Before this project, I had never read any Virginia Woolf, save for the short excerpted passages included in my Norton 5th Edition. I've always liked the idea of Virginia Woolf that formed somewhere along the line, but now I can say I love the real thing. She is a poet who prefers paragraphs to stanzas.
I had the same initial trouble penetrating this novel as I had with Mrs. Dalloway. There were so many characters and so many relationships to keep track of. My difficulty was compounded by Woolf's habit of so thoroughly stepping into the minds of her characters. I did not know who I was supposed to be critical of and who I was supposed to be rooting for. I don't think I ever realized how I look for these signals from an author when I read, but apparently, I do.
The difficulties of course worked themselves out as continual exposure let me trace out who was who and let me understand where everyone was coming from without the need to cheer for one character and boo down another. Everything evened up for me just in time to enjoy the amazing dinner scene in the first section. I wanted that scene to go on forever, jumping from head to head and thought to thought as the characters swim in the social waters. I found it mesmerizing and difficult to put down.
Part two, Time Passes, blew my mind. When has an author set up so many characters, especially what appears to me a main character, in the first part of a novel and then slaughtered them parenthetically in the second part without drama or incident. Mrs. Ramsey is simply not there one night to hold Mr. Ramsey. CRAZY! The second section was the most poetic. Had I a pen in hand (and was not reading from a library's copy of the book), I would have underlined the entire section for its beautiful insights and phrasings.
Politcally, I'm not sure I'm smart enough to suss out this book. It tackles the same difficulties of community and communication between people that Mrs. Dalloway does, but now it tackles gender issues and issues of art very aggressively. Mr. Ramsey the tyrant, the man for whom women are fonts of sympathy to coddle his gentle ego, who seems to take a sadistic glee in shattering dreams . . . what am I to do with him. Regardless of what and who he is, his children crave his approval, and Cam finds herself in love with his very form and dignity. How do we move beyond these social and constructed roles, if at all? So much lies with Lily Briscoe and her comparison with Mrs. Ramsey, but I'm not the guy to tease that out. Much smarter scholars than I have deciphered this text and I shall be happy enough for now to swim in the deep end of Woolf's work, unable to touch bottom, floating, just enjoying the waters.
Come on in; the water's fine!
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Crossing The Bridges of San Luis Rey
If what I wanted while reading Cather was for an incident to be mined fully and to be laden with meaning, Wilder here has given me my wish. On the one hand, the book is the polar opposite of Cather's, for every incident is rife with meaning. On the other hand, the books are very similar, attempting to arrive at a truth about life through the tableau's of different life stories laid next to one another.
I enjoyed this book immensely. Wilder writes beautifully and directly, blending details and meanings in straightforward sentences that all work together to build to something grand. Moreover, the topic is epic while the subject is small and local; my favorite kind of story.
This is a novel about our efforts to find meaning in what seems like a random and meaningless world. Set in 1714 Peru, this novel seems worlds away from America and Europe after The Great War. But how many mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers must have been asking themselves "why?" in the wake of the war? Why did their loved ones die? Why did others survive? How could God let this all happen? I imagine the questions raised by the breaking of the bridge are the same as those asked by Wilder's contemporaries.
We are set up brilliantly by Wilder in the introductory section to read the lives of those fallen with great care, looking for some pattern or meaning, as Brother Juniper did. We are told that a great treatise was written on this subject, so we cannot help but think in those terms. Are we looking for irony? A cruel God? A just one? Should it make sense? We follow the narrator's retelling of these lives as a chain of cause and effect. We watch the lives interweave know that someone will be taking the spill down the chasm soon. Who? Why? We are encouraged to make connections and try to make sense as Juniper does. The frame of the novel plays an important role in our reading of the stories, which is just great writing on Wilder's part.
And then we get to the final section and Brother Juniper's method is revealed. Wow. Have waded through the complex emotions and responses of this set of people, to see that Juniper made a chart assigning people numbers to create some calculus to explain God is horrendous, and horrendously funny. The method of course fails him, so he tries to amass all the facts he can from all the sources he can, hoping that some great mind will come along to discover (or "surprise" as Wilder seems to like to say) the method to divine God's meaning. By this point, we know that such things are futile, and we are left with our own attempts to connect things. You must end with the resolution that you do not know and cannot know.
Wilder does not leave us in a state of hopelessness, though. He offers us one nugget, perhaps something we ourselves noticed. This book isn't just about finding meaning; it is about love: "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." Love IS meaning and the meaning IS love. All of these tales are about thwarted or lost love: The marquesa for her daughter, Pepita for the Abbess, Esteban for Manuel, Manuel for Camilla, Uncle Pio for Camilla and the theater she was to create, the Captain for his daughter, the Abbess for Pepita and the twins. Long before the bridge of San Luis Ray breaks, these bridges of love between two people break and those who live by that bridge fall long before they make the physical fall that begins the novel. The Marquesa, Esteban, Uncle Pio, they have all fallen from the bridge of love. They have all "discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other." Interestingly, it is as they attempt to mend those bridges or at least to move on that they meet their final fates. The Marquesa will be brave and less selfish; Esteban will join the captain and "do what we can" and "push on . . . as best we can"; Uncle Pio will find a replacement in Don Jaime; but those things are not to be. And what of Don Jaime and Pepita. And what of the survivors who find meaning by carrying on and loving backwards across the absence to make up for the first broken bridges?
The book gives you a lot to chew on, being emotional without becoming cute or trite.
As a final thought, what do you make of Camilla as being the only character who overlaps all the narratives. I think she is central to Wilder's thinking, but she would deserve an essay all to herself.
Jason (Goodness 2, Piety 0, Usefulness 8)
I enjoyed this book immensely. Wilder writes beautifully and directly, blending details and meanings in straightforward sentences that all work together to build to something grand. Moreover, the topic is epic while the subject is small and local; my favorite kind of story.
This is a novel about our efforts to find meaning in what seems like a random and meaningless world. Set in 1714 Peru, this novel seems worlds away from America and Europe after The Great War. But how many mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers must have been asking themselves "why?" in the wake of the war? Why did their loved ones die? Why did others survive? How could God let this all happen? I imagine the questions raised by the breaking of the bridge are the same as those asked by Wilder's contemporaries.
We are set up brilliantly by Wilder in the introductory section to read the lives of those fallen with great care, looking for some pattern or meaning, as Brother Juniper did. We are told that a great treatise was written on this subject, so we cannot help but think in those terms. Are we looking for irony? A cruel God? A just one? Should it make sense? We follow the narrator's retelling of these lives as a chain of cause and effect. We watch the lives interweave know that someone will be taking the spill down the chasm soon. Who? Why? We are encouraged to make connections and try to make sense as Juniper does. The frame of the novel plays an important role in our reading of the stories, which is just great writing on Wilder's part.
And then we get to the final section and Brother Juniper's method is revealed. Wow. Have waded through the complex emotions and responses of this set of people, to see that Juniper made a chart assigning people numbers to create some calculus to explain God is horrendous, and horrendously funny. The method of course fails him, so he tries to amass all the facts he can from all the sources he can, hoping that some great mind will come along to discover (or "surprise" as Wilder seems to like to say) the method to divine God's meaning. By this point, we know that such things are futile, and we are left with our own attempts to connect things. You must end with the resolution that you do not know and cannot know.
Wilder does not leave us in a state of hopelessness, though. He offers us one nugget, perhaps something we ourselves noticed. This book isn't just about finding meaning; it is about love: "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." Love IS meaning and the meaning IS love. All of these tales are about thwarted or lost love: The marquesa for her daughter, Pepita for the Abbess, Esteban for Manuel, Manuel for Camilla, Uncle Pio for Camilla and the theater she was to create, the Captain for his daughter, the Abbess for Pepita and the twins. Long before the bridge of San Luis Ray breaks, these bridges of love between two people break and those who live by that bridge fall long before they make the physical fall that begins the novel. The Marquesa, Esteban, Uncle Pio, they have all fallen from the bridge of love. They have all "discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other." Interestingly, it is as they attempt to mend those bridges or at least to move on that they meet their final fates. The Marquesa will be brave and less selfish; Esteban will join the captain and "do what we can" and "push on . . . as best we can"; Uncle Pio will find a replacement in Don Jaime; but those things are not to be. And what of Don Jaime and Pepita. And what of the survivors who find meaning by carrying on and loving backwards across the absence to make up for the first broken bridges?
The book gives you a lot to chew on, being emotional without becoming cute or trite.
As a final thought, what do you make of Camilla as being the only character who overlaps all the narratives. I think she is central to Wilder's thinking, but she would deserve an essay all to herself.
Jason (Goodness 2, Piety 0, Usefulness 8)
Monday, April 12, 2010
Death Comes for the Archbishop - and His Era
I am told that Willa Cather characterized Death Comes for the Archbishop as a narrative, rather than a novel. Although I do hate to quarrel with an author about her own work, I would argue that Death Comes for the Archbishop is not a narrative either, or at least, not in the sense of being a story about characters. Yes, Death Comes for the Archbishop recounts selected incidents in the life of the fictional Father Jean Marie Latour, who was appointed Bishop of New Mexico at age 35, in or around 1851, and who died 38 years later, in the spring of 1889, but I would argue that Cather is not telling the single story of Latour's life so much as the many stories of the new American southwest. Focusing on Latour gives her a lens through which to view whole towns, whole tribes, and disparate cultures, with which Catholic priests have a unique relationship.
Cather's interest in stories is explicit throughout Death Comes for the Archbishop, not only in the content of the writing, but also in its structure. Cather divides the "narrative" into nine books, many of which are devoted to the story of one excursion, one event, or one person, his rise and fall. Sometimes Father Latour and his vicar, Father Vaillant, participate in the stories, as in Book Two, when they rescue the fair Magdalena from the evil, throat-slitting bandit who is her husband, and sometimes they simply hear the stories, like "The Legend of Fray Baltazar," which is recounted by one of the parish priests.
Father Latour also sees his life in terms of stories. In Book Six, as he looks about, he begins to think "how each of these men not only had a story, but seemed to have become his story." And in the final and most modern(ist) Book, when Father Latour is nearing death, he drifts ever backward and forward in time. The narrator explains: "When the occasion warranted [Father Latour] could return to the present. But there was not much present left; Father Joseph dead, the Olivares both dead, Kit Carson dead, only the minor characters of his life remained in present time." Father Latour keeps returning, then, to the past, some of which he fears will be forgotten. And that, too, is what this book is about: the passing of historical moments.
When the book opens, we are almost immediately made aware of things that have come before and faded away. "The language spoken" among the cardinals in the preface, the narrator relates, "was French - the time had already gone by when Cardinals could conveniently discuss contemporary matters in Latin." The Italian Cardinal later laments, "Beginnings . . . there have been so many." In this story, Bishop Latour must begin the whole Apostolic Vicarate, but he bears witness to many endings as well: the ending of corrupt priests, the ending of marriages, the decline of tribes. An era comes and goes in the pages of this novel, for with the start of the gold rush and the arrival of the train in Santa Fe, death comes not only for the archbishop, but for his moment in history.
There is a strong preoccupation in this book - and perhaps it is Cather's - with capturing oral stories and histories in print while the people still remember them. The narrator says of the subject of Book Five, Padre Martinez, that Martinez "knew his country, a country which had no written histories. He gave the Bishop much the best account [Latour] had heard of the great Indian revolt of 1680, which added such a long chapter to the Martyrology of the New World." Obviously Martinez did not witness this revolt; he was part of the oral tradition of recounting it. Notably, however, Martinez is a dying breed. The narrator says: "Naturally [Martinez] hated the Americans. The American occupation meant the end of men like himself. He was a man of the old order, a son of Abiquiu, and his day was over." The beginning of Latour's Vicarate Apostolic is itself an ending.
As for what is ending, well, when Martinez is first introduced, the narrator says, "Father Latour judged that the day of lawless personal power was almost over, even on the frontier, and this figure [Padre Martinez] was to him already like something picturesque and impressive, but really impotent, left over from the past." As the institution of America begins, lawlessness and individual tyranny end, subjugated by law, order, and the dual institutions of church and country. The frontier is tamed, and Cather recounts how a bishop and his vicar help to tame it.
There is something interesting in the way that European influences work in this novel, but I think that's a topic for another discussion, along with the vaginal cave with its stone lips and strange smells.
Cather's interest in stories is explicit throughout Death Comes for the Archbishop, not only in the content of the writing, but also in its structure. Cather divides the "narrative" into nine books, many of which are devoted to the story of one excursion, one event, or one person, his rise and fall. Sometimes Father Latour and his vicar, Father Vaillant, participate in the stories, as in Book Two, when they rescue the fair Magdalena from the evil, throat-slitting bandit who is her husband, and sometimes they simply hear the stories, like "The Legend of Fray Baltazar," which is recounted by one of the parish priests.
Father Latour also sees his life in terms of stories. In Book Six, as he looks about, he begins to think "how each of these men not only had a story, but seemed to have become his story." And in the final and most modern(ist) Book, when Father Latour is nearing death, he drifts ever backward and forward in time. The narrator explains: "When the occasion warranted [Father Latour] could return to the present. But there was not much present left; Father Joseph dead, the Olivares both dead, Kit Carson dead, only the minor characters of his life remained in present time." Father Latour keeps returning, then, to the past, some of which he fears will be forgotten. And that, too, is what this book is about: the passing of historical moments.
When the book opens, we are almost immediately made aware of things that have come before and faded away. "The language spoken" among the cardinals in the preface, the narrator relates, "was French - the time had already gone by when Cardinals could conveniently discuss contemporary matters in Latin." The Italian Cardinal later laments, "Beginnings . . . there have been so many." In this story, Bishop Latour must begin the whole Apostolic Vicarate, but he bears witness to many endings as well: the ending of corrupt priests, the ending of marriages, the decline of tribes. An era comes and goes in the pages of this novel, for with the start of the gold rush and the arrival of the train in Santa Fe, death comes not only for the archbishop, but for his moment in history.
There is a strong preoccupation in this book - and perhaps it is Cather's - with capturing oral stories and histories in print while the people still remember them. The narrator says of the subject of Book Five, Padre Martinez, that Martinez "knew his country, a country which had no written histories. He gave the Bishop much the best account [Latour] had heard of the great Indian revolt of 1680, which added such a long chapter to the Martyrology of the New World." Obviously Martinez did not witness this revolt; he was part of the oral tradition of recounting it. Notably, however, Martinez is a dying breed. The narrator says: "Naturally [Martinez] hated the Americans. The American occupation meant the end of men like himself. He was a man of the old order, a son of Abiquiu, and his day was over." The beginning of Latour's Vicarate Apostolic is itself an ending.
As for what is ending, well, when Martinez is first introduced, the narrator says, "Father Latour judged that the day of lawless personal power was almost over, even on the frontier, and this figure [Padre Martinez] was to him already like something picturesque and impressive, but really impotent, left over from the past." As the institution of America begins, lawlessness and individual tyranny end, subjugated by law, order, and the dual institutions of church and country. The frontier is tamed, and Cather recounts how a bishop and his vicar help to tame it.
There is something interesting in the way that European influences work in this novel, but I think that's a topic for another discussion, along with the vaginal cave with its stone lips and strange smells.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
The Style of Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather was doing something daring with the novel, or so I am told. According to A.S. Byatt's introduction to my edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop, Cather was striving to do for the novel what modern painters were doing with painting; simplifying and de-romanticizing. This move forward is also a giant move backward, according to Cather, according to Byatt. And the main inspiration for the style of Death Comes for the Archbishop were the frescoes of the life of St. Genevieve done by Puvis de Chavannes. She wanted to create a narrative "without accent, with none of the artificial elements of composition." In these frescoes, scenes of martydom are given equal weight as the scenes of daily living because "all human experiences, measured against one supreme spiritual experience, were of about the same importance."
I lean on this explanation of the narrative style of Death Comes for the Archbishop because I found myself very disappointed in the book. And from my experience, books and films are disappointing to us because they do not tell the same story that we wanted told, they do not focus where we want them to focus. That is not the fault of the story or the teller; it is the fault only of the reader to keep forcing her desires on the story being told.
I wanted adventure. I wanted drama. I wanted to have any one of the many mini-narratives of the novel expanded and played out for us. I would have liked to have seen Padre Martinez resist the new order and seen the confrontation between the priests. I would have liked to spend more time with Fray Baltazar and his motives, fears, concerns. I wanted rich characters with rich motives in dynamic conflict. But Ms. Cather was not interested in my wants; she wanted to tell her own story her own way. To her, the "essence of such writing is not to hold the note - not to use an incident for all there is in it - but to touch and pass on. I felt that such writing would be a kind of discipline in these days when the 'situation' is made to count for so much in writing, when the general tendency is to force things up." Yes, I wanted the incident to stand for much more, for the situation to count for a great deal, for things to get forced up.
Instead of playing out these incidences and situations, Cather touches upon each scene and moves on, for the meaning is not in the individual moments that happen over the 40 years of the novel, but in the collective image created by all the frames of the fresco of her work. Panels cannot be separated and made more important than other panels--all the panels are equal and work in concert. We don't need to see Latour's raising the money for the cathedral or the cathedral itself; in one panel we see the stone to be built; in the next, it is already built and Latour's body is laid out.
I respect and admire Cather's desire to push the novel in a new/old direction to try to get at some truth of life as she understands it. While I was reading it, I kept thinking of what wasn't there; now that I am done, I can appreciate what is there.
I think Ann will touch upon the politics and contents of the novel when she blogs; me, I had to expend all my energy trying to see the book for what it is to also work through the meanings presented throughout the novel.
I lean on this explanation of the narrative style of Death Comes for the Archbishop because I found myself very disappointed in the book. And from my experience, books and films are disappointing to us because they do not tell the same story that we wanted told, they do not focus where we want them to focus. That is not the fault of the story or the teller; it is the fault only of the reader to keep forcing her desires on the story being told.
I wanted adventure. I wanted drama. I wanted to have any one of the many mini-narratives of the novel expanded and played out for us. I would have liked to have seen Padre Martinez resist the new order and seen the confrontation between the priests. I would have liked to spend more time with Fray Baltazar and his motives, fears, concerns. I wanted rich characters with rich motives in dynamic conflict. But Ms. Cather was not interested in my wants; she wanted to tell her own story her own way. To her, the "essence of such writing is not to hold the note - not to use an incident for all there is in it - but to touch and pass on. I felt that such writing would be a kind of discipline in these days when the 'situation' is made to count for so much in writing, when the general tendency is to force things up." Yes, I wanted the incident to stand for much more, for the situation to count for a great deal, for things to get forced up.
Instead of playing out these incidences and situations, Cather touches upon each scene and moves on, for the meaning is not in the individual moments that happen over the 40 years of the novel, but in the collective image created by all the frames of the fresco of her work. Panels cannot be separated and made more important than other panels--all the panels are equal and work in concert. We don't need to see Latour's raising the money for the cathedral or the cathedral itself; in one panel we see the stone to be built; in the next, it is already built and Latour's body is laid out.
I respect and admire Cather's desire to push the novel in a new/old direction to try to get at some truth of life as she understands it. While I was reading it, I kept thinking of what wasn't there; now that I am done, I can appreciate what is there.
I think Ann will touch upon the politics and contents of the novel when she blogs; me, I had to expend all my energy trying to see the book for what it is to also work through the meanings presented throughout the novel.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Fiesta; or, The Sun Also Rises
The back cover of my edition of The Sun Also Rises reads like a torrid romance novel, illustrating (again) how difficult it is to capture a book in summary, but also how important. Here's the back cover:
Paris in the twenties: Pernod, parties and expatriate Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley, aristocratic and irresistibly beautiful, but with an abandoned, sensuous nature that she cannot change.
When the couple drift to Spain to the dazzle of the fiesta and the heady atmosphere of the bullfight, their affair is strained by new passions, new jealousies, and Jake must finally learn that he will never possess the woman he loves.
I'll grant that this is a commercial summary, intended to sell the book, but it is a bunch of wretched nonsense all the same. The Sun Also Rises is not a frustrated, tragic love story, nor does anyone in this novel have a "nature," at least not in the sense in which that sounds. This is a novel firmly rooted in environment, in a time and several places, through which the war has left these characters to wander Europe, lost and half-dead.
For the duration of Book One, I found this a vastly frustrating novel to read. The first person narrator of the story, Jake Barnes, is a journalist living in Paris. His work occupies a very small share of his life; most of the time, he goes purposelessly from bar to restaurant to bar in the company of a great many characters he rarely bothers to introduce or to contextualize. (The writer Robert Cohn is an exception to this pattern, but more about him later.) When Jake first encounters his former love Brett Ashley, he is in a dance club, where he has brought a woman he stared at on the street. When Brett accuses him of turning romantic, he answers, "No, bored" - and that's exactly how he sounds in Paris. Bored. Aimless. Detached. One of the reasons for his bitterness, we soon discover, is that he sustained an injury during the war that left him impotent. That is likewise one of several reasons he and Brett can't be married. According to Brett, they can't even live together because she would cuckold him relentlessly. "You couldn't stand it," she tells him, to which he answers, "I stand it now." Brett leaves at the end of Book One for San Sebastian, where she conducts an affair with Robert Cohn.
The novel picks up serious steam in Book Two when Jake and his friend Bill Gorton go to Pamplona for the fiesta. Brett and her fiance, Mike, meet them there, and Robert Cohn comes along, too, which is of course awkward for everyone. Still, Jake comes alive during fiesta, I would argue because it organizes the experience of life - or rather, disorganizes that experience - in much the same way that war did. Fiesta goes on for seven days without ceasing. There are rockets going off, people thronging the streets. "Everything be[comes] unreal," as Jake says. Bill Gorton calls it a "wonderful nightmare." People share their wine, their food. It is an atmosphere of community and chaos and danger, as illustrated when a man is killed during the running of the bulls.
When it comes time to see the actual bullfight, Robert Cohn reveals his otherness, his difference from the rest of the group when he worries that he might be "bored" during the fighting. This remark incenses Bill Gorton, who says, "That Cohn gets me. . . He's got this Jewish superiority so strong that he thinks the only emotion he'll get out of the fight will be being bored." Brett's fiance picks up on the fury and the joke, and this exchange ensues:
'You weren't bored, were you?' asked Bill.
Cohn laughed.
'No. I wasn't bored. I wished you'd forgive me that.'
'It's all right,' Bill said, 'so long as you weren't bored.'
'He didn't look bored,' Mike said. 'I thought he was going to be sick.'
'I never felt that bad. It was just for a minute.'
'I thought he was going to be sick. You weren't bored, were you Robert?'
'Let up on that, Mike. I said I was sorry I said it.'
'He was, you know. He was positively green.'
'Oh, shove it along. Michael.'
'You mustn't ever get bored at your first bull-fight, Robert,' Mike said. 'It might make such a mess.'
By the end of this passage, the notion of boredom is exchanged for physical sickness in a way that I find significant. The concern before the fight is that the violence will prove too disturbing for Brett. That it also proves too disturbing for Cohn suggests that boredom is the equivalent of physical weakness, of being feminized. The rest of the men come to Spain to feel emotion, to be engaged, to be men again. This is especially true of Jake, who is very proud that he has aficion, or passion, for the bulls, which in this section seems to stand in for his lost and wounded masculinity. Americans aren't supposed to be able to have aficion, but Jake does, and it is real, validated by the Spanish men who touch him on the shoulder and approve. In the terms of fiesta, then, Jake is the strong one, the real man, and Cohn is weak and womanly.
Except that he isn't. As we know from the opening sentence of the novel, "Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton," and when Cohn finds out that Brett has gone off with Pedro Romero, the 19-year-old bullfighter, he demands that Jake tell him where they are. Jake won't, and when Cohn comes at him, Jake tries to throw a punch only to have Cohn knock him out cold. Cohn is such a strong fighter that can't be defeated by the men in his party; he can only be defeated by Romero, whom he "masscres," but whom he can't knock out. Romero says he'll kill Cohn in the morning if Cohn doesn't leave town, and Cohn does finally depart, teary and regretful. Not long after that, Brett leaves with Romero.
Just as the war has damaged and blighted the men in this book, it has also damaged Brett, as we discover in Book Three. Just as Jake is settling into his hotel in San Sebastian to recover from fiesta, he gets a distress call from Brett, summoning him to Madrid, where Jake learns that Brett kicked Romero out because Romero wanted to domesticate her. (During the war, Brett married an English aristocrat, Lord Ashley, only to have him come home deranged and threatening to kill her. He went to bed every night with a gun beneath his pillow, and for her own safety, Brett took out the bullets as soon as he fell asleep. No wonder, then, that she does not take kindly to the idea of domestication.) Romero wanted Brett to grow out her hair and marry him so that "I couldn't go away from him, he said. He wanted to make sure I could never go away from him. After I'd gotten more womanly, of course." Brett is "all right" now that she's gotten rid of him, but she is very fixated on one idea as she talks to Jake:
'I'm thirty-four, you know. I'm not going to be one of those bitches that ruins children.'
'No.'
'I'm not going to be that way. I feel rather good, you know. I feel rather set up.'
Later, she adds: 'You know it makes me feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch. . . .It's sort of what we have instead of God.'
At age 34, Brett's almost but not quite lost her chance to be fertile. That she still has a chance to procreate is clear from the fact that she can still attract a virile 19-year-old partner, the novel's consummate example of masculinity and the only man in the book who is not blighted or broken. (Jake is impotent. Mike is bankrupt. Cohn is Jewish, which the men in this novel regard as his weakness.) Still, Brett rejects this last opportunity to have kids because she doesn't want to be a bitch "that ruins children." After the terrible violent nightmare of the war, it is not procreation, but refusing to create that replaces God - and perhaps defies him.
So what is this a story about? Certainly it's about lost and damaged people clinging to each other after the war, when pre-war ideals and ambitions about career and family no longer make sense. In many ways, it's also about Jake Barnes' friendship with a Jewish writer and former boxer, who reads a book called The Purple Land that awakens the romantic in him, inspiring him to leave his long-time love, Frances, to pursue Brett, a woman of class. In this respect, Cohn is to Barnes as Gatsby is to Nick Carraway: the last example of strong, romantic hope after everyone else has already given up. That Cohn happens to be pursuing the object of Jake's affections is all the more perfect. Cohn's doomed quest to win Brett allows Jake to experience what would happen if Jake truly and sincerely pursued Brett himself, as shown in this conversation:
'Everybody behaves badly,' I said. 'Give them the proper chance.'
'You wouldn't behave badly.' Brett looked at me.
'I'd be as big an ass as Cohn,' I said.
'Darling, don't let's talk a lot of rot.'
'All right. Talk about anything you like.'
'Don't be difficult. You're the only person I've got, and I feel rather awful tonight.'
Brett needs Jake to be her friend, her "person," the one man who can't pursue her. And Jake seems to be liberated by Cohn's experiences so that he can be that "person," no longer trapped by the belief that he and Brett should be together. At the very end of the novel, it is she saying that they would have been good together, while he recognizes this as a "pretty" fantasy.
One final note is that I don't feel like I know enough historically to say how "Jewishness" is coded in this place and at this time in history. In this novel, however, it is treated with the same disdain by Brett's fiance as Gatsby's low origins are treated by Tom Buchanan (ironically, although Cohn has both money and a solid name in the place of his birth, that fortune is overshadowed by his ethnic and religious identity here).
Paris in the twenties: Pernod, parties and expatriate Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley, aristocratic and irresistibly beautiful, but with an abandoned, sensuous nature that she cannot change.
When the couple drift to Spain to the dazzle of the fiesta and the heady atmosphere of the bullfight, their affair is strained by new passions, new jealousies, and Jake must finally learn that he will never possess the woman he loves.
I'll grant that this is a commercial summary, intended to sell the book, but it is a bunch of wretched nonsense all the same. The Sun Also Rises is not a frustrated, tragic love story, nor does anyone in this novel have a "nature," at least not in the sense in which that sounds. This is a novel firmly rooted in environment, in a time and several places, through which the war has left these characters to wander Europe, lost and half-dead.
For the duration of Book One, I found this a vastly frustrating novel to read. The first person narrator of the story, Jake Barnes, is a journalist living in Paris. His work occupies a very small share of his life; most of the time, he goes purposelessly from bar to restaurant to bar in the company of a great many characters he rarely bothers to introduce or to contextualize. (The writer Robert Cohn is an exception to this pattern, but more about him later.) When Jake first encounters his former love Brett Ashley, he is in a dance club, where he has brought a woman he stared at on the street. When Brett accuses him of turning romantic, he answers, "No, bored" - and that's exactly how he sounds in Paris. Bored. Aimless. Detached. One of the reasons for his bitterness, we soon discover, is that he sustained an injury during the war that left him impotent. That is likewise one of several reasons he and Brett can't be married. According to Brett, they can't even live together because she would cuckold him relentlessly. "You couldn't stand it," she tells him, to which he answers, "I stand it now." Brett leaves at the end of Book One for San Sebastian, where she conducts an affair with Robert Cohn.
The novel picks up serious steam in Book Two when Jake and his friend Bill Gorton go to Pamplona for the fiesta. Brett and her fiance, Mike, meet them there, and Robert Cohn comes along, too, which is of course awkward for everyone. Still, Jake comes alive during fiesta, I would argue because it organizes the experience of life - or rather, disorganizes that experience - in much the same way that war did. Fiesta goes on for seven days without ceasing. There are rockets going off, people thronging the streets. "Everything be[comes] unreal," as Jake says. Bill Gorton calls it a "wonderful nightmare." People share their wine, their food. It is an atmosphere of community and chaos and danger, as illustrated when a man is killed during the running of the bulls.
When it comes time to see the actual bullfight, Robert Cohn reveals his otherness, his difference from the rest of the group when he worries that he might be "bored" during the fighting. This remark incenses Bill Gorton, who says, "That Cohn gets me. . . He's got this Jewish superiority so strong that he thinks the only emotion he'll get out of the fight will be being bored." Brett's fiance picks up on the fury and the joke, and this exchange ensues:
'You weren't bored, were you?' asked Bill.
Cohn laughed.
'No. I wasn't bored. I wished you'd forgive me that.'
'It's all right,' Bill said, 'so long as you weren't bored.'
'He didn't look bored,' Mike said. 'I thought he was going to be sick.'
'I never felt that bad. It was just for a minute.'
'I thought he was going to be sick. You weren't bored, were you Robert?'
'Let up on that, Mike. I said I was sorry I said it.'
'He was, you know. He was positively green.'
'Oh, shove it along. Michael.'
'You mustn't ever get bored at your first bull-fight, Robert,' Mike said. 'It might make such a mess.'
By the end of this passage, the notion of boredom is exchanged for physical sickness in a way that I find significant. The concern before the fight is that the violence will prove too disturbing for Brett. That it also proves too disturbing for Cohn suggests that boredom is the equivalent of physical weakness, of being feminized. The rest of the men come to Spain to feel emotion, to be engaged, to be men again. This is especially true of Jake, who is very proud that he has aficion, or passion, for the bulls, which in this section seems to stand in for his lost and wounded masculinity. Americans aren't supposed to be able to have aficion, but Jake does, and it is real, validated by the Spanish men who touch him on the shoulder and approve. In the terms of fiesta, then, Jake is the strong one, the real man, and Cohn is weak and womanly.
Except that he isn't. As we know from the opening sentence of the novel, "Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton," and when Cohn finds out that Brett has gone off with Pedro Romero, the 19-year-old bullfighter, he demands that Jake tell him where they are. Jake won't, and when Cohn comes at him, Jake tries to throw a punch only to have Cohn knock him out cold. Cohn is such a strong fighter that can't be defeated by the men in his party; he can only be defeated by Romero, whom he "masscres," but whom he can't knock out. Romero says he'll kill Cohn in the morning if Cohn doesn't leave town, and Cohn does finally depart, teary and regretful. Not long after that, Brett leaves with Romero.
Just as the war has damaged and blighted the men in this book, it has also damaged Brett, as we discover in Book Three. Just as Jake is settling into his hotel in San Sebastian to recover from fiesta, he gets a distress call from Brett, summoning him to Madrid, where Jake learns that Brett kicked Romero out because Romero wanted to domesticate her. (During the war, Brett married an English aristocrat, Lord Ashley, only to have him come home deranged and threatening to kill her. He went to bed every night with a gun beneath his pillow, and for her own safety, Brett took out the bullets as soon as he fell asleep. No wonder, then, that she does not take kindly to the idea of domestication.) Romero wanted Brett to grow out her hair and marry him so that "I couldn't go away from him, he said. He wanted to make sure I could never go away from him. After I'd gotten more womanly, of course." Brett is "all right" now that she's gotten rid of him, but she is very fixated on one idea as she talks to Jake:
'I'm thirty-four, you know. I'm not going to be one of those bitches that ruins children.'
'No.'
'I'm not going to be that way. I feel rather good, you know. I feel rather set up.'
Later, she adds: 'You know it makes me feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch. . . .It's sort of what we have instead of God.'
At age 34, Brett's almost but not quite lost her chance to be fertile. That she still has a chance to procreate is clear from the fact that she can still attract a virile 19-year-old partner, the novel's consummate example of masculinity and the only man in the book who is not blighted or broken. (Jake is impotent. Mike is bankrupt. Cohn is Jewish, which the men in this novel regard as his weakness.) Still, Brett rejects this last opportunity to have kids because she doesn't want to be a bitch "that ruins children." After the terrible violent nightmare of the war, it is not procreation, but refusing to create that replaces God - and perhaps defies him.
So what is this a story about? Certainly it's about lost and damaged people clinging to each other after the war, when pre-war ideals and ambitions about career and family no longer make sense. In many ways, it's also about Jake Barnes' friendship with a Jewish writer and former boxer, who reads a book called The Purple Land that awakens the romantic in him, inspiring him to leave his long-time love, Frances, to pursue Brett, a woman of class. In this respect, Cohn is to Barnes as Gatsby is to Nick Carraway: the last example of strong, romantic hope after everyone else has already given up. That Cohn happens to be pursuing the object of Jake's affections is all the more perfect. Cohn's doomed quest to win Brett allows Jake to experience what would happen if Jake truly and sincerely pursued Brett himself, as shown in this conversation:
'Everybody behaves badly,' I said. 'Give them the proper chance.'
'You wouldn't behave badly.' Brett looked at me.
'I'd be as big an ass as Cohn,' I said.
'Darling, don't let's talk a lot of rot.'
'All right. Talk about anything you like.'
'Don't be difficult. You're the only person I've got, and I feel rather awful tonight.'
Brett needs Jake to be her friend, her "person," the one man who can't pursue her. And Jake seems to be liberated by Cohn's experiences so that he can be that "person," no longer trapped by the belief that he and Brett should be together. At the very end of the novel, it is she saying that they would have been good together, while he recognizes this as a "pretty" fantasy.
One final note is that I don't feel like I know enough historically to say how "Jewishness" is coded in this place and at this time in history. In this novel, however, it is treated with the same disdain by Brett's fiance as Gatsby's low origins are treated by Tom Buchanan (ironically, although Cohn has both money and a solid name in the place of his birth, that fortune is overshadowed by his ethnic and religious identity here).
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Great Gatsby
For the sake of continuity, I will start this blog entry by asking what this book is about. At its most basic, The Great Gatsby is the story of the social climber James Gatz, who invents himself as Jay Gatsby, falls in love with a rich girl, and spends the rest of his short, tragic life trying to win her, despite the fact that she has married a wealthy man named Tom Buchanan. After quickly amassing the fortune he needs to care for Daisy, Gatsby almost succeeds in getting her back, at least until Tom investigates the actual sources of Gatsby's money, which Tom reveals on a trip to New York with Daisy, Gatsby, Nick, and another friend. This revelation makes Daisy doubt Gatsby, but it is a tragic accident on the way home from New York that ruins Gatsby's chances forever - and indeed ends his life. On the way home, Daisy drives, inadvertently striking and killing a woman who turns out to be Tom's mistress, Myrtle Wilson. Thinking Gatsby hit Myrtle and drove away, Tom tells Myrtle's husband where to find Gatsby. George Wilson goes to Gatsby's house, shoots him in his pool, and then shoots himself, leaving Nick Carraway alone to arrange Gatsby's funeral, which no one but Gatsby's father attends. It is a sad and wonderful story, but it's also a more complex one than I think I realized.
I think Jason is right on about the parallels between James Gatz and Clyde Griffiths (who seals his fate in part by inventing not one but two new identities for himself). There is a social climber at the heart of this novel, and the narrator says that he "represent[s] everything for which I have an unaffected scorn." At the same time, however, the narrator has genuine affection for Gatsby, who has "an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person. No - Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men."
But what did prey on Gatsby? That's a question I don't feel like I can entirely answer to my satisfaction.
The east-west business that Jason raised also interests me. The Carraways have new money, but they have stayed in the same place long enough that they can successfully mythologize their origins and masquerade as having old money. Near the end of the novel, Nick says, "I am . . . a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name." In the middle "west," old money is rooted. There are family homes, family estates, and the people have some decency. In the east, where there is new money, anyone can rent any house. No one "remembers" how to get to your address unless you're throwing a party. People don't come to your funeral. God himself isn't watching anymore; he's been replaced by an advertisement, a giant pair of eyes.
There is some connection, too, between geographical and social mobility, both of which are vaguely distasteful. Old money keeps horses. Old money converts a garage back into a stable, while new money buys a new yellow car, a "circus wagon." Jordan and Daisy are both bad drivers. I don't know what this all means, but I find it interesting!
I suppose Nick admires Gatsby's optimism because he knows Gatsby, like Clyde, can't possibly succeed. We can never have the American dream; it's ever receding before us, so that we can only ever be what we were at the start.
I think Jason is right on about the parallels between James Gatz and Clyde Griffiths (who seals his fate in part by inventing not one but two new identities for himself). There is a social climber at the heart of this novel, and the narrator says that he "represent[s] everything for which I have an unaffected scorn." At the same time, however, the narrator has genuine affection for Gatsby, who has "an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person. No - Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men."
But what did prey on Gatsby? That's a question I don't feel like I can entirely answer to my satisfaction.
The east-west business that Jason raised also interests me. The Carraways have new money, but they have stayed in the same place long enough that they can successfully mythologize their origins and masquerade as having old money. Near the end of the novel, Nick says, "I am . . . a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name." In the middle "west," old money is rooted. There are family homes, family estates, and the people have some decency. In the east, where there is new money, anyone can rent any house. No one "remembers" how to get to your address unless you're throwing a party. People don't come to your funeral. God himself isn't watching anymore; he's been replaced by an advertisement, a giant pair of eyes.
There is some connection, too, between geographical and social mobility, both of which are vaguely distasteful. Old money keeps horses. Old money converts a garage back into a stable, while new money buys a new yellow car, a "circus wagon." Jordan and Daisy are both bad drivers. I don't know what this all means, but I find it interesting!
I suppose Nick admires Gatsby's optimism because he knows Gatsby, like Clyde, can't possibly succeed. We can never have the American dream; it's ever receding before us, so that we can only ever be what we were at the start.
Monday, March 22, 2010
The Great Gatsby - That Ol' SPOILED Sport
What a difference context makes! I read this book two years ago and didn't find it nearly as satisfying as I did this time. On the one hand, I think it was more enjoyable because I already knew the basic plot movement and didn't need to wonder or worry about where the story was going. On the other hand, I had An American Tragedy for comparison.
Like An American Tragedy, The Great Gatsby is about money. In many ways James Gatz/Jay Gatsby is like Clyde Griffiths, a boy of humble origins who falls in love with wealth, wealthy culture, and a beautiful and rich girl. In An American Tragedy, Clyde had no chance of moving up the social ladder, but by marrying the right girl, he hoped he could. Gatsby wants to climb the social ladder so that he can marry the girl of his dreams. And Gatsby can and does move up that social ladder . . . to an extent.
He is wealthy, there is no doubt about it. Everyone wants to take advantage of his parties and his generosity, but his money is new. And because it's new, it's suspect. All the rumors circulating around Gatsby are because old money has an existing history, a family to point to. Buchanan and Daisy are from old money, and they see Gatsby's parties as vulgar. Gatsby's counterpoint is of course Myrtle whose party is more vulgar and distasteful. Compare both parties to the cultured ease of the opening dinner at the Buchanans. Buchanan doesn't have hydroplanes and a "circus wagon"--he has converted his garage to a stable, for goodness sake--how cultured is that? And the true social and cultural inroads made by Gatsby are revealed by his funeral. So he can be rich, but he cannot ever have what Buchanan and Daisy have. The money is Daisy's voice that both Gatsby and Nick admire is something you are born into.
And what does Daisy see in Buchanan that makes her love him? God knows that he is nothing but an ass to us readers. Gatsby's not the bee's knees, but he sure is more likable than Tom. But to Daisy, Gatsby, for all his charms is not of the same social standing as Tom, no matter how much money he has. It is a doomed love affair from the beginning. At 30, Daisy is not the 18 year old romantic girl ready to run off with Gatsby.
I love how Gatsby is not self-made, but that Wolfshiem takes full credit for making him.
Nick is fascinating to me as well, but since all my posts are too long as it is, I shall cut myself short. Where does Nick fall in this scale of wealth and social position? He seems both rich from childhood (as the opening sentence suggests) but also rather poorly positioned in his home on West Egg. I love how Nick gets disgusted with just about everyone.
And speaking of West Egg, what do you make of the Midwest v. East distinction? It seems to move from a comment about America to something about the East Coast. Is this East v. West distinction echoed in East v. West Egg?
I'd write more, but I hate to bore.
Happy readings!
Like An American Tragedy, The Great Gatsby is about money. In many ways James Gatz/Jay Gatsby is like Clyde Griffiths, a boy of humble origins who falls in love with wealth, wealthy culture, and a beautiful and rich girl. In An American Tragedy, Clyde had no chance of moving up the social ladder, but by marrying the right girl, he hoped he could. Gatsby wants to climb the social ladder so that he can marry the girl of his dreams. And Gatsby can and does move up that social ladder . . . to an extent.
He is wealthy, there is no doubt about it. Everyone wants to take advantage of his parties and his generosity, but his money is new. And because it's new, it's suspect. All the rumors circulating around Gatsby are because old money has an existing history, a family to point to. Buchanan and Daisy are from old money, and they see Gatsby's parties as vulgar. Gatsby's counterpoint is of course Myrtle whose party is more vulgar and distasteful. Compare both parties to the cultured ease of the opening dinner at the Buchanans. Buchanan doesn't have hydroplanes and a "circus wagon"--he has converted his garage to a stable, for goodness sake--how cultured is that? And the true social and cultural inroads made by Gatsby are revealed by his funeral. So he can be rich, but he cannot ever have what Buchanan and Daisy have. The money is Daisy's voice that both Gatsby and Nick admire is something you are born into.
And what does Daisy see in Buchanan that makes her love him? God knows that he is nothing but an ass to us readers. Gatsby's not the bee's knees, but he sure is more likable than Tom. But to Daisy, Gatsby, for all his charms is not of the same social standing as Tom, no matter how much money he has. It is a doomed love affair from the beginning. At 30, Daisy is not the 18 year old romantic girl ready to run off with Gatsby.
I love how Gatsby is not self-made, but that Wolfshiem takes full credit for making him.
Nick is fascinating to me as well, but since all my posts are too long as it is, I shall cut myself short. Where does Nick fall in this scale of wealth and social position? He seems both rich from childhood (as the opening sentence suggests) but also rather poorly positioned in his home on West Egg. I love how Nick gets disgusted with just about everyone.
And speaking of West Egg, what do you make of the Midwest v. East distinction? It seems to move from a comment about America to something about the East Coast. Is this East v. West distinction echoed in East v. West Egg?
I'd write more, but I hate to bore.
Happy readings!
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