Thursday, June 29, 2017

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (1817)

An innocent and naive young woman ventures into the world, heroically confronting duplicity, terror, and romance.

Book Review: Northanger Abbey is Jane Austen's most entertaining and amusing novel, if for no other reason than the reader can clearly see that Austen is having fun, chortling (in a most ladylike way) to herself as she dashes off another comedic line. The book is identified as the first of her six major novels to be written, but the last to be published, seen as the last of her juvenilia, and a transition to her more mature works, noted for their subtle social commentary. All that may be true, but Northanger is a romp. Our almost too-good-to-be-true heroine, Catherine Morland, virtually a Candide in a (voluminous) silk dress, puppy-like expects and sees the best in everyone she meets, fearing nothing but loneliness and isolation. The first half of the book reads much like a parody of Austen's own later writings. But, in the second half, having read too many Gothic novels and traveled to crumbling Northanger Abbey, Catherine begins to see horror behind every curtain. Here Austen frolics, as she deliciously parodies what must've been her own infatuation with Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) and other writers' Gothic romances. Austen, with deep passion, goes on and on about novels, authors, plots, noting that rarely do their characters read a novel, and "who, if she accidentally takes up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages in disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?" Austen discusses spoilers: "What can it be? -- But do not tell me -- I would not be told upon any account." She even provides a list of best Gothic romances to read. One of the best parts of Northanger Abbey is that it is a book about books. But also about the growth and experiences of our heroine. At one point a character tries to bring the susceptible Catherine down to earth with stiff-upper-lip sentiments: "Remember the country and age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians." Even her own mother tries to instill backbone by saying, "you always were a sad little shatter-brained creature." What becomes of our "shatter-brained" heroine? Austen, in her proto-post-modern way admits that the reader will note that few pages remain in the book, and so the reader is aware "that we are all hastening together to ... ." What? Read Northanger Abbey to find out. Jane Austen is having a good time, and so will the reader. [4★]

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Juan Rulfo and 100 Years of Modern Mexico

Juan Rulfo (1917-1986) was born a century ago in Jalisco, Mexico (Mariano Azuela was also born in Jalisco). He is one of Mexico's greatest writers, but is worth reading by anyone from any country. Although Mexico gives his work its strength, Rulfo's genius makes his fiction universal. Sadly, he wrote very little. In 1952-53 he received a grant from the Mexican Writers' Center that enabled him to publish his first book in 1953, a brilliant collection of stories titled The Plain in Flames (El llano en llamas -- also published as The Burning Plain). In 1953-54 he received a second grant from the Writers' Center, and in 1955 Rulfo published his masterpiece, the novel Pedro Paramo. By this time he had begun doing some film work, and in 1956-57 probably began writing what would later be the novella The Golden Cockerel (or "the golden rooster" -- El gallo de oro). The novella was not published until 1980, appearing as El gallo de oro y otros textos para cine (The Golden Rooster and Other Texts for Cinema); it seems likely that it was a screenplay later turned into prose fiction.

Before I begin sharing my thoughts and opinions, let me make my caveats. I am not an academic, I am not Mexican, I did not study Rulfo's works in school. I am an outsider. But even in this era that worships the sanctity of "own voices," I believe the viewpoint of the outsider still has value, seeing from without what the culture may not see from within. When one is arguing the universality of a regional author, as I am doing, the value of the outsider's viewpoint increases in purpose. I am simply someone who loves Mexico and the Spanish language.

By rooting his stories deep in the rural Mexico he knew, Rulfo gave his a writing a reality and strength that exists in any language. Placing his fiction in the Mexican countryside might seem to have little to do with many modern and urban Mexicans, but the beginnings of Mexico since the Revolution were rural: everyone seems to have family and relatives who still live out on the ranch. It is familiar. But Rulfo isn't just writing of the countryside, he's writing of people. Making his stage part of a dry, desolate, harsh country sets his characters in relief, shines a spotlight, removes the extraneous and the distractions. It's a bare stage (as with Beckett's Godot) on which we can't help but see these people naked, clothed only in fear, greed, suffering, and all the other omnipresent human feeling and emotion with which we are blessed and cursed.

Rulfo might be called one of the "novelists of the Revolution" (as, more accurately, was Mariano Azuela), since he somewhat frequently mentions the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero Rebellion (La Cristiada) in his fiction. But he doesn't fit there, as these references are only part of the verisimilitude, showing the reality, the context, as one must mention cars when writing about American life. He isn't writing about the Revolution, he again is writing about more basic and common elements of life and humanity, even in the midst of endless war.

With any of Rulfo's work, the reader can't help but realize that the author was heavily influenced by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Except he wasn't. Garcia Marquez had examined Rulfo's work in depth. When he first received a copy of Pedro Paramo, he read it twice in one night, and then repeatedly until "I could recite the whole book, forwards and backwards." After studying Rulfo, Garcia Marquez acknowledged that he had found "at last, the way I sought to continue my books." Of course Garcia Marquez was Colombian, not Mexican, and influenced everyone. I don't think it's too much for me to claim, given the words quoted above, that Rulfo's influence is far more general than commonly thought. He's not just a regional writer.

Rulfo goes far beyond his native Mexico, to address the emotions, fears, concerns of every person. By writing of, and then leaving the local, the regional, the specific behind, Rulfo brought Mexican writing into the modern era, and made it international writing. His work is really of love, hate, revenge, sin, fear, what we all encounter, feelings we all have. Although the novel Pedro Paramo may have been born in El dia de los muertos (the Day of the Dead), Rulfo's writing of memories, ghosts, death, Hell, and histories, are elements that affect all people, from whatever country. We all face life, our memories, our death, and Juan Rulfo, in fiction, brilliantly does the same.  🐢


Sunday, June 25, 2017

The Golden Cockerel & other writings by Juan Rulfo (2017)

A novella plus a collection of fragments, letters, and miscellany by the author of Pedro Paramo and the short story collection, The Plain in Flames.

Book Review: The Golden Cockerel is here identified as a novel (or, at 74 pages, a novella), but strongly resembles a screenplay turned into prose. It was most likely written around 1956-57. The film was released in 1964. The novella was originally published in 1980 as part of a collection in Spanish entitled El gallo de oro y otros textos para cine (The Golden Rooster and Other Texts for Cinema). The novella focuses on cockfighting at festivals in rural Mexico. An indigent, disabled man lucks into a magnificent fighting bird, and his fortunes change. A story of violence and love, wealth and poverty, freedom and fate. While Mexican to the bone, it's also a universal tale. The Golden Cockerel is much more straightforward, visual, and less experimental than Rulfo's other fiction. While a good, even engaging story, it doesn't reach the heights of the novel Pedro Paramo or the stories collected in The Plain in Flames. The remainder of the "writings" in this book are largely not completed works (there's also a number of typos and the translation, by Douglas J. Weatherford, seems inconsistent). While interesting for their moments of genius and reflections of Rulfo's novel, stories, and influence on Gabriel Garcia Marquez, they're mostly just bits and pieces of his work. They do provide much food for thought on Rulfo's thought processes and writing choices. Look for the reference to Gone with the Wind! Valuable, even essential, for Rulfo completists and scholars, these writings are not the best evidence of Rulfo's genius. Unfortunately, especially considering how little fiction he wrote, The Golden Cockerel cannot be rated as successful or important as his other work.  [3½★]

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

The Burning Plain & Other Stories by Juan Rulfo (1953)

A collection of 15 short stories buried in the earth of Mexico, by the author of Pedro Paramo.

Book Review: The Burning Plain and Other Stories was Juan Rulfo's first work of fiction. In these stories, the reader sinks deep into the Mexican soil, a landscape coated with dust, bones parched, burned by the sun, desperate for water. Suffering and death are always near. Vengeance is real: "I shouldn't have killed all of them," the man was thinking. "It wasn't worth it putting such a burden on my back. Dead people weight more than live ones." We feel the futility of fighting fate. Just a few story titles: "We're Very Poor," "Tell Them Not to Kill Me," "No Dogs Bark." The stories seem to take place in a haze, in the dark, it's often difficult see clearly, as in a dream. Many times the end of the story is close to where it began. Plot is present in The Burning Plain, but isn't the driving force. These stories are built on character, and in learning to know the characters, we see what made them, how they got to where they are, how life and fate and Mexico created them and put them in this place at this time, facing this hard moment. These women and men feel the full burden of Mexico's social pressures, of the true effects of the Revolution: ("They grinned with their toothless mouths and told me no, that the government didn't have a mother"). Some of the stories are quite short, but none are slight. One story turns the life and mistreatment of a child into a parable of the Mexican peasantry. In another, the loss of a cow shows how close every family is to disaster. One tells of the hard road north to the Estados Unidos. There are many good stories, and they tend to hit with a soft, quiet power, not a heavy emotional punch. A few of my favorites are "Talpa," a story of a haunted, ill-fated love; "Luvina," a town that could be near where Pedro Paramo lived; "The Night They Left Him Alone," where death waits at the end of the path; and the clever, dark humor of "Anacleto Morones." The future ghost of Gabriel Garcia Marquez lives in the stories of The Burning Plain. This is the kind of book that can be pulled down from the shelf several times a year to revisit a story, and relive that moment.

The translation of this edition, well done by George D. Schade (I haven't seen a Spanish version), is from 1971. A new 2012 translation of this collection (by Ilan Stavans, with two additional stories) rendered the title as The Plain in Flames, a closer translation of the Spanish title, El Llano en Llamas. When I'm ready for a re-read, I'll try to find a copy of that one. In the meantime, this collection of stories was well worth reading, strongly painting the soul of Mexico. [4★]

Monday, June 19, 2017

Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin (1994)

A young lesbian comes of age in puritan 1980's Taiwan.

Book Review: Notes of a Crocodile is one of a kind, sui generis, and isn't easily described. Our protagonist says it's about "getting a diploma and writing." No, it's not. This posthumous novel covers friendship, university life, emotions, relationships, misfits, literature, homosexuality, emotions, and crocodiles, all occurring in a small, almost claustrophobic orbit. I can't remember the last book that drew me in so completely; every time I put it down the story kept spinning in my mind until I picked it up again. It's a strong book.

The narrative is told in a series of school notebooks by our 18 year old protagonist trying to push her way through youth, sexuality, and love, overthinking, over-intellectualizing, feeling emotions too deeply, being too proud or not proud enough, all those snares we go through when young. What we do when caught in our first loves. The chapters are periodically interspersed with more surreal and metaphorical short chapters about crocodiles that invisibly live among us; these chapters provide some needed comic relief.

Notes of a Crocodile is influenced (in a good way) by Haruki Murakami, who is referenced several times, including his novel Norwegian Wood, by name. But the novel doesn't read like plagiarism or parody; Qiu has made Murakami's style her own. There is the adored female love interest, the somewhat jerky male friend, the almost perfect female friend, the character who runs a bar, references to western literature and music. I don't remember a cat. I think Qiu even teases Murakami a bit when a character says, "Women are beautiful and mysterious, aren't they?"

The one flaw for some readers will be that our protagonist seems to dwell, even wallow in the miseries of her situation, becoming something of a drama teen. The anguish, though well-written, can go on for pages. At times she seems to want to prolong and go deeper into her agonies, rather than try to work through or past them. But while noticeable, I also think it's understandable when one feels unique, separate, rejected, isolated. That's what we do when first exploring love. That's what youth and difference are about. What the drama teen doesn't realize is that we are all (subject to parental perversions, self-doubts, voices in our heads) just putting forth different efforts to appear normal. Some, like our protagonist, make little effort. Although the reader may want to tell the characters to move on with their lives, Qiu accurately captures the turmoil and melt downs of love, betrayal, and youth. And captures and captures ... for some it will be intense, for others repetitive.

On the other hand it is beautifully written, with amazing metaphors and concepts, well translated by Bonnie Huie. There were a few points when I wondered if lines were perfectly translated, but given how fantastically difficult Notes of a Crocodile must've been to translate, I'm an ass for even mentioning it. A powerful book that I found easy to identify with and difficult to stop reading. The most compelling book I've read in a long time.  [4½★]

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Thoughts About Reading ... #1

As you might expect, I think a lot about reading. And food. Perhaps they're thoughts we all have. Maybe you think about reading a lot more than I do. Anyway, I've decided to start recording my thoughts about reading, and see whether they change over time.

Often I think about why I'm not reading. It's kind of like wondering why I'm not eating a cookie when I have cookies in the cupboard. I could read more if I didn't get caught up in other, less interesting things, but I do; I'm easily distracted. Or even when doing bookish things such as hunting through bookstores, I could be at home reading the books I have, instead. I should be more disciplined, but I don't want reading to become a chore, something I "have" to do. I always want to have a bit of that reading hunger, if you know what I mean. So I'm fine with a couple days between books, or missing days of reading now and then. Life occurs.

One thing I don't do is worry much about how many books I'm reading. Sure, there's lot of books I want to read, but there's only time for so many and I'll get to them when I can. I can eat only one cookie at a time (unless I stack them up and then shove them ... never mind). Many people read much faster and many more books than I do, and that's fine, too. We each read at our own pace and depth. I can't worry about how many books other people read. My mother used to say, don't look at anyone else's plate, don't worry about what others at the table are eating, you just watch your own plate. Good advice for life. I do have a goal of books I'd like to read this year (ever the optimist!), but if I don't make that number, life will go on -- it's not a problem, first world or otherwise.

What I could I be reading? That's something I do think about a lot. Even while reading. It's like eating a sandwich while thinking about eating a burger. What's with these food similes? For instance, in the last couple weeks I've discovered two new (to me) authors, Qiu Miaojin and Juan Rulfo, and both were brilliant. So I immediately want to read more by them (sadly neither was prolific, Rulfo writing two or three books and Qiu about the same). But I also made a trip to the library and picked up an armful of reads from the New Book shelves. Those darn Russian authors are always nagging me. And I need to complete my reading of Austen and the Brontes. How many hours are there is a day? Is sleep truly necessary?

So those are my reading thoughts for today. Trying to keep on with the reading, not worrying about how many books others read, and pondering all the books I do want to eat ... I mean, read.  🐢


Thursday, June 15, 2017

The Death of the Author

The current academic trend in literary criticism these days is a theory spun in an essay by Roland Barthes (why are all the clever theoreticians French, when the French seem best at pastry, cheese, and wine? Hmm ...), known affectionately as The Death of the Author (DOTA). Let me caveat right here: I'm not an academic, I'm untrained in literary analysis, and if I abuse some key concepts I admit ignorance, but I'm not attempting to misstate the tenets of the theory. In this approach the reader (professor, student, critic) ignores intent, the author's statements and the author herself when evaluating the work (apparently mandatorily known as "the text"). No auteur theory here. They believe "the text" must stand on its own, apart from any biographical, historical, or other information outside the four corners of the document. Only the reader's interpretation matters (ignore the of-our-time narcissism). Thus the theory separates itself from attempts to read fiction as autobiography, historicism, and similar approaches. The approach is also called "The Death of the Author," because now the author is no longer important, only the reader's analysis has validity: "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author." Long live the Reader! Yes, this is certainly one valid approach to literary interpretation, but only one among many, and not the most convincing. How often have you felt the author coming through the writing?

My issues with DOTA are several (I'm sure all my quibbles have been addressed before in much larger words and with many more footnotes). First, it seems artificial. We're going to evaluate a literary work, but first let us put on blindfolds and pretend that the author never existed. We have a novel, where and when did it come from, why is it in German, is the author female or male? Who knows? Not us. We're going to make believe there is no author, despite the loads of information we may know, because DOTA tells us to. Why intentionally handicap ourselves and put on blinders? Isn't literary analysis difficult enough without tying one hand behind our back? Like ice skating with bricks instead of skates, it just seems an affectation.

Next, it seems extreme, even if it aligns with the Literature Major Full Employment Act. Sure, what the author says about his work is not definitive and often may be misleading. I believe reading fiction as autobiography is usually a mistake and usually wrong; there's just too much we don't know (subject for another day). I don't subscribe to author worship. Authors making self-serving statements? Of course they do. In retrospect any number of authors have realized they're geniuses, and have the interviews, articles, and memoirs to prove it. So no, I don't take an author's statements at face value, and authors are often the worst person to explain their work. But it's extreme to throw everything the author says out the window, and the critics and academics, much like today's current crop of politicians, are not doing their job. It's an academic's responsibility to determine how much weight to give an author's stated intentions. A little? A lot? None? When was a statement made? How persuasive is it? A scholar's job is to determine what biographical or historical information, if any, we're going to include. That's part of the work, not just throwing up our hands. It's like a detective saying, we will not look at any information regarding the victim, let's make believe there is no victim. Now, let's solve the murder.

Following along with this, DOTA denies agency (another academically mandatory word) to the writer. A writer talking about the refugee experience may find she was actually explaining her sibling rivalry. Authors' ideas are not their own, everything is in the province of the reader. So whatever Barthes intended in his essay is irrelevant, it's only my opinion that counts.

Fourth, it's a bit of an oxymoron. DOTA decrees that the author is dead, hence the clever appellation. But we have loads of dead authors. Graveyards, anthologies, and ivory tower classes are full of them. Scholars spend a great deal of time excavating the detritus of dead authors, searching old attics, old trunks, old relatives, perusing letters, diaries, marginalia. Then the academics go off to write earth-shattering biographies full of new revelations that shed halogen-bright insights into the long-dead author's work. Well why are they doing all that, if the text speaks for itself. Wasting their time, apparently.

Finally (I could go on, but I already have), we lose so much by sticking strictly to the edicts of DOTA. Let's say a woman over 50 has enclosed a poem in a letter to a friend. In the poem is the line, "invisible, I step off the sidewalk," and in the letter is the line, "No one sees women my age, ah to be 20 again." If some academic, relying only on "the text," goes on to write about how our urban, mechanical society endangers people crossing streets, we're not helping anyone. If, after reading a poem about a sculpture, we later learn the name of the specific work, are we not to look at a photo of that sculpture? How does ignoring the sculpture add anything?

Hope you enjoyed my rant, all meant in good fun, from someone who enjoys reading using all my senses, all my faculties, all the tools available. I'm not giving up any of them. Happy reading. And where is Jacques Derrida when you really need him?  🐢




Tuesday, June 13, 2017

The Public Image by Muriel Spark (1968)

A famous English actress living in Italy is threatened with scandal.

Book Review: The Public Image is Muriel Spark writing Muriel Spark, and was listed for the first Booker Prize. I will read anything Spark writes: she has a tone, an intelligence, a something meaningful hiding just behind the surface meaning of her books, that I find irresistible. She is one of the few writers who I feel ill-equipped to read, and I love that. She puts more into her books than I'm capable of seeing, and that challenge is something I live to read. Why all this? Because although I enjoyed The Public Image and would and will read it again, it's not my favorite of her books and I may not be one of her best. But it is Muriel Spark, so that's enough. It's written in a cleaner, more straight forward manner than her earlier books, a step back, removed. The plot is mostly unpredictable, involving cruelty and sadism. Her books are always well written, well thought out, and this one evokes a strong sense of the Sixties. Enter this book knowing that no one and nothing is as it seems. The facade we all erect, our public image (whether celebrity or mere mortal), is always some level of false, hiding some aspect of ourselves, and that is true of everything in this novel. Although superficially about the carefully constructed public image of celebrities, as Spark was then a celebrity, she is actually more interested in the moral decisions we make in presenting ourselves to the world, not simply that a scandal might force some overrated celebrity to live with a lesser degree of conspicuous consumption. It's about identity, but also about dignity. About when are we acting, and as we grow and learn we become different people, is that false? As with all Spark novels, The Public Image can be read on as many levels as the reader is willing to make an effort to find. [3½★]

Saturday, June 10, 2017

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore (2014)

The story of the comic book super hero, from long before she was created in 1941, up to the 1970s.

Book Review: The Secret History of Wonder Woman has to do with a lot more than just the title hero. The reader will encounter suffrage and the women's movement, birth control, lie detectors, BDSM, the evolution of comic books, censorship, and much more. The reader will hear about the lineage, the creative family life, and the unusual theories of the super hero's creator, and yes, the marvelously complex Wonder Woman is in there somewhere as well (starting on page 186). It's a quick enjoyable read, solid pop history, passionate in part because the author can't get enough of the kinky stuff. Without that, I doubt this book would've been written. Lepore is a reliable Wonder Woman defender, finding cultural significance wherever possible, although recognizing the ways that her character can be problematic. It's good enjoyable fun all the way (if the reader doesn't mind the plentiful detours). With the recent release of the highly successful film, there will be some new fans eager to search out The Secret History of Wonder Woman. If they accept (or skim) the sections dealing with Lepore's broad picture, only a few will be disappointed. But as is typical with pop history, there are a few annoyances along the way. First, Lepore's claims for the significance of Wonder Woman in achieving women's rights in America seem a wee bit overblown. My opinion is that women would still have established their numerous accomplishments, even if Wonder Woman had never existed (although we all would've been much the poorer for it). Second, the author often speculates wildly without providing any support for her conjectures: "maybe it was then that he told her ... maybe he even went to the movies ... he may have ... or maybe ... ." And maybe all these unfounded speculations are wrong. In fact, Lepore acknowledges in the Epilogue, that at least one of her speculations was incorrect, so why were we making so many unsourced speculations? Similarly, the author relies heavily on sources that she acknowledges are unreliable -- so why such reliance? And finally, straying so far afield from the main story line will annoy the heck out of some readers (not me, though) -- just a warning. None of these flaws are crippling, they're just not good tools for a historian. But The Secret History of Wonder Woman is meant to be fun history, so just sit back and enjoy the ride.  [3½★]

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo (1955)

Upon his mother's death, a man ventures out to rural Mexico in search of his father and to take his inheritance.

Book Review: Pedro Paramo is a book that doesn't care if its read or not. Read, don't read, the story is there, waiting. Juan Rulfo (1917-1986), born in Jalisco, Mexico, published only three works of fiction: a book of short stories (1953), this short novel, and a later novella (1980). Given the evidence of this book, that's a small tragedy. The whole of the novel seems like an extended Dia de los Muertos. Ghost towns inhabited by ghosts. Wandering souls with no hope of redemption. The dead speak, memories live, the past continues on. Dreams become nightmares, and then are dreams again. Who is alive, who is departed? There's no telling. A quick bit of background: the word paramo translates as desert or wilderness; our protagonist is Juan Preciado, preciado meaning valued. There's much of Mexico here: village life, farms and ranches, priests, revolution, Pancho Villa. Abandoned towns. Though filled with spirits, there is also much of the flesh here, body heat, sin, fevered desire. Gabriel Garcia Marquez must've read Pedro Paramo. Throughout the book there are glimpses of Garcia Marquez around every corner, and he could've written the final 10 or 20 pages. Rulfo must have been an influence on the Nobel Prize winner. What this short book does not have is narrative drive, a compelling mystery, a plot, a push to keep reading. Pedro Paramo (well translated here by American poet Lysander Kemp) is too dreamlike, misty, too insubstantial for that. You enter the ghost world and stay there at your choice. But you'll want to stay, and wish you could stay longer.  [4★]


Monday, June 5, 2017

FilmLit: Papa - Hemingway in Cuba (2016)

Film Review: Papa - Hemingway in Cuba is a slice of Hemingway's life, a short period in the late Fifties when he became friends with an idol-worshiping reporter from Miami. Perhaps the best element of the film is that it was filmed on location, in Hemingway's actual haunts in Cuba, including his own luxurious house (carefully preserved by the Cuban government). Apart from that we see what the reporter saw: marital problems between two people with big egos, one just a bit larger than the other; Hemingway's sympathies for the communist rebels, reminiscent of his involvement in the Spanish Civil War; the toll that abuse and age had taken on the writer -- now a writer who could no longer write. In one heartbreaking scene, we see Hemingway broken as he painfully etches a zero for his daily writing word count, this by a man who had once proudly crowed about how many words, good words, he could write in a day. We also see how his paranoia was not all that paranoid, and the pressures that were pushing him to his end in Idaho. Although not a great film (destroyed on Rotten Tomatoes), Papa - Hemingway in Cuba is a good solid effort by all concerned, guilty only of trying to do too much in too little time, trying to make too many points about the author too quickly. The movie can't show Hemingway's greatness as a writer, especially as Hemingway's reputation may now be at the lowest point it's ever been (perhaps due for rehabilitation from his image as the great white macho man). The more the viewer knows about Hemingway, however, the more enjoyment there is to be found. Papa - Hemingway in Cuba is a rare and interesting glance into a life, well worth the time of anyone interested in the Nobel Prize-winning author.  🐢

Friday, June 2, 2017

The Lottery & Other Stories by Shirley Jackson (1949)

Twenty-five stories by the author of the novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and of course, the classic short story "The Lottery."

Book Review: The Lottery and Other Stories, originally subtitled The Adventures of James Harris, was the only short story collection published during Jackson's lifetime. At least three unique collections have been published since. These stories are not much similar to her novels, they find the terror and horror in our everyday lives, in prejudice, mental illness, and the small cruelties people inflict on other people. The stories make clear that Jackson always felt like an outsider, despite her success. None of these stories is like "The Lottery," which stands out from the others on several levels. But all the stories in The Lottery and Other Stories are well-written, intriguing, and worth reading. Having read all Jackson's novels, I felt that she wrote them from her subconscious, from some brilliant instinct, wrote them almost automatically, just letting her emotions and fears flow onto the page. The novels often abandon strict structure and dig deep into elemental emotions. But these stories are carefully constructed, controlled examinations of everyday routine and human interaction, often ending unresolved, in mid-breath. The clear effort and precise attention to detail that went into these stories show a craftsman of the first order, and may make me re-think my views on the novels. James Harris (the Daemon Lover) is a mysterious man who shows up in a number of the stories, but is not a consistent thread or theme. The Lottery and Other Stories is an excellent collection by one of our best writers of the damaged psyche.  [4★]