THE BEST NOVELS I'VE EVER READ - PART 2

It's Wednesday, and for no other reason than I'm already confused about the time twice over (DST, and I thought last Saturday was St. Patrick's), I may as well continue discussing the best novels I've ever read. As before, I will draw a faint line in the dust between the best I've read and my favorites -- faint because they overlap, but are not entirely synonymous. Anyway, last Saturday Evening Post I hit you with ten novels which I regard as inarguable classics. Tonight I come at ya with ten more. So without further ado (adieu?), here they are:

THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K. LeGuinn. Somewhere between science-fiction and fantasy lies this incredibly imaginative, speculative novel about a visitor to the planet of Gethen, where the population is "ambisexual," meaning they alternate sexes when not in a sexless state. Ostensibly about one man's attempt to establish diplomatic relations with a faraway world, DARKNESS is actually about the way our sexuality -- not our gender, but our actual sexual physiology and its effects on our behavior -- shapes civilization and human behavior. The frustrated narrator, Genly Ai, struggles mightily but is never entirely able to overcome the cultural/sexual barriers his permanent male status places between himself and the Gethans. Written in 1969, long before the present era of "gender reveal parties" and pronoun arguments, LeGuinn fearlessly explores the very nature of humanity and how sex, and sexlessness, shapes outlook and society at large. A short, vivid novel with a lush and picturesque "creative surround," it also shows that world-building need not take 1,000 pages.

THE WINDS OF WAR by Herman Wouk. The first installment of his two-book series about WW2, WINDS chronicles two familys, the Henrys and the Jastrows, on the eve and beginning of the second world war. The Henrys are a sprawling Navy family whose patriarch, the crusty go-getter Victor "Pug" Henry, has his sights set on admiral's rank. The Jastrows are affluent Jews divided between America (the fiesty Natalie) and Europe (the pompous Aaron). Intersecting by marriage, Wouk threads his many characters through politics, religious strife, the first rumblings of the Holocaust and the outbreak of the war. A sprawling epic tied closely to historical events, it is at its heart a romance, one which blows all over the planet as world events threaten to destroy characters we become more invested in -- despite or perhaps because of their flaws -- with every page. Wouk's greatest gift was making chapters in which not much happens but dialog and description read with delightful ease. This sort of Tolstoy-like saga, with innumerable well-drawn characters (even the minor ones seem to stand out clearly in my mind) set against grandiose moments of history, is not in fashion nowadays, but Wouk was quite the master of it.

SPARTACUS by Howard Fast. Written in a deliberately anachronistic style in a non-chronological way, SPARTACUS chronicles the doomed rebellion of that slave against the power and might of the late Roman Republic. Though Fast takes liberties with history and characterization to fit the story into a modern political framework (he was a communist when he wrote it), if one scrapes away his ideological motives, one discovers a timeless tale about the human desire for freedom, the dehumanizing perils of wealth and inequality, and universal need for love as we understand it. His depictions of the late Republic -- its glory and its corruption -- slave life, gladiatorial games and war are carried out in an unusual way, more through reminiscences than conventional descriptions, but his madness has method: he is trying to tell us how difficult it is to get to the truth at the core of every legend, and how little that truth really matters when the legend is so inspiring and necessary. Making a story which ends so tragically so uplifting takes a very special artistic talent.

IT by Stephen King. So many people know IT from the 80s TV series and recent film duology that it's easy to forget it was a novel. And what a novel. King's magnum opus of terror is probably his best-ever book, a 1,000+ page epic which, unlike some of his other lengthy works, rarely if ever feels bloated, self-indulgent or overwritten. The story of seven children who do battle with a monster, only to have the monster return in their adulthood even more dangerous than before, IT is really several things at once. It is the ultimate "monster horror novel" because It is a creature which assumes the shape of that which its victim most fears, so be prepared for a lot of different baddies in one book, all of which like to murder children in hideous ways. It is an astonishingly sentimental and beautiful examination of King's own small-town New England childhood in the 1950s. And it is an equally wonderful exploration of childhood friendship and the power (and peril) of imagination. At his worst, King is a sloppy and lazy writer who publishes novels that feel like first drafts, with characters that feel half-dimensional: at his best, he is a pastmaster of the art he himself has elevated to a new level over the course of his long career. IT is an example of him driven by a white-hot idea drawn from his own childhood, and nursing it until it was nearly perfect. Nobody who reads IT will forget characters like Ben Hanscom, Richie "Trashmouth" Tozier, the psychopathic bully Henry Bowers....or the thousand-faced monster itself. If King had been hit by a truck (or eaten by a monster) after writing this book, his legacy would still be intact.

KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING by George Orwell. Some novels are written "for" you. Others are written "about" you. ASPIDISTRA will speak to any creative soul -- any aspiring writer, musician, poet, or artist; indeed, to counterculturist or hater of the capitalistic system who also rejects its political alternatives. In other words, to stubborn, irrational dreamers fighting for artistic or just plain human integrity. It is the story of Gordon Comstock, a former advertising writer from London who chucked away his "good" job to pursue the life of a poet, failed miserably, and now exists in self-enforced poverty, choking on bitterness and frustration. If this sounds depressing, it is: but it's written with such stinging Orwellian wit that Gordon's struggles, while brutal and humiliating, are also frequently comic. He is just sympathetic enough for us to care about his misery, and just enough of a misanthrope for us to get a kick out of it at the same time. After all, his "war against money" is a choice, as is the dismal way he treats Rosemary, the girl who loves him but won't sleep with him, and Ravelston, his wealthy best friend. Although Gordon is presented as a fairly rotten person in many ways, his loathing of the advertising world -- a metaphor for the entire capitalist system as Orwell saw it -- is so genuine, and his self-loathing as an artist so realistically depicted, that though the setting (1930s London) is a century removed from today, nothing about the struggle itself seems dated. What Gordon wants -- to make a living doing what he loves -- is not unreasonable, but everything conspires to force him away from the epic poem he's trying to compose and back into the soul-atomizing job of writing advertising jingles for deodorant and breakfast crisps. Everyone with any artistic talent at all, anyone who lives an eccentric or "different" kind of life, can relate to Mr. Comstock and his rebellion against money.

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY by Irving Stone. This beautifully-written saga about Michaelangelo is not only very well-written (the prose is vivid but curiously light, curiously deft in its touch), but deeply satisfying and enriching to read. Following the progidious talent from childhood to death, it weaves his career as a painter and sculptor through the tumultuous and violent events of Italy in the 16th century, when it (like Europe) was making a painful transformation from the end of the Dark Ages to the beginnings of the Enlightenment, covers the three curiously chaste "loves of his life," as well as his rivalry with other masters, including Leonardo Da Vinci. I never expected a thick historical novel about a man with no capacity for violence, no sex life, and no interest in politics or religion or money could be this page-turning or rewarding to read. I emerged from it feeling as if I had taken a barefoot tour of Italy and the Renaissance, experiencing both its glories and the intricacies of his culture and its grittier, uglier, crueler aspects. Full of intrigue and brimming with the same zest, even lust, which Michaelangelo brought to his work, I found it one of the most aesthetically pleasing novels I can recall.

THE KILLER ANGELS by Michael Sharra. By now you know, even if you haven't read my own book SINNER'S CROSS, that I much prefer my war stories to revolve around people and emotions rather than technology or grand strategy. This classic novel of the Battle of Gettysburg, inspired by the real-life accounts of its participants, has probably lost a certain luster in readers' minds because it was force-fed to generations of highschool students. This is unfair. While Sharra's very singular prose style is not going to be for everyone, and can occasionally become distracting (the last thing prose should ever do), his take on the battle, as a clash of human wills, hopes, dreams, fears, loves, hates and ambitions, rather than a battle of armies per se, is seminal. He brings historical characters so completely to life that the reader steps away from the book feeling as if they know men like Robert E. Lee, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, John Buford, and most especially James Longstreet, whose postwar letters and writings inspired Shaara to write the novel. While explaining the tactical and strategic plotting of both sides, Shaara sternly sticks to the novel as a lens for observing humans under pressure, showing the blunders and brilliance which such pressure produces in the great and the ordinary human alike. THE KILLER ANGELS is one of a handful of books I would say are necessary to read -- not because everyone will like it, but because of the insights it offers on causes, war, and human nature itself.

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE by Anne Rice. Speaking of prose stylists, Rice's famous (and infamous) vampire saga features the most accurate reproduction of 19th century "Gothic" style writing I have ever read. It is part of what weighs this novel down, but it is also what transforms it from a mere vampire tale into a genuine classic, a work of prose-poetry on a vast scale. It follows Louis du pont du Lac, an 18th century plantation owner who is transformed into a vampire, through 200 years of wandering and suffering across the world -- emphasis on the "suffering" -- as he tries to come to terms with existential anguish over his condition. While slow and even ponderous at times, it is a remarkable and vivid work which brings 1700s/1800s New Orleans to such life that it seems almost to throb and pulsate with, well, blood. Lestat, Louis' sire and mentor, is a terrifying depiction of sadistic villainy tinctured with operatic self-pity; Claudia, the child-vampire Lestat turns to give Louis a "daughter," is simply pure evil, both of them contrasting brutally with Louis and his never-ending feelings of remorse and doubt. Rice uses vampirism, curiously enough, as an examination of humanity: Louis spends his chunk of eternity in mourning for his mortal self, for the loves he cannot have, for the life he cannot live. The irony is, of course, that he never appreciated human life when he had it. There's a message in there somewhere....

RED ARMY by Ralph Peters. This forgotten gem might be the best "pure war" novel I've ever read. Its author was a former Army intelligence man who possessed a keen understanding of the Soviet army and NATO, and wrote a book which is in every way the opposite of Tom Clancy's engrossing mega-hit, RED STORM RISING. Focusing entirely on the human element rather than weapons systems or technology, and told 100% from the POV of the Soviets during a hypothetical WWIII, it chronicles a whole slew of memorable characters as they fight and die to conquer West Germany sometime in the later 1980s. What I love about RED ARMY is that it is both free of the jingo patriotism which tended to ruin Clancy's best efforts, and a fully human novel. Men like Leonid, the hapless private soldier; Seryosha, the vicious, cowardly bully; and Gordunov, the haunted, ruthless paratrooper given an impossible task, are not easy to forget. Nor are the Malinskys: the four-star general living up to ancient traditions, and his son, who cannot live them down. Peters writes combat as chaos in which very little goes right, and that usually by accident, and war at its higher levels as a clash of egos, hidden agendas and politics as much as strategy or tactics. His criticisms of the Russian military, NATO generally and the German army specifically (both validated, in their way, by current events in Ukraine) are also very rich food for thought. This is a hard-hitting book whose mantra is "war is not won by the most competent army; it is won by the least incompetent army."

I trust there are some books on this list readers might disagree with, but for me, the measure of a great novel is how it lingers within one's mind, and what effect it has on one's development as a human being -- and, if they're of a creative turn, on their own writing style. To be effected, and affected, by words on a page is powerful magic. These books left a mark on me. If you haven't already indulged and are of a mind, they might do the same for you.