Month: October 2017

Deserving ‘Nobel Prize in Literature’ Recipients Who Haven’t Won Yet

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Earlier this month, Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature. I’ve read only one of his books — The Remains of the Day — but just from that novel alone I can see that he was deserving of fiction’s top honor. A magnificent, subtle work.

Ishiguro’s win got me thinking about living authors who have yet to receive a deserved Nobel. They include, among others, Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits, etc.), Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale, etc.), John Irving (The Cider House Rules, etc.), Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible, etc.), Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, etc.), Philip Roth (American Pastoral, etc.), and Alice Walker (The Color Purple, etc.).

Heck, when interviewed after learning of his Nobel naming, Ishiguro mentioned how deserving Atwood is of literature’s utmost prize.

Other writers I’ve read who should at least be considered? A.S. Byatt, Margaret Drabble, Haruki Murakami, and Anne Tyler, to name a few.

And how about Stephen King? Sure, he’s a mega-mass-audience writer, but some of his novels (I’ve read 15 of them) have plenty of literary elements. Plus King’s relentless output!

Or J.K. Rowling? Not only has she written the amazing Harry Potter books but the compelling non-fantasy novel The Casual Vacancy and detective fiction.

Then there are authors I’ve never read who, from their reputations, seem Nobel-worthy. Joyce Carol Oates is one prime example.

Heck, I wish any of the many names above had won the prize last year rather than Bob Dylan, a great songwriter but hardly a Nobel fit, in my opinion.

Perhaps they haven’t had enough output or long-enough careers yet, but I could also see future Nobel Prize in Literature consideration for Junot Diaz, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Liane Moriarty, (Ms.) Lionel Shriver, Zadie Smith, and Donna Tartt, among others.

I’m sure I left out some very deserving names, including writers obscure to many readers. Who do you think should win the fiction Nobel who hasn’t — including authors I mentioned or didn’t mention?

My 2017 literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: 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. The latest weekly piece, which has a Halloween theme, is here.

Fiction’s Great and Grating Parental Expectations

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You want drama in literature? How about story lines that focus on parents’ expectations for children, and the success or failure of their kids to meet those expectations. Also, does what the parents want match what their daughters or sons want? Often not.

Expectations are a big issue in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — the J.K. Rowling/Jack Thorne/John Tiffany play of which I’m currently reading the script in book form. The action takes place about 20 years after the amazing events in the seven Harry Potter novels, and Harry’s son Albus is having a heckuva time living up to his heroic, ultra-famous father.

In L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle (which features a different “castle” than Hogwarts), the narrow-minded mother has little confidence in the social and intellectual abilities of her bright daughter Valancy Stirling. Valancy proves her wrong by showing she’s an absolutely amazing person after leaving her oppressive childhood home.

Did the mother expect less of Valancy because of Valancy being a daughter rather than son? That reminds me of how the Tulliver parents in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss give their son Tom more respect, education, and responsibility than their much smarter, much nicer, stifled-in-her-ambition daughter Maggie. Patriarchy, sexism, and all that in what is probably Eliot’s most autobiographical novel.

On the more positive side, the man (not her biological father) who raises the title character in Fanny Burney’s 18th-century novel Evelina is a really nice guy who thinks the world of Evelina. While having some trepidation about her going to the big city (London), he believes she will do well in life. Evelina proves him correct.

The father-daughter dynamic is not as pleasant in Henry James’ Washington Square, in which Dr. Sloper is mean and controlling with his rather dull, dutiful daughter Catherine. Obviously, the dad doesn’t have high expectations for Catherine, who, while ending up having a mostly unhappy life, does become a more independent person who stands up for herself.

Another example of the father-son dynamic (besides Harry Potter and Albus) involves Gabriel Grimes and his stepson John in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain. Gabriel is a religious hypocrite who expects John (a semi-autobiographical teen version of Baldwin) to be obedient and religious. The conflicted John sees Gabriel for the nasty man he is, but does have sort of a religious conversion that the reader figures will not last long.

Then there’s the obnoxiously “manly” dad (Henry Stamper) who expects little of his weak-ish younger son (Leland) in Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion. Leland subverts that expectation, but only a little.

What have been some of the memorable novels for you that touch on this topic?

My 2017 literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: 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. The latest weekly piece, about both overdevelopment and a curriculum that downplays novels, is here.

Elegiac to the Future: The End of Eras in Novels

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This blog post will be about novels with strong elements of EOAE. Examples Of Author Excellence? Well, yes, but I’m actually referring to End Of An Era.

Yes, a number of novels have a poignant feeling that something major has ended or is coming to a close. Or it might be a “good riddance” feeling, if the era was rotten and better days could be ahead. Or it can be a combination of negative and positive.

My most recently read example of all this was Larry McMurtry’s The Last Kind Words Saloon — which includes an aging Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Buffalo Bill Cody in a cast experiencing the end of the Wild West. Sort of sad, because the frontier era was a major/crucial part of U.S. history, but it was also a time of huge negatives such as the decimation of the Native-American population.

Of course, Alex Haley’s Roots and other novels that include the demise of slavery after the American Civil War make a reader pleased that an atrocious era has ended. Yet there are still plenty of horrors to think about as U.S. racism continued to rear its ugly head in countless ways post-1865, as we see in books such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

Then there are many novels that expertly capture the feeling of life immediately after the carnage of World War II. The relief and the optimism, but also the pessimism that sets in when some of the optimism is found wanting. One novel that does the pessimism part of that really well is Walter Mosley’s crime mystery Devil in a Blue Dress, set in late-1940s Los Angeles.

Speaking of WWII, Fannie Flagg’s The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion includes a major story line about women who served as pilots during that war. The part-nostalgic, part-indignant-at-sexism novel is set many decades later — when many of the characters are now old or deceased.

Set in an earlier time, Booth Tarkington’s novel The Magnificent Ambersons depicts, among other things, the end of the horse-and-buggy era and the start of the automobile age.

Going back even further in time, one of the compelling things about Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford is the way a rural, homogenous English village begins to experience the industrial age and the arrival of people with more of an international background.

The end of an era can also involve a specific person, as is the case with the James Hilton novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips that chronicles the life of a beloved teacher at career’s end.

What are some of your favorite fictional works that fit the theme of this post?

My 2017 literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: 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. The latest weekly piece — which has a literature theme! — is here.

Graphic Novels Can Be Novels That Are Graphic Rather Than Graphic Novels!

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I’ve written about literature for more than six years (including three-plus years at my own blog here), so it can sometimes be difficult to come up with new themes to discuss.

Case in point: I read The Fault in Our Stars late last month and, after shedding many tears, tried hard to think of how to fit John Green’s page-turningly impressive book into a theme I hadn’t specifically written about before. Death in literature? Been there. Young-adult (YA) novels? Done that. Etc. Also, I almost never focus on just one fictional work — this is not a book-review blog.

Then it occurred to me: Write about novels that don’t shy away from showing how painful and gruesome illness and death can be. Books — especially those written decades or centuries ago — often sanitize or sentimentalize those sorts of things, which can spare readers some emotional upheaval but make some of us feel we’re not getting enough realism.

The Fault in Our Stars, while extraordinarily inspiring and funny in many ways, does not go that latter route. What its two ill protagonists face (I won’t give specific details to avoid spoilers) is often depicted graphically and disgustingly. And a secondary character suffering from eye cancer? There’s a heartbreaking scene that will leave you totally shaken.

In So Much For That, Lionel Shriver also gets down and dirty with the details of three of her characters’ major physical ailments. But, as with John Green, Shriver offers enough upbeat moments to keep us reading. After all, most literature lovers don’t want to be depressed on every page. It also helps that Shriver, Green, and certain other authors offer tons of high-quality writing.

Things can also get pretty graphic when some novels depict (sexual or non-sexual) assaults, as is the case with Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Abigail Tarttelin’s Golden Boy, Stephen King’s Misery, Richard Matheson’s Hunted Past Reason, Frank Bill’s Donnybrook, and James Patterson’s Kiss the Girls, among many other books. (Of course, sexual assault is really about violence rather than sex.) There’s a high blood quotient in many of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, too.

And some novels show the grievous physical and psychic toll of war more graphically than others. Among the books that don’t pull many punches in that area are Geraldine Brooks’ March, Louis de Bernieres’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, and Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun.

In the usually more sanitized pre-1900 era of literature, one of the most stomach-turning depictions of death comes near the end of Emile Zola’s 1880 novel Nana.

What are some of the memorable novels you’ve read that mostly tell it like it is when it comes to things like illness and death?

My next blog post will appear Monday, October 16, rather than Sunday, October 15. I have something to do that Sunday…what is it…what is it…oh…my older daughter Maggie is getting married! (Monday, October 16, note: I’m now shooting for a new blog posting on Tuesday, October 17.)

My 2017 literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: 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. The latest weekly piece, which includes advice to dress like a developer for Halloween, is here.

Characters Who Are Not What They Seem

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Impersonations. Dual identities. Switched identities. Hidden Identities. Etc. Literature has many of them, and discussion of all that will be unmasked…now.

Characters not being what they seem can help make books interesting, compelling, and dramatic. Those elements of mystery (for lack of a better word) can be puzzles to solve for other characters and for us, the readers.

This topic came to mind when I recently read Isak Dinesen’s 79-page short story “The Deluge at Norderney.” Various things happen in that striking tale of four people stranded in a house as floodwaters rise, but the biggest shocker is when we learn one of the characters isn’t who he claimed to be.

A number of famous novels also contain identity twists. For instance, we as readers know that the titular character in Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo is Edmond Dantes, but the people the Count is wreaking revenge on (for his false imprisonment) do not know until the last minute that this charismatic rich guy is the man they framed.

Mark Twain wrote two memorable “swap” novels: The Prince and the Pauper (a rich kid and a poor kid change places) and Pudd’nhead Wilson (a white baby born to the master of the house and a white-looking but partly black baby born into slavery are switched in infancy and grow into each other’s station in life — making for a strong commentary on race, class, upbringing, and genetics).

Also from the 19th century, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde explores the idea of dual personalities, good and evil. And Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre includes the memorable scene of Rochester disguising himself as a gypsy to try to learn what Jane’s feelings might be for him. Later, Jane adopts the name Jane Elliott when she flees and doesn’t want to be traced — similar to when Helen Huntingdon becomes Helen Graham when escaping an abusive marriage in Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Moving to the 20th century, L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle has Valancy Stirling’s love interest hide his identity as both a rich heir and famous author of books written under a different name.

Then, in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, there’s the servant to Lord Voldemort known as Peter Pettigrew, Wormtail, and (in rat disguise) Scabbers. An identity trifecta!

Of course, there are various comic-book superheroes (Wonder Woman, Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, etc.) with both human identities and costumed identities. Michael Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay includes a cartoon character’s creation/exploitation that kind of mirrors the story of Superman’s creation/exploitation.

What are some of your favorite fictional works (those I mentioned or didn’t mention) containing characters who fit the topic of this blog post?

And here are two songs: Renaissance’s “Jekyll and Hyde” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Brilliant Disguise.”

My 2017 literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: 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. The latest weekly piece, about everything from Trumpcare to kneeling during the national anthem, is here.