A Cruel Man Delighting in Flowers

'Titus Groan':

'The moon slid inexorably into its zenith, the shadows shrivelling to the feet of all that cast them, and as Rantel approached the hollow at the hem of the Twisted Woods he was treading in a pool of his own midnight.'

I shall read the other two stories in this volume in due course, but for now, shall leave the shadows of Gormenghast, the deathly halls with their noises dark as shrinking pupils, and those people, heavy, flinching and lost between those marvelous walls...

There is much to love here. Peake writes in a visual way, very different to any other writer who I have described as being visual. Usually this means a kind of filmic-manner, like Elmore Leonard, so you can read it like you're watching it. But this is almost the opposite. You read this as if you're absorbing it. Like on a gallery wall, or perhaps on the side of a broken building, some genuine street-artist been at work.

The novel could easily be described as narrative-poetry. There are passages that you want to read over and over again, like the one above. There is a thickness to the style, as if Peake is varying his brushstroke for a purpose and an effect. When he is heavy, though, the pages start to feel lighter and want to be turned...

You can call it fantasy, but there's nothing overtly 'fantastic', other than what can be fantastic. The characters are vividly drawn to the point of hurting your eyes, making them feel like bleeding instead of tearing. The inclusion of occasional sparse illustrations add further edge. You do not love any of them, but you pity them all. They are all dark and mean and 'bad', but the degree of harm they are willing to do differs, so I enjoy the moral ontology Peake plays with.

As some reviewers here have complained, it can be slow-going. I admit to considering throwing in the towel. On several occasions, picking up the tome did feel close to a chore, but after sitting down, being sat on by a cat (not a white one...) and having a glass of Shiraz at hand in my favourite reading chair, and after the first few paragraphs, you need to go further.

Dick shows his usual dazzling blend of vision and narrative energy in this novel. The ideas he is playing with and the manner with which he uses humanity and technology to play out these ideas is five star worthy.

However, maybe due to the above, I can't help being 3 star disappointed upon finishing... I understand the demented manner with which the narrative focus is in play with the theme, but I really wanted more from the simulcra: I wanted them more up front in the story, and found myself wanting to skip through the relationship angst of Pris and Louis.

I guess this is why I prefer [b:Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?|7082|Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?|Philip K. Dick|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51figp%2BFE8L._SL75_.jpg|830939], which is kind of the same novel, in a way, but from another angle.

I also enjoy the dated science-fiction speculations, such as the existence of domestic rocket travel and interplanetary colonisation along side the use of carbon paper on typewriters and public phones with books with everyones addresses in them...

Disclosure: I work for Garratt Publishing as their Editorial Assistant, and this was one of the first books I worked on for them, but I still stand by my rating and comments below.

Falzon manages to achieve a great synthesis of substance and style with this book. His thesis, that the more socially exclusive a society becomes - the more volitile and uncivilized, is established through both anecdotal and observational prose; the 'punch' is driven by strong poetic framing to each chapter: 'The Dangerous Classes' being one of the best.

While I may have some argument with how aspects of 'the Unheard' is delineated along certain discursive lines, I have no argument with the central thrust and aesthetic energy.

While it may by set in Australian social terms, the milieu Falzon operates in professionally, it has a universal social message, as perhaps fore-shadowed by the title's play on a Martin Luther King quote.

'I did not betray Mr Kurtz - it was ordered I should not betray him - it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.'

This book is literature: words made into art. If you enjoy sociology and want to use it to consider and weigh up factors of social relativism with it, that's fine, but vaguely annoying in a similar way as seeing someone using a good reproduction of Caravaggio's 'David and Goliath' to wipe up dog puke.

Conrad charts an interesting space here between Realism and Modernism, in that his style is realist, and he had commented on the close correlation between Marlow's journey and his own Congo experience, but I am convinced in the heavily ironic/allegoric underpinning of this plainly fantastic Western Canonical work. I believe Conrad left many clues and pointers: such as the lack of mention of 'Africa', the nested narrative focus between Marlow and the actual narrator of Conrad's tale, the way light and dark is used, and passages such as:

‘He [Kurtz] was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream…’

‘We live, as we dream – alone….’

It had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one another. For a long time already he, sitting apart, had been no more to us than a voice.

(And later, it’s only the Light of someone lighting a smoke that reveals otherwise…)

Not to mention some of the absurdities about the characters, maybe foremost regarding Kurtz and Kurtz’s harlequin, whose ‘…very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed…’ And he does just kind of disappear, with some last minuts supplies. You get the feeling that no-one else even saw him: that he was Marlow’s Tyler Durden… And it’s chiefly through this harlequin that Marlow learns about Kurtz, not from Kurtz himself, then tells a guy on a ship many years later, who then is telling us about him.

Heart of Darkness is an existential novella about the relationship between a self-conscious reason-able animal, and the unconscious reason-less environment it finds itself subject too. The Light of Reason and Civilization is a constructed one, an artificial creation that must lie to us to protect us and these bizarre faculties we have developed from the Horror of the Reality we are actually a part of, which recognizes not one wit of any of our high minded ideas.

Kurtz is the end result of a journey into ‘the interior’. The accountant, who first tells Marlow about Kurtz – ‘In the interior you will no doubt meet Mr Kurtz’ – is the end result of staying firmly fixed upon the exterior, ‘…a world of straight forward facts.’ Marlow’s very brief experience with Kurtz, ‘the remarkable man’ - involves a decision between remaining in the interior, or journeying out. There is no way out, however, so in choosing Marlow, Kurtz must die. Marlow survives only because he doesn’t take that final step into the darkness.

And he does betray Kurtz, in the very end. He chooses Humanity over Horror: Lies over Truth.

Allegory can be annoying, but when it is so lightly and subtley played with, and the characters are so human and fractured in their own ways, when you have such a pure realist dialogic kind of pulse to the action and the movement and the relationships - it is so touching when Marlow shares his shoes with Kurtz's (possibly imaginary) harlequin - then it's more than forgivable. It's art.

My attorney advised me to read this book. He said that it could count in lieu of community service and I should report my findings to Professor Alistair Bean, down at the Tax Agency.

But Bean was dogging me from the start. When I rang the Agency, this girl told me he wasn't there. But I could tell from her tone that she was hiding something nasty, some kind of hurt, behind that taffy apple & rum/raisen voice. I could hear her mouth purse between each word, and I could hear the sound of her tuna fish lips tapping together like they were beached on a wet shore.

'Really, I've never heard of him.'

'You've never heard of him?'

Tap. Tap. 'That's what I said. I've never heard of him. Umm...'

'You've never heard of him.' But this time, I strung the 'never' out so it was like n-ehhhhhhhhhhhhh-ver.'

I kept repeating myself, experimenting with different ways of saying 'never' and feeling the different ways it made my lips tap together until she hung up.

I was suddenly disgusted with the whole affair, so I said to the empty telephone signal: 'This Thomo guy really had something going on here. I mean, this novel has a shape, you know what I mean, Bean?' Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. 'Yeah, the structure is the theme, Bean.' Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. 'Well, Structure's not just something to hang your hat on.' Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. 'But that's what I'm saying.' Meeep. 'I...' Meep.

I hung up on him.

And he was an intellectual, mind you.

This is a strange novel, or, perhaps more accurately, this is an estranging novel. Philip K. Dick manages to take you on a ride that is sometimes quite comfortable and unchallanging - you can sit back and admire the scenery - then, just when you think you know where you are and that the dirver knows the road rules, you blink and you're somwhere else entirely, and the driver's heading the wrong way down a one way road in an industrial estate on a cliff top doing a hundred and five.

This novel deals with ideas like reality and sanity: how sense is made of things. You can be baffled, but that ideas themselves are baffling, which is part of the point. Ever noticed how life seems to make sense until you really start examining it?

If anything, it leaves you wanting more. The character development is sound, but, at times, underdeveloped if anything. About twenty pages from the end I had the literary equivelent of that feeling that you get (as put forward in 'Seinfeld') when you realise that there's no way the half hour tv show you're watching can wrap up in time and you're bound to get a 'to be continued'. Except, there's not one here. Maybe this is part of his point, but it lost him a star from me.

'Breakfast at Tiffany's':
Truman Capote is a beautiful and deft stylest, and a marvelous ironist, combined with an unflinching approach to the thematic content of whatever he is wtiting about. The fact that he gets short shrift in the pantheon of 20th century American writing, versus the likes of his long time friend and contemporary Harper Lee, is an absurdity.

This story has such a sense of packed intensity. Capote manages to say much through the narrative focus while ensurting you never really question the pace. Holly Golightly is a fantastic invention: a character you can really love and hate simultaneously: a really human complexity is developed around her. At some points she seems ditzy and ridiculous, at others a steaming battleship. She is stupid and clever. A slut and a prude. And she drops the N-bomb casually, but retains literary heroic status. This could be part of his modern fall-from-grace, but it is also part of his genius.

What a great film it could have made, because it was the film they did make of it that has probably made me hestiate for so long to read it. I shouldn't have, and nor should you.

'House of Flowers'
A short modern fable, with a whimsical child-like kind of tone often in conflict with the adult subject matter, creating a very distinct mood. Anyone still obsessively married to that whole 'show don't tell' school of writing could realy benefit from reading this too.

'A Diamond Guitar'
A little Cool Hand Luke: A Novel treatment to the above themes, with a similar style, though more masculine and sweaty. Strong, evocative prose, with thickly drawn characters.

'A Christmas Memory'
Heavy on nostalgia but still interesting for its style and character building. Although, would bring the whole down to 4.5 stars.

It's fortunate that literary heroin, or 'book smack' as we call it in the mean aisles of the campus library, is both less physically damaging than the powder form, and much less easy to use. And, I suppose, easier to score. Book smack can't be injected into your body and you just sit back and it does its work.

It's more subtle than that.

But, fuck man, i/ll tell ya what, this stuff is some good shit, I mean, yeah, theres rough around the edges moments that if you/re not in the vibe you might start pipping on about the punktuation or the spelling or the paragraphing like you was some middle school english teacher with them big fat titties and a deep brown stare who/ll keep you back at lunchtime and make you pick up papers in the windy hall, but you gotta know that the deal is to deliver a little more than a concise account of goings on in real hard pound of pure book smack. You gotta know everything has to send you on the trip, everything needs to point you up when you/re saying whats going on hats going on whats going on and sometimes being human we lose track of the punktuation anyways. Maybe when you/re filling in a home loan application or a stat u tory declaration and the mans right behind your shoulder with a cane and mirror glasses on then yeah you/re there, man, but other times, theres no room for the punktuation like when you're on a high or on a low or on the bed getting blown sky high by the woman with the stare that makes your spine melt. So stay cool and let Hubie in. Find a good vein. It/s worth it.

Formulaic? Yes, but character-driven, plot-strong writing with a masterful touch of both place and pacing. Corris is able to provide detail and depth with such blistering economy as to make anyone interested in writing envious. It seems simple and effortless, but of course, it isn't. Here is a master craftsman and great story-teller in action. Sustaining a central character like this after 30 novels? Great read. If you've ever lived in Sydney, even more bun for your buck.

This book is one of those marvelous ones that manages to do many things at once. You can be depressed and uplifted simultaneously. The simplicity of the narration and the ordinary-ness of this society that Ivan Denisovich Shukhov finds himself a member of is all the more chilling for it, but also warming...

It is about much more than simply the brutality of Stalinism. The way in which human beings develop and own the reality that they are presented with has an existential ring to it.

Freedom for Shukhov would mean to become a carpet-painter? And the capret-painters have inherited the world. Poor old Shukhov. Maybe he will be spared freedom...

Philip Roth is the kind of writer that just doesn't seem to show up anymore. He is unflinching, fearless and unafraid. He doesn't mind getting really messy, since his topic - being human - is one of the most messy there is.

'The most outrageously funny book about sex yet written' is quotes 'The Guardian' on my cover, which is misleading (but, of course, the publisher is trying to grab the brower's attention, I realise...). It's not 'about sex', unless you're being very broad and Freudian about the title 'sex'.

There's such a beautiful truthness to this story; Roth creates such humans on the page with the fevered and ecstatic ease of Portnoy spraying out another sudden string of semen.

It made me laugh heartily on occasions. My daughter had to come in and see what was up in my quiet lounge, since, due to headphones piping Bach into me, I hadn't realised just how loud I was. (When Portnoy is giving his version of what mothers say to other mothers about their sons. You'll know it when you read it...)

Oh God, such blatant crunching honesty.

Bring back Portnoy. LET HIS PETER GO!

Okay, so perhaps reading this after The Brothers Karamazov wasn't a good idea, but I do usually like to read something light and genre after something more meaty.

Not in this case.

I was expecting something a little more humourous and parodic, but this book seemed to take itself very seriously, while being of that brand of contemporary fantasy that tries to make social commentary in a ham-fisted way (although making obvious connections between 'whiteness' and being human is kind of dehumanising David Gemmell blurb which had 'wall to wall action...gritty, fast paced'. Maybe there was something more sinister during the ellipse...

It is, of course, intimidating to write a review to attach to a book such as this, a masterpiece wrought by a master. I had read it before in a different translation perhaps fifteen years or so ago, and so it was I began to rediscover many of the ideas that influenced my own ideas. Some books become mirrors looking into mirrors, an abyss on either side, to use the very Karamazovian expression.

Within this novel, there are many levels, and many depths - and I use the word depths in particular. Dostoevsky is inventing the modern, in a number of ways, posing questions and formulating ironies that remain both fresh and so delishisly unresolved today, and are caught up with those kind of absurd notions that so influenced further thinkers and writers, such as Albert Camus.

If it may be intimidating to review, it is sometimes considered intimidating to read. I would argue that is part of its power, and suggest that any reader take their time with this novel. Do not treat it as three thousand roubles to be spent on one night's carouse. Treat it as a gold mine in Siberia.

The breezy urban dystopia and edgy venacular of Marlowe's world is full of dark vitality - a kind of human energy that lurks beneath the punks and wise guys bravados. There is something here that most modern crime writers lack in spades: while Chandler certainly writes a good plot, he reveals it through the characters with such subtlety and irony. Marlowe is as tough as nails, and as smart as a cuban heal, but he is very human on the page, not a plot device, a fully functioning textual human being. It's worth the read just to see that happening, and also to see how the words can summon the shade of Bogart so effortlessly...

Perhaps even superior to 'The Big Sleep', 'Farewell My Lovely' once again Chandler delivers on every level - engaging plot with the requisite twists and turns, great characters - sometimes larger than life, but always still somehow clinging to it - and a voice that makes for some real edge and dark comedy. even some of the noir situations that have become cliche seem fresh with Chandler doing it. Great to have a tough-guy protagonist who is vulnerably human, and being as untouched by political correctness as only a 30s man could be...

This would have been two stars if it weren't for Glokta. He carried ths story for me, and I was often in a state of narrative impatience while reading either of the other two story threads: the West/Threetrees and the Quest.

Abercrombie writes very well, good dialogue and well-rendered exposition, but the plot development and 'honesty' with which he treats his characters is often flawed in this book. Other reviewers have commented along the lines of 'expect the unexpected' - but, once you've divivied the rather obvious political lean in the story, you can pretty much predict what's what. Although the depths to which Ladisla falls becomes absurd. Sometimes, it felt like Abercrombie was Bethod's chief informant, so that you knew, without any question, that the barbarian king was always going to out-guess anything anyone else came up with. I could see the two of them scheming away there. Abercrombie telling him: 'Hey, man, I just wrote those upper class, stick-up-their-arsess, namby-pamby, weakling Union scum into that positon there, on the hill...'

There also seems some rather heavily derivitive scenes here and there: I'll let other readers work them out.

While Glokta continues to shine from the first book, Ninefingers doesn't even seem like the same character. The catch-phrases are consistent, but I couldn't help feeling like he was an imposter. Some brat-pack actor trying to make it stick. The interplay between him and Ferro though is sometimes compelling.

Although I have already purchased #3, I'm putting it on the reading back-burner after this... Although, I'm pretty sure I will end up reading it, just to find out what happens to my favourite Inquisitor.

I read this while doing Literary Studies in university. Bloom's work was introduced to us piecemeal as a foil, a series of quotes here and there to wind up into a tight straw-man and then knock down. And burn.



I read further and discovered there was much more to him, the last genuine Literary Critic.

It was quite a few years back, so I will have to reread at some stage to provide a proper review, but some of the commentary on here, so full of facile assumptions and Resentment...



...required some sort of presence. I remember not always agreeing with him, but always being challenged by his ideas and his own beautiful and engaging style.

It's also worth noting, re. 'the list' this quote from Bloom in an interview:

The list was not my idea. It was the idea of the publisher, the editor, and my agents. I fought it. I finally gave up. I hated it. I did it off the top of my head. I left out a lot of things that should be there and I probably put in a couple of things that I now would like to kick out. I kept it out of the Italian and the Swedish translations, but it’s in all the other translations—about 15 or 18 of them. I’m sick of the whole thing. All over the world, including here, people reviewed and attacked the list and didn’t read the book. So let’s agree right now, my dear. We will not mention the list.