Reflections on a vagabond life
Under the Autumn Star, a short novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Knut Hamsun, was originally published in 1906 under the Norwegian title of Under Høststjærnen. It is the first volume in a trilogy, the second book of which is entitled A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings. The third and final volume has been published in English as either The Last Joy or Look Back in Happiness. In English-language editions, the first two volumes are often confusingly lumped together into one book entitled Wanderers or The Wanderer.
Under the Autumn Star is narrated by an educated man who comes from a “good family.” As the book opens, he has taken up residence at a rented country cottage. He has spent time in the city and has cultivated sophisticated manners, but he has grown tired of urban life and has decided to live a quieter and more solitary existence. Before long, however, he decides rather than stay put at this seaside retreat, he will wander the countryside as an itinerant handyman, passing himself off as a common laborer and earning his living with his hands. Often in partnership with other wandering workmen he meets along the way, he stops at various farms, looking for work and requesting shelter. While digging wells, cutting wood, or excavating trenches, he and his fellow workmen often have their eyes on the wives, daughters, or servant girls of the landholders that employ them.
As the story develops, we learn the name of this narrator—Knud Pedersen—which also happens to be the birth name of the author, thus indicating that this is an autobiographical work. If indeed this is a faithful representation of Hamsun’s own life then it is an unusually candid one that delves deeply into his psychological state and reveals memories of past love affairs. The book has the wistfully nostalgic feeling of a memoir, sometimes humorous and often touching. Like many of Hamsun’s works, the narrative has a very meandering feeling, seemingly following a course of unconnected observations as the protagonist moves from place to place. Though the subtle plot may create the illusion of haphazardness, Hamsun gradually builds an emotional tension that drives the reader forward to each successive chapter. Though the narrator possesses a youthful wanderlust, he is no longer a youth. There are indications that he may have suffered some psychological trauma in his former life. Despite his penchant for manual labor, he possesses a sensitive soul and takes matters of the heart seriously, perhaps too seriously. Towards the end of the book the narrator exhibits behavior that verges on creepiness, at least by today’s standards, but you nevertheless feel strongly for him because of the uncompromising realism and sensitivity with which Hamsun renders his emotional state.
The English translation by W. W. Worster presents some difficulties. The translator retains Norwegian titles like Fruen (lady, wife, Mrs.) and Frøken (Miss), and the less common praestefruen (minister’s wife, I assume). One awkward aspect of the text is the repeated reference to the “thumbnail” of a smoking pipe that Knud is crafting. Not only is the use of this term in reference to the pipe unclear, it also takes on a bizarre and unexpected meaning later in the book.
The conclusion of Under the Autumn Star is sufficiently resolved for it to stand alone as a complete novel, but it also anticipates the next volume in the trilogy. After having enjoyed this first installment, I look forward to following this wanderer into book two.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R85PT2YA7UTA5/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm
A decent overview, but not for beginners
 |
| Karl Marx |
You can’t really read a great deal of literature and history published in the last 150 years without coming across Marxist themes and ideas. Love it or hate it, Marx’s philosophy was a world-changing event, the effects of which still persist to this day. For all his monumental influence, however, American students are unlikely to encounter anything but the most cursory mention of Marx in school, unless you majored in philosophy or economics. The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Friedrich Engels is brief and pretty easy to follow, but it seems a rather incomplete expression of Marx’s philosophy, more propaganda than treatise. If you really want to know what Marx is all about, you’ve got to read Capital, which is hardly a book for novices. Unwilling to invest the time and effort necessary to tackle that intimidating tome, I was hoping to find an intelligent primer that would give me an overview of the main components of Marx’s philosophical system. This led me to The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx, a 1921 publication by Austrian Marxist scholar Max Beer.
The contents of the book are definitely more Teaching than Life. Beer devotes few pages to biography and chooses to focus primarily on Marx’s writings. Before he even gets into Marx, however, Beer first provides an introduction to the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Marx was a follower of Hegel, and a grasp of Hegel’s concept of the dialectic is integral to an understanding of Marx’s work. Beer also goes into a lengthy synopsis of the philosophy of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a French Socialist philosopher who sparred with Marx over a number of intellectual issues. Though I suppose this overview of Proudhon may be necessary for clarifying the finer points of Marx’s thought, it feels a bit tangential. Likewise, it seems a strange choice by Beer to devote a large portion of the book’s conclusion to the economic theory of David Ricardo, as opposed to handling that earlier in the book. The most bothersome part about these side trips is not so much that they distract from Marx but rather that Beer writes about his subjects as if he assumes you’ve already read their work. In fact, it is difficult to determine who exactly Beer wrote this book for, as it doesn’t read so much like an introduction to Marxist thought as it does a recap, a sort of postgraduate cheat sheet. Beer includes too many extended quotes from Marx’s works in the text when that space would have been better occupied by more summation and explanation.
Thankfully, there is still room for Beer to outline the fundamental concepts of Marxism, as I had hoped. Chapter IV: The Marxian System takes up the entire second half of the book, and for the most part delivered the overview I was hoping for. Again, it is not written for the philosophical rookie, so Beer’s text is not always easy to follow. Some of the more mathematical economic theory, like the calculation of surplus value, is written out in paragraph form, when simple equations or charts would have been much more helpful.
Admittedly, one of the qualities that attracted me to this work is its brevity. The printed edition was only 130 pages long. Once I got into the ebook, however, I realized those must have been some pretty dense pages because this work is by no means a brief, easy read. In some respects, Beer succeeded in answering my questions about Marx, but in others he still left me scratching my head. This work is likely too elementary for real graduate students of philosophy, but I would only recommend it to those lay readers who have a serious interest and considerable experience in reading philosophical texts.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R244965ZGPX516/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm
The life of the mind, the life of the flesh
Set vaguely in the Middle Ages, Hermann Hesse’s 1930 novel Narcissus and Goldmund tells the story of the friendship between two monks who meet at a monastery. Narcissus, a young teacher at the school, is the model of a pious scholar, with a brilliant mind disposed toward logic and philosophy. Goldmund, a newly arrived student, is also very bright, but bears a reckless, lusty, artistic soul that ultimately leads him to depart the cloister for a life of wanderlust.
The book’s title and promotional copy lead one to believe it will depict a dichotomous conflict between these two characters and their opposing natures—“A raging battle between flesh and spirit,” as the cover of my paperback copy hyperbolically exclaims. Rather than giving equal time to both sides, however, the book is really about ninety percent Goldmund, ten percent Narcissus. The bulk of the narrative follows Goldmund on his travels as a wandering adventurer, and for the most part the reader is happy to accompany him on his journey. His spiritual quest resembles that of the title character of Hesse’s novel Siddhartha, but much more grounded in an earthly realism with which the modern reader can identify. As Hesse presents it, the vagabond life, free from responsibility, is quite seductive. Though Goldmund faces hardships along the way, he finds no shortage of offers of food and lodging, and women are constantly throwing themselves at him.
In other novels, such as Beneath the Wheel and The Glass Bead Game, Hesse paints an equally seductive and rather utopian picture of monastic life—the rewards of study, the joys of quiet contemplation, the brotherhood of scholars—while stressing that physical action and bodily pleasures are also essential to a happy and meaningful life. In this novel, he approaches this antithesis from the other side: Narcissus and his life of the mind are given the short shrift in order to concentrate on the earthly life and bodily pleasures personified by Goldmund. We see Narcissus praying, fasting, and conducting administrative duties at the monastery, but we learn nothing about his scholarly pursuits. He occasionally serves as a foil to Goldmund in friendly debates and brings out hidden qualities in the latter’s personality, inspiring him to thoughtful revelations. If there is a “battle between flesh and spirit” here, it takes place largely within Goldmund himself.
Hesse, with his interest in Jungian archetypes, makes an attempt to position Narcissus and Goldmund as personifications of the masculine and feminine sides of human nature. Goldmund’s wandering spirit and longing for freedom is attributed to his mother, who died when he was young yet still appears to him in visions. To be honest, women aren’t treated all that well in this book. They either serve as sexual partners for Goldmund or are deified as mother goddesses. Female characters have never been Hesse’s strong point; he’s definitely more at home in a monastery full of dudes. Even Hesse himself seems to grow tired of his halfhearted male/female dichotomy and lets it fall by the wayside in favor of a much more successful contrast between the two characters as embodiments of the differing intellectual natures of the artist and the philosopher.
Narcissus and Goldmund is one of Hesse’s best novels. I would put it in his top three, along with Steppenwolf and Siddhartha. Though the two monks of this novel may inhabit a time and place long past, their story nevertheless imparts valuable philosophical lessons relevant to modern life. As is often the case with Hesse’s works, this book inspires personal self-reflection and may change the way you look at your own life.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/RUQMVQIK4P3C6/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm
A series overview
Having previously read and reviewed the Stories by American Authors series and the Stories by Foreign Authors series, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1884 and 1898, respectively, I decided to tackle their 1896 series Stories by English Authors. Once again, Scribner's offers a ten-volume set, each volume of which contains five to seven short stories or novellas. Contrary to the series title, not all the authors are English—some hail from Scotland, Ireland, or Wales. A proper name would have been Stories by British Authors. The ten volumes contain a total of 60 stories by 54 authors (several are listed as Anonymous). As far as I can tell from the free ebook versions, the volumes are not numbered. Each book is subtitled according to the country or region where its stories are set. I have previously reviewed all ten volumes individually here at Old Books by Dead Guys, in the following order. Click on the links below to read the complete reviews.
Stories by English Authors: England
Stories by English Authors: London
Stories by English Authors: Ireland
Stories by English Authors: Scotland
Stories by English Authors: Germany, and Northern Europe
Stories by English Authors: The Sea
Stories by English Authors: Africa
Stories by English Authors: France
Stories by English Authors: Italy
Stories by English Authors: The Orient
In many cases, the stories feature English protagonists in the various locales, though sometimes the authors write stories with “native" characters, in an attempt to illustrate the local customs and character of the setting in question. Sometimes the stories in this latter category take the form of harmless folktales, but often they can come across as condescending or racist towards the cultures they’re depicting. The worst volume in the series is The Orient, which manages to offend half the peoples of the Eastern Hemisphere. The Ireland volume, though written entirely by Irish writers, paints a dismal picture of the Emerald Isle as a land of drinking, fighting rednecks. Surprisingly, the Africa volume is one of the better books in the series, because it mostly ignores Africans altogether and focuses more on English adventurers launching expeditions into the Dark Continent. The best volume of the ten is the one on Germany, and Northern Europe, largely due to superb entries by Robert Louis Stevenson and Ouida.
These books are in the public domain and can be read online and downloaded for free at various sources, including Amazon and Project Gutenberg. I read the Stories by Foreign Authors series first and was very impressed by it. It contains a lot of great stories by some of the most renowned writers in 19th-century European fiction, as well as other lesser-known authors that prove to be pleasant surprises. Following that with the Stories by American Authors series was a big disappointment. Most of the authors included there have since rightfully faded into obscurity, and their offerings are mostly mediocre. Overall, the Stories by English Authors series proved to be even slightly worse than the American series, and nowhere near the quality of the Foreign series. Like its American counterpart, the English series is also heavy on the obscure and the mediocre, though it is occasionally redeemed by the presence of a heavy hitter like Stevenson, Ouida, Sir Walter Scott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or H. Rider Haggard. As often as not, however, the big name authors deliver lackluster selections, as is the case with Anthony Trollope, Rudyard Kipling, Wilkie Collins, and others.
I highlight the best stories in the series below, as I have done with the American and Foreign series. I tried for a top ten list, but could only come up with nine, and that was being charitable. I have rated each of these stories from five to four stars, and they are listed in descending order of merit.
“Markheim” by Robert Louis Stevenson
from Stories by English Authors: Germany, and Northern Europe
On Christmas night, a lone customer enters an antique dealer’s shop with robbery and murder on his mind. Reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe, Stevens focuses on the psychological state of the killer. The story takes a very unexpected turn and becomes a riveting philosophical thriller.
“A Dog of Flanders” by Ouida
from Stories by English Authors: Germany, and Northern Europe
A boy and his grandfather, poor as beggars but happy, live in a village outside Antwerp. One day they find an injured dog who becomes the boy’s inseparable friend. A great story, though melodramatic at times. Longer than it needs to be, but the ending is worth it.
“A Leaf in the Storm” by Ouida
from Stories by English Authors: France
In a picturesque village on the banks of the Seine, a 92-year-old woman lives a peaceful life with her grandson. Life is good until the reality of the Franco-Prussian War descends upon their sleepy hamlet. Depressing, but reminiscent of Emile Zola with its brutal realism.
“The Four-Fifteen Express” by Amelia B. Edwards
from Stories by English Authors: England
On a train ride to his friend’s country estate, a man meets a mutual acquaintance of his host. When discussing the encounter with his friend, however, he discovers that the mysterious passenger has been on the lam for embezzlement. The two friends investigate, and a good mystery story ensues.
“Long Odds” by H. Rider Haggard
from Stories by English Authors: Africa
Aging adventurer Allan Quartermain tells the story of how a family of lions killed his oxen, and how he hunted them down for retribution. A fun and exciting hunting story with good descriptive passages and just enough local color.
“An Idyl of London” by Beatrice Harraden
from Stories by English Authors: London
Two art students, an old man and a young woman, form an unlikely friendship while copying paintings at the National Gallery of Art. The ending is handled somewhat clumsily, but overall the story is quite touching.
“Ghamba” by William Charles Scully
from Stories by English Authors: Africa
A young white man in South Africa strikes up a friendship with a rather creepy old native named Ghamba, who tells his new friend about a criminal hiding out in a cave in the mountains. Turns into a pretty good and violently fun pulp fiction tale.
“Quarantine Island” by Sir Walter Besant
from Stories by English Authors: The Sea
Spurned by his beloved, a young doctor volunteers to serve on an isolated island where ship passengers are quarantined before being allowed on the mainland. It follows a familiar formula, but the details are well written.
“King Bemba’s Point” by J. Landers
from Stories by English Authors: Africa
A young Englishman goes to work as assistant to the factor at a southeast African trading post. When a visitor arrives from England the assistant suspects that he and the boss share a mysterious prior history. Predictable, but otherwise well executed.
That’s it for Scribner’s short story series. Next, I am moving on to the three-volume set International Short Stories, published by P. F. Collier & Son in 1910. Its three books focus on American, English, and French fiction.
The toughest book you’ll ever love
Ethics by Baruch Spinoza (a.k.a. Benedict de Spinoza) was originally published in 1677 under the Latin title of Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata. Though the title highlights Spinoza’s ethical philosophy, the scope of the book is much broader. Before he ever gets around to discussing how people should conduct themselves, he first examines in great detail the nature of God, the substance of matter, and the processes of human thought and emotion. One thing that separates Ethics from just about any other philosophical text you’re likely to come across is that Spinoza makes his argument in the form of a mathematical proof, similar to the style of Euclid’s The Elements. He begins each of the book’s five parts by defining terms. He then postulates several fundamental axioms. From these axioms, he proceeds to make a series of propositions, each of which builds upon the material that came before. He supports each proposition with explanatory commentary, corollaries, and notes.
The result of this approach is a very comprehensive and coherent one-volume philosophical system of how the universe works. By coherent I mean that its pieces cohere firmly and logically together; I definitely don’t mean easy to read. Never has a book been so orderly structured yet so confusing. Each sentence Spinoza writes is crafted in a circuitous syntax that is quite frustrating to decipher. He pens each statement with such precision that at times its like reading computer code. Yet when kernels of wisdom do emerge from this fog of verbiage the reader reaps the rewards of pure genius. It’s not always a fun read, but it is a work that deserves deep concentration and contemplation. Though the Euclidean structure of the book makes for labor intensive reading, you’ll end up wishing more philosophers would have adopted this logical structure and stated their ideas so systematically.
Spinoza begins by discussing the substance of which the universe is comprised. While dualists like Plato and Descartes posited that the universe consists of two substances, matter and spirit, Spinoza proposes a monism by which matter and mind are one and the same substance. Since only one substance exists, God is also comprised of it, and since God is infinite, the universe (or Nature) is God. Thus, from the philosophy of monism springs the religion of pantheism. In Spinoza’s view, everything is divine. His deity is not an anthropomorphic god, nor does he believe in ideal definitions of good and evil. Spinoza maintains a strictly deterministic view of the universe in which every action leads back to the ultimate cause, the eternal God. Fate is predetermined and free will is an illusion. Spinoza goes to great lengths to explain how human thoughts and emotions are the result of natural processes, even so far as to define a tedious laundry list of human emotions and their causes. His ethics are very similar to those of the ancient Stoics. Man has no control over what befalls him, but he can manage his emotions with rational thought and cultivate happiness by contemplating God and resigning himself to his natural destiny. Despite his continual use of the G-word, Spinoza’s pantheism is about as near as you can get to atheism without calling it as such. The Ethics may be the closest thing to a bible for freethinkers that has ever been produced. Thanks to its Euclidean structure, you can even quote it chapter and verse.
The Wordsworth Classics series has a beautifully typeset paperback edition of the Ethics, with a revised version of the 1883 translation by W. H. White. However, the translation by R. H. M. Elwes (also 1883), found in the free ebook edition from Project Gutenberg, is a little easier to understand. For difficult passages, I found myself going back and forth between the two.
If you like this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R1CO8EFGXFKWIU/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm
An epic saga of men, dogs, and robots
City is likely the best-known and most highly regarded work by science fiction author Clifford D. Simak (though his novel Way Station may also be a contender). Published in 1952, City is composed of eight short stories previously published in sci-fi magazines from 1944 to 1951. For the novel, Simak added additional material to tie the tales together, including brief introductions to each story written by an editor in some far-distant future. In 1973, Simak also added an epilog. Though the commentary-from-the-future device has been used in previous science fiction novels, here Simak adds his own unique twist to the idea: in City, the editor is a dog.
The philosophical question underlying City is what would happen if mankind had the benefit of communicating with another intelligent species? How would this help or hinder our development? Man first attempts to form a beneficial partnership with Martians, but for reasons better left unsaid here, that proves unsuccessful. Then, a scientist named Bruce Webster decides to enhance the communication abilities of dogs so they can more intelligently interact with humans. This move has unseen ramifications that play out for tens of thousands of years into the future. City chronicles this future history of life on Earth, with recurring appearances by members of the Webster family, their robot Jenkins, and the descendants of those first experimental dogs.
At first it seems the talking, literate canines merely serve the purpose of comic relief, but as you become more involved with the stories, the dogs become more integral to the narrative, and it becomes clear that they serve a higher function. The dogs are presented in contrast to mankind, to highlight the qualities inherent or lacking in human nature. This creates a disturbing disjunction between the cute humor that arises from talking animals and the serious points Simak makes about the future of the human race. Jenkins, the robot, presents a similar quandary, as he at times is depicted as possessing perhaps more humanity than the humans he serves.
I had previously encountered two of these stories, “City” and “Census,” in The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak series. I thought these stories were great on their own, but here in City they become part of something grander and much more remarkable—an epic, sweeping speculative vision of the ultimate fate of mankind and the planet we live on. Though the parts may originally have been published separately, Simak clearly conceived them as one cohesive whole. Each piece is intricately linked to those that precede and follow it. The one aspect of the book that I didn’t care for all that much is the dog editor’s brief introductions to each chapter. They don’t do much to enhance the narrative, and they get annoyingly repetitive as the fictional commentator repeatedly wonders whether men ever existed, or if they are merely a myth. The eight stories and epilogue alone would have worked just fine without these interludes. I would argue that the canine editing hurts the narrative more than it helps.
This may be the book that made Simak famous, but if you’ve never read his writing before, City is a challenging work to start with. Be prepared for weirdness, and open your mind to Simak’s grand plan. This epic saga of the intertwining destinies of men, dogs, mutants, robots, extraterrestrials, and others may come across as exceedingly bizarre at first, yet Simak never betrays the unique logic of his fictional universe. What’s more, as is often the case with his work, Simak endows this sci-fi novel with an underlying humanity that elevates it into the realm of great literature.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/review/R2Q3HS8MWWDTWN
An exciting improvement over the first book
I read the Hardy Boys mysteries when I was younger, and I’m now reading them with my son. We were both relatively unimpressed with The Tower Treasure, the first book in the series of boy-detective novels by author Franklin W. Dixon. To my surprise, however, my son wanted to read more, so we moved on to book two, The House on the Cliff. This mystery novel was originally published in 1927, but like many of the books in the series it was significantly revised in 1959 by Harriet Adams, an editor working on behalf of the publisher who owned the rights to the books. I’m happy to report, and I think my son would agree, that The House on the Cliff is much more entertaining and exciting than the volume that preceded it.
Smugglers have been operating in the coastal waters near the town of Bayport, and the police and Coast Guard have asked for internationally renowned detective Fenton Hardy’s help on the case. He in turn enlists his sons Frank and Joe and their buddies from high school to help him out with some of the legwork. The boys are assigned to watch the waters from a cliff that overlooks the bay. This vantage point is located on the grounds of the old Pollitt place, a spooky mansion sitting in seaside seclusion. Through the lens of their telescope, the boys spot suspicious activity taking place in the bay. Could it be the smugglers? Then suddenly, they hear strange noises coming from the Pollitt house. Fearing someone might be in danger within, they decide to enter the mansion and investigate.
There isn’t a lot of detective work here in the sense of piecing clues together to solve a puzzle, but there is a lot of cops-and-robbers-style scenes of chase, capture, and escape. The Hardy Boys follow the bad guys into secret caverns and hidden passageways. Occasionally guns are drawn and fists are thrown, but the violence is kept at a minimum for young audiences. As always, the Hardy Boys are held up as examples of right behavior and moral fortitude. The illustrations always show them wearing sweaters and ties—even when they’ve supposedly just been swimming!—while the villains wear trashy open-collared shirts and short sleeves. Still, even though the smugglers speak in sailor slang, there’s less of the classism here that was so blatant in The Tower Treasure. The criminals are depicted as men behaving badly but not incapable of moral redemption.
My son, of elementary school age, really enjoyed the colorful characters, like the helpful informant Pretzel Pete and the evil king of the smugglers Snattman. Almost every chapter in the book ends on a cliffhanger, so we were always looking forward to what would happen next. The House on the Cliff is not a particularly creative or intelligent mystery, but it’s a good family-friendly adventure novel that’s still got enough thrills for young boys to enjoy. After reading this episode, my son and I are looking forward to starting book three, The Secret of the Old Mill.
