The internet's been down for the past few days. In place of an all out update (that'll come later) here is a list of the books I've recently read, followed by a brief analysis of the work.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Travels with Charley: In Search of America
by John Steinbeck

After "Of Mice and Men," "In Dubious Battle," "The Pearl" and "The Chrysanthemums" raised my suspicions, "Travels with Charley" sealed the Steinbeck deal for me. I can firmly say with any and all confidence that I have, that John Steinbeck is my all-time favorite writer.

His language is elevated, but never too high for the common person to not understand. His love and empathy for the underdog runs deep, yet never turns preachy against those they're fighting against. He cares about issues of class, yet his works never get bogged down with diatribes against either the haves or the have nots. His understanding of humanity runs deeper than a lot of philosophers I have read.

"Travels with Charley" is Steinbeck in top form, yet I've never read a piece of his where he *wasn't* in top form. At it's basic level, it's a novel about a man traveling the country with his poodle Charley. Yet looking deeper, it's about a man in search of the American identity, and how this identity is shaped by the places people live.

I got a lot from this book, but one of the main things that I carry away from this reading is his description of returning home to the Salinas Valley. He talks about how when people return to their original home, people describe how everyone and everything within that town feels like a ghost to that individual person. Steinbeck corrects that notion by saying it isn't the town and the people in the town that feel like ghosts, but it is the individual person that is the ghost. The town and the people kept on living their lives and progressing into the future, while the person who left in essence died, and that when they return home, they're returning to a place that has struggled to forget you.

He also describes Texas better than some Native Texan writers have tried to do. He devotes more pages to Texas and the people who live here, than he did to any other state, despite naming Montana as the state he unconditionally fell in love with. Seems that Texas is so big in both area and pride, that even one of the greatest writers in American history couldn't devote himself to brevity.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
by Hunter S. Thompson

I read this "road" novel at the same time as "Travels With Charley" and highly recommend that no one attempt to do the same. Reading Thompson's detailed acid trips minutes after reading Steinbeck's detailed accounts of the foliage in New Englad was in and of itself a trippy experience. They both read well together, but man...I felt like I needed detox after I finished both of these novels.

"Fear and Loathing" is not really a "road" novel per se, since Hunter and his "attorney" spend most of the novel in one city, yet it feels very much like a road novel in that the main character is fully aware that he is on a journey of some kind.

It was an overall easy read, and one that I would recommend to anyone who is interested in "the dope generation," but there was much to this book that left a lot to be desired. It was enjoyable reading about his drug fuelled stay in Las Vegas, yet I don't really feel like the story went anywhere. At the end, he does his best to summarize what he was trying to get across, yet the message felt very "tacked on," instead of something that moved in and out of the previous 200 pages.

This is also one of the few books where the movie was definitely better than the book. I felt the movie did a better job at getting Thompson's disappointment with the sixties counter culture drug movement out there than did the book.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Jarhead
by Anthony Swofford

I've seen this book on my mom's bookshelf for quite a while, yet I didn't decide to read it until I heard that they were making a movie based off this book. I started this book on Monday, and finished it two days later on the following Wednesday. It was an overall easy read, yet I can't say that it was written particularly well.

Knowing that Hollywood was in the process of making this book into a movie, and knowing what actors were playing what characters, helped me to fill in the blanks as to what different characters looked like, since Swofford himself did not go into too much physical description into the individual characters that graced his story's pages.

His anger and disallusionment at the Marine Corps was palpable, and something I could easily relate to as someone who has had many of the same feelings and thoughts that he wrote about, yet I had a sense that he seemed to think that all the Marines he served with felt this same exact way about the Corps. I don't want to say that they did or didn't, but the story seemed less nuanced than it could have been.

The book was great overall, and one that I'd highly recommend to anyone who wants to know a bit of what it feels like to be used by an institution that's main purpose is the dehumanization of both yourself and other people. Although I didn't serve in war time, I can say that this book feels 100% authentic to the Marine experiences that I've had in different capacities.

-----------------------------------------------------------

The Autobiography of Malcolm X
by Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley

I was pleasantly surprised to see Malcolm X had the strength to tell Alex Haley all the good and bad experiences that he's been involved in. Many times, autobiographies tend to be fluff pieces where the person leaves out the bad stuff that they've done, and only leaves the good stuff in. With this book, Malcolm gives all the details of his hustling and pimping past. Because he's not afraid to lay it all out on the line, his transformations that take place are all the more moving and impactful.

The book is a bit lengthy, and the beginning chapters seem to drag on and on, but once he begins his preachings with the Nation of Islam, the book becomes a very fast read, and one that was hard to put down.

I have a lot to say about my views of Malcolm X, but feel that it'd be better said in its own post which will come at a later time. Until then...

matt out