Matthew Battles, Library: An Unquiet History

This book is essentially a history of the development of the library, from its earliest beginnings in Mesopotamia to the public library we use today. But it's much more. In elegant prose, Battles regales the reader not only with the "stories" of major developments in library sciences over the centuries, he also gives you loving descriptions of the ways in which books have been handled, bound, and catalogued as well as fascinating character studies of the many people who contibuted to developments in the library sciences: Aristotle and Cicero, John Harvard and Jonathan Swift, Melvil Dewey and Alfred Kazin, among others.

Library: An Unquiet History is further filled with trivia for the eager bibliophile, such as phony titles from Dickens's "false facade" collection, titles from books that exist only in literary works, descriptions of the personal libraries of famous writers and thinkers, even details on how the role of the librarian has changed over the centuries.

Interestingly, one thing that emerges from Battles's writing is an appreciation of the fragility of the library and the intellectualism for which it stands. In retrospect, the history of the library is really the history of its destruction and the suppression of its works, whether at the hands of a Julius Caesar or a Joseph Goebbels. But like a phoenix emerging from its own ashes, the library is testament to the endurance of intellectualism in the face of fundamentalism, demagoguery, and military might.

This is an interesting and well-written work of non-fiction that I enjoyed. You will, too.

Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

About four years ago I encountered a list of the top science fiction novels of all time, which included many I would have expected to see on the list (e.g., War of the Worlds, Stranger in a Strange Land, Brave New World) and several I had never even heard of (Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light and Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog, for instance). A Canticle for Leibowitz fell into the latter category and, after scoring used copies of the novels on the list that I hadn't read, I set about reading them as time permitted. Only now have I gotten around to the Miller novel.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is flat-out one of the best things I've read this year, and I can't believe it languished on my shelf all this time.

In terms of setting, the novel focuses on post-nuclear holocaust civilization as it struggles its way through about 1,800 years of development. Divided into three sections, the first section takes place about 600 years after the "Flame Deluge" (i.e., the present-day's nuclear holocaust) as civilization works its way thru a new Dark Ages; the second section takes place 600 years after that, as civilization undergoes a new Renaissance and Enlightenment; the final section brings the novel full-circle as mankind once again enters a Space Era, bringing with it the renewed capability for nuclear annihilation.

The story itself follows a cloister of monks who have managed to base their entire belief system and way of life on the writings of the Blessed Martyr Leibowitz: a collection of blueprints, letters, and even a shopping list. Miller makes abundant use of Latin phrases and terminology to fashion the world of the monastary, and the novel -- while beginning with a humor that is dark and reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove -- steadily develops a vision that is altogether bleak.

Read the book and check out the soundtrack. Great stuff here!

Cynthia DeFelice, Under the Same Sky

Joe Pedersen is the fourteen-year-old son of a farming family in upstate New York. It's the start of summer and Joe has his eye on a motorbike, but his parents won't simply buy it for him. The alternative: he agrees to work for the summer on his family farm, laboring side-by-side with migrant farm hands, and as he experiences first-hand the prejudice against his fellow laborers it quickly becomes the most important -- and educational -- summer of his life.

DeFelice gives the reader an engaging and suspenseful story with characters that are well-drawn. The humor that she incorporates into the saga of Joe's development enhances his characterization nicely, making him a "typical" young man who is learning the value of money, the strain of peer relationships, and the agonies of that first adolescent infatuation.

I enjoyed this book. You will, too!

Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

For about the past forty years or so there has quietly developed a whole subgenre of literature that offers a "retelling" of an established literary work, but from the point of view of one of the minor characters. Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea are good early examples of this genre, "retelling" Hamlet and Jane Eyre, respectively. This genre also describes the entire Gregory Maguire ouvre.

Which is one of the reasons why I feel somewhat disappointed by Atwood's latest novel, The Penelopiad. While I had hoped she'd give the Stoppard and Rhys treatment to the character of Penelope and the events of Homer's Odyssey, I was disappointed to find a novel that, well ... doesn't say much that I hadn't already heard before. Its "story" adheres closely to the Homeric epic for obvious reasons, but the voice of Penelope -- who laments her inferior position within the household, and comments on how little credit she is given in the "official" mythic accounts -- merely echoes that of Elpheba from Wicked (the catty competitiveness between Penelope and Helen even parallels that of Elpheba and Glinda). And having read Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale years ago (which I think is a masterpiece), Penelope doesn't seem to "say" much about man/woman relationships and society's perceptions of those relationships that hasn't been said already.

What I did enjoy about the book was the conversational approach Atwood took to giving the stories of the ancient Greek underworld and the myths, maintaining the spirit of the oral tradition from which all of these myths derive. Penelope peppers her narrative with countless sidebars involving characters we all know from Greek mythology, and these serve to season the narrative nicely with fresh qualities that a simple rehashing of The Odyssey wouldn't. All told, I was more interested in her observations of the underworld than her trite feminism and obvious characterization of a teenaged Telemachus.

Bottom line: Methinks Maguire's Wicked covered the same ground and did so more entertainingly and profoundly.

Philip K. Dick, The Man Who Japed

Here's a fun mind-bender of a novel!

The year is 2114. In post-nuclear holocaust America, Allen Purcell finds himself in a position of power as he quickly ascends the government ranks to the position of Director of Telemedia, soon to be solely in charge of all that society deems ethical and morally correct. The problem is, one night he sneaks into a public park and "japes" (i.e., vandalizes) a statue of Major Jules Streiter, the founder of Moral Reclamation and symbol of all that this society must hold in reverence. The other problem is, he doesn't remember doing it. Dick's novel follows Purcell as he tries to unravel the circumstances that made him jape the statue, all the while trying to elude the authorities, his business superiors, and a mysterious Doctor Malpardo and his lovely sister, Gretchen.

I'm a relative newcomer to the fiction of Philip K. Dick, but I can certainly understand the cult-like attraction to his work. Although he mostly wrote during the decades spanning the fifties thru the seventies (he died in 1982), his characters and worlds and situations seem amazingly contemporary: paranoic page-turners that offer a glimpse of what our future may (already) hold. I read this book in one sitting!

Check it out.

New Thomas Pynchon Novel Due on December 5th

There was great news on Yahoo! yesterday:

NEW YORK - Thomas Pynchon fans, the long wait is apparently over: His first novel in nearly a decade is coming out in December. But details, as with so much else about the mysterious author of such postmodern classics as "V." and "Gravity's Rainbow," have proved a puzzle.

Since the 1997 release of "Mason & Dixon," a characteristically broad novel about the 18th-century British explorers, new writings by Pynchon have been limited to the occasional review or essay, such as his introduction for a reissue of George Orwell's "1984." He has, of course, made no media appearances or allowed himself to be photographed, not counting a pair of cameos in "The Simpsons," for which he is sketched in one episode with a bag over his head.

This much is known about the new book: It's called "Against the Day" and will be published by Penguin Press. It will run at least 900 pages and the author will not be going on a promotional tour.

"That will not be happening, no," Penguin publicist Tracy Locke told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Like J.D. Salinger (who at one point Pynchon was rumored to be), the 69-year-old Pynchon is the rare author who inspires fascination by not talking to the press. Alleged Pynchon sightings, like so many UFOs, have been common over the years, and his new book has inspired another round of Pynchon-ology on Slate and other Internet sites.

Late last week, the book's description — allegedly written by Pynchon — was posted on Amazon.com. It reads in part:

"Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.

"With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The description was soon pulled from the site, with Penguin denying any knowledge of its appearance. According to Amazon.com spokesman Sean Sundwall, Penguin requested the posting's removal "due to a late change in scheduling on their part. We expect the description to be reposted to the book's detail page in the next day or two."

Locke declined comment on why the description was taken down, but did reluctantly confirm two details provided by Sundwall, that the book is called "Against the Day" (no title is listed on Amazon.com) and that Pynchon indeed wrote the blurb, which warns of more confusion to come.

"Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur," Pynchon writes. "If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction. Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck."


Watch for it on Amazon.com, foax!

Harald Weinrich, Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting

Since so much of a typical school year for me is devoted to reading (or re-reading) works of fiction, I like to immerse myself in some good non-fiction over the summer months, whether it be for pure entertainment or the enhancement of my classes. Here is a book that falls into the latter category. Literary works that offer depictions of an "underworld" or "hell" are staples of the A.P. English course I teach, and as one of the five rivers of the ancient Greek underworld, Lethe (translated in the Greek as "forgetfulness") is perhaps the most "literary" of the rivers (cropping up again and again in poetry and fiction as a metaphor for intoxication, for sleepiness, even for truth, etc.), and Weinrich's book traces the various ways in which memory and forgetting function throughout works ancient thru modern.

Admittedly, this book addresses a number of authors I've either never read (e.g., Simonides, Rousseau, Saul Bellow) or never even heard of (Themistocles? Chamisso? Kleist?), but the premise of tracing the notions of why memory is significant to, say, society's morals is a fascinating topic when Weinrich examines how memory (and, in turn, forgetting) functions within the works of Homer, Dante, Kant, Proust, Pirandello, and Weisel. Several years back, I read Roger Shattuck's Forbidden Knowledge, which similarly traces a common theme through the whole history of Western literature (starting with the Genesis myth and concluding with a reading of the works of the Marquis de Sade), and while I found Shattuck a much more engaging read, I thought Weinrich more focused in his analysis. Some of Weinrich's strongest points were perhaps reserved for addressing why memory is important to cultural literacy, what constitutes an event worthy of memory, and why forgetting serves social significance (beyond the society and time period in which its event occurred).

Make no mistake: this is hardly "beachside" reading for the average high school student. But it was something I found interesting and useful for classroom use, taken all in all.

Happy Bloomsday!

"Bloomsday is a holiday observed annually on June 16 to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce and commemorate the events in his novel Ulysses, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904. The day is also a secular holiday in Ireland. The name derives from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist in Ulysses, and June 16 was the date of Joyce's first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, when they walked to the Dublin village of Ringsend." [...]

Read more about it here.

Check out The Brazen Head, an excellent James Joyce-related website at The Modern Word.

And here's The Onion 's take on it! : )

Cheers!

Adam Nicolson, God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible

Over the past seventeen years of teaching I've been on countless commttees -- none having ever gone smoothly, mind you -- and it is the mere fact that a committee of fifty-four well-educated but religiously biased and politically savvy individuals can somehow reach consensus on one definitive translation of the Holy Bible that makes the whole idea of consensus within a committee all the more astounding!

Nicolson offers plenty of good stuff here. He provides an interesting portrait of King James I, a walking paradox whose desire to prompt this all-inclusive translation project stems from his own religious biases and immense ego; he details the meticulous and ingenious methods used by the translators to arrive at a text that is at once readable and literary, yet ambiguous and accessible; he weaves within the narrative the "dirty laundry" of many of the key translators, continually reminding the reader of how such a majestic text derived from very human readers; and he affords an abundance of details about the Jacobean era to give one a solid sense of the zeitgeist in which the King James Version was created.

(For me, this book works well with the teaching of Shakespeare and Milton, as well as the early Puritans.)

This was recommended to me by one of the students in my summer Newberry seminar on Milton's Paradise Lost, and is a good book for anyone who wants to see just what goes into the translation of text, especially one rife with religious and political significance. Although I've read numerous books on the writing and translating of the Christian Old and New Testaments (and I'll list a few good recommendations below), God's Secretaries reminded me of just how much political importance was associated with a particular bible translation ... something which I suppose I'd forgotten about.

Rather than its dogma, I prefer the study of biblical text from a literary standpoint -- the stories, the mythologies, and the meanings we, as readers, have historically granted these stories. A few books I've read on the subject, which are quite good (some of which are Pultizer nominees), include:

Charles Panati, Sacred Origins of Profound Things: The Stories Behind the Rites and Rituals of the World's Religions

Jack Miles, God: A Biography

Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought

Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism

I also enjoy the works of Elaine Pagels, especially Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, The Origin of Satan, and The Gnostic Gospels

If you (like me) are intrigued by why many human beings seek religion and a belief in a deity of their choice, you may wish to check these out.

Peace.

* BTW: I received as a Father's Day present a copy of Karen Armstrong's A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I'll let you know how it is. (6/19/06)

Calvin Trillin, Tepper Isn't Going Out

It's simple:

After a hard day at the office, Murray Tepper likes to park his car (always legally) along the streets of Manhattan and read the newspaper quietly. At first, no one other than drivers looking for parking spots (and who are much dismayed by the notion of anyone sitting in a parked car, reading) are bothered by this, but gradually Tepper garners the unsolicited attention of pedestrians who, inspired by this simple act of civil obedience, now crowd the streets in hopes of sitting on his passenger side, seeking advice and enlightenment from Tepper. Eventually the news media, a book agent, and City Hall itself become swept along in what turns into a hilarious legal battle for this Everyman and his right to park and read. And when questioned why he's sitting in his car reading, Tepper's answer is always simple: "There's seven minutes left on the meter."

Tepper Isn't Going Out is an entertaining and quick read. Aside from some mild satire involving city politics, media celebrity, and literary tastes, this is not a book to read for deep meanings ... and that's fine, too. In some respects, the novel does with/for New York City what A Confederacy of Dunces does with/for New Orleans (structurally, both novels are similar), and it made me notice something, albeit hard to describe, about a New York "style" of writing that is reminiscent of authors like J.D. Salinger and E.B. White -- an easy, crisp, and lightly witty prose style that, except for references to laptops and the internet, could have just as easily come from a 1956 issue of The New Yorker.

I'm not crazy about the cover of the book, for whatever that's worth. The pastel colors and Crayola-like drawing perhaps "work" with the prose style I just mentioned, but I don't know. Sometimes when I like a book but dislike its cover, I'll play a game with myself and try to "re-invent" the cover, and in this case a quirky Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post-like scene might work better. But again, for whatever that's worth.

This is yet another fun book with which I had the pleasure of starting the summer. I'm on a roll!

Frank Portman, King Dork

Every so often a book comes around that's just a fun read, and Portman's debut novel was just the ticket to kick off my summer reading. Recommended to me by a friend and colleague, the novel is, as its basis, young Tom Henderson's contemporary rant against what he calls the "Catcher Cult," the mindless belief amongst all Baby Boomers that somehow The Catcher in the Rye is the greatest book ever written. This he contends until one day discovering a stack of heavily annotated paperbacks once belonging to his father (who was a suicide when Tom was eight), and throughout the novel -- in between confrontations with his mom and stepdad, second-base hook-ups with girls, visits to a psychologist, and reveries about being in a band (and its hysterical revolving door of names and personnel) with his friend Sam -- "Chi Mo" (i.e., Tom) reads the various books in his father's collection in an attempt to learn more about the man he little knew (the stack includes, among others, Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain, Graham Greene's Brighton Park, Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, etc.).

From a literary standpoint, this is a fun book. We get to hear Tom's reactions to each of the books from his father's collection, and whether he's giving each book an accurate reading or not becomes part of the fun of his character development. Also, he returns to The Catcher in the Rye periodically to denounce its dated language (the Holdenisms) and irrelevance to contemporary youth culture, but watching Tom's experiences in the first semester of his sophomore year parallel those of Holden over his weekend (the girl obssessions, the fights, the contemplations on religion, the conflicts with authority figures; at times, Tom even unknowingly lapsing into a few Holdenisms of his own) adds to the book's charm.

But for anyone who has ever wondered what it's like inside the hormone-addled brain of a sixteen-year-old boy, this is pretty much on the mark. Some things never change, regardless of your generation. And if you want a book that rocks (the author is the lead singer of the Mr. T. Experience), Chi Mo's observations on various genres of rock, not to mention the band name fixation, are absolutely hysterical. If you've ever been in a band, this is a must-read!

Looking for a fun summer read? Here it is!

A Much-Needed Update!

Well, needless to say it's been a few months since I actually took the time to list anything I've read. The entire Spring got away from me, I must admit, and while I did a good amount of reading, I simply didn't have the time, patience, or inclination to log-on and write about it.

Here are a few of the books I have read since ... well, January 16th:

Rudyard Kipling, The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories -- I'd never read any Kipling before, and this was the first 2006 selection for our Saturday book group. I was impressed not only with how entertaining the stories were (despite their being quite politically dated), and how much they seemed ahead of their time in terms of style. (January)

George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman at the Charge -- Hilarious stuff! Flashman is a recurring Fraser character who finds himself in various historical events and periods. Here he is involved in the Charge of the Light Brigade. Flashman is hailed as a hero in all his escapades, but he's a liar, a bawd, a coward, and it makes his adventures that much funnier! This is laugh-out-loud reading! (February)

Franz Kafka, The Trial -- Creepy and relevant! (March)

Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son -- This was the next novel in my ongoing attempt to read all of Charles Dickens's novels. I began it on Wednesday, April 46th and finished it on Wednesday, May 31st. My goal was to finish its 948 pages before June 1st. This novel marks the start of Dickens's "Middle Period," wherein he tries to balance the humor and fun of his earlier novels with the socially conscious works of his later period. It was good. (April/May)

Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair -- A cool little book that was recommended to me by one of the students in my spring Newberry Library seminar. For bibliophiles it is a must ... especially if you've read Jane Eyre recently! Tuesday Next is the protagonist: a time-travelling literary detective! Simple, fun reading! (May)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (as published in installments in Stanford University's monthly facsimile of The Strand Magazine) -- Each year, Stanford's Discovering Dickens project publishes a Dickens novel in facsimile installments. This year, they gave Boz a rest and selected Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories from The Strand Magazine (circa 1891), and the stories are compellingly fun! (January thru April)

Gregory Maguire, Son of a Witch -- Never finished it. I'd read Wicked last year and loved it. This book just didn't grab me . . .


I'll get back in the update groove, dearest Reader. Just you wait. : )

Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge

It feels like it has taken me almost a year to read this book. In truth, it's taken me since late-September to get through this thing, for various reasons. But part of the blame must rest with the book itself which, for as much as I love Dickens's work, is rough going.

In a nutshell, Dickens's fifth novel is the story behind the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780, a sprawling week-long uprising that devastated portions of London and its neighboring countryside and led to a conflagration that destroyed most of the then newly built Newgate Prison. While it's considered a historical novel in the same way A Tale of Two Cities is "historical," Dickens focuses on mostly a variety of fictional characters who populate the tale, making this a work of historical fiction.

To be honest, the first half of the book is woefully dull and unhumorous, completely unlike any other Boz novel in that regard, and you read three hundred pages and it feels like a thousand because, try as you might, there are few characters you can grasp onto and enjoy -- even in their villainy. But the second half of the novel? It moves like gangbusters, and suddenly the reader is thrust into the heat of the riots, some humorous exchanges take place, a public execution is described beautifully (Dickens waxes poetic when it comes to blood and gore!), and you begin to care about the characters (as well as see how all that initial 300-page meanering falls into place!).

One Dickens scholar described this novel as akin to the "problem plays" of Shakespeare, which I can see. The character of Barnaby himself is an "idiot" (much like Faulkner's Benjy Compson) who occupies very little narrative space, all things considered. And while there are scattered examples of the stylistic flourishes Dickens will perfect in subsequent novels, the overall writing lacks that certain "flair" of excitement he invests in his other works. I suspect this is partly due to the circumstances under which this particular novel was written (i.e., it was planned a few years earlier to be his second novel, but became the reason for a battle with his publishers that, once settled, probably left Dickens with a bitter taste in his mouth anyways).

I recommend this book, but only to the die-hard Dickensians.

William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Knight's Tale" (from The Canterbury Tales)

Here is this year's selection for the "Obscure Shakespeare Play Reading Group," which will promptly meet tomorrow afternoon at the Irish Times to discuss the work.

The Two Noble Kinsmen -- which is Shakespeare's final play and a collaborative effort with his contemporary playwright, John Fletcher -- is a Jacobean retelling of Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale": Arcite and Palamon, the eponymous kinsmen and subjects of Thebean monarch Creon, are wounded in battle when Theseus, the Duke of Athens, battles Thebean forces to honor the dead to whom Creon refuses proper burial. Taken prisoner but mercifully nursed back to health, the two kinsmen cast eyes upon the lovely Emilia from afar and immediately voice their love for her, which results in a rift between the two and subsequent animosity. They fight (nobly, I might add) and, by play's conclusion, one gets the girl (though not who you might think) and one gets mourned. A gross over-simplification of the plot, admittedly, but that's it in a nutshell.

Like last year's selection of Coriolanus, this is in my opinion an incredibly underrated Shakespeare play. Part of the problem here, I suspect, is that this is one work that critics and scholars generally agree was a collaboration, and that is perhaps off-putting for the Shakespeare "purists" (of which I proudly assert that I, too, am). Nevertheless, it's a surprisingly well-paced and unified work of literature despite the fact that it is a collaboration between two authors of such differing ages and talents. I also get the impression that this play makes the most sense to a reader when s/he has read all the other plays and The Two Noble Kinsmen is the last to read, because so much of the play harkens back to previous plays and motifs within them: the Jailer's Daughter's madness over unrequited love reminded me of Ophelia in Hamlet; Emilia's contemplation of the two kinsmen via their "pictures" recalls Hamlet's bedroom discussion with Gertrude over the "counterfeit presentiment of two brothers" (Act III, Scene vi); the Schoolmaster's play-within-a-play is reminiscent of, among others, Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream; the list goes on and on, and while reading the play I noticed momentary glimpses of characters and situations and scenes from Coriolanus, Twelfth Night, Love's Labor's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Titus Andronicus, and even Macbeth. Fittingly, this is a play often placed at the conclusion of Shakespeare anthologies (I also occasionally read from The Riverside Shakespeare).

I had never read Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" (or, if I did back in high school, I didn't remember it), but in this case I read it after having read the Shakespeare play to sort of fill in gaps for whatever I found confusing, or to help me get a sense of what Shakespeare (and Fletcher) added to the storyline. Who would have thought I could use Chaucer as Cliff's Notes?! Ha!!

I enjoyed the play, and look forward to discussing it with Al, Mike, and Ben tomorrow.

Happy New Year, dear reader!

Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

Here's a fun little piece of classic children's literature that will delight any bibliophile!

The Phantom Tollbooth tells of Milo, a young boy whose ennui is getting the best of him until one day he discovers in his room a mysterious box and a small turnpike tollbooth within (some assembly required) with an accompanying map. Because he has nothing better to do, he assembles it and drives his little car thru the booth, whereupon he is transported into the magical kingdom of Wisdom: he passes through the Doldrums until he arrives at Dictionopolis (ruled by Azaz the Unabridged), where he learns that the Princesses Rhyme and Reason have been banished by the ruler of Digitopolis (the Mathemagician, who, incidentally, is the brother of Azaz), and the kingdom is in chaos. Milo then sets out, with the help of Tock the Watchdog (i.e., a dog with a clock in its body) and the Humbug on a road trip thru the Forest of Sight, the Valley of Sound, the Mountains of Ignorance, and the Sea of Knowledge (with a brief stop on the Island of Conclusions, which you get to by jumping to Conclusions) to rescue the princesses, and along the way he meets a delightful array of characters, like the Spelling Bee, Aunt Faintly Macabre, Dr. Dischord and his faithful servant, Dynne, the Dodecahedron, and countless others!

"Good" children's literature (like "good" kids' films) is layered, with fun and enchantment for the children while providing something worthwhile for the adults, and Juster maintains an excellent balance between the absurdity of the characters and plot with the puns, wordplay, and tradition of the narrative itself. At its core, this is a road novel with a protagonist who will, along the way, gain an awareness of his identity and likely change his ways; much of the novel will also harken to such works as Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking-Glass, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and even John Bunyan's Christian allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress. In all, you have here a work that delights in puns and allegory while the protagonist learns that there is "much to see, and hear, and touch" in Life!

Frankly, I had never heard of this book until a colleague spoke of it and gave it to me as a Christmas gift. I read it in one sitting on the first day of our holiday break, and am now happy to spread the gospel of Milo and his wonderous journey!

Do check it out, and tell me what you think!

Don DeLillo, The Body Artist

Talk about haunting!

The protagonist of this short novel is Lauren Hartke, a performance artist in her mid-thirties whose husband has recently committed suicide. The majority of the novel centers around Lauren as she copes with the stages of grief in an empty house, only to discover a mysterious "ageless" man who has apparently been living in the home. She makes various attempts to engage him in conversation, but his responses remain enigmatic and soon you (like Lauren) are wondering if this man is somehow a physical manifestation of . . . what, her husband? his spirit? their communication-challenged relationship? her own grief? her guilt? or her creativity?

The novel never really makes it clear, but one thing is for certain: DeLillo's prose contributes to the enigmatic quality of the work, clearly hovering between a terse, simple style and a not-quite-but-eerily-almost Magic Realism, bringing to mind the deliciously layered prose of Faulkner and Morrison.

This is a novel you can either knock-off during a lunch hour, or spend several days dwelling upon. And that's a good thing. I would recommend you dwell upon this novel a while -- resonances are there . . .

Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

If you're looking for a good non-fiction read that's both fascinating and hilarious, here's your book.

From the start, Roach displays a playfulness and wit when discussing her subject matter, but it never veers into the irreverent. In fact, she is always respectful of the dignity of those who have given their bodies to scientific inquiry and research, and her humor has the tone of when you are at the funeral of a loved one and you're keeping the conversation lighthearted because the circumstances are anything but. Yet, she balances nicely that wit with the probing of a journalist who is, well . . . curious, curous about how our bodies can contribute to science long after we've departed from them.

And that's the part that I found wildly compelling here. Roach explores the various ways in which, when donating one's body to scientific research, that body can be used -- from automotive safety testing (instead of crash-test dummies) to organ harvesting, from military ballistics testing (as targets) to reconstructive surgery practice, from airplane wreckage study to cannibalism, and many more. I expect that you will be as fascinated as I was to learn, for example, how cadavers are preferred over crash-test dummies when testing automobile safety (windshield strength, airbag deployment, restraining belt safety, etc.) because (unlike a C-TD) they help us more accurately learn "how much force a skull or spine or shoulder can withstand" without using live subjects (p. 87), or how authorities use a complex combination of recovered airplane wreckage, seating charts, and descriptions of body remains to determine the cause of an airline disaster.

As a literature teacher, I found this book to have endless connections with works of fiction I've taught over the years, because Roach offers history, statistics, and research on such topics as decapitation (Macbeth), medicinal cannibalism (Moby-Dick), experiments in live burial (Poe's fiction), reanimation (Frankenstein), wacky experiments on the human body over the centuries (Gulliver's Travels), and even a recent eco-sensitive movement within the funeral industry (albeit a small one, out of Sweden) to permit one's remains to be turned to compost and, say, used to enrich the soil of a tree (something which Henry David Thoreau, I believe, would have loved!).

This is an excellent book!

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

I'm still in the process of reading the entire Dickens canon in chronological order and, concurrently, teaching the novels at the Newberry Library. I've already completed seminars on The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and The Old Curiosity Shop; my next seminar (in the Spring of '06) will center on Barnaby Rudge and Martin Chuzzlewit and, from what I gather, these two novels are the redheaded stepchildren of the Dickens canon.

I started Barnaby Rudge several months ago and, with the exception of a few passages, it was rough going. I had to put it aside and read other things, having gotten about 180 pages into it and being unable to focus on one meaningful event or likeable character. I will eventually read it, but for now . . . it's D.O.A.

Martin Chuzzlewit, on the other hand, is an incredibly underrated Dickens novel. While the title seems to me as off-putting as that other off-putting title of 19th-Century fiction, Ethan Frome (which, unless you've read the book, you think it's going to be dreary and boring stuff . . . and nothing could be farther from the truth!), this is considered Dickens's "American" novel, for he had recently made his first voyage to the United States, eager to see for himself this legendary land of democratic values and independent spirit, but he returned to Mother England in disillusionment. Chuzzlewit is, in effect, his scathing response to Americans -- as boorish, gun-toting, dim-witted hypocrites who flaunt their "land of freedom" while justifying slavery and various shows of intolerance. Here in the P.C. twenty-first century, Chuzzlewit might be an appropriate book to revisit, for it offers a glimpse of what Dickens's contemporaries thought of American culture back in 1843 -- and in many ways, sadly, not much has changed.

As a story, it's pretty simple: Old Martin Chuzzlewit is supposedly dying, and various relatives come out of the woodwork to ingratiate themselves to him in the hopes of securing their fortunes. Mr. Seth Pecksniff (hypocrite extraordinaire) and his two daughters, Mercy and Charity, move in the secure the fortune, while young Martin Chuzzlewit is forced, via Pecksniff's manipulations, to leave the premises in disgrace, thereby leading him to journey to America in search of his fortune. In typical Dickensian fashion, sundry subplots ensue, numerous memorable characters are introduced (especially Mrs. Sairie Gamp and her good friend, "Mrs. Harris") and all loose ends are neatly tied-up by novel's end, leaving the "bad" characters punished accordingly and the "good" ones duly rewarded for their virtue. As in his previous novels, money is once again a major element of the narrative, for it helps to distinguish the characters by showing the reader who values money, who schemes for money, and who is virtuous despite a lack of money.

Martin Chuzzlewit demonstrates a maturity of style and narrative control that his previous novels lack. By this time, Dickens had experimented with trying to sustain two separate narratives simultaneously (the Nicholas and Kate Nickleby plotlines come most immediately to mind), but here he seems to do a better job of balancing the plotlines. From what I understand, Dickens was quite proud of this novel and had hoped to be immortalized as the author of Martin Chuzzlewit. Although "Boz" would go on to produce more lasting and universal novels in his upcoming decades, this is not a novel to be ignored. It's quite good, actually.

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

Truth be told, I'm much more of a Tolkien fan than a Lewis fan when it comes to each writer's respective fantasy fiction. The Lord of the Rings is an incredible literary work, and functions on so many different levels (as fantasy, as quest narrative, as allegory, as a modern retelling of every epic from Beowulf onward ...) and, for all I know, The Chronicles of Narnia may likewise be a work of such depth. If this volume, however, is any indication of what the entire Chronicles is like, I'm probably better off sticking with Tolkien.

As a narrative, the novel pretty much remains in the "children's literature" vein of, say, The Hobbit. Lewis's tale of four children who discover a portal into the snow-ridden secret land of Narnia via a magical armoir, and become embroiled in an epic battle of Good vs. Evil, has a memorable collection of characters, enchanting settings, and a distinctly Christian subtext. For me at least the main turn-off is the style which, because of its quaintly repetitive structure (not to mention a somewhat intrusive narrative consciousness), never really transcends the level of an elaborate children's story.

I'm not suggesting that this novel is necessarily flawed as a result of this. This was no doubt Lewis's design, and there's obviously nothing wrong with exploring Good vs. Evil through a children's story. Part of the problem here is that I've only read this one novel (which is Volume Two of the entire seven-volume Chronicles), so I'm taking the work out of its larger context. Just as The Lord of the Rings begins in the Shire with Bilbo's birthday and, over the course of the narrative, increases in complexity and darkness, so too might The Chronicles. I'd have to read all seven volumes to find out. Unfortunately, reading The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe doesn't leave me hungering for more; I think I get the idea here.

Has anyone else out there read it? Am I missing something?

Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Pop culture is a tricky fence to straddle. On the one side you have the "critics," who diminish the importance of pop culture analysis, deeming it an exercise in futility because little worthwhile can come from that which, by its nature, is ephemeral (not to mention "popular"). On the other side you have the analysts themselves, seeking to make sense of (and give relevance to) the slippery miscellania of our Existence.

Enter Klosterman, who straddles that fence nicely in this collection of essays (each of which is separated by an informal blog-like "rant" or observation that offers something of a segue from one essay to the next). Whether he's examining the social significance of The Real World, the influence of internet porn on cultural definitions of beauty, the amorous conquests of The Fonz, the importance of Clint Black lyrics, or why Luke Skywalker is the first cinematic representation of that which would years later become known as Generation X, Klosterman draws from a wide range of topics -- sports, art, film, TV, politics, religion, etc. -- and provides compelling links among all of these to demonstrate that "[i]n and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever 'in and of itself'."

This book isn't for everyone, of course. My guess is that those of us born between, say, 1960 and 1982 (roughly the Gen X'ers or, as my friend Dave calls us, the Electric Company generation) will get the most amusement from Klosterman's observations. Folks who are either older or younger than this will simply not care about his swipes at Billy Joel's Glass Houses or his HBO reveries. Perhaps that's the biggest problem with pop culture analysis: it often fails to engage those who are not part and parcel of that particular "moment" in pop culture. But Klosterman makes valient attempts to bridge that gap, as when he writes the following:

Here is the easiest way to explain the genius of Johnny Cash: Singing from the perspective of a convicted murderer in the song "Folsom Prison Blues," Cash is struck by pangs of regret when he sits in his cell and hears a distant train whistle. This is because people on that train are "probably drinkin' coffee." And this is also why Cash seems completely credible as a felon: He doesn't want freedom or friendship or Jesus or a new lawyer. He wants coffee.

Within the mind of a killer, complex feelings are eerily simple.

This is why killers can shoot men in Reno just to watch them die, and the rest of us usually can't.

This is a humorous and insightful collection.