Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century Quest: #70

Title: The Alexandria Quartet
Author: Lawrence Durrell
Judgin' the Book by its Cover: The photograph on this cover is strangely appropriate, although it depicts nothing from the novel. The image of the European women as tourists in a foreign land is a pretty apt depiction of the characters' relationship to their environment.

Thoughts: Whew. I feel like I need to chug some Gatorade and do some serious stretching after this marathon. (Incidentally, today is the New York marathon... but hey, any old jerk can run 26.2 miles. It takes a serious person to read an 887-page book). First of all, the Modern Library folks pulled a fast one! The Alexandria Quartet is actually four novels bundled together, so even though the characters overlap and the setting remains the same through most of the work, it's technically not a novel, in my book. Hrmph.

Annnnyyyyhoozle... the book is, like I said, four separate novels published in one volume. The first story, Justine, is written from the perspective of one L.G. Darley, a British writer who is swept into an affair with a married Alexandrian socialite. Darley, a pretty obvious stand-in for Durrell himself, does a rigorous postmortem on the complicated and stormy relationship with Justine, a calculating nymphomaniac married to Nessim, one of the city's prominent bankers. I really struggled with this storyline. The prose consisted mainly of dated psychosexual analysis and broad observations about groups of people. However, the second book, Balthazar, provided a new (and far more interesting) perspective on the events of the first. In this novel, Darley, now living on a Greek island, receives a letter from Balthazar, a scholar of the Kabbalah and a doctor, that pulls the rug out from under Darley's understanding of the affair. The third volume, Mountolive, pulls back and offers a history of Nessim's family that lays the foundation for understanding the social and political climate in Alexandria. Finally, Clea, the fourth, brings a wiser, more mature Darley back to the city as the second world war tightens its grip on the Mediterranean.

The strength of the quartet is its wealth of characters. Durrell manages to create a world in which all the characters are multidimensional and undergo personal transformations throughout the course of the work. The weakness of the quartet, on the other hand, is its failure to create a real world for the characters to live in. Alexandria is seen only through the eyes of the British colonial worldview, and while the descriptions of the geography are quite beautiful at times, the residents of the city are described only as dark and animal-like others. I've been constantly struck throughout this project by the off-putting racism of many of these authors, and this is one of the worst examples. Nearly every description of a native Alexandrian includes a reference to the blackness or darkness of their skin, and they are not given the importance or roundness of the main characters. It's as though the entirety of Alexandria is a playground for the Europeans or the Coptic and Jewish minorities, and everyone else outside of these groups is a part of the scenery that isn't worth investigation. In this respect, I didn't find that Durrell brought Alexandria to life, which is too bad. Moreover, the squishy philosophizing in the book was nearly unbearable to read, and for me it was at its most interesting when it stayed away from that. Overall I enjoyed the book, but given the immense chunk of time I invested in it trying to get interested, I'm not sure I would do it again.

Half-Way Point!!

50 down, 50 to go! Unfortunately, 22 of those are books that I'd read previously, and since last month marked the two-year anniversary of this project, it could take me as long as four more years to finish this!! Better get my butt in gear and pick up the pace!

Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century Quest: #71

Title: A High Wind in Jamaica
Author: Richard Hughes
Judgin' the Book By Its Cover: What an evocative cover! The contrast between the roiling black skies and the bright, oversized fruit and flowers illustrates the darkness about to overtake the dreamscape of Jamaica. Even the poppies in the foreground suggest an unpleasant, opiatic vision.

Thoughts: This novel, originally published in 1929, tells the story of the sea voyage of seven children from Jamaica to England. After a hurricane levels the family homestead, the Bas-Thorntons send their five children unaccompanied back to the motherland to be nurtured by civilization. Two neighbor children join them on the journey. But the hurricane was only the beginning of the nightmare for the children; not long after departing from Montego Bay, the boat is taken over by pirates, and the children are haphazardly abducted. During the resulting time, the pirates try to adhere to a strict moral code when dealing with the children, but the children themselves soon devolve into amorality.

Hughes' interest in the psychology of children is evident, and he is particularly interested in the opposing ways that adults and children view each other. He certainly punctures the myth of the innocence of childhood, and maintains that within the most angelic naif there lies calculated deception. Hughes' prose is very detached, withholding judgment and refusing to show emotion in the face of extreme events. Similarly, the children react to tragedy with a cool indifference, almost immediately forgetting about the death of a family member. Instead, they fixate on details that could only be of importance to a small child ("There was a monkey!"), and they place a much higher premium on propriety than on actions or motive.

The book has rightly been described as nightmarish, and has also been likened to The Lord of the Flies. In my mind, at least the beginning of it bore a greater similarity to the beginning of Wide Sargasso Sea-- the images of a ruined landscape and collapsed slave economy induce an instant feeling of dread. By the end of the novel, the weaknesses of every character lie in plain sight for all to see. So perhaps this story is simply a post-colonial metaphor, an elucidation of the evil that lurks just under the polite, well-mannered surface of the colonizing British.

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!