I never use the word love with regard to novels, but here it's necessary. This is an absolutely astonishing book. Every page possesses new wonders andI never use the word love with regard to novels, but here it's necessary. This is an absolutely astonishing book. Every page possesses new wonders and great literary pleasure. Philip Roth called it O'Brien's "masterpiece." High praise methinks. It's the most rewarding book I've read so far this year — except perhaps for Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry, also an Irish writer. BTW, O'Brien wrote this one while in her eighties....more
Just glanced at the opening. A strange over-voluble voice here, which may mitigate as we go. We'll see. Most notable were a few clunky metaphors, whicJust glanced at the opening. A strange over-voluble voice here, which may mitigate as we go. We'll see. Most notable were a few clunky metaphors, which I can't imagine ever seeing in Gardner's fiction. Reads like lecture transcripts. But as I say, this is just my first glance....more
Superb. A note to page 99 by Robert Chandler, the translator, emphasizes the novelty of this text, which the author last revised in 1964.
"Grossman wroSuperb. A note to page 99 by Robert Chandler, the translator, emphasizes the novelty of this text, which the author last revised in 1964.
"Grossman wrote Everything Flows at a time when there was almost no reliable published information on such topics as the Gulag, Collectivization, and the Terror Famine [Holodomor]. Given his dependence [solely] on oral sources, it is remarkable how little he has got wrong."
So the book is a feat of reportage as much as it is one of fictional narrative. It's part harrowing novel and part shattering exposé. The argument about how Lenin had to preserve the old system of slavery in Russia in order to advance the Revolution is fascinating.
"It is, indeed, tragic that a man who so sincerely loved Tolstoy and Beethoven should have furthered a new enslavement of the peasants and workers, that he should have played a central role in reducing to the status of lackeys — State lackeys — such outstanding figures of Russian culture as the writer Aleksey Tolstoy, the physical chemist Nikolay Semyonov, and the composer Dmitry Shostakovich. ¶ The debate begun by the supporters of Russian freedom was finally resolved. Once again, Russian slavery proved invincible." (p. 182)
And later: "Stalin united within him all the most ruthless traits of slave Russia." (p. 191)
Mr Llosa can write. I won't dispute that. But this is not a good novel for me for the following reasons. (1) The author has bitten off far more than hMr Llosa can write. I won't dispute that. But this is not a good novel for me for the following reasons. (1) The author has bitten off far more than he can chew in a mere 400 pages. The scope of the book is vast and too much feels rushed. He might have narrowed his scope, but alas he wants it all. Because of the enormous narrative breadth, this reader never got the level of satisfaction in the area of character development that he would have liked; there are so many characters and after a while they all seem to blur. (2) There is a rushed, headlong quality to the book, probably this is intentional but I do not like it. (3) I find the levels of Catholic motivation to be too much; probably for a Latin American reader these levels are just right. For these and other reasons I did not finish the book and give it two stars.
The book breaks into three stories: (1) that of Urania Cabral, set in the present day, when she returns to a now democratized Dominican Republic years after Trujillo's assassination to confront (torment) her father who was a "senator" (read crony) under the Benefactor; (2) that of Trujillo himself in the weeks before his assassination; and (3) that of the group of men, mostly young men, who will kill him.
The story Urania tells to her incapacitated father, who is now in a wheelchair, is most unsettling. Urania is visiting from New York City where she now lives. She has done extensive reading on the subject, now knows much about those dark mysterious years of her youth. For example, how Trujillo, habitually cuckolded his ministers. Urania spares her mute father none of it. She is so cruel.
Dictator Trujillo is a megalomaniac on the model of Stalin. He terrorized his own people for 31 years. In October 1937 he ordered the slaughter of about 20,000 Haitians in what came to be known as the Parsley Massacre. Typically, the US backed him as a bulwark against Communism. (Now where have we seen that pattern before? Chile, Iran, Vietnam, Cuba, and Korea spring to mind, to mention a few.)
Trujillo's a compulsive neat freak who seeks through personal cleanliness and punctilio a semblance of the moral standing he can never command. We first come across him undergoing his daily toilette with great care. Trujillo's story begins in 1961 some 16 months after a Pastoral Letter has been sent by the Vatican to the Catholic community in the Dominican Republic. Since then the Church has, Trujillo feels, harassed him from the pulpit for his flagrant human rights violations and turned the people against him. The two Catholic leaders responsible for this he imagines feeding alive to sharks, as he has so many other opponents.
The assassins's storyline is set on May 30, 1961, as they await the Generalissimo's car on a stretch of road. There are 4 of them in the car and as they wait there are flashbacks outlining the motivations of each. This is tedious.
In some ways The Feast of the Goat is a counterpart novel to Graham Greene's The Comedians. That excellent book--set in Haiti on the other side of Hispaniola in the 1960s when the corrupt Duvaliers were in power--is a model of narrative pacing and economy.
Merged review:
Mr Llosa can write. I won't dispute that. But this is not a good novel for me for the following reasons. (1) The author has bitten off far more than he can chew in a mere 400 pages. The scope of the book is vast and too much feels rushed. He might have narrowed his scope, but alas he wants it all. Because of the enormous narrative breadth, this reader never got the level of satisfaction in the area of character development that he would have liked; there are so many characters and after a while they all seem to blur. (2) There is a rushed, headlong quality to the book, probably this is intentional but I do not like it. (3) I find the levels of Catholic motivation to be too much; probably for a Latin American reader these levels are just right. For these and other reasons I did not finish the book and give it two stars.
The book breaks into three stories: (1) that of Urania Cabral, set in the present day, when she returns to a now democratized Dominican Republic years after Trujillo's assassination to confront (torment) her father who was a "senator" (read crony) under the Benefactor; (2) that of Trujillo himself in the weeks before his assassination; and (3) that of the group of men, mostly young men, who will kill him.
The story Urania tells to her incapacitated father, who is now in a wheelchair, is most unsettling. Urania is visiting from New York City where she now lives. She has done extensive reading on the subject, now knows much about those dark mysterious years of her youth. For example, how Trujillo, habitually cuckolded his ministers. Urania spares her mute father none of it. She is so cruel.
Dictator Trujillo is a megalomaniac on the model of Stalin. He terrorized his own people for 31 years. In October 1937 he ordered the slaughter of about 20,000 Haitians in what came to be known as the Parsley Massacre. Typically, the US backed him as a bulwark against Communism. (Now where have we seen that pattern before? Chile, Iran, Vietnam, Cuba, and Korea spring to mind, to mention a few.)
Trujillo's a compulsive neat freak who seeks through personal cleanliness and punctilio a semblance of the moral standing he can never command. We first come across him undergoing his daily toilette with great care. Trujillo's story begins in 1961 some 16 months after a Pastoral Letter has been sent by the Vatican to the Catholic community in the Dominican Republic. Since then the Church has, Trujillo feels, harassed him from the pulpit for his flagrant human rights violations and turned the people against him. The two Catholic leaders responsible for this he imagines feeding alive to sharks, as he has so many other opponents.
The assassins's storyline is set on May 30, 1961, as they await the Generalissimo's car on a stretch of road. There are 4 of them in the car and as they wait there are flashbacks outlining the motivations of each. This is tedious.
In some ways The Feast of the Goat is a counterpart novel to Graham Greene's The Comedians. That excellent book--set in Haiti on the other side of Hispaniola in the 1960s when the corrupt Duvaliers were in power--is a model of narrative pacing and economy....more
James is brilliantTry to reimagine The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with the “slave,” Jim, as narrator. Now he is known as James, and he is learned.
James is brilliantly realized. James speaks standard American English, but when around white people his talk becomes an ungrammatical slave vernacular. This vernacular, of course, is not a vernacular. It’s a mask James’s and his fellows in wretchedness put on to hide their intelligence from whitey. The device is not only funny, but it subverts almost every word here.
There are moving insights into the myriad brutalisms of slavery — and the sick white rationale for them. That’s good. We need to be reminded that for slaves there was no absolutely no recourse to rule of law. They were accosted for anything and everything: including imagined slights. For God help the slave who should even for an instant imply intellectual superiority to his or her “owner.”
The writing is lighter than air. It moves from wry amusement to harrowing action and back again within the space of a sentence or two. I’m especially impressed by Everett’s narrative zip. He has an enviable facility for brief sections and chapters. Each has its little narrative task —string them together for addictive narrative thrust.
The minstrelsy part has multilevel irony. On hearing him sing in a blacksmith's shop James is bought by a white minstrelsy troupe. He is the dressed in suit and tie and painted with blackface. So he is a black man painted in blackface so he can appear like a white man painted in blackface and sing for whites. As a black man he would not be allowed to perform with white men (in blackface).
To enliven my flimsy description of this excellent novel, I’ve included a link to the true story of Leonard Black, a Maryland-based “slave” who fled to Canada in 1837....more
A tale of enormous narrative power about military exploits and love. It's an absolute heartbreaker. The narrator is Persian eunuch and great beauty, BA tale of enormous narrative power about military exploits and love. It's an absolute heartbreaker. The narrator is Persian eunuch and great beauty, Bagoas, who acts as Alexander's valet, adviser and lover. In this novel Alexander is an optimist and a gentleman. He sees his wars as making the world a better place. He is a young man whom we see ever so gradually worn down by duty, grief and injury. Somewhere it is said that he lived multiple lives in the span a normal man would have lived only one. In the end, the intensity with which he lives is impossible, unsustainable, reckless — even for someone held to be part divine. The recurring motif here is Homer's Achilles, half man and half god. I encourage you, prospective reader, not to think of the book as mere historical fiction. It transcends genre; it's literary fiction of considerable merit. It's tonally masterful and utterly gripping. I wish I could say how it's done. Staggering....more
—Brilliant and exciting. A literary thriller but not a novel of action, more a contemplative thriller. The description is super vivid (48 fps), and th—Brilliant and exciting. A literary thriller but not a novel of action, more a contemplative thriller. The description is super vivid (48 fps), and the images pop.
—The novel starts well if you like the unrelievedly dark, as I do. McCarthy is word drunk in the best sort if way. His characters so far are all working stiffs. (A nice break from the billionaire greed so prevalent these days.) From this black background emerges some funny stuff too. Just absolutely hilarious passages usually voiced by Bobby's friends. Novel proceeds mostly as dialog.
—One scene is of a cool day on the Gulf within view of the coast. Bobby Western sits in the cabin of a tender drinking tea; he wears a wet suit. A private jet lies forty feet below the surface in Gulf waters. The Oiler is already down there cutting the door open with acetylene. Western puts on his diving equipment, tanks, fins, mouthpiece and jumps in. Western arrives just as the Oiler opens the aircraft's door. Inside are well-dressed corpses, a few wearing stylish Italian shoes; seven strapped in passengers, and two pilots. After a cursory examination Western and the Oiler go up to the tender whereupon all manner of questions arise about where the jet came from: who the passengers might be, why the plane has been under for what seems like three days, etc.
—We know the sister, Alice, through flashbacks. Her hallucinations are not chronological. In the scene at the start of the book she is older and planning her suicide. The language of her prime hallucination, The Thalidomide Kid is very high flown. (You may remember another Kid from Blood Meridian.) In a later sequences she's younger and still in school, In these scenes The Kid speaks more or less like everyone else. I wondered about that and it hit me — this is supposition at this point — that when the sister is older, and on the verge of self-destruction, she is crazier and thus her hallucinations are more disturbing, the Kid's lingo so absurdly rich, which may be why she plans to die by her own hand.
In another section, in what seems like an homage to the poet John Berryman, a character from his The Dream Songs, Mr. Bones, springs from those poems to entertain Alice. You might say the author was indulging in magic realism until you learn that the sister is in fact discussing her hallucinations with two note takers, presumably shrinks.
—Text sometimes dips quite startlingly into the Joycean, the Beckettian. This is a novel of at times intense narrative pleasures. Some Hemingway like passages too especially as Bobby walks around the streets of New Orleans, eats, sleeps, wakes up in the dead of night when it's not so easy to be hard boiled about things as it is during the day.
"In his dreams of her she wore at times a smile he tried to remember and she would say to him almost in a chant words he could scarcely follow. He knew that her lovely face would soon exist nowhere save in his memories and in his dreams and soon after that nowhere at all. She came in half nude trailing sarsenet or . . . or she would push back the cowl of her robe and her blonde hair would fall about her face as she bent to him where he lay in the damp and clammy sheets and whisper to him I'd have been your shadowlane, the keeper of that house alone wherein your soul is safe. And all the while a clangor like the labor of a foundry and dark figures in silhouette about the alchemic fires, the ash and the smoke. The floor lay littered with the stillborn forms of their efforts and still they labored on, the raw half-sentient mud quivering red in the autoclave. In that dusky penetralium they press about the crucible shoving and gibbering while the deep heresiarch dark in his folded cloak urges them on in their efforts. And then what thing unspeakable is this raised dripping up through crust and calyx from what hellish marinade. He woke sweating and switched on the bedlamp and swung his feet to the floor and sat with his face in his hands. Dont be afraid for me, she had written. When has death ever harmed anyone?" (p. 184)
—Turns out that one of the jet's passengers is missing. Well, how could that be? Didn't we see Oiler cut the door open? How could have anyone gotten out? We don't know who the passenger is or where he or she has gone. But strange men looking like G-men arrive at Bobby's rental late one night and begin questioning about the wreck. This is when he learns a passenger is missing. He moves out that night into a suicide's room above a bar. He feels more than knows he's being followed. Then one day his money in the bank is attached by the IRS, despite the fact that he owes no taxes. He hires a detective...
— I find the JFK content boring. It's like an unwelcome condensation out of Oswald's Tale. Fortunately the digression is brief. But don't let that dissuade you. See my first paragraph....more
The feuilletons are interesting. Most were written during Walser's late twenties and early thirties in Berlin. If they pale they do so because of a reThe feuilletons are interesting. Most were written during Walser's late twenties and early thirties in Berlin. If they pale they do so because of a relentless Berlin boosterism. In fairness, one must say that this is what Berlin's newspapers editors buying and the always impecunious Walser found himself able to supply. Even "The Little Berliner" suffers from this obsession, but that story, written in the voice of a twelve-year-old girl, is more assured and tonally solid and seems to transcend the feuilleton formula. The story is so good in fact that it put me in mind of Walser's four fine novels, and his wonderful Selected Stories, the volume introduced by Susan Sontag. Otherwise the book is a bit of historical and biographical piece work. Essential for the Walser completist, but not the place to start reading him....more
It's about the coming into being of an Irish police state. There's been an "emergency" decree. People associated with a teachers' union march start toIt's about the coming into being of an Irish police state. There's been an "emergency" decree. People associated with a teachers' union march start to disappear. As far as I can tell it's set in Dublin, which is never named.
Americans will read it as the playbook to be used should Florida Felon win in November. The perversion of state institutions, the lie that is now truth, the facile grab for power.
Those in Hungary and other authoritarian states, or prospectively authoritarian states, will no doubt have their local take too. So it has broad appeal.
The jackboots march, but many won't believe it, or can't believe it. Society and family holds people in place. It's no time to be obtuse; it's time to flee.
"The state is supposed to leave you alone, Michael, not enter your house like an ogre, take a father into its fist and gobble him, how can I even begin to explain this to the kids, that the state they live in has become a monster?" (p. 37)
I find the comma splices annoying—not sloppy, intentional but annoying. And I'm no maven. Run on dialog without quotes, too, but surprisingly readable....more
I. B. Singer's first novel. It was first serialized in the Jewish Daily Forward in the late 1940s. This English translation appeared in 1950. Singer'sI. B. Singer's first novel. It was first serialized in the Jewish Daily Forward in the late 1940s. This English translation appeared in 1950. Singer's style is reminiscent of Tolstoy, but not in slavish imitation. He's unique.
Heading an enormous cast is the old man Meshulam Moskat. Richer than Croesus and in his 80s, he has just returned from taking the waters at Carlsbad with a 3rd wife. It's some years before World War 1. Moskat has put his children in charge of collecting his rents — and he hates them for being dependent upon him. He is a horrible, bitter, egomaniacal old fuck. And yet he's the head of this huge clan who gather around him thinking about their inheritance. But the joke is on them because he dies without a will. The greedy scramble afterward is not pretty.
A theme in The Family Moskat is the split between religious (Hassidim) and secular (assimilated) Jews. Asa Heshel, grandson of a prominent rural rabbi, reads Spinoza and comes to Warsaw for further study. A daughter being pressured into an arranged marriage, Hadassah, runs away from the family home with Heshel. Their flight to Switzerland fails. Hadassah is returned to her scandalized family by the police after several days in prison. Heschel, stuck in Switzerland, marries the wrong woman.
An extraordinarily strong sense of community arises from persecution. When Marilynn Robinson writes about Christian folks, or when Naguib Mahfouz writes his Muslim characters, there is no similar sense of danger because they are writing about largely unmixed societies.
One of my favorite things about Singer's novels is his deep knowledge about the rituals and traditions of Judaism. Not surprising, I suppose, when you learn he came from a family of rabbis. You get both the cultural richness and the petty vindictiveness and everything between. Here we are in a Polish prayerhouse before World War I:
"They came to the antechamber, stopping to wash their hands at the copper urn, and went into the prayerhouse. A candle flickered in the Menorah. The pillars that enclosed the reader's stand threw elongated shadows. The shelves around the walls were packed with books. Some of the students were still bent over the tables, reading in the dim light. Worshippers paced back and forth, softly chanting. A youth swayed fervently in a corner. Near the Ark was a framed inscription in red: 'God is always before me.' On the cornice of the Ark two carved gilded lions held up the Tablets of the Law. There was a heavy odor that seemed to Asa Heshel to be compounded of candle wax, dust, fast days, and eternity. He stood silent." (p. 237)
I love it when the characters are walking around pre-war Warsaw, and the reader gets all this description of a city that for the most part no longer exists: the neighborhoods, streets, buildings, public parks and street life. The following is from the scene in which Hadassah runs away from her family and her arranged marriage to be with her true love, Asa Heshel.
"The evening was coming on when they left the coffee house. They passed the prison at the corner of Nalevki and Dluga and went along Rymarska Street and the Platz Bankovy. On the Iron Gate Square the street lamps were already burning. A cold wind came from the direction of the Saxon Gardens. Tramcars rolled along. Crowds of people thronged the market stalls. Hadassah held Asa Heshel's arm tightly as though afraid she might lose him. Farther along, at the bazaars, stall-keepers presided over mounds of butter, huge Swiss cheeses, bundles of mushrooms, troughs of oysters and fish. The torchlights were already ablaze. They passed a slaughterhouse. Floodlights blazed in the building. Porters with hoses were swishing water on the stone floor. Slaughterers stood near blood-filled granite vats, slitting the necks of ducks, geese, and hens. Fowl cackled deafeningly. The wings of a rooster, its throat just slit, fluttered violently. Hadassah pulled at Asa Heshel's sleeve, her face deathly white. A little farther on, in the fish market, stood tubs, barrels, and troughs. In the stale-smelling water, carp, pike, and tench swam about. Beggars sang in quavering voices, cripples stretched out stumps of arms. Away from the glare of the lights inside, the darkness of the court was intensified." (p. 158)
I know of no other novel that shows us so plainly what we have lost. The rabbis and elders fear the Jewish way of life will soon be destroyed. They are correct, but their downfall will not be effected by the Most High as a punishment for secularization, rather it will be carried out by Nazis about to enter the scene.
The characters are so vibrantly realized. There are scenes of great religiosity in which the core of the characters never wanes. One Sabbath scene is pure ecstatic joy. This scene marks the return of Asa Heshel to Warsaw after five years of war. He was in the Czar's army and lived through the Bolshevik Revolution. Asa travels from house to house and is greeted with a Sabbath celebration in each. I wish I could better describe the sheer scope of the book, both its big-heartedness and its moments of gravity, but that's beyond me. That said, this excellent novel is not Singer's best. It has a tendency toward melodrama, sometimes very amusing melodrama — Singer had a gift for humor — but grave moments of doubt and personal danger too.
Superb. Smith is capable of writing dialogue for anyone; regardless of background, she brings them to life. This is mastery, no question. She creates Superb. Smith is capable of writing dialogue for anyone; regardless of background, she brings them to life. This is mastery, no question. She creates these group scenes: multiple characters all talking at once, or seeming to, yet the narrative thread is pulled neatly through. To think she published this 450-pager when she was 24! It's clear she's learned much from Martin Amis — particularly from The Information. That's not a criticism; every novelist has his or her models. Anyway, and this is hardly breaking news, but a dazzling first novel. Halfway through it hit me, there's not a single male character here who isn't a loony. Henri de Montherlant famously said happiness writes white. Zadie Smith surprisingly refutes that claim in several passages of this wonderful book. I'm on to On Beauty next. It's rare to find someone who makes you eager to read their entire oeuvre....more
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