My Father and Myself - J. R. Ackerley
One problem with this book is that it doesn’t have a subject to focus on. Ackerley admits that he knew little about his father. They were on amiable but emotionally distant terms. What intrigues Ackerley is the possibility that his father, a world-class womanizer, was involved in homosexual relationships as a young man. This can’t be proven, so the question, though raised, is never resolved. As for the “myself” part of the book, Ackerley mostly writes about his unsatisfying homosexual life. In doing so he’s unsparing in detailing his intimate faults. Is such honesty to be lauded? I guess it is, but I wound up having no empathy or sympathy for him. I didn’t want to know about his bad breathe, impotence, etc. I found the vulgarity, presented in an elegant prose, distasteful. Ackerley worked at the BBC for many years, but we have nary a word about that job; instead he tells about cruising bars to pick up sailors. As for his family, we get researched snippets about his father, and some attention is given to his brother and mother (almost nothing about his sister). He doesn’t seem to have much feeling for any of them; his prevailing attitude is one of aversion. What emerges is an unsavory, unhappy man, and I didn’t find the time I spent with J. R. to be pleasant or profitable. Notably, his one true love is a dog.

Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
For Vonnegut an idea was as important as character or plot. This novel raises the question of whether racist views lie latent in all of us. The protagonist is a man who isn’t an anti-Semite but acts like one – and does a great job of it. During WWII, in radio broadcasts from Germany, he inspires hatred for Jews. That he’s actually an agent for the USA was, for me, a false turn in the plot; it provides a justification for Howard’s actions and thus absolves him of guilt. Beyond the thought-provoking idea (which the author backs away from), the book was okay. It weakens at the end: Resi arrives and brings out Vonnegut’s maudlin side (her suicide for love) and Howard’s angst is overdone.

The Marquis of O — - Heinrich von Kleist (German)
Kleist wrote these stories in the early 1800s, and many are set in medieval times. We get romanticism, brutality, swooning, manly tears, frothing at the mouth, fanatical religiosity, the supernatural. Despite these aspects there’s something clinical about Kleist’s writing; this acts as an antidote to the overwrought emotionality. The stories are good, but most are far too long. Length hurts the intriguing premise of “The Marquis of O — .” “Michael Kohlhaas,” in particular, would have been better if cut by a fourth – it could have been a masterpiece. It’s about a need for revenge that sweeps aside any other consideration; this need becomes madness, fueled by the exhilaration of madness.

A Modern Instance - William Dean Howells
Howells had something good going, and then he blew it. I stopped reading the last fifty pages of this four hundred page novel; I didn’t care about the characters anymore. And I had cared a lot about Bartley and Marcia. Though mismatched, they had a symbiotic relationship, and love was one of the elements binding them together. I wanted to know where their differences and dependencies would take them. But Howells introduces problems that cause them to separate; he gives center stage to two prigs who moralize about Right and Wrong (and find Bartley to be a despicable cad). If Howells wanted me to respect these noble pontificators, he failed; I sided with Bartley. He was no more than a flawed human being like you and me and Marcia. Without the anchor of Bartley and Marcia’s relationship, the novel lost its vitality and purpose. Questions arise: Howells had done an excellent job of depicting the bond between these two people, so why did he let it dissolve so easily? And why did he turn the once-handsome Bartley into someone grotesquely fat? He seemed to hate the man.

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

A book that seems to be held together by a network of electrical wires. In a sense this is fitting, for the event Vonnegut was writing about was an inhuman one. The bombing of Dresden is presented in an apocalyptic light; the aftereffects flicker erratically on one of the survivors, Billy Pilgrim. The time travel and alien abduction he undergoes are possibly products of his imagination – his escape from reality. The book’s sci-fi aspect, the humor, the repetitions, the short sections that make up the text, the skipping around in time – all keep the reader from feeling grounded. Maybe the only way Vonnegut could approach his a subject was by using evasion and distancing. Though he produced a unique and effective work, one I respect, these very aspects were a barrier to intimacy.

The Dwarf - Par Lagerkvist (Swedish)

The Nobel Prize winning author impressed me initially; I thought this was an interesting philosophical novel, using a most unusual perspective. By the end I thought it was a foolish novel. The malevolence and destructiveness of the dwarf were overdone and became tiresome. Events – such as the poisoning at the feast – were unrealistic. The prose often took on a shrill tone. And it was all so damn dark that it became oppressive. There was not one character to relate to or care about. Pessimism can be bracing, but this was the kind that’s depressing – not a glimmer of humor or freshness or exhilaration. Total negativity cannot be absorbed for long in a relationship, nor in a novel.

The Middleman and Other Stories - Bharati Mukherjee

The author takes on a variety of personas – housewife, Vietnam vet/psycho, immigrant. She isn’t ladylike, which one expects of a female Indian writer; she’s mod, tough and sometimes sets out to shock the genteel reader. But her stories – or the five I read – could not, consistently, pass the “So What?” test. There’s a pulpy garishness to her subject matter and approach; the events depicted in “The Middleman” belong in a comic book. Other stories, as if to display her versatility, are sensitive, more sedately written, but they too were marred by superficiality.

Stepping Westward - Malcolm Bradbury

Initially this book was like comfort food – the characters and situations were satisfying in a mildly pleasant way. But “mildly” is the crucial word; even the humor wasn’t funny enough. I could have read on, but the factor that tilted the scales was when Bradbury stepped westward. He’s very good with the Brits but has a tin ear for how Americans speak and doesn’t seem to understand how we act. I wanted to tell him, Sorry, old chap, we just aren’t like that.

Portrait of a Marriage - Nigel Nicolson
I suspect a whitewash job. Vita and Harold are not the wonderful couple the son would have us believe they are (read between the lines). The book is well-written but repetitive. I see the makings of a good novel about the rotten rich.

Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin
Powerful, impassioned, intense. Perhaps too intense. The unrelenting darkness of these people’s lives started to weigh heavily on me. Religion is pervasive for them, but it’s a religion born of desperation and desolation; it too is dark. Baldwin creates four vibrant characters. Interestingly, the one who is most fully-developed – and the most sympathetic – is the hated father. This is an autobiographical novel by a young man; Baldwin may not have had the detachment or perspective necessary to resolve complex emotions. This sense of irresolution is present in the ending, when John goes into a religious trance. I was baffled as to what this scene said about the boy and the direction his life would take.

Black Spring - Henry Miller
These are sketches, odds and ends. But, then, doesn’t Miller do whatever he wants to do? Genius gives him that right. Miller was a supreme egotist; all his writing is about himself. I’ll grant him a degree of genius, but it’s not the kind that’s compatible with my tastes. Too self-indulgent. The words cascade impressively, but I was often not sure of what the point of it all was. I like structure and discipline; Miller hated structure and discipline. He succeeded in pulling me into his world in Tropic of Cancer, but not in anything else I’ve read by him.

Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut
Lightweight stories. Entertaining, often inventive – but reading them is like eating buttered popcorn. Vonnegut is in favor of love, sex, peace, etc. This, as the “message” of too many stories, gets to be predictable and trite. A few stories rose to the level of good, but most were juvenile and, like popcorn, lacking in nourishment. I only read half.