Friday's Forgotten Book: Gardner F. Fox: Barbary Slave

We did a week-long trip to Chania and Gerani in Crete, and I took, as usual with our trips, my Kindle along. I didn't get to read much (who can do that with a three-year old kid on a same trip?), but I managed to get through one novel. I think that's pretty good given the circumstances. And hey, I also wanted to the beach!

The book in question was Barbary Slave that I'd loaded free on my Kindle. It was written by Gardner F. Fox who's best known as one of the more prolific writers for DC Comics and the creator of the DC Multiverse, alongside with several DC characters. I'm not really into superheroes, but Fox interests me as a contributor to pulp magazines (westerns, sports, science fiction) and as a paperback writer. His reputation hasn't been very good, seems like he could be a sloppy writer with cardboard characters. I thought, though, I might be entertained for a short while reading Barbary Slave. I'd started earlier a new thriller with an interesting premise, but given up after some pages, since there was just too much disposition and not enough action. I'd also started one of Gardner Fox's science fiction novels, but that seemed only ridiculous.

But Barbary Slave proved to be pretty entertaining. Sure, it was racist and chauvinistic as all hell, but I still enjoyed the heck out of it. The action starts from page one and almost never slows down. Barbary Slave is a fast-moving swashbuckler set in the early 19th century Tunis, during First Barbary War (war I knew almost nothing about until now), and the hero is an American navy lieutenant called Fletcher. In the beginning of the book he's already been a slave for several months and been digging food from ditches. He manages to rise from the gutter only to find himself a guardian of a harem. The queen lusts for Fletcher and tries to conquer him with all her might. The book has all the plot twists of several Game of Thrones episodes, with all the violence depicted in an old-fashioned, at times almost ecliptic style, and without the rapes. I actually thought this could've been a Conan novel, set in a fantastic setting, instead of a historically accurate (or at least one pretending to be) setting. Many of the chapters end in a cliffhanger, which kept me turning the pages, though Fox's writing style is florid. This is strictly purple prose, but it's almost never too purple. I also know next to nothing about ships or fencing, but Fox seems to have known was he was writing about.

The racism, though... almost all the Arabs and Moslems in the book are either stupid or cruel and sadistic - or both. The only heroic Arab is an armless man who's been tortured wildly by rulers. There's also no way Fletcher could fall in love with the harem's queen or another Arab woman, there has to be a white American woman who he can fall in love with safely. But given the book's age, this all is somewhat understandable.

The book was originally published as by Kevin Matthews by Popular Library in 1955, but it's been reprinted as Gardner F. Fox for quite a few times now. I noticed the e-book was free through illustrator Kurt Brugel's newsletter (for a limited time, it's not free anymore); he's bringing all of Fox's novels out as e-books. There were some formatting errors throughout the book, but not too many. Here's another review if you don't believe me.

More Forgotten Books at Patricia Abbott's blog here.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Clark Howard: Dirt Rich

I mention this book in my Pulpografia in the entry for Clark Howard, but I've actually never read it - until now. Dirt Rich (1986) is a long, sweeping epic on Texas, oil, fatherless sons, tyrant fathers, absent sisters, treacherous wives and hard-working men. The story starts from 1918 and ends just after World War II, and there are also some backflashes to the days of Wild West. Lots of things happen in the 800 pages of the book.

Clark Howard is an excellent short story writer and he also seems to be a good novelist. There's lots to admire in Dirt Rich, for example how Howard never really tells what a person looks like, but you still get the feel of how he/she acts, moves, reacts, dresses. The real history of a nation is somewhere in the background, but still effecting the acts of individuals.

I know the Friday's Forgotten Book meme is about Ray Bradbury this week, but I just happened to finish this late last night.

Sarah Waters's The Night Watch and Fingersmith

I guess this could qualify as a Forgotten Books post, even though the books in question are not forgotten in the least. I've seen Forgotten Book posts about Edgar Rice Burroughs and Christa Faust's Money Shot, so I guess the rules are not very strict.

I've finally completed my share of the reference book on historical novelists. I read two of Sarah Waters's novels, the only two translated in Finnish, and liked them quite a bit. Doing this book has been quite a task. As you may remember, I didn't like Arturo Perez-Reverte's books and I almost ended up hating Robert Harris's novels on Cicero. I must confess skipping pages a lot. There were also other writers that left me utterly cold. The one exception - before Waters - was Tracy Chevalier, who writes in a terse prose I happen to like, and she handles difficult themes (women's oppression and stuff like that) pretty deftly.

One could compare Sarah Waters to Chevalier. Both write about women's oppression and their silence in the by-gone centuries. Sarah Waters adds a theme of being lesbian in the Victorian age. Both write books that are not easily categorized - they have elements of a crime novel, they have some experimental bits in their books (Waters has less of them), both are eminently readable. Waters harks back to Charles Dickens and his time, while Chevalier is a strictly 20th century writer, with a style maybe reminiscent of Jean Rhys.

Fingersmith is more strictly a historical novel, set in the 1860s. Some low-lifes, portrayed grotesquely à la Dickens, are trying to get money out of a peculiar old guy living in a mansion outside London, collecting pornography. They force a young girl to be a maid in the house and one of the low-lifes starts to flirt with the daughter of the old man in order to get married and inherit the old man. Everything seems to succeed well, but then Waters throws a very nice twist in the tale and manages to bring new themes into her book: the violent treatment of women in the mental institutions. There's yet another twist in the book, which makes it a relenting read. The last hundred pages are very exciting and tense. The love story between the two girls is touching, and Waters's view of Victorian pornography is interesting.

The Night Watch is set in London during the bombings of WWII. The book is episodic and starts from the end, moving towards the events taking place first. It works marvellously, even though the book didn't hold my interest as well as Fingersmith. The scene in the middle, with the abortion going wrong, is very, very strong.

I recommend these two books quite highly.

Isabel Allende's Zorro

I have a confession to make: I've never read a real Zorro novel by Johnston McCulley. From the classic Zorro movies I've seen only the seminal Tyrone Power version from 1941. (I'm not even sure if I've seen any of the Antonio Banderas versions.) But even with this minimal grasp of the matter I can say Isabel Allende's prequel to McCulley's Zorro (2005) is a bit boring attempt that never reaches the feeling of high adventure that would be required. I read the book, because Allende is included in the reference book of historical writers I've been working on. (The reference book is late and it feels like I'm never getting it out of my hands. Aaargh!)

Allende has done her work pretty carefully, but it seems she's been watching only the films and hasn't read McCulley's novels (from what I can gather). She makes the historical references quite accurately, to my mind, and she develops Diego de la Vega's character carefully. I thought the part in the Spanish War against Napoleon was the best part in the book - exciting, enthralling, adventurous. But the problem with her book is exactly that: there's not enough adventure. I'm sure many McCulley fans would like Allende's novel more if it just had more sword fights. You feel like Allende was thinking she was doing a serious historical novel, like many of her other novels are, and remembering every now and then that this is supposed to be a swashbuckling adventure. Paradoxically, her more serious, more literate historical novels are more entertaining than her Zorro. (That said, I must admit that I just dropped one of her books, Portrait of Sepia: too repetitive, too much familiar aspects, too much lecturing about the history of Chile.)

It's a small wonder none of McCulley's Zorro stories were ever translated in Finnish - I'm not really sure why this never happened. There have been some abridged versions in some obscure Disney anthologies not many friends of literature would dare to look at, and I think I've seen one version in an old Finnish pulp magazine in the fourties. Would it be about time?

We had the Disney TV series in Finland of course, and Steve Frazee's novelization of that, cut into shorter chunks and published as separate books - I loved those books as a kid and I think I loaned them out of the library at least five or six times. Given that, it's a small wonder that I never sought out any of McCulley's Zorros. (And I'm really not sure whether I ever saw the TV series as a kid.)

Did you know that this early nineties TV series of Zorro also had a series of paperback novelizations? By the series creator, Sandra Curtis, published under the byline of "S. R. Curtis"? Curtis is known to the Zorro aficionados for her non-fiction book Zorro Unmasked. Six of Curtis's novels were published in Finnish in 1992, when the series was on the Finnish television, but they are not mentioned in the Wikipedia article for Zorro. I had an opportunity to ask about these from Sandra Curtis herself and she admitted the books have never appeared in English language, albeit there have been many translations in many languages. Haven't read any of these, but I've been going to, since I'd like to run a Zorro issue in Ruudinsavu/Gunsmoke, the magazine of The Finnish Western Society. (I did a bibliography of the paperbacks and posted it on the Pulpetti's bibliographic section here.)

Summertime Blues

I know, I know, it is pretty boring to post just to say is busy and will be busy and will be having a vacation, but that's what I'm gonna do right now. My daughter came to Finland to spend the summer with us and we are doing a bit of travelling, so there won't be much to write.

But, ah man, there's been a lot to write about. I just don't know where I'm spending my time (on Facebook, maybe?), but some things I've been meaning to write about but haven't:

1) the Red Riding trilogy: superb rendering of David Peace's book quartet: serial killing put in the social context (I really was meaning to write a long essay about this, but suffice to say that T. Jefferson Parker did this thing better in his California Joe; brilliant nevertheless)

2) Robert Harris's Rome novels: utter bores, don't waste your time on them

3) a Mexican wrestling movie from the early seventies I watched with some friends of mine: forgot the title, but the movie was hilarious, just like the sixties Batman TV show

4) Arturo Perez-Reverte's novels on Captain Alatriste: just can't get hooked on them, even though they are said to be popular and hark back to the golden days of the adventure novels, give me a Thomas B. Costain any day over Perez-Reverte!

I know I'm forgetting something. I just know it.

I'm reading Justin Cronin's celebrated vampire novel The Passage (Ensimmäisten siirtokunta in Finnish) and liking it a great deal, but

Some great films seen lately and other ephemera

I've been really busy during the last two weeks, hence no posts. I'll try to get some done in the near future.

But, em, you know, I get a feeling that everyone thinks I see only bad movies, like the recent Silent Trigger. I've seen quite a many great films lately, but for some reason or another I haven't written about them here. They include John Huston's James Joyce film The Dead, which is simply marvellous, Georges Franju's great, but slightly obscure Les yeux sans visage (AKA The Horror Chamber of Doctor Faustus), and, just late last night, Terrence Malick's war epic The Thin Red Line.

There was also the Festival of Finnish Cinema, during which I managed to see only some movies, but they included Seppo Huunonen's Karvat, about which I've written before (see here; I'll add the link later, there's some trouble with this computer), and Visa Mäkinen's exploitation flick Yön saalistajat/Hunters of the Night from 1984. Visa Mäkinen is an independent movie maker from Pori, where I used to live, and this is his only action film, from a script by Kari Levola, a writer who's now living in Raisio near Turku, where I now live. I know him, and he's a very nice guy, and I can see what he tried to do with the script for this film, but for some reason the delivery fails at all accounts: the direction, the actors, the editing. But the film is more fun for it. I'd like to see this remade. Maybe I'll have to start producing films on my own...

Have I been reading anything? Yeah, I've read two novels by Tracy Chevalier, The Girl with a Pearl Earring and Falling Angels, which I recommend heartily; I read them, because we are doing a sequel to the reference book on historical novelists with Jukka Halme and Sari Polvinen. I'll start one of Robert Harris's novels on Rome any day now.

I've also been reading Spade & Archer by Joe Gores (the Finnish translation just came out as Sam Spaden etsivätoimisto), but I'm not really getting into it. Spade seems a bit too stale. Was he this boring in Hammett's books? I don't think so. But I'll write more about the book once I finish it.

As for the family matters... Sigh. I just heard my daughter and her mother will be spending three more years in the Central Europe. These will be hard years. And I don't know what Kauto will think of this - he hasn't been told yet.

Will never try a Clavell book in my life

As you may remember, I was reading James Clavell's historical novels for a book I'm working on. I was boasting about how I'd read all 4,000 pages of them.

But no. I just couldn't. This is pretty awkward to admit, since I'm still writing the entry for him, but I had to put Shogun down and when I started to read Tai-pan, I had to put it down, too. I will probably take a look at Gai-Jin, but nothing more. His novels set in more recent times I won't even open.

I was talking earlier about how Alex Haley's Roots (and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code) are more about telling than showing. This is also the case with Clavell. He can't seem to understand how to build a scene in an economical way, and he really isn't good with action scenes. What was more troubling was his habit of cobbling the narrative with flashbacks - almost every page has a flashback in which a character is given a motive for his or her actions. And I just couldn't get into that. It got so tiresome I shudder at a sight of a Clavell novel.

Hope my employer isn't reading this. And mind you, in the coming book I'll try to write about Clavell in a more objective way than what I just posted above.

I'm also sorry I never wrote anything more about Norah Lofts. I read several of her novels and I liked them more than Clavell's books, even though I wasn't enthusiastic about them. Some of you might try Madselin (1969, IIRC) if you're interested in how to write about the Norman Conquest without sword and axe fights.

Shogun rip-offs?

I'm reading James Clavell's Shogun for the historical novelists reference book I've been working on. It's been over 20 years ago since I first read it and it seems I don't remember anything of it. The book seems better than I really expected, but it's also too long. I'm hoping all the time they'd start with fights and battles and all that. It occurred to me that there must've been some Shogun rip-offs that would be shorter than 1,000+ pages. Any suggestions? Do Robert Shea's books count?

Friday's Not Very Forgotten Book: Alex Haley's Roots

I finished Alex Haley's Roots last night and I must say that it's not a very good novel. It's not forgotten, either, so I don't know why I'm writing this, but there are some things I was wondering about reading the book, so here goes.

I was thinking about Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code for a couple of times when I was going through Roots. Why? Because they share something: both have spawned several imitations in different media and Haley's book may have given a boost to the subgenre of historical novels which describes a history of one family through centuries (I don't know when James Michener started doing these, but Roots is still an early example).

Both books are also very bad considering how much they have been discussed and talked about. You know, writing courses and teachers of creative writing always: Show, don't tell. That's the way to come up with good literature, otherwise you'll be just a bore. Then how come do these books which tell, don't show, have been so popular and so influential? Haley's book could've been at least 200 pages leaner if he had taken some creative writing courses and taken a hint: show, don't tell. He's always telling what his characters are thinking and why and how and when that happened and what was going on in the big world. It was boring in the beginning and irritating in the end. And I'm sure the book's depiction of the slave system could've been more shocking if Haley hadn't been so careful to point out what his characters are feeling at any given moment.

The Da Vinci Code is fast-moving and it has a plot full of intrigues and mysteries. I can understand its popularity. Roots, however, doesn't have a plot - the whole book is just a series of scenes, put together with no tension between them. Especially the first 150 pages are very boring - the description of everyday African life seems meaningless (at least now, it must've been a culture shock in the 1960's America). There are some scenes which have more tension and suspense in them - for example the scenes in the slave ship are quite good, as are the scenes which show Kunta Kinte trying to escape his slavedom.

I'm not sure how much Roots is being read today. Its popularity may be due to the TV series the last episode of which has been one of the most popular TV shows ever in the US history. But the book has been highly influential and its impact on the American culture cannot be ignored. Still, it's not a very good novel.

One thing on Haley interests me though. He says in the end of his novel (he's also a character in the book, in case you don't know, as he is a descendant of Kunta Kinte) that he published some sea-faring stories in some magazines, presumably in the fifties. He doesn't name any publications, story titles or possible pseudonyms. The Fictionmags Index has only one article by Haley, in Saturday Evening Post. Does anyone know what magazines Haley is talking about?

(Written on Thursday, since I'll be away for some days.)

My contribution to Patti Abbott's series.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Norah Lofts's Hester Roon

Norah Lofts is one of those historical writers on whom one easily stamps a romantic image: mansions, young, slightly devilish counts, shy virgins, angry mother-in-laws... When I started Hester Roon, one of Lofts's later novels (it's from 1982), I got fast rid of my presuppositions: the book begins with a woman giving birth at an attic of a roadhouse, thinking that if it's a boy, she'll give it away, if it's a girl, she kills it. It's a girl and the mother doesn't have the nerve to kill it. She promises the inn-keeper that the child won't get in the way of her work and keeps the baby tied up in her bed for the first two years of her life.

The tone is set and everything that follows is very grim and reeks of misery. Which would've been very nice, but the book really doesn't go anywhere, and at the end I was left wondering what Lofts wanted to say with her novel. If it's only "keep your chin up, everything will turn out okay", I don't think it's a good enough reason to write a novel. The ending has more romantic clichés than the previous 400 pages, which was a pity, since the preceding grimness was much more interesting. There's no kiss between the love couple, though - and actually the love aspect is only hinted at.

I have a stack of other Norah Lofts novels waiting for me, but I'll have to read Alex Haley's Roots first. Reason: I'm editing a reference book on historical writers with two friends of mine and I'll have to write about Lofts and Haley, two writers I hadn't previously read.

(My contribution to this week's Friday's Forgotten Books series, hosted by Patti Abbott.)

Friday's Forgotten Book: Thomas B. Costain: The Black Rose

Okay, I'll do one while I'm still here.

Thomas B. Costain was one of the most popular of the American mid-20th century historical writers, the others including Kenneth Roberts, Edison Marshall, Frank Yerby, F. Van Wyck Mason... The Black Rose from 1945 has been one of his best-known novels and it was made into film with Tyrone Power and Orson Welles and directed by Henry Hathaway. It's a vast epic tale of two young Britons who travel all the way Cathay (aka China) just after the big Crusades to Jerusalem. They notice Europeans are regarded barbarians, but they also encounter cruelty amongst the Mongols and other nations of the Far East. The novel is not free from racism of its time, but it's also a great tale of adventure. I recommend this highly, if you're into this sort of thing.

(Sorry, a bit too short, but I've been sitting here all day and I'm hungry now.)

Friday's Forgotten Book: A Maggot, by John Fowles

(Been busy all this week, hence no blogging. And this will be short.)

I don't know whether any book by John Fowles could be called forgotten, since he must be one of the highest regarded British authors of the last thirty decades. But I don't see a lot of discussion on him lately, so when I read this, I thought I'd do a Forgotten Book post about it.

A Maggot is a historical novel, but it's not for a historical novel purist. The events of the book take place in the early 18th century, but the narrator makes clear that "he" narrates the text from the late 20th century, i.e. from now (the book is from 1983, if I remember correctly [it's not at hand and I don't feel like opening a new browser and checking]). In this regard, the book resembles Fowles's best-known novel, The French Lieutenant's Lady. Both are essays on the historical novel, not historical novels per se. Fowles also uses many different narrative techniques - some pieces of the book are told in present tense, some are transcripts of interviews or interrogations and some are the narrator's own ponderings and mini-essays. This can be annoying if you're accustomed to more straight-forward narratives.

What's it about, then? A Maggot tells about mysterious events regarding a disappeared duke (or whatever, I already forgot, a man of nobility in any case) and his servant who's found dead hanging from a tree. The events involve a known prostitute. There's also a sort of private eye, a lawyer who interrogates some of the people that had to do with the said events. There are fantasy or even science fiction elements in the book, but we never know if they are only imagination.

The reader is left unconscious of what actually happened, which works very well, in my view. I had some trouble getting into the book, but halfway through I was actually quite excited about it. The ending is powerful and links the book in actual events that have taken place. (If you want to know what they are about, read the book.)