Doctor Copernicus by John Banville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"'I believe in mathematics,' he muttered, 'nothing more."

What a beautiful statement! Nicolaus Copernicus, the sixteenth-century mathematician, astronomer, physician, and economist, one of the greatest revolutionaries in the history of science who formulated the heliocentric model of the then known Universe, utters the above phrase during a conversation that happened some time in the 1490s at the University of Bologna. At least according to John Banville, the author of Doctor Copernicus (1976), a book that is quite hard to categorize: is it a historical novel or perhaps a fictionalized biography? In some places it even reads like a history textbook.

While I like reading biographies I find it hard to review them: one would need to know almost as much as the author about the subject of the biography to provide a worthwhile critique; I know little about Copernicus even if he is a national hero in my native country, the most famous Pole in history. Here lies another problem. Throughout my education - and I even graduated from a high school in Warsaw named after Copernicus - I had been invariably assured about utter Polishness of Copernicus. From early childhood I had known him as Mikolaj Kopernik while in Banville's book the name is Nicolas Koppernigk. I am now risking an accusation of treason when I quote Banville who has Copernicus' uncle, bishop Lucas Waczelrodt (Watzenrode), tell young Copernicus the following:

"'You are not German, nephew, no, nor are you a Pole, nor even a Prussian. You are an Ermlander, simple. Remember it.'"

Ermland (in Polish 'Warmia') was an autonomous political entity during Copernicus time and only later became a part of the Polish crown. We will probably never know what language was spoken in the astronomer's childhood home. It is known that he was fluent in Polish, German, and Latin, which was also the language of most of his writings.

The first two parts of the book are written from the third-person omniscient point of view and events from Copernicus' life are recounted in basically chronological order on the historical, political, and social backdrop of his times. Two central themes that the biography revolves about are Copernicus' lifelong quest to understand the structure of the Universe and his reticence to publish his masterwork, De Revolutionibus de Orbium Celestium.

In Part III, entitled Cantus Mundi, the author switches to the first-person narration by Georg Joachim de Porris, called Rheticus, who was Copernicus' pupil and who is considered responsible for getting his master to agree to publish De Revolutionibus. To me, this is by far the best part of the book, one that speaks to me with the strong feeling of realism that I find possible only in very well-written fiction. Also - this is just my personal proclivity - the part reads most literary to me with great prose, which occasionally turns quite strong like in:

"Yes, Dantiscus was a brilliant, fearless and elegant man. And a swine. And a fraud. And a lying, vindictive cunt."

I think that the appeal of the third part is a result of the author's device of having us look at Copernicus not directly from Banville's point of view but filtered through Rheticus' view.

Readers who like plots in their books will likely enjoy the turbulent story of Koppernigk's relationship with his brother Andreas. I appreciate that Banville underemphasizes the story of Koppernigk's relations with Anna Schillings, his housekeeper: these things belong to popular literature. On a somewhat related note, I found the background motif of the Teutonic Knights Order fascinating. Banville imagines the Grand Master Albrecht's conversation with Koppernigk in a powerful monologue that begins with:

"'Ah. The common people. But they have suffered always, and always will. It is in a way what they are for. [...] The common people? -- pah. What are they to us?'"

An interesting read!

Three-and-a-half stars.


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McNally's Caper by Lawrence Sanders
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"As the French say, when there's no alternative a man must sleep with his wife."

McNally's Caper (1994) is the fourth out of seven installments in Lawrence Sanders' series starring Archy McNally, "the chief (and sole member) of the Discreet Inquiries Department of McNally & Son," a law firm that represents prestigious - and rich - clients in Palm Beach, Florida. This is the sixth McNally novel that I have read and while I have been frequently disappointed by Mr. Sanders' other novels this series always delivers. Not in terms of plot, about which I don't much care, but because of the wonderfully ornate language that never fails to amuse me.

We meet Archy - who has just successfully solved a case of thefts in a jewelry store - as he accepts a new discreet inquiry task from his father, the head of the law firm. Mr. Forsythe, a client of the firm, suspects that someone in his family or maybe a staff member is a thief: several items of value have recently disappeared from his home, including a Picasso lithograph and a first edition Edgar Allan Poe. Archy commences the investigation in the guise of cataloguing books in the library of the Forsythe mansion.

Very soon Archy learns that the Forsythes, despite reputation of being dull, are in fact "a fascinating and perplexing family of crotchety individuals." There is a strangulation attempt, naked pictures of household staff and a family member emerge, blackmail is suspected. Not only does Archy have his hands full with the investigation but also, as expected, he gets involved in affairs of the flesh with one of the Forsythe women. The scenes of amorous conquests and sexually charged asides are - as usual for McNally series - tactfully written and funny:

"A woman, perched high on the wheeled ladder, was reaching up to select a volume from the top shelf. She was wearing an extremely short denim skirt.
Her position in this literary setting forced me to recall Browning's apt observation: 'Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?'"

The atmosphere momentarily darkens when the obligatory murder occurs. Archy works hand-in-hand with the police and, obviously, manages to be instrumental in solving the case and in making sure that the guilty parties will face the consequences.

I am happy with the light, breezy, often whimsical prose with clever puns and word plays. How not to like phrases like "Seductio Ad Absurdum" or the "that's offal" pun? The novel is a total trifle, guaranteed to be forgotten in a day or two, but I had some fun while reading. A marginal recommendation, and - maybe because I like Archy or maybe for no reason at all - I am rounding the number of stars up.

Two-and-a-half-stars.



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The Book of Evidence by John Banville
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"I killed her because I could, I said, what more can I say?"

I have found another favorite author. My Goodreads friend, Judith, highly recommended John Banville, and in particular his The Untouchable. I read good books very slowly so since I still work more than full time I began with a much shorter novel, one of Banville's earlier works, The Book of Evidence (1989), which made the short list for Booker Prize. It took me almost an entire week to read the 217 pages (a popular novel of this volume would take me one evening), but it was a literary delight - almost entirely because of Banville's wonderful prose.

I am including a synopsis after the rating if the reader wants to avoid "spoilers," even if the so-called plot (rather minimal here) is not an important component of the novel and it is basically known from the beginning how the events will develop. One does not read books like that for the story. Thousands of authors can tell a story; only very, very few can tell it in a way that inspires awe for their writing talent. For me, Banville's prose is on par with three supreme masters of language: Patrick White, Vladimir Nabokov, and Cees Nooteboom. Life is worth living to read sentences like

"The sun, the salt air, leached the significance out of things, so that they lost their true weight."

Let's note, though, that it is not just the language. It is - to use a horrible cliché - the depth of psychological insights that adds profundity to that sentence. This is in fact the first extraordinary aspect of Banville's prose that I noticed: the language he uses is completely interwoven with the psychological states he describes; it is hard to find where one ends and the other begins. This entanglement of language and psychology is evident in many passages and in some places it is even explicit:

"I am struck by the poverty of the language when it comes to naming or describing badness. Evil, wickedness, mischief, these words imply an agency, the conscious or at least active doing of wrong. They do not signify the bad in its inert, neutral, self-sustaining state."

Three fragments of the novel are so gorgeous that I had to read them several times, just to savor the writing. First, the magical, breathtaking passage about the woman from the painting whose life story Freddie creates when looking at the picture. Then there is the spellbinding account of the murder and the threesome scene with Daphne and Anna.

The murder scene reveals yet another outstanding feature of Banville's prose: almost complete absence of clichés, which to me one of the most important attributes of great literature. While most of us conceptualize murder based on depictions in movies or TV Banville's scene of killing avoids popular stereotypes. Furthermore, why did Freddie kill? He does not know and the reader will not know either. That's how things often are in life. The movies, TV, and popular literature tend to artificially create a semblance of sense in human behavior. Reading Banville's novel one might understand that the causality that narrative arts create is often artificial and fake. The reader of Book who likes to have things explained at the end will likely be quite disappointed.

And finally, the most obvious aspect of the novel: it might be read as a modern rewrite, or perhaps homage to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, which was written 123 years earlier. Even the author himself alludes to the similarity. Let's make it clear, though, Freddie is no Raskolnikov and while Dostoyevsky is all about moral issues, guilt, and consequences of evil deeds, Banville focuses on post-modern motifs in his writing. The depth of both novels is comparable but the artistry of Banville's prose makes his story so much more readable (however I read Dostoyevsky only in Polish translation; maybe the original Russian is better). Yet another difference is the "narrative unreliability" of Freddie's account. We cannot be sure what really happened; he himself is not certain.

Four and a quarter stars.

[A brief (and, frankly, misleading) synopsis] Freddie Montgomery, formerly a scientist for a government institute, now lives the life of leisure somewhere in the Mediterranean. He has borrowed money from a local gangster and, unable to pay back the debt, leaves his wife as a hostage and returns to Ireland with hopes to sell some paintings owned by his family. He finds out that the paintings have already been sold to a friend of his so he decides to steal one of them. He kills a woman during the burglary and is now in jail awaiting the trial.

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Gambit by Rex Stout
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"[...] at twenty minutes to ten, I stood in the alcove at the end of the hall next to the kitchen, observing through the hole in the wall, the cast that had been assembled for what I consider one of the best charades Wolfe has ever staged."

Well, I dare to disagree. This is my 10th book in the venerable Nero Wolfe series that I am reviewing on Goodreads and to me the most unremarkable one even if it marginally deals with chess, a topic that interests me quite a lot. I read the novel several weeks ago, did not have time to write the review, and now when I finally found a free hour I am unable to remember even the basic outline of the plot and have to skim the book again.

A president of a big corporation is in jail, charged with murder. Miss Blount, his 22-year-old daughter, hires Nero Wolfe to prove her father's innocence. The murder happened in a chess club when a chess prodigy who was playing twelve simultaneous blindfold games was poisoned having drunk hot chocolate. Miss Blount's father was apparently the only player who had an opportunity to administer the poison. The reader learns that Miss Blount offers $22,000 up front to entice Mr. Wolfe. Neat amount: twenty-two thousand dollars in 1962, when the book was published, would be worth about $180,000 in today's money!

Naturally, the events in the plot begin resembling a game of chess. The reader learns what a gambit is:

"It's an opening in which a player gives up a pawn or a piece to gain an advantage."

We have some reasonably relevant chess quotes and even Robert Fischer, the future (1972) world chess champion, is mentioned. I would have particular reasons to get interested in the novel as it was precisely in 1962 that I got seriously interested in chess and joined a chess club in Warsaw, Poland. In fact, the very next year I had an opportunity to meet the very same Robert Fischer, when he played few games in Warsaw.

Alas, the plot is quite predictable and the reader will likely lose interest quickly, as I did. As in all Nero Wolfe novels the writing has the specific old-style charm and of course Archie Goodwin is the most remarkable and unforgettable character, as opposed to the cliché of Mr. Wolfe. There are several neat pearl of wisdom scattered in the text, of which I will quote one:

"Nothing is impossible in the relations between men and women."

To sum up, I am unable to recommend the novel as it barely clears the two-star level. Even so, I will continue reading the series, in search of an installment as great as the magnificent Murder By the Book.

Two stars.

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jrnls80s by Lee Ranaldo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"[...] without saying a word to each other or touching or being in a very close proximity we had quite a full relationship just through the eyes. so satisfying. it was very beautiful and delicate and complete in itself, a blown kiss from her and it was over. no names, no games, just a tunnel of desires flowing between us that said it all, what was and what could have been. it didn't have to be. it was already complete."

Lee Ranaldo (I will use capital letters in the review in spite of the author's lower-case mannerism) was a guitarist for Sonic Youth, probably the most influential band in the entire history of the so-called alternative (experimental, "indie", avant-garde) rock music. Sonic Youth were my favorite band and I believe I have listened to every single piece of music they released in their 30-year history (1981 - 2011). Mr. Ranaldo is universally acknowledged as one of the most talented and influential rock guitarists of all time. I haven't known him as a writer but his JNRLS80s (1998) - whose subtitle "poems, lyrics, letters, observations, wordplay, and postcards from the early days of Sonic Youth" aptly describes the contents - is quite a worthwhile, interesting, and readable medley of literary pieces.

I would distinguish three intertwined literary modes in the book. Many long fragments read like diaries of Sonic Youth early tours - several tours in Europe and in the USA. The reader will find some mesmerizing passages, like the one about the Broken Circle/Spiral Hill land art project, near Emmen in the Netherlands, or general observations about how different Europe is from this country.

On the other extreme, reading many passages in the book feels like surfing through someone's dreams, where the author's words evoke hazy, foggy, indistinct, phantasmagoric images of places, people, and events. The author's stream of consciousness is often hard to read yet there are brilliant, eloquent fragments, like:

"that wonderful purple that hangs under the eaves at twilight, and washes cool thru evening trees. the color of nighttime sunshine, an indigo flame, bathing dark nights in desire. [...] i am secreted away in dark depths. a dream, in purple shades, with a lover, by an opaque sea."

I have some difficulties though with enjoying the author's poetry, which sometimes reads (to me!) pretentious and stilted. But then poetry is my least favorite form of literary expression and I may simply be too ignorant and unqualified to judge. Though the reader will likely agree with me that the lyrics to many Sonic Youth songs that are included in the book are of much higher quality than the usual rock lyrics, even in the most sublime avant-garde genre.

Since I love the Sonic Youth's music so much I was happy to read Mr. Ranaldo's brief remarks about the band's work on their breakthrough album, DayDream Nation (1988), a seminal album in the alternative rock music genre. I only wish he gave much more of that material than just a single page. And I love the page-and-a-half beautiful passage about Lordes, a woman whom the author knew a long time ago. A heartfelt and deeply human portrait of an unconventional person.

A recommended read, not only for Sonic Youth fans.

Three-and-a-quarter stars.


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Not Quite Dead Enough by Rex Stout
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"There was that little twist to a corner of her mouth, so slight that it had taken me a year to get onto it, that was there when she was betting the stack on four spades with nothing but a six of clubs in the hole."

Even if I have read all Nero Wolfe mysteries, most of them more than once, I still have fun reading them; nothing has changed since the mid-1960s when I first met the sedentary genius of detection and his intrepid and debonair sidekick Archie. The novels have many features that I like: solid and engaging prose, interesting secondary, non-recurring characters, and small volume. Yes, Mr. Wolfe is a caricature, basically a cartoonish character, and the setup of the usual denouement in the detective's office is a heavy cliché, yet Archie's persona and the overall charm of the stories compensate for the weaknesses.

Not Quite Dead Enough (1942) is one of the earlier installments in the series. Uncharacteristically, the volume combines just two novellas (usually there are three). The events in both of them happen during World War II and Archie Goodwin is in fact Major Goodwin in the U.S. Army. The first novella begins when Major Goodwin is called to report to the Chief of Army Intelligence. The military needs the great detective's help and Archie is supposed to persuade him to agree. Meanwhile Mr. Wolfe and Fritz (the live-in cook) are exercising, dieting (!!!) and preparing to join the Army to help the war effort.

If the hilarious premise of Mr. Wolfe dieting is not enough, we have more: the story involves pigeons, squirrels, and there is even a mention of "dead hawk business." And to top the craziness, Archie has to try hard to get arrested in a murder case. Clever denouement nicely rounds up this charming novella.

The second novella, titled Booby Trap, is no match in quirkiness, but also has its good points. The story begins when Archie is carrying a live grenade out of Mr. Wolfe's brownstone. I hope this is not much of a spoiler even if we all know the "Chekhov's Gun" principle, with which the author toys here. In a continuation of the first novella, Nero Wolfe is helping the military intelligence officers investigate the death of one of their own. Perhaps the most interesting element of the story is the presence of Sergeant Dorothy Bruce, a member of the Women's Army Corps. 77 years ago women in the military were not that commonplace yet the author considers it completely normal (as opposed to Mr. Wolfe). An uncharacteristically brutal denouement concludes the story.

Good first story and satisfactory second one combine to provide a nice read.

Three stars.


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