Under Fire: The Story of a Squad by Henri Barbusse

The war novel to end all war novels

Under Fire is a novel by French author Henri Barbusse, based on his own military experiences in World War I. Barbusse enlisted in the French Army at the age of 41 and served on the Western Front from 1914 to 1916. Under Fire was published in late 1916, while the Great War was still very much in progress. The book was a great success upon its release and received the Prix Goncourt (France’s award for best novel of the year).

Much of the action of Under Fire takes place in the trenches on the front lines of the fighting between France and Germany. The story follows a squadron of foot soldiers, men with working class backgrounds and little education—not career soldiers but common privates plucked from their hometowns and thrust into the hell of war. The book has about a hundred named characters, most of them members of this squadron, but a core group of about a dozen men form the central cast of this drama. The book is narrated by one of the squad’s soldiers who is presumably Barbusse himself. He is never mentioned by name, but it is revealed that he is a writer gathering stories for what might someday be a book.

Under Fire was controversial for its time because of its brutal naturalism. Barbusse’s literary style is similar to that of Emile Zola’s, as seen in the latter’s own classic war novel The Debacle, but taken to extremes worthy of a horrific world war fought with modern technology. Barbusse vividly describes the miserable living conditions in the trenches and the terror of undergoing constant bombardments. The battle scenes are drenched in rain and mired in mud. Barbusse’s prose is littered with gruesome images of injuries, deaths, and corpses littering the land like a macabre sculpture garden. Nothing in this novel qualifies as a glorified or romanticized image of war. Barbusse pushes a very strident anti-war message here. He may have served almost two years in combat, but in his heart he is clearly a pacifist. Barbusse’s experiences of war even converted him to communism after seeing his fellow poilus suffer for the aristocrats and oligarchs who make war for their own benefit.

This is not entirely a novel about combat. Between the battles there is plenty of time for the men of the squad to take their leave in small towns, farms, and even in Paris. Their experiences, however, are far from luxurious as the mud, the rain, hunger, and lice seem to follow them wherever they go. Barbusse depicts the life of a soldier as just as much drudgery as danger, but his uncompromising realism insures that the narrative never becomes boring. Amid all the tragedy one finds moments of humor and the camaraderie of brothers in arms. At times, these men may come across as salt-of-the-earth caricatures, but I find that preferable to the tortured poets that inhabit some highbrow war novels, like John Dos Passos’s Three Soldiers. Barbusse makes you feel for these soldiers, as victims crushed under the wheel of war, but he never resorts to excessive sentimentalism or cloying melodrama.

Under Fire influenced Ernest Hemingway’s writings on World War I, as well as those of Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front, which was published in 1928. I haven’t yet read that latter novel, but if it is, as people say, the greatest novel of World War I, I can only assume that Barbusse’s Under Fire is a close second. As a document of war, it is difficult to imagine a much more vivid and visceral experience then what Barbusse delivers here. If we had no photographs or artifacts of the Great War, Barbusse’s text alone would be sufficient to teach us what that tragic conflict was like. Under Fire is an exceptional novel that deserves a more prominent position in the canon of 20th century world literature.

Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar

Tragically bohemian Latinos in Paris

Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar was born in Belgium during World War I. He grew up in Buenos Aires and emigrated to France in his late thirties. Cortázar is a highly esteemed author in Latin America, where he is considered one of the groundbreaking modernists who spearheaded the Latin American literary “Boom” of the 1960s and ‘70s. His novel Hopscotch (original Spanish title: Rayuela) was published in 1963.

Hopscotch concerns an Argentinian expatriate named Horacio Oliveira who lives in Paris. He is involved with a woman called La Maga (real name Lucia) who is from Uruguay and has an infant son. The two South Americans circulate amongst an international group of friends, self-appointed intellectuals who live a bohemian lifestyle. Calling themselves, “the Club,” they spend their days and nights sipping coffee and maté (a sort of South American tea), listening to jazz records, and arguing about literature and philosophy. Other than one member who calls himself a painter, none of them seem to have jobs, and its unclear how they survive. All of the club members display a condescending attitude toward La Maga, who is not as well-read as the men in the group. She seems to have a genuine love for Horacio, who merely deigns to put up with her.

At first, it’s possible for the reader to become invested in the relationship between Horacio and La Maga, but at the halfway point the novel takes a turn into another direction that just feels silly, pointless, and a colossal waste of time. La Maga, unfortunately, is the only sympathetic character in the book. The rest of this social set is composed of smug, pretentious blowhards. If your circle of friends talked like the way these guys talk, you’d want to punch them all in the face. They take turns trying to prove they’re smarter than each other by out-name-dropping authors, musicians, philosophers and filmmakers that they think are cool. It doesn’t take long to realize that Cortázar himself is the pretentious blowhard who wants you to think his cultural choices are cool. When the writers and thinkers in question aren’t arcane enough to satisfy his snobbery, he even creates a fictional intellectual named Morelli whom he quotes at length to no purpose.

Hopscotch is renowned for its innovative narrative structure. In a brief intro, Cortázar explains that the novel can be read in two ways. First, one can read it as a linear novel from chapters 1 through 56. Alternately, one can follow a maze-like path in which chapters 57 through 155 are haphazardly distributed between the primary narrative chapters. The reader is directed from chapter to chapter in a manner reminiscent of the Choose Your Own Adventure Books, paging back and forth from one passage to the next, or in the case of the ebook, just clicking the links. Being the completist I am, I chose the longer, more circuitous route. Regrettably, chapters 57 through 155 are mostly unnecessary to the narrative (even Cortázar calls them “expendable”) and consist merely of “deep thoughts,” epigraphs, tangential digressions, and failed experiments.

If your definition of great literature is “anything goes,” then you’ll probably think Hopscotch is a cutting-edge masterpiece. I, however, don’t think it deserves that much credit. Many of the writers that Cortázar mentions in Hopscotch, such as Raymond Queneau and Witold Gombrowicz, were far more successful than he at using experimental language and structure to enhance a narrative, create an effect, or actually say something, rather than merely indulging in weird-for-weird’s-sake showiness. Cortázar seems to think that he can just write whatever pops into his head, and you’ll eat it up because he’s a highbrow man of letters. If the book were shorter, it might be easier to give him credit for some cleverly written passages, but Hopscotch is so overdone it feels like an ordeal, like being trapped at one of the Club’s maté parties.

The Inspector Maigret Novels of Georges Simenon

Keeping them all straight

From 1931 to 1972, Belgian-French author Georges Simenon published 75 novels in his Inspector Maigret series of mysteries. (There are also 28 short stories, none of which I’ve read.) The star of these books, Jules Maigret, is superintendent of the Police Judiciaire in Paris. He works out of the police headquarters on the Quai des Orfèvres, where he heads a team of detectives—Janvier, Lucas, Lapointe, and Torrence—who appear as recurring characters throughout the series. Rather unusual for a detective series born in the 1930s, Maigret is married. Madame Maigret appears in almost every book and occasionally has a major role in a case. Although his home and office are in Paris, duty often calls Maigret farther afield to locations all over France, elsewhere in Europe, and even to the United States. The variety in Maigret’s cases allows the reader glimpses into different aspects of French society: metropolitan and provincial, rich and poor, urban and rural, and various regional distinctions.

I never set out to read all these books, but I keep finding them in used book stores and library sales at very inexpensive prices. When I pick up a Maigret novel, I’m pretty sure I’m in for a good read. The worst of these novels are above average for the mystery genre, and the best of them are excellent. 

When I find a Maigret novel, however, it is often difficult to tell whether I’m buying the same book twice because the English editions have been published under so many different titles. I decided I need a checklist to keep them all straight. Below is a list of all the novels in the series. The books I’ve read and reviewed are highlighted in blue. Click on the titles to read the complete reviews.

 

Harvest/HBJ paperback editions (circa 1990s)
uncredited cover designs

1. Pietr-le-Letton (1931)
English titles: Pietr the Latvian, The Strange Case of Peter the Lett, Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett, Suite at the Majestic 

2. Le Charretier de “la Providence” (1931)
English titles: Lock 14, The Crime at Lock 14, Maigret Meets a Milord, The Carter of La Providence

3. M. Gallet décédé (1931)
English titles: The Late Monsieur Gallet, The Death of Monsieur Gallet, Maigret Stonewalled 

4. Le Pendu de Saint-Pholien (1931)
English titles: The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien, The Crime of Inspector Maigret, Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets 

5. La Tête d’un homme (1931)
English titles: A Man’s Head, A Battle of Nerves, The Patience of Maigret, Maigret’s War of Nerves 

6. Le Chien jaune (1931)
English titles: The Yellow Dog, Maigret and the Yellow Dog, Maigret and the Concarneau Murders, A Face for a Clue

7. La Nuit du carrefour (1931)
English titles: The Night at the Crossroads, The Crossroad Murders, Maigret at the Crossroads 

8. Un crime en Hollande (1931)
English titles: Maigret in Holland, A Crime in Holland 

9. Au rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas (1931)
English titles: The Grand Banks Café, The Sailors’s Rendezvous, Maigret Answers a Plea

10. La Danseuse du Gai-Moulin (1931)
English titles: The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin, At the “Gai-Moulin”, Maigret at the “Gai-Moulin” 

11. La Guinguette à deux sous (1932)
English titles: Maigret and the Tavern by the Seine, The Guinguette by the Seine, Maigret to the Rescue, A Spot by the Seine, The Bar on the Seine, The Two-Penny Bar

12. L’Ombre chinoise (1932)
English titles: The Shadow Puppet, The Shadow in the Courtyard, Maigret Mystified

13. L’Affaire Saint-Fiacre (1932)
English titles: The Saint-Fiacre Affair, Maigret and the Countess, Maigret Goes Home, Maigret on Home Ground

14. Chez les Flamands (1932)
English titles: The Flemish House, The Flemish Shop, Maigret and the Flemish Shop

15. Le Port des brumes (1932)
English titles: The Misty Harbour, Death of a Harbor Master, Maigret and the Death of a Harbor Master

16. Le Fou de Bergerac (1932)
English titles: The Madman of Bergerac

17. Liberty Bar (1932)
English titles: Liberty Bar, Maigret on the Riviera

18. L’Écluse no. 1 (1933)
English titles: Lock No. 1, The Lock at Charenton, Maigret Sits it Out

19. Maigret (1934)
English titles: Maigret Returns, Maigret

20. Les Caves du Majestic (1942)
English titles: The Hotel Majestic, Maigret and the Hotel Majestic, The Cellars of the Majestic

21. La Maison du juge (1942)
English titles: Maigret in Exile, The Judge’s House

22. Cécile est morte (1942)
English titles: Cécile is Dead, Maigret and the Spinster

23. Signé Picpus (1944)
English titles: Maigret and the Fortuneteller; To Any Lengths; Signed, Picpus

24. Félicie est là (1944)
English titles: Félicie, Maigret and the Toy Village

25. L’Inspecteur Cadavre (1944)
English titles: Maigret’s Rival, Inspector Cadaver

26. Maigret se fâche (1947)
English titles: Maigret Gets Angry, Maigret in Retirement

27. Maigret à New York (1947)
English titles: Inspector Maigret in New York’s Underworld, Maigret in New York

28. Les vacances de Maigret (1948)
English titles: Maigret’s Holiday, A Summer Holiday, No Vacation for Maigret

29. Maigret et son mort (1948)
English titles: Maigret’s Dead Man, Maigret’s Special Murder

30. La première enquête de Maigret (1949)
English titles: Maigret’s First Case

31. Mon ami Maigret (1949)
English titles: My Friend Maigret, The Methods of Maigret

32. Maigret chez le coroner (1949)
English titles: Maigret at the Coroner’s, Maigret and the Coroner

33. Maigret et la vieille dame (1949)
English titles: Maigret and the Old Lady

34. L’Amie de Mme. Maigret (1950)
English titles: Madam Maigret’s Friend, Madam Maigret’s Own Case, The Friend of Madame Maigret

35. Les Mémoires de Maigret (1951)
English titles: Maigret’s Memoirs

36. Maigret au “Picratt’s” (1951)
English titles: Maigret in Montmartre, Inspector Maigret and the Strangled Stripper, Maigret at Picratt’s

37. Maigret en meublé (1951)
English titles: Maigret Takes a Room

38. Maigret et la grande perche (1951)
English titles: Maigret and the Tall Woman, Maigret and the Burglar’s Wife

 

Harvest/HBJ paperback editions (circa 1980s)
Bob Silverman cover designs

39. Maigret, Lognan et les gangsters (1952)
English titles: Maigret, Lognon and the Gangsters; Inspector Maigret and the Killers; Maigret and the Gangsters

40. Le Revolver de Maigret (1952)
English titles: Maigret’s Revolver

41. Maigret et l’homme du banc (1953)
English titles: Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard, Maigret and the Man on the Bench, The Man on the Boulevard

42. Maigret a peur (1953)
English titles: Maigret Afraid, Maigret is Afraid

43. Maigret se trompe (1953)
English titles: Maigret’s Mistake

44. Maigret à l’école (1954)
English titles: Maigret Goes to School

45. Maigret et la jeune morte (1954)
English titles: Maigret and the Dead Girl, Maigret and the Young Girl

46. Maigret chez le ministre (1954)
English titles: Maigret and the Calame Report, Maigret and the Minister

47. Maigret et le corps sans tête (1955)
English titles: Maigret and the Headless Corpse

48. Maigret tend un piège (1955)
English titles: Maigret Sets a Trap

49. Un échec de Maigret (1956)
English titles: Maigret’s Failure

50. Maigret s’amuse (1957)
English titles: Maigret’s Little Joke, Maigret Amuses Himself, None of Maigret’s Business

51. Maigret voyage (1958)
English titles: Maigret Travels, Maigret and the Millionaires 

52. Les Scrupules de Maigret (1958)
English titles: Maigret Has Scruples, Maigret’s Doubts

53. Maigret et les témoins récalcitrants (1959)
English titles: Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses

54. Une confidence de Maigret (1959)
English titles: Maigret Has Doubts, Maigret’s Secret

55. Maigret aux assises (1960)
English titles: Maigret in Court

56. Maigret et les vieillards (1960)
English titles: Maigret and the Old People, Maigret in Society

57. Maigret et le voleur paresseux (1961)
English titles: Maigret and the Lazy Burglar, Maigret and the Idle Burglar

58. Maigret et les braves gens (1962)
English titles: Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse, Maigret and the Black Sheep 

59. Maigret et le client du samedi (1962)
English titles: Maigret and the Saturday Caller

60. Maigret et le clochard (1963)
English titles: Maigret and the Bum, Maigret and the Dosser, Maigret and the Tramp

61. La Colère de Maigret (1963)
English titles: Maigret’s Anger, Maigret Loses His Temper 

62. Maigret et le fantôme (1964)
English titles: Maigret and the Ghost, Maigret and the Apparition 

63. Maigret se défend (1964)
English titles: Maigret Defends Himself, Maigret on the Defensive

64. La Patience de Maigret (1965)
English titles: Maigret’s Patience, Maigret Bides His Time, The Patience of Maigret

65. Maigret et l’affaire Nahour (1966)
English titles: Maigret and the Nahour Case

66. Le Voleur de Maigret (1967)
English titles: Maigret’s Pickpocket, Maigret and the Pickpocket 

67. Maigret à Vichy (1968)
English titles: Maigret in Vichy, Maigret Takes the Waters

68. Maigret hésite (1968)
English titles: Maigret Hesitates

69. L’Ami d’enfance de Maigret (1968)
English titles: Maigret’s Childhood Friend, Maigret’s Boyhood Friend

70. Maigret et le tueur (1969)
English titles: Maigret and the Killer

71. Maigret et le marchand de vin (1970)
English titles: Maigret and the Wine Merchant

72. La Folle de Maigret (1970)
English titles: Maigret’s Madwoman, Maigret and the Madwoman

73. Maigret et l’homme tout seul (1971)
English titles: Maigret and the Loner

74. Maigret et l’indicateur (1971)
English titles: Maigret and the Informer, Maigret and the Flea

75. Maigret et Monsieur Charles (1972)
English titles: Maigret and Monsieur Charles

 

Penguin paperback editions (2013 to present)
Alceu Chiesorin Nunes cover designs

The Bridge in the Jungle by B. Traven

Life and death in a tropical village

I only discovered B. Traven about a year ago. Since then, I’ve read four of his novels, and three out of the four have been superb. The Bridge in the Jungle is the best one yet. It was first published in German in 1928, then in English translation in 1939. Traven was born in Germany and worked as a sailor for a while before settling in Mexico in the 1920s. It is unclear how long he lived there, but almost all of his books take place in Mexico. The Bridge in the Jungle is set in an unspecified location in Central America, though that term may be used vaguely enough here to encompass Chiapas in Southern Mexico, where Traven was known to have spent some time. Traven published a series of a half a dozen novels known as his Jungle series. Confusingly, however, The Bridge in the Jungle is not part of that series, but rather a precursor to it.

The novel is narrated by an American drifter who is once referred to by the name of Gales. (Traven readers will recognize Gerald or Gerard Gales, the name Traven commonly applied to his protagonists, though his Gales books don’t necessarily constitute a series.) This narrator visits his fellow American friend Sleigh, who lives in the middle of the jungle with his Indian wife and a few head of cattle. A bridge built by an oil company crosses a river there. Next to the bridge is a water pumping station owned by the railroad. Gathered around the bridge is a poor and tiny riverside village comprised of a few squalid huts and ramshackle houses, including Sleigh’s.

Gales and Sleigh attend a party that’s being held in the village near the pump station. It’s an impromptu dance held in someone’s front yard. Villagers of all ages attend, bringing food or musical instruments or whatever else they can contribute. At first, it takes a while for this party to get off the ground. The promised musicians are no-shows, and Gales and Sleigh are clearly disappointed. For a while, it seems like this is what the book is going to be about: a bummer of a party in the middle of nowhere. The occasion is disrupted, however, when an unforeseen crisis befalls one of the families of the village. The nature of this catastrophe is best left unsaid here, to avoid spoiling too much of the plot. What the novel relates, however, is how the entire population of the village accepts the stricken family’s troubles as their own and comes to their aid and support.

This is not a feel-good story, however. It is a vivid immersion into the reality of life among the rural poor in a developing country. I’ve traveled enough in Mexico to appreciate the gritty realism of Traven’s depictions of that country. While I may be merely a dilettante tourist, he was the real deal who lived the life of the drifters about whom he wrote (see also The Cotton-Pickers and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre). The village depicted in The Bridge in the Jungle is no doubt based on a community among which Traven lived for some time, and his vivid recollections bring this world to life. He doesn’t just describe the trappings of these people’s environment but also lets the reader in on their thought processes and philosophy of life. Here, as in all of his books, Traven includes some pro-socialist, anti-imperialist comments, but such social criticism plays a minor role in a story that is much more personal than political.

While reading The Bridge in the Jungle, I couldn’t help wondering how a writer like Hemingway is immortalized with a Nobel Prize while Traven is allowed to fade into obscurity. This novel is more powerful than anything I’ve read by Hemingway and at least as profound as William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, without all the annoying stream-of-consciousness wordplay. Traven’s writing delivers the unvarnished realism of a John Steinbeck or Jack London but without any of their literary pretensions. The more I read of his work, the more impressed I am by the perceptive naturalism and plainspoken style of his storytelling.

Indians of the Northwest Coast by Philip Drucker

Commonalities and diversity among Native peoples of the region

In the early and mid-20th century, the American Museum of Natural History published a series of books called Anthropological Handbooks. I’ve never been able to find a complete list of the books in this series, but I have found a few volumes available for free download online. Indians of the Northwest Coast by Philip Drucker, an anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American Ethnology, is number 10 in the Handbook series and was published in 1955. My interest in the Northwest Coast Indians began with a love for their beautiful art, and trips to Alaska and British Columbia in recent years have heightened my curiosity about their culture, beliefs, and lifestyle.

In books related to history, archaeology, or anthropology, when I see the word “Handbook” in the title, it leads me to expect an overview suitable for general readers. This book is indeed an overview, but it’s hard to say who the intended audience is. It definitely requires the reader to have some foreknowledge of anthropological concepts and subject matter. There is a discussion here about blanket weaving, for example, for which the reader is expected to be familiar with the techniques and technical terminology of Native American hand weaving. In general, the text of this book reads as if it were meant to provide a general overview of the Northwest Coast Indians to anthropologists who specialize in some other region or culture.

The information is organized into categorical chapters on material culture, economy, social structure, religious beliefs, rites and ceremonies, and art. Rather than emphasizing the characteristics and customs common to the various Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest—the Tlingit, Haida, Coast Tsimshian, Bella Coola, Kwakiutl, Nootka, Coast Salish, and more—Drucker spends more pages pointing out the differences between these groups and the many subdivisions thereof. After introducing a practice common to many Northwest Coast peoples, such as matrilineal social organization, dancing societies, or potlatches, Drucker is then obliged to elaborate with a list of all the exceptions to what he just said. The result is a survey in which it’s very hard to see the forest for the trees. I have no issue with the facts presented, only the way those facts are presented. This would be a good reference for seeking specific details, but overall it’s hard to form a vivid glimpse into what Native life was like on the Northwest Coast. Much of this discussion of tribal differences—the Tlingit did this; the Haida did that—could be better accomplished through charts and tables, but few are included. The book is amply illustrated, however, with black and white photographs.

If your primary interest in the Northwest Coast Indians is their art, this book provides a chapter on the subject, but there are better and more colorful books on that topic, such as Bill Holm’s Northwest Coast Indian Art. At the time Drucker wrote his book, there were few Native artists practicing in the Northwest. Since then, thankfully, a number of Native artists have revived the techniques of their forefathers and continue to create compelling art. From this book, I was hoping for more of an understanding of the philosophy behind that art. The popular conception of these Indians nowadays is that they are a peaceful, egalitarian people living in harmony with nature. Readers may be troubled by Drucker’s revelations of historical practices like slavery, cannibalism, and a rather petty obsession with materialism. Although Drucker clearly has great respect for the Indians of the Northwest Coast, this is an old-school anthropology book written by a white ethnographer without any perspective from the Natives themselves, which today would be frowned upon. There is a lot to learn from this book, but there have surely been more comprehensive and accessible surveys of the subject published since.

Nordenholt’s Million by J. J. Connington

The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many

J. J. Connington was the pseudonym of a British chemist named Alfred Walter Stewart. Stewart wrote about two dozen detective novels under the name of Connington, as well as one science fiction novel. That sci-fi book, titled Nordenholt’s Million, was published in 1923.

In London, a laboratory-bred strain of bacteria is let loose from its petri dishes into the outside world, and it immediately begins to wreak havoc on the environment. This particular species of microbe is a denitrifying bacteria that breaks down the nitrogenous compounds in soil, thus depriving plant life of this essential nutrient. As the bacteria spreads by means of global human transportation, the soil around the world is devastated and plants die off at an alarming rate. The British government calls a meeting to discuss how to face the impending famine. The only attendee who has any idea how to tackle the problem is a billionaire industrialist named Nordenholt. He proposes that the only way to ensure the survival of the human race is to sequester a small portion of the population in an isolated location, provided with adequate food, while the rest of mankind dies of starvation. These select few million survivors, nicknamed Nordenholt’s Million, will devote their energies to manufacturing nitrogenous compounds to revitalize the dead soil so that humans may thrive once again and rebuild civilization. In order to execute this plan, Nordenholt declares himself dictator with absolute powers. He establishes his enclave in Scotland and selects his population of survivors. The novel is narrated by Jack Flint, an engineer, whom Nordenholt appoints as his right-hand man.

The apocalyptic idea that forms the basis of Nordenholt’s Million seems like a promising foundation for a science fiction novel. The way that idea is executed here, however, leaves a lot to be desired. The best scenes of the novel occur outside the Nordenholt compound, when Flint is describing the post-apocalyptic landscape of London—a violent, hopeless world reminiscent of the film Escape from New York, where people hunt each other down in packs like wild dogs and even resort to cannibalism. Only a few chapters, however, provide such dark glimpses of the end of the world.

Instead, far too much of the book is devoted to Nordenholt himself, whom Flint describes, discusses, and analyzes to excess. In doing so, he’s clearly holding Nordenholt up as Connington’s ideal of masculinity. Nordenholt is strong, decisive, pragmatic, rational, and ruthless, possessing supreme intelligence, fortitude, and stamina, etc. Although this novel came out a little late to be called Victorian, it feels like a throwback to that era. Readers of Connington’s time needed ideal heroes and moral lessons in order to justify and endure a work of science fiction, or so Connington seems to think. Today’s readers of science fiction, however, would rather read more about the ramifications of the disaster and the science behind a solution.

Although human-induced global warming was foreseen as early as 1800 by Alexander von Humboldt, Connington never even considers it here. In this novel, the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, and the rest of the world’s plants, has no effect on the atmosphere; Connington only mentions the ugliness of the barren landscape. If you habitually read fiction of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, however, you’re probably used to forgiving scientific inaccuracies and moralistic preachiness. Despite its antiquated faults, Nordenholt’s Million is not a terribly written novel for its time. It’s likely to adequately entertain those who appreciate “Radium Age” science fiction.

Chalk Face by Waldo Frank

The David Lynch of the Jazz Age

Waldo Frank (1889-1967) was an American novelist, literary critic, and leftist political activist. Although largely forgotten by mainstream American readers of today, his novels are worth noting because they are some of the more eccentric and envelope-pushing works of American fiction from the 1920s. Although Frank is a white author of Jewish descent, he has a literary connection to the Harlem Renaissance through his personal and professional friendship with Black writer Jean Toomer, author of the novel Cane, a book which Frank edited. Although clearly from a different walk of life than the writers in the New Negro movement, Frank’s writing shares some stylistic similarities with the innovative modernist literature of the Harlem Renaissance. Frank was also considered an authority on Spanish and Latin American literature, subjects on which he published a few respected nonfiction books. 

Frank’s novel Chalk Face was published in 1924. The book is related in the first person, with much stream of consciousness, by John Mark, MD. Mark is more of a medical researcher than a practicing physician, and although devoted to his work, his career is not particularly lucrative. He asks his wealthy parents for money so that he can pursue a comfortable marriage with the love of his life Mildred, a beautiful woman of high class, but they refuse to grant him financial assistance. Undaunted, Mark decides to go forward with his proposal anyway. When he asks Mildred for her hand, she confesses that she is in love with Mark, but she’s also in love with another man, Philip. She can’t make up her mind which suitor to spend the rest of her life with, so she asks Mark for 24 hours to consider his proposal. That evening, however, Mark and Mildred receive news that Philip has been murdered. Witnesses testify to having seen a suspect lurking around the scene of the crime: a man dressed in black with a bald head and startlingly white skin. Instead of simplifying Mildred’s decision, Philip’s murder only puts distance between her and Mark. Mark is worried that Philip might have been killed by another of Mildred’s admirers, and fearing himself the next possible victim, he decides to look into the murder himself

Despite the description above, this is far from a conventional murder mystery. Rather than a detective novel, Chalk Face bears more resemblance to a bizarre David Lynch film, such as Twin Peaks or Lost Highway, in which it is often difficult to tell the difference between what is reality and what is taking place in a dream state or parallel universe; where the villain may be a psychotic human being, a demon from Hell, or a manifestation of someone’s dark psyche. (Robert Blake in Lost Highway certainly has a touch of Chalk Face about him.) This ambiguity is compounded by Mark’s narration. Although he is a man of science, he has a rhetorical style more suited to an apocalyptic cult leader. He expresses everything in romantically grandiose and hyperbolic terms, digresses into much abstract musing on love and death, employs many confusing metaphors, and squeezes the last drop of juice out of his thesaurus. The result is a confusing and disjointed work where you never really understand exactly what’s going on.

Even though Chalk Face amounts to a very frustrating narrative, I admire Frank for his adventurous avant-garde intentions to produce something more challenging than the same-old, same-old. Although what he’s trying to say is difficult to comprehend, one can sense his sincerity in attempting to express deep thoughts. This isn’t just modernist hipster posturing, which is the feeling I got from a previous book of Frank’s that I read, City Block. Chalk Face leaves me with the feeling that maybe if I read this book three or four times, I might find some profound revelations in it, but on the other hand, it hasn’t convinced me that it’s worth that kind of effort.

Monsters by Barry Windsor-Smith

A dark and disturbing graphic masterpiece

I’m a lifelong reader of comic books, and Barry Windsor-Smith is one of my favorite artists—easily top 3 if not number one (Will Eisner and Jack Kirby would be high on my list as well, just to show you what league BWS is in). Not to sell him short, Windsor-Smith is also a writer of comics, and, unlike many in the superhero line, he often inks, colors, and sometimes even letters his own pages. Early in his career, Windsor-Smith developed an idiosyncratic style, highly detailed, lyrical, and romantic in nature, resembling what comics might look like if drawn by the Pre-Raphaelite painters. His best-known work is probably his Weapon X story from 1990 to 1991, which, when combined into graphic novel form, comprises the definitive Wolverine origin story. Having started his career with Marvel in 1969, Windsor-Smith has been a comics professional as long as I’ve been alive, and at 75 he is still going strong. He recently produced what might be his magnum opus. His graphic novel Monsters, a 365-page black-and-white hardcover, was published in 2022 by Fantagraphics Books. Monsters won the Eisner Awards that year for Best Graphic Novel, Best Writer/Artist, and even Best Letterer (Windsor-Smith himself).

In the 1960s, a young man named Bobby Bailey walks into an army recruitment office, hoping to enlist. Because of his lack of education and the fact that he lost an eye when he was younger, the recruiting officer, Elias McFarland, won’t take him for the regular army. He does, however, recommend Bobby for a secret government program that might be able to use him. This project, dubbed Prometheus, turns out to be a twisted Captain America-esque experiment, originally conceived by the Nazis, of using genetic engineering to create some kind of superhuman soldier. McFarland soon regrets having signed Bobby up to be a guinea pig for Prometheus. Tortured by guilt, he decides to investigate what became of Bobby. As Bobby’s past and present are gradually revealed, Windsor-Smith flashes back to Bobby’s childhood and beyond to his father’s encounter with Nazis in World War II. Those events from the past set in motion a tragic story, decades in the making, involving a complex web of connections between the Bailey and McFarland families, an Ohio police officer, and a Nazi scientist.

Monsters is a deeply dark and disturbing work. It has some science fiction elements that comics readers will be familiar with, but it is a highly literary novel in its character development and psychological themes. Because of its prodigious length, expert plotting, and ready-made storyboards, this novel reads like a feature film just waiting to be made. Given the subject matter, it would probably be an indie arthouse horror film from studio A24, directed by somebody like Robert Eggers or Nicolas Winding Refn. This is not a story for the faint of heart, as it includes scenes of torture, child and spousal abuse, murder, and rape, but these scenes are brief and integral to the story, not gratuitous.

The writing is ambitious, and the art is impeccable. Visually and narratively, Monsters calls to mind Will Eisner’s graphic novels of the 1970s and ‘80s, such as his A Contract with God trilogy. The lengthy page count allows Windsor-Smith to take his time telling the story. Conversations between the characters run their course as they would in real life, without feeling crammed into a limited number of panels. Who else in comics today devotes that kind of time and effort to character development? Maybe once or twice a decade, much like Eisner, a comics auteur comes along that shows us the apex of what the comic art form can be. Right now, Windsor-Smith is that artist. In terms of literary merit, Monsters can hold its own against most works of contemporary fiction, and among graphic novels, Monsters is a masterpiece.

A page from Monsters (from the publisher’s website)

The Naturalist’s Illustrated Guide to the Sierra Foothills and Central Valley by Derek Madden

A model nature guide with beautiful art

I’ve never been to the Sierra Foothills nor the Central Valley of California, and there’s a good chance I may never go there. Like many people who enjoy the outdoors, however, I fancy myself an amateur naturalist, and I enjoy reading books about nature. The Naturalist’s Illustrated Guide to the Sierra Foothills and Central Valley was published in 2005, first under the title of Magpies and Mayflies, and then reissued under its present title in 2020. I bought this book for two reasons, 1) because it was a Kindle Daily Deal, so why not? and 2) I just love the illustrations. The art is by Derek Madden, a professor of biology at Modesto Junior College. Madden is also the primary author of the book, with help from Ken Charters and Erinn Madden. Although the art is in black and white, Madden’s depictions of plants and animals go way beyond the diagrammatic line drawings you typically see in such nature guides. These are really some gallery-worthy drawings. As a nature-inspired artist myself, I like having Madden’s work as a stylistic reference for how natural illustration should be done.

Enough about the pictures; how about the text? The book is divided into categorical chapters, starting with plants and fungi, then covering animals under the headings of invertebrates, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. This is not so much a field guide that one would use for identifying species in the wild. Although it could serve that purpose to some extent, if that’s your main concern then you’d be better off getting a guide with color photographs. Madden doesn’t cover every species in this geographical area, and in some cases, such as insects, he only discusses wildlife at the family level, not the species level. What Madden tries doing with this book, however, and he succeeds quite admirably, is to explain the life cycles and behaviors of these living things and how they fit together within the Sierra Foothills and Central Valley ecosystem. Although I don’t live in California, many of these same species, or at least their families, reside in Kansas, where I live, so much of the information in this guide is relevant to me and other nature lovers who live elsewhere in North America. 

One criticism of the book, and it’s a small one, is that Madden, being a biologist, only covers living things. I’ve always thought of the term “naturalist” as being someone who studies nature in its totality, including nonbiological natural processes such as geology, hydrology, and meteorology. Naturalists like Darwin, Humboldt, and Thoreau certainly broadened the scope of their writings to include such topics. Definitions of natural history vary, however, some including geology and habitat studies, some not, so maybe my quibbling is unreasonable.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and learned quite a bit from it. It’s really a model of how such regional natural histories (not full-color field guides) should be done, and the stunning art by Madden is a bonus. I wish I had an all-encompassing one-volume guide like this for the area in which I live. If you reside in California or frequently visit the region in question, all the better for you.

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

Sittin’ around talkin’ about doin’ somethin’

Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, published in 1940, is set during the recently concluded Spanish Civil War. Hemingway worked as a war correspondent in Spain during the war, and he references some real historical figures and events in the text. The narrative is informed by Hemingway’s own experiences of the war, as well as second-hand knowledge he gleaned as a journalist, but this is not an autobiographical novel like A Farewell to Arms.

Robert Jordan is an American who has volunteered to serve on the side of the Spanish Republicans in their fight against Francisco Franco’s Nationalists. The leftist Republicans have the support of the Soviet Union, while the right-wing Nationalists are backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. In his civilian life, Jordan is a professor of Spanish at the University of Montana, but in his guerrilla life he is an expert in demolitions. A Soviet general has tasked Jordan with blowing up a bridge in order to prevent fascist troops from thwarting a major Republican offensive. In order to fulfill his mission, Jordan needs the support of some locals, so he rendezvous with a band of anti-fascist guerrillas made up of Spaniards and Gypsies. Jordan joins them in their hideout in a mountain cave, where they plan their upcoming strike. Among the group, Jordan meets María, a young Spanish woman raped and orphaned by the fascists, with whom he falls in love. 

The first 270 pages of For Whom the Bell Tolls consist of Jordan and this band of partisans sitting around their cave talking about what they’re going to do. Frankly, the book really could have used a lot less of that. The last 200 pages of For Whom the Bell Tolls, however, consist of the characters actually doing what they said they were going to do, and those 200 pages make for a very good novel. One wonders why Hemingway waited so long to get the ball rolling. The answer, as I’m sure some lit critic would tell me, is character development. Much of that intended development, however, feels more like stunted growth.

Hemingway made some odd stylistic choices when writing this novel. The most glaring and persistent is that he decided to use the second person pronouns “thee,” “thou,” and “thy” throughout. At first, I thought this was his way of showing the contrast between the Spanish “usted” and “tu,” but that turned out not to be the case, since the word “you” isn’t used anywhere in the book, regardless of degree of intimacy. Another awkward convention that Hemingway employs is that whenever a swear word is spoken in dialogue, he substitutes the word “obscenity” instead, as in, “Go obscenity yourself!” It’s like the written equivalent of bleeped profanity on television. Was this really necessary in 1940? Apparently so, since the Post Office banned it as obscene anyway, but this stilted and sanitized language undermines the book’s realism. Another faulty dimension to the novel is the romance between Jordan and María, which now reads as a stereotypical story of a White Anglo male colonizing a subservient third-worlder. Despite portraying Maria as a survivor, Hemingway makes her dumber than she needs to be, which feels like he’s just fueling some shady male fantasy.

I’m not a huge Hemingway fan, and none of his books have ever really blown me away, but For Whom the Bell Tolls is the best work of his that I’ve read. Although there is enough depth to this novel to qualify as high literature, at times it often reads like a Clint Eastwood movie (Two Mules for Sister Sara and Where Eagles Dare come to mind). If you can endure the first half, the rest makes for a compelling read.

Essential X-Men, Volume 11 by Chris Claremont, et al.

At the height of mutant popularity

In the early 1990s, the X-Men were the most popular characters in Marvel’s comic line (although Spider-Man probably could have argued that point). So popular, in fact, that Marvel decided to supplement their long-running Uncanny X-Men title with an all-new comic named just plain X-Men (now known as Volume 2). This was in addition to X-Factor, X-Force, Excalibur, and the solo Wolverine magazine. Marvel’s trade paperback Essential X-Men Volume 11 celebrates this heyday of mutantkind by reprinting Uncanny-X-Men #273 to 280 and X-Men issues 1 to 3, along with a few crossover issues of X-Factor, The New Mutants, and The New Warriors. All of these issues were published in 1991. I was actively reading Marvel comics at this time and own at least half of these issues, but thanks to this Essential volume I was able to bridge some gaps in continuity.

Chris Claremont, the premier X-Men author since 1976, was still cranking out good work in 1991. The end of Volume 11 marks the end of his long run. Claremont writes about half of the issues in the volume, and Fabian Nicieza most of the other half. The main villains antagonizing the heroic mutants in these issues are the Shadow King and Magneto. The Magneto stories are better because they remain mostly in science fiction territory with a little bit of politics thrown in, while the Shadow King plots are mostly mystical and psionic mumbo jumbo, with the action often occurring within some character’s mind. The whole purpose of these plots seems to be to get as many mutant characters as possible into the pages, and Claremont manages to do that while still keeping the stories interesting and reasonably intelligent. Almost all of the dozen core X-Men are quite appealing characters, but the army of also-rans that populate X-Factor, the New Mutants, or X-Force seem excessively ephemeral. Just about every villain the X-Men faced in 1991 employed some form of mind control, which serves the purpose of getting the X-Men to fight each other, thus giving fans the chance to see Wolverine fight Gambit, or Professor X fight Colossus, or Rogue fight . . . Strong Guy.

Marvel’s series of Essential paperbacks reproduces classic comics in black and white on newsprint paper. Often the pages are scanned from the original inked artwork. In this volume, however, colored art has been scanned as grayscale halftones. At times this renders the panels difficult to read, as when all the characters are wearing nearly the same shade of gray. A trend began in the ‘90s of placing less importance on inking and more on digital coloration. As a result, inking of that decade often consists of fine-lined chicken-scratch cross hatching with very little shadow. The colorist would then go wild in Photoshop. In my opinion, this trend was a step down from the classic Marvel style. Of such chicken-scratch artists, however, Jim Lee was clearly the king. He draws about half of the issues in this volume, and his work looks beautiful. Although the ‘90s were not a great decade for Marvel art overall, they usually put their best artists on their popular X titles. Guys like Whilce Portacio and Andy Kubert, both of whom pencil issues in this volume, aren’t quite up to Lee’s level, but they’re still good artists for this era.

I believe Claremont and Lee’s X-Men #1 is still the highest-selling comic book of all time. Like most of the other issues in this volume, it’s a fun, thrilling, well-executed comic. There’s nothing here that will be considered a classic masterpiece like Claremont’s earlier Dark Phoenix Saga, but these stories succeed as action movies if not as Shakespearean drama. Things at Marvel would soon go downhill from here, but this volume provides a nice trip down memory lane.

Main-Travelled Roads by Hamlin Garland

Midwestern farm tales not quite ready for rural realism

Hamlin Garland was one of the pioneers of the realist movement in American literature, along with his contemporary Stephen Crane. Garland’s particular area of expertise was writing stories of farmers and rural life in the Midwest. Raised on a farm himself, Garland moved on to the big cities of Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, where he practiced his literary craft and eventually won a Pulitzer Prize, among other accolades. His first book of fiction, Main-Travelled Roads, a collection of 11 short stories, was published in 1891 and immediately established him as a successful man of letters.

Garland was born in the rolling prairie lands of southwestern Wisconsin near the village of West Salem, in the vicinity of La Crosse. Garland’s hometown was apparently the model for the fictional town of Bluff Siding, also near La Crosse, where several of these stories take place. A few of the stories have recurring characters that appear in loosely connected narratives, somewhat like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. A few others take place in unspecified rural locations in what Garland would have called the West, but which we now think of as the Midwest or Great Plains.

In a brief foreword to the collection, Garland explains that he wanted these stories to express the daily hardships, back-breaking toil, and depressing drudgery of farm life. That might have made for a great book if he had stuck with this idea. While a negative view of rural life does appear throughout the book, its impact is watered-down by country-bumpkin humor, Ma and Pa Kettle-style accented dialogue, and unrealistic happy endings. Even so, many critics of Garland’s day found the realism off-putting and vulgar. Garland’s naturalistic writing style was groundbreaking for 1890s America, too avant garde for some critics of the time, but Main-Travelled Roads feels tame compared to the darker fiction of the muckraking era of a decade or two later, when writers such as Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and Frank Norris brought American literary naturalism to its apex. Garland could also be considered the godfather of the regionalist movement in American fiction that would culminate in the work of Willa Cather and William Faulkner.

All of these stories are good, but few are great. They all generally start off as a blunt and gritty portrait of a poor farmer’s plight, but in the second half they veer off into rosier feel-good territory. The best entries in the collection stop short of melodramatic endings and conclude with a more realistic contentment. Among these are “The Return of a Private,” about soldiers returning home from the Civil War to their Wisconsin farms, and “A Day’s Pleasure,” about a farmer’s wife’s rare day in town. In the likely autobiographical tale “God’s Ravens,” a farm-born writer decides to leave Chicago and head back to his hometown to live a healthier stress-free life. He and his wife soon discover, however, that you can’t go home again, as they have trouble fitting in with their rustic neighbors. “Under the Lion’s Paw” takes a proto-muckraking stab at socioeconomic issues facing poor farmers. “A ‘Good Fellow’s’ Wife” concerns a small-town bank failure, but it’s told in a more humorous style.

Main-Travelled Roads is a better-than-average collection of short fiction from the end of the 19th century, but it suffers from too much hillbilly comedy. If you’re looking for a work of fiction that really does portray the harsh reality of American farm life with brutally naturalistic realism, I would recommend the 1921 novel Dust by Marcet and Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, set in Kansas.

Stories in this collection

A Branch Road

Up the Coolly

Among the Corn-Rows

The Return of a Private

Under the Lion’s Paw

The Creamery Man

A Day’s Pleasure

Mrs. Ripley’s Trip

Uncle Ethan Ripley

God’s Ravens

A “Good Fellow’s” Wife