1001+ Books: At the Mountains of Madness

1001+ Books:

#9 - At the Mountains of Madness

by: H.P. Lovecraft (1936)

       At the Mountains of Madness applies the scientific mind to the awe-inspiring colossus of everything unknown to science, and is left with a reaction of horror and fascination seen primarily when the young or the stupid enter the den of a sleeping lion after it's been fed a gazelle. There are many times when the antarctic expedition who have stumbled upon the remnants of long dead, highly intelligent civilization predating humanity by millions of years are touched by the urge to turn and run without looking back. A creeping sense of dread and foreboding permeates the text, building gradually and so effectively that the climax is inevitably anti-climactic. This disappointment at the end of the book may have something also to do with the way Lovecraft writes. These nuggets of terror and revelation are sprinkled a little too sparsely over a plethora of long-winded scientific analysis and mythology, which is interesting in it's own way, but is not balanced as well as it could have been. The influence of this work is undoubtably established though, seeing shadows in everything from John Carpenter's The Thing to the criminally underrated Alien prequel (kind of) Prometheus.

   Rating: B-

1001+ Books: The Great Gatsby

1001+ Books:

#8 - The Great Gatsby

by: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

       I am not a great reader. I mean, I can read well, and write well, but I am not what you would call "well read." Not yet anyway, but I'm working on it. Because of this, I tend to draw comparisons not between books and other books, but between books and another medium I am much more well versed in: film. So it is not surprising to me that what I see in The Great Gatsby compares much more to movies I've seen than other books I've read. And what comes to mind immediately for me while reading this particular novel is Italian cinema of the '50s and '60s, specifically, and surprisingly, the films of the great Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni (although you could easily make comparisons with the more surface level similarities between Fitzgerald's work and the extravagant flash of Federico Fellini's pictures). The commonality I see between Gatsby and, say, L'Avventura or La Notte by that previously mentioned auteur, lies not in form or style, but in their respective essences. The major difference is that what Antonioni goes for deliberately seems almost to be accidental in Fitzgerald's case. Antonioni's films are openly about vapidity and a loss of self. Fitzgerald's book is too, only in what appears to be a more unintentional, and possibly even more bleak sort of way.

       The story is simple, and well known, so I'm not going to bother going through it, just Google it. What the novel is "about" is such familiar themes as wealth, the past, and the ever present "American Dream." The story takes a look at the unattainability of previously mentioned dream as well as the impossibility of the fulfillment of expectation. It casts a judgmental eye on the decadent and immoral antics of the rich, but notably not enough not to participate in them. We discover by the book's end that everyone (but Gatsby and Nick, the novel's self-described "non-judgmental" narrator) is an unfeeling leech, only present to take what they can from the titular character and leave without any ties. I read Fitzgerald writing Gatsby as a pure, lovelorn, lost soul who believes in goodness and the powers of connection and love. I myself read Gatsby as an emotionally malformed, incredibly self-centered and naive victim of circumstance. Like how I suspect Fitzgerald was, he is a man obsessed with the malleable meaninglessness of symbols and dreams, hanging onto things he thinks will fill the holes he can't fill himself. This is true of most of the characters (the "holes" part), but Gatsby is a romantic, which turns his malaise from a character flaw into a kind of chronic and damning disease. He's too sensitive for his life, his times, and his peers. This would make Gatsby a more sympathetic character, but through Nick's eyes he is kept at arms length, a myth or an idea instead of a man.

       Now it is no rule that great art (at least "narrative" art, if that's the right term) has to feature likable characters (I cite There Will Be Blood). And while I wouldn't say that the book is devoid of likable or relatable characters per say, it also doesn't feature anyone you can "root for," for lack of a better term. Nothing seems genuine, and by the end of the book everyone comes off in varying degrees of insincerity and indifference. Even Nick, who tells us of his anger, who tells us about his awe and reverence for Gatsby, about his thoughts and feelings on everything that happens, gives me the impression of doing so out of respectability more than anything. He just couldn't convince me he cared all that much. In a sad kind of way it's almost as if he's telling this story to reap some sort of material or moral benefits, like he's writing to be published, not to be heard.

       To make another, more personal cinematic comparison, this seems to be, for me, the Casablanca of popular literature, in that both this book and that highly revered movie leave me wondering, albeit less with Fitzgerald's work, what all the fuss is about. I mean, it's good, you know, very pretty and whatnot, but it's certainly not the greatest book ever written. In fact, there doesn't seem to be that much special about it (the beautiful prose aside). Maybe expectations have played too great a role in my appreciation of this book. Anything is bound to disappoint when it has labels like "the (arguably definitive) Great American Novel" slapped on it. I think I just find it all a little too "easy," if that makes sense. I wasn't challenged to think much (not that that is some kind of watermark for quality), but more importantly I wasn't made to feel much. What gives this novel credit is the strength of the craft, the mastery and versatility of language Fitzgerald brings to the table. Language is clearly his greatest strength, but it's not enough. It's a charming read, but I can't get past that hollow feeling, that affectation of meaning that Fitzgerald can't actually match in practice.

   Rating: C+

1001+ Books: Cat's Cradle

1001+ Books:

#7 - Cat's Cradle

by: Kurt Vonnegut (1963)

       "See the cat? See the cradle?"

       As we all know, this is, indeed, nonsense. As anyone can plainly see, when you play with a piece of string and happen upon the formation of the "cat's cradle", a series of X's criss crossing over each other, as displayed on the book cover above, on thing is certain when it comes to what can be found: no damn cat, no damn cradle. Look close enough, and what do you see? A bunch of silly strings. "No wonder kids grow up crazy..." says Vonnegut. And it's hard not to see his point. In the end, what do humankind's feelings and ideas about god amount to when scrutinized up close, when looked at through the clear-eyed lens of science? No damn cat, no damn cradle.

       Vonnegut, in another of his masterpieces here, skewers the sacred cow of religion by inventing his own; and one of the more sensible ones at that. Enter Bokonism: a pack of foma (lies in plain-speak). Bokonism is a religion centered around the idea that all of its ideas are completely untrue, something it acknowledges in its very first lines. Despite this, it is (secretly) the reigning religion on the island of San Lorenzo, something everyone there believes, but can never admit to. The creator of the religion, Bokonon, is a fugitive who is wanted by the government and their president, "Papa", who is secretly a Bokonist as well.

       When the novels narrator visits the island, he is also converted into the religion. He is Jonah, or John, and he is working on a book about the father of the atomic bomb, one Dr. Hoenikker. In his research, he seeks out the three children of Hoenikker, and finds them on the island of San Lorenzo by chance, or, as Bokonon would say, "as it was supposed to happen." He also manages to fall in love, become next in line as the president of San Lorenzo, and witnesses the end of humanity as we know it to the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, ice-nine, also fathered by Dr. Hoenikker. And all by chance. "As it was supposed to happen."

       And that is what the book is about, among many things: chance. Or, in other words, the complete and utter meaningless of it all. That's where religion comes in. Despite what the first paragraph of this review may entail, this book is the best argument for religion that I've come across in a while. In the throws of nuclear terror, in an age where something like ice-nine can wipe out the human race in seconds flat, what's the harm in playing pretend to keep you from going insane. Sure, like anything, religion can weaponized, but is it a necessary evil? Do the pros outweigh the cons, or is it, like the island nation, caught in an eternal balance of right and wrong, a yin-yang that must never be thrown out of balance, just like the balance of outlawed yet widely practiced Bokonism and Christianity on the island.

       Alas, more than it is about religion, or destruction, or randomness, it is about humanity. Specifically its chronic idiocy. Everyone in the book is capable of, and acts upon, the stupidest accidents that needn't have happened, like one character licking ice-nine and having their body frozen solid. And there is also stupidity on a grander level, like the invention of ice-nine itself, the greatest threat to mankind created out of curiosity and used to detonate the world by clumsiness. But as much as Vonnegut attacks the stupidity of humans, he defends us as well, for he is a humanist at heart. You can tell that he feels for these people in his writing. You can tell how he cares for us poor, clumsy, stupid, meaningless things. "Mud that sits up" as we are called.

       In the beginning (not that beginning), I was slightly disappointed by the book. It wasn't quite as hilarious as Breakfast of Champions, and it didn't quite grab we in its tight fist the way Slaughterhouse-Five did (one of my favorites, ever). It's one of those pieces that I realized how much I enjoyed it and how much I admired it after I was finished, in my reflection and writings on it. It grows in its absence. Not quite Slaughterhouse-Five, but a good second place. 

   Rating: A-

1001+ Books: On the Road

1001+ Books:

#6 - On the Road

by: Jack Kerouac (1957)

       A book, at it's best, can be a window into the soul of another human being, another mind at work with ideas about the way things are and what not and all that goes on in the world to them. This is such a book, less a narrative, more a wild screaming road down out and through the great landscape of the world known as America, buzzing and zooming past characters and beats through the night hopped up on booze and tea and life! It's a generation definer, a snapshot in the history of the highways and routes and roots and wayward travelers in the time of freedom on the open road and wild abandon down life's ephemeral ways with reckless youth and infinite, spiraling life force that permeates throughout the text like the blooming headlights passing you in the dark of the American dream. Quite the ride, and that's what it is above most everything else: a ride, not a story. A life, not a linear line or a narrative structure.

       Dean Moriarty is not the protagonist of the book, but he is what the book is about, for lack of a better phrase or term. Dean is a rambunctious, crazy, and wild man who travels the American landscape with friends and strangers in the eternal pursuit of kicks. Getting his kicks is, for him, achieving the very American dream, as it were, and finding his moments and swathes of grace to enshroud himself in and breathe in with fire and vigor that the people around him can only hang onto and become hurtled along with him in his mad voyage. He is the touchstone of everything wild and careless and free in the world (or at least the USA) and he attracts people who want to be like him like flies on sugar, and repels others like oil on water. Some get him (it), others don't. Truman Capote didn't, deriding the book by calling it typing, not writing. I feel like I understand Dean. I'd like to be him. That's not to say I would like to be his friend, or even be around him. That's not my life, but reading this book makes me feel, however briefly, that I wish it were.

       So what's it about (the book)? It's about America, and the open road, and the burning youth and desire for freedom, and not much else. The story is told from the perspective of Sal, who is infatuated with Dean and tells his story in some kind of a crazy remembrance of himself and things that he felt and things that happened to him. He recounts his various adventures with Dean and other friends and lovers, relishing the times they had together traveling across the country there and back and all over again. It is a breathless, free roaming book full of little moments and unwavering momentum that never really breaks down. Nothing, and everything, seems to happen all the time, and it has the wild dash spirit of the characters lives. Apparently autobiographical, it is a keen insight into the mind of a madman, a man high on life, man!

       But what is it really about? It is about a certain lifestyle, and a certain kind of person that can simultaneously be a loathsome detriment and a kind of crazy beauty and purity, like fire that is so alive yet so dangerous to touch. It's about being totally free, and the consequences that come with freedom. Dean is free, but if you look at his life, and simply look into the future a few years, you see an accident waiting to happen, one that is inevitable. The book doesn't dwell on it too much, but there is certainly a feeling of things turning out badly for the lives of the people Dean touches. He leaves a line of bastard children across the States like a trail of abandoned eggs waiting to go bad or break to easily. He steals cars, and you have to think about the people who's cars are being stolen at some point. At one point he is confronted by his friends, he accuse him of being a user and a con man, only worried about his personal satisfaction and nothing else. Sal defends him, but in his heart he knows it's probably true. It's hard not to get wrapped up in the glory of Deans blaze, and you end up feeling life's pure excitement hit you like a lightning bolt when he is around. But he leaves a path of destruction, something he seems to be running from and never looking back at.

       It's a cultural touchstone, and a bonafide classic, as well as a divisive and polarizing one. You either have the patience for the never ending exuberance and wild prose Kerouac spills out, or you don't. I'm glad I do, because it made this a fascinating and powerfully raw and visceral work. Bonus points to Will Patton for being the perfect reader for this story, giving it an amazing life force and propulsion. I feel it may have been a difficult read without him doing great on the audiobook.

   Rating: A-

1001+ Books: Breakfast of Champions

1001+ Books:

#5 - Breakfast of Champions

by: Kurt Vonnegut

       Tip: don't listen to this book, it is clearly meant to be a visual experience as opposed to your straightforward narrative. The book is apparently littered with various hand drawn illustrations by Vonnegut, that have to be described (admittedly somewhat humorously) by the reader. Speaking of the reader, John Malkovich is simultaneously perfect for the reading of a Vonnegut book and an incredibly ill choice for the reading of any audiobook. He lisps, which is part of the charm, but also can be frustratingly hard to follow, especially with his jerky, disjointed, flowed together movement from one sentence to the next. Part of me feels I should try actually reading it, but there simply isn't the time with 1001 books to get through. Unfortunately my experience with the novel, in a car going down the interstate at sonically abundant speeds with a narrator who seems to be mildly impaired in some way or another, may unfairly lower the rating of it.

       Anyway, despite the slightly imperfect conditions to which I experienced the book, it was certainly interesting, but nowhere near the absolute genius of Slaughterhouse-Five. One thing is definitely is is hilarious. Vonnegut remains a master of satire, and his sensibility especially shines through with Malkovich's reading, which is, like i said, imperfect, yet well suited to the author. Vonnegut's observations of humanity, and his insane, funny ideas about the world are beautiful and frightening to behold. He frequently compares people to meat machines filling out their daily purposes, but also describes them as unwavering columns of light. The soul inside the machine. Race relations in America are rarely presented so honestly and unforgivingly as in this. Each character is immediately described as either black or white, and their genealogy is often detailed, like describing black characters as being descended from slaves.

       Overall, this is a solid book, but the experience I had with it could have been better I think. The ideas are provocative and inspire much thought, and the execution and presentation of the ideas is often perfect and incredibly humorous. Not quite the heights I know the author can reach, but enjoyable all the same.

   Rating: B

1001+ Books: Midnight's Children

1001+ Books:

#4 - Midnight's Children

by: Salman Rushdie (1981)

       This is a book to fall in love with, a book to enwrap yourself in, to be experienced, to be led along by the hand by into the twirling, fantastic world it creates with it's spiraling, whirling, and magical prose. It is a book of many things into one thing, a story of scale colossal and detail minute, which relishes in its telling and confounds in the same likeness as well. It is a story of India, and of one boys importance in the story, and his family, and the 1001 children of midnight, and a perforated sheet, and a lapis encrusted silver spittoon, and a nose and knees, knees and a nose, and love, and hate, and death, and hope, and magicians, and 500 year old whores, and smelly old boat men, and all the many other things that make up the wide world.

       Saleem Sinai, who was born on the stroke of midnight, at the exact moment of India's independence, is the narrator and ultimate focus of the novel. But the book goes far beyond him into his parents and grandparents histories, and also the history and prehistory of his country, mirroring each other throughout their developments in time. It is encompassing of many things, but overall it is about families and connections, and histories which leak throughout them. Immensely enjoyable in its characters and story, especially in its complete insight into said characters thoughts, feelings, and lives. A book as rich as India herself, and as colorful and alive as well. 

   Rating: A-

1001+ Books: The Fall of the House of Usher

1001+ Books:

#3 - The Fall of the House of Usher

by: Edgar Allen Poe (1839)

       Sometimes, in this time of gore-splattered sequel-spun frightless and biteless jump scare embellishing marketing, you need a really good fright to get the blood flowing again. Such is the Fall of the House of Usher; a mainstay in the Gothic horror genre and staple in the literary genius of Edgar Allen Poe, as well as literature in general. And it is frightening. Not in a momentary surprise or grizzled violent sort of way, but in something much more... undefinable almost. Morbid. Haunting. Grotesque, on a level somewhere close to the soul. It makes you physically uncomfortable. It leaves an impression, one I'm having too hard a time shaking. Even now I find my eyes gazing back towards my bedroom door, trying not to let it happen, in preposterous yet creeping dread that I may just see something I don't want to. It's somewhat a relief after crawling through Lord Jim, but the feeling of occupying my time with writing so as not to have to turn the light out is not comforting either.

   Rating: B+

1001+ Books: Lord Jim

1001+ Books:

#2 - Lord Jim

by: Joseph Conrad (1900)

       This is not an easy read. It is confusing, wordy, and longwinded. I wouldn't call it boring, but I would call it dragging. Its timezones shift, its narrators switch, and all unexpectedly, with little to no indication when things are happening or who's telling the story, at least until it is halfway through its transferring from one to the other. I don't like it when books make me feel slow, but at least this one isn't condescending; just kind of a pain in the ass. A slog, a grind, a hard time, and By Jove! is it not a lot of fun. I will say that it gets easier as you go, but unfortunately it also gets more repetitive as well, at least until the third act. Almost the entire book is in quotations, which doesn't make a lot of sense. It insists on being in the third person, but most of the book is narrated by Marlow (a funny coincidence considering my last book I read in the 1001, The Big Sleep, and how completely different the two characters who share the name are), who is constantly in those confines because the first chapter or two is from the POV of an omnipresent narrator. It's like reading a book that is entirely in comic word bubbles, with all the dialogue in smaller word bubbles inside those bubbles.

       The story is this: Jim, just Jim, at least at first, is a young seafarer who dreams of adventure and heroism that comes with the seaman's life. He is hired aboard the Patna, a ship carrying four hundred Muslim migrants from one land to another. One night, he and the crew notice something wrong with the ship, and convinced it is going to sink, ditch it and its passengers in an attempt to save themselves. Only the ship doesn't sink, and they all have to be rescued, disgraced as sailors in the line of duty, especially Jim who feels an incredible sense of guilt over the whole thing. The second act of the book concerns, from Marlows perspective - the man who would befriend Jim after the Patna disaster - what Jim does with his life and how he wrestles with his demons. This includes lots and lots of getting jobs, hearing something about the Patna, quitting the job in shame, finding a new job, having the same thing happen, and so on, and so forth, over, and over, and over again. Eventually, however, in the much more interesting third act, he finds a new start for himself, and heads for the uncolonized land of Patusan, where he meets a girl and falls in love, also obtaining the titular title of Lord Jim by helping out the people of said land. In the end (spoiler alert, but I doubt you're gonna read this, are you), after a major failure to his people, he walks out of Patusan in shame, much like he abandoned the Patna in the beginning. He is shot dead in the chest by a vengeful villager who's sons death he was partly responsible for.

       Fate, it seems, is the main concern of Conrad's writing here. That, and nature. Not as much the nature of flowers and fruits and jungles, but the nature of men (and pointedly not so much women). Fate and nature seem to intertwine; can man decide his own fate, or is he subject to his own nature?Jim thought he could escape fate, and so did Marlow think so of him as well, but in the end his own inabilities as a man caught up with him and he was forced back into old habits: jumping ship. He realizes what he already suspected, despite his fortune and power in his new circumstances, he is not, and could never be, a god among men. Marlow describes Jim as being "one of us" throughout the text, despite also revering him as being on another plane of human existence almost. The villagers certainly see him as much, and treat him as having power short of a god. It is said, by Marlow, that he, himself, is not good enough. But he adds that neither is Jim, although he is as close as any man ever came. He makes an enigma out of him, one he is determined that cannot be solved, although it is more than likely he is willfully deluding himself into believing that, ignoring man's inherent nature of being much less complicated than it would like to be. The text is full of unclear, foggy notions about things, Marlow being constantly unable to articulate the magnitude of certain situations, or vague feelings. It makes Marlows narration both affirm his idea of the world being unsolvable, but possibly also refutes it in his unreliableness as a narrator (there are many of these in this book, but then again every narrator is, somehow, unreliable). Maybe fate acts with nature to the same outcome, proving that both are true phenomena in their own rights. In the end it is about surviving, which is in every mans nature and against all odds of fate.

       This is a difficult book, as I've said, with profound ideas. One that is worth delving into. That is not to say I would recommend it to many, maybe not even very many at all. It is mostly not enjoyable, and while it begins and raps up powerfully, the middle is so goddamn hard to get through that it makes it almost unnecessary. It is rewarding in the end, and a powerful book at times, but ultimately the fruits of the labor do not quite outweigh the labor. That being said, when it is good, it is very good. The descriptions of Jim's feelings during the "sinking" of the Patna are so forceful and emotionally charged it causes one to almost feel they are going through the same thing, Jim's disappointment at the end of the book similarly so. If you are going to read this, be ready for a challenge, and be well prepared in your endurance beforehand, which is something I was not. On the bright side, most things you read after this are bound to be easy compared. 

   Rating: C

1001+ Books: The Big Sleep

1001+ Books:
#1 - The Big Sleep

by: Raymond Chandler (1939)

       "Not a game for knights" is how Philip Marlowe describes his chess match against himself, and that is pretty close to how you could describe Marlowe's world. Unfortunately for him, he happens to be the knight-errant of late-30s Los Angeles; a city as corrupt and vile in his eyes as the naked young woman in his bed, his damsel in distress, committed to finding herself in distress, with nothing more to say than "you're cute" and nothing more to offer than a warm body. Marlowe is a half decent man operating in an indecent world, a man looking for purity in places of the impurest nature. He knows this, and quietly enjoys in it to an extent. He's committed to his job like a knight to a quest, and he's doing it for the money, yes, but also, in the end, to spare a dying old man his dignity. At least, I think that's what happened. I'm still a little foggy on some of it. Who killed the chauffeur?

       Starting a new project (reading 1001 books, probably a terrible idea considering my commitment to 1001 albums and 1001 movies), I thought this would be an appropriate pick for a nice easy read, a page turner (or, you know, the audio equivalent), something to ease me back into the groove of reading. Easy and breezy as it was, that shouldn't be confused for simple. It's a notoriously complicated plot, so much so in fact that when Howard Hawks was directing the film adaptation, he called up Raymond Chandler to fill in gaps he couldn't connect. Of course, Chandler couldn't help much, he didn't know the answers either. But the plot isn't the thing here, and he must have understood that, based upon how impossibly complex it is and the loose ends that never are really tied up. It's all tone, mood, atmosphere; cigarette smoke, sharp suits with sharp tongues, hot LA heat, coffee, booze, cynicism and smooth misogyny.

       It's a perfect working of atmosphere over story, and I'm not bothered by that at all, it's often what I look for in a piece of fiction first. Marlowe is a great protagonist (some would argue one of the greatest in American literature) and a nice center point for the confused action that happens around him. His witty, sardonic cynicism is key to the understanding of the world, and perfect vantage point from which that world can unfold itself and show all its nasty crevices and corners. Like I said above, Marlowe seems to be the only semi-clean spot in all the muck and grime that the city and its characters live in, not to say that he is by any means an angel himself. He's just a man set to do his duty, get the job done and get paid. It's the tension between his duty and his temptations that is interesting. He kisses the older of the two spoiled and wild sisters that are children to his employer, but refuses to sleep with her. He's chivalrous. He has a strong sense of duty and keeps his word, but even he stooped a little for a moment to embrace life's base pleasures. He's almost like a man out of time, like a knight-errant again, albeit a disillusioned one, with too strong a sense of morality to fit in with a corrupt world.

       But more than it is a character study or an allegory (which I really doubt it is), it's just some nice pulp fun. A classic PI novel a great character and great setups and lines of dialogue. Sure you can dive in an psychoanalyze its characters, but I had more fun letting it all wash over me, and enjoying the quips and strings of extravagant words, the endless and inventive metaphors and similes, and the presence and narration of the protagonist. 

   Rating: B+