My world fell apart last November with the election of Donald Trump, and I’m still trying to put the pieces back together. Nothing literal (lucky me). I’ve just spent the past few months detached from….everything outside of my personal bubble. I’m getting back to normal, though. No less angry – but better able to be a part of the world, I guess.
Unfortunately, reading has been one of the things that has fallen by the wayside. I haven’t had the mental energy to read and write reviews. I was supposed to update the review database at the beginning of the year, but I never did. Sorry. Also, I’ve had all these reviews sitting here, unfinished.
Anyway. Is this cheating? I technically read all these last year, but never got the reviews submitted.
The Hustler (1959) – 5 stars
I saw this movie years ago. Maybe twenty years ago. It’s widely regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made, and has one of Paul Newman’s best performances. I loved it. So, perusing Audible’s catalogue a few months ago, I saw this audiobook sitting there waiting to be listened to.
The movie, from what I remember, followed the book pretty closely while being a bit more melodramatic and having a less ambiguous ending. It’s impossible to not read this novel, though, without picturing a young Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson.
Felson is a young pool shark traveling the country with Charlie Fenneger, hustling men for money. And he’s really good, but cocky. In Chicago, one of the best pool sharks goes by the name of Minnesota Fats, and he’s a legend. Guys come from all over the country to shoot their shot, and they almost always lose. Felson is good enough to win. Just ask him.
And he almost does it, but Fats is a pro. And he’s experienced. He waits him out, and lets Felson burn himself out (with the help of alcohol). Eddie’s partner, Charlie, leaves him. Felson loses everything, and goes into a downward spiral. Most of the novel is about Eddie Felson getting back to the top.
It’s a pretty great novel, though, regardless of the movie. I think it’s probably been overshadowed by its adaptation, which is a shame. Walter Tevis was a pretty great writer, and I want to check out his other books.
Horseman, Pass By (1961)
I don’t know that these two writers have a great deal in common, but there was something about reading one after the other that just made sense. They were contemporaries, but explored different themes about different regions of the country. Walter Tevis was born in California but moved to Kentucky when he was 11. He joined the military after WWII, and spent most of his life as a teacher (in both high school and college) before dying of lung cancer in 1984. Tevis wrote six novels and an assortment of short stories exploring fairly dark themes, including alcoholism, gambling, and loneliness and isolation. His stories covered contemporary fiction and science fiction, and were made into a number of screen adaptations (including The Hustler, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and, recently, The Queen’s Gambit).
Larry McMurtry was born in northern Texas about ten years after Walter Tevis, and spent his whole life there. He went to school in north Texas. He wrote from north Texas. He taught English in Texas universities. He wrote about Texas. And he died in 2021 at the ripe age of 84. Almost all his stories took place in Texas, and explored both broad, sweeping stories about contemporary life and the history of his state along with personal, fictionalized stories of his childhood and early life.
Both Tevis and McMurtry have something to say about mid-century white male life in America. I know that’s like, the most thoroughly covered demographic in world history, but I still found their voices interesting.
Horseman, Pass By was McMurtry’s first novel. And having read a few of his books now, it feels like it. The Lovesome Dove books are a rich tapestry of characters. They give the world a complex, lived-in feeling. Even the most minor of characters are given motivations and quirks that set them apart from everyone else. Everyone has their own voice.
In Horseman, Pass By you see this attention to detail, but McMurtry isn’t as confident and relaxed as he would become. The characters don’t feel quite as real and well developed. They bleed out on the edges, blending with the others and losing some of their dimensionality.
Set on a cattle ranch in the 1950s, the novel primarily focuses on Homer Bannon, his stepson Hud, and his grandson Lonnie. Homer is aging, and learns pretty early on that his cattle herd is afflicted with hoof and mouth disease. Hud is a good ranch hand, but not a good person. Lonnie is a teenager.
It isn’t a particularly complex novel, but it was enjoyable enough. And as far as first novels go, it was pretty good. I think the movie is better, though. It has a young Paul Newman, prowling like an old Tom Cat (which he often seemed like, I guess).
The Last Picture Show (1966)
I read this a few months ago, and I’ve largely forgotten the book. I do remember enjoying it immensely, but it hasn’t stuck with me at all. The same thing happened with the movie, though. I watched it maybe fifteen years ago, and most of the book didn’t seem at all familiar – despite the movie being fairly faithful.
This book takes place in the fictional town of Thalia, Texas – the same location as Horseman, Pass By (and a few other novels by McMurtry). It follows teenagers Duane and Sonny as they approach the end of high school, and deals with all of the things you’re used to books about late teenage youth transitioning to adulthood. Maybe this book helped define the genre, I don’t know – but it’s very influential, so it wouldn’t surprise me.
Time is a frustrating thing. I’m in my 40s, now – but I still feel (in my inner self) like I’m in my 20s. I don’t feel like a 43 year old, or, I guess, like I thought a 43 year old would feel. I don’t know if I ever will. But that which happened before my time feels like it happened a long time ago. The 1960s might as well have been 100 years ago. So I love reading these older books, because they constantly surprise me with how contemporary they feel. The world is different, but the people described are just people.
I know that sounds trite. Of course they’re people. Of course they aren’t much different from people today. It’s not like my generation invented feelings, or complexity, or growth. I obviously haven’t said or felt or thought anything that hasn’t been said or felt or thought by literally billions of people across the planet over the tens of thousands of years that people have been alive. It’s easy, though, to lose that perspective. Novels, more than any other medium, do a really good job solidifying the complexity of the human experience.
The Silmarillion (1977)
I’ve read The Lord of the Rings multiple times, and it’s possibly my favorite book (if it’s counted as one) ever written. I first read it, and The Hobbit, in middle school, and they set me on a path of reading that I’ve (mostly) never left.
And though I’ve owned a copy of The Silmarillion for almost 30 years, I’ve never read it. It’s just….so dense and dry (though, not as bad as George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood). But over the last several years I’ve been watching various Youtube channels that detail lore from Tolkien’s world, so it only made sense that I sit down and read the thing.
There is so much here, I think it’s fair to say we could get decades of TV shows and movies if the Tolkien estate ever chose to develop them that way. What we’ve gotten thus far (the three The Lord of the Rings films, the three Hobbit films, The War of the Rohirrim, the upcoming The Hunt for Gollum, and the Amazon TV show) is mostly based on the four books and appendices at the end of The Return of the King. No one has the rights to the rest of Middle Earth – and there’s far, far more to this world than The Lord of the Rings. That series, as great as it is, is really just a coda to Tolkien’s life’s work.
It’s insane.
And it’s a bit of a shame that the books of the hobbits were the most developed.
Tolkien’s son, Christopher, spent his entire life cataloguing and publishing the vast notes and snippets of story into the 12 volume collected History of Middle Earth library. I suppose I’ll get through it at some point, but that may take another 30 years of procrastination (if I live that long).
The Silmarillion is usually described as the Bible for Middle Earth, and it’s an apt analogy. It begins with creation, and details the entire history of the world as it relates to elves and (to a much lesser degree) dwarves and humans. It is full of hundreds of characters, and covers tens of thousands of years. It is, in short, a lot.
But it’s what it doesn’t cover that is the most captivating, to me. Middle Earth is Earth, essentially. But almost everything that happens takes place in the equivalent of Europe. There is no Africa or east Asia – they’re just hinted at. The Americas aren’t covered. It’s extremely Eurocentric. And I don’t really buy that Tolkien was racist (at least not in the way we use that term today) – though that accusation does get levied against him, occasionally. He wrote about the subjects that he knew the most about, and what he knew most was the language and history of Anglo-Saxon history. I don’t think he did that for moral reasons. It’s not that he thought Africa or Asia didn’t matter. It’s not that he thought they were inferior or beneath notice. They weren’t his area of expertise. He was writing about what interested him, and he was writing from his perspective.
But I’ve always wished we knew more about what was going on in the rest of the world. Gandalf and Saruman were two of the wizards, the Istari, sent to Middle Earth by the Valar to help against Sauron. But there were five, total. Radagast makes a brief appearance in The Hobbit, but there were also two wizards, the Blue Wizards Alatar and Pallando, who journeyed East and were never heard from again. There are hints that they may have been somewhat successful in containing or distracting Sauron before eventually forming their own cults in eastern lands. After the success of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien began work on a sequel that took place a couple hundred years later, and would’ve detailed the rise of a cult called “Dark Tree”. Some have theorized that one of these Blue Wizards would’ve been at the center of this cult, but Tolkien gave up on the novel pretty early in its development.
Anyway, as far as this book goes – it runs the gamut from fascinating to frustrating to dull and impenetrable. Your mileage may vary on how enjoyable it is, but it’s a must for any fan of Middle Earth, and an important read for most fantasy fans. There are a lot of stories that I would’ve loved to be given The Lord of the Rings treatment.
Sweet Bean Paste (2017) – 4 stars
Sentaro manages a shop that sells dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste. He’s basically given up on life and only works so that he can pay off a debt he owes the former owner of the shop, who is now dead. An old, disabled woman comes into the shop looking for a job. Against his better judgement, he allows her to work at the shop because her bean paste is so much better than his. They develop a relationship as he grows to appreciate her.
At its core, this book is about appreciating the world in a more visceral way. The food described is the main avenue through which his message is described. I found the novel warm and comforting – which are some of my favorite emotions, but there’s a hint of sadness here as well. Highly recommend.