Sherry reviews Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street. “Published in 1920, Main Street is proto-feminist, liberal in its politics (to contrast with the no doubt conservative politics of 1920’s small town businessmen), and agnostic in its religious views. Our protagonista, Carol Kennicott . . . mostly stays just this side of being an obnoxious, supercilious snob.”
Category Archives: Fiction
Frankenstein: Dead and Alive, by Dean Koontz
If I were actually the kind of industry insider I pretend to be as an author/blogger, I would have been aware that Dean Koontz’ long-awaited final volume in his Frankenstein trilogy was coming out at last. (He delayed it, he has reported, because New Orleans, the setting of the books, had suffered enough after Hurricane Katrina, and deserved a break. I’d been very worried the story would go forever unfinished.)
Koontz dedicates Frankenstein: Dead and Alive to “the late Mr. Lewis, who long ago realized that science was being politicized….” It would appear that C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength was an inspiration for this book and for the whole trilogy. That gives me particular satisfaction, as I did an homage of my own in Wolf Time.
Although it’s not necessary to read the first two books before reading Dead and Alive, I would recommend it. It’s a pity there was such a long lag between books, because, in my opinion, this book works best as the capstone to the trilogy experience. Continue reading Frankenstein: Dead and Alive, by Dean Koontz
The Wand Beats the Laser Gun
Fantasy has thrown down Science Fiction in popular literature, in case you haven’t noticed. It’s partly science’s fault. Philip Marchand reports this quote: “We have reached the point where contemporary science is so far out, to most people it is indistinguishable from magic,” comments well-known Canadian science fiction novelist Robert J. Sawyer. “The notion, for example, that black holes might provide not only links between space but links to time is grounded in current theoretical thinking.”
(via Arts Journal)
Where Are the Heroes?
It’s interesting that Lars wrote about villains last week, because I was thinking about them last week too. I quickly a list of 50 greatest from literature, compiled by the UK Telegraph a while back. So when I said to myself, “Dude, what’s the list of 50 greatest heroes look like,” I ran aground searching for a list. That is to say, I didn’t find one.
Of course, now that I search again, I find this list and this one, both broad and not quite what I wanted, especially the latter one. So what about our own list? If you wanted an list of great heroes from literature, who would you expect to see?
Odysseus, Hamlet, Henry V, Petruchio maybe. Frodo, Sam Gamgee, Aragorn, Faramir (unless we limit it to one per work). King Arthur, Erling Skjalgsson, Beowulf, Theseus. Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Edmund Pevensie, Robin Hood. (This is getting beyond me, and if I had to rank them, I couldn’t do it.)
If She Doesn’t Go In . . .
Four Lost Wodehouse Playlets Found
Four short, satirical plays written by P.G. Wodehouse between 1904-1907 have been discovered and show the great comic author’s politics. He wrote them in support of British conservatives and those arguing for tariff reform.
Literary historian Paul Spiring discovered the works. “They are quite powerful,” he said, “and show that he was very much a supporter of the Tariff Reform League and pro-Chamberlain. His writing has often given people the impression that he was above politics. But the songs show that he was quite astute.”
September 1928: English novelist Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881 – 1975), creator of the characters Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves, at the door of his home at Hunstanton Hall, Norfolk. (Photo by Sasha/Getty Images)
Catalina’s Riddle, by Steven Saylor
I picked up a couple of Steven Saylor’s Rome Sub Rosa novels because James Lileks praises them highly, and I have a high opinion of James’ taste. Unfortunately, I find I can’t share his enthusiasm.
Not to say the two I’ve read have been bad books. Catilina’s Riddle, which I just finished, and The Venus Throw, which I reviewed a while ago, are well-researched and well-written mysteries centered on the political conflicts that convulsed the Roman republic during the ascendancy of Cicero and the rise of Julius Caesar.
This story starts in 63 B.C. Gordianus the Finder, the detective hero of the series, has settled down on a farm in Etruria, some distance north of Rome, which he inherited from a friend. His new farm is entirely surrounded by the properties of his late friend’s siblings, and they (with one exception) do not welcome him. But Gordianus has had his belly full of Rome and its intrigues. The simple life of a gentleman farmer looks very good to him.
Neverthless, his past—in the person of an agent of his old patron, Cicero—intrudes. Cicero has an odd request. He wants Gordianus to play host to (and to spy on) Cicero’s own greatest political enemy, the charismatic young politician Catilina. Gordianus is sick of Cicero, and initially refuses. But he changes his mind after a headless body shows up in one of his barns. He interprets this as a threat, and begins to realize that you can flee Rome, but Rome will always follow you. Thus he gets more and more enmeshed in the plots and counter-plots of Cicero and Catilina. As in The Venus Throw, the actual murder mystery—the question of the headless body, along with two more that follow—turns out to be a footnote to the great events that overtake them all by the end of the story. Continue reading Catalina’s Riddle, by Steven Saylor
“Save the World, Save Time for Tea”
John Wofford reviews Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for Patrol. He writes:
“In Smith’s promises that Zombies transforms Austen’s ‘masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read,’ and press materials that declare Austen ‘unavailable for media contact,’ Pride and Prejudice and Zombies becomes a calculated twist on our own media-saturated, nothing-as-sacred/everything-as-entertainment approach to … well, everything.”
How is Reading for ‘Escape’ a Bad Thing?
Travis Prinzi writes about fantasy in literature, leaning on Tolkien’s Fairy Stories essay. He asks why do many readers assume authors are just writing for the fun of it, not crafting an artwork to one degree or another.
The real “gnosticism” in this discussion is not the artist who builds a story on an imaginative key, but one who thinks that books provide some “escape” from the “real world,” and that this escape is a good thing. Tolkien wrote,
Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in a prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?
For Tolkien, the pejorative use of “escapism” was married to the false belief that current trends define Real Life – the electric street lamp, for example, is nowhere near as permanent as Lightning. But most of us know more about the lamp, because it’s more relevant to our daily existence. The fairy-tale takes us to the lightning, the “more permanent thing.”
More permanent things–that’s what I want to write about.
Hobbit Movie In the Rapids
Heirs to the Tolkien Estate say they are owed money on The Lord of the Rings and want to stop the production of The Hobbit. Speaking at Comic-Con, Peter Jackson said The Hobbit has yet to gain funding.