The End of the Affair

Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is Catholic guilt somersaults for a lapse Catholic reader. Much like his novels set in more exotic locales, infidelity, guilt, love, relationships, and events of a more momentous impact such as World War II figure prominently, but this is perhaps, the most intimate account of doomed lovers struggling with love, faith, and morality in a bourgeois setting, with both God's love (agape) and human interpersonal notions of love battling it out. Although I prefer Greene's non-Britain settings, it was refreshing to see his somewhat expected character types in London during the War as the backdrop for a conflict of epic scale (God's existence, what does it mean to love another person or experience the love of God) just as the humor and autobiographical elements of the novel reveal more of Greene's comic sensibilities and willingness to perhaps mock himself however lightly. Even someone writing about romance and the search for human connection knew how to use humor effectively in this carefully and richly worded novel, imbued with so much meaning that even some of the superstitious Catholic 'miracle' hints can be forgiven. 

The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy

Douglas Adams is one of those interesting science fiction writers I've only recently come to know. Despite listening to a few episodes of the radio series and watching some of the 1980s TV series, Adams and his approach to science fiction comedy was mostly unknown. However, after reading the first in the trilogy of five novels and nearly done with the second book, one can see his appeal. Adams is a master of absurd and, to me at least, deliberately somewhat poor writing for the absurdist universe he crafted. The second novel, Restaurant At the End of the Universe, excels with its existential and time travel humor. Highly recommend.

Saint Louis Blues Louis Style

A definitive take on W.C. Handy's classic, "Saint Louis Blues." Handy's use of the habanera rhythm illustrates how "Latin" music has been part of the jazz repertoire for over 100 years, and part of the reason why I annoyed by the ways in which some define "Latin Jazz" as a genre or sub-genre of jazz. Moreover, Armstrong's honking orchestra did in the 1920s what came to define early R&B so well with artists like Louis Jordan.

Mona Lisa Overdrive

Mona Lisa Overdrive is perhaps the least successful of the Sprawl trilogy. Combining the framework of Count Zero with some of the opaque prose of Neuromancer, this novel feels more disjointed or jarring, although Gibson leaving the most intriguing aspect of the matrix for the final pages aligns so well with some of the religious themes of the novel, especially the paradigm of the matrix and Vodou. Nonetheless, one should be glad Gibson included Japanese characters of importance here, mainly Kumiko, since Japan and Japanese ideas are central to his vision. Furthermore, the reader is treated to more of the Sprawl, London in this unusual setting, and New Jersey and Florida. The bleak conditions and unequal society depicted are quite harrowing, but fit perfectly with the previous two novels in establishing Gibson's world. Moreover, the return of Molly makes this required reading, albeit less victorious than Neuromancer. Nothing is as it seems, and perhaps one will never know the first causes.