Category Archives: Time Magazine 100 Novels

Review of Animal Farm by George Orwell

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 5: Animal Farm by George Orwell (1946)

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

Animal Farm is George Orwell’s allegorical parable that portrays the events of the Russian Revolution of 1917 by telling the story of a farm that the animals drive off their human masters and rule themselves. It is a clever little story with the crafty pig Napoleon consolidating power over the Animal Farm, and even changing the commandments of animalism as he and his pig and dog minions establish control. By the end of the story the pigs who control the Animal Farm, renamed Manor Farm by the end, are indistinguishable from the humans from the surrounding farm. It is a poignant story about the loss of history in a dictatorship that controls the narratives, and the way idyllic communities can be corrupted by their leaders.

This short novella has endured well as both a story and a political commentary. Even without a direct connection to the Russian Revolution the parable graphically illustrates the proverb that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The use of animals who lack the literacy to critique the changes to the practice of animalism and the manipulation both the written records of the commandments and the revolutionary song the animals sing (the forbidding of the singing of the Beasts of England) continues to be a warning of the ability to manipulate the opinions of the population by controlling the media.

Review of Possession by A. S. Byatt

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 73: Possession by A. S. Byatt (1990)

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

S. Byatt’s Possession is exactly the type of treasure I hoped to discover when I embarked on reading through the Time Magazine top 100 novel list, a truly gorgeous work in its use of the English language, method of telling the story, and its truly rich characters. There were several times I would stop and remark how beautiful a poem, letter, or dialogue was. I could identify with almost all the characters in this book and see a portion of myself reflected in each of them. It is a novel of stories within stories that is often told by the imagined writing and correspondence between the characters. It begins when Roland Mitchell, an underemployed scholar of the fictional poet Randolph Henry Ash, discovers in a volume Ash used two drafts of a letter to an unknown woman. Roland retains the letter and begins his quest to discover who this unknown woman is and to see if their relationship, whatever it may be, sheds any light on the work of Ash. Once his investigation leads him to the poet Christabel LaMott he is introduced to Maud Bailey, a feminist scholar with a keen interest in LaMott both as a writer and as a distant relative. Together they discover a collection of letters between these two poets which leads them into a re-evaluation of the lives of both the poets the study and themselves as they both become captured in this quest to uncover the story of this previously unknown but highly impactful relationship. Although Roland and Maud have not published their discovery, rumors begin which also brings Maud’s former lover and scholar Fergus Wolf, English Ash scholar and Roland’s boss James Blackadder, American Ash scholar and collector Mortimer Cropper, American feminist and Cristabel LaMott scholar Leonora Stern, and a scholar who studied Ellen Ash, Randolph’s wife, Beatrice Nest into the pursuit of the correspondence, Maud and Roland who disappear for a time, and the truth of this previously unknown relationship.

Possession is a phenomenal story, but the creation of the poetry of both Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMott as well as a beautiful set of letters between them is incredible. This was a joy to read. The narration evoked a rich sense of the people and the landscapes they encountered. Some of the best use of descriptive language I have ever read. The correspondence was frequently as poetic as the actual poems created and it made me wish I could read more of both poets. There were surprises all the way to the end of the book and I was awestruck with this incredible piece of literary artwork. I loved this book.

Review of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 83: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992)

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

Snow Crash is a dystopic view into the future from the early 1990s when the internet was emerging to an imaginative world of a United States that has devolved into corporate, religious, and ethnic enclaves and the metaverse, the virtual world created by hackers and populated by avatars, becomes the escape from reality. Hiro Protagonist and Y.T. are the two primary protagonists that are navigating this chaotic world where they are exposed to a plot which threatens to grant control to all humanity to the mysterious L. Bob Rife and his religious front Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates. The plot moves from technological to religious to philological speculation about the original human language being similar to the binary language of computer language. Through infecting hackers who have learned the machine code and using their blood to create a drug which allows his followers to practice glossolalia, the Pentecostal practice of speaking in tongues which is also for the book the base language that was shattered in the story of Babylon. In a plot that involves the Central Intelligence Corporation (formerly CIA), the Mafia, Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong (a multinational business franchise), the muscle bound and menacing Raven who carries his own nuclear device, the Raft (a conglomeration of ships centered around the U.S.S. Enterprise and a tanker) the plot is inventive if excessive.

Science Fiction is probably the toughest genre to write an enduring story within because as time passes the technology evolves in ways that can undercut the story’s credibility. Snow Crash is one of those rare novels where its concepts become the language of future technology: for example, the metaverse and the popularization of the term avatar. It also provided a fertile base for other works that would project a future where the metaverse becomes the escape from reality like Ready Player One. The religious and philological speculations were a part where, because of my background, I had trouble suspending my own knowledge to accept the premises of the novel and the devolution that the novel foresaw into commercialized interests thankfully never occurred in the United States in the way the book envisions. Yet, in the thirty years since the publication of this book there are areas where the author was accurate as we live in a time where they are beginning to construct an alternative reality and a corporation which rebranded itself Meta is one of the leading forces in creating this metaverse. Unfortunately, the book is accurate that there are many people who escape from the real world into the digital world and what was envisioned as a dystopic reality is at least partially being adopted as normal.

Review of Loving by Henry Green

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 55: Loving by Henry Green (1945)

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

Loving is set in an aristocratic household of the Tennants in Ireland early in World War II, but in an unusual manner the main characters are the servants in the household and not Mrs. Tennant who is the matriarch of the household. Mr. Raunce assumes the role of butler at the beginning of the book when the previous butler dies and now, he is responsible for the management of the household. Throughout the story he is balancing his new responsibilities in the household with his budding relationship with Edith, one of the other servants in the household. There are several small and large scandals that are a part of the life of the household: from a peacock killed by a visiting cousin to the affair between Mrs. Jack (the daughter-in-law of Mrs. Tennant) and Captain Davenport (the next-door neighbor) while her husband is at the front, to a missing sapphire ring. The conversations between the servants of the household can be humorous and enlightening but this little world is disconnected from the big events occurring in the world around them.

The plot of Loving proceeds at an unbothered pace as it slowly reveals the scandals underneath the stolid surface of this world which is nearing its end. I can see why many people enjoy the dialogue and the gossip among the household but this world caught in its own little troubles only tangentially aware of the struggle for survival going on in the battle for Brittain. The war and the Irish Republican Army both make occasional appearances, but that is far removed from this world of old ways and old money. Ultimately Henry Green’s gift for dialogue was not able to keep me engaged in the meandering plot of mundane events. Like Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, this one was not for me but others have found this work incredible powerful so please make your own judgments, these brief reflections are merely my consolidation of my thoughts on each work.

 

Review of Ubik by Philip K. Dick

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 94: Ubik by Philip K. Dick (1969)

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

Ubik is a strange novel which combines a science fiction future (as projected in the late 1960s) with a noir aesthetic in a world which combines time travel, space travel, a heavily commercialized future, psionic powers, and half-life (a way of preserving mental life by putting the person into a cryogenic state). The primary protagonist, Joe Chip, is a down on his luck tester of psionic abilities for the powerful Runciter corporation and a friend of the company’s owner Glen Runciter when a mysterious woman, Pat Conley, is brought to his residence by a talent recruiter to be tested. Joe quickly discovers that Pat Conley’s powers, her ability to manipulate time, would be an incredible asset for the Runciter corporation but would also pose an extreme threat to them as well. When presenting Pat Conley to Glen Runciter for potential employment the company is offered a job to deal with a psionic threat to a corporation at a moon base and Glen Runciter, Joe Chip, Pat Conley and nine ‘inertials’ (individuals with powers that can thwart the psionic powers of companies that the Runciter organization provides protection against). The mission leads to a disaster for all involved as the present and reality seem to unravel and the team begins to individually age rapidly while their world regresses to the late 1930s.

Reading science fiction from an earlier time period is a little disorienting, especially when the projected future is now thirty years in the past. The world of Ubik is a strange imagining of what the 1990s would be by a person in the 1960s complete with all manner of talking appliances and doors that are coin operated. The reality of rapid space travel, cryogenic half-life, psionic powers, and radically different geopolitics never occurred as the novel projected, but the reality twisting plot of the second half of the novel is interesting. The book gets its name from a substance called Ubik which is advertised at the beginning of each chapter and becomes a key need for the protagonists as they try to navigate a reality which is being pulled by opposing forces of degradation and preservation. It is a strange but imaginative plot with a mysterious ending.

Review of I, Claudius by Robert Graves

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 46: I, Claudius by Robert Graves

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

I, Claudius is a fascinating first-person narration of the life of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (or Claudius) who would become the fourth emperor of Rome. The novel takes the historical backdrop of Rome under emperors Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula and portrays the world of the elites of the Roman empire. Claudius is often overlooked because of his lameness and his stuttering, but he learns to use his sharp mind as a historian. He is despised initially by Augustus and his wife Livia but late in his life Augustus realizes that his evaluation of Claudius has been mistaken. The novel portrays Claudius, presumably late in his reign as emperor, setting down an honest history of the Roman empire complete with assassinations, the debauchery of those in power, and the dangerous world that those in proximity to the Caesars must navigate.

As a person with some familiarity of the early Roman empire the book was a fascinating interweaving of fact and conjecture. Robert Graves gives a personality to these figures so often portrayed in statues and shows the humanity and sometimes the depravity of these men who will be viewed as deities throughout the empire. Livia occupies a major place in the narrative and is portrayed as a ruthless manipulator of Augustus and Tiberius. Yet, after her death it also becomes clear how she has kept the worst tendencies of Tiberius under control. Claudius is presented as a character who it is easy to empathize with, who endures the loss of his brothers, his first love, and is constantly at risk of being eliminated by Livia, Tiberius, and eventually Caligula. Yet, he survives all of them and to his dismay is eventually named the emperor of Rome.

This is a great example of early twentieth century historical fiction. Graves does a masterful job of inviting the reader into the time of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula without expecting the reader to be well versed in the history of the first century, but remains believable by a reader who is familiar with it. I look forward to reading more from Robert Graves and will probably read Claudius the God the sequel next.

 

Review of The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 12: The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

The Berlin Stories is actually two books written based on the author’s time in Berlin from 1929-1933. The Last of Mr. Norris narrates Christopher Isherwood’s relationship with Arthur Norris and several other figures from his circle of acquaintances. Arthur Norris as a character is both charming and paranoid and is a complex collection of contradictory eccentricities and collaborations. Arthur can rally a communist rally or manipulate Arthur into entrapping a fellow friend Kuno (Baron von Pregnitz) in  a trip to Switzerland. The character of Arthur with his unappealing assistant Schmidt is always one step away from disaster and early 1930s Berlin is a dangerous place for a trickster like Arthur. The Berlin Diaries is a collection of shorter encounters with characters set in the same time period. The character of Sally Bowles, who would later be adopted to the stage in “I Am Camera” and the movies in “Cabaret” is the shining star among this collection as this young woman navigates the nightlife of Berlin as an aspiring actor and dancer in a cabaret. Peter and Otto, an older man and a younger man in an arranged relationship, form the second group of characters with Peter jealous of Otto’s other attractions. In a time when his finances are challenging Christopher Isherwood moves into the slums with Otto’s family in Berlin, the Nowaks with their sick mother, alcoholic father, two sons and one daughter. Moving in opposite directions Christopher also shows us into his connections with the wealthy Jewish family, the Landauers, where he has an initially friendly if formal relationship with the Natalia Landauer and is taken into the confidence of Bernard who runs the family business. Connecting the two stories is the landlady Fraulein Schroeder in whose house Christopher lives through much of this time.

The environment of early 1930s Berlin also plays a crucial role in these two books and it gives a window into this desperate time. Berlin is a place of conflict and danger where communists and fascists are vying for power, where poverty and depression are constantly present, where anything is available for sale and where people will do anything to survive. It does illuminate both the violence of the emerging Nazi movement but also gives a perspective why hopeless people would be drawn to it or its communist alternative. It is a dark environment to write a story within and none of the characters would be considered heroic, but they are survivors. Seeing the environment of pre-Nazi Berlin through the characters eyes helps make the time more vivid, but the understanding of the environment also helps the characters more understandable.

Review of the Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 13: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

The Big Sleep is the first novel featuring the iconic private eye, Philip Marlowe. This is one of the books that would be instrumental in the evolution of the private eye character in the noir films with dark characters. Chandler’s writing style immediately evokes the feeling of watching a classical private eye or crime movie and he takes us to the darker side of Hollywood in the 1930s. Philip Marlowe is the intelligent but hardnosed investigator asked to investigate an attempt to extort the elderly patriarch of the family. The investigation quickly walks into the murky world of pornography, gambling and drinking (in the immediate aftermath of prohibition), and murder.

The book’s style seems tailor made to become the movie it would be made into multiple times. Raymond Chandler does a good job of balancing giving enough information to show the reader the scene in their mind without becoming bogged down. It is a quick paced read but the characters seem somewhat two dimensional. Philip Marlowe is the tough guy investigator who is intelligent but has no emotional depth, and the other characters are given just enough story to fit their place in the plot. It is very different from many of the other books in the Time Magazine top 100 list, but it probably finds its place here to represent the noir investigative genre that has continued to exercise popularity. It is an invitation to the smoke-filled world of tough guys who drink all the time and walk on the dark side of 1930s Hollywood.

Review of the Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels
Book 14: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

The Blind Assassin is a story within a story narrated in flashback by Iris Chase Griffen. Looking back as an old woman she remembers her time growing up with her sister Laura in household whose father shattered by World War I and the economic downturn of the 1930s and whose mother died while both girls were still young. Their father, Norval Chase, runs the Button Factory in the fictional town of Port Ticonderoga but struggles with alcoholism and depression and often isolates himself from the family to drink his pain away. Both girls were raised by Reenie, the family housekeeper, and while much of their childhood they live a relatively privileged life until the economic downturn and its impact on their father’s factory sets the conditions that cause her father to allow the wealthy Richard Griffen to propose to Iris at only eighteen to provide for his daughters. Iris’ marriage into the family of the politically ambitious Richard and his dominating sister Winifred leaves her feeling powerless, manipulated and controlled. Her husband’s version of love is abusive and Iris suspects he has several affairs during their marriage. Richard and Winifred also control the life of her sister Laura after the death of her father while Iris is on her honeymoon with Richard. The control of Laura’s life leads to her confinement in a mental health asylum and eventually her choice to commit suicide in a vehicular accident. Yet, Iris maintains her own secret life, an affair with Alex Thomas who tells her science fiction stories but who is also on the run for his activities with Communist groups in Canada in the 1930s. The story moves between the reflections and life of an old woman, remembrances of the affair and the narration of the story of the blind assassin, and a narration of the life of Iris to be handed on to her granddaughter who she is unable to see or visit due to the manipulation of the relationship between her daughter and her by Winifred.

The ending of this story is clever and the overall story is well written, but it takes a long time to develop. There is something in the voice of the old Iris which a bit haughty and detached in her view of the world around her and I had to work to get through the first two thirds of the book. Iris’ character is passive for much of the book and life happens to her, it is only in the end where we see the places where she has carved out a space to reclaim some control of her life. It is a book told from the perspective of regret: regret for her own feelings of powerlessness, regret for the damage she was unable to shield her sister, her daughter, or herself from. There is a realism in the lack of agency for a woman who is both the child of an alcoholic and who lives in a time where women had few options. I enjoyed the ending and that made the overall journey worth it. It is difficult to read the story of a woman who has no agency from the perspective of a man who is used to exercising agency and there were times I wanted to rage at the male characters in the story for the way they treated their daughter, their wife, or their lover. Yet, the views of the past are often as alien as the worlds that are described in the science fiction narrative of the blind assassin and the strange power of a book to place you in that alien place and allow you to rage at the situations of the characters in a book is part of the strange magic that authors yield in their words.

Review of Light in August by William Faulkner

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 49: Light in August by William Faulkner

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

Light in August deploys a combination of poetic and banal language to tell an ugly story with a series of characters who for their own reasons are unable to exist within the confines of their society. There is something that reminds me of the writing of Flannery O’Connor in the way Faulkner uses beautiful language combined with the simple speech of the characters in his stories that is authentic to their education and station. There are many times where the language and the assumptions of the American South in the 1930s, when the novel is written and set, are jarring to the ears of a modern hearer, but the novel is historically situated in a time where the views on race, sex, religion, and society are very different from our current era. At times I could fall into Faulkner’s poetic use of prose, and he is truly gifted as a wielder of the English language, but each of the characters is unlovable in their own ways. Whether it is the indomitable Lena who refuses to give up her search for Lucas Burch/Joe Brown who is the father to the child she carries, Joe Christmas whose birth and life seems to be overshadowed by a questionable birth and lineage and a grandfather who views his divine calling as bringing about the destruction of his grandson, or Gail Hightower the disgraced minister who lives in the shadow of his grandfather who died in the Civil War.

Light in August is a work of art but like all art its reception is subjective. The world of the 1930s American South at times seems like an alien world for its strangeness and prejudices. There are times where the work seems dystopian and none of the characters, except perhaps Byron Burch, attempt to be heroic. For me the prose is gifted but the story is plodding and the characters seem to fit into a deterministic pattern based upon their inherited flaws. I can appreciate it as a classic but it was hard to hear the speech of the 1930s South, especially towards Black Americans, and not cringe at the way the derogatory terms for Black Americans continued to echo in my head even after putting the book aside. Perhaps it, like Flannery O’Connor’s work, present an uncomfortable mirror to the world of my grandparents whose prejudices echo in both spoken and unspoken ways in our own.