Back in 1995, in order to celebrate their 60^th Anniversary in business, Penguin Books issued a series of very small books by famous authors called Penguin 60s which contained only around sixty to eighty pages. These books are tiny, only 4 inches by 5 inches, 10 centimeters by 12 centimeters.

I really liked this idea, because I am one of those who believe that a true genius can show her or his genius in 60 pages as well as in 100, 200, or 900 pages. They sold for only $.95 here in the United States and I wound up with about twenty of them. However here I am 26 years later, and nearly all my Penguin 60s remain unread.

So I decided to read and review a couple of them now. I picked works by two of my favorite authors, Graham Greene and Robert Musil.

In ‘Under the Garden’, Graham Greene attempts a childhood fantasy, something much different from the adult spy and foreign adventure fiction that he is justly famous for. I must say that I had a lot of difficulty appreciating this work, as fantasy is probably my least favorite genre of fiction. A boy of seven goes underground beneath the garden at his home and discovers some strange creatures and persons living there. There is the one-legged old man Javitts and his woman Maria who “kwahk”s instead of talks. Their daughter has left them and is now in the upper world and has been crowned Miss Ramsgate. Even though Greene’s other work nearly always appeals to me, this one did not really sustain my interest.

‘Flypaper’ by Robert Musil starts with eight short good-natured essays. Some of them were dated, having been written a hundred years ago. The standout for me was the first one, ‘Flypaper’, which is about that sticky paper people used to control the number of flies before there were a lot of insecticides. It was paper with this golden yellow sticky poison on it. The flies would land on it, get stuck, and slowly die. Robert Musil exactly describes what happens to the fly. I suppose as a child watching the flies land on flypaper was my first intimation of mortality. I thought Musil’s essay was a brilliant example of close sharp observation as he captures the plight of the flies.

In another of these essays, Musil closely observes the behavior of monkeys on a monkey island at the zoo. One can learn a lot about human nature by observing the behavior of monkeys on monkey island.

Essays don’t have the same impact for me that fiction does. ‘Flypaper’ does wind up with a twenty-six page fictional story which is also good-natured and has some of the qualities of Musil’s other fiction.

I suppose that if there were any real money to be made in the reprints of these works, they would have been given a proper reprint instead of a Penguin 60 reprint. I definitely would not recommend buying a box set of all the Penguin 60s today.

‘Under the Garden’ by Graham Greene       Grade:    C+

‘Flypaper’ by Robert Musil                               Grade:   B