The choice is made

At the start of a fresh week of reading it’s a bit like that moment you get when you put a spoon through the foil on a new jar of coffee. It is hard not to get excited about what you are going to read next and some of that decision making is purely on an emotional level.

As a result of reacting emotionally to a great front cover, a recent BBC 2 programme about the battle of Stalingrad and the chance to read something by a Russian author this week, and let’s be honest most of the next, will be spent reading the mammoth Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman.

The story of the battle of Stalingrad is such am amazing one from every angle of courage, despair and revenge that is a great magnet for historians, fiction writers and film makers alike. Some efforts succeed, Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad for example, while others only get half way there. The film Enemy at the Gates might have a fantastic opening sequence but then it rather ebbs away.

So it is with a mixture of anticipation that Life and Fate is started. The first post comes tonight…

bookmark of the week

Earlier today the family and me popped along to see the new planetarium complex at the Royal Observatory. The boys were too young to see a show in the new centre but they had some fantastic interactive exhibits which really show what can be done with modern technology. One of the favourites of our short trip was one showing the different planets in infrared, xray and gamma and so this bookmark whould also remind me of today.

book of books - The Big Sleep

A picture of a gun toting Humphrey Bogart adorns the front cover and in the background is a glamorous blond. But although sex is offered the women are nothing but trouble for Raymond Chandler’s lead character Philip Marlowe. He manages to survive only just by shaking off their advances, although it almost costs him his life.

Although reading Chandler might feel like a guilty pleasure this is well worth it because the sense of enjoyment is there throughout the book. There is a pace that drags you in and makes you feel as if you are sitting on Marlowe’s shoulder and that is a pleasure worth feeling plenty of guilt about.

Plot summary
Hired to solve a black mail case Marlowe cannot keep away from the bigger mystery of what happened to the son-in-law of his client, a wealthy general with two wild daughters. He manages to solve the blackmail case and on the way get embroiled in a couple of murders with the blackmailer, an erotic bookseller named Geiger, as well as those trying to make advantage out of his demise, Brody another blackmailer, getting bullets lodged in their guts. With the apparent blackmail case solved Marlowe turns back to the question of what happened to bootlegger Rusty Regan, who was meant to have run off with the wife of nightclub owner Eddie Mars. But Marlowe gets tipped off about the whereabouts of Mrs Mars and although he almost gets killed and has to kill a man to escape there is no sign of Regan. He then works out that the younger of the general’s daughters killed him in a frenzy and after she tries to do it to him he informs the older sister that he has worked it out and tells them to leave town. Meanwhile he has also worked out that Mars worked out what had happened and was waiting to blackmail the daughters once they came into their father’s fortune.

Is it well written?
This is almost like two books with the Geiger case dominating the first and then the search for Regan the second. The result of that slight gear change is that you have to drop and then rebuild the pace. Maybe it is because my recent Chandler reading has been short stories but that drop and then rebuilding of pace is something slightly difficult to get used to. There is also more of a personality on show here with Marlowe displaying the traits of the lonely and damaged and when he is almost seduced by Carmen, the younger daughter, his reaction is slightly more than is required. That sort of depth is often lacking in the short stories but Chandler doesn’t really take it anywhere so you are left with a flawed hero without much explanation why. Overall though the one-liners, sharp eye for detail and a twisting and turning plot make this an enjoyable read.

Should it be read?
If you like Chandler then it is not a question of if but when you will get round to reading this book. Because of its Hollywood connections this might be a recognisable title and therefore get chosen ahead of some of the other books. That would not be a bad thing because it lays out Philip Marlowe and the world he inhabits as well as anything else I have so far read. In terms of the demands it makes on a reader there are not too many and it is just a question of finding the time to read this book rather than having to sit there with a dictionary or other reference works.
Summary
Blackmail and lies cost lives and make a lethal mix when a dose of youthful madness is added to the mix

Version read – Penguin paperback

book of books - Life A Users Manual

When you try to describe this book to someone you realise the ambition of Georges Perec. He describes a Parisian apartment block and then goes through it room by room describing the notable features and objects and telling the stories of those who lived in the rooms both past and present. At points he goes off on long interesting tangents and at others he concentrates of a developing story that concludes the book. In between he redefines the reading experience with lists of the tales that feature in the book as well as illustrations of the words that occasionally pop up on books and papers in the apartment.

There is no chance that this review can do the book justice, not because it is some work of genius that is above criticism, but because it is in place indefinable and as a result you might be able to pin down one part that works or doesn’t work but there are 100 other parts that are different.

Plot summary
There are several different things going on here with a story of the puzzle maker and the puzzle solver with Winckler and Bartlebooth; a comment on the state of Paris by the way the building is threatened by destruction; along with that there are lots of different stories, some short and some long, about the people who live in the flats. But at the end he manages to compress it all into seconds and that is one of the most powerful moments of the book, when you realise that all of these observations have been made without time passing more than a fraction of a few seconds. But the story that you are left with is one of a rich Englishman Bartlebooth who spends ten years learning how to paint watercolours, twenty years painting 500 different ports and then sending them back for Winckler to make into 750-piece jigsaw puzzles. Bartlebooth then solves the puzzles at a rate of one a fortnight and sends them back to where they were created and they are dipped into the water and the blank sheet of paper is sent back to him – a pointless life’s work but one that is completely harmless. But in the end it is made hazardous by the interest from the media, the personal cost to Bartlebooth with blindness and the almost bitter battle he plays out against Winckler who puts traps into the puzzles with the way he shapes the pieces. There are a hundred plus stories that run alongside this one but ultimately it is the Bartlebooth story you remember and it is with his death that the book concludes.

IS it well written?
You will probably struggle to find a book that is similar to this in ambition and style. It is brilliant at weaving a web that maintains the interest and continues to show what life is like in Paris and how it has changed. In a way this is a psychological battle over a jigsaw, a social history of Paris and a series of tales that are of differing interest. But it is never dull and you have to credit Perec with a style that keeps it going. Part of the reason it does keep going is because unlike Proust, who is equally ambitions in using objects to describe an era or a person, Perec reels off long lists of paintings and books but in a very detached way that allows the reader to walk through the apartment block almost like a museum or in some ways as a ghost travelling between the past and the present.

Should it be read?
This should be tackled by anyone who wants to see what French literature had to say for itself in the 1960s and 70s. There is a hint of the heavy war time legacy with a couple of characters having wartime obsessions but most of the book illustrates a society that is class ridden, based on money as well as heritage, and although living in a community still deeply individualistic. From a budding writer point of view it shows how far you can push a style, from a reader’s point of view makes you dwell on the thin line between a tale and real experience and from a sociologist point of view provides a great idea of the differences between people living all within a few metres of each other.

Summary
A society is shown through the world of an apartment block with the puzzle of life never quite being solved

Version read – Harvill paperback

Lunchtime read part II: The Big Sleep

"What did it matter where you lay once you wee dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell."

The book ends with Marlowe in devastating form ripping apart any attempts to stop him spelling out the truth. You wait for this moment for 215 pages and when it comes it is well worth waiting for.

Highlights from chapters XXXI and XXXII

* Marlowe stops after getting his commission from the general to find Rusty and talks to Carmen the younger crazier daughter and she asks him to teach her to shoot after he hands her back her gun he picked up when she fired at Brody

* She directs him out to a remote abandoned farm and oil works and Marlowe wanders off 30 years to set up the target but as he gets within 10 feet of her she starts shooting at him and falls into an unconscious fit after he manages to grab her

* He takes her home and then confronts her sister Vivian and tells her what he thinks has been happening – that Carmen shot Regan and she had to pay Eddie Mars $15,000 to hush it up but in turn Mars was going to blackmail her out of her fortune – and then tells her that he filled the gun with blanks and that’s why he has come back unlike Regan

* She admits it and Marlowe demands that she takes her sister away to get cured from her condition but threatens to spill the beans if she has not left town in three days and then despite the likely trouble he decides to head out and tell Eddie Mars its all off

A full review probably on Sunday…

Lunchtime read: The Big Sleep

The book reaches its conclusion and in a way The Big Sleep has been two books with the blackmailing Geiger story the first part and then the hunt for Rusty Regan the second. The Regan story is darker than the first and is personally more dangerous for Marlowe and takes you into contact with contract killers, bent policemen and the seedier side of what money can do as a corruptible force.

Highlights between chapters XXVI to XXX

* Marlowe decides to follow up on the lead to Agnes who knows where Eddie Mars’s wife is hiding out but he is too late and the man he arranged to meet has been poisoned with cyanide

* Marlowe takes a call in his office and Agnes arranges to meet and she tells him the details and Marlowe heads off to find her and after getting two punctures meets the poisioner hanging out in a garage

* Before he knows it Marlowe has been knocked out and tied up but the mistake they make is to leave him with Eddie Mars’s wife who lets Marlowe escape but all he does is wait outside and then put four bullets into the man who kept him prisoner

* He goes to the police but doesn’t get thanked for it and then he has an appointment with the general who asks him why he chose to try to go after Regan when he had not been instructed to

* Marlowe explains that he had a hunch that’s what the general wanted and when he explains he is now backing off the old man offers him $1,000 to track Regan down and sends him on his way

Might try to squeeze the final bit in tonight or tomorrow…

Life A User's Manual - post VIII

Hurrah it's only been a week and a half but at last a book gets completed.

All of a sudden – and there is not too much space left anyway – the Bartlebooth story starts to dominate and the anecdotes start to lean in onto the development of that core story.

By this stage of the book you start to value the style, which is best described as a detached Proust, his gaze never misses anything but there is not the emotional involvement with it and you can go from a story about a triple murder to something about a hotel chain without barely pausing for breath.

The ending comes and you are left wanting more - more of the stories of the people who lived in the apartment block and more of the tales that its objects inspire.

Bullet points between pages 410 – 500

* The story of Helene Borodin is told with her deciding to seek her own form of justice by tracking down her husband’s killers and snuffing them out one by one before heading back to France from America

* Then there is a long-winded description of how two hotel groups signed a strategic deal to try and compete with the growing number of multinational competitors by setting up the most exclusive hotels in the world

* Along with providing guests unique experiences like their own ski slopes the hotel chain plans to offer some of the most unique art and after hiring a well known critic Beyssandre and gives him five years to find the most famous art

* He reads about the Bartlebooth painting, jigsaw making, puzzle solving and then destruction and decides that those pictures would be the most unique in the world and after writing to Bartlebooth indicates he is prepared to start killing to get his hands on the pictures

* Just as it seems that the pictures will have to be destroyed in another way the hotel chain folds and nothing more is heard of the critic and Bartlebooth can return to his struggle to finish the puzzles

* There is then a tale of the young Reol family who are almost bankrupted by their desire to have a luxurious bedroom suite but just as it seems to be black things are saved; then there is the tale of the man who believes Hitler is alive; and a final mention of Hutting the painter

* But the book closes with Bartlebooth dying with Winckler’s final twist in his hand, a jigsaw piece that should be an X shape which is fact shaped as a W with him gone his old water colour teacher also dies and his servant disappears bringing to an end one of the main characters of the apartment block

As things reach their conclusion with Bartlebooth there is an incredibly powerful reminder that this entire book has been describing real time of just a few minutes and as an achievement this book is an incredible one

A review will follow over the weekend…

Lunchtime read: The Big Sleep

The loneliness that Sara Patesky wrote about in her article in the Saturday is all too evident as Marlowe sits in his office and wonders what he will do with his time. Luckily for him the phone rings to break the monotony.

Highlights from chapters XXI to XXV

* The Sherwood’s butler contacts Marlowe to tell him that having read newspaper reports about the murderers being found they assume the case is closed and will pay $500 for the trouble the detective has gone to

* Marlowe starts to become increasingly interested in what did happen to Rusty Regan so heads out to see Eddie Mars at his night club and gambling joint to find out what he knows

* Mars coughs up almost no information but Rusty’s ex-wife is gambling for high stakes and Marlowe goes through to watch her and is then on hand to protect her when a stick up man tries to get the money back she has won for the casino

* She melts in Marlowe’s arms but he continues to ask her what Eddie Mar’s has on her and so she demands he drives her home and she runs into the general’s mansion and closes the door

* The next encounter is with the younger sister Carmen who is waiting for Marlowe in his bed naked and the detective slings her out and then destroys the bed she lay on because it soils his living area

* Next is an encounter with someone who has been tailing Marlowe for two days a man who finally gets the courage to come and lay out his business which involves leading Marlowe to Mrs Mars who was meant to have fled with Rusty but in fact never managed to do so because the bootlegger had been killed by Mars

More tomorrow…

Life A User's Manual - post VII

There is an amazing capacity to go deeply into what you might see as odd tangents. For instance a boy reading a magazine about an adventurer in Egypt is focused on and the entire story is relayed. Likewise the entire history of people and the stories in paintings and maps is told in full.

Bullet points between pages 366 – 410

* The story of the ex resident who became a famous cyclist who rode the tour de France is told including what happened to him after he finished racing he becomes a pace setter and after a while becomes jealous of his protégé and takes him on a time trial that ends in a crash and disfigurement

* The disfigured cyclist asks for the pacesetters sisters hand in marriage and after getting it they last a few months before she runs away and he goes to South America where he becomes rich, pays for surgery and comes back for his true love

* You get the entire story of an Arabic speaking Frenchman who is sent by napoleon I to get a pact with the Barbary leader as a result of a boy who is reading about it in a magazine on the stairs while he waits for5 his grandfather a piano tuner

* Bartlebooth goes blind making his jigsaws and has to hire help to explain to him what the pieces are shaped like and what they depict

* Then there is the story told of a judge and his wife who steal for the sexual excitement it causes who are eventually caught and as a result sent to prison and their flat is inherited by the butler

More tomorrow…

Reading for different countries

There was a great article in the weekend FT magazine recommending different books based on countries. I’m heading off to Switzerland for my holiday so according to the FT the book that should be in my luggage is Imposture by Ben Markovits. Ironically it is by an American author and the subject is Byron’s doctor but there must be enough of a Swiss connection to link it in with the country.

On the lunchtime read front it has been a disaster these past couple of days and so the hope (and it is probably vain) is that I can get back on track tomorrow and finish The Big Sleep this week.

I’m attending a business dinner tonight but there will be a Life A User’s Manual post it just might not quite make the midnight cut-off…

A conspiracy theory

Sometimes it feels as if there is almost a conspiracy against you reading. The most valuable commodity when you are trying to read a book is time but with emails, phone calls and Blackberry’s there is rarely a chance to get the peace and quiet needed just to read a few pages.

It is getting harder and harder to find space in the day to read and that is a real worry because if that goes then a reality check disappears and a chance to switch off from the drudgery of the day is lost. I’d be tempted to go one further and mention that there is almost a conspiracy to stop you getting the time to blog. People talk about blogs etc all being a generational thing but it has nothing to do with age and is all about time. Right now I am sitting here tapping this out while the wife stares daggers and wonders why I haven’t tidied up the kitchen. I never got that sort of grief when I was 15…

Life A User's Manual - post VI

A better day on the Life A User’s Manual front but still not as much consumed, as I would have liked. The best thing to do is to pick out a couple of stories although there is again a slight advance in the Bartlebooth story that seems to link in with most of the other main characters.

Bullet points between pages 266 – 338

* There are some moments which would be perfect as a way of showing someone not reading this book what it was like and the collection of things that have been found on the stairs shows the exhaustive imagination that is being deployed here

* As usual there are some stories that stand out with the painter Hutting using a colour palette based on price as one story that sticks in the mind along with the German scientist who tried to recapture the spirit of the experiments he made during the war another

* But it is with a sense of reassurance as you get back to the more solid platforms of some of the stable characters of Madame Moureau and Bartlebooth and you hear about her disagreements over the development of her kitchen and start to learn more about his problems with jigsaws

* Setting himself the task of completing a jigsaw every two weeks starts to become harder not just because of age and boredom but because Winckler the maker of the puzzles views each of the 750 piece puzzles as connected to one large puzzle

* He makes the challenge for Bartlebooth difficult because he sets booby traps that are not sprung until several puzzles have gone by and puts shapes and inconsistencies into the shapes of the pieces that remind the rich Englishman who is really in control

More tomorrow…

An apology about the evening post

Against the grain a bit, there is not going to be an evening post about the book I’m reading on my commute for the simple reason that the amount of pages I managed to read make it hardly worthwhile. On both legs of my journey I had the pleasant experience of sitting with friends and as a result the book stayed on the lap unopened. I intend catching up tomorrow with a good day’s reading.

Needless to say there will be more of the usual from Life A User’s Manual with a collection of observations and stories that are changing almost as often as you turn the page so the best way of reporting on the days reading is to highlight a couple of the enjoyable episodes that are shared as the eye of the author moves from room to room and flat to flat.

Apologies for today’s failure but normal service will resume tomorrow…

Delayed weekend paper highlights

A couple of interesting pieces in The Guardian at the weekend, which are worth mentioning. The first, an interview with Gunter Grass, was part of the author’s media blitz to try and promote his autobiography Peeling the Onion but it contained one insight into the art of biography that others, particularly celebrities would be wise to ponder:

“There are some authors who think they have to write their autobiography at the age of 30. I had to be 80.”

“Writers know that sometimes things are there in the drawer for decades before they finally come out and you are capable of writing about them.”

The other article that was enjoyable, partly because of the current reading of Chandler, was a piece by American crime author Sara Paretsky. She argued that there had always been a mythical appreciation of the strong loner in America and Chandler along with Dashiell Hammett were able to deliver great models of that character in their books.

“Chandler thought of Marlowe as a knight. Like all romantic knights marlow takes justice into his own hands. We ordinary people trust knights because they are working on the side of right against people who may be perverting the law.”

But she comments on the price these hard boiled detectives pay for being the lone crime fighters and Marlowe, Chandler’s most famous creation is no exception:

“When I revisit Chandler’s novels, Marlowe’s loneliness stands out in a physically painful way. Except for an occasional chess game with someone in the police department, he is alone all the time.”

Lunchtime read: The Big Sleep

There is a break of sorts in this book when one side of the case is solved and on his own initiative Marlowe sets off to solve the other nagging questions surrounding the disappearance of Regan the Irish bootlegger married to one of the Sherwood daughters. That has been the case everyone thought he was on and he now embarks on it of his own volition.

Highlights from chapters XVII to XX

* Having watched Geiger’s gay lover shoot down Brody Marlowe takes him back to the house and there has to calm the man down with a couple of punches and some hand cuffs before discovering the body of Geiger has been replaced in the house

* Marlowe calls up his friend in the DA’s office and gets him to come down and clear up the mess, which involves handing the details of Geiger’s killer and Brody’s to a rather bemused and ungrateful police officer

* Having nailed those two crimes the next twist focuses on Regan the Irish bootlegging husband of one of General Sherwood’s daughters and so Marlowe calls on missing persons who reveal that the suspicion is that the Irishman ran off with the wife of a nightclub owner Eddie Mars, who incidentally owned the house Geiger lived in

Armed with that information no doubt Marlowe will now go off and do what the police have failed to be able to and find the missing Irishman. More tomorrow…