Gravity's Rainbow

There was no Pulitzer Prize for Fiction awarded in 1974, despite the fact that the judges for that award unanimously selected Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.  Pulitzer's advisory committee decided that it was better if there was no winner.  There was no formal statement, but apparently during deliberations words used to describe the work included "unreadable", "turgid", "overwritten", and "obscene".  Gravity's Rainbow did share the National Book Award and its reputation among critics seems to have only improved over time.  I side with the advisory committee.

John Adams

John Adams is the second book I've read by David McCullough. It was one of the fastest selling non-fiction books in history and made into a mini-series by HBO.  Like 1776, the other book I've read by this author, John Adams is a highly engaging read that draws the reader in and makes historical figures come alive.

At the same time, McCullough is a bit too much of a fan and comes across, at times, as an apologist rather than a historian.  Adams was a great diplomat  who was fundamental to the birth of our country and, in many ways, exemplified the values and integrity that are often ascribed to and rarely found among America's founding fathers.  All available evidence indicates that he had an amazing relationship with his wife and integrity in his personal dealings.

Adams was far from perfect in certain areas.  He was an absentee vice president, which was fairly excusable given the nature of the job.  But he continued this trend as president and his administration was ineffective as a result.  He couldn't effectively run the government by correspondence.  He was enormously critical of the intolerance and ego he perceived in others and had a complete blind spot to these qualities in himself.  Adams would nurse grudges based on any slight for years and perceive conspiracies when there was no basis.  To be fair, the conspiracies he believed were basically nothing compared to those his successor perceived everywhere.  It was a fairly common occurrence at the time.

This is an enjoyable book, but you should go in expecting to find some glossing over of Adams less desirable qualities.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

When I read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers it didn't strike me as good or bad so much as extremely depressing.  The book is mainly about John Singer, a deaf man who can't speak and lives in a mill town in 1930s Georgia.  It opens with his best and only friend being sent away to an asylum and gives the reader a window into life in a small town in the deep south as Singer struggles to make a new life alone.

While I would certainly say that the depressing tone of the book is its most notable feature, I would still admit that it is quite good.  McCullers makes the downtrodden, lost, scared, and depressed members of this town feel very real.  I have complained in the past about bizarre characters that I found it impossible to relate to.  For some reason the bizarre acts of the characters in this book didn't bother me at all.  Their actions may not be logical, but it's clear that they are coping with their circumstances loneliness in the only way that they can think to.  They're driven by a desperation that has little consideration for reason.

A good read that I'd recommend, but certainly not a happy one.

The Sot-Weed Factor

I have been pleasantly surprised by the fact that relatively few of the books that I've read have been so bad that it was painful for me to keep reading.  Unfortunately, I still have had a few of those, and one of them was the Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth.  Like another of my least favorite books, Don Quixote, Barth's novel is a satire.  While Don Quixote was intended as a commentary on orthodoxy, The Sot-Weed Factor intended to make light of the origins of America through the use of licentious and scatological humor.  The full title goes into a little more detail on the subject matter: "The Sot-Weed Factor: Or, a Voyage to Maryland. A Satyr. In which is describ'd, the Laws, Government, Courts and Constitutions of the Country; and also the Buildings, Feats, Frolics, Entertainments and Drunken Humours of the Inhabitants of that Part of America."

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

The latest book I read that I have yet to review is The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro.  This book is not for someone looking for a light read.  It's over 1,300 pages, which made me particularly annoyed that it's not available for Kindle.  It's a highly critical biography of Robert Moses, a man I'd never heard of before reading this book.  He was ostensibly nothing more than a particularly ambitious park builder.  In the author's opinion, he single-handedly fundamentally shaped New York City's infrastructure, pretty much always for the worse, by bulldozing every branch of the municipal and state governments and even occasionally dictated to presidents.