"This Perfect Day"

I'm curious as to why I'd never heard of Ira Levin's This Perfect Day before it showed up as a Kindle deal-of-the-day last week. I've never seen or read Rosemary's Baby or The Stepford Wives, but I am aware of them and what they are. Obviously, Deathtrap is a great play. But I had never heard of this one. A cross between 1984 and Brave New World and Ayn Rand's Anthem and CS Lewis' The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength, it's thought-provoking and very well executed. Having now read a couple of Levin's works (the outstanding mystery thriller A Kiss Before Dying was a deal a few months ago), I can say that Levin was a very good writer...

"Christ, Marx, Wood and Wei, led us to this perfect day..."

Highly recommended. (There's a little bit of adult language and content, but it's neither gratuitous nor pointless.)

Ulysses

I decided, about a week ago, to read Ulysses (which I did not finish when I tried it 30 years ago.)  Finished it.  Glad to have finished it.  Can cross that off the list.

May be a work of genius.  I'm reminded of Asher Lev, who had to master the basics before going beyond.  There's enough great writing in there to say that Joyce clearly mastered the basics.

Not a great novel, not in the usual meaning of that term.  When you finish a great novel, do you need to go find a commentary to explain to you what just happened?  No.  An exercise in writing technique, some of which works, some of which doesn't, and all just piled together.  Apparently there is a structure, which may or may not have been more evident in the original serialized version.  I will go back to it, I suspect, in places and pieces, but not often and not all.  Could Maxwell Perkins have turned it into a great novel by cutting half of it?  I doubt it.  The parts that are fascinating are balanced, or more than, by the parts that are frustrating. 

Are there parts that would have been less frustrating, more accessible, to a reader in early 20th century Ireland and/or England, due to cultural context?  Certainly.  Enough to tip the scales?  Not certainly, but possibly.

Is it obscene?  No.  It's almost relentlessly vulgar, but I'm not sure I've ever read anything less titillating.  As obscenity, it's an epic failure.

Would I recommend it?  Very seldom, and to very few.  I suspect its appeal, like Spinal Tap's, grows "more selective..."



Oh, and let me say one more thing - the famous "eight sentences" aren't. Not in any meaningful sense of the word. They're just long stretches of non-punctuated text.

A Child's Dream of a Star

What is the internet really good for? Accessing the collective wisdom of the ages.

From the University of Florida, we have The Literature For Children Collection, and it's a blessing.

Literature for Children is a collection of the treasures of children's literature published largely in the United States and Great Britain from before 1850 to beyond 1950. At the core of this Collection are books from the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature, housed in the Department of Special Collections and Area Studies at the University of Florida. Books from the Departments of Special Collections at the Florida Atlantic University, Florida State University, and the University of South Florida join volumes from the Baldwin Library to complete the Collection.

This morning, I've discovered a (very short) work of Charles Dickens (A Child's Dream of a Star) with which I was previously unfamiliar. It's there for anyone. And it is beautiful...

"Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!"

I'm never, ever going to read Ralph Nader's new novel, but I'm glad that he wrote it, so that I could read Rob Long's review of it...

The saddest thing I expect to read this year...

"“When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books.

- Cushing Academy headmaster James Tracy

50 crime writers to read before you die

So, the Telegraph has listed the 50 crime writers to read before you die" Obviously, the main purpose of such a list is to generate controversy over the inclusions and omissions. Well, they've achieved their purpose. Over in the Corner, John Miller thinks (incorrectly) that "most obvious name missing from that best-crime-writer list is Michael Connelly," while Mark Hemingway believes that "it's an absolute travesty that Ross MacDonald is not on the list." Well, I've never read either Connelly or McDonald, so I can't comment on the omission of their names. But I do have a couple of comments.

1. With apologies to Mr. Miller, the single most obvious missing name is Rex Stout. A prolific writer, an iconic character, virtually infinitely re-readable, the absence of the creator of Nero Wolfe, does, as suggested by one of the commenters at the Telegraph's website, "invalidate the list."



2. The second most obvious omission is Erle Stanley Gardner. Is there a more iconic character in American crime fiction than Perry Mason? If you want to argue that Gardner wasn't a very good writer, you'll have to find someone else to do it with, because I won't disagree with you - he wasn't. But he was a very stylized writer, who was, in many ways, the creator of the courtroom thriller, and a master plotter. If Agatha Christie belongs on the list, and she obviously does, then so does Gardner.



3. While recognizing that Dickens' novels frequently include crimes (and believe me, I'm a huge fan of Dickens in general, and Bleak House, which they cited, in particular), there's just no purpose to having his name on a list of this sort. He wasn't a "crime writer" any more than Shakespeare or Wodehouse, both of whom wrote about many crimes, both of whom were "better writers" than the vast majority of the inhabitants of the list, and neither of whom belongs on it. Nor does Dickens.



4. Edmund Crispin? That's a joke, right? As were his novels. His presence on the list goes a long way towards invalidating it. If I could go back in time and spend the time I spent reading Crispin re-reading Gambit or Murder By The Book or Some Buried Caesar for the 20th time, I'd consider that a good thing.



5. I'm not going to kick Wilkie Collins off, because I recognize the importance of The Moonstone. But that's it, as far as I know, and I've never actually been able to finish it.



6. I want it understood that this is a question, not a criticism. I've never read Raymond Chandler, and maybe he should be there. But I can't help but wonder if he'd be there if Humphrey Bogart hadn't filmed The Big Sleep.



7. One of the spots on the list is filled by "Steig Larsson, crusading Swedish journalist who died in 2004, leaving the manuscripts of three thrillers." I'm thinking that maybe, just possibly, that spot would be more appropriately filled by someone like Ellis Peters, the creator of the 20 wonderful Brother Cadfael mysteries.

My favorite book

Over in The Corner, John Podhoretz and John Derbyshire and Rick Brookhiser have been discussing the question "what's your favorite book" and asking it of presidential candidates.

My problem with the whole "what's your favorite book" question is that a real reader doesn't have one. If you love to read, you've had a thousand favorite books, because every great book you've read was your favorite while you were reading it. Did I love Les Miserables more than David Copperfield? A Tale of Two Cities more than Prince Caspian? Any Nero Wolfe more than any Brother Cadfael? Summer Lightning or The Code of the Woosters more than Atlas Shrugged or The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant? Witness more than The Grapes of Wrath or Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? Each of those (and each of 200 others) has been my favorite at one time or another. It's a pointless and un-answerable question...