History: Published in 1903, this book is an early example of the espionage novel.
The book enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I and was extremely influential. As Childers's biographer Andrew Boyle noted: "For the next ten years Childers's book remained the most powerful contribution of any English writer to the debate on Britain's alleged military unpreparedness." Winston Churchill later credited it as a major reason that the Admiralty decided to establish some important naval bases.
Plot: Carruthers, a minor official in the Foreign Office is contacted by an acquaintance, Davies, asking him to join in a yachting holiday in the German Frisian islands. Carruthers agrees, as his other plans for a holiday have fallen through. He arrives to find that Davies has a small sailing boat, not the comfortable crewed yacht that he expected. Davies gradually reveals that he suspects that the Germans are undertaking something sinister in the area, based on his belief that he was nearly wrecked by a German yacht luring him into a shoal in rough weather. Carruthers and Davies spend some time exploring the shallow tidal waters of the area, moving closer to the mysterious site where there is a rumoured secret treasure recovery project in progress. They are watched by a German navy patrol boat, which warns them away from the area.
Taking advantage of a thick fog, Davies navigates them covertly through the complicated sandbanks in a small boat to investigate the site. They find that it is actually the centre of a German plan to invade England. The invasion plan is master-minded by a renegade Englishman, but Davies has fallen in love with his daughter and he does not want to hurt her by revealing her father's treason. In the end, Davies and Carruthers confront the English spy for Germany, attempt to flee with him back to England (and his dgtr), but he escapes and they never find him again.
Review: Containing many realistic details based on Childers’ own sailing trips along the German North Sea coast, the book is the retelling of a yachting expedition in the early 20th century combined with an adventurous spy story.
It was one of the early invasion novels which predicted war with Germany and called for British preparedness.
Opening Line: “I have read of men who, when forced by their calling to live for long periods in utter solitude--save for a few black faces--have made it a rule to dress regularly for dinner in order to maintain their self-respect and prevent a relapse into barbarism.”
Closing Line: “From that point our personal history is of no concern to the outside world, and here, therefore, I bring this narrative to an end.”
Quotes: "By God, I’ll give you five minutes to be off to England and be damned to you, or else to be locked up for spies!"
Rating: Not good.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
356. Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
History: This book was published in 1921. In the book, Huxley satirises the fads and fashions of the time. Crome Yellow is in the tradition of the English country house novel, as practiced most notably by Thomas Love Peacock, in which a diverse group of characters descend upon an estate to leech off the host. They spend most of their time eating, drinking, and holding forth on their personal intellectual conceits. Huxley's novel, however, has slightly more actual events and far more delineation of character than Peacock's novels -- which is interesting considering Huxley's tendency in most of his other novels to lecture at great length.
Also of interest is a brief pre-figuring of Brave New World. Mr. Scogan, one of the characters, describes an "impersonal generation" of the future that will "take the place of Nature's hideous system. In vast state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world with the population it requires. The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations; and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly from flower to flower through a sunlit world."
Crome is very much a reflection of Garsington Manor, a refuge for pacifists and refugees during the First World War, and the home of Lady Ottoline Morrell. She was a great supporter of nascent literary talent, including Huxley himself, and liked to be surrounded by artists and intellectuals, so the fictional gathering at Crome is certainly autobiographical; often a fascinating aside to first novels. At a loose end after leaving Oxford University, Huxley moped around at Garsington hoplessly smitten by a very young Belgian refugee with lesbian tendancies, Maria Nys.
Plot: On vacation from school, Denis goes to stay at Crome, an English country house inhabited by several of Huxley's most outlandish characters--from Mr. Barbecue-Smith, who writes 1,500 publishable words an hour by "getting in touch" with his "subconscious," to Henry Wimbush, who is obsessed with writing the definitive "History of Crome". Denis's stay proves to be a disaster after his weak attempts to attract Anne, the girl of his dreams. The characters make the novel, and the history behind Crome, the festival, as well as the embarrassment Denis has to endure. In the end, Mary, an intellectual however emotionally devoid companion, talks him into leaving, because of his hopeless love and jealousy for Anne.
Review: A group of landed English aristocrats spend time in one of their mansions, taking walks, talking about history and politics, and trying to pair up. This particular mansion is called Crome, and it has some fun history. I especially liked the story about the three sisters who wouldn't eat in front of other people; one of them was blackmailed into marrying the man who discovered them gorging themselves in a secret room. The book is virtually plotless, but the characters are fun.
Opening Line: “Along this particular stretch of line no express had ever passed.”
Closing Line: “He climbed into the hearse.”
Quotes: "Perhaps, in the future, when machines have attained to a state of perfection--for I confess that I am, like Godwin and Shelley, a believer in perfectibility, the perfectibility of machinery--then, perhaps, it will be possible for those who, like myself, desire it, to live in a dignified seclusion, surrounded by the delicate attentions of silent and graceful machines, and entirely secure from any human intrusion. It is a beautiful thought."
Rating: Good.
Also of interest is a brief pre-figuring of Brave New World. Mr. Scogan, one of the characters, describes an "impersonal generation" of the future that will "take the place of Nature's hideous system. In vast state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world with the population it requires. The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations; and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly from flower to flower through a sunlit world."
Crome is very much a reflection of Garsington Manor, a refuge for pacifists and refugees during the First World War, and the home of Lady Ottoline Morrell. She was a great supporter of nascent literary talent, including Huxley himself, and liked to be surrounded by artists and intellectuals, so the fictional gathering at Crome is certainly autobiographical; often a fascinating aside to first novels. At a loose end after leaving Oxford University, Huxley moped around at Garsington hoplessly smitten by a very young Belgian refugee with lesbian tendancies, Maria Nys.
Plot: On vacation from school, Denis goes to stay at Crome, an English country house inhabited by several of Huxley's most outlandish characters--from Mr. Barbecue-Smith, who writes 1,500 publishable words an hour by "getting in touch" with his "subconscious," to Henry Wimbush, who is obsessed with writing the definitive "History of Crome". Denis's stay proves to be a disaster after his weak attempts to attract Anne, the girl of his dreams. The characters make the novel, and the history behind Crome, the festival, as well as the embarrassment Denis has to endure. In the end, Mary, an intellectual however emotionally devoid companion, talks him into leaving, because of his hopeless love and jealousy for Anne.
Review: A group of landed English aristocrats spend time in one of their mansions, taking walks, talking about history and politics, and trying to pair up. This particular mansion is called Crome, and it has some fun history. I especially liked the story about the three sisters who wouldn't eat in front of other people; one of them was blackmailed into marrying the man who discovered them gorging themselves in a secret room. The book is virtually plotless, but the characters are fun.
Opening Line: “Along this particular stretch of line no express had ever passed.”
Closing Line: “He climbed into the hearse.”
Quotes: "Perhaps, in the future, when machines have attained to a state of perfection--for I confess that I am, like Godwin and Shelley, a believer in perfectibility, the perfectibility of machinery--then, perhaps, it will be possible for those who, like myself, desire it, to live in a dignified seclusion, surrounded by the delicate attentions of silent and graceful machines, and entirely secure from any human intrusion. It is a beautiful thought."
Rating: Good.
355. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
History: A 6,000-word short story, published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women's physical and mental health. As someone who was almost destroyed by S. Weir Mitchell’s “resting cure” for depression, it is not surprising that Gilman structured her story as an attack on this ineffective and cruel course of treatment. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is an illustration of the way a mind that is already plagued with anxiety can deteriorate and begin to prey on itself when it is forced into inactivity and kept from healthy work.
Plot: Told in the first-person perspective as a series of journal entries, the story details the unreliable narrator's descent into madness. The protagonist's husband, John, believes it is in the narrator's best interest to go on a rest cure, since he only credits what is observable and scientific. He serves as his wife's physician, treating her like a powerless patient. She is forbidden from working, and has to hide her journal entries from him, so she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency," a diagnosis common to women in that period, or the story hints that part of the woman's problem is that she recently gave birth to a child, insinuating she may be suffering from what would now be called postpartum psychosis.
While on vacation for the summer at a colonial mansion, the narrator senses "something queer about it." Confined to an upstairs room, she devotes many journal entries to obsessively describing the wallpaper—its "yellow" smell, its "breakneck" scrawling pattern, the various patches it is missing, and the fact that it leaves yellow smears on the skin and clothing of anyone who touches it. (Said yellow smears are found on her clothing, suggesting that all along it was she that was shredding the wallpaper). Obsessing over the hatred she believes radiates from the room, she supposes that it must have once been a nursery, and that the children who lived in it hated the wallpaper as much as she did. She notes a patch of wallpaper has been rubbed off at her shoulder height early in the book, and after lapsing into insanity confirms that she was the one who had done all the damage to the room, although she is oblivious to this fact herself. She describes how the longer one stays in the bedroom, the more the wallpaper appears to mutate and change, especially in the moonlight. With no other stimulus than the wallpaper, the pattern and designs on the wallpaper become increasingly intriguing, and a figure soon appears in the design. She eventually reaches the conclusion that the figure is a woman creeping on all fours behind the pattern, trying to escape the bars from the shadows.
After "realizing" she must try to free the woman in the wallpaper, she begins to strip the remaining designs off the wall. While working on peeling away the wallpaper, she tries to hide her obsession with it due to her paranoia and fear that John may re-diagnose her, and his sister will remain with them. On the last day of summer, she locks herself in her room in order to strip the remains of the wallpaper. When John arrives home, the woman refuses to unlock the door and tells him to go fetch the key from outside her window where she threw it earlier. Once he returns with the key and opens the door, however, he finds her creeping around the room, circling the walls and touching the wallpaper. She exclaims, "I’ve got out at last," her husband faints, as she continues to circle the room, stepping over his inert body each 'lap' around.
Review: This story has been interpreted by feminist critics as a condemnation of the androcentric hegemony of 19th century medical profession. The narrator's suggestions about her recuperation (that she should work instead of rest, that she should engage with society instead of remaining isolated, that she should attempt to be a mother instead of being separated entirely from her child, etc.) are dismissed out of hand using language that stereotypes her as irrational and, therefore, not qualified to offer ideas about her own condition. The feminist interpretation has drawn on the concept of the "domestic sphere" that women were held in during this period.
Modern feminist critics focus on the degree of triumph at the end of the story: while some may claim the narrator slipped into insanity, others see the ending as a female's assertion of freedom in a marriage in which she felt trapped. The emphasis on reading and writing as gendered practices also illustrated the importance of the wallpaper. If the narrator was not allowed to write in her journal nor read, she would begin to "read" the wallpaper until she found what she was looking for: an escape. Through seeing the women in the wallpaper, the narrator realizes she could not live her life locked up behind bars. At the end of the story, as her husband John lies on the floor unconscious, she crawls over him, symbolically rising over him. This is interpreted as a victory over her husband, notwithstanding that she lost her sanity in the process.
Gilman's interpretation: Gilman indicated that the idea for the story originated in her own experience as a patient: "the real purpose of the story was to reach Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways".
Gilman had suffered years of depression, and Mitchell had been consulted as a specialist. He put her on a rest cure, urging her to "live as domestic a life as possible." She was forbidden to touch a pen, pencil or brush ever again, and only allowed two hours of stimulation a day.
After three months and almost completely giving up, Gilman decided to go against her diagnosis and continue to work again. After realizing how close she had come to worse mental illness, she wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" with additions and exaggerations to illustrate her point of misdiagnosis. She sent a copy to Mitchell, but never received a response.
She further added that her purpose in writing "The Yellow Wallpaper" was "not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked." Gilman claimed that many years later she learned Mitchell had changed his treatment methods, but this claim has been discredited by book historian Julie Bates Dock. Mitchell actually continued his treatment methods and was interested in creating entire hospitals devoted to the "rest cure" so that his treatments would be more widely accessible. This was as late as 1908, 16 years after her short story was published.
Other interpretations: "The Yellow Wallpaper" is sometimes referred to as an example of Gothic literature for its treatment of madness and powerlessness. Alan Ryan, for example, introduced the story by writing "quite apart from its origins [it] is one of the finest, and strongest, tales of horror ever written. It may be a ghost story. Worse yet, it may not."
Another interpretation is to doubt the veracity of many of the narrator's early statements. There may never have been a husband, sister, baby, or any other characters as described in the story, meaning the entire story (or a large part of it) is the product of a deluded mind, so the reader cannot know what is true and what is not.
Opening Line: “It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and
myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.”
Closing Line: “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right
across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every
time!”
Quotes: "It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw — not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper—the smell! ... The only thing I can think of that it is like, is the color of the paper! A yellow smell."
"For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way."
Rating: Good
Plot: Told in the first-person perspective as a series of journal entries, the story details the unreliable narrator's descent into madness. The protagonist's husband, John, believes it is in the narrator's best interest to go on a rest cure, since he only credits what is observable and scientific. He serves as his wife's physician, treating her like a powerless patient. She is forbidden from working, and has to hide her journal entries from him, so she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency," a diagnosis common to women in that period, or the story hints that part of the woman's problem is that she recently gave birth to a child, insinuating she may be suffering from what would now be called postpartum psychosis.
While on vacation for the summer at a colonial mansion, the narrator senses "something queer about it." Confined to an upstairs room, she devotes many journal entries to obsessively describing the wallpaper—its "yellow" smell, its "breakneck" scrawling pattern, the various patches it is missing, and the fact that it leaves yellow smears on the skin and clothing of anyone who touches it. (Said yellow smears are found on her clothing, suggesting that all along it was she that was shredding the wallpaper). Obsessing over the hatred she believes radiates from the room, she supposes that it must have once been a nursery, and that the children who lived in it hated the wallpaper as much as she did. She notes a patch of wallpaper has been rubbed off at her shoulder height early in the book, and after lapsing into insanity confirms that she was the one who had done all the damage to the room, although she is oblivious to this fact herself. She describes how the longer one stays in the bedroom, the more the wallpaper appears to mutate and change, especially in the moonlight. With no other stimulus than the wallpaper, the pattern and designs on the wallpaper become increasingly intriguing, and a figure soon appears in the design. She eventually reaches the conclusion that the figure is a woman creeping on all fours behind the pattern, trying to escape the bars from the shadows.
After "realizing" she must try to free the woman in the wallpaper, she begins to strip the remaining designs off the wall. While working on peeling away the wallpaper, she tries to hide her obsession with it due to her paranoia and fear that John may re-diagnose her, and his sister will remain with them. On the last day of summer, she locks herself in her room in order to strip the remains of the wallpaper. When John arrives home, the woman refuses to unlock the door and tells him to go fetch the key from outside her window where she threw it earlier. Once he returns with the key and opens the door, however, he finds her creeping around the room, circling the walls and touching the wallpaper. She exclaims, "I’ve got out at last," her husband faints, as she continues to circle the room, stepping over his inert body each 'lap' around.
Review: This story has been interpreted by feminist critics as a condemnation of the androcentric hegemony of 19th century medical profession. The narrator's suggestions about her recuperation (that she should work instead of rest, that she should engage with society instead of remaining isolated, that she should attempt to be a mother instead of being separated entirely from her child, etc.) are dismissed out of hand using language that stereotypes her as irrational and, therefore, not qualified to offer ideas about her own condition. The feminist interpretation has drawn on the concept of the "domestic sphere" that women were held in during this period.
Modern feminist critics focus on the degree of triumph at the end of the story: while some may claim the narrator slipped into insanity, others see the ending as a female's assertion of freedom in a marriage in which she felt trapped. The emphasis on reading and writing as gendered practices also illustrated the importance of the wallpaper. If the narrator was not allowed to write in her journal nor read, she would begin to "read" the wallpaper until she found what she was looking for: an escape. Through seeing the women in the wallpaper, the narrator realizes she could not live her life locked up behind bars. At the end of the story, as her husband John lies on the floor unconscious, she crawls over him, symbolically rising over him. This is interpreted as a victory over her husband, notwithstanding that she lost her sanity in the process.
Gilman's interpretation: Gilman indicated that the idea for the story originated in her own experience as a patient: "the real purpose of the story was to reach Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways".
Gilman had suffered years of depression, and Mitchell had been consulted as a specialist. He put her on a rest cure, urging her to "live as domestic a life as possible." She was forbidden to touch a pen, pencil or brush ever again, and only allowed two hours of stimulation a day.
After three months and almost completely giving up, Gilman decided to go against her diagnosis and continue to work again. After realizing how close she had come to worse mental illness, she wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" with additions and exaggerations to illustrate her point of misdiagnosis. She sent a copy to Mitchell, but never received a response.
She further added that her purpose in writing "The Yellow Wallpaper" was "not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked." Gilman claimed that many years later she learned Mitchell had changed his treatment methods, but this claim has been discredited by book historian Julie Bates Dock. Mitchell actually continued his treatment methods and was interested in creating entire hospitals devoted to the "rest cure" so that his treatments would be more widely accessible. This was as late as 1908, 16 years after her short story was published.
Other interpretations: "The Yellow Wallpaper" is sometimes referred to as an example of Gothic literature for its treatment of madness and powerlessness. Alan Ryan, for example, introduced the story by writing "quite apart from its origins [it] is one of the finest, and strongest, tales of horror ever written. It may be a ghost story. Worse yet, it may not."
Another interpretation is to doubt the veracity of many of the narrator's early statements. There may never have been a husband, sister, baby, or any other characters as described in the story, meaning the entire story (or a large part of it) is the product of a deluded mind, so the reader cannot know what is true and what is not.
Opening Line: “It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and
myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.”
Closing Line: “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right
across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every
time!”
Quotes: "It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw — not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper—the smell! ... The only thing I can think of that it is like, is the color of the paper! A yellow smell."
"For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way."
Rating: Good
354. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
History: This book was published in 1939, the first in his acclaimed series about detective Philip Marlow. One of the murders is left unexplained. Owen Taylor is found murdered in a car that has been pushed into the bay. Chandler was shocked to find later that he didn't know who the killer was
Plot: Private investigator Philip Marlowe is called to the sprawling mansion of the elderly and paraplegic General Sternwood. The date is mid-October 1936 (we know this from a reference in chapter 11 to a Dionne Quintuplets advertising calendar from that year gracing Marlowe's office). General Sternwood asks Marlowe to deal with a blackmailer named Arthur Gwynn Geiger, apparently a purveyor of rare books. Geiger is involved with the General's nymphomaniac daughter Carmen, and makes her sign promissory notes. Marlowe tells the general that he will persuade Geiger to stop. Before Marlowe leaves, Vivian, the General's other daughter, queries Marlowe about the nature of his visit. She is under the impression that he is being hired to look for Terence "Rusty" Regan (her husband), who had disappeared about a month before.
Marlowe visits Geiger's bookshop, where he discovers that the assistant, Agnes, knows absolutely nothing about rare books. While he is waiting to talk with Geiger, a customer visits the back room of the store and leaves with a book. After following him and taking the book, Marlowe deduces that Geiger loans pornography, and then blackmails his customers. Marlowe goes back to the store to see Geiger leaving, and follows him to his house, where he waits outside. After some time, he hears gunshots and a woman's scream. He breaks his way into the house and finds Geiger dead on the floor in front of a camera. Carmen is posing naked and drugged with "ether and something else, possibly laudanum". He takes Carmen home, but doesn't call the police. When he returns to the scene, he discovers that the body has been removed.
The next morning he is telephoned by Bernie Ohls, a policeman, who informs him that the Sternwoods' chauffeur, Owen Taylor, has been found dead in the harbor. He apparently drove off the pier and drowned, but the doctor suspects the cause of death could be a blow to the back of the head. Marlowe visits the bookstore again, and finds that the books are being relocated to the premises of Joe Brody, a former lover of Carmen who had been paid by General Sternwood to leave her alone. Marlowe then goes to his office, and finds Vivian waiting for him. She informs him that an anonymous woman is trying to extort her for the nude photos of Carmen. Visiting the crime scene a third time, Marlowe finds Carmen (who has forgotten the events of the previous evening) looking for the pictures. They are interrupted by Eddie Mars, a gangster who runs a local casino. He claims to be Geiger's landlord, looking for the rent.
Marlowe visits Joe Brody, whom he believes has the compromising photos of Carmen. Brody, along with Agnes, is trying to take over Geiger's business, including the blackmail. Brody admits to seeing Owen Taylor drive off the pier, but denies being the murderer. Marlowe eventually persuades Brody to give the photos to him, but Carmen arrives with a gun, extremely agitated. She shoots at Brody but misses him. Marlowe confiscates the gun and tells her to go home to her sister. Another caller knocks at the door and asks for Brody. Brody goes to the door but is shot dead before he can open it. Marlowe runs after the caller, captures him, and recognizes him as the other assistant from Geiger's store. The young man identifies himself as Carol Lundgren, and Marlowe deduces that he's Geiger's homosexual lover who shot Brody in revenge, mistakenly believing him to have murdered Geiger. Lundgren had moved Geiger's body into the garage and later to another room and laid it out with black candles. Marlowe drives to the district attorney's house and hands Lundgren over to Bernie Ohls.
Marlowe visits the missing persons bureau and discovers that Regan apparently ran away with Mona Mars, Eddie Mars's wife. Eddie Mars calls Marlowe to his club, where Mars tries to bribe him to stop following the case. Marlowe sees Vivian winning a large amount of money in roulette. He later realizes that the win is an act to make him believe that Mars is not involved with Vivian. He also deduces that Mars knows something that could be very damaging to the Sternwoods, and is blackmailing her. Marlowe asks Mars about the car following him, and Mars denies knowing about it. When Vivian leaves the casino with a large amount of money, Marlowe breaks up an apparent mugging of Vivian and drives her to a coffee shop and then to the beach, where she tries to seduce him. He refuses her advances and takes her home. When he finally returns home himself, Carmen is in his bed, nude. He throws her out in a rage.
Marlowe's tail turns out to be a man named Harry Jones who is now working with Agnes. After Marlowe outwits him and confronts Jones about following him, Jones offers to sell some information about Mona Mars to him. Marlowe agrees, and is told that she is being held at a secret location by Eddie Mars's hitman, Canino. He also learns that she never ran off with Regan, and is in hiding so that people will not think Eddie Mars killed Regan. Jones asks Marlowe to meet him at his office that night with two hundred dollars with the promise that Agnes will reveal the location of Mona Mars. Marlowe visits Sternwood and is paid $500 for his work. When Marlowe arrives to meet Jones, he hears Canino talking to Jones through a doorway. Marlowe sneaks in through another entrance and hears Canino coerce Jones to tell him where Agnes is staying. Jones lies to him and Canino suggests they have a drink to celebrate Jones's common sense. Canino poisons the drink with cyanide which kills Harry. As Marlowe examines Harry's body for a clue as to Agnes's true location, the phone rings and Agnes agrees to meet with him. She gives him Mona's location in exchange for the $200.
On the way to the safe house, Marlowe purposefully flattens his tire so he can get into the mechanic's shop and then make his way to the safe house. He recognizes Canino, who is in the shop with the mechanic and who does not initially recognize Marlowe. The mechanic knocks Marlowe unconscious. He comes to in the house where Mona is staying. When he wakes, he sees her, and she frees him.
Canino comes back and a gunfight ensues. Canino is killed and Marlowe goes to the police, who do not press charges. Marlowe visits General Sternwood the next day, who is initially upset that Marlowe tried to find Rusty Regan, which he had not been asked to do. On the way out, Marlowe returns the gun to Carmen and she asks Marlowe to teach her how to shoot. Carmen leads Marlowe to an abandoned oil field owned by the Sternwoods. He sets up a can on a tire for target practice. As he walks back to her, Carmen shoots at him in a rage, but the gun was filled with blanks by Marlowe. Carmen then has an epileptic fit. Marlowe returns Carmen to the house and visits Vivian and tells her his theory that Carmen killed Regan. Marlowe figures that Regan had thrown Carmen out of his bed, just like Marlowe, causing Carmen to hate him. She asked him to teach her how to shoot, and she shot him dead. Vivian admits that Carmen shot Regan and Vivian asked Eddie Mars to cover it up, but then he blackmailed her. Marlowe promises not to go the police as long as Carmen is institutionalized. The book ends with Marlowe ruminating on his adventures and the grim, sordid human comedy he has been thrust into.
Review: Throughout Chandler's book, The Big Sleep, he describes places so the reader develops a sense of the surroundings and feels like they are right there with Philip Marlowe, the Detective.
For example, when Philip Marlowe entered General Sternwood's mansion, Philip notices the "main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair." Chandler continues to describe the rest of the rooms and halls. The use of description makes the scene real. However, if a writer uses several passages to describe something, then it can become boring to readers, and they may discontinue reading.
Chandler uses several characters and describes each character, so readers can become acquainted with their personalities. For example, Chandler describes Carmen, General Sternwood's daughter, in such a way that readers realize she is immature. He does this through General Sternwood's conversation with Marlowe. General Sternwood says, ". . . she would suck her thumb and look coy." This description shows the reader that Carmen is immature because an adult wouldn't suck his or her thumb. General Sternwood also says that "Carmen is a child who likes to pull wings off flies." He describes Vivian, his other daughter, as "spoiled, exacting, smart and quite ruthless." Readers can tell that Vivian is more mature, but is more of an evil person.
Even though Chandler uses a lot of description, the story moves along and readers want to keep reading to find out who committed the crime that Philip Marlowe is trying to solve. However, sometimes it takes more than one time through to figure out the plot.
Opening Line: “It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain the clearness of the foothills.”
Closing Line: “All they did was make me think of Silver Wig, and I never saw her again."
Quotes: "You know what Canino will do? Beat my teeth out and kick me in the stomach for mumbling."
“It’s not his dying. It is what he would be thinking right before he died.”
Rating: Not very good.
Plot: Private investigator Philip Marlowe is called to the sprawling mansion of the elderly and paraplegic General Sternwood. The date is mid-October 1936 (we know this from a reference in chapter 11 to a Dionne Quintuplets advertising calendar from that year gracing Marlowe's office). General Sternwood asks Marlowe to deal with a blackmailer named Arthur Gwynn Geiger, apparently a purveyor of rare books. Geiger is involved with the General's nymphomaniac daughter Carmen, and makes her sign promissory notes. Marlowe tells the general that he will persuade Geiger to stop. Before Marlowe leaves, Vivian, the General's other daughter, queries Marlowe about the nature of his visit. She is under the impression that he is being hired to look for Terence "Rusty" Regan (her husband), who had disappeared about a month before.
Marlowe visits Geiger's bookshop, where he discovers that the assistant, Agnes, knows absolutely nothing about rare books. While he is waiting to talk with Geiger, a customer visits the back room of the store and leaves with a book. After following him and taking the book, Marlowe deduces that Geiger loans pornography, and then blackmails his customers. Marlowe goes back to the store to see Geiger leaving, and follows him to his house, where he waits outside. After some time, he hears gunshots and a woman's scream. He breaks his way into the house and finds Geiger dead on the floor in front of a camera. Carmen is posing naked and drugged with "ether and something else, possibly laudanum". He takes Carmen home, but doesn't call the police. When he returns to the scene, he discovers that the body has been removed.
The next morning he is telephoned by Bernie Ohls, a policeman, who informs him that the Sternwoods' chauffeur, Owen Taylor, has been found dead in the harbor. He apparently drove off the pier and drowned, but the doctor suspects the cause of death could be a blow to the back of the head. Marlowe visits the bookstore again, and finds that the books are being relocated to the premises of Joe Brody, a former lover of Carmen who had been paid by General Sternwood to leave her alone. Marlowe then goes to his office, and finds Vivian waiting for him. She informs him that an anonymous woman is trying to extort her for the nude photos of Carmen. Visiting the crime scene a third time, Marlowe finds Carmen (who has forgotten the events of the previous evening) looking for the pictures. They are interrupted by Eddie Mars, a gangster who runs a local casino. He claims to be Geiger's landlord, looking for the rent.
Marlowe visits Joe Brody, whom he believes has the compromising photos of Carmen. Brody, along with Agnes, is trying to take over Geiger's business, including the blackmail. Brody admits to seeing Owen Taylor drive off the pier, but denies being the murderer. Marlowe eventually persuades Brody to give the photos to him, but Carmen arrives with a gun, extremely agitated. She shoots at Brody but misses him. Marlowe confiscates the gun and tells her to go home to her sister. Another caller knocks at the door and asks for Brody. Brody goes to the door but is shot dead before he can open it. Marlowe runs after the caller, captures him, and recognizes him as the other assistant from Geiger's store. The young man identifies himself as Carol Lundgren, and Marlowe deduces that he's Geiger's homosexual lover who shot Brody in revenge, mistakenly believing him to have murdered Geiger. Lundgren had moved Geiger's body into the garage and later to another room and laid it out with black candles. Marlowe drives to the district attorney's house and hands Lundgren over to Bernie Ohls.
Marlowe visits the missing persons bureau and discovers that Regan apparently ran away with Mona Mars, Eddie Mars's wife. Eddie Mars calls Marlowe to his club, where Mars tries to bribe him to stop following the case. Marlowe sees Vivian winning a large amount of money in roulette. He later realizes that the win is an act to make him believe that Mars is not involved with Vivian. He also deduces that Mars knows something that could be very damaging to the Sternwoods, and is blackmailing her. Marlowe asks Mars about the car following him, and Mars denies knowing about it. When Vivian leaves the casino with a large amount of money, Marlowe breaks up an apparent mugging of Vivian and drives her to a coffee shop and then to the beach, where she tries to seduce him. He refuses her advances and takes her home. When he finally returns home himself, Carmen is in his bed, nude. He throws her out in a rage.
Marlowe's tail turns out to be a man named Harry Jones who is now working with Agnes. After Marlowe outwits him and confronts Jones about following him, Jones offers to sell some information about Mona Mars to him. Marlowe agrees, and is told that she is being held at a secret location by Eddie Mars's hitman, Canino. He also learns that she never ran off with Regan, and is in hiding so that people will not think Eddie Mars killed Regan. Jones asks Marlowe to meet him at his office that night with two hundred dollars with the promise that Agnes will reveal the location of Mona Mars. Marlowe visits Sternwood and is paid $500 for his work. When Marlowe arrives to meet Jones, he hears Canino talking to Jones through a doorway. Marlowe sneaks in through another entrance and hears Canino coerce Jones to tell him where Agnes is staying. Jones lies to him and Canino suggests they have a drink to celebrate Jones's common sense. Canino poisons the drink with cyanide which kills Harry. As Marlowe examines Harry's body for a clue as to Agnes's true location, the phone rings and Agnes agrees to meet with him. She gives him Mona's location in exchange for the $200.
On the way to the safe house, Marlowe purposefully flattens his tire so he can get into the mechanic's shop and then make his way to the safe house. He recognizes Canino, who is in the shop with the mechanic and who does not initially recognize Marlowe. The mechanic knocks Marlowe unconscious. He comes to in the house where Mona is staying. When he wakes, he sees her, and she frees him.
Canino comes back and a gunfight ensues. Canino is killed and Marlowe goes to the police, who do not press charges. Marlowe visits General Sternwood the next day, who is initially upset that Marlowe tried to find Rusty Regan, which he had not been asked to do. On the way out, Marlowe returns the gun to Carmen and she asks Marlowe to teach her how to shoot. Carmen leads Marlowe to an abandoned oil field owned by the Sternwoods. He sets up a can on a tire for target practice. As he walks back to her, Carmen shoots at him in a rage, but the gun was filled with blanks by Marlowe. Carmen then has an epileptic fit. Marlowe returns Carmen to the house and visits Vivian and tells her his theory that Carmen killed Regan. Marlowe figures that Regan had thrown Carmen out of his bed, just like Marlowe, causing Carmen to hate him. She asked him to teach her how to shoot, and she shot him dead. Vivian admits that Carmen shot Regan and Vivian asked Eddie Mars to cover it up, but then he blackmailed her. Marlowe promises not to go the police as long as Carmen is institutionalized. The book ends with Marlowe ruminating on his adventures and the grim, sordid human comedy he has been thrust into.
Review: Throughout Chandler's book, The Big Sleep, he describes places so the reader develops a sense of the surroundings and feels like they are right there with Philip Marlowe, the Detective.
For example, when Philip Marlowe entered General Sternwood's mansion, Philip notices the "main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair." Chandler continues to describe the rest of the rooms and halls. The use of description makes the scene real. However, if a writer uses several passages to describe something, then it can become boring to readers, and they may discontinue reading.
Chandler uses several characters and describes each character, so readers can become acquainted with their personalities. For example, Chandler describes Carmen, General Sternwood's daughter, in such a way that readers realize she is immature. He does this through General Sternwood's conversation with Marlowe. General Sternwood says, ". . . she would suck her thumb and look coy." This description shows the reader that Carmen is immature because an adult wouldn't suck his or her thumb. General Sternwood also says that "Carmen is a child who likes to pull wings off flies." He describes Vivian, his other daughter, as "spoiled, exacting, smart and quite ruthless." Readers can tell that Vivian is more mature, but is more of an evil person.
Even though Chandler uses a lot of description, the story moves along and readers want to keep reading to find out who committed the crime that Philip Marlowe is trying to solve. However, sometimes it takes more than one time through to figure out the plot.
Opening Line: “It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain the clearness of the foothills.”
Closing Line: “All they did was make me think of Silver Wig, and I never saw her again."
Quotes: "You know what Canino will do? Beat my teeth out and kick me in the stomach for mumbling."
“It’s not his dying. It is what he would be thinking right before he died.”
Rating: Not very good.
353. Germinal – Emile Zola
History: This book was published in 1885. It was the first major work on a strike, based on his research notes on labor conditions in the coal mines. Germinal was criticized by right-wing political groups as a call to revolution.
Plot: The novel's central character is Étienne Lantier, previously seen in L'Assommoir (1877), a young migrant worker who arrives at the foreboding coalmining town of Montsou in the bleak far north of France to earn a living as a miner. Sacked from his previous job on the railways for assaulting a superior - Étienne was originally to have been the central character in Zola's "murder on the trains" thriller La Bête humaine (1890), before the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Germinal persuaded him otherwise - he befriends the veteran miner Maheu, who finds him somewhere to stay and gets him a job pushing the carts down the pit.
Étienne is portrayed as a hard-working idealist but also a naïve youth; Zola's genetic theories come into play as Étienne is presumed to have inherited his Macquart ancestors' traits of hotheaded impulsiveness and an addictive personality capable of exploding into rage under the influence of drink or strong passions. Zola keeps his theorizing in the background and Étienne's motivations are much more natural as a result. He embraces socialist principles, reading large amounts of working class movement literature and fraternizing with Souvarine, a Russian anarchist and political émigré who has also come to Montsou to seek a living in the pits. Étienne's simplistic understanding of socialist politics and their rousing effect on him are very reminiscent of the rebel Silvère in the first novel in the cycle, La Fortune des Rougon (1871).
While this is going on, Étienne also falls for Maheu's daughter Catherine, also employed pushing carts in the mines, and he is drawn into the relationship between her and her brutish lover Chaval, a prototype for the character of Buteau in Zola's later novel La Terre (1887). The complex tangle of the miners' lives is played out against a backdrop of severe poverty and oppression, as their working and living conditions continue to worsen throughout the novel; eventually, pushed to breaking point, the miners decide to strike and Étienne, now a respected member of the community and recognized as a political idealist, becomes the leader of the movement. While the anarchist Souvarine preaches violent action, the miners and their families hold back, their poverty becoming ever more disastrous, until they are sparked into a ferocious riot, the violence of which is described in explicit terms by Zola, as well as providing some of the novelist's best and most evocative crowd scenes. The rioters are eventually confronted by police and the army, who repress the revolt in a violent and unforgettable episode. Disillusioned, the miners go back to work, blaming Étienne for the failure of the strike; then, in a fit of anarchist fervour, Souvarine sabotages the entrance shaft of one of the Montsou pits, trapping Étienne, Catherine and Chaval at the bottom. The ensuing drama and the long wait for rescue are among some of Zola's best scenes, and the novel draws to a dramatic close. Étienne is eventually rescued and fired but he goes on to live in Paris with Pluchart.
Review: This book is not really about the plot. It's about the premise behind the plot. It's about rich versus poor, about labor laws and selfishness and leadership and abuse of leadership and socialism versus capitalism and violence against women and child labor and human rights. That makes it sound like a political book, and it is, but it's not dry. All of this stuff is slipped in carefully, fitting in between the cracks of the plot to fill it up and fatten it with all this meaning. And Zola isn't one-sided. No. While it's obvious he cares more about the poor than the rich, he doesn't excuse the bad actions of the poor and doesn't give the rich worry-free lives. He shows them both realistically, both with problems and worries and pain, and in some places, has them working together, alongside each other, towards a single goal.
In the 19th century, women were viewed differently than they are now, and those differences really play a part in the roles women played in the literature of their time. It seems though, that general groups of women remain the same despite time differences. The way women cope with the working class, lower class, or generally difficult situations is by aligning their personalities with specific walks of life. In Zola's Germinal, the women usually fit into three general categories: the first and most important category is the maternal role of motherly conduct or at least maternal instinct, the second category is that of the tom-boy or the woman striving for equality/masculinity amongst the men, and the final category is that of the consort or the wanton. Each group of women has a unique way of improving their lives in relation to others through specific means that may be either demeaning or admirable in their difficulty
The darkness was pervasive and it just got worse. Even when the people began to strike, they also began to starve and made almost no progress in their strike. It was hard to bear, especially when they were contrasted with the wealthier mine owners. One of the managers even envies the poor people their freedom as compared to his restricted aristocratic lifestyle – I don’t think he quite understood the situation.
Opening Line: “Over the open plain, beneath a starless sky as dark and thick as ink, a man walked alone along the highway from Marchiennes to Montsou, a straight paved road ten kilometers in length, intersecting the beetroot-fields.”
Closing Line: “Men were springing forth, a black avenging army, germinating slowly in the furrows, growing towards the harvests of the next century, and this germination would soon overturn the earth.”
Quotes: "Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like."
Rating: Good, but sad.
Plot: The novel's central character is Étienne Lantier, previously seen in L'Assommoir (1877), a young migrant worker who arrives at the foreboding coalmining town of Montsou in the bleak far north of France to earn a living as a miner. Sacked from his previous job on the railways for assaulting a superior - Étienne was originally to have been the central character in Zola's "murder on the trains" thriller La Bête humaine (1890), before the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Germinal persuaded him otherwise - he befriends the veteran miner Maheu, who finds him somewhere to stay and gets him a job pushing the carts down the pit.
Étienne is portrayed as a hard-working idealist but also a naïve youth; Zola's genetic theories come into play as Étienne is presumed to have inherited his Macquart ancestors' traits of hotheaded impulsiveness and an addictive personality capable of exploding into rage under the influence of drink or strong passions. Zola keeps his theorizing in the background and Étienne's motivations are much more natural as a result. He embraces socialist principles, reading large amounts of working class movement literature and fraternizing with Souvarine, a Russian anarchist and political émigré who has also come to Montsou to seek a living in the pits. Étienne's simplistic understanding of socialist politics and their rousing effect on him are very reminiscent of the rebel Silvère in the first novel in the cycle, La Fortune des Rougon (1871).
While this is going on, Étienne also falls for Maheu's daughter Catherine, also employed pushing carts in the mines, and he is drawn into the relationship between her and her brutish lover Chaval, a prototype for the character of Buteau in Zola's later novel La Terre (1887). The complex tangle of the miners' lives is played out against a backdrop of severe poverty and oppression, as their working and living conditions continue to worsen throughout the novel; eventually, pushed to breaking point, the miners decide to strike and Étienne, now a respected member of the community and recognized as a political idealist, becomes the leader of the movement. While the anarchist Souvarine preaches violent action, the miners and their families hold back, their poverty becoming ever more disastrous, until they are sparked into a ferocious riot, the violence of which is described in explicit terms by Zola, as well as providing some of the novelist's best and most evocative crowd scenes. The rioters are eventually confronted by police and the army, who repress the revolt in a violent and unforgettable episode. Disillusioned, the miners go back to work, blaming Étienne for the failure of the strike; then, in a fit of anarchist fervour, Souvarine sabotages the entrance shaft of one of the Montsou pits, trapping Étienne, Catherine and Chaval at the bottom. The ensuing drama and the long wait for rescue are among some of Zola's best scenes, and the novel draws to a dramatic close. Étienne is eventually rescued and fired but he goes on to live in Paris with Pluchart.
Review: This book is not really about the plot. It's about the premise behind the plot. It's about rich versus poor, about labor laws and selfishness and leadership and abuse of leadership and socialism versus capitalism and violence against women and child labor and human rights. That makes it sound like a political book, and it is, but it's not dry. All of this stuff is slipped in carefully, fitting in between the cracks of the plot to fill it up and fatten it with all this meaning. And Zola isn't one-sided. No. While it's obvious he cares more about the poor than the rich, he doesn't excuse the bad actions of the poor and doesn't give the rich worry-free lives. He shows them both realistically, both with problems and worries and pain, and in some places, has them working together, alongside each other, towards a single goal.
In the 19th century, women were viewed differently than they are now, and those differences really play a part in the roles women played in the literature of their time. It seems though, that general groups of women remain the same despite time differences. The way women cope with the working class, lower class, or generally difficult situations is by aligning their personalities with specific walks of life. In Zola's Germinal, the women usually fit into three general categories: the first and most important category is the maternal role of motherly conduct or at least maternal instinct, the second category is that of the tom-boy or the woman striving for equality/masculinity amongst the men, and the final category is that of the consort or the wanton. Each group of women has a unique way of improving their lives in relation to others through specific means that may be either demeaning or admirable in their difficulty
The darkness was pervasive and it just got worse. Even when the people began to strike, they also began to starve and made almost no progress in their strike. It was hard to bear, especially when they were contrasted with the wealthier mine owners. One of the managers even envies the poor people their freedom as compared to his restricted aristocratic lifestyle – I don’t think he quite understood the situation.
Opening Line: “Over the open plain, beneath a starless sky as dark and thick as ink, a man walked alone along the highway from Marchiennes to Montsou, a straight paved road ten kilometers in length, intersecting the beetroot-fields.”
Closing Line: “Men were springing forth, a black avenging army, germinating slowly in the furrows, growing towards the harvests of the next century, and this germination would soon overturn the earth.”
Quotes: "Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like."
Rating: Good, but sad.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
352. The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
History: This book was published in 1995.
Plot: Traveling back to his childhood neighborhood, the narrator meets with one of his mother's neighbors, who lived through WWII in Hamburg, one of the most devastated cities in Germany. Already as a child he bought curried sausage (Currywurst) from her - and by trying to unravel how this strange dish came to be, he discovers how one's woman life was changed.
In search of the primal recipe, the narrator finds the very same Mrs. Lena Brucker in a nursing home, where she agrees to tell him how her love affair with a young naval officer led to a series of cagey business deals, and to a culinary inspiration. With a husband and two grown children away in the war, Lena Brucker meets at the cinema a young soldier who, failing to leave her flat next morning, becomes a deserter secreted by her there.
Her story begins in 1945, on the day of Hitler's marriage to Eva Braun, which happens to be the day of her chance meeting (on line to buy movie tickets) with Petty Officer Bremer. An air raid forces the couple to seek refuge in a shelter; later they flee to the apartment where she lives alone, abandoned by her husband and closely monitored by nosy neighbors and Gestapo informants.
Soon the neighbors are discussing the mysterious footsteps that are heard in her apartment while she is away at work in the food rationing office. For Bremer has gone AWOL, at least partly in order to remain in Mrs. Brucker's bed. He passes his time doing crossword puzzles, compulsively cleaning the kitchen and worrying that he will be betrayed to the police. In the evenings, he and his hostess eat, make love, confess the truth about themselves -- and commit major lies of omission. Bremer is vague on the subject of his wife, so Mrs. Brucker feels less than obligated to tell him when the war ends and he is free to leave her apartment. Eventually though, after discovering the truth about the Jews and the concentration camps, she reveals that the war is over, in an emotional argument, leaves the apartment for a walk, and when she returns, he has left.
Eventually, her family comes back to live in the apartment, but she is restless. After forcing her husband out, she trades and bargains to open a food stand. After an accident, she mixes the curry with the ketchup, and this is the discovery of the curried sausage.
Mrs. Brucker dies, and leaves the author the remnants of the recipe, also the sweater she was knitting whilst she told the above story.
Review: A cherished German fast food sold at metropolitan kiosks, currywurst is sliced pork sausage slathered with a mixture of ketchup and curry powder. Popular legends hold that it was invented in Berlin or Hamburg or Essen, either by a bored hash slinger or someone who accidentally mixed ingredients. Timm's tale garnished the mastermind with a fictional identity and a backstory, earning comparisons to "Like Water for Chocolate" and other books and pics that link gastronomy with history and affairs of the heart.
Opening Line: “It’s been a good twelve years since I ate my last curreied sausage at Mrs. Brucker’s stand.”
Closing Line: “But there are still five complete words; capriole, ginger, rose, calypso, squirrel, and, slightly torn – even thought nobody will believe me – novella.”
Quotes: "involved in the invention of curried sausage: a naval petty officer, a silver equestrian badge, 200 squirrel skins, 24 cubic meters of lumber, a whisky-drinking, female sausage-factory owner, a British military commissary and an English beauty with red-gold hair, three bottles of ketchup, my father, choloroform, a laughing dream and much more."
Rating: Good.
Plot: Traveling back to his childhood neighborhood, the narrator meets with one of his mother's neighbors, who lived through WWII in Hamburg, one of the most devastated cities in Germany. Already as a child he bought curried sausage (Currywurst) from her - and by trying to unravel how this strange dish came to be, he discovers how one's woman life was changed.
In search of the primal recipe, the narrator finds the very same Mrs. Lena Brucker in a nursing home, where she agrees to tell him how her love affair with a young naval officer led to a series of cagey business deals, and to a culinary inspiration. With a husband and two grown children away in the war, Lena Brucker meets at the cinema a young soldier who, failing to leave her flat next morning, becomes a deserter secreted by her there.
Her story begins in 1945, on the day of Hitler's marriage to Eva Braun, which happens to be the day of her chance meeting (on line to buy movie tickets) with Petty Officer Bremer. An air raid forces the couple to seek refuge in a shelter; later they flee to the apartment where she lives alone, abandoned by her husband and closely monitored by nosy neighbors and Gestapo informants.
Soon the neighbors are discussing the mysterious footsteps that are heard in her apartment while she is away at work in the food rationing office. For Bremer has gone AWOL, at least partly in order to remain in Mrs. Brucker's bed. He passes his time doing crossword puzzles, compulsively cleaning the kitchen and worrying that he will be betrayed to the police. In the evenings, he and his hostess eat, make love, confess the truth about themselves -- and commit major lies of omission. Bremer is vague on the subject of his wife, so Mrs. Brucker feels less than obligated to tell him when the war ends and he is free to leave her apartment. Eventually though, after discovering the truth about the Jews and the concentration camps, she reveals that the war is over, in an emotional argument, leaves the apartment for a walk, and when she returns, he has left.
Eventually, her family comes back to live in the apartment, but she is restless. After forcing her husband out, she trades and bargains to open a food stand. After an accident, she mixes the curry with the ketchup, and this is the discovery of the curried sausage.
Mrs. Brucker dies, and leaves the author the remnants of the recipe, also the sweater she was knitting whilst she told the above story.
Review: A cherished German fast food sold at metropolitan kiosks, currywurst is sliced pork sausage slathered with a mixture of ketchup and curry powder. Popular legends hold that it was invented in Berlin or Hamburg or Essen, either by a bored hash slinger or someone who accidentally mixed ingredients. Timm's tale garnished the mastermind with a fictional identity and a backstory, earning comparisons to "Like Water for Chocolate" and other books and pics that link gastronomy with history and affairs of the heart.
Opening Line: “It’s been a good twelve years since I ate my last curreied sausage at Mrs. Brucker’s stand.”
Closing Line: “But there are still five complete words; capriole, ginger, rose, calypso, squirrel, and, slightly torn – even thought nobody will believe me – novella.”
Quotes: "involved in the invention of curried sausage: a naval petty officer, a silver equestrian badge, 200 squirrel skins, 24 cubic meters of lumber, a whisky-drinking, female sausage-factory owner, a British military commissary and an English beauty with red-gold hair, three bottles of ketchup, my father, choloroform, a laughing dream and much more."
Rating: Good.
351. Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
History: This book was published in 1980. Coetzee is generally considered to be a postcolonial and postmodern writer who utilizes the nameless empire as an allegory. The magistrate is a figure searching for meaning on the outskirts of an unjust, cruel empire. His love for the barbarian girl is at once paternalistic, fetishistic and misguided. Ultimately, the magistrate learns he is too entrenched within his imperial breeding to make sense of the frontier (the plight of his own people and the barbarians).
Plot: A magistrate in charge of administering the law in a colonial town witnesses the torture of the invaded indigenous population. The colony or the place is unspecified. Most characters have no names, although the circumstances surrounding the events indicate that the colony is South Africa while the barbarians indicate the black population. The magistrate is of unspecified age although he refers to himself as approaching retirement. At first loyal and dutiful the magistrate becomes skeptical about the legal system he represents. He questions its effectiveness, but if he were to leave his successor could be more ruthless.
His rather peaceful existence on the frontier comes to an end with the arrival of some special forces of the Empire, led by a sinister Colonel Joll. There are rumours that the barbarians are preparing an attack on the Empire, and so Colonel Joll and his men conduct an expedition into the land beyond the frontier.
The magistrate is content with his life until the investigation to examine the alleged barbarian uprising occurs. Colonel Joll is sent to establish the extent of danger that the barbarians, who live behind the border may pose to the colony......
They capture a number of "barbarians," bring them back to town, torture them, kill some of them, and leave for the capital in order to prepare a larger campaign against the barbarians.
The Magistrate looks the other way while Colonel Joll interrogates the prisoners, assuming that the acts of the Empire, while excessive in force, are necessary for the security of the people. When the Colonel fills the settlement compound with vagrants as prisoners, the Magistrate finds it increasingly difficult to hold his tongue. He unwittingly reveals his true feelings to the Colonel. However, it is not this subtle insubordination that leads to his political demise, but his sincere relationship with a barbarian girl that causes him to become the new object of the Empire�s suspicion. The Magistrate becomes involved with a "barbarian girl" who was left behind crippled and semi-blinded by the torturers. They become lovers. Eventually, he decides to take her back to her people. After a life-threatening trip through the barren land he succeeds in his objective and returns to his town. Shortly thereafter, the Empire's forces return and the Magistrate's own plight begins. Malicious acts of torture are then administered to the imprisoned magistrate including binding and hanging from the wrists. He also gets punched in the chest. He witnesses horrible acts of violence on the barbarians captured, which are, in turn, committing acts of retaliation as well. Eventually, the magistrate is released, but only becomes a useless citizen, somewhat damaged, until the town is closed by the barbarians.
Review: The imagery, archetypes and situations which Coetzee uses to form his allegory are fairly obvious : the Empire stands for Afrikaner-ruled South Africa; the barbarians are the blacks of South Africa; the Magistrate, as evidenced by the ritual ablutions he performs, his time in the desert and his near crucifixion, is a Christ figure; and the Empire's officials, as evident in the final passage above, are as much prisoners of the repressive system of laws as are the barbarians. There are no evil monsters in a Coetzee novel, there are only humans who think, feel, and act irrationally, sometimes out of confusion, sometimes out of insecurity. The Magistrate, a man past his prime who seeks the sexual bliss of young women, is similar to the flawed David Lurie in Coetzee�s more recent novel, Disgrace. Neither makes apologies for what they have done or who they are, nor do they try to persuade their harshest critics that they should be given leniency.
By contrast, Colonel Joll and his sadistic henchman, Mandel, seem like devils incarnate, but they are only children, playground bullies with authority gone amok, afraid and insecure. Despite their horrible acts against the human species, the Magistrate sees in them only confusion, terror, an inability to understand.
Coetzee displays such masterful control of the medium that we never view any of the characters as caricatures. Underneath the harrowing description is a distinct compassion, which seeps through to every layer of the novel.
Opening Line: “I have never seen anything like it: two little discs of glass suspended in front of his eyes in loops of wire.”
Closing Line: “Like much else nowadays I leave it feeling stupid, like a mana who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere.”
Quotes: “I did not mean to get embroiled in this. I am a country magistrate, a responsible official in the service of the Empire, serving out my days on this lazy frontier, waiting to retire. “
Rating: Good, but very very violent and gruesome.
Plot: A magistrate in charge of administering the law in a colonial town witnesses the torture of the invaded indigenous population. The colony or the place is unspecified. Most characters have no names, although the circumstances surrounding the events indicate that the colony is South Africa while the barbarians indicate the black population. The magistrate is of unspecified age although he refers to himself as approaching retirement. At first loyal and dutiful the magistrate becomes skeptical about the legal system he represents. He questions its effectiveness, but if he were to leave his successor could be more ruthless.
His rather peaceful existence on the frontier comes to an end with the arrival of some special forces of the Empire, led by a sinister Colonel Joll. There are rumours that the barbarians are preparing an attack on the Empire, and so Colonel Joll and his men conduct an expedition into the land beyond the frontier.
The magistrate is content with his life until the investigation to examine the alleged barbarian uprising occurs. Colonel Joll is sent to establish the extent of danger that the barbarians, who live behind the border may pose to the colony......
They capture a number of "barbarians," bring them back to town, torture them, kill some of them, and leave for the capital in order to prepare a larger campaign against the barbarians.
The Magistrate looks the other way while Colonel Joll interrogates the prisoners, assuming that the acts of the Empire, while excessive in force, are necessary for the security of the people. When the Colonel fills the settlement compound with vagrants as prisoners, the Magistrate finds it increasingly difficult to hold his tongue. He unwittingly reveals his true feelings to the Colonel. However, it is not this subtle insubordination that leads to his political demise, but his sincere relationship with a barbarian girl that causes him to become the new object of the Empire�s suspicion. The Magistrate becomes involved with a "barbarian girl" who was left behind crippled and semi-blinded by the torturers. They become lovers. Eventually, he decides to take her back to her people. After a life-threatening trip through the barren land he succeeds in his objective and returns to his town. Shortly thereafter, the Empire's forces return and the Magistrate's own plight begins. Malicious acts of torture are then administered to the imprisoned magistrate including binding and hanging from the wrists. He also gets punched in the chest. He witnesses horrible acts of violence on the barbarians captured, which are, in turn, committing acts of retaliation as well. Eventually, the magistrate is released, but only becomes a useless citizen, somewhat damaged, until the town is closed by the barbarians.
Review: The imagery, archetypes and situations which Coetzee uses to form his allegory are fairly obvious : the Empire stands for Afrikaner-ruled South Africa; the barbarians are the blacks of South Africa; the Magistrate, as evidenced by the ritual ablutions he performs, his time in the desert and his near crucifixion, is a Christ figure; and the Empire's officials, as evident in the final passage above, are as much prisoners of the repressive system of laws as are the barbarians. There are no evil monsters in a Coetzee novel, there are only humans who think, feel, and act irrationally, sometimes out of confusion, sometimes out of insecurity. The Magistrate, a man past his prime who seeks the sexual bliss of young women, is similar to the flawed David Lurie in Coetzee�s more recent novel, Disgrace. Neither makes apologies for what they have done or who they are, nor do they try to persuade their harshest critics that they should be given leniency.
By contrast, Colonel Joll and his sadistic henchman, Mandel, seem like devils incarnate, but they are only children, playground bullies with authority gone amok, afraid and insecure. Despite their horrible acts against the human species, the Magistrate sees in them only confusion, terror, an inability to understand.
Coetzee displays such masterful control of the medium that we never view any of the characters as caricatures. Underneath the harrowing description is a distinct compassion, which seeps through to every layer of the novel.
Opening Line: “I have never seen anything like it: two little discs of glass suspended in front of his eyes in loops of wire.”
Closing Line: “Like much else nowadays I leave it feeling stupid, like a mana who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere.”
Quotes: “I did not mean to get embroiled in this. I am a country magistrate, a responsible official in the service of the Empire, serving out my days on this lazy frontier, waiting to retire. “
Rating: Good, but very very violent and gruesome.
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