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!

Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow

The first (and so far only) book I’ve ever bought from Skoob near Russell Square, and one that I got mostly because my dad remembers loving it but couldn’t recall a single element of the plot.

Sadly enough, this is a Bellow novel that I liked, but that’s about it. In many ways I didn’t think it was Jewish enough (compared to Mr Sammler’s Planet) or sufficiently innovative (compared to Herzog).

I found Renata to be hardly believable, and Citrine himself to be hardly likeable. Again, like the pickpocket in Mr Sammler’s Planet, the criminal Cantabile was for me the most interesting character in the story (and whenever he is around the book becomes immediately more interesting).

Or maybe I’m just overcritical because I don’t like how rich Citrine is and I got upset thinking that in the end everything worked out and that Humboldt really did leave him a great gift. 

In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

I actually had to wait for my wife and baby daughter to be quite literally on the other side of the planet (Brazil) before I could muster the strength and courage to read this book. And to think that when I was young I thought that Capote had just written Breakfast at Tiffany’s and nothing else…

The opening chapter was, for me, by far the hardest to read – not so much because of the brutality of the scenes (I was already quite familiar with the story), but because I was almost physically sick by the point Nancy’s friend found the first body and couldn’t stop thinking of Bobby Rupp (Nancy’s boyfriend) and what he must have experienced.

The rest of the book didn’t have many surprises, but it did end with the added (and for me really unexpected) drama of the stories of Lowell Lee Andrews, George York and James Latham – and all the people they killed before joining Perry and Dick on the death row – and that so nearly tipped me over the edge.

The House of Spirits – Isabel Allende

Am I being overly harsh or is this book simply not of the same standard as Paula? The answer is that maybe I’ve just completely outgrown magical realism (which is sad, because back in the day I had loved A Hundred Years of Solitude so very much).

I honestly think that, had it not been for Clara’s extra sensory abilities, I would have enjoyed the novel a lot more. And I would have probably also liked it better if the characters weren’t ultimately representations of various social and political groups (and periods) in Chilean history (the roman à clef as a genre often gets a bit on my nerves). And the fact that Allende also openly declares that Blanca never married Pedro Tercero because she didn’t love him enough just stings – the guy deserved better.

But then again, most of this probably applies only to 85% of the book, because from the moment Alba gets arrested the novel gains massively in literary, political and moral weight (although it’s really too bad that Allende picked the allegoric name of Alba/Dawn for the character that is meant to symbolize hope for the future – think outside the box!)

The Malayan Trilogy – Anthony Burgess

A book (well, actually three) that my mum gave me back in my teenage years. She asked me all smugly if I knew who Burgess was and, having just discovered Kubrick at the time, I had to disappoint (or impress?) her by saying that yes, I did know he was the guy who wrote A Clockwork Orange. After that pseudo high-brow cultural exchange, neither one of us read the trilogy for a good dozen years.

Turns out that the three books are just awesome. The atmosphere is very similar to that of many of my beloved Graham Greene novels, with a not-so-veiled critique of the white man and the wonders of colonization and “progress”. What I found particularly interesting is that the three books have a very different mood: Time for a Tiger is at times absolutely hilarious (and Nabby Adams and his love/dependence on warm beer is one of the best side-kicks I’ve ever come across), The Enemy in the Blanket is a much deeper exploration of love and envy than I thought I would encounter after reading the first book, and Beds in the East is the book that I would like all my students to read when they study the British decolonization process.

All in all, I probably enjoyed the book so much because Crabbe’s approach to colonialism reflects mine, and also because he goes out with a  bang (or a plop?) 

Una Vita Violenta – Pier Paolo Pasolini

My parents each had a copy of this book when they moved in together back in the 1980s and, thirty years later, realized they had no need for two copies in the same house so gave one of them to me (that said, they’re not even sure whether they read the novel or not!)

I did love Ragazzi di Vita, but I found Una Vita Violenta (which in many ways follows in its footsteps) to be of a whole other calibre. Whereas one grows to like the Riccetto in the former a bit less as the book goes on and he settles within “the system”, I actually fell in love with Tommaso more and more with each page (after feeling the intense desire to strangle him during his football match with kids half his size at the beginning of the book, I just felt the need to protect him from the evils of the world).

Sure, his political path is a bit too allegoric for me, but by the end of the book my nerves were completely shattered. I was glad he did not drown in the flood that hit his old neighbourhood, but the end is really no less devastating (and yet, it is the only way the book could/should have ended in order to be one of the great works of the Italian literature of the last century). 

Watership Down – Richard Adams

When I rescued this book from the “table of unwanted items” in my building it was more beaten up than Bigwig after his big showdown with General Woundwort. It was worth rescuing it. Not that, unsurprisingly, its state improved after being put in my bike bag and taken to work every day this week!

As an adventure book Watership Down is just great. It’s got tales of heroic bravery, suspense and friendship. From that point of view it ranks up there with Treasure Island, Around the World in 80 Days and The Lost World in terms of children’s (or at least young adults’) literature. The problem, though, is that, even in this case, I could have really done without magic and folklore: I didn’t care for the stories passed down from generation to generation of rabbits, and I would have liked Fiver a lot better had he not had extra-sensory perception!

Sure, only bucks appear to have a prominent role and does take very much the back seat, but I really don’t see it as too much of a problem and I don’t read too much of a macho message into it (maybe because I’m a man!). 

Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut

One of my latest Fopp acquisitions (actually strictly speaking my mom bought it for me…). After loving all the other Vonnegut novels and stories that I had read, the most I can say in this case is that Breakfast of Champions, despite being one of his most famous works, is alright (which I think is also how he felt about the novel himself).

Nothing more, nothing less. Alright. The book is not really a novel and neither it’s a long short story, and I can’t somehow push myself to label it a novella (it just doesn’t feel right). So, because of its felt pen drawings and its clear autobiographical traits I’ll just call it a gift that Vonnegut gave himself for his 50^th birthday, or maybe a literary way out of (or further into?) a mid-life crisis…

1934 – Alberto Moravia

Well, after being left totally indifferent by Gli Indifferenti I had to read another book by one of Italy’s most famous writers. And after all I did love so many of the movies taken from his works (La Ciociara, Il Conformista and Ieri, Oggi, Domani).

1934 is undeniably interesting, but I still didn’t find it that great a read. While a good literary device, the trick that is played on Lucio makes me suffer (I always empathize too much in these cases!) and I also found it rather improbable. Not to mention the fact that the many scenes of a sexual nature to me read mostly like the unfulfilled desires of a 75-year old man.

I also could have done with fewer philosophical passages on the meaning of life and love and more on the nature of Fascism. Also, I find it interesting that Moravia considers the year 1934 to be the 7^th of the Fascist stronghold on power, since most historians would make this start either in 1922 with the March on Rome or in 1926 with the “Leggi Fascistissime”, but maybe he referred to the Grand Council of Fascism becoming the Italian constitutional body in 1928. Pedantic, I know, but probably this is as close to a deep academic point I made in the last two years…

Cities of the Plain – Cormac McCarthy

Up until a couple of weeks ago, I only disliked McCarthy’s books when I found them too gratuitously violent (Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men). Sadly enough Cities of the Plain proved that on some rare occasions I might not fall in love with McCarthy’s novels because they can also be, well, average.

The prose is still great and the characters interesting if a bit boring in their stubbornness, but I have two problems with this book.

1. Was it all just about capitalizing on the success of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing? Cause I really saw no need to bring back John Grady and Billy (despite the fact that they are two of the characters that I loved most in history!) and pair them together – I want my cowboys to be allowed to ride on in the sunset and never be seen again at the end of books

2. John Grady survived countless attacks in the Mexican prisons in All the Pretty Horses and then gets essentially destroyed in a knife-fight by his dead lover’s pimp. Now, I understand hating your enemy affects your judgement (thanks Godfather II), but I seriously would have expected more from one of the coolest men ever…

Mr Sammler’s Planet – Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow is probably as underrated a Nobel Prize winner as any, and the fact that my second-hand bookshops very rarely have his books is undeniably a sad sign! But hey, luckily my parents had two copies of this novel (and Skoob near Russell Square had Humboldt’s Gift, which I will hopefully read soon).

Mr Sammler’s Planet is wonderful, witty and deep. It is also typically Jewish and New Yorker, which makes it an instant sell with me. For all the depth and likability of the protagonist, however, the two most interesting characters are the dying Elya (a perfect patient, and surely a very good doctor – if uninterested in his profession) and the stylish and mysterious pickpocket, whose bizarre decision to impress Sammler by showing him his member is for me one of the great creations of American literature. Speaking of great creations of American literature, though, it’s important to remember that nothing here matches Herzog’s graphomania…

And I could talk about Sammler’s experiences in WWII, but the book is ultimately about overcoming those (at least to me), so I won’t. Instead, I’ll say that this book mentions Ferdinand the Bull, without a doubt my favourite story between the ages of 3 and 6.