Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

I’ve finished reading Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest last week but I only got around to blogging about it today. *sigh* I really have to commit myself in doing this thing. Anyway, the novel itself was enjoyable up until the last quarter of it when a plot twist completely threw me off. I won’t reveal much of the action, though, because the greatest strength of Red Harvest lies on its unpredictability. Also, plot twist did get resolved elegantly at the end. I actually became more satisfied when I did a quick re-read and marveled at Hammett’s excellent plotting.

Red Harvest is told in first-person by the Continental Op, a nameless detective and a recurring character in many of Hammett’s stories. He stumbles into the mining town of Personville when a newspaperman contacted him for a job. The Op never finds out the nature of the job, though, as his client is murdered before they could even talk. The story then gets out of control as the Op searches for his client’s killer and he himself is sucked into the spiral of violence and corruption that gave the place its nickname ‘Poisonville.’

What’s neat about the plot is that it’s actually a series of four mini-mysteries. Every time the Op succeeds in solving one of them, a bigger one gets thrown at him. Adding to the chaos is a cast of morally suspect characters trying to kill, pay or trick him, sometimes all at the same time. All he could depend on is his cunning and his own personal brand of morality. The dialogue is top-class as well, smooth and sharp, exactly the way I like it. The Op’s voice is witty enough that it uplifted a certainly depressing portrait of the American small town, but cynical enough to remain believable. I just wish people still talk like that, all clipped and sexy.

My final verdict: this novel is pretty good. I just wish I wasn’t befuddled by that plot twist from the left field. >_<;;

Reading Update: I’v started reading two novels this time, just to see if I can sustain my attention on both without going out of my mind. They’re Complicity by Iain Banks and Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq. The last one is my 1990’s pick for the By the Decades Reading Challenge. I must admit that I’ve been reading more of Complicity, though.

Reading Through the Decades (Challenge List)

 I got a free ride in the MRT this morning of because of Philippine Independence Day. Yay! 

As I’ve mentioned yesterday, I’m participating in the By the Decade Reading Challenge hosted by 3M. According to the website, “The goal of the challenge is to read books from as many consecutive decades as possible.” The host is reading 15 books in all but I figure I should start slowly since it’s already halfway through 2007 and I want to coherently blog about my opinions on the books. So I came up with these 10, many of which will be subject to change based on availability/length/whim.

1900’s – A Room With a View, E.M. Forster

1910’s – Death in Venice and Seven other Stories, Thomas Mann

1920’s – Scaramouche, Rafael Sabatini

1930’s – Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck

1940’s – Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake

1950’s – Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak

1960’s – A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

1970’s – Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

1980’s – Black Dahlia, James Ellroy

1990’s – Pig Tales, Marie Darrieussecq

2000’s – My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk

I currently own most of these books except the Burgess and the Calvino, but I’m hoping that there will be cheap ones availalble in the second hand bookstore in UP AS walk. I was surprised that many of the books I’ve finished reading were actually released in the first half of the 20th Century. I guess the biggest gap I have in my reading rests on the classics and the contemporary works. This must be rectified.

A Room With a View by E.M. Forster

E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View is an unexpected romance. I’m not just talking about the plot itself, which revolves around the coming of age and sensual awakening of a young young British woman during her first visit to Italy. By romance, I’m talking about the act of reading the novel itself: I unexpectedly fell in love with the story. You see, I never felt any passion for English novels before. I’ve not ignored them completely, having read about 15 novels so far but considering the vastness of British literature, that number is frankly pathetic. 

The usual turn-off for me are the characters, mainly because I  find many of them emotionally inaccessible. Maybe that’s too harsh a description but I can’t think of anything else. I don’t see restraint as a necessarily bad thing (see my fondness for Hemingway’s stories), but when I have to make too much effort to empathize with protagonists, I tend to lose interest. I felt this way with the works of John LeCarre, John Fowles, even Oscar Wilde (technically Irish, but let’s not quibble).  Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse is the exception. But for that novel, it was the exquisite language of that novel that won me over, and not the people.

E.M. Forster makes it easy for you to care about his characters. They are all so… vulnerable, all of them fumbling for their own versions of an ideal life. Some of them succeed without even realizing it. I didn’t expect to like the main character, Lucy Honeychurch, or even care about her unemployed, Italy-vacationing, upper-middle class existence. Yet I did. My favorite character is Mr. Emerson, George’s father. Such fanciful notions on philosophy and existence, an old man I’d *love* to listen to all day. But then, I do have a weakness for talkative old men.

There is so much to be said about E.M. Forster’s breezy, evocative style. He vividly depicted Florence at the height of spring, the English countryside’s bright summers giving way to the frostiness of autumn. I also take it as a sign of great cosmic irony, having read it when Manila’s weather was at its most humid and oppressive. Heh.

I’m still getting the hang of this writing about books thing. I felt like I rambled too much of non-important musings and not enough description of the book itself. Also, I’ll post my list for the By the Decade Reading Challenge tomorrow.

Favorite Books Meme

Oh, this is long overdue.

A book that made you cry: Without a doubt, Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. Jesus. I remember pausing right after I reread the last page, then suddenly bursting into tears, thinking about the hopelessness of everything. It’s a fantastic book, but it’s one of those that I’ll probably never read again because of the emotional toll it would take on me.

A book that scared you: It didn’t really make me shake in terror, but I remember feeling very tense while reading Lois Lowry’s The Giver. I was afraid for the hero and wanted him to escape, dammit, because his world is so screwed up I feel claustrophobic just thinking about it.

A book that made you laugh: Sharyn McCrumb’s Bimbos of the Death Sun. It’s technically a mystery novel but anyone who has come in contact with gamers, Trekkers and Harry Potter geeks will bust their gut laughing at this one.

A book that disgusted you: The Face of Another by Kobo Abe disgusted me because it’s just plain awful. So boring, with the protagonist doing nothing but whine and plot and come off as the single most incompetent husband in the whole world. So yes, my hate runs deep and true.

A book you loved in elementary school: I read my first Stephen King in fourth grade and fell hard for him. It was Christine and I remember thinking, this is a world my classmates don’t even know about, so adult and scary and thrilling all at once. I felt old and wise compared to them. Man, I wish I can have that feeling again.

A book you loved in middle school: Uh, no middle school where I came from

A book you loved in high school: Well, I read it at the tail-end of my senior year in high school so I don’t know if this answers the question, but my biggest discovery was The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. Before that, most of what I’ve been excusively reading Stephen King and uh, Sweet Valley. I think I read it at the right time–the subject matter would have turned me off whn I was younger and had I read it in college I would have found it too shallow.

A book you hated in high school: How embarassing is it to say that my high school was so un-literary we didn’t have required novels? Oh, except for Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. But I didn’t hate those.

A book you loved in college: Oh, college is not yet finished and I don’t think I can think of just one anyway. The amount of books I’ve read since starting university is unprecedented and most of them are life-changing in one way or another. One book I wouldn’t have picked up if it wasn’t for college: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago.

A book that challenged your identity: I have to say it isn’t a particular book but a whole system of thought. Post-colonialism as described by Edward Said (Orientalism), Frantz Fanon, and Stuart Hall. I haven’t finished any single work from these guys yet and managed only to read xeroxed chapters for school but man, it changed many things for me. Here I reveal my pretentiousness.

A series that you love: I don’t really read book series, except Harry Potter and I haven’t even finished Half-Blood Prince yet. I’v only read the first installments of some series like No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, and only the first two of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. So by default, Harry Potter.

Your favorite horror book: Well, Stephen King’s IT pretty much destroyed my opinion of clowns for all time but I don’t think I finished that novel. There are a lot of Ray Bradbury Stories that creep me out especially “The Fog Horn” and “The Scythe.” I get more scared by movies than books, though.

Your favorite science fiction book: Most of the SF books I’ve read were the “classics” like Asimov and Bradbury. I really liked Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (probably because of the Filipino protagonist) and of course, Fahrenheit 451 is still a good one.

Your favorite fantasy: Ditto with fantasy. I get turned off from reading them due to the fear that I’d be just throwing away my money for some bad writing. I’ll have to do something about that prejudice. My favorite so far is Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, which is amazing. But that’s not a typical fantasy novel, I gather.

Your favorite mystery: Definitely a tie between Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and Ray Bradbury’s Death is a Lonely Business. I think I’ll do a gigantic post for these two writers because, ugh, they just own my brain. Two favorite books of all time.

Your favorite biography: I’ve only read little. I really liked Mario Vargas Llosa’s account of his presidential campaign in A Fish in the Water, but that’s a memoir. Oh, how can I forget Sebastian di Grazia’s Machiavelli in Hell! My favorite Florentian, favorite Renaissance Man, favorite misunderstood historical figure. Too bad he has been appropriated by how-to books for enterpreneur-wannabes.

Your favorite “coming of age” book: I wanted to say Jim Girmsley’s Dream Boy but um, I guess it doesn’t count. Hmm, I guess The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, or at least the first two I’ve manage to read. I really loved those four girls in my secret, girly thoughts. Hehe.

Your favorite classic: I think by now we really ought to consider Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov as a “classic.” Barring that, it’ll have to be Les Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos. Such a thrilling, well-written novel.

Your favorite romance book: Hidden Riches by Nora Roberts. The ultimate guilty pleasure, my paperback copy of this book is now losing the back cover because I pull this out every time I get depressed. My literary equivalent of an ice cream after a break up. I find the predictability comforting.
Your favorite book not on this list: I can think of three right now, Jorge Amado’s Showdown and Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. These books, together with the Bradbury and Eco deserve posts of their own.

intro

One of the reasons I wanted to keep this blog is to force myself to write again. Life has been beating down hard on me these past weeks and I think it paralyzed me from doing the one thing that made me feel better: writing.

I can’t write stories right now, not with the way my brain is going. But I think I can talk about books. It makes it easier for me to remember them when I actually take the effort to put my opinions down on record. And perhaps the trick to overcoming this block is to get back on the habit of typing up sentences again.

So with that hopeful note, this litblog begins its life.