The Breast

What a bizarre book. Try to explain to anybody that the narrator has been turned into a 155 pound breast and then tries to tell what it feels like. He pays homage to Kafka, obviously, and Gogol, but beyond that, what to say. The narrator is David Kapeesh, however, whom I last saw as the narrator in the Dying Animal, so that lends more meaning to it. At least I know that he does not remain a 155 pound breast forever. Funny that he did not mention this episode in Dying Animal, though. The most touching parts of the narration come when David is trying to deny what has become of him and convince the doctors that it is nothing more than a psychotic episode that he will eventually snap out of. He's also concerned about keeping hold of his old life, especially as a professor of comparative literature and ponders the departmental politics of his predicament. He also dwells at length on the sexual feelings aroused in him by touch and the fact that he can only be aroused and not climax. It is outrageous and funny enough, but somehow it just never got around to making a point. It's a great exercise in style and narration, but little else that I can see.

Author: Roth, Phillip

Date Published: 1972

Length: 1 hr 50 min

Narrator: Colacci, David

Big Rock Candy Mountain

I really wanted to put this book down and abandon it in the first half of the story. I first tried listening to it with Sara, and it went nowhere with either of us. It was primarily about Elsa's leaving home and hooking up with Bo, up to the point after they got married and tried to make a go of it in Washington with a small cafe. Elsa seemed too much of a self conscious cypher and Bo was just Joe Jock who wanted to make a bundle of money. Neither of them seemed all that interesting and the plot was going nowhere.

Then I tried to finish listening to it by myself, while Bo and Elsa separated--or should I say after Bo ran away after abusing Elsa--and then Bo reached the point of bankruptcy with the farm in Canada after he persuaded Elsa to come back. I just found Bo intolerable. I couldn't feel anything for him and his travails as he convinced himself of one get rich quick scheme after another and dragged Elsa--and now the boys Chet and Bruce--along with him. I couldn't understand why Elsa allowed herself to go back to him, although her only options were to settle into a quiet life of conventionality and boredom in Minnesota. Especially in the audio format, I just found Bo suffocating, much as Elsa found herself smothered by him, especially as he began to bully his way around people, whether at the old Swede's farmhouse or with the bartender's family in North Dakota during his first bootlegging run during the flu epidemic. His character really began to deteriorate under the pressures of making money, showing itself with the mocking attitude toward the old British couple in Canada and then shooting the bird in front of Bruce and Elsa who were shocked by the brutality of the act.

I thought I'd give the book another try as a print novel, and that seemed to make all the difference. Also, Chet and Bruce were beginning to make a difference with the narration of the novel and the tensions in the family, rather than Elsa worries and sorrows and Bo's scheming, and the book became akin to Look Homeward Angel. I can't imagine that Stegner didn't have Wolfe in mind when he wrote the book for the parallels are too great--dysfunctional family trying to make it in the early 20th century, told from various points of view in the family, finally settling on the youngest son to have the final say in the book. It is Bruce that has some of the more interesting thoughts and experiments in narration (as in the car ride back to Nevada after his first semester in law school) and it's hard not to wonder whether great stretches of the book are autobiographical.

In short, I grew from loathing the book--or maybe more particularly, loathing Bo--to thinking that it was a very good, if not great, novel of American life. Having seen it through to the end and looking back on it as the history of a family, especially the family of a bootlegger during prohibition, and ending up in Salt Lake City, no less, gives the book a perspective that borders on insight into the human condition, what great literature is supposed to do. The final parts of the book, with Elsa dying and Bruce taking care of her--then reflecting on her and the rest of his family--contain great writing, even in the scenes where Bo reflects on his own situation and becomes desperate for money. He is even less likable than earlier in the book, as his needs and wants become even more hardened and self-centered. But as Bruce reflects, Bo had been very capable and even showed tenderness at times. It's almost as if Stegner asks: How does a bootlegger become as he is? What drives him? What becomes of him? And make no mistake, it is Bo's book. He is the center of its universe, and when he shoots himself finally, it brings a fitting end to his story and gives the book a finality and impact that was unexpected. 

Author: Stegner, Wallace

Date Published: 1943

Length: 563 pp & 25 hr 38 min

print & audio

Narrator: Bramhall, Mark

Of Mice and Men

You would think that I'd have been all over this given my enthusiasm for Steinbeck a few years ago, but this was my first real encounter with the book since I was a sophomore in high school, and Andy Bernea and I did a cutting for our Drama 1 class. I was George and he was Lenny, and he got a standing ovation from the class for his performance. I was along for the ride.

The book is so fucking bleak. As Sara said, you know it's going to turn out badly, but it makes Grapes of Wrath seem like a comedy. And there is a lot that seems unrealistic about the story, even though it is considered a story of realism. Mainly, Lenny. Given his behavior around the puppy and the ease with which he crushed Curley's hand and killed Curley's wife, it's hard to imagine that he would have made it as far as his did without being locked up. Sara pegged him as psychotic, especially when he threw the dead puppy around, and it just doesn't seem real that he had not been incarcerated or killed before then. Interesting that Steinbeck says that he worked with Lennie and watched the real "Lennie" kill the ranch foreman with a pitchfork.

Curley and his wife don't seem all that plausible to me, but maybe that's a product of the times that I grew up in. For Curley to go around trying to pick a fight with the ranch hands, or then to insist that he was going to gut-shot Lenny when he found him just doesn't ring true with me. The code of the west comes to the Depression?

Candy and Crooks provide enough pathos throughout the book to keep it depressing. Both of them are in dead ends with their lives with nothing to look forward to after being essentially destroyed by their jobs. Candy seems as simple as Lennie much of the time, and his hopes are of course shattered when Lennie dies. Crooks almost buys into the dream of a house and a farm, but pulls back in refusing to hope for something better.

I find it hard to believe that this has been taught in American lit for so many years. I wouldn't even begin to know how to approach it with kids who have so little background knowledge. Maybe it's a fit with depression era literature, but it seems that there must be better stuff out there. And if I were going to teach a short Steinbeck novel, I'd go for Cannery Row over Mice and Men.

Author: Steinbeck, John

Date Published: 1937

Length: 4 hr

Narrator: Hammer, Mark

Star Island

OK. Hiaasen is a lot of fun--and Star Island is fun--but the last couple of books are running thin. I enjoyed his earlier books--especially Skin Tight, Double Whammy, Stormy Weather, and Skinny Dip--a lot more. There's ust too much name dropping and brand name dropping in Star Island for my tastes. Yes, it is a book about modern notions of fame, stardom, and the paparazzi, and the inherent absurdity of it all, but it does leave me kind of cold.

Two of Hiaasen's previous characters return in Star Island--Skink and Chemo--but outside of Skink's tying a sea urchin onto the balls of the condo developer, or his taking a shit in the washing machine of his former lieutenant governor, he seems out of place. And, Hiaasen keeps reiterating the absurdity of Skink's appearance, almost as if her were padding the book. Chemo comes off a lot less creepy than his previous appearance in Skin Tight, and even achieves a certain amount of compassion in his refusal to kill Bang Abbott, the paparazzo, or Ann DeLusia, the double for Cherry Pye. Ann is really the only sensible character in the book, and it's her story that drives the novel. Cherry Pye is a complete caricature of stardom--think Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton--although it is hard to think caricature with the likes of them on the loose. Cherry's parents and her agent are the real culprits, in a sense, as they lead blood sucking lives leeching on their daughter's stardom. And she has no talent to begin with. Keeping her straight and sober, and cleaning up the messes when she doesn't, forms the major part of the book, and it's all doomed to failure until the end of the book when Ann steps in and forces sobriety on Cherry. Of course, it was hard to keep a straight face when Linday Lohan's father announced that he was opening an addiction facility this past week--he could have stepped straight out of this novel.

So Star Island turned out to be a pretty forgettable book. It started off with some promise, but then it started to lose direction and ended up tying up a lot of loose ends when the rest of the story didn't coalesce. Maybe Hiaasen should write about novelist who can no longer bring their A game to the table with the distractions of living up to their own fame.

Author: Hiaasen, Carl

Date Published: 2010

Length: 11hr 31min

Narrator: Hoye, Stephen

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

I don't know if I can say that I was really blown away by McCulloch's Reformation two years ago, but it made reading Durant's books seem very dated and almost simplistic. I had high expectations for Christianity this summer, making it my major reading project of the summer. And reading it screen by screen on an ipod touch added significantly to the feeling of major task. The ability to highlight and review through the Kindle website, really added to the feeling of accomplishment, however, and made the summer's major read feel like something special. It certainly took enough time.

McCulloch captures the main theme of the book in the introduction: "I live with the puzzle of wondering how something so apparently crazy can be so captivating to millions of other members of m species" but also "I still appreciate the seriousness which a religious mentality brings to the mystery and misery of human existence." And that's where we part company, too, as I am just more taken by the craziness of it. Let's begin with the fact that both Jesus, the main character (kinda, sorta), and Paul, who really founded the religion--and who essentially paid no attention to Jesus's life or to what he said--were both flat wrong. They both spoke with great urgency about the imminent end of the world, and the following believers were left in the tough position of explaining to themselves why the world didn't end, after all.

Of course, politics underlies the whole story--going back to David, at least, with the establishment of the temple in Jerusalem to consolidate his power and his rule after usurping the kingship of Israel. Bring it through Josiah whose priest "discovers" the Deuteronomic code in 640 BCE after ursurping the throne from Amon of Judah, and Constantine's vision on the Malvern Bridge and his use of Christianity in consolidating his power, and Clovis adopting Martin of Tours as his personal saint because of the power that it give him when he begins to unite northern Europe under Frankish rule.

Central to understanding the history of Christianity is the compromise reached at Chalcedon, based first on the homousion controversy, inadvertently spurred by Constantine at Nicea in 325 CD, with a major battle between the miaphysites (monophysites), who argued that the three persons of the Trinity (which is probably never mentioned in any part of the books that make up the modern Bible) share one nature, while the dyophysites insist that Jesus had two natures--one human as the person Jesus and the other divine as the Logos. And add the Tome of Leo that declares Jesus as perfect in divine nature and perfect in human nature as well. It al seems to technical and even irrelevant to make these distinctions, and yet they underlie centuries of schism and violence.

Another main argument runs through the area of authority--does it come from the line of apostolic succession, from scripture, from faith, from personal revelation. One conclusion is that the Reformation represents Augustine's doctrine of salvation over his doctrine of the church. Luther, following Augustine--and Paul before him, emphasizes the complete depravity and worthlessness of man--original sin--and the inability of man to do anything about it except through grace. This, of course, stems from Paul's vision on the road to Damascus and his developing a whole Christ centered theology without having much reference to Jesus's life or teachings.

Even though Paul lays the foundation of the religion, it is Peter who becomes the center of a crazy "mana" centered practices that leads to the formation of the papacy, which finally declared in 1870 (in the midst of being attacked by the Italian army and most of the delegates to the conference had left) that it could be infallible, even though the office had passed through innumerable schisms and moral lapses.

It's important to realize, too, that religion as a personal choice is a relatively recent phenomenon, becoming embraced primarily in England and Holland before becoming institutionalized in the America in the early 18th century. The story of Christianity, especially after Constantine's conversion, is a story of "territorial communality" leading to condemnation, execution, and wholesale war.

In the end, though, there is just too much to cover, even in a thousand pages, to do real justice to the topic. It was a good read and very informative, but so many areas had to be glossed over or superficially described. My own final thought echo Kant when he said that the "Enlightenment is mankind's exit from self-incurred immaturity." This is a book about a particular kind of self-imposed immaturity that helped shape the culture and society that I live in. How crazy is that?

Author: MacCulloch, Diarmaid

Date Published: 2010

Length: 1015 pp

electronic print