Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner

When I was in college I was given Light in August to read and thought it was incomprehensible. Of course at nineteen in college my interests when I was reading were more along the lines of Stephen King. And those were great books.

Even a couple of years ago when I decided to read some Faulkner, starting with his short stories I struggled to find his writing much more than the vegetables that we have to eat. Then I tackled the three classics in the Summer of Faulkner set. These were very challenging but somewhere along the way I started to understand the rhythm's of Faulkner's writing. The run on sentences, the punctuation from hell, and the having to keep a mental note of who is actually speaking at one time. When you get through the first two sections of The Sound and the Fury and feel like you understand the thoughts of the heavily autistic Benjy, and the suicidal Quentin you feel like you deserve a medal. The funny thing for me was that as I read, backtracking often to understand, it became less like work and more anticipation of what was going to happen. In that book when we get to section three and read the more straight forward account of Jason one feels nostalgic for Benjy and Quentin.

Reading some reviews on Goodreads of this book it is clear to see that Faulkner will always be controversial. Some cannot get by this writing style. I certainly understand that. Others will always be uncomfortable with the handling of race in his books and the frequent misogynistic viewpoints of the characters, they cannot be hidden, often they make up a large part of the story. For me though Faulkner is stunning in his use of the language. It is clear that he is telling tales that try to relate what he has seen, grown up in, and felt growing up in a Southern culture in which a great deal of the populace were veterans of the Civil War and or one generation removed. Growing up with the bitterness of defeat, the loss of a way of life, with the racial tensions that created is something those in the North could not understand than and factually none of us here seventy five years later.

So with this backstory in my mind and my growing respect for the work of Faulkner I kept seeing lists that showed Absalom as his greatest novel, the greatest Southern novel of all time, and in some lists as the best book of the twentieth century. Certainly armed with my understanding of Faulkner's rhythms I was ready. I was not quite as ready as I thought. If one reading those previous books feels challenged they pick up Absalom and suddenly realize there is one more level of Faulkner.

This is the Faulkner of legend. This is the Faulkner with a twelve hundred word sentence. This is the Faulkner with several different narrators telling the same story, each adding a little, peeling the onion of the story as it were a little deeper. Still even with the additional challenge in the reading one sees quickly, if they will be open to it, that this book in a perfect specimen.

The book tells an overview of the life of Thomas Sutpen and his descendants. Certainly not told in a linear fashion, this is Faulkner after all, we learn how Sutpen came to Mississippi, swindled 100 acres of land and built his castle and then his life. Over the course of the book we learn Sutpen's pre Mississippi backstory, what motivates him and how one story in his youth changed his whole life. We meet his son Henry and daughter Judith the children he built his whole life for and we see how even in the world of a man like Thomas Sutpen, a man with more ambition than any ten men, life does not move in the expected way.

The book features, as one of the narrators Quentin Compson. Quentin who will commit suicide just two years later ( than the time frame of his existence in this book) in The Sound and the Fury tells his roommate at Harvard one cold winter night how he came to know the story of Thomas Sutpen and Quentin's aunt Rosa and her sister Ellen and how sometimes we find out things in our family tree that might have been better left unknown.

Perhaps I was naive, as revaluations of Sutpen come to the fore in the book I still did not see the left hook that was coming. When finally the truth was known, the reason for the conflict that eventually burns so hot that it destroys nearly everyone, I felt like I should have seen it coming. It is after all a Faulkner book. I confess I did not see it all coming. As my wife said maybe I was so in love with the sentence structure, the sentences that I just could not digest the full meaning of the words.

She was not wrong about my love of the writing. Often at night as she was fading to sleep I would make her listen to a certain sentence, one that went on for three quarters of a page, and ask her to enjoy the luxuriousness of his writing. Safe to say that while my wife respects and supports my love of literature she does not get a chill in her spine at eleven at night from any writer.

Still it does make me feel like at least my teachers were trying to expose me to the greats when I was younger, I do worry that in today's society with the need to be politically correct ( by today's standards) Faulkner in another thirty years will be unread by anyone under 50. Perhaps all great literature fades away but to me if Dickens tells us about London in the first half of the 1800's, if Hemingway takes us to Spain in the thirties, then Faulkner is our best chronicler of the South in the first half of the last century. Just because we do not like what he puts in the mirror for us to see does not mean that we should not see the value in looking at the reflection.

I cannot speak enough praise for the works of Faulkner. Absalom is an incredible book, and if your lucky you, like me, will not see it coming until it hits you in the face.

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Some books age well. This classic by Erich Maria Remarque is a novel that does just that. Perhaps it is because the experience of war, of combat, the soldier in the battle never really changes that much. The weapons can change but the experience of killing your fellow man has much in common.

I was telling a friend of mine that I would think that one of the most rewarding courses to take and or teach would be a wartime literature course. Comparing the works of Hemingway, Mailer, and recent efforts by Tim O'Brien, Denis Johnson, and Kevin Powers with the book of Remarque would be very rewarding.

In this book we meet the narrator Paul Baumer. Baumer, at the onset of World War I joins the German army at the age of eighteen. Encouraged by a schoolmaster to join with his classmates Paul and a group of friends join the army with all good intentions. Like many young men they join for reasons of patriotism, the glory of the Fatherland, and expect glory and thrills.

By the time we join the characters in the book they are no longer besot with these images and ideas. The book was controversial upon publication, the book was burned by the Nazi's in Germany, it did, after all, not glorify war. Speaking of war as meaningless and as something that nothing good comes out of we see Paul and his friends decimated by the war.

At age 20 he has been in the military two years and seen his friends die, he has seen troops gain and lose, gain and lose, the same land over and over. To him the enemy becomes the leaders in the military. He begins to realize that the French troops on the other side of the lines are no different than he. They are young men and boys, husbands and fathers, men who have been taken out of their lives and told to kill men and boys, fathers and husbands who they have no grudge with.

Paul is given a leave and at home feels completely out of place. He is told by a neighbor in town that he only understands his little piece of the war, that the real strategy and goal can only be seen as a whole. In effect his ambiguous feeling is only because he does not understand the war that he is living every day. His father, seeking to connect, asks about the battles. Paul cannot share, it is not something a man talks about.

Paul is injured and we see scenes of the hospitals, the overworked nurses and nuns, the doctors who amputate constantly and Paul imagines thousands of hospitals just like this across all of Europe and wonders why.

After seeing his friends die one by one Paul knows that peace is about to happen. In the fall of 1918 no one wants to be the last one to die. With peace on the horizon Paul lets up his concentration and the inevitable happens. We are told that on that day the war is so meaningless, that so little matters that the only bulletin on the condition of the war that day is that the situation is All Quiet on the Western Front. His death, any death has really meant nothing.

A brilliant book, as relevant today as it was eighty years ago.

Revisiting The Yellow Birds

I wrote a few weeks ago about this debut novel by Iraq War Veteran Kevin Powers that has been called the best book of the year. When I read the book I was moved and amazed at how wonderful the book is.

For a person such as me who is always reading something it sometimes is hard to take a step back and say this is an exceptional book. Not just a great book like I am always saying a book is, but a very outstanding, an exceptional book.

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers is exceptional. It is Hemingwayesque. The author appeared on Morning Joe this morning and he was soft spoken and understated. The group around the desk was all in agreement at how wonderful the book was and as Joe Scarborough read the first paragraph it became clear that this book is something rare, something that will become part of the literature of the American canon. With a first line " The war tried to kill us in the spring" what becomes immediately clear is that the blurb on the cover by Tom Wolfe that this is the All Quiet on the Western Front of America's Arab wars is not hyperbole. It is simply the truth.

If you read one book this year. This is the one. There are not enough positive adjectives for how meaningful this book is.

Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy

This book ended Cormac McCarthy's Western Trilogy with it's release in 1998. McCarthy over my reading of this set of books has become one of my favorite authors. It is impossible to read his work without seeing a straight line from Hemingway to McCarthy and for someone who considers Hemingway his favorite author this is a road I am glad to travel.

In Cities of the Plain we revisit a character from each of the first two books in the series, John Grady Cole from All the Pretty Horses and Billy Parham from The Crossing. The year is 1952 and though Parham is nine years older than the nineteen year old Cole the two have developed a brotherly relationship. Certainly with Billy's loss of his brother Boyd in the previous story this in understandable.

The major events in this book take place South of the border in Ciudad Juarez a border town across from El Paso. As the boys from the ranch go across the border one night and go into a brothel John's friends encourage him to partake of one of the women who catches his eye. He declines however and as the story we see the cowboys doing all kinds of cowboy things. Roping cattle, catching wild dogs bringing down calves keeps the boys busy. Unbeknownst to his friends however John Grady Cole has returned south of the border and has started spending time with the young prostitute who has moved to a different brothel, one owned by a very dark character named Eduardo.

Soon Billy Parham and the rest of his friends know that John has a problem and it is becoming bigger and bigger. No longer in lust, he now is in love and he wants to bring this girl out of the brothel and marry her. Eduardo however has no desire to let that happen, he will not let Cole buy her out, it is all complicated by the fact that Eduardo is in love with the young prostitute as well.

This book captures all of the glory of the first two books and brings the characters into the twentieth century. McCarthy's talent is on display here on every page. The scenes that he depicts are beautiful and clear. The relationship between the cowboys is so attractive to someone watching in modern times, the simplicity, the honesty, and the lack of sarcasm and easy rudeness is as attractive as the vivid scenery that the author describes.

Other characters in the book are deeper than any we have seen even in the first two books, at least in terms of secondary characters. On his travels South of the border John Grady meets and establishes a friendship with an elderly blind musician. He also is reverential in his dealings with Mr. Johnson, the elderly patriarch of the ranching family for whom he works. Sitting on the porch with Mr. Johnson as he has wandered out in his long underwear and hearing the stories of the old man's days on the plains driving cattle north, days that he calls the best of his life.

Billy while not the major character in the story, is still a big part of the story and his ultimate decency makes him the most unsullied character in the story. He is a friend in need and a friend indeed as cliched as that is. When the book ends the sorrow he feels over the end we see coming is palpable.

Upon the completion of the book we are given an epilogue. In this we see what happened to Billy in the second half of the century. He travels the country, finding ways to earn a living, as the ranching and cowboy life that he has known ends under his feet. In the final scenes of the epilogue Billy in his seventies is staying dry under an overpass when he spies an old Indian man on the opposite side. The man comes to sit with them and as they talk he tells Billy a story about a dream he had and a dream the character in his dream had. In the end he offers thoughts and questions about what is life and where is reality and where does it end. As McCarthy spins the vision we are allowed to be amused by Billy, even in his seventies playing the innocent asking questions that have more to do with the logistics of the vision than the hidden deep meanings. Later we are told that Billy continues to wander until following the river he is taken in a by a family who find in him something special, he greets the children as they come home from school, teaches them how to ride and feels a level of being home one senses he has not felt for a long time.

As the story of Billy finally comes to an end he is having a very vivid dream and wakes the wife of the family with whom he is staying. She asks him if he would like a drink and reading Billy, an almost eighty year old man still uncomfortable with women saying " Yes Ma'am " with his best manners one is struck by the anomaly of one of the cowboys of lifetimes ago coming to the end of his life in the new millennium. He tells the woman of his dream of his brother Boyd, long dead, and says he wishes everyday that he could spend some time with him, see him ride, one last time. After the woman settles him he tells her that " He is not who she thinks he is." The wife counters will a self assured " We know just what you are." By the end of this story we do to.

Billy, is one of the most enduring characters of twentieth century literature, and perhaps McCarthy's greatest creation. Understated in everything he does, and a hero we would all be proud to know. Yes Billy we all know just who you are.

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

This book that offers a perspective on American soldiers in Iraq. The book has immediately been called a masterpiece. On a par with Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and almost certain to be heavily rewarded next year when the book awards are announced.

Most likely we will see a movie as well. However being ahead of the curve is a blessing and you want to read this book now. It is incredible.

Our narrator is Bartle a 22 year old soldier, or ex soldier, as the book is told from some years after his experience in Iraq. Bartle has been asked by his Sgt to look after an eighteen year old private named Murphy. To increase his responsibility at family day before the unit shipped out Murphy's mother had also extracted a promise that he would look after her son.

Just a boy himself at twenty two we hear Bartle's internal dialogue as he ventures into war. The feelings of the soldiers on the ground, some of the passages stand up as memorably as the passages in Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls.

The contrast however is staggering. While Robert Jordan felt a sense of duty and volunteered for his service our boys in Iraq feel a sense of helplessness and desperation s they advance and fall back and fight over the same ground on what becomes more and more like a schedule. The constant savagery of their actions, the inability to determine friend or foe, the constant guilt over their actions builds up.

Murphy disillusioned like all the solders struggles more. At eighteen and a young eighteen at that he becomes somber an disengaged. He tells Bartle that he cannot let the war define him, that in fact he n longer wants to be his friend as they only thing they have in common is the war and he wants nothing in the war in his soul. Bartle telling the story in the future, looking back, is torn up with regret. We learn early in the book, in the second chapter that Murphy dies, we see his fall into a pit of despair. At one point Murphy takes to sitting outside a small hospital so that he " can see hope in action" or watch a young female medic " that offers a glimpse of something beautiful" where everything is ugly.

Late in the book we learn what happened to Murphy and how his friend Bartle reacted to it and the repercussions of that action. Having manipulated his answers on his stress test before release to seem like he had no concerns or issues about his war experience Bartle later goes into a long soliloquy about his true feelings about the war, his actions, their meaninglessness, and perhaps most enlightening on his feelings about the new American way of appreciating and thanking American soldiers on their return in an almost overdone way.

For the great proportion of the population who do not think about the wars we get involved in or who rationalize our lack of concern over the soldiers with the knowledge that they all volunteered this is an eye opener. An understanding has to be had that wars of occupation and nation building are much different than wars where one's own country has been attacked, that psychologically the difference is staggering. We also need to understand that volunteering for the military is in a great percentage of cases due to a lack of opportunities state side.

This book is heart rending and magnificent. Before you thank another soldier for his service it would be wise to read this book, to get a slight glimpse on the profane and black thoughted life he has led before he returns home.

Hemingway and Gellhorn

This HBO biopoc centers on the relationship between Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn was a magazine writer for Collier's in the late thirties and early forties, this being the time when magazine writers for these magazines were well known.

Meeting in Spain during the Spanish Civil War when she was writing for Colliers and Hemingway was gaining inspiration for what became his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway at the time was married but that did not prevent them from falling together. Over the next few years there relationship was one of fire. They covered the war in Spain, then the war in China. Later after they were married and with their relationship fracturing Hemingway got himself hired with Collier's, essentially taking his wife, Gellhorn's, job. Eventually Gellhorn stowed away on a medical ship and beat Hemingway to the front.

The relationship between the two is interesting, and I clearly love the writing of Hemingway but for me the stronger appeal of the movie was the scenes with the characters in Spain, China, the beaches of France and later in Germany.

Spain, always an interesting story for me. The communists were the freedom fighters, the fascists were helped by Franco and yet clearly the Americans were ambivalent at best about the outcome of the war. When Hemingway and Gellhorn met with Eleanor and later Franklin Roosevelt to extoll the cause of the freedom fighters they were believed to be fellow travelers.

The downside of this movie for me were the sex scenes. Clive Owen did a fine job as Hemingway. Nicole Kidman is attractive but some of these scenes were over the top. We are made to understand that the relationship is fiery and passionate, that they fight as hard as they love. I do not know that seeing Owen thrusting and Kidman naked is necessary. I am not a prude I just thought it was a little gratuitous.

The cast is stellar. Robert Duvall gives a magnificent performance as a Russian General, and Parker Posey plays Hemingway's soon to be divorced wife.

Watching the movie, one of Hemingway's cronies, Joris reminded me of the drummer from Metallica. That is what I said to myself, the dog, whoever was in the room. After the movie I looked it up and saw that it was Lars Ulrich. I had no idea that he acted.

Other notables in the movie Tony Shalhoub, Joan Chen As Madame Chiang ( a small but stunning performance) and Peter Coyote.

Worth ones time, wonderfully filmed. The problem is not with the movie, it was what it purported to be, I wanted it to be less about the relationship and more about the life and history they touched. Still a good movie

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

The Crossing is the second of the three volume Border Trilogy from Cormac McCarthy. As I read many books at once I must confess that this one took awhile. The book centers on a young man named Billy Parham. Billy, his younger brother Boyd and his parents live on a small farm in New Mexico.

This is a difficult book. There is much meandering thought and much wisdom being imparted from the various characters.

As the book begins Billy and his Father are attempting to trap a wolf that has come up across the border from Mexico and is killing local livestock. McCarthy has been compared frequently to Hemingway and in the writing of Billy's attempts to trap the wolf one sees it. The detail given to each step is exquisite. I must confess many of the terms fall on deaf ears to me but i was able to follow what he was doing.

Billy cannot catch the wolf despite his best efforts. Finally one evening he sets a trap, under the remains of a fire that has been cookfire for some travelers the night before. As he tells his father this his father warns him to return at first light and hope that no one else attempts to use the fire-sight. And he goes to bed and the authors states " that he never saw him again." A very jarring line as one has no idea what is to come.

That morning when Billy arrives he has caught the wolf. He is transfixed, the wolf is caught by the foot but Billy watches her and cannot bring himself to shoot her. For the next fifty pages of the book we see Billy taking the wolf to Mexico. Muzzled, leashed, and taught to follow along on a rope behind the horse Billy travels until his story takes a turn he did not wish. He wanted to return the wolf to the wild, suffice to say for Billy Parham things often do not happen as planned.

Along the way in this section of the book and others Billy meets many different people, most of them Mexican. He meets good people and bad but the good outweigh the bad by far. One of the most compelling and noticeable parts of the book is that, for all the hard luck and sadness that comes to Billy , most of the people of the Mexico he travels through are overwhelmingly generous and kind. Travelers are fed and housed as a matter of fact to be taken as normal.

When the wolf part of the story comes to it's conclusion Billy returns home, slowly and with no great plan, and finds his home abandoned. Billy learns that his father and mother were murdered by horse thieves. Billy, in his stoic way gets his brother Boyd from family friends that have been taking care of him and they head out on the trail. They never come to a spoken decision about their plans but yet they know where they are going.

They cross the border in Arizona and then their story beings. In Mexico again. The same frustration occurs in this book as the previous, many of the characters speak in untranslated Spanish. In cases where necessary I had to use my Spanish to English translator. Still the payoff is worth it.

If you are looking for the typical Western with quick pace and easily resolved problems this is not the book for you. McCarthy's characters do not speak much but they think much and we as readers are given a glimpse of those thoughts on life and death and all the other thoughts we all have late at night.

Along the way Billy and Boyd meet some characters easily remembered. To advance the themes of the story these characters often have much to say, and much that they say is shaded in gray, with duplicate meanings and understandings.

This man is an exquisite writer. It is not easy. It is work. McCarthy however writes characters as deep and thoughtful and affecting as any you will find.

Be ready to take time. Take breaks if you need. I finished two books between the wolf section and Billy's return home, I even contemplated giving up. I did not and I was greatly rewarded. This is a fantastic book. A book that will stick with your memory for a long, long time.

I have a couple of biographies to read but I am looking forward to finishing the series soon. It is something to be on a shelf with Hemingway.

One of Ours by Willa Cather

Willa Cather is one of those authors that draws much division. Some authors are widely acclaimed, others are popular. Cather won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for this effort, one would assume she was both. Reading some of the history of the book after I finished reading it I was surprised to see that in some circles it was ridiculed, including by my favorite author Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway,of course, was a much different type of author than Cather. Cather's war scenes are not drawn that well, they could be considered a bit clunky, still from the author of O Pioneers one does not expect scenes of war to be as descriptive as an ambulance driver in World War such as Hemingway.

The book centers on Claude Wheeler, the middle son of a successful Nebraska farmer at the turn of the 20th century. Growing up on the plains, with a successful father and a pious mother Claude has a good life. He, however, feels the success and comfort is confining.

He goes to a Christian college but wishes to go to the State University. His father brings him home to run the farm while his younger brother is giving the more exciting charge of a new farm purchased in Colorado. For Claude it seems like everything is the same, he feels boxed in.

Claude marries a young woman who he has a deep friendship with. By the standards of the day however they do not know each other well and have little in common. His wife to be Enid's friend dates Claude's older brother. His older brother and Claude are not much alike and not much fond of each other, Claude also grew up with this girl, a poor girl who the town considers flighty. Claude never pursues his feelings for this girl and lives to regret it.

This book has some passages that are very memorable. Claude seeks the approval of Enid's father for the marriage. The gentleman knows and likes Claude, he knows his daughter however, what her goals in missionary work are and how that will conflict with the happiness of a young man expecting a traditional wife. As they talk however he realizes that for an older man to talk to a younger man about life is " like the dead talking to the living, they cannot be heard." Having a couple of teenage sons of my own that I often wish I could get to listen to me rather than experience the hard lessons of life themselves. It is as written, it is like the dead talking to the living. In a sense is that not what the difference is between young and old. The young are living and the old have lived.

The second part of the book features Claude going to war. As the war heats up in Europe, as Belgium and France fall his family becomes transfixed by the war. His Mother prays over Paris. Claude notes that Paris used to be the city of vice in his parochial mother's mind, now as the German army approaches it becomes a citadel of light and she prays both the city and it's citizens.

In this day of instant news watching Claude, his father, or his neighbors go into town to get the news of the war from the Omaha papers to the east shows what an effect this war had on the isolationist nation. Of course on the plains a great deal of immigrants farmed, Cather's books often speak of Bohemians, and these people were very concerned with the affairs of the home continent.


As Claude is trained and goes to Europe we follow him. He falls in love with France and it's people. Eventually he takes part in battles, loses good friends and heads for the Battle of Verdun.

This is a moving book. I was glad when I finished to see that it won the Pulitzer. Enjoying My Antonia and O Pioneers Cather is an author I appreciate. This book is more, more significant. A true moment in time of this country with a hero that is not a hero, but a simple American boy of the plains. This makes him all the more honorable.

A great book.

You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe

Thomas Wolfe is considered one of the great American authors of the twentieth century. As I continue to find my way through this canon of literature I find that there are many more hits than misses. I also am sure that some of the books that I have passed over and not considered good were simply books that I took up at the wrong time.

Still when I ventured into Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again I expected it to be what it has been told to be. It was very disappointing, it was just not a story that compelled me to invest. If I had more knowledge of comparative literature I might be able to know before reading that perhaps Wolfe was not in my genre, such as Hemingway, Mailer, etc are.

In any event this book was a strong disappointment. Thomas Wolfe is not an avenue I plan to go down again.

The good news is that one will never catch up with all they want to read. I am sure these are great books. Just not for me.

Huck Finn by Mark Twain

This book is called The Great American Novel by many literary critics. It is a very good book. Still in reading this book, as good as it was, there is no way it can be called a great novel. Twain to me was as much as a satirist as a literary writer.

Huck Finn is often at the top of the list of books banned by libraries and schools across the country. Why? Well like Faulkner in the early twentieth century Twain in the nineteenth used some very racially colorful language. Other concerns were about references to Huck and the Slave Jim going naked on the raft.

These complaints are silly to us in the modern world. The story of Huck Finn is very strong. Still this material is dated. Dated in a way that does not mean it should be controversial but that simply the story is a bit contrived. To me, when Tom appears and he and Huck are making efforts to free Jim the repeated efforts to make the plot more complicated and dangerous do not age well. It is understood that Tom was raised on adventure stories and wants to live out his imagination but the plot and things they have Jim do seem a bit silly and unrealistic.

Of course Twain was writing about a time when Black people were kept in bondage and slavery so perhaps this was just one more layer of ridiculousness he was trying to exhibit to prove the point of how a society could claim to be all beneovelent and gracious as the Southern culture claimed and yet keep slaves. Huck struggles with this too. When he comments on how he thinks less of Tom for Tom saying he would help him free a slave and when he admits he will be going straight to Hell if helps Jim escapes he shows the conflict of the South.

This is a good book. I am glad I read it. Perhaps like much literature it is a matter of style, taste, and personal preference but to me putting Twain in the echelon of writers such as Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck is something that requires a stretch of the nature of the whoppers told by Tom Sawyer.

Read it. Enjoy it. It is, however, overrated.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

I believe I attempted to read this book over a decade ago. At the time it could not hold my interest. My reading habits have changed greatly in the last ten to fifteen years and with a more literary bent now I wished to try again.

In this book by McCarthy we meet John Grady Cole a sixteen year old in Texas in 1949. His Grandfather has died and his Mother, now divorced from his father has no interest in keeping her Father's ranch. Cole has never wanted to be anything more than a rancher and implores his Mother to let him run the ranch to no avail.

Faced with moving to town Cole instead sets off with his best friend Lacey Rawlins traveling by horseback south through Texas. Crossing into Mexico they intend to travel South to work as cowboys.

Just before crossing the Rio Grande they meet a young man who calls himself Jimmy Blevins. He rides a big bay horse which it seems doubtful is his and though he claims to be sixteen does not appear to be past 13. Eventually he falls in with the boys, much to Lacey's disgust.

After losing his horse and gun in a thunderstorm Blevins convinces the boys to go with him into a nearby town to see if his horse landed there. He did, they steal it back and are chased. The boys and Blevins split and they continue South eventually finding work on a large ranch. Thier expert horse skills find them both work, Cole as a horse trainer.

The ranch owner's daughter the bueatiful Alejandor tempts Cole and they fall into an affair.

The story continues. Betrayal, prison, proving oneself, love, love lost, revenge and eventually isolation.

McCarthy writes beautifully. His prose is as descriptive as will be found. It reminded me instantly of Hemingway. Short declaritive sentences and then again the description of nature and scenery so evocative as to place you there. I was pleased to see after reading and having the Hemingway thoughts that other reveiwers mentioned the same thing. Certainly anyone with experience with both can see the similarity. For my money being compared to Hemingway is never a bad thing.

One unfortunate in the book was the use of Spanish conversation with no translation. Not knowing Spanish I am sure I missed a few things. I do not believe it was integral to the story, often it seemed to be very simple conversation.

Still that in itself lent an air of additional authenticity to the book and the story itself is a strong one. Always liking Western imagary this was a book I greatly enjoyed. I look forward to the rest of The Border Triology.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

I am told that Faulkner is one of the great writers of the modernist period. I am a Hemingway fan and he is as far from modernism as one can get. Still this book is challenging and if one sticks with it a novel to behold.

The first chapter is told through the eyes of Benny a 33 year old man who is autistic, although in those days is defined more as a dummy. The chapter from Benny's point of view is very hard to read. Told in Faulkner's often used stream of consciousness writing style we learn about Benny in three different ages. We are told that we can define what age Benny is speaking by his caretaker at the time. The second chapter focuses on Quentin the older brother who...struggling with his relationship with his sister and her troubles...commits suicide.

The first chapter is difficult, the second chapter is in parts lose to impossible. Later we follow the last brother, Jason, as he deals with life is manipulative, mean spirited, vengeful and petty. This book is hard and very easy to give up on. Eventually it all comes in focus, the lives of Jason, Quentin, Caddy, Benjy and the mother Caroline. Caroline and Jason are two very unlikable characters but Caddy is exceptional. Her love for Benjy is later compromised by her issues with men. This becomes the nexus of all the brothers troubles. Benjy needs her as his only truly caring person, Quentin struggles with her impurities, and Jason hates her for a loss he felt her responsible for to his future.

Also in the book is the long history of the Compson family attendants, namely a negro family led by Dilsey and three generations of her family.

I have read so many great books it is hard to say this is the best, thiis is the top ten. Faulkner is never easy. He is always worth the effort.

Hemingway's Boat by Paul Hendrickson

I love Hemingway. I consistently name him my favorite author. So this book purporting to speak of the last twenty five years of is life held interest for me. It is schlock. Perhaps not the authors fault due to the subject matter but still terrible. By all accounts he was a bad man who wrote only of masculine things such as war and hunting. Ecause he could not relate to women. This books make clear he could deal with little.

What he could do was write i think that os all I need to know.

The Killers ( 1946 Movie )

This movie is adapted from the short story by Ernest Hemingway. However the story being short only tells the first twenty minutes of the movie. The movie provides the backstory.

In the movie two hit men arrive in a diner in Brentwood, New Jersey asking after a an man named Ole' Anderson otherwise known as the Swede. The Swede works as a pump attendant at the local garage and the people in the diner, where Ole' is known to take his meals have no idea why hit men would be looking for him. When warned that they are searching for him he appears to be resigned to his fate stating only that " he did something bad a long time ago."

The story is told from there as an insurance investigator looks into the murder as a life insurance policy is to be paid. Through a series of vignettes we learn the true nature of the murder.

Burt Lancaster plays Ole' Anderson in his film debut, Edmund O' Brien plays insurance investigator and Ava Gardner is the woman that causes all the trouble.

A fine movie that keeps you guessing.

The Stories of John Cheever

I enjoy short stories. I think that they are a prelude into an author's vision and have used these stories as my entry into the works of Hemingway, Faulkner and now Cheever. An appreciation for a good short story appears to be a lost art. In the mid nineteen hundreds each week many literary magazines were published many with stories by some of the great authors of the time on a regular basis. I suspect that in today's marketplace short stories are considered not worth the effort, certainly the financial rewards are meager compared to the riches from a bestselling novel.

I occasionally will show a favorite story to a friend but more often than not after humoring me with a reading, if at all, they do not enjoy it as I did. What is the point of it or I do not understand will be the response. As a short story is often a glimpse of a moment in time in the life of a character and not often a beginning, middle and end our current entertainment culture has spoiled them.

As we now watch Mad Men every season and celebrate the New York driven culture of the mid sixties the stories of John Cheever become even more relevant again. When published in 1978 this collection of stories earned Cheever the Pulitzer Prize.

I read several books at a time and have over the last couple of months made it a practice to read one Cheever story each night before bed. It is hard to describe why these stories are so good. Often they are just lonely people in a busy world. A sense of loss and optimism haunts these people. Cheever has an ability to allow his characters to move from real to imagined storylines and occasionally it is a challenge to follow along.

This collection is full. I enjoyed each one. A few such as Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor, The Swimmer, The World of Apples and Artemis the Honest Well Digger are reknown but these stories are wonderful.

This is a top ten collection of stories. Highest recommendation.

Henry IV Part 1 by William Shakespeare

Continuing my reading of Shakespeare I picked this history to try. Shakespeare is not easy and as you read it sometimes you wonder if it is worth the struggle. Yet when you have fought through and finished you realize that the story told was well worth hearing.

Wishing to continue the tale with part 2 I now realize that Shakespeare's histories are if not written in chronological order would be best read so. So now before I move on to Part 2 of Henry IV I am going to go back to the beginning and start with King John

In the story which I have read we meet some characters that still are culturally significant, the most notable perhaps that of John Falstaff the rogue who Henry the IV slums with before he decides to be a responsible member of the Royal family.

In this we see King Henry IV beset by an army attacking as well as some disgruntled Lords and Earls joining the fray.

Falstaff and is lies and protestations offer a humorous outtake from the true story of the battle to be fought and Henry the V, Prince Hal as his known grows into himself and makes his father proud.

As the story ends more battles loom as the war of succession is not complete but one thing we can be sure of is that Shakespeare will tell it well.

These works are not for the easily discouraged but there is a story underneath them that would tell just as well today as over 500 years ago. Digging for it makes it read even better when it all comes together.

Occasinally a quote is found that rings true and could be used as easily today as then. One is " Why, thou owest God a death " a statement the Prince makes to Falstaff as battle approaches urging him not to worry of what will be. One can draw the line to Hemingway and some of his short stories particualry for me Francis Macomber advising that we have but one death and to make it a good one. ( paraphrased as I did not look up the exact quote but remember the story.)

It may be that Shakespeare is the beginning of all modern literature.

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

I am not a big fan of military books. However there are several classic books which are told in or around military action. Hemingway wrote two and this, Norman Mailer's first book, ranks as another.

Telling the tale of the invasion of a fictional island in the Pacific in World War II we are brought along with one reconnaissance team. The book is told in both current time and individual sections called " Time Machine " where we learn the personal histories of each of the members of the troop.

The characters are interesting and face different challenges. We see Polish, Jewish, Southern, Italian and other nationalities and the prejuidices that each soldier brings with him become part of the story.

The invasion is led by a General Cummings and egocentic, mindgame playing leader who in the end wants total submission by his staff. The mission itself ends up being successful but in such a way that it makes one question everything about the leadership of the army and the hits and misses of war.

This was a good book. I myself enjoyed the character development sections as much as the real time story. I am glad I read this book but as stated this is not one of my favorite subjects. I found the last 50 pages to be a bit long. The mission was bogged down and perhaps the way you felt reading it was how the soldiers felt performing it.

Mailer was a great writer. This book does not match up, for me, to The Executioner's Song which won the Pulitzer but it was a book and is a landmark in American fiction for a reason.

The Collected Stories of William Faulkner

William Faulkner is not one of our easiest writers to appreciate. I was given a Faulkner book, Light in August I believe it was, to read in college as an assignment. I am sure I did not read it. I think Cliff helped me on that one. I think today kids use some free resource called perhaps " Sparknotes" to help them in similar situations.

However, my reading list shows I am going back and reading them all. I hope that Ms. Bruer appreciates it.

Faulkner is dense. Whereas Hemingway declares and makes clear Faulkner is shady and ambiguous. Many times in these collections of stories of Faulkner's you will read well into a story assuming an assumed fact from the narrator and then find your assumption was wrong and you will have to reinterpret the whole story based off this new information.

I will confess that some of these stories found me going back and rereading after this new information came to light. Faulkner is not easy.

Faulkner is however worthwhile. Some of the stories are so dense in dialect and fuzziness and first person versus second and third that they do not stand out for me. Perhaps the fact that much of my reading is done last at night is not the best time for them. Some of the stories however are to be treasured.

For me the stories The Tall Men, Two Soldiers and it's conclusion Shall Not Perish are three standouts which measure against anything I have read. Hair, Uncle Willy, The Brooch, Beyond, and There Was a Queen stand out.

I must confess the section of the stories called The Wilderness was told in such a dialect and improbable way that I still struggle to gain any pleasure from it.

Faulkner was not easy. He was however masterful in what he did. His work I assume because of it's depiction of the South in the times he wrote is not in anyway shape or from politically correct today. It does not have merit because of some of the implied racism of the speech and culture presented but it also does not not have merit because of these issues either. If that makes sense.

The recent censoring of Twain made sense in that some said that without he would not be taught at all. If that is the case so be it. Are we really so sensitive however that we cannot read history and fiction from a historical time period and appreciate it's merits without endorsing all of its views.

It is a subject that rankles. If you find Faulkner dense, written in a way you do not like and do not wish to wade in that is a legitimate thought and decision. Some of the easy criticism that is lodged his way due to how and what he wrote would make almost any authentic writing of a time period unable to be appreciated a century later were it to be the rule.


These stories are classics.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Few novels have had the long term cultural impact of this book. You can read Peanuts comic strips that tell of Charlie Brown having to read War and Peace over Christmas vacation and of course not getting it done. In the English culture something that is long, perhaps too long, is referred to as being like War and Peace.

So noting that my Kindle allows me free access to many of the classics last fall I started War and Peace.

I always read several books at once and so in doing so this was a book that took me more than three months to finish.

I did finish it tonight. I love Hemingway and he remains my favorite author. This book, however, is a treasure an absolute masterpiece.

I must confess that I did find the Second Epilogue something I did not read verbatim as it was long and lengthy and more of epistle on War, Power and the interpretation of History.

The book itself is full of characters that you come to know and slowly over the course of time. The book is a comment of War, a story of Napoleon and the Tsar but also of the families and large cast of characters.

The Rostov's and Bolkonski's are the main characters and along with Pierre are the characters that we most follow but the book takes us across the entire landscape of Russian life of the time.

I must confess earlier in reading The Great Upheaval and the sections as relate to Catherine the Great, and of course my fascination with the movie Doctor Zhivago as one of my three favorite movies of all time I think that the Russian story could easily be one of the most interesting histories to explore.

War and Peace solidifies that opinion and I look forward to exploring more.

The book is long. It takes a bit to get going. But once into the book the biggest feeling at the end is one of regret that it is not longer.

A masterpiece.

For Whom the Bell Tolls - The Movie

Having read the book and reviewed it here the review of the movie will be much different. This movie from 1943 was up for nine Oscars with one win for supporting actress.

Ernest Hemingway handpicked Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman to play the American Robert Jordan and Maria a Spanish girl rescued by a band of fighters operating behind the facist lines in the Spanish Civil War.

Hemingway was reportedly not happy with the finished movie as he felt the politics of the movie were diminished. Of course for a mainstream movie that is true. However politics did invade the movie, most notably Robert Jordan's monologue about why he as an American was involved. He tells that the communists and those for the Republic are on one side against the facists, Nazi's, Germans and Italians and that Spain was a practice and proving ground for what might be coming later for all of Europe and America would have to fight then so he chose to fight now.

I consider myself a student of history but the Spanish Civil War is not an easy war to understand. To delve too far into the politics would have made the movie less easy to relate too and it was , with that cast, a commercial film.

As I watch Cooper in this, Friendly Persuasion, and High Noon I become more and more of a belief that he was a fine, underrated actor. I have enjoyed him in everything I see him in.

The characters in this book and thus movie are well drawn. Anselmo is a great character torn between the Republic he wants and not wanting to kill , Pablo is perhaps the most complex character Hemingway ever drew. Yes he is for himself but his twists and turns, his becoming a Capitalist with his horses and his brutal behavior when needed. Pilar who takes over the leadership of the group when Pablo loses his grip is well told as well.

Ingrid Bergman was captivating. Perhaps not a great fit for a Spanish girl she still filled the role well. She was beautiful and the chemistry between her and Cooper was apparent. Her smile was as radiant as you will ever see in a movie.

An underrated subplot is the tale of Sordo and his last stand.

This was one of the best books I have ever read. The movie is a good one too.

Both are highly rated by this reviewer.