Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.

Mindless violence. King Street, Sandy Bay. November 2011.

Just the two books this week, but what books they were!

The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark ventures into a genre that I am more familiar with in film than print: the Western. A brief plot synopsis might lead you to think that this novel is little more than a cliché: two drifters are drawn into a lynch mob to find and the rustlers presumed to be the killers of a local man.

It is in fact much more than that. Written in 1940, the novel is a somber, unsympathetic examination of the ease with which men slip into violence and resist the urge to ‘justice’. It explores starkly ‘masculinity’ and the tendency of the fear of exposure in terms of physical cowardice to trump moral courage when it comes to groups of men.

It is a fantastic collection of set pieces that affords Van Tilburg Clark the opportunity to explore these themes and remain able to keep the pace cracking along and tense narrative to the (inevitable) ugly conclusion. What really works well is the dénouement. In a naturalistic way, the author enables the characters to attempt to reconcile the events and further demonstrate the central points of the tale.

Very highly recommended.

Shifting from the American frontier in the late-1870s, the great Vladimir Nabokov’s debut novel Mary is set in 1920s Berlin, amongst the exiled Russian community in the immediate wake of the Russian Revolution.

Yet this is no political novel, rather a very personal account of one’s first love. A brilliant series of portraits of drifters thrown into circumstances beyond any of their control allows Nabokov the scope to explore some big themes of love, desire, memory, happiness, nostalgia, freedom and belonging in interesting and innovative ways.

Again, I very much liked the ending, which I really won’t talk about because I’d rather you read the book yourself. Very highly recommended.

Comments

Kris McCracken said…

Both really are top reads.

8 December 2011 at 08:13

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

Can you believe that it is time for Theme Thursday already? Today we are not talking chocolate , toddlers , mess or ignominy . No, today we're dealing with ANIMAL . Now I could have posted a picture of a possum, numbat, wombat, wallaby or any other furry killing machine that roams our fair isle, but I figure that I'd use a far more deadly creature as an example of an animal . Some people - I know them as fools - have chosen to embrace that highfalutin idea that human beans are for some ungodly reason superior to animals. Of course, what these imbeciles seem to forget is that were are simple animals ourselves ! Anyone with a baby, toddler, teenage boy or Queenslander in their household could tell you this. Look at Henry [above]. One chocolate frog in the back of the car on a sunny day and all of a sudden it's Elagabalus meets Bacchus for a quick shandy in the Serengeti and we're down on all fours carrying on like a cat in heat. Fair dinkum, anyone who chooses to ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

This will hurt me...

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