The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"It was a pink slip of paper three inches wide and seven inches long, and it told the First National City Bank to pay to the order of Nero Wolfe one hundred thousand and 00/100 dollars."

Well, these are the 1965 dollars and the equivalent amount today would be almost one million. We meet the obese genius, Nero Wolfe, and the suave and manly Archie Goodwin - Wolfe's intrepid secretary and right-hand man - in the detective's office, where a rich widow, Mrs. Bruner, has just signed the check. She is hiring Wolfe to do what "perhaps no other man alive can do" - take on the FBI. With this cool setup The Doorbell Rang (1965) begins, Rex Stout's 41st novel in the Nero Wolfe series.

Mrs. Bruner had sent 10,000 copies of the book The FBI Nobody Knows (an actual 1964 book, currently available on Amazon) to cabinet members, senators, representatives, executives, district attorneys, and other public personages. As a result, she is now followed day and night by FBI agents and her family as well as the employees of the Bruner Corporation are harassed. Thus Mrs. Bruner hires Wolfe to compel the FBI to stop the intimidation.

Mr. Wolfe takes the case, no doubt enticed by the huge check. During the investigation a connection is discovered to an unsolved murder of a free-lance writer who had collected material for an article on the FBI. It will not be a spoiler when I write that Wolfe succeeds: the denouement involves quite a clever masquerade. I also like quite an interesting coded conversation between Wolfe and Archie. Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn plays some role in the story and the passages like

"'I've decided women under fifty are - what are they?'
'Well, jejune's a good word.'
'Too many Js.'"

must have served as an inspiration for Archy McNally's dialogues from Lawrence Sanders' novels.

Rex Stout's problems with FBI are widely known. The Bureau had him on a list of 'persons of interest' because the author had always been committed to liberal causes, participated in anti-fascist activities before World War 2, and later continued as an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism. Rex Stout always was a fierce critic of J. Edgar Hoover.

The Doorbell Rang is certainly not among the stronger installments in the series but it provides a better way to spend time than watching commercial garbage on TV. A marginal recommendation.

Two-and-a-half stars.

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J. S. Bach by Calvin R. Stapert
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"When asked whether the St. Matthew Passion is the greatest work ever composed, Masaki Suzuki, conductor of the Bach Collegium Japan, responded affirmatively [...]"

While attempts to identify "the greatest work ever composed" are rather frivolous, if one were to treat them seriously no other composer would be more frequently mentioned by musicologists than Johann Sebastian Bach, and the St. Matthew Passion would certainly be close to the top, if not at the very top of their choices. The Erbarme dich, mein Gott aria for contralto from Passion is certainly the most beautiful piece of music I know, transcendent and sublime (look for Delphine Galou's performance on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBeXF... ). And, of course, Bach is my favorite composer.

J.S. Bach (2009) by Calvin R. Stapert is the second Bach's biography I have recently read, after Geck's Bach. Life & Times and I like this one a bit more, mainly because the author does not offer annoying running commentary to his own text as the other book does. Still, the author (or maybe it is the publisher) insists on typographical affectation of frequently repeating the most important sentences of the text at the top of the page.

The main emphasis of this biography is on religious roots of Bach's music. The author writes:

"I have made the assumption that Bach's thinking, indeed his whole being, was shaped by theology [of the Lutheran Reformation], a theology that he inherited from his ancestors and was given expression in the texts he set to music."

When discussing vocal works the author focuses on the theological content of the texts. He writes that he takes the theology expressed in those texts as "the key to Bach's own thoughts and feelings."

It is obviously very difficult to try to summarize Bach's tremendous opus in a few short phrases, yet the author does a good job when he states that the composer had always been working towards the goal of "well-regulated church music," and repeats this phrase in two different places of the text. Another key feature of Bach's work is noted as well

"[... these works] exhibit Bach's 'summa' mentality, that is his drive to do something comprehensively, to provide a 'summation', or to bring something to the 'summit' of its development."

I like the author's treatment of Bach's cantatas - the chronology, complexity of their form, and intense involvement with the chorale. My most favorite cantata (BWV 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme) is mentioned as well. I have also enjoyed some personal tidbits about Bach's life: the funny story about his troubles with students in Arnstadt, and even funnier incident of Bach being reprimanded for having a young woman visit him in the choir loft. I also like the author's perhaps surprising observation in the Epilogue:

"The extraordinary quality that posterity has heard in Bach's music makes a stark contrast not only with how most of his contemporaries heard it but also with the ordinariness of Bach's life."

An interesting, worthwhile read, and a "must read" for any J.S. Bach fan.

Three-and-a-half stars.

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The Investigation by Dorothy Uhnak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"I am very convictable right now [...] People want to convict me of something. After all, I haven't behaved the way 'people' think I should, the way a 'mother' should have reacted [...]"

A very good police procedural, one that might seem a bit dated - the novel was published in 1977 - yet very relevant for today's times because of the underlying theme of 'trying a case in the court of public opinion'. Dorothy Uhnak's Investigation is the first book of this author that I have read but certainly not the last. Amazon's prices for other used books by Ms. Uhnak are exorbitant so it's time to run for the library.

The detectives on the DA's Investigating Squad take a call from the precinct about missing Keeler's kids. Kitty Keeler is a young mother, an attractive woman, married to a middle-aged husband. There is a history of marital problems and of using children as hostages in resolving conflicts between the spouses. The bodies of two kids are soon found; they have been strangulated and shot. Detective Joe Peters leads the investigation.

The procedural thread is totally captivating and very well written. Ms. Uhnak used to work for 14 years as a detective for the New York City Transit Police Department and not only does she convincingly convey the details of police activities but, most importantly, she also portrays the police department politics. Even without the criminal plot it could make great reading:

"Aside for splits based on politics, racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds and specific personality differences, we're just one cohesive team."

But two other themes dominate the novel. Ms. Uhnak paints a compelling psychological portrait of Kitty and manages to make her feel like a real person, not just a character in a plot. She behaves like an actual human being rather than as embodiment of how the majority of people imagine other people should behave. Kitty has a strong and distinctive personality so, obviously, she 'rubs other people' wrong, to use a cliché phrase. The scene of Kitty being interrogated by the detectives is superb. No clichés there!

Finally, perhaps the most important theme of the novel: trying criminal cases 'in the court of the public opinion.' Remember the Casey Anthony's case of 2011 - 2014? It gained wide attention in the media, including social media. Most everybody had their opinion on the issue of guilt or innocence. People devoured hours and hours of TV coverage and basked in the self-satisfied and disgusting glory of being able to judge other people. Were the Kitty Keeler's case to happen now there would be even more coverage, and every single interest group would try to "own" the case with the use of social and other media. Ms. Uhnak's novel offers a warning sign.

In the novel we learn the so-called "truth" about what happened at the end. I could live without the explicit solution since to me it softens the impact of important issues raised by the author. Now, attempting to be facetious: this was 1977 after all, when the existence of truth was implicitly assumed unlike now, in the era of "post-truth." Anyway, a very good novel, highly recommended!

Four stars.


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Round About Midnight: A Portrait Of Miles Davis by Eric Nisenson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"[Keith Jarrett] said that Miles would rather play music that was new and innovative than play older music even if the newer music was far less perfect. For perfection was never Miles's goal. It was the journey itself that his music was about, the process of growing and constantly arriving."

I have to admit that I have never been a fan of Miles Davis's jazz. While I almost immediately fell in love with John Coltrane's music and admire many works by Eric Dolphy and Sun Ra, Miles Davis leaves me quite cold, with the exception of Bitches Brew (but then many listeners would not exactly count that album as jazz) and Sketches of Spain. So when Eric Nisenson, the author of 'Round About Midnight. A Portrait of Miles Davis (1996) writes:

"[Kind of Blue] is one of the most beautiful works of art of this century. I am certain that this piece of music will still be listened to on the day the sun implodes. [...] It is amazing how it continues to stir my soul every time I hear it [...]"

I suspect that something is very wrong with me, with my reception of music. It must be my fault that I do not appreciate Kind of Blue.

Anyway, even if I am unable to share Mr. Nisenson's admiration of Miles Davis's works, I certainly appreciate the book. The author is passionate about the topic and writes very well, which makes this one of the best biographies I have ever read. This is almost as great a read as the Ascension. John Coltrane and His Quest that I have reviewed recently.

Maybe because of my lack of enthusiasm for Miles Davis' main works the early parts of the biography made strongest impression on me. Mr. Nisenson offers fascinating glimpses into Miles Davis' youth: his childhood in a well-to-do black family in East St. Louis, his first break with the Billy Eckstine band, the "apprenticeship" with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, a stint at Juilliard School of Music, and then the times of Birth of the Cool, meeting J.P. Sartre in Paris and an affair with Juliette Gréco.

By mid 1950s, Miles Davis - not even 30 years old - becomes a living legend. He carefully creates his own enigmatic persona: arrogant, opulently dressed, driving a white Ferrari. Miles as the embodiment of Ultimate Hip, the epitome of Ultimate Cool. Then comes the universally acclaimed album Kind of Blue (1959) as well as beautiful Sketches of Spain (to this day I remember how in the early 1980s, on Delaware Street in Berkeley, I listened to that album for the first time). Then the adventures with fusion (to oversimplify: fusion is a cross between jazz and progressive rock) and Bitches Brew with John McLaughlin, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, and other famous musicians.

About 1975 Miles Davis retires to come back in 1980 for his 10 final years during which he is, unfortunately, mostly cashing on his fame and catering to pop tastes of the then audiences:

"Glamor and money meant everything in this age of Reagan. Miles had always had a heightened awareness of the currents of American life."

That period produced some of the least interesting music I have heard in my life, among others the album You Are Under Arrest, which even the critics consider a catastrophic failure.

To sum up, 'Round About Midnight is a compelling read, well-written and rich in detail. The author even manages to mention how my favorite rock band, Sonic Youth (1980s - 2010s) had been influenced by Miles Davis. Highly recommended!

Four stars.

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Nerve Damage by Peter Abrahams
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

" ROY VALOIS, SCULPTOR, DIES AT 46
by Richard Gold and Myra Burns
Roy Valois, a sculptor whose large works are displayed in many public spaces around the United States and at several prominent museums, died yesterday at his home in Ethan Valley, Vermont. He was 46."

We first meet Roy Valois when he dreams about his wife, Delia, who died 15 years earlier. A PhD in economics, she used to work at Hobbes Institute, an economic think tank. Roy has just finished a new sculpture, called Delia, an artistic homage to his wife whom he loved so much. Roy is now with Jen and has been planning to propose to her. Yet having experienced alarming medical symptoms he consulted a specialist who offered a grim prognosis. Roy becomes morbidly interested in his obituary, which - like for all famous people - is written well ahead of time in New York Times. The obituary is flattering but it contains incorrect information about Delia's employment history. Roy sets out to correct the info but the data he uncovers makes him lose confidence as to Delia's work record. Where did she work? Who was she? Did he know his beloved wife at all?

Nerve Damage (2007) is a suspense novel slash thriller by Peter Abrahams. The setup is intriguing but having been burnt by the same author's Revolution #9 , with its fantastic setup and complete fiasco of the latter parts of the plot, I was quite apprehensive. Well, indeed, the plot does deteriorate a bit, and much earlier than in Revolution, but it remains marginally interesting; so I kept reading on to the very end, which is too sappy for my taste and relies on a cliché literary device. But the reader will probably enjoy tense scenes like:

"First, he cleared the top of the coffin. Then he dug a little side cut, a place to stand. [...He] stepped into the side cut, bent forward, got his hands under the lid of the coffin. Then, straightening his back, pulling with his arms, he slowly raised the lid and laid it aside."

Peter Abrahams' prose is very readable without being shallow so I can forgive him several implausible turns of the plot. Paper-thin characterizations of Skippy, Jen, and Mr. Truesdale are harder to forgive, though.

A marginally recommended read, far from the three-and-a-half-star quality of A Perfect Crime , yet serviceable when nothing's better around.

Two-and-a-half stars.

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Looking for Alaska by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"She had the kind of eyes that predisposed you to support her every endeavor."

A beautiful sentence from a wonderful book. A few months ago I reviewed Uglies, a very good novel in the Young Adult genre, recommended by a student of mine. I was astonished by how much I liked the book and became quite embarrassed of my generally disdainful attitude towards the genre. So when the same student highly recommended another YA novel I could not wait to read it. John Green's Looking for Alaska (2005) is a terrific book; although it is addressed to young people, it treats them as they should be treated - as adults.

We meet Miles Halter as he leaves his "family and Florida and the rest of [his] minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama." He refers to François Rabelais' last words when he says

"That's why I am going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps."

Miles' adventures at the Culver Creek Preparatory School provide the plot of the novel. His roommate, Chip, aka "the Colonel," introduces him not only to the school's social structure but also to Alaska, "the hottest girl in all of human history." The plot is riveting and amazingly plausible to the very end.

This is a wonderfully mature book in how it handles serious topics and would do well as mandatory reading for all teenagers. Had I known the book twenty-something years ago, when my daughter was in her early teens, I would have wanted her to read it. I haven't found anything naive, cheap, condescending, overly simplistic, or brazenly didactic in the novel. It is amazing how much good stuff, how much common sense it packs with regard to life advice. And how well it handles the topics of sex and sexual initiation for which - as I understand - it got into some trouble with the self-proclaimed guardians of morality who attempt to perpetuate their own sexual hangups in their children. No vulgarity, no titillation with the subject, no guilt; just the healthy way of treating Things That Need To be Dealt With.

Completely unexpectedly I found a passage that touched a theme which would naturally belong to the type of Books for Very Old People that I love to read but which I would never expect to find in a YA novel. Take the quote that seems to come straight from Cees Nooteboom, the greatest scholar of human impermanence:

"Someday no one will remember that she ever existed, I wrote in my notebook, and then, or that I did. Because memories fall apart too. And then you're left with nothing, left not even with a ghost but with its shadow.

The novel is imbued with the love of books. It mentions so many great authors: François Rabelais, Gabriel García Márquez (a quote from The General in His Labyrinth provides a sort of motif for the entire novel), Kurt Vonnegut (his Cat's Cradle is one of Alaska's favorite books), poetry of Auden. While the author provides a charming description of Alaska's physical beauty - from which I took the epigraph - it is her love of books that adds a more important dimension to her "hotness."

Many wonderful passages in the novel: let me just mention the touchingly sweet Thanksgiving scene at the Colonel's mom. Then, there is all the humor, which made me laugh out loud so many times. True, I like to laugh and I probably laugh much more than an average person but I do not remember ever in my life laughing as hard as when I was reading the scene of the Great Prank during the Speaker Day at Miles' school. When Lara, the Romanian student, tells the speaker to "subvert the patriarchal paradigm" and he proceeds accordingly I got a hysterical attack of laughter which lasted 10 minutes and almost ended in suffocation. Oh, how I wish I were a part of a prank like that!

A beautiful love story whose poetry will be understood by young people, yet a mature and wise story. I am not quite sure what's going on with me: while always so stingy with the rating stars I am going to round up my 4.5 rating, even though the novel has not been written by any of the usual suspects like Joyce, Coetzee, Nabokov, Vonnegut, García Márquez, White or Nooteboom. Thank you, EK!

Four-and-a-half stars.

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Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'I doubt it,' Reacher said. 'I read it in a book once. It worked on the page. But in the real world I imagine it would have exploded and blinded me [...]"

Exactly. That's the problem with Lee Child's Bad Luck and Trouble (2007), except that many components of the plot are so ridiculous that I doubt that for most readers they would even work on the page. This is the eleventh installment in the long-running Jack Reacher series and either it is significantly weaker than the earlier books or this reader has become much more picky. I had read two or three of the first four books in the series in the late 1990s or early 2000s and generally liked them.

The novel opens with a strong and memorable prologue: a horribly suffering man with both legs broken is flown in a helicopter to his execution. At the height of 3,000 feet he is thrown off the stretcher into the night air for the final 20-second terrifying flight towards the ground.

The plot proper begins when Jack Reacher, who is living the life of a transient in Oregon, notices an unexpected deposit of $1,030 in his bank account. Obviously (sarcasm intended), it must be a message - a cry for help - from one of his pals with whom he had served as a special investigator in the military police. And although Reacher is not told where to meet his old friend (it turns out to be Sgt. Frances Neagley whom he respects a lot), he manages to find her immediately. The author again seems to self-mock his reliance of serendipity in the plot:

"Where in the vastness of LA would she be comfortable? There were twenty-one thousand miles of surface streets to choose from.
Reacher asked himself. Where would I go?
Hollywood, he answered."

Silliness like that abound in the novel, including the horrible cliché of cleverness in guessing a password, and so on and on. Everything that happens to Reacher and other "good guys" is miraculously convenient for them. They have friends in very high places who owe them favors. They have access to unlimited cash. Virtually everything that could go right in the plot does. But then it is just a silly fairy tale for "adults" so one should not expect any semblances of realism.

What I truly dislike is the author's fascination with guns, ammunition, calibers, and other technical details of weapons. Adolescents boys and adolescent "grown-up" men with weapon-centered lifestyles will be really happy with this novel. Also, they will get really solid hard-ons when they read the slow-motion descriptions of physical damage to human bodies inflicted by bullets and other weapons. They will love the truly manly language:

"We investigate, we prepare, we execute. We find them, we take them down, and then we piss on their ancestors' graves."

On a positive side the reader will find a reference to John Coltrane on Miles Davis albums. And the writing is pretty competent for the fairy tale for "men" genre.

Two stars.


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Late Essays : 2006-2017 by J.M. Coetzee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"This modest but beautifully composed little ten-page episode does indeed provide a good education, and not just for older persons: how to dig a grave, how to write, how to face death, all in one."

Late Essays 2006 - 2017 is the 22nd book by J.M. Coetzee that I am reviewing here and the fourth collection of essays by the Nobel Prize winner in literature, after Stranger Shores , Inner Workings , and Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship . The collection is a totally wonderful, serious, demanding read, which could well be used as a learning tool for students who intend to become literary critics. The set contains 23 essays; I am only providing unorganized thoughts on some of the essays. I wouldn't be able to synthesize these impressions into a full-fledged review of the entire collection.

In the essay on Philip Roth's Nemesis Coetzee demonstrates superb sense of humor when he writes about certain character being a virgin "in a Clintonian sense." But it is really a serious essay about serious issues. We read "God is just another name for Chance," and Coetzee provides a strong ending for the essay when he writes about an episode from Roth's Everyman, which I quote in the epigraph.

In the essay about a story written in the early 1800s by Heinrich von Kleist Coetzee addresses one of my hot-button subjects. Suppose an author, on purpose, does not clearly state what happens to characters in the story at some point of the plot. Consider a reader's question "What has really happened?" Coetzee counters with his question "What does 'really' mean?" To me it touches upon the readers injecting their own fictions into the author's fiction in order to make it more realistic to them.

I love the essay titled "Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama". I have not read that novel, apparently one of the major works of Argentine literature and I have now put it on my "To read" list. In the next essay Coetzee writes about Leo Tolstoy's works and focuses on The Death of Ivan Ilyich, one of the best novellas I have ever read, a relentlessly realistic and thus terrifying account of a man dying. He ends the essay with a powerful quote:

"In both of these stories Tolstoy pits his powerful rhetoric of salvation against the commonsense scepticism of the consumer of fiction, who like Ivan Ilyich in his heyday looks to works of literature for civilized entertainment and no more."

I have been tremendously impressed by Coetzee's essay on the Polish poet, Zbigniew Herbert. The South African/Australian writer shows deep understanding of the political situation in the Soviet-controlled countries in Eastern Europe after the Second World War, and particularly of the more benign yet no less morally corrupting Polish brand of Soviet-style ideology.

Two essays are dedicated to works by the great Australian writer, Patrick White, two of whose novels are among the best books I have read in my life, The Eye of the Storm and The Aunt's Story, which I reviewed here on Goodreads. In the first essay Coetzee focuses on White's Vivisector and in the other on The Solid Mandala, a novel that is on my "Read Immediately" shelf.

Strongly recommended jewel of literary criticism.

Four stars.

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The Sixth Commandment by Lawrence Sanders
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"You are as old as you feel? Bullshit. You're as old as you look. And you can't fake youth, not really. The pain is in seeing it go, grabbing, trying to hold it back. No way. Therefore, do not send to ask for whom the ass sinks; it sinks for thee."

With Lawrence Sanders one gets some winners, like the wonderful McNally series, for instance, McNally's Risk , and some stinkers, like the unbelievably bad Private Pleasures . The Sixth Commandment (1979) comes somewhere in between, fortunately a bit closer to the better side of Mr. Sanders (or whoever wrote his books; I really do suspect that he used to hire ghostwriters to produce the stinkers).

Samuel Todd works as a field investigator for the Bingham Foundation that gives away about 10 million dollars a year for scientific research. Mr. Todd is tasked to investigate Dr. Thorndecker, a Nobel Prize winner and an expert in the biology of aging, who has requested a substantial grant to study the effects of electromagnetic waves on human embryo cells in vitro. It is clear from the beginning that the case is anything but straightforward: as soon as Todd arrives in the town where the scientist lives, he receives a note that says "Thorndecker kills." Not only is the good Doctor the owner of a research lab but also he owns a nursing home that caters to rich patients. Todd suspects that the connections between the two institutions have been understated in the grant application.

From the beginning of the investigation the author is trying to convey to us Todd's sense of dread about what might be going on. "It's worse than you think!" says one of the characters. Yet Mr. Sanders is more successful in producing some nice prose (evident in his later, McNally novels). Here's a cool passage that refers to John Donne's famous poem:

"So I knew that if I did not do something, Europe would be the less."

He also manages to evoke some lyricism in his prose:

"It was a metallic mesh, wrapped around the physical world. [...] Beyond, even dimmer, the bare trunks of trees appeared, disappeared, appeared again, wavery in the hazy light."

There is even a smattering of social observations to accompany the plot: Dr. Thorndecker's little town, deserted by most young people, is "a village that was a necropolis of fractured dreams."

Far below the level of McNally series yet a readable, moderately interesting story, with a rather predictable ending.

Two-and-three-quarter stars.

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The Lives of Animals by J.M. Coetzee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"He pulls the car over, switches off the engine, takes his mother in his arms. He inhales the smell of cold cream, of old flesh. 'There, there,' he whispers in her ear. 'There, there. It will soon be over.'"

The article in Wikipedia about The Lives of Animals (1999) classifies the book as a metafictional novella, which is not an accurate characterization. The Lives is not a novella but rather a collection of diverse literary pieces: it contains two honorific lectures, a report of the audience reactions to the lectures (the only component that resembles a novella), and a set of essays on literary, philosophical, and scientific topics related to the lectures. Neither is the book metafictional, which usually means 'self-referential' or 'emphasizing its own fictional nature.' I would call the book 'parafictional', where the prefix 'para-' means 'beside' or 'beyond.'

For instance, it is completely unimportant whether the lectures are 'real' of 'fictional.' They are presented by Elizabeth Costello, a fictitious Australian writer created by J.M. Coetzee. But Coetzee had once read Costello's lectures as if they were his own. So now, were they real? Yes and no. Incidentally, the question whether something is real or not is grossly overrated. One should rather ask whether a literary construct is realistic. In that sense Costello's/Coetzee's lectures certainly are.

The lectures are about how we treat animals. How we torture them, slaughter them, and then eat them. Through the lectures Ms. Costello conveys her message: sympathy toward animals should be a moral and ethical imperative. Animals are not that different from us, she points out: they feel pain, they suffer, and - most importantly - they have their "sensation of being." She argues that since we are able to think about our own death we should also be able to "think ourselves into the being of [an animal]."

The notion of human reason is invoked: one could conceivably construe that Ms. Costello juxtaposes reason and sympathy. We learn about her "disdain for so many taboos of rationalism" while she stresses sympathy that "allows us to share [...] the being of another." Ms. Costello verbalizes one of the most famous Coetzee's quotes:

"There is no position outside of reason where you can stand and lecture about reason and pass judgment on reason."

I am not a native English speaker yet I dare to doubt that the word 'sympathy' is the right one to represent how Ms. Costello wants us to treat animals. I would rather use words like 'compassion,' 'caring,' or 'kindness.' Or maybe even the more general term 'decency,' which J.M. Coetzee considers the highest moral imperative (I completely agree with him, see my review of his Waiting for the Barbarians .)

In the 'novella part' of the book Coetzee presents (almost verbatim) Ms. Costello's lectures, The Philosophers and the Animals and The Poets and the Animals, and portrays the reactions of the audience at the lectures. The reader will also find a slim thread of 'fiction' where the author quotes Ms. Costello's conversations with her son and his wife.

To finish on a personal note: I abhor killing of animals; I even try to walk carefully and never step on an insect or a lizard. When I have to kill a rodent maimed by my cat I strive to be most humane in the process. I despise hunters and would not shake hands with anyone who kills animals for "sport." Yet I eat meat. Similarly, but on a lower degree of violation of moral principles, Ms. Costello wears leather sandals and carries a leather purse. How dare I and Ms. Costello be like that?

Four stars.


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Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"For four hours, she'd sat up there, twenty-six stories above blue cement, and considered whether she'd go through with it or not. [...] At what moment had it all crystallized to the point where she'd hoisted her legs over that four-foot balcony wall and stepped into black space?"

Another disappointment and all so typical! An author whom I know from at least one good book in the past, interesting setup of the plot, realistic characters, skillful writing, all so promising until... At some point the novel begins to deteriorate to the extent that I barely have the patience to continue reading. Dennis Lehane's Prayers for Rain (1999) is a good example of the phenomenon. I very much liked A Drink Before the War that I had read over 20 years ago. That was the novel that began the Kenzie/Gennaro series of which Prayers is the fifth installment. The current novel is a well-structured, well-written, and captivating book until about one third into the story. Then the clichés of the genre take over and the plot loses its grip over the reader. Things get much worse about two-thirds into the novel: quality deteriorates to the degree that I have just been able to skim the pages to see if anything can hold my attention. A promising book turns into the dreaded page-turner: mob clichés, gun clichés, character clichés abound. The plot twists are implausible and just plain silly.

A brief synopsis of the setup: Kenzie and Gennaro are not together as a consequence of events from a previous installment. Karen Nichols, a young woman who is being stalked, hires Kenzie to convince the stalker to "lay off her." When the detective and his cliché sidekick Bubba Rogowski administer heavy corporal therapy to the offender, he promises to stop harassing Karen. Yet six months later, she jumps to her death from the observatory deck of a sky scraper. Kenzie is devastated: he feels heavy guilt - several weeks before her death Karen tried to call him and he was too busy to return her call.

The first third of the novel, maybe even a half, reads like real literature, well-written, and captivating. Karen Nichols emerges a fully realistic, tragic character, with all the usual human frailties and complexities. The unforgettable, well-written conversation between Kenzie and Karen's mother and stepfather makes it hard not to get angry at the degree of harm that parents can do to their children. The scene reminded me of some of the virtuoso dialogues in Denise Mina's novels. Yet the good stuff is balanced by gratuitous scenes of violence and brutality:

"[He] no longer had possession of his own hands. They were on the floor to the left of the silent motor, chopped off above the wrists and neatly laid, palms down, on the floorboards."

I will not mention what else was done to the victim who was carefully kept alive during the amateur surgery, read the book if you are into pornography of torture.

The beginning of the novel was evidently written by a good author. The ending could have as well be written by me or generated by a computer. I have not heard about mystery authors hiring ghostwriters to finish their novels, but I know nothing about the business of mystery literature. "Hook the reader on the beginning and then who cares about the rest," may well be the best business plan.

Two stars.


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Mokusei!: A Love Story by Cees Nooteboom
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"It was a passion that would burn him down to his roots and through which all that came before and after would fade, because this time it was love first and foremost and only secondly a story."

A slim and slight novella from my favorite author. Cees Nooteboom's Mokusei (1982) should really be called a short story as it fits on 86 largish-print pages with wide margins. Mr. Nooteboom focuses only on three motifs in the story, and they are some of the main themes in his opus: love, the nature of the past, and fascination with Japan.

The beautiful and beautifully told story of Mr. Presser, a Dutch photographer, who falls "head over heels" in love with a young Japanese woman, is a sweet tale of love predestined to fail, if one wants to equate not achieving the "happily ever after" with failure. But even so, and despite the memories and the pain, isn't having lived and not loved a greater failure?

The love story is intermingled with meditations on the contrast between a visitor's preconception of the country they visit and the reality of that country. Mr. Presser's friend, a Dutch cultural attaché in Japan, warns him that it is virtually impossible for a foreigner to understand Japan and it is not even the matter of "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." The visitors

"[...] know a little, which is really nothing, about Japanese culture, but that doesn't bother them, they have something better than knowledge, they have an idea about Japan."

Naturally, the passing of time and the way that the past exists never escape Mr. Nooteboom's attention:

"Long ago, and at the same time a sort of yesterday. For that kind of time no verb tenses exist. Memory flows this way and that between the perfect and imperfect, just as the mind, left to itself, will often prefer chaos to chronology."

Some time ago I reviewed here J.M. Coetzee's The Good Story where he writes about human relationships as interactions between projected fictions. Nooteboom mentions people's multiple masks instead:

"Three masks she was now wearing, one on top of the other, the Asiatic, that one of her own impenetrability, and the third, equally unrevealing veil of sleep."

One must praise the superb translation by Adrienne Dixon. To sum up: what would be a great book for most authors is just a good one for Cees Nooteboom.

Three and a half stars.


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The Watchman by Robert Crais
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"Pike's mouth twitched, and Cole wondered if Larkin had noticed that Pike never laughed or smiled. As if the part of a man who could feel that free was dead in Pike, or buried so deep that only a twitch could escape."

Less than a month ago I reviewed here Chasing the Darkness by Mr. Crais. Although far from the class of his early The Monkey's Raincoat or L.A. Requiem I recommended Chasing as quite a readable and interesting novel. Well, I can only marginally recommend The Watchman (2007), primarily for the - quite possibly unintended - comedic value of Joe Pike's characterization. While Mr. Crais' early novels were often termed "modern So Cal noir," there is not an iota of noir in The Watchman. Instead we have fast action, frequent killings, and Joe Pike as the coolest, most bad-ass, awesomest warrior, a grotesquely exaggerated caricature of a supremely manly man of very few words and no laughs or smiles.

22-year-old Larkin Conner Barkley, a heir to an obscenely rich family, worth five or so billion dollars herself, is enjoying a four-am. ride on the streets of L.A. in her Aston Martin. There happens a collision with a Mercedes sedan whose occupants hurry to drive away before she calls 911. Apparently, one of the people whom Larkin has seen in the Mercedes does not want to be seen. She becomes a federal witness, due to testify before the federal grand jury since the guy in the other car may be an indicted murderer, with narco-trade connections. Federal protection bungles their job: there are two attempts to assassinate her. So it's Joe Pike to the rescue, the single most powerful protection agent in the entire universe.

Joe Pike is so manly, so masculine that he wears sunglasses at night.

"Cole had seen Pike do push-ups on his thumbs; push-ups using only the two index fingers. Pike popped walnuts like soap bubbles [...]"

He is in total control of his body and his mind (!)

"His heart rate slowed. His breathing slowed. His body and mind were quiet. He could wait like that for days [...]"

In the defense of the author, the reader will find a fragment in the novel where Joe Pike seems a little like a real person: we learn about events from Pike's past when he was an officer in LAPD.

On the other hand it is hard to forgive the author for inclusion of a comedy thread that features the forensic expert John Chen and his desperate struggle to get "poontang" and Pike's acceptance. The Chen thread makes it obvious that Mr. Crais still treats Joe Pike as a serious, plausible character, which amazes this reviewer. Also, writing sentences like

"[...] eyes showing the kind of pain you'd feel if you were being crushed, as if the last bit of love were being wrung from your heart."

indicate that the author relaxed the standards of his prose.

I am still recommending the novel, albeit just barely, because of the interesting plot. More Cole less Pike, please! Or at least have Pike stumble, please, just once, just for fun. It would make the novel better - there is nothing more human than failure.

Two and a half stars.

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Blue: The Murder Of Jazz by Eric Nisenson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"This is why so much bland improvised music is popular now: the tinkling bells, liquid melodies, and vapid prettiness of New Age; the dentist's-office jazz of Kenny G. and Grover Washington, Jr.; and the reactionary and utterly predictable watered-down hard bop of the neoclassicists. It is improvisation without risk, without ecstasy, without soul."

I envy the author his writing skills! I wish I could pen phrases like "vapid prettiness of New Age," "utterly predictable watered-down hard bop of the neoclassicists," and so many others. I completely agree with the author, Eric Nisenson, in his 1997 grim diagnosis of the state of jazz in the mid-1990s. I dearly love jazz, mainly the 1960s' jazz, but also many earlier and more recent works. The only two kinds of jazz I cannot stand are the so-called "smooth jazz" - the "dentist's-office" music - and the soulless, riskless, ecstasyless mechanical "jazz" that Wynton Marsalis and his ilk used to produce

The blurb on the cover of Eric Nisenson's Blue. The Murder of Jazz very aptly describes the book: "A road map to the current jazz wars," a quote from the Wall Street Journal. And what a great road map it is! Of course, I am biased: I seem to love the same type of jazz that the author loves, yet even without the bias a careful reader cannot disagree with the author's line of reasoning and his clear, item-by-item, logical exposition of why the kind of music promoted by Jazz at the Lincoln Center had nothing to do with the supposed "resurgence of jazz." It is precisely the other way around: the neoclassicist ideology - as espoused in the writings of two jazz critics, Albert Murray (the "Karl Marx" of the movement) and Stanley Crouch (the movement's "Lenin") - and the neoclassicist practice of jazz - as implemented by Mr. Marsalis and other artists under the Lincoln Center's banner - killed jazz. The neoclassicist movement murdered everything what was valuable in jazz: the spontaneity, the creativity, the seeking of what has not yet been done.

For any jazz lover this is a great book to read, even if one does not want to take sides in the fight for the soul of jazz. From the introduction, where the author charmingly paints his lifelong love for jazz, through the quite detailed yet never boring or overwhelming history of jazz music - period-by-period, with chapters on swing, bebop, cool, fusion, etc. - to the clear exposition of the mid-1990s sad state of things, the text captivates the reader with clarity, depth, and good writing.

Let me now return to polemical mood and quote some of the issues that the author mentions but - in my view - does not emphasize enough. First is the fact that the neoclassicist movement is controlled by business interests and that much of it has little to do with art. Yes, Wynton Marsalis is a virtuoso, no one questions his enormous talent, yet the music he produces is evidently designed to sell not to inspire. Second - and the author is way too polite to state it unequivocally; I do not need to be polite - comparing Mr. Marsalis' music to that of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, or Sun Ra - is simply insulting. Yes, his musical skills may be comparable, but his music sucks because it has no soul.
Genuine jazz music has to be created "in and for the moment" and "reflect the lives and times of the musicians playing it." Its depth comes about "from the souls of the musicians" who create it at a particular moment in time.

To end on a less vitriolic note: I am thankful to the author for including quite a long passage on Sun Ra and his Arkestra - some of the greatest innovators in all music. I will look for further readings about Sun Ra and the band.

Four and a half stars.

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Revolution #9 by Peter Abrahams
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"Blurting the answer to twenty-six across in the Sunday New York Times crossword was the first big mistake Charlie Ochs had made in twenty years. Playing Ben Webster was the second."

Peter Abrahams' Revolution #9 (1992) provides a black and white, textbook example of a mystery/thriller novel that is great at the beginning and absolutely unreadable at the end. From the wonderful first chapter - about a boy baseball player who accidentally leaves his mitt in his father's office - through captivating three chapters that introduce the main characters in the plot, to the outstandingly well written scenes of Charlie meeting Emily and falling in love with her, a most discriminating reader will have a feeling that the author is a "serious," accomplished writer. People seem to come alive from the pages of the novel.

The plot carries on fast. On the wedding day the young couple looking forward to a long and happy life meet an unexpected guest. A man, dressed in a gorilla suit, hands Charlie a magnum bottle of champagne decorated with a black ribbon around the neck and with a congratulations card from Uncle Sam addressed to a Mr. Wrightman. The next day Uncle Sam himself shows up and Charlie suddenly leaves Emily for a few days to straighten out some complicated inheritance business in his family. We now learn that Charlie Ochs might not be who he seems he is.

The story rewinds 22 years to 1970 and we get acquainted with anti-government activists of The Committee of the American Resistance grouping students opposed to Vietnam War. They are involved in armed resistance against the government policies. That part of the plot is well-written and truly captivating. The contemporary thread on the other hand begins to deteriorate. Charlie discovers a clue that totally changes the basic algebra of the story and things begin to break down on the plausibility front. Then comes page 275 of the hardback edition that I was reading when events lose any relationship to reality and the reader is served literary garbage.

I was not strong-willed enough to read the last fifth of the book, I just flipped through the pages, and - being Polish-born - I noticed a tiny yet funny fragment mentioning the leader of the Polish pro-Soviet government in the 1960s.

After the first hundred or so pages of the book I was contemplating a possible four-star rating. Now I am even hesitant to assign a two-star one. Yet I have to, since the author of the first part of the book is a good writer. Whoever - instead of Peter Abrahams - wrote the last part should be ashamed. I highly recommend the novel to all readers who love experiencing massive disappointment.

Two stars.

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The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"They often said they found it difficult to remember that the other was a separate person. [...] It was precisely this collusion that made them vulnerable and sensitive to each other, easily hurt by the rediscovery that their needs and interests were distinct."

I loved reading Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers (1981). Captivating plot that skillfully builds atmosphere of menace and dread, remarkable psychological insights, outstanding prose, and - maybe most important – very small volume (fewer than 120 pages) would usually guarantee an at least four-star rating from me. Yet toward the end of the novella, something happened to my reception of the book. I remember the moment when my enthusiasm - quite suddenly - waned and a feeling of disappointment crept in.

Colin and Mary, an unmarried couple who have been with each other for seven years, are on vacations in an unnamed tourist city (obviously Venice, Italy). They do touristy things, they smoke a joint now and then, they have sex. They are both attractive and have been in the acting profession. The unfamiliar city seems like a maze to them: they keep getting lost in the tangle of small streets and alleys and can never find the way to where they want to get. The author convincingly builds the atmosphere of a bad dream where nothing dreadful really happens, but the feeling of doom intensifies with each moment. The reality becomes more and more "off-centered" and tinged with shades of nightmare. One day Colin and Mary meet a stranger, Robert, and that meeting will change their lives forever. Obviously not in a good way.

The "off-centeredness" and the disturbing feel remind me of The Vanishing , Tim Krabbé’s great thriller, made even more remarkable by the Dutch author’s good writing. I believe, though, that Mr. McEwan aspired to something deeper than a thriller. One can find some first-rate psychological stuff in Comfort: Colin and Mary having difficulties with separating their identities, the passages about missing the comfort of daily routine of their non-vacation lives, or the thread about how they love each other but not necessarily at any particular moment. I only wish the novella focused more on these themes.

I also love the humor: some of it subtle and a little nightmarish like when Mary is thirsty and cannot get a sip of water in the middle of all these canals, and then finally gets to a restaurant where the waiter offers her an espresso. There are lighter moments as well, for instance, Mary and Colin spend four days not leaving the hotel, occupied mainly with having sex and talking about all things sexual. It is then when Colin invents for Mary

"[...] a large, intricate machine, made of steel, painted bright red and powered by electricity; it had pistons and controls, straps and dials, and made a low hum when it was turned on [...]"

I will stop quoting here so as not to be accused of prurient interests.

McEwan's prose is wonderful: precise and economical, with no unneeded words. Nothing like his newer books, which I find interesting and readable yet overwrought and bloated. I also enjoy the visuals: while the Venice-like setting reminds me of the equally disturbing and very good movie Don't Look Now (1973), the feel of being lost in a maze brings memories of the great 1961 film Last Year in Marienbad. All this is wonderful stuff.

So what don't I find wonderful? The "crime thread", even if it is its inevitability that is the main point rather than the events themselves. I strongly dislike Robert's story of his childhood; I find it superfluous and spoiling the structure of the plot. Yet what mainly caused my enthusiasm about the book to evaporate was that the author explains why things happen. By providing explanations, he robs the plot of its mystery feel. Like a magician who, having performed a spectacular trick, shows how exactly we have been had. Very disappointing to me! I felt almost exactly the same when reading the very ending of the superb On Chesil Beach (McEwan’s book that I like the most, so far). By explaining the motives of human actions, the author takes away from me the option of interacting with the fiction. As a reader, I love to be a co-creator of the fictions and participate in figuring out the reasons why things are as they are rather than being spoon-fed by the author.

To sum up, Comfort, while a very good book, is flawed for me.

Three-and-three-quarter stars

(With thanks to my Goodreads friend, Judith, for the recommendation. I also "borrowed" from her the word 'doom' that captures the mood – ‘doom’ is ‘mood’ spelled backwards - in the novella.)

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Savages by Bill Pronzini
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"Other marks were visible on the wrists and arms. Rodent bites. That was what he'd been trying to fight off in his delirium... rats, mice, attracted by the blood, making sharp-toothed forays in the dark."

Well, I've had it for late installments in Pronzini's famous series about the detective who should be called "Unnamed" rather than "Nameless." I am not interested in the soap-opera-style continuity of events in the lives of Kerry, Tamara, Jack Runyon, and other companions of Mr. Unnamed. The early books in the series had more of the "one off" flavor, which I definitely prefer. Alas, they are more difficult to find.

Mr. Unnamed has a repeat client: four years ago he was hired by a woman whose sister had been planning to marry a rising software industry executive. The woman requested a detailed background check on the guy whom she considered ruthless, pathologically ambitious, and interested only in her sister's money. At that time the detective did not find any dark spots in the man's past, and the couple got married. Now, however, the woman's sister died in a fall, and she is convinced that the husband did it.

Meanwhile Jack Runyon - the "Nameless" novels seem to become more about him - is trying to deliver a subpoena to a man in a small town in Northern California. While the subpoena target is nowhere to be found Mr. Runyon discovers a dead man hung from a crossbeam in a barn.

The two threads proceed in parallel and perhaps the most interesting mystery for the reader is whether they will merge at the end. There are some pretty lame scenes in the novel, for instance the bad comedy of two cops interrogating Runyon: the reader can't be sure whether the comedic elements have been intended by the author or are inadvertent results of his sloppy prose. Deputy Kelso is a caricature of a policeman. On the other hand, the denouement is quite surprising and I very much like the last page of the novel.

Considering that the novel was published in 2007 it is hard not to like the following passage:

"Profits up fifteen percent [...], expansion plans in the works, looks like they're going public pretty soon. Another Donald Trump in the making."

But, all in all, this is not a very good novel, and it is hard to recommend.

Two-and-a-quarter stars.


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Bach by Martin Geck
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"[...] a modern composer who wanted to explore the realm of music in every direction must make his own laws and be ready, instead of using the simple numerical series denoting the oscillating relationships of the overtone series 1:2:3:4:5, and so on, to turn to the irrational number √2 in order to divide the octave, with strict rationality, into 12 equal but no longer 'natural' semitones."

This year we are celebrating the 333rd anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach's birth. As a matter of fact, when I was reading Martin Geck's book Bach it has been almost exactly 333.33 years since the most eminent composer of all times was born. Exactly a third of a millennium! Bach's music today is as relevant and as contemporary as it was 300 years ago. To me, a quasi-mathematician, the timeless nature of Bach's music, the fact that it always sounds fresh and not dated, is the result of it having deep mathematical structure. Bach's music transcends the conventions of the times when it was written and - again, to me - is abstract rather than figurative. Exactly like mathematics, which abstracts from limitations imposed by the real world.

Geck's book is a rather standard-style biography: it outlines the major events in Bach's life and intersperses the chronology with analysis of the music composed in the corresponding periods. The biography's volume is very modest, just about 170 pages, including various appendices, yet readers unfamiliar with Bach's life will learn a lot from it. We read about the composer's schooling, his first professional post in the Neukirche in Arnstadt, and the following sequence of gradually more important and prestigious jobs - court organist and Konzertmeister in Weimar, Kapellmeister and Director of Chamber Music on Prince Leopold's court in Köthen, and Kantor at St Thomas's in Leipzig.

The reader may be amused by tidbits about Bach's presumed insubordination "at the office": one time he was reprimanded for playing too long, the other for overstaying his leave. In Weimar he was in fact confined to detention "for too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal." I found the syllabus of his prima class in Lüneburg the most interesting: the boy had to study: Latin grammar, theology, logic, rhetoric, philosophy, and versification. No wonder the students were better educated in 1700 than in today's high schools.

As a total layperson in music I will not attempt to analyze the author's discussion of various compositions by J.S. Bach but it certainly felt great to read about some of my most beloved music like Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (to me some of the most "abstract", in mathematical sense, art ever created), preludes and fugues from Well-Tempered Clavier, violin concertos, and both Passions (St Matthew and St John).

I actively disliked the author's commentary to his own text, where - instead of traditional footnotes - he uses text boxes, which the publisher printed in annoying red. The inserts break continuity of the text and often obscure the main points. Not to mention that two of the inserts were misplaced (not the author's fault, I suppose).

Three stars.


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Chasing Darkness by Robert Crais
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"The sky was a beautiful crystalline blue, as bright as any I had ever seen, but a certain darkness could blot the sky [...] The darkness frightens me, but what it does to us frightens me even more. Maybe this is why I do what I do. I chase the darkness to make room for the light."

About quarter of a century ago I had read Robert Crais' The Monkey's Raincoat and loved the novel. Since I also remember another good book of his, L.A. Requiem, I decided it is time to get reacquainted with the author through some of his newer work. I chose Chasing Darkness published in 2008. Well, it is a great, compulsive read, yet not exactly of the same caliber as the two older novels. I certainly need to re-read them because maybe it was only my immaturity - at barely 40 years of age - that made me love those two books.

The setup of Chasing Darkness is enthralling: fires are raging in the Greater Los Angeles area and police officers assigned to inform residents about the evacuation order make a gruesome discovery: the body of a man who apparently killed himself. Between his feet they find a photo album, entitled My happy memories. The album contains horrifying pictures of several women, victims of brutal murders. Everything points out to the murderer reliving his thrills before committing suicide. Well, Elvis Cole assisted by his awesome sidekick, Joe Pike, will find the truth.

From Mr. Crais' two early books I remember Joe Pike as a purely cliché character: infinitely honest, infinitely macho, and invincible. He would defeat the whole battalion of Supermen and the entire army of Chuck Norrises just by lifting the little finger of his left hand. Luckily, in Darkness we do not need to deal much with his invincibility. Elvis Cole, a human-like character with all his faults and a good sense of humor, is clearly the protagonist.

Mr. Crais' writing reads more like screenplay for a movie rather than a full-fledged novel: the characters lack inner complexity and are shown through the prism of their single defining feature, but since we know this is not supposed to be a realistic narrative but rather one that implements a convention, the deficiency does not matter much. For example, in one of the first scenes two police officers visit Cole and Pike and the entire situation is a desperately silly macho game of trying to outcool and outmasculine each other. I do not believe readers can take any of this seriously so the scene has its comedic value (I tend to visualize macho characters doing their macho things almost naked, wearing only incontinence diapers).

Despite the laughable masculine clichés and screenplay-like feel this is quite a good novel. Mr. Crais paints a realistic thus grim portrait of city politics and scumbag city politicians. I also like the cynical thus truthful commentary on the role of attorneys in a criminal trial - the role that is not much about law and certainly not about justice. Many readers will probably like the major twist in the denouement. Overall a good read and a positive recommendation from me.

Three and a half stars.


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Spirit Catcher: The Life and Art of John Coltrane by John Fraim
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Like many members of my generation I gauge the climate of the times by the music created. Once the music meant something but now that time is past. Now it seems forced on us solely for the profit of record companies."

I belong to the generation for whose members music indeed meant something. My youth happened in the 1960s and music - rock, jazz, or avant-garde - meant everything to me: it captured the zeitgeist and embodied the spirit of rebellion, the feeling of the great social and cultural change about to happen. Even now the music that I love (works by J.S. Bach, John Coltrane, and many others) is one of the most important aspects of my self-identity. To my 20-year-old students in 2018 the sole function of music is to provide entertainment and when asked what music they like they will likely answer "whatever they play on the radio." I am not being judgmental: it's simply that the times they are a'changing.

John Fraim's Spirit Catcher. The Life and Art of John Coltrane (1996) is the fifth biography of John Coltrane that I am reviewing here on Goodreads (the links to my four previous reviews are listed at the bottom). Alas it is not one of the better ones, although it does have good points other than the wonderful quote shown above about what music means to different generations. There is the intriguing story of the mysterious "drone sound" that Coltrane heard in his dream when he was kicking his heroin habit in 1957:

"[...] the search for the mysterious sound began. It was a search that would continue throughout his life and would cause him to create some of his most intense and emotional music."

The reader will find a very interesting passage about chaos vs. order:

"For those two great forces in jazz and life, order and chaos, now waged their greatest battle [...] inside the spirit of John Coltrane."

Readers more fluent in the analysis of music than this reviewer may be interested in the author's claim that the first signs of the 'Coltrane sound' may be heard on Kind of Blue, the famous album recorded by Miles Davis group with John Coltrane. Perhaps the most interesting is the author's suggestion that the interplay between John Coltrane and Elvin Jones (the drummer in the classic Coltrane quartet) on My Favorite Things is a harbinger of Coltrane's future interest in free jazz - a suggestion which on the face of it seems farthest from reality in such a melodic work as My Favorite Things.

The author is unusually fond of metaphors which tend to obfuscate rather than emphasize the points he makes. For instance, on one page we read "punches out at the listener in one of the strongest jolts of musical electricity that Coltrane would ever record," and then "pounds away at the listener like the surf of some great ocean." But the elaborate phrase on page 173 wins the Most Pretentious Metaphor contest:

"What remains is a sparse, wintry sound which stands against nature's forces like a stately old Victorian mansion along the treeless Mendocino coast of northern California."

I also found a factual error in the book: Eric Dolphy did not die of "coronary problems" but of diabetic condition. And the correct name of the Jefferson Airplane singer (misspelled on page 180) is Grace Slick. I recommend the book, alas with little enthusiasm.

Three stars.

Ascension by Eric Nisenson: a great, great book!
John Coltrane by Bill Cole: not worth the effort.
Coltrane. The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff: good book!
John Coltrane. His Life and Music by Lewis Porter: a definitive biography by a Coltrane scholar.



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Mourners by Bill Pronzini
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"[...] his strange pattern of conduct had escalated at about the same time as the murder. It could be a coincidence, of course. It could also be that the crime has somehow triggered his mourner obsession, dormant or subdued in him since his childhood trauma."

Mourners (2006) is the 33rd book (by my own, obviously incorrect count) in the famous series featuring the unnamed detective. I definitely prefer much earlier novels in the series: they do not have the feel of a literary soap opera where in each installment we meet the same characters and participate in their everyday lives and emotional relationships. To paraphrase the famous proverb, I believe that "familiarity breeds boredom." I would much prefer the consecutive novels to be stripped of the characters of Kerry, Tamara, and Jake Runyon, or at least - if the author wants to mention them - have their appearances reduced to incidental. Obviously, my preferences are not in the mainstream.

The detective watches Mr. Troxell, a well-off financial consultant, attend a funeral in the Bay Area. Just the day before Troxell watched two other funerals. The detective has been hired by the fervent mourner's wife, alarmed by significant changes in her husband's behavior. We learn that Troxell underwent a deeply traumatic experience in his childhood. The setup of the novel is promising and I hoped that Pronzini would display his usual solid handling of the story.

The plot indeed becomes quite interesting when Troxell is seen in a cemetery placing a wreath on the grave of a woman who had recently been a victim of rape and murder. Naturally, the investigation focuses on exploring possible connections. Alas, Mr. Pronzini decides to switch to the soap opera mode and the reader is treated to several side threads. Two of them feature Kerry (the detective's wife) and Jack Runyon (an operative in the detective's firm) both of whom face really serious life problems. In another thread, written in a slightly comedic mood, we follow the tribulations of Tamara (the de facto boss in the detective's firm), who seems to have been dumped by her boyfriend. There are references to Kerry's distant past and the detective has a failed "birds-and-bees" conversation with his daughter. Readers who thrive on conceptual continuity of novels in a series will love this stuff.

Luckily for me, the denouement avoids sharp twists and turns, yet it might be the reason that it feels too anticlimactic. I intensely dislike two items in the novel. While the whole Russ Dancer's thread is annoyingly cliché the gratuitous inclusion of Tamara's incident with Mr. Clement is even worse - it would take a much better writer to successfully pull it off.

I have one more of the new installments of the series on my shelf, but then I will return to the older ones. Reading about the same characters over and over again, may be a harmless way of spending time but I prefer to spend it with a new set of characters in each book.

Two stars.

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Ascension: John Coltrane And His Quest by Eric Nisenson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"[...] the more one listens to Transition the more one hears a diamond-hard beauty unlike anything else in music. That something so roiling can also have such beauty is one of the paradoxes of Coltrane's art. A lot of great twentieth-century art, since it reflects its time, seems to confront and challenge its audience: Guernica, Finnegans Wake, The Rite of Spring. Like those modern masterpieces, much of Coltrane's work [...] has a modern grandeur unlike anything that has come before it.

Just last month I reviewed here Bill Cole's John Coltrane - a pseudo-research book full of New Age mumbo-jumbo and Fela Sowande's gibberish - which escaped the minimum rating on the strength of possibly interesting musicological analysis. Since I love John Coltrane's music and unreservedly admire what he stood for and what he tried to achieve in his art, I had to erase the anger caused by Mr. Cole's painful failure of a biography. In the ultimate contrast Eric Nisenson's work, Ascension. John Coltrane and His Quest is a totally wonderful book - deep, balanced, thoughtful, and focused.

I vividly remember the day (in 1966, I believe) when I first heard John Coltrane's music: I can see the room in my mother's small apartment when suddenly manic saxophone shrieks and wails came on the radio, immediately followed by utterly beautiful music. I remember my total fascination with the sound and with the raw power and deep passion of the music. Eric Nisenson begins his wonderful biography with an account how he first saw and heard John Coltrane live with his classic quartet (McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, and Jimmy Garrison) at the Half Note:

"Coltrane [...] played roiling arpeggios alternating with ribbons of intense lyricism often accentuated by saxophone cries and wails. [...] He seemed to be not in this world, and I, as well as most of the audience, [...] felt we had long left it far behind, too. [...] My body felt exhilaration, transport, even as much as my mind and spirit."

The story of Coltrane's life and his music is told traditionally, in a chronological manner. The author focuses in more detail on transcendent and timeless masterpieces in Coltrane's opus, such as A Love Supreme or Transition. Mr. Nisenson has the courage to call out failures as well, such as the audacious yet unsuccessful attempt to enter the realm of free jazz, Ascension or the bizarre artifact of the Sixties, Om.

The passages about A Love Supreme are some of the most compelling writings about music:

"[...] the last section on A Love Supreme [...] creates the impression of perfect stillness, like a man on his knees with his head bowed. It is utterly radiant and transcendent, at times pleading, almost sobbing in its need to be with God. It is one of the few works of art that, like the Sistine Chapel or Chartres Cathedral or Bach's St. Matthew's Passion is itself a religious experience."

The subtitle of the biography refers to Coltrane's quest, which - as most music critics agree - was the "quest to reach and find God through seeking within." Yet the author is careful to explain that Coltrane was not worshipping any particular God but rather "a personal synthesis of [...] ideas basic to all religions," Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and others. Mr. Nisenson also points out that Coltrane's quest was more of spiritual than religious nature and that it might have been a search for the universal truth.

Coltrane's personal statements about wanting to be a "force for good," his continual search for that perfect sound, and the fact that never in his career had he made any concession to popular taste or cared what the audiences wanted to listen to tell me that his quest was for the three Transcendentals: Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. Certainly not for things that we, mere mortals, crave: Money, Power, and Fame.

A great biography! I will round the rating up.

Four and half stars.


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Sentinels by Bill Pronzini
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"These mountains, they got secrets nobody can find out."

Continuing with my Pronzini Binge I have just read Sentinels (1996), the twenty-fifth installment in the now forty-six-year-old series featuring the Private-Detective-Whose-Last-Name-Is-Never-Mentioned. It is a readable mystery, albeit a completely unremarkable one. It also reminds me of some more recent novels by John Shannon, and not in a good way.

The Detective-With-Unmentionable-Name is hired by a woman whose daughter, Allison, a university junior, disappeared on her way home to Bay Area from Eugene, Oregon. Allison was traveling with a young man, presumably her boyfriend whom she planned to introduce to her mother. They took a scenic way south and their car broke down in Creekside, a little town in the northeastern corner of California. They have not been seen since.

The author has a bit of metafictional fun: the detective refuses to use the services of Sharon McCone, a detective friend of his, who could fly him to the remote part of California in her plane. The funny part is that Ms. McCone is a protagonist of detective novels written by Marcia Muller, who is Mr. Pronzini's wife in real life. Anyway, the detective drives to Creekside and gets to talk to the mechanics in the garage where the car was fixed. He also interviews the owners of a small motel and a waitress in a diner. None of these people know much about the couple and - what's worse - they seem to be quite unwilling to talk to the detective, resenting the Big City intrusion into their rural lives.

While the publisher, for once, partly resisted the urge to spoil the denouement in the blurbs on the cover, a hint is given there, one that makes the solution of the mystery easier to guess. It is indeed difficult to describe the outline of the plot even in vaguest terms without providing automatic spoilers. The readers who enjoy the familiarity of characters populating the plot will no doubt be amused by passages featuring Kerry and Tamara Corbin. The comedic space filler about Kerry's friend, Paula, who picked up a new fad - Alida's workshops on the Holy Sexual Communion - would be quite funny were it not so cliché.

The detective's conversation with one of the main characters that directly precedes the final scene is psychologically naive and implausible. The very last fragment of the novel features the probable topic of the next installment in the series - a Shameless Detective Sequel Plug. All in all, Sentinels is quite a weak entry in the series. The unnamedness gimmick may well be its strongest point.

Two stars.


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Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion"
(Francis Bacon, Essays "Of Beauty", 1625)

Some 50+ years ago I liked to pretend I was way more mature than my fellow teens: I shunned the so-called Young Adult fiction, and read only "grown-up" books. Ever since that time the YA genre has seemed to me simplistic, naive, overly didactic, and generally a waste of time that could be better spent on really heavy stuff by, say, Faulkner and Joyce, or Coetzee and Nooteboom, to mention contemporary authors. So when a student of mine recommended Uglies (2005) by Scott Westerfeld as the best book she has ever read I was a bit skeptical even if I trust that student's judgment a lot. What's more, the novel may be classified as science fiction, which definitely is not my favorite literary genre. Imagine my surprise then, when the book turned out to be well written, intelligent, thought provoking, and compellingly readable. Well, so much for preconceived opinions! I am also happy that there still exists some commonality of worldview between myself and at least some of my students who are now not that far in age from my grandchildren.

The plot happens in the future, several hundred years from now, when our current civilization (we of now are then called "the Rusties") is a thing of the distant and shameful past:

"It was hard to think of the Rusties as actual people, rather than as just an idiotic, dangerous, and sometimes comic force of history."

(Hey, this describes our civilization quite well!) At the age of 16 all young people undergo a prettification operation that transforms their non-standardized - meaning ugly - physiques into perfect body shapes and perfectly beautiful faces. In addition, technology has made such progress that once prettified the young people do not have worry about much - they can focus on having fun.

Tally, the protagonist of the story, is about two months away from the operation. She still lives in Uglyville and one night she sneaks out to New Pretty Town looking for her boyfriend who has already been prettified. The caper almost ends with her getting caught by safety wardens but Tally manages to escape and in the process meets Shay, a rebel girl of exactly the same age. Tally's meeting with Shay sets up a wonderfully captivating and complex plot, which most readers will have great fun to follow. One portion of the plot has made a strong impression on me - Tally's long journey to the place called the Smoke, guided only by a cryptic note coded by Shay. The passages are powerful and haunting, they seem to transcend the genre and evoke feelings not unlike one has when reading the story of you-know-who returning to Ithaca.

Not only is the plot enthralling but also Tally is a well-written character with wonderfully and plausibly rich personality. She feels like a real person as opposed to, unfortunately, some other characters, particularly Shay. There is even a smidgen of nice love story in the novel, appropriately muted for young readers, yet well portrayed and in fact very sweet. Science fiction fans will appreciate various details of the future technology. I particularly like the flying on hoverboards and the "bungee jackets."

On a serious note, one of the three things I like the most about the novel is the sharp yet not quite in-your-face critique of social engineering. The other standout is the underlying motif of what beauty is and how it relates to symmetry and averaging: I am so grateful to Mr. Westerfeld for providing the Francis Bacon quote that I used, following his lead, as the epigraph. (The continuation of the Bacon's quote is shown after the rating.) And finally, the novel may make the reader think about that special time in human life - mid- to-late teens - when people construct their identities and their personalities.

To sum up, despite the Young Adult genre, despite some over-explanatory passages and the ending that blatantly sets up a sequel, Uglies is not in any way inferior to many very good "serious" books that I have reviewed here. My student deserves huge extra credit.

Four stars.

"A man cannot tell whether Apelles, or Albert Durer, were the more trifler; whereof the one, would make a personage by geometrical proportions; the other, by taking the best parts out of divers faces, to make one excellent. Such personages, I think, would please nobody, but the painter that made them."
(Continuation of the epigraph quote by Francis Bacon from Essays, 1625)

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Adam's Rib: A Rocco Schiavone Mystery by Antonio Manzini
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"A man has every season while a woman only has the right to spring."
(Jane Fonda's quote used by Antonio Manzini as the epigraph to his novel.)

Adam's Rib (2014, Italian original) is the second novel in Antonio Manzini's series featuring Rocco Schiavone. Like the previous book, Black Run , I have read it in (very good) Polish translation (Żebro Adama). The plot happens in Aosta in northern Italy, where Rocco Schiavone, a Deputy-Chief of police, has been banished as a result of his unprofessional behavior on the Rome police force. In fact, in this novel we learn the nature of Rocco's misdeed: if one were sympathetic to this type of behavior - I am definitely not - one would euphemistically characterize it as 'violating the law to administer justice.' The reader also learns about painful events from Rocco's personal past.

The plot begins when Irina, a Belarussian emigrant working as a cleaning woman, finds the apartment of her employers burglarized. She alarms the police and Rocco with his cliché sidekick, Italo, find a woman hanged from a chandelier in the bedroom. Various clues point to suicide but Rocco - a phenomenally shrewd detective - obviously knows better and suspects the suicide has been staged. The denouement is really clever and readers who like plot twists will not regret carefully following the story to the very end.

Rocco is as women-crazy as in the previous installment:

"An obviously attractive woman's body was concealed under the drab policewoman uniform. Pity that the overcoat hid her butt, but Rocco had been able to rate it earlier, when she was wearing uniform pants."

Beating suspects during interrogation will probably not endear Rocco to the readers, unless they subscribe to the belief that "suspects are always guilty of whatever they are accused of," in immortal words of Monty Python.

Like in the first book in the series the thread about Rocco's wife, Marina, is to me the best thing in the novel. The prose in this storyline reads authentic and fresh, not as clichéd as in the procedural thread or in descriptions of Rocco's interactions with other people. The affecting exchange between Rocco and a pathologist performing an autopsy caught my attention:

"'I assure you these are wonderful patients - quite calm and uncomplaining.'
'Alberto, they are dead. How could they complain?'
'Maybe not. But if you listen very carefully, sometimes you will hear their quiet pleas to cut their bodies delicately.'"
(This reviewer's translation of Polish translation of the Italian original.)

The author is much more subtle than Rocco, his thug protagonist. It is hard not to like the epigraph quote, either.

Two and three quarter stars.


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