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Friday 17 June 2016

Something for the weekend

Roleplaying and Ancient Greece don't seem to be particularly popular with the readers of this blog, if the number of comments is anything to go by. So here are a few books I've read recently that I think are worth recommending. I hope you'll see something you like:


Collected Stories of Isaac BabelCollected Stories of Isaac Babel by Isaac Babel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Apologies to Dr Johnson, but it's been a very long time since any intelligent person could seriously assert that it's the job of writers to present the reader with a moral lesson. Even so, fiction lies. If you were an alien who only knew of human beings from reading their literature, you wouldn't recognize the species when you came across it. That's because even the best authors bake their own viewpoint into the story. Darkness At Noon or Bend Sinister or Dirty Snow -- in all of those books are people doing terrible things, but there's still the sense that the authors, while of course not commenting on the action, stand for civilization and the best of humanity. Even though (in fact, because) those books are full of the anger or disappointment of the civilized viewpoint, they perpetuate the idea that civilized man is a good creature who can sometimes be corrupted into "inhumanity".

But Babel presents a far less comfortable picture of mankind. He's writing many of these stories from the viewpoint of a Jewish intellectual serving as an officer in a Cossack regiment of the Red Army. That's not made up, either; extraordinary as it sounds, it was Babel's own military real-life experience. Unsentimentally he describes acts of generosity alongside shocking barbarity. And he doesn't pretend the latter is any less human or explicable than the former. If there is any act of Othering, it's Babel's own reflective view of himself and the civilized attitudes inculcated in him by his middle-class Jewish background. It's not that we can't see what Babel himself stands for - it comes as no surprise that Stalin had him murdered in the late '1930s - but his way of observing human behaviour holds up a horribly clear mirror. You'll come away from reading this feeling deeply disturbed.

The Red Cavalry tales take up most of the book, but there are also Runyonesque stories of Jewish gangsters in Odessa and semi-autobiographical accounts of Babel's early life, including some vivid up-close descriptions of antisemitic pogroms that make for very uneasy reading.

As a companion to reading Babel's work, I very highly recommend Professor David Thorburn's sublime lecture course entitled "Masterworks of Early 20th Century Literature", available in both audio and video versions. 

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The BookshopThe Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A middle-aged woman opens a bookshop in a small Suffolk town in the late 1950s, and in doing so inadvertently stirs up the battle lines of class conflict. It sounds like the basis for an Ealing comedy, and indeed there were several scenes that had me laughing out loud, but Ms Fitzgerald is a more thoughtful and subtle writer than that, and she does not invoke the comedic structure of the classic English novel for frivolous effect. There’s nothing cosy about what’s going on here. It may be a quiet English village, but even here privilege has the power to destroy lives. Ms Fitzgerald writes with such economy and beauty – often I had to pause and appreciate her prose – that you don’t immediately grasp the cold anger behind her urbanity, nor the consequences of an event till you are onto the next scene, like a stiletto sliding painlessly between the ribs to inflict a fatal wound that is not at first noticed. It all builds to a conclusion of tremendous ferocity and force. To say more would be to spoil the impact, but I will say that the final pages are among the most affecting in literature.

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The Tremor of ForgeryThe Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Graham Greene's favourite Highsmith novel, which he pointed out is about apprehension rather than fear. We follow Howard Ingham, an American writer visiting Tunisia as research for a film script. With exquisitely subtle but effective touches, the sense of dislocation grows. Ingham's alienation at being adrift in a foreign culture and a foreign language combine with a disquieting lack of communication from home.

The story explores guilt, in part, and in that sense reminded me of Woody Allen's "Crimes & Misdemeanors" as well as, obviously, Crime & Punishment. But the guilt here is a more disconnected, troubled, elusive emotion. Guilt at not feeling more guilty, even, as Ingham feels his moral bearings coming adrift. We eventually realize that the full story of what Ingham is blaming himself for is very probably quite different from what he imagines; but then, the blame is not the point. It cuts deeper into the whole question of fitting in, the existential dismay at whether right and wrong even mean anything, and the lies we tell not only others but ourselves.

If that all sounds rather too vague - it's not. This is a page-turner. Highsmith is a master of her craft, and she keeps turning the screw by tiny degrees towards an unbearable pitch of tension. It's not for me in the same class as Carol, but only just falls short.

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The Fade Out, Vol. 1: Act OneThe Fade Out, Vol. 1: Act One by Ed Brubaker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I always clear the decks for a new Brubaker. This one has his usual Roeg-like imbricated timelines woven in an intriguing setting: Hollywood in the late '40s, glamourous and grubby at the same time, providing the classic Brubaker ingredients of lust, greed, secrets, lies - all heated to meltdown point by bad judgement on the part of the good guys and ruthlessness on the part of the baddies. That's insofar as anybody in an Ed Brubaker story is unequivocally "good" or "bad", of course.

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Three Men in a Boat (Three Men, #1)Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you only know Victorian humour from old Punch cartoons, you might be surprised at how modern this is. The prose is fresh, becomes quite lyrical in places, and JKJ is a natural raconteur. I laughed out loud throughout and was quite happy to spend a pleasant few hours in the company of three fellows and a dog who lived 126 years ago and yet feel as if they might be people you could meet tomorrow.

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13 comments:

  1. Thanks for the suggestions Dave. There's a goodie in here that my Dad will love, so it's been most useful even if not quite as you intended.

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    1. And you could borrow it off your dad, Michael. You never know, you might enjoy it too.

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  2. Three Men in a Boat was hilarious, even by today's standards. Also, I love all things Ancient Greece, even if I didn't comment on your last post. Thanks Dave.

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    1. Then you may also be interested in my review of Apostolos Doxiadis's graphic novel Logicomix, which has got a bit of Aeschylus in it:

      https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6493321-logicomix

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  3. Hi Dave. How about letting us know your favourite books of all time?! Assuming you've not posted those before.

    By the way, I have watched Seconds, The Forbin Project and The Day The Earth Stood Still so far from your recommendations. All very enjoyable, probably Seconds being the best of them, or at least the most interesting. Purchased The Incredible Shrinking Man at the same time, which was pretty good also.

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    1. A favourite book? I wouldn't know where to start, Andy. These days I do try to find time to do a quick review on Goodreads of each book I've read, so if you're interested I guess you could have a look through those. Off the top of my head: Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Gormenghast, Riddley Walker, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, The End of the Affair, Lolita, Pride & Prejudice... I could just go on and on!

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  4. Thanks Dave. Slightly embarrassed to say I haven't read any of them. Having just looked at your Goodreads reviews, I've only read a handful of those also (John Wyndham is a favourite). I guess, so many books, so little time. As I mainly read sci-fi/horror/fantasy novels in my formative years, I'm now institutionalised regarding the little I read, so would be interested in your influences or favourites from those genres if you ever have the time to compile them.

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    1. I did spend my childhood & teen years reading the same genres fairly exclusively, Andy -- which probably explains why I hardly ever look at them these days. But JS&MrN is a favourite, as I said, and Gormenghast. And I was lucky enough to read Oliver Johnson's new fantasy novel in manuscript, and that's superb. When it comes to horror I love the Binscombe Tales. But on the whole I find that stuff a bit superficial these days. I prefer character-driven stories and most genre stuff is a bit "plotty". Still, different strokes, eh?

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  5. Yes, I can see why you don't now bother. Perhaps for similar reasons I prefer short stories these days, there not being the time to be too plotty. In fairness, my attention span may also be sharply on the decline! Will give the Binscombe Tales a try as I see you've mentioned those in a few posts.

    Perhaps without realising it my tastes have also changed. Take Stephen King, just as an example. The Shining a classic, Doctor Sleep a bit contrived with the baddies irritating idiots. Is that the author in decline, that I'm now hyper critical or is it my over-exposure to the genre? Possibly all three (sorry Mr King - great author).

    Are you able to elaborate on Oliver's new novel? Not read anything by him since Golden Dragon!

    Oh, and read you wife's first novel a few weeks ago. Very good, though did prefer Lifeform Three.



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    1. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of fantasy -- as long as it's fantastic and strange and surprising. Just having magical SFX in a story doesn't do it. So I rarely read fantasy, but when I find something like JS&MrN or Gormenghast I'm always delighted.

      Oliver wrote a trilogy of novels in the mid-90s. His new book surpasses anything he's done before and for my money is one of those truly great fantasy novels I'm always hoping to come across. Beyond that I can reveal nothing. But I put it on a par with Gormenghast, and I'm not one to give extra points to a book just because a friend (or spouse) wrote it!

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  6. Will keep an eye out for Oliver's new novel and take a look at his previous trilogy.

    Having finally got around to buy/download your Frankenstein, after all that, my phone is Android. Drat and double drat.

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    1. I know; the publishers really never got that digital publishing shouldn't be restricted to a single territory or platform. One option is an iOS emulator:

      http://www.technonutty.com/2015/09/ios-simulator-windows-emulators-for-ios.html

      -- though I say that without having tried any of them. Alternatively there's the epub3 version, though you will need to get a full-spec reader app that includes Javascript:

      https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B63rIuFhh29eZ3ByTHY4WEtzYzQ

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    2. Or given my late developing technophobia, I'll just see if one of my mates has got an IPAD and borrow it for the weekend!

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