A screenshot of The New York Times website from the morning after the election.

Back in 2024, I discussed betrayal in literature. I’m going to repost that piece down below, while adding a few novels I’ve read during the past two years. But I’ll first talk about a political betrayal, and how it helped lead to the wonderful midterm election results in the United States this past Tuesday, November 3, when a large majority of the country FINALLY turned against the vicious Trump regime and his sycophantic fellow Republicans.

When seeking a return to the White House during his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s promised no new wars and lower prices. The man is a pathological liar, of course, but enough people believed him to get him elected. (Trump’s blatant racism and some other things also helped him win two years ago.)

But Trump and Israel started the disastrous Iran War this year for no good reason – causing all kinds of death and destruction, and making the price of gas, food, and other necessities soar. Those betrayals of key campaign pledges – along with Trump’s loony tariff policies, blatant corruption, anti-immigrant cruelty, cover-up of the Epstein pedophilia/sex-trafficking scandal he was tied to, etc. – helped doom the chances of many Republican politicians in the recent midterms.

That said, here’s my post from two years ago about betrayal in literature. After that, I’ll add a few relevant novels I’ve read since then.

Portraying Betraying (October 20, 2024)

Betrayal is a Harold Pinter play, and betrayal in novels is the subject of this blog post.

Literature with a betrayal element can make for intense reading. We feel sympathy for the betrayed, anger at the person doing the betraying, curiosity about whether the betraying person will get their comeuppance, and more.

The Bad Daughter, a Joy Fielding novel I just finished, includes plenty of betrayal – most notably perpetrated by a vile real-estate developer who betrays his son by marrying that son’s fiancée and at the same time betrays one of his daughters because that fiancée was also the daughter’s best friend. Is the father’s betraying action why he gets shot in the book? The Bad Daughter is a suspenseful page-turner with several skillful red herrings, but is unfortunately marred by a surprise ending that doesn’t feel believable.

Another nasty/betraying dad not respectful of boundaries is Fyodor Karamazov, who’s enamored with the same woman (Grushenka) his son Dmitri is in love with in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

Monumentally betrayed is Edmond Dantes, who’s framed for a crime he didn’t commit in Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. A long imprisonment and epic revenge ensue.

Another 19th-century classic containing a memorable betrayal is George Eliot’s Silas Marner, whose title character is done wrong by his supposed best friend. This devastates Silas and changes the trajectory of his life in two profound ways – one bad and one good.

Modern fiction offers many other betrayals in addition to those in The Bad Daughter. For instance, the title character in Toni Morrison’s Sula and Nel are best friends when growing up, but Sula later has an affair with Nel’s husband. In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, a cowardly Amir betrays his friend Hassan by not intervening when Hassan is attacked – and Amir’s longtime guilt subsequently drives the plot. Ian McEwan’s Atonement features a teen girl who betrays her older sister and that sister’s boyfriend by not-so-mistakenly accusing him of a rape he didn’t commit.

Betraying one’s country is also a thing, as Benedict Arnold did during the Revolutionary War. Arnold is among the real-life notables who have cameos in Diana Gabaldon’s (mostly) 18th-century-set Outlander series of novels.

–

Among the many novels I’ve read since 2024 that fit this theme are Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, in which the weird couple Amy and Nick continually betray each other so much it’s almost comical; Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Malibu Rising, in which rock star Mick Riva betrays his wife June and their children with abandonment amid constant womanizing; and John Grisham’s The Confession, in which the police and others frame an innocent Black teen for a rape and murder.

Any thoughts about, and/or examples of, this topic?

Misty the cat says: “Tuesday’s U.S. vote was so amazing that even three deer got elected.”

My comedic 2024 book – the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed – is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂 (Not my voice. 🙂 )

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – which discusses the elections amid a Star Trek theme — is here.

Elizabeth Gaskell

As I currently read Elizabeth Gaskell’s very good but not great 1848 book Mary Barton, I thought about the hierarchy of fiction authors in a 19th century that saw the blossoming of the novel as a form of writing.

There were of course the no-brainer superstars (whether fame came during or after their lives) who each wrote three, four, or in some cases many more memorable novels — including Jane Austen, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy of England; Walter Scott of Scotland; Honore de Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Emile Zola of France; Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy of Russia; Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain of the United States; and Henry James of the U.S. and England.

There were also the excellent 19th-century authors who each wrote perhaps only one or two truly great novels, but those books were stone-cold classics. Among them were the Bronte sisters (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne), Louisa May Alcott, Gustave Flaubert, Nikolai Gogol, Alexander Pushkin, George Sand, Mary Shelley, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Thackeray, and Ivan Turgenev.

Then there were the 1800s writers who were at times excellent, but might be classified in a tier slightly or significantly below the above authors. They included R.D. Blackmore, Lewis Carroll, Kate Chopin, Joseph Conrad, James Fenimore Cooper, William Dean Howells, Stendhal, Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, Oscar Wilde, and the aforementioned Gaskell, to name a few.

Mary Barton was Gaskell’s debut novel, and it takes a searing look at harsh working-class life and wide class divisions in 1839-1842 England while also offering some romantic intrigue. Why did I find the often-compelling book very good but not great? Well, it’s kind of wordy even by 19^th-century-novel standards, and all the caused-at-least-partly-by-poverty death depicted in it – while realistic – can be overwhelming.

Before I go further, I should say that where I rank 19th-century novelists is strictly my own personal opinion; where you place them would likely differ. Heck, should I even be ranking authors? 🙂

Of course, there were also 1800s writers who were great in mostly a genre sort of way – whether that genre was sci-fi, horror, detective fiction, adventure, youth-oriented fiction, and so on. I’m thinking Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Allan Poe, Johanna Spyri (Heidi), Bram Stoker, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, etc.

I’ll conclude by noting that this post only mentioned 19^th-century novelists I’ve read. Some of them (such as Nikolai Gogol and Oscar Wilde) were also famous or more famous for short stories, plays, and/or other non-novel forms of writing. And the work of several of the included authors spilled at least somewhat into the 20th century.

Your thoughts on this topic? Agree or disagree with my rankings? Other 19th-century novelists you’d like to mention?

A final note: It was very sad to hear about the October 28 death of Patrick Stewart, 86, the magnificent actor whose wide range of roles included various Shakespeare characters and Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation (one of my very favorite TV series). Relating to this week’s post, Stewart starred as well in a 1975 miniseries based on Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1855 novel North and South and as Ebenezer Scrooge in a 1999 TV production of Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. Stewart also played every character in that Dickens book in an acclaimed one-man stage production.

Misty the cat asks: “Why am I moving forward when the clocks just went back?”

My comedic 2024 book – the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed – is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂 (Not my voice. 🙂 )

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – about the upcoming November elections in my town and the U.S. – is here.

Nicholas Evans (Associated Press photo/Tina Fineberg).

The last time I devoted a whole post to symbolism in novels was in 2014 – the year this blog started. So, I’d like to revisit that topic via some books I’ve read since then or that I read before 2014 but didn’t mention in that previous post.

As I noted 12 years ago, symbolism can make a novel more interesting and evocative. It’s another element in the mix to draw in readers — along with the plot, characters, prose quality, etc.

I recently read Nicholas Evans’ riveting novel The Divide, which offers a compelling mystery, a heartbreaking family saga…and a symbolic title with multiple meanings. In the book, The Divide is the literal name of a Montana vacation spot where a meeting of two characters (one married to someone else) leads to a fateful romance that helps drive the plot. The title also evokes thoughts of the West/East, rural/urban, and ideological divides in the United States – and of “the divide” between women and men that’s a major theme as the storyline unfolds.

John Steinbeck’s East of Eden does the symbolism thing with a number of Biblical references, including the Trask sons Caleb and Aron having a Cain and Abel dynamic along with the same initials. Their father’s first name in the novel? Adam, of course.

The star of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is obviously not literally an invisible man, but he is one figuratively because African-American citizens – especially decades ago — were not truly and truthfully SEEN by many people in a racist majority-white society.

Marcel Proust’s opus In Search of Lost Time features the serving of a delicious madeleine that triggers nostalgic memories. It’s both a cake and a symbol.

The pigs and other creatures in George Orwell’s Animal Farm are obviously symbolic stand-ins for humans.

Gregor Samsa becoming a giant insect in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis symbolizes alienation, dehumanization, loss of identity, and more.

The title character of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is a living/breathing huge white whale but its existence also symbolically represents obsessive pursuit that can be pointless.

In Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Mississippi River is a…river…but also a literal symbol of freedom for the slave Jim and a more figurative symbol of the opening of Huck’s mind as he matures.

Robert Louis Stevenson uses the title character(s) in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to shine a symbolic spotlight on the good-evil duality of many humans.

In my 2014 post, among the many novels I mentioned were George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (which uses recurring water situations in a symbolic way), Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna (whose title is an actual place in the novel but also symbolically has plot significance as a gap/blank space/missing part), and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (in which “Gogol” is the actual name of a character even as that name evokes the absurdity of life in its reference to the often-absurdist Russian author Nikolai Gogol).

My 2014 post also noted that symbolism sometimes involves the initials of character names – including Jim Casy, the Jesus Christ figure in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath; Martin Eden, the semi-autobiographical “me” in Jack London’s Martin Eden; and Undine Spragg, who embodies crass U.S. materialism and ruthless ambition in Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

Misty the cat says: “I got my steps today, and also got my ladders.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂 (Not my voice. 🙂 )

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – about state school funding and more — is here.

Daphne du Maurier

It’s Halloween month, and thoughts turn to writers skilled at creating scary, spooky, suspenseful fiction.

Those authors who come to mind include Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, and Shirley Jackson, among others. But what about Daphne du Maurier?

Well…it’s complicated. A number of du Maurier’s novels and short stories indeed have chilling and sinister elements, but some of her books do not. One could say du Maurier was more an author of literary fiction than of Gothic horror fiction, though she of course excelled at both and could effectively combine the two. Let’s take a look at this British author’s stellar writing career after a brief detour into her interesting family lineage.

The 1907-born du Maurier’s mother Muriel was an actress and her father Gerald an actor/stage manager. Daphne’s grandfather George was a cartoonist and writer – including authoring the novel Trilby whose Svengali character had a name that would live on in language as an evil person who manipulates and controls others.

Daphne’s first novel to achieve wide renown was the potboiler Jamaica Inn (1936), which – along with Rebecca (1938) and her story “The Birds” (1952) – would cement the writer’s eerie bona fides by being turned into Alfred Hitchcock movies.

Rebecca is of course du Maurier’s most famous novel – and a classic. As many of you know, it stars the unnamed young bride of Maximilian de Winter, whose first wife (the title character) died under mysterious circumstances in the water bordering their Manderley estate. The book also features creepy housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, who’s intensely loyal to the late Rebecca and threateningly hostile to the new bride.

While the second Mrs. de Winter is initially shy and timid, her eventual turn into a more determined and self-assured person is an example of how du Maurier created a number of strong, feminist women in her fiction.

One of them is Frenchman’s Creek protagonist Dona – a married, upper-class, 17^th-century English mother who daringly has an affair with a French pirate and even becomes a pirate herself for a while. In a 1941 novel of adventure and general fiction that’s not in the Gothic horror genre.

Among other du Maurier novels with little or no hint of the spooky and supernatural were 1949’s The Parasites (about an eccentric theater family) and 1954’s Mary Anne (a fictionalized look at du Maurier’s brainy and ambitious great-great grandmother navigating initial poverty and a patriarchal society).

In-between was 1951’s My Cousin Rachel, a mystery/romance with haunting elements.

The author was still going strong in 1969, when her time-travel novel The House on the Strand was published. The way du Maurier moves her protagonist repeatedly from the 20^th to 14^th century, and the eye-opening experiences he has in the 1300s, make that book one of the cleverer examples of the time-travel genre also explored by H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, Octavia Butler, Diana Gabaldon, Jack Finney, Edward Bellamy, Audrey Niffenegger, and others.

Short stories were a du Maurier strength, too. “The Birds,” of course, but also her later-career 1971 collection featuring “Don’t Look Now” and other memorable tales; a collection I just read for the first time. The “Don’t Look Now” story’s shocking manipulation-of-time conclusion is a wondrous thing to behold.

Among the works by du Maurier – who died in 1989 – that I haven’t read are a few of her other novels as well as her plays and nonfiction.

Any thoughts on this post and du Maurier’s writing?

Misty the cat says: “When that chipmunk writes its memoir, I can narrate the audiobook.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂 (Not my voice. 🙂 )

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – which includes a movie theme — is here.

A forlorn Yankees dugout. (Getty Images.)

With the New York Yankees eliminated from the playoffs again last week despite having one of the highest payrolls in baseball, it’s time to take a swing at the topic of underachievers. In literature.

There are various reasons why fictional characters underachieve. Laziness, being spoiled, making dumb decisions, having psychological issues, having some physical or mental disability, etc. And there are cases where underachieving is a good thing – like, say, choosing a more-relaxing lifestyle over a frantic, high-paying job.

Our first underachiever to discuss is Tom Tulliver of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. He’s from an initially affluent family, is favored over his smarter sister Maggie during an ultra-patriarchal 19^th century, and so on, but becomes only somewhat successful. Why? For one thing, Tom is not that intelligent despite have some drive and practical skills, and he’s not very capable of “thinking outside the box.”

Another 19^th-century character, Isabel Archer of Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, also has advantages: smarts, kindness, good looks, an inheritance, some independence. But she gets manipulated into a miserable marriage, and seems too wedded to conventionality to possibly get out of it. Again, a very patriarchal time and place in which to live.

Then there are bright characters whose lives are blighted well into adulthood because of the responsibility they feel, or are browbeaten into feeling, toward problematic parents.

For instance, the title character of Honore de Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet devotes much of her young-adult life to her not-nice, miserly father – essentially assuming the role of her late mother/his late wife.

In Daphne du Maurier’s The Parasites, daughter Celia in the theatrical Delaney family has a lot of drawing talent, but doesn’t pursue that craft as she devotes most of her time to doing stuff for her self-centered, demanding father.

Ignatius J. Reilly of John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces is a pretty smart guy. But he’s too lazy, too eccentric, and too…various other things to make a success of his life.

Holden Caulfield of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is also brainy, but drifts through his young life with self-centered and alienated thoughts.

Moving briefly away from novels, famous fictional underachievers include the title character of Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and Willy Loman of Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman.”

Of course, novels can feature upward or downward arcs in underachievement and achievement. One upward example is Sydney Carton, of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, who has an unsuccessful life until choosing heroic redemption. One downward example is Gervaise Macquart, of Emile Zola’s The Drinking Den, who painstakingly builds a successful life as a businesswoman until being dragged down by her once-admirable roofer husband after an injury sends him spiraling into alcoholism.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

Misty the cat says: “My apartment-complex inspection has turned up no ‘Lord of the Rings’ orcs.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂 (Not my voice. 🙂 )

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – which covers parking, privacy, and polling places — is here.

“Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel The Autumn of the Patriarch is not about me but should be,” says Misty the cat during one of his leashed walks. (Photo by Laurel Cummins.)

Misty the cat here, back for my every-two-month guest litterbox…um…literature post as autumn leaves turn from John Green to Tommy Orange to Rita Mae Brown. Prominent authors don’t grow on trees? Perhaps they do.

Speaking of prominent authors, today is the birthday of the late Anne Rice. She wrote many novels starring vampires, which are mythical undead creatures who rise from the grave at night to drink the blood of the living but never show up at my weekly book club gatherings. Perhaps I’m serving the wrong drinks. 

What have I, Misty the cat, been reading lately? The edition of Breakfast at Tiffany’s I borrowed from the library last month included a second Truman Capote novel. I was hoping that bonus book would be Lunch at Burger King, Dinner at Katz’s Delicatessen, or Midnight Snack at the Nearest Dumpster, but it turned out to be Other Voices, Other Rooms. I tried to stay with OVOR, but gave up after too many pages of too much racial stereotyping. Besides, I didn’t like what Holly Golightly did to one of my fellow felines at the end of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. So, I’ll be rereading Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo to fine-tune my vengeful mood – and to learn why The Count moved from Sesame Street to Monte Cristo.

Capote may not have liked it, but Dumas was of part-African descent – as were the writers Colette and Alexander Pushkin, among others. Colette’s most-famous novel was Gigi (despite it hardly being her best book) while Pushkin’s masterpiece was Eugene Onegin. The title of that novel-in-verse has the same initials as Eggy Omelet, which I suspect some people order for breakfast at Tiffany’s.

I’m currently reading Salley Vickers’ The Cleaner of Chartres, and it’s always nice when a working-class character (in this case Agnes Morel) stars in a novel. Of course, many working-class people sadly get laid off – even as the “e” in “Salley” has so far escaped that downsizing fate.

Getting back to the current season of autumn, my thoughts turn to “The Fall of the House of Usher” – one of Edgar Allan Poe’s quartet of tales that also includes “The Winter of the House of Usher,” “The Spring of the House of Usher,” and “I, E.A. Poe, Might Be Dead But Stop Creating Fake Titles for My Short Stories.”

Dave will respond to comments while I, Misty the cat, read “The Summer of the House of Usher.”

Misty the cat asks: “Am I ‘Up the Down Staircase’ or up the up staircase?”

I and Dave’s comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂 (Not Dave’s voice. 🙂 )

Dave is also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writes the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – which includes mentions of many famous plays — is here.

After recently reading Truman Capote’s famous 1958 novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I realized that my periodic posts over the years about a specific decade of literature had not yet included the 1950s. That will be remedied today faster than an Elvis Presley hip swivel.

Looking back, the ’50s are considered a relatively conventional time in certain ways, but there were definitely signs of change bubbling under the surface that would explode in the following decade – among them pushes for civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ rights. So, not surprisingly, many ’50s-released novels contained both conventional and unconventional elements – with the unconventionality also including a bit more candid depiction of sexuality and a bit more use of four-letter words than in prior decades and centuries. 

Civil rights and the Black experience in general were reflected in novels such as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958). Unfortunately, the otherwise pretty open-minded Breakfast at Tiffany’s has some racist elements, whether that involved Capote thinking that way himself or the author just showing what many people’s views openly were back then.

Some non-white ethnic characters were also treated non-stereotypically in some ’50s novels. One who comes to mind is the highly educated Chinese-American cook/housekeeper Lee in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden (1952); he’s that book’s smartest, most ethical, and most relatable person.

Independent or partly independent women appeared in novels such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s (starring the flighty but strong-willed Holly Golightly), Daphne du Maurier’s Mary Anne (1954), Herman Wouk’s Marjorie Morningstar (1955), and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959). There’s also East of Eden’s Cathy Ames — though that evil, driven character is far from a role model.

LGBTQ+ characters, whether closeted or not, in ’50s lit? There were certainly some in Breakfast at Tiffany’s – one of the before-its-time highlights of Capote’s novella. Giovanni’s Room (1956) by James Baldwin comes to mind, too.

Meanwhile, Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny (1951) gave readers food for thought about the necessity to distrust authority when the person in authority isn’t worthy of trust. A sentiment that would become more pronounced in the 1960s and beyond.

Also published in 1951 was J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, with its prescient look at teen angst and alienation through the lens of annoying protagonist Holden Caulfield.

Other ’50s novels of note include, among others, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian Fahrenheit 451 (1953), with its book-burning government’s thought-policing and anti-intellectualism; William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), which explored how things can go bad when “civilization” is lost; and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy (1954-1955), the pioneering fantasy classic that some considered a World War II allegory despite the author’s denial of that.

Major releases that decade, to name some, also included Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel and Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time (both 1951); Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, and Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood (all 1952); Erich Maria Remarque’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1954); Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955); Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day (1956); Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (all 1957); Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard and Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana (both 1958), and Gunter Grass’s The Tin Drum and Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus (both 1959).

The ’50s novels mentioned in this post are ones I’ve read; there are of course many other books from that decade I have not gotten to.

As an aside, I’ll mention a novel I recently read by 1955-born author John Grisham. That book is The Widow (2025), and I must say that, after 50 or so novels, Grisham’s still “got it.” The Widow, about a small-town lawyer falsely charged with murdering the title character, is a riveting page-turner.

Thoughts on this post and the books in it? Any other 1950s novels you’d like to mention?

Misty the cat: “I’m keeping the pillow warm for when my college human comes home for Thanksgiving.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂 Not my voice. 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – about a very interesting Township Council meeting — is here.

Angine de Poitrine! The video I took this screenshot from is at the end of today’s post.

I recently heard about a French-Canadian musical duo named Angine de Poitrine, and I must say that getting-very-popular band is delightfully quirky in its goofy appearance and mesmerizing songs.

The “q” word reminds me of some of the quirkiest authors and novels I’ve read over the years. Sometimes that quirkiness can be too much, but it’s often a nice change of pace…entertaining, compelling, and original. 

One of the first authors to come to mind is John Irving. He frequently deals with quite serious matters – war, abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, etc., but mixes in all kinds of weird things. Bear appearances, wrestling situations, a deadly foul ball during a baseball game, and more. Life is unpredictable…

There’s also Franz Kafka’s writing, which is…Kafkaesque. 🙂 One obvious example is the human Gregor Samsa becoming a giant insect in that author’s The Metamorphosis.

Herman Melville got quirky in his rare 100%-land-based novel Pierre, which includes strong hints of incest as well as the author using his title character as a vehicle to obliquely reference Melville’s real-life dismay over the poor reception for his previous year’s Moby-Dick.

Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman? The title alone telegraphs just how oddly the author uses food in her debut novel.

Anthony Burgess’ dystopian A Clockwork Orange is also very offbeat with its slangy different language and more.

Or how about Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five? It mixes horror, black humor, time travel, and more as it makes its antiwar points.

Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle features an isolated ultra-eccentric family, strange murders, and other eyebrow-raising content.

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita includes the devil in its cast as well as a flying human (no airplane involved) and other fantastical elements.

Which reminds me that magic-realism novels, such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, can also feature flying humans and other peculiar things.

Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman includes absurd content such as cops who speak mostly in non sequiturs and are obsessed with bicycles.

And we can’t forget Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, who offers readers all kinds of surreal stuff: Alice’s body changing sizes, bizarre chess goings-on, the fading-away Cheshire Cat…

I’ll end by noting that there are novels that are mostly not weird but have at least one weird element. For instance, the tragic-yet-delightful ghost in Elin Hilderbrand’s The Hotel Nantucket.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

An Angine de Poitrine song:

Misty the cat says: “Before the rain the birds get noisy/That doesn’t mean I live in Boise.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂 Not my voice. 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – about ICE agents again menacing my town and more — is here.

Reading fiction offers many pleasures. I’ll discuss one of those pleasures today.

Discovering an excellent living author you’ve never read before is a great feeling, and it can be even greater when that author has been around for a while — meaning you suddenly have a number of novels to enjoy from that writer’s back catalog.

Such was the case when I read the quite-literary, character-rich mystery writer Tana French for the first time last week. I liked The Searcher a lot, and was happy to see that French had written nine other novels – the first dating back to 2007 – from which I could choose to read without waiting for new ones to be published.

The Searcher (2020) stars a 40-something retired Chicago cop who moves from the U.S. to rural Ireland (echoing the American-born French’s relocation to that European country) and has two sequels — the first of which, The Hunter (2024), I’m reading now and finding even better than The Searcher. Then there are six books in French’s “Dublin Murder Squad” series and one standalone novel.

Changing the name Tana by one letter to Tara, Tara Jenkins Reid is another author I recently tried for the first time, starting with her novel Daisy Jones and The Six. I liked that Fleetwood Mac-inspired story enough to quickly read two more Reid novels – Carrie Soto Is Back and Malibu Rising – and am impressed with the way the author infuses pop culture and sports into serious fiction. Six more novels in her back catalog…

Isabel Allende came out with her masterful debut novel The House of the Spirits in 1982, but I didn’t read that magic-realism classic until around 2010 or so. Meaning I subsequently had 14 previous Allende novels from which to choose, of which I would particularly enjoy reading Daughter of Fortune and Zorro. (Allende has written eight more novels since 2010.)

I was also late to Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander time-travel series, which launched in 1991 even as I didn’t read the first novel until 2019. By then there were seven more installments, all of which I addictively polished off during the height of Covid in 2020.

Kristin Hannah’s first novel was also published in 1991, but I didn’t discover her until reading The Nightingale less than five years ago. By then, there were more 20 other Hannah novels to catch up on, including the gripping family saga The Great Alone and the moving tale of friendship Firefly Lane.

It was more than 20 years after Elin Hilderbrand’s 2000 publishing debut that I belatedly began reading that author – starting with her delightful 2022 novel The Hotel Nantucket. By then, there were nearly 30 other Hilderbrand books to enjoy – and I polished off most of them.

When I first read Lee Child about a decade ago (his mid-career Jack Reacher novel 61 Hours), he had already written 20 Reacher books. So, there would be many Reacher page-turners in Child’s back catalog to enjoy, while also reading each of his new thrillers that arrived every fall since then.

Similar situation with John Grisham, who I didn’t start reading (choosing The Client) until he was in mid-career.

Of course, reading a deceased author for the first time usually means there are various other novels by that writer to enjoy in the future.

Your thoughts about this topic, and examples from your own reading experiences?

Misty the cat says: 🎵 “‘Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.’ 🎵 Except it’s Sunday.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂 Not my voice. 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, and include many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – about a daycare center’s 100^th anniversary and other topics — is here.

Parties in fiction! They can be wild, weird, fun, entertaining, stressful, somber, tragic, etc. These gatherings can tell us a lot about the characters as well as put a spotlight on the culture and customs of their time. Meanwhile, those in attendance might meet for the first time, reunite, break up, and experience many other things. Parties can advance a novel’s plot, too.

Among the craziest parties I’ve encountered in a book is the 1983-set one in Taylor Jenkins Reid’s excellent 2021 novel Malibu Rising, which I read last week. The California shindig features plenty of drugs and sex, couples starting and ending relationships, changes in the lives of the Riva family members who star in the novel, celebrity cameos, police called to the door, and a mind-boggling conclusion. The novel basically alternates between that all-night party and various chapters fleshing out the backstories of the Rivas: rock star father Mick and the wife (June) and four now-adult children (Nina, Jay, Hud, and Kit) he abandoned.

Other novels with memorable parties? Let’s go chronologically back in time (of publishing date) to some examples.

In Zadie Smith’s London-set White Teeth, one of that 2000 novel’s main characters (Archie) is thinking of suicide but decides to go to a party instead – where he meets his future second wife (Clara). There is also much more to the book, which might be the most multicultural novel I’ve ever read.

Don DeLillo’s ambitious Underworld (1997) includes a scene at a real-life party: Truman Capote’s famous 1966 “Black-and-White Ball” at New York City’s Plaza Hotel. A rather high-profile guest list: Lauren Bacall, Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Johnny Carson, Walter Cronkite, Ralph Ellison, Mia Farrow, Henry Fonda, Joan Fontaine, Katharine Graham (the Washington Post publisher), Lillian Hellman, Lady Bird Johnson, Harper Lee, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Frank Sinatra, John Steinbeck, Andy Warhol, etc. As one can see, some prominent writers attended in addition to the host Capote.

The first book (1954) of J.R.R. Tolkien’s iconic The Lord of the Rings trilogy opens with a massive party for the aged Bilbo Baggins, star of The Hobbit (1937). It’s a party that also serves to introduce Bilbo’s much younger adopted relative Frodo Baggins, who goes on to co-star in the trilogy.

Hermann Hesse’s existential 1927 novel Steppenwolf features a lavish masquerade ball, after which we witness the Harry Haller character’s famous visit to the fantastical “Magic Theatre.”

Two years earlier, in 1925, saw the release of Virginia Woolf’s masterful Mrs. Dalloway – which unfolds in one day as the title character prepares to host a party that then happens. But there is plenty of backstory and profound stuff going on in a book set soon after the trauma of World War I.

Emile Zola’s tragic The Drinking Den (1877) features a Paris wedding party that’s way too expensive for the bride (Gervaise) and groom (Coupeau). The extended scene depicts some happiness but mostly portends the doom to come.

Charlotte Bronte’s classic Jane Eyre (1847) includes a high-society gathering at Thornfield Hall during which Rochester dresses as a gypsy fortune-teller to question governess Jane, with whom he has been falling in love.

The orgy scene in The Magic Skin certainly has a big impact on things in Honore de Balzac’s 1831 novel.

Short stories of course also feature their share of parties, with two of many examples being James Joyce’s poignant “The Dead” (1914) and Edgar Allan Poe’s macabre “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842).

Thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

Misty the cat says: “I’m where ‘the deer and the antelope play,’ minus the antelope.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂 Not my voice. 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece – my 500^th column for that website! — is here.