Re-reads

Burmese Days – George Orwell

A book written in anger can be exhilarating, which is the case here. Orwell spent five years as a member of the Imperial Police Force in Burma, so his anger is based on personal experience. Mostly he’s angry at the mentality of the British administrators who are in charge of exploiting the considerable wealth of Burma. Most of them are contemptuous toward the native Burmese (the word “nigger” appears with monotonous regularity in their conversation). Yet they are not above using the women for sexual purposes. They’re an unhappy, dissatisfied, lonely group of men, who drink to excess (in some cases to unconsciousness). Flory is the main character, and it’s obvious that he is Orwell. But Orwell is in an attack mode, and Flory is not spared; at the end he is destroyed – violently. Which, I believe, is a misstep. One aspect of the discontent among the British is that most are without wives. When a young British woman arrives Flory falls in love with her. A love without a valid basis, for she is the polar opposite of all he believes in. Yet he convinces himself that she can share his innermost feelings, that they can be soul mates. The proper ending, in my estimation, would be for the two to marry. Flory would soon enough find out what a disastrous mistake he has made. But that may be a track Orwell wasn’t willing to pursue; the plot is already quite complex, teeming with characters and situations, and I think he wanted to cut things short. The prose is utilitarian, but the novel has a potent velocity. If Orwell cared enough to write something, it has value. 4

The Night Visitor – B. Traven

In 2009 I reviewed this collection, and deemed the stories to be “good (or pretty good; none are very good).” The reason I’m reviewing it again is that previously I didn’t reread the long title story. I wrote in the review that I would “let that chilling nightmare remain intact in my memory.” And I cite it as the sole reason why the book is worthy of being on my MMB list. Well, this time around I did reread “The Night Visitor,” and it left me cold. No chills, no nightmarish feelings were evoked. I found the premise to be unconvincing, and the Indian from the past who emerges at night seemed no more than a contrivance. My ho-hum reaction brings up the whole problem in these rereads. At some unknown age I was obviously moved by the story. Why? What changes occurred in me? – for the story has not changed. Which evaluation is valid? I’m not sure. Still, since many rereads do hold up, I have to delete this one.

The Collector – John Fowles

This novel disturbed me as very few do. The first section is told from Frederick Clegg’s POV, in his voice. We see his logic, his justifications, and we also see what he doesn’t: the horror of his actions. This is a warped man, and to be in his mind is chilling. Miranda, the person he “collects” (as he does butterflies) and holds prisoner also emerges. Not through any understanding on Clegg’s part (he can’t even understand himself), but through her responses and actions that he duly records. She wants desperately to live, and fights for her freedom in any way she can devise. That makes up the first section of this 300 page book. The next section is told from Miranda’s POV, through her writing in a sort of diary. This section, for me, was a big drop-off. Actually, we already knew all we needed to know about Miranda. Her thoughts are just not that interesting. A lot of pontificating about what is valuable in life, about art, about an older guy she’s infatuated with (to me he came across as a prig). Truth to tell, I found myself dragging through this section. I can understand Fowles’ dilemma. To have a novel, and not a novella, he had to take the path he took. He just wasn’t able to pull it off. Yet I need to be more charitable to the Miranda who is writing in her diary: she’s young, her ideas are important to her, she tries to keep them alive in captivity. After her death we return to Clegg’s POV. Always justifying. Though he’s a prisoner, in his own distorted mind, he victimizes others. What “grade” do you give a novel in which the first half is a tour de force and the second half mediocre? The strengths are so compelling that they win over the day. I can only deduct one point from a five. 4

Animal Farm – George Orwell

Orwell originally subtitled this novella “A Fairy Story.” I’m glad that was dropped, but I see a parallel between Farm and the work of the Grimm brothers. Their tales were indeed grim, full of cruelty and horrific events – and so is Farm. In this reading I had a gut reaction: I truly detested Napoleon and his toadies and I was appalled by the methodical subjugation of the animals. This reaction on my part was, I believe, Orwell’s intent. By framing his story in an almost childlike way he was able to convey what he couldn’t accomplish in a political essay: his hatred of the Communist regime. What he did in Farm was deceptively simple; he wrote that it was “the only one of my books that I really sweated over.” He had trouble finding a publisher; at the time (1945) England and the USSR were allies against Hitler. But Orwell saw clearly what was going on under Stalin’s iron fist. That was his gift: to see clearly and to find a way to express his feelings. In this instance, the way he chose was perfect. 5

A Life in Letters - George Orwell
In his carefully composed letters Orwell comes across as a man who was sane and sensible and reserved. When he does express his state of mind – or the state of his health – it’s presented in a reasonable way. No outbursts – except exasperation regarding some political subject. Politics was Orwell’s first passion (and definitely not mine, so much of his correspondence was of no interest to me; I did a lot of skimming). Orwell lived in near-poverty for most of his adult life; his income came mainly from doing reviews. He finally began to make money with the publication of Animal Farm in 1945 – five years before his death. He wrote four novels before AF, and none of them sold well. He avidly disliked two of those early works (A Clergyman’s Daughter and Keep the Aspidistra Flying) and wanted them suppressed. He stated in one letter that he wasn’t really a novelist. He felt that his talents were more fitted for nonfiction, such as The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia, which are politically oriented (as are his fable, AF, and 1984). Writing came hard for him, but he was a diligent worker. For much of his life he was a sick man (tuberculosis), and he faced his illness with stoicism. In his last letters he expresses a wish for five more years; he felt he had something to say, and the world was finally listening. He was married twice. I was grateful that Peter Davison, an Orwell scholar who put together this compilation, included the letters his first wife, Eileen, wrote; they’re entertaining, lively, funny, and have a spontaneity that Orwell’s lack. She emerges as a flesh and blood personality, and I felt emotionally drawn to her. She too had serous health problems; her last, upbeat letter to Orwell was written as she was about to go into the operating room for removal of an ovarian cyst; she died under the anaesthetic. I don’t believe their marriage was a bed of roses; I also felt (perhaps unfairly) that Orwell was a neglectful husband, too involved with his writing and political activities. They adopted an infant son, Richard, and Orwell had deep concern for the boy’s welfare. In his last, mostly bedridden years he proposed marriage to several women. It was a practical proposition, as befits this practical man (he noted that, as widows, they would receive royalties). But he also wrote one of the women that he needed “someone to be fond of me.” This plea, coming from a man like Orwell, is touching. He married Sonia Brownell – the ceremony took place in his hospital room; a few months later he would die in that same room. His headstone has the words “Here Lies Eric Arthur Blair” and gives the dates that span the forty-seven years he lived and wrote.

The Journals of John Cheever
The nearly 400 dense pages that make up this book represent only one twentieth of the words Cheever wrote in the journals he kept for over forty years. To publish all the three to four million words wouldn’t be feasible, and the decision as to what to include was made by Cheever’s longtime editor, Robert Gottlieb. He has omitted the journals from the forties, which, he writes, “. . . seemed considerably less consistent in their intensity and quality than what was to follow . . .” Indeed, quality was of concern to Cheever. These pages contain carefully crafted prose. Even the last entry, written three days before his death, is a lovely piece of writing. He admits to the “narcissism” (that’s the word he uses) of his journal-keeping: “At the back of my mind there is the possibility of someone’s reading them in my absence and after my death, and exclaiming over my honesty, my purity, my valor, etc. What a good man he is!” This is a self-conscious undertaking, meant to impress. His perceptiveness and powers of observation are often on display. He also includes lengthy descriptions of nature and of people he happens to observe; there are scenes that could come off the pages of a novel or short story. For me this amounted to extraneous clutter, and I found myself skimming. What I wanted were his thoughts and feelings, and there is much of that. He could be unsparing of himself and others (foremost his wife). We learn of his miserable marriage (one which he describes as “obscene and grotesque” but which lasted for over forty years); his alcoholism (which he overcame late in life); his depression; his rampant bisexuality. He had a complex and contradictory nature which he struggled with. Considering that struggle, I should have developed more sympathy for him than I did. Often I didn’t like the man. As for those above mentioned virtues he wanted to inspire in the reader, I thought he often didn’t face the truth. Such as why his wife came to loath him; reading between the lines, I could see how she would get to that point. As for purity, he could be lyrical about love and sex, but he could also be extremely gross. Valor and goodness are things he aspired to, at least in words; his wife and children would be the ones who could say whether he achieved those virtues. At times I wondered why his family allowed the journals to be published (maybe money played a role). He kept them for his eyes only until three years before his death, when he floated the idea of their publication to his son. When they did come out (first as excepts published in The New Yorker) he had been dead for years, but his family members had to live with words that must have been extremely painful. I wonder if he was aware of that. Or if he just didn’t care.

Dr. Wortle’s School – Anthony Trollope
In this late (and short) novel by Trollope only the title character has depth and dimensions. The plot revolves around the predicament of Mr. and Mrs. Peacocke, but he’s a dry stick – a gentleman who always does the upright thing – and his wife is so vapid that she’s no more than a twig. When it’s found that they’re unmarried, they face the condemnation of Society. The issue at stake has to do with morality; because Dr. Wortle believes the Peacockes to be innocent of any sin, he’s determined to stand by them to the end, even if it means the collapse of his beloved school. In doing so he reveals strengths and weaknesses; it’s his weaknesses that make him interesting. His injured pride provokes him to enter into reckless battle, yet he can often see that he’s acting in a foolhardy way. We follow his struggle not only with public opinion but with his own self. This is a novel filled with religiosity – Wortle is a Reverend – but he sees so-called religious people acting without compassion, and at one point he thinks “It is often a question to me whether the religion of the world is not more odious than its want of religion.” Also, it’s suggested that part of Wortle’s spirited defense of the beleaguered couple is motivated by Mrs. Peacocke’s beauty. Without the bull in the china shop, this would be no more than an insipid Victorian novel. The tacked-on romance involving Wortle’s daughter and Lord Carstairs has only one notable aspect: it shows the obsequious attitude people have toward status and wealth; Mrs. Wortle thinks with ecstasy of “the diamonds her daughter would certainly be called upon to wear before the Queen.”

A Clergyman’s Daughter – George Orwell
Orwell’s intent in this novel was to bring up social and religious issues, and he crudely manipulated events to achieve that goal. Most striking was his having Dorothy lose her memory. In chapter one she’s living in Suffolk with her father, resolutely doing good deeds that go unappreciated; in chapter two she’s on a London street, wearing strange clothes and not knowing her name. She joins a ragtag group and winds up in the fields picking hops. I almost quit reading when this switch occurred. What kept me going was that I got involved with the more muted Dorothy and her new life. Then, abruptly, we’re with Dorothy and a weird assortment of the homeless spending the night in Trafalgar Square; she’s penniless and freezing (this hallucinatory section is constructed like a play of voices). In the next sequence she gets a job as a teacher in a girls’ day school where minds are stunted rather than developed. In the final chapter Dorothy is restored to her life as a clergyman’s daughter; here Orwell introduces his last issue: she’s lost her faith. The question for her is how to go on, because, as she sees it, without faith life is “meaningless, dark and dreadful.” Orwell’s ability to create vivid characters makes the issues he introduces engaging. Mrs. Creevy, the principal of Ringwood Academy, ranks high in fiction’s assemblage of petty monsters. Dorothy’s father, the Rector, is constricted by a selfishness so stifling that he’s unable to love anyone, including his daughter. But Orwell must have loved his creation, because he made me care for Dorothy. She goes through an enormous journey and ends up with nothing; even the possible consolation of marital love is denied her, for at no point does she have the least interest in sex. In the closing scene she’s making costumes for a church play by gluing together sheets of brown paper; she gets caught up in this mindless task and “The problem of faith and no faith had vanished utterly from her mind.” A bleak ending to a bleak but honestly felt book.

The Autobiography of My Mother – Jamaica Kincaid
The novel begins: “My mother died at the moment I was born, and so for my whole life there was nothing standing between myself and eternity; at my back was always a bleak, black wind.” Later in that opening paragraph she refers to the “black room of the world.” Xuela grows up without love; when that word appears it’s always in the negative sense (in reference to her father, “He could not love me”). She becomes stoically defiant: “Until I was four I did not speak. This did not cause anyone to lose a minute of happiness; there was no one who would have worried about it in any case.” The word “happiness” seems out of place because nobody in this novel is capable of that emotion. When Xuela strikes up a short-lived friendship, she describes it as “something I did not experience with anyone ever again in my life.” So something positive appears in a negative light (and with a warning that things are not going to get better). Xuela’s first sexual encounter is with a man (or, rather, an automaton) who shows her not one grain of affection. She becomes pregnant and has an abortion; she suffers extreme and prolonged pain. Afterwards she becomes hardened to the point of being inhuman: “I would bear children, they would hang from me like fruit from a vine, but I would destroy them with the carelessness of a god . . . I would cover their bodies with diseases, embellish skins with thinly crusted sores, the sores sometimes oozing a thick pus for which they would thirst, a thirst that could never be quenched.” This litany of motherhood goes on, but I could not go on. Kincaid’s world is airless and without light. She indulges in and expands the unhealthy aspects of her psyche. I know anger, hatred, cruelty exist, but it’s the indulgence and the expansion that renders it unreal. Kincaid makes no concession to the reader: we will be immersed in her negative emotions. But the reader also has the choice not to remain in her “black room.”

The Road to Wigan Pier – George Orwell
In the late 1930s Orwell was sent by a socialistic book club to investigate conditions in a coal mining district of England. Being Orwell, he didn’t just observe from the sidelines, he tried to immerse himself in the lives of the people he was writing about. Though no personality (except his own) emerges, Orwell’s rigorous intelligence is (as always) refreshing, and he had the ability to express what he thinks simply but forcefully. He includes some autobiographical material; it seems that the critical event in his life was his five year stint with the Imperial Police in Burma. Being a part of an oppressive system left him with a bad conscience; he did things that went against his nature, and as a result he sided with the oppressed and became opposed to “every form of man’s dominion over man.” With Wigan Pier I have now read every book Orwell wrote. Since I respect him so much, I have always found it distressing when he shows prejudice toward Jews. In A Clergyman’s Daughter Dorothy is treated callously when she moves to London, but it is “The Jew on the corner, the owner of Knockout Trousers Ltd., who was the worst.” Too often, with Orwell, it is the Jew on the corner who is the worst. But I did some research and found that later in life he acknowledged his anti-Semitism and renounced it. Actually, I expected no less of the man.

Glory - Vladimir Nabokov (Russian)
Nabokov wrote Forwards to the English translations of his Russian novels, and for Glory he expresses a special affection. He admires his prose, and rightly so. His use of description is not just beautiful and inventive, but it’s tied to the main character’s emotions. When Martin spots Sonia sneaking out of the house (to go dancing with a rival), he enters her room, where “there remained a cloudlet of powder, like the smoke following a shot; a stocking, killed outright, lay under a chair; and the motley innards of the wardrobe had been spilled onto the carpet.” Nabokov bestows on Martin – who he proclaims to be “the kindest, uprightest, and most touching of my young men” – a finely-tuned and expansive imagination; for him a boyhood train ride is a feast of sensations. Nabokov calls it a “wand stroke” not to make someone with such keen sensitivity an artist. “How cruel,” he writes, “to prevent him from finding in art – not an ‘escape’ (which is only a cleaner cell on a quieter floor), but relief from the itch of being!” Indeed, how cruel this denial is, because all Nabokov leaves Martin with is a fascination for Sonia. Nabokov calls her “a moody and ruthless flirt,” but I’d go much further; she’s another wand stroke of cruelty. Her sarcastic, derisive rebukes cut; she seems compelled to bat Martin’s feelings about like a cat with a crippled bird. Not having the refuge of art and being left only with Sonia, Martin is an isolated man; his existence is purposeless, and by his mid-twenties he seems depleted. Still, his capacity to find something thrilling in ordinary pleasures is never entirely snuffed out, and the book ends with him embarking on an exploit into an imaginary world of adventure. We never know the outcome of his dangerous crossing of the border into Russia. In an abrupt and seamless transition we switch to the mind of a friend who has no idea what becomes of Martin. This switch, though done with remarkable skill, points to a major flaw: for half the novel Nabokov was stuck without a storyline. Though he filled the void with the distractions of wonderful incidentals, the ending presented an insurmountable obstacle. It’s significant that in his Forward Nabokov describes a chess problem he once composed, one that was “diabolically difficult to construct.” In Glory he resorts to legerdemain to solve his novelistic problem. He has Martin disappear like a canary on the arm of a magician. With a flourish of a scarlet scarf – poof! – he’s gone. And Sonia, finally, weeps.

Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell
This was Orwell’s first book, and the edition I have categorizes it as a novel. Actually, it’s three parts reportage, one part fiction. In Paris the unnamed narrator works as a plonguer (a dishwasher with a variety of other tasks) in a large hotel and later in a Russian restaurant. The kitchens in both places are filthy and vermin-infested. His experiences “destroyed one of my illusions, namely, the idea that Frenchmen know good food when they see it.” The work is physically punishing and often frenetic; verbal abuse is so commonplace that “imbecile” is a mild form of address. The pay for sixteen hour days (with only Sundays off) is barely enough to cover the cost of a tiny room in a hotel (also filthy and vermin-infested). For Orwell the City of Lights shrank to his workplace, the Metro, a bistro (to get drunk in on Saturday nights) and his bed. The Paris section teems with colorful characters carrying on in a state of high drama. When Orwell moves to England things slow to a more sedate pace. But in London he never finds work – he’s a tramp, sleeping in “spikes.” These government-sponsored boarding houses limit an individual to one night’s stay, a rule which causes the poor to constantly be on the move (thus comes the word “tramp”). Meals at the spikes consist of tea and two slices of bread with margarine; men sleep (or try to) crammed into filthy dormitories; the “beds” are often the floor. Though Orwell doesn’t in any way ennoble the down-and-out, he believes that most of the men he encounters could be worthwhile citizens. They would prefer to work, but the inability to keep themselves clean, or to have decent clothes, limits their options. And as they idly wander, their hopes are extinguished and their bodies deteriorate. They’re even denied the comforts of sex; no woman would have anything to do with them, and they don’t have money for the cheapest prostitute. The book is grimy and vulgar, as befits its subject (the Paris section reminded me of the atmosphere of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer). Orwell is successful in relating conditions, but he understands that his insight is limited because he’s not stuck in that life. He closes by writing, “I should like to know what really goes on in the minds of plonguers and tramps and Embankment sleepers. At present I do not feel that I have seen but the fringe of poverty.” An issue that cannot be avoided in reviewing this book is the anti-Semitism that runs through it. Is Orwell merely relating the attitude of his friend Boris when the man goes into a long diatribe expressing his virulent hatred for Jews? Why, whenever a Jew appears (and Orwell can spot them), are they depicted in a very negative light? For a man whose compassion and intelligence I respected, I found this to be disturbing. And disappointing.

Invitation to a Beheading - Vladimir Nabokov (Russian)
I believe this novel – a masterpiece that ranks up there with Lolita – is about Life, and it presents a disturbing picture. Cincinnatus is in a cell, awaiting execution for an undisclosed crime (that of being alive). He wants to know, in the beginning, the date of his execution; the answers he receives confuse or mislead him. Later a definite date is set (“You have inoperable cancer, Mr. Jones.”). If we think of the scenario Nabokov presents us with in these stark terms (mostly we avoid thinking of it) Cincinnatus is man stripped of all but the essentials of existence. In this state he yearns for three things: compassion, love and understanding. The last is the most important. For how can another person be compassionate toward you, how can they love you, if they don’t understand who and what you are? The terrible (and terribly grotesque) cruelty of the book (Cincinnatus is not harmed physically at any point) is the utter lack of understanding everyone exhibits toward him; instead he’s treated with a callousness that can take the form of ridicule or indifference. He tries to express his true self in writing, but that’s futile. No one will read his words; besides, he can’t put into words what he wants to say. So he’s emotionally alone (and is that not the human condition?). The surreal ending is intelligible if we consider that the world exists for each of us through our senses; the world ceases when we do. When Cincinnatus’s head is severed a vestige of his consciousness continues on for a moment as everything around him crumbles to nothingness. *

The Stepdaughter - Caroline Blackwood
A psychological study that’s pared down to the bare bones. A woman (identified only as J) is writing letters to “Nobody”; in them she describes her situation and her emotional state. She’s very depressed and angry; the person consuming her thoughts is her ugly stepdaughter, a girl that J loathes. I found all this interesting, in a warped way, but fault lines began to form in a structure that was already flimsy. When the stepdaughter mysteriously disappears J becomes deeply concerned about her fate. Why this sudden switch in attitude? Also, J has a daughter of her own living in the apartment, but she’s given only one scene, on one page; her absence as a functioning character is inexplicable. As for the whereabouts of the missing stepdaughter – that’s never disclosed. Even when writing an off-kilter novel the author has to connect the dots.

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich - Danilo Kis (Yugoslavian)
An original work, but, for me, impenetrable and boring. I was so lost that I thought I was reading separate stories before I realized that they were chapters in a novel. Nothing held my attention – no character is developed in depth, there’s no coherent and consistent narrative. There’s a lot of Slavic history (with names that meant nothing to me), a lot of political goings-on (which confused me), a lot of brutality, a lot of diversions. The book has a dark, oppressive atmosphere, which I suppose accurately reflects the world that Kis was writing about. But it’s a world I know nothing about, and the author never enlightened me.

Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell
I don’t read much non-fiction. I prefer to inhabit somebody’s imaginative world. But Orwell is Orwell; his personality infuses this book, and communion with that person was what I was seeking. In the introduction Lionel Trilling makes two statements that I agree with: Orwell was a virtuous man, and he told the truth. This book doesn’t untangle the labyrinth intricacies of the Spanish Civil War; Orwell limits himself to what he observed, and even that can be confusing (at one point he warns the reader that a chapter will be rough sledding, and it was). The most interesting aspects are the human ones. Orwell tells of the boredom of war, of the rats, the excrement, the lice. He tells of the comradery that builds up between men. He sees a cause worth fighting for and exposes the ways in which that cause was violated. At the end he returns to find England in a deep, deep sleep, and he fears that it will be jerked awake only by the roar of bombs. As is usually the case with Orwell, he was prophetic.

Dirty Snow - Georges Simenon (French)

The French title translates to The Stain on the Snow, which is better. But this novel is so bad that the word “better” shouldn’t be used when reviewing it. In an interview Simenon stated that he didn’t plot his books – he just let things happen – and he wrote them in one sitting and didn’t revise. In this novel the central character, Frank, does things that he doesn’t understand, and neither did I. To the virgin Sissy he has an irresistible appeal (I have no idea why). I had enough when I got to the scene where he rigs it so that another man can have sex with her (the room will be dark so she’ll think it’s Frank). Stupid, huh? The people in the story are mechanical windup toys. William T. Vollman wrote the Afterword; to him Frank is an enigma, and he finds great significance in this. What balderdash!

Portuguese Irregular Verbs - Alexander McCall Smith

Diverting and mildly funny. Recommended for a quick, light read.

Coming Up for Air - George Orwell

Orwell had no sense of compromise. He depicted the world and its people as he saw them, and what he saw was not pleasant. In this book we’re in the mind of George Bowling, a fat, forty-five-year-old married man with two children and a mortgage. He has false teeth (the book begins, “The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.”). He’s a salesman, barely getting by financially. He doesn’t much like his wife, nor his children, nor his job, nor his life. He doesn’t believe in anything spiritual, thinks that things in the present are much worse than they were in his boyhood, and he foresees the future (Orwell wrote this on the verge of WWII) as even more bleak. He goes back in memory to his early years. Though life for young George was often ugly and emotionally arid, this segment is a beautifully-wrought evocation of the past. Being inside George’s mind does get hard to take – where are his higher feelings? Love, charity, kindness? They only appear in flashes. But – here’s the tough part – it dawned on me that George is the common man; instead of being fed platitudes about human nature, in George we get the unvarnished truth. At the book’s end he visits his boyhood town, and if the reader expects any pretty codas – a reunion with the love of his young manhood, his catching that big carp in the deep, hidden spring – we must remember who we’re dealing with: Mr. No Compromise. The sweetheart is a hag, the deep spring has been drained and is now being used as a dump. Even the simple values people lived by have been undermined by the forces of progress. He returns home; he had lied to his wife to make the trip, and she’s onto the lie; on the last page he’s enduring a tirade of accusations (mainly of unfaithfulness, which is not true); he knows this badgering will go on for months. And that’s it. Orwell leaves us with nothing. Nothing but an unlikely hero of fiction, walking through his life. *

The Devil Tree - Jerzy Kosinski
What does Kosinski do that makes him so readable? First, his books are thin and therefore not imposing. Then he divides his work into short sections (usually less than a page long) with big spaces between them, so that it’s kind of like eating potato chips for the reader – one section, then another, then . . . He concerns himself with subjects that fascinate people; in this book it’s fabulous wealth and the power it bestows. He puts in a lot of sex (the novel is almost pornographic) and cruelty (less present here than in his other work). He also jumps around to different voices, locales and does so without boring filler. His prose is simple, smooth – easy to read. We have to slow down at the speed bumps of understated meaning (existential void and all that), but, hey, with the lurid stuff waiting ahead, we can put up with that; in fact, it may help us (and the author) feel justified in reading (and writing) this stuff. But there’s much to be learned from Kosinski about engaging a reader; he’s a master of manipulation.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell
This novel has a poet railing against money (or his lack of it). Written in the thirties, it has relevancy today. The subject matter interested me, and, as usual, Orwell is very readable. After a while, though, Gordon became tiresome on the subject of his finances. He also treated his girlfriend poorly, which was alienating (I liked her). But then he receives fifty dollars for a poem and proceeds to go on a colossal drunk. He behaves abominably. It’s the type of behavior, in front of Rosemary and his best friend, after which he can’t continue his life as before. The book needed this jolt – the reader suddenly realizes the depth of Gordon’s unhappiness. The deus ex machina is Rosemary’s pregnancy. Gordon decides to marry her, get a job, and live a life like other men. And his poetry? – it gets dumped in the trash. *

Why Did I Ever - Mary Robison
Why did I ever read this book? What a dysfunctional, angry person the main character is! Yet there’s something smug (and phony) about her, as if she’s secretly pleased with her angst, her aimless driving about through the night, etc. She’s good with deadpan quips (in the face of despair), but it’s just part of Robison’s wounded bird act, and I wasn’t buying into it; instead my thoughts turned to her messed up children and how they got that way. Incidentally, she loves her cat. Who dies.