What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Henry Farrell – 1960

It’s not great literature by any means, but it’s an interesting, light read as kind of a fan-fiction mashup of A Streetcar Named Desire and Sunset Boulevard, leaning towards the sordid instead of pathos or poetry. Possibly because the 1962 movie is so famous and is such a strict adaptation, the book reads like a novelization of it, not incredibly graceful or visceral, just efficient in its juicy storytelling.

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye

Alan Dean Foster – 1978

The king of movie novelizations and the ghostwriter of “George Lucas’” Star Wars novel, Alan Dean Foster was commissioned to write a sequel to the hit film, but was advised that it had to be something that could be easily adapted into an inexpensive movie if the powers-that-be decided that Star Wars needed a sequel. Obviously, and thankfully, that plan was scrapped in favor of The Empire Strikes Back. Nevertheless, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye retains the distinction of being not only the first Star Wars sequel but the very first work of “expanded universe” building in the Star Wars fiction galaxy, a sub-genre all its own that has flooded the earth with seemingly innumerable comics, novels, TV shows, video games, etc. Yes, it even precedes the notorious Star Wars Holiday Special, which taught us about Life Day and introduced Boba Fett before he ever appeared in film. Foster’s novel, presumably crafted with input from Lucas, is pretty underwhelming. It feels like Foster barely got Star Wars, and in all fairness, hardly anyone at that time could conceive of what it would become. The plot has Luke and Leia, still before knowing of their own sibling connection, crash land on an industrial outpost planet and scramble to evade capture by the always pursuing Empire. Luke retains some of his youthful humility from the 1977 film (aka A New Hope), but Leia is more irritable and unlikeable than she previously was. The focus stays on them the entire time as they pass through a frontier mining town and witness injustice while trying to stay undercover. Eventually, late into the book, Darth Vader finally shows up to fight a duel with Luke, whose Force powers are magnified by his contact with a sacred crystal. It’s an interesting read, but it never gets past the TV-movie mentality that would later give us The Ewok Adventure, an economical detour into a somewhat Star Wars-y landscape. But all this restraint makes no sense because it’s a novel. Foster could have made it more epic and ambitious than any movie, but he was curtailed by the demand to keep it simple for the sake of a future B-movie budget that never even came to pass. Thus we see that, as early as 1978, Lucas was already bending his art over to accept the insertion of corporate demands, something that would only get progressively worse over the years, culminating in his sale of the whole beloved franchise to the Disney media conglomeration.

Pictures of the Gone World

Lawrence Ferlinghetti – 1955

“...couples going nude into the sad water in the profound lasciviousness of Spring in an algebra of lyricism which I am still deciphering.”

Not only is this Ferlinghetti’s first book, it’s the first publication by his bookstore and printing company City Lights in San Francisco, which went on to put out books by fellow poets Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and many others. Ferlinghetti just died a few years ago at the age of 101! These poems are printed in scattered fashion across the pages, making use of wide unused spaces and without punctuation or justified edges. Altogether, they give the impression of someone reflecting upon considerable travels around the world. Ferlinghetti has the same detached, ironic voice of most of his fellow Beats, reacting to human activity with an alien’s bemusement and a bit of disdain. By far, my favorite poem in this collection is ‘The World is a Beautiful Place.’

“The world is a beautiful place to be born into, if you don’t mind some people dying all the time.”

Dandelion Wine

Ray Bradbury – 1957

“Knew the names of all the wild flowers and when the moon would rise or set and when the tides came in or out. He was, in fact, the only god living in the whole of Green Town, Illinois, during the twentieth century that Douglas Spaulding knew of.”

More potently than any other novel I have experience with, Dandelion Wine exudes a warm, melancholy nostalgia not just from its text but even from its pages, cover and title. This was my third time reading it after reading it twice in high school, which means not much of it was still in my head after 30 years except for the basic notion of 12-year-old Douglas Spaulding becoming conscious of the world and trying to savor his summer months in 1928 small-town Illinois. There’s not much I can say about the book that other reviewers haven’t covered, so I’ll just make a few observations. I didn’t learn until recently that it is actually a fix-up novel mixing the main Spaulding plot with several short stories that Ray Bradbury had already published elsewhere. I wish that wasn’t the case, I wish it had all been original for the book and planned as a complete novel, but I can’t deny that it works and that I would never suspect it’s a fix-up if I didn’t know. Details that stand out for me: 1) An early chapter about Douglas, on the cusp of puberty, lying in the woods and being overwhelmed by the sensuousness of nature, eating fruit, and feeling the breeze on his skin. Soon after, he goes to the edge of an ominous ravine next to town and is struck by the contrast of primordial wildness and civilization and wonders how the two can possibly be reconciled. 2) There is a serial killer in the town, targeting women walking alone at night. He has been conflated into an urban legend about a being the townsfolk call “the Lonely One,” an almost supernatural boogeyman figure that parents use to scare kids with and about whom boys tell each other tall tales. 3) A couple things foreshadow Bradbury’s next novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes; a traveling junk man with mystical powers is a bit like the lightning rod salesman in the later story, and in one chapter, Douglas and his brother Tom visit a carnival and are captivated by a lifelike fortune-telling machine that they “rescue” with the intention of reviving it to restore its powers of prophecy. 4) A few times, modernization is dealt with as a corrupting influence, i.e. the “happiness machine” a man builds that backfires by distracting him and his family from the true happiness in their lives together, Aunt Rose reorganizing Grandma’s kitchen and buying her a cookbook, which spoils the magic of her instinctive cooking skills, and Grandpa’s rejection of a miraculous new type of grass that would never have to be mowed. In keeping with the style of Bradbury’s numerous short stories, many of the vignettes are ironic or tragic in nature, with twists that emphasize punishment for not appreciating the here and now, and reward for taking time to smell the roses. Sometimes this technique can seem needlessly cruel, like Twilight Zone episodes, such as the young man who falls in love with a woman based on her photograph only to find out that she is really decades older than him, and the elderly man in a rest home who dies in the midst of calling strangers in foreign countries so they can hold the phone to their windows and allow him to hear bustling life around the world. One of the stories I enjoy the most involves Douglas’ best friend John Huff, also 12 years old, who seems to be everything a boy should be, agile, kind, brave and knowledgeable about everything worth knowing. Being forced to move away, John is worried about being forgotten. Douglas assures him that’s impossible, but when John shuts his eyes and asks Douglas to tell him what color his eyes are, Douglas can’t remember. This is key to the theme of the novel, as Douglas learns to celebrate the vibrance and diversity of life, but also becomes aware of death, loss, the passage of time, and the fleeting nature of memory. The overall feeling of nostalgia for the magic of childhood is off the charts throughout Dandelion Wine, but it isn’t quaint or cloying. It’s genuine because it’s Bradbury’s honest agenda and not seasoning added to artificially create a sensation the book wouldn’t otherwise have. What makes it great is Bradbury’s unabashed pleasure in his use of language, pleasure in memory and reverie, celebrating reverie, celebrating both sensory experience and consciously reflecting upon and analyzing the experience.

King Jesus

Robert Graves – 1946

“Do you ever relax from your monomania of holiness?” - Pontius Pilate to Jesus

I don’t think I’ve ever been as happily captivated by a novel from beginning to end as I was while reading Robert Graves’ King Jesus. I loved it so much that I felt like it was written especially for me. How Graves was able to present his enormous knowledge of antiquity, blended with his own theories and observations, filtered through his somehow poetic and completely accessible writing style, is nothing short of miraculous in my opinion. Equally remarkable is his ability to tell the story of the life of Christ from secular and pagan perspectives while also displaying due admiration for Jesus himself. The fictional historian who guides us takes the position that most of Jesus’ reported miracles were misunderstood or exaggerated in the retelling, but that Jesus was not only a genuinely gifted holy man with sharp human ethics, and who was legitimately entitled to be known as the King of the Jews as well. I was hooked from the very first page, on which Graves describes the antagonistic relationship between Judaism and “mother goddess” cults in the ancient Levant. This connects to Graves’ other major work of the 1940s, his nonfiction study of paganism and poetry, The White Goddess. The scholar/historian narrator in King Jesus asserts that the great secret of ancient Judaism is that the right of kingship is actually passed through the female line, not the patriarchal. The Biblical characters Hannah (Anna), Elizabeth, Miriam (Mary), the mother of Jesus, and Mary of Cleophas all belong to a parallel or interior sect within Judaism that maintains the ways of the older cults devoted to the mother goddess. “In the name of the Mother,” is a password phrase recognized by them all. Graves suggests that Jesus’ birth was engineered by a clever, farsighted high priest who arranged a surreptitious marriage between Mary, the last in the royal matriarchal line, and Antipater, King Herod’s eldest son and heir, giving their offspring indisputable claims to the Judean throne through both parents. Herod spoils these plans when he condemns Antipater to death as an Abrahamic sacrifice intended to help cure him of the mysterious festering diseases that would claim his life soon after Jesus’ birth, forcing Mary to seek out an arranged second marriage with the carpenter Joseph and to flee to Egypt to protect the infant from the murderous Herod. One of the running themes of the novel is the misogyny that Graves seems to consider inherent in Judaism. The Israelites dread being on the sea, identifying it with the Female, i.e. female sexual power, the lust that corrupts and distracts holy men from their holy business. The great rarely-spoken-of enemy of the Jewish tribes is the mother goddess embodied by the apocryphal Lilith, “the first Eve,” and her fellow priestesses down through the ages. Lucifer/Satan/the Devil is never even mentioned, but it is stated that Jesus’ mission is to personally “destroy the works of the Female.” There is a remarkable and heady chapter in which a type of doctrinal wizards duel takes place between Jesus and Mary of Cleophas (Clopas), a prostitute ringleader and high priestess of the goddess cult, which climaxes with an agreement between the two of them to marry in order to fulfill messianic prophecies that both of them have vested interest in, although the actual marriage, to Mary’s chagrin, is to remain unconsummated. Jesus’ many recorded miracles are explained as either misunderstandings or exaggerated by word of mouth, and in some cases, the result of the power of suggestion. Jesus is careful not to attempt healing anyone who is blatantly incurable. A crippled man is able to stand because Jesus relieves him of his debilitating guilt. The changing of water into wine is just a metaphor, not an actual phenomenon. It is told that Lazarus, a cousin of Jesus’ witch wife Mary, was cursed by her with a condition resembling death in order to lure Jesus home, and that Jesus is somehow able to remove the trance, allowing Lazarus to seemingly rise from the dead. There are unexplained miracles too, however, which the author seems to accept, having no rational explanation, including Jesus’ resurrection. After exiting his tomb, he is last seen disappearing into the mist over a hill in the companionship of three women; Mary, his mother, Mary, his queen, and a third, unidentified woman. As in Frazer’s The Golden Bough, it is observed that crucifixion is an ancient tradition in many cultures, starting as a propitiatory ritual requiring kings themselves to be killed, and degenerating over time into a punishment for lowly criminals. As such, Jesus ends up accidentally fulfilling the pagan “dying god/dying king” prophecy, which he could have averted if he had accepted Pontius Pilate’s help, who clearly accepted that Jesus was King Herod’s grandson, even noting the facial resemblance. Just after his tortuous execution, Jesus’ wife/queen Mary comments to observers that her husband’s actual crime was not against the Pharisees or Rome but “the Female,” whose prophecies cannot be rushed into fruition, not even by someone of Jesus’ great gifts and genius. In losing his battle against the great mother goddess, fervently praying to his Father god to his last breath, Jesus is discredited and condemned. We are left to discern the meaning of his resurrection ourselves, as Graves’ narrator appears to run out of theories in the book’s final pages, but the implication could be that the Female’s, the Triple Goddess’ magic has won out over the Israelites’ slight-of-hand miracles and superstitions, as the three mysterious women on the foggy hill, like Macbeth’s trio of witches, lead the healed and resurrected Son of David off to his true destiny. King Jesus is a truly unique, beautiful, challenging and satisfying work of literature by one of the great English author/scholars.

Starship Troopers

Robert A. Heinlein – 1959

As a longtime fan of Paul Verhoeven’s film adaptation of Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein’s source novel has been on my reading list for years. The only other book of his that I’ve read is Stranger in a Strange Land. Supposedly, Verhoeven didn’t read much of the novel because he found it fascistic. I don’t know if that’s the case. I interpreted it as a story told from the point of view of a young soldier who is thoroughly indoctrinated in military philosophy. Probably 80% of the novel is a debate and dissertation, first absorbed and then expressed by protagonist Johnnie Rico, about everything from practical soldiering to the mathematics behind combat strategy. Rico is an interesting hero because, as in the film, he starts out a rather spoiled and self-interested boy, but, due to his inherent humility, quickly adapts to the life of an infantryman. Rico portrays himself as simple and unexceptional, but his writing and observations are advanced, and I wondered if this situation could occur because the society he lives in places minimal value on arts and letters, being completely militarist in orientation. What makes the book so interesting to me is the ultimately unresolved question of whether or not Rico is exclusively brainwashed or if the army just legitimately brings out and polishes his best natural abilities. Regarding the perceived “right wing” slant of the novel, I don’t buy it. Why can’t a brilliant author bury himself in an alien worldview just like he does with his main characters and fictional universe, to explore how systems and ideas evolve? The presence of militaristic statements by fictional characters does not make the author a fascist. That logic would lead you to believe that Nazis criticizing Jews in hateful language in Schindler’s List must mean that the work itself, and its author, are fascist too. This reasoning is absurd on the face of it. Further, the implication of fascism’s characteristic xenophobia is completely undercut by Heinlein’s depiction of a cooperating international Earth culture. Juan “Johnnie” Rico is from South America, but the language he speaks at home with his parents is Tagalog, and his squad in basic training is populated with inductees representing not only English but Spanish, German and Japanese-speaking nations. And in the final chapter, depicting a brand new infantryman preposterously boasting of his nation's many historical accomplishments, we and Rico are reminded that ideologies often flourish thanks to big lies. It's clear that Heinlein is highly skeptical of all political systems, including the one currently in power in his story. I was surprised how little combat against the giant “Bugs” of Klendathu actually takes place in the story. In fact, Rico doesn’t find himself in the middle of the war until the last dozen or so pages, and even then, ironically, he gets injured and knocked unconscious and misses the battle’s entire resolution. (Hardly the rousing finale you’d expect in a supposedly pro-war book.) In further irony, Verhoeven’s film was also dismissed as fascist propaganda by blinkered intellectuals utterly consumed with interpreting all art through the filter of their narrow agenda. These automaton-like critics lack the tools to acknowledge the subtlety and nuance of authors who are actually critiquing the very things they’re accused of promoting. That’s the real dystopia we’re in, which was always foretold by the best science fiction writers like Heinlein, Bradbury, Vonnegut, and many others.

The Once and Future King

T.H. White – 1958

Comprised of four novellas written in the 1930s and 40s about Arthurian legends, The Once and Future King is T.H. White’s most celebrated work, comparable in scope and eloquence to Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, White’s fellow English contemporaries. The four books are The Sword in the Stone, The Queen of Air and Darkness, The Ill-Made Knight and The Candle in the Wind. A fifth story, The Book of Merlyn, was intended to conclude the epic collection but was ultimately published posthumously. Like Tolkien’s The Hobbit, The Sword in the Stone was first published separately in the late 30s and is more of a whimsical introduction to the dense fantasy world to be further explored in the later, more mature books. As the basis of the animated 1963 Disney film, The Sword in the Stone may be the most famous story, but I felt that the centerpiece and soul of the book is The Ill-Made Knight, the story of Lancelot’s all-consuming and tragic love for Queen Guinevere. This passion causes him to betray his best friend and king, as well as his faith, and to compromise his honor. The portrait of Lancelot is like nothing I’ve encountered before, full of so much heartbreaking irony that it’s almost unbearable. Unlike Arthur, who was always destined to lead, Lancelot was a completely unexceptional and unloved child who craved nothing except the love of a father figure, a role that Arthur would fill. Much is made of his physical ugliness, which only adds to his low self-esteem. What he is, though, is a universally unmatched swordsman and warrior, making him a legend in his own lifetime. He carries a lonely and dark secret all his life; the knowledge that he is not benevolent by nature and has to actively imitate the behavior of good people in order to function as a noble knight. This humility, ironically, is what makes him the superior man in the end, though he never comprehends it. He feels like a pretender his entire life. In this sense, he is the noblest and truest hero, because he overcomes weaknesses to accomplish the things he does, whereas many of the other knights who seem “good” so effortlessly never seem to question their own righteousness. To make matters worse, being smitten by his idol Arthur’s wife leads to a one-sided burden of a relationship. Guinevere lusts for him but is generally capricious and jealous, barely concerned that her hysterics lead Lancelot to raving madness at one point, showing only fleeting regrets over the abject misery she is laying upon her guileless lover. The Queen of Air and Darkness (a.k.a. The Witch in the Wood) also stands out for its disturbing back-and-forth between Arthur agonizing over how to justify force to create peace and the witch Morgause’s and her children’s appalling cruelty to animals, including the gruesome killing and desecration of a rare, white unicorn. Throughout the novel, White’s prose is exquisite without becoming flowery. His famous use of anachronisms and his almost sadistic deployment of arcane British words and references can have you shaking your head at times, but it's never off-putting. Ultimately, its provocative debate about humanity’s penchant for war and whether or not it deserves its dominion over the natural world is what stays with the reader long after putting it down.