I was originally going to read this book when I was in Paris, however I had only just finished reading a collection of Satre's plays and there were a couple of other books that had caught my attention beforehand (such as [author:Hemmingway]), so I decided to put it down for a while. Mind you, considering that it is set in a seaside town that is fictional, though technically supposed to be La Havre, I could have read it when I was in Rouen, though of course I didn't know anything about the book until I actually started reading it. Anyway, since I have no idea when I will get back to France (particularly La Havre as there is supposed to be an Impressionist Museum there which happened to have the famous Renoir paintings on display in an exhibition, which meant they weren't in the D'Orsay when I was there), I decided that I should read it sooner rather than later.

Well, I have to admit that I am glad I did because this book is nothing short of awesome, even if it is somewhat hard to follow up times. Mind you, I would start praising Satre's writing style but that would probably make me look like a complete idiot because the version that I read was in English and Satre wrote in French, and my French is simply not at a level where I can actually read a novel, let alone determine whether the writing is any good (my German isn't that good either, but at least I can read a Tintin book, though I usually only get past the first couple of pages before I put it down and go and start doing something else, though reading a Tintin book in German is sort of cheating since I am quite familiar with the books anyway).

I probably should start talking about the book as opposed to rabbiting on about anything but the book, but then again I am one of those people that does get distracted quite often, and I do sort of write stream of consciousness style, in the sense that I simply dump onto the word processor the first thing that comes to mind as opposed to actually planning out my review in the way that I would do an essay. Well, this book is stream of consciousness, but it does not necessarily mean that Satre didn't plan it, namely because writing stream of consciousness doesn't necessarily mean that the story wasn't planned, but rather it is writing in a style as if we were looking directly into the mind of the author. Actually, Nausea (or La Nausée as it is in French) is written as a diary of the protagonist who basically puts his thoughts down on paper as he basically drifts through life, and drift he certainly seems to do.

Nausea is about an historian named Antoine who basically is trying to come to terms with who he is. He is financially secure, which means that he doesn't have to work, and basically spends his time researching and writing about an obscure French politician. He is also a bit of a loner, though he does interact with the Autodidact, who is basically reading every book in the library in alphabetical order (something which I probably wouldn't do, not so much reading every book in the library, but reading them in Alphabetical order, though I would probably skip books like Fifty Shades of Grey and the sequels). There are also a couple of other characters in the book, including Antoine's long lost love Anny, whom he tries to get back in touch with only to discover that she has moved on.

Funny thing this, and I guess it goes to show the type of person that he is, clinging onto a past that has long gone. This does happen, especially when one is a loner, that the only people that we know are the people that we have known, so when we decide to start looking for love the loner always looks backwards to the people that he (or she) has known as opposed to the people that he (or she) will know. Then again I guess this is the nature of the future – it is a big unknown, whereas the past is a known, and as such when we look back into the past we only encounter people that we have known, and people that we have known tend to be more comforting because there are no nasty surprises, where as people that we do not know, though we might have met them, are a blank slate, which means the potential for some really nasty surprises.

Yet, as Antoine has discovered, things are not static – they change, as is the case with Anny. She has moved on and simply doesn't want to go back, where as Antoine simply wants to cling to a past that has now long gone. I guess this is why he is an historian since he does not want to let go of the past. However, does that mean that Ford was correct when he said that 'history is bunk'? I don't think so – there are two ways to approaching history: the academic way and the conservative way. The academic seeks to learn from the past to be able to understand why things are the way they are, and to look for patterns to assist us in ascertaining the future. This is the same with the stock market analyst – they analyse historical data in an attempt to look for patterns which might make them, and their client's, money. Then we have the conservative view that doesn't look at the past academically, but rather looks at the past as a form of comfort – in a way the past comforts them because it is familiar, while the future is a vast unknown, and thus the conservative wishes to cling to the familiar rather than take the risk for entering the unknown, which is why, in many cases, we have this war against the future. Then again, it really isn't the immigrants that are taking our jobs, they are just taking the jobs that we really don't want to do – no, the robots are taking our jobs.

Finally, there is the question of existence and identity, but then again this is one of the core ideas of existentialism – who we are. Mind you, this type of query has been going on since time immemorial (or at least as far back as people discovered that they had time to sit down and think about thinking as opposed to working in the fields tilling crops and going out into the forest to hunt animals), even before Decartes famously said je pense, donc je suis (I think, therefore I am). However, what is coming out of this book is the suggestion that our identity, our existence, is defined by our environment. This is evident as Antoine comes to realise that the inanimate objects around him are beginning to define his existence, which is starting to make him sick – ergo the title of the book.

Yet isn't it true that in our modern society we are defined by our job, our house, our upbringing, even the phone that we have: oh, you have a Samsug that is three years old, well I'm better because I have a new one (says the cocky individual before the phone blows up). I guess it is one of the reasons why BMWs are suddenly becoming so popular, and why the urban sprawl is pretty much destroying Australia's market gardens – we need to have an identity and that identity comes from the house you live in and the car you drive. In fact it has even been suggested that some people have had their job applications rejected based upon the suburb in which they live.

Okay, that is a very materialistic look at the book because there is a much more philosophical look as well, and that is our environment. Sure, there is our definition based on our phone and our car, but there is also the definition based on our family, where we grow up, the language that we speak, and the people whom we associate with – many of these things we have no control over. For instance my Dad was an electronic engineer when has resulted in me having a much stronger affinity with computers than the guy next door whose dad is a motor mechanic. Mind you, I ended up doing and arts/law degree, but a lot of that had to do with the post-modern idea of defining ourselves as opposed to letting the world define us. This, in a way, works because there are a lot of toxic people out there who try to define who we are against our will, however there are other aspects to our environment, to our definition, and to our existence, that we should embrace.

In the end embrace that which is good about us and reject that toxic individual who scorns you because you vote for a different political party, don't own a car, and tries to provide an explanation to your life out of their own ignorance, but rather accept those who accept you for who you are, and seek to let the past be the past and see the future as an exciting adventure that needs to be lived as opposed to a terrifying unknown that needs to be stopped. If anything, the one thing about our coming robot overlords is that they aren't going to discriminate.

One of the main reasons that I decided to read this book, other than the fact that it happens to be a modern classic, is because I was reading an article in a Christian magazine that was complaining about how this book, and the motor car in general, is responsible for the promiscuous, permissive, and licentious society in which we now live. Mind you, this particular magazine pretty much made me want to puke, especially when you came across an article by some guy (and it was usually a guy, never a girl) who carried on about how bad he was, and he got so bad that he landed up in a huge amount of trouble, but then he found Christ and all of a sudden his life was turned around. Okay, some might be asking why, if I happen to be a Christian, am I trashing this particular magazine – well, because it happens to be a complete load of rubbish.

Anyway, enough of the reason as to why I ended up reading the book (and the other reason was because I wandered into a bookshop in Paris looking for a copy of Hemmingway's A Moveable Feast, and upon discovering that there wasn't a copy of that particular book, or in fact any book by Hemmingway, I decided to get this one instead, particularly since upon seeing it I was reminded of that incredibly annoying article that I read) and onto the book itself. Well, as it turned out the person that wrote the article probably didn't read the book at all because firstly it isn't about a single roadtrip, but about four, and also the main character (which happens to be Kerouac) doesn't own a car but rather relies either on buses, on his friends, or simply hitchhikes to get form point A to point B.

However, what this book does happen to be is a road trip – in fact it happens to be the original road trip. Sure, Willy Nelson might have written a song about a road trip, however the theory is that if it wasn't for this book the multitude of road trip movies (such as Thelma and Louise, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and of course Easy Rider) would never have come about. Mind you, I personally believe that is rubbish namely because if Kerouac didn't write this book then somebody else would have come along and written something similar, it is just that Kerouac managed to beat all of the other authors to the punch with his classic story of how he travelled from New York to Los Angeles and back again, from New York to San Francisco, and from New York to Mexico City where he landed up with the Mexican version of Dehli Belly, and was deserted by his friend (though this particular friend didn't seem to be the most honourable of people, especially since he seemed to have multiple wives and girlfriends).

On the Road is apparently the book that thrust the Beat Generation into the lime light, though interestingly enough the Beat actually refers to a group of writers as opposed to a generation as a whole (such as the Baby Boomers, or my generation, that being Generation X). I also suspect that the Lost Generation, that is the Generation of Hemmingway and his cohorts, was also a literary generation as opposed to a generation as whole. However it is interesting how people of an older Generation do tend to have an influence on those of a younger generation – Kerouac was influenced by Hemmingway, who in turn had an influence on the Baby Boomers despite the fact that he was of an older generation. Mind you, when I was young it was the Baby Boomers that had an influence on me, though more the celebrities than my parents. However, we should also remember that writers such as Lewis and Tolkien were from the 'Lost' generation as opposed to the 'Beat' or even the Baby Boomers (of which artists such as David Bowie were members).

One thing that stands out from this book happens to be how it seems that it was the beginning of the America that we now know, that is the America of the automobile and of the sprawling suburbs. In a way what the car did, or more specifically the cheap car that could be bought by the average punter (though it sounds as if Kerouac and his friends bought the 1940s equivalent of the old bomb and used it to travel about America). The interesting thing is that this is an America before the interstate highways, an America that is still developing and trying to find its feet and its identity. Sure, it had just emerged victorious from the Second World War, and had also emerged as the superpower after Britain was effectively bankrupted (and also saw its colonies, bit by bit, claiming independence), but it still hadn't really developed the identity that it eventually developed by the sixties and the seventies. However, what it also did was effectively became a car culture, which is a culture of individualism – having a car meant one have freedom, freedom to do, and go, wherever one wants to go, however there was a problem, namely that this place never seemed to exist – Kerouac travels from New York to California a number of times, spends his days in Denver, which seems to be the centre of the United States, and then frees himself further by going South of the Border and dreaming of going even further beyond – having the ultimate freedom to travel as far as the tip of South America.

However these dreams seem to be stunted – he ends up with Dehli Belly, and is deserted by his friend, Dean, a number of times. However it also seems that Dean seems to drift from woman to woman, from place to place, and from friend to friend, not having any real roots. We see the same with Kerouac as well, especially when he begins to settle down with the Mexican woman in Los Angeles, but then decides to dump her and return to New York. This is a new time, a time where people can pull out their roots and travel where-ever. Before then people rarely, if ever, travelled too far beyond their home. Yet, the interesting thing is that when one travels, when one pulls out their roots, it is very hard to put them back down again. I discovered that when I moved cities, that the roots that I pulled up had a lot of difficulty being planted again – sure, I have made new friends, but there are times and elements that I do not understand because I have not been around. There is a Website – Adelaide Remember When – that sits in my heart because I grew up in Adelaide, yet a similar website for Melbourne, Sydney, or even London and Paris, wouldn't have the same effect on me. Well, okay, London and Paris might be a little different, but I never grew up there so I don't have a personal connection with the past of any of those cities.

In a way what Kerouac is exploring, even if he it being intentional, which I suspect he isn't, is how we are beginning to become disconnected from place. Sure, he lived in New York, but in reality he come from abroad. However, what the car has done is that it has made it even easier from him to pull up his roots and to travel about. I have been on road trips myself, the longest going from Adelaide to Brisbane via Melbourne and Sydney, and back again. There is something liberating about letting go of life and jumping into a car and simply driving, even if one doesn't even have a destination in mind. In fact piling your friends into a car and going on a roadtrip is a bonding experience, as I have discovered on numerous trips to Melbourne and back again. However, things have even gone further with the advent of the commercial airline – now we can simply jump on a plane and simply anywhere we wish (though of course there are some restrictions, particularly when it comes to obtain a visa to enter certain countries, particularly if you happen to be from a country where the passport really has little, if no, power whatsoever).

Anyway, what better way to finish off this post than with a picture of a place where Kerouac seemed to finish off his journeys: Times Square.

The Real Hipsters

The funny thing is that after I had posted this review I suddenly realised that there was something that I forgot – the hipster. In a way it is really amusing reading about hipsters in a book written over fifty years ago. Well, that probably shouldn't be as odd as I think it to be namely because hipsters seem to be very retro in character to the point that retro is the new cool. Mind you, the hipsters of Kerouac’s generation weren't the retro lovers that the millenials are namely because the scene itself simply didn’t exist. In a way what the hipsters in Kerouac’s day were doing were setting the trends for the future – they were the members of the Beat Generation that laid the foundations for the sexual revolution and the era of flower power.

I have to admit that this whole retro hipster move is interesting in and of itself, and there are a lot of aspects about it that I really enjoy – the second hand clothes, in fact the second hand everything, which probably has a lot to do with them living in ridiculously overpriced innercity housing. However, it isn’t just the second-hand fascination that drives it, but also the coffee and craft beer craze and the smashed avocardos and eggs benedict (which is my breakfast indulgence of choice, though I can't stand avacado). Oh, there are sliders as well, but I think there was a time when you wouldn’t get anything like that on a breakfast menu, and people were happy with instant coffee (if you wanted good coffee you would get plunger coffee) – now you can buy your own coffee machine.

Yet this wasn’t the hipster movement of Kerouac’s age – they were bohemian, which is a sophisticated way of saying poor. Okay, not every poor person is bohemian since bohemians also tended to be artists, or wanted to be artists but never actually got a break. Even though Kerouac did get a break it wasn’t until at least ten years after he finished his book, and eventually died of alcohol poisoning pretty shortly after. However, the bohemian artist seemed to be driven by their art, but not only that, they also lived the poor lifestyle, as we encounter in this novel. Here Kerouac basically scabs lifts and when he runs out of money panhandles (otherwise known as begging) to get some more, even if only to get home. Mind you, it isn’t as if he is destitute, he still earns a stipend from the government for his military service, so it is enough for him to be able to live the artist’s lifestyle (which certainly isn’t the case today – if you try that you would be labelled with the term dole bludger and the like).

While Kerouac may not have introduced the hipster, or more precisely ‘Ned Kelly’ beard, there is one thing that this book has taught me – how to wear a tie and still look cool (not professional, cool):

When you discover that this book is about the life of a university lecturer you may automatically think about a certain movie in which a certain music teacher has a dream of creating a fantastic piece of music only to find himself trapped in a high school teaching music until his retirement to then discover the impact that he has actually had on all of the students that had passed through his class – and you would be wrong. Or, you could think about a high school chemistry teacher that discovers that he has cancer and to provide for his family decides to start cooking meth and, well, you would be wrong again. Mind you, with a title like Stoner (and the fact that is was written in 1965) you might end up thinking the the book is about somebody like this:

and, well, I guess you would be wrong again, though one sometimes wonders if the fact that William Stoner is actually a university English teacher then he must have had the occasional smoke, but in all seriousness the only drugs that appears in this book is a glass of whisky and a half-empty bottle of Sherry that is so old that one ought to throw it out (despite the fact that it probably will give you hallucinations).

However, I should say something about this particular book, and in a way it actually feels as if it is one of those feel good books, namely because upon reading it you feel somewhat relieved that your life is nowhere near as bad as Stoner's. Look, there are a couple of things I envy about the guy (okay, one, other than the name, and that is the fact that he is a lecturer in the liberal arts, and gets to have sex with a heaps intelligent post-grad, even though it is only an affair), however when you consider what has gone wrong with his life I guess one's envy of the fact that he is a lecturer pails in comparison.

It is not that his life started off bad but it appears that he made some choices that set his life on a course of what one could consider to be ordinary, though I would suggest that an ordinary life would be much better than the life he had. For instance, after taking a dislike at a poser of a post-grad (and as I think about it, he did give this particular post-grad a lot of chances) and basically seeing through his rubbish, he earned the eternal enmity of another lecturer (who seemed to stick up for this particular student to the point that makes you wonder if there were some shenanigans going on behind closed doors) which resulted in his career going nowhere. Mind you sometimes the idea of climbing the corporate ladder can result in a lot more burn out than simply being content with the job one currently has, though the problem with the world in which we live is that rewards seem to be commemorate with how high up the management ladder you are, and some of the good jobs can only be obtained if you have actually held a management role. However I digress.

Then there was that nightmare of a woman that he ended up marrying. I'm not really sure about this Edith woman, and sometimes I wonder if this particular woman was unrealistic because I find it very hard to believe that such a person could actually exist in real life. I'm not even sure if I could blame Stoner for making the wrong choice because it seemed like it was only after the wedding vowels that Edith began to show her true colours. In a way, if the saying 'behind every great man is an equality great woman' then maybe this book is suggesting that 'behind every rank failure is a bitch of a wife'. That's probably being a bit harsh, but then the picture that Williams paints or, or should I say tar and feathers, Edith, I sometimes wonder if he has a rather nasty misogynistic streak running through him.

Anyway, I want to finish off by looking at some of the ideas that comes out of another review that I read a while back, and that is what I will refer to as 'The Death of the American Dream'. It was something that I never really thought about until my American History lecturer one day began to ridicule the whole idea of the inalienable right of the pursuit of happiness. It is not so much that it is such a vague concept, but it does not necessarily define what happiness is, and suggests that if one is not happy then there is something wrong with them. However it is not so much an American thing but in many cases an Anglo thing. Yet consider the fact that depression is literally running rampant in our socirty, which makes us wonder whether this whole idea of happiness is actually working, or whether the American experiment has failed. Or what about the rights of others to be happy – what happens if your desire to be happy ends up forcing others into depression, and if you cannot do what you want to be happy then you are forced into depression. As for Stoner we cannot even consider whether he is happy – he seems to persevere against struggles that mere mortals like me would cave under, yet one wonders if, at the end, he dies happy – I don't think so, but I guess I will throw that open to a debate because while I have my own opinion, I really can't be bothered using the spoiler tab at this point in time.

Well, this is annoying. Having just arrived back from Europe, and having travelled half way around a world you could say that I now have the holiday hangover – Jet Lag. Basically I have had about 10 hours sleep in total over the past four days, namely because I go to sleep and suddenly an hour later I am wide awake, laying in bed, wondering whether I should get up and do something, or simply lie there and attempt to get some more sleep, which generally doesn't occur until around 5:00 am (which means that I am not up until around 10:00, when I am able to sleep in that late). Also, having had my first full day of work (in an office) for seven weeks, you could say that I am a bit zonked. However I have just finished the second instalment of Adam's rather bizarre, and quite absurd, space adventure, and if I don't start writing the review now I probably never well (not that I can easily write at the moment, even on a laptop – maybe I should get up and go for a walk before hand, or even better go down to the pub and get a beer – yes, maybe I'll do just that).

Okay, I'm now down at the pub with a beer in front of me, but I will do my best to resist the temptation to talk about how Belgium has turned me into a beer and coffee snob, particularly due to the fact that in Belgium you get beer that has been brewed in Monasteries for hundreds of years, where as in Australia you simply get beer that is pretty substandard (though nowhere near as bad as English beer – which as I have said previously is little more than coloured water). Anyway, enough of that because I really want to get this review completed before I move onto my next book.

So, the book starts of where the previous one ends, and sort of follows the television series (though the television series ends at the end of this book). However I didn't feel that this part of the series was anywhere near as good as the first book (or even the series). I would sort of suggest that it was tying up a few loose ends, but in fact the first book didn't have any lose ends that needed tying up (but then again any lose ends that exist in absurdist literature generally are not ment to be tied up – otherwise it would cease to be absurd). Further, it seems that the story has been padded out a bit and as such it feels a little forced, especially since the original really didn't need a plot – they land up at the Restaurant that exists at the end of time, namely because they are looking for some place to have a meal and people go there for a humongous light show. Our heroes then steal a stunt ship belonging to a galactic rockstar, but it turns out that this ship is going to be flown into a star. Fortunately they find a teleport and escape, but Zaphod and Trillian disappear to who knows where, while Arthur and Ford land up back on Earth (or at least on a ship heading in that general direction).

While that is the basic plot of the second half of the television series, this book gives a bit more of a meaning behind plot – the Vogons realise that since Arthur and Trillian managed to escape Earth their job of destroying the Earth was left half finished so they decide to go after them to finish it off (and you will see more of that in future books). Also, Zaphod decides to go and find out who the actual ruler of the universe is, namely because even though he is president of the galaxy he really has no power (though he ends up getting board and heads of to have some dinner instead). In a way it felt a little forced and sort of detracted a lot from the original premise, which was understandably quite absurd. Even though Zaphod does eventually find the ruler of the universe, as it turns out the guy is pretty absent minded, and in a way one wonders whether he actually rules anything, and why it is that he is supposed to be the ruler of the universe.

Maybe it has something to with this idea that there really isn't any order, or sense, in the universe, and if there is any deity, the lack of sense, or purpose, suggests that the ruler really has no idea what is going on, or maybe has been around for so long that he (or she) has simply become senile. In a way it does seem to be like this, but I really don't want to get into anything too theological to attempt to disprove Adam's theory because in a way it is your typical Deist view of existence – sure there is a God who created the world, but he is either long gone, or simply set it in motion and let it go about on its own devices. I guess that is why the theory of Thermodynamics works – creation moves from order to disorder in the same way that a mechanical device slowly, but surely, winds down to a halt. However the way that the world seems to go about suggests that maybe he have been forgotten about it. However, it is quite interesting that whenever somebody comes along and suggests that maybe if people learnt to get along a bit better they either end up shot, forced to drink poison, or hung on a cross.

One group I do need to mention are the Gulgafrinchans – they are a rather amusing, and quite interesting, race of people. The deal with them is that there were three classes of people – the ruling class, the working class, and the middle class. The thing with the ruling class is that they were the rulers (and controlled the means of production), so they considered themselves particularly important. The working class actually had useful skills that the ruling class could use to produce stuff, while the middle class simply leached off the capital of the ruling class and the hard work of the working class. The middle class consisted of people such as advertising executives, sales managers, film directors, and telephone sanitisers – people that if they were removed from society then society would pretty much continue to function, but at a more efficient rate.

In a way I am inclined to agree – there is actually a whole class of people that simply exist to make things more complicated, and more expensive. Lawyers (and politicians) create reams and reams of laws to make life so complex that one cannot navigate the environment without spending lots of money to actually understand what these mystical words actually mean. As for advertisers, market analysts, and sales managers – they simply exist to make things more expensive. For instance they take what is effectively a t-shirt and with a wave of their hands transform it into a lifestyle – a brand if you will – which means that one can jack up the price to no end. In a way the middle class really only exists to take money from the working class, give it to the ruling class, and take a significant cut for themselves. The fact that they come across as a bunch of bumbling idiots who haven't managed to get anything done because everything has been referred to a discussion group is no accident. In  away, as some suggest, totalitarian dictatorships are so much more effective because they do away with all these pesky politicians who exist only for the election cycle, and simply get things done. The problem is that it is actually very rare for there to be a totalitarian dictator that wants to make the country great as opposed to simply using his position as a chick magnet (otherwise Africa would be one of the most powerful continents on the planet).

I can't finish off this review without making mention of Marvin the Paranoid Android. No matter how disappointing the book ended up being for me, he still ends up stealing the show. Even though he is an incredibly intelligent robot (who has existed, by the end of the book, for millions of years) it is impossible to actually get anything out of him – namely because he acts like your typical self absorbed depressive – 'here I am, a brain the size of a planet and you want me to …'. Mind you, he really has his moments, especially when he is talking to a robot tank, and simply by being himself, ends up getting the tank to literally destroy itself (by shooting away the floor underneath it). In the end, it is the classic line that he gives when he is at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe (which is have quoted in the title, so I won't repeat it here) which is probably my favourite line of the entire series. Oh, and prophet that rocks up at the restaurant just before the universe ends, and doesn't get a chance to finish his apology for being late.

Maybe, just maybe, I'm being a little harsh on this book.

While this book was eventually published in 1983 the essays that the book contains date back to the fifties and the sixties and tend to focus on both the emerging science-fiction and fantasy genre, as well as some essays looking at literary criticism in general. The thing with science-fiction and fantasy at this time was that it was still very much a fringe genre, generally looked down upon by the critics of Lewis' day, and these essays were designed to attempt to change the perception of this new form of literature, especially since it has existed in some form or another since people first started telling stories.

What we seem to have with regards to this genre are the generally recognised classics of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, however they weren't the only people who were experimenting with this new genre – Mary Shelly had published Frankenstein, which is basically about a robot that hunts down its master, and The Last Man, which is a post-apocalyptic story of the last man left alive on Earth. However, even around Wells' time we have writers such as Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the creator of Conan the Barbarian Robert E Howard. The thing is that in the case of Haggard, his stories about the adventures of Alan Quartermain, have found themselves moved out of the category of fantasy and into the category of adventure.

The reason for this is that when the world was smaller, and a lot less known, authors would imagine what the world was like in these mysterious places – Swift set is adventures out in the middle of the oceans, while Haggard set his adventures deep in the darkest parts of Africa. Even writers like Howard created a time that existed before recorded history, and created a civilisation that existed there but has since been all but destroyed. The problem is that as we explore and map the globe, and as we make educated guesses about the pre-historic times, setting stories in these places becomes less and less believable, so authors need to look for other worlds in which to set their stories – and the main reason for setting the stories in other, imaginary, worlds, is that there is a lot less demand for realism, while setting a story in, say, Hong Kong, probably requires a lot more research (not that writers actually do that). Mind you, when they made the film version of John Carter, one of the complaints was that now we know that Mars is little more than a barren rock so creating a movie where a civil war soldier lands up in a world full of Martians isn't going to sit all that well these days.

One interesting thing that Lewis comments on was how he was disappointed with a film version of King Solomon's Mines, and how the final cliff hanger was changed to make it somewhat more exciting. I can sort of see where Lewis is coming from here, because I'm sure many of us have been seriously disappointed when one of our favourite books has been put onto the big screen. However cinema is a completely different medium to a book, in the same way that a play isn't necessarily the same as a poem – reading a play and watching a play be performed are two completely different experiences, and as I have discovered watching the play performed means that you are able to understand it a lot better. However, noting Lewis' criticism of the cinema adaptation of Rider's classic adventure tail, we begin to see cinema take on a life of its own – Indiana Jones comes to mind. In fact Lewis even suggests that when he was writing we had only seen the beginnings of this genre and the best were yet to come – well, when I think about it after Lewis' death we did see the rise of cult sci-fi classics such as Star Wars, Star Trek, and of course Doctor Who.

Lewis also writes a couple of comments on literary criticism, which I'm sure should apply to us since many of us do write reviews on books on Booklikes. Lewis suggests that one of the worse jobs to have is to be a paid book reviewer. I sort of can appreciate that. I write reviews because I enjoy writing reviews – as soon as you start getting paid to do it the pleasure somehow disappears. Mind you, I suspect that you would be lucky these days to get a paid reviewing job, particularly since many of the websites that post reviews of, well, whatever, tend to rely upon the unpaid work of schmucks like us (yet will pocket the profits gained through click-bait advertising).

I can also appreciate how he mentions that as a paid reviewer your TBR list literally explodes, and you have a dead-line to read all of these books. Personally, I don't like being rushed when it comes to reading a book, which is basically why I ignore review requests (and I suspect that I am not the only one). Mind you, all you need is for one bad apple and even the most interesting book will be ignored (I had some guy request I review a book, and I agreed, only to have him hound me for a couple of weeks to write the review, and didn't even get a thankyou, or a like, when I did so – I also suspect that I am not the only person who had this problem). Mind you, since my tastes generally involve authors that are, well, dead, then it is going to be difficult for a Booklikes author to fall into that category.

What caught my attention though were the reviewers that would review a book that they had never even read, or review a book in an attempt to cover up some flaws in the story (though I'm sure it isn't possible to cover up bad grammar, or spelling, unless of course you are writing poetry then theoretically anything goes, but once again, as Lewis suggested, in former times a poet was simply another name for a writer of fiction and fantasy). Mind you, I do spend an inordinate amount of time trying to patch up the apparent contradictions in the X-men films, namely because they are supposed to be all in the same universe, but the more you think about it the more it makes your head hurt. As for reviewing books that one hasn't read – I'm sure nobody actually does that on Booklikes.

9 September 2016 - Singapore (or at least the Airport)