Milorad Pavic: Author of the experimental novel 'Dictionary of the Khazars'

A dictionary is a book that, while requiring little time every day, takes a lot of time through the years." So noted Milorad Pavic in his all-absorbing Dictionary of the Khazars (1982). This was no plain historical work about a vanquished 10th-century Caspian race. Subtitled "a lexicon novel in 100,000 words" it is divided into three sections, each arranged as a reference work, one overlapping with another so that time and space take further, even limitless twists across hundreds of years. It incorporates fable, myth, romance, a sabre manual, etymology, science, lute music, history – and purported history.

All this Pavic regarded as a form of autobiography. What's more, it appeared in "male" and "female" versions, which differed by one paragraph, almost making readers complicit in two deaths. To say any more would give the game away, but Pavic himself imagined readers chancing to meet, variant copies to hand, in a café, after which "I see how they lay their dinner out on top of the pillar box in the street and how they eat, embraced, sitting on their bicycles".

It was greeted internationally as post-modern, magic realist and, in Paris Match, as the first novel of the 21st century. It equally recalled Tristram Shandy and The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor, and anticipated David Lynch, while some call it the thinking man's The Name of the Rose. Either way, it is far from the social realism of post-war Belgrade.

Born there in 1929 ("sign Libra, Ascendant Scorpio, Aztec horoscope, Serpent"), Pavic came from a family of writers which went back several centuries, a trend bucked by his father, Zdenka, who became a sculptor and married a professor of philosophy, Vera. Pavic was always conscious of his Serbian ancestors' fate: in the 17th century they were compelled into adopting Roman Catholicism, from which they converted back to Orthodox Christianity; but they were left with an unsettled identity, a state which underpins his great novel.

In the Thirties, Pavic was greatly influenced by an uncle who was a poet, and delighted in learning French at Belgrade Grammar School; at the city's university he began to translate Pushkin. His inclinations, however, ill-suited officialdom's decrees: Serbian history, and Classical and Baroque literature, were "unsound" in Communist eyes.

He wrote little for a decade. Instead, married with two children, he had stints on Radio Belgrade and in a publishing house until, after gaining a PhD, he became a professor at the University of Novi Sad from 1974 to 1982. He then spent a decade at the University of Belgrade. During this time he wrote stories, poems and a history of Serbian literature, most of which went untranslated.

He had also worked for five years on his Dictionary of the Khazars. Its three sections (red, yellow, green) are each a version – Christian, Jewish, Muslim – of an encyclopaedic dictionary which purports to have been prepared by three 17th-century students. Each dictionary, in treating the same and similar subjects, incorporates a demon (including one whose breasts yield black milk), and, amid the limitless plots which derive from these triads, such sinister turns include one copy of the original, fugitive work containing poison. What's more, some of three 20th-century scholars, also of those three races, will meet a sorry end in 1982.

Such a narrative can be as readily browsed; the reader "can use his right eye as a fork, his left as a knife, and toss the bones over his shoulder," said Pavic. Suffused with dreams, often bringing reality in their wake, its observations include "a woman without a behind is like a village without a church", while "thoughts expire on contact with words as quickly as words expire on contact with thoughts". Elsewhere, "she kisses him quickly, so hastily that he accidentally feels her breasts, like a compote of pears under her dress" while, hanging outside a shop, some exotic fruit "releases voices that sound like a chaffinch". One paragraph is a story in itself: above water "he wrote in his cage by using his teeth to cut letters into the shell of a crab or a turtle, but since he did not know how to read what he had written, he dropped the animals back into the water, never knowing what messages he was sending out into the world... he died dreaming of salty female breasts in a gravy of saliva and heartache".

Inspired by a Swiss review of the novel, Pavic semi-revisited it in a more awkward play – Theatre Menu (1997) – which could be acted in nine forms. His novel Landscape Painted with Tea (1990) partly concerns wartime Belgrade and works in a crossword-puzzle format; with Last Love in Constaninople familiarity with Tarot cards is handy, and Inner Side of the Wind (1993) is a variant upon Hero and Leander, told from each viewpoint.

Although of no political party, on retirement in 1992 he was preoccupied by the Serbs' fate in a decade which, he felt, made them a further victim of Western Christianity. As for his novel, full of libraries, it has suffered from the collapse in English public-library stocks: dismayingly, there are no copies throughout Sussex.

Christopher Hawtree

Milorad Pavic, writer: born Belgrade 15 October 1929; married 1957 Brenka Basta (one son, one daughter); died Belgrade 30 November 2009. [independent.co.uk]

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Dictionary of the Khazars, a novel by Milorad Pavic

# Paperback: 338 pages
# Publisher: Vintage; Vintage International ed Male ed edition (October 23, 1989)
# Language: English
# ISBN: 0679724613

This book was written by a serbian professor of literature, but might have been written by a former argentinian librarian: Jorge Luis Borges. Both the authors share a love for combinatorics, puzzling coincindences, catalogues, and bizzarre stories. Their stile is rational and dramatic at the same time, like the facade of a baroque church. Also, this book was published in 1986, the year of Borges' death, and is maybe the epitaph that Borges would have liked.

This is a book about the truth. The king of a mysterious people (the Khazars) summons three sages (a christian, a muslim and a jew), because he wants to convert to the true god. Centuries later, three literati write their own accounts of that conversion (each one is different). And this century, three researcher investigate again on what happened.

Finally, there is not a single truth. The book is organized as a dictionary, or better, three dictionaries (one for each religion). Every word inspires a different story and explanation, but all are filled with magic events and mysterious characters. The reader is the ultimate investigator -- and creator -- of the Khazar empire. It's up to him to discover the truth.

A final (and personal) note. This "dictionary" may seem an extremely sophisticated literary game, similar to those of Calvino and Perec. This is is true, but there is more. When the book was out, the civil war (apparently motivated by secular religious intolerance) had not begun yet. To me, this book seems also a passionate attempt to show how difficult is to attain the truth, and an invitation to tolerance.

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The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: The Praises and Criticisms

Ever since its publication in 1951, J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye has served as a firestorm for controversy and debate. Critics have argued the moral issues raised by the book and the context in which it is presented. Some have argued that Salinger's tale of the human condition is fascinating and enlightening, yet incredibly depressing. The psychological battles of the novel's main character, Holden Caulfield, serve as the basis for critical argument. Caulfield's self-destruction over a period of days forces one to contemplate society's attitude toward the human condition. Salinger's portrayal of Holden, which includes incidents of depression, nervous breakdown, impulsive spending, sexual exploration, vulgarity, and other erratic behavior, have all attributed to the controversial nature of the novel. Yet the novel is not without its sharp advocates, who argue that it is a critical look at the problems facing American youth during the 1950's. When developing a comprehensive opinion of the novel, it is important to consider the praises and criticisms of The Catcher in the Rye.

When studying a piece of literature, it is meaningful to note the historical background of the piece and the time at which it was written. Two J.D. Salinger short stories, "I'm Crazy" and "Slight Rebellion off Madison," were published in periodicals during the 1940's, and introduced Holden Caulfield, the main character of The Catcher in the Rye. Both short stories were revised for later inclusion in Salinger's novel. The Catcher in the Rye was written in a literary style similar to prose, which was enhanced by the teenage slang of the 1950's. It is a widespread belief that much of Holden Caulfield's candid outlook on life reflects issues relevant to the youth of today, and thus the novel continues to be used as an educational resource in high schools throughout the nation (Davis 317-18).

The first step in reviewing criticism of The Catcher in the Rye is to study the author himself. Before his novel, J.D. Salinger was of basic non-literary status, having written for years without notice from critics or the general public. The Catcher in the Rye was his first step onto the literary playing field. This initial status left Salinger, as a serious writer, almost unique as a sort of free agent, not bound to one or more schools of critics, like many of his contemporaries were. This ability to write freely, his status as a nobody in the literary world, was Salinger's greatest asset. Rather than to scope inside Salinger's mind and create a grea tness for him, we are content instead to note him for what he is: "a beautifully deft, professional performer who gives us a chance to catch quick, half-amused, half-frightened glimpses of ourselves and our contemporaries, as he confronts us with his brilliant mirror images" (Stevenson 217).

Much of Salinger's reputation, which he acquired after publication of The Catcher in the Rye, is derived from thoughtful and sympathetic insights into both adolescence and adulthood, his use of symbolism, and his idiomatic style, which helped to re-introduce the common idiom to American literature. While the young protagonists of Salinger's stories (such as Holden Caulfield) have made him a longtime favorite of high school and university audiences, establishing Salinger as "the spokesman for the goals and values for a generation of youth during the 1950's" (qtd. in Davis 317), The Catcher in the Rye has been banned continually from schools, libraries, and bookstores due to its profanity, sexual subject matter, and rejection of some traditional American ideals. Robert Coles reflected general critical opinion of the author when he called Salinger "an original and gifted writer, a marvelous entertainer, a man free of the slogans and clichés the rest of us fall prey to" (qtd. in Davis 317).

Obviously, the bulk of praise and criticism regarding any novel or piece of literature will come from published critical reviews. When a novel or any piece of literature is published in the United States, critics from newspapers, magazines, and various other sources flock to interpret the book and critique its style. The same was true for Salinger's novel. Noted book reviewers from across America critiqued The Catcher in the Rye, bestowing both praise and criticism at different levels. Each reviewer commented on different parts of the novel, from Holden's cynicism to the apparently homosexual Mr. Antolini. The novel, like any other, was devoured and picked apart piece by piece. It is the role of the researcher, therefore, to analyze the various reviews and develop a clear understanding of the novel.

One of the most widespread criticisms of The Catcher in the Rye deals with the adolescence and repetitive nature of the main character, Holden Caulfield. Anne Goodman commented that in the course of such a lengthy novel, the reader would weary of a character such as Holden. Goodman wrote "Holden was not quite so sensitive and perceptive as he, and his creator, thought he was" (20). She also remarked that Holden was so completely self-centered that any other characters who wandered through the book, with the exception of Holden's sister, Phoebe, had no authenticity at all. She wrote of Salinger's novel: "The Catcher in the Rye is a brilliant tour-de-force, but in a writer of Salinger's undeniable talent one expects something more" (21). Goodman did have a point in the fact that Holden was something of an over-developed character. He described himself early in the novel, and with the sureness of a "wire recording," (Goodman 20) he remained strictly in character throughout. Salinger failed in his novel to address other characters with as much detail as Holden. This is due in part to the fact that Holden tells his own story, and also to the idea that a story told by Holden Caulfield would never describe others, as he speaks only of himself.

Reviewer James Stern of the New York Times critiqued Salinger's novel by incorporating Holden's style of speech into his review. Stern tried to imitate Holden by using short, incomplete sentences with undeveloped ideas: "That's the way it sounds to me, Hel said (a friend of the author), and away she went with this crazy book, The Catcher in the Rye. What did I tell ya, she said the next day. This Salinger, he's a short story guy. And he knows how to write about kids. This book, though, it's too long. Gets kinds of monotonous. And he should have cut out a lot about these jerks and all at that crumby school. They depress me. They really do. Salinger, he's best with real children. I mean the ones like Phoebe, his kid sister. She's a personality. Holden and little Phoebe, Hel said, they kill me. This last part about her and this Mr. Antolini, the only guy Holden ever thought he could trust, who ever took any interest in him, and who turned out queer -- that's terrific. I swear it is" (5).

Stern's goal in this review was to critique the novel for its length and its melancholy nature. He saw The Catcher in the Rye as being too depressive to be of any redeeming value to the reader. Stern did praise him, however, when he commented on Salinger's ability to write about children. Other short stories by Salinger, such as "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "Franny and Zooey," are also based around children and adolescents.

Some critics have argued that Holden's character is erratic and unreliable, as he possesses many of the middle-class values that he claims to reject. Later commentators, however, have praised the wry humor of the main character, his "technical virtuosity" (qtd. in Davis 318), and the skilled mockery of verbal speech by Salinger. These critics have commented that the structure of the novel personifies Holden's unstable state of mind. Alastair Best remarked: "There is a hard, almost classical structure underneath Holden's rambling narrative. The style, too, appears effortless; yet one wonders how much labour went into those artfully rough-hewn sentences" (qtd. in Davis 318).

A larger field of critics at the time of The Catcher in the Rye's publication in 1951 took a positive view of the novel. For example, Chicago Tribune reviewer Paul Engle commented that the story was "emotional without being sentimental, dramatic without being melodramatic, and honest without simply being obscene" (3). Engle also wrote of the authenticity of Holden's character, the idea that his voice was typical of a teenager, never childish or written down to that age level. He praised the book in noting that it was not merely another account of adolescence, complete with general thoughts on youth and growing up. Engle wrote: "The effort has been made to make the text, told by the boy himself, as accurate and yet as imaginative as possible. In this, it largely succeeds" (3). Engle's viewpoint is one that is echoed by many. The Catcher in the Rye is not simply a coming-of-age novel with usual twists and turns, but rather, the unique story of a unique child. It is rare to find a character, actual or fictitious, who is as dazzling and enticing as Holden Caulfield. As Engle wrote, "The story is engaging and believable . . . full of right observations and sharp insight, and a wonderful sort of grasp of how a boy can create his own world of fantasy and live forms" (3).

Generally, critics view the novel as Holden Caulfield's melodramatic struggle to survive in the adult world, a transition that he was supposed to make during his years at preparatory school. Some critics will point to the fact that Holden has flunked out of three Pennsylvania prep schools, and use it to symbolize the fact that he is not truly ready for adulthood (Davis 318). David Stevenson commented that the novel was written "as the boy's comment, half-humorous, half agonizing, concerning his attempt to recapture his identity and his hopes for playing a man-about-town for a lost, partially tragic, certainly frenetic weekend" (216). Reviewer Charles Kegel commented that the novel could be read as Holden Caulfield's "quest for communicability with his fellow man, and the hero's first person after-the-fact narration indicates . . . he has been successful in his quest" (53).

Though considered by most to be a tragedy, The Catcher in the Rye is found by some critics to be humorous, witty, and clever. The use of Chaplin-like incidents serves to keep the story hovering in ambivalence between comedy and tragedy. Whenever a character is nearing the point of no return in a Salinger piece, it is usually done by route of the comic (Stevenson 216). Other commentators have noted that much of the humor in The Catcher in the Rye comes from Holden's misconceptions about adulthood. An example is shown in Holden's relationship with an old schoolmate, Luce. Although the older man is more experienced than Holden, he is not as mature as Holden believes him to be. After an attempt at communication with Luce fails, Holden flees to Phoebe, the only person he completely trusts (Davis 318). S.N. Behrman also noted that the literalness and innocence of Holden's point of view in the face of complicated and depraved facts of life makes for the humor of the novel: haggles with unfriendly taxi-drivers, futile conversations with a prostitute in a hurry, an intellectual discussion with a man a few years older than himself, and a completely hilarious date with Sally Hayes, an old girlfriend (74). The humor in Holden's character comes from his communication with the outside world. His innocence, in my point of the view, his hunger for stability and permanence, make him both a tragic and touching character, capable of making dark activities on the surface seem hilarious and silly below.

One of the most popular means by which The Catcher in the Rye is critiqued is through the comparison of Holden Caulfield to other literary characters. The novel is often compared to traditional period literature, particularly Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Both works feature naive, adolescent runaways as narrators, both commenting on the problems of their times, and both novels have been recurrently banned or restricted (Davis 318). John Aldrige remarked that both novels are "study in the spiritual picaresque, the joinery that for the young is all one way, from holy innocence to such knowledge as the world offers, from the reality which illusion demands and thinks it sees to the illusion which reality insists, at the point of madness, we settle for" (129). Harvey Breit of The Atlantic Bookshelf wrote of Holden Caulfield: "(He) struck me as an urban, a transplanted Huck Finn. He has a colloquialism as marked as Huck's . . . Like Huck, Holden is neither comical or misanthrope. He is an observer. Unlike Huck, he makes judgments by the dozen, but these are not to be taken seriously; they are conceits. There is a drollery, too, that is common to both, and a quality of seeing that creates farce" (82). It is possible, in theory, to do an entire character study comparing Holden and Huck. Both are adolescents, runaways from society, seeking independence, growth, and stability in their lives.

Another character that Holden Caulfield is compared to, though to a lesser degree than Huck Finn, is Hamlet. Like Hamlet, as Charles Kegel wrote, Holden is a "sad, screwed-up guy" (54), bothered by words which only seem true, but are really quite phony. The honesty and sincerity that Holden cannot seem to find in others he tries to maintain within himself. Holden often makes a point of using the word "really" to assert the fact that something is really so, to prove to the reader that had not become a phony himself. Holden is distressed often by the occasional realization that he too, must be phony to exist in the adult world. With regard to the insincere "Glad to've met you" formula, he comments that "if you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though" (qtd. in 54-5).

It is evident by studying the reviews of The Catcher in the Rye that most critics enjoy picking apart the character of Holden Caulfield, studying his every action and the basis for that action. Reviewers of the novel have gone to great lengths to express their opinions on Salinger's protagonist. Some consider Holden to be sympathetic, others consider him arrogant, but the large majority of them find him utterly entertaining.

In her review of The Catcher in the Rye for the New York Herald Tribune, Virgilia Peterson commented on Holden Caulfield's innocence. Peterson wrote that Holden was on the side of the angels, despite his contamination by vulgarity, lust, lies, temptations, recklessness, and cynicism. "But these are merely the devils that try him externally," she wrote, "inside, his spirit is intact" (3). Holden does not tilt against the entire adult world, for he knows that some decent citizens still remain, nor does he loathe his worst contemporaries, for he often hates to leave them. Peterson commented: "For Holden Caulfield, despite all the realism for which he is supposedly depicted, is nevertheless a skinless perfectionist." In addition, Peterson wrote that Salinger speaks for himself as well as his hero when he has Holden say to little Phoebe: "I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around- nobody big I mean- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff. I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them . . . I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. . . " (qtd. in 3; Salinger 173).

In essence, Holden Caulfield is a good guy stuck in a bad world. He is trying to make the best of his life, though ultimately losing that battle. Whereas he aims at stability and truth, the adult world cannot survive without suspense and lies. It is a testament to his innocence and decent spirit that Holden wouldplace the safety and well-being of children as a goal in his lifetime. This serves to only re-iterate the fact that Holden is a sympathetic character, a person of high moral values who is too weak to pick himself up from a difficult situation.

S.N. Behrman, in his review for The New Yorker, also took a sharp look at Holden's personality. Behrman found Caulfield to be very self-critical, as he often refers to himself as a terrible liar, a madman, and a moron. Holden is driven crazy by phoniness, an idea under which he lumps insincerity, snobbery, injustice, callousness, and a lot more. He is a prodigious worrier, and someone who is moved to pity quite often. Behrman wrote: "Grown men sometimes find the emblazoned obscenities of life too much for them, and leave this world indecorously, so the fact that a 16-year old boy is overwhelmed should not be surprising" (71). Holden is also labeled as curious and compassionate, a true moral idealist whose attitude comes from an intense hatred of hypocrisy. The novel opens in a doctor's office, where Holden is recuperating from physical illness and a mental breakdown. In Holden's fight with Stradlater, his roommate, he reveals his moral ideals: he fears his roommate's sexual motives, and he values children for their sincerity and innocence, seeking to protect them from the phony adult society. Jane Gallagher and Allie, the younger brother of Holden who died at age 11, represent his everlasting symbols of goodness (Davis 317).

A quote by Charles Kegel seems to adequately sum up the problems of Holden Caulfield: "Like Stephen Dedalus of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Caulfield is in search of the Word. His problem is one of communication: as a teenager, he simply cannot get through to the adult world which surrounds him; as a sensitive teenager, he cannot get through others of his own age" (54).

When critics consider the character of Holden Caulfield, many point to the novel's climactic scene, when Holden watches as Phoebe rides the Central Park carousel in the rain and his illusion of protecting the innocence of children is symbolically shattered. Critics regard this episode as Holden's transition into adulthood, for although the future is uncertain, his severed ties with the dead past have enabled him to accept maturity. James Bryan observed: "The richness in the spirit of this novel, especially of the vision, the compassion, and the humor of the narrator reveal a physche far healthier than that of the boy who endured the events of the narrative. Through the telling of the story, Holden has given shape to, and thus achieved control of, his troubled past" (qtd. in Davis 318).

S.N. Behrman noted in his critique of The Catcher in the Rye that the hero and heroine of the novel, Holden's dead brother Allie and Jane Gallagher, never appear in it, but they are always in Holden's mind, together with his sister, Phoebe. These three people constitute Holden's emotional frame of reference -- the reader knows them better than the other characters Holden encounters, who are generally, except for Phoebe, nonessential (71).

When asked for a final comment on the character of Holden Caulfield, John Aldrige stated that the innocence of the main character was a combination of urban intelligence, juvenile contempt, and New Yorker sentimentalism. The only challenge it has left, therefore, is that of the genuine, the truly human, in a world which has lost both the means of adventure and the means of love (130).

One of the most intriguing points in Holden's character, related to his prolonged inability to communicate, is Holden's intention to become a deaf-mute. So repulsed is he by the phoniness around him that he wishes not to communicate with anyone, and in a passage filled with personal insight he contemplates a retreat within himself: "I figured that I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversation with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone . . . I'd cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I'd meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we'd getmarried. She'd come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she'd have to write it on a piece of paper, like everybody else" (Salinger 198).

Caulfield's inability to communicate with others is also represented symbolically in the uncompleted phone calls and undelivered messages which appear throughout the novel . . . On fifteen separate occasions, Holden gets the urge to communicate by phone, yet only four phone calls are ever completed, and even those are with unfortunate results (Kegel 55).

The final step in the critical analyzing of The Catcher in the Rye is to look at what has occurred at or near the end of the novel. John Aldrige wrote that in the end, Holden remains what he was in the beginning- cyni cal, defiant, and blind. As for the reader, there is identification but no insight, a sense of"pathos but not tragedy." This may be Salinger's intent, as Holden's world does not possess sufficient humanity to make the search for humanity dramatically feasible (131).

Other critics, however, have taken a slightly more optimistic view of the novel's conclusion. For example, S.N. Behrman remarked that Holden knows that things won't remain the same; they are dissolving, and he cannot allow himself to reconcile with it. Holden doesn't have the knowledge to trace his breakdown or the mental clarity to define it, for all he knows is that "a large avalanche of disintegration is occurring around him" (75). Yet there is some sort of exhilaration, an immense relief in the final scene at Central Park, when we know Holden will be all right. Behrman quipped: "One day, he will probably find himself in the mood to call up Jane. He may become more tolerant of phonies . . . or even write a novel. I would like to read it. I loved this one. I mean it- I really did" (75-6). Charles Kegel wrote that Holden will not submit to the phoniness of life, but will attain an attitude of tolerance, understanding, and love which will make his life endurable. There is no doubt that when he returns home to New York, for he will return home, he will be in the mood to give "old Jane a buzz" (56).

In the end, The Catcher in the Rye will continue to be a point of great public and critical debate. One must remember, however, in the study and critique of the novel, particularly for a researcher or critic in 1996, that the story was written in a different time. If originally published today, the novel would probably create little publicity and garner only average book sales. The fact that a novel of such radical social opinion and observation was written in a time of conservatism in America made it all the more controversial. Some critics scolded the novel as being too pessimistic or obscene, too harsh for the society of the 1950's. Others, however, nominated Salinger himself as the top-flight "catcher in the rye" for that period in American history (Peterson 3). They argued that Salinger's concerns represented an entire generation of American youth, frustrated by the phoniness of the world, just like Holden was. The popularity of the novel and debate over its redeeming social value have never faltered since its initial publication, due in no large part to the fact that J.D. Salinger is now a recluse. It would be conclusive to say that critics of The Catcher in the Rye have legitimate criticisms of the novel, while advocates and supporters of the story's message also have expressed veritable praise.


Works Cited

Aldrige, John. "The Society of Three Novels." In Search of Heresy: American Literature in an Age of Conformity. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1956, 126-48.

Behrman, S.N. "The Vision of the Innocent." Rev. of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. The New Yorker, Vol. XXVII, No. 26, 11 August 1951, 71-6.

Breit, Harvey. Rev. of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. The Atlantic Bookshelf, Vol. CLXXXVIII, No. 2, August 1951, 82.

Davis, Robert Con, ed. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 56. Detroit: Gail Research Inc., 1989.

Engle, Paul. "Honest Tale of Distraught Adolescent." Rev. of The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine of Books 15 July 1951, 3.

Goodman, Anne. "Mad about Children." Rev. of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. The New Republic, Vol. 125, No. 3, 16 July 1951, 20-1.

Kegel, Charles. "Incommunicability in Salinger's 'The Catcher in the Rye'." Studies in J.D. Salinger: Reviews, Essays, and Critiques of 'The Catcher in the Rye' and Other Fiction, Marvin Laser, ed. New York: Odyssey Press, 1963, 53-6.

Peterson, Virgilia. "Three Days in the Bewildering World of an Adolescent." Rev. of The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. New York Herald Tribune Book Review 15 July 1951, 3.

Salinger, Jerome David. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1951.

Stern, James. "Aw, the World's a Crumby Place." Rev. of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. New York Times Book Review 15 July 1951, 5.

Stevenson, David. "J.D. Salinger: The Mirror of Crisis." The Nation, Vol. 184, No. 10, 9 March 1957, 215-17.

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The above article written by by Eric Lomazoff, published at http://www.levity.com/corduroy/salinger1.htm

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The Champion, a stunning novel by Tim Binding

# Paperback: 400 pages
# Publisher: Picador (4 Feb 2011)
# Language English
# ISBN-10: 0330536257
# ISBN-13: 978-0330536257


Charles Pemberton lives in a small Kentish town that is as middle-class as they come.

His dad is well-respected, the family has money and a nice house and he gets sent to the local fee-paying school. And then along comes 'Large' - who is (whisper it quietly) working-class.

But what a guy. He's charismatic, charming and larger than life in all ways. He can get everyone on his side and proceeds to do so.

Charles wants to hate him, but can anyone really hate Large?

Tim Binding writes this superbly. All the characters are wonderfully drawn and the story is so beguiling and one that most of us will recognise - basically a typical class clash and one that is played out and laid out wonderfully.

This story portrays all the pettiness and small-town rivalries that exist nationwide, as well as the resentment felt by people seeing ex-schoolmates doing better than them.

This had me hooked from the outset and I rattled through it. A joy of a read.

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A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Viergut

In 1981, eleven-year-old Saba Hafezi watches as her mother and twin sister, Mahtab, board a plane to America, leaving her in a seaside village in northern Iran. Though she is certain of what she saw, Saba's broken father and colorful slew of surrogate grandmothers claim that Mahtab is dead and that Saba should forget about her troublesome mother; nevertheless, there are others who attribute Saba's belief in her sister's survival to “twin-sense” and relish the possibility that Mahtab might still be alive. Over the next seventeen years, Saba immerses herself in illegal western books, movies, and magazines, and weaves an exquisite parallel American life for her twin sister, one that mirrors her own in bizarre and unlikely ways—and rivals the fates of Ivy-League western shahs—a life that the bookish Saba too might have lived if she'd been allowed to get on that plane.

Beginning with small tokens of adolescence and moving to larger coincidences of unrequited love, the violent consequences of forced marriage to a much older man, and motherhood, Mahtab’s hazier American story keeps pace with her sister like a shadow. Mahtab loses a lover when Saba does. Mahtab finds unexpected wealth in the same way as Saba. But whereas Saba’s story has all the grit and brutality of real life in post-revolution Iran, Mahtab’s is like an American television show as imagined under an Iranian storyteller’s blanket, always returning power and control to the heroine’s hands.

A TEASPOON OF EARTH AND SEA uses strong, colorful characters, a unique narrative voice, and rural eastern storytelling techniques with western-style prose to convey a sense of mystery and a compelling message about identity and being the mistress of one's own fate while living and battling within the fantasy of our other "selves." The bittersweet ending leaves the reader wondering if it matters at all where life takes us or why. Maybe the soul is unchanging and—as the old saying goes—life is written in the veins.

[Riverhead (World English) 2012; Edizioni Piemme (Italy) 2012; Rocco (Brazil) 2012; De Bezige Bij (Netherlands) 2012; Editions Calmann-Levy (France) 2012; Gyldendal (Norway) 2012; Damm (Sweden) 2012; Mare (Germany) 2012; Grup (Turkey) 2012; Modern Press (China) 2012; Wydawnictwo Otwarte (Poland) 2012; Thaning & Appel (Denmark)].

About the author
Dina N. Viergutz was born to a controversial family of doctors and poets in Iran in 1979 and lived and traveled there throughout the Iran-Iraq war. Having escaped the country on the day of her mother’s intended execution, Dina spent some years in Europe before moving to the United States. She speaks three languages and recently became a citizen of France (dual with U.S.), and has spent the last three years living in Paris and Amsterdam with her husband where she researched and wrote A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea. She is a graduate of Princeton and holds two masters degrees from Harvard, and she has just been accepted to the Iowa Writers Workshop beginning in the fall 2011. She has done an array of work, including leading strategic projects for Saks Fifth Avenue and McKinsey in New York City. As a Zuckerman Fellow at Harvard, she has discussed public policy with world leaders, and as a Teaching Fellow and keynote speaker (also at Harvard) she gave speeches to audiences of hundreds before she turned thirty.

picture taken from http://apps.facebook.com/facebookshelf/people/1700632880

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Before I Go to Sleep: A Harrowing Psychological Thrillers

If you're into psychological thrillers, Before I Go to Sleep by S J Watson is the book for you. The novel opens with a "young woman" waking up with no idea where she is. We only know what she knows...as she keeps going, we learn that she's not so young and she has no clear memory of...well...anything. At the end of the first chapter (Pt 1), we learn that she's been keeping a journal. The second part of the book is her journal entries over the last couple of weeks. We only know what she remembers to write down and she only knows what other people tell her. The writing is incredible, the characters are intriguing...so much mystery and a twist ending.



I predict that this is going to be one of the hottest books of this summer. Not only is it brilliant, fast paced and impossible to put down, it's already been sold in 32 countries and to Ridley Scott, who has picked a director for it and has scheduled production on the movie for later this year. That's damn impressive for a debut novel that is basically the result of taking one course on writing at the impressive Faber Academy.

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Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson

Hardcover, 368 pages
Expected publication: June 14th 2011 by HarperCollins
Before I Go to Sleep is the debut novel by S J Watson, due to be published in 36 countries.


What if I wake up tomorrow and don't know who I am?
What if I have no idea who I can trust?
What is the truth?
Who is telling me the truth?
Who am I?
Who was I yesterday?
What will happen tomorrow?

These kinds of questions are often what life is really about. But what would it be like to wake up in a room you do not recognize, not to know the person in bed with you, not knowing what day today is, how old you are and what your name is? How would you know who to trust, other than the person who is there everyday telling you?

Christine goes to sleep every night knowing that tomorrow her life will begin all over again. Her husband Ben tells her gently each morning that she has had a traumatic head injury and suffers from amnesia. No one has suggested to her to keep a daily journal until Dr. Nash enters the picture. He even calls her daily to remind her where she is hiding her journal and that she should read it.

With this journal and the help of Dr. Nash, Christine begins to understand her past and her present. Nothing is as it seems to be. And I can say no more of this story, you must read it for yourself.

This novel is so well written that you don't even think about the writing. This leaves one to be totally immersed in the story. I am not a fast reader and it often takes me a week or so to read a book. With this book, I would start reading and realize an hour had passed and I was totally unaware of anything other than the story. It took over my life, I didn't fall asleep reading it like I usually do with novels. I lay awake at night wondering how Christine could even go to sleep at night. I tried to remember a time when I woke up and didn't know where I was.

This may seem strange but all through reading the book I thought S.J. Watson was a woman. I think this is partially because I read an entry of his blog where he used an analogy of raising a child and sending it out into the world to compare to having his book published. Now I am thinking he should feel complemented that I thought he was a woman until I happened to read the blurb on the cover that refers to "him". He totally convinced me that Christine was a realistic character. Basically this book is gender neutral. It should be enjoyed by everyone who likes an exciting absorbing story.

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visit the official book website at http://www.sjwatson-books.com, the author blog http://www.sj-watson.blogspot.com/

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Prom and Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg vs Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

They were published 200 years apart, but they have a ton in common. Of course we’re talking about Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Elizabeth Eulberg’s Prom and Prejudice, both of which are quoted below. The thing is, can you tell which quote came from which book? Our thanks to Elizabeth for compiling these quotes!



1. “I never realized what a luxury kindness could be.”
2. “Do you really think with your circumstance you’ll be getting other offers?”
3. “Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.”
4. “I have been a selfish being all my life…”
5. “Then I took him in, kneeling before me, giving me the best proposal of all.”
6. “He seemed to be at a loss for words. No doubt this was the first time such a thing had ever happened to him.”
7. “It is your turn to say something now, Darcy.”
8. “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”
9. “To not attend would be a scandal from which a young girl would never be able to recover.”
10. “Since the first moment I met you. You have been nothing but conceited and standoffish.”
11. “Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.”
12. “He expressed no regret for what he had done…”


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this quiz posted at http://novelnovice.com

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Prom & Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg

From the much-buzzed-about author of THE LONELY HEARTS CLUB (already blurbed by Stephenie Meyer, Lauren Myracle, and Jen Calonita), a prom-season delight of Jane Austen proportions.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single guy in his spring semester at Pemberly Academy must be in want of a prom date.

After winter break, the girls at very prestigious, very wealthy, girls-only Longbourn Academy are suddenly obsessed with the prom, which they share with the nearby, equally elitist, all-boys Pemberly school. Lizzie Bennett, who attends Longbourn on scholarship, isn't exactly interested in designer dresses and expensive shoes, but her best friend, Jane, might be - especially now that Charles Bingley is back from a semester in London.

Lizzie is happy about her friend's burgeoning romance, but less than impressed by Will Darcy, Charles's friend, who's as snobby and pretentious as his friend is nice. He doesn't seem to like Lizzie either, but she assumes it's because her family doesn't have money. It doesn't help that Charles doesn't seem to be asking Jane to be his prom date, or that Lizzie meets George Wickham, who tells her that Will Darcy sabotaged his scholarship at Pemberly. Clearly Will Darcy is a pompous jerk who looks down on the middle class - so imagine Lizzie's surprise when he asks her to the prom!

Will Lizzie's prejudice and Will's pride keep them apart? Or are they a prom couple in the making? From Elizabeth Eulberg comes a very funny, completely stylish prom-season delight of Jane Austen proportions.

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20 Classic Books to read before you die

1: Moby Dick
"Call me Ishmael." With these three words, Herman Melville began Moby Dick - perhaps the most important American novel of the 19th Century. Yet this great writer was almost forgotten by the time he died, and was even listed as Henry Melville in the New York Times obituary.

The downturn in his career was actually due to Moby Dick. Melville had previously been a successful writer of maritime adventure stories, but then he penned this ambitious tale of a maddened sea captain, obsessed with hunting down a white whale, and it proved a little too much for readers at the time.

Even critics were puzzled by Melville’s poetic, almost Biblical style of writing. It was only after his death that the book became accepted as the masterpiece it is - a compelling story that that also tackles big ideas like man’s place in nature, the need for meaning in life, and the nature of America itself.


2: 19 Dead Souls

Don’t be fooled by the morbid-sounding title: Dead Souls is actually one of the wittiest books of the 19th Century. It was written by Nikolai Gogol - not particularly famous outside Russia, but actually a major influence on both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Dead Souls is his only novel, and tells the story of an enterprising young man who travels around Russia buying up "dead souls" – that is, peasant workers who have died, but who are still registered as living in the census records. He purchases them from landowners, hoping that it will create the illusion that he owns many workers himself, and so allow him to extract huge loans from the government.

A broad and brilliant satire on society – Gogol caricatures and parodies nearly everyone, from gossiping housewives to cruel landowners to pompous officials - Dead Souls is also considered the first-ever Russian novel.


3: Bleak House

It may not be as famous as Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, but Bleak House has got to be Charles Dickens’s greatest novel. He crammed in everything he knew about Victorian London, and reading the result is the next best thing to time travel.

On the surface it’s a satirical (and still relevant) assault on the British legal system – how corrupt lawyers, aristocrats and businessmen use the courts for their own ends. Satire makes up just one layer of the novel however - it’s also a story of forbidden love, family secrets and intrigues.

And, being Dickens, the book is jam-packed with unforgettable characters, not least of all London itself– the sprawl of the city and the curling tentacles of fog have never been depicted so powerfully. This is escapism at its most beguiling.


4: Moll Flanders

Daniel Defoe’s best-known book will always be Robinson Crusoe, but a far bigger and more exciting read is Moll Flanders, his other great novel.

Moll is the daughter of a convict who's determined to become a respectable, wealthy lady and what follows is an often amusing, often tragic tale, as Moll gets married (repeatedly), commits accidental incest, becomes a prostitute, con woman and thief, and is made all too familiar with the walls of a prison cell.

A breathless ride through the muck and glitter of the 18th Century, the novel also gives us one of the most charismatic leading ladies in literature. Beautiful, witty and ruthless, Moll is thoroughly ahead of her time. Yet she’s also endearingly sweet and vulnerable, and you’ll find yourself egging her on, even as you wish she’d sort herself out.


5: Pride and Prejudice

Most people know a thing or two about Pride and Prejudice – if only because of Colin Firth’s dip into that pond. But, if you're only familiar with the story from seeing it on the screen, it’s well worth going back to the source.

Jane Austen’s best-loved novel is funny from the first page, and is just as much a comedy as a romance. Austen manages to sum up pretty much everything about romance and courtship – the awkward flirtation, the mixed messages, the way love can make fools of even the smartest and strongest of us.

Everyone knows Darcy, of course: one of the great romantic heroes of literature (which is quite an achievement considering how stuffy and humourless he is). But there are a whole gallery of characters to savour, from the grotesque Lady Catherine de Bourgh right up to the heroine Elizabeth Bennet – a sassy, witty gal who’d fit into the 21st Century with ease. This is chick-lit at its best!


6: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Anne Bronte has never found the same fame as her sisters Charlotte and Emily, which isn’t really fair because The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is one of the great 19th Century novels.

With it, Anne struck an early blow for women’s lib - it tells the story of a beautiful woman who leaves her womanising husband to make her own way in life. The heroine, Helen Huntingdon, has got to be one of the strongest female leads in English fiction – she’d certainly give Lizzy Bennet a run for her money.

However, this is a far cry from the wry, ordered world of Jane Austen. Helen’s story takes in alcoholism, decadent sex and social scandal, and the emotional turbulence of the novel almost rivals that of Wuthering Heights.


7: Vanity Fair

Charles Dickens may have been king of literary London in the mid-19th Century, but one arch-rival and pretender to the throne was William Makepeace Thackeray.

Determined to out-do Dickens, Thackeray produced a storming, rip-roaring epic of British life, gave it an utterly wicked heroine and called it Vanity Fair. While Dickens was certainly the writer with the wider scope and bigger heart, Thackeray was crueller, cooler and completely unsentimental.

Vanity Fair is the story of Becky Sharp, a deliciously wicked social climber who uses her looks, charm, and a fair bit of deceit, to bewitch men and amass as much money as possible. It's a biting satire on British society, and the hypocrisies of the upper classes, and definitely the Victorian novel for those looking for a proper page-turning romp.


8: Middlemarch

On the face of it, a novel subtitled "A Study of Provincial Life" may not sound like the most exciting read in the world. But George Eliot's Middlemarch is a strong contender for the title of greatest British novel of the 19th Century.

Eliot uses a small, fictitious town as a model for civilisation in general, exploring the nature of love, integrity, family, goodness and corruption. The central character, Dorothea, is a living saint – or at least wants to be one. Yet the irony is that choosing the right path for the right reasons is exactly what leads her into all kinds of trouble.

This is as big as British novels get – if the epic Russian novelist Tolstoy had been born in the UK, he would have come up with something like this. Luckily, we had the remarkable Eliot to do it instead, and she gave us what none other than Virginia Woolf later called "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people."


9: War and Peace

Here it is: the daddy of classic novels, the epic tale that many have called the greatest book of all time. But don’t be put off by its reputation, because this is a feast you’re going to enjoy.

Set in the early years of the 19th Century, Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece follows a cluster of Russian aristocrats as they face an invasion by Napoleon’s army. While the many battle scenes are vivid and suitably bloody, the book really excels when it comes to the conflict in human relationships. After all, Tolstoy was fascinated by one premise above all others - how does one keep one's morals intact when faced with a flawed and evil world?

With a book as wide-ranging as this, it’s no wonder so many other writers have compared Tolstoy to Shakespeare (although, ironically, Tolstoy himself never liked Shakespeare that much). War and Peace is one of those books you live rather than simply read. Make time for it, and you’ll see what all the fuss is about.


10: Madame Bovary

Shy, arrogant and disgusted by society - that was French novelist Gustave Flaubert. But this same misanthrope was also the man behind one of the most sensitive and moving portrayals of a woman’s life ever written.

Emma Bovary's husband is the classic “nice guy” – reliable, comforting and utterly dull. So Emma, desperate for passion and excitement, embarks on a series of heated affairs - but tragedy is the inevitable outcome. This exquisite book caused a scandal when it was published, and French public prosecutors wanted it banned for obscenity. Instead it became a bestseller and its clean, crisp style has influenced countless writers since.

That style was the result of Flaubert’s obsessive perfectionism – he would literally spend a week writing a single page, re-writing each sentence until everything was just right. The result is perhaps the ultimate story of adultery, and what drives people to betray each other.


11: Crime and Punishment

Few novels have been as influential and adored as Crime and Punishment. It was written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the legendary Russian novelist who was worshipped by everyone from Sigmund Freud to Einstein.

The novel itself tells the intense tale of a young impoverished student who sees himself as "extraordinary" and exempt from the normal rules of society. This gives him the right (he feels) to murder a pawnbroker and take her money. But, after butchering the unfortunate victim with an axe, he's plunged into guilt and self-loathing, while a sly detective closes in on him all the while...

Despite the weighty themes of guilt and redemption, Crime and Punishment is a gripping rollercoaster of a book. A thriller with brains, it’s something that will stay with you long after you reach the dramatic climax.


12: Daniel Deronda

Not content with having produced the gobsmacking masterpiece that is Middlemarch, George Eliot ended her career with yet another great novel: Daniel Deronda. It's famous now as one of the first – and most sympathetic – novels about British Jews.

Daniel Deronda, the sweet-natured and handsome hero, rescues a beautiful singer from killing herself in the Thames, and this leads him to explore and become a part of the Jewish community in London. Eliot cleverly weaves Daniel's journey of self-discovery into the story of Gwendolen, a young woman who begins as a spoilt society girl but slowly redeems herself by helping others.

For a book about Victorian society, it is startlingly relevant to today’s world events – one of the great themes is the migration of Jews to that part of the Middle East where Israel would later be formed. Yet is also a love story, and Eliot never allows the political and philosophical ideas to overshadow the people she creates.


13: Scarlet and Black

The French writer Stendhal had a way with 19th Century ladies. In fact, he was almost addicted to romance and seduction, which might explain the womanising hero of his classic novel Scarlet and Black.

It follows the unscrupulous young cad Julian Sorel as he uses his looks and intelligence to charm his way through French society in the years following Napoleon’s fall. Unfortunately, he’s less than wise in his choice of conquests, and his affair with the wife of a mayor begins a chain of events that put a bit of a dampener on his quest for wealth and power.

But is Julian to be admired or not? This question is what makes the novel so intriguing. The book challenges our own ideals by presenting a person who is guilty of deceit and selfishness, but who is no worse than many of the people he manipulates. By examining his motives, you’ll find yourself questioning your own take on the world.


14: Persuasion

Jane Austen’s novels are all incredibly famous – except this one. For some reason, Persuasion has never enjoyed the same adulation as Emma, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, yet in some ways it's her richest work.

That could be because it was her last and was, in fact, published after her death. Unlike Austen's other books, which focus on budding society girls experimenting with first loves, this one delves into the life of a more mature woman. The heroine, Anne Elliot, is persuaded to refuse an offer of marriage because her suitor isn't 'respectable' enough. Many years later, Anne's former love returns as a wealthy man - but is it all too late?

Persuasion is thoughtful and nostalgic - it’s fascinating to see Austen tackle themes of regret and lost love, rather than straightforward courtship. For that reason, it’s the perfect complement to her other masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice.


15: Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad produced a number of genuine classics but his best work is the relatively short Heart of Darkness - perhaps the single finest attack on colonialism ever written.

It tells of Marlow, an Englishman who takes a consignment of ivory down the Congo River in a Belgian-occupied area of Africa. During the journey he witnesses many atrocities carried out on the native Africans by the colonialists, and learns of an ivory trader named Kurtz who has set himself up as a demigod among the tribes of the region.
With Kurtz, Conrad shows us how colonialism – and the idea of "civilising" other races – can backfire and corrupt the occupying forces. It's a potent fable that can be applied to many other moments in history - Francis Ford Coppola famously used it to study the Vietnam war in Apocalypse Now.


16: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. There was nothing before, there has been nothing as good since."

That was Ernest Hemingway's opinion and, while he was probably being a bit over-the-top, it does say something about just how important Huckleberry Finn is. Twain intended it as a simple adventure yarn, but the book actually ended up being a call to freedom and rebellion.

Written from Huck’s point of view (and the American slang style is one of its many marvels), the story follows the teenager as he and a freed slave named Jim sail down the Mississippi on a raft. Along the way they encounter all manner of undesirable people and situations, which strengthens their resolve to reject mainstream society.

The book’s savage attack on the evil of slavery is what gives it power, but it’s also a beautiful tale of childhood, contrasting the innocent idealism of the young with the violence and corruption of the adult world. Take a look, and see why Hemingway was in such awe...


17: The Picture of Dorian Gray

This is the one-and-only novel published by the legendary wit Oscar Wilde and it's just as deliciously wicked as you’d expect a Wilde work to be. Dorian is a strikingly beautiful and vain young man who wishes he'd never grow old. The wish comes true, and instead it's a portrait of Dorian which begins to age – and then bears the signs of his growing cruelty and corruption.

This is Wilde’s take on the old Faust myth and it's a classic of late Victorian literature, full of debauched dandies smoking opium cigarettes whilst discussing art, sex and morality. Indeed, it was considered somewhat shocking in its day, particularly because of the undercurrent of homosexuality.

It's a great read but, if nothing else, you should give it a go if only to arm yourself with some killer one-liners to deploy at your next dinner party!


18: Tristram Shandy

When a clergyman named Laurence Sterne published Tristram Shandy in the mid-18th Century, the sheer originality (and strangeness) of the text caused many a critic to roll their eyes. Even Samuel Johnson pronounced: "Tristram Shandy will not last!"

But it did last - perhaps because the book’s sense of humour is shockingly modern, filled with so many clever tricks, bawdy gags and wantonly silly interludes that you’d think the Monty Python team wrote it (while drunk).

The plot itself is simple - it’s the story of the life of a chap named Tristram Shandy, as recounted by him. But it’s the blissfully chaotic style that makes it so extraordinary. Shandy begins with his parents in bed, conceiving him, and goes off on so many wild tangents that he’s not even born until hundreds of pages in.

Packed full of sly jokes, strange drawings and crazed misadventures, it’s perhaps the wackiest classic of all time. It was also Virginia Woolf’s favourite book, so isn’t it time you had a dose of Shandy?


19: Dracula

It may not be as beautifully written as some of the other books on our list, but Dracula is probably the best known of them all. After all, Bram Stoker’s novel gave the world a character so iconic that we’ve seen him in films, TV shows, comics, cartoons, musicals and computer games.

Yet the book is much more than just the story of a blood-sucking count - it’s a fascinating study of Victorian morality and sexuality. Dracula himself is a tempter who utterly corrupts sweet Victorian maidens, and it’s up to the gang of waistcoated heroes to see off this wild creature and restore proper etiquette and order.

Dracula remains a great horror story, taking us from Transylvania to England and back again, so forget Buffy, Interview with the Vampire and all the countless imitators - snuggle up with the original Dracula and get to know the vampire who started it all!


20: Wuthering Heights
And finally... well, we couldn't really leave Emily Bronte's ubiquitous tale of passion, tragedy and temperamental tantrums off the list, could we?

As surely everyone knows, at the heart of Wuthering Heights is Heathcliff – the ultimate literary bad boy, whose love for Yorkshire maiden Cathy is balanced only by his hatred for just about everybody else. And, when Cathy chooses a more respectable man as her husband, it drives Heathcliff into a fury that destroys both their lives.

But that’s not even the half of it. Because, while everyone thinks of the Bronte novel as the story of Cathy and her rough, dangerous, scheming suitor, it also chronicles the lives of a second generation who are affected by Heathcliff’s need for vengeance. It’s an epic, compelling and quietly complex tale.

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http://uktv.co.uk/yesterday/stepbystep/aid/574462

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10 ways digital books are changing our literary live

The Hermitage Bookshop in Cherry Creek North, decidedly old-school with its oak furniture and elaborate Persian rug, isn't where you'd expect to find a fan of e-books, but listen to owner Bob Topp: "E-books have increased the purchase of print books," he says.

"It's easy for people to read the Sunday paper, look at a book review, and 10 minutes later, they've got that e-book on their Kindle. More people reading is good. I think it's way too early to say that the e-book will kill the hardback."

Topp doesn't use an e-reader, but his wife does. She praises its ability to store hundreds of novels in a slim, mobile device that weighs less than most of the venerable collectible books on the Hermitage shelves.

Certainly, digital publishing is changing the way people consume books — how and where they acquire books, and how and where they read. Here are 10 examples, old school versus new.

PRINT BOOKS: We joined book clubs.

DIGITAL BOOKS: We discuss them in booklogs. Readers extract favorite (or hated) passages from books to comment on in dedicated blogs, aided by Google, which is indexing and ranking individual book pages and passages, based on online chatter. Read a perplexing or inspiring passage and then instantly browse comments from other readers — effectively, a global book club. This option takes reading a book from being an individual activity to a group sport.

Some examples: bookblog.net, book-blog .com, and Kirkus Review's kirkusreviews .com/meet-the-bloggers, an aggregation of book blogs.

PRINT BOOKS: We find them in libraries, bookstores and bookmobiles.

DIGITAL BOOKS: For people who own personal computers, e-readers, smartphones, iPads and other tablets, there's 2 4/7 access to libraries and bookstores for purchasing, borrowing and downloading material.

However, people who don't own those devices are left behind. Underfunded schools, for example, barely have funds for printed books, much less e-books, e-readers or laptops, educators say.

"I hate to see our increasingly divided culture leave the poor further behind by making texts available mostly in unaffordable and impractical formats," says Denver School of the Arts literature teacher Gregg Painter.

PRINT BOOKS: Scribble notes in the margins.

DIGITAL BOOKS: We use Kindle's Public Notes virtual annotation application.

Want to see how this works? Go to kindle.amazon.com, click on "Most Popular," then "Books with the most public notes," then on a title to bring up a list of note-writers, and clicking the "+" sign next to each name to see an individual's notes.

Notes aren't necessarily illuminating — "Note: look up ostergarden in wikipedia," writes Joel Gianoli in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." (It's a farm in Sweden.)

But they could be. Imagine looking up the notes that previous students leave in e-textbooks. Or seeing Jon Stewart's comments in the margins of Sarah Palin's latest tome.

PRINT BOOKS: Write to a favorite author, hope for a response by mail.

DIGITAL BOOKS: Visit a favorite author's Facebook page to send a message and a friend request; follow that author's Twitter feed. Fort Collins author Lauren Myracle, whose latest book, "Shine," has its own Facebook page, maintains at least three Facebook pages that are followed avidly by fans who exchange views with her.

"Last night I read 'The Corsage' and you were absolutely right! Very scary stuff! It took me two hours to try and sleep last night," wrote fan Emma Dougherty.

Loveland historical mystery writer Charlotte Hinger calculates that she spends nearly as much time promoting her books on Facebook and other social media as she does researching and writing "Lethal Lineage" and her other books. Her Facebook page quotes Agatha Christie, and her wall updates fans on book signings, reviews, conferences and her progress on her new novel, "Hidden Heritage."

PRINT BOOKS: Collect an author's autograph at a bookstore reading.

DIGITAL BOOKS:Use Autography, which debuts next month. It's a software program that allows writers to autograph an e-book using an iPad. The writer calls up his book, inserts a blank page between the title page and the first chapter, and then inscribes the blank page. The process takes less than three minutes, and authors can e-mail their inscriptions remotely.

PRINT BOOKS: Want to publish a book? You'll need a proposal, an agent, an editor, a publisher and a marketing department

DIGITAL BOOKS: Want to publish a book? There's an app for that, and authors can be quite successful. Amanda Hocking, JA Konrath and Karen McQuestion all are authors as famous for their aggressive self-promotion as for their books. However, self-publishing isn't always a good thing.

"There are a lot of crummy self- published books," says Colorado agent Jodi Rein.

"But a lot of good writers are choosing to go that route, too. It can be great for writers, because they can keep more of the profits. Who's going to be the gatekeeper? It used to be that you'd walk into a bookstore and know that the books had been vetted by editors and publishers. If anyone can get published, do books still have value?"

PRINT BOOKS: Donate used books to charity, sell them to a secondhand bookstore.

DIGITAL BOOKS: "Used books" don't exist. Purchased books remain indefinitely on e-readers. Amazon Kindle books are automatically backed up on Amazon servers, so if a reader loses a Kindle or wants to upgrade, the books on the old Kindle move to the new one. The Kindle app will do the same thing for an iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Phone, plus Macs and PCs.

PRINT BOOKS:Swap books with friends.

DIGITAL BOOKS: Until recently, the options were mostly limited to loaning your e-reader (and the books on it) to friends, or resorting to pirated files. Amazon's Lendle allows users to share certain (not all) Kindle titles for 14 days, similar to the way libraries arrange e-book loans.

The borrower doesn't need a Kindle, just a Kindle reading application for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry or Android.

PRINT BOOKS: Find an unfamiliar word in a book? Get a dictionary, look up the meaning.

DIGITAL BOOKS:Use your e-reader to highlight the word and click on it, and the definition will display at the bottom of the page. This function is available on newer e-readers, including the latest Kindle, which includes the New Oxford American Dictionary.

PRINT BOOKS:Collecting rare books, including first editions and antiquarian books.

DIGITAL BOOKS:There's no equivalent so far. Hermitage owner Bob Topp says he sees quite a few new customers who've become fans of an author after reading several digital books.

"It's a whole new group of people discovering a new world of older books, a dimension they never knew about," he says.

"They come into our store, and the look in their eyes is 'Book! I just gotta touch a book!' They've read the e-book on the plane, but now they want a book they can hold in their hand."

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SOURCE: http://www.denverpost.com

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Books to Read for in April 2011

Please Look After Mom
By Kyung-sook Shin
256 pages; Knopf

This best-seller set in the author's native Korea examines a family's history through the story of the matriarch, mysteriously gone missing from a Seoul train station.



Started Early, Took My Dog: A Novel
By Kate Atkinson
384 pages; Reagan Arthur Books

Retired detective Tracy Waterhouse is not prone to heedless action—until that day at the mall when she makes the mother of all impulse buys. One minute she's watching a little girl being mistreated by her junkie mom, feeling "despair and frustration as she contemplated the blank but already soiled canvas of the kid's future." The next she's asking: "How much for the kid?" So begins Kate Atkinson's Started Early, Took My Dog (Reagan Arthur), the latest novel to feature private investigator Jackson Brodie, first seen in the author's 2005 Case Histories. Set in the English city of Leeds, the book alternates between the present and 1975, when then-rookie policewoman Tracy discovered another mistreated child, who eventually becomes part of Jackson's current investigation. While their lives only briefly intersect, they are kindred souls. Both Tracy and Jackson are tough, decent, appealingly vulnerable, and, in middle age, more than a little wistful about the choices they've made. (As Tracy contemplates her Faustian bargain, she thinks: "She could have someone to love but it would cost her everything.") Mixing wry wit and gritty realism, Atkinson deftly smudges the border between literary and detective fiction—with complex, compelling characters negotiating a maze of grisly violence, dark secrets, and shadowy dangers.


The Free World
By David Bezmozgis
368 pages; Farrar, Straus and Giroux

How dreamy—summer in Rome and the nearby seaside with family and friends. Except that the Soviet Jews thrown together there in David Bezmozgis's electrifying debut novel The Free World (FSG) are immigrants and refugees stranded in 1978 as they await visas to their Promised Land, wherever that may be. Canada? The United States? Australia? Bezmozgis, himself a transplant from Latvia to Toronto, displays a quicksilver empathy and quiet, burning admiration for the strong women attached to three generations of Krasnanskys, a family that Roman exile threatens to break apart. The matriarch, Emma, is a "simple creature" sidelined by the chaos of change. Her daughter-in-law Polina, a Christian among Jews, contends with a wayward husband, Alec, the handsome, slippery lover boy at the story's violent core. Both women have lost children, a bond that unites them despite the differences in their marriages, their ages, and their experiences of Rome. As for the men—oy: criminal mishaps, misguided love affairs, and a stubborn refusal to let go of a Soviet past even though it betrayed them with anti-Semitism, famine, and war. Along with the darkness, though, there is beauty here: "Dmitri led them out of the necropolis, past a statue of a headless, armless man in a toga, and along a street of bleached stone ruins, with their exposed floors mutely resigned to the whims of the sky." These are the charms of the ancient city, but for the Krasnanskys they can't compare to the lure of a new life.


You Think That's Bad
By Jim Shepard
240 pages; Knopf

"Cinematic" is one way to describe Jim Shepard's collection You Think That's Bad (Knopf). Each story takes you to a different place and time; from a British cartographer's circa 1930 exploration of the Arabian desert to a futuristic take on global warming, these exterior worlds are as fantastically fashioned as the characters themselves. In "Netherlands Lives with Water" (included in Best American Short Stories 2010), right before the sea swallows Rotterdam, a husband thinks about his wife: "We told each other I think I know when we should've said Lead me farther through your amazing, astonishing interior." Shepard's cataclysmic renderings are both terrifying and awe- inspiring. There's a word for that, too—sublime.


Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World
By Tina Rosenberg
402 pages; W. W. Norton & Company

Here are some things we know peer pressure can cause: smoking, driving drunk, buying stuff we don't need. Here are some things Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tina Rosenberg has seen peer pressure do: increase math performance among minority students, help prevent the spread of HIV, contribute to the demise of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic's repressive regime. In her smart and earnest book, Join the Club (Norton), Rosenberg, a MacArthur "genius" grant recipient, debunks the popular notion that peer pressure is always bad and argues that by helping people find positively persuasive cohorts, we can change the world. One unforgettable example: a stop-smoking campaign in Florida that convinced teenagers it was more rebellious and cool to confront the tobacco companies than to use their products. "Peer pressure is a mighty and terrible force—so powerful that, for the vast majority of people, the best antidote to it is more peer pressure."

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oprah.com

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Digital Rights in the Age of E-books and Amazon's Apology

It's not every day that the country's largest retail website site submits a candid apology to users for an action that is self-described as "stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with [its] principles." CEO of Amazon, Jeffrey Bezos, did just that when he apologized on the company's behalf for removing the George Orwell's classics, Animal Farm and 1984, from customers' Kindle accounts last week.

When Amazon realized it was selling unauthorized e-copies of the works to customers to download on their Kindle accounts, it acted swiftly and in line with provisions of its Digital Rights Management (DRM) agreement with customers, to remove the content from subscribing accounts, and refund customers for their purchase. And while Amazon's actions may seem reasonable in a broad sense of correcting a mistake, the poetic irony of the situation certainly has not escaped the media and Amazon customers---and has sparked the re-ignition of public debate over digital rights.

As one Amazon customer commented online, "I liken it to a Barnes & Noble clerk coming to my house when I'm not home, taking a book I bought from them from my bookshelf and leaving cash in its place...It's a violation of my property and this is a perfect example of why people (rightly) hate DRM" This sentiment of unsettlement has been shared by the general public and tech bloggers alike, and the mutterings of discontent follow release of Amazon.com's second-quarter earnings showing a 10% decline.

But is an e-book a purchaser's property?

Amazon's DRM is heavy with restrictions and limitations---namely, unlike buying physical books, there is no first right of sale with Kindle e-books. Customers then, purchase a limited license to read the book, and do not actually own a copy of it.

The heavy restrictions associated with the DRM have been an ire with customers since the introduction of Kindle in 2007. In light of the recent Big Brother-esque actions, the spotlight is on Amazon to make the connection between customers and their Kindle e-books more palatable. [source: http://blogs.findlaw.com]

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How is literature relevant today?

# I would argue that literature is relevant to today's generation in the same way it was relevant to my own (born in 1970) generation.

Literature has always been relevant only to those who care. Literature has been (at least since my youth) an optional thing. You could easily go through life without truly encountering "good" literature. I think it is the same now.

For those who care about it, literature continues to be relevant. It continues to allow people to explore and contemplate the human condition. That, too, has not changed.

So I guess I don't see a real difference between literature's relevance today and its relevance to my generation.

## I think there are all kinds of things in literature that are still relevant, and if you consider a rather wide range of books to be literature, even more are relevant.

If you read any science fiction, it is still a wonderful place where the moral and ethical questions raised by powerful new technologies are raised and dealt with. These can be particularly helpful to those willing to pay attention to them as our society generally fails to raise these questions and rushes headlong into any new technology without pausing for breath.


### Literature and technology are not mutually exclusive. In fact, with the use of technology, literature can reach a far wider audience than ever. Technology is merely a vehicle - literature is the passenger. Literature remains a great unifying and illuminating force - one of the ways in which we learn and celebrate ideas, share experiences, connect to our pasts, gain insights into other cultures and share in hope for the future.

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this quoted from www.enotes.com

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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.


****

"The Great Gatsby" is considered by many to be the zenith of american fiction writing in the last century. I won't say that it is the best american novel I've read but I will say it is probably the most perfect.

Along with J.D. Salinger, Fitzgerald has got to be my favorite writer of fiction. As opposed to Hemingway's bluntness, and Faulkner's artiness, Fitzgerald's prose seems(to paraphrase Michael Chabon) to rain down from style heaven. His style in fact is like the ladies he writes about: cool, lean and absolutely enchanting. He would never dream of overwriting and knows exactly when to hold back for maximum effect. His use of the language is assured and consequently eminently readable. For that alone this should be considered the Mona Lisa of prose.

What is astounding though is how he puts his sparsely elegant style to use giving his characters shade and depth. Fitzgerald is a true student of humanity and his skills of observation are razor sharp. He sums up his characters in sentences that read like aphorisms bulging with truth about the human condition. There's not a page goes by I'm not gasping at the depth of his vision and the economy he uses to express it.

So far I've dwelt on how he wrote and not on what he wrote. People who'd back another nag in the Great American Novel derby knock Fitzgerald's sophomoric (their word not mine) obsession with romance between men and women. They reduce his works to the level of melodramatic tear jerkers. This is a gross simplification of his talents. Yes "Gatsby" focuses on a doomed love affair but it does so to illustrate the errors in thinking that he felt marred his generation.

Gatsby is about the hollowness of the American dream as dreamt in the twenties. Fitzgerald looked around him (and in the mirror)and saw men and women locked in a frenzied and ultimatley doomed race for speed, money and sin. Gatsby and Daisy's love is doomed because their values have been distorted by money and comfort and opulence. They cannot see the depths because they are too easily distracted by shiny surfaces. When Daisy cries as Gatsby shows off his elegantly tailored shirts because she has never seen clothes so beautiful sums up perfectly how for her exteriors matter most. This is at the heart of the tragedy that unfolds before us in this delicious little novel.

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What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

I seem to have developed a fondness for approaching great writers via the road less traveled. I read John Cheever’s “Journals” before his stories and novels. I got around to Joseph Brodsky’s poems, in “A Part of Speech,” only after reading “Watermark,” his short book on Venice. Martin Amis? I started off with the bits of journalism in “The Moronic Inferno” and then moved on to “Money.” And now I commence my reading of Haruki Murakami, not with “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” or “Norwegian Wood” but with this little book about running. I’m guessing that the potential readership for “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” is 70 percent Murakami nuts, 10 percent running enthusiasts and an overlapping 20 percent who will be on the brink of orgasm before they’ve even sprinted to the cash register. And then there’s me, the zero-percenter: a non-running Murakami virgin. Oh well. The supreme test of nonfiction is that it be interesting irrespective of the reader’s indifference to the subject under discussion, and a great writer’s work is obviously beflecked with greatness whatever the occasion. So the terms of the test are clear.

Murakami began running seriously when he was 33, in 1982. In recent years he has covered an average of six miles a day, six days a week and has competed in more than 20 marathons. In 1996 he completed an ultramarathon of 62 miles. Lately he’s developed a fondness for triathlons, and although he’s fighting a losing battle these days against his own previous (that is, younger) race times, he has no intention of quitting. To give up running would be like giving up writing, which would be like giving up living. When he crosses the ultimate finish line his gravestone will, he hopes, read:

Haruki Murakami
1949-20**
Writer (and Runner)
At Least He Never Walked

The book is part training diary, part reruns of escapades undertaken at the behest of magazines (including an excellent account of a solo assault on the original route from Athens to Marathon in the full scorch of summer) and part memoir. Narrative incentive is provided by the looming prospect of the 2005 New York City Marathon. Some of the nicest touches derive from stuff he notices out of the corner of his eye, on the hoof, as it were. As a quick chill descended on Boston in the fall, “even the faces of the squirrels looked different as they scurried around collecting food.” Or there are moments when he views himself and his fellow triathletes as they might appear to an outsider, as “a bunch of pitiful dolphins washed up on the shore, waiting for the tide to come in.”

“What I Talk About” is the latest installment in a pleasant mini-tradition of writers bunking off from their day jobs to take their sporting hobbyhorses out for a trot: Robert Hughes on fishing, John Updike on golf, Joyce Carol Oates on boxing. Sometimes this interest is entirely that of a spectator (Oates), sometimes it is that of a keen if limited practitioner (Updike); always it engenders quasi-philosophical musings. Murakami exaggerates when he describes his own thoughts on “the fleeting nature of existence” as “very philosophical,” but running certainly has closer kinship with the labor of writing than any other sport. For Murakami, long-haul running is not just a metaphor for the loneliness of the long-distance novelist; it’s pretty well synonymous with it. In the style of Albert Camus — who claimed that much of what he knew about morality and duty he learned from soccer — Murakami believes that “most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day.” Specifically, he believes that writing requires, in order of priority, talent, focus and endurance — all of which find their complements in the habit of running. Writing, he thinks, is “an unhealthy type of work” because it brings the author face to face with the “toxin that lies deep down in all humanity” and without which “no creative activity in the real sense can take place.” Even if you don’t buy into this — and I don’t see how you can, unless you throw in the dully dampening qualifier that it depends on the kind of creativity involved — the more modest claim, that running is a useful antidote to sitting on your bum and writing, is easy to accept. The discipline needed to keep running when you don’t feel like it, the constant instruction to your body to cover the requisite number of miles, offer immediate parallels with the grind of meeting your target of however many words a day. Murakami is not dogmatic. He knows that for writers, as a Tobias Wolff character put it, “there is no such thing as an exemplary life,” but an unyielding regime of running and early nights is what’s enabled him to keep churning out critically acclaimed best sellers.

Murakami may be addicted to running, but hey, it seems a lot healthier than Mishima’s bodybuilding trip — and nothing about the book under review suggests that Murakami will disembowel himself and get a friend to cut off his head. Even so, aspects of his training involve such extremes of self-torture that even the most tolerant reader will find them questionable, for the unpalatable truth is that Murakami listens to Eric Clapton while running.

Is there any connection between the music Murakami listens to and his own prose? In races he is conscious of his fellow competitors’ running styles in the same way “two writers perceive each other’s diction and style.” Jogging alongside him we get ample opportunity to check out his literary style, at least as given to us in this translation from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel.

To characterize it as briefly as possible: easy on ear and mind alike, it’s the type of prose I would call sort of pretty poor. Running is “sort of a vague theme” (i.e., not just vague but vaguely vague), and the book is “a kind of memoir.” Murakami sort of likes this kind of thing, not just as an indistinct modifier but as a form of category-definition. He’s the “type of person,” “kind of person” — I lost track of the number of times this came up — who likes “sort of laid-back” music and is “sort of a brazen person” who sometimes has “a sort of arrogant attitude.”

I have not made a comparative study, but I suspect that the most tedious four-word combo in any language is “As I said earlier.” Murakami wastes no time demonstrating his mastery of all the variants of this heart-sinking turn of phrase. It first pops up on Page 12 — difficult to see how it could have come any earlier — and its cousin “As I mentioned before” appears five pages later.

On Page 25 he tells us that the “kind of” jazz club he used to run was “pretty rare” and served “pretty decent food” and that he was “pretty naïve.” Moving on, we learn that he was “pretty surprised” when his first novel was “fairly well received,” that his Cambridge apartment was “pretty noisy,” that his new running shoes have been “pretty well” broken in, that he is “pretty easygoing” and had “a pretty good feeling for the pace” he would need to maintain in the New York marathon.

In an afterword Murakami explains that part of the motive for writing the book was “to sort out what kind of life I’ve led.” If he’d written “sort of sort out” I would have forgiven him everything, but instead, he goes in for further self-incrimination. Apparently, it took quite some time to “carefully polish and rework” the book, and he “needed to revisit the manuscript many times over a period of time.” So it’s a straight choice: either he’s the kind of writer who’s a pretty poor editor of his own stuff or this kind of lazy repetition is deliberate. But if it is deliberate, what conceivable purpose is being served? Thomas Bernhard uses incessant repetition to screw his prose into an excruciating ball of angst, and occasionally, Murakami’s short-order tics bunch up so close that they almost run away with themselves: “As I’ve said, I’m not a very competitive type of person.” The sloppiness reaches an anticlimax of sorts when, in the midst of a “pretty disorderly” swimming race, he becomes “kind of confused.” The rest of the time this accumulating cloud of imprecision, this lack of linguistic focus (one of his trinity of crucial qualities, remember), seems “kind of lethargic” and succeeds in making us identify closely with “the type of person who, once he gets sleepy, can fall sound asleep anywhere.”

Now, I don’t know how representative this book is of Murakami’s novelistic style, but I wonder: Is this low-maintenance, attention-deficit prose part of Murakami’s attraction, especially among the young? Do people enjoy reading him for the same reason they persist in listening to music as blandly familiar as Clapton’s? If Martin Amis is engaged in a “war against cliché” — a phrase in danger of becoming a cliché itself — then Murakami, on the evidence of this book, is a serial appeaser. How much does his thigh hurt? “Like crazy.” How do we know the weather is nice? Because — as he tells us (twice) — there’s “not a cloud in the sky.”

It’s not all bad, of course. There are flashes of quality, as when his muscles feel “as hard as week-old cafeteria bread,” but most of the time his prose, unlike those muscles, is so laid back that it can barely stand up (to even moderate scrutiny). As he imagines an editor saying about a memory evoked by another musical favorite, the Lovin’ Spoonful: “It’s not bad, but it’s sort of ordinary and doesn’t amount to much.”

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Geoff Dyer’s new novel, “Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi,” will be published next spring, this article published at nytimes

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"Please Look after Mom" listed on NY Times Best Seller April 2011

Novel kyeong-suk Shin, titled 'Please Look after Mom' which is translated in English, listed on the New York Times bestseller, April 2011.

According to KL Management which handles copyright works kyeong Shin-suk, a novel 'Please Look after Mom' was ranked 21st in the category of stairs bestselling novel 'The New York Times' to be published on 24th April.

This rank based on the number of book sales during the week starting on the 3rd. Meanwhile, the novel 'Please Look after Mom' officially sold in the United States since April 5 last.

KL Menagement add a famous literary publishing company 'Khnopff' in the United States has published one hundred thousand volumes in the first issue was published and even longer for the issuance of the fifth.

The entry of Korea into the stairs bestselling novel 'The New York Times' is the first time it lasted.

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