APPLESEED

Is Matt Bell honest with himself? A literature professor proposed this big question in the movie, The Whale. Is it a big question that riddles throughout Matt’s latest novel, Appleseed? I’m wondering why the author picked an apple seed to be planted all over America by a human brother, Nathaniel, and his brother, Chapman, half human/half faun in lieu of other fruit. I’m joking about the apple, but it is a good source of fiber and antioxidants. Haha. This is a very confusing past, future, and far-future breakdown and rebuilding of the earth due to climate change and other abuses of mother earth. I really don’t know who Matt thinks or blames in this novel for sure, but it’s spelled out in two thoughts: Man and or a future Amazon-type company. Certainly not the brothers planting apple trees in the past with the idea of a profit ten years later when the trees start producing fruit. Will Matt’s Amazon store (Earthtrust) start buying up each state one by one? She wanted to be authorized to control everything in the world. “She wanted, in those more idealistic days, for the world to choose this together,” On page 99, we read, “But after the global economic collapse, the wars everywhere abroad and the secession and sacrifice at home, the worsening climate disaster, and the collapse of the worldwide food supply?  Maybe now Eury didn’t need anyone’s permission, for anything. She did business in every country, and her security forces administered failing and failed states worldwide; she controlled more than enough land to build whatever she wanted whenever she needed. Now the world’s governments couldn’t risk standing up to Eury Mirov, to Earthtrust. Will Eury build a spaceship in the future to leave Earth for good? Was this novel written as a defensive plan against the offense of Musk, Bezos, and Branson? Haha.

We haven’t talked about Eury’s ex-partner, John, who is a one-man wrecking crew working against Earthtrust and is eventually captured and forced to sign papers into a type of indentured service to one of Earthtrust’s working farms. He has to sign over his citizenship, his right to vote, his right to own property, and his Bill of Rights on a ninety-nine-year agreement in exchange for a leased home, a fixed wage, safe food and clean water, and loss of freedom outside his assigned compound. Will he stay there? Then to make this story more complicated, we go into the far future where a lone cyborg is trekking across the Iceland of western America in search of any left/over mankind with the quest to reset the Earth. His name is C433 because he has rebuilt himself 433 times. This was not my kind of story. I hate novels that jump back and forth between past and present no less adding the far future. What did I like? Well, mainly his ability to write lines that pleased me.

 The author’s prose is uniquely entertaining; such as on page 134 when Chapman, the half-human, who is in the forest alone, and enjoys the forest’s babble: “Chapman’s ears truly have begun to hear more; with no one to talk to, mostly his tongue lies dumb in his mouth. (note; that was a great line). He listens for the smallest forest voices, the clicking language of squirrels and rabbits, the chatter of mice in the underbrush; he hears hawk chicks exploring their nest, woodpecker eggs hatching far above his head, hidden in holes pecked into towering trees. A breeze wafts by, a local wind suffused with local smell-something floral, something overripe, something rotting-moving through these woods and only these woods, present one day and gone another. If these trees were cut down, he thinks, this particular breeze would be cut down too; If different birds chirped and tittered here, then the breeze would carry new sound; if there were no bears or skunks wandering the swamp, then the breeze would lack their musk, its most potent texture.” Wow! Such a big deal out of something so small! Matt Bell is a native of Michigan, who teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: You are probably asking,” Why did I give this novel four stars?” Well, it’s a good question since I really didn’t like this novel, although the writer follows most of the creative writing rules.” My main beef is that I hated the story…thus bad grades for the plot, but he did use Good versus Evil as a strong theme. But he didn’t make me shed any tears over his character development. I’m not going to care for his cyborg since the writer himself rebuilds him 434 times! Haha. Am I going to cry over the feelings of a half-human, half-faun that spends all day planting apple seeds? One of his biggest sins was that he didn’t catch my interest. His setting was in three eras, which I hated. But his style of writing and his dialogue were outstanding, These two elements took his novel out of the three-star puddle and landed him in the four-star pond. Just so you know. Haha.

SINATRA AND ME in the wee small hours

 Old blue eyes life told in a refreshing way by his manager, producer, drinking buddy (Jack Daniels and water), and best friend. This is not Frank’s life story, although the blanks get filled in along the way. It’s a composite of thousands of conversations with Frank, his friends, and his family as told by Tony Oppedisano, his Sicilian confidant, manager, fellow singer, and writer of this book. Being Sicilian is one of the reasons Frank was always assumed to be mafioso by the press, who had a vendetta for most of old blue eye's career. The other reason was Frank’s presumed ties with all the big NYC clubs and later Las Vegas. The fact that all those clubs and early Las Vegas were mobbed-owned didn’t seem to mean anything to the American press. Sinatra’s trouble with the press started when Frank decked New York Mirror’s Lee Mortimer after Mortimer linked Frank to Lucky Luciano with no evidence. Frank's verbal attacks on columnist Dorothy Kilgallen were started when he called her “the chinless wonder.” Frank also had a long press battle with Maxine Cheshire, who also linked him to the mafioso. Anyway, the slightly built Sinatra was always able to stand up to anybody. If he liked you, you were his friend for life. If he disliked you, it’s not true that he didn’t apologize. “ Hey, I’m sorry. Sometimes I’m a schmuck. Help me get my foot out of my mouth. Frank could be extraordinarily generous with his fans. If people were polite one good turn deserves another. And one bad turn deserves another.” 

Frank’s taste for women was always in the spotlight. “When Frank married actress Mia Farrow in 1966, he became the butt of a lot of jokes. Jackie Mason was one of the most vocal. He used to talk about Frank’s buying Mia a box of crayons for her birthday, or Frank’s being asked to leave the bar because Mia’s rattle was making too much noise. As everyone knows, Frank was still married to Nancy Sr. when he met Ava Gardner. Ava was the total opposite of Nancy, Sr., which was part of the attraction. If Nancy was the angel on one of Frank’s shoulders, Ava was the devil on the other. Nancy was the devoted Italian wife and mother, every inch a ‘good girl.’ Ava was a two-fisted drinker, and like his mother, Dolly, Ava had a mouth as bad as Frank’s. Frank told me, she could have a mouth like a truck driver. She drank as well as I did or better. Ava was also stunningly beautiful, the Angelina Jolie of her day.” Frank and Marilyn (Monroe) were very close and he idolized her. “She was beautiful and funny and charismatic and radiated sexuality. She was also as fragile as a troubled child, always looking for a man to take care of her and make her feel safe. Frank knew her for years, and they had a romance of sorts. Contrary to widespread belief, however, Frank never slept with her. He told me he badly wanted to, that he was terribly attracted to her, but always stopped short. He just couldn’t get rid of the feeling that sex with her would be taking advantage of a woman who’d already had been used by so many men.”

Sinatra’s mom, Dolly, was a five-foot ninety-pound leader, who was a domineering and sometimes aggressive mother. She was a political force in Hoboken, NJ, getting a letter of commendation from Calvin Coolidge, congratulating her on her great work for the Democratic Party. “Dolly had a mouth like a sailor. Her profanity was legendary.” She was known for grabbing Frank by the ear and dragging him home when caught playing hooky. “Dolly wanted him to enroll in the Stevens Institute and become an architect.” Even though Frank had a pretty high IQ and was fascinated with geometric designs, his heart was set on being a singer. “The whole thing came to a head one night over dinner with his parents. They were eating when his father said, “So, did you enroll in the Stevens Institute?” Frank said no and that he could be a better singer than Bing Crosby. His angry father said, “Well, fine, If that’s your final answer, that’s your choice, but you are not going to do it on my dime. So pack your stuff and get out of here.” Young Frank packed his bag and left to continue his singing career on his own. He was going to have to do it, “My Way.” Haha. 

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Frank Sinatra died of a  heart attack on 5/14/1998 at the age of 82. Reportedly, his wife, Barbara was encouraging Frank to fight for his life when he said his final words,” I’m losing.”

In the Source Notes, his friend Tony Oppedisano, explains how he wrote this book: “Unlike most Sinatra biographers, I lived this book. It is almost entirely on direct personal experience and on thousands of conversations that occurred over decades with Frank, Jilly Rizzo, Nancy Sinatra Sr., and others close to Frank. I expect that I have been consulted on so many other Sinatra books because, in some cases, I have the only living memory of what occurred. I have become something of a keeper of the flame.

DEAD SILENCE

S. A. Barnes’ space novel, Dead Silence, somehow never lives up to the blurb on the inside jacket…” picks up a strange distress signal,” a line that always hooks me into reading a sci/fi novel. That line opens the door to a cornucopia of possibilities but sadly doesn’t add to the suspense of this novel. The signal is picked up by a space repair ship, LINA, a ship on its 26th month of updating “a network of beacons throughout the solar system designed to boost ship and colony transmissions.” The upgrade will put this crew out of work since the upgrade they are installing will be handled by a Verux SmarTech machine on earth in the future. The five-member team is led by our protagonist, Claire Kovalik, who was the only survivor of a past failed mission on the Ferris Outpost twenty-three years ago. Everyone died except Claire. Since then, Claire seems to flip-flop between reality and hallucinations bordering on insanity for the entire 343 pages of this fake novel, I’m calling it fake because it never lives up to its potential. The author’s prose is very easy to understand for a sci/fi novel yet still caused me the dreaded sleepy eyes syndrome. After listening to Claire’s constant whining about her previous failed outpost disaster and continuous complaining about her bosses back on earth, I lost all empathy for our lead character, who lives in a perpetual state of *Einstein Insanity (*Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.)

The distress signal comes from the luxury liner ship, Aurora, designed for the rich and famous and that disappeared on its maiden voyage. Can the crew bring it home and claim it as theirs and all the riches inside? “Twenty years ago, five hundred passengers and a hundred and fifty crew left on a maiden voyage for a tour of the solar system. It was supposed to take a year. But the Aurora disappeared six months in. All souls are presumed lost. The luxury space cruiser had every possible amenity you can imagine. Gold faucets, real wood floors, coffee from actual beans, meat that was once alive.” The crew on the Lina consisted of team captain, Claire Kovalik, and teammates Voller, Kane, Lourdes, and Nysus. They debated whether they should return home and report the incident or try to bring it back to earth and collect the salvage fee. They decided to see if they could return the ship to earth and earn enough to quit their jobs, “We’re going to be rich!” The crew navigates Lina next to the Aurora. “The Aurora is discomfortingly large, once we’re right upon it. In the Lina, it feels like we’re a tick crawling on a sleek silver beast that hasn’t yet noticed our presence or been annoyed by it to shake us loose.” 

“Theoretically, the Aurora could receive shipments from resupply vessels while cruising. State of the art for the time, “ Nysus says, his voice high and reedy with excitement. “So the outer doors could be independently operated if the setting was engaged and you had the override code.” And clearly, he does.

“Then the working lights kick on outside, giving us our first look inside the Aurora. It is shockingly normal, other than the fields of debris. A coffee mug, absurdly upright, floats by, and a four-legged object, glossy with black paint drifts aimlessly in the far left corner.  “Shit”...it’s a baby grand piano, floating upside down. The lights continue to sweep the area as Voller edges us toward the center of Aurora’s bay.” Suddenly they were in, Lina’s landing gear attaching their ship to the deck. That’s your 59-page taste of a 339-page novel. Are any of the 650 souls still alive after 20 years? What went wrong with this massive luxury liner? Can the five-person crew of the Lina navigate the massive ship back to earth? Why did so many people have to die? Was it corporate’s fault? This book was enjoyable but nothing special. The jacket blurb gave me a reason to believe this novel was going to be exciting but failed to rouse me. One of my favorite first contact novels was Harry Bates’ Farewell to the Master published in 1940 (see Rick’s review in Rambling Comments #5 on 2/3/2018.) You probably never heard of the novel because the theme was the major difference between the short story and the movie. The atomic bomb had not been invented yet when Harry Bates wrote the short story in 1940. The 1951 movie was a big hit and is considered a sci/fi classic. The movie? The Day the Earth Stood Still, starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, and Sam Jaffe as the professor.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: So Rick, what are some of your favorite first contact novels? Well, how about the following in no particular order:

Contact by Carl Sagan published in 1986: Amazon writes, “The future is here…in an adventure of cosmic dimension. When a signal is discovered that seems to come from far beyond our solar system, a multinational team of scientists decides to find the source. Why are they watching us? And what do they want with us?”

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky published in 1972: This is one of my favorites, it was banned in Russia for 8 years due to government censorship. “Roadside Picnic takes place in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial event, which simultaneously took place in half a dozen separate locations around the earth for a two-day period.

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke published in 1973: This is my all-time favorite! “A huge, mysterious, cylindrical object appears in space, swooping in toward the sun. The citizens of the solar system send a ship to investigate before the enigmatic craft, called Rama, disappears.”

 

CHILDREN OF TIME

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time won the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke Award with this exciting science fiction classic space opera. All the action takes place on a planet thousands of years from a dying Earth that was destroyed by human's hate for each other. Doctor Avrana Kern attempts to send thousands of monkeys down to a green planet along with a  nano-virus to speed up the evolution of the monkeys in hope of producing a better human being. Her ship is one of several ships launched in different directions looking to terraform an unoccupied planet capable of supporting human life. It takes almost 15 years to find a suitable planet. But before she can unload the monkeys, a political group against the project blows up the ship, Doctor Kern escapes in an observation satellite and releases the nano-virus on the planet not knowing that all her monkeys are dead. She maintains an orbit around the planet. Now thousands of years pass and the real story of Children of Time begins. I didn’t issue a spoiler alert because all that I have told you is just a preface of the main story that follows on this 600-page tome. This is the story of the spaceship, Gilgamesh, and it's several thousand years voyage. As vast as this novel is, it’s amazing that the main characters on the spaceship are only six, and the main insects on the planet are held to four. What is interesting is that when Doctor Kern dropped the nano-virus to speed up evolution she was unaware the planet already had an insect population.

Since the spaceship took thousands of years to arrive at the target planet, generations of people were born on the ship. Most of the population was put to sleep in coffin-like containers only to be awakened if they were needed to help maintain the ship or to be sent down to a planet to start human life. Holsten Mason, the man in charge of remembering Earth’s past history, is over 2,000 years old since he was an original crew member on Gilgamesh and has been put to sleep and awakened so many times that he technically was that old. The author’s story was initially confusing until I realized he was talking about two different spaceships in two different eras. That’s why Mason was important to Gilgamesh, he could tell the current humans about the past (the old world and their technology) when things would pop up that affected a present-day situation. His knowledge was part of a dying skill. What I loved about these spaceships was that the author didn’t get technical, he does not explain how the engines run or how the sleeping coffins work. If some new technical feature on the spaceship comes up…so be it. I don’t care how it works, just get on with the story. On the other hand, he is great at describing the creatures that already live on the terraformed planet. My kind of sci/fi storytelling, good character descriptions, and less technical talk. An example of what I dislike in sci/fi literature is a novel written by author Vernor Vinge (a computer science professor and writer), who drove me crazy with his constant boring technical talk in his sci/fi novel, Rainbows End. 

If I told you about the insects that were evolving on the terraformed planet it would spoil the story for you. I will just tell you that Kern’s observation satellite continued to orbit the terraformed planet for 2,000 years holding off any ship that tried to land on the planet. When Gilgamesh first tried to land on the terraformed planet, they were warned by Kern’s satellite to stay away. “It’s a warning, it saying that we’re transmitting from incorrect coordinates or something like that, It says we’re forbidden here,” I think that Author Tchaikovsky’s story was unique and written in a manner that every reader can understand. There are 600 pages of eccentric enjoyment ahead of you. I highly recommend this novel to any genre of the reader.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Bugs and insects have always interested Mr. Tchaikovsky, a British fantasy/ science fiction writer.

Wikipedia says, “Whilst studying at the University of Reading he ran a role-playing game called Bugworld. The game told the story of the insect-people of the lowlands, under threat from the encroaching Wasp Empire. From this original scenario, the entire series of books grew.” (talking about Tchaikovsky’s Shadows of the Apt 10 book series. 

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY

 It took me over a month to read this novel or should I say study this novel. Charles Dickens is either the greatest writer of all time or the greatest magazine editor that ever lived. I slowly read (and studied) 20 pages or so a day with some breaks spending time with my acrylic painting hobby. It’s not that I eschewed my daily chore, but one has to understand with Dickens you must go at a snail’s pace or chance missing his meaning. I’ll let you read the first paragraph of page 183, chapter 18, “There are many lives of much pain, hardship, and suffering, which, having no stirring interest for any but those who lead them, are disregarded by persons who do not want thought or feeling, but who pamper their compassion and need high stimulants to rouse it.” Now, if you read that at a normal pace, you will not understand what he just wrote. You must reread much of his novel before reading on or risk discerning his thoughts. Coupled with seemingly hundreds of characters (it was actually 40+) knowing that one of these early minor or major characters (some were comically abhorrent) will surely appear near the end of the story to completely vex you because you didn’t pay proper attention to him/her. Most of Dickens’s novels were originally monthly or weekly serial publications before being published into book form. The adventures of Nicholas Nickleby was Dickens’s third novel, written while still writing Oliver Twist. Poverty was always the main theme in his novels, Dickens himself witnessed his father being sent to Debtor’s Prison causing the twelve-year-old Charles to bounce from place to place which led Dickens to believe “the rigors of life were unfairly borne by the poor.” (Wikipedia). “Masses of the illiterate poor would individually pay a halfpenny to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of reader.” (Wikipedia). Alright, enough about Dickens, what’s the story about? I’m glad you asked.

BTW, before I give you a brief rundown of the story, I want to apprise you of how Dickens tells a story (at least in my 1944 illustrated copy). He writes a little blurb about what’s going to happen in italics before the chapter starts, such as, in chapter XII, he previews it with, “Whereby the reader will be enabled to trace the further course of Miss Fanny Squeer’s love and to ascertain whether it ran smoothly or otherwise.” Anyway, I thought those little interpolations before each chapter were refreshing. Before I tell you about the story, I need to give you an example of the author’s amazing descriptive ability (I promise my synopsis is coming shortly). On page 383, chapter XXXV, our protagonist, Nicholas Nickleby meets Mr. Charles Cheeryble, twin brother of Ned, “He was a sturdy old fellow in a broad-skirted blue coat, made pretty large, to fit easily, and with no particular waist; his bulky legs clothed in drab breeches and high gaiters, and his head protected by a low-crowned broad-brimmed white hat, such as a wealthy grazier might wear. He wore his coat buttoned, and his dimpled double-chin rested in the folds of a white neckerchief-not one of your stiff-starched apoplectic cravats, but a good, easy, old-fashioned white neckcloth that a man might go to bed in and be none the worse for. But what principally attracted the attention of Nicholas, was the old gentleman’s eye,-never was such a clear, twinkling, honest, merry, happy eye, as that. And there he stood, looking a little upward, with one hand thrust into the breast of his coat, and the other playing with his old-fashioned gold watch-chain: his head thrown a little on one side, and his hat a little more on one side of his head (but that was evidently accidental; not his ordinary way of wearing it), with such a pleasant smile playing about his mouth, and such a comical expression of mingled slyness, simplicity, kind-heartedness, and good-humor, lighting up his jolly old face, that Nicholas would have been content to have stood there, and looked at him until evening, and to have forgotten, meanwhile, that there was a thing as a soured mind or a crabbed countenance to be met within the whole wide world.” Wow, now you know why many people think Dickens was paid by the word (not true). Notice the heavy use of adjectives and long sentences. 

Nicholas Nickleby’s father lost everything in the stock market and dies thereafter. Mrs. Nickleby, Nicholas, and his sister, Kate, go to London to seek rescue from the wealthy and devious, Uncle Ralph Nickleby, their only relative. Ralph grudgingly puts them up in an abandoned house he owns after the Nicklebys had a short stay at kindly miniature painting artist, Mrs. LaCreevy’s home. Nineteen-year-old Nicholas asks for help in finding employment. Ralph hates Nicholas and gets him a low-paying job as a teaching assistant to the repulsive Wackford Squeers, who runs the school Dotheboys Hall in Yorkshire. Squeers and his wife are mean to the boys who live there. Squeers keeps most of the money the parents give him and he beats and starves the boys regularly. He especially picks on a boy named Smike. (are Dickens character names special or what?). One day while Squeers is beating up Smike for nothing, Nicholas loses his composure and pummels Mr. Squeers. Nicholas flees with Smike to London not knowing what Squeers is going to tell his uncle. Mrs. Squeers says, “I hate him worse than poison.” Meanwhile, Ralph gets Kate a low-paying job at Madame Mantalini’s fashionable milliner shop. She is initially liked by her boss, Miss Knag until the customers want to deal with Kate only because of her good looks. Now Miss Knag hates Kate and schemes to get rid of her. Newman Noggs, who clerks for Ralph Nickleby, takes Young Nicholas under his wing and provides shelter for Nicholas at the Kenwigs’ home while he’s on the run from Squeers. He also finds Nicholas a new job teaching the four young Kenwigs children French. (Nicholas changes his last name to Johnson).  Noggs, once successful himself, is now a drunk who despises his boss, Ralph. In the meantime, Ralph asks Kate to host a dinner party at his house for clients of nobility and wealth. He just wants a pretty face around to enhance his business prospects and it works as everybody there tries to get close to Kate. This rattles a country girl like Kate and she bursts into tears and runs out of the room pursued by the dominating Sir Mulberry Hawk and his friend, Lord Fredrick Verisopht. Uncle finally gets a coach for Kate and she leaves in tears.

I’m going to end my review of the story now because it’s about ready to take off like a runaway train and I want you to enjoy all the ensuing happenings. There are many adventures and miss adventures for the Nicklebys and their conglomeration of good and bad characters yet to be touched on, you have had only a taste of this marvelous novel. It’s a tough read not just only because of the 711 pages, but because of Dickens’s grandiose writing style which was prevalent during his times. Also, occasional bouts of Mr. John Browdie speaking with an accent, such as, “And she wur coaxin’, and coaxin’, and wheedlin’ a’ the blessed wa’. Wa’at didst thou let yon chap mak’ oop tiv’ee for? Says I. ‘I deedn’t John, says she, a squeedgin my arm. ‘You deedn’t ?’ says I. ‘Noa,’ says she, a squeedgin of me agean.” Boy, Hemingway sure simplified things in the 1920s. All kidding aside, Nicholas Nickleby is an important read and should be savored like a fine wine.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: On June 8th, 1870, Charles Dickens suffered a stroke and died at his home. He was only 58 years old. He was working on an unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dan Simmons (a great writer) wrote a wonderful novel, Drood, in 2009. It is hypnotizing story about Dickens narrated by his real-life friend and author, Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White).

Amazon writes, “Drood explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author’s last years and may provide the key to Dickens’s final unfinished work.”

If you have time (you should make room), Drood and The Woman in White are two of my all-time favorite novels (surely in the top ten). Both novels are over 700 pages each but worth reading.

THE SUN ALSO RISES

 

Do you remember the line in Don McLean’s 1971 song American Pie...the day the music died? Well, when Ernest Hemingway published his first novel The Sun Also Rises in 1926...it was the day descriptive writing died. Other than F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, Hemingway’s style changed the way authors wrote from descriptive to non-descriptive. Paris in the 1920s was home for The Lost Generation, a group of American expatriates along with some European writers and artists who, led by Gertrude Stein, rejected the  American way of writing and painting (Picasso was a member of the group). The group was young and rebellious. Besides Hemingway, the group included American writers, John Dos Passos, Hart Crane, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, and Irish novelist James Joyce. And did they drink! They were seen daily in the Ritz, Cafe de la Paix, the Rotonde, La Closerie des Lilas, the Bois, and all the other prime restaurants and bars in Paris. I’m only bringing this up because this style of living is inspired throughout his first novel. Also, I have to admit that I love reading about that era (see my 2/17/2017 review of Everybody Behaves Badly). Anyway, I wanted to give you the flavor of the times in order for you to enjoy the novel to the nines. BTW, besides writing, drinking, and dining, the group also loved boxing and bullfighting.

The story itself is a microcosm of the Lost Generation with a Cormac McCarthy approved five main characters: The narrator, Jake Barnes (obviously Ernest Hemingway), Lady Brett Ashley, Mike Campbell, Robert Cohn, and Bill Gorton along with an interesting sidebar character, Count Mippipopolous. On a fishing trip to Spain, Bill said to Jake, “You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.” Jake answered with, “It sounds like a swell life...When do I work?” Bill says, “You don’t work. One group claims women support you, Another group claims you’re impotent.” After the fishing trip, Jake and Bill head to Pamplona for the running of the bulls (history tells us that Hemingway did participate) and bullfight watching. There they finally meet their late-arriving friends, Brett, Mike, and Robert at the Hotel Montoya. “Where the hell have you been? Asked Jake. Brett blames Robert for all the delays. On the way to the corrals, they passed a wine shop with a sign in the window: Good wine 30 centimos a liter. “That’s where we’ll go when funds get low,” Brett said. Throughout the novel, it becomes apparent (that) their wine funds will never be low. You wonder how these heavy drinkers were able to produce novels considered literary masterpieces. You have to remember when you are reading this novel Hemingway was only writing about activities that he was actually participating in. They really wined and dined deliberately every day. Like Jake said, “It sounds like a swell life.” Haha.

Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (The Old Man And The Sea), although I find his style easy to follow...it's somewhat bland. Where Hemingway’s character might say, “I see a red rose.”, a descriptive writer like Robert Louis Stevenson (which I prefer) might write, “I see a long-stemmed cardinal red rose with dew-covered petals and sharp prickles.” That’s all I’m saying...reviewers are writers too, haha. F. Scott Fitzgerald befriended Ernest Hemingway and the modernist Lost Generation, but never changed his descriptive style. I did enjoy Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises but struggled to find any plot. Yet Hemingway’s story of Cuban fisherman Santiago in The Old Man And The Sea (his last novel) actually displayed some descriptive writing and a plot. Go figure. BTW, wasn't Spencer Tracy fabulous in the movie version? Bung-o! 

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I know that The Sun Also Rises was Hemingway’s first novel, but all of his life pleasures are displayed in his novel. Some facts about Hemingway’s life:

1. He was an ambulance driver in the Italian front during WWI where he was wounded.

2. As a journalist, he covered The Spanish Civil War.

3. He was a foreign correspondent during WWII.

4. In 1954 he had two successive plane crashes in Africa that caused the start of his physical deterioration.

5. In 1961 Hemingway deliberately shot himself with his favorite double-barreled shotgun in Idaho. His wife initially told the press that it was accidental. 

6. Many people believe that Hemmingway had CTE from all his concussions which would explain the suicide...a major reason for the NFL player's rash of suicides.

ADDRESS UNKNOWN

 

In 1938 Kathrine Kressmann Taylor wrote a classic novel (really a 79-page short story), Address Unknown, that unfortunately still resonates in today's world. It’s an epistolary book built around the letters betwixt the years 1932 and 1934 between the partners of Schulse-Eisenstein Galleries of San Francisco, Martin Schulse (a non-Jew) and Max Eisenstein. They run a successful art gallery business. Apparently, they both originally lived in Germany. Martin Schulse has decided to move back to Germany and expand their art business in Europe. As you read this story the contents of the letters get scarier and scarier as Adolph Hitler rises in power. The author wrote the story to alert the non-believing American people at the time:

“I wanted to write about what the Nazis were doing and show the American public what happened to real, living people swept up in a warped ideology.”

Max’s first letter to Martin in Germany is filled with jealousy:

My Dear Martin, Back in Germany! How I envy you! Although I have not seen it since my school days, the spell of Unter den Linden is still strong upon me-the breadth of intellectual freedom, the discussions, the music, the light-hearted comradeship. And now the old junker spirit, the Prussian arrogance and militarism are gone.” Ahaha, wait, the good old days of German arrogance are right around the corner. Max is living the life of luxury in Germany. He bought a thirty-room bargain in ten acres of park and he now employs ten servants for the same wages as the two he had in his San Francisco home. His boys have three ponies and a tutor. Life is good. 

As the letters progress, Martin writes to Max:

“You have heard of course of the new events in Germany, and you will want to know how it appears to us here on the inside. I tell you truly, Max, I think Hitler is good for Germany, but I am not sure...The man is like an electric shock, strong as only a great orator and a zealot can be, but  I ask myself, is he quite sane?”

Now that you know what this treasure of a novel is about, grab your own copy to see what happens. You can read the entire book sitting in your easy chair in a few hours!

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I know it was a short review but if I went any further you wouldn’t have to read it. Haha. To my remembrance, I have only read three other epistolary novels, two I’ve reviewed, one I read before I started reviewing books:

World War Z by Max Brooks (see my review of 2/18/2011) is a novel full of interviews with the survivors of the zombie war. Clever idea, but I liked the movie better.

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski (see my review of 2/1/2013). A novel that goes one step further and gets into different ergodic levels. Very, Very strange novel, it tests your compos mentis.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. The story of a woman learning that her family’s past is connected to an inconceivable evil. The scariest book I’ve ever read... bar none.

the LINCOLN HIGHWAY

 

There are storytellers and tale-tellers and then there is Amor Towles, a Cormac McCarthy disciple if ever I saw one. Having read his A Gentleman in Moscow (see my review of 12/31/17) I knew what to expect...superb prose and a captivating story. The amount of main characters is a readable five with two sidebar characters. It doesn’t get any better than that. No need to note the innumerable and exotic names cataloged in most novels, because this novel only has a total of seven. How about Emmett, Billy, Woolly, Duchess, and Sally as your main characters? And Ulysses and Pastor John as your side characters? Do you think you can remember them? You bet your sweet bippy you can! That’s what I’m talking about. And in this novel (ala Cormac McCarthy) he sheds the quotation marks. He uses dashes in lieu of. Here’s a typical example: 

  - How long has this highway been around? asked Duchess.  

  - It was invented by Mr. Carl G. Fisher in 1912.

  - Invented?

  - Yes, said Billy. Invented. 

It’s surprisingly easy to follow and for some reason seems to flow better...more natural. Amor’s previous two novels have sold over four million copies and have been translated into more than thirty languages. Have I found my new best writer? You can bet your sweet patootie! HaHa. No, I’m not disparaging my two all-time favorites...Mark Twain (see my review of Tom Sawyer on 11/7/2017 and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court on 11/8/2012) and Charles Dickens, but they’ve passed on. I'm talking about today's authors. And don’t call me a misogynist because I also love Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries ( see my review of Dumb Witness on 4/28/17 and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe on 5/16/2013). So what's Amor's story about? Well, once upon a time…Haha.

The Warden from The Salina Kansas Juvenile Work Farm was driving Emmett Watson (18) home to Morgen, Nebraska after Emmett’s term was cut short because of his father’s death. His brother Billy (8) was waiting for him at the family farm along with Mr. Ranson, a neighbor, and a banker waiting to serve notice of non-payment of the mortgage. Emmett and Billy were given two weeks to clear out. After the banker left, the boys found Emmett’s 1948 Studebaker in the barn with $3000 in the trunk. This was all their father had left in the world. The boys decided that they would head to California to find their mother, who walked out on the family eight years ago. Billy had found a metal box with nine postcards addressed to the boys from their mother traveling down the Lincoln Highway. The last card showed a large, classical building rising above a fountain in a park in San Francisco. The boys were disturbed that their father never showed them the postcards that were addressed to them. So, it was Horace Greeley’s “Go west young man” for Emmett and Billy. 

The boy's California plan hit a snag when who walked in the barn to surprise them? None other than Duchess and Woolly, two escapees from the juvenile farm Emmitt just left!  Emmett was dumbfounded:

 - But How…?

 - We hitched a ride with the warden. While he was signing you out, we slipped into the trunk of his car.

It seems that Woolly’s grandfather died and left him a trust fund of $150,000 in the Adirondacks. They want Emmett to take them to New York and they will split the money three ways. This is the point where this story peels off like a dragster, but your taste of the first 41 pages of a 576-page blockbuster has ended. I will not divulge anymore, grab a copy and enjoy. BTW, I loved the way Amor put his novel together. Each chapter was narrated by a different character. That gave each person (even the minor ones) an opportunity to state his/her view as the story unraveled. Well done, Amor, and kudos to you for your wonderful sidebar stories throughout the novel. Wow, a rare review where I didn't criticize the author….oh well.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: This has nothing to do with the above novel, but has anybody noticed a large amount of useless or neophyte (in some cases) amount of Memoirs written this year? I'm Somewhat allergic to them ever since I almost blew my brains out reading Henry Kissinger’s Years of Upheaval and The Memoirs of Richard Nixon in the same year! Yikes!  

Do we need the life story of Dorina Medley? Haven’t we had our fill of Real Housewives …?

How about a memoir of a biographer? Eric Metaxas’s Fish out of Water will surely get you counting sheep.

How about Hunter Biden’s Beautiful Things? What’s beautiful about his cocaine habit or his Ukrainian corruption? 

Now I’m sure Will Smith is a fine gentleman, but shouldn’t he age a bit more before writing his memoir, Will? Wouldn’t you rather read the memoirs of Morgan Freeman? If you do...good news. Kathleen Tracey wrote a biography in 2006 about Freeman, but no memoir.

And lastly...the ultimate sleeping pill, the memoirs of Indian actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Unfinished! Well, I’m finished.  

Rambling Comments #7: Hoopla And Libby, Your Public Library Online

This is a guest post by Deron O:

Imagine looking at your bookshelves and suddenly seeing them burst through the walls and stretch off into infinity. That’s Hoopla and Libby. They’re invaluable extensions of your local public library, allowing you to access e-books, audio books, music, tv shows and movies online for free through their apps and websites. I typically use them on my iPad. They are an endless treasure trove.

A few months ago, I had just finished reading my old paperback of Frank Herbert’s The Children of Dune and thought I’d rewatch its SyFy adaptation. The only place I could find it for streaming was on Hoopla. Hoopla? I had never heard of it before. After doing a bit of reading, I learned that Hoopla is a service linked to public libraries that allows one to download what you’d normally find at a library. To sign up, you just need a library card. I visited my library’s website and obtained a temporary card online. Within half an hour, I was watching Children of Dune on my iPad.

I then started poking around Hoopla. To my surprise, they have an extensive collection of comics and graphic novels. I love comics but hadn’t read much over the past twenty years given their cost and space they take up. Many are available on Hoopla as compilations, but there are current single issues too. I’ve burned through a lot of the classics: Infinity Gauntlet, Batman: Hush, Eternals, The Incal, X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga and others. I’ve read thousands of pages of comics in the past few months.

While on my library’s website, I noticed Libby. Just like Hoopla, you sign up with your library card. Through Libby, I read my first e-book: Enola Holmes: The Case of the Left-Handed Lady. I wasn’t sure how I would like reading a book on an iPad, so I picked this book mainly because of its novella length and easy reading. It was a success. I’ve since read another e-book and have a Stephen King book on hold.

On Hoopla, e-books and audio books can be checked out for 21 days, music for seven days and movies and tv shows for three days. E-books and audio books can be checked out for 21 days on Libby.

There’s a limit to the number of items you can check out from these services. I am restricted to nineteen items per month on Hoopla, which has been more than enough. Libby has a different method where I can have up to ten items checked out at any one time. Those numbers are set by your library, so yours may be different. Also, at least for Hoopla, there is a limit to the total number of items that can be checked out in any one day by all subscribers connected to your library. Many times I’ve tried to check out a comic late in the day only to be denied because the daily limit had been reached. It resets at midnight.

On Libby, only a certain number of copies exist for borrowing that is set by your library. For example, the Enola Holmes book I chose was the second of the series because the first one’s only copy had already been checked out. You can put a book on hold, and when it is available, you’ll receive an alert explaining that you have a limited time during which you can now borrow it. I put the first book on hold and was alerted of its availability a few days later. Hoopla has no limitations.

Not every author or all the works of any one author are available. However, the content is vast enough that you could easily find something to read. I did see that two books reviewed recently on this site, The Hour of the Witch and The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, are available on Libby.

These services have broadened my selection and taste in books, choosing ones I would not ordinarily have. I am currently enjoying Star Wars, Ms. Marvel, and Sweet Tooth from which the acclaimed Netflix series was adapted; none of which I would have read had I not found them on Hoopla. E-books were never an option for me, preferring only physical books, but not anymore.

Check out Hoopla and Libby. They are the best thing I’ve found on the internet in years. Hopefully, you’ll have as good an experience as I did and become more appreciative of your local public library.