, a great many in fact.  I would prefer no footnotes, this not being non-fiction and the type being so very small.

Still these are concerns that won’t take away from Mrs. Clarke’s unique attempt here to bring something interesting and new to the fantasy field.  Apparently it took her 10 years to write this book.  One could surely see a sequel coming and that wouldn’t be half bad.

The creator originates.  The parasite borrows.  The creator faces nature alone.  The parasite faces nature through an intermediary.  The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature.  The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.  The creator lives for his work.  He needs no other men.  His primary goal is within himself.  The parasite lives second-hand.  He needs others.  Others become his prime motive.  The basic need of the creator is independence… to the creator all relations with men are secondary.

From the beginning of history, the two antagonists have stood face to face: the creator and the second-hander.  When the first creator invented the wheel, the first second-hander responded… he invented altruism.  The creator - denied, opposed, persecuted, exploited - went on, moved forward and carried all humanity along…

Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead - pages 712,715

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

That’s Architect Howard Roark at his trial very near to the end of Mrs. Rand’s Fountainhead.  As you may or may not be aware I’ve reviewed Mrs. Rand’s, Atlas Shrugged, earlier (about two reviews down or so) I thought that The Fountainhead was a later book by Mrs. Rand and was surprised to find, back then, that Atlas Shrugged was her final fiction. With this in mind I knew that I must read the Fountainhead to see the ‘development’ of Mrs. Rand as a writer… in this odd case I had to go back to an earlier novel, not something I generally do as I prefer to look at each writer, usually at the start from the bottom up. And the verbiage leading to the Fountainhead led me to gather that it would be better than Atlas Shrugged.

Objectivist Creator Ayn Rand

On a more personal note, my very own dear mother has always been something of an admirer of Mrs. Rand’s, so there is that factor as well. It was only just a few days ago with my mother at a popular Deli down the street, and as we were eating I brought up the fact that I’m reading The Fountainhead. She said that she was only 20 when she read it (she’s in her 60’s) and said that she remembered thinking that “That’s it!” Meaning that her thoughts and ideas had been crystallized by Mrs. Rand in some important fashion. As we continued our discussion of the book my mother was saying, and has always said that Mrs. Rand is putting her own Objectivist Philosophy into her novels… she interestingly told me not to look at these books as novels at all! We went on to discuss Mrs. Rand’s ‘popularity’ and mother said that Mrs. Rand was ‘dissapointed’ throughout her later life that her works weren’t more popular amongst the people. Mother said that Mrs. Rand was expecting many people to ‘fall all over’ her works, we both laughed a bit about that, and my mother agreed with me that Mrs. Rand wasn’t going to be ‘that’ popular. I went on to state that Mrs. Rand said that she only cared about the few who would read and understand her work, and to my surprise my mother expressed a very emotional objection…

It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature - and that the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning - and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or The Fountainhead that they will betray: it is their own souls.

Ayn Rand

At the Introduction of The Fountainhead’s 25th Anniversary Edition.

Which brings up the above words. Mrs. Rand is certainly a fine talent, if one may call her that! She probably isn’t taken that seriously as a philosopher, but what would a philosopher do in the modern era? As there are no Prophets anymore there are no Philosophers either… the world only looks back and then moves forward, very little is for the present. Luckily Mrs. Rand is a fine writer and it’s too bad she didn’t write more novels! She could have written the next ‘Gone With The Wind’ at the rate she was going.

I’ll just leave it here then.

p.s. I did prefer Atlas Shrugged to The Fountainhead…. Posterity is sure to shine on her yet.

As you may or may not be aware we’ve been closely reading the Science Fiction works of Mr. Alistair Reynolds, most notably the Revelation Space Novels of this author.

The series supposedly ended with Absolution Gap, yet here we have a new Revelation Space novel called The Prefect which is set within the Revelation Space Universe, in particular 100 years before the Plague that destroys the Glitter Band.

In the books before this one it is quite clear that the Melding Plague has turned this ‘utopia’ (The Glitter Band), a civilization of 10,000 Orbital Habitats into The Rust Belt. So this is an interesting new direction that Mr. Reynolds is taking us in. We are able to actually know that the Plague is coming, in the years to come. Essentially the Melding Plague is used as a so called ‘future event’ to be avoided in The Prefect.

The book includes a complete understanding of the Panoply, the security force that enforces various laws within the Glitter Band. It’s a police force without a lot of muscle, as prefects, The Panoply enforce certain voting rights to all the inhabitants of the Glitter Band, and are not allowed to use guns but have ‘Whiphounds’ which are used exclusively for defense. Everything in the Glitter Band is proceeded by a vote where a simple majority of the inhabitants enforce a sort of Democratic-Communism.

Tom Dreyfus is our main character here, he’s a field prefect with a sterling reputation and works closely with his two young aides, prefects in training. Dreyfus has a very close relationship to the Supreme Prefect, Jane Aumonier. As the book continues we meet another Prefect, head of security, Senior Prefect of Security Gaffeny, who begins to work with Aurora a computerized entity who believes that she has a better way to secure The Glitter Band from the Melding Plague which she claims to be able to prevent. The book is essentially about the takeover of the Glitter Band by Aurora working with Gaffeny.

The other story within The Prefect is the story of The Clockmaker, an odd entity that is described as an Angel of Death. A sort of machine/sentient lifeform of unspeakable powers that is apparently an offshoot of Philip Lascaile, a character in Revelation Space who was believed to have committed suicide after meeting with the Shrouders, but was in fact scanned to produce a simulation, which was sent back to the Shrouders, who turned it into the Clockmaker. This Clockmaker becomes a large part of the later book as an antagonist to Aurora, who is taking over the Glitter Band quite effectively.

There is much to read here in The Prefect, and I found myself enjoying the book and read through it quite quickly. It’s interesting to note that with the timeline in the past we know exactly that the Melding Plague will indeed destroy the Glitter Band in the future, so it makes for some fun for readers in that ‘I told you so’ way. There is some interesting action in The Prefect, and is definitely recommended to anyone especially if you are in any way interested in Mr. Reynolds work or even that of science fiction.

“Who Is John Galt?”

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is surely not what you’d expect anyone today to be reading. Sure, you’d expect a few ‘college students’ going through the depressed days after ‘beer nights’ to be taking a looksie into this visionaries works. But Mrs. Rand is usually given a wide berth from most readers, who actually might be better informed by reading her.

Mrs. Rand is something unique to Philosophers, if we can call her that, she is a Philosopher who writes fiction. And where most Philosophers would be terrible fiction writers, Mrs. Rand is a very good writer on her own merits actually. Her Atlas Shrugged is my first attempt at her work, as it were. I’m no student of Philosophy, personally I’m not all that interested in ‘how to get there’ isms, but more interested in the actual firmament of arriving at said locale… if you get my drift!

Still I’ve included a u-tube video of Mrs. Rand’s interview with Mr. Mike Wallace in 1959, she is quite an interesting person, I must say. My actual mother has been an adherant or admirer of Mrs. Rand’s for some time, and so after many years of her name cropping up in our discussions I’ve finally buried the axe and blasted off into her work. I’m pleased to see that as literature, Mrs. Rand’s work can stand rather well upon its own regardless of her Philosophic views and notions that may rankle some who are ’steadfast’ into their own stratas and prejudices. To each his or her own would then be the mantra.

Atlas Shrugged has many inventive and interesting characters to light its way. Written in 1957 it is Mrs. Rand’s longest and last novel. I was surprised actually to realize that Atlas was Mrs. Rand’s ’swan song’ as it were. If doesn’t feel like a last attempt and I actually assummed that this was a novel before her better known novel, ‘The Fountainhead’… which I have and will be reading within the next coming months. So right there you can see that I’ve come into Mrs. Rand’s Lexicon with great ‘Ignorance’ but with an open and wandering mind.

In fact Atlas feels somewhat dated… and when I did mention to my mother that I was reading Mrs. Rand she informed me that she remembered that all of ‘hollywood’ was reading Atlas when it came out, she said that it wasn’t really read by the public at large but was championed by the artists within the hollywood community as being an important read. And goodness, at over 1000 pages you’d really be surprised to find ‘any’ actor reading more than two hundred pages of anything (much less Ayn Rand) for any length of time! I mean, come on, where talking Hollywood here! So it is a pretty good recommendation there that actors and actresses of the 50’s, the Golden Age of Hollywood were high on Mrs. Rand! I mean Humphey Bogart was still alive back then! So I was pleased of course that the larger public had passed over Atlas to pursue the latest cook book or funny little joke book that seem to tickle the heart of ‘the great unwashed’ as someone once called them!

The book itself concerns one Dagny Taggart a young woman who is - Operating Vice President of Taggart Transcontinental her families Railroad. The book centers around Mrs. Taggart almost exclusively as she is a somewhat ‘moral’ being as Ayn Rand would have it. She is seen as a real ‘light’ in a time of great turbulance to America. Mrs. Rand’s America isn’t really all that familiar to actual American’s however. There is the undercurrent of great and foolish decisions being made all without an actual Congress, Senate or even a President! In fact there doesn’t seem to be an actual President of America in Mrs. Rand’s America as envisioned in Atlas Shrugged. Mrs Taggart is pitted against many men of the Government who seem to be forcing an odd Socialism upon the dying nation. And it is surely a dying nation that Mrs. Rand is showing us.

As Originally Russian before becomming an American, Mrs. Rand’s view of America is a valued one as she wouldn’t have our RA. RA. RA. baggage to contend with. And these intricacies into our valued Ameircan Societies show us a new and different view of ourselves. Mrs. Rand is surely a positive force throughout her novel. There is hope everywhere, even though the economy and industry of the nation is in total distruction. Indeed, with our own economy going through one of it’s worst ‘corrections’ in our fabled history it is interesting to find yourself reading Atlas Shrugged at this time.

As the novel continues into Mrs. Taggart’s victories with her railroad a love story of sorts develops between her and a one Hank Reardon, the creator of a Steel Company that has revolutionized steel into a new compound called Reardon Steel, which is lighter, lasts longer and costs less. Here it is emphasized by the nefarious governmental forces, through some really high hyperboyle, that Mr. Reardon is an enemy to America because his invention would put the Steel Industry out of business. It is made clear that these men in charge of the Government don’t want intelligence to get beyond them, which would surely be the death knell for any civilization, considering the way Ignorance has of felling anything unknown with the approval of the Ignorant. A usually large and unruly majority!

So it is then that Mrs. Taggart and Mr. Rearden have an affair which is handled really quite well by Mrs. Rand. Mrs. Taggart does seem to be something of a ’sex kitten’ in some of these scenes, yet it is funny when Mrs. Rand brings her main character back out into society with never a concern about her more purient passions exposed. I mean she really gets into the rough sex of Mr. Rearden who is something of an unhappy man, at least at first, and is described, often as a Sex Maniac! This was the 50’s after all. But Mrs. Taggart takes a man from his wife… and actually announces her carnal passions to the nation of all things later in the book via Radio America! Still Mrs. Rand makes it clear that Mrs. Taggart remain an actual Icon of pureness and morality even though she is unmarried and sleeps around with just about every male character in the book!

Mrs. Taggart is a Slut! Excuse the French… of course we wouldn’t call her that in polite society, but you must admit that she seems to get away with everything in a Rand World… I suppose this lack of reaction to such sexual escapades would be an Objectavist’s creed to let a woman roam as it were. In my eyes I didn’t have much of a problem seeing that Mrs. Taggart could ‘get away’ as it were with her rather immoral stances, still it is Mrs. Rand whose Philosophy is often called Moral by herself many a time. So it is of interest here in her book that she seems to find Mrs. Taggart untouched by her many love affairs…. one in fact, and as a teen, with a wealthy Spanish Tycoon of good family who owns a Worldwide Copper Mill, Francisco d’Anconia.

Indeed the love affair with Mr. Rearden is very real yet Mrs. Rand doesn’t actually end this affair as anything uniting or important. Yet as a matter of the Heart itself it doesn’t ring actually very true as Mrs. Taggart seems to find, finally a man who seems to be up to her ‘elevated’ stances. Namely John Galt himself. I’ll refrain from describing Mr. Galt here, you can see who he is in the book itself, just to say that he reminds one of say, The Apostle Paul, someone untouched by the currents of society, one who only knows right and can dismiss everything else. He’s perfect in other words… still it is hard to believe that Mr. Rearden would let Mrs. Taggart go so easily, especially after their very real and fatal attractions. Mrs. Taggart is just given to one man after another, and it is surely an unusual development, even in a work of fiction, to see a woman go from one worthy and attractive man and unto the next one without even a tear or at least a moment or two. It’s almost as if Mrs. Rand has icewater for blood in these interesting passages! This then is a new woman that perhaps Mrs. Rand is seeing us towards, and I’m sure that if Mrs. Rand were actually alive today she would be able to laugh off these comments as being beneath her treasured and valued stances, yet as the heart will proclaim all the philosophies of the world can’t describe the pain or realities of love, which are by definition lasting and not conditioned in any way by the vagaries of Intellect.

I have focused upon Mrs. Dagny Taggart’s love affairs mostly here… but there is much to the book, a great deal and I must commend Mrs. Rand as a writer, regardless of her growing and warrented, to be sure, influence within ‘human affairs’. She has a fine sense of person and keeps a very massive effort going at a pretty good clip. I was pleased to have read this book and would recommend it as important for one to read. Indeed even as a snapshot of the time, the 50’s, Atlas Shrugged is a very good way to incorporate these important ‘notations’ into your own life and times. Especially with the world always trying to slip through our fingers and into the dreadful future to come, it is right nice and fine to see that troubles have a way of being a part of every era.

Atlas Shrugged a worthwhile read.

The Portrait of a Lady

We are certainly onto something here with Henry James, below this review you’ll see James’ Washington Square and The Bostonians, and there seems to be no reason that we shouldn’t keep with this “Jamesmania” for the present.  The Portrait of a Lady is James’ in ‘full flower’ I’d say, a much more expansive view of a James world than I have yet seen from this undaunted and scintillatingly talented writer.  Here for the first time I find a James applying the full script to his passions, allowing his characters full form and vigor in a truly large and complex world.

Like many of James’ works the story of The Portrait of a Lady involves a Heroine, Isabel Archer a young American woman who is ‘rescued’ by her Aunt (Lydia Touchett) from a life less ordinary.  She is taken from American to Gardencourt in England to meet Lydia’s Husband Daniel Touchett, who is older and somewhat emaciated with death surrounding the ‘old fellow’ like a moth to a flame.  Here, at Gardencourt Isabel also meets the son of Lydia and Daniel, Ralph Touchett who idolizes his father and is rather taken with his young cousin.  Ralph is also a bit infirm as well with ailments that James goes to some length to identify.  Lydia as the Mother and Wife is shown to be something of a ‘traveller’ as she does seem to stay a distance from her husband and son.  It is into this world that Isabel begins to find a full flower of her as yet youthful positions and dreams.

Isabel is very much more intellectual in my opinion than his last few heroines in The Bostonians and Washington Square.  Here I feel that James isn’t going to any lengths to present Isabel as anything but herself.  Her beauty isn’t ‘amazing’ and she doesn’t have ‘powers’ of charm as does Verena Tarrent of The Bostonians.  No, Mrs Archer appears altogether more full than the earlier James women, more serious and less accommodating to her surroundings.  She actually isn’t much ‘fun’ for us as readers and it has been written by Noted Critic and James Historian Harold Bloom that: “The novel (The Portrait of a Lady) being James’ portrait of himself as a woman.  All to the good then as we are carried through some really interesting and verbose scenes with Isabel Archer and these cast of interesting characters.

As the trust of the novel takes shape Isabel is looked upon as someone really rather valuable to her surrounding admirers.  She is often spoken of in glowing terns and the book does really go into overdrive, as it were as we are shown a number of men or suitors who vie for Mrs. Archer’s hand in marriage.

There is a one Lord Warburton, a lord of an English Manner down the road from Gardencourt who takes an instant fascination to Isabel.  He goes to great lengths to present himself to her, yet Isabel is always seemingly out of his reach.

There is Casper Goodwood a wealthy and young American Mill Owner who follows Isabel to England to stake his claim, he a haunting presence in the book, as his love for Mrs. Archer is unrequited and unremitted as well.

Then and finally foremost is Isabel’s most likely to succeed in this area with the dark and somewhat sinister Gilbert Osmand, an American living in Florence with a young Daughter.  Isabel is introduced to Mr. Osmand by Madame Merle yet another Ex-Pat living in England with a long friendship with Mr. Osmand.  It is with Isabel’s meeting with Madame Merle where we really see the book take us into unexpected places.  Mrs. Merle is described as ‘brilliant’ and very talented indeed, yet she is also kindly dismissed by Mr. James rather completely and often as someone who ‘never made a success’ of her own dreams.  In other words her lofty pursuits were not met with success in life, still Mrs. Merle is known by a great many and is an iluminary to her vast circle of friends.

Madame Merle introduces Isabel to her old friend Gilbert Osmand, a reclusive and very intelligent soul who is really very biting, in fact.  Mr. Osmand would not be the first choice that would come to ones mind in the meeting of a young potential bride like Mrs. Archer.  His daughter, Pansy, is brought up far away from him in a Catholic Nunnery, as if her very presence were something of a trouble to this dark character, who paints and apparently enjoys the shadows.  This interesting relationship between Mr. Osmand and Mrs. Merle does come to light latter in the book as Madame Merle guides her new friend Isabel into wedlock with her exact opposite.

Further into the book I won’t stray, you will surely want to read the musings of Mr. James without the verbiage here to do this work any further credit.  The way James ended this book was a bit perplexing to me though, as there is not a clear break with Isabel and Mr. Osmand, I could quite see Mrs. Archer returning to her non-committal husband in Florence, after all she did choose him over a Lord and a Mill Owner of wealth, still James is probably not allowing us a clear cut away that another more say ‘ordinary scribes’ might.  No James is indeed very serious here, in that we not mistake his intentions.  Mrs. Archer is surely a ‘catch’ by anyone’s estimation, her ‘value’ seems to be most important to her and her friends do go along with that for some way.  Still as critic Bloom wrote that Isabel is James and vice versa, is a compelling statement, and perhaps good strategy on Mr. James’ part as he surely needed to vivify his way into these strange and mysterious “Womanly Waters”.  On a lighter note, Mr. James was indeed “Gay” as Wilde and his note are often tagged, so it was probably no problem for James to wear the ’skirt’ for a while, at least metaphorically.  This note and tone would surely only increase Mr. James’ fine and lasting words in this work.

I’m still somewhat puzzled by the James Cannon.  His words and thoughts do flow through me somewhat vibrantly, but I seem to have some trouble picking up upon his baser motives and attractions.  He doesn’t seem to actually ’speak’ to us now does he, and as a Master of the Craft, he surely has all the right not to.  Still, I’m not a student and will have to penetrate further into this very great and esteemed man of the past.

Washington Square by Henry James

I’ve recently had an opportunity to peruse a few new Henry James books.  Only a few weeks ago did I review The Bostonians by Mr. James and found that book quite worth the reading.

In this newest book Washington Square however, there are not nearly as many pages as a ‘normal’ James work, somewhere around 120 pages or so.  I’d certainly put it in the Novella category.  Be that as it may Washington Square is nothing that will tax the ordinary reader, it’s intentions are rather clear and it goes about telling its story in a quick and intelligent manner.

I did however find that Washington Square lacked the lyrical language of The Bostonians, I often felt that this work felt like a younger less experienced James were at the helm.

The book itself concerns a Doctor, one Dr. Austin Sloper,  He’s a noted physician at about 55 or so when we meet him, he’s married a beautiful woman who gives him a son who soon after dies.  Heartbroken the couple have another child a girl who is rather simple and plain, her name is Catherine Sloper and she is the Heroine of our story.  A week after Catherine’s birth the doctor’s wife dies of complications due to childbirth.  Mr. James does explain this all very quickly, yet we do recognize a few trace elements of bitterness coming off the good doctor throughout our little novel here.  Indeed he does once say to Catherine later in the book that he isn’t a ‘good’ man.  Which surprises Catherine who actually loves her father somewhat.  The crux of the matter is that Dr Sloper doesn’t think very much of his plain daughter.  He compares her to his beautiful wife who is long dead and Mr. James does go on about Dr. Sloper’s intelligence and humor at parties etc, so we see quite clearly that the doctors ambitions will not be realized by his remaining daughter who he actually considers to be something of a bore of all things.

Catherine for her part loves and admires her father and wants only what he wants.  She doesn’t quite see her father’s poor treatment of her in his pert and ironical manner.  One gets a sense that he does love her yet that he is often short and ironic and sarcastic when around her.  When a young man enters Catherine’s life, Morris Townsend, who at about thirty is described by Mr. James as a very beautiful young man.  Mr. Townsend is a ‘fortune hunter’ he has squandered his life savings on foolery and being ‘wild’ as he mentions, yet he is intelligent and does seem to have a real attraction for Catherine.  However, Dr. Sloper grows to despise the young man and forbids his daughter to marry him.  He suggests strongly that she will not receive his share of inheritance if she does.

This is the basic thrust of the book then, as Dr. Sloper grows increasingly against the young man who has his daughter’s intentions.  Catherine for her part is loath to do anything against her father and it is difficult for her to part with the attractive young man, even though he is a rake.  After all Catherine isn’t a pretty or lively girl in any way, as Mr. James so clearly reminds us any number of times.  This ‘poor’ girl as Mr. James writes of her, is really at a loss as what to do but then does indeed side with her lover in the end, after a long journey with her father throughout Europe….

Washington Square is a very spare book.  I can’t say that I actually enjoyed the story much.  Although I’ve read that many seem to take to this story of a Father’s bitterness towards his Daughter as good, I found it pretty bloodless actually.  The father does seem to be a real wet blanket for sure, he makes bones about protecting his daughter from the Rake Morris Townsend yet one does get the sense that he is only getting back at a life that took his beautiful wife and family from him, he is really rather mean in my estimation.  The doctor doesn’t seem to care much about his daughter’s happiness at all, and as the book ends one sees that Catherine really has become a bit as her father envisioned her.  She looks back on the business with Mr. Townsend with a bit of unhappiness for sure, as she must often wonder what could have been.  Yet it’s an ignoble end for her as Mr. Townsend does visit, much changed.

Mr. James is surely into some deep waters here, and his telling is well done but without the usual ‘James’ flair that I am used to.  I also read that Mr. James himself found this work rather beneath him and couldn’t even re-read it for inclusion into a special Addition of his work.  I must side with the Aurthur then that this one does feel a bit less spectacular and can be easily skipped over.  Not a bad novel to while away a rainy night but not one to clutch to in the bane of greater pursuits!

Absolution Gap

Absolution Gap is the final volume of Alastair Reynolds ‘Revelation Space’ series of novels.  We here at By The Book have reviewed all of them.

In this one Absolution Gap Mr. Reynolds begins us back to where the last book essentially left off on Ararat the Pattern Juggler World where the Lighthugger ‘Infinity’ (the ship had become Captain John Brannigan through the Melding Plague, if you remember) was crash landed into the Pattern Juggler Ocean.  It is here where we pick up on some old favorites of the series.  There is Scorpio, the genetically altered pig and leader of the colony, and we see that it has been over twenty years since the colonization.  He is in search of his friend, Nevil Clavain, the old war hero from the past who you may remember from the earlier books, he is now somewhat older and in seclusion upon the new settlement.  There is a pod that has landed nearby with someone in it… and fearful that it might be Skade, Scorpio enlists the now reclusive and weary Clavain to assist.

Turns out that it’s Khouri, Villanova’s assistant… she tells them that her baby (Aura) was stolen from her womb by Skade who crash landed on Ararat recently in the Pattern Juggler Ocean.  This baby, Aura apparently has helped the Conjoiners fashion new weapons to fight off the Inhibitors, deadly machines that are set on destroying sentient life throughout the Universe.

This is the general scheme of the book, Mr. Reynolds keeps things going at a pretty good pace at first.  Some of our ‘favorites’ from the first two books are killed but the book continues rather well after ‘offing’ some pretty powerful characters.  Of course the whole thing is about the danger of the Inhibitors, the cube like machines of intelligence that can destroy whole worlds and people.

Mr. Reynolds introduces us to a new world and setting upon our travels in the dangerous space.  Hela an airless moon of the gas giant Haldora.  There was an ancient and extinct alien race that once lived on Hela, called the Scutllers, and Mr. Reynolds really does a good job at weaving this story into the larger text.  By bringing in a Horris Quaiche, a scavenger of noted repute who has been forced to find something valuable upon the Hela landscape.  His shuttle crashes and he sees the gas giant Haldora disappear before his eyes.  Later as the book progresses we see that there has become a religion and society upon Hela and this is where Mr. Reynolds introduces us to Rashmika Els, a very precocious girl of one of the Hela Badland families.  In this side story she supposedly seeks out her brother who has joined the caravans of religion, that she disproves of.  She has also become something of an expert of Scuttler anatomy and wants desperately to join the caravans that must keep moving so as not to miss a glimpse of the gas giant Haldora disappearing again.  In fact these adherents stare at Haldora constantly, and Quaiche, himself now old and infirm sits in a coach without eyelids and stares at Haldora exclusively…

There is lots going on as Mr. Reynolds shifts from the one story about Scorpio, Aura, Clavain and Skade to the one on Hela regarding the adventures of the mysterious Rashmika Els.  I was pretty hopeful about the character of Quaiche actually, I did find him rather refreshing as he went into the Hela world to explore for riches.  I was waiting to return to his story, but then realized that much time had passed as Mr. Reynolds did go on about the Quaicheist Religion, and then suddenly after some odd pages we are faced with an old skeleton, Quaiche himself, quietly mad apparently, still he did seem a bit more commanding at the first and in my mind very interesting… I was thinking along the lines of a new male character… I didn’t realize that this was the last book of the Revelation Series.  Still, it’s not unlikely that Mr. Reynolds won’t start on a new Revelation Space tack sooner than later.  I would encourage him in that endeavour, I didn’t care for the epilogue, however, and felt that he should have simply left the Inhibitors as unmatched instead of explaining them a bit too simply in my opinion.

This is essential reading, however, if you are in any way interested in Mr. Reynolds work.

Absolution Gap is a fitting summery to his Revelation Space books, we can only wait until the wheels spin again for Mr. Reynolds as we surmise his worlds and imagination with eager if not hopeful steps.

Let’s continue now upon our Reading Adventures with Mrs. Stephenie Meyer’s The Host. I’m not one who often reads very popular fiction, and The Host graced any number of best seller lists for quite a long time if I remember. The Host is something of a yearning for a return to Romance, actually, and although it has a Science Fiction Plotline, it somewhat succeeds in this endeavor. I can almost assure you that 90% of Mrs. Meyer’s readers are women. There is a very sensitive side to The Host and Mrs. Meyer is fairly instinctive to her surroundings here.

The Story of The Host can be summed up rather easily. The book begins with a young woman being chased and then falls down an elevator shaft and apparently is dead, except that her pursuers are Aliens from another creation entirely separate from our Earth. These are advanced beings who implant themselves within the living bodies of their “Hosts”, thusly becoming them. And this is exactly what happens to young Melanie “Mel” Stryder, whose body is cured by a ‘Healer’ of the Alien race then implanted with the Alien Creature.

After this occurs the young woman who was implanted in Melanie’s body goes about her new life with her new consciousness and body. What is clear, however, is that ‘The Hosts’ have already taken over the entire planet with just about everyone, that was once ‘Human’ now of this Alien Sustenance. The Aliens are really rather more relaxed about things then we are, they abhor violence, and even money itself isn’t exchanged anymore for goods and services. It is into this new world that the young alien woman in Melanie’s body traverses. It becomes quite clear at the outset, however that Melanie is still somehow just under the surface of the host that has taken her over, and there is much trouble as the voice of Melanie is vibrant and rather obsessive to this host within her. There is also a backstory at this time about Melanie’s love for a young man, Jared and her young brother Jamie. The host of Melanie is really rather well meaning and finds it hard to live with Melanie, and she even finds herself loving Jared the young man herself.

It is with this backdrop that the new Melanie tries to come to grips with her new body and spirit. She is actually hounded a bit by a Seeker, one who is more on the law and order side of things amongst the aliens. The Seeker is pretty strongly portrayed as snide and unruly with a single minded devotion to her duties, and she does belittle and frighten the Host in Melanie. The host as Melanie decides that she needs further guidance and considers leaving Melanie’s body for another body. It is then that she travels by car across the desert. Where she finds that she is more attached to Melanie than she first suspected. They travel to find Jared and Jamie and go deep into the Arizona desert to find them. They nearly die but are rescued by a Rag-Tag assembly of surviving humans, Uncle Jeb is in fact Melanie’s old Uncle.

Jared and Jamie are actually among these but Jared hates Melanie very much because he sees that she is an alien now. The other survivors of humanity also hate her and the book goes into some pretty intense detail about the fears of the young alien inside of Melanie. She is hit quite a lot by Jared and others of the tribe, but survives pretty much intact. It’s sad in my opinion that these young men were able to so manhandle this woman, alien or not. I did long for some muscle from real men at this time, simply because a lady is a lady. Yet Melanie and the host within her still love Jared and she gains some friends within the caved compound. Her brother Jamie loves her regardless and another named Ian who was at first as hateful as many of the rest do come to love her quite a bit.

The romantic play between these characters is handled rather clearly, and here Mrs. Meyers does have a pretty good way of bringing out her characters. I did grow weary of the host in Melanie always in fear of being killed by the ‘humans’ in the cave, and wish these long drawn out sequences could have somehow been shortened. Still it’s an effective story told with a certain flair. This isn’t ‘deep’ reading but reading which you won’t be too upset about. It gives one pause to think of future books by Mrs. Meyer, she could soar someday as a writer and here’s hoping she succeeds.

Now we continue with our further explorations of Haruki Murakami’s work. Our last two reviews of Mr. Murakami, you may wish to read as well (Sputnik Sweetheart and A Wild Sheep Chase).

In this one Mr. Murakami often enters the Fantasy area of fiction, interspersing an unusual mix of real life characters with an alternate fantasy world. The main character of Hard Boiled is known as a “Calcutec” which means that he is basically a human number cruncher who is able to decipher complex binary codes and such within his own scull. He’s another of Mr. Murakami’s male ’stock’ main characters. He lives in a small apartment, is divorced and is about 35 or so. He’s disconnected from life in general and basically lives a lonely existence with only himself to concern himself with. As a Calcutec the unnamed narrator works for a group called “The System” an underground organization that protects important data from “The Semiotecs” who steal such data for their own ends. There is no James Bondish touches to Mr. Murakami, however! His touch is unusual to say the least as a Murakami work is not easily defined under normal circumstances.

I was pretty well surprised to find Mr. Murakami in this fantasy area, all his works that I’ve read so far, are firmly steeped in the everyday existences of life itself, but here Mr. Murakami does enter into some science fiction elements. The outcome is ‘interesting’ to say the least.

To continue with the story, however, the narrator meets with an aged scientist and his young charge, a fat teenaged girl (17), who wears only pink and is the Granddaughter of the scientist. The meeting takes place at first in a high security building in Tokyo, where after much delay; the narrator is whisked into a closet of an office and is made to wear a rain slicker. Suddenly the closet opens up and there is a subterranean world just underneath, with a river, trees and the scientist’s laboratory under a waterfall. Not what you’d expect in a Tokyo Skyscraper. It is while meeting the scientist that our hero, the narrator and Calcutec, is to perform his data encryptions for the professor. The professor himself is eccentric to say the least, he has important data concerning the state of sound, and can indeed seemingly ‘take sound away’ with his devices. He is much older and a ‘go-getter’ type of elder gentleman, with much energy throughout the tale.

The narrator with this meeting is told that he must return in a few days with the important data of ‘the world will end’. And so it goes, I won’t say too much more, but quite a few things do occur to the narrator in the actual life sections of the book.

The other part of the book is the narrator in a fantasy land called, The End Of The World, which turns out to be a creation of the narrator himself, it’s an odd world where there is a wall containing the entire population. There are Unicorns and the narrator becomes a “Dreamreader” in this fictional land, by reading the ‘memories’ of the sculls of dead Unicorns in the Library of the town itself. There is much about “Shadows” that are separated from the inhabitants of the town causing them to be trapped there forever. It’s an ‘afterlife’ of sorts, if you will, but no one will be mistaking this man’s afterlife with Heaven, say. It’s really rather dreary really.

The book is an honest attempt at fantasy but here, for the first time I feel that Mr. Murakami has ’stepped’ into an area where he may not have been altogether there. My main trouble with this present Murakami work is with the narrator, he’s just not that interesting to me personally, he goes about life with a large chip on his shoulder but pretends to be a bit too humble in my estimations. We’ve seen this man a bit too much in Mr. Murakami’s books, and unfortunately in this one, the book itself doesn’t rise to the occasion as in other Murakami works. Again Mr. Murakami’s female characters, are always somewhat more interesting than his male characters. The scientist, I found to be dull… his nonsensical approach lost me almost at the get go, he seemed to be a bit too jocular for the ‘concerns’ of a tactician.

I can’t recommend that you read this work by Mr. Murakami, in fact you may be assured that you can skip it if you are aware of Mr. Murakami’s other fine and lasting works. In this one the pieces just don’t fit for us as readers. So it is regretful that I must vote thumbs down upon this one.

Most of us know of Mr. Kafka’s work by way of The Metamorphosis, which has become required reading in High School classes. I’m one of those who found the Metamorphosis rather inventive and highly exceptional, so it was with no little surprise that I did decide to pick up one of Mr. Kafka’s books, The Trial.

The Trial is just that a Trial of one Josef K, who as a respected bank official, is suddenly accused of a crime. Interestingly the crime itself is not revealed in any way and we never learn of the actual charges against Mr. K. The book is very strange indeed, and if you were expecting a straight forward ‘crime drama’ you will be disappointed, as Mr. Kafka isn’t interested in the facts, as it were but in the undercurrents and perceptions of the legal proceedings that ensnare the young bank official.

As Josef K looks further into his trial, we meet many very unusual and often singular characters from his life. His lawyer is a sickly fat man with a young girl as a servant that often has illusions of love and intimacy with the lawyer’s clients, including Mr. K. In fact the women in The Trial are often looked upon as really rather frivolous, yet somewhat real in that Mr. Kafka is a very intense writer of much imagination and depth.

The accused Josef K. proclaims his innocence often and most everyone does believe him, yet although he has supposedly committed a real crime, or is accused of one he is not arrested but hounded by the courts of the land itself, presumably Germany, Mr. Kafka’s home nation. Kafka’s scathing portrait of a twisted and insane legal system, that is ineffectual and inept is surely at the core of The Trial. There seems to be no way at all to resolve any crime at all, and the best one can hope for in the book is to go unnoticed by the legal officials who seem to go to great lengths not to exonerate anyone.

The main character Josef K. is very strong in thought and deed, he is straightforward in every sense and does seem to be his own worst enemy in these circumstances. He is certain of his every move and I think the reader may not be all that sympathetic to Mr. K, who does often appear to think perhaps a bit too highly of himself. Still he is a very well drawn character, and one would assume that he mirrors, Mr. Kafka himself a bit. Mr. Kafka, I was rather surprised to learn had a law degree! His demonstration here is complete abhorrence to the legal system, he clearly dismisses any semblance of honesty, grace or dignity to the profession. One is almost reminded of Orwell’s 1984 when reading The Trial, at times, Kafka’s Legal Eagles, are Vultures in a time with possible totalitarian tendencies. Was this Kafka’s purpose, to warn us of upcoming atrocities within the Law Offices and Justice Systems of the future, or is his The Trial to be looked upon as more whimsical then? I believe that that would depend upon the reader.

One doesn’t read Kafka, however with a shower of sunshine upon the shoulder, however. The Trial is surely a book that will keep you wondering at the intricacies and talents of this singular man who does still tend to enliven and enrich our reading pleasures.

Let us now turn our attention to The Bostonians by Henry James. I must admit that I’d never read anything by Mr. James before, but his reputation has, of course proceeded him. So it was with some interest that while I was shopping for other books, that I decided upon The Bostonians. I usually try to start at the beginning of a writer’s career but with Mr. James there are quite a few books and I just felt that I finally needed to ‘pick one up’ as it were.

A quick perusal of its back cover told me that it would be about the so called ‘Woman’s Movement’, the Woman’s Suffrage Movement. There are three main characters, Olive Chancellor, a stalwart of the Movement who is wealthy, cultured and attractive. She is very single minded in her pursuit of a woman’s dignity during a time of much turbulence amongst the sexes. Olive is really nearly sexless as described by the very lyrical text as Mr. James describes her. Indeed, she has no need of a man at all and looks at the ‘Species’ as something less than savory and/or necessary, and although mannerly and strict to men, in general, the tone of the book leads the reader to understand that Olive despises Man most completely.

Into Mrs. Chancellor’s life comes the other adult member of the novel, one Basil Ransom, a Civil War Veteran, who has moved to Boston for a time to enliven his prospects, he is a very distant cousin to Olive and when they meet, at the very beginning of the novel, Olive takes him to one of her ‘ladies meetings’. Mr. Ransom is a staunch Conservative of the Old School, he has no feelings whatsoever for the rights of women, in general, and would indeed prefer that they cater to men as they have and had done so in this very early time in American history. Mr. Ransom is charming to be sure, at times one would think of Rhett Butler, from Gone With The Wind, at times while Mr. Ransom makes himself agreeable to the women of The Bostonians. Olive’s older sister Mrs. Luna, who is much older even falls in love with him, all to her own consternation as he sours upon her and vice versa. While at the Woman’s Suffrage meeting continues at a wealthy and well to do feminist of the time, the third member of our little party speaks to the assembled, the Pretty and Talented, Verena Tarrant.

Mrs. Tarrant, is terribly young but remarkably brilliant in speech and manner, and she wow’s, for lack of better terminology, the assembled guests, no so more than Olive and Mr. Ransom, who although cutting and disagreeable to the woman’s movement, makes a standoff appearance mostly while this is all going on. Mrs. Tarrant is unformed and the interplay that develops between her and Olive is at the core of the book. Each of Verena’s talks at various parlors and houses of the time is treated to glowing notices by Mr. James, he doesn’t go so far as letting us know what she is saying only the reactions of the surrounding listeners, especially Olive and Mr. Ransom who for himself disagrees with everything she has said, yet seems to find her very presence illuminating. Olive for her part is in a Rapture of love for Verena and after this first encounter spends some pages of the book securing Verena, from her parents into her very own home. She literally pays off Verena’s parents for their daughter, and in the book, Mrs. Chancellor is very cold to these two. In fact Mrs. Chancellor is dismissive of just about everyone in her space preferring her own company to that of others. She is set in her ways and sees no need to change in any way.

As the book progresses Olive and Basil Ransom obviously fall out of favor with one another, and at first one doesn’t get the sense at all, that Mr. Ransom is in love with Verena, very much, although Mr. James does go into some detail about Basil’s ‘feelings’ for this young girl. Mr. Ransom then moves to New York and the book proceeds without him altogether, mostly focusing upon the fears of Olive pertaining to Verena falling in love with a man, something that Mrs. Chancellor abhors and wants to see Verena avoid seemingly at all costs. Verena doesn’t lack for the attention of men and any number of young specimens do arrive to coax her into their fold. Mrs. Chancellor has a way of dismissing these various suitors as wholly unnecessary and crass for any number of reasons and does indeed receive Verena’s promise not to marry any of them.

The book proceeds in this manner until it returns to Mr. Ransom, who is doing actually very poorly in New York, he is a lawyer and it appears, via the narrative of Mr. James that Mr. Ransom is a very bitter man indeed, mostly about the southern loss in the Civil War. Then as Mr. Ransom visits Boston again he decides to see Mrs. Tarrant, Verena alone in the park, it is here that he ‘makes his play’ for the young riser. Verena herself is taken aback by the passions of Mr. Ransom, and his complete disagreement about the Woman’s Movement that Verena is apparently transfixed with. He basically takes over this young attractive and talented woman with his charm and so forth.

As the book continues into its final stage, Olive realizes that she is indeed losing Verena and of course to her most ardent enemy, Mr. Basil Ransom.

I won’t go too much into the end and I must warn many of you who may wish to read the Bostonians not to venture to Wikipedia, until after you read the book, the whole plot is summarized there in about two paragraphs and the beginning, middle and ending are there for all to see! Taking any drama at all from us as readers!

I was taken by Mr. James’ writing itself, his ‘flow’ is purely invention, and at first I didn’t quite understand his meanings or his thrust. His writing to me seems almost sing-song in nature, a lyrical exercise of almost uncommon depth and excellence. I quickly found myself caught up in The Bostonians and read sometimes whole sections rather quickly and with much interest. I’ve never known anyone who writes like this, Mr. James is a force of One, in the high literary circles, as his reputation will warrant. Still, Mr. James is completely in control of his work and owns it rather completely, his interest isn’t in us as readers but his own informed and lucid interpretation of things. We aren’t going to get our usual Lollipops then from a James work! That I could see. Over at Wikipedia, however I did read that The Bostonians was roundly unfavorable to the critics of the time as being not altogether fair to the Woman’s Movement of the time. I do believe that perhaps the times were to immediate to see a clearer picture of The Bostonians and now that there has been so much water under the bridge, that Mr. James’ work here will be much more admired and cheered for new and modern audiences that have the distance of the Woman’s Historical Movement to see a larger picture of this very fine work.

With that said I can’t say I enjoyed the ending very much, but am agreeable to it as being completely real. Mr. Basil Ransom, in my own humble opinion was less than gentlemanly and I really had very little sympathy at all for his ways and means. I didn’t wish him harm in any way, yet I felt that he was more concerned with the ‘battle between the sexes’, his war with Mrs. Chancellor, to be the main thrust of his intellect. He, in many ways seemed to need to push this individual unhappiness of his into the lives of these very fine individuals, perhaps, I think because of his bitterness with the loss of the South in the Civil War. Unlike, Rhett Butler then, Mr. Ransom is, in my eye, lacking that very singular Southern Charm of which he infused himself with, like a shadow of the true metal was my guess.

One is wondering about these things and more as Mr. James does state at the end that Mrs. Verena Tarrant is surely in for more tears. Not something that a newlywed would be accustomed to whilst considering such a singular state as wedlock.

The Bostonians, Highly Recommended.

Now we turn to Redemption Ark, the third book in the Revelation Space Series of Science Fiction. The first two books are Revelation Space and Chasm City which we have reviewed and recommend that you read these.

This time as we travel further into the World of Redemption Ark we see that unlike Chasm City which mostly takes place on land, Mr. Reynolds has fashioned Redemption Ark mostly in space, keeping more to the tone of Revelation Space. Some of our old friends are here, Triumvir Ilia Volyova, Ana Khouri and Captain John Brannigan is back as well.

In this one we learn a good deal more about the Conjoiners, the first Conjoiner Galiana, who Legendary as she has become, is a ‘victim’ of The Inhibitors, artificial creatures, who are apparently bent on not allowing sentient life freedom in space. Galiana is placed in a sort of suspended animation by the Inhibitors, and that is essentially how the book begins with Skade, a Conjoiner Elite, investigating the ship, finds Galiana and keeps here in this bio-freeze state against the wishes of Galiana, who only wants the freedom of death.

Ten years later Nevil Claivain the lover of Galiana and father of her warped and feral child Felka wonders about Galiana not realizing that she has been found. There is another story about where Claivain rescues Antoinette Bax, of Yellowstone from certain death as she attempts to jettison her father’s ashes into a gas giant, his last wish apparently.

After this Nevil Claivain who has so far resisted becoming a Conjoiner completely is convinced to do so by Skade. During this Claivain decides to disagree and takes Skade’s ship and enlists the help of Antoinette Bax.

Meanwhile Volyova and Ana Khouri are becoming more aware of the Inhibitors somewhat near Resurgam and of course Volyova pretty much stays with the Lighthugger ship that has actually become Captain John Brannigan, due to his troubles with the Melding Plague. Also on the ship are the “Hell Class” weapons that Galiana created with the help of the Inhibitors of the future, about 60 very deadly machines or weapons, each capable of great damage. It is these weapons that the Conjoiners want back. That is the center of Redemption Ark, and Claivain and Skade race to retrieve these valuable killing machines to hopefully (they seem to think) thwart the intentions of the Inhibitors, who are coring a planet near Resurgam to destroy that planet.

Volyova won’t release the weapons, of course, and there is much made of who will get them. Essentially the story focuses upon Volyova and the Military Mastermind Clavain and how one or the other will win this conflict for the weapons. Volyova wants to use all the weapons right now but Claivain wants to wait for a better opportunity. Also the inhabitants of Resurgam are air lifted off the planet and sent to the Lighthugger ship which has a great deal of room but in infected by the Captain who is very deep in the Melding Plague that has infested the entire ship.

The book really shines when it’s about the Captain and the ship rather than about Claivain and the Conjoiners who seem to talk a bit much for my taste. In fact I believe that the Captain is the one that everyone is concerned with even more than the Inhibitors. At one point The Captain is able to fire one of the Hell Class Weapons upon himself, the ship, deciding to destroy himself and it with him. I was thinking that that would be a-ok, but Volyova has other plans and thwarts this plan, which in the end seems ok, I suppose as the Ship finally crashes down on a Pattern Juggler World and seems to be ‘evolving’ into something interesting.

I believe that the so called ‘Pattern Jugglers’ are the Enablers, the other side of the Inhibitors, so this is interesting and will be better explored in the fourth book of the series titled, Absolution Gap, of which I will be reviewing here soon.

I’ve been a bit dry in this review, but I think you get the gist.