Book Review: The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

  


I begin by saying that I know The Fountainhead is some sort of holy icon to a lot of people. Even more than fifty years after its publication it is selling very well, and is quite popular. When I took my copy down to the shop here in Venice where I can trade in used books for credit toward other used books, the owner of the shop

Book Review: Ironweed, by William Kennedy

 


Ironweed, by William Kennedy, is one of the Albany Novels, so called because they take place in Albany, New York. The book is about a bum named Francis Phelan, and his bum friends trying to survive as homeless bums in the winter in upstate New York, i.e., one cold goddamn place. I suggest wearing a sweater while you read this, even if you’re at the beach, because the writing is so good, and the description of the cold so biting, that you will feel it.

Francis had a family, a wife and kids, but booze got the best of him, and he ended up on the streets starving and freezing his ass off. All of his bum friends are on the street for the same reason. His friend Helen, for example, is a talented singer, but she is a fucking drunk and could

Book Review: Across the River and into the Trees, by Ernest Hemingway

 


Across the River and into the Trees, by Hemingway, is a novel about a fifty year- old Colonel in the U.S. Army immediately after WWII, who comes to Venice to die. He as been there many times before, and it is where he wants to be. He falls in love with a young girl of about 17, and they have a bit of a relationship. In the end he dies while being driven out of town in his car.

I know that Hemingway is revered as a great writer, and rightfully so. But I did not like this book— it’s not his best work.

The title is a reference to the last words of Stonewall Jackson: “. . . let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.” The colonel had been a general, but we are

Book Review: And the Ass Saw the Angel: A Novel by Nick Cave

One of the things a Literary Man should do is read books, and I don’t suppose you’d be reading this blog if you were not interested in reading books. For that reason, I intend to write a review on occasion of a book that I think fits into the Man Lit genre. Today I start with And the Ass Saw the Angel, by Nick Cave. That’s right, the musician Nick Cave of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.


This book is the definition of Man Lit, although the protagonist (if such he can be called) is a young man or boy, and deserves to be read by all devotees of Man Lit. 


From the back cover of the paperback edition I read, the Daily Telegraph said: “As if a Faulkner novel had been crossed with Whistle Down the Wind and then narrated by a stoned blues musician . . .” I agree.


The title of the book is a quote from the Bible:


And the Ass saw the angel of the Lord
standing in the way, and his sword drawn
in his hand: and the ass turned aside
out of the way, and went into the field:
and Balaam smote the ass, to turn her
into the way. (and so forth)


  Numbers 22:23, et seq.


A rather cool quote, I think.


The story takes place in the deep south of the United States (although Nick Cave is a Aussie whom I believe presently lives in Berlin). The “hero” of the story, Eucrid Eucrow, is born into abject poverty to a moonshine filled mother, and a father who busies himself trapping little animals and throwing them into a wooden corral, which in my mind was rather like an old water tower tank.


He comes into conflict with his mother and his father, and the fanatically religious towns people, and slides more and more into insanity hides in a swamp, is found out there, and then builds a fortress around his house guarded by mean dogs that he thinks are alive, but seem all to be dead. Throughout most of the story it is pouring rain. It weighs on you like a big damp blanket, setting the tone of the tale.


When I pick up a book in a store trying to decide whether to buy it, I read the first line, and then I flip through the book to a random spot to see if the language is interesting. To The Literary Man, the writing style will always be of paramount importance over the story.


The book has a prologue involving crows flying around, which I found a little opaque, but I knew I was in good territory with the opening of Chapter 1:


“It was his brother who tore the caul on that, the morning of their birth, and as if that sole act of assertion was to set an inverted precedent for inertia in his life to come, Euchrid, then unnamed, clutched ahold of his brother’s heels and slopped into the world with all the glory of an uninvited guest.”


Good stuff.


Now in the middle of the book?


“Ah was scared — yes, ah was. Ah could feel mah innards become bundles of livid rope from which swung a chattering sabbat of hunchbacked bell-ringers.”


Even better stuff (yes, he is trying to give the impression of the southern accent, but he doesn’t over do it.)


With these two quotes, and the comments from the back, and my knowledge that Nick Cave had a way with words, I plopped down my cash.


Bottom line, the book is brilliantly written and a joy to read, although after reading it you may not be able to explain to anyone what it was about, and you may not even know what it was about. But that is not so important for the Literary Man. In popular fiction the story is king, and the writing style is of virtually no importance. We, on the other hand, want a story, of course, but the style of the writing is what counts. This book is a buy and hold. One of my favorite books of all time.


I note, however, at least in the edition I read, which was printed in the UK, they use British terms for things. For example, “torch,” when they mean “flashlight,” and “bonnet,” when referring to the hood of a car. Don’t let that stop you, though, it’s worth reading either way, and you can find humor in the silly names that the Brits have given to things. (I love Brits, don’t get me wrong. But they do use some funny words.)


The book mentioned here, as well as other relevant stuff, can be purchased through Amazon:

Hello, and Welcome

This is the inaugural post of my blog having to do with writing. Specifically, it has to do with the writing of Man Lit. Now, this is not Male Lit, because I discovered that this means Gay Lit. I have nothing against gays or the literature that may be produced by them or on their behalf. But that is not the subject of this blog, and that is not what I write.

I have noticed a deficiency of new literature and fiction in the world written for men. There is plenty of history, biography, current events and sports books around. Even fictional books relating to these topics, but I see little in the way of literary fiction that is intended for a male audience. Chick Lit and teen girl lit abound. In chick lit they flit about shopping, obsessing over some guy, dealing with their issues related to getting old and divorced, or a combination of the two. It’s all about relationships. In teen girl lit it seems that the only theme these days is hunk vampires, and what is called “paranormal romance.” In my Man Lit, it is about the man. His relationships figure in because even the best among us does not operate in a vacuum. But that is not the focus. The focus is the man, or the protagonist, in the jargon of the writer.

I am in my mid-fifties, and there are certain themes that I am interested in as a man that don’t seem to be being addressed. I hope to do that in my writings. So, my work will contain a lot of talk about the concerns of people like me, and will be written in the language of people like me.

For example, I am concerned about death. Although interested in religious topics, and fascinated by religious texts, I do not believe in God. The heroes in my stories have the same affliction. This presents certain issues when contemplating death, and you might call it existential. The hero often quotes the Bible, or the story may involve religious elements and religious themes. But the message is never religious.

I also have a tendency to cuss a lot. I spent six years in the Navy, a lot of that on a submarine. By the time I got out I thought that the word “fuck” was a grammatical device used to separate the major parts of a sentence, or even as a word separator. It is a noun, verb, adjective, article, conjunction, and a meaningless interjection. So, in my writing you will find a lot of “fucks” and the occasional “cocksucker,” of “motherfucker.” I try to keep it down, though, because my goal is to create literature, not filth. The use of these words, and others like them, is intended to create realistic speech for people like me, but not be gratuitous.

On the topic of sports, of course many of us love sports, and I am no exception. I am not a fanatic, but I do love a good football game. Sports will be used on occasion in my writing because that is what we do, to a great extent.

Drinking is another thing that sets us apart from the beasts, such as women and teenage girls. (Although I know a lot of women who could hold their own in that regard). I love beer, wine, scotch and martinis, and so do my characters. They will occasionally have too much, but they do not become snot slinging drunk. That is for the twenty-somethings.

So, that’s it by way of introduction. I intend to post snippets of things I’m working on here, and to shamelessly promote my books. But I’m not going to be a prick about it.