Homage to Catalonia/Down and Out in Paris and London

In Homage to Catalonia, it's easy to see the ideas behind both Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four taking shape. Orwell's experiences in the militia fighting against Franco's coup are similar to Michael Shaara's sketches of Gettysburg in The Killer Angels, in that they're an inset, rather than the complete picture. (Of course, this is significantly more forgiveable in Orwell's case, since he's writing about his experiences, rather than about the scope of the coup and the subsequent war)

If I wasn't aware of the history, I would think that the final third of this book was embellished -- street battles between members of the same side during a civil war? I've seen it argued that the Soviet Union's assistance hurt the Left in Spain more than it helped, and after reading this, it's certainly a perspective I have to take seriously.

Overall, this is a fascinating work, both from its perspective on soldiering in an unfamiliar land, as well as Orwell's analysis of the political situation (which, until the end, he keeps in separate chapters, which is a nice touch if one wants to focus on one or the other). What is obvious to us over sixty years later (that the USSR's purpose in Spain was to advance its own foreign policy, rather than necessarily to help the Republicans) was tragically not so during the war, much to the detriment of the dead.

The second work in this book, Down and Out in Paris and London, shows Orwell's socialism in if not quite an inchoate form, at least not at its final stage of development. The descriptions of the lives of poverty led by waitstaff, tramps, and residents of cheap hotels are real, but the feeling is similar to Pulp's "Common People":

cos when you're laid in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you call your Dad he could stop it all

In short, that Orwell is living like this to have a taste of the life, not because he has no alternatives. This is illustrated when, fed up with working fifteen hour days underground as a "plongeur" (a dishwasher/errand boy), he writes a friend in London, who is able to get him a job quickly, so Orwell is able to leave his (miserable, but not untypical) fifteen hour workday.

The second portion of Down and Out in Paris and London is along the same lines -- when Orwell arrives in London, and is informed that his position will not be ready for a month, he decides to spend the time slumming, sleeping in workhouses and public dormitories. Here, the conditions are truly appalling, and Orwell does meet some fascinating characters. However, he does occasionally slip into lecturing, but that can be forgiven in such a young (at the time) author.

Clearly, Down and Out in Paris in London is no longer quite relevant -- not because no one in major Western cities lives or works in poor conditions, but because the conditions described here no longer exist. It is a worthwhile document of a bygone time, and it's worthwhile to see a young Orwell's ideas taking shape. Homage to Catalonia is, in my opinion, the more significant and interesting work here.

Interpreter of Maladies

I really wanted to hate Jhumpa Lahiri's debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies. All these neat, precious stories where everything is tied up with a bow at the end. (Maybe I was just upset because the eponymous story in the collection is about an interpreter who works for a doctor, rather than some sort of shaman). Fortunately, I was not able to -- the stories flow quite well, as the limpid prose is eminently readable, and Lahiri makes it easy to become invested in her characters.

Having previously read Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children helped me avoid too much culture shock towards Lahiri's Indian characters and settings, but she does an excellent job at making the exotic familiar -- all of Lahiri's characters are easy to relate to, and as such, there comes familiarity with the things, foods, and customs that they are familiar with.

Despite their ease of reading, I have little desire to revisit these stories. They're all the sort of work that I'm glad I read, but there's little pleasure to be had here, in re-reading. I'd love to be proven wrong, but this is an experience to have once. The characters are good to have met, and the craft is to be admired, but there's little memorable or to be reflected upon.

One thing I wish I could remember -- in "Sexy", an American (of non-Indian extraction) asks an Indian what the Taj Mahal is like, and is told: "The most romantic spot on earth. An everlasting monument to love." I wish I could remember what work I'd been exposed to said of the Taj Mahal "it's a tomb" to emphasize how misguided the desire to build one for a living woman was.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

David Foster Wallace's book of "essays and arguments" is, if nothing else, a fantastic way to enrich one's vocabulary. Luckily, reading Wallace is much more than a lexical exercise -- he's engaging, wryly funny, insightful, prone to digression, and given to self-examination and introspection. In other hands, the consistent footnotes and self-glossing could be distracting, but all of these essays flow quite well.

The collection is without a unifying theme, although there are two essays on tennis -- one on Wallace's experiences as a regional junior player from roughly twelve to eighteen (from twelve through fifteen, he was "near great"), and the other on Michael Joyce, at the time ranked in the 80s in the world. The latter is dated several years later, and Joyce so impresses Wallace that Wallace resolves not to mention his experiences on the junior tennis circuit, where he (Wallace) had been highly ranked in his small corner of Illinois.

The capstone and eponymous essay uses copious footnotes, and is an extremely in-depth followup to the previous essay on the Illinois State Fair (a magazine had sent Wallace to the Fair the previous year, and had liked the results so much that he was sent on a luxury cruise to attempt to duplicate his hyperliterate-fish-out-of-water act). Unfortunately, it's also the only essay in the collection where Wallace moves from wry observer to neurotic complainer, as his interactions with the crew (and his reflections upon these interactions) display paranoia. He is able to laugh at himself, but it's a little unsettling.

Overall, this is an extremely engaging and diverse collection of essays. While two (television and literary criticism) can be a bit dense, they're all worth reading. It's also interesting to see the differences in style -- the early essays lack footnotes, the television essay uses them for their ordinary intended purpose (cites), the Lynch essay uses them extensively (and is delivered in vignetted form), and the title work uses them on nearly every page, with occasional sub-notes (!). Extremely engaging and thought-provoking.

The Killer Angels

I have never heard of a historical novel quite like Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning effort; while other novels certainly feature equal or greater depths of research, Shaara is alone, as far as I know, in using only primary sources in his attempt to bring to life the Battle of Gettysburg. In a brief (one page) note, Shaara explains why he did so thusly:

You may find it a different story from the one you learned in school. There have been many versions of that battle and that war. I have therefore avoided historical opinions and gone back primarily to the words of the men themselves, their letters and other documents. I have not consciously changed any fact. I have condensed some of the action, for the sake of clarity, and eliminated some minor characters, for brevity; but though I have often had to choose between conflicting viewpoints, I have not knowingly violated the action.

Shaara also cites Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage as an inspiration for his novel -- that reading history isn't enough to induce the feeling of being there. Of course, this raises the question as to what liberties Shaara took -- what minor characters he eliminated or condensed, and why was this done? (Although, who needs a dozen different aides to a general when one will do?)

The Killer Angels is split into chapters in which the narration is focused on one man, from a third person perspective. I believe this is the best way to convey the scope of the planning, buildup, and execution of the battle, as Shaara rotates the viewpoint with each chapter (although the narration remains third person omniscient). The biggest criticism of this usage is that the thoughts of the most recurring characters (Longstreet for the Confederacy, and Colonel Chamberlain for Union) can get repetitive -- Longstreet constantly despairing of his inability to persuade Lee to engage in a more defensive posture, and Chamberlain doting on his younger brother, Tom. It is precisely because of this narrative structure that The Killer Angels succeeds as a humanistic portrait of the battle, rather than a historical analysis -- real people can be tedious and repetitive.

While I don't have the historical chops to go into whether or not Shaara's narrative is a) faithful to the sources he worked from and b) in line with what modern historians believe, I feel that I should point out that after the battle begins, he neglects to mention much beyond Little Round Top (because that's where Chamberlain was, and where Longstreet, on Lee's orders, attacked) and Pickett's Charge (because Longstreet and Chamberlain were again both involved). While the action on Little Round Top and the Federal center were not inconsequential to the battle, other areas of engagement are glossed over. So while the novel is large in scope, it seems almost narrow here.

The Killer Angels is a worthwhile, easy read, and certainly made me want to look more into the Civil War in general, and the Battle of Gettysburg in particular. In that respect, it is a smashing success. Is it a worthy Pulitzer winner, though? Out of the winners I have read, I would rank it next to last, ahead of only Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies.

Lords and Ladies

Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies is one part of an extensive series (thirty eight total novels, according to Wikipedia), but I was able to read it as a stand alone novel, without being familiar with the rest of the series, or its extensive mythology. This is a major point in its favor, as many series can be impenetrable if the reader isn't familiar with the basic premise and previous plotting.

Lords and Ladies is pretty standard comic fantasy (although Pratchett is one of the originators of the genre, so maybe that's not a totally fair criticism) with witches, elves, dwarves, trolls, wizards, and a jester who has become king. The conflicts are predictable, but the resolution not quite so. A worthwhile way to spend some time, although I have little desire to read the rest of the series. (It is, however, a comforting thought that if I were struck so, it would not take me an inordinate amount of time).

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.

Heat

Bill Buford's Heat is the story of one man's descent into madness. Buford meets Mario Batali, the celebrity chef, and proceeds to insinuate himself in the kitchen of one of Mario's restaurants, Babbo. Buford's goal is to soak up culinary knowledge for his own benefit, to be a better cook at home. Buford begins in the prep kitchen, where food is initially prepared (dicing carrots, trimming fat and bone from cuts of meat, preparing herbs) so the service in the evening just has to cook. From there, he moves around the kitchen, working the grill, the pasta station, and plating food.

After a year in the kitchen, Buford wants more. Despite his proficiency (he's already quit his job as an editor, and is working full time as a line cook), he takes some time off from the restaurant to spend time in Italy with the family who taught Mario how to make pasta. The family is only too happy to take on a friend of Mario's, and Buford makes several trips, becoming quite close to the family, who live in a backwater Italian town. He is even shown a tortellini recipe on the condition that he keeps it from Mario.

This still isn't enough for Buford, and he returns to Italy (with his long-suffering wife, who he has convinced to quit her job as well) to work with a Tuscan butcher, who Mario's father had worked with. The butcher is a larger than life individual, much like Mario -- at Buford's first encounter with him, everyone in the shop is drinking, and the butcher is declaiming the Divine Comedy. At the butcher shop, Buford is instructed by the butcher's mentor, and learns that not all countries have the same cuts of meat -- he's relating to Mario the various cuts he's learned on the leg, and Mario stops him, laughing, with the revelation that he's never heard of these cuts. The student has, while not quite surpassed the master, become something different.

The book ends with Buford and Mario enjoying a night on the town, and Mario offering to help Buford start a restaurant. Buford demurs, saying now that he's master Italian cooking, he needs to follow the example of Catherine di Medici, and master French.