Month: May 2017

The Wars in the World of Literature

Posted by

58

With tomorrow being America’s Memorial Day, I want to mention some of the most memorable novels set in wartime.

Many of those books show the awfulness of war, while some glorify it. A good number of fictional works focus on the people doing the fighting; others focus on civilians and how they’re affected — whether those civilians are in/near the carnage or far away on the home front. Some wartime novels are written by military veterans and might even be semi-autobiographical, while others are by writers who get their battle “experience” via research. Many wartime books are of course dramatic, visceral, and heartbreaking — and sometimes darkly humorous.

One great novelist who turned to wartime scenarios again and again was Erich Maria Remarque. His World War I-focused All Quiet on the Western Front is justly famous, but Remarque also authored several exquisitely written WWII-set novels that pack an immense emotional wallop — including Arch of Triumph, The Night in Lisbon, and A Time to Love and a Time to Die.

Then there was Remarque’s Nazi-concentration-camp-placed Spark of Life — one of a number of novels, such as William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice and Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader, with a Holocaust theme.

Other compelling wartime novels include (to name a few) Elsa Morante’s History, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, John Steinbeck’s The Moon Is Down, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Alistair MacLean’s Where Eagles Dare, and James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific (all WWII); Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls (Spanish Civil War); L.M. Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingleside and Willa Cather’s One of Ours (WWI); Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, Geraldine Brooks’ March, and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind (America’s Civil War); Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (Napoleon’s invasion of Russia); and Sir Walter Scott’s Old Mortality (Scotland’s 1679 Battle of Bothwell Bridge).

As one can see from the above paragraph, plenty of women have written riveting wartime novels.

Then there’s fiction that includes main or supporting characters dealing with war-caused physical injuries, post-traumatic stress, survivor’s guilt, and more. Among those novels are Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress, and M.L. Stedman’s The Light Between Oceans.

Which war-related novels have you found most memorable?

Here’s a review of, and a video interview about, my new literary-trivia book Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com, which covers Montclair, N.J., and nearby towns. The latest weekly column is here.

Russian Fiction Is Much Better Than Trump’s Diction

Posted by

88

With the corrupt Trump administration’s ties to Russia all over the news, I’d like to offer a different Russia-related topic this week: Russian literature.

Which includes an amazing array of dark/compelling/unforgettable fiction, particularly in the 19th century. Even Trump would be impressed reading Crime and Punishment — as long as Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel was shortened to a one-paragraph memo.

Crime and Punishment is my favorite Russian novel, and one of my favorites from any country. Riveting, feverish, psychological (it was said to have influenced Sigmund Freud). The high points of The Brothers Karamazov may be even better, but there are some slog-through pages and chapters that the never-a-dull-moment Crime and Punishment doesn’t suffer from. Dostoyevsky reportedly planned to make The Brothers Karamazov the first of a trilogy, but death intervened.

There are several other Dostoyevsky works well worth discussing, so please have at it in the comments section! But now I’ll turn to Leo Tolstoy, whose War and Peace and Anna Karenina are as famous as novels can be. I was impressed with those two classics (though I’m more a fan of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov) as well as with several of Tolstoy’s magnificent short stories, some almost novella length. “The Kreutzer Sonata,” “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” “Master and Man” — wow!

Speaking of short stories, you can’t go wrong with Tolstoy’s pal Anton Chekhov. A pioneering writer of tales that are more character-oriented and human-emotion-focused than plot-oriented, plus Chekhov of course was also a master playwright.

Earlier-in-the-19th-century Russian authors can also knock your socks off (though I wouldn’t advise that during a Moscow or St. Petersburg winter). Alexander Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter novel is among that writer’s great reads, as is Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls novel and his “The Overcoat” short story. Dostoyevsky contemporary Ivan Turgenev also wrote some really good novels, including Fathers and Sons.

Moving near/into the 20th century (experienced by the 1910-deceased Tolstoy for a decade), we have socialist-realist writers such as Maxim Gorky and Nikolai Ostrovsky. The latter’s How the Steel Was Tempered (a novel I purchased during a 1980s trip to Russia) is quite gripping for a while before getting a bit tedious.

Then there was Boris Pasternak, whose Doctor Zhivago novel drew the ire of Soviet officials despite it being somewhat nuanced about socialism; and the dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was adept at both fiction and nonfiction (and the subject of this “Mother Russia” song by Renaissance). I’m not fond of the way Solzhenitsyn’s politics turned very right-wing, but he did go through imprisonment hell.

Renaissance has a lead female singer and a female lyricist, but Russian literature (unlike fiction from a number of other nations) has been dominated by men. Unfortunately, lots of patriarchy, machismo, and sexism in that country — which might be one reason why Trump is so attracted to Putin and Russia’s oligarchs.

Russia’s history of authoritarianism and oppression certainly has had an effect on its writers, as has that country’s politics, poverty, income inequality, geographic size, high rate of alcoholism, aforementioned machismo, and huge war casualties — including the carnage resulting from Napoleon’s and Hitler’s invasions. But the most famous Russian writers would most likely be literary geniuses no matter where they had lived.

Obviously I’ve left some writers out, so please fill in some of those blanks in your comments. Who are your favorite Russian authors, either ones I mentioned or didn’t mention?

Here’s a review of, and a video interview about, my new literary-trivia book Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com, which covers Montclair, N.J., and nearby towns. The latest weekly column — set in the year 4034 AD! — is here.

Reading Gaps: Mine, and Yours?

Posted by

121

Because of all the time I spent trying to promote my new literary-trivia book during the past six weeks, I ironically managed to read only one novel (Jorge Amado’s interesting Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands).

That’s not a good thing for a literature blogger. 🙂 Also, the near-total absence of fiction negatively affected my mood (as did the various new outrages from America’s mean-spirited Republican leaders). Novels can be fun, relaxing, exciting, educational, and/or take you to “another place.” Suddenly, for the first time since a previous reading gap a couple of decades ago, I wasn’t getting much of that.

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone, to quote Joni Mitchell.

But I’m now getting back to reading more fiction again — starting with Fanny Burney’s 1778 novel Evelina, which I’m in the middle of. One highlight of that often-funny book is the hilarious way English and French characters fling insults at each other. But there’s also deeper stuff about a woman’s place in society, the complexity of relationships, family, country life vs. London life, and more.

It’s fascinating to experience any kind of life at that time through the eyes of a female author. I’ve read and enjoyed a number of 18th-century novels — Voltaire’s Candide, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, etc. — but, up until now, none by women, for the simple reason that there weren’t a whole of published books by them back then. Rigid gender roles, sexism, patriarchy, and all that — which of course persisted into the 19th century, yet we thankfully still got Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Louisa May Alcott, and other revered 1800s female authors.

One can definitely see the 1752-born Burney’s influence on Austen, who took her Pride and Prejudice title from a phrase in Fanny’s Cecilia novel. Other interesting facts (outlined in a chapter of my literary-trivia book): Burney wrote four novels and eight plays, kept a journal for 72 years (from 1768 until her death in 1840), worked in the court of King George III from 1786 to 1790, and underwent a harrowing mastectomy in 1811.

The next novels in my queue: Donna Tartt’s first book The Secret History (I loved her third novel The Goldfinch and mostly loved her second novel The Little Friend) and then Dream Palace by Amanda Moores, who happens to be the wife of a very well-read regular commenter here — jhNY.

What have been your experiences (if any) with reading gaps? Why did you read little or no fiction for a period of time? How you did you feel about that? What got you back to reading fiction?

Here’s a review of, and a video interview about, my new literary-trivia book Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

Speaking of books, fellow WordPress blogger M.C. Tuggle has written a new “modern fantasy” novel titled The Genie Hunt. I haven’t read it myself, but if you want to learn more about it, click here.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com, which covers Montclair, N.J., and nearby towns. The latest weekly column, about my congressman’s awful vote for Trumpcare, is here.

Do the Republicans Trashing Your Health Care Also Root for Literature’s Villains?

Posted by

69

Most fiction readers root for the characters who are nice and admirable, not the villains. But after America’s far-right Republicans voted May 4 for a Trumpcare bill that would heartlessly yank medical insurance from millions of non-rich citizens, I’m thinking the majority of those soulless GOP scoundrels might identify with literature’s “bad guys.” So…

— When Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, etc., read Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, they love them some Mr. Brocklehurst — the wealthy “religious” hypocrite who cruelly allows Jane and the other girls at the Lowood institution to freeze, be badly fed, and more. Some of the girls die as a result, as would many Americans “thanks” to Trumpcare.

— Many far-right Republicans perusing John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath would undoubtedly cheer when a thug murders compassionate fighter against injustice Jim Casy — whose sharing of initials with the humane (not the GOP version of) Jesus Christ is no coincidence.

— A good number of GOP ghouls are most likely thrilled when brutal slave-owner Simon Legree viciously abuses the brave/kindly Tom in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

— In George Eliot’s Silas Marner, William Dane frames the sympathetic title character and steals his fiancee — making Dane a hero to many a far-right Republican.

— Nathan Price of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible is a sexist and racist missionary, earning him the undying love of countless reactionary GOPers — including various Christian-evangelical leaders.

— The despicable, patriarchal men ruling the roost in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale? Thousands of Republican ultraconservatives want to party with them.

— In Emile Zola’s The Ladies’ Delight, department store owner Octave Mouret is a ruthless capitalist who drives mom-and-pop shops out of business — a Walmart approach that sends numerous right-wing Republicans into ecstasy. But Mouret does have a bit of humanity, so that’s troublesome to the Paul Ryan crowd.

— The far-right GOP also has mixed feelings about Samad Iqbal. That character in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is obnoxious, overbearing, sexist, and not as smart as he thinks — all catnip for Trump and his ilk. But Samad is Muslim, which mostly disqualifies him from Republican admiration.

— The husband of the title character in Stephen King’s Rose Madder is a policeman who’s a racist and a wife abuser — two qualities very endearing to Trump and other lowlife GOP leaders.

— Erich Maria Remarque’s Spark of Life? Many far-right Republicans may feel a kinship to that novel’s Nazi concentration-camp guards. (And Trumpcare’s motto should be the second half of the title of Remarque’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die.)

— Finally, pathological right-wingers pull for Lord Voldemort in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Role model!

Of course, who knows how much literature America’s reactionary GOP bigwigs actually read? Maybe the occasional Ayn Rand novel…

Any novels you’d like to mention featuring villains far-right Republicans would adore?

Here’s a review of, and a video interview about, my new literary-trivia book Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com, which covers Montclair, N.J., and nearby towns. The latest weekly column is here.