The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje

A book that I had on my “maybe” list for years, chiefly because I thought it would have been very faithful to the movie. Turns out, the plot is way more intricate (as is often the case) as is the development of the narration.

But did I like the book better than the movie? Not really – while the character of Kip, the Indian sapper, is so much more interesting and developed than in the film, everyone else seems to talk simply too poetically for me (or maybe I’m just heartless). I had probably read In the Skin of a Lion at a much different point in my life, but I found that novel to be much more interesting of its successor (possibly also because it dealt with a Canadian past I was extremely fascinated by). 

It is clearly a good and interesting book, but, even in the confusion of an Italian villa half-destroyed by the Second World War, it’s all a bit too idyllic.Less poetry, more crude prose, and the book would have been worthy of a 9-Oscar movie. 

The Comedians – Graham Greene

I bonded with the former Registrar at LSE over our common love for literature – although, honestly, I was mostly listening to his suggestions rather than offering much of my own (with the exception of some tips on some Italian novels, at best). I remember telling him that I wished I could teach the Vietnam War by starting with a discussion of The Quiet American, and him saying that his favourite Graham Greene book was actually The Comedians. I can see where he was coming from (although this is not my favourite Greene novel – that’d probably be Our Man in Havana, at least at the time of writing).

In terms of white men trying to find their place in Latin America, I liked The Comedians a lot better than The Honorary Consul, and that’s probably because Haiti to me is much more exotic than Argentina and Paraguay. Also, the Live and Let Die-vibe of the book is truly excellent, as is the self-criticism of Mr Brown (who really reminded me of Rick in Casablanca). I just can’t understand how they managed to make an awful movie out of this book…

Now I think I’ll have to stop reading books by Greene, chiefly because I’ve read a few too many over the last couple of years and I am afraid I might be overdoing (my relationship with Ian McEwan serves as a serious warning here).

Oh, and whoever designed the back-cover of my Penguin edition is an absolute ass committed to spoiling the plot – bravo!

Winter Journal – Paul Auster

A book that I had often seen in bookshops but avoided because, let’s face it, I don’t really like self-celebrating memoirs/reflections on an author’s life etc. Like a child, I only read it because my mom said so. And clearly my mom knows best – sure, it’s a self-celebrating reflection on the author’s life, but if the author in question is Paul Auster, then the book is bound to be extremely well written and, at the very least, the mirror of a very interesting life.

What this book has left me with are chiefly two things: the love and profound respect Auster feels for his wife Siri Hustvedt, and the fact that that he is, or at least he portrays himself to be, rather happy at the prospect of growing old.

At times there are passages I didn’t feel particularly interested in (some stories about his youth, for instance, left me quite untouched), but overall the book is at the very least quite thought-provoking. I never thought Paul Auster would have played pick-up basketball growing up, as pretty much all of his sports references in his other books seem to be about baseball, but reading about that made me happy, as did seeing him go through all the houses he lived in and what these meant to him. 

Burmese Days – George Orwell

I never thought I would get to write something like this, but having now read all of Orwell’s novels I can see why so many people think he was a genius. He’s still far from being my favourite writer ever, but 1984, Burmese Days, and Coming Up for Air are three really good novels (although Keep the Aspidistra Flying is remarkably bad, I only moderately liked A Clergyman’s Daughter, and I honestly can’t stand Animal Farm).

Burmese Days reminded me of some of the finest Graham Greene, but also of that wonderful thing that is Burgess’ Malayan Trilogy – it’s a beautiful portrayal of the pettiness of a colonial society that doesn’t really understand the reality of the land it inhabits, of its silly internal fights, and of the way in which locals try to ingratiate themselves with the Europeans.

Flory doesn’t possess the literary weight of Burgess’ Crabbe, but he is still a deeply fascinating character. And sure, the book was written by a person who quite clearly thought that British imperialism was dead by the 1930s (and history ultimately proved he wasn’t far wrong), but that doesn’t mean this book of fiction, if taken with a pinch of salt, isn’t historically accurate. 

Perfidia – James Ellroy

It’s been a month and two days since my last post, so let’s get back to my commentaries (I would love to be able to call them reviews, but I’m aware they’re just three paragraphs on my impressions of books!). Perfidia was a novel I quite literally dove into after reading a falling madly in love with L.A. Confidential. Probably owing to its size and bright red cover, my daughter tried to snatch it every time I opened it. She loved it a lot. Me, less so.

Being Ellroy, it’s obviously superbly written, fast-paced, witty, intriguing, intricate and all that. In addition, the exploration of the fictionalized shady dealings in the organization of internment camps for people of Japanese origins set-up in the US at the start of WWII is absolutely fascinating.

But there is a but: while I absolutely loved how Bernstein, Lana Turner, and plenty of other celebrities of the time (or their look-alikes!) appeared in L.A. Confidential and The Black Dhalia, I think that Ellroy goes too far with Bette Davis in Perfidia. An epic one-night stand with Dud Smith, sure, but making her such a focal point of the plot was just a bit excessive. And even in this case, I’m not quite sure how I feel about Ellroy re-using yet again so many of his characters: they remain awesome, but I found myself no longer as interested in their lives as I was in other books in which they appeared. 

The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky

One of the “big” books that I wanted to read during my wife and daughter’s prolonged stay in Brazil. I succeeded, but at times it was honestly quite hard.

The Idiot started off as possibly my favourite Dostoevsky novel, mostly because Lev is such a wonderful character (or maybe I’m biased and he’s actually just a 19^th century Russian version of Forrest Gump?), but after Part I the book just goes on and on a bit too much, and I actually often struggled to keep track of who the characters were (Aglaya and Nastasia in particular merged into one at multiple points).

It’s undeniably my fault to a very large extent – I should have put a more serious effort in reading the book instead of going through most of it during lulls at work (shh…) – but, for want of a better term, after 200 pages I just started to find the book a bit boring. And after dismissing a Dostoevsky novel with a banal word like “boring”, I have officially lost every credibility as a reader/blogger/pseudo-intellectual/human being…

Seta – Alessandro Baricco

A book that my wife received from one of my relatives some ten years or so – probably given to her because back then her Italian wasn’t yet absolutely faultless like it is now and/or because she had liked Novecento.

And I actually kind of liked it, which came to me as a rather big surprise. Not so much because I don’t normally like Baricco, but mostly because I’m often not too fond of the people who cite him as one of their favourite authors (unless they are 16 or less, in that case all, or at least some, is forgotten). Yes, I am an awful snob. I honestly have to admit that spending an hour reading this story (defining it a novella would be too much) was quite enjoyable. Yet, I don’t have that much to say – yes, the book was nice enough, but has the literary weight of its silkworms. 

A Clergyman’s Daughter – George Orwell

Another step in my quest to read all of Orwell’s novels (not because I love him or because they’re many, but because I have, well, his “complete novels”).

Orwell himself seems to have disliked A Clergyman’s Daughter, written at a time of financial difficulties and little literary inspiration. Oddly enough, I didn’t dislike it – compared to the dullness of Keep the Aspidistra Flying this was a welcome journey of self-discovery, and I did enjoy the writing (except for the chapter set in Trafalgar Square, the only one the author apparently found worth something).

This is not to say that I particularly liked the book though – I kept on thinking how (literally) miserable the hop pickers were compared to the peach pickers of Grapes of Wrath, and attacks on Christianity (despite my remarkable distance from it!) normally bore me to death, as in this case.  

The Human Stain – Philip Roth

A book that I picked up for a small donation from 1LoveCommunity in Canary Wharf – absolutely lovely place and a really, really, really good book. I saw the cinematic version of The Human Stain when I was still a teenager trying to woo my high-school crush with my intellectual profile. I thought the movie was average at best, and so was the high-school crush at the time.

The novel is objectively a very easy sell with me: an odd kind of “campus novel”, written by one of the greatest American Jewish writers of the 20^th century, with a fair bit of racial problems, Vietnam, family violence and mysterious pasts. It also has a lot of sex. Actually, a bit too much of that and of related overconfidence (or overcompensation?).

The Human Stain is probably as good an “American” novel as American Pastoral. At times Dean Silk appears a bit too eloquent and articulate, but then again he probably wouldn’t have been able to live a life like his without exceptional intellectual dexterity. The one thing that bothers me, though, is that I couldn’t picture Faunia as anyone other than Nicole Kidman (the actress who portrayed her in the movie) and I really don’t think she should have had her face. 

The House on Mango Street – Sandra Cisneros

I originally had no idea how this random book made its way onto my bookshelves. Turns out it was an old book my wife bought during her college days in the US, then brought down with her to Bolivia, was boxed and shipped to Brazil after her family moved there, and finally found its way to London after she went down to South America on an extended visit. The book has been around, and it shows – it’s covered with foxing stains and its pages seem to hold together by pure coincidence.

I had never heard of it (my bad, as usual, as a self-critical white European male) and had no expectations. Given its size, I figured I could read it during one of my daughters’ rare naps and, for once, did it without reading “around it” on the web beforehand. Judging by its cover, synopsis and vignette structure, I assumed the book would be raw, unpolished and rough, and the read would feel scattered and intermittent. And it was. But the book was also intriguing, well-written and, in a way, eye-opening.

So I’m really glad I invested little more than hour reading this. I have read very little non-white North American literature and this book was a very welcome change – I wouldn’t go as far as saying that it’s one of my favourite books, but, despite its frequent violence, it felt like a nice bit of fresh air. Oddly enough, I also think that some of its stylistic shortcomings (I’m not quite sure vignettes can make for great literature, for instance) were simultaneously some of its most interesting tracts. 

L.A. Confidential – James Ellroy

OK. Let’s get back to work (well, odd turn of phrase considering that I have been neglecting the blog for the last month and a half because of, well, work…)

L.A. Confidential has been sitting on my bookshelf (probably the last of my books from Books for Free in Stratford) for ages. Thing is, having watched the movie I felt like there was no need to rush to read the book. But, as often happens, I was wrong – the two are wildly different, something that is quite evident as soon as one starts to realize how intricate the novel’s plot actually is (and even then, it keeps on getting more and more intricate as the book progresses).

Ellroy is as self-assured as writers can get (reading his interviews at times I have the feeling that his ego might have trumped even Gore Vidal’s) but he might have a point, as I think he’s a better crime writer than Chandler, Hammett, or pretty much anyone else in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. His characters are cocky, witty, degenerate, ruthless, and yet not implausible. On top of that, real-life characters add a decadently classy touch to this Ellroy book (or any other work of his, really). And in the novel, Jack Vicennes comes into his own so much more than in the movie.

I loved the movie, but the book was of an even higher calibre – surely one of the best I’ve read so far in 2017 (one day I should do a yearly top-10…). Because of this I am now reading Perfidia, which might have been a bad decision, but more on that later…

Coming up for Air – George Orwell

Despite really liking 1984 (I was about to write “enjoying”, then realized it wasn’t the best of terms for the book!) I’ve never really been a fan of Orwell. Honestly, I’ve only read this book because a few weeks ago I picked up Penguin’s complete Orwell novels.

Turns out, I really did like Coming up for Air too. After the first few pages on the dullness of the main character’s life I thought I was in for another Keep the Aspidistra Flying (and that would have been a big, big disappointment), but I was wrong and this book is quite a lot more than that. The bleakness of the setting actually reminded me of Graham Greene’s It’s a Battlefield, and the novel is overall remarkably insightful in its observation on the impending Second World War.

I enjoyed both the flash-backs and the present-day narration, but the one issue I had was with the main character’s disillusion with the present and his attempts to go back to the good old values of early 20^th century rural England, because more often than not that’s the kind of person that would very much like to see me leaving the country. 

The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

With my wife and baby daughter gone for six weeks (!!) I decided this period was my best chance to read the thickest book I had on my shelves.

The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the most gripping books I’ve ever read – parts of it reminded me of Stevenson, others of Verne, and I suspect quite a few would have reminded me of Hugo (this remains only a suspicion because, erm, I’ve never actually read any Hugo). The vendetta is at times a bit too prolonged, and I would honestly differentiate between the degree of guilt of Fernando, Danglars, Villefort and Caderousse, but I don’t really hold Dantès responsible for the death of young Edourad de Villefort (much like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dantès plays no role in the outcome of this subplot).

However, for spellbinding that the book is, I really don’t think this is great literature. It’s honestly just a bit too easy to read and to follow (the only intimidating thing being the thickness of it in the end), I never got even remotely confused by the plot or by the characters in it. As one of my colleagues rightfully said, it’s probably just a book that used to be low-brow and that is now considered to be high-brow because of the passage of time and historical setting.  

Travels with Charley – John Steinbeck

A book that I read for my office’s book club – a clear step in the right direction, but still not a particularly good read (and the fact that I am labeling a book by Steinbeck in this way makes me want to hit myself!).

The problem for me is probably that there are so many works of fiction and non-fiction about travelling around the US that it’s so easy to make comparisons, and these don’t really favour Travels with Charley. If one sees this book as a fictionalized travel account, then it doesn’t come close to comparing to On the Road. If one sees it as a non-fiction description of Steinbeck’s travels as a self-styled bum (and I really don’t think you can consider yourself one when you are that successful and popular a writer!) then Jack London’s The Road is miles above.

Or maybe it’s just that I’m not that fond of dogs. Or that being married to a Latin American woman I’m bothered by the sub-header “In Search of America” for something that is only limited to the USA. Or even that I often found myself thinking how many of the manly men that he encountered on his journey would have voted Trump. 

Howard’s End – E. M. Forster

How I suffered. It’s not like any of this was unexpected (quite the opposite as, thanks to the help of Merchant-Ivory productions, the plot had very few surprises for me), but it’s all so heart-breaking. I very much like to identify with poor Mr Bast (it’s not as if I came from a poor family, but I am still the first kid to go to university, and went to another country – and LSE and Cambridge at that – and scrubbed dishes six nights a week for three years in order to pay my own expenses and feel like a pseudo-proletarian). Seeing him ultimately mistreated by people who (in some cases) mean well but fundamentally only see him as their own little project and not as, erm, a person, is just too much.

Sure, Charles will go to jail following Bast’s death, and his own kid (whom he will never meet) is going to inherit Howards End and be all posh – but that doesn’t even begin to make up for a stupid death under piles of books or the awfulness of not being in control of one’s own life because some do-gooders who are completely out of touch with reality secretly (or not so much at times) think that they know what’s best for everyone.

Being Forster, it’s obviously superbly written, but this story just gets me so very worked up!