The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

Don't judge a book by its cover, or an author by his appellation. I saw "Breece D'J Pancake" and cringed. I figured I knew exactly why someone would choose to do that, and exactly what kind of stories they would write. Luckily, I was way off; from reading the afterword (or one of them, anyway), I learned that the awful punctuation was the fault of the first magazine that published one of Pancake's stories, and he kept it, because why not? Secondly, these stories aren't precious and tedious at all.

The first story in this collection, "Trilobites" is one of the best short stories I've ever read. Some critics, (like Joyce Carol Oates, on the freaking cover of my edition, and at least one of the fore and afterwords) liken Pancake to Hemingway, and while I can see it, I don't think that's wholly accurate. Hemingway is just more sparse than Pancake is -- Hemingway's protagonists seem more detached. The rest of the collection is quite strong, as well. Sure, there are ebbs and flows (the foreword singles out the gothic "Time and Again" as an ebb), but the stories remain inventive and haunting. Recommended unreservedly.

That said, while this is great writing, it isn't always fun reading. These are depressing stories about lost and desperate people, the kind who "have lost a wheel, fallen off a biplane wing, or crossed yourself left-handedly . . .". Pancake doesn't let his characters blur together -- sure, these are miserable people, but they all have very different reasons and circumstances, and he's not going to let you forget that.

Hopscotch

There are at least three different ways to read Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch; the first is to read the first fifty-six chapters in sequence (until one reaches a line of stars signifying "everything after this can be ignored" at the end of Chapter 56). Doing so will give the reader a frustrating, choppy, occasionally dense, tedious, and unengaging experience. Unfortunately, following the author's instructions (laid out conveniently in a "Table of Instructions" before the rest of the text begins) results in the same experience, only longer. While the additional chapters do help to fill out some events that may be unclear upon a "normal" reading, (such as making the narrative a little more linear, as with Pola), or flesh out a backstory (Morelli/the old man), or add color with excerpts from referenced works/relevant passages/letters, the novel still has the same problems as with a linear reading -- that the happenings seem pointless. Producing a boring novel about expatriate bohemians in Paris is one thing, but a boring novel that the back cover blurb pitches as "the dazzling, free-wheeling account of [protagonist's] astonishing adventures" seems to be a little more difficult. (Not that I am opposed to the selection of flattering back cover blurbs. Far from it.) It's not the flouting of conventional narrative structure that bothers me about this novel -- it's that all the flouting of conventional narrative structure feels so pointless. While the pace picks up a little when the action returns to Argentina, it's not nearly enough to save this.

On the Road

Jack Kerouac's On the Road is one of those novels that I'd assumed would be assigned to me at some point in English class. It wasn't, and I've managed to put it off until now. I'd expected this to be a tedious read; this impression was due to being aware that Kerouac had originally typed the novel on one continuous scroll. Knowing this, I (erroneously) concluded that On the Road was a drug-induced frenzy of a novel, with exclamations galore, vague transitions, and endless hallucinatory passages. On this note, I was very mistaken; the novel is a pleasure to read, and Kerouac's occasional exuberance and general tone is, if not conversational, easy to digest.

Another way On the Road threw me was the fumbling towards adulthood of the characters, the growth shown by the Kerouac figure, in contrast with Dean Moriarty, who Kerouac begins obsessed with, before finally abandoning. Again, I'd thought the novel was about indulgence in hedonism and restlessness, rather than growing towards responsibility as one aged.

Overall, On the Road was like nothing I had expected, given what I'd thought of it, and was an enjoyable and worthwhile read, a worthy slice of Americana, &c &c

The Power and the Glory

I was at first tempted to read The Power and the Glory as entirely allegorical, that the travails of the unnamed whisky priest are the persecutions of the Church in Mexico, and that his weaknesses represent the failures of the Church, due to it being an organization made of fallible men, as hard as they try to do good. However, this doesn't work particularly well, (with the exception of the final chapter) although the novel is not without allegory -- the half-caste mestizo as the Judas figure is merely the most obvious. While the priest's suffering and persecution is not Christ's, or that of a saint (contrast the whisky priest with the story of Juan, a martyred priest who certainly could be a saint that a devout woman reads to her children), he is unequivocally a man of God, despite his very human failings -- he had been proud and self-satisfied prior to the persecutions and outlawing of Catholicism, and afterwards, he turned to drink, even fathering a child in an alcoholic stupor. He is unable to regret this unconfessed sin, as he loves the child, so how can he truly repent for a sin he is not sorry for? (Not that it matters much anyway, as a renegade priest, one does not have many opportunities to attend confession.)

The novel is spent in squalor, among the poor towns of that certain Mexican state where it is set. (The setting is meant to evoke Tabasco, but Greene changes some of the geography. All place names are real, as far as I am aware. There are certainly towns with the names mentioned in the novel in Mexico.) All of the characters that we meet share a certain hopelessness with the priest -- there's Tench, the dentist, who wants ether, drink, and to be elsewhere -- although not necessarily back in England with his family. There's the lieutenant, an atheist, a self-described "man of the people" who can't relate to anyone and commits atrocities. There's Fellows, the happy-go-lucky banana salesman, his hypochondriac wife, and his precocious daughter, Coral. The only one of them who feels real is Coral, she's likely dead at the end of the novel. While the people don't always feel real or fully fleshed out, the settings do -- like jump cuts in a movie, each place is realized.

Overall, I have to be about the ten thousandth reviewer to conclude that this is an excellent novel, that Greene manages to write a pro-Catholic novel without it being merely an apologia. This, of course, makes it infinitely easier to read. The ending of the novel seems more allegorical than anything, which is satisfying, because on a real level, there can be no happy ending.

The Drunkard's Walk

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives illustrates the difficulties of writing a popular book on statistics: before getting to one's point, one must spend several chapters introducing concepts in successive layers, to build a foundation for the reader to understand the eventual point. Leonard Mlodinow does this here, with the first nine of the ten chapters building the foundation for the tenth. Although such a narrative structure could prove awkward and threaten to capsize, each of the ten chapters here are engaging, filled with historical anecdotes, and clearly explain the concepts and tenets of statistics and probability. Unfortunately, the final, eponymous chapter, while the realization of all the concepts discussed previously, feels almost truncated, because since the author spent nine chapters getting us to this point, it feels like its assertions could be fleshed out over several more chapters, rather than being terminated where it is.

This is certainly a good starting point as a popular introduction to statistics -- although many of the concepts introduced are counterintuitive, they're explained and fleshed out relatively quickly and easily -- I particularly enjoyed the chapter on Bayesian probability in this regard. While not nearly as mathy as it could have been -- the mathematics of probability are glossed over (none of those hideous upside-down 'u' symbols) -- The Drunkard's Walk does feature paragraphs liberally sprinkled with numbers. The only issue here is that any math is free form, and some pages read like giant word problems. Rarely is everything tied together neatly with equations, which can make for necessary re-reading. However, as a popular primer, one would be hard-pressed to do better. (A slightly more in depth look at similar themes is available in Chances Are . . . by Michael and Ellen Kaplan.)