The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

With all the recent hoopla about the recently released movie adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” and with the recommendation of a trusted fellow reader, I decided to pick up a copy of the book and see how it read.  The last time I had poked my head into it was during the rush and crush of grad school, and as that was such a rushed read, I don’t think I got a real appreciation of it. So read it again this week (and then immediately read it one more time to enjoy the writing and imagery at a much more leisurely pace).

Wow. What a difference a few years makes. This more recent reading was a completely different experience for me and I realized that I had not the same appreciation before due to the speed of grad school reading requirements or because I am much more experienced in the world of books now. (Perhaps it’s both.)

This is one of the few books that I immediately picked up and read again once I had finished it. I wanted to read it a second time to notice all the recurring imagery that Fitzgerald had put in there, and also, having read a brief biography of Fitzgerald and Zelda (both troubled in their own ways), it’s clearly much more autobiographical than I had realized before.

I’m not going to go over the plot – there are other resources for that and besides, I’d like people to read the original text to get their own ideas. This is fabulously written and seems to perfectly capture the rich idle ennui of the wealthy young in the Jazz Age (a phrase, incidentally, that Fitzgerald is credited with originating). The characters in this story drink to get drunk, they chat with people they don’t know about things they don’t care about, and all this in an atmosphere of excess – money, time, drink…

Fitzgerald and wife Zelda spent some time as expats in Paris at the same time as Hemingway and those guys, and although Fitzgerald and Hemingway were good friends, Hemingway rather sneered at Fitzgerald’s “selling out” and writing commercial stories to pay the bills. (Oh, how superior you must be, Ernie.) They both had alcohol problems and marital challenges, and obviously influenced each other in how they wrote – very spare sentences (despite the excessive and overloaded world Fitzgerald portrays).

Gatsby’s world seems to have been bought on every level – one evening, the “premature moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer’s basket…” Everything can be bought, everything can be sold.

Written in 1925, it predated the Depression years and reflects the over-consumption and deep feeling of detachment and isolation felt by some people at that time. Fitzgerald’s characters have a sense of despair unspoken and Gatsby is frequently portrayed removed from all his guests by him not drinking, by standing away from this guests, by the shallow chatter, and by the fact that most of his guests don’t even know the host.

Fitzgerald writes that Gatsby not only dispenses generous hospitality to people, but also “dispensed starlight to casual moths”.  Light plays a huge role in this book – just think of the green light at the end of the dock – as does color (especially colors linked with the sun: yellow, gold, orange… Once you see this, you tend to recognize it more than otherwise. At least, I did.)

It’s a love story (of so many things) on some levels, but it’s not one that the typical person would want to replicate – it’s unrequited (or is it?), it’s complicated, it’s delayed by five years and a marriage to the wrong person (Daisy to Tom). And throughout the story, I would argue that there’s a light veiled theme of same-sex attraction between various combinations of characters (mainly male).  Gatsby wants to go back to the past when he first met Daisy five years ago, although it’s not possible (and not healthy) to do so.

And the “five years” pattern repeats itself quite a few times: Gatsby and his rich friend Dan Cody were together on the nautical adventure for five years, it’s been five years since Gatsby has last seen Daisy, and he’s been living on West Egg for five years… Fitzgerald is not known for his “sticking to the facts” (was “not scrupulous about real details” is how scholar Dr. Matthew Bruccoli* put it) and “was incapable of factual meticulousness” (i.e. he says that Nick Carraway was from the Mid-West: San Francisco! – but details schmetails.) So – was the five-year period there for a reason?

“Can’t repeat the past?… Why of course you can!”

- Jay Gatsby.

This is really one of the best books that I have read this year, and I can’t believe that I didn’t really appreciate (or even like) this book on earlier readings. If this was a title forced on you in your younger educational days, I urge you to take another look at it. With the experience of years, it can be a completely different experience to read it again and I have loved reading it this time around.

Now I’m not sure about going to the movie – I can’t believe that it would do justice to such a rich storyline and characters. Highly recommended.

• I am sure this guy has never received any guff about his last name. Nope. Never.

Lubbock Home and Family Book Review for May 2013

Each month, I write a book review column for a local magazine here in town. In collaboration with (and with permission from) the publisher, thought it might be fun to read here. So – here you go:

YOUNGEST:

Mister Seahorse – Eric Carle

This is the story of Mr. Seahorse who is busy looking after Mrs. Seahorse’s eggs as he travels around the sea bed. His neighbors range from tilapia to trumpet fish, most of whom are also fathers to-be looking after their eggs. I loved this book for its fantastic color pictures (done using tissue paper), but also because it clearly shows that fathers can play an important role in looking after families (without any judgment). It’s not anti-mother, by any means – just very supportive of males playing a large part of looking after kids. Another fun twist was the insertion of printed plastic panels behind which various characters hide – so fun to look at (and behind!) It’s difficult to go wrong with an Eric Carle book.

MIDDLE:

The Kid Who Named Pluto and the Stories of Other Extraordinary Young People in Science – Marc McCutcheon

A marvelously upbeat and encouraging book about young people (including kids) who have achieved huge milestones in science. With science and technology becoming more important, this quick read narrates the true stories of both girls and boys who have named planets, invented cryptic codes, and enabled people with poor vision to read and other breakthroughs – sometimes starting with only a simple sketch. The books also include lots of fun facts of further details about the kid scientists and a list of books for further reading at the end. A really good way to encourage kids into the scientific world. (And parents– it’s written so you will get it as well!)

ADULT:

My Stroke of Insight – Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.  

A science-focused book with a personal view of how a fairly young woman deals when she has a stroke unexpectedly one day. A true story, the author is a neuroscientist who has been studying the brain, and so as she recounts the morning (and each moment) she had her stroke, she remembers details that bring the whole experience clearly to the reader. It’s a fascinating portrayal of her long recovery process – how she needed to relearn how to talk, walk, speak, eat – and also how her caretakers looked after her and what was helpful (from a patient perspective). It was tough for the author to remember that just because she had had a stroke, she wasn’t “less than…” she was before. She was different.  If you know anyone who has had a stroke, I would highly recommend reading this book to get a deeper understanding of how life can be for one person with a similar situation. (My father had a stroke, and this would have been very helpful at the time.) The author is mostly very down-to-earth about things, but she can wander off on digressions sometimes. Still, overall, a very good read.

So – there you go. More next month!

Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days – Arnold Bennett (1908)

It’s been a long while since I have leisurely browsed the library shelves, and so I happened to wander over to the B section just to see what was there on offer. I came across a few copies of Arnold Bennett’s writing, and since I really enjoyed “The Wives’ Tale” a while back, I saw this one and checked it out. It was an older book edition, it had yellowing pages and the font was perfect so if it ended up being a good story to boot, then it was win-win-win.

Bennett was a prolific writer and wrote everything from novels to self-help so there is a lot to choose from (on-line). The pickings at our library were slim, but not everyone is quite the fan of writers such as Bennett and I get that. I was not familiar with this title, but felt comfortable checking it out after reading the jacket, and so I settled down one rare rainy Saturday last weekend for a good read. The Superhero was out of town, it was cool and damp, and there were no pressing items on the to-do list. It was pretty much a “perfect read for a perfect time” type of situation which ended up being…perfect! Ha.

Written as satire, Buried Alive is a shortish novel that focuses on Priam Farll, a world famous painter who is very shy and happiest out of the limelight. When Henry Leek, the painter’s valet, dies unexpectedly, Priam seizes the opportunity to change identities with his unknown (and now dead) assistant and retreat to a much valued quiet life. At first, it was just an impulsive lark to do so, but as time continues and events start to get more complicated, the story picks up speed.

World-famous as painter Priam Farll is, his face is not well known due to his reclusive life (although this lifestyle was becoming hard to maintain as more and more people wanted to meet him and his social requirements picked up). As he becomes more famous, more was expected of him, and so when Henry Leek, the butler dies in bed one day, it’s a decision of a moment for Priam to assume his identity (and his quieter life) – and thus Priam’s life changes for ever.

This is a quick read and a light-hearted novel focusing on the old standby of mistaken identity, dead bodies and turnkey moments in someone’s life. And yet, trite as that may sound, this was also a great read – it’s not a demanding narrative, but if you’re just looking for a solidly good read that’s hard to put down, then you’ll be happy with Buried Alive. It’s not deep; it’s not provocative; it’s not packed with lots of big words, but it is an enjoyable way to spend some time.

Proof that it really rained water from the sky last week or so…

More Poe Humor…

Source: Unknown.

 

 

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal – Mary Roach (2013)

“People are surprised to learn: They are a big pipe with a little bit around it.”

- Ton van Vliet

 

As high as the bar had been set with Mary Roach’s previous books, this one reached it (if not higher). Roach is a smart, funny and good science writer who seems to ask the same weird questions of her experts that I would want to ask – she actually does though which elevates her to Superstar status in my eyes.

After having covered large nebulous topics before, Roach’s decision to look in-depth at the human (and other animal’s) digestive system from top to bottom is perfectly done. I know I might be crossing the line here in Fangirl raving, but she is that good. Honestly.

Gulp, her latest release, covers digestion from taste buds to umm… fecal matter, and everything in between in a meandering twisting manner that takes the reader down numerous rabbit holes, but not in a digressive manner – only in a natural trailing way so that you too end up as curious as she is about things you hadn’t really thought about. Who knew that people were paid to taste pet food to make sure it’s palatable and matches the description on the tin? (I didn’t.) Once I’d read the lists of strange things that people have swallowed (on one end) and have inserted into themselves (at the other end), you start to realize the plain fact that humans are odd. No way around that, I’m afraid.

Chapters cover everything from the mechanism of swallowing to fecal matter transplants (an important medical treatment for some cases) and none of it seems irrelevant. It’s all sewn into the content of the book in a seamless manner and when you add in the wit that Roach has with her writing, it’s fascinating. Even if you didn’t really like Elvis that much, he’s got a mention here – next time I see him, I will immediately think of his bowel problems, no doubt about it. It’s thought that he died of a medical issue that was not recognized at the time as it was quite rare – megacolon. Honest. You need to read the book to find out more.

(Speaking of Elvis, the washing machine repair man who visited the other day to fix ours happened to be a competitive Elvis impersonator. That was one fascinating conversation. Seriously. I had little idea about that world…)

I love Mary Roach’s writing, and I wish that we were friends (although that might sound somewhat creepy). She is one of the funniest and smartest science writers around, and whichever Roach title you end up picking, you’ll have an entertaining journey into a topic that you had no idea you were so interested in.

Highly recommended.

(Mary Roach is also hilarious in real life when we were lucky enough to catch her on an author visit to campus. Some authors need to never read their work (as they are dreadful speakers), but Roach does everything right when she presents her writing.)

And if you don’t believe how awesome Mary Roach is, here is an NPR interview which will prove it for you.

Humor…

Source unknown.

New TBR Pile for Summer Days

• Dancing Girls – Margaret Atwood (short stories) (F)
• Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome (F)
• The Lizard Cage – Karen Connelly (F)
• August – Gerard Woodward (F)
• Bitchfest – anthology (excerpts from decade of Bitch magazine)
• Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town – Nick Reding (how meth affected one small community in US)
• Sea of Poppies – Amitav Ghosh (F)
• A Passage to India – Forster (F)
• The Devil’s Highway – Luis Alberto Urrea (issue of illegal immigration)
• Maphead – Ken Jennings (the lure of maps)
• Classics for Pleasure – Michael Dirda (book about books)
• Going to Extremes – Joe McGiniss (Alaska travel)
• The Bite of the Mango – Mariatu Kamara/Susan McClelland (NF about refugee from African nation rife with instability)
• The Social Animal – David Brooks (sociology/anthro) – Reading this right now
• Like One of the Family – Childress (Af-Am domestic history)
• Coasting – Jonathon Raban (UK travel by boat)
• Wesley the Owl – Stacey O’Brian
• The Sex Lives of Cannibals – J. Maarten Troost (travel narrative)
• Color: A Natural History of the Palette – Victoria Finlay
• Foreign Friends – Jojo Moyes (F)

So – that should set me up for the next month or three…

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner – Alan Sillitoe (1959)

This collection of spare short stories was really good, although not quite what I was expecting (although I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting if you ask me). Apart from being this surprise read, I really enjoyed Sillitoe’s early work and have ordered his debut novel (from 1958) called Saturday Nights, Sunday Mornings as it sounded so good.

Sillitoe is usually considered to be one of the earliest members of the “Angry Young Men”* movement in England during the 1950’s which embodied the feeling of disillusionment stemming from the hardships of WWII that were still ongoing years later. Industry had not really recovered since the war, unemployment and poverty were rife (especially for the working class in the Northern part of England), and so conditions were tough for a lot of people. It’s from this perspective that the stories are shown – of working class lads living working class lives facing common life problems.

The title story, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, is the one that I have heard of before although, for many years, I thought it was about marathon running (haha). It does concern running, but it’s much more literary-minded than that.

It’s from the PoV of a young lad who has been sentenced to some time in Borstal, a youth detention center across the country (in England) usually set in barren and removed environments such as the moors etc. It’s a tough place and its inmates end up tough (if they’re not already), and for the protagonist of this particular tale, his is not a life he cares that much about. When he is selected from amongst his fellow inmates to run long-distance for the Borstal team, the act of running takes on much more meaning than his supervisors realize.  In running, this boy has his freedom when he has none otherwise, and so at the end, when he asserts his choice, it’s a way of reclaiming his independence. It’s really an excellent read.

The other stories were along those same lines, although very different. They each have working class protagonists living in industrial cities and in close densely populated neighborhoods of families who have similar problems and ideas stemming from their experience. They vary in age, but the stories usually revolve around relationships (ranging from friends, boyfriend/girlfriend and family of origin to work relations), and it’s obvious that Sillitoe has lived what he writes here. (He did – he had to leave school when he was 14 to work in a Raleigh factory in Nottingham.)

When Sillitoe was actually writing these stories, Wikipedia has an interesting theory (true? I don’t know…) about how the Labour Party (political party) continued to want power distributed among the wealthy and elite more than the working class (perhaps in case of uprising), but it knew it needed to keep the lower classes happy. So the welfare state was created and strengthened without assigning much political power to its beneficiaries and the Angry Young Men movement was born.

There was political and philosophical debate (according to the author of this Wiki) about whether the state was trying to help the working classes or “keep them down” as the saying goes. I imagine it depends on which side of the divide you are as to how you felt, and clearly, this issue continues to be timely. (Again, not sure how true this Wiki theory is, but I thought it was an interesting viewpoint nevertheless.)

• The Angry Young Men (who were sometimes called the Angries :-) ) were a group of mostly working and middle class playwrights and authors (including Kingsley Amis, Alan Sillitoe and Philip Larkin) who rose to fame during the 1950’s in the UK and were characterized by disillusionment with traditional English class-riddled society. As time went on, the Angry Young Men group became less unified and many of the authors who were classed as such dismissed the idea and were not happy with being bunched together. (Can’t blame them – it seems to me that they were such a varied lot that lumping them all in one group would have been nonsensical.) It’s really interesting to read about and there’s loads on-line about this if you’d like to travel further down the particular rabbit hole.

Catch-Up Time

So, it’s time to catch up with some things… I’ve been having some good reading lately, but only a few have been stand-out titles which trigger big and deep thoughts (as evidenced in my posts. HA!) Thus, some micro-reviews are in order:

Blueprint for Disaster: Get Fuzzy – Darby Conley

A collection of strip cartoons (or sequential art if you want to be posh) about a mixed species household of human Rob Wilco, a bachelor who shares his space with Bucky Katt (a smarty-pants Siamese cat) and Satchel, a sweet mix of Shar-Pei and Labrador. Drawn by Darby Conley (and probably lived by him as well), this cartoon was syndicated in the late 1990’s, and no wonder as it is spot on its depictions of life with feline and canine pets. Satchel the dog is really sweet but not.. umm… very *quick* (shall we say?) and roommate Bucky Katt is fast thinking and quick witted, but with a slightly naughty streak in him. This combination leads to some very entertaining reading. It’s been a long time since I’ve indulged in some Get Fuzzy, and it’s still as funny and on target as it was during the 1990’s when I first read it. It just makes me smile.

And then we have this funny read (the Get Fuzzy) compared with the rather harrowing short stories of Alan Sillitoe in “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”. More on this later, but great contrast between Get Fuzzy and the protagonists of Sillitoe’s stories, along with lots to think about.

And then I emerged myself for the first time in Agatha Christie. Don’t have a lot of experience in the mystery genre, so just picked a random title off the Agatha Christie shelf at the library (“4:50 from Paddington”) which I loved, and so then exchanged that title with another one (can’t remember which one right now). Looking forward to more Miss Marple, but will need to research whether they need to be read in a particular order or if they are stand-alones. (I know about the two series of Miss Marple and Poirot, but not the details.)

Mary Roach is one of my writing heroes (and I wish we could be friends) – she has a new release out now called “Gulp: An Adventure down the Alimentary Canal” which is hysterically funny and smart. (Thus the dream that we could be friends.) Roach is a science writer with a great sense of humor and I have enjoyed all that she has written. This is another good one, and will have its own post in time. Just saying.

And then watched a couple of really good movies (been lucky):  one was a psychological thriller called “Fallen” which has an ending which will make you fall out of your chair. (Good boy movie if you need one.)

The other was “Robot and Frank”  about a retired cat burglar who is getting ill with Alzheimer’s so his caring family get him a robot butler to help with his life… Very good. And at the real-life movies, looking forward to Ironman 3 (in Imax) and also The Great Gatsby. I have a feeling that the film will be better than the book… for once!

PLUS – I found out that I am not going to be laid off from my job so that helps to make everything good!

Spring TBR Pile Update

• Logavina Street – Barbara Demick (NF) – READ (link)
• Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism  – Natasha Walter (NF)
• The Campaign for Domestic Happiness – Isabel Beeton (NF)
• The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton – Kathryn Hughes (NF bio)
• Neverland: J. M. Barrie, the du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan – Piers Dudgeon (NF)
• Time was Soft There (book about the Shakespeare Co. book shop in Paris) – Jeremy Mercer (NF) DNF
• Helen Keller: The Story of my Life – Helen Keller (NF autobio)  - READ
• Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC – Joseph McCormick and Susan Fisher-Hoch (NF)
• The Devil’s Highway – Luis Alberto Urea (NF)
• As For Me and My House – Sinclair Ross (Canadian F) – READ
• Be the Pack Leader – Cesar Milan (NF)
• Methland – The Death and Life of an American Small Town – Nick Reding (NF)
• Becoming Queen Victoria – Kate Williams (you know Victoria would slip in there somewhere…) (NF)
• Charles Dickens (bio) – Clare Tomalin (NF)
• Chasing the Monsoon – Alexander Frater (NF) – READ
• Going to Extremes – Joe McGinnis (NF) – Alaska armchair travel
• The Secret Life of Bletchley Park – Sinclair Mckay (NF)
• The Grandmothers – Doris Lessing (F) READ
• Strength in What Remains – Tracy Kidder (NF)
• The Marie Curie Complex – Julie des Jardins (NF)
• The Best American Sci and Nature Writing 2006 – Brian Greene (ed.) (NF) – in process
• Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood (F)  READ – link

Books from own TBR so far this 2013 – 16 (out of total of 48).  Four from the TBR out of nine total titles for this month – almost half so not too shabby. Seven titles from Spring TBR pile (compiled in January 2013). Might be time to switch the titles up and get a new set of TBRs with which to guilt myself (I mean “from which to choose”)… J

Coming Up: the new Summer 2013 TBR Pile…