Harold Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination **** 1/2

An awesome illustration of the value of browsing in used book stores. I'd never heard of Harold Frederic nor of this novel, by I found a copy of a Modern Library edition at Moe's in Berkeley. The premise sounded interesting, and the cover copy called it "one of the four or five best novels by an American in the 19th century."

The Damnation of Theron Ware tells the story of an up-and-coming Methodist minister in upstate New York. Due to some church politics, he is assigned to a small town with a conservative set of church trustees, who don't care for his fancy preaching and fashionable wife. While laboring under the burden of their austere religious vision, he comes under the sway of the local Catholic priest and his rationalist doctor friend. They open Theron's eyes to his provincial ways, and he slowly abandons his beliefs. As the title indicates, the result is not positive.

The book gives a good sense of everyday small-town life and the role of religion in late 19th century America. It takes Theron's religiosity and ambitions seriously, and questions the goodness of adopting a scientific-rationalist view. I empathized with Theron and believed in his sincerity; the author does not stretch him to turn him into a comic character. I loved it!

Blake Butler, Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia ** 1/2

This unusual book has some fantastic passages in it. Butler's ability to capture dream states -- or more accurately, waking dream states -- is positively Lynchian. I'll remain haunted by the image of the man in the car outside of his house at night, with the engine running and his stare permanently straight ahead. And by the huge boulder slowly getting closer to falling on his not-sleeping form. And the recurring images of keys for hidden doors.

I also liked Butler's idiosyncratic way of phrasing ("The initial wanted instinct upon first hitting the pillow is to be blank"), including how he always refers to his body in terms of skin or meat, and his odd observations ("The bulk of any house is made of air"). His implicit comparison between the symptoms of insomnia and senile dementia was interesting.

I can't neglect to mention the thematically appropriate glow-in-the-dark Zs all over the cover of the book.

With all of this great stuff, why the poor rating? Because the parts between are filled with academic Deleuze-ian jargon and meaningless flights of pseudo-profound whimsy, during which my mind wandered so much that I may have missed some of the good stuff. The book would have been much more powerful at half of its current length.

Patrick O'Brian, Desolation Island *** 1/2

The fifth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series relies on familiarity with the characters and the milieu. I fully enjoyed it, but only because O'Brian hooked me with his inimitable style in the first four books. Desolation Island gives Stephen Maturin more of the plot than Jack Aubrey, and moves through its story at a leisurely pace: the only sea battle comes after page 200 and the titular island gets its first mention on page 297. Alas, the deliberate pace of the earlier chapters means that the exciting parts get short-changed a bit in the closing pages. In particular, I thought the scene of the Leopard crew fighting to save its sinking ship or abandon it was rushed.

No matter, though. I'll read The Fortune of War presently.

Yemina Ben-Menahem, editor, Hilary Putnam ****

Hilary Putnam is the philosopher who initiated me into contemporary philosophy. My undergraduate thesis advisor had me read “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” (1975), and I was drawn in by the issues Putnam raises in that challenging and entertaining essay. I went on to read the other essays in his collection Mind, Language, and Reality, then works by the philosophers he referred to (such as Quine and Kripke), and on and on to this day. This book is a collection of essays about his philosophy.

None of the authors writes with the clarity or verve of Putnam himself, but by adding their perspectives together I was able to clarify some of my confusion about how Putnam's ideas changed over the years and how his philosophy differs from other contemporary philosophers. More importantly, the book presented ideas that changed, or at least deepened, my own views on the nature of reality.

For a more complete assessment of the philosophical points, see my summary on the Philosophy page of our web site.

Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Reticence **** David Orr, Beautiful & Pointless ***1/2

Here's proof that I'm a cliché of an over-educated elitist: A month ago, on our way to see a jazz quartet at the opera house, I bought two short books while browsing at a bookstore: an experimental novel from the Belgian literature series (Reticence) and a guide to modern poetry (Beautiful & Pointless). The show was excellent, and I enjoyed both books, which I read over the Memorial Day weekend.

The unnamed narrator of Reticence travels to a small Mediterranean village with his toddler son. It's off-season, so not many people are there. For reasons he can't explain, he doesn't feel like visiting his friend Biaggi who lives in the village. Instead, he wanders the town, visits the beach and the port, and wonders why he hasn't met Biaggi since the village is so small. He concludes that Biaggi must be avoiding him and spying on him. Then he sees a dead cat floating in the harbor and he's sure Biaggi is behind it...

Reticence is all atmosphere: the overcast weather, the secluded town, the lighthouse on the island sweeping its beam across the harbor. The narrator describes recurring events in a way that seems mysterious, and almost as if time is running backwards. It is full of lovely imagery. The dead cat reminded me of Witold Gombrowicz's Cosmos, which also has a narrator interpreting random events as pointing to a larger meaning, and also features a dead cat. The story in Reticence wraps up without coming to much of a conclusion, leading me to a review that uses the title of the next book: beautiful and pointless.

My favorite thing in Beautiful & Pointless is Orr's characterization of reading poetry as being like traveling to a foreign country:

It's not necessarily helpful to talk about poetry as if it were a device to be assembled or a religious experience to be undergone. Rather, it would be useful to talk about poetry as if it were, for example, Belgium. ... Consider the way you'd be thinking about Belgium if you were planning a trip there. You might try to learn a few useful phrases, or read a little Belgian history, or thumb through a guidebook in search of museums, restaurants, flea markets, or promising-sounding bars. The important thing is that you'd know you were going to be confused, or at least occasionally at a loss, and you'd accept that confusion as part of the experience.

Orr has a pleasant and clever writing style. Most of the points he makes apply equally to other specialized art forms (like jazz or experimental novels) as they do to poetry, but that doesn't make them less true. He gives a surprising amount of attention to the business of being a poet, of creating art that very few people outside of your mostly academic circle pay any attention to. It's an enjoyable little book, but frankly didn't make me feel like reading more poetry.

On the other hand, I probably will read other books by Jean-Philippe Toussaint. 

Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books *** 1/2

Marilynne Robinson is an unlikely author for me to enjoy, given her deep Christian themes and my solid atheism. However, first in her novel Gilead and again in this collection of essays, Robinson conveys to me a strong, hopeful worldview that takes seriously the richness of the human spirit. ("...Lacking the terms of religion, essential things cannot be said.") The word that always comes to mind when I read Robinson's work is "grace": she is a careful and subtle thinker whose prose is littered with quiet surprises.

My favorite essays in this collection argue forcefully against reductionist views of human nature, those that treat us as "mere primates" or driven by "rattish self-interest" and "essential beastliness," and for acknowledging human consciousness as "properly an object of wonder." Her approach yields novel arguments for particular social policies, regarding education especially.

When I Was a Child isn't perfect. Her essays are not well structured; they tend to wander over their subject. A couple of them are narrowly focused on issues of purely Christian interest. In moments of weakness Robinson can get strident about modern American society. But overall the book provides an attractive and compelling peek into a way of thinking very different from mine.

Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet *** 1/2

The Flame Alphabet offers a variation on William Burroughs' concept of language as a virus. In this experimental novel, language becomes toxic, causing people to become seriously ill and even die. Children are immune, so many parents do everything they can to ameliorate the symptoms and stay with their kids. The narrator belongs to a religion called "the forest Jews" whose members worship in huts hidden in the woods and receive rabbinical transmissions through underground cables. Some people blame the forest Jews for the epidemic; others think they may hold the key to a cure.

As in Notable American Woman, Marcus includes a personal tenderness not usually found in avant-garde novels of this sort. Sam's relationship with his wife and daughter provides a solid, relate-able foundation for the wild story. I wasn't always sure what Marcus was getting at, but interesting ideas shone through.