Same Damn Good Reads

For whatever reason, (well, there is a reason, but I'm not going into that here), in 2006 I hit a reading mother lode. Now, 2006 just happened to be the year I read these books.


Here they are:


Life and Fate (New York Review Books Classics) by Vasily Grossman. Most of these books are extraordinarily funny. This one isn't. Life in Stalin's Soviet Union during WW II. NYRB page. My review.

Excerpt from an essay on Grossman, a WW II Sovier war journalist:

It has proved almost impossible to write about the Holocaust without becoming bathetic or cheap, but Grossman did it as both a reporter and as a novelist, when he once again metamorphosed the material for Life and Fate.

“What music resurrects in the soul of a man about to die is neither hope nor thought,” Grossman writes, “but simply the blind, heart-breaking miracle of life itself,” and the gas chamber sequence in this book is a requiem that rises in rhapsodic detail and intimacy until it becomes virtually impossible to read without weeping. Beginning with the long, agonizing transport in a cattle-car, these chapters hook upon the characters of an educated Red Army doctor named Sofya Levinton and a foundling boy named David and follow their memories and minutest impressions from the train into the “bathhouse” of the death camp. Again each firmly shaped paragraph lends its weight to what follows, culminating in prose of nearly unbearable heaviness and grandeur:

The shuffling quietened down; all you could hear were occasional screams, groans and barely audible words. Speech was no longer of any use to people, nor was action; action is directed towards the future and there no longer was any future. When David moved his head and neck, it didn’t make Sofya Levinton want to turn to see what he was looking at.

Her eyes—which had read Homer, Izvestia, Huckleberry Finn, and Mayne Reid, that had looked at good people and bad people, that had seen the geese in the green meadows of Kursk, the stars above the observatory at Pulkovo, the glitter of surgical steel, the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, tomatoes and turnips in the bins at market, the blue water of Issyl-Kul—her eyes were no longer of any use to her. If someone had blinded her, she would have felt no sense of loss. . . .
The boy’s movements filled her with pity. Her feelings towards him were so simple that she no longer needed words and eyes. The half-dead boy was still breathing, but the air he took in only drove life away. His head was turning from side to side; he still wanted to see. He could see people settling onto the ground; he could see mouths that were toothless and mouths with white teeth and gold teeth; he could see a thin stream of blood flowing from a nostril. He could see eyes peering through the glass; Roze’s inquisitive eyes had momentarily met David’s. He still needed his voice—he would have asked Aunt Sonya about those wolf-like eyes. He still even needed thought. He had taken only a few steps in the world. He had seen the prints of children’s bare heels on hot, dusty earth, his mother lived in Moscow, the moon looked down and people’s eyes looked up at it from below, a tea-pot was boiling on the gas-ring. . . . This world, where a chicken could run without its head, where there was milk in the morning and frogs he could get to dance by holding their front feet—this world still preoccupied him.

Flashman: A Novel (Flashman) by George MacDonald Fraser. The British anti-hero. More Hilarious, outrageous, anything-but-PC. 





The Last Crossing: A Novel by Guy Vanderhaeghe. 2004. My review. Christian Science Monitor review. The Guardian review and excerpt:

The last crossing, the second in Guy Vanderhaeghe's nineteenth-century prairie-lands trilogy, comes heralded with praise from Annie Proulx and Richard Ford. Charles Gaunt's twin brother, Simon, has gone missing in Montana and Charles and his elder brother, Addington, are dispatched by their overbearing father, from his deer-filled estates in nineteenth-century England, to attempt their brother's recovery.

The Big Sky by A. B. Guthrie Jr. My review. He won the Pulitzer for the sequel, The Way West in 1950, but start here. Heading West in 1830.

"You can't beat God for bein' picky. No, sir. If he catches you playin' cards or sayin' one swear word...it's to hell with you forever and ever...Even thinkin' is mighty dangerous. As a man thinketh, that's how he is, and to hell with him ag'in. Why you reckon he gave us a thinker then?...God is some busybody."

The Towers of Trebizond (New York Review Books Classics) by Rose Macaulay. This book was outrageously funny as only the late Victorian British can pull off. My review. From the NYRB page:

"'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass." So begins The Towers of Trebizond, the greatest novel by Rose Macaulay, one of the eccentric geniuses of English literature. In this fine and funny adventure set in the backlands of modern Turkey, a group of highly unusual travel companions makes its way from Istanbul to legendary Trebizond, encountering potion-dealing sorcerers, recalcitrant policemen, and Billy Graham on tour with a busload of Southern evangelists. But though the dominant note of the novel is humorous, its pages are shadowed by heartbreak—as the narrator confronts the specters of ancient empires, religious turmoil, and painful memories of lost love. 

Friends of pancho villa by James Carlos Blake. My review. I thought I was one of the few people ever to have read this book. Great historical fiction and also laugh out loud funny (really, not just LOL). But, hey ho! Johnny Depp is making it into a moving picture!

Blake's Pancho:

"From now on their books will have to say, 'Nobody ever invaded the United States except for Francisco Villa, the magnificent Mexican patriot who tried so hard to be our friend but who we treated so shamefully because we are such stupid sons of bitches and have no honor.' "

The Tears of Autumn by Charles McCarry. My review. One of the great spy stories of all time. The Kennedy assassination made simple. A WAPO review from 2005 Passing the Test of Time.

Raskell and Roge and Short Arsed Raskell

In American Slavery, American Freedom by the great Edmund S. Morgan, when discussing the efforts at social control in the 17th century Virginia colonial era, he quotes the Surry County, Virginia records for April 16, 1660, that Bartholomew Owens of said county described Captain George Jordan as a “Raskell and Roge and shorte Arsed Raskell”. Owens further stated that he “Longed to kick that short arse”. Owens “spoke scandalous words” against the county commissioners averring that “he would never have justice in that county” and “highly reviled” Captain Jordan (one of the county commissioners). 

Here is a link to my review of American Slavery, American Freedom.

Later that same year, hearing that Owen “hath of late in divers places in ye said Countye & Elsewhere Scandalized & Defamed them in Generall by taxing them with Injustice”, the Surry County commissioners appointed Jordan “to sue & prosecute said Owen at next Court.” Owens was convicted, but the penalty remains unclear.

I was attracted to the quote by the colorful imagery and idiosynscratic spelling, but the episode does reflect fairly common insubordination even among the small landholders toward the the governing commissioners, who were large landholders and baldly used their power to favor their own interests.

The other thing that struck me was that I found a typed copy of Surry County records in about 2.4 seconds using Google, whereas Morgan spent months and years researching the award-winning book. (Francis Parkman Prize for 1976.)

(See my post of favorite authors.)

A Dozen Good Reads Or More - Fiction

Casting back from 2007 to 2009, here are a dozen of my favorite fiction reads (OK, actually thirteen). Some titles will be familiar, others not. Some are literature and others are genre fiction (if that has any meaning at all). All are good.

I've been reviewing books pretty steadily on Amazon since 2006, but I had to leave out 2006 to keep my list at a manageable size. For whatever reason, 2006 was a very excellent reading year for me, worthy of a separate post. So, no Flashman, no Richard Sharpe, no A.B. Guthrie Jr. No, Patrick O'Brian, whose 21 tales of naval adventure, scientific exploration, and intrigue featuring Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, I had already polished off before 2006.


The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill. Featuring "72-year-old state coroner Dr. Siri Paiboun...in Cotterill's engaging whodunit, set in Laos a year after the 1975 Communist takeover...". My review is here.

***

The Stalin Epigram by Robert Littell, Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, and The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge each examines the Stalinist terror, its destruction of its victims, who are often loyal Communists, the manipulation of the human mind and body, and the nearly univerisal failure of resistance. Koestler and Serge were both disillusioned Stalinists, but Serge has the 'advantage' of having experienced the terro first-hand. How Littell manages to keep up is a credit to his skill as a writer. Remarkably, each book is a work of excelling merit. 

The Stalin Epigram: A Novel by Robert Littell. From PW: In 1934, real-life poet Osip Mandelstam struggles to get published in the totalitarian state....Much to the despair of his fellow poets, Osip writes an epigram likening Stalin to a ruthless killer, leading to Osip's arrest, brutal interrogation and exile...Littell is unflinching in his portrayal of Osip's tragic arc, bringing a troubled era of Russian history to rich, magnificent life." My review is here.



Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler.
Here is Christopher Hitchens' retrospective on Slate.com: "Koestler's chief character, Nicholas Rubashov, is modeled on those former Bolshevik intellectuals who made full "confessions" of fantastic and abominable crimes at the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s. And, because Koestler had by no means forgotten what he had learned about the dialectic, he decided to place Rubashov in a dilemma from which he himself had escaped. What if the opponent of Stalin is still half-convinced that Stalin is morally wrong but may be "historically" right? He may decide to put his name on the confession and hope that history will one day vindicate him. His last duty to the Party may, in other words, be suicide."

My review of Darkness at Noon is here.


The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge has been republished as part of the marvelous NYRB Classics series. Here is my review.

NYRB says: "One cold Moscow night, Comrade Tulayev, a high government official, is shot dead on the street, and the search for the killer begins. In this panoramic vision of the Soviet Great Terror, the investigation leads all over the world, netting a whole series of suspects whose only connection is their innocence—at least of the crime of which they stand accused. But The Case of Comrade Tulayev, unquestionably the finest work of fiction ever written about the Stalinist purges, is not just a story of a totalitarian state."

Here is Hitchens again, this time in the LA Times reviewing a biography of Serge by Susan Weissman. And here is a review of that same biography on a web site called Revolutionary History:
"VICTOR Serge was one of the most interesting characters in left-wing politics during the first half of the twentieth century....Serge has been frightfully overlooked at all points of the political spectrum. This is not surprising, as his heartfelt defence of the October Revolution put him beyond the pale of most social democrats and anarchists, his active participation in the Left Opposition did likewise with Stalinists, and his clashes with Trotsky and often heretical views led him to be looked on with suspicion by many if not most Trotskyists."

 ***

Shadow Country (Modern Library Paperbacks) by Peter Matthiessen.
Here is the PW review. And here is my review.

"Oh Lord God," she cries. "They are killing Mr. Watson!"

Shadow Country is Peter Matthiessen's reworked rendering of his earlier trilogy of historical fiction relating the life of the brutal Florida pioneer Edgar J. Watson. (This version still consists of three "books" and runs to almost 900 pages.

Shadow Country is almost entirely set in the 1890's and early 1900's in a frontier region not widely known - the Ten Thousand Islands of south Gulf Coast Florida (the Everglades area). The area was absurdly remote at the time and presented such daunting challenges and dangers to any settlers that it was in fact nearly unsettled. It is brutally hot and humid, resistant to agriculture, possessed of dangerous animals (on sea and land), prone to calamitous storms, infested with mosquitoes, and inhabited by a large proportion of suddenly violent men as well as sociopathic criminals. This is the place Edgar J. Watson chooses to live.

Within the first ten pages of Book One, the reader confronts this sentence: "Oh Lord God," she cries. "They are killing Mr. Watson!"

That Watson is an exceptional man is undoubted. Beginning with nothing, he manages to set himself up as a power to be reckoned with. He is also grandiose, violent, and merciless. But is he a murderer (several times over)? Opinions vary. He drinks too much. He loses what he has and what he wants and what he values. It is a hard life in a hard place. Edgar Watson was a hard man in dire need of some education and civilization, neither of which could be found in any quantity in the islands.

Shadow Country is an American epic of a mysterious historical character (yes, Edgar Watson really lived and died in the islands). The writing is at times exquisite. The story it tells is often brutal or just about plain hard life. The writing is compelling, the reading can be draining.

***

Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy) by Naguib Mahfouz.
My review is here.

"Naguib Mahfouz, the only Arabic language writer ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, begins Palace Walk with Amina, the devout and devoted Muslim wife of al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad patiently waiting for her husband to return home from another long night of drinking, music, and carousing with his male friends and pursuing illicit sexual relations in Cairo's clubs and cafes. Mahfouz thus immediately establishes Amina's willing and absolute subservience to her husband. Mahfouz takes the next several chapters to develop al-Sayyid Ahmad's position as the unquestioned head of a family of two daughters, Khadija and Aisha, and three sons, Yasin an adult son from a prior marriage, Fahmy a law student, and young Kamal.


About two-thirds of the way into the book, the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 breaks out against the British occupation and draws the family into its vortex. Much of the final third of the book is taken up with the family's interactions with the British occupiers. The revolution provides an important historical background and Mahfouz masterfully recreates the sounds, sights, smells, and tastes of Cairo's streets, but his greatest triumph is the creation of the complete life of this urban yet intensely Islamic and Egyptian family, a family that is perhaps remarkable in some ways, but well within society's accepted bounds.

Take the time to savor Palace Walk. Mahfouz rewards the persistent reader by patiently building the remarkable depth and completeness of his characters. Once the last page is turned, the reader can rest secure in the knowledge that Palace Walk is only the first book in Mahfouz's great Cairo Trilogy. Highest recommendation."

***

The Draining Lake: A Thriller (Reykjavik Thriller) by Arnaldur Indridason is another example of superb Scandinavian crime msyteries. Reviewed here on Euro Crime.
My review is here.
 
 

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The Radetzky March (Works of Joseph Roth) by Joseph Roth. More to follow.
 
 

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A Sailor of Austria: In which, without really intending to, Otto Prohaska becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire by John Biggins. Read John Biggins!
 
 

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The Singapore Grip (New York Review Books Classics) by J.G. Farrell.
Another gem recovered by NYRB Classics. Farrell specialized tales of the unraveling of the British Empire. He also wrote Troubles and The Siege of Krishnapur. Then he managed to get himself swept off the shore while fishing and drowned.
 
NYRB summary: "Singapore, 1939: life on the eve of World War II just isn't what it used to be for Walter Blackett, head of British Singapore's oldest and most powerful firm. No matter how forcefully the police break one strike, the natives go on strike somewhere else. His daughter keeps entangling herself with the most unsuitable beaus, while her intended match, the son of Blackett's partner, is an idealistic sympathizer with the League of Nations and a vegetarian. Business may be booming—what with the war in Europe, the Allies are desperate for rubber and helpless to resist Blackett's price-fixing and market manipulation—but something is wrong. No one suspects that the world of the British Empire, of fixed boundaries between classes and nations, is about to come to a terrible end.


A love story and a war story, a tragicomic tale of a city under siege and a dying way of life, The Singapore Grip completes the “Empire Trilogy” that began with Troubles and the Booker prize-winning Siege of Krishnapur."

***

The Turnaround by George Pelecanos.
The WAPO journalist takes his crime fiction to a new level in this trip back to DC in 1972 and the echoes into the present. His web site. http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/features/georgepelecanos/turnaround/

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Little Big Man (Panther) by Thomas Berger. You've seen the movie, now read the book. It's even better.

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McAuslan in the Rough by George MacDonald Fraser.
The author of the Flashman series also wrote a fictionalized version of his days in the postwar army. 

Novels of the American West

Western Novels

The Old West or the American West has captivated the imagination of readers since even before the Old West had entirely left the stage. (In some cases the myth of the Old West began to influence the way people actually behaved.) The myth rested on some factual foundation. Heroism, savagery, physical hardship, endurance, as well as the breaking of mind and spirit, and the clash of whites and natives all took place against a backdrop of the unparalleled natural beauty found in the western United States. The Old West produced enduring stereotypes, among them: the Cowboy, Lawman, Gunslinger, Gambler, Savage Indian (sometimes the Noble Savage). Take a peak at the list of historical figures at the nd of this post and you'll be surprised how many of them you recognize.

Americans are not alone in their love of the Old West fiction. Europeans, Germans in particular have a thirst for such yarns. (Max Brand, an amazingly prolific American writer and immigrant from Germany has enjoyed popularity in his homeland.) Max Brand Online is the Official web site owned by the writer's heirs.

The Wikipedia entry on the Western genre has some useful classifications.

See also, Wikipedia entry on Western fiction.

The Old West or Western genre covers a wide range of quality from pulp novels to literary works. I offer the following Westerns that I have enjoyed.

Early Days in Texas
Not Between Brothers by David Marion Wilkensen. My review.
From Publishers Weekly:


Spanning three decades in the early 19th century that saw the birth and early years of the Independent Republic of Texas, this well crafted, gripping first novel portrays three cultures-Mexican, white immigrant and Comanche-in bloody collision....Wilkinson is a gifted storyteller who brings Texas history to life with a tale rich in adventure and high emotions.


The Borderland : A Novel of Texas by Edwin Shrake

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. “Cormac McCarthy's nightmarish yet beautifully written adventure masterpiece” of the Texas borderland circa 1830.

“The novel recounts the adventures of a young runaway, the kid, who stumbles into the company of the Glanton Gang, outlaws and scalp-hunters who cleared Indians from the Texas-Mexico borderlands during the late 1840's under contract to territorial governors. Reinvisioning the ideology of manifest destiny upon which the American dream was founded, Blood Meridian depicts the borderland between knowledge and power, between progress and dehumanization, between history and myth and, most importantly, between physical violence and the violence of language.” From the official web page.



Many Westerns also include a good bit of humor:

Little Big Man (Panther) by Thomas Berger

Flashman and the Redskins by George MacDonald Fraser

The Ballad of Dingus Magee by David Markson. An example of “acid western”.

From New York Magazine: "Long before David Markson became critics’ favorite underrated writer of experimental fiction, he was a pulp novelist. This newly reissued 1966 Western is an outrageously ribald take on the genre (marred, unfortunately, by a subpar Frank Sinatra film that was later made of it). A sample sentence: “‘Nice to have you back, you double-dealing, women-and-children-terrifying dishonorable skunk,’ Hoke said, setting aside the pen.” Trust us: there’s a lot more where that came from."


 
Friends of pancho villa by James Carlos Blake. From my review: James Carlos Blake takes the reader through the Mexican Revolution (and civil war) beginning in 1910 when Rodolfo Fierro, the narrative voice, joins Pancho Villa's small gang during a train robbery. Villa's fortunes rise and fall rapidly and Fierro has the ultimate insider access. Thirteen years later political opponents ambush and gun down Villa, by then retired, on the streets of Parral.


In Blake's telling, Villa and his friends had a grand time fighting, drinking, dancing, screwing, and loving (except for Pancho who rarely drank - he seemed to get married instead). At times the book is laugh-out-loud funny, which is a bit disconcerting because the bodies are piling up quickly. The confrontation between the Scotsman William Benton and Villa is hilarious in a profane and violent way. Pancho and Rodlfo inhabit a brutally violent world that frequently turns murderous almost without warning.

One paragraph captures the sense of history, the humor, and Villa's somewhat vague political identity when Pancho describes the impact of his brief invasion of New Mexico. "From now on their books will have to say, 'Nobody ever invaded the United States except for Francisco Villa, the magnificent Mexican patriot who tried so hard to be our friend but who we treated so shamefully because we are such stupid sons of bitches and have no honor.' "

Realist portrayals:

The Big Sky by A. B. Guthrie Jr. Won the Pulitzer Prize in 1950.

Guthrie wrote the Big Sky in 1947 and then a sequel, The Way West in 1949 and a second sequel Fair Land, Fair Land in 1982.

Shadow Country (Modern Library Paperbacks) by Peter Matthiessen (actually on the frontier in Florida)

True Grit by Charles Portis.

Deadwood by Pete Dexter

The Last Crossing: A Novel by Guy Vanderhaeghe

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. If you enjoyed Lonesome Dove, I highly commend the other three books in that series: Streets Of Laredo : A Novel, Dead Man's Walk : A Novel, and Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove)

Wikeipedia provides this handy summary of the Lonesome Dove books:

The order in which the books were written:

1. Lonesome Dove (1985)

2. Streets of Laredo (1993)

3. Dead Man's Walk (1995)

4. Comanche Moon (1997)

Chronology of Events

1. Dead Man's Walk

2. Comanche Moon

3. Lonesome Dove

4. Streets of Laredo



McMurtry also wrote a trilogy of Berrybender books:

The Wandering Hill: The Berrybender Narratives, Book 2 (Berrybender Narratives)

Sin Killer : The Berrybender Narrative, Book 1

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Americans are not alone in their love of the Old West fiction. Europeans, Germans in particular have a thirst for such yarns. (Max Brand, an amazingly prolific American writer and immigrant from Germany has enjoyed popularity in his homeland.) Max Brand Online is the Official web site owned by the writer's heirs.

Max Brand - King of Westerns: Frederick Schiller Faust Was a Prolific Author of Western Novels
by Matthew Pizzolato

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A web page with a list of the actual gunfights in the Old West.

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How many of these Old West historical figures do you recognize?

Billy the Kid

Buffalo Bill

Wild Bill Hickok

Judge Roy Bean

Jesse James

Bass Reeves

Frederic Remington

Annie Oakley

Butch Cassidy

Kit Carson

Bat Masterson

William Breakenridge

Alan Pinkerton

Will Rogers

Sam Bass

Calamity Jane

George Custer

Wyatt Earp

Black Bart

Bill Pickett

Belle Starr

Favorite Authors - One through Eight

I put this list of my favorite authors together a couple years ago. My only criteria then and now is that I really enjoyed the experience of reading the author's books. This installment includes eight such authors. I have left out Mark Twain because I figured "why bother to include one the Big Names?". But I may just rethink that thought.
Not really in any order:

1. Larry McMurtry fiction of the West, esp. the Old West & history of the same Lonesome Dove: A Novel by Larry McMurtry. His essays on NYRB. His archive page from NYT.

2. Alan Furst – “historical espionage novels” of the pre-WW Two era in Europe, esp. central Europe; Kingdom of Shadows by Alan Furst or Dark Star: A Novel. Impossible for me to choose a single favorite; only Foreign Correspondent and Dark Voyage disappointed (a little). New book in June 2010: Spies of the Balkans

Furst interview with Robert Birnbaum on Identity Theory web site.

Radio interview with Furst on KQED


3. Edmund Morgan – US colonial era historian - essays by Morgan at NYRB.

On TV wiith Charlie Rose on Ben Franklin.

One of my favorites: The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89 (The Chicago History of American Civilization) by Edmund S. Morgan



4. James McPherson US Civil War historian - He wrote the greatest single-volume history of the Civil War or any war or an era: Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States)

Amazon's James M. McPherson Page
McPherson continues to turn out quality and readable histories:

Book: Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution

Book: Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

Meet James McPherson at the NEH web site.

5 Questions for James McPherson (Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian & Britannica Contributor) on Abraham Lincoln & His Legacy.

YouTube  Conversation with History at UC Berkeley



5. Edward Rutherfurd official site

Historical fiction epics of British Isles and elsewhere. I loved his books when I read them; not sure I would put him this high today if I was starting fresh - but then again I think I've read sarum three times!
My favorites:

Book: London: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd

Book: Sarum: The Novel of England

Book: The Forest

6. Rose Macaulay – Makes my list on the strength of one book: The Towers of Trebizond with its famous opening line: "'Take my camel, dear,' said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass." Famous First Words : NPR

Rose Macaulay - NYRB The NYRB page for The Towers of Trebizond



"The Towers of Trebizond" by Rose Macaulay - Salon.com “Dotty English eccentrics take a tour of Turkey in this delightful and long-forgotten 1956 satire -- which then takes an unexpected and sobering turn toward a crisis of faith.”



7. John Mortimer  Try any of the Rumpole of the Bailey series and  if you will soon swoon for the old darling as tweaks the pompous and defends the criminal accused. "Crime doesn't pay, but it's a living."

Book: The First Rumpole Omnibus by John Mortimer

SALON Features: "Champagne for everyone!"

UK Guardian obit: Rumpole of the Bailey creator John Mortimer dies

Madeline Kahn interviews John Mortimer:

He has his own page on the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/john-mortimer

I’ve never read his Rapstone Chronicles books (Paradise Postponed & Titmuss Regained) – I tried one many years ago and it wasn’t to my taste at the time. Paradise Postponed (Rapstone Chronicles). 



8. John Biggins A Sailor of Austria: In Which, Without Really Intending to, Otto Prohaska Becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire (The Otto Prohaska Novels) by John Biggins

Biggins wrote four marvelous books of historical fiction featuring Otto Prohaska, a Czech resident of the Austro-Hungarian Empire who serves on a submarine in its navy during WWI. Each book takes Otto to a different unexpected adventure. Oddly, it is hard to find much information about Biggins. Apparently the books did not sell all that well when originally published in the 1970s, but have been reissued by McBooks Press.

Check out the star ratings on Amazon: The people who read it, love it.

Tony Miksak's Words on Books as broadcast weekly on KZYX radio discusses John Biggins:

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Probables for the next installment:


9. George MacDonald Fraser

10. Patrick O’Brian

11. Gore Vidal

12. Paul Fussell

13. Arthur Conan Doyle

14. John Keegan

15. A.B. Guthrie

16. John Le Carre`

Morality Play by Barry Unsworth

Morality Play by Barry Unsworth

My review:

Brilliant Literary Historical Fiction, January 15, 2010

By	Douglas S. Wood "Vicarious Life" (Monona, WI) - See all my reviews

Barry Unsworth writes literary historical fiction. Now there's a sentence that sounds as much like a challenge as a description, by which I mean his writing lifts the genre above clanging swords and abundant décolletage.

Morality Play is a murder mystery set in 14th century England. Our narrator Thomas is a Benedictine brother "outside his diocese without license"; enticed by the delights and promise of a spring day, he wandered off and is still wandering months later when he comes across a band of players in the woods arguing over what to do with a dead body. The dead body is not a murder victim, but rather a deceased member of the troupe.

After Thomas is allowed to join the players, they make their way to a nearby town. When the standard Play of Adam fails to fill the coffers, their poverty drives them to a startling innovation: they adapt the "morality play" and base it on real events, to wit a play based on a recent murder of a young boy by young woman. Medieval morality plays portrayed good versus evil with characters personifying attributes on one side or the other. Unsworth's play includes God, Mankind, Death, Devil, Justice, Good Counsel, and Truth to name some.

With only hours to prepare, the players must ad lib and they soon find that their assigned roles organically guide them toward a critical examination of the supposed facts of the crime. After the first performance the troupe spreads across the town to find out more for their evening's performance. Before all is said and done, they get very near the truth and find that they have mightily displeased the local lord.

Aside from giving the reader an interesting mystery, Unsworth also takes us literally backstage in the life and work of a traveling medieval theater group. He also convincingly recreates life and the social order of 14th century English town with the threat of plague and famine on Earth followed soon thereafter by hellfire. Unsworth's key insight, however, is found in his exploration of the way that roles can confine and define human behavior. Morality Play is a highly entertaining and stimulating read.

***

Here's an interesting quiz by the same name.

Morality Play

The Skull Mantra (Inspector Shan Tao Yun) by Eliot Pattison

Below is my review of The Skull Mantra (Inspector Shan Tao Yun) by Eliot Pattison.

The Edgar Awards are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America. They honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, film, and theatre published or produced in the previous year. The awards are technically the Edgar Allan Poe Awards.

Some Tibet info. Learn about gompas.


(Photo of the Potala Palace near Lhasa is from Pondstone Communications Blog)
Another review at:

BookLoons Reviews - Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison

"I don't believe everything I read on a book's cover, but when the blurb on The Skull Mantra compares this thriller to greats like Gorky Park and Smilla's Sense of Snow, it's dead on. Pattison has written a remarkable first novel, which places an indomitable protagonist in the disturbing political setting of contemporary Tibet. Who hasn't heard of the plight of the Tibetan people after the brutal Chinese takeover with its erasure of ancient monasteries, genocidal treatment of monks and nuns, and forced labor camps?"

Get Advice on Guru Practice.


My review:

The Skull Mantra earned Pattison the 2000 Edgar Award for best first novel from the Mystery Writers of America. The story is set in contemporary Tibet. The mystery centers around the efforts of imprisoned former detective Shan Tao Yun to solve a string of murders of high-ranking Chinese officials. The powers-that-be are bent on pining the murders on several Tibetan Buddhist monks. When the headless body of the local prosecutor is discovered by Shan's prison labor gang, he is allowed to investigate the crime by Colonel Tan, the local ranking official. Having spent three years sharing close quarters with imprisoned monks, Shan is highly skeptical that a monk is behind this murder.

The lives of the Tibetan monks and all Tibetans under Chinese domination are Pattison's real focus. That focus raises this book above its rather convoluted and, shall we say, unlikely mystery (are disgraced Chinese detectives really given more-or-less free rein to investigate murders?). Pattison also explores beliefs of Tibetan Buddhists. The demon Tamdin is central to the story, but of greater interest we also learn about gompas, the fortress-like monasteries where traditional practices are studied and passed on; and we learn about gomchen or great meditators; and we learn about the painstaking creation of beautiful sand mandalas, which, once completed, are destroyed.

Pattison sheds light on the Chinese treatment of Tibet, and especially the Buddhist monks; the treatment seems to swing between bad and abhorrent. For example, Shan learns that during the Cultural Revolution the Red Guard seized and destroyed ancient Buddhist manuscripts and used the shreds to line their latrine. Tibetans have been killed or imprisoned, as well. The Chinese government has also drastically altered demographics by encouraging Chinese emigration to Tibet to an extent that Chinese are now a majority in Lhasa, the capital city. (The Chinese government disputes these claims.)

While the history and the mystery contribute to the book's value, its transcendental strength is the exploration of Buddhist spirituality. This element comes through not just through the monks' lives, but also through the changes in Shan and his two assistants/minders. The book could have used a bit tighter editing. Physical locations could have been more distinctly identified as it was sometimes difficult to know where things were happening. Pattison has written another five books in the Shan series and two more in a new series set in colonial America (Bone Rattler: A Mystery of Colonial America). The Skull Mantra gives readers a original and creative take on the detective mystery genre. Highly recommended.

My Reads 2009: Classic and Significant Books

For no particular reason, in 2009 I spent a significant chunk of my reading time catching up on some of those books that anyone who takes reading even a little bit seriously should read.

I term them Classics and Significant Books. The classics tag is, I think, self-explanatory. Significant books are books that have endured for at least several decades and remain noteworthy.

I'd like to add links, but the Internet is running in mud this morning. This page has my reviews on Library Thing.

1.    Heart of Darkness and The Congo Diary by Joseph Conrad. Conrad's semi-autobiographical journey up the Congo River. Coppola used it as the basis of his film classic Apocalypse Now.

2.    I, Claudius : From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, Born 10 B.C., Murdered and Deified A.D. 54 (Vintage International) by Robert Graves.

3.    The Case of Comrade Tulayev (New York Review Books Classics) by Victor Serge.

4.    The First Rumpole Omnibus by John Mortimer. OK, I'm cheating a little here by including this volume in this list, but it's my list and I really love the Rumpole books.

5.    War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. This book is the major reason that my total number of books read was down from previous years! The new translation is the one to read. Yes, it is worth your time.

6.    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. I re-read this book about every five years.

7.    Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding. I read this book as a freshman at the University of Illinois and it was one of those books that introduced an 18-year-old from Southern Illinois to a broader, deeper world of learning. Fielding also wrote the perhaps better known Tom Jones.

8.    The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. On one level, The Name of the Rose is a decent whodunit set in an isolated northern Italian medieval monastery. Mixed in with the mystery, however, are discursions in semiotics, hermeneutics, biblical analysis, religious debate, literary theory, and medieval history. And what would a medieval mystery be without the inquisition? I find Eco's tendency to show off a bit annoying, but the guy is Mr. Smarty Pants. My review.

Saw the movie before I read the book. Both are good. Each has a somewhat different ending. The movie is easier on the little gray cells.



Try this page for a more comprehensive list of Great Books.

Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen

"Shadow Country is altogether gripping, shocking, and brilliantly told, not just a tour de force in its stylistic range, but a great American novel, as powerful a reading experience as nearly any in our literature. This magnificent, sad masterpiece about race, history, and defeated dreams can easily stand comparison with Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. Little wonder, too, that parts of the story of E.J. Watson call up comparisons with Dostoevsky, Conrad, and, inevitably, Faulkner. In every way, Shadow Country is a bravura performance, at once history, fiction, and myth — as well as the capstone to the career of one of the most admired and admirable writers of our time." The New York Review of Books

NYT review:Shadow Country - Peter Matthiessen - Book Review - New York Times
LA Times review:'Shadow Country' by Peter Matthiessen - latimes.com

My review:

Shadow Country (Modern Library Paperbacks) by Peter Matthiessen

An American Epic of a Brutal Man and Place, December 30, 2009 Shadow Country is Peter Matthiessen's reworked rendering of his earlier trilogy of historical fiction relating the life of the brutal Florida pioneer Edgar J. Watson. (This version still consists of three "books" and runs to almost 900 pages. I did not read the earlier version and so cannot offer comparisons between the two.) Shadow Country is almost entirely set in the 1890's and early 1900's in a frontier region not widely known - the Ten Thousand Islands of south Gulf Coast Florida (the Everglades area). The area was absurdly remote at the time and presented such daunting challenges and dangers to any settlers that it was in fact nearly unsettled. And nearly all who did settle there were running or hiding from something, such as the law or deserted family members. Or they were just deeply anti-social. Aside from its remoteness, the area had almost nothing to recommend itself (I usually the qualified `almost nothing' in the vent that I think of some redeeming feature). It is brutally hot and humid, resistant to agriculture, possessed of dangerous animals (on sea and land), prone to calamitous storms, infested with mosquitoes, and inhabited by a large proportion of suddenly violent men as well as sociopathic criminals. This is the place Edgar J. Watson chooses to live. Within the first ten pages of Book One, the reader confronts this sentence: "Oh Lord God," she cries. "They are killing Mr. Watson!" (Killing off the main character in the opening pages of a 900-page work of fiction proves Matthiessen is either brave or foolish.) The story is told with a dozen different narrators recalling Watson's arrival and life in the islands. Matthiessen's remarkable ability to produce so many distinctive voices makes this book incredibly readable. These people can all tell a story (they are in good practice life on the islands providing so much idle time). Matthiessen does not, however, make them all tell the same story; differences of viewpoint produce a fascinating ambiguity. That Watson is an exceptional man is undoubted. Beginning with nothing, he manages to set himself up as a power to be reckoned with. He is also grandiose, violent, and merciless. But is he a murderer (several times over)? Opinions vary. He drinks too much. He loses what he has and what he wants and what he values. It is a hard life in a hard place. Edgar Watson was a hard man in dire need of some education and civilization, neither of which could be found in any quantity in the islands. Book Two traces the story of Lucius Watson's "obsessive quest for the truth about his father" (NYT Review). It is the 1920's and Lucius is writing a history of his father's life (he has a doctorate in history), traveling to courthouse archives and interviewing long-forgotten family members. But he also has "the list" of the armed men who gunned down the elder Watson. The list naturally makes people nervous and some of them are quite dangerous. Book Two reveals some fascinating history, including the mostly unsavory operation of the law in south Florida, such as sheriff's renting the labor of black inmates to business interests (and pocketing much of the money). For more on that practice see Douglas Blackmon's stunning new history Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. Book Three presents Edgar himself as the narrator of his life story from a child in South Carolina to various stopping places in Florida, Arkansas, and finally the Thousand Islands. The brutality of his childhood, the ready violence of white men toward blacks and of his own father toward him, makes Edgar's later actions more understandable person, if not justified. He develops a rigid personal code that demands recompense in full for any slight. He attempts a justification that reveals some complexity and contradictions, but falls short of the mark. Shadow Country is an American epic of a mysterious historical character (yes, Edgar Watson really lived and died in the islands). The writing is at times exquisite. The story it tells is often brutal or just about plain hard life. The writing is compelling, the reading can be draining.

Tidbits

Just picked up Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon. After reading the first few pages of the Introduction, I am horrified. I find myself gobsmacked because I considered that I knew this history. But widespread industrial neo-slavery?

***

Do I dare trust Michael Crichton again? After the wretched State of Fear, I swore off him. When he died Crichton had finished a new book: Pirate Latitudes: A Novel by Michael Crichton

NPR's reviewer Alan Cheuse raved about it. I put it on hold.

Christmas 2009 Books

You can never go wrong buying books for a book-lover. Here's my haul from 2009:

Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Thomas Pynchon OK, I just finished The Name of the Rose and now I get another book that requires a guide to understand (My review of Name of the Rose). Here's a free guide to GR



And not only that, I also received Pynchon's newest book, Inherent Vice.


More:


The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan  This is Egan's followup to his award-winning Worst Hard Time.


Two books from the historical detective series featuring Hanno Stiffeniis the early 18th century Prussian magistrate. The series features Immanuel Kant as the behind-the-scenes mover. OK, so now I need to read Kant too.

Critique of Criminal Reason: A Mystery and Days of Atonement: A Mystery by Michael Gregorio

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

My review of The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals  by Jane Mayer 

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful: A Lady Asked Dr. Franklin, "Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?", August 29, 2008 "A republic," replied the Doctor, "if you can keep it." Quoted in the Afterword from the papers of Dr. James McHenry at the time of the 1787 federal convention in Philadelphia. `The Dark Side' by Jane Mayer tells one of the most profoundly disturbing stories that I have ever read. Mayer details how the Bush Administration led America to what VP Dick Cheney called `the dark side' in order to fight terrorism. A small coterie of officials at the highest level of the administration took this country down a path that ignored and thus destroyed the rule of law. Whether the damage is permanent remains to be seen. Here are some of the most salient points: Mayer confirms what others have asserted: that Cheney runs the national security apparatus. At least in this realm, Cheney operates like the prime minister. What is less known is the extraordinary power exercised by his legal counsel, David Addington. Cheney and Addington share a belief in an extreme view of the proper powers of the President in the national security area. In their view, the President has no limits on his power. None. Cheney used 9/11 to snatch greatly increased power for the executive. To be fair, the top officials felt a huge personal responsibility to protect the US from another terrorist attack. One can only imagine the burden. This burden caused them to act out of fear and panic. Any action that might help reduce the chances of another attack even by a small amount was worth doing. They acted as if they and all Americans were cowering weaklings willing to jettison liberty for security. As Ben Franklin's aphorism concluded, we got neither. As a lawyer, I found it personally distressing that lawyers played the key role in providing the `golden shield' of legal immunity for all manner of horrific acts in the quest for `actionable intelligence'. Lawyers, especially government lawyers, are supposed to tell their clients `no' when a proposed action crosses the line into criminality. A handful of lawyers, John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and Addington in particular, always gave their bosses the answer they wanted, `yes, we can torture, spy, kidnap, hold secret prisoners in secret prisons without charges'. A few lawyers within the administration did resist. When Jack Goldsmith the newly appointed head of the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel discovered John Yoo's secret `torture memo', he moved successfully to get it revoked. Less known is that after Goldsmith left under extreme pressure, a new memo authorizing torture was issued by Steven Bradbury. Most other lawyers either caved in to Addington's bullying intimidation or were simply cut out. Mayer's triumph was getting so many people to talk to her both on and off the record about closely held administration secrets. The reliance on unnamed sources necessarily forces the reader to place a certain amount of faith in Mayer's judgment (although certainly not to the extent of Bob Woodward). Mayer established that the US killed several subjects during interrogation and kidnapped (`extraordinary rendition') at least 8 entirely innocent people, tortured them, and held them in secret prisons. Mayer was able to establish that one of these people was held on the `hunch' of the head of the CIA's al Qaeda unit and was not finally released until weeks after it was clear he was just had the same name as a wanted suspect. The fate of the other seven is unknown. Beyond dispute is the affect the torture and kidnapping regime had on America's reputation. It will take at least a generation to recover it. Perhaps most worrisome is that these actions will serve as a precedent for future administrations, which only criminal prosecutions would obviate. Mayer provides the basis for the indictments. My only quibble with the book is that it needed a little tighter editing. Highest recommendation if you can stomach it.

Olive Kitteridge

My review of best-seller Olive Kitteridge: Fiction

Life Hands Out a Licking, September 30, 2009


4.5 stars. The setting of Elizabeth Strout's extraordinary short stories is small town Maine and the people are utterly middle class (and exclusively white or very nearly so). Small town and middle class, yes, but not in a Babbitt (Signet Classics) way.

Retired school teacher Olive Kitteridge holds center stage in most of the stories. I heard her described as `a force of nature', an apt description particularly if one pictures mostly stormy weather. It is a good thing the book consists of shorts because few readers could make it through a full book of Olive. Olive is not easy to take and yet in the stories she is a compelling figure, excruciatingly human but not quite pathetic.

As I read these stories, I kept picturing the `KER-POW' and `BIF-BAM' graphics on the old Batman TV series. People do get battered, seldom physically and only occasionally by Olive. Life hands out a licking. (If you're 50 and haven't figured that out yet, you may be a Panglossian or just incredibly lucky. In that case, your luck could be about to change.) And yet the people in the stories often seem quite placid, quiet, and calm - normal as normal can be. And they are, but then you find that they are dealing with one or another of our utterly human pains, sometimes physical, nearly always emotional. Children, aging, your children aging, marriages, illnesses, adulteries, suicides, insanities, accidents - they are all in here, not sensationally, but just as part of life, if you hang around long enough.

Strout's writing powerfully draws the reader into each story. I found the book to be emotionally exhausting, but very often insightful in direct and uncomplicated ways. Great stuff.
 

Augustus: A Novel

Here is my review of Augustus: A Novel by John Edward Williams, who also wrote Butcher's Crossing (New York Review Books Classics).


Many Suffered From Close Contact with Augustus - But Not Readers of this Work,

January 28, 2007

By	Douglas S. Wood "Vicarious Life"

John Edward Williams won the 1973 National Book Award for 'Augustus' and deservedly so. This amazing piece of literature masquerading as historical fiction (and I like historical fiction) draws the reader into the world of Gaius Octavius, later to be Augustus, first emperor of Rome.

Williams tells his tale by the unusual technique of presenting letters, journal entries, and memoirs. By this method he allows the reader to gradually enter, indeed become immersed in, the world of Augustus, his family, friends, enemies, and most important, his Rome. 'Augustus' traces his rise from the vulnerable adopted son of Julius Caesar through a steady accretion of power as he becomes first a triumvir (with Mark Antony and the nonentity Lepidus), and then settles in as emperor of the world.

The historical record for Augustus's life has gaps that challenge an author and Williams grasps the challenge deftly, just as Augustus grasped power. We see Augustus as an aloof, cold and calculating politician whose assiduous pursuit and cautious exercise of power allows him to hold that power for over four decades, but always using that power for Rome, always for Rome, his Rome.

Yet many people suffer from their close contact with this man - his equally calculating wife Livia, for one, his dear friends Maecenas and Salvidienus, to name two more, but none more so than his daughter Julia. The last third or so of the book focuses on the break between Augustus and Julia. Williams presents an interesting and shocking explanation for Julia's exile - at least an explanation that Augustus believes or claims to.

The penultimate chapter draws Augustus's life to a close with a lengthy letter to Nicolaus of Damascus in which a dying Augustus bemoans his fate and the weight of authority he has had to bear - it is really most unattractive for one of the most powerful men in history to indulge in such self-centered despair, but it also rings true because Augustus spent his life denying himself so many pleasures in order to hold on to power for the good of Rome, as he convinced himself. In the end, Augustus saw himself as the embodiment of Rome - anything that threatened his power, threatened Rome. This is so well done that one finds oneself becoming angry with Augustus, who is after all just a character in this brilliant work of historical fiction.

'Augustus' is not an easy read. Prior knowledge of the historical era certainly aids the enjoyment and comprehension of the book. Ultimately, however, this remarkable work of historical fiction and literature deserves the highest recommendation.

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