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.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
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.
Monday, June 27, 2011
When Bad Men Do Good: Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene is a name I have been familiar with for a long time, but until now, I have not read any of his books. One summer, on a long drive, I listened to a BBC radio play of his book Our Man in Havana, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. But The Power and The Glory is the first of his books that I have read. And according to all the little blurbs that come with my edition, it is his masterpiece.
I am not a religious man, and trials of religious people do not typically move me. There is no exception here for the unnamed priest at the center of The Power and The Glory. I can respect his struggles, and I understand his dilemma, but for the most part I was not moved by his inner religious turmoil. That said, however, I really enjoyed this book and really enjoyed the main character we follow around because even as the book is about the trials of a persecuted priest among persecuted people, it is the people and not the religion that Greene studies and discusses.
When I learned in the biographical sketch at the head of my edition that Greene converted to Catholicism when he was 26, I was very wary about what I was about to read. That knowledge acted like a lens, affecting the way I started into the book, the symbols and lessons I looked around for. That lens fell away as I got a quarter of the way into the book and simply enjoyed the story and the writing. Greene creates crisp, clear, and evocative sentences. He seemingly effortlessly creates a scene with deft description and characters come to life through their dialogue and interaction. I never found myself wanting the scenes to move faster or for the plot to develop quicker, nor did I wish to linger longer. It all moved so perfectly. And then, as I neared the end, as the whiskey priest neared the end of his journey, I suspiciously picked that lens back up and read on expecting one of two things. Either the priest was going to get his absolution and become an appropriate martyr, or he would be denied confession and die ingloriously.
Greene did something I didn't expect and he did it with great skill. The whiskey priest does indeed die without confession, without repenting of his own scenes AND he becomes a proper martyr, believably. There is nothing superhuman in the priest's fate. He does not find God's strength to face his execution. He does not transcend to some higher spiritual level in meeting his death, but it is that incredible humanity that makes his death meaningful. Unlike Christ, the priest is a man steeped in sin, but like Christ, he dies with the sins and confessions of everyone who called on him. He gave his life to hear the last confession, and he did it without seeming ridiculously pious. And his last word, overheard by the dentist, before the firing squad let loose, was "excuse." What a great and ambiguous word! Was he making an excuse for his own behavior, pleading for a stay of execution, or speaking to God as Christ upon the cross, asking him to "excuse" their murdering him, for they know not what they do? In this conclusion, Greene allows tragedy and hope to come together in a beautiful balance. He gives us the ending that the priest becomes a martyr but without it becoming a cheesy tale of morality. Greene gives it all to us, and you cannot ask for a better ending than that.
The thing Greene explores throughout the novel and the priests travels is the difference between the man and the role he performs. The priest can be a bad man, a bad priest, and still do good. He can be the horrible example he fears he is and still bring God to people. There are no wicked characters in this book; and there are certainly no saints. But what the people are like on the inside, what motivates them and occupies their mind, are different from the effect they have on other people and the world around them. The lieutenant is a kind-hearted man who gives money to a struggling man and seeks to eliminate the church for what he sees as the good of the people, but he is ready to execute innocents to reach his goal. The fang-toothed mestizo is another great example of the person and the role being at odds.
Graham Greene is another author that I plan to return too when this experiment is over. I love his writing, his plotting, and his combination of intellect and intuition to create a riveting and rewarding story.
I am not a religious man, and trials of religious people do not typically move me. There is no exception here for the unnamed priest at the center of The Power and The Glory. I can respect his struggles, and I understand his dilemma, but for the most part I was not moved by his inner religious turmoil. That said, however, I really enjoyed this book and really enjoyed the main character we follow around because even as the book is about the trials of a persecuted priest among persecuted people, it is the people and not the religion that Greene studies and discusses.
When I learned in the biographical sketch at the head of my edition that Greene converted to Catholicism when he was 26, I was very wary about what I was about to read. That knowledge acted like a lens, affecting the way I started into the book, the symbols and lessons I looked around for. That lens fell away as I got a quarter of the way into the book and simply enjoyed the story and the writing. Greene creates crisp, clear, and evocative sentences. He seemingly effortlessly creates a scene with deft description and characters come to life through their dialogue and interaction. I never found myself wanting the scenes to move faster or for the plot to develop quicker, nor did I wish to linger longer. It all moved so perfectly. And then, as I neared the end, as the whiskey priest neared the end of his journey, I suspiciously picked that lens back up and read on expecting one of two things. Either the priest was going to get his absolution and become an appropriate martyr, or he would be denied confession and die ingloriously.
Greene did something I didn't expect and he did it with great skill. The whiskey priest does indeed die without confession, without repenting of his own scenes AND he becomes a proper martyr, believably. There is nothing superhuman in the priest's fate. He does not find God's strength to face his execution. He does not transcend to some higher spiritual level in meeting his death, but it is that incredible humanity that makes his death meaningful. Unlike Christ, the priest is a man steeped in sin, but like Christ, he dies with the sins and confessions of everyone who called on him. He gave his life to hear the last confession, and he did it without seeming ridiculously pious. And his last word, overheard by the dentist, before the firing squad let loose, was "excuse." What a great and ambiguous word! Was he making an excuse for his own behavior, pleading for a stay of execution, or speaking to God as Christ upon the cross, asking him to "excuse" their murdering him, for they know not what they do? In this conclusion, Greene allows tragedy and hope to come together in a beautiful balance. He gives us the ending that the priest becomes a martyr but without it becoming a cheesy tale of morality. Greene gives it all to us, and you cannot ask for a better ending than that.
The thing Greene explores throughout the novel and the priests travels is the difference between the man and the role he performs. The priest can be a bad man, a bad priest, and still do good. He can be the horrible example he fears he is and still bring God to people. There are no wicked characters in this book; and there are certainly no saints. But what the people are like on the inside, what motivates them and occupies their mind, are different from the effect they have on other people and the world around them. The lieutenant is a kind-hearted man who gives money to a struggling man and seeks to eliminate the church for what he sees as the good of the people, but he is ready to execute innocents to reach his goal. The fang-toothed mestizo is another great example of the person and the role being at odds.
Graham Greene is another author that I plan to return too when this experiment is over. I love his writing, his plotting, and his combination of intellect and intuition to create a riveting and rewarding story.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
The Day of the Locust
As always, my review/essay contains all kinds of spoilers, so if you want to read The Day of the Locust without having anything ruined for you, go read it first and then come back. And I highly recommend reading it. It is a rather short book but one that is wonderfully written and culturally weighty, I think.
Reading Nathanael West's Day of the Locust is exactly why I love this project. It is quite possible that without this reading quest I would never have discovered this incredible writer or this thoughtful novel.
Like many of my favorite novels, Day of the Locust places its characters in a particular cultural moment and the two are thoroughly intertwined. West is able to tell a compelling story and make a larger comment on American society without ever feeling pretentious or ridiculous. West does what Tod thinks painter Alessandro Magnasco would do with his subjects: "He would not satirize them as Hogarth or Dumier might, nor would he pity them. He would paint their fury with respect, appreciating its awful, anarchic power and aware that they had it in them to destroy civilization." Like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Anderson, and others of his time, West keeps a neutral, distant tone that respects both the characters and the readers while showing us something deep in the ways of human beings.
In a lot of ways, this novel reminded me of The Great Gatsby; only, it's The Great Gatsby turned on its head. Nick Carraway and Tod Hackett are both observers of the drama surrounding them, and both are involved without actually creating any of the drama. Nick is a transplant in the east coast, moved to New York to be a part of the financial heart of the country. Tod is a transplant on the west coast, moved to L.A., to be a part of the entertainment heart of the country. Fitzgerald uses his novel to comment on the excesses of the culture and the role that finances and wealth play in that corruption. West uses his novel to comment on the excesses of the culture and the role that entertainment and movies play in that corruption. But where Fitzgerald takes us into the lives of those who are at the center of wealth and the cultural scene, West plays around the outskirts of the entertainment industry, with the extras, the vaudevillian actors, and all those hovering on the edges.
West is quite explicit in his cultural analysis at the end of the novel when the riot breaks out in Hollywood and Tod connects that riot to the painting he has been working on through the entirety of the novel, "The Burning of Los Angeles." The masses have been lulled into working and working so that they can buy some leisure time and partake in the American Dream, but when they actually get there, they see how hollow it all is and they become restless, bored:
Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that
they have been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of
their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies.
Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks,
love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. This daily diet
made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can't
titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough
to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated
and betrayed. They have saved and saved for nothing.
Hackett notes that "all those poor devils . . . can only be stirred by the promise of miracles and then only to violence." And it's important to note that the riot is one of the middle class: "Tod could see very few people who looked tough, nor could he see any working me. The crowd was made up of the lower middle classes."
In some ways the riot at the end of the novel was jarring, because West had focused on individuals up to that point, not on masses of people. But what this technique does is cause you to reevaluate what you have read up to this point, to comb back through the novel and see the world hovering around the edges of Faye, Harry, Tod, Earle, Miguel, and Homer. And in doing so, we see that we have only been looking at a corner of West's canvas, picking out individual faces in a crowd. The ending is like a an epic pull-back of a camera in a movie, showing us the full landscape of destruction for the first time.
The whole is written upon the parts, however, I believe, and the individual characters echo the larger world of the novel. Faye, or instance, is like Hollywood and the dream that keeps everyone coming out and staying in L.A. It is obvious to everyone what she is. Tod sees right through her but wants her all the same. She is promiscuous, but he sees something innocent as well. She is not bright, but he sees that she has moments of self-awareness. Everyone flocks around her like those chasing the dream. Homer is the hard working lower middle class that saves and saves and is left only with boredom and disappointment. West consistently describes him as a poorly constructed automaton who is made up of disparate parts that don't talk to each other. His hands are alive and act by themselves, just like the crowd is made up of all these parts but act with one destructive force. And for as gentle and restrained as Homer is, one day that rock will strike him in the face and he will explode and destroy, beating adore without thought or mercy. His explosion of course mirrors the riot that sweeps Todd away.
What amazes me is that West does all this while simultaneously creating real characters and an absorbing story. This is not a political tract dressed up like a novel; this is a novel with a social conscience. And still more amazingly, West's critique feels like it could just have easily been made yesterday as over 70 years ago.
When this list is done (in five years?) I will definitely come back to read West's Miss Lonelyhearts, which is paired with The Day of the Locust in my edition. So wonderful!
Reading Nathanael West's Day of the Locust is exactly why I love this project. It is quite possible that without this reading quest I would never have discovered this incredible writer or this thoughtful novel.
Like many of my favorite novels, Day of the Locust places its characters in a particular cultural moment and the two are thoroughly intertwined. West is able to tell a compelling story and make a larger comment on American society without ever feeling pretentious or ridiculous. West does what Tod thinks painter Alessandro Magnasco would do with his subjects: "He would not satirize them as Hogarth or Dumier might, nor would he pity them. He would paint their fury with respect, appreciating its awful, anarchic power and aware that they had it in them to destroy civilization." Like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Anderson, and others of his time, West keeps a neutral, distant tone that respects both the characters and the readers while showing us something deep in the ways of human beings.
In a lot of ways, this novel reminded me of The Great Gatsby; only, it's The Great Gatsby turned on its head. Nick Carraway and Tod Hackett are both observers of the drama surrounding them, and both are involved without actually creating any of the drama. Nick is a transplant in the east coast, moved to New York to be a part of the financial heart of the country. Tod is a transplant on the west coast, moved to L.A., to be a part of the entertainment heart of the country. Fitzgerald uses his novel to comment on the excesses of the culture and the role that finances and wealth play in that corruption. West uses his novel to comment on the excesses of the culture and the role that entertainment and movies play in that corruption. But where Fitzgerald takes us into the lives of those who are at the center of wealth and the cultural scene, West plays around the outskirts of the entertainment industry, with the extras, the vaudevillian actors, and all those hovering on the edges.
West is quite explicit in his cultural analysis at the end of the novel when the riot breaks out in Hollywood and Tod connects that riot to the painting he has been working on through the entirety of the novel, "The Burning of Los Angeles." The masses have been lulled into working and working so that they can buy some leisure time and partake in the American Dream, but when they actually get there, they see how hollow it all is and they become restless, bored:
Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that
they have been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of
their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies.
Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks,
love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. This daily diet
made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can't
titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough
to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated
and betrayed. They have saved and saved for nothing.
Hackett notes that "all those poor devils . . . can only be stirred by the promise of miracles and then only to violence." And it's important to note that the riot is one of the middle class: "Tod could see very few people who looked tough, nor could he see any working me. The crowd was made up of the lower middle classes."
In some ways the riot at the end of the novel was jarring, because West had focused on individuals up to that point, not on masses of people. But what this technique does is cause you to reevaluate what you have read up to this point, to comb back through the novel and see the world hovering around the edges of Faye, Harry, Tod, Earle, Miguel, and Homer. And in doing so, we see that we have only been looking at a corner of West's canvas, picking out individual faces in a crowd. The ending is like a an epic pull-back of a camera in a movie, showing us the full landscape of destruction for the first time.
The whole is written upon the parts, however, I believe, and the individual characters echo the larger world of the novel. Faye, or instance, is like Hollywood and the dream that keeps everyone coming out and staying in L.A. It is obvious to everyone what she is. Tod sees right through her but wants her all the same. She is promiscuous, but he sees something innocent as well. She is not bright, but he sees that she has moments of self-awareness. Everyone flocks around her like those chasing the dream. Homer is the hard working lower middle class that saves and saves and is left only with boredom and disappointment. West consistently describes him as a poorly constructed automaton who is made up of disparate parts that don't talk to each other. His hands are alive and act by themselves, just like the crowd is made up of all these parts but act with one destructive force. And for as gentle and restrained as Homer is, one day that rock will strike him in the face and he will explode and destroy, beating adore without thought or mercy. His explosion of course mirrors the riot that sweeps Todd away.
What amazes me is that West does all this while simultaneously creating real characters and an absorbing story. This is not a political tract dressed up like a novel; this is a novel with a social conscience. And still more amazingly, West's critique feels like it could just have easily been made yesterday as over 70 years ago.
When this list is done (in five years?) I will definitely come back to read West's Miss Lonelyhearts, which is paired with The Day of the Locust in my edition. So wonderful!
Thursday, June 9, 2011
The Big Sleep
You would think that after you read Tropic of Cancer nothing could shock you. But shock is always contextual. An F-bomb amongst a crowd of profanities is barely noticed, whereas the same bomb dropped in a preschool classroom gets a lot more attention. In addition, Tropic of Cancer was not a massively popular book, but The Big Sleep was. I had seen the movie, and I didn't remember anything too racy, just a lot of sharp talk and cigarette smoke. But the book has plenty of pornography, nudity, drugs, sex, and adult behavior. I wasn't expecting it. And when one character responds to Marlowe by saying, "Go ------ yourself," that dash spoke louder than any paragraph in Henry Miller's work.
But that dash, how interesting! I have seen swear words in just about every book on the list. But this book, a book written for adults, refrains. It refrains not from the sentiment, but from the word itself. And for some reason, that decision captures the moral spirit of this book. The sentiment of adult seediness is all there, but there is a big dash hovering over it. That sentiment and that dash are both in the lead character and narrator, Philip Marlowe.
In my memory, Marlowe was a worldly guy, a ladies man, a tough guy whom nothing surprises. And my memory is pretty spot on. Except that he might as well have a halo over his head. He strikes me as a noir Rhett Butler, a guy who plays the scumbag, hangs with the scumbags, but in his heart is something else. Marlowe can talk the talk and solve the puzzles, read people and anticipate their next move, but there is nothing rotten at his center. He may drink more than is approved of today, but he is unaffected by his alcohol consumption. He can drive, fight, think on his feet and resist temptation no matter how much booze is sloshing around in his belly. Here is a guy who has the opportunity to sleep with a number of women and doesn't once. He doesn't even seem to feel the temptation. Not once does he need to take a cold shower.
Instead, the thing that he cares about is an old, dying man who in turn cares about the well-being of his daughter's missing husband. The women are femme fatales every one, but their dance is made on the periphery of the action, an action that works between men. And just so that you don't go thinking Marlowe and his fellows are gay, Chandler gives us real homosexuals to contrast with Marlowe's masculinity. When the young lover swings at Marlowe, he lets you know they are different, he and the gay fighter: "It was meant to be a hard [punch], but a pansy has no iron in his bones, whatever he looks like." Being gay makes you weak, and Marlowe is not weak. And he is not gay either. He isn't. So stop considering it. Just stop it.
No, he isn't gay; he is a catcher in the rye, only it's not children running through the rye. It's the old man. The big moral responsibility in Marlowe's adventure is to keep the old man from discovering how rotten his corrupted daughters are and that Regan has been shot and killed by one of them.
And this tenderness that Marlowe feels for Sternwood (yeah, that sounds like an erection), and Sternwood's tenderness for Regan are set up in opposition to all the other relationships in the novel. In this world, relationships are leverage, bargaining positions that can shift as the individual's needs shift. This is a novel of alliances, not love. Los Angeles is a corrupt place where cops can be bought, pornographers protected, murderers hidden and everyone can be betrayed. And Marlowe can navigate all these shark infested waters even as he holds his moral lamp above the waters. So like Mitchell, Chandler wants it both ways--a hard and gritty novel with sentimentality tucked into the harsh folds and slid into the sharp corners.
This is a famous novel not just because it is a great storyline, not just because it is representative of a whole genre, not just because it's an excellent mystery. This novel is also beautifully written. The overstated similes that seem to be the hallmark of private detective fiction are genuine and powerful in this novel. Hell, I found them to be downright poetic. For example, "So she giggled. Very cute. The giggles got louder and ran around the corners of the room like rats behind the wainscoting." That is everything a simile should be! Those giggles become a physical thing with a tangible character. Chandler does an incredible job describing his scenes with precision and color and his characters have voices you can hear, and not just because you've watched enough black-and-white movies to know the accent. The plot develops with mystery and inevitability and never gets muddled. This book is on the this list because Chandler is a superb writer.
If I had time I would love to compare The Big Sleep to Red Harvest. If there is anyone out there playing along, I would love to hear your own thoughts. Till then, I'll take my two fingers of scotch and get back to work under intermittent light of the neon sign outside my window.
But that dash, how interesting! I have seen swear words in just about every book on the list. But this book, a book written for adults, refrains. It refrains not from the sentiment, but from the word itself. And for some reason, that decision captures the moral spirit of this book. The sentiment of adult seediness is all there, but there is a big dash hovering over it. That sentiment and that dash are both in the lead character and narrator, Philip Marlowe.
In my memory, Marlowe was a worldly guy, a ladies man, a tough guy whom nothing surprises. And my memory is pretty spot on. Except that he might as well have a halo over his head. He strikes me as a noir Rhett Butler, a guy who plays the scumbag, hangs with the scumbags, but in his heart is something else. Marlowe can talk the talk and solve the puzzles, read people and anticipate their next move, but there is nothing rotten at his center. He may drink more than is approved of today, but he is unaffected by his alcohol consumption. He can drive, fight, think on his feet and resist temptation no matter how much booze is sloshing around in his belly. Here is a guy who has the opportunity to sleep with a number of women and doesn't once. He doesn't even seem to feel the temptation. Not once does he need to take a cold shower.
Instead, the thing that he cares about is an old, dying man who in turn cares about the well-being of his daughter's missing husband. The women are femme fatales every one, but their dance is made on the periphery of the action, an action that works between men. And just so that you don't go thinking Marlowe and his fellows are gay, Chandler gives us real homosexuals to contrast with Marlowe's masculinity. When the young lover swings at Marlowe, he lets you know they are different, he and the gay fighter: "It was meant to be a hard [punch], but a pansy has no iron in his bones, whatever he looks like." Being gay makes you weak, and Marlowe is not weak. And he is not gay either. He isn't. So stop considering it. Just stop it.
No, he isn't gay; he is a catcher in the rye, only it's not children running through the rye. It's the old man. The big moral responsibility in Marlowe's adventure is to keep the old man from discovering how rotten his corrupted daughters are and that Regan has been shot and killed by one of them.
And this tenderness that Marlowe feels for Sternwood (yeah, that sounds like an erection), and Sternwood's tenderness for Regan are set up in opposition to all the other relationships in the novel. In this world, relationships are leverage, bargaining positions that can shift as the individual's needs shift. This is a novel of alliances, not love. Los Angeles is a corrupt place where cops can be bought, pornographers protected, murderers hidden and everyone can be betrayed. And Marlowe can navigate all these shark infested waters even as he holds his moral lamp above the waters. So like Mitchell, Chandler wants it both ways--a hard and gritty novel with sentimentality tucked into the harsh folds and slid into the sharp corners.
This is a famous novel not just because it is a great storyline, not just because it is representative of a whole genre, not just because it's an excellent mystery. This novel is also beautifully written. The overstated similes that seem to be the hallmark of private detective fiction are genuine and powerful in this novel. Hell, I found them to be downright poetic. For example, "So she giggled. Very cute. The giggles got louder and ran around the corners of the room like rats behind the wainscoting." That is everything a simile should be! Those giggles become a physical thing with a tangible character. Chandler does an incredible job describing his scenes with precision and color and his characters have voices you can hear, and not just because you've watched enough black-and-white movies to know the accent. The plot develops with mystery and inevitability and never gets muddled. This book is on the this list because Chandler is a superb writer.
If I had time I would love to compare The Big Sleep to Red Harvest. If there is anyone out there playing along, I would love to hear your own thoughts. Till then, I'll take my two fingers of scotch and get back to work under intermittent light of the neon sign outside my window.
Monday, May 16, 2011
The Death of the Heart - Not a Laughing Matter
Elizabeth Bowen's The Death of the Heart is a quiet novel. Taking place largely in the upper-class home of Anna and Thomas Quayne, the story plays out like a novel of manners, with guests coming and going and people being rather polite to each other. Or at least they seem to be polite to each other, and it is in that seeming that Bowen's story finds its strength. This two-faced behavior is commonplace enough and shouldn't surprise anyone. But the lies told, the secrets kept, and secrets revealed in confidence take on new depth and import when seen through the eyes of Portia Quayne, the sixteen-year-old girl at the center of the novel.
Portia is above all an observer. The love child of an upper-class man who longs for his old life and a common woman forced to live an uprooted life by her shamed husband, Portia is the quintessential outsider. She grew up in hotels, traveling from one to another, watching the fellow guest come in and out of her life. After her father's death, Portia and her mother are an isolated pair with no ties. And when her mother passes, Portia goes to live with her father's son, Thomas, and his wife, Anna, in London.
Portia keeps her observations in a diary. At the opening of the novel, we learn that Anna, who does not care for her quiet guest, has found Portia's diary and read it through. Anna is upset that Portia is watching her and making notes. She does not complain about what Portia has said, and there is no evidence that Portia is mean spirited in her writings, but she feels violated on behalf of everyone who has been watched. Anna seems disproportionately upset by her discovery, and that is our first indication about Bowen's plan for this novel. There is power in observation and in the silent passing of judgment. Anna feels that Portia is laughing at her behind her back, and this practically unhinges Anna.
Characters throughout the novel are obsessed with being watched, being exposed, and being in the public eye. As long as you are the one laughing at others, feeling superior to others, you are in the position of power. But to be laughed seems to be a fate worse than death; at least it is an equal fate, as the very title of the novel suggests.
The titular heart is Portia's. The novel is a coming of age story for Portia, and her final entrance into adulthood is not love, or sex, or independence. The thing that hurtles her irreversibly into adulthood is having her heart broken by the betrayal of her boyfriend, Eddie. Eddie's betrayal is not that he loves another. While Portia is upset that Eddie held hands with Daphne in the movie theater, Portia accepts his odd explanation and moves on. In fact, Portia is maddeningly indifferent to Eddie's awful behavior, seemingly willing to tolerate any kind of mistreatment. But the one thing she cannot tolerate is the knowledge that Eddie knew that Anna read Portia's diary regularly, and that Anna knew that Eddie knew but Portia knew none of this. Eddie and Anna, in other words, had a secret and excluded Portia. "You have laughed at me. You've laughed at me with them," says Portia to Eddie, shattered. Later she tells Major Brutt, "It, it isn't all right there [at Anna's house] any more: we feel ashamed with each other. You see, she has read my diary and found something out. She does not like that, but she laughs about it with Eddie; they laugh about him an me."
This betrayal is worse than if Eddie and Anna had had an affair: "Oh, he's not her lover; it's something worse than that."
Meanwhile, at the Quayne house, politeness fall apart (even as they continue to act politely to each other) as Anna and St. Quentin reveal their subversive acts to each other.
This much more plot summary than I am usually comfortable with in these posts, but the meanings of the novel are woven so tightly into the plot that I have a hard time grabbing the individual threads. The novel was intense and driving even as nothing of any seeming import happened. All the characters' interactions with each other and themselves are ripe with subtext and potential energy on the brink of becoming kinetic. It is in the end a rather dark novel about relationships and the unavoidable power relations between all people, power that unbalances everything and makes a simple union an impossibility. I have seen many films try to tackle this same subject and have never found them satisfactory. The reason Bowen succeeds where others have failed, I think, lies in her ability to plunge into the hearts and minds of the characters and let us linger in the wet dark of their thoughts. We are the additional layer in this power relationship as we, as readers, sit in judgment, in the know. We are the ultimate diary readers, the ultimate observers. Will we laugh at these creatures and share a joke amongst ourselves at their expense?
Another novel I am glad to have read. I feel like I have read an original thing here, a thing that others have tried to imitate many times and failed.
Portia is above all an observer. The love child of an upper-class man who longs for his old life and a common woman forced to live an uprooted life by her shamed husband, Portia is the quintessential outsider. She grew up in hotels, traveling from one to another, watching the fellow guest come in and out of her life. After her father's death, Portia and her mother are an isolated pair with no ties. And when her mother passes, Portia goes to live with her father's son, Thomas, and his wife, Anna, in London.
Portia keeps her observations in a diary. At the opening of the novel, we learn that Anna, who does not care for her quiet guest, has found Portia's diary and read it through. Anna is upset that Portia is watching her and making notes. She does not complain about what Portia has said, and there is no evidence that Portia is mean spirited in her writings, but she feels violated on behalf of everyone who has been watched. Anna seems disproportionately upset by her discovery, and that is our first indication about Bowen's plan for this novel. There is power in observation and in the silent passing of judgment. Anna feels that Portia is laughing at her behind her back, and this practically unhinges Anna.
Characters throughout the novel are obsessed with being watched, being exposed, and being in the public eye. As long as you are the one laughing at others, feeling superior to others, you are in the position of power. But to be laughed seems to be a fate worse than death; at least it is an equal fate, as the very title of the novel suggests.
The titular heart is Portia's. The novel is a coming of age story for Portia, and her final entrance into adulthood is not love, or sex, or independence. The thing that hurtles her irreversibly into adulthood is having her heart broken by the betrayal of her boyfriend, Eddie. Eddie's betrayal is not that he loves another. While Portia is upset that Eddie held hands with Daphne in the movie theater, Portia accepts his odd explanation and moves on. In fact, Portia is maddeningly indifferent to Eddie's awful behavior, seemingly willing to tolerate any kind of mistreatment. But the one thing she cannot tolerate is the knowledge that Eddie knew that Anna read Portia's diary regularly, and that Anna knew that Eddie knew but Portia knew none of this. Eddie and Anna, in other words, had a secret and excluded Portia. "You have laughed at me. You've laughed at me with them," says Portia to Eddie, shattered. Later she tells Major Brutt, "It, it isn't all right there [at Anna's house] any more: we feel ashamed with each other. You see, she has read my diary and found something out. She does not like that, but she laughs about it with Eddie; they laugh about him an me."
This betrayal is worse than if Eddie and Anna had had an affair: "Oh, he's not her lover; it's something worse than that."
Meanwhile, at the Quayne house, politeness fall apart (even as they continue to act politely to each other) as Anna and St. Quentin reveal their subversive acts to each other.
This much more plot summary than I am usually comfortable with in these posts, but the meanings of the novel are woven so tightly into the plot that I have a hard time grabbing the individual threads. The novel was intense and driving even as nothing of any seeming import happened. All the characters' interactions with each other and themselves are ripe with subtext and potential energy on the brink of becoming kinetic. It is in the end a rather dark novel about relationships and the unavoidable power relations between all people, power that unbalances everything and makes a simple union an impossibility. I have seen many films try to tackle this same subject and have never found them satisfactory. The reason Bowen succeeds where others have failed, I think, lies in her ability to plunge into the hearts and minds of the characters and let us linger in the wet dark of their thoughts. We are the additional layer in this power relationship as we, as readers, sit in judgment, in the know. We are the ultimate diary readers, the ultimate observers. Will we laugh at these creatures and share a joke amongst ourselves at their expense?
Another novel I am glad to have read. I feel like I have read an original thing here, a thing that others have tried to imitate many times and failed.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Swimming through At Swim-Two-Birds
At Swim-Two-Birds is one hell of a trip. It is unlike anything I have read before, and most certainly unlike anything else on this list so far.
Flann O'Brien is one of the several noms de plume of Brian O'Nolan, an Irish contemporary of James Joyce. Written at the height of High Modernism, At Swim-Two-Birds is convoluted and non-linear, encasing stories within stories and levels upon levels. But this must be one of the most tongue-in-cheek modernist novels written. There were many times when I laughed out loud (LOL!) at the ludicrous storylines. One of the characters, for example, Finn MacCool is a hero of Irish legend who likes to tell stories, recite poetry, and engage in hyperbole. Early in the novel, Finn relates what a man must do to be a part of Finn's gang. Near the end of a list of impossible abilities, Finn adds:
"One thousand rams he must sequester about his trunks with no offense to the men of Erin, or he is unknown to Finn. He must swiftly milk a fat cow and carry milk-pail and cow for twenty years in the seat of his drawers. When pursued in a chariot by the men of Erin he must dismount, place horse and chariot in the slack of his seat and hide behind his spear, the same being stuck upright in Erin. Unless he accomplishes these feats, he is not wanted of Finn. But if he do them all and be skillful, he is of Finn's people."
O'Nolan delights time and time again in the absurdities of the happenings in this novel. The structure alone is absurd. O'Nolan has a fictitious author, O'Brien, write a novel of a fictitious narrator, unnamed, who writes a fictitious book about a fictitious author, Trellis, who writes his own stories and keeps his own fictitious characters locked up in his house. Trellis's character Finn tells a lengthy story of his own about a man called Sweeney. Trellis rapes one of those fictitious characters who then gives birth to a son, fully grown, who meets up with Trellis's other characters to write a piece of revenge fiction about Trellis. Who is the author and who is the authored becomes intertwined and in some ways inseparable.
The highest frame of the story, that of the narrator and his encounters with his college friends and his confrontations with his uncle seems rather trivial, since it seemed to me merely a way to get out the stories about Trellis and his characters. There is not much of a plot as far as the narrator goes. He is a lazy man who spends most of his time in bed writing his stories. He leaves his room to share his stories and to be needled by his uncle, whom the narrator detests, to study harder and be a good student. I was surprised therefore when I came to the end of the novel and found myself combing through the story with this tension between the narrator and his uncle as my guide.
See, this is a novel obsessed with the act of writing and creating. And as the story of Trellis and his characters brings to the fore, "author" is intimately tied to the word "authority." He who writes claims a power and an authority over that which he writes. But that authority is tenuous at best. The characters have full lives beyond the boundaries of the novel. Like actors, they play the part directed by the author, but when business hours are over, they drug the author and have free reign of the house. In that piece of revenge fiction, the characters bring a lawsuit against Trellis for misusing and abusing them.
Trellis is an interesting combination of the narrator and the uncle. Like the narrator, Trellis spends all his time in bed, but like the uncle, he wields his authority bluntly. And when the uncle demonstrates fairness at the conclusion of the novel, the narrator seems to reconceive Trellis's cruel fate, letting him off the hook, but simultaneously freeing the characters by burning Trellis's manuscript.
That's why I see this novel as the portrait of the artist as an awkward young man. The author is part rebel (against society and the authoritative forces around him) but he is the very essence of authority and a creator of society (within the boundaries of the novel) itself. How does the self-aware young author reconcile these internal contradiction? With great absurdity and humor according to O'Brien. And a lot of bloodshed and pain too, for the characters express this struggle in the young artist with their own contradictory natures. Specifically, there is a great amount of gentility to the characters and their exchanges with each other (at every level of the story (stories)), but they are simultaneously vicious, devising levels of punishment through which few readers could experience any kind of uncomplicated joy.
This novel confounded my original attempts to make any sense of it, and somewhere around page 20, I just let go and let the current sweep me away, laughing as I went. And whether or not you struggle with the whats and wherefores of the novel, you are in for a good time if you have a keen sense for the absurd.
Flann O'Brien is one of the several noms de plume of Brian O'Nolan, an Irish contemporary of James Joyce. Written at the height of High Modernism, At Swim-Two-Birds is convoluted and non-linear, encasing stories within stories and levels upon levels. But this must be one of the most tongue-in-cheek modernist novels written. There were many times when I laughed out loud (LOL!) at the ludicrous storylines. One of the characters, for example, Finn MacCool is a hero of Irish legend who likes to tell stories, recite poetry, and engage in hyperbole. Early in the novel, Finn relates what a man must do to be a part of Finn's gang. Near the end of a list of impossible abilities, Finn adds:
"One thousand rams he must sequester about his trunks with no offense to the men of Erin, or he is unknown to Finn. He must swiftly milk a fat cow and carry milk-pail and cow for twenty years in the seat of his drawers. When pursued in a chariot by the men of Erin he must dismount, place horse and chariot in the slack of his seat and hide behind his spear, the same being stuck upright in Erin. Unless he accomplishes these feats, he is not wanted of Finn. But if he do them all and be skillful, he is of Finn's people."
O'Nolan delights time and time again in the absurdities of the happenings in this novel. The structure alone is absurd. O'Nolan has a fictitious author, O'Brien, write a novel of a fictitious narrator, unnamed, who writes a fictitious book about a fictitious author, Trellis, who writes his own stories and keeps his own fictitious characters locked up in his house. Trellis's character Finn tells a lengthy story of his own about a man called Sweeney. Trellis rapes one of those fictitious characters who then gives birth to a son, fully grown, who meets up with Trellis's other characters to write a piece of revenge fiction about Trellis. Who is the author and who is the authored becomes intertwined and in some ways inseparable.
The highest frame of the story, that of the narrator and his encounters with his college friends and his confrontations with his uncle seems rather trivial, since it seemed to me merely a way to get out the stories about Trellis and his characters. There is not much of a plot as far as the narrator goes. He is a lazy man who spends most of his time in bed writing his stories. He leaves his room to share his stories and to be needled by his uncle, whom the narrator detests, to study harder and be a good student. I was surprised therefore when I came to the end of the novel and found myself combing through the story with this tension between the narrator and his uncle as my guide.
See, this is a novel obsessed with the act of writing and creating. And as the story of Trellis and his characters brings to the fore, "author" is intimately tied to the word "authority." He who writes claims a power and an authority over that which he writes. But that authority is tenuous at best. The characters have full lives beyond the boundaries of the novel. Like actors, they play the part directed by the author, but when business hours are over, they drug the author and have free reign of the house. In that piece of revenge fiction, the characters bring a lawsuit against Trellis for misusing and abusing them.
Trellis is an interesting combination of the narrator and the uncle. Like the narrator, Trellis spends all his time in bed, but like the uncle, he wields his authority bluntly. And when the uncle demonstrates fairness at the conclusion of the novel, the narrator seems to reconceive Trellis's cruel fate, letting him off the hook, but simultaneously freeing the characters by burning Trellis's manuscript.
That's why I see this novel as the portrait of the artist as an awkward young man. The author is part rebel (against society and the authoritative forces around him) but he is the very essence of authority and a creator of society (within the boundaries of the novel) itself. How does the self-aware young author reconcile these internal contradiction? With great absurdity and humor according to O'Brien. And a lot of bloodshed and pain too, for the characters express this struggle in the young artist with their own contradictory natures. Specifically, there is a great amount of gentility to the characters and their exchanges with each other (at every level of the story (stories)), but they are simultaneously vicious, devising levels of punishment through which few readers could experience any kind of uncomplicated joy.
This novel confounded my original attempts to make any sense of it, and somewhere around page 20, I just let go and let the current sweep me away, laughing as I went. And whether or not you struggle with the whats and wherefores of the novel, you are in for a good time if you have a keen sense for the absurd.
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