A Tale of Two Cities. By Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens

amazon.com free e-book on Kindle. First published 1859. 

(This is the first book I read on the new Kindle presented by Malli and Murugan)

The story must be familiar even to those who have not read the book or come across it in the many other forms and media it has been published. By sheer osmosis, I think, this tale of the supreme sacrifice made by a lover must have permeated the consciousness of many, many people, without their being actually aware when and where they first came to know of it. Anyway, as I said, the tale is familiar enough, and to me it is so especially from my reading the book many years ago - perhaps an abridged version, though I do not remember exactly when. Thus there are many scenes in the book which are firmly connected in my mind with the events in the book. The broken barrel of wine in the streets, and the reaction of the people around as they run to gather up the wine by whatever means they can, soaking it up in dirty cloths, for example; the name Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where many of the important events take place; the Bastille; the tumbrils in which the condemned prisoners of the revolution, mostly former aristocrats, were conveyed to the guillotine; the ghoulish glee with which each decapitation was greeted by the crowd, in particular the group of women who sat knitting just in front of the device; the name 'Madame Defarge' - I remember thinking in 1990 in Strasbourg that a friend there could perhaps trace her ancestry to this fearsome lady; the exchange of prisoners in prison; and the flight to England; and the final scenes at the execution.

But there are also many scenes that were new to me in this reading, making me suspect this is the first time I am reading the complete book.  For example, I became freshly acquainted with some of the lesser characters, such as the lawyer Lorry and his assistant Jerry, Lucie Manette's governess Miss Pross, and a few others. The description of Dr. Manette as a dazed shoemaker, 'not all there', brought to mind the character of 'The Keymaker' in 'Matrix Reloaded'. The thrilling and climactic confrontation between Miss Pross and Madame Defarge was again completely new to me. 

But whether familiar from a previous reading or new to me, the character descriptions, the narration, the plot, and all aspects are excellent, and the book is a terrific read, especially, if one is a Dickens fan, like I am. The historical setting of the book in the French revolution makes it an important contribution to understanding the zeitgeist of those times. I particularly liked it that Dickens is so even-handed in his comment. He condemns, mainly through sarcasm and irony, the excesses of the aristocracy as of the sans-culottes. He is as sympathetic to the tribulations of the poor as to those of innocent, kind-hearted and good members of the aristocracy, such as Charles Darnay. Though, in the case of this ostensible protagonist of the story (Carton is the actual hero), the character is weakly etched and Darnay comes across as well-meaning but stupid. Lucie Manette is also too pale and soft, but this a weakness shared by most of Dickens' heroines (Agnes in DC, for example).

A great book, but not involved or detailed enough to displace DC from the top of the list. 

The Racketeer. By John Grisham

The Racketeer

John Grisham

Hodder. First published 2012.

A lawyer who is imprisoned for being marginally and innocently involved in a financial scam plots his revenge. Not specifically on those who sent him to jail, but on the FBI and on the gangsters. So that, like the protagonists in other Grisham thriller I read, 'The Firm', in the end he is on the run from both the law and the crooks. But, of course, he is way too smart for them, and manages to outwit both groups. The book is interesting enough, with 'insider' descriptions of things like the witness protection program. Ideally it should be purchased at an airport bookshop and read over the journey. And this is what Chitra did. I just borrowed it from her.

The Code of the Woosters. By P.G. Wodehouse

The Code of the Woosters

P.G. Wodehouse

Penguin Books. First published 1938.

Among the top 10% of PGW books, this is a brilliantly plotted novel about Wooster and Jeeves, the fearful imbroglio in which Wooster lands, and the magnificent work by Jeeves in hauling him out of it. It features Sir Watkyn Basset, the magistrate who builds up a fortune by 'sticking like glue' to the fines he levies on the offenders brought up before him; Roderick Spode, an aspiring dictator with a dark secret; the good and deserving Aunt Dahlia, who wants Bertie to steal a cow creamer; Madeline Basset, who is so sentimental and mushy, she thinks 'every time fairy blows it's nose, a wee baby is born'; Gussie Fink-Nottle, who is engaged to Madeline, and conducts scientific experiments on the love-life of newts; Stephanie Byng, a petite female who has a running battle with the village policeman, Constable Dobbs; and her fiance Harold 'Stinker' Pinker, a local curate, who is so clumsy he would trip and fall over something, even in the Gobi desert. The writing is superb, with almost every line a delight. I pick one at random - 'The eyes behind the spectacles were cold. He looked like an annoyed turbot'.

This book is also associated in my mind with the smell and taste of peanut butter. It was one of the the first PGW I read, in Project House, Devnar, Mumbai, in about 1968 or '69. I read it in the afternoon, after school, as I tasted peanut butter sandwiches for the first time. 

The Prague Cemetery. By Umberto Eco

The Prague Cemetery

Umberto Eco

Translated from Italian by Richard Dixon

Vintage Books. First published in English 2011

'Foucault's Pendulum' by Eco, published in 1989, dealt with a fake conspiracy set up by a group of bored Italian intellectuals to beguile a mediocre but vain poet to pay enormous sums of money to see his work in print. The conspiracy however goes wrong, becomes all too real with disastrous consequences for the perpetrators of the joke. 'The Prague Cemetery' also involves conspiracies, again most of them fake, with the narrator of the stories, one Captain Simonini, being the common thread that holds them together. 

The events occur in Paris and a few other European cities and towns in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries. Simonini is a talented forger. He is not only skilled at copying other's documents, but can also create, ab initio, treatises, letters, books or purported speeches that implicate a wide variety of people, sects, and groupings in many different maleficent acts. He repeatedly uses these talents, always for money - that's the way he makes his living - and is in this way involved in Garibaldi's 'Il Risorgimento' in Italy in 1860, and the Paris commune of 1871, during both which historical events he creates documents that lead to important turns in them. His culminating success is in creating the 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', which is a document that actually exists and has been used by anti-Semites, including the 'greatest' of them all, Adolph Hitler, to justify their excesses against the Jewish people. Apart from the Jews, Simonini's forgeries also implicate other 'usual suspects', principally Jesuits and Freemasons, in global conspiracies to seize absolute power.           

Simonini has a split personality, and he often becomes Abbe Dalla Piccola, in which character he has adventures in other hermetic spaces. He witnesses spirit possession, flirts with Theosophy, has conversations with Freud and other practitioners of the nascent discipline of psychiatry. The book thus brings together descriptions, ostensibly from the 'inside', of various shady, pseudo-scientific and pseudo-historical practices that were prevalent then, and are prevalent now. The grandfather conspiracy theory of them all, the one about the Knights Templar, finds a passing mention, as does the one about the 'Illuminati', two theories so profitably mined recently by Dan Brown. 

'The Prague Cemetery' is an amusing, well-written, detailed novel that weaves in and around actual historical events, documents and personalities, but claiming its own protagonists as the heroes, the movers and the shakers. It is very like 'Foucault's Pendulum' in the general attitude it bears towards these idiotic but dangerous theories, and like that novel and unlike, for example, Dan Brown's books, always ensures that the reader does not turn a breathless believer of any of them. 

Schindler's List. By Thomas Keneally

Schindler's List

Thomas Keneally

A Touchstone Book. First published 1982.

Oskar Schindler was a Czech-Polish-German businessman, who gave sanctuary to more than one thousand Jews, otherwise destined for starvation, unspeakable horrors and death at the hands of the German SS during World War II. Schindler did this under the pretext of employing them in his enamel-ware and armament factories as slave labour, labelling their efforts as essential for the German war efforts, and supporting this classification by outrageous bribes of rare liquor, jewels and cash to all the SS officers and bureaucrats involved. He was able to bring his flock of 'Schindlerjuden' safely through the War, and was properly acknowledged for his brave and heroic efforts by post-war Jewish organisations. 

Keneally writes wonderfully, using somewhat sparse material to not only describe Schindler and his deeds, but also understand his possible motivation. In the latter endeavour he is not very successful, and we are left bewildered by the apparently random heroism exhibited in a milieu of apparently random evil. The book is not a dry documentation of what Schindler did, neither is it a hagiography. Keneally describes quite of lot of events not directly related to the Schindler narrative, but which serve to highlight the sheer madness of the entire SS operation, which sought to wipe out more than 10 million people from the face of the earth. In the event it succeeded in eliminating about 6 million. 

The Nazi quest for 'the Final Solution' has since served as the epitome of organised political evil. What distinguished it, and continues to distinguish it, from the hundreds of mass murders and genocides that continue to happen throughout the world is the following: a) It was systematically and efficiently organised with its own macabre bureaucracy and with technology specifically invented for the purpose. b) It lasted much longer than similar crimes throughout history. c) It had no economic or strategic value from the point of view of the war. d) It was not something perpetrated by people in the grip of violent and unreasonable passion. Thus while it may be specious to equate the current actions of the Israeli army against the Palestinians with those of the Nazis, the equality does not hold. The latter actions are a result of Israeli insecurity, those of the Germans were not. Israel's crimes against the Palestinians is of a different nature, and that's why they are so ill-informed by the country's own history. 

After Spielberg made the movie based on it, this book (originally called 'Schindler's Ark', but released in the US with 'List' substituting 'Ark') is among the best known examples of Holocaust literature. It is as moving and shocking as I remember William Styron's 'Sophie's Choice' to have been. But unlike the latter, Keneally's book is a celebration of goodness, not just a stark portrayal of evil.
  

A Damsel in Distress. By P.G. Wodehouse

A Damsel in Distress

P.G. Wodehouse

E-book downloaded from the Internet. First published 1919.

This is a romantic comedy, not a part of any series (Jeeves, Blandings...) though some of the characters in this book foreshadow people like Lord Emsworth and Lady Constance from the later books. George Bevan, a successful composer of music for comic plays, falls in love with an Earl's daughter, who is herself in love with someone else. How he successfully woos her forms the main story, such as it is. There is a lot of snappy conversation, many well-sketched characters and a couple of hilarious scenes. Though the writing had not yet, in 1919, reached the heights attained in later books like 'Right Ho, Jeeves', and there are no 'nifties' I can quote, yet it is certainly better than that of PGW's ostensible rivals, such as Richard Gordon or Henry Cecil. The plot though, has none of the intricacies of the 'golden age' stories. All the same, a good book to read - again and again, though each time after a lapse of a few years.

Psmith in the City. By P.G. Wodehouse

Psmith in the City

P.G. Wodehouse

E-book. Downloaded from the web. First published 1910.

This is a continuation of the adventures of Psmith and Mike after they leave school. Mike's plans to attend University (Cambridge) are dashed when his father looses money. Consequently he is employed in the New Asiatic Bank in London as a beginner clerk. His initial gloom at his sudden loss of all the chances to play cricket is lightened when Psmith also joins the bank. The two combine to continue their career of ragging all and sundry, in particular the pompous, self-important and slightly (only slightly) nasty manager of the bank. Great writing, though not yet reaching the heights attained by PGW a decade or two later. The book is apparently based on PGW's own initial experiences after school. It also contains a fair bit of writing on cricket.