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MY BOOK WORLD Pynchon, Thomas. Mason and Dixon. New York: Holt, 1997.
My partner and I listened to the 48-hour Audible version of this book narrated by a fascinating British actor, Steven Crossley. He seemed to bring life to each character with an singular idiolect, particularly to the principals, Mason and Dixon. Often written without speech attribution, the dialogue was easier to understand with Crossley’s superior reading ability. I followed along with a hard copy of the book. The story of the two men who created the 233-mile boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania—the Mason Dixon line—became better known for establishing a line between the warring North and South of the USA. The novel also sets up a much fuller picture of the men’s lives as individuals and as partners in various ventures. One of the most fascinating may be their noting of the Transit of Venus multiple times and places throughout the world. Mason is laconic and melancholy, whereas Dixon is more garrulous and freewheeling in his dealings with the world—challenging their friendship and partnership to the nth degree at times—but also setting up a unique and rare lifelong friendship. A long slog of a read, but it is quite worth it, especially if you hear someone else (a professional) read it aloud! Up Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | Sandra Tsing Loh WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Judy Blume THURS: A Writer's Wit | Ricardo Güiraldes FRI: My Book World | Graham Norton, Ask Graham
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THURS: A Writer's Wit | Annie Bethel Spencer FRI: My Book World | Thomas Pynchon, Mason and Dixon
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MY BOOK WORLD Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown, 2002.
Author Sebold adopts an odd and unconventional point of view by narrating the book by way of a murdered fourteen-year-old girl. The most astounding aspect of the author’s bold move is that she so totally buys into this POV that it seems quite believable to readers. Young Susie Salmon is on her way home (swimming upstream? obvious catch?) from school when she is enticed by an across-the-street neighbor, Mr. Harvey, to visit his “den” in the middle of a cornfield. The rather intelligent girl knows better, but, as I said, she is ensnared by a master seducer. Mr. Harvey has murdered multiple females, mostly young girls like Susie, usually after he has violated them sexually. How he has gotten away with it for so long is probably a tribute to his wiliness: his obsequious way with other adults, his “shy” act in front of children, girls specifically. Susie’s father right away suspects Mr. Harvey, but he has no proof, and, after a few weeks Mt. Harvey disappears from the neighborhood. Yet, because of Susie’s omniscient view of things (anyone going to heaven has this POV), she knows exactly where everyone in her life is at any given time and what they are thinking. Nice device. No other writer will ever be able to use it again! In an ordinary novel, the comeuppance of the murderer might be paramount in the minds of most readers. What happens to the dastardly Mr. Harvey? I’ll tell you. In a very short scene near the end, readers witness Mr. Harvey attempting to pick up a young woman as they both smoke cigarettes out back of a store. She stalks away, calling him a creep, and surely as an act of God, an icicle drops from the eave of the building and does away with Mr. Harvey. It is all he deserves by way of attention in this novel. Someone else will have to tell his story, if anyone would want to. More miraculous is the ending in which, by way of a bit of magical realism, Susie has one more meeting with a boy she had kissed just before she died. Of course, now, he is twenty-one, which makes things different, but Sebold handles this problem very deftly. In all, a very satisfying novel that investigates a number of issues in modern life besides the perennial problem of creeps picking up and murdering children. Up Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | Betty Friedan WEDS: A Writer's Wit | William S. Burroughs THURS: A Writer's Wit | Annie Bethel Spencer FRI: My Book World | Thomas Pynchon, Mason and Dixon
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MY BOOK WORLD King, Dave. The Ha-Ha: A Novel. New York: Back Bay, 2005.
Nothing like holding a book on your shelves for twenty years before reading it! But it has been worth the wait. A young Howard Kapostash serves sixteen days in Vietnam before he is severely injured—so injured that even with therapy he cannot speak or write any longer. Think about it, a fairly good looking young man is so injured he emerges looking like Quasimodo—even into his forties. Though he does carry a card informing strangers he is of normal intelligence, his life is full of difficulties. Oh, he does all right with the people he deals with every day: the nuns at the convent where he keeps the grounds mowed and neat, the woman living with him who tends his books and in return is allowed to use his kitchen to maintain her soup business. Sylvia, a former girlfriend from high school, who now asks (demands) a big favor of him. Sylvia is checking herself into a drug rehab place, and she needs a place to leave her nine-year-old son. Pronto. Yes, for an undetermined amount of time, little Ryan will come to live with Howard and the rest of his housemates: Nit and Nat, two hippie types who manage to pay their rent, but barely. Howie and Ryan develop an interesting relationship. Through his usual pantomime, Howard is able to communicate with Ryan and even teaches him a few things about baseball and life. After eight weeks, the two become close, Howard being like a father Ryan has never had in his life, and because Ryan has taught Howard a few things, as well. This becomes the time when Sylvia is well enough to leave rehab. Instead of this reunion of mother and son being a happy time, however, Sylvia sets up a cause-and-effect situation by which Howard is victimized once again. I won’t spoil the ending because it is well worth reading for yourself to find out what it is. No wonder the novel was bestseller in its time! Yes, about the title. At first I thought this book must be about a stand-up comic. But a ha-ha is “a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier (particularly on one side) while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond from the other side. The name comes from viewers’ surprise when seeing the construction.” (Wikipedia). A photograph or diagram can expand this description if you can locate one. There is a ha-ha at the convent where Howard works, and it becomes a major point in the plot as well as providing a metaphor for Howard’s life. Up Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | Nien Cheng WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anton Chekhov THURS: A Writer's Wit | Shirley Hazzard FRI: My Book World | Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
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MY BOOK WORLD Patchett, Ann. The Magician’s Assistant. Orlando: Harcourt, 1997.
Magician Parsifal dies suddenly in Los Angeles, and his assistant wife, Sabine, is instantly burdened with a visit from Parsifal’s family of Alliance, Nebraska. The two members who fly to LA for the service are Parsifal’s mother, Dot, and the magician’s younger sister, Bertie. Sabine is in no mood, especially when they keep calling her husband Guy, a name he gave up long before for adopting his stage name, Parsifal. But Sabine suffers the visitors quietly, taking them to places familiar to Guy/Parsifal, including the rug factory he owns and runs. Oh, and readers learn early that Parsifal is gay and has acquired a lover/partner, Phan. Parsifal marries Sabine largely to protect their financial interests. Readers also learn that most magicians don’t make a living from the work; they have to have a day job, too. Sabine herself is employed by an architecture firm, creating exquisite models for structures the firm is designing. During the short visit, Sabine becomes close to Parsifal’s family members and promises to make a trip to Nebraska soon. In the middle of January Sabine lands, after a shaky flight, in Scottsbluff. She is greeted by Dot and Bertie. Later she meets Kitty, Guy’s older sister, who looks a lot like him. So do her teenage sons, one of whom is also named Guy. At first Sabine is ill at ease but after some long visits with Dot and Kitty, she learns more about her late husband, Guy/Parsifal, mainly that he had a major tussle with the law when young, and the law won. Because he was underage, he spent his time in a reformatory, not in a prison for adults. After serving his sentence, he headed for LA to begin his career as a magician. Back in his heyday, he and Sabine had appeared on the Johnny Carson Show, and someone had made a VHS tape of their appearance. In fact, the family watches it almost daily. They insist that Sabine see it, too. She’s never viewed a recording of their work before, so it is novel to her. Patchett does a masterful job of carefully threading together all the strands of this novel, and I won’t say more because there would have to be some spoilers, and I don’t want to do that, I just don’t. Up Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | M. K. Hobson WEDS: A Writer's Wit |August Strindberg THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anya Seton FRI: My Book World | Dave King, The Ha-Ha: A Novel
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THURS: A Writer's Wit | William Kennedy FRI: My Book World | Ann Patchett, The Magician's Assistant
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MY BOOK WORLD Stone, Nic. Dear Martin: A Novel. New York: Penguin Random, 2017.
A Black teenage boy about to matriculate at an Ivy League school faces a number of lifechanging challenges. Not only does Justyce have deep feelings for a white Jewish girl who also likes him but he becomes involved in two escalating events with police officers in his city. During one of these incidents, he and his best friend are shot by an officer. To deal with his trials and tribulations, Justyce writes letters to the late Martin Luther King as if he is a living mentor. The author handles with depth and sensitivity all that Justyce must go through to grow as a person. I like how Stone uses “news bulletins” from local TV stations to bring readers up to date on events, as well as an interesting font to distinguish Justyce’s letters to MLK. In dialogue, Stone utilizes a playscript format, eliminating the need for quite so many “they said” situations. Not only a very moving book but a stylishly presented one, as well. Up Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | Edward St. Aubyn WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Jenny Nimmo THURS: A Writer's Wit | William Kennedy FRI: My Book World | Ann Patchett, The Magician's Assistant
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MY BOOK WORLD Rutherford, Margaret. Margaret Rutherford: An Autobiography as Told to Gwen Robyns. London: Wyndham, 1972.
Recently I caught a couple of Rutherford’s Murder films on Turner Classic Movies, in which she plays Agatha Christie’s detective, Ms. Marple. And I became fascinated with the actor, how intricately and honestly she played the part, though the stories are relatively simple. Like a lot of actors/artists she suffered in her personal life early on. At age three her mother died, and an Aunt Besse raised her. It is easy to imagine her life as she was born in 1892, just a few months before my maternal grandmother was born. I usually don’t care for “as told to” books because the prose does sound as if it has been dictated onto a recording and transcribed word for word. But Rutherford’s spoken prose apparently is so eloquent, it doesn’t seem to affect the quality of the written result. Besides, her accounts are terribly interesting. Rutherford celebrated nearly fifty years in the acting business before, because of physical difficulties, she quit, just before her death in 1972—at age eighty. She seemed to make the most of her life no matter what. She went after and earned the career she desired. She traveled for both work and pleasure. She “adopted” adult children after she was married because she had none of her own. At age fifty-four she married fellow actor, Stringer Davis. He died a few months following her death. Perhaps some of her tips to actors are dated, but for the most part probably not. Kindness, consideration of fellow workers, and generosity never seem to go out of style. I paid entirely too much for this used copy, but I do think it has been worth it! If only it were signed! MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY 2025! Up Next: TUES JAN 7, 2025 : A Writer's Wit | Zora Neale Hurston WEDS JAN 8, 2025: A Writer's Wit | Robert Littell THURS JAN 9, 2025: A Writer's Wit | Simone de Beauvoir FRI JAN 10, 2025: My Book World | Nic Stone, Dear Martin
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FRI: My Book World | Margaret Rutherford, Margaret Rutherford: An Autobiography as Told to Gwen Robyns TUES: A Writer's Wit | Zora Neale Hurston WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Robert Littell THURS: A Writer's Wit | Simone de Beauvoir
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AUTHOR
Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA. See my profile at Author Central:
http://amazon.com/author/rjespers Archives
January 2025
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