Lunchtime read: For Esme with Love and Squalor and other stories

The theme is Seymour again but this time the suicide is dealt with head-on with the holiday in Florida, which was mentioned in Seymour: an Introduction being the location for the final hours of a disturbed but obviously talented man.

There is no sense of impending doom in this story at all so the ending takes you by surprise and it is hard not to come to the conclusion – shared by the mother-in-law – that Seymour is unhinged.

A Perfect Day For Bananafish

* Muriel, Seymour’s wife, is in the hotel and makes a long distance call to New York and tells her mother that Seymour is acting reasonably normally but the mother is alarmed and argues that he should never have been let of hospital by the army

* Muriel defends her husband but there have obviously been issues around the grandmother and suggestions Seymour has made around her funeral arrangements and something to so with trees

* Meanwhile Seymour is on the beach and then plays with a little girl as they go into the water searching for bananafish but at the end when he kisses her foot as she plays the imaginary game you sense there is a bridge he cannot cross

* He then walks back into the hotel embarrasses a woman he accuses of looking at his feet in the lift walks into his room and gets his gun and then lies on the twin bed next to Muriel and blows his brains out

Where this collection of stories can go from there is hard to guess but there will be more tomorrow…

The Reprieve - post VI

The book comes to an end with the mixture of different stories being told in succession carrying onto the last page. The difference compared to the beginning is that by now you see the method in the madness and the juxtaposition between events with a brilliant contrast between Ivich being violated by her lover and Czechoslovakia being let down by France and England.

There is also a mixture of relief and disappointment when it appears that the Munich agreement has heralded peace and not war. Half of the characters are still being mobilized when the announcement is made and the book ends with a feeling of limbo.

Bullet points between pages 348 – 377

* Everyone is waiting for a statement by the French leader Daladier that most expect will be an announcement of war and it is with a sense of resignation that some of the major characters make decisions that they could regret with Ivich giving herself to a man and Boris joining up for three years

* However as the announcement arrives Daladier explains that he is flying the next day to see Hitler with Chamberlain and so he has nothing to announce - a move that starts to dispel some of the tension

* Mathieu sits on a train going towards the barracks and planes fly overhead leading some aboard to believe that they are German and war has been declared but when they arrive at the station they are told the news from Munich

* The French and British faced with war to defend Czechoslovakia back down and let their ally down and in a scene of anger and disappointment the Czech government understands it is on its own

* Back in Prague the news is met with anger but in France there are crowds waiting to meet Daladier as he flies back into the capital celebrating what they believe is a peaceful end to the confrontation with Hitler

“Daladier stood on the top step, and looked at them dumfounded. Then he turned to Leger and said between his teeth:
‘The blind fools!’”

A review will follow in the next couple of days…

the week ahead

Having posted a week ahead plan last week, which served as both a target and a reminder, it seemed like a good idea to do it again. Plus it is a graphical way of getting the taste buds going.

On the review front the aim will be to post a review of J.D Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters Seymour: an Introduction which was last week's lunchtime read.


Also by either the end of tonight or tomorrow Jean-Paul Sartre's The Reprieve should have been finished and ready for the review treatment.


That leaves next week to look forward to and keeping with Salinger the lunchtime read will be another short story collection For Esme - with Love and Squalor and other stories.


The main read during the daily commute will be the final part of the the Roads to Freedom trilogy by Sartre Iron in the Soul which should update the story and bring it to some sort of conclusion.


That's the plan anyway...

book of books - Goodbye to Berlin

When this book by Christopher Isherwood starts you can’t help felling its some sort of travel journal come diary written by someone who is hanging around Berlin teaching English until they can make it as a writer and go back to England. But as the book goes on it has a deceptive edge to it that becomes heart breaking at the end as a City, country and people is consumed by Nazism.

For those historians that wonder how Hitler managed to appeal to a large number of the population this gives a slight insight into the fickle nature of people, the desperation of the poor and the willingness for people to accept the status quo.

Plot summary
Christopher is a writer who has had one book published, which he confesses sold only five copies, who is teaching English in Berlin and making friends along the way. He tells the story of a couple of years in the German capital at the start of Hitler’s reign through a series of stories that link and roughly follow in consecutive order. The characters he meets illustrate the poverty the German’s find themselves in after the slump, the sort of people (aggressive loners) who are in the vanguard of the brown shirt movement and the ignorance of many people about the looming danger. He leaves Berlin when the city is daubed in swastikas and Nazi flags and the change in the city and the people he knew is starting to make it an unsavoury place to live. He can show the reader just how things have changed by reflecting them back on the characters and the locations.

Is it well written?
It is subtle in its power and authority and it manages to slowly turn itself from a journal into a historical statement. But it never feels like that is going to happen from the start it seems like a genuine reaction to events and that makes it more powerful. Some of the characters you discover become early victims of the Nazi anti-Semitic policies with Bernhard the man Christopher befriends who is the nephew of a Jewish department store owner being killed. The various different characters, ranging from a social gadfly from England who sleeps her way through the city, a homosexual who becomes obsessed with a German named Otto and Christopher’s various landlady’s all represent different social positions and political views and the book is made richer by the author’s movement through various different situations.

Should it be read?
The simple answer is that it should because if history repeats itself then it is best to be aware of just what can happen to a people when they are put under economic strain, exposed to extreme politics and largely react with indifference. It is an easy book to get through and although you sometimes want Christopher to become more than just an observer you are grateful he can remain objective. For history lovers, those who like the diary style and anyone looking for a book describing the end of an era this is a perfect read. I particularly like the end of the era feel to it because just like some of the great Russian revolutionary literature it is the political background that drives the story and defines the characters.

There is one other point that is still haunting me. When the Nazi’s sat down and dreamt up the horror of the final solution it was in a Wannsee villa that they had taken over from the Jews. In the book Christopher is invited out to a villa in the same location by Bernhard the rich retailer. You can’t help but feel it might have been the same place and the bitter irony of the lonely detached Bernhard having his villa, where he entertained, being used as a venue for such a gruesome discussion.

Summary
A tale of how a people allowed themselves to sleep walk into a Nazi regime that started killing from the start

Version read – penguin paperback

bookmark of the week

With all this Sartre it seemed apt to dig out a bookmark that was purchased in a castle in Britanny. Don't ask for a translation I've no idea but it looks good.

Lunchtime read: Seymour: an Introduction

After an odd an uneasy start the penny finally drops and you start to understand that this is a book that the author is finding very hard to write about a brother that he idolised and the rest of the family looked up to. The weight of trying to come up with a suitable tribute is crushing and you start to see the pain of the exercise:

"I said I'd finish this, but I'm not going to make it after all. Not because I'm not a proper iron man but because to finish it right I'd have to touch on - my God, touch on - the details of his suicide, and I don't expect to be ready to do that, at the rate I'm going, for several more years."

Highlights from the final third of Seymour: an Introduction

* Buddy describes how his brother was his greatest critic but also a friendly voice of encouragement and he prints a memo his brother sent after he had written his first major piece of writing

* Then he stumbles around the area of revealing what his brother looked like and he admits he cannot do that easily and gets frustrated and calls on the reader to be satisfied with the information he has been able to provide

* He tries as best he can to describe the eyes, nose and dress sense but where he manages to get a bit more colour is round his brother’s love of sports but throughout he never manages to describe Seymour as an older man preferring the safety of their youth

A review will follow shortly…

weekend paper round-up

If there is a theme to the coverage in today’s papers then it is about versions of books with some disagreements about the concept of cutting them down and printing draft versions.

David Lister uses his arts column in The Independent to have a crack at Orion Publishing, which is launching its compact editions of classics. Lister describes the whole idea as arrogant: “I wish the scheme as much failure as it is possible to have. It takes a certain sort of arrogance to mess with these texts and make massive cuts.”

One of the obvious candidates for cuts would be War & Peace and in The Times there is a story about the controversy between rival publishers as the original draft version of the book is published. The graphics on the front cover apparently are not too many miles away from the current Penguin classics version.

The Guardian review section ponders on what the biographers will make of a politician who has so far been hard to pin down in print. “What makes Tony Blair tick..has always been elusive.” No doubt the biographers will never be able to match the advance or the sales figures of Blair himself ever decides to pen his memoirs. Remember the Thatcher books? And people wonder why most of us think politics is boring – just try reading about the politicians.

The Reprieve - post V

Just as it seems like war is inevitable it looks like Hitler might back down but the wheels are in motion and the characters move to take up their places in the event of a war. In a flood the old characters come back to the centre of the story and Mathieu gets more attention than he has nearly all of the book and Ivich reappears and Boris and Daniel share their thoughts with the wrong audience.

Bullet points between pages 288 – 348

* Mathieu returns to his Paris flat and cannot sleep sp heads out to visit some old haunts and take a mental picture of the city for what he expects could be the last time but before heads out his landlady hands him a letter from Daniel which he pockets rather than reads

* Boris confides to Lola that he is not sure if he will be frightened by war and that concerns him but she only thinks of herself so he resolves to join up and put an end to his doubts and heads for the recruitment office

* Philippe the pacifist is noticed in a bar with the prostitute he picked up by the secretary of the pacifist editor the boy has fallen under the influence of and so she resolves to follow him and watches as Philippe is beaten up for calling an end to the war

* Mathieu pretends to be a policeman and steps into save Philippe and then helps the secretary Irene put him into a cab but she stops and asks for his help because the young man is trying to escape

* They take him to her flat and put him to bed and then in the most emotionally intense scene yet Mathieu and Irene share the night together and although when they wake Philippe is gone she agrees to see him off at the station that night when he leaves

* Ivich meanwhile has just about had enough of being cut off in the country and after her father welcomes the German aggression and comments that soon they will be able to return to Russia she storms out and heads for Paris

* Once back in the capital she heads for Mathieu’s flat and he meets her and tells her she can stay there but he seems to have gone past the point of having any thoughts for her of love and lust and leaves her to go to the station and there he says goodbye to Irene

* Philippe goes to the police and tries to get himself made a martyr for peace but all they do is phone his father and ask him to come and pick him up

The final thirty pages will come at some point this weekend…

Lunchtime read: Seymour: an Introduction

Accepting defeat this book is not going to be finished today and so the second third has been read rather than the second half and the enbd will have to come tomorrow. After a rather mixed start you still feel like shouting to the writer "get on with it" and begging him to cut to the chase.

highlights from the second third of Seymour: an Introduction
* Buddy explains that his brother Seymour loved Japanese and Chinese poetry and he has a collection of his brother's poems that the family is pressuring him to print and potentially make public

* He describes the frustration his failure to print the poems has caused and also shares some of his life story describing himself as a virtual recluse teaching english to students and writing in a home near the Canadian border

* Then he sketches some of the family history with the mother and father orginally being musical hall stars who finally settled down when they had several children and the father got a job in radio

The final third comes tomorrow...

The Reprieve - post IV

The war continues to loom large and as France reacts to its pledges with Czechoslovakia and as a result calls up its reservists the tension spreads far and wide. Almost no one is left untouched by the feeling of apprehension with bar owners questioning when to shut up shop and relationships between men, women and parents and children getting seperated.

Bullet points between pages 180 - 285

* Lola and Boris find themselves in an emptying hotel as guests fearful of war head home and leave the two together with Boris being particularly loving towards Lola because he has decided that the relationship will all be over in a year

* Using a butterfly approach the story lingers on Charles and the rest of the evacuated hospital patients as they get loaded onto a train and head away from an area that is going to be on the front line

* On the way Charles makes friends with a woman lying next to him and he starts to struggle when he needs to carry out natural functions and keeps his pride intact not wanting to use the bed pan in front of her

* On the political stage the French are on their way to see the British government and the Czechs again make a plea for resistance against Germany commenting that they refuse to be enslaved by another country

* Gomez heads off to see Mathieu who has yet to report to the army but most of the other characters are in transit heading to their respective singing on points and Boris is still stuck in his thinking about age and wondering what the war will cost him in terms of missed opportunities and lifespan

* Boris works out how many omelettes he will eat and drinks he will consume before being killed believing that he was born to die young in war

* The evening is dominated by Hitler making a speech in which he harangues the Czech government and calls for rights for Germans living outside the mother country and ends up giving an ultimatum that unless the Czech’s back down it will be war

* All of the characters listen, except Phillipe who has been kept in a room by a prostitute he slept with and the crescendo of the speech is reflected in the reactions of different characters among them Mathieu who is finally on his way to report for duty

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: Seymour: an Introduction

It’s great to see writers try different things but for me the introduction to this story just doesn’t quite work. Being addressed to the reader all the time and told what the writer is trying to do is slightly tiresome after four or five pages. Even when the story proper starts and the narrative concentrates on Seymour it is told in such a way that you start yearning for a more accessible style.

Highlights from the first half of Seymour: an Introduction

* A couple of quotes from Kafka and Kierkegaard start an introduction about writing, seeing and unsuitability as the narrator explains that he is the same character Buddy, from the first story, and he feels almost uncomfortable writing about his brother

* The first fact you find out about Seymour is that he committed suicide while on holiday with his wife in Florida at the age of 31

* After that you are keen to hear why he did it and what led him to go from the married man described in Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters but because there has to be an assumption that you are fresh to this story you get the potted history of Seymour as a child radio star

Hopefully in the second half the story will develop and the style will settle down. More tomorrow…

The Reprieve - post III

If you imagine something like War & Peace but with all of the characters talking all at once you get a flavour of what Sartre seems to have aimed at trying to do. You get several pages where the story starts to focus on one character and develops then almost like channel hopping the story skips rapidly across several locations.

Although it remains a real task to concentrate and there is always a temptation to try to filter out who you think you have to invest in emotionally on the character front and although that is starting to come a bit clearer Sartre keeps throwing more people into the mix.

Bullet points between pages 110 – 180

* Daniel is fighting with himself to suppress his homosexuality but you get the sense it might well be a battle he loses because the marriage to Marcelle doesn’t seem to be doing him any good

* Several characters start their transit as a result of the call-up with Hannequin leaving his wife at the station after boarding a train; Maurice who spends a final night with his partner Zezette; and Pierre who is travelling back from Africa to Marseille infatuated with a singer come prostitute

* Philippe a young man under the influence of a pacifist runs away from home and pays to get false documents that will allow him to escape to Switzerland and before he goes he gets a bitter taste of the true feelings of the workers he has idealised

* Gros-Louis searches for friendship in Marseille and ends up being mugged for his trouble then when he manages to talk to someone about work he is told that he has to go an report for duty otherwise will be classed as a deserter

Meanwhile there has not been much about Mathieu or some of the other mainstays from The Age of Reason and with all of these numerous storylines running alongside each other it will be interesting to see how they develop with some - Philippe and Maurice - actually crossing over and meeting each other.

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

Having read Catcher in the Rye there are similarities with Buddy taking a very dim view of most of the people around him and only really having a warm felling for his family. There isn’t the same aggression as there is with the main character in Catcher but that is more because you feel Buddy is more of an observer and it is not directly involving his life.

Highlights from the second half of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

* The wedding guests are grumpy and hot and Seymour’s brother Buddy invites them back to his apartment which has air conditioning and the attraction of a drink

* In the apartment the guests pick over photographs and again insult the absent Seymour even though Buddy has shown hospitality to them an offered them the use of the phone to call the bride’s family

* He seeks refuge in the bathroom and reads his brother’s diary and spots a message his sister has left with the quote ‘Raise the Roof Beam, Carpenters’ encouraging her brother to get married

* The diary reveals that Seymour is having difficulty reconciling himself with the idea of getting married to someone and sharing himself and his happiness and although the diary reveals doubts it does not include an intention to break off the relationship

* After leaving the bathroom the maid of honour comes off the phone and reveals that Seymour and the Bride have eloped and the reception is going ahead with relief all round

* Returning back to the diary Buddy reads his brother’s wish to elope and then falls asleep and wakes to find just a cigar end and a drinks tray as evidence that anyone was there at all

Tomorrow I’ll start on the other story – Seymour: an Introduction

The Reprieve - post II

The tension starts to mount as the Czech government mobilises its forces, a move that Hitler takes as evidence of provocation, and across France army reservists are called up shaking those who thought it might never happen out of their slumbers. But for some it is not enough and the French are still cowards, whereas for others it is all too much, particularly those who fought in the First World War. The lucky ones die before they realise that conflict has failed to secure peace.

“…and in that one moment – war – war that Pierre dreaded, Boris accepted, and Daniel welcomed, would enter clad in steel, the great stand-up war, the white men’s crazy war.”

Bullet points between pages 50 - 110

* As Chamberlain waits to meet with Hitler the Czech government takes decisive action and mobilizes its forces against the threat of German aggression - a move that Hitler implies proves his point about the aggression towards the Sudetenland German community

* The characters in that country welcome the move but a similar attempt to mobilize reserves in France is greeted with a more mixed outcome with some of the characters feeling numb – Mathieu - and others are scared

* Mathieu is waiting for a visit from Gomez who has been serving with the army in Spain and receives a letter from Boris who is enjoying a holiday with Lola before he has to set off and report for duty

* Elsewhere men are getting ready to say farewell to loved ones and head off to report and Sartre manages to convey a mood of anticipation and fear from numerous characters all in a confusingly short space of time

* A nurse sits with an old first world war solider who has died before discovering his efforts in 1914 to secure peace were to no avail, while others who experienced that conflict get ready for separation, mutilation and even death

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

This book has two stories so they will be dealt with in half chunks over the next four working days.

Highlights from the first half of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

* A large family with numerous children is described in the year 1942 with the eldest son Seymour apparently getting married in new York according to one of his sisters who informs the brother narrator that he has to attend on behalf of the family

* The brother duly turns up for the wedding but there is no sign of Seymour and the bride is in floods of tears as after an hour plus the ceremony is called off and everyone heads back to the bride’s family apartment

* Seymour’s brother sits in the car with an aggressive maid of honour who finally tumbles who he is but not before she reveals that the groom had doubts because he was ‘too happy’ to get married and that he called it off the night before

* The brother abandons the car with the maid of honour but seems in two minds what to do next

More tomorrow…