What I've Been Reading: May 2014 to December 2014

In the last few months, I have gotten way behind on my reading, but even further behind in writing about my reading. So here's my effort to cover the majority of the books I've read over the last eight months in one go. As usual, there's a lot more to be said about all of them, but in all but the last case I've kept my comments short - admittedly in part because for some of the books I've already forgotten much of what I'd originally thought of saying about them.

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
This fantasy novel from Germany is rather different from most other books in the genre. It tells of a boy who enters a fantasy world, which is a common enough concept, but its similarities with other novels with such stories ends there. Fantastica, the fantasy world that the boy Bastian reads about in the book he stole from a seller of old books, is truly fantastic, and when he enters it, it turns out that he can shape it according to his desires, though this turns out to have a downside as well. But the fantasy world itself has virtually limitless possibilities, which is one of several ways in which the title is fitting. Another is the hints at many other possible untold stories that are scattered throughout the book. Basically, when a character’s part in the main story comes to an end, Ende often provides a brief hint at their future, concluding: “But that is another story and shall be told another time.” Of course, stories can be spun off in many directions from most novels that cover a lot of ground, especially in a fantasy world, but Ende makes it explicit that there are if not infinite at least a great number of stories that could be told. The main story itself is interesting and entertaining, if a little strange and unconventional in its twists. Bastian himself ends up as more of an anti-hero than a hero in much of the book’s second half, which makes an interesting twist, and Fantastica is a fascinating and unpredictable setting. While I’ll admit that my own preference is usually for somewhat more Earth-like fantasy worlds, if only because they are easier to get a mental grip on, a creation like Ende’s shows greater inventiveness. Overall, I found the book enjoyable, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys fantasy or just inventive storytelling.

World War Z by Max Brooks
I’ve never been particularly into zombies, but I have to admit a long-time attraction to post-apocalyptic tales, and that’s what this is. The disease that causes victims to become zombies is given a reasonably scientific-sounding explanation, and the stories of the various survivors are sufficiently gripping. While admittedly it has little relation to the merits of the novel as a whole, I have to say I also liked the treatment of China (the disease’s point of origin), where the government due to its exceptionally poor handling of the situation (starting with excessive secrecy similar to its handling of SARS in the real world) is eventually overthrown, and Tibet, which has become an independent, democratic and relatively prosperous independent country. A few things are not sufficiently well explained, and I would have preferred a little more about the overall course of events, as not everything is made clear through the disconnected stories. But while it’s not an exceptional piece of literature, the novel is good entertainment and a decent choice for reading on a trip or at the beach.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
This novel is often ranked by scholars as one of the greatest English-language novels of the 20th century. Like the similarly critically-revered Ulysses by James Joyce, it makes extensive use of stream of consciousness, and as such is not an easy read by any means. It tells of several decades in the lives of the highly dysfunctional Compson family through the eyes of various family members. The first section is told through the eyes of Benjy, the mentally disabled son of the Compsons. The narrative is a highly disjointed stream of consciousness that jumps around in time, so it takes quite some time to follow what is going on. The second section is narrated by the older Compson son Quentin, who was sent to Harvard using the money obtained from the sale of Benjy’s beloved pasture, which is turned into a golf course. Both Benjy and Quentin are in different ways obsessed by their sister Caddy, who is intelligent but willful. She becomes pregnant by one of her several lovers, and rushes into marriage with a man who later dumps her when he discovers the child is not his. Quentin’s part of the tale also jumps back and forth in time between his life at Harvard in an increasingly depressed mental state and his past, particularly his relationship with Caddy. His part of the narrative, while far more articulate than Benjy’s, is just as hard to follow and becomes even more so as his mental state deteriorates. The third section is told from the point of view of the third brother Jason, who is the most stable but the least likeable of the siblings. He is a racist and basically a sociopath who takes after his equally unlikeable mother, a hypochondriac who cares nothing for anyone else in the family except Jason, because he takes after her. Jason’s section is dominated by his running conflict with Caddy’s daughter (confusingly also named Quentin), who he has blackmailed Caddy into making him the guardian of, and whose money from her mother he is embezzling. The last section is narrated by the family’s black servant Dilsey, who does much to help the disintegrating Compson family hold together, though ultimately she can only watch them collapse. All in all, the novel is an impressive piece of work, one that paints an intriguing picture of life in the American South in the early 20th century, and it is an interesting challenge to read, but it isn’t something to read for fun.

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
This is one of the most well-known retellings of the Arthurian legends, in part because it presents a feminist and pro-pagan version of the stories. This is a commendable approach, as the original stories certainly have a patriarchal and decidedly pro-Christian bias, and it is refreshing to see them re-interpreted in this way (Bradley herself apparently sees the book not as anti-Christian, but as opposing the traditional, patriarchal view of the religion). Bradley’s telling of the story is for the most part sufficiently interesting to keep the reader engaged through a quite lengthy novel. However, the book is not without its flaws. For one thing, some of the characterization struck me as unbelievable and inconsistent. Whether it was Igraine’s apparent transition from non-Christian to seemingly pious believer back to non-Christian; Morgause’s initial portrayal as scheming and ambitious, then basically sympathetic (and content with her situation) if somewhat hedonistic and then as cold-bloodedly scheming again; Arthur’s surrender to his wife Gwenhwyfar on the issue of the banner he carried into battle and his oath to Avalon; the relationship between Gwenhwyfar and Morgaine; or a number of other actions of the characters, there was much that didn’t ring true. Of course, people are complex, they can change over time, and they often hide their true feelings, and some consider that sufficient explanation for these elements in the story. But to me, it didn’t seem so much as if the characters were evolved or revealing hidden parts of their personalities, but more as if they had split personalities or had become entirely different people. Some scenes were a little hard to believe, such as one where Morgaine gets into a very heated argument with Arthur and Gwenhwyfar and aims at least one very strongly worded insult at the latter (the sort which normally would cause a complete rupture in a relationship), and yet a few minutes later they are all talking almost calmly. Also there were occasional lapses in the writing, such as where the exact same phrase was used to describe Arthur’s reactions several times in the space of a few paragraphs. At times it seemed that Bradley overemphasized the conflicting points of view at the expense of the story, somewhat like Ayn Rand did in Atlas Shrugged. Bradley’s tendency to do this was not nearly as egregious as Rand’s, and her writing is much better, but it still pales in comparison to that of a more subtle writer like Ursula Le Guin, who can make a point about a profound issue with much less preaching. These flaws were not enough to make me want to stop reading the book, but they do detract from it. Overall, in the field of Arthurian fantasy, I’d have to say that I’d rank Mary Stewart’s Merlin series as clearly superior to this book, though admittedly having first read Stewart’s books when I was in my teens and re-read them more than once since then, I’m somewhat biased in their favor. I would still recommend The Mists of Avalon to fantasy fans, particularly those interested in tales relating to King Arthur, but I’d recommend reading the Stewart novels first.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
This is a sequel of sorts to Atwood’s excellent apocalyptic novel Oryx and Crake. I say “of sorts” because in fact the two for the most part overlap in time, though this book extends to a later point in time than the first. This novel follows two women who were members of an environmentalist cult of sorts, and like the previous novel it skips back and forth in time between the protagonists’ lives prior to the collapse of civilization and their efforts to survive afterward. Generally speaking, it is also a very good book, well-written and engaging, with interesting characters. Some of the coincidences (mainly how various characters just happen to encounter each other in very different places and situations) do stretch believability somewhat, which is a bit of weakness – though the coincidences are not more of stretch than those in Dickens novels, which are still regarded as classics. Atwood also seemingly engages in a bit of re-writing of her previous novel, at least with respect to Ren, one of the protagonists of this one. While a character named Brenda is mentioned briefly in the first novel as a girl that its protagonist Jimmy dated briefly, as is one specific incident between them, there is no hint that Jimmy had especially strong feelings for her, as is stated in this novel (two of Ren’s close friends from this novel also figure in the first novel, somewhat more prominently than Brenda, Atwood doesn’t have to change as much about the nature of their relationships with Jimmy). Atwood also adjusts the timeline of some events to fit the new story. However, this sort of thing is sometimes a necessary evil in writing a series of connected books (J.R.R. Tolkien had to literally re-write the encounter between Bilbo and Gollum in The Hobbit to fit the story that later developed in The Lord of the Rings, though since all editions of The Hobbit published since the 1950s feature the later version of the story, few readers are aware of this), and the few inconsistencies that result can mostly be explained away, this is a minor issue. All in all, The Year of the Flood is a worthy follow-up to Oryx and Crake, though perhaps not quite its equal.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
One interesting thing for me about this novel is the way it triggered my slightly vague memories of the historical event it is based on. In the novel, a group of terrorists attack a party being held at the home of the vice president of an unnamed South American country, taking the guests hostage. Not too far into the novel, it is mentioned that the country’s president is of Japanese descent, which immediately called to mind Alberto Fujimori, the former president of Peru, which in turn reminded me of an actual incident that took place in Peru. I didn’t remember where the actual incident took place (it was at the Japanese embassy), and I suspected (correctly, as far as I could tell from what I looked up afterwards) that many key elements of the novel were fictional, but it was still obvious that the historical event served as inspiration for the novel. In the book, the party is a birthday party for the chief executive of a powerful Japanese electronics firm that the hosts hope to persuade to build a factory in their country. He has no plans to do so, and was only persuaded to attend the party because the host country arranged for his favorite opera star to perform at it. Of course everything is disrupted by the hostage-taking, but as a stalemate between the hostage-takers – who had originally expected that the president, their actual target, would be at the party – and the country’s military develops, the hostages and their captors end up stuck together inside the house, and all sorts of strange relationships develop. The novel in essence is an exploration of human relationships in an extraordinary situation, one that is far removed from the real world, and the tone of much of it is positive, sometimes humorous, and even uplifting. Unfortunately, the outside world hangs like an ominous cloud over all the blossoming relationships in the house, something I felt perhaps even more strongly than a reader who didn’t know of the historical incident would. This is because one thing I remembered most clearly about the incident was how it ended, including how the military’s behavior in the final assault had later come into question. Patchett hints at how things will end through foreshadowing, but since the actual assault takes place so fast it isn’t quite as dark as it might have been. Still, readers shouldn’t expect a very happy ending, though a few of the main characters are able to salvage something from the destruction. Despite the relatively bleak ending, the book as a whole is a pleasure to read, and it’s worth recommending.

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (Translated by Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa)
This famous book is one of the earliest works of prose fiction to appear in post-medieval Europe. In structure it is quite similar to The Arabian Nights, as it consists of a series of mostly unrelated stories told within the context of a frame story. The frame story itself is not particularly eventful, though its background is fascinating. Boccaccio wrote the book in the mid 14th century, soon after the bubonic plague commonly known as the Black Death struck Italy, including his home city of Florence (Firenze), and the novel’s introduction includes a very vivid and grim description of the ravages of the plague. The premise of the book is that a group of ten young people, seven women and three men belonging to the upper classes, decide to escape to the countryside together, where they spend their time singing, dancing and telling stories. As they decide at the beginning of their trip to leave all bad news behind them, it is not surprising that for the rest of the book, the plague is rarely mentioned, to the point where one could easily forget their motivation for embarking on what seems like a rather idyllic holiday of idle pleasure. But then the frame story is not really the point, and anyway the introduction was no doubt enough unpleasantness for the readers who were Boccaccio’s intended audience (mainly women looking for something to while away their spare time). The main point is the stories told over a ten day period, with each of the characters telling a story in turn, usually based on a theme set by the member of the group whose turn it is to be Queen or King for the day.

The stories themselves come in a wide variety and for the most part are highly entertaining and often funny. Most are set in contemporary or near contemporary Italy, but others range farther afield, all over the Mediterranean and even to Cathay (though the characters in the story set there are Hebrew and Persian rather than Chinese), and back in time to Lombard Italy and even in one case the time of the Roman Empire. The obvious difference between these stories and those of The Arabian Nights is that there is much less swashbuckling adventure and magic (although there’s a bit of both) and a lot more sex. The amount of the latter (occasionally graphic, though mostly through use of earthy metaphors) may be surprising, until one recalls that not every Western culture of the past has been as repressed about sex as, say, the English of the Victorian era or Americans of almost any era. The Romans, for instance, frequently wrote very forthrightly about sex. Nevertheless, some of the (often hilarious) stories of various lovers’ escapades – one story involves a man who ends up sleeping with all the nuns in a convent, and another ends up with two couples making a permanent spouse swapping arrangement – make the reader wonder if the Italians of Boccaccio’s day really were that open-minded. Not that everything took place out in the open; in fact, though many of the stories involve adulterous affairs, it seems that being caught in one red-handed could have serious consequences (in fact much of the humor involves the efforts of various lovers to avoid getting caught). Homosexuality is rarely alluded to, and when it is it is treated negatively, though the mild disapproval in The Decameron is nothing like the virulent homophobia in a book like Fanny Hill. I should also note, though that it would be a mistake to assume that all the stories involve love affairs and sexual escapades. In fact, most told on the first and last days do not involve anything of the sort, and many of the others do not either. Many revolve around reversals of fortune, or clever remarks that put someone in their place, or get the speaker out of trouble.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is its view of women. At times, the book presents the sort of attitude toward women that one might expect to see in a very patriarchal society, that is to say, quite negative about both the abilities and the rights of women. Even at the beginning, when the group of seven women is discussing fleeing the city, one of them gives a speech that is very derogatory about women and their ability to manage without men, leading them to decide to ask the three young men to come with them. A few of the stories repeat attitudes of this sort. Several of the sexual escapades described are essentially rape, as the woman is described as submitting to the man’s advances unwillingly. In one of the stories featuring the rather stupid Calandrino and the pranksters Bruno and Buffalamaco (some of the few characters who appear in multiple stories), the former beats his wife rather badly, though in a later story she is able to take revenge. The most extreme example, however, is a story told by one of the women on the ninth day that not only once more contains a speech about women’s inferiority to men, but directly advocates the beating of wives by husbands (though it seems that not all the women approved of the message, as the story evoked “murmuring” among them).

Despite these examples of blatant misogyny, however, much of The Decameron has a very liberated attitude toward women. Many of the stories feature women who are not afraid to speak their minds and very clever women who get the better of the men they deal with. Nor do the women only use their intelligence for love affairs. In a few stories, the female protagonists display capabilities in fields that in that era were generally reserved for men alone. One woman is a very talented doctor who successfully treats the king of France. Another, after narrowly escaping death at the hands of her husband, who falsely believes she was unfaithful to him, disguises herself as a man and displays such abilities in a series of situations that she ends up as a high placed member of the court of the Sultan of Egypt. Another woman, caught in an affair in a city with draconian punishments for unfaithful women, forthrightly declares to the judge that the law is unfair because women were not consulted in its drafting. These positive portrayals of women are enough to justify the statement in the scholarly introduction to the translation I read that The Decameron is notable for “almost revolutionary feminism” – certainly, despite the lapses mentioned above, on the whole women are portrayed much more positively and in much greater variety than in many other later novels, even many from only half a century ago (where the women are usually restricted the roles of secretaries and housewives).

The Decameron paints an interesting picture of Italian society of the times in other respects as well. At times the stories reflect the belief, unfortunately widely prevalent in pre-modern Europe, that people of noble ancestry were naturally superior. However, other stories directly contradict this, presenting a much more egalitarian view where characters of poor backgrounds can be at least as noble as those of high birth. Another aspect of the book is its generally very negative view of the Catholic clergy, all the way up to the Papacy. Friars are routinely mocked and lambasted for their greed and hypocrisy, and in one of the very first tales a Jew whose Christian friend keeps trying to convert him goes to Rome to see how the leaders of the Church behave, and in the end converts not because the Pope and other prelates behave well, but because the religion manages to thrive in spite of their scandalous behavior. Incidentally, while this tale implies the superiority of Christianity as a religion over Judaism, the Jew himself is portrayed positively, and in the following story, the only other to feature a Jew, he is again shown in a positive light – as is Saladin, who also features not only in the latter story but in a much longer one near the end. All in all, the book doesn't include many of the biases against various groups (except the one against the clergy, but then they were not a disadvantaged group) that are common in many stories from previous centuries.

The Decameron features a wide range of characters, from kings to peasants and everything in between, and all of them are very vividly drawn. While Boccaccio may not have written the stories themselves, like William Shakespeare (who also did not make up his plots), it is in the masterful way he tells them that his greatness lies. Also worth noting is his conclusion, in which he addresses criticism that his stories are too scandalous (i.e., too much sex) and contain language not fit for refined readers. He makes a very excellent argument that all the words he uses are appropriate to the stories he tells and furthermore that his tales, like so many other things, will be harmful or useful depending on the reader. As he says, fire and weapons and even the Bible can be used for good or bad, and while "a corrupt mind never understands a word in a healthy way", a healthy mind will not be harmed by words of any kind. With this concise defense of his masterwork, Boccaccio not only punctures contemporary prudes who objected to his stories, but the centuries of prudes that would follow. Today, however, most readers can simply enjoy what the introduction with good reason argues is one of the most readable of any of the world's masterpieces of literature.