Leopard

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, translated by Archibald Colquhoun, 320 pages

Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salinas, would be perfectly content ruling over his large family, amusing himself with his mistress, indulging in his passion for astronomy, playing with his dog, and watching over his hereditary estates with benevolent indifference.  Unfortunately for him, history has other plans, as Garibaldi's revolutionaries lay siege to Palermo, with Fabrizio's own nephew, the dashing Tancredi, joining them in their effort to overthrow the monarchy.  Even in the security of his country estate at Donnafugata, the prince has to reckon with his eldest daughter Concetta's love for Tancredi and his nephew's growing affection for the bourgeois beauty Angelica.

The Leopard is a masterpiece.  It is not a dramatic novel - most of the major external conflicts are resolved without struggle or comment.  The real drama is social, historical, psychological, and, in the end, metaphysical.  Despite the sentimentality of its characters, it is a remarkably unsentimental work.  There is much to attract us in the passing world of the Sicilian nobility, but the novel does not romanticize them.  CS Lewis famously remarked that there is no "magic about the past.  People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we.  But not the same mistakes.  They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us."  So it is with The Leopard - the novel unfolds for the reader a universe of values which overlaps but significantly diverges from those of liberal modernity and allows him to judge between them.

Short Timers

The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford, 180 pages

"The Marines are looking for a few good men."  So the young man we know only as Joker enlists.  He soon learns more.  "The Marine Corps does not want robots.  The Marine Corps wants killers.  The Marine Corps wants to build indestructible men, men without fear."  If he never quite reaches that ideal, he pursues it, never alone, but always in the company of his fellow Marines, through the narrow hell of boot camp on Parris Island and the wider hell of war on the banks of the Perfume River.  "I understood that my own weapon could do this dark magic thing to any human being.  With my automatic rifle I could knock the life out of any enemy with just the slightest pressure of one finger.  And, knowing that, I was less afraid."

The Short Timers is no doubt best known as one of the two semi-autobiographical novels on which the film Full Metal Jacket is based (the other being Dispatches by Michael Herr).  The book is significantly different from the film - more brutal, more repetitive, and also more obvious.  Questions of credibility arise at certain points - how many Stars and Stripes photojournalists dabbled in cannibalism?  Perhaps more than one might think, but at times the reader will be very conscious that this is a novel and not a direct factual account, a problem that is compounded by some surreal sequences and others which are ambiguously unreal.  If the writing is uneven, however, there are certainly more than enough unforgettably visceral passages to justify the trouble.

Stories of Your Life and others

Stories of Your Life and others by Ted Chiang, 10 hrs 23 m, 333 pages

This is a collection of the author's first eight published stories. All of the stories were good but my least favorite was the first one - "Tower of Babylon". It was slow to get going but had a good ending. It was the author's first published story which could be why it wasn't as good.

The title story, Stories of Your Life was the basis for the movie Arrival and it is what drew me to this collection. However, it wasn't my favorite story in the collection. I would say my favorite is a toss up between "Understand" and "Liking What You See: a Documentary".      

"Understand" is about a man who is given a life saving drug that unintentionally makes him more intelligent. After several doses, he is super intelligent and has control over his body. While he is constructing his grand philosophy he finds out there is another like him. He realizes there can only be one of them which leads to a showdown.

"Liking What You See: a Documentary" is set in the future where your ability to tell if people are beautiful or ugly can be turned off. The documentary is of people at a college debating and then voting on whether everyone at the college will be required to have the procedure while they are attending.

I would recommend this book to fans of science fiction and fantasy.        

Party Monster: a Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland

Party Monster: a Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland , by James St. James, 287 pages

With the recent release of Michael Alig from prison, I found myself saying, "Who?"  I had no knowledge about the Club Kids culture of New York City in the '90s, so I read this true-crime tale written by James St. James.  (Note: if interested in drag queen makeup tutorials, google James St James transformations on Youtube).  James St. James writes of an incredibly decadent, superficial, drug-fueled nightlife, where the cast of characters is simultaneously sympathetic and repulsive, all at once.  He describes at length the rise of Michael Alig, from shunned party-goer to the organizer of must-attend, blow-out bashes, where wild events would take place, all in a frenzy of tons of drugs.  Alig, who comes across as someone who just desperately wanted to be loved, soon becomes addicted- both to drugs and notoriety, which soon spirals out of control, culminating in a night of murder and months of denial.  The writing is very scattered and conversational, which I found engaging, but others might not.  There are many funny events in this book, but those, combined with the shadow of addiction and murder, made me feel a little uncomfortable laughing.  This was later turned into a movie with Macaulay Culkin.