I'm a fan of Paul Auster and was deeply saddened by the news of his passing earlier this year. I've read all of his novels, and even though I thought I'm a fan of Paul Auster and was deeply saddened by the news of his passing earlier this year. I've read all of his novels, and even though I thought that 4321 was a total borefest I was looking to reading more of them; and then, suddenly, he was gone, and with him all the possible books he could have still written.
Luckily, I had one more to go. An ace in the hole. Baumgartner, published a year before his death. How did it get past me? I don't know, but I was happy to dig in. Even more so. I was happy to say goodbye by reading one last novel by a favorite author.
The good news is that, contrary to his previous tome, Baumgartner is mercifully short; the whole thing clocks in at just a little over 200 pages. The bad news is that just like its predecessor, it is once again an absolute borefest.
The plot - however little there is of it - revolves around the eponymous protagonist, Sy Baumgartner, who spends almost the entirety of the book reflecting on his life and people that he knew, focusing mostly on his late wife, Anna. Baumgartner spends the majority of the books musing about Anna and how they met, how she changed his life, and how her absence still affects him. It could be an absolutely beautiful homage to lost love - even if fictional - if it weren't so incredibly dull. I'm sure you've heard readers dismiss literary fiction as "boring", "plodding", or "not having a real plot" - this is Baumgartner to a T. This novel is the very definition of navel-gazing; however, one must ask, why should we even bother to attempt to gaze at something that was done so many times before, and so much better - including by the author himself?
It's pretty clear that Baumgartner is a fictional stand-in for Paul Auster himself; numerous events from his life were clearly inspired by Auster's own experiences. It's obviously not a bad thing - most authors draw inspiration from their own lives. In this case, however, Auster doesn't really do anything with his fictionalized alter-ego; Baumgartner is sympathetic, but unremarkable, and nothing particulatly interesting or inspiring ever happens to him. We can relate to him, but we can't learn from him, we can't be inspired by him, there's nothing that we could take away from our brief acquaintance. Putting it bluntly; if Baumgartner did not exist, it would be wholly unnecessary to invent him, and the world would chug along just fine.
If you haven't read any Auster, I would suggest his other, earlier novels, such as The Brooklyn Follies. That novel is populated with interesting characters, who undergo a journey of discovery along with the reader - the exact opposite of Baumgartner, where nothing ever happens and nothing is learned along the way. It makes me sad to know that this is Paul Auster's last novel; it reads almost like a draft of something bigger, a sketch of something deeper that he was working on, but now will never finish....more
The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that they are not mended again.
First published in 1948, shortly before racial segregatiThe tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that they are not mended again.
First published in 1948, shortly before racial segregation became official state policy in South Africa, Alan Paton's debut novel is a quiet, but powerful book, whose impact lingers on long after its last page is turned.
Much has been said about Cry, the Beloved Country, and although decades have passed since its initial publication the novel continues to be as moving and touching as it was when it first appeared. At its heart it is a tragedy - the tragedy of its protagonist, the Zulu priest Stephen Kumalo, who leaves his village and ventures to the metropolis of Johannesburg in search of his missing son, Absalom. Behind the personal story of pastor Kumalo lies the tragedy of post-colonial South Africa itself; with its beautiful, bountiful land locked away and kept in the hands of the white minority, forcing the majority black population to exploit what little resources they were allotted and in turn creating conditions for crime and exploitation to flourish. Any society established on unequal principles cannot be just and fair, and throughout the book we see example after example of that; however, we also see glimmers of hope and beauty beneath opression and decay.
Paton was a deeply religious man, and his Christian beliefs greatly influenced his writing; not only in his position against Apartheid, but also in his prose itself. Cry, the Beloved Country can be described as almost biblical in tone; Paton's prose has this ethereal, gospel-like quality to it, but its reader never feels like being preached to from a pulpit. The book strives to see the good in people, even those unfairly privileged, and does not shy away from noticing wrongs done by the oppressed. Paton seeks Christianity as a positive force and possibly the only way for things to change for the better, but at the same time cannot turn a blind eye to its teachings being ignored by those who pride themselves to be the bearers of civilization founded on its values. The truth is that our Christian civilization is riddled through and through with dilemma. We believe in the brotherhood of man,, remarks one of the characters in the novel, but we do not want it in South Africa. We believe that God endows men with diverse gifts, and that human life depends for its fullness on their employment and enjoyment, but we are afraid to explore this belief too deeply.
Much has been written about the book since its initial publication, and it is astonishing - and saddening - to see how relevant it is in our time. Cry, the Beloved Country is a deeply felt, profound novel written by a deeply sensitive and empathetic man, and one that I am glad I have read....more
Do you enjoy reading about celebrities? Do you scour all the news outlets for the latest gossip, browse social media in hopes of catching the latest cDo you enjoy reading about celebrities? Do you scour all the news outlets for the latest gossip, browse social media in hopes of catching the latest candid shot of your favorite star? If so, chances are you'll like this book; you might possibly even be able to overlook its many flaws and get some enjoyment out of it. If not, then it's a position that's better avoided - you'll probably end up actively disliking it.
As the title suggests, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is the story of the relationships the eponymous fictional star had over the span of her life; now, a retired recluse in her twilight years, she's willing to come out of her shell and spill the beans to a young journalist that she's personally selected for the task? Why, you might ask? There's a reason, but it's not very good - in fact, it's so bad it almost made the already mediocre experience of reading the book even worse.
The biggest flaw of the book is sadly the one that perpetuates throughout it from beginning to end; The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a case study of telling instead of showing. We are constantly told - via the novel's narrator, and other forms of additional material, such as newspaper clippings - about the protagonist's immense talent, yet we are never shown what exactly warrants such judgement. It's easy to invent a famous movie star and tell everybody of their incredible talent a career; it takes a little more skill to actually convince your readers to believe in them, and this is where the novel falls flat on its face.
Not that it does much better on other front. Despite being a contender for Goodreads' 2017 best historical fiction, it manages to evoke perilously little - if any - of the time and place it is supposed to portray; it is especially jarring, since it switches between two periods, and constantly fails to show the reader how little difference is there between both; character speak and behave in the exact same way across decades. To make it worse, none of the people in the book - including Evelyn herself - are particularly interesting; in fact, despite being the star of the show, Evelyn might be the worst of them all. You might be forgiven if you forgot that she's actually Cuban, since the author certainly did - the fact is brought up only a few times in the book, and only considered by Evelyn herself near the end of the book. Evelyn's ethnicity doesn't stop her from rising up at insane speed all the way to the top in Hollywood in the 1950's, and that's only because she is not really an immigrant with her own personality; she's just a dollar store Marilyn Monroe with a little more tan.
More could be said about the book - its reliance of truisms, token characters, its lack of subtlety and nuance, where complex issues are dumbed down and presented with all the elegance of a sledgehammer - but we shouldn't repeat the errors of this novel; sometimes the less said, the better. However, sadly, it seems to me that more often than not what I see as flaws in books like these are the exact reason for their popularity, however fleeting it may be; I doubt this book in particular will be remembered in 10 or 20 years time, but I have no doubt that it - and others like it - will continue to sell like hotcakes, at least for a while. Any news of a TV adaptation yet?...more
Loading...
