Book Notes: 'Jerry of the Islands' by Jack London

Jerry of the Islands by Jack London

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book captures a part of the history of the Solomon Islands (and indeed, Australia), that has been conveniently forgotten. This book should be called Jerry the Racist Dog and it is difficult to see how the author's attitudes are not racist. Nevertheless, as I was recently informed by a reliable source, Lolita did not necessarily make Nabokov a paedophile, but it is still confronting. Written in the style of White Fang and Call of the Wild, the story is from Jerry's perspective, although more than a decade later. And unlike his stories about humans, the animal stories tend to have happy endings. I found an article in an Australian newspaper that shows part of London's inspiration for the book. While I must reserve judgement until I read some more of London's work, but in the meantime, I find it difficult to rate this book too highly.



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Book Notes: 'The Great Railway Bazaar' by Paul Theroux

The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia by Paul Theroux

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I must admit that I enjoy travel novels. While not really fiction, there is typically a story with a beginning and an end that coincides with the departure and the arrival. Sometimes factual and historical, such as Sven Hedin's Silk Road, and at other times then-contemporary snapshots of a particular period in the recent past. This book includes the first chapter of Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, which covers the same journey as The Great Railway Bazaar but thirty years later. I must say that I am not a fan of such marketing of other books. A simple pointer to the new book would have been sufficient but now I am compelled to read this first chapter so the former book is properly "finished". I often keep my own journals when I travel, and I have several all waiting to be retyped or rediscovered. Sometimes I will keep a journal during the mundane times and write simply what happened. It is often banal. Theroux apparently wrote in the past tense as it happened, but it is his reflections and self-deprecating manner, especially towards the end of his journey, that captures how one must feel at the end of four months' train travel. I found this aspect, along with the historiographical capturing of the past viewed from the perspective of someone living in the mid-seventies, to be particularly engaging. As a consequence, this was an easy and enjoyable read and re-affirms my taste for good travel novels.



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Book Notes: 'Don Fernando' by W. Somerset Maugham

Don Fernando by W. Somerset Maugham

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I must admit to feeling I read this book out of order. Although the cover blurb suggests that this is Maugham's greatest work, it would seem that Don Fernando was a sketch of the research Maugham did for what would later become Catalina. It has the feel of a travel book, somewhat similar in intent to On a Chinese Screen, but held together by a personal story relating to Don Fernando and an historical book he insisted Maugham should have. I kept waiting to hear more about Don Fernando but instead found myself enthralled in a treatise on Spanish art, literature, and architecture amid life during the Counter-Reformation, and the artists and mystics who made it all happen. I am often impressed by the depth of historical knowledge of the literary greats. Indeed, Maugham claims to have read some three hundred books as research for a planned novel that had not happened by the time Don Fernando was published. It is clear that one doesn't write true 'literature' without a hefty amount of research. The trouble with reading such scholarly work is the reminder that great works do not come easy, and my ability to absorb literature vociferously is limited by my work and the professional reading I must continue to do. I recall an interview in the Paris Review where an author spoke of the limited time for reading that remained in his life, and the need to be strategic about what one reads after age fifty. Sadly, Don Fernando reminds me of that fast-approaching fact, and there is so much in Maugham's work here that deserves further investigation. I am afraid I will have to abandon the details and enjoy the ephemeral sensation of my newly gained yet thin knowledge.



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