Carl Deuker -- Books, Movies, TV

A philosophical novel along the lines of Candide . Both books are entertaining in their lampooning of clichès and accepted truths.  In Zadig, no good deed goes unpunished.  He is cheated, accused wrongly, misunderstood--and at all times he is honorable, the epitome of the good citizen.  Perfect length--these aren't characters in the normal sense of a novel.  It's a bit like an intellectual puppet show. Medicine:  "It would have been better had it been the right eye," said the doctor.  "I could easily have cured it, but the wounds of the left eye are incurable." Observation:  "Zadig chiefly studied the properties of plants and animals; and soon acquired a sagacity that made him discover a thousand differences where other men see nothing but uniformity." This is a very good description of Charles Darwin--exactly his attributes Love/Desire:  "A growing passion, which we endeavor to suppress, discovers itself in spite of all our efforts to t...

Melmoth Reconciled, by Balzac This is Balzac's rather odd and uneven version of the Faust tale.  A bank cashier steals 500000 francs, meets a stranger, exchanges his soul for power, discovers his "love" doesn't really love him, discovers that power is not all that he expects, and then makes his own trade, avoiding hell by consigning someone else to it.  Faust, Dorian Grey--both better by far. On desire, once satisfied:  "So often it happens that, with possession, the vast vast poetry of desire must end, and the thing possessed is the seldom the thing that we dreamed of." On Paris:  "That city of fiery ordeals and branch establishment of hell." On theft by the wealthy:  "Society will sanction the theft of millions, shower ribbons upon the thief, cram him with honors, and smother him with consideration." Great description:  " For the first time in his life the old soldier felt a sensation of dread that made him stare open-mou...

Available through Gutenberg for free and through Kindle for 99 cents. The Miracle of Zobeide by Pierre Mille      Protestant missionary is tricked by Muslim into believing that a turtle is growing a finger's breadth every day.  Mildly amusing. The Owl's Ear    Erckmann-Chatrain  (I'm guessing a science background.  Stories are drawn to wavelengths of sound in particular.)   An interesting meditation on sound and how it is taken for granted.  " so also will my  micracoustic  ear trumpet extend the sense of the unbearable beyond all possible bounds. Thus, sir, the circulation of the blood and the fluids of the body will not give me pause; you shall hear them flow with the impetuosity of cataracts; you shall perceive them so distinctly as to startle you; the slightest irregularity of the pulse, the least obstacle, is striking, and produces the same effect as a rock against which the waves of a torrent are dashing!" An...

From:  Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories  edited by Julian Hawthorne (a public domain book). Great horror story.  A double takes over our narrator's life (story is told as a journal).  The double, who seems to live on milk and bread, controls our narrator's thoughts, but also makes our narrator wonderfully speculative on the nature of life. "Whence do these mysterious influences come, which change our happiness into discouragement, and our self-confidence into diffidence. One might almost say that the air, the invisible air is full of unknowable Forces, whose mysterious presence we have to endure." p. 40 "Last night I felt someone leaning on me who was sucking my life from between my lips with his mouth.  Yes, he was sucking it out of my neck like a leech would have done." 44 The stars dart out their rays in the dark heavens.  Who inhabits those worlds? What forms, what living being are there yonder.  What do those w...

Woman in White Wilkie Collins finished March 28, 2016 "Some of us rush through life, and some of us saunter through life.  Mrs. Vesey SAT through life." p 31 "Our capacity of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth, one of the civilized accomplishments which we all learn as Art." 36 "No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman." "Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's person appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them." 180 "Men little know when they say hard things to us how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us." Mr Fairlie--the ultimate simpering hypochondriac--on being visited on an important matter by his lawyer:  "Louis, do you think he would go away if I gave him five shillings?" Solomon in all his glory was Solomon with the elements o...