It’s a civic holiday in glorious Ontario, Canada. (My roommates and I have no idea what we’re supposed to be celebrating, except summer weather and Tim Horton’s ice caps, maybe.) Therefore I should give my magnificent brain a rest but when I see a fellow human in need I cannot turn my head aside. I cannot deny our shared humanity (as much as I may like to).

Rushdie is threatening legal action over some of Evans’s wilder allegations, which of course places him in a difficult situation. Two decades back, he was being held up as an icon of free speech beset by censorship, theocratic totalitarianism and mob violence. He’s clearly aware of the potential ironies: “I am not in the business of suppressing books,” he declares. “I just want the stuff taken out of which he knows to be untrue.”

“Untrue”; a tricky word. On Her Majesty’s Service purports to be a non-fiction book, and must be judged on that basis. But Rushdie’s whole career has been based on the artful renegotiation of the distinction between fact and fiction, history and fantasy. The magic realism of Midnight’s Children; the alternate history of The Ground Beneath Her Feet; the postmodern self-reference of Fury; the liberties taken with Hamlet and Star Trek in East, West; above all, the cavalier reworking of ancient texts and myths in The Satanic Verses; all of these are liable to the pedantic corrective that “it didn’t really happen like that”.

Yes, Mr. Footman, very good! You’re almost there. Your final conclusion should be: Mr. Salman Rushdie writes fiction: “An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented.” F-I-C-T-I-O-N.

Hint: Any need for the word “magic”, “myth” etc.

Bonus charity gesture: Hamlet is a play (P-L-A-Y), also an imaginative work, and while you may have endeared yourself to some fan boy communities, even Wikipedia knows that Star Trek isn’t depicting reality either.

Helpful suggestion: A political science beginner’s course on matters related to free speech and the limits thereof.

Token of thanks: No tangible objects needed! Just promise to think before you hand Guardian any more word vomit, especially on Rushdie news of which we readers get far too much. I’m subscribed to its RSS feed after all. Cheers!

Click on images

Is it bright where you are?

The Death of Elizabeth (1828)

Portrait (1909) by Henri Le Fauconnie

(Google translate for link)

Music: “Absence” from Les Nuits d’Été Op. 7 by Hector Belioz, lyrics by Théophile Gautier
Mezzo-soprano: Dame Janet Baker
Conductor: Herbert Blomstedt.
Orchestra: Danish radio symphonic orchestra

(Info about the cycle) (Lyrics)

“Tell me , do you have any coloured blood?”

Mark recognized, with anger and embarrassment, the small halt in his breathing but he answered easily enough, “Of course. Why do you ask?”

“Shouldn’t I? It seems an interesting point about a man like you.”

“I suppose so,” said Mark. “But it’s not usual to hear a European ask it.”

[...]

“It worries you quite a bit, eh?”

Mark grinned…”Does it show so much?” he asked.

“You ought to have seen your face, ” Hancko said, “when I asked you.”

“It’s a queer business,” said Mark. “Being my colour and and my class in my sort of country. All your training…all your influences and most of the education you get encourages you to value one side of what you were born and to despise the other. It becomes a reflex by the time you’re about five years old.”

“What are you going to do?” Hancko asked him then.

[...]

“What [are] you getting at?”

“Everything,” he replied, looking steadily at Mark, and with the accent of his English only discernible by the faint hardness of the vowels. “Everything you want to do, no matter how complex and untidy it looks, has something specific in it that moves the whole thing. An essence that you can get at.” He closed his hand slowly, like a man grasping a sinking stone in the water before it reached the bottom. ” Every question, comes down finally to ‘What’, not ‘Why’. In our case it’s a matter of giving an allegiance to the destiny of the poor. A real allegiance, I mean, that’s almost like religious faith, but not quite. Don’t mind that, though. It’s an allegiance to them as a class, to what they have to offer, to the work you must do with them. In your country one lot of people who are white rule and prosper by using the people like you. They’re able to use you because they allow you a good share in their world, and because they’ve given you a set of values to live by that depend on the approval of that world. And the poor of your world, the blacks, they’re kept poor because you, people like you I mean, get an idea clearly in life that there will always be something irreconcilable between the white world and the black. And only the white world has any value, call it beauty if you like, for you. Is that right?”

“Yes,” Mark said slowly. “I suppose that is the way it works.”

“It’s not a question,” Hancko continued, “of starting a race war: that’s almost more stupid than the other thing. It’s only a question of taking sides. Every time history becomes urgent and a little sick, as it is now, a man has to pick a side. Especially men like you who carry both your worlds within you, in your blood.”

From Voices Under The Window by John Hearne, published by Peepal Tree Press

Hope it hasn’t been mentioned and my old eyes have deceived me, but have you seen the PBS version of Persuasion? I really enjoyed the whole PBS Jane Austen series. - Tasses

No, I’m afraid not. I tend to avoid Austen adaptations unless there’s something in the advertising that indicates the director produced something beyond the ordinary. More importantly, I’m not even sure if I have PBS. But I remember reading reviews of it online and viewers feeling much the same as you did.

With all the Wyndham you’ve been reading, can you tell us which one appealed to you most? What about him made you want to read multiple titles?

Also, re: Wide Sargasso Sea — do you have an opinion in general on the writing of “sequels” using another author’s characters? - Melanie

The Chrysalids retains its top spot because my reread revealed why images of it had stayed with me from boarding school (even if I couldn’t remember specific details). It’s also the best developed one in terms of plot and theme.

Generally when I find an author I like I seek out his other titles immediately. Penguin’s re-release of much of his backlist and the novels’ short length made it all too easy for me to gorge.

In general I lay a pox on authors who go about messing with other books in order to write pre- or sequels. I’m a huge Austen fan but I’ll never read those Darcy’s Diary claptrap. I made an exception for Wide Sargasso Sea because it’s a) considered a classic and b) Rhys wrote other novels that are also well-regarded.

On Literature and Knowledge: Is this more a theoretical book or more an op-ed from the author? Do you disagree with any of the author’s arguments? - bookchronicle

Ahhh, it’s a bit of both with the op-ed strain being a bit more dominant. She goes to some lengths to define and elucidate an understanding of “knowledge” different from the scientific and, ergo, arguing for literature’s importance as is rather than trying to torture it into the objective paradigm.

I’ve read it months ago but I do remember being sceptical about her support for the idea that literature nurtures empathetic knowledge in readers. It’s a library book though, so I don’t have a copy here to go into more details. Hope I was clear enough!

How do you think Persuasion compares to other Austen novels? Would you recommend it to someone new to the author, or would you tell them to try something else first? - Christine

Oh, I love it. Here’s my ranking, leaving out P&P because I’ve forgotten how much I like it and so must re-read to make things clear. Emma’s first, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park and Persuasion are all tied in for 2nd place because I can’t decide which I like better, while Sense and Sensibility languishes at the bottom because it’s good Austen but I don’t see what all the fuss is about.

You know, it all depends on what kind of reader the newbie is. All of Austen’s major novels are of a certain quality that renders that issue irrelevant. NA may not have MP’s complex architecture but it has a persuasive, enchanting element coupled with Austen’s judicious eye that wins readers over, for example. It’s more about what that new reader is likely to connect with first because, despite similar themes, Austen’s novels vary in style and focus, she brings different things to the fore in her works. I suppose most would go with P&P because it’s considered THE book but that’s a boring tactic, don’t you think? Sometimes it’s neater to take a divergent path even if you end up at the same finishing point.

Thanks to everyone for the great questions!

Round One

The Lydia Millet questions

I just recently read a Lydia Millet novel. What’d you think of her? In the one I read, the characterization was brilliant, although her writing felt heavy at times.

How were Millet’s characters in the novel you read? How well were they drawn? Did you find yourself attracted to some while repelled by others? - kelskels

That’s a trickier question than you might expect. Her characterization for the kind of novel she wanted to write was excellent, IMO. In one review (via Soft Skull)– the only one you need read on this novel, btw, as the newspaper ones were pure pap for the most part — the critic wrote that “Millet delivers a novel that strips a character of all pretense, custom, habit and certitude, even of personality, to leave an entity that moves blindly forward in a world of blunt instinct.” I agree completely but it left others complaining that they weren’t the “fully dimensional”, proper rounded characters that all novelists must write all the time to be considered any good. Far be it from me to declare such critics flapping philistines with woefully limited ideas of what fiction is, may they please spare the public their editorially approved opinions but…*ahem* yes, I thought How the Dead Dream did well on that score. I too found her writing heavy at times the first time around but on a reread lost all sight of what I found problematic in the first place…until I picked up My Happy Life, another of her novels, which threw all that heaviness to the fore so I had to put it down and give myself a break.
Yes, I felt that pull and push to certain characters…did you read How the Dead Dream too or is this Millet’s general style? It’s like you’re in my head.

“How the Dead Dream” is a book I have been meaning to read for some time now.

Who this book would speak more powerfully to. Do you believe that animal lovers/owners would connect with the main character more so than non-animal people?

Did this book make you think about the differences in how people treat their human family members as opposed to their animal family?

What do you think is the main message Millet is trying to get across to her readers? - Joanne

While the main character may be more appealing to animal lovers I don’t think he would connect to them anymore than other readers precisely because he’s not a typical animal lover. Indeed for most of the novel although he becomes more conscious and concerned about others and the wider world he doesn’t develop in a clear cut, “let’s join PETA” manner.

No, the book didn’t make me think about how persons treat pets differently from relatives…. I think one of Millet’s main purposes in writing the book was to change environmentalism’s image to the average person. She wanted to sap it of its sentimental, “hobby” like status where people cry over cute pandas and instead highlight how it is as serious, and vital an issue as oil prices or health care, say, which are seen as more general “issues”. Especially when it comes to talking about animal extinction.

What’s Literature and Knowledge like? Easy to read and understand? - Maree

Ummm…I would say it’s only easy to understand if you’re used to reading university-level texts on abstract matter like theory. That being said Dorothy Walsh is meticulous in defining her terms and building her argument careful from chapter to chapter, anticipating questions and answering them well, for the most part, and avoiding silly jargon. She writes so clearly, with a touch of humour that it’s a book I’d recommend to those who wanted to dip their toes into books on literature and aesthetics but are unsure of where to start and are afraid of being overwhelmed.

Was Nick right to sacrifice his vocation (teaching, scholarship) for a life of beauty and pleasure? Why do Nick and the MP argue about Richard Strauss? - Amateur Reader

You know, I don’t think it’s a question of right or wrong since poor Nick didn’t even seem clear on what the heck he was going to write for his doctorate. He was clear about it except when he had to explain it to others — and maybe he was just shy, poor thing — but I say that if you can’t string two clear sentences together on your thesis you’re in trouble. Much easier to cut and snort. (I know that sweet Nick thought that no one would understand his oh so literary topic but I call BS.) He did get a whole (ugly) building out of it!

Nick and the MP’s musical arguments are symbolic of the British government’s oppression of homosexuals. Strauss controversially supported the Nazi regime who were famously homophobic and Gerald, a Thatcherite, no doubt supported Thatcher’s anti-gay legislation she established in the 80s.

(I went for the most outlandish explanation I could think of. How did I do?)

Have you read any of Dubus’ novels? Which form do you think he masters, or is he skillful with both? Which was your favorite story from this collection? - Dew

Dubus only wrote one novel, an early one, which I’ve rarely seen mention and so am not much interested in. He (and I) consider him to be a short story writer. It’s his son Dubus III that’s known for his novels.

My favourite story from that collection is probably the first one “Killings” which, to my surprise, was adapted into a movie.

I have several drafts on Wharton (whoops, missed that deadline), Silent Light (for First Magazine), Lydia Millet (that one was supposed to be an epic), A.L. Kennedy and others seething from neglect in the bowels of my dashboard (while I wonder what else I can do for Open Letters Monthly). There are many (many) print and online literary magazine issues languishing unread. (This never, never happens. If I read anything it’s my LRB and OLM.) I’ll offer no excuses only my apologies and this post which I just churned out in an effort to get the juices flowing.

My most recent novel read is The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. It’s a Booker winner so I heard about it but the prize plus the title emitted waves of tedium — I figured it featured some middle-aged don’s limpid natterings plus an affair with a fresh young student. This changed last year when I read Hollinghurst’s excellent TLS Commentary piece on Ronald Firbank. I thought his name sounded familiar and behold! he was the same Booker winner of that one book. Still wary I swerved and reached for his first novel instead The Swimming-pool Library and was amazed. Never had I imagined such an unabashedly sexual novel could at the same time be so “literary” — in this case simply meaning a book with complex themes, stimulating, morally ambiguous character dynamics, lovely writing, interesting set up of ideas, motifs and so on.

A lot can happen between 1988 when that book was published to 2004. If I had known that The Line of Beauty was so recent I might have skipped it for one of the 90s novels. (I held the impression it was a mid-90s novel for some reason.) Hollinghurst aged, mellowed, became wiser, a little less outrageous, more subtle, judicious, wilier, perhaps, likes to take his time, turn the wheel, build the moment with layer upon intricately built layer. Basically, it turned out to be the novel I dreaded. The sort of book that, I imagine, innocent hoi polloi buy in an effort to obey their betters by partaking in the superior literature of the day, only to have it lay on the nighttime table for half-a-year with the book mark at somewhere around page 110 holding up the latest Stephanie Plum and the new non-fiction sensation.

If I were a Henry James fan I may have loved this book, squeeing in delight at every big and small allusion. (Amateur Reader doesn’t think so.) Usually, I get a bit excited when a writer so consistently links his book to another’s, especially if it’s a classic one with which I am unfamiliar. Unless it’s Henry James whose books have always looked very long and sound very boring. (I was wrong about Edith — could be wrong about James…but have you seen the size of his books? I do it for Proust but he’s French. I’ll do a lot for French writers. And British Victorian writers but James is Edwardian, right? Missed it, old chum. Can we pretend his fiction is Edwardian for the sake of this post and my excuses? Isn’t he American or something? There, Americans don’t count, I go for the British.)

Nick Guest, the protagonist in Hollinghurst’s most recent novel, is a doctorate student in Literature at UCL writing an unfathomable thesis on James, his favourite writer. He graduated from Worcester College, Oxford where, despite his middle-class trappings, he managed to make friends with the handsome rower Toby whose uncle (on Mom’s side) is an Earl and whose politician father is similarly (though I think a less illustriously, title-wise) connected and very wealthy besides. The family likes Nick, so much so that they rent him one of the rooms in its London home, making him feel like one of the family. It helps that he can act as a vaguely defined guardian for Toby’s younger 19 year old sister who is clinically depressed and a bit wild besides: keep her from cutting herself, vet her boyfriends, assess and report on her general well-being, all the things a 21 year old is uniquely qualified to do. He is also a gay virgin and desperate to hook-up and indulge in much thought over pleasures.

Not much in the book happens as Hollinghurst covers three years of Guest in the Fedden household. Nick sleeps with some guys, is eternally conflicted about his existence in this upper-class lifestyle, oft disapproving and yet addicted to its sensual gifts and lifetime of ease. He sees through Gerald’s fake politician affability yet takes pride in being connected to Gerald in the first place. He wants to be true to himself and those around him but can’t quite manage it much of the time, probably because he’s not so sure what to make of himself. (I’m guessing my ignorance of all things Henry James is working against me here.) To be fair, the choice of sleeping mates is an essential structural point. At the beginning, in more innocent times (of limited opportunity), he puts aside a long-held crush for Toby and sends out a lonely heart letter to a Jamaican working class man in his late 20s. In the second section he’s made a leap and bags Wani, a beautiful, wealthy Lebanese millionaire (from his Oxford batch), a closeted gay whose debonair, effortless cool demeanour that the world admires is wholly owed to Cocaine Productions. In the third that’s done away with due to ex-lovers left and right succumbing to an “illness” that goes unnamed for most of the story. Each marks an evolution in Nick’s character to an extent.

The story’s historical backdrop colours the story heavily as well, something that only became obvious to me after I pulled myself out of Nick’s constant “OMG I’m so middle class + gay but I love all this sex+drugs+money+class privilege but oooh they can be so callous + self-delusional and I’m totes better than that haha but am I really, I’m so lost? lawks” loop. They’re in Thatcher’s England as the book starts out at around the peak of her popularity and ends after her last Tory win when her prospects begin to dim — all the while England’s unemployment numbers rises in the millions. As an upper-class Tory who treats his rural constituents as if they were extra-terrestrial visitors who must be humoured one realises how effectively Gerald’s status acts as blinkers. So his Thatcher-mania is almost redundant in that regard. There’s a scene near the end where Gerald is over-the-moon to have “The Lady” at his house for his wedding anniversary party — which doesn’t figure much for his poor wife must remind him that they will have the first dance not him and Thatcher — in which Hollinghurst has a jolly, slightly caustic old time describing all the plump, middle-aged Thatcherites following her around reverentially, patting their balding pates while eyeing her bounteous crop enviously, kneeling on the floor by her as she sits on the coach desperate to get in a word. It was too much like those deb balls you read in Regency romances or a parody of a Jane Austen ballroom scene except that our intrepid hero sees through it all and gleefully succumbs to it (even though he’s not a Thatcherite). Story of his life.

Homosexuality figures largely as well and lends the novel a furtive quality. Most of Nick’s upper-class society know that he’s gay they just politely ignore it except the rougher ones who take jibes at him in order to establish some imaginary superiority. It’s a shadow world that, unfortunately, is gaining more public attention because of AIDS. The landscape is trickier because Nick has a penchant for black lovers who aren’t fortunate enough to have millionaire Daddies to smooth over the race issue among his company. Wani has that but is supremely conscious of its less than stellar supermarket origins therefore he’s not going to make things worse by even implicitly acknowledging a relationship with Nick. Add this to Nick’s class issues and although his life seems charmed for most of the novel it’s more like he’s dancing on a precipice held up by sheer luck. And though his richer friends may be more secured Hollinghurst never allows that secure decadence to permeate the entire novel. It has a much more enclosed quality like a snow globe and around them things are harder, more precarious, less glamorous.

Rather, this is how the novel appears to me now as I turn it over. I assure you while reading it it felt more like trying to do the foxtrot hip deep in mud. I know it is a more complex novel that The Swimming-Pool Library , far more intricately built. There are untold things you could pick apart that I’ve not mentioned, including the musical allusions and the architectural references and close attention to buildings in particular, which carries over from TS-PL. No doubt critics would view Hollinghurst’s change in hero an advancement — from the rich, carefree, lusty, outrageous yet often judicious William Beckwith to the anxious, naive, smart but wilfull, middle-class Nick more liable to sink than sail and so therefore a tastier morsel for a good novelist. However, I prefer when Hollinghurst’s caustic humour and abandonment is closer to the surface, when he doesn’t draw the curtain on a sex scene early enough to make it “tasteful” and more palatable (I suppose). That writer appeared in The Line of Beauty but not early enough to save it. My interest in Hollinghurst still remains, though, and I intend to read all of his backlist so that should tell you something.

The Weekly Geek activity

What was your favorite (or least favorite) part of Persuasion? Did you think Captain Wentworth wrote the best, most romantic love letter of all time??? Have you seen any movie versions of Persuasion? Which one is your favorite if you have? - Becky

As I look back now I can’t say that I have a particular favourite section. The novel as a whole stands out to me very brightly in being the opposite of what I expected — the boring Austen novel. It’s the last major one I read after contemplating a reread of Pride & Prejudice because I thought it would be slow — everyone mentions it’s about “patience” which is an upstanding theme but doesn’t sound exciting unless you’re going to make it allegorical and over-the-top like Pilgrim’s Progress (as I remember it anyway). Instead it was filled with near unbearable tension and I found myself entirely taken with Anne and her troubles.

I’ve never seen any of the film adaptations and tend to avoid them as a rule. Parts of the film industry appear to see Austen as a dependable money cranker, fans ever ready to take in another run-of-the-mill boots and petticoats in the country romance rather than making much of anything. Three exceptions to his is Ang Lee & Emma Thompson’s “Sense & Sensibility” (which I like more than the book (!)), the BBC’s faithful P&P 1995 tv series and (somewhat controversially) the latest P&P adaptation starring Keira Knightley. It wasn’t the most faithful and there are some corny lines (help us) but it’s the most cinematic one I’ve ever seen over all others (including the BBC).

How would you describe Andre Dubus’ literary style? - Bybee

In the school of Hemingway, perhaps? That seems to be a catch-all phrase for male writers who write plain, efficient sentences. He’s very much a realist as it’s generally understood and focused on character. They’re usually working class — the men are often military and the women are their mothers, wives, girlfriends or widows — and troubled. He writes with a singular sympathy — I’m not exaggerating here. I write this about other authors but if I were to name a prototype Dubus’ stories would be it — and a measured perspective to all whether it’s a New England waitress with an abusive boyfriend or a misogynistic Marine for whom women are simply things to stick his willy in. He gives them all some grace.

His stories’ success is wholly based on how compelling they are regardless of how mundane and typical the situations may be. Without that there isn’t really anything else for you to rest your eye on and get much nourishment from. But at his best — watch out! He’s the only writer who has ever made me soak my pillow with tears. (I’m an easy crier and tears can trickle down but at the end of “Rose” which I think is at the end of his The Last Worthless Evening I was sobbing, hiccuping, the works.) For anyone who thinks short stories are lesser than novels, Dubus is the man to read.

The Wide Sargasso Sea questions

Tell me more about Wide Sargasso Sea! Most of the reviews I’ve seen of it have been on the fence. Personally, I didn’t like the way either Rochester and Annette were protrayed. Also, Rhys changed a lot about her main character (including her name), which disturbed me. What do you think of Rhys’s writing style? Do you think she did Jane Eyre a service or disservice by writing a “sequel?” - Katherine

I’ve been wanting to read Wide Sargasso Sea for ages. How did you like it in comparison to Jane Eyre? - Alessandra

I started Wide Sargasso Sea once… it seemed to weird so I never finished it. Did you like it? Find it weird? Did it mess up the Jane Eyre story for you or add to it? - Suey

I wrote a bit on this novel before with a promise to write more, which I fully intended to do, until I lost all my damn notes. *ahem*

I turned the last page, my centre of mass shifted, something that always happens when a work has more than justified its existence — in one sense, it justified and confirmed mine as well. That should have been an euphoric feeling but I was also sorrowful. The best thing happened — I’d read another great, great work that confirms why I read fiction, specifically novels. And the worst thing happened — my perspective on Jane Eyre had changed forever. Each book by a different author inhabits its own world of course. It’s only that I’ll never be able to read about Brontë’s poor, monstrous Bertha Mason without wondering what, to Brontë’s mind, brought her there to that Thornfield attic. Rhys showed one possibility and it moved me, almost unbearably.

No fence sitting here, I’m a full on fan. I’m not the person to go to when assessing a novel’s “weirdness” because I love nothing so much as crazy, over-the-top French authors, heated imagery, spaced out sentences etc. So Rhys’ hot house, Eden-after-the-fall with the off-kilter, slightly menacing characters were a plus for me rather than a minus. It didn’t mess up Jane Eyre for me although it did open me a little wider to Brontë’s stereotypical treatment of Bertha. Funnily enough it’s Vilette that gives my Jane Eyre enthusiasm a more tarnished quality. I suppose it’s because it’s one thing for an author to lay a j’accuse at another but a whole different thing when the original turns the gun on herself, as it were.

I love both Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre in completely different ways. The authors are so different: hailing from different times, countries, class…just such different worlds and produced such different books that, despite the obvious links, I can’t put them side by side and say which one I prefer.

Katherine, your question is trickier. I’m not sure what big changes Rhys made to the Antoinette character besides the name change since Brontë didn’t give much beyond vague details on Bertha’s background as best as I can remember. (But I don’t have the best memory so please expound in comments if you care to!) For a novel to be based on Bertha I’d think a novelist would have to go beyond what Brontë mentioned to get much of a story. Neither did I take issue with how Antoinette and Rochester were portrayed. Especially in Rochester’s case his behaviour was very plausible. In Jane Eyre he was never a saint or even a very good character for much of the story and in light of how English male gentry were raised and Europe’s scientific view of Creoles — where everything from the tropical climate to miscegenation made them suspect — and add that to his young age…I may not have approved of but story-wise it worked.

The name change disturbed me but only in the way I figure Rhys meant it to. Rochester is denying Antoinette her personhood and that plays pretty well as one explanation as to how things played out in Jane Eyre.

I am not one for classic prequels or sequels. It’s why it took me so long to get to Wide Sargasso Sea even though I’d heard of it since I was 12/13; and heard it described as a sort of post-colonial, West Indian answer to the imperial British classic, something which its proponents no doubt expected to appeal to young Jamaican students. Not to me since even then I instinctively disliked that kind of overtly political, messagey stuff when it came to literature. Also it was contradictory since until that point I had learned implicitly that British classics were THE books of the English-speaking world and then all of a sudden I was expected to do a 180 and want to knock it down. (I was a reader before high school and so it may have been easier for those who only read school assigned texts which included West Indian lit. Most bookstores on the island, though, gave a different message.)

I only came to it when I made the decision to read more West Indian literature. I think it’s an excellent novel in which the author didn’t write it as a kind of cheap Jane Eyre vs. Wide Sargasso Sea smack down so I don’t think it besmirches Brontë’s literary legacy.

This won’t be the most edifying post you’ve ever read here but I saw a similar bit at Sterne and decided I’d share some Amazon one/two star reviews on some of the books I read this year. It’s less about the book in question than the reason the book got trashed…

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Such a huge disappointment., January 16, 2008 By EscondidoCA When I saw Masterpiece Theater was doing a series on Jane Austen and her novels, I decided to read them in the order the shows would air–starting with Persuasion. It was the first and last of Austen’s that I will read. She may well have captured the mores and social rules of the time, but she didn’t create characters I could really care about. I stuck with it to the end and found the revelations about Mr. Elliot to come out of nowhere and the ending romance to be something we could see coming from the very start. I’ll take Edith Wharton over Austen any day.

The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

Superlatives apply., April 10, 2001 By Lord Chimp What I mean by this is that affixing the title of “Worst book ever” to The Stone Angel is not a stretch. I have read some truly bad novels in my time, but The Stone Angel is simply horrifying. Never has there been a more repulsive character than Hagar, a neurotic, arrogant, despicable old woman. The book is told in a series of intermittent flashbacks that seem pointless in conjunction with Hagar’s current situation (which is that her family wants to put her in a nursing home).At first I was mildly interested by the florid writing style, but the book soon made me numb (it actually caused me physical pain). The reason for this is that the main character of The Stone Angel’s story is the most repulsive fictional creation I’ve ever beheld. Hagar’s bloated idiocy renders her ineffably repellent after just a few chapters. Being 90 years old, her thoughts and dialogue are completely separated from reason, destroying any interest a person could have in the progress of the story. Her flashbacks further reinforce her overweening nature. I suppose this book has merit if you wish to enter the mind of a 90-year old arrogant woman whose logical faculties have been shattered, but who really wants to read about that? Sure it’s believable (for which some reviews have credited it), but why on earth does anyone care about a cantankerous old hag with bowel problems? Talk about the ultimate anti-hero! [...]

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore & David Lloyd.

Very well done … but somehow lacking, September 29, 2005

By	Grimmy “Grimmy” (MD USA) - See all my reviews

Let me first say that it’s a well-written, fascinating, literate piece of work. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Then again, afterwards you’re left with a sort of empty feeling. Because where did those horrors Moore alludes to come from? And the answer is: from the beliefs that Moore espouses!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. In the scene where he broadcasts a message via a TV station, he plainly states that we are just animals, fresh off the tree. And this was the exact view that Hitler, for one, used to justify his campaign of killing the unwanted: the old, the infirm, the mentally ill, gays, Jews. As Bethell writes:

“During the period of American neutrality in World War I, Kellogg was posted to the headquarters of the German general staff and was shocked to find German military leaders, sometimes with the Kaiser present, supporting the war with an “evolutionary rationale.” They did so with “a particularly crude form of natural selection, defined as inexorable, bloody battle. …
[...]
“You like Darwin?” The German intellectuals were saying. “We’ll give you Darwin.” (end quote)

*I’ve been watching all of Extras these days.

I joined this initiative started by Dewey months and months ago but never participated until now. Members come up with a weekly theme question bloggers partake if they are so inclined, links are collected, we visit each other, mingle and have great fun. Since I’m one of those awful persons who swear up and down that they have something great about to splash on this blog in the next instant, lovely readers voice their anticipation, and nothing comes forth, this one is right up my alley.

1. In your blog, list any books you’ve read but haven’t reviewed yet. If you’re all caught up on reviews, maybe you could try this with whatever book(s) you finish this week.

2. Ask your readers to ask you questions about any of the books they want. In your comments, not in their blogs. Most likely, people who will ask you questions will be people who have read one of the books or know something about it because they want to read it.

3. Later, take whichever questions you like from your comments and use them in a post about each book. I’ll probably turn mine into a sort of interview-review. Link to each blogger next to that blogger’s question(s).

4. Visit other Weekly Geeks and ask them some questions!

My vast list. Asterisks denote books for which posts are pending. I left out books that I never intended to review:

Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
Literature and Knowledge - Dorothy Walsh
Finding a Girl in America and Other Stories - Andre Dubus
Spin - Robert Charles Wilson
Persuasion - Jane Austen
How the Dead Dream - Lydia Millet*
The Chrysalids - John Wyndham*
The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham*
The Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham*
Chocky - John Wyndham*
Paradise - A.L. Kennedy
Chess Story - Stefan Zweig, translated by Joel Rotenberg
The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst*

Ask away (if I have any readers left)! Make it as long, short, trivial, profound, facetious as you like. I am your humble servant. It’s likely that I’ll answer questions in an actual post since I can blather on…

To break through my marvellous summer blogging block, let’s have a look at what I am or about to gobble up, shall we? (I have a zillion half-finished 1,000 word drafts molting in the dashboard, not to mention literary magazines (print and online) languishing in neglect. Pathetic.)

I bought a pile of Peepal Tree Press books earlier this year one of which is published in conjunction with the Calabash Literary Festival we all know and love. I’m still with Jamaica’s first literary vanguard so I started with John Hearne’s Voices Under the Window. It’s a nice step forward after reading Rachel Manley’s book about her grandparents because Drumblair endsright around the time when Jamaica was moving into the black power movement and she (being of lighter skin) discovered it difficult (being of lighter skin) to make a place for herself. Her grandparent’s legacy in Jamaica’s fight for independence turned out to be an albatross. Hearne, as Kwame Dawes wrote in the novel’s introduction, was in a similar position because of his skin colour and his neglect to pen a suitably political novel to reflect the times, according to his detractors. Beyond that Dawes makes much of Hearne’s flashback technique and how it shapes the novels over-all structure and influences one’s reading. I’m curious to see what I’ll make of it.

Northwestern University Press is currently my favourite press because of the Pierre Jean Jouve in its blacklist. Paulina 1880 made the start of my year amazing and I’m expecting similar wonder here. I don’t even knowwhat The Desert World’s about yet, but Lydia Davis is the translator (w00t!). Ugh, if only she could have translated all of Proust for Penguin.

Still with Adam Bede. My reading here has been rather distracted after an earnest start so I haven’t had anything thoughtful to blog about here or mention over at The Valve. Anyway, the other participants have rather l33t close-reading skills so colour me mostly a bystander in this experiment. Not that George Eliot is encouraging me to be much else. I’m more of Rich Puchalsky’s mind so far — I’m partial to all the character’s Eliot does not think much of and more or less wearied of that magnificent country paragon Adam Bede and the saintly Dinah (who God should please love so much that he takes her to her heavenly home so that I don’t have to abide anymore of her perfect preacher letters). Mrs. Poysner is my favourite so far if only because one minute I think she’s rather horrid and the next minute the best thing Adam Bede has going for it. Here Eliot is unable to lay hold hard enough to my moral rudder in order to establish what I ought to feel about her. Blergh.

What’s currently on your reading plate? And is your summer going well?