CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Dostoevsky’s 1866 novel poses interesting questions. Can an extraordinary person murder an inferior person and avoid punishment? Is this exceptional individual above the law? Didn’t he do humanity a good deed by eliminating a useless being? As Arte Johnson on Laugh-In would say…”Very interesting”. Throughout this psychoanalytically (wow,18 letters) driven novel, I wondered why the main character, Rodion Romanovich, a.k.a Rodia, (characters have many different names in this novel) committed murder in the first place. Was it Czar Alexander ll’s fault? Maybe he created a lot of confusion when he set the serfs free and abolished capital punishment, while on the flip side his infamous Secret Police sent thousands to Siberia. There had to be much perplexity and chaos with all the political changes. Since the Czar was encouraging University studies, I’m confused why Rodia and his friend, Dmitri Prokofich, a.k.a. Razumikhin, dropped out of school. Change in government was still decades away since Lenin was only four years old at the time of this book’s publication. I’m also confused why Rodia, as poor as he was, felt superior to begin with. Sigmund Freud stated in the notes on page 525, “Dostoevsky cannot be understood without psychoanalysis...he illustrates it himself in every character and every sentence.” This novel is about the foolhardy journey of a psychopath in czarist Russia stalked by the cynical Porfiry Petrovich (Russia’s answer to Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot?). What a book!

I say what a book, but sometimes I think that I’m reading a play. I love the sidebar expressions from some of the characters; such as, “he-he-he!” (Porfiry Petrovich and Peter Petrovich), “cough-cough-cough” (Katerina Ivanovna), or “poof-poof-poof!” (Amalia Ivanovna). Is this a acting devise, or what? Did I say that I loved this book? What I love the most is that I can misspell names and no one would be the wiser. But the main question is still what made Rodia axe Aliona Ivanovna (a lot of people in this story with similar names), a sleazy pawnbroker, to death? And subsequently her domineered sister, Lizaveta, who happened to walk into the murder scene. And why did Rodia instantly become sick and feverish throughout the remaining pages. This is truly a case for Freud. This is not the only psychoanalytical question. What’s going through the head of Peter Petrovich Luzhin, who is engaged to Rodia’s dirt poor sister, Dunia, a.k.a. Avdotia Romanovna, when he gets into a argument with Rodia and later tries to frame a poor street walker and semi-friend of Rodia, Sonia, with stealing a hundred ruble note from him? And what about the somewhat lovable drunken father of Sonia’s, Marmeladov, who says to Rodia in a pub on page seventeen (referring to his wife), “Such is my trait! Do you know, sir, do you know, I have sold her very stockings for drink? ...her mohair shawl I sold for drink.” As a government clerk (only God knows what that is), Marmeladov had a responsible job. Yet, what made him leave a pub in a drunken state and seemingly commit suicide by stepping in front a horse drawn coach?

While Rodia is in his feverish state, his doctor, Zossimov and his friend, Razumikhin, notice that Rodia gets interested and excited only when the talk is about the murder and who did it. As he grieves over his guilt, he seems ready to fess up to the murders. Once when he is called to the police station (it’s only about his overdue rent), and once when he runs into a clerk from the police station at a restaurant. He obviously wants to confess, but doesn’t know how to. Then he gets his second wind and says on page 182, “Life is real! Haven’t I lived just now? My life has not died with that old woman! The Kingdom of Heaven to her-and now leave me in peace!” Rodia now wants his pledges (pawned items) back, and since his friend (Razumikhin) is a relative of the lawyer in charge of the murder case, Porfiry Petrovich, he goes to the police station for an interview with the skeptical and cynical Porfiry. It seems that Porfiry suspects Rodia is the murderer. Let the cat and mouse game begin. On page 241, Porfiry says to Rodia, ...“I heard that too (about not being well). I heard, in fact, that you were in great distress about something. You look pale still.” In which Rodia replies, “I am not pale at all...No I am well again.” Really? Then it gets real interesting when Porfiry tells Rodia about an article Rodia wrote while in school, “There is, if you remember, a suggestion that there are certain persons who can...that is, not precisely are able to, but have a perfect right to commit breaches of morality and crimes, and the law is not for them.” Is this good stuff, or what?

There are two other characters that I would like to mention. The first one is Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov, who appears early in the book as the employer of Rodia’s sister, Dunia, who is working for him and his wife as a governess for the children. Since Dunia rejected his sexual advances, he has her fired and spreads the rumor that she was after him sexually. It’s later found to be untrue, but severe damage has been done to her reputation. After Arkady’ wife dies, the degenerate reappears in the book looking to cause more problems for Dunia and Rodia. And I loved the conversations from the landlord, Andrei Semionovich Lebeziatnikov, who espouses an early communistic commune life (remember this book was published in 1866) way before Lenin. Dostoevsky’s blockbuster was a prototype of what this reviewer considers a classic novel. Don’t ask me how it ended, because you need to read this book!   

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: The last book Dostoevsky wrote was his famous, The Brothers Karamazov. goodreads.com says, “The Brothers Karamazov, completed in November 1880 just two months before Dostoyevsky's death, displays both his mastery as a storyteller and his significance as a thinker. In this volume, Dr. Leatherbarrow shows that far from being merely a philosophical religious tract, The Brothers Karamazov is an enjoyable and accessible novel. He discusses its major themes, including atheism and belief, the nature of man, socialism and individualism, and the state of European civilization, focusing particulary on those themes of justice, order and disorder, in whose revolutionary treatment he sees the real significance of this literary landmark.”

Here are some quotes about Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment from noted scholars:
"...the only psychologist from whom I have anything to learn." - Nietzsche (1887)

"Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss." - Albert Einstein

  "So great is the worth of Dostoevsky that to have produced him is by itself sufficient justification for the existence of the Russian people in the world: and he will bear witness for his country-men at the last judgement of the nations." - Nikolay Berdyaev (1923)

  "...a prophet of God," and "mystical seer." - Vladimir Solvyov (1883)

  "He lived in literature." - Konstantin Mochulsky

  "Dostoevsky is finished. He will no longer write anything important." - Nekrasov (1859)

  "Russia's evil genius" - Maxim Gorky (1905)

  "...the Shakespeare of the lunatic asylum" - Count Melchoir de Vogue (1848-1910)

  "A sick, cruel talent" - Nikolay Mikhailovsky (1882)

  "Dostoevsky preaches the morality of the pariah, the morality of the slave." - Georg Brandes (1889)

  "...an author whose Christian sympathy is ordinarily devoted to human misery, sin, vice, the depths of lust and crime, rather than to nobility of body and soul" and described Notes from Underground as "...an awe- and terror-inspiring example of this sympathy." - Thomas Mann

  "Dostoevsky was human in that 'all too human' sense of Nietzsche. He wrings our withers when he unrolls his scroll of life." and "Dostoevsky had virtually to create God -- and what a Herculean task that was! Dostoevsky rose from the depths and, reaching the summit, retained something of the depths about him still." and "Dostoevsky is chaos and fecundity. Humanity, with him, is but a vortex in the bubbling maelstrom." -Henry Miller

  Joseph Conrad described The Brothers Karamazov as "... an impossible lump of valuable matter. It's terrifically bad and impressive and exasperating. Moreover, I don't know what Dostoevsky stands for or reveals, but I do know that he is too Russian for me. It sounds like some fierce mouthings of prehistoric ages."

  "He who gets nearer the sun is leader, the aristocrat of aristocrats, or he who, like Dostoevsky, gets nearest the moon of our non-being." - D.H. Lawrence

  Kenneth Rexroth once described Dostoevsky as a "man of many messages, a man in whom the flesh was always troubled and sick and whose head was full of dying ideologies--at last the sun in the sky, the hot smell of a woman, the grass on the earth, the human meat on the bone, the farce of death"

Turgenev on Dostoevsky:”...the nastiest Christian I’ve ever met.”

“Dostoevsky wrote of the unconscious as if it were conscious; that is in reality the reason why his characters seem ‘pathological’, while they are only visualized more clearly than any other figures in imaginative literature...He was in the rank in which we set Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe.” - Edwin Muir  

Was this writer ahead of his time, or what?

Picture of Fyodor Dostoevsky:

The City of Ember

This is a guest review from my eleven year old grandson, Kai Ohlarik:

An underground city built for unknown reasons is dying.The storerooms are empty. The generator is breaking down.The only hope is to escape, but according to the city's knowledge, Ember is the only light in a dark world.

Lina and Doon have hope. Lina found instructions from the builder of the city. The only problem is Lina’s sister, Poppy, chewed up the instructions… the instructions now look like this: Unfortunately, the instructions were found years later than they were supposed to be found. Lets go back to Lina’s heritage. The seventh Mayor of Ember was sick and dying. So he took the box home, thinking that something in the box would heal him. Despite his efforts, he could not open the box.

Sadly, the Mayor died before he could pass on the instructions to the next Mayor. The instructions were now hidden in a closet in his home. They would remain there for a very long time, until they were discovered by his family many years later. The person was Lina Mayfleet. The box was set to open in 220 years and that’s why the dying Mayor couldn’t open it. Now it’s up to Lina and Doon (a friend) to lead the people of Ember out of their dying city.

The plot for The City of Ember really makes you care about all the characters. The author, Jeanne DuPrau, has written three other books in this series. In my opinion, they were all great books.

I would recommend this book to third grade students and up. It has a great story and always has you thinking what will happen next. All in all, I would rate this book five stars.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: From the movie:

On answers.com, someone submitted this question...Does anyone have the full instructions for egress from The City of Ember? The answer was edited by Taylor Mad Dale:

Instructions for Egress

This official document is to be kept in strict security for a period of 220 years. After that time preparations have been made for all inhabitants to leave the city. Instructions are as follows:

1. Explore path along river within pipeworks.
2. Find stone marked with E by river's edge.
3. Climb ladder down riverbank to ledge approximately eight feet below.
4. With your backs to the water, you will find door of boathouse bunker. Key is behind small steel panel to the right of door. Remove key, open door.

5. Locate boat, carry into light. Boat is stocked with necessary equipment. Back _______________ onto s___________ ___eet.

6. Using ropes, lower boats down into water. Head downstream. Use _______ to avoid rocks and assist over rapids.

7. You will travel approx. 3 hours. Disembark where river ends. Follow the path.   

The CLEVER Mill Horse

The author sent me an autographed copy of her novel for review:

What seemed like a boring concept, turned out to be a suspense filled tale with many twists, turns, secrets and discoveries. I know that I’m treading on fragile ground when I say that Jodi Lew Smith has blended the gothic and historical romance novel into one, but it’s true. Okay, consider this...the gothic novel; such as, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847) emphasizes the devastating effect of jealousy and vengefulness: Heathcliff is rebuffed by Catherine in favor of Edgar and seeks revenge. In The Clever Mill Horse, Henry Emerston’s proposal of marriage is rejected by Aunt Lucille and Henry spends his life looking for retribution. I’m calling Jodi Lew-Smith’s novel a historical romantic gothic (is there such a thing?) because of our heroine Ella’s relationship with Zeke/Lucas and the fact that the Flax Gin was a real invention, albeit in the later 1860s. This is not to be confused with Maximilian de Winter, Rebecca and the second Mrs. de Winter in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (a 1938 gothic romance novel). However Daphne du Maurier had the best sinister character in a Mrs. Danvers. Are you confused yet? What I’m trying to say is that Jodi’s novel had a lot of the above characteristics which reminded me of those famous novels.

Now since gothic novels employed descriptive writing, how did Jodi do? I think she did very well. On page 43, Jodi describes Ella’s father, Amherst…”He was of middle height, but seemed shorter because of his unusually thick shoulders-derived from years of hefting flour sacks. Unlike his powerful shoulders, his face, which must have once been handsome in a rugged way, had sagged here and puffed there, until he had come to wear an old man’s face on a vigorous body.” Not bad for a farmer with 250 apple trees! Also intriguing is why Jodi named the novel the way she did. What was clever about Edgar (a 33 years old horse)? Because he carried the hidden gold watch? Because he walk in circles at Grandpa’s blacksmith shop? I read a review that said Edgar never reappeared, did you actually read this book to the end? Anyway, what is this book about?

Okay, it’s set in central New York from 1804 to 1811 in the fictional (?) town of Deborahville. Grandfather Tunnicliff and Ella, his granddaughter, are trying to perfect his design for a flax machine, similar to the cotton gin. They are attacked by the Loomis gang on a horse stealing venture. Grandpa is killed (really?), Pete, the indian, is wounded, but Ella, throwing a knife, kills one of the gang. Ella had previously agreed to get the patent for the machine if Grandpa Tunnicliff died before the machine’s patent was acquired. In the ensuing chapters, we meet Zeke, Ella’s long time friend, Aunt Lucille Tunnicliff (is she passing counterfeit notes?), the underhanded lawyer, Henry Emerston, who says he will help Ella get the patent for the Flax Gin. Aunt Lucille believes him, wise Indian Pete doesn’t (is he Lucille’s secret lover?) Henry lets Ella use a room in his mill to work on her Flax machine. Henry’s son, Lucas, an artist, shows up to sketch Ella while she works on the flax machine. Really? Meanwhile, Ella’s father, a drunk, comes home and beats up his wife, Catherine (same name as tragic figure in Wuthering Heights) and the children. He only stops when Ella comes home with her throwing knife. Ella finds out that Henry Emerston is planning to steal her patent. The race is on. How can Ella complete the machine and get to the patent office in Washington, D.C. before Henry and the Loomis gang? Get your own copy of this novel to find out. The real suspense is just starting.

I really enjoyed this novel, but I must say that I’ve read quite a few maiden novels this year and many have been five star and female written. Good job ladies! The only thing I did not like in this novel was on page 409, when I read…”end of book one.” I don’t mind sequels, but I don’t like reading a novel only to find out that the story is not over. I like to decide by myself whether I want to read a series. Many times this has stopped me from reading the second book. A good example of this is when I got to page 766 of Justin Cronin’s novel, The Passage, and realized that the story wasn’t over. I haven’t read the second one. I guess it’s just me. I prefer connecting works like All the Pretty Horses (see my review of 4/02/2013), The Crossing (see my review of 10/03/2013), and Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy. All three stories ended, but were related to each other. It was my choice to read, or not read the second and the third novels. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Jodi’s novel, I’m just relating to you my individual quirk. Enough said, read this gothic romance (?), it’s worth the effort.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: So what is your favorite gothic novel? I have written about this before, so I will not bring up those novels again today. I did consult with goodreads.com (one of my favorite sources) and eliminated the novels I previously talked about. So what’s left? Plenty, how about:

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, “First published pseudonymously in 1764, The Castle of Otranto purported to be a translation of an Italian story of the time of the crusades. In it Walpole attempted, as he declared in the Preface to the Second Edition, "to blend the two kinds of romance: the ancient and the modern." Crammed with invention, entertainment, terror, and pathos, the novel was an immediate success and Walpole's own favorite among his numerous works. The novel is reprinted here from a text of 1798, the last that Walpole himself prepared for the press.”

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte,”Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead, subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. She takes up the post of governess at Thornfield, falls in love with Mr. Rochester, and discovers the impediment to their lawful marriage in a story that transcends melodrama to portray a woman's passionate search for a wider and richer life than Victorian society traditionally allowed.

With a heroine full of yearning, the dangerous secrets she encounters, and the choices she finally makes, Charlotte Bronte's innovative and enduring romantic novel continues to engage and provoke readers.”

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, “Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde’s story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author’s most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray’s moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel’s corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, “a terrible moral in Dorian Gray.” Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde’s homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray’s relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.”

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, “First published in French as a serial in 1909, "The Phantom of the Opera" is a riveting story that revolves around the young, Swedish Christine Daaé. Her father, a famous musician, dies, and she is raised in the Paris Opera House with his dying promise of a protective angel of music to guide her. After a time at the opera house, she begins hearing a voice, who eventually teaches her how to sing beautifully. All goes well until Christine's childhood friend Raoul comes to visit his parents, who are patrons of the opera, and he sees Christine when she begins successfully singing on the stage. The voice, who is the deformed, murderous 'ghost' of the opera house named Erik, however, grows violent in his terrible jealousy, until Christine suddenly disappears. The phantom is in love, but it can only spell disaster. Leroux's work, with characters ranging from the spoiled prima donna Carlotta to the mysterious Persian from Erik's past, has been immortalized by memorable adaptations. Despite this, it remains a remarkable piece of Gothic horror literature in and of itself, deeper and darker than any version that follows.”

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, “A very young woman's first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate...An estate haunted by a beckoning evil.

Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls...

But worse-much worse- the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil.

For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them.”

Reading the classics is such a trip!

A drawing of the Flax Machine (gin): 

in the KINGDOM of ICE

Hampton Sides...you did it again! A narrative nonfiction book that is factual but told in a way that seems fictional. It doesn’t get any better than that. Having read Blood and Thunder, I knew what to expect...exciting reality. This book somewhat reminds me of three novels that I have previously read, Dan Simmons’s The Terror, Dan Simmons's The Abominable (see my review of 1/8/2014) and Carsten Jensen’s We, the Drowned (see my review of 7/9/2011). Maybe I’m a fan of true Arctic adventures that emphasizes man’s ability to survive the harshest challenges. In 1879, the idea was that once a ship got through the Arctic ice, it would sail into an "open polar sea" is hard to believe, yet the world’s leading cartographer, Professor August Petermann from Germany, convinced the world that it was true. This is the story of the U.S.S. Jeannette’s attempt to prove that theory correct. On page ten, Hampton Sides says the essential question was: “How would man reach the North Pole? And once there, what would it be like? Were there open sea routes? Unknown species of fish and animals? Monsters that lived on the ice? Lost civilizations, even? Were there whirlpools, as many people believed, that led to the bowels of the earth?” Jules Verne’s 1864 novel, Journey to The Center of the Earth, made this speculation seem feasible.    

Enter eccentric James Gordon Bennett, owner of The New York Herald, fresh off his fake "Wild Animal Hoax" and his 1870’s sending of reporter Henry Stanley to remote Africa to find David Livingstone. Combine Bennett with Lt. Commander George W. Delong, who, to his chagrin, missed all the action in The Civil War. Bennett said that he would fully fund the trip to the North Pole, and Delong would get a leave of absence from the U.S. Navy to make the attempt to sail to the North Pole. Bennett had to set up his home office in Paris after he became a pariah in New York City because, among other things, he urinated on his fiancee’s piano at a holiday party in full view of all the guests. Bennett meets with Professor Petermann in Germany and decides that they could reach the Arctic via the Bering Strait. The Centennial Expo (1876) in Philadelphia provides Delong’s exploratory trip with Alexander Graham Bell’s telephones and Thomas Edison’s arc lamps (the incandescent light bulb was still in the test phase). They will light up the Arctic! Delong finds a ship,The Pandora, on the Isle of Wight and sails it to France. Bennett renames it The Jeannette after his sister. By a special act of Congress, it becomes an American ship. They sail it from Le Havre, France to San Francisco in 166 days (18,000 miles). Then the expedition gets bad news...Professor Petermann, suffering from Manic Depression, hangs himself. Does this story read like a novel, or what?

Once in San Francisco, Delong hires Lt. John Danenhower as his navigator. Delong heads to Washington, D.C. to meet the Secretary of the Navy and hire the ship’s doctor, James Ambler. The doctor warns Delong that Danenhower has had previous bouts with insanity. But Delong finds out that Danenhower is doing a great job in San Francisco hiring people and reinforcing the ship for Arctic travel. The wacko Bennett is paying for everything. He also wants Delong to look for a lost ship (the Finnish ship, The Vega) led by explorer Adolf Nordenskiöld, who was trying to find a Bering Strait passage to the North Pole. Delong finally leaves the U.S.A. with a total of thirty three men and provisions. Once he reaches the Bering Strait area, he finds that Nordenskiold is not lost and, in fact, has proven Petermann’s theories wrong. The Bering Strait entry is “but a cul de sac." Wow, this is bad news. 

So is The Jeannette on a failed mission course? They proceed anyway. On September the 7th, 1879, they are stuck in the ice! Winter comes, the ice presses the ship, Edison’s lamps don’t work. Seventy one days in the dark doesn’t make the men happy. Many times during the winter…"the ice began to squeeze the ship-literally, to strangle it. Beads of oakum tar and pine pitch oozed from the seams. At one point, the decks bulged.” Danenhower starts showing symptoms of syphilis, the ship springs a 4,000 gallon per hour leak, and they are drifting with the ice flow. While drifting, Delong finds two unknown Islands. He names them, Jeannette and Henrietta Islands. The crew develops lead poisoning from the canned tomatoes. What else can go wrong? In the summer of 1881, the ice opened and The Jeannette was set free. Great, right? No. The ice came back with a vengeance and crushed the ship! On page 228, “Finally it came, the call they had been dreading but preparing for, off and on, for many months: Abandon ship!”

Now, if you think I gave the story away...think again, knuckleheads! (Bill Murray of Meatballs fame and Charles Barkley (Outrageous!) both said this). This is where the story gets interesting. They are stranded on the ice, one thousand miles from Central Siberia. Who will make it and who will die? Will anyone make it back? I can’t tell you...buy your own copy of this bestseller. As usual, this type of writing is ‘the cat’s meow’ to me.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: As you know, I like books or novels that deal with hardships on the ice or in the cold weather. That said, the following are books that amazon.com recommends (including their commentary), other than the books that I mentioned in my review:

The People's Act of Love (2005) by James Meek: “In the outer reaches of a country recently torn apart by civil war lives a small Christian sect and its enigmatic leader, Balashov. Anna Petrovna, a beautiful, restless photographer, is raising her young son by herself amid this brutal landscape. Stationed nearby is a company of Czech soldiers, desperate to get home but on the losing side of the recent conflict. Each soldier lives in a fragile co-existence and a troubling uncertainty prevails. Into this isolated community trudges Samarin, an escapee from Russia's northernmost prison camp. Immediately apprehended, he is brought before Captain Matula, the Czech company's megalomaniac commander. But the stranger's appearance has caught the attention of others, including that of Anna Petrovna. And when a local shaman is found murdered, suspicion and terror engulf this village. To be published in twenty countries, The People's Act of Love is quite simply magnificent storytelling and it promises to be an auspicious literary event.”

Arctic Dreams (2001) by Barry Lopez: “Barry Lopez's National Book Award-winning classic study of the Far North is widely considered his masterpiece.
Lopez offers a thorough examination of this obscure world-its terrain, its wildlife, its history of Eskimo natives and intrepid explorers who have arrived on their icy shores. But what turns this marvelous work of natural history into a breathtaking study of profound originality is his unique meditation on how the landscape can shape our imagination, desires, and dreams. Its prose as hauntingly pure as the land it describes, Arctic Dreams is nothing less than an indelible classic of modern literature.”

The Rifles (Seven Dreams) (1995) by William T. Vollmann: “Vaulting through time to another flashpoint in the long struggle between Indians and Europeans, William T. Vollmann's visionary fictional history now focuses on the white explorers of the mid-1800s, desperately dreaming of forging a Northwest Passage. As Sir John Franklin embarks on his fourth Arctic voyage, he defies the warnings of the native people, and his journey ends in ice and death. But his spirit lingers in the Canadian north, where 150 years later, in 1990, Inuit elders dream of long-gone seal-hunting days and teenagers sniff gasoline. And when a white man seduces and leaves pregnant a young Indian woman, he becomes Franklin reincarnated, bound for the same fate. Vollmann's vivid characters and landscapes weave together the stories of the past and present to live out America's ongoing tragedy of greed, ignorance, and violence.

Now, tell me, don’t you feel a little bit cold? Burr...burr!

The Jeannette stuck in the ice:

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Ray Bradbury ask this question...Can love combined with happiness, laughing, and dancing conquer evil? It will take 290 terrifying pages to get the definitive answer. This is a classic evil versus good novel published by the great fantasy/horror writer in 1962. This novel is part of Bradbury’s Green Town trilogy, which included Dandelion Wine (1957) and Farewell Summer (2006). As a sidebar, I remember my neighbor’s father back in the ‘50s making dandelion wine, not that it has anything to do with this review. Anyway, this book is so dark that the evil ringmaster/owner of the carnival is, believe it or not, Mr. Dark, aka the Illustrated Man. Stephen King’s It (1986) and The Stand (1990) are worthy challengers to Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes in the dark novel category, but there is something special about this ‘carnival comes to a small town’ thriller. And, and... it’s done without a single clown in the story. Freak show...yes, but no clown. Before I get to the guts of the novel, I think that it’s interesting that Bradbury got the book’s title from a line in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “By the pricking of my thumbs/something wicked this way comes.” Also as a boy, Ray Bradbury met a carnival magician named Mr. Electrico (a character in this novel).  

Two thirteen year old boys (born two minutes apart) are lying on the grass by their homes when Tom Fury, a lightning rod salesman approaches the boys. The boys are Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway (I love those names) and Fury tells them a storm is approaching. He says,...”One of those houses will be struck by lightning!” Is he talking about a real storm, or the impending carnival train? We will re-unite with Tom Fury later in the story. Subsequently that night, the boys see posters being put up in town saying, “Coming October Twenty-Fourth...Cooger and Dark’s Carnival! See the Dust Witch...the Skeleton... the Most Beautiful Woman in the World...Mr. Electrico...The Illustrated Man.” Wow, but it’s October and everybody knows that  all carnivals stop after Labor Day, right? Maybe, but this is a special carnival. At three in the morning, the boys are awakened in their homes by calliope music in the distance. The carnival train is coming! Looking out the high windows of their homes, they could see the train approaching. They dress, climb down from the windows (they both built steps to the ground so they could tiptoe out of the houses) and run for the train. They see a tall dark man, heavily tattooed, gesture and the train begins to unloaded in silence. How’s that possible? Very strange.

The next day the boys run into their teacher, Miss Foley, who is confused and lost in the mirror maze. They get her out and she tells them she is with her visiting nephew, Robert. But is it really her nephew? And why is he missing? Later, Jim and Will find a mysterious carousel (merry-go-round). They spot one of the owners, Mr. Cooger, riding the carousel in reverse. He went on the ride looking about forty and when he got off, he looked like a twelve year old! The boys run. Mr. Dark knows that they saw what happened. Trouble is coming. What is this carnival all about? Why are so many people missing? The boys run to Charles Halloway (Will’s father and janitor of the town’s library). Charles researches the carnival at the library and finds that the same Mr. Dark and Mr. Cooger have had the carnival at least since 1846. How is that possible? How old are Dark and Cooger? This all happens early in the novel, the rest of the story deals with Charles, Will and Jim trying to unravel the mystery before it’s too late for the town. This was an intoxicating and hair-raising tale... to say the least (I got my idiom in).

I liked the fact that Bradbury kept the main characters down to four people: Will, Jim, Charles and Mr. Dark (Cormac McCarthy style). The side characters were great; Miss Foley wanting to get younger, Mr. Fury wanting to see the most beautiful woman in the world, Mr. Electrico, the frightening Dust Witch and the Skeleton Man. When the reader can concentrate on limited characters, the reading experience is easier and more enjoyable. This was a great read...grab a copy and enjoy!

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: It seems to me that I’m a fan of dark novels and I’m not sure why. I know that Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorites, but who else do I like besides Stephen King and Ray Bradbury? Well, I did like the J.K. Rowling Harry Potter series (1997-2007), but by book #7, I soured on the series. Smart move on her part to say goodbye. How many books and movies can you read and watch about ‘Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry’ before you vomit?

I do like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings novels (1937-1949), but the numerous movies have put a damper on my gusto for the books. After awhile, I didn’t care if Frodo Baggins and his servant, Sam, could destroy the ring before Sauron got to them. Sometimes I think that a novel should stay a novel.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) is a dystopian novel about children marooned on a small island. I know it’s a cult favorite (sometimes I wonder what that is), but isn’t it predictable that they would turn into caveman-like people eventually? Doesn’t it stand to reason that anybody who has previously played cricket would turn into a primitive without  The Laws of Cricket rules to go by?

Now, one of my favorites is Stephen King’s Under the Dome (2009). The story was great...I mean an invisible dome drops from the sky on a Maine town (where else?), but didn’t I see the same alien kids playing games on the half hour show called The Twilight Zone back in the 1960s?

Okay, what about Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965)? What is my wiseguy retort on this novel? Well, I never did understand what the ‘spice’ was about. I know it was controlled by the Atreides family on Arrakis, but what do you do with it...shove it up your ass?

Okay, enough funny stuff. I really liked Charles Dickens Oliver Twist (1838). Goodreads.com says this about the novel, “The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens's tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters — the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. Combining elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama, in Oliver Twist Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.” This is one of my favorite dark novels.