**spoiler alert** I stress that this review is being written within hours of my finishing the book. It will not be comprehensive, and I will focus mai**spoiler alert** I stress that this review is being written within hours of my finishing the book. It will not be comprehensive, and I will focus mainly on my impressions. I urge students of literature to read a professional critic for a concrete assessment of this book. I will say I will do more than address whether or not I liked this book, but if you’re seeking to learn about THE NOVEL OF FERRARA before reading THE NOVEL OF FERRARA, read Goodreads’ thumbnail review. I am not here to teach you. [Indentation. Some comments on my Goodreads reviews point out my lack of paragraphs makes my reviews confusing. I write these reviews on whatever device is handy. Once I post, I often discover my indentations vanish. For clarity, then, I will put the word “Indentation” in brackets at the start of each paragraph.] The edition I read was an English translation by Jamie McKendrick. It was published in the United States in 2018, the publisher being W. W. Norton & Company. Jamie McKendrick wrote the introduction and provided footnotes. André Aciman, author of CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, which is rather in the manner of Bassani himself, wrote the forward. Indentation.] THE NOVEL OF FERRARA, while a collection of Bassani’s novels and stories, was considerably revised by its author in 1980, six years after its first publication. Essentially, then, this is the ultimate form he chose for the presentation of his fiction. Most of the novels and stories within THE NOVEL OF FERRARA appeared in the quarter-century following World War Two. All of it deals with life in Mussolini’s Italy and the decade or so just after Mussolini was hanged. Italy was Germany’s ally during World War Two, and the backdrop to the novels and stories in this book is Fascist Italy’s participation in the Holocaust. Many of the characters are Jewish and even when THE NOVEL OF FERRARA reads like a coming-of-age story, there are sudden reminders throughout that many of the characters will be sent to concentration camps. They will die there. [Indentation.] One reason I read this book is that I wanted to see how Italy’s descent into Fascism matched up to what I perceive is happening in the United States right now. Circumstances dictate how far we go, of course. But the rhetoric of today’s far right sounds very much like the rhetoric used by the Fascist characters in THE NOVEL OF FERRARA. Giorgio Bassani lived through it. He remembered it. [Indentation.] This book is highly visual. The town of Ferrara is colorful. Heavy things occur in gorgeous surroundings. This adds to the irony of this deeply sad saga. [Indentation.] The novels and stories in this book are rich in observation of everyday life. I think it would be possible for a reader to read this and not notice the implications of certain events. Bassani is extremely subtle. But for all the dinners, study sessions, bicycle rides and daily routines described, at the center of it is the complacency of friends and neighbors as people they’ve known all their lives are disenfranchised by Italy’s Racial Laws. (The Racial Laws were instituted in 1938, almost twenty years into Mussolini’s rule. The slow build-up to this horror should give 21st-century readers cause to reflect.) [Indentation.] I think Bassani writes a lot like Thomas Mann. He is excellent at showing the inner lives of young scholars. He never underscores his points, but he shows what isolation is like. A novel-length excursion into the mind of a broken man of forty or so, THE HERON, is something of a departure here; it is not focused on an over-achiever. But as with Thomas Mann, Bassani shows what it is to be lonely....more
THE NEW YORK TRILOGY contains three short works by Paul Auster: "City Of Glass" (written from 1981 to 1982), "Ghosts" (written in 1983), and "The LockTHE NEW YORK TRILOGY contains three short works by Paul Auster: "City Of Glass" (written from 1981 to 1982), "Ghosts" (written in 1983), and "The Locked Room" (written in 1984.) "City Of Glass" was published as a standalone book in 1985, and "Ghosts" and "The Locked Room" were published, each by itself, in 1986. Then Penguin started publishing them in 1987. They were finally published in one volume in 1990. The edition I have, with an introduction by Luc Sante, came out in 2006. I don't know when Penguin put Art Spiegelman's wonderful cover art on it, but the flap - Yes! This paperback has flaps! - mentions Paul Auster's novel 4321, which came out in 2017, so it's obvious the TRILOGY has had at least two covers. This book was given to me by friends a month ago. I have always been meaning to read something by Paul Auster. This edition of this book is the best place to start. I did cheat: I went to my library and borrowed a memoir by Paul Auster called THE RED NOTEBOOK. It gave me a good notion of the history of THE NEW YORK TRILOGY's publication. Auster had to shop "City Of Glass" around for some time. Note the three-year lapse between the completion of the book and the publication date. Then note the steamroller effect. His independent publisher, Sun & Moon, published all three books by 1986. Penguin, as major as a publisher gets, puts all three out between 1987 and 1988 and then puts them in one volume in 1990. The copyright page of my copy says it has been reprinted thirty times. (To be specific, it has a line which reads "27 29 30 28." If I've interpreted those numbers wrong, I will still say that Paul Auster is a writer as such. I've known what he looks like since the eighties. I've read articles he's written. I've seen him on PBS; heard him on NPR and have generally sensed he is a highly respected author.) But not until now, at the age of sixty-one, have I ever read a single book of his. Strictly in terms of tone, THE NEW YORK TRILOGY is sturdy. Auster's cadence is more mid-century than present day. Even for someone writing in the early to mid-eighties, he has an unusually direct way with a sentence. If I'd had to guess, I'd have said this book was put together no later than 1958. I think the events in it go no later than 1977 or so, but I don't think it even mentions world events. There is nothing in here, except the mention of what year it is, every now and then, to indicate a world where Vietnam, Woodstock or Watergate have occurred. It seems mid-century because its surface resemblance is to Noir stories, which were so popular before 1960 and which rarely made reference to world events. The writers THE NEW YORK TRILOGY specifically refers to tend to be the major American writers of the nineteenth century, with Mark Twain left out. Hemingway once said American literature begins with Mark Twain. Auster refers to Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville and Emerson, all dead a good sixty years before Auster's stylistic models wrote. He writes like Nathanael West, Camus and Dashiell Hammett. The question running through my mind as I read was whether or not the various doppelgängers haunting each other reflected a pattern. The answer, I think, is "No." Although there is at least one stunt (involving street directions which spell a phrase) and a few literary references which reward those in the know (one example being the moment a character says to another character, "Call me Redburn") the plot never requires the reader to notice these things. The fact that the walk one character takes actually spells a word is not underscored by Auster. I suspected a word or shape was being indicated by turns the character made, but I never felt Auster demanded I puzzle it out. I only learned it was, indeed, a spelling, when I read a review which gave away what was spelled.) I got the reference when a character said "Call me Redburn" because I've read all of Herman Melville. Melville wrote a book called REDBURN and the first line of his epic novel MOBY-DICK is "Call me Ishmael." Just before the character says "Call me Redburn" there is a passage about a sailor walking along a deck in a snowstorm. The passage itself reminded me of a passage in one of Melville's novels. THEN, Auster's character says "Call me Redburn." There is no plot point dependent on this. A reader who knows nothing of Melville can read this part and simply think it's part of the story. The reader may wonder who Redburn is, but, since people in this book take up pseudonyms, the larger point, that the world is made of people hiding behind various identities, is made. Auster's specific references are not meant as obstacles to the telling of these three loosely connected stories. The larger theme is one of people deliberately isolating themselves and being perceived by others who, themselves, would rather not be seen. The three stories have some interconnected characters, but Auster is not testing the reader. He himself crops up here and there, but he doesn't break the fourth wall. The fact that one character from one story turns up in the other does not mean that we're supposed to solve something. I ventire to say that these books were not intended to form a trilogy. It happened that Paul Auster put a few characters from each book into the other books, but only toward the end of the third book does the narrator hint that there is a commonality between the books. Kurt Vonnegut used to put characters from his novels into his other novels, but he usually did it with satirical fanfare. While there is a larger reason for Auster to cause a character from one book to appear in another, they appear offstage. It is an unusually subdued funhouse running through these books. The characters are haunted by sins of omission. Briefly, "City Of Glass" describes someone undergoing a process of dissipation, "Ghosts" shows two people inspire paranoia in each other, and "The Locked Room" is about a person who so identifies with someone else that when he gains what he thought the other person would get, he becomes very distracted. Drink lots of coffee....more
- This review contains a general spoiler -There are echoes of Ralph Ellison, F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner in Brandon Taylor's novel, REAL - This review contains a general spoiler -There are echoes of Ralph Ellison, F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner in Brandon Taylor's novel, REAL LIFE. Its thematic and stylistic similarities with Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN are manifest. Taylor captures Ellison's sardonic tone throughout this story of a young black graduate student whose social set is almost exclusively white. The point of view of a man perpetually on the fringe of a deeply unhappy, privileged elite is very much like that of Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway in THE GREAT GATSBY. The parts of REAL LIFE dealing with a traumatic childhood in the rural south have something of Faulkner's wildness. At the same time, REAL LIFE has crystallized the post-Violet Quill gay novel. It is not about the closet. The characters don't spend any energy on worrying if people will notice they are gay. But they spend every second of their lives wondering if the people around them are going to misinterpret them. The main character, Wallace, has resigned himself to the condescension with which white people treat him. Much of the power of this novel comes from the sheer accuracy of its descriptions of white people being evasive whenever their racism seems to have been noticed by Wallace. But Wallace, a survivor of sexual abuse, is forever guarded in his interactions. Systemic racism and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder inform Wallace's moves. There are wistful moments in this book, humorous situations and several realistic glimpses of the anxiety of academic life. It's good writing....more
I read this book starting last August (in 2021) and finished it in about three weeks. I'm pleased to say I did this. When it came out in 1988, I read I read this book starting last August (in 2021) and finished it in about three weeks. I'm pleased to say I did this. When it came out in 1988, I read about ten pages and decided I'd continue at some point. It's been thirty-three years, but I finally caught up to my brother, who, indeed, did read the whole thing in 1988. I won't summarize the book. Goodreads' thumbnail description, which, I find, duplicates the text of the folding flap of the first US printing, is as succinct a description as you can find. (I suspect Rushdie wrote it, because the phrase "self-made self", a pretty humorous phrase, is in it.) In any case, I will make a few observations: This is a very entertaining book, but you must pay close attention. It rewards close reading. Salman Rushdie is a solid storyteller. If you are bamboozled by juxtapositions of time, place and point of view, stick with it and you'll find parallels throughout the telling. It is, above all, a truthful representation of human behavior. A lot of THE SATANIC VERSES is reminiscent of Saul Bellow, in particular the sections dealing with Alleluia Cone and her parents. She even drives a Citroen, which is a car which figures prominently in Bellow's HUMBOLDT'S GIFT. Bellow's way of summarizing, in a paragraph, an entire life and the lives that life intersects, is frequently reflected in THE SATANIC VERSES. A lot of writers from the mid-to-late 20th century have a similar tone, but Rushdie absolutely replicates Bellow's syntax, especially in the characterizations of three or four grifters who pop up every so often in this book. This is all to the good. Do read this novel....more
POSSIBLE SPOILERS. Disclaimer: Because this Library Of America volume, which contains three novels, is the one which contains the most definitive text POSSIBLE SPOILERS. Disclaimer: Because this Library Of America volume, which contains three novels, is the one which contains the most definitive text of THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA available, I stress that it is the only one of the three in this volume I've read. Goodreads reviews can only be posted if the reviewer has clicked "I'm finished." So, while I have finished THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA, I have not read THE REVERBERATOR or THE TRAGIC MUSE. THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA was published in 1886, relatively early in Henry James's career. He was forty-three years old, had been a published novelist for almost fifteen years and had already written an unquestioned masterpiece, A PORTRAIT OF A LADY. He died in 1916, well established as a writer of high merit. THE TURN OF THE SCREW, written in 1898, is easily the archetypal novella. James is an iconic author with a wide readership more than a century after his death. But this book is James's attempt to get out of himself. He commandeers Dickens's properties while venturing into Dostoevsky's territory. Whenever his main character, Hyacinth Robinson, is the focus, James must suppress his obvious desire to satirize the underground. He anticipates Conrad when he characterizes the players in the secret society Hyacinth is lured into. The Princess with whom he is enraptured is plausible, but Hyacinth's sexless love for her is not. The deadbeats who argue at the secret political meetings Hyacinth attends are plausible, but their trust in hyacinth is not. I think James had every element he needed in order to make this book soar, but he undercut his effort in order to pay tribute to Dickens. We learn at the start that Hyacinth, a working-class youth living with the impoverished seamstress who adopts him at birth, is actually the son of a lord. That isn't necessarily Dickensian, but his funny name is. James, however, doesn't know how to devise a funny name, let alone one which would convey something about the character it is given to. The name Hyacinth Robinson conjures up no images, the way such names as Oliver Twist, Ebenezer Scrooge or Uncle Pumblechook do. There is another character in this book who is an impossibly good person. She has a mysterious malady from birth which is never specified. James finally lets loose with what is definitely his own thought about her when two characters both say to each other, "I've never liked her." But, as I've said, James is paying tribute to Dickens and not parodying him. For 99 per cent of the book, Hyacinth is Henry James's sincere effort at giving the reader a Dickens hero. But he is also trying to show how the underground works. When Paul Muniment, Hyacinth's idol (and the brother of the over-angelic invalid Hyacinth secretly despises) talks about the rigged game of society, James actually shows he knows how revolutionists talk. But Hyacinth has to be made to be Muniment's rival for the affections of the Princess, and James's unwillingness to specify a sexual dynamic undercuts the portrayal of Muniment. (Note the use of a funny name here, too. It's weird but not weird in an intriguing way. James can't master Dickens's naming trick.) ONLY Dickens can make us root for a fundamentally bland figure. David Copperfield has no human characteristics that I can remember (except for his secretly wishing his first wife would go ahead and die, which Dickens, as an author, clearly wants her to do, do-gooding martyr that she is) and Henry James can only make such a character unfathomably dull. Dickens appeals to a reader's sense of foul play. We like David Copperfield because he has been dealt a bad hand. There is no other reason to care about him. But it is, after all, THE reason to care about him. Add to this that James has a conflict: He wishes to imply an entire world of underground activity. His character Paul Muniment even says that world exists, everywhere, unnoticed, so it's clear that James is aware of this way of thinking. But James's odd super-patriotism comes to the fore, preventing James from detailing the seediness he knows is a dominant quality in the lives of anarchists. Hence, Hyacinth periodically makes proclamations about British backbone. Again, James ALMOST gets somewhere in his depiction of a working-class woman who sometimes socializes with Hyacinth. She is a realistic version of Eliza Dolittle. But James wants us to care about Hyacinth's relationship with the Princess, an aristocrat. I have not stressed that most of this book is written with great care. But it is the great care of a master craftsman who has forgotten the shape of the object he's creating. THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA has everything a book needs. But Henry James attached a donkey's tale to it. He learned from his mistake and wrote several uncompromising masterpieces after this. If you read this novel, you'll watch a great writer fall on his ass for five-hundred and fifty-six pages. ...more
[Update to my review: To clarify what I just wrote here, I'll point out that I'm reviewing the Kindle edition, which replicates the Valancourt Books e[Update to my review: To clarify what I just wrote here, I'll point out that I'm reviewing the Kindle edition, which replicates the Valancourt Books edition from 2014. You may be seeing a different cover.] First point: Goodreads really ought to identify the author by her real name and not the pseudonym which ceased to be on the cover of this book decades ago. Her name is Gillian Freeman. She used the pseudonym Eliot George for contractual reasons when the book was first published in 1961. Note that Goodreads's default image of the Kindle edition says "Gillian Freeman." The introduction also explains that the pseudonym was used because Gillian freeman had an obligation to a "rival publisher." Given that homosexual behavior was a punishable offense in Britain in 1961, it would be natural to think the pseudonym was used because of the fear of controversy. But Freeman's own name was used when she wrote the screenplay for the 1964 movie of THE LEATHER BOYS. Homosexuality wouldn't be decriminalized in Britain until 1967. THE LEATHER BOYS is a relatively short novel and it is written in clear prose. It was commissioned by the literary agency Anthony Blond, which became a publishing house. Gillian Freeman had been a reporter, and it shows. The agency told her they wanted a "Romeo and Romeo" story and that it should be in a working-class setting. (I got a lot of information from Michael Arditti's introduction to the 2014 Valancourt Books edition and from reviews of the movie, which I was lucky enough to see in an online showing recently. The movie's getting a lot of attention lately.) The characters make horrible decisions, as in every Kitchen Sink drama, but everything is described realistically and the pacing is swift. The book depicts London just as it was about to swing. So, it does not swing here. The characters are feeling the post-World War Two restraints and they are in a dead-end financially. But there is humor and, in moderate doses, tenderness. The courtroom drama is very believable. The book is a time-capsule but it is not dated. It's quite good. Above all, it is a perceptive work. The last paragraph is just right....more
(Goodreads thinks I read the paperback published in Britain. I read only the hardcover US edition, published in September, 2019. I finished it yesterd(Goodreads thinks I read the paperback published in Britain. I read only the hardcover US edition, published in September, 2019. I finished it yesterday, October 27th, 2020. If Goodreads says I read both editions, it is incorrect. While this may seem unimportant, I liked the cover of the US edition so much that I must point out that it the UK paperback is shown in the thumbnail, the cover which charmed me was the US cloth cover. I have read Salman Rushdie before, but the artwork on the US dustjacket, by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich, simply called to me when I saw it on the shelf at my local library.) With the deaths of Saul Bellow, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip Roth and John Updike, the voice of American literature was silenced. A sardonic wit was common to all four of them. They were roughly of an age, the Great Depression, World War Two and the Korean "conflict" providing a grim backdrop. In the case of Vonnegut, who wrote one of Salman Rushdie's favorite novels, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, the survivor guilt he had in common with the other three was the result of his being witness to the immediate aftermath of the atrocity that was the Allied bombing of the German city of Dresden. No hand-to-hand á la Mailer for Vonnegut, no Joesph Heller bombardier experience for him. But he did know the closest of calls: Being locked in an underground shelter as an imprisoned US soldier as an entire city inhabited by civilians was demolished above. Brought above ground just after it, he saw thousands of bodies of his defenseless enemies; men, women and children, in piles among rubble-strewn streets. Less than thirty years later, the young readers of SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE would laugh at the forlorn literary stand-up routine its traumatized author produced. I read many of his books when I was in eighth and ninth grade. I saw him speak when I was fifteen. Salman Rushdie, who, I'm guessing, is about ten years older than I am - I am sixty - read it when he was in college. You never forget Vonnegut. Many people go through a phase, usually when they are quite young, of reading him, which is almost always followed by a great reluctance to pick him up again. But then, you say, "Let me look at, oh, PALM SUNDAY," and you read two, three or four of his books in a month. He makes an impression. I was not surprised (although delighted) when, checking out Rushdie's webpage after reaching the halfway point in QUICHOTTE, to see he'd written an appreciation quite recently, of SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE. He said everything I've ever thought about Kurt Vonnegut. In particular I'd been thinking of him as I read QUICHOTTE. So I say now, that if, with the passing of Vonnegut and his friends Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and John Updike, the American voice has been absent from literature, it has been noticed, rescued and revived by Salman Rushdie. In channeling Cervantes, Rushdie has almost thrown readers off course. QUICHOTTE is a good update of DON QUIXOTE, and it spins Collodi's PINOCCHIO to humorous effect as well. Somewhere, Mark Twain says Cervantes was his model. (Doesn't HUCKLEBERRY FINN have the road in common with DON QUIXOTE?) Surely the road is a theme in the American novel. The ocean is Ahab's road. The road is Kerouac's ROAD. In one of the hundreds of references made in QUICHOTTE, the narrater tells us that Quichotte and his son (his Pinocchio, really; Sancho, in QUICHOTTE, being one of its protagonist's thoughts come to life) are traveling across country the way Robert M. Pirsig and his son do in the epic '70s memoir ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE. Throughout Quichotte, the American experience is at center stage. Saul Bellow's gift for writing a paragraph referring to multiple works of literature, historical figures, Hollywood movies, newspaper comics, and many other cultural touchstones while still making an accessible point is on display here. Vonnegut's world-weary eye for the absurd is in use here. Updike's ability to express the exquisite torture of social embarrassment is here. And Roth's resonant tone reverberates. The American novel is here, in Salman Rushdie's meditation on the Great Republic's decline. There are excursions to London, recollections of India and, of course, world subjects are discussed. But this is the book neither Bellow, Vonnegut, Roth or Updike lived to write. How is it that Rushdie is their successor? They grew to adulthood in monstrous times. Rushdie's monstrous, protracted, personal encounter with global politics, religious fanaticism and state-sanctioned terrorism may, in itself, have heightened his sensitivity in the same way writers of the World War Two generation had their sensitivity set on alarm; but I think his being a survivor is what puts him in their company. Then again, he's an inspired artist: He is for all time. ...more
I won't go into much detail about this. The Goodreads page for WHITE-JACKET gives you a good idea of what's in the book. I'll make some observations. FI won't go into much detail about this. The Goodreads page for WHITE-JACKET gives you a good idea of what's in the book. I'll make some observations. First, I'll point out I read the Northwestern-Newberry edition, edited by Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker and G. Thomas Tanselle. The Library of America edition of Melville uses this text, so if you're worried you can't find it, almost any library system can obtain a Library of America edition. Hayford, Parker and Tanselle performed a major service to American letters in editing the works of Melville. Their editions are as definitive as have ever been published. I shall make a second point, a point I couldn't have quite made a year ago, because within this last year (2019) I've read all of Melville's novels written before MOBY-DICK. I read MOBY-DICK in 1978, and, in the intervening years, I read all the novels Melville wrote after MOBY-DICK. It is my opinion that Melville's first five books are not merely apprentice works; nor do they merely foreshadow MOBY-DICK. The advantage of reading his first five books in order is that you'll notice he echoes, in each successive book, elements in the preceding books. By the time the you get to MOBY-DICK, you have a framework. While WHITE-JACKET occasionally mentions a theme from Melville's earlier books, it anticipates not only MOBY-DICK but BILLY BUDD. The constant refrain in WHITE-JACKET is a lament about the United States Navy's reflexive dependence on the punishment of flogging. Significantly, the narrator is falsely accused of committing a punishable offense. His thoughts, as he stands accused, are very much like those of Billy Budd when Billy Budd finds himself accused. Melville should be read in his entirety. His output was Wagnerian. Each work is expanded upon by its successor. WHITE-JACKET is, perhaps, at least one-third a tract about systemic abuse in the US Navy. It is truly a plea to end the practice of flogging. What is surprising in this is that, for all its shocking detail, it is, somehow, more depressing than stirring. It is a litany of abuses. Melville, before this, had written about harsh conditions aboard ship, but in WHITE-JACKET he is trying to change readers' hearts and minds. (I believe WHITE-JACKET did influence national thinking on this and that reforms were instituted.) The fact that the Navy itself was committing these abuses informed Melville's opinion. Merchant ships were harsh, but this was the navy of the republic. Melville thought to do something about it. But his full artistry would return with MOBY-DICK. Melville admires Ahab more than we might think. Ahab hates the ship-owners, too. But in WHITE-JACKET, the government is the bad guy. Melville takes a crack at being a reformer. The prose is intricate, as usual. It soars in the last three or four chapters....more
I read this on a Kindle. I am convinced I pay attention better when I'm reading a bound book, but this is neither here nor there. I will only say I'd I read this on a Kindle. I am convinced I pay attention better when I'm reading a bound book, but this is neither here nor there. I will only say I'd have rather had a book in my hand, with pages I could have turned. You don't get a sense of when a book will end when you're reading it on an e-reader. Even if the page number is at the bottom of the screen, that is not a good approximation of seeing your progress as you read a book made of paper. In any case, THE GALLERY, John Horne Burns's 1947 bestseller about American soldiers in a city they'd liberated three years before, is powerful. Paper or Kindle, it is worth reading. It is not really a novel, but I have to say it is something more than a themed volume of stories. Its chapters about individuals are connected by general thoughts expressed by an anonymous American soldier. Most of the chapters about individuals are from the point of view of any given American soldier, but this is not always the case. One chapter is from the point of view of a middle-aged woman from Naples who survives by running a gay bar. Another is from the point of view of a young woman who winds up working behind a counter at a US army dance club. These stories are very straightforward while, at the same time, surprising. Taking place mostly in August, 1944, in the ruined yet surviving social center of Naples, Italy, the overarching tone is ironic sorrow. This was the turning point of the war in Europe. Paris was liberated at the same time as the action in THE GALLERY, and parts of Italy had thrown off the German yoke - a serious Italian Resistance had weakened the Nazis in Naples at the end of September, 1943, and the Allied occupation began on October 1st. But THE GALLERY does not go into this history. There is no need. It is clear that Naples is officially occupied by the Allies when the book takes place and the town is a ruin after the bombings it has suffered under the opposing forces. THE GALLERY describes US soldiers at what passes for leisure. They are stationed in a ravaged city. But of great importance is the fact that war itself has not yet ended in August, 1944. The soldiers await other battles. Italy is not out of the war yet. Naples is under the Allies, but regions to the North are not. The stories in THE GALLERY need to be read in order. The meditative, connecting passages are designed to guide the reader toward the book's conclusion. Phrases from earlier stories are repeated to emotional effect in later stories. The one phrase which occurs throughout, and quite often is "in August, 1944." Highly realistic novels about World War Two came out shortly after the war. Norman Mailer's THE NAKED AND THE DEAD came out in 1948; James Jones's FROM HERE TO ETERNITY in 1951. Mailer is famous for gritty detail. Jones is especially good at acute observation. But John Horne Burns, largely forgotten now, was briefly lionized before either Mailer or Jones. Not a combat soldier himself (unlike the other two authors, who had the whole hand-to-hand combat experience) he nevertheless managed to convey the abject horror of war. His soldiers see the conditions the citizens of Naples live in. The soldiers are not free of misery either. A chapter about a syphilis ward is only lightened by the fact that these are among the first people on earth to be treated with penicillin. It is significant that a crucial chapter takes place OUTSIDE of Naples. The outer world impinges. One amazing thing about THE GALLERY is its frankness about gay soldiers. While there is a chapter set in a gay bar, there are gay characters throughout the book. Burns is more realistic about this than almost any writer of his time. The fact that he was gay himself does not explain his realistic attitude, though. Many gay writers of his generation wrote negatively about gay life. This is not to say that Burns was trying to cause the reader to be compassionate toward gay people. He ASSUMES the reader is compassionate toward everybody. This makes him different from almost any writer I've ever read. There was one chapter I did not understand. It is about a petty tyrant in charge of censoring letters. I wasn't certain what Burns wanted me to make of him. Parts of this chapter were brilliant, but I didn't get it. I am not of the opinion that Burns was deep. But THE GALLERY is honest. That is a virtue....more
I read the translation by Marc Romano and D. Thin, published in 2005 by New York Review Of Books. What strikes me about this is that Georges Simenon, iI read the translation by Marc Romano and D. Thin, published in 2005 by New York Review Of Books. What strikes me about this is that Georges Simenon, in this 1938 novel, managed to write something covering the same ground as many another modernist work without it being, in any sense, an indictment of society. The antihero at the center is as well-drawn as any I've ever run across, but his self-deception is clearly his own fault. ...more
I found this in a nice independent book store today. I read the book it's extracted from, many years ago. (That book is MOBY-DICK.) I decided, after lI found this in a nice independent book store today. I read the book it's extracted from, many years ago. (That book is MOBY-DICK.) I decided, after looking at this edition, to give it to my brother, a professional clammer. He loves this chapter of MOBY-DICK and seeing it in a stand-alone book, I had to get it for him. Applewood Books is a manufacturer of hand-crafted books. I've read about the company before, and have always hoped to find one of their books. It's been a good day!...more
I read the translation by Norman Denny, published by the New York Review Of Books in 2006. I don't know when Norman Denny did the translation, but I suI read the translation by Norman Denny, published by the New York Review Of Books in 2006. I don't know when Norman Denny did the translation, but I suspect his was the one used in the first American edition of 1955, if only because the edition I read does not state that it is a "new" translation. The tone of this book matches the tone of mid-20th-century American fiction to the point that the first third or so could just as easily have been written by John O'Hara. I believe Simenon had lived in the United States for about eight years when he wrote it in 1953, but he so thoroughly grasped the American scene (or at least the New York and New England scene) that it is hard to believe the books he wrote between 1930 and 1945 dealt almost exclusively with life in France. FEUX ROUGES starts out as a dispassionate study of an alcoholic businessman's marriage. One waits for the main character to do something reckless, and, indeed, he does, but when he does, the book (called RED LIGHTS in this translation) shifts into Noir mode. It is still, in the middle third, a study of alcoholism, but the 1950s obsession with a fallen creature having his or her life taken over by someone almost satanic starts informing the narrative. The Cold War produced numerous books and movies with this theme: PSYCHO (Hitchcock's movie more than the Robert Bloch novel) THE DESPERATE HOURS (which fits the bill except for the fact that the victims are not fallen) and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (both the Hitchcock movie and the Highsmith novel.) The final third of RED LIGHTS is the one I found most like Simenon's other books. The first third actually has quite a few parallels with a book which appeared six years later: Richard Yates's REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. The couple in that novel is almost identical with the one in this book. This does not mean Yates read this book, but there was a vogue then for dissecting the nuclear family. (Some scenes and locales are remarkably similar, of course: The wife getting out of the car in the middle of the night during an argument; the little roadside bar looking like a log cabin; and the husband's resentment of his wife for taking a job, even though it becomes increasingly necessary that they have a two-income household.) Until RED LIGHTS takes its Noir turn, Simenon is writing classic middlebrow American drama. The Noir midsection is worthy and it is especially realistic in its treatment of the main character's dissolution. The final third has Simenon becoming Simenon again (and an American cop becoming, in the lighting of a pipe, Maigret himself for a split, if subliminal, second.) It is a stark book. ...more
I read the New York Review Of Books edition, which has the translation by Marc Romano. LE COUP DE LUNE was published in 1933, during the first prolificI read the New York Review Of Books edition, which has the translation by Marc Romano. LE COUP DE LUNE was published in 1933, during the first prolific burst of Maigret novels. It is not part of that series, it being a stand-alone story of French colonial life. This novel, like most of Simenon's books, is brief, but then again, so was Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS. Like that work, it packs a wallop. Graham Greene would explore much the same territory over the next few decades. Having read many books by Joseph Conrad and all the novels of Graham Greene, I can say that Simenon, in TROPIC MOON, offers a perfect distillation of the themes Conrad and Greene dealt with. The message is clear: White Europeans raped and murdered people of color is distant lands and the people back home in Europe were complicit. TROPIC MOON is unambiguous about this. While I do not read French, I have read seven of Simenon's books in translation and have to say that Marc Romano achieves a uniformity of tone I have not found in the translations of the other Simenon books I've read. This may be because Simenon was extremely focused in this book, but I have a feeling Romano is an exceptional translator. ...more
I read this in the translation by Louise Varèse. La Vérité sur Bébé Donge first appeared in the US in 1953, under the title I Take This Woman. I'm not I read this in the translation by Louise Varèse. La Vérité sur Bébé Donge first appeared in the US in 1953, under the title I Take This Woman. I'm not sure when Louise Varèse's translation appeared, but the copy I read was copyrighted in 1992 by the Estate of Georges Simenon. The copyright page says this is the second edition of this translation. Georges Simenon died in 1989. If you read a different translation, bear in mind your impression of this book may differ from mine partly due to our having obtained different translations. Anyway, this book, though dealing with the aftermath of a crime, is not a mystery. Simenon, whose gifts for characterization are strong in his mystery novels, brings those gifts front and center here. In this book, Simenon takes a cue from Flaubert by dissecting a marriage. Gallic as get-all, The Truth About Bébé Donge focuses on the inner thoughts of a husband whose wife has made an attempt on his life. He and his brother are the local leaders, running an increasingly expanding business. They've both married sisters, so the crisis which ensues after François Donge's wife puts arsenic in his coffee devastates the family. Of course, being the kingpin of the town, Francois hardly shows his emotional turmoil. He examines everything he ever did since the day he met the woman who would try to kill him. As traditional as Simenon's writing is, the reader is treated to the drifting of François's mind. The effect is modern. And yet it is a realistic work. It is a relatively short novel, but packed with subtle observation. Even though we are in the mind of one character from beginning to end, we are given the sense of how this character deals with his small but distinct circle of friends and family....more
This novella is so well-known that critiquing it seems pretentious, describing the plot superfluous and trying to convey the experience of reading it This novella is so well-known that critiquing it seems pretentious, describing the plot superfluous and trying to convey the experience of reading it dubious. I will point out a few things which have nothing to do with its qualities but do point to its influence. I will first say that, more than seventy years after HEART OF DARKNESS was published, Chinua Achebe wrote an essay which no student of 20th-century literature can do without. The essay's premise is that, in HEART OF DARKNESS, Conrad yields to his own xenophobia to such an extent as to belie the story's anti-imperialist thrust. Achebe was from Africa and felt there was no reason to overlook the racism of HEART OF DARKNESS. Here is a link to a PDF of the essay: https://polonistyka.amu.edu.pl/__data... Secondly, I think it has to be acknowledged that HEART OF DARKNESS is a novella and not a novel, long for a novella though it is, and though it is, arguably, the length of a short novel. It unfolds like a novella. The form was at its height when Conrad wrote this in the late 1890s. Only Henry James, Conrad's contemporary, rivaled him as a master of the form. I think F. Scott Fitzgerald took a little of the opening of HEART OF DARKNESS (a part of the book set on a boat on the river Thames) for the closing paragraphs of THE GREAT GATSBY. I don't think this is far-fetched at all. T.S. Elliot quoted HEART OF DARKNESS in his poem "The Waste Land." He and Fitzgerald were contemporaries. I think the mysterious Gatsby has some of the qualities of the mysterious Kurtz. Occasionally, Conrad's grammar is weird, though this is less often the case in HEART OF DARKNESS than in many of his other works. He didn't learn English until he was twenty, and he didn't start writing for publication until he was forty, so it is understandable that sometimes his phrasing is bizarre. This is from HEART OF DARKNESS: "I felt like a chill grip on my chest." Conrad must mean "A chill gripped my chest," "It felt as if a chill were gripping my chest," or "My chest felt gripped by a chill." He is NOT saying, as someone of out time might, "I felt, like, a chill grip my chest." Nobody used "like" like that in 1899. I suggest that you read this work in no more than two sittings. Heavy though it is, HEART OF DARKNESS was designed for magazine readers. The narrator is talking to friends one night over drinks. They gather regularly to tell tall tales. (The narrator points out that though his tales are always tall, they are true. Be true to the intent. Read it in one or two sessions.)...more
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