Nana by Emile Zola

Biting cultural criticism dressed up in naughty lingerie
Nana chronicles the rise of the title character from lowly street girl to a queen of the whores in Second Empire Paris. Part of the fun of reading this book is to imagine how shocked the audience of Zola’s time must have been when they first read this novel. Nana makes Madame Bovary look like Mother Teresa. A series of men from various levels of social status become involved with Nana, and the only way to satisfy their lustful obsession with her is to rid themselves of every drop of money and every shred of dignity. At one point Zola says it were as if the entire economy of France had passed between her legs. The book offers serious commentary on the decadence and decay of Parisian society in the late nineteenth century. At the same time, it’s a wonderful piece of pulp fiction. The events and characters are exaggerated in some parts to comedic effect, but under the satire lies a strong indictment of loose mores and shallow pleasures. Nana is a symbol of the political, cultural, and moral degradation of France. (Her contemporary American cultural equivalent might be . . . Paris Hilton, for example.) As a literary character, Nana has the paradoxical effect of being likeable even while we despise everything she stands for. This book is the ninth volume in the Rougon-Macquart series (Nana is the daughter of Gervaise Macquart of the book L’Assomoir), but it stands alone as a work of literature. Previous knowledge of Zola or his works is not necessary to enjoy this novel. This book is a worthwhile read for anyone who appreciates great literature.
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The Complete Works of Jack London (a Kindle collection from O’Conner Books)

Not quite complete, but exceptional nonetheless
This collection is not quite the “Complete Works” it claims to be, but it probably contains 95% of London’s published writings, which is a great feat for an author so prolific. The most glaring omission is the short story collection On the Makaloa Mat, which contains some of London’s best Hawaii Stories like “Shin-Bones”, “The Water Baby”, and “The Bones of Kahekili”. Also absent are The Kempton-Wace Letters, which he co-wrote with Anna Strunsky, and The Assassination Bureau, Ltd., which was completed after his death. Since these two were collaborative works, it’s possible they may not be public domain, therefore their absence would be understandable. Other than that, all that’s missing are “minor” works: a few plays, some non-fiction journalism pieces, some of the stories he wrote during high school. None of his poetry is included. The novel The Star Rover appears under its alternate title, The Jacket. The short stories are arranged in the context of the collections in which they were originally published, which is good. There are four collections here that are not considered part of the official Jack London canon: Brown Wolf and Other Stories, A Collection of Stories, Stories of Ships and the Sea, and Tales of the Klondyke. These four collections contain mostly stories repeated from other collections, but they also have some obscure stuff not available elsewhere.

As far as ease of use is concerned, this collection could be more user friendly. There is an interactive table of contents which allows you to click on individual volumes, however each volume does not have its own table of contents. So if you click on The Strength of the Strong, for example, it takes you to the first page of the first story, but if you want to know the other six stories that are included in that volume, the only way you’re going to find that out is by scrolling through the entire volume. For an author who wrote so many short stories, it would have been useful to include some way of easily accessing individual stories, like an alphabetical index.

Overall it’s a fantastic collection of work by America’s greatest author. Downloading them all in one inexpensive chunk sure beats hunting for the lesser-known works in used book stores, libraries, or on ebay.

(To read about individual books contained within this Kindle volume, click on the “London Jack” tag in the right-hand column of this blog.)
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Works of Honoré de Balzac (a Kindle collection from MobileReference Collected Works)

Save yourself several dozen trips to the library
I purchased this collection a year ago and have since read six of the pieces included: Les Chouans, Lost Illusions, Farewell, Sarrasine, At the Sign of the Cat and Racket, and Father Goriot. (Click on the “Balzac Honore de” tag in the right-hand column of this blog to read reviews of individual works.) I found none of the annoying typographical errors often present in public domain Kindle files that are generated by optical character recognition, which leads me to believe that someone actually took the time to proofread and edit the text. The English translations are all about a hundred years old, but contain no overly archaic terminology that would hinder a reader’s understanding. They retain just enough of an antiquated feeling to remind you that you’re reading a distinguished work of classic literature.

For those who don’t know, almost all of Balzac’s writings fall under the heading of the Comédie Humaine, a series of about 100 novels and stories loosely connected by recurring characters. This Kindle file features two interactive tables of contents, which are very convenient and easy to use. One arranges the pieces according to the way Balzac classified them within the structure of his Comédie Humaine. The second table of contents lists the titles in alphabetical order. In works composed of multiple novellas, for example Lost Illusions or The Thirteen, both the parent title and the title of each individual part are listed. Balzac’s works have often been published under more than one English title, in addition to the original French title, so if at first you can’t find a specific work included here, check Wikipedia for alternate titles. This file contains the complete Comédie Humaine, plus a handful of additional works, including the Droll Stories and five plays.

Some but not all of the pieces contained in this collection end with a list of recurring characters and the other novels of the Comédie Humaine in which they appear. While this is slightly helpful in choosing further works to read, for those really interested in the overall structure and continuity of the Comédie Humaine, I would recommend downloading Repertory of the Comédie Humaine by Anatole Cerfberr and Jules François Christophe, available for free from Project Gutenberg.

Balzac’s works and their English translations are all in the public domain, so you can get all of these works for free elsewhere. However, if you are a fan of Balzac it’s worth spending a couple of bucks just to avoid the hassle of downloading all these works individually. This well prepared collection presents Balzac’s amazing oeuvre in a satisfying, user friendly package.
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Pantheisticon by John Toland

“All Things are from the Whole, and the Whole is from all Things.”
Pantheism is a metaphysical view that asserts that God is inseparable from the physical universe. This God, however, bears little resemblance to the Christian, Moslem, or Judaic God. In fact, among Pantheists the word “God” is often interchangeable with words like “Nature”, “Soul”, or “Mind”. Most religions of the world are dualistic philosophies which view the world as being comprised of two substances, matter and spirit. Most Pantheists, on the other hand, are monists who believe the universe is composed of only one substance (matter), and that any divinity, intelligence, or spirit must be an inherent quality of that matter. Thus this divinity permeates the entire universe and inhabits all things. Everything is a part of and subject to the governing order of the natural universe, and nothing, not even God nor human consciousness, resides outside of physical reality. Many of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers were Pantheists, as were the early Hindus and the Chinese Taoists. The most prominent Pantheist in the Western philosophical canon is Baruch de Spinoza, in whose work John Toland, the author of Pantheisticon, was certainly well-versed.

Toland was an Irish philosopher and outspoken freethinker who often published writings attacking conventional religious views. Pantheisticon was first published in Latin in 1720; the first English translation appeared in 1751. It is a brief booklet, little more than 100 small pages. Toland devotes about half the book to an explanation of the basic concepts of Pantheism. What he has to say on the subject is in many ways a rehash of Spinoza, but less mathematically logical in its construction and harder to understand. At times it’s even difficult to determine whether Toland is proposing a monistic or dualistic form of Pantheism. He makes digressions into physics and astronomy that do little to clarify his position, especially when penned in the prose stylings of three centuries past.

In the second half of the book Toland presents something far more original and unique. He asserts that throughout the Europe of his time there existed Socratic Societies, brotherhoods of Pantheists who, in the tradition of the ancient Greeks and Romans, gathered for banquets and engaged in philosophical discourse. Toland transcribes the “Form” of these meetings, a sort of liturgy that’s to be recited at these secret dinners, which include many quotes from their patron saint Cicero and call-and-response hymns devoted to the triumph of reason over superstition. Whether or not societies of this sort actually existed, the sort of pan-European network that Toland proposes here seems unlikely. It’s more probable that Toland’s intention is to inspire such brotherhoods, and create for the disciples of reason something resembling an organized religion.

If you really want to get a thorough understanding of Pantheism, this is not the book to read. For that I would suggest The Ethics by Spinoza. Nevertheless, if you are a freethinker, you’ll get a big kick out of the Pantheisticon. It gives one the feeling that you’re not alone in the world, that somewhere out there exists a brotherhood of like-minded heathens who value reason over superstition and scientific investigation over dogma. The book is also well stocked with quotable gems, for example, “The Sun is my Father, the Earth is my Mother, the World’s my Country, and all Men are my Relations.” Words to live by for the human race, to be sure.
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Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

The doors of the mind blown open
Harry Haller envisions himself as having a dual personality. One half of his nature, the human side, longs for social interaction and a comfortable bourgeois existence. The other half, his animal side, which he refers to as the Steppenwolf, craves solitude and the fulfillment of its savage desires. Unable to reconcile these two halves of his nature, the aging Haller finds himself depressed and filled with revulsion for his pointless, insignificant life. He sets his mind on suicide until he chances upon a sympathetic woman, Hermine, who rescues him from his self-imposed isolation, introduces him to a new social circle, and teaches him to enjoy life again. Though that brief description may sound like the beginning of a romance novel, Haller’s mysterious savior does not so much resemble a love interest as she does a Virgil guiding Dante through Hell.

Hermann Hesse is known for introducing ideas from Eastern philosophy and religion to the minds of Western readers. Though the Oriental imagery is not as overt here as in some of his other novels, there is still a prominent undercurrent of Buddhist and Hindu thought. Haller serves as an example of how one’s view of the self or of his own “personality” is merely a construct of self-crafted illusions. In reality the soul is as multifaceted as the world at large, and this restrictive self-definition only serves to hinder him from attaining peace and fulfillment. The true self can only be discovered by breaking through this psychological obstacle, negating the illusory self, and opening oneself up to the myriad possibilities of life. In Steppenwolf, Hesse expresses this largely Eastern concept through the language of European intellectualism. It reads more like a psychoanalytical treatise than a Buddhist sermon.

The novel liberally departs from realism, as dreams and hallucinations intermingle with the concrete events of Haller’s life, their boundaries often obscured. Rather than a stream-of-consciousness narrative, this novel might be described as stream-of-subconsciousness. On his strange journey of self-discovery Haller encounters Goethe and Mozart, and explores the Magic Theatre where parallel visions of his existence intersect. These hallucinatory departures can get pretty bizarre, at times resembling the sort of pretentious Euro-surrealist film clips that Saturday Night Live used to lampoon in their “Sprockets” sketches. In Hesse‘s skillful hands, however, these disjointed scenes unite to form a vivid encapsulation of the paranoia, disappointment, and disgust felt by many a liberal intellectual as Europe was recovering from one horrible world war, only to embark on another in the not too distant future.

Steppenwolf is much more than just a snapshot of the mind set of its time, however. Though first published in 1927, much of what this novel teaches about human nature is timeless. The opposition between the solitary individual and his social obligations to mankind is an eternal conflict, one that has only been compounded by the dehumanization of modern society. Hesse understands this conflict with precise clarity and expresses it with a fearless originality that enlightens and amazes. When I first read this book as a young, angst-ridden bohemian, it truly struck a chord with me. Rereading Steppenwolf now as a full-fledged member of the bourgeoisie, approaching middle age, I find the lessons learned are different but no less profound.
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Leopoldo Mendéz: Oficio de Grabar by Francisco Reyes Palma

An impressive retrospective of the master printmaker’s art
In his native Mexico, Lepoldo Méndez is highly regarded as one of the country’s great artists, with a stature just below that of the “big three” (Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros). Through a mixture of powerful social realism and biting political satire, his masterful woodcut prints embody the socialist ideals of post-Revolution Mexico, vividly capture the living conditions of the Mexican working class, and fiercely denounce corruption and war.

The text of this book is in Spanish. It gives an excellent overview of Méndez’s life and career, from his early work in the Futurist-inspired Stridentist movement to his participation in the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) to his leadership of the revolutionary print collective Taller Gráfica Popular (TGP). Also discussed in detail are the influence of José Guadalupe Posada on his art, and Méndez’s work in the field of movie titles. The book also reproduces two articles that Méndez wrote, one from 1926 about mural painting and one from 1947 on Mexican art in general. It ends with a chronology of Méndez’s life which is so rich in detail it could serve as a biography in its own right.

This book contains 125 illustrations of Méndez’s work, spanning his entire career, all beautifully reproduced, in high contrast black and white or in full color when appropriate. The design and printing of the book is excellent with the exception of the horrible choice of text font (Bodoni bold extra condensed) which, though attractive, is difficult to read.

This book is the best I’ve ever seen on Méndez. For a comprehensive study of the man and his work, probably the only real competition is Deborah Caplow’s book Leopoldo Méndez: Revolutionary Art and the Mexican Print. That book is currently in print, and the text is in English, but the illustrations in the Reyes Palma book are far superior in quality. Even if you can’t read Spanish, if you love Méndez's prints you won't find a more beautiful collection of his work than this one.

Leopoldo Méndez, Fusilamiento (Firing Squad), for the film Un Día de Vida, 1950, linoleum cut print, 41.8 x 30.4 cm

Leopoldo Méndez, Portada para carpeta de grabados (Cover for a portfolio of prints), 1944, 30.4 x 41.8 cm

Leopoldo Méndez, Lo que puede venir, 1945, wood engraving, 17 x 30.4 cm

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The Portable Jack London, edited by Earle Labor

“Desert Island” London

I'm a big fan of London, and have (so far) read probably 2/3 of his published work. I always prefer, when possible, to read his stories in their original collected volumes, rather than in the many “greatest hits” collections of his work. This volume is the exception to that rule. Earle Labor, a renowned London scholar, has put together the ultimate “desert island” volume of London’s work. All of the best stories are here, as well as an excellent collection of his non-fiction writing, letters, and biographical material. The Call of the Wild is also included in its entirety. Unfortunately, other excellent novels are not represented here, but that’s understandable due to space concerns. Labor provides a detailed chronology of London’s life, and an introductory essay that puts these varied works into context. The result is not merely a showcase of London’s best work, but a volume that gives an excellent overview of the man’s life, the stages in his literary career, and the development of his politics and philosophy. For diehard London fans, if you can only fit one book in your carry-on bag, this is a great volume to have with you. For those who have never read London before, this book makes a great introduction to the man and his art.
(Published by Penguin as part of their Portable Library series.)

Stories in this collection:

To the Man on Trail

In a Far Country

The Law of Life

A Relic of the Pliocene

Nam-Bok the Unveracious

To Build a Fire (1902)

Moon-Face

Bâtard

Love of Life

All Gold Canyon

The Apostate

To Build A Fire (1908)

The Chinago

Koolau the Leper

Good-by, Jack

Mauki

The Strength of the Strong

Samuel

A Piece of Steak

The Madness of John Harned

The Night-Born

War

Told in the Drooling Ward

The Mexican 

The Red One

The Water Baby

The Call of the Wild (complete novel)
Also selected nonfiction, letters, and a chronology

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