"Jim Henson's The Storyteller: Ghosts" by Michael Walsh, Mark Laszlo, Jennifer Rostowsky, VER

  I've been reading more graphic novels, and came across "Jim Henson's The Storyteller: Ghosts" based on the 1980s TV show. The novel is comprised of four stories on the theme of ghosts-- with the wonderful framing device of having the old man storyteller tells his stories to his talking dog. These stories each floored me, both in art and content, and the result is something truly special. 

 I devoured this volume in an evening. On their own, each story would be something truly triumphant, and together it makes for one great spooky read. Each is incredibly well written, drawn, and stunningly emotional. Mark Laszlo's "The Myling" sets the tale with an incredible personal tale of two brothers and the spirits known as mylings. Jennifer Rostowsky's "Envy & Ash" is a wonderfully timeless, and LGBTQ, exploration  of love-- infatuation?-- lost and the Southeast Asian legend of the ahp. Michael Walsh's "The Last Lullaby" is an absolutely beautiful reflection on death and loss with the Newfoundland and Irish legends of the banshee and bean sidhe. It was my favorite until the last, VER's "The Promise" which is an awesomely moving riff on Slavic folklore and the tales of the veles, and how we leave this world when we die. 

 This book is something very special, indeed. The ghost stories are fantastic in every sense of the word, and each author's writings before the tales about why they chose what they did for their ghost stories-- and what ghost stories mean to them-- are an absolute delight. In any format, the sheer talent of the artists gathered here would be something to behold; for any medium exploring ghost stories, this is an incredibly moving piece of work. 

"Beloved" by Toni Morrison

 

 I finally read Toni Morrison's novel "Beloved," after picking it for my book club, having meant to read it for years. 

Ink will forever be spilled on this masterwork, and rightfully so. "Beloved" is the great American novel. Far too much to be placed into genre, this novel of the trauma of slavery in the American experience, is one of the most intense, heartbreaking, thought-provoking pieces of literature you will ever read. And one of the most difficult, and rewarding. 

 The story of Sethe, her daughters Denver and Beloved, sons Howard and Buglar; her mother-in-law Baby Suggs and Paul D, "Beloved" rightly stands as one of the major novels of the last century. The questions Morrison explores-- of personhood and freedom and hope and despair-- come from the America in which it is placed, and follow us to this day. And a great many smarter than I have written about them. The horrifying circumstances these characters went through were the real life, lived experiences of an untold number of people, and the devastation left with the reader cannot begin to comprehend what life was like for people in these situations. 

"Beloved" is also one of the most expertly written, and beautiful books I have ever read. In the later half of the novel, there is a section of several chapters told in the first person from Sethe's, Denver's and then Beloved's point of view, and how perfectly Morrison brings each of their voices out-- as well as the combined experience of all those who have come before them-- is heartbreaking, brilliant and they will take you breath away. 

  In the final chapter, our narrator repeats, and repeats again, "This is not a story to pass on." No one today living can say,  with any certainty, what art will survive hundreds of years into the future. But long after those of us alive when Morrison published "Beloved" have gone, and our customs and dress and habits are looked at as the dusty foreign things last in time, this novel will be read. And remembered. 

"Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein" by Lita Judge

 "Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein" is a beautiful, haunting and primal look at writer Mary Shelley's life. I have to admit, that I have been a lifetime lover of horror, and "Frankenstein" has near biblical status in my person canon-- but reading this book was the most personal and informative account of Mary's life that I have experienced.

 A graphic novel, the text here is often prose, resulting in a long form poem that would work on its own but excels with the beautiful, ghostly yet alive illustrations showing the complexities of Mary's life, her loves, her sadness and her creation.

 In both film and literature, the story of famous writer creating their renowned creation has become almost a genre in itself. From Michael Cunningham's "The Hours" to the film and subsequent stage musical "Finding Neverland," there is an appetite out there for stories that show how literature's immortal came to be. In this graphic novel, Lita Judge does a fantastic job at not just showing the elements of Mary Shelley's young life that culminated in the novel "Frankenstein," but showing the complexities of how her life and experience led her to the ideas and philosphies her Doctor Frankenstein and his monster have played out for readers across the years-- and forever. will.

From her time as a neglected young girl, with a mother she never knew who would have been so proud of what she accomplishd and persevered through, Mary's life faced constant abuse. Her father, step mother, and later the poet Percy Shelley were all extremely volitale and abusive relationships through which she endured-- and managed to create. Life, in the form of her children and her writing. And this is all captured beautifully in this long form graphic novel. In beautiful black and white. 

The amount of research that went into this piece is daunting, and beyond the limits of commendable. The author's notes and bibliography at the end are worth reading in and of themselves. This is a must read for any lover of Shelley and her monster, and a brilliant piece I am sure I will often find myself returning to. 

Finished 3/29/20

"A Game of Thrones" George R. R. Martin

"Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?' 'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him." p.22

That place, when a person can be brave, is where "A Game of Thrones" takes place. This story, and these characters, came into my life like a thundestorm. Full of loud, booming, natural beauty-- difficult to forget, this brilliantly plotted and populated epic is truly a modern classic. Before reading this first novel, having seen the HBO television adaptation, I had dismissed the series as not something I would normally read. What Martin does here is nothing short of epic, brilliant and all the like terms that get tossed around. Using ideas, terrain and creatures we have seen before-- knights, dragons, kings and queens-- he expertly tips convention on its head, and makes a kind of fairy tale, for adults, that will have you turning page after page. 

There is so much going on in this book, and that is the best of things. It is the far exception in this densely populated book that a character is not instantly and immensensely memorable. These women and men-- Ned, Catelyn, Arya, Robb, Sansa and Bran Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys-- are so human, and so many shades of heroes and villians and everything in between. We see this story playing out across kingdoms and nations, from so many different eyes-- from the eyes of our presuemed heroes, the Starks; our presumed villians, the Lannisters, a host of others; and the exiled girl at the edges of the world who just might have the power to save the world. The way they are played and reveal themselves in the plot, each chapter from another's point of view, makes this a great work of the human condition, politics and history that just so happens to include the possibility of dragons and other magic. 

I could not love this story more. 

"The Ocean at the End of the Lane" by Neil Gaiman

     If magic is real-- and I am not saying for certain it is or it is not-- Neil Gaiman would write it. And if that magic was about a childhood, and the power stories have to grow along with that child, what Neil Gaiman would write would be "The Ocean at the End of the Lane."'

     There is much said in this short space of a novel, and much that is left unsaid. Our nameless narrator, returning home, to the lands of his youth, for a funeral of an untold person, takes us-- quite literally-- through memory and down the lane to his childhood. A time of reading and retreating and death and friendship and love. "I had been here, hadn't I, a long time ago? I was sure I had. Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like chilhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good." (5) It isn't easy to come to feel for and love a character in a novel, and is more difficult yet to accomplish in a novel short as this. Gaiman does so and more with no seeming effort, swiftly, as we come to know the boy who's name we do not know, who had "Nobody [come] to [his] seventh birthday party." (9) and who believes from a young age that "Books were safer than other people anyway." (9) A series of traumatizing events lead our narrator through the loss of his cat, the witness of his family's border's suicide, and to the house at the end of his lane, to a friend he will make. Lettie Hempstock-- that friend-- dare I say has an instant place of prominence in the world literary canon; this older girl who knows the ways of the world, and that those ways are a kind of magic, and understands the stories of the wild, along with two older generations of her family's women.

     A story about stories, and the power within stories, Gaiman employs some of his most beautiful prose to comment on the things of childhood, of all life, and the ways to use stories to confront them. "'Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't [...] monsters are scared,' said Lettie. 'That's why they're monsters.'" (112) And these comments, out of the mouths of children like Lettie, are why I read.

     There is a great beauty at work here in this novel, of stories and their redemptive powers. As our narrator ages, to the point of an adult, he returns time and again to these people of his stories, after having seemingly forgotten them. Returning to a place and time when they are real. These people, these stories, which have the power to save a life and to redeem-- this beautifully quirky trinity of women, who are willing to lay down their lives so that you may be saved, and live-- these people who, beyond all reality are very real. Feelings, stories and people like Neil Gaiman has breathed into life here are why I read, and why I consider Gaiaman one of my favorite writers working today. Life does not always accomodate rereading novels, when there are so many out there still to be read-- but I will visit the tale of this boy and his friend Lettie, and come to the ocean, again.

"The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski

"That miniature hand was so moist and pink and interesting, the temptation was almost irresistable. She pressed her nose forward another fraction on an inch.
 'No licks,' Trudy whispered in her ear.
 Almondine began to wag her tail, slowly at first, then faster, as if something lond held motionless inside her had gained momentum enough to break free." (33-34)

 If you try to come up with a way to describe "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle," you will always come up short. With this novel, David Wroblewski has written a great American novel of the story of "Hamlet," and so much of the genius of the tale lies in recognizing the characters and themes from the play of Denmark, and seeing how they have been translated, and fit in Edgar's own story. Whether they be the more clear paralells between the mother figure Gertrude and Trudy, or Fortinbras and Forte-- or the, at first sight, less obvious characters such as Almondine. But yet this novel is more than that. David Wroblewski has written a novel on the intimacies and rages inside a family, a novel on the nature of humans and animals and how, when, and if, those natures differ. And yes, I will touch on the novel's ending in my discussion here.

 With the story, Wroblewski has rewritten Shakespeare's "Hamlet" as a great American novel. The life of Edgar, his family and his dogs would stand high on its own, without the knowledge of Hamlet's story; however, the text adds so many worlds to the reader's experience when read with Hamlet and his family in mind. I do not know how I might have reacted had I not been aware of the Hamlet connection before the final act. But I do feel that knowing, still, the tragedy to come did not lessen its effect.

 The tale, for all that is tragic, is beautiful. In word and thought, Wroblewski's writing is so often page-stopping perfect. Passages in the beginning, of Edgar finding pieces of his family's past in the rolling lands and houses of his family's farm; the account of Edgar's parents' first child, Edgar's birth and the cub that comes in between are pieces so exact, so immediate they forever leave their mark. The author's descriptions, so full of the air in the barn, the farmhouse and the people living in this space between the woods becomes another character in the story and leaves the reader with the Sawtelle farm long after the last page is turned. "In April, gray curtains of rain swept across the field. The snow rotted and dissolved over the course of a single day and a steam of vegetable odors filled the air. Everywhere, the plot-plot of water dripping off eaves. (23)

The Chequamegon Forest, which lies just beyond the Sawtelle's fictional farm. 

 Perhaps some of the most beautiful parts of the novel occur when the narrative shifts to point of view of the dog companion who grows with Edgar throughout the novel, Almondine. A narrative which can, without any exaggeration, seamlessly work from that of a person to a dog and back again is no small feat. Wroblewski does this beautifully, and this is without doubt some of the best ficition from a non-human animal's point of view this reader has ever encountered. "Eventually, she understood the house was keeping a secret from her. [...] In April she began to wake in the night and wander the house, pausing beside the vacant and the blowing furnace registers to ask what they knew, but they never answered. Or knew but couldn't say." (30-31)

 There is so much to be read in this story of a family, their home, and the life's work of their generations. What one generation knows of the other, what a parent knows of their child, a child the parent; a person, a friend. And what they do not know, cannot.

 "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" is more than the bringing of Shakespearean tragedy to the American family; more than the story of a son trying to understand his father and that man's life, work, companions-- and to avenge him. Some stories stay with you after they are done. Some, you might remember pieces of for a memorable scene or happening. The story of the Sawtelle family, Edgar and his dog Almondine will stay with you long after you have left them, and the tale of a family, their mute son and the dogs they raise on a Wisconsin farm-- and the loss they experience, how they try to find each other-- and will never leave you.

"I thought I'd never see you again, he signed.
 You were lost.
 Yes, lost.
 You didn't need to come back. I would have found you." (550)

Why Charlotte?

 From E. B. White himself, at the request of his published. Coming to us from Harper Collins, by way of Letters of Note. 

 Transcript via Letters of Note:

"Transcript

E. B. WHITE
NORTH BROOKLIN, MAINE

29 Sept

Dear Ursula:

Thanks for your dandy letter and for the book. If I ever get time I'm going to read the book. I think it looks very nice and I agree with you that the endpaper is too bright. But on the other hand, I'm not sure that anybody thinks about endpaper except publishers, and probably not more than 1800 people in the United States have ever heard the word "endpaper", and they are all Stevenson people.

Enclosed are some remarks that I hope will satisfy your Publicity Department.

Sorry to learn that Dr. Canby is revolted by spiders. Probably doesn't meet the right spiders. Did you know that Dr. Canby has a wife named "Lady"?

Yrs,

Andy

------------------

I have been asked to tell how I came to write "Charlotte's Web." Well, I like animals, and it would be odd if I failed to write about them. Animals are a weakness with me, and when I got a place in the country I was quite sure animals would appear, and they did.

A farm is a peculiar problem for a man who likes animals, because the fate of most livestock is that they are murdered by their benefactors. The creatures may live serenely but they end violently, and the odor of doom hangs about them always. I have kept several pigs, starting them in spring as weanlings and carrying trays to them all through summer and fall. The relationship bothered me. Day by day I became better acquainted with my pig, and he with me, and the fact that the whole adventure pointed toward an eventual piece of double-dealing on my part lent an eerie quality to the thing. I do not like to betray a person or a creature, and I tend to agree with Mr. E.M. Forster that in these times the duty of a man, above all else, is to be reliable. It used to be clear to me, slopping a pig, that as far as the pig was concerned I could not be counted on, and this, as I say, troubled me. Anyway, the theme of "Charlotte's Web" is that a pig shall be saved, and I have an idea that somewhere deep inside me there was a wish to that effect.

As for Charlotte herself, I had never paid much attention to spiders until a few years ago. Once you begin watching spiders, you haven't time for much else---the world is really loaded with them. I do not find them repulsive or revolting, any more than I find anything in nature repulsive or revolting, and I think it is too bad that children are often corrupted by their elders in this hate campaign. Spiders are skilful, amusing and useful. and only in rare instances has anybody ever come to grief because of a spider.

One cold October evening I was lucky enough to see Aranea Cavatica spin her egg sac and deposit her eggs. (I did not know her name at the time, but I admired her, and later Mr. Willis J. Gertsch of the American Museum of Natural History told me her name.) When I saw that she was fixing to become a mother, I got a stepladder and an extension light and had an excellent view of the whole business. A few days later, when it was time to return to New York, not wishing to part with my spider, I took a razor blade, cut the sac adrift from the underside of the shed roof, put spider and sac in a candy box, and carried them to town. I tossed the box on my dresser. Some weeks later I was surprised and pleased to find that Charlotte's daughters were emerging from the air holes in the cover of the box. They strung tiny lines from my comb to my brush, from my brush to my mirror, and from my mirror to my nail scissors. They were very busy and almost invisible, they were so small. We all lived together happily for a couple of weeks, and then somebody whose duty it was to dust my dresser balked, and I broke up the show.

At the present time, three of Charlotte's granddaughters are trapping at the foot of the stairs in my barn cellar, where the morning light, coming through the east window, illuminates their embroidery and makes it seem even more wonderful than it is.

I haven't told why I wrote the book, but I haven't told you why I sneeze, either. A book is a sneeze.

(Signed) " 

Harper Collins

Letters of Note

"Capote in Kansas" by Kim Powers

"20th Century Ghosts" by Joe Hill

It should be hard to properly review, or write about, a book of short stories. By definition, each piece of writing work is an unique, stand alone piece of art which would be judged on the merits of its own few pages.

 "20th Century Ghosts" by Joe Hill is something different. Without knowing when or how each of Hill's stories were written, the effect they had on this reader was entirely unique. At once, the stories-- ranging from beautifully rendered post-modern/meta-physical (or, perhaps more frankly, categorized as new and original) ghosts stories to weird fiction to a type of writing which defies classification at every turn-- the stories in the collection are an experience. Mr. Hill is a talent all his own, and one needs to only read a story or two from this volume to know that, and to complete this volume is to marvel at the expanse of that talent.

 My favorite story in these pages is without question "Pop Art." Nothing I could have read, or even surmised from the title, could have prepared me for this beautiful little story gem with a heart so big, so pure, so all Joe Hill's own. A bildungsroman; childhood; prejudice; growing up; hatred; anti-Sematism; that which cannot be named. "Pop Art" may very well go down as one of my all time favorite short stories. When I read the summary-- a story about a boy who befriends an inflatable boy at school-- I did not expect anything but a slightly sci-fi piece of weird fiction. Not the deeply personal story that it almost would do a disservice to discuss. (And, no, I don't believe the short film adaptaion did much at justice, either.)

Amanda Boyle's short film adaptaion of "Pop Art" 

 Other stories that stand out in the collection are the title "20th Century Ghosts"-- wherein a ghost of a young movie-going girl haunts her favorite theater; "Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead" and "The Cape."

 I am very eager to get a start on Hill's novels.

From Hill's graphic novel adaptaion of "The Cape"

Contact 
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"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

 "'What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?' cried Daisy, ' and the day after that, and the next thirty years?'
 'Don't be morbid,' Jordan said. 'Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.'" (118)

 I started reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" not knowing why the novel was written. I knew the novel is considered a classic deemed by the literary establishment and modern canon, knew the work is assigned to countless high school English students the country over, knew many readers see this among the great American novels. I started reading "Gatsby" partly out of a sense of duty; to read one of those books I should read, because it is one of those books that everyone should read. To check another one off my list-- and what better time than the present.

 Not until I was almost a hundred pages into the short novel did I understood why this work has the reputation it does. After finishing the later half of the novel in about a day, I still do not know why this is commonly assigned high school reading. Yes, I am sure there are high schoolers who may have been through certain experiences that help in understanding the novel-- but I believe they must be few and far between. "Gatsby" seems to be one of the major American novels for its themes-- for it's explorations of the personal, of love found, lost and never able to be gotten over; for its documenting of the act of the American dream, the desire, the longing; for all it comments on understanding the timelessness of American society, class. And how all of those experiences are linked together, seamlessly.

 "The Great Gatsby" is, on it's plain, beautiful, crafted face a simple story. A story people have such a variety of reaction to; a painfully simple story. If any one selection from the novel speaks to its heart, I believe the quote I have opened with-- "'Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall'" -- is truest. "The Great Gatsby" is immediately a novel about people who are living a cycle, constantly repeating. Though Jordan in this passage seems to convey that the start of autumn promises a new beginning, the characters in Gatsby's world experience the emotions of their lives and situations as intensely and as steadily as the seasons. After finishing the novel, I read many comments, reviews and others' thoughts that seemed to think no character in these pages is sympathetic. At times, I thought Daisy Buchanan-- trapped in her mansion with her children and her unfaithful husband, yearning for the romance of her younger years, her truer romance with Jay Gatsby-- was the most sympathetic. But in the end, Daisy does not come off so well; succumbing to her situation, and giving into the life she has in the safety of her marriage over the possibilities of Jay Gatsby, forever; after Gatsby, unable to help himself, has given up everything to her.

 I don't believe there are no sympathetic characters in the novel. Yes, there are many pathetic characters, who just cannot find the strength to rise above and out of their situations. But I believe Jay Gatsby warrants sympathy, as does Nick Carraway by extension, of whom we see Gatsby through his eyes. Jay Gatsby-- forever, truly, homeless. Drifting through the classes and places and people and sights of America; dreaming his own dream, dreaming the American dream of this young country. Jay finds love, or what he believes to be, in his youth with Daisy, and he can never recover. He feels somehow ashamed of his place in society, because he believes that is what kept him from Daisy-- and perhaps, because of who Daisy is inside, it was-- and he spends his life after Daisy creating a world, a person and a life that she could-- for all her class snobbery-- accept and be with. When, in the end, this all comes crashing down, proving not to work as intended, and for all her suffering Daisy cannot will herself to be anything other than who she is and what she has become-- Jay has been left without a purpose. Without an identity, without a life. Without, even, more than a ghostly memory of what Nick has experienced, seen.

 Yes, I feel sorry for the great Gatsby. There is something so timeless, so tragic, so literary to this failed love, this failed life, these failed dreams. And that, I believe, is why the novel endures as a classic, remains as truthful and current today as it was when published.

 "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eldued us then, but that's no matter-- to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--
 So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." (180)

"Unsaid" by Neil Abramson

You know a novel is something special when, within the time of the first few pages, you know those who live within the pages see, feel the world the same as you.

 "Every living things dies. There's no stopping it." (1) So begins "Unsaid," a novel that denies category at every turn one is available. The novel is narrated by Helena, a veternarian who has died of cancer. The reader is never told any specific thing about the afterlife Helena inhabits; we feel, see and experience it along with her. We don't know why Helena has stayed behind-- but we see through her all she has left behind, and still is connected to in life. Her husband, her animal companions, the friends who shared her cause she worked with.

 In "Unsaid" Helena explores death. Her death, what it means to the living she has left behind, what role death played in her life while she was alive. She relives the decisions she had to make as a verternarian and human, when the choice came to end the life of an animal, and she relives the struggle she put up against her own death to cancer. Helena cannot interact with the living; she simply watches. As her husband, David, comes to understand her in ways he never did, or could never fully, in life. As her rescued dogs live and grieve for her. As the man she shared a veterinary practice with continues to try and keep a morally sound practice amid a world where ethics are not always considered. As the colleauge she shared a life of work on chimpanzee communication with struggles to continue her work; as the chimpanzee she focused on, Cindy, is at the mercy of the humans who care for her while this all goes on.

 There is so much beauty in this book. On loss, and all life-- animal and human alike. Subjects that could come off as heavy-handed in the hands of a lesser writer are handled here delicately, and always so movingly, by Neil Abramson. The connections the characters make and share-- and how they all do, cannot or learn to communicate with each other-- human and animal-- are beautifully rendered truth.

 While so much of this novel's power is subtle and natural, it nonetheless carries great, consistent power. I can't remember a novel that has moved me to tears earlier or more consistently in quite sometime. Beginning with Helena's recollection of her meeting her husband, as they move an injured deer out of the road; to the disabled child of one of Helena's colleagues new colleauges being able to see the world in a way which is the only one to bring comfort to an elderly woman who just lost her dog in surgery; to the many epiphanies David has as he, left behind, comes to understand his wife and her work.

 For anyone who has loved, lost an animal companion. For anyone who has loved, lost a person of any consiousness. To anyone who loves the power of literature and bearing-witness and writing stories and longed to understand another person or being, and gain entrace in that most secret of gardens-- Neil Abramson has written a novel of comfort that understands, knows.

"Bambi" by Felix Salten

 "Bambi" is an absolutely beautiful novel. Published by Felix Salten in 1923, the characters of the young deer and his mother have spawned lives of their own, beyond- likely- even Salten's own imagination, through the adaptation of the 1942 Walt Disney animated film. "Bamibi," for whatever legacy it may have, is a novel far more than a children's tale; far deeper, and filled with too much beauty to not be enjoyed at many stages in life. There is a lyrical, golden poetry to this novel of the forest and the lives within-- that speaks of life, death, family, God, the inherent brutal nature of the world and that which rises above. There is a whole chapter in the novel of dialogue between two leaves on a tree in the fall that is so simple, and beautiful, you read the words rapidly and then stop with wonder when it has ended.


"They were silent a while. Then the first leaf said quietly to herself, 'Why must we fall?...'
 The second leaf asked, 'What happens to us when we have fallen?'
 'We sink down....'
 'What is under us?' " (106)

© Bryan Ball, 2012, All rights reserved. 

  While Salten allows the reader these occasional interludes into another character's perspective, from the moment "He came into the world in the middle of the thicket," (1) we see the world of the forest through Bambi's eyes. And what a journey that is. We come to discover the forest as Bambi is taken, carefully, around the forest by his mother-- we meet the other animals who live there such as the Hare, the magpies, the squirrels and the pheasants. We meet Bambi's mother's sister, Ena, and her children: the beautiful Faline and the weaker Gobo. We see the beauty of the bright, shining life-filled forest, and experience the glorious meadow, where we learn the concept of danger, and why the deer have to be careful, each moment of their lives. The deer always have to be vigilant because of "He." Early on, while running, young Bambi comes face to face with "He" as "He" extends his third arm to point toward Bambi-- who, instinctively sensing danger, runs away.

© Bryan Ball, 2012, All rights reserved. 

 Reading up on what has been written about "Bambi," there are a whole hosts of thoughts on what Salten intended, with the tale of the animals in the forest being terrorized by their oppressor, the humans. A number of people maintain the novel as an allegory for Nazi Germany's treatment of Jewish citizens-- and Salten was Jewish, living in Austria during the 1930's. And some maintain that it is simply an environmental tale of the horrors life inflicts on itself. For while man is the most destructive force in the forest, nature is intrinsically brutal, as evinced multiple times throughout the novel, when Bambi witnesses animal on animal violence-- such as when he is frozen while watching a fox kill a duck, and, later, when that fox is murdered by a hunter's dog, as the forest literally calls the dog out a traitor, for serving the ultimate oppressor, the humans. "'Yes, traitor!' hissed the fox. 'Nobody is a traitor but you, only you.'" (276)

© Bryan Ball, 2012, All rights reserved. 

 And, perhaps, that is the ultimate message of the novel-- to show the reader that life is so beautiful, while so brutal, and in that the reader sees every such brutality which may occur-- from the obvious assaults of humans hunting animals to the horrors of Nazi Germany. Likewise, I find it compelling that this novel is classified as primarily a children's novel and-- at least that I have heard-- not often taught in schools. If George Orwell's "Animal Farm" is worthy of reading by high school students, "Bambi" certainly is, if not more so. There is just so much in here Salten intended for an adult audience. While describing the characteristics of deer-- as they grow, mate, socialize and live alone-- Salten paints such clear pictures of human emotion, and interaction. From early on, we see Bambi's mother and the dominating presence she has over his whole life, in what she tries to teach him, to survive in this harsh world-- "'Run anyway as fast as your legs will carry you. Run even if something should happen... even if you should see me fall to the ground...'" (29)

 And, after Bambi loses his mother, after he experiences intense loneliness, and later intense love with Faline-- he yearns for something else, some greater meaning. This meaning he searches for in all things, most predominantly in his relationship with his father. Only-- at the very end-- does at least his aging and declining father seem to find some closure for the similar quest he, too, must have been on all along. For it is in the novel's final pages, when Bambi's father leaves him before Bambi meets the young twin deer (who very well may be his and Faline's), does Bambi's father feel as if he has passed on everything he can to his son, the crucial knowledge of survival. A great many things may be taken from this passage. Bambi's father clearly feels his life complete now that he knows Bambi has realized the presence of a higher power, of the fact that this violent force of life that is "He" is not what truly governs the life in the forest, and all life. That there is something more, something greater, something good, which stands over all the violence, all the beauty, all the life.

"'Do you see, Bambi,' the old stag went on, 'do you see how He's lying there dead, like one of us? Listen, Bambi. He isn't all-powerful as they say. Everything that lives and grows doesn't come from Him. He isn't above us. He's just the same as we are. He has the same fears, the same needs, and suffers in the same way. He can be killed like us, and then He lies helpless on the ground like all the rest of us, as you see Him now.'..
 Bambi was inspired, and said trembling, "There is Another who is over us all, over us and over Him.'
 'Now I can go,' said the old stag." (286)


* © Bryan Ball, 2012, All rights reserved.  These three photographs are of one deer, who has taken up residence in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York. A deer I call "Felix" after the author of the novel.

"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers

 "In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together." (1)

 There are novels you finish reading, and you know. You feel slightly, forever, less for experiencing the loss of the novel, the loss of a loved character-- and forever slightly more for having known them. Carson McCullers' modern masterpiece "The Heart is A Lonely Hunter" is without question one of these novels. At once, the novel is a meditation on life, love and the loneliness that so often lives between in human relationships-- and an almost unbelievably wise exploration of the forces of government, religion and other politics in which we live our lives.

 It is often mentioned that McCullers somehow managed to write this novel when she was 23. Twenty-three.  In 1940, for whatever age she may have been, McCullers wrote a perfectly executed, spectacularly profound novel which comments on racial, sexual and gender roles in a way so beyond her years, it's almost hard to believe.

 Each character we meet in her novel is painfully real, and though we meet them in the deep American south of the 1930's, we have met them before in the world where we live. At the center of the story is Mr. John Singer, a deaf mute, who lived with the friend he loved until his friend's family had him put away in an asylum. Mr. Singer befriends a number of people in the small town-- Mick, a girl of about 14, confused and searching and raging and hurting; Biff Brannon, the owner of a local cafe; Jake Blount, a rebellious spirit yearning for political, social and religious revolution; and Dr. Copeland, an African-American doctor who has held his head high on his life-long quest to better his race and his people's place in the world.

 And there is so much within these characters' lives and happenings, that it does a disservice to the novel to not talk about each of the many issues so poignantly dealt with in an in-depth way which would span many pages of my own. Mr. Singer loves his friend Antonopoulos, with an all-consuming love which does not, and cannot, speak its name. Young Mick longs for all the answers she cannot even ask the questions for-- and finds her only solace in the art of classical music, and Mr. Singer's friendship. Mr. Brannon considers a great deal of poignancy on the subject of religion-- and Jake Blount rages against the political and social machines which oppress every man, woman and child in the poor south, during the time now known as the American Great Depression. And Dr. Copeland works all his life for a better future for his children and his people-- going so far as to advocate a march on Washington, DC for racial equality.

 I am simply in awe of how effortlessly McCullers switches from the perspective of each character. In the passages told from Mick's point of view, the reader feels the pain, the bursting confusion of adolescence-- and the reader feels, and knows, how real the solace Mick finds in her music is; a safe place from the confusing world around her she has found herself coming of age in. And in Dr. Copeland's passages, the reader feels the oppression of the social structure upon the successful African-American physician, which is thrust upon the great thinker the doctor is-- as he tackles incredible ideas such as the writings of Karl Marx, and faces the struggles of maintaining a relationship with his grown children. And in the passages of Mr. Singer's thoughts, the reader knows how much Antonopoulous is loved. How desperate Mr. Singer is to have his friend with him, and how no other friendship, no other person, will be for him who Antonopoulous is.

 All these characters are searching, longing for something, someone. There are fewer more haunting titles in literature, and more lingering prose than the lives of Mick, Mr. Singer and Dr. Copeland-- and how they look for what they feel needs to be found. As Dr. Copeland's daughter Portia, who works for Mick's family, says of Mick: "'... This afternoon you going to roam all over the place without never being satisfied. You going to traipse all around like you haves to find something lost. You going to work yourself up with excitement. Your heart going to beat hard enough to kill you because you don;t love and don't have peace. And then some day you going to bust loose and be ruined. Won't nothing help you then.'" (44)

 "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" is one of those novels which will make you feel. With one line, McCullers broke my heart, and took her place in literature. It has been quite a long time since I have been this affected by a novel-- and I'm sure it will be some time before I experience something similar, again. "Mick cried so hard that she choked herself and her father had to beat her on the back." (305)

"Other Voices, Other Rooms" by Truman Capote

 Every time I read Truman I wonder why I haven't read more of him. And I wonder why it is that the world has chosen to remember him the way they do. So much more than the television personality he became later in life, so much more than the author behind the book the film "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is based on and-- I say this, without having read the work-- so much more than the writer of "In Cold Blood."

 "Other Voices, Other Rooms" is, on it's own as a narrative, a milestone of a novel. Breaking ground for gay subject matter alone, when considered as a novel written by a young Truman Capote-- when he was twenty-three, no less-- the feat is even greater. There are so many ways to read this novel-- as an auto-biography of its author, a revolutionary milestone in documenting through literature the gay experience, the definition of a modern Southern Gothic-- or nothing so simple.

 And the prose through which Capote accomplishes this is gorgeous. Lush, golden, sparkling hot summer breeze-- Truman's writing from start to finish here is the definition of what a brilliant talent can do. Put you in the shoes, the day of a seemingly orphaned boy, who has lost his mother and is traveling to meet his biological father. A style all his own, each word, and each sentence they compose, is a beautifully constructed piece of art that appears effortless, and effortlessly takes you to the middle of the twentieth century, to the deep south, to the expanse of Skully's Landing, to the world of young Joel Knox.

 In a setting so awash with vibrancy, the characters truly manage to make the novel, while being of life rather than brighter than the world they inhabit. I won't forget Joel, his cousin Randolph or the young girl he befriends, Idabel (based, famously, on Capote's childhood friend and fellow talent Harper Lee.) It feels a rarity, that each character and her or his own, individual, story stand out so in the memory-- and also (but not because of) the relationships all of these characters have, they stand out, in their same, own way.

 Here, Truman has written a classic coming of age story that only he could. Whether the child Joel's coming of age is related to some personal acceptance of his homosexuality or not, there is a proudly, openly explored view of the gay experience, through Joel's journey, and, especially, through Randolph. After finishing the novel-- and I warn any reader that I am about to discuss the novel's ending-- but before reading any criticism, I wondered-- what if. What if Joel's decision at the end, his choice to stay, is to directly mean he chose Randolph? And, if so, the acceptance of his own homosexuality? Or- what if, by staying, Joel does so and becomes romantically involved with (the much older) Randolph? Or nothing so simple? Perhaps Joel is accepting that his fate will be there, with Randolph at the Landing-- but alone? To become whatever man it is he is, or is meant to become? I don't believe I've decided, other than no such definite decision is possible.

 In a novel with so many passages of beautiful writing, it was hard to decide on one to include. However, I have decided on the words to follow, which come late in the novel, from Randolph.

"Afterwards, and though at first I was careful not to show the quality of my feelings, Dolores understood intuitively what had happened: 'Strange how long it takes us to discover ourselves; I've know since first I saw you,' she said... The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface: and why not? any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell." 

"I'll tell you," said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, "what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter--as I did!"

"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" Jonathan Safran Foer

 What to do with Jonathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"? I had been wanting to read Foer since his novel "Everything is Illuminated" was so popular. I bought a copy of his earlier novel several years ago, and had more or less forgotten about him until I read his wife's, Nicole Krauss, novel "The History of Love" last year; a novel which I consider the best of the first decade of the new century.

 So. "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is my first experience with Foer-- and, having finished the novel over a week ago, I'm still unsure what I think. There is a deal of great work here, in this novel of loss, grief and living in the face of tragedies from marriages to the events of September 11, 2001 to the bombing of Dresden during World War II. Parts of this novel work-- and come close to soaring-- and others, frankly, do not. The sections narrated by Oskar Schell, a young boy who has lost his father in the World Trade Center on 9-11, are interesting and involving, though not without their problems. The sections narrated by the boy's grandparents are somewhat more problematic, although some of the most poignant writing in the novel appears in their sections.

 I could write of how the grandparents' relationship, or the uniformity of the people Oskar meets in his quest take away from the realism of the novel and-- ultimately-- it's emotional effect; but I would rather talk about what works here. Sections such as the tape Oskar plays of Hiroshima survivors' interviews, the "Hamlet" performance and the actual bombing of Dresden (save the over the top ridiculousness of the zoo) are very well written, and worth the reading of the novel alone. And for all the narrative's faults, how Oskar's quest is resolved was very well written, in some ways unexpected and appreciated. And the novel's final images truly are haunting. While some of my problems with the text lie within the disconnect between the actual text and the images used throughout, the imagery of the dream where all is reversed, as the only, simple reaction to major tragedy, combined with Oskar's final flip book, is haunting: leaving the questions and sadnesses not fully explored within the novel with the reader after the last page has been turned.

"The Borrower" by Rebecca Makkai

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This is a surprising little book, and an excellent first novel. Stop me if you've heard this one before: a young, mid-twenty something children's librarian meets a young boy, in small town America. Librarian meets boy's evangelical family, discovers that said family will only allow boy to read so-called "holy books"-- and later finds that the boy's family's idea of salvation for their child is something far more sinister. 

There is so much to love about this book. 

At points, the narrative simply soars-- Makkai's librarian, Lucy's, interaction with the boy, Ian, and his family are written with a starkly appealing, simple realism, and laced with a wicked sense of black humor. Toward the middle of the novel, however, when the big event happens, I wasn't initially sold. But as I continued reading, I found Makkai's writing to be rather genius, and something that resembles a modern (adult? young adult?) fairy tale. The world of "The Borrower" is very much our own-- filled with the oppression of children, the bigots who use extremist religion to justify their hatred and the salvation found in the world of fiction, the history of books. And yet the adventure that salvation takes our characters on is such it seems right out of the world of the children's novel, the fairy tale. And it suits the tale beautifully. 

The final hundred or so pages of this novel are so wonderfully written they deliver an amazingly affecting ending-- one I did not expect. The culmination of our story comes at you seemingly out of nowhere-- or, at least, on a level you do not expect. It has been quite some time since I was so moved by the ending of a novel. There are books you finish, and you know the characters will stay with you, their names never forgotten. Ian Drake is one of them. 

Image:  The Centered Librarian

“Ian once suggested that in addition to the mystery stickers and the sci-fi and animal ones, there should be special stickers for books with happy endings, books with sad endings, books that will trick you into reading the next in the series. 'There should be ones with big teardrops,' he said, 'like for the side of Where the Red Fern Grows. Because otherwise it isn't fair. Like maybe you're accidentally reading it in public, and then everyone will make fun of you for crying.' But what could I affix to the marvelous and perplexing tale of Ian Drake? A little blue sticker with a question mark, maybe. Crossed fingers. A penny in a fountain.”  

I expect great things to continue coming from Rebecca Makkai.

"Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury

I love Bradbury. 


His talents, especially the ones which bend to the darkening, orange winds of October, are beautiful, poetic odes, often to the nostalgic aura of childhood, adolescence and the subsequent bridge to adulthood. And his talents are in full display in "Something Wicked This Way Comes." 

With this novel, Bradbury uses his poetry to write a love letter to his childhood, All Hallow's Eve, and how the rites of the autumn season had such an influence over his life. At once, this is the story of two friends growing up alongside each other, facing, for the first time, the lurking death which hangs over all of our autumn's. And, this is a story about one of the boy's father's growth while accepting-- and winning?-- over this lurking specter of death and evil. 

The circus which travels by night and its cast of weird characters is so eloquently representative of fear of the coming winter, and Bradbury does not waste one character, one mirror-house, one twisted carousel to show us this. To breathe life into these characters, Bradbury unleashes his poetry, his own way of talking that so beautifully takes one back through years, to a place both reminiscent of our own youth, and a magnificently rendered historical moment of a small town, rural 1920s harvest time. 

I love this novel.

Autumnforest: Thank you!