Abraham Lincoln (1918)--John Drinkwater

I didn't like this one quite as much as the Sherwood play, though it held my interest. It is hurt by a couple of weak scenes which will make even a person like me who has a higher tolerance for both archaic attitudes and schmaltz than they ought to cringe. One features a black character who meets Lincoln and unfortunately talks in an Uncle Remus dialect. I suspect that this sort of thing is going to turn up more frequently in the forgotten books on this old list than one would desire to have to cope with. I noted a similar deficiency many years ago when I read Booth Tarkington, an otherwise more than able novelist who is little honored today. And Drinkwater, who was an Englishman, was in theory I suppose trying to celebrate the end of slavery and introduce a human voice into that commemoration; but imagining black characters who possessed any of the admired qualities of the prevailing civilization of the time in any kind of high degree seems to have been beyond the capability of nearly everyone. The other poor scene involved the generals Grant and Meade talking about what a great man and leader Lincoln was on the occasion of imminent end of the war, which was excruciatingly corny; as I alluded to earlier, I don't cringe that easily (at corniness). Otherwise, the play was tolerable as literature of its period, and I enjoyed reading it. It is obvious that my long history of studying, thinking about and playing games with this list, combined with all the confusion and disappointment that has accompanied most of my attempts to do anything requiring the exertion of my mental faculties in the years since this list first attracted me, has made me more excited to finally read some of these books than I had realized, and than they probably intrinsically merit. The next two titles up, Absalom, Absalom and Adam Bede, I have read before for my other list. They are certainly worth reading again, and I am hell-bent to do so. That said however, I cannot neglect this edition's

Bourgeois Surrender Challenge

1. City of Thieves--David Benioff....................4.56
2. The Accidental City--Lawrence N Powell...4.52
3. Fahrenheit 451--Ray Bradbury...................4.17
4. The Handmaid's Tale--Margaret Atwood....4.12
5. Total Recall--Piers Anthony.........................3.50
6. Four titles from this challenge remained unrated: American Eloquence: Studies in American Political History, by Dunston & Woodburn; Julia Ward Howe, by Richards & Elliott; Sword & Pen: Ventures & Adventures, by Willard Glazier; and The Mediterranean,by T.G. Bonney, et al. 

An interesting challenge, with surprise at the Atwood and the Bradbury scoring so low. As in all endeavors that choose to rely on mass approval, this game has its perils. I have read Handmaid's Tale and I admit, it did not do much for me (I did like Lady Oracle, for what it's worth). I've never read Fahrenheit 451 and I was kind of hoping it would win, since it is both short and such an iconic book of postwar America, the literature of which time period I frequently like. City of Thieves is a modern book (2008) by a modern author about which, and whom, I knew nothing. My local library had a copy and it is fairly short (258 pages) so I decided to accept the challenge. In fact, I am already up to page 165 in it. I have endured some mild...chastisement?--I am not sure what exactly to call it, the suggestion is that I am hidebound and overly and perhaps even mindlessly attached to the classics--about my easy dismissal of most modern books, and it is true I don't generally like them. While they are the works of my rivals and would be peers who have succeeded so brilliantly in navigating the intellectual waters of our times, such as they are, whereas I have failed more utterly than once would have seemed possible, I am still confident that most of them are not very good. I have to say, though, that this City of Thieves does seem to me to be very good, and its author is certainly capable enough--contrary to much apparent contemporary belief, a lack of capability is not one of the primary problems afflicting the book world. Although it is a modern book it is set during the siege of Leningrad in 1942, so it has an old and, given the conditions which were in operation at that time, decidedly elemental atmosphere. It does not redefine the possibilities of the novel or exhilarate in and make sense of the most vital trends and movements of our own time. Nonetheless it is smoothly written and especially shows an advanced degree of skill for the telling description or metaphor. I have no idea what a real survivor of that time would make of it--it does have something of the American 'endurance of the human spirit' quality about it that Europeans, especially those in the countries hardest it by the 20th centuries' wars, seem to have moved beyond believing in--but it does a better job at describing the fatigue and hunger, if not the terror, that were endemic in that period than other things I have read. For example, there is a bit where a thoroughly exhausted and starving character is trudging through the snow at night in -20 degree or so cold, with the German army all around the area, and how the only way he is able to cope with this is by making it as far a certain tree that his eye has alighted upon, and then when he reaches this to pick out another one, and so on. I believe I gained a couple of pounds at the beginning of the book because the descriptions of the hunger effected me enough to make me crave food more than I do ordinarily.

I was curious enough to look up some of the big professional reviews of the book. I am almost sorry that I did, as the instinct of most reviewers seems to be to spend as much time working through their issues with the idea of David Benioff the person as to think about the book. There is a lot to chew on there. He is apparently monstrously handsome. His father was the head of Goldman Sachs. He is married to a Ivy-League educated movie actress. He has a highly successful career writing for television and movies--book fiction seems, at least in terms of income, to be kind of a sidelight. Then there is the obvious talent, whatever one thinks of how it is being deployed, for fluid and satisfying plotting and prosifying across genres. As far as I can tell it is not like this guy sells massive numbers of books or generate an inordinate amount of love from the literary community, passionate young intellectuals, and so on, but he makes enough, and is known and connected enough in a lot of desirable circles, to make a lot of people look at themselves in the mirror and wonder where it all went wrong for them.

The edition of Abraham Lincoln I ordered was from the old Riverside Literature Series (1927, in this instance), which is a set of (from what I have seen) scrawny little books with pale blue covers, the series seal imprinted on the front and the book's number on the back (268 for A.L.). The skinny spines are ugly and spare, the title only appearing in boring block capital letters When I was in high school I had copies of Hamlet and Macbeth from this series, but I have long lost those, and this is the first book from the series I have had since then. The series was evidently intended to be used in schools; the texts are accompanied by many pages of notes, study questions, & suggestions for essays and classroom dramatizations. There were fifteen general questions taken from 'College Entrance Board Examinations'. A sample:

"Choose one character from each of five novels or plays and show briefly in each case how this character changes for the better or for the worse because of one or more of the following reasons: a. The influence of another character. b. Circumstances over which the character has no control. c. The character's own strength or weakness."

Another suggested 'topic for investigation' was "Calhoun's Doctrines of Nullification and Secession."

I am aiming to be more positive and likable. I don't know if it is possible to achieve this if one has to make a conscious effort to aim for it, but I think it is worth trying.