Candy by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg

While perhaps best known for writing screenplays (Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider, Casino Royale, etc), Terry Southern wrote several novels and essays. In the 50s he hung around in New York with the likes of Robert Frank, Larry Rivers, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and so on. During that time he wrote a short story "about a girl in Greenwich Village who got involved with a hunchback because she was such a good Samaritan" (that particular description of it comes from this interview). Several people, including the poet Mason Hoffenberg, felt this girl should have more adventures, and the two began writing alternating chapters that grew into the novel Candy.

Candy is loosely based on Voltaire's Candide, written as a kind of spoof on the dirty books being published at the time. Candy Christian is a buxom teenager who more or less spends the novel being raped by various people, including her uncle. I realize this sounds horrific and offensive, but it somehow manages to be funny and zany in a dated 1960s sort of way. I was introduced to a number of ridiculous words for "vagina" that I'd never heard before, including "honeypot" and "lamb pit." And yet, I think I liked the book. One of my favorite lines:

"'Uh-huh,' said the cynical cop. 'Dr. Caligari, I suppose.'
Candy didn't like this kind of flippant reference to an art film."

No Exit and Three Other Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre

Of all the books I've read over the years by Sartre, I think "No Exit" is probably the one that I was most engaged by. It's probably his most accessible, and maybe I was intrigued by the "Hell is other people" aspect. Though apparently that line has been misunderstood for years. According to Sartre:

"'Hell is other people' has always been misunderstood. It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because. . . when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves, . . . we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever I say about myself someone else’s judgment always enters. Into whatever I feel within myself someone else’s judgment enters. . . . But that does not at all mean that one cannot have relations with other people. It simply brings out the capital importance of all other people for each one of us."

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre

This is, as far as I can remember, my first foray into spy novels, and it's a pretty good one--Graham Greene said it was "the best spy story I have ever read." Alec Leamas, a British agent in early Cold War Berlin, is called back to London by Control after his last double agent is killed. Instead of being dismissed, he is given a rather dangerous assignment: play the part of a disgraced agent, a defector, as part of a plot to bring down Mundt, an assassin for the Abteilung, the East German Secret Service.

The novel is of course suspenseful and entertaining, but it also seemed somewhat more literary than I had expected. It's well written and carefully plotted, and Leamas is more of an anti-hero, hard drinking and disillusioned, than some kind of slick action hero. Good stuff all around.

Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom was a star high school basketball player, which was pretty much the highlight of his life. It's all been downhill from there. Now he's a little older, and his job and marriage are miserable and unfulfilling. One day on a whim he gets in his car and keeps driving. Except then he turns right back, but instead of going home shacks up with someone else for a few months, while a priest keeps trying to get him to reconcile with his pitiful wife.

I bought this book in a used bookstore in Kansas City, along with a stack of other old paperbacks. The owner commented that this one was "excellent" (the only other title that received a comment besides that was George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, which is allegedly also "excellent").

Other than one short story, I'd never read John Updike before, and I had a really hard time getting through this book. I couldn't stand any of the characters, except for maybe Ruth, the former prostitute. (Which I suppose doesn't necessarily make for a bad book, but that wasn't my experience this time.) Rabbit's wife is completely helpless. I pictured her as some kind of a pathetic blob of a human being, and quite frankly, I wish Rabbit had kept running that very first day and hadn't turned back. Although at the same time I didn't particularly like Rabbit either.

I have to assume Updike's work developed over time considering his literary reputation but this book did not make me want to read anything else of his.

By the way, I had no idea this had been made into a movie. Starring James Caan, no less!

Three Beds in Manhattan by Georges Simenon

One of Simenon's romans durs (the current NYRB edition has been retitled to Three Bedrooms in Manhattan for some reason), in which two lonely and desperate people meet late one night at an all-hours diner in New York. Together they move from one bar to another, and then from bedroom to bedroom around the city (a hotel, hers, and then his). You can almost visualize the thick haze of smoke, whiskey, and desperation present throughout the book. The writing is hard, unsentimental, and spare--romantic and yet not. The noirish elements might almost be a bit much--it definitely doesn't live up to The Widow, which is still my favorite.

Simenon's many praises.

How to Talk Dirty and Influence People by Lenny Bruce

I picked up this book about a month ago in a used bookstore in Kansas City and the pages were so brittle that it literally started to crumble in my hands as I read it (hence the scotch tape on the lower left).

Published originally by Playboy at the behest of Hugh Hefner himself, this is the autobiography of legendary comedian Lenny Bruce, written just a few years before he died at age 40. It starts off with a little bit about his youth and stint in the army, but mostly focuses on his obscenity trials, including a few maddening courtroom transcripts. Parts of the book feel slightly dated, which is inevitable, but it still made me laugh.

It also made me glad that I didn't live through that era. (Watching Mad Men has the same effect.) As much as I'd love to have been able to see the Velvet Underground play Max's Kansas City or buy property in Manhattan when it was cheap (or see Lenny Bruce perform stand-up, for that matter), it's also nice to live in a world where you can say "cocksucker" in a public forum without worrying about being arrested.

The Magic Christian by Terry Southern

This very short, somewhat dated-feeling, yet amusing novel is about an eccentric billionaire whose only goal in life is to use his vast fortunes to create disorder, and prove that people will do anything for money, no matter how degrading or distasteful--even crawl into a pit of steaming offal. This is a man who really likes not just to piss people off, but to completely mystify them in the process--kind of a mindfuck, if you will.

I love this cover, how Ringo Starr just blends right into the wallpaper. His character was created solely for the movie adaptation of this book (it was written solely for Ringo, in fact), so it actually makes sense that he's sort of nonexistent, as he doesn't appear once within its pages.

Apparently Peter Sellers (also seen on the cover) loved this book so much that he sent it to Stanley Kubrick, who was inspired to hire Southern to write the screenplay for Dr. Strangelove. Good instincts, Peter.

The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller

Just as war was breaking out in Europe, Henry Miller went to Greece, traveling around the country with the writer Lawrence Durrell, who lived there at the time. This account of his journey there is brilliant and intense with his feeling for the country and its people. As he describes it, "Greece is the home of the gods; they may have died but their presence still makes itself felt."

I love what he says he looks for in his travel accommodations: "I like hotels which are second or third rate, which are clean but shabby, which have seen better days, which have an aroma of the past." Words to live by!

Funeral Rites by Jean Genet

This is the first and only book I've ever read by Jean Genet. I've been meaning to read A Thief's Journal for awhile now but for whatever reason never got around to it. I became particularly interested a number of years ago when one of my college classmates was assigned to do a paper on it and was so offended by the content that she asked the teacher for another assignment (and was denied).

After reading this I think I might have an inkling why (although at the same time it seems silly to make such a fuss over a little explicit gay sex). Both sensual and brutal, Funeral Rites follows Genet's grief for his lover Jean, killed in the Resistance during World War II, and his perverse attraction to the collaborator Riton. As the cover copy on a later edition states, it is a "dark meditation on the mirror images of love and hate, sex and death."

I love how the cover has no title or author--just this great photograph of Genet taken by Brassai. (I've included the spine in the above image as well).

Maigret S'Amuse and Maigrez Chez le Coroner by Georges Simenon

I recently spotted this pair of French editions of two Inspector Maigret novels by Georges Simenon, and even though I don't know the language I loved the cover art, not to mention the coordinating aspect, so much that I couldn't help buying them. The iconic silhouette of the pipe, the man on the back, the rings of smoke. Maybe I'll teach myself French so I can read them. (Probably not.)

If you open the book and lay it face down it looks like Maigret is smoking his pipe. Pretty awesome.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

This is a classic example of a Southern gothic novel. John Singer, a deaf and mute man whose closest friend is sent to a mental hospital, becomes a confidant for various outcasts--a lonely teenage girl, an alcoholic socialist, a black doctor who is estranged from his family--in a 1930s Georgia mill town. Each one seems to believe that Singer understands them as they pour their hearts out to him. He may be a good listener but he really cares only for one man, his hospitalized friend. It's been years since I read this but I still remember how dark and depressing yet powerful this novel is.

I bought this copy for about a dollar or two from one of those tables that are always set up near NYU. They always have the best stuff for next to nothing!

The Holy Terrors by Jean Cocteau

This disturbing novel from French surrealist Jean Cocteau concerns two siblings who isolate themselves from the world as they grow up, out of touch with reality, enveloping themselves in the fantasy world they've created for themselves. But as they grow older, the fantasy is shattered when they try to involve others in their secret games.

The book is illustrated with 20 drawings by Cocteau.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

I found this old Penguin UK edition of Lord of the Flies not too long ago and decided to pick it up. I haven't read it since I was in high school but I remember it as a powerful allegory on human nature, and I kind of want to read it again to see how it holds up in my mind. Interestingly enough, it seems that the book was a bit of a flop upon initial publication and actually went out of print for awhile, until it went on to become a bestseller in the early 60s, required reading for just about every high-schooler for decades to come.

I almost typed "Penguin Classics" in the previous paragraph but realized that at the time this book was printed it was a fairly new book--not yet a Classic. Kind of weird to read his bio on the back of the book as if he were a contemporary writer, still alive today.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I read this book on my own when I was in college, and I must say that it was not nearly as daunting as it seemed like it would be. While it is in part a novel of ideas, it is also a psychological thriller, a glimpse inside the mind of a murderer, and I can honestly say I found it to be a gripping read.

This edition has a supplement in the center that provides a "pictorial background of plot highlights" (for instance, the above "disreputable Russian hats"). I'm not sure how this is supposed to help the reader--is the inability to visualize a historically accurate 19th-century Russia that much of a hindrance?

I like the picture quiz at the end.

Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott

This 1884 novella was written as a satire on the social hierarchy of Victorian culture. The noteworthy part is that it takes place in a two-dimensional world occupied by geometric figures, line segments, and regular polygons.
The narrator, a "humble Square" is visited by a three-dimensional Sphere who introduces him to the world of Spaceland. Once his mind is opened to the possibility of new dimensions, he tries to convince the Sphere of the theoretical existence of a fourth spatial dimension. Offended, the Sphere returns him to Flatland in disgrace.


I really wanted to like this book. The concept is so nerdy that it's awesome, and there are all these great mathematical line drawings throughout. But when you come down to it, I'm really just not a math person.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Written in Virginia Woolf's stream-of-consciousness style, To the Lighthouse is divided into three sections. The first and longest takes place over the course of two days at the Ramsay family's summer home off the coast of Scotland. The second, shortest section occurs over the course of many years, signifying the passage of time (in fact, it's called "Time Passes"), and the last section comprises one afternoon in which the family, years later, returns to its long-neglected vacation spot. I love this book, though it makes me a little sad just thinking about it--the quiet way that Woolf expresses how things change over time, how you can wistfully look back at a summer long ago and reflect on how much has happened since then, at how different your life has come to be. Heartbreaking, really.

L'étranger by Albert Camus

This was my mother's copy of the classic existential novel, which she read for a French literature class in college. She hadn't realized she would have to read all the books in French when she signed up, and only stayed in the class because if she dropped it they would have to cancel the class for lack of students.

I've heard it's a good book to read in French for a beginner. I'm a bit too much of a beginner to try though (that is, non French speaker).

She's taken a lot of notes in the margins.

The Physicists by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

I read most of this book in the stacks at the Pratt library, while I was supposed to be shelving. Hey, everyone did it--I was still more productive than most student employees.

As for the book, it's a satiric play by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt, in which the world’s greatest physicist, Johann Wilhelm Möbius, is in a madhouse, surrounded by two other scientists: one who thinks he is Einstein, another who believes he is Newton.

1984 by George Orwell

Next up is a copy of another classic novel by George Orwell: his final work, 1984. I found this old Penguin UK paperback in a used bookstore in Tucson, and even though I already had a copy of the book, I couldn't resist picking up this perfect example of the classic Penguin design. I strangely like how there was a time when all of Penguin's paperbacks looked virtually the same--you could always tell a Penguin when you saw one.

This year marked the 60th anniversary of the publication of 1984, and I got to work on a few projects commemorating this event, including the following video, a fake commercial for Victory coffee (I even make a cameo appearance later on). Totally silly, but it was fun to work on.

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Like many of his works, Kurt Vonnegut's second novel The Sirens of Titan features elements of science fiction. The richest, luckiest man on Earth embarks on a journey that takes him from Earth to Mars to Mercury, back to Earth, and finally to Saturn's moon, Titan, where he again meets the man ostensibly responsible for the turn of events that have befallen him. The aliens from the planet Tralfamador, which appears in many of Vonnegut's later works, particularly Slaughterhouse-5, play a role as well.

But the novel is not a typical science fiction novel--in fact, despite the aliens and interplanetary travel, it's not really science fiction at all, but rather pure satire, using those plot elements as more of a means to freely tell the story without any worldly hindrances.