The novel’s storyline of international intrigue doesn’t interest me nearly as much as the power of the writing itself. I am hooked immediately by the narrative voice and Didon’s skillful style.  It looks easy but is not.  The parade of paragraphs is far from conventional. It is successfully non-sentimental, as we are led to believe the author prefers things. But I don’t find it cold. It’s unique, maybe hip, and at times choppy and not always linear. Didion has the artfulness to pull it off and make the prose sound superb. If it sounds at times disjointed and loopy then it fits the world it describes.

Some of us really like opening chapters that sound notes or chords of the music that will run through the rest of the novel ahead. I’m well set up and tuned in, after reading the concise compilation of mood and circumstance presented in C1. It’s a poem and a prelude and a functional opener in only 500 words or so. It’s something a writer can study and learn from.

Didion is probably more well known for her non-fiction and essays. Of the ones I’ve read, “Miami” is my favorite, for all the light the author provides on the history of Cuba’s association with the city. The White Album is on my list to do. I’ve read one or two other Didion novels, and solely for its unique style and perfect language, “The Last Thing” is the best I’ve experienced so far.

On the basic level this is the story of Jed Martin’s artistic phases, his romances, his successes and failures, and his relationship with his father. This thread persists to the end of the book, even though part 3 strays and becomes its own self-standing mystery story.

Houellebecq cleverly includes himself as a character, a bit part at first and later more active and prominent. He is hired by Jed Martin to write a descriptive chronology of his works. This device gives the author an added dimension to his ability to present all things Martin. And many things Houellebecq (the writer’s home, his habits, his diet, and eventually the stench of his own murdered body).

My favorite thing in the novel (which has some eye-opening sections about art and the gallery business and a particularly terrific set of discussions about William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites) is the interaction between Jed and his father. Houellebecq can be hard-shelled, sometimes aloof, but he got the son and dying father part down pat.

My least favorite thing (and this is at the ‘Picky’ measure line in the jigger) is the principle character’s name. Jed Martin sounds like a hillbilly name, and even if younger readers who never watched Paw and Granny don’t get that, well, how about  the fact that Jed sounds too much like Jeb.

Other items of note:  the women interests, Genivieve and Olga, are no mere stick figures but instead real and memorable. The more involved and/or subtle descriptions of France and the French way of life are likely best appreciated by those who know France, and since I don’t, I skated through much of that stuff. Jed’s agents and curator characters were more auxiliary than alive, and in keeping with the allegorical patterns in the novel, that fits.  It’s the art and the work which are real and of the heart, while the presentations and sales are secondary.  Finally, another interesting twist is that Jed Martin is the antithesis of the financially failed artist we’re usually stuck with in stories. Everything he produces turns to gold; he becomes immensely wealthy and in high demand.

His shorter and more mundane novel “Whatever” remains my favorite. That one portrays a bourgeois world of business writers and software folks that I can identify with more readily.  “Map and Territory” is on a far grander scale, dealing in a world of  wealth and endeavors far beyond the sphere of us ordinary grubs.  It is nevertheless a very good novel and not a pretentious one. It took me a while to read it because each paragraph has weight. Some parts were dead-on witty and perceptive. The book has a more complicated allegorical level, which is worth further contemplation. One day.

The location and title of every book in my palatial office is fixed in my memory. Sometimes I give them a cutesy nonsensical associative phrase to help me remember. Like, Norman Mailer’s hardback is rubbing against Amy Hempel’s front matter.

Sure I do.  Not.

I forgot to say that this book about memory training is not in my collection. I had the good sense to check it out of the library rather than spring for it on Amazon. And remembered to take it back nine days before it was due.

This is an odd thing to be reading. It’s a 1930 British novel discovered in a roundabout way.  I liked Alduos Huxley’s novel Chrome Yellow and searched Amazon for something similar: an early century comedy of manners, or a compact novel that presents sort of a claustrophobically attached circle of people. Preferably portrayed with and without mercy. A style that bares their naked motives on stage, like Shakespeare would, or Dickens.

It’s interesting how Waugh makes characters and scenes so alive with so little effort. There is not much accompanying narrative to describe who they are or where they are; just enough to be efficient  The story moves via dialog, often as sharp as a razor. Waugh also has a knack for profiling characters by their names (Miss Runcible, Mr. Outrage, Fanny Throbbing). A few pages in and I’m on the boat with them, seasick and singing hymns for the benefit of Mrs. Ape.

The Angels (named after Virtues) stay aft on the ship and in second class on the train. We’ll have to see what becomes of them. Waugh became a converted Catholic around the time this book came out. He was 27.   Guilt?  It didn’t stop him from writing some (reportedly) even more scathing books afterwards.

Report in progress:

• 1st night’s reading derailed by the pages and pages of italicized stuff.
• next day, things got a little better, typeset and story-wise, but noticed the narrator overstates most everything, thereby narrowing any chance for the reader to think independently.
• wondered if the timing wasn’t right to read this book, moody reader thing.
• the overstating, which I thought might just be a temporary style to induce a breathlessly excited tone for mundane events (full, deep cups of coffee?), doesn’t stop and keeps going and going and going…
• Skimmed far ahead and read the same thing I read earlier, repeated a different way.  The content’s padded? Maybe there’s a reason but maybe not.

(to be continued after some eyedrops, a beer and two Advils)

• Back.  Tried again, but… obviously a major conflict in style appreciation. Sorry. I will try to simplify it in five words instead of five hundred: I can’t read this novel.

Principle character and narrator Tony Webster is in his early sixties. The being British part doesn’t get in the way. We can relate. Tony is a mixed bag of deliberations and compulsions – he buys stuff to descale his tea kettle and, in the spirit of older men with little to lose, is eagerly willing to make a fool of himself over women.

Veronica Ford becomes the object of his obsession, which makes us shake our head with pity because she is such a hollow bitch. It is her mother who proves to be the most interesting female character (wish there had been more of her). Tony’s ex-wife Margaret is portrayed as all-knowing and a bit too precious. If they had ever taken that late-post-divorce romantic weekend together, I would have thrown the book down.

The first part of the book has a prep school feel to it, and the second part zips quickly into middle-age.  Barnes via Tony presents endless observations and little theories about life as an aging idle dude. It is the reader’s task to separate the hoodoo from the chaff…for Tony is far from being a reliable narrator. Tony can be astute and pretty damn dense at the same time.

Interesting and detailed depiction of email as a role player in today’s relationships.

Literary grade A, no wasted words, fast and efficient. I read it in two sittings. Not sure how much of it will stick with me as memorable.

Elmore Leonard wrote pretty damn well in 1970 when he put out the Western novel Valdez is Coming. You can see some Hemingway influence in it. His style is clean and unaffected and he makes use of interior monolog to let his characters ponder ethical situations. There are honest and deceptively skilled descriptive scenes that take place in plains and forests and mountains. The action involving Valdez and his love interest borrows straight-faced from Roberto and Maria’s sleeping bag sequence in For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Leonard doesn’t slow us down with transitions and segues. The narrative string presses forward. Both of these books end with satisfaction, yet the endings are wry and abrupt, minimal without violins or fireworks. (the ending in Stick took me by surprise, assisted by the side-effect of reading it on a Kindle that showed the book 80% complete – turned out the last 20% of the kindle file was promotional copy about Leonard’s other books).

His characters are vivid: some evil, some stupid, some sexy, some heroic. There are loyal madams, allied giants, and converts who back the hero. There is vengeance. Some characters reappear and drift between novels.

These are features he has maintained and perfected decades later in his crime novels.

In Stick, Ernest Stickley is a hybrid good guy-bad guy (he also appears in Swag). On the loose in South Florida, he falls among some rich and fast company. There is no real hero, no girl to hold in veneration. It’s a small study in corruption, men and women alike (the women in this one have appetites while the men are into games). Things move at a good clip, and while some have criticized Stick for being plotless, it has enough action and character study to make it top-shelf stuff.