Baswoods books 2

Yann Queffélec - La Dégustation
Yann Queffélec is a french author with many books and essays published under his name. La Dégustation was published in 2005 and as the title suggests wine and wine tasting features heavily in the novel. Nice in the south of France with its vineyards and rich lifestyle, a marriage between a successful entrepreneur of 50 years to a woman of 21 years, who are very much in love, the blue Mediterranean always visible, hints of dark secrets from the past; all sounds very promising, however I found the book confusing and very much of it never rung true with me.

Bernard Tragore is the 50 year old wine producer and publisher who marries Muriel, whose mother refuses to give her consent and is barely able to go to the lavish wedding. Muriel discovers a talent for tasting wine encouraged by her husband and studies to become a sommelier: it is 1973 and so there are few women involved in the profession. Bernard however has nightmares about the second world war and it soon becomes obvious that it was the part he played when he was 20 years old; Muriel is jewish but seemingly has no suspicions that Bernard might have been active in the Milice. Bernards nightmares and strange night visitations by a German man puts a strain on their relationship.

Yann Queffélec does produce some striking images, but it took me some time to get familiar with his vocabulary and this probably did not help with my enjoyment of his novel. Not my favourite read of the year by some way and so three stars.

The Great War of 189 A forecast - P. H. Colomb et al
This is a curiosity. I read it as one of the books that is claimed to be science fiction before the term science fiction was invented. It was published in 1892. P. H. Colomb was in fact Vice-Admiral Philip Howard Colomb and published some books on the theme of naval warfare. In The Great War 189____ he surmises that a world war is only a few years away and so he was not far from being right. He then tells the history of this forecast war as a series of articles from wartime correspondents. The war starts with the assassination of Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria (how near is that for a forecast as the 1914 world war started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria) then Austria mobilised against Bulgaria and then Russia mobilised against Austria from then on many other countries of Europe were drawn in. Germany declared war on Russia who was allied with France, but in a strange twist England came into the war on the side of Germany.

Whereas the first part of the book is interesting enough when the detailed descriptions of various battles take precedence then it gets a bit bogged down. Colomb is of course very good on naval tactics and British seapower proves to be decisive. Land battles are described in some horrific detail with early machine guns creating havoc with the cavalry. I tired of all the fighting long before the end, because it is battlefield tactics that really interest the author. However it still held interest and the newspaper reporting style fitted the subject matter very well. 3 stars.

Aya De Yopougon - Bande dessiner - Margeurite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie No 2

Second instalment of the story of three young girls who live in Yop City (Yopougon) on the Coté D'Ivoirien. Life gets more complicated for Adjoua who will not say who is the father of her baby (Bobby). She has to work and so dumps the baby on her studious friend Aya. Meanwhile Bintou is seeing Gregoire who says he lives in Paris and has sex with him. Local reformed drug dealer Mamadou is tracked down as the father of Bobby and seems to want to take responsibility. Aja's father businessman Ignace has lost his job and has another family in the town and Moussa the wayward son of Patron Bonaventure Sissoko is still trying to live the high life. Who is going to be this years Miss Yopougon. Good art and a good story make this a good continuation of Aya de Yopougon 3.5 stars.

Interesting books to kick off the second half of the year. Colomb sounds quite prescient, despite the Britain element.

V. S. Pritchett - Mr Beluncle
Another book to tick off the list of 1951 publications. V. S. Pritchett was best known for his short stories and essays and for being editor of the New Statesmen, he was said not to have enjoyed writing novels and after reading Mr Beluncle I could imagine why this may have been so. It took a long time for the story (such as it was) to get going while the author took careful aim to build on his characters. However it did convey an excellent impression of life in a provincial English town in the 1950's.

Mr Beluncle was probably a self made man and we meet him when at 50 years old his furniture business is starting to fail. He is a commanding figure who rules his family like his factory in an authoritarian manner. The story is told from the point of view of his eldest son Henry, who has a job in his father's business, but suffers from the stress of dealing with his father both at work and at home. Mr Beluncle has a fierce temper and Henry's two brothers and his mother all have various defence mechanisms for dealing with the outbursts. Mr Beluncle has supreme self confidence and is never wrong. There are two other sides to Mr Beluncle that have to be accommodated, he is a member of a religious organisation run by a Mrs Parkinson and attends regular meetings of this group who call themselves The Science of Purification. Mr Beluncle's business is kept afloat by the money supplied by his partner Mrs Truslove, who is half in love with the great man. Mr Beluncle has a history of obtaining financial support from female admirers. The story gets going when Henry thinks he is in love with Mary Phibbs and his father admonishes him for stepping out with a girl who is below their station and when a crippled member of the Science of Purification starts to walk for the first time.

The novels main strength is its slightly satirical look at 1950's attitudes and its character's search for something in which to believe. The dialogue like the story can suddenly take some strange turns, some of which seem outdated today, but ring true at the time that the novel was published. It is like stepping back into a time capsule, but its satire can make for a slightly depressing read and so 3 stars.

Romain Puértolas - La petite fille qui avait avalé un nuage grand comme la Tour Eiffel.
A long title for a book that is basically a tall story; as tall as the Eiffel tower. A man sits down to have his hair cut in the hairdressers, as the barber snips away at his afro hair the man says he wants to tell him a story. The barber warns him not to move his head around too much or he might cut off his ear. Unperturbed the man tells the story of a postlady named Providence, who wanted to fly off her own volition to save a child in a Moroccan hospital suffering from cystic fibrosis. Providence has a history of achieving things quickly, she could walk at 7 months old and saw no reason why she could not learn to fly. The story involves her interview with Master Hué who calls himself the most powerful man on earth, who then refers her to a monastery in Versailles. Providence does not have much time because she needs to get to Marrakech at a time when all aeroplanes are grounded because of volcanic ash in the air, but being a law abiding citizen she requests permission from the traffic control chief at Orly airport.

The story sounds like something out of a children's book and in a way it is a childlike story, however despite a lightness of touch there is some serious storytelling going on here. The author has fun with myths and fables and indulges in some word play. There are frequent surprises in national identities and people are not always who they seem to be, apart from political world leaders like Barrack Obama and Françoise Hollande who appear from time to time. Love, courage perseverance and a sense that anything can be achieved by the most unlikely people are themes running through the book and to top it all there is a delightful twist in the tale. I slowly warmed to this shaggy dog story.

Romain Puértolas is a French author who writes in the comic vein, but there are underlying themes of sympathy for immigrants and foreign nationals. Debunking universally held myths is another speciality as well as lightly satirising world famous celebrities and politicians. There is no denying the feel good factor in reading this novel, but the frothy entertainment has a more serious message for those readers who pick up on it. Not bad and so 3.5 stars.

>7 baswood: Sounds like fun!

John O'Hara - The Farmers Hotel
The American author John O'Hara is now best known for his short stories. He was prolific; writing a number of novels and plays. In 1951 he published The Farmers Hotel which is of novella length (153 pages) and which can easily be read in one sitting. Ira Studbaker of Rock Bottom Pennsylvania has recently refurbished a hotel in the old style. The small town of 850 inhabitants can just about support a Farmers Hotel and Ira and his black friend and helper Charles are making final preparations for opening the doors on their first day of business. Ira has previously worked in the food trade and the hotel is something he has always fancied doing as a sort of pre-retirement project. It has been snowing heavily all morning and when they open the doors to a couple of rich people still dressed in expensive hunting clothes, Ira stands them drinks because they are his first customers. Ira and Charles wish to present a relaxed, welcoming atmosphere and have employed a local townswoman to do the cooking. Soon the guests Howard Pomfret and Mrs Paul are tucking into steak sandwiches.

The snow continues to fall and Howard starts to worry about getting stuck, because it soon becomes clear that Mrs Paul needs to be back home to her husband. More guests arrive driven towards the only hotel for some distance by the wretched weather: Mr Mayo in show business with the Pickwick sisters are trying to get to a theatre for an engagement. The local doctor pops in for some refreshment and then Joe Rogg bangs on the door annoyed that Howard's Buick is blocking the road in such a way the he can't get passed in his truck. He is invited in for a couple of drinks and guests, employees and a couple of locals set themselves to wile away the time waiting for the weather to improve. Joe Rogg is keen to set up some sort of gambling den, but is persuaded to sit down to dinner with the others and they provide their own entertainment, stories are told, backgrounds are sketched in and tensions between the guests develop. Its going to be a long night...........

O'Hara presents to his readers a snapshot of life in a small American town when outsiders crash in amongst the locals. Ira and Charles could not be more welcoming, but it does not take much for people to rub each other up the wrong way, even when good food and drink and a warm room are at every ones disposal. People bring their own problems and some just don't fit in even when all is done to make them welcome. The novel is really little more than an extended short story. but it is told with a certain charm, some pertinent dialogue and violence never far away. An enjoyable read three stars

An example of the cover designs in this series

Byron - Herbert Read (writers and their work series)
I can see a rabbit hole looming ahead after I discovered that this critical essay on Lord Byron was published in 1951. The cover of the books in the early series is iconic in my mind because I have one of them in my own library and they seemed to be everywhere when I was in school.

They were essentially of essay length stretching to about 20 pages with an extensive bibliography of about 10 or more additional pages. Herbert Read's essay on Byron follows the early format. It starts with a brief look at the authors reputation and then launches into a psychological analysis of the author using quotations from journals, autobiographies, letters and works. Read makes the point that an enduring myth has been shaped around Byron since his death and it can be difficult to separate the myth from the man. He goes on to say that particularly in Byron's case "it is important to guard against the importation of moral judgement into a literary context" Byrons father had a reputation all off his own and was often referred to as 'Mad Jack Byron': he hired a governess to look after his son and she beat him "until his bones ached" From this upbringing Byron developed a disgust of life and his heart was thrown back upon itself. He became melancholic and his despair was a very real thing. However along with this character trait there was a mad passion for action and he was conscious of his obligations and responsibilities, based on his own concept of justice and his confident knowledge that he had a part to play in the world. His reputation as a libertine is too big a subject for this essay. His own philosophy of life tended towards nihilism and he is quoted as saying"

"Those poor idiots of the lakes (Wordsworth et al) are diluting our literature as much as they can"

"I envy no one the certainty of his self approved wisdom"

Read then goes on to criticise Byron's own poems and says that they are not fundamentally poetic. He cannot be ranked among the great poets of the past, there is something missing: whereas Wordsworth for example believed that there was something that made his poetry express thoughts and ideas greater than themselves. A sort of talent that enabled him to seek universal truths in the poetry that he produced. Byron thought this idea was a load of twaddle. His poetry had to be forced from himself, it was a painful experience to write. Read claims he was more of a satirist, he was able to hold up a mirror to the absurd and more viscous aspects of human nature gained from his own life experiences. He goes on to say that there is at the base of all Byrons work an essential sanity; a hatred of sham and humbug, generous impulses and manly courage. He was a free spirit and a poet who rose above the daily conflict of vice and virtue to view the spectacle with cynical humour.
Towards the end of his life Byron's writing came under the influence of Shelley and he wrote a number of plays, many of which are now forgotten. He died of course in heroic circumstances fighting for liberty in Greece, but Read has no time to reflect much on this only saying that Byron had a reputation as being a good administrator and battlefield tactician.

As is my previous experience with essays in this series they are seriously critical of their subjects, they are by no means panegyrics. They have much to pack into an essay format, but do attempt to provide some serious literary criticism. 4 stars

The rabbit hole I mentioned earlier is that there were several essays published in this series in 1951:

William Blake - Kathleen Raine
G M Trevelyan - J H Plumb
George Elliot - Lettie Cooper
Osbert Sitwell - Roger Fulford
Sheridan - W W Darlington
Ivy Compton Burnett - Pamela Homsford Johnson
Thomas Hardy - R A Scott-Jones
Samuel Butler - G D H Cole

But why stop there; as there were 200 published in the earlier series
Hm.........................

>10 baswood: Houla, that rabbit hole sounds deep indeed! Thank you for a very interesting review. I realize I know next to nothing about Byron, but now I know a tiny bit more.

Existentialism, Marxism and Anarchism - Herbert Read
After recently reading Herbert Read's essay on Byron I came across another of his essays published a year earlier 1950 and could not resist dipping into it. Read starts off by stating that he is not a professional philosopher and so although his enquiry is philosophical he will not use philosophical terms. He says the main concept of existentialism is angst: the abyss, immediacy and the priority of existence to essence. All existentialists who are aware of their separate and lonely individuality who stare into the abyss contrasts this not only with the rest of human species, but with the whole goings on in the universe; must feel angst: this can lead to nihilism. He then goes onto quote from Jean-Paul Sartre who put forward the idea that the existentialists who experience this sense of detachment or freedom must throw himself back into the social context with the intention of changing these conditions. Sartre's idea of engagement.

"Revolutionary man must be a contingent being unjustifiable but free, entirely immersed in the society that oppresses him, but capable of transcending this society by his efforts - materialism mystifies him by depriving him of his freedom."

This leads onto a short discussion on Marxism which Read says is basically economic theory wrapped up in conditions that have been teased out from History. Does it provide a blue print for the future? Read answers his own question by saying the future will make its own prints and they will not necessarily be blue. He says the Anarchist like the Marxist rejects the nihilism of the Existentialist. Whereas the Marxist sees the goal achieved by positive direct struggle, the anarchist sees it in terms of mutual aid; a symbiosis depicted by human values. Marxism is based on economics; anarchism on biology.

The freedom of spontaneous events born of the ontic centre and the freedom to mould things in such a way enhances our sense of vitality and makes life more intense. Read finishes his essay with this conclusion:

"I would reply that in my opinion anarchism is the only political theory that combines an essentially revolutionary and contingent attitude with a philosophy of freedom. It is the only militant libertarian doctrine left in the world, and on its diffusion depends the progressive evolution of human consciousness and of humanity itself."

The second part of the essay is titled Chains of Freedom 1946-9. This is a series of notes and jottings that Read had written down and which he thought worth publishing. He thinks about the differences between freedom and the french liberté. He has plenty to say on justice and the judicial system following a call to serve on a jury. He writes about equality at some length and finishes with the classical idea of virtue and the possibility of a universal moral standard. He believes it essential that moral virtue should be taught and be a major part of the curriculum for the young.

Sir Herbert Read was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher. He only managed to complete one novel The Green Child which I read some time ago. It is a sort of mystery/science fiction fiction novel which I loved. It has been good to read more of Read and so 3.5 stars.

>12 baswood: Sounds interesting! This reminds me of a book I read back when I was following Massimo Pigliucci: How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy. The book is like a catalogue of the different philosophies of life, so that you can choose your own. I was surprised to find a chapter on existentialism, and it was very different from my preconceived idea of it (which aligns more or less with your description from Read's book), much more optimistic. It also reminds me that I had started to read on anarchism, and I should pick up that thread again. I have a book on it in my TBR: L'anarchie expliquée à mon père. Oh, and Beauvoir, I really need to read Beauvoir.

I searched on Kobo and was surprised to find several books by Herbert Read. I have wishlisted To Hell With Culture, because who can resist a title like that? And that cover!

>13 FlorenceArt: L'anarchie expliquée à mon père sounds interesting.

I have read quite a bit of Beauvoir, I found her autobiographies fascinating:

Mémoires d'un jeune fills rangée
La Force de l'âge
La force des choses

I have also read Le Deuxième Sexe and one of her novels Les Mandarins

>14 FlorenceArt: That title's not surprising as he called himself an anarchist!

>15 baswood: I have read Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée, but it was so long ago! I’m not even sure I read it whole, the book I see in my memory is volume 1 in the Folio edition.

>16 baswood: I’m not sure that follows… and now I really must read it!

Eric Poindron - De L'égarement à travers les livres
This story is told in the first person by a man who describes a visit to a book shop: one that specialises in antique books. He is searching for a rare book by Gérard de Nerval a nineteenth century french author who was a major figure during the era of french romanticism. The bookseller immediately identifies our storyteller as a man whose fascination for books has completely taken over his life. A man like himself who is on the edge of madness because "Qui lit trop devient fou" (who reads too much becomes mad). The shop is in the town of Rheims and the bookseller says that there is a secret society that has a collection of rare books called Le Cénacle Troglodyte. It is somewhere underground near the cathedral. Our storyteller is all too willing to be recruited on missions to search out rare books, but first he must acquaint himself with the possibility of becoming ill with L'onirobibliomania and then must search out the Cénacle Troglodyte. He travels across the city searching out booksellers who specialise in folklore and the phantasmagoric. on the trail of a book by Collin de Plancy: the dictionnaire infernal.

The rest of the book is made up of increasingly weird and wonderful searches for books by such luminaries as the poet and botanist Adelbert von Chamisso. Voltaire and the legend of the removal of his body involves him travelling to Romilly in the Aube department to interview various people connected with the story. He spends two months in Baltimore in the USA on the trail of works by Edgar Allan Poe meeting the mysterious Lovecraft. William Hope Hodgson a British author killed in Ypres in 1918 is one of the lesser known authors who features in a text "Livre de Raison".

The book searches are a mixture of fact and fiction with the emphasis on tales from folklore. The searches are a strain on the readers credulity, despite the footnotes. Eric Poindron has a passion for works by minor authors especially when folklore and the paranormal are involved and his enthusiasm and taste for the mysterious is ever present in De l'egarement à travers les livres. He is the author of many books and texts in France as well as being a poet and critic, little of anything by him has been translated into English. I found this expedition into some of the darker corners of french literature not so much to my taste and so 3 stars.

Joseph Conrad - Nostromo
This is not an easy read. It is Conrad's longest novel and being aware that it was originally conceived as a short story I found myself bogged down with a considerable amount of padding, especially in the first 150 pages, when the story hardly gets going, at this point it is difficult to pick out any major themes and Conrads sentence structure is as its most abstruse. However once Dacoud and the enigmatic Nostromo steal the silver from the mine and take to the sea waters of the gulf, then Conrad was in his natural element and the narrative drive kicks in, only to stall again further on, when events are once more told in flashback form, before we finally learn the fates of Dacoud, Nostromo and the silver. The novel has the feeling of a melange, it is as though it was too difficult for Conrad to conceive of, or to go through the hard graft of a complete re-write and so what we have is a modernist novel published in 1904 and very much ahead of the game: there are flashbacks, flash forwards, and changes of points of view (though it is mostly an omniscient POV)

Admittedly the novel has a huge canvas on which to draw the events. The backstory of imperial intervention in a fledgling South American state leading to yet another revolution and its consequences for the many characters in the story. There are a number of characters that appear and reappear as the story progresses, but the need for their back stories makes the novel appear to advance in a crab like fashion and as Conrad changes the nomenclature from time to time this can be initially confusing, however when I got to the end of the novel I had a pretty firm grasp of who did what and in some instances why, and in most cases when, so the narrative works after a fashion. The novel is set in the fictional South American country of Costaguana mainly in the seaboard town of Sulaco. Charles Gould an English business man has reopened a silver mine in the mountain above the town, providing work and infrastructure along with a relatively stable government headed by the dictator Ribiera. The mine has been financed through American capitalism which works well enough with the Ribieran regime. Genral Montero and his brother Pedrito have organised an army from the indigenous population and have taken over the capital of Costaguana on the other side of the mountain range and it is only a question of time before a conquering army gets to the gates of Sulaco, when murder, rapine and destruction will follow. Every six months a large consignment of silver comes down from the mine to be shipped and general Montero is hurrying across the mountains with his invasion force to capture the booty.

The first part of the novel deals with the mostly ex-patriot community that run much of Sulaco (the Blancos) in conjunction with the local Ribierists. Nostromo himself is of Italian origin and has made a name for himself in organising the ports dockers, he is an adventurous, competent man; a sailor of fortune that can often be found in Conrad's novels. In the first part Nostromo is hardly introduced, we get to know him gradually through third party references. When he speaks there are no words of wisdom, merely cliches.

When the revolution comes, when the hordes arrive; what will happen to the altruistic Emilia wife of Charles Gould, the french adventurer Martin Decoud, Don José Avellanos head of one of the oldest families, Dr Monygham a misanthropic English doctor, Giorgio Viola an exiled Italian revolutionary and his two daughters and many others? this is the narrative that drives the novel along with what will happen to the silver. Nostromo held in esteem by most of the central characters does his best to make himself useful, when a tricky situation is encountered Nostromo and his team of dockworkers are called into action.

Conrad's novels have been denounced because of an inherent racism and there is plenty of evidence in this novel. The indigenous population are described as negroes, riff-raff unable to think for themselves, uncivilised just wanting to satisfy their immediate animal needs. The ex-patriots however fare little better, with their need to constantly exploit the situation for their own needs. They are driven by the need to make money and have little thought for the people they exploit. Only Emilia Gould and Dr Monygham seem to have other virtues, but Nostromo! who knows where he stands. Conrads novels can today come across as anti-imperialist which sits uneasily with his characters racist attitudes, but this is a novel written in 1902 when thoughts and attitudes were in many respects different from today.

Doctor Monygham says to Emilia Gould towards the end of the novel:

"There is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests"

This is certainly the case for her husband Charles who is a workaholic, but characters are always thinking about Nostromo. What drives him? Nostromo hardly gives away any clues, the best that he can come up with is that he wants to be esteemed by others, he needs to cut a figure. He is the hero of the counter revolution, but nobody publicly acknowledges this. He ends up feeling betrayed and the silver of the mine is a corruption that he cannot ignore. Nostromo is the title of this novel, but Conrad never seems to come to grips with his central character and this seems to be a weakness and makes the whole novel appear a little hollow. I find Nostromo a curious mixture, there are passages of excellent writing and themes that are resonant today, but the whole thing feels unbalanced. 4 stars.

>20 baswood: Excellent, thoughtful review of Nostromo. Conrad is one of my favorite authors, but Nostromo is not among my favorites of his novels. One thing to remember about the book is that it represents one of the few times that Conrad was writing about a place he'd never been, as he never did go to South America. My own, brief, review from my reread back in 2013 was:

For the past several years, I've begun each year with a re-read of one of Joseph Conrad's major novels. Nostromo, in some ways, is the least satisfying of that group. It features a lot of somewhat off-putting exposition, especially over the first 180 pages or so (of a 460-page book) and it takes place in a fictional country in South America, a continent Conrad never visited.

However even less-than-top drawer Conrad is still Conrad, with stretches of marvelous writing and descriptions, and acute insights into human nature. In what ways and on how many levels can a huge fortune, benevolently administered, be a force for good and at the same time poison, corrupt and entrap everyone it touches? Once the book really gets going, the intrigues, human portraits and suspense of a small country on the verge of revolution will pull you in. Still, it can be a long slog to get to that point, and this is not the Conrad novel I recommend to people.

>21 rocketjk: Thanks Jerry and I see that our thoughts on this novel are similar. Thats interesting for me to learn that Conrad never visited South America, which may account a little for the sometimes curious racial mixes that he tells us were to be found there. I wonder what and where he had in mind when he wrote this.

I still have Victory to read before the end of the year.

>22 baswood: Ah, well, Victory is one of my favorite Conrad novels. Lots of moody, gradually increasing tension.

The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare (Norton Critical Edition)
The Merchant of Venice TV movie 1980
The Merchant of Venice has been described as a problem play, mainly because of its anti-semitic point of view, but also I think because the resolution of the plot takes place in act four of a five act play. Let's start with the anti-semitism as there have been a number of apologists over the years who have made a case for it not being a major theme in the play. However much sympathy can be engendered by the playing of Shylock on stage or film there is no getting away from the fact that this is stereotypical at best and racist at worse. It made me think of a recent political rally headed by Donald Trump where he called for 'you beautiful Christians' to vote for him. The Christians are all beautiful in The Merchant of Venice, the Jews and there are only two of them in the play are variously described as Jew-dog or the devil incarnate: Shylock is usually referred to by the Christian community as The Jew not by his family name. Antonio who reluctantly takes out a loan from Shylock, freely admits that he is wont to spit on his coat or kick him in the market place and would likely do this again in the future. This attitude to the Jewish community is a reflection of the intense dislike: religious and racist that would have been normal at the time Shakespeare wrote this play. Although the action takes place in Venice, I am assuming that London Elizabethan playgoers would have no trouble in identifying the prejudice against the Jewish community and many would be in sympathy with it.

There are two major plot lines that Shakespeare has bundled together. One is the bond that the merchant Antonio takes out with Shylock, which calls for the forfeit of a pound of his flesh if he does not make the payment on time and the other is the heiress Portia's commitment to choose a marriage partner, using the trial of the selection of one of three caskets. Bassanio links the two plots as he asks for a loan from his close friend Antonio so that he can travel to Belmont to take part in the competition for Portia's hand in marriage. This linking device works well and the audience or reader is able to follow one of Shakespeares most coherent plots. The play contains some of Shakespeares most beautiful verse and the quality of the writing throughout the play is impressive (It is interesting to note that Shylocks speech which contains "I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes?...... is not written in verse format). The plot is well worked with no obvious loose ends, but the final act which deals with the exchanging of the rings seems anti-climatic, however as the play is usually placed amongst the comedies rather than the tragedies, this makes sense to me.

The Norton critical edition contains a wealth of information. The source of Shakespeare's story lines is easily identifiable and is printed here. There is also much contextual information on the situation for Jews in the 1590's when the play was written, as well as a parliamentary debate on usury and the case of Doctor Lopez which was fresh in the minds of people at the time. There are various critical responses ranging from Observations by Nicholas Rowe in 1709 up to an interesting essay on the performance of The Merchant of Venice in Israel. The themes and talking points of the play are explored in some detail.

I also watched the BBC 's 1980 production of the play starring Warren Mitchell as Shylock and thought it trod a fine line between sympathy for Shylock and the righteousness of the Christians at the court of Venice. The fifth act with its tomfoolery and the romance of the rings was particularly well played and rounded off the production to good effect. Well worth watching. The Merchant of Venice has never been my favourite Shakespeare play, but I enjoyed once again getting to grips with this problem play via the Norton Critical edition's publication: 4.5 stars

>24 baswood: "Although the action takes place in Venice, I am assuming that London Elizabethan playgoers would have no trouble in identifying the prejudice against the Jewish community and many would be in sympathy with it."

I heard an interview, I think on Terry Gross' "Fresh Air" interview show (which is broadcast in the U.S. on NPR radio), with two actors (can't recall names) who were getting ready to act in a production of "Merchant of Venice." They made the point that when the play was originally produced, it was not considered a tragedy, but rather a comedy about a Jew getting his comeuppance.

fwiw, I thought the movie version with Al Pacino as Shylock was quite good.

Vargo Statten - The Devouring Fire
Vargo Statten - The New Satellite
Vargo Statten is a pseudonym of John Russel Fearn a British author of pulp fiction; active from 1933 to 1960. He was one of the few British writers published in American magazines and wrote science fiction, mystery and western stories. He had over a dozen novels published in 1951 and I found two of them available to read online. The Devouring Fire and The New Satellite are science fiction and are of novella length (115-120 pages). Both stories are as full of invention as they are of plot holes, but I could not deny the energy of the writing or the breathless action that ensued.

A brief synopsis - The Devouring Fire imagines that the earth's upper atmosphere is made up of such a combustible material that any attempt to launch a vessel into space would cause a catastrophic fire that would destroy the earth. Scientist Dick Meadows has developed a new rocket fuel that he is convinced will launch an era of space travel, but when he observes a shooting star burning up in the atmosphere his calculations lead him to work out the dangers in the atmosphere. Unfortunately his wealthy patron has already launched an enterprise to make use of the new fuel and the money men are calling the shots. On top of this his formula for the rocket fuel has been stolen by an Eastern European power. Can Dick Meadows get his formula back and save the planet?

The New Satellite imagines that there is something seriously wrong with our solar system. Mercury the planet nearest the sun has turned a red colour before cracking up and the same thing has happened to our moon. The resulting disruption had caused earthquakes on earth and ace pilot Frank Hurst has noticed a red sheen on parts of the oceans. Joseph Blair has used the coming catastrophe to seize power in the UK and is busily making spaceships to save people loyal to him. Frank Hurst has noticed a strange satellite in an orbit where the moon used to be and offers his services as a pilot for the first of Blair's spaceships. He intends to explore the satellite.

Two very unlikely scenarios that are meat and drink for pulp fiction writers and John Russell Fearn exploits his tall stories for all that they are worth: taking his plot lines to fairly logical conclusions as his heroes do not manage to avert the catastrophes. His prose style is adequate for the genre and there is no obvious racism or sexism in his approach. Good solid pulp entertainment and so three stars.

Tanguy Viel - Cet Homme-Là
Cet Homme-Là is Jesus Christ and the author Tanguy Viel includes a forward explaining why he felt the need to write a short book on the life of Jesus. He says it is probably one of the most told stories something that many people know, but he felt he had some sort of debt to pay after looking at the Renaissance paintings in Rome. He noticed similar paintings and the subtle differences in colour and form and thought he would write in a similar vein. His aim was to think about the story and to bring it down to earth, to think about the domestics and other more mundane arrangements.

The book is divided into short chapters that cover some of the main events in the life of Christ. There are two parts to the book like there are two parts to the life of Jesus. There is the story of his birth and the meeting with John the Baptist and his activities when he turned thirty years of age and in part II there is the final week of his life. The author wonders about the thoughts of Joseph when Mary announced that she had been visited by the angel and then what drove them to go to Nazareth to pay their taxes when Mary was so near to giving birth. He describes the shocking events of Herod's slaughter of the innocence and asks himself why the three mages visited Herod in the first place and one realises that Jesus' birth had resulted in a reign of blood. Viel also tells one of Jesus' most puzzling parables: the distribution of the five talents pointing out that Jesus did not give explanations for his stories. His demeanour throughout his life seems to have been high handed, his treatment of his mother for instance and then the turning over of the market stalls in the house of worship was completely in character.

Part II describes the horror of the crucifixion and the fact that Jesus was well aware of what was about to happen to him in that fateful week before Easter. This part of Jesus story is the most known the most documented and so Viel is reduced to adding some reality to the story and he does tell snatches of the story very well, making readers think about aspects of that final week in real terms. Do we need yet another retelling of the story of Jesus in lay mans terms; probably not and so any value would be in an approach that makes the reader re-evaluate what he already knows and feels. I think that Tanguy Veil is only partially successful in the 75 pages and 21 chapters that are published in Les Éditions de Minuit and so three stars.

>27 baswood: Still, it sounds interesting. Was writing one of the five talents that Jesus gave out? Perhaps Tanguy Viel was miffed.

I’d like to read this book as I have little knowledge of the life of Jesus.

>28 kjuliff: Nice thought about Tanguy Viel being miffed, however in Jesus' parable the Talent was a unit of money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Talents

>29 baswood: Thank you for enlightening me. I read the Wiki article and now I see that my parents were wise in raising me an atheist.

It was interesting that none of the servants chosen to keep the talents for themselves, or to give them to the poor.

>30 kjuliff: lol. I read the Wiki article and now I see that my parents were wise in raising me an atheist.

Penguin Modern Poets 3
George Barker (1913 - 1991
Martin Bell (1918 -1978)
Charles Causley (1917 - 2003)

First published in 1962 this volume features three British poets who were established figures on the poetry scene when they were collated in this series. The series continued to provide a good selection of poems from each author with the aim of widening the appeal to readers who might find these slim volumes more attractive than some larger collections: I know I did.

George Barker is probably the poet who has lost most ground over the years. He had a reputation of being a womaniser, a bit of a rogue and a dabbler in pornography. He was also a heavy drinker, drug user and irresponsible in his bohemian attitude to life. So what about his poems? the selection here seems to show him trying to out romantic the Romantics and to enjoy writing about sex "Turn on Your Side and Bear the Day To Me " is a good example. However his sometimes wild use of imagery can hit the mark and produce some memorable poems. One of a cycle of six lyrics is typical of his style:

VI
Narcissus and the Star

I will not look within
Where at the hot pit pisses
A diet of worms and a demon
Adoring his mirror twin
More than any Narcissus
The issue of his semen

But as the first and last
Dead suns rise and set
Over and hereafter
The sweet star and the past-
Glory without regret
For all things ever after.

A poet who perhaps lets his pen run away with him and it is not always easy to follow where he is going, but be not surprised if it is apocalyptic.

Martin Bell although an established poet only oversaw one book of his poetry during his lifetime. He was a communist and spent much of his time editing other peoples poems especially his students and so this selection in the modern poets series was a chance to see a number of his poems collected together. His poems are essentially humorous, talkative, and also political. He wrote about the second world war and his own situation and his attitudes and thoughts to life in general, best summed up in some verses from "Ode to Himself:"

Go on, good monkey, make your bow, be me
.........................................................

Sad monkey, a self pitying one,
Unlucky monkey, monkey who was framed
By mean streets in the shabby years-
Poor wretch of a monkey
In the freezing winds of time
Almost a brass monkey.

Miniature snarling super-ego monkey
Squatting on the shoulders of the gross orungutang

And stinking cynical monkey
Planning small satisfactions
In face of an abstract nothing
What a nest of nasty negative monkeys.

Charles Causley's poems appear somehow more poetical after the previous two authors. His use of rhyme and poetical form is more precise. He was a schoolteacher and writer and much of his work relates to his native Cornwall. His poems are direct and he is not afraid to use a simple sing-song form to get his point across. Some of his well formed verses are particularly striking for example from "The Life of the Poet:"

Lock the door, schoolmaster,
Keep the children in.
The river in spate at the schoolyard gate
Roars like original sin.

But like the previous two poets the second world war is a subject that won't go away and this is a verse from "A Ballad for Katherine of Aragon"

But war is a bitter bugle
That all must learn to blow
And it didn't take long to stop the song
In the dirty Italian snow.
O war is a casual mistress
And the world is her double bed
She has few charms in her mechanized arms
But you wake up and find yourself dead

This slim volume like the others in the modern poets series fits nicely into an inside pocket of a jacket or a handbag. I used to be in the habit of carrying one around with me and some of the volumes are in a pretty bad state of repair. Modern poets 3 shows a collection of poems written by authors of the same era and similar subject matter, but with very distinct styles. You are not going to love or even like all the poems (there are 57) but all are worth a look and some thought and so 5 stars.

Carène Ponte - Prendre la vie comme elle vient.
Since 2018 french author Carène Ponte has been publishing one or two books a year and this 2023 novel was the next book on the library shelf. According to 'wiki' she writes in the genre of 'feel good' books, which is not my preferred genre, but I enjoyed this one well enough up to a point.

Alice in her late teens was a talented figure skater, but not quite good enough to make the national team for the Olympics. She met and fell in love with Aymeric and they got married and settled down to a loving relationship. Alice has not been able to have children and the meat of the story starts in her 40th year, when she has come to terms with her situation. She is the director of a library and Aymeric is sometimes away on business. Alice receives a phone call from a hospital telling her she needs to come quickly because Aymeric has had a serious car accident. When Alice arrives Aymeric has slipped into a coma. He stays in a coma for five days, but unexpectedly regains consciousness, but after his serious head trauma he has lost all of his memory and doesn't recognise his wife. Alice is able to take him home after a couple of weeks and is resolute in helping him to get back his memory. Nothing works and not only has Aymeric lost his memory, but his character has undergone a radical change and his attention span has been severely reduced. The novel then focuses on how Alice copes with this new situation, getting help from a support group and taking up an interest again in skating to bring some relief to her difficult home-life.

There is a second part to the book which winds the clock back to Aymeric in hospital and still in a coma. In this changed scenario he dies and leaves Alice with her grief and a strange letter left with his solicitor. There is then a third part: again the clock is wound back and Aymeric wakes up from his coma suffers no memory loss and Alice and Aymeric continue their life together. It was during the second part I started to lose interest in the book; the device of winding the clock back to create another scenario with the same characters seemed to me to be little more than padding and by the time I got to the third part and the 'feel good' ending I was bored. This device of winding back the clock has been used many times in novels, but in this book it felt more like an excuse to carry on writing with all the background details already in place. A little too lightweight for me and so 3 stars.

>33 baswood: Was this on your personal library shelf, or public library? If personal, I'm curious as to how you acquired it. It doesn't seem like your usual at all, not that you don't venture in all different directions.

>34 labfs39: It was the next book on his library shelf. That’s how he chooses the next book to read, except for the ones for consecutive years of his birth starting at dob.

>33 baswood: I have to admit that the blurb alone (ce roman va vous bouleverser) would have made me put it back on the shelf and pick up the next one 😉

>34 labfs39: Yes it was the next book on the public library shelf. I have to grit my teeth sometimes because the little game I play is that if the book is written in french and not a translation from another language then I will give it a try. I purposely do not read the blurb, its my introduction to contemporary french reading. My next book is Féerie général by Emmanuelle Pireyre.

>37 baswood: Ah, all this time I thought you were taking the next one off your own personal library shelf, but I couldn't see you owning this one. Hence my confusion. Now it all makes sense!

>21 rocketjk: I didn't know he had never been to South Africa, either. I enjoyed this detailed review >20 baswood:.

>26 baswood: This sounds like so much fun. My dad has piles of these in a box at home, I should check and see if there are any novels by Vargo Statten.

>32 baswood: " I used to be in the habit of carrying one around with me and some of the volumes are in a pretty bad state of repair." What are pockets for, if not to carry poems?

Orson Scott Card - Xenocide
This is the third book in the Ender series and although the story of this long science fiction novel reaches its conclusion in the fourth book: Children of the Mind; I won't be reading it. For my taste there was just too much religious mumbo jumbo, cod psychology and cod philosophy weighing down the story line to such an extent that I struggled to get to the End (pun intended)

The story continues more or less where Speaker for the Dead finishes. Andrew Ender Wiggin the Speaker for the dead and his family are nuturing life on the planet Lusitania. There are two alien life forms the Buggers (the Hive Queen) and the Piggies (pequininos), that are under threat from the earth's government now called Congress. The planet Lusitania is infected with a virus: the descolada which is essential for the pequninos to continue their life cycle, but destroys everything else. The Hive Queen is creating her own colony of insect like workers to make intergalactic space ships to escape the planet. Congress have sent a task force to Lusitania with a bomb to destroy the planet to stop the spread of the descolada. Meanwhile on another planet the inhabitants of Chinese origin follow the Path which is made up of an elite strata of people who are god spoken, whose super intelligence is helped by an ability to speak to the gods. A super computer programme (Jane) that has an autonomous existence is helping Ender and his family of scientists by stopping the arrival of the task force. The elite group on the Path are trying to discover how the task force has been prevented from reaching Lusitania.

Most of the world building on Lusitania had already been achieved in the previous novel: Speaker for the Dead and so the new addition to the story line focuses to some extent on the people of the Path. The link between the two planets however is fairly tenuous and only serves to show an alternative society to the frantic work and seemingly endless discussions amongst the scientists and religious community on Lusitania. One could call the discussions family squabbles, because Orson Scott Card has an uncanny knack of reducing life changing theories and positions down to a fairly low common denominator, which is Ender's extended family. I got tired of reading about them way before the somewhat disappointing resolution of some of the physical and scientific issues. This book just didn't work for me and so 3 stars.

>40 baswood: I liked the first two books in the trilogy, but he lost me with this one. I found it disappointing too.

Ender and Dune are both spectacular illustrations of the law of diminishing returns -- one magnificent book, one OK sequel, and a sea of sludge beyond that.

>32 baswood:

Barker was a complete cad (to avoid the less polite terms that come to mind), with the womanising as such being the least of it. The insufferable married hypocrite was a "devout" Catholic, you see, so while he stuck his dick in any woman willing (particularly if/while she had money), he adamantly refused to use any contraceptive method at all. God forgives adultery and child abuse, you see, but not a condom! Thus George begat a good dozen of miserable children (known to history), the named brood falling to the care of wife and girlfriends. I learned more than I cared to know about this ass through reading by and about Elizabeth Smart who, in a lengthy fit of what may in retrospect be called madness, not only paid to get Barker and his wife transported to North America, but largely supported them and his children, including the four he spawned on her, until she came to her senses (By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept).

And the saddest thing is that he's such a nullity of a poet.

Emmanuelle Pireyre - Féerie générale

Emmanuelle Pireyre is a french author and poet who won the Prix Médicis for Féerie générale in 2012. The book consists of seven essays that comment on modern day life. They are a mixture of narrative stories usually juxtaposed with one or two other narrative threads that lead the reader to make connections and to enjoy the authors philosophical comments on the people and their actions. Interspersed with the narratives are thoughts or snapshots from the lives of famous people, or they appear in the dreams of the characters in the story for example the singers James Brown and Edith Piaf.

Each story starts with a short introduction and a list of characters and things or events contained in the story. The first story is titled "How to let little girls float" and contained in the story is

Roxane
Horse
Mirem and Malcolm
Claude Levi-Strauss
Umberto Eco
Tsutomu Miyazaki
The four young girls of Tokyo
The future mangaka
Population Japanese

The introduction tells us that: one day in Europe there was a little girl who hated finance. In Japan there lived a man whose library was full of Manga books, but they were not enough to satisfy his needs: he committed some atrocities. Twenty years earlier Umberto Eco had his Superman comics stolen. Typically the story ends with some paragraphs entitled Kiss collection, which can be ideas or comments drawn from what has been written earlier in the piece. Emmanuelle Pireyre tells her stories like fairy stories, but rooted in reality and while some of the connections jump out at you others I think are more subtly hidden.

Emmanuelle Pireye uses her stories to comment on life in the 21st century. As a reader one can breeze through the stories, when some of the more obvious connections will quickly become apparent, however if you enjoy her style of writing I think more can be gained from closer or repeated readings. This was a book from my local library and so I am thinking about getting my own copy. Difficult to rate but at least 3.5 stars

>44 baswood: Very intriguing !

Laurent Petitmangin - Ce qu'il faut de nuit
Laurent Petitmangin is a french author who had his first novel published in 2020 when he was 55 years old. It won the prix Femina des Lycéens in the year of its publication and was critically acclaimed when featured during the rentrée of that year. I have often picked it up and put it down again in various bookshops and so was pleased to find it in my local library. I was not disappointed.

The story is told in the first person by a father of two sons who have nursed their mother for three years while she dies of cancer. The father has a good relationship with both his sons, the elder is nicknamed Fus who is in his early twenties and like his father is passionate about football. They go together to football matches and Fus is well liked, he has grown to be a large amiable individual and is considerate to his younger brother Gillou who is working hard to get to University in Paris. The story is set in the department of Lorraine in the extreme North East of France and the father works on the french railways and is a socialist and trade union official. After the death of the mother Fus makes some new friends outside his usual circle which become important to him. The father has heard rumours at work, that Fus has been seen with a group of individuals who are leafletting for the extreme-right party of Le Pen. He is reluctant to challenge Fus, but they become more distant at home. The father copes with the situation as best he can, but gets worried when Fus takes Gillou under his wing and charges himself with finding appropriate accommodation for Gillou in Paris.

The story is realistic in its setting and highlights problems of families struggling to cope with political differences, especially where those differences are extreme and can easily lead to physical danger. This has probably always been more of a problem in France than in the United Kingdom and the father telling this story cannot bring himself to talk or discuss his problem with anyone let alone with Fus. He would have been able to talk to his wife, but now as a single parent he finds himself out of his depth and with nowhere to go and appears to be trying to fight off depression. It is too easy to be critical and say: well the father should take responsibility and tackle the problem head on when it arises, but as many people find this is just too difficult in a family situation.

The book is written from the father's perspective and although the reader can appreciate his fears, there is little insight into what is going on in his head. It is like being in a situation where someone is blanking out the problems and doing his best to deal with the situations as they arise. This I think is the strength of this novel and sets it apart from other stories. The novel also made me think about and question the situation in France today. Are there gangs of youths intensely politically motivated, looking to use violence against others in areas where the old industries are under threat ? I do not know how much autobiography there is in this novel, but it is loaded with such a realistic setting that it was a convincing read. All in all I found this an excellent and thought provoking novel and so 4 stars.

Georges Simenon - Les quatre jours du pauvre homme
Georges Simenon - Un nouveau dans la ville

Two novels by Simenon that have been labelled as part of his Roman Durs (Hard stories) oeuvre. They were intended to be more literary works than those which featured Maigret and although the police appear in the novels they rarely take centre stage. They were psychological thrillers where more often than not characters would stop and examine the actions that they were taking, trying to work out how they got themselves into situations that might soon destroy or overwhelm them. Characters suffer trauma and despair, but this rarely stops them acting in ways that are detrimental to others around them: the novels seem to revel in the dark side of human nature. These two published in 1949 and written while Simenon was in 'exile' in the United states are typical.

Les Quatre jours du Pauvre Homme is set somewhere in Paris. François Lecoin is visiting his wife in hospital, it appears that she is terminally ill and is about to undergo yet another operation. François is drinking heavily and has lost his job and is struggling to make ends meet. The first part of the novel takes place over a two day period when his wife dies soon after her operation and François feels a sense of relief, his teenage son is still at home and they are joined by Raoul one of François brothers who has just returned from making his living in Africa. There develops a tug of war between the two brothers over François son and Francois leaves the funeral arrangements to Raoul while he sets up a meeting with his successful older brother Marcel. He is in luck when he finds Marcel's attractive wife home alone and blackmails her into handing over a cheque which will pay for the funeral and put him back on his feet. Part two of the story takes place some three years later. François has got himself a job with a magazine writing exposé stories about the rich and famous, one of whom is his own brother. There are still tensions with his son and his blackmailing scam is starting to unwind.

Un Nouveau dans la Ville is set in America in a small town just a few miles away from Calais on the border with Canada. Winter is closing in and a middle aged man of sallow complexion has hitched a lift into town. He calls himself Justin Ward and when he calls in at the bar in town he creates suspicion and is promptly taken down to the police station for questioning after a local murder that has made the news on the radio. Justin will not say where he comes from, but it is obvious that he has nothing to do with the murder and when he is released the next day he makes it known he is going to stick around for a while. He takes a room is a local boarding house and is seen to have a wad of bills in his moneybelt. He refuses to give any information about himself, but takes a keen interest in the news from Chicago and seems to know a lot about gambling on horse racing. Charlie is the owner of the bar in town has worked hard at making a position for himself in town; he runs a betting book from his bar and is involved in occasional smuggling, but has a working relationship with the sheriff. Everybody is suspicious of Ward and when the editor of the local paper remembers seeing him in Chicago it appears he had another name. Justin Ward not only stays in town but arranges to buy out the owner of the billiard hall across the road from the bar. Is he a fugitive, a tax inspector or just an ill man looking for somewhere to make a living?

Both of these stories look at the underside of life in a functioning community. People are on the make, criminality seeps into the lives of the leading characters. They are suspicious, wary of each other, illicit sex and prostitution are commonplace and there are hints of successful criminals higher up the food chain. Both the stories create a certain amount of tension, but perhaps Un nouveau dans le Ville is the more focused of the two with its depiction of small town life. They are both included in Tome number 8 which is part of the series which collect together 117 novels of Simenons Romans Durs. 3 stars for Les Quatre Jours du Pauvre Homme and 3.5 stars for Un Nouveau dans la Ville.

I seem to have lost my reading mojo of late, but here are a couple of french books that I managed to finish this month.

L'enterrement de Monsieur Bouvet - Georges Simenon.
This is another novel now classified as belonging to Georges Simenon's Romans Durs series. It was published in 1950 when Simenon was resident in America. Its a good story that takes place in Paris. M. Bouvet is a collector of books and is often seen leafing through the book sellers stalls on the road above the river Seine. He is an elderly man and one bright morning he collapses and dies, a tourist happens to take a picture of him which is published in a newspaper. M Bouvet lived alone in a small rented apartment and when the police carried out the necessary enquiries his past history became complicated mainly through a lack of information. An American woman turned up claiming to be his wife with rumours of a large amount of money stashed away somewhere. She said his real name was Samuel Marsh and he was the owner of a mine in the Congo.

The picture in the newspaper aroused other interests and soon the police investigation turned up all manner of information. Mme Blanch claimed that he was an anarchist in the first world war, while someone else claimed he was a German spy. The book follows Inspector Beaupêre's methodical enquiries until a resolution is concluded. The mystery of who M Bouvet was is the main interest in this novel, but Simenon spins out his tale always with the thought that there maybe many people living in Paris at the time just after the two world wars who would rather keep their past activities secret. 3.5 stars.

L'hôtelière du Gallia-Londres - Bernadette Pécassou
Bernadette Pécassou is a French author and jounalist. She has written 14 books to date and now continues to write novels and works on documentary television programmes. L'hôteliére du Gallia Londres was published in 2018 and takes the reader back to the 1950's and the town of Lourdes. It follows the life of female classmates at school as they make their way in this tourist and town of pilgrimage, probably the most famous in France. Marie is a bakers daughter, but dreams of owning an hotel her friend José is the daughter of owners of a small pension (family hotel). When Marie's father dies she is eased out of the family business by her older brother and must find her own way, likewise Josy whose father sells the pension to a property developer. Ines Holden is the daughter of the wealthy owners of the hotel du Gallia-Londres and her friend Beatice Rivière are also at the same school but move in different circles to Marie and Josy, however Josy's brother Paul Dulac is the young attractive captain of the rugby team and his charm and achievements on the rugby field enable him to straddle the two worlds.

The book tells the story of the Marie and Josy's struggles to make their way in Lourdes and eventually achieving their dream of owning an hotel, while Ines and Beatrice stories intersect with Paul Dulac and the novel concludes with the death of Marie as an elderly lady well into the 21st century. The novel neatly ties up all loose ends and has a fairly satisfying feel-good factor. In my opinion however the author is far more interested in the town of Lourdes and how it works with the tourists and pilgrims than she is with the characters in her story. We never really get below the surface of her character's actions which take a fairly predictable route. The book is fascinating however in what it told me about Lourdes, the different social levels at work, the running of the hotel business and the tourist industry. I think that the journalist half of Bernadette Pécassou takes precedence over the novelist. 3 stars.

Sartre for Beginners - Donald Palmer

I am reading The Years of Theory: Postwar French Thought to the Present - Fredric Jameson as well as We have only this life to live: Selected essays by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Jameson's book starts with the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and it can be fairly heavy going, getting to grips with the philosophy of Jean-Paul, but lying around the house was Sartre for Beginners by Donald Palmer which is part of A Beginners Documentary Comic Book series. Comic book it may be with its many illustrations, but it does not shy away from explaining the essential building blocks to enable readers to understand Sartre's take on existentialism. It also links his ideas to previous philosophical works, providing just enough information for the reader to get an idea of how Sartre was challenging previous concepts. The book even provides a short introductory biography of Jean-Paul, which sets the tone with some humorous asides that kept me chuckling throughout the book. After reading Jameson's chapters on Sartre I found that Sartre for Beginners reinforced the basic tenants of Sartre's thoughts very effectively. Perhaps there are too many comic sketches and some of the humour gets a bit repetitive, but they usefully break up the text into bite size chunks. 4 stars.

I don't expect to finish Jameson's book any time soon and I'll probably never get to the end of Sartre's essays, but it was a beautiful warm sunny day yesterday and I was out walking, toiling up a steep narrow country road, thinking existential thoughts. An ambulance suddenly appeared over the brow of the hill and I just had time to get out of the way.

Hey Bas, i guess Sartre truly was a dangerous thinker. Appreciate this review of Sartre for Beginners. Hope all is well with you.

>49 baswood: Anything Sartre is best read in the sunshine.

Jealous of your weather. Here yesterday was a typical Paris November day.

I read some Sartre as a teenager but I can’t say I took much away from it, except of course that l’enfer, c’est les autres. I’d like to read Beauvoir some day but for some reason Sartre doesn’t appeal.

>52 FlorenceArt: Beauvoir is very interesting. I have read her autobiographies I think there are four or five of those as well as her novel The Mandarins and of course The Second Sex

>50 dchaikin: I have not been posting so much recently, because I have not been reading so much.

>52 FlorenceArt: Florence, I think you would like She Came to Stay

>53 baswood: Join the club!

Bas, I read this article and thought you might find it both funny and certainly enforcing any stereotypes you hold about Americans.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/us-couple-dream-life-france-became-nightmare/index.ht....

>53 baswood: reading trouble, or are better things coming your way?

>55 RidgewayGirl: Interesting, Kay. I'm surprised they moved to a country where they didn't speak the language and seem to have expected to just "pick it up."

>55 RidgewayGirl: I was amused by the article and have heard similar complaint to Brits returning to their homeland. I try not to hold other people to stereotypes. The two Americans are not the only ones who have difficulty in settling in France. Many British people who have enjoyed holidays in France cannot adapt to living over here. Mostly they are surprised by the many cultural differences and also surprised to find that many French people don't or can't speak English.

There are British people who have lived successfully in France for a number of years without bothering to learn French, but they have to depend on other people for help when they come across a problem. The less French you know the more likely you are going to come up against an insurmountable problem. We have witnessed many Brits returning to their homeland when they get older and medical problems have arisen. It is difficult for some elderly people to learn a new language.

Bureaucracy is difficult wherever you live, but I have found France no worse than other countries, it is just that things are done a little differently here.

I think most people underestimate the impact of cultural differences. It’s hard to anticipate all the things you were taking for granted and how you will react to their being suddenly gone.

It’s the same about bureaucracy, your native bureaucracy is just how things are done, other peoples’ are meaningless charades.

Also, it’s a detail but the problems with opening a bank account probably have much more to do with the American government than with French banks. In my experience banks and banks everywhere, and they are indeed highly bureaucratic, so there’s that, see above.

>55 RidgewayGirl: Those two Americans would have had a problem moving anywhere in America. Certainly NYC where knowing some Spanish helps big time.

>58 baswood: Many British people have a hard time settling in Australia for similar reasons to the two Americans in the article Kay posted. But in Australia there’s no language barrier. They (the Brits) seem to have more problem acclimating than other immigrant groups.

Consequently there used to be a lot of antagonism and Australians coined the term “whingeing Poms”. I think they come with expectations that aren’t met.

>60 kjuliff: I think the cultural barriers can be even more of a shock when the language is the same. You tend to unconsciously assume that if the language is the same, the culture will be the same.

>61 FlorenceArt: I think perhaps that’s true in many cases. But it’s also true that people who have not traveled a lot - and I mean travel-travel not tourist travel, have no idea about cultural differences.

I’ve had to buy train tickets and make hotel arrangements in situ. The English couple in the article must have been on cruise trips or package tours. I noted they sent their US car to France! I think they’d organized their French house from the US, and had hired a “relocation specialist”! They were setting themselves up for failure.

I remember buying bus tickets in small towns in India, finding a hotel at 9pm in Algiers. Getting lost in Java. You have to immerse yourself in a culture to know it.

>55 RidgewayGirl: I think this was my favourite part of the article:

Aside from talking to people in the supermarket, Joanna says she rarely has lengthy conversations with anyone but her husband nowadays.
“I said to Ed one day, ‘I haven’t talked to one person here in three months…’ I just miss interacting,” she says, adding that she doesn’t necessarily “want to hang around with expats” as “that’s not exactly why we came on this adventure.”
Locals have been friendly and welcoming, but Joanna hasn’t managed to “strike up friendships” the way she would have hoped to, conceding that the language and cultural barrier have made things more tricky.

>63 rv1988: Yes, that part stuck out. It's moved to Germany as an adult and while it was challenging, if I'd decided not to learn German, it would have left me isolated and unhappy.

I like it your thread is so nice an quiet.

>65 edwinbcn: Yes, clear and crisp.
>64 RidgewayGirl: I moved to America over 20 years ago and still have problems with the language.

The Years of Theory: Postwar French Thought to the Present - Frederic Jameson

I have been reading this book over the last month, which has served me as an introduction to post war philosophical and to some extents social and political thought. Frederic Jameson an American died last year at the age of 90, in 2021 he gave a series of lectures which were recorded verbatim and which have been published as this book. The lectures were I think mainly given over the internet because 2021 was the plague year (Covid-19). Jameson was a literary critic a philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He was himself much involved with the literature and philosophy of this period which he labels French Theory, having met and discussed ideas with some of the leading protagonists as well as writing a number of books himself.

The lectures start with Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialism, but also glance back to previous generations of European philosophers, such as Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche, with Marx always in the background. Jameson's first book was on Sartre and he admits to still being exited by Sartre's thinking, he briefly discusses Beauvoir before moving on to Levi-Strauss and structuralism and the first of the breaks in philosophical thought of this era. Fanon and Merleau-Ponty are briefly discussed before the next of the big breaks coming with Lacan and Freud. The lectures continue with the superstars of the time; Althusser, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze and others. There is a lecture on feminist thought: Monique Wittig, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray and later chapter cover more poststructualists like Barthes, Jean Baudrillard. Each lecture is about twenty pages long in book form and so can only serve as an introduction to the ideas generated by these people. Nothing is conclusive and there are numerous loose ends, but the aim of the lectures seems to have been to get the students exited by the content and for them to delve further into what interested them.

The book certainly feels like being present in a lecture theatre, because Jameson will interrupt himself with asides or little stories. He refers in passing to some of the work that the students have produced and advises them on what to read or will tell them not to bother too much with some of the materiel that he is presenting to them. There are some amusing stories and for the most part the language is relatively easy to follow, although I found myself having to look up some definitions of philosophical terms and even some of the thoughts which Jameson's explanations had not brought home to me.

The book does well in placing the philosophers in context with the events that were taking place in France and Europe, which Jameson contrasts with America at this time, where increasingly intellectual pursuits had been derided. He writes nostalgically about the lectures in Paris given by Lacan where hundreds of people jam packed themselves into theatres to hear the words of wisdom and would do well to avoid being doused in cigarette ash from their immediate neighbours. He tells us of Lacan's parody of Descartes famous maxim "I think where I am not, and I am not where I think". Jameson also talks about films and cinema theory, seemingly a passion of his as well as references to some of the horrors of late capitalism and materialism. He always has something of interest to say even if some of the philosophy may seem a little opaque.

The book does well in providing a chronological story of French theory written by somebody on the inside and somebody who has lived with these thoughts all his life. It was certainly a change of pace for me which sometimes took me out of my comfort zone, but I have a new list of recommended books to consider and you cant ask much more from a non fiction tome. 5 stars.

>67 baswood: Sounds interesting ! I don’t know much more about most of these people than their names.

>67 baswood: how interesting! I’m reading Piers Plowman, which maybe isn’t all that different.

>69 dchaikin: Good luck with Piers Plowman which I found a struggle to read. The poem keeps seeming to start allover again and I didn't like the "broken backed" poetical lines.

>68 FlorenceArt: Although I knew Sartre fairly well, like yourself many of the others mentioned in my review were just names.

We only have this life to live - Jean Paul Sartre
This is a selection from the many essays that Jean-Paul Sartre wrote during his lifetime. There are ten volumes of essays for those who might want to read everything. Sartre was a scribbler all his life until at the age of 70 he had to slow down because he lost most of his sight. In a poignant interview which concludes this selection he reveals that not being able to see what he had written was a difficulty that he could not overcome. However when the interviewer asks if life had been good for him Sartre replies:

"On the whole, yes. I don’t see what I could reproach it with. It has given me what I wanted and at the same time it has shown that this wasn’t much. But what can you do? (The interview ends in wild laughter brought on by the last statement)."

There are many fine essays in this collection that show the variety of interests that spurred Sartre to write, after all he earned money from his criticism. Of course there are essays on his philosophical thoughts and a particularly good one that he wrote in reply to critics who derided his existentialist position, that struck many as defeatist at the time of the German occupation. 'Existentialism a Clarification' takes those critics to task and ends with the the idea that:

"Existentialism is no mournful delectation, but a humanist philosophy of action, combat and solidarity.......... I hope I have made that clear to everyone."

He writes about Giacometti's sculptures explaining how one should look at them to see the how the artist had broken new ground by his art. He writes a critique of Albert Camus novel l'etranger and a biography of Paul Nizan both of which contain Sartre's own view of the world. He writes much about politics: "The Ghost of Stalin" takes as its subject the difficulty of establishing a Socialist State in a world subsumed by Capitalism: this is typically one of his most dense pieces of writing and takes some careful reading to extract the points he is making. He is more clear with his views on the Israeli - Arab conflicts and crystal clear on his abhorrence of colonialism when he writes in support of Frantz Fanon. In 'Victory' he writes about the use of torture in the Algerian war and in another essay writes about his stance on the discovery of the Gulag's in Stalin's Russia and his relations with the communist party in France.

Sartre was joint editor of the magazine Temps Modern and he talks about his eventual break up with fellow philosopher Merleau-Ponty; there are no excuses and plenty of regrets for misunderstandings and questionable behaviour. The Third World Begins in the Suburbs is an exposé of the use of immigrants to supply cheap labour for the factories and shops in France and the hypocrisy of those who then use racist stances to complain about immigration. An essay that like some others could be targeted to expose problems facing the world today some 50 years later. There are essays on his trips to America where as a young man he listens excitedly to Jazz in Nicks Bar in New York, this contrasts with his later stance when he fears that Europe will succumb to Americanization and all its evils.

This book was one of the recommendations from the recent series of published lectures by Frederic Jameson (see above) and I thank him for the 'heads up'. It is an excellent introduction to the world of Jean-Paul Sartre and so 5 stars.

>71 baswood: Great review, Barry. I've added We Only Have This Life to Live to my library wish list, and I'll try to get to it in the next year or two.

>71 baswood: great review. Sounds like an excellent introduction