Jane Smiley Books

I have wanted to read a Halldor Laxness novel for awhile, since he is Iceland's national author and I enjoy Iceland and what literature of the country I've read (which is not much). I read a few pages of his most well-known work, Independent People, but couldn't really engage with it. I read a fairly significant amount of Salka Valka, which I someday hope to read all the way through, and really enjoyed it but for some reason just couldn't finish it (it was summer vacation and I was pretty busy, though). So I found myself searching for a Laxness novel I could read all the way through and enjoy all the way through. My school's library has a wonderful collection of Scandinavian texts and virtually all of Laxness' oeuvre, although only a small section of those has been translated into English. I found myself leafing through the first few pages of each of his English translations and finally settled on one.

The Fish Can Sing captivated me immediately, catching me up in its plot from its first line (which is something like "A well-known author once said that apart from losing one's mother, it is most fortunate to lose one's father") and enchanting me with its first chapter and continuing to do so throughout the novel. This is a delightful and pretty easy read, although the philosophical issues it addresses are relatively complex and stimulating. I also have to comment on how well-chosen the English title is, and I think it is far superior to the original Icelandic title, which is very generic and doesn't tell much about the novel itself, although I suppose it is significant. The English title has its origin in one of the poems within the text, which I believe is a sort of proverb and used as a mantra throughout much of the book. Alfgrim, the narrator, wants to be a lumpfisherman like his grandfather, Bjorn of Brekkukot (a farmstead and free-of-charge inn on the outskirts of Reykjavik where many interesting characters come to stay), who is considered one of the poorest men but who is rich in spirit. Alfgrim also finds himself inexplicably connected to the famous singer Gardar Holm, and the two perspectives - fishing and the land-holding and simple lifestyle and the spiritual and material aspects of singing, music, and being a singer - merge in the narrative.

One of the elements I liked about this book is that, as I was reading it, it reminded me of the one of the books I used for my thesis, the Faroese novel The Lost Musicians by William Heinesen, which, I believe, is contemporaneous to The Fish Can Sing (published in the 1950s, taking place a few decades earlier). The Lost Musicians centers around the commercializing fishing capital of the Faroe Islands and how some of its residents, a band of musicians, combat the shadowy forces brought upon their lives largely by the sectarians and their temperance society inhabiting the islands through their music. There are musical references throughout the novels that take music, inscribed in nature, to a higher plane (the novel is also where I gleaned my user name from), and The Fish Can Sing does the same thing. There are many references to ships in each novel, coming and going as a means to improve oneself and seek fame, but in the end what takes on the most importance is that spiritual world of music itself and all that it represents, the deepest wishes, hopes and thoughts (for The Lost Musicians) and finding one's "true note" (for The Fish Can Sing). Money and material possessions are of very little value in both novels, and a world beyond our own takes precedence, as embodied in artistic forms. Both of the novels also center on many different characters in one small area of a small town, providing many contrasting points of view, although since The Fish Can Sing is in first person there is a slightly more narrow scope to the direction of the action. In the end of each novel, also, both the last lost musician, Orfeus, and Alfgrim, sail off on a ship to Denmark to pursue what they may, but one gets the feeling that they will transpose the values of their everyday lives onto their new inhabitance rather than succumbing to the fashion of the times in their colonists' stead.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes "good literature", however you may define that. This book is written by Iceland's most well-known modern/early contemporary author, so I suppose it could be considered popular literature, but it is not overly sentimental or trite. It's a bit like a modern Charles Dickens, or maybe that's just what the translation makes it out to be, but that is the calibre I consider it. You need not know too much about Iceland or its history to fully enjoy The Fish Can Sing - I myself don't know too much - but you will definitely benefit and enjoy it all the more if you do. One scene I find entertaining is the Barber Bill, in which a town assembly discusses whether or not public shaving should be allowed, and if it should be, at what time of day this activity should be able to take place. Luckily, the novel explains a bit of the background so it's not terribly confusing, and the references to saga characters and whether or not it was "proper" for them to shave is an amusing anecdote.

Laxness' book, "The Fish Can Sing" is a remarkable book. At first, it seems like a random series of vignettes about early 20th-century Icelandic life, full of detail and life, but appearing loosely bound at best. But by the end of the novel, the reader realizes he is in the hands of a master craftsman as the rich detail provided in earlier chapters come back to play important roles in the culmination of the book and its plot.

There's an endless array of well-defined, complicated, and vivid characters. There's the lavish countryside painted simply - evoking the same feeling you get from a good watercolor. Then there's the plot, which is mysterious and complex, but leaves you with much to ponder.

A nod to the translator, Magnus Magnussen, because the prose is fertile and poetic. It's unbelievably rich, yet brilliantly sparse. This is the way prose should be.

Laxness and Magnussen have given us a beautiful, soulful book. It's a remarkable read.

This brilliant work amply demonstrates why its author, Halldor Laxness, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955(?). Without much of a plot--it portrays the maturation and awakening of a young man, Alfgrimur Hanson--"The Fish Can Sing" is nonetheless very rich in characterization and aptly depicts life in early 20th century Iceland. As an American who has lived in Iceland for the last two years, I have grown to appreciate Laxness's insight into the character of the proud and independent Icelandic people. I have read two other Laxness books which I could find printed in English--"Under the Glacier" and "Independent People"--and although those are very good, "The Fish Can Sing" is outstanding and clearly my favorite. Humorous, though-provoking and ultimately very moving, this book is one which you will surely enjoy and not readily forget.

What a wonderful book. If you loved Independent People as much as I did, you will love this book too. It has the same wit and some similar themes. The book does have a plot (despite what a couple of other reviewers say), but the author develops his story slowly. Once you're "into it" (be patient!) you will be glad for the pace. There are so many marvellous details here to savor. I just loved it, and plan to read it again in the near future.

The charm of this book is in its atmosphere. You get a wonderful feel of early C20 Iceland and the characters that inhabit it, from the old-fashioned fisherman who ignores market economics to the admirer of modern cesspits. The age of the novel, like its hero, progresses from child to early-adolescent. A particularly charming thing about this novel is the way rather grimy adult features of adulthood are transformed by the place and its people. The cesspit-admirer, for instance, sees modern cesspits solely as an exciting new invention; and the farmers, when they discover barbed wire, just string it up in purposeless and harmless lines across the country.

The plot involves an orphan boy (Alfgrimur) who might be a gifted singer, his experiences while growing up, and his relationship with the elusive "famous Icelandic singer" Gardar Holm. But "fame" appears to be something petty, the god of Danish shopkeepers (Danes, of course, are grown-up) -- and the "one true note" which Alfgrimur seeks can be attained just as well while singing at funerals in the local churchyard.

The work deborah butterfield does is so amazing. The grace and fluidity she is able to capture of the horses is remarkable, and I am not a horse lover. I love fine sculpture and her horse sculptures are amazing. Each one is different and rich and I can visualize the animals as she saw them. The images in the book are remarkable representations of her work and the text easy to read.

Not for Deborah Butterfield the bronzes of Frederick Remington, who saw horses as active partners of active men. Her horses are....themselves. Individuals. With distinct personalities. And great souls. If you love animals, these will steal your affection as surely as if they were great cats or dogs.

What's surprising about Butterfield's horses is their construction. She began by making them of sticks, wire and mud. (And by building them big --- they're taller than most horses.) From the beginning, she could use these unpromising materials to deliver the essence of a horse. What she could not deliver was permanence. So she learned to use disposable materials as the mold of the sculpture, and then to cast it in bronze that retained the texture of wood, wire and mud. Careful painting completes the work.

Butterfield breaks fresh ground with every horse. And why not? She thinks of her sculptures as self-portraits --- as explorations of her animal nature. Maybe that's why so many of her sculptures seem to be female. And why they connect on such a deeply emotional level.

This beautiful book contains 75 full-color plates. It is the ideal gift for horse lovers --- and that includes girls who are mad for horses and are ready to dream about them in a new way. But even considered just as a coffee-table book, 'Deborah Butterfield' passes every test, starting with the shallowest --- your guests will gravitate to it, flip through it, and say, "Where did you get this?"

My heart swells with pride and admiration. What a wonderful tribute to an artist that completely captures the spirit and nature of the majesic equine beast she loves. The line and content of her work is perfect. How marvelous that her work is across the nation, how poetic and musical is the word that describes her work. A marvelous book.

The stories in this collection deal with a number of varied subjects, but most are well written and interesting. I liked it, because there are some styles that I'd not have read if they were not in a collection. I recommend it for anyone who is open minded.

This is a chunky, endearing, handsome book that's just confirms everything we most love about dogs. But these are MASTERS of prose here, as well as being "masters" of their family dogs. So just imagine the novelists and short story writers you love sharing stories of their own canine companions. Jane Smiley on her golden's insatiable fetching, Armistead Maupin on his dog's uncanny ability to interfere with anything romantic, Merrill Markoe on her small dog's undeniable love affair with her slipper. There's Danny Shanahan writing and illustrating a short guide on how to read your dog's behaviors. There's--well, there are sheep dogs, mixed bred wonders, Labs, bull dogs, unruly dogs, cockers, spaniels...and a pack of other dogs photographed in black and white by Robin Schwartz that make this book the perfect gift to give or keep. Plus the book's profits are part of Rosen's ongoing efforts to support animal welfare agencies.

Of Human Bondage is a study of how life circumstances mold human behavior and thought. The story follows Philip Carey's life from birth to age 30. We see life through Philip's eyes to understand the experiences that shape the boy and the man. Through life's trials; disability, loss, deprivation, ridicule, friendships, love and achievement Philip grows and changes. He reveals in his human struggle bounded by his passions his desire to find a meaningful life.

Maugham's characters are writ large. Philip's uncle is not simply stern, but austere, coldly unemotional, miserly, and unsympathetic. Philip doesn't just have financial problems, but falls upon near starvation and homelessness. His girlfriend is not simply hurtful but calculatingly cruel, and devoid of human decency. Anthley cannot just be a jolly sort, but a verbose and bellowing character bursting with goodwill and humanity. Philip's actions and insights are sometimes disgustingly selfish and other times heartbreaking sincere and humble. He is fully and believably human.

After loving Maughams other works such as, The Razors Edge, Up at the Villa, Theatre I felt I must give Of Human Bondage another try. My first attempt failed as I did not have the patience to make through the sluggish first 200 pages of Philip's early years. After Philip goes off to Paris to pursue an artist's life, things really take off for both Philip and the reader. Though written almost a century ago the story is as relevant as ever and will be as long there are people taking life's journey. A full and absorbing tale deserving of it's classic status.

When little club-footed Philip Carey's mother died, he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle, severe, religious relatives who knew not how to handle the child thrust into the midst of their lives. He grew up without coddling or affection, but with books and the fantastic worlds they brought to him, worlds he would strive his whole life to recreate in fact. From his experiences in school to an artist's paris, to the hospitals of London and the dregs of society, Of Human Bondage details his search for himself and for his own brand of reality as he waits, desperate for life to finally begin. I see a lot of myself in Philip's apparently directionless wanderings, which is the beauty of this novel. He is believeable to extremes, and gloriously ambivalent morally. The book is beautifully written and wonderfully unpredictable, avoiding trite cliches and overlong prosaic rambles alike. Read it for school, or for pleasure, or for the experience of seeing plainly a slice of someone else's life, someone neither virtuous nor sinful, someone wholly real.

Little read these days, but Maugham remains head and shoulders above almost all contemporary novelists and this is his masterpiece.

I have read this book many times over the years and it's different every time. Is amazing how one writer can get all those human emotions and write about them, one can actually feel what the characters feel and get involved into their lives. A book that is worth reading more than once...

I am sorry to say that I thoroughly disliked "Of Human Bondage." I know it is on every must read list for fiction (which is why I decided to read it) however, I just wonder how such a boring story can continually be relegated to such a hallowed position in literature? Not only did I find it dull but I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the main character's perception of women! I'm not a feminist in the least but most of the female characters were described in such pathetic ways. "Yellow teethed" "Sallow skin" "Dirty Hands" "Tear stained over powdered face", it goes on and on. I wondered if the author was uncomfortable women? I looked online for some information about Maugham. To my surprise I found out that Maugham was bisexual. He did marry and have a child but for most of his life it sounded like he was involved with men. In no way can I say this substantiates or confirms the tone of the book -- but in some way it answered my question or concern.

Instead of this book I'd recommend the following classics: Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Madame Bovary by Flaubert. At least in these books, maybe the female characters are not the most virtuous but the characters are written with such sensuality that even though they might not be described as gorgeous they are brought to life in the pages by the author with a kaleidoscope of words that makes them multidimensional -- good or bad.

Fantastic reading of the book. The first chapter is slow due to detailed writing of scenic attributes but once the plot unfolds it is riveting. It is easy to feel for the characters due to the unbelievable job that Alan Rickman does narrating the story, He has the proper voice inflections for each character to really project the appropriate emotions meant by the author. I have listened to book narrations before that have failed miserably at that important aspect and subsequently ruined the experience. Rickman is a master at it. Although it is fairly long, it did not detract at all as I listened to it on the way to work each day. I actually found myself wishing it were longer! I would highly recommend "reading" this via the audio book.

Get the CD version just out .
When I had to read this book in High School I found it excruciatingly BORING. But Alan Rickman did such a good job, now I think this story is BETTER than Wuthering Heights.

From AudioFile
" The suffering that follows is mitigated somewhat by the ending, but more by the mastery of Alan Rickman's reading. At the start, Rickman senses the voice for each character in Hardy's fictional world, and he maintains each character's personality throughout. He even manages to project Hardy's subtle shadings of tone with the rhythm and tempo of his narration, throwing in a song here and there because, in spite of his gloom, there is a festive strain to Hardy, as well. If you have a hard time reading this classic English writer, this is how to do it. "P.E.F. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine.
Yes and he can even do the womens voices without doing falsetto ! Rickman won the Best Talking Book or Talkie thing for this and deservedly so.
I enjoy talking books and often use them as I drive long distances and this is the best one I have heard so far. I hope Alan Rickman , or another English actor, reads some more Thomas Hardy books for us in future.

Hardy is very good at descriptions. The language he uses makes the people and scenery come alive. While this is true I personally feel that I would have preferred to read other books over this one. A good book but nothing special.

This book has been taught in lit classes for years excellent but sad book.
Michael B Vye

First, let me confess that I bought this because I am a fan of Alan Rickman's wonderfully rich, mellifluous baritone and the idea of spending hours listening to him read one of the classics of English literature is was absolute heaven to me. And, I can honestly say, I was not disappointed; the recording is absolutely brilliant.

Using ever nuance and range of his distinctive Rickmans each character that poulates Egdon Heath his or her own distinctive voice and cosistantly applies it throughout from the beginning to the end of the story. When he reads the description of the wild and desolate heath, Rickman's voice turns Hardy' prose into sublime poetry.

This is a great collection of stories for 2 reasons. The first is because it's a great bargain for the price. This is a HUGE book & will entertain the reader for hours. I've bought several volumes of the great Sagas, including several such as Egil's Saga & Njal's Saga or Burnt Njal, which contained only one story. This book contains all of Egil's Saga as well as many others. I think Penguin definitely gives you a lot for your money.
The second reason is that these are great stories. The characters are interesting, the action is intense, and the plots are memorable. Anyone who loves tales of adventure & conflict will find something to like here. Anyone thinking that the Norse people offered no lasting contribution to Western culture should familiarize themselves with the Sagas. In my opinion, these works compare favorably to any literature of the Middle Ages.
The one caution I'd offer to someone not familiar with these tales is to not read the introductions until after reading the story. Otherwise, the ending will be spoiled for you.
Penguin has a reputation for publishing important historical works of literature at very affordable prices. This collection is a fine addition to their impressive catalog.

Stepping Off the Edge: Learning & Living Spiritual Practice
Roots time for me. I am half Icelandic. People tend to think of the ancient Norsemen as barbaric murderers. Well, they went a-Viking, and you probably wouldn't want to meet them on one of their "shopping trips". But the Norse had a rich and complicated culture, their own religion, and some of the most powerful sagas in the world. Icelanders were the scribes and intellectuals. The Icelandic sagas have been compared to the Greek in scope and power. Sample a civilization that's been glossed over by European history. Check out Independent People, by Halldor Laxness, for an example of a modern Icelandic genius' writing.

~The Sagas of Icelanders: Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition~ is an intriguing collection of prose describing life and events in Iceland during the 10th and 11th centuries. They are extraordinary specimens of Icelandic literature. Icelanders were prominently of Nordic Viking descent and were also amalgamated with Celtic/Gaelic peoples whom they often took as wives. Their adopted homeland was not inhabited until after the 9th century. Iceland is a desolate landscape of basalt and lava beds, punctuated by volcanoes, geysers, and glaciers, which makes it the site for some epic adventures. The image of the Vikings that inhabited this land is varied. Some see them as noble, genius at maritime skill and navigation, prolific traders and explorers. Others regard them as savage marauders who loot and plunder. The later Norsemen in these Sagas were more tempered than the ones of the earlier centuries.

Iceland was very unique amongst European societies from the tenth to thirteen centuries. It had no executive administration, king or monarch to speak of, but rather a complex sophisticated system of legislative and judicial institutions. The Althing served as a national assembly. Regional quarter courts were set up for adjudicating disputes. Iceland was kinship society. Whenever blood feuds and disputes arose, the offending party or parties could seek the support of his family and a tribal chief. Kinship as a concept is integral to understanding the Sagas. It involves a sense of familial belonging not unlike the Celtic clan system. The de facto government would often broker peace so as to meditate conflict, but sometimes conflicts turned deadly when personal vengeance was sought to avenge perceived wrongs.

While good as far as it goes, I expected (admittedly somewhat naively) that a book titled, "The Sagas of Icelanders" contained all of the icelandic sagas.

It doesn't. And aggravating allusions and references now and then to sagas that aren't contained in this volume just compound the frustration. But it does contain a core (to my mind, chosen somewhat arbitrarily) of the sagas from which one can build a familiarity as well as a list for further reading.

This review is largely a response to David Heinrich's strange two-star review (see below).

Where to begin????

First, Mr. Heinrich's remarks represent a peculiar crackpot strain of libertarian thought that imagines Viking Age Iceland as a social and political model for contemporary America. Give me a break! Viking Age Iceland was an agrarian society with a tiny, homogeneous population working extremely marginal land. It should be needless to say that the forms of political organization and conflict resolution that worked for medieval Icelanders will not work for a huge, diverse population working within a complex, increasingly post-industrial economy. But then, by my observation, libertarians tend to live in a fantasy world of one-on-one interactions on which other relations--e.g. power, economic--do not impinge.

As for the representativeness of this anthology, it's hardly biased. Kellogg et al. gather a rich selection of sagas that offer a wide range of plots and character types: e.g. explorers, farmers, pioneers, poets, men, women, bad warriors, noble warriors, on and on. Njal's Saga is by far the longest of the sagas, too big to include here. Even so, there's plenty of lawspeaking in this anthology, not just blood feud and violence.

Finally, this reviewer refers to per capita violence in medieval Iceland. Where did he get that information? Did medieval Icelanders keep such records? Did he derive them from the sagas themselves? If so, that's a problem because they are literary productions, written 100+ years after the Viking Age; they are not court records, mortality statistics, or any other such documents. They tell us much about how medieval Icelanders saw themselves and their past. As sources, however, they get problematic at best if one starts trying to pull from them specific biographical or historical fact.

All this said, The Sagas of Icelanders is a rich, representative, and absorbing selection of some the world's greatest writings.

Today I read a news article about Greenland entitled "Climate Change Is a Mixed Bag for Inuit." I had to smile at that since I have just finished reading Smiley's book, which recreates the society of Greenland at the end of the 1300's when the problem was global COOLING. Nowadays, the fjords are ice free by April or May (instead of July): that contrasts with the ice and hard winters coming earlier and earlier for the ancient Greenlanders. Then, farms were abandoned, people died of disease and starvation, the Inuit had to come further south to hunt. And Smiley even contrasts this to the hardy folk and explorations of Erik the Red's time. Who knows? Maybe as our own century proceeds, we will see farmers again in Greenland!!
This extraordinary novel spins out many of the conflicts of the time: between and within families, between the Church and the old Nordic laws represented by the dwindling number of lawsayers, between the old culture of "riches" and the rapidly approaching destitution, between the settlers and the Inuit. The book is so rich in theme and character; the reader will find many more conflicts to mull over. Most of all, in the lives of these people, we see ourselves in all of life's cycles. Smiley's style evokes the way these people thought and talked, with a predominance of the old Anglo-Saxon lexicon that is our heritage as English speakers.
This eloquent book is in the great tradition of "Kristin Lavransdatter" by Sigrid Undset (the translation by Charles Archer had me mesmerized) and "Giants in the Earth" by Rolvaag.

I'm a huge fan of hers. There were a few things that I didn't like about this one:
1) Too long and repetitive. 1/4 could have been pruned
2) Weak character development
3) Confusing at parts

A really good read. This spare and yet rich tale spun out over generations had me longing for a loom and a trencher of dried reindeer meat. As I turned the last page, I ruefully left my paperback time-travel machine and returned to the time of packaged foods and incandescent lighting.

This book reads and is written as an epic, a sprawling novel, illustrating the customs, weather, beliefs, habits, and lifestyle of the people of Greenland in the Middle Ages. There is a lot of detail, about hunting parties, shoes, tiny beds built into walls, imaginary creatures, and most importantly the relationships of the people.

I first read this book soon after it came out in 1988 or `89, and its magic has never left me even after having reread it more than once since. The story, written in spare but illuminating saga style and historically accurate as far as it's known, vividly fleshes out a time and place, a society struggling to survive while being virtually forgotten by the outside world, a society of which many today are unaware that it ever existed. The novel spans generations, set during the latter half of the 1300s to early 1400s (some evidence indicates that the last Greenland Norse remnants in the Eastern Settlement may have held on into the early 1500s). Although its two widely separated settled areas never numbered more than a total of perhaps five thousand persons at the max, to ask why it disappeared is, in a real sense, to put the cart before the horse. As the late geographer Carl O. Sauer reminded us in his 1968 book "Northern Mists," the first thing to be asked -- the obverse, the first side of the question of why Norse Greenland failed -- is how it survived for five hundred years. This remarkable medieval people endured over a span as long as that of the Roman Empire and a century longer than the American culture has yet done since the first permanent English settlements of the early 1600s with far more support from overseas. With a sure hand Smiley portrays a distinctive slice of humanity in all its strengths, weaknesses, capacity for good and evil, fallability, wisdom, and stoic acceptance of its own mortality. Unlike some more recent writing of hers I've seen, the author essentially "tells it like it is," and in the manner of a true saga lets the chips fall where they may -- thus allowing the reader to make one's own judgments. This book is a masterpiece.

I found this book very well written. It is interesting that the author chose not only to show the terrible suffering that came from slavery, but also she revealed how slavery extracts a toll on the master. Personally it exemplifies how religion can (as in many cases throughout history) support and justify cruelty and violence. This book should stir everyone at the gut level. I don't want to forget to add that I like the Modern Library Classics format. At the end of the book is discussion questions and commentary by other famous authors.

My one-star rating applies only to the Penguin edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Penguin edition, edited by Ann Douglas, has a high rate of transcription error. So it is not suitable for serious study.

I listed a selection (over 100) of the transcription errors in the Penguin edition for a presentation at the 2007 American Literature Association conference. For example, the Penguin edition on page 619 (in the 4 copies that I've examined) has the following line:

"If the laws of New England were so arranged that a master could [it]now and then[/it] torture an apprentice to death, would it be received with equal composure?"

In the 1852 Jewett edition (the first printing in book form), the sentence included an additional clause:

"If the laws of New England were so arranged that a master could [it]now and then[/it] torture an apprentice to death, without a possibility of being brought to justice, would it be received with equal composure?"

This error--the omission of "without a possibility of being brought to justice"--diminishes a key theme in Stowe's work. I encourage scholars, teachers, and students to purchase Ammons's or Sklar's editions of UTC. Among editions that I've examined, those editions have more reliable texts. I have not examined the new Bedford edition (Railton) or the new Norton edition (Gates and Robbins).

If you choose to buy some other edition, perhaps your choice will encourage Penguin to publish a corrected edition. This edition was ranked 41,945 at Amazon when I wrote this review in July of 2007.

I wasn't ready to enjoy this novel and the first 60 pp reinforced this prejudice. The beginning is filled with Stowe's rendition of slave's speech--"ah's gwyne ter make corn pone fer Mas'r"--which most modern readers will find demeaning. Fortunately this tones down.

As a non-religious person I have a low tolerance for preachifyin, but it bothered me less as the novel progressed, as it became obvious that the most effective argument against slavery at the time was righteous Christianity. The issue was not the equality of the races, though Stowe does allow for that (not bad for 1850!), but that a Christian should not own humans, period. Whether the slaves were happy-go-lucky, sentimental, childlike, superstitious--all these supposed attributes of one race or another--all these were irrelevant to her.

Through the character of St Clare she argues that the greater sin of slave owners was their hypocrisy rather than the ownership per se. That owners might claim justification from some obscure passage in the Bible was an outrage. Better to simply admit that you hold slaves because you have the power to do so, and it makes your life easier. If you are to be wicked, admit it at least--don't hide behind some nonsensical religious rationalization. If the slave owners could be honest about their reasons, then there might be hope of winning the moral argument.

The characters are one-dimensional--pure good, pure evil, not much in between. Most are what we now see as stereotypes. They merely function as tools of the plot and the point. What I didn't expect was that the story itself would be as exciting as it was. It moves right along. This overcomes the preachiness and the simplicity of the characters, and is the reason so many read the book. Even for all its patronizin and preachifyin, it's a page-turner.

As others have noted it is amazing to see how "Uncle Tom", portrayed as noble and saintly, has become such a term of derision.

Finally, if you are going to read this, don't read the Introduction until after you've read the novel, as it gives away several plot points that you are better off encountering for yourself in the novel.

When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe he reportedly said, "This is the little woman who made the great war". The tremendous influence of this book on Anti-Slavery attitudes are considered to be a very real factor in leading to atmosphere which helped bring about the Civil War. This work is thus in terms of its 'real effect' in the 'real world ' far more important than 'Moby Dick' or " Leaves of Grass' or 'The Scarlet Letter ' or 'Walden', the greatest books of the American Renaissance.
The literary quality of the book is in no proportion to the Influence which it had.
I have found it an almost impossible read, in good part because of its language.

Throughout history, few books have garnered more controversy than Harriet Beecher Stowe's UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. When he met Mrs. Stowe in 1861, President Lincoln proclaimed, "So you're the little woman that wrote the book started this great war." That may be a bit of an overstatement, but the book certainly had enormous social and political consequences.

In the social structure that has evolved since the emancipation of slaves in this country, few labels have a more derogatory intent to the black person than being called an "Uncle Tom". We hear it repeatedly used to indicate a black person who chooses not to follow in lockstep with the direction of radical black anarchist leaders. For the life of me, I can't grasp that concept. What greater compliment than to be referred to as a man who faced such immense adversity yet who remained steadfast in his faith.

I realize the argument is that Tom did as he was told and refused to stand up for himself, but that argument only portrays the shallowness of a society that has been more and more anti-Christian as time goes by. Those who would make that argument fail to see the strength and courage it takes for a true Christian to resist temptation and consistently put personal challenge into the Lord's hands.

This book, today, receives a tremendous amount of criticism for Stowe's constant Christian "preaching" throughout the book. Stowe, born in 1811, is of the founding daughter generation. Her strong portrayal of Christian virtue is yet another reminder that America was founded on Christian principles. People today, in our society where Christianity is under constant criticism, hate to admit that America once was, and was intended to be, a Christian nation. At the time of its publishing, Stowe's work was criticized for being biased towards anti-slavery, but was never criticized for its expression of Christian virtues.

For me, and I'm sure others, the book does have one great flaw. Mrs. Stowe was well known for accurately depicting the vernacular of a particular region. While that may add authenticity to a story, it also creates a painfully tedious read. That is the case here. This is not a book that most people could pick up and read at once. For me, it was a long daily process of 10-20 pages at a time.

Here is an example of what I'm referring to;

"I'm thinkin' my old man won't know de boys and de baby. Lor'! she's de biggest gal, now, -good she is, too, and peart, Polly is. She's out to the house, now, watchin' de hoe-cake. I's got jist de very patern my old man liked so much a bakin'. Jist sich as I gin him the mornin' he was took off. Lord bless us! How I felt, dat ar mornin'!"

I'm sure there are readers who appreciate such authenticity, but for me, and I'm sure untold masses of high-school students who once found this on their "required reading" list, that is just plain tedious. My only other knock on the book is the "happily ever after" ending which Stowe gave to several of the main characters. For those once trapped in the bondage of slavery, I don't believe too many of them lived out that kind of scenario.

That said, if you've not read this book, do so. Find a way struggle through it. Stowe gives portrayals of both sides of the slavery coin. By that I mean, she managed to portray that many slave owners considered their slaves as family members and treated them with respect and kindness, while there were also other owners who viewed slaves as mere possessions to be abused and defiled.

This book may not have started the Civil War, but it most certainly had a profound effect upon society like few books in history have ever had. That fact, in and of itself, makes this book a must read for everyone.

Monty Rainey
www.juntosociety.com

So many books. So little time.

Jane Smiley's "Thirteen ways of Looking at the Novel" won't help you to deal with the sheer volume of new books that are published nowadays. In fact, weighing in at close to 600 pages, it may actually slow progress towards whatever numerical goal you may have set for 2008. Nonetheless, I urge you, I implore you, to get this book and to take the time to read it. Why? Because if you do, you will never read a novel the same way again. I have read no other book that comes close to this one in terms of enriching my overall reading experience.

The structure of the book is straightforward. The first twelve chapters, spanning 270 pages, or just under half the book, have titles like The Origins of the Novel, The Psychology of the Novel, Morality and the Novel, The Art of the Novel, The Novel and History. Each reads like a terrific tutorial by the professor of literature you wish you had had in college. Though these chapters are never less than fascinating, for my money it's the next four chapters which make this book so brilliant. They are titled The Circle of the Novel, A Novel of Your Own (I), A Novel of Your Own (II), `Good Faith: A Case History . Basically, Smiley uses the 100 pages or so spanned by these chapters to given an inspired tutorial, of unsurpassed brilliance, on how to write a novel. If I had my way, it would be required reading for all of the Rick Moodys, the Heidi Julavits, the Dave Eggers, the Deborah Eisenbergs, any of those too-smart-for-their-own good writers at work today who continue to foist off their whip-smart, empty-hearted, look-at-me-how-smart-am-I, metafictional experiments on the unsuspecting reader, passing it off as `literary fiction'.

In the last half of the book, Smiley analyzes 101 of her favorite novels, ranging from `The Tale of Genji' and `The Decameron' to `White Teeth' and `Atonement', bringing to bear the ideas laid out in the first half of the book. This is done with such wit, intelligence, and sympathy that the effect is to make you want to re-read those books you were already familiar with, and to rush out and get the books she discusses that you haven't already read.

In short, this is one of those rare books that is genuinely uplifting, and will rekindle your enthusiasm for reading. I can give it no higher recommendation.

This compendium falls into three parts, more or less. The first section offers Smiley's survey of how the novel evolved. Here, she emphasizes the importance of Bocaccio's Decameron and Marguerite de Naverre's Heptameron, two collections of stories grouped around a tale-telling symposium, more or less. The first stresses the humanism and the joy of human relationships; the second cautions humans about the danger of such relationships. Here, Smiley finds the tension that characterizes the subsequent four centuries of what becomes, with the rise of literacy and the spread of affordable books, the novel as we know it.

Her 22 years spent teaching university in Iowa show in her analysis. Some readers may be lulled off to sleep by her rather academic considerations; as a literature lecturer myself for about the same amount of time that she taught, I found these introductory chapters a bit too longwinded--she continues as the pages pile up to elaborate points already made, and at times I felt like she had to stretch her material to fit, well, 13 chapters no matter what. Still, it taught me a lot that I had not learned in the classroom myself, and it's useful for any reader as an overview or summation. Despite the rather too-professorial pace, she does come up with a few memorable remarks in these first 200 pages.

For instance, that Don Quixote, shown to conveniently nod off whenever the talk turned to amours, began a tendency for the novel (for much of its evolution) to avoid explicit depictions of sex. That the English novel tends to lead up to marriage, while the French equivalent starts off with marriage--or its stagnation after the honeymoon's faded. How drama inflates its protagonist while novels deflate their main character's pretensions or aspirations. Or, in her opinion with which I disagree, why Ulysses and what she critiques as too-mannered a fictional rendering distances fatally the novel from its natural milieu where the reader--and the writer--belong.

I never have read a Smiley novel, so that puts me in either an uninformed or fresh reception for her next section. She takes the making of her novel "Good Faith," and shows how she took an anecdote told her from real life and worked it into a novel. I admit that while I have no interest in reading GF after encountering her account of its construction, the process described was told--being from the inside rather than via a critic after the fact--in an informative and insightful manner. But it's still a bit clumsy; if you have not read GF, then the coyness with which she gives some details and withholds others (so as not to spoil the plot) does prove awkward, as this novel's not exactly as familiar for most of us as many of the others she peruses in the 101 listed in the final section. I did find her reactions to reviews, her book tour experiences, and her struggles with knowing when to stop writing informative, however. This led into a chapter in which she addresses the reader as if he/she seeks advice on how to write a novel, too. This chapter felt as if imported from a previous article; it aroused for me absolutely no interest in writing one, and its place in this otherwise reader-oriented collection seemed precarious. But others will no doubt be invigorated by it.

For the final section, the second half roughly in length of the book, the 101 novels she lists and summarizes rather briskly--as she points out, often overlapping with the previous chapters that were written after she had drafted the notes on the 101 novels as she read them, offers far less enticement than I'd have expected. I thought I'd find many novels that I'd never heard of, or always had wondered if I should read but hadn't known enough about to sample. She did get me to search out Gogol's novella "Taras Bulba," one I'd never encountered. But many of her titles are already familiar, standard-issue for reading groups, English majors, or the "common reader" that Virginia Woolf could once expect to find out in the educated public. This is not meant as a put-down, but there were fewer rare and previously hidden or neglected finds in her list than I'd have liked.

Contrast this to the increasingly middlebrow types of novels that populate her list as it moves into the latter 20c. This on the one hand is unsurprising; this is the same category that Smiley herself writes for--the respectable popular "trade paperback" by the classier imprints from usually mass-market publishers. But I found really no new books in the more recent decades to seek out after reading her reviews. She too often does not show the faults of what she reads--such as Ian McEwan's "Atonement" being a refreshing and too rare inclusion of why she did not think a novel "worked"--and her generally sunny acceptance of the stack she plowed through does speak for her optimism and good-natured encouragement of her fellow writers. Again, I tend towards the more difficult novel than most of the people reading this book would, so I admit my snobbish prejudice!

Smiley does enjoy the benefits of much more leisure than most of us, riding horses in Carmel Valley, reading to her heart's delight, and taking the Course in Miracles--a paragraph early on praising this for her own recent transformation still seems baffling to me, alas. For we busier folk, her own foray through a few years of reading her way through the big bedside stack we bibliophiles all dream of having does show her commonsense and accessible approach to explicating how novels are made, why they work, and which ones worked best for her. While each of our stacks would differ from hers, she does provide in this hefty volume (a good value for the price) enough for any reader to learn and debate with her from the comfort of our own armchair or pillow.

I guess it is well known that Smiley is a witty, intelligent, and congenial writer but this book nevertheless surprised me. I didn't want it to end! I found myself hoarding the pages of the penultimate essay the same way I do with the closing chapters of a novel I am enjoying. I will now have to re-read to figure out how she accomplished this (can it be simply a matter of voice?), but in the meantime want to recommend it to all comers. Just delightful.

This book is excellent and will repay close reading, but I am of two minds. On one hand, Smiley has examined the development and significance of the novel as only a practicing novelist of depth and talent could. On the strength of her treatment I've resolved to try her novels. Any description I might give of her discussion would not do it justice.

On the other hand, she clearly has a political axe to grind and this comes out most one-sidedly in her descriptions of novels. First, her history of the novel begins with Murasaki Shikibu's "Tale of Genji," leaps to Bocaccio's "Decameron" as a precursor to the novel in its western form, and then holds a steady course through Cervantes, Defoe, Austen, Dickens, and James into the twentieth century. Perhaps because she has identified as a major concern of the novel the question of "what a woman is for" (her words), Smiley ignores Twain, Hemingway, and modern novelists whose work is not animated by that question. She does not claim completeness for her 100 novels and writes more than once that she is not trying to compile a `Best 100' list, but she does claim a certain disinterestedness that is belied by her choices. She (usually) likes European novelists (nothing wrong with that) and woman novelists (ditto) who pursue her favorite question. Novelists who have nothing to say on the question either leave her cold or don't make the list at all. Hence, she claims not to be able to remember her experience of "Moby Dick" and Joyce's "Ulysses" strikes her as a lot of art devoted to a not very interesting premise. About her contemporaries Pynchon, Delillo, and Wolfe she has nothing to say at all.

Second, the idea that failure to read novels caused the badness of our politicians is nonsense. Lincoln wasn't a great reader of novels, nor was Washington. I don't deny that people well-read in good novels might as a result develop empathy but Smiley seems not to believe there are other routes to the same destination. Furthermore, plenty of very good leaders, not to mention good people in general, claim that daily contact with the Bible helps them to love their neighbors as themselves. GWB's treatment of Iraq doesn't strike Smiley as loving enough (one might say "Christian enough"): fine, but this is not grounds for blaming the Bible and Bush's poor education. Where should we believe Mother Theresa or Dietrich Boenhoeffer learned their love of humanity?

Third, J.S.'s history of the novel, though accurate as far as it goes, doesn't make sense given her concerns. She includes "The Tale of Genji," which had zero influence on the novel's early development in the West, but excludes medieval saints' lives, which I expect influenced the "Decameron" and are sources for the reader's experience of interior truth she believes is a defining characteristic of the novel. She will claim she had to start somewhere but why not consider the source of the novel's interiority, since she places so much emphasis on that quality? The primary source of western interiority is the idea that the soul has to answer to God in conscience. This fearful relationship between self and deity was illustrated in hundreds of saints lives. A frequent element in the stories of female saints is the refusal to do the socially expected thing--marry a man--in favor of maintaining chastity. Tales like this dramatize the sense of self against other that grew as Christianity spread. This crisis deepened during the Protestant Reformation and it should not surprise us that the novel's development began as Luther and Calvin were claiming that the soul's isolation was even more absolute than Christians had previously believed.

Finally, had she looked she would have found several long, plotted, prose works that predate "The Tale of Genji" by several centuries: the novel has perfectly fine ancient roots in the Greek romance and other long prose works of antiquity, such as Apuleius' "Metamorphosis" and Petronius' "Satyricon."

So, brilliant and idiosyncratic, just as I believe Smiley wanted it. Buy the book.

I read the first few chapters and thought this was not a bad book. The author often has to stretch to tie her point to her examples but was keeping my interest. And then it happened! What so many of today's "accomplished" writers can't avoid.
A completely useless and bombastic attack on the Bush administration stuck in the middle of the book. Whatever your political views, these pages are confused and embarassing. A nice 3-4 star book of criticism and advice destroyed because our author could not contain her hatred and bile. My reading group (2 conservatives, 2 moderates and 3 liberals) voted 7-0 to stop discussing this book after hitting this passage. Leave political commentary to the hundreds of hacks across the spectrum.