A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess seemed to think that his seminal novel A Clockwork Orange wouldn't be as remembered if it weren't for Stanley Kubrick's acclaimed film version. According to Burgess, his best-known work is a simple morality tale, and he was less than thrilled that a) the American publisher omitted his final chapter, and b) that his work was the basis for a film that appears to glorify sex and violence. Although Burgess would prefer his work to have been presented unbowdlerized, he's not enamored with it: "I should myself be glad to disown it for various reasons" and that the work is "too didactic to be artistic", he says in the introduction.

I don't think that Burgess' American publisher was wrong in thinking the twenty-first chapter was a sellout. Burgess himself admits that there was no hint of change in the previous chapter, nor in the rest of the proceeding book. So while the author may contend that the twenty-first chapter is necessary symbolically, morally, and from a storytelling perspective, it certainly feels tacked on as it's a massive change in direction from the remainder of the novel, particularly a novel that is broken into three sections. So on the one hand, I'm not particularly satisfied with the final chapter, due to its stark difference from the rest of the novel. However, as Burgess points out, omitting it leaves something that's less a novel and more a fable.

Overall, I'm glad to finally tick this off my list, but I can't say that this is something I much enjoyed.

City of Thieves

David Benioff's City of Thieves begins with a conceit; that the author is relating his grandfather's experiences during the siege of Leningrad. This is, of course, patently false, but it might be a better hook than a typical cold open. Benioff has the good sense to stay out of his own way after this -- there's no interlude where he asks his grandfather "and then what happened," as they both sip tea or vodka.

This is a plot-driven novel, which certainly isn't bad -- it's easy reading, and I was able to finish it over the course of a few hours. Our protagonist is Lev, a malnourished seventeen year old boy, stuck in Leningrad during the siege. When a dead German pilot falls from the sky, Lev and his friends loot the body, and Lev is arrested by the NKVD. Rather than shooting him on the spot, they take him to prison, where he meets Kolya, a deserter with literary pretensions.

After spending the night in prison, Kolya and Lev are delivered to a colonel, who offers them their freedom for a price -- his daughter is getting married in a week, and he needs a dozen eggs so she can have a wedding cake. It's a surreal request, in a city where people eat dirt (from underneath a sugar factory), the bindings of books, "bread" made from bark flour, and where rumors of cannibalism abound (and are horrifyingly confirmed, here). With no other options, Kolya and Lev agree to the colonel's request, and are set back into the city, sans their ration cards. Without the ration cards, they will be unable to obtain even the meager amount of food that is available in the city.

This all occurs in the first forty pages. The remaining ~220 are devoted to the pair's increasingly difficult quest, as they meet numerous dead ends, and deal with various obstacles -- literature, an amateur butcher, a rooftop henhouse, German shelling, Kolya's libido, Russian troops, the winter, partisans, kept whores, the Einsatzgruppen, and chess. It's a fun adventure, and worth seeking out.

The Savage Detectives

I've heard Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives described as "the kind of novel Borges could have written." I'm not sure I agree, but it's not an entirely far-fetched comparison -- the two protagonists (based on Bolaño and a friend of his) are on a quest to find a respected member of an obscure avant-garde group, and their meanderings after the meeting (or after their attempt at the meeting) are told through a series of anecdotes, related by persons of varying degrees of intimacy and familiarity -- we have former lovers, traveling companions, members of antipodal literary movements, minor functionaries, neighbors, drinking buddies, etc. Each anecdote (vignette) is well crafted, and as such, this could be a work of Borges'. However, if this were a Borges novel (or the Borges novel, since there are none), I doubt that there would be as much sex, booze, or weed involved. Additionally, the vignettes would take place during the search for Cesarea Tinajero, rather than afterwards. They also might be a bit less mundane -- while the vignettes aren't from bland people, it seems every narrator is slowly losing their mind in a different way. While we occasionally (often?) encounter such narrators in Borges' work, the worlds he creates are slightly more fantastic (in the most literal sense) than what is in The Savage Detectives.

Regardless of my quibbling, this is a hell of a novel. The initial structure was a bit odd (now there's a complaint, especially considering the previous novel reviewed here is Nabokov's Pale Fire) in that the first section is a series of diary entries from a bookish young poet who is introduced to our future protagonists, drops out of law school, and becomes a member of their movement. This section is much devoted to his coming of age -- his first experiences with sex, with cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana. In contrast, the second section is the aforementioned vignettes, spanning twenty years (1976-1996), in which our diarist is mentioned once -- when a scholar denies that he (the diarist, not the scholar) had been a member of the "gang". (In fact, this reference to the diarist comes in the second-to-last vignette, as if to remind the reader how the novel began. The last vignette is a continuation of the first -- an old poet that the two protagonists had visited in 1976, before setting off on their journey. His story is broken up throughout the novel, but stitched together, his (half dozen? dozen?) mini-chapters form one complete narrative of an evening he had spent drinking with the two protagonists). The vignettes almost take the form of interviews: as if the person being questioned had been asked "Tell me about your experiences with Arturo Belano and/or Ulises Lima", or "Tell me about your experiences in [time and place] and how they relate to Belano and Lima," and then was given free reign to ramble onwards. The final section is a resumption of the initial diary, concerning the continuation of the protagonists' search for the vanished poetess.

Despite The Savage Detectives being a novel about poets and poetry, the only poem written by a character in the novel that we as readers are shown is Cesarea Tinajero's sole published poem, which, other than its title, is wordless. I find this to be a good joke, as well as a good contrast to Pale Fire, which featured almost a thousand lines of subpar poetry. (Additionally, the protagonists are described as "more drug dealers than poets", which may or may not be a fair characterization -- their stories are only told secondhand.)

Beyond crediting Bolaño, I must credit the translator, Natasha Wimmer, who certainly had a difficult task, as this novel is clearly filled with slang in the original. (More or less difficult than translating Juvenal? Probably less, since at least Wimmer has contemporaries who have lived immersed in whatever vernacular this is written in).

Absolutely recommended.

Midnight's Children

Who the hell am I to judge Midnight's Children? Not only did Salman Rushdie's novel win the Booker Prize, it won the Best of the Booker, marking it the finest of the 41 novels to be awarded said prize. (Of course, the Best of the Booker was chosen by online and text message voting, with 7800 people casting votes, so maybe it's not the indicator of quality one would think. Not that I didn't enjoy the novel -- Midnight's Children was an entertaining story, an introduction to the history of India (certainly not the final word, but my knowledge of Indian history prior to this was based mainly on Wikipedia articles), as well as much more than literary junk food. (And what is literary junk food? For me, my most recent dosage came in the form of this: Super Bowl Bound
by William Campbell Gault -- I remember reading this at age 12 and it being lots of fun, and I recently managed to acquire a copy. Total escapism.))

Being the contrarian that I am, I'd love to debate how as to whether this actually is the best novel to receive the Booker Prize. Unfortunately, this is the only winner of the Booker Prize that I've read. I suppose I'll have to rectify that at some point, several of the prizewinners are on my "to read" list. (This is ordinarily the part of the blog post where the author asks for recommendations. However, as far as I am aware, no one reads this blog.)

Self-indulgent digressions aside, Midnight's Children is absolutely worth reading, as it is regarded as Rushdie's finest novel. It follows Saleem Sinai from his birth at the moment of India's independence from Britain (the stroke of midnight, August 14th, 1947), through his childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. Saleem's life loosely mirrors that of the young nation, although most of his actions do not affect his countrymen -- he even spends a time living in Pakistan. The novel culminates in the Emergency, with Indira Gandhi's seizure of powers as well as some severe consequences for Saleem. (The novel isn't kind to Indira* -- her son Sanjay Gandhi is referred to having 'labia lips' every time he is mentioned -- in fact, 'labia lips' appears in the novel more than his given name.) This irreverence wasn't without repercussion for Rushdie, however -- Indira sued him for defamation, not due to her depiction in the novel, but due to one sentence, that I repeat here:

"It has often been said that Mrs Gandhi’s younger son Sanjay accused his mother of being responsible, through her neglect, for his father’s death; and that this gave him an unbreakable hold over her, so that she became incapable of denying him anything."

This line has been excised from my edition of the novel due to the terms of the settlement (which are apparently still in place despite Indira's death? This gives me the opportunity to use my favorite of the internet acronyms, IANAL) is happily provided by Rushdie himself (along with some background, and the sentence's proper place in the text) in his preface. There's not much that bothers me more than such textual edits, so it's nice to know such a sentence was meant to be in place.

*Ordinarily, I wouldn't refer to a historical personage by their first name, but "Gandhi" is so associated with Mohandas Gandhi (no relation), that I feel here I must make a distinction.