There are live wires when dealing with any political (or politicized) topic in art. When discussing race, religion, and sex, an author runs the risk of oversimplifying the issue, of sacrificing honesty to present the topic in a falsely positive or negative light. Moreover, when two of these topics appear in the same work, one may be sacrificed to the other. For example, Ralph Ellison is interested in race and power in Invisible Man, and he has little to no interest in how gender plays into that mix. As a result, the female characters make fleeting appearances at best and generally fall flat, skipped over for the Ellison's larger interest. Any one of these topics, then, is difficult to handle honestly, and with each added topic in the same work, the difficulty increases exponentially.
James Baldwin pulls off the amazing feat of handling not one, not two, but all three issues of race, religion, and sex without sacrificing any issue to the other two, all the while being honest about all three. The result is an incredibly insightful representation of the lives of African Americans in the mid-20th century.
Go Tell It on the Mountain is the story of John Grimes. It is a coming of age story as John travels from boyhood to manhood all in the course of the day of his 14th birthday. In the first chapter, we meet all the major players of the novel: John, his brother Roy, his father Gabriel, his mother Elizabeth, his aunt Florence, and a young man at the church whom John greatly admires, Elisha. We learn that Gabriel is not John's birth father, but that he has helped raise John since John was a baby. We learn that John is a quiet boy whose heart is filled with anger towards his father, who is a deacon at their church and a strict disciplinarian. We learn that Gabriel does not seem to like John, preferring his natural son Roy (short for Royal), though Roy has as much contempt for his father as John does. In the final section, while at a church prayer service that night, John finds himself on the threshing floor having the religious experience that brings him into adulthood in the eyes of the church. But it is the middle section that colors our understanding of and hopes for John, for it is in the middle section that we learn the histories of Florence, Gabriel, and Elizabeth. These stories are like overlapping short stories, and they provide the context for John's climactic experience.
In another novel, John's rising up from the threshing room floor would mark a moment of transition symbolizing a great rebirth. But in Baldwin's hands, John's entrance into adulthood and religious revelation are not simple moments to be celebrated. Nor are they defeats for John. They are complicated experiences, and we are all too aware of the complexities. When John goes home after the service, we do not expect his life to change. We are all too aware of the rough road ahead.
One of the things I admire about this book is how it has a cumulative effect, like when your eyes adjust to a darkened room: you find certain objects and lights immediately, and then bring more and more into view as you understand the objects you see and search to make sense of the shapes that are only just coming into view. The first thing you see in this book is religion. Every character in the novel struggles with the Christian faith and the Baptist church. For every character, the religion provides both moments of anguish and moments of peace. Baldwin sees the church as a powerful force, as destructive as it is positive, and for his black community, it is the center of power. Gabriel himself is powerful, physically and spiritually. But that show of power is coupled with the powerlessness of his actions--Gabriel cannot control his son, couldn't save his first son Roy, couldn't lift Deborah up as he imagined, and can't stop John from having his revelation. This powerlessness masking itself as power is echoed by the presence of White America in the novel. In both the South and the North, Baldwin's focus is on African American communities, but on the outskirts of those communities are the violent actions of whites: Deborah's rape, Richard's brutalizing, Roy's stabbing. These events are never the focus, but their pressure is felt in every thing else that happens. Baldwin captures all this seamlessly, and it's only in actively thinking about the stories of the various characters and where their lives meet that the connections start revealing themselves.
I was most struck by Baldwin's depiction of his female characters, Florence, Elizabeth (and even Esther and Deborah). They are every bit as complex as the men, and they are crucial to Baldwin's complete depiction of the black community he is discussing. These women are not cowed by the threats thrown at them in the guise of religious guidance. They are strong and insecure and looking for something they can't find. You feel for everyone, even when you don't like them. The book is, in short, a perfect study in character.
This is the first Baldwin novel I have ever read. I have read and loved many essays and always respected him as a thinker and as a writer with the ability to get at the heart of things in a poetic and profound manner. His novel writing is every bit as impressive, and I look forward to reading more of his novels when this project has come to its completion.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Monday, October 1, 2012
Man Oh Invisible Man!
When Ann and I first started this project two and half years ago, we looked through the list and noted which books we had already read. When I got to Invisible Man, I hesitated. I thought I had read the book, but I wasn't sure. If I had read it, I thought I liked it. If I hadn't, then it was something I always wanted to read.
I know for certain now that I had not read it, because if I had, I would have remembered such an incredible novel. Holy moly! Like Grapes of Wrath, this is a perfect novel in my eyes. Even though the book is nearly 600 pages long, it never once sags or drags. It comes out firing with a riveting and poetic prologue, introducing us to the narrator, smart, angry, and possibly a little bit crazy, living in his secret hole beneath New York City. We are instantly aware that this is a book about character, about politics, about race, about the relationship between individuals and organizations. And like Orwell, Ellison never lets his political art become more political than art. This is first and foremost a work of imaginative fiction, beautifully written and constructed with the tightness of a drum skin.
In an ideal work of fiction, character is plot and plot is character. What happens is decided by the character we follow and the decisions he makes (as well as the decisions that are made for him). Similarly, the character is constructed by the events that unfold around him and batter him about. In Invisible Man, plot and character are inseparable. On the one hand, it is an intricate character piece, and on the other hand, it is a heavily and tightly plotted story. Moreover, it is the very specific story of one specific character, but the novel resonates because it is simultaneously the story of a generation of American black men in the 1940s and '50s, and beyond that it is also simultaneously the story of all Americans. In the end, Invisible Man is a story about the individual and his place in society. (I use the male pronoun there purposefully, since the novel is not overly concerned with the struggle of women.) The Brotherhood is a specific organization, but the narrator's experiences with the Brotherhood are laden with meaning beyond that specific relationship. The narrator is on a search for self-discovery, because "if I discover who I am, I'll be free," and like one of his professors said of Stephen Dedalus,
Ralph Ellison tackles exactly how difficult it is to create "the uncreated features of our face" in a world where we are not seen for who we are, in a world where people don't see beyond your clothes or the color of your skin. We are all invisible to each other when our inner eye tells our physical eye what to see. And on top of that, the organizations and groups that exert their forces upon us don't care at all who we are.
That problem, the problem of discovering who we are, sounds airy and philosophical, but Ellison keeps his novel grounded in details and the specific world that scrapes against the narrator. But the theoretical, the philosophical, hovers right behind the physical in all things in this novel. Every description does double duty, both anchoring us in the physical moment of the scene and alluding to the meaning of the image. Take this passage, in which the narrator finds himself alone with a beautiful white woman who has designs on our protagonist. She is on the phone and they are standing in her bedroom:
Ellison wastes not a single moment, not a single image, and not a single word. It is truly stunning to read, and I found myself wanting to read slower and slower to feel each word and image move between the fingers of my mind just to admire their texture and power.
Finally, this book, perfect in its execution and elocution, would fall flat were it not for its unflinching honesty. This novel tackles so much about our world, and it does so with a crazy sense of control. I never once doubted that Ellison had thought this novel and its subject matter through down to every detail. But for all that confidence and deft handling of his material, Ellison has no pat answers to the dilemmas his narrator faces. The mystery of life is perfectly articulated and poignantly unsolved.
If you are only going to read a handful of books from this list of 100, Invisible Man should be at the top of your list.
I know for certain now that I had not read it, because if I had, I would have remembered such an incredible novel. Holy moly! Like Grapes of Wrath, this is a perfect novel in my eyes. Even though the book is nearly 600 pages long, it never once sags or drags. It comes out firing with a riveting and poetic prologue, introducing us to the narrator, smart, angry, and possibly a little bit crazy, living in his secret hole beneath New York City. We are instantly aware that this is a book about character, about politics, about race, about the relationship between individuals and organizations. And like Orwell, Ellison never lets his political art become more political than art. This is first and foremost a work of imaginative fiction, beautifully written and constructed with the tightness of a drum skin.
In an ideal work of fiction, character is plot and plot is character. What happens is decided by the character we follow and the decisions he makes (as well as the decisions that are made for him). Similarly, the character is constructed by the events that unfold around him and batter him about. In Invisible Man, plot and character are inseparable. On the one hand, it is an intricate character piece, and on the other hand, it is a heavily and tightly plotted story. Moreover, it is the very specific story of one specific character, but the novel resonates because it is simultaneously the story of a generation of American black men in the 1940s and '50s, and beyond that it is also simultaneously the story of all Americans. In the end, Invisible Man is a story about the individual and his place in society. (I use the male pronoun there purposefully, since the novel is not overly concerned with the struggle of women.) The Brotherhood is a specific organization, but the narrator's experiences with the Brotherhood are laden with meaning beyond that specific relationship. The narrator is on a search for self-discovery, because "if I discover who I am, I'll be free," and like one of his professors said of Stephen Dedalus,
[his] problem, like ours, was not actually one of creating the uncreated conscience of his race, but of creating the uncreated features of his face. Our task is that of making ourselves individuals. The conscience of a race is the gift of its individuals who see, evaluate, record . . . We create the race by creating ourselves and then to our great astonishment we will have created something far more important: We will have created a culture.
Ralph Ellison tackles exactly how difficult it is to create "the uncreated features of our face" in a world where we are not seen for who we are, in a world where people don't see beyond your clothes or the color of your skin. We are all invisible to each other when our inner eye tells our physical eye what to see. And on top of that, the organizations and groups that exert their forces upon us don't care at all who we are.
That problem, the problem of discovering who we are, sounds airy and philosophical, but Ellison keeps his novel grounded in details and the specific world that scrapes against the narrator. But the theoretical, the philosophical, hovers right behind the physical in all things in this novel. Every description does double duty, both anchoring us in the physical moment of the scene and alluding to the meaning of the image. Take this passage, in which the narrator finds himself alone with a beautiful white woman who has designs on our protagonist. She is on the phone and they are standing in her bedroom:
I nodded, seeing her turn without a word and go toward a vanity with a large oval mirror, taking up an ivory telephone. And in the mirrored instant I saw myself standing between her eager form and a huge white bed, myself caught in a guilty stance, my face taut, tie dangling; and behind the bed another mirror which now like a surge of the sea tossed our images back and forth, back and forth, furiously multiplying the time and the place and the circumstance.
Ellison wastes not a single moment, not a single image, and not a single word. It is truly stunning to read, and I found myself wanting to read slower and slower to feel each word and image move between the fingers of my mind just to admire their texture and power.
Finally, this book, perfect in its execution and elocution, would fall flat were it not for its unflinching honesty. This novel tackles so much about our world, and it does so with a crazy sense of control. I never once doubted that Ellison had thought this novel and its subject matter through down to every detail. But for all that confidence and deft handling of his material, Ellison has no pat answers to the dilemmas his narrator faces. The mystery of life is perfectly articulated and poignantly unsolved.
If you are only going to read a handful of books from this list of 100, Invisible Man should be at the top of your list.
Monday, September 3, 2012
The Dance Continues - Book II of A Dance to the Music of Time
The second book of A Dance to the Music of Time is called A Buyer's Market. This novel follows Nick's first few years out of college. He is living in London and working at a publishing house that publishes art books.
I found the second book much more enjoyable than the first, probably because I knew what to expect and was not holding it up against Catcher in the Rye. Taking it for what it was, I was able to slow down and enjoy the clever controlled phrasings of the author and submerge myself in the narrator's world. The characters from the first novel continue to dance in and out of Jenkins's life, and there is a definite sense of building. These first three novels appear to be Act I, in which the world and characters are being established before the second act comes to rattle them all up.
I can't say that I have any clearer idea what the novel is about, or what Powell is saying about the world around us. I have the vague notion that Powell is pointing to the time between the two World Wars as a transitional time in modern culture. The upper-class propriety of the university-educated boys in the first novel was punctured by the upward mobility of Sunny Farebrother and Widmerpool, and those issues of class seem even more prominent in this second book. Sunny and Widmerpool were still part of the dinners and dances of culture in the first book. Here, the main figure who frames the novel is Mr. Deacon, a painter who had some exchanges with Nick's parent when Nick was a boy. Running into him as an adult, Nick gets on friendly terms with Deacon and their worlds overlap, bringing Nick into a more solidly middle-class environment. Deacon and Gypsy Jones are like characters out of a Dickens novel, fun but not entirely scrupulous, and they make the sense of the social order seem less stable and more fluid than before. I feel, in short, that class is at issue in the novel, but what in the end is Powell's interest is still a mystery to me.
I do love the idea of making an epic story out of what seems a rather mundane set of circumstances. Due to Powell's careful construction, I have full faith in his ability to bring all the disparate narratives (which will certainly be getting still more disparate) together in meaningful ways down the road. There is an impressive tightness in the layering of incidences that suggests a formidable discipline at the core of the novels. Just as an example, the figure of E. St. John Clarke is raised by Widmerpool in the opening chapter when he discusses a bit of art criticism published in the papers. Clarke is again mentioned in passing at a party in a following scene, and crops up one or two more time before we learn that Members (one of Nick's acquaintances from university) is a secretary to Clarke. So even though the man himself never makes an appearance, he haunts the conversation of the novel. By doing so, along with similar careful references, Powell feels in complete control of his story, like a Pynchon without the added level of absurdity.
I am also interested in the sense of time in the novel. The past and present co-exist like a picture book with overlays. As Jenkins encounters a new experience he tells us both what he thought at the time and that such thoughts were the product of the too narrow experience of youth. Later, he assures us, he will be able to look back at this moment and understand what was really at issue. As he says at the end of the second book,
Before I go, I would like to pose a question to my non-existent co-readers. What is up with the individual titles in this series? How is the second book A Buyer's Market? Who is buying? Who is selling? And what is being sold? Deacon's art? His antiques? Memories? And what was questionable in the first novel, A Question of Upbringing? These titles make no direct reference to what's happening in the novel, and I can't help but feel that they are some type of clue to Powell's root concerns in the novels. Any help would be appreciated.
I will pick up the series when I reach 1955. For now, it is on to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
I found the second book much more enjoyable than the first, probably because I knew what to expect and was not holding it up against Catcher in the Rye. Taking it for what it was, I was able to slow down and enjoy the clever controlled phrasings of the author and submerge myself in the narrator's world. The characters from the first novel continue to dance in and out of Jenkins's life, and there is a definite sense of building. These first three novels appear to be Act I, in which the world and characters are being established before the second act comes to rattle them all up.
I can't say that I have any clearer idea what the novel is about, or what Powell is saying about the world around us. I have the vague notion that Powell is pointing to the time between the two World Wars as a transitional time in modern culture. The upper-class propriety of the university-educated boys in the first novel was punctured by the upward mobility of Sunny Farebrother and Widmerpool, and those issues of class seem even more prominent in this second book. Sunny and Widmerpool were still part of the dinners and dances of culture in the first book. Here, the main figure who frames the novel is Mr. Deacon, a painter who had some exchanges with Nick's parent when Nick was a boy. Running into him as an adult, Nick gets on friendly terms with Deacon and their worlds overlap, bringing Nick into a more solidly middle-class environment. Deacon and Gypsy Jones are like characters out of a Dickens novel, fun but not entirely scrupulous, and they make the sense of the social order seem less stable and more fluid than before. I feel, in short, that class is at issue in the novel, but what in the end is Powell's interest is still a mystery to me.
I do love the idea of making an epic story out of what seems a rather mundane set of circumstances. Due to Powell's careful construction, I have full faith in his ability to bring all the disparate narratives (which will certainly be getting still more disparate) together in meaningful ways down the road. There is an impressive tightness in the layering of incidences that suggests a formidable discipline at the core of the novels. Just as an example, the figure of E. St. John Clarke is raised by Widmerpool in the opening chapter when he discusses a bit of art criticism published in the papers. Clarke is again mentioned in passing at a party in a following scene, and crops up one or two more time before we learn that Members (one of Nick's acquaintances from university) is a secretary to Clarke. So even though the man himself never makes an appearance, he haunts the conversation of the novel. By doing so, along with similar careful references, Powell feels in complete control of his story, like a Pynchon without the added level of absurdity.
I am also interested in the sense of time in the novel. The past and present co-exist like a picture book with overlays. As Jenkins encounters a new experience he tells us both what he thought at the time and that such thoughts were the product of the too narrow experience of youth. Later, he assures us, he will be able to look back at this moment and understand what was really at issue. As he says at the end of the second book,
This is perhaps an image of how we live. For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected; so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity.This is one of the reasons, I think, that the novel feels weak in plot at this stage. These are moments that have gained significance only in latter years of the narrator's life. These were not the tales he would have told a year after their happening, but they are the tales that lay the groundwork for where his life is to take him. At this point, I can gladly be patient for the story to build and take me someplace meaningful.
Before I go, I would like to pose a question to my non-existent co-readers. What is up with the individual titles in this series? How is the second book A Buyer's Market? Who is buying? Who is selling? And what is being sold? Deacon's art? His antiques? Memories? And what was questionable in the first novel, A Question of Upbringing? These titles make no direct reference to what's happening in the novel, and I can't help but feel that they are some type of clue to Powell's root concerns in the novels. Any help would be appreciated.
I will pick up the series when I reach 1955. For now, it is on to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
Monday, August 13, 2012
A Dance to the Music of Time - Twelve Times!
The '50s look to be a hard decade on this list. I don't mean that the books look more challenging than usual, but that there are a few surprises. First, I saw that The Lord of the Rings was listed as one book, even though it was published as three. But I suppose that is a fair grouping, since Tolkien intended it to be one book and wrote it as such. So, the authors of this list managed to fit 102 books, into their list of a hundred. Imagine my surprise then, when I was looking up the next book on the list, A Dance to the Music of Time, and discovered that this title is actually an epic collection of 12 books! Moreover, they were not written as one book. Volume One, A Question of Upbringing, was published in 1951, the second book in 1952, the third in 1955, all the way up to the last book being published in the mid-70s. So now we are up to 113 books. They are tricksy!
The whole of the novel, I am told, follows our narrator, Nick Jenkins, throughout 50 or so years of his life. The books appear to follow strict chronological order, and this first book, A Question of Upbringing, begins somewhere in the 1920s at Oxford for the three years Jenkins is at university. And while Jenkins is a first-person narrator, and while the book follows his life, it is less about him than about all the people he encounters. He is very much like Isherwood's camera in The Berlin Stories. (Actually, that's another book that was built out of two books! That puts us at 114!).
According to an interview with the Paris review (http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3475/the-art-of-fiction-no-68-anthony-powell), Powell knew he wanted to write a very long piece of fiction. Here's how he explains it:
My enjoyment of this novel suffered somewhat from following fast upon Catcher in the Rye. Caulfield's narration in Catcher is so alive and fresh and wild, that Jenkins's proper English and detached tone felt leaden. Both novels were about young men away from home at school, but Holden's adventures and encounters were much more gripping. As it is, I'm not even sure what the significance of A Dance to the Music of Time is, and I have not grasped its greatness yet, or why it is considered such a literary achievement. Something tells me that I need to read much more to appreciate what the book is doing, so I will leave analysis to later books, which I will read in the order they were published with the rest of the list. I am about to embark on the second book, A Buyer's Market, and should get a better sense of what Powell is doing from there.
This is what I know for now. The first novel opens with the narrator watching men work on a street corner where they had made a kind of camp as they work by the hurricane lamps in the growing dark. The images of these men moving in and out of and around the light makes the narrator think of Poussin's painting, A Dance to the Music of Time:
The whole of the novel, I am told, follows our narrator, Nick Jenkins, throughout 50 or so years of his life. The books appear to follow strict chronological order, and this first book, A Question of Upbringing, begins somewhere in the 1920s at Oxford for the three years Jenkins is at university. And while Jenkins is a first-person narrator, and while the book follows his life, it is less about him than about all the people he encounters. He is very much like Isherwood's camera in The Berlin Stories. (Actually, that's another book that was built out of two books! That puts us at 114!).
According to an interview with the Paris review (http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3475/the-art-of-fiction-no-68-anthony-powell), Powell knew he wanted to write a very long piece of fiction. Here's how he explains it:
Well, this is rather a long story. You see I haven't any great talent for inventing plots, and indeed it seems to me that even the best writers are inclined to churn out the same stuff in eighty thousand words, although it's dressed up in a different way. And so I thought that there would be all sorts of advantages for a writer like myself to write a really long novel in which plots and characters could be developed, which would cover this question of not doing short-term plots—doing rather larger ones, in fact. But of course I didn't know at the beginning quite how long all this was going to be . . . I knew there would be a great number of novels, and about, I suppose, halfway through I realized that I should have to do at least three about the war. Well, having done six before, it seemed the obvious answer to do three to end it up with, because I think it's quite a good idea to have some sort of discipline imposed on yourself in writing, and therefore I deliberately wrote the last three with the idea of ending it up and doing the neat twelve volumes. But I have to admit that in 1951 I didn't know there'd be exactly twelve.He is right about this novel not having much to do with "plots." There are only four chapters in the book, each about 60 pages long, and each acting like something of a short story. We follow his encounters, mainly, with three other boys who were friends or acquaintances his first year at school: Stringham, Templer, and Widmerpool. There are things that happen (and some stories are quite amusing unto themselves), but for the most part, Powell focuses on the interplay between characters. And I'm wishing I had more to say about that interplay.
My enjoyment of this novel suffered somewhat from following fast upon Catcher in the Rye. Caulfield's narration in Catcher is so alive and fresh and wild, that Jenkins's proper English and detached tone felt leaden. Both novels were about young men away from home at school, but Holden's adventures and encounters were much more gripping. As it is, I'm not even sure what the significance of A Dance to the Music of Time is, and I have not grasped its greatness yet, or why it is considered such a literary achievement. Something tells me that I need to read much more to appreciate what the book is doing, so I will leave analysis to later books, which I will read in the order they were published with the rest of the list. I am about to embark on the second book, A Buyer's Market, and should get a better sense of what Powell is doing from there.
This is what I know for now. The first novel opens with the narrator watching men work on a street corner where they had made a kind of camp as they work by the hurricane lamps in the growing dark. The images of these men moving in and out of and around the light makes the narrator think of Poussin's painting, A Dance to the Music of Time:
These classical projections, and something in the physical attitudes of the men themselves as they turned from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin's scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing Outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.And that is the image and theme that ties together the next twelve books. And while I am not in love with the first book, I am hopeful that their will be a reward over the course of the novels, a power built up over time.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Catcher Me If You Can
I hadn't read any Salinger since my college days, and I was excited to get to read him again, as well as a little scared. My sister had recently attempted to read Catcher in the Rye and had told me that she "just couldn't do it." I was afraid that Holden wouldn't be the person I remembered, our old friendship strained as one of us moved on in life while the other stayed in his same old circles.
Instead, our reunion was a happy one, and we got on like we had never been apart. Salinger has an incredible talent for taking hold of a moment and having the details feel simultaneously offhand and poignant, both casual and powerful.
One of the interesting things I find again and again on this journey through these 100+ novels is how varied the novels are aesthetically, and how much work it is to transition from one work to another. Each novel is like moving into a foreign country, and the unfamiliar language and customs are jarring at first. The culture is of course not going to change for your convenience, so you must to the changing if you don't want to be miserable during your stay. If you're lucky, when it comes time to collect your things and catch the next train, you will be able to feel like you understood and appreicated where you have been.
Sometimes the people in the foreign land are cold and formal and unfriendly, and you never feel like you fit in. But occasionally, you feel at home from the moment you pull into the station. The people are warm, the landscape familiar and exotic at the same time. You understand the language and fall into step with the natives without any effort. That was my experience coming back to Catcher in the Rye.
Catcher in the Rye is more of a character study than a novel. Holden Caulfield is the novel. Moreover, he does not have a character arc; he does not progress or grow through the course of the novel. He does not learn something that makes him see the world differently. If you don't like Holden, you are not going to like the novel. If you are taken in by his charm and depth, however, then you are in for a wonderful experience.
I found Holden to be touching and captivating. When I read the book in my early 20s, I was struck by the toughness of Holden, his outward signs of worldliness. He roams the streets of New York like an old pro, smoking, drinking, going to bars, being visited by prostitutes, and walking through Central Park in the deep dark of night. He seemed to be jaded and too fast grown, looking for the innocence he no longer possessed, to protect the innocence symbolized for him by his sister Phoebe and by the children playing in the rye at the cliff's edge. His obsession with phonies was a rejection of the false world of adults that he had been thrust into, diametrically opposed to the honest innocence and natural interaction of kids.
On this reading I had the perspective of being older, of having a son of my own, and I felt a tenderness toward Holden that made me love him all the more. For all his posturing, he is precisely where most 16-year-olds are, in that awkward place between childhood and adulthood. He himself has the very innocence he seeks to protect. For example, his wondering about where the ducks in Central Park go when the pond freezes over kills me, as Holden would say. He has such a genuine love for all the people in his stories, even as he tells you how much he can't stand them. As much as he critiques the other boys in the various schools he attends, he has something nice to say about everyone. He even concludes the novel with that sense of loss over all the people he encountered, even the kids he didn't like. Even his language, which attempts to sound tough, simultaneously sounds childish and sweet. Salinger concluded Holden's narrative with him sitting on a bench watching Phoebe ride the merry-go-round, bawling because she "looked so damn nice." I can't think of a more perfect ending, because I felt just like Holden, only it was he who was on the merry-go-round, circling New York City and the people of the story, reaching for the gold ring, as I sat on the bench worrying about him falling, but not interfering. As I said earlier, Holden doesn't have a character arc, so it is literally like a merry-go-round that takes us nowhere over the 48 hours that the novel covers, And like Phoebe, who chooses the same mount to ride after circling the ride, Holden selects the same course of action again and again.
Salinger is a master of his craft, and I find his style to be very powerful. First-person narratives are always a challenge because you need to be in character and still say something meaningful. The usual solution to this problem is to have the narrator have a few verbal tics to throw in occasionally and then tell the story you want. Given how particular Holden's talk is, it should by all rights become overpowering and tiring, perhaps satisfying the needs of a short story, but never sustaining the needs of a novel. But Salinger makes it work again and again. And more importantly, he mines the language of youth for its poetry. Holden has a detail that sums up everyone he encounters. Jane, for example, never uses her kings in checkers; she just keeps them on the back row. When Holden's roommate takes Jane out on a date, Holden, being sixteen, has a hell of a time processing his emotions about the possibility of Stradlater making time with Jane. The inevitable result of Holden's immaturity and powerful emotions is a fight, which ends with Stradlater kneeling on Holden's chest, pinning his wrists to the ground: "He kept holding onto my wrists and I kept calling hims a sonuvabitch and all, for around ten hours. I can hardly even remember what all I said to him. I told him he thought he could give the time to anybody he felt like. I told him he didn't even care if a girl kept all her kings in the back row or not, and the reason he didn't care was because he was a goddam stupid moron." These phrases echo like refrains in a song, gaining power and force with each repetition. Holden just about breaks my heart.
I have gone on long enough, so I will spare you my thoughts about Catcher in the Rye as a first criticism of the American Dream and feeling of optimism that grew throughout the 50s as the American economy grew stronger and stronger (that bit about needing your luggage to not be better than your roommate's is brilliant!). We won't talk about his red hunting hat or his crying when Phoebe gave him her Christmas money, or Phoebe's playing Benedict Arnold in the school play. Feel free to talk about those things yourself, or anything else that struck you about the novel.
Instead, our reunion was a happy one, and we got on like we had never been apart. Salinger has an incredible talent for taking hold of a moment and having the details feel simultaneously offhand and poignant, both casual and powerful.
One of the interesting things I find again and again on this journey through these 100+ novels is how varied the novels are aesthetically, and how much work it is to transition from one work to another. Each novel is like moving into a foreign country, and the unfamiliar language and customs are jarring at first. The culture is of course not going to change for your convenience, so you must to the changing if you don't want to be miserable during your stay. If you're lucky, when it comes time to collect your things and catch the next train, you will be able to feel like you understood and appreicated where you have been.
Sometimes the people in the foreign land are cold and formal and unfriendly, and you never feel like you fit in. But occasionally, you feel at home from the moment you pull into the station. The people are warm, the landscape familiar and exotic at the same time. You understand the language and fall into step with the natives without any effort. That was my experience coming back to Catcher in the Rye.
Catcher in the Rye is more of a character study than a novel. Holden Caulfield is the novel. Moreover, he does not have a character arc; he does not progress or grow through the course of the novel. He does not learn something that makes him see the world differently. If you don't like Holden, you are not going to like the novel. If you are taken in by his charm and depth, however, then you are in for a wonderful experience.
I found Holden to be touching and captivating. When I read the book in my early 20s, I was struck by the toughness of Holden, his outward signs of worldliness. He roams the streets of New York like an old pro, smoking, drinking, going to bars, being visited by prostitutes, and walking through Central Park in the deep dark of night. He seemed to be jaded and too fast grown, looking for the innocence he no longer possessed, to protect the innocence symbolized for him by his sister Phoebe and by the children playing in the rye at the cliff's edge. His obsession with phonies was a rejection of the false world of adults that he had been thrust into, diametrically opposed to the honest innocence and natural interaction of kids.
On this reading I had the perspective of being older, of having a son of my own, and I felt a tenderness toward Holden that made me love him all the more. For all his posturing, he is precisely where most 16-year-olds are, in that awkward place between childhood and adulthood. He himself has the very innocence he seeks to protect. For example, his wondering about where the ducks in Central Park go when the pond freezes over kills me, as Holden would say. He has such a genuine love for all the people in his stories, even as he tells you how much he can't stand them. As much as he critiques the other boys in the various schools he attends, he has something nice to say about everyone. He even concludes the novel with that sense of loss over all the people he encountered, even the kids he didn't like. Even his language, which attempts to sound tough, simultaneously sounds childish and sweet. Salinger concluded Holden's narrative with him sitting on a bench watching Phoebe ride the merry-go-round, bawling because she "looked so damn nice." I can't think of a more perfect ending, because I felt just like Holden, only it was he who was on the merry-go-round, circling New York City and the people of the story, reaching for the gold ring, as I sat on the bench worrying about him falling, but not interfering. As I said earlier, Holden doesn't have a character arc, so it is literally like a merry-go-round that takes us nowhere over the 48 hours that the novel covers, And like Phoebe, who chooses the same mount to ride after circling the ride, Holden selects the same course of action again and again.
Salinger is a master of his craft, and I find his style to be very powerful. First-person narratives are always a challenge because you need to be in character and still say something meaningful. The usual solution to this problem is to have the narrator have a few verbal tics to throw in occasionally and then tell the story you want. Given how particular Holden's talk is, it should by all rights become overpowering and tiring, perhaps satisfying the needs of a short story, but never sustaining the needs of a novel. But Salinger makes it work again and again. And more importantly, he mines the language of youth for its poetry. Holden has a detail that sums up everyone he encounters. Jane, for example, never uses her kings in checkers; she just keeps them on the back row. When Holden's roommate takes Jane out on a date, Holden, being sixteen, has a hell of a time processing his emotions about the possibility of Stradlater making time with Jane. The inevitable result of Holden's immaturity and powerful emotions is a fight, which ends with Stradlater kneeling on Holden's chest, pinning his wrists to the ground: "He kept holding onto my wrists and I kept calling hims a sonuvabitch and all, for around ten hours. I can hardly even remember what all I said to him. I told him he thought he could give the time to anybody he felt like. I told him he didn't even care if a girl kept all her kings in the back row or not, and the reason he didn't care was because he was a goddam stupid moron." These phrases echo like refrains in a song, gaining power and force with each repetition. Holden just about breaks my heart.
I have gone on long enough, so I will spare you my thoughts about Catcher in the Rye as a first criticism of the American Dream and feeling of optimism that grew throughout the 50s as the American economy grew stronger and stronger (that bit about needing your luggage to not be better than your roommate's is brilliant!). We won't talk about his red hunting hat or his crying when Phoebe gave him her Christmas money, or Phoebe's playing Benedict Arnold in the school play. Feel free to talk about those things yourself, or anything else that struck you about the novel.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
The Lion, the Witch and the What What!
We made it to a new decade! 1950! 24 years down, 56 to go!
And now we have made it to C.S. Lewis's classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (without the Oxford comma!). This is the first children's work in the bunch, and I think it is the only one, and its presence in this list gives us a little insight into what puts a novel into the top 100. For my taste, any of Roald Dahl's works is better written, more entertaining, and more riveting than this book, but none of Dahl's novels made the cut. This could just be a matter of taste, but I suspect it has to do with the classic standing of Lewis's piece. I touched upon this angle to Time's selection of novels when discussing Hammett's Red Harvest. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a watershed novel, a standard against which every other children's story of adventure is measured. The book is such a part of our cultural language and thought that it practically demands placement in the list.
I don't have much to say beyond that observation because a ton of type has already been spent on this book that I couldn't possibly say anything new. Surprisingly, this is the first time I have read the book (I wasn't much of a reader as a kid--I saw the cartoon that aired on TV). And I was surprised by how I wasn't in love with it as I read it. There were some fantastic passages and perfect descriptions. The entire scene in which Aslan sacrifices himself was powerful, the best scene in the book. The description of the statues coming back to life like a flame taking to newspaper ("stone folds rippled into living hair"!), was perfectly evocative. But a couple things left me scratching my head. Father Christmas? Really? A ton of fairy tales have that moment when the hero is given a gift that will turn the tide down the way, so Lewis is in a fine tradition here, but Santa Clause? And while I loved the phrase "always winter and never Christmas," I can't endorse the appearance of Santa. And why was Susan given a bow if she never makes use of it. The horn is a fine gift and gets a blow, but Susan definitely got shafted in the gift-giving department (and in the plot department over all, I say).
And that ending? Really? The kids grow to adulthood in the kingdom as kings and queens, not missing their mother or any other family. Okay, I guess I could see that; they have each other after all. But then they tumble through the wardrobe and find themselves kids again? Who wants to go from being twenty-something and independent to a teenager? From a king to an 8th grade kid? Count me out!
And now we have made it to C.S. Lewis's classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (without the Oxford comma!). This is the first children's work in the bunch, and I think it is the only one, and its presence in this list gives us a little insight into what puts a novel into the top 100. For my taste, any of Roald Dahl's works is better written, more entertaining, and more riveting than this book, but none of Dahl's novels made the cut. This could just be a matter of taste, but I suspect it has to do with the classic standing of Lewis's piece. I touched upon this angle to Time's selection of novels when discussing Hammett's Red Harvest. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a watershed novel, a standard against which every other children's story of adventure is measured. The book is such a part of our cultural language and thought that it practically demands placement in the list.
I don't have much to say beyond that observation because a ton of type has already been spent on this book that I couldn't possibly say anything new. Surprisingly, this is the first time I have read the book (I wasn't much of a reader as a kid--I saw the cartoon that aired on TV). And I was surprised by how I wasn't in love with it as I read it. There were some fantastic passages and perfect descriptions. The entire scene in which Aslan sacrifices himself was powerful, the best scene in the book. The description of the statues coming back to life like a flame taking to newspaper ("stone folds rippled into living hair"!), was perfectly evocative. But a couple things left me scratching my head. Father Christmas? Really? A ton of fairy tales have that moment when the hero is given a gift that will turn the tide down the way, so Lewis is in a fine tradition here, but Santa Clause? And while I loved the phrase "always winter and never Christmas," I can't endorse the appearance of Santa. And why was Susan given a bow if she never makes use of it. The horn is a fine gift and gets a blow, but Susan definitely got shafted in the gift-giving department (and in the plot department over all, I say).
And that ending? Really? The kids grow to adulthood in the kingdom as kings and queens, not missing their mother or any other family. Okay, I guess I could see that; they have each other after all. But then they tumble through the wardrobe and find themselves kids again? Who wants to go from being twenty-something and independent to a teenager? From a king to an 8th grade kid? Count me out!
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Desert-ed
As I've noted many times in these entries, I know very little about most of the books I am reading here. And I am perpetually amazed at my inability to see where any of these novels end up. See my last entry about Greene's The Heart of the Matter for a perfect example of an unexpected turn. I'd like to think that my failure to predict has nothing to do with my being an inattentive or weak reader. Instead, I think that it is because I don't know what the novel is about until the ending twists my neck along with the plot.
It will not surprise you to learn, then, that Paul Bowles throws me for yet another loop with his novel The Sheltering Sky.
At the start of the novel, Bowles sets up the characters, their competing desires, and the tensions that will fuel their interactions. Port and Kit are independently wealthy New York intellectuals who are traveling in Northern Africa to see some part of the world untouched by the war. The couple is estranged sexually, though they still have many affections for each other and appear to be best friends. Port is searching for something genuinely not European or American, something original, something primal. Kit, while very like Port, would much rather be in Italy or France. Neither likes the heat, the people, or the Europeanized city that they begin in, but Port wants to move deeper into the Sahara desert, fascinated by its raw wildness. Port wants a solitary experience, but he wants Kit to share it with. Kit is a believer in omens and sign and does not care to glimpse into the power beyond them. Even the recounting of dreams shakes Kit to her foundation as she fear what's at the route of them. In one of the happier moments, Port and Kit rent bicycles and go riding out to the dunes, where they park and watch the sunset. For Kit, "Sunset is such a sad hour." But for Port, "It was such places as this, such moments that he loved above all else in life. . . . And although he was aware that the very silences and emptinesses that touched his soul terrified her, he could not bear to be reminded of that." He hoped she "would be touched in the same way as he by solitude and the proximity to infinite things," but of course, they merely terrified her. But for this critical difference, the two seem very well suited to each other, and both overthink their actions and reactions and fail again and again to make the connection they want.
Complicating matters is their traveling companion, Tunner, a good looking man several years younger than they who was captivated by the couple and gladly followed them to Africa. He is a perfect foil for Port. Tunner appears to be shallow with a surface of kindness and good-spiritedness that drives Kit crazy. The other Eurpean characters are Mr. Lyle and the woman he claims is his mother.
It is among these characters and their interaction that the stage is set, and foolishly I thought the stage was set for interpersonal drama. We have a love triangle (Tunner has a crush on Kit, and the two have a shared night in a train car while Port has traveled ahead with the Lyles). We have growing tension as the group travels deeper inland away from civilization that they understand and amenities they are used to. Mr. Lyle turns out to be a thief and makes off with Port's passport, and when Port takes Kit further inland without his passport to avoid meeting Tunner who is returning with his passport, it seems that they couple is bound for trouble. Will the couple work things out? Will the love triangle resolve or explode? Will the missing passport and the inability to prove his identity land Port in trouble with the authorities? On that final bus ride into the Sahara, port becomes ill, and we wonder will the lack of hospital care force Kit and him into a precarious position?
And just as everything is set up, as all the questions are floating before the reader, the plot crumbles in our hands. Port dies after an extended period of delirium. And after hiding the fact of Port's death, Kit steals off into the desert in the middle of the night. The entire last portion of the novel follows Kit as she encounters strange Arab merchants who take her for a lover and then a wife, disguising her as a boy. Then after she escapes, she encounters another Arab whom she takes for a lover before he steals all her Francs.
What?!
I did not see that coming. And it's at that moment, that I always need to re-approach the first two-thirds, the setting up of the story. Either the writer panicked in the middle of his book and went running off in a blind direction, or the points he built up earlier were not about what I thought they were about. And sure enough, it becomes apparent that Ports infidelities with Marhnia and his obsession with the blind dancer are not about his infidelities any more than Kit's is. The girls are that true experience with another world that Port is questing for. Meanwhile Bowles is letting us know what Kit is like faced with the limits of her knowledge. Tunner is there not to set up a love triangle, but to propel Port into the desert where he can die alone in a tete-a-tete with the nothingness of being. That moment is what the novel builds too. In fact, we are given hints that this is where we are going from the very beginning.
In the first chapter, Port wakes from a nap, and Bowles describes the moving in and out of nothingness, into and out of the room around him, and Port's calm. This scene is echoed in Port's dying scene in which he enters and leaves the room, balancing between something and nothing. Losing Port, Kit must face the ugliness of existence and the loss of her only love. Her experience is further tainted by her guilt and anger, and the result is something of a psychotic break. Her fear of the nothingness of death is greater than her fear of life and she wanders out into the world no longer afraid wanting to forget all her experiences and knowledge.
Now what happens to her after that is either reality or purely fantasy. It is gripping and bizarre, but my brain kept revolting against what it was being fed. I do love the ending however, where Kit re-encounters "civilization" a broken woman who belongs neither among the living or the dead.
The moral of the story (my story, that is) is that we often mistake our misreading of a book for the mis-writing of the tale. We need to be willing to assume that the writer told the exact tale that he or she wanted to tell, and our anger and frustration that it did not go where we thought it would go (and wanted it to go) is not to be blamed on the book itself. Part of our job as reader is to wrestle with the text and pull out the meaning that's there.
If you can experience The Sheltering Sky for what it is and not get caught up in what it is not, you are in for a real treat.
It will not surprise you to learn, then, that Paul Bowles throws me for yet another loop with his novel The Sheltering Sky.
At the start of the novel, Bowles sets up the characters, their competing desires, and the tensions that will fuel their interactions. Port and Kit are independently wealthy New York intellectuals who are traveling in Northern Africa to see some part of the world untouched by the war. The couple is estranged sexually, though they still have many affections for each other and appear to be best friends. Port is searching for something genuinely not European or American, something original, something primal. Kit, while very like Port, would much rather be in Italy or France. Neither likes the heat, the people, or the Europeanized city that they begin in, but Port wants to move deeper into the Sahara desert, fascinated by its raw wildness. Port wants a solitary experience, but he wants Kit to share it with. Kit is a believer in omens and sign and does not care to glimpse into the power beyond them. Even the recounting of dreams shakes Kit to her foundation as she fear what's at the route of them. In one of the happier moments, Port and Kit rent bicycles and go riding out to the dunes, where they park and watch the sunset. For Kit, "Sunset is such a sad hour." But for Port, "It was such places as this, such moments that he loved above all else in life. . . . And although he was aware that the very silences and emptinesses that touched his soul terrified her, he could not bear to be reminded of that." He hoped she "would be touched in the same way as he by solitude and the proximity to infinite things," but of course, they merely terrified her. But for this critical difference, the two seem very well suited to each other, and both overthink their actions and reactions and fail again and again to make the connection they want.
Complicating matters is their traveling companion, Tunner, a good looking man several years younger than they who was captivated by the couple and gladly followed them to Africa. He is a perfect foil for Port. Tunner appears to be shallow with a surface of kindness and good-spiritedness that drives Kit crazy. The other Eurpean characters are Mr. Lyle and the woman he claims is his mother.
It is among these characters and their interaction that the stage is set, and foolishly I thought the stage was set for interpersonal drama. We have a love triangle (Tunner has a crush on Kit, and the two have a shared night in a train car while Port has traveled ahead with the Lyles). We have growing tension as the group travels deeper inland away from civilization that they understand and amenities they are used to. Mr. Lyle turns out to be a thief and makes off with Port's passport, and when Port takes Kit further inland without his passport to avoid meeting Tunner who is returning with his passport, it seems that they couple is bound for trouble. Will the couple work things out? Will the love triangle resolve or explode? Will the missing passport and the inability to prove his identity land Port in trouble with the authorities? On that final bus ride into the Sahara, port becomes ill, and we wonder will the lack of hospital care force Kit and him into a precarious position?
And just as everything is set up, as all the questions are floating before the reader, the plot crumbles in our hands. Port dies after an extended period of delirium. And after hiding the fact of Port's death, Kit steals off into the desert in the middle of the night. The entire last portion of the novel follows Kit as she encounters strange Arab merchants who take her for a lover and then a wife, disguising her as a boy. Then after she escapes, she encounters another Arab whom she takes for a lover before he steals all her Francs.
What?!
I did not see that coming. And it's at that moment, that I always need to re-approach the first two-thirds, the setting up of the story. Either the writer panicked in the middle of his book and went running off in a blind direction, or the points he built up earlier were not about what I thought they were about. And sure enough, it becomes apparent that Ports infidelities with Marhnia and his obsession with the blind dancer are not about his infidelities any more than Kit's is. The girls are that true experience with another world that Port is questing for. Meanwhile Bowles is letting us know what Kit is like faced with the limits of her knowledge. Tunner is there not to set up a love triangle, but to propel Port into the desert where he can die alone in a tete-a-tete with the nothingness of being. That moment is what the novel builds too. In fact, we are given hints that this is where we are going from the very beginning.
In the first chapter, Port wakes from a nap, and Bowles describes the moving in and out of nothingness, into and out of the room around him, and Port's calm. This scene is echoed in Port's dying scene in which he enters and leaves the room, balancing between something and nothing. Losing Port, Kit must face the ugliness of existence and the loss of her only love. Her experience is further tainted by her guilt and anger, and the result is something of a psychotic break. Her fear of the nothingness of death is greater than her fear of life and she wanders out into the world no longer afraid wanting to forget all her experiences and knowledge.
Now what happens to her after that is either reality or purely fantasy. It is gripping and bizarre, but my brain kept revolting against what it was being fed. I do love the ending however, where Kit re-encounters "civilization" a broken woman who belongs neither among the living or the dead.
The moral of the story (my story, that is) is that we often mistake our misreading of a book for the mis-writing of the tale. We need to be willing to assume that the writer told the exact tale that he or she wanted to tell, and our anger and frustration that it did not go where we thought it would go (and wanted it to go) is not to be blamed on the book itself. Part of our job as reader is to wrestle with the text and pull out the meaning that's there.
If you can experience The Sheltering Sky for what it is and not get caught up in what it is not, you are in for a real treat.
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