Open City – Teju Cole

An odd novel. The narrator – Julius – is a young man who wanders about New York City (and Brussels, for a short while); he records what he sees and gives his thoughts on a wide range of topics. When he converses with another person he mostly relates that person’s words (not what he says). He’s very intelligent – an intellectual knowledgeable about literature, art, music. And he’s incisively contemplative. Though the book was written in 2011 – before Trump, before Covid, before George Floyd – Julius is prescient about the present-day state of political discourse, epidemics, and racial tensions. Such a book can work only if the thoughts and observations are interesting to the point of making one think, and are presented in clear prose. Cole delivered on both counts. I’ll offer a short excerpt as an example. From his apartment window Julius watches a woman in her apartment pray (she’s in a shawl) and he thinks, “Prayer was, I had long settled in my mind, no kind of promise, no device for getting what one wanted out of life; it was the mere practice of presence, that was all, a therapy of being present, of giving a name to the heart’s desires, the fully formed ones, the as yet formless ones.” Good observation, I thought. But, though I was engaged with a mind at work, in another way, the book is lacking. Is it even a novel? Besides the absence of a plot, there’s a refusal by Cole to develop his character. We learn that Julius has recently broken up with a girlfriend and that he’s estranged from his mother, but neither subject is developed – not one bit. And near the end a woman he has known for many years accuses him of having done something in the distant past that seems totally out of character. Cole doesn’t have Julius confirm nor deny this accusation. So why introduce it if there is no reaction by the accused? This withholding bothered me a bit – but not that much, because there was so much in this book that I admired. In looking at Teju Cole’s Wikipedia entry, I see that, at age forty-six, his only other book of fiction is a novella. He’s mostly devoted his creative energies to political commentary and photography. Probably he recognizes that fiction is not his medium.

Eleven Stories – Phillip Routh

Yes, I’m reviewing my own book. Though I was (of course) familiar with the characters and plots, reading these stories was somewhat of a fresh experience, for the first one was written about forty years ago and the last about fifteen. What was new to me was the prose and how the story was developed. And not all the ones I’ve written were worth, in my eyes, inclusion. Of the “keepers,” several things made an impression on me. Eight of the eleven stories are dark, some exceedingly dark; only one story could be described as uplifting. Another aspect is the absence of any autobiographical element; I don’t write about myself, though my choice of subject matter may be revealing. Eight stories are in the first person (five males, three female), and the voices are distinctly different. As are the plots; the world of one story has nothing in common with that of any other. Many contain some form of mystery, to be disclosed at (or near) the conclusion. I don’t cheat, but I believe that the disclosing will be a surprise – a valid one – because the stories are carefully constructed. With one exception, they have a definite ending, though my intention is to always leave the reader with matters to think about. As for the prose, you won’t be impressed by any verbal virtuosity; my aim is to be concise and clear and smooth, and I consciously avoid doing anything to call attention away from my characters and their situations. Lastly, this is not really a book. The stories are at a blog I created. Visit Eleven Stories (by clicking here) and give some a try. Maybe, if you read one, you’ll move on to another. At least, that’s my hope. And, since I give my opinions of the work of other writers at this Jack London site, why not offer yours about mine?

A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian – Marina Lewycka

There was one element running through this novel that bothered me, and it pretty much negated any virtues it has. An eighty-four year old man (the father of the narrator) becomes enamored with a thirty-six year old Ukrainian with fabulous boobs. They marry, and Valentina and her teenage son move to England to join him (which was her sole objective). Once ensconced in the house she heaps abuse on her husband, mostly verbal. She wants more money than she’s getting, more luxuries, which he can’t afford. The amount and nature and persistency of the abuse is what I found objectionable. The old man is left with no dignity (and, too often, with no clothes). His impotence is made to be a joke (“flippy floppy!”). Though his daughter tries to help, in her eyes he’s a senile, deluded, doddering fool. Which he is; this is a bleak look at old age. From the blurbs, it seems that other readers found this scenario humorous. For me it was alienating. Still, the book has some good aspects. One is the view it gives of the brutal history of the Ukraine, and of the achievements of Ukrainians. Also, the immigrant experience plays a role; V, for all her crudity and avarice, is struggling to survive. The tone of the book softens a bit toward the end. The daughter has a sister, with whom she is on bad terms, and they bond over the plight of their father. This was rather nice. That said, there was a dearth of likable characters. If you’re wondering about the title and the author’s foreign name, the father is writing a history of tractors, and doing it with a competence he doesn’t otherwise show. And the author was born in 1946 in a refugee camp in the Ukraine. This, her first novel, was published when she was fifty-nine.