The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon was originally published in 1959. My paperback copy has 324 pages, including the introduction by Louis Menand. Almost everyone has watched at least one of the two films made of Condon's book. In the plot, American soldiers are captured, brainwashed, and programmed by their Chinese captors. One of them is programmed to become a political assassin. In the introduction Lois Menand says, "The Manchurian Candidate may be pulp, but it is very tony pulp. It is a man in a tartan tuxedo, chicken a la king with shaved truffles, a signed Leroy Neiman. It's Mickey Spillane with an MFA, and a kind of summa of the styles of paperback fiction circa 1959." (pg. viii). Although the book shows it's age in some ways, it is surprising how well it stands the test of time. This is one case where the film, and I'm thinking of the 1962 version, actually does an excellent job of representing the content of this psychological thriller. This theme of brainwashing is as pertinent today as it was during the cold war. highly recommended

Synopsis:

Everyone knows the controversial 1962 film of The Manchurian Candidate starring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury, even though it was taken out of circulation for twenty-five years after JFK's assassination. Equally controversial on publication, and just as timely today, is Richard Condon's original novel. First published in 1959, at the height of cold war paranoia, The Manchurian Candidate is a terrifying and suspenseful political thriller featuring Sergeant Raymond Shaw, ex-prisoner of war, Medal of Honor winner, American hero... and brainwashed assassin. Condon’s expert manipulation of the book’s multiple themes – from anticommunist hysteria to megalomaniacal motherhood – makes this one of the most entertaining, and enduring, books of the era.

Quotes:

Louis Menand: "Some people like their bananas overripe to the point of blackness. The Manchurian Candidate is an overripe banana, and delectable to those who have a taste for it." pg. x

"It was sunny in San Francisco; a fabulous condition. Raymond Shaw was not unaware of the beauty outside the hotel window, across from a mansion on the top of a hill, but he clutched the telephone like an osculatorium and did not allow himself to think about what lay beyond that instant: in a saloon someplace, in a different bed, or anywhere." Opening

"Well, it just so happens that you're a Medal of Honor winner - incidentally, congratulations - I meant to write but we've been jammed up. Johnny is a public figure, Raymond." pg. 15

"His mind began to spin off the fine silk thread of his resentment in furious moulinage. For almost two years he had been free of his obsessed mother, this brassy bugler, this puss-in-boots to her boorish Marquis de Carrabas, the woman who could think but who could not feel." pg. 17

"It took that kind of objectivity to begin to tolerate Raymond, who was full of haughtiness. Raymond stood as though someone might have just opened a beach umbrella in his bowels. His very glance drawled when he deigned to look, seldom deigning to speak." pg. 26

"Conditioning is based upon associative reflexes that use words or symbols as triggers of installed automatic reactions. Conditioning, called brainwashing by the news agencies, is the production of reactions in the human organism through the use of associative reflexes." pg.32

"Although the paranoiacs make the great leaders, it is the resenters who make their best instruments because the resenters, those men with cancer of the psyche, make the great assassins." pg. 43

Mercy Among the Children

Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards was originally published in 2000. My hardcover copy has 371 pages. Richards won the Giller Prize (Canada's most prestigious literary award), and the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award for Author of the Year and Fiction Book of the Year for Mercy Among the Children. Richards' book was on my TBR list and I decided to read it now because it was recently rejected as a book for Canada Reads and I wondered why.

Oh. My. Goodness. This is an incredible, heart breaking novel that will haunt me for years to come. The story of Sydney Henderson's family, as told by grown son Lyle, is about the price they all pay for Sydney's refusal to abandon his principles. The novel is stronger and richer because it is told from the son's point of view. It is about the nature of good and evil, and the relationship between fathers and sons. But it is unrelentingly sad. I wanted some justice for Sydney and his family. I wanted Sydney to fight back, but Richards kept Sydney true to his principles. This is a brilliant study of human nature and the selfishness and pettiness that rules the daily lives of so many people.

Mercy Among the Children is not for everyone. It is simply so sad. I was anxious for the family. I bawled like a baby several times. Many readers, like me, will also be angry at all the people in the Henderson's lives who did not speak up and take a stand. In the end, Mercy Among the Children could be a parable showing that the truth will eventually come out, although perhaps not in the expected way. Oh, it should also be mentioned that Richards is an incredibly gifted writer.
One of the best - Very Highly Recommended.

Synopsis from the Publisher:

When twelve-year-old Sydney Henderson pushes his friend Connie off the roof of a local church in a moment of anger, he makes a silent vow: Let Connie live and I will never harm another soul. At that very moment, Connie stands, laughs, and walks away. Sydney keeps his promise through adulthood despite the fact that his insular, rural community uses his pacifism to exploit him. Sydney's son Lyle, however, assumes an increasingly aggressive stance in defense of his family. When a small boy is killed in a tragic accident and Sydney is blamed, Lyle takes matters into his own hands. In his effort to protect the people he loves — his beautiful and fragile mother, Elly; his gifted sister, Autumn; and his innocent brother, Percy — it is Lyle who will determine his family's legacy.

Quotes:

"Lyle Henderson had a story to tell, perhaps about this very thing, and he was hoping Terrieux would listen. This was not an unusual request from the men that Terrieux knew, but was unusual for a boy of Lyle's age and demeanour. The demeanour was something seen only in youth, a kind of hopefulness in spite of it all. In spite of the blast of misfortune that would crumble lives to powder." pg. 2

"Here Lyle looked at his notes again - pages and pages of quotations and arrows. 'Everything I relate is true. It is what I have witnessed and what has been told to me - the conversations of others even when I was not present are very near to being exactly what they were, told to me by those who remembered them first-hand, or talked to someone who knew. It has taken me almost seven years to piece together what it was all about, and I want to set it before you now. Maybe you can write about it, as a former policeman, just for interest sake, and maybe you can expose the Mat Pits of the world.' " pg. 6

"I often wanted to enter the world of the stained glass - to find myself walking along the purple roads, with the Mount of Olives behind me. I suppose I wanted to be good, and my mother wanted goodness for me. I wanted to escape the obligation I had toward my own destiny, my family, my sister and brother who were more real to me than a herd of saints." pg. 11

"What surprised him was the fact that an educated man would ever do this. He had been innocent enough to assume that the educated had excised all prejudice from themselves and would never delight in injury to others - that is, he believed that they had easily attained the goal he himself was struggling toward. He did not know that this goal - which he considered the one truthful goal man should strive toward - was often not even considered a goal by others, educated or not." pg. 21

"What my father believed from the time his own father died was this: whatever pact you make with God, God will honour. You may not think He does, but then do you really know the pact you have actually made? Understand the pact you have made, and you will understand how God honours it." pg. 22

"Worse for her social welfare, she saw miracles - in trees, in flowers, in insects in the field, especially butterflies, in cow's milk, in sugar, in clouds of rain, in dust, in snow, and in the thousands of sweet midnight stars." pg. 23

"There is a second group, the group that you and I belong to. The group that says that in a man's heart is the only truth that matters. You cannot change a constant by changing how the rules might be applied to this constant." pg. 36

" 'Don't worry - truth will out,' Sydney said.

They continued their walk, not understanding how evil and darkness attach themselves to the good or great to destroy their will to live." pg. 72

"I remember him now as a man who had no idea of the responsibility or maturity his vocation required." pg. 225

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston was originally published in 1937. My paperback copy has 236 pages, including a foreword and extra material. I will admit that at the beginning the dialogue, presented phonetically in a southern dialect, frustrated me. After forcing myself to continue, I was able to read it a little easier without as much difficulty. It really is a simple story about a black woman who marries three different men, who wanted three different women. Ultimately, Their Eyes Were Watching God is "a bold feminist novel, the first to be explicitly so in the Afro-American tradition" as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote in the afterword (pg. 197) in my copy. I am highly recommending Their Eyes Were Watching God, if only for the historical perspective of a Black woman living her life in the thirties.

From the cover:

Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person - no mean feat for a black woman in the 30's. Zora Neale Hurston's classic 1937 novel follows Janie from her nanny's plantation shack to Logan Killick's farm, to all-Black Eatonville, to the everglades, and back to Eatonville - where she gathers in "the great fish-net" of her life. Janie's quest for identity takes her on a journey during which she learns what love is, experiences life's joys and sorrows, and comes home to herself in peace.

Quotes:

"Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly." pg. 1

"Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times. So they chewed up the back parts of their minds and swallowed with relish. They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song." pg. 2

"You know if you pass some people and don't speak tuh suit 'em dey got tuh go way back in yo' life and see whut you ever done. They know mo' 'bout yuh than you do yo'self. An envious heart makes a treacherous ear." pg. 5

"Ah don't mean to bother wid tellin' 'em nothin'. Phoeby. 'Tain't worth de trouble. You can tell 'em what Ah say if you wanns to. Dat's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's mouf." pg. 6

"Ah was wid dem white chillun so much till Ah didn't know Ah wuzn't white till Ah was round six years old." pg. 8

"Lawd a'mussy! Look lak Ah kin see it all over again. It was a long time before she was well, and by dat time we knowed you was on de way. And after you was born she took to drinkin' likker and stayin' out nights. Couldn't git her to stay here and nowhere else. Lawd knows where she is right now. She ain't dead, 'cause Ah'd know it by mah feelings, but sometimes Ah wish she was at rest." pg. 19

"Ah don't want yo' feathers always crumpled by folks throwin' up things in yo' face. and Ah can't die easy thinkin' maybe de menfolks white or balck is makin' a spit cup outa you: Have some sympathy fuh me. Put me down easy, Janie, Ah'm a cracked plate." pg. 20

Drop City

Drop City by T. Coraghessan Boyle was originally published in 2003. My hardcover copy has 444 pages. T.C. Boyle is a gifted writer and it's a pleasure to read his writing. The story of the Drop City commune itself wasn't quite as enjoyable as Boyle's writing. While I enjoyed the juxtaposition of people living off the land in the Alaskan wilderness versus the hippies at Drop City's idea of going back to nature in California, I really did become tired of the Drop City denizens, and their drugs and sex in the first part of the novel. Actually, I appreciated the novel more once Drop City moved to Alaska and they had to learn some harsh truths. This is a highly recommended novel.

I was especially excited to discover that this book, picked up in a used bookstore clearance section was, in fact, a signed edition by T. C. Boyle. They really need to double check what they are doing. This isn't the first time I've found a hidden treasure there, beyond the books themselves.

From Book Magazine:

It's 1970, and the hippies at Drop City, a California commune, are grooving on acid, pot, free love and music by Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane. A thousand miles north in the Alaskan wilderness, a very different community of bourgeois "dropouts" exists: isolated trappers and homesteaders, such as Sess Harder and his new wife, Pamela, who live in a remote cabin and struggle against the brutally cold winter. For nearly half of Boyle's engaging novel, which depicts the sometimes tragic American desire for reinvention, the two communities remain separate, but when sanitary and legal troubles threaten Drop City, the hippies pile into their school bus and head north to Alaska, "the last truly free place on this whole continent." Through border crossings and Jack London-like treks in the cold, Boyle masterfully builds narrative suspense in anticipation of the collision of these two communities. Though some may find the blend of realism and naturalism too conventional for a novel about free love and communes, Boyle, always a skilled and generous storyteller, offers a stream of adventures, surprises and rewards.

Quotes:

"Outside was the California sun, making a statement in the dust and saving something like ten o'clock or ten-thirty to the outbuildings and the trees. There were voices all around her, laughter, morning pleasantries and animadversions, but she was floating still and just opened up a million-kilowatt smile and took her ceramic bowl with the nuts and seeds and raisins and the dollop of pasty oatmeal afloat in goat's milk and drifted through the door and out into the yard to perch on a stump and feel the hot dust invade the spaces between her toes. Eating wasn't a private act - nothing was private at Drop City - but there were no dorm mother's here, no social directors or parents or bosses, and for once she felt like doing her own thing. Grooving, right? Wasn't that what this was all about? The California sun on your face, no games, no plastic society - just freedom and like minds, brothers and sisters all?" pg. 3

Ronnie's brow was crawling and his mouth had dropped down into a little pit of nothing - she knew the look. Though he hadn't moved a muscle, though for all the world he was the hippest coolest least-uptight flower-child cat in the universe, he was puffing himself up inside, full of rancor and Ronnie-bile. He got his own way. He always got his own way..." pgs 8-9

"His name was Marco, and Norm Sender, the guy -cat - who'd inherited these forty-seven sun-washed acres above the Russian River and founded Drop City two years ago, had picked him up hitchhiking on the road out of Bolinas." pg. 13

"All the communities he'd been a part of, or tried to be a part of, had fallen to pieces under the pressure of the little things, the essentials, the cooking and the cleaning and the repairs, and while it was nice to think everybody would pitch in during a crisis, it didn't always work out that way." pg. 48

Cries Unheard

Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell by Gitta Sereny was originally published in 1998. My hardcover copy has 412 pages. This is a heartbreaking account of the British child killer, Mary Bell, but more importantly, it makes a case for the reform of the justice system when dealing with children. Bell agreed to talk to Sereny 27 years after her conviction. Sereny tells us about Bell's horrific childhood, the murders, her public trial, and her years of imprisonment. Apparently this book was quite controversial in Great Britain when it was first released. Although the information about the treatment of children in the justice system and protective custody is a bit dated now, it still makes a compelling argument for reform. Cries Unheard is not a typical true crime novel, so if that is what you are interested in, this might not be a good choice for you. It would also be helpful to read Sereny's 1972 book, The Case of Mary Bell, or research the murders before reading Cries Unheard. This book is recommended, especially for those interested in child psychology.

Synopsis from the Publisher

What brings a child to kill another child? In 1968, at age eleven, Mary Bell was tried and convicted of murdering two small boys in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Gitta Sereny, who covered the sensational trial, never believed the characterization of Bell as the incarnation of evil, the bad seed personified. If we are ever to understand the pressures that lead children to commit serious crimes, Sereny felt, only those children, as adults, can enlighten us.

Twenty-seven years after her conviction, Mary Bell agreed to talk to Sereny about her harrowing childhood, her terrible acts, her public trial, and her years of imprisonment-to talk about what was done to her and what she did, who she was and who she became. Nothing Bell says is intended as an excuse for her crimes. But her devastating story forces us to ponder society's responsibility for children at the breaking point, whether in Newcastle, Arkansas, or Oregon.

A masterpiece of wisdom and sympathy, Gitta Sereny's wrenching portrait of a girl's damaged childhood and a woman's fight for moral regeneration urgently calls on us to hear the cries of all children at risk.

Quotes:

"Briefly then: In the course of nine weeks two small boys, aged three and four, were found dead. Some months later, in December 1968, two children, both girls, were tried for their murder; Norma Bell, age thirteen, was acquitted; Mary Bell (no relation) was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. The case caused an uproar, and Mary Bell was demonized across the country as the 'bad seed,' inherently evil." pg. xiii

"The central account here, the story as Mary Bell told it to me (almost all of which I was able to subsequently check against the knowledge of others), is intended not as biographical literature but as a document that might serve as an incentive to all of us who care about children's well-being. If Mary's painful disclosures of a suffering childhood and an appallingly mismanaged adolescence in detention succeed in prompting us - whether as parents, neighbors, social workers, teachers, judges and lawyers, police, or government officials - to detect children's distress, however well hidden, we might one day be able to prevent them from offending instead of inappropriately prosecuting and punishing them when they do." pgs. xx-xxi

"And in the first four years of Mary's life her mother had tried repeatedly to rid herself of this unwanted child. Time and again she attempted to hand her over to relatives and, twice, to strangers. Four times she tried to kill her." pg. 12

"Mary's case, and her life since her release in 1980, has raised an extreme and, to her, deeply disturbing amount of media interest." pg. 13

"...there are two entirely distinct parts to her. One is the attractive, warm, and unconditionally loving young mother....The other part....is chaotic, almost incapable of organization and discipline, and....often very sad." pg. 27

"....the national press backed away from the case: in 1968 troubled children were not yet in vogue, and 'evil' was best ignored lest it might infect." pg. 33

rating books

I'm dropping the number ratings for awhile. I will continue to note if the book is very highly recommended, highly recommended, recommended, so-so, not recommended, or if I did not finish it, so the idea of the 5 point scale is there but not the numbers. What I am pondering right now is some special notation of books that I would previously have given a 5, a very best award (like Bethany's Happy Chicken Award) and maybe a stinker award for the very bottom. I've always struggled with the idea of rating a book, but began doing it for a book group which required a rating. Since I'm no longer a member of that group, I really don't have to continue doing something that makes me uneasy.

I'm uncomfortable with a rating system simply because sometimes I read a certain kind of book for the escapism - and that's ok. After reading (and really liking) John Updike's rules for reviewing, I decided that a number rating system makes me too uncomfortable. I don't want to make any author an example, but let's take Alten's Meg books as an example simply because they are exciting escapism. I know they are not fine literature, but they were never intended to be fine literature. The pleasure my nephew and I had in reading Meg met Alten's purpose in writing it.

The Echo Maker

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers was originally published in 2006. My
hardcover copy has 451 pages. Winner of the 2006 National Book Award, this is said to be Powers most accessible novel. I can only compare it to the approximately 150 pages of Gold Bug Variations that I managed to read first - out of 639 pages - before I set it aside and said enough. I gave up on it. I wasn't up to the challenge. (From what I read, Publisher's Weekly was correct in calling Gold Bug Variations a "strange, overwritten, often infuriating, manically intelligent and sometimes deeply moving novel.") The Echo Maker surprised me, in comparison. It is a complex, intelligent, multi-layered novel, and the plot was certainly more accessible and immediately more compelling than Gold Bug Variations. While Powers writes beautifully captivating prose, his novels don't appear to be written for the average, casual reader. I also have a suspicion that I'm not quite up to Powers' intellectual capacity.

Although I enjoyed The Echo Maker, intimately understanding the setting and cranes, I also found that it became tedious after awhile and I kept feeling like it could have used some good editing, some tightening up. I was tired of Dr. Weber almost immediately. The only reason I pressed on and finished was because I wanted to see what happened to Mark and Karin and if the mystery surrounding his accident was solved. While I'm glad I tried two of his novels, in all honesty, I don't think I'm the audience for which Powers is writing. The Echo Maker is a recommended novel, if only for a dedicated reader to experience Powers prose.

From the Publisher

On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter has a near-fatal car accident. His older sister, Karin, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. But when Mark emerges from a coma, he believes that this woman - who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister- is really an imposter. When Karin contacts the famous cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber for help, he diagnoses Mark as having Capgras syndrome. The mysterious nature of the disease, combined with the strange circumstances surrounding Mark's accident, threatens to change all of their lives beyond recognition.

Quotes from The Echo Maker:

"Cranes keep landing as night falls. Ribbons of them roll down, slack against the sky. They float in from all compass points, in kettles of a dozen, dropping with the dusk." opening sentences

"A squeal of brakes, the crunch of metal on asphalt, one broken scream and then another rouse the flock. The truck arcs through the air, corkscrewing into the field." pg. 4

"Your brother has had an accident. In fact, he'd long ago taken every wrong turn you could take in life, and from the wrong lane." pg. 5

"She told her boss, as vaguely as she could, about the accident. A remarkably level account: thirty years of practice hiding Schluter truths. She asked for two days off. He offered her three. She started to protest, but switched at once to grateful acceptance." pg. 8

"She hunted down the newspaper and read the flimsy accident account until it crumbled. she sat in the glass terrarium as long as she could, then circled the ward, then sat again. Every hour, she begged to see him. Each time they denied her. She dozed for five minutes at a shot, propped in the sculpted apricot chair. Mark rose up in her dreams, like buffalo grass after a prairie fire. A child who, out of pity. always picked the worst player for his team. An adult who called only when weepy drunk. Her eyes stung and her mouth thickened with scum. she checked the mirror in the floor's bathroom: blotchy and teetering, her fall of red hair a tangled bead-curtain." pg. 9

"Then she saw the note. It lay on the bed stand, waiting. No one could tell her when it had appeared. Some messenger had slipped into the room unseen, even while Karin was shut out. The writing was spidery, ethereal: immigrant scrawl from a century ago." pg. 10

"Eight times an hour, he asked what had happened to him. Each time, he sat shocked by the news of the accident." pg. 59

"What are you doing here, anyway? Who sent you?"

Her skin went metal. "Stop it, Mark," she said, harsher than intended. Sweet again, she teased, "You think you sister wouldn't look after you?"

"My sister? You think you're my sister?" His eyes drilled her. "If you think you're my sister, there's something wrong with your head." pg. 59

Quotes from Gold Bug Variations:

"Word came today: four lines squeezed on a three-by-five. After months of bracing for the worst, I am to read it casually, jot down the closing date. The trial run is over, Dr. Ressler dead, his molecule broken up for parts, leaving no copies." opening sentences

"I spread my hands on the table and divorced them. Through a tick in my eyelid, I pointlessly read the note again. All over with our friend, his four-letter tune. I knew the man for a year, one year ago. Before everything fell apart, he became one of the few who mattered to me in the world." pg. 15