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Last month in Beyond the 52 Book Challenge, we looked at The Autobiography of Mark Twain. This month we're going to look at even more classics. Don't worry folks, we'll be back to sci-fi, fantasy and a more than happy helping of Star Trek books par the course starting next month. That's right . . . due to insistence of certain individuals, who shall remain Sheryl Roberts and Mathew Bredfelt, I'm going to do The 52 Book Challenge: Year Two. Only this time there is a twist. If I have not at least ordered the book by December 31st, 2011, it's not going to be read. Granted I have over 90 books in my boxes so I doubt I'll need more for awhile. Anyway let's get on with the show.
- The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner:
This book is a somewhat slow and sedate, yet very funny, parody of both the romantic melodramatic novels of the period and the political process after the Civil War. What is amazing is how little has changed since 1873, at least in terms of the way politics get done in Washington. The only significant change is how much it costs to buy a member of Congress. When you adjust for inflation it is a lot cheaper now. The book is incredibly timely. It wouldn't surprise me at all if it had been in the Occupy Wall Street Library. As for the book itself, the method used for writing it is obvious. Twain wrote one set of characters. Warner wrote another set of characters. Their stories are stylistically very different. The last third or so of the book is all the various plots beginning to intersect. Those expecting a full scale satirical assault that is typical of Mark Twain will be in for a mild disappointment. It is a very toned down. Part of that could be his attempt to make his style compatible with Warner's, however it could also be that he has not yet found his true voice. This was Twain's first novel and was published a full three years before The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Another weird bit of trivia: the book was originally meant as a joke between friends. They named a character Beriah Sellers after someone Warner knew, thinking there couldn't be more than one Beriah Sellers in the world. Surprisingly, there was and they got threatened with a lawsuit. The name was changed in later printings. After the death of both men with the unlikely name of Beriah Sellers, the name was changed back.
The next book I was assigned to me during my sophomore year in high school. The thing is I got the flu and was out of school for about a week. So I skipped from the end of the first section to the last five chapters. Which is really all you need to read to pass the test. Still, I promised my English teacher: "I'd get around to it." It has taken about 17 years but better late than never . . .
- A Tale of Two Cites by Charles Dickens:
Some authors works are so well known and well received that their names metamorph into adjectives used in everyday language. Shakespeare, Kafka, Orwell and Dickens are prime examples of this. However along with this fame often comes an unwanted passenger: the cliche. This book has every Dickensian cliche you can think of. The orphan who discovers something about their family they didn't know. The grimy, slightly amoral lower class workman who will do just about anything, no matter how disturbing, for money. The dashing upper class man who gives up all his money to help the masses and of course, for love. The man in search of redemption. These are all character types Dickens has used many times. If that was the only problem with the book, I could let it slide. There is also the fact that Dickens was obviously getting paid by the word. Almost all writers of the period were but his use of language really goes out of its way to show it off. Instead of writing 1778, Dickens would write seventeen-hundred seventy eight simply because he would get six more cents for it. If it were an occasional thing, even that would be okay. He does it a lot. He also includes needless inventories of things the characters are carrying that turn out to be completely irrelevant. They aren't used for misdirection or to give insight into the character's personality. They are just padding. There is another big annoyance. He tends to have characters repeat what they said a short time ago. This is okay when you consider his work was originally serialized and that these repetitions are sometimes in different chapters. The readers originally could have gone weeks or months between chapters and forgotten these key tidbits. What really gets my goat is his key technique to build excitement in the same chapters. He tends to have characters repeat what they said a short time ago. It's fine when it's in a different chapter. When it is in the same chapter, it's bothersome. When it is on the same page it feels like a real waste of time. The real problem with the book however is that there are only two characters I found myself willing to put much of an emotional investment in: Sydney Carton and Mr. Cruncher. Depending on how you interpret the story, Carton is either a deus ex machina or he is the real main character of the story. The ending makes me believe Dickens was attempting the latter. Only the rest of the story does not back this up. He's not introduced until several chapters in and doesn't start out with the page time that he later receives. Secondly, when he does start developing emotional depth with his speech to Lucie Manette about how he would die for her or anyone who she cares for - he is telegraphing the ending of the story. The only reason that he might be the real main character is that we see how others think of Sydney (if they do at all) and how he sees himself. While the story is not really about him, he is the most completely defined character in the book. A bit ironic, since Carton doesn't believe anyone should care about him one way or the other. In actuality he's the only one you should care about, though I developed a bit of soft spot for Cruncher. Mr. Cruncher is a vile and disgusting man who doesn't show an ounce of kindness till the last five chapters. When he does flip flop it seems out of character and a little forced. Before that point, you aren't supposed to like him but he is as close to comic relief as this book gets. For this alone, he kind of grew on me - like a fungus.
- A Trip to the Moon by Jules Verne:
As a novel this book is very, very, very slow. It is 135 pages but it feels like it is closer to 300. It also lacks something most Verne novels have no problem with - excitement. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea has its share of technobabble but they at least have other things happen. Here 20 of the 35 chapters are spent arguing just how to get the money, supplies and land needed for the trip. It isn't until around chapter 21 that Verne bothers with things like characterization and plot. However judging from real space travel, not the kind you see on Star Trek, this is quite accurate. Months or even years of research and planning all come down to a few hours of actual action. There is something else the book has going for it: for all the main details of space travel it got wrong there is plenty it got right. It predicted the country that would first attempt to go to the moon. It predicted the state where it would be launched from. It predicted the approximate amount of time it would take to get there fairly accurately. The book even included an alternative launch point in Texas - which is exactly where NASA built a tracking station and landing area. Where the science doesn't really work out, Verne is aware of it and it's all in fun. Still, if you call a book A Trip to the Moon they should actually go on a trip to the moon. That doesn't actually happen. The ending serves to remind us of all the dangers of space travel but also of all mankind's hopefully endless desire to find out what is out there. It's another sad parallel to the truth and the fate of Apollo One. So as an actual novel, it wasn't really worth reading. As blue print for how to get to the moon using steam punk technology, it's interesting enough. I still think I like George Melies movie version La Voyage Dans La Lune better. It has great effects considering it was made in 1902. Then again, by that standard it practically had to invent them.
- The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:
I have always enjoyed Sherlock Holmes. However one thing becomes clear while reading this book - The Mystery of the Empty House - in which Doyle's beloved detective returns from the grave was probably where the series jumped the shark. The point is widely debated in Holmesian societies to this day but it would be clear even without reading the introduction that as much as I love Sherlock Holmes that Arthur Conan Doyle did not. What had once been clever mind puzzles was now beginning to like seem worn out tricks. Where there had once been a degree of dry wit and humor, now seemed monotonous and almost mechanical. At this point Doyle had obviously discovered the truth about being a professional writer. You have the works you do for the joy of it (in his case his histories, historical novels and essays on spiritualism) and the stuff you do for the money (in his case the Holmes stories and The Doctor Challenger novels). While a few of the short stories don't try to lie outright to read from the word go and don't venture too far out into Crazyville, none of these stories quite get back to the quality of the stories before Holmes went over the falls. Perhaps Holmes should have stayed there.
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