In descriptions so richly imagined that he sometimes has to invent new words, Boris Vian brings to life the strange world discovered by a wandering traveler, Timortis, a psychiatrist who wants to “psychiatrize.” Timortis has been born an adult and has no memories of his own. An “empty vessel,” he believes that if he can learn everything there is to know about someone, he can bring about a transference of identity and make his own life more complete. He is wandering in search of people who will bare their souls and all their memories. Vian’s satire and offbeat humor continue unabated throughout the novel. A horse is crucified for his sexual depravity, women take off their clothes so they can be “psychoanalyzed,” Angel builds a boat and tells Timortis that it is “not a Maytree Ark,” and Noel, Joel, and Alfa Romeo grow quickly, looking for blue slugs so they can learn to fly. Additional bizarre episodes abound, leaving the reader to ponder the meaning of the non-stop action, at the same time that s/he is whisked along by the speed of Vian’s prose to new and still more surprising events. (To see the full review, click on the title.)
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Published in 1945, this novel, which Evelyn Waugh himself sometimes referred to as his “magnum opus,” was originally entitled “Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder.” The subtitle is important, as it casts light on the themes–the sacred grace and love from God, especially as interpreted by the Catholic church, vs. the secular or profane love as seen in sex and romantic relationships. The tension between these two views of love–and the concept of “sin”–underlie all the action which takes place during the twenty years of the novel and its flashbacks. When the novel opens at the end of World War II, Capt. Charles Ryder and his troops, looking for a billet, have just arrived at Brideshead, the now-dilapidated family castle belonging to Lord Marchmain, a place where Charles Ryder stayed for an extended period just after World War I, the home of his best friend from Oxford, Lord Sebastian Flyte. The story of his relationship with Sebastian, a man who has rejected the Catholicism imposed on him by his devout mother, occupies the first part of the book. (To see the full review, click on the title of this excerpt.)
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Basil Seal, familiar to readers of Black Mischief (1932) as the man hired to become the ruler of an African nation and to modernize it, has returned to England, his ludicrous efforts at modernization for naught. It is the autumn of 1939 (in this 1942 novel), just as war is breaking out, and Basil, one of the “bright, young things” on whom Waugh casts his satiric eye and biting wit, is bored. Penniless, he accepts his sister Barbara’s suggestion to help her to place urban children with rural families to protect them from the incipient bombings. Soon he has turned this in to a profitable business–country house residents are more than willing to pay Basil NOT to bring three especially monstrous children, to live with them. Strong on character, grim humor, and satire, and short on overall plot, Waugh has created in this novel characters who represent the worst of upperclass young people–their shallow interests, indifferent education, frivolous behavior, lack of long-term goals, and seeming absence of any values except pleasure. (To see the full review, click on the title of this excerpt.)
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Focused on the “bright, young things” whose frantic pursuits of pleasure led to constant and ever more frivolous parties in the years leading up to World War II, Vile Bodies offers a satiric look at every aspect of upper class British society. From the hilarious opening chapter, in which an assortment of British travelers is crossing the Channel from France during especially rough weather, through innumerable parties, dances, weekend visits to country houses, automobile races, airplane trips, a movie set, and ultimately, “the biggest battlefield in the history of the world,” Waugh skewers his characters and their values (or lack of values) and, in the process casts a jaundiced eye on society as a whole. Though the characters are superficial and their behavior even more so, as one would expect in a satire, Waugh manages to keep the reader’s interest high through his rapid changes of focus and scene and his keen observations of society in the years just prior to the war. (To read the entire review, click on the title.)
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Posted in Classic Novel, Literary, US Regional on Jan 10th, 2011
“Miss Lonelyhearts” is the 26-year-old son of a Baptist preacher, working in New York in 1933 as the writer of a gossip column. A sensitive person, he reads thirty or so traumatic letters from readers every day, ranging from women with too many children and abusive husbands, to people who have no idea where their next meal will come from, and he must offer some sort of hope to each one. Shrike, a features editor, is his antithesis, a nihilist who mocks Miss Lonelyhearts’s Christian faith, every other philosophy which might offer hope, and Miss Lonelyhearts’s every attempt to escape from the sadness of his life. Extremely emotional and filled with cynicism and despair, the novel is the consummate example of Depression literature, firmly establishing the attitudes and philosophies that prevailed as people tried to deal with events so overwhelming that no philosophy, other than nihilism, could fully explain them. West’s focus on themes and philosophies and the symbols which illuminate them prevents this brilliant but often heart-rending novel from descending into melodrama and pathos.
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