Books and Tunes November 30th, 2019

Sitting in a pleasantly ratty cafe in a bustling back corner of London, enjoying a too strong filter coffee and that sort of chilly winter light one can't find in Los Angeles. I hope you're happy, and well.

I mean, probably. I don't actually know who you are, maybe you're like, a Nazi, or someone against whom I have some terrible personal dislike. But, probably, all in all, I hope you're happy, and well.

Call for the Dead by John le Carre – Le Carre's first, semi-canonical Smiley story, similar to the rest of the oeuvre, our graceless, phlegmatic, unhappy protagonist struggling with Soviet spies, the muddled morality of the modern world, all in about a quarter the space of some of the later books. If you were going to read these by now you probably already have, but if you might, and you haven't, you should. Or something.

Apaches by Oakley Hall – A rebellious cavalry sergeant presides over the death of the last free Native Indians and a too-moral gunslinger in another of Oakley Hall's sweeping depictions of a mythic west. Hall was a talented writer working in a sub-genre which tends to be critically dismissed, and you could do a lot worse than reading this book, though you'd do better to start with the genuinely brilliant Warlock, probably the best Western written not written by Larry McMurtry or Charles Portis.

A Murder of Quality by John le Carre – In a peculiar deviation from form, Smiley solves a murder in a toney English public school, basically le Carre doing P.D. James. It's interesting to watch Smiley out of his 'normal' element, and le Carre provides an adequate English-style mystery, with a lot of expectedly unexpected turns, but since I basically don't like English-style mysteries this one didn't do as much for me as some of Smiley's other glum misadventures.

The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgewood – An absolutely masterful depiction of Mitteleuropa's greatest pre-20th century tragedy, in which religious and political differences within the Holy Roman Empire incite a pan-European conflict. The wars of religion have long been a source of fascination for me, one that I'm returning to in preparation for a thing I'm working on, and I've read quite a bit about this era—duplicitous Wallenstein, desperate Frederick, cunning Matthias, and the brilliant Adolphus—so I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that there is no better work on the subject available in English, despite it being some 90 years out of date. One might quibble over some of the author's particular conclusions – I think she tends to give the various Emperor's a bit too much of a pass – but this is an indisputably masterful work of popular history on a complex subject largely unfamiliar to modern readers. Highly recommended, assuming you have some interest in the topic and the energy to cram through 600 pages.

Woman with a Blue Pencil by Gordon McAlpine – A Japanese writer on the eve of internment is forced to abandon his literary mystery for shlocky, jingoistic pulp in this nested, complex narrative. A clever enough premise to sustain its brief length.

Last Witnesses: Unchildlike Stories by Svetlana Alexievich – Another in Alexievich's polyphonic histories, this time detailing the experiences of children during the Great Patriotic War. This is basically a four-hundred page gut punch, repetitious (though not tedious) recollection of tanks streaming through orchards and parents disappearing forever. As a whole the reminisces are, appropriate given the age of the children, less coherent narratives than impressionistic depictions of the maddening, confused horror of modern conflict, and I think somewhat less affecting than some of Alexievich's other woks. Still, well wroth your time.

Scenes From Village Life by Amos Oz — A cycle of short stories depicting ennui and lingering despair in a small Israeli town, just to the coherent side of magical realism. Strong stuff, all in all, Oz is a talented writer and these are subtle and disturbing, without completely forgoing sympathy for the characters involved.

When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson – Another of Robinson's broadsides against modernity, vigorously if politely defending her brand of thoughtful, empathetic whitebread Christianity against the oppressive and barbaric influences of capitalism, thoughtless leftism and mass media. As always I find Ms. Robinson's brand of thought a tonic for troubled times, although I will also admit that some of these essays read a lot like some of the other essays from her I've read. Take that for what it's worth.

Babe in Paradise by Marisa Silver – A suite of short stories depicting the scuzzy, bitter, lonely realities of life in Los Angeles, where everyone imagines themselves two steps from blissful good fortune and would elbow their mother down an escalator to get there. I'm about half-kidding with that depiction, and while some of the stories do feel like every other story written about Los Angeles ('the air quality is terrible and I was going to visit a pornographer in the valley') the prose is strong and the occasional moments of human kindness feel earned and authentic.

Summerlong by Peter S. Beagle – The arrival of a mysterious woman upends the relationship between two elderly lovers and their child, in this pleasant if fairly predictable modern fairy tale. Beagle's a solid writer, lyrical if occasionally overwrought, and this is solid stuff if its what you're looking for, although personally I kinda felt like it could have used a few more curveballs to keep me on my toes.

Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks -- The impressionistic experiences of a black woman in Chicago, common in her decency, misfortune, and earthy optimism. Strong stuff, Brooks has a talent for writing lines that feel like lines you've never read before, and the relative complexity of the prose provides an interesting counterpart to the deliberately prosaic narrative.

The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka — Memoirs of the three-odd years that Soyinka spent imprisoned by the Nigerian state, mostly in solitary confinement. This is quite marvelous; Soyinka's prose is excellent, his motivations admirable, his struggle to avoid madness uplifting. This stands among the better examples of what is, alas, a distinctly popular 20th century subgenre.

The Little People by MacDonald Harris – A dreamy, dazed American goes to live with friends in an English country house, meets fairies, maybe goes crazy. MacDonald can write, and he has a talent for winding you up with a lot of lyrical prose and then punching you in the gut with something really nasty. All the same this felt a little...languid to me, which is sort of the point, admittedly, but still, it felt a little dull.

The Silence in the Garden by William Trevor – The mysteries of an Irish manor and the small village it neighbors are revealed in a series of nested narratives, as sin and misfortune slowly work their way through several generations. William Trevor is, as I've had occasion to note, an absolutely masterful writer, marrying subtle but fabulous prose with a natural grasp of narrative rarely found outside of genre fiction. This is, like the ten-odd other books I've read by him this year, fabulous.

The Alchemist by Hanz Holzer – So I got this from the library thinking it was a thoughtful biography of Rudolf II, the melancholic art collector and Hapsburg Emperor who did very little to stop the 30 year war from burning down his country, only to discover that it was, in fact, an enormously sloppy work of popular 'history' written by a writer whose dozens of other credits seem to involve investigating ghosts and pretending astrology is true. But since I was reading about Rudolf for this project I'm working on, itself a rather slapdash work of historical fiction which nakedly sacrifices accuracy for fun, I thought this might be worth my time. It wasn't, however. It was stupid. People who believe in astrology are stupid. Also, magic. Magic isn't real. Get over it, kiddos.

The Grass by Claude Simon – A woman tell her lover about her husband's aunt, who was a lovely woman, and lived a life like any other life, which is to say pregnant with hushed meaning, tragic in its quotidian reality, sublimely beautiful, and largely without the benefit of the period, a form of punctuation which, it must be said (must it be said?) Simon rejects on basic principal, because he has read too much Proust or is just very French or perhaps because it beat him as a child, the period, I mean, coming on him at the schoolyard or perhaps at home by his writing desk (the oak one, the one that faced out the window, the one beside the yellow wallpaper) and delivering such vigorous and forceful cruelties that our author (Simon) chose to eschew them (periods as a form of punctuation) throughout his long career as a writer, a career which included winning the Nobel prize, not that there's anything wrong with this style of writing, which allows (forces?) the reader basically amount to push one's mind through the complex series of exercises required to make heads or tails of the prose, prose which is beautiful but often, after all the navigation, the deciphering, the wandering about, proves to be, say, a description of a fat woman's blouse, a blouse which, like every other blouse, is a fractal, proving some essential and indelible truth about the nature of the world, a sad world, a world we inhabit against ourselves, a world which, once again, must avoid ending its sentences as it would throwing a baby out the window, and heaven forbid someone calls you while you're reading or you want to stop and scratch your armpit or something, because as soon as you break the flow of the sentence it takes another five or ten or twenty minutes to get back into the groove, which, fine, some people like, even I like, sometimes, but not all the time, and not here as much as I have in other works of Simon's that I've read.

The Owl Service by Alan Gardner – Three adolescents in a decaying house in rural Wales are forced to recreate a tragic mythic rite. Gardner is widely regarded as one of the best Y/A writers of the 20th century, but the things that I've liked by him (this and the bizarre, horrifying, very clever Red Shift) are barely Y/A at all. The narrative and conflicts in this book are as far as possible from the 'special child discovers how special he is' plot of most modern Y/A books (and, for that matter, Gardner's to my mind overlauded Wisestone of Brisingamen (or whatever it's called, I'm in an airport and can't be bothered to look it up), the characters well-etched and sympathetic, if often unpleasant. Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying this was very good, and it would be worth trying to trick your niece or nephew into replacing it for whatever Harry Potter clone they're currently choking on.

Futureland by Walter Mosley – Interlinked short stories about an improbable dystopian future. Pedantic and on the nose, this is one of the weaker things I've read by the author.

Conundrum by Jan Morris – A brief, lovely account of the authors transition from male to female, a lifelong journey which Morris chronicles with great charm and lucidity. Thoughtful and genuinely engaging, Ms. Morris comes off as an enormously likable person who bravely and optimistically faces, and overcomes, the bitter circumstances of her birth. Excellent and engaging.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman – Short stories by a late 19th century feminist, critiques of the patriarchy which, with the exception of the fabulously weird eponymous story, are clever but kind of soft.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – A small Colombian town is universally complicit in the honor killing of a young aristocrat. A short novel by Marquez that doesn't focus on pederasty! This is strong stuff, full of the odd digressions and rich side characters that made Marquez so fun to read, but with less of the hyper-stylized impossibilities that tend to grate on me. Then again that seems to me to be what a lot of readers like about the man, so maybe ignore me.