I was eagerly anticipating my reading of Chasing the Bear, for it was the only Spenser adventure written by Robert B. Parker that—probably because it I was eagerly anticipating my reading of Chasing the Bear, for it was the only Spenser adventure written by Robert B. Parker that—probably because it was classified as a YA—I have not chosen to read before. Now—alas!—I have read it. I do not think it is a success.
It could have been a fine book. It was certainly a good idea for one. Why not go back and write a Spenser origin story? Why not show him as a young teenager, living in rural Wyoming with his father and his two maternal uncles, facing challenges and learning the values that would eventually make him a man.
The stories themselves—young Spenser’s rescue of a girl from her drunken father, his truthful declaration to the local police, and—later—his protection of a Latino boy menaced by a few young racists—are all pretty good. So what’s wrong? All the stories are related by old Spenser to his perennial gal pal Dr. Susan Silverman, who comments, from time to time, on the psychological significance of it all.
I’ve never been a big fan of Susan, so I have to admit my prejudice, but I think—whatever you may think of Dr, Silverman, that this structure turns the novel into a small disaster, for two reasons: 1) the narrative itself is habitually interrupted, and those interruptions periodically drain it of both suspense and energy, and 2) it causes the book itself to become a meditation on lost youth—not exactly an appropriate theme for a YA novel. (The wellsprings of individual human character is a good YA theme. But not a meditation on lost youth.)
Still, like a said, the stories are good. And it's a quick read, for the book is short. Even shorter than your average Spenser....more
Jason Koivu’s Beyond Barlow is the story of a journey, crowded with action and incident. It is the adventure of Ford Barlow, a boy come to manhood, a Jason Koivu’s Beyond Barlow is the story of a journey, crowded with action and incident. It is the adventure of Ford Barlow, a boy come to manhood, a “woodcutter’s giant of a boy,” but although the book has much in common with boy’s adventure tales like Treasure Island and Kidnapped, the suddenness—and occasional viciousness—of its violence set it apart as a story for adults. Still, the forest through which Ford travels is not a Lord of the Flies landscape of naturalistic horror, but rather a real forest, with lessons to teach, a bounty to give, and mysteries to explore.
Ford, barred from home due to an unfortunate accident, soon meets up with The Wayward Boys, boy thieves each distinguished by a notable characteristic: Kellyn the leader, Duff the strong one (“a barrel-shaped ghoul of a boy”), Chandler the smart one, Jakes (born farmer and lover of animals), Cook the cook, Runt the runt, etc. The gang experiences both successes and hardships (more hardships in the winter), and Ford becomes part of the Wayward Boys. Eventually, after many adventures, they encounter a vicious band of career criminals, and find that their way of life—indeed, life itself—is in danger.
There are many things to like about this book, but my favorites are Koivu’s use of genre and the forest his imagination creates.
Koivu uses genres as the best writers do, as colors in his writer’s palette, as tools for producing an effect. The reader knows he is in a land of fantasy because the magistrates of the villages possess strange made-up names and the forest contains a few creatures, both reptile and mammal, which seem foreign to our world. The ghastly and the ghostly are also part of the story, particularly later on, but these gothic touches are merely devices for intensifying the alien impression left on the boys by the most remote parts of the forest. Koivu—as it should be—feels no compulsion to explain his ghosts--or explain them away, for that matter—but instead lets them remain a part of the forest’s abiding mystery.
It is the forest itself that is my favorite part of Beyond Barlow. The Wayward Boys are most likable, not in their thieving or scheming, but in their explorations of the forest, the games they play within it, and the challenges it forces them to face. Jason Koivu, in a brief biography on the back of the book, tells us that he spent his early years in New England “swimming, fishing, and frolicking in the forest.” I for one am not surprised. His forest doesn’t seem at all like a writer’s atmospheric or symbolic creation. No, this is an honest-to-god forest, a true, breathing enveloping forest, one that convinces the reader it will exist long after The Wayward Boys are gone....more
Returning to a novel you liked years ago is often a risky business, particularly so when the genre of that novel is science fiction. Nothing can age s Returning to a novel you liked years ago is often a risky business, particularly so when the genre of that novel is science fiction. Nothing can age so rapidly as the past’s conception of the future, and what once seemed cutting edge may, after fifty years or more, appear simply ludicrous.
Because of this, I was delighted to find H.G. Wells' brief novel at least as charming and exciting as I remembered it, the Time Traveler’s scientific lecture still intriguing, the journey he describes still convincing, and the sociological history he reveals to us—of the evolution of the two races, the Eloi and the Morlocks, still as persuasive as it it was in 1895. (Okay, I admit, not quite as persuasive as evolutionary biology, but—given the rising gap between the rich and the poor—still compelling as a parable and cautionary tale.)
Although I remembered vividly both the origin and appearance of the Eloi and the Morlochs, I had forgotten much of the rest, and what I forgot made the book even better: 1) the delightful clarity of the Time Traveler's exposition to his audience of dinner guests about the nature of time as a dimension and the possibility of traveling through it, 2) the vivid description of the time-trip itself, a flickering cinematic-style vision, 3) the brutal destruction of the future of the English countryside, brought about by the Traveler’s reintroduction of fire, and 4) the end of his journey in a dying world of the far future, and the almost religious tone of his musings.
What was most clear to me, however, is how artfully H.G. Wells here combines scientific speculation, sociological parable, compelling adventure, and philosophical meditation. He both informs and delights, while never wearying his reader, in this book that is less than half the length of most of the first volumes of our current speculative fiction trilogies.
Still a classic, and one that our contemporary writers would do well to emulate....more
I sometimes feel sorry for the second book of a trilogy, for it is often treated more like a bridge, and less like a destination. The deuxième volume I sometimes feel sorry for the second book of a trilogy, for it is often treated more like a bridge, and less like a destination. The deuxième volume is neither the thatched cottage that begins the tale, nor the ancestral mansion that ends it. Instead, it is more like a road, and, however diverting the scenery and people of this road may be, it is—after all—more of a means than an end.
This is doubly true of Louise de la Valliere, the middle volume of the final D’Artagnan romance, sandwiched between The Vicomte de Bragelonne and The Man in the Iron Mask. It is not strictly the second volume of an authentic trilogy, but instead an arbirtary 700 page hunk of narrative prose, the smackdab middle of a 2,000 page serial novel, at least twice the length of Dickens’ Bleak House. If it possesses qualities which distinguish it from the reamaining two-thirds, they are to some degree accidental.
Roughly speaking, The Vicomte de Bragelonne is about the quest to re-establish an absolute monarchy abroad (Charles II of England) while strengthening one at home (Louis XIV), and The Man in the Iron Mask is about a conspiracy to subvert that same domestic monarchy. Louis de Valliere is the portion of the book which describes the social and amatory world of the Sun King near the zenith of its power, and shows how the absolute dominance of one man and his whims can circumscribe the quests for truth and adventure into a taste for gossip and a predilection for conspiracy. We observe the grand political impulse as it operates in the court of Versailles, how it is compelled to fix on the king’s personal dislikes and emphemeral loves, and we sense that what we see before us—though ostentatious, even magnificent in its pageantry—is a reduced and decadent world.
Nevertheless, we find people here to root for: the amiable upstart Malicorne, with a lover to impress and a fortune to earn; Louise de Valliere, the sweetest and most honorable of royal mistresses; Raoul Count de Bragelonne, the noble son of Athos, a young man who loves Louise hopelessly and sincerely; the veteran D’Artagnan, ever willing to serve his king (and enrich himself along the way, if he can); and the Sun King himself, an intelligent young man with generous impulses, who has the power to do anything—anything except to escape from the net of absolute monarchy itself.
Louise de la Valliere, although it seemed a long road at times, never led me to lose confidence in Dumas’ narrative art. It entertained me, and made me look forward to my destination : The Man in the Iron Mask....more
After a ten year haitus on the planet Hollywood, the “Queen of Space Opera” returned to the form with The Ginger Star (1974), the first volume of the After a ten year haitus on the planet Hollywood, the “Queen of Space Opera” returned to the form with The Ginger Star (1974), the first volume of the trilogy known as “The Book of Skaith.” A decade of screenwriting work (Eldorado, The Rockford Files, The Long Goodbye, etc.) had made the thoroughly professional Brackett an even more accomplished writer, and in this trilogy—her last science fiction/ fantasy novels—she demonstrates what she has learned.
Eric John Stark lands on Skaith, a world lit by a dying red sun, a world only recently introduced to space travel. He has come there to search for his mentor and foster-father, the diplomat Simon Ashton, who disappeared while on a mission to arrange for group emigration. The planet faces doom, slow but inevitable, by the waning light of its ginger-colored star, but the Lord Protectors of Skaith fear the general chaos--and the loss of control--that would come with mass emigration. Are the Lords themselves responsible for Ashton's disappearance? Stark--a hard man who lives up to his name--is determined to uncover the truth.
This first volume of the trilogy takes us from Stark's arrival at the southern starport Skeg to his arrival at "The Citadel," the Lord Protectors' mythic stronghold in the far north. Along the way we encounter many peoples and tribes—some genetically adapted to the waning of “Old Sun,” some half-crazy with prophecy in the face of doom--as Stark wields destruction and forms alliances while he seeks to discover the fate his old friend.
The astonishing thing about this novel—even more so than many earlier Brackett novels—is the extraordinarily swift story-telling, the inventive world-building, and the way both are accomplished without ever sacrificing credibility, character motivation, or the twilight atmosphere of a declining world.
Brackett is a writer who deserves to be better known. This is required reading for all who love science fiction/ fantasy trilogies, for Brackett shows us how this sort of thing should be done....more
Popular historian and utopian novelist H.G. Wells is sometimes thought of as the “anti-Gibbon”: whereas Edward Gibbon devoted himself to studying a cu Popular historian and utopian novelist H.G. Wells is sometimes thought of as the “anti-Gibbon”: whereas Edward Gibbon devoted himself to studying a culture’s “decline and fall”, H.G. Well’s celebrates the march of progress, showing how our culture, despite many obvious setbacks, moves on toward greater and greater achievements. But Wells, although an optimist by nature, was also a gifted literary artist, and when he seized upon an idea with disquieting implications, he did not hesitate to explore them. The Island of Dr. Moreau, perhaps the greatest and most disturbing of his “scientific romances,” is an example of his uncompromising art at its best.
The plot is straightforward. The shipwrecked Edward Prendick ends up on an island presided over by the once notorious but now discredited surgeon Dr. Moreau, who has dedicated his life to transforming animals into humans by a series of painful operations. His more successful failures (all his works are failures) have formed a society on the other side of the island, where—with the doctor’s help--they have created an ethical system that “men” like them should follow, and a religion too, in which above all else Dr. Moreau and his laboratory (the House of Pain) are both reverenced and feared.
The book has many themes, the most obvious of which are the morality of both animal experimentation (or “vivisection,” as it was called in Well’s time) and the use of pain in experimentation, but also touches upon the twin processes of evolution and degeneration, the nature of religion, the character of a man who would play God, and—yes—even the character of God himself and the deplorable semi-human beings that he “creates.” This last theme is perhaps the reason why an older Wells once referred to this book as “an exercise in youthful blasphemy.”
To give you an idea, here is a bit of the most blasphemous portion of the book, in which Dr. Moreau explains himself to Prendick:
“So for twenty years altogether — counting nine years in England — I have been going on; and there is still something in everything I do that defeats me, makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further effort. Sometimes I rise above my level, sometimes I fall below it; but always I fall short of the things I dream...These creatures of mine seemed strange and uncanny to you so soon as you began to observe them; but to me, just after I make them, they seem to be indisputably human beings. It’s afterwards, as I observe them, that the persuasion fades. First one animal trait, then another, creeps to the surface and stares out at me. But I will conquer yet! Each time I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say, ‘This time I will burn out all the animal; this time I will make a rational creature of my own!...They go. I turn them out when I begin to feel the beast in them, and presently they wander there. They all dread this house and me. There is a kind of travesty of humanity over there...There’s something they call the Law. Sing hymns about ‘all thine.’ They build themselves their dens, gather fruit, and pull herbs — marry even. But I can see through it all, see into their very souls, and see there nothing but the souls of beasts, beasts that perish, anger and the lusts to live and gratify themselves. — Yet they’re odd; complex, like everything else alive. There is a kind of upward striving in them, part vanity, part waste sexual emotion, part waste curiosity. It only mocks me….And now,” said he, standing up after a long gap of silence, during which we had each pursued our own thoughts, “what do you think? Are you in fear of me still?”
The sprawling three-thousand-page saga of the Four Musketeers is the meerschaum pipe of adventure literature. Although it first attracts attention by The sprawling three-thousand-page saga of the Four Musketeers is the meerschaum pipe of adventure literature. Although it first attracts attention by its intricately carved detail, it is even more remarkable for the way it ages, for it reveals a rich range of colors as it progresses, each darker and more interesting than the one before.
Twenty Years After created a world more cynical, and heroes less intrepid and less unified, than that youthful romp The Three Musketeers, and now, Ten Years Later—as one of the volumes of this two-thousand-word serial continuation is sometimes called—the world revealed is even darker, and the cautious heroes more self-involved, than before.
The nature of the world is most clearly shown by the characters of its royal ministers. The cowardly and miserly Mazarin, who replaced the Musketeer’s fierce enemy the fearless and generous Richelieu, has become more cowardly and miserly than before, and is soon replaced by the two rival ministers Fouquet and Colbert who are concerned not with statecraft but with finance (n addition, of course to gaining ascendancy over one another.)
The musketeers—all in their late forties or fifties—have grown cautious as well: Count Athos strives to create a career for his son Raoul (the Vicomte of the title), Baron Porthos wishes to further his position in society, Bishop Aramis engages in deeper, more inscrutable politics than before, and even Captain D’Artagnan wearies of being a musketeer, discouraged by years of thankless service, disappointed in his callow young king, and—most important of all—worried about his lack of money for a comfortable retirement. It is money—not love or adventure or bravery—that makes this world go round.
And yet there are adventures and bravery here, and a little love too. D’Artagnan and Athos accomplished great things for the exiled Charles II of England, and D’Artagnan—with the assistance of Raoul—battles rioters in the Paris streets. (Characteristically, though, this last heroic deed is also about money. D’Artagnan has become a landlord, and the rioters are trying to burn his building down.) Also, Raoul and Louise are attractive young lovers. But though Raoul is noble and Louise is charming, we somehow sense that—in this darkened world—such love is doomed to fail.
Twenty Years After moves more slowly than The Three Musketeers, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne is slower still. But—like a meerschaum—its coloring is rich and varied. I have decided to continue with the saga. After all, there are only about thirteen hundred pages left to go....more
This second of the four volumes* which comprise the conclusion of the “The Four Musketeers” (The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, Louise de la This second of the four volumes* which comprise the conclusion of the “The Four Musketeers” (The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, Louise de la Valliere, The Man in the Iron Mask) is perhaps the most significant, for it shows the reader, more clearly than the three others, how the meaning of heroism and adventure shift during the reign of that most absolute of monarchs, “The Sun King,” Louis XIV.
Soon after the volume begins, the domestic villain of the piece arrives: “Madame,” Henrietta of England, the wife of “Monsieur,” Duke of Orleans, effete younger brother of the king. Henrietta, an intelligent but superficial coquette, attracts a wealth of admirers, one of whom is the Duke of Buckingham, and the quarrels of these admirers—including a duel on a small strip of land off the French coast--evoke the romantic adventures and knightly virtues of The Three Musketeers.
The affecting scene in which the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria, is forced to banish this young duke, the son of her dead lover—the lover who gave her “The Diamond Studs," the occasion for our musketeers greatest exploit—signals that the days of large-hearted adventure may be at an end. The young king has come to manhood, and in this new world dominated by his powerful personality, the straightforward old political plots of “king” and “cardinal” are no more. Instead, they are replaced by ephemeral palace intrigues, centering around King Louis himself, and his loves, particularly his passion for the tenderhearted Louise de la Valliere.
Toward the end of the volume, in reference to an act of elegant public humiliation staged by Madame in revenge against the King, Dumas sums up the difference in the spirit of the age:
Let it not be supposed, however, that Madame possessed such terrible passions as the heroines of the middle ages, or that she regarded things from a pessimistic point of view; on the contrary, Madame, young, amiable, of cultivated intellect, coquettish, loving in her nature, but rather from fancy, or imagination, or ambition, than from her heart—Madame, we say, on the contrary, inaugurated that epoch of light and fleeting amusements, which distinguished the hundred and twenty years that intervened between the middle of the seventeenth century, and the last quarter of the eighteenth.
The times call out for a deep, all-encompassing intrigue to save our four aging former musketeers from these “light and fleeting amusements,” and Aramis—the schemer and consummate politician of the four—has been working overtime. His efforts will eventually bear fruit in The Man in the Iron Mask.
*In some editions Ten Years Later appears as a separate volume; in others, the long series--which is, after all, one big novel--is issued in three volumes instead....more
This sequel to The Three Musketeers is the “thinking man's” Blues Brothers, a “getting the band back together” tale that is set where such stories sho This sequel to The Three Musketeers is the “thinking man's” Blues Brothers, a “getting the band back together” tale that is set where such stories should be set: among friends in their forties and fifties, still vigorous in decline, constrained by the comforts and commitments of middle age. Hollywood, for the last quarter-century, has preferred “grumpy old _____” movies (fill in the blank, “astronauts,” “spies,” “mobsters,” etc.), but such heroes in retirement offer few interesting challenges; like the crew of Tennyson's “Ulysses,” it is natural for them to “sail beyond the sunset, and the baths/ Of all the western stars” because, close to death, they have little to hope for. Or lose.
Not so the four friends of Dumas' continuing saga. Lieutenant D'Artagnan (the only remaining Musketeer) longs for a promotion, the rich landowner Porthos (now a widower) dreams of being a baron, and these ambitions lead them to serve Mazarin, the extremely unpopular new cardinal—an ignoble, miserly successor to their former adversary, the old cardinal—who is attempting to solidify his control over the boy king. Meanwhile, revolution is in the air: the people of Paris, spurred on by certain aristocrats, endeavor to oust this disagreeable man. D'Artagnan asks his other old friends to unite with him in supporting Mazarin, but these two keep their own counsel and decline: Aramis, devoted both to his mistress and to her political intrigues, has already joined the aristocratic cabal, and the now abstemious Athos appears to be completely domesticated, thoroughly devoted to the education of his “adopted” son Raoul. This time, it seems, it will not be “one for all, and all for one.”
All this of course is as it should be. In midlife, when you choose a side, it is hard to tell good from bad and even harder to separate principles from self-interest. And later, when you are in need of assistance, you may find your once good friends disinterested or preoccupied with their own affairs. But then, if you are lucky, like Monsieur D'Artagnan, new events and old sentiments may conspire to bring true hearts together again.
Unlike The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After builds slowly. The two pairs of friends do not even come into conflict until almost one-third of the way through this long novel, and only succeed in “getting the band back together” a third of the way from its conclusion--across the sea, in another country, in the service of another beleaguered king. But, as I said, this is the “thinking man's” Blues Brothers. It may play fast and loose with history, but, through the many twists and turns of its exciting plot, it remains a convincing portrait of heroes in middle-age....more
Written in one week to defray the cost of his mother's funeral, Johnson's moral tale is a superior example of the prose of its era, and its era—the Ag Written in one week to defray the cost of his mother's funeral, Johnson's moral tale is a superior example of the prose of its era, and its era—the Age of Enlightenment—is renowned for the quality of its prose. It is true that Candide—written in 1759, the same year as Rasselas--excels Johnson's work in both wit and humor, but then Voltaire's task was much easier. He merely wished to demolish another man's philosophy, whereas Johnson wished to persuade his readers how to be happy.
Being happy wasn't easy for Johnson. He suffered from poor eyesight, facial scarring from scrofula, intense irritability, OCD, Tourette's, and thoughts of suicide. He also was afflicted with severe depression in his youth, so profoundly that—as he once told a friend--“he was sometimes so languid and inefficient that he could not distinguish the hour upon the town-clock.” How did he withstand such obstacles? By keeping his fancies and wishes private, applying himself assiduously to the task at hand, and enjoying whatever happiness arose from his labors.
It should be no surprise that Johnson's personal method is similar to the moral of his tale. When Rasselas of Abyssinia becomes discontented with “The Happy Valley,” where his every whim is catered to, he departs, with his sister, her companion, and his tutor to explore the condition of the world. The four of them have many adventures, experiencing much pleasure and pain, but nothing offers them real satisfaction (except for the enduring promise of heaven). After discoursing on various philosophical topics, they conclude that the greatest wisdom would be to return from where they came, embracing their destiny in “The Happy Valley'.
As a sample of Johnson's measured, deliberate prose, I offer the following excerpt from a discourse on the relative merits of the monastic and secular life:
Those men, answered Imlac, are less wretched in their silent convent than the Abissinian princes in their prison of pleasure. Whatever is done by the monks is incited by an adequate and reasonable motive. Their labour supplies them with necessaries; it therefore cannot be omitted, and is certainly rewarded. Their devotion prepares them for another state, and reminds them of its approach, while it fits them for it. Their time is regularly distributed; one duty succeeds another, so that they are not left open to the distraction of unguided choice, nor lost in the shades of listless inactivity, There is a certain task to be performed at an appropriated hour; and their toils are cheerful, because they consider them as acts of piety, by which they are always advancing towards endless felicity.”
“Do you think, said Nekayah, that the monastick rule is a more holy and less imperfect state than any other? May not he equally hope for future happiness who converses openly with mankind, who succours the distressed by his charity, instructs the ignorant by his learning, and contributes by his industry to the general system of life; even though he should omit some of the mortifications which are practised in the cloister, and allow himself such harmless delights as his condition may place within his reach?”
“This, said Imlac, is a question which has long divided the wise, and perplexed the good. I am afraid to decide on either part. He that lives well in the world is better than he that lives well in a monastery. But, perhaps, every one is not able to stem the temptations of publick life; and, if he cannot conquer, he may properly retreat. Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil. Many weary of their conflicts with adversity, and are willing to eject those passions which have long busied them in vain. And many are dismissed by age and diseases from the more laborious duties of society. In monasteries the weak and timorous may be happily sheltered, the weary may repose, and the penitent may meditate. Those retreats of prayer and contemplation have something so congenial to the mind of man that, perhaps, there is scarcely one that does not purpose to close his life in pious abstraction with a few associates serious as himself.”...more
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