Evelyn Waugh - Decline and Fall

Rating 7.5

Decline and Fall is the sort of merciless social satire about Oxford and its elitist characters I expected to find when I bought Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm.

Whereas the latter left me utterly disappointed - to the point I left that book half-read - this novel turned out to be far more brilliant than I thought.

It's funny to notice how Mr. Beerbohm was chiefly a caricaturist who toyed with literature while young Evelyn Waugh was exactly the opposite.
And I believe both men made the right choice in sticking to what they did best later in their life.

Decline and Fall was published in 1928 as an 'illustrated novelette', but Waugh's sparse cartoons are amateurish and clumsy when compared to his brilliant flourished words.
In fact, among the novelists I have been reading, only the Swiss author Friedrich Durrenmatt had a worse inclination to figurative art than Waugh did.

So much for Evelyn Waugh's early aborted career as an awful cartoonist.
Shall we focus on his writing? Oh yes, indeed!

Mind you, this novel is the very first that Waugh published and it is better than a household name of British humour like P.G. Wodehouse in my humble opinion.

Am I partial to Mr. Waugh?
Well, to be honest, I don't think I am. And let me tell you why.

This guy (pictured on the left wearing a top hat worthy of Churchill) was a conservative at heart, a converted Roman Catholic and an incurable reactionary.
Had he lived in these years, Evelyn Waugh would have probably had his weekly column in The Times or The Telegraph attacking the UE and flirting with the UKIP.
I hardly doubt his harangues would have spared harsh words on Eastern and Southern European immigrants alike invading the UK.
Had we met in person, Mr. Waugh would have probably been condescending in talking to me, found my English pronunciation disgraceful and my social manners uncouth.

But still, I'm not bitter about him. Not a bit.
No hard feelings, Evelyn.

True, Mr. Waugh changed and developed his writing style quite a lot, but the joyous, sadistic pleasure that you can find in this early novel of his is unsurpassed in his later - and more accomplished - works. 
After all, this is the same author who delivered novels such as A Handful of Dust,Brideshead Revisited and Scoop which are staple food for many an English literature fan. And yet, all those books were just too perfect to blow me away completely.



Decline and Fall might be a juvenile work, but it does have power, anarchy, courage.
What I'm trying to say is that this novel is spontaneous and authentic to the point that you can easily imagine its author giggling at his own jokes and making fun of its own characters.

The downside of this novel is that there is plenty of racism in it. Which is hardly surprising thinking that Waugh is the same guy who entitled one of his novels Black Mischief.

Actually, if you are a black person, an Italian, a Frenchman, a Welshman or have Jewish heritage chances are you will be either deeply offended or bitterly amused by this book.
And if you're a woman things won't improve that much. Female characters here are pompous matrons, coquettish posh bitches and prostitutes (Waugh plays the prudish by calling them 'entertainers').

But then again Waugh here is pitiless in his scorn for everyone and every social class, from aristocracy to the bourgeoisie passing through Bauhaus-inspired architects, butlers, schoolmasters and pub-owners.
If there is one thing Mr Waugh is excellent at it's in despising people and the way he does that is terribly funny.

Decline and Fall is a 'Candide Revisited' without the wit of Voltaire, but with much more enjoyable cruelty. Waugh didn't need to stage the Lisbon earthquake to raze to the ground the times he lived in.

Dave Eggers - A Hologram for the King

Rating 6.7

This is a strange beast of a novel about an impotent middle-aged American man, Alan Clay, engulfed in the quite predictable twists and turns of the global economy.

Before dealing with impotence and middle life crisis, Mr. Clay used to be a self made man building up an entrepreneurial career in the manufacturing sector.

Now, the problem with Alan was chiefly a philosophical one: he thought that quality would have always won over quantity. Which was wishful thinking in the 1980s and 1990s and daydreaming in the noughties.
Having found his niche market, bicycles, Alan firmly and strangely believed that he could keep the production in the US despite the rise of cheap manufacturing labour abroad - in China, to be precise.

In Mr. Clay's myopic view, purchasing a sturdy, durable and reliable bike was what the American buyers aimed at. An American-made jewel of a bicycle that should and might have made its owners proud to ride it and to show its chromes around. A sort of family heirloom of a bike. A bike made of the same substance of dreams.

Now, all of this didn't make much sense in the real world and, in fact, doesn't stand a chance against mighty China and the Far East.
(Oddly, Eggers seems to ignore that the most of the world's biggest bike manufacturers such as Giant, Merida and Ideal Bike are actually Taiwanese).

Thus, when his dreams to keep the bicycle production line in the US are crushed and the company he works for has to shut down, Alan tries to fight back but in his own over-optimistic fashion. And quality and shiny chromes cannot save him.

Needless to say, that all his following start-ups fail one after another. Banks refuse to give him any more loans. His creditors start losing their patience. Alan puts his house on sale and wait for opportunities. 

Which is precisely why he finds himself stuck in a tent in the Saudi desert in this novel.

For the opportunity has come.
Due to a lucky coincidence (and a dubious acquaintance), Alan has been sent to the Saudi Kingdom by an American IT company as the member of a team which is trying to get a lucrative contract from no one else than King Abdullah.

And selling a futuristic communication system involving holograms to King Abdullah Economic City - the (sandy) apple of the eye of the sovereign - is what Alan Clay wants. He needs his commission to restart all over and pay a good college for his daughter.

That Alan doesn't know (and doesn't care) a fig about holograms is not the point.
He's the senior member of the American expedition. He's supposed to be the problem solver. He should know how to talk business. 

Unfortunately, the whole enterprise turns out to be a game of endurance. Nobody shows up in the tent to meet Alan and his team and the Americans are left alone awaiting King Abdullah or one of his dignitaries to show up. Just imagine Waiting for Godot by Beckett set in The Desert of the Tartars by Buzzati to get a snapshot of the whole situation.

And a hologram, a mirage, a Fata Morgana is what King Abdullah Economic City is. Will the King pop up? Will Alan Clay come back home with his money? And does that really matter?

After all, Alan does find a way to kill his time by making buddies in Jeddah.
The young chatterbox of a chaffeur driving him around and taking him to his family's secluded palace for hunting wolves down.
The nymphomaniac divorced Danish woman who tries to arouse Alan sexually to win over her boredom and loneliness.
The mysterious and fascinating Saudi lady surgeon who shows the hidden pleasures of snorkelling to the American visitor.

All supporting actors and actresses who come and go with the mere purpose to make Alan's (and the reader's) wait more bearable. Well, to some extent.

This is a novel about too many things at the same time. Eggers doesn't manage to keep up the good work he did in his former non fiction books and it's hard to see where he tries to take Alan and us at the end.
A Hologram for the King may lack a clear purpose and is certainly written in a somehow artificial oversimplified style, but it has an exotic taste and a sorrowful meaning:
no matter what you do and where you go, outsourcing always gets the last word.

Czesław Miłosz - The Captive Mind (Zniewolony umysł)

Coming soon...

David Mitchell - Black Swan Green

Coming soon...

Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night

Rating 8.8

Today I will tell you about an interesting and unexplicably underrated semi-underground tribe: the Vonnegutians.

Either urban or rural, the Vonnegutians are spread all over the world (with primeval colonies in Indianapolis and the Galapagos islands) and cover at least three generations.

Secularists by nature, the Vonnegutians may however be inclined to join the subtropical doctrine of Bokononism at an earlier or a later stage of their lives.

Regretfully, the social behaviour of the Vonnegutians is still a mystery.

Oddballs at heart, many Vonnegutians are lonesome, romantic and slightly schizophrenic souls. These folks like to be considered outsiders and underdogs and, sometimes, join (and then abruptly desert) international fellowships of fanatic Vonnegutians known as 'karass'.

An interesting habit of the members of a karass is to call 'granfaloons' all non-Vonnegutians clubs, parties, societies, communities and religions.

How to recognise a Vonnegutian?
Well, that's incredibly easy. Just let him/her speak.

Most Vonnegutians are avid readers and share a common ground of uncommon jokes, obscure quotes, historic dates, Trafalmadorian jargon, German poetry all spiced up with a mix of sarcasm and fatalism. And so it goes.

Another way to understand if you are talking with an actual Vonnegutian is to ask him/her what their favourite book is.
Chances are the Vonnegutian will answer by mentioning one of the novels written by his/her prophet: Kurt Vonnegut Jr (KVJ).


KVJ delivering an awesome lecture in a pre-TED Vonnegutian meeting

The sub-tribe known as the 'Mother-Nighters' worship a scroll entitled 'Mother Night' and written in 1961 from KVJ.

It must be stressed out that the 'Mother-Nighters' do not represent a majority among the Vonnegutians, whose main sub-tribes are definitely the tempered 'Slaughterhouse-Fivers' and the fanatical 'Cat's Cradlers'.

However, if you will ever have the chance to meet an authentic Mother-Nighter (as your humble pen pusher, here, is), please keep calm and listen on. You won't regret it.

Nick Nolte portraying the heroic criminal and criminal hero Howard J. Campbell in the interesting 'Mother Night' movie

John Christopher - The Death of Grass

Rating 7.0

What? Only 7.0?
Am I sure? Did I give this rating by mistake?

Yes, yes. And no, I'm afraid.
Don't get me wrong, folks.

For The Death of Grass (aka No Blade of Grass in the US) is a good novel. Well, actually a very good novel. And I do believe that you should give this book a chance and read through it from page 1 to page 194.

It won't take that long. You won't get bored. But, nonetheless...

This book was out of print for many years, but the Penguin fellows have recently reprinted it. In a paperback edition. With a fancy gloomy cover. And even a foreword.

So, what are you waiting for?
Go and get it.



Did you know that they made a bombastic B-movie out of this novel in A.D. 1970?

Got it? Did you read it?
All very well.

Now, tell me, did you really like this?
Because I did and yet I did not.

Unlike other British sci-fi novelists (Shiel, Wyndham), the author here does a good job investigating on the psychology of the main characters, wondering about the moral dilemmas they have to face when struggling for survival.

The novel does have a slow kick off, but then it starts rolling smoothly without unnecessary detours and with a clear goal to reach: an almost mythical dale.
An Eden valley protected by a well manned and gun-machined palisade where a less wild bunch of human beings is likely to survive starvation thanks to potatoes, beetroots and unlimited fresh water supply.

The road trip of our heroes from London to the north of England, where the dale is located is hard and bleak enough, but left me with the impression that John Christopher forgot some practical details.

Right, all grasses belonging to the graminae family are suddenly dead. The soil is bare and the land is brown. And yet, what happened to the fruit trees and to the wildberries?
The death of grass struck England on springtime, but the author never mentions the possibility that people could scrap a living from fruits and berries. Where have they gone?
Or, perhaps, am I the ignorant one who needs to check if fruit trees do after all belong to the graminae family?

Then Mr. Christopher tells us that all trains stopped running. Again, why?
Does coal belong to the graminae family too? Oh wait, I bet it's just a sign (and an effect) of the social turmoil bringing England to its knees. All the same, the train empasse hasn't quite convinced me.

And don't let me even start with the way the author treats women in this novel which is backwardish even for the 1950s standards (I am Tarzan, you're Jane). The gentlemen here are either killers or rescuers. The ladies here are either damsels in distress or sexual slaves.

The fight for survival bits here are convincing enough and quite realistic in their basic roughness.
I can summarize Christopher's post-apocalyptical gatherings with a syllogism from the movie A Fistful of Dollars:

When a man with a .45 meets a man with a rifle, the man with a pistol will be a dead man.

Not that this fire armed philosophy happens to be very different in, say, The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

At least Christopher's survivors are still able to speak proper English in all of its local and class variations. And, to me, that's a very strong point. Okay? Indeed.

Stefan Zweig - The Post-Office Girl

Rating 7.5

The Post-Office Girl has been my commuting book over the last two weeks.

Hence, I read this novel at intervals from 7.30 to 8.30 AM and from 5.30 to 6.30 PM stuck in the upper deck of buses packed with people coughing, listening to music, talking at their cellphones, playing online games and talking to each other. And necessarily in this order.

You may therefore understand that my attention span to the written word was somewhat fickle and got easily unnerved by the virulent bursts of either cheap muzak or vicious hack erupting around me.

All that said and all distractions considered, I quite liked this book.
Stefan Zweig brought me in a very specific age and place (diminished, depauperated and disillusioned Austria in the mid 1920s) and was extremely good in putting himself in the shoes of a woman, the postal official Christine seducted and abandoned by a posh life in the high districts of the Swiss Alps.

I would say that the best chunk of this novel is its seductive part, with poor Christine brought to touch the stars of a carefree and wealthy life for a mere week just in time to lose it due to the weakness and silly social concerns of her benefactors.
I've found far less convincing the second part of the novel where Christine's acrimony for her dull and miserable life is boosted up by Ferdinand, who seemed to me very much a spoof of an actual character.

True, there were times in which I blushed reading the most feuilleton-ish bits of The Post-Office Girl and the abrupt ending of the novel (an unfinished one) let me down, but nonetheless I have to praise the author for most of what he accomplished here.

Just forget all those 'modern Cinderella story' and 'a tragic reindition of the Sleeping Beauty fable' tags you will see printed on the cover of your copy of this book. There's nothing or very little of that sort here.

If there's one novel I thought about when I was done with this one that is, oddly enough, America by Franz Kafka.
Well, to be honest The Post-Office Girl shares very little with America save the German language in which they were written, but in both cases I wished that the author had had the time and the willingness to complete what he had started.

Janne Teller - Odin's Island

Rating 7.2


Funnily enough, this is the third book I read involving some big wig from Valhalla taking a trip downstairs.

Whereas the hilarious American Gods by Neil Gaiman and The Son of the Thunder God by Arto Paasilinna focused on Mr. Thor and his kin, Janne Teller chose no less than the CEO of Norse cosmogony: Odin.

Odin's Island is a brilliant but long winded novel. 
Miss Teller has a knack for creative storytelling and here plays quite skillfully on the thin razorblade separating a young adult from a grown up audience.  However, there's too much on Odin's Island plate to get a satisfactory reading meal. 

The author of this book juggles with Nordic sagas, environmentalism, religious fanatism, pure escapism and geopolitical frictions. No surprises that sometimes one of these juggling balls falls down thus affecting the plot of the novel. It's hard to tell a folktale dressing it up with a dystopian cloth. 

Characters are very sketchy here and Janne Teller doesn't seem to care much to develop some of them as they may deserve. Personally, I couldn't help but picture Tintin's 'Captain Haddock' every time 'Ambrosius the Fisher' said anything, just like the character 'Gunnar the Head' reminded me Kjell Bjarne from the Norwegian movie (and novel) Elling.

Reading an English translation of this book, didn't help me as too many names were translated and with a randomness that left me quite puzzled. It's quite obvious that, say, if you change the original 'Smedieby' into the plain 'Smith's Town' the whole architecture of a modern saga collapses.

As for the religious subplot here, I found it quite brave but it may be hard to chew for those who don't appreciate a certain blend of Danish humour (including the notorious Mohammed cartoons and a movie like Adam's Apples).
Anyways, with its pros and cons, Odin's Island was a pleasant and refreshing novel and left mostly good memories.

Jonathan Coe - The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim

Rating 6.0

Phew wee! Jonathan Coe did it again.

A pretty decent effort of a novel spoiled by an abrupt, clumsy (and metafictional!) ending.

Pity, because The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim (no better titles available) does have its good moments and includes some brilliant dialogues and ideas.

Just like Mr. Coe would be able to write.

Alas, there's just too much writing here: too many characters, too many subplots nonchalantly left open, too many letters/emails/essays/short stories to fill the gaps and keep the story going by tossing it here and there with no mercy. Ah, and there's too much of a certain NavSat...

These 330 pages could have been either 200 (drying the story up) or 500 (by expanding it). But Mr. Coe didn't bother to make the effort.
Hence, 330 pages left me bored while leafing through them and unsatisfied once done with the book and actually asking for more.

Perhaps only a passing mark is too harsh a rating for this book, but if I think to what Coe wrote in the past, this novel doesn't deserve three stars. Potential is a double-edged sword: ask Ian McEwan.

Edmund de Waal - The Hare With Amber Eyes

Rating 7.8

'Hello, this is Mr Editor calling from Big Publisher, may I talk with Mr De Waal?
'Speaking.
'Good morning Mr De Waal, I've good news for you regarding the publication of your...ehm Mr De Waal?
'Yes? What's the matter?
'I'm afraid I cannot hear you very well. Are you alright? The phoneline seems to be quite disturbed...
'Oh, apologies Mr Editor. It's only my wheel. You see, I'm working on a rather minimalist bowl for the Victoria & Albert Museum.
'I see.
'You know, I'm first and foremost a potter. And then a flaneur. And then an asthete. And then a researcher. And then a writer.
'Oh, come Mr De Waal! Don't let yourself down. What I was going to say is that we of Big Publisher will be glad to publish your book entitled 'The...the Hare...
'The Hare with Amber Eyes?
'That's it! Thank you, Mr De Waal. And what a brilliant title that is!
'Well, to be honest I'm not quite sure of that Mr Editor. Are you sure that such a title will work?
'If it will work?! But of course, it will. Mr De Waal, let me tell you something. With a title like 'The Amber with Hare Ears...
'It's 'The Hare with Amber Eyes'
'Whatever. With a title like the one we chose, your book on family bibelots will sell like hotcakes. Wait and see. After all I didn't choose 'The Hare and the Embers' for nothing
'It's 'The Hare with Amber Eyes'. I think you are confusing me with Sandor Marai...
'Ah Mr De Waal, Mr De Waal. That's not the point. Now, don't let yourself down and trust me...

The author at the wheel shaping minimalist pottery. I daresay I prefer him writing

And trusted him Mr De Waal did. And The Hare with Amber Eyes sell surprisingly well and also got a bunch of literary prizes including the Costa Book Award (which sounds perfect for hotcakes).

You may be surprised. Despite of its all but aptly chosen title, this book is a little treasure.
I was rather skeptical when I started reading the story of the once wealthy Ephroussi family intertwined with crunchy bits of history and art, but over the course of the book I changed my mind completely.

Reading this book you will learn that Renoir was not only a great artist but also an utter moron 

Edmund De Waal may be a world known potter, but he certainly know how to be an engaging writer and a storyteller. There is much quality and much aestheticism in this book and I savoured it with relish.
When reading The Hare with Amber Eyes you will find yourself in Paris, Vienna, Tokyo and Odessa before and after the Great War and World War Two.

You will learn an awful lot on the Ephroussi dynasty (family tree included!), but - above all - you will wish to discover or rediscover the French impressionists, Proust, Austrian secessionism and Japanese art.

The Hare with the Amber Eyes surrounded by her fellow netsuke from the Ephroussi Collection

I had never heard of those tiny carved jewels named 'netsuke' before (that's what the hare with amber eyes refers to!) and I have to thank Mr De Waal to open up my eyes. This book works on so many levels that I cannot really give it justice in a short review.
Suffice is to say that one should read this to win over the daily triviality of a dull commuter's life.

Winter on a Double-Decker

Condensation as compensation
for the dull
Repetition
of daily words of annihilation
again and again
bottled up in thoughts
every now and then.
Row after row after row of
absurd, untold litigations
left standing and tossed
on the top of a bitter
Loss.
And that's it. That's what. That's why
the suburban semi-frozen
preoccupied bus-driver  
is caught off guard on
his early morning shift
when someone doesn't tell him
Thanks.

John Wyndham - The Day of the Triffids

Rating 7.5

Wow, reading this one was good fun!

Let's make it straight: I still think that War with the Newts by Karel Capek cannot be surpassed as a sci-fi dystopian novel, but - in its best moments - The Day of the Triffids certainly get close to that underrated model.

You have to agree that carnivorous aggressive two metres tall plants feeding themselves with the rotten corpses of the human beings they hunt down are pretty decent villains. The idea of making all the world population save a few souls blind is brilliant and not redundant at all as the author needed to explain why triffids managed to take the Earth over.

True, this book has a minor flaw. It is affected by a certain post-post Victorian mannerism that makes it less spectacular and apocalyptic that it could have been. Wyndham could have spared us with the unlikely love story subplot and put more gruesome and creepy descriptions in this novel rather than the odd peeping Tom moment.


Yes! They made a movie out of this novel in the roaring 1960s. And it does look scary; quite unintentionally, though

John Wyndham doesn't seem to take his triffids as seriously as they may deserve at a first (and especially at a second!) glance, but doesn't resort to irony in depicting them too: which is a pity.
Nevertheless, the novel keeps an enjoyable pace - apart from a few unnecessary descriptions - and benefits from its metropolitan London and then countryside setting.

Due to its quintessentially post-post Victorian soul, to a certain puritanism and to what we may call a sort of happy ending, they called this novel a 'cosy catastrophe' and this label may well be true, but only to a certain extent.

Mr. Wyndham pay his debt to The Scarlet Plague by Jack London more than once, but manages to keep himself original on the whole.


The novel left its mark in the 1980s thanks to a bunch of Aussies from Perth

Amin Maalouf - Leo the African

Coming soon...

George Orwell - A Clergyman's Daughter

Rating 6.4

com·ple·tist /kəmˈplētist/
"An obsessive, typically indiscriminate, collector or fan of something".

Ah, I like this one. I am an obsessive - although not indiscriminate - collector of something: books.
Now, my problem with George Orwell is that I liked, if not adored, all that I read by him, which is pretty much all that the man wrote. With one exception: A Clergyman's Daughter.

I knew that Orwell himself disowned this novel deciding to don't have it reprinted during his lifetime. However, unlike Franz Kafka - who burned much of his early writings - and Graham Greene - whose second and third works have never been published again - Orwell set a different fate to A Clergyman's Daughter.

Writing to his literary executor, Orwell agreed to have "any book which may bring in a few pounds for my heirs" printed again after his death.
And that's why a novel which Orwell himself looked at as "a silly potboiler" found its place into the Penguin Modern Classics.

Well aware of the fact that A Clergyman's Daughter was all but a masterpiece, I've always postponed the right moment to buy it hoping to bump into a second hand edition in a charity shop, to no avail.
Then, rummaging through the bookshelves of a provincial Oxfordshire library I found the novel and promptly borrowed it.

Done with the reading, it's time to talk about this book.
And what can I say?
Well, first of all that this stuff is not that bad.

I mean if you're a completist of George Orwell, you might read this one. Just keep in mind that the final version of this novel is far from what its author had in mind having been savagely maimed by its fearful and puritan publisher, Gollancz.
That alone could explain why on my Orwellian scale this book comes last even though in some of its moments is better than the clumsy, but exotic, Burmese Days.

Let's name the merits first. It's admirable that George Orwell put himself in the shoes of a woman, Dorothy Hare, for the first (and last) time in his career as a novelist.
It's equally praiseworthy that Orwell wanted to open the eyes of his readers on something of a taboo in 1935 England: rape. The idea behind this novel was to highlight the supreme injustice of many English women in the 1930s. Women who were powerless against oppressive families, perverted men, vicious gossip and dodgy employers. Not that many of these nooses have changed in the meantime.

Dorothy Hare is oppressed by her father - a snobbish lazybone of a reverend - and stalked by an old womanizer in a dull village. A village where social life revolves around the male obscenities shouted in a pub and the female backbitings whispered in a tea house.
And Orwell is quite good in portraying the pious monotonousness of Dorothy's humble life and her passive resignation.

Then this bucolic nightmare is suddenly interrupted. But thanks to Gollancz censorship we don't know what happened to Dorothy. All that we can read is that the clergyman's daughter wakes up on a pavement in London unaware of who she is and where she comes from.

Badly struck by his own publisher, Orwell tries not to sink.
The novel follows Dorothy (now Ellen) in her new harsh life as a beggar, a hop-picker and eventually as a teacher in an awful school.
This part of the book deals with George Orwell's personal experiences down and out in London and teaching in order to make a living, but it doesn't work as it could.

Sure, there are vivid and poignant descriptions of a miserable life in London and its countryside among gypsies, petty thieves and prostitutes, but whom the author fails with is Dorothy/Ellen. The poor woman recovers all of her memory, but never develops as a character.
No matter what happens around her, the clergyman's daughter sticks to her role of a musty wallflower at the mercy of events. Till the disappointing but pretty obvious sweet and sour end.

At the end of the day, it's not clear what Orwell wanted to achieve here.
What was the point of putting Dorothy's life upside-down if she didn't change a bit? How doesn't she feel any frustrated emancipation?
True, the woman admits that she lost her faith and that's certainly bad for a clergyman's daughter. But does she seem to care? Mmh, not really.

In all of its insipidity (and due to the significant cuts), A Clergyman's Daughter is not a silly potboiler, but definitely a missed chance. What a pity.

Graham Greene - Our Man in Havana

Coming soon...