The Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane's serialized novel, The Red Badge of Courage (Simon & Schuster Enriched Classic) may have pleased audiences in 1894, but this crapfest was painful to read and it's current popularity stands as a testament to how high school teachers must enjoy torturing students with horrible books. Crane, a reporter who never fought in the Civil War, chronicles the psychological melodramas of a young soldier, Henry, exposed to the horrors of war for the first time. Henry the intellectual douchebag justifies his cowardly retreat from his first battle as indicative of his superior intelligence--he wanted to preserve his life while his automaton comrades fought like beasts or cogs in the great war machine. Eventually, Henry learns how to fight as a beast as well.

Yawn.

I wouldn't read this bung ever again. And I certainly would never recommend it to anyone. But I did get it for $.10 at a Friends of the Library book sale and despite my loathing of the work itself, I remain entirely enamored of used book sales. There's a certain allure to tattered books that have been passed around for years, their pages yellowed and weathered with use.

Gulliver's Travels

I'm a few books behind in my reviews, so I'm afraid these may be rather abbreviated.

Jonathan's Swift's classic novel, Gulliver's Travels (Collector's Library), available for free here, chronicles the adventures of Gulliver as he travels about the globe. The tales should be familiar to most English-speaking people because, unless you grew up in a bubble, you've heard references to the Lilliputians and other aspects of Gulliver's travels. In picking up some older classic literature, I can see gaps in my education where I feel like I should have been exposed to these stories at some point and for whatever reason, I had to read crap like Where the Red Fern Grows or Flowers for Algernon instead of more foundational literature. Such is life with a crappy education system.

Anyway, Swift breaks Gulliver's travels into four journeys. The first lands him among the Lilliputians, tiny people who imprison him despite their stature. The second lands him among giants where he's carried about in a luxurious box as a kind of curiosity item in a way that brought to mind Paris Hilton's purse dogs. His third adventure brings him to a floating island with inhabitants that beat on each other to get each other's attention, an action I've been inspired to reproduce on my hubby when he zones out on the NCAA tournament or his blog. And last but not least, Gulliver's last trip takes him to a land of noble horses who rule with such integrity and honor that Gulliver is disgusted and depressed to return to humanity.

The text is a goldmine of ideas on various topics from how to rule to the nature of medicine or the law. My interest was piqued by Swift's descriptions of the nature and causes of various illnesses, which included his character's understanding that some people are born with maladies already upon them--an understanding of genetics without the modern frame of reference.

Would I recommend Gulliver's Travels? If you have a tolerance for political science and policy discussions in your literature, you'll enjoy it. It's not an edge-of-your-seat suspense thrill ride, but it's a slow, thoughtful journey that's interesting for what it can say to the modern reader.

The Black Sheep

Honoré de Balzac's famous tale, The Black Sheep (Penguin Classics) seemed to me to lose something in its translation from French to English, as though the original text was populated by subtle plays on words and innuendoes that were simply lost, er, in translation. Ugh. Sorry about that.

It's a gorgeous web Balzac weaves though. The plot is delicious. And here it is, in short form.

One father sires two children. He believes the second, a daughter, to be the product of his wife's infidelity and sends the ill-begotten spawn away. His first child, a son, is a dunce. The father dies and leaves his idiot son a fortune. Meanwhile, his daughter has two sons of her own: her first son is an ambitious, evil bastard and her second son is a pure-hearted artist. Her first son is her true love but even she realizes his true nature after he steals money and is generally a petty, selfish dickhead.

But that's the thing about petty, selfish dickheads. They're predictable. And Balzac counts on it.

The daughter, realizing that she's in a tight financial spot because of her son's dickheadedness decides to call on her dunce brother for a piece of the family fortune. But, her dunce of a brother is being swindled from within his own home, having fallen in love with a peasant girl. The girl is in love with a rogue from town who wants to take the dunce's fortune and is set to do exactly that. The rogue is far too clever for the daughter and her good son who fall prey to his manipulations and leave town penniless and shamed.

But the daughter's dickheaded son is just the match for the rogue. He finds himself in a position to take on the girl and the rogue and he uses his innate dickheadedness to win the day, to swindle the swindler. This is the brilliance of Balzac's plot. He uses an evil character to screw over another evil character and it's fabulous!

So the dickheaded son screws over the girl and her rogue. He gets the fortune. And then he's done in by his own dickheadedness and the fortune falls to the daughter's good son, the pure-hearted artist that Balzac clearly wanted us to adore from the start. So the plot comes full circle, good people are rewarded and evil plays its part in bringing about a happy ending.

It took me a good 150 pages to warm up to the plot but once I realized what Balzac was doing, I was enthralled. It's slow and plodding. You need patience to get into it and even then, the idea of the plot may be better than the actual application.

Robinson Crusoe

Widely regarded as the first English novel, Robinson Crusoe (Collector's Library) is now one of a number of works of classic literature available for free on the web. Ah, the irony.

Stylistically, this book leaves a lot to be desired. It's plot is plodding and repetitive and repetitive, there's no thrilling climax and the ending seems oddly out of place. The language and moralistic overtones make this a challenging read that most people would probably pass up in favor of some Tom Clancy novel. Sigh.

Defoe tells the story of an ill-fated soldier who sets sail from Britain against his father's advice only to have a series of adventures before ending up shipwrecked alone on a deserted island. Sound familiar? Dozens of crappier authors have taken Daniel Defoe's novel idea and come up with a bastardized version. But this, darlings, is the original, the genesis, the inspiration.

And it's entertaining, after you come to terms with the fact that Defoe is writing to an audience that assumes that Christianity is the Best Religion Ever and that slavery is part of the natural order of life. It's the origin of some of that folk wisdom that's become cliche, like the only thing we have to fear is fear itself or it's better to look on the sunny side of life. For some reason, I thought that was insanely cool, even though I'm sure Defoe probably ripped that stuff off from some other author I haven't read yet.

But uh, what is the deal with the wolves? I must have missed the hidden message revealing why Defoe included Crusoe's canine encounter. I assumed that it was there to show the whimsy of fate--like here's the schmuck who survived 26 years on a deserted island and now he's going to be devoured by wolves in France. HA! Or not. Thoughts on that?

At any rate, Robinson Crusoe isn't for everyone. But it is the original shipwreck story, so if you're into that kind of thing and you have the patience and tenacity to stick with the thick language until you get accustomed to it, it's worth reading. Entertaining and educational, but it's not for everyone.

The Count of Monte Cristo

I love Alexandre Dumas! I read The Three Musketeers (Oxford World's Classics) in high school and loved it for its fast-paced plot and adventure.

The Count of Monte Cristo (Signet Classics) is just as good, the ultimate tale of prison break and revenge. Our protagonist, Edmund Montes, is like one of the first super heroes. Dumas takes an innocent young man with a budding romance and throws him in prison, the victim of despicable political machinations. While he's rotting away, Montes meets a wide old man who educates him and bequeaths to him the location of a secret treasure.

Upon escaping from the prison, Montes acquires all of the dubious skills he'll need to become a demon of vengeance and the story follows him as he utterly demolishes the men who screwed him over. This, my friends, is a fantastic book to read when you're contemplating all of the horrible things you wish you could do to someone who hurt you in the past. Glorious fun!

Yet Dumas seems to get slightly self conscious of his protagonist's vengeful endeavors. Toward the end of the book, Montes seems to have some slight doubts, a hint of regret that he dedicated his life to the destruction of these evil men. He is seemingly redeemed by new love and the promise of a better future, but really, the audience of this book isn't as concerned with Montes' future dealings as we are with the brilliant annihilation of his sworn enemies.

Dumas is tawdry, exciting and delicious. This story reads like an action movie. It's well worth a few hours of your time.

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott's classic Victorian coming of age tale, Little Women (Signet Classics), is an excruciatingly endearing and irksome sermon about the challenges of growing up with moral integrity. Copious reviewers sing the praises of Alcott's tale, praising its durability and time-honored, much-beloved stance in the literary lexicon. Readers swoon with adoration of Alcott's sisters.

Perhaps the greatest praise I can offer Little Women is that the tale contains nuggets of wisdom that still resonate today. Who can't relate to Jo and her quick temper and sharp tongue getting her into trouble? What new mom hasn't been guilty of excommunicating her husband in favor of her babies at some point like Meg? Who hasn't been lured by the vacuous temptations of popularity like Amy? The messages resound for little women today like the must have for Victorian girls looking for their signature novel.

That being said, it's quite clear that Alcott is writing the novel to preach a godly, selfless lifestyle...which is quite typical of the motivations of many of her contemporary novelists as well. There's always a moral to Alcott's tales and it typically involves self sacrifice. Maybe one of the reasons that people enjoy this book so much is because it's devoid of sensational, lurid details that we've come to expect from our entertainment. There's no violence. There's no description of war or explosions or drugs. There are only familiar challenges. It's downright wholesome.

And also somewhat dishonest. Alcott's sisters "suffer" from "poverty" in Little Women. Shenanigans. These girls feel poor because they don't have silks or enormous estates to retreat to, but somehow, Amy manages to spend months abroad, the family never goes hungry like so many did back then and their father doesn't have to endure any backbreaking labor to make ends meet. They're so "poor" that they have a servant and look down on certain immigrants, like the Irish.

I feel like this book is required reading for women at some point in their lives. I wouldn't run out and grab it, but if you stumble on it at some point, you might as well read it and see what all the fuss is about.

Crime and Punishment

In an attempt to keep my brain from atrophying, I've started reading and rereading some classic literature. First on my list happened to be Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (Norton Critical Editions). While there has been loads of scholarly analysis far more brilliant than anything I can come up with, I'll still offer my insight, for what it's worth.

While this is obviously a work about crime and the subsequent internal torment that follows a brutal murder, I found other themes far more compelling. To me, this was a work about the bitter consequences that arise from our vices if we fail to reign them in. Marmeledov, most obviously, was enfeebled by his alcoholism and though he watched it destroy his family and send his daughter into prostitution, he still sat at the pub. Svidrigailov pursued his lust and was by all accounts a cruel, calculating man and in the end, his faults prevented him from obtaining the one thing he wanted most--Dunya's love. And lastly, Raskolnikov's vice was an overabundance of reason untempered by compassion or mercy. He justified murdering the old woman with cold reason and rationality but it was his emotions that tortured him in the aftermath of her death. Oddly enough, Raskolnikov's salvation--his love for Sonya--seems like the triumph of feminine qualities (the whimsical emotions) over masculine ones (impassive reason).

The first time I read this book, I was 14. It was truly a pleasure to go through it again from a more adult perspective. It's not a terribly uplifting read, but the tragic characters are worth the study if you're feeling a bit moody.