I have enjoyed almost every book that I have read for this project. Some books I had read before and were excited to re-read. Some books I had heard of before and always wanted to read. Some books were brand new to me. Call It Sleep falls into this last category. I had never heard of Call It Sleep, and I had never heard of Henry Roth. And the experience I had reading this book is exactly the experience I was seeking when Ann and I started this project. It is a wonderful, striking, compelling, beautifully written work of fiction that has been rolling around in the recesses of my mind since I began it a few weeks ago.
As Ann has undergone her journey as a novelist over the past couple of years, I have had the opportunity to reflect on what I love most in the books I read and in the writing I enjoy. The one thing I keep telling Ann that she does to perfection is to be profound without being pompous, to be meaningful without being heavy-handed, to be rich without being baroque. A real piece of art strikes you intellectually and emotionally while at the same time just being interesting and compelling. Henry Roth does what Ann does so well and creates real art here.
The story of David Schearl simultaneously feels like an extended character piece (what Alfred Kazin calls The Portrait of an Artist as a Child) and a plot-driven story about David’s world. The plot is mortar-tight, but you never see it coming. At times the story feels like it wanders and introduces characters because they interest David. It is not until later that the pieces click into place and come into focus as the foundation they always were. That is a very difficult feat to create in any story.
The symbolism and meaning that infuses the novel was at first off-putting for me. The meaning of the Cellar as a place of dark human/animal desires and sexuality is so Freudian, that while I read the first section of the novel I thought to myself, “Oh, this is why the book was so popular in the 60s, the height of Freudian interpretations in literature.” The Oedipal issues that David has with Dad, his relationship with his mother, the dark underpinnings of sexuality, can all be packaged up and dismissed, were it not for Roth’s deeper characterization. David’s relationship with his mother is more than some Freudian desire; there is a real relationship here, complex and touching. David’s problems with his Dad isn’t just a war over Mother, it is a struggle with a man who suffers from paranoia and other personal problems. Albert is both frightening and pathetic, a terror and a struggling immigrant. Roth lets these larger structures and systems fall like a cloak over the characters, scenes, and situations, but he keeps everything alive by having the characters move and tussle beneath the cloak, struggle and strive to resist any such reduction.
Kazin’s comparison of Call It Sleep to Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist seems very fitting to me. This is high literature like Joyce’s work, only Roth manages to achieve Joyce’s level of profundity while still allowing the plot and character’s motives to be simple and comprehensible. The only point of confusion for me is the penultimate chapter, when David burns himself on the third rail. But because this is the ultimate climax and David’s at a fevered pitch, it all seems fitting. I do not mind the confusion, and I feel like I could parse it out and untangle the connection between David’s search for the pure light that once made him unafraid and confident and the grownup inhabitants of the Lower East Side discussing sex from an adult perspective not seen in the book up to this point.
It is a joy to get the highs with the lows in this amazing novel.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Monday, October 18, 2010
Appointment in Samarra
I took a little hiatus from the list after finishing Henry Miller in order to give Ann some time to catch up. She has way more obligations than I do, which means she has way less time to read. But now that she is long done with I, Claudius and well into Tropic of Cancer, we can safely proceed.
It was so lovely to return to "normal" fiction. Graves's novel was more or a historical recounting (however well written), and Miller was experimental and self-cousciously weak narratively. With O'Hara, we have something more classical, with a protagonist; a problem; a beginning, middle, and end. Oh, sweet joy!
This was the first novel since Light in August to have characters and characterizations that I could really sink my teeth into. The plot here is driven by the characters. And while most of the characters are interesting and well-developed, Julian English is of course the centerpiece of our view of Gibbsville. There is a lot not to like about Julian. He has racist impulses, he cheats on his wife, and he turns to alcohol an awful lot. But O'Hara does an impressive job of making Julian very sympathetic and understandable. The things he does, he does for a reason. And his negative actions and thoughts are balanced by his self-criticisms (or is that self-loathing?) and his knowledge that he has to face up to things. I found the scene in which he returns to Caroline after trying to reconcile with Reilly the first time very touching. He takes those steps slowly and heavily to let her know what happened. He does not mislead her for sex. Similarly, after he has his fight at the club and is driving out of town, he comes to his senses and realizes that he cannot run away, that he must return and meet with Lute. He is funny and endearing even as we watch him make mistake after mistake. O'Hara lets our feelings for Julian be an entire experience, where we can sit outside and critique Julian but at the same time nod with each decision, understanding why. When he climbs into the running car to end his life, we see how trapped he is (or at least how trapped he feels) and can't condemn even if we don't condone.
O'Hara's attempt to treat Caroline the same was is impressive, even as it comes up short. I got the feeling that the heart of Caroline had many chambers that O'Hara couldn't access. He knew of the complexities; he knew of the disappointments; he knew that hidden desires existed; But I think that in the end he didn't know the specifics or how they played out. His one train-of-thought passage from inside Caroline's mind, something he does with no other character, not even Julian, shows that he was going to extreme lengths to get in there. In fact, I was so happy to see an author have such lively and human female characters. Caroline, Irma, Frances, Libby, Alice -- they all exhibit the same racist, defensive, combative, and carnal traits that the men of the novel do.
The racism in the novel seems to be something other than gratuitous. The novel is filled with groups with strict borders. There is the Lantenengo Street people and the regular Joes. The Catholics and the Protestants. The club members and the guests and those entirely excluded. The Jews. The Poles. The Irish. The younger kids and the young adults. All those boundaries crossed and mingled at points, but they could harden in a heartbeat and create social pressures and problems. It is all these hardening borders that isolate Julian at the end of the novel. He sees himself ruined with Reilly, cut off by the Catholics, despised by the Irish, Pollocks, and veterans, too old for the young girls, denied by the women of his age, hated by people he thought were friends but who would side with Caroline and/or Reilly, and he has an enemy in Ed Charney as far as he knows. The small town politics leave nowhere for him to go. The novel feels observational in this respect. O'Hara is clearly critical, but he does not prescribe some solution or provide any exit. When the dust settles on Julian's suicide, life will continue in Gibbsville, and everyone else will suffer from the same structure. People will put two and two together and get five, as Reilly's sister points out. In this novel and in the minds of hungry observers, two plus two always equals five.
This post is now officially too long, so I'll merely add a few concluding thoughts and questions. The title and opening narrative suggest and interesting interplay between fate and the decisions we make. Julian's death is determined long before it occurs, and all his decisions, no matter what he intends, lead him straight and inevitably to that point. Or is there more to it than that?
Julian's nickname is Ju. Is this related to the racism of the novel, in which Ju is a homonym for Jew?
Why begin and end with Lute and Irma? How do they set up the world of the novel and the values and concerns at issue? Is it important that this novel happens in the first year after the stock market crash of 1929? Why do we spend so much time with Al Grecco when he plays such a small part in the novel and absolutely no part in the conclusion?
Cue the crickets.
It was so lovely to return to "normal" fiction. Graves's novel was more or a historical recounting (however well written), and Miller was experimental and self-cousciously weak narratively. With O'Hara, we have something more classical, with a protagonist; a problem; a beginning, middle, and end. Oh, sweet joy!
This was the first novel since Light in August to have characters and characterizations that I could really sink my teeth into. The plot here is driven by the characters. And while most of the characters are interesting and well-developed, Julian English is of course the centerpiece of our view of Gibbsville. There is a lot not to like about Julian. He has racist impulses, he cheats on his wife, and he turns to alcohol an awful lot. But O'Hara does an impressive job of making Julian very sympathetic and understandable. The things he does, he does for a reason. And his negative actions and thoughts are balanced by his self-criticisms (or is that self-loathing?) and his knowledge that he has to face up to things. I found the scene in which he returns to Caroline after trying to reconcile with Reilly the first time very touching. He takes those steps slowly and heavily to let her know what happened. He does not mislead her for sex. Similarly, after he has his fight at the club and is driving out of town, he comes to his senses and realizes that he cannot run away, that he must return and meet with Lute. He is funny and endearing even as we watch him make mistake after mistake. O'Hara lets our feelings for Julian be an entire experience, where we can sit outside and critique Julian but at the same time nod with each decision, understanding why. When he climbs into the running car to end his life, we see how trapped he is (or at least how trapped he feels) and can't condemn even if we don't condone.
O'Hara's attempt to treat Caroline the same was is impressive, even as it comes up short. I got the feeling that the heart of Caroline had many chambers that O'Hara couldn't access. He knew of the complexities; he knew of the disappointments; he knew that hidden desires existed; But I think that in the end he didn't know the specifics or how they played out. His one train-of-thought passage from inside Caroline's mind, something he does with no other character, not even Julian, shows that he was going to extreme lengths to get in there. In fact, I was so happy to see an author have such lively and human female characters. Caroline, Irma, Frances, Libby, Alice -- they all exhibit the same racist, defensive, combative, and carnal traits that the men of the novel do.
The racism in the novel seems to be something other than gratuitous. The novel is filled with groups with strict borders. There is the Lantenengo Street people and the regular Joes. The Catholics and the Protestants. The club members and the guests and those entirely excluded. The Jews. The Poles. The Irish. The younger kids and the young adults. All those boundaries crossed and mingled at points, but they could harden in a heartbeat and create social pressures and problems. It is all these hardening borders that isolate Julian at the end of the novel. He sees himself ruined with Reilly, cut off by the Catholics, despised by the Irish, Pollocks, and veterans, too old for the young girls, denied by the women of his age, hated by people he thought were friends but who would side with Caroline and/or Reilly, and he has an enemy in Ed Charney as far as he knows. The small town politics leave nowhere for him to go. The novel feels observational in this respect. O'Hara is clearly critical, but he does not prescribe some solution or provide any exit. When the dust settles on Julian's suicide, life will continue in Gibbsville, and everyone else will suffer from the same structure. People will put two and two together and get five, as Reilly's sister points out. In this novel and in the minds of hungry observers, two plus two always equals five.
This post is now officially too long, so I'll merely add a few concluding thoughts and questions. The title and opening narrative suggest and interesting interplay between fate and the decisions we make. Julian's death is determined long before it occurs, and all his decisions, no matter what he intends, lead him straight and inevitably to that point. Or is there more to it than that?
Julian's nickname is Ju. Is this related to the racism of the novel, in which Ju is a homonym for Jew?
Why begin and end with Lute and Irma? How do they set up the world of the novel and the values and concerns at issue? Is it important that this novel happens in the first year after the stock market crash of 1929? Why do we spend so much time with Al Grecco when he plays such a small part in the novel and absolutely no part in the conclusion?
Cue the crickets.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Tropic of Cancer , or how I learned to use the C-word
WARNING!--THERE WILL BE ADULT LANGUAGE AHEAD
The perfect analogy for my experience of reading Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer is life. That sounds loftier and bigger than I mean it, but it is true. In my youth (starting out the novel), I was wide-eyed with wonder, trying to learn the language being spoken around me, often confused and hitting against the walls of the text and gaining the necessary cuts and bruises. But I soldiered on. I aged quickly, and 50+ pages into the book, I was in my teen years, rebelling against the world around me--what the hell is going on?! You don't know anything! We come from two different worlds, old man! Somewhere in the middle, I entered my adulthood and accepted that I needed to live by the groundrules that Miller set. I went to work, did my job reading, and tried to make the best of it. Two-thirds into the book, I saw that the end would be upon me one day, and I had to reevaluate the experience of my life, to come to terms with what had happened to me. I didn't hate the world around me, and I did more than just coexist with it; I tried to find reasons to embrace it. And then, near the end of it all, in the twilight years of my reading, I came to terms with the journey I was on. My wounds and scars were still present and aching, but a nostalgia has set in, and I am thankful for the journey I was on.
In short, I hated the book, then felt like I understood it, then appreciated it, and was definitely glad when it was over.
Most of the time while I was reading the book, I had no idea why I was reading it, other than to finish it for the sake of this project. There is no narrative drive in the book to compel a reader forward, no plot or movement to pull me from one page to the next. The weight and importance of the novel is directly proportionate to how fond you are of the main character and the world he stumbles through. If you like the details of these insecure, gad-about, ex-patriated "artists" and their sexual escapades, you are going to find the novel very compelling. If hearing the women referred to continually as cunts and valued by the extent to which they crave, perform, and enjoy sex, then your experience of the book will leave much to be desired.
The passages that gave me the most clarity, were the ones in which Miller declaimed his artistic goal. On page 243 of my edition, Miller writes:
"Up to the present, my idea in collaborating with myself has been to get off the gold standard of literature. My idea briefly has been to present a resurrection of the emotions, to depict the conduct of a human being in the stratosphere of ideas, that is, in the grip of delirium. To paint a pre-Socratic being, a creature part goat, part Titan."
So enough with the romantic notion of elevating people to some noble level of representation. The world around us is filled with sex and shit and crabs and syphilis and people are revolting. But they are also part Titan, and that glorious light at their heart is every bit as present as their nastiness, but both need to be there. When I thought of his perspective, I gained an appreciation for that goal. It made sense of his admiration of Whitman and the shocking strength of Whitman's poetry.
But when I stepped back again, and looked at what he DID represent, I remember why I was frustrated. I don't see anything titanic here. He claims to love the world and the people even as it is all rot, but I don't see that love. I see a character and his friends who all feel superior to everyone else. People who hold jobs and make ends meet are represented as sad clods of human beings. No one Miller meets can write worth a damn or have an appropriate reaction to any circumstance. They are all missing the stuff he sees. I had to reread a good portion of "Leaves of Grass," to be sure, but indeed Whitman is in love with the human race, and the very jobs they do are noble. Yes, he wants to get a something outside of the perfumes of society, at something raw and animal, but the mere act of nursing, of marrying, of swimming, of engaging with each other and the world around them, made every soul beautiful in his eyes. The souls in Tropic of Cancer are every bit as yellowed and rotting and lousy as the places the live. How can you love what you don't respect?
As usual, I am very glad to have read this book. It confirms again that in spite of our apotheosizing the generations before us, they were all as shitty and sex-driven and depraved as any other generation. These are the same folks that Brokaw called "The Greatest Generation." Things do not move steadily downhill; it's always just a trick of perspective.
I would love to hear from someone who really connected with this book and with Miller. So if anyone reads this and has had a different reaction, please let me know about it. Cunts.
The perfect analogy for my experience of reading Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer is life. That sounds loftier and bigger than I mean it, but it is true. In my youth (starting out the novel), I was wide-eyed with wonder, trying to learn the language being spoken around me, often confused and hitting against the walls of the text and gaining the necessary cuts and bruises. But I soldiered on. I aged quickly, and 50+ pages into the book, I was in my teen years, rebelling against the world around me--what the hell is going on?! You don't know anything! We come from two different worlds, old man! Somewhere in the middle, I entered my adulthood and accepted that I needed to live by the groundrules that Miller set. I went to work, did my job reading, and tried to make the best of it. Two-thirds into the book, I saw that the end would be upon me one day, and I had to reevaluate the experience of my life, to come to terms with what had happened to me. I didn't hate the world around me, and I did more than just coexist with it; I tried to find reasons to embrace it. And then, near the end of it all, in the twilight years of my reading, I came to terms with the journey I was on. My wounds and scars were still present and aching, but a nostalgia has set in, and I am thankful for the journey I was on.
In short, I hated the book, then felt like I understood it, then appreciated it, and was definitely glad when it was over.
Most of the time while I was reading the book, I had no idea why I was reading it, other than to finish it for the sake of this project. There is no narrative drive in the book to compel a reader forward, no plot or movement to pull me from one page to the next. The weight and importance of the novel is directly proportionate to how fond you are of the main character and the world he stumbles through. If you like the details of these insecure, gad-about, ex-patriated "artists" and their sexual escapades, you are going to find the novel very compelling. If hearing the women referred to continually as cunts and valued by the extent to which they crave, perform, and enjoy sex, then your experience of the book will leave much to be desired.
The passages that gave me the most clarity, were the ones in which Miller declaimed his artistic goal. On page 243 of my edition, Miller writes:
"Up to the present, my idea in collaborating with myself has been to get off the gold standard of literature. My idea briefly has been to present a resurrection of the emotions, to depict the conduct of a human being in the stratosphere of ideas, that is, in the grip of delirium. To paint a pre-Socratic being, a creature part goat, part Titan."
So enough with the romantic notion of elevating people to some noble level of representation. The world around us is filled with sex and shit and crabs and syphilis and people are revolting. But they are also part Titan, and that glorious light at their heart is every bit as present as their nastiness, but both need to be there. When I thought of his perspective, I gained an appreciation for that goal. It made sense of his admiration of Whitman and the shocking strength of Whitman's poetry.
But when I stepped back again, and looked at what he DID represent, I remember why I was frustrated. I don't see anything titanic here. He claims to love the world and the people even as it is all rot, but I don't see that love. I see a character and his friends who all feel superior to everyone else. People who hold jobs and make ends meet are represented as sad clods of human beings. No one Miller meets can write worth a damn or have an appropriate reaction to any circumstance. They are all missing the stuff he sees. I had to reread a good portion of "Leaves of Grass," to be sure, but indeed Whitman is in love with the human race, and the very jobs they do are noble. Yes, he wants to get a something outside of the perfumes of society, at something raw and animal, but the mere act of nursing, of marrying, of swimming, of engaging with each other and the world around them, made every soul beautiful in his eyes. The souls in Tropic of Cancer are every bit as yellowed and rotting and lousy as the places the live. How can you love what you don't respect?
As usual, I am very glad to have read this book. It confirms again that in spite of our apotheosizing the generations before us, they were all as shitty and sex-driven and depraved as any other generation. These are the same folks that Brokaw called "The Greatest Generation." Things do not move steadily downhill; it's always just a trick of perspective.
I would love to hear from someone who really connected with this book and with Miller. So if anyone reads this and has had a different reaction, please let me know about it. Cunts.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Me, Myself, & I, Claudius
I have been very excited to read I, Claudius ever since I saw it on the list. It's one of those books I have just always wanted to read. This project may take 5 years to do, but I am having a great time doing it.
Just because you have been wanting to read a book for a long time, it doesn't follow that you will love the book once you read it. There were many things that disappointed me about this book. The first is that it reads more like a history textbook than a novel. I don't know the history of historical fiction, so it could be that this book was a forerunner in the genre and is remarkable for that reason. Related to the first disappointment is the second: for a book filled with dramatic stories, there is very little drama. Things do not unfold in such a way that you are kept in suspense at all. It's all very factual. The anecdotes are amusing and striking (and I was sent to my old textbooks and Wikipedia to see what Graves was making up), but they aren't dramatic. And connected to these first two disappointments is the third: the plot is missing. We follow the Roman Empire through three generations of emperors, and we have something of a main character in Claudius, but the unifying action that brings it all together is missing.
Now all that being said, I enjoyed the book a great deal for what it was. The unifying principle was not a character's desires, goals, or actions; the unifying principle was the moral fall of the Roman Empire. We follow the empire from the first emperor following Caesar to the installation of Claudius as emperor. Even as Augustus rules, Claudius believes that the hope for a rebirth of the republic is simply a fantasy. And what we see is that the absolute power of being emperor corrupts absolutely, even if it does so through generations instead of through one single person.
This focus on the corruption of a government and the corresponding erosion of civil rights makes perfect sense in its historical context. In 1934, when this book was initially published, we are heading into the second World War. Europe is uneasy and Germany's chancellor is Adolf Hitler. Central government powers are being consolidated and strengthened and many heads of states are strong personalities. In many ways the novel seems prescient, as Graves discusses treason trials and informers and a whole people seemingly powerless to stand up to one man. He even discusses the army being consolidated under Tiberius and Sejanus, disconnecting the army from the people and aligning it instead with the ruler. At times I would have told you this novel was written in 1948 when Orwell was publishing 1984.
From my brief research on the subject, Graves seems to have had some views on gender politics . . . with which I would have to disagree. I find it fascinating that Livia becomes the big villain in the first half of the novel. Apparently Tacitus's Annals made some suggestions about Livia's influence over Augustus, but Graves took it all to a whole new level, making her a villain that Shakespeare would love to include in a play. The women who are good in this novel are ridiculously good, and the those who are bad are near evil. The men who do wrong are mean, and Sejanus does give Livia a run for her money, but he is not nearly as accomplished as she is. Castor is a meany, but Livilla is wretched. In some ways, the men in this novel are simple. They've got honor and codes and they fight, but everything is pretty straight forward for them. The women are smarter, and when inclined, devious. I read in an interview that Graves sees women as the moral centers of our world (not a new position); if that is the case, what roles do women and men play in the collapse of this society?
And what a collapse! The moral depravity in this novel is breathtaking. Whoever wants to complain about the youth of today should give this novel a read. The youth look pretty fantastic comparatively.
I am very glad that I read this novel, and I am very excited to rent the 1976 miniseries, which must put all the drama together into something genuinely dramatic, a Sopranos in ancient Rome. John Hurt, Derek Jacobi, and even a young Patrick Stewart as Sejanus . . . seriously? How good does that sound?
Just because you have been wanting to read a book for a long time, it doesn't follow that you will love the book once you read it. There were many things that disappointed me about this book. The first is that it reads more like a history textbook than a novel. I don't know the history of historical fiction, so it could be that this book was a forerunner in the genre and is remarkable for that reason. Related to the first disappointment is the second: for a book filled with dramatic stories, there is very little drama. Things do not unfold in such a way that you are kept in suspense at all. It's all very factual. The anecdotes are amusing and striking (and I was sent to my old textbooks and Wikipedia to see what Graves was making up), but they aren't dramatic. And connected to these first two disappointments is the third: the plot is missing. We follow the Roman Empire through three generations of emperors, and we have something of a main character in Claudius, but the unifying action that brings it all together is missing.
Now all that being said, I enjoyed the book a great deal for what it was. The unifying principle was not a character's desires, goals, or actions; the unifying principle was the moral fall of the Roman Empire. We follow the empire from the first emperor following Caesar to the installation of Claudius as emperor. Even as Augustus rules, Claudius believes that the hope for a rebirth of the republic is simply a fantasy. And what we see is that the absolute power of being emperor corrupts absolutely, even if it does so through generations instead of through one single person.
This focus on the corruption of a government and the corresponding erosion of civil rights makes perfect sense in its historical context. In 1934, when this book was initially published, we are heading into the second World War. Europe is uneasy and Germany's chancellor is Adolf Hitler. Central government powers are being consolidated and strengthened and many heads of states are strong personalities. In many ways the novel seems prescient, as Graves discusses treason trials and informers and a whole people seemingly powerless to stand up to one man. He even discusses the army being consolidated under Tiberius and Sejanus, disconnecting the army from the people and aligning it instead with the ruler. At times I would have told you this novel was written in 1948 when Orwell was publishing 1984.
From my brief research on the subject, Graves seems to have had some views on gender politics . . . with which I would have to disagree. I find it fascinating that Livia becomes the big villain in the first half of the novel. Apparently Tacitus's Annals made some suggestions about Livia's influence over Augustus, but Graves took it all to a whole new level, making her a villain that Shakespeare would love to include in a play. The women who are good in this novel are ridiculously good, and the those who are bad are near evil. The men who do wrong are mean, and Sejanus does give Livia a run for her money, but he is not nearly as accomplished as she is. Castor is a meany, but Livilla is wretched. In some ways, the men in this novel are simple. They've got honor and codes and they fight, but everything is pretty straight forward for them. The women are smarter, and when inclined, devious. I read in an interview that Graves sees women as the moral centers of our world (not a new position); if that is the case, what roles do women and men play in the collapse of this society?
And what a collapse! The moral depravity in this novel is breathtaking. Whoever wants to complain about the youth of today should give this novel a read. The youth look pretty fantastic comparatively.
I am very glad that I read this novel, and I am very excited to rent the 1976 miniseries, which must put all the drama together into something genuinely dramatic, a Sopranos in ancient Rome. John Hurt, Derek Jacobi, and even a young Patrick Stewart as Sejanus . . . seriously? How good does that sound?
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
I Need More Light, Less August!
I think that without the excellent initial musings of my husband, I would have walked away throwing this book over my shoulder like salt. This is an incredibly dense and complex book, the language twisted and inscrutable in passages, beautiful and painful in passages, poetic and enviable everywhere, though the story befuddled me thoroughly. At times, I felt like Lena, plodding along because I have to, because I need to find something - which in my case is only the last page. It took me well over a month to make my journey, and here are a few thoughts so that I can walk away respecting myself, as well as the book.
One disclaimer I must make before beginning is that I had not read Light in August before I sat down with it this summer. Since I have always believed that one must re-read Faulkner if one hopes to comprehend him, I must immediately admit that I don't. Those who do seem to be onto the same themes that Jason and I just discussed over lunch: race, religion, and a community that polices itself with rabid determination, punishing everyone whose interests or identity transgresses "sacred" racial and moral boundaries.
Light in August does seem almost entirely preoccupied with the stories of those transgressors: with Lena, who gets pregnant out of wedlock; with Joe Christmas, who was born out of wedlock and reportedly the product of miscegny; with Joanna Burden, who lives nearly in exile based upon her family's history with race and carries on an illicit sexual relationship with Joe Christmas; and with Gail Hightower, who is a whole fucking mystery unto himself, as far as I'm concerned. The savage sexism of Joe Christmas bothered me terribly, and I in my arrogance feel like I have better uses for my time than analyzing him in any detail, although I am interested in the relationship between gender and morality in the novel.
Traditionally, in America, the woman's consolation for her social and political inequity was her unchallenged command of the moral domain. She was to know morality, to embody it, and to imbue it in her family, as well as her community; this was God's intention. In this novel, women do function in this way - but only to a degree. Armstid predicts when he gives Lena a ride in his wagon that "womenfolks are likely to be good [to Lena] without being very kind. Men, now, might. But it's only a bad woman herself that is likely to be very kind to another woman that needs the kindess." His wife, Martha, is in fact very good to Lena without being kind, giving Lena her own egg money in a fit of fury - and emphasizing that it is her own, as if to dare Armstid to stop her. Men do treat Lena fairly well, but in that respect, Lena is alone. There are many "bad men" in the novel, and they make savage and terrible moral guardians, committing acts of appalling violence and cruelty in the name of upholding their own codes.
In a sense, Joe Christmas fits in with those men, insofar as he loathes himself and tries to provoke others to loathe and reject him, too. Of course, Joe also asks a central question, which he poses to Joanna Burden: "Just when do men that have different blood in them stop hating one another?" He himself isn't sure he even has "different blood," but if he doesn't, he says, he has "wasted a lot of time." Doing what? Exposing that hatred? Showing the absurdity of racism by revealing the violence that comes at the mere suggestion, the mere statement of racial difference?
It's almost as if I don't want to ascribe that to Joe Christmas because he is so deeply unlikeable - and because the novel itself is saturated with descriptions of blackness as a tangible, undesirable state. Gah!
To be sure, this novel is critical of the policing roles that Hines and Grimm and McEachern play, but what is the novel really about, in the end? I disagree vehemently with the idea that Lena is somehow a symbol of life that carries on in spite of all. Lena is delusional. She rejects Byron on some unstated basis, which I suspect is that he lost in his fight with Lucas Burch. He is not masculine enough for Lena, so she will go on searching (without actually searching) for a man she knows won't have her. I don't quite get it, which makes this whole blogging process seem frustratingly pointless.
Sigh.
One disclaimer I must make before beginning is that I had not read Light in August before I sat down with it this summer. Since I have always believed that one must re-read Faulkner if one hopes to comprehend him, I must immediately admit that I don't. Those who do seem to be onto the same themes that Jason and I just discussed over lunch: race, religion, and a community that polices itself with rabid determination, punishing everyone whose interests or identity transgresses "sacred" racial and moral boundaries.
Light in August does seem almost entirely preoccupied with the stories of those transgressors: with Lena, who gets pregnant out of wedlock; with Joe Christmas, who was born out of wedlock and reportedly the product of miscegny; with Joanna Burden, who lives nearly in exile based upon her family's history with race and carries on an illicit sexual relationship with Joe Christmas; and with Gail Hightower, who is a whole fucking mystery unto himself, as far as I'm concerned. The savage sexism of Joe Christmas bothered me terribly, and I in my arrogance feel like I have better uses for my time than analyzing him in any detail, although I am interested in the relationship between gender and morality in the novel.
Traditionally, in America, the woman's consolation for her social and political inequity was her unchallenged command of the moral domain. She was to know morality, to embody it, and to imbue it in her family, as well as her community; this was God's intention. In this novel, women do function in this way - but only to a degree. Armstid predicts when he gives Lena a ride in his wagon that "womenfolks are likely to be good [to Lena] without being very kind. Men, now, might. But it's only a bad woman herself that is likely to be very kind to another woman that needs the kindess." His wife, Martha, is in fact very good to Lena without being kind, giving Lena her own egg money in a fit of fury - and emphasizing that it is her own, as if to dare Armstid to stop her. Men do treat Lena fairly well, but in that respect, Lena is alone. There are many "bad men" in the novel, and they make savage and terrible moral guardians, committing acts of appalling violence and cruelty in the name of upholding their own codes.
In a sense, Joe Christmas fits in with those men, insofar as he loathes himself and tries to provoke others to loathe and reject him, too. Of course, Joe also asks a central question, which he poses to Joanna Burden: "Just when do men that have different blood in them stop hating one another?" He himself isn't sure he even has "different blood," but if he doesn't, he says, he has "wasted a lot of time." Doing what? Exposing that hatred? Showing the absurdity of racism by revealing the violence that comes at the mere suggestion, the mere statement of racial difference?
It's almost as if I don't want to ascribe that to Joe Christmas because he is so deeply unlikeable - and because the novel itself is saturated with descriptions of blackness as a tangible, undesirable state. Gah!
To be sure, this novel is critical of the policing roles that Hines and Grimm and McEachern play, but what is the novel really about, in the end? I disagree vehemently with the idea that Lena is somehow a symbol of life that carries on in spite of all. Lena is delusional. She rejects Byron on some unstated basis, which I suspect is that he lost in his fight with Lucas Burch. He is not masculine enough for Lena, so she will go on searching (without actually searching) for a man she knows won't have her. I don't quite get it, which makes this whole blogging process seem frustratingly pointless.
Sigh.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
A Brave New Handful of Dust
I'm getting a little ahead of Ann for the moment, but I'm sure she will catch up in no time. For now, we forge ahead into the unknown, into Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust.
This was another intriguing book, one of those whose final act seems so incongruous with those that preceded it, like A Passage to India. We begin as a comedy of English city society and end in the jungles of Brazil. I felt like I tumbled into the surreal as Tony and Dr. Messinger struck out into the jungle, like Waugh had been reading Heart of Darkness and decided to give that a go for a while. Then I started to wonder, which came first in the creation of the story: the jungle or the city? So I looked it up on Wikipedia and there was a quote by Waugh saying that he had had an experience in which he was far from culture reading to an older gentleman when it occurred to him that the man could keep him hostage if he wanted to. So that is where this book began for him. He worked back from there, he said, to play out further "civilized man's helpless plight among [savages]." Tony is of course our civilized man and Brenda, Beaver, and the lot are the savages. You can probably take it all from there.
The thing that I actually thought of most when I finished this book was how similar it was to Brave New World by Huxley. In both stories we follow a man who shares our sensibilities about the world and how people and society ought to behave while struggling in a world that actively works against him. Brave New World even has that section in it where the protagonist goes to live amongst the savages, which struck me as being similar to the jungle section in Waugh's book. And of course, both protagonists are beaten down in the end. Curiously enough, Brave New World was published in 1932, just before Waugh would have been writing his book. Whether or not there was any influence, it is clear that there is something of a zeitgeist here that both authors are tapping into about the fears of where contemporary society was headed. The Great War was a ways behind them, but more turmoil was brewing and the modern political machinery was churning away.
This is a book that I have enjoyed thinking about after I finished it more than I enjoyed the actual reading of it, although I did find the characterization of John Jr. very funny and greatly enjoyed the fake affair scene with Tony and Milly and her daughter. This is my first exposure to Waugh and I would be delighted to read more.
This was another intriguing book, one of those whose final act seems so incongruous with those that preceded it, like A Passage to India. We begin as a comedy of English city society and end in the jungles of Brazil. I felt like I tumbled into the surreal as Tony and Dr. Messinger struck out into the jungle, like Waugh had been reading Heart of Darkness and decided to give that a go for a while. Then I started to wonder, which came first in the creation of the story: the jungle or the city? So I looked it up on Wikipedia and there was a quote by Waugh saying that he had had an experience in which he was far from culture reading to an older gentleman when it occurred to him that the man could keep him hostage if he wanted to. So that is where this book began for him. He worked back from there, he said, to play out further "civilized man's helpless plight among [savages]." Tony is of course our civilized man and Brenda, Beaver, and the lot are the savages. You can probably take it all from there.
The thing that I actually thought of most when I finished this book was how similar it was to Brave New World by Huxley. In both stories we follow a man who shares our sensibilities about the world and how people and society ought to behave while struggling in a world that actively works against him. Brave New World even has that section in it where the protagonist goes to live amongst the savages, which struck me as being similar to the jungle section in Waugh's book. And of course, both protagonists are beaten down in the end. Curiously enough, Brave New World was published in 1932, just before Waugh would have been writing his book. Whether or not there was any influence, it is clear that there is something of a zeitgeist here that both authors are tapping into about the fears of where contemporary society was headed. The Great War was a ways behind them, but more turmoil was brewing and the modern political machinery was churning away.
This is a book that I have enjoyed thinking about after I finished it more than I enjoyed the actual reading of it, although I did find the characterization of John Jr. very funny and greatly enjoyed the fake affair scene with Tony and Milly and her daughter. This is my first exposure to Waugh and I would be delighted to read more.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Some Light (in August) Reading
This blogsite is appropriately titled because I want to begin every post by stating that I am not smart enough to be writing about this book. Light in August is no exception.
Trying to wrap my head around this book is like trying to fit a twin-sized sheet on a queen-sized bed: I can get one corner on, and then a second, but as I stretch to make the third corner fit, one of both of the first two comes flying off. The stories of Lena Grove, Byron Bunch, Joe Christmas, and Gail Hightower could each stand alone in a short story or in a novella, so what is Faulkner doing bringing all these lives under a single cover in a single novel? What unifies all these different tales? What do all these characters have in common?
After much mulling and pondering, I think that Faulkner is saying something about the way we deal with life by withdrawing from it. The thing that got me started in this direction was Reverend Hightower. When he delivers Lena’s baby, his dissatisfaction with Bryon changes, and he wants to thank Byron for pulling him out of his non-existence into the world around him. He has been so busy living in a world of ghosts that he has not interacted with the world around him. From there, I thought about Ms. Burden and her life of isolation on the hill. And then there was Byron himself, who is so afraid of becoming hurt that he avoids human contact, especially with women. When he works late on a Saturday he feels safe, like nothing will come and endanger him there. In this light, Lena’s imperturbability in the face of others opinions begins to look like something other than mere strength. She has checked out, in her own way, living in a fantasy nearly as complete as Hightower’s chasing down Joe Brown/Lucas Burch even after he is untraceable.
So how does Christmas fit into all of this? First, let us look at the way he impacts the world around him. He is a catalyst of sorts that upsets the whole world around him. In the most obvious way, he affects Ms. Burden. Before Christmas, she leads a solitary life, shunned by Jefferson’s white community and shunning them in return. As her relationship with Christmas progresses, she goes through something of a breakdown. At first, she is detached and calm, but then she begins to unravel, going to emotional extremes, and as Christmas observes, she behaves like three different women. Finally, she pushes Christmas in a way she has to know will end badly; she asks him to go to a school for blacks and then learn the law under a black lawyer. As if that weren’t enough, she pulls an ancient revolver on him to force him to act. I wonder if she is practically committing suicide by pushing Christmas as she does. After 40 years of controlling her world tightly, when she lets go and engages, it all falls apart.
Christmas doesn’t have this exact result on everyone else, but he crashes into all of their neatly monitored worlds and breaks them all apart. Byron brings Uncle Doc and his wife to Hightower, and Christmas charges into Hightower’s home where he is murdered. Christmas’s presence forces everyone to interact with each other.
Christmas. In all the novels we have read so far, none of them have dealt with race issues so bluntly. Passage to India dealt with race, but it was all put in the context of nationalism. Here, Christmas believes himself to be of a mixed race simply because other people tell him that he is. This information shapes his whole life. He uses it to start fights and to force others to react to him. He hates himself and those around him, both white and black. When Burden asks him how he is sure, he notes that he has certainly wasted much of his life if he isn’t indeed mixed. What is Faulkner saying about race here? Is Christmas somehow the South, mixed and struggling 70 years after the civil war to come to terms with its mixed heritage? Christmas is the most active of the characters in this novel, even if his actions are destructive and self destructive. What does that mean? Moreover, this novel deals more with the reaction to race than to race itself. This book does not show white and black characters working anything out; instead, it shows how all these people react to the suggestion that there is a black blood somewhere in the gene pool.
So now I have to devolve into a set of questions that I have and would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on. In a novel where we get everyone’s past, even the past of Grimm, who appears in one chapter to shoot Christmas, why is Joe Brown (or should I say Lucas Burch) given no history? We get nothing on him. Peculiar.
What is Faulker saying about authority and America through McEachern and Grimm? Faulkner makes it clear that each sees himself reacting without passion, following immutable laws of behavior. Neither man is set up as a model to emulate, certainly; one acts from religious piety, and one from patriotic vision. Both are cruel and as detached as the other characters in the novel. But acting through passion is just as problematic, as Uncle Doc and the folks who killed the Burden family illustrate. Withdrawing, bad. Following rules blindly, bad. Being blindly passionate, bad. The closest we get to a hero is Christmas and Hightower. That is rough.
How is Christmas’s relationship to his grandfather, Uncle Doc paralleled with Hightower’s relationship to his grandfather? I’ve heard that Christmas, who is 33 in the novel, is likened in some criticism to Christ; how does that idea follow through?
This novel is rich and complex and way beyond my meager intellect, but it sure is a compelling read. What do you have to add?
Bueller? Bueller?
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