In a time of crisis and when we are overwhelmed with time spent indoors, books can provide our saving grace, a window into worlds without the ailments of our reality, all wrapped together in fanciful prose and narration.
This last month, just before we were all asked to stay indoors and practice social distancing, I read three novels, each a classic in their own right.
Let’s get into it.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence (1928)
One of the most notorious and influential banned books of the 20th century, Lady Chatterley’s Lover was slated as overly-erotic and promiscuous, like an older and more intelligently written iteration of E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey.
The story follows Constance—Lady Chatterley—and the dismantling of her marriage with her wealthy, upper-class, war-veteran paraplegic husband. She takes Oliver Mellors, the property game-keeper, as her secret lover and the narrative traces the heat of the affair. The author deftly plays with the characters’ reputations regarding class and social status, lighting them afire with scandal and rumors both true and false.
The tale is a classic romance that stands out above others of the day because of how intimately the (male) author is able to expound upon the notions and emotions of Constance Chatterley. What follows is a poetic and dramatic exposé on love, lust, and sexual intimacy.
The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell (1937)
George Orwell was a prolific writer of political criticisms during the early-to-mid 20th century, and The Road to Wigan Pier remains one of his most polemical pieces.
The book is divided into two parts: Part I is an investigation into the destitute working conditions and living conditions of coal miners and their families in Northern England; Part II is an analysis of Socialism and the many reasons that different classes of people dislike and support the ideology.
Orwell spent time living and working alongside the working class men of the coal mines, documenting their tribulations. Men literally had to crawl on all fours for three hours down into a tunnel just to get to work to begin an 8-hour shift of backbreaking labor; then they had to crawl uphill for another handful of hours at the end of their shift. For all this the miners made pennies and typically went many weeks without access to a bath. The conditions described in Part I are frightening, blunt, and sad.
Using Part I as a primer, Orwell then explicates how Socialism could right the ship of the working class, though he also weaves in contemporary denouncements of Socialism and the ways it could go awry.
Never before has the world seen a political commentator as sharp as Orwell.
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (1963)
One of many of Kurt Vonnegut’s popular science fiction novels, second in popularity only to his Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) which was a satire denouncing war, violence, and the devastation left in the wake of the Dresden bombings. Cat’s Cradle carries similar anti-war themes, as well as anti-industrialization and warnings against humanity’s ever-advancing technologies.
The story follows John, the narrator, who is writing a book about the Hiroshima bombing and the late Felix Hoenikker—the (fictionalized) father of the atom bomb. John becomes entangled with Hoenikker’s adult children who are now in possession of a dangerous technology, ice-nine, invented by their late mad-scientist father.
The story is satirical and many consider it to be allegorical in nature—the dangers of ice-nine parallels the mutually assured destruction threatened during the Cold War. Vonnegut ties in “Bokonon” throughout the tale, a nihilist religious movement based on the inevitability of all things. Together with ice-nine, Bokonon helps add to the author’s questioning of placing technological advancement over the well-being of human beings.
The book reads quickly, as it is constituted of 127 very short (and funny) chapters. I did not enjoy it as much as Slaughterhouse-Five, though it was an intelligent and satirical criticism of man’s relationship with war and technology.
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