Switch Bitch

Switch Bitch

By Roald Dahl

Keeping it short today...

And for anyone who, like me, was unaware... Yes, that Roald Dahl.

This might come as a shock, but I had no idea that Roald Dahl, the writer of some of my favorite children's novels including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Fantastic Mr. Fox and The BFG, was also a prolific writer of short fiction for adults as well. I kew that Shel Silverstein wrote a lot of adult content, but not Dahl. So I approached Switch Bitch, a collection of four short stories for adults, with equal parts trepidation and eager anticipation. Was my childhood to be ruined or would I be opened up to an entirely new side of a writer I have always enjoyed?

Turns out, neither. If you have never read Roald Dahl's adult fiction he provides wonderfully fantastical premises and gorgeous twist endings to his admittedly addictive stories. I simply dare a reader to settle into one of these stories and then try and put it down for the evening. It won't happen. In that respect, Switch Bitch, like Dahl's children's literature is virtually impossible to ignore and a delightful romp from start to finish.

But I also found the stories lacking a certain quality. My fundamental problem with Switch Bitch (and this is my problem with so many works ofd fantasy and science fiction) is that he could have taken his premises so much further. I yearn for the extremes. I was literally begging the pages to take his ideas farther afield than Dahl seemed prepared to go. In the story "Bitch" the possibilities of a perfume that renders the human male into a helplessly unstoppable sexual beast are tantalizing, but Dahl reins the story in just as I was prepared to go all the way. And in "The Great Switcheroo" I was prepared for a bigger twist than what was eventually revealed I thought. Dahl owed it to his readers to take that premise to the ends of the earth. Alas, he did not, or at least not as far as this reader would have liked. I sincerely hope this is because Dahl was showing a modicum of literary restraint and not because I have become so wholly depraved that I am wishing sexual cataclysm on unsuspecting literary characters. Of course, on the list of things I'd rather no be known for "More Deviant than Roald Dahl" falls pretty low on the list.

Is it worth a read? Of course. It's an interesting insight into the mind of one of the 20th century's greatest writers. Just don't expect the unexpected (as the cover implores). There's nothing particularly new on these pages. But if you like Roald Dahl you owe it to yourself to check this one out. Don't worry. Your virgin eyes will absorb the impact. Dahl may have hit his fair share of literary home runs, but Switch Bitch is second base is so many more ways than one. Of course, Dahl's second base is still pretty sweet.

Sex With Kings

Sex With Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry and Revenge

By Eleanor Herman

Sex With Kings is the sort of niche history that really gets me going. I love it when a historian bites off a little corner of history and chews on it for 200-300 pages, especially if it is a subject that has otherwise been left to rot on the side of the plate. Subjects such as the etymology and evolution of the word fuck or the history of the human fear of premature burial arouse in me a curiosity that must be satiated.

When I came across Sex With Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry and Revenge (via someone else's book blog, but I forget whose. If you read this and it was your blog let me know and I will edit in your credit) my insatiable curiosity was roused. How could a history of royal mistresses not fail to entertain as well as inform. So long as it didn't focus on the detritus one finds in the British tabloids, this should have been a fantastic read.

Well, it is.

And it isn't.

First, one must give Eleanor Herman her dues. This book is an exhaustive piece of research. One wonders whether she was able to get her hands on every single existing letter written by or about royal mistresses since the reign of Louis XIV and if it isn't the definitive work on the subject, it should be.

This book is stuffed with juicy details into the private lives of the kings and queens of Europe. From the sorcery that some mistresses performed to maintain their relations with the king to the knifing ways in which they batted off pretenders to their position to the manner in which each of them was cast aside upon the death of their royal benefactor. It is a veritable historical gossip rag full of exposes and scandals.

But it that was it, if the sole purpose of Herman's work was to satisfy the leering eyes of historical royal worshippers then this book would be pointless. Herman also examines the ways in which mistresses have shaped the history of Europe. How some wars were the direct result of the meddling and others were settled due to the soothing hand of a king's dangerous liaison. In the case of King Ludwig of Bavaria, his mistress Lola Montez directly caused the revolution of 1848 that eventually forced the King to abdicate his throne and move into exile.

But I did have some problems with this book. First and foremost is the title of the book. When I first heard about this title I was excited to read the way in which mistresses were kept and perceived in a wide variety of royal and imperial settings. Sex With Kings suffers from excessive Euro-centrism. This wouldn't have bothered me so much had it been mentioned in the title. something like Sex With Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry and Revenge in Europe, but it wasn't called that. I wanted to know about the Imperial courts in Japan and China, the harems of Middle Eastern kingdoms and the such. But it concentrated primarily on Europe (and if I'm being honest, it focused even more primarily on Western Europe, Russia and Serbia only factoring in on a couple of occasions).

I also didn't enjoy the organization of the book. I understand that this is always a problematic point for anyone writing history. Do you write your subject chronologically, thematically or do you write it as a character study. Here, Herman chooses a thematic organization with such chapter headings as Beyond the Bed - The Art of Pleasing a King and Loving Profitably - The Wages of Sin. I suppose this organization was as good as any other but I found it difficult to juggle the names of kings, queens and mistresses from chapter to chapter. When Herman refers to Madame du Pompadour for the umpteenth time in chapter 10 I was forever trying to remember whether she was the mistress of Louis XIV or Louis XV. I would have preferred a character study that was divided either by king or by mistress.

Nevertheless, Herman is forgiven any personal problems a reader might have with her work. As it stands, she has bitten off a chunk of history to call all her own. As of this moment, Eleanor Herman is the official authority on the history of royal mistresses in Europe.

Welcome To The Monkey House

Welcome To The Monkey House

By Kurt Vonnegut

Interesting. I just finished Welcome to the Monkey House. Two books ago I read Ape House. This is all part of my challenge to read books that refer to primates (other than humans) in some way. Next up: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. It's all opposable thumbs, all the time here at My Life in Books!

OK.... anyway...

Sitting down with a Kurt Vonnegut book is like easing back into your favorite chair to watch your favorite movie while eating your favorite snack food. After months of treading new ground, it's nice to sit back with something familiar. Something unsurprising and solid. Kurt Vonnegut (along with Tom Robbins and Salman Rushdie) are my Rushmore. They are my chicken soup for the reader's soul. They are my safety reads. Goto novels when I feel like I need a refresher on where I came from. I love to revisit these guys and I do so often.

All this revisitation is a bit of a Catch-22, though, because at last count I only have three more novels left before I have read Kurt Vonnegut's entire bibliography. With Robbins, it's one, with Rushdie, it's two. For as much as I read, I have never finished an author's entire career's work (well... except Harper Lee). And while I will be left with collections of short fiction, essays and opinions for all three authors once I complete their bibliographies, as Welcome to the Monkey House shows, this shall be problematic.

Welcome to the Monkey House is one such collection of Vonnegut's early short fiction that I can only assume was published in what he refers to in Breakfast of Champions as "beaver magazines"(actually, after a cursory look on the Wikipedia entry for the collection, most of these stories were first published in reputable sources such as Collier's, Ladies Home Journal and Esquire, but let's not mess with a good story). The stories are predominantly science fiction, although some decidedly not. As with most collections of short stories, the content of Welcome to the Monkey House is uneven. Granted it's the sort of uneven work created by Kurt Vonnegut, which means it's good. But it's still uneven.

Personally, I enjoy Kurt Vonnegut's more traditional science fiction over anything else. Science fiction was the genre in which Vonnegut rarely failed. This turned out to be true on this collection as well. I most enjoyed a story entitled "The Manned Missiles" (1955) in which the father of the first Soviet man in space writes a heartfelt letter to the father of the first American man in space. Their boys' missions, which culminated in each of them dying in space due to the aggression of their respective nations, culminates in a detente between America and the Soviet Union and hints at the end of the Cold War. The story has both heart and social relevance (at least on the date of publication). Furthermore, this story has relevance considering its optimistic view of the future. Many Vonnegut critics have accused him of being overly pessimistic.

The title story, "Welcome to the Monkey House" (which, incidentally is the only story in this collection actually published in what might be construed as a beaver magazine... Playboy) is the centerpiece of the entire collection. It explores the subject of sexuality and overpopulation. In an effort to de-populate the planet people have willingly been robbed of their sexual urges. Furthermore, people are encouraged to visit government sponsored suicide clinics where they are eased off this mortal coil by suggestively clad virgins. When she encounters a Billy the Poet, a man who has not ascribed to the new system, she is shown the nature of this life, which she deems "pointless."The story is rife with sexual and moral tension and is perhaps one of the best stories of Vonnegut's career.

In another excellent story Vonnegut lays out a story about Thomas Edison and his dog that may or may not be a lie to get away from an annoying small town story-teller. In another Vonnegut elaborates on one woman's pathological obsession with home renovation. In yet another he tells the story of the first computer to express human emotions and how it falls in love with a woman.

But there are a few stinkers in the mix here (and no Kilgore Trout anywhere in sight). Like the rockets on the early space program, some of these stories just never seem to get off the ground. They all have that signature Vonnegut style but just don't seem to get anywhere. As one would expect from a collection of an author's early work, the stories read like a young writer trying to find his voice. As a devout reader of Kurt Vonnegut, it was a pleasure to read the trajectory of his young writing and see the origins of the more mature writer that would emerge in the ensuing years. In that sense Welcome to the Monkey House is just as much a piece of literary history as it is a collection of short fiction.

But if you are new to Kurt Vonnegut, I would recommend you pass on this one for the time being and start somewhere more conventional: Breakfast of Champions or Slaughterhouse-Five. As for me, I'm coming full circle. It's just about time I begin my way through Kurt Vonnegut's titles for the second time.

So it goes...