25. Beasts
by Joyce Carol Oats
The only other of her nearly 50 books that I’ve read is a memorable novella called Zombie, which is a disturbingly intimate first person narrative of a serial killer who is at the peak of his game. Good stuff. Beasts, also a novella, which is why I chose to read it (not a big Oats fan), is not quite as powerful.
Beasts is two things: a cliché and a weak gothic horror novella, both of which have been done a thousand times before with far greater affect.
The cliché: The setting is 1975 at a small liberal arts college in culturally uptight New England. The protagonist is a young budding poet whose parents just divorced, leaving her adrift in a world of intellectual, sexual and emotional predators. By predator I mean a good looking, uber-bohemian college professor who turns the girls in his poetry class on by wearing dirty jeans instead of slacks and tweed, smoking a lot while he effortlessly and offhandedly lectures about art and “going for the jugular” in poetry, you know-keeping it real, and reading them titillating D.H. Lawrence filth.
So this young woman becomes infatuated by the anti-establishment college professor and of course he ravages her like a beast (that smells like cigarettes and ). Wait, the cliché is not complete. He has a sultry French sculptress wife who also ravages the student. Yes, a threesome in the mid-70s. It goes on for a while as we explore the, “entwined boldness and vulnerability of young women” (LA Times).
The gothic horror: Turns out this couple has done this to multiple girls. And they tend to dope them up in order to photograph them performing sexual acts for a porn magazine. Ah, the posh New England elite unwittingly becoming the objects of trashy porn mags. Also, throughout the novel there is an arsonist who keeps trying to burn buildings on campus. This may shock you, but that little tidbit becomes quite meaningful as the novel reaches its climax.
Don’t read it.
The only other of her nearly 50 books that I’ve read is a memorable novella called Zombie, which is a disturbingly intimate first person narrative of a serial killer who is at the peak of his game. Good stuff. Beasts, also a novella, which is why I chose to read it (not a big Oats fan), is not quite as powerful.
Beasts is two things: a cliché and a weak gothic horror novella, both of which have been done a thousand times before with far greater affect.
The cliché: The setting is 1975 at a small liberal arts college in culturally uptight New England. The protagonist is a young budding poet whose parents just divorced, leaving her adrift in a world of intellectual, sexual and emotional predators. By predator I mean a good looking, uber-bohemian college professor who turns the girls in his poetry class on by wearing dirty jeans instead of slacks and tweed, smoking a lot while he effortlessly and offhandedly lectures about art and “going for the jugular” in poetry, you know-keeping it real, and reading them titillating D.H. Lawrence filth.
So this young woman becomes infatuated by the anti-establishment college professor and of course he ravages her like a beast (that smells like cigarettes and ). Wait, the cliché is not complete. He has a sultry French sculptress wife who also ravages the student. Yes, a threesome in the mid-70s. It goes on for a while as we explore the, “entwined boldness and vulnerability of young women” (LA Times).
The gothic horror: Turns out this couple has done this to multiple girls. And they tend to dope them up in order to photograph them performing sexual acts for a porn magazine. Ah, the posh New England elite unwittingly becoming the objects of trashy porn mags. Also, throughout the novel there is an arsonist who keeps trying to burn buildings on campus. This may shock you, but that little tidbit becomes quite meaningful as the novel reaches its climax.
Don’t read it.
24. Aloft
by Chang-rae Lee
I endured this one. At once it is a fine example of Chang-rae Lee's mastery of the language of the heart and a story about a boring man approaching sixty on Long Island. All told it is a ok work of fiction on a subject that didn't interest me.
I endured this one. At once it is a fine example of Chang-rae Lee's mastery of the language of the heart and a story about a boring man approaching sixty on Long Island. All told it is a ok work of fiction on a subject that didn't interest me.
23. Los Versos del Capitan
by Pablo Neruda
This is Neruda's umpteenth book of love poems. It's especially good for me because it has both the original Spanish and the English translation on the opposite page. I can read the Spanish, but miss a great deal of the layers of meaning. Neruda has been on of the world's most celebrated poets for decades. He's still wringing out the words.
While this old man's poetry can be a bit chauvinistic, and romantic in the old Spanish way, it is beautiful.
Here's one called "La Infinita":
Ves estas manos? Han medido
la tierra, han separado
los miserales y los celeales,
han hecho la laz y la guerra,
han derribado las distancias
de todos los mares y rios
y sin embargo
cuando te recorren
a ti, pequena,
grano de trigo, alondra,
no alcanzan a abarcarte,
se cansan alcanzando
las palomas gemelas
que reposan o vuelan en tu pecho,
recorren las distancias de tu piernas,
se enrollan en la luz de tu cintura.
Para mi eres tesoro mas cargado
de immensidad que el mar y sus recimos
y eres blanca y azul y extensa como
la tierra en la vendimia.
En ese territorio,
de tus pies a tu frente,
andando, andando, andando,
me pasare la vida.
In English:
The Infinite One
Do you see these hands? They have measured
the earth, the have separated
minerals and cereals,
they have made peace and war,
they have demolished the distances
of all the seas and rivers,
and yet,
when they move over you,
little one,
grain of wheat, swallow,
they can not encompass you,
they are weary seeking
the twin doves
that rest of fly in your breast,
they travel the distances of your legs,
they coil in the light of your waist.
For me you are a treasure more laden
with immensity than the sea and its branches
and you are white and blue and spacious like
the earth at vintage time.
In that territory,
from your feet to your brow,
walking, walking, walking,
I shall spend my life.
This is Neruda's umpteenth book of love poems. It's especially good for me because it has both the original Spanish and the English translation on the opposite page. I can read the Spanish, but miss a great deal of the layers of meaning. Neruda has been on of the world's most celebrated poets for decades. He's still wringing out the words.
While this old man's poetry can be a bit chauvinistic, and romantic in the old Spanish way, it is beautiful.
Here's one called "La Infinita":
Ves estas manos? Han medido
la tierra, han separado
los miserales y los celeales,
han hecho la laz y la guerra,
han derribado las distancias
de todos los mares y rios
y sin embargo
cuando te recorren
a ti, pequena,
grano de trigo, alondra,
no alcanzan a abarcarte,
se cansan alcanzando
las palomas gemelas
que reposan o vuelan en tu pecho,
recorren las distancias de tu piernas,
se enrollan en la luz de tu cintura.
Para mi eres tesoro mas cargado
de immensidad que el mar y sus recimos
y eres blanca y azul y extensa como
la tierra en la vendimia.
En ese territorio,
de tus pies a tu frente,
andando, andando, andando,
me pasare la vida.
In English:
The Infinite One
Do you see these hands? They have measured
the earth, the have separated
minerals and cereals,
they have made peace and war,
they have demolished the distances
of all the seas and rivers,
and yet,
when they move over you,
little one,
grain of wheat, swallow,
they can not encompass you,
they are weary seeking
the twin doves
that rest of fly in your breast,
they travel the distances of your legs,
they coil in the light of your waist.
For me you are a treasure more laden
with immensity than the sea and its branches
and you are white and blue and spacious like
the earth at vintage time.
In that territory,
from your feet to your brow,
walking, walking, walking,
I shall spend my life.
22. Winter's Tale
by Mark Helpern
This novel is about the unforgettable character Peter Lake. That’s his name because he didn’t have one. He has beaten time. Well, I think he’s beaten time but you might think that time is an entirely different thing than we thought it was. It’s magical. It’s about Winter for sure.
It’s 750 pages, but came highly recommended so I dove in. Not one page was a waste. It spans over a century in New York City, its harbor, rivers and bays, and the Hudson Valley… and an impossible and yet highly plausible town beyond the valley. In terms of time it’s a lot like the inside back page of a Mad Magazine cover where the image is one thing until you fold along the lines and go “Ahh!”
I fear that evoking thoughts of Mad Magazine might lead you to thinking this novel is not serious. Oh, it's serious. It's serious about love and belonging and adventure and awful, senseless grudges that are fun -- all those things that are proven to scoff at time.
I already loved the city… and the impossible… and messing with time, but this book runs a great distance with those feelings. It’s exceptional.
It’s a very funny, fully engaging tale full of passion, epic love, long held grudges… and a horse that can do extraordinary things. The tale begins with him running away from his stable in Brooklyn over 100 years ago. He’ll be no slave.
Then there’s Peter Lake. Did I mention him?
Helpern is a very gifted writer. If you are tired of the American novel, if you think it has had its day in the sun, pick this one up. There is little convention about it.
This novel is about the unforgettable character Peter Lake. That’s his name because he didn’t have one. He has beaten time. Well, I think he’s beaten time but you might think that time is an entirely different thing than we thought it was. It’s magical. It’s about Winter for sure.
It’s 750 pages, but came highly recommended so I dove in. Not one page was a waste. It spans over a century in New York City, its harbor, rivers and bays, and the Hudson Valley… and an impossible and yet highly plausible town beyond the valley. In terms of time it’s a lot like the inside back page of a Mad Magazine cover where the image is one thing until you fold along the lines and go “Ahh!”
I fear that evoking thoughts of Mad Magazine might lead you to thinking this novel is not serious. Oh, it's serious. It's serious about love and belonging and adventure and awful, senseless grudges that are fun -- all those things that are proven to scoff at time.
I already loved the city… and the impossible… and messing with time, but this book runs a great distance with those feelings. It’s exceptional.
It’s a very funny, fully engaging tale full of passion, epic love, long held grudges… and a horse that can do extraordinary things. The tale begins with him running away from his stable in Brooklyn over 100 years ago. He’ll be no slave.
Then there’s Peter Lake. Did I mention him?
Helpern is a very gifted writer. If you are tired of the American novel, if you think it has had its day in the sun, pick this one up. There is little convention about it.
21. The Last Great American Hobo
Essay by Dale Maharidge
Photos by Michael Williamson
When he was a teenager, Montana Blackie heard about other teenagers just walking away from their lives and "riding the rails" together. The Great Depression was in full swing when Blackie hopped his first freight train. Sixty years later (at the time of publishing), he still hasn't returned to conventional life. He's a life long hobo by choice. And if the authors of this remarkable little book about his existence can be believed, he is the last of the Depression-era hobos.
This is a beautiful prose and photo essay on Montana Blackie's remarkable existence, which by the 1980s had become nearly impossible to maintain. Society has changed and no longer distinguishes between the homeless and the hobo. It's a tough time to be old. At 76 years old in 1989, he was, "a man out of time and place." During the three years the authors spent with Blackie in the late 1980s, he had built a grand camp along the Sacramento River reminiscent of the 1930s Hoovervilles. As the authors note time and time again, it seemed odd that he would build such an extravagant place when the likelihood that it would be demolished by authorities was very high. But that is Blackie's way.
Blackie says, You've got to maintain, keep your camp clean. Son'bitch can't keep his camp clean, he's no good. Well, I figure I might be on the fucking road, a dirty old filthy bastard, but my place is going to be clean. The old hobos in the old days, they used to be a bindlestiff, that bastard packed everything, and if he was crazy, he had a name for every pot and pan hung on the fucking wire of his tree. The old bindlestiffs are gone. A few around like myself. There's only a few crazy diehard bastards like me around that still motivate [ride rails]. As far as hoboin' goes, it's the same as it used to be. Fuck the idea of steam trains. All they did was change the motivation, that's all. There ain't a damn thing modernized. Still the same old tracks. Same units. Same goddam road, clickity-clack on down the line. Really nothin' has changed over the years. Not for me anyway.
This a well-written, intimate essay that honors a man and his way of life. It's a bit heart breaking, though, since it's clear that the world has changed around Montana Blackie, leaving little room or tolerance for his way of being.
The photos are fantastic. I wish I could share a few here.
Since childhood, I am perpetually drawn to the hobo life.
Photos by Michael Williamson
When he was a teenager, Montana Blackie heard about other teenagers just walking away from their lives and "riding the rails" together. The Great Depression was in full swing when Blackie hopped his first freight train. Sixty years later (at the time of publishing), he still hasn't returned to conventional life. He's a life long hobo by choice. And if the authors of this remarkable little book about his existence can be believed, he is the last of the Depression-era hobos.
This is a beautiful prose and photo essay on Montana Blackie's remarkable existence, which by the 1980s had become nearly impossible to maintain. Society has changed and no longer distinguishes between the homeless and the hobo. It's a tough time to be old. At 76 years old in 1989, he was, "a man out of time and place." During the three years the authors spent with Blackie in the late 1980s, he had built a grand camp along the Sacramento River reminiscent of the 1930s Hoovervilles. As the authors note time and time again, it seemed odd that he would build such an extravagant place when the likelihood that it would be demolished by authorities was very high. But that is Blackie's way.
Blackie says, You've got to maintain, keep your camp clean. Son'bitch can't keep his camp clean, he's no good. Well, I figure I might be on the fucking road, a dirty old filthy bastard, but my place is going to be clean. The old hobos in the old days, they used to be a bindlestiff, that bastard packed everything, and if he was crazy, he had a name for every pot and pan hung on the fucking wire of his tree. The old bindlestiffs are gone. A few around like myself. There's only a few crazy diehard bastards like me around that still motivate [ride rails]. As far as hoboin' goes, it's the same as it used to be. Fuck the idea of steam trains. All they did was change the motivation, that's all. There ain't a damn thing modernized. Still the same old tracks. Same units. Same goddam road, clickity-clack on down the line. Really nothin' has changed over the years. Not for me anyway.
This a well-written, intimate essay that honors a man and his way of life. It's a bit heart breaking, though, since it's clear that the world has changed around Montana Blackie, leaving little room or tolerance for his way of being.
The photos are fantastic. I wish I could share a few here.
Since childhood, I am perpetually drawn to the hobo life.
20. The Postman
by David Brin
Men can be brilliant and strong, they whispered to one another. But men can be mad, as well. And the mad ones can ruin the world.
It is 2012, some sixteen years after all out war sends the world -certainly the United States- into total chaos. Nuclear war destroyed all U.S. cities and left a wake of radiation and fallout that killed off the vast majority of the population. But the U.S. may have recovered as a nation if large groups of violent "survivalists," or vicious, opportunistic pseudo-Darwinists, hadn't organized to plunder what was left... Damn those Holnists to hell!
The story is about the unlikely hero, Gordon Krantz, who changes things through a lie he initially starts telling in order to ensure his survival. He is a survivor, a wanderer, in search of some semblance of civilization in a land rife with separatist violence, starvation and... well, you get the idea. Just as he is finally about to meet his own end he happens upon an abandoned U.S. mail truck with the skeleton of it's driver still in the seat. He takes the deceased postman's uniform and two bags of 16 year old mail and sets out with a new scheme to trade the illusion of a restored postal system -and thereby the beginnings of a "Restored United States"- for food and shelter. He underestimates the old, worn out uniform's power as a symbol of hope.
I really enjoyed this book. It's an exciting plot. It also has some unique insights as a work of social commentary. If you are poring through the catalogue of good post apocalypse fiction, this one should be somewhere on your list.
I didn't want to mention the movie, which was lame, and I certainly didn't want to say the obvious "the book is better", but something needs to be said about how incredibly screwed up the movie is. It is an unprecedented butchering of an excellent novel.
Anyway, this is a pretty exciting novel. I recommend it.
Men can be brilliant and strong, they whispered to one another. But men can be mad, as well. And the mad ones can ruin the world.
It is 2012, some sixteen years after all out war sends the world -certainly the United States- into total chaos. Nuclear war destroyed all U.S. cities and left a wake of radiation and fallout that killed off the vast majority of the population. But the U.S. may have recovered as a nation if large groups of violent "survivalists," or vicious, opportunistic pseudo-Darwinists, hadn't organized to plunder what was left... Damn those Holnists to hell!
The story is about the unlikely hero, Gordon Krantz, who changes things through a lie he initially starts telling in order to ensure his survival. He is a survivor, a wanderer, in search of some semblance of civilization in a land rife with separatist violence, starvation and... well, you get the idea. Just as he is finally about to meet his own end he happens upon an abandoned U.S. mail truck with the skeleton of it's driver still in the seat. He takes the deceased postman's uniform and two bags of 16 year old mail and sets out with a new scheme to trade the illusion of a restored postal system -and thereby the beginnings of a "Restored United States"- for food and shelter. He underestimates the old, worn out uniform's power as a symbol of hope.
I really enjoyed this book. It's an exciting plot. It also has some unique insights as a work of social commentary. If you are poring through the catalogue of good post apocalypse fiction, this one should be somewhere on your list.
I didn't want to mention the movie, which was lame, and I certainly didn't want to say the obvious "the book is better", but something needs to be said about how incredibly screwed up the movie is. It is an unprecedented butchering of an excellent novel.
Anyway, this is a pretty exciting novel. I recommend it.
19. My Name is Asher Lev
By Chaim Potok
Make even greater works to make up for the pain you will cause.
This one struck my heart. It’s about the becoming of an artist who must reconcile his own nature with that of his orthodox Jewish tradition and beliefs. Asher Lev is a Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn. Told by the painter himself, his story begins when he is five and runs well into his adult life as a successful artist. But his success did not come without causing great pain to his family and community… and therefore himself. It’s all necessary, though, in order for him to become an honest/great artist.
Millions of people can draw and paint well, but how many have an eye for the essence of things, and dare to make pictures that depict the world as they truly see and feel it? How many Chagalls are there? Picassos? Matisses? Levs?
I am a bit speechless, as I just finished the book and am somewhat blown away. I can't be objective. It’s a very beautiful novel, one that might usurp something on my top ten list.
David, have you read this one?
Make even greater works to make up for the pain you will cause.
This one struck my heart. It’s about the becoming of an artist who must reconcile his own nature with that of his orthodox Jewish tradition and beliefs. Asher Lev is a Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn. Told by the painter himself, his story begins when he is five and runs well into his adult life as a successful artist. But his success did not come without causing great pain to his family and community… and therefore himself. It’s all necessary, though, in order for him to become an honest/great artist.
Millions of people can draw and paint well, but how many have an eye for the essence of things, and dare to make pictures that depict the world as they truly see and feel it? How many Chagalls are there? Picassos? Matisses? Levs?
I am a bit speechless, as I just finished the book and am somewhat blown away. I can't be objective. It’s a very beautiful novel, one that might usurp something on my top ten list.
David, have you read this one?
18. Survival in Auschwitz (or If This is a Man, it’s original title)
By Primo Levi
I am finally almost caught up on my book reviews!
Thanks, Walkerp, for recommending this one. What a remarkable account of this man’s survival during his ten-month imprisonment at the German death camp, Auschwitz. Primo Levi, an Italian Jew, was twenty-five when he was arrested by Italian fascists and transported to Auschwitz. His story is an extremely valuable document of the systematic cruelty and genocide engineered by Nazi Germany.
I can’t help but compare Levi’s accounts with that of Eli Weisel, having read them only a month apart. Both were at Auschwitz at the same time. In terms of fact, both tell the same story. But they are very different men. One thing that is remarkable about Levi’s account is the extent to which thinking contributed to his survival, the thinking of a practical, humane, scientific mind. Sure, like Weisel, Levi takes care to acknowledge biological strength and incredible luck, and the grace of many men who could have just as easily hoarded life for themselves. But it is his ability to think, to remain level-headed, that is key to remaining human, and ultimately to survival, in the chaos of random, unconscionable evil. His is a testimony of the indestructibility of the human spirit.
An example of Levi’s thinking (it’s a bit out of context, but…):
Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both of these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite. Our ever-insufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called in the one instance, hope, and in the other, uncertainty of the following day. The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also on every grief…
Thinking. He often felt he was thinking too much during those ten months, but the man who thinks too much is inseparable from the survivor.
Like so many survivors of genocide, Levi’s morality was challenged to the extreme. He argues that the ordinary world’s sense of morality (what’s right and wrong, or good and evil) don’t stand a chance at a place like Auschwitz. That sounds bleak… and yet some may survivors (and they weren’t many. Two thirds of Europe’s Jews were murdered) returned with a deeper sense of humanity and purpose. Put simply,
There comes to light the existence of two particularly well differentiated categories among men – the saved and the drowned.
His question, our question, is one of responsibility for all those people.
Among the things that have been bothering me as a read through Holocaust literature this year is that we have no equal account from the other side, from a Nazi who desired to come clean. It’s one thing to talk in near-hyperbole of the evil Nazi Germany, but what of the individual giving or taking orders at a place like Auschwitz? The cruelty. The insanity. How can that be explained?
Another aspect of morality that I find profound is the discovery of how impossible it is for these survivors (Levi and Weisel) to think that their God had anything to do with either the atrocity or their survival. They come out very different believers, much more human believers. Just after a “selection,” a routine event whereby prisoners are selected for slaughter, Levi and others who survived yet another close call, have a moment of reprieve:
Now everyone is busy scraping the bottom of his bowl with his spoon so as not to waste the last drops of the soup; a confused, metallic clatter, signifying the end of the day. Silence slowly prevails and then, from my bunk on the top row, I see and hear old Kuhn praying aloud, with his beret on his head, swaying backwards and forwards violently. Kuhn is thanking God because he has not been chosen.
Kuhn is out of his senses. Does he not see Beppo the Greek in the bunk next to him, Beppo who is twenty years old and is going to the gas chamber the day after tomorrow [he’s been selected] and knows it and lies there looking fixedly at the light without saying anything and without even thinking any more? Can Kuhn fail to realize that the next time it will be his turn? Does Kuhn not understand that what has happened today is an abomination, which no propitiatory prayer, no pardon, no expiation by the guilty, which nothing at all in the power of man can ever clean again?
If I was God, I would spit at Kuhn’s prayer.
This is a must read for those wanting to understand the Holocaust. I also recommend it to pretty much everyone else.
I am finally almost caught up on my book reviews!
Thanks, Walkerp, for recommending this one. What a remarkable account of this man’s survival during his ten-month imprisonment at the German death camp, Auschwitz. Primo Levi, an Italian Jew, was twenty-five when he was arrested by Italian fascists and transported to Auschwitz. His story is an extremely valuable document of the systematic cruelty and genocide engineered by Nazi Germany.
I can’t help but compare Levi’s accounts with that of Eli Weisel, having read them only a month apart. Both were at Auschwitz at the same time. In terms of fact, both tell the same story. But they are very different men. One thing that is remarkable about Levi’s account is the extent to which thinking contributed to his survival, the thinking of a practical, humane, scientific mind. Sure, like Weisel, Levi takes care to acknowledge biological strength and incredible luck, and the grace of many men who could have just as easily hoarded life for themselves. But it is his ability to think, to remain level-headed, that is key to remaining human, and ultimately to survival, in the chaos of random, unconscionable evil. His is a testimony of the indestructibility of the human spirit.
An example of Levi’s thinking (it’s a bit out of context, but…):
Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both of these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite. Our ever-insufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called in the one instance, hope, and in the other, uncertainty of the following day. The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also on every grief…
Thinking. He often felt he was thinking too much during those ten months, but the man who thinks too much is inseparable from the survivor.
Like so many survivors of genocide, Levi’s morality was challenged to the extreme. He argues that the ordinary world’s sense of morality (what’s right and wrong, or good and evil) don’t stand a chance at a place like Auschwitz. That sounds bleak… and yet some may survivors (and they weren’t many. Two thirds of Europe’s Jews were murdered) returned with a deeper sense of humanity and purpose. Put simply,
There comes to light the existence of two particularly well differentiated categories among men – the saved and the drowned.
His question, our question, is one of responsibility for all those people.
Among the things that have been bothering me as a read through Holocaust literature this year is that we have no equal account from the other side, from a Nazi who desired to come clean. It’s one thing to talk in near-hyperbole of the evil Nazi Germany, but what of the individual giving or taking orders at a place like Auschwitz? The cruelty. The insanity. How can that be explained?
Another aspect of morality that I find profound is the discovery of how impossible it is for these survivors (Levi and Weisel) to think that their God had anything to do with either the atrocity or their survival. They come out very different believers, much more human believers. Just after a “selection,” a routine event whereby prisoners are selected for slaughter, Levi and others who survived yet another close call, have a moment of reprieve:
Now everyone is busy scraping the bottom of his bowl with his spoon so as not to waste the last drops of the soup; a confused, metallic clatter, signifying the end of the day. Silence slowly prevails and then, from my bunk on the top row, I see and hear old Kuhn praying aloud, with his beret on his head, swaying backwards and forwards violently. Kuhn is thanking God because he has not been chosen.
Kuhn is out of his senses. Does he not see Beppo the Greek in the bunk next to him, Beppo who is twenty years old and is going to the gas chamber the day after tomorrow [he’s been selected] and knows it and lies there looking fixedly at the light without saying anything and without even thinking any more? Can Kuhn fail to realize that the next time it will be his turn? Does Kuhn not understand that what has happened today is an abomination, which no propitiatory prayer, no pardon, no expiation by the guilty, which nothing at all in the power of man can ever clean again?
If I was God, I would spit at Kuhn’s prayer.
This is a must read for those wanting to understand the Holocaust. I also recommend it to pretty much everyone else.
17. Blackwater
by Kerstin Ekman
My dad gave me this one by Swedish writer Kerstin Ekman. It’s a mystery/thriller with some conventions we Americans might be surprised by.
Set in the 1970s, in the mountains of Sweden, there is a murder. The protagonist is a 30-something mother who has decided to leave her life as a teacher in Stockholm and trek it up to live with her former student-turned-boyfriend on a commune in the mountains surrounding the very rural town of Blackwater. She arrives to encounter a cast of characters who are less friendly than she imagined they would be. The local store owner and his wife seem put off by her and her daughter’s presenence, despite the appearance of poverty. While at this local store she also encounters a group of crude mountain boys who are pissing, throwing their empties, etc., just as crude mountain boys might.
Ekman is a master at creating situations or encounters that are not quite what is reasonably expected. This style creates an often imperceptible stress or discomfort in the reader. That is even before the protagonist happens upon the aftermath of a brutal murder scene at a remote campsite.
Some things that make this novel interesting to an American reader:
- Taking her time. As a thriller, this novel plods along, taking its sweet time as we explore all facets of a strikingly unromantic Swedish mountain life.
The forest. I felt deep in the forest myself. It got under my skin. In this way, the novel is excellent writing.
- The clear distinctions between and biases among Swedes, Finns and Norwegians.
- Life among crude, brutish mountain men.
- The very frank language of sex and sexuality. This was great.
- A massive cast of characters. I’m not used to so many suspects, and characters with cross-purposes.
As the reader of a thriller, I got lost. She tries to accomplish too many things. A big, unstoppable conglomerate is leveling the mountainsides as folks try to establish a commune. Mixed into this small, problematic population are those trying to occupy the land only to protect it from the tree-killers. Then there are the hikers. And many, many the locals. Aside from placing a vast array of characters in proximity to each other, it’s never clear what most of them have to do with the murders. It is almost as if the novel is social commentary in the guise of a thrillers. Well, that’s not so bad.
My dad gave me this one by Swedish writer Kerstin Ekman. It’s a mystery/thriller with some conventions we Americans might be surprised by.
Set in the 1970s, in the mountains of Sweden, there is a murder. The protagonist is a 30-something mother who has decided to leave her life as a teacher in Stockholm and trek it up to live with her former student-turned-boyfriend on a commune in the mountains surrounding the very rural town of Blackwater. She arrives to encounter a cast of characters who are less friendly than she imagined they would be. The local store owner and his wife seem put off by her and her daughter’s presenence, despite the appearance of poverty. While at this local store she also encounters a group of crude mountain boys who are pissing, throwing their empties, etc., just as crude mountain boys might.
Ekman is a master at creating situations or encounters that are not quite what is reasonably expected. This style creates an often imperceptible stress or discomfort in the reader. That is even before the protagonist happens upon the aftermath of a brutal murder scene at a remote campsite.
Some things that make this novel interesting to an American reader:
- Taking her time. As a thriller, this novel plods along, taking its sweet time as we explore all facets of a strikingly unromantic Swedish mountain life.
The forest. I felt deep in the forest myself. It got under my skin. In this way, the novel is excellent writing.
- The clear distinctions between and biases among Swedes, Finns and Norwegians.
- Life among crude, brutish mountain men.
- The very frank language of sex and sexuality. This was great.
- A massive cast of characters. I’m not used to so many suspects, and characters with cross-purposes.
As the reader of a thriller, I got lost. She tries to accomplish too many things. A big, unstoppable conglomerate is leveling the mountainsides as folks try to establish a commune. Mixed into this small, problematic population are those trying to occupy the land only to protect it from the tree-killers. Then there are the hikers. And many, many the locals. Aside from placing a vast array of characters in proximity to each other, it’s never clear what most of them have to do with the murders. It is almost as if the novel is social commentary in the guise of a thrillers. Well, that’s not so bad.
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