The Closers by Michael Connelly

"In the hallway he punched the elevator button harder than he needed to.  He had too much excitement and energy and he understood this.  The chorus of forgotten voices.  The chief seemed to know the song they were singing.  And Bosch certainly did, too.  Most of his life had been spent listening to that song." (p 8)


I sometimes take a break from "serious" literature to read some genre fiction. After reading Julia Keller's review of Michael Connelly's most recent novel I decided to try one of his earlier works, The Closers, featuring Detective Harry Bosch.
I was not disappointed as the novel was tightly woven, suspenseful story of crime and detection. In it Detective Harry Bosch is brought out of retirement by a new chief of police and assigned to a new division called "Open-Unsolved"; basically a 'cold case' division that is known as "The Closers". They look into cases that have remained unsolved for many years, and are hoping to close the file after all these years. He is teamed with his old partner, Kiz Rider, and they have the DNA of a man connected to the murder, but quickly discover that there may be more to this case than there seems. It is a seventeen-year-old case whose twists and turns kept this reader turning the pages until the resolution almost four hundred pages later. The book is full of realistic details about police work and references to some of the changes in criminal law, particularly the impact of "hate crimes". The change in the science of detection with the advent of DNA and its' resulting ubiquity is also an important factor in the story. This was a delightful light read, and introduced my to an author to whom I plan to return for more enjoyment in the future.




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Two Picture Books

While currently visiting my sister in northeastern Nevada I have had the opportunity to peruse two picture books for children. I was impressed and delighted with both. Each provide lavish and interesting illustrations intertwined with provocative narratives.
One of the books, The Wall by Peter Sis, is a memoir of his childhood growing up behind the Iron Curtain in the former Republic of Czechoslovakia. Line drawings and personal photographs tell the history of the boy's world as he experiences the world. His own passion for drawing is the inspiration that infuses the book with joy and spirit and, in the end, inspires the reader as well.
The other book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, is both fantasy and mystery of a young boy in Paris whose life and search for the meaning of secrets is told through an amazing mixture of text, pictures, and graphics that at times tell the story by themselves. This is an exciting book to read and it was no surprise when I noticed it held a place on the most recent New York Times Book Review children's book bestseller list.
Both of these "children's" books are worth spending time reading and prove thought-provoking for readers of all ages.


The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. Scholastic Press, New York. 2007.
The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sis. Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York. 2007.

Novels of Ideas


For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by "novels of ideas". They are novels for which the ideas play an important and integral part in the work as a whole. My personal favorites included the following examples that may help as I have found them worth reading and rereading: The Brothers Karamazov, The Magic Mountain, Death in Venice, The Plague, Auto da Fe, Atlas Shrugged, Zorba the Greek and The Man Without Qualities. Each of these has at its core the artistic display of ideas, both explicitly and implicitly. In each characters represent ideas and in some there are sections in which the ideas are directly displayed in essays, letters or other direct comments by the author.

I have most recently been reading The Schopenhauer Cure by Irvin D. Yalom that, at least in part, is a novel of ideas. In this case, primarily the ideas of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who is presented both through one of the characters and through biographical essays interspersed throughout the novel. This is a method that I have not encountered before in this type of novel, but recently experienced in reading the historical novel, Birds Without Wings. More on this subject will be added to this thread.....

Atonement


by Ian McEwen

Reading a book multiple times you begin to spot details and connections that you may have missed on previous reads. That is the case for me with Ian McEwen's fine novel, Atonement.
Having both read it for at least two previous book groups and seen the movie version, my reading this week focused on the structure and some of the details. McEwen's novel has some of the hallmarks of great books in his attention to details, for example the broken vase from the opening that reappears late in the story and is really broken. I was also fascinated by Briony's fixation on order leading to her ordering her world as best she could. This is demonstrated by the orderly attention to detail of her bedroom and her relations with her family that eventually break down and neatly lead in to the crisis of the first section of the novel. The structure of the novel mirrors the importance of order with traditional chapter numbers in the first section and none in the later books of the novel. There are more indications, all of which point to the excellence of the novel. Briony Tallis, at three stages of her life, narrates this searing account of lives ruined and, perhaps, salvaged. Told with an exquisite detail that captures the heat of an English day, the passion of young lovers, the chaos of war and retreat, and a conscience that tries to right past wrongs, McEwan is at his best as he recreates Briony's life and her struggle to tell the truth about a childhood error that ruined many lives. It was short-listed for the Booker Prize, which McEwan won for Amsterdam.I have grown to appreciate and even like this novel, and I would recommend it to all who enjoy history and serious drama portrayed in fine literature.

Fictional Characters

One of the joys of reading is the characters who inhabit the fictional worlds of literature. Reflecting on my own reading I remember some of my favorites and find that they may provide me with information about my self. I like people who have traits that I admire. And I do not always like the heroes or heroines of my favorites works; at least not as much as some of the other characters or those from works which I do not value as highly. Some examples follow with brief commentary.

Last night at the monthly Plauche reading group we discussed Great Expectations, among whose characters I am particularly fond of Joe Gargery, Pip's brother-in-law. He demonstrates many admirable virtues primarily being Pip's friend and support throughout the story, even when Pip treats him unjustly. Also on my list, and this is not in any particular order, are Alice in Wonderland, Jane Eyre, Dorothea Brooke of Middlemarch, Howard Roark of The Fountainhead, Bernard Rieux in The Plague, Pierre Bezukhov in War & Peace, and Larry Darrell in The Razor's Edge. This list (which definitely not comprehensive) may seem a strange grouping, but these characters are all memorable for me and demonstrate some characteristics which I admire even as they are also flawed in many ways. Aren't we all?

I think this particular group share in common the trait that they are all seekers; after happiness, knowledge, wisdom, love and a better life. They do not all succeed completely, but they pursue their goals in admiral ways and I find them one of the primary reasons to continue reading, searching for myself.

Person Nicholas Rostov

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On the Shore of the Wide World

Simon Stephens' play, which won the prestigious British 'Olivier Award' as the best new play in 2006, is currently receiving its Chicago Premiere produced by the Griffin Theatre Company. I attended yesterday's matinee and concur with the critics' reviews that this is an outstanding production. Jonathan Berry directed with focus and cohesiveness essential for the multi-generational story.
The play tells of three generations of the Holmes family whose lives are touched by tragedy and gradually uncovered during the course of the play until you feel like you are a part of their family. During the first two sections the tension builds and events suggest the potential of dire fates for some of the family, but there are also glimmers of hope and the ultimate outcome is not clear until the last scene. The cast was excellent with Paul D'Addario and Elise Kauzlaric exceptional as the parents, Peter and Alice. Josh Schecter, new to this theater, was a convincing young Christopher Holmes while the grandfather, Charlie, a difficult role, was handled with rough-hewn realism by Norm Woodel. The portrayal of both hesitant young love and unique adult tensions was a key aspect of this thought-provoking drama. I would highly recommend it.

Home Truths about Homer

Yesterday I attended the First Friday Lecture sponsored by the Basic Program of Liberal Studies at The University of Chicago. I was filled with anticipation not so much because of the topic but because the lecturer would be A. P. David, a former instructor in the Basic Program, with whom I had studied in several classes in the early nineties reading Plato and Tolstoy among others. I was fortunate to meet him and say hello before the lecture and find that he he did remember me almost ten years after leaving the program. While obtaining his PhD from the Committee on Social Thought his specialty was Homer so I expected the lecture would be exceptional and I was not disappointed. David shared a list of Home Truths about Homer and provided brief arguments in support of each of them. In doing so he demonstrated his thorough knowledge of Homer and other writers; for example at one point he invoked Jane Austen's Mansfield Park as an example to support his argument.

There were twelve 'Home Truths' and while I will not list them all I will mention some of them. They included some well known and accepted (I believe) truths like the fact that we know nothing about Homer's life, that the Greeks are not mentioned in Homer, and the fact that Homer does not mention Iphigenia, the supposed daughter of Agamemnon who is so important to later Greek dramatists such as Aeschylus. More interesting were some of his less well-known truths such as the poet known as Homer was female, Aphrodite is real, and there is no soul in Homer's poems. Most interesting was his argument for the origin of Homer's poetry in the 'Dance of the Muses' for which he shared a video presentation of a dance version of Homer read in the original Greek. The Lecture as a whole was both impressive and inspirational. It provided many ideas to spur my rereading of The Iliad.

Dickens and Opium

In an Opium Den

In 1830 Hector Berlioz conceived his Symphonie Fantastique as an autobiographical tale which according to the composer's own detailed program was composed to describe the tortured dreams of a sensitive artist in lovesick despair who takes an overdose of opium and becomes haunted by visions of an unattainable woman.
In the penultimate movement of this epitome of Romanticism he depicts the musical equivalent of opium hallucinations ('Marche aux supplice'). This music referred to the pleasures of opium, production of which had been growing since the eighteenth century development of the opium trade by the British East India Company.
Even before Berlioz, in 1821 Thomas de Quincey published the first edition of his now famous Confessions of an English Opium Eater chronicling his experiences with the drug. These included his dreams and the original manuscript was written in haste at one might say a 'fever pitch'. The final section, "The Pains of Opium", recounts the extreme of the author's opium experience (up to that time), with insomnia, nightmares, frightening visions, and difficult physical symptoms. Thomas de Quincey revised his 'Confessions' for a new edition in 1856 and it is this edition that we enjoy today.

All this is in preface to a brief discussion of Charles Dickens and opium. Dickens' biographer Peter Ackroyd notes a slight connection between de Quincey and Dickens' family during their move early in Charles' life to the city (Dickens by Peter Ackroyd, p. 19). It does not seem to be a stretch to imagine that the mature Dickens was aware of, if not familiar with, de Quincey's work. It with this in mind that we turn to the opening scene of The Mystery of Edwin Drood which is set in an opium den. It is the aura of this den and the degenerates within that create the first hint of mysteriousness that will be with the reader throughout the, unfortunately, uncompleted work. A brief passage follows:
"Shaking from head to foor, the man whose scattered consciousness has thus fantastically pieced itself together, at length rises, supports his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He is in the meanest and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged window-curtain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable court."(p. 7)

The man is John Jasper who, in a Jekyll and Hyde fashion, will inhabit the book and find the aura of the opium den is not the only part of his aspect that suggests villainy. One mystery in the story is that no proof is ever presented of any overt malediction on his part; therefore we must simply rely on his creepily obsessive behavior enhanced by the aura of the opium den to feed our speculations. At the end of the manuscript we have only journeyed halfway into the story; thus the ends are left loose and destined to lay before us like unanswered questions for eternity.



The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens. Penguin Classics, New York. 2002 (1870)

A Great Essayist

All Art is Propaganda

by George Orwell

A new collection of the essays of George Orwell is always welcome and this one is timely in this hyper-political election year.
All Art is Propaganda is a collection of his essays bound by the theme of philosophical and aesthetic commentary. It includes such masterpieces as "Politics and the English Language", "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 being more important includes many bits of wisdom including,
"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."
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. Reading Orwell reminds one of the possibilities of fine prose. His essays never fail to be both enlightening and interesting on each of the disparate topics he addresses. I hope that some of the many readers of his novels will take the time to savor their fine prose.


All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays by George Orwell. Harcourt, New York. 2008.

Opium and Mystery, but No Ending

The Mystery of Edwin Drood
by Charles Dickens

Four years, many speaking engagements, and a trip to America intervened between Charles Dickens' penultimate novel and his final one, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Ever since his involvement in a train accident in 1865 on his return from France, and perhaps even before, Dickens was ailing with a variety of illnesses, some of which were at least aggravated by overwork and his refusal to reduce his schedule. It was thus in 1869 that he began writing his final novel of which the first six of the originally intended twelve monthly parts were published in 1870. He died in June of that year with the mystery unfinished.
Edwin Drood begins in an opium den and the air of mystery that surrounds that venue grows as the story progresses. At the center of the story is Edwin Drood, his fiancee Rosa Budd, his uncle John Jasper, Canon Crisparkle, and the Landless twins, with others to numerous (as was Dickens' way) to mention. The style is fresh and new for Dickens, especially when contrasted with the heavier more convoluted style of Our Mutual Friend which immediately preceded it. The first half of the story introduces conflict and doubt for the young Drood and we see glimmers of danger headed his way in the remaining finished sections. Although incomplete, the novel has appeal and is well worth reading.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens. Penguin Classics, New York. 2002 (1870).

On the Road

I visited the Columbia College Center for Book & Paper Arts yesterday with my friend Kyle Tschaen. After a light repast at Ceres restaurant with our friend Randy Koch, Kyle and I walked over to the Center to view Jack Kerouac’s iconic manuscript scroll of On the Road.
It is the centerpiece of a college-wide initiative at Columbia investigating the disparate group of poets, artists, filmmakers and musicians known as the Beat Generation. The first draft of On the Road was produced by Jack Kerouac in a three-week writing marathon. He created a 120-foot-long continuous scroll of semi-translucent paper by pasting and taping together separate 12-foot-long strips so he could feed the it through the typewriter without interruption. In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of On the Road, the exhibition offers visitors a rare opportunity to see the original draft, containing Kerouac’s own edits in pencil, and using the real names of those depicted in the published novel including Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. In addition there is a unique exhibit of book covers entitled "On the Road Around the World", displaying 66 international book covers from different editions of On the Road from the Collection of Horst Spandler. With the addition of a biographical video of interviews and commentary on Kerouac's life this is an amazing exhibit of modern American culture from the mid-twentieth century.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Viking Press, New York. 1957.

Point Counter Point

Bad people doing bad things, but in a very witty way. That is a brief, if incomplete, summary of Aldous Huxley's novel, Point Counter Point.
It is more broadly a "novel of ideas" with a novelist of ideas, Philip Quarles, at its center surrounded by friends and family whose lives are like those of the monsters that Philip writes about in his journal. Just as Philip decides to structure his novel on the contrapuntal techniques of music (think Bach and Beethoven) the novel Huxley has written is structured in the same way. We are presented with an opening overture of more than one-hundred-fifty pages at a dinner party that serves as an introduction to most of the characters. The remainder of the novel intersperses scenes from their lives, letters from lovers and most interesting, the writings of Philip Quarles, who with his wife spends most of the first half of the novel returning from India and who is the closest to a protagonist that we get. While there is a bit of a literary explosion near the end, this is more a novel of the daily lives of London sophisticates in the 1920s. It catalogues their alternately sordid and ludicrous (sometimes both) erotic adventures, which generally end unhappily.
I particularly enjoyed the wealth of references to literature and philosophy, Huxley's polymathic mind shows through on every page. Among the literary references was the use of Dickens in a way that captures one of his essential character traits, "the appearance of Dickensian young-girlishness" (p. 19). Overall, I found the play of wit and ideas compelling, enough to bear with the bad people and their antics.

Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley. Harper & Row, New York. 1928.

Our Mutual Friend

Charles Dickens' penultimate novel, and last complete one, is a compendium of the best and worst of his art. The characters are present, perhaps too many, but they lack the fresh life and spirit of earlier works like Dombey & Son or Bleak House.
The metaphors are present, but the waters of Our Mutual Friend are dark and foreboding, ultimately leading to death; while the waters of earlier works, such as Dombey again, hold the promise of life. It seems that Dickens is worn out and it shows in the lack of energy; but in spite of this there remain beautiful passages and complex plotting, perhaps his greatest. His critique of social class and society surrounds the story with the caricature of the Veneerings at its apex. Within the story he uses his theme of false identity as well as he ever has with one of the central characters, John Harmon, the prime specimen. But he fails to provide a central character with whom we can identify as he did so well in David Copperfield, Bleak House and Great Expectations. The Boffins, who are very appealing at first, appear to change their moral character and thus disappoint (at least Mr. Boffin) while the most appealing characters, like Jenny Wren or Lizzie Hexam, are not substantial enough or central enough to carry the novel. So we have a novel that receives a mixed grade from this reader. I finished it longing for the early Dickens humor and the later Dickens greatness but was left with a bit of that but not enough to sustain the 800 pages he had devoted to the story of Our Mutual Friend.


Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. Penguin Classics, New York. 1997 (1865)

Person David Copperfield

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Between Silence and Light

When I was a youth I had a fascination with buildings and architecture. I would pore over pictures and architectural drawings and design my own houses. This fascination faded somewhat as I grew older but within the world of art I have continued to have a special affinity for architecture, both reading about it and viewing it (I am especially looking forward to the opening of the new wing of the Art Institute of Chicago).
My interest in architecture was encouraged more than four years ago when I viewed the documentary My Architect based on the life of Louis Kahn. Kahn (1902-1974) was one of the great architects of the twentieth century. John Lobell described Louis Kahn's approach to architecture best in the introduction to his book on Kahn, Between Silence and Light:

Louis Kahn saw architecture as the meeting of the measurable and the unmeasurable. He used the word "Silence" for the unmeasurable, for that which is not yet; and the word "Light" for the measurable, for that which is. Kahn saw architecture as existing at a threshold between silence and light, which he called the Treasury of the Shadow.

The spirit of Louis Kahn and his spirituality are demonstrated again and again through his creativity, in his buildings which are still with us. Some of the greatest of these include the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (my favorite), the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, and the Philips Exeter Academy Library. Above all Kahn created works that preserved art through time and thought, inspiring the world in the process.


Between Silence and Light by John Lobell. Shambhala Press, Boston. 1979.

Books and Childhood

Children's Literature

Last night I attended a lecture by Seth Lerer, Professor of English at Stanford University, on Children's Literature.
He explored the iconic books, ancient and contemporary alike, that have forged a lifelong love of literature in young readers during their formative years.
His book, Children's Literature, charts the makings of the Western literary imagination from Aesop's fables to Mother Goose, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Peter Pan, from Where the Wild Things Are to Harry Potter. In his lively lecture Professor Lerer connected the current Newberry exhibit, Artifacts of Childhood, with his observations on the changing environments of family life and human growth, schooling and scholarship, and publishing and politics in which children found themselves changed by the books they read. The references to literature of childhood over the ages, many of which I was unaware of, were made fascinating by his witty, yet scholarly, observations. I look forward to reading his book.

Children's Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter by Seth Lerer. University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Books I Love

I look at the statistics on my blog as they start to grow and I wonder about notion of "favorite books". What are my truly favorite books and why do I categorize them that way? Well, I certainly have fond memories of reading each of them, but for different reasons: for some it is the story, others the beauty of the prose, and many it is the ideas demonstrated by the book. One special group of favorites is the books that I have read more than once, in some cases many times. This is a select group that includes much of Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Notes from Underground and The Brothers Karamazov); but also single books by certain authors including War & Peace, Atlas Shrugged, The Sound and the Fury, The Man Without Qualities and Middlemarch. Actually I should include Ayn Rand in the multiple book group as The Fountainhead is another of hers that makes this list.
Finally there is a select group of books that I have read and reread my whole life and expect to read again. This group includes Jane Eyre, Alice in Wonderland, Great Expectations and Of Human Bondage. While there are many other books that I have read once and consider favorites, the books mentioned here are among my "favorite books". Perhaps I will discuss their special qualities and appeal for me in a future commentary.

Camille Saint-Saens


Today is the anniversary of the birth in 1835 of Camille Saint-Saens. one of my favorite composers from my earliest years as a musician and music-lover. One of the first records that I owned included a two-piano version of "The Swan" from "Carnival of the Animals" in collection of duo piano favorites performed by Whittemore and Lowe. When I was attending college I found Saint-Saens piano concertos acquiring a recording of the second and fourth by Phillipe Entremont. I even took the fourth piano concerto as a topic for analysis in a course on the Symphonic Concerto. Over the years I have become acquainted with other great works of his including his lovely concertos for cello and violin, the "Organ" Symphony with its majestic tres French finale, and his most famous opera, Samson et Delilah, which I have seen more than once at Lyric Opera. In his long life Saint-Saens was a polymath, but it is his music that remains with us and inspires to this day.

Literary Economics


In light of current events on the business front I have been dipping into a classic text that provides historical perspective for understanding the events of today.
This is the classic Manias, Panics, and Crashes by Charles P. Kindleberger. He provides a succinct history of economic crises in ten chapters plus a conclusion as to "The Lessons of History". Interestingly he feels it necessary in his first chapter to explain: "This book is an essay in what is derogatorily called today "literary economics," as opposed to mathematical economics, econometrics, or (embracing them both) the "new economic history."" (pp. 7-8)
Having received my own degree in Economics less than a decade before this book was published I found a kindred spirit in that I, too, preferred "literary economics", eschewing econometrics, et. al. I recommend Kindleberger's treatise as a good example of economics (without approving of all his views), history, or both. His analysis of various episodes of speculative fever in the markets and his thoughtful discussion of causes and lessons for today are worth reading and considering in light of our own economic turbulence.


Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises by Charles P. Kindleberger. Basic Books, New York. 1978.

Sibelius and Shostakovich

Last night I attended the Chicago Symphony Orchestra where guest conductor Michael Tilson Thomas led the orchestra in a concert that included both Jean Sibelius' Fourth Symphony and Dimitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. The Sibelius work, premiered in Helsinki in 1911, is a mostly bleak and lean composition which demonstrates Sibelius ability to connect thematically his larger works. Modern sounding even today, the original audiences reacted negatively with remarks that the symphony was "ultramodern". To the twenty-first century ear the modernity has faded but not disappeared and it is tempered with pastoral melodies and harmonies that are somewhat neo-romantic compared to contemporary fare.

The piece de resistance of the evening was the second half performance of Shostakovich's great Fifth Symphony in d minor. Written almost thirty years after the Sibelius in 1937, it represents Shostakovich's attempt to redeem himself with the Stalin government that had banned his Fourth Symphony and relegated him to their list of heretics and outsiders. Fortunately, for the composer and the musical world, his work received official approval, and audiences have subsequently made it a favorite of twentieth-century symphonic literature. The opening movement is heroic and is followed by a truly "joking" scherzo. A third movement of passionate emotional strength leads to a finale that is magnificent and uplifting throughout.
I first heard this Symphony about forty years ago and it immediately became one of my favorites. The Chicago Symphony's performance last night reminded why it remains a favorite.

Birds Without Wings

Louis de Bernieres is probably best known for his popular novel, Corelli's Mandolin, which I read and enjoyed several years ago. It was with this experience in mind that I anticipated reading this, his next novel, published in 2004. I was not disappointed. Birds Without Wings is more than a novel, it is several novels, a work of history and a biography of one of the leaders who remade the map of the twentieth century. It is this that makes it both an interesting book to read and a less successful book than it could have been. The stories are centered in a small village and resonate with today as lives are disrupted with displacement of both ethnic and religious groups as the society is forced into the future; our own present. I found the most dissatisfying aspect of Birds Without Wings was its massive size and the attempt of the author to do too much. The result is characters and events that are not always described with the depth necessary and deserving for the story. However, the book is excellent in its depiction of the time of the end of the Ottoman Empire, combining the beauty and nostalgia of the lives of people from small town Anatolia with the brutal sweep of the history of political movements and war encompassing the end of empire and the rise of Mustafa Kemal, subsequently known simply as Attaturk. The author tells each of these stories with a readable style that makes this book, while not without flaws, one that is easy to recommend.


Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres. Alfred Knopf, New York. 2004.

Quotation of the Day: "Not all men can read all books; it is only in a chosen few that any man will find his appointed food; and the fittest lessons are the most palatable, and make themselves welcome to the mind. A writer learns this early, and it is his chief support; he goes on unafraid, laying down the law." Robert Louis Stevenson, Learning to Write 42 (1888; repr. 1920).

Simple Complexity

The Plague (continued)
by Albert Camus

Our discussion of Camus' The Plague last Sunday focused on the introductory section. The novel is written with simple complexity in that the seemingly simple prose reveals through careful analysis complexity that rivals any of Camus' favorite authors (Melville, Dostoyevsky, Kafka). The narrator claims to be writing a chronicle, but there are contrasts and mysteries that arise immediately including the question of the identity of the narrator. On page 6 we read that "the narrator (whose identity will be made known in due course". When that will be will have to wait until quite near the end of the novel. 

At any rate the narrator claims to have access to both his own witness of events, the testimony of other eyewitnesses and documents that record the events (this will include a journal that forms part of the subsequent text). The first person to whom we are introduced is Dr. Rieux who encounters rats almost immediately, but does not think much of that. We wondered why, especially after he notices a bleeding rat, that as a doctor he does not think about plague and disease, but he does not and that will have to wait. Our discussion will have to wait as well until next time when we plan to finish Part One.

The Plague by Albert Camus. Trans. by Stuart Gilbert. Vintage Books, New York. 1972 (1948)