Our Malady

Subtitled "Lessons in Liberty From a Hospital Diary," Timothy Snyder's short book about nearly being killed by the commercial medicine system in the United States should be shocking. Unfortunately, for anyone who has had extensive contact with this system and its designed flaws that make a few rich and many sick, it will not be. Snyder's account of the differences between his first child being born (in Austria) and his second (in the United States) is particularly telling. In Austria his wife was kept in the maternity ward for 96 hours after delivery and provided with constant care and training. In America an algorithm demanded labor be induced and a Caesarean be performed despite the fact that the mother and unborn child were both in excellent health. Of course the fact that other countries have figured out how to provide a decent standard of care for all of their citizens will cut no ice in a nation whose policies are oriented almost exclusively toward enriching the wealthy, so despite the fact that Snyder ends his book with a call for change and a measure of hope I won't hold my breath.

Dreiser Looks at Russia

Theodore Dreiser went to the Soviet Union in the winter of 1927-28 on the condition that he could go where he wished and write about it afterward without restriction. His observations on Russian society, industry, art, food, and Communism are never less than interesting and reveal Dreiser to be, in the main, a skeptic of the Soviet experiment. This is mainly because the author believed that, as much as inequality and individual achievement might be artificially leveled, man as a species could not be permanently bent by a doctrine alien to his nature. That didn't stop Dreiser from hailing the generally improved working conditions and standard of living over czarist times, or from admiring the all-for-one spirit and lack of materialism he says he witnessed.

Cleanliness was a fixation with Dreiser, who was appalled by the smell and clothing of many of the Soviets he came across. He also had a hard time finding a decent hotel room with a proper toilet and working bath.

Dreiser kept a diary during his trip, which was edited and published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1996. Based on a small excerpt I read, it is a much richer account and includes many of his misgivings about the Soviet experiment. As the editors of the diary point out, Dreiser Looks at Russia didn't make much use of the diaries and often shows the author expounding on subjects about which he had little knowledge. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating account of a time, before the show trials and purges, when a disinterested observer could hope that something worthy might come out of Russia.

1933 Was a Bad Year

Having not heard the name John Fante before he was mentioned by a comedian on Instagram, I ordered this book on the strength of its title. Depression era fiction — Ironweed comes to mind — appeals to me because it heightens the stakes for the characters. Fante's short novel is about a 17-year-old Italian-American living in Colorado in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains whose plans for glory center on his left pitching arm, or the Arm as he calls it. The family is poor, with a bricklayer father who is out of work and hustles pool to get by, a worn-out devout Catholic mother, a manaical grandmother, and some siblings. What Fante does so well, using a sharp but not showoffy style, is take these absolutely ordinary people and infuse them with a spark of the universal.  

Lives Other Than My Own

Emmanuel Carrere's memoir might have been called "Deaths Other Than My Own" but for the life-affirming outlook that makes his chosen title so apposite. Carrere, dividing the text into sections dealing with the 2004 Asian tsunami and the death of his sister-in-law, digs into the lives of those lost and those who remain. Grief, the search for meaning, and the will to go on are explored frankly and with clear eyes. 

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

The source of a Peter Yates film that I have grown to admire more with each viewing, The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins is a marvel of language and grit. Breaking new ground in the genre, as far as I know, the novel is about 90 percent dialogue. Higgins had a great ear, and there are little morality tales threaded all through the text.

The Muses Are Heard

"When the cannons are silent, the muses are heard." This was a favorite saying of a Soviet minder to visiting Americans who brought a production of Porgy and Bess to Leningrad and Moscow in 1955-6. Truman Capote's account of the trip, through the premiere performance, is rich in detail and characterizations. Mrs. Ira Gershwin hunts for caviar; Capote gets sozzled in a workingman's bar with female bouncers; and the Russian audience, at least at the outset, sits on its hands in confused silence during the opening performance. The book pulses with Capote's sharp eye and sly humor.

Lost Face

The stories in this Jack London collection, published in 1910, are full of brutality, humor, and terror. "To Build a Fire" is the best example I've read of a story that builds with mounting dread to a conclusion that is both inevitable and affecting. What comes through in all of Lost Face is London's keen understanding of his setting and of human nature.

Castaway

The two poles of a reader's reaction to James Gould Cozzens's Castaway might be to 1) throw the book against a wall, or 2) plunge deep into thought (ideally with the help of a fellow reader) about its meaning. I fall somewhere in between. The story is simple enough, about a lone man in a multistory department store after an unnamed catastrophic event outside. He gathers material to make a fort, looks for food and weapons, and then there is an event and a "trick" ending. What struck me before the ending was the pointlessness of the man's labors: all of those efforts, to what end? Does he believe he will be able to live out his days in the empty store? It's the survival instinct on display, and it is, ironically, not wholly rational. Cozzens's prose is thorny but usually worth the effort to untangle. I ordered this book after learning that Sam Peckinpah had a lifelong wish to turn the story into a movie. Reading it with that in mind, and seeing in my mind's eye what he might have done with it, added to the pleasure of reading. 

S.S. San Pedro

James Gould Cozzens's short novel is an excellent depiction of a slow-motion disaster. The ship is listing slightly as it leaves port, something that everyone notices, but there is no urgency to address the issue and some of the characters engage in the kind of happy talk that assumes that problems will fix themselves. By the time disaster is imminent, passengers are still being told that everything will be fine. Faith in technology (engines, pumps, radio) and in authority (a deathly ill captain) combine in a fatal cocktail. Cozzens's prose is a little too purple for my taste, and his use of the semicolon exceeds everyone I've ever read, but this remains a startling little tale. 

Prometheus: The Life of Balzac

It is depressing, in a couple of ways, to read Andre Maurois's biography of the great French writer Honore de Balzac. First, and more prosaically, the book's heavy reliance on correspondence to and from Balzac reminds me of the decline of letter-writing and the rich detail that will be unavailable to future biographers of great figures. The digital trail, so easily erased, is no substitute for an analog archive. Second, and more significantly, this biography reminds me that our era appears to be one of artistic stagnation. Balzac's ideas and work were revolutionary; the same could be said of Faulkner and Dos Passos. Thomas Bernhard died 30 years ago. But we get the culture, and the leaders, we deserve.