The back cover of my edition of The Sun Also Rises reads like a torrid romance novel, illustrating (again) how difficult it is to capture a book in summary, but also how important. Here's the back cover:
Paris in the twenties: Pernod, parties and expatriate Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley, aristocratic and irresistibly beautiful, but with an abandoned, sensuous nature that she cannot change.
When the couple drift to Spain to the dazzle of the fiesta and the heady atmosphere of the bullfight, their affair is strained by new passions, new jealousies, and Jake must finally learn that he will never possess the woman he loves.
I'll grant that this is a commercial summary, intended to sell the book, but it is a bunch of wretched nonsense all the same. The Sun Also Rises is not a frustrated, tragic love story, nor does anyone in this novel have a "nature," at least not in the sense in which that sounds. This is a novel firmly rooted in environment, in a time and several places, through which the war has left these characters to wander Europe, lost and half-dead.
For the duration of Book One, I found this a vastly frustrating novel to read. The first person narrator of the story, Jake Barnes, is a journalist living in Paris. His work occupies a very small share of his life; most of the time, he goes purposelessly from bar to restaurant to bar in the company of a great many characters he rarely bothers to introduce or to contextualize. (The writer Robert Cohn is an exception to this pattern, but more about him later.) When Jake first encounters his former love Brett Ashley, he is in a dance club, where he has brought a woman he stared at on the street. When Brett accuses him of turning romantic, he answers, "No, bored" - and that's exactly how he sounds in Paris. Bored. Aimless. Detached. One of the reasons for his bitterness, we soon discover, is that he sustained an injury during the war that left him impotent. That is likewise one of several reasons he and Brett can't be married. According to Brett, they can't even live together because she would cuckold him relentlessly. "You couldn't stand it," she tells him, to which he answers, "I stand it now." Brett leaves at the end of Book One for San Sebastian, where she conducts an affair with Robert Cohn.
The novel picks up serious steam in Book Two when Jake and his friend Bill Gorton go to Pamplona for the fiesta. Brett and her fiance, Mike, meet them there, and Robert Cohn comes along, too, which is of course awkward for everyone. Still, Jake comes alive during fiesta, I would argue because it organizes the experience of life - or rather, disorganizes that experience - in much the same way that war did. Fiesta goes on for seven days without ceasing. There are rockets going off, people thronging the streets. "Everything be[comes] unreal," as Jake says. Bill Gorton calls it a "wonderful nightmare." People share their wine, their food. It is an atmosphere of community and chaos and danger, as illustrated when a man is killed during the running of the bulls.
When it comes time to see the actual bullfight, Robert Cohn reveals his otherness, his difference from the rest of the group when he worries that he might be "bored" during the fighting. This remark incenses Bill Gorton, who says, "That Cohn gets me. . . He's got this Jewish superiority so strong that he thinks the only emotion he'll get out of the fight will be being bored." Brett's fiance picks up on the fury and the joke, and this exchange ensues:
'You weren't bored, were you?' asked Bill.
Cohn laughed.
'No. I wasn't bored. I wished you'd forgive me that.'
'It's all right,' Bill said, 'so long as you weren't bored.'
'He didn't look bored,' Mike said. 'I thought he was going to be sick.'
'I never felt that bad. It was just for a minute.'
'I thought he was going to be sick. You weren't bored, were you Robert?'
'Let up on that, Mike. I said I was sorry I said it.'
'He was, you know. He was positively green.'
'Oh, shove it along. Michael.'
'You mustn't ever get bored at your first bull-fight, Robert,' Mike said. 'It might make such a mess.'
By the end of this passage, the notion of boredom is exchanged for physical sickness in a way that I find significant. The concern before the fight is that the violence will prove too disturbing for Brett. That it also proves too disturbing for Cohn suggests that boredom is the equivalent of physical weakness, of being feminized. The rest of the men come to Spain to feel emotion, to be engaged, to be men again. This is especially true of Jake, who is very proud that he has aficion, or passion, for the bulls, which in this section seems to stand in for his lost and wounded masculinity. Americans aren't supposed to be able to have aficion, but Jake does, and it is real, validated by the Spanish men who touch him on the shoulder and approve. In the terms of fiesta, then, Jake is the strong one, the real man, and Cohn is weak and womanly.
Except that he isn't. As we know from the opening sentence of the novel, "Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton," and when Cohn finds out that Brett has gone off with Pedro Romero, the 19-year-old bullfighter, he demands that Jake tell him where they are. Jake won't, and when Cohn comes at him, Jake tries to throw a punch only to have Cohn knock him out cold. Cohn is such a strong fighter that can't be defeated by the men in his party; he can only be defeated by Romero, whom he "masscres," but whom he can't knock out. Romero says he'll kill Cohn in the morning if Cohn doesn't leave town, and Cohn does finally depart, teary and regretful. Not long after that, Brett leaves with Romero.
Just as the war has damaged and blighted the men in this book, it has also damaged Brett, as we discover in Book Three. Just as Jake is settling into his hotel in San Sebastian to recover from fiesta, he gets a distress call from Brett, summoning him to Madrid, where Jake learns that Brett kicked Romero out because Romero wanted to domesticate her. (During the war, Brett married an English aristocrat, Lord Ashley, only to have him come home deranged and threatening to kill her. He went to bed every night with a gun beneath his pillow, and for her own safety, Brett took out the bullets as soon as he fell asleep. No wonder, then, that she does not take kindly to the idea of domestication.) Romero wanted Brett to grow out her hair and marry him so that "I couldn't go away from him, he said. He wanted to make sure I could never go away from him. After I'd gotten more womanly, of course." Brett is "all right" now that she's gotten rid of him, but she is very fixated on one idea as she talks to Jake:
'I'm thirty-four, you know. I'm not going to be one of those bitches that ruins children.'
'No.'
'I'm not going to be that way. I feel rather good, you know. I feel rather set up.'
Later, she adds: 'You know it makes me feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch. . . .It's sort of what we have instead of God.'
At age 34, Brett's almost but not quite lost her chance to be fertile. That she still has a chance to procreate is clear from the fact that she can still attract a virile 19-year-old partner, the novel's consummate example of masculinity and the only man in the book who is not blighted or broken. (Jake is impotent. Mike is bankrupt. Cohn is Jewish, which the men in this novel regard as his weakness.) Still, Brett rejects this last opportunity to have kids because she doesn't want to be a bitch "that ruins children." After the terrible violent nightmare of the war, it is not procreation, but refusing to create that replaces God - and perhaps defies him.
So what is this a story about? Certainly it's about lost and damaged people clinging to each other after the war, when pre-war ideals and ambitions about career and family no longer make sense. In many ways, it's also about Jake Barnes' friendship with a Jewish writer and former boxer, who reads a book called The Purple Land that awakens the romantic in him, inspiring him to leave his long-time love, Frances, to pursue Brett, a woman of class. In this respect, Cohn is to Barnes as Gatsby is to Nick Carraway: the last example of strong, romantic hope after everyone else has already given up. That Cohn happens to be pursuing the object of Jake's affections is all the more perfect. Cohn's doomed quest to win Brett allows Jake to experience what would happen if Jake truly and sincerely pursued Brett himself, as shown in this conversation:
'Everybody behaves badly,' I said. 'Give them the proper chance.'
'You wouldn't behave badly.' Brett looked at me.
'I'd be as big an ass as Cohn,' I said.
'Darling, don't let's talk a lot of rot.'
'All right. Talk about anything you like.'
'Don't be difficult. You're the only person I've got, and I feel rather awful tonight.'
Brett needs Jake to be her friend, her "person," the one man who can't pursue her. And Jake seems to be liberated by Cohn's experiences so that he can be that "person," no longer trapped by the belief that he and Brett should be together. At the very end of the novel, it is she saying that they would have been good together, while he recognizes this as a "pretty" fantasy.
One final note is that I don't feel like I know enough historically to say how "Jewishness" is coded in this place and at this time in history. In this novel, however, it is treated with the same disdain by Brett's fiance as Gatsby's low origins are treated by Tom Buchanan (ironically, although Cohn has both money and a solid name in the place of his birth, that fortune is overshadowed by his ethnic and religious identity here).
Monday, March 29, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Great Gatsby
For the sake of continuity, I will start this blog entry by asking what this book is about. At its most basic, The Great Gatsby is the story of the social climber James Gatz, who invents himself as Jay Gatsby, falls in love with a rich girl, and spends the rest of his short, tragic life trying to win her, despite the fact that she has married a wealthy man named Tom Buchanan. After quickly amassing the fortune he needs to care for Daisy, Gatsby almost succeeds in getting her back, at least until Tom investigates the actual sources of Gatsby's money, which Tom reveals on a trip to New York with Daisy, Gatsby, Nick, and another friend. This revelation makes Daisy doubt Gatsby, but it is a tragic accident on the way home from New York that ruins Gatsby's chances forever - and indeed ends his life. On the way home, Daisy drives, inadvertently striking and killing a woman who turns out to be Tom's mistress, Myrtle Wilson. Thinking Gatsby hit Myrtle and drove away, Tom tells Myrtle's husband where to find Gatsby. George Wilson goes to Gatsby's house, shoots him in his pool, and then shoots himself, leaving Nick Carraway alone to arrange Gatsby's funeral, which no one but Gatsby's father attends. It is a sad and wonderful story, but it's also a more complex one than I think I realized.
I think Jason is right on about the parallels between James Gatz and Clyde Griffiths (who seals his fate in part by inventing not one but two new identities for himself). There is a social climber at the heart of this novel, and the narrator says that he "represent[s] everything for which I have an unaffected scorn." At the same time, however, the narrator has genuine affection for Gatsby, who has "an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person. No - Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men."
But what did prey on Gatsby? That's a question I don't feel like I can entirely answer to my satisfaction.
The east-west business that Jason raised also interests me. The Carraways have new money, but they have stayed in the same place long enough that they can successfully mythologize their origins and masquerade as having old money. Near the end of the novel, Nick says, "I am . . . a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name." In the middle "west," old money is rooted. There are family homes, family estates, and the people have some decency. In the east, where there is new money, anyone can rent any house. No one "remembers" how to get to your address unless you're throwing a party. People don't come to your funeral. God himself isn't watching anymore; he's been replaced by an advertisement, a giant pair of eyes.
There is some connection, too, between geographical and social mobility, both of which are vaguely distasteful. Old money keeps horses. Old money converts a garage back into a stable, while new money buys a new yellow car, a "circus wagon." Jordan and Daisy are both bad drivers. I don't know what this all means, but I find it interesting!
I suppose Nick admires Gatsby's optimism because he knows Gatsby, like Clyde, can't possibly succeed. We can never have the American dream; it's ever receding before us, so that we can only ever be what we were at the start.
I think Jason is right on about the parallels between James Gatz and Clyde Griffiths (who seals his fate in part by inventing not one but two new identities for himself). There is a social climber at the heart of this novel, and the narrator says that he "represent[s] everything for which I have an unaffected scorn." At the same time, however, the narrator has genuine affection for Gatsby, who has "an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person. No - Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men."
But what did prey on Gatsby? That's a question I don't feel like I can entirely answer to my satisfaction.
The east-west business that Jason raised also interests me. The Carraways have new money, but they have stayed in the same place long enough that they can successfully mythologize their origins and masquerade as having old money. Near the end of the novel, Nick says, "I am . . . a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name." In the middle "west," old money is rooted. There are family homes, family estates, and the people have some decency. In the east, where there is new money, anyone can rent any house. No one "remembers" how to get to your address unless you're throwing a party. People don't come to your funeral. God himself isn't watching anymore; he's been replaced by an advertisement, a giant pair of eyes.
There is some connection, too, between geographical and social mobility, both of which are vaguely distasteful. Old money keeps horses. Old money converts a garage back into a stable, while new money buys a new yellow car, a "circus wagon." Jordan and Daisy are both bad drivers. I don't know what this all means, but I find it interesting!
I suppose Nick admires Gatsby's optimism because he knows Gatsby, like Clyde, can't possibly succeed. We can never have the American dream; it's ever receding before us, so that we can only ever be what we were at the start.
Monday, March 22, 2010
The Great Gatsby - That Ol' SPOILED Sport
What a difference context makes! I read this book two years ago and didn't find it nearly as satisfying as I did this time. On the one hand, I think it was more enjoyable because I already knew the basic plot movement and didn't need to wonder or worry about where the story was going. On the other hand, I had An American Tragedy for comparison.
Like An American Tragedy, The Great Gatsby is about money. In many ways James Gatz/Jay Gatsby is like Clyde Griffiths, a boy of humble origins who falls in love with wealth, wealthy culture, and a beautiful and rich girl. In An American Tragedy, Clyde had no chance of moving up the social ladder, but by marrying the right girl, he hoped he could. Gatsby wants to climb the social ladder so that he can marry the girl of his dreams. And Gatsby can and does move up that social ladder . . . to an extent.
He is wealthy, there is no doubt about it. Everyone wants to take advantage of his parties and his generosity, but his money is new. And because it's new, it's suspect. All the rumors circulating around Gatsby are because old money has an existing history, a family to point to. Buchanan and Daisy are from old money, and they see Gatsby's parties as vulgar. Gatsby's counterpoint is of course Myrtle whose party is more vulgar and distasteful. Compare both parties to the cultured ease of the opening dinner at the Buchanans. Buchanan doesn't have hydroplanes and a "circus wagon"--he has converted his garage to a stable, for goodness sake--how cultured is that? And the true social and cultural inroads made by Gatsby are revealed by his funeral. So he can be rich, but he cannot ever have what Buchanan and Daisy have. The money is Daisy's voice that both Gatsby and Nick admire is something you are born into.
And what does Daisy see in Buchanan that makes her love him? God knows that he is nothing but an ass to us readers. Gatsby's not the bee's knees, but he sure is more likable than Tom. But to Daisy, Gatsby, for all his charms is not of the same social standing as Tom, no matter how much money he has. It is a doomed love affair from the beginning. At 30, Daisy is not the 18 year old romantic girl ready to run off with Gatsby.
I love how Gatsby is not self-made, but that Wolfshiem takes full credit for making him.
Nick is fascinating to me as well, but since all my posts are too long as it is, I shall cut myself short. Where does Nick fall in this scale of wealth and social position? He seems both rich from childhood (as the opening sentence suggests) but also rather poorly positioned in his home on West Egg. I love how Nick gets disgusted with just about everyone.
And speaking of West Egg, what do you make of the Midwest v. East distinction? It seems to move from a comment about America to something about the East Coast. Is this East v. West distinction echoed in East v. West Egg?
I'd write more, but I hate to bore.
Happy readings!
Like An American Tragedy, The Great Gatsby is about money. In many ways James Gatz/Jay Gatsby is like Clyde Griffiths, a boy of humble origins who falls in love with wealth, wealthy culture, and a beautiful and rich girl. In An American Tragedy, Clyde had no chance of moving up the social ladder, but by marrying the right girl, he hoped he could. Gatsby wants to climb the social ladder so that he can marry the girl of his dreams. And Gatsby can and does move up that social ladder . . . to an extent.
He is wealthy, there is no doubt about it. Everyone wants to take advantage of his parties and his generosity, but his money is new. And because it's new, it's suspect. All the rumors circulating around Gatsby are because old money has an existing history, a family to point to. Buchanan and Daisy are from old money, and they see Gatsby's parties as vulgar. Gatsby's counterpoint is of course Myrtle whose party is more vulgar and distasteful. Compare both parties to the cultured ease of the opening dinner at the Buchanans. Buchanan doesn't have hydroplanes and a "circus wagon"--he has converted his garage to a stable, for goodness sake--how cultured is that? And the true social and cultural inroads made by Gatsby are revealed by his funeral. So he can be rich, but he cannot ever have what Buchanan and Daisy have. The money is Daisy's voice that both Gatsby and Nick admire is something you are born into.
And what does Daisy see in Buchanan that makes her love him? God knows that he is nothing but an ass to us readers. Gatsby's not the bee's knees, but he sure is more likable than Tom. But to Daisy, Gatsby, for all his charms is not of the same social standing as Tom, no matter how much money he has. It is a doomed love affair from the beginning. At 30, Daisy is not the 18 year old romantic girl ready to run off with Gatsby.
I love how Gatsby is not self-made, but that Wolfshiem takes full credit for making him.
Nick is fascinating to me as well, but since all my posts are too long as it is, I shall cut myself short. Where does Nick fall in this scale of wealth and social position? He seems both rich from childhood (as the opening sentence suggests) but also rather poorly positioned in his home on West Egg. I love how Nick gets disgusted with just about everyone.
And speaking of West Egg, what do you make of the Midwest v. East distinction? It seems to move from a comment about America to something about the East Coast. Is this East v. West distinction echoed in East v. West Egg?
I'd write more, but I hate to bore.
Happy readings!
Thursday, March 18, 2010
In Praise of Chronological Order
I realize that starting with these older texts can be challenging and will probably scare off a number of people who were scarred by high school and college instructors, but there is a huge benefit to doing it this way.
Namely, we get a picture of a larger culture. When Peter Walsh reflects on his time in Britain, that means something to us because of our experience with A Passage to India. And in these novels concerned with class and class structure (An American Tragedy, Mrs. Dalloway, The Great Gatsby) we have a context that is created from these companion texts. Novels and stories all exist within a particular time and place regardless of their being called "timeless." Reading the books together and in order, we can see them existing together.
We are not far enough along the timeline to see books referring to each other, commenting upon each other, building off each other, but I will not be surprised to see that in the future too.
So far I find this to be a very rewarding project. Thank you, Ann, for making this happen!
Namely, we get a picture of a larger culture. When Peter Walsh reflects on his time in Britain, that means something to us because of our experience with A Passage to India. And in these novels concerned with class and class structure (An American Tragedy, Mrs. Dalloway, The Great Gatsby) we have a context that is created from these companion texts. Novels and stories all exist within a particular time and place regardless of their being called "timeless." Reading the books together and in order, we can see them existing together.
We are not far enough along the timeline to see books referring to each other, commenting upon each other, building off each other, but I will not be surprised to see that in the future too.
So far I find this to be a very rewarding project. Thank you, Ann, for making this happen!
Mrs. Dalloway - Brought to a SPOIL, then Left to Simmer
This was the most fascinating of the three novels so far to me. I found the first 10 pages to be VERY difficult. I am used to things opening in media res, but this took that to a whole new level. I must have reread each paragraph two or three times before moving to the next one, waiting for something to become clear. From the back of the book, I knew that the story took place in one day and that it followed Mrs. Dalloway as she prepares for an evening party. That knowledge helped very little to anchor me.
When we first jump outside of Clarissa to Scrope Purvis, who drives past her while she waits to cross the street, I was shaken. That paragraph got four or five reads. It wasn't until we left Clarissa and started wandering through all the people on the street that the book came into any real focus for me. Ah! We are going to be sitting in these heads and bouncing off of people as they pass, interact, and comment upon each other. We are in a novel of thoughts more than action. Then it all became delicious.
It felt to me like a poem forced into the suit of prose. I had to read slowly, digest each sentence both for appreciation and for meaning. Once I committed myself to this deliberate pace I loved it. Every sentence feels like its meaning is supposed to echo throughout the novel, just like the "leaden circles" of Big Ben tolling away the hours and tying all the players together. How different from the overwritten prose of Dreiser, to feel like every sentence demands your attention.
As for meaning, I am not smart enough to digest this novel. I will be chewing on it for a long time to come.
I loved being in each person's head, hearing Peter Walsh view the world and himself, struggling with Mrs. Kilman as she says things that she knows she shouldn't say. Every character here is respected, has something internal. I feel like we glimpse through our various viewpoints an entire culture, or at least an entire cultural moment. These characters are both self-aware and self-delusional.
I will point to a passage that I believe Ann will expound upon because it struck us as the center of the novel. This is from the ponderings of Peter Walsh restating Clarissa's youthful theory "to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. But she said . . . not 'here, here, here' . . . but everywhere. She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them, even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to . . . ."
How apt then that the novel should be called Mrs. Dalloway and follow all these people, most of whom she knows and some of whom she does not, namely Rezia and Septimus. To know Mrs. Dalloway (or any other character here) we need to know them all.
No one exists in a vacuum. Just as important is that we all exist alone. At one point I thought the novel was downright existential as no one could communicate with anyone else effectively, Dalloway couldn't even tell his wife he loved her (not in so many words). We were stuck in minds, never getting satisfactory exchanges. We jump from character to character; there is no bridge, no connection. So, no one exists in a vacuum and no one exists together. Ouch. That is a tough bind for the human race, or at least for post-war Britain.
When we first jump outside of Clarissa to Scrope Purvis, who drives past her while she waits to cross the street, I was shaken. That paragraph got four or five reads. It wasn't until we left Clarissa and started wandering through all the people on the street that the book came into any real focus for me. Ah! We are going to be sitting in these heads and bouncing off of people as they pass, interact, and comment upon each other. We are in a novel of thoughts more than action. Then it all became delicious.
It felt to me like a poem forced into the suit of prose. I had to read slowly, digest each sentence both for appreciation and for meaning. Once I committed myself to this deliberate pace I loved it. Every sentence feels like its meaning is supposed to echo throughout the novel, just like the "leaden circles" of Big Ben tolling away the hours and tying all the players together. How different from the overwritten prose of Dreiser, to feel like every sentence demands your attention.
As for meaning, I am not smart enough to digest this novel. I will be chewing on it for a long time to come.
I loved being in each person's head, hearing Peter Walsh view the world and himself, struggling with Mrs. Kilman as she says things that she knows she shouldn't say. Every character here is respected, has something internal. I feel like we glimpse through our various viewpoints an entire culture, or at least an entire cultural moment. These characters are both self-aware and self-delusional.
I will point to a passage that I believe Ann will expound upon because it struck us as the center of the novel. This is from the ponderings of Peter Walsh restating Clarissa's youthful theory "to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. But she said . . . not 'here, here, here' . . . but everywhere. She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them, even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to . . . ."
How apt then that the novel should be called Mrs. Dalloway and follow all these people, most of whom she knows and some of whom she does not, namely Rezia and Septimus. To know Mrs. Dalloway (or any other character here) we need to know them all.
No one exists in a vacuum. Just as important is that we all exist alone. At one point I thought the novel was downright existential as no one could communicate with anyone else effectively, Dalloway couldn't even tell his wife he loved her (not in so many words). We were stuck in minds, never getting satisfactory exchanges. We jump from character to character; there is no bridge, no connection. So, no one exists in a vacuum and no one exists together. Ouch. That is a tough bind for the human race, or at least for post-war Britain.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Watching the Movies that Go with the Books: An American Tragedy
For purists, seeing a movie after reading the book can be downright harrowing. The actors have the wrong hair. The script eliminates four of the best scenes - and irreverently changes two more. High on rubber cement, the script writer creates a whole new subplot to replace the three other ones he mutilated like the sick serial killer he is. Frankly, if not for some popcorn and the great reward of fuming after the fact, the whole experience would be too much.
Of course, there is another option - or so I'm told - which is to take the same faith I would give to the book and loan it to the film, assuming that the director has a viable story s/he wants to tell. It may not be the same story that appears in the book, but it was inspired by the book, and it can be interesting (instead of irritating) to compare and contrast the two. You know, theoretically.
Testing this whole notion, last night we watched A Place in the Sun, the 1951 Columbia Pictures adaption of An American Tragedy. The director - who won an Oscar for his efforts - decided that the story he wanted to tell was a tragic tale of a love that could not be. The marketing department definitely got the memo, billing the movie as "The Screen's Most Powerful Love Story," which naturally takes place between Clyde and Sondra, renamed George and Angela for the film and played by Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.
To tell the screen's most powerful love story, it becomes necessary to make a few changes to Dreiser's novel, and by a few, I mean scores, including changing the setting to post-war America.
- Roberta, renamed Alice, becomes a dowdy, unattractive, whiny, grating shrew who does everything but boil George's pet bunny. Seriously, when he goes to spend the week with Angela and her parents (!) at the lake, Alice sees a picture of him in the paper with Angela and hops a bus, calling George at Angela's house and demanding to be picked up at the bus station NOW and married IMMEDIATELY; otherwise, Alice will go to Angela's house and tell her parents everything.
- Angela's parents, meanwhile, seem more or less prepared to allow George into the family - even after George discloses fully his poor (and embarrassing) background. Marrying Angela is not a dream in this version of the story, and entering the upper crust is not a tantalizing possibility. It's all real, and it's all going to happen, provided George can somehow get rid of the shackle that is Alice.
- Instead of planning Alice's murder, however, George decides to kill her rather spontaneously. Once he's out on the water, he loses his nerve (because he is a really good guy, after all), and Alice falls into the lake because she stands up and overturns the boat.
- Despite all of these changes, George in the end decides that he must be guilty, because while Alice was drowning, he wasn't thinking of her. He was thinking of Angela. In his prison cell, he bids Angela farewell (she will love him forever, though), and he goes to the chair, presumably meant to have our tears as he fades from view.
In an odd way, seeing this romantic version of the story increased my admiration for Dreiser's novel. In the book, Clyde is an ass - in no small part because Roberta is not. The book doesn't simplify Roberta; the book makes her an attractive, intelligent girl whom Clyde woos, pesters, and finally seduces, only to abandon her even before her hour of need. Clyde is an ass. And to put us in his head, to make him sympathetic to us in spite of that, is a serious accomplishment.
The book also encourages us to think in ways that I did not fully credit. By giving us two very clear characters to root for, the film makes us unwittingly complicit in the murder of Alice. We want Alice dead, if only to make Shelley Winters stop whining! In the book, however, we are meant to question much of what we read. Jason realized this just from reading; for me, it took seeing the film to help me see the book.
Of course, there is another option - or so I'm told - which is to take the same faith I would give to the book and loan it to the film, assuming that the director has a viable story s/he wants to tell. It may not be the same story that appears in the book, but it was inspired by the book, and it can be interesting (instead of irritating) to compare and contrast the two. You know, theoretically.
Testing this whole notion, last night we watched A Place in the Sun, the 1951 Columbia Pictures adaption of An American Tragedy. The director - who won an Oscar for his efforts - decided that the story he wanted to tell was a tragic tale of a love that could not be. The marketing department definitely got the memo, billing the movie as "The Screen's Most Powerful Love Story," which naturally takes place between Clyde and Sondra, renamed George and Angela for the film and played by Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.
To tell the screen's most powerful love story, it becomes necessary to make a few changes to Dreiser's novel, and by a few, I mean scores, including changing the setting to post-war America.
- Roberta, renamed Alice, becomes a dowdy, unattractive, whiny, grating shrew who does everything but boil George's pet bunny. Seriously, when he goes to spend the week with Angela and her parents (!) at the lake, Alice sees a picture of him in the paper with Angela and hops a bus, calling George at Angela's house and demanding to be picked up at the bus station NOW and married IMMEDIATELY; otherwise, Alice will go to Angela's house and tell her parents everything.
- Angela's parents, meanwhile, seem more or less prepared to allow George into the family - even after George discloses fully his poor (and embarrassing) background. Marrying Angela is not a dream in this version of the story, and entering the upper crust is not a tantalizing possibility. It's all real, and it's all going to happen, provided George can somehow get rid of the shackle that is Alice.
- Instead of planning Alice's murder, however, George decides to kill her rather spontaneously. Once he's out on the water, he loses his nerve (because he is a really good guy, after all), and Alice falls into the lake because she stands up and overturns the boat.
- Despite all of these changes, George in the end decides that he must be guilty, because while Alice was drowning, he wasn't thinking of her. He was thinking of Angela. In his prison cell, he bids Angela farewell (she will love him forever, though), and he goes to the chair, presumably meant to have our tears as he fades from view.
In an odd way, seeing this romantic version of the story increased my admiration for Dreiser's novel. In the book, Clyde is an ass - in no small part because Roberta is not. The book doesn't simplify Roberta; the book makes her an attractive, intelligent girl whom Clyde woos, pesters, and finally seduces, only to abandon her even before her hour of need. Clyde is an ass. And to put us in his head, to make him sympathetic to us in spite of that, is a serious accomplishment.
The book also encourages us to think in ways that I did not fully credit. By giving us two very clear characters to root for, the film makes us unwittingly complicit in the murder of Alice. We want Alice dead, if only to make Shelley Winters stop whining! In the book, however, we are meant to question much of what we read. Jason realized this just from reading; for me, it took seeing the film to help me see the book.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
An American Tragedy - SPOILED but not Rotten
Oh how different are the writing styles of Forster and Dreiser (and Woolf too for that matter, but that will be saved for another blog). Some will prefer Dreiser to Forster, but I belong to the other camp, preferring Forster's direct, poetic, and insightful prose to Dreisers cumbersome and unedited prose.
Both these stories, Passage to India and An American Tragedy, do not end where I expect them do. I expect Passage to end shortly after the trial and Tragedy to end shortly after Clyde is caught. The dramatic impulse does not dictate that we follow Clyde all the way to the moment of his execution, but it is important to Dreiser to take us there. It was Forster's determination to include the entire final section that led Ann to draw her brilliant reading about what is actually at the heart of Forster's novel, the friendship of Aziz and Fielding. Here the American tragedy is not simply Roberta's murder. The novel is about two murders: Roberta's and Clyde's, and for Dreiser, Clyde's murder seems every bit as tragic and pointless as Roberta's.
The thing that strikes me about the third book of the novel is Clyde's inability to feel fully guilty for murdering Roberta. He's not a sociopath insofar as he knows that what he did was not good, I believe. There's much made, as Ann notes, about whether or not Clyde actually killed Roberta or if in the end it was an accident, but again I agree with Ann and that Clyde is clearly responsible for Roberta's death. So why does Clyde want to split hairs here, and to the point that he cannot make any such confession of his guilt even to McMillan and God? Because, I propose, for Clyde, his actions were not wrong. The personal beliefs born in Clyde is that the search of material goods and ease are a reasonable and necessary quest. Roberta was going to ruin that irreparably. What is immoral then? Getting rid of an obstacle to pursue what he must pursue or accepting defeat and living a miserable life. Clyde does not deal with a moral vs. immoral decision, but with two moral decisions.
This books seems to me to be a response to Horatio Alger novels, in which our plucky young hero rises up from obscurity due to hard work and moral righteousness. Clyde never stands a chance to truly rise. He makes a million bad decisions and suffers from them, but if he were born privileged like Gilbert or Belknap, his decisions would have been in no way disastrous. Belknap faced the same problem, but his rich father bailed him out. If Gilbert reached the same point that Clyde did and got someone pregnant, Dad would be there. Hell, even Dr. Glenn performed abortions for the rich and privileged but not for the poor. And let's say Gilbert murdered Roberta for the same reason Clyde did, the entire legal force of the Griffiths would have been there to aid him.
Please forgive the rambling nature of this post.
If Clyde's murder is a parallel with Roberta's, and if Roberta was murdered because she stood in Clyde's way, then why was Clyde murdered? What was Clyde pregnant with and how did his pregnancy (metaphorically speaking, of course) threaten to derail the social world in which he lived? I think that is the central question of the novel.
How do morality and social progress/personal improvement meet and shape each other? Another central question.
This novel is widely considered a piece of Realism in which environment, not nature determine the course of events and character. Here, Clyde's desires and concerns are innate, not created by culture. So much so that he is constantly searching for understanding, understanding that his mother and society at large cannot have for him. He is something like Frankenstein's monster not knowing why he has been made so monstrous. How can others behave so well? How can they avoid the troubles he does? What Clyde never connects, because no one admits, Clyde's desires are not monstrous, but human, or rather "American." Others have the same problems, but they are either comfortably stuck in their caste or they are privileged enough to avoid the ramifications.
To murder Clyde, society addresses nothing, examines itself and its structure not at all. The deathhouse sequence continually refers to the mechanical nature of things here. Everything is ritualized and automatic and meaningless. The only examination expected is to be made by the prisoners trying to come to peace with the end of their life. Our social structure need examine nothing and can move on, leaving Clyde and his trial to be what it always was: entertainment for the masses, a reality TV show before TV, a Jerry Springer circus of pain and outrage.
And though I feel all that intellectually, I can't say I had much sympathy for Clyde, myself. He was a whiny prick. I have no idea what that says about me.
Both these stories, Passage to India and An American Tragedy, do not end where I expect them do. I expect Passage to end shortly after the trial and Tragedy to end shortly after Clyde is caught. The dramatic impulse does not dictate that we follow Clyde all the way to the moment of his execution, but it is important to Dreiser to take us there. It was Forster's determination to include the entire final section that led Ann to draw her brilliant reading about what is actually at the heart of Forster's novel, the friendship of Aziz and Fielding. Here the American tragedy is not simply Roberta's murder. The novel is about two murders: Roberta's and Clyde's, and for Dreiser, Clyde's murder seems every bit as tragic and pointless as Roberta's.
The thing that strikes me about the third book of the novel is Clyde's inability to feel fully guilty for murdering Roberta. He's not a sociopath insofar as he knows that what he did was not good, I believe. There's much made, as Ann notes, about whether or not Clyde actually killed Roberta or if in the end it was an accident, but again I agree with Ann and that Clyde is clearly responsible for Roberta's death. So why does Clyde want to split hairs here, and to the point that he cannot make any such confession of his guilt even to McMillan and God? Because, I propose, for Clyde, his actions were not wrong. The personal beliefs born in Clyde is that the search of material goods and ease are a reasonable and necessary quest. Roberta was going to ruin that irreparably. What is immoral then? Getting rid of an obstacle to pursue what he must pursue or accepting defeat and living a miserable life. Clyde does not deal with a moral vs. immoral decision, but with two moral decisions.
This books seems to me to be a response to Horatio Alger novels, in which our plucky young hero rises up from obscurity due to hard work and moral righteousness. Clyde never stands a chance to truly rise. He makes a million bad decisions and suffers from them, but if he were born privileged like Gilbert or Belknap, his decisions would have been in no way disastrous. Belknap faced the same problem, but his rich father bailed him out. If Gilbert reached the same point that Clyde did and got someone pregnant, Dad would be there. Hell, even Dr. Glenn performed abortions for the rich and privileged but not for the poor. And let's say Gilbert murdered Roberta for the same reason Clyde did, the entire legal force of the Griffiths would have been there to aid him.
Please forgive the rambling nature of this post.
If Clyde's murder is a parallel with Roberta's, and if Roberta was murdered because she stood in Clyde's way, then why was Clyde murdered? What was Clyde pregnant with and how did his pregnancy (metaphorically speaking, of course) threaten to derail the social world in which he lived? I think that is the central question of the novel.
How do morality and social progress/personal improvement meet and shape each other? Another central question.
This novel is widely considered a piece of Realism in which environment, not nature determine the course of events and character. Here, Clyde's desires and concerns are innate, not created by culture. So much so that he is constantly searching for understanding, understanding that his mother and society at large cannot have for him. He is something like Frankenstein's monster not knowing why he has been made so monstrous. How can others behave so well? How can they avoid the troubles he does? What Clyde never connects, because no one admits, Clyde's desires are not monstrous, but human, or rather "American." Others have the same problems, but they are either comfortably stuck in their caste or they are privileged enough to avoid the ramifications.
To murder Clyde, society addresses nothing, examines itself and its structure not at all. The deathhouse sequence continually refers to the mechanical nature of things here. Everything is ritualized and automatic and meaningless. The only examination expected is to be made by the prisoners trying to come to peace with the end of their life. Our social structure need examine nothing and can move on, leaving Clyde and his trial to be what it always was: entertainment for the masses, a reality TV show before TV, a Jerry Springer circus of pain and outrage.
And though I feel all that intellectually, I can't say I had much sympathy for Clyde, myself. He was a whiny prick. I have no idea what that says about me.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
An American Tragedy: I'm Done
It is a mighty thing to read a book of 814 pages, and mightier still when the prose gropes and fumbles at you like a 16-year-old boy from the very start to the very end (horny little bastard). I feel slightly proud that I survived it all, although I do confess to having enjoyed at least 200 pages of it. Despite my objections to the prose, however, I feel a bit flummoxed when I try to consider what I think about the story.
The rumor on the street is that this is a story about the American Dream, here understood to be the idea that a person of humble beginnings and low means can, through hard work, become wealthy and rise to a new position in the social order. In this novel, of course, people do nothing of the kind. They are born into their social class, and though they might kill to escape it, they cannot - and most know better than to try. The poor certainly know their place; in Lycurgus, they trudge to the factory and back again without any sign of greater aspirations. Apart from Clyde, we meet only one person who dares to be a class climber, and that is Walter Dillard, a fellow boarder at Mrs. Cuppy's who is shortly dismissed by Clyde as being too crass and too far beneath the family name to maintain as an associate.
And then there is Clyde, our lower-class protagonist. Clyde does succeed in entering the social world of his wealthy relations, but decidedly not through his own industry. He has the family name, and he resembles his cousin, Gil, for which reason, the fabulous Sondra Finchley stops her car and offers him a ride. Dreiser takes great pains to show that Sondra invites Clyde into her world - at least initially - just to irk Gil, who detests Clyde. There is no more to it than that. Sondra falls in love with Clyde's devotion to her, and after his lower-class girlfriend becomes pregnant, he literally kills to be with Sondra, which then leads to his apprehension, incarceration, and eventual execution.
Apparently, by the way, there is a whole school of readers who believe that Clyde did not murder Roberta, a notion I find strange and amusing. He plotted to kill her. He took her to a remote location to kill her. He committed so thoroughly to killing her that she lost her corporeality in his eyes. Yes, at the last second, he shrank from the odious business of killing her, but when he hit her with the camera, his object was "to free himself . . . forever." That doesn't seem terribly innocent to me.
Another odd notion I gleaned from the criticism is that Clyde is the victim of a social paradox - namely, that he is encouraged by society to seek wealth, but when he does, he is punished. As an abstract idea, I love that. I agree that capitalism has many tricks like that. But is the idea dramatized in the text? I don't think so. We do not see Clyde being encouraged to pursue wealth, neither by advertisements, nor by people.
And finally, this work has been praised as a triumph of naturalism, with the core idea being that people are shaped principally by their birth and environment, with no real free will. I don't see that in the text either.
Textual evidence, dammit!
And there it is.
The rumor on the street is that this is a story about the American Dream, here understood to be the idea that a person of humble beginnings and low means can, through hard work, become wealthy and rise to a new position in the social order. In this novel, of course, people do nothing of the kind. They are born into their social class, and though they might kill to escape it, they cannot - and most know better than to try. The poor certainly know their place; in Lycurgus, they trudge to the factory and back again without any sign of greater aspirations. Apart from Clyde, we meet only one person who dares to be a class climber, and that is Walter Dillard, a fellow boarder at Mrs. Cuppy's who is shortly dismissed by Clyde as being too crass and too far beneath the family name to maintain as an associate.
And then there is Clyde, our lower-class protagonist. Clyde does succeed in entering the social world of his wealthy relations, but decidedly not through his own industry. He has the family name, and he resembles his cousin, Gil, for which reason, the fabulous Sondra Finchley stops her car and offers him a ride. Dreiser takes great pains to show that Sondra invites Clyde into her world - at least initially - just to irk Gil, who detests Clyde. There is no more to it than that. Sondra falls in love with Clyde's devotion to her, and after his lower-class girlfriend becomes pregnant, he literally kills to be with Sondra, which then leads to his apprehension, incarceration, and eventual execution.
Apparently, by the way, there is a whole school of readers who believe that Clyde did not murder Roberta, a notion I find strange and amusing. He plotted to kill her. He took her to a remote location to kill her. He committed so thoroughly to killing her that she lost her corporeality in his eyes. Yes, at the last second, he shrank from the odious business of killing her, but when he hit her with the camera, his object was "to free himself . . . forever." That doesn't seem terribly innocent to me.
Another odd notion I gleaned from the criticism is that Clyde is the victim of a social paradox - namely, that he is encouraged by society to seek wealth, but when he does, he is punished. As an abstract idea, I love that. I agree that capitalism has many tricks like that. But is the idea dramatized in the text? I don't think so. We do not see Clyde being encouraged to pursue wealth, neither by advertisements, nor by people.
And finally, this work has been praised as a triumph of naturalism, with the core idea being that people are shaped principally by their birth and environment, with no real free will. I don't see that in the text either.
Textual evidence, dammit!
And there it is.
Monday, March 8, 2010
An American Tragedy: It Does Get Better
Reading the first chapter of An American Tragedy was something akin to eating a large bowl of dry dog food. The second chapter did little to improve the experience, but by perhaps the fourth, I could agree - at least theoretically - that reading this tome might prove more enjoyable than a doing hard labor in a Siberian prison in a bikini made of nails.
According to Amazon.com, An American Tragedy "was called by one influential critic 'the worst-written great novel in the world.'" Amen. Jason and I have at least consoled ourselves that we can laugh together at the descriptions, which are long and convoluted yet also lengthy but not altogether without that brevity and concision which might otherwise render it charming. (Now excuse me, I have to rinse my brain out with Scope.)
I believe as we work our way through this list, we will benefit by remembering that these novels exist in a historical context, that their literary value is measured not necessarily by the enjoyment that we find in the characters and their stories but by the contributions their authors have made to the body of works we agree to call Literature.
As it goes along, an American Tragedy does get more gripping, and I look forward to our discussion of it.
According to Amazon.com, An American Tragedy "was called by one influential critic 'the worst-written great novel in the world.'" Amen. Jason and I have at least consoled ourselves that we can laugh together at the descriptions, which are long and convoluted yet also lengthy but not altogether without that brevity and concision which might otherwise render it charming. (Now excuse me, I have to rinse my brain out with Scope.)
I believe as we work our way through this list, we will benefit by remembering that these novels exist in a historical context, that their literary value is measured not necessarily by the enjoyment that we find in the characters and their stories but by the contributions their authors have made to the body of works we agree to call Literature.
As it goes along, an American Tragedy does get more gripping, and I look forward to our discussion of it.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
An Inauspicious Start?
I am going to start out my thoughts on Book 1 in the same way Ann did: A Passage to India is a book about...150 pages too long. This was really a grind for me to get through, not because it was difficult but because it just couldn't keep my attention. It had its moments, a few passages in which I found myself saying "finally, some insight," but there just weren't enough of those.
As I was getting close to the end, I realized that there wasn't a single character in the book that I was pulling for. Aziz was clearly getting a raw deal from the most abhorrent character in the book, Miss Quested, but I found him to be very inconsistent in character. He was a likeable guy in the early going and during the trial, then he seemed bitter in his dealings with Fielding, then he was Joe Johnny Nice Guy again at the end. I suppose you could argue that anyone would be bitter having gone through what Aziz did, but he was bitter with the only Englishman that stood up for him.
Maybe I'm just not well read enough, or smart enough, to "get" A Passage to India. But maybe I am, and I can't imagine why this book is on any 100 Greatest Novels List when names like Mailer and Dos Passos are absent. Notwithstanding my poo-pooing of the first book, I am 100% committed to the project. What I am hoping is that in the next few years, as we all read through the List, we can have some good discussions over some good beers why certain books should be out and why others should be in.
As I was getting close to the end, I realized that there wasn't a single character in the book that I was pulling for. Aziz was clearly getting a raw deal from the most abhorrent character in the book, Miss Quested, but I found him to be very inconsistent in character. He was a likeable guy in the early going and during the trial, then he seemed bitter in his dealings with Fielding, then he was Joe Johnny Nice Guy again at the end. I suppose you could argue that anyone would be bitter having gone through what Aziz did, but he was bitter with the only Englishman that stood up for him.
Maybe I'm just not well read enough, or smart enough, to "get" A Passage to India. But maybe I am, and I can't imagine why this book is on any 100 Greatest Novels List when names like Mailer and Dos Passos are absent. Notwithstanding my poo-pooing of the first book, I am 100% committed to the project. What I am hoping is that in the next few years, as we all read through the List, we can have some good discussions over some good beers why certain books should be out and why others should be in.
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