Comedy of Life in Brooklyn

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store 

by James McBride

“Chona had never been one to play by the rules of American society. She did not experience the world as most people did. To her, the world was not a china closet where you admire this and don’t touch that. Rather, she saw it as a place where every act of living was a chance for tikkun olam, to improve the world.”   ― James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store





James McBride's 381-page novel The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store combines elements of group comedy, cultural history, thriller, and love story. The story takes place in Pottstown, Pennsylvania's dilapidated Chicken Hill neighborhood, where African Americans and Jewish immigrants coexist and work side by side. The book tells the story of the people who live in Chicken Hill, how they make ends meet despite being marginalized by the larger white population, and how the country is changing quickly, as witnessed by those who were formerly enslaved and others who have recently arrived.

The author's prose style is elegant, and his development of individual characters is exceptional, providing a realism for his story that few novelists attain. I enjoyed this novel as much as his wonderful Good Lord Bird, and I look forward to more novels from James McBride.

Intelligent Mischief

  

Tartuffe 

by Molière

“Beauty without intelligence is like a hook without bait.”   ― Molière, Tartuffe








One of the most divisive comedies ever written, Tartuffe was the focus of the biggest censorship dispute of the 17th century. Molière's remarkably beautiful drama concerning religious belief fundamentally altered the purposes and goals of comedy. It was extremely brave, if not foolish, of Molière to humorously tackle such a subject in a religiously sensitive era that still dealt with heresy at the stake. Tartuffe may have struck a nerve when his detractors interpreted the play's portrayal of religious hypocrisy and fake piety as an assault on religion in general. Still raw from Tartuffe's sting, it is easy to criticize the prejudice and blindness of his contemporaries. At the time of his passing, Molière's fellow clergymen were still resentful of Tartuffe. But the drama still manages to jolt and move spectators in tender places, and the urgency of being able to discern genuine devotion from fakery is as great now as it was in 17th-century France.

Moliere demonstrated that the caricatures of farce facilitated rather than hindered the investigation of human nature and social experience, and that both comedy and tragedy could delve into profound psychological depths and fundamental human concerns. His was a unique character comedy that drew laughs heartily at the mistakes and pretenses of human nature while portraying modern manners in a lifelike manner. Not everyone found it funny.

Rewarding Stories

The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy 

by James Purdy

“Just like children, he and the greatwoman Grainger longed, and especially demanded even, that something should happen, or again Parkhearst would cry, “A reward, I must have a reward. A reward for life just as I have lived it.”   ― James Purdy, The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

These stories just happen to take place here. That they happen in America and feel very American on the surface still allows room for depths of meaning that suggest the archetypal. I am reminded of the southern Gothic world of Flannery O'Connor without the religion. His thoroughly idiosyncratic writing leaves trails of peculiar, odd, eccentric characters that make their way through a world that is a skewed version of every town. Usually every town is more like Thornton Wilder than David Lynch.

When I first came across Purdy, it was through his enigmatic and unsettling vision of Eustace Chisholm. However, his sharper focus became apparent in his smaller works, such as Malcolm and The Nephew. The stories in this collection range from fairy tales about an opera diva whose mega-stardom is cleverly managed by her talking cat to the story of the young girl who escapes with a fire-breathing dragon to eat turtle soup; from an unusual story of a desperate husband whose fixation on a rare white dove results from his obsession over his wayward ex-wife to a visit to Moe's Villa, a private mansion that doubles as a gambling casino where the Native American owner teaches lonely boys the game of poker.

Gore Vidal called him "an authentic American genius.". For Vidal, himself given to the fantastic, Purdy's stories contained "lost or losing golden ephebes.". This collection is a welcome feast for fans of Purdy, as well as a nice taste for newcomers.

When the bizarre is the norm, your nightmares become mere dreams, yet what wonderful dreams! This collection of short stories is just that—a myriad of prose poems engaging your soul and fulfilling needs beyond your imagined life. All you need is to sit back, read, and enjoy!

Family Nostalgia

Tom Lake 

by Ann Patchett

“I look at my girls, my brilliant young women. I want them to think I was better than I was, and I want to tell them the truth in case the truth will be useful. Those two desires to not neatly coexist, but this is where we are in the story.”   ― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

Ann Patchett's 309-page novel Tom Lake explores the transient aspects of life, love, and death. The narrative centers on a mother who, while under COVID-19 quarantine, tells her grown children about her first love. The book investigates what it means to be content when everything around you is collapsing. One notable aspect of the novel was the influence of the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder.

This is not my first Ann Patchett novel, but it's the first that I have enjoyed, at least in part. As always, her book is well written and readable, but I began to lose interest in the narrative about halfway through the book. By the end, I wished that I had spent my time rereading Our Town, or one of Thornton Wilder's delightful novels.

Two Artists

Peacock & Vine: 

On William Morris 

and Mariano Fortuny 

by A.S. Byatt

“If Morris and his contemporaries were possessed by the medieval Christian imagination and the ancient sagas, the moderns looked further back to the ancient world, and rewrote the Greek myths and legends to suit their own ideas about society and history.”   ― A.S. Byatt, Peacock & Vine: On William Morris and Mariano Fortuny

It would be wonderful to be an artist whose life and work flowed together seamlessly, like water in a river, because your existence would be so complete. Peacock and Vine is a brief but frequently engrossing meditation on the lives of William Morris (1834–1896) and Mariano Fortuny (1871–1949), two people who succeeded in achieving this goal.

I'm still waiting for my invitation to visit Venice, but in the meantime, I can luxuriate in the prose and illustrations of Ms. Byatt's fine art biography. With a mix of criticism and history, she takes the familiar, William Morris, and the less familiar, Mariano Fortuny, and highlights their lives and work with the interpolation of beautiful illustrations. This was a pleasingly informative short excursion into the world of art. The quotes from Ruskin and Proust were an added delight.

Lost in Africa

Scoop 

by Evelyn Waugh

“News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read.”   ― Evelyn Waugh, Scoop








Scoop (London, 1938) by Evelyn Waugh is a satire on journalism. It is based on Waugh's 1935 assignment to cover the conflict between Abyssinia and Italy while working as a war correspondent for the London Daily Mail in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). Waugh acknowledged that he was not very good at covering wars, but he did keep a close eye on what his fellow reporters were doing. The outcome was a comedic and satirical novel that mocks the newspaper industry and the journalism profession with a playful yet decidedly deadly tone.

The story centers upon a few humorous turns of events. Lord Copper, the conceited and uneducated proprietor of the Daily Beast, inadvertently dispatches William Boot, a naive nature columnist, to cover the conflict in the made-up nation of Ishmaelia in East Africa. At least geographically speaking, Ishmaelia and Abyssinia are identical. William learns a few fast lessons on the crafty methods used by journalists, who are constantly attempting to outsmart their peers and break a story. William returns to London as a well-known reporter after receiving many significant scoops on his own thanks to a string of fortunate events. However, all of it is meaningless to him, and he is glad to be going back to his remote and run-down country house, Boot Magna Hall, where his numerous eccentric relatives reside. Overall this is still an entertaining comedic read.

Colonial Tale

Tropic Moon 

by Georges Simenon

“My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven’t read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may — need is the word I use — to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill’s history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed.”  ― Roger Ebert

Tropic Moon, one of Georges Simenon's "Romans durs," or hard novels, is his first book set outside of Europe. The story of Tropic Moon is not only harsh on the protagonist but also on the French colonial system as a whole—that is, it is extremely harsh on the French colonialists who lived in Africa. This was a slightly different experience for me compared to Simenon's detective novels.

Apolline vs. Dionysian

The Birth of Tragedy 

and The Case of Wagner 

by Friedrich Nietzsche

“Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.”   ― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche not only narrates the origin of tragedy, but he also offers a postmortem that identifies its killers. According to Nietzsche, with Euripides' help and encouragement, Socrates destroyed this pinnacle of Greek culture. However, Nietzsche goes on to predict that Wagnerian opera will bring about its revival, at least in Germany. The ideas of Schopenhauer and Kant indicate that the rationalism that was introduced by Socrates and ultimately led to the abolition of tragedy has run its course and reached its limits, which means that the time is right for tragedy to reappear. Pace logic apart, the thing itself demonstrates that it is fundamentally unknown.

Nietzsche's analysis identifies the Apolline and the Dionysian artistic tendencies that are united in Greek tragedy. In contrast to the Dionysian, who offers chaos, intoxication, obscurity, excess, and fusion, the Apolline symbolizes clarity, beauty, order, shape, and individuation. Greek tragedy—at least the works by Aeschylus and Sophocles—exposes its audience to existential horrors like fate's hand, the impotence of even the most admirable people, and the certainty of suffering. It rises above the pit of sorrow and pessimism, however, to affirm life in the end, or at the very least, to affirm aesthetic force and its capacity to redeem pain and suffering, by crafting these brutal facts into a great work of art.

Regrets from Time Past

I Have Some Questions for You 

by Rebecca Makkai

“it was easier to believe she was lying than that lightning loves a scarred tree.”   ― Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions For You

This was a real challenge for me from beginning to end. I can't say that I was thrilled to read this book, even though I managed to slowly proceed through it. I was not inspired to flip the pages, and I wished the story had been more interesting. I persisted because I don't give up easily and was curious to find out what really happened before the murder and if justice would be served in the end. Unfortunately, the second-person narration didn't exactly work for this particular story, and I frequently felt like the prose was wandering.

I can say that, without giving too much away, I was quite impressed by how true to reality the novel was. Even though we always want our books to have poetic justice and perfect endings, this one chose a conclusion that, although not perfect, may be more realistic than what actually happens. That having been said, I cannot recommend this novel, as I felt it had too many flaws.

A Historic Moment

The Magic Lantern:          The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague 

by Timothy Garton Ash

“In this crowded world, we must learn to navigate by speech, as ancient mariners taught themselves to sail across the Aegean Sea.”   ― Timothy Garton Ash, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World

Written by a brilliant witness who also took part in epochal events, The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that defines a historic moment. Covering events such as the first free parliamentary elections in Poland, where Solidarity was forced to try and limit the extent of its victory, or attending the meetings of an unlikely alliance of Catholic clerics and free-thinking intellectuals planning the liberation of Czechoslovakia, Garton Ash writes with a great deal of empathy and impact.

This book is a stunningly evocative portrait of the revolutions that swept Communism from Eastern Europe in 1989 and whose aftereffects are still being felt today. From the perspective of more than three decades, Garton Ash writes in a sharp afterword, "Freedom's battle is never fully won. It must be fought anew in every generation.” I would recommend this to all readers who are interested in modern European history.

Do Humans Want to be Good?

All Art is Propaganda:

 Critical Essays 

by George Orwell

“On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”   ― George Orwell, All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays









All Art is Propaganda is a collection of George Orwell's essays bound by the theme of philosophical and aesthetic commentary. It includes such masterpieces as "Propaganda and Demotic Speech," "Charles Dickens," and "Rudyard Kipling." Of particular interest in our political enthused year are the essays addressing the nature of propaganda; both directly in "Propaganda and Demotic Speech," and somewhat tangentially in "Politics and the English Language," the latter of which is more important and contains many insightful statements like "if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. Bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better."

I hope that some of the many readers of Orwell's novels will take the time to savor their fine prose. Orwell's essays are always both enlightening and interesting on each of the disparate topics he addresses. The usage of political speech in the twenty-first century is proof enough of Orwell's claim. Thoughtful criticism, such as Orwell's, is woefully lacking in our current day, particularly among practicing politicians and their supporters.

Scientific Woman

Lessons in Chemistry 

by Bonnie Garmus

“Whenever you start doubting yourself, whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change and change is what we're chemically designed to do.”   - ― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

My experience reading this book was at times unpleasant since the characters were often caricatures and the events appeared forced, especially when they were opposed to Elizabeth Zott, the main character, a scientist. So, even though the book was very readable and difficult for me to put down, this reduced my enjoyment of it.

The main character of Elizabeth, however, really pulls this book together. Elizabeth is not only intelligent, but also incredibly rational, pragmatic, and level-headed; she just won't accept being underestimated. She continues to defy the restrictions that some (sometimes it seems like everyone) would place on her due to her sex, telling her audience that "the reduction of women to something less than men...is not biological; it's cultural." Not so much because she defies these boundaries but because she recognizes their absurdity and acts appropriately, which made me fall in love with her. It is the absurdity of some situations that provides a level of comic relief in what is often a very dark story.

The novel's opening chapters, which seem almost like they were written for a young adult readership, highlight the author's straightforward writing style. Although the approach becomes less obvious as the story goes on, some readers might become disinterested before the action truly picks up. The characters that surround Elizabeth also lack complexity; for the most part, the "good" ones are all very wise and helpful, while the evil characters are naive and malicious; I thought this distracted from the message of the book. Lastly, a lot of the storyline, especially the fairytale conclusion, is highly dependent on coincidence. These aspects detracted from what I otherwise found to be a pleasant read.

Insights and Discoveries

The Heart in Exile 

by Rodney Garland

"It was all clear now, or at least as clear as it could be. I had discovered and could explain many things, but there was so much, of course, that I could never hope to explain."  - Rodney Garland, The Heart in Exile

Although this book is a mystery set in the gay community of post-World War II London, it is much more than that. It explores the nature of love and the very personal truths experienced by homosexuals, as well as the gay life, which was necessarily an underworld in London at the time. It is this second aspect of the book that allows it to rise above the average sentimental story. This book is intensely about the lives of a psychiatrist and his former lover, who was found dead from what appeared to be an overdose of sleeping pills. The doctor's investigation into what happened led to revelations about himself that profoundly affected his life.

This book, which examined the variety of homosexual life in London and offered a touching account of how one might transform his life in unexpected ways when faced with the ups and downs of daily existence, captivated me. It was both fascinating and profoundly touching.

Interesting but Unconvincing

Trust 

by Hernan Diaz

“they all believed, without any sort of doubt, that they deserved to be heard, that their words ought to be heard, that the narratives of their faultless lives must be heard. They all had the same unwavering certainty my father had. And I understood that this was the certainty that Bevel wanted on the page.”   ― Hernan Diaz, Trust

This novel is an interesting blend of different genres, spanning historical fiction, autobiography, and critical memoir. In addition to facing the lies that frequently lie at the core of interpersonal relationships, the imagined might of capitalism, and the ease with which power may corrupt facts, Trust is part an engrossing story and part an attempt to construct a literary puzzle. 

I found the first two sections interesting reading, especially as they read like a fantasy of a superman of finance. However, the final sections did not impress. With the unsatisfying sections just hanging on to the somewhat dull but interesting first two parts, the whole was ultimately unconvincing as a modernist literary construct.