Shameless Self-Promotion Saturday (S2-PS) (March 14, 2015)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller ← It's a hyperlink to my review. G'head, try it; it won't delete the internet or anything.

My S2-PS is a review from my early blogging experience, before I had any clue about promoting my blog. It is my least-viewed review, of a very enjoyable story.

S2-PS is a weekly meme, hosted by The Once Lost Wanderer. You are invited to join in and promote your own blog!

• Choose a post from your blog, that you would like to promote.
  It might have received few page views, or few comments,
  or be one you are particularly pleased with and you just want it revisited,
  or any other reason that suits you.

• Link to that page (of course), with an explanation of why you want it revisited (optional).

• And then please, add a comment to the Once Lost Wanderer with a link to your S2-PS post.

Is Less More?

I’m approaching the half-way point of my quest, and I’d appreciate some feedback.

The main thing I’m pondering, as you can probably infer from the subject line, which is preferable: long or short review?

Many of my earlier reviews contained rather long synopses. Of course, “long synopses” is an oxymoron; stupid bovines notwithstanding, I’ve been aiming for shorter synopsis lately, a bit more of my own impressions or favorite moments, themes, characters, or lines, but a shorter review in total.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: Well Wanderer, it’s your blog; write whatever type/length review you like.

Point taken, and agreed.

However, I like people to read my reviews and I like them to like reading my reviews and I like them to return and read more of my reviews, so… I am interested in your opinion: shorter or longer?

Two examples: Nostromo (shorter review (looks long, but only because of the artwork)) vs To the Lighthouse (longer review).

Of course, I’d welcome any other feedback: hate the layout, like the star ratings, love the cover art, etc, but mostly, what do you hope to learn when you read someone else’s book review? And maybe even more importantly, anything you especially don’t want to learn?

Me? When reading others reviews, I don’t want much of a synopsis and definitely no spoiler without a warning. Some reviews are very analytical, scholarly even, while others are more emotive. I like both, with a slight preference for the latter. Primarily I want to know: did you like it? Why or why not?

Nostromo, A Tale of the Seaboard by Joseph Conrad (44 down 56 to go)

A story of treasure, that was paid for…with the soul of a woman, and the life of a man…

This is the first time I’ve read Nostromo. It is a realist novel, third-person narrative about the scheme to save the silver treasure of the San Tome mine. It is set in a fictional South American country in the late 19th century.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel satisfies square G3 of 2015 Classics Bingo: Adventure Classic

Nostromo takes place in the fictitious South American country of Costaguana. The title character, Nostromo, is a nickname given to Giovanni Battista Fidanza, an Italian sailor who has settled in Sulaco and become Capataz de Cargadores or head longshoreman. It is a story of ambition, idealism, patriotism, corruption, ego, loyalty, and betrayal.

Sulaco is an Occidental Province, isolated from the rest of Costaguana by mountains and the sea. Nostromo has nearly universal respect of the citizens of Sulaco. To his superiors, he is a trusted agent of unquestioned ability and integrity. To the sailors and general population, he commands respect and admiration, and perhaps a little fear. He was…

a man for whom the value of life seems to consist in personal prestige. 

...who had lived his own life on the assumption of unbroken fidelity, rectitude, and courage! 

However, he is not among the official leaders of Sulaco. The principal character is Charles Gould or don Carlos, the Costaguana born, Englishman and owner/operator of the San Tome silver mine. That might conjure up an image of an aloof and exploitative European, stealing the riches of the land with no regard for the inhabitants, but that would be a false image. Gould is known affectionately as the King of Sulaco, (Rey de Sulaco). He is a fair to his employees, benevolent to the community, and a Costaguanero and idealist at heart. He envisions the wealth of the San Tome mine bringing stability and prosperity to Costaguana. The mine makes a major concession to the government, so it operates to the mutual benefit of all involved.

Until the revolution.

Control of the mine becomes the objective of the two ruthless brothers and leaders of a military revolution. The isolation of Sulaco, buys some time for Gould and others to plan a daring exploit to smuggle the horde of silver out, and then to enlist internal and external support in hopes of making Sulaco a separate nation, independent of the rest of Costaguana. The plot requires a man of exceptional ability and courage…namely Nostromo. He would make it...

the most famous and desperate affair of my life…

Of course, things don’t go exactly as planned.

The story starts a bit slow, though it was well worth it. Conrad creates such intriguing and believable characters I was concerned for their safety and felt a patriotic fervor for their beloved and beleaguered Sulaco. Besides Nostromo and Gould, there is Don José Avellanos a leading citizen who suffered cruelly under a previous dictator, who is now unwaveringly devoted to Gould; Avellanos' beautiful daughter Antonia and her fiancé Martin Decoud, who masterminds the plot to save the silver. Decoud has an ulterior motive: not a bad one, not an evil one, just not about the silver, or independence. Then there is the aged Dr. Monygham who also suffered under a previous regime, and now holds very little dear except doña Emilia Gould, the gracious and kind hearted wife of Charles Gould. She was my favorite character. She reminded me a bit of my wife.

And finally, the mysterious Isabels. I'll spare their role in the tale, and let you discover it yourself. It's a very enjoyable story with fascinating characters, exotic lands, intrigue and treasure. You can hardly go wrong with treasure.

In Italian, Nostromo literally means boatswain, but it may also be a corruption of nostro uomo, meaning “our man”. Both meanings fit nicely, and are most likely an intentional play on words by Conrad.

The version of Nostromo I own is illustrated by Paul Hogarth. Below is his rendering of the illustrious title character.

Excerpts:

Of course, government anywhere, is a thing of exquisite comicality to a discerning mind

In the most skeptical heart there lurks at such moments, when the chances of existence are involved, a desire to leave a correct impression of the feelings, like a light by which the action may be seen when personality is gone, gone where no light of investigation can ever reach the truth which every death takes out of the world.

The mere presence of a coward, however passive, brings an element of treachery into a dangerous situation.

To him, as to all of us, the compromises with his conscience appeared uglier than ever in the light of failure.

Narrative describing Emilia Gould: 

...she resembled a good fairy, weary with a long career of well-doing

Ode to Dr. Seuss (original poem)

In honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday today March 2, I present the following:

ODE TO DR. SEUSS
by The Once Lost Wanderer (J.E. Fountain)

On those days, rainy days with nothing to do
How he took me away, and I bet he took you

To whimsical lands and fanciful creatures
With stars on their bellies and other odd features

Yes the thinks I can think, thanks to old Dr. Seuss
And his tale of the Oobleck or a big hearted moose

Of foxes in sockses or odd colored eggs
Or a book about feet but not one about legs

Yes a book about feet is quite a rare feat
It's a feat I repeat and may never be beat

And the Lorax, oh the Lorax, not a word rhymes with Lorax
I couldn't rhyme that if I sat on sharp floor tacks

And the Whos I have wondered, were the Whos the Grinch hated
The same Horton heard or not even related

And the cat, that old cat, in the red and white hat
How could I possibly forget about that

Or those marvelous pests, thing one and thing two
Or Yertle the turtle, or fish red and fish blue

How I hopped on my pop, I hopped till he pleaded
I'm certain he wished that he'd not let me read it

To many I'm certain it seems childish prattle
But take heed and remember the Great Butter Battle

And now when I'm strolling down Mulberry Street
And I see something common, something not at all neat

I try to imagine what the Doctor might say
That a great wild adventure is but one think away

But he's gone now, he's gone, but never forgotten
To forget Dr. Seuss would be something quite rotten

So he lives in my heart and I'll always remember
Especially when rolls round the First of Octember

For though I never met him, I'd say he's my friend
And once that is said, all that's left is…The End


 © 2015 Joseph E. Fountain

Teaser Tuesday (February 24, 2015)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. 


Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
 
My Teaser:

To be told repeatedly that one's future is blighted because of the possession of a silver mine is not, at the age of fourteen, a matter of prime importance as to its main statement; but in its form it is calculated to excite a certain amount of wonder and attention. In course of time the boy, at first only puzzled by the angry jeremiads, but rather sorry for his dad began to turn the matter over in his mind in such moments as he could spare from play and study.

(p. 61, from Nostromo by Joseph Conradqlp 

Classic Literature moment at the Oscars

I don't usually watch the academy awards, but for some reason I stayed up to watch it last night. All very much the same as most years, some amusing moments, some annoying, some poignant. Biggest surprise for me, Lady Gaga did an outstanding job performing a medley from The Sound of Music; Julie Andrews even seemed moved by it.

But the point of this post, there was a bookish moment. During the period when they show pictures of persons associated with the film industry who passed away in 2014, there was a shot of Gabriel García Márquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and other classic novels. Most of his books have not been adapted to film, so I was a bit surprised, but I guess he was a film critic, and screenwriter.

He was the first author I read in 2015, so it resonated.

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (43 down 57 to go)

 I was the shadow of the waxwing slain ~ Opening line of a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", which is central to the novel Pale Fire.

This is the first time I’ve read Pale Fire. I previously started, and did not finish, a different novel by Nabokov, so this is the first by Vladimir Nabokov I have finished. Pale Fire is a postmodern novel employing metafiction, in the form of a 999-line poem also titled Pale Fire.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 

This is a unique and complex novel. In attempting to simplify, I will likely only confuse. But it is my task, per my quest, so I shall try. At first I thought this was not a novel at all, but a poem. Upon completion, I realized that combined, the foreword, the poem, and the commentary tell a story in a unique way, or metafiction. As such, it is indeed novel in the most literal sense. In fact, you could argue it is the only novel, or at least the most novel of any of the novels I have read.

Not very clear, is it? The story told by Pale Fire is only realized by reading the foreword, and the poem, and the commentary. The foreword is not a real foreword, but a fictional foreword by the fictional character Dr. Charles Kinbote, a colleague and friend John Shade, the fictional author of the poem. After the poem, the fictional Kinbote offers fictional commentary on the fictional poem, by the fictional author Shade. All three parts are actually the fictional creation of Nabokov.

And a brilliant creation. I didn’t like Pale Fire at first, or even in the middle, but almost with the very last line of the commentary, it all became clear and I was stunned. Truly the most novel novel I’ve read.

This novel satisfies square G5 of 2015 Classics Bingo: Published 1950-1999

I’d like to offer a recommendation on how to read Pale Fire. Read the poem first in entirety, it is written in four cantos. It is quite clever, and small passages make sense of a limited scene or impression, but you will probably not sense a single congruous tale. Next read the foreword. Then read commentary that pertains to Canto One, and then reread Canto One. Do the same for Canto Two, Three and Four, and then reread the entire poem.

And you’ll have the whole story. The story of an exiled King living incognito as a professor at an American University, of the King’s childhood, the revolution, his escape, and the assassin sent to track him down.

A bit more about the poem: it rhymes. It’s a bit old fashioned, but I still like poetry that rhymes.

Excerpt:

             One ear in Italy, one eye in Spain,
               In caves, my blood, and in the stars, my brain

Also, 999 lines might seem like an untidy number. The poem is unfinished as the meter is incomplete; line 999 does not have a corresponding rhyme. Kinbote realizes the first line is also the last line, or line 1000. The poem tells the tale of the exiled King, but as Kinbote puts it (and note the play on the Novel/Poem’s title), it tells the tale with: 

Echoes and wavelets of fire, and pale phosphorescent hints,... 

The author, Shade, also wrote parts with apparent precognition of events yet to come.

Lastly, a word about the title. There is an amusing bit of irony in the commentary, where Kinbote expresses his disdain for the technique of deriving titles from some other poetic work.

See Browning’s My Last Duchess. See it and condemn the fashionable device of entitling a collection of essays or a volume of poetry – or a long poem, alas – with a phrase lifted from a more or less celebrated poetical work of the past. Such title possess a specious glamor acceptable maybe in the names of vintage wines and plump courtesans but only degrading to the talent that substitutes the easy allusiveness of literacy for original fancy and shifts onto a bust’s shoulders the responsibility for ornateness since anybody can flip through a Midsummer-Night’s Dream or Romeo and Juliet, or, perhaps, the Sonnets and take his pick.

The irony is that the title Pale Fire is from Shakespeare's Timon of Athens.

The moon's an arrant thief,  And her pale fire she snatches from the sun (Timon of Athens, Act IV, scene 3). 

I'm certain it was intentional.

Excerpts from the commentary:

The summer night was starless and stirless, with distant spasms of silent lightning.

Vainly does one look in Pale Fire (oh, pale, indeed!) for the warmth of my hand gripping yours, poor Shade!

All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.

Let me close this important note with a rather anti-Darwinian aphorism: The one who kills is ALWAYS his victim’s inferior.

Quoting Shade: 

Kings do not die – they only disappear, eh, Charles?

…kinbote means regicide in your language? Asked my dear Shade.

Yes a king’s destroyer, I said (longing to explain that a king who sinks his identity in the mirror of exile is in a sense just that).

.