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Thread: Miscellaneous Books

  1. #1
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Miscellaneous Books

    One weekend later than I said, I am proceeding with this. This thread is for members to review and discuss miscellaneous books they have read. This should be an intellectually invigorating endeavor for all involved. I will get the ball rolling, and start things off with a review that has been sitting in my documents for a while now

    Review

    Chicago Style Citation: Hamsun, Knut. Growth of the Soil. Translated by Sverre Lyngstad. New York and London: Penguin Classics, 2007.

    It must be stated that this work was first published in 1917, but this edition from Penguin Classics was published in 2007. I also recognize and acknowledge that a Chicago Style citation and a work of classic literature are an incongruous pairing, with MLA Style being typical for literature and Chicago Style being typical for history. I used MLA for my composition and literature elective courses, and Chicago for my history courses. Chicago is far more natural for me at this point. This is not an academic exercise and I ultimately see no wrong in using a Chicago Style citation for an informal review.

    For the inaugural miscellaneous book review, I have chosen to focus on Growth of the Soil, a classic work of literature that won the Nobel Prize for its author, Norwegian Knut Hamsun (1859-1952). Much can be said about Hamsun the writer and Hamsun the man, and it is likely for the best to bifurcate any analysis of Hamsun into these two separate provinces. On Hamsun the man, I will say little. I prefer to, for the purpose of this review, confine my focus to Hamsun the writer and the specific work that is being reviewed. However, for the sake of a full review, I will briefly discuss Hamsun the man.

    Specifically, I will focus on the controversy that marks Hamsun and his legacy. Owing to Hamsun’s year of birth, it should come as little surprise that Hamsun harbored racist views. Most historical figures certainly did, especially by today’s standards. Perhaps one’s mind may conjure up parallels to American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft in regards to Hamsun. But such a comparison would be insufficient, for Hamsun’s stature as a writer was as larger than Lovecraft’s as his rhetoric was more incendiary. For the sake of brevity, I will put it succinctly. Hamsun openly supported the Nazi occupation of Norway during World War II, going so far as to gift his Nobel Prize to Joseph Goebbels. For this betrayal of his country, he was forced to forfeit most of his assets after the war, dying an impoverished pariah at the age of 92 in 1952. But enough about Hamsun the man. If one wants more on this, the information is readily available elsewhere.

    This review is about Hamsun the author and his work, not Hamsun the man. Granted, there will be glimpses of Hamsun the man, owing to the fact that some of his personal views will ineluctably be reflected in some of the book details that are being proffered for this review – parts that best capture the quintessence of the novel’s themes, which will of course allude to Hamsun’s views. For instance, the depiction of the city as an agent of corruption, and its deleterious effects on the morality and ethics of certain characters, certainly reflects Hamsun’s distaste for modernity and preference for the agrarian lifestyle.

    Let us set the stage for this novel. It begins with a man named Isak journeying up from a village, through the tracts of wilderness. Eventually, he settles down in a plot of land he finds worthy and goes about establishing himself. It is difficult to live alone, but he manages. However, he continually asks any and every passerby if they know of any women that could join him, constantly asking them to make it known that he is searching. Unfortunately for him, the prospects simply aren’t great for farming with some outcast so far away from any civilization. But fortunately for him, word eventually reaches a woman by the name of Inger, who is an outcast in her own right due to a harelip (called a cleft palate nowadays). Isak himself recognizes that the deformity is essentially a blessing, owing to the fact that were it not for her limited prospects in life and marriage, she wouldn’t have settled out in such a remote location with him.

    From this union of figurative lepers more life springs forth as time and seasons go by cyclically, like clockwork. This may sound dull - a novel dedicated to monotonous labor and the blossoming of the fruits of said labor. And the first three chapters are rather dull. But I must assure you that it gets better after that. And I will further assure you that the subject matter is anything but dull. For within these pages, one will find two infanticides, a stillbirth, and a man left to die in the snow by his covetous neighbor. Hamsun will make readers work through pages of dense prose for each literary treat, just as Isak and his family must work hard through each season to make the farm flourish, but for voracious readers it is a worthwhile effort. Indeed, there is a little something for many different tastes.

    For readers who like emotion in their books, they will find touching moments in Hamsun’s descriptions of Inger finally having a chance at marriage and motherhood, having hitherto been passed over due to her disfigurement. For the outdoor enthusiast, one will enjoy the practical lessons imparted by Isak upon his sons – such as how to tell if the moon is waxing or waning. For lovers of elegant prose, one will very much appreciate the preternaturally vivid descriptions of the seasons by Hamsun. And for those who like conflict, they will find it in the battle between tradition and modernity. The wholesome and purifying countryside versus the corrupting city. This manifests itself in no better way than in the dichotomous contrast between the two sons, Eleseus and Sivert. The latter is a chip off the old block, while the former is all but emasculated by his stints in the city. Man and nature, old versus new, themes of faith and the law, the encroachment of industry, hard work versus efforts to lazily acquire wealth, frugality versus profligacy, utilitarian values versus the values of the ornate and vapid. All of this and more in one novel.

    I will ultimately rate this novel 3.5 starts out of 5. Were I rating this on Goodreads, I would round it up to a 4. But this is not Goodreads, and I am free to do half stars.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  2. #2
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    As I submit this second review, I will once again extend an open invitation to any and all to review anything they have read! Now on to the review of The Road by Cormac Mccarthy.

    Review

    Another review, another author of immense stature. While Cormac McCarthy (born 1933) has not won a Nobel Prize, as Knut Hamsun did, he did win the Pulitzer Prize for the presently reviewed work, The Road. Additionally, the nearly ninety-year-old McCarthy is widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary American writers, almost certainly the greatest living American writer. Now let us set the stage for this powerful tale, which was adapted for the big screen a few years back into a film starring Viggo Mortenson. The time is not known, yet it is some time in a grim and dark future in which some unspecified cataclysm decimated civilization. Life is as unforgiving and brutal as the new world is cold and cruel. A nameless father and son traverse this bleak wasteland, with only one another and a few meager possessions in a shopping cart. The man was alive before the world order collapsed. The son was not.

    They are the walking dead in this new living nightmare of a world, as the now deceased mother observes ruefully in a flashback. They had a pistol with three bullets once, she bitterly notes, in order to escape the many worse fates that now exist. But the man had used one of those bullets once to protect them, and now they just have two bullets. Do the math. She gave up on this miserable life at some point in the past, philosophically making the case for death by her own hand over the rape and murder that otherwise likely awaited. And so she took her life one night, cutting her wrists with a piece of obsidian, not wishing to selfishly deprive her husband and son of the most viable avenue of suicide should they need it in the future.

    It is now later in the journey, and the father is forced to shoot and kill a man to defend himself and his son. Now they only have one bullet. Selfless as a devoted father ought to be, that one bullet is for the boy, should the need arise. But what if he perishes before he can spare his son a fate worse than death? He instructs the boy on how to properly commit suicide in one scene, but it is clear that the boy does not truly understand. Such a task will ineluctably fall to the father. What if he can’t shoot him, he asks himself? Would he have it in him to crush his son’s skull with a rock, he wonders in one scene while desperately hiding from a band of cannibals. Horrible as that is, there are fates worse than even that. Such a fate worse than this is showcased in one harrowing scene in which the duo, hiding a couple hundred feet off the road, observe a convoy of slavers.

    They continue their desperate journey through the deep snow and ash, the father progressively sicker and periodically coughing up blood, grappling with starvation as they struggle with the Sisyphean task of finding enough food. The journey is a procession of horrors that an omnipotent and benevolent God would not allow to exist, the coup de grâce of these horrors being discovered at a freshly abandoned cannibal campsite. The external conflict with this world continues alongside internal ones as they reach the coast. Conflicts of the hearts. The hardened heart of the grizzled father and the golden heart of the innocent son. The man acquiesces to the heart of the boy in one scene, sharing their food with a starving old man. But near the end of the journey, the father’s heart wins out against a man who tries to steal from them, to the great distress of the boy. Tragedy finally strikes not long after, a miasma of loss and fear hanging over the boy. Yet thin rays of hope and salvation shine through the foreboding mist, and it is going to be alright for the boy. A white-pilled ending after a black-pilled narrative.

    The Road is many things. It is an epic. It is a tragedy. It is horror. It is drama. It is a tale of perseverance. It beautifully handles the themes of life and death, of love and sacrifice, of the indomitable will to live even in the face of unspeakable adversity. It masterfully showcases the battle between good and evil, not just externally, but of the good and evil within ourselves. The man and the boy will not resort to cannibalism, as others have. They will retain their humanity. They are the good guys, and they always will be, the man assures his son. More than anything, The Road is a tale of the chemistry of the forces of life, an epic of life, death, the will to live, and the callous indifference of the elements to the plights of men.

    McCarthy is a master, and with this work he demonstrates that sometimes less is more with the sparse dialogue and lack of names. And while the lack of quotation marks around dialogue is vexatious, I will give McCarthy, who has been compared to such giants in American literature as Melville and Faulkner, a pass. This was the first book by McCarthy that I read, but it will not be the last. I now find myself wishing to read Blood Meridian, a Western laden with Gigachad turboviolence widely regarded as his opus, and Outer Dark, which tells the tale of an incestuous brother and sister in Appalachia, and the woman’s desperate search for their son after the brother leaves him to die in the wilderness. Perhaps I will review those works at a later date. Five stars out of five.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  3. #3
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    Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy

    Review

    It may seem a bit redundant, but the third review shall focus on another of Cormac McCarthy’s books – Outer Dark (1968). The Road (2006), which I covered in my previous review, is his most recent work – although that will change later this year, with the planned double publication of The Passenger and its sequel Stella Maris. McCarthy turned eighty-nine last month, and it seems sadly likely that that will be his last hurrah. Maybe he’ll live to see a century and write another still. A bookish man can hope. I’m getting way off topic – and the presently reviewed work is his second novel. This is vintage McCarthy, and it is not quite as good as The Road, but this grim and dark tale, an Appalachian tragedy laden with violence and sin, is still a force to be reckoned with. Both books have bleak and sad endings, but while the ending of The Road is sadness intertwined with hope, there is nothing in this earlier tale but abysmal tragedy with a pinch of dramatic irony thrown in like capsaicin into a bowl of chili that was already going to scorch the mouth. Therein lies the difference. Another key difference: The Road is a quest for salvation and deliverance from an intransigently evil world that also explores the awesome power of fatherhood, while Outer Dark – though similarly depicting the equally powerful force of motherhood – is a quest to fill a hole in one’s life, in which two incestuous outcasts separately wander Appalachia seeking to right what is wrong in their lives, consigned to the status of peripatetic wanderers in their desperate quest for attainment. But that is enough of comparing this book to The Road, which is one of the best books I have ever read.

    The stage is set rather quickly in this tale. It is Appalachia sometime around the turn of the Twentieth Century. The central figures of this tragic play are also quickly established: Most prominent are the incestuous brother and sister, Culla and Rinthy Holme. Rinthy is a young nineteen, while Culla’s age, though somewhat nebulous, seems to be a bit older – perhaps he is in his mid-to-late twenties. Also essential to the plot are an unnamed tinker who sells odds and ends from a wagon that he hauls by the power of his own locomotion, and a trio of killers - one named Harmon and the other two unnamed. The plot also moves quickly, until it doesn’t, until it does once more. Rinthy gives birth to Culla’s child, Culla leaving the nameless boy to die in the wilderness and lying to Rinthy – telling her the boy died of natural causes. The tinker discovers the boy and rescues him from the woods – it was at first unclear to me whether the tinker merely acted as a good Samaritan or took the boy as his own, although it later becomes clear that it is the latter. At the same time, three menacing men are roaming the countryside, leaving carnage in their wake. Rinthy eventually discovers Culla’s lie, and runs off to find her son. Culla runs off after his sister. From here the narrative becomes a primarily two-pronged one, alternating back and forth between the two siblings as they wander through the Appalachian countryside, interacting with a variety of figures who comprise the ensemble supporting cast of this backwoods tragedy. And every so often, the trio appears, killing a member of the ensemble cast. Nihilism defines much of this tale, and indeed I found much of it to be listless and devoid of much meaning. The bulk of pages exude nihilism and monotony. Nothing of real significance happens, and next thing the reader knows the book has almost been finished. But then much happens. It’s a bunch of nothing until it’s a bunch of something. Perhaps this is an accurate depiction of real life, where nothing happens for years and then one day all is upended. Culla and Rinthy have traveled and nothing has really happened. And then a lot happens. The plots congeal. The tinker, Culla, and Rinthy – in that order – each stumble upon the campsite of the three killers one by one on their own accord, and it is there that the novel reaches its jarring and ghastly conclusion – one of the most depraved endings I have ever read.

    Although Outer Dark has many merits, it also leaves something to be desired. Like The Road (There I go again making an unfair comparison) the tale is quite sparse in certain aspects, yet this time one is not left feeling that less is more. That is not to detract from the positives of this tale. Indeed, in terms of prose, Outer Dark arguably outshines The Road, although the simpler and more accessible style of the latter work is profound and powerful in its own way. Here, however, we have prose that is eloquent and at times almost mystical. Some highlights include the descriptions of lightning, of a dirtied and downtrodden Rinthy, of a massive punt gun that a gregarious old hermit shows to Culla during one stop of his journey, and of the process of a seasons-long decomposition of a hanging corpse. All said, this is a literary journey both pastoral and dark that one should undertake so long as cheery endings aren’t a requirement for one’s literary palate. How many millions of souls throughout history have wandered listlessly through dark worlds with nothing, souls lost and looking for something, anything? Such is the narrative of Outer Dark, which, in its riveting conclusion, unearths the most nightmarish qualities that the underbelly of humanity has to offer. 4.5 stars out of 5.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  4. #4
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    No reviews currently upcoming. However, I will once again invite others to review books.

    Here is a list of books I currently plan to read in 2023. At least a couple will probably be reviewed here:

    Fiction:

    The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
    As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
    Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
    Child of God also by McCarthy

    Non-fiction

    The Secret Lives of Bats by Merlin Tuttle published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
    The Pope and Mussolini by David Kertzer published by Random House
    The Russian Fascists by John J. Stephan published by Harper and Row
    Political Hellraiser: The Life and Times of Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana by Marc Johnson published by University of Oklahoma Press
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  5. #5
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    The Brothers Karamazov is my favorite Dostoevsky book by far. I love that book.

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