This blog was originally intended for those reading along with the list that kicked this journey off. According to this original vision, my entries would be one of many and a conversation would arise between blogs as our different impressions and interpretations came together. To that end, I was only too happy to include spoilers in my entries so that we could discuss the books in as much specific detail as possible.
It now seems that I am the last man standing, as it were, and the few who read my posts read them as a kind of book review. Because of this change, I will be spoiling as little as possible in my following posts. If anyone out there wants to discuss things in detail, please make comments, get down to business, and I will meet you there!
Robert Penn Warren is an amazing writer. I had seen the black and white film version of All the King's Men, but I had never read the book before. It is of course common place to note that a book is better than its cinematic counterpart, but I don't always feel that that is true. If a book is heavily plot-driven, it can typically be made into a successful film because cinema loves action and doing; it can show that vividly and powerfully. My impression of All the King's Men from the movie is that the book is about Willie Stark, the country bumpkin who rises to power as the Governor of an unnamed state, and who then confuses his ambitions for power and for doing good. It is a story of the rise and fall of one man and all the collateral damage that creates. Indeed, even reading the jacket cover of my edition, that is the story that it summarizes.
I was surprised then to find almost halfway into the book that the narrator is not simply Watson to Stark's Holmes, but that he is the very center of the novel. The richness of this story is the richness of the narrator's observations and feelings. The extent to which this is an amazing book, and it is indeed an amazing book, has everything to do with Jack Burden's self-loving, self-loathing, caring, uncaring relationship with himself and the world he operates in. Robert Penn Warren brings everything he has to this book and touches upon so many aspects of humanity that I have no idea how he found anything else to write about in the 40 years of his life that followed the publication of this book.
Jack Burden is straight out of a hard-boiled detective novel. He is world-weary and wise and shocked by nothing. He talks the tough talk and doesn't get emotionally attached. And he watches everything and everyone to see which way things go. The difference is that Jack isn't out to make a buck or save someone's life. Moreover, he has failed relationships with everyone in his life, including himself. And the novel reveals those relationships and Jack's every impulse in amazing detail while never once feeling like the pace of the novel is sagging. Hell, the greater portion of one chapter (and the chapters in the book are rather long) is given over to retelling the story of the life, love, and trials of a distant relative during the civil war who was the subject of Jack's dissertation when he was a graduate student of history. It has nothing to do with Willie Stark and yet everything to do with the concerns of the novel and the relationships that boil at its center.
This novel is about good and bad and the good bad people can do and the bad good people can do. It's about the utter uselessness of concepts of good and bad when applied to people. The novel manages to do what so many other storytellers have tried and failed: it presents individuals and society in all its complexity. When others attempt such a thing, you are often presented with a big blob of a mess, everything entangled and meshed, muddy and shadowed. Robert Penn Warren deftly shows the sides of people without destroying the individual impressions, like light shining on a multifaceted gem, the gleam bouncing off one facet sharply without denying the presence of the other facets. In fact, the mere presence of that facet speaks of all the other facets that share a side with it. It is an amazing thing to see.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Not Loving Loving
A lot of novels begin in media res, and I have gotten quite comfortable with being confused for a number of pages, if not a number of chapters. When the confusion lasts longer than I would like, I sometimes read the forward or introduction if my edition comes with one. My edition of Henry Green's Loving comes with an introduction by John Updike, and I availed myself of it after stumbling through the first ten pages of the novel. I recharged my battery after reading that "Green, to me, is so good a writer, such a revealer of what English prose fiction can do in this century, that I can launch myself upon this piece of homage and introduction only by falling into some sort of imitation of that liberatingly ingenuous voice, that voice so full of other voices, its own interpolations amid the matchless dialogue twisted and tremulous with a precision that kept the softness of groping, of sensation, of living." Wow, that sounds good!
But I did not find it to be as exhilarating as Updike. It took me a quarter of the book to figure out who was who, and another quarter to feel comfortable with the cast of characters. Then I spent the last half trying to figure out why I was reading the book at all. The uniqueness of Green's voice was lost on me, but I did find his skill at dialogue most impressive. He had many scene transitions that were sharp and clever. And he had a few descriptions that were striking and poetic. But those moments of admiration were moments, disparate and free-floating, unanchored to any plot or theme that I could follow. Summaries of the novel focus on the division of the masters and their servants and on the characters raiding each others turf as the warring nations in Europe simultaneously war with each other, but to say that that is what this novel is about does not ring true for me. The servants gossiped and spied on each other, but nothing about it felt like it was echoing the fighting happening overseas for the characters.
In the end, it's Raunce's story above all others. He is promoted to Butler, falls in love with Edith, and in the end the two elope. There are some power struggles, but nothing is ever really on the line. There could not be said to be any hills or valleys in the story. It is telling that Green avoids any chapters, because chapters suggest a rhythm that I found the novel lacking. So in the end I feel like I didn't understand the novel at all. And my brief search through the interwebz did not shine any light on it. Here is a novelist admired by many, and a novel that has made it not only on this top-100 list but on several others as well. So I just want to understand why.
One of the things that I like about reading from a top-100 list is that I can assume that what I am reading is good or ground-breaking in its own way. When a book takes an odd turn or does something that I would never expect, I can assume that the author had a reason for doing so, that doing so is part of his or her very point. I don't expect all the novels to be gripping or to be great in every category (character, plot, pacing, writing, etc.), but I do expect each novel to be doing one of two things: Giving me a good yarn or saying something about the world we live in. The good yarn I can do without if the characters and world portrayed are vibrant and absorbing, which they are indeed in this novel. But I can't say that this novel is saying anything about anything.
So there it is. It's not the worst book I've read. It's not the lamest book I've read. It's not the most confusing book I've read. I just don't get it. So if anyone out there can enlighten me, please do!
But I did not find it to be as exhilarating as Updike. It took me a quarter of the book to figure out who was who, and another quarter to feel comfortable with the cast of characters. Then I spent the last half trying to figure out why I was reading the book at all. The uniqueness of Green's voice was lost on me, but I did find his skill at dialogue most impressive. He had many scene transitions that were sharp and clever. And he had a few descriptions that were striking and poetic. But those moments of admiration were moments, disparate and free-floating, unanchored to any plot or theme that I could follow. Summaries of the novel focus on the division of the masters and their servants and on the characters raiding each others turf as the warring nations in Europe simultaneously war with each other, but to say that that is what this novel is about does not ring true for me. The servants gossiped and spied on each other, but nothing about it felt like it was echoing the fighting happening overseas for the characters.
In the end, it's Raunce's story above all others. He is promoted to Butler, falls in love with Edith, and in the end the two elope. There are some power struggles, but nothing is ever really on the line. There could not be said to be any hills or valleys in the story. It is telling that Green avoids any chapters, because chapters suggest a rhythm that I found the novel lacking. So in the end I feel like I didn't understand the novel at all. And my brief search through the interwebz did not shine any light on it. Here is a novelist admired by many, and a novel that has made it not only on this top-100 list but on several others as well. So I just want to understand why.
One of the things that I like about reading from a top-100 list is that I can assume that what I am reading is good or ground-breaking in its own way. When a book takes an odd turn or does something that I would never expect, I can assume that the author had a reason for doing so, that doing so is part of his or her very point. I don't expect all the novels to be gripping or to be great in every category (character, plot, pacing, writing, etc.), but I do expect each novel to be doing one of two things: Giving me a good yarn or saying something about the world we live in. The good yarn I can do without if the characters and world portrayed are vibrant and absorbing, which they are indeed in this novel. But I can't say that this novel is saying anything about anything.
So there it is. It's not the worst book I've read. It's not the lamest book I've read. It's not the most confusing book I've read. I just don't get it. So if anyone out there can enlighten me, please do!
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Lonely Hunters Make Good Company
In spite of my long silence, the search for smarts continues. I took some time to read Watership Down with my son and I have begun reading Dune aloud to Ann. It is one of her favorite books, but it is my first time reading it. In addition, I got lassoed into reading a free market economics book that is draining my soul.
But onward with the subject at hand: Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. We all have certain subject matters and writing styles that resonate with us on what feels like a primordial level, and McCullers and this novel do just that for me. Like Cannery Row and Winesburg, Ohio, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter takes a look at human suffering at its finest, at the efforts we make to reach out to the world around us, at the inevitable failure of those efforts. Every part of this novel was a joy to me. McCullers's writing is powerful in its straightforwardness and it manages to be wonderfully heartwrenching while steering clear of sentimental goop. Moreover, the writing never falls into self-congratulatory profundity even as it makes beautifully profound observations of human desires and interactions. The characters are vibrant and alive, seeming to exist beyond the borders of the page.
As Biff Brannon observes, the lonely creatures surrounding John Singer are able to cast their own image onto Singer due to his muteness. And as Singer observes, the three lonely hearts that seek him out are all obsessed with something they cannot get a hold of. McCullers makes it clear that Singer holds no special powers himself; in fact, he is equally obsessed with and equally able to write his own desires on Antonapoulos. Everyone is casting about to find a fellow soul that vibrates on the same frequency, and often we mistake our own eternal vibration for the like vibration of another.
All interactions in this novel miss their mark. Biff loves Mick, but she sees his attention as something malicious, her own guilty conscience turning his love into suspicion. Jake Blount and Dr. Copeland are fellow political activists who cannot trust themselves or others, who meet for one night of intense discussion only to fall apart and become more distant than ever. Singer's love for Antonapoulos is painful to watch since we know that that love is doomed from the first chapter. Each character has wonderful insights into those around them but is blind to his own motivations and doings. And it seems the more they stumble, the more lost they become. Mick's entrance into adulthood is of course the prime example of this. After her initiation into sexual adulthood, she withdraws not only from those around her, but from herself. She is no longer allowed into her own interior room. Her response is strikingly similar to Bubber's after shooting Baby in the face. Both have crossed a threshold after which childhood is lost, and with childhood, some understanding of ourselves and our own dreams.
Perhaps it is hope that the lonely heart hunts for, hope for a connection and for a world of possibilities. And when that hope dies, something dies in us. For Singer, that death is total. Without Antonapoulos, he has no reason to go on at all. For those who pinned their hopes on Singer, his death sends them into a spiral as well. Mick's estrangement from herself is complete, and Jake's groundedness is lost. We cannot see beyond ourselves. Worse yet, we cannot see within ourselves. Where does that leave us?
Biff seems to be the pivot point of the novel, insofar as he is left standing in the end. He is the only character rooted in the community. I suppose Copeland is certainly rooted, but his desires for a better world take him out and set him on the fringes, as does his skin. No, Biff is the only one settled and unmoving. He is as disconnected as the rest, but there is something resigned in him that allows him to keep soldiering on even as the world changes. His loneliness doesn't seem as painful, and I can't decide if that is an even sadder fate than that of the others.
I took so long to read this novel not because it was a difficult or slow read, but because I was eager for it not to end. I knew from the start that it was not going to end well, and I was in no rush for everything to unravel and slip away. The writing, the characters, the world--they were all too good to let go.
But onward with the subject at hand: Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. We all have certain subject matters and writing styles that resonate with us on what feels like a primordial level, and McCullers and this novel do just that for me. Like Cannery Row and Winesburg, Ohio, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter takes a look at human suffering at its finest, at the efforts we make to reach out to the world around us, at the inevitable failure of those efforts. Every part of this novel was a joy to me. McCullers's writing is powerful in its straightforwardness and it manages to be wonderfully heartwrenching while steering clear of sentimental goop. Moreover, the writing never falls into self-congratulatory profundity even as it makes beautifully profound observations of human desires and interactions. The characters are vibrant and alive, seeming to exist beyond the borders of the page.
As Biff Brannon observes, the lonely creatures surrounding John Singer are able to cast their own image onto Singer due to his muteness. And as Singer observes, the three lonely hearts that seek him out are all obsessed with something they cannot get a hold of. McCullers makes it clear that Singer holds no special powers himself; in fact, he is equally obsessed with and equally able to write his own desires on Antonapoulos. Everyone is casting about to find a fellow soul that vibrates on the same frequency, and often we mistake our own eternal vibration for the like vibration of another.
All interactions in this novel miss their mark. Biff loves Mick, but she sees his attention as something malicious, her own guilty conscience turning his love into suspicion. Jake Blount and Dr. Copeland are fellow political activists who cannot trust themselves or others, who meet for one night of intense discussion only to fall apart and become more distant than ever. Singer's love for Antonapoulos is painful to watch since we know that that love is doomed from the first chapter. Each character has wonderful insights into those around them but is blind to his own motivations and doings. And it seems the more they stumble, the more lost they become. Mick's entrance into adulthood is of course the prime example of this. After her initiation into sexual adulthood, she withdraws not only from those around her, but from herself. She is no longer allowed into her own interior room. Her response is strikingly similar to Bubber's after shooting Baby in the face. Both have crossed a threshold after which childhood is lost, and with childhood, some understanding of ourselves and our own dreams.
Perhaps it is hope that the lonely heart hunts for, hope for a connection and for a world of possibilities. And when that hope dies, something dies in us. For Singer, that death is total. Without Antonapoulos, he has no reason to go on at all. For those who pinned their hopes on Singer, his death sends them into a spiral as well. Mick's estrangement from herself is complete, and Jake's groundedness is lost. We cannot see beyond ourselves. Worse yet, we cannot see within ourselves. Where does that leave us?
Biff seems to be the pivot point of the novel, insofar as he is left standing in the end. He is the only character rooted in the community. I suppose Copeland is certainly rooted, but his desires for a better world take him out and set him on the fringes, as does his skin. No, Biff is the only one settled and unmoving. He is as disconnected as the rest, but there is something resigned in him that allows him to keep soldiering on even as the world changes. His loneliness doesn't seem as painful, and I can't decide if that is an even sadder fate than that of the others.
I took so long to read this novel not because it was a difficult or slow read, but because I was eager for it not to end. I knew from the start that it was not going to end well, and I was in no rush for everything to unravel and slip away. The writing, the characters, the world--they were all too good to let go.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Native Son Shines On
In Native Son, Bigger Thomas, a young black man, murders a teenage white girl, smothering her in her own bed, shoving her body into the family furnace, and cutting off her head so she can fit. Richard Wright does everything he can to make this experience difficult for his white readers. Mary Dalton, the murdered girl, is a young revolutionary who wants to help bring about a world of racial equality. Her mother and father hire Bigger knowing he's had a troubled past with the purpose of bettering him and his family. In addition, Bigger is something of a thug and a bully. When we meet him earlier, we see him intimidate and fight with his friends, turning fear into violence, masking his insecurities and worries by lashing out and humiliating others.
And in spite of stacking the deck against Bigger, Wright makes us feel for him, makes us understand him.
In 1940, the same year Native Son was published, Wright authored an essay entitled "How 'Bigger' was Born." In it, he talks about his motives for making Native Son difficult to react to emotionally:
"I had written a book of short stories which was published under the title of Uncle Tom's Children. When the reviews of that book began to appear, I realized that I had made an awfully naive mistake. I found that I had written a book which even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears."
There is still one other passage in "How 'Bigger' was Born" that makes me truly appreciate how difficult it must have been for Wright to write this novel with Bigger at its center:
"I felt a mental censor--product of the fears which a negro feels from living in America--standing over me, draped in white, warning me not to write. This censor's warnings were translated into my own thought processes thus: 'What will white people think if I draw the picture of such a negro boy? Will they not at once say: "See, didn't we tell you all along that niggers are like that? Now, look, one of their own kind has come along and drawn the picture for us!"' I felt that if I drew the picture of Bigger truthfully, there would be many reactionary whites who would try to make of him something I did not intend. And yet, and this was what made it difficult, I knew that I could not write Bigger convincingly if I did not depict him as he was: that is, resentful toward whites, sullen, angry, ignorant, emotionally unstable, depressed and unaccountably elated at times, and unable even, because of his own lack of inner organization which American oppression has fostered in him, to unite with the members of his own race."
Bigger is why this book is so gripping. Don't get me wrong; the plot is incredibly well-crafted. By about page 50, I was thoroughly convinced that the Cohen Brothers needed to turn this book into a movie. While they have never really dealt with black America, I could see them treating the murder and Bigger's attempt to conceal the body with such skill. And the kidnapping idea? And the newspaper men gathered about the furnace? And the detective grilling Bigger in the cellar? So many scenes with such intensity, a single bad decision unfurling into a catastrophe. So, yes, the plot was top notch. But Wright's truly wonderful feat was how fully realized Bigger was, and how we are made to understand his impulses and desires whether we feel like him or not. Wright has done an incredible job.
The book on this reading list that I kept thinking about as I read Native Son was Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Both novels deal with the murder of a woman by a man who attempts to cover it up. In both novels the man is motivated by something uniquely "American" (at least as their authors' understand them). Both authors' took the basic story of the murder from current newspaper headlines. And both novels end with a lengthy trial scene and the state-sanctioned murder of the murderer. Dreiser's Clyde pre-plans his murder in an attempt to climb the social ladder by marrying a rich man's daughter. For Dreiser, this desire for wealth and social success is the thing that American society breeds in us. Wright's Bigger is the titular native son, a product of American Jim Crow culture. For as unpleasant as Bigger's character is, those unpleasantries are created by the restrictions and limitations that surround and press upon Bigger like the humid air of Chicago's Southside in Summer. He murders not by design, but by fear, a sudden impulse to survive. These are the origins of all Bigger's actions. Both authors use the trial to build sympathy for the murderer as the overzealous prosecutors attack them, trying to make their horrible crimes even more horrific. I would not be surprised to learn that Wright had Dreiser's novel rolling around in the back of his head.
Wright uses that last section to lay out the thesis of his book, and that portion of the book has been attacked as the weak link. I can understand that. After the gripping drama of the first two books, the pondering pace of the third section is something of a let down. But it feels like Wright is doing more than giving a defense of Bigger's actions. His lawyer's speech is a small portion of the section. Instead we watch as Bigger's actions are interpreted by the prosecutor and as crimes he didn't commit are laid upon him. And we watch as Bigger tries to find his place to live in this world. When he finally comes to peace in the last few pages, I don't know what to make of his lawyers reaction. Mr. Max seems scared of what Bigger says. Is he scared because Bigger's revelations are scary? Or is he scared for Bigger himself and his knowledge that he is on his way to the electric chair?
This entry is long enough, so I will not delve into the importance of communism in this novel, and while I suspect no one reading this (if anyone reads this) will care to join in, I leave that as an open question: Does communism hold the hope for a world of racial equality in this book? And I would also like to write a whole section on the role the newspapers play in shaping and skewing public opinion. Especially as it transforms the question of rape into a certainty. What role do newspapers play in oppression here?
If you haven't read this book, go out and read it now, even if I just spoiled half the novel's storyline. It is a wonderful read!
And in spite of stacking the deck against Bigger, Wright makes us feel for him, makes us understand him.
In 1940, the same year Native Son was published, Wright authored an essay entitled "How 'Bigger' was Born." In it, he talks about his motives for making Native Son difficult to react to emotionally:
"I had written a book of short stories which was published under the title of Uncle Tom's Children. When the reviews of that book began to appear, I realized that I had made an awfully naive mistake. I found that I had written a book which even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears."
There is still one other passage in "How 'Bigger' was Born" that makes me truly appreciate how difficult it must have been for Wright to write this novel with Bigger at its center:
"I felt a mental censor--product of the fears which a negro feels from living in America--standing over me, draped in white, warning me not to write. This censor's warnings were translated into my own thought processes thus: 'What will white people think if I draw the picture of such a negro boy? Will they not at once say: "See, didn't we tell you all along that niggers are like that? Now, look, one of their own kind has come along and drawn the picture for us!"' I felt that if I drew the picture of Bigger truthfully, there would be many reactionary whites who would try to make of him something I did not intend. And yet, and this was what made it difficult, I knew that I could not write Bigger convincingly if I did not depict him as he was: that is, resentful toward whites, sullen, angry, ignorant, emotionally unstable, depressed and unaccountably elated at times, and unable even, because of his own lack of inner organization which American oppression has fostered in him, to unite with the members of his own race."
Bigger is why this book is so gripping. Don't get me wrong; the plot is incredibly well-crafted. By about page 50, I was thoroughly convinced that the Cohen Brothers needed to turn this book into a movie. While they have never really dealt with black America, I could see them treating the murder and Bigger's attempt to conceal the body with such skill. And the kidnapping idea? And the newspaper men gathered about the furnace? And the detective grilling Bigger in the cellar? So many scenes with such intensity, a single bad decision unfurling into a catastrophe. So, yes, the plot was top notch. But Wright's truly wonderful feat was how fully realized Bigger was, and how we are made to understand his impulses and desires whether we feel like him or not. Wright has done an incredible job.
The book on this reading list that I kept thinking about as I read Native Son was Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Both novels deal with the murder of a woman by a man who attempts to cover it up. In both novels the man is motivated by something uniquely "American" (at least as their authors' understand them). Both authors' took the basic story of the murder from current newspaper headlines. And both novels end with a lengthy trial scene and the state-sanctioned murder of the murderer. Dreiser's Clyde pre-plans his murder in an attempt to climb the social ladder by marrying a rich man's daughter. For Dreiser, this desire for wealth and social success is the thing that American society breeds in us. Wright's Bigger is the titular native son, a product of American Jim Crow culture. For as unpleasant as Bigger's character is, those unpleasantries are created by the restrictions and limitations that surround and press upon Bigger like the humid air of Chicago's Southside in Summer. He murders not by design, but by fear, a sudden impulse to survive. These are the origins of all Bigger's actions. Both authors use the trial to build sympathy for the murderer as the overzealous prosecutors attack them, trying to make their horrible crimes even more horrific. I would not be surprised to learn that Wright had Dreiser's novel rolling around in the back of his head.
Wright uses that last section to lay out the thesis of his book, and that portion of the book has been attacked as the weak link. I can understand that. After the gripping drama of the first two books, the pondering pace of the third section is something of a let down. But it feels like Wright is doing more than giving a defense of Bigger's actions. His lawyer's speech is a small portion of the section. Instead we watch as Bigger's actions are interpreted by the prosecutor and as crimes he didn't commit are laid upon him. And we watch as Bigger tries to find his place to live in this world. When he finally comes to peace in the last few pages, I don't know what to make of his lawyers reaction. Mr. Max seems scared of what Bigger says. Is he scared because Bigger's revelations are scary? Or is he scared for Bigger himself and his knowledge that he is on his way to the electric chair?
This entry is long enough, so I will not delve into the importance of communism in this novel, and while I suspect no one reading this (if anyone reads this) will care to join in, I leave that as an open question: Does communism hold the hope for a world of racial equality in this book? And I would also like to write a whole section on the role the newspapers play in shaping and skewing public opinion. Especially as it transforms the question of rape into a certainty. What role do newspapers play in oppression here?
If you haven't read this book, go out and read it now, even if I just spoiled half the novel's storyline. It is a wonderful read!
Sunday, August 14, 2011
A Milestone
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)
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)
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.
Monday, July 25, 2011
The Greatness of Grapes
The Grapes of Wrath is my favorite book of all time. It is everything that I look for in a story. I want a gripping story of characters I can see and feel. I want sentences and paragraphs I can sink my teeth into. I want a world so fully developed that every part of the story feels right at home. I want to walk away from the story satisfied in my mind, my heart, and my soul. The story of Tom Joad and his family does all that for me.
I was struck on this reading by the simplicity of the story. To trace the Joad's odyssey from beginning to end is to draw a direct line with only 15 or so dots. There are no complicated plot twists, no big reveals, and very few surprises, and yet the whole thing is riveting! The book does not slump or slow at any point for me, even when I know what is going to happen.
And to take that simple story and interlace it with the larger story of all the migrants surrounding the Joads was brilliantly done. The Joads and their trials always exist in a context that is as beautifully written as the main narrative.
It is sad that this book is wasted on high schoolers who are looking to avoid reading it in the first place. The book is taught, I think, for wonderful reasons: it's a classic, it's beautifully written, it allows students to learn about the dust bowl and the depression. But how can your typical high schooler appreciate the language, the dialogue, the details, its genre as a protest novel? I would say that it can't hurt to expose them to this book, except most of us walk around groaning at the title, at this piece of capital-L Literature precisely because it was forced on us. And what high schooler didn't get sick of talking about the turtle in chapter three?
For me, Grapes of Wrath is a perfect book, and I couldn't be happier that it made this list.
I was struck on this reading by the simplicity of the story. To trace the Joad's odyssey from beginning to end is to draw a direct line with only 15 or so dots. There are no complicated plot twists, no big reveals, and very few surprises, and yet the whole thing is riveting! The book does not slump or slow at any point for me, even when I know what is going to happen.
And to take that simple story and interlace it with the larger story of all the migrants surrounding the Joads was brilliantly done. The Joads and their trials always exist in a context that is as beautifully written as the main narrative.
It is sad that this book is wasted on high schoolers who are looking to avoid reading it in the first place. The book is taught, I think, for wonderful reasons: it's a classic, it's beautifully written, it allows students to learn about the dust bowl and the depression. But how can your typical high schooler appreciate the language, the dialogue, the details, its genre as a protest novel? I would say that it can't hurt to expose them to this book, except most of us walk around groaning at the title, at this piece of capital-L Literature precisely because it was forced on us. And what high schooler didn't get sick of talking about the turtle in chapter three?
For me, Grapes of Wrath is a perfect book, and I couldn't be happier that it made this list.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
