Book Review - Brighton Rock

Graham Greene was a prolific author. I have an anthology that includes 3 of this best known novels, Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, and The Heart of the Matter. From the back cover of this edition (QPB, 1991) this short bio is given:

"Greene was an adventurer and world traveler with a thirst for danger, and many of his novels are set in the vaired and distant locales he sought out. In all he wrote 54 books including novels (24 of them), short stories, plays, essays, travel and children's books; and two autobiographies"

Greene is noted for his much publicized conversion to Catholicism, largely due to the influence of his fiancee. I believe this was a significant turning point for his writing, as he became absorbed, and although some may disagree with me I don't hesitate to say obsessed; with moral dilemma and struggles.

Brighton Rock folds neatly into the pocket of moral dilemma. The characters are rich and as always Greene's eye for detail allows great visibility into the drama that unfolds before us. The book has two conundrums with which I struggled. The first is the era. Brighton Rock was copyrighted in 1938. Therefore, much of the language, culture and dialogue is 70 or so years old. Add to that the setting in an English seaside town with the nuances of a foreign culture and a good portion of the reading included attempting to understand the words and setting.

For example, upon embarking on the novel I had assumed that Brighton Rock was the name of the seaside town in which the drama takes place. The town is Brighton, but Brighton Rock as pointed out by the editor is

"..a form of stick candy as characteristic of English seaside resorts as salt water taffy is to Americans. The word "Brighton" appears on both ends of the stick at no matter what point it is broken off."

The story begins at full speed:

"Hale knew they meant to murder him before he had been in Brighton three hours."

Hale was a newspaperman. In that time, in English seaside towns; it was popular for newspapers to have contests. The itinerary and picture of a journalist was published in the paper and the journalist was given a fictitious name, in this case Hale was named by his paper Kolley Kibber. If a person approached the journalist, called him by the fictitious name and was carrying the appropriate newspaper a cash reward was given on the spot.

Hale was the target of a ragtag band of petty thieves out to get the reward money he carried. The leader of the band was a 17 year old nicknamed Pinkie, possibly due to his young age. Greene also refers to him frequently as "The Boy". The gang is involved in other extortion rackets, but the nucleus of the story revolves around the murder of Hale. Pinkie is ruthless and commands men older than him. The murder is carried out, but there are two figures introduced who have great potential to bring Pinkie and his gang down.

The first is Ida. Ida is a blustery, bosomy whirlwind. Her slightly flawed character is buoyed by her cheerful disposition (especially after a few glasses of beer or sherry), love for song and her unflagging optimism. As Hale realizes the plot unfolding around him, he seeks solace in Ida's company, which she readily signs up for. Hale's paranoia and disappearance ignite in her an unflagging, deterministic quest for his justice.

The second is Rose. Rose is young, impressionable and the product of a lower middle class family (like Pinkie) scraping by on a waitressing salary. Rose is party to a clue which could bring Pinkie and the gang down. Although she doesn't realize it, the power of her knowledge causes Pinkie to react in an unusual manner. Although he is sickened at the thought of it, she becomes his girlfriend, and then solely for the reason that a spouse cannot give legal testimony to the other spouse; he marries her. The romance is vacous and one sided. We feel pity for Rose - she is consumed by a love for Pinkie that is not reciprocated. He at times berates her and then comforts her.

Pinkie has a scarred psyche, exacerbated by his experience as an altar boy. At times of uncertaintly or fear, he lapses into reciting latin phrases he had been trained to memorize. His faith though is non-existent, he acknowledges that the only road before him leads to Hell and punishment.

It is on this road that the story traverses. The downward spiral of Pinkie's amoral actions accompanies his treatment, or mistreatment; of Rose. Even to his own ragtag band Pinkie displays cruelness and disdain. Ida plunges recklessy on, determined to find and bring Hale's murderers to justice. Once she gets close to Pinkie, his damaged psyche and the imminence of arrest and trial feed his downward spiral into greater acts of cruelty.

The story's climax is only slightly predictable, and is craftily done to the extent that I was swept up right to the end. I'll not provide a plot spoiler but only leave you with the main characters on a dark cliff in a storm. You'll have to read the book, and I heartily recommend it; to find out the ending!

Product Review - Fuel Belt

I've only worn a Camel Back once, and didn't really like it. Having the weight of the fluid in a backpack (even though not much) and the moving around was annoying. Now that I'm running some longer distances I know I needed something.

Enter Fuel Belt! This clever contraption does several things that attracted me to it. First, it puts the weight lower on the hips rather than high on the back. I think that is a more advantageous position to keep the back relaxed. Second, it distributes the weight so that it is not centralized. Finally, it's different bottles allow for different fluids rather than being the same necessitated by one container.


To be fair, I haven't looked at the current technology advances of the Camel Back or generic substitutes. They certainly have improved and become more sport specific but even so it was clear to me that Fuel Belt was designed for runners, not adapted to runners. If you are a Camel Back representative and want to send me one of your designs for product testing, email me and I promise to give it a fair review.

For a 17 mile run I filled the two back containers (the containers hold 8 ounces) with Powerade, and the front two with water. I put a gel packet in the zip container. The zip container is very small and will not hold much else. Off I set on the run! The first thing I noticed was that the weight in the back, albeit small; gave the sensation that the belt was going to pull my shorts off. Now I must say that I don't have large buttocks so this may be not an issue for most people. It just seemed to ride lower than I expected.

I was about five miles into the run when I first took a drink. It was awkward getting the bottle out of the back, and more awkward getting it in. It is likely a learned skill that gets better over time. Because the bottles are held in place by an elastic strap pocket, it's a tricky balancing act between being too loose and having the bottles come out, and being too tight where it is difficult to get them back in.

There was a small amount of sloshing when consuming some but not all of the fluid, but nothing too egregious. I can live with that. The sizing was too black and white. I am approximately a 33 inch waist. The medium was too small, and I had to exchange it. The large is nearly too big.

The price is fairly expense at $44.95, but overall I think the cost was worth it and I would recommend it.

Book Review - Perfume: the story of a murderer

This is an odd little book which I spotted on a colleague's desk and was graciously loaned to me. In some ways repugnant, but in others strangely compelling it is a story of scent and the investment of layers of meaning derived from and attributed to the odors which make up the days of our lives. The book is graphic, gritty, gratuitous and gripping. I could barely put it down.

The subject of the book, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born into a bloody beginning in 18th century France. The trail of blood is never far from his life as he attempts to satiate his unbending drive to concoct the perfect scent. Because Grenouille has such a highly developed, even preternatural; sense of smell it is inevitable that this skill would be tied into the vocation of perfume making. The historical setting is very well done with descriptive terms that helped me feel that I was observing first hand the events described in the book. There is a movie made from the book, and although it employs several fine actors I will likely abstain from seeing it as I'm not sure that the sensate landscape from reading could be reproduced onto the screen.

As an example of the writing here's a paragraph I particularly liked:

"He was delighted only by moonlight. Moonlight knew no colors and traced the contours of the terrain only very softly. It covered the land with a dirty gray, strangling life all night long. This world molded in lead, where nothing moved but the wind that fell sometimes like a shadow over the gray forests, and where nothing lived but the scent of the naked earth, was the only world that he accepted, for it was much like the world of his soul."

On a lighter note as hard as I tried I could not escape the 1970's hit song "Dead Skunk" by Loudon Wainright as I read the book:

Crossin' the highway late last night

He shoulda looked left and he shoulda looked right

He didn't see the station wagon car

The skunk got squashed and there you are!

You got yer Dead skunk in the middle of the road

Dead skunk in the middle of the road

You got yer dead skunk in the middle of the road

Stinkin' to high Heaven!

Take a whiff on me, that ain't no rose!

Roll up yer window and hold yer nose

You don't have to look and you don't have to see'

Cause you can feel it in your olfactory

I will admit that olfactory is one of my favorite words, and I also tender congratulations to the book's author Patrick Suskind for using the word judiciously and not liberally, as would be my tendency. I mean, how can you write a whole novel centered on the sense of smell and not use such a perfect word as olfactory on every page?

There is good character development also. Of particular interest to me was a perfumer named Baldini - a blustering, bumbling, bombastic bozo who develops an affection for Grenouille and takes him under his wing to teach him the trade.

There are three major parts to Grenouille's story. He begins as an outcast from society, and in the middle of the book is an interlude that sees his withdrawal from soceity, then in an interesting plot twist he is introduced into and accepted by society. Ultimately I have concluded that the subject of the book is not Grenouille, but his nose! Suskind is a great wordsmith, and I think his concept and commentary of the olfactory sense (oops - there I go) is wrapped in the story.

The story ends though in a macabre way that left me puzzled and irritated. I'll not be a total plot spoiler but I was not satisfied and even perturbed about the final events that transpired.

Other than then ending which left me flat, an enthralling read overall.

Book Review - Everyman

Philip Roth brings us a small (182 page) book with a big meaning. Although Benjamin Franklin is who the following quote is attributed to, a variant was also used by Daniel Defoe prior to Franklin. Franklin's version is the one that we are most familiar with:

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

Well, this book is not about taxes, and the last time I checked the death rate still averaged about one per person. A curious aspect of the book is that the central figure is never named. The book begins at his funeral, then re-starts with the recollections of Everyman's childhood. The transition is accomplished naturally and smoothly, and is an example of Roth's capable skills as a writer. Oddly enough, there are parallels to my own father in this book. The first is that as a young boy Everyman is hospitalized for a hernia, and next to him is another boy who dies in the middle of the night. This same exact experience happened to my father, where in Minneapolis he was admitted to a hospital (I believe for complications due to asthma) where a young boy in the bed next to him passed away. I think these brushes with death remind us all of how frail and quick life can be.

In my own childhood I had a neighbor kid who I hung out with for a brief time. Oddly enough, I don't remember his name! I suppose forty years of time can do that. Following the method set by Roth, I'll call him Everyboy. Either his family or our family moved, creating the natural rift we all experience when our relational circles change. Word came to me that he had been killed riding his bike, as he was crossing a street a car ran him over. It was an odd moment for me, that I would never ride bikes with him again. Even at that young age (I'm guess I was about 8) I was impacted by death.

Well, so was Everyman. During his childhood he views a dead sailor washed up on the shore being removed by the Coast Guard. Roth then takes us in a jump over time, simply stating without any qualification that 22 years had passed. We journey through Everyman's failed marriages, estrangement from his sons, and both love and envy regarding his brother who exhibited superior health. Through various ailments we hear Everyman's facing his mortality with statements like this:

"...but now eluding death seemed to become the central business of his life and bodily decay his entire story".

After his successful career, he takes up a lifelong passion - being an artist. This is the second parallel to my own father. Dad worked at various jobs his whole life, and now is doing what he has always wanted to do - teaching art to children. Everyman offers painting classes to other members in his retirement community, and befriends a woman who bemoans her loss of vitality and is apologetic for the physical needs she has. He tries to comfort her, but 10 days later she commits suicide with an overdose of pain medication. It is an interesting scene, where the one thing that brings relief to her life is also used as the contributor of her death.

As I read through the book, a dawning thought began to take hold of me - the central figure of this book is not Everyman, it is death and its predecessor, the decline of health as age stalks us all. Although Roth does not invest in anthropomorphic comparisions of death, the theme emerges and is always tied to the thoughts, words and actions of the figures in the book.

I suppose that the two great literary themes are love and death. In the book "The Question of God" by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi Jr. postulates a debate between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis. In it Nicholi asks the age old question:

"How do we resolve and come to terms with what Freud called "the painful riddle of death"? Socrates said "the true philosopher is always pursuing death and dying".

Roth's answer is that as Everyman is being prepped for yet another surgery, under the effect of the anasthetic; he dreams about the vitality of his youth, the treasure of a summer day at the seashore, the perfect priceless planet that earth is and his excitement and longing to enjoy every day. Roth describes how

"He went under feeling far from felled, anything but doomed, eager yet again to be fulfilled, but nonetheless, he never woke up. Cardiac arrest. He was no more, freed from being, entering into nowhere without even knowing it. Just as he'd feared from the start"

The question we ask is this: if we came from nothing, and we end in nothing, why do our lives mean something? In not only the Christian worldview but other religions as well, death is NOT the end of existence. But Roths seems to think so.

GRADE:

1. Literary - A+. Roth communicates his ideas fluidly and cohesively. This is an easy reading book where concepts do not need equivocation.
2. Worldview - F. Roth communicates his ideas fluidly and cohesively. Unfortunately, this is not the worldview that I espouse!