Monthly Archives: May 2013

Smiley’s People by John le Carre

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This is the third entry in John le Carre’s spy trilogy that began with the great Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I tried to read the second entry in the trilogy, The Honorable Schoolboy, but found it slow-moving and uninteresting (le Carre later said that he should have reduced the role of the George Smiley character in The Honorable Schoolboy; I thought Smiley was the only interesting thing in the book.)

Smiley’s People begins with the investigation of a murder in London. This leads Smiley to come out of retirement again and attempt to get some Russians, including a very important one, to defect. Although the story held my interest throughout, the ending is anti-climactic. There could have easily been a fourth novel in the series, considering how this one ends. Unfortunately for those of us who enjoy George Smiley, that didn’t happen. (4/7/11)

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

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Apparently there has been a nuclear war, resulting in nuclear winter. What remains of the world is grey and desolate, with ash falling from the sky. The people who are still alive in this part of America are divided between those who eat people and those who fear being eaten. A man and his young son journey on foot toward the ocean, scavenging for old canned goods along the way, trying to stay warm and avoiding strangers. The father is incredibly resourceful. The boy is resilient. I’ve avoided seeing the movie because it sounds too intense. It probably is. It’s clear that they’ve had these conversations before.

It’s hard to find such a sad and depressing book enjoyable, but it is certainly worth reading. The most enjoyable parts of the book are the conversations between father and son. They discuss their options. The man tries to reassure the boy.

I kept wondering how the book would end. The ending could have been a lot worse. (3/24/11)

The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker

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This is one of the strangest novels I’ve ever read. It concerns an office worker named Howie who goes out at lunchtime to buy new shoelaces. The novel begins as the man enters the lobby of the building in which he works and approaches the escalator that will take him back to his office. The novel ends as the man steps off the escalator and looks back toward the lobby. 

Between these two simple events, Howie ponders in extraordinary detail a wide variety of relatively mundane topics: the design of milk cartons, etiquette in the men’s room, what can be purchased in a modern drugstore, thoughts that occur more than once per year, the virtues of the Jiffy Pop brand of popcorn, and the best way to count sheep when trying to fall asleep. 

It’s a short novel, but many readers must still find it incredibly slow and boring, even if they skip the lengthy footnotes. I hurried through a few passages that didn’t seem worth dwelling on. But I thought the book was interesting throughout, sometimes funny, always thoughtful, reminiscent of Tristram Shandy (which I’ve read) or Remembrance of Things Past (which I haven’t) in its tangents and attention to detail.  (3/18/11)

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

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According to 1491, as many as 90 million people lived in the Western Hemisphere before the arrival of Columbus. The vast majority of these people died from diseases brought from Europe by the various explorers, traders and conquerors who visited North, Central and South America starting in 1492.

Taking into account recent research, Mann argues that Indian societies were larger, older, more complex and more technologically sophisticated than previously believed. They also had much more effect on the environment, building major cities and transforming much of the countryside for agricultural purposes (even the Amazon basin). The Indians of the Western Hemisphere did not “live lightly on the land”.

In fact, according to Mann, the New World that European settlers eventually encountered, with its dense forests, huge herds of bison and vast flocks of passenger pigeons, was a recent development. The catastrophic effects of disease on Indian populations resulted in certain parts of nature running wild, certain species experiencing explosive growth after the Indians could no longer manage their environment, as they had done for thousands of years before Columbus.  (3/15/11)

The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry

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The outstanding 1970 movie was based on this engaging, well-written novel. McMurtry used Archer City, Texas, where he grew up, as the model for the fictional town of Thalia, located exactly where Archer City is, about 25 miles south of Wichita Falls in the northeastern part of the state.

The book relates a year in the lives of three high school seniors, three married women and a man who owns the local movie theater, cafe and pool hall. It’s an absorbing story, partly because the main characters tend to be preoccupied with sex, either thinking about it, looking for it, or remembering it. It’s hard to believe that there was that much sexual activity going on in a small town in Texas in 1952, but maybe there wasn’t much else to do around there. Especially after the picture show closed down, soon after the arrival of television.

The movie, which was filmed in Archer City, is very faithful to the book, using a lot of the novel’s dialog. The key incidents are all included in the movie, although some of the sex was eliminated or toned down, including the scene with the cow.  (3/6/11)