Category: Books

If you’re going to plan a murder, you may as well do it right, nay, make it a work of quality, if you please.  Like George Smiley, the British former secret service agent who discovers just such a murder of quality and solves it in the small town with an exclusive school. 

Le Carre is known for his spy novels, but this was apparently his early work, and a short one it is that takes you on a little trip of intrigue and leaves you guessing until the very end.  Reminiscent of the style of Poirot and Miss Marple. 

Powerful.  Thoughtful.  Breaks your heart, and makes you mad all at the same time.  These are some of the immediate reactions to this crime-thriller novel.  If you are an opponent of capital punishment, that is.  If you are not, it ought to be even more powerful, thoughtful and heartbreaking.  And it will make you kick yourself for all your self-righteousness.

Grisham’s position on the death-penalty laws is clear:  he is a strong and loud opponent of it, and the story that is woven around this piece of law is one that is designed to make you sit up and wonder about all the many injustices that might have already taken place in so many states within the USA that support this law.  Injustices because the wrong person is convicted and placed on Death Row, like Donte Drumm.  The clinical precision by which this law is administered makes the hair rise behind your neck, and leave you wondering about how in God’s name you or any one else might ever be able to get another night’s sleep when you have so calmly taken the life of another human being.  This ‘eye for an eye’ and ‘tooth for a tooth’ law is such a horrific one that there can never be a peace that may come out of it– to anyone, least of all the victim’s survivors.

You’re taken on a grand tour of the so-called justice system in the great state of Texas and its prison facilities, and you’re made to see how in the name of democracy and in the execution of a “fair” trial, a bogus confession of an innocent man is used to put him to death.  It is impossible to read this book and not get thoroughly pissed at the Texas legal system.

But here’s the thing:  even if the man was guilty as charged, I would not support the death-penalty.  And I certainly would not live in any state that does.  This is a much wider topic for discussion, of course, but I may as well take the opportunity to make this proclamation once and for all:  I refuse to let a single dollar of my taxes go toward supporting one of the most heinous crimes of legalized murder routinely committed by a state-supported administration.  Instead, I’d rather use that same dollar to support a criminal spend an entire life-time in prison, if necessary.  That’s my personal opinion.  And one that is shared by John Grisham.

Moby Dick is a leviathan of a novel equal in measure to the leviathan of the sea and its own namesake.  Employing every literary device including grand symbolism and allegory, Moby Dick can claim to be not just the great American Novel, but a formidable force in the canon of world literature.

“Call me Ishmael” is one of the most recognizable opening lines in the English-language literature.  And what a story does Ishmael the whale-ship sailor give us!  Setting sail on the Pequod, Ishmael is bound for a journey of a lifetime.  A journey he needs to undertake in order to understand himself. Starting right from making seemingly-simple distinctions in the sensations of cold and warmth.  Ishmael says, “… truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.”

And if Ishmael resides in each of us, there’s also much of Captain Ahab in each of us.  Despite all our best intentions, who amongst us has not become obsessed to a degree in seeking out something that eludes us?  And like Captain Ahab do we pursue it despite all reason?  Captain Ahab actually believes that he is destined in his pursuit.  He says, `Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.”

But the intensity of the pursuit no matter how passionate does not determine if it is a noble one.  It might have all the passion of the ocean and still be a misguided pursuit. Like Ahab’s.  Like the ill-fated Pequod, the thirst for vengeance is one that will turn upon itself and serve nothing and no one in the end.

Magnificent in every metaphorical construct, and spanning every complex theme of the human condition, Moby Dick is a whale of an epic story about the pursuit of a big fish, nay, about life itself.

A fascinating autobiography of one of the greatest statesman of the 20th century. Churchill speaks of his very early childhood and his youth, much before his days of parliament and becoming PM, etc.

I didn’t think I’d be so interested, but I’m very taken by the style and accounting of his early influences, and especially his days in the British cantonements in India toward the end of the nineteenth century (late 1800s), and his accounts in the Boer War in South Africa at the turn of the twentieth century– in which many an Indian served as part of the British army. My own ancestors were known to have served in this war, I am told, which makes it even more interesting for me on a personal front.

It is interesting how on more than one occasion, Churchill laments his lack of a formal higher (academic) education owing to his enlisting in the Army at a young age. Those deficiencies, if any, notwithstanding, he builds a reputation as a brilliant war correspondent well before he even enters politics.

The Old Man and the Sea is a magnificent novella, beautiful in its simplicity of the story of an old man and a big fish.

It is about one last chance to prove oneself. It is a story about human friendship that is not a respector of age and station. It is a story about the indomitable human spirit to conquer nature. It is about the beauty and fury of Nature itself, and all that it holds within its power, both humans and fish alike. It is about taking pride in the work of your hands. And about the great circle of life.It is also about loss, and the value of bearing it well. It is about exercising restraint in telling a tall tale– a fish-tale, if you will!

Amazing how a small story can speak to so many things about the human condition. Thank you, Mr. Hemingway!