Americana – Don Delillo
This was Delillo’s debut novel, and his prose crackles with intelligence and originality. Dave, the first person narrator, is a young executive at a television network. In a manic chapter (the Friday review meeting) he observes people like Weede Denney and Reeves Chubb engage in an absurdist charade of mendaciousness and ineptitude and toadying. When he’s not killing time in his office Dave navigates through New York as if he owned it – he seems to know everyone and has beautiful women at his beck and call. Yet he feels a profound desolation and solitude. And there’s the killer. This might have worked as a satire of corporate life, for it’s funny in parts and has a fast-moving surface sheen good for skating on. But with a protagonist suffering from angst that potential melted away. Especially when the angst comes across as a contrivance. In Part Two we take an excursion into Dave’s youth, but he’s no different from the adult version: one cool customer with hidden depths. After leaving a party rife with inanity (Dave gets off some of his trademark quips) he stands outside in the dark and quiet and thinks, “It was a Sunday night in early September, and my body beat with sorrow at the beauty and mockery of all bodies.” Shortly thereafter, as Dave was shagging fly balls at a deserted ballpark, I decided to part company with him. So I missed his cross-country trip, in which, according to the back cover, he makes a “mad and moving attempt to capture a sense of his own and his country’s past, present and future.”

The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
The first person narrator in Morrison’s debut novel is ten-year-old Claudia; the book seems to be about her and her sister. Pecola appears as a secondary character, a poor soul who has everything going against her. But Pecola’s story begins to take up more space; we even get the life histories of her parents. At the close of the chapter devoted to her father he rapes Pecola. What follows next is a chapter featuring Soaphead Church, who has a thriving business as a Spiritualist and Psychic Reader. Pecola comes to him, asking for blue eyes (so that she can be beautiful, like white people). Soaphead rents an apartment from a lady whose mangy old dog revolts him; he gives Pecola some poisoned meat and tells her to feed it to the dog, and “if the animal behaves strangely, your wish will be granted on the day following this one.” The dog dies horribly and Soaphead goes to his desk and writes a long, instructive letter to God, much of it justifying his sexual desire for little girls. Pecola gets her wish; we learn this in a chapter in which she’s talking obsessively about her blue eyes to an imaginary friend; she’s gone over the edge. In an Afterword Morrison expands on the genesis of the novel and its broader theme (racial self-loathing). Though she wanted readers to interrogate themselves for the smashing of Pecola, many “remain touched but not moved.” Beyond my “poor soul” reaction, I was both unmoved and untouched. The fault lies primarily in the way Pecola is presented. She mostly appears in disconnected segments in which she’s observed by others; this placing her on the sidelines amounts to an avoidance of her. Other elements detracted from believability, foremost of which was the over-the-top garishness (the Soaphead chapter is an example). And the degree of ugliness was alienating. Some people get more than their rightful share of it, but to express it so graphically made me feel as if it were being shoved in my face (here’s the Truth, like it or not). Lastly, Morrison’s attempt to impose newness through typography stuck me as gimmicky. We get chapters in which the margins aren’t justified; we get sections in italics; chapters begin with excerpts from a white child’s reader: HEREISTHEFAMILYMOTHERFATHERDICKANDJANE . . . Morrison ends her Afterword by writing that “the initial publication of The Bluest Eye was like Pecola’s life: dismissed, trivialized, misread. And it has taken twenty-five years to gain for her the respectful publication this edition is.” Morrison’s Nobel Prize was surely the deciding factor in the republication. As for the belated respect, Morrison deserves credit for her intentions.

Seven Poor Men of Sydney – Christina Stead
In Stead’s debut novel (I’ve been using those last two words a lot lately) she lets her prodigious talent run unchecked. Her characters are speaking machines, going on and on in a manner so rarefied, so hyper-intelligent that it was difficult to follow. No discernible plot emerged – just a lot of socialism and unhappiness – and the emotions were pitched way too high. Finally, two thirds of the way through, the tidal wave of words began washing over me, and I quit reading. There were stretches in Poor Men when the weight of words and ideas was lifted, when people interacted, and these interludes were wonderful; they’re better than what most authors are capable of. Though Stead would always remain an undisciplined writer, she would learn some things about her craft. In The Man Who Loved Children we get an entire novel that is wonderful.

A Dark Night’s Passing - Naoya Shiga (Japanese)

This is a novel in which depression plays a major role. We follow Kensaku as he searches for a way of life that will free him from episodes of emotional, physical and spiritual suffering. At the halfway point he marries; this seems to offer the prospect of contentment, but it turns out not to be as simple a solution as he had wished. One of the book’s virtues is its restrained portrayal of the “dark night” of the soul; another is its depiction of pre-war Japanese culture. Kensaku’s marriage to Naoko – both their courtship and their relationship as husband and wife – is especially interesting. For over four hundred pages I was involved in someone’s life, which is a significant achievement. Yet Shiga goes astray in the last section. The first half of this autobiographical work came out in 1921, followed in the next two years by a substantial part of the second half. In the concluding chapters, which weren’t published until 1937, the fifty-four-year-old author has Kensaku go to a temple in the mountains; we last see him in a tranquil state of near-death. Shiga had spent too much time in the actual for this nebulous attempt at closure to be convincing.

Ocean of Story - Christina Stead

Few writers are more oceanic than Christina Stead, though with her you don’t sink to the murky depths; instead you get a tumultuous ride on white-capped crests. That said, this volume of her “uncollected stories” is a mistake because it’s primarily made up of sketches, fragments and toss-offs. Stead closes one “story” with “(And so on. Don’t know.).” In his Afterword the editor traces which of her novels these pieces are connected to (“ ‘The Woman in the Bed’ is a rewriting of those parts of The Little Hotel . . .”). But I suggest that you read The Little Hotel. And why bother with an “obvious spin-off” from The Man Who Loved Children? The editor concludes his inventory with the following statement: “The writings in this volume vary in quality. This is no matter for surprise, since a little fewer than half of them (some obviously lacking the final polish) were found among her papers after her death. It seemed to me worthwhile putting them together.” I disagree. They may be of some value for Stead scholars, but for those not acquainted with her work this collection does her a disservice.

Seize the Day - Saul Bellow

What a wordsmith Bellow was! His writing is both smooth and sumptuous, grounded and imaginative. But a novel succeeds or fails on character and plot. In the course of one day (a day fraught with crises) Tommy Wilhelm’s guts are spread out before us. Perhaps this serving of Wilhelm is too rich – he’s like a dish fancied up with so many sauces that the palate becomes confused. As Tommy floundered about in a cascade of emotions I became increasingly detached. In a three character book, the father was the only person I could relate to; at least I could draw a bead on who and what he was. Tamkin, on the other hand, was way too slippery a concoction. For a long stretch in the middle of the book – seventeen pages – he holds forth on matters like the “real soul” and the “pretender soul.” When Tamkin gives Tommy a poem he wrote about Mechanism vs Functionalism, Tommy says to himself, “What kind of mishmash, claptrap is this? . . . What does he give me this for? What’s the purpose? Is it a deliberate test? Does he want to mix me up? He’s already got me mixed up completely.” Tommy could be complaining about Saul Bellow. It cannot be wisdom that Tamkin is spouting (most likely he’s a con man); why, then, did Bellow dedicate a good chunk of this 115 page novel to “claptrap”? Things end in a torrent of tears from Tommy: “. . . they were pouring out and convulsed his body, bowing his shoulders, twisting his face, crippling the very hands with which he held the handkerchief.” This spectacle of grief failed to move me; like his hardhearted father, I had my fill of Tommy and his problems.

Cotters’ England - Christina Stead

I’m using the book’s original title, when it was first published in England (it appeared in the United States as Dark Places of the Heart, which is too conventional for such an eccentric work). Stead was a writer of extravagant dimensions who let her passion and intuition have free rein; she didn’t abide by rules or limits. Her strength is her weakness; she has so much energy that she can tire the reader out. As her characters talk – and do they talk! – it’s as if floodgates have been opened. The voices of Nellie and Tom, a brother and sister, are the most insistent. But what lies behind their words? We get insight into the tangled alleyways of Nellie’s mind, but Tom is nebulous; I don’t think Stead dug her claws into him to the degree that she did with his sister. The England of the Cotter family is a dumping ground, sordid both physically and morally. Despite this setting, the book has indefatigable verve and spirit; it soars in a crazy, crazed way. And behind Stead’s seemingly haphazard approach is a sense of unity. Though she veers off in a unexpected new direction in the last paragraph, I was left feeling that a circle had been closed. A fitting way to end this review is to give you a taste of the voice of Nellie, as she talks to Tom: “Ah, ye devil! Come, chick, let’s have your news, don’t tease! Tell it in your own deprecating style, at the rate of one hint a half-hour, to be tiresome. Come, what did you do last night, chick?”

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner - Alan Sillitoe

The long-distance title story (over fifty pages) is good, but its potential is meaty enough to be better than good, so in a sense it falls short. Early on we know too much. The boy’s intention to lose the race (which is stated on page six and never wavers) is part of his overall attitude toward life – he’s far beyond any hope for rehabilitation. Sillitoe arms his protagonist with a thoroughly worked-out defiance toward society (“. . . by Christ, I’d rather be like I am – always on the run and breaking into shops for a packet of fags and a jar of jam – than have the whip-hand over somebody else and be dead from the toe nails up”). The boy’s voice is good, but that one note – defiance – is sounded too often. As for the next two pieces – “Uncle Ernest” and “Mr. Raynor the School-Teacher” – the first was weak, the other inconsequential. “The Fishing-Boat Picture” (about a failed marriage) was initially interesting, but it needed an emotional kick at the end. To achieve this the reader must be made to feel emotions, and this won’t happen if they’re directly stated – which is what Sillitoe winds up doing.

These Thousand Hills - A. B. Guthrie, Jr.

When I was in my teens Guthrie’s The Big Sky and The Way West played an important role in furthering my love of books, so reading These Thousand Hills was disheartening. It follows fifteen years in the life of Lat Evans as he moves up in the world of the Montana Territory in the late1800s. I became increasingly uninvolved with this taciturn, stoical, colorless character. I also felt no empathy for him; Guthrie doesn’t develop a basis for some judgmental decisions Lat makes, so he seems heartless. The ending is a melodramatic grab bag (including a gratuitous murder mystery). Lat owns up to his shortcomings, but the impact is diminished because it has no repercussions; on the last page his wife lyrically forgives all. As for that wife, and the prostitute with a heart of gold who precedes her, they’re merely role players. There’s a mechanical, paint-by-numbers feel to this book. The prose is inventive, but in a diligent way, and the re-creation of the past has the type of authenticity that seems researched. Maybe a determination to finish his “Big Sky” series was spurring Guthrie on. Missing is the inspiration that marked those two earlier novels of my boyhood. Or, at least, that’s what I want to believe.

The Puzzleheaded Girl: Four Novellas - Christina Stead
Honor is certainly puzzling. Her odd nature and actions (such as appearing at the doors of people she barely knows, asking for money or a place to stay for the night) engenders both a mystery (what makes her tick?) and sympathy for someone seemingly proud and self-sufficient yet obviously in dire need. However, in order to generate pathos Stead needed to provide insight into her character’s mind, but Honor remains inexplicable; her story covers many years and eventually she becomes a sort of jack-in-the-box, popping up in an increasingly disheveled state. Lydia, of The Dianas, is another oddball – hyper, bordering on the frantic; she hurtles from one man to another at a headlong pace. Inklings of what lies behind her behavior seem to emerge near the end (something intriguingly dark), but Stead veers away from the darkness and wraps things up with an improbable happy ending. The Righthanded Creek (“A sort of ghost story”) is a mishmash of heavy atmospherics. Stead abandons one family living in a haunted cottage (in the middle of a crisis) and introduces a new one (no explanation for the switch offered). In Girl from the Beach George (another frantic character) tries ineffectually to deal with problems involving women and money. It’s a romp through the chaos of a man’s life (I hope Stead knew that she was writing a comedy). None of these novellas can stand as a finished work. They have the feel of castoffs, ideas pursued but dropped. Still, I found each one entertaining. Stead’s idiosyncratic prose is engaging, and some scenes show her prodigious gifts. Creek contains a chilling monologue in which a man describes his addiction to alcohol; in his words I felt the real ghost in the tale emerge, the one that devours and destroys from within.

Salem Possessed - Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum
The authors don’t describe in detail what went on in Salem during the witchcraft craze. Instead they explore the underlying factors – moral, economic, psychological – that gave rise to the events. They support their conclusions with extensive research. A shift from traditional Puritan values to capitalistic entrepreneurship was occurring, and this change created turmoil and conflict. In Salem the clash resulted in tragedy. I found the authors’ analysis not only valid, but relevant to the pressures at work in our present-day society. We have much in common with Salem.

A Middle Class Education - Wilfrid Sheed
This is a long, substantial, complex novel. On a superficial level it’s about young men at Oxford’s Sturdley College. John Chote is the central character; when the novel opens he’s just received a scholarship to study in the United States. John is no model student; he and his friends spend their days and nights drinking, gambling, playing pranks and womanizing (or claiming to womanize). They value humor above sincerity; to them everything is fodder for a sarcastic remark. But this book is far from a campus frolic. As Sheed digs deeper into the inner workings of his evasive character (especially when John is marooned in America) I felt what was hidden behind his facade of jokes: a stultifying depression. Sheed refuses to end the book with any sort of resolution. After his college years are over John faces a world which offers him no hope for happiness. It’s not the world’s fault; John is his worst enemy. I think Sheed knew his character too well to provide easy answers.

The Admiral and the Nuns - Frank Tuohy.
I admire Tuohy’s writing style but not his sensibilities. Most stories in this collection were murky and oppressive and had no discernible point to make (except, possibly, that life is a grubby affair). Too many characters were either emotionless or borderline hysterics; I couldn’t understand or care about them. The joyless sex that the morally-challenged males have with prostitutes got tiresome. After reading a few short pieces that were nothing more than filler, I called it quits. Only one story was fully successful. The match being arranged in “The Matchmakers” is between cocker spaniels; a man and woman become acquainted for the purpose of mating their dogs. Tuohy handles this premise cleverly, and there’s a gentleness to the story that wasn’t evident anywhere else. Also, both characters were likable.

The Little Hotel - Christina Stead
Though little, the novel has messiness and density. Novellas are usually sparse, concise, concentrated, but Stead was a very undisciplined writer; she was not one to be contained within boundaries or abide by rules. Some examples: she has a character occupy a large part of the first half of the book, then she abruptly drops him; she concentrates on issues in an obsessively insistent way. These things work because Stead writes with such a strong inner conviction that the reader is persuaded to accept her terms. At any rate, the hotel is there, and a very sad group of people occupy it. *

Martin Bauman - David Leavitt
I borrowed this from the library because it was about a writer, written by an insider, so I thought I’d find out what the literary life is like. What I discovered is that you don’t have to be a good writer to get a book published; I made it halfway through this undistinguished effort. The prose was wordy and pedantic, foolishly elaborate, and Leavitt constantly repeated himself, sometimes the same thought on the same page. Weak character development, lame plot. A book filled with vacuous gossip.

All We Know of Love - Katie Schneider
This is a first novel, and in the beginning I was impressed by how polished a piece of work it was. However, there were problems, subtle ones that began to nag, to slow down my reading til I stopped two thirds of the way through. The self-centeredness of the main character (who’s obviously the author’s alter ego) is the root weakness. One result of that self-centeredness is that all other characters, not being of much importance, have a one-dimensional sameness. The writing is pretentious; at the end of most sections is a line – quiet, understated – that’s pregnant with significance. Why? Because this author takes herself and her Art and her thoughts and experiences so seriously. Seriousness, self-centeredness – not faults until they leech the liveliness out of matters, turn all into a stagnant grayness. Gray, in this case, because the author’s character is lamenting her sad state throughout – without good reason. The girl is blessed again and again! For example, she goes alone to Venice and falls in with people who love and take care of her. This book is shallow, and that’s its worst failing, for Schneider believed she was plumbing great depths (as is evident in her title).

In the Dutch Mountains - Cees Nooteboom (Dutch)
In the beginning this had a fable-like simplicity – which was good. But then the story began to be told in an elaborate and pedantic way. I don’t know what the author was trying for, but it didn’t work for me.

Persuasion - Jane Austen
I never finished it; the interest wasn’t there. The main character, Ann, was too Miss Perfect. Maybe Austen identified with her and thus kept piling up the excellencies of character. Also, the prose is difficult in that you can lose your line of thought in its prolonged intricacies. The author has a good touch with humor, and she can satirize people’s foibles nicely, but there wasn’t enough of that and too much of the cloying Ann.

Let It Come Down - Paul Bowles
I had quite enough of Bowles when I finished this novel. He can do so many things well – create interesting characters, scenes, dialogue, mood. The exotic setting (Morocco) was especially good. Yet he can’t make sense of it all. He stays, at length, in his main character’s thoughts, but that mind is muddled from hashish. Bowles moves the plot along in fits and starts; he has people act in unlikely ways, abandons characters and lines of action which he’s spent much time developing. Bowles may be lazy or hashish-addled himself; at any rate, he seems incapable of sustaining logic. What he can do – and does often (I’ve read three of his novels and some stories) – is come up with some really repugnant cruelty at the end.

The Sixth Day - Primo Levi (Italian)
Levi is a chemist, and in this book he takes intriguing scientific ideas and develops them, making a quick, solid point and stopping. Almost all these pieces succeed in what they set out to do: they make one see the world in a fresh light. It’s not Levi’s aim to develop characters or plot, so the main lack of this book – for a reader like me – is its absence of people involved in situations I could relate to. Levi was not a novelist; the closest he came to writing one was The Monkey’s Wrench – and that’s wonderful.

The Sins of the Fathers - Lawrence Block
A private eye novel of the dark, brooding variety, about sordid matters. The writing is pared down, efficiently simple, but the first person voice is too unemotional. It comes across as artificial: the world-weary PI. Not that this book isn’t well done – it all works, even the revelation at the end is plausible – but I read reluctantly, not really enjoying it, not caught up in the events, and wondering if a guilty pleasure should be more pleasurable.

The Man Who Loved Children - Christina Stead
This unique novel sets its own standards and is driven by a passion that sweeps aside all reservations; I accepted its extremeness, its histrionic edge. The prose is initially difficult, but its intricate rhythms are accessible. In Stead’s portrayal of a weirdly dysfunctional family no one is wholly attractive, no one can be labeled as a villain; everyone is too complex to classify or dismiss. This novel sprang unbridled from the best place – somewhere deep inside the author. It’s a great achievement. *