A 31% Review.

Is it ever OK to review a book after having read 31% of it?  I don't think this falls under the purview of Pierre Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, but I couldn't say, because I haven't read it.  Certainly when you've read enough of a book that the will to finish it is vanquished by the desire to no longer be subjected to it, you have made a de facto judgment.  The judgment to stop, in this case was the right one, but what about the decision to start it?

I discovered in February that I had, all on my own, already read 5 of the 16 books that would be participating in the Morning News' 2009 Tournament of Books.  I was excited!  In the past, I'd stumbled upon the tournament in medias res, or after it was ended, or I'd not really been interested in the competitors.  But this year I had several horses in the race, most notably, the best book I've read in years, Netherland by Joseph O'Neill (guess I outed my zombie vote there), and I would actually be able to have informed opinions about many of the results and might even discover a book or two that I'd like to read.  Imagine how pleased I was when The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, mewling usurper of the 2008 Man Booker, pathetic Prince John to Netherland's Richard I, Coeur de Lion, was overtaken in the first round by the hitherto unknown to me Harry, Revised. 

Rereading the judges' and commentators' views of Harry, Revised in Rounds One and Two again after I've read as much of the book as I'm going to has me wondering what bad judgment call got me to read the book in the first place?  Cautionary comments are abundant:  first round judge Jonah Lehrer bemusedly says, of the eponym Harry Rent, "he doesn’t like the Monte Cristo, even though he orders it every time",  commentator Kevin Guilfoile certainly mentions the prostitutes that the author innovatively and ingeniously has Harry visit, and second round judge David Rees is so torqued off by the book and the unsatisfying end, he presents us with a "transcript" of his talk to his therapist about it.  Now, who in their right mind doesn't like a Monte Cristo?  That's a huge red flag!  It's like Robert Shaw as Red Grant ordering red wine to go with the sole on the train to Zagreb in From Russia With Love.  Connery's Bond was INSTANTLY alerted that something was up, and I should have been too. 

After all of this evidence that this book was to be avoided (and the growing suspicion that knocking White Tiger out in the first round was a cynical contrarian manouver), as Eliza Doolittle says, this is "what done 'er in":

"Despite a few too many allusions to Dumas—Harry models himself on the Count of Monte Cristo—Sarvas does an admirable job of fleshing out a 19th-century narrative skeleton with some pitch-perfect descriptions of 21st-century Los Angeles and its denizens, from the Brentwood podiatrist to the diner waitress."

So, you got me thinking some Flaubert-Dumas hybrid set in current LA is what we're dealing with here, and I am supposed to have the mental wherewithal withstand the power of that suggestion?  I am supposed to know that just because you slap a faux iconic Penguin's Classics cover with a Jacques-Louis Davidesqe portrait (evoking the fevered image of Kleist or Constant) over the protagonist's head on your book cover, that it's marketing and it actually has nothing to do with your book whatsoever?  "Pitch-perfect descriptions of 21st century Los Angeles and it's denizens"...?  Only if that denizen is a benighted Michael Scott type 40 lbs later (who has the stunning originality to think, just like every other middle aged man ever in the history of all time that his salvation lies in sex with someone in their early 20s) who escapes one contrived situation only to fall neatly into an even bigger stew.  Kinda like The Hot Rock.  Michael Scott in The Hot Rock I like (great premise...i just came up with that right now!), but not when you're sold on Adolphe for the 21st century.

I DID IT! (rated 3 stars)

Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club)

by Leo Tolstoy

The day I never thought would come is finally here. Today I closed Anna Karenina FOREVER! The force-fed nightmare is over. While there were certainly beautifully written passges (helped by the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation, no doubt) I can’t ever imagine reading this book ever again. I will say the scene at the horse races was lyrical and sparked the imagination. And when Levin went on the hunting trip with Stiva, the natural descriptions made me feel as if I was there. But my brain was so choked by the extended description of Russian provincial politics at approximately page 600, I put the book down for a month and wouldn’t touch it. Way to throw a wrench into whatever plot momentum this thing had, Count Lev. 

At that point, knowing the fate of the heroine anyway, I couldn’t help wondering what could possibly be so important that we had to delay the climax for still another 200 pages. As I recall the upshot of those provincial elections was that….Levin was so confused by all the political doublespeak that he a) didn’t understand the voting process, and b) forgot who he was supposed to vote for anyway. So I made it through all that for absolutely no pay off whatsoever. Dear Tolstoy, allow me to quote Tim Gunn: I can’t want you to succeed more than you do! If the (secondary) main character can’t be bothered to understand it all—WHY SHOULD I? The only redeeming event in those final infernal pages were the descriptions of Anna’s internal emotional break down. I just kept thinking, “Yes, that’s just like a woman.” But that did not take up 200 pages. I persevered to say I had done it, but I would not recommend it.  

This fall, when I began Anna Karenina, I was excited by the announcement of the new Pevear-Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace, but at this point I don't know if I could do the slog.  Maybe a 4 pages a day program, but right now I don't know if I have the strength.

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A review of "The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel"

The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel

by Louis Bayard

I am really in a slump here people. I am apparently plagued with the ability to pick out books with great premises that are never brought to fruition. This is what, the third book in a row that I made 3/4 of the way through and didn’t finish? I’m starting to think it’s not them, it’s me…nah, it’s them. The plot has a great set up in the beginning: cadet Edgar Allan Poe is brought in to help solve a twisted murder at the US naval academy crica 1830. Then for the rest of the book, nothing happens. There is no trail of clues to follow, and only one vilain to consider (well, maybe two). Instead we are punished by extended authorial excercises in character voice. Edgar Allan Poe as written couldn’t be more of a linguistically ostentatious twit. Less talky, more plotty, ok?

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A review of "The Janissary Tree: A Novel"

The Janissary Tree: A Novel

by Jason Goodwin

This book started out promisingly. It’s abundantly clear that the author has a profound knowledge of Turkish history and culture and a light comic touch when it comes to characterization. Unfortunately, the plot, although interesting enough at first, was hampered by the choice (and I don’t know if it was authorial or editorial) of using very short chapters that always ended with a dramatic cliffhanger, but were followed by a new chapter that involved different settings and characters. A little of this is usually alright, but used with such consistency here it had the effect of confusing me and making me forget where the action had left off once returned to a scene. It reminded me of reading the Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, which was first serialized in a magazine before being published in book form. There Collins had to use cliffhangers so readers would buy the next issue. Here, the technique just made me feel manipulated. With with 80 pages to go, I realized that I really didn’t care whodunnit or why, which abruptly put an end to this visit to Istanbul.

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A review of "Tinisima"

Tinisima

by Elena , Poniatowska

Tina Modotti is a fascinating 20th century character whose life was stranger than fiction. Elena Poniatowska, journalist and author, allegedly spent 10 years researching Modotti, and this novel is the fruit of that labor. It’s difficult to understand why she chose to write a novel instead of a biography. Her training as a journalist is evident throughout this book, much to its detriment. Modotti’s life is intricately plotted: first she did this, then she did that. We get a well-researched timeline of events that would be laudable in biographical form, but we never quite come to understand Modotti.

Why would such a vibrantly voluptuous spirit, the center of bohemian Mexico in the 1920s, who tried so hard to create beautiful forms in both art and life consciously subsume and excise all remnants of her unique personality from her life to become a drab gray Comintern agent, abandoning her appearance and her art? Why would she go from a sybaritic plethora of male admirers to obsessing over a pro-Stalinist assassin that just couldn’t be bothered to pay her attention? How was her automatic love of mankind and the idealism it engendered tricked and blinded by the evils committed in the name of Communism? If there were no answers to these questions to be found in all Poniatowska’s biographical research, than certainly a novel might be the ground for examining these questions. It would allow the author to venture with imagination to answer what is left unknown. But Poniatowska creates a Modotti so opaque that psychological understanding becomes impossible.

Modotti crosses paths with hundreds of people in this book. The work is peppered with names of people that are just randomly inserted, possibly to give events context but without context of their own, making it impossible to tell to the reader if a) the person is fictional or b) the person really existed. I get the feeling that most of the people named were real, however Poniatowska gives next to no information about them, so their addition becomes blather. Additionally, as there is no internal examination of Modotti herself, there is no examination of her interaction with these people that would help us understand anything about them. Weston did this, Mella did that, Rivera said this, Vidali went here…we don’t know why, they just did, and we stop caring. I couldn’t be bothered to finish the book with 50 pages to go.

I’m sure Modotti’s life would make a fascinating biography. That’s what I should have read instead of this.

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A review of "Passionate Minds: The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment, Featuring the Scientist Emilie du Chatelet, the Poet Voltaire, Sword Fights, Book Burnings, Assorted Kings,"

Passionate Minds: The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment, Featuring the Scientist Emilie du Chatelet, the Poet Voltaire, Sword Fights, Book Burnings, Assorted Kings,

by David Bodanis

Emilie du Chatelet is a wonder of nature that sent her lover Voltaire into depression because she was SMARTER than him and he knew it. She didn’t try to show him up, she just was who she was. Where has this book been all my life, and how did I just hear about her for the first time. She’s my new #1 Girl Power Icon. Queen Elizabeth I, your majesty, after a 18 year reign over my heart, you’re bumped to #2.

And, amongst her other lovers, the Duc du Richelieu, aka the basis for Valmont in Choderlos de Laclos’ Liaisons dangereuses. DING DONG! If you’re a big 18th century ho like me, you’ll luvvvvvv this.

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That's Enough For Me.

Naked in the Marketplace: The Lives of George Sand

by Benita Eisler

This was a slim biography, easily digestible, not a large scholarly tome, which is a blessing and a curse. My criticisms for the author mainly come from the format. We learn (a summary of) what she knows, but not HOW she knows it. There is a small notes section at the end corresponding to minimal (less than five) footnotes throughout the text. Now believe me, I am not demanding the kind of intricate note system that has you keeping a finger in the notes section so you can jump back and forth between the text and the additional information at the back of the book. But it would be nice to know when she concludes, for example, that Sand’s father Dupin was not her biological father, whether that is authorial conjecture or common knowledge (at least amongst Sand scholars). For that fact there is no footnote, no way of following the scholarly trail, nothing. There is no doubt in my mind that Ms. Eisler is VERY knowledgeable about her subject, but her choice to largely remove her authorial imprint from the text has a novice “Sandiste” like me wondering how authoritative the work is.

I have long been interested in George Sand, but this is the first biography I have read about her. It will probably be my last, mainly because of Ms. Sand herself. I have a problem with people that absolutely live the life they want to live (at the expense of children) and then blame “class” and “society” when they themselves persist in behaving in a way that always end in drama and sadness.

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Bizarre Love Triangle

All for Love: A Novel

by Dan Jacobson

I’ve often heard it said that one’s ability to take responsibility for one’s own actions is the highest indicator of self-esteem. Don’t tell that to the protagonists of this book. Certainly we the readers are entertained by their devastating choices, but it’s their inability to relent in the pursuit of the inevitable consequences that fascinates. I can only liken the behavior of these people to the current exploits of Britney Spears. However, I don’t think Ms. Spears is as enamored with the acting out of the dramatization of her own saga as much as Princess Louise and her erstwhile lover Mattachich. Once on top of the world, Britney is insistent on degrading herself, but in the pursuit of pleasure. For the lovers of this historical novel, pleasure never really comes into it.

I believe the book’s titular “love” was never part of their endgame (sorry to disappoint!). They are two united pilgrims of imagination, seeking to discover what lies beyond the strictures of class in Hapsburg Vienna. Once they find it, puzzlingly, they don’t stop. They continue on in an intractable gyre of indigence and affliction of their own making, only ending, in this life at least, in death. While on the one hand the reader marvels at their brazen, obscene commitment to finish what they audaciously start, one cannot help but ponder, was it all worth it?

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A review of "The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles"

The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles

by Martin Gayford

The precision with which this book is written is very impressive. There is so much detail in this book, the author presents us with the type of house linens that Vincent purchased to decorate the Yellow House in Arles. He can describe the contents of the house even to what pictures were hanging on which walls, and what chair was placed where. But the details don’t override the narrative. I knew next to nothing about van Gogh before reading this. I knew what everyone knows. He cut his ear off, and he painted sunflowers.

Who knew that Vincent was a bigtime reader, and even possibly a synesthete? Literature was as important to his work as color, but you’d never guess it just by looking at their subject matter. The author of this book teases out the influences and the symbolism behind his works. Yes, SYMBOLISM. And even though Vincent’s references may have been obscure, the author easily connects the dots for us. He can be my Art History 101 prof any time.

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