A Stricken Field

Typically Martha Gellhorn gets second billing to her ex-husband Ernest Hemingway. I was pleased that this Virago Modern Classics edition didn't even mention him in her bio. Instead the focused on her record as a war reporter. In that category she was a trail-blazer. She covered five wars: Spain, Finland, China, WWII and Java. If you're not familiar with all those Google it.

"A train whistle blew and a little procession of people straggled and stumbled through the crowd, herded by soldiers. The soldiers were not shoving them—but they were keeping them moving. All the faces looked stupid with exhaustion; the eyes searching around the room, for nothing, were empty even of questions or of fear. They were like old bundles of gray cloth. They had no tickets; the soldiers herded them down a platform and they were lost in the smoke, and the crowd closed behind them."

But it's a bit vexing that her style is so similar to Hemingway. They both embraced that spare, and understated style. The passage above is one of a few where she ran long enough to use a semicolon. But while they may have influenced each other (a topic neither author's biographers want to entertain) it is just as likely they were equally influenced by their mutual experience as news-writers. regardless she remains under-appreciated.

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Walter M. Miller was science fiction writer. The genre remains the last frontier of hacks, frauds and innovators and Miller was one of the finest. Before A Canticle for Leibowitz, he had published only short stories, and it was the only novel he published in his own lifetime. So you can see that style built into the often dense language burning up all that momentum with the feeling it will be spent in 10 or 15 pages.

"They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, if was easier for them to see that something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness it could believe in perfection, and yearn for it."

He originally wrote it as three novelettes, and then seeing the theme, re-wrote and combined them into one book with three sections. The book is loaded with religious metaphors and Latinate phrases which add gravitas to certain sections, but also dignify some of the unavoidable gothic overtones that come with post-apocalyptic literature.

There are reams of analysis you can read on the text if you wish to pursue it, or just read it.  Either way I see no need to delve into that redundantly here.