We are officially a quarter of the way through the list of 100 novels! The books read so far are as follows:
1. A Passage to India (E.M. Forster)
2. An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser)
3. Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)
4. The Great Gatsby (Scott Fitzgerald)
5. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
6. Death Comes for the Archbishop (Willa Cather)
7. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Thornton Wilder)
8. To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)
9. Red Harvest (Dashiell Hammett)
10. The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner)
11. Light in August (William Faulkner)
12. A Handful of Dust (Evelyn Waugh)
13. I, Claudius (Robert Graves)
14. Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller)
15. Appointment in Samarra (John O'Hara)
16. Call It Sleep (Henry Roth)
17. Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
18. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
19. At Swim-Two-Birds (Flann O'Brien)
20. The Death of the Heart (Elizabeth Bowen)
21. The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler)
22. The Day of the Locust (Nathanael West)
23. The Power and the Glory (Graham Greene)
24. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
25. The Man Who Loved Children (Christina Stead)
Sunday, August 14, 2011
The Man Who Had Mixed Feelings About The Man Who Loved Children
As always, this brief post contains spoilers, so if you plan on reading the book and want to be surprised by it, wait to read this.
But really, how many people are planning on reading this book? The title was vaguely familiar to me, and in spite of her having written over a dozen books, Christina Stead was entirely unknown to me. Add to that the odd looks I get from people when they see what I'm reading and their general statements that follow ("I should read more," "I haven't read for fun since high school," "Oh I don't read novels or fiction," etc.) and I think poor Ms. Stead has a slim chance of having her novel read much. And as I say in nearly every post here, that is one of the reasons I am glad to be doing this project: even if I personally wouldn't put a book in my own personal top 100 list, I am being exposed to works and ideas that I never would have otherwise, works and ideas that have made an impression on the world and culture both past and present.
And no, The Man Who Loved Children would not be in my personal top 100 list. The book is very long for its subject matter and the plot seems to tread water through the middle 200 pages or so as we witness the same fights, the same troubles, the same manipulations that are the daily bread of the Pollit family without building to anything, without that slow turning of the screw. At about page 350 (my edition has 527 pages), I began to despair that the book was one long character piece that would end exactly where it began and I would have wasted two weeks worth of reading. What was odd was that I felt like Stead was being very intelligent and that she knew what she wanted to accomplish even as I felt like the book was going nowhere. How is that possible? But indeed, the final 60 or so pages were dynamite and brought the story to a wonderful conclusion.
Part of the difficulty of the story is that you are not allowed to hold on to any characters comfortably. In some books, our heroes have faults, but we love them anyway. In fact, we love them because of their faults. Their faults make them human and in some way make them tolerable. Without those faults they would be too good and the story to saccharine. But in The Man Who Loved Children, I found myself loving and hating all of the main characters in nearly equal proportion, which makes it very hard to navigate. Henny Pollit is endearing in her cavalier approach to parenting, but she says such nasty things to the children that laughter becomes uncomfortable. Sam's childish view of the world is amusing and his genuine love of life makes him very likable, but his tyranny over his children by inserting himself in everything they do, his mean-spirited mockery of what he sees as their faults, his views on Eugenics and women that made the muscles in my neck grow taught--all these things made him despicable even as he was charming and likeable. This war between the two parents had no clear superior.
And even Louie, the oldest daughter, whose story I think this is, truly--even she is not someone you can simply cheer on. She is a wonderful character who combines Sam's imaginative reconstruction of the world and Henny's emotional mystery to be something entirely her own. She is the child we follow most, and she is the child around whom the climax pivots and sways. Stead does not feel any need to stay with Louie much and gladly goes trotting off to Singapore with Sam and to illicit lunch dates with Henny. She fleshes out these two forces with emotional distance and with love that made me suspect Stead was working through her own childhood. And Louie, in all her awkwardness, ugliness, ungainliness, is a beautiful child whose single goal is to survive this upbringing. In many ways, this novel could be retitled "The Artist as a Young Girl Trying to Survive Her Wack-A-Doo Home and Childhood."
It is my belief that we dislike novels and movies most when they aren't the movies and novels that we want to see. Why did they do that?, we ask because the character we want to cheer on wouldn't do that. Why did they have that scene at all?, we ask because we would rather they tell the story that is in our head. Why did that character live while this one died?, we cry because it is not the way we would have done it. And I think that those reactions were the ones I was having when the book most unsettled me. I wanted Sam to have some sort of reckoning, some moment where he is forced to face reality and see his manipulations for what they were. Stead couldn't do that for me because that wasn't her purpose. Sam's selfishness and egocentrism is so complete that he cannot look outside himself but for fleeting moments before his ego rushes into the room and starts rearranging the furniture back the way it was. I wanted Henny to become something of a hero who caused Sam to have that reckoning, but Stead couldn't do that for me because Henny is every bit as broken as Sam, but in her own way. I wanted Louie to rise above the muck and make something good come from this chaos of her childhood, but Stead couldn't do that for me because Louis is a girl who grows from 11 to 15 in the course of the novel, filled with hormones and emotional scars from her two parents. The book is not a realistic novel, but there is an emotional realism that Stead is bound by and that emotional realism is the story she wants to tell whether I want her to or not.
My effort in all my posts for this project has been to meet the novelists and novels where they are, to read the books they have written, not find them faulty for not writing the books I thought they should have written. And when I finish any novel of this sort, I find the things that seem odd and start with the assumption that these things were not added and left in accidentally but that they were purposeful constructions of the novelist. As purposeful constructions, the novelist left them in for some purpose; the secret to appreciating the novel for what it is is to come to some understanding of these story outcroppings that at first glance mar the landscape. So if I seem too full of praise for these books, too generous with my criticism and analysis it is only because I give the books the benefit of my doubt.
So in the end, chewing on the scenes and picking the characters from my teeth, rolling them over my palate and savoring the different flavors, I find that I like the book and would recommend it to others. The writing is wonderful and the characters and world created are impressively complete. Actually, one of the main reason I would recommend it is so I can talk to someone about it to help me figure out what is going on here still more. So if any of you out there have read it and want to weigh in with your thoughts, I would greatly appreciate it.
But really, how many people are planning on reading this book? The title was vaguely familiar to me, and in spite of her having written over a dozen books, Christina Stead was entirely unknown to me. Add to that the odd looks I get from people when they see what I'm reading and their general statements that follow ("I should read more," "I haven't read for fun since high school," "Oh I don't read novels or fiction," etc.) and I think poor Ms. Stead has a slim chance of having her novel read much. And as I say in nearly every post here, that is one of the reasons I am glad to be doing this project: even if I personally wouldn't put a book in my own personal top 100 list, I am being exposed to works and ideas that I never would have otherwise, works and ideas that have made an impression on the world and culture both past and present.
And no, The Man Who Loved Children would not be in my personal top 100 list. The book is very long for its subject matter and the plot seems to tread water through the middle 200 pages or so as we witness the same fights, the same troubles, the same manipulations that are the daily bread of the Pollit family without building to anything, without that slow turning of the screw. At about page 350 (my edition has 527 pages), I began to despair that the book was one long character piece that would end exactly where it began and I would have wasted two weeks worth of reading. What was odd was that I felt like Stead was being very intelligent and that she knew what she wanted to accomplish even as I felt like the book was going nowhere. How is that possible? But indeed, the final 60 or so pages were dynamite and brought the story to a wonderful conclusion.
Part of the difficulty of the story is that you are not allowed to hold on to any characters comfortably. In some books, our heroes have faults, but we love them anyway. In fact, we love them because of their faults. Their faults make them human and in some way make them tolerable. Without those faults they would be too good and the story to saccharine. But in The Man Who Loved Children, I found myself loving and hating all of the main characters in nearly equal proportion, which makes it very hard to navigate. Henny Pollit is endearing in her cavalier approach to parenting, but she says such nasty things to the children that laughter becomes uncomfortable. Sam's childish view of the world is amusing and his genuine love of life makes him very likable, but his tyranny over his children by inserting himself in everything they do, his mean-spirited mockery of what he sees as their faults, his views on Eugenics and women that made the muscles in my neck grow taught--all these things made him despicable even as he was charming and likeable. This war between the two parents had no clear superior.
And even Louie, the oldest daughter, whose story I think this is, truly--even she is not someone you can simply cheer on. She is a wonderful character who combines Sam's imaginative reconstruction of the world and Henny's emotional mystery to be something entirely her own. She is the child we follow most, and she is the child around whom the climax pivots and sways. Stead does not feel any need to stay with Louie much and gladly goes trotting off to Singapore with Sam and to illicit lunch dates with Henny. She fleshes out these two forces with emotional distance and with love that made me suspect Stead was working through her own childhood. And Louie, in all her awkwardness, ugliness, ungainliness, is a beautiful child whose single goal is to survive this upbringing. In many ways, this novel could be retitled "The Artist as a Young Girl Trying to Survive Her Wack-A-Doo Home and Childhood."
It is my belief that we dislike novels and movies most when they aren't the movies and novels that we want to see. Why did they do that?, we ask because the character we want to cheer on wouldn't do that. Why did they have that scene at all?, we ask because we would rather they tell the story that is in our head. Why did that character live while this one died?, we cry because it is not the way we would have done it. And I think that those reactions were the ones I was having when the book most unsettled me. I wanted Sam to have some sort of reckoning, some moment where he is forced to face reality and see his manipulations for what they were. Stead couldn't do that for me because that wasn't her purpose. Sam's selfishness and egocentrism is so complete that he cannot look outside himself but for fleeting moments before his ego rushes into the room and starts rearranging the furniture back the way it was. I wanted Henny to become something of a hero who caused Sam to have that reckoning, but Stead couldn't do that for me because Henny is every bit as broken as Sam, but in her own way. I wanted Louie to rise above the muck and make something good come from this chaos of her childhood, but Stead couldn't do that for me because Louis is a girl who grows from 11 to 15 in the course of the novel, filled with hormones and emotional scars from her two parents. The book is not a realistic novel, but there is an emotional realism that Stead is bound by and that emotional realism is the story she wants to tell whether I want her to or not.
My effort in all my posts for this project has been to meet the novelists and novels where they are, to read the books they have written, not find them faulty for not writing the books I thought they should have written. And when I finish any novel of this sort, I find the things that seem odd and start with the assumption that these things were not added and left in accidentally but that they were purposeful constructions of the novelist. As purposeful constructions, the novelist left them in for some purpose; the secret to appreciating the novel for what it is is to come to some understanding of these story outcroppings that at first glance mar the landscape. So if I seem too full of praise for these books, too generous with my criticism and analysis it is only because I give the books the benefit of my doubt.
So in the end, chewing on the scenes and picking the characters from my teeth, rolling them over my palate and savoring the different flavors, I find that I like the book and would recommend it to others. The writing is wonderful and the characters and world created are impressively complete. Actually, one of the main reason I would recommend it is so I can talk to someone about it to help me figure out what is going on here still more. So if any of you out there have read it and want to weigh in with your thoughts, I would greatly appreciate it.
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