Month: September 2015

Comparing the Not So Comparable

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Do you ever play intellectual games with books? For me, this sometimes involves trying to find the similarities between two very different novels I’ve read consecutively or fairly close together. Why do I do this? I don’t know — it’s sort of fun.

For instance, the last two novels I read were Lisa Scottoline’s The Vendetta Defense and Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus. The first is a start-of-the-21st-century legal thriller about a long-delayed revenge killing, while the other is a 1950s class-differences story with nothing more violent than a hard-fought tennis match.

So what possible connections are there between those two books? Well, both focus on a certain group of people — Italian-Americans in The Vendetta Defense and Jewish characters in Goodbye, Columbus. Each features a romantic couple who seem somewhat mismatched — lawyer Judy Carrier and stonemason Frank Lucia in Scottoline’s novel, and lower-middle-class Neil Klugman and upper-class Brenda Patimkin in Roth’s novel. Both books are essentially serious but have plenty of humor. And they share a palpable sense of place — Philadelphia and its environs in The Vendetta Defense and Essex County, N.J.’s gritty Newark and affluent Short Hills in Goodbye, Columbus. Heck, my Essex County town of Montclair is mentioned and disparaged twice in Roth’s book. Thanks, Philip!

Last year, I reread George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov back-to-back. (How did I remember it was back-to-back? I keep a list! 🙂 ) What those books share is length (lots of it!), some slow pages that are more than made up for by many brilliant pages, and authors with virtually concurrent life spans (Eliot 1819-1880 and Dostoyevsky 1821-1881). On a deeper level, both novels depict interesting sibling relationships, bad marriages, some questionable moral choices, profound thoughts about religion and religious hypocrisy, etc. Yet the books are also as disparate as disparate can be: England vs. Russia, female vs. male perspective, and much more.

Several years ago, I consecutively read T.C. Boyle’s The Road to Wellville, a part-comic historical novel set in corn flakes inventor John Harvey Kellogg’s Michigan sanitarium more than a century ago; and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, a deadly serious dystopian trilogy set in the future. What in the world could those two works have in common?

On a surface level, the title of Collins’ trilogy and first trilogy book obviously remind one of food — even as Will Lightbody in Boyle’s novel is desperate for some unhealthy grub while reluctantly staying with his wife Eleanor at Kellogg’s health-oriented sanitarium. More seriously, there is a LOT of death in The Hunger Games but also some weirdly unexpected dying in The Road to Wellville. And both novels depict abuse of power — of course on a much smaller scale in Boyle’s book.

Do you have two very different novels you’d like to contrast here to see if they have some commonalities?

And here’s a 2013 post I wrote that looks at similarities in novels that might not be so different from each other. You’re welcome to discuss those types of books, too!

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Sad Book Journey? Don’t Stop, Be Reading

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If a lousy or mediocre novel is making you feel bad, it’s an easy decision to stop reading it. But what if an excellent novel is making you feel bad? I don’t know about you, but I keep reading. After all, some of the best literature ranges from depressing to tragic.

I experienced this while recently reading Felicia’s Journey by William Trevor. The title character is a teen girl who leaves Ireland for England to try to find the feckless young man who got her pregnant. Felicia ends up being “helped” by the oily Mr. Hilditch, a middle-aged guy who has major psychological issues (we later find out why) and might be a serial killer.

Ugh, I thought as I read — this won’t end well. And the conclusion is indeed sad. But I’m glad I didn’t ditch the book. Trevor’s prose was superb, and the melancholy ending was different than I expected. One may figure something bad is going to happen in a depressing novel, but exactly what that something will be isn’t always predictable. Surprise in literature is often a good thing!

Other depressing novels I’ve read that I couldn’t put down? A classic that comes to mind is Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. One is 99% sure that the trajectory of Lily Bart’s life will never stop being downhill, but her story is masterfully told — and there’s always that unlikely 1% chance for redemption in any unhappy book.

Then there’s Richard Wright’s Native Son, in which an African-American character (Bigger Thomas) is dealing with poverty, racism, and a criminal-justice system with little justice. Those three strikes don’t augur well for a happy ending, but the novel is riveting.

Elsa Morante’s History is also a magnificent achievement even as readers can guess than Ida and her son Giuseppe are probably doomed because of their personalities and the World War II carnage that surrounds them.

Or Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, which involves a hostage situation. It’s fascinating how Patchett humanizes the hostage takers almost as much as the hostages, but you just know that there will be plenty of deaths before you turn the last page.

George Eliot wrote novels with both sad and part-happy endings, but there’s something about Maggie Tulliver’s life in The Mill on the Floss that early on gives readers a sinking feeling about her ultimate fate. But what a masterful book!

In Paul Theroux’s The Mosquito Coast, Allie Fox is brilliant but borderline nuts. So when he takes his family from the U.S. to live in the Central American rain forest, it’s like watching a car crash (if a car could drive in a rain forest). But it’s hard to avert one’s eyes.

Then there’s Edgar Allan Poe’s novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. As is also the case with most of Poe’s iconic short stories, things don’t end well, but the horror and spookiness are memorable.

Of course, with certain historical-fiction works, we absolutely know disaster awaits — perhaps from remembering what we read in our high school history books. But if the story is compellingly told, we’re willing to experience the heartbreak. One of many novels in this category is Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, in which we obviously don’t expect the protagonist to reach a ripe old age.

We also expect total disaster, or at best a mixed ending, in dystopian novels — yet are still fascinated by many of them. For instance, George Orwell’s harrowing Nineteen Eighty-Four is almost impossible to put down.

And don’t forget novels whose titles telegraph their “depressing-ness.” To name just two, there are Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None — though readers of the former know it contains a measure of amazing uplift at the end.

In the theater world, some plays are literally labeled tragedies, so upbeat conclusions are clearly not in the offing. But Shakespeare is worth the time, isn’t he? 🙂

What are some novels that you avidly continued reading despite having a bad feeling about what would happen to the characters?

Here’s Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” — the song referenced in my silly headline!

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

There Are Places They Remember

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When you see the names of the authors Stephen King, Charles Dickens, Anne Tyler, and L.M. Montgomery, what places in their novels come to mind? Maine, London, Baltimore, and Canada’s Prince Edward Island.

When you see the name of the author Lee Child, what place in his novels comes to mind? Um…well…uh…is there a town called Mayhem?

Yes, some authors write fiction that’s often set in the same locale, while other authors send their characters all over the map. In the latter case, Lee Child’s justice-dispensing former military cop Jack Reacher has drifted to California, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, London (where he didn’t meet Charles Dickens), Maine (where he could’ve met Stephen King), Nebraska, New York City, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, DC, and elsewhere.

And of course many authors are in between when it comes to geography — having a go-to locale for a number of their books, but mixing things up in other works. An example of that would be John Steinbeck, whose best-known novels unfold in California but who also wrote fiction set on Long Island, NY (The Winter of Our Discontent), in an unnamed European country under Nazi occupation (The Moon Is Down), etc. There’s also Mark Twain, who’s best known for his books set in and near the Mississippi River, but who also wrote novels such as Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (which takes place in France) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (duh — the Constitution State and England). Twain’s site-jumping is not surprising given how much of a world traveler he was.

Advantages for often keeping characters in one state, city, or town? An author has a rock-solid knowledge of that particular locale — where she or he might have grown up and perhaps still lives — and thus can showcase the locale in a totally authentic way. Also, writers who focus on one place don’t have to spend as much time researching and traveling for their next novel, leaving more time for crafting the actual prose. And many a reader likes the comfort level of always knowing where characters are living their fictional lives.

But putting protagonists in various locales can keep things fresh — and draw in new readers interested in seeing (among other things) how accurately their neck of the woods is depicted.

As noted before, there are various lines on the geographical continuum for where authors situate their books. For instance, Henry James changed his locales but had favorites he returned to. So you’ll see his characters more than once in New York City, Paris, London, etc., but not in as many places as Lee Child sends Jack Reacher. (Why Henry James didn’t create a justice-dispensing former military cop is for psychologists to mull over… 🙂 )

And it’s exciting, surprising, and intriguing when an author we mostly associate with one locale suddenly puts a novel in a different place — as when Dickens sent Martin Chuzzlewit‘s title character to America, the usually Scotland-focused Sir Walter Scott chose France for Quentin Durward, the usually U.S.-centered Willa Cather wrote the Quebec City-based Shadows on the Rock, the usually New England-centered Nathaniel Hawthorne picked Rome for The Marble Faun, the usually ship-at-sea-chronicling Herman Melville kept Pierre on land in New York State and New York City, and the often-NYC-focused Edith Wharton put Ethan Frome in rural Massachusetts.

Where do your favorite authors set their books? Do they mostly focus on one locale, or put their characters in many places, or fall somewhere in between?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)


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I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Fiction That Reflects Other Fiction

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Many novels spring mostly from an author’s brain and nowhere else. But some fiction is directly inspired by previous works, or satirizes previous works, or in some other way reflects previous works. The creative approach might be original, but the starting point is not.

That can be a praiseworthy or not-so-praiseworthy thing. We’re curious what the author will do with her/his riff on the story that came before, and are aware that a different angle on that story can be interesting and instructive. On the other hand, we might sit there thinking the author used the previous work only as a writing crutch.

I’m of course talking about novels that reflect work by another author, not sequels or series in which a writer references her/his own previous work as “the saga continues.”

This topic occurred to me while reading Robin McKinley’s absorbing 1997 novel Rose Daughter last week. It’s a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, which is best known as a Disney film but has its origins in a fairy tale that includes a 1756 version by French writer Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont.

Speaking of the 18th century, Henry Fielding directly satirized/parodied Samuel Richardson’s 1740 novel Pamela with Shamela (1741) and indirectly did the same thing with Joseph Andrews (1742). The latter is a hilarious book starring a man who, like Pamela, fights off all attempts to be seduced as he holds out for marriage.

Ann Radcliffe’s 1794 Gothic romance novel The Mysteries of Udolpho helped inspire Jane Austen to write Northanger Abbey, which was published in 1817 but partly penned in the late 1790s. Austen’s book stars a young woman who loves reading Gothic novels that make her imagination rather…over-imaginative. The Mysteries of Udolpho is mentioned about a dozen times in Northanger Abbey, which isn’t top-notch Austen but still a good novel.

(I am NOT going to discuss the 2009 book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. 🙂 )

Moving closer to the present day, there’s John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and its many biblical references, including several characters who share the same first initials as Cain and Abel. If you consider The Bible literature — heck, at least some of the stuff in it HAD to be made up — then Steinbeck’s ambitious novel belongs in this blog post. (When God blogs, is it called a glog? But I digress…)

Then we have Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847). Rhys’ hypnotic work of fiction chronicles the pre-Jane Eyre life of the “madwoman in the attic” in Bronte’s novel, including how she met and married Edward Rochester.

There’s also Jasper Fforde’s engaging 2001 novel The Eyre Affair, in which detective Thursday Next enters the pages of Jane Eyre — and doesn’t have to cross a wide sea to do so. She uses “The Prose Portal” instead.

And there’s Margaret Atwood’s interesting/quirky The Penelopiad, which focuses on what Penelope was thinking and doing while her hubby Odysseus was experiencing the epic thing in Homer’s The Odyssey.

What are your favorite novels (or other fiction) that connect to previously published works? What do you think of authors doing that?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.