Incidental Inventions by Elena Ferrante (2019)

A year-long collection of weekly columns in the Guardian written by the author of the Neapolitan Quartet.

Nonfiction Review: Incidental Inventions is a book I was certain to read because I must devour everything Elena Ferrante writes. Had to read even though this wasn't fiction but a series of short essays on a variety of prompts suggested by the editors of the Guardian. Wonderfully, they're written by the same voice that wrote the fiction. The essays mostly fall into two categories: glimpses of her life that often show parallels to the novels, and her thoughts on a host of significant  contemporary issues. Included in the latter is her consistent dedication to daily and practical feminism. Despite her protestations as to the necessity of anonymity to her writing, for those interested these columns provide a great deal of biography and many hints as to where the books originated. Some of these brief rambles fill out ideas from the stories and readers who subscribe to the cult of personality will find many insights into the person who wrote the novels. There are numerous references to childhood, family, and her own life story. All enriched by the illustrations. There are also purely personal confessions. In Incidental Inventions we learn that Ferrante suffers from insomnia, is afraid of snakes, has trouble digesting pizza, that she was once a heavy smoker, that as a child she "was a big liar." All of which (except the last) completely irrelevant to our reading of her books. Incidental Inventions also contains her illuminating perceptions and understanding of a variety of matters important to conversations in today's world. These subjects are subtly expressed in the novels and elaborated on and enunciated in Frantumaglia. Even in these brief essays she's always discerning, enlightening. There is much to treasure seeing her mind at work. She lives life consciously, analytically. These essays appealed to me more than the personal information as I love to see her mind work. I respect Ferrante's position that we only need to know the author through her creations, which is why when she's spilling about her own life it seems contradictory. I don't need to know those things. What does interest me is when she's expressing her opinions. I enjoy seeing a strong, intelligent mind at work, with enough common sense to bring it all down to earth. Her many comments here on literature and writing constitute a graduate seminar on the subject: "All literature, great or small, is ... contemporary." I may not always agree (my exclamation points are not as phallic as hers), but I relish and value what she has to say. The Italian view of things is all too rare in the world. I only wish an American newspaper was cool enough to publish her column as the Guardian was,. I also wonder just how much controversy these columns stirred up with her thoughts on affirmative action and the (mostly hetero) relationship between the sexes. She notes that she refuses to speak badly of other women, even those she dislikes, because she knows the trials all women endure. There was no mention in Incidental Inventions of her outing by an Italian journalist or whether she'd publish again. After the outing and given her feelings about anonymity I was afraid that she might not write again, but I've just learned that The Lying Life of Adults will be released in English in June of 2020 (the Italian edition was published in November 2019). Until then, in this short book there is a seemingly limitless wealth of epigrams to spur and provoke. And for someone who has spent many pages with Elena Ferrante, even the personal information in Incidental Inventions was as enjoyable as news from an old friend.  [3½★]

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (1971)

A man finds that his dreams change the world and so becomes afraid to dream.

SciFi Review: The Lathe of Heaven is short, but has Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) enjoying herself by doing what she does best. She combines an undercurrent of humor with elements that work on a serious and moral level. This kind of gentle, good natured comedy was occasionally seen in Sixties science fiction (see The High Crusade or The Technicolor Time Machine), here with a completely and resolutely average, bumbling protagonist. At first the story seemed somewhat slight, even posed against the backdrop of disastrous climate change (published in 1971 but set around 2010). But the respite of humor fades amidst the darkness, chaos, and dreams become nightmares. Le Guin is willing to address the big issues, watching civilization collapse. In The Lathe of Heaven she looks at the law of unintended consequences: how attempts at social engineering can go wrong, how good intentions can go astray, how nothing turns out quite the way we want it to. How the world may be a mass of misery, but there's no instant remedy in any larger sense and could always be worse. As did Arthur C. Clarke in Childhood's End, she wonders if perfection becomes joyless. She reminds us that humans aren't capable of being God, but making a deal with the Devil provides no answer either. The story reminded of the three wishes of the jinn, when each wish somehow flips from what was wanted and turns wrong (see the movie Bedazzled (1967 & 2000)). As I read I wondered if our protagonist George Orr was a tip of the hat to George Orwell and the story was a nod to Philip K. Dick. The Lathe of Heaven is short, quick, interesting. When finished, the book continued to grow and kept percolating through my mind. Always a good sign in a book.  [3½★]

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke (1953)

Aliens come to Earth.

SciFi Review: Childhood's End is both clever and ambitious, and stunning for having been written in 1953. The book is a masterpiece of the classic science fiction plot, is wonderfully written, explores an almost infinite arc, and is interesting as a time capsule of how our lives have changed in 60 plus years. There are many science fiction plots: time travel, exploration of other planets (with possible alien contact), post-apocalyptic dystopias (caused by science), totalitarian-government dystopias (enabled by science), the computers take over, and on and on. But perhaps the classic story line since The War of the Worlds, one we can all imagine while lying in bed at night, is the inevitable alien visitation (if they can find us, that is). Here Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) presents a novel and intriguing variant on the trope. Certainly unexpected, and one that deserves to be kept under wraps. I got chills at two points: when he writes "The human race was no longer alone," and when he first described the visitors. This take on the old plot is effective because Clarke's writing rivals literary fiction: characters are rounded, realistic, motivated. Subverting expectations, the story moves slower than one generally anticipates in science fiction, being less plot-driven and allowing more space for the characters who chart the story. I hate to call a novel too ambitious, but Childhood's End lives up to its title, ranging from origin to apotheosis to extinction. For me the ending is too amazing (prepare to have your mind blown), but that may simply be because my imagination is too small. It's well worth the wild ride, though, and will encourage believers in human exceptionalism. Although it's irrelevant to the book, while reading I was continually struck by how the informed expectations of 1953 have been diverted. Living in a time that had seen the seismic Manhattan Project completed in six years or so, the sky was the limit. Yet Clarke did not see humans attempting space flight until the late 1970s, but did suggest that the apartheid government in South Africa would've been overthrown by then. Although he states that "the opinions expressed in this book are not those of the author," I think it notable that one of the first of the new rules for his fictional future Earth was one prohibiting cruelty to animals. Other predictions were the Pill and DNA testing. Beyond that trivia, however, Clarke has made a thought-provoking book that is one of the cornerstones of science fiction. A strong influence on my conception of alien visitation. At one point the narrator states, "Countless times this day had been described in fiction." There may be none better than Childhood's End.  [4½★]

Ice by Anna Kavan (1967)

Two men pursue a young, silver-haired woman at the end of the world.

SciFi Review: Ice is a weird book, that ended up being just a bit too weird for me. Anna Kavan (1901-68) wrote an interesting and experimental novel verging on science fiction, but in the end it left me with not enough there there. Told in the first person by a man (I call the Pursuer) who always follows after a delicate, silver-haired woman. Their world is surreal, unclear, unreal. The Pursuer has visions, seeing things he couldn't see, at times entering another personality. It's uncertain whether these visions are hallucinations, dreams, a form of second sight, a seeing of possible futures or alternate realities, of different planes of existence or alternate time-lines. Even madness. Kavan's characters are aware of their disjointed view of life. The young woman is "too preoccupied with her own dream world." The Pursuer "had a curious feeling that that I was living on several planes simultaneously," is "restrained by the peculiar uncertainty as to what was real," and sees "a flashback to something dreamed." "The hallucination of one moment did not fit the reality of the next ... it was reality happening in quite a different way." The uncertainty extends to the nature of the characters. The Pursuer and his mortal rival for the woman, the warden, are at once deadly enemies, best of friends, and almost the same person: "Our looks tangled together. I seemed to be looking at my own reflection ... not sure which of us was which ... I continually found I was not myself but him ... we were like identical twin brothers." Both want the woman, both are sadistic, both are willing to kill. All these bewildering facets made for slow reading as I kept going back to the beginning of a chapter to make sense of some new bit of information, but no explanation or clarification was to be found. Ice has been called science fiction. At one point the Pursuer sees partially human creatures "reminding me of mutants in science fiction stories." It's actually more a fantasy novel, today we would call it dystopian and post-apocalyptic. There are massive encroaching ice fields, the product of a seeming nuclear winter, though the speed of the glaciers makes one think of ice-nine (see Cat's Cradle (1963)): "No country was safe ... from the present devastation, which would spread ... and ultimately cover the entire planet." With the coming end of the world, the remaining countries war with each other, this conflict embodied in the Pursuer's brutal rival, the warden. Kafkaesque repressive political measures are caused by and exacerbate the effects of the approaching natural disaster. The government is closing in, as is the ice, as are the two men pursuing the woman. The writing, being deeply interior and egoistic yet often richly imagistic, is reminiscent of Anais Nin; the dead-pan statements of the fantastic also remind the reader of Kafka: "I had never before met anyone who owned a telephone and believed in dragons," or "People whispered or cleared their throats. The jury looked tired, or bored." The silver-haired woman is the source of all desire and conflict. Yet she's desirable only because she must be, because the author sees her (or sees herself) as infinitely desirable. She has little personality beyond proclaiming her victimhood: "Victimization in childhood had made her accept the fate of a victim ... something in her demanded victimization and terror ... expecting to be ill-treated, to be made a victim." There is little that is apparently attractive in her child's body. She has no agency. The Pursuer states, "I myself did not understand my compulsion to see this girl," as the relationship "had always been painful and unrewarding." Perhaps like an addiction. They say in dreams all the people dreamed about are simply the dreamer. Here, all the characters are variations of each other, even the girl as the victim is the other side of her two abusers, who are sometimes the same person ("we were like halves of one being"). The victim needs her abusers as they inexplicably need her. The story ties in with Kavan's own life, her biography being as intriguing as any novel (being, inter alia, a lifelong heroin addict). This is a surreal, psychological thriller of a novel, but there was little "why" or personal involvement. For most of the book the characters were one-dimensional, uninteresting, cold, distant. There was little human contact. It was hard to care as the adventures were often repetitive, with the Pursuer finding the girl and losing the girl over and over. Ice is an intriguing and odd effort with a lot to talk about, but did not make an addict of me.  [3★]

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett (1934)

Nick and Nora Charles reluctantly solve a murder in Manhattan.

Mystery Review: The Thin Man is the fifth, and final, novel by Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961). The film it inspired in 1934 overshadows the novel itself, thanks to brilliant performances by Myrna Loy and William Powell as the celebrated duo. Amazingly, they drink more in the book than they do in the movie, which means their livers must be on life support. Those who do read the book, however, will find that Hammett made a great leap forward in his last novel, creating more rounded relationships and social interactions with a variety of friends and acquaintances, and without the claustrophobic threats of violence in his previous books. He presents a husband and wife team who actually like each other, and demonstrates greater humor than ever before. The book is dedicated to his long-time partner Lillian Hellman, and I have to believe that their relationship formed the basis for Nick and Nora. Plus there's Asta the dog. There must be a dog. As our story begins, Nick Charles has been retired from detective work for six years and is now happily managing his wife's money. It's all very Manhattan, with bars, clubs, shows, sporting events, and includes a reference to "Levi Oscant," which is the name of well-known society pianist Oscar Levant spelled inside out (he was in movies). The witty banter in The Thin Man is top notch. Nick would prefer to focus on his drinking (it may be too early for breakfast, but it's not too early for a drink), but slowly gets dragged into a murder case involving a former client. Nora is there to help and an endless list of entertaining characters follows. I wonder what I would've thought of the mystery if I hadn't seen the film (several times); I enjoyed it immensely anyway and The Thin Man is one of his two best novels. As an aside, the book includes (for no apparent reason) a rather lengthy account from 1874 of Alfred (aka Alferd) Packer, a Colorado cannibal, which I assume is where most people outside Colorado first heard of the incident. I found the novel irresistible, with my only regret being that the only sequels were from Hollywood.  [5★]

The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham (1929)

A weekend party at an isolated country house with the foreboding name of Black Dudley becomes a gradually increasing horror.

Mystery Review: The Crime at Black Dudley (aka The Black Dudley Murder) is Margery Allingham's first novel featuring not-yet-detective Albert Campion. In fact, Campion is not the protagonist, disappears on page 172, and doesn't even try to solve the murder (that burden is borne by one George Abbershaw, Scotland Yard consultant, who Allingham seems to have intended to be her intrepid sleuth and carry the story). Although he later proves to be effective at what he does, Campion is described as "a congenital idiot," "a silly ass" with "foolish pale-blue eyes" behind spectacles, and an "absurd falsetto drawl." A small-time criminal who will do anything for money that's not "sordid or vulgar." Although Dorothy Sayers' Peter Wimsey and Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn were both introduced bearing a certain resemblance to Bertie Wooster, Campion's must be the most ignominious introduction of any major series detective. The Crime at Black Dudley itself is a sort of Gothic thriller featuring a creepy old mansion, hidden passageways, a menacing dagger, and more bizarre and fabulous events than one could expect from a contemporary of Agatha Christie. There is even a Moriarty-esque villain: "this man controls organized gangs of crooks all over Europe and America ... he has the reputation of being utterly ruthless and diabolically clever ... the most dangerous and notorious criminal of modern times." Thus labeled, the reader knows a roller coaster ride lies ahead. Allingham also lets her detective (Abbershaw, not Campion) address "the old problem of Law and Order as opposed to Right and Wrong ... which knows no unraveling." Experienced mystery readers may know where that leads. On that subject, although one may guess the culprit, Allingham gives no clue whatever to the motive. Interestingly Ngaio Marsh seems to have used a few elements of this story to create her own first novel with Roderick Alleyn, A Man Lay Dead (1934). The Crime at Black Dudley is a surprisingly dramatic, even melodramatic tale, with a nice bit of romance and a good bit of action, but only so-so as a mystery and gives me little clue as to the future of Albert Campion who I know will feature in at least 20 more books.  [3★]

Akhmatova Poems by Anna Akhmatova (1989)

A valuable collection of poetry covering the whole writing life by the great Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966).

Poetry Review: Akhmatova Poems is a perfect introduction to a poet too unfamiliar in the West. This Everyman's Library Pocket Poets edition, translated by D.M. Thomas, helps rectify the oversight of a writer who lost many creative years when her work was banned by the Stalin regime. Anna Akhmatova's writing reflects the course of modern Russian history. Known as a St. Petersburg poet, she lived and wrote from the time of the tsars until after the death of Stalin. She began as a leader of the Acmeists, a Russian movement that, similar to the Imagists, was devoted to simple, direct, clear and exact writing, opposed to the convolutions of the earlier Symbolists. Even her later writing is usually concise and pointed. Her work is known for its lyricism and her popular early poems told of love's sorrows: "How unbearably white/the blind on the white window." For her, love consisted of both passion and suffering, parting, leading to anger and then to loneliness and despair. "An autumn whisper between the maples/Kept urging 'die with me'." But pain could find some comfort in a confessional sort of religion, flesh balanced by spirit. "... a red maple leaf/marks the pages of the Song of Songs." A patriot in the truest sense of the word, she refused to emigrate despite her dissent from the Revolution, government disapproval (her works banned, her husband shot, her son sent to a labor camp), and the hardship of the Second World War. After publishing mostly lyrical love poetry from 1912 to 1922 she was unable to publish until 1940. She then wrote poems in solidarity with London and Paris. But the poems of this later period primarily reflected the country's pain and tragedy during the war (she was one of those besieged in Leningrad before being evacuated) in poems that were dark and despairing, but demonstrated her fervent love of country by promoting sacrifice and extolling the martyrs of the war. "We've all had to learn not to sleep for three years./In the morning we shall find out/Who has died in the night." Her earlier poems, however, led to Akhmatova being famously condemned as "a nun and a harlot" by a government official in 1946. After this attack, her work was again suppressed until 1958. "The glass doorbell rings/shrilly ... Is today really the date? ... Don't let it be me." In her final period she could examine the years and losses during the Stalinist era. Akhmatova reflected on the tragedies perpetrated by the government and Russian experience and history during her lifetime and 60-year writing career (beginning in 1907), as in her famous works Requiem, which addressed the sadness and suffering mixed with steadfast hope, but always outraged by the injustice of the Stalinist era; and A Poem Without a Hero, a historical epic of the times. There is a short but helpful "Notes" section at the end, yet for non-Russians there is so much we miss and don't understand. My one small complaint is that translating a foreign language into rhyme well seems impossible to me. Other than that, this volume has much to appreciate. There is almost too much; the palette is so broad the book requires rereading the rereading. The Everyman's Library edition is variously titled Akhmatova (on the cover), Akhmatova Poems (on the title page), and Anna Akhmatova Poems (on page 11). Whatever, it is a perfect gift and fits easily in any backpack or purse.  [5★]

Dark Passage by David Goodis (1946)

An innocent man breaks out of prison only to find life on the outside is no more free. 

Mystery Review: Dark Passage takes the statement "nobody ever said life was fair" to the breaking point. If it wasn't for bad luck, the wrongly convicted Vincent Parry wouldn't have any luck at all. When he somehow escapes prison he finds almost the whole world is against him. David Goodis is one of those "best writer you've never heard of" discoveries. While to my mind not in a league with Hammett, Chandler, Mosley, or Ross MacDonald as far as enduring works, you won't miss reading them while reading Goodis. Dark Passage features a dark, pessimistic view of the world, lonely and isolated, that makes the reader hope even when there's no chance of hope because that's all there is left. "I tell you it ain't bearable when a person has nothing to look forward to." When the novel hits various emotional peaks, the panicked, stream-of-consciousness, hearing-voices style of writing is overwhelming. In a world of paranoia, Parry doesn't want much, maybe the love a good woman, doesn't matter much about her looks. No hard-boiled, leering descriptions of pulchritudinous dames here. He's a man on the outside looking in, envying those who have what he doesn't: "He liked to see them coming in wearing their expensive clothes, smoking their expensive cigars, talking with their expensive voices." Goodis mixes plot with characterization with the best of them and sucks the reader into his world, which is all we can ask of a writer. Dark Passage is also a film noir with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (1947).  [4★]

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (2016)

A 36-year-old woman works in a convenience store for 18 years excluding all else in her life to the consternation of family, friends, and co-workers.

Book Review: Convenience Store Woman is one of those rare books that feels as if it was written just for me, like We Have Always Lived in the Castle, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, or just about any of Kafka's short stories. I know Keiko here as I know Merricat. This book is 163 pages long and I need about that many pages to discuss it as I found myself relating on too many levels. In one sense it's about finding the life that works for you no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Being a store worker is for her "the only way I can be a normal person." Many of us work hard at being normal: "It was the first time anyone had had ever taught me how to accomplish a normal facial expression and manner of speech." But it's okay to be seen as odd, different. Live your life, don't let others live your life. It's also about the joy that can be found in a job well done, the satisfaction of of having complete command and understanding of what you're doing and how to do it. Keiko can read customers' "minutest movements" and her body "acts reflexively in response." Convenience Store Woman also looks at how a demanding job in the old world can start to take over life. Laundry, groceries, cooking, clothing all have to fit into the dictates of work. The job begins to define all elements of life. Another side of this view is the completely unnatural world that is modern work, divorced from us as humans, and what the working world makes us into: cogs in the machine. "At that moment, for the first time ever, I felt I'd become a part in the machine of society. I've been reborn, I thought. That day, I actually became a normal cog in society." Temporary, easily replaced, just another widget along the conveyor belt. Although Keiko, the main character in Convenience Store Woman, has very little life, actually it's the same and no less than the life of anyone working for someone else. Like Keiko we're all temporary. It can be read as about disability or depression or any need or lack with which we have to cope, any way that we can. Yet I also simply wanted to read it realistically. What if this was me. Toward the end of the story when everything starts to fall apart, it becomes clear that Keiko would make an excellent manager, and perhaps only her being considered odd has kept her from being promoted. A thoughtful book that made me think, that took me inside someone else's skin, but also a quick, enjoyable read that I related to my own life. After reading I have two wishes: (1) that Sayaka Murata will now have more of her work translated into English and other languages, and (2) that Keiko gets to be in charge of her very own convenience store.  [5★]

The Wounded and the Slain by David Goodis (1955)

A couple goes to Jamaica to salvage their failing marriage, which turns into a dangerous walk on the wild side.

Mystery Review: The Wounded and the Slain is ambitious, a novel that wants to fit into that lurid nether world between crime and straight fiction, like a low-calorie version of The Bonfire of the Vanities. David Goodis (1917-67) examines what happens when the unthinkable intrudes on everyday life, when that everyday life consists of an alcoholic husband and a traumatized wife. The Wounded and the Slain is an odd sort of walk on the wild side, a venture into the unknown, only here the unknown is Jamaica where a married couple go to save their almost crumbled, wholly uncommunicative nine-year marriage. The story is alternately told by the wife and husband. He a straying and committed and eager drunk, rapidly losing touch with any logic in the world -- "To do anything logically was too much of an effort ... it was nothing more than a blindfold that covered the inner eye." She guilt-ridden, haunted by repressed childhood memories (which Goodis also touched on in Of Tender Sin (1952)). They both find alternatives and options in Kingston, one in the swanky, walled resort, the other in the violent slums. Eventually both risk their lives trying to do what they think is right. Not a mystery (though a death occurs), more a seamy slice of life Nelson Algren-style. When readers cite hard-boiled novels as angsty and existential, The Wounded and the Slain is what they're talking about. Just enough thoughtful moments to let the reader think: "In prison the art of wrongdoing has many professors." A taste of what might happen when one gives up on everything. The ending is just hard-edged enough to comfortably fit with the rest of the book.  [3½★]

Woman in the Dark by Dashiell Hammett (1933)

A fleeing young woman stumbles upon the home of a man recently released from prison, but all is not as it seems.

Mystery Review: Woman in the Dark is subtitled "a novel of dangerous romance." I guess. More a long short story than a novel (or even novella) and the romance is on the rough and abrupt side, but what does one expect in 70 generously margined pages. Hammett's protagonists seem tossed on the sea of fate, knowing that there's little about life they can change so it's barely worth even trying, though they do. His heroes mostly resign themselves to accepting what comes, however painful it might be. The Ned Beaumont kidnapping scene in The Glass Key is the epitome of this, in which he calmly accepts beating after beating like a turtle pushing against a wall. Our protagonist here has less to say and do than most, but the titular "Woman in the Dark," a German immigrant (apparently not a refugee) rises to the occasion. And the bad guys are pretty bad. The story is too short though, really needed to be expanded and developed, so ends up just a quick bite to enjoy and move on. Woman in the Dark was also a 1934 film with Fay Wray (the scream queen of King Kong fame). The movie is no better or worse than the book, but at least fleshes out the skeleton presented here.  [3★]

The Heroic Slave by Frederick Douglass (1853)

A slave escapes from Virginia and travels through Ohio on his way to sanctuary in Canada, and that's only the beginning.

Book Review: The Heroic Slave is the only work of fiction written by the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglass. Who knew? My reading of this was inspired by reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' first novel, The Water Dancer. The Heroic Slave is more short story than novella and more advocacy than story, but an interesting rarity nonetheless. As might be expected of a first piece of fiction, it relies on unbelievable coincidences, but the periodic willing suspension of disbelief is required calisthenics these days, anyway. Although fiction, this is also a slave narrative, with the climax of the story based on an actual but generally unknown event from 1841. The story, however, comes second to the more didactic points Douglass wants to make in The Heroic Slave. He makes clear to those who might fail to understand (this was America in 1853), that slaves were human beings: "children of a common Creator -- guilty of no crime -- men and women ... chained ...humanity converted into merchandise ... all to fill the pockets of men ... who gain their fortune by plundering the helpless." He exposes the hypocrisy of slavery existing in a country that not long before had fought for its freedom, but when slaves did the same labeled them criminals. A white character says, "Our difference of color was the only ground of difference ... it was not that his principles were wrong ... for they are the principles of 1776." To reinforce that point Douglass names his mighty and "noble protagonist" Madison Washington. Reminding his readers that in America the proper response to tyranny is revolt. Having escaped slavery in 1838 at age 20, Douglass later became a leading abolitionist voice and publisher. He was an adviser to Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, also serving as an ambassador to the Dominican Republic and consul-general in Haiti. Douglass was an early supporter of the women's right movement, attending the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Although The Heroic Slave is brief and perhaps not great literature, it's an authentic voice of the times and an insight into the American past that is not even past.  [3★]

Of Tender Sin by David Goodis (1952)

A Philadelphia insurance agent begins to lose touch with reality, threatening his marriage, his job, and soon his life.

Mystery Review: Of Tender Sin isn't a mystery about crime, at least not at first. Here the mystery is about what is causing Al Darby's visions, transforming them into an obsession that tears his life apart. (n.b., "Darby" is also a township in Delaware County adjacent to Philadelphia.) My second novel by David Goodis, this is worlds apart from the chaste struggle against fate that was Dark Passage (1946). More sensual (almost erotic), than the former novel, but all in service to a plot that takes it to the edge. Goodis does not fall into the typical "madonna or whore" cliche; instead each female character is a lot of one and a bit of the other, making the roles more credible. Of Tender Sin is a psychological mystery, consisting of one man's struggle with repressed memories and taboo passions. These pressures lead our protagonist to go for "a walk on the wild side" in the seamy districts of Philadelphia. Goodis paints Philly street by street as carefully as Joyce did Dublin. Wherever the plot might momentarily unravel, Goodis quickly saves it with his stunning skills -- he can write suspense with the best of them. A quick entertaining read with just enough grimy verisimilitude to make it a genuine noir novel, Of Tender Sin is an odd book out, but no less enjoyable for that.  [3½★]

The Coral Sea by Patti Smith (1996)

A remembrance in poetry of Robert Mapplethorpe.

Poetry Review: The Coral Sea is a collection of Patti Smith's writing about the memory of Robert Mapplethorpe who passed in 1989, at least up to that point in time (1996). I read the revised version published in 2012, which added more poems to the original edition. It consists of a preface to his book Flowers, a poem for his memorial, and a number of prose poems that tell "our story." The collection is well illustrated by both their photographs. As such, it's something of a prequel to her memoir Just Kids (2010), the story of their struggling young "ambitious artists" days in New York City. I'd suggest, however, to read it after if interested. Elegy seems to bring out the creator in Patti Smith. On her groundbreaking, combining punk with poetry, first album Horses (cover photo taken by Mapplethorpe) she included an "Elegie" for Jimi Hendrix. In her three memoirs she recollected Mapplethorpe (Just Kids), her husband Fred "Sonic" Smith (M Train, 2015) and Sam Shepard and Sandy Pearlman (Year of the Monkey, 2019). The Coral Sea is Smith's poetic remembrance, Just Kids is her memoir of the same. The latter is the stronger work, which led me to wonder if memoir is the natural outcome of what Smith calls "the dried-up-poet" syndrome. So much of poetry comes from an author's own life. If as one ages it becomes harder "to make it new," is not memoir, which also flows directly from one's own life not a natural avenue to channel those creative but now maybe less energetic impulses? I know of no poet to compare Smith with, from which she sprang. She is in love with images, she sees all, images and elements appear, vanish, then reappear in another poem, repeating words and images tightly interwoven throughout the book. The poems are visual, but she hears the sounds of her poems, every poem is capable of being read aloud. No, not just read aloud, declaimed, orated, spoken from a stage. Even sung, even danced. The whole is a metaphoric voyage, with people from their lives given new identities. She has a fearless poet's soul, is afraid of no combination of words, willing to write a "reign of tears" or "tiny arrows burning with the seductive poison of love" or "only Cupid in mischievous sleep could muster. And only M in cruel awakening could master." Many poets are far too cool to write those words, but Smith's poetry is fiery, rich, not cool. One line is "No one could enter a soul composed of tears, for one would surely drown." To me those words succeed and fail on several levels. Some favorites are "After Thoughts" and "The Herculean Moth." From these poems I get less a sense of who Robert Mapplethorpe was than who Patti Smith thought he was or what he was to her, for she seems to inhabit his skin in these lines, at times it's unclear where Smith begins or Mapplethorpe ends. She writes of him warts and all, confident that he transcends earthly flaws, traits, and peccadilloes. For her they both needed and collected amulets, tokens, talismans, touchstones, relics and ritual, objects with meaning, myth, and magic. Everything is visceral, tactile, texture. She runs more to emotion, but there is food for the intellect here also. In the final analysis the poems in The Coral Sea are heartfelt, honest in their fanciful way, with a meaning that Smith understands more than anyone. There are many personal and opaque references. For instance in the last line of the book she writes "commending these same wings beneath the folding arms of the deaconess of his soul"; Mapplethorpe died in Deaconess Hospital. For what is infinitely intimate to her, she gently and generously allows us to see through the door she's opened.  [3½★]

Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith (2019)

In her third memoir, Punk poet Patti Smith selects moments from 2016, an election year and the Year of the Monkey.

Memoir Review: Year of the Monkey, as with her two previous memoirs, Just Kids and M Train, remembers lost friends and lovers. Just as she eulogized Robert Mapplethorpe and her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith in those books, here she focuses on playwright Sam Shepard and writer Sandy Pearlman. Lamenting those passed is a theme Patti Smith has developed as far back as her memorable first album, Horses (1975), which included the song "Elegie" dedicated to Jimi Hendrix ("my head is aching as I dream and breathe"). Year of the Monkey relates occasional events from 2016 and as in her previous works (including the short book Devotion in the "Why I Write" series) she expands on her belief in the power of objects, memory, ritual, sympathetic magic, the importance of people she's known, places she's been, her deep emotional reactions, and gives wide latitude to whimsy and the creativity latent in the world. Her reflections on books she's read (Roberto Bolano's 2666; Meditations by Marcus Aurelius) add interest. As 2016 was an election year in the U.S., Year of the Monkey incorporates a fair share of Trump bashing, also. Compared to the books mentioned above, this one has the smallest palette and is the most self-indulgent (why constantly describe her unappetizing breakfasts) and the most fictionalized, but at age 70 perhaps she's earned that right and it's easy enough for the reader to indulge her in this short memoir. Even as Patti Smith laments "the dried-up-poet syndrome," her poetic soul is never far from the surface.  [3★]

18 Blues Haiku

Combining two of my interests, haiku and the blues, just for fun (no disrespect intended). Here I mostly stay with the 5-7-5 format to create some structure (as with the 12-bar blues). All of these are taken from old blues songs; none are mine.

♪

oh, rock me baby
like my back ain't got no bone --
rock me all night long

♪

the sky is crying
see the tears roll down the street --
oh, where can she be

♪

baby please don't go
don't go down to New Orleans --
you know I love you so

♪

got my mojo working
but it just won't work on you --
don't know what to do

♪

ramblin' on my mind
I hate to leave you baby --
you treat me unkind

♪

turn your lamp down low --
you got no nerve baby
turn me from your door

♪

don't you want to go
back to old California --
sweet home, Chicago

♪

under a bad sign
down since I began to crawl --
have no luck at all

♪

I should have quit you
a long time ago, quit you --
went to Mexico

♪

down to the crossroads
fell on my knees, asked mercy
take me if you please

♪

woke up this morning
I looked around for my shoes --
mean old walking blues

♪

you gotta help me
can't do it all by myself --
I'll find someone else

♪

ain't superstitious
a black cat just crossed my trail --
I'll get put in jail

♪

up in the morning
I believe I'll dust my broom --
he can have my room

♪

can't quit you baby
got to put you down for awhile --
make me mistreat my child

♪

gonna leave running
got the key to the highway --
walking is too slow

♪

kiss before I go
'cause when I leave here this time
won't be back no more

♪

I should've quit you
then I wouldn't be here, down
on the killing floor

♪♪♪

The Hothouse by the East River by Muriel Spark (1973)

We meet a married couple in Manhattan, their children and friends, and soon wonder if one of them is insane, and if so, which one, or is it in fact all of them.

Book Review: The Hothouse by the East River is a bad dream, perhaps Muriel Spark's, perhaps ours. Not a nightmare, never so bad that one wakes up in a shaking panic trying to scream. Just constantly uncomfortable, uncertain, at times absurd or surreal, definitely mad. At least someone is, but the madness is calm, quite polite, courteous even. We quickly enter the minds of everyone, listening to them speak and think and fret, living their hellish lives, and we still don't know who, or which of them, is insane.

One is in good hands with Muriel Spark: she is always more clever than her reader, never sentimental, and always in control. Although in a novel as unbalanced as this one (I've read over a dozen of her books and this is the most disordered), the reader might reasonably (but unnecessarily) have doubts about her command of the situation. Her writing can be an acquired taste; she's like no one else.  Unlike so many of her novels, in The Hothouse by the East River religion is not obviously front and center, but instead psychiatry is a constant presence.

By the end of The Hothouse by the East River, the reader learns more, and almost enough. Still, the reader wonders if this a traditional story of long lineage, satire, metaphor, allegory, a fever dream. Perhaps a puzzle or a game of cat and mouse with her readers being the mice (as an ardent Spark fan I'm happy to be the rodent). Part of the joy of reading Muriel Spark is that she respects the reader's intelligence and assumes (right or wrong) that we're up to the challenge.  [3★]

"Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" by Thomas Pynchon (1959)

The story of a late Fifties Washington D.C. party in which cultures clash.

Story Review: "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" was Thomas Pynchon's second published work, appearing in Cornell University's formal literary journal, Epoch, in Spring of 1959. Written while still in college, for some reason he did not include the story in his short fiction collection, Slow Learner (1984). Which is a shame because it's easily as good as any piece in that company. The title comes from a line in an early speech in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure referring to the powers of life and death and of mercy. Apt and lovely title for this piece. Unlike so much of Pynchon's work "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" is written in a straightforward, quick-reading style. A story that encompasses the carousel of an "absurd, surrealist" party consisting of a fetal pig, Chianti, Kurtz, Seconal, T.S. Eliot, Peter Arno, a Bartok Concerto, and a Klee original. The sort of party in which "you might give absolution or penance, but no practical advice." A party which you want to attend, but might not stay till the end. Apparently written quickly, it's all the better for that as it exists in its natural state before Pynchon had time to gild it with myriad additional layers of his encyclopedic and many-lives-lived knowledge. Available for sale or in PDF on-line, "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" is well worth seeking out for anyone with an interest in Thomas Pynchon and an entertaining story.  [5★]

Slow Learner by Thomas Pynchon (1984)

Five early stories and an invaluable but confessional introductory essay by the Bard of Oyster Bay.

Book Review: Slow Learner is a necessary book for anyone who wants to know Thomas Pynchon. If you've read at least two of his novels and have any extant interest, you should read this as well. For die-hard fans the fun will be in searching out characters, events, scenes, and themes that reappeared in later works. For casual Pynchon readers seeing the author's maturation as a writer will be food for thought. My suggestion is to read the Introduction to Slow Learner after reading the stories. It will make ever so much more sense and will save re-reading. This will be difficult for acolytes who tend to salivate after any scrap of information they can obtain about the maestro. In the Introduction, Pynchon not only enthusiastically deprecates his early works, but also provides useful advice for beginning writers. Through his humility, Pynchon is trying to lower expectations, to discourage reading too much into work from his 20's when he was experimenting with and exploring his craft, and perhaps to assuage his own wincing and cringing when looking back. Else why release them at all? For another bit of insight into his world fans should seek out Pynchon's Introduction to the Penguin edition of his friend Richard Fariña's only novel, Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me (1966). Since there are only five stories here and this is one of the notable writers of our time, each deserves its own bit, along with year of publication.

"The Small Rain" (1959) - The simplest story here (published when Pynchon was 22), but still touching and effective. Here Pynchon aims at a big statement, but subtly and in an offhand manner befitting an enlisted man. A soldier story in the vein of Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead (1948)), or more distantly Ernest Hemingway (who comes in for a mention). His first published story and the most conventional. [3★]

"Low-lands" (1960) - Pynchon writing an allegory, a fairy tale for a modern and cynical age. Written well before the similarly titled but unrelated song by Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan (and friend of Richard Fariña), "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" (1966). [3★]

"Entropy" (1960) - The convoluted plot of the story encapsulates the concept of the title, down to the stilling of a heartbeat. Very Pynchonesque, and reminiscent (especially the dialog) of the aforementioned Richard Fariña novel. [4★]

"Under the Rose" (1961) - Reads like an outtake of V. (which it is, apparently -- see Chapter Three of that work), and includes characters from that novel. Rich, Baroque, complex, historical. I can't say that reading this story will provide the key to understanding any facet of that book. It actually doesn't seem like a short story at all. [3★]

"The Secret Integration" (1964) - Published a year after V. and two years before The Crying of Lot 49. Pynchon had decided that he knew how to write a short story. Along with "The Small Rain," the least Pynchon-like story in the bunch (though he can't help but flash moments of his shtick), and the most conventional (was published in The Saturday Evening Post, after all). This is Pynchon making social commentary and exploring the idea that children may be wiser than adults. [4★]

Slow Learner is an excellent place to begin reading Pynchon, following along in fits and starts as he finds his way. Also recommended are the more often suggested The Crying of Lot 49 and his first novel V., for those chronologically inclined. In these early stories we discover that Pynchon had already digested several encyclopedias, lived several lifetimes, and had mastered the art of looking at everything the way no one else does. Given his cybernetic store of knowledge, he makes disturbing and surprising connections. His writing is bizarre, but beautiful.  [3★]

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh (2018)

A young woman in pre-9/11 Manhattan tries to sleep for most of a year.

Book Review: My Year of Rest and Relaxation tries its best to make itself unlikable, which is a clever if cynical way to make it even more likable. The main character is a privileged, entitled, disloyal, WASPy, Ivy League graduate who doesn't have to do anything and doesn't. She's alienated, misanthropic, angry, feeling connected to the world only by her building's trash chute. Moshfegh at length but offhandedly establishes her trauma, subtly detailing the scars of her upbringing and the recent deaths of those responsible. "We got along best when we were asleep." Her inability to grieve has become a wall between her and everything else. She doesn't have anything to grieve for, so she grieves by not grieving. The narrator doesn't like herself much and doesn't expect to be liked. Despite having pretty much everything we're supposed to want in life (looks, money, cool job), all is insufficient and superficial. Emblematic of that lifestyle is her best and only friend Reva, who self-conscious and self-hating engages in a constant battle of self-improvement. She lives a life of quiet desperation, but like so many stubbornly rides daily into the valley of death. Reva's concern is about what we're told life should be, what we should want, one of those people who have careers instead of jobs. This is everything our narrator doesn't want to be. She doesn't want to be one of the people in a country somnambulating through life, chasing meaningless goals. Consequently, she treats Reva horribly ("'You'll be fine,' I told Reva when she said her mother was starting a third round of chemo. 'Don't be a spaz,' I said when her mother's cancer spread to her brain."), which is how her tool of a so-called boyfriend treats her. Self-hating people find a way to accept such treatment. Unhappy with everything, she wants to live in a world of "fluff," where it all can be ignored. "I needed a way out of this -- the bathroom, the pills, the sleeplessness, the failed, stupid life." So our narrator enters My Year of Rest and Relaxation. She evolves a plan to eradicate her current life in "American" sleep. She wants to hibernate in a chemical cocktail. To undergo a drug-fueled metamorphosis in which she'll be reborn as someone who doesn't hate everyone and everything. "I knew in my heart ... that when I'd slept enough, I'd be okay. I'd be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person ... . My past life would be but a dream, and I could start over without regrets." The vehicle for this rebirth and the novel's comic relief is provided by the hilarious and incredible psychiatrist Dr. Tuttle, gleefully providing a level of medication that would hospitalize a racehorse and injecting fresh air and fairy dust on every page in which she appears. After our narrator's dark night of the soul, we and she come out the other side. The ending seems rushed, but her plan works. She has a newly born heart (and Moshfegh reveals her own). She's woken up, just as America awoke to what looked like a much different world after 9/11. Our narrator is now willing to connect to humanity (with charity shop Goodwill as her first step). In My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Moshfegh is willing to use any trick in her bag, including Pynchonesque bad jokes, saying the unsayable, and mining dark humor and disgust for all they're worth. She goes to implausible and awkward lengths to deny the narrator a name, but I'm unsure why. She writes amazingly well, (somehow she reminds me of Bret Easton Ellis -- that's a compliment, btw), but I'm not sure that even this amazing book matches her talent. At this point we can only read Ottessa Moshfegh and marvel; someday we'll look back and be able to see how it all worked and where it all fit.  [4½★]

No Bones by Anna Burns (2001)

A Catholic girl in Northern Ireland growing up during the Troubles, from age 7 to 32. 

Book Review: No Bones is Booker Prize winner (for Milkman) Anna Burns' first novel, and similarly addresses the war zone that was Northern Ireland. Echoes of Milkman are abundant (yes, there's a milkman here, too, but everyone has names). If this novel is an only slightly distorted, many-year photograph of that brutal religious warfare, then Milkman is the unretouched negative: less clear, more stark. The novel contains an abundance of detail that can only be supplied by one who lived through those horrifying times. The story mostly follows young Amelia, living in the Catholic Ardoyne section of Belfast from 1969 when the British troops arrived to 1994 when there were stirrings of peace for the Northern Irish Troubles (a typically Irish ("it'll be grand") euphemism for a time that should have been called the Horrors). Each chapter is a terrifying stop along the way of that 25 year arc. A bit of knowledge about those extraordinary and abnormal times is necessary to fully understand No Bones, although they are expansively and painfully described. "Amelia was in blank mode. Amelia was at a funeral. She knew how to behave at funerals." Overarching all the moments and horrors are the simple lessons that insanity begets insanity and that violence begets violence: not in some trite circle, but in a magnifying and geometrically rising line, creating more horrors that beget greater horrors. The insanity of those desperate times drive the residents (especially the still-plastic children) to varying levels of fear, madness, and violence in response. In a community besieged, following on a history of 800 years of oppression, violence turns inward, murder is always imminent, British soldiers kill pet dogs, logic becomes unreasoning, rubber bullets become toys. As society deteriorates, so do families. As individuals begin to fall apart, descending into obsession and madness, people become wholly involved in the terror, viciously joining in the bloodshed, or become numbed, insulated, isolated, escaping into drink or psychosis. "The build-up to committing murder, as anyone will tell you, takes its toll on a person." Schools are no refuge, but only places of more and inescapable violence. Are the images and descriptions grotesque exaggerations devolving into dark humor, or simple reportage? As death leads to death there's no time to dwell on lost friends, there's just too many, so a moment to acknowledge and then back to a life that is anything but normal. For Amelia the guilt of the many deaths she never took time to properly grieve drives her into anorexia, madness, and an institution. "They'd all heard and forgotten about Danny Megahey ... already, he was gone." Although there are many examples of sexual violence, mental illness, and unexpected death, one of the most powerful scenes was simply Amelia describing how to get from one part of town back to Ardoyne, following a long and circuitous route so as to stay safely on Catholic streets, yet someone following the same path an hour later will die anyway. Burns' writing style reflects those Irish authors who came before her, a worthy part of the great Irish tradition, but she's wholly her own writer. No Bones seems like a first novel, however, in that Anna Burns tries to do too much: is this dark humor, is this a description of mental illness, is this a factual account of atrocities on both sides, is this reality become unbearable and distorted into grotesque fantasy. Is this a novel that reflects the complex chaos of the times by becoming complex chaos. The changing points of view are abrupt. At times it seems the descriptions of psychotic reactions will never stop. An eerie account of a shadowy time, a revealing journey for those strong enough to take it.  [3½★]

Clock Without Hands by Carson McCullers (1961)

The past, that's not even past, battles the future in a small Southern town at the dawn of integration.

Book Review: Clock Without Hands was Carson McCullers' last novel, written during long, debilitating illnesses, published six years before her death. The story has her powerful writing, intriguing characters, and is set at the beginning of the civil rights movement. It has all the elements to succeed, but doesn't quite pull together to be as brilliant as it should be (and as I expected). Still a good read, enjoyable, quick, revelatory, yet for me it felt distant, with little sense of immediacy, distracted. The climactic incident is rushed and buried. There are four main characters but the depiction of each has a flaw: one somewhat unbelievable; another nearly too watery to care about; one challenging and meaningful, but repetitive; and the most complex, contradictory, and interesting character is almost a caricature, but that's a judgment call. Seems that McCullers began with a central character, the Judge, an all too human "typical" Southerner, but written as an individual, with qualities that belie the stereotype so that he becomes an actual person. A devout narcissist who believes he must fit the role he was raised to, in the only way he knows how to live, the set of beliefs and actions that he must wear, even as his mind is going. Two of the other characters are less fully drawn, but still help create the four elements that comprise the story. The Judge's grandson, whose past was kept from him and so has no direction in life until he learns the new South can include the Atticus Finch he's determined to become. A young black man who feels the pain of injustice, but in his core really wants to become a man of culture, taste, learning -- one who cannot be disparaged by any white man. Frustrated at a life without possibility, he takes a step that he hoped would never come. And the most meaningful character, a dying man who's never acted freely, who sees a life never lived (a life of easy bigotry), who never became a person, and faced with his death he sees the loss of his soul: "He was a man watching a clock without hands." A man before a chasm, staring at death, for the first time finds the courage to take a stand, who finally becomes a human being despite the cost. The remainder of his life matches the length of the story. For all the characters time is the catalyst that drives Clock Without Hands. McCullers obviously had great aspirations for the novel, addressing not only her usual concerns of loneliness, isolation, and confused sexuality, but the new political and social movement of the Fifties, the role of race in the South. There is a great novel lurking within. McCullers again creates a community of souls as in her other books, but here they do not balance and complement. The four are disjointed and the characters fail to mesh as they should, being built at different levels of complexity, meaning, and credibility. Clock Without Hands is well worth reading (everything by McCullers is), but doesn't match her best. Though a good reader will easily see how it could have.  [3½★]

Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers (1941)

On a Southern army base in the peacetime of the 1930's, all that is wrong with two couples becomes tragedy.

Book Review: Reflections in a Golden Eye is one of Carson McCullers' lesser known works, but here she puts the "Gothic" in Southern Gothic with a vengeance. The tension builds from the first page. As with The Secret History we know there will be a murder -- involving six people and a horse. I liked the horse. The six characters interact, two married couples, an enlisted man, a servant. All misfits, saturated in feelings of isolation, alienation, obsession. All outsiders, all become grotesques, stunted by an impersonal world that refuses space for them, as outlined in McCullers' famous "square peg, round peg" conversation between two officers. As such they descend to instinct, to the animal, to primitive violence, silences, to the most basic needs. Predators and prey. Deformed reflections of humanity. The characters intertwine, overlap, hate and love and lust for each other, all living somewhere along the sexual spectrum. One, an officer forced to stay intensely closeted, denied his identity and impulses, lashes out sadistically at the world, at men and horses and kittens: "He stood in a somewhat curious relation to the three fundaments of existence -- life itself, sex, and death." Another a man indoctrinated, brainwashed since childhood to fear women, to reject their diseased, repugnant bodies. Mentally disfigured, he's almost more animal than man. As our involvement with the six continues, the tension and mystery grow, we feel the tragedy of being human, we all want to fit somewhere, we all seek something we can't hold. The tension builds until the reader knows something has to give, but is unsure what or where: there are many fissures in this volcano. Reflections in a Golden Eye is a daring book for 1940, addressing sadism, voyeurism, masochism, sexual neglect, repressed sexuality, gay and straight. Unlike her other books, here McCullers is detached from her characters; she does not love them. After reading, I realized I'd barely scratched the surface in understanding these characters, and needed to go back and read it again to more fully comprehend their roots and motivations. Reflections in a Golden Eye now seems even better than when I finished it a month ago.  [4★]

Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated by James Thurber (1940)

A collection of fables updated for the modern age.

Book Review: Fables for Our Time is Aesop brought into the 20th Century and made humorously dark or darkly humorous. A satirical menagerie poking fun in an acidic (but funny) commentary on society. James Thurber presents a form of humor rarely seen today, but sadly still relevant. As with our friend Aesop, the morals tell the story: "It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be"; "If you live as humans do, it will be the end of you"; "It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers"; "You can fool too many of the people too much of the time"; "Run, don't walk, to the nearest desert island." All quite obviously true, but the fun is in seeing how Thurber gets there. While some of the fables provide a sharp insight to every day life, others address more serious issues such as the paranoia of communities, as may be focused on refugees, Jews, Reds, or Muslims. In "The Very Proper Gander" a rumor sparked the crowd to gather sticks and stones till they "set upon him and drove him out of the country." The people are oh-so-afraid of those oh-so-dangerous ganders! Even darker are the lessons of "The Birds and the Foxes" and "The Rabbits Who Caused All the Trouble." Fables for Our Time also includes a section, as noted above, of "Famous Poems Illustrated." These are story-poems by writers such as Longfellow, Scott, Tennyson, Housman, and Whittier, all of whose work I assume were safely in the public domain. This section is interesting as an introduction to popular verses of yesteryear, but may be of more interest to fans of Thurber's drawings, as he provides an illustration for most every stanza of the poems. Otherwise, I think the poems were included as a way to fill up a too-slender book. Fables for Our Time isn't indispensable and may be difficult to find, but it's a pleasant enough book representing a lost art form and a sharp eye into human nature. Some fables are dated in a Steve Harvey/battling Bickersons kind of way, but spot on in their evaluation of people.  [3½★]

At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell (2016)

A wide ranging exploration of the lives and ideas of the existentialist philosophers.

Nonfiction Review: At the Existentialist Cafe is subtitled "Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails," which gives a clue that this is not your grandma's existentialist handbook. Sarah Bakewell tells the story of and explains existentialist philosophy through the lives of its proponents, which makes for a human, engaging, and accessible story. Full credit to her for bringing life to such a rarefied subject, and for bringing such a rarefied subject to the general reading public. Although this has become the most successful pop philosophy book since Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), within there is the makings of a serious and informative textbook. Bakewell is a master of disguise: she can teach and entertain in the same sentence. For the serious reader, At the Existentialist Cafe provides a highly useful Cast of Characters, detailed and extensive supplementary chapter Notes, a  thorough Select Bibliography, and a well-organized Index. Her short but incisive discussion of Simone de Beauvoir's groundbreaking The Second Sex (1949) is a high point of the book. Bakewell notes that The Second Sex "can be considered the single most influential work ever to come out of the existentialist movement." Worth noting is that The Second Sex relates practically to everyday life, as did the Epicureans and the Stoics, than does the philosophy for philosophy's sake that fills these pages.

Today it's possible to live in a superficially religious country (where one does not have to believe, but cannot too openly disavow the customs of belief), caught somewhere between the less religious countries of Europe and the truly devout countries of the world. It's surprising how shocking and controversial, even unnerving, existential philosophies once were, and how little they move the needle now. Much of what Bakewell relates, seismic at the time, is taken for granted today. Many people now seem to live existential lives, although most probably would not identify as existentialists. "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom," wrote Kierkegaard, and today anxiety is a natural and constant element of our lives. As such, the philosophy is less interesting, less necessary, to many modern readers except historically, as it is simply how many live, like fish in water. Bakewell notes: "Existentialist ideas and attitudes have embedded themselves so deeply into modern culture that we hardly think of them as existentialist at all."

As is common with many biographers these days, Bakewell gives herself time in the spotlight along with her subjects, but unlike most biographers at least she does it with taste and restraint. Interesting to me is that Bakewell has a philosophy degree, but she is primarily a biographer, yet explains philosophy better than any book I've ever read by an academic in the field. Perhaps we need biographers to be the new teachers, combining lives with knowledge. For the average reader interested in existentialism, this is the perfect book for painless pedagogy.  [5★]

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (1929)

Ten letters from the great German poet to a young correspondent seeking poetic enlightenment.

Nonfiction Review: Letters to a Young Poet contains much valuable advice, which most young people will ignore and never become poets worth reading, but a few will listen and learn and so make the most of whatever talent they possess. These letter were written when Rilke was in his late 20s and early 30s, just coming into his own as a poet. He disowned most of his poetry written before then. His greatest strengths here are his sincerity and his belief in solitary self-reliance ("Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody."). The letters were written as he received letters from his young correspondent, as thoughts struck Rilke, as he had time to ponder, not as some carefully planned, ordered, and organized program of poetry instruction. The letters are all the more valuable for that. Self-help books cannot make a good poet of someone who is not, but they can save a good poet significant time in developing that talent. Rilke doesn't concern himself with ephemera: the pointless mechanics of words, lines, and structure. Rather he works to help his young friend discover if he has the soul of a poet, if he has the inner strength, spirit, passion, and feeling to be a poet. For Rilke that is the sole importance, that is all of it. He advises the searching poet to be alone, to look deep within, and to determine whether the nascent poet must write. His advice is to seek depth, not irony; ignore criticism; to listen only to the inner voice; to be human, not male (Rilke's correspondent was a young man). Rilke emphasizes the importance of solitude, the strength gained through loneliness, the value of re-living child-like moments. He teaches that learning to love one another is a lengthy process ("do not write love-poems"). The great poet reveals a surprisingly insightful view of women and values the truth of nature above all. Rilke believed that the poet can change the world into spirit, into something meaningfully communicated through depths of feeling and memory: "How much he was at one with all these things!" Letters to a Young Poet is a treasure trove of lessons for the seeking writer; it may not appeal to all readers. Such a short book should simply be read on principle, to gather anything at all that speaks to anyone wanting to write. My edition was translated in somewhat archaic language ("thither irony never descends"; "to a sojourn in the Eternal City Rilke was himself nothing loath"). It's worthwhile to look for some more modern translations to see if some of the denser and more opaque language should be blamed on Rilke or the humble translator. For someone in their late-teens or early twenties, with serious aspirations to poetry, Letters to a Young Poet can only be a benefit.  [4★]

Three Stories and Ten Poems by Ernest Hemingway (1923)

Ernest Hemingway's first book, published in an edition of 300 copies.

Book Review: Three Stories and Ten Poems was published in 1923 by a small, modernist Parisian press for expat writers, Contact Editions, whose owner took a chance on the then-unknown future Nobel Prize laureate. Just as it says in the title, this slim volume contains three stories:

"Up in Michigan" - The story that (according to Hemingway) Gertrude Stein felt was good but unpublishable (inaccrochable was her word), and so a waste of time to write. In the story a young woman receives an unbearably brutal, illusion-destroying introduction to the world and the essential nature of men at the hands of man with whom she's infatuated, despite her essential decency and innocence. It was not included in Hemingway's first story collection, In Our Time (1925), as the publisher was afraid of the obscenity laws. It wasn't published again until 1938 in the collection The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories.

"Out of Season" - Some consider this the "story that marks the true beginning of his mature style."
Here, a weak man, a fish out of water, allows himself to be manipulated and exploited by an illiterate drunk. Recognized as the first example of Hemingway's "iceberg theory," that what is not in the story can be understood through context. To that end he excised the original ending. The story was later included in his first story collection, In Our Time.

"My Old Man" - This one was selected for the 1923 edition of The Best Short Stories (later The Best American Short Stories, which is still published) series. A boy makes the painful discovery that his father is simply a man, with a life of his own marked by the imperfections, flaws, and weaknesses that are humanity. The piece was included in the collection, In Our Time.

One of the elements that we don't realize about these stories is how revolutionary their style was at the time. The simple, stripped down writing was still uncommon, and so was quite striking to readers even apart from all other aspects. Hemingway left out extraneous words, and even extraneous plot, believing excised portions could be discerned through the rest of the story. For modern readers, familiar with contempoary approaches, however, the writing style can seem and sound too simple, too "see Jane run."

Three Stories and Ten Poems also includes the titular poems, in which Hemingway tried to push the limits, to make them revolutionary, or at least conspicuous in a sort of bluntly realistic style. I find it interesting that like Bukowski, Hemingway's early start was as a poet as much as a writer of fiction, seemingly incompatible with his stereotypical image as a macho man's man. The poems are worth discussing. Six of the ten poems were originally published in the important Chicago modernist magazine Poetry (which in 1915 first published the then impenetrable "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and is still publishing today) in January 1923. Gertrude Stein noted that she liked the poems more than his contemporaneous fiction. Despite these commendations, Hemingway's poetry is not the basis of the reputation that led to the Nobel Prize. The poems have an always-traditionally-masculine edge, mostly straightforward without too much embellishment, using words rarely used in English-language poetry at the time (gonorrhea, whore, stomach-pump), just as "Up in Michigan" addressed a subject more directly than was usually done. Published in 1923, some of these are war poems, reminiscent (though not as well done) of the British poets of the First World War. The ten poems with my simple notes are:

"Mitraigliatrice" - There's some confusion about how to spell the title of this poem -- apparently wrong in the book but correct when it was published in Poetry. Here Hemingway compares his Corona typewriter (sent to him for his birthday by his wife, Hadley) to a machine gun. Wishful thinking, perhaps. The metaphor no doubt became more common after the invention of the electric typewriter.

"Oklahoma" - Open to interpretation: I see it as author is writing about one thing, but thinking of another to make the last line hit hard. Yes, I mean metaphor.

"Oily Weather" - The triumph of man over nature. Which you'd think Hemingway would've understood is a mirage.

"Roosevelt" - Meaning Teddy, since FDR was a ways off back then. Here Hemingway mocks the self-mythologizing, macho manly-man President. Which is a little ironic, perhaps projecting, since no one was more aware of his own image than the author.

"Captives" - Not a brilliant poem perhaps, but accurate and honest in its emotion.

"Champs D'Honneur" - My guess is that this ("Fields of Honor" in English) is Hemingway's reply after reading Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est." Owen was a great war poet.

"Riparto D'Assalto" - A war poem, good enough, mixing thoughts of soft, warm prostitutes with the misery of the war zone. Hemingway watching "shock" or "storm" troops between battles.

"Montparnasse" - A cynical comment about the ex-pat, Bohemian life on the Left Bank of Paris. Hemingway was one of those people who felt he could expound on the lives of others, not realizing how little we know about the desperation contained in the lives of others.

"Along with Youth" - A coming of age poem, as with the Nick Adams' stories or "My Old Man." Given the subject, not terrible.

"Chapter Heading" - I enjoyed this one, a good poem. Reminded me of Edna St. Vincent Millay; that's a compliment. It was selected for Best Poems of 1923 and was Hemingway's first publication in a book in the U.S.

If Hemingway's poetry speaks to you, you should seek out Complete Poems, edited by Nicholas Gerogiannis, published by University of Nebraska Press (Bison Books). It's too obvious to say, but true, that Three Stories and Ten Poems is interesting more for its historical value and as an insight into Hemingway's growth as a writer, than valuable for the lasting quality of the work. Regardless, the collection is worth the price of admission.  [3★]

In Evil Hour by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1962)

The circle of violence begins anew for the residents of a Colombian river town when an anonymous agitator begins posting local rumors about rich property owners.

Book Review: In Evil Hour (La mala hora) is the first novel published by Gabriel García Márquez. This short book has the same "telling a tale" tone as his later works, making it both familiar and charming. It's a kind of cozy, oral history that might be told in a cafe or a barbershop, with just enough added irreverence to make it human and believable, as if relating a story that may've been long known in the region. It reminded me a little of Chronicle of a Death Foretold. At this point in his career, García Márquez was still writing realistically, without the magical elements of his later work. Although much more focused and simpler in scope, In Evil Hour is clearly a stepping stone on the way to the achievement that would be One Hundred Years of Solitude. Colonel Aureliano Buendía makes a brief appearance, as does mention of Macondo, and other notes from the melody of that literary masterpiece. The undertone of In Evil Hour, though, is violence as it afflicted rural Colombia. Political violence that became an unstoppable force, destroying communities, despite all best intentions: "Abandoning us to God's mercy is another way of beating us up." A time when threats become more powerful than their execution. Most of the characters, even those with families, are lonely, isolated, and see themselves coming to some solitary end. As with his most famous novel, here in the midst of the tropical heat, noontime dust, and slow decay, is the same existential dread.  [3½★]

Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh (2017)

A collection of 14 stories published from 2012 to 2017 by the author of Eileen and My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

Book Review: Homesick for Another World announced Ottessa Moshfegh as the empress of ennui, the princess of pointlessness, and the icon of the isolated. I prefer her longer works to the stories collected here, but that's only saying I prefer ice cream to cheesecake. While the novels pack a harder punch, in the stories I can see the world through Moshfegh's compound eye and piece it together like a shattered mirror. Roaming my reactions to these stories my vocabulary becomes: bleak, pointless, flawed, false, disgust, directionless, illusions, twisted, resignation, unrealistic, unambitious, hopeless, absurdist. One wonders why a pulverizingly intelligent writer is so interested in such people; she must've met Ignatius J. Reilly. A few years from now decoding Homesick for Another World will be a college thesis to jump start some lit-major's career. The stories are short and quick reads, almost more like sketches. I limited myself to a couple a day to let them sink in. Eight of the 14 stories are written from a male (not always hetero) perspective. No other author writes so skillfully and so often from such varied points of view (in the stories it's not all as binary as it sounds). As with her novels, Moshfegh's take on human beings of any sort is done convincingly and blindingly well. But still, the stories in Homesick for Another World have an irony, a skepticism bordering on insincerity, always a shade apart from the world most us live in. Although the characters dabble in the grimy and grubby, the litany of inversions doesn't discourage the reader: we're all adults here. A necessary chunk of the Moshfegh canon.  [4★]