The Lonely Londoners

I found this book in the house the other day. It was given a way with The Times a few years ago. It is well written but in a convincing West Indian style, sometimes with little punctuation. The scope is too thin for it to be a great novel and the unsavoury nature of certain parts was unhelpful. It captures the WIndrush generation's experience to some extent and is very interesting. Sam Selvon died in 1994.

Herman Hesse's Siddhartha

In the same section of Waterstones where I saw the Jhumpa Lahiri short story collection I saw a copy of Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. I first became aware of this book many years ago reading  James W Sire's very helpful book The Universe Next Door. He mentions it in his chapter on Basic Eastern Pantheistic Monism. The book is certainly a great advertisement for that way of thinking. It relates the story of the eponymous hero from his Brahmin youth, through his time as a samana and encountering the Buddha, through a sansara period of sex, riches and gambling then back into a more traditionally Hindu  approach to life. It is very well written and so lures in the unsuspecting. It was written (in German) in the twenties but reached popular heights only by the sixties when the Beatles and others were looking east for inspiration. It is still worth a read - in order to understand eastern thought and read well written and simple prose.

Summer Reading 2 Fiction

Among the fiction this summer has been the novella The Kreutzer Sonata by Tolstoy and Stoner by John Williams. Both are high classics, a little demanding but worth the little effort needed. The Tolstoy was hard to get into - too many characters. (It would be easier in a film). Once you were into it though it became gripping. Tolstoy clearly knew human nature well. Apparently, it is a manifesto for celibacy and works on that level but is surely a rallying call to biblical views of marriage and a warning against many dangers. The reason for the title only comes out towards the end, which is well done. It might have been good to have the Beethoven piece playing as I read. I might have cried.
Stoner is a 1965 novel by an American John Williams that has been rediscovered and touted by Waterstones and others. I heard about it on Radio 4 and then read the first page in store and was hooked. It really is a brilliant novel with several purple passages of great beauty. It tells the very ordinary 20th century life story of an English lecturer (the writer's own occupation). Morris Dickstein (nor me) wrote that Stoner is "a perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving that it takes your breath away." I enjoyed it but only in cathartic way. Utterly bleak, almost the only moments of joy allowed to the protagonist come illicitly. You could easily get depressed on this stuff and I'm glad it was not a set text when I was in school. One has to feel sorry for humanists some time. They have very little going for them. Where would I be without the love of God in Christ and the hope of a glorious and joyful heaven?

Of Mice and Men

I took opportunity while I was away to do some reading, of course. I wanted to read Steinbeck's Of men and mice because kids read it in school these days and I was curious. So I now know why it has the title it has (not just the Burns reference) and I'm familiar with the basic story. It's a good story, well written but as it is only a novella it works at a fairly superficial level - great for kids starting on serious literature. I've never seen any of the movie versions. I started The grapes of wrath once may be I'll have another go.

Ethan Frome

I've been reading Edith Wharton's novella Ethan Frome. It is a well told and powerful tale that reveals a story of passion and sadness in 19th century rural New England. Part of the story teller's art is to book end the piece with references to the then present and these give the main story a strength that it would probably otherwise not have. Only around 99 pages it is quite a work and well deserves the praise it has been given as Wharton's best selling work. Early reviewers though it too cruel but given a little distance one can cope with it easier by hoping nothing so dire would ever happen to me or those I love. It is quite a moral tale in its own way. It is crying out to be filmed. I notice that was done in 1993 with Liam Neeson (director John Madden), how successfully I don't know not having seen it.