Too many unconnected dots
The Hotel Majestic is the 41st work of detective fiction in Belgian author Georges Simenon’s series of Inspector Maigret mysteries. The novel was originally published in 1942 under the French title of Les Caves du Majestic, and it has also been translated into English as The Cellars of the Majestic or Maigret and the Hotel Majestic. The “Cellars” or “Caves” refers to the kitchens and storerooms in the basement of the hotel. The translation by David Watson uses the term “still-room,” which is where coffee, tea, and food are prepared for guests and sent to the upper floors through a dumb waiter. As the book opens, Prosper Donge, who runs the still-room at the Hotel Majestic, arrives for work one morning and discovers a dead body stuffed into a locker, or so he claims. Maigret investigates the murder, and Prosper Donge becomes the prime suspect.
The victim of the crime is the French-born wife of a wealthy American industrialist, both traveling in Paris on business. It is soon revealed that the woman was a former hostess at a nightclub in Cannes, and some of her associates there, now living in Paris, may have been connected with the crime. The American husband is no angel himself, and he lives up to the stereotype of the ugly, entitled American, resulting in some humorous confrontations with Maigret.
The Hotel Majestic sports an interesting cast of characters, and the murder plot itself is well thought out, but the way Simenon tells the story leaves something to be desired. Part of the fun in reading detective fiction is trying to solve the puzzle yourself. On a few occasions in this novel, however, Maigret is privy to information to which the frustrated reader does not have access, which leaves one feeling a little cheated. Early in the book, for example, Maigret asks someone about a baby, and the reader wonders, “How does he know they had a baby?” Names of persons or businesses are mentioned once in passing conversation; then later in the book they become major plot elements when Maigret reveals an entire back story, gleaned from his years of police experience, unbeknownst to the confused reader.
My least favorite aspect of Simenon’s writing is the way he pens dialogue. He composes conversations in fragmentary sentences, interspersed with numerous ellipsis dots ( . . . ). This is intended to reproduce the feeling of actual speech, but in real life people are usually capable of expressing complete thoughts. You would think a police officer interrogating a suspect, in particular, would want to nail down clear and accurate statements. Instead, every one of Simenon’s ellipsis dots represents something the reader has to fill in with inferences or assumptions, which often leads to misunderstanding. The Hotel Majestic seems to have even more of these ambiguous pauses than is typical of Simenon, which contributes to the feeling that the mystery plot has too many unconnected dots.
One thing that usually sets the Maigret mysteries apart from typical detective fiction is the pathos with which Simenon depicts the supporting characters. Here, however, both Simenon and Maigret seem to have little sympathy for The Hotel Majestic’s criminals, suspects, and victims. The result is a competently crafted story that lacks feeling. The Maigret series as a whole is worthwhile reading, but this is not one of its more compelling entries. Of the 14 that I’ve read so far, my favorites are The Night at the Crossroads and The Late Monsieur Gallet.
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The clarinetist of Monte Cristo
Honoré de Balzac’s series of writings known as the Comédie Humaine consists of around 90 works of literature ranging from tiny short stories to epic novels. All of these works are downloadable as individual ebooks, so I review them all separately as individual pieces of Balzac’s grand design. Facino Cane is one of the briefer entries in the Comédie Humaine. This short story was first published in an 1836 issue of the journal Chronique de Paris.
Facino Cane is only about 20 pages long, and the first 10 pages are all set-up. The reader doesn’t even meet the title character until around the halfway point. Balzac’s story is told by an unnamed narrator, a Frenchman of twenty years of age. In the opening pages he introduces himself, talks about his life in Paris, and describes himself as a curious observer of humanity. While attending a wedding, he notices an interesting-looking musician among the band providing the evening’s entertainment. During a break in the music, the narrator strikes up a conversation with this fellow, an elderly blind clarinetist named Facino Cane.
The name Facino Cane is taken from an actual historical figure, an Italian commander of mercenaries during the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Balzac’s story, however, does not concern him. The real Facino Cane serves merely as the namesake for a fictional descendant living in 19th century Paris. Over the brief course of the story’s second half, Facino Cane tells the narrator his whole life story. He was born in Venice and lived a life of wealth and intrigue. The narrative he relates is like The Count of Monte Cristo condensed into ten pages. Because of its extreme brevity, this story-within-the-story reads more like a rough plot sketch than an actual finished narrative. When Facino Cane concludes his tale, the narrator likewise wraps up his own account with a two sentence epilogue, and the short story is done.
Balzac is always entertaining, but this is not one of his better works. It feels more like an idea for a story than an actual finished work of literature. After reading it, one can’t help but wonder what a great novel it might have made had Balzac chosen to develop it at length. Since the story requires such a minimal investment of time, however, it is certainly worth a read for Balzac fans.
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Preachy sword-and-sorcery fantasy
Fantasy literature isn’t really my thing, but I am a huge fan of Clifford D. Simak’s science fiction, so I was more than willing to give this novel a try. The Fellowship of the Talisman was first published in 1978. The poorly chosen title leads one to believe this is going to be a rip-off of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books, and as with any book in this genre there are some inevitable similarities. Simak, however, adds some interesting science fiction ideas to this traditional sword-and-sorcery quest narrative. The tone of the storytelling calls to mind Stephen King more than it does Tolkien, but the cast of characters is comprised of representatives of dozens of mythical species straight out of the Dungeons & Dragons handbook, similar to the popular 1970s fantasy literature of authors like Piers Anthony or Fritz Leiber. For that genre, The Fellowship of the Talisman would be a satisfying read had Simak not chosen to add elements of theology and religion that ruin an otherwise adequate story.
The Fellowship of the Talisman takes place in England during the 20th century, but this is not the 20th century that we lived through. In this alternate history, Europe has yet to emerge from the Dark Ages. Medieval feudalism still reigns. The progress of civilization has been halted by waves of evil that periodically sweep across the land. Swathes of territory are decimated by an army of evil nonhuman beings known as the Harriers. Simak partially attributes this evil to the fact that in this timeline the Christian crusaders never took Jerusalem.
Duncan Standish, a nobleman’s son, is asked by his father to undertake a dangerous mission. A rare manuscript has been discovered that purports to be an eyewitness account of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. If proven genuine, this document will bring hope to the good people in their fight against evil. In order to authenticate the manuscript, Duncan must take it to Oxenford, where a noted scholar will examine and translate the document. To fulfill his mission, Duncan must cross the Desolated Lands that are currently under attack by the Harriers. He departs with a small party that grows larger as his journey continues. Beings that we consider mythical are real in this world, and Duncan encounters many of them, both good and evil.
The fundamental flaw of the novel is Simak’s implication that Christianity was the key to freeing Western civilization from the Dark Ages. On the contrary, it was the humanists of the Renaissance and the deists of the Enlightenment who got us out of the Dark Ages. If it were up to the Church, we would all still be living under feudalism and being executed for believing in Copernicanism. The best thing about the Crusades was not that the holy warriors of Western Europe took Jerusalem, but rather that they took the knowledge of Islamic philosophers and mathematicians home with them. The plot premise is acceptable at first, while the pro-Christian theme is kept pretty quiet throughout a story filled with characters of pagan origin. When it comes to the conclusion, however, Simak escalates the religious fervor to the point of ridiculousness. The reader spends the whole book waiting while this band of misfits trudges along on their journey, only to have the entire quest wrapped up in the final 14 pages with a silly and simplistic ending.
Because Simak is a great writer, this book has its fair share of interesting characters and exciting scenes. The novel suffers, however, from a slow pace overall and a cockamamie plot with a preachy ending that adds insult to injury. I’m still an avid fan of Simak, but The Fellowship of the Talisman is among my least favorite of his works.
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Foundations of a national literature
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| Machado de Assis |
As one might expect, Brazilian Tales, published in 1921, is a collection of short stories by Brazilian writers. The volume was edited by Isaac Goldberg, a literary jack-of-all-trades who translated works from French, Italian, German, Yiddish, Spanish, and in this case, Portuguese. Goldberg also wrote over 30 volumes of the Little Blue Books series in diverse areas such as biography, music, freethought, and world literature, including The Spirit of Brazilian Literature and Brazilian Short Stories. In addition to the six short stories collected in this volume, Goldberg also supplies a brief but educational introduction to the history of Brazilian letters. He explains that Brazilian literature began as an extension of Portuguese literature and often tried to emulate European culture. By the end of the 19th century, however, Brazil had developed its own national literature, unique to Brazilian culture and society, that deserved to be recognized worldwide.
If Brazilians were asked to choose their nation’s greatest author, the consensus would likely be Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. According to Goldberg,“When the Brazilian Academy of Letters was founded in 1897, Machado de Assis was unanimously elected president and held the position until his death.” Half of the six selections Goldberg includes in this volume are authored by Machado de Assis. The first two entries, “The Attendant’s Confession” and “The Fortune-Teller,” are both suspenseful tales somewhat reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe. Though murder figures into both plots, however, they are more about morality than the macabre. The third selection, “Life,” is a horse of a different color. This piece is a dialogue between the legendary “Wandering Jew” Ahasverus and the Greek god Prometheus. Nineteenth century writers loved to invoke classical mythology for such philosophical exercises, but “Life” is unlikely to hold much appeal for twenty-first century readers.
Of the remaining selections, “The Vengeance of Felix” by José Medeiros e Albuquerque is the least satisfying. This tale of revenge concludes with an intended “surprise twist” ending, but the reader sees it coming a mile away. The last two entries are of higher literary merit. Coelho Netto’s “The Pigeons,” uses a native superstition to heighten the poignancy of a family tragedy in an Indigenous household. In “Aunt Zeze’s Tears,” the title character is a proverbial “old maid,” but still young enough to hold out hope for finding love. Author Carmen Dolores delivers a nuanced and psychologically insightful character study that results in a quite moving narrative.
This book is only about 150 pages long, and the word count on each page is pretty low. It seems that brevity was a major consideration in Goldberg’s selection criteria, and this is the book’s major fault. These stories, each of which is only 10 to 20 pages long, are over before they ever really go anywhere. Most are just character sketches followed by an abrupt ending. Nevertheless, the quality of the writing is quite good all around. Reading these brief scenes makes one wonder what these talented authors could do with an entire novel. To that end, Goldberg does suggest some novels in his introduction. Later in the 20th century, Latin-American literature gained in popularity, and Brazilian writers like Jorge Amado, Clarice Lispector, and Paolo Coelho achieved renown. Back in 1924, however, Goldberg was one of the first critics to draw attention to the literature of Brazil. His Brazilian Tales provides an informative and enticing introduction to that country’s literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Stories in this collection
The Attendant’s Confession by Jaoquim Maria Machado de Assis
The Fortune-Teller by Jaoquim Maria Machado de Assis
Life by Jaoquim Maria Machado de Assis
The Vengeance of Felix by José Medeiros e Albuquerque
The Pigeons by Coelho Netto
Aunt Zeze’s Tears by Carmen Dolores
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The first four stages of a musician’s life
French novelist, playwright, and essayist Romain Rolland won the 1915 Nobel Prize in Literature. This was due in no small part to his recently completed magnum opus Jean-Christophe, a series of ten novels published from 1904 to 1912. In the Jean-Christophe cycle, Rolland charts the cradle-to-grave trajectory of one character, a German-born musical prodigy named Jean-Christophe Krafft. When translated into English, these ten novels were published as a three-volume edition by Henry Holt and Company. The English-language Volume 1, published in 1911, contains the first four of Rolland’s Jean-Christophe novels: Dawn, Morning, Youth, and Revolt.
Christophe is born in a small unnamed German town on the Rhine. He comes from a long line of musicians. His grandfather and father are both professional players in the local symphony, though the elder is semi-retired and the father is an alcoholic has-been. When it is discovered at a young age that Christophe is a prodigy at the piano, he is groomed to follow the family profession, often through abusive methods. Despite his terrible childhood, Christophe does love music, and he achieves a level of virtuosity that exceeds his forbearers. As a child prodigy, Christophe enjoys the patronage of the Grand Duke and is often called to the castle to play his compositions.
Why would a French author choose to set his epic work in Germany? Rolland uses the setting to pontificate upon the “German soul,” to contrast the German and French natures, and to level a fair amount of criticism at Germany and its culture. Despite Rolland’s erudition, his broad generalizations on such topics often come across as nationalistic stereotypes, not only of Germany but also of France. In the process of Christophe’s musical development, Rolland manages to talk trash about the entire history of German classical music, accusing everyone from Beethoven to Brahms to Wagner of composing childish lies built upon false idealism.
Rolland could be considered the last of the great romanticists. Though he wrote at a time when European literature was well on its way into modernism, Rolland was still a holdout for the literary ideals of 19th century romanticism. That is evident in the plot of Jean-Christophe, which features an individualist protagonist who suffers repeated persecution and intense emotional angst in his struggle for self-fulfillment. Like his good friend Hermann Hesse, however, Rolland’s depictions of human nature are informed by modern psychological science, which results in characters more grounded in realism than those of traditional romanticists like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or Victor Hugo. The vivid precision with which Rolland describes the natural environment, social conditions, and human psychology in Jean-Christophe often borders on naturalism.
Nevertheless, Rolland does occasionally lapse into maudlin territory. In Morning, for example, Christophe forms his first male friendship. The day after meeting this new pal, Christophe is writing letters to the guy saying “My soul . . . I love you.” Such effusive expressions of bromance are an unrealistic throwback to the 18th century days of Goethe. Christophe’s relationships with women, however, are much more grounded in 20th century realism. At times, Rolland concentrates so much on his hero’s love life that Christophe’s musical career is almost entirely forgotten. There are also large portions of the book in which Christophe comes across as a conceited jerk, making him difficult to root for, but he does grow as a human being and shows promise of redemption. Despite a few imperfections, Jean-Christophe is a monumental work of literature, and Rolland’s writing is exceptional. He crafts Christophe’s life with such fullness and intricacy that the reader can’t help but follow this narrative through to its end.
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Romantic thriller in colonial Peru
Martin Paz, a novella by Jules Verne, was originally published in 1852 as a serial in the French literary magazine Musée des familles. Verne was only 24 years old at the time of publication, and this story predates the science fiction novels for which he is best known. The one element that unites Verne’s prolific body of work, sci-fi or not, is an adventurous love for travel and exploration, often to exotic lands. Here he takes the reader to Peru in a story set during the 1820s. Verne begins by explaining the social stratification of colonial Lima. The governing Spaniards enjoy a domineering position at the highest level of social status. Below them are the mestizos, those of mixed European and Indigenous heritage. At the bottom of the social ladder lie the Indigenous peoples of South America, referred to throughout the book as Indians. Under this rigid system, no matter how high one might rise within his own class, he was forced to suffer the condescension and abuse of those among the higher levels of the racial hierarchy.
Verne adds an interesting twist by introducing a Jewish family into the story. Though looked down upon as a stranger and outcast who fits into none of the above classes, a wealthy and successful Jewish businessman named Samuel is often sought after as a moneylender, and his riches grant him a certain degree of power in Limanian society. Samuel arranges to marry his beautiful daughter Sarah to a wealthy mestizo named André Certa, who has more affection for the family’s wealth than for the girl herself. Certa comes to suspect that an Indian named Martin Paz has eyes for his betrothed, and he fears the feeling may be mutual. One evening Sarah and Martin, she on her balcony and he in the alley below, share an emotional moment. Certa comes upon the scene and draws his sword. In the ensuing fight, Martin wounds Certa, and then must flee. When an Indian harms a mestizo, who drew first is irrelevant. If captured, Martin faces certain execution.
In Martin Paz, Verne overtly displays a respect and sympathy for Indigenous Americans. Martin is clearly the noblest character in the book, and the Indians in general, though not portrayed as saints, are depicted as freedom fighters valiantly struggling for independence from oppressive Spanish rule. Verne’s depiction of the Jewish characters is a little more problematic, however, as Samuel is not portrayed entirely positively, but Verne never stoops to anti-Semitism. If anything, he could be accused of being anti-Spanish.
In style and substance, this early work by Verne could pass for an adventure by Alexandre Dumas, one with enough melodrama and romance to be adapted into an opera. As in the novels of Dumas, the plot threads of multiple characters are braided together throughout the narrative, and all are tied neatly together in the end. So much happens so fast in this novella that it is sometimes difficult to determine exactly what’s going on, though some of the blame for that may fall upon the English translator. In the interest of establishing his setting with verisimilitude, Verne also loads his prose with Spanish terms and Peruvian colloquialisms that hinder the momentum of the action. Verne has clearly done diligent research on Peru, and he vividly brings the setting and time period to life for the reader. This is by no means a realistic work of historical fiction, however, as the plot takes contrived and theatrical turns that defy belief. In the end, Verne delivers an entertaining tour of Lima and the surrounding countryside, but Martin Paz leaves the reader wishing that a stronger, more true-to-life story had taken place there.
Hollow-Earth Utopia
These days we still have to contend with a few Flat Earthers, but if you were around two hundred years ago it’s likely you would have encountered some Hollow Earthers. Prior to any scientific exploration of the Earth’s polar regions, the Hollow Earth theory proposed that the planet is a hollow spherical shell, and that the interior surface of that shell may have oceans and land masses just like the exterior surface upon which we live. In addition, this spherical shell may be just one of a number of concentric spheres nestled within the Earth’s outer crust. The way to reach these inner worlds, the theory proposes, is through the Earth’s poles, which are actually large holes, the Earth being pierced through its axis like a giant bead.
Symzonia: A Voyage of Discovery, published in 1820, is a utopian novel founded upon this Hollow Earth theory. The book derives its title from the name of John Cleves Symmes Jr., who first proposed this modern take on the age-old idea. Symzonia was published under the pseudonym of Captain Adam Seaborn, who is actually the fictional narrator of the story. The real author of the book is unknown. It may have been Symmes himself or one of his followers. Some scholars speculate that Symzonia may actually be a parody or satire of Symmes’s theories, and the novel’s mixture of earnestness and silliness often makes it difficult to tell. For the most part, however, Symzonia reads as if it were penned by a true believer. Like many of the pseudoscientific theories that persist today, the Symmes theory had its fair share of converts, and the concept of the Hollow Earth left its mark on American literature. Willis George Emerson’s 1908 novel The Smoky God, for example, is faithfully based upon the Hollow Earth theory. Other authors just used the theory as an imaginative premise for science fiction, such as in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth or the Pellucidar series of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Captain Adam Seaborn assembles a sealing expedition to the islands of the far Southern seas. Unbeknownst to his crew, however, his real intention is to sail farther south than anyone has ever gone before, in hopes of finding an entrance into the interior of the Earth. After too much typical sailing narrative, stops on run-of-the-mill islands, and countless astronomical observations (there is a very complex geometry by which the interior world gets its sunlight), the ship finally reaches its destination. Seaborn discovers a continent on the interior of the Earth’s shell, one that it is inhabited by a race of beings with a civilization more technologically and morally advanced than our own. These “internals” (we are the externals) welcome Seaborn into their world and educate him in the ways of their society.
There is an element of racism to the story. The perfect beings of the internal world possess the pale skin of alabaster, while the degraded races of the outer world bear various levels of swarthiness. It is proposed that the Eskimo and Inuit peoples encountered in the Arctic are actually emigrants from the interior world, but they are outcasts, the descendants of sinful internals who were ejected from the Symzonian garden of Eden. The farther they were removed from paradise, the darker their skin and the less civilized their habits became. Surprisingly, however, the narrator makes one comment advocating the abolition of slavery.
If you like nineteenth century science fiction, Symzonia is worth a read, but don’t expect a masterpiece or even a fun kitschy treat. It can be quite boring at times. The utopian stuff is interesting, but it takes a while to get there, and the book has a very long and unnecessary epilogue.
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