townesvanfaulkner

Writing Style-6.5
Originality-7.0
Plot-2.0
Merit(whatever that means)-6.2
Overall-6.1

This is yet another book that could have been so much more if only I were the editor.

Ok, here’s how it played out. I had read about 40 pages and thought it was brilliant. I hadn’t read such detailed, highly perceptive writing about southern Appalachian nature scenery since reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper. I thought, ‘I’m in for a treat. This book is going to be brilliant.’ By the time I had reached page 45 I had started to get slightly annoyed by the tone of the book. By the time I had reached page 50 I thought, ‘This book better change gears in a hurry and start going somewhere else because I’m getting tired of this crap’. By the time I had reached page 60, I hated it.

Now, that said, by the time I finished it I didn’t really hate it, I just hated the tone of the writing. Between pages 40 and 60 I was able to pinpoint what was grating on my nerves. The Orchard Keeper is written in the third person and the natural surroundings come off almost as though they are a main character in the story. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is written in the first person about a girl observing her natural surroundings and comes off as pompous flowery crap.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is not really a novel at all, it’s more a collection of philosophical essays centered around observing nature. Sort of a Zen and the Art of Sitting Beside a Fucking Creek All Day. Each chapter could probably stand on it’s on and is typically some observation, for instance, observing a muskrat, and then something philosophical that the author gleans from this observation. The problem is the annoying, holier-than-thou tone that the author takes about these observations. Like, ‘I’m so patient, I can sit beside a creek completely motionless and wait to see a muskrat. I am so zen. And then I can see the beauty of the muskrat and the world around us that no one else can see. I am so smart.’ And then on top of this the writing is flowery and audaciously overwritten.

On the good side, many of the observations are pretty interesting and much of the philosophy is pretty good. A lot of the “novel” is random scientific trivia, sort of like a book that Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings might write. For instance, I now know that 10% of the world’s species are parasitic. That’s interesting (and gross) and the author goes on to discuss the moral implications of this. Why would God create so many species that all they do is feed off other animals? It’s weird and doesn’t seem like intelligent design. So, the book is full of stuff like this—pretty interesting science trivia and an interesting philosophical aside that follows.

All in all, this is a pretty decent book. I like what the author was going after. First, I think that the book should be marketed differently. I thought I was going to read a Southern Gothic novel and instead I got philosophy essays. Secondly, the tone of the writing is nigh on unbearable. You can’t help but think this is written by some crazy old lonely lady with nothing better to do than sit by a creek all day and live in her own head where she’s the smartest person in the world. At the end of the book, in the ‘About the Author’ section I found out that Dillard was actually 27 when she wrote the book so she wasn’t actually old, but her youth could by blamed for the flowery writing too.

Another point I’d like to make in the book’s favor is that it would probably behoove artists, particularly painters or photographers, to read this book or at least the second chapter, titled ‘Seeing’, because much of the book is about the art of observing our world and this is at the heart of what artists do—see things in our environment that others might not latch on to and make connections to our morals, values, beliefs, etc.--or at least just paint a pretty picture or take a pretty photograph.

Natury/literary/philosophy types would probably really like this book. I don't want to put it down TOO much because a couple of TVF readers come to mind here.

Writing Style-8.3
Originality-8.2
Plot-7.7
Merit(whatever that means)-8.4
Overall-8.0

This edition consisted of four stories: The Death of Ivan Ilych (obviously), The Kreutzer Sonata, Master and Man, and Family Happiness. I had read The Kreutzer Sonata and Master and Man previously but decided to go ahead and reread them because I enjoyed them the first time and thought that I could perhaps glean something more out of them with a rereading. Actually, The Kreutzer Sonata is my favorite of Tolstoy’s “short” stories.

So we’ll start with that one. I thought that perhaps I was just particularly in the mood for a story of this nature when I read it several years ago. But upon rereading, I found that it was every bit as good as I felt it was the first time.

The Kreutzer Sonata is a Beethoven sonata for piano and violin. You should definitely check it out if you have not heard it. In fact, it would be a nice touch to listen to it as you read this story. The story is about a guy who kills his wife in a jealous rage (I’m not giving the ending away here, you learn this early on in the story). His wife plays piano and has been playing with a professional violinist for fun. It is their playing the passionate Kreutzer Sonata that helps bring about the main character's rage. The mood of the story is set perfectly when the jealous husband boards a late night train and begins to tell a follow passenger his story after there had just been a debate among the passengers about marriage and divorce.

Similarly, Family Happiness is about an unhappy marriage. Unhappy marriages seem to be a common theme in Tolstoy’s stories. Especially those that he wrote later in life. The Death of Ivan Ilych has another unhappy marriage. Another great story that wasn’t in this edition is called The Devil. It’s about marriage, lust, and infidelity too.

Master and Man is a very touching story about a master and his servant going on an ill-advised trip one evening because the master needs to make a real estate deal with someone in town. There is a fierce snowstorm that they are trying to make their way through and they keep getting lost by wandering off the road into the fields because they can’t see where the road is for all the snow. It’s about the social class dynamic between the master and the servant. Very powerful.

I’m not sure why they chose The Death of Ivan Ilych as the main story in this edition. I didn’t care for it nearly as much as Kreutzer or Master. This story takes place at the wake (or funeral?) of Ivan Ilych as they look back on his life, which was pretty shallow.

Family Happiness was pretty decent but the weakest story of the lot. It’s sort of about what makes a man happy with his family life and what attributes make for a happy, smoothly running family. I’m reminded of the first line of Anna Karenina about how each happy family is alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in their own way.

If you are curious about Tolstoy but are intimidated by the length of War and Peace (which I loved) or Anna Karenina (which I hated) then it might be worthwhile to check out some of these novella-length stories first to see if you like his writing style and common themes. If you really like a couple of them and don't get very bored reading any of them then you can feel pretty confident about taking on War and Peace.

Writing Style-9.1
Originality-7.9
Plot-7.5
Merit(whatever that means)-7.6
Overall-7.8

This book was really close to reaching rarefied air. The first two-thirds of it I was completely captivated. The writing is incredibly beautiful, very Hemingwayesque. In fact the whole story reminded me of Hemingway.

I started noticing this book showing up on several of these Top 100 lists and I hadn’t heard of it so I became curious. And I can totally understand it’s inclusion on these lists.

The gist of the book is that there is this trio of Americans who are vacationing in North Africa not long after World War II. They are a husband and wife and their male friend who wanted to tag along.

The plot is leisurely paced, but the caliber of the writing keeps you moving through the book at a brisk clip.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t crazy about the ending. I dug the message, but just not the way the story played out. For instance, there is one scene in which a woman falls in love with her rapist. That just didn’t sit right with me and I couldn’t let it go regardless of how good the rest of the book was.

I also would have liked it better if the book ended a little bit more softly, quietly, gently—as the rest of the book seemed to flow. I thought it was a neat juxtaposition of bad things happening over and over to this trio of travelers, but the writing style and voice was so relaxed about it. I thought it went well with the existential bent of the novel. But then, the ending turns into this whirlwind climax. I thought it could have been more powerful if it didn’t seem like it was trying so hard to form a powerful climax. Make sense?

The central theme, that I took from it at least, was the world’s complete indifference to us and our wishes and plans. Sort of similar to Lord Jim, which I just read. There’s no running or hiding from your problems and there’s no use in planning or thinking you can undo what you got coming to you. It’s a theme that I’m particularly into right now. And the North African/Sahara environment in this book is great for it as was Patusan in Lord Jim. Plus, the author documents this environment beautifully.

I highly recommend this book, especially if you are a fan of Hemingway’s style.

Writing Style-2.6
Originality-3.1
Plot-2.1
Merit(whatever that means)-0.2
Overall-1.0

This is cheesy 1950’s science fiction. Don’t bother. Unless, of course, you like cheesy 1950’s science fiction.

But, you know, if you do, in fact, enjoy cheesy 1950’s science fiction then you should at least read something with some brains and heart and pick up something by Philip K. Dick.

Because The Mind Cage is crap. I had it laying around the house for years and never read it for good reason until one day my dumb ass thought, ‘I gotta read this, I’ve had it forever.’ Bad move.

Did anyone know that Texas singer/songwriter James McMurtry is Larry McMurtry's son? Check this bio out:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:r1u06j5h71u0~T1

Of course, Larry McMurtry is the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist who wrote Lonesome Dove and screenwriter of Terms of Endearment and currently nominated for screenwriting Brokeback Mountain. I'm quickly becoming a huge fan of James McMurtry. Ornitholoco knows what I'm talking about. He's a hell of a guitar player too. This bio says his English professor mom taught him how to play. This is cool as shit.

Also, I discovered this by listening to http://pandora.com which is a pretty slick little app. Btw, it linked Belle and Sebastian to James McMurtry, which I think is pretty cool.

Writing Style-5.9
Originality-6.8
Plot-5.4
Merit(whatever that means)-6.9
Overall-6.0

I loved Heart of Darkness and the story that came with it in my edition, The Secret Sharer. And Lord Jim could have been as good or better than Heart of Darkness, if it had been Heart of Darkness sized. At over 300 pages this was far too long. Way too wordy.

I had trouble following the story because it was so needlessly wordy that my mind would drift. Most of the paragraphs are over a page long. And there’s not really enough plot to merit this length of novel. I mean, why choose to make Heart of Darkness short and Lord Jim so much longer?

The kernel of the story, I really, really dug. Basically, you have this dude Jim who is first mate (I think) on a ship and during some sort of disaster at sea he jumps ship. At heart he’s a really good, kind, sensitive guy and it really bugs him that he jumped ship. So, he feels pretty worthless and this causes him to accept a job that takes him to this remote and very wild location called Patusan. At Patusan he reinvents himself and creates a new life where he is well-respected with the local natives and marries a half-caste girl named Jewel. Everything is going good again, but his past and the outside world haunts him and the action builds to a climactic conclusion.

The ending is great. Very reminiscent of Heart of Darkness. The segment concerning the disaster aboard the ship is great too, but in between it gets pretty boring.

In my own little perfect world, this book would be roughly the same length as Heart of Darkness, say, about 150 pages and they would be published together and it would be one of the most awesome books in literature. I guess they are considered two of the most awesome books in literature, but that would be in the real world, not my own personal fantasy world. So screw that world.

This is one of those books where reading it makes you feel like you’ve got ADD because your mind keeps wandering. So, I don’t recommend it if you have a less than average attention span. But if you are someone who loves great literature and loved Heart of Darkness and can fight through a tedious novel for the sake of looking back on it in it’s entirety and appreciating it for the story buried deep beneath so many unnecessary words, then give Lord Jim a try because now that I’ve finished it I really am very fond of it.

There’s another novel like this that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. It’s Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. I recently saw Woody Allen’s Match Point (which is phenomenal, btw) and it reminded me a lot of that book. It’s almost an exact modern retelling with a slightly different twist at the end. But at any rate, that book was unwieldy at seven or eight hundred pages and got really boring in places. But looking back on it, it’s a really great story and I grow fonder of it over time. It kind of sticks with you.

Writing Style-6.8
Originality-5.8
Plot-5.0
Merit(whatever that means)-5.8
Overall-5.6

This was disappointing. As big a fan as I am of Southern Gothic. I expected and hoped for more.

I had read Clock Without Hands by her before and thought it was pretty good. Pretty simple, but solid.

I liked the Ballad of the Sad Café pretty well. It had a nice feel to it. Not quite sure what it was supposed to say, but that’s okay sometimes.

The other stories were completely useless. Totally uninspired and uninteresting. I got absolutely nothing from any of them.

In my opinion, you shouldn’t move on to Carson McCullers or Eudora Welty until you’ve read every word that Flannery O’Connor ever wrote. But that’s just me. And, of course, I still need to read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter to give Carson one more chance. So, take this advice with a grain of salt.

Writing Style-5.8
Originality-6.3
Plot-5.2
Merit(whatever that means)-5.4
Overall-5.3

This is from Marion Zimmer Bradley’s famous sci-fi series entitled Darkover. I’m not an expert on the genre, but I’d bet it’s about the best feminist sci-fi/fantasy series you’re likely to come across. I mean in the form of an overdone series, not compared to single novels like The Handmaid’s Tale or Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness or Marion Zimmer Bradley’s own Mists of Avalon.

In fact this book, especially in the beginning when you are still getting used to the world of Darkover, is really kind of comically feminist. Darkover is a very oppressive world, especially certain parts of it. And there is one country that women actually have to walk around constantly with their hands in shackles. There is a free roaming band of women who are called Free Amazons (seriously) and they reject the laws of man. They are on a mission to free a young girl who’s been taken captive by a prince of the very oppressive country.

The plot’s nothing special here. The first two sections in the novel are people on a journey to rescue someone held captive. Not to hard to dream this plot device up—and then to have the guts to use it twice. Wow.

But still it’s a very entertaining read. Bradley is a perfectly capable writer. The characters are enjoyable. The action is brisk and actually really exciting. I will certainly pick up the next Darkover book in the series at some point when I’m in the mood for this sort of thing. Amy’s read a different Darkover novel, called Darkover Landfall I believe, and she thoroughly enjoyed and plans to read more as well. So, if you are like us and every now and then are in the mood for a perfect blend of sci-fi and fantasy with a feminist slant then this is a good world to visit. Of course, this sort of thing isn’t for everybody, so…

Writing Style-6.4
Originality-6.8
Plot-6.2
Merit(whatever that means)-5.8
Overall-5.9

This is a historical fiction novel from Chilean author Isabel Allende. It’s centered around one young girl's venture from Chile to San Francisco in 1849, during the height of the California gold rush, to find her lover.

It starts rather awkwardly. I wasn’t sure who the main character was supposed to be. It goes into great detail about several character's backgrounds. And the first character that it goes in depth about actually turns out to be a fairly minor character in the main plot of Eliza, the young Chilean girl’s, adventure. Not sure what that was about. This kept me from getting into the novel from the start because as soon as I would come to care about this guy it would start talking about Eliza’s adoptive mother’s life. Then once I got into her story it would go into Eliza’s. Then into this Chinese doctor’s life, Tao Chi’en, who becomes very close to Eliza. By the second half of the novel it seemed to gain some focus as you pretty consistently follow Eliza and Tao’s lives in California.

It’s pretty good historical fiction. I really liked the detail in Tao’s background. He was sold into slavery, then was Shanghaied, meaning some sailors got him drunk and stowed him away on board a ship and by the time he woke up they were at sea and there was nothing he could do about.

It also goes into how Tao's biggest dream is to marry a girl with perfect "golden lillies", which are tiny (3 to 4 inch) deformed feet. It was common at that time in China for young girls to have their feet bound so that they couldn't grow because men found it attractive. It's crazy how society can shape what we find attractive isn't it? And then what lengths women have to go to in order to keep up with these requirements. In the west at this time, of course, you had corsets, which is fairly similar.

The novel is richly detailed, both the characters and the world that they inhabit. My critique is not the level of detail, but simply who the author chooses to focus on at the beginning of the novel—it just seemed odd.

Ultimately it’s about a young Eliza naively chasing after her love and the contrast between what she has in her head and what she actually gets. The relationship between her and Tao is really nice. There is a weird sort of love there; at times brotherly-sisterly, at times fatherly-daughterly, and a tad bit romantic—but above all, unlikely.

Unfortunately, the story really loses steam towards the end. I thought that it was a pretty good, well written novel that needed some fat trimmed from the beginning and a tighter ending.

Amy pretty much devoured it and really loved it though. She really loves reading about other cultures and there’s a lot of that here with the great diversity in San Francisco and the Chileans and British colonials of the age and Tao’s Chinese background. This stuff is probably the novel's strongest selling point.

Well, it’s been about nine months since I kicked off TVF with a post of Herndon’s Hunderd. I’ve read a lot of good books in the last nine months and I figure it’s about time to update the Hunderd.

There’s been a new top 100 books list published in Time magazine so I’m including TM in each books awards brackets to designate that it was included in this list. I also just realized I never linked to the Harvard Bookstore Top 100, so I’m adding that to the Book Lists links.

The commentary is pretty much the same. I’ve highlighted the new entries. The highest of which is The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, which came in at #45.

I’ve also thrown some stuff off the list in the interest of including more novels. I’ve thrown off all plays except for Death of A Salesman. I decided to throw off a couple of the lowest P.K. Dick books and a James Morrow because I felt like they were over-represented for essentially writing the same formulaic books over and over. I’ve combined somethings; The Hobbit is now included with the LOTR Trilogy, Flannery O’Connor’s The Complete Stories now takes the place of Everything That Rises Must Converge because The Complete Stories encompasses that story collection, obviously. Anyhoo, here ‘tis.

1. The Sound and the Fury-William Faulkner – Without question #1. No competition. [LM – 5, ML – 6, MLR – 33, R – 10, HBTWC, TM]

2. Suttree-Cormac McCarthy – Without question #1 among living writers. The heir to Faulkner’s throne; which, I think has actually hurt his career, but not in my eyes. [MLR – 96, HBTWC]

3. One Hundred Years of Solitude-Gabriel Garcia Marquez – According to former president William Jefferson Clinton this is the greatest novel written since Faulkner. I guess Bill hasn’t read Suttree yet? [HBS – 9, HBTWC]

4. The Brothers Karamazov-Fyodor Dostoyevsky – There are no words for the three chapter conversation between Ivan and Alyosha where Ivan states his case against God and ends with the Grand Inquisitor. [HBS – 14, HBTWC]

5. 2001: A Space Odyssey-Arthur C. Clarke – For years my favorite novel and movie (before I started reading Literature with a capital L). The reason I went into propulsion engineering (which I’m not too happy about now in hindsight). Still, I think it’s an important novel and a friggin great read. [PESF – 15]

6. A Death in the Family-James Agee – Reads like a long poem. It’s hard not to cry for little Rufus. This book is what Look Homeward, Angel could have been but didn’t quite accomplish. [PP, TM]

7. Death of a Salesman-Arthur Miller – The only play that I feel like including. [HBTWC]

8. All the King’s Men-Robert Penn Warren – Based loosely around the life of Louisiana governor Huey Long, one of the most complex and colorful characters in the history of American politics. This guy was caring enough about the working class to be considerably to the left of FDR’s New Deal politics but at the same time he ran probably the most corrupt state-wide political machine the country’s ever seen. [ML - 36, R – 38, HBTWC, PP, TM]

9. Absalom, Absalom-William Faulkner – I really need to reread this one. I read the first half on planes going to a job interview in Connecticut (God, I’m glad I didn’t get that job) and it’s really not a good book to read on a plane. But the ending, which adds a lot of insight into what was going on in Quentin’s head during his chapter of Sound and Fury, literally kept me awake ALL night after I finished it. [LM – 32, MLR – 36, R – 58, HBTWC]

10. Dune-Frank Herbert – Man, do I wish I could erase the part of my memory that contains this book and read it again. It’s so action packed and cool, but smart too. It’s what you wish every sci-fi book could be when you pick them up, but this was the only one that ever followed through. [MLR – 14, PESF – 3, SFBK – 3, HA, NA]

11. War and Peace-Leo Tolstoy – This 1500 pager reads like it was 400 pages. Not at all the chore that I thought reading it was going to be and which reading Anna Karenina actually was. [HBS – 57, HBTWC]

12. Blood Meridian-Cormac McCarthy – The book doesn’t advertise this, but this novel is actually based on a true story. Cormac took an obscure memoir of someone who traveled with the real-life Glanton gang to write this. From what I understand, all of the violent scenes and massacres actually occurred and the Judge was a real character who was every bit as weird and creepy as Cormac presents him as. [LM -48, MLR – 54, HBTWC, TM]

13. The Crossing-Cormac McCarthy – I thought that after Suttree, Blood Meridian, and All the Pretty Horses I had read the best McCarthy has to offer, but this one is every bit as good as any of them.

14. Beloved-Toni Morrison – What an amazing concept for a book about slavery. I wish there were more ghosts in great Literature. [LM – 12, MLR – 31, R – 7, PP, HBS – 37, TM]

15. Light in August- William Faulkner – This novel is as accessible as The Reivers but as brilliant and magical and rich as Absalom, Absalom. [ML – 54, MLR – 89, R – 68, HBTWC, TM]

16. The Sportswriter-Richard Ford – It’s hard to describe what makes this book so good. It’s so really, really realistically real [TM].

17. A Confederacy of Dunces-John Kennedy Toole – Wow, what a treasure that we have this novel. It was written by a guy who couldn’t get it published and then he killed himself in his late twenties, I think. His mom sent the manuscript to Walker “most over-rated southern writer” Percy who loved it and got it published. Thanks, Walker! Your greatest contribution to American Literature. [PP]

18. Lonesome Dove-Larry McMurtry – If this story were written by Cormac McCarthy it would likely be my favorite novel. [PP]

19. Lolita-Vladimir Nabokov – Sick but beautiful. [LM – 9, ML – 4, MLR – 34, R – 11, HBTWC, HBS – 7, TM]

20. Les Liasons Dangereuse-Pierre Choderlos De Laclos – There’s a reason this book has been adapted to movies so many times. It’s a great story with awesome characters. The book is surprisingly hilarious and there are great quotes throughout. I didn’t much care for the moral at the end, but the ride up to the fall was SO much fun.

21. All the Pretty Horses-Cormac McCarthy – There’s obviously so much to be learned in Mexico. [NBA, NBCC]

22. Wise Blood-Flannery O’Connor – Clearly the master of short stories. Still, I like it when her short stories are about the same characters and string together to make a novel. [LM- 56, MLR – 38, HBTWC]

23. As I Lay Dying-William Faulkner – Contains Faulkner’s shortest chapter. The entire contents of the chapter: “My mother is a fish.” [ML – 35, MLR – 67, R – 19, HBTWC]

24. Invisible Man-Ralph Ellison – I think this would make a phenomenal movie. Imagine the intro: the main character smoking a joint, listening to a jazz record, with the ceiling of his studio apartment covered in light bulbs stealing free electricity from the Man. Then cut to the Battle Royale scene. [LM – 18, ML – 19, MLR – 69, R – 24, HBTWC, NBA, TM]

25. Go Down, Moses-William Faulkner – A series of stories, including The Bear, that sort of make up a novel. Is The Bear Faulkner’s most inspired writing? Perhaps more so than Sound and Fury even? Make sure that you only read the version of The Bear that is published in Go Down, Moses or Three Short Novels. There’s a version out there that leaves a chapter out.

26. The Grapes of Wrath-John Steinbeck – This book has so much heart. [LM – 34, ML – 10, MLR – 22, R – 3, HBTWC, PP, TM]

27. Child of God-Cormac McCarthy – A necrophile, serial-killing, cave dweller is the main character. Only Cormac could infuse so much humanity into a story like this. [HBTWC]

28. The Orchard Keeper-Cormac McCarthy – Part ode to the east Tennessee landscape, part lament to a vanishing way of life. McCarthy’s award-winning debut novel.

29. The Unvanquished-William Faulkner – There’s a major scene in this one that’s so similar to a scene in Outer Dark (#31) it’s ridiculous. Fittingly, Faulkner is a step, nay, two steps ahead of McCarthy.

30. Slaughterhouse-Five-Kurt Vonnegut – Definitely the place to start with Vonnegut. [LM – 54, ML – 18, MLR – 23, R – 29, TM]

31. Outer Dark-Cormac McCarthy – Sort of a precursor to Blood Meridian. One of the main characters is similar to the Judge.

32. The Sun Also Rises-Ernest Hemingway – Emasculation is so sad. [LM – 20, ML – 45, MLR – 63, R – 18, HBTWC, HBS – 86, TM]

33. Song of Solomon-Toni Morrison – Among my favorite Toni Morrison character names: Guitar, Milkman, and a girl whose parents randomly open bible pages to find names for their children so she ends up being named Second Corinthians, or Cori for short. [R – 25, HBTWC]

34. The Rules of Attraction-Bret Easton Ellis – This is my favorite of his books and the setting and overall mood of the book has a lot to do with that. I like the small northeastern private school feel better than his typical LA/New York settings. Read this book in December while listening to old REM records (pre-Green era).

35. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest-Ken Kesey – I was surprised at how much I related to this book. Don’t let the movie suffice for this one, read the book. [MLR – 90, R – 28, TM]

36. The Big Sky-A.B. Guthrie – If you love westerns geared towards adults who aren’t morons and you’ve read McCarthy’s western novels and Larry McMurtry, this should be your next stop.

37. A Song of Ice and Fire Series-George R.R. Martin – I dropped this one a spot because book number four in the series, A Feast for Crows, wasn’t up to par. You better get your ass in gear George, take this as a warning.

38. Cold Mountain-Charles Frazier – This North Carolina author does his best Cormac McCarthy imitation and pulls it off extremely well. Plus it’s set during the civil war, so it’s super, extra cool. [NBA]

39. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch-Philip K. Dick – Gosh, it’s been so long since I read this one I barely remember it. I do remember loving it though and maintaining that it is my favorite Dick novel. It was on one of Amy’s reading lists in grad school at Penn State so I feel somewhat validated in this opinion. [PESF – 13]

40. Only Begotten Daughter-James Morrow – This guy, from State College, PA, writes religious satire in the fantasy/sci-fi realm. He’s won numerous World Fantasy Awards among other awards. Most of his books are laugh-out-loud funny. This one is about the second coming of Christ, but this time It’s a She, Julie Katz, and She’s born in Atlantic City in the modern era. Hilarity ensues. [WFA]

41. Independence Day-Richard Ford – The sequel to The Sportswriter. Our protagonist is now working as a real estate agent, a perfect existential profession. [P/F, PP]

42. The Hamlet-William Faulkner – This is where Faulkner starts to not quite measure up to his masterpieces, but for Christ’s sake, he’s still Faulkner so it’s friggin fabulous and must not be passed up.

43. The Violent Bear It Away-Flannery O’Connor – I read this soon after McCarthy’s Child of God and was struck by just how similar their writing is in these books. And then I got to the last sentence of The Violent Bear It Away where it ends with, “...he moved steadily on, his face set toward the dark city, where the children of God lay sleeping”. I got chills. [HBTWC]

44. A Clockwork Orange-Anthony Burgess – I saw in the news the other day some kids beat a homeless person to death and said in court that they did it for fun and because they were bored. Reminded me of this book. [LM – 79, ML – 65, MLR – 55, R – 49, TM]

45. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting-Milan Kundera – This guy might be the most intelligent author I’ve ever read.

46. The Lord of the Flies-William Golding – I avoided this for a long time thinking it was children’s literature. It’s anything but. It’s quite terrifying and violent, very eerie. [ML – 41, MLR – 25, R – 8, TM]

47. The Handmaid’s Tale-Margaret Atwood – Things start to go wrong when the president is given an inordinate amount of power after a terrorist attack on congress. Hmmm… [MLR – 53, HBS - 25]

48. East of Eden-John Steinbeck – This is one of those rare books, like One Hundred Years of Solitude, that ambitiously tries to encompass a large chunk of human history and the human experience and in many ways succeeds.

49. The Jungle-Upton Sinclair – Great book for a borderline socialist. Power to the people. [R – 45]

50. Black Boy-Richard Wright – My edition, and I think most newer editions, contains the original Black Boy, Wright’s story about growing up in Mississippi, and then the second half was his story about moving to Chicago, joining the communist party, and then becoming disillusioned with communism and white intellectuals. It’s less compelling reading than the first half but still an important story. [MLNF – 13, HBTWC]

51. The Cities of the Plain-Cormac McCarthy – The conclusion to the Border Trilogy, following All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing. It’s kind of a disappointment. After it seemed like he put so much into the first two books, this one feels like he’s just trying to wrap it up and get on to something else.

52. Sanctuary-William Faulkner – Faulkner says he wrote this one just for sensationalism’s sake and to sell books. I have trouble believing it because it’s pretty brilliant and much meatier than The Reivers. [HBTWC]

53. The Complete Stories -Flannery O’Connor – There are very few writers who can write equally well about both sides of the arguments regarding religion and morality such that both devout Catholics and devout agnostics (myself) can both love them (The Brothers Karamazov comes to mind here). Flannery O’Connor is such a writer.

54. Darkness at Noon-Arthur Koestler – The anti-communist manifesto. I was turned on to this one because it was the highest ranked book I’d never heard of on the Modern Library’s top 100 at #7. I don’t know about #7, but it is a wonderful book and a concise critique of why communism failed. [ML – 8]

55. A Prayer for Owen Meany-John Irving – This one could have been higher but I just didn’t buy the ending, which felt contrived and cheesy. Still, Owen is a great character and you really come to love the little fella. Up until the last scene it’s a brilliant novel. [MLR – 28]

56. The Corrections-Jonathan Franzen – People keep mentioning this book to me and how much they liked it. Several of my friends can’t be wrong. It’s good. Hard to put my finger on why since there’s so many characters and so many themes, but it’s just good. So, let’s not belabor it shall we? [NBA, TM]

57. One of Ours-Willa Cather – This one might be a little high at 57. I read it not long after Sept. 11, 2001 and was feeling particularly, uncharacteristically patriotic. I would say that I’m, well, significantly less so four years later. But, I’ll stick with my first instinct and leave it. I can’t go changing this list around every time my moods or beliefs swing. [PP]

58. The Illustrated Man-Ray Bradbury – The master of sci-fi short stories. This is my favorite collection.

59. The Confessions of Nat Turner-William Styron – A beautifully written account of the famous slave insurrection. An exploration into Nat Turner’s background and what might have caused this particular slave to rebel and so many others not to. [PP, TM]

60. The Rocket Boys-Homer Hickam – Amy came home one day to find me lying on the floor literally balling. She thought someone had died or something, but I had just finished this book and was listening to a Mineral record. I was in a very weird, early-twenties, graduating college, emo kind of stage at the time and this book just struck a chord.

61. Sabbath’s Theatre-Philip Roth – I almost put this one down because the first 80 pages or so just seemed like gratuitous, dirty, dirty sex. But it actually turned into a respectable novel just in time and I ended up really loving it. [NBA]

62. Fay-Larry Brown – Larry Brown might be the greatest southern writer you’ve never heard of. Unfortunately, he passed away of a heart attack at the age of 53 last November (2004). But, he’s got 8-10 books out there and I’m looking forward to reading more of them.

63. The Fountains of Paradise-Arthur C. Clarke – This one really got to me during my engineering “phase”. Written in 1979, this book is about building a space elevator. They actually held the first ever space elevator conference a year or two ago. [HA, NA]

64. Neuromancer-William Gibson – What The Matrix is to movies, Neuromancer is to books. Of course, The Matrix had the benefit of being made in 1999. 15 years after William Gibson kicked off the cyberpunk revolution with Neuromancer. [PESF – 33, SFBK – 6, HA, NA, TM]

65. The World According to Garp-John Irving – Has a lot of similarities with Owen Meany. I don’t want to give anything away here but I think if you like one you’ll like the other. Basically, I feel like Garp as a novel has a little bit more dignity because it doesn’t have the kooky ending, but I just loved Owen’s character more. [MLR – 64, R – 37]

66. Less Than Zero-Bret Easton Ellis – This book was published in 1985, Ellis was born in 1964. You do the math and that means that this was published (published, not written mind you) when the author was 20 or 21 years old. Holy mother of God.

67. The Unbearable Lightness of Being-Milan Kundera – This was hard to rank. I feel like it deserves better than #68 because it’s obviously a brilliant novel. But, truth be told, I think a great deal of the brilliance was over my head. I just didn’t grasp all of the intricacies and had trouble tying it all together. However, there are so many levels to this book that you could enjoy it on. Kundera is very observant and keen on the different aspects of people’s personalities. The sheer joy of relating to parts of his characters or recognizing traits that you’ve noticed in others is enough to enjoy the book and warrant its place on this list. [HBTWC]

68. No Country For Old Men-Cormac McCarthy – My least favorite of his books, but the first new one to be published since I started reading him, and I was ultimately fully satisfied.

69. At Heaven’s Gate-Robert Penn Warren – I wasn’t sure where to go with RPW after All the King’s Men. I was attracted to this one because it was inspired by Nashville local politics around the time the novel was published (1943). This one was very good. If you liked King’s Men you can’t go wrong here, though it sounds like World Enough and Time is perhaps his second most acclaimed novel. I look forward to it whenever I get around to it.

70. Childhood’s End-Arthur C. Clarke – Clarke revolutionized sci-fi by taking the standard confrontation with alien beings and instead of fighting them or describing how different they look than us and what their world is like he looked at this imaginary confrontation and asked deeper questions like: how would we ever even conceive of what they are doing here or how their technology works since they would be so inconceivably more advanced than us, would they still perpetrate wars, perhaps they are what guides our evolution? His genius lies not in the setting up of these confrontations but in the conclusions where instead of tidily wrapping up the story with perhaps a clever plot twist at the end and explaining the aliens motives or technology or beliefs, he left a great deal of ambiguity which naturally rings more true since these civilizations would have to be so much farther advanced than us to have supported interstellar travel. Childhood’s End, published in 1953, is the early turning point in Clarke’s thinking, which led towards smarter, harder, more realistic sci-fi. [PESF – 1, SFBK – 7]

71. The Kreutzer Sonata-Leo Tolstoy – A classic novella about jealousy. The Kreutzer Sonata is a Beethoven sonata written for piano and violin. You should check it out, it’s phenomenal. The story is about a husband whose wife plays piano and finds a male companion to play violin with her. The husband hears them playing the Kreutzer Sonata and as the music builds he becomes certain that they are having an affair and he goes into a murderous rage. It’s pure genius. I’ve recently read a group of four stories under the title The Death of Ivan Ilych and other stories. I’d like to also mention the stories Master and Man and The Devil here, they would be my second and third favorite of his “short” stories.

72. Jude the Obscure-Thomas Hardy – Revolutionary. It felt way ahead of it’s time.

73. The Martian Chronicles-Ray Bradbury – Amy read this for a class in grad school and loved it. It’s short stories but they are sort of tied together in that they are all forays to the alien planet of Mars. [PESF – 79]

74. Ender’s Game-Orson Scott Card – This is just super-cool sci-fi. I want to say more but I don’t want to give anything away. [MLR – 59, SFBK – 22, PESF – 34, HA, NA]

75. Deathbird Stories-Harlan Ellison – Another sci-fi short story writer. Not quite up to par with Bradbury, but Deathbird Stories is widely regarded as his greatest collection. This book is almost as much horror as it is sci-fi, most of the stories are about violence and evil and so forth. He opens the book with a caveat not to read too many of the stories in the same sitting. Amy wasn’t able to get into it. [SFBK – 18, PESF - 76]

76. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?-Philip K. Dick – This is what Bladerunner was based on. [SFBK – 8]

77. About a Boy-Nick Hornby – This made a surprisingly good movie starring Hugh Grant.

78. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men-James Agee – I know this is not a novel, but it is High Art and I’ve got plays on here too, so, give me a break already. James Agee and photographer Walker Evans spent a couple of months living with 3 sharecropper families in Alabama during the Depression. They document their lives with grace and dignity out the ying-yang. It’s really amazing. [HBTWC]

79. Blameless in Abaddon-James Morrow – This is a sequel to Towing Jehovah (in which God dies and His body falls into the Mediterranean at 0 deg. longitude and 0 deg. latitude and the Vatican hires an oil tanker captain to tow His gigantic body to the Arctic to be preserved and keep it secret from the rest of the world that God is dead). Blameless in Abaddon is a modern-day Jobian tale about a lawyer whose wife dies of cancer and he puts God (who is now barely alive and whose body is the central attraction at an amusement park in Florida run by the Southern Baptists) on trial for crimes against humanity. Sacrilegious hilarity ensues once again.

80. A Gathering of Old Men-Ernest J. Gaines – This book kicked butt. I loved rooting for the old men.

81. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy & The Hobbit-J.R.R. Tolkien – Shew… another tough one to rank. I’ll be honest, I thought certain parts were terribly boring and I spent years in between books because I wasn’t compelled to read on in the trilogy. But simply for the accomplishment of building such a rich world from scratch and starting a whole genre it deserves at least this spot. [MLR – 4, R – 40, HBS – 5, TM]

82. Shogun-James Clavell – This was super-cool. I thought it was going to be about warring Japanese tribes but it’s actually about what it would be like to wake up in a totally alien civilization. The first Portuguese ship wrecks on the coast of feudal Japan.

83. Lincoln-Gore Vidal – It just seems to flow that James Clavell’s Shogun and Gore Vidal’s Lincoln are back to back on this list, doesn’t it? This is a must read for Civil War fans. [HBTWC]

84. American Psycho-Bret Easton Ellis – I like this book more and more as I reflect on it. Perhaps its rank at #83 is an artifact of having ranked it too soon after reading it before the initial shock had worn off. It’s pretty gruesome and I had to take periodic breaks from it. But I don’t think the violence is as gratuitous as it first seems. I think its hard to convince some people that certain policies/societies/beliefs/whatever(social contructs) lead from point A to point B to point C to point D, with point D being, for some, death/oppression/sexual objectification/whatever(bad things) and points B and C have obscured the root cause of this badness (kind of like money laundering). What I think Ellis has done is take artistic license to wrap the string of points around to where point A explicitly (very explicitly) leads to point D. [LM – 76]

85. The Color Purple-Alice Walker– I had a real good feeling about this one when I picked it up and saw that it was a series of letters to God written in black, southern dialect. It didn’t disappoint at all. [NBA, PP]

86. The Call of the Wild-Jack London – Buck is such an awesome character.

87. Hyperion-Dan Simmons – Someone at NASA was giving away some sci-fi paperbacks outside their office one day and among them was this Hugo award winner that I decided to pick up. I hadn’t read hardcore sci-fi in a while and this book restored my faith in the genre. Unfortunately, I’ve read plenty of sci-fi crap since then and have strayed away of late. [HA]

88. Moby Dick-Herman Melville – This book begins and ends superbly and there’s some parts in between that are great too. I love all the biblical stuff and the grandness of the tale and its themes. But, the lengthy technical descriptions of whaling and whales and whale ships and whale pictures and what not in between are just too laborious and painful to read to warrant a higher ranking. If I could select certain chapters and condense this book to about half its size it would easily be top 20. [HBTWC]

89. Rendezvous With Rama-Arthur C. Clarke – A celebration of mystery and encounters with the unknown. [HA, NA]

90. Breakfast of Champions-Kurt Vonnegut – I read this too soon after Slaughterhouse-Five and started to get tired of Vonnegut’s tone about halfway through it. Otherwise, you can’t go wrong with this one. [HBS – 89]

91. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater-Kurt Vonnegut – The main character, Mr. Rosewater, in this book reminded Amy and I both of Ignatius from Confederacy of Dunces. This is a really funny book. We still laugh together regularly when we think back to one particular scene.

92. Innocent Darkness-R.F. Sheehan – I’m taking a flyer on this one. I really thought it was brilliant. I loved the idea. I loved the McCarthian journey through Mexico. In my humble opinion, this book should stay in print and be more widely read and recognized.

93. Glamorama-Bret Easton Ellis – The characters and the violence in this one are very similar to American Psycho except updated to the 90’s. So, it’s not quite as fresh here. Plus the plot jumps all over the place. It gets very phildickian, which is a bit of a twist from American Psycho. I think maybe Ellis was aware of the phildickianess because there is a scene where he mentions that in someone’s apartment they have a complete collection of all of Philip K. Dick’s novels on a book shelf, it seemed sort of out of the blue and since I had already felt the similarities I couldn’t help but chuckle. The cameos of all the famous people are really cool.

94. From Here to Eternity-James Jones – This is the first of a WWII trilogy with the second book being The Thin Red Line. From Here to Eternity presents life in the army in the lead up to WWII. [ML – 62, NBA]

95. Empire Falls-Richard Russo – This is a great book set in a small town in BFE Maine. I thought it was funny how much it reminded me of Kingsport, TN. [PP, HBS - 60]

96. The Winds of War & War and Remembrance-Herman Wouk – I’m now lumping these two together since I recently completed War and Remembrance. It’s good history and grand romance; epic in scale.

97. The End of the Affair-Graham Greene – This is my first and only Graham Greene novel so far, so I can’t really compare it with any of his others. The writing is great since it’s so captivating with a fairly sparse plot. I really enjoyed the love story. The End of the Affair refers to a promise to God that one of the lovers makes in the face of her partners possible death during a World War II bombing. It makes for a fairly interesting dilemma. Gosh, I sure do like religious dilemmas a whole lot to be a secularist. Wonder what’s going on there?

98. Look Homeward, Angel-Thomas Wolfe – I’ll hate to have to see this one drop off the list after I read three more books that are better than it because I really respect it and loved parts of it. It’s too long though and I think he tries a little too hard at times like he’s being really cognizant of producing Great Literature.

99. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius-Dave Eggers – The best of the last decade’s memoir frenzy, which James Frey has now effectively killed.

100. The Sheltering Sky-Paul Bowles – This had the potential to be higher, but part of the ending just didn’t sit right with me.

Writing Style-8.5
Originality-8.6
Plot-7.1
Merit(whatever that means)-8.3
Overall-8.4

Alright, that does it, I LOVE Milan Kundera. I’m not sure I can overstate this fact. I’ve now read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, then Immortality, and now The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Good God, this dude is brilliant, I mean really effin’ BRILLIANT. Go read him right now. Walk, don’t run. Disregard the rest of this post. I’m serious. Git. Scram. Be off with ye.

Ok, now that you are back from the bookstore or library having obtained one of Kundera’s literary treasures, let me impart a few thoughts about him and this book.

This might actually be my favorite of his at this point. I’m not sure that it’s better than Unbearable Lightness as a novel, but having now read 3 of his books I think I’m starting to figure this Kundera character out a little bit.

Laughter and Forgetting is very similar to Immortality in structure. It has a central theme, Communist totalitarianism as it relates to Kundera’s native Chzechoslovakia being invaded by Russia in 1968—then with this central theme always in mind, Kundera proceeds to attack it from several different angles. These different angles are in the form of seven loosely related stories with loosely related characters in which he attacks the theme from a philosophical standpoint, an autobiographical standpoint, a metaphorical standpoint, a personal fictional account, an allegorical standpoint, etc. This was the exact same modus operandi as Immortality. Now that I’m catching on to his MO, I’d really like to go back and reread Unbearable Lightness to see if I get more out of it.

I’ve been pimping Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon on here lately. This is another great anti-communist manifesto to go along with that one. Both are from authors who actually lived under communist rule. In fact, as I understand, were both Communists of a sort, and became disillusioned, as tends to be the case.

I’m not gonna belabor the point anymore, but I strongly encourage all serious readers to try one of these books out.

There are so many things to discuss with the book, but part of the fun of reading it is trying to follow his logic and make connections on your own. So, I’d love to hear from anyone who has or chooses to give one of these books a go. Amy loves the guy too. So two enthusiastic thumbs up from our household.

Writing Style-7.0
Originality-6.8
Plot-6.9
Merit(whatever that means)-7.4
Overall-6.8

This is another great book by Ernest J. Gaines. It’s familiar territory if you are familiar with him. A Louisiana plantation where whites, blacks, and Cajuns coexist.

The main plot here is that a young black man is convicted of murder when he unwittingly joins in on an attempted robbery where a white store owner is killed. The young man is unarmed and unaware of the robbery plot, but he was at the scene and implicated. At his trial his attorney argues that the judge should not give him the death penalty because it would be like putting a hog to slaughter. This is a reference to the fact that the defendant is mentally challenged. But still, he is sentenced to the death penalty.

His grandmother’s last wish for him is that he not die like a hog but like a man. She and a friend enlist the town’s black school teacher to act as a mentor to the young man in jail and teach him how to be a man before he is executed.

This schoolteacher is the main character of the book. He reluctantly agrees to help out. He is college educated and hates his environment and would like to leave Louisiana with his girlfriend.

Like the other Gaines novels that I’ve read there is tons of local color. And every single word carries the weight of oppression. Gaines describes how every single act or even the tiniest gesture between a white person and a black person carries some message and reveals and reminds those involved that there is a deeply ingrained power structure there. To me this is the most important aspect of his writing. The central theme tends to be letting some semblance of pride or subtle revolt shine through from this horribly oppressive environment.

I still think I like A Gathering of Old Men most of the books of his that I’ve read. Maybe because it was the first, but I really think it was the characters and their particular ‘subtle revolt’ (not so subtle in this instance, really) that I liked best.

Writing Style-6.6
Originality-3.5
Plot-N/A
Enjoyability-6.0
Merit(whatever that means)-9.1
Overall-6.7

I’m morbidly behind on my book reviews so I’m gonna try to be brief so I don’t get bogged down with the chore of catching up.

This is the third Schlesinger book I’ve read along with A Thousand Days about the JFK presidency and Crisis of the Old Order, the first volume in his FDR New Deal trilogy. Schlesinger is certainly one of my favorite historians. He tends to write about the people that I am interested in, he’s sharp as a tack, has impeccable historical integrity (though his detractors tend to think he’s got too much of a hardon for the Kennedys), and writes superbly.

It took me many months to finish this one though. Not sure why. Maybe it was the intimidating length of the book, maybe it was the fact that I had recently read a lot of the same information in the JFK book, maybe it was just my mood recently. There’s really no good reason why it took me so long. The book is fabulous.

If you have any interest in Robert Kennedy, this is a must read. My favorite parts of the JFK book in fact were about Robert. Some of his quotes to southern segregationists while he was Attorney General and using his federal power to desegregate the south really get your blood flowing. And his role in the Cuban missile crisis as the voice of an appropriate middle-ground type of retaliation is extremely impressive. In short, the Joint Chiefs and anti-communist, hawkish types were calling for an invasion of Cuba. Meanwhile, dovish types were saying we couldn’t really do anything about the missiles unless we were ready to start a nuclear world war III. Robert Kennedy argued for the balanced approach of a naval blockade of Cuba to keep the Russians from sending nuclear warheads to further equip the missiles that were already there. So we stood up to the Russians without firing first and they backed off as the ships were approaching. Good stuff. If Nixon had been elected in 1960, running as a hardline anti-communist, what might have happened? Shudder to think, what if George W. were put in a similar situation? We’d probably all be mutants crawling out of holes in the ground forming tribes and worshipping the Big Boom Makers Who Came Before and having children with tentacles and three eyes and killing each other over the watering holes that don’t taste too brackish.

Not long before I read this book, I read A Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy. It’s this crazy crime noir thriller set in the sixties and centers around the Kennedys and the mob and Cuba and Communists and J Edgar and all the stereotypical stuff that you would put in a noir book of the era. What was interesting was how much of this crazy shit was very true to life as I started reading the Schlesinger book. Crazy stuff like deals with the mob to find ways to overthrow Castro and the power struggle between J Edgar Hoover and Robert Kennedy who was supposed to be his boss as Attorney General, but essentially J Edgar could do whatever he wanted to.

There are tons of great Kennedy quotes in the book of course. I wish I had kept track of a few to share here. Maybe I’ll leaf through the book this weekend and try to find some. But I’ll leave you with one that comes to mind. In the early to mid sixties, Robert Kennedy takes a trip to tour South American countries. In one country, I can’t remember which one specifically, he is determined to enter their mines against the better judgment of his advisors who say that it’s too dangerous. After returning to the States, he’s talking to a reporter about living conditions for these miners and he says, “If I had to work in those mines, I’d be a Communist too.”

Setting Sun
Of Love and Love Lost on the Rio Grande
Everyone Needs a Song Called Hallelujah
Twenty-two

All songs written and performed by Enoch and copyright of Bassless Accusations Music 2006, except background vocals on Hallelujah by A-killa. I'd like to thank a bunch of people that made this batch of songs much better than my previous ones. First and foremost is Amy who had the foresight to see that I needed quality equipment and got me a new 8-track and a sweetass condensor mic for xmas. Thanks to Phil for the loaner mandolin on Setting Sun and Hallelujah. Thanks to Ms. Lawless for the high quality Sony headphones. Thanks to Mike for the percussive intruments on Rio Grande. And thanks to Mom for the chromatic harp in Rio Grande. Thanks to Frank Wiggley for being my biggest fan.

Writing Style-7.0
Originality-6.5
Plot-5.0
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-6.6
Overall-6.7

I am a HUGE Bret Easton Ellis fan. He may well be my favorite truly contemporary author. Amy’s a big fan too. I think I’ve now read all of his work except for the latest, Lunar Park, which I’m waiting to come out in paperback.

Alright, for those of you not familiar with Ellis—he writes mainly about the 1980’s. Particularly the uber rich. His characters are typically young, rich, self-absorbed, vapid, vacuous, filled with ennui, etc—I think you get the point. Reading Ellis is like watching MTV’s Laguna Beach totally uncensored (only at some point in the show it would be revealed that Kristen, or somebody, is really a robot that runs on human blood and she starts harvesting hoboes after luring them to her estate with the promise of fetish-filled sex).

There’s tons of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. It makes for exceptionally entertaining reading. But somehow, it’s got heart too.

I think that ultimately Ellis is experimenting with the question of what happens to a society or group of people that have no rules and have no needs or wants? In his world anything goes. You feel the characters constantly striving to feel something, anything. Whether it’s via drugs or sex or rape or murder or torture or whatever crazy device Ellis comes up with, its this lack of substance (I guess) in their lives because of their status and wealth that leads them to this abhorrent lifestyle.

And, Ellis is so good at putting you in that specific time and place. The lingo, the food, the fashion, the music of the 80’s he is obsessed with. It’s comical how in one novel everyone may be listening to Duran Duran whereas in another everyone may be listening to The Talking Heads and REM, or they may be wearing Polo shirts or Wayfarer sunglasses or whatever.

I don’t recommend that you start with The Informers however. The Informers is really a bunch of loosely related short stories, sort of a Bret Easton Ellis version of the movie Magnolia. If I had it to do over again, I would probably read the books chronologically in terms of when they were published. Less Than Zero was his first novel, published when he was 20 or 21 years old. And it’s a great place to start. If you like it you’ll want more, if you don’t then you wouldn’t have liked American Psycho or any of the other books of his that you might have picked up instead.

If you’ve already read Ellis and liked it, you can’t really go wrong with the Informers, it’s simply more of the same. I like all of his books but they do tend to be sort of monotonous. That said, I do think that he effectively varies his theme enough that they are all worth reading.