Madeleine

Published after her death, this is Andre Gide's account of his marriage, as well as entries concerning his wife that had been excised from his published journals. Gide was relatively silent on his wife and his relationship with her while she was alive (indeed, it was only after her death that the general public became aware of her name, as she was always "Emmanuelle" in his writings) as she was relatively withdrawn and self-effacing. So this is the first look at an important part of the writer's life (which he termed "the central drama of my existence"). However, it's extraordinarily self-indulgent.

Madeleine is divided into three parts -- Et Nunc Manet in Te (from what may be Virgil. ". . .and now lives in you. . ." or something similar), the aforementioned journal entries (1916-1939), and a letter to an unidentified correspondent (who had apparently written Gide for advice on getting married. Alternatively, it's Gide writing to his younger self, which is may be too meta to be the case.)

Et Nunc Manet in Te is Gide's account of his marriage, in which he attempts to explain why he wanted to marry his cousin, and why he behaved the way he did. On the one hand, it's a revealing look into the Gide and his reasons. On the other, it's an autoapologetic that must omit much, as it never mentions his illegitimate daughter (!) with another woman. Even if one buys Gide's crocodile tears, it's cringe inducing. The following journal entries aren't all that illuminating (perhaps they're better if one has read Gide's journals), and the letter is short and quite relevant, if covered earlier. The prose is lovely, but I wish I'd never been aware of this.

Ilustrado

It begins with a body -- that of seminal Philippine writer Crispin Salvador floating in the Hudson. Ilustrado follows Salvador's protege (seemingly sharing a name with our author) in his investigation into Salvador's death (surely, his mentor couldn't have killed himself, our protagonist thinks). Syjuco interweaves that plotline with our protagonist's reminisces from childhood, interviews and essays by Salvador, Salvador's various fictions, daydreams of our narrator, and running Filipino jokes on an everyman from a particular background.

It's tough for me to square how I feel about this one -- it's an enjoyable, engaging novel, but at any point did I feel "I'm glad I read this" or "I can't wait to recommend this to someone", and I'm not quite sure that I did. Why did I feel that way? Was it that the mystery didn't quite grab me, but I didn't feel pulled into madness or confusion the way I often am with similar works? Was it that all the Filipino cultural references went over my head? Was it that the protagonist progressed to someone I had difficulty relating to? There's only so many characters with a bit of a drug habit I can stomach before I get bored.

So, yes, this is something I consider worth reading, but I don't know if it's something I'll ever come back to, or say "Hey, you should really check out Ilustrado!" I will give Syjuco points for a few gratuitous Borges references, particularly a book one character finds towards the denouement.

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

A Long Way Down

Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down is a (comic? attempted comic?) novel about suicide -- four strangers meet at the top of a high rise, on New Year's Eve, each planning to jump, each for different reasons.

Each chapter presents a separate character's viewpoint, so we get to get inside everyone's head. Unfortunately, none of the characters are all that distinct -- there's a mid-fifties ex-TV star, a mid-fifties mother of a disabled son, an early thirties American wannabe rock star, and a teenager. So in theory, four quite distinct personalities, both due to different generations and different circumstances. Of course, much of the insight comes from "you'd think people in my situation would feel this, but instead, I feel this," from each character, which is interesting the first dozen times, but drags a bit as it continues. And it certainly continues.

It's not that that this is a bad novel, as in ineptly executed -- I'm just not sure the way it treats suicides is . . .sensitive enough? Realistic enough? Compelling enough? The forced interaction between the characters can get painful at times. I'll give Hornby credit for not wrapping everything up with a neat little bow at the end (everything is fixed and it's like nothing ever happened!), but that's about it.

A Mencken Chrestomathy

Sweet merciful crap did it take me too long to finish this. H.L. Mencken is an American icon, but if this is him at his best, I'm not going to be inclined to seek out much more of his work. Mencken has a reputation as a gadfly, which is certainly fulfilled here, but there's also lots of conjecture, speculation without supporting evidence, and general orneriness. Mencken can certainly turn a phrase (a nice line to end another vignette I wasn’t enamored with: "if women, continuing their present tendency to its logical goal, end by going stark naked, there will be no more poets and painters, but only dermatologists."), but many of his sections (such as on the relations between men and women, quoted above) are embarrassingly outdated.

This isn't a difficult read in that it's dense, hard to follow, or challenging, but Mencken's style hasn't aged particularly well; he reads like an ancient hackle-raising columnist, which is exactly what he is at this point. One can certainly see why he was censured and denounced -- there's loads of inventive invective in here, but the actual ideas are usually pretty half-baked. Unfortunately, I like the idea of Mencken more than I like the reality -- taking potshots at America, American customs and peculiarities, and particular Americans sounds a lot more interesting in theory than what Henry Louis does in practice. I'd love to be proven wrong at some point, but after slogging through this lackluster anthology, I'd put that as unlikely.

To Die in Italbar

Roger Zelazny ranked To Die in Italbar as his worst novel, but I strongly disagree; I would give that title to the uninteresting Damnation Alley, which features little of what characterizes his better work -- that is, snappy dialog, an interesting protagonist, exotic locales, and fleshing out of setting and motive. All of that is present here, although this isn't nearly Lord of Light.

Zelazny begins the novel by dropping several different characters in unrelated settings on us, before finally tying them all together. It's a bit of an information dump (and several of the characters, notably our female protagonist) aren't very well fleshed out. Still, he shoves the story along quickly enough that it's hard to get too bogged down in that.

Probably the weakest area of the story is the motivation of the man who's the objective of the main characters; his reasoning is a little too capricious. Of course, it's demanded by the plot, and can be handwaved away with a little deus ex machina, so maybe not. (I do like Zelazny's concept there, although it's hurried, as he notes, and weakly fleshed out). The final conflict occurs offscreen, observed secondhand by the reader, which can work well as a device, and works tolerably here.

A fun, easy read, but not one of Zelazny's better works.

The Lost City of Z

David Grann's The Lost City of Z was widely praised, and I can certainly see why -- Grann keeps the narrative moving, while skipping between his experiences, and those of Colonel Percy Fawcett, one of the final figures of the Age of Exploration, who disappeared somewhere in the Amazonian jungle looking for the remnants of an ancient civilization. (Or not so ancient, a contemporary of the Maya, the Inca, and the Aztecs.)

Probably the best point of the book was how interweaving Fawcett's and Grann's story allowed Fawcett to slowly come into the foreground; in the beginning, he looks like a quietly competent man, the last of the Victorian era explorers. By the end, he seems like a madman on a spiritual, rather than a scientific, quest. The weakest point was that the long winding up was unable to produce a satisfying conclusion -- Grann spends the entire book working up to his Amazon trip, and then nearly immediately comes to a conclusion. While he's able to tie this in with the end of Fawcett's story, it feels rushed, pat, and not fleshed out. (Of course, given that Fawcett disappeared ~80 years before Grann began the project, in a jungle, Grann was unlikely to find anything other than he did, which is old Indian legends).

Overall, this is a fun pop-archaeology/anthropology/history book, with an interesting hook.