The Book Tower

I’m still here! I’ve just been unable to fit in the time for this website lately. I’m currently in the process of changing jobs, which I always tend to find very stressful with my mind in overdrive which in turn squeezes any creativity out of me.

I have also been unable to get very far with any of the three books I am currently reading. Joyce’s Ulysses (not a light read even in the calmest of environments), In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu and A Curious Earth by Gerard Woodward. Hopefully I can finish the Woodward soon and post something about it. Bear with me…

Comment

I admit it. I’m having some trouble with Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America. I hate it when this happens; a novel starts off highly enjoyable before you begin to sink into boredom. Is it my fault, his fault, the fault of circumstance? The novel is 390 pages long. I am currently on page 200, just over halfway. When I can recall these statistics so readily I know I am in trouble.

The Plot Against America has a what if scenario. What if Charles Lindbergh, most famous to us for flying from New York to Paris in 1927, had later become US President? What if, as a possible Nazi sympathiser, he had prevented the US involvement in World War II? The novel follows young Philip (born in 1933) and the rest of the Roth family during the early 1940s. They include his father, fighting an apparent lone battle against anti-semitism, his socially ambitious aunt and his cousin, crossing the border into Canada to fight with the Allies and losing a leg in battle for his efforts.

There are some interesting omens delivered of a world under Hitler’s rule (as a keen stamp collector, Philip dreams of familiar US stamps bearing the swastika), and although Roth is a skilled writer of prose his novel has so far taken me nowhere. Possibly because his what if has so many far reaching implications that he can’t possibly do it justice. I’m tempted to stop reading now and this saddens me. My high hopes for the book have been dashed because, rather than lapping it up, I’m eager to read something else. So I’m almost at the point where I’m going to cut my losses and move on.

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Torbett studied the country out there. The shadows long on the road. Who the hell are these people? he said.
I dont know. I used to say they were the same ones we’ve always had to deal with. Same ones my grandaddy had to deal with. Back then they was rustlin cattle. Now they’re runnin dope. But I dont know as that’s true no more. I’m like you. I aint sure we’ve seen these people before. Their kind. I dont know what to do about em even. If you killed em all they’d have to build a annex on to hell.

For anyone who has recently finished The Road and are looking for another Cormac McCarthy fix I highly recommend No Country For Old Men. This is another helping of McCarthy’s distinctive and highly original prose that immediately grips from the start. There’s also a high quota of bloodshed, some disturbing themes running throughout and one of the most effective literary villains I’ve encountered in a long time.

Similar to The Road, No Country For Old Men works wonders with an ostensibly simple story. A Vietnam veteran (the setting is 1980) stumbles across the aftermath of a drug deal that has gone horribly wrong. He finds a suitcase full of money and decides to take it, a decision that immediately causes him a lot of anguish.

After stealing the drug money Llewellyn Moss is pursued by the ruthless killer Anton Chigurh. Also thrown into the heady mix is the laid back and contemplative sheriff Ed Tom Bell. Although a fast moving thriller – at times Chigurh’s determined and tireless pursuit of Moss makes him seem like a distant cousin of The Terminator – this is also a deep and thoughtful piece. McCarthy takes his sleepy Texan setting and slams the modern and ugly world of drug running in its face. No Country For Old Men is also a novel that trips you up just when you think it’s possible to become comfortable following Moss’s life as a fugitive. McCarthy turns the whole thing on its head with a shocking turn of events – and then he does it again with stomach churning effect.

I couldn’t wait to finish whatever else I was doing and get back to this book; it raises the stakes on what can be justifiably be classed as a page turner. No Country For Old Men has recently been filmed by Joel and Ethan Coen and I’ve already heard good things about it. In fact, if it’s anything as good as the novel I’m expecting a masterpiece. I do wonder though how they have turned this into a piece of cinema; whilst the novel at times reads like a screenplay – and McCarthy writes smart, witty dialogue that outstrips anything the Coen brothers have ever written – some may judge the outcome anticlimactic. No Country For Old Men becomes a quiet and resigned rumination on unbeatable and sickening evil and I admire McCarthy all the more for it. He’s brave enough to avoid the happy and neat ending – something that doesn’t belong in this young man’s world.

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