In the Year 2889 by Jules Verne

Short story of a utopian America

“In the Year 2889” is a short story by Jules Verne. Many literary scholars now consider this story to be the work of Michel Verne, son of Jules, but it was published under Jules Verne’s name. It is common knowledge that Michel carried on the family business by writing some “Jules Verne” novels after his father’s death. Michel never produced a classic like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea or Around the World in Eighty Days, but the quality of his work is likely on a par with some of his father’s more mediocre offerings. “In the Year 2889” was published in the February 1889 issue of The Forum, an English-language magazine, while Jules was still very much alive. Reportedly, a New York newspaper editor asked Jules to write a story depicting the world a thousand years in the future, and apparently Jules delegated that task to Michel.

The story takes place in America on the 25th of September, 2889. It depicts one day in the life of George Washington Smith, a wealthy media mogul and founder of the Manhattan Chronicle. In the 29th century, the “media” in use is the telephote, something similar to our internet in that it delvers live streaming of events, on-demand news, and video communication with family and friends. Smith, a sort of Rupert Murdoch of his age, wields enough power and influence that his enterprises stretch beyond communications to include industry, finance, and politics. As such, he is consulted by various parties for his opinion on matters of world import. Through such conversations, the reader gets a glimpse into the global politics of this future millennia. Familiarly, America and Russia are the current superpowers, with China on the rise.

Some of Verne’s predictions in this book have proven to be prescient: the internet and media empires, as already mentioned; also chemical and biological warfare, scientifically processed foods and home delivery of meals, and various systems for harnessing clean energy from the environment. Others of his prophecies are as of now still rather pie-in-the-sky in nature, yet nevertheless have since shown up in many a science fiction story: the colonization of other planets in the solar system, ubiquitous flying cars, and the ability to freeze human beings in suspended animation for thawing back to life at a later date. To readers of the 21st century, some aspects of Verne’s future forecast seem rather quaintly cautious. The narrator reports with evident satisfaction, for example, that human life expectancy has risen from 37 to 52 years.

Being a short story, and not a very long short story at that, none of these ideas is really developed very thoroughly. The text is simply a rapid-fire stream of sketchy projections. In some ways, however, that’s a relief from some of the more ponderous utopian epics from the early years of the sci-fi genre. “In the Year 2889” is brief, and it may not be entirely realistic, but it is fun. Whether it was written by Michel Verne or not, this story is totally in keeping with what one would expect from Jules, and fans of the father will enjoy this work by the son.

The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer by Oscar Micheaux

Memoir of an industrious Black homesteader

Oscar Micheaux is best known as a pioneering Black filmmaker. He produced, wrote, and directed at least 40 films—some silent, some talkies—from 1919 to 1948. Prior to embarking on his film career, however, Micheaux first expressed himself through literature, publishing three books in the decade of the 1910s. His first published volume, 1913’s The Conquest, is sometimes referred to as a novel, but it reads more like an autobiography of the first 30 years of Micheaux’s life. Micheaux published the book anonymously, and the narrator’s name has been changed to Oscar Devereaux, but the events depicted in the book closely parallel those of Micheaux’s life. The names of other persons in the book have been likewise slightly altered, and the names of towns and cities are sometimes changed or abbreviated (for example, M—pls equals Micheaux’s hometown of Metropolis, Illinois).

Micheaux/Devereaux was born on a farm in Illinois, where his parents eked out a poor living. His grandparents were slaves; his father illiterate. Oscar, however, believed that through hard work and education he could better himself. He refuses to accept that his race should disqualify him from success comparable to his White counterparts, and he sets his sights on being a landowning farmer. He works for a few years as a porter on Pullman railroad cars, bouncing all over the country and even through Mexico and as far as Argentina. Through his travels, he discovers an attractive land opportunity in South Dakota and files for a homestead claim. For a few years, Devereaux is the only Black farmer in this region of South Dakota. Through his hard work, he earns the respect of his neighbors and adds more parcels of land to his holdings.

Along with Micheaux’s ambition and success comes an arrogance that’s evident in his writing. He expresses contempt for many of his own race—rich and poor alike—for being, as he sees it, lazy, short-sighted, and frivolous. He declares himself a progressive in the mode of Booker T. Washington and considers the vast majority of Blacks to be reactionaries. Micheaux also seems to think he’s God’s gift to women. When he finally does settle down with a partner, he talks about the relationship as if it were a business deal and has some rather unfavorable things to say about his significant other. At one point in the book, Micheaux/Devereaux falls in love with a White woman of Scottish extraction. The relationship itself is not surprising, but the fact that he wrote about it so candidly, in 1913, is quite surprising. He discusses some instances of interracial marriage on the South Dakota prairie, but chooses not to go that route himself.

The Conquest may be a valuable document of the African American experience, but much of what Micheaux relates could apply to the experience of farmers and homesteaders of any race or ethnicity. If you’re expecting stories of racism or discrimination, there’s almost nothing of that here. Much of the book concerns the homesteading process and Westward expansion. Micheaux goes into great detail about land laws, the claims process, and financial dealings. He also chronicles at length how several small towns in South Dakota competed for a railroad line and economic dominance in the region. As a document of this era, this will likely prove a treasure trove of information for historians, but sometimes such real estate business can become boring to the general reader. In addition, a great deal of The Conquest is about Devereaux’s love life, through which we get realistic glimpses into different classes of Black Society, both rural and urban, during this time period. The conclusion of The Conquest makes you wonder if the only reason Micheaux wrote this book was to get the last word in a quarrel with his in-laws.

When Americans think about African American literature, we generally think about critically acclaimed modernist writers from the Harlem Renaissance or afterwards—Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright. Often forgotten, however, are the African American authors of the earlier realist, naturalist, and muckraking eras who documented Black life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though film may be Micheaux’s claim to fame, The Conquest proves he deserves to be mentioned alongside pioneering African American literary luminaries like Charles W. Chesnutt and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Peterson Reference Guide to Bird Behavior by John Kricher

Basic overview with pretty pictures

Roger Tory Peterson (1908–1996) was an American artist and naturalist who was probably the most important figure in the development of birding as a hobby, pastime, and/or obsession. His line of Peterson Field Guides has grown beyond ornithology to over 50 volumes examining diverse aspects of nature and ecology (not all authored by Peterson). In 2015, the Peterson Institute started adding a series of Peterson Reference Guides to their line of books. The Peterson Reference Guide to Bird Behavior, written by John Kricher, was published in 2020.

I expected these Reference Guides to be for advanced birders who want to delve deeper than what’s found in the typical field guide, perhaps something along the lines of Kenn Kaufman’s Advanced Birding, also in the Peterson line. I found the Peterson Reference Guide to Bird Behavior, however, to be surprisingly basic. Most of the information imparted in this volume can likely be found in the introductory chapters of a good field guide—the opening pages that most people ignore because they just look at the bird pictures. The way Kricher delivers the information is also not ideal. The book is intentionally written for a beginning-birder, non-scientific audience, but that doesn’t stop the text from being at times confusing and often boring.

The first half of the book provides some valuable information on bird anatomy. Those lessons are not aided, however, by the absence of diagrams in this book. That is likely a conscious choice on the part of the publisher: If we put a lot of pretty photographs in the book, that will attract general readers, but if we include diagrams, that will scare general readers away. They’ll think the book is too intense for them, like a textbook. So everything is written out by Kricher in prose paragraphs, even when that’s not the most appropriate way to deliver the information. The chapter on different stages of molting, for instance, is quite difficult to comprehend, when a simple table or chart would have made it so much easier to understand and remember. But if we put a table in the book, we’ll scare away those general readers! If you just want a general book on birds and the cool things they do, full of pretty pictures, then I would recommend David Attenborough’s The Life of Birds.

The most difficult aspect of writing or reading a book like this is that the general subject of birds, even just North American birds, encompasses an incredibly broad and diverse range of species and behaviors. The result of this is that most of the text reads like “Some birds do this. Some birds do that.” The only solution for that is to consult a book with specific behavioral information on every individual species, such as Kaufman’s Lives of North American Birds. That book is truly a reference guide, while Kricher’s is really more of a primer. Kricher tries to solve the problem of diversity by providing many examples. The trouble with this approach is that the book consists almost entirely of examples with very few principles or conclusions drawn. I also don’t like the fact that Kricher talks about himself so much in this book: I once saw this, or I once banded such-and-such a bird. I’m from the Northeast, so we’re mostly going to talk about Northeastern birds. I don’t really care what your personal perspective is. I want to learn about the birds, and not just the birds with which you have some kind of personal connection.

I have seen the Peterson Reference Guide for Sparrows and for Woodpeckers, and they seem to be more of what I expected from these Reference Guides. Those books appear to be deeper and more thorough in nature, simply because they’re not expected to cover every bird species imaginable. (and the publisher allowed some diagrams!) In general, the Peterson Field Guides are great; I’ve derived much joy and learning from them. This particular Reference Guide to Bird Behavior, however, is not one of the Institute’s better-thought-out offerings.

Heartbreaker by Mike Campbell with Ari Surdoval

Soft-spoken guitarist with much to say

Mike Campbell may not be a household name, but you’d probably recognize his face if you saw it. He’s the guy who stood next to Tom Petty for about the past 50 years. Campbell is the guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, as well as Petty’s band from the early 1970s, Mudcrutch. He is also a sought-after session musician, songwriter, and recording producer. Since Campbell’s autobiography, entitled Heartbreaker, was published in 2025, you can add bestselling author to that list. This book is really an excellent rock memoir, even though I’m not a zealous Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers fan. I like their music, but I don’t have all their lyrics memorized or know Petty’s life story. I’m actually a bigger fan of Campbell than I am of Petty. Campbell’s probably one of the top ten living guitarists in rock, and I like the work he’s done with other artists like Bob Dylan, Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, and others. I really enjoyed Peter Bogdanovich’s documentary film about the Heartbreakers, Runnin’ Down a Dream. This band has one of the better rags-to-riches stories in rock. Bogdanovich’s take on the band is a lot more sunshiny than Campbell’s account. Here in Heartbreaker, you get to see a darker side of Tom Petty. Campbell clearly loves and admires Petty, and would die for him, but he relates how Petty at times could be egotistical, vindictive, and, well, petty.

The bulk of Campbell’s account focuses on his and Petty’s early career. Before you ever even get to the Heartbreakers, about a third of the book is spent on Mudcrutch. If anybody still thinks rock and roll is a “money for nothing” profession, they should read Campbell’s recollections of how he and his bandmates had to claw their way to the top. As Campbell relates, he was dirt-poor to begin with, when growing up in Gainesville, Florida. At first, choosing to devote his life to a rock band did not improve his financial situation any, though his malnourishment kept him out of the Vietnam War. Even after the Heartbreakers had a half dozen hits getting frequent radio airplay, and their album Damn the Torpedoes went triple platinum, Campbell was still in financial dire straits. Such is the musician’s plight when your name is not the one in front of the band. Not until Campbell wrote the music to Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer” did he reach a level of financial security where he could reliably pay his mortgage.

Of course, from such humble beginnings things took off considerably. Campbell eventually did get to live the life of a rich and famous rock star. Despite his tremendous success, Campbell comes across as very humble, grateful, and down-to-earth. He talks as if he’s an average-joe, unassuming working stiff who’s just as amazed as we would be when members of the Beatles, the Stones, Fleetwood Mac, or Bob Dylan show up on his doorstep asking for his help. You get some very entertaining and candid behind-the-scenes insights into all of the rock luminaries that Campbell has rubbed elbows with. As a Dylan fan, I really enjoyed Campbell’s humorous and revealing stories about touring and recording with Dylan.

Heartbreaker delivers everything fans could ask for in a rock memoir. I assume Campbell’s coauthor Ari Surdoval is responsible for how well-written this book is. The way the stories unfold is quite skillfully done, captivating, and addictive. Campbell covers the recording of every album, every touring milestone, every band personnel change, every interior personality conflict, and every record company business deal. Not being a musician myself, there’s more here about guitars and playing them than I can understand. Drugs are discussed as a fact of the rock and roll life, not as a badge of honor nor a cross to bear, neither glorified nor scorned. The consequences of drugs are plainly evident in some of the book’s sadder moments—the death of Petty and of bassist Howie Epstein. Overall, however, Campbell’s memoir is a life-affirming celebration of music and friendship, full of humor and poignancy. I read a fair amount of these classic-rock autobiographies, and Heartbreaker is a superb addition to the genre.

Tartarin of Tarascon by Alphonse Daudet

Underwhelming adventures of a comical hero

Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) is a beloved writer in his native France but not so familiar to American readers. He is considered a naturalist writer, but his works tend to be lighter and more humorous than contemporaries like Emile Zola or Joris-Karl Huysmans. Daudet was born in the South of France, and his novels and stories are often set in that region of the country. One such novel is Tartarin of Tarascon, published in 1872. This book must have achieved some degree of success in France because it spawned two sequels: Tartarin on the Alps and Port Tarascon.

Tarascon is a department in the French region of Provence, near the Mediterranean Coast. Daudet describes it as a quaint, bucolic locale where hunting is the primary pastime. One resident of this district is Tartarin, a short, stocky, he-man who reads adventure novels and dreams of exploring exotic lands. He has never left Tarascon, however, and has never done anything to distinguish himself as particularly intrepid. Nevertheless, as a big fish in a small pond, the other hunters of Tarascon regard him as somewhat of a local hero. One day the circus comes to town, bringing with it a caged lion. When Tartarin steps up to the cage to regard the beast, he is heard to mutter something along the lines of, “I’d like to take a crack at one of those.” The folks of Tarascon inflate this comment into a rumor that Tartarin is planning a trip to Africa to hunt lions. After a while, the rumor becomes so insistent that Tartarin feels the only way he can save face is to make the rumor a reality.

The problem is, Tartarin is somewhat of a coward. Daudet describes him as having two personalities—part Don Quixote, the romantic hero, and part Sancho Panza, the cautious everyman. He is ill-equipped with the courage required to make an international voyage, much less hunt the king of the jungle. Feeling obligated, however, to do so, he embarks on a boat to Algeria.

This all sounds like the set-up for a funny slapstick comedy about a clumsy sad sack who stumbles his way by dumb luck through dangerous situations. The humor here, however, has not aged well, and the gags don’t inspire much laughter anymore. The jokes are so simplistic that I wondered if this were perhaps written for children. Daudet spends too much time convincing us of Tartarin’s insignificance and ineptitude. By the time he gets to anything resembling an adventure, more than half the book has already gone by. Things don’t really pick up a whole lot once Tartarin arrives in Africa, either. The hardest part about shooting a lion is finding one. Eventually, the novel is wrapped up with an ending that just feels silly and pointless.

If the plot is so sluggish, what’s the main attraction here? The character of Tartarin does inspire some sympathy. He’s an underdog the reader can root for. French readers likely would have recognized him as a certain stereotypical type of Southerner. English-language readers probably won’t get that connotation but will still recognize Tartarin as a familiar type of lovable loser who bites off more than he can chew. Such satire is not enough to bring any laughter or excitement to the proceedings, however. Like drifting down a lazy river, this book just kind of coasts along, and the ride ultimately feels inconsequential.

Dune: The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

Star Wars stole from Dune; now Dune steals from Star Wars

I’m a huge fan of Frank Herbert’s Dune saga, the original six novels that were published during his lifetime. I have read each of those books at least three times. For many years, however, I have purposely avoided reading any of the posthumous prequels or sequels put out by his son Brian Herbert. Brian’s takeover of the Dune franchise has always seemed to me a shameless nepo-baby move. Can Brian Herbert even write? I don’t know. I’ve never read anything written solely by him, except for his biography of his father, Dreamer of Dune, which I found disappointing. A smart move by Brian, however, was to team up with prolific sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson. The recent Dune movies have renewed my enchantment with Frank’s fictional universe. Since I keep running into Brian’s Dune books in used book stores, I finally broke down and read one.

Dune: The Butlerian Jihad was published in 2002. It’s not the first Dune book that Brian Herbert and Anderson wrote, but it’s the first book chronologically in Dune history. The Butlerian Jihad is referenced in Frank Herbert’s books as a historic event having happened about 10,000 years in the past. It was then that mankind rose up against artificial intelligence and destroyed and outlawed computers and robots, which is why you never see any droids in the Dune books. Frank Herbert never sketched out the details of that landmark event, thus leaving his son the opportunity to write that history. I believe Frank Herbert named the jihad after Samuel Butler, author of Erewhon, an 1872 novel that presages a similar revolt against AI. In this Dune prequel, however, the jihad is named after a Butler family: Manion Butler is the political leader of the free humans, and his daughter Serena Butler is a prominent politician who inspires the humans to rebellion.

All of the familiar Dune planets are involved in this story, as well as a few new ones, including Earth. The groups and families that you would expect to be living on those planets, however, is much jumbled from the original Dune books. Cultures can move around a lot in 10,000 years, apparently. Because the Butlerian Jihad is in many ways the genesis of the Dune universe, Herbert and Anderson get to play with a lot of origin stories in this book. Here we get the origin of the spice trade, the Fremen, worm-riding, the Tleilaxu, possibly the Bene Gesserit (too soon to tell), and the Holtzman shields that characters wear to protect themselves in battle. We even get the origin of glowglobes, as if anyone was clamoring for that. Tio Holtzman, the creator of the Holtzman Effect, is a character in this novel, as are Aurelius Venport and Norma Cenva, who are mentioned in God Emperor of Dune as the creators of the foldspace technology that made the Spacing Guild possible (They haven’t invented that yet). Two of the major characters are an Atreides and a Harkonnen, but they are a far cry from the roles their families play in the original Dune. The treatment of the Atreides name is rather disappointing here compared to the illustrious history of the family that Frank Herbert hinted at in his books.

When George Lucas made Star Wars, he stole a lot of ideas from Dune. This book, however, reads as though Brian and Kevin stole some of those ideas back. This reads a lot like a Star Wars novelization. There’s a Luke Skywalker-type character and a Princess Leia-type character; not so much a Han Solo, though. The story is about a rebellion against an evil empire run by armored overlords. The Luke figure is the Darth Vader figure’s son. This is mostly typical interplanetary war fare without any of the philosophy or religious undertext one expects from Frank Herbert’s Dune. Anything that’s original in this book came out of Frank’s head, not Brian and Kevin’s.

Dune: The Butlerian Jihad certainly isn’t boring, but it’s neither as deep nor as awe-inspiring as Daddy Herbert’s books. I got more enjoyment and intellectual stimulation from The Dune Encyclopedia (1984), a non-canon expansion of the Dune mythos to which Frank Herbert gave his blessing. Which brings up another point: I’m not a fan of the way Brian Herbert has kept such a tight fist on the Dune legacy for so many years. If he had opened up the Dune universe to more licensing, as was done with the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises, the result would have been a lot more novels, comics, TV shows, etc. set in the Dune world. Many of those productions would have been non-canon and maybe downright bad, but, like those of Star Wars and Star Trek, the Dune characters would probably be household names by now. Even if Brian Herbert’s name on this book makes it “official,” I don’t think he and Anderson have done any better than many other sci-fi writers would have done. Despite my lukewarm reaction to this entry in the Dune saga, however, it’s probably got me hooked enough to at least read through this Butlerian trilogy.

Là-bas (Down There) by Joris-Karl Huysmans

Shock lit from a Zola protégé

Émile Zola, founder of the French literary school of Naturalism, was often castigated by his contemporary critics for including vulgar and disgusting subject matter in his novels. Much of what was considered vulgar and disgusting in the late 19th century, however, we today would just consider realism. One of Zola’s more prominent literary protégés, however, seemed to take such criticism as a challenge and proceeded to actively court controversy and deliberately shock readers with the decadent and gruesome content of his writings. Joris-Karl (or J. K.) Huysmans (1848–1907) was the author of À rebours (Against the Grain) and Là-bas (Down There or The Damned). The latter book, published in 1891, deals with the subject of Satanism in France.

In Paris, a writer named Durtal is working on a biography of a historical figure named Gilles de Rais (1405–1440), a French baron who fought alongside Joan of Arc. Gilles de Rais was tried and executed for abducting, torturing, raping, and murdering at least 140 children. According to Durtal, these heinous crimes, which Huysmans describes in graphic detail, were acts of Satanic worship. Durtal feels that in order to truly understand Gilles de Rais, he must delve into the activities of contemporary Satanists. His investigation leads him through a series of friend-of-a-friend referrals that bring him closer to rubbing elbows with real live devil worshippers in one of their Satanic ceremonies.

Much of the story is told through dinner conversations between Durtal and his friends des Hermies, a physician; Carhaix, a church bell-ringer; and sometimes Gévingey, an astrologer. It is to these listeners that Durtal relates much of the history of Gilles de Rais that he has uncovered. When Durtal is not dining with these companions, the story turns to his love life. He receives a letter from a secret admirer, a fan of his work, and begins an amorous correspondence with her. What comes out of the conversations between Durtal and his friends is a nostalgia for medievalism in preference to the modern world. Even though they’re not satanists, they enjoy dabbling in superstitions and the occult because such matters harken back to those earlier times. A lot of supernatural conspiracy theories are brought up at the dinner table, and it’s always somewhat unclear whether Huysmans actually believes this stuff, or if these are just the thoughts of his fictional characters. It was always clear where Zola stood on religion, but I don’t know Huysmans well enough to judge his supernatural inclinations.

Judging from Là-bas, Huysmans seems to want to be the Marilyn Manson of French literature. The way he’s written this book reminds one of those heavy metal bands that try really hard to be louder, harder, and more demonic than everyone else. Even for libertine France, there is a surprising amount of indecent and risqué content for 1891: semi-graphic sex, sacrilege and blasphemy, bodily functions and feces, mass murders, rape, sodomy, pedophilia, and, of course, a lot of talk about the devil. Even when Huysmans isn’t discussing one of these topics, he goes out of his way to digress gratuitously into some off-putting subject, such as food sanitation. There is a sexual affair in this book between Durtal and a married woman, but Huysmans doesn’t even make it titillating. Instead, he describes it as the most annoying, ungratifying, and pointless love affair imaginable.

There’s a lot that’s unpleasant about Là-bas, but it is interesting. Sometimes it reads like classic Zola-esque naturalism, and sometimes it reads like a 1970s Satanic B-movie. It’s rarely boring, which is more than I can say for Huysmans’s À rebours, but I can’t really recommend this as a great work of literature.

Icarus; or, The Future of Science by Bertrand Russell

Pessimistic outlook on scientific progress

Bertrand Russell won the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature, even though he was not a literary writer. He was a philosopher and mathematician who broke through to a wider general audience as a public intellectual. His essay Icarus; or, The Future of Science was published in 1924 as a 72-page book. The London publisher Paul Kegan produced a series of 110 books called To-day and To-morrow, consisting of short volumes containing essays that speculate on the future. The first book in this series was Daedelus; or, Science and the Future by J. B. S. Haldane. Russell’s Icarus, published six months later, is a response to Daedelus. The two authors were not in total disagreement. Both expressed doubts that some recent scientific advances were actually beneficial to mankind, but overall Haldane was the more optimistic of the two. In general, Haldane thought scientific advances would elevate the happiness of the common man, while Russell predicts that only the powerful will reap the benefits of progress.

Russell opens Icarus by stating he’s not going to talk much about the biological sciences. That’s not his department, and Haldane already covered that topic sufficiently in Daedelus. Strangely, however, Russell then goes on to talk mostly about biological sciences: genetics, eugenics, birth control, and anthropology. The longest chapter discusses changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution. Russell really doesn’t discuss technology much at all, but rather focuses on how our modern industrial and commercial society has spawned a revolution in organization, both in terms of efficiency and ubiquity. The result is that people now have less control over their lives than they did in, say, the 17th century, since much of our existence is regimented by organizational bureaucracy and government oversight, from our lives at work to the media we consume to the education of our children. Russell goes on to argue that science may very well be the downfall of liberalism and democracy.

Science would increase mankind’s happiness and health, Russell argues, if man were a rational being, rather than an emotional and greedy animal. Rapid scientific progress upsets the comfort zone between man’s desires and living conditions. In addition to the mythical metaphor of Icarus, Russell offers the analogy of how wolves become accustomed to periods of starvation; as a result their evolutionary descendants, domestic dogs, overeat every chance they get. It would be interesting to hear Russell’s take on the current (human) obesity epidemic, something he does not predict here.

I suspect that Icarus may have been delivered as a lecture before it was published in book form. That’s how it reads, anyway. The two books, Daedelus and Icarus, comprise a sort of debate in print, a point/counterpoint. Much of what Russell predicts for the future has already come to pass—declining birth rates, global economy, media empires, the arms race, and a general dumbing down of humanity. He presents some really interesting ideas here, but the obvious fault of the book is its brevity. It would have been a more productive work if Russell had had more room to develop his arguments, but the format of the To-day and To-morrow series confined it to a brief discussion. There aren’t enough pages for him to really convince you of anything. This is a thought-provoking work, but more thoughts are provoked than satisfied. Perhaps Russell delves deeper into these topics in other books, and I have yet to discover them.

Niels Klim’s Journey Under the Ground by Ludvig Holberg

18th-century sci-fi from a Danish Voltaire

Niels Klim’s Journey Under the Ground or Niels Klim’s Underground Travels is a science fiction novel published way back in 1741. It was penned by Danish author Ludvig Holberg. The edition I read included a brief biography of Holberg, which makes him out to sound like Denmark’s version of Voltaire. He was that Scandinavian nation’s pre-eminent man of letters in the 18th century, an Enlightenment freethinker who, besides this one novel, also wrote books on philosophy, history, and law, as well as plays and poetry. Niels Klim’s Journey, Holberg’s only novel, is very much in the same vein of satirical sci-fi and fantasy literature as Voltaire’s Micromegas (1752) and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726).

The story takes place in 1664. Niels Klim, a recent graduate of a Copenhagen university, returns to his hometown of Bergen in Norway. Near that city is a mountain with a mysterious hole in it, from which warm air emanates. Someone should really investigate that hole, so Niels volunteers to lead an expedition. He enters the cave with a small team of men. While rappelling into a chasm, Niels’s rope breaks, and he falls for a very long time.

It turns out that the Earth is a hollow shell. Inside is an inner space complete with a small sun and a planet about 600 miles in circumference, named Nazar. Niels lands on this planet and finds himself in the kingdom of Potu. The citizens of Potu are intelligent, speaking trees. Unlike trees we know, they are not stationary, and can walk using their roots, but not quickly. They welcome Niels into their society and, due to his long legs, they give him the job of courier-general. The Potuans include many races, essentially different species of tree, each with its own peculiar characteristics and personality traits. In addition to Nazar, Niels also explores what Nazarians call “the firmament,” actually the interior surface of the Earth’s sphere, which also bears nations and their inhabitants. There he encounters civilizations of beings resembling animals of the surface world, but possessing language, the ability to walk upright, and human-like hands.

In total, Niels spends twelve years in this underground universe. Unlike Gulliver, who visited about a half dozen different lands in his travels, Niels seems to encounter a new race of beings every few pages, each with their own strange quirks. I’m sure many of these fictional peoples are meant to satirize different nations and polities of Holberg’s day. Not being an 18th-century Dane myself, I’m sure much of that satire was lost on me. For today’s reader, however, Niels Klim’s Journey Under the Ground does make for more accessible and humourous reading than Voltaire’s satires, such as Candide or Zadig. Even if you don’t know the politics of the time, you can enjoy Holberg making fun of various types of people and systems of government. There is a land where gender roles are reversed, for example. The women are sexual predators, and the men are expected to be chaste virgins and slut-shamed if they aren’t. Thus, Holberg points out some of the ridiculous double standards placed on women of his time. Another land is inhabited by philosophers and academics who are so focused on their search for knowledge that they have abandoned all personal hygiene and social graces. Each little country Niels visits has its share of comedic surprises.

With this novel, Holberg inaugurated the hollow-Earth subgenre of science fiction, from which would arise Symzonia (1820), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1867), Mizora (1881), A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888), The Smoky God (1908), and At the Earth’s Core (1914), among others. Niels Klim’s Journey Under the Ground deserves respect as a pioneering work in science fiction, but it’s not just some stodgy old vintage antique that belongs in a museum display case. After all these years, it’s still fun to read.   

The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

If Poe wrote The Omen

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) is a Welsh writer known for his work in the fantasy and horror fiction genres. His best-known work is likely The Great God Pan, a novella first published in book form in 1894. Early in his career, Machen’s brand of decadent horror didn’t bring him a great deal of success or acclaim, as his writings were ahead of his time in challenging puritanical sensibilities. In the 1920s, however, critics started to rediscover and appreciate his work. The Great God Pan has since influenced later generations of horror writers, including Stephen King, Peter Straub, and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro.

The premise of this novella is based on the ancient idea known as Platonic dualism—the theory that beyond the world of our senses there is a higher, “real” world that we cannot experience except through rare and extraordinary revelations. Physicists and materialist philosophers conjecture that there are higher dimensions beyond 3D space that we are incapable of empirically comprehending, while spiritualists and clergy assert a supernatural spirit-world that exists outside the realm of matter. It is with this latter conception that Machen deals in The Great God Pan. Through an unethical medical experiment, a physician grants his guinea-pig patient the power to see into this extramundane world beyond. This opens up a Pandora’s box, from which an abyss of satyr-like demons and hellish abominations is revealed, once separated from our reality by a thin veil of imperception but now unleashed and seeping into the world in which we live. The phrase “the great god Pan” is not literal; it’s just a euphemism for this supernatural realm.

The Great God Pan has every bit of the spine-chilling macabre atmosphere of one of Edgar Allan Poe’s best stories. The plot, however, presages modern horror films like The Omen, The Exorcist, or The Mothman Prophecies. A small group of characters teams up to investigate a mystery that leads them to horrifying supernatural conclusions. In this case, however, the evils they face do not come from the Christian Hell but rather from a pagan Hell that harkens back to ancient times. Though the heroes are British gentlemen who likely attend the Anglican church, they are forced to acknowledge horrors and evils that predate their beliefs and defy their cozy faith. Such ideas and imagery were a bit much for Machen’s Victorian audience. The book was perceived as controversial and scandalous upon its release, but it has been acknowledged by later generations as a masterpiece of the horror genre.

Machen has structured the narrative so that it reads almost like a series of reports—medical diagnoses, legal documents, personal diaries and letters—in which the characters exchange information. This heightens the realism of the work. It’s amazing how much terror Machen can generate by saying so little about the menacing cause of woe. Here you won’t find tangible villains like the vampires of Bram Stoker or the tentacled beasts of H. P. Lovecraft. The monsters in this novel are less forthcoming. They reveal themselves in a peculiar facial expression or an inexplicable feeling of dread. They don’t tear their victims to pieces but nevertheless silently engender a contagious chain of death.

This is only the second book I’ve read by Machen, the first being The Hill of Dreams. That book impressed me so much that I bought the Delphi Classics’ ebook The Complete Works of Arthur Machen, and I’m glad I did. I was even more blown away by The Great God Pan, and I look forward to exploring deeper into Machen’s body of work.

Aslan Norval by B. Traven

Late-career oddity

B. Traven, real name unknown, was a German author who emigrated to Mexico but continued to write in the German language. He was mostly active during the 1920s and ‘30s, and most of his fiction is set in Mexico or Latin America. After not publishing much of anything during the ‘40s and ‘50s, Traven’s final novel, Aslan Norval, was published in 1960. He died in 1969. Aslan Norval is not only a couple decades removed from Traven’s better-known works but also quite different in style and subject matter. This novel is set in the United States, mostly New York, and features a Korean War veteran as its protagonist.

In the opening chapter, Clement Beckford, the veteran in question, is hit by a car. Although not seriously injured, he is rushed to the hospital and forced to undergo medical examinations so the hospital can rake in some insurance dollars. Luckily for Beckford, the motorist who struck him is a beautiful billionairess who wants to make up for his inconvenience and minimal pain and suffering. This woman, named Aslan Norval, invites him to lunch and inquires into his situation. Since returning from the war, Beckford is down on his luck. He can’t find a decent job or get a useful education. He tells her that what he’d really like to do is hydrological engineering—the construction of dams and canals. Within a few days, he finds that the wealthy woman has established a new company in his chosen field and installed him as president. She then reveals her grand plan to build a canal across the United States, thus circumventing the need for the Panama Canal, which is inconveniently located in a foreign nation. Rather than reveling in the generosity of his benefactress, Beckford can’t help but think that she has an ulterior motive. Either she wants to have an affair with him, he surmises, or she wants to set him up as a patsy in some fraud scheme.

Traven always emphasizes anarchist, leftist, and socialist themes in his work, and Aslan Norval is no exception. In this late-career offering, however, his political message is less pointed and more scattershot. In the opening chapters, he manages to satirize and/or complain about the insurance industry, for-profit hospitals, ambulance-chasing lawyers, veterans’ benefits, and higher education. Later he turns his attention to the Panama Canal project, Congressional corruption, defense spending, foreign aid, the arms race, the space race, and Cold War paranoia. His critical darts are dispersed all over the board, so he never really hits the bullseye with any of them. His sense of humor also seems to have suffered with the passing of time. Slapstick and sarcasm are distributed in a haphazard, willy-nilly fashion. The result is something that reads less like classic Traven and more like one of Upton Sinclair’s lesser efforts.

Despite the odd humor, there is somewhat of an odd film noir atmosphere to this book, with Aslan Norval as the femme fatale. At first, Traven seems to want you to root for Beckford and Norval, but he then has them both behave in unethical ways that makes you like them less. There are a couple of “love” scenes in this book that are rather creepy and off-putting. Overall, the plot is not well constructed, dragging in some portions while fleeting in others. Aslan Norval almost reads like a novel that was left unfinished at the time of the author’s death. You wonder why Traven chose to waste the second-to-last chapter dwelling on a pointless romantic subplot instead of building the canal story towards a conclusion. Then he wraps up everything way too quickly and unsatisfactorily in the final chapter. In general, I really like Traven’s writing, so this book was not a worthless read for me, but it certainly isn’t anywhere near as good as those Latin American novels (The Cotton-Pickers, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Bridge in the Jungle) that he wrote in the ‘20s and ‘30s.

The Friendly Road: New Adventures in Contentment by David Grayson

Ho-hum escapades of a hobo hobbyist

The Friendly Road, a book by David Grayson, was published in 1912. David Grayson was a pseudonym used by Ray Stannard Baker, an American journalist and writer of nonfiction in the muckraking style of social justice exposé. Under the pen name of Grayson, he published several lighter and fluffier books. The first was Adventures in Contentment (1907), about life on a farm. The Friendly Road is the second Grayson book, hence its subtitle New Adventures in Contentment. The Friendly Road is written as if it were a first-person nonfiction memoir, but then again, David Grayson isn’t a real person, and many of the happenings in the book seem contrived and not very realistic. This is more of a work of semiautobiographical fiction, and it falls somewhere between a novel and a collection of short stories.

Grayson owns a farm, whereabouts unknown. All the names of cities and towns in the book are fictional, so you never know where the story is taking place, just somewhere in America. (Baker lived in Amherst, Massachusetts.) Grayson decides he wants to take a break from his farm and strike out on the road to dabble in the life of a tramp. He carries very few possessions and soon spends all of the money in his pockets. Over the course of his journey, he lives off of the kindness of strangers. In a typical chapter, he encounters someone along the road. He sees them working and decides to pitch in and help, uninvited. He asks for no compensation, but there’s always hope that he’ll be offered a meal and a place to sleep for a night or two. There’s no real purpose to Grayson’s journey other than wanderlust and the possibility of making new friends. Grayson wants to make friends with everyone and thinks everyone wants to make friends with him.

I can sympathize with Grayson’s wanderlust, and I generally enjoy reading books about this unfettered, wandering lifestyle. What I don’t like about The Friendly Road, however, is how Grayson constantly reminds the reader that he’s bestowing sage wisdom upon you. He’s extremely satisfied with his own sense of humor and flaunts a know-it-all confidence in his discovery of the secret meaning of life. His revelations, however, are not particularly surprising. What is the key to a happy life? No responsibilities. Duh. Nice (non)work if you can get it, but Grayson’s rosy pictures of pointless wanderlust don’t really stand up to his own moral sermonizing. If everyone lived their life this way, would the world be a better place? Nope. It’s important to note that when Grayson leaves home and strikes out on the road, he leaves behind a woman whom you assume is his wife. She, or someone else, is left responsible for the farm from which he’s fled.

The Friendly Road improves a little in its second half when Grayson encounters a socialist and gets involved in a labor struggle. Baker slips into muckraking mode for a while, and you at least get some sense of historical events that were going on at the time. Still, his insight into the class struggle is a lot shallower and tamer than contemporaries like Jack London or Upton Sinclair. Grayson is neither for nor against socialism. He won’t commit to either side. He just wants everyone to get along.

There are many better books on hobos, tramps, and drifters. In fiction, there are classics like Knut Hamsun’s Wanderer trilogy (1906–1912), B. Traven’s The Cotton-Pickers (1926), John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (1937), Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), and William Kennedy’s Ironweed (1983), just for starters. In nonfiction, Jack London’s The Road (1907) and John Krakauer’s Into the Wild (1996) are both excellent. With so many other superior choices, why bother with Grayson’s tepid chicken soup for the soul?

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

Big universe, big thoughts

The 1980 PBS TV series Cosmos was a landmark in the history of television. The companion book to that series, also published in 1980, was the bestselling science book of all time (until Stephen Hawking beat it a few years later). The Cosmos book has 13 chapters that parallel the 13 episodes of the TV program. Alexander von Humboldt published the original Cosmos book back in 1845 to 1862, and Sagan does mention Humboldt in a footnote. The intent by both authors was to summarize and encapsulate in one volume the state of scientific knowledge on the heavens and the earth. Though Humboldt’s Cosmos was popular in its day, his was a pretty dry scientific text compared to Sagan’s more accessible and inspirational book. The way Sagan combines science writing with philosophy, skepticism, and freethought reminds me of another book from the end of the 19th century: Ernst Haeckel’s The Riddle of the Universe.

As one would expect from an astronomer and planetary scientist, Sagan spends much of Cosmos discussing the planets and other bodies in our solar system, as well as galaxies, the universe as a whole, space travel, the Big Bang, and the search for extraterrestrial life. In addition, however, he discusses particle physics, the origin of life, DNA, evolution, the history of science and astronomy (particularly in ancient Greece), and the human brain. The final chapter of Cosmos is about nuclear war. Although still a threat, Armageddon is not on people’s minds as much as it was in the ‘80s, and disarmament now seems further from reality.

Like any science book of years gone by, the obvious drawback to Cosmos is that it’s outdated. Sagan doesn’t really say anything wrong in this book, but what’s omitted is notable. There’s no mention of quantum physics or dark matter, for example. Sagan wrote Cosmos after Voyager 2 had performed its flyby of Jupiter but before it had reached Saturn. There was no Hubble Space Telescope. The existence of exoplanets was still suspected, not confirmed. The nearly fifty intervening years since publication, however, didn’t really bother me. I consider myself pretty well-versed in astronomical matters for a general reader, but I still learned many interesting scientific facts from Sagan’s Cosmos. Sagan is great at putting things into perspective, both humanity’s insignificance in the universe and the immensity of space and time. (He’s much more eloquent than the “billions and billions” catch phrase for which he’s known.)

I’d read much of this information before, but never as succinctly nor as elegantly put as Sagan presents things here. The other famous science book of this era was, of course, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. Though also aimed at the general reader, Hawking’s book is not easy to understand and his explanations aren’t quite user-friendly for the layman. Sagan, on the other hand, is great at explaining complex scientific phenomena in simple terms that anyone with a high school education can understand, without dumbing down the scientific content or the philosophical implications of the matters discussed.

Sagan stopped short of declaring himself an atheist, but for readers of a freethinking persuasion, he is one of the best areligious writers out there, if not the best. He is a superb rationalist preacher, without the pretensions or cynicism of Richard Dawkins and other “neo-atheists.” Since Sagan’s death, others have tried to assume his role as leading spokesman for science—most recently Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye—but no one has quite matched his passion, eloquence, and trustworthiness as a public intellectual. Cosmos, although published in the middle of his career, is Sagan’s magnum opus, the distillation of his entire career. His other books may focus in more detail on some of the topics presented here, but no book better encapsulates his thought in its totality as this one. In the 1980s, this book was a must-read, and today it’s still an important and rewarding work for anyone who cares about science.

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock

Small-town humor from a Canadian Mark Twain

Stephen Leacock was a popular Canadian author who publish many books of fiction, humor, and essays in the early 20th century. Though not much known south of the border, he is a household name in his native Canada. One of his most popular works is Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, published in 1912. The book is a series of stories set in Mariposa, a small town in Southern Canada, presumably in Ontario (because the Maritime Provinces are mentioned as a separate entity, and no one in Mariposa is French). Mariposa may be based on Leacock’s memories of his own hometown, Orillia, Ontario, but he stressed that the locale is a fictional amalgamation of many small towns in Canada.

Is Sunshine Sketches a collection of short stories or a novel? It’s a little of both, but I think it leans more towards the latter. The stories build on one another, so they should be read in order, and sometimes a story arc will be spread over two or three chapters. In form and structure, it can be easily compared to Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. Sunshine Sketches is not a modernist work, however. There are no traces of Winesburg’s Freudian themes, nor will you find the cynicism of Sinclair Lewis’s depictions of small-town life. Leacock makes fun of the citizens of Mariposa, but he’s not laughing at them; he’s laughing with them, as if he counts himself among them. He writes in a style of jovial, old-fashioned storytelling along the lines of Bret Harte, with plenty of humor that calls to mind Mark Twain. Leacock, in fact, won a Mark Twain Medal in 1935 (awarded by the International Mark Twain Society). Nowadays, while the United States has a Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, inaugurated in 1998, Canada has a Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humor, first awarded in the 1940s.

Leacock’s stories of Mariposa are indeed funny, sometimes hilarious, and as charming as you would expect from a book with the title of Sunshine Sketches. The tone is very light. Occasionally you’ll find the melancholy mention of a lost loved one, but there are no dark themes here. Even when Leacock dwells on suicide, he manages to find humor in it. The reader quickly becomes enamored with this little town and gets emotionally involved in the characters’ lives. Leacock profiles Mr. Josh Smith, the portly and successful hotel keeper, Jefferson Thorpe, the barber with a shrewd knack for investments, and Reverend Drone, minister of the Anglican Church. Mr. Pupkin, the bank teller, courts Ms. Zena, the judge’s daughter. The Mariposans gather for a boat outing on Lake Wissanotti, engage in a fundraising campaign for the local church, and turn out in droves on election day. In all cases, these events turn out unexpectedly and with humorous consequences.

If you’ve ever traveled through rural villages in Southern Ontario, it’s easy to imagine a picturesque life similar to what Leacock depicts in Mariposa. Of course, such ideas are partially based on preconceived bucolic and idyllic storybook stereotypes. Leacock plays up to such notions but subverts them with wry and affectionate humor. I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, and I had no trouble identifying with Leacock’s Canadian characters. I suspect that my hometown, in the time of my grandparents’ generation, was probably a lot like Mariposa. I imagine many Canadian students probably read Sunshine Sketches in school, but there’s no reason why this enjoyable book should be confined to an audience of Leacock’s countrymen. American readers should definitely check it out for a fun and enchanting read.

Hüsker Dü: The Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock by Andrew Earles

A non-tell-all career retrospective

Minneapolis rock band Hüsker Dü existed from 1979 to 1988. Within that short tenure, they managed to have a profound influence on alternative music. Combining the raw power of hardcore punk with the catchy melodies and harmonies of pop, Hüsker Dü rose from Midwest indie band to big-label signees who flirted with Nirvana-level mainstream stardom. Music journalist Andrew Earles examines the band’s career in his 2010 book Hüsker Dü: The Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock.

In the introduction, Earles does his best to dissuade you from reading this book by telling you everything it’s not: It’s not a biography of the musicians’ personal lives. It’s not a behind-the-scenes tell-all. It’s not about the conflicts within the band, drug use, love lives, or the musicians’ post–Hüsker Dü solo careers. Earles states his intention in writing this book is to make a case for Hüsker Dü’s importance in music history. Luckily, however, the book is a little bit of all those things that Earles says it’s not. There are, in fact, elements of an exposé here, so it’s more than merely Earles’s critical opinion of their music. What biography there is, however, is very much a music-business narrative about recording, touring, and selling records. If one of the band members fell in love or got busted for drugs, Earles isn’t going to tell you about it.

Sometimes the Hüskers (as Earles repeatedly refers to them) seem like supporting characters in their own book. There are lengthy passages that chart out a history of the Minneapolis punk and post-punk scene, or the history of various indie record labels, in particular Los Angeles’s SST Records. Like music fans of all genres are wont to do, Earles demonstrates himself an aficionado of punk and post-punk by naming as many obscure bands as he can cram into the text. More annoying, however, is the great lengths to which Earles goes to define the genre of “hardcore.” At least a few chapters are spent belaboring that term, decreeing what is hardcore and what isn’t, and obsessing over exactly when Hüsker Dü stopped being hardcore and started being something else. Such hair-splitting of labels becomes tiresome.

Earles interviewed Hüsker Dü band members Grant Hart and Greg Norton for this book. Bob Mould declined to participate because he was in the process of writing his own memoir, See a Little Light (2011). The Hart and Norton interviews are the most valuable aspect of the book. You learn the most from what comes straight out of Grant and Greg’s mouths. Not surprisingly, Hart gets some digs in on Mould, declaring him an egomaniac and a control freak. Have no fear, however, Mould had much worse to say about Hart and Norton in his book. Reading Mould’s autobiography actually lessened my appreciation for Hüsker Dü’s music, because it revealed his personality to be everything Hart says it is—off-puttingly arrogant, pretentious, and vindictive. On the other hand, I’ve grown to have more respect for Hart’s work over the years. Outside of the band, Earles interviewed a few dozen other music industry figures, including their sound technician Lou Giordano, audio engineer Steve Albini, and colleague Mike Watt of the Minutemen. The book ends with a comprehensive discography of Hüsker Dü recordings that delves deeply into rarities beyond their eight albums.

As a fan of Hüsker Dü, I didn’t learn as much about the band as I had hoped, but I did learn some. Earles does a good job of making a case for Hüsker Dü’s historical importance and musical influence, but is that really necessary? If you’re reading this book, chances are you already know that. It would be hard to find an “alternative” band these days that doesn’t claim to have been influenced by Hüsker Dü. If you’ve never heard Hüsker Dü’s music, this book might make you want to listen, but you’re probably not going to want to know about all the minor punk bands that Earles discusses here. This would have been a better book if Earles hadn’t been so reluctant to just tell the story of the band, warts and all. Isn’t that really what most Hüsker Dü fans would want to read?

The Beloved Vagabond by William John Locke

Pretentious intellectual goes slumming

William John Locke was a prolific and popular British writer of fiction of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He had a few bestsellers in his day, and about two dozen films have been adapted from his books. At least three of those movies are based on his novel The Beloved Vagabond, first published in 1906.

London poor boy Augustus Smith is the son of an alcoholic, slatternly mother who works as a laundress when she’s not abusing him. One evening when delivering some clean laundry to mommy’s customers, he makes the acquaintance of an odd fellow. When Augustus accidentally reveals a work of literature he is carrying on his person, this man, who calls himself Paragot, takes an instant liking to the young lad. Paragot immediately makes arrangements to buy the boy from his mother for a pittance, that is, to take Augustus on as a permanent servant. What Paragot really wants, however, is an apprentice with whom to share his unconventional lifestyle. He doesn’t like the boy’s name, so he dubs him Asticot [meaning maggot]. Judging from Paragot’s cultured loquacity, he is obviously highly educated, but he lives an austere hand-to-mouth existence. When his landlord evicts Paragot from his lodgings, he decides to tramp around France, indoctrinating Asticot into his vagabond lifestyle.

The reader is clearly meant to be charmed by Paragot. This free spirit becomes less interesting, however, when one discovers that he’s not a vagabond by necessity but by choice. Paragot has an unlimited supply of money from some mysterious source. He’s never hard up for a meal and has enough means to be quite generous to others. So basically, Locke wrote a book about the joys of European vagrancy, but he didn’t actually have the guts to write a novel about a poor person, so this hobo novel stars a wealthy English gentleman.

Paragot is also an intellectual, as Locke repeatedly points out. Paragot has read everything, knows everything, can do just about anything, speaks just about any language, refers to himself as a genius, and has the ego to match. Locke has clearly developed the character to be his ideal of a gentleman scholar who scorns convention. Paragot, and by extension Locke, scoffs at English “respectability” and gripes about the constricting social conventions that “respectable” people follow. The reader realizes, however, that Paragot is a pretentious intellectual who has his own ridiculous social code that must be followed. He looks down on anyone who hasn’t read this particular book or doesn’t drink his brand of liqueur. Paragot frequently comes across as an elitist know-it-all blowhard, like a cross between Cliff Claven and Frasier Crane with a hipster affectation for bohemian dishevelment. Later in the book, Locke does briefly show Paragot in the light of a buffoon, but for most of the book we are expected to admire him through the worshipful eyes of Asticot.

The Beloved Vagabond does have its endearing moments here and there, when it’s not being annoying. The ending of the book was unexpected and satisfying. I found Paragot’s life moderately entertaining and wasn’t bored by the book. This novel has the feeling, however, of a poser writing about the “counterculture.” Paragot is a dilettante for whom vagabondage is just another area of interest. He’s a toe-dipper into the lifestyle, not a plunger. Locke likewise comes across as a dabbler writing about a milieu he really doesn’t know.

Wayfarers by Knut Hamsun

Workingman’s blues, Norwegian style

Wayfarers, a novel by Norwegian Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun, was published in 1927 (Norwegian title: Landstrykere). Be careful not to confuse this with another Hamsun book, Wanderers, or his novel A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings, part of his Wanderer trilogy. (Only the English titles are confusing, not the Norwegian titles). Wayfarers, on the other hand, is the first book in Hamsun’s August trilogy, the second and third books being August and The Road Leads On.

Edevart Andresen lives with his parents and siblings in Polden, the small Norwegian coastal village where he grew up. Like most men in his village, he makes his living primarily from fishing. Every winter the Polden men go on a fishing expedition to the Lofoten Islands and then return to dry their fish on the rocks of their hometown shore. One day, Edevart meets another young man, August, who has been away from Polden, traveling the world as a sailor, and has now returned. August, with his gold teeth and boastful talk, is frequently the object of ridicule from his neighbors. Edevart and August strike up a fast friendship. August is a big-idea man who’s always looking for a scheme to make a fast buck. He convinces Edevart to enter into various business enterprises with him. The two travel up and down the Norwegian coast like vagabonds, engaging in assorted occupations. Sometimes flush with cash and sometimes hard-up for a meal, the two traveling companions form a share-and-share-alike, what’s-mine-is-yours bond. The dynamic between the two is often comical, sometimes calling to mind the two tramps from Waiting for Godot. Though not much different in age, Edevart is still an inexperienced, naive young man while August is more a shrewd man-of-the-world. Edevart is still very much a “good boy,” but he begins to fall under the corrupting influence of August’s looser morals. Their relationship is not without conflict, and sometimes they separate for months, only to reunite for another adventure..

The story takes place in the late 1860s. Judging by the fickle fortunes of the characters in this book, Hamsun depicts a time of economic hardship in Norway. While much of Europe has transitioned into an industrial economy, the denizens of these small villages on the Norwegian coast still live a subsistence lifestyle not much changed from many generations past. No source of income, not even the fish, can be relied upon, so Edevart and August must turn to other avenues of income, including itinerant peddling, storekeeping, farming, and thievery, among others.

This novel meanders just as much as its two protagonists. The story often proceeds at a lackadaisical but pleasant pace. As you become involved with these characters, you are content to take life as it comes, just as they do. If there is a message to this story, it isn’t hammered home. This book is about the journey, not the destination. Hamsun considers the question of whether it is better to accept one’s lot in life and be whom one was born to be, or to venture afar, forge one’s own path, and try to determine one’s own destiny. This novel shows both the positive and negative aspects of wanderlust and vagrancy. Another issue that’s discussed is emigration to America. No doubt Hamsun saw many of his countrymen leave Norway for the United States during hard times. Here he questions the milk-and-honey, rags-to-riches image of America and asserts that crossing the Atlantic is no happily-ever-after panacea.

After completing this book, I was pleased to find out that it’s part of a trilogy. I enjoyed following the lives of these two men, and I look forward to catching up with Edevart and August in the second and third novels of the August series. Because these books were published late in Hamsun’s career, however, there are no English translations in the public domain, and paper copies of August are not cheap.