Book Report: January 2005
January 9, 2005
With nothing terribly interesting in theaters now, and with the second half of the television season just now kicking to life (welcome back Jack Bauer, we missed you), I thought now would be a good time to leave the visual medium for a spell and look into the written word, by way of a few superb novels I’ve read in the past two months. When I last wrote of my reading schedule, I had just finished E.M. Forster’s “A Passage to India”, and staying in a classic British mood, had started D.H. Lawrence’s 1921 novel “Women in Love”, one of those books that pops up on English Lit syllabi, but may be intimidating to the modern reader for its verbose prose and chatty, sometimes misanthropic characters. Never mind all of that though, because, as difficult as some of Lawrence’s symbolism may be- especially when he starts reducing human relationships to mere domination and jealousy- it is a supremely entertaining read, a sequel of sorts to his notorious (and originally confiscated) 1915 novel “The Rainbow”, once again following Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen of Beldover as they struggle to accept love in its purest forms, spiritually and sensually. At the time I was nearing the end of this novel, I happened to see Mike Nichols’ “Closer” in theaters, and immediately started constructing thoughts about how the two dealt similarly, and differently with sex, male-female relationships, voyeurism, and the often domineering underbelly of sexual fantasy, but scrapped the idea of any definitive essay because the film is too cold and calculating to necessarily compare with Lawrence’s somewhat more upbeat, highly metaphysical, slightly autobiographical modernist text, but it is interesting, as a passing fancy, to note that both the film’s dialogue (especially the strip club sequence between Natalie Portman and Clive Owen), and the book’s views on humanism (down in Gerald Crich, up in Rupert Birkin) ring to the same tune; that be it partner swapping in 21st century London, or courtship (male-female, male-male) in an early 20th century mining town, sexuality is more than just skin deep, it’s a matter of the mind as well.
Feeling a bit burned out after the lengthy, wordy Lawrence novel, I picked up a recent edition of Patricia Highsmith’s 1950 psycho-thriller “Strangers on a Train”, which served as a reference, in theme and name only, to the great 1951 Hitchcock masterpiece starring Robert Walker. The first of Highsmith’s 21 novels, ‘Strangers’ is all about ethics and morals, and how one bad seed can implant itself in good soil, and grow until it has totally engulfed the pure being into a web of lies, murder, and ultimately, undeniable inner guilt. On a train ride through Texas, rising star architect Guy Haines accidentally meets 25-year-old playboy Charles Bruno, a terrible alcoholic who casually lays out his thoughts on “the perfect murder”, little go Guy’s understanding Bruno actually plans on executing the conception, offing Guy’s trampy wife in exchange for the murder of his own tight-fisted father. Much like “Women in Love”, the undertones of obsession and homosexuality (in ‘Women’ it’s based on friendship, in ‘Strangers’ it’s based on need and madness) run throughout the novel, and though it’s only eluded to, not concrete, we see in Bruno a character so possessive in his feelings for Guy that it drives him into a sad, jealous, paranoid maniac. There are major differences from the book and the movie, like, for instance, the more cinematic climax on a merry-go-round in the movie as opposed to the subdued, guilt ridden Guy-in-a-motel-room book ending, but it’s one of those rare cases where the initial story was so good, that two differing interpretations both came out great.
“Strangers on a Train” was an easy, addictive read, and didn’t take me long at all, so following it, I wanted to get back into British classics, and taking a tip from a friend who had read “Gulliver’s Travels” in class, I picked up Jonathan Swift’s 1726 satire, one of the most famous novels of all time. Knowing little about the novel except the fantasy aspects (Gulliver a towering giant in Lilliput, an insignificant runt in Brobdingnag), I was struck by the bitter irony and sharp satire of Swift’s story, a mock travelogue told in four parts, recounting the travels of an English surgeon and novice adventurer around the globe, encountering slightly veiled symbols of British history, and serving as a sounding board for Swift’s stinging thesis on humanity and pride. Swift satirizes government, election, and war in Books One and Two, science in Book Three (in the flying city of Laputa), and finally comes to a harsh conclusion that man is no better than the ugliest beast (Yahoo is the term) in Book Four, where in Houyhnhnmland, talking horses are represented as God-like in purity, impervious to emotion, yet suspicious of lower forms, i.e. humans. If you can get past the contempt of Book Four, and the sometimes-difficult satire of Book Three, “Gulliver’s Travels” offers a rich and rewarding study in the foibles of 18th century government, literature, thinking, and, to a degree, fantasy. If you decide to follow on this recommendation, beware poor child-friendly editions, and be sure to note that Swift, England’s premier writer and satirist of the time, was staunchly opposed to England’s occupation of Ireland, his birthplace, because it’s a major symbol throughout the four books of “Gulliver’s Travels”.
Finally, finding it tough to leave England for some reason, I took to reading the classic Sci-Fi novel “The War of the Worlds”, an 1898 short work by the granddad of Science Fiction, H.G. Wells. The story takes place in London and its suburbs, where, one night, blasts of light can be seen coming from the direction of Mars. A few days later the mystery of the light is solved when a Martian capsule lands in a suburban forest, and the Martian inside, a slimy thing with octo-like tentacles, after some hesitation, starts murdering the onlookers outside of his ship. In a matter of days, a whole fleet has arrived, sacking London, planting strange red bushes over the terrain, and feeding on the corpses of their victims. Wells’ apocalypse is incredibly exciting, and the descriptions of the alien invaders makes it one of the earliest novels to seriously suggest the classic Sci-Fi notion that we are not alone, but the book is also, like “Gulliver’s Travels”, a bitterly satiric metaphor of British imperialism, here reversed with a superior race controlling all aspects of British life. Most adaptations of the novel focus more on the death and destruction of the invasion, including the famous Orson Welles Mercury Theater radio adaptation on October 30, 1938 (a performance which caused slight panic, and effectively sealed Welles’ ticket to Hollywood), and gloss over the deeper meanings, but either way, as an adventure, or as a political statement, “The War of the Worlds” is a fun, quick 2-3 day read. Next summer Steven Spielberg will release his adaptation of the novel, starring Tom Cruise with reports of a budget topping 200 million dollars, which suggest lots of action and effects; one can only hope some politics as well.
Currently, staying in a Sci-Fi mood, I’m back to the short stories of Philip K. Dick, one of my favorite authors, and on deck, I have George Orwell’s classic communistic war parable “Animal Farm”, one of those very famous novels that has been collecting dust on my book shelf for years, unread, and under appreciated, but I’ll report on those, and others, in due time. For now, if you find yourself in need of a good read, be it challenging like “Women in Love” or “Gulliver’s Travels”, or psychologically exciting like “Strangers on a Train” or “The War of the Worlds”, by all means, takes these suggestions and let me know how you make out, because, without great literature to fuel our imaginations, supply our movies with respectable fodder, and provide a more sophisticated conversation topic, what would we be but a bunch of lazy Yahoos.
by Adam Suraf