This marks a full year since my investing in Audible, and three months since I last wrote of what books I had finished through that service. The list this time around might feel somewhat paltry, as I only completed four books. Here they are and the year when I last read each.
Beau Geste, P.C. Wren — never
Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian Barbarian, Robert E. Howard — never
Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackery — never
The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, Douglass Wallop — 1977
Two of these are very long books. Vanity Fair is 400,000 words, while the Conan series, which included every story about Conan that Howard had written before fatally shooting himself after his mother's death, includes more than two dozen works, most of which are of novella length, plus one novel of 77,000 words. Altogether, measuring how long the audio book against Vanity Fair, I'd guess this was 500,000 words. Thus, less books read, not less time spent reading.
What can I say about Conan? It's a slog. Howard repeats many of his similes and idioms, almost to the point where they can be predicted once enough content is read. In many cases, I could not help losing the context of the story, as Howard is very concerned with describing the hallways and stairwells and rooms that are run through, until it becomes each becomes a pastiche of the one before. This is disorienting. The character is unquestionably compelling, however, and given the time when he's written, utterly unique and the model for many fantasy characters written after. But one doesn't come away from the compendium feeling enlightened or refreshed; there's nothing left to think about when the story is over. It is merely a story, filling a given day and then meant to be lightly discarded, without concern. I can testify that I was fairly punchy at the end. I'd recommend not reading the whole collection back to back, but buying the book and then picking up one of the novellas once a month.
Most, I would imagine, have never heard of the book, The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant. It was written in 1954, and "wallop" seems to have been the author's real name, though it's a rather funny surname for a book about baseball. I found the book in my junior high school library when I was in grade 7 or 8, and I think would have read it twice. It is the source of the musical, Damn Yankees, which deviates considerably from the original, though the screenplay was adapted from Wallop from his own book. I wanted something light to read after Vanity Fair, and found it by going through lists of books on wikipedia's literature list, year by year. I was very surprised to find it listed in Audible. And it was free. So was Vanity Fair and Beau Geste, as it happens, so I haven't paid for a book in the service since Conan, and have now racked up four credits, by not using the one's I have paid for (if you're an Audible user).
It was light, fun, written at a time when it looked like the Yankees would never lose a pennant again. I has a very different vibe from the musical, which completely discards the book's point — that something gotten easily must come at the expense of someone else. This makes an interesting commentary on the Faustian tale, as the main character, having gotten what he wants from the Devil, finds it wounds the lives of those around him. But the book doesn't sustain this theme well; it just isn't ready to be serious about it, and too soon the theme is discarded.
Beau Geste was an enormous surprise. It was a phenomenon when it was released in 1923; the book was transferred to screen three times, plus a satire directed and starred in by Marty Feldman, which I saw in the theatre. The one movie I haven't seen is the silent version with Ronald Coleman, but I can attest that the others are not the book. They have elements from the book, but they cherry picked... and so, as I came through the book initially, it was a lot of, "What the hell is all this...?"
That said, if one has the patience, it's an excellent adventure, and the last third of the book is a nailbiter. Astoundingly, as near as I remember, though published five years after the war, and taking place in or around the ten years before 1920, and being a book about the military, there's no reference to the 1st World War. There is a reference to being a cinema star, so that's rather odd. It is tragic, it is very British, and much of the book is composed around two mysteries, which take a great deal of time to sort out. I don't like mystery novels, but as both mysteries end up being explained so adroitly, I was able to forgive the endless question asking (which is why I hate a mystery story) for the benefit of the solution. The last five pages are simply delightful.
And now, at last, Vanity Fair. This book pays no attention whatsoever to Chekhov's gun, nor should it have. It argues vociferously that life is not made up of things that matter, but rather of things that infringe on happiness, nearly always unfairly, and made vastly worse by the pursuit of one's own self-importance. This last drives an exhaustive accounting of rather pleasant people doing unspeakable things to themselves and to others for the sake of their appearance and self-perceived accomplishments. It is brutally rich in passive, righteous micro-cruelties and long-suffering miseries that last because of all the crosses available for all the characters to climb up upon.
But... the book is very funny throughout. Thackery makes no pretense that the storytelling is sacred and breaks "the fourth wall" to comment on his own characters in Vonneguttian fashion, which is an absolute delight — especially for a writer. It is very long but never difficult to read, there are many characters but for the most part they are easy to remember (except that Thackery has a habit of using three or four different names to describe the same character). The length of the novel truly establishes the amount of time that has past, so that as the characters in it experience moments of nostalgia about their youth, as we were there also, we feel the same nostalgia because it happened so long ago in the text. Vanity Fair is unquestionably the best book I've read in this last year, with the possible exception of Pride and Prejudice. It puts all the themes of the Great Gatsby to shame, as that latter book more or less attempts to discuss Vanity also, but in a more childish way. Still, we can't ask high school students to read a book which would probably take them all year. Took me 39 days.
So.
Re-reading Dracula, now. I'll write the next of these come the end of November.
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