Roderick Random - Tobias Smollett

The Adventures of Roderick Random (Smollett, 1748)

Ever since I read Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, I've wanted to read Smollett. The young David talks about how he escaped into the worlds of Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, and Humphrey Clinker, and as a young reader taking his escape in David Copperfield, I took note.

Alas, Smollett left me underwhelmed.  Roderick Random is definitely a picaresque novel. It checks all the boxes: a bluff young hero who undergoes outrageous turns of fortune (there's a reason his last name is Random), a goofy sidekick who tries to make the bluff young hero look good, a host of colorful characters along the way, and a perfect woman waiting at the end of it all. But checking the boxes is about as deep as it goes.  It's a series of events, a little bit of humor, but not much reason to care.

The main problem is Roderick himself. An orphan mistreated by his grandfather and relatives, his major motivation throughout the book is revenge.  He doesn't really care about love, friendship, or even making money -- he just wants to get even. During his stint in the navy under a tyrannical captain, Roderick starts to eek some empathy out of the reader. Under the hardship of the ignorant captain, he matures imperceptibly as he bonds with his messmates in distress, but for the rest of the book, he knocks about with no one but himself in mind.  The happy ending is handed to him on a silver platter, and it's very hard to rejoice, especially when his final prosperity comes attended with several last swipes at the people who kept him down.  He's not really an anti-hero, but he's certainly not likable.

If there is any redeeming quality here, the widely ranging breadth of the book provides a fairly convincing tableaux of run-of-the-mill humanity:  nothing special, no one particularly saintly, villainous, or conflicted, just a bunch of humans trying to get their kicks on life's bumpy highway.

Arbitrary rating:  3 out of 5 outrageous turns of fortune

A Sentimental Journey - Laurence Sterne

A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (Sterne, 1768)

The only other novel by the author of the hilariously freewheeling Tristram Shandy, Sterne's Sentimental Journey is similarly light-hearted and humorous, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Of course, the plot is immaterial. The book starts and ends mid-sentence, and in the middle of those interrupted sentences, the narrator (the parson Yorick from Tristram Shandy, though really just a thin veil for Sterne) wanders around France -- he never even gets to Italy -- seeking intellectual attachments, finer feelings, and female regard. The hopeless romantic falls in love at the drop of a hat with random shopkeepers and lady's-maids, but it's a love that never takes itself too seriously, especially if it will interfere with a good anecdote or the purchase of a fine set of Shakespeare.

Essentially a slim volume of digressions, musings, sketches, and anecdotes, my only complaint is that it's too short.  After the bountiful feast of Tristram Shandy, the enjoyable Sentimental Journey isn't even dessert - it's a sample platter, with several delectable bites but not much to sink one's teeth into. That said, those bits are quite delicious.  Take this scene. After a good meal, Yorick waxes eloquent on the beauty of charity:  "When man is at peace with man, how much lighter than a feather is the heaviest of metals in his hand! he pulls out his purse, and holding it airily and uncompressed, looks round him, as if he sought for an object to share it with! ... I had scarce uttered the words, when a poor monk of the order of St. Francis came into the room to beg something for his convent... The moment I cast my eyes upon him, I was predetermined not to give him a single sous." The book is full of engaging, rambling stories that take comic and often ironic turns.  Continually undercutting, diverting, and rerouting his narrative, Sterne's art of the absurd is enchanting, and it is underpinned by genuine love and self-deprecating good-humor.

Arbitrary rating: 4 out of 5 random shopkeepers

Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings - Johnathan Swift

Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings (Swift, 1726)

Johnathan Swift's gift for satire outlives the timeliness of his subjects - though so often, his targets are intrinsic to human nature, and therefore never out of date. Enriched with razor wit and the passion of an Irishman, the works in this collection are a testament to the genius of Swift.

Of course, almost everyone knows something about Gulliver's Travels, Swift's most famous work. A sweeping portrayal of human folly, political shenanigans, and absurd ideas, there is much more going on here than whimsical storytelling. Through a series of unfortunate events, Gulliver discovers many faraway lands and exotic peoples: the tiny Lilliputians and the giant Brobdingnagians; the mathematical Laputans with their heads in the clouds; and the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent horses who herd the degenerate Yahoos, perhaps the most withering and misogynistic portrayal of humanity ever committed to paper. Indeed, the end of the book is intensely dark, with Gulliver rejecting his own family as "poor Yahoos" and living in despairing isolation. That, plus all the scatological humor in regards to tiny and giant people, and I'm not sure how this ever became known as a kid's book!

Also included are A Tale of a Tub, "The Battle of the Books", "The Mechanical Operation of the Soul", "An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity in England", "A Modest Proposal", "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift", and several other shorter works in prose and poetry. The Tale is one of the funniest things I've ever read.  A satire on modernist thought and "new learning", he skewers the wordy style of the writers of his day by expanding a 30-page allegory into almost 120 pages of introductions, prefaces, footnotes, and digressions. But fear not, it's hilarious from start to finish, due in no small part to Swift's ebullient wit.

I wish I could do justice to Swift's style and substance within this review, but it's hopeless.  All I can say is, read him.

Arbitrary rating: 4.5 out of 5 ebullient wits

The Imperial Hotel - The Samurai of Prog

The Imperial Hotel (The Samurai of Prog, 2014)

1. After the Echoes - 8:43
2. Limoncello - 7:57
3. Victoria's Summer Home - 2:54
4. The Imperial Hotel - 28:10
5. Into the Lake - 8:43

All I can say is, wow.  A gathering of musicians across several continents in several studios came together and created a progressive rock masterpiece.  The core of the Samurai of Prog are Marco Bernard (bass), Kimmo Porsti (drums), and Steve Unruh (vocals, flute, violin, acoustic guitar). The Samurai solicited four different keyboardists for original compositions, which they arranged, interpreted, performed, and recorded, with the help of different guest guitarists for each song, plus a few others. From this large cast of musicians and composers, it is remarkable that the album is coherent at all, much less the focused, well-paced, exciting, wildly creative success that it is.

With a glorious sunburst of a chorus as its anchor, keyboardist Octavio Stampalia's "After the Echoes" marries several different moods and movements. Up-tempo knotty verses, contrapuntal piano and bass, beautifully fragile vocals in the bridge, and heroic instrumental solos combine to stunning effect in this opener. From such bright beginnings, the playful Baroque waltz of Robert Webb's "Limoncello" continues the goodness: a melodic bass line dances with muscular synth, sprightly violin/flute, and a delicious over-the-top guitar performance from Yoshihisa Shimizu. More multi-part vocals import a wistful, Decameron-related musing.

David Myers's solo piano performance of "Victoria's Summer Home" serves as a lush, Romantic introduction to the main event: Robert Webb's "The Imperial Hotel", a dramatic, richly textured, perfectly paced musical ghost story.  Shared lead vocals between Steve and Robert tell the tale of a rich young upstart trying to buy an abandoned hotel, whose aged owner Emma will only entertain her potential buyer as a hotel guest. James plays along in hopes of making a deal, but Emma's hopes are darker and more mysterious... The story communicates well on first listen but yields new enjoyment with repeated hearings, and the music perfectly complements the action. The Samurai shine on their instruments, Webb provides inspired keyboard/synth/organ, and the stately guitar work of Glass Hammer's Kamran Alan Shikoh reaches dizzying heights in this multifaceted epic. The 28 minutes flies by and leaves you very satisfied, yet still wanting more. Ah, the yearning...

Closing the album is Linus Kase's "Into the Lake", an intricate, murky rumination on the unrecoverable past. The intense interplay of synth, violin, bass, and drums, along with the contrapuntal two-part vocals during the 19/8-time verse, all combine to create a sense of drama and disintegration that makes the piece gripping. The album as a whole moves from light to dark, freedom to capture, possibility to certainty, with the story of "The Imperial Hotel" acting as the heart and hinge, and the other songs exploring the same emotional arc through progressive adventures. Not to be missed.


Arbitrary rating: 5 out of 5 musical ghost stories

The Secret Island Band Jams - Resistor

The Secret Island Band Jams (Resistor, 2011)

1. Voyage 7 (improvised) - 4:01
2. Picadora (composed) - 5:01
3. Piezo Fury (improvised) - 5:25
4. All Systems Go! (composed) - 3:30
5. Dream of the Arctic Tern (improvised) - 6:12
6. Santa Anna (improvised, violin added later) - 8:16
7. Quirk (composed) - 3:47
8. Sleepytime (improvised) - 7:11
9. Double Ascent (improvised) - 15:07

Half of Resistor's superb second album Rise consisted of the humorous 40-minute narrative song suite "Land of No Groove", in which four musicians, discouraged by the drivel and fluff of modern music, seek out a new land and discover a far-out group of musicians in voluntary exile on a deserted island. The Secret Island Band Jams is Resistor's third album, all instrumental and mostly improvised, presented as the music made by the Secret Island Band, who promised to push the "record" button whenever something cool was happening.

I'm always up for an adventure, but I must be getting old, because the prospect of a jam album dismayed me at first. Never fear, Resistor transcend the limitations of the genre.  As other reviewers have noted, you probably couldn't pick out the improvised pieces versus the composed pieces without being told -- particularly the stunning opener "Voyage 7" and the murky, roiling, adventurous "Santa Anna". This is due in part to a fascinating method of communicating chord progressions mid-jam, which is elegant, inspired, and described in the liner notes. The editing is also quite good, crafting these jams into memorable, fascinating instrumentals, but the biggest reason for success here is the band.  The sympathetic interplay of the instrumentalists is truly special to hear, and the excitement is palpable.  While I do miss the vocals, this is still an album packed to the gills with fantastic music. Play it loud!

Arbitrary rating: 4.5 out of 5 moments of sympathetic interplay

Rasselas - Samuel Johnson

The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (Johnson, 1749)

When I started reading this, I almost immediately thought of Candide. I figured it had to be a response to it, sort of an anti-Candide, but it turns out they were both published the same year, so both authors were writing in a similar style for opposite purposes at roughly the same time. Craziness!

Samuel Johnson, the great eighteenth-century British man of letters famed for his dictionary, essays, biographies of modern poets, and an annotated, authoritative edition of Shakespeare, produced only one work of creative fiction. Rasselas reads as a fable, similar to Voltaire's aforementioned classic, but it starts from the opposite end:  where the everyman Candide starts with a fixed idea of the world that is successively challenged by the vicissitudes of life until he has to abandon it, the privileged Rasselas starts with no fixed concepts, just an undefinable yearning. Raised in luxurious seclusion as Abyssinian (Ethiopian) royalty, he yearns for something beyond meaningless pleasures. With his sister Nekayah and the wise poet Imlac, he goes out into the world to seek the type of life that will produce lasting happiness.

The story elements here are fairly simple and none too memorable. The characters are merely mouthpieces for the competing philosophies of Johnson's day, and while there is certainly wisdom in these pages, the work as a whole did not strike me as a powerful piece of writing. The climax, where Imlac discourses on the soul, is the weakest part, and it is supposed to be the strongest, since Johnson's message is that we should focus on the eternal rather than the temporal. (Definitely the anti-Candide). In his desire to evaluate all of human experience for its ability to produce earthly happiness, Johnson spends more time negating the world than expounding the eternal, and the overall effect is a lack of focus.  Though I agree with Johnson's conclusions, I have to give the writing prize to Voltaire's focused, incisive satire, rather than Johnson's meandering Platonic dialogue.

Arbitrary rating: 3 out of 5 anti-Candides

Tom Jones - Henry Fielding

The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (Fielding, 1749)

What a literary feast!  Fielding employs his rare wit and humor in this epic picaresque novel that sets out to chronicle Human Nature in all its lumps and bumps.

One day, good Squire Allworthy finds a baby left in his house, with a note asking him to take care of the child. Raising Tom alongside his nephew and heir Blifil, Allworthy loves the boys as if they were his own sons. But when Allworthy's sister (Blifil's mother) dies unexpectedly, Blifil poisons Allworthy's mind towards Tom, who is kicked out into the world to fend for himself. Secure in the knowledge of his innocence to Allworthy, yet pining for the hand of the beautiful Sophia, Tom travels the roads of England, encountering comic setbacks, unexpected bounties, and wild circumstances on his road to reconciliation.

The plot of this book really is outstanding, especially since, like all good picaresque novels, it doesn't seem to have a plot at all.  Tom and his friend Partridge go from episode to episode, stage to stage, yet very little is wasted in Fielding's narration, and everything circles back in consequence as we reach the end.  The twist at the finale probably inspired all of Dickens' melodramatic concluding scenes and revelations, yet in Fielding the twist is not only believable, but it should have been obvious from page one. Seeing everything fold into place makes for a very enjoyable reading experience.

The characters are no less delightful. Fielding skillfully exploits the foibles and idiosyncrasies of human nature, and in the process, he makes his characters real: the sweet yet strong Sophia; her conniving lady's maid Mrs. Honour; the mock-pretentious schoolteacher Partridge; gruff, hot-tempered Squire Western and his urbane, dictatorial sister; the insidiously sneaky Blifil; and Tom's warm-blooded good nature all make the pages breathe.

Of course, Fielding's considerable wit practically makes the pages shake.  I laughed out loud several times while reading, whether at his knowing asides in the narrative, or more often at his comic metafictional intrusions, where he lambasts critics and playfully analyzes the art of writing and storytelling. When I was younger, I probably would have hated those chapters as interruptions of the story, but they provide a unique outlet for the author to speak candidly and hilariously, straight to the reader.

Since this novel was written in 18th century England, there are plenty of ribald jokes and bawdy incidents, all cloaked with the intention of enjoining good morals, but delivered with a wink and a nod.  And though it looks for awhile as if Tom's sins and indiscretions have sunk him into the pit, he ultimately emerges unscathed, with previous indiscretions filed under "wild oats". That's the only weak part for me, but Fielding claims his subject matter as his defense - he will not whitewash or polish his characters, but rather portray them as they are, in the most hilarious way possible.

Arbitrary rating: 4.5 out of 5 comic metafictional intrusions