Listen to the Lion

Time's All-time 100 novels: Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited" and William Golding's "Lord of the Flies"

The most important thing to know about Evelyn Waugh is that he is a man, in spite of his given name. The second thing to know about him is that he is Catholic, a fact that informs most of his work, especially Brideshead Revisited. Brideshead is about an aristocratic, dysfunctional Catholic family seen through the eyes of an agnostic family friend, Charles Ryder, who is constantly surprised that a family can be both thoroughly dysfunctional and thoroughly Catholic at the same time, since, in his eyes, the dysfunctional part - which includes alcoholism, adultery, separation and a strongly hinted bit of homosexuality - automatically means they are hypocritical or just plain silly when paired with the Catholic part.

 

Orwell apparently said that Waugh was "about as good a novelist as one can be while holding untenable opinions," the untenable bit, presumably, being his Catholicism and fundamentally conservative view of the 20th century. But if you can accept the fact that reasonable people can believe in, and long for, God, then you can appreciate the beauty, the humor and the subtelty of what happens to the characters in Brideshead, especially the narrator Ryder.

 

Lord of the Flies, another on Time's list of books that I somehow escaped reading in school or college but had always meant to read, explores the darker side of human nature. Sadly, it was a bit of a letdown. Once you know the premise of the book - that a bunch of boys end up alone on an island after their plane crashes, killing all the adults on board - you can guess where it goes from there.

 

Things start out OK, with the boys forming a government and dividing up the labor needed for survival, but it soon collapses into a Hobbesian nightmare. Give Golding credit for writing the book, but I can't help but think it could have been done much better. Nothing was particulary moving, insightful or menacing.

5 stars

All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren

Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy

1984 - George Orwell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

4 stars

The Assistant - Bernard Malamud
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett

Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

3.5 stars

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

3 stars

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

Lord of the Flies - William Golding

 

2 stars

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

1 star

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

Time's All-time 100 novels: Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange"

Really an exhilarating read, both for its style and content. As for the former, the narrator is Alex, a 15-year-old gang leader at the beginning of the story who speaks a dialect called Nadsat, a mix of English, Russian and Cockney rhyming slang.

It's a highly effective way of getting inside the protagonist's head, which is where the drama of this book is played out. After his arrest for an act of "ultraviolence" that turns into a murder, Alex is conditioned, through the use of drugs in combination with violent and pornographic images, against his former behaviors.

The question, posed by Burgess in a non-pedantic manner, is whether society and/or the individual is truly better off if anti-social activity is banished through the absence of free will.

A Clockwork Orange is also darkly humorous, further enhancing its status as a stylistic and moral masterpiece.

I'm now exactly 25 percent of the way through my quest.

5 stars

All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren

Animal Farm - George Orwell

The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

The Moviegoer - Walker Percy

1984 - George Orwell

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

4 stars

The Assistant - Bernard Malamud

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien

Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett

Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

3.5 stars

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

3 stars

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

2 stars

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

1 star

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

Time's All-time 100 novels: Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart"

After The Crying of Lot 49, anything would be a great read, but Things Fall Apart was pretty good regardless of its position in my literary quest.

Achebe tells the story of a Nigerian Ibo village through the life of Okonkwo, one of its greatest men. As the title suggests, things don't exactly go well for Okonkwo or the village. A tragedy befalls him and he has to go into exile for seven years, only to return to find that white and African missionaries have established a church, which aids in the village's disintegration.

Achebe is great at description; how the village looks, smells and operates is made richly clear. And he is even better at showing how a man of initiative in some things can be bound by tradition, convention and the consequences of his own decisions.

5 stars

All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
1984 - George Orwell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

4 stars

The Assistant - Bernard Malamud
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

3.5 stars

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

3 stars

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

2 stars

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

1 star

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

Time's All-time 100 novels: Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49"

The Crying of Lot 49 is one of two Pynchon novels on Time's All-time 100 novels, and reading it makes me wonder if I can possibly make it through the other entry, Gravity's Rainbow, especially since Crying is supposed to be Pynchon's most accessible work.

Crying has no plot, no characterization and, as far as I could see, little of the witty wordplay that's supposed to be its main attraction. It's 150 pages of sheer, ineffable gibberish.

I defy anyone to make a case to the contrary.

5 stars

All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
1984 - George Orwell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

4 stars

The Assistant - Bernard Malamud
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett

3.5 stars

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

3 stars

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

2 stars

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

1 star

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

Time's All-time 100 novels: Bernard Malamud's "The Assistant"

After my bouts with Harper Lee and Judy Blume, this effort from Bernard Malamud was quite a morale booster.

The Assistant is about a early 1950s Jewish Brooklyn grocer, his daughter, and an Italian-American drifter who, by a weird circumstance that is artfully revealed in the book, comes to work for the father and then fall in love with the daughter.

Malamud does a great job explaining what the characters are thinking and then backing that up with how the characters behave and speak. The relationship triangle stays complicated throughout the book, but it all makes sense as each character is doing what he, or she, thinks best to serve their individual goals and values. None of the characters here are bound by fate or are one-dimensional.

I still prefer Malamud's The Natural, a truly magical 5-star effort, but this one is a solid 4-star pick on the Time list. I have more strength now for my quest.

5 stars

All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
1984 - George Orwell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

4 stars

The Assistant - Bernard Malamud
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett

3.5 stars

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

3 stars

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

2 stars

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

Bob Dylan and the cops

Another stellar job by the police.

Van on NPR

A must-listen interview with Van about his recent performances of Astral Weeks.

"Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl" by Van Morrison

Van Morrison
Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl
Listen to the Lion Records
5 stars (out of 5)

I could write a book about this CD and its 1968 predecessor - why don't one of you bestow upon me some patronage so I could do just that? - but I'll try to keep it as short as possible.

First of all, get your hands on the original album and listen to it a few times and you'll, hopefully, know why the release of a live version 40 years hence is such a big deal. It's an album that has served as something like a sacred incantation, or a calming, soothing drug, for the mere thousands who have "gotten" it over the years, and it's the greatest work by the world's greatest singer-songwriter not born in Hibbing, Minn.

This album, the live one released in February, marks a return to form for Van who had been struggling on stage with sub-par newer material and bands that weren't up to following him to places he used to go. And this album got this writer out of a serious bout of mind-fog and writers' block earlier this year.

No one else's voice can heal the soul quite like Van's, and all throughout each song on this album there are examples of that. From mumbling and whooping through his harmonica into the mic, to starting a line late so he has to rush to catch up, to hitting high notes with an unmatched sense of drama, to repeating a word or phrase over and over, to spontaneous scatting, to just being silent, Van's arsenal has never been more full.

He imposes a sense of dread and desolation on "Beside You" and "Slim Slow Slider" but leaves you feeling hopeful and strong in spite of it. Nothing is more urgent than his vocal on "The Way That Young Lovers Do," and no one else can sound that urgent while being totally in command.

No one else has written and performed love songs of the structure and feel of "Astral Weeks," "Sweet Thing" and "Ballerina" and no one has done the same for nostalgia and regret as Van does on "Cyprus Avenue" and "Madame George."

There are two non-Astral songs tacked onto the end of the CD, the introspective "Listen to the Lion" and "Common One," which is the middle call and response section taken from previous performances of "Summertime in England," a full version of which would have been more than welcome.

It would be reasonable to expect one to detect flaws in Van's approach this far on, but age seems to have only made him better, especially when performing his best work. One hopes this towering achievement makes Van and other artists less likely to stay at arm's length from the great works of their youth.

More lexicon

Some more words I've encountered in my readings, with simplified definitions:

Aetataureate - adj. of or pertaining to a golden age

Beau geste - n. a noble and generous act

Bricoleur - n. a person who creates a diverse range of things

Chamfer - n. a symmetrical sloping surface at an edge or corner

Chert - n. a hard, dark, opaque rock composed of silica

Ciborium - n. 1. a receptacle shaped like a shrine or a cup with an arched cover, used for the reservation of the Eucharist 2. a four-pillared canopy over an altar in a church

Cosmogony - n. a theory of the origin of the universe

Crenellated - v. provided battlements to the wall of a building

Dace - n. a small freshwater fish of the minnow family, typically living in running water

Damask - n. a woven fabric with a pattern visible on both sides

Elision - n. the omission of a sound or syllable while speaking

Embonpoint - n. stoutness of person

Epistemology - n. the theory of knowledge

Glyph - n. 1. a pictograph 2. a sculptured figure

Hake - n. a large-headed elongated fish with long jaws and strong teeth

Noogenic - adj. from the human mind and spirit

Nystagmus - n. a persistent, involuntary  movement of the eyeball, usually from side to side

Organdy - n. a fine translucent cotton or silk fabric, usually stiffened and used for women's clothing

Purlieu - n. the area near or surrounding a place

Putto - n. a representation of a cherubic infant

Quirting - v. hitting with a short-handled riding whip with a braided leather lash

Roweled - v. used a spiked revolving disk at the end of a spur to urge on

Scoria - n. a cindery, vesicular basaltic lava, typically having a frothy texture

Suppurate - v. to produce pus

Tumbril - n. a farmer's cart used to transport prisoners to the guillotine during the French Revolution

Vidette - n. 1. a mounted sentry positioned beyond an army's outpost 2. a leading star of stage, screen or television

Time's All-time 100 novels: Harper Lee and Judy Blume

I'm up to 21 books read on my quest to read all 100 entries on Time's top 100 list, having just finished the audiobook version of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and the dead tree version of Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

Neither of these are good books, but I can see why the former is on the list, but not the latter.

Are You There God? is about a girl eager to begin puberty and nervous about all that entails, including boys, school, etc. She is also trying to decide whether to be religious, since her Jewish father and Christian mother, who barely emerge as characters, have chosen to raise her as "nothing." There's really no plot, just Margaret whining about one thing after another. I guess it could serve some sort of purpose in making girls feel like they're not alone, but if this is what great pre-teen lit is supposed to be, I should seriously think about getting into the racket.

To Kill a Mockingbird is much more problematic. For one thing, its about a third longer than it needs to be, with the main plot being surrounded by a series of annoying little happenings narrated by the ever-annoying little tomboy Scout, whose father Atticus defends a black man wrongly accused, of course, of raping a white woman. The characters are all perfectly drawn stereotypes, even Boo Radley, the creepy neighbor who turns out to have a heart of gold.

There's nothing to disagree with in this book. We all know racism is bad and Southerners are colorful, and I suppose one book that documents this has to be on everyone's list. Plus Gregory Peck is really cool.

5 stars

All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
1984 - George Orwell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

4 stars

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett

3.5 stars

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

3 stars

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

2 stars

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons