What Are You Reading

[Fading Fast]

Claudelle Inglish by Erskine Caldwell, first published in 1958


Usually, it's easy to say "the book is better than the movie," but the book and movie versions of Claudelle Inglish take different approaches to the same material in a nuanced way that makes them more complementary than competing efforts.

In the book, author Erskine Caldwell drops you into the middle of a southern sharecropper's family – the Inglishes: husband Clyde, wife Jessie, and daughter, the titular Claudelle – on the brink of shattering changes, and then lets the narrative drive the character reveal.

The movie drops you into the same family, but lets the character reveal drive the narrative. As a result, in the movie, you feel closer to the characters – in the book, you feel closer to the story itself.

Caldwell sets the scene of a southern farm where a sharecropper, Clyde, works the farm for a rich landowner, Lightsy Hushour. Clyde just goes about his day, as does his daughter, Claudelle, who is waiting for her fiancé to get out of the army so they can marry.

Clyde's wife, Jessie, is not just going about her day as she's angry and bitter about having, in her opinion, married the wrong man. Still a pretty woman after twenty years of marriage to a poor farmer, she thinks she should have traded on her youth and beauty for a better match.

That's the setup with one seemingly small spark about to ignite a firestorm of lust, ***, and lies that will engulf not only the family and Hushhour, but the entire surrounding farming community.

The spark is a letter from Claudelle's fiancé, a poor local boy who courted Claudelle and promised to marry her after his two years of mandatory army service.

He, instead, "reverse" Dear Johns her – breaking their engagement by mail because he's fallen in love with someone else whom he plans to marry.

Claudelle, who had "given herself body and soul" to the boy before he left, is bereft. Inconsolable as only teenagers can be, something breaks in beautiful Claudelle. Her way out of depression is, and there's no other way to say it, by sleeping with almost every man that moves.

This throws the small community into turmoil as boys her age line up for "dates," while older men lust from the sidelines. But it's not always from the sidelines, as Claudelle is democratic in her generosity, only asking for gifts like candy or stockings in return for her "favors."

Middle-aged Hushour, who wanted to marry Claudelle before this "new phase," is encouraged by Jessie to hang in there. Jessie wants Claudelle to marry Hushhour, despite his age, so that Claudelle won't make the mistake she, Jessie, made of marrying a poor man for "love."

Thrown into this *** storm – in this usually buttoned-up small town – is an "affair" Claudelle has with a married middle-aged store owner – he's a gift-giving bazaar – and a possible dalliance with one of the town's ministers (for God's sake!), and the community's seams are tearing.

Eventually and quickly all this will explode leaving a large and ugly debris field in a once respectable community that has you wondering what Erskine is saying.

Does he really see these communities as fragile as the one he portrays here? Does he see overwhelming lust and regret stewing just below the surface: are these communities ***ual frustration and indignation hotspots waiting to erupt?

Caldwell does all this with an impressive economy of words. He picks his spots to provide exposition, gives you just enough, and then moves on. The story fills out in time, but with pinpricks not deep cuts. But pay attention as some of those pinpricks draw a lot of blood.

The movie covers the same territory, but much more than the book does, it draws you into the characters: Claudelle's heartbreak and the odd retribution that gives her no pleasure (well, no peace of mind), Jessie's vicious anger, and Clyde's unrewarded quiet decency.

In the novel, you feel this event happen to the people; in the movie, you feel the people driving the event. As usual, it's still better to read the book first, but they really complement each other nicely.

Regional differences today are quaint and surfacey as we all have the internet and people aren't unaware of the larger world. Caldwell, though, was writing at a time when a small, rural, Southern community could still be its own self-contained ecosystem easily subject to disruption.

Caldwell then drops the mother of all disruptions into one of these rural religious ecosystems in the incarnation of a pretty girl trying to have the most *** possible. It almost sounds funny, especially to a modern ear inured to ***ual exhibitionism, but it wasn't then.

When you finish the last page of Claudelle Inglish, more a novella in length than a novel, the overriding feeling is one of sadness that so much went needlessly wrong from one Dear John postal missive.


Comments on the movie here: #31,885

 

[2 Days Dubai]

^ Caldwell and Wolfe stirred the same pot. I skimmed the former but lost myself in Wolfe; whom had me gripped like Wouk for some inexplicable reason. A film released a few years ago on Wolfe's relationship with Charles Scribner was excellent. A cipher who died far too soon.

 

[Fading Fast]

^ Caldwell and Wolfe stirred the same pot. I skimmed the former but lost myself in Wolfe; whom had me gripped like Wouk for some inexplicable reason. A film released a few years ago on Wolfe's relationship with Charles Scribner was excellent. A cipher who died far too soon.

You are spot on, IMO. The excellent movie I believe you're referring to is "Genius" (2016), which is based on the even better book "Max Perkins: Editor of Genius"' by A. Scott Berg.

 

[2 Days Dubai]

You are spot on, IMO. The excellent movie I believe you're referring to is "Genius" (2016), which is based on the even better book "Max Perkins: Editor of Genius"' by A. Scott Berg.

Yep. That's the one. I dialed Amazon for Berg's book on Perkins as a bed stand classic nightly.
Hemingway was a Perkins client and the film had a snippet with Papa offering Max his take on Wolfe, which defacto made Berg's book absolutely a must read. The author's circle is a sure snare; dovetails Schulberg's Disenchanted Fitzgerald focus, also on bed stand.

 

[Semmi]

View attachment 696255
Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat by Red Barber and Robert W. Creamer, first published in 1968


The word "legend" is overused, but it does apply to Red Barber's career in sports broadcasting – a career that began in baseball's infancy on radio and peaked with TV and radio broadcasts in the largest media market in the country, followed by a "retirement gig" at NPR.

Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat isn't just a baseball book, however, as it's more a personal account of Barber's life as told by Barber himself. Like almost all autobiographies, he's the hero, yet you'll still see some flaws he admits to and some you can intuit despite his efforts.

What drives the story though is Barber's insight into baseball, baseball broadcasting – its history and challenges – and the major baseball personalities Barber met in his long career. Baseball is just one of many sports today, but Barber was doing all this when baseball was "the sport."

The book is at its best when Barber is talking about how radio broadcasts started – most team owners opposed it, thinking it would hurt stadium ticket sales – including the “wire” games, where the announcer “created color” around a scorecard-like telegraph account of the action.

Barber was also there for the early Brooklyn Dodgers broadcasts. He does an excellent job of capturing the "something special" the Dodgers held for Brooklyn. Later, as the usual career buffeting happens, he goes "across town" and broadcasts Yankee games for fifteen years.

Barber also saw the rise of televised baseball. Once again, the book soars as Barber describes the difference between radio broadcasting – where the broadcaster is in total control of what the listener hears – and TV broadcasting – where the broadcaster is a servant of the monitor.

Along the way, Barber sprinkles in anecdotes about his meetings and relationships with notables of the era, including team owners/managers like Larry MacPhail and Branch Rickey, network heads like William S. Paley, and of course, famous players like Jackie Robinson.

As to Robinson – the first black player in Major League Baseball – you can judge for yourself how honest Barber is being, but credit to him for acknowledging, as a man of the South, his initial resistance. It's a time, place, and norms nuance that our modern politics hates.

The book is less interesting when Barber is describing his life, other than a fascinating story about a medical illness he had as a young man that nearly wrecked his broadcasting career. The medical arrogance involved, much more of a thing then, is frightening.

His life, though, also reveals its era. His dad worked on the railroads – a secure job at the time; Barber left college to get married when marrying very young was the norm; people were regularly addressed by their surnames; and religion, not politics, was often personally defining.

Ushering his story along, Barber writes like he spoke – clear, no-nonsense, and just folksy enough to make even the behind-the-scenes business of baseball feel personal. His writing manages the difficult combination of being breezy, yet intelligent at the same time.

Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat is not the first book to pick up if you're new to baseball literature, but if you aren't and you're looking for a fun one from one of the giants of baseball's early broadcasting era, it's an enjoyable and quick read.


N.B. I owe a hat tip to @LizzieMaine for this enjoyable recommendation.

"The Martian" by Andy Weir

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Martian" by Andy Weir

Welcome to Fedora.

 

[JasonY]

Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. On book 3.

 

[Fading Fast]

The 60th Monarch by Bernard Glemser, first published in 1974


Since politics has gone through the modern book-publishing world like a wrecking ball, one needs to go back to an earlier era to find reliably well-written and entertaining fiction that isn't a thinly veiled political tract.

For those looking for "good old fashioned" fiction – meaning smart and engaging storytelling, but in a recognizable context – most of the twentieth century is fertile ground as modern publishing didn't lose its collective mind until the past few decades.

While the 1970s are often a trip through crazy *** – like "*******s" parties – excessive drug use, and bad style, The 60th Monarch, perhaps because it's set in a fictional Malaysian state and it's not singularly focused on Western culture, is a good old-fashioned page-turner of a novel.

Author Bernard Glemser doesn't do literature, he writes stories – and fun ones. Read The Fly Girls or Here Come the Brides for Glemser at his pop-culture kitschy best. Yet, while less pop culture kitschy, The 60th Monarch is still a heck of a fun read.

Additionally, it's a neat time capsule of the early 1970s international hotel business when a new luxury hotel in a small (being honest) backward and politically corrupt Pacific country – a fictional Malaysian state – was still a big cultural and economic event for the country.

The Monarch Hotel chain – think Four Seasons or The Ritz – was half courted by the state of Muang Sua and half driven by economics in choosing the coastal country for its new hotel-casino-marina complex. That decision comes early and easy; everything that follows is hard.

The country is a cesspool of corruption and racial strife. The indigenous Malaysians openly hate that the ethnic Chinese and Indians are doing better economically, so they've passed laws that force hiring of Malaysians, which makes staffing the monstrous Monarch a challenge.

That's just one of many problems – including corrupt contractors, "friends" of the government who must be paid off, and the local investors in the hotel who sign contracts and then make incessant demands – that harass the Monarch's management team.

That team, headed by Henry Jordan – a hotelier right down to his constantly aching back – and the new hotel's manager, Felix Gautier, are professionals who have opened many hotels before, so part of the story's fun is watching these men, mainly, calmly navigate these choppy waters.

Being the 1970s and given the culture of the country, they also have to navigate several young women coming onto them for various mendacious reasons, plus the importance of ghosts to the people. Finally, they also face a competing hotel chain trying to squeeze them out.

It's just a good story that gives you a feel for the 1970s, international travel, a luxury hotel, the Malaysian culture – its people, its customs, its quirks, and its many good points.

Because it was written before the modern publishing industry's insanity took hold, the culture's bad points are here as well, giving us a balanced view, which we now seem incapable of doing in our novels.

Here, though, you can ignore our modern politics – even better, you can see this novel as an escape from it. You can just enjoy The 60th Monarch for itself: a fun page-turning tale from the 1970s that doesn't try to be more than it is or, thankfully, try to preach to you.

 

[Semmi]

View attachment 711545
The 60th Monarch by Bernard Glemser, first published in 1974


Since politics has gone through the modern book-publishing world like a wrecking ball, one needs to go back to an earlier era to find reliably well-written and entertaining fiction that isn't a thinly veiled political tract.

For those looking for "good old fashioned" fiction – meaning smart and engaging storytelling, but in a recognizable context – most of the twentieth century is fertile ground as modern publishing didn't lose its collective mind until the past few decades.

While the 1970s are often a trip through crazy *** – like "*******s" parties – excessive drug use, and bad style, The 60th Monarch, perhaps because it's set in a fictional Malaysian state and it's not singularly focused on Western culture, is a good old-fashioned page-turner of a novel.

Author Bernard Glemser doesn't do literature, he writes stories – and fun ones. Read The Fly Girls or Here Come the Brides for Glemser at his pop-culture kitschy best. Yet, while less pop culture kitschy, The 60th Monarch is still a heck of a fun read.

Additionally, it's a neat time capsule of the early 1970s international hotel business when a new luxury hotel in a small (being honest) backward and politically corrupt Pacific country – a fictional Malaysian state – was still a big cultural and economic event for the country.

The Monarch Hotel chain – think Four Seasons or The Ritz – was half courted by the state of Muang Sua and half driven by economics in choosing the coastal country for its new hotel-casino-marina complex. That decision comes early and easy; everything that follows is hard.

The country is a cesspool of corruption and racial strife. The indigenous Malaysians openly hate that the ethnic Chinese and Indians are doing better economically, so they've passed laws that force hiring of Malaysians, which makes staffing the monstrous Monarch a challenge.

That's just one of many problems – including corrupt contractors, "friends" of the government who must be paid off, and the local investors in the hotel who sign contracts and then make incessant demands – that harass the Monarch's management team.

That team, headed by Henry Jordan – a hotelier right down to his constantly aching back – and the new hotel's manager, Felix Gautier, are professionals who have opened many hotels before, so part of the story's fun is watching these men, mainly, calmly navigate these choppy waters.

Being the 1970s and given the culture of the country, they also have to navigate several young women coming onto them for various mendacious reasons, plus the importance of ghosts to the people. Finally, they also face a competing hotel chain trying to squeeze them out.

It's just a good story that gives you a feel for the 1970s, international travel, a luxury hotel, the Malaysian culture – its people, its customs, its quirks, and its many good points.

Because it was written before the modern publishing industry's insanity took hold, the culture's bad points are here as well, giving us a balanced view, which we now seem incapable of doing in our novels.
I like to alternate books with something more dynamic. If you want to find the perfect card game, there is a great list https://www.thebulletintime.com/trend/ranking-the-most-popular-card-games/ , which ranks the most popular card games by frequency of play, popularity in regions, stakes, etc. If you want to think a little, try poker, especially Texas Hold'em. It requires strategy, logic, and psychological intuition. And if you want to relax, then Blackjack is a great option: simple rules and fast games.
Here, though, you can ignore our modern politics – even better, you can see this novel as an escape from it. You can just enjoy The 60th Monarch for itself: a fun page-turning tale from the 1970s that doesn't try to be more than it is or, thankfully, try to preach to you.

I read this book! It's a delight!!!

 

[Fading Fast]

I read this book! It's a delight!!!

Wow, that's great. I had a feeling I was in a group of one who read Glemser. I'm glad others like you read him too.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Just finished Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, published in 1605 (part II in 1615). 1,034 pages. Whew!
As far as thick classics go, DQ is pretty accessible. The plot is straight forward and it is not as complex and imposing as some other masterpieces.
The story is about a 50 year old, middle class guy, Alonso Quixano, who is Disillusioned with his life. He has been reading chivalric tales of knights all his life, and it has driven him crazy. Therefore he decides to run off and become a knight errant, pursuing adventures and living according to a noble code of chivalric values. Actually, during the course of the book, it is sometimes not 100% clear that he is actually insane. He adopts the aristocratic designator “Don” , and Fashions himself as Don Quixote de La Mancha and off he goes! He views every inn as a castle and every innkeeper’s wife is a noble and beautiful countess (at least). He jousts at windmills, splits monster‘s heads with his sword (actually big Wine skins), attacks enemy armies ( hurds of sheep), etc etc. All the while he is espousing the virtues of saving maidens, defending the weak, doing good, fighting evil and so forth.
Unfortunately, he lives in a jaded and cynical time when no one believes in chivalry or in his quest. In the first quarter of the book he gets beaten up quite a bit, and generally mishandled.
DQ is often mentioned as being the first modern novel, with fictional characters that have an inner life and grow as individuals. I think it was Dostoyevsky who likened DQ to a Christ-figure, preaching a better way of life and getting persecuted for it. Dostoyevsky certainly used DQ as an inspiration for his book “The Idiot”.

The best part of DQ is the interplay between Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza. DQ is tall and lean and Ernest and idealistic. Sancho Panza is a down to earth peasant who is very amusing and sometimes wise. The exchanges between these two characters can be very entertaining. I think Sancho Panza is one of the greatest characters in fiction.​

The book is in two parts that were published ten years apart. The second part is by far the better part. The author uses the literary gimmick that assumes that all the characters in Part II have bought and read the book that was Part I. Therefore everyone sees DQ coming a mile away, and are ready to tease him and play tricks on him.
Another thing about this book is that it is a “nesting doll” that contains several other stories buried in the main plot: love stories, tales about the Ottoman wars, and more.
From page 1 of DQ, we are told that DQ Is crazy. Cervantes also tells us that he is making fun of the concepts of Knighthood and Chivalry. However —as the story goes on— the reader slowly falls in love with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza and, by the end, you find yourself rooting for them and saddened by the idea that chivalry is out of favor and that idealism is mostly mocked.
I was sorry that the book ended because I will miss the company of DQ and SP. (on the other hand, it is a very long book.)
Who hasn’t dreamed of being a noble, chivalrous knight at one time or another? THAT is perhaps the author’s trick way of getting these characters into our hearts. They are pretty relatable. Yes, even crazy Don Quixote.

 

[Fading Fast]

Just finished Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, published in 1605 (part II in 1615). 1,034 pages. Whew!
As far as thick classics go, DQ is pretty accessible. The plot is straight forward and it is not as complex and imposing as some other masterpieces.
The story is about a 50 year old, middle class guy, Alonso Quixano, who is Disillusioned with his life. He has been reading chivalric tales of knights all his life, and it has driven him crazy. Therefore he decides to run off and become a knight errant, pursuing adventures and living according to a noble code of chivalric values. Actually, during the course of the book, it is sometimes not 100% clear that he is actually insane. He adopts the aristocratic designator “Don” , and Fashions himself as Don Quixote de La Mancha and off he goes! He views every inn as a castle and every innkeeper’s wife is a noble and beautiful countess (at least). He jousts at windmills, splits monster‘s heads with his sword (actually big Wine skins), attacks enemy armies ( hurds of sheep), etc etc. All the while he is espousing the virtues of saving maidens, defending the weak, doing good, fighting evil and so forth.
Unfortunately, he lives in a jaded and cynical time when no one believes in chivalry or in his quest. In the first quarter of the book he gets beaten up quite a bit, and generally mishandled.
DQ is often mentioned as being the first modern novel, with fictional characters that have an inner life and grow as individuals. I think it was Dostoyevsky who likened DQ to a Christ-figure, preaching a better way of life and getting persecuted for it. Dostoyevsky certainly used DQ as an inspiration for his book “The Idiot”.

The best part of DQ is the interplay between Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza. DQ is tall and lean and Ernest and idealistic. Sancho Panza is a down to earth peasant who is very amusing and sometimes wise. The exchanges between these two characters can be very entertaining. I think Sancho Panza is one of the greatest characters in fiction.​

The book is in two parts that were published ten years apart. The second part is by far the better part. The author uses the literary gimmick that assumes that all the characters in Part II have bought and read the book that was Part I. Therefore everyone sees DQ coming a mile away, and are ready to tease him and play tricks on him.
Another thing about this book is that it is a “nesting doll” that contains several other stories buried in the main plot: love stories, tales about the Ottoman wars, and more.
From page 1 of DQ, we are told that DQ Is crazy. Cervantes also tells us that he is making fun of the concepts of Knighthood and Chivalry. However —as the story goes on— the reader slowly falls in love with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza and, by the end, you find yourself rooting for them and saddened by the idea that chivalry is out of favor and that idealism is mostly mocked.
I was sorry that the book ended because I will miss the company of DQ and SP. (on the other hand, it is a very long book.)
Who hasn’t dreamed of being a noble, chivalrous knight at one time or another? THAT is perhaps the author’s trick way of getting these characters into our hearts. They are pretty relatable. Yes, even crazy Don Quixote.

What an absolute great write-up; I loved reading it. Thank you. I read DQ in high school Spanish, but have never forgotten it as, as you note, the characters worm their way into your heart.

 

[Turnip]

Just finished.

 

[Turnip]

Next one…

 

[Fading Fast]

Turn the Key Softly by John Brophy, first published 1951


At a high level, novels run from pulp, through popular, to literature, and you can spend a lot of time defining out the differences, especially if you want to get all snooty about it. But most normal people just want to read a book that entertains while making them think a bit.

By that standard, Turn the Key Softly is a good read, close to the center of the continuum that occasionally drifts toward pulp and, occasionally (and unsuccessfully), toward literature. It's a pageturner that pushes you to consider the complexity of its story and characters.

Those characters are three women released from prison on the same day. They will have different but slightly entwined experiences on their first day of freedom. Set in contemporaneous England, however, those experiences are all wrapped in a very class-conscious culture.

England was also deep in an experiment with socialism after WWII – hence the ongoing food shortages – but cultural norms die hard. So while everyone pays high taxes and has "free" healthcare, everyone is still judging how much the other "pig is walking on its hind legs."

Monica, Stella (both young women), and Mrs.Quilliam (she's in her seventies) have become somewhat friends in prison, bonding a bit more as they are the only prisoners being released on the day the novel opens.

Monica, with her refined manners and aloof bearing, reads "upper class;" Stella, in for prostitution and with a love of flashy jewelry, reads, well, you get it; and stick-thin Mrs. Quilliam, with her threadbare clothes and unpretentious manner, reads everyday working class.

Monica invites both women to a fancy supper that evening as a getting-out celebration. Mrs. Quilliam views this as a lovely gesture, but Stella sees it as Monica putting on airs. Still, a free meal in a nice restaurant is a free meal in a nice restaurant, so Stella accepts.

Weaving back and forth amongst the three, Brophy then takes us through the first day out for each woman. Mrs. Quilliam tries to restart her former life, which works out well as she gets both her old room in her boarding house and her de facto dog – the joy of her life – back.

Stella has a fiancé, a bus conductor, who's all set to marry her — a good man who’d pull her out of her old life of prostitution. But Stella knows that marrying him means a life of counting pennies. The question becomes: can she pass up the "easy" money of her former "career?"

Monica has the most complex past. She grew up a lower-middle-class girl who has tried through self-education to reinvent herself as an upper-class woman. But a very bad choice in an upper-class boyfriend led to her stay in the pokey and threatens to derail her life again.

Brophy drifts a bit into pulp as Monica – remember, it's her first day out of prison after two years – returns to the boyfriend for some wave-your-hand surfacey reason, but in truth, Monica had a need, nay, urge, demanding to be met. Yup.

The women have their various adventures and then meet up for Monica's dinner followed by Act Three where each one will face a crucial event that could determine what their post-prison life will be like.

Even at dinner, the class-consciousness is palpable, especially as Stella resents Monica for, well, being Monica and taking the women to a refined restaurant and ordering champagne for everyone. You can read your bias into anything, but it's Stella who has the issue.

Where Brophy shines is in fleshing out these women as real characters with complex motives and feelings. You'll remember each one well after you finish the book. You'll also remember that the three women's assumptions about each other are mainly wrong.

Brophy spins a bit off the rails trying to go high-brow, especially with a tortured metaphor riffing on a line from Keats' poem To Sleep for the title and then having Monica assess her life through the poem's lens. This is an author who aspires to be taught in English class.

Brophy, instead, should play to his strengths: writing smart, popular pageturners that entertain with good stories and deeply human characters. It's no easy feat to do that – many try / most fail – so he should focus on that and let the English 101 symbolism flow naturally or not at all.


N.B. Turn the Key Softly was made into an outstanding 1953 English movie, but, as in the United States, the censors forced the filmmakers to "clean" things up. For the livelier story and characters, the book, as almost always, is the place to turn.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Thanks for that review. Well written and interesting. The famous British class system is the topic that launched a thousand books. I just started wading into Dracula by Bram Stoker, and the British class system is already making an appearance. Unfortunately, regarding Turn the Key Softly, few things would turn me away from a book faster than the opening premise of “so, three women get out of prison…”. I really need to be more open-minded.

 

[Flos]

Currently rereading Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. It’s one of my all-time favorites and highly recommend for anyone into creative writing!

 

[Fading Fast]

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in 1963


You do not come to a Jeeves novel by P. G. Wodehouse to be wowed by its originality or to see how his characters have grown and expanded their outlook and personalities through their experiences; you come to a Jeeves novel to put on the equivalent of an old literary shoe.

You come to Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves to enjoy the all but unflappable English butler Jeeves and the bumbling but honorable Englishman he serves, Bertie Wooster, do the same things they always do: Wooster gets into predicaments and Jeeves, behind the scenes, gets him out.

That would be boring if not for the other reason you come: the incredible dynamic Wodehouse created between his two lead characters, where Wooster leans on Jeeves not only for help, but for vocabulary and guidance, while Jeeves "steers" his employer to safer shores.

In one wonderful exchange, Wooster is bumbling through a description of nations going from being friendly to antagonists, with a bunch of idioms, until he asks Jeeves the proper way to say it and Jeeves deadpans, "Relations have deteriorated, would be the customary phrase, sir."

That joke lands well, but then Wooster employs it to describe the engaged couples he's trying to help by noting, "Well, relationships have deteriorated between Miss Basset and Gussie." The echo playback of the joke takes the entire scene up a level.

Even that doesn't fully capture their relationship verve as there's a piquant rub to it. Wooster can get peeved at how good Jeeves is at his job, while Jeeves can be annoyed when Wooster isn't behaving as a proper Englishman should – when that word meant something.

The latter can play out over something as trivial – but it's not trivial to them – as a new and unusually flamboyant tie or a hat that Wooster sports with glee, but that Jeeves, without ever saying it, believes is beneath his employer's dignity.

In this late-in-the-series entry, Wooster finds himself visiting one of those old English estates where the daughter of the estate's owner is engaged, but the engagement is wobbling. Wooster cares because the girl said her backup plan is to marry him, Wooster.

Wooster, a man of integrity, wouldn't say no to her (it's presented as some English code-of-honor thing not to refuse her marriage proposal), but he also doesn't want to marry her, so his plan is to save the current engagement.

While there – at an estate he doesn't want to go to in part because he isn't liked by the owner – Wooster gets into all sorts of predicaments: he's accused of stealing an antique, he accidentally smashes a valuable grandfather's clock, and he gets arrested.

Jeeves, as always, is moving the chess pieces behind the scenes to save his employer – the heart and soul of the series. You don't really care about the contrived story, which is oddly hard to follow as it's convoluted and populated with too many characters with too many silly names.

What you care about is visiting with your old friends Wooster and Jeeves, who are still going strong five-plus decades after they first found each other in a universe where they don't seem to age. All this makes Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves the literary equivalent of really good comfort food.

 

[DogFacePonySoldier]

Just finished Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, published in 1605 (part II in 1615). 1,034 pages. Whew!
As far as thick classics go, DQ is pretty accessible. The plot is straight forward and it is not as complex and imposing as some other masterpieces.
The story is about a 50 year old, middle class guy, Alonso Quixano, who is Disillusioned with his life. He has been reading chivalric tales of knights all his life, and it has driven him crazy. Therefore he decides to run off and become a knight errant, pursuing adventures and living according to a noble code of chivalric values. Actually, during the course of the book, it is sometimes not 100% clear that he is actually insane. He adopts the aristocratic designator “Don” , and Fashions himself as Don Quixote de La Mancha and off he goes! He views every inn as a castle and every innkeeper’s wife is a noble and beautiful countess (at least). He jousts at windmills, splits monster‘s heads with his sword (actually big Wine skins), attacks enemy armies ( hurds of sheep), etc etc. All the while he is espousing the virtues of saving maidens, defending the weak, doing good, fighting evil and so forth.
Unfortunately, he lives in a jaded and cynical time when no one believes in chivalry or in his quest. In the first quarter of the book he gets beaten up quite a bit, and generally mishandled.
DQ is often mentioned as being the first modern novel, with fictional characters that have an inner life and grow as individuals. I think it was Dostoyevsky who likened DQ to a Christ-figure, preaching a better way of life and getting persecuted for it. Dostoyevsky certainly used DQ as an inspiration for his book “The Idiot”.

The best part of DQ is the interplay between Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza. DQ is tall and lean and Ernest and idealistic. Sancho Panza is a down to earth peasant who is very amusing and sometimes wise. The exchanges between these two characters can be very entertaining. I think Sancho Panza is one of the greatest characters in fiction.​

The book is in two parts that were published ten years apart. The second part is by far the better part. The author uses the literary gimmick that assumes that all the characters in Part II have bought and read the book that was Part I. Therefore everyone sees DQ coming a mile away, and are ready to tease him and play tricks on him.
Another thing about this book is that it is a “nesting doll” that contains several other stories buried in the main plot: love stories, tales about the Ottoman wars, and more.
From page 1 of DQ, we are told that DQ Is crazy. Cervantes also tells us that he is making fun of the concepts of Knighthood and Chivalry. However —as the story goes on— the reader slowly falls in love with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza and, by the end, you find yourself rooting for them and saddened by the idea that chivalry is out of favor and that idealism is mostly mocked.
I was sorry that the book ended because I will miss the company of DQ and SP. (on the other hand, it is a very long book.)
Who hasn’t dreamed of being a noble, chivalrous knight at one time or another? THAT is perhaps the author’s trick way of getting these characters into our hearts. They are pretty relatable. Yes, even crazy Don Quixote.

Kafka wrote a creepypasta that Dq is a demon made up by Sancho kinda like an antiquated fight club.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Continuing Gregg Hurwitz - Out of the dark (2019). Still good, I tell you! This is how to do a thriller!