I found Under the Net to have quite a few similarities to The Ginger Man, partially due to Iris Murdoch’s writing style not causing me to cringe, but mainly due to Jack Donaghue. Despite his flaws, I still found myself liking Jack. Now that I’m finished with the novel, I thought I would describe some of the two protagonists’ essential differences.

1.When Sebastian gets drunk, he starts violent bar fights. When Jake gets drunk, he sends love letters.

2.Neither of them make a great deal of money, but at least Jake works. Sebastian intends to go to the park and study law, and instead he flirts with his neighbor while his daughter is present. Jake, when he realizes he needs money, gets a job that sounds to me like one of the worst available: an orderly at a hospital cleaning up after patients.

3.Jake’s friends are much better people than Sebastian’s friends, some of whom are more disgusting than Sebastian himself.

4.For Sebastian, freeloading off his friends is a regular way of life. But when Jake thinks he betrayed his friend’s trust and friendship, he feels horribly. (Also, Sebastian does not have a conscience.)

5.Sebastian probably has STDs. Jake, on the other hand, goes after one woman throughout the entire book, and at the end when he realizes she’s really not interested in picking up where they left off, he stops. Jake also has opportunities with other women, which he politely declines.

6.While I wouldn’t trust Sebastian within a 50 mile radius of his own daughter, the relationship between Jake and the dog Mars is one of my favorite parts of the book. Jake begins by kidnapping Mars to use as leverage to get back something that was taken from him. By the time Jake finds out that the person who had Mars before has no desire to get him back, he and the dog are already close friends.

Jake is by no means perfect, but with a solid balance of positive and negative qualities Jake is a much more fascinating and relate-able fictional character than Sebastian will ever be.

Books Left: 98
Days Left: 691
Current Book: The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

I’m going to write about my initial thoughts on The Postman Always Rings Twice quickly now before I actually finish the book. This is why I might get it finished so quickly:

Yes, that is me and I am working from home, or to be more specific, working from the snow fort in my front yard. I was lucky to have heat, electricity, and most importantly internet access unlike so many in the DC metro area. (And yes, if you clicked the link you’ll see that the Weather Gang is reporting another big snowstorm tomorrow night!) This storm has had a devastating effect on my social life and let’s just say that if LOST is overrun with weather updates I might go crazy and hit someone in the head while they’re in the car and then push the car over a cliff.

That’s what happened in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Novel 98 on the list is yet another tale of a morally bankrupt man. (Noticing a trend yet?) This morally bankrupt man gets a woman to fall in love with him. (Notice another trend?) This woman is married to a man known as the Greek, and doesn’t like him because he’s Greek, because apparently Greeks are a race that should be stygmatized (this is news to me–all I know is that the food is incredibly good and the men look like this–I don’t see a problem here!) and she wants out.

So our main character, the moral vacuum, decides murdering him is the only way out. He gets the wife to go along with him since her upstairs is vacant. He has no money, so if the Greek dies his wife will get all his land, his shop, etc. But the first time they try it fails and he takes out a life insurance plan which makes their second sucessful try more tricky, because the life insurance company doesn’t want to pay out if it’s murder.

It’s a great story so far and the writing is top notch. Even though we have another antihero, I can’t help but kinda sorta want them to get away with it, mainly because I feel for the wife. Similarly I was rooting for George Minafer as The Magnificent Ambersons came to a close as well. But not once did I want anything good to happen to Sebastian Dangerfield.

I think much of that comes down to good writing. Booth Tarkington and James. M. Cain were able to construct characters that were, essentially, unpleasant people that we’d never want anything good to come of in real life but write them in such a way that inspire our sympathies.