3 of John Steinbeck's Best

The Red Pony Review

There is one obvious question that may need clarification before I begin. Why The Red Pony? And it is a valid question. Would it have made more sense to review The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden or Of Mice and Men? Sure. However, I feel this blog has developed a noticeable trend; long, laudatory pieces providing unabashed praise for the more salient works of important novelists.

I was told that The Red Pony isn’t a great book; I read a review that ratified this perspective and having finished the book, I can wholeheartedly agree. The Red Pony isn’t a bad novel, it’s mediocre. Yet with the aforementioned novels under Steinbeck’s enormous, powerful belt, it seems this mediocrity transforms into disappointment.

The problem with the novel is that it is quite simply bland. It is split into short stories, beginning with protagonist Jody receiving the titular 'red' pony. Jody loves the pony but is forced to grow up when tragedy occurs. The rest of the book seems to simply continue along these dull and faded lines.

I would recommend this book only to those who adore Steinbeck, as it presents his idiosyncratic prose which he is famed for. Yet, if, like me, you enjoy Steinbeck, but don't adorn him, you may find this book slightly bland and  insipid. It may be wise to refer to Steinbeck's aforementioned salient classics that guarantee a great read.

Ernest Hemingway

To end what has somewhat accidentally become Ernest Hemingway week, I thought it was fitting to add this photo. I have shown photo's of two of his other hedonistic desires, guns and alcohol, in previous posts, but it is important to end the week showing what he does best, writing.

This photograph is statuesque and in my opinion shows the power and presence the man ostensibly possessed.







'Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another' -
Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)

American Writers Do Love Their Guns..

1. Ernest Hemingway teaching his son how to shoot.

2. William Burroughs, another firearms fanatic, posing mysteriously with his handgun. This is a man who accidentally murdered his wife in an intoxicated and playful game of 'William tell'.

3. Hunter S. Thompson, probably the most salient firearm-bearing writer, aiming his gun into the abyss.

Here's a relevant post: Hunter S. Thompson's obituary, of sorts, for William Burroughs. Where he glorifies and accredits Burroughs weaponry skills:

http://hstbooks.org/2008/08/19/william-s-burroughs-obituary-by-hunter-s-thompson/

Here is a truly remarkable video of William Burroughs, clearly deteriorated and incapacitated by old age, shooting William Shakespeare:

Ernest Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls

'Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.'

John Donne

Ernest Hemingway’s brevity has never been imitated or matched. His prose is fast, laconic, at times brutal and often breathtaking. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954, shortly after his celebrated novella, The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway was awarded the prize ‘for his mastery in the art of narrative’ and modestly claimed the award was undeserving, due to the aptitude of his competition, but stated that the prize money was still welcome.

Hemingway lived a tumultuous life, riddled with violence, depression and war. A life filled with wonderful romances and woeful separations. He frequently claimed to be lonely and desolate and believed this was the perfect psychological state for all good writers. He said in his Nobel acceptance speech that ‘writing, at its best, is a lonely life’.

All these troubles, his failed romances, his experience of war and his sustained injuries arguably culminated in his suicide in 1961. However, it was later found that he had a rare genetic disease; hemochromatosis, which was passed down from his father, who tragically reached his own suicidal demise. The disease doesn’t allow the body to properly metabolize iron, which can result in mental and physical deterioration.

One can hardly speculate as to whether he was depressed because of the horrors he had witnessed in war-torn Europe, or whether his 4 failed marriages were to be held somewhat culpable, or whether his depression was solely attributed to this rare disease; one thing we do know is the hardships, the atrocities and those painful, woeful moments are immortalized in his terse, yet wonderfully explicit, semi-autobiographical prose throughout every page his wonderful oeuvre.

Hemingway writes with astonishing verisimilitude, and while his life was noticeably painful, he never neglects moments of spontaneity and always presents his audience with extraordinary romances and friendships. His novels are inextricably fluctuating, expounding the extremes of all emotions in his most idiosyncratic and distinctive prose.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is no different. In fact, it is probably the best example of this erratic prose. The story follows protagonist, Robert Jordan, empathetically know as ‘English’, through the violence and terrors of the Spanish Civil War. He is sent to a camp of republican guerrillas, who are fighting against Franco’s Fascists, in a conflict that tore Spain apart and eventually saw Franco in power. Jordan, a dynamiter, is sent there to blow up a bridge in order to aid the republicans.

As the narrative progresses, the protagonist is seen falling in love with a young girl living at the camp named Maria. Maria is a victim of the Fascists, who executed her parents and proceeded to sexually abuse and rape her. Jordan and Maria's attraction is instant, and provides gentler tones to a book that is quite sanguineous and horrific by its very nature.

Throughout the novel, Jordan argues with the old camp leader Pablo, a drunk, who was once a brave and ruthless soldier, over his conspicuous ineffectuality and his perpetual inebriation. Other than this, Jordan for the most part becomes friends with those in the camp and listens to their copious stories, anecdotes and tales of war, none more frightful than those from when Pablo was in charge.

One sequence in particular sticks with the reader, a sequence as merciless as any to be found in modern literature. Pillar, Pablo’s wife and current leader of the camp, tells Jordan of Pablo’s cold-hearted brutality in the days when he drank less and fought more. This particular story is somehow picturesque despite its palpably vicious inclinations. It displays how Pablo led men of a cliff after threatening their lives. How a group of guerrillas lined up and killed Fascists, one by one, in regimented yet horrific fashion.

If you have, or even hope to read For Whom the Bell Tolls, you will know of this scene. It is quite brilliant. The way Hemingway describes, in his distinctive brevity, the action of each man who is led to their deaths, down the tunnel of guerrillas towards the cliff. The ones who try to escape, who are then beaten continuously until they either die from such beatings or try their luck of the cliff. The ones who accept their fate, who walk proudly off the cliff as if straight into heaven. The ones, who scream for forgiveness, ask for exoneration and beg for mercy.

In these frightful scenes, Hemingway describes how Pablo is cold and fearless, which lends the reader a degree of admiration for the drunk who has fallen from glory, who once fought valiantly and boldly against a Fascist regime. And at the same time you sympathize with the devil, these Fascists, some hard-line, some nascent non-believers, all seemingly on a journey through perdition.

Much like Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, Hemingway volunteered for the Spanish Civil war, lending the novel its inevitable biographical content and its veiled realism. The book can be exceptionally cold and at times perhaps a little too masochistic, but for me, it remains permanently entertaining.

The book is neither for the fainthearted, nor for those who enjoy drawn out, leisurely, Proustian prose. This novel is almost 500 pages of pure, unadulterated emotion, always extreme and always enjoyable. It has action, love, friendship and brutality almost in repetition, all embroidered and implemented with Hemmingway’s incomparable brevity and distinguished style.

Hemingway is often praised, and rightly so, for the Old Man and the Sea and A Farewell to Arms, but it is here where his disparate style, his laconic prose and his truly desolate literature is best displayed. Out of all of Hemmingway’s work, this is the book that encapsulates Hemingway, this is the book that shows how truly astonishing a writer he really is.

University Rankings for 2013

For all you undergraduates in the Uk:

The Guardian Rankings for 2013:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2012/may/21/university-league-table-2013

And for the rest of you:

The Times: top 400 Universities in the world:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/top-400.html

Good Luck

A New Paradigm

Saw this on another blog. Quite interesting

All about changing education paradigms. Seeing as this is a literary blog, this seems pertinent.

Interestingly, what this man says about coming out of university with a degree no longer guarantees a job, is something I fervently believe. I feel that I was lied to about the symptomatic effects of gaining a degree. It isn't a bridge to more money and guaranteed employment, that was a fallacy...

Nikolai Gogol - The Nose

For a few weeks I read solely short stories, this concluded with what I now consider to be one of my favourite books, Nikolai Gogol's The Nose 

It wasn’t until I read David Foster Wallace’s collection Oblivion that I realized how wonderful short stories can be. His most celebrated, and best, The Depressed Person, showed that shorter stories can be as enjoyable as many longer novels. Upon finishing this I read Lorrie Moore and Miranda July’s attempts, and while they didn’t quite match Foster Wallace’s effort, they were still fascinating.

I would advise reading Miranda July above Moore, if only because I was attracted to the use of experimental perversities that seems to play such a large role in her work. After reading these I came to the realization that I hadn’t read any classic short stories, of which many authors are famous for.

So I read Dubliners, and was instantaneously in awe with James Joyce’s seemingly abundant talents. Honestly, James Joyce might just be literatures monotheistic saviour. I went on to read a collection of Hemingway’s short stories, which included, The Old Man and the Sea, which is arguably a novella rather than a short story, either way it was magnificent.

Then there’s other novella’s that fall under this distorted category (that I would personally term short stories). Some notable examples are Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and John Steinbeck’s The Pearl.

After Reading these brilliant works, I came across a collection of Nikolai Gogol’s short stories, entitled Diary of a Madman, the Government Inspector, & Selected Stories (Left). Amidst a somewhat disappointing start (I thought that Diary of a Madman, the esteemed titular short story, wasn’t very good) I stumbled across a story called The Nose.

The Nose is brilliant, it is as surreal as it is funny, really mindboggling stuff. It follows a respectable man who wakes up one morning and in horror is missing his nose. The man is understandably bemused and apoplectic, and wonders how to escape his predicament. Amidst his wonderings, he sees his nose, in the street, fully formed and of human size. The story follows this man, his thoughts and feelings while he tries to restore his face to its previous nasal normality.

It is a wonderful journey and unexpectedly humorous. Gogol, who was Dostoyevsky’s foremost influence, is an exceptional writer. Dead Souls, his magnum opus, is brilliantly written, however the overwhelmingly sombre undertones does mean, that while it is certainly a magnificent novel, it is quite difficult. The Nose is Dead Soul’s polar opposite, absolutely hysterical and whimsical yet retaining that brilliant Gogolian dialect that makes all his works so fascinating.

It seems that I have been primarily reviewing well know books that I have enjoyed, often without criticising them. And while I would love to break that trend, by being critical, it is perhaps not the time. The Nose is beyond criticism; it is so enjoyable and memorable that it would be a sin against literature not to advise it. It really is superb. 

Top 100 Books

With the craze that surrounded Harry Potter and all things magical, the BBC decided to publish a 'Top 100' list as part of their 'Big Read'. The book was supposed to indicate books that everyone should read, however I found the list quite erroneous (how can all 7 Harry Potter books make the fold). Judge for yourself:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml

Anyway, I found this list on the Guardian and deem it far more comprehensive and, in my personal taste, correct:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/may/08/books.booksnews

Here's a few notes, please disagree:

Firstly, the list is less suffocating as it hasn't numbered the entries, this allows the reader slightly more freedom in discerning for themselves where each entry should lie.

It dates well, whereas the BBC version was slightly compact and overly modern, the Guardian is far more ubiquitous and rounded.

A problem with the Guardians version, is that it has 'complete works', which feels obvious and contrived. After all, Kafka's best book is not his 'complete works'. Quite stupid really.

That's about all, as a side-note, Crime and Punishment shouldn't be in either. It's overrated. (Sorry)

5 of Don DeLillo's Best:

After the previous post glorified Don DeLillo's Falling Man, I felt obliged to share my personal favourites. Here are 5 of DeLillo's novels in no particular order:Sidenote: The three titles in the middle are published by Picador, if you are interested in this minimalistic design.

If I have one criticism of his oeuvre it would manifest itself amongst the pages of The Body Artist. Avoid this novel if possible. Other than that, enjoy DeLillo....

Post 9/11 US Fiction: Don DeLillo and Jonathan Safran Foer

Theodor Adorno once claimed that to write poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric. He later rescinded this ideal, claiming that ‘perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream’.  Adorno was concerned that attempts to artistically interpret or even condemn Auschwitz would be callous, and at the same time, success at such an attempt would be futile.

The same has inexorably been said about art (especially fiction) after 9/11. I have recently read two books that deal with 9/11 in very contrasting ways. The first was Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and the second was Don DeLillo’s Falling Man. Foer’s attempt is different as it seemingly adopts 9/11 as a principal theme, and is excessively referential to the event. The plot is strange and simple, a boy named Oscar, who loses his father in the terrorist attacks on September 11^th 2001, finds a key left by his father and searches New York for whatever it may open, meeting a variety of people who have also suffered and thereby forming relationships built on their mutual anguish.

Oscar is overwhelmingly precocious and is increasingly unlikeable. Foer seems to ask the reader to forgive Oscar’s apparent arrogance and obnoxiousness due to his ever-present melancholy. However, I couldn’t look past how unlikeable he was; page by page I grew increasingly irritated by this 9 year old child. I think what I disliked most was how the author was perpetually referring all of Oskar’s exploits back to the horror of his father’s death, and unfortunately, this didn’t allow the story to expand, or Oskar to become more agreeable.

I think the main problem with Foer’s attempt was that it dealt with 9/11 head on; it appeared too romantic due to the sweet young boy who prevailed through his torment and overcame his fears and trepidations despite the horror of the event. It almost played on 9/11 as a certain way to capture it’s readers, and although this was seemingly a smart move (it sold many copies and was made into a truly awful feature film); in literary terms, the book is over romantic, glorified and ultimately dull.

DeLillo’s attempt is a far more accessible and likeable piece of literature. DeLillo is a more experienced writer and the theme of terrorism has appeared in his works before, especially Players and Mao II (Both excellent books). He has even been called prophetic as he eerily wrote in Players that ‘to Pammy the towers didn’t seem permanent’.

Falling Man begins in the towers, where he claims one can hear the ‘buckling rumble of the fall, this is the world now’. It follows the aftermath of the event, through the lives of a New York couple (Keith and Lianne) who rekindle a past romance. It looks at how their lives have been effected without the over romantic aspects that Foer uses, rather it is quite laconic and only deals with 9/11 intermittently, usually in the characters psychology or through the emotions inspired by a performance artist who hangs from buildings, representing the titular photograph that was famous after the attacks, the Falling Man. (Interestingly, this picture (above, left) also plays a rather significant part in Foer's novel)

By avoiding perpetual reference to 9/11, DeLillo is able to form a far stronger plot and develop more likeable characters that you are genuinely sympathetic towards. This is not to say I had no sympathy for Oskar, but rather he was far more enigmatic and therefore tougher to engage with, and was ultimately, and bear in mind these are fictional stories, tiresome.

I think perhaps what I took from reading these two books, was that in order to engage in such tragic events, the author must attempt to avoid permanent reference to the event, and while it can form the core of the story (in fact if this is part of the plot that would be almost inextricable), playing on the collective emotions that derive from such a horrific event can lead to a novel that is vapid, over-romantic and cheap.

DeLillo gets the balance just right, he deals with the event but also develops a story outside of it, a story in which the event is in the background, permanently installed in the mindset of his characters but not unavoidably driven by it. I would recommend Falling Man and most of DeLillo’s other works, he is an extremely talented contemporary writer, and one of the few that I would entrust to attempt the ostensibly insurmountable task of literature after September 11^th.

Literature Adaptations

Hollywood producers are increasingly adapting works of literature. Producing films from literature can be a way of bringing some of the best stories ever told into the visual world, and while they can be riveting upon fruition, I think there are some book adaptations that ratify the wide-spread contention that some books are quite simply unadaptable.

For example, two books that I quite adore, Kerouac's On the Road and Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis, premiered at Cannes film festival over the last week on the big screen. Both these films were done by rather artistic, creative and esteemed directors, giving them every chance of success. However, these are books that I would deem unadaptable, and are certainly not meant for an adaptation that veers towards entertaining the inevitable demographics which, unfortunately, they will ultimately seek.

Both films have a twilight star in main roles, and both have been, according to early reviews, and their trailers, diluted to suit a wide reaching audience. If both films are not successful, as early reviews also indicate, I believe it is not because of shortcomings in their scripts or failure from the reputable directors and writers who took part in these projects, but rather due to the fact that certain books are simply not meant for the big screen. They can't be diluted or glamorized because this in itself defeats their point.

When I heard these two books were becoming films I was slightly bemused, I am not against the idea of adapting classic or contemporary works of literature, my problem is that certain novels shouldn't be adapted (including the aforementioned two), and it seems these films may very well amplify my contention. 

5 Iconic Book Covers

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is renowned for being a book that combines philosophy and literature, and one that is supposed to create an exciting read whilst  enlightening it’s audience. The problem is that the abovementioned elements of this notoriously well-received and somehow 'best-selling' novel do not succeed.

The philosophical aspects of the novel are elementary, and while it borrows from some well known philosophers, such as Kant and Hume, it’s overall ‘thesis’ is underwhelming and falls short. The notion of a classic vs romantic view of the world, and the negation of technology, seems to differ only slightly from other philosophical theories while attempting to stand on its own. It fails to be either revelatory or substantial. Consequently, Robert Pirsig isn't, nor ever will be, considered a philosopher in the same class as some of those mentioned in this book.

In terms of its literary achievement, it lacks the quality to captivate its audience, it is a slow and lacklustre read, and it seems conflicted in what it is trying to accomplish. The best parts of the book are about his relationship with his son, and these are too infrequent and when they do arrive Pirsig, once again, veers off into the world of philosophy and creates a story that is difficult to follow.

Furthermore, the book is noticeably narcissistic and seems like an attempt to celebrate the authors own intellectual superiority. This makes the novel tedious at times, and a reader may well be inclined to raise his eyebrows above the page at the self-indulgent biographical narrator who seems stubborn and ultimately bland.

I wouldn’t advise this book to anyone. especially anyone who either loves literature or has a penchant for philosophy. In trying to combine the two he fails at both respectively. All this could be forgiven if the book was entertaining, but it is a difficult, slow and evidently monotonous read that fails to encapsulate, enlighten or even slightly engross its readers.

A Tim Burton Poem:

I recently read some of Tim Burton's poetry. And while I am usually belligerent towards anyone who feels they can use their fame, or notoriety, to attempt to succeed in another field, I actually quite enjoyed this little book of ornate poetry.

Here's a little sample:

The collection of poems is called The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy, and although it's not Yeates, Keats or Wordsworth, it is certainly entertaining and isn't the worst way to spend your day.