Stoner is one of the two books I’ve decided to write my thesis on, come next term.
It’s that rare thing, a work that perfectly encompases the full strengths of the novel as a form. It’s worth deeper study. So, then, this will be a short review — I’d hate to be caught plagiarising my own Goodreads review, six months from now.
This is a novel about failure. Failure in all aspects. Failure in work, failure in fatherhood, failure in love.
Stoner is driven by a gentle love for literature, and by a regard for those around him, a sensitivity that seems to paralyze him from acting in his personal life, while paradoxically forcing him into a conflict that proves disastrous for his career, that brings him years of unhappy existence.
Look to his marriage — the sensitivity he shows towards Edith’s oppressed nature does nothing so much as turn married life into a most bitter failure, a war of attrition that claims the bright young daughter he and Edith have as its greatest victim.
And through it, he does precious little. He’s resigned, paralyzed by a caring that does not allow him to break through whatever equilibrium he finds himself in the middle of.
There’s no victory Stoner doesn’t have that isn’t turned to defeat; Edith, Katherine, the scandal with Walker. The only victory Stoner can claim all his own is the restoration of his advanced classes, the irony being that it is a victory gained through boredom and indifference–a fact I thought particularly bitter.
You should read it. Everyone should. It’s a great work of fiction.
Shirer is interesting in that he was if not a player in much of what transpired over the NaOriginally posted over at my blog: The Grimoire Reliquary.
Shirer is interesting in that he was if not a player in much of what transpired over the Nazification of Germany, then an observer; an American journalist stationed in Berlin for the early years of Hitler’s rule and for much of the war period as well. His own observations make their way into this sprawling, 1600-page epic and they never seem out of place, never irrelevant or historically inaccurate. William L. Shirer does not seek to be objective and judge this period fairly — and where the bloodstained rise of Nazism is concerned, I’m more than happy to say, “Fuck any pretence at objectivity” — but he does look into so many of the aspects that make possible first the rise, and then the fall, of Hitler’s Reich. If ever you’ve needed proof that collision, rather than causation, defines social order (for more on this topic, read my summary of Caroline Levine’s Forms ), the rise of Nazi Germany is a compelling reading in favour of the former argument.
What did I learn from this novel?
Much of the bloodiest period of history came about thanks to in-fighting, backstabbing, supreme egoism and selfishness that often had nothing to do with Nazis other than giving Hitler and his cronies the kind of possibility every would-be authoritarian regime could only wish for.
Hitler’s charisma is no small thing, and has certainly played its role; but a bigger role by far is the sick personal ambition of men without great skill or talent, and not a whit of understanding. Men like Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher, like dozens of military men from captains to generals, all the way to field marshals. Don’t even get me started on the vast majority of degenerate high-ranking Nazi officers, or at the learned men in universities who, rather than objecting to the destruction of basic scientific principles along with basic human decencies, bowed down and allowed the shrine of knowledge to be raped in such a profane way. Did you know Nazis propagated that much of physical science was untrue, that they twisted principles just because they were discovered by Jewish scientists and researchers? Most of the faculty at universities said nothing, even when they could have. Even when they should have.
I could write four thousand words, forty thousand words and I would barely scratch the gist of this book. It’s good, it’s written really well, and a lot of historians hate it: What more do you need?!
As to the why behind certain historians’ dislike for this massive work of history — I don’t quite know why that is. Perhaps it’s Shirer’s decision not to mask in the slightest his hatred for Nazi ideology. Perhaps it’s the fact that his novel sold so well. But he does not lack for first-hand historical sources — the diaries of so many of the Nazi High Command, as well as many others, most notably that of Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian foreign minister and Mussolini’s son-in-law. I might look into a translation of Ciano’s diary, in fact, since it’s a fascinating read and shows a side to Italian-German relations that is much more multi-faceted than I ever expected.
I listened to this in audiobook form because…history is easier to consume this way, for me. I absolutely recommend this, and I think any politically conscious citizen of the world could use to see the myriad processes that led to the Rise and Fall of Nazi Germany....more
This review was originally published over at booknest.eu!
Published by: HarperVoyager (2010 ed.) Genre: Sci-Fi, Fantasy Pages: 296 Format: paperback AwardsThis review was originally published over at booknest.eu!
Published by: HarperVoyager (2010 ed.) Genre: Sci-Fi, Fantasy Pages: 296 Format: paperback Awards: Hugo Award for Best Novel (1968) Copy: Picked up at my local library. Support your libraries, folks!
“His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god.”
Gods, I loved this one. My admiration for Roger Zelazny and his talents goes back to early adolescence when my father, may Krishna and Vishnu look at him favourably, granted me passage into a world that lies in intersection to our own (and yet far, far above it, the way real objects are above shadows), the world of Amber. It is a glorious place, and one I haven’t dared revisit for many years; but this review goes a little further back, before Zelazny himself ventured into the Chronicles of Amber.
Lord of Light is an epic contained in just under a three-hundred page novel. Its ideas are grand and ambitious, as much in the vein of fantasy as in science fiction, the basic structure of much of the novel borrowed from the creation myth of Buddhist lore (heavily based on reality but mythologised after two and a half millennia), the aforementioned Sam taking on the role of prince Siddhartha Gautama. But Sam is not a man to only wear a single hat – his identities throughout the seven chapters of the book are many and the role of destroyer comes as easy to him as that of ascetic philosopher. Whether he believes in what he preaches or not is besides the point.
This book is fantastic to read if you don’t know much about Hinduism and Buddhism but are looking for something to enthuse you, make you curious about enlightenment and spirituality of these dual religions which many of us in the Western world are hardly ever in the position to interact with on a meaningful level.
But divorce it from any knowledge from Hinduism; no, divorce is the wrong word. Rather, give Zelazny the creative leeway he deserves, let him loose on the pantheon and watch as he creates something remarkable and original as well as traditional. Perhaps the most delight I took was in these scenes which centred around the interactions between Sam and Yama (also called Yama-Dharma) the death-god and most brilliant amongst all the gods.
“Call themselves?" asked Yama. "You are wrong, Sam, Godhood is more than a name. It is a condition of being. One does not achieve it merely by being immortal, for even the lowliest laborer in the fields may achieve continuity of existence. ... Being a god is the quality of being able to be yourself to such an extent that your passions correspond with the forces of the universe, so that those who look upon you know this without hearing your name spoken. Some ancient poet said that the world is full of echoes and correspondences. Another wrote a long poem of an inferno, wherein each man suffered a torture which coincided in nature with those forces which had ruled his life. Being a god is being able to recognize within one's self these things that are important, and then to strike the single note that brings them into alignment with everything else that exists. Then, beyond morals or logic or esthetics, one is wind or fire, the sea, the mountains, rain, the sun or the stars, the flight of an arrow, the end of a day, the clasp of love. One rules through one's ruling passions. Those who look upon gods then say, without even knowing their names, 'He is Fire. She is Dance. He is Destruction. She is Love.' So, to reply to your statement, they do not call themselves gods. Everyone else does, though, everyone who beholds them." "So they play that on their fascist banjos, eh?" "You choose the wrong adjective." "You've already used up all the others.”
This is the kind of dialogue that got me into literature, made me want to dig as deep into it as can be, and make the study of it my life’s work. It sparkles, it crackles, and it captures perfectly who these two characters are; Yama, who is avatar and representation of the end of all things, as severe as the silence of the grave; and Sam, who cuts through all the bullshit and calls things as he sees them, and fights for a cause not wholly his own to the last. Fine – I’m projecting beyond the conversation above but you can’t blame me for the enthusiasm.
See, the intertextuality is something Lord of Light thrives on and is shaped by. The paragraph above makes a passing nod to Dante’s Inferno, and perhaps to some of Zelazny’s other work itself – a quick google search revealed the following quote, penned by none other than him: “All of these things considered, it is not surprising that one can detect echoes, correspondences and even an eternal return or two within the work of a single author. The passage of time does bring changes, yea and alas; but still, I would recognize myself anywhere.” What this intertextuality allows Zelazny to do is weave his unique vision while using Hindu and Buddhist cannon as a vehicle to enrichen an imaginative world which takes on themes of oppression and the dangers of technological advancement, touches on colonialism and, most formidably, seeks to divorce religious preaching from spirituality, while arduously studying the bonds between the two. What does that last point stand for? As mentioned before – and I don’t mark this as spoiler, for it is established early on – Sam hardly believes what he preaches. Does that lessen his teachings? To discover the answer, multi-faceted as it is, you might want to pick this one up.
I am in awe of Zelazny, yet another of the SFF masters of old whose works will always hold relevance to our present. Lord of Light is a quintessential classic, and one you will be well-served by taking the time to read it. It will not always be easy…but it will be rewarding. This is my Sci-Fi read of the month, and I give it full marks, 5 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.
I rarely add a song to my reviews, but there is one that encapsulates the book and its protagonist in particular, in such an excellent way as to warrant it. The song in question is called “The Lord of Lightning” by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard....more
I finished Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 many months ago — I’ve kept pushing the review further and further off because this is one of the classics, it’s lI finished Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 many months ago — I’ve kept pushing the review further and further off because this is one of the classics, it’s loved by many, disliked by some, downright hated by a chosen few. I find myself decidedly in the camp of the first, as this novel illustrated the absurdism of war through examples that will have you either grasping at your sides with laughter or blinking slowly, trying to comprehend what the hell just happened.
It is a difficult book to penetrate, at first. Heller thinks little of chronology, the structure of his chapters a mess that is at once brilliant and confounding; the opening begins in media res, with Yossarian pretending to be both sick and crazy for who-knows-which time. Unafraid to hop from one character’s circumstances to another, Heller uses an omniscient narrator to sketch out the daily life of the soldiers of the U.S. Air Army. He does so in a way that extends to far more than just these characters, encompassing the entirety of the army, of any army, even of every army. The objections to war, after all, should not be examined in a case-by-case basis.
Once you become acquainted with the military and its maddening mechanisms, Heller’s thesis statement begins to fall into place:
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.
“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.
Ironic, isn’t it? This circularity is the bread and butter of so much of Heller’s seminal work, and though other examples of this never failed to garner a laugh, chortle or chuckle from me, these became ever more histeric as I continued my sixteen-hour journey across a text that is increasingly pessimistic about the nature of modern society in all its paradoxic, violent and capitalistic glory.
There is something of a postmodernist precursor to this book, something that so well captures the pulse of a movement that was just beginning to arise in the sixties (Catch-22 was published in 1961) that you can’t help but applaud Heller for taking the measure of so much of the postmodernist essence:
It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.
This codifies so much of my experience with postmodernism!…And the distance from this to Angela Carter isn’t that much of a stretch, is it?
I listened to Catch-22 as narrated by Trevor White whose reading brought the characters to life and made the dialogue jump off the page. I recommend you give that particular audiobook a listen — it’s well-worth the Audible credit!
And, before I close this review off, may I say that Milo Minderbinder is one of the most brilliant characters used to satirize capitalism and the notion of free market, ever? The Mess Officer of the Air Force base that most of the book is set up at, is the beating heart of a pyramid scheme that puts all others to shame; Milo is a hell of a guy, and he’s almost as funny as he is scary.
I could write about Catch-22‘s insane cast for days, but alas, I’ve got This is one I’ll be coming back to, reading and rereading, and something tells me no two reads will be the same. Just writing this review is enough to fill me with excitement over the possibility of experiencing the narrative Joseph Heller constructed with such impeccable care. If you’ve heard that this is one of the finest novels of the 20th century…well, you’ve heard right....more
Ursula K. Le Guin’s legacy will echo throughout the world of fantasy for as long as the genre is read. Chief amongst her works are the six novels (and several short stories) based in Earthsea, a world of seas and islands, and adventure most of all. I’ve had this classic on my TBR pile for ages, and when I stumbled on an excellent Black Friday deal on the Complete Earthsea Illustrated Edition with art by Charles Vess, I knew the time had finally come.
A Wizard of Earthsea is a 56,000-word novel, less than 200 pages in length in most paperbacks, a mere 125 pages in this glorious edition; for all that, it took me several days to make my way through. This is no page-turner that keeps you on your nails; rather, it’s a slow dive in a world that is half fairy tale, half “Young Merlin and Gandalf going on a quest of self-discovery”.
Self-discovery is something Le Guin places emphasis on. Our main character is Sparrowhawk, who will one day, we are told, grow up to be among the greatest wizards of Earthsea and certainly the greatest voyager and adventurer the world has ever seen. But before he became a legendary Archmage, Sparrowhawk was first known as Ged, an apprentice prideful for the depth of his talent and the well of his power. Going yet further back, he was a child on the island of Gont, motherless and raised by a blacksmith father without an ounce of tenderness; and taught in his first words of power by a village witch whose own knowledge of magic consists as much of truth as it does of old wives’ tales and fraudulent imitation.
Ged’s thirst for learning takes him far, to an unknown land where he studies among some of the greatest of wizards; but one lesson, more important than all others, he learns all on his own.
Power used unwisely and to one’s own prideful ends, is not the wizard’s way.
It’s a hard lesson, and one that haunts Ged, defines his journey as the wizard recovers from a terrible ritual that let loose a thing of shadow into the world.
“To light a candle is to cast a shadow…”
A Wizard of Earthsea is about Ged’s moral journey and his coming face-to-face with his personal demons — and not dispatching, but embracing them and becoming whole. It’s a book also about friendship and the strength of kindness, which is often more powerful and significant than the greatest magic worked by master wizards. It’s about trust. Time and time again, it’s about “unshaken, unshakable” trust.
“If plain men hide their true name from all but a few they love and trust utterly, so much more must wizardly men, being more dangerous, and more endangered. Who knows a man’s name, holds that man’s life in his keeping. Thus to Ged, who had lost faith in himself, Vetch had given that gift only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakable trust.”
But I’ve said enough about Ged. To learn the full length of his journey from a brash boy to a humble wizard, take the time to read the novel. And hey, if the journey of self-discovery isn’t enough…
A dragon awaits within these pages, and his face-off with our young wizard is a thing to behold, a thing of great beauty.
But before I let you go, I’d like to turn your attention to Le Guin’s prose, and her. Her words have a magical, enchanting quality about them. They seep into you gently, unerringly; and the lessons of the book stay once you’ve closed and put the book away. Long after, I’m willing to bet. She does so much with little enough — the supporting characters aren’t particularly deep and they won’t offer some thorough observation of the human soul; and as I previously mentioned, this is no sprawling epic. It is, however, compelling to no end, and the world of Earthsea is a magical place.
And — something I didn’t know until I saw Charles Vess’ illustrations; Ged isn’t white. Funny how so many of the covers (and subsequent fan art) I’ve seen completely misrepresent the colour of the main character, portraying him as your run-of-the-mill white wizard. But he’s not, in a book originally published in the late 60’s — and that’s enormously important. Le Guin continually subverts expectations in tiny ways, even this early on in the genre’s history, even when, in some ways, this is the most traditional of fantasy stories. It receives my glowing recommendation.
You should read this if:
*You enjoy quests of self-discovery; *You’re looking to explore the roots of the fantasy genre; *You, like me, love the grimdark genre but could occasionally use a break and a reminder that the human condition is defined by more than just pain, betrayal, and loadsa murder! *You have a love for magic that works on the basis of naming objects and creatures by their true names; *You’ve ever had a passing interest in the works of Ursula K. Le Guin; *You enjoy prose on the edge of the fairytale-like! *And more! Prob’ly.
“You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do…”
What’s there to say about this one that hasn’t been said before?
Vonnegut is among the quintessential American authors, someone who, despite writing scWhat’s there to say about this one that hasn’t been said before?
Vonnegut is among the quintessential American authors, someone who, despite writing science fiction, transcended the stigmata of SF without difficulty, entered popular American consciousness and hasn’t left it since. Its message strongly abhors the very notion of war, decries the brutalities of it and relates the horrors of the Second World War in bloodcurdling detail. It’s not an easy book to read or listen to, not even with James Franco’s voice relating the events Billy Pilgrim goes through. Billy Pilgrim, unstuck through time, going back to World War 2 and forth into the sweet unknown; Billy Pilgrim, an optometrist. Billy Pilgrim, prisoner-of-war in Dresden, shoved forth into Slaughterhouse-Five with the rest of them, along with one Kurt Vonneghut, though he himself never makes use of the name.
“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
Billy Pilgrim, who is kidnapped to Tralfamadore and stuffed into their zoo along with a woman he comes to love. Billy Pilgrim, who knows the hour and the method of his own death, and knows it is predestined, and does not fool himself into believing in the folly of free will*.
So it goes.
What’s between the covers of Slaughterhouse-Five is real. It’s anger and it’s fury and maybe it’s helplessness, too, at the perpetual cycle that churns out war and its injustices. Monstrous, terrible as they are. Vonnegut shows it how it is; no glory can be found amidst the mud and ice – only the illusion of it in the eyes of the vainglorious prick Roland Weary, whose pettiness and cruelty plant a seed the poisonous fruit of which eventually results in the death of a good man.
It is also a critique of America, in two of the most poignant paragraphs I have read in recent memory:
“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
These words were true when Vonnegut wrote them, and they resonate so much stronger today. I fear they will resonate stronger yet tomorrow, and tomorrow, and the one after it, as well.
Strange, perhaps, that I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed the Sirens of Titan. But I appreciate its merits; appreciate, even, that it has more merits than Sirens does. I’ll always remember 2019 for Vonnegut, for this and Sirens and perhaps Breakfast of Champions, if I manage to get through it before the closing of the year.
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* But these are not Vonnegut’s beliefs; just because his main character believes it, and the Tralfamadorians believe it, doesn’t make it so, my friends. The only reason I mention this is, Vonnegut seems to have gotten a lot of flack for it in the past.
Oh, and do I even need to tell you how great James Franco does as narrator? No. No, I don’t....more