For Whom the Bell Tolls

On Monday, the 28th, I finished Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. "Bell" is, on the surface, a book about three days in the life of a band of anti-fascist guerrillas during the Spanish Civil War. More than that though, the book is an exploration of what complex creatures human beings are. Even good people are capable of doing ghastly things, given certain circumstances. Moreover, the book examines the motivations of many characters and you get a real feeling for why they're fighting in the civil war, even though they were never trained soldiers.

The main character is Robert Jordan, an American university instructor who has come to Spain to fight against the fascists. Even if one wanted to forget Robert Jordan's name, it would be impossible, since Hemingway writes out Robert Jordan's name in full on nearly every page of the book. It's my biggest criticism of the book, but realize that this is minor. But I digress. Jordan's experience in the civil war is as a dynamiter. As such, he's sent by the communist (anti-fascist) General Staff behind the fascist lines to meet up with a guerrilla band led by a man named Pablo. Jordan's orders though, essentially send the band on a suicide mission to blow up a bridge at the start of a Republic offensive. From here, we learn how Jordan reconciles placing himself and these other people (who, for the most part, he likes very much) in mortal danger for a "greater cause." We also learn how many of the band found themselves in this situation and why they fight. Jordan does have a romantic interest, which at first I thought was trite, but then I realized that it was important for Jordan to have more at stake than just himself and his life. For the story to have greater weight, he had to be willing to sacrifice the life of someone he loved.

We also learn how bureaucracy, petty politics, and general incompetence put all of the guerrilla band in danger (in some cases more than danger). Fighting for ideology, fighting for your home, fighting for your government, fighting for murdered friends and family, fighting for the Spanish people...all seem to be legitimate reasons to be engaged in the civil war, but they all come with a terrible cost.

As an aside, I found it interesting that Hemingway devoted several pages to the story of how Robert Jordan's father killed himself with a pistol. Considering that Hemingway was later a gunshot suicide, I wonder if he thought about suicide for much of his life.

Hemingway's main characters seem extremely "real." Perhaps it's because his dialogue was so good. He interspersed Spanish into the English text and it really seemed to bring the characters to life. Also, his descriptions of the forested mountain territory of Spain really placed you, the reader, in the action. The occasional change of point-of-view from a Jordan to an omniscient narrator to another character and then back to Jordan was sometimes jarring, but in all it gave a more complete picture of the situation the characters found themselves, and thus benefited the story. In sum, it's abundantly clear to me why For Whom the Bell Tolls is considered an American classic.

Confederacy of Dunces

So I finished Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole last night. Frankly, I'm disappointed. I was expecting big things and all I got was an ok book. Pulitzer Prize, Shmulitzer Prize, says I.

Dunces chronicles a few turbulent weeks in the life of Ignatius J. Reilly, jobless medieval scholar who lives in his tiny room in his mother's tiny house. It should be mentioned that Ignatius' great intelligence is only matched by his enormous physical bulk, complete disdain for others, enhanced self-opinion, and unmatched hypochondria. Due to a series of odd circumstances, Ignatius finds himself having to look for a job in his home town of New Orleans. Toole takes us from job to job, introducing us to fabulously weird characters whose lives all seem to be intertwined at the end, mainly because of Ignatius' fabulous failures.

Ignatius, while the main character, is not a sympathetic character. Funny to laugh at, yes, but not funny. I don't think he can even be properly termed an anti-hero. The other characters are spectacularly unique, especially Burma Jones. The character studies of Ignatius and Jones are the real strengths of this book. Sure it's got some funny moments, but I didn't find it riotously funny like many of the critics did. The dialogue is also a strong point of the book. The characters really do "sound" like "real people." I find that this is often very difficult for writers to master and Toole does an excellent job of it.

Despite the strengths mentioned above, I didn't find the story all that funny or compelling. Certainly there were funny scenes, but the book wasn't all that funny. I didn't want anything good or bad to happen to Ignatius, I just wanted him to go away. Less Ignatius and more Burma Jones would have made for a better book. The multiple characters all crossing paths at one time or another is always a fun trope, but I've seen it done a lot better in other works.

Of course part of the book's cachet is the tragic circumstances of its publishing. Toole had been deceased, a suicide, long before the novel was ever published. His mother found the manuscript and sent it to the Dean of Southern Literature, Walker Percy. Percy loved the book and got it published. Indeed, it's sad that Toole couldn't have lived to see his work gain accolades. Dunces is certainly a good read, but in no way would I consider it a classic.

Deliverance by James Dickey

Let me start off by saying that I've seen the movie Deliverance a few times, and it certainly burns in one's memory. I don't know how one can ever forget the scene of Ned Beatty being raped by vicious hillbillies. Rough stuff. On to the book.

Deliverance details the canoeing trip of 4 upper middle-class Atlanta men. Seemingly a dull idea for a book (the anomie of the middle class, yadda, yadda, yadda), James Dickey turns it into a magnificent story. The men of the book, Ed Gentry (our narrator), Lewis, Bobby, and Drew, are all fairly well off friends who at Lewis's urging, decide to go on a canoe trip on a wild river in rural north Georgia. At least from Ed's perspective, he needs to find something different and break away for a while from the mundane office life and do something different. One can assume that the others feel the same way. So our intrepid canoeists head to the river...and everything goes wrong.

They start by meeting rough and tumble hayseed-types who they're make fun of and talk down to, yet at the same time are afraid of. And it's clear that the country folk don't like these city slickers very much at all. Once they get the canoes in the river, it's clear that most of the main characters don't know what they're doing and have no business being on such a difficult river. Other problems erupt when they come across a couple of armed hillbillies. Suffice it to say that things go very poorly for at least one of the members of the group. To say much more about the plot would be to give away what makes this book great: the story.

Dickey gives us a story of man versus nature and man versus his primal self. He makes us examine what getting back to nature really means. Should one even want to go back to nature? While she's beautiful, Mother Nature is heartless as well. On the other hand, Dickey explains the exhilaration of living life so on the edge and so in the moment. The story is so incredibly compelling that it's very hard to put the book down. No doubt this is an American Classic.