GatesyRead

Saul Bellow was a terrific writer – a Nobel Prize winner, no less – and occasionally I have the urge to read all of his books, one after the other. Then I remember all the other books I have on my shelves crying out for attention, and “shelve” the idea. But this year, I did go back to Square One and purchase, and read, Bellow’s first novel, Dangling Man (1944). Out of order, I can add it to Herzog (1964), Seize the Day (1956), Humbolt’s Gift (1975), Henderson the Rain King (1959) and Ravelstein (2000).   There’s a bunch I’ve missed, and a few on my shelves I’ve never got to, and since I read Herzog as a teenager, a lot of water has passed under the Du Sable Bridge. I feel I ought to start again. One needs more than one life to read – and at least one, to live. On the other hand, Joseph – the “hero” of this particular novel, has more than enough time on his hands as he ‘dangles’ between employment (he has lost his job) and recruitment into the US Army. In the diary format, Jo

Graham Greene’s 7 th novel, re-released in 2004 as a vintage classic, came into my hands via a book bucket in Katoomba and sat on my shelf for a few years before I got started. I read it in a few days. Compulsive reading. The question is – what’s so appealing to the reader about a ruthless, 17-year old killer? Why has it been adapted into different forms (including a 1944 play, a 1997 radio drama, a failed 2004 musical, and two films – 1947 and 2010)? I think the answer is, in part, the spectacle of the slow-motion-train crash. The opening sentence of the novel is a brilliant example of foretelling: ‘Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him’ (p.3). He doesn’t make it out of Chapter 1, this journalist. Chapter 2 then introduces ‘the Boy’ (later known as “Pinkie”) whom we soon figure is Hale’s killer. The story is not a traditional crime story, however -- the primary crime happens so quickly and we know the murderer. What becomes fascinat