GOD BLESS YOU DR.KEVORKIAN by KURT VONNEGUT

This meaningful satire was written in the late 90s , an excellent primer to the lessons of the questions Vonnegut posed in the previous decades.

This review gives a synopsis of the novella. 
 

In God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Vonnegut skips back and forth between life and the Afterlife as if the difference between them were rather slight. In thirty odd "interviews," Vonnegut trips down "the blue tunnel to the pearly gates" in the guise of a roving reporter for public radio, conducting interviews: with Salvatore Biagini, a retired construction worker who died of a heart attack while rescuing his schnauzer from a pit bull, with John Brown, still smoldering 140 years after his death by hanging, with William Shakespeare, who rubs Vonnegut the wrong way, and with socialist and labor leader Eugene Victor Debs, one of Vonnegut's personal heroes. What began as a series of ninety-second radio interludes for WNYC, New York City's public radio station, evolved into this provocative collection of musings about who and what we live for, and how much it all matters in the end. From the original portrait by his friend Jules Feiffer that graces the cover, to a final entry from Kilgore Trout, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian remains a joy. - See more at: http://www.buffalolib.org/vufind/Record/1042863/Reviews#sthash.jMhHH7U5.dpuf

In God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Vonnegut skips back and forth between life and the Afterlife as if the difference between them were rather slight. In thirty odd "interviews," Vonnegut trips down "the blue tunnel to the pearly gates" in the guise of a roving reporter for public radio, conducting interviews: with Salvatore Biagini, a retired construction worker who died of a heart attack while rescuing his schnauzer from a pit bull, with John Brown, still smoldering 140 years after his death by hanging, with William Shakespeare, who rubs Vonnegut the wrong way, and with socialist and labor leader Eugene Victor Debs, one of Vonnegut's personal heroes. What began as a series of ninety-second radio interludes for WNYC, New York City's public radio station, evolved into this provocative collection of musings about who and what we live for, and how much it all matters in the end. From the original portrait by his friend Jules Feiffer that graces the cover, to a final entry from Kilgore Trout, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian remains a joy. - See more at: http://www.buffalolib.org/vufind/Record/1042863/Reviews#sthash.jMhHH7U5.dpuf

In God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Vonnegut skips back and forth between life and the Afterlife as if the difference between them were rather slight. In thirty odd "interviews," Vonnegut trips down "the blue tunnel to the pearly gates" in the guise of a roving reporter for public radio, conducting interviews: with Salvatore Biagini, a retired construction worker who died of a heart attack while rescuing his schnauzer from a pit bull, with John Brown, still smoldering 140 years after his death by hanging, with William Shakespeare, who rubs Vonnegut the wrong way, and with socialist and labor leader Eugene Victor Debs, one of Vonnegut's personal heroes. What began as a series of ninety-second radio interludes for WNYC, New York City's public radio station, evolved into this provocative collection of musings about who and what we live for, and how much it all matters in the end. From the original portrait by his friend Jules Feiffer that graces the cover, to a final entry from Kilgore Trout, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian remains a joy. - See more at: http://www.buffalolib.org/vufind/Record/1042863/Reviews#sthash.jMhHH7U5.dpuf

In God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Vonnegut skips back and forth between life and the Afterlife as if the difference between them were rather slight. In thirty odd "interviews," Vonnegut trips down "the blue tunnel to the pearly gates" in the guise of a roving reporter for public radio, conducting interviews: with Salvatore Biagini, a retired construction worker who died of a heart attack while rescuing his schnauzer from a pit bull, with John Brown, still smoldering 140 years after his death by hanging, with William Shakespeare, who rubs Vonnegut the wrong way, and with socialist and labor leader Eugene Victor Debs, one of Vonnegut's personal heroes. What began as a series of ninety-second radio interludes for WNYC, New York City's public radio station, evolved into this provocative collection of musings about who and what we live for, and how much it all matters in the end. From the original portrait by his friend Jules Feiffer that graces the cover, to a final entry from Kilgore Trout, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian remains a joy. - See more at: http://www.buffalolib.org/vufind/Record/1042863/Reviews#sthash.jMhHH7U5.dpuf

This interview from the period just before the Iraq War gives a detailed insight on the concepts and thoughts of Vonnegut on the lessons of the past and the challenges of the present.

THE IDIOT by FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

The appeal of this Novel is the grand concept of bringing to the outside World the Holy Russian tradition of the Holy Fool that can , if only Russia itself believes in them rather than being embroiled in wasteful Francophile dreams , can bring to the forefront the Slavic Nation and Spiritual vision that can redeem not only Russia , but the World.Nothing less than a Slavic solution for a Slavic problem.

Alas the execution , through a mixture of financial constraints at the time in Dostoyevskys life and the flaw of any concept that brings a Manifest Destiny in a Nation becoming a self-appointed Spiritual Guardian of the Races , does not , and could never , match the vision.Technically , Dostoyevsky would work on a single draft whilst his previous only copy would be getting printed by the publishers , thus giving him no working copy of the previous installment so that he could get all the threads of the story together in a coherent order.The supreme biographer of Dostoyevsky , Joseph Franks calls it right when he states the book is "perhaps the most original of Dostoevsky's great novels, and certainly the most artistically uneven of them all,".That statement very much comes across as you admire the incredible undertaking whilst also regret the forced , awkward rush of something that deserves the artist getting the space needed to proclaim such a monument to the world.
Many portions he dictated as he walked around the Room , not knowing himself the direction the work would take , and if he did decide to change tact he had no way of recalling the already printed previous draft from the publishers if he , as he done many times with other Novels , wanted to change direction with the plot or characters.

This excellent review by AS Byatt gives a very good account of the strains and stresses Dostoyevsky was under as well as the concept behind the Book and why , despite its execution , it is regarded as a masterpiece of sheer effort of an artist trying to speak The Spirit to the Masses.

"I think The Idiot to be a masterpiece - flawed, occasionally tedious or overwrought, like many masterpieces - but a fact of world literature just as important as the densely dramatic Brothers Karamazov or the brilliantly subtle and terrifying Devils . In those two novels, as in the simpler Crime and Punishment , Dostoevsky had plots and political and religious ideas working together. In The Idiot he is straining to grasp a story and a character converting themselves from Gothic to Saint's Life on the run. What makes the greatness is double -the character of the prince, and a powerful series of confrontations with death. The true subject of The Idiot is the imminence and immanence of death. The image of these things is Holbein's portrait of Christ taken down from the cross, a copy of which hangs in Rogozhin's house, and which was seen by both Dostoevsky and Prince Myshkin in Basle. It represents, we are told, a dead man who is totally flesh without life, damaged and destroyed, with no hint of a possible future resurrection. The form of the novel is shaped by the inexorable outbreak of Dostoevsky's deepest preoccupations. It is the quality of Dostoevsky's doubt and fear that is the intense religious emotion in this novel - to which Lawrence was no doubt reacting."

NORWEGIAN WOOD by HARUKI MURAKAMI

Born at a time when Japan had undergone a humiliating aftermath after WW2 the Japanese most famous writer was a Nationalist who looked to the Imperial Age , Murakami turned his back on that and studied European literature and revelled in music thus taking a path into a World in which Memory , Dreams , Magical Realism and Reality which makes a theme that has universal appeal across all cultures and languages.
"Memory is a funny thing" could almost be a motto for what Murakamis work is all about.Norwegian Wood became and still is one of his biggest successes.

It is fitting a Book written about his student day memories should be reviewed by a student


This Guardian piece gives more depth to the theme of the Book. 

" Haruki Murakami's novels have gained immense popularity because they guide readers through some of life's darkest and most dangerous territory – the cold, dark winter woods of death and grief and abuse – and do so with wisdom and warmth."

The video below is a look into the social and emotional journey of Murakami and his larege following of readers.

A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by JOHN KENNEDY OTOOLE

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."is a quote by Jonathan Swift which inspired by title of this posthumous tale , a debut book that has since become a popular novel in the Catch-22 type mould.
As a posthumous released work it has much merit going for it potential wise but it has a very much  proto-type project feel about it.

This review by jacr100 is a very apt summation of the readers experience.

"If anyone is confused by that title, I’d better explain: I’ve been pondering why the majority of previous reviewers have either loved or hated this book. I think one reason is that you have to really engage with the character of Ignatius J. Reilly in order to expose the funny side of the novel. Admittedly his lofty sense of self-importance and heedless misanthropy won’t make this easy, not forgetting his predilection for hot dogs, burping, etc; but if you bear with him, the scorn he pours forth on virtually everyone he comes into contact with does start to make you chuckle, particularly since his anachronistic language and imaginative insults sound positively alien amidst the casual slang of his New Orleans acquaintances.
There are some genuinely funny moments, and the storyline is structured along the lines of classical farce drama, with the unfortunate Ignatius spiralling downwards into an ever more precarious position, both socially and financially. Not that he cares, mind you – he has only entered the world of work temporarily and under coercive pressure from his mother, biding his time until his great social commentary modelled on the philosophy of Boethius propels him to prominence. I agree with one other reviewer that it is this latter project that makes the book a little turgid at times, when Ignatius casts down pages of vitriolic invective in his diary. These sections aren’t boring, but neither are they that funny, and the reader might be forgiven for skipping them to get back to Ignatius loudly criticising the latest film, or condescendingly mocking whomever he encounters that day.
Anyone who is looking for a deep social satire, portrait of New Orleans, or critical insight into the reality of the American Dream probably won’t be too enamoured with this book, since it achieves these very subtly, against a backdrop of farce and characters who in many cases are exaggerated or one-dimensional. But if you approach this book not expecting – or even wanting – to discover the psychologies or ‘truths’ of human existence, and instead begin with an open mind just large to accommodate a near-obese, pompous buffoon with aims to change the society he despises for its ignorance and avarice, you might be in for a pleasant surprise."

The profile of the Book increased when it and the writer received a Pulitzer prize , as this reviewer in the video suggests sometimes prize giving bodies "some of these prize-giving bodies try to prove how much smarter they are than you and I".

But last word should go to someone who was profoundly affected by the Book and not the cynics.

"'A Confederacy of Dunces' is a story of loneliness amid crowds, a comedy that hurts. At the centre is an anti-hero named Ignatius J Reilly. If Don Quixote had been thrust into the underbelly of modern New Orleans, this is exactly who he would have become. Hypochodriac, melancholic, a walking catastrophe, an unlikely philosopher in a world where few have patience for abstractions. With his clumsy ways, tweed trousers and inexcusable bluntness, he doesn't fit in, entering social contexts with his lumbering, elephantine fashion. The reader cannot decide whether to pity or admire him, but loves him all the same. As Walter Percy said, he is "in violent revolt against the entire modern age.""

SOUL MOUNTAIN by GAO XINGJIAN

Looking back in China , a little like in Spain under Franco or South America under the military dictators , is not merely an innocent reflection on times past , it has to be a journey in which the reality of the past has to be a shadowworld , a universe peopled by spectral beings in a ghostly world where memories merge into unreal metaphorical paintings on a canvas magic-reality masquerading as myth over experience.

It is this necessary approach even for a Chinese writer living outside his homeland ,just as Spanish and Latin American writers living outwith the past , cannot directly pass comment on the previous which makes some criticism of the Book being a fragmented jumble of memory that never crystallises into a coherent narrative a little unfair.

In saying all this the Book does not really have a "soul" of its own that captures the reader with a vision for a better alternative , more it comes across as a sad lament of a man who himself has lost touch with his inner soul.

This review by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF for the New York Times gives a fair assessment of the Novel

"Back to the question, though, of what ''Soul Mountain'' is about: every reader might answer the question differently, but to me at least it was ultimately less a travelogue than a searching account of an individual's ramblings to himself as he bounced between the oppression of the group and the oppression of loneliness. Escape from the collective is a particularly resonant theme for Chinese intellectuals like Gao, for status and power have always been conferred on Chinese scholars by the state -- typically a repressive one.
The Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 reminded intellectuals, if they needed any such reminder, that the group could turn on them suddenly and ferociously. In those years, teachers and officials would abruptly find themselves paraded in front of a mob and forced to bend down, arms twisted painfully behind their backs, as their colleagues, friends, children and even spouses stepped up to denounce them as spies, counterrevolutionaries or ''stinking'' reactionaries. Those struggle sessions subsided after 1976 but left many people with an enduring fear of political campaigns and mob rule. Perhaps it is not surprising that Gao is drawn to Taoist recluses in the mountains"

MUQTADA AL-SADR AND THE FALL OF IRAQ by PATRICK COBURN

Written at a time when the Shia resistance was consolidating the political landscape and already making Iraq a major Iranian sphere of influence came the military resistance led by Muqtada Al-Sadr which set US forces into a retreat , thus making US planners realise the Military domination of Iraq was already in an unstoppable countdown.

The reason of success for the Shia was that they formed an alternative Government first and then the object of the Political and military resistance was to defeat the Occupation and put the Alternative Government in place.

Patrick Coburn was the first writer of a Book about the young leader Muqtada , this makes it a bit of a , albeit an informed one , rushed job on a fast moving and evolving scene. This review by James Denselow points out some of the weaker construction of the Book.

 "Patrick Cockburn's friend and colleague Robert Fisk once wrote that he saw journalism as `writing the first draft of history'. On the sleeve of Cockburn's latest book on Iraq it states that `this is the first book about Muqtada al-Sadr, the most important political figure in post-occupation Iraq'. The question that arises is did Cockburn have enough material to write a biography of al-Sadr? Or did the gap in knowledge and frenzy in politics surrounding the Iraqi cleric prompt the publishers into pushing Cockburn into writing a first draft instead?

Reading the book one discovers that it is indeed the later. But Cockburn knows Iraq well enough to write a decent background account of the rise of Shia in Iraq that will appeal to those who are unsatisfied with the US official rendering of Muqtada as little more than a renegade. It reads as a coherent narrative heavily laced with journalistic anecdotal evidence to provide a very readable background to one of the `new Iraq's' new politician's.

The difficulty is access to Muqtada himself. Cockburn's experience in the first chapter, where he just manages to avoid death at the hands of the Sadrists, highlights the danger in getting close to him. So despite reading an entire book nominally about him, the reader is still left wondering who the man behind the evolving myth actually is.

Cockburn covers a lot of ground very quickly in the book. He starts with a twelve page introduction to `the Shi'a of Iraq' and races on through the Iran-Iraq War, the subsequent Shia uprising and the various trials and tribulations of Muqtada's family as they walk the deadly tightrope of the Saddam era. The cornerstone of Cockburn's book is to connect the history of the Shia with its relevance today - which is an implicit critique of those who would enter Iraq from an ahistorical perspective. At one point he explains how post-invasion the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani banned chess. Why? because `Yazid was playing chess in his palace in Damascus when the head of Imam Hussein was brought to him' (p.26).

The key focus is on the rise of Muqtada. Cockburn explains his emergence as the response to a vacuum created by an ill-conceived and unimaginative US invasion. The collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime and the inability of the US to replace it allowed the Shia clergy and its mosques, repressed for so long under Saddam, to spring up and take control of vast swathes of local politics. It was the failures of the invasion plan, combined with earlier failures in the West's policy towards Iraq, that set the scene for an environment into which Muqtada would emerge. Cockburn cites the mass impoverishment of Iraqis as an essential precondition for the `swift rise of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr in the early 1990s and his son Muqtada after 2003' (p.107).

Cockburn's short chapters covering lengthy historical events argue that Muqtada was a natural and predictable consequence of the fall of Iraq. The US occupation of Iraq and the initial top-down `Coalition Provisional Authority' (CPA) run by Paul Bremer, could never accept this existence of a contesting authority figure. That Sadr's support was based on a grassroots legitimacy born from the split blood of his own family clashed with CPA's bunkered Green Zone mentality that somehow Washington staffers could build the new Iraq as they liked.

Cockburn is correct when he points out that "the Shia were not, after all, trying to break up Iraq, but get their fair share of power within it" (p.82). Ironically, considering that America considered Iraq's sovereign unity a matter of critical importance, the CPA supported the Iranian backed SCIRI and exiled based Dawa party over a homegrown Sadrist alliance. Muqtada even harnessed what was left of battered Iraqi nationalism and in 2005 offered support to the besieged insurgents in Fallujah.

There is little doubt about the importance of Muqtada al Sadr in the deeply fragmented political landscape of modern Iraq. Cockburn's work is a testimony to this importance, yet you feel that much more will and can be written on one of Iraq's most elusive figures."

Like a revolution in Iran , we find that the Al-Sadr senior leaders under Saddam the " Shia now possessed a clergy and religious organisation that was separate from the State.Potentially it could provide an alternative leadership for the Shia. The death of Al-Sadr Senior meant that the younger Al-Sadr could take this "organisation" in a society that had " no central government in many centuries...explains the strength of non-state agencies."

We also find that the massacre of the communists when Saddam came to power was also accompanied to the slaughter of shias in government and civil service positions whilst the nationalisation of the Baathist regime took business away from shias and into mainly sunni led government.

In this interview Patrick Coburn gives more insight into Muqtada and Iraqi affairs before the pullout.


This article from Counterpunch sees Coburn giving his assessement on the retirement from politics by Al-Sadr in 2014

THE INSULT by RUPERT THOMSON

Rupert Thomson claims in an Interview when he looks back at his body of work he cant even remember writing some of his Books , which tallies with my recollection of reading this Book , i know i did but i cant remember doing so or even recall any meaningful part of it.
I wonder if this is a reflection of the type of Books he writes or if he has sublimely taken the reader into the mind of a Character himself that cannot remember his life and experiences.
In this context this review by Ryan Chapman in Goodreads may be worth a mention in full , though it has to be said to be it is a minority opinion.

"I'd heard such good things about Rupert Thompson. I might try another book down the road, but this one was uniquely terrible, I couldn't even finish it. From the unoriginal, solipsistic narrator to the meandering pace and dearth of any suspense or momentum, I couldn't help but think of the author sitting down every day and arbitrarily picking something new for his protagonist to do. ("Today I'll have him order a pastry!" ... "Today he should meet yet another person who's unexplainably friendly to him even though he's a dick toward everyone!")

If anything, this reminded me of Haruki Murakami, where the entire world happens to the male protagonist, in which he expends minimal effort to woo women, make friends, and embroil himself in vague mysteries. I can only take so many books with bored, listless middle-class guys (who somehow don't need to work a day job) narrating to the reader their peregrinations around the city.

I'm sure the myriad strands of the plot come together, but the central conceit is so weak I couldn't bring myself to care. Also, there are dozens of gaps in logic regarding when Blom can or cannot see (the rules Thompson creates for this only seem to apply when he doesn't feel like describing anything visual). An apt title for the book, indeed."

In this interview Rupert describes a later Book and some of his processes.Including a very profound definition that Novels can teach compassion by making one life on another person or society.

THE FIGHT by NORMAN MAILER

One of the best pieces of sports reportage stems from an original and established genre of deep penetrating psychological workings devised by a generation of writers of which Mailer was a major founding contributor.

"D’Amato the boxing trainer and Doctorow the novelist share the same conception of professionalism, and both believe Mailer meets it. D’Amato, who describes Mailer as “someone who was curious not only about boxing but also about people’s minds,”"

In the Book Mailer becomes an almost spectral presence in a tight scene that comes close to a prose fly on the wall type treatise on the moods , feelings and sensory biography of the participants.

As the reviews point out this style can be seen as the Author giving himself the centre stage as much as the participants , but they miss the point that in order to "be with them" he has to adopt the persona of being and moved with them in very close physical and emotional ways.

The video below gives a brief reading from the Book by Alec Baldwin