26. Henry James, THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

Kate Croy and Merton Densher want to get married but they are broke. Nobody blames Kate for this, because her father has been Ruined in his Business Dealings and will now live out the rest of his life dependent on others. The London society in which they move largely places the blame on Merton, who works for a newspaper (the more things change) and has no family fortune.

If this were a Jane Austen novel, here's where a convenient older relative would die and leave somebody investments... but we're in Jamesville now, so the way the lovers determine to solve their problem is colder and less coincidental. On a business trip to America, Merton befriended an American heiress named Milly Theale, who later arrives in London and becomes Kate's best closest friend. Everyone knows Milly is very rich, almost nobody knows she is also very ill. So Kate says to Merton, what if you and Milly were to get married, knowing that she might leave you, the bereaved husband, with enormous stacks of cash? Wouldn't that be tragic. Wouldn't you be so, so sad and console yourself with the deceased's best friend, remembering the happiness they had shared?

Since this is also not an Agatha Christie novel, they all swan off to Venice -- Milly for her health, Kate because she has a rich aunt to sponsor her and nothing else to do but be wooed by Rich Aunt's favorite suitor for her, Merton to put Kate's plan into action and possibly woo her in secret, Rich Aunt's Favorite Suitor because he is rich (I suppose?)

Surprisingly, I loved this book. I didn't appreciate the density of this book at first, because it took me about 150 pages to get into its rhythms, but when I did I was able to pause at the end of each section and reflect on what had happened and may happen as a result. Thus my enjoyment of THE WINGS OF THE DOVE was stretched out for weeks, when I felt very, very close to the action. This isn't the James I remember from DAISY MILLER; the ponderousness really adds up to something. I dwelt in the world of this book as if it were science fiction.

After I finished this book, faced with the amount of ambiguity James had baked into this bizarre love triangle, I read a fair amount of criticism and analysis around THE WINGS OF THE DOVE. What actually happened is quite clear, but a lot of its impact is up for interpretation: What is Milly Theale's real diagnosis, and how was her health affected by the stir around her? How much weight does Kate actually give her family's input into her marriage, despite how she may act? How affected, or unaffected, is Merton by his errand? From reading I learned that many people see the character of Milly as relatively flat, without the complexity of her companions; to them, her illness wipes her out, making her seem too saintly. (Also, a lot of people apparently saw the '90s movie starring Helena Bonham Carter as Kate, and then were surprised that the book doesn't have any sexy scenes in it. Well, I never.)

But it was Kate whom I sought and failed to understand. I couldn't figure her out, couldn't put the clues together, and since she's the linchpin of everything that happens in THE WINGS OF THE DOVE,
I definitely couldn't, however, see her as pure villain, and I don't think James did either. (And not because of King Ambiguity.) I felt that the author had an unusual sympathy for Kate's predicament -- constrained by forces beyond her control, trying to scrape up the smallest amount of autonomy over her situation. In a way, she is the most powerless person in the whole novel, even though she can't be forced into marrying Rich Aunt's choice of men. The breaking of her will against the facts of her life is terrible to watch.

Ellen vs. ML: 59 read, 41 unread
Next up: I have a few more to recap from when I was wandering in the wilderness! Which do you like on deck, THE GRAPES OF WRATH or THE WAY OF ALL FLESH? 

75. Evelyn Waugh, SCOOP

There's something about expecting to laugh, and not finding anything funny to laugh at, that can make a person believe nothing will ever be funny ever again. The flavor of despair permeates the whole thing. I was so primed with SCOOP to love it, and maybe later on reflection I'll be able to appreciate what it was going for -- but not now.

Satirizing the excesses of the press? I love it. A case of mistaken identity gone global, as rural columnist William Boot is sent to a troubled African country instead of novelist John Boot? On board. International incidents that may not even have been taking place, distorted by reports on the ground? You bet! But this novel felt interminable, because these gags were so visible from a thousand miles away, that they just weren't funny -- and they went over the same points over and over again, without making them more pointed or entertaining.

Yet I hate to even write that because it feels like a personal failing. Hey, I have a sense of humor! I really do! I read DECLINE AND FALL, and I remember liking that (though it was for a class, and I may be confusing its rags-to-riches-to-rags plot with that of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels"). I know the difference between satire and comedy. And I would never presume from a British author the same style of humor as, say, in Fox's Tuesday night comedy lineup. (Though if William Boot had crashed a wedding and run out with a bottle of champagne, I might have laughed a little more. Not prescribing. Just saying.) But I didn't find it entertaining at all, I slogged, and that was that.

Naturally, I was prepared to bid He-velyn* goodbye forever until I looked at the Modern Library list and realized I still have one more to get through (A HANDFUL OF DUST).

Ellen vs. ML: 58 read, 42 unread

Next up: Maybe THE GRAPES OF WRATH. 

*Have you heard this one? Evelyn Waugh (m.) married a woman who was also named Evelyn, and apocryphally their friends referred to them as He-velyn and She-velyn. Hyphens are mine there. 

RIP Gore Vidal, giant of American letters, one-time Kerouac bed buddy and (most important to our purposes) member of the Modern Library editorial board.

60. Walker Percy, THE MOVIEGOER

Binx Bolling is just looking for something to hold onto. I lost count of the number of times Bolling, the protagonist (one could not say hero) of Walker Percy's debut novel THE MOVIEGOER remarked on the physicality of women around him as "solid," "fleshy" or "big-bottomed," all these words used without judgment but rather observationally. (Richard Ford, also, luxuriates in the physical description of humans without judgment. Maybe this is where he learned it.)

The solidity of these women is marked against the evanescence of Binx's sense of direction, physically and psychologically. Having returned from serving in the Korean War to his family in New Orleans, Binx (one of the great first names in literature, honestly) has a just-okay job, is trying to seduce his new secretary without putting in much effort and gets the most excited about catching a glimpse of an actor filming in the French Quarter. He wouldn't describe himself as a man without possibilities, but which to alight on?

His ennui did not make me sympathetic. I think at the time Bolling's plight of not wanting to follow in the path his family set out for him -- law school, settling into a practice, getting married -- could have been perceived as revolutionary even without some kind of impetus on the other side. Yet I failed to see him as a southern Frank Wheeler, beating wildly against his passions, because he didn't seem to have any. He isn't so much stranded as overparented (in this case, largely by an aunt who is pushing him to move into her guesthouse) and undermotivated. In 2012 I fear we would call this a "manchild," but in 2012 it might not be a plot at all because, hey, he has a job, passing love interests, a hobby. It was unclear to what higher plane he even wanted to ascend, because they all seemed like work to him. Binx's troubled cousin, Kate, who has a history of suicidal behavior and is in the act of running away from her imminent marriage, cuts a much more dynamic figure in THE MOVIEGOER, and also seems to be his other real passion (but maybe I was reading between the lines too much).

I got my '70s mass-market paperback from blogmigo Wade Garrett, who should tell me more specifically why he didn't like this book because I think our reasons were similar.

Ellen vs. ML: 58 read, 42 unread.

Next up: SCOOP, by Evelyn Waugh.

92. William Kennedy, IRONWEED

This book begins in a cemetery and that's the most uplifting scene in the whole book. No one said hacking through this list would be fun, but I don't think I could handle 99 other books about the depravity and hopelessness of the human condition.

We find Francis Phelan in Great Depression-era Albany, being paid to cover some new graves -- a job he found to pay off the estranged son who last bailed him out of jail. Francis realizes that his parents are buried there, along with his infant son whose death was Francis' fault, and as he hallucinates that the dead people in the cemetery are singling him out for that long-ago death, he leaves the job and starts to drink again. A subsequent series of hallucinations and flashbacks takes Francis back through time in which he was a promising professional baseball player and a father, before guilt over his son's death and the strikebreaker he killed with a rock drove him away from them.

This book took me straight into the way an alcoholic like Francis justifies continuing to drink even when all signs are pointing to "stop drinking." What passes for lucidity from Francis is his internal reasoning that life as a bum (the book's preferred word) really isn't so bad; there are always flophouses and campfires under bridges, and someone with enough money to buy alcohol, although outside of his head the level of "not so bad" looks pretty terrible. For instance, Francis reunites briefly with Helen, his partner in self-destruction ("girlfriend" or "lover" just seems too joyful for their actual relationship) who has a little money with which to get a room for the night, but when they get robbed on the road he leaves her with another bum he knows who has a car. Francis' logic says, "Helen will be safe here with this guy who has a car she can sleep in, so she doesn't freeze to death," but he knows (as Helen later confirms) that the shelter will come at the price of Helen having sex with the car's owner. That Francis is fine with this tradeoff is worse than the tradeoff itself. This type of backward logic makes him unsympathetic, even through his non-self-inflicted troubles.

This book is right next to TOBACCO ROAD on the Modern Library list and they share similarities of economic straits, but while the sharecroppers of Tobacco Road are more or less tied to the land till death, Francis has options -- which makes his delinquency even more frustrating. He finds jobs, but he can't keep them because they interfere with his drinking; truly, it's the only thing that he loves. Even when it's revealed that (spoiler) Francis' wife still lives in Albany and would love to have him move back home, to be well-fed and well-rested, we know that he won't stay. It wears the reader down, but at the same time it's easy to understand why his son would just want to give up on him.

Knowing before I started that it took place among alcoholics during the Depression, I hadn't expected IRONWEED to be some kind of happy hobo story, but I didn't think it would be quite so effectively depressing. I read that this is just one book in Kennedy's trilogy about Depression-era Albany, without a consensus as to which of the three books are the best (the other two being LEGS and BILLY PHELAN'S GREATEST GAME), although IRONWEED won the Pulitzer. There's also a movie I am not likely to sit through featuring Jack Nicholson as Francis and Meryl Streep as Helen, plus Tom Waits (no, really) as one of Francis' bum friends.

Ellen vs. ML: 57 read, 43 unread

Next up: I'm still reading FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, very slowly. I feel guilty about wanting the war to start so it will get more interesting.

And here's a pretty picture of Ironweed, the flower (Vernonia gigantea), via Growin' Wild.

Wonderfully funny, you say?

My friend Marjorie Hakala has an essay on The Millions right now called "Seven Reasons To Read A Dance To The Music Of Time," referring of course to Anthony Powell's classic 12-book series. (I'm so ignorant, not only have I not read this Modern Library pick, I had been saying until yesterday that it was 10 books. Sad.) I think I'm convinced! And if you don't want to take my word for it, Roger Ebert also recommended the article.

2012 Resolutions for Reading

For once, setting realistic resolutions really paid off in 2011:

• Read 2666. Yes! I started it in July and read it on and off till November, but I finally did it. 
• Knock 3 books off the Modern Library list.  How about four?! And two of them were books I would gladly recommend to others (CATCH-22, A BEND IN THE RIVER).
  
• Read the 3 David Foster Wallace short-story collections. All right, I didn't do this. I didn't even read one, although I now own one. Maybe I'll do this this year, but I won't resolve to do it, because I don't know if short-story collections are my favorite thing in general. (That awkward moment when!)

Here's what I will resolve to do in 2012: 

• Read more nonfiction. I own plenty and I'm interested in it, but it wasn't until looking through my entire list of books in 2011 that I found a hole there. Most of the nonfiction I did read, although I enjoyed it, was fairly niche. I think this one will complete itself without a problem. 
• Knock 6 books off the Modern Library list. Aiming higher. 
• Continue to strive to actually read the books I own. Not surprisingly, there are still a lot! Christmas was really good to me in this regard, not that I'm complaining, but now I'm going to read those books. 
• Change my blogging process a little. Just going to leave this here since I'm sure the minutiae will just put to sleep. But, see if you notice anything!

7. Joseph Heller, CATCH-22

I don't know if I can do justice to how terrific this book is... so here's my pitch for why you should read it if you haven't already, because maybe you made the same mistake I did.

This is the 50th anniversary year of the publication of CATCH-22 and I can't speak to whether the military is more absurd than it was 50 years ago, but I'm comfortable with the grand assertion that modern life is more absurd than it was 50 years ago.


I knew CATCH-22 was about World War II; I knew it was funny but dark, somewhere along the lines of SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE (I can address the accuracy of that in a bit); and I knew what a Catch-22 was, as one of those cultural gems one picks up. I assumed that based on those facts, I pretty much knew what this book was going to be "about"...

...omitting of course that the absurdity of Catch-22, as revealed in perhaps the first 50 pages of this book, is deepened and multiplied throughout the book, to the extent that you realize that you also are living under the obscure military rule that gives the book its name (trivia alert! It was originally Catch-18) and that it's not just "oh, how funny, what is one to do!" but that it can make you crazy... just not crazy enough for you to exempt yourself from it.

And the only way to express that there are stakes to that is to set that story of contradiction against a literally life-or-death backdrop, where Yossarian may actually have to die in order to get out of combat missions (and even that's not enough, given that he still lives with a dead man! Or does he.)


This past weekend I was reading a review of Nathaniel Philbrick's new book WHY READ MOBY DICK?, making the case for Melville's book as the ur-text of American literature. I can't lie, my first reaction to this wave of press was "But I diiiiiiid." Is Melville that unknown to people in America as a whole? Did this book really need a champion? (All this I say without actually having read Philbrick's book, which I might yet do anyway.) From there I jumped to which book I would choose, cycling through old favorites like THE HOUSE OF MIRTH and THE GREAT GATSBY and at-first-overlooked novels like THE SUN ALSO RISES and OUR TOWN. And out of all of those, I realized that the one I would pick would be CATCH-22, in spite of its baggy middle and the mild injury that there isn't more Major Major in it (wordplay!)

This book ought to be to young-ish adults what ON THE ROAD is to teenagers. The fact that Heller wrote a particular sort of book better than I ever will is somehow not dampening to the spirit. This is a book to be celebrated. Why read CATCH-22? Because you're already in it -- that's why.

"Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?" --Joseph Heller

Ellen vs. ML: 56 read, 44 unread

Next up: I skipped FROM HERE TO ETERNITY for this, so probably that?

Filmbook: Guest Writer Orrin Konheim On The Top 5 Films Based On Modern Library-Celebrated Novels

Today’s post is by film writer Orrin Konheim whose blog I took over a few weeks ago. I asked to recommend some movies based on books on the Modern Library 100 Novels list. Orrin can also be found at Examiner.com and has a very funny list of things he will do for you for money. (All of which appear to be legal also!) Visit Orrin's personal top 100 films list here. Take it a way:

I took this writing challenge from Ellen because, while not as much of a book reader, I wanted to explore which movies came from great books.

What I found was that most of these films are distinguished by rich storylines that aren’t just moving from beginning to end because the plot necessitates it. They all curiously meander to distant corners and back. The main characters in “A Passage to India” in the beginning of the film are all but forgotten at film’s end in lieu of the more interesting souls that have popped up midway.

Similarly, if “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” were written more like a movie, it would have been more efficient in trimming down stories (i.e. the alcoholic played by Stacy Keach, or the doctor’s estranged daughter) that aren’t critical to the arc of the main character -- but the film doesn’t discriminate. A film that almost made the cut, “All the King’s Men,” suffers from similar overcrowding; one might guess that so much detail is devoted to interesting minor characters in the sources that the screenwriter can’t bear to let them go. On the other hand, “From Here to Eternity” seems to have a fairly even distribution of screentime to its five main characters, but their stories don’t intersect.

Lastly, some films gave me the indication that they were constrained by having to stay faithful to some rich source material because they covered such a long time span. “Brideshead Revisited” seemed as if it covered twenty or thirty years’ time (although it was probably far less: the characters seemed to have aged significantly from the war) while “The Magnificent Ambersons” seems like the longest 88 minutes of film you’ll ever see. Although Sandra Locke is clearly still the same age at the end of “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” you get the sense that she’s aged several years at the time.

Here are my picks:

"From Here to Eternity" (1953)

Despite winning the Best Picture Oscar and being known to modern audiences for its kissing scene on the beach, I still view “From Here to Eternity" as a somewhat undiscovered gem. Set at Pearl Harbor in the months before the famous attack, it’s a film (based on a James Jones novel) about the lives and conflicts of officers when there’s no urgency for an attack, and in that sense, it’s more interesting than most war movies. It’s a film that I love and consider among my favorites (in some rudimentary outdated list of my top 100 films of all time, I ranked it 10th), mostly because of its great characters and great performances.

Of the five leads, Montgomery Clift leaves the strongest impression on me as guarded private who we learn is a formidable bugler and boxer but he refuses to do either for his company out of principle. Clift gradually opens up as he befriends a fellow private played by Frank Sinatra who defends him from a sadistic bully (Ernest Borgnine) and attracts the interest of a call girl played by Donna Reed (both Oscar-winning roles) but the stubborn ex-bugler is a tragic figure. Meanwhile, the Captain’s second-in-command (Burt Lancaster) begins a torrid affair with the Captain’s wife (Deborah Kerr) although it's a relationship destined for doom as well. Ed. note: This is of particular interest to me since I just visited the Pearl Harbor historic site for the first time.

“The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” (1968)
“The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” reminds me of a book I read in 10th grade called BOY’S LIFE (by Robert McCammon) in which the quirks and quirky characters of a small-town in the South are deconstructed by a boy as he grows up and loses his innocence. Only this time, it’s a 14-year old girl played by Sandra Locke on her debut. Locke (better known as Clint Eastwood’s future ex-wife) is in my opinion, the most beautiful actress ever and I’ve always had a soft spot for her, but she’s hilariously unconvincing as a 14-year old. (She was apparently 21, but a very mature 21.) Similarly, the casting of the dumb mute as Alan Arkin is equally baffling. Arkin, best-known to modern audiences as the foul-mouthed grandpa in “Little Miss Sunshine,” has built a career with his Yiddish-infused deadpan style, so why use him for a role with no dialogue? Despite these impediments, the two stars really shine and elevate the strewn-all-over story to something special.

“A Passage to India” (1984)
I find it ironic that David Lean’s films mostly come from books because his body of work is so purely cinematic. A master of the epic, his visual scope is so large that his films are hardly worth watching unless it’s on a screen thirty feet high. “A Passage to India” (based on the E.M. Forster novel) was Lean’s last film and it certainly feels as if it comes from a very rich story with a lot of subtext. Set in colonial India, the film revolves around the mother and bride-to-be of a Colonial Magistrate who are bored with the stuffiness of the old order and wish to venture out to the “real India.” They soon form a social club with a local mystic (Alec Guinness in brown-face, ughh), a local doctor and a magistrate. The wife-to-be (Judy Davis) gets more than she bargained for as she has an attack of sorts for which the prominent local doctor is accused of rape. The ensuing trial brings to the forefront the racial undercurrent of the times and a clear and unforgiving divide forms between bigotry and compassion. It’s a poignant film with complex moral themes with well-earned moments of sadness and hope.


“Brideshead Revisited” (2008)
One of those movies that seemed to fly under the radar when it was released, the film boasts Emma Thompson, Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw in this novel adaptation about guilt, forbidden love, more forbidden love, and love being prevented from blooming because of more guilt. Set in Great Britain in the 1940s, the story’s first act involves a wealthy youth named Sebastian (Whishaw) who invites his commoner friend from the University, Charles (Goode) on holiday to his estate. Sebastian is very into Charles in a more-than-just-friends way and Charles is what might be described as bi-curious enough to give Sebastian some hope. (The film takes a sort of “hey it was the ‘70s” [or its British equivalent] attitude towards its characters’ sexuality.) This all changes when Sebastian’s sister shows up and Charles becomes into her, although that’s a forbidden love for different reasons. They also have a horribly overbearing mother who the kids hate and Charles also hates (is it more or catastrophically awful mothers the norm in Dickensenian literature?) and blames for the failure of his friendship with Sebastian and romance with his sister. It’s a movie that has its moments but I certainly wouldn’t recommend it as highly as the other three above-mentioned films. Ed. note: My parents love the old miniseries with Jeremy Irons as Charles – but this is a much smaller time investment.

For my fifth pick, I’ll have to cheat a little bit and draw from the Modern Library-produced reader’s list, or the right column here. “All the King’s Men” and “The Great Gatsby” were so by-the-numbers films that they felt like little more than filmic cliff notes. I really can’t remember “The Magnificent Ambersons” well enough to opine (Ed. I sure liked the book, though) and I feel like “Apocalypse Now” is too loosely based (Ed. note: on HEART OF DARKNESS, of course) to satisfy book readers. As a result, I’m going to go with the reader’s version and select:

“Shane” (1953)
There was practically a different Western playing every week if you went to a movie theater in the 1950s, so what makes “Shane,” based on the 1949 novel by Jack Schaefer, a film that’s even remembered 60 years later? (Ed. note: Having not seen the movie I believe it's the part where, spoiler, people shout "Come back, Shane!") I think it’s entirely because the story is told by Joey Starrett (played by 11-year-old Brandon de Wilde). If the genre isn’t directly aimed at kids, one might say that the Western appeals to the childlike part of adult for whom an untamed world without rules is an ideal fantasy in our rigid bureaucracy. The character of Joey is key because, like us, he doesn’t exactly understand why the Western is the way it is. He grows attached to the charismatic gunslinger title character and worries early on about his departure. He doesn’t understand the irony of the Old West (or at least the movie version): After the heroic gunslinger has done his job to tame the West by chasing away the bad guys, he’s created a civilization that has no place for a man with such a violent and unchaste profession.

Well, that was easy. Thanks, Orrin! If you want to blog for me, please reach out at lnvsml at gmail.com.

Modern Library Annual Suggestion Box

Last time I called for suggestions on what to read next on the Modern Library list, these were the books you recommended:

• Robert Graves, I, CLAUDIUS
• E.M. Forster, A PASSAGE TO INDIA
• Joseph Heller, CATCH-22
• Salman Rushdie, MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN
• John Fowles, THE MAGUS
• Vladimir Nabokov, PALE FIRE
• Anthony Powell, A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) (...fall project? winter?) 
• Virginia Woolf, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

I haven't read any of those yet, but if there's another one that you think I should accelerate that's not up there, I would love your suggestions.

Here's the complete list and here's the list with the ones I've read crossed out. (Read all the things!!!)

83. V.S. Naipaul, A BEND IN THE RIVER

This was exactly the kind of book I needed to read after LORD JIM, the kind that reminded me that sometimes great books don't coast in on decades of hoary accolades. Its protagonist offered the kind of self-awareness and regret that I felt was sorely lacking from most in Conrad's book. Dense, philosophical, totally fulfilling.

The self-aware regretful one is the book's narrator, Salim, Indian by heritage, East African by birth, running a general store in another African country during the end of its occupation by Europeans and the rise of a dictator known in the book as "The Big Man." (My idle Googling suggests the model for the unnamed country was either Uganda or Zaire; that it could be any number of countries is probably the single most depressing aspect of this book.)

Salim's friend Nazruddin owns the general store but decided to get out amid the political upheaval; for Salim, the city at "the bend in the river" represents a way to postpone the arranged marriage expected of him, the management of the family servants and compound in the East and as a substitute for the European graduate education he won't be receiving -- a sort of summer-abroad approach to career building. But it doesn't really work out that way, because at first Salim sees great opportunity in maintaining the store through independence... and then it becomes dangerous for him to do anything but stay.

A BEND IN THE RIVER personalizes the post-colonial experience through Salim's surrogate family in his adopted hometown, from the other two Indian expats who come to own the town's brand-new fast food franchise, to the priest who runs a nearby school for local boys and collects tribal masks on the side, and even the famed journalist rumored to be writing a biography of The Big Man. At one point he looks after the son of one of his downriver trading partners and one of his family's rebellious servants, who have been packed off in hopes that Salim would be a good influence; Salim himself doubts this, and their own entanglements arguably outstrip his. These characters transcend their specificity to illuminate that moment in history without losing their personalities, and as political changes roll through the town with the rise of The Big Man, they all take them in differently.

Lonely and somewhat aloof from his African neighbors, Salim has a lot of time on his hands to consider that there may no longer be a place for him in the country (and by extension, in all of Africa). Not a colonizer, he still feels something of a patriarchal responsibility to the people he meets, without being able to define where that assignment stops. His ruminations on the state of the nation are in tune with his characterization; I never felt like Naipaul was delivering me something through him, nor did he seem too aware of the ways he has failed what he sees as 'his' role to the city as it shifts and disappears.

Naipaul is still a sexist toolbag, but he wrote at least one riveting book. When I finished it I sat and thought about its eventual conclusion (which I'd prefer to see as not depressing, but analytical, scientific) for a long time, rather than jumping straight into the next one; and there are few higher compliments to be paid here.

Ellen vs. ML: 55 read, 45 unread

Next up: I got an e-galley of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, the new unexpurgated version, so likely that? Tomorrow I'm going to post a list of all the reader suggestions that were made to me the last time I called for htem, and maybe I should start working through those as an approach.

"But next morning, at the first bend of the river shutting off the houses of Patusan, all this dropped out of my sight bodily, with its colour, its design, and its meaning, like a picture created by fancy on a canvas, upon which, after long contemplation, you turn your back for the last time. It remains in the memory motionless, unfaded, with its life arrested, in an unchanging light. There are the ambitions, the fears, the hate, the hopes, and they remain in my mind just as I had seen them--intense and as if for ever suspended in their expression. I had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream, no matter whether over mud or over stones. I wasn't going to dive into it; I would have enough to do to keep my head above the surface. But as to what I was leaving behind, I cannot imagine any alteration."
-Joseph Conrad, LORD JIM

Guardian's 100 best nonfiction books: What do you have?

18, but I would do much better if I counted excerpts as well. (College! Where you read a lot of excerpts of things!) This list spans thousands of years, and there are some very strong choices on here (THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST, THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE, SLOUCHING TOWARD BETHLEHEM) and a few I've never heard of before. Hey, why haven't I read NEWS OF A KIDNAPPING yet?

For fun, contrast this list with the Modern Library 100 best nonfiction books (which I haven't even attempted to tackle yet, but all right, 11). Interestingly, the ML list has Churchill's World War II history on there, but the British newspaper didn't seem to think it worth inclusion. For even more fun, contrast that list with the "Reader's List" on the right side, displaying a voting process clearly dominated by Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard fans.

Thanks to regular commenter Elizabeth for mailing this in.

Modern Library news! Open Road media is publishing an uncensored ebook of James Jones' FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (#62 on the list) restoring the cursing and references to some sexual activity between men (my paraphrasing of the Times article on it). See, I wasn't procrastinating, I was just waiting for the real unexpurgated edition to come out! Pun definitely not intended! 

Open Road is also bringing out nine (9) of Jones' books which have never been published at the same time, in case I love FROM HERE TO ETERNITY and want to go back through the catalog.

"Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust but your minds. I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean to be offensive; it is respectable to have no illusions--and safe--and profitable--and dull. Yet you, too, in your time must have known the intensity of life, that light of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone--and as short-lived, alas!"

-Joseph Conrad, LORD JIM

99. J.P. Donleavy, THE GINGER MAN

Do you like stately, plump Buck Mulligan? Want to spend 250 pages with him?

I grabbed this paperback in a hurry because I was going to Hoboken for St. Patrick's Day (observed on Saturday) and, o vanity, needed a book that would fit in my jacket pocket in case things got out of hand. (They didn't.) I had tried to read it almost four years ago and found it difficult to get into, but this time I sailed through the stream-of-consciousness musings of one Sebastian Dangerfield, American expat in Dublin ostensibly going to school on the G.I. Bill but largely scamming drinks and sleeping with every woman who will have him, to the obvious disapproval of his cold English wife.

From what I've read about THE GINGER MAN I know it was banned or at least restricted for much of its published life. It didn't offend me but the depravity wore me down even in that slim a volume. When Sebastian's fortunes seemed to take their umpteenth turn, I both wanted him to succeed in his latest scheme, and knew that he wouldn't. (Vagueness to avoid spoilers.) There is one really incredible sequence involving an animal costume, though.

J.P. Donleavy is in fact still with us -- this is his first novel, probably one of the only first novels on the Modern Library list, and seems to be at least somewhat autobiographical -- but hopefully he hasn't learned to Google himself.

Ellen VS. ML: 53 read, 47 unread.

Next up: After a long suspension, working on #85 LORD JIM on Dailylit.

Scoff

No, actually, if you want to read the whole Modern Library list you can't skip the D.H. Lawrence books you don't like. I mean, what kind of lawless land is this? (And before you say anything else, see: THE RAINBOW, WOMEN IN LOVE)

2011 Reading Resolutions

Read 2666. I've owned a copy for over a year now and it seems like every time I read a best of decade list, or the A.V. Club does some kind of round-up, some self-appointed conscience-person pipes up to ask why this book isn't represented. Then I look at it on my shelf and think "Well but first I should read X, Y, and Z and also those essays by A" and then my brain shuts down and I make some more coffee instead. Let's do this thing this year. Love it or hate it (probably love given all its accolades up to now). 
Read the 3 David Foster Wallace short-story collections. I finished THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM in bed this morning (when I said I was going to give that up, I lied).
Knock 3 books off the Modern Library list. That should be stupidly easy.

So, what are yours? (Edited to add: I feel mine are devastatingly simplistic now that I've read the L.A. Times list of reading resolutions from authors. Please to note.)

New Year's Reading Resolutions

Here were my resolutions for the past year:

1. Read Richard Yates' other novels, since I loved REVOLUTIONARY ROAD so much in 2008. Whoops. I read one of his novels, COLD SPRING HARBOR, but didn't like it.

2. Continue the Unbookening: going through the books I already own and haven't read, reading them, and trying to get rid of some before I buy more. Hooray, I did this. Except for March and April I was either even or gave away more than I got, which is better than last year.

3. Read one Modern Library list book a month. Oops. I read three -- HOWARDS END, OF HUMAN BONDAGE and APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA -- and started WOMEN IN LOVE.

Oh well. New year, new raised expectations:

1. Finish the SANDMAN series. I've read two of the volumes, which means I have eight left, but they're quick reads.

2. Keep Unbookening. I thought about this a lot when I was at home over the holiday but I'll save the proselytizing for later.

3. Summer project: Read some more David Foster Wallace (first novel, three story collections, two essay collections) before THE PALE KING comes out. My best intel right now is that THE PALE KING will be out not this year, but in April '11; still, I think this would be fun. This is just a placeholder till I figure out what I actually want to do.

4. Read all the Modern Library books I currently own -- I haven't counted, but I believe there are 8.

Do you make resolutions about what you want to read in the coming year? Have one you want to share?

59. Max Beerbohm, ZULEIKA DOBSON

Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl, but girl is cruel to boy. So boy decides to kill himself. Girl changes her mind and decides to love him so boy will change his mind, but when boy changes his mind, girl goes back to her original attitude, and thus boy and girl are never quite in concert.

We know the protagonists of Max Beerbohm's ZULEIKA DOBSON are shallow, because the narrator makes this clear from the start. Zuleika is a rich dilettante known mostly for her traveling show of magic tricks, who has come to stay with her grandfather at Oxford at the fictional Judas College.* When her path crosses with the Duke of Dorset, they could be a perfectly shallow match: He's an indifferent scholar for whom his vast wealth is really no big deal, who enjoys drinking with his club the Junta. But he decides that Zuleika must be his -- and, embarrassed by his elaborate declaration of love (involving sheep, no less!), she rejects him with a sniff. The Duke retreats to his friends, expecting them to cheer him up, but they declare they are in love with Zuleika too -- and if she won't have them, they won't have anyone.

ZULEIKA DOBSON is Beerbohm's only novel and I wish he had written more fascinating little dark fables like this one. What the Duke decides to do, and the way he and Zuleika ping-pong between trying to figure out their feelings and act how their breeding dictates they should, is so bizarre and switchback-filled that abruptly in the middle of the book I realized that I wasn't engrossed in boy meets girl any more. I was lost in a much greater allegory which delivered a peculiar punch at the end.

Progress of LN VS. ML: 48 read, 52 unread.

Next up on LNVSML: Joseph Conrad's THE SECRET AGENT (#46). Read it on Dailylit, like me!

*As I discovered by perusing this list of fictional Oxford colleges. Is it because of libel laws that English writers are so loath to set their works in colleges that exist?