Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century Quest: #72

Title: A House for Mr. Biswas
Author: V.S. Naipaul (Sound familiar? He should, if you're a faithful reader... and if you're not, get out of here! I don't need any fair-weather fans!!)
Judgin' the Book By Its Cover: I love this bright, splashy cover! It captures the essence of the vibrant island of Trinidad far more than the book does, which seemed like it could have been set almost anywhere (my book cover, courtesy of NYPL, was a plain, red, cloth cover... not too exciting). I got a much stronger sense of place about Trinidad from a few short pages in Netherland.

Thoughts: A House for Mr. Biswas narrates the struggles of an Indo-Trinidadian man to gain independence through home ownership.
Mohun Biswas, a character reportedly based on Naipaul's father, is born unlucky and, after his father's untimely death, is plagued by bad decisions, poverty, overbearing in-laws, and unsatisfactory employment. In this regard, he is something of an everyman; there is a universal element to the trials and tribulations that he faces. It was often very frustrating to read about Mohun's exploits; like a lovable loser uncle, nothing he does seems to turn out right and he's a magnet for scam artists. However, he's also an incorrigible troublemaker, and his insistence on standing up to pushy family members was at times the only thing that kept me reading.

Naipaul presents a thoroughly descriptive portrait of Mohun Biswas, and I really felt like I knew him through and through, especially since the book covers his entire life, from cradle to grave. It was a masterfully written story, but its bleakness and pessimism were sometimes hard to swallow. Naipaul presents in this story the tragedy of human existence, the oftentimes fruitless struggle to leave your mark on the earth and to overcome miscalculations and blunders. As a result, it wasn't the most enjoyable read, but it was truthful and timeless.

Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century Quest: #73

Title: The Day of the Locust
Author: Nathanael West
Judgin' the Book By Its Cover: I actually like this pulpy cover more than I like the book itself, although the cover is a bit misleading (the event in the picture never actually takes place)-- I was under the impression, mainly because of the cover, that this was a disaster novel. Yeah, not so much.

Thoughts: There's a belief, possibly the only opinion shared by both New York intellectuals and Midwestern evangelicals, that Hollywood is the dark, twisted counterpoint to the American dream, a whirling cesspool of evil (unlike the healthy stew bubbling away in New York's melting-pot). Nathanael West is surely the progenitor of this viewpoint. The Day of the Locust is easily the ugliest book I've ever read, a sour, black-hearted, apocalyptic vision of mankind at its worst.

The novel, told mainly from the perspective of Tod Hackett, a studio art director, centers around Faye Greener, a beautiful but hard girl whose unabashed sexuality attracts a crowd of low-life admirers. Tod falls for Faye, as does Homer Simpson, a gawky hotel clerk from Iowa who traveled west for his health; Earle, a handsome but poor cowboy who works part-time as an extra; and Miguel, Earle's Mexican roommate. Faye wields her body as a weapon to propel her ever closer to stardom, and her unattainability only fuels the men's fires. As the denouement approaches, the lust and debauchery around Faye increases until nothing is left but utter destruction.

Faye is a stand-in for Hollywood itself, all surface and no substance, the post child for the allure of artificiality. West's Hollywood is filled with creatures like Faye-- dissipated degenerates on the fringe of society who spend their sweaty-palmed coins on the cheap thrills of whorehouses, bars, and cockfights. These residents, who flocked to California in droves in the hopes of a better life, found nothing but disappointment and disillusionment waiting for them, and when they move together en masse, they become a dangerous mob devoid of all humanity.

This novel is particularly nasty-- the terms "slut" and "fairy" are tossed around frequently, the main character on more than one occasion is preoccupied with the idea of rape, and each character is described with a searing contempt. I found it very similar to Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary, in which Puerto Rico's outsiders drink themselves into total collapse. The prose is fairly lively and interesting, but the viewpoint is so toxic that unless you're an incredibly pessimistic person looking for your worldview to be confirmed, you probably won't enjoy this book too much.

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!

Just finished up a long, laborious, and detailed post about The Day of the Locust, and as I clicked on it to publish it, the text vanished and the autosave apparently failed-- it's like I never wrote a word! Totally disheartening... I'm not sure I have the strength to go through that again...

Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century Quest: #74

Title: A Farewell to Arms
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Judgin' the Book By Its Cover: Have we ever talked about how much I love poppies? Few things in life make me as happy as spotting a cluster of poppies waving in the breeze. They're so cheery and spontaneous-- how can you not love them?

Thoughts: OK, we're all friends here, right? So no one's going to judge me after I confess to a great ignorance? You all know me-- American Lit major, book worm, general nerd-- but you may not know that until now, at the ripe old age of 26, I hadn't read a lengthy Hemingway work. While we're being totally honest here, I may as well mention that the only thing I've actually read of his is one short story, "Hills Like White Elephants", something I'd blame partly on the zeal of professors seeking to rid syllabi of the canonical white male authors and partly on my own avoidance of the macho-man-does-macho-things ethos I've always associated with Hemingway. I've had a copy of A Moveable Feast stuffed in my bookshelf for a couple of years, but I've staved off reading it out of fear that I'll rush off to Paris on the next flight out and find myself gnawing on a baguette on the Rue de Rivoli before my poor Man Friend even realizes I'm gone!

To my great surprise, I really liked A Farewell to Arms, and I found the story to be incredibly moving. Between the lines of Hemingway's starved, spare prose lies a tender love story, the story of two people brought together and bound by the nearness of death. Frederick Henry's experiences as an ambulance driver in war-torn Italy closely follow Hemingway's own life, and thought the details of Henry's affair with a nurse differ, the emotions are as true to life as biography, if not more so. I highly recommend this book. I ran to Strand and picked up a copy for Tromant as soon as I finished, and watch out, this book may be headed your way soon, too!

One last thing: an unexpected side effect of this novel was that I consumed more pasta while reading it than I have in the last few months combined! Everything other scene takes place while someone is slurping macaroni or spaghetti-- I'm just glad that I didn't take to guzzling grappa with the same vigor!

Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century Quest: #75

Title: Scoop
Author: Evelyn Waugh
Judgin' the Book By Its Cover: The whimsical illustration and cover design perfectly suit the tone of the book. Nice work, guys!!

Thoughts: An identity mix-up sends bashful nature columnist William Boot to the front lines of a revolution in the African country of Ishmaelia, where he rises to the occasion and becomes a war reporter. This light but satirical farce details the ridiculous nature of competition between newspapers, media's descent on foreign soil, and political coups. No one is left unskewered in this book-- country estate-dwellers, urbane novelists, high society debutantes, media magnates, newspapermen, foreign dignitaries, and the list goes on. Scoop reveals a different side on Waugh, one that is only hinted at in Brideshead Revisited, that of the quick-witted and unrepentant satirist. I really liked this book, although it didn't have the depth or emotional charge of Brideshead. Worth a read.

Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century Quest: #76

Title: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Author: Muriel Spark
Judgin' the Book By Its Cover: That's a pretty glamorous photo! But what's going on with the weird fighting cherubs on the left?

Thoughts: This story is about a non-traditional teacher at a traditional school for girls in Scotland, sort of a Dead Poets' Society in which the tale is narrated by a former student who has an ambivalent view of her teacher. Miss Brodie refuses to stick to the prescribed curriculum and instead selects a group of particularly malleable students ("the Brodie set") to take under her wing and instruct about the importance of art, fascism, and her own love life. The deceptively simple story is woven between the past and the present as the narrator slips in clues about the fate of Miss Brodie and her ultimate betrayal at the hands of one of the Brodie set.

I liked the way that Spark dug into the hazards of molding children like putty, and her observations of how aware school kids really are of what is happening around them. I also liked the narrator's bittersweet tone as she looks back on the girls from her past and, knowing what she now knows about their lives and fates, wistfully wishes to undo past actions. But I'm not sure that this is a top-100 kind of novel-- I didn't feel moved or changed by it, and I'm not sure that I would heartily recommend it to someone else.

Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century Quest: #77

Title: Finnegans Wake
Author: James Joyce
Judgin' the Book By Its Cover: This may be the blandest cover so far...

Thoughts: This is the book that nearly did me in. I spent four months reading it, probably the longest time I've ever spent on a single book, four months of pain and suffering. When I finally finished it in February, all desire to blog (and every last shred of discipline I ever possessed) had been sucked out of me by the whirling abyss that is Finnegans Wake. I started reading with hope and optimism, which was quickly replaced by nagging worry (which was inevitably followed by intense frustration). I expected the book to be something like, oh, maybe Trainspotting-- written in a difficult vernacular that would suddenly open up and make sense after a chapter or two. Not so with FW. The plot (I use this term loosely) centers around a father and son, stand-ins for periods of Irish history. After that things get really convoluted, particularly since Joyce is interested in the way that stories get distorted with time and likes to spin and re-spin the episodes in the novel. I purchased the Joseph Campbell skeleton key and read it simultaneously, and with Campbell's aid, I sometimes could pick out themes in the text, but I never felt like I truly understood what was going on. Joyce is clearly a talented wordsmith (as evidenced by the abundance of puns in the book, many of which made me chuckle), but I just couldn't wrap my brain around this one, no matter how hard I tried.