The Ginger Man (J.P. Donleavy) (10.0/10.0)

The Ginger Man is perhaps the most eloquent portrait of debauchery ever painted in the English language. And it may just be the greatest American novel that no one has ever heard of. I can only barely read in any language other than English, so I don’t really know what they have to say about hedonism. But it’s hard to imagine anyone weaving an uglier tale in more beautiful language.
Sebastian Dangerfield is a bad man and behaves accordingly. Shortly after World War II, he finds himself studying at the prestigious Trinity University in Dublin, Ireland. Having squandered his GI Bill money and being miserably wedded with child, he does what any rotten human would do: he abandons his dependants and embarks on a journey of decadent self-indulgence.

Yet, he is a strangely-compelling character who appears more principled in his wickedness than perhaps even the Pope in his righteousness. He is a wastrel of the highest order who at first appalls but soon has the reader weeping in sympathy as his uncompromising mission to find beauty in this life—on his own gluttonous and lusty terms, of course—is revealed.

He takes advantage of women, he steals, he lies, he drinks too much, and he possesses every conceivable carnal vice. He is a person of huge appetites that devours life in breathtaking gulps and gives nothing in return. Yet to a man like Dangerfield these imperfections are what make him beautiful and somewhere along the line Dunleavy seduces us into sympathizing with this with rotten character; more than just sympathize, Dunleavy even brings us to champion this swine for some of the very same reasons we find him so distasteful at beginning of our voyage.

With such a beautiful gift of verse many readers may wonder why J. P. Donleavy didn’t devote his powers to do good. Rather than chronicling a beast of a man on his hilarious journey to purgatory, why not use his gift to pen a serious and profound piece—perhaps the next Great American Novel some might ask.

Well, in my mind he has. And that book is The Ginger Man.

The Last American Man (Elizabeth Gilbert) (1.5/10.0)

I rarely have a visceral reaction to any particular book, and the reviews that are hosted here on The Literate Man will attest to the fact that I generally give (very) positive reviews, but The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert really pissed me off. 

First of all, I should have loved this book. The subject is Eustace Conway, renowned mountain man of North Carolina, who took to the woods as a young man determined to lead a more simple and natural life, who hiked the Appalachian Trail in order to find himself, who spent months studying with the Maya in Guatemala, who went cross-country on horseback, and who ultimately established a primitive farm in the mountains of his home state. In fact, I feel a real kinship with the story of Eustace Conway, at least in broad outline. I grew up in the hill country of Western New York, where I worked horse and dairy farms, and spent many an hour hunting up arrowheads in the forests about my family's home. I, too, generally think that life is too complicated, too artificial, too sterilized, and that a return to a more simple existence is good for the soul. I too, spent several months hiking the Appalachian Trial during a break between college and law school. And I spent years living in Guatemala, trekking the spine of volcanoes that run the length of the country, and working with the indigenous Maya communities there. I should have LOVED the story of Eustace Conway; instead, I walked away from Elizabeth Gilbert's treatment feeling only pity for him and very much cheated by the promise of his story.

In titling her book, The Last American Man, Elizabeth Gilbert made a very tall and significant promise to her readers, namely that the story would reflect distinctly American values and otherwise reveal the embodiment of those values in a particular individual. Now, please understand that I have nothing against the man himself.  Eustace Conway is, from all that I know about him, a supremely competent and skilled outdoorsman.  What quickly becomes obvious in the book, however, is that Eustace spent the first half of his life suffering under and running from the harsh and autocratic rule of his father and the second half creating his own home (a primitive farm, known as Turtle Island), where he could draw young people in by the promise of a simpler life and then command and control them in precisely the same manner as his father commanded and controlled him. The rest of the book is no more than Gilbert's idealism of her subject and window-dressing.  In escaping his unbearable home life, Eustace Conway exchanged the yoke for the whip, but the system and the philosophy remain precisely the same.  Such autocracy is not an essentially American trait - indeed, it is precisely the opposite of a respect for individual liberty, a principle which Eustace Conway obviously abhors. A dedicated woodsman, he may be, but Eustace Conway is not in any way, shape, or form a paradigm of American masculinity.

And Eustace Conway is hardly the last of his kind, although he goes to great lengths to market and promote himself as the embodiment of American frontier principles.  Gilbert treats this self-promotion as part and parcel of what it means to be an American hero, pointing to the images that Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, among others, created to enhance their public standing.  By doing so, she tacitly elevates every travelling evangelist and snake-oil salesman to the status of American folk hero.  But these traits are hardly uniquely American or disappearing in our time.  In fact, self-promoting, self-righteous, and domineering natures abound in every society around the world. And so, the promise of the book's title goes not only unfulfilled, but directly contradicted.  I can only conclude that the title was a misguided marketing effort to sell more copies of what is a decidedly flat, fractured, and uninspired tale of an otherwise skilled woodsman who has spent his life in trying to tell other American males (and females) how to live their lives, while he fails again and again to effect a life that is significantly different from that led by his father. He is, simply, one self-promoting autocrat seeking to escape the domination of another, which is hardly a unique story, much less an essentially American one.

Pantaleon y Las Visitadoras (Mario Vargas Llosa) (8.5/10.0)

For native gringos, like myself, who occasionally stray into Spanish-language fiction, I think Mario Vargas Llosa is by far the most accessible of the Latin American fiction writers. This is true for two reasons: first, for his straightforward prose (though calling him Hemingway-esque is probably unfair to both), and, second, for the tasty themes that Vargas Llosa chooses to treat, which are usually some combination of military and sexual. For anyone who has struggled to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Miguel Angel Asturias in Spanish (and I love them both), Vargas Llosa is quite a relief both in terms of complexity and humor.

But back to the theme—it is the development and introduction of an efficient prostitution ring into the Peruvian military that provides the back story in Pantaleon y Las Visitadoras, which was translated into English in 1990 as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service. You can just see Vargas Llosa’s very first notes on the novel now, “Peruvian army hires prostitutes—hilarity ensues.” And it does. Now, before you sit down to draft your angry letters about the objectification of women, please note that the book is pure satire. Its purpose is to show the farcical nature of applying military strategy to issues which are ... well ... decidedly non-military. And the prostitutes, who take center stage and one of whom tempts Captain Pantoja to consider infidelity, are some of the best-drawn characters in the book.

Pantaleón y Las Visitadoras is perhaps my favorite of Vargas Llosa’s works, though I am also partial to La Ciudad y Los Perros, which treats the subject of young boys growing up in a Peruvian military academy. Either is a great (and relatively easy) read in Spanish for anyone with even conversational skills in the language. But if you want a good laugh or two along the way, I’d recommend Pantaleon y Las Visitadoras.

Apple’s iPad Is for Stories, Not for Books (iBooks: 2.0/10.0)

We’re stepping a bit out of the box here at The Literate Man today to bring you a review of book-related technology. Now, before my office is raided by a team of Apple goons, let me be clear that I love the Apple iPad. For those of us that enjoy stories as related by the more visual media—including the Internet, videos, television shows, and movies—it is nothing short of revolutionary. However, recognizing that The Literate Man is a blog for and about literature, the iPad’s performance as an e-reader leaves much to be desired. In fact, in terms of technology designed to present words on a page, it is not even in the same class as a Kindle or Sony eReader, leaving me to wonder how Apple can even market the e-reader potential of the device with a straight face. In short, the iPad is not the right choice for anyone that is serious about reading content (other than Internet content) on an electronic device.

A little bit of background: I am a traditionalist. As you will note from several of the posts here, I like nothing better than the smell and feel of an old, worn (preferably first run) copy of a work of classic literature. Nevertheless, I recognize convenience and have been reading books on electronic devices for more than ten years. I am dead serious when I tell you that I read not only War and Peace, but also Moby Dick and Anna Karenina, on an early version of the Palm Pilot. Fortunately for all of us, the technology has improved greatly. I have been using a Sony Pocket eReader for approximately six months now. And I do have problems with the Sony. It is simply maddening to attempt to read any type of work with footnotes—David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest just about drove me to the mental state of Hal Incandenza. But the Sony device is lightweight, the type is crisp and clear, and there is absolutely no problem reading in full sunlight. As such, I have continued to use the Sony with pleasure and, in fact, just finished Joyce’s The Dubliners, for which a review will be forthcoming.

As for the iPad, I picked it up about two weeks ago, more for the media-related functions than the iBooks application, which has been widely criticized. Still, I thought that I would probably use the iPad as an e-reader on occasion, and I looked forward to enjoying its innovations. But—and here’s the point—there are none, at least none that I find useful or even noteworthy. It is quite simply a portable computer screen with a white background upon which blurry black type is placed – it is, in short, a Word document. But that’s not all. I have used it to read in a variety of contexts now, and I have found every one difficult and troublesome. To begin with, the weight of the device prohibits you from holding it aloft like a book for any period of time. And, as previously mentioned, the text is anything but crisp, making the reader’s eyes tire after only a few minutes of reading and resulting in a pounding headache if one reads for any extended period of time. And, did you say that you like to read at the beach? Forget it. The device is a better mirror than an e-reader in direct sunlight.

There’s more, but I think the point is made. For me, the iPad is a wonderful media device (and I plan to use it heavily for such), but a complete failure as an e-reader.

Guerrero & Heart's Blood (Alan Clark) (8.2/10)

In 1511, Gonzalo Guerrero, a Spanish sailor, and Jeronimo de Aguilar, a Spanish priest, were among a party sailing from Panama to Santo Domingo, which was shipwrecked on a coral reef off the coast of Jamaica. After drifting for weeks, they washed ashore on the Yucatan peninsula and were taken captive by the local Maya. Several were sacrificed immediately and the rest were taken as slaves. As the only two survivors of this ordeal, Guerrero and de Aguilar took radically divergent paths: Guerrero went on to become a respected warrior and chieftain among the Maya, leading campaigns against his own people with the arrival of Cortez in 1519. De Aguilar, in contrast, remained a slave, denigrated and abused by his captors, until he was saved by Cortez and accompanied him as a translator on the conquistador’s march to distant Tenochtitlan.

It is a mystery to me that the story of Gonzalo Guerrero has never truly resonated with the American people. It contains all of the same elements that make movies like Gladiator and Avatar such blockbusters: an Old World warrior, a distrustful indigenous population, a slave to warrior to chief progression, a cross-cultural love story, and a tear-jerking tragedy full of outrageous injustice. I read an award-winning, fictionalized account entitled, Guerrero, by Eugenio Aguirre, some years back. The edition that I read was in Spanish, although I believe that I have seen reference to an English translation at some point. But even that well-written tale failed to capture the conflict in the mind and heart of Gonzalo Guerrero as has been accomplished in this short, independently-published work by Alan Clark. The first portion, “Guerrero,” is a play focused on the character of Gonzalo Guerrero in the period immediately preceding Cortez’s arrival. He is firmly-entrenched in Maya society, where he enjoys the respect of his chief, Nachancan, and the love of his Maya wife and children. Despite de Aguilar’s attempts to remind him of his Christian beliefs, he recognizes that it is his destiny to live and love among the Maya, to practice their customs, which he has come to understand and appreciate, and he is content to do so. Clark treats the many conflicting emotions of the great warrior with deftness and exhibits a distinct knowledge of and appreciation for Maya ritual.

The second portion of Clark’s work, “Heart’s Blood,” is de Aguilar’s retrospective on his captivity and his relationship with Gonzalo Guerrero. While there is an understandable hatred of the Maya that had enslaved him, there is also a love of his companion, Guerrero, and a sadness that accompanies his departure from the Maya en route to join Cortez at the start of his expedition. De Aguilar’s reflection provides a suitable counterbalance to Guerrero’s stoicism and the book feels as if it comes full circle.

The book is not available publicly, but you may contact Alan Clark directly for a copy through his website at http://www.alanclarkart.com/index.php.

The Long River Home (Larry Smith) (8.5/10.0)

I love this novel. I love it not for what it is, but for what it represents. And what it represents is a continuation of the quintessential American storytelling tradition wherein family is intimately and irrevocably linked to the land that provides for its survival and it is the emotional drama of multiple generations of hardworking and hard-loving men and women that drives the story straight to the reader’s heart. It is the tradition first made popular by Mark Twain in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, then polished by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, and finally perfected by Norman Maclean in A River Runs Through It and Ken Kesey in Sometimes a Great Notion. It is, quite simply, the tradition to which The Literate Man is dedicated. And it is a tradition that is largely absent from the pages of Amazon and the bookshelves of Barnes & Noble, which are increasingly dedicated to the formulaic and the prurient.

The Long River Home follows four generations of the McCall family from 1861 through 1949 as they witness and experience the transformation of the Ohio River Valley from wilderness to agriculture to industrialization. Andrew McCall, solitary child of the Civil War and sometime bootlegger, is the patriarch of the family, and the wildness and wanderlust of his nature can be traced down the succeeding generations. Equally prominent in the family’s blood is the loyalty and stoicism brought by Andrew’s wife, Mariah, who manages to hold the family together even when events threaten to tear it apart. There is no unbelievable drama here—only the decisions, right and wrong, of the very human beings that inhabit the novel’s pages. But Smith treats them both fairly and subtly, and the reader comes away with the sense of having lived among the McCalls and having loved them in spite of, or perhaps because of, all of their flaws.

The Long River Home is not perfect. It is inconsistent at times, and the reader feels strangely closer to the historical characters than those that would be almost contemporaries. It is not in the same class as those classics mentioned above, though at times it does get within spitting distance of them. But it is a book that brings you into emotional contact with the characters that inhabit its pages and closer to an understanding of the human condition. And for that reason alone, it should be treasured.

The Second World War (Six-Volume Set) (Winston S. Churchill) (9.4/10)

Now this is a man’s work, and for more reasons than one. In six long and annotated volumes, Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill holds the reader’s attention masterfully through the years of blind pacificism and the rise of the Nazi menace in Germany (The Gathering Storm) through the blitzkrieg campaigns that brought all of Europe, and very nearly England, to its knees (Their Finest Hour) to the reluctant entrance of both Soviet Russia and the United States into the war (The Grand Alliance) and the gradual turning of the tide as the massive capabilities of all three were harnessed to overcome German war production (The Hinge of Fate) to the storming of the European continent and the discovery of German concentration camps (Triumph and Tragedy) to final victory over Nazi Germany by traditional warfare and imperial Japan by the reluctant use of atomic weapons (Closing the Ring).

Please understand, I am not generally a fan of military history or of war tales in general. And I am certainly not a fan of all of Churchill’s works (his four-volume work, A History of the English Speaking Peoples, has me begging for release only halfway through volume two). But this is quite simply the greatest story of the twentieth century, and this set of six volumes records the events through the eyes and ears and hands of one of its primary architects. Churchill is a fantastic storyteller here, though he does have a weakness for prolonged and verbose defense of his decisions in the moment. Nevertheless, the urgency of actual events moves the story along at a comfortable pace, and Churchill generously excerpts from his own correspondence and the archives of the British government’s to tell the tale.

Especially interesting is the tremendous correspondence that passed and the friendship that developed between Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt before America’s entrance into World War II. Even as the population of Great Britain was huddled underground in subway stations during the Battle of Britain, Churchill had faith that reason and right would win out in the hearts of the American people and he repeatedly expressed that faith to Roosevelt, while also pleading for increased military support under the Lend-Lease Act of 1941. Equally engaging is Churchill’s hot and cold relationship with Joseph Stalin, whom Churchill variously considered his closest ally and, by the end of the war, the embodiment of evil upon the earth. But the facts don’t lie, even in Churchill’s hands, and there can be no doubt that England and America would have very likely lost the war to the Axis powers if the Great Bear had not made its timely entrance and proceeded to sacrifice the greater share of its manhood for victory.

The Second World War is not for the feint-hearted. The reading of it is an enormous project to undertake. But the rewards are tangible not only in the beautiful prose which graces its pages, but also in the significance of the events that it relates. Overall, it is simply one of my favorite works.