Cosmos, Volume I by Alexander von Humboldt

All of the things that go to make Heaven and Earth

If you’re old enough, you may remember the classic 1980s television series Cosmos, created and hosted by the astronomer Carl Sagan. Or, you might recall the 2014 series Cosmos, a tribute to Sagan’s work, hosted by Neil de Grasse Tyson. Both, however, stole the idea of Cosmos from Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Just as Sagan and Tyson were likely the most famous scientists in America at the time their TV shows were broadcast, Humboldt was probably the most famous scientist in the world when he published his late-career magnum opus Cosmos. This landmark work of science literature was published in five volumes, the first of which, the subject of this review, came out in 1849. Humboldt’s Cosmos is an attempt to synthesize all knowledge of the natural sciences up to the mid-nineteenth century. It reads as if Humboldt wrote it for his scientific peers, but Cosmos also enjoyed an immense popular readership in its day..

Humboldt unfurls his scientific overview in a systematic fashion, beginning with the large and moving to the small. He starts by discussing “nebulae” that we now know to be other galaxies. He then examines the various components of our solar system before moving on to the Earth’s seismic and volcanic activities and its rocks and minerals. Then it’s on to oceanography and climatology before finally arriving at life in the form of plants, animals, and humans. Although Humboldt proceeds with systematic rigor, he was also notoriously prone to digressions on whatever topics interested him. The book gets off to a slow start with about a hundred pages of introductory material in which he outlines how scientists should write about nature, how he’s going to write about it, and what exactly he’s going to tell you, before he ever gets around to telling it. As an example of Humboldt’s wandering mind, even in this “general” introduction, there is a three-page footnote about the elevation of the snow line on various mountains of the world. When he finally gets to his “General Review of Natural Phenomena,” delivers it in typical nineteenth-century fashion: all in one long chapter with no breaks or subheads. Humboldt gives special extended attention to some of his “pet” interests, such as the zodiacal light (sunlight reflecting off cosmic dust). The English edition that I read from 1868 (translation by E. C. Otté) has only one appendix; it’s about prehistoric birds in New Zealand.

It’s really interesting to learn about the state of science in 1849, and how scientists and explorers of that era went about obtaining knowledge of our universe. This was before the discovery of continental drift or Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, but such revelations are certainly foreshadowed in this work. I’ve always admired Humboldt as an explorer and a naturalist, but when reading Cosmos one can’t help but admire him as a researcher. He seems to have read everything that had been published in four or five languages, no small feat when you consider how difficult it must have been just to get one’s hands on a specific book in those days, or how much time, effort, and patience was required for correspondence with one’s scientific colleagues.

Though he had an encyclopedic mind and a voracious appetite for specifics, as evidenced by some of the trivial rabbit holes he ventures down in this book, Humboldt was science’s master generalist. He was well-versed in a multitude of scientific disciplines, and his writings emphasize how all natural phenomena are intricately connected into a cohesive and interdependent whole. In this regard, Humboldt was the founder of ecology as we know it. In the introduction to Cosmos, he explains that he wants to write a work that assembles precise empirical data but never loses sight of the essential beauty and wonder of nature, the emotional effect so important to the Romantic movement. As far as imparting the beauty and sublimity of nature is concerned, Humboldt was more successful with his earlier work Views of Nature. Cosmos, on the other hand, reads more like a relentless torrent of data, but it’s a fascinating torrent to mentally bathe oneself in. Reading Cosmos is like living vicariously through a golden age of natural science, as if you were one of Humboldt’s associates. It’s a difficult read, not for everybody, but if you enjoy science history, a trek through Volume I of Cosmos is an inspiring and enlightening experience.  

Godfrey Morgan: A Californian Mystery by Jules Verne

Robinson Crusoe fantasy camp

Not too long ago, in reviewing The Swiss Family Robinson by John David Wyss, I briefly touched upon the profound influence that Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe has had on world literature. That novel clearly had an affect on Jules Verne, who wrote at least a handful of “robinsonades” and included Crusoe-like plot elements in many of his novels of travel and exploration. Verne’s adventure novel L’école des Robinsons was published in 1882. The French title literally translates into The School for Robinsons, and the book has been published in English as School for Crusoes and An American Robinson Crusoe. The 1883 London translation of the novel, however, was entitled Godfrey Morgan, after its protagonist.

Godfrey, an orphan, was raised by his uncle, the billionaire William W. Kolderup of San Francisco. Kolderup also has an adopted daughter, Phina, with whom Godfrey is conveniently betrothed. (Almost every Verne novel features a pair of young lovers engaged to be married.) Before he ties the knot, however, young Godfrey wants to travel the world. Having never ventured far outside of the gilded cage in which he was brought up, Godfrey now has a spell of wanderlust. His future father-in-law grants Godfrey his consent to embark on a round-the-world voyage, provided he is chaperoned by his tutor, Prof. Artelett, a dandy who teaches dancing and deportment. The two head west across the Pacific Ocean towards New Zealand but never make it there. Their ship is wrecked in a storm, and the crew is lost. The two gentlemen from San Francisco find themselves marooned alone on a deserted island.

Much like the original Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson, these two castaways enjoy a number of fortunate boons. All of the livestock from their ship miraculously makes it to shore, a box washes up on the beach containing many implements necessary for survival, and a hollow sequoia presents itself as a makeshift townhouse. This is not the most arduous of survival stories. Godfrey and Artelett spend most of their time gathering roots and occasionally shooting a deer. These fellows are far less industrious than the Swiss Family. In order to add some excitement to the proceedings, Verne brings in perils that belong on an entirely different continent. Eventually all is explained, though the explanation is ridiculous.

Though Verne is famous for his science fiction, little science is employed in the survival of these two gentlemen. Typical of Verne, however, this novel is largely a secular, rationalist take on the Crusoe genre. Although obligatory mention is made of the almighty every now and then, this wilderness sojourn is not a meditation on divinity like the pious contemplations of Crusoe and the Swiss. Unfortunately, there are a couple racist comments about dark-skinned islanders here. In general, I’ve found Verne to be more enlightened than many of his contemporaries, but he was still guilty of the ignorance and prejudices of his era.

There isn’t much mystery to this “Californian Mystery.” Verne sets up the plot so that every event is telegraphed well ahead of time. You’d have to be ten years old or less not to see where this story is going. Everything is so obvious that it must have been intentional by Verne to let the audience in on secrets to which Godfrey and Artelett are not privy. Does that strategy pay off? Well, so-so. This isn’t one of Verne’s more intelligent or exciting novels, but it is moderately fun, and the characters are likable. If you’ve read any of Verne beyond his two or three more famous books, then you probably know what to expect, and Godfrey Morgan neither disappoints nor exceeds those expectations.

Trouble in Mind: Bob Dylan’s Gospel Years—What Really Happened by Clinton Heylin

More than most fans want to know, and not who you want to hear it from

Although I’m not a true Christian believer, I love Bob Dylan’s gospel period. He made some fine rock and roll from 1979 to 1981 and assembled some excellent musicians to perform it. Dylan’s born-again Christian spell, which encompassed the albums Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love, is generally not well-regarded by critics or fans. At the time, some concert-goers expressed outrage that Dylan was only playing his new Christian rock tunes in concert while ignoring his Greatest Hits. This period in Dylan’s musical career perhaps enjoyed a slight resurgence in appreciation with the release of The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More in 2017. To capitalize on the release of that official collection of previously unreleased material, frequent Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin published his book Trouble in Mind: Bob Dylan’s Gospel Years—What Really Happened, also released in 2017.

Heylin takes the “What Really Happened” in the subtitle very literally. His main concern here is to establish a detailed chronology of events, such as the first time Dylan played “Slow Train” in a rehearsal, the first time he attended the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in LA, the last time he played “Saved” in concert, and so on. In great detail, Heylin recaps every recording session, tour rehearsal, concert performance, and on-stage sermon that took place over these three years, as well as newspaper and magazine reviews of Dylan’s concerts and Dylan’s reactions to those reviews. Much attention is accorded to any change in concert playlist or album track selection. It’s a lot of trivial detail, but as a Dylan fan, and in particular a fan of this period, I found all this interesting. Heylin’s research is commendable. If you don’t mind seeing the trees rather than the forest, this book is for you. If, however, you really want to understand Dylan’s religious beliefs, the religious content of his songs, or why he embarked on this gospel trip in the first place, you’re not going to find that here. Thankfully, however, we have Scott Marshall’s excellent 2017 book Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life to enlighten us on such deeper matters.

What I really don’t like about Trouble in Mind is Heylin’s tone and attitude. First of all, his prose reads as if it were written for a group of his buddies. It’s rather casual and snarky, and Heylin seems too pleased with his own clever turns of phrase. When you’re acting as a journalist and a historian, whether you like it or not, write with a little professionalism and formality. This isn’t a fanzine. Even if you hate Heylin’s prose, however, much of the text is quoted from other sources that are better written.

After reading this book, I have to ask, does Heylin even like Dylan’s music? He certainly doesn’t care much for this gospel era. He frequently states that Saved and Shot of Love are terrible albums, full of lackluster performances. Obviously, I like this period of Dylan’s career or I wouldn’t be reading your book, so why would I want to read about how much this music sucks? Heylin frequently repeats the old chestnut that the studio recordings don’t hold up to the live performances, which is the same gripe you often hear from your friends who like to brag about how many concerts they’ve seen. Heylin thinks it’s his god-given mission to inform you of what he considers Dylan’s every fault and stupid mistake in these three years of his career, whether it’s songs he left off albums, records delivered later than promised, unproductive rehearsal sessions, or song arrangements that Heylin didn’t agree with. This is a relentlessly negative portrait of Dylan as a sloppy, foolish, absent-minded buffoon that the reader is supposed to chuckle along with. Heylin writes as if he’s too good for Dylan. No, you’re not better than the guy you make your living off of. We know he’s quirky, makes messy music, and sometimes weird decisions, but he’s still the greatest rock singer-songwriter of all time and a deserving Nobel laureate. Marshall wrote a book that treats him as such. Heylin has not.

A Dream of John Ball by William Morris

Renaissance fair socialism

William Morris (1834–1896) was an English author, visual artist, textile designer, and socialist agitator. As the most prominent artist in the British Arts and Crafts movement, Morris created drawings, paintings, book illustrations, fabrics, furniture, and stained glass windows that harkened back to the Middle Ages. He was also a rather prolific man of letters, and his literary works, not surprisingly, were likewise often set in medieval times. His novel A Dream of John Ball was published in 1888.

The narrator of the novel is a present-day Englishman of the 1880s who falls asleep and dreams himself back into the Middle Ages. Specifically, he finds himself amid the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, a rebellion that swept across large portions of England. Serfs fighting for the right to own property and be their own masters rose up in arms against the regime of King Richard II. The narrator falls into a band of such rebels in County Kent. The inspirational leader of this cadre of freedom fighters is John Ball, a real-life clergyman whom Morris portrays as a sort of Robin Hood figure. Jack Straw, another historical figure from the revolt, also appears in the novel.

After quickly being accepted into this band of rebels, the narrator fights along side them in an encounter with the king’s forces. In this battle that takes up roughly the first half of the novel, Morris indulges his ardor for medieval culture, lovingly describing in vivid detail all the garments, weaponry, and accoutrements of these 14th-century warriors. This extended action sequence reads like a few chapters disembodied from Ivanhoe or some other Sir Walter Scott novel. There’s much medieval pageantry and heroic derring-do but not much of a story. Morris emphasizes the fellowship between these daring and forthright men while implying that such fellowship no longer exists in the modern world. In Morris’s eyes, this picturesque world of medieval farmers and craftsmen would have been an idyllic utopia, were it not for the oppression they endured under feudalism.

The second half of the novel is an improvement over the first. When the narrator finally sits down to talk to John Ball, the story actually goes somewhere and has a purpose. Ball can somehow sense that his conversation partner is a visitor from the future. He asks the narrator if his dream of equality and brotherhood of man will ever come to fruition. The narrator regrettably informs Ball that although serfdom and feudalism would cease to exist in England, men will still be bound as wage-slaves within an oppressive system run by greedy oligarchs. Although much has changed in half a millennium, the ultimate status of the common man has changed little. He proceeds to explain capitalism in lingo evocative of the Middle Ages, with many thees and thous and the use of antiquated words like “villeins” and “thralls” instead of “serfs” or “proletariats.” The Peasant’s Revolt is regarded by some radicals as an inspirational prototype (albeit unsuccessful) for a socialist revolution. While there is no hope for John Ball’s rebels, Morris encourages readers of 1888 to hold out hope for an overthrow of the oligarchy and freedom for the common man.

Morris is regarded as a pioneer of the science fiction and fantasy genres in English literature. A Dream of John Ball is merely a baby step in that direction. The only science fiction element is the time travel, which takes place in a dream and therefore could just be the narrator’s imagination. A couple years after this novel, Morris would write a more overtly sci-fi and more overtly socialist work, News from Nowhere, which is superior to A Dream of John Ball in just about every way I can think of. Nevertheless, the second half of A Dream of John Ball is well-conceived, eloquently executed, and daringly outspoken for its time.

The Rider on the White Horse by Theodor Storm

Dark Frisian fable of seawalls and specters

Theodor Storm (1817-1888) was a German writer, but he comes from a very specific area of Germany, North Frisia in Schlesweig-Holstein, that has a mixed cultural history of German, Dutch, and Danish influences. He was born on the coast of the Wadden Sea, which is presumably the setting of his novel The Rider on the White Horse, published in 1888. I don’t believe the word Frisia is ever used in the novel, but I assume this story is meant to take place on the German stretch of the coast. To an American reader unfamiliar with the region, however, this novel that’s largely about dike building will seem Dutcher than an orange tulip growing out of a wooden shoe.

An anonymous narrator traveling along the coast comes across a rider on a white horse. The rider has a crazed look with glowing eyes and an overall Headless Horseman vibe, but with head intact. The narrator then pulls into a nearby inn where he asks the locals about this fearsome apparition. There in the tavern, and later in his home, the town schoolmaster regales the traveler, and us, with the origin story of this mysterious horse and rider.

The schoolmasters’s tale flashes back to the 1740s and ‘50s. Hauke Haien is the son of a farmer and surveyor of middling means. Though born and raised on a farm, Hauke is not really cut out for farming, or at least his heart isn’t in it. He is more interested in book learning and has a head for engineering. In his teens, Hauke’s father manages to get him a position as an apprentice to the dike master, the official who is responsible for overseeing the dikes that protect the local farmers’ lands from the sea. An added bonus of this job is that Hauke gets to spend time with the dike master’s lovely daughter Elke, with whom he forms a close bond. Hauke would like to become dike master himself some day, but that position usually goes to the wealthiest landowner in town. If he wants the job, therefore, Hauke must strive to elevate himself above his modest status and financial means.

There’s a whole lot about dike building in this novel. This was at a time when all the work was done moving earth with shovels, carts, and horses. I sometimes found it difficult to understand exactly what Storm was saying in regard to the design, construction, and workings of the dikes, but it didn’t affect my appreciation of the human story. Although there are elements of this novel that make it feel like a fable or fairy tale, the book provides a realist view of the lives of the farming community in this time and place. After reading this novel, I find it amazing that anyone can live in these coastal lands reclaimed from the sea, with nothing but a handmade wall of dirt protecting their homes and crops from flooding and devastation.

Storm is regarded as one of the most important figures in German literary realism. Though this story is primarily realistic, it does have some supernatural elements, including the implication that God is expressing himself through nature to either benefit or punish the characters. One admirable aspect of the book is Storm’s sensitive portrayal of a child with a developmental disability. The characters here feel real, and it is easy to sympathize with them. If this is intended as a fable, the moral is not obvious. Is this merely a case of bad things happen to good people? I presume that we are supposed to find Hauke guilty of the sins of pride and ambition, which he pays for with the hardships that befall him, like Icarus flying too close to the sun. From the perspective of this 21st-century reader, however, his ambition just seems like hard-working industriousness, for which he should be rewarded, not castigated. More pious readers of the 1880s would have seen it differently. Nevertheless, I found this a compelling story, very well told by Storm, and I learned an interesting thing or two about North Frisia.

The Delphi Classics Collected Works of Eugene O’Neill

Complete up to a point

Eugene O’Neill is one of the greatest playwrights in the history of American theatre. He won four Pulitzer Prizes for drama and the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature. Over the years, I have enjoyed reading a few of his plays, so I decided to read (or reread) his complete works. Whenever I want to buy a classic author’s work in bulk, I turn to the Delphi Classics. They make the best, most complete ebook collections of classic literature. Because of the United States’ severe copyright laws, Delphi has produced two versions of O’Neill’s oeuvre. The rest of the world gets his Complete Works. The USA, however, only gets the Collected Works—that is, everything up to 1929, the cut-off point for works to fall into the (copyright-free) public domain. Rather than list what this volume includes, it’s easier to list what it’s missing: Dynamo, Mourning Becomes Electra, Ah, Wilderness!, Days Without End, More Stately Mansions, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey into Night, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Hughie, and A Touch of the Poet. Unfortunately, that list includes a few of O’Neill’s greatest works, but we’ll have to wait a few years before their copyright expires. Presumably, Delphi will update their ebook files with additional titles when they become available, as they have done with their other ebook collections.

Delphi’s Collected Works includes all of O’Neill’s one-act plays except for Hughie (1941). Of these twenty short dramas, very few are masterpieces, but overall they provide a revealing look into how O’Neill’s style and choice of themes developed over the years. O’Neill’s one original short story, “Tomorrow,” is also included here, as well as over sixty of his poems. Some additional rare odds and ends, not published until long after O’Neill’s death, are not surprisingly absent from this collection.

Among the full-length plays (say an hour and a half or longer on the stage), the highlights of this collection are The Hairy Ape, Anna Christie, Beyond the Horizon, and Strange Interlude. To be honest, the bad outweigh the good in this collection, but if you really want to get an idea of the arc of an author’s career, you have to read the bad as well as the good. Some real stinkers include Welded, Servitude, and The Great God Brown. Although O’Neill is known for realist plays about family dynamics, alcoholism, and the lives of New England sailors, it is interesting to find him venturing out of his comfort zone with experiments like history plays—The Fountain, Marco Millions, and Lazarus Laughed—and kabuki-type masked productions—The Great God Brown and again, Lazarus Laughed. The Hairy Ape and Strange Interlude are two cases where O’Neill’s modernist experimentation successfully paid off.

Since all of the content included herein is in the public domain, you could download all of these writings from the internet for free. It is worth it, however, to spend the three bucks to get them all together in one convenient package from Delphi. Although their ebooks aren’t perfect, Delphi is by far the most conscientious editor and producer of ebook bundles of classic literature. They actually put some diligent research into compiling these collections. Works are arranged chronologically. Some of the more important individual plays get introductory synopses discussing the original stage productions and critical response. Also, the ebook is illustrated with a scattering of photographs picturing O’Neill at different stages in his life, places he lived and worked, and title pages and posters for his plays. In print form, the Library of America has a well-edited and well-produced complete works of O’Neill in three volumes, but those might set you back a pretty penny. In ebook form, The Delphi Classics Collected Works of Eugene O’Neill is the best an American reader is going to get, and it’s well worth the nominal charge incurred.  

The Devil’s Paw by E. Phillips Oppenheim

World War I spy plot with anti-Red sermonizing

E. Phillips Oppenheim (1866–1946) was a very successful author of fiction involving espionage, intrigue, mystery, and crime. From 1887 to 1943, he published over 100 novels. The Great Impersonation (1920) is generally regarded as his best work. Other than that, I couldn’t tell you which of his books are supposed to be good or bad. When I’m in the mood for some Oppenheim, I just pick one at random, based on title. The Devil’s Paw, also published in 1920, is the ninth Oppenheim novel that I’ve read thus far.

Two friends sit before the fire in a hunting cottage near the coast of Norfolk, England. The owner of said cottage is Miles Furley, a parliamentary representative for the Labor Party. Julian Orden is a wealthy aristocrat who lives at his parents’ palatial estate nearby. Mommy and Daddy Orden host a who’s who of aristocrats at their mansion. Among the frequent house guests is the current Prime Minister of England. The year is 1917 or 1918. World War I is underway, and the Americans have joined the fight. Part of Furley’s wartime duties as a coastal landowner is to patrol the shoreline looking for suspicious activity. This evening, however, he injures his leg and asks Orden to cover his shift. While making his rounds on the beach, Orden spies a mysterious figure picking up a canister from the surf, presumably containing a message from a German submarine. Before he can make a move to intercept the spy, however, Orden is struck on the head and knocked unconscious. The next day, he finds evidence that one of his parents’ party guests, a beautiful Russian woman, may be involved in the treasonous act he witnessed on the beach. 

I’ve never been blown away by an Oppenheim novel, but I generally find them moderately entertaining. I wanted to like The Devil’s Paw, but this story kept letting me down. The plot here involves socialists. Rather than proletariats, however, most of the would-be radicals depicted here are wealthy, paternalistic socialists. Oppenheim isn’t really interested in people who work for a living. He thinks that aristocrats are the only people worth writing about, and the only people capable of running the world. Here he pays lip service to the cause of socialism and labor, but one never really gets the feeling that his heart is in it. Orden, the hero of the novel, was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and just happens to dabble in labor politics. The villain is the guy who wears shabby clothes and doesn’t like opera. The result is a jingoistic propaganda piece in which socialism is portrayed as a scam and pacifism is portrayed as evil.

Although this book was published between the two World Wars, Oppenheim’s fiction is still very much stuck in the Victorian Era of the 1880s or ‘90s. One annoying convention from that age is the idea that women can commit no evil. In Oppenheim’s world, the most heinous crime a man can commit is treason, but if the perpetrator is a beautiful, upper-class female, the gentlemanly thing to do is look the other way. (Of course, if she’s of the servant class, she could be shot or hanged for espionage, no problem.) Oppenheim also tries hard to create some sexual tension between his male and female leads, but that’s awfully hard to do when his characters and intended audience are stuck in an idealized gentility wherein you can’t even kiss someone without being willing to back it up with a wedding ring.

If you know anything about history, you know how the spy plot is going to turn out. Oppenheim can’t change the outcome of the Great War. Thus, the only possible thrills would have to come from having the characters threatened with peril. There’s surprisingly little danger in this thriller, however. It mostly reads like a series of political debates, the outcome of which is a foregone conclusion, given Oppenheim’s monarchical bent. Oppenheim should’ve stuck to writing novels about the rich and powerful and left the socialists out of it. He’s clearly out of his element here.

Deluge by S. Fowler Wright

Ahead-of-its-time post-apocalyptic thriller

S. Fowler Wright (1874–1965) was a British author of genre fiction active from the 1920s through the 1950s. His science fiction novel Deluge was published in 1928. The book was an immediate bestseller and Wright’s first big commercial success. Deluge was adapted into a Hollywood movie in 1933.

The novel opens with a brief prelude that informs us that the Earth has been struck by a catastrophe of unusual seismic activity causing land masses to sink and sea levels to rise. This cataclysm is accompanied by fierce storms delivering pouring rain, stronger-than-hurricane winds, huge rogue waves, and fires caused by broken gas lines. After the prelude, the narrative backtracks to day one of this disaster and follows an English family as their daily life is disrupted by this apocalypse. As the novel progresses, other characters are introduced, their experiences related, and eventually all their storylines become intertwined. England, where this novel takes place, is reduced to a scattering of small islands separated by miles of water. A few buildings remain standing, and some livestock survives. The human survivors of these islands are rapidly forming themselves into gangs that may be the seeds of a new civilization, but the absence of government, law, and essential services has brought out the worst in humanity.

Considering it was published almost a hundred years ago, I was impressed by how bluntly realistic this novel is. Rather than a story from 1928, Deluge reads like it could have been a 21st-century post-apocalyptic thriller. In fact, I found this more intelligent and compelling than many recent movies about dystopian futures. There are no mutants or zombies in Deluge. Wright concentrates on what happens to human nature when mankind is thrust back into Iron Age living conditions. One consideration Wright explores very frankly is what would happen to women in such a situation. They are outnumbered by male survivors, who want to possess and use them like property. Wright doesn’t shy away from the distasteful aspects of this dilemma, but confronts it matter-of-factly. Women of the 1920s, I would assume, enjoyed less independence and had fewer opportunities to kick ass than women of today. Nevertheless, here Wright delivers a realistic female lead who is admirably intelligent, resourceful, athletic, and can hold her own in a battle against men.

The first half of Deluge is excellent as Wright unfolds his vision of what life would be like after such a doomsday scenario. At about the halfway point of the novel, however, Wright goes into some extended action sequences of siege, abduction, and escape that just go on way too long. Like a drawn-out chess game, he examines every facet of these encounters in minute detail. Where is each character standing at a given time? What happens if they move in this direction, or that? Whose carrying what gear on which horse? It’s just too much logistical minutiae. These chaotic action scenes distract from the larger issues of how human nature and morality change when survival becomes the primary motivator. The new society is ruled by might makes right, until a small community decides they want to adopt a form of government. Wright’s wishful-thinking solution to that problem—a variation on the benevolent autocracy of a philosopher/king—is neither believable nor attractive. The ending of the book is also a bit of a let-down in the too-convenient way in which potentially thorny issues are wrapped up neatly.

The story is told by an unnamed narrator of the post-apocalyptic future who occasionally offers up commentary on aspects of our present society: capitalism, women’s rights, capital punishment, environmental devastation, the frivolous entertainments on which we waste our time, and so on. This aspect of the book is very well done. Overall, the strengths of Deluge outweigh its disappointments. I was impressed by Wright’s writing; his sci-fi reads more like our contemporaries (2025) than his contemporaries (1928). A year after Deluge, Wright published a sequel entitled Dawn.

The Misty Harbour by Georges Simenon

Maigret on the Waterfront

The Misty Harbour, published in 1932, is the 15th novel in Georges Simenon’s series of Inspector Maigret mystery novels and the 30th book from that series that I have read and reviewed so far. The book’s original French title is Les port des brumes, and it has also been published in English under varying configurations of Death of a Harbor Master. The Maigret books are consistently good but not always excellent. The Misty Harbour is one of the better ones. This mystery grabs you from page one and keeps you gripped until the very end.

As the title indicates, The Misty Harbour takes place in a fog-bound seaside town: Ouistreham on the coast of Calvados, Normandy. This town serves as the seaport to the city of Caen, to which it is connected via a canal. In Paris, where Maigret serves as the superintendant of the Police Judiciaire, a John Doe is found wandering the streets. He has no memory of his identity, appears to have suffered some brain damage, and has lost the power of speech. The man has a gunshot wound to his cranium that appears to have received some medical attention. The Paris police send out newspaper articles to help ascertain the mystery man’s identity. His housekeeper responds, identifying him as Yves Joris, the harbor master at Ouistreham. She has no idea what happened to him or why he’s in Paris. Maigret accompanies Joris and the housekeeper on the train back to Ouistreham to investigate the cause of the harbor master’s injury. Shortly after arriving in the coastal town, Joris drops dead, apparently murdered by poison.

In Ouistreham, social life revolves around the waterfront tavern la Buvette de la Marine. Maigret makes several visits to the establishment to toss back a few beers with the local inhabitants and find out what they know, but nobody’s talking. The population of the town consists mostly of sailors and other working men who make their living from the sea. Many of them speak the Breton language. These men make frequent trips to England, the Netherlands, or Norway to ship goods to and from Caen. A few upper-class inhabitants, who have made their fortunes in the shipping industry, also have homes in Ouistreham. Among these is the town’s mayor, Monsieur Grandmaison, a particularly prickly character who seems to have something to hide. He repeatedly butts heads with Maigret and challenges the inspector’s authority.

Having read so many Maigret novels, I’ve gotten to the point where I can sometimes foresee where Simenon’s mystery plots are going, but this case was sufficiently perplexing that I couldn’t figure out what was going on until all is revealed in the final chapter. Atypical of Maigret novels, this one sports a few action scenes, violence included, in which Maigret gives and takes blows with the rough and tumble sailors of Ouistreham. Sailors and bargemen are frequently featured in Maigret novels. Simenon clearly has an affinity for those who live and work at sea or on the canals of France, as seen in such novels as Lock 14, The Grand Banks Café, The Flemish House, Maigret and the Headless Corpse, and Maigret and the Bum. One of the joys of reading the Maigret books is learning about different aspects of life in France, and The Misty Harbour provides a vivid glimpse into the maritime lifestyle on the Norman coast in the 1930s. In all respects, The Misty Harbour is an exceptional example of Simenon’s and Maigret’s work, one well worth reading for fans or newcomers to the series.

The Child of the Cavern, or The Underground City by Jules Verne

Home sweet coal mine

Jules Verne’s novel Les Indes noires (“The Black Indies”) was published in 1877. It has been published in English under various titles, including The Child of the Cavern, The Underground City, Strange Doings Underground, and Black Diamonds. Unfortunately, some of those English titles reveal more about the plot than they should. This is a science fiction adventure novel about a coal mine, the science in this case being geology.

James Starr was the head engineer at the Aberfoyle Mine near Edinburgh, Scotland. Ten years prior to the start of the novel, that mine was shut down, its resources deemed exhausted. As the story opens, Starr receives a letter from his right-hand man at Aberfoyle, the former overseer Simon Ford. The mysterious message begs Starr to come to Aberfoyle immediately. Although the mine has been inactive for a decade, Ford never left. He lives inside the mine with his wife and 25-year-old son Harry, in a cottage thirty stories beneath the earth. Starr descends into the mine to visit the Fords, and Simon lets him in on his recent amazing discovery. At the end of one of Aberfoyle’s underground passages, Simon has found firedamp (flammable gases) issuing forth from crevices in the rock, a strong indication that a bed of coal exists behind the walls. He speculates that the mine may have some riches left in her yet, in the form of a mother lode of undiscovered coal. Ford and his family may not be the only parties to have made this discovery, however. There is evidence that some mystery person has been wandering in the caverns of Aberfoyle, perhaps with evil intentions.

I’ve always admired the fact that Verne could make a science fiction novel out of just about any field of science. He proved that scientific romances (the 19th-century term for the genre) didn’t have to be about outer space or utopian or dystopian futures. Verne wrote novels about all sorts of scientific phenomena that struck his fancy, from aeronautics (Five Weeks in a Balloon, 1873) to paleontology (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1867) to oceanography (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, 1871). I’ve never been fascinated with coal mines, but Verne managed to keep me interested with this subterranean adventure. In fact, he makes coal mines sound like the most wonderful places on earth. All the characters want to live and work in one, so much so that they rarely make trips to the surface. Verne’s books are also known for their geographical content and often educate the reader on exotic locales. In this novel, however, the reader doesn’t really learn a whole lot about Scotland, because so much time is spent underground.

While The Child of the Cavern is grounded in geological fact, this story gets pretty farfetched, even for Verne standards. As previously alluded to, people spend inordinate amounts of time deep underground. God only knows what they’re eating. And don’t get me started on Harfang (a secret better left unrevealed). One must suspend quite a bit of disbelief to enjoy this novel. The plot here is a little like a Scooby Doo mystery, one of the less satisfying ones where the “ghost” unmasks to reveal an unfamiliar character. As is often the case with Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires, there is a sinister villain here, as well as a couple of young lovers eager to get married when the crisis is resolved. This is not one of Verne’s greater works. It’s an obscurity, and probably deserves to be so, but if you can get in touch with your inner twelve-year-old, it is a fun ride.

The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen

Disturbing trip inside a mind losing grip on reality

Welsh author Arthur Machen’s novel The Hill of Dreams was published in 1907. Its protagonist, Lucian Taylor, is the son of a clergyman. Lucian and his widower father live on the outskirts of a rural Welsh village named Caermaern. Lucian is very intelligent, but not in the conventional good-grades way. He loves books and enjoys filling his mind with esoteric, mostly useless knowledge. A social outsider, Lucian frequently wanders alone through the countryside. He develops a fascination for the local Roman ruins and all things antiquarian and reads works on the occult. From such subject matter, he creates an interior fantasy world that serves as a paradisiacal refuge from the world of everyday society. Lucian is smart enough to pursue university studies, but he doesn’t have the money to do so. I don’t know enough about the Welsh clergy to understand how a country parson goes poor, but Lucian and his father live in relative squalor. Lucian is caught in the catch-22 of can’t get an education without money and can’t earn money without an education. He decides to become a writer and devotes all of his energies to that goal. The practice of writing becomes almost a religious obsession with him, entwined with his pagan fantasy land. Lucian’s literary career is an uphill battle, however, and he experiences failure and frustration in his chosen vocation.

Through the eyes of this outsider, Machen satirizes the British literary scene and the British class system. The rich residents of Lucian’s town look down on him for his poverty, while they themselves are depicted as pompous, shallow hypocrites. As a writer, Lucian yearns to create a timeless masterpiece for the ages, but he is constantly reminded, by literary critics and well-meaning neighbors, that the insipid popular novel is where success lies. Underlying the story of Lucian’s coming-of-age, The Hill of Dreams is an expression of Machen’s ideas on literature and the arts. His is a bleak and cynical outlook reminiscent of Jack London’s Martin Eden.

Machen is best-known today as an author of horror fiction. (Stephen King is a fan.) Is The Hill of Dreams horror? Not by today’s standards. It’s more of a psychological tragedy with an overall tone reminiscent of the deliberate dreariness of Edgar Allan Poe’s work. The novel charts Lucian’s gradual descent into madness. The reader roots for this young man, hoping he’ll find some happiness, but it becomes harder to get behind him as he becomes more and more disturbingly unhinged. Lucian’s story illustrates how someone like a John Hinckley Jr., Mark David Chapman, or Ted Kaczynski might have been created. About 90 percent of this novel, however, happens inside of Lucian’s head, so he never goes so far as to commit actions similar to those aforementioned psychopaths.

Those with antisocial tendencies can’t help but identify to some extent with Lucian. Polite society is replete with superficial pretense. Wouldn’t it be great if we could get along without it? This is a book that speaks to misanthropes and misfits. Hermann Hesse’s novel Demian likewise speaks to that audience, but reassures such misanthropes that there are others out there like you, your narcissism is justified, you are superior to the human herd, and someday you will be discovered by your misfit brethren. Machen offers no such consolation in The Hill of Dreams. We sympathize with Lucian, but there is no doubt he has gone off the rails, beyond the point of reason or justification.

Machen writes brilliant, exquisite prose. There’s hardly a sentence in this book that wouldn’t qualify as a quotable line of poetry. The plot, or lack thereof, does get repetitive and drag on in its relentless chronicling of Lucian’s deranged thoughts. Nevertheless, this is a deep and compelling work. One reading might not be enough to fully appreciate everything Machen put into this.   

Strange Interlude by Eugene O’Neill

Mature psychological drama slightly overdone

I’ve been gradually working my way through the complete works of American playwright Eugene O’Neill, proceeding mostly in chronological order. It has been a bumpy ride with some true masterpieces scattered amid mediocre offerings, failed experiments, and some real stinkers. Strange Interlude, published in 1928, is one of the good ones. Here O’Neill has reached his mature, Nobel-worthy style. In this play, O’Neill employs a modern technique of stream-of-consciousness soliloquy which was groundbreaking for its time, although it feels tame compared to the later modernist weirdness of avant-garde playwrights like Samuel Beckett or Eugene Ionesco. Strange Interlude won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1928, the year it premiered. The play consists of nine acts and at full-length takes about five or six hours to perform on stage.

The play opens in the home of Henry Leeds, a professor at a New England university. Nina Leeds, his daughter, grieves the loss of her fiancé Gordon Shaw, who was killed in World War I. Nina wanted to marry him before the war, but she suspects her father dissuaded Gordon from pre-deployment nuptials. Thus, she was never able to consummate her union with Gordon, whom she worshipped, and she resents her father for it. A friend of the family, Charles Marsden, has known Nina since childhood and is obviously in love with her, but she has placed him firmly into the friend category. Nina, distraught from her fiancé’s death, leaves her father’s house to nurse wounded soldiers and embarks on several sordid sexual escapades. As a sort of penance, she agrees to marry Sam Evans, an affable boob whom she likes but doesn’t love. Sam’s best friend Ned Darrell, a physician, is also attracted to Nina, and the feeling is mutual. The play is essentially an extended power struggle between these four (and later a fifth) main characters. The three men each love Nina in their own selfish ways, and she manipulates them to satisfy her own neurotic needs. Though Gordon Shaw is deceased before the play begins, his presence looms large in Nina’s memory, and all the men feel they have to compete with the unrealistic ideal he left behind.

The aforementioned technique of soliloquy makes it possible for the audience to know what’s going on in the characters’ heads. In dialogue scenes, the characters speak to each other, but they also speak their thoughts out loud, as if those in the room can’t hear them. In movies, such interior monologue would be done with voice-overs (as in the 1932 film adaptation of Strange Interlude starring Clark Gable), but it’s unclear exactly how this would work on a stage. In the text, the stage directions and punctuation set these soliloquies apart.

For a Broadway play of 1928, Strange Interlude deals with some admirably challenging subject matter: sexual promiscuity, mental illness, infidelity, abortion. It’s refreshing to hear sexuality handled in a realistic manner after the more prudish theatrical conventions of earlier years. In Strange Interlude, O’Neill demonstrates the psychological insight and authenticity that would mark his later masterpieces like The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night. The dynamics between the characters feel real. Their interactions read like a chess game of wills, desires, and jealousies. Compared to the sexual politics, the discussion of mental illness feels a bit antiquated, and overall, the drama is somewhat drawn-out and repetitive. I don’t know if I’d want to sit in a theatre for five hours to watch this play, but to read it off the page over the course of a week made for a compelling experience.  

50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know by John Sutherland

The “Need” remains largely unsatisfied

John Sutherland is a British literary critic who writes books on books for both academic and general audiences. His book 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know, published in 2010, is an attempt to explain concepts and themes of intellectual lit-crit to a popular audience of book lovers with above-average intelligence. I review a lot of books (about 1600 since I started this blog in 2012), and although I tend to avoid heavy lit-crit analysis and speak to nonacademic readers, I figure it couldn’t hurt to learn a little bit more about the concepts of literary criticism and the terminology employed. So, when this book popped up as a Kindle Daily Deal, I snatched it up at a reduced price. Though there is certainly information here that would be of interest to any bibliophile, overall I found 50 Literature Ideas a disappointing learning experience.

As one might expect, the contents of the book consists of 50 literary terms or ideas, about five pages on each. Sutherland really doesn’t do a very good job of explaining these terms and concepts to the reader. For each idea, he’ll tell you that Frank Kermode said this about it, and T.S. Eliot said that about it. Then he’ll give you a few examples from Shakespeare, Dickens, and Virginia Woolf. All of these opinions and examples usually contradict one another, and none of them really elucidate the topic at hand. Sutherland doesn’t really seem interested in truly educating readers about these 50 Ideas. Instead, he seems to want to conduct book-club salon-type discussions that showcase his erudition.

Since this book is aimed for a general audience rather than the literary intelligentsia, however, Sutherland has to dumb down his discourse, which only serves to make the conversation more vague and ill-defined. He defines “bricolage,” for example, as “using what’s at hand,” a meaning so vague that it could encompass pretty much all literary writing. What author doesn’t use what’s “at hand?” Same with “imagery.” All words create pictures. Duh. How does that help us understand literature? Sutherland tells us the history of “deconstruction,” but never really explains what it means. In regards to “metafiction,” Sutherland suggests that “all fiction is metafictional to some degree.” If the concept is that vague, what’s the point of talking about it? Sutherland would do his readers a favor by practicing more “solidity of specification” (Idea #29, which, after reading this book, I’m sure I’ve misunderstood). Sutherland does fare better with the last ten or so terms, which are more issue-based than conceptual, like “plagiarism,” “obscenity,” and “libel,” for example.

In the examples that Sutherland selects to illustrate these ideas, he makes it clear that he thinks the only literature worth writing about is English literature. Very rarely does he reference a work from outside of Britain. (The much-cited T.S. Eliot and Henry James were born in America, but opted for life in London.) The same was true of the other book I’ve read by Sutherland, Curiosities of Literature (2011). That book was basically an assemblage of literary trivia, but it didn’t claim to be anything more than that. 50 Literature Ideas, however, does claim to be more, but it’s still just a hodgepodge of trivial facts and quotes about books and authors. 50 Literature Ideas is part of a series from the publisher Greenfinch, a subdivision of Hachette UK. There are over 30 books in the “50 Ideas” line—in physics, architecture, psychology, and politics, for example. I would hope that other books in that series are more enlightening than this one. However, I suspect that a big part of the problem is the format of these books, which confines the author to delivering lessons that are required to be brief and shallow.

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

The luckiest castaways ever

Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, was one of the first novels in the English language, and it had a huge influence on subsequent literature. It even established its own international genre of like-minded survival stories, known as “robinsonades,” a category that includes everything from The Lord of the Flies to Gilligan’s Island, among many others. One of the earlier and best-known robinsonades is The Swiss Family Robinson by Swiss author John David Wyss, published in four volumes from 1812 to 1827.

In 1798, the French Revolution spills over into Switzerland, bringing a wave of secularization with it. As a result, a Swiss clergyman is stripped of his fortune. He decides to emigrate with his family to start a new life in Australia. During a heavy storm, the vessel carrying them wrecks on some rocks somewhere in the East Indies. The crew flees the wreck in the lifeboats, abandoning the Swiss family to their own devices. The wrecked ship fails to sink, and when the weather clears, the family—father, mother, and four sons—make their way to a nearby island that appears previously undiscovered and uninhabited. Alone on this deserted isle, with no rescue expected, they must learn to survive and settle in for the long haul. The surname of the family in question is never specified, but, since they’re Swiss, it’s unlike they were the Robinsons. The inclusion of “Robinson” in the title is merely a tribute to Robinson Crusoe.

If there is a moral to The Swiss Family Robinson it is that “the good Lord will provide,” and boy, does He ever! Much like the original Crusoe, the family has access to their wrecked vessel, which serves as a veritable hardware store, grocery, and Noah’s ark. The bounty of this undiscovered isle also defies belief, as the family is practically showered with beneficial plants and animals. These gifts they industriously employ in the development of all manner of civilized technologies to ensure their health, comfort, and joy. After reading chapter after chapter of the family’s always-successful efforts in engineering, agriculture, and science, the reader would not be surprised if they built a bamboo pedal car like Gilligan used to drive around his island. They do manage to build a home inside a tree that resembles the Berenstain Bears’ abode. The tone of The Swiss Family Robinson is relentlessly pious and cheerful. While some of the original Crusoe’s McGyver-like accomplishments defied belief, at least they were balanced by hardships. On the Swiss family’s “Happy Island,” there are no hardships. Content with the hand they’ve been dealt, the family makes no attempt to facilitate a rescue, such as building a signal fire. The parents don’t seem to mind that their sons will all die virgins in remote isolation.

Robinson Crusoe had its share of religious sermonizing in the form of the hero’s quasi-Transcendentalist philosophical musings on God and Nature. The Swiss Family Robinson is equally pious if not more so, but the preaching comes in the form of familiar, simplified church-going platitudes. The book was likely aimed at a young audience, but the father and mother also seem designed to instruct adults in proper parenthood. Wyss repetitively imparts certain moral lessons—Be industrious, Give thanks to God, and Love your mother—couched in an entertaining and inviting story. Although Robinson Crusoe is the better work of literature, The Swiss Family Robinson may be the better adventure story for the masses, even though any dangerous sharp edges have been sanded down by the relentless optimism. This isn’t always the most intelligent book, but it is amusing. One can understand why film studios have adapted this novel into several movies and television series over the years.

Why Bob Dylan Matters by Richard F. Thomas

Dylan the classicist (i.e. ancient Greece and Rome)

Richard F. Thomas is a professor of classics at Harvard University, “classics” in this context meaning the literature and culture of ancient Greece and Rome (in Thomas’s case, more Rome than Greece, I believe). Thomas is also an avid and diehard fan of Bob Dylan. Thomas’s 2017 book Why Bob Dylan Matters arises from the Venn-diagram intersection where those two circles of interest overlap. Thomas uses his prodigious knowledge of classical texts and Dylan lyrics to point out parallels between the two, asserting that Dylan frequently makes references to the works of Virgil, Ovid, Homer, and other classical writers in his songs.

The bulk of this book discusses intertextuality in Dylan’s work, what laymen might call borrowing, sampling, or stealing from prior works of literature and music. To those of us who aren’t professors of classics or literature, where that’s most apparent is when Dylan recycles snippets of lyrics from traditional folk songs and old blues tunes. Thomas, however, has uncovered and enumerated many instances where Dylan has borrowed from ancient Greek and Roman poetry, in particular the epics The Aeneid and The Odyssey. Thomas asserts that Dylan is somewhat obsessed with Rome: “Clearly Dylan feels a connection to the antiquity of Rome, as he does with no other place.” That seems like a bit of a stretch to me—wishful thinking for a classics professor, perhaps—but there certainly is some merit to Thomas’s point. He states his case well by making many side-by-side lyrical comparisons that are quite interesting interpretations of Dylan’s art.

Thomas focuses primarily on the periods in Dylan’s career that most scholars and commentators emphasize: the ‘60s classics like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Masters of War,” the 1976 album Blood on the Tracks, and Dylan’s renaissance of the late ‘90s and early 2000s from Time Out of Mind to Tempest (the last Dylan album released before this book was published). It is in the latter period in particular that Thomas finds many references to ancient Rome and The Odyssey, so Time Out of Mind, “Love and Theft,” Modern Times, and Tempest are all examined in detail.

One big problem I have with this book is the way it’s packaged—the title and the cover design. There’s nothing to indicate that this book has anything to do with the Greek and Roman classics. Why Bob Dylan Matters is an incredibly generic title for such a specific approach to Dylan’s music. Before buying the book, I browsed through the table of contents and got the idea this was a lit-crit book defending Dylan’s right to win the Nobel prize. Right up front in chapter one, however, Thomas makes it clear that this is a book about Dylan’s relationship to ancient Rome. Shouldn’t the title and/or subtitle make that clear? Why not call the book Dylan and the Classics, or Dylan and Ancient Rome, or Bob Dylan and the Early Roman Kings (to quote a song title)? I get the feeling the publisher William Morrow deliberately tried to hide what this book is about in hopes of misleading more people into buying it. I like what Thomas has to say about Dylan, but not every Dylan fan is going to get into a book about Cicero, Virgil, and Catullus.

Like any book on Dylanology, Why Bob Dylan Matters gets into much parsing of words, hair-splitting of trivial facts, and conjectural mind-reading of the Bard from Hibbing. That can be annoying at times, but if you’re a Dylan fan, that’s also part of the fun. I wasn’t blown away by Thomas’s revelations, but I did learn quite a bit and gained insight into Dylan’s songs and writing process. This book renewed my enthusiasm for music that I already loved. It made me want to go back and listen closely to those albums discussed. If a book of music criticism can manage to do that, then in my opinion it’s accomplished its mission.

All Things Reconsidered: My Birding Adventures by Roger Tory Peterson

A miscellany of magazine columns

Roger Tory Peterson (1908–1996) is not only the biggest name in birding but also a notable figure in book history. Others had published bird guides before Peterson, but he more or less created the modern genre of the popular illustrated field guide as we know it today. His Peterson Field Guides have since expanded into a broad range of natural history beyond just birds, and countless other authors, artists, and publishers have built and expanded upon his original template. All Things Reconsidered: My Birding Adventures was published in 2006. From the title, packaging, and table of contents, I had hoped I was getting a Peterson autobiography, or at least a birding memoir along the lines of Kenn Kaufman’s Kingbird Highway or Noah Strycker’s Birding Without Borders. That was not the case, however. “All Things Reconsidered” is the title of a column that Peterson wrote for Bird Watcher’s Digest magazine. This book is a collection of those articles. The 42 selections included here are arranged in chronological order by date of original publication, from 1984 to 1996.

While not an autobiography, most of the articles reproduced in this grab bag are to some extent autobiographical. The majority do in fact focus on birding adventures, with Peterson describing trips he took to find birds in various locations, from Connecticut to Botswana to Antarctica. These stories reach back as far as the 1920s. Peterson is famous as a painter of birds, but he was also a bird photographer, and many of these articles are as much about photography as about birding. There’s very little in here about art, except for a couple of good entries at the end of the book. In addition to bird finding and bird identification, these articles cover a number of other bird-related topics, including wildlife conservation, ecotourism, extinct species, and birding history. Peterson devotes a couple columns to the life of John James Audubon, and spends several entries eulogizing or paying tribute to his contemporary birding colleagues and friends.

One learns a bit about birds from this book but learns even more about birding tourism—sites to visit, how to get there, what species you’ll find, etc. Because Peterson is the rock star of birding, his ornithological outings are far from typical. Peterson was successful enough in his career to afford a globe-hopping lifestyle. He gets “backstage” access to wildlife refuges and national parks, with permission to venture into areas in which the general public is not allowed. Wherever he goes birding, he is guided by the manager or director of the refuge he’s visiting or the leading ornithologists in the area, who give him the inside tips on where to find the rare, endemic species. Peterson also gets ferried around to remote locations by a host of friends with yachts, planes, safari caravans, and research vessels. The average birder’s experience at these sites is unlikely to resemble Peterson’s, but it is entertaining to live vicariously through his experiences. I really admire that Peterson, having realized at a young age that he loved birds, decided to build a life around them, successfully forged a unique career path, and despite not really being an academic ornithologist, he nonetheless made a lasting impact on ornithology.

All Things Reconsidered is what it is: a collection of short, miscellaneous magazine articles, and that’s what it reads like. Peterson is a good writer who delivers clear prose and keeps things interesting. If you’re a birder, you certainly won’t be bored reading his bird-related memories. On the other hand, this book isn’t really about anything in particular, so you’re not going to learn a whole lot about anything in particular, including Peterson’s life and career. A book called Wild America (1955) would be Peterson’s equivalent to Kaufman’s Kingbird Highway, and I don’t believe he published an autobiography. He did leave us a lot of great books on birds, however, and for that we owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

The Torrent by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Spanish politician drowns in love

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was a prominent figure in Spanish literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and also found some international success through English translation. His novel Entre naranjos (“Between Orange Trees”) was published in 1900. It was translated into English as The Torrent. The Spanish title refers to the orange orchards of Valencia, the province of Spain where Blasco Ibáñez was born and raised and where this novel is set. The English title, The Torrent, is mostly metaphorical, as in a torrent of emotions. A flood does take place over the course of one or two chapters, but it is not the main focus of the novel.

Rafael Brull is the pride of his hometown of Alcira, in Valencia near the East Coast of Spain. He represents his district as a deputy in the Spanish Cortes (parliament) in Madrid. Rafael inherited his political clout from his grandfather and father. Grandpa Don Jaime was a shrewd wheeler-dealer, and papa Don Ramón was a macho gangster, but Rafael is a kinder, gentler sort of politician and somewhat of a pawn in his family’s game. The real political strategist in the family is Rafael’s mother Doña Bernarda, assisted by the family’s “fixer,” Don Andrès, both of whom supervise and guide the dutiful Rafael’s every move. Needless to say, the young deputy would be quite a catch for some lucky young lady of Alcira. Rafael’s mother has arranged a marriage for him with the daughter of the richest man in the region. One day, however, an exotic and beautiful woman arrives in town: Leonora, a world famous opera star who captivates Rafael’s attention. His mother disapproves of the woman, as the townspeople see her as a loose, libertine adventuress. Rafael, head over heels in love, is willing to risk all for Leonora, but despite constantly toying with him, she denies him any reciprocation and insists that they only be friends.

In his early works, at least, Blasco Ibáñez wrote in a naturalist style likely influenced by French writer Émile Zola. Zola is my favorite novelist (I have reviewed his complete works at this blog), and Blasco Ibáñez is the one writer I’ve found who can do naturalism just about as well as Zola, as proven by such excellent novels as The Cabin and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Zola himself didn’t always hit the bullseye with his naturalism but sometimes ventured into more romantic, melodramatic, and less realist works, particularly when love affairs are concerned, as in his novels The Kill and The Sin of Father Mouret. Such is the case here as well with Blasco Ibáñez’s The Torrent. The character of Leonora is a bit over the top. She reads more like someone’s ideal of a femme fatale than a real person. Rafael’s abject enslavement to her may have been more accurate to chivalrous love affairs of 1900, but it’s hard to identify with today.

There are basically two main plots entwined throughout the book. One is Rafael’s love for Leonora. The other is his political career. This latter aspect of the book is handled well, with pure naturalistic realism. Blasco Ibáñez presents a cynical backroom view of political machinations that points out the problems with party politics, political machines, and nepotistic dynasties. When reading the works of Blasco Ibáñez, I can’t help thinking that he must have influenced the writers who arose during the Latin American literary “boom” of the 1960s and ‘70s. The Torrent’s political narrative calls to mind some of Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa’s political works like The Feast of the Goat, and Rafael’s father Don Ramón shares some character traits with Mexican author Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo. That’s just me drawing parallels, however, not actual evidence of direct influence.

The Torrent is not Blasco Ibáñez’s best work, but it is still clearly the work of an expert practitioner in the art form of the novel. Having read three of his books so far, I have only dipped my toe into the depths of his body of literature, but I am looking forward to diving deeper into that pool and discovering more long-lost treasures.