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Hello readers and welcome back to another installment of the Reading List. As mentioned previously I have tried to work in more BIPOC and female authors on this list, but I also have a pretty big backlog of “old white dudes” sitting on bookshelves around my apartment that I need to read to round out the list. To that end I decided to read an author I have not encountered since I attempted to read his master work over a decade ago, James Joyce and his 1916 first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
A novel about the beauty of the creation of art and the struggle to escape Catholic teachings, this book touches on many themes that would be important to Joyce over his career. This was also a challenging and difficult read, mainly due to Joyce’s dense use of language and thematic elements, including liberal use of the Latin language that Joyce’s protagonist Stephen Dedalus is forced to learn at his Catholic school. In the first chapter we witness Stephen watching his father entertain an argument about Irish politics. Then we see in another early scene that Stephen gets his glasses broken by another student and is walloped for it by a professor. He then goes to the rector of the school to ask if the punishment can be rescinded. The family then moves to Dublin for financial reasons. Later we see Stephen struggle with temptations of the flesh and his wondering if he should confess such sins. Then we get a long chapter of what was familiar to me, a sermon cataloging hell and its discontents that leads Stephen to decide to confess to a priest. But this is the last bit of the church to stick to his soul as he is born to be an artist. When he is at university he has a long conversation with a colleague / friend about beauty and the nature of art (one of the best parts of the book, in my opinion) which helps Stephen lean into the creative life instead of the religious one. We see at the end in diary entries Stephen’s commitment to this life. This was a very interesting book for several reasons, not least of which its themes dramatically spoke to me when it comes to living an artistic life. As someone who has also struggled to leave a church and break out on my own artistically, that theme definitely resonated with me. But this was also an attempt by me to read one of the great masters of the form since abandoning the maddening Ulysses (1922) about a quarter of the way through years ago. Joyce is a master when it comes to the use of language and allusion, and this early story (first published serially by Ezra Pound) really shows it. These are realms he would of course go to extremes within Ulysses, and I hope to someday return to and understand that work. I would recommend A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to anyone who is looking for an interesting take on the artistic life and what it takes to commit to it, but be aware that the language is often times impermeable and the themes tend to override (which is not necessarily a bad thing but one of modernism, the tradition in which Joyce was writing). Thanks as always for joining me on this reading adventure.
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Hello readers and welcome back to another installment of the Reading List. As mentioned previously I have tried to work in more BIPOC and female authors on this list, but I also have a pretty big backlog of “old white dudes” sitting on bookshelves around my apartment that I need to read to round out the list. To that end I decided to read an author I have known about for years but never read: Philip Roth and his ridiculous 1969 work Portnoy’s Complaint.
A bizarre, hyper-sexualized tale of trysts and romps all theoretically poured out to a psychiatrist / psychologist in an office, the novel is the tale of one Alexander Portnoy and his weird life of involving himself with women and being obsequious to his Jewish parents. We never technically leave the session as it takes place within the entire book, with only the doctor commenting at the very end of the novel. We come to see how Alexander became the sexual deviant he is in his thirties through extended monologues focused on his childhood living under the thumb of a domineering mother and constipated, insurance-selling father. But the novel jumps around in time a lot more than that and consists of Portnoy’s current lust interest, a woman who is named as Mary Jane but whome Portnoy constantly refers to as “the Monkey.” We also travel with Portnoy to the land of Israel where he is confronted with aspects of his Jewishness that he has never gotten in touch with before the trip. And we see all the times in between where Portnoy wrestles with his budding sexuality and urges as a young child leading up to his first formative relationships, one of which he refuses to continue unless the woman converts to Judaism. This book was an interesting yet off-putting look at what it was like to grow up in a Jewish family during World War II and afterward and how family dynamics played a key role in how the younger Alexander (and his sister, who gets mentioned in the beginning but later gets married off and we don’t see her very much) grows up in New Jersey during these crucial, important years of our nation’s history. We also see the struggles of Portony to unleash his sexual comportments versus his real ambition to do good in the world, from being on a Congressional committee to leading a high up position within the New York City government. But all of this is bogged down by the sexual tension that permeates the novel and while it may read as quiescent today, definitely shocked and appalled readers the world over when it was released at the end of the Sixties. I don’t know that I would recommend this book to everyone as it is full of explicit material and ravages the psyche that is tormented by it. While apparently Roth wanted to use the psychologist’s session as a way to expose life as it really was during the sexual revolution it comes off as just bizarre (not to keep using that adjective) and something that I think a female audience would cringe through reading. I had read for years and years that this was Roth’s master work and while I don’t see that I am still considering reading more of his body of literature as I progress through my own writing career. Roth was indeed a towering force in American letters and influenced a whole generation of Jewish (and non-Jewish) writers to show their lives on the page in this country of ours. Thanks for joining me on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome back to another installment of the Reading List. As mentioned previously I have tried to work in more BIPOC and female authors on this list, but I also have a pretty big backlog of “old white dudes” sitting on bookshelves around my apartment that I need to read to round out the list. To that end I decided to revisit an author I haven’t read for seven years, Neil Gaiman and his astonishing 2001 work American Gods.
A novel about gods and their devotees, this was an amazing story that kept me hooked throughout all of its over 500 pages. We first meet one of the two main characters, Shadow, as he is just getting out of prison for the crimes of robbing his former partners and beating them up. Shadow is a big guy, you see, and after he gets out of prison and thinks he is going home he meets the second main character Wednesday, who offers Shadow a job as a driver and bodyguard. While at first Shadow rebuffs him, after he learns the life he led before prison is no longer feasible (his wife and best friend died in a car accident) he takes the job. After a choice encounter with the first god Shadow receives a coin (Shadow’s into coin tricks too) that inadvertently brings his wife back to a sort of life and she ends up following him around the story until the very end. The story becomes a rollicking traveling tale, with Shadow and Wednesday visiting gods in Chicago and Cario, Illinois where Shadow briefly works as an undertaker’s apprentice. Wednesday later has Shadow deposited at the town of Lakeside, Wisconsin where he is supposed to lay low but where he meets some of the more interesting (almost all of them non-god) characters in the novel. Later a major character is killed (I won’t give it away) and that leads to an all consuming confrontation that haunts the rest of the book. Shadow volunteers to be there at the wake for this character which involves lashing himself to an ancient tree for days, where he ultimately dies and comes back to life reborn. Shadow also learns a major revelation while “dead.” And while the rest of the novel ends in what could be considered an anti-climactic way, I really enjoyed it. There are some wrap up (and to my mind, Stephen King-esque) bits in Lakeside to finish up the novel and then Shadow continues on his travels around the world. This book was an incredible read for many reasons, not least of which are Gaiman’s incredible knowledge of mythology and the gods which populate not just the main story but several asides as well. This is also a great “on the road” novel where we see the main characters Shadow and Wednesday (who turns out to be Odin in disguise, not to spoil too much) recruiting the old gods to fight against the new gods (represented by things like the internet and media). There are tons of characters and each one is interesting and memorable. I also happened to read the 2011 published edition of this novel which is considered “the author’s preferred text” and includes an additional twelve thousand words of content as well as some extras. And I was so into this book that I went back to the original inspiration for wanting to read it, an “American Gods novella” that was included in Fragile Things that I re-read to see what Shadow was up to in the years following the events of American Gods. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a masterful, fantastical read full of magic and mystery and good old fashioned traveling around the United States. While in my review of Fragile Things I noted not all of the stories were for me, American Gods definitely was and I would easily recommend it to anyone looking for a great tale full of great characters. Thanks as always for joining along with me on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome back to another installment of the Reading List. As mentioned previously I have tried to work in more BIPOC and female authors on this list, but I also have a pretty big backlog of “old white dudes” sitting on bookshelves around my apartment that I need to read to round out the list. To that end I decided to go with a book I have wanted to read for ages: David Abrams’s 2012 Iraq War classic Fobbit.
A tale about the boredom and folly of war, Fobbit follows a rag tag group of Iraq War Army fighters at various stages in their careers. Staff Sergeant Chase Gooding seems to be the main character, the titular “fobbit” who stays at Forward Operating Base Trinity and works in the Public Affairs Office under Lieutenant Colonel Eustace Harkleroad. Death tolls come in every day and it’s up to Gooding and others in his office to write the press releases that will sanitize the fallen and show the war to be going great. But we don’t just hang out in the FOB all novel, we also meet several other characters including Lieutenant Colonel Vic Duret and Sargeant Brock Lumley who are actually out in the streets of Iraq fighting the “enemy,” and we meet Captain Abe Shrinkle who manages to make a mess of every “situation” he finds himself in, first shrinking away from killing a terrorist who had rammed an Abrams tank and then killing a mentally ill Iraqi and then another “Local National” when he tries to torch a Coalition truck without realizing there is a man underneath. Shrinkle then gets relieved of his command by Duret and is forced to work in the fitness center gathering towels. He eventually goes rogue and winds up hanging out in the Australian pool where a very tragic event happens that I won’t give away for those who want to read this fabulous book. Of course Gooding’s PAO department is called in to massage the horror and make it palatable for the media, which in this case is damn near impossible. This book was a great read for many reasons, not least of which is that Abrams absolutely nails the stupidity and yet incredible morale of warfare. Each of these characters is fully realized and that makes their observations of the war that much more realistic. As is probably known, Abrams himself fought in this conflict and so his recollections are spot on and deserve commendation. He also started a blog called The Quivering Pen which unfortunately shut down in 2020 but in which I was fortunate enough to write a blog post about my first time writing a novel. Abrams knows about the banality of warfare and how it grates on those who made the decision to go into the armed forces and it totally shows in this work. Even the title is a play on words, calling upon older writers such as Tolkein as Abrams mentions in the beginning of the book. I would highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a rollicking tale about the disastrous invasion of Iraq from 2003-2011 (and beyond, as we still have troops there) and looking for characters that illustrate that conflict in the most imaginative and entertaining way possible. Thanks for joining me on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome back to another installment of the Reading List. As mentioned previously I have tried to work in more BIPOC and female authors on this list, but I also have a pretty big backlog of “old white dudes” sitting on bookshelves around my apartment that I need to read to round out the list. To that end I decided to go with a novel and an author that I had heard about for years was absolutely phenomenal, Michael Chabon and his 2007 work The Yiddish Policemen's Union.
This was a fantastic read for many reasons, not least of which would be Chabon’s exacting use of language, but also his captivating use of the smallest bit of world building to give us an expansive universe that makes sense. Meyer Landsman is one of the all time great characters I have encountered in the books I have read, and his continual interactions with his ex-wife and cousin made for a most entertaining read. For those who don’t want the novel spoiled too much I won’t give away too many plot details, but it probably does help to mention that this book is set in an alternate timeline from our own in which the persecuted Jews of the Holocaust were re-settled not in Israel in 1948 but in Sitka, Alaska, on a small island near the south of the state. However when we meet the main characters this is threatened with “reversion” as the time limit has expired for the area to become once again part of Alaska. On the face of it this novel reads like a classic detective story, with Meyer being introduced and the discovery of the body happening immediately. Investigating the local chess scene (a board was found near the body with an unfinished game), Meyer determines that this was Mendel Shpilman, a person of much importance within the world of the mafia in Sitka. Meyer conducts his investigation through several hilarious set pieces, including getting into the mother of Shpilman’s car at the funeral and going out to a strange place that is controlled by the Verbovers (the mafia) and getting caught by the local police. Behind this place is a diabolical plot that Meyer discovers a bit too late to prevent, but he does end up solving the murder. As stated this was one of the most unusual and unique novels I have ever encountered, and with each page I was blown away by Chabon’s use of language. He even included a Glossary of terms, both made-up and real, of Yiddish in the back of the book to help readers such as myself. Also included in my edition of the novel was Chabon’s 1997 Harper’s essay “Guidebook to a Land of Ghosts” where some of these ideas were beginning to be fleshed out. If I did have one criticism of the novel, it would be I wish we had more discovery of the other things changed in this world. We get a brief mention that Berlin was destroyed by a nuclear weapon in 1946 and a few other tantalizing details of other nations but we don’t get a full picture of how different this world is from our own. But that’s a minor quibble with what is overall an excellent story and one I would highly recommend to anyone wanting an excellent detective yarn that also dabbles in what-if type scenarios. Thanks for joining me on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome back to another installment of the Reading List. As mentioned previously I have tried to work in more BIPOC and female authors on this list, but I also have a pretty big backlog of “old white dudes” sitting on bookshelves around my apartment that I need to read to round out the list. To that end I decided to go with a book and author I have wanted to read for ages and never got around to: Vladimir Nobokov’s 1957 tale Pnin.
A bizarre college story wrapped around an enigmatic main character, Pnin revolves around the titular hero (first name “Timofey”) as he navigates the collegiate world of Waindell (based on places the real Nabokov taught) and attempts to continue his Russian language studies and teaching. When we first meet Pnin he is on the wrong train to give a lecture. Fortunately he gets that straightened out and we see him giving the lecture to a throng of what he perceives to be dead people from his life. We then see him reconciled with his ex-wife Liza and we learn that she tricked Pnin into coming to America to marry, only to leave him for a psychologist, Dr. Eric Wind. Pnin finds a place to stay with the Clements but is kicked out when their daughter returns. Later Pnin meets Liza’s son for a visit but is flummoxed by his inability to relate to the boy, Victor, with books and a soccer ball. We then see Pnin entertaining people at a lodge by his Russian aptitude and that of his croquet playing, and the novel wraps up with an epic faculty party hosted by our main character. We are finally led to understand how the narrator knows Pnin as the narrator describes his run-ins with Pnin over the years and how the narrator is now the leader of the Russian department at Waindell college and wants Pnin to stay teaching, but sadly our main character has already left the grounds in his car. This was without a doubt one of the weirdest and yet funniest books I have encountered in years, and made more so knowing now that it was based on much of Nabokov’s life as a college professor. The descriptions alone of the various characters are worth the price of admission (which comes in the form of many dense Russian phrases Pnin uses over the course of the book), and the story itself weaves its way from that part of the world to America. The other characters are all unique creations but by far the most work went into Pnin and his wanderings and thoughts. I don’t think I have come across a “college faculty” book that entertained me this much since Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who has yet to read Nabokov as I did, as it is a hilarious take on the collegiate world and the great writer was at the top of his game when he composed this ridiculous tale. Thank you for joining me along on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome back to another installment of the Reading List. As mentioned previously I have tried to work in more BIPOC and female authors on this list, but I also have a pretty big backlog of “old white dudes” sitting on bookshelves around my apartment that I need to read to round out the list. To that end I decided to go with a book I managed to pick up at my former job working at a bookstore that I have always wanted to read: Colum McCann’s 2009 National Book Award winning Let the Great World Spin.
This novel was a great read for many reasons, not least of which would be McCann’s ineffable ability to tell a stunning yarn narrated by so many different people. The story revolves around New York in the 1970’s and an event that really happened: a man named Philippe did spread a wire between the twin towers and tightrope-walked across it in 1974. The entire novel circulates around this event and we are introduced to two of the main characters, Corrigan and Ciaran, in the second chapter. Corrigan is very devoted to the Order, a religious organization that demands his entire life. Ciaran is visiting him from Ireland after having grown up with his brother there. There is a burst of tragedy involving two other main characters and a freeway after Corrigan is driving some prostitutes home from court after being arrested, and we lose one of the main characters just like that. The rest of the novel delves into various themes: personal familial loss during the Vietnam War, artists trying to find inspiration in the dirty seventies New York and instead locating parties and drugs, the life of a prostitute on those same mean streets and how she survives, as well as other themes like graffiti and whether or not it should be considered art. We meet Claire and Solomon, parents of a young boy who goes to Southeast Asia on a mission to count the war dead, and we meet Lara and Blaine, the artists who have swore off the bad life and moved to a remote cabin in upstate New York, and we delve into the life of Adelita, the young nurse who falls into Corrigan’s life and turns it upside down. As stated this was one of the best books I have encountered in a long while, mostly due to the masterful way in which McCann weaves the rich tapestries of each individual live into something that is more than its parts, but also somewhat due to the narrative framing device of the tightrope walker. Most characters have something to gain and to profoundly lose, and are hoping for a better future for their children, but are not always granted it. In a very moving section towards the end we see one of Claire’s friends in loss, Gloria, adopt the very children of the prostitute that died in the before-mentioned car crash, and one of those children gets to narrate her own part of the work in returning to New York to see the dying Claire. It’s an amazing ending to a quite remarkable collection of stories and helps wrap them all up. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a great New York narrative (one before I read it I thought pertained to 9/11 and the WTC, but that horrible event looms silently in the future of most of these tales) from the seventies that also ties together many different characters and settings into one fantastic novel. Thanks for joining me along this reading adventure. |
AuthorJohn Abraham is a published author and freelance journalist who lives in the Twin Cities with his wife Mary and their cat. He is writing a speculative dystopian novel and is seeking representation and a publisher. Archives
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