The Hound of the Baskervilles (reviewed)

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle.

On a more positive note, I just finished reading The Hound of the Baskervilles for the second time. It's a great classic of the mystery genre, and it's a fun read.

Writers often remark that dialog is easier and more interesting to read than straight narrative, especially where exposition comes in. This idea gets a lot of support here. Oftentimes Watson or Holmes will describe a long series of events by the reading of a letter, which may go on for several pages. The prose may look like narrative, but it's actually framed as dialog, which did seem to make it easier to read and more interesting. At least I thought so.

[spoiler follows]

Doyle also uses red herrings rather liberally. Right from the start, for example, he makes us wonder who the doctor named Mortimer might be and why he would have left his walking stick behind, but these questions merely served to introduce Watson and Holmes; Mortimer wasn't involved in the murders at all. Also, Mortimer had a dog, but it wasn't big enough to be the hound in the story. There were lots of other red herrings, but then, what do you expect from a mystery?

[end spoiler]

Doyle deftly switches from one scene to the next. Oftentimes he'll prep a destination in one sentence, then suddenly they've arrived at it in the following. He doesn't always do this, and that's where it gets interesting, because when he does give detailed exposition and description, the effect really stands out. For example, at the start of Chapter 6, Watson describes Baskerville Hall as he and the new baronet see it for the first time, including the surrounding countryside as they approach by train, then the road and the buildings as they approach by carriage. This is a remarkably different experience from reading, say, Henry James, where everything is burdened with description and nothing seems remarkable.

Anyway, I recommend this story, especially for fans of the mystery genre.

As on a Darkling Plain (reviewed)

As on a Darkling Plain, by Ben Bova.

This book is awful.

I hate to put it so bluntly — especially since I am a struggling writer myself and I know how tough it can be to write a tightly plotted novel — but this one is just inexcusably bad. An entire dream sequence is accidentally repeated almost word for word in two separate chapters. (Editors, what happened to you?) It has no flow whatsoever. The dialog is embarrassing. Characters do things inexplicably, suddenly, without any precipitating decisions or choices.

Okay, it's just bad, bad, bad. If you want to try reading Ben Bova, don't read this one. It's a stinker.

If someone else has enjoyed a different book by Bova — maybe one of his later novels, for example — feel free to speak up. I hate to knock the guy based solely on one of his earliest works. But the fact that he even considered this novel to be ready for a publisher has me scratching my head.

Jekyll and House

Speaking of TOS, I highly recommend an article in the latest issue (Winter 2006/7) titled "Mr. Jekyll and Dr. House: The Reason-Emotion Split as Manifested in House, M.D." The author is Gena Gorlin, and she does a remarkable job. Her writing is clear, concise, and purpose-driven; her arguments read like an arrow that flies straight to the bullseye. It's no wonder Miss Gorlin was a two-time winner of The Fountainhead contest (that, according to her bio in TOS). She stays on theme throughout, and she hits the issue from several different angles, but each angle feels fresh and illuminating.

You do not have to be a fan of House, M.D. to benefit from the essay. In fact, I've never seen the show. Anyone who is familiar with the prevalent mind-body split in today's heroes (like Spock on Star Trek), will know precisely what Miss Gorlin takes issue with about the show. In any case, she provides excellent examples and descriptions.

The issue of the "cold hearted" advocate of reason versus the unhinged emotionalist is near (but not dear) to my heart. In fact, I so can't stand to see this dichotomy play out in a character that I will turn off the television, return a DVD unwatched, and even get up and leave a theatre rather than subject myself to the punishment of watching it.

Thank you, Miss Gorlin, for not merely skewering the mind/body idiotarians of the art world, but especially for illuminating the right alternative.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

I'm not thrilled about having to write this review. I know that Asimov's Foundation series is a beloved treasure to many long-time fans of Sci-Fi, and I'm not the kind of person who goes around stomping on other people's picnics. But as benevolent as I may want to be toward Asimov given his productive writing career and his courage to "go down new roads armed with nothing but his own vision" (to borrow a quote from Ayn Rand, out of context), I won't sidestep the obvious conclusion: if this book is any indication, Asimov was not a very good writer.

Based on the Wikipedia entry on Asimov, it appears that I am not the only one who thinks so. The entry states in defense of Asimov, "A considerable portion of such criticism boils down to the charge that Asimov's works are simply dated." Perhaps, but not mine. My criticism involves the man's command of the art of fiction, an art form that pre-dates the rise of Sci-Fi by at least one hundred years.

Here's an example of a key literary problem in Foundation: The plot is not driven by a man. It's not even driven by a machine. It's driven by an abstract idea that transcends eons. Sure, it has a name—Hari Seldon—but this is not really a character at all in any meaningful sense; it's just a moniker for a social theory called psychohistory.

This shadow protagonist is the idea that society is cyclical and can be modeled by mathematics, in other words, after some predictable period of time (?) a society must fall apart under the weight of too much success (!), then it must go through a mystical period, then it must go through a trade period, and so on.

Let's ignore the fact that this is a specious idea. When judging literature as art, the critic should consider only whether the author successfully conveys his theme, not whether his theme has merit. In this case, however, it's actually the theme itself that gets Asimov into trouble.

The theme is enormous—and beyond! The story spans 30 millennia in just under 300 pages!

In order to write a novel that does not consume every shred of wood fiber on planet Earth, Asimov had to make his story leap forward from one epoch to another. He does this by chopping the story up into a succession of mini-plots.

Since the life span of the characters is the same as that of today's humans, each new mini-plot must have its own cast. These men are like house flies that appear in summer and disappear come autumn—and are as memorable. We never care about a single one, and there's no unity between them.

This is an example of what Aristotle called an episodic story. He was not a fan.

The experience of reading such a story ought to be little more interesting than reading an encyclopedia (ironically, if you know the story), except that Asimov displays just enough story-telling talent from paragraph to paragraph that he manages to weave an engaging mini-tale over and over again. It may work if you're patient and very forgiving of the author. Still, I found my willingness to disbelieve stretched beyond its elastic limits so many times throughout the story that reading became an act of will.

Here's another problem: We don’t even see what happens to the main actors in some of the mini-plots, except perhaps through a vague historical reference dropped by some distant descendant—that is to say, by some cog of a man who, like his ancestor, is stuck in one of Sheldon's pre-determined futures. This violates a basic tenet of story-telling: show don't tell. Important events, especially the demise of a main character, should never be narrated.

And yet another problem: We expect to care about the first moving character that we encounter. We assume that he/she will stay with us throughout the entire novel and that we ought to care about him in some way. This was true of Quasimodo, Eddie Willers, Howard Roark, and even Frodo Baggins. Trouble is, Gaal Dornick (the first character in Foundation) meant nothing to the story. He didn’t even really matter to the first mini-plot in which he appeared. This is a major literary mistake. Note to self: never build sympathy for a character you don't intend to use.

As for my overall impression, I go back to Aristotle and his idea of unity. This story shows why Aristotle was right to insist on it. Maybe Asimov knew about this principle. Maybe he thought that his mentioning of Hari Seldon's name now and then would glue his story together. It didn't. The psychohistory premise creates more of a frame around the story than a thread running through it.

But really he could not possibly have unified a story around such an ambitious theme. Even a great philosopher would have had to present an enormous number of concretes in order to demonstrate the kind of change that happens just within a single culture let alone over eons and great distances. Since Asimov could not do it, his story comes off as propaganda. In fact, the ending is mostly narrated instead of demonstrated.

I found myself hoping that the book would end like one of those fun mysteries in which the investigator explains everything just before someone jumps up and declares, "Yes! Yes! I did it! I killed him!". Unfortunately, that didn't happen. The narrator ends the story with a somnambulant description of psychohistory, which leads to nothing but—of all things!—an entry in an encyclopedia.

Certainly nobody important gets killed. Too bad. I was hoping someone would find a way to go back in time and kill Hari Seldon before he could unleash his theory on the unsuspecting universe.

The Enemy by Lee Child

I'm surprised that I liked this story by Lee Child. It's not your typical Military Action/Murder Mystery. Sure, it has all of the usual elements: a death on the first page, a sidekick, a love interest, plot twists, and an adroit hero. It's all in there. But there's also something subtly unique about this novel.

The hero is named Jack Reacher. He's fairly independent, selfish, benevolent, rational, and otherwise principled. Sure, it could be said that all action heros are that way, but I would have to disagree. Many are undercut by bad premises, especially by hedonism, or more specifically a wanton disregard for lasting values and a kind of self-centeredness that looks more like solipsistic vanity than real self-interest. As far as I could tell from one reading, that's not Reacher.

His character in some ways resembles Captain Mal, the hero of the made-for-cable series named Firefly.

Both men can and will do precisely what must be done in the most impossible situations, and not after taking an opinion poll or considering their advancement in some kind of bureaucracy; they just do it and remarkably don't ask questions later. Both men tend to think through issues one or two steps ahead of their companions, but they also value the benefits they gain from their best companions, and they show it. Both men, within the privacy of their own souls, remain aware of doing the right thing, which you see especially when the men are alone, under duress. In short, both men are moralists, and that makes them essentially Romantic characters.

I've heard that Child's novels are unique in another way: they attract more female readers than any other Military/Action-type of literature. It's also not surprising that a lot of women adored Firefly's Captain Mal, a somewhat unusual fact in the Sci-fi Action genre. I'm not entirely sure why.

Despite a few minor flaws, Child's command of the craft of writing impressed me throughout. His narrative flows very smoothly. Touches of setting, history, time changes, and other kinds of exposition come and go almost unnoticed yet still leave a strong enough impression. I should say that his style is nothing like mine. His prose doesn't milk very many emotions, but it gets the job done, which is the right style for this kind of fiction.

I have not read any other Jack Reacher novel, so I can't endorse the entire series. You can try this one first without reading the others. I recommend it.

"A Farewell to Arms" (Part II)

In terms of volition, there are at least three kinds of heroes in literature: Accidental, Bumbling, and Goal-directed. Lieutenant Henry is an example of an Accidental Hero. He pulls off feats only in the face of grave or sudden adversity. He rises to meet life’s challenges and so deserves credit for pulling off a difficult stunt now and then.

Consider two men flying a Cessna aircraft, a pilot and his non-pilot friend. When the pilot suddenly dies of a heart attack, what will the non-pilot do? If he goes berserk or makes bad decisions, he will likely crash the plane and die. If he shows ingenuity, he may extend his life or even survive against all odds; this is the Accidental Hero, and I suspect that many people, to the extent of their physical and mental capabilities, would rise up and become such a hero if their highest values were threatened. Henry is such a hero; he deals with adversity only when it comes his way, though not always successfully.

The Bumbling Hero, on the other hand, isn’t a hero at all. If he lands the plane, it’s because he mystically manages to push all the right buttons and pulls all the right knobs while singing “Tweetle-dee” and ejaculating about his “awfully bad luck,” and while not displaying a scintilla of good sense. How many billions of times can writers churn out these obnoxious rubber ducks? Ask Hollywood.

There's a third and better kind: The Goal-directed Hero. He is the one who bends circumstances to his will. In literature, he is the originator both of conflict with his enemies and of resolution by his own action. By “conflict with his enemies” I don’t mean that he initiates force against others. I mean that in the pursuit of his goals, he will necessarily encounter resistance (in the context of literature) and will overcome them (in the context of my literature), this in contrast to the Accidental Hero whose antagonists, by their primary actions, cause him to rise up and act in self defense. My protagonist—the Goal-directed Hero—will always take (positive) action first.

"A Farewell to Arms" (Part I)

[I just finished reading this short novel by Hemingway, so here's my review of it.]

Hemingway is very good at creating a kind of naturalistic tale that I don't care for at all. Even so, I find myself being drawn back into his stories, more as a writer than as a reader. The artist in me gets curious. I realize after reading a story that I don't remember how the characters spoke or how they looked. For that matter, I don't remember ever feeling the need to know more about them, yet I clearly remember the events that happened in their lives.

So why do I keep reading a story in which I don't really know the characters—or is it that I know more about them than I realize? These are questions I would like to answer, because then maybe I could stop reading Hemingway and be satisfied.

I think it's partly the male in me that draws me back to Hemingway, since his stories have an unusually masculine—and also intellectual—style and mythos about them. They're like reading a much smarter Zane Grey. Lines are drawn sparsely—little more than thin, gray sketch marks—yet a single strike may carry all the drama of a gunshot. Where Zane Grey may have a gun battle raging in every other chapter, first when a furious bear attacks, then Indians, then more Indians, then a corrupt sheriff, and so on, Hemingway may save that single gunshot until it carries the weight of everything, like spiritual death, loss, tragedy, alienation, hopelessness, and destitution—always destitution.

The masculinity of the story may also explain why I don't really see the intimate details of Hemingway's characters. A lot of men—especially the most outwardly masculine ones—tend to deal with each other at arm's length, taking what they need and nothing more, and not dwelling too long on “inconsequentials”. (Personally, I think this is caused more by mind-body disintegration than by the nature of masculinity, but that's a topic for a different discussion.) In any case, all of Hemingway's characters are rendered in this fashion. You know about them only by the way they flick their cigarette or cast their reel.

[Spoilers Follow]

A Farewell to Arms doesn't really have a plot in the proper sense, meaning a purposeful progression of events. The story consists mainly of plodding reactions, not purposeful pro-action. The question is decidedly not: what is Lieutenant Henry’s goal and how will he achieve it despite the war? Rather, the question is: Will Henry emerge from the challenge of war intact, slightly altered, nearly destroyed, or not at all? In other words: What will the war do to Henry?

He is “caught up in” turmoil, but he does not create the turmoil; it creates him. Nature and cruel fates always act upon him, and always he must react. I just don't see how a good plot could ever come from such a victim-centered viewpoint.

In college Literature courses, this book is often presented as a propaganda story against war. But if this were true, one would expect the war to be shown as the cause of Henry's troubles, even if only the ultimate cause. In fact, it doesn't matter that Henry is caught up in a war. He could be entangled in just about any series of unfortunate events, say a revolution or a volcanic eruption, because the war itself is rarely mentioned. Even his decision to join the war was an afterthought, like a young man deciding between buying this car or buying that one.

I think there's a much deeper battle going on in this story, something more frightening than what you'd find in the more colloquial and homey naturalism of, say, a Sinclair Lewis or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Hemingway puts Henry in the worst of circumstances—any circumstance will do—and then makes him do nothing except wait, sometimes lie, and finally run away. Henry rarely acts except to save himself, never pro-actively to gain or keep his values. And this is why I don't think Hemingway cared nearly as much about the war as he did about his own tortured psychological state.

So, naturally, Henry had to lose his wife and child—that is, his highest values. It would be wrong to say that he also lost his self, because he never attained it nor even thought of pursuing it. Perhaps this is where Hemingway inadvertently confesses his own view of mankind's place in this universe—not as initiator, but as pawn—and worse, pawn of a mean and angry universe. No wonder Hemingway was an alcoholic.

Catharsis

I've just been emotionally devastated by a novel. I'm talking about sitting down on the floor and just weeping. I couldn't even breathe. Ugh! I haven't felt that way since my own dear grandmother died. Yes, I'm serious. I cried over a novel as if someone close to me had died. Talk about catharsis! Art is just such an absolutely incredible thing.

The book was The Last of the Wine, by Mary Renault.

I have to think that some of my emotions came from the beautiful and agonizing homosexual relationship that forms the spine of the novel. Still, it's a really good story in itself. I would even call it fairly high literature—at least some of the best historical fiction I have ever read.

It seems that most of the people who don't like this story (on Amazon) mainly just have a problem with compound sentences (ignoring the homophobes, anyway). As one otherwise positive reviewer wrote: "The language was very difficult to get through. I had to re-read a lot of passages to get the gist." Are you kidding? This guy must be used to reading Stephen King. Personally, I find Renault's writing to be positively breezy, but maybe that's because I've already made it through Henry James, Tolstoy, et al., in the name of literary fortitude.

I should warn anyone who might happen upon this review (*minor spoiler follows*): This story is patterned after typical Greek tales, so don't expect the gods to be any more kind than usual.