Palimpsest (Lambda Literary Award winner)

Palimpsest is a novel by Tiptree, Andre Norton, and Mythopoeic Award winning novelist, poet, and literary critic Catherynne M. Valente (1979- ), published in 2009 and won Lambda Literary Award in the same year; also it was named a 2010 Hugo Award nominee in the Best Novel category.

The novel follows four travelers: Oleg, a New York City locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. They've all lost something important in their life: a wife, lover, sister, or direction. They find themselves in Palimpsest after each a spend a night with a stranger who has a tattooed map of a section of the city on his or her body. [1]

Review [2]

“Catherynne M Valente’s Palimpsest just knocks me flat with her use of language: rich, cool, opiated language, language for stories of strange love and hallucinated cities of the mind.” — Warren Ellis, author of Transmetropolitan

“Palimpsest is an elegant and evocative story set in a gorgeous alien wonderland.” — Elizabeth Bear, author of Hammered

"Gorgeously written and deliriously imaginative, Palimpsest is the book for those who love old maps and grow wistful at the sound of a night train. A modern masterpiece in Valente's unique voice and singular sensibility."—Ekaterina Sedia, author of The Alchemy of Stone

“Catherynne Valente has once again proved her mastery of the fantastic. Full to the brim with beautiful images and gorgeous prose, Palimpsest belongs on the same shelf with Calvino's Invisible Cities and Winterson's The Passion. Valente is writing the smartest, gentlest, deepest work in the field, and she's good enough to do it. I remain in awe.”—Daniel Abraham, author of The Long Price Quartet

"It's never enough to merely read a book like Palimpsest, it has to be imbibed, and it's sensuality fully savored."—Nick Bantock, author of The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy

“Outstandingly beautiful prose.”–Publishers Weekly

Palimpsest: A Review [3]

I first heard about the book "Palimpsest" through Livejournal spam. I kept getting reminders that the author, Catherynne Valente, would be reading from her latest novel at the KGB Bar. There was a plot synopsis of the novel in the announcement: something quivering and salacious, but also far, far too coy. Something about four strangers meeting in the night.

Here's the plot synopsis that would have got me to buy her book in person and to hear her read, something I wish I'd done now:

Palimpsest is a book about a city that is also a sexually transmitted disease. You visit the city the night after you fuck somebody infected with it, and then the city possesses your heart and dreams.

After you are infected, you can only be conscious of the lack of magic, mystery, and beauty in your life now that you have seen the alternative. The lack is as brutal as a spiked bat!

Palimpsest is the true reality that you have always known lies just out of reach for you. Like HIV, once you are infected with the city, you die unless you find a cure. But there is only one cure -- permanent immigration to Palimpsest -- and there has been a war that makes this nearly impossible. Good fucking luck, you wanton travelers!

Or, to sum up the theme using Valente's own far more lyric and lucid prose:

"To touch a person...to sleep with a person...is to become a pioneer," she whispered then, "a frontiersman at the edge of their private world, the strange, incomprehensible world of their interior, filled with customs you could never imitate, a language which sounds like your own but is really totally foreign, knowable only to them. I have been so many times to countries like that. I have learned how to make coffee in all their ways, how to share food, how to comfort, how to dance in the native ways. It is harder, usually, to find a person who wants to walk the streets of me, to taste the teas of my country, to... immigrate you could say."

* * *

"Palimpsest" is a fantasy novel, I guess. But it is a fantasy novel in the same way that the works of Haruki Murakami or David Mitchell are fantasy novels.

It is "high fiction," a book that tells a story on its own terms, using an uncompromising and invented form to create higher resonance than the genres of either "literary fiction" or "fantasy" are capable of providing.

High fiction is gaining ground in literature and might be literature's best hope for bringing in new souls. It melds the best things about post-modernism, modernism, and genre fiction, while cutting out the excesses of all three disciplines.

High fiction would not be possible without post-modernism's brush clearing, even though reading the triumphs of 60s, 70s, and 80s literature is like reading through the filing cabinet of an English professor while all the air is being sucked out of a sealed room, like some kind of Batman deathtrap.

But post-modernism worked! At least, it worked in television and film. Everything has now been leveled. Thanks to the gimcrackery of image, New York City is just as real a place as Hogwarts. Since this is true, fiction can tell whatever the fuck story it wants now and people will just go with it. Settings can be manipulated and tweaked to conform to the logic of stories without rigorous world building.

Nobody cares what is real anymore, because now even telling "true" stories means we have to incorporate the mystical, the alien, the fantastical, and the arcane. Also, memoirs and reality television have laid such siege to the truth these days that they have stolen it from fiction like a fancy toy, so fiction can do what it pleases.

However, the lessons of modernism have also taught us that formal experimentation, craft, and deployment of a unique style, are the best ways to elevate prose, and they always improve a work when used deliberately and with control. "Ulysses" = huge success! "Finnegan's Wake" = unreadable, unless it is the only book you ever read.

People toiling for decades in the thankless Prose Mines of modernism taught us the limits of language and revealed many of the tricks, traps, inadequacies, and open areas of narrative exploration.

These days, while you write fantasy novels, you must read Faulkner.

Which brings us to the most important component of "high fiction." The fantastic. The genre spirit. Over the years, the genre writers kept the raw spirit of fiction alive by focusing on pure story. Tales! Adventure! Imagination! Crisis! Catharsis!

And that's what people want. Genre writers realized that if they didn't get it from fiction, they'd get it elsewhere. Those with aspirations for high fiction can no longer neglect this audience. This audience is all of us.

High fiction combines the structural freedom of post-modernism, the elevated style of modernism, and the story power of genre. To write a piece of high fiction is to therefore write fiction that challenges a writer's skills on all levels.

This is a great age for such challenges, an age where if you know how to look, you can see that the path is clear for anything. This is the age of high fiction masterpieces such as Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas," Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore," Ursula Le Guin's "The Tombs of Atuin," Susannah Clarke's "Dr. Strange and Mr. Norrell," and Peter Matthiessen's "Shadow Country."

"Palimpsest" is part of this tradition; a tradition struggling out of imagination's protoplasm to reignite the novel for modern readers.

* * *

"Palimpsest" is the story of four people on three continents who journey to the city of Palimpsest together for the first time one night and are then forever linked.

The structure is simple but specially tailored to the subject. The story cycles between the four characters -- each of whom has different desires and problems -- while alternating between the psychogeography of the sexually-transmitted city and the real life dilemmas of four very damaged human beings.

For instance, in order to keep visiting the city, the characters must keep fucking new people who have been there. And every time they visit, they lose something or are permanently altered.

My major problem with this book is also its chief strength. This is not a novel driven by plot or characters. This is a novel driven by setting and by ideas, where the characterization is revealed by the setting. The setting is actuated by the structure, and the structure is lyrical and poetic, replete with images and synesthesias that describe a city that is half-wonder and half-nonsense.

It is a place built for crazy people. Luckily, our protagonists are crazy and fit right in. However, it is a gamble that the reader will be able to empathize with the obsessions of these half-rendered characters. Taken as a story about the safety valve of the imagination, however, "Palimpsest" becomes a book about what people will risk in order to fight for their rightful place.

Sometimes the end result was like reading a beautiful map instead of visiting a real place. Or reading the rules to a game instead of playing it. I am conventional: I wanted more change, growth, risk, and plot.

However, the map and the rules were so engrossing that I stopped caring after awhile and just let my mind savor the possibilities. The ingredients were so fascinating and rare that it became okay that I could not always taste the dish.

* * *

Palimpsest is also really hot.

The characters don't care who they fuck in order to travel to their dream city. Men, women, lepers, the disfigured, the portly, the old, the young, the good, the evil. Every person is their own country and if you want to visit, you have to pay the price.

The tension of the book is the movement between sleaze to the sublime, which is also the tension of sex itself. Isn't it? The passage from life to mystery; the movement from the ordinary to the exalted.

The lowest world is raised up:

"A folktale current in Hokkaido just after the war and passed from conductor to conductor held that the floor of heaven is laced with silver train tracks, and the third rail is solid pearl. The trains that ran along them were fabulous even by the standards of the Shinkansen of today: carriages containing whole pine forests hung with golden lanterns, carriages full of rice terraces, carriages lined in red silk where the meal service brought soup, rice-balls, and a neat lump of opium with persimmon tea poured over it in the most delicate of cups. These trains sped past each other, utterly silent, carrying each a complement of ghosts who clutched the branches like leather handholds, and plucked the green rice to eat raw, and fell back insensate into the laps of women whose faces were painted red from brow to chin. They never stop, never slow, and only with great courage and grace could a spirit slowly progress from car to car, all the way to the conductor's cabin, where all accounts cease, and no man knows what lies therein."

"In Hokkaido, where the snow and ice are so white and pure that they glow blue, it is said that only the highest engineers of Japan Railways know the layout of the railroads on the floor of heaven. They say that those exalted engineers are working, slowly, generation by generation, to lay the tracks on earth so that they mirror exactly the tracks in heaven. When this is done, those marvelous carriages will fall from the sky, and we may know on earth, without paying the terrible fare of death, the gaze of the red women, the light of the forest lanterns, and the taste of persimmon tea."

* * *

Valente has a huge, wild talent and reading her book is intoxicating yet dangerous, like sipping liquor from a crystal goblet and eating dainty sandwiches while getting a massage from an assassin.

It's a book that feels well-tuned and well-edited. Blood was spilled on this book. Whole ink buffalo were slaughtered, and every part was used.

Here's a fascinating and spot-on editorial Valente wrote about why editors are so important, and why self-publishing is not a good idea.

"The general meme seems to be this: with the advent of ebooks, which are definitely going to be the dominant form of book publishing forever and ever, there will no longer be any need for traditional publishers. Each writer will become something of an autonomous press, self-publishing through Amazon and Apple, who are totally awesome indie champions of the little guy, unlike those horrible corporate presses, hiring their own editors, copyeditors, typesetters, marketers, and artists, and putting up their work directly for sale online. Then: profit!"

"I find this to be a horrifying dystopian future, and I'll tell you why."

However, in this editorial, she does bring up a very important point about electronic rights:

"Where I think change could best happen right now is on the contract level. If, for example, e-rights became a subsidiary right I could administer separately, like audio rights, then you'd see a revolution in ebooks as we all experiment. Right now, however, you more or less cannot sell a book to a major publisher without giving them e-rights, and that sucks."

She isn't just whistling Dixie, either. When her partner lost his job and they needed money, she took a YA-novel from "Palimpsest" and turned it into a persistent, online web novel called "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making."

You can read this book for free here, and donate what you want.

I think this is exactly how electronic novels should look, personally. By putting out an online novel this way, an author doesn't have to go through Amazon, Apple, or Google, and they are able to add artwork, audio tracks, links, and "code art" in ways that simply don't work for ebook readers. You can read "Fairyland" from any computer with an internet connection. It can be tweaked. Corrected. Added to.

Unfortunately, "Fairyland" is also an example of a book that a professional writer had to put out without help, unable to pay for good graphic designers, good coders, or good editors, and also unable to convince publishers that this is what an ebook should look like.

Imagine what kind of electronic books publishers could make if they brought all of the resources of the New York industry to bear on this burgeoning market, instead of buying into the idea that Apple or Amazon are in a better position to create and leverage narrative art, which is a ludicrous idea.

* * *

"Palimpsest" is a radical and experimental piece of metatextual prose, cloaked in the guise of a perverted fantasy novel about A City. It is rough, smart, and flawed.

It is a book designed to makes passing it on a radical act. An act of transgression.

And I want to pass it on to you.

I want to put this book in your mind forever.

To make it a part of you. To tattoo it on your flesh. You like to read, right? So come a little closer...don't be shy...just a little bit closer, please... [END]

[1] Wikipedia.org: Palimpsest
[2] Amazon.com: Palimpsest
[3] Palimpsest: A Review by Miracle Jones

To Kill a Mockingbird (Pulitzer Prize winner)

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by American author Harper Lee (1926- ) published in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize in the same year. It became a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old [1].


Summary [2]

Chapter 2 September comes around and Dill leaves to go back home to Meridian, Scout realizes that she's starting her first year of school. After her first day, however, she's determined not to go back. After trying to explain the complicated backgrounds of some of the county folks to the new teacher, Scout lands herself into trouble again and again, and is not quite sure how. It should be obvious, she thinks, that offering Walter Cunningham a quarter for lunch is simply not done. They don't take help from anyone, and the reason why he doesn't have a lunch is because he can't afford one. When she tries to explain this to the new teacher, however, she gets her hands slapped by a ruler. When lunchtime finally rolls around, she's grateful to get out of class and go home. Chapter 3 Scout wastes no time paying back Walter Cunningham for getting her started on the wrong foot with the new teacher. It isn't until Jem comes and stops her that she quits tormenting him in the playground, and she nearly falls over when Jem invites the poor boy to lunch at their house. The day doesn't improve when she embarrasses Walter at the table and is forced to eat in the kitchen by Calpurnia. When she returns to school the day's drama isn't over. Miss Caroline, the teacher, is horrified to discover a cootie in the hair of Burris Ewell, a hulking, angry boy who quickly reduces Miss Caroline to tears as he slouches out of the room, his first and only day of school over. That evening Scout is weary from the day's crimes and begs Atticus not to send her back to school anymore. The fact that Miss Caroline forbade her to read and write anymore is really what's distressing her, and when Atticus strikes a deal with her that if she will concede to go back to school they'll continue reading together like always, she happily accepts. Chapter 4 As the schoolyear inches along, Scout begins to realize that she's far more educated than her peers, and even more so, perhaps, than her teacher. As construction paper and crayon Projects evolve day after day, she realizes she is just plain bored. As she walks home from school there is a huge oak tree that sits on the corner of the Radley lot. She passes it every day without incident, only one day she spots two pieces of chewing gum in a knot in the tree. After making sure it won't kill her she hastily crams it into her mouth, and Jem is furious with her when he finds out, convinced that it's poisoned by Boo Radley. During their walk home on the last day of school Scout and Jem find another treasure in the tree, this time two old, shined up pennies. When Dill arrives for the summer two days later the group resumes their obsession with Boo Radley. They create a play that reenacts Boo's life, and continue with it all summer long until they are very nearly caught by Atticus. Chapter 5 When Dill and Jem start excluding Scout from their plots she begins to spend more time with her next door neighbor, Miss Maudie Atkinson. Miss Maudie is garden obsessed, and spends her evenings reining over her front porch in the twilight. Scout gets a lot of valuable information from her about Boo Radley's past, and the reason, perhaps, why he never comes out. The next day she uncovers a major plot by Dill and Jem to pass a note to Boo Radley. Scout protests but they threaten her and before she knows it she's part of the scheme. Things proceed fairly smoothly until they're caught by Atticus, who forbids them to set one more foot on the Radley property and to leave Mr. Radley alone.

Chapter 6 The last night of the summer Jem and Dill hatch the biggest plot of them all (reasoning that, if they get killed, they'll miss school instead of vacation). They decide to try and peep into one of the windows at the Radley house. When Scout (who until tonight knew nothing of the plan) starts to protest, they call her a girl and threaten to send her home. With that, she joins them. Things take a disastrous turn when Boo Radley's older brother, Mr. Nathan Radley, hears them and, thinking they're intruders, fires a shotgun. They barely make it through the fence in time and high tail it back home so they're not missed by the adults. When they step into the gathering crowd to discuss the gunshot Scout is horrified to realize that Jem is missing his pants. Dill hatches a good one and tells Atticus that he won them from Jem playing strip poker. The adults seem satisfied with the lie, and don't suspect them of causing the gunfire at the Radley place. After they slink off, Scout discovers from Jem that he lost his pants as they were scurrying through the wire fence. They got caught and he had to leave them behind or risk getting shot. Late that night Jem decides to go after them rather than risk Mr. Nathan finding them the next morning and turning him in. Scout pleads with him not to go, but he does it anyway. When he gets back, he doesn't say a word but lies in bed, trembling. Chapter 7 Jem's silence about that night lasts for a week. They both start school again, and Scout discovers that the second grade is worse than the first, and the only consolation is that now she gets to stay as late as Jem and they can walk home together. It's during this walk home one afternoon that Jem finally opens up about his sojourn trip back to the Radley place to retrieve his pants. He tells Scout that his pants were not tangled up the wire as he left them but were folded neatly on the fence post, as if someone was expecting him to come back and get them. As they approach the oak tree with the knot hole they discover a ball of twine. After waiting a few days to make sure that the knot hole is not some other child's hiding place, they take ownership of everything they find in there from here on out. The next treasure they discover in there is the figure of a boy and girl carved out of soap. They're carved to look like Scout and Jem. The next prize is an old pocket watch that doesn't run. They decide to write a letter to whomever is leaving them things, but they're shocked to discover the next day that the hole has been filled with cement. When they question Mr. Nathan Radley (Boo's brother who does leave the house) he tells them the tree was sick and he had to do it. Upon questioning Atticus, however, he tells them that tree is perfectly healthy. Chapter 8 That fall Maycomb endures the coldest snap since 1885, and Scout thinks the world is ending one morning when she wakes up and finds snow on the ground. Although it's only a dusting, Jem is determined to build his first snowman and sets out creatively making one out of dirt, and then using the precious white snow to cover it up. That night the temperature drops even further and all the stoves in the house are lit for warmth. Scout is awakened in the middle of the night by Atticus, who tells her Miss Maudie's house next door is on fire and they have to get out. They spend the night in front of the Radley driveway, watching the commotion. The men of Maycomb help as much as they can getting furniture out of her house while there is still time, but eventually the whole thing is up in flames. They don't go back inside the house until morning, and Scout is horrified to discover she's wrapped up in blanket and she has no idea where she got it. She almost falls over when they deduce it was Boo Radley that brought the blanket out to her in the night, and she never even knew. They're heartened to discover the next day that Miss Maudie is not grieving for her lost house, saying she always wanted a smaller one anyway. Chapter 9 As the school year progresses Scout begins to get teased at school over her father, atticus is called a "Nigger Defender" and one night she asks Atticus why people are talking about him. He tells her that's he's taken on a case that affects him personally and because he is defending this man, Tom Robinson, there is a big stink about it in town. Atticus asks Scout that, no matter what she hears, she's not to get into a fight with someone over this case. True to her word, she doesn't fight, even when antagonized at school. Until Christmas. Their Uncle Jack Finch comes down from Boston, which is the good part of Christmas. The bad part is that they all have to spend Christmas day at Aunt Alexandra's house at Finch's Landing. Even worse, their cousin Francis is there, and Scout hates him. Things go smoothly until after dinner when, alone in the backyard with Scout, Francis starts calling Atticus all sorts of terrible names because he's defending a black man. Scout sails in with her fists to defend him and gets caught by Uncle Jack. She doesn't have a moment to tell her side of the story, and moments later they're on their way back home. She's finally able to tell her story to Uncle Jack later that night, and he apologizes for jumping all over her when he should've been punishing Francis. Chapter 10 The neighborhood excitement starts up again in February when Tim Johnson, a mangy dog owned by a man on the other side of town, is discovered walking up the street with rabies. The sheriff is called and he and Atticus drive up with a gun to shoot it. Scout and Jem watch in amazement as their father, whom they've never seen hold a gun in his life, takes aim and shoots the dog square in the head from an amazing distance. They're further shocked to discover that he is the deadest shot in Maycomb county, an accomplishment he's never bothered to mention to them since he doesn't like guns. Chapter 11 The day after Jem's 12th birthday finds the two walking into town to spend his birthday money. The downside to taking the route into town is that they have to walk past Mrs. Dubose's house, a cantankerous, bitter old woman who lives at the end of the street. She never has anything good to say to anyone, but Atticus constantly tells the two of them to ignore her foul words and treat her with courtesy and respect. Normally they're able to do this, but today their patience is pushed thin when she starts insulting Atticus's decision to defend Tom Robinson. They wait until they're on their way back home from town and suddenly Jem starts destroying Mrs. Dubose's flowers with Scout's baton wand, chopping them viciously off the bush and scattering them across her yard. When Atticus comes home later that evening, he knows he's in for it worse than he's ever been. Atticus makes Jem go to her house and talk with her, and when Jem returns he says that she is making him read to her everyday for the next month. When Monday comes around, Scout goes with him to keep him company, and the days drag by. When she dies a month later, Atticus informs them that Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict who had decided she was not going to die addicted to the drug. Jem's afternoons of reading to her broke her from her addiction, and she was able to die in peace. Chapter 12 As summer begins Scout is crushed to discover that Dill will not be joining them. When Atticus has to go out of town for two weeks, Calpurnia decides that she will take them to church with her. Aside from one woman, Jem and Scout are welcomed into the African church with open arms and they're amazed to see how different it is from their own staid church service. They're also amazed to find out that the church collection is going to Helen Robinson, Tom's wife, and the Reverend is not letting anyone leave until they've collected $10, which is what she needs each week to support her kids. Purses are scraped and pockets searched, and finally everyone comes up with enough money and the doors are opened. They also find out that Tom is in jail because he's accused of raping Bob Ewell's daughter, Mayella (who is white), which is why the entire town is in an uproar over Atticus taking on the case. When they get back home from church, they find Aunt Alexandra on the front porch swing waiting for them. Chapter 13 As Scout and Jem begin to question Aunt Alexandra, she tells them she's come to stay awhile (which could be days or years, according to Maycomb's customs). She settles in and the county welcomes her with open arms, although she certainly adds a formidable presence to Jem and Scout's daily routine. She begins trying to instruct the two on how to be a proper Finch (since they come from, in her words, a Fine Family) but both Scout and Jem have no interest in becoming a little gentleman and a little lady, and hardly bother trying to learn. Chapter 14 As life continues on with Aunty in the house, one night Scout goes to bed and steps on something soft and warm and round, which she thinks is a snake. After calling Jem in for a thorough investigation under her bed they find Dill under there, dirty and starving and still his same old self. Scout finds out that the reason why Dill ran off was because his parents just aren't interested in him, and he spends most of his days alone. He spends the night with them, uncertain what the next day will bring. Chapter 15 It is decided a week later that Dill will stay in Maycomb with his Aunt Rachel, who happens to be the Finch's neighbor. This news makes both Scout and Jem very happy. One night they're all relaxing in the living room when Mr. Heck Tate, the sheriff, comes knocking at the door with a group of men, warning Atticus that the local group of no-accounts might try to come at Tom Robinson this weekend. He is being held in the Maycomb jail. The next night Atticus mysteriously leaves the house and on a hunch Jem, Scout and Dill go looking for him in town. They finally find him reading a book on the porch at the jailhouse. Once Jem is satisfied that Atticus is ok they turn to go, but suddenly a line of cars pull up and a group of men get out and surround the porch. Things get serious when Scout, Jem, and Dill rush into the crowd to Atticus's defense, and although he tells them to go home they don't budge. Scout realizes that these men are strangers, and that they're here to get Tom Robinson. Scout finally sees that she does know one man in the crowd, Mr. Cunningham, Walter's father, and as she tries to make conversation with him the entire group falls silent, listening to her talk about Walter and Mr. Cunningham's entailment, which Atticus is currently helping him out on. Although she doesn't realize it, she makes them all realize that they are acting barbaric and finally it's Mr. Cunningham who calls off the mob and makes everyone go home. Chapter 16 The next morning, Saturday, the whole county begins to file into town to watch Tom Robinson's trial. Jem and Scout run a constant commentary for Dill, explaining the backgrounds and tendencies of everyone that passes. After lunch they head into town themselves to watch the trial. Due to the immense crowd there's no room downstairs but Reverend Sykes, the black preacher from Calpurnia's church, gives them seats in the colored section upstairs. When they get up there and sit down, they see the first witness is Mr. Heck Tate. Chapter 17 As Atticus begins to question the sheriff, who was the one that immediately saw Mayella after she was raped, he immediately begins to find holes in his testimony that prove there is no way that Tom Robinson could have beaten and raped the girl, although at this time the jury and crowd don't really know where he's going with his questioning. All that is apparent is that Mayelle's right eye was blackened and that all around her throat was bruised, as if two strong hands had tried to strangle her. The next witness to take the stand is Mayella's father, Bob Ewell, who is poor, uneducated, and downright mean-spirited. As Atticus begins to question him, it becomes finally apparent to Jem where he's going. He suddenly sees that there is no doubt that it was Bob Ewell who beat up Mayelle and then pointed the finger at Tom. Scout still doesn't see it; however, and thinks Jem is counting his chickens before they're hatched. As she looks at the back of Tom Robinson, who is big and strong, she thinks he easily could have hurt Mayella. Chapter 18 Mayella is the next to take the stand, and as Atticus questions her he begins to poke holes in her testimony as well. Finally he asks Tom Robinson to stand up so Mayella can identify him, and everyone sees that his left arm is fully 12 inches shorter than his right, and is therefore crippled and unusable. Scout finally sees that there is no way he could have choked Mayella and blacked out her right eye. It's a physical impossibility. Atticus then begins to ask her if it was really her father that beat her up but she refuses to say, and she refuses to say another word after she accuses Tom Robinson one more time. Chapter 19 The next and last witness is Tom Robinson himself. Tom tells the jury that he went into Mayella's yard lots of times to help her with little chores, and that she was always asking for his help. She once offered to pay him, but Tom declined the invitation. Since that, Tom willingly executed Mayella's chores free of charge. When he begins talking about the night of the rape he tells everyone that Mayella invited him in to do a chore and then started coming on to him, trying to kiss him, and it was her father that saw what she was trying to do through the window. Tom tried to resist Mayella without hurting her, and as soon as he could get away he took off running. He is soft-spoken and polite. But he makes the mistake of telling Mr. Gilmore that the reason he helped Mayella is because he felt sorry for her. And in those times, a black man feeling sorry for a white woman or even saying it may as well be a crime. During the cross examination by Mr. Gilmore Dill begins crying uncontrollably, so Scout takes him outside for some fresh air. Dill cannot get over how cruel Mr. Gilmore (the prosecutor) is to Tom Robinson, and another man is outside the courthouse and knows exactly why Dill is so upset. Chapter 20 The man is Mr. Dolphus Raymond, a local character who is ostracized because he married a black woman. To tone down the talk about him around the town he pretends to be a drunk, but it is really Coca Cola that is in the paper sack he carries around. He tells Dill that people can be very cruel sometimes and that it makes him sick too. Scout knows she shouldn't be out talking to this sinful man, but she finds him nice and fascinating. When they get back inside the courthouse they find Atticus in the middle of his closing statement, and Jem is convinced they're going to win the case since Tom Robinson could not have physically done what Mayella is accusing him of. Chapter 21 When they go home that evening for dinner they can hardly wait to go back to the courthouse because they don't want to miss the verdict. They wolf down their supper and race back. The jury stays out a long time, till almost midnight, deciding on a verdict, and Scout falls asleep waiting to hear. In total the jurors were out deciding almost nine hours. Finally they come back with a verdict: guilty. Chapter 22 Jem starts to cry, and cannot believe the jury would convict Tom when it was so obvious he hadn't raped Mayella. He and Scout are both in shock. The next morning the Finches all surprised at the amount of food that was left on the back porch from black people in the community, mostly from Calpurnia's neighborhood, to tell Atticus "thank you" for defending Tom Robinson, in spite of the verdict. The children have a conversation with Miss Maudie who tells them that it wasn't just Atticus trying to help Tom Robinson. They Judge was trying, Mr. Heck Tate was trying, there were lots of people behind the scene trying. They might of lost the case, she says, but only Atticus could have kept a jury out so long deciding. In her mind, it's a baby step towards equality. Chapter 23 The next drama of the day is that Bob Ewell spits in the face of Atticus and says he'll get him back for embarrassing him so badly in court. Atticus passes it off as an empty threat, and does his best to assuage the fears of Jem and Scout, who are very worried for him. Atticus has not lost hope for Tom Robinson, either. There's still the appeal, which he's confident that they have a good chance of winning. As Jem and Scout discuss the lives and ways of Maycomb county folks after the trial, they begin to realize something disturbing about human nature, and the ways people can come up with to just be mean spirited. Jem begins to understand that the reason Boo Radley never comes out of his house is not because he can't, but is because he doesn't want to come out. Chapter 24 As September inches closer Scout is introduced to formal tea time, hosted by Aunt Alexandra, who is on a relentless campaign to teach her to be a lady. As Scout navigates through the social hour she's lost on how ladies can look so pretty and delicate, and yet trap each other with conversation, revealing an aggressiveness you can't really see except when they talk to each other. She decides she feels much more at home in her father's world. When Atticus comes home early from work and interrupts tea Scout knows something's up. She follows him into the kitchen and learns that Tom Robinson is dead. He made a break for it at the prison and was shot by the guards. Atticus enlists the help of Calpurnia to go and tell Tom's wife, Helen. Scout, Miss Maudie, and Aunt Alexandra pull themselves together and rejoin the ladies at tea. Chapter 25 Jem and Dill were able to witness the sad affair of Atticus having to tell Helen that Tom is dead, as his car passed them as they were walking back from swimming at Barkers Eddy. Atticus was very gentle about it, but Helen fainted away. The town of Maycomb was interested in Toms death for about two days, and then moved on to other things. Jem tells Scout that he heard from the grapevine that Mr. Ewell was threatened them again, saying that there was one down and two to go. Jem believes that he's all talk and warns Scout not to breathe a word to Atticus, and not to worry. Chapter 26 As school starts Jem begins high school (7th grade) and Scout rarely sees him until dark. She's in 3rd grade now, and although the Radley place ceases to terrify her she still thinks about Boo, and regrets ever tormenting him the way they used to. One day in class they start talking about Adolf Hitler, and Scout discovers that her teacher, Miss Gates, hates Hitler and feels strongly that his persecution of Jews is wrong. Scout is confused about this, however, because during the summer at the trial she heard Miss Gates distinctly saying ugly things about Tom Robinson, and how this should teach them all a lesson. When she asks Jem about it, why Miss Gates can hate Hitler and yet feel Tom Robinson's verdict is justified because he's black, Jem gets very upset and yells at her not to ever talk about that trial to him again. When she goes to Atticus for comfort he tells her that Jem is just trying to come to terms with something in his head, and when he does he'll start being himself again. Chapter 27 As October crawls forward a few things happen in town. The Judge finds a nighttime crawler in his yard but doesn't see who it is. Helen Robinson, Tom's wife, starts working for Mr. Link Deas, Tom's old employer, who offers her a job because he feels so badly about what happened to Tom. She has to go a mile out of her way to avoid the Ewell place, because each time she passes they antagonize her. When Mr. Deas finds out about it he goes over to the Ewell place and threatens Mr. Ewell to leave Helen alone. The next day Mr. Ewell follows Helen all the way to work and Mr. Deas has to chew him out again. To Aunt Alexandra, it bodes trouble. As Halloween approaches Scout learns that she will be required to participate in the school pageant, an agricultural themed production where she'll be playing the part of "Pork". Her costume is a large ham hock fashioned out of brown cloth and chicken wire. Everyone else is too worn out to come to the night's pageant, so Scout and Jem go alone. Chapter 28 It's a really dark night, but Scout has fun playing the various games the school put on before the pageant. The entire county is there to watch the show, and Scout invariably falls asleep waiting for her part in the play and makes her entrance much too late. She's mortified, but it makes everyone laugh. Because she's so embarrassed about her performance she asks Jem to wait until most of the people have left the school before they begin walking home. As they start their journey back home in the pitch black dark, Jem begins to hear someone following them. At first they think it's their friend, Cecil, trying to scare them, but they begin to realize that it's not. Before they know what's hit them they're attacked from whomever is following them. Scout is crushed under her costume, and then Jem screams. She can't see a thing, and then things grow quiet and she realizes there are now 4 people under the tree. Scout stumbles out into the road, calling for Jem, and then sees a man walking unsteadily, carrying Jem in front of him towards their house. When she gets inside Atticus quickly calls the doctor and the Sheriff, and none of them know how badly Jem is hurt until Dr. Reynolds gets there and informs them that he's got a broken arm. Heck Tate gets there next and tells them all that Bob Ewell is lying under the tree where they were attacked, dead with a kitchen knife stuck in his ribs. Chapter 29 Scout tells them all what happened leading up to the attack. The man that carried Jem into the house is still in the room with them, but he's so silent and in the shadows that they pretty much forget he's there. Heck Tate tells them that Scout's costume probably saved her life, as there is a slash mark through the chicken wire where Bob Ewell tried to stab her. When she gets to the end of her story she realizes that the man who saved their lives, the man who carried Jem home, is Boo Radley. Chapter 30 As Dr. Reynolds starts to set Jem's arm they all head to the front porch, where Boo will be more comfortable in the shadows. Scout leads him out and sits beside him in the deepest shadow. Atticus and Heck Tate get into a battle of wills over who really killed Bob Ewell. Atticus believes Jem did it, and refuses to have the affair "hushed up" so it's hanging over Jem's head and the county has ample material for gossip. Heck Tate contends that Bob Ewell fell on his knife, and flat out refuses to tell anyone that Boo Radley killed him (which is what really happened). His reason is because he knows all the ladies of Maycomb county would be by Boo's house bringing him cakes to thank him, and he knows Boo doesn't want to be dragged into the limelight. Finally, Atticus agrees to the story, and thanks Boo for saving his children. Chapter 31 Scout leads Boo back into the house one last time so he can say goodbye to Jem, who is still sleeping, and then she walks him home. After he goes inside she stands on his front porch and realizes that she can see the entire neighborhood. She understands that all through the years Boo has watched them grow up, playing games and living their lives. She begins to understand that maybe she and Jem did give something to Boo after all. She gives him a hug and heads back home. The novel To Kill A Mockingbird revolves around a young girl named Jean Louise Finch who goes by the nicknamed "Scout". Scout experiences different events in her life that dramatically change her life. Scout and her brother Jem are being raised by their father, a lawyer named Atticus and a housekeeper named Calpumia in a small town in the south. At this point in time in the South racism and discriminations towards black was a big issue . The story begins when Scout is 6 years old, and her brother is about to enter the 5th grade. That summer Scout and her brother meet a young boy named Dill who comes from Mississippi to spend the summers there. They become fascinated with a man named "Boo" Radley, a man in his thirties who has not been seen outside of his home in years, mainly because of his suppressed upbringing. They have an impression of Mr. Radley as being this large ugly and evil man. Then comes the trial. Scout's father becomes a defense attorney for a black man, Tom Robinson, who is falsely accused of raping a white women. This has a big affect on Scout. During this trial she gets teased by friends because her father was helping this black man. Scout starts to see the racism that exist. During the trial Scout and her brother and close friend Dill witness the trial. Even though they are young they can see that Mr. Robinson is innocent. Even though Mr. Robinson's innocence was clear even in the eyes of kids, Mr. Robinson was still found guilty. Later in an attempt to escape, Mr. Robinson is shot dead. Scout is extremely disappointed at the verdict and even more at the death of Mr. Robinson and realizes the injustice that exist. Later in a cowardly attempt by the alleged rape victims father, tries to kill Scout and her brother in order to get even with her father for making him look back in court. This is when Mr.Radley makes an appearance again an stabs their attacker. Even though Mr. Radley kills a man he is not tried for murder because he was defending the Scout and her brother. Finally some justice. This gives Scout some hope that is a chance for improvement in this unjust world.

Review [3]

"A first novel of such rare excellence that it will no doubt make a great many readers slow down to relish more fully its simple distinction...A novel of strong contemporary national significance."
-- Chicago Tribune

"All of the tactile brilliance and none of the precocity generally supposed to be standard swamp-warfare issues for Southern writers...Novelist Lee's prose has an edge that cuts through cant, and she teaches the reader an astonishing number of use truths about little girls and about Southern life...Scout Finch is fiction's most pealing child since Carson McCullers's Frankie got left behind at the

wedding." -- Time

"That rare literary phenomenon, a Southern novel with no mildew on its magnolia leaves. Funny, happy and written with unspectacular precision, To Kill a Mockingbird is about conscience--how it is instilled in two children, Scout and Jem Finch; how it operates in their father, Atticus a lawyer appointed to defend a Negro on a rape charge, and how conscience crows in their small Alabama town."

-- Vogue --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

[1] Wikipedia.org: To Kill a Mockingbird
[2] Wikisummaries.org: To Kill a Mockingbird
[3] Amazon.com Review: To Kill a Mockingbird

Sons and Lovers (ranked ninth on 100 best novels ...)

Sons and Lovers is a novel by English writer D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) published in 1913.

The Modern Library ranked Sons and Lovers ninth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century [1].

[You can read the full story online or on Amazon Kindle (Stories for Your Leisure Time):

Sons and Lovers (Part One)

Sons and Lovers (Part Two::Section One)

Sons and Lovers (Part Two::Section Two)]


Plot Summary [2]

Part I:

The refined daughter of a "good old burgher family," Gertrude Coppard meets a rough-hewn miner at a Christmas dance and falls into a whirlwind romance. But soon after her marriage to Walter Morel, she realizes the difficulties of living off his meagre salary in a rented house. The couple fight and drift apart and Walter retreats to the pub after work each day. Gradually, Mrs. Morel's affections shift to her sons beginning with the oldest, William.

As a boy, William is so attached to his mother that he doesn't enjoy the fair without her. As he grows older, he defends her against his father's occasional violence. Eventually, he leaves their Nottinghamshire home for a job in London, where he begins to rise up into the middle class. He is engaged, but he detests the girl's superficiality. He dies and Mrs. Morel is heartbroken, but when Paul catches pneumonia she rediscovers her love for her second son.

Part II:

Both repulsed by and drawn to his mother, Paul is afraid to leave her but wants to go out on his own, and needs to experience love. Gradually, he falls into a relationship with Miriam, a farm girl who attends his church. The two take long walks and have intellectual conversations about books but Paul resists, in part because his mother looks down on her. At work, Paul meets Clara Dawes who has separated from her husband, Baxter.

Paul leaves Miriam behind as he grows more intimate with Clara, but even she cannot hold him and he returns to his mother. When his mother dies soon after, he is alone.

Lawrence summarized the plot in a letter to Edward Garnett on 12 November 1912:

It follows this idea: a woman of character and refinement goes into the lower class, and has no satisfaction in her own life. She has had a passion for her husband, so her children are born of passion, and have heaps of vitality. But as her sons grow up she selects them as lovers — first the eldest, then the second. These sons are urged into life by their reciprocal love of their mother — urged on and on. But when they come to manhood, they can't love, because their mother is the strongest power in their lives, and holds them. It's rather like Goethe and his mother and Frau von Stein and Christiana — As soon as the young men come into contact with women, there's a split. William gives his sex to a fribble, and his mother holds his soul. But the split kills him, because he doesn't know where he is. The next son gets a woman who fights for his soul — fights his mother. The son loves his mother — all the sons hate and are jealous of the father. The battle goes on between the mother and the girl, with the son as object. The mother gradually proves stronger, because of the ties of blood. The son decides to leave his soul in his mother's hands, and, like his elder brother go for passion. He gets passion. Then the split begins to tell again. But, almost unconsciously, the mother realizes what is the matter, and begins to die. The son casts off his mistress, attends to his mother dying. He is left in the end naked of everything, with the drift towards death.

[1] Stories for Your Leisure Time [Kindle Edition]

[2] Wikipedia.org: Sons and Lovers

Humboldt's Gift (Pulitzer Prize ..., and Nobel Prize in Literature ...)

Humboldt's Gift is a novel by Canadian-born American writer Saul Bellow (1915–2005), published in 1975, won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize, and contributed to Bellow's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature the same year.


The novel, which Bellow intended to be a short story, is a roman à clef about Bellow's friendship with the poet Delmore Schwartz. It explores the changing relationship of art and power in a materialist America. This theme is addressed through the contrasting careers of two writers, Von Humboldt Fleisher (to some degree a version of Schwartz) and his protege Charlie Citrine (to some degree a version of Bellow himself). Fleisher yearns to lift American society up through art but dies a failure. In contrast, Charlie Citrine makes quite a lot of money through his writing, especially from a Broadway play and a movie about a character named Von Trenck - a character modeled after Humboldt.

Another notable character in the book is Rinaldo Cantabile, a wannabe Chicago gangster, who tries to bully Citrine into being friends and whose career advice to Citrine, focused solely on commercial interests, is the opposite of the advice Citrine was once given by his old mentor, Humboldt Fleisher, who valued artistic integrity above all other concerns.

Some critics, including Malcolm Bradbury, see the novel as a commentary on the increasing commodification of culture in mid-century America, and throughout much of the book, Bellow analyzes, through the voice of Citrine, his concerns about spirituality, poetry, and success in America. [1]

Humboldt's Gift Summary [2]

Chapters 1–3

Humboldt’s Gift begins with an introduction to Von Humboldt Fleisher, who published a popular avant-garde poetry book in the 1930s. Charlie Citrine, fresh out of college and in love with literature, is so moved by this work that he relocates to New York City in 1938 and becomes friends with Humboldt. Humboldt is a famous talker and manic depressive. In the 1940s, Humboldt marries Kathleen, and they move from Greenwich Village to rural New Jersey. Charlie spends a weekend with Humboldt and Kathleen in September 1952 when Humboldt’s mania is in full swing. Humboldt’s success is dissipating just as Charlie hits it big with a Broadway play a couple years later. They are estranged, and Humboldt pickets his show, arguing that real intellectuals do not make money.

Humboldt dies of a heart attack at a hotel in the early 1960s. Charlie reads his friend’s obituary in the paper and is deeply moved. Humboldt is one of the few people Charlie loves, and he dreams of him often. In the present day, ten years later, Charlie’s life is not going well. He has a beautiful girlfriend and is physically fit, but his ex-wife and the IRS are taking all of his money, and he is mentally unchallenged. But it is all about to change, thanks to Humboldt.

Chapters 4–7

Charlie leaves for an appointment and finds his Mercedes-Benz 280 SL smashed up. He is stunned. He knows Rinaldo Cantabile did it because he has been harassing Charlie with late night phone calls. Charlie lost to Cantabile in a poker game but stopped the check he paid him with when he found out that Cantabile was cheating. Charlie asks his doorman, Roland, to flag down a cop and returns to his apartment. Charlie is overwhelmed by the mess this has made of his day. He thinks on his past success; most of his money is gone, the money that came between him and Humboldt. The cops show up and seem amused by Charlie’s smashed up car. They also hint that it is mob-related, but Charlie plays dumb.

Around noon, Cantabile calls Charlie, and they set a time and place to meet for Charlie to pay him back in cash. Charlie manages to drive his wrecked car to the bank and from there calls to make an appointment with the dealership. Charlie leaves a message for George, asking him to stay away from the Russian Bath today. He is worried Cantabile will go after George for telling Charlie to stop the check. George set up the poker game to give Charlie a chance to hang out with “real people.” Cantabile and his brother Emil crashed the party and openly cheated; everyone noticed, except Charlie. Charlie thinks about asking his gentleman hoodlum friend, Vito Langobardi, at the Downtown Club what he thinks of Cantabile. But at the last minute, Charlie changes his mind because he does not want Vito to think less of him for mixing business and pleasure.

Chapters 8–10

Charlie takes a taxi to the Russian Bath. Inside, Mickey, who runs the concession, assures Charlie that George has already paid his weekly visit. Cantabile pulls up in a white Thunderbird, and Charlie tries to pay him but Cantabile has other plans. They get into the Thunderbird. As Cantabile is driving, Charlie remembers visiting his birth home in Appleton, Wisconsin. Charlie knocked on the door but no one answered so he peeked into the bedroom where he was born. He saw an old fat woman in her underwear. Her husband accosted Charlie, who managed to talk his way out of a beating.

Cantabile takes Charlie to the Playboy Club. They sit at a table with Mike Schneiderman, a gossip columnist, and Bill Latkin, who owes Cantabile a favor. Charlie is supposed to pay Cantabile back publicly, but he fumbles the cue, angering Cantabile. Their next stop is a jewelry dealer’s apartment in the Hancock Building. Charlie successfully pays Cantabile this time. They go to a construction site, and Cantabile flies all but two of the fifties from a girder high off the ground. They have dinner at a steakhouse, and Cantabile asks Charlie to help his wife Lucy with her doctoral thesis on Humboldt. Charlie refuses.

Chapters 11–12

Charlie takes the next morning off to recuperate. His latest big work is a series of essays on boredom. He is also increasingly fascinated with Dr. Rudolph Steiner’s anthroposophy philosophy. Charlie takes out all of his Humboldt papers and lies down on his green sofa to think. He now knows that Humboldt was sane at the end of his life and regrets that he ran away that day on 46th Street. He recalls how the Times published a two-page obituary for Humboldt. Humboldt lived like Americans expect their poets to live: his great work was followed by personal decay and decline. Americans see poets as essentially useless; however, Humboldt would have been pleased to see his prominence temporarily renewed with such a long obituary.

Chapters 13–17

In November 1952, Humboldt is depressed that Stevenson lost the presidential election. He reveals a scheme to get himself a chair in modern literature at Princeton. Humboldt needs this stability because he is off-balance and cannot write poetry. Charlie agrees to help, and at Humboldt’s insistence, they form a blood-brother pact by exchanging blank checks.

Charlie makes the pitch to Professor Ricketts for Humboldt to be given a chair. Ricketts agrees wholeheartedly but says that there is no money. Defeated, Charlie reports this answer to Humboldt. Humboldt is inexplicably elated and leaves immediately for New York City. He visits Wilmoore Longstaff, head of the very rich Belisha Foundation. Longstaff likes Humboldt’s plan and promises him the money. Humboldt’s chair lasts a few months before the trustees of the Belisha Foundation reject Longstaff’s budget. Ricketts offers to find money to keep Humboldt on staff, but Humboldt resigns.

[1] Wikipedia.org: Humboldt's Gift

[2] eNotes.com: Humboldt's Gift Summary & Study Guide