O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (novel #244)

But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes.

Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, published in 1913, is the first book of Cather’s Great Plains Trilogy: O Pioneers! Song of the Lark, My Ántonia. O Pioneers! tells of the Bergson family, Swedish immigrants to the Nebraska frontier. The story focuses on Alexandra, the only daughter, who, at her father’s death and by his wishes, becomes the business head of the family farm. The Bergsons, like others around them, are struggling to make ends meet, and there is mounting pressure to sell out and move back east.

 

Alexandra’s father is determined not merely to take a living from the land, but to love it and prosper.

 

John Bergson had the Old-World belief that land, in itself is desirable. But this land was an enigma. It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces. He had an idea that no one understood how to farm it properly, and this he often discussed with Alexandra.

 

Alexandra inherits the vision from her father, and when he is unable to realize it in his lifetime, he wisely chooses Alexandra to see it through.

 

She had never known before how much the country meant to her. The chirping of the insects down in the long grass had been like the sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.

 

It is a sweet tale, though not fast-paced nor thrilling. There are sometimes gaps of many years in the narrative. Contextual clues make it clear they were filled with slow, determined struggle, resilience, sacrifice, and human drama.

 

In addition to man, or in this case, woman, versus nature, there is indeed human drama. Alexandra is often at odds with her two oldest brothers, though they acquiesce for the most part. They seem to understand, but never acknowledge, that she is the brains of the operation. And there are two love stories: Alexandra and a family friend, and her youngest brother and his childhood friend. Circumstances don’t allow much of a chance for either.

 

Cather does an expert job of creating empathy for Alexandra. Remarkable since this reader at least has little pioneer spirit, nor any sense of connection to the land, which is Alexandra’s defining trait. She is a completely likable heroine in a story with few villains.

 

I did live in Nebraska a century after Cather, who moved there when she was nine. I lived in a modern city, and she grew up on the plains, so I defer to her portrayal of frontier life.

 

My rating 4 of 5 stars

 

For its timeless portrayal of American frontier life, for its themes of pioneer courage and vision, sacrifice, family, community, and love.

 

This is the second novel by Cather that I’ve read. The other being Death Comes for the Archbishop. I enjoyed both and will certainly read more by Cather, probably from the Great Plains Trilogy. I understand the trilogy is a new set of characters and non-chronological, so it may be read in any order.

 

This novel satisfies the “Wanderlust” category in the What’s in a Name? 2025 challenge. Titles for this category need to include words or phrases related to wanderlust.

 

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Rabbit, Run by John Updike (novel #242)

There is this quality, in things, of the right way seeming wrong at first. ~ Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom

Rabbit, Run is the first of five in Updike’s “Rabbit” series, which follows the life of Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom. Rabbit has been described as the “middle-class everyman,” presumably of the
American 1950s.

 

Ugh…I hope not. I would borrow from another commentator, different author, different character. For me, Rabbit is “one of the most feckless characters in literature.

 

But before I comment further on this novel, I want to mention that in addition to being a Pulitzer-winning novelist, Updike was a distinguished literary critic. The following are his personal rules for literary criticism:

• Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.
• Give enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.
• Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy précis.
• Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.
• If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's œuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

I like these rules. They are fair and systematic. So, in deference to the author and the critic, I will attempt to review Rabbit, Run according to Updike’s rules.

 

Harry Angstrom, or Rabbit, a nickname picked up in childhood for a nervous flutter under his nose, is a married father of one, plus one on the way. He has an uninspiring job, demonstrating and selling kitchen gadgets. Rabbit was a big basketball star in high school and daydreams about his not-so-long-ago heroics. He reminds me of the characters from Springsteen’s Glory Days. His wife, is simple, alcoholic, and seven months pregnant.

 

So, I get the “everyman” designation. He has a deep sense of dissatisfaction; how could he not, following the world-saving exploits of the Greatest Generation, selling vegetable peelers, must have felt maddeningly impotent.

 

One evening, after work and getting his honey-do list from Janice…

Rabbit freezes, standing looking at his faint yellow shadow on the white door that leads to the hall, and senses he is in a trap. It seems certain. He goes out.

Meaning he runs. He intends to make it to the Gulf of Mexico and sleep on the sand, but he doesn’t have a map or much of a plan. He stops to ask directions, though Rabbit cannot say precisely where he is headed. He doesn’t get any helpful advice and prepares to leave…

[Rabbit] walks to his car door. He feels through the hairs on the back of his neck the man following him. He gets into the car and slams the door and the farmer is right there, the meat of his face hung in the open door window. He bends down and nearly sticks his face in. His cracked thin lips with a scar tilting toward his nose move thoughtfully. He’s wearing glasses, a scholar. “The only way to get somewhere, you know is to figure out where you’re going before you go there.”

 

Rabbit catches a whiff of whisky. He says in a level way, “I don’t think so.” The lips and spectacles and black hairs poking out of the man’s tear-shaped nostrils show no surprise. Rabbit pulls out, going straight. Everybody who tells you how to act has whisky on their breath.

I’m not very good at determining an author’s intent, and I’m not sure that Updike ever called Rabbit “every-man.” However, it does seem that he is trying to explain a dreadful ennui pervasive in mid-century American men. Did he achieve this? Powerfully, but I’m unconvinced that Rabbit was “every-man.” Most did not drive away, leaving wife and family.

 

I didn’t like Updike’s style of prose at first. There is never a break, never a pause. He doesn’t have chapters and only one or two blank passage of time sections. There might be a name for this, but I don’t know it. I’m certain this is not right, but it was almost like stream of consciousness by the omniscient narrator. I did grow more accustomed to his style, and I think it worked. It may have been intentional to show that life never lets up, leaving Rabbit feeling trapped.

 

I know this…I didn’t like Rabbit. I couldn’t even feel sorry for him most of the time. I just wanted to say, “Dude!?” An unlikeable character does not mean bad storytelling, but maybe Updike intended Rabbit to be at least a little likable. In that regard, for me, he failed. While reading this, I often thought of the eponymous character from Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March. Augie was immature and his own worst enemy, yet somehow, I liked him. He says of himself…

Lord, what a runner after good things, servant of love, embarker on schemes, recruit of sublime ideas, and good time Charlie.

Now that I’m done, I think I’ve written a fine review. Updike was a clever fellow.

 

My rating:  3 1/2 out of 5 stars

 

 

This novel was my read for the Classics Club Spin #40

 

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For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (novel #232)

No man is an island,

Entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less,

As well as if a promontory were:

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s

Or of thine were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

~ John Donne

 

 

In him, too, was despair from the sorrow that soldiers turn to hatred in order that they may continue to be soldiers. Now it was over he was lonely, detached and unrelated and he hated every one he saw. ~ narrative regarding Robert Jordan, the hero of For Whom the Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls is set in Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. The main character, Robert Jordan, is an American fighting for the Republic against the fascists. He is a man on a mission: to blow a bridge. To do so he must travel behind enemy lines and seek the assistance of guerrilla fighters. As the novel opens, he has already found Anselmo, who in turn introduces him to a small band of guerillas ostensibly led by Pablo, but in truth led by Pablo’s wife Pilar.

 

There is immediate friction between Pablo and the Ingles as Jordan is called. Pablo believes the dynamite can be put to better use than a bridge, while Jordan has orders from the organized Republican Army. Blowing the bridge will prevent the fascists from sending reinforcements to an upcoming battle.

 

Among the guerrilla band, there is Maria, an emotionally scarred young woman the fighters rescued from the fascists. Romance develops between Roberto and Maria. They seize each possible moment and pledge themselves to each other for whatever time they have.

 

There are complications with the bridge, with Pablo, with the dynamite, with true love, but there remains the chance that things will work out, including escape after the bridge is blown.

 

The opening line of the book, and the closing find Robert Jordan in ironically similar physical positions, yet with drastically different prospects.

 

Opening line:

He lay flat on the brown, pine needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tips of the pine trees.

Closing line (three days later):

He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.

This was a reread, but it’s been over 30 years since I last read it. I appreciated it more this time, understanding the inescapable interconnectedness of our lives that Hemingway portrayed and that he alluded to in the title. He initially intended to call it The Undiscovered Country, but eventually decided on a line from Donne. Good choice, I think.

 

Like many of Hemingway’s novels, the main character resembles Hemingway, without the novel being autobiographical. The most poignant similarity between Jordan and Hemingway, is that their fathers both shot themselves.

 

And that Jordan contemplates becoming a writer. While watching some planes overhead he muses…

They are shaped like sharks, Robert Jordan thought, the wide-finned, sharp-nosed sharks of the Gulf Stream. But these, wide-finned in silver, roaring, the light mist of their propellers in the sun, these do not move like sharks. They move like no thing there has ever been. They move like mechanized doom.

 

You ought to write, he told himself.

 

This is the fourth novel I’ve read by Hemingway. The others: The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea. The Old Man and the Sea is my favorite, but For Whom the Bell Tolls is a close second. The message is profound, and the characters are memorable, believable, lovable, pitiable. One complaint, that I’ve had before with Hemingway, the dialogue between lovers is absurd, preposterously cloying. (I would cite an example, but I don't want to nauseate you.)

 

Nevertheless…

 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

 

 

For Whom the Bell Tolls is not a glorification of war. In the introduction, Sean Hemingway describes the reason for his father’s interest in war…

Hemingway appreciated the deep bonds forged in wartime among its fellow combatants, but he viewed war itself as a crime against humanity.

 

And now the movie: 1943 starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. It’s nearly 3 hours and quite faithful to the novel. I’m not a fan of Cooper, But Ingrid Bergman as Maria? I like Bergman in most things, but were there no Hispanic actresses in the 40s, or at least someone who could attempt a Spanish accent? Full on Swedish accent all the way. Baffling. But again, a faithful adaptation worth watching if you like the book.

 

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The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (novel #229)

Here was the truth, here was the life that belonged to him; and he, who fancied himself so scornful of arbitrary restraints, had been afraid to break away from his desk because of what people might think of his stealing a holiday! ~ narrative regarding Newland Archer

 

Set in late 19th Century, upper-class New York, The Age of Innocence follows the last days of bachelorhood and early married life of gentleman lawyer Newland Archer. And then, the conflict he suffers between duty and self-indulgence.

 

He’s not a bad guy, and his fiancée/wife is by all accounts a peach. But sweet May is not quite equal to Newland’s ideal of an independent minded woman. He has some progressive ideas about equality of the sexes, but…

 

There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free…

 

So, they are wed.

 

He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.

 

But only weeks before the wedding, enter May’s cousin Countess Ellen Olenska. Ellen’s presence and behavior is scandalous to the upper-class New York society for leaving her husband and though the family harbors her from the horrible count, she is still something of an embarrassment and social liability. Newland is disdainful with all the rest, but he slowly perceives a fascinating soul, unbound by tradition and duty.

 

And as Deano sang…that’s amore!

 

Poor Newland. He must do what is right, or what he desperately wants. He concludes that in all the world, in all of time, only he and Ellen suffered such an unbearable duty.

 

Ellen Olenska was like no other woman, he was like no other man: their situation, therefore, resembled no one else’s, and they were answerable to no tribunal but that of their own judgment.

 

I was never quite sure what Wharton intended the reader to wish for:  Newland and Ellen to run away together, or for Newland to honor duty and societal codes (probably the latter). I was sympathetic to his unhappiness, but I’ll spare the spoiler as to which road he chose.

 

His wife May? Well, she is just a little bit more clever and more independent minded than is apparent to Newland or the reader.

 

The three main characters, Newland, May, and the Countess Olenska were all vivid and believable. Secondary characters were probably caricatures that Wharton fully intended to lampoon society elites of the gilded age. I thought it was masterfully done. It was a bit esoteric for me though, and I don’t feel it has aged particularly well. For that, I give it…

 

3 ½ out of 5 stars

 

 

Which I’ll remind, is a good rating.

 

This novel satisfies the “Virtue” category: (title must name a virtue: “innocence”) in the What’s in a Name 2024 challenge.

 

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy (novel #217)

There were times when he sat watching the boy sleep that he would begin to sob uncontrollably but it wasn’t about death. He wasn’t sure what it was about but he thought it was about beauty or about goodness.

 

The Road is a post-apocalyptic novel set in North America. The book opens nine or ten years after a global holocaust, which took place in the late 20th or early 21st century. Nearly all animal and plant life has ended.

 

The man and his son, never named, are among the last survivors scavenging the charred earth for food. All survivors are desperate. Many are thieves. Some are murderers and cannibals. The man and the boy are good guys.

 

Which is one of two motifs McCarthy uses. The boy frequently asks if they are the “good guys.”

 

There are other good guys.

You said so.

Yes.

So where are they?

They’re hiding.

Who are they hiding from?

From each other.

Are there lots of them?

We don’t know.

But some?

Some. Yes.

Is that true?

Yes. That’s true.

 

The man often describes the two of them as “carrying the fire.”

 

The two ideas are related but separate. The meaning of “good guys” is obvious, while “carrying the fire” is never explained.

 

Ordinarily, I’m not a big fan of this technique: leaving something vague for the reader to infer. I feel like, “OK author, you had something in mind; what was it?”

 

But in this instance, I liked it. I don’t know why. There are differing interpretations for “carrying the fire”; here’s mine.

 

The “fire” is the belief that humanity is not a cosmic accident and will not be exterminated by one, the belief that we are created in the image of the Creator and are the stewards of Grace and Beauty. The holocaust destroyed everything beautiful. Carrying the fire is the hope and commitment to seeing it restored…against all hope.

 

Making the man and the boy heroes I could cheer for.

 

The boy to his father:

Are you real brave?

Just medium.

What’s the bravest thing you ever did?

He spat into the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.

 

The boy was born shortly after the holocaust. He never knew the world that was. His father tells him stories of it but thinks he must seem like an alien to the boy. When the novel opens, the boy’s mother is dead; both father and son have memories of her.

 

There are moments almost like joy. They discover a bomb shelter stocked with food and provisions. The boy gives thanks to the people who prepared but were unable to use it. Such moments are few and do not last. Most days are tedious misery or paralyzing terror. The reader never expects a happy ending, but in the end…there is a glimmer of hope. The fire burns.

 

My Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

 

 

 

This is my second reading of McCarthy. I liked Blood Meridian, which is also quite grim. I’ll read more by McCarthy, but I may schedule him amongst some lighter fare.

 

 

 

Film rendition: The 2009 film starring Viggo Mortenson and Kodi Smit-McPhee is an excellent portrayal, quite faithful to the book, well acted, and visually bleak.

 

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Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (novel #197)

Whew! Have I got grievances! Do I harbor hatreds I didn’t even know were there! ~ Alexander Portnoy

 

I vaguely remember the scandal over this book when it was published in 1969, which made me a bit wary of it now. But I enjoyed Roth’s later novel American Pastoral, so I decided to give Portnoy’s Complaint the benefit of the doubt.

 

Which turned out to be too beneficent.

 

I came very close to putting it in the DNF bin, but I kept hoping for something redeeming, or at least poignant, but no. Just a long, coarse, narrative of Portnoy complaining. 

 

At least it was well titled.

 

Jewish-American bachelor Alexander Portnoy describes to his analyst his upbringing, promising career, and excessive masturbation habits. Portnoy’s monologue describes the repression in mid-20th Century Jewish-American families, his struggle for identity in Christian, Anglo-Saxon America, and the inner turmoil caused by public respectability and private shame. I suppose these themes resonate with some, but they did very little for me.

 

I’m not in favor of banning books, but I am in favor of ignoring some. I think the scandal in 69 created notoriety for a book which is merely outrageous; some would say avant-garde. It’s a fine line in my opinion.

 

My rating 2 out of 5 stars

 

 

 

 

As I mentioned I liked American Pastoral, so I’m on the fence with Roth. I’ll read more, but with discretion. How do you feel about Portnoy’s Complaint? Philip Roth?

 

This was my SPIN book for TheClassics Club Spin #29.

 

Excerpts (all by Portnoy):

 

And then, of course my father is a man who has a certain amount of worrying to do each day, and sometimes he just has to forego listening to the conversations going on around him in order to fulfill his anxiety requirement.

 

Could I really have detested this childhood and resented these poor parents of mine to the same degree then as I seem to now…

 

The freak I am! Lover of no one and nothing! Unloved and unloving!

 

One rare bright spot…loved this:

Oh, and there is really nothing in life, nothing at all, that quite compares with that pleasure of rounding second base at a nice slow clip, because there’s just no hurry any more, because that ball you’ve hit has just gone sailing out of sight…

 

 

 

 

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee (novel #194)

…every man’s watchman, is his own conscience ~ Dr. John Hale Finch

 

Go Set a Watchman reads like a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, but it isn’t. Jean Louise Finch, known as Scout in childhood, lives and works in New York City. She returns to Maycomb, Alabama to visit Atticus, her aged father, who still practices law in the sleepy southern town.

 

Sounds like a sequel, right? The explanation is a bit complicated, and didn’t make sense when I first read it. Go Set a Watchman is the first draft of a novel that would be much revised, to become To Kill a Mockingbird. In the first draft, adult Jean Louise has numerous flashbacks to her childhood. The publisher apparently liked the flashbacks more than the main storyline and urged Harper Lee to include more childhood scenes, and eventually the entire novel became a long recollection of childhood, centering on a legal case and family crisis that is barely mentioned in the Watchman draft. The title was changed – and a masterpiece resulted.

 

But Go Set a Watchman, was never intended to be published. 

 

And in my opinion, it never should have been. There is a myriad of complex, legal, moral, ethical, and artistic controversies surrounding the publication. The book made a bunch of money, but the author was dead barely six months after publication. If I had it to do over, I don’t think I’d buy it. But I did, and I read it, so the rest of this is just my commentary on the literary merits of the book.

 

First, it isn’t as terrible as some reviews make it. In fact, there were times when I found it quite enjoyable – mostly those childhood flashbacks. Yay! more stories about Scout and Jem. But, there is a terrible dilemma. That’s good, novels need a conflict. The old south is coming to terms with the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs the Board of Education, ending racial segregation in schools. Not everyone in Maycomb takes this federal interference in state’s rights very well. And when Atticus and others are slow, or even reluctant to champion the cause of racial equality, Jean Louise is disillusioned and outraged. 

 

The narrative about the conflict is weak. It is introduced abruptly, developed unconvincingly, reaches a heartbreaking climax as Jean Louise curses her father and storms away to leave Maycomb forever. And then…all is resolved ridiculously fast in a few pages, and one shocking slap to Jean Louise’s face, by Uncle Jack. Dr. John Hale (Jack) Finch did not survive the final draft to appear in To Kill a Mockingbird. Too bad. I liked him.

 

My rating 3 out of 5 stars

This novel satisfies “a classic by a woman author”, in the Back to the Classics 2022 Challenge.

The title is taken from The Bible.

 

For thus hath the Lord said unto me,

Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. Isaiah 21:6

 

It is the text chosen by the preacher on Jean Louise’s first Sunday back in Maycomb. It isn’t momentous at the time. But later, while admonishing his niece, Uncle Jack says:

 

Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his own conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.

 

That, and a few other words of wisdom begin to turn the tide for Jean Louise, and she is soon reconciled to her father. (too easily, too quickly)

 

My favorite of Uncle Jacks aphorisms:

 

I’ll put it in my own words: the time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right.

 

 

Other Excerpts:

 

She did not stand alone, but what stood behind her, the most potent moral force in her life, was the love of her father.

 

She touched yesterday cautiously, then withdrew, I don’t dare think about it now, until it goes far enough away. (this one reminds me of another southern female from literature who liked to put unpleasant thoughts off for another day)

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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof...a play by Tennessee Williams

This is probably Tennessee Williams best known play. It won a Pulitzer Prize, and Williams said
it was his personal favorite of his works. Fortunately for me, I had never seen a film or stage production, so it was all new to me.

 

I’ve always been intrigued by the title.

 

The play takes place in a single day, late 1950s, in a single room of the Mississippi cotton plantation of Big Daddy Pollitt. Big Daddy is dying of cancer, though he doesn’t know it. His dysfunctional family has just learned the truth, and intends to break the news to Big Momma after Big Daddy goes to bed.

 

Big Daddy is bombastic, rude, and bullies his family. Big Momma desperately wants to believe – and pretends – that all is well. Oldest son Gooper (Gooper? I know, right?) and his wife Mae, are two-faced and conniving to win the estate. Younger son, and clear favorite of Big Daddy is Brick, who is an alcoholic and lives platonically with his wife Margaret aka Maggie aka the cat on the hot tin roof. 

 

In short – they’re a mess. Ordinarily, I dislike stories about self-destructive people, and at first I didn’t like this one for that very reason. But somehow, Maggie grew on me. She was the closest to being morally or emotionally healthy – and she has her issues. But I felt sorry for her, and admired her determination to save Brick and her marriage. And Brick is even sort of likeable, as he is completely honest about his alcoholism, and utter uselessness. 

 

My copy contained two different versions of the 3^rdand final act. The first as Williams wrote it, and the second, with changes suggested by stage director Elia Kazan. In a note about the alternate version, Williams opined that Kazan’s suggestions improved the play. I agree. 

 

This play read pretty easy, almost like a novel. But plays are meant to be performed, not read. I watched two film versions: 1976 starring Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner, which was quite true to the play (version with Kazan’s suggested revisions). The 1958 version starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman is more iconic but far less faithful to the play, though I thought Taylor and Newman were more convincing as Maggie and Brick.  

 

Reading this play satisfies a classic play in the Back to the Classics Challenge 2021, and completes the challenge for me, having read all 12 categories.

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Big Trouble by Dave Barry (novel #169)

Detective Baker decided that this was probably going to be one of those cases where somebody shoots a gun and nobody ever finds out who or why, which is a fairly common type of case in Miami.

I usually read the classics, and even though there is no precise qualification for that distinction, I think it is safe to say Big Trouble does not qualify – and likely never will. 

 

Which is not to say it is not a delightful read.

 

In preparing this review, I realized one of the advantages of reading (and reviewing) dead authors – I never have to worry about them reading my review. I was literally worrying about that the first dozen or so pages of Big Trouble, because to be honest, I wasn’t loving it. I wanted to because I love Dave Barry, who is a Pulitzer prize-winning, humor columnist. He is cheerfully cynical, patently absurd, and endearingly self-effacing. I did not read his column regularly, but whenever I did, I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

 

But Big Trouble was just a little too cliché – at first – in the character of Puggy: loveable loser, simpleton, loafer, boozer, semiprofessional vagrant. 

 

But somewhere the story turned, just about the same time Puggy’s day turned. He was having a good day, making $45 easy, by voting at several different polling stations, but later gets beat up, but then gets an easy job and free beer. 

 

He was drinking his second free beer, feeling better again about how the day was going, except for peeing his pants, when the door opened.

 

People peeing their pants is a motif Barry uses repeatedly, but in a very tasteful way.

 

Besides Puggy, there are a pair of likeable hit men (I know, but yeah), maybe due to their utterly detestable target, international arms dealers (also nearly likeable), small time thugs, a couple good cops, a good but incompetently overzealous cop, awkward high school kids, their surprisingly intelligent parents, a dog, a poisonous toad, a python, and no gators (except those associated with the University of Florida).

 

It’s a marvelous farce. Patently absurd – in Barry form – and yet, just on the cusp of plausible...well at least within sight of being on the cusp of plausible. Great fun, highly recommend it.

 

My rating: 3 ½ of 5 stars

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The Stranger by Albert Camus (novel #155)

"I have never been able really to regret anything in all my life." ~ Meursault, The Stranger

I had no idea what to expect from The Stranger. I knew it was a thesis to some extent for Camus’ philosophy of absurdism, but that had very little meaning for me. Blissfully ignorant I began.

Blissful didn’t last long. It begins with the main character, Meursault, learning of his mother’s death and departing for her funeral. Set in Algeria, mid 1940s, it details a few days, and then a year or so in the life of French Algerian Meursault.

The reader begins to see Meursault is a man without great passion or emotion. He goes through some of the motions of mourning, but doesn’t really seem to mourn. It isn’t as though he had a bad relationship with his mother, he professes to have loved her and to have got along. He is just indifferent to her passing.

This blasé attitude is the mark of Meursault. The day after the funeral he begins, or perhaps renews, a relationship with a girl from work, goes to the beach, goes to a comic film, and shows no sign of mourning. When his girl, Marie, asks him to marry her, he flippantly agrees, but later when she asks if he loves her, he responds, "I suppose I don’t" – but he’s still willing to marry her. It doesn’t mean anything to him.

Meursault’s aloof attitude toward life culminates when he kills an Arab. The first fatal shot is probably self-defense, but after pausing…

…I fired four more shots into the inert body, on which they left no visible trace. And each successive shot was another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing.

Meursault is arrested and tried. The most damning evidence being his indifference to his mother’s death, and indifference to everything.

Meursault is Camus’ embodiment of absurdism – the futility of seeking meaning or value from life. As such, I thought Meursault and the novel do a fair job of portraying absurdism, but do nothing to convince me of its merits; in fact, quite the opposite.

I pondered the title, and I suppose Meursault is the stranger – a stranger from humanity. I can’t say I enjoyed it, but I did find it interesting and well written. I’ll read more by Camus, but certainly with a predisposition next time.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This novel satisfies square G5, Classic Science or Philosophy (Absurdism) in the 2020 Classic Bingo Challenge, and Classic in Translation (from French) for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2020.

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