South African author Damon Galgut’s fictionalized biography of author E. M. Forster (1879 – 1970), known as Morgan, takes a different approach from non-fictional biographies, synthesizing all the author’s research into the character of Forster and then journeying inside his mind, ultimately allowing “Forster” to tell his own story. As the openly gay Galgut asserts throughout this novel, Forster’s most significant difficulty in his personal life and in his writing seems to have been in reconciling his homosexuality with the rest of his life so that he could live and love fully on all levels. During Forster’s most prolific years as a novelist, 1908 – 1924, “minorite” activities were almost universally hidden, not just frowned upon by society, but rejected as aberrant behavior.
Strict codes of behavior governed how people interacted within various social classes, and the need to conform allowed little room for any kind of social experimentation and led to the ostracism of those who were “different.” How “minorites,” in particular, came to terms with their essential natures and were able to live within this restricted society becomes a major theme of this novel.
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There is nothing small-scale about Lily King’s new novel, Euphoria. Here she creates a novel on the grandest scale in terms of themes and ideas, at the same time that she also dramatically changes the time frame and setting from the US in the present to areas of New Guinea so remote that they have never been explored by “outsiders.” American anthropologist Nell Stone and her Australian husband Schuyler Fenwick have been in New Guinea studying previously unknown tribes since 1931, and now, almost two years later, Nell is more than ready for change. For the past six months they have been studying the warlike and cannibalistic Mumbanyo tribe, though most of that study has been done by Fen. Now, however, Nell is weary and frightened of the fearsome Mumbanyos with their bloodlust and their penchant for discarding babies in the river. A meeting with Andrew Bankson, a British anthropologist, gives them a chance to study yet another group, more peaceful, and the three scientists begin to share more than just their research. Based, in part, on the life of anthropologists Margaret Mead, her husband Reo Fortune, and Gregory Bateson in 1933.
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Posted in 8-2013 Reviews, Biography, Book Club Suggestions, England, Historical, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Jamaica, Literary on Oct 3rd, 2013
A professional dancer from the age of eleven, Noel Coward (1899 – 1973) spent the rest of his life in “show business” as a playwright (of thirty-nine plays), composer (of over three hundred songs and sixteen musicals and operettas), film maker (of fifteen adaptations of his plays), and actor-director-producer connected with two dozen additional productions. Now, however, it is 1971, as this novel about his life opens, and he is seventy-two and dealing with an endless series of heart and lung problems, no doubt exacerbated, if not caused, by his persistent smoking. As the narrative evolves, impressionistically, Coward’s mind is seen wandering, and he frequently dozes off. He dreams of the Jazz Age and Gertrude Lawrence, and he sometimes relaxes by reading one of several children’s books by E. Nesbit which he loved as a child and still enjoys reading. He drinks too much, eats too little, refuses to see many people, and becomes annoyed if his life partner Graham Payn is not at his immediate beck and call. Often Payn is with Cole Lesley, “Coley” (formerly known as Leonard Cole), who began his association with Coward as a British valet, then became his secretary, manager, and occasional cook. At a time in which rap music is popular and raves are ubiquitous, the witty and clever lyrics for which Noel Coward was so famous, and which depend so much on word play and the rhythm of educated (British) speech, may be completely unfamiliar to readers of this book. Indeed, Noel Coward himself, once a household name, may also be an unfamiliar name to many readers of this book. Fame is fleeting, and never more obviously so than with an author/writer/composer/screenwriter like Noel Coward, who was also brilliant, articulate, and gifted beyond measure.
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In this newly reprinted novel from 1938, considered the “first jazz novel” ever written, author Dorothy Baker takes the reader into the mind and heart of a young white boy whose desire to excel as a creative jazz musician is so overwhelming that he lets nothing get in his way – not the fact that he is only a child when he begins to pursue his interest, not the fact that he is an orphan living virtually alone with a young aunt and uncle who are home only once or twice a week, not the fact that he is supposed to be in school, and not the fact that he has no instrument at all that he can play. Born in Georgia, Paul Martin has recently moved to a poor section of Los Angeles where his guardians have found work. Though he is not a good student in his school’s assigned subjects (and cannot remember how much seven times seven is), he has learned to read music and “could memorize like a flash anything that had any swing to it, anything that he could take hold of rhythmically.” Becoming a truant in order to practice piano in a mission church, Rick eventually switches to the trumpet and eventually finds success in jazz clubs in California and New York. The obsession of creative jazz musicians for perfect moments is clearly depicted here, and the author’s ability to bring the reader into the mind of the creative artist is stunning. The obsession of Rick Martin for more and more and more, and his inability to take a rest, as he begins relying on alcohol to keep going, shows the powerful drive of some creative talents such as that of Rick (and for the model for this character, Bix Beiderbecke)
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If Banksy is now considered part of the recognized art world, as author Will Ellsworth-Jones contends in this enlightening biography, it is certainly not what Banksy himself would ever have envisioned when he was growing up. Dedicated to preserving his personal anonymity, Banksy, according to an acquaintance, was born in 1974, in Bristol, England, then the center of a lively graffiti “art scene.” Featuring nightly battles between young men armed with aerosol paint cans and the police who wanted to arrest them for defacing property, this scene was a counterculture phenomenon centered around Barton Hill, a less “leafy” neighborhood than the one in which Banksy himself grew up. He joined that night-time scene, however, when he was only fourteen, escaping a police roundup of seventy-two older, better-known graffiti artists in the late 1980s. Excited by the hit-and-run atmosphere which surrounded these street artists, Banksy once admitted to an interviewer that “it was only when he had an aerosol spray can in his hand that he discovered his voice. Eventually, he found recognition, too. In 2008, Banksy was given an exhibition at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. He also sold 135,000 copies of his book, Wall and Piece, and auction sales for his work were also brisk. At a Sotheby’s auction to raise money for AIDS programs in Africa, for example, his prices ranged from $385,000 to $960,000, with the painting on the cover of this book, “Keep It Spotless,” selling for $1.8 million at that auction.
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