Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

 Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1965.

I've been trying to read this, according to the Tigers-Royals ticket from 22 July 2000 used as a bookmark, for at least twenty years; I've made three previous attempts, and gotten maybe three chapters into the work. It is perhaps the most difficult piece of fiction I have ever read.

 I have not read Finnegan's Wake; Ulysses was enough. James Joyce’s Ulysses is also the most comparable work I can bring to mind, although Volcano reminded me more of James Agee's Death in the Family. The perspectives and the detail, the story itself with interaction between equal characters -- these are all fresh, but sufficiently familiar, to be recognizable literature.

The language, though -- that is Joycean. Our main character -- can't call the Council a protagonist, because he doesn't want anything, doesn't change, isn't even an anti-hero, just a broken drunk -- well, he's a broken drunk living in Mexico. I've never felt such a accurate portrayal of intoxication (or, even greater achievement, being a drunk) in writing. It's Billy Wilder's Lost Weekend as stream of consciousness rather than reporting, and the sensations are almost something one must have experienced to understand. Yet Lowry makes it possible, with an effort on our part, to share that most personal, private perspective, and by the end, offers an incredible experience.

Best read with a bottle of Mescal.

The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead. NY: Signet, 1968.

This intersecting story of great men -- of architects Keating and Roark, and newspapermen Toohey and Wynard -- is really about the girl who connects them. Dominique is a frigid social climber who destroys two husbands to be with her lover. Her self-discovery drives the plot and, finally, brings resolution to each of the characters.

Or is it about the rapist who stalks her through two marriages? The Fountainhead is totally a male sex fantasy (skyscrapers -- you really need that symbolism explained?): rape a woman and she’s yours forever. That’s the wrong message (one of several), of course, but illustrates why the book is important to understand. Most dangerously, the book appeals to those who conflate thinking OF oneself with thinking FOR oneself.


First, it’s inspiring how those who want “nothing but freedom” are those with the financial freedom to want nothing more. How they get so rich in the first place isn’t a moral question -- the getting rich is a moral imperative. This is the first lesson of the catechism: you should be rich. Take it. From whom it’s taken matters not; if they can’t hold it, they don’t deserve it. Only rich people are characters worth discussion.

Value is only the use to which I -- as opposed to anyone else, who has no consequence -- the use to which I wish it put. This is sociopathy.

“The meaning of life is work” -- this phrase excuses so much. But, that meaning is only available to those few, those special few who (want to think they) are great, and to hell with everyone else; only my work matters. The masses, by obvious contrast, are part of the material and good only for what can be made with them.

But correlating talent as a worker and value as a man? Really? It’s just a hymn of praise to unregulated exploitive capitalism.

The masses are only that, masses, not each, individually, an ego as great as Rand’s; not each, like Roark, the center of existence for its own self; not each, a reader of this tripe believing it applies to him, and no one else...

This ‘philosophy’ only works if the masses are illiterate (and thus, they must be kept that way). Otherwise, everyone reads The Fountainhead and wants to be a ‘builder’ -- and society descends into petty squabbles among egomaniacs, while nothing is built and people die in the starvation of anarchy.

Or perhaps society runs exactly as Rand envisions. Soon, we run into the tragedy of the commons. This occurs when each genius takes what he ‘needs’ without regard for others, who are, after all, of no consequence. Soon all resources are depleted, and no one can build again.

Alas, such is the curse of self-proclaimed genius.

“He wondered why ineptitude should exist and have its say.” He did not understand that perfection is an ideal, not reality. He was, after all, just an inexperienced, idealistic boy.

The Fountainhead has an obvious attraction for alienated adolescents; thinking that I am great, that the world doesn’t understand, and that starving for my ideals is perfectly reasonable can be very attractive for someone who doesn’t fit in and starves because of it. Unfortunately, not fitting in does not make one a genius, and we have no right to impose our ideals upon others. Claiming otherwise; claiming an authority unto oneself; these may be good qualifications for Congress, but they will not, generally, get your project built. Other people are usually necessary for that, and our rights end when encountering the same rights of others.

The reaction against communal instincts and reflexive praise of capitalism are understandable, to some extent, since Rand was a refugee from the Soviet Union. She was predisposed to assert the self against society. Of course we must each be able to assert the “I”; the individual ego is, as she notes, what gives us each value. She made this argument eloquently in Anthem. But each of us contains that, and each of us must respect that in each other. We can not  use everyone else as the dumb stone of our construction, but must assist others also struggling toward realization. We can all be supermen -- those who already are should not make it an exclusive, power-wielding club, but a goal available for all. In The Fountainhead, Rand makes clear that most people are not, in her estimation, capable or worthy of such self-realization, and indicates that those who are ought simply ignore the rest. This extends her Objectivism, exposing its main tenant as the virtue of selfishness and going beyond asserting the self over nihilism to asserting the self over others.

Really, it is simply a failed line of thought which collapses on itself, because exploiting others creates a downward spiral that takes down everything (see: climate change, the Great Recession, &c). Ultimately, The Fountainhead cannot be read with a straight face. Instead of reading this as a serious philosophical treatise, it should be treated as romantic comedy and played with high camp: “I love you -- I must punish myself by marrying him!” It has already been done, with a script by Rand herself, but imagine the following cast.

Roark            Matt Damon
Keating         John Cusack
Dominique    Scarlett Johansen
Catherine      Emma Watson
Cameron       Clint Eastwood
Guy               Tim Roth
Ellsworth      Steve Buscemi
Wynard         Leo DiCaprio

Jonathan Franzen, Freedom. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010.

Jonathan Franzen, Freedom. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010.

Someone, once upon a time, will have written the great American novel. Freedom is Franzen’s bid, and Freedom isn’t the great American novel. Then again, neither is Infinite Jest. Or Catch-22. Or The Great American Novel. Twain? Hemingway? Fitzgerald? All good candidates, but start with Moby Dick.

Freedom, though, is (what passes for) a great American novel, vast and open and experimental (but not really) and trying to be everything at once in a great rush of excitement, and eventually disappointment and a a bit of a headache.

Dostoevsky tells us that happy families are all alike, and in so doing exposes one of the novelist’s best tricks--follow a family and catalog their miseries. The Berglunds shouldn’t merit a novel; they have an American Dream life in Saint Paul, Minnesota, when the story opens. But Franzen uses one of Vonnegut’s favorite plot moves: someone gets into trouble, then gets out of trouble. It’s simple, but if it’s trouble enough, it can carry a novel.

And the Berglunds, they get into some trouble. Franzen tears this family apart, and when only a faint glimmer of hope remains, squelches it. This would make a fine ending.

It would also be an easy ending, because the anti-climactic years between losing hope and death are tedious for everyone. Yet this coda, this uniquely American need for closure, is also where the Berglunds get out of trouble, at the very last moment. So of course everyone loves it. In spite of this obvious, unnecessary and sorta cop-out ending, this over-hyped book is an enjoyable experience, easy to read in a well-crafted, invisible way and easy to keep picking up until there is too much invested in the characters to quit. Go ahead, read it all.

Old Men in Love

Alasdair Gray, Old Men in Love: John Tunnock's Posthumous Papers. Easthampton: Small Beer Press, 2010.

Old Men in Love is, according to the (fictional?) reviewer invited to provide an epilogue, Gray’s last book.  If so, it is a fitting bookend for his career, which began with Lanark, a sprawling, disjointed mess of a novel hailed as a Scottish Ulysses and the beginning of a Renaissance in Scots literature.  Like Lanark, Old Men weaves several distinct storylines around a common theme (care to guess the theme?), and presents the material, which the narrator claims is that of another writer, in a non-linear, even incoherent, order.  Old Men in Love is supposedly the collected writings of a Glasgow schoolmaster, containing the existing chapters from a planned fiction trilogy, to be called ‘Money at Play’, and chapters from his diary.

Tunnock is a bachelor who, late in life, discovered a taste for young women that is his downfall.  Diary entries describe his youth in Glasgow, his current situation, and his plans for ‘Money at Play’.  It is his fiction, however, that comprises the bulk of the text.  We get stories of a breakaway Scottish Utopianminister, an Italian painter, and a retelling of Socrates’ trial, each done in by a socially-unacceptable desire; each was to be a volume in the trilogy, but none is near complete.  The trial, which is climactic to Old Men in Love, proceeds as a dialogue and differs greatly from Plato’s account.  It is also the last thing Tunnock writes; he is re-energized by the project and making plans to finish it when he dies.

Old Men in Love is not the important book that Lanark was, but it is another fine piece of creative history and quite a bit of fun.  It is easier to digest than Lanark, as well, being half the size and broken into easily-understood segments loosely bound by Tunnock’s story.  It would be a good introduction to the author for those who are interested in literature outside the mainstream.

Cory Doctorow, The Makers.

Cory Doctorow, The Makers.  NY: Tor, 2009.

Makers is about a group of entrepreneurial folks who build a New Work movement, making new products from what is at hand in an agile development process that creates amazing things.  These people are the love children of Ayn Rand and Eugene Debs, creating a utopian society of like-minded outcasts.

It only gets interesting after they crash the economy.

Makers is a polemic, and the agenda is both clear and compelling.  That our society is unfair, and unsustainable, serves as an easily accepted premise; that we should try to change that, another.  The failure that ensues, like any good tragedy, follows necessarily from these premises, yet is no less entertaining for its inevitability.

J. Stanton, The Gnoll Credo. 2010: 100 Watt Press, Zepher Cove NV.

The Gnoll Credo starts with a fantastic assumption: Gnolls, intelligent humanoids descended from hyenas, live somewhere across the Ghamor Desert. Rumor is that one has even learned to read and write. Aidan O’Rourke, a scholar specializing in Alpha predators, sets out to verify the stories.

Upon reaching the frontier, O’Rourke is met by Gryka, who seems to be waiting for him. She tells him that Gnolls do not have a written philosophy, but if he waits, she will write it for him. Gryka and O’Rourke spend the rest of the summer translating the document she produces; this is the Gnoll Credo.

Building a story around an ethnographic document and using episodic character excavation rather than a traditional plot makes The Gnoll Credo seem more a political treatise, like Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward or a Platonic dialogue, than the usual fiction. Stanton’s over-arching premise is that adopting agriculture was a mistake, that humans are hunters at heart and denying this has caused most of our collective misery. While we may disagree with this, Gryka is such a compelling representation of what is wild that it is easy to be swept along without considering the underlying argument and simply accept this alternative way of being. The end result is a hard to describe little book, but one that continues to demand thoughtful attention long after the final pages.

Tim Green, Baseball Great. NY: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2009. Josh LeBlanc is twelve years old and getting ready for his school team tryouts when his father's minor league baseball career ends unexpectedly. But when his father takes a sales job for the coach of a local travel team, Josh joins that squad instead. His dream is to do what his father couldn't: get to the big leagues and be a baseball great. He has the talent, but he needs to get stronger to compete against older boys. One of his teammates offers him some gym candy to help him through their weightlifting workouts. With friendships and his future on the line, what will Josh do? This well-paced, exciting story, targeted at eight to twelve year olds, will have even recalcitrant readers anxiously turning pages to find out what happens next.

Heather Webber, Truly, Madly. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010.

“There comes a time in every girl’s life when she realizes her father isn’t perfect.”

Even if the father is Oscar Valentine, whose blood carries Cupid’s Curse, a hereditary ability to make matches for others, but not oneself; an ability to read psychic auras. His daughter Lucy had it, but lost it in an electrical accident, so taking over the family match-making business doesn’t much appeal to her. Duty calls, though, so she does her best to pair people using the power she has instead: the ability to find lost objects.

But her first client is still in love with the fiancee he’d lost six years earlier, so Lucy’s talents do come into play. She ends up uncovering, then solving, a murder, rescuing a lost little boy, and falling in love herself as well as laying groundwork for the series to continue. And Truly, Madly is a good start, but Webb is trying too hard. She has a fun premise and enjoyable characters--and a three-book contract; she doesn’t need to give time to dressing her sets with name-brand props. This seductive shorthand of naming, rather than describing, is all too common in the airport-shop fluff genre. While it may be an attempt at realism, it is more likely intended to convey a sense of the privileged environment inhabited by the characters and to which the reader is presumed to aspire. Unfortunately, all it achieves is an impermanence: an Audi A3 is a sleek, sporty roadster, but unless one knows that, the reference is meaningless. This is why writers are told “show, don’t tell”.

But this is a minor point, a failing of the entire type of book; as one of that type, Webb can’t be faulted for following the genre’s convention and, in fact, seems to largely overcome it by the end of the book. Truly, Madly is a lot of fun; not straight romance, not R-rated, not hard-boiled mystery, not just a coming of age acceptance story, and not hung up on its outlandish underlying assumption. Psychic abilities may be unusual, but it’s not hard to see a promising future for Ms. Valentine, the match-making detective, and her new Lost Loves service.

Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Philadelphia: 2009, Quirk Books.

Jane Austen, know for her light comedies of manners, saw her literary oeuvre cut short, with only a handful of published titles. While this may have saved her from becoming an early Victoria Holt, rumors had long persisted that something--something else was being hidden. Finally, thanks to the efforts of Grahame-Smith, we know what that is.

Austen's abbreviated output reflects her tragically truncated time, as she was struck down at forty-one by a here-to-fore unknown illness. Grahame-Smith, however, has uncovered the truth. Austen, having been bitten by a manky dreadful during one of her contemplative garden walks, soon became undead. Between frenzied feasts on baronial brains, she did what she had always done: she wrote.

Austen's literary executors knew this, of course, and had successfully suppressed her "later work" for years, because it may as well have been gibberish. It was, in fact, regarded as nothing else until Grahame-Smith, a Zombie researcher working on an entirely different project, stumbled onto a few pages in an American archives. Recognizing the tortured sounds as Zombie and the style as distinctly Austen, he immediately made queries after more. Finally receiving permission to sit down with the originals led to a multi-year translation project, of which Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the first volume.

Like all of Austen's prior work, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies deals with the romantic travails of British girls. The plot is largely lifted from her earlier Pride and Prejudice, but this version gives much more attention to the hordes of Zombies roaming England during warmer seasons--understandable, given Austen's new perspective. The story is full of memorable scenes, such as Elizabeth's visits with Lady Catherine, Lady Catherine's visit to the Bennett's, or the tender moment Elizabeth shares with Mr. Darcy at the Zombie pyre.

Like all works by the undead, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies does have its slow moments. Much time is devoted to dances and chasing after husbands, not so much to Zombie ethnography; one would have hoped that Austen's keen social observation might have survived to provide insight into the Zombie mind. But overall, and thanks largely to Grahame-Smith's able, dedicated translation efforts, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a worthy contribution to Austen's canon and the literature of the undead.

Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.

Who is Nobody Owens, and why does The Man Jack want to kill him?

Nobody Owens is the child who lives in the graveyard. He is not a ghost, but his adopted parents and most of his friends are--and they have taught him many of their tricks for escaping human detection.

Nobody came to the graveyard as a toddler, having left his home via the door The Man Jack forgot to close when entering. The Man Jack murdered Nobody's family and was after him as well, but after when the child snuck into the graveyard, his newly-dead mother availed upon the ghosts to protect him. So Nobody grows up in the graveyard, learning his letters from former teachers. He makes a human friend and eventually even goes to school, growing with the adventures of each chapter.

Why The Man Jack wants him dead in the first place, however, isn't clear until nearly the end, when The Man Jack finally gets another chance at Nobody.

Gaiman, who has also given us The Sandman and Coraline, won the Newbery Medal for this delightful book, which he says took him twenty years to translate from idea to text. In spite of the supernatural setting and somewhat disturbing plot, there is really nothing either scary or objectionable about the book, which is enjoyable for children of all ages.

Philip K. Dick, Voices from the Street. New York: TOR, 2007.

Voices from the Street is a previously unpublished novel from Philip K. Dick, the sci-fi icon behind Total Recall, AI, A Scanner Darkly, Blade Runner, and Minority Report. According to the publisher, it is the last of his novels to be published--only twenty-five years after his death.

Visions is clearly an early book. Set in 1950s Southern California, it chronicles the disintegration of Stuart Hadley, a handsome young television salesman. The prose is clean and measured, never reaching the frantic fever of later works like Valis, in spite of a sometimes brilliant mirroring of style and scene--the prose of someone consciously writing well, rather than confidently writing. It is very good, but not identifiable as Dick.

What is immediately identifiable, however, is the ever-recurrent conflict between perception and reality--what some call metaphysical exploration and other, paranoid schizophrenia. Hadley is a young man, with a new son and a good job, but all his good fortunes are nothing compared to his dreams and inarticulatable ambitions.

First Hadley turns to religion for answers, joining the Society of the Watchmen of Jesus. He is inspired by their leader, who speaks of prophecy:

"Even exceptional insight cannot give us exact information, the day, the month, the year. Do you understand what the prophets were? They were men gifted with this exceptional insight, this special sense, an ability to perceive future occurrences, to remember them as we remember events of the past. The impact of great things yet to come impinged on their minds. Everything they saw will come about; but these events were of such foreign and awesome nature that only by rendering them in elaborate poetic imagery could they translate them into the diction of the times, and represent the events to themselves."

But the speaker is not a prophet, only a charismatic speaker, and Hadley is quickly disillusioned. Renewed focus on work leads to promotion, but this, too, proves hollow, leading to a final break with reality from which Hadley never recovers.

The final result is a book that, while far from the science-fiction for which he is known, shows Dick to be a fully-competent, character-driven novelist already exploring some of the complex themes of his finest material. Publication may have been delayed by some occasional profanity--much less acceptable in the 50s than today--but availability now completely the work of an important writer and provides further insight to his artistic development.

James Hynes, The Lecturer’s Tale. New York: Picador, 2001.

A literary work, Nelson Humbolt’s doctoral advisor said, is any imaginative writing that is inherently more interesting than anything that could be said about it, and The Lecturer’s Tale qualifies. The torments of academic life--departmental infighting, the struggle for tenure, and the like--have been well documented in American fiction, particularly by Don DeLillo’s White Noise and Jane Smiley’s Moo. Yes, academics offer an easy target for satire--the leisurely life of learning inspires envy; the disheveled forgetfulness, disdain. In truth, however, this world is highly competitive, even combative. James Hynes's The Lecturer’s Tale is a joyfully bleak look at the life of Humbolt, a mediocre literary scholar, as he falls from post-doctoral stardom at an elite public university to adjunct composition instructor, then, magically, finds his way not only to tenure, but the department chair--only to learn, in the end, that cash is better than tenure.

The story relies completely on our suspension of disbelief: an accident on the quad leave Humbot with an ability to bend others to his will, one of his colleagues is a vampire, and an alien shows up briefly at the end. Nonetheless, it captures well the atmosphere of academia--a place where, as the vampire tells, Humbolt, “Gender as subversive parodic performance doesn’t work if you don’t tell anyone”--and such a statement is clearly understood. A place where a job candidate’s lecture on the symbolism of a non-existent Elvis movie is considered genius, never mind that the movie is only in his head. This wordsmithing is a sort of magic; Hynes simply asks us to accept a bit more. This is easy enough until part three, the denouement.

In the final section, however, Hynes goes overboard. All loose ends are tied off, but in such a fantastical way as to defy even the most gracious sense of credulity. While the final results are appropriately satisfying, the alien and the vampire--which might have worked, as manifestations of Humbolt’s delusions--are instead played as real, rather than metaphorical, thus inserting an element of unreality that is out of place with Hyne’s otherwise brilliant display of departmental dysfunction. This is a highly literate book, featuring literature and literary theory as much as the characters. Tightly plotted, with elegant prose and lively dialogue, it is sure to appeal to all post-graduate literary scholars. The rest of us might get a few good laughs from it, too.

Kurt Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008.

Armageddon in Retrospect could be seen as a shout from the grave, a humanist’s last call from the afterlife, if Vonnegut hadn’t already played out that trope in God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by doing interviews with the dead for his local NPR station. Instead, it is merely another installment in his long line of story collections. And from Welcome to the Monkey House and Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons through the recently-collected magazine stories in Bagombo Snuffbox, Vonnegut’s short work has been consistent in its quality.

Unlike all of Vonnegut’s prior collections, though, these stories have never been published before. As noted above, they all exhibit Vonnegut’s careful high polish, so perhaps their common theme is what kept them in his desk drawer.

As the title suggests, these pieces are all about the end of the world. For Vonnegut, this was World War II, in which he fought, and during which he survived the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden. He struggled with what he saw for years, until finally decanting it as Slaughterhouse-5, but we never really saw this struggle in print until now.

The pieces in Armageddon are undated, except for Vonnegut’s letter home from a Red Cross camp once the war ended and the speech he was preparing when he died, so we can’t attribute them to a particular period in his career. “Guns before Butter” and The Commandant’s Desk”, however, stand up well with the best of his previously published short pieces-- this is not simply mining the files of a dead icon for easy money, but a unified collection of highly personal material. And as his son Mark says in the introduction, “(e)ven if the content of any given piece isn’t interesting to you, look at the structure and rhythm and choices of words. If you can’t learn about reading and writing from Kurt, maybe you should be doing something else.”

As an added bonus, the book is illustrated with prints from Vonnegut’s post-novelist career as a graphic artist.

Walter M. Miller, Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz. New York: Bantam, 1988.

Current scientific theory suggests that, while the universe has been expanding since the “Big Bang”, it will eventually run out of steam and begin contracting. As matter collapses into black holes, becoming denser and denser, it will finally be reduced to a single, infinitely compact and unsustainable point--leading to another “Big Bang”, when it starts all over again.

Miller’s tale, originally published by Lippincott in 1959, applys this same cyclic principle to humanity. It is the story of a Catholic sect, founded by a penitent scientist after the Flame Deluge--present-day man’s first nuclear war--to preserve what was left of historical knowledge from the backlash against learning that followed. its three sections show man’s progress, from the struggle to legitimize learning around 2800 A.D., to its embrase by secular society in 3200, through the inevitable repetition of history which, once again, brings down Lucifer’s fire to destroy a technologically advanced but morally corrupt society in 3700.

This is a book of complex ideas and theological questions, such as man’s responsibility for the use of knowledge and the meaning of hope, but it is neatly summarized in these lines:
How shall you “know” good and evil until you shall have sampled a little? Taste and be as Gods. But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.

Infinite love does return to the world, briefly, as the second holocaust descends, to show that hope, like history, moves in cycles.

Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979.

At the end of Anne Frank’s diary, we learn that the girl died in a concentration camp not long before the end of World War II. But a diary is not a strictly factual account, and the story requires an ending that can’t, independently, be verified as true. What if Anne Frank had actually lived?

Throughout his long and distinguished career, Roth has been willing to take on controversy [Portnoy’s Complaint is about masturbation; The Breast is about, well…a man who becomes a mammary gland] and make grand claims, like naming his baseball book The Great American Novel. The Ghost Writer, though, seems like a deeply personal meditation, devoid of provocation, at first blush.

Adhering to strict Aristotelian formal requirements of time and place, The Ghost Writer is a middle-aged writer’s recounting of, and reflection upon, a long-ago meeting with his literary hero. The action is confined to the rural estate of Lonoff, an established short story artist who has invited the young, aspiring author Nathan for a chat. While the winter weather is frightful, things go very well for Nathan—until he sees the young woman sorting through Lonoff’s papers on the floor in the next room.

Tension immediately begins to build as Nathan tries to learn who she is. What he discovers during the long, sleepless night stays with him for twenty years and provides a loose frame for this entirely predictable, but utterly engaging, little book.

Anne Fine, Return of the Killer Cat. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003

Fat orange tabby cats always seem to get into trouble: the adventures of Heathcliff and Garfield have been staples of the funny pages for years. Tuffy is another cat in this vein—Return is his second book, following Diary of a Killer Cat. This time, Tuffy’s family is going on vacation and recruits the local minister to cat-sit. Reverend Barnham, though, doesn’t appreciate Tuffy’s dietary needs, or his extra-curricular activities. Meanwhile, the neighbor is desperate for a pet “just like Tuffy”—and offering fresh cream and tuna, three times a day.

So Tuffy does what any cat would do, even though it means abandoning his gang and dressing up as “Janet”. Trouble, naturally, ensues in this delightful tale for young children reading short chapter-books.

Anthony Burgess, The Wanting Seed. 1996: New York, W.W. Norton [© 1962].

Tristam Foxe knew that history goes in cycles, and that he was simply unfortunate enough to be caught between the Pelagian and Augustinian phases, between the belief that people are good and will regulate themselves, and the belief that people are bad and must be controlled. Tristam knew this because he used to teach history (fifth form) a the South London (Channel) Unitary School (Boys) Division Four.

Tristam knows that some sort of normalcy will be restored soon. This interphase, though, is a long way from any kind of normal. The crisis has come because an over-populated world, led by human example, has stopped reproducing. In a world where China's 'One Child' law has long been in effect, nothing grows.

All of nature finally rebels, and Tristam ends up in the army working to restore order and a food supply. When his men go into battle, Tristam learns exactly what the government is doing about the crisis—the central horror of this book that, once accepted, allows us to see the humor, and the similarities to our own situation, in this deep dark black comedic gem.

Marcus Zusak, The Book Thief. 2006, New York: Knopf.

A friend asked why I read children's books. I answered, glibly, "because they can hold more truth." This was before I read The Book Thief.

The Book Thief is a title. It belongs to an adopted German girl during World War II, and later to her story as related to us by Death, who is somehow always nearby. (Incidentally, Death is an informative, entertaining, and completely trustworthy narrator.) She earns the title, but wears it well: she steals books from the mayor's wife, but reads them aloud to get her neighbors through air raids.

But the Book Thief is more than an avid reader. She is also fiercely compassionate and stunningly brave, traits learned from the man she calls Papa, who calms her nightmares, teaches her to read, and hides a Jew in his basement even as others wearing the yellow star are paraded down the street toward Dachau. She must be strong, to survive this story told by Death.

While told from the child's perspective, this is not really a children's book, any more than Anne Frank's diaries are for children. No, The Book Thief is a good book, and maybe an important one; and like any other good book, it is suitable for anyone who wants to keep reading. It holds an awful lot of truth.

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and…(series). NY: Scholastic, 1998- 2007.

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and… series is one of the most challenged titles in America. Some people are scared of these books because the characters use magic, but they are wholly misguided. While her books feature witches and wizards, they are far from glorifying Satan; in fact, Rowling is singing the same song as John Lennon and Jesus Christ: all you need is love.

This point is made clearly during a conversation between Potter and his headmaster at Hogwarts School for Wizards near the end of …Half-Blood Prince.
"But I haven't got uncommon skill and power," said Harry, before he could stop himself.
"Yes, you have," said Dumbledore firmly. "You have a power that Voldemort [the Dark Wizard] has never had. You can—"
"I know!" said Harry impatiently. "I can love!...
"So, when the prophecy says that I'll have 'power the Dark Lord knows not,' it just means—love?" asked Harry, feeling a little let down.
"Yes—just love," said Dumbledore.

Far from glorifying evil—or even magic, which is part of the setting, not a focus of the story—Rowling is pushing a world-view that stresses tolerance, cooperation, and love. That she does so in a fabulously-paced series of high adventures with a well-developed, ever-evolving cast of lovable, recognizably eccentric characters is tribute to her great skill. These books certainly do not deserve banishment: they should, instead, be recommended reading for all ages.

Poul Anderson, The Star Fox. NY: Signet, 1966.
Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan. NY: Dell, 1959.

Ah, the Space Opera—the individual versus the infinite. From Buck Rogers to Star Wars, putting a cowboy in a spaceship has been incredibly popular. Gunner Heim, captain of Anderson's spaceship Star Fox, is one such cowboy. He has much in common with Winston Niles Rumfoord, Vonnegut's aristocratic explorer in Sirens of Titan. Both of these characters are strong businessmen on Earth who buy private spaceships to take on tasks that their governments will not attempt, to make space safe for humanity. Both succeed. Yet the hope for humanity implied by these successes could not be more different.

The difference is free will.

Vonnegut, while a self-proclaimed humanist, is nonetheless a serious determinist. In his work, characters are acted upon; they react, but they do not choose: we do, as Bokonon teaches in Cat's Cradle, "what we must, muddily must, muddily must". So when Rumsfoord hurls himself gallantly into the unknown and inaugurates a new space age, it isn't because he wants glory, or even for discovery. It is because he must: this act is required to reach the goal of a power beyond his own. While this goal is eventually met, providing a successful conclusion to human development, this success leave us with a very bleak view of humanity's purpose.

Heim, though, is a Navy man—and command implies choice. Heim is no one's tool, fighting a private war to save a planet, and his success is far from certain. But the thrill of freedom, and the danger of choice, make Anderson's future much more attractive than Vonnegut's version. While both authors provide fast-paced, easy reads, The Star Fox is really nothing more than a ripping good yarn. Vonnegut, on the other hand, forces readers to confront uncomfortable philosophical issues. This could be why, while Anderson is recognized as a Sci-Fi giant, Vonnegut has become part of the literary canon.