Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Here's a quicky book beginnings post because I am running behind and still have a dozen things to do today, including making dinner. 

Thanks for joining me every week for Book Beginnings on Fridays. Share the opening sentence (or so) from the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your eye, even if you are not reading it right now. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow.

-- from Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. I am rereading this 20th Century classic as a buddy read on Instagram. It's a good one to read as an audiobook because that is not a title you want to be seen reading in public!

I read this in high school and found it rather plodding. But I love Maugham's short stories, so wanted to give it another try. I am now halfway through and still find it plodding. It definitely picked up when Philip goes to Paris to become an artist, but it will never win me over. It is on the Modern Library list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

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THE FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts another teaser event on Fridays. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book they are reading -- or from 56% of the way through the audiobook or ebook. Please visit Freda's Voice for details and to leave a link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Of Human Bondage:

He knew that Miss Wilkinson was the daughter of his Uncle William’s last rector, and he had a wide acquaintance with the daughters of clergymen. They wore ill-cut clothes and stout boots.

List: Modern Library’s list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century

Remember 1999? One of my favorite crazes of 1999 was all the "best books of the century" lists that came out as we raced towards the new Millennium. I got hooked on the Modern Library’s list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century.

When I took up the list in 1999, I had read about 25 of the books on it, mostly in high school and college. I had already knocked off Ulysses thanks to a Great Books course in college, so I figured I had a head start. I decided to read them all.

I wasn’t a nut about it. I read about one book from the list every month or so. It was a little daunting to realize that there are 121 books on this “Top 100” list, because even though they are listed as one book, some are really sets, trilogies, etc.

It took me about seven years to finish the rest of the books on the list. Finishing this list sparked my obsession with book lists, which led to me starting this blog so I could keep track of my favorite lists.

I certainly did not like every book I read, but I am glad that I have now read them all. How many have you read? Any favorites?

Here’s the list:

1. Ulysses by James Joyce

2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (reviewed here)

4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

6. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (reviewed here)

7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

8. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

9. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

10. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

11. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

12. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler

13. 1984 by George Orwell

14. I, Claudius by Robert Graves

15. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

16. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

17. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

18. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (reviewed here)

19. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

20. Native Son by Richard Wright

21. Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow

22. Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara

23. U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos

24. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

25. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

26. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James

27. The Ambassadors by Henry James (reviewed here)

28. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

29. The Studs Lonigan Trilogy by James T. Farrell (reviewed here)

30. The Good Solidier by Ford Madox Ford

31. Animal Farm by George Orwell

32. The Golden Bowl by Henry James (reviewed here)

33. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (reviewed here)

34. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh (notes here)

35. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

36. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (reviewed here)

37. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

38. Howards End by E.M. Forster

39. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

40. The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

41. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

42. Deliverance by James Dickey

43. A Dance to the Music of Time (series) by Anthony Powell  (discussed here)

44. Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley

45. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

46. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

47. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

48. The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence

49. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence

50. Tropic of Cancerby Henry Miller

51. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (reviewed here)

52. Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

53. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

54. Light in August by William Faulkner

55. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

56. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

57. Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford

58. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

59. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm

60. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

61. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

62. From Here to Eternity by James Jones

63. The Wapshot Chronicles by John Cheever

64. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

65. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

66. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

67. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

68. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

69. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

70. The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durell

71. A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes

72. A House for Mr. Biswasby V.S. Naipaul

73. The Day of the Locustby Nathanael West

74. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

75. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

76. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

77. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (discussed here)

78. Kim by Rudyard Kipling

79. A Room With a View by E.M. Forster

80. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

81. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (short review here)

82. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

83. A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul

84. The Death  of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

85. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

86. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

87. The Old Wives Tale by Arnold Bennett

88. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

89. Loving by Henry Green

90. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (reviewed here)

91. Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell

92. Ironweed by William Kennedy

93. The Magus by John Fowles

94. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (reviewed here)

95. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch

96. Sophie's Choice by William Styron (reviewed here)

97. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

98. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

99. The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy

100. The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (reviewed here)


OTHERS READING THE BOOKS ON THIS LIST


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Review: All the King's Men

 

Robert Penn Warren won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for All the King's Men, his fictionalized account of Louisiana's legendary governor Huey Long. In the novel, Long is Willie Stark, an idealistic country lawyer who takes on the political machine in his state and achieves meteoric success, only to be compromised by the same system he railed against.

This book has been on my list of Top 10 favorites since I read it in the mid-1990s, shortly after law school. Robert Penn Warren's combination of beautiful writing, compelling story, and political shenanigans wholly beguiled me.

Now, getting close to 20 years later, I wanted to re-read it to see if it still packed the same punch. It did, but in a quieter way. Either because I am older now or because I was familiar with the story, the political side didn't grab me, but the personal stories of Stark's family and the narrator, Stark's operative Jack Burden, struck me even harder with their heartbreak.

Warren was a poet first and a novelist second. His writing is full of metaphor, long descriptions, philosophical musings, and some long digressions away from the central plot. All these things, if not done right, can ruin a novel for me, fan of a good yarn that I am. But Warren does it right. It is definitely a book you have to settle in to and let it lead, but it is worth the dance if you do.

OTHER REVIEWS

on Vapour Trails

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NOTES

All the King's Men is listed on the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century and the Time Magazine list of All-TIME best novels. 

This counts as one of my Pulitzer Prize choices for the Battle of the Prizes, American Version.  This challenge runs through January 31, 2012, so there is still time to enter -- books read since February 1, 2011 count.

A revised edition of All the King's Men was published a few years back, to little fanfare and a small dustup between Noel Polk, editor of the "restored" edition,  and Joyce Carol Oates.  It is much longer and, inexplicably, Willie Stark is called Willie Talos, which in itself would make it impossible for me to read, Willie Stark being such an icon of American fiction.

A Mini-Smackdown: Modern Library v. Radcliffe

Finishing the books on the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century inspired me, in a round about way, to start Rose City Reader.  I was so jazzed by finishing the list that I started adopting other Must Read lists.  The Radcliffe Publishing Course's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century immediately caught my eye because it is the declared rival of the Modern Library list.

The Radcliffe list is nagging at me right now. I have only 14 or so books to finish before I have completed the list -- a tantalizingly achievable goal. Having recently finished Where Angels Fear to Tread (reviewed here), I am one step closer.

There is a tremendous amount of overlap between the two lists. If I had to chose which list really represented the "best" 100 novels of the 2th Century, I would pick the Modern Library list for a couple of reasons. First, I think the Radcliffe list leans in general to books that are more popular (Gone with the Wind, for example, which also won the Pulitzer, so I'm not knocking it, but still), while the Modern Library list includes books that are more literary. For example, the Modern Library list includes An American Tragedy, which I thought was heavy going, but it was a groundbreaking work so I agree that it should be on the list.

Second, but along the same lines, the Radcliffe list includes a number of children's books. They are good children's books, but I would have chosen only from books for adults.

Finally, while I understand that the Modern Library list is often criticized for not having "enough" books by women, I think the Radcliffe list overcompensates. I really don't think the list needs three books by Tony Morrison or even three by Virginia Wolf, especially at the expense of some of my favorites from the Modern Library list like A Dance to the Music of Time and The Alexandria Quartet.

I'm open to persuasion. Other thoughts?

If anyone is working on wither list, please let me know. I love to read blogs about these lists. And if you would like to be listed on either of my list posts, please leave a comment here or on my list posts with appropriate links and I will add them.

Book Notes: The Magus

The Magus by John Fowles was my least favorite book on the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels list.

I could not stand The Magus! It may be the only book that I actually hate. Pompous nitwits running around a stupid island playing games with each other! And all the time spouting humanistic gobblygook about the death of God, or whatever they were prattling on about. It has a cult following, but I thought it was overwrought nonsense.

So no full-length review -- just my gut reaction.

Review of the Day: The Studs Lonigan Trilogy

James Farrell's Studs Lonigan trilogy is justly lauded as a milestone in American literature, a monument to a new "naturalist" style. But monuments can be boring, even if they are important.

The trilogy has not aged well. The slang the characters use, their clothes, even some of their concerns, are anachronisms now that require a great deal of "willing suspension" to appreciate the spot on description of the rough world of second generation, Irish Catholic toughs in Chicago in the 1920s. This is definitely not the glittery 1920s of Fitzgerald or Dorothy Parker!

The final book of the trilogy, Judgment Day, is the longest of the three and the most accessible. Unlike the first two volumes, which concern mostly what is inside Lonigan's head, there is a lot of plot and action in this one.

Judgment Day takes a compelling look at the Great Depression, focusing on the middle class characters and what they lose because of the depression. Because these people have jobs, own their own businesses, invest in real estate, speculate on the stock market, they seem more familiar and relevant than Dust Bowl dirt farmers (The Grapes of Wrath), labor agitators (The USA Trilogy), or other soup line characters from books and movies about the Great Depression.

Except for compulsive "list" readers, skipping the first two volumes and only reading Judgment Day may be the way to go. It stands alone as the most worthwhile of the three.


NOTES

I read Studs Lonigan a couple of years ago. I am only posting my review now because I am updating my Modern Library Top 100 post to include my comments about the books I read.

OTHER REVIEWS

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Review of the Day: Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is an incredible novel, but it is not a book for me. 

I had avoided reading this famous book because I thought it would be unbearably dreary. How could a book about the firebombing of Dresden during WWII not be dreary? But it is on the Modern Library's Top 100 list, so I finally read it.  Now I know the answer: If you write a book about the firebombing of Dresden and fill it with time travel, space ships, and extraterrestrials, it's not dreary, it's goofy.

But I don't like goofy books about extraterrestrials, especially when they are really serious books about the morality of firebombing your enemy during war. I realized that I would rather have a dreary, realistic book than a goofy book.


NOTES

I read Slaughterhouse-Five a couple of years ago. I am only posting my review now because I am updating my Modern Library Top 100 post to include my comments about the books I read.

There are people who feel very strongly that this is the greatest book ever written. I know this because when I first posted my review on LibraryThing, several of them sent me comments expressing their disappointment that we didn't see eye to eye. (That is a watered-down description -- what I actually got were Unibomber-style manifestos on Vonnegut's genius.) 

OTHER REVIEWS

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Review: The Naked and the Dead

Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead is a mesmerizing look at Army life in WWII. Mailer tells the story of an Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon on a fictional Pacific Island. There are fewer battle scenes than expected. Most of the story is about the men on daily patrols, guard duty, and a week long patrol behind enemy lines.  The realism of Mailer's descriptions -- particularly, of what it was like to hike for days and days in the jungle carrying 60 pounds of equipment -- are riveting. What those men went through!

Mailer personalizes the characters by interposing flashbacks highlighting the pre-war lives of several of the men. He also switches the point of view among the various characters. Still, the characters are never fully developed, which, oddly, made the story more realistic. The reader gets the kind of impressionistic views of each man in the troop that the men had of each other. These men were all thrown together to serve under horrible conditions, but they had nothing in common to start with and really did not know each other.

All in all, a great book. It is long, but it is a fast read. In Mailer’s introduction to the 50th Anniversary edition he self-deprecatingly explains that the book (his first) was a best seller and was written in the flashy language of all best sellers. But it is not the language that makes the book so good, it is the story.


OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

Mailer's best seller did not win any prizes, but it did make it to the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century, Radcliffe's competing list, The Book of the Month Club's "Well Stocked Bookcase" list, and Anthony Burgess's list of his favorite 99 novels.

Book Notes: Finnegans Wake

Two years ago, I set out determined to finish the Modern Library’s list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century – a list I had been lackadaisically working on since it was published in 1999. At that point, I only had about 30 or so to go of the 121 books on the list. The largest boulder in my path at that point (or at any point on my journey to reaching this goal) was Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

Before I started FW, I knew nothing about how it was written and had no idea that it was so crazy. I knew that it is Joyce’s magnum opus, that it took him 17 years or so to write, and that he had staff helping him research. I also knew from reading about FW that it all takes place in one night, but is a history of all time, and that the main dream character feels guilt about something he did in a park with two "temptresses" and for vaguely incestuous feelings he has towards his daughter.

I "knew" these ideas only in the sense that I read about their existence. But by 100 pages or so into the book itself, I still had no actual comprehension of them. Or anything, for that matter. The closest I could get would be a vague suggestion of some of these themes from sentences like this:

And so they went on, the fourbottle men, the analists, unguam and nunguam and lunguam again, their anschluss about her whosebefore and his whereafters and how she was lost away away in the fern and how he was founded deap on deep in anear, and the rustlings and the twitterings and the raspings and the snappings and the sighings and the paintings and the ukukuings and the (hist!) the springapartings and the (hast!) the bybyscuttlings and all the scandalmunkers and the pure craigs that used to be (up) that time living and lying and rating and riding round Nunsbelly Square.

Yep. That's what the entire book is like. All 620 pages. Made up words, foreign words, amalgamated words – crazy stuff.

I never understood an entire paragraph; only occasionally comprehended an entire sentence, and definitely only short ones; and was delighted at every word I caught. I read it for the experience of reading it, but gave up trying to understand it after the first page. Yes, I tried reading it out loud, and that helped – but only to a point. I decided to just let it flow over me and enjoy the sounds like poetry or music.

And I was so pleased with myself for finishing it. I was free to "shun the Punman" after months of effort. I was also a little concerned, because I seemed to understand it better after about page 500. I hoped this meant it just hits an easier patch as it gets to the end. I hoped it did not mean that I had learned enough FW language to comprehend more, because then I would have been tempted to start over at the beginning!

Of course, that is what Joyce intended. He wanted to publish FW in a spiral binding without covers, so there would be no official beginning or end and people would read it non-stop. As it is, it starts in the middle of a sentence. The final sentence in the book is the beginning of the sentence that starts the book.

Finnegans Wake was definitely the most difficult book I have ever read. It is not that I hated it. It was incredibly frustrating, but it has poetic beauty. I do not think anyone should read it unless they are compulsive about finishing their book lists (like me), or are really into James Joyce. But I like the idea that there is a structure to it (even if I couldn't follow the structure).

For me, it was like that famous Hieronymus Bosch triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights. I do not like it. I think it is weird. It takes too long to look at and there are so many things in it that I do not understand. But, I admire the mind and talent that created it.

That said, I was thrilled to be done with FW! When I finished it, I keep thinking of that joke about the 85-year-old, widowed rabbi who goes into the confessional at St. Mary's and says to the priest, "Father, I just had sexual relations with a 24-year-old aerobics instructor." The priest says, "But Rabbi, why are you confessing? You aren't Catholic." The rabbi says, "Confessing? Are you kidding? I'm telling EVERYBODY." That was me – I told EVERYBODY.

And now you can "suck it yourself, Sugarstick"!

OTHER REVIEWS OR ESSAYS ON FW

The Clerk Manifesto: Seven Pleasures of Finnigans Wake

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Review: Sister Carrie

Although Theodore Dreiser finished Sister Carrie in 1900, years of stutter steps on the part of various publishing companies delayed its full American publication until 1908. Even then, as Dreiser describes, “the outraged protests far outnumbered the plaudits.” Dreiser’s new “realism” was shocking to readers.

While Sister Carrie may not pack the same punch 100 years later, the story is sprightly and still relevant. It moves right along, with plenty of dialog and even some exciting adventures. The period details of Carrie’s life may be particular to fin de siècle New York, but the story of Carrie’s efforts to rise above her situation, in contrast to the pathos of Hurstwood’s decline, is still compelling.

The only off-note was the last minute “moral of the story” message that seemed tacked on in the last two pages. That money cannot buy happiness is a common message, but a little hard to go along with when weighed against the alternative presented by Hurstwood’s fate. Compared to the pages and pages of sermonizing that wrap up Dreiser’s American Tragedy, however, the final homily is blessedly short.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTE

Sister Carries made it to the Modern Library Top 100 list.  I am particularly fond of my Modern Library edition because it has the funky dust jacket image.

Review: The Magnificent Ambersons

The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkinton's 1919 Pulitzer Prize winner, is one of those books that I enjoyed more than I thought I would. I was afraid it was going to be heavy and dull, and it certainly wasn't. Still, it was not a favorite of mine.

It moved right along through the story of the demise of the once-prominent Amberson family and the growth of their Midwestern town into an industrial city. However, it moved along at such a clip, and with so little thematic subtlety, that it seemed like a book for young adults.

I'm not saying that Tarkington should have handled his themes with the heavy hand of Henry James, but a little of Edith Wharton's nuance or F. Scott Fitzgerald's precision would have added depth to the tale.

OTHER REVIEWS

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Review: Wide Sargasso Sea

I am perfectly ambivalent about Wide Sargasso Sea. Every reaction I had to the book is balanced by its opposite reaction:

• The moody, languid prose captured the tropical setting: I longed for a more direct narrative. 
• The switches in perspective deepened the relationships among the characters: it was frustratingly difficult to track who was saying what and when they were saying it. 
• The themes of madness, alcoholism, cruelty, and love were fascinating: the characters were all horrible and it was awful to watch them destroy themselves and each other. 
• The connection between the heroine and the insane wife in Jane Eyre is an inspired literary device; the tie-in with Jane Eyre is a manipulative gimmick. 

See what I mean? Everything I like about the book, I dislike about the book. Equipoise. But it made it to both the Modern Library and Radcliffe lists of best novels of the 20th century, so the half of me that disliked the book is at least pleased to have accomplished two tasks.

OTHER REVIEWS

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Review: Sophie's Choice

In Sophie’s Choice, William Styron does as masterful job of telling a horrific tale in bearable way. Sophie is a Polish Christian who survived 18 months in Auschwitz before the camp was liberated by the Allies. Of course her story is heartbreaking. But Styron unfolds the tale in a way that allows the reader to take it all in without being crushed by the sadness of it.

First, instead of marching out the story of Sophie’s capture and imprisonment in chronological order, Styron layers it on, each layer building on the next. When the 22-year-old narrator, Stingo (a Southerner moved to Brooklyn to write novels), first meets Sophie in the summer of 1947, she gives him only the briefest version of her experience in the war. It is only as they grow closer as friends that Sophie, through a series of drunken encounters, provides more details to Stingo, each time admitting that she had lied to him before in earlier versions of her tale.

By presenting the horrifying particulars bit by bit, Styron seems mindful of the warning, and even quotes Stalin as saying, that a “single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The reader sees the tragedy of Sophie’s experience because, by offering just a little at a time, Styron allows the reader to digest her story, along with a great deal of information about the Holocaust in general. If Styron had presented her story in full from the beginning, the awfulness would be numbing.

Also, Styron balances Sophie’s tragic past with her tragic present in Brooklyn. In love with Nathan, a brilliant drug addict subject to violent fits of jealousy, Sophie has no chance of building a “normal” life in America. But, given her experiences in the concentration camp, it is impossible to imagine how she could. Rather than present an unbelievable fairy tale of survival, Styron uses the tortured relationship between Nathan and Sophie as the catalyst for her revelations to Stingo, as well as the vehicle of her ultimate, and well-foreshadowed, undoing.

Finally, for all its sadness, there is plenty of humor in the book. Some of Stingo’s failed romantic adventures are downright funny, as are his self-deprecating descriptions of his writing efforts. Again, without these side stories offering a respite from the main narrative, Sophie’s story would be unbearable.


OTHER REVIEWS

Chaotic Compendiums

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NOTES

Sophie’s Choice is one of my Top 10 favorite novels of all times. It won the National Book Award in 1980.  It is on Anthony Burgess's list of his favorite 99 novels.  It is on the Modern Library list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century and Radcliffe's rival list. 

Review: Midnight's Children

Midnight’s Children is the pseudo-autobiography of Saleem Sinai, the first baby born in independent India. Saleem tells the story of his life, as enmeshed in the history of the first 31 years of post-colonial India and entwined in the lives of the other 1,000 children born between midnight and 1:00 a.m. on the first day of the new country. Saleem describes this complicated, vivid, magical, funny, and disturbing mix as the "chutnification of history."

This was the first novel Salman Rushdie wrote and the first of his that I have read. I could kick myself for waiting so long. This book is a delight. There is a reason it show up on so many lists, including: Booker Prize Winners Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century Radcliffe's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century

OTHER REVIEWS

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Review: The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury is much easier to understand if you realize that it cannot be understood from the get go, but only when it is complete. To borrow a line from The Big Chill, sometimes you have to let art flow over you.

The book is divided into four parts, the first three of which are told in first-person, stream of conscious narrative from the perspective of three Compson brothers: Benjy, Quentin, and Jason.  Benjy’s section is particularly difficult to follow because he is mentally retarded and does not talk, but only narrates what he hears, in no particular chronological order.  Quentin’s and Jason’s sections are progressively more comprehensible as pieces of the story develop.  The final section is told by an omniscient third-person narrator, ties the loose ends together, and brings the story to its exciting close.

The first-person accounts are made even more confusing by the multiplicity of names.  Because this is the story of a large Southern family, many family members share first names.  There are two Moreys, although the younger of the two is renamed Benjamin, the first narrator.  The two Jasons, father and son, can usually be told apart, but the two Quentins, uncle and niece, are particularly confusing when introduced in Benjy’s section because the absence of chronological consistency brings both Quentins into the story at the same time, although the niece was born after the uncle’s death.

Reading The Sound and the Fury is like watching a masterpiece being painted.  Each brushstroke brings out more of the picture until the whole, beautiful composition is revealed.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

Reading The Sound and the Fury is also particularly satisfying for compulsive "list" readers, since it shows up on so many "best of" lists, including the following:

Books by Nobel Prize winners
The Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century
Radcliffe's competing list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century
Time Magazine's All-Time Best 100 Novels (1923 to the Present)
The Well-Stocked Bookcase (Book of the Month Club)

Review: The Golden Bowl

Only Henry James can take a beguiling idea like quasi-incestuous adultery, add an Italian prince, a billionaire art collector, and exotic foreign travel, and make a story so tedious that it is a true chore to read.

James writes in wisps of ideas, continually layering these wisps until there is a shimmery, translucent image that gives an idea of what he is trying to get at. These literary holograms are sometimes pretty, often interesting up to a point, but there is no substance to them. By the time the image emerges from the wisps, all I can think is, “So what?”

I can appreciate the talent it took to write an entire novel without saying anything directly. James definitely had a skill that he developed to the utmost. But while I admire the talent, I have no desire to make it a part of my life. I appreciate James’s talent the way I appreciate that of the artists who can paint the face of Jesus on a grain of rice. Impressive, but I’m not going to collect a gallery of rice portraits.

OTHER REVIEWS

(If you would like your review of this book or any other Henry James book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add your post.)

NOTES

This was one of the three Henry James books on the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century.

Modern Library's Top 100 List: Favorites

Hands down, my favorite "book" on the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century list was A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell.  Although commonly listed as one work, Dance is actually 12 novels, originally published separately but commonly published in four volumes of three novels each, called "The 1st Movement," "The 2nd Movement," etc.

Dance follows a group of characters in England from 1914 through WWII and up to 1971. The plots of the individual novels are less important than the entwining of these characters as they move in and out of each others lives over the years.

It is definitely on my Desert Island list (10 books I'd want with me if stranded on a desert island) -- especially if I can count it as one book, like the Modern Library did.

Here is a list of the 12 books of Dance to the Music of Time, in publication order.

They Had Me With "Ulysses"

The Modern Library’s list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century was the trigger of my book list obsession. When I encountered this list in 1999, I had read about 25 of the books on it, mostly in high school and college. Thanks to a Great Books class my freshman year, I had already finished Ulysses, so I figured I had a head start. I decided to read them all.

I finished reading all the books on the list in September 2007. This was before I started Rose City Reader, so I did not review many of them.

I wasn’t a nut about it. It took me seven years to finish the list, which is about a book a month or so. It was a little daunting to realize that there are 121 books on this “Top 100” list because some listed as one book, are really sets, trilogies, etc. But I kept plugging along.

Reading through the list required me to read some classics I had never read (An American Tragedy, Studs Lonigan, and The Secret Agent, for example) and introduced me to some authors I had not encountered before (such as John O’Hara and Lawrence Durell). I certainly did not like every book I read, but I am glad that I have now read them all.


Here’s the list:

1. Ulysses by James Joyce

2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (reviewed here)

4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

6. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (reviewed here)

7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

8. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

9. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

10. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

11. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

12. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler

13. 1984 by George Orwell

14. I, Claudius by Robert Graves

15. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

16. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

17. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

18. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (reviewed here)

19. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

20. Native Son by Richard Wright

21. Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow

22. Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara

23. U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos

24. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

25. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

26. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James

27. The Ambassadors by Henry James (reviewed here)

28. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

29. The Studs Lonigan Trilogy by James T. Farrell (reviewed here)

30. The Good Solidier by Ford Madox Ford

31. Animal Farm by George Orwell

32. The Golden Bowl by Henry James (reviewed here)

33. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (reviewed here)

34. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh (notes here)

35. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

36. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (reviewed here)

37. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

38. Howards End by E.M. Forster

39. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

40. The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

41. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

42. Deliverance by James Dickey

43. A Dance to the Music of Time (series) by Anthony Powell  (discussed here)

44. Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley

45. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

46. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

47. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

48. The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence

49. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence

50. Tropic of Cancerby Henry Miller

51. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (reviewed here)

52. Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

53. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

54. Light in August by William Faulkner

55. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

56. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

57. Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford

58. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

59. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm

60. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

61. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

62. From Here to Eternity by James Jones

63. The Wapshot Chronicles by John Cheever

64. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

65. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

66. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

67. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

68. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

69. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

70. The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durell

71. A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes

72. A House for Mr. Biswasby V.S. Naipaul

73. The Day of the Locustby Nathanael West

74. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

75. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

76. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

77. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (discussed here)

78. Kim by Rudyard Kipling

79. A Room With a View by E.M. Forster

80. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

81. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (short review here)

82. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

83. A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul

84. The Death  of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

85. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

86. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

87. The Old Wives Tale by Arnold Bennett

88. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

89. Loving by Henry Green

90. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (reviewed here)

91. Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell

92. Ironweed by William Kennedy

93. The Magus by John Fowles

94. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (reviewed here)

95. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch

96. Sophie's Choice by William Styron (reviewed here)

97. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

98. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

99. The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy

100. The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (reviewed here)


OTHERS READING THE BOOKS ON THIS LIST

100 Books in 100 Weeks
The Modern Library List
Doug Reviews the Top 100 Novels
The Treacle Well

(If you would like to be listed here, please leave a comment with links to your progress reports or reviews ans I will add them here.)