By
Adam Bloch, on September 13th, 2010
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I moved back to New York City in 2007 after an absence of five years. Shortly after my arrival, during one particularly bad insomniac fugue, I noticed The Pushcart War sitting forgotten on a distant shelf in my room, a relic of my elementary school reading days. I devoured it anew in about two hours. A few months ago, I read it again. I loved this book when I first read it in fourth grade, I loved it in 2007 and I love it now.
Its enduring appeal has much to do with what it means to me as a New Yorker. The Pushcart War is one of the quintessential New York books in children’s literature, on a par with Stuart Little and The Cricket in Times Square, doing for my hometown what Madeline does for Paris and Make Way for Ducklings does for Boston. It meant a lot to a 9-year-old just beginning to make sense of the city’s stew of sights and experiences and also to a 22-year-old finding that his city had changed a lot during an extended absence.
The New York that Jean Merrill presents is one easily familiar to its inhabitants, both in 1964 when it was originally published and even now. It is a polyglot, multicultural city, a bustling conurbation filled with colorful characters and encounters, many based at real locations around Manhattan, from the Upper West Side to Little Italy. It’s a place filled with cranks and raconteurs and folks with names like Morris the Florist, Harry the Hot Dog, Moe Mammoth, General Anna, Papa Peretz, Harry the Hot Dog and Mr. Jerusalem. …
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By
Adam Bloch, on November 30th, 2009
Author: Norman Mailer
1948, Picador
Filed under Literary
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
Young and fresh out of Harvard University, Norman Mailer went to war in 1943, doing two years of duty in the Philippines and seeing almost no action. When he came home, he very self-consciously set out to write an epic war novel. The Naked and the Dead was the result.
In his introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of the now widely regarded classic, Mailer wrote that Tolstoy was his primary influence and if he had any goal in writing the novel, it was to generate a sense of compassion.
There is compassion in The Naked and the Dead, but it is mere flotsam amid a sea of misery and suffering. Like its logical predecessor, All Quiet on the Western Front, it leaves no conclusion other than the one Hobbes reached centuries earlier about the lives of men in war: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” …
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By
Adam Bloch, on November 18th, 2009
This book has been chosen as a Great Read
Author: Joseph Heller
1961, Simon & Schuster
Filed under Literary
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
9 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
Some years ago, I picked up Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. I found it absurd, constantly surprising and outrageously hilarious. Naturally, I couldn’t stand it and quit by page 70. (If the preceding statement treads on your illogic nerve, then welcome to the world of Catch-22 and start getting used to it.)
How could something so delightfully funny prove so tiresome? The challenge lies in Heller’s penchant for farce and his unusual narrative structure. The overarching sense of the absurd, while consistently amusing, can prove a bit trying. One eventually wonders if there’s a point amid all the ridiculous proceedings, whether there’s anything serious to be said about an obviously serious subject – in this case, war. Ah, but that’s partially the point of this wonderfully pointed satire: the mysterious divide between matters of life and death and the attentive significance they demand and sometimes fail to receive. …
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I moved back to New York City in 2007 after an absence of five years. Shortly after my arrival, during one particularly bad insomniac fugue, I noticed The Pushcart War sitting forgotten on a distant shelf in my room, a relic of my elementary school reading days. I devoured it anew in about two hours. A few months ago, I read it again. I loved this book when I first read it in fourth grade, I loved it in 2007 and I love it now.
