MostlyFiction Book Reviews » Classic We Love to Read! Wed, 14 May 2014 13:06:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.3 NEUROMANCER by William Gibson /2011/neuromancer-by-william-gibson/ /2011/neuromancer-by-william-gibson/#comments Sun, 21 Aug 2011 14:56:02 +0000 /?p=20303 Book Quote:

“Just thinking out loud . . . How smart’s an AI, Case?”

“Depends. Some aren’t much smarter than dogs. Pets. Cost a fortune, anyway. The real smart ones are as smart as the Turing heat is willing to let ‘em get.”

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd AUG 21, 2011)

One of the rare books to wear the coveted triple-crown of science-fiction, winning all three major prizes in the genre (the Hugo, Phillip K. Dick, Nebula awards), as well as being included on Time Magazine’s 1995 list, “All TIME 100 Best Novels,” it isn’t hyperbolic to claim that William Gibson’s 1983 classic, Neuromancer, is a must-read in our world of ubiquitous WI-FI, 24-hour connectedness, and the Blue Brain reverse engineering project, a world in which a recent Time magazine cover claimed The Singularity would be upon is in less than 40 years.

If  you – like me – are late to this party, and haven’t yet read this book, you’ll find it hard to believe it was published in 1983, and you’ll undoubtedly see the influence that it has had on a number of later works. Let me put the publication date in perspective: I was 5 and played Space Invaders on a Commodore-PET computer at school and it was almost a decade and a half later before I surfed the net (on dial-up, no less) or, even, had an email account. So I can’t imagine how Neuromancer – a book about hackers who jack into cyberspace and troll the matrix, essentially a virtual reality representation of all computers, and their data-structures, linked on a global network– was received in a 1983 world of Commodore computers.

Case is a “data-thief,” a hacker for hire, who loses his ability to jack into “a custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix” when he makes the “classic mistake” of stealing from his employer during one of his runs. His punishment: forced administration of mycotoxin, the ensuing neurological damage locking him out of the matrix, a devastating punishment for a man who “lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace.” High on amphetamines and suicidal, Case scours black-medicine clinics in Chiba City, Japan, which has become, with its “poisoned silver sky,” a “magnet for the Sprawl’s [an eastern seaboard megacity that spans from Boston to Atlanta] techno-criminal subcultures.” That is, until he’s picked up by Molly, a street samurai, with silver lenses “surgically inset, sealing her sockets” and retractable scalpels embedded under her nails, who takes him to see her boss, Armitage .

Armitage, a former Special Forces soldier, has a job for him. He promises to repair Case’s neurological damage if he agrees to work for him. To ensure his complete co-operation, Armitage has time-sensitive sacs of the mycotoxin inserted into his arteries: if Case completes his assignment, Armitage will have the sacs removed; else, the mycotoxin will be released, his neurological restoration undone. Much to his chagrin, Case is given a new pancreas to boot – one that renders him insensitive to the amphetamines he was partial to. Faced with the prospect of living in his “prison of flesh” without the option of pill-popping escape, what choice does Case have but to agree?

But before he can get started on the actual job, Armitage needs a piece of hardware – a recording of McCoy Pauley’s consciousness, a legendary hacker, and one of Case’s mentors. The Dixie Flatline construct—McCoy Pauley survived brain death, or flatlined, three times while jacked into the matrix, hence his nickname, and the moniker for his construct– is locked away in the corporate headquarters of Sense/Net in Atlanta. With the help of a group of cosmetically modified radicals called the Panther Moderns, Case and Molly prepare to break into Sense/Net to steal the construct; they’ll need the Dixie Flatline’s expertise for the actual job. Rigged with a device that’ll allow him to toggle into a “simstim” stream of Molly’s “sensorium” while inside the matrix, Case will infiltrate Sense/Net’s security systems, breaking through the Intrusions Countermeasures Electronics, or ICE, to facilitate Molly’s passage through Sense/Net headquarters.

While things at Sense/Net don’t go exactly as planned – a riot breaks out; Molly breaks her leg – they succeed in lifting the construct, and so the group is off to Istanbul to retrieve the last member of their team, a heroin-addicted sociopath who gets off on betraying people, with a surgical implant that allows him to project images onto other people’s retinas – Peter Riviera.

But Case still doesn’t have any idea what they’re really up to or who Armitage really is. According to his research, there’s no record of Armitage being a part of Screaming Fist, a US military operation that sent US soldiers to infiltrate Russia on a doomed mission in order to glean information about the EMP weapons they knew the Russians would use to thwart the attack. And so, Molly has the Panther Moderns investigate Armitage: turns out he takes his orders from Wintermute.

Wintermute, an Artificial Intelligence, has been orchestrating the gig from the get-go, and now that its team is assembled, it arranges for them to fly to Freeside, a Vegas-like space resort that orbits Earth. Freeside is owned by a rich and mysterious family, the Tessier-Ashpools. No Tessier-Ashpool stock has been traded for more than 100 years, and it is rumored that the family – both original members and clones – exist in a state of cryogenic slumber in their labyrinthine space-station mansion, Villa Straylight, awaiting the time when technology renders man immortal.

Wintermute is housed somewhere in Villa Straylight, as is his AI sibling, Neuromancer. Two parts of super-intelligent entity, they were built with barriers between them to keep the Turing police, the law-enforcement body that regulates the construction of AIs, from destroying them. But to ensure their eventual consolidation and evolution, Wintermute was built with a single, overriding desire – to merge with Neuromancer. However, many non-digital safeguards were put in place, and in order for the fusion to happen, someone must speak a password into a console located somewhere in Villa Straylight. While Case breaks through the ICE that separates Wintermute from Neuromancer, Riviera and Molly will have to convince the only member of the Tessier-Ashpool family not in cryogenic freeze, 3LadyJane, to give them the password. If all goes according to plan, the two entities will fuse, creating an autonomous super-intelligence.

Believe it or not, this is a necessarily superficial sketch of a quite complicated plot, but for all its nuances and drama, I couldn’t get caught up in the suspense of it all: I was too impressed by Gibson’s enviable imagination, and it’s to his credit that the book never feels overburdened by detail. While, for the most part, the characters don’t rise above being clichés of the genre, this is an intelligent meditation on the conditions of autonomous intelligence.

Questioning the conditions of autonomous intelligence, or for lack of a better word, personhood, is as old as human society and has had many moral implications, from granting (and denying) women political participation to the emancipation of slaves, and I suspect in years to come, the ways in which we answer this question will be used to argue for (or against) the rights of machine intelligence. And yet, even as I type this, part of me balks at the assumption that machine intelligence, the kind of intelligence that deserves constitutionally entrenched rights and freedoms, is even possible. Although Turing’s famous test for machine intelligence is quite clear, I can’t ignore my resistance to the claim that any machine that behaves indistinguishably from an intelligent consciousness is an intelligent consciousness. Reading this book forced me to examine why that is: what about our minds am I so reluctant to admit might be reproduced in silicone?

In the current state of things, our brains are phenomenally superior to the best computers not in terms of memory, but of adaptability and processing power. The ways in which we learn and assimilate information is far more sophisticated than the way even the “smartest” computer program learns now. The Dixie Flatline construct, essentially a ROM construct, is not really alive, not really an autonomous intelligence, precisely because it cannot learn or adapt to new material.

In fact, it is the restriction of this capacity, the capacity to bring together information stored in disparate parts of the brain, that renders Armitage so unstable. As it turns out, Armitage did participate in Screaming Fist, known then as Colonel Corto. The sole survivor, Corto was physically and psychologically shattered. Wintermute first makes contact with Corto in a psychiatric hospital in Paris when he’s assigned to a computer-based rehabilitative program. Wintermute essentially constructs the Armitage personality around Corto’s broken psyche. The result is a personality with limited access to itself, and hence, limited assimilative and adaptive capacity, resulting in something more like an automaton, as Case notices, little more than “a statue.”

When Case asks “where had Corto been all those years,” he’s asking an age-old question about the nature not just of consciousness, but of our selves. While prostitutes, or “meat puppets” are able to disconnect the connection between their minds and their bodies, a neural cut giving a computer chip temporary control of their bodies– women literally objectifying themselves – in a way that suggests consciousness is strictly neurological, the language Mr. Gibson uses to describes Case’s experience in the matrix – “disembodied consciousness” – and the descriptions of Case’s consciousness piggy-backing on Molly’s experience through the simstim rig are more suggestive of embodied souls – Cartesian ghosts in the machine – than neurologically reductive consciousness.

And just as Case prefers the freedom and bliss of disembodied consciousness, Neuromancer, with its own stable personality, prefers solitary existence to the restrictive loss of self it believes merging with Wintermute would entail. But as the emergent Neuromancer/Wintermute super-intelligence suggests, the two are better together; and perhaps for all its advanced technology and autonomous Artificial Intelligences, Neuromancer really is a humanistic book; perhaps in encouraging Case to get emotionally involved in his work – to find his hate –Wintermute is pushing him to draw on his dual natures, rational and emotional, pushing him to be paradigmatically human.

At the end of all this, the Wintermute wins, and a superintelligent entity is born, one that is “the sum total of all works, the whole show.”  I, like Case and the Tessier-Ashpool matriarch who designed it, can’t really imagine what such an intelligence might be, but if Ray Kurzweil is right, and this day will soon be upon us, I look forward to one thing, the same thing that surprised and pleased me about this book: whatever a conscious AI entity looks like, whatever its motivations and character, whatever fortunes or calamities it spells for mankind, it will undoubtedly answer some of the important philosophical questions about what exactly it is to be human in this all too physical world.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 505 readers
PUBLISHER: Ace Trade (July 10, 2000)
REVIEWER: Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: William Gibson
EXTRAS: ExcerptWikipedia on Neuromancer
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

 

 

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]]> /2011/neuromancer-by-william-gibson/feed/ 0 RAGTIME by E. L. Doctorow /2011/ragtime-by-e-l-doctorow/ /2011/ragtime-by-e-l-doctorow/#comments Sat, 30 Jul 2011 12:50:18 +0000 /?p=19533 Book Quote:

“Father watched the prow of the scaly broad-beamed vessel splash in the sea. Her decks were packed with people. Thousands of male heads in derbies. Thousands of female heads covered with shawls. It was a rag ship with a million dark eyes staring at him. Father, a normally resolute person, suddenly foundered in his soul. A weird despair seized him. The wind came up, the sky turned overcast, and the great ocean began to tumble and break upon itself as if made of slabs of granite and sliding terraces of slate. He watched the ship till he could see it no longer. Yet aboard her were only more customers, for the immigrant population set great store by the American flag.”

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd  (JUL 24, 2011)

E.L. Doctorow’s 1974 masterpiece, Ragtime, takes its name from the a style of music, the melodious offspring of blackface cakewalks and patriotic marches, that perfectly captures the optimism and energy of the America in the early 1900s. It’s aptly titled too, for Doctorow manages to capture the energy of the era, a time of hitherto unheard of growth and prosperity, a time when coal miners took on the capitalists for safer work conditions and fair pay, and won; a time when a single, socially- minded photographer, documenting immigrant ghettos, took pictures powerful enough to move a president and serve as evidence of the necessity of improved housing conditions for the poor; a time when American entrepreneurs amassed more wealth than some European monarchy, through little more than hard work and talent. However, it was also the era of Jim Crow legislation and the venomous prejudice that made it impossible for a black man to materially enjoy his success, say, by driving a shiny new Model T Ford – but more on that later.

Although too many people, unprotected by social safety nets or workplace regulations, lived and worked in squalor, the first decade and a half of the twentieth century brought with it a general sense of hope and optimism, and it’s the paradoxes of this period, the progressive enlightenment and conservative barbarism, the frosty rationality and fuzzy superstition, the fervent patriotism and homicidal anarchy, that E.L. Doctorow builds Ragtime around.

Set in New Rochelle, NY and New York City, the book centers on an upper-class family known only by their roles in relation to a young male observer: Mother, Father, Mother’s Younger Brother, Grandfather. And while they could stand-in for any of a certain type of family – well-off, white, entrepreneurial – they are remarkable, in all their anonymity, for the ways in which they burst out of type, in spite of themselves: Father, a manufacturer of patriotic paraphernalia, tags along with his flags on Arctic expeditions, something of a hobbyist explorer; Mother, radically progressive without knowing it, befriends Sarah, the black mother of the illegitimate baby Mother finds buried in the garden, and ends up raising the black child as her own; Younger Brother builds bombs to aid a series of rebels after his heart is broken by the infamous Evelyn Nesbit, wife of the morphine-addicted sadist and millionaire, Harry Thaw. In what was billed as “The Crime of the Century,” Thaw famously blew off the face of Nesbit’s long-time lover, the architect, Stanford White, in the roof-top garden at Madison Square Gardens.

In fact, throughout the book, the whole family, not just Younger Brother, have connections of varying importance with historical figures: Mother serves Harry Houdini lemonade when his car breaks down in front of their house; a heartbroken Younger Brother takes to following Emma Goldman and her revolutionaries around; Father helps to end a standoff in J. Pierpont Morgan’s house. And while this anonymous family plays its bit role in history, cultural trends bring the major players together: J. Pierpont Morgan tries to interest Henry Ford in joining his secret society founded on Egyptian-flavoured occultism; Harry Houdini impresses a mistaken Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the inventor of a flying machine; Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung happen upon Evelyn Nesbit at a street art stall devoted to silhouette art.

However, for all the optimism of the early 20th century, these were far from perfect times: racism was still rampant and institutionalized. Coalhouse Walker is a black musician doomed by his well-groomed confidence and articulate manner and the father of the baby Mother found in the garden. When Mother and Father take Sarah and the baby into their home, Coalhouse drives out from Harlem, every Sunday, his shiny red Model T Ford glinting through the streets of New Rochelle like a flickering flame. This is too much for the men of the Emerald Isle Engine, a volunteer fire brigade, and when Coalhouse fails to show them the deference they feel due, they destroy his car. After Sarah is killed in her misguided attempt to appeal to the federal government for help, Coalhouse’s sets out for revenge, bringing New Rochelle to its knees in terror.

Meticulously researched, this book alludes heavily to historical facts, however, Doctorow’s deft hand keeps the narrative from sagging under the weight of it all, and just as no historical account can ever be free of interpretation, Doctorow’s prose, however deceptively declarative, is steeped in judgment. For example:

“At palaces in New York and Chicago people gave poverty balls. Guests came dressed in rags and ate from tin plates and drank from chipped mugs. Ballrooms were decorated to look like mines with beams, iron tracks and miner’s lamps. Theatrical scenery firms were hired to make outdoor gardens look like dirt farms and dining rooms like cotton mills. Guests smoked cigar butts offered to them on silver trays. Minstrels performed in blackface. One hostess invited everyone to a stockyard ball. Guests were wrapped in long aprons and their heads covered with white caps. They dined and danced while hanging carcasses of bloody beef trailed around the walls on moving pulleys. Entrails spilled on the floor. The proceeds were for charity.”

As I read Ragtime an American flag billowed in the periphery of my mind’s eye like an animated icon, as if all the threads of the story were woven together to create one of Father’s flags. However, this wonderful exploration of early 20th-century America will appeal not only to history buffs, but to anyone interested in great fiction.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 140 readers
PUBLISHER: Random House Trade Paperbacks (May 8, 2007)
REVIEWER: Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: E. L. Doctorow
EXTRAS: Wikipedia on Ragtime
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of: 

All the Time in the World

Homer and Langley

The March

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]]> /2011/ragtime-by-e-l-doctorow/feed/ 0 THE CRY OF THE OWL by Patricia Highsmith /2011/the-cry-of-the-owl-by-patricia-highsmith/ /2011/the-cry-of-the-owl-by-patricia-highsmith/#comments Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:59:54 +0000 /?p=19273 Book Quote:

“I have the definite feeling if everybody in the world didn’t keep watching to see what everybody else did, we’d all go berserk.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (JUL 21, 2011)

American author, Patricia Highsmith, who died in 1995, left behind a respectable body of work. Highsmith is known primarily for her psychological thrillers, so perhaps it’s not too surprising that a number of her novels have been adapted for the big screen–including The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley’s Game, Ripley Underground, The Cry of the Owl and This Sweet Sickness. Highsmith’s first novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock–a man with an uncanny ability to spot new talent. While Strangers on a Train is my all-time favourite Hitchcock film, it veers away from the darkest corners of Highsmith’s tale. I like to think that even Hitchcock wasn’t ready to wrestle with some of Highsmith’s controversial and insidiously buried themes.

Highsmith is a criminally underrated writer. While her talents are recognized repeatedly by the film industry, she is not as widely read as she deserves to be. During Highsmith’s lifetime she won a number of awards, but those awards are largely granted to mystery novels, and mystery and crime novels aren’t considered on the same playing field as so-called literary fiction. In 2011, Grove Press championed Patricia Highsmith by declaring the re-release of nine of Highsmith’s books, and that brings me to the sinister, moody psychological novel, The Cry of the Owl.

The Cry of the Owl is set in a small Pennsylvania town, and the story begins with quiet, introverted engineer Robert Forrester leaving work one night. Mentally shattered from a recent vicious divorce, feeling lonely, sad and depressed, Forrester has developed a habit of stopping at an isolated country house and watching a pretty young woman as she moves through her mundane, domestic tasks. This isn’t exactly peeping tom stuff as Forrester isn’t interested in catching the girl nude or even watching the girl with her fiancé, Greg. Instead it’s as though watching the girl provides Forrester with some sort of reassurance that decency and normalcy exist somewhere in the world. Forrester thinks this is fairly harmless stuff–although to get a better look he must leave his car, creep up to the house, and watch the girl in the dark. Each time he promises himself that it will be his last, but he always returns, inexplicably drawn to the picture of domestic simplicity and harmony.

Perhaps it’s inevitable. Perhaps Forrester intended it to happen. One night, the girl, bank teller, Jenny Thierolf, spots Forrester in the gloom. We’d expect her to scream, run away and call the police. But she doesn’t. Instead she invites Forrester in:

“He stared at her in an unbelieving way, at her soft hair so close to him now, only six feet away, at her gray eyes—they had flecks of blue in them. Here. So near he could touch them, were the white curtains he had seen her put up, the oven door he had seen her so often bend to open. And something else struck him: his pleasure or satisfaction in seeing her more closely now was no greater than when he looked at her through the window, and he foresaw that getting to know her even slightly would be to diminish her and what she stood for to him—happiness and calmness and the absence of any kind of strain.”

From this point on, a dreadful atmosphere of growing menace lurks over the story as its damaged, emotionally disturbed characters interact and form dangerous, obsessive relationships. Right after the dreamy, moody Jenny enters Forrester’s life, his ex-wife, the toxic, psychotic man-eater Nickie begins pestering him with intrusive phone calls. Tormenting men is a favourite sick game for Nickie, and she’s not about to give up the sport of hounding Forrester–even though she has fresh meat at home in the form of a new pliable, rich husband. Jenny’s boyfriend, Greg, a pharmaceutical salesman with broken relationships in his past doesn’t appreciate Forrester’s presence in his fiancée’s life, and these four characters: Jenny, Greg, Nickie and Forrester find themselves emotionally tangled on a collision course with death. There’s the sense that the events that occur are unique and could only occur in this fatal cocktail, stirred by a death obsession, dependant personalities, and fueled by violent jealousy.

This is a Highsmith tour-de-force–a must read for those who’ve tested Highsmith territory with the Ripley novels. The Cry of The Owl moves with precision skill to its stunning conclusion even as it explores the inherent dangers of crossing the boundary between fantasy and reality, the repressive horror of small town living, and the monstrosity of society’s collective judgment.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 19 readers
PUBLISHER: Grove Press; Reissue edition (July 12, 2011)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Patricia Highsmith
EXTRAS: Guy Savage review of Eleven
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

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]]> /2011/the-cry-of-the-owl-by-patricia-highsmith/feed/ 0 THE ARTIFICIAL SILK GIRL by Irmgard Keun /2011/the-artificial-silk-girl-by-irmgard-keun/ /2011/the-artificial-silk-girl-by-irmgard-keun/#comments Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:19:12 +0000 /?p=18550 Book Quote:

“And I think it will be a good thing if I write everything down, because I’m an unusual person. I don’t mean a diary – that’s ridiculous for a trendy girl like me. But I want to write like a movie, because my life is like that and it’s going to become even more so. ”

Book Review:

Review by Friederike Knabe  (JUN 14, 2011)

There is nothing fake or “artificial” about the heroine of this surprising work of fiction. First published in 1932 in Germany, it was followed very quickly by its English translation in 1933. It was an immediate hit for a young author’s second novel; praised for its pointed sense of humour as well as the underlying critique of society. The story, written in the form of the central character’s musings and diary, blends a young woman’s daily struggles to make ends meet with, an at times sarcastic, yet always, witty commentary on daily life among the working classes during the dying days of the Weimar Republic.

Irmgard Keun cleverly uses her memorable character – Doris – who is as naïve as she is shrewd – to convey her own astute observations and critique of social and economic conditions of the time. While many aspects of the impending political disaster could not be predicted, Keun conveys her presentiments through Doris’s experiences. Despite the less than rosy picture it draws for Doris, the story is written in a deceptively light-hearted style, using the regional and working class colloquial language of her character with some Berliner phraseology and idioms thrown in. Keun’s vivid imagery and metaphors are often unexpected as they are hilarious. Kathie van Ankum’s new English translation captures Doris’s voice vividly and with great skill, even though Keun’s peculiar language with its grammatical mistakes and local idioms is close to impossible to transpose into another language.

Running out of options to subsidize her meagre income as a less than competent typist, Doris dreams of making it big in the movies. “I want to be a shine” (Ich will ein Glanz sein) is her ambition. She has the looks for it and her choice of boyfriends is aimed at having them provide the necessary accessories for her status as a glamour girl. Options appear to open when she lands a one-line action part against stiff competition. Unfortunately she gets carried away with her brief moment of “Glanz,” and walks off with a fur coat that “wants me and I want it – and now we have each other.”Sensuality is prominent when Doris describes fabric, often linking it to smell, objects and the people she meets.

Her closeness and loyalty to her former colleague and friend Therese is touching, relying on her as much as wanting to support her in turn. To escape being discovered with the fur coat, she leaves her mid-size town for Berlin, the centre of fashion, the arts and the movie business. Her luck goes up and down, depending on the circumstances and generosity of the current boyfriend. All the while she pines for her first and only love, Hubert. As soon as she feels settled into an almost “normal” life of some luxury with one partner, events force her to leave quietly or secretly. Yet, unflinchingly, she pursues her dream and the search for a Mister Right. Will she find him? As we follow Doris through a year’s seasons, we realize that we take in much more: Keun’s rich and detailed portrayal of Berlin and brilliant characterization of some of its multi-faceted people, always seen, of course, from Doris’s perspective.

Not surprisingly, given Keun’s topics and social critique, Keun’s books were blacklisted and all available copies confiscated in 1933. No longer able to publish Keun went into exile to Holland, where she continued to enjoy great popularity among other German exile friends. When Holland was invaded in 1940 she had to flee again. Reports of her suicide enabled her to return under cover to Germany, where she survived until the end of the war. Unfortunately, Keun could not rekindle the public’s interest in her writing; she died in 1982, lonely and poor. Her books were rediscovered decades later and have also benefited from recent re-translations. Reading it today, The Artificial Silk Girl (Das kunstseidene Mädchen) has lost nothing of its charm and relevance as a portrait of a working girl’s life in Berlin of 1932. It is a rare glimpse into a society on the brink of dramatic change, seen through the eyes of a working class young woman. (Translated by Kathie von Ankum.)

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 5 readers
PUBLISHER: Other Press (June 14, 2011)
REVIEWER: Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Irmgard Keun
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More books brought back to life:

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Translated Bibliography:

]]> /2011/the-artificial-silk-girl-by-irmgard-keun/feed/ 0 THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF BLACK MASK STORIES edited by Otto Penzler /2010/the-black-lizard-big-book-of-black-mask-stories-edited-by-otto-penzler/ /2010/the-black-lizard-big-book-of-black-mask-stories-edited-by-otto-penzler/#comments Fri, 17 Dec 2010 14:41:18 +0000 /?p=14255 Book Quote:

“I had been on a divorce case, shadowing a man most of the night before; so I didn’t do anything about the screaming telephone for the first few seconds except try to swim back down in the sticky molasses of sleep and wish whoever was calling would go away.” (from Her Dagger Before Me by Talmadge Powell)

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (DEC 17, 2010)

Clocking in at over 1100 pages, The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories is an impressive collection destined for the shelves of noir and crime fans. This is a companion volume to The Black Lizard Book of Pulps (and yes, I have a copy of that too). The 50 plus short stories, novellas and novels found in The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories have been “handpicked” from the archives of Black Mask Magazine. The magazine ran from 1920-1951, and as aficionados know, there are only two known complete collections of Black Mask magazine. Old or rare noir is pricey, so this collection is a must for all crime fans. Editor Otto Penzler writes the foreword, and Keith Alan Duetsch writes the introduction which includes an overview history of the magazine’s history. Each piece is preceded with a brief bio of the author along with the original publication date in Black Mask magazine. Original illustrations accompany the text.

There are so many names here, and so many wonderful stories, it’s impossible to mention them all. Many of the names are recognizable to fans of crime fiction–including Dashiell Hammett’s Maltese Falcon. But there’s something unique about this version; this is the complete Maltese Falcon. This is the “first time that the original magazine version has been published since its initial appearance eighty years ago.” Hammett’s novel was “dramatically revised after serialization with more than two thousand textual differences between the two versions.”

Other authors are less familiar, so for crime fans, this collection is a treasure trove of new names. The stories encompass a range of settings. “The Dancing Rats” by Richard Sale, for example, is set in Oahu after Pearl Harbor, and the tale concerns a doctor from the leper colony at Molokai who faces a deadly new enemy in the form of a mystery ailment that threatens the entire population. Another story, “Murder in the Ring” by Raoul Whitfield, is set in the boxing world, while “Knights of the Open Palm” by Carroll John Daly pits PI Race Williams against the KKK. The tale is told with a unique voice that instantly captured my interest:

“Race Williams, Private Investigator, that’s what the gilt letters spell across the door of my office. It don’t mean nothing, but the police have been looking me over so much lately that I really need a place to receive them. You see I don’t want them coming over to my home; not that I’m over particular, but a fellow must draw the line somewheres.”

For the aficionado, there are also numerous stories of historical significance–including Katherine Brocklebank’s “Bracelets.” In a time when female authors of noir and crime found it expedient to assume a male pseudonym, Brocklebank is the only positively identified female contributor “in the thirty-two-year history of Black Mask.” Her story is particularly unusual in that it depicts a female series character Tex of the Border Patrol. Also look for Peter Collinson (pseudonym of Dashiell Hammett), Erle Stanley Gardner’s “Come and Get It,” and Frederic Brown’s “Cry Silence.” For those interested in the film noir connection, many of the authors included in this collection also wrote novels made into film. Charles G Booth’s “One Shot” included in this gigantic collection, also wrote “The House on 42nd Street” and” Johnny Angel.”

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 15 readers
PUBLISHER: Vintage; Original edition (September 21, 2010)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Otto Penzler
EXTRAS: Noir Fiction is About Losers, not PIs
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

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]]> /2010/the-black-lizard-big-book-of-black-mask-stories-edited-by-otto-penzler/feed/ 0 COMEDY IN A MINOR KEY by Hans Keilson /2010/comedy-in-a-minor-key-by-hans-keilson/ /2010/comedy-in-a-minor-key-by-hans-keilson/#comments Thu, 16 Dec 2010 14:55:34 +0000 /?p=14220 Book Quote:

“Everywhere, in the grip of death, life goes on too.”

Book Review:

Review by Helen Ditouras  (DEC 16, 2010)

To be comfortable in the world of the Kafkaesque, one must slowly climb up the literary ladder, page after page, year after year. My journey began with the likes of V.C. Andrews during my tawdry youth, and then eventually reached its pinnacle with Tolstoy, and of course, Kafka. Aside from my literary snobbery (which is nothing short of a veneer – I still love me some Sidney Sheldon), having entered Kafka’s abyss of absurdity and horror makes Hans Keilson’s novel, Comedy in a Minor Key, not only recognizable, but entirely brilliant.

But I hate to take credit where it’s not deserved. I am not the lone genius who has pegged Keilson as a contemporary of Kafka – many literary critics have beat me to the punch, and rightfully so. Keilson’s Comedy in a Minor Key (published in 1947), is also followed by The Death of the Adversary, published in 1959, and shares some very distinct characteristics – both aesthetic and thematic, with the aforementioned tale. His minimalist prose are skillfully juxtaposed with themes of tragedy, which reflects his work as a psychiatrist post WWII, and his pioneering developments in the effects of war trauma on children. Trauma, as a reoccurring theme, resonates throughout his work.

Keilson’s Comedy ironically reveals the story of Nico – a Jewish perfume salesman hidden in the second-floor room of Wim and Marie, a benevolent Dutch couple, during Nazi-occupied Holland. In this room, Nico’s life is carefully preserved by the couple, who manage to go about their daily lives amidst the dread of exposure. Yet apart from the terror, all three characters lead lives that border on the painfully banal. Day after day, Nico anticipates the moment when Marie can deliver the daily paper upstairs. Both Wim and Marie too look forward to the clandestine conversations they share with Nico when the sun goes down. These small, but endearing rituals, keep the trio bound in camaraderie and secrecy, while Europe’s Jews are detained and annihilated. Yet despite the fact that Wim and Marie carefully tend to Nico each day, he eventually succumbs to a feverish illness which takes his life in the very room that promised sanctuary.

I refuse to spoil the novel by revealing the climax, so I will return to my musings of the Kafkaesque. Keilson deliberately avoids discussion of the occupation and its horrors in order to set the stage for the deep ironies that the novel comically uncovers. Nico is similar to Joseph K. – he is seemingly persecuted simply for existing. Both characters are confined in psychological isolation, and neither of them foresees an end. Moreover, the world in which Nico and Joseph K. live in escalates into mystery and unfathomable trepidation, with little respite. Like Joseph K., Nico endures the fear that comes to epitomize his entire existence.

Comedy in a Minor Key perfectly conveys the trauma that ordinary people experience during their life span. But more importantly, it also imparts the illogical dimensions of oppression that afflict people all over. That misery sometimes cannot be avoided at any cost is the philosophical conclusion that Keilson’s Comedy cleverly relates with pathos and farce. Keilson’s message reverberates clearly: pain and suffering is universal, and sometimes, the only way to communicate this anxiety is through humor. (Translated by Damion Searls.)

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 28 readers
PUBLISHER: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition (July 20, 2010)
REVIEWER: Helen Ditouras
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Hans Keilson
EXTRAS: Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> /2010/comedy-in-a-minor-key-by-hans-keilson/feed/ 0 DEATH OF THE ADVERSARY by Hans Keilson /2010/death-of-the-adversary-by-hans-keilson/ /2010/death-of-the-adversary-by-hans-keilson/#comments Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:47:46 +0000 /?p=13074 Book Quote:

“I could not give him up; I needed him. His existence meant my destruction in the near future, that much was certain. But his sudden death, or some other event that would have robbed me of his threatening presence, would equally have destroyed me. Between us two, ties and obligations had come into being, perceptible only to those whose share in the things of this world lie in suffering. A strange and questionable share, perhaps; but who can break the community that secretly establishes itself between the persecutors and their victims?”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (OCT 22, 2010)

What is the relationship between persecutors and their victims? In The Death of the Adversary – poised on the brink of what soon will be one of the world’s most horrific tragedies – an unnamed narrator in an unnamed country reflects on an unnamed figure who will soon ascend to power. Although the figure (“B”) is never revealed, it soon becomes obvious that he is Hitler and that the narrator is of Jewish descent.

The narrator – who bemoans his own passivity – is blessed, or cursed, with high intelligence. Because he is unable to come to grips with evil for its own sake, he twists his logic to make sense out of the insensible; he knows B hates what the narrator represents, but he believes that the narrator desperately needs that hatred and, in fact, feeds on it…eliciting hatred in return. He goes further: in his “logical” mind, he believes that the adversary and his victims are in a state of symbiosis, feeding upon each other and because of their mutual need, neither adversary will eliminate the other. History, of course, has sadly shown how ludicrous this conclusion was.

Keilson uses a conceit in presenting these musings; his fictional (or autobiographical?) narrator has deposited a manuscript for safekeeping during the war years. Now, as he awaits word of the death of B, he rekindles his memory about the events of those pre-war years.

In haunting prose, he remembers his father’s words when he was only 10: “If B. should ever come to power, may God have mercy on us. Then things will really start to happen.” He recalls being ostracized from a group of non-Jewish children who seek to banish him from their games. He remembers the ending of a close friendship with another man who, it turns out, is enthralled by B. and his ideas. He recounts the two times when his path and his adversary’s intersected.

And, in one of the most devastating parts of the book, he recreates an evening at the apartment of a saleswomen he worked with whose brother and friends are revealed to be Nazi thugs, who desecrate a supposed Jewish cemetery to prove that even in death, Jews will not allowed to experience peace. As the young man describes in exhaustive detail how gravestones – even those of young children – were defaced, our narrator sits transfixed, unable to admit to his heritage or condemn these monstrous acts.

It bears acknowledging that Hans Keilson – now a centenarian – lives in an Amsterdam village, after the Nuremberg laws forced him to flee from his native Germany. He is a psychoanalyst who pioneered the treatment of war trauma in children. It is no surprise, then, that the book is underpinned by a deep psychoanalysis of the relationship of perpetrator and victim, and the victim’s sense of denial and self-delusion. Sometimes this works; sometimes it doesn’t. By removing the victim from his more primal emotions, there is a certain sterility that is not normally seen in Holocaust-themed books. The translator, Ivo Jarosy, appears to take a literal rather than interpretive approach, which creates a certain British formality in tone.

Still, as Arthur Miller once wrote, “Attention must be paid.” Hans Keilson is one of the last witnesses to the atrocity that was the Holocaust. In an era where – incredibly – a new breed of Holocaust deniers are rearing their ugly heads, it is important for the world to understand once again the sheer evil and damning repercussions of this most heinous act of genocide. (Translated by Ivo Jarosy.)

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 18 readers
PUBLISHER: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Reissue edition (July 20, 2010)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wkipedia page on Hans Keilson
EXTRAS: The New York Times article on Hans Keilson
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of :

Comedy in a Minor Key

Also try:
The Great House by Nicole Kraus

Bibliography:

]]> /2010/death-of-the-adversary-by-hans-keilson/feed/ 0 CONCRETE by Thomas Bernhard /2010/concrete-by-thomas-bernhard/ /2010/concrete-by-thomas-bernhard/#comments Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:42:11 +0000 /?p=12856 Book Quote:

“No doctrine holds water any longer; everything that is said and preached is destined to become ludicrous.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (OCT 12, 2010)

I’d read wildly different reviews of a Thomas Bernhard book. One review was overwhelmingly positive while another review thought the same book (The Old Masters) pointless. After reading both reviews and salient quotes, I leaned towards the pointless reaction, but then again, the reviewers’ reactions to the same book were so different, I was curious to try a Bernhard novel. This brings me to Concrete, and after reading it, I now understand how this author could provoke such vastly different reactions from readers.

Concrete is narrated by a 45-year-old bachelor, Rudolph who lives in the town of Peiskam, Austria. When I say narrated by I mean that quite literally. Rudolph, who suffers from sarcoidosis, hopped full of prednisolone, wants to write a book about Mendelssohn Bartholdy. He’s spent years on the project and has an entire room full of notes to prove it, but Rudolph, who’s a classic procrastinator, has a litany of excuses about why his masterpiece isn’t finished. Concrete is a 156-page rant against several of Rudolph’s pet peeves: his pushy sister, charity, religion, Vienna, pet owners, so-called “simple people,” –you name it–Rudolph complains about it. And complain he does endlessly, repetitively and utterly pointlessly. Concrete is a brilliant, brilliantly funny look at the labyrinth of one man’s peevish, petty, rambling yet repetitive obsessions, and if you’ve read Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

When the novel begins, Rudolph’s successful sister has finally ended her visit at the old family home to which she has “the right to domicile.” She left urging Rudolph to visit Vienna, and Rudolph claims to be thrilled to see the back of her. The first part of the novel is a litany of complaints about his sister, and she’s portrayed as a monstrously domineering woman who is “the excuse for every failure” in Rudolph’s life:

“Although she had gone, I still felt the presence of my sister in every part of the house. It would be impossible to imagine a person more hostile to anything intellectual than my sister. The very thought of her robs me of my capacity for any intellectual activity, and she has always stifled at birth any intellectual projects I have had. She’s been gone a long time now, and yet she is still controlling me, I thought as I pressed my hands against the cold wall of the hall.”

According to Rudolph, there’s “no defence” against someone like his sister–a woman who’s so “wretched, malignant, deceitful” her husband “fled from her stranglehold and went to South America, to Peru, never to be heard of again.” Monstrous indeed, but as Rudolph shifts from one rant to another, we arrive at the conclusion that perhaps Rudolph’s relentless sister isn’t so bad after all.

Spurred on by his sister’s suggestion that he’s stagnating in Peiskam, Rudolph decides to take a long-delayed holiday and he ends up in Majorca. His fussy preparations for the trip include dragging along a suitcase of notes on Mendelssohn–along with adequate medicines for his chronic condition.

Concrete (and the meaning of the title becomes horribly clear at the end of the book) is an interior narrative rendered by an extremely unreliable, unhappy narrator. Seclusion and illness–combined with adequate funds to allow complete ostracism from the world–combine to create a situation in which Rudolph need have very little contact with humanity. His primary unsatisfying relationships are with his sister and his housekeeper, and apart from that he keeps himself company. While this is all very funny, undercurrents within the text illustrate how chronic disease erodes self-confidence while demanding a controlling relationship from its human host.

There’s the sense that we are in the same darkened room with Rudolph as he mutters one diatribe after another, curses fate, and argues himself into the position that he hasn’t published anything because to do so is “evidence of a certain defect of character.” He’s one of those people who ramble on like broken records about the same half-dozen issues. You could leave that darkened room, come back four hours later, and he wouldn’t have noticed your absence. But since Rudolph’s agonized rants are in print, we don’t have to miss a word. (Translated from German by David McLintock.)

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 7 readers
PUBLISHER: Vintage (August 10, 2010)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Thomas Bernhard

Wikipedia page on Thomas Bernhard
EXTRAS: Excerpt

Guy Savage has more to say about Concrete
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Woodcutters

Wittgenstein’s Nephew

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Nonfiction:

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]]> /2010/concrete-by-thomas-bernhard/feed/ 0 WOODCUTTERS by Thomas Bernhard /2010/woodcutters-by-thomas-bernhard/ /2010/woodcutters-by-thomas-bernhard/#comments Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:34:26 +0000 /?p=12866 Book Quote:

“You used to be in love with these ridiculous people, I told myself as I sat in the wing chair, head in heels in love with these ridiculous, low, vicious people, who suddenly saw you again after twenty years, in the Graben of all places, and on the very day Joana killed herself. They came up and spoke to you and invited you to attend their artistic dinner party with the famous Burgtheater actor in the Gentzgasse. What ridiculous, vicious people they are! I thought sitting in the wing chair. And suddenly it struck me what a low ridiculous character I myself was, having accepted their invitation and nonchalantly taken my place in their wing chair as though nothing had happened – stretching out and crossing my legs and finishing off what must by now have been my third or fourth glass of champagne.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (OCT 12, 2010)

Thomas Bernhard is a writer of semi-autobiographical fiction and satire who possesses an acerbic wit. Born out of wedlock in Holland in 1931, he was raised for several years in Vienna by his maternal grandfather, himself a writer. His grandfather introduced him to the many literati of his generation and also to Schopenhauer, who remained a strong influence on Bernhard’s life and writing. Bernhard considered Vienna his home though he maintained a love/hate relationship with it. The Boston Review cites that “In his final will and testament, Thomas Bernhard – Austria’s most infamous novelist and playwright for the past half-century, and the most outspoken critic the state has endured since Karl Kraus – performed an unlikely post-mortem disappearing act. With characteristic bravado, he banned any further production and publication of his works within his home country for the duration of their copyright.” Bernhard suffered from chronic tuberculosis to which he succumbed in 1989 at the age of 58. He speaks at great length about his illness in his novel, Wittgenstein’s Nephew.

Woodcutters, originally written as part of a trilogy, is Bernhard’s diatribe about his disgust, revulsion, loathing, hatred and vilification of the hypocrites and losers that make up the art circle in Vienna from the 1950’s through the 1980’s. In his unique style, with not one paragraph in nearly 200 pages, this novel is told primarily in stream of consciousness from the viewpoint of a writer, one not unlike Bernhard himself. The novel is in three identifiable parts – the writer sitting in a wing chair observing a dinner party, the writer discussing his relationship with a recently deceased friend, and the conversations of an actor during dinner.

The first segment of the book has almost every sentence beginning with, containing, or ending with the phrase ” …from my wing chair.” As the writer looks on at those attending the party, from his wingchair, he remembers all the reasons that he has been estranged from these very same people for the last twenty or thirty years. He remembers all the slights he received, the lies that were told about him and the hypocrisies he’s witnessed. He tries to figure out why he accepted this invitation and ruminates about it over and over, finally coming to a semi-belief that it was because his friend had committed suicide yesterday and he was feeling more vulnerable when he was invited. He recollects his history with all of the attendees, each relationship ending poorly, with the writer getting the bad end of the stick. He can think of nothing positive to say about anyone nor can he imagine why he even remains at such a despicable gathering.

The middle part of the book takes place at Joana’s funeral. Joana was the writer’s friend who committed suicide the previous day.  It is the afternoon of her funeral. As the writer recalls Joana’s time as the reigning queen of Vienna’s art scene, he describes her lovely costumes, her graciousness, and her mentoring of others. She marries a weaver, a man who creates great tapestries that are sold throughout the world. It was Joana who made him famous and created the mystique that surrounded him. When he was in his prime, her husband left her for a Mexican woman and Joana, in her grief, succumbed to uncontrolled alcoholism despite several treatments. It was not without surprise that the writer learned that Joana had taken her life.

The third part of the book is the arrival, two hours late, of the actor in whose honor this dinner party is being held. (The story goes back and forth in time as gaps are filled in about different characters and the writer’s relationships with them). We are privy to the conversations at the table and the rudeness, drunkenness, and shameful behaviors of the guests. The actor has just finished up an Ibsen play and is tired, as are the guests, as the dinner did not start until close to midnight. The writer is a listener and observer, discussing in his own mind the implications and audacities of all that he hears. He is especially disgusted at the rudeness of an egomaniacal woman writer who keeps alluding to the actor’s old age. The actor finally snaps and gives this woman a piece of his mind, an action that the writer finds stunning. While he originally had thought poorly of the actor, the actor starts speaking about how he’d like to live in the woods and be a woodcutter. For some reason, the writer finds this a lovely idea and he ends up liking the actor.

As the dinner party ends, the writer wants to be sure to leave alone. As a misanthrope, having company is one of the worst things he can imagine. He says polite and hypocritical goodbyes to his hosts creating his own self-loathing as he sees he is no better than those he criticizes for their false charms and graciousness. What he’d like to say to his hosts is that he hates them, that he has no idea why he came to this awful party, and that he hopes he doesn’t see them for another twenty or thirty years. However, he does not do this. He plays his role as polite guest and leaves in an almost manic mood. He walks and runs around the streets of Vienna alternately embracing and hating this city that is his, despite all its foibles.

For those of us who can embrace Bernhard’s unique style, he is a breath of fresh air. His writing has a post-modern feel to it as he examines everything as part of something else, yet everything having a separate and distinct context in its own right. Everything is connected and nothing touches anything else. We can wonder till the planets’ ends and still come up with more and more reasons for why any particular event, action, or thought exists. The last thing Bernhard would call himself is a philosopher, but despite his self-description, there is a lot of philosophizing going on in his book. (Translated from German by David McLintock.)

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 8 readers
PUBLISHER: Vintage (August 10, 2010)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Thomas Bernhard

Wikipedia page on Thomas Bernhard
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Wittgenstein’s Nephew

Concrete

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

About:

]]> /2010/woodcutters-by-thomas-bernhard/feed/ 0 THE POST OFFICE GIRL by Stefan Zweig /2010/the-post-office-girl-by-stefan-zweig/ /2010/the-post-office-girl-by-stefan-zweig/#comments Mon, 20 Sep 2010 20:32:56 +0000 /?p=12280 Book Quote:

“And to think that it all turns on nothing but money, filthy, low-down, vile, despicable money. With a little money, two or three banknotes, I could have been among the blessed.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate (SEP 20, 2010)

Christine Hoflehner, the postmistress in a small village in Austria, seems an unlikely Cinderella. Coming of age in the crippling poverty prevalent in Austria after the First World War, she is now twenty-six, barely holding out on her meager salary as a state employee, without social life, without future. But then a fairy godmother appears in the form of an aunt who has married well in America, who invites her to stay with them at a luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps. Once there, she lends her fashionable clothes, buys her expensive accessories, and takes her to a beauty salon to complete the transformation. Drab no longer, Christine is now the belle of the ball, courted by the rich and titled of several nations. It takes a week or more before her personal clock strikes midnight, but when it does and she flees home in shame, she can no longer be content with the humdrum life she had left behind. This becomes the story of a Cinderella after the ball, with no prince to appear with the glass slipper.

The book’s German title, added by the publisher, is RAUSCH DER VERWANDLUNG (The Intoxication of Transformation), suggesting the heady change that comes over Christine in her grand hotel, but also implying the disillusionment that must inevitably follow. This is the subject of Zweig’s second part, which was left unfinished at his death in 1942. I have to admit that I found the ending unexpectedly abrupt, though I did not feel unsatisfied. It seemed to leave the outcome open, even optimistic, rather than continuing the downward spiral that was probable in real life. After some months of depression, Christine meets a fellow spirit named Ferdinand, a wounded veteran of the War returning from extended captivity as a POW to find a country unwilling to make any use of his talents. Now bitterly aware of the social inequalities that surround them, Christine and Ferdinand conceive a plan to start their lives anew, and it is on this note of muted possibility that the book ends.

It is a weakness, I think, that the two parts of the book have such a very different tone. The opening, aided by a racy translation by Joel Rotenberg making ample use of twenties American slang, reads almost like F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is all action and excitement. Just listen to Zweig’s evocation of the Jazz Age: “But the diabolical music drives everything along, strongly syncopated, lurid, lively and spirited and yet rhythmically precise, with a pleasantly slashing ride cymbal, a soothing fiddle, and a jarring, kneading, pummeling beat, hard and propulsive. The musicians are tawny Argentineans in brown jackets with gold buttons, and they play like fiends, in fact they look like fiends, like liveried and festooned demons, and every one of them seemingly out of his head.” Anyone who has ever lived for even a day beyond their means in a luxury resort will feel Christine’s enchantment, and anybody who has merely looked in from the sidewalk will know her subsequent pain.

In the second part, I think more of Steinbeck. Action is mostly replaced by description, interior monologue, and (once Ferdinand comes on the scene) impassioned speeches about political inequality. This section tells us a great deal about the kind of social conditions that would provide a fertile seedbed for National Socialism only a few years later. But it makes a less exciting story. Perhaps if Zweig had written a third part, he would have answered the heady opening with high-speed adventure of a different kind. But it is difficult to imagine any upbeat ending to the misery of those interwar years, that would drive Zweig into exile, see his books burned, and give birth to another War. This book may be unfinished, but so was history. Even as it is, this is a novel that will first intoxicate you, then open your eyes to reality — sobering yet undeniably important. Its belated publication is very welcome.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 17 readers
PUBLISHER: NYRB Classics (April 15, 2008)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia on Stefan Zweig

Kirjasto on Stefan Zweig
EXTRAS: Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Another read from the past:

The Vera Wright Trilogy by Elizabeth Jolley

Partial Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

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