Robertson Davies. Fifth Business.

Dear Mr. Frunk,

So, I put down Against the Day with less than two hundred pages left. Partly because I needed a break and partly because my girlfriend’s mother had lent me it, I started Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business (she signed up for booksfree.com, which is similar to netflix, only with books, obviously).

I didn’t have any expectations for it. The book jacket says it centers on a boyhood incident – the throwing of a single snowball – that affects the course of several characters throughout their entire lives. A bit of research told me the book is based off Jungian psychology, of which I’m only causally familiar with. I was even turned off by the phrase “fifth business,” which is a character in opera who’s not the protagonist, antagonist, etc., but is essential to the action if only in a peripheral way – something I never heard of until picking up the book. With a depressed, weighty sigh I picked it up more to read it as a courtesy to Mrs. R’s generosity than to any expected enjoyment.

The novel itself is a written letter from Dunstan Ramsay – in response to a brief article about his retirement – to his Headmaster. Usually, I avoid epistolary novels since they invoke memories of Stoker’s Dracula. But I trudged on. The book is roughly divided into six sections that more or less translate into six different stages of Ramsay’s growth.

Despite everything against it, the first section won me over. Ramsay lives in a small town in Canada called Deptford, which Davies paints in exquisite detail and reminds me of a wintry version of Carson McCullers’ small towns. Right away, that ominous snowball is thrown and events are set in motion. I won’t describe what exactly happens with the snowball, as Davies’ construction of the scene and its far-reaching ripples is ingenious and needs to be experienced. It was then I realized the powers Davies had at his command.

Yet the book at times can be slow-going. World events, such as World War I and the Great Depression, are depicted vaguely at best and used more as a time frame reference than anything else. However the events do impacted the characters’ lives, but the sections are tedious and dull. Later, you’ll realize the importance of the sections and recognize more fully the themes Davies was laying, but it was a chore.

I know so far what I’ve described probably sounds dull. And you’re thinking, God, why should I read this? Believe me, I thought so too at times. An accurate description of my own journey and thoughts is just being fair, I think. Because what I’m trying to do is describe the journey without spoiling the strangeness, the enigmatic events and ideas within it. And all of it was not entirely clear until the very last pages. That end scene changed everything that came before – through no trickery, mind you – but through natural actions of its characters. That’s not to say they’re unreliable, especially Ramsay, but the final revelation made me weak at the knees.

If I told you what the story hinges on, you’d probably never pick it up. It’s so deceptively simple. But Davies had crafted a masterpiece. One that works on so many different levels due to its construction and even more so because we don’t fully realize it until we reach its conclusion.

So, Frunk, I urge you to read it. It is not one of those depressing, existential modernistic texts or, as Mir described, something by those miserable German authors. But I think you’d appreciate the Jungian archetypes, the guilt of its protagonist, the hagiology, the fool-saints, and just the story itself. As a gift from one booklover to the other, I offer this recommendation.

Sincerely,
Cave Hinds

Brooks Hansen. The Chess Garden.

Brooks Hansen’s The Chess Garden is about the spiritual life of Dr. Uyterhoeven, which is detailed through twelve letters, in a form of an allegory, written to his wife who in turns reads them to the town they’ve called home. To call this novel allegorical fantasy sounds, to my ears, dismissive, so I’ll refrain. The book is a marvel of invention, of ideas, and of heart. Its end I find thematically similar to John Crowley’s Little, Big, though Hansen’s novel is not quite on the level of that masterpiece.

The novel’s structure is one of its biggest strengths, and one of its few flaws. It switches between the Dutch doctor’s wife and town, his biography, and his startling letters. They fit perfectly together, much like the golden leaf cloaks pieced together by monks in the Antipodes, the imaginary land the doctor visits. But I call it a flaw due to the tediousness of the biographical sections, which I concede are necessary, but, at times, a bore to get through. It’s partly due to the dry, detached manner of Hansen’s prose style. The style works in perfect conjunction with the fantastical elements, in a restrained way that casts them as almost natural, be it the wax-dripping candle trees, the large silver lake, or the chasm of a thousand tumbling dice.

The imaginary, star-shaped land the doctor visits, the Antipodes, is populated with game pieces, mostly chess pieces, but not exclusively so. As his adventures begins, events seem to happen random, with an eye more for imagery than plot, until Hansen introduces key elements and things that happened prior are cast in a new light. The island hosts a group the doctor calls vandals, who wish to destroy goods that are the essence of goods. So if you have the good cane and destroy it, the usage of a cane – its function and purpose – is lost to memory. The doctor sides against the vandals, and it isn’t until later that he understands the need to abandon earthly goods. This is where the spirituality kicks in. Overall, Hansen handles the topic rather well, except for one incredibly awkward scene when Dr. Uyterhoeven speaks of Christ and discusses his own spiritual life. Despite the embarrassing conversation, Hansen finds more effective means to convey his message, such as in the words of one character: “What matters won’t change. What changes don’t matter.” Which is the essence of this very spiritual book, not to mention the nature of the afterlife – at least in the Christian sense.

Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë



To call Jane Eyre a feminist text is to insult women. To call it a feminist novel is to insult literature. And to call Charlotte Bronte a writer is to insult civilization. Might as well call Hitler a humanitarian.



Jane Eyre is divided into roughly three parts, which I will summarize in one sentence: It is about an abused orphan who falls in love with a man who keeps a woman upstairs that bites others. The plot isn’t very surprising or subtle, nor is it of much interest. As a child, Jane Eyre is neglected and abused at her adopted home and later at a boarding school. Life gets better as she ages and as she later takes employment under a Mr. Rochester.



Yes, Mr. Rochester is the same man Jane falls into a deep, unconvincing love with, the same man who shelters a mad-woman upstairs. All is revealed in a ridiculous plot twist. Yet, while Jane’s feelings never changes for Mr. Rochester, she is forced to abandon him due to propriety’s sake. This begins the third section, which details another boring plight in Jane’s life. She improbably meets up with relatives, though the fact isn’t uncovered until later. When it is discovered, her cousin immediately proposes to Jane. All of a sudden, her being blood-relation makes her eggs viable – I don’t know why.



Unsurprisingly, Jane rejects the proposal and seeks out Mr. Rochester once more. Mr. Rochester, though now wife-less, is blind and crippled, which, according to Bronte, makes the once superior man now on equal footing with Jane. Yeah… this novel was certainly revolutionary.



There is only one reason I can celebrate Jane Eyre’s existence and it’s due to her younger sister’s rebuttal, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. So successful was Anne’s rebuttal that upon her death Charlotte repressed it. Thankfully, readers can now rightfully be disgusted be Charlotte’s works and then feel redeemed by basking in Anne’s glow.




View all my reviews.

My review

My Cats.

Penelope.


Penelope, crouched.


Penelope, asleep.


Odysseus.


Odysseus, hiding.


Odysseus, found.


Odysseus, hello.

Lynne Truss. Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss



Finished 9/3/08



Lynne Truss’ book takes its title from an old joke, which is conveniently reprinted on the dust jacket:


"A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
'Why?' asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
'I’m a panda,' he says, at the door. 'Look it up.'
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.'"



The joke aptly summarizes Truss’ comedic tone, and her dead-serious approach to punctuation, which she reveals, again from the dust jacket, in this quote: “So, punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.”



I’m a stickler for punctuation, at least for myself. From a sense of pride and ascetic pleasure, I craft correspondence, emails, and even text messages while strictly adhering to rules of punctuation and spelling. Editing, at times, is a sense of pleasure for me. I will not go so far to say that a misspelled, improperly punctuated email or text message is insulting to the reader; however, one can’t help but wonder, if the writer put so little thought into their writing, what about other aspects of their lives? For one so in love with written language, it is a difficult, narrow path remaining tolerant. As a rule, I abstain from being judgmental based on a person’s lack of punctuation skills. Truss, however, does not.



The vandalistic anecdotes and random assortment of historical trivia are the life of Truss’ book of the “zero tolerance approach to punctuation.” She notes times of defacing public property to add and remove apostrophes and hyphens. Her justification, which she details through historic examples and writers’ diatribes, is that without punctuation, that humble guide that instructs how to read the written word, language would breakdown to chaos and ambiguity. And she’s right, as one can see in the example above. A misplaced comma renders an entirely new meaning to the sentence.



Yet, one cannot fill a book on this premise alone, no matter how many pages she has of anecdotes. Thus, she recites basic rules for different punctuation and why it is worth saving. Sadly, it is here that book breaks down and becomes uninteresting. I admire her attempts at keeping things interesting. Many of the examples are bizarre sentences, either by her hand or borrowed. For those not as familiar with the rules of grammar, this would be a good addition. For others, there are more formidable guides, which, in all likelihood, are already owned by them.



If this book left me with anything, it was an intense desire to read more George Bernard Shaw. The man’s theories are just fascinating.




View all my reviews.

My review

Mark Ovenden. Transit Maps of the World

Transit Maps of the World by Mark Ovenden



I’ve discovered a love for oversized coffee table books. Unwieldy troves of trivia, in them novelty wins. I’d buy one browse it for a couple months. They’re books to enjoy slowly, over time, digesting niblets of facts on some geeky, specialized subject. Mark Ovenden’s Transit Maps of the World fills this niche, it makes the journey worthwhile.



In the preface, he smartly defines a transit system. Urban transit maps remain the book’s primary focus, though, while questionable to some, he defends the inclusion of other mixed systems – those with above ground as well as below ground transit systems.



The book is divided into six zones or sections, the first three of which being the richest. The zones are further divided into cities. Ovenden details histories, from the inception of a city’s urban system to its recent model and also includes proposed plans. These biographies of the cities are filled with beautiful reproductions of the maps as they change, grow, and become standardized.



Yes, standardized. Not only is the book interest in the development of the urban systems, but the maps themselves. Some include topography, landmarks to orient travelers where they are aboveground. Standardized, for cleaner looking maps, rids itself of topography and settles instead for standard angles, equal station distant, black station ticks with open circles, among other practices. The book becomes even more interesting where the cities take risks on the maps, trying out a new design. Some experiments early on are phased out, others became the standard.



For most major cities, the development of the systems started in the late nineteenth century, where exponential population growth created demand. Faced with the population surge above, engineers went underground. This was when the maps appeared. The systems grew, some massively. During the Depression, many plans were scrapped, and some systems were put on hold indefinitely. Several of the cities in the later zones had plans before the Depression, but were hit so hard that nothing was done until as recently as twenty years ago.



The book, for all its geeky pleasure, is not serendipitous. After such richly detailed early zones, the latter zones feel included simply for the tagline across the front cover: “The World’s First Collection of Every Urban Train Map on Earth.” It drags once you understand the transit map’s history and trajectory. Even Ovenden has to devise creative ways to say the same thing over and over.



But for novelty value, the book is worth it.


View all my reviews.

My review

Don DeLillo. Cosmopolis.

Cosmopolis: A Novel by Don DeLillo



Finished 8/22/08



DeLillo is not known for intricate plots. His books are about ideas. This is where he thrives. This is the compensation for an apparent lack of trajectory, or at least a tight;y-paced plot, mostly. But when he abandons all plot and instead engages the character in a series of random conversation, even his thematic issues lack. There needs to be propulsion in his novels, direction. Without, he gives us the lackluster Great Jones Street about a recluse rocker who does nothing but sit in an apartment building. The characters who visit actually seem to offer a moderately interesting plot, but there is no action. The sloth protagonist lies around, bored, and the reader feels the same.



In Cosmopolis, DeLillo offers the same dull albeit silly snapshot: A billionaire rides across town in a limo for a haircut. Yes, a haircut. The trip takes all day due to a presidential visit, a funeral and an assassination attempt… by pie. Yes pie. A pastry assassin makes living, or at least attempts to construct a point, by hitting celebrities in a face with dessert. Odd asides such as this give the book a humorous buzz, but it’s all superficial.

The only ideas that float by worth any acknowledgement is the overabundance of information. Portions of it reminded me of Warren Ellis’ great Transmetropolitan set in the near distant future where human vices have grown as technology advanced. I mention the graphic novel series because it’s the only worthy venture my mind took while reading Cosmopolis. And I love DeLillo.



This is the type of book where DeLillo opens himself up to criticism. Everything he’s faulted for, on full display within. There’s the funeral of rap star Brutha Fez that tightropes between weighty seriousness and farce. Mildly compelling sequence, memorable for how straight-faced he approached the scene despite how ridiculous it all was underneath. Yet one must the point where it culminates with this dozy of a line: “When people die, you weep.” A writer, who’s made a name on modern cultural insights, gives us that profound little nugget. What in the absolute fuck. Avoid.




View all my reviews.

My review