Hemingway's Boat

I may as well round off one memoir review with a complementary one. I went through a very serious Gilded Age Authors phase, like any English major out there, and devoured many biographies and essays about my favorite racist, ridiculous, asshole ex-pats. But Invented Lives and Hemingway's Boat were the two quintessential biographies that stuck out to me.

An exquisitely written, far-reaching biography that dips into the lives of almost everyone Hemingway encountered during his tumultuous, controversial life. Hendrickson clearly did his research for this novel; it is extensively quoted and cited throughout, with a well-crafted essay on sources at the back. Interestingly, there is little quotation from Hemingway himself in the book, but it actually isn't sorely missed. In fact, it's refreshing to hear about his life from the mouths of others, when so many other biographies tend to hone on in Hemingway's famous, egotistical ranting.

What really made this book a joy to read, though, was the focus on Pilar and Hemingway's sea adventures. There was enough content about his career and his writing that it wasn't overwhelming, but using Hemingway's relationship with his boat as a guide through his life made the chronology interesting and, frankly, beautiful.

The writing was great, almost too poetic for a biography- but it never became purple prose and, as far as I remember, didn't detract at all from the facts of the author's life. In fact, each anecdote centered around that famous boat was both candid and a joy to read. Although Hendricks is much less critical than Mellow in his biography, he similarly refuses to shy away from some of Hemingway's less likeable qualities. (He shoots himself in both legs by accident.)

Admittedly, the organization of the book was a bit of a mystery; it jumped through the years with impunity, leaving me a little lost at points but never seriously confused. That issue cost a little bit of praise, for Hemingway's life was much more ordered than Fitzgerald's. However, Hendricks does warn the reader about this in his introduction, saying:

"[It] isn’t meant to be a Hemingway biography, not in any conventional sense…. …My aim, rather, is to try to lock together the words “Hemingway” and “boat” in the same way that the locked-together and equally American words “DiMaggio” and “bat,” or Satchmo” and “horn,” will quickly mean something in the minds of most people…."

which explains quite a lot about the lack of narrative structure. For this reason, it definitely helps to have a basic knowledge of the chronology of Hemingway's life, which can be pretty easily tracked by whom he is married to at the time, or at least Wikipedia handy in case you get confused. It is not the best biography to start off with for facts on Hemingway.

Alternatively, you can just let go and go with the tide. Without being tethered by a linear chronology, the book flows wonderfully from one passage to another, even as it skips years or decades of his life. Whether you take a strictly scholarly or a pleasure-seeking approach to it, Hemingway's Boat is a great read.

 

Invented Lives: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

I apologize. I apologize for my absence and to myself for letting yet another project slip out of my grasp. I'm going to blame it on a poor attention span, because that's a pretty catch-all excuse for members of my generation.

Anyway, since the only books I have been reading lately have been the Lord of the Rings trilogy and I'm only halfway through the last one, I figured I would just post an older review from my Goodreads account. When I am done with the last book I may do a LotR post, but probably not a review. I don't know what it would take to qualify me to critique one of the most iconic series in the history of fantasy, but being eighteen and a bookworm isn't quite it.

 

I found this biography of the infamous Jazz Age couple comprehensive, well-researched, engaging and, ultimately, heartbreaking. Mellow's biography utilizes perfect selections of letters, diary entries, and wild anecdotes to explore the star couple's relationship from its beginning through its rocky decline. It is personal and gritty, without glamorizing the couple's bad habits and appalling behavior. It can be rough to read for any starry-eyed Fitzgerald enthusiast, but ultimately, I think, necessary.

Like any Fitzgerald biography, it can get fuzzy and skips around as parties and alcoholic binges blur together, but that is possibly more of a commentary on Fitzgerald rather than Mellow. In fact, if you let yourself be carried away by the story and forget about keeping things in order, it offers almost a glimpse into the way the Fitzgeralds' might have documented their own lives-- out of order, chaotic, and with hints of glamour and poise.

Even when it was difficult to tell when events occurred in relation to the stages of F. Scott and Zelda's relationship, Invented Lives was thoroughly entertaining and novel.

Catch-22

Despite the irritating and unnecessary degradation of all of its women characters, Catch-22 remains some of the most clever writing I've ever read. The wild, disjointed, hilarious story of Yossarian the womanizing, quick to love, cowardly Captain and his motley Army crew makes even less sense the more you struggle to put it together.

The plot unfolds early-on as a series of vignettes that skip wildly in time and place, so it can be hard to stay interested, which is what my folly was the first time reading it. However, if you focus more on the wit and the writing and forget the notion of reading a straight-forward action sequence, you will have more fun reading than you would expect.

The last hundred or so pages, though- I forgot from my first time reading that they are so gripping, and somewhat horrifying, and completely all-kinds-of-wrong (and, yet, still occasionally hilarious) that they beg to be read straight through, which I recommend. The central theme of war-is-madness is never driven home so clearly than in those last hundred pages, where the storyline finally straightens out but everything else goes topsy-turvy.

Catch-22 will delight, entertain, and definitely tickle the word-lover's fancy (I have an extensive list of words from this novel that I needed to look up); but it will also frustrate and horrify. Definitely original, and definitely worth more than one reading.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Welcome to the first weekly book review Friday!

Those who were expecting a straightforward single-character narrative clearly didn't read the subtitle for this novel: An Oral History of the Zombie War. I don't know about you, but how often do you read the history of an event from a single point of view? In fact, if you have, what you were reading was not truly the history of something. WWZ: An Oral History of the Zombie War is absolutely what it claims to be.

This novel by Brooks, the author of the hugely popular The Zombie Survival Guide (and also the son of Mel Brooks- who knew?) follows much of the incredible detail of the Zombie Survival Guide without much of the humor (in fact, some of the interviews are harrowing and somewhat discomfiting). 

The first thing you should know is that Brooks thinks of /everything/. If you are expecting merely a blow-by-blow action adventure of the 'major battles' of the Zombie War, you will be disappointed. If you are expecting the plucky survival story of a sympathetic character as he or she lives through the Zombie years, you will be disappointed. But if you are looking for a complete scope of how Brooks imagines a Zombie apocalypse will 1) come about and 2) affect the world during and after the battles, this book will not disappoint.

Told in ever-shifting interviews with people affected by the Zombie War around the world, World War Z covers almost every aspect of the world that is often changed by world-wide warfare, but with the obvious twist that really highlights Brooks' imagination- how would that be different if the enemy combatants were the undead?

The format may not be for every reader, however. While the interview format might throw some people off at first, it becomes much easier to get used to- and it's worth noting that as the book goes on and the stories get wilder, the interviewer character sits back more often and lets the interviewee speak for pages at a time, so it reads more like a traditional narrative. Honestly, though, I enjoyed the format and the emphasis it really put on nearly independent point of views, with the interviewer acting as a mostly neutral party. 

The voices of the characters are a tad off sometimes. Occasionally they seem similar to one another, especially the various army/navy characters, which is to be expected from Brooks' real first foray into a fictional narrative instead of faux-informational style. I enjoyed his attempts at making regional dialect, mostly present in the differing names people had for the zombies--Zed Head, ghoul, Zack-- even if at times they were a bit too heavy-handed. 

The writing itself is generally strong, though his style didn't stick out to me as especially laudable. Sections of the narrative were truly horrifying and what Brooks lacked in really clear and purposeful prose at times he made up for in impressive insight into the thoughts of people trapped in situations that we can barely imagine. 

Brooks looks at the initial outbreak, the political impact of the world having a united front against evil, the aftereffects and a world rebuilding, the environmental impact- he even takes the point of view to an orbiting space station. WWZ is exhaustive and endlessly interesting. Brooks is a master at writing what he is an expert in and this book adds to his reputation as possibly the one person who has thought more about the zombie apocalypse than the average teenager on the internet.

An Introduction

Allow me to introduce you to The Litterateur's Notebook, and yes- litterateur. What a strange word: "a literary person; especially a professional writer," via the Merriam-Webster dictionary. My first post on this blog, and already a blatant lie! 

I'm no litterateur, insofar as the professional writer part goes. I've been paid a total of around $350 for my writing over the course of my (albeit short) lifetime, and most of that went hand-in-hand with other internship duties. Despite my success in NaNoWriMo last year, I've yet to finish a novel. But I'm only 18 (as of tomorrow), an embarking college freshman with a myriad of other things to worry about. Why should I expect to be a litterateur, or even name a pretentious blog after the word?

Well, for one thing, let me assure you: I am a hipster. I mean, there was that time I listened to a Zooey Deschanel song and didn't even hate it. I'm also a word nerd, and I can appreciate an uncommon word enough to appropriate it for my blog title.

For another, it is never too early to secure a good blog title. I mean, in a couple years I could have been kicking myself for not snatching up this blog title before it was taken by some ghost blogger who decided to leave their blog to rot (who takes littlelitterateur.blogspot.com and then doesn't post? People who want to watch the world burn, that's who).

And there's one more thing: I fully intend on becoming a true litterateur. Maybe not during the course of this blog, but the written word vocation has been humming in my blood and soul for as long as I can remember. This blog is one of my stepping stones. This blog will keep my fingers limber and my mind ticking as I work through college and, hopefully, prove entertaining in the meantime.

Personal introductions aside, I will be updating this blog (mostly) every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Almost every other day there will be content here, personal issues notwithstanding. Tentatively, Mondays will pertain to current events or "I am obsessed with..." posts, Wednesdays will either be inspiration bits or thoughts on writing, and Fridays will be book reviews. 

Only time will tell for this wannabe litterateur, but hopefully you stick around to see me make it. 

Cordially yours,

Abby