Book of the Week: The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain

Some books have a way of coming back. They are not of their time necessarily. But at their core is the human comedy which never grows stale or loses its relevance. Shakespeare's MacBeth is such a work. After all, the hunger for power and the willingness to murder in order to obtain it are universal in the human experience. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg retains its luster for very similar reasons.

I've often believed there are two Mark Twains. I won't argue that one of them is Samuel Clemens. But the Twain who wrote Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was not the same man who had been hardened by financial troubles and the death of several family members later in life. That Twain was a bitter, cynical bloke who had a bone to pick with the world. And damn me if you will, but I love that Twain much better.

Maybe it's because my favorite works by Twain are not the perfectly rendered classics he penned at the height of his career. I read both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as part of my school curriculum. I found them interesting and well written. I do consider them to be classics. But in some ways, I never quite connected with those novels. Much like The Adventures of Augie March or Anna Karenina, I respected the writer and the works, but neither sunk into my soul.

My connection with Twain started with Pudd'nhead Wilson. Twain's satirical take on racial problems in America possesses a great sense of wit, but also a razor-sharp dissection of what makes humans tick. It is not a beautiful portrait of America. Nor is The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg. Once again, this was not a content man, but one who had literally fled the country to escape his creditors. Twain actually scrawled out ...Hadleyburg on hotel stationary from his various stops in Europe.

The visceral anger that Twain felt towards his homeland and his hatred for human greed in general bleeds off the pages of ...Hadleyburg. That, however, is what makes it such a joy to read. Much like Pudd'nhead Wilson, this novella comes across more as a punk anthem, a short series of jabs at our guts, rather than an epic tale. And in spite of its imperfections (the lack of subtlety, the forgone conclusion that the citizens of Hadleyburg will get theirs), you enjoy every bit of the town's downward spiral. It is a wonderful adult fable that benefits from Twain's sense of humor, especially in the town hall scene once the supposed upstanding nineteen are revealed as charlatans.

In fact, if you've been paying attention to the massive global economic crisis, ...Hadleyburg is the perfect companion to our current state of the world. After all, rampant greed was the cause of our financial system's downfall. Twain's tale of a supposedly incorruptible town, whose reputation made them the envy of citizens far and wide, and their ultimate downfall due to the simple sin of greed, still plays exceptionally well. Having experienced the harsh reality of being in debt, Twain was given a first hand lesson in the effects of greed.

One could never argue that ...Hadleyburg is a classic work of American fiction. That is often reserved for Twain's earlier novels. But you can argue that it retains its own enduring allure, if for no other reason than its belief that, at our core, we are all capable of being tempted and corrupted.

Of course, I would be a bastard for not complementing Melville House Classics for publishing "The Art of the Novella" series which keeps works such as The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, Melville's Benito Cereno, and Dostoevsky's The Eternal Husband in print as stand-alone entities (rather than being lumped into anthologies). They are publishing the novellas in a style worthy of Blue Note Records, with similar cover treatments, and a sense of dedication that usually is only found at smaller presses. Cheers to them.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Book of the Week: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

It is really hard to write good literary satire. Simple fact is that often satire goes too far over to the side of parody. When it crosses that line, it becomes bad mimicry rather than true satire. Think what This Is Spinal Tap would have been like if Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer just did an impression of the guys from Saxon – it would be funny for five minutes (if you actually knew who Saxon was) but ultimately the joke would get old. Over-parody leads to a stale joke and then you have an author who is just winking at his readers. After all, is Rich Little really that funny?

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch could’ve descended into a really bad parody, especially considering that co-authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett originally intended it as a send-up of Richard Crompton’s William books (ask your friends from the UK). The initial title they had conceived was William the Antichrist. But Gaiman and Pratchett took the joke farther out -- much farther out -- satirizing everything from the Bible to The Omen to modern English society. The cast of characters includes a sect of extremely loquacious nuns secretly in the employ of hell (The Chattering Order of Saint Beryl), Pollution as the replacement for a now retired Pestilence (thanks to the invention of Penicillin), a bibliophile Angel (known as Aziraphale) who is not so sure he wants heaven to win, a Demon who is more concerned with his antique Bentley than stealing souls, the slacker descendents of Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder, and even Agnes Nutter who lives up to her name. This makes for a concoction that is rife with sharp, pinpointed jokes that still hold up and still retain their bite.

Simply put, it is amazing satire. It the equivalent to reading a Monty Python film and comes as close to matching the sheer genius The Life of Brian as one could get in a novel. In an opening sequence, we’re introduced to Crowley, a demon who has come to enjoy his life on earth and is not particularly enthralled with the idea of Armageddon. The only thing that irks him more is having to show up for the daily counting of the deeds with two other demons at a dreary cemetery at midnight. Never mind the traffic getting out of London, the real frustration for Crowley arises when he cannot explain to his fellow hellspawn that blocking all portable phone systems in central London will do more good for Satan than tempting a politician or a priest.

“But you couldn’t tell that to demons like Hastur and Ligur. Fourteenth-century minds, the lot of them. Spending years picking away at one soul. Admittedly it was craftsmanship, but you had to think differently these days. Not big, but wide. With five billion people in the world you couldn’t pick the buggers off one by one any more; you had to spread your effort. But demons like Ligur and Hastur wouldn’t understand. They’d never thought up Welsh-language television for example. Or value-added tax. Or Manchester.”

Manchester is of course Crowley’s proudest achievement as a demon. Or there is the slight episode where the mighty Kraken rises from the sea once more, directly under a whaling ship.

“There is a tiny metal thing above it. The kraken stirs. And ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance.”

Chapters such as that keep Good Omens chugging along at great pace. What is most obvious is that Pratchett and Gaiman had an absolute hoot writing the book. The interplay is fantastic, a grand piling on of ideas, where ultimately it doesn’t matter who originally conceived of which bits (much like the Pythons).

If you could level any criticism at the book it is that the ending is so bloody nice. The writers literally pull the final punch and leave the reader with a very saccharine outcome after pages and pages of skewering most of modern society (from the 17th century onward). You come to this very perfectly resolved, somewhat hopeful ending, feeling as the writers feared appearing a little too cynical. Picture The Empire Strikes Back if Luke just suddenly strikes down Darth Vader rather than losing his hand (and discovering the true identity of his father).

This is mostly due to the original concept of William the Antichrist -- or rather the character of Adam. While the character is an interesting parody of Damian from The Omen, he tends to drag the action down, giving the book a YA bent that it doesn’t need. After all, the cast of memorable characters is overloaded as it is and the book is simply much funnier when Adam is not around to slow up the pace. One could argue this was a necessary device, a way to cut the more biting parts of the book in order to have some contrast. But in the end, you can’t help but feel that the character could’ve been reduced to a minor one with the emphasis kept on Crowley and Aziraphale’s attempts to thwart their respective sides during the ensuing Armageddon.

It is however somewhat of a nitpick because that flaw is greatly diminished by the overall wit and surgical skewering of all things the Apocalypse in Good Omens. About the only thing funnier is The Left Behind series, but those books are not intentionally humorous.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Book of the Week: I Spit On Your Graves by Boris Vian

When Jean d’ Halluin first published I Spit On Your Graves in 1946, he was looking for a bestseller to kickstart his new imprint, Editions du Scorpion. Written by an African-American writer named Vernon Sullivan, the book was a visceral, often misogynistic, and (once it gets rolling) violent pulp novel offering a gritty commentary on racial injustice in the United States.

The plot centered on Lee Anderson, a light skinned black man seeking revenge for the murder of his brother at the hands of whites. Anderson, takes his revenge by infiltrating southern society as a white man (he has light skin and blond hair), bedding every white woman he can, and ultimately selecting two of those women to murder as payback for his brother’s death. Despite being considered too controversial and subversive for U.S. publishers, the French public devoured the novel. By 1947, it outsold work by Sartre and Camus, giving d’ Halluin the bestseller he craved.

That alone would’ve made for interesting literary history. But there was more to the story…

Vernon Sullivan never tried to have the book published in the United States.

Vernon Sullivan did not exist. I Spit On Your Graves was in fact written by a Frenchman. A white Frenchman. Said Frenchman had never actually visited the United States.

Then there was the law suit filed against the author by Cartel d’action sociale et morale, the same right wing organization that tried to censor the work of Henry Miller.

Last but not least, there was the grisly murder committed by a Parisian man who strangled his mistress. The authorities discovered a copy of I Spit On Your Graves at the scene of the crime with a part where Lee Anderson dispatches one of his victims circled.

Hence its bestseller status. Who didn’t want to read the “murder book,” as the introduction Marc Lapprand calls it?

And then of course, there was the bigger question: what if the book was not about racial injustice at all?

On the surface, I Spit On Your Graves is a pulpy, not expertly written tale of murder and sex. And upon first reading, I Spit On Your Graves comes across as that – a cheap pulp mystery, lacking only the cover illustration of a woman screaming, hands raised against her face, as an unseen stalker comes at her with a knife.

It is overflowing with graphic sex (for it’s time) where Lee takes the female characters in every scenario imaginable (barring midgets and donkeys). At first one would take it as a sub-par Tropic of Cancer, except that the reader’s knowledge of Lee’s racial identity gives the book a taboo that is non-existent in Miller’s novels. Lee gets his hands on every white woman he possibly can, and they are all to willing to be taken, even if they don’t admit it at first (as is the case with Lou Asquith). As Lee relates early on in the story, “I had all the girls, one after the other, but it was a bit too easy, it turned my stomach.” It comes off like a line from a 70s Blaxploitation film. And in many ways, I Spit On Your Graves reads like a Blaxploitation script. However, as the book goes on Lee flips from bragging of his conquests to being disgusted at how far he has sunk to achieve his revenge. He becomes increasingly sickened by his seduction of the Asquith girls and this drives him further towards the violent outcome.

And that is where the book starts to turn from pure pulp sadism and gratuitous sex into a more layered, psychological exploration. We know Lee is seeking revenge. We know he is going to kill. It is only a matter of time and the reader is forced to travel down the road, dragged further and further into Lee’s madness, strapped in, unable to change the course.

Keep in mind, Vian was no pulp writer. He was a contemporary of Sartre and Camus, who wrote the incredibly well received Froth on the Daydream (also translated as Foam of the Daze). He was also a translator, poet, music, critic, and jazz musician who was close with Duke Ellington and Miles Davis.

In many ways, it is similar to Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, forcing you to see the world of the book through the eyes of a very twisted and violent narrator. We immediately find ourselves repulsed by the narrator’s narcissism, their ruthlessness, and most importantly their penchant for extremely grisly acts. And yet, it is this grotesque, amped, psychotic, bloodthirsty humanity that captivates us.

I’m not the first person to make such a comparison between these two books. However, there is a major difference between them. Whereas Ellis was satirizing society, specifically the Reagan-worshipping stockbrokers of the 80s, Vian was going deeper – he was satirizing publishing and ultimately, the reader.

After all, sex and murder were rampant in novels published circa 1946. Both are still widely used as devices and plot points today. In fact, one could argue that both are necessary lynchpins of all modern literature. Sex and death is what it’s all about.

The book is so overly violent and misogynist because Vian is parodying pulp writing, a form very prevalent in post-war France when he wrote I Spit On Your Graves. Like Swift’s A Modest Proposal, it takes the argument to its fullest extreme, giving readers the ultimate in literary-noir: a story so extremely violent and disgusting to modern thinking that the reader can’t put it down.

Much has been said about the social commentary perceived within I Spit On Your Graves. Of this one can look literally. Lee, a black man who’s brother was murdered by whites, seeks revenge by wreaking havoc on white society. In the end however, without giving anything away, there is no justice for Lee. So it is easy to see I Spit On Your Graves as a biting commentary on racial injustice in America during the 20th Century.

But in many ways, Vian is still having his fun with us. After all, he’s not trying to convince us that Lee is an unfortunate character of racial injustice that we should pity. He’s getting us to hate Lee Anderson in spite of his quest for justice. After all, Vian’s audience was white, educated, French society. And it is Lee’s racial identity, his status as ‘black’ that made (and still makes the book) so controversial. If Lee was a white man bedding a bunch of women and then murdering two of them, it would be a Harry Crews novel. Vian however spins the tables, serving up a tale of a violent, lustful black man out for revenge, one that horrifies and yet draws us in, convincing a repulsed and outraged public to keep on reading. Ultimately the joke is on us. We are thinking of racial injustice, clinging to the social message seemingly contained within the book, and yet it is the titillating bits – the sex and death – that keep us reading. Swift would’ve been proud.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari