An interesting story of a small publisher who almost published a J.D. Salinger book was told in today’s Washington Post. Alas, he made a mistake. No book for you! . . . A telephone call Buddy Holly secretly recorded when he tried to get the rights to That’ll Be the Day from Decca is making the rounds. It’s interesting how different the music business was 50+ years ago . . . While it’s been a rough week for President Obama (no bump from the SOTU), I applaud him for targeting to eliminate the Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit. It would be even better if eliminated the entire earned income tax credit program . . . A long time ago our family visited Haiti. It wasn’t in good shape then either. As I recall, a boy was going to be publicly flogged for an accident. While the earthquake has been devastating, Haiti has long been in great need . . . There was a time when I would have been gearing up to watch the Olympics. Now it is just a blip. How many storylines will be crafted that break up the actual sporting events? Curling and luge are still two events I marvel at . . . the one-inch of snow we were expected to get turned out to be a few inches more. It’s pretty outside . . . There is plenty to rail against the NFL for, but its move of the Pro Bowl to the off Sunday between the championship and the Super Bowl is a good move. I still have no interest in this game, but I suspect it will garner higher ratings . . . Bob Ingle’s piece today tells just one side of agency packing. It’s a bad side. Political appointments only need to earn $7500 to be in the state pension system. Of course, as I have been discussing of late, they do the political dirty work of elected officials without being held accountable . . .
The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it.
Somehow I missed the news that J.D. Salinger passed away the other day. Much like Neil Young, Salinger’s work, most notably his opus, The Catcher in the Rye, helped me through those awkward adolescent years.
I was assigned to read the book prior to entering St. Andrew’s along with a couple other books. Mom purchased all of them, and I began reading them right away. Of course, at the time I was finishing my freshman year at Wildwood Catholic. I have a vivid memory of reading my scarlet covered book in the lunchroom in the basement. Someone approached and informed me this may not be the best book to read considering the Catholic Church had banned the book. Ha! My teenage angst was just fueled by that.
Years later I sought the banned book list by the church. I don’t believe I ever found one.
Anyhow, banning books is just silly. Nevertheless . . .
I read most of Salinger’s works at one time or another. Granted, Salinger’s reclusiveness was so set that he has nothing newer than 1965. I wonder how much will be published posthumously.
Holden Caulfield was the first character, I suspect, that I read that used the word fuck. for a teenage boy, that was a hook. Of course, Holden’s life was more than a curse. It was enlightening as well as refreshing.
A couple weeks ago I stumbled across the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. I have been intrigued by it. There is a group that is trying to read each of these books. To promote that challenge, each month it selects a few books from the list to read and discuss. I have long sought an online reading group. I think I will like this one. Each month they select books by the last name of the authors. For January 2010, the letter L was up. After input, it was decided to read D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover and John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came In From the Cold.
Interestingly, these books were a bit more difficult to locate locally than I had anticipated. The CLUES system was offline last Tuesday. The Millville library closed. As we bopped about running errands, we ended up over at the Vineland library. CLUES was up there. There apparently is but one copy of Lady Chatterly’s Lover in the county. That is at the college. I asked to make certain I was entitled to check out books there. I was told I was. I was also informed they may not be opened during the holiday. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is only available as an audiobook. I have not embraced that technology as others have.
Back home I decided to give Cumberland County’s only bookstore a try. We have an excellent used bookstore in Millville. Gert suggested I call first. I did; they had both books, although Lady Chatterly’s Lover was only available new. I went down there and picked up both books for less than $10.
I just finished the Le Carre book. Overall it was a good book. In some regards it is dated. The counter to that is the details seem more plausible than a normal espionage book. Le Carre is a former member of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Leamas is a 50-year old English spy. He headed up the Berlin network. The story begins with his chief turncoat being gunned down at the Berlin Wall. Ready for retirement after this disaster and the effective end of the network, Leamus retreats back home. There he is presented with one last job. The balance of the book is that job.
We learn about a spy’s commitment to the job. It’s not about the money as we find Leamus living a horrifically sparse life that finds him jailed. It’s all part of the con. He falls for a Communist. Liz seems to be his downfall, but again, it has all been thought out.
The plot marches along fairly predictably until the end. It is then that some twists are offered. It is also there that the book falters some for me. The double-twist at the Communist trial is not explained well enough for me. Did Leamus know Mundt was in it all along? If not, then how did it come that Mundt helped with the escape? It would seem rather forced at that point.
Liz was shot dead climbing the Berlin Wall. I think a better ending for her would have been to have refused to climb. Staying behind the wall to show her allegiance to the Party seems far more fitting. And did Leamus make it? It is unclear. I suppose that is done purposely. I don’t care for it.
Le Carre’s writing agrees with me. Perhaps it is because the book is 47 years old and is how books I grew up with were written. Perhaps it is just Le Carre’s style. I noted he used lain perfectly. Given my struggles conjugating that verb, it is always nice to see the work used.
I enjoyed this book, but I think it pales compared to Clancy’s Jack Ryan books. The twists were perfunctory, lacking the suspense of Turow, for instance.
Finally, I note that my ragged copy of the book first sold for 75¢. It is a first edition paperback.
I stumbled across this list on the Listology web site. Listology is an interesting concept; one can post lists. They fully admit it’s for the OCD. Yeah, that’s me.
There was a time when I was really into lists. It’s not that I am not any longer, it’s just that I guess I am wise enough to recognize a list with a title of 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die is going to be a big lesson in objectivity subjectivity.
No Billy Shakes. No Chaucer. No D.H. Lawrence. Oh well.
Nevertheless, I went through the list. Eventually, I plan to update my Shelfari bookshelf to include those books I have read previously, even if I do not own the book or even remember the plot. Here are the books I recall reading from the list.
Jazz – Toni Morrison
A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
Beloved – Toni Morrison
The Cider House Rules – John Irving
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Godfather – Mario Puzo
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
The Graduate – Charles Webb
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
Junkie – William Burroughs
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
Molloy – Samuel Beckett
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
The Plague – Albert Camus
Native Son – Richard Wright
The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Trial – Franz Kafka
Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
Dracula – Bram Stoker
The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Hard Times – Charles Dickens
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
I say recall, because there were a few books on the list I think I may have read, but cannot be certain. There are plenty of books I should have read, some of them even assigned. Then there’s The Hobbit. I have begun and stopped this book no less than six times, yet never finished it. I have a beautiful hardcover copy of it. It is on my list of books to read.
There is no way I would ever finish the 1,001 Books list. Just seeing Ulysses and Finnegans Wake on the list makes me cringe. I am not a big Joyce fan, especially for those two. Sigh . . .
So, dear reader, which of these 1,001 books have you read?
I have extremely fond memories of The Dead opening the Rochester show with Box of Rain –> Cold Rain & Snow. Despite it being June, it was cold and rainy. Today demands this song . . . Governor Corzine is such a great financial wizard. He agreed to have New Jersey taxpayers pay approximately $22,000 per day to get out of series of bonds former governors Florio and McGreevey negotiated. How’s that for efficiency? Oh, and his former employer, Goldman Sachs has a cushy $1 million monthly draw from Jersey taxpayers from the Transportation Trust Fund. Good riddance, Corzine . . . If that isn’t bad enough news for you, here comes the report showing that New Jersey is over $33 billion in debt. The report accurately points to the “independent” agencies ability to indebt taxpayers without voter approval . . . Locally, Lou Magazzu is pushing for creating another agency to issue bonds. He just took over the Improvement Authority that already has that ability. Meanwhile, taxpayers are screwed . . . I stumbled across The Best Christmas Pageant Ever the other day. This is a wonderful read aloud book. Treat yourself to this wonderful tale of the Herdmans . . . Here’s a different take on the White House party crashers . . .
