My Antonia by Willa Cather (1918)

The immigrant experience among the pioneers on America's Great Plains.

Classics Review: My Ántonia at first simply seems to be Willa Cather (1873-1947) telling a random collection of stories about the backbreaking task of settling the Nebraska prairie. Characters come and go, the titular Ántonia doesn't appear for chapters at a time. The chilling wolf story comes from Russia. "I suppose it hasn't any form," a character says. The more the reader mulls over the book, however, the more layers there are to peel back. Our narrator, the native-born Jim Burden, does everything right, goes off to college, becomes a lawyer, and ends up miserably alone in a loveless marriage. His childhood friend Ántonia, a Czech immigrant, goes her own passionate way, lives on her own terms wrong decisions and all, arrives at fulfillment and happiness that Jim can only try to join. The immigrants are poor and struggling, but their families and culture are richer and stronger than the American-born. My Ántonia is owned by tough, independent women: "I like to be like a man," Ántonia says, showing off muscles work-hardened by the farm. The narrator's love interest (another immigrant woman) states, "I don't want a husband ... men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers ... I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody." Although he wishes it was, the relationship between Jim, he's four years younger, and Ántonia isn't romantic. Instead there's a lifelong friendship, a deeper love. The center of the story is the hard labor of common people, the constant worry of farm work. A subject that, perhaps because it sounds deadly dull (sorry Nebraska), is all too rare in literature. Cather makes it work. The attitudes toward the immigrants are telling. They're placed in a separate train car, a character notes "you were likely to get diseases from foreigners," town boys lust after the immigrant girls but aren't allowed to date them. There are also many moments of living history, life on the plains, how things were done. Eugene O'Neill's famous actor father even comes in for a mention. My first book by Willa Cather, My Ántonia was a happy surprise, deceptively simple and powerful.  [4½★]

Fear of Dancing: The Red Moon Anthology 2013 ed. by Jim Kacian (2014)

The annual collection of the best in haiku-related writing.

Poetry Review: Fear of Dancing is the 18th edition of this annual compilation. Poets as varied as Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, Etheridge Knight, and Sonia Sanchez have written books of haiku. Poets such as Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams have written poems influenced by haiku. I try to "sell" haiku and its relatives as an adult art form (for some of us it's how we learned to count syllables in elementary school). It's a way to briefly express one's creativity, the talent required dependent more on one's powers of observation than on sitzfleisch. For those who enjoy reading or writing haiku it may increase mindfulness, awareness, and closeness to nature or the world around us. A perfect form for walkers and those who may "feel" more than philosophize. One can employ the 5/7/5 syllabic form but there's no requirement. It's a very democratic art form. I often think of how Emily Dickinson could find the universe in her minute observations. But enough of my mild evangelism. Fear of Dancing is much like the previous collections, always of high quality and excellently produced. There are 154 poems here from various publications around the world throughout the year, varied as can be. From the gently humorous title piece: "writing cursive/my unspoken fear/of dancing", to the more poignant: "but stop/the old man/never gets on". Other favorites were "unpicked apples/we promise/to keep in touch" and "thistledown scatters the visible breeze". There are also five essays that can be a bit overly serious, but also highly informative and validating (other people are thoughtful about haiku!). They cover subjects from English versus Latin roots in English-language haiku, an interview with scholar Makoto Ueda (who notes that ten million Japanese write haiku, which are published in over 800 "little magazines"), synesthesia, and modern or avant-garde forms. For anyone interested or curious about the various forms of haiku Fear of Dancing, or any of the annual editions (all are in print), is an invaluable resource and treasury.  [5★]

Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford (1960)

A memoir of growing up Mitford.

Nonfiction Review: Hons and Rebels begins as a series of reminiscences of a quirky childhood in rural England between the wars. All told with much humor as seen through the eyes of a member of an aristocratic family (her father was a baron) of six sisters and a brother, notably writer sister Nancy, a couple sisters who espoused fascism, the "little sister" who became a duchess, and poor Pamela who barely rates a mention and simply lived her own life. Fellow "pink" Nancy comes in for the sharpest digs and the brother comes off best. What is little explored is what kind of parenting created this menagerie. Or the raft of sublimated emotions, as discussing intimate family matters just wasn't done at the time. And maybe it is all in there with the blustering, somewhat racist father and the vague, somewhat hands-off mother. "This silly germ theory is something quite new," their mother asserted, "doctors don't have any idea what really causes illnesses, they're always inventing some new theory." The second half of Hons and Rebels presents Mitford absconding with her first husband as two fervent communists set on saving the world. The couple ends up in America living a kind of hand-to-mouth existence that always comes right in the end. The memoir ends as her husband volunteers to fly for Canada in the war while the author prepares to give birth. She later became involved in the U.S. civil rights movement (as did her daughter) and wrote books that mattered, most notably The American Way of Death (1963). If I'd first read Hons and Rebels in my romantic teens I might've seen it as a sort of blueprint for life (without the aristocratic trappings, of course). It presents a picture of England in a certain time and place, which to an American eye is reminiscent of the (seemingly exaggerated) British movies of the time. This was my first foray into the Mitford cult, which led me to read sister Nancy's (semi-autobiographical and similar) novel The Pursuit of Love, while the family biography, The Sisters, (2001) by Mary S. Lovell, sits on my shelf.  [3½★]

Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut (1976)

After the Green Death civilization has fallen apart, and maybe that's a good thing.

Book Review: Slapstick has a negligible plot, the structure haphazard, as a novel it seems an amateur attempt. The story-line shifts wildly, the action veers and twists, the thread becomes tangled. Everything is a frolic and a detour. But in Slapstick Vonnegut wasn't trying to write a novel. Affected by the deaths of his sister (years before) and an uncle, he was trying to engage in a (rather one-sided) conversation with the reader. He employs his own style of writing, a voice that's purely idiosyncratic, that of a cynical old man with a dark sense of humor and a need to speak more bluntly than polite society would encourage and to share his thoughts which may verge on philosophy though sometimes they just sound like advice. The minimal plot here is merely the framework which he upholsters with his ideas, feelings, and as he says "the closest I will ever come to writing an autobiography." Most notably the half-idiot monster twins Eliza and Wilbur stand in for Vonnegut and his sister. He writes: "It is about what life feels like to me." I wonder why he put in the plot at all, the miniature Chinese, the King of Michigan, the Turkey Farm. But that's what readers expect from Vonnegut, that he spin some sort of odd sci-fi imagining. Maybe he felt he couldn't sustain his meandering conversation for a whole book. Perhaps emotions are better revealed through stories than bullet points. Sometimes he needs to be absurdist. I know Slapstick isn't for everybody. Not everyone wants to listen to the crazy guy on the bus, smelling of cigarettes, whose words only half make sense. But fortunately for me, all Vonnegut's words make sense. His unique voice speaks directly to me. And what he's speaking of is humanity, that everyone be a little kinder than they need to be, that we all need some connection with others if we can only find it. He's an old cynic, but he's caring, comforting, and above all honest. He fights the horrible existential aloneness of our time (Slapstick is alternately titled "Lonesome No More!" The villain of the piece is an Ayn Rand-like expert in psychological testing who believes that in America "nobody has a right to rely on anybody else." Her rule for life is "Paddle your own canoe." Depending how you feel about that will tell you whether Vonnegut is your cup of tea. He works in some big ideas here, and I'll mention just one more. Many of us have been hurt by love at some point, and many have hurt others in the selfishness and the cruelty of love. I'm not even talking about all the murders, suicides, and other grotesque violences of people who say they love each other. Vonnegut says, "Please--a little less love, and a little more common decency." There's a certain maturity in realizing that genuine love, romantic, familial, or otherwise, requires common decency. Enough. Slapstick may not be his best, but for the right readers it's a happy conjunction of humor and humanity.  [4★]

Red Wind by Raymond Chandler (1946)

An early collection of Raymond Chandler short stories.

Mystery Review: Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories is a seemingly random selection of five of Raymond Chandler's short detective stories. None feature Philip Marlowe. The two best stories, "Goldfish" (1936) and "Red Wind" (1938), later reappeared in Trouble is My Business with their protagonists (Ted Carmady and John Dalmas, respectively) magically transformed into Philip Marlowe. They're also the only two written in the first person, as were all the Marlowe stories. Two others, "Guns at Cyrano's" (1936) and "I'll Be Waiting" (1939) were subsequently collected in The Simple Art of Murder. The fifth story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot" (1933) can be found in Collected Stories. The elegiac "I'll Be Waiting" is the only piece in Red Wind that has the feel and tone of a short story, and appropriately it was first published in the Saturday Evening Post. The other four originally appeared in Black Mask or Dime Detective and read more like short novels. The reader can easily envision Chandler adding subplots, red herrings, and encounters with colorful characters to make them full length books. "Blackmailers Don't Shoot" was Chandler's first published work, which took him six months to write. The plot is is somewhat chaotic as the author focuses on mean streets verisimilitude and creating a rounded and compelling main character. Tellingly, it features a detective named "Mallory," who is tougher than tough and oft-surrounded by bullet-riddled bodies. It also has some of the Chandler verve: after being shot Mallory's "right leg felt like the plagues of Egypt." I don't know if this collection can still be found (my copy is from 1946), but Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories contains five entertaining tales as well as a bit of history.  [4★]

Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart by Irmgard Keun (1950)

After World War II Germany adjusts to a new world order.

Book Review: Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart was the last novel published by Irmgard Keun (1905-82), but it did not capture the immediacy and moral twilight of the time as did her previous novels. Three of her four earlier novels are favorites of mine: Gigli (1931), The Artificial Silk Girl (1932), and Child of All Nations (1938), with After Midnight (1937) not far behind. All great reads well worth finding. The story amiably wanders about, with no particular arc or story line, and no particular sense of tension, conflict, or urgency. The reader's next page will be much like the previous one. While the writing is uniformly charming and witty ("He's no more clever than  a politician or a bunny rabbit"), with continual injections of sarcasm, irony, and cynicism punctuated by dark humor ("I don't see her as a loose, immoral person as a genius of forgetfulness"), it's not particularly compelling. For me that made for slow reading. There are some, but not many overt comments about the social and political situation in Germany after the war during the occupation, though in a sense the novel itself is that commentary, even if circumscribed. Keun seemed to be holding back as she didn't do in her earlier books. At one point a character states, "The books that are most in demand are the ones that people think will be improper." This isn't an improper book. There's even less comment about what happened during the war, which makes for an odd and uncomfortable silence. At least for non-German readers it doesn't much illuminate the situation. But Keun is willing to go for the absurd: "Versifying noodle-makers are avid for real estate." Our eponymous hero in Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart bumbles through the chaos of the post-war years, trying to survive, trying to help others, trying to be a good person. He meets many colorful characters trying to do the same thing. The link between Ferdinand's various encounters and events and the national situation isn't sharp or obvious. Keun isn't writing allegory. One could call it a picaresque novel if much of anything happened, and if Ferdinand weren't so generally wholesome. Although told from Ferdinand's point of view, we don't get a good grasp of his personality, as he's somewhat vague, amorphous, hard to pin down. He certainly doesn't arouse the the level of sympathy and involvement as did Keun's earlier desperate heroines. Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart is wonderfully, cleverly, and humorously written. "Why don't the occultists understand that if that's what they wanted, then spirits would come of their own accord?" Unfortunately, the lack of plot and absence of dramatic tension limited the charm of the meandering storyline for me. Readers who can thrive without plot will find much to enjoy here.  [3½★]

Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie (1985)

As it says on the tin, all twenty of the Miss Marple short stories.

Book Review: Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories cherry picks all the Miss Marple stories from four of Agatha Christie's collections. Oddly, the second Miss Marple book, The Tuesday Club Murders (1932, aka The Thirteen Problems), rather than being a novel consisted of thirteen short stories, all suited to Miss Marple's particular method of detection. She doesn't need to be right on the scene (similar to Mycroft Holmes or Nero Wolfe) and always finds some reminiscent situation ("the village parallel") to enlighten the present dilemma. "Human nature is much the same in a village as anywhere else." After that early flurry, however, Miss Marple appeared in only seven more short stories, spread over three anthologies, all of course collected here. Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories makes a convenient basket for these works, although having all the stories back-to-back reveals a bit of the formula in Christie's writing and shows how often they turn on a single (far from obvious) point. The stories are none the worse for their periodic simplicity and some could easily have been expanded into full-length novels had the author chosen to do so. The length and variety of Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories makes it an immersible and enjoyably extended experience for the reader. The perfect small gift for the Agatha Christie aficionado of your acquaintance.  [4★]