God’s Country – Percival Everett

I usually write reviews of all books I make it at least halfway through, but there was an exception. Here’s an excerpt from an essay I wrote about a year ago, entitled Racism in Fiction: “I’m not writing a review of God’s Country — it’s not worth the effort. Everett is a facile writer, and it seemed to me that he tossed off this piece of crude and abusive nonsense with the primary purpose of expressing his feelings toward the white race.” The reason I’m now referencing it is due to the reception Everett’s recent work has gotten. James has received both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. It’s a reworking of Huckleberry Finn, told from the POV of Jim, the slave. Maybe it’s good. Maybe he’s toned down his feelings. But my local library only has digital versions of the book, and I’m not going to read it off a screen. And I’m not going to buy it.

You can read the essay dealing with God’s Country at Tapping on the Wall 

The Mangan Inheritance – Brian Moore

Moore should get credit for his clear, smooth prose, which carries the reader along effortlessly. I was carried along effortlessly in the first part, when Jamie Mangan was living in New York, married to a woman who had become a star of stage and screen. And who ditches him for a producer. But before her divorce, she gets into a fatal car accident, and Jamie winds up the sole heir to a lot of money. That’s only one inheritance in this novel. The other one (or at least the possibility of one) is discovered by Jamie while staying with his father. He comes across an old daguerreotype and is startled: he could be looking at the image of himself. The man photographed just might be the famous (and famously dissolute) 19^th century Irish poet, James Clarence Mangan. Jamie, in his younger days, had fashioned himself as a poet; that ambition had fizzled, but is now revived: could the poet’s blood of his ancestor flow in his veins? So off he goes to Ireland, to a remote and dismal village where some Mangans live. They’re a ragtag and mysterious group (they seem to be hiding some secret). Jamie is immediately smitten by a teenage vamp, and Moore serves up an explicit sex scene. Which I wished he had spared me. Actually, I had fallen out of sympathy with the proceedings. I had the feeling of being mired down in an Irish bog. I just didn’t care about Jamie’s search. I didn’t care if he was an ancestor of JCM, I didn’t care if he would start writing poetry again. If, indeed, that was where Moore was headed. But I didn’t care where he was headed. 

Open Secrets – Alice Munro

Munro won the Nobel Prize, so learned studies of her work will be coming out. I’m going to make some generalizations about this collection, which was an early mid-career work, and came out just before A Friend of My Youth. I read that book and thought it had three very good stories, but in my review I wrote that most were “baggy, unfocused and too long.” All those problems were endemic in this collection. By “baggy” I’m referring to the many loose ends left hanging about. And too many characters appear but play no real role; they amount to clutter. That’s part of being “unfocused,” a problem that also arises from the way Munro shifts about in time. We go back and forth, we skip over years (decades!). Munro doesn’t focus on a limited scale; it’s as if she wants to write a novel that covers an entire life (which helps to make the stories “too long”). And where are we left at the end? Often in a sort of limbo. The last story in the collection, and the last one I read (I skipped “The Albanian Virgin”) was “Vandals.” It begins with a letter (almost every story has letters, some quite long) and then we go back to when Bea meets Ladner and falls in love. (Is it love?; I guess so.) He’s a strange duck, but interesting. Then we switch to present time, to two other characters, Liza and her husband Warren, both young. Liza lives near the Ladner home (Ladner had died), and Bea writes a letter asking them to check on the house where Ladner (and, later, she) had lived. What Liza does is gleefully and maliciously trash the entire place (initially Warren watches, seemingly unconcerned, but later joins in). They plan to blame the destruction on vandals. Why does Liza do this – act like a maniac? Something seems to have happened between her and Ladner when she was very young. We get gauzy flashback images suggesting that. But what? Molestation? My reaction? – Alice, spit it out. Quit with the vagueness. I don’t need any explicit description, but I do need more than hints. In this collection the most concise story is “The Jack Randa Hotel,” which also has a definite ending. But I can’t say it’s the best, because I didn’t think it was anything special. Is Munro a talented writer? Yes, absolutely – I enjoyed parts, even whole sections, of every story. And some of her stories I’ve read in the past have worked entirely. But none in this collection achieved success, for the reasons I’ve given. In fact, dissatisfaction set in, which is why I skipped “Virgin.” I just had my fill of disorderly storytelling. Final note: I checked Goodreads reviews, and a two star review was brief but, I believe, makes a good summary: “I’m still not quite sure what did and didn’t happen in this book.” Same with me, bro.

A Patchwork Planet – Anne Tyler

I found this novel to be enjoyable and satisfying. Barnaby, the main character, came to life, as did the secondary ones. I pretty much liked everybody (with the exception of a few, but they were jerks). And if there’s a point being made about Life, it’s in Barnaby’s interactions with his clients at Rent-a-Back. That business provides assistance to those who need it – which is, mostly, the elderly. Clean out an attic, get a prescription, move a sofa, fix a leaky faucet. All manner of little and not-so-little jobs and errands. In some cases, he’s just providing human contact (under a flimsy premise). We get a look at old age that is, I believe, accurate and meaningful. Barnaby is invariably patient and caring (though not in a gushy way). He has an innate decency. But why is he, at age thirty, working for meager wages at such a low-level job? Couldn’t an intelligent guy do better? It all has to do with a misspent youth, which he never rises above. He never “gets his act together.” Some might classify him as a loser, but I didn’t. Maybe he found his calling at Rent-a-Back. As for Tyler’s plot, it has its strengths and its weaknesses, but the weaknesses weren’t deal-breakers. That said, I must admit that I felt sorry for what happens to Sophia at the end. She’s the thirty-five-year-old woman Barnaby gets romantically involved with. I don’t believe her mistake in judgement was so bad. But my having this opinion stems from that virtue of the novel I mentioned: I liked the lady. Last note, pertaining to that Goodreads reader who, in reading the Munros stories I reviewed above, was “not quite sure what did and didn’t happen.” Try Tyler. You won’t run into that problem.

Reviews from the past

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

Mr. Darcy was a problem for me, one that never went away. For most of the book Austen presents him as a man whose sense of superiority is such that he has open disdain for those who don’t meet his lofty standards. He’s also a meddler; he uses every resource to separate his friend from a woman who he, Darcy, considers an inappropriate match. Since he displays little feeling for Elizabeth, when his proposal of marriage comes it’s a surprise (her “astonishment was beyond expression”); she rejects him and catalogues her reasons for actively disliking him. Yet they will marry, and this is due to nothing short of a metamorphosis in Darcy. Suddenly he engages in all sorts of kind, generous acts. We’re to take this as an indication of his feelings for Elizabeth, but to me it wasn’t Darcy doing these things; it was Austen stacking the deck in his favor. Does she succeed at making the two credible as lovers? I saw no warmth on either side. Darcy remains wooden, and though the same cannot be said of Elizabeth, her most passionate moment takes place when she first sees his estate; the splendor of the house and grounds is such that she feels “to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!” When her sister asks her how long she has loved Darcy, she answers, “I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.” Her mother is enraptured by the marriage: “Oh! my sweetest Lizzie! how rich and how great you will be!” Her sentiments are not just those of a small-minded and greedy woman. In the society of the idle rich depicted in this book (no main character does a lick of work) people maneuver to be in the good graces of those who rank higher in wealth and status. The two worst toadies – Elizabeth’s mother and the fatuous Mr. Collins – are one-dimensional objects of Austen’s ridicule and disdain. Yet Elizabeth’s friend marries Mr. Collins for the financial security he can provide. And Elizabeth? After her marriage she plans to protect Darcy from the “mortification” of having to interact with “vulgar” people. She “looked forward with delight to the time when they should be removed from society so little pleasing to either, to all the comfort and elegance of their family party at Pemberley.” (2 other books by this author are reviewed)

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

I’m an ardent admirer of Waugh, but this book, his magnus opus, is a mistake. How does it differ from the seven earlier works that I hold in high esteem? For beginners, in the prose. Waugh’s beautiful sentences are self-consciously ornamental; when he reverts to the stringent economy of his old style (as in Charles Ryder’s stay with his craftily malicious father), the novel rises to excellence; in fact, it succeeds in all sections in which Charles is an observer. Detachment was Waugh’s strength. But in Brideshead he taps into his intimate emotions (he uses a first person narrator, which he had never done before). He begins by recreating a paradisaical Oxford and Charles’s friendship with the “madly charming” Sebastian Flyte (who carries around a life-size Teddy Bear named Aloysius). The young men are inseparable and do gay things together. I use “gay” with a double meaning; since Waugh has the two sunbath together in the nude, I wondered why he didn’t take the step of making their relationship a physical one. Charles writes of Sebastian: “He was magically beautiful, with that epicene quality that in extreme youth sings aloud for love . . .” In this book there’s much talk of love (Charles thinks that “to know and love another human being is the root of all wisdom”). But – going back to Waugh’s strengths – he excelled at depicting hapless characters being cruelly manipulated, or monsters of selfishness doing the manipulating. Love is precisely what he’s unable to make credible in Brideshead. Sebastian is one of a number of people who are discarded. As the disastrous Book Two begins ten years have passed, and Charles is returning from the jungles of South America. He’s married but loathes his wife and cares not one whit for his two children. When he encounters Sebastian’s sister, the beautiful and tragic Julia, an empyreal love springs up between them. The gauzy, rhapsodic prose in which it’s described is, at times, laughable. He and Julia part over some religious mumbo-jumbo concerning the operation of divine grace. As with the discarded characters, this seemed like a convenient way to avoid dealing with the mundaneness of a long-term commitment. I find it significant that, early in the book, there’s a nine page monologue in which a homosexual character unloads on Sebastian and Julia; he goes beyond cattiness and into the truly vicious. The point is, it’s a brilliant sequence that showcases Waugh at his best. It surprises me that so many people buy into what’s false in this novel: its elegiac romance. (3)

See essay at The Five Star Club

Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell

This was Orwell’s first book, and the edition I have categorizes it as a novel. Actually, it’s three parts reportage, one part fiction. In Paris the unnamed narrator works as a plonguer (a dishwasher with a variety of other tasks) in a large hotel and later in a Russian restaurant. The kitchens in both places are filthy and vermin-infested. His experiences “destroyed one of my illusions, namely, the idea that Frenchmen know good food when they see it.” The work is physically punishing and often frenetic; verbal abuse is so commonplace that “imbecile” is a mild form of address. The pay for sixteen hour days (with only Sundays off) is barely enough to cover the cost of a tiny room in a hotel (also filthy and vermin-infested). For Orwell the City of Lights shrank to his workplace, the Metro, a bistro (to get drunk in on Saturday nights) and his bed. The Paris section teems with colorful characters carrying on in a state of high drama. When Orwell moves to England things slow to a more sedate pace. But in London he never finds work – he’s a tramp, sleeping in “spikes.” These government-sponsored boarding houses limit an individual to one night’s stay, a rule which causes the poor to constantly be on the move (thus comes the word “tramp”). Meals at the spikes consist of tea and two slices of bread with margarine; men sleep (or try to) crammed into filthy dormitories; the “beds” are often the floor. Though Orwell doesn’t in any way ennoble the down-and-out, he believes that most of the men he encounters could be worthwhile citizens. They would prefer to work, but the inability to keep themselves clean, or to have decent clothes, limits their options. And as they idly wander, their hopes are extinguished and their bodies deteriorate. They’re even denied the comforts of sex; no woman would have anything to do with them, and they don’t have money for the cheapest prostitute. The book is grimy and vulgar, as befits its subject (the Paris section reminded me of the atmosphere of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer). Orwell is successful in relating conditions, but he understands that his insight is limited because he’s not stuck in that life. He closes by writing, “I should like to know what really goes on in the minds of plonguers and tramps and Embankment sleepers. At present I do not feel that I have seen but the fringe of poverty.” An issue that cannot be avoided in reviewing this book is the anti-Semitism that runs through it. Is Orwell merely relating the attitude of his friend Boris when the man goes into a long diatribe expressing his virulent hatred for Jews? Why, whenever a Jew appears (and Orwell can spot them), are they depicted in a very negative light? For a man whose compassion and intelligence I respected, I found this to be disturbing. And disappointing. (6)

Five Star Club

Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie

I decided I should read something by an author whose books have sold in the billions. This Hercule Poirot mystery was published four years before Christie’s death (at age eighty-six), but it doesn’t show any signs of fatigue. The no-frills prose achieves its utilitarian purpose of moving things along at a nice pace. There’s not much to Poirot – he’s courtly and a good questioner (which is pretty much all he does). Another character – Mrs. Oliver, an elderly lady who writes detective stories – is more lively. The plot gets a bit muddled in the middle – too many facts, too many leads – but things sort themselves out, and I was able to figure out who did what to whom before Poirot explains it all at the end. As for logic (where most mysteries flounder), we never learn where the bullet wounds were located. Head, heart? This matters, and so is a glaring omission. Also, we’re asked to believe that two sane people would allow a homicidal maniac (someone who kills children!) to carry on for a lifetime. Despite such missteps, this was a pleasant diversion. Pleasant? Though death by violence is the subject, it happens well offstage (a type of mystery deemed a “cozy,” probably linking it to the knitted covering put over teapots). Dame Christie may be summarizing her own career when she has Mrs. Oliver think: “She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read.” After I finished this book I tried a Miss Marple (The 4:50 from Paddington); I hoped it would be better than Elephants, but it was worse. So I won’t be one of the billions. (1)

The House on Mango Street – Sandra Cisneros

The edition I had was Knoph’s tenth anniversary “celebration” of the book’s initial publication. It’s actually a mini-book – small in size, almost a square, and the font is large; it’s 134 pages long. The publisher deems it a “coming-of-age classic.” It’s a very easy read about a Chicano family living in poverty in Chicago. It’s episodic, filled with colorful characters. It’s not an angry book, not an indictment; there’s no grinding of axes. It moves nicely. But I only made it about halfway through. It just wasn’t for me. Maybe it was too simplistic – I’ve appreciated quite a few coming of age books by women writers, but they were more complex, more geared to adult sensibilities. If I was a young girl (especially one who was culturally different from my peers) I would have finished the book (especially since it is now assigned reading in many junior high school classrooms). Anyway, it made Cisneros famous. In her introduction she acknowledges the novel’s autobiographical aspects. And she also keeps referring to Iowa. Why Iowa? – need you ask? It’s interesting that the road to fame for this poor Chicano girl would go through the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop. There, in that simple fact, is a lesson for those with literary ambitions to take heed of.

Everything to Live For – Paul Horgan

This is the second of the three “Richard books.” (The first, Things as They Are, is on my Most Memorable Books list.) The two differ in a number of significant ways. Things is in the first person, is episodic (like linked stories), and Richard is a child. Everything is in the third person, has a definite plot that covers events in a single summer when Richard is seventeen. He’s spending that summer with very wealthy relatives. Actually, he finds that he’s been invited there to be a stabilizing influence for Max, the son of the family. Max is twenty-one, and is a complex character. Though he has everything to live for – good looks, intelligence, the love of a terrific girl, money he’ll be inheriting – he’s going off the rails emotionally. Why is he so unhappy, why does he act in such an objectionable way, why is he so reckless? So bent on self-destruction? We get an answer, which I found to be on the weak side. Max’s behavior and emotions dominate everybody, and I found a reaction gradually setting in: Really, is he so damn important? The whole premise struck me as shaky. Not helping matters is that Richard came across as unusually self-assured for his age. And the book is often over-written, over-thought. Still, despite all these negatives, I stayed involved. Many aspects of Everything are good (particularly the portrayal of the secondary characters). I believe that Horgan was too emotionally invested in the material. (Why? – was he Richard?) This is one of those novels that should have been done with more detachment.

Post script: I’m not doing re-reads anymore (at least not for now), but after I finished Everything I found that, in 2008, I had written a review of it. Seventeen years is a long gap, but I never had the slightest inkling of having read it before. And in my previous review (which was negative) I give a reason for its failure that never occurred to me this time around. Makes one wonder . . .

The Wife – Alafair Burke

The author is the daughter of the crime novelist James Lee Burke, so she had her foot securely in the publishing world. Yet she has other irons in the fire. She went to Stanford Law School and then worked as a deputy district attorney in Portland, where she prosecuted domestic violence cases. And, besides writing a lot of books, she’s a professor of law at Hofstra University. So she knows how the legal system works as regards crime cases, which lends a valuable authenticity to The Wife. But can she write a good novel? Well, yes, but with limitations. There are two lines of narrative: one is in the first person, in which Amanda (the titular wife) relates events. The other is in third person and follows a detective named Corrine. The story opens with Amanda’s husband – a professor of law at NYU – being accused by a student of making inappropriate sexual advances. Things escalate (mainly a rape accusation from another source). Then one of the accusers disappears. Things get very complicated (and involve Amanda’s past). Too complicated? Too many loose ends floating around? Yes, in my opinion. But my main problem is the first-person narrator. This type of novel depends on surprising the reader, but that’s most often based on the author using misleading tactics. Near the end of The Wife we find out that, in the version of events Amanda has given us (and why would we not have believed her?), much has been withheld or is outright false. Since I react badly to being misled, I wasn’t happy with this twist. And the novel, with all those complications (which keep growing), is too long and is filled with texts and emails and cell phones and internet searches – all of which law enforcement can use to trace your actions (potential wrongdoers beware!). I did stick it out to the end only to find that some important things were left unresolved. So I have a few questions for Ms. Burke: Was the husband convicted of murder? Does Corrine follow up on leads that implicate Angela – as she states she’ll do in the book’s final sentence? Is there going to be a sequel? Is the movie deal still on? Please reply at this site.

Hotel Savoy – Joseph Roth (German)

This short novel – an early work by Roth – was published in 1924, yet it seems quite modern. The prose is spare but sharp, the first-person narrator is mostly a noncommittal observer, there’s an absence of a plot. Gabriel fought in WWI and had been in a Siberian prisoner of war camp. On the opening page, on the street in front of the Hotel Savoy, he thinks: “After five years I again stand at the gates of Europe.” (Where, exactly, in Europe we never know.) He plans to stay in the hotel “a couple of days or a week,” but that span of time grows into what must be months. Since he has little money (and no luggage), he’s given a room on the sixth floor of the seven-story hotel. Room 703: “I like the number – I am superstitious about them – for the zero in the middle is like a lady flanked by two gentlemen, one older and one younger.” Since I’m on that page, in the elevator with Gabriel, I will add more of his thoughts, for they impart the main virtue of this novel: “I enjoy the swaying feeling and calculate how many wearisome steps I would have had to climb but for this noble lift. As I rise even higher, I throw my bitterness, my wanderings and homelessness, all my mendicant past, down the liftshaft from which it can never reach me again.” While the two lower floors of the Savoy are opulent, reserved for the very wealthy, the top two floors house the poor in dismal little cells. The hotel is a microcosm of the world, in which there exists a scale of different classes. Is this a social protest novel? Is it about the impoverished, who would work if there were jobs to be had, rising up, at the end, in violent revolution (which is crushed, but not before leaving the hotel in ruins)? Not really. The novel is mostly composed of Gabriel’s interactions with various characters, all odd in various ways and to varying degrees. It’s these characters, including both the wealthy and the poor, that stand out – that give the novel it’s richness. At the end Gabriel is on a train, headed for parts unknown. And that’s it. This is a major talent stretching its wings on a limited stage. *

Image of Josephine – Booth Tarkington

Tarkington produced dozens of works – mostly fiction, but also a good number of plays and non-fiction. He was popular both with readers and critics (he won the Pulitzer Prize twice). Five of his novels were made into films. As a boy I enjoyed Penrod, and as an adult I thought The Magnificent Ambersons was excellent. But, until now, that has been my only exposure to Tarkington. I was surprised to find, after completing Image, that it was his last novel. I would say it was a fitting closure to a long career, mainly because Josephine is a unique and compelling character. We first see her as a girl of fourteen, playing with friends. Well, not really friends; she’s too bossy, rude, imperious, she has too inflated an idea of her worth to inspire anything in others but hostility. At this young age her extremely wealthy grandfather (who dotes on her and encourages her outsized beliefs) puts her in future control of a fabulous museum he’s going to build, full of precious works of art. Skip ten years, the museum is built, and Josephine – now a beauty – is still thoroughly dislikable. She has no respect for her unperfected fellow-creatures; she walks over people or uses them. Another character plays a major role in this story: Bailey Fount, a WWII veteran who was severely wounded and is on leave to recover. Besides his physical wounds, he’s a psychological mess, so unsure of himself, so self-conscious, as to be almost a stumbling mute. As a safe refuge, he’s placed in the position of Assistant Curator of Paintings at the museum. Events occur that cause him to enter into a complex entanglement with Josephine. The strength of the novel is the way both these characters become more than they initially seemed to be. Is this evolution entirely believable? No, but I went along with it because it interested me. Bailey expands to assertive manhood, Josephine shrinks to the point where one actually feels pity for her. She long harbored a gilded image of herself, and when that image begins to crumble what she faces is a frightening aloneness. Yet she stubbornly holds onto her pride – or, at least, its remnants. The ending is ambiguous; the reader never knows what the future holds for these two. But, somehow, that Big Question works. 

Mountain Time – Bernard DeVoto

The first half of this novel takes place in New York, where Cy Kinsman is a resident surgeon at Mercy Hospital (which treats both the poor and the wealthy). Cy is brilliant at his job – he has “the hands,” ones capable of doing the most intricate procedure, and the mind to know what needs to be done. Though he’s headed for greatness in the field (and the attendant wealth), he abruptly ditches it all and returns to the western city he grew up in, where he works as a mechanic and lives in an abandoned barn. (I wasn’t at all clear on why he made this decision.) While he was in New York he had met up with someone he knew as a boy – Josephine. She’s married to a struggling writer, and has one child. Her husband is juvenile, selfish and pretentious; he’s also unfaithful and doesn’t have a job (she’s the breadwinner). She’s unhappy and angry, and at the end of Part One decides to get a divorce and return to the same city as Cy. This becomes a two-person novel, about a relationship. But the New York section had a lot concerning the workings of a hospital and what takes place in an operating room, and this was excellent stuff. I tried to find what ties the author had with the medical profession in order to present it so authentically. In vain. Seems DeVoto was purely a man of letters. If this is researched material, it’s top of the line. All through this novel the writing is very good. But there’s a Big Problem: I mentioned not understanding why Cy quit medicine, and my lack of understanding applies even more strongly to the nature of the relationship he and Josephine share. They have some sort of deep bond. And though there’s physical attraction, they never consummate it. We get tons of words about how they feel, but none of it makes sense. Josephine acts crazy at times (has an urge to kill her little daughter, etc.) She’s unusually dependent on Cy to help he out of her “moods,” but also is defiant and even antagonistic toward him. He’s always reliable and caring, but keeps a distance. What we get is far too many long excursions into unfathomable emotions. Anyway . . . With sixteen pages left in the book the two go on a camping trip and all the problems between them magically disappear. And they finally, at last, have sex. When they return to civilization, Cy tells her they’re getting married, and she complies. This simplistic happy ending – after all the strife and agonizing that went on for the previous hundred pages – seems to be a sort of cop out. But, still, I liked them both and was glad they settled things.

The Letters of Frida Kahlo – compiled by Martha Zamora

If you entitle a book The Letters of Frida Kahlo you’re obligated to deliver. Despite the deluxe looking edition, there’s not much here. Gaps spanning years without one letter? From someone who seemed eager to receive letters (and so must have reciprocated by writing them)? And, being married to a world-famous artist, Diego Rivera, would make her someone whose letters people would keep. The last personal one we get (a note, really) is from 1947, and she died in 1954. No letters in seven years? The compiler pads the closing section with many pages consisting of such things as a letter to the President of Mexico, which is purely political, and a “Portrait of Diego,” which was written for a catalogue that accompanied an exhibition of his work. I began both and then skipped them because they didn’t contain anything personal. Another problem: the compiler offers next to nothing about her life, her situation; I was left wanting to know much more about her, so I’ll try to find a good biography. The letters we do get are buoyant, her writing is lively. Emotionally she’s lavish and passionate. That said, there’s a darkening of her spirits in the later ones. A tumultuous life, married to someone like Rivera, probably took their toll. Plus there are her many dire physical problems that began when she was very young and continued to her early death. The shortest letter in this collection was written to a boyfriend when she was eighteen: “The only good thing is that I’m starting to get used to suffering.” And the way she endured suffering is downright brave. Last gripe: this book provides not one of her paintings.

Frida Kahlo in Mexico – Robin Richmond

It’s clear, now, that the collection of letters I reviewed above offered up a highly sanitized version of its subject; actually, it seems directed at children. This biography is definitely not for children – or even for sensitive souls. Kahlo’s life was brutal, and she fought against it in ways that were often far from noble. Though isn’t to fight – to live a full life – noble? Her physical problems began with childhood polio and later, when she was eighteen, with an accident involving a collision with a bus she was riding in and a streetcar. Both caused lifelong pain and disability – in her forty-seven years she would endure thirty-two surgeries. One way she fought against these problems was with her angry, sometimes gruesome art, which we get many examples of. As for her marriage to Diego Rivera, if he was a serial adulterer (he even had an affair with Frida’s sister), she too had affairs (with both men and women). Her language was notable in its use of vulgarity. She drank and smoked excessively. But she was colorful and charismatic – an impressive and compelling personality. It was a proud image she had to fight to maintain, and it seems she finally gave up the struggle. Her death was most likely a suicide – an overdose of painkillers (no autopsy was performed). She was in a hospital, her leg had recently been amputated; her last drawing was of a black angel, accompanied by the words “I joyfully await the exit – and hope never to return.” This book covers her life in context to the history of Mexico and to the politics of the time, and I skipped most of this. I also skipped the lengthy psychoanalyzing of Kahlo’s art that Richmond indulges in. True, it’s autobiographical art, but I had no interest in an interpretation. If you care to learn more, you’d be better off choosing a different source.

Re-reads

Hotel Splendide – Ludwig Bemelmans

When Bemelmans immigrated to the United States he got a job at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel as a busboy, and, over the years, worked his way up to the position of assistant banquet manager. In these stories he doesn’t write about himself, but of the other employees, such as (to select a few) Mespoulets, the hopelessly incompetent waiter who is steadily demoted to lower and lower positions; Kalakobe, the only Negro employed at the hotel, one with grandiose ambitions; and, looming over everyone, Monsieur Victor, the tyrannical Maître d’. A few portrayals of the wealthy patrons of the restaurant are also included. Some stories are more entertaining than others, but overall this book has charm, and the capacity to make you feel good. It’s often amusing, and even when it addresses situations that could be seen as tragic, it’s done with a light touch. There’s one story in which a character quotes from a book describing the grotesque gustatory extravagances of decadent Rome, and this can be seen as a critique of the opulence of the Ritz-Carlton. But, really, Bemelmans has no ax to grind. In the attitude toward life displayed, I would think he was happy man (which is what he may have become), so I was surprised to find that his early years in Europe were very grim. He first found success as an illustrator (each chapter in Splendide begins with one of his line drawings); later fame and fortune came to him as the author of the Madeline series of children’s books. I was familiar with some stories because I used them when teaching reading in Junior High decades ago. The final one is “The Murderer of the Splendide.” I remembered exactly how it would end: with a surprise twist, and a mystery which we know the answer to. 4

Laughter in the Dark – Vladimir Nabokov (Russian)

Nabokov had a cruel streak (or, at least, cruelty is a factor in many of his novels, including Lolita). In Laughter he seems to enjoy presenting the exploitation and destruction of Albinus; there’s no trace of pity for the victim. This is mid-career Nabokov; he wrote it when he was in his early thirties. It seems conceived as a book that would bring in some cash. The prose is good, and at times inventive, but not finely honed as much of his other work. And the characters are one-dimensional. The rationale for Albinus’s obsession with sixteen -year-old Margot is not developed; we’re asked to accept that he finds her irresistibly attractive in a sexual way, and he gives up wife and child to have her. He’s merely a dupe. As for Margot, she’s a hard-boiled manipulator; though her feelings for Albinus are aversion and contempt, he’s rich and she wants to get as much as possible from him. She does love (or lust after) a man named Rex, who enters the picture at the halfway point. Rex ups the ante of heartlessness; he’s a full-fledged sadist who derives delight from Albinus’s suffering. What we have here is a lurid and even repellent tale: we watch as poor Albinus is completely destroyed (before his violent death he’s rendered blind). At the end Margot and Rex are the winners. As a potboiler, the book succeeds. It serves up a readable excursion into aberrant emotions. 3

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog – Dylan Thomas

The Welsh writer (primarily a poet) wrote these autobiographical sketches when he was in his twenties. Why he chose to use a title similar to James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a mystery. Maybe his aim was to signal his lack of pretention. Or maybe it was an effort to attract readers (which he failed to do). At any rate, I call these sketches rather than stories because they have no plot. Just scenes. The prose is the big thing here – the poet comes out in clusters of impressions. I’m not the ideal audience for this sort of thing (at least, not now; I may have been in the past). That said, I did appreciate it. It’s constructed chronologically; that is, the first sketch – “The Peaches” (my favorite of the lot) – takes place when Dylan is a very young boy, and the last when he’s on the verge of adulthood. The setting is Swansea in South Wales, a place filled with colorful characters who engage in rollicking dialogue. A lot of this comes alive in a swarming way. The last two sketches are drenched in alcohol – which would be the author’s  lifelong nemesis – and they aren’t presented as positive experiences. Pervading them is a sense of loneliness, of an unfulfilled need of a woman’s love. Here’s part of the book’s closing sentence, which encapsulates what Thomas set out to give us in this portrait of the place which formed him: . . . “the small and hardly known and never-to-be-forgotten people of the dirty town had lived and loved and died and, always, lost.” 4

The Connoisseur – Evan S. Connell

Prior to starting this review, I looked up as much as I could find on the enigmatic Mr. Connell. One thing I already knew was that he was a collector of pre-Columbian art, which is what his character in this novel becomes. Muhlbach is on a business trip in New Mexico (his home is New York), and happens to come across a terra cotta statuette in a Taos shop. The opening sentence: “Unspeakable dignity isolates the diminutive nobleman.” Thus begins what amounts to an obsession. Though Muhlbach has two children (his wife is deceased) they are given almost no attention. They could easily not exist, and Muhlbach could be, like the author, a lifelong bachelor without children. I think Connell included them to show how insignificant he considered them to be. What matters to Muhlbach (and to Connell) are the objects he’s obsessed with. We get long scenes – at a university’s anthropology department, at a motel auction, at a high-scale Greenwich Village shop, at a knick-knack store called Charlotte’s Curiosity Corner. Though Muhlbach remains somewhat monochromatic, the characters he meets are lively creations. A lot of technical territory is covered as Muhlbach learns the intricacies of collecting authentic pieces – for much is fake, expertly done. Muhlbach finds it peculiar that when he discovers that a piece is not truly pre-Columbian, no matter how much he was first attracted to it, it immediately becomes of little worth in his eyes. Does all this sound boring to you? Odd? Yes, it’s an odd novel, but, for me, in Connell’s hands, fascinating. The scenes are done with expertise. The prose is lovely in its flowing simplicity. It’s an artfully rendered work. 5

Re-reads 

Hunger – Knut Hamsun (Norwegian)

The unnamed narrator dominates the reader’s sensibilities with a completeness that few novels can match. We’re totally immersed in his actions, thoughts and emotions. He’s a writer living in Christiana (Oslo) who can’t sell his work, and he doesn’t turn to other means of making a living. So he starves, he lives in hovels (or out in the open). The hunger of the title is very real. But most important are his thoughts and emotions (which drive his actions). We’re in a mind that is, to put it mildly, unusual. Most of the time I was bewildered by the man, and, since I couldn’t relate to him, I couldn’t feel empathy. Often I thought he was crazy (a thought he has too). Why did he do this, why did he say that? No halfway normal person would follow wayward impulses as he does. In one instance – involving his encounter with a woman he names Ylajali (nobody in the book has a given name) – I doubted that it had actually happened. Why would a sane woman get interested in such a weird character? Can we attribute his eccentricities to hunger? I don’t think so, for starving people have a sense of practicality, which our character lacks. My edition contains introductions by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Robert Bly (who did the translation). I read both, searching for some reference to the issue of insanity. I searched in vain. What I did learn was that Hamsun experienced a prolonged period of hunger. This was his first novel, written in 1890; in the work that followed he turned more and more to a realistic approach (which I prefer). Anyway. . . This novel kept me interested, it’s vivid, it even has a jaunty quality (which is odd, considering its subject matter). On the last page our character impulsively gets a job on a ship about to leave port. This is good: on the ship he must do practical work, and do it well. He must interact with others in a rational way. He must be a normally functioning man. If not, they’ll toss him off the boat in the middle of the ocean. I never wanted to toss this book into the ocean. But I don’t get, on this reading, the virtues attributed to it by Singer and Bly and others, who see it as a landmark in psychological fiction. 3

A Cab at the Door – V. S. Pritchett

A memoir about the author’s youth (ending when he’s in his late teens). One thing that struck me as peculiar was the detail he included. I’ll make up an example: an aunt Viv he knew when he was six has a mole on her chin and wheezes when she laughs. And there’s more – what she says, etc. Why does it matter to the reader (the aunt will play no role in his life; she just appears on page 14 and never again). And how could he remember all that about her? My surprise was greatly heightened when I learned that the author was 68 when he wrote this book. What we get is a clutter of characters and events, all described with care. These people come and go, and chronology is shaky. His immediate family are not given precedence; some (such as his three younger siblings) are ignored. His mother is composed of a few standard reactions. His father plays a more significant role, and is presented as a pompous fool. Victor seems not to love any of them. We do get to know him, but he doesn’t come across as someone I could sympathize with. His growth as a writer is chronicled, but who cares? Despite all these negative factors, things improved when I changed my attitude toward what I was reading: I gave up trying to make sense of the potpourri, I just let it all wash over me. I took in the moment, and didn’t worry about its significance. The main character is actually London of the early 1900s. Not upper-class London, not slum London, but the lower end of middle-class London. It rises from the pages, a monster of a city, teeming and vigorous. We’re immersed in its streets, shops, parks, offices, weather, etc. And, foremost, its people – their appearance, gestures, speech, attitudes. On that basis, the book works, because these brief snippets are lively. Actually, Pritchett wasn’t a novelist, and it shows. He had a vast array of books published, but only five were novels, and he once stated that he didn’t like writing them. But to write a memoir one needs to have some novelistic skills, and the lack of them shows in Cab. Still, for the passing enjoyment I got out of this odd book, it deserves a weak 3

The Fall – Albert Camus (French)

Two men meet in a bar in Amsterdam (“May I, monsieur, offer my services without running the risk of intruding?”). What follows is a monologue: one man (Jean-Baptiste) talks to another (who never says a single word). This occurs over a number of days, at various meeting places. What we get is a prolonged confession, a dark one, but presented in a witty, offhand way. The speaker examines his life and the motives driving him. What he confesses to is his falsity and pridefulness and emptiness. The book is highly cynical (“Of course, true love is exceptional – two or three times a century, more or less”). Our narrator’s good acts are actually, under his scrutinizing eye, seen to be motivated by vanity, a need to be considered virtuous in his eyes and in the eyes of others. It amounts to a greed that needs to be constantly fed. And, it’s implied, many of the human species act under similar drives. I have few high-minded illusions about human nature, but I found Jean-Baptiste to be an extreme specimen – not a believable one. He merely serves the purpose of allowing Camus to make philosophical points. But to do so in a novel is a tricky proposition. Halfway through this confession I took the place of the man listening and decided that, if I were him, I would avoid meeting up with J-B at all costs. So why take his place and read on? Camus’s acclaim as a writer (the Nobel Prize at the youthful age of forty-four), and his death three years later (car accident), impart a certain glamor to his work. I may once have been impressed. Delete

Re-reads

The Duke of Deception – Geoffrey Wolff

This book elicited a strong reaction in me, so for that alone it’s significant. It’s subtitled “Memories of My Father,” and is classified as a memoir, with Wolff’s father playing the major role. The Duke was a deceiver of epic proportions. His life story (as he presented it), his upper-class mannerisms, his possessions – all false. Oh, the possessions were real, but they were unpaid for. It seemed that he had an aura of authority and wealth that earned him trust from merchants and other victims who were all to ready to accept worthless checks and put items on credit. As for those possessions, they were the best. The best automobiles money can buy, the best clothing, watches, jewelry. The restaurants and hotels he frequented were top tier; he put his meals on his “tab,” he walked out of hotels without paying for his stay. All bills and requests for payment were blithely ignored. He was a man with talents beyond scamming. He got jobs (using a resume that included Yale and the Sorbonne in Paris, neither of which he attended) in aerospace industries, not as an engineer but as a facilitator. Because he was good with people, he was good at those jobs; but he would eventually tire of them and begin to be a no-show. And he would be fired. I could go on (and on and on) about his shortcomings, but it’s his relationship with his son that’s at the core of the book. And here he excelled. He was a good, loving father when Geoffrey was young. A father many would wish for. He spent a lot of time with the boy, taught him things, praised him. And gave him lavish presents. When, in his early teens, Geoffrey caught the boating bug he received the finest in motor boats. When Geoffrey could drive, he received a fancy sports car. Of course, these were unpaid for. But still. It’s the reservoir of love Geoffrey has for his father that becomes a conflicting element in this book. Because, as Geoffrey grows older, he begins to see his father’s flaws, his fakery, his inadequacies. He begins to question the man, and the Duke reacts with anger. Things sour between the two. What bothered me was that, while Geoffrey becomes judgmental, he carries on like his father, as if rules of conduct didn’t apply to him. He borrows money that goes unreturned, he’s deceptive in his dealings with people and institutions; he’s a faker who assumes appearances to impress people. He’s sent to exclusive schools (one in England) and he wastes his time there. Never studies, seldom attends classes. Instead, he parties, drinks far too much. He wrecks his cars. Speed limits? – who cares, he would go 140 MPH if he felt like it. Though how a change came about in Geoffrey’s behavior/attitude is not part of the story, his bio shows that at some point he straightened up and started living an honest life. He graduated from Princeton, wrote books, taught at universities; he got married, had two sons (to whom he dedicates this book). His father’s final years were brutal. If he was to be punished for his faults, he received such punishment in full measure. He was in and out of jails and mental institutions. His body was found two weeks after his death in a shabby room, amid squalor and empty bottles of liquor and empty barbiturate pill boxes. The smell emanating from the room alerted someone passing by to the fact that the police needed to be called. Obviously no friends checked up on him; he had no friends. He had appealed to his son (in an aggressive manner) for help – that he come live with him. Geoffrey wouldn’t allow this to happen. He had his life on the right track, and there was no room for a mess like his aged father. I can’t blame Geoffrey for this decision; his father was beyond help. In closing: If Geoffrey loved and cared for his sons, as his father had loved and cared for him, and if he taught them to avoid all the bad behavior – which he had eventually learned to avoid – then he got valuable lessons from the Duke. 4

Fat City – Leonard Gardner

Billy Tully, at age thirty, has reached the dead end of life. At times he gets an inclination to revive his career as a boxer, but he was never that good to begin with. Now he can only take and deliver punishment, and see who can survive. There’s no glamorizing of boxing: it’s brutal, ugly and, as Billy thinks at one point, insane. He turns to it to make a buck; his other jobs, such a field work (topping onions, etc.) is also brutal in the demands it makes on the body and the spirit. The setting for the novel is Stockton, California, a place you never want to be. At least not the area Billy occupies – skid row. Ratty rooms, bars. Yes, Billy is a heavy drinker – what can be expected? Out of loneliness he briefly gets involved with a woman – also a drinker, but, unlike Billy, an insanely abusive one. Billy emerges as a decent man in a very bad place, and with no discernable way out. There’s another character, a twenty-year-old named Ernie Munger. He and Billy meet at a gym, spar a bit – but, besides youth, Ernie has no gift. He gets a girl pregnant and they marry, though he doesn’t love her. He seems, in his aimlessness, his lack of resources, to be headed to the same fate as Billy. And what is Billy’s fate? He simply disappears; he’s there in a late chapter, then he’s gone from the narrative. I believe a novel so relentlessly bleak has worth because there are many lives like those depicted in Fat City, and their story should be told. The author was almost one of them. Much of what happens to Billy in the book happened to Leonard Gardner: growing up poor in Stockton, boxing, field work, an early marriage that didn’t last. A talent for writing saved him. But, in a very long life (the last time I checked he was in his nineties), he wrote only this one book, when he was thirty-six. He wrote screenplays, notably for the excellent movie version of Fat City, directed by John Huston. 4

Sunday – Georges Simenon (French)

Authors who write a suspense novel which is constructed so that everything points to a surprise twist at the end must be aware of a major pitfall: that twist must not only be believable, but it must offer a jolt to the reader. If it doesn’t deliver that effect, the work is a failure. For half this short book Emile plans to kill his wife Berthe, using arsenic in her food, but all along we feel that things won’t turn out as he expects. Over many months we follow as he carefully – very carefully – devises the perfect crime (which has to occur on a Sunday, when the local doctor is out sailing). Though we’re always in Emile’s mind, I had trouble understanding his motivation for murder, and Berthe remained a mystery. But, still, the writing was clear and concise, the setting – a small town on the Riviera – was well rendered, and the events moved along. So I waited for the payoff with a sense of anticipation. Waited until the last two pages. And what I got there was illogical and dumb. Berthe knew what he was up to all along, and had her own diabolical plan in place? Please – there was absolutely no basis to suspect that. Simenon’s nose dive into the pitfall I mentioned can be attributed to his approach to writing. In an interview in the Paris Review he stated that he didn’t plot his novels and had no idea how things would turn out. This shows in Sunday, in which he found he had no ending. As for why I once thought it was a success – well, there’s a real mystery (as is the fact that Simenon is considered to have been an important writer). Out of curiosity, I went back in Jack London and found four previous reviews of his novels. I thought one of them was fairly good. Of the others, none of which I finished, there’s a recurring complaint: “lacks logic . . . characters act without sufficient motivation.” One of the reviews closes with two words: “What balderdash!” Unlike Leonard Gardner’s one heartfelt effort, Simenon wrote over 400 novels. Delete

Re-reads

The Groves of Academe – Mary McCarthy

Perplexing. First, why is this a re-read? In one sense that’s easy to answer – because it was on my list of Most Memorable Books. But why was it there? In all my other re-reads I had some memory of the book, but this time around nothing was the least bit familiar. No character, no situation, not even the atmosphere or prose style. Also, I’ve always read for entertainment (well, sometimes to impress myself), and this is deadly boring stuff. There’s not even a discernable plot. Mary McCarthy is a very intelligent woman, and can toss off words like pseudepigraphal and anagogical, but she doesn’t show the basic ability to write a novel that moves. This one drags along, the characters and action imbedded in dense, convoluted verbiage. Maybe she saw her audience to be of her ilk – people with big brains who had spent their life in academe and would enjoy a comic skewering of it (if a comic skewering was indeed her aim). Anyway, in closing, Groves, must have arrived on the MMB list by some mistake. But I have another perplexing fact to reveal: this time around I read the whole damn thing, every single word. Delete

Appointment in Samarra – John O’Hara

This first novel, written in 1934 when the author was in his late twenties, is radically different from the one I reviewed above. For starters, it’s highly readable, the pages just fly by. And instead of intellectual matters we get a lot about parties, clubs, drinking, sex. (The sex was considered very daring for its time.) And there’s loads of dialogue; O’Hara was lauded for his depiction of the way people talk. As for a plot, in a period of forty-eight hours Julian English moves steadily toward self-destruction. He’s often drunk (or getting there) and when drunk he does irrational things that alienate people (including his wife). He winds up killing himself. Like I said, it’s a readable book. But though I value clarity in prose and the story line, there’s one vital caveat: that prose and story must deal with authentic human beings. Julian and his wife Caroline had no real substance, and so I couldn’t care about their dilemma. When Julian dies, my reaction was ho hum. That may seem callous, but the guy was nothing but a cardboard cutout. And not even a likable one. As for the dialogue, O’Hara seemed enamored with this knack; people blab on and on (or we follow their thoughts for pages). I was in my teens when I read this, and I suppose I saw the novel as a depiction of adult life. Now I’m old, and I can say that no real adults populate these pages. This is an immature, shallow book. So I was very surprised to discover that the Modern Library ranked it as twenty-second in its list of the best English language novels of the twentieth century. Who’s right – the teenage me and Modern Library’s “distinguished Board made up of celebrated authors, historians, critics, and publishing luminaries” – or the person writing this review? The answer is clear. Delete

The Light of Day – Eric Ambler

Ambler is classified as a writer of international thrillers, but in this novel he eschews the violence common in that genre and instead offers up a logical story – an engrossing one that grabs onto and holds your attention. The first thing he gets right is the first-person narrator. Arthur Abdel Simpson (his mother was Egyptian, his father a British soldier) is quite a piece of work. He cites himself as a journalist, but when the narrative opens he’s working as a guide and taxi driver in Athens (he’s banned from Egypt and the UK due to petty criminal activities). Yes, he’s a crook, but not a gun-carrying one; he’s middle-aged, overweight and avoids rough play at any cost. In the role of guide he will serve as a procurer for sex, and he will steal your money if the opportunity presents itself. I found this scoundrel to be entirely likeable. The situation he gets into in Day is complicated, though Ambler makes it all clear. Arthur is employed as a driver by a Mr. Harper; he will take a car from Greece into Turkey, for undisclosed purposes. But Arthur is stopped by customs at the Turkish border, and the police remove the door panels of the car and find guns, grenades, etc. Harper is obviously up to no good (possibly political in nature). To find out what his plan is, the Turkish police force reluctant Arthur into the role of agent; he will continue to work for Harper and report his findings. But Harper keeps him in the dark for almost the entire novel as to what the “no good” involves; that audacious plan doesn’t begin to emerge until the last forty pages. A film entitled Topkapi was made from the novel, and though it altered the plot and characters, it’s a good flick in its own way. Of course, it couldn’t use Arthur’s voice, which I will share with you from the opening paragraph: “It came down to this: if I had not been arrested by the Turkish police, I would have been arrested by the Greek police. I had no choice but to do what this man Harper told me. He was entirely responsible for what happened to me.” 4

A Charmed Life – Mary McCarthy

I thought I’d give Mary another chance (after Groves). Was she capable of writing a good novel? Well, yes: this outing was a success, though with limitations. She created a handful of vivid characters; I had definite feelings about Martha, Warren, Dolly and Miles (who I detested). She put them in situations (or, rather, messes) that make for fun reading. Her creation of scenes, such as the one involving a courtroom paternity case. is strong. That said, her plotting is weak. This is most evident is the ending, which is no more than a cop out. It’s as if McCarthy threw up her hands in the face of all the complications and said Enough! The setting for the novel is a town called New Leeds, where intellectuals and artists gather, mainly to take advantage of the low cost of living (they’re not successes financially). The natives of the town are depicted as existing on a low scale. Yet the “advanced” types, for all their intelligence and lofty ideas and ideals, carry on stupidly, and McCarthy serves up a wicked look at this type of person. Her braininess sometimes intrudes on the narrative flow, such as in the overly long chapter involving the reading of a Racine play. Also, why are some characters who should play a role left on the sidelines? When we go into Martha’s husband’s mind at the end, one has to wonder why he’s been ignored for nearly 250 pages. I guess it all comes down to this: Mary McCarthy was a very smart woman with a penchant for applying cruel barbs, but she was no novelist. Still, she could be entertaining company. 3

Re-reads

Dom Casmurro – Machado de Assis (Portuguese)

This novel, published in Brazil in 1900 and written by a grandson of a slave, is strange in both its approach and its construction. Machado first tries to make it seem that Bento, the main character, is speaking to the reader. All first-person novels take this tack, but not with the insistence found here. Bento often comments on what he’s telling us. One example, from the second page: when explaining how he got the nickname of Casmurro, he tells us, “Don’t look it up in the dictionary,” for the definition there, he finds, is not fitting. He explains what it means in his case, which is “a quiet person who keeps himself to himself.” This quiet person, a man in his sixties who lives alone, is going to tell us the story of his life solely because he wants to relive the past. Or, more specifically, to evoke “a celebrated November afternoon that I have never forgotten.” Then he adds, “Read on and you will understand what I mean.” So I read on and was soon introduced to Capitu, a neighbor girl he had known and played with since childhood. But he has reached the age of fifteen, she fourteen, and feelings change. He combs her hair on that celebrated November afternoon, and a kiss follows. A kiss he will never forget. Capitu is a very strong character. She seems, from what she says and by her actions, to be intelligent, determined and manipulative. More of a woman than a girl. The two vow to get married, but there’s a hitch: his widowed mother’s first child, a boy, had been born dead, and she had made an oath to God that if her second child were a boy, and lived, she would destine him for the priesthood. Since Bento is an obedient and loving son, there’s that dilemma to be solved. It is, eventually, and he and Capitu get married. But I wondered, from the beginning, how Bento reached old age alone and isolated. The answer emerges late in the narrative; in between there are many digressions, side issues – too many. And there’s a skipping of huge gaps of time; an abruptness sets into the narrative. Capitu largely disappears as the vibrant presence she was for that one scene (a fact which may have significance). The novel is considered to be a masterpiece of Brazilian literature. I found it original and engaging, but in some vital way frustratingly inexplicable. In the end I didn’t understand Bento – the man “speaking” to me. 3

A Member of the Wedding – Carson McCullers

It took McCullers five years to write Member. In a letter she told her husband “It’s one of those works that the least slip could ruin,” and that she had worked over some parts “as many as twenty times.” In my opinion, she should have spent another month working to delete whole sections. All of Frankie’s ultra-sensitive musings needed to go. No human being ever indulged in such delusional thinking. Even the whole premise of the book – Frankie’s intention to live with her newly married brother and his bride, for them to be a threesome – is such a silly idea that I can’t believe any twelve-year-old girl would ever entertain it. Also needing deletion is the whole business with the soldier – again, no twelve -year-old girl would act so stupidly (nor would the soldier). Lastly, delete the entire final Part Three, all twenty-some pages. It wraps things up in a highly unsatisfying way (and does so by using the gratuitous death of one of the characters). What is left after all these deletions? There’s the kitchen where Frankie and Bernice and John Henry sit and talk and interact. This is wonderful. Bernice (the Black cook) serves to blunt Frankie’s extreme words and actions. Bernice is by far the strongest character in the novel, and McCullers should be given credit for creating her. There’s not much to John Henry, except a sweet, unformed little boy (he’s the one who gets sacrificed in Part Three). The atmosphere of a small Southern town is nicely evoked. So there are pluses. The book didn’t get much of an audience, but the play and the film (which I saw, and liked very much) and the TV version made the story famous. I won’t delete this novel, due to its strengths. 2

A Member of the Wedding: A Play – Carson McCullers

This play version happened to be available at my local library. Reading it was quite a surprise. McCullers pretty much fixed all the problems I noted in my review of the novel. Did she see the light? Did someone give her guidance? (The primary candidate is Tennessee Williams, who encouraged her to do a play version and who helped her in writing the beginning.) Did the restrictions of staging benefit in not allowing all that indulgence in Frankie’s musings? The set keeps us in a single location: the kitchen, where the novel was at its strongest, and where we only get to hear what Frankie says and see what she does. Bernice is given the major role she deserves; John Henry is more developed; the soldier is eliminated entirely. The premise – wanting to be a member of the wedding – is presented in a more reasonable way. In other words, there’s an overall toning down of the extravagances. A few characters that were only referred to in the novel make brief appearances – mainly Frankie’s brother and the bride-to-be. This was a stabilizing element, because in the novel they came across as mythical figures. Three good actors could do something with this material, and Ethel Waters, Julie Harris and Brandon de Wilde (at age seven!) surely carried it off admirably. The play ran for 501 performances and won the New York Drama Critics Award. My only gripe (one I had with the novel) was the death of John Henry. When a character in a movie or play mentions in passing that they have a headache, you know that they’re doomed in the last act. But, probably, when Bernice talks of his death, there must have been a ripple of shock throughout the audience. What?! John Henry died? That lovable kid?

Re-reads

Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Waugh! He stated that he intended this first novel to be funny – nothing more. It’s a humor based on absurdity in characters and events. But it’s not silly or even far-fetched; it’s an intelligent humor. Our “hero” is Paul Pennyfeather, a name which pretty much defines his personality. He goes from a student at Oxford (he’s expelled for “indecent behavior”), to a master at a disreputable private school for boys in Wales, where one of the students, Peter Beste-Chetwynde, takes the hapless Paul under his wing and guides him on how to act and what to do (which is as little as possible). From there he progresses to the country estate of Peter’s widowed mother, the beautiful and fabulously rich Margot. She and Paul get engaged to be married, but that plan goes bust when Paul is arrested for human trafficking for the purpose of prostitution, and he’s sent to prison for eight years. There’s a happy ending, of sorts. In none of these events is Paul guilty of any misdoing; he’s simply a bystander for more dynamic personalities. One character describes Life as big spinning wheel. Most people on the wheel flounder around under its momentum; some seek the center, where all is calm; others, like Margot, go to the very edge of the wheel, where the momentum is greatest, and hang on. Paul sits on the sidelines and watches. Nothing fazes him, not even prison (“. . . anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison.”) That quote is my only attempt to replicate Waugh’s unique humor. Anyway, read this one, it’s a lark, a sparkling gem, and is written with a lovely simplicity. 5

The Way West – A. B. Guthrie

I have a reference guide to American literature, and I looked up Guthrie, only to find he wasn’t included. They had Zane Grey, but not Guthrie. I’m also aware that few people today have any interest in a novel about a trip by wagon train to Oregon in the 1840s. I consider both of these facts to be regrettable. It was an epic and important event in our country’s history, and a novelist who could so vividly recreate it should not be forgotten. Guthrie gives us the mechanics of how the trip works, the hardships endured, and – most important – the people who did the enduring. These people are a varied lot, and run the gamut of human nature. We get to know them, some more intimately than others, and when tragedies happen they have real emotional clout. I was impressed by the courage and grit and resourcefulness on display, by women as much as men. And I wondered if people today could endure and prevail such a physically and emotionally taxing journey. Someone from a prior novel by Guthrie – the equally excellent The Big Sky – plays a major role. Dick Summers is persuaded to leave his home in Springfield to lead the train. This former Mountain Man, now fifty, is impressive not only in his knowledge, but in his character. The book received the Pulitzer Prize in 1949, but people were different back then, mainly in their values. 5

A Good Man in Africa – William Boyd

For quite a long stretch I found this book to be entertaining. It tells of the misadventures of Morgan Leafy, a British official stationed in the West African county of Kinjanja. Boyd uses the third person, but we’re always in Morgan’s mind. It’s quite a messy mind. Much of the humor – it’s a comic (or, rather, farcical) novel – derives from the difference between how Morgan feels (which is often rage, exasperation, dislike, etc.) and how he speaks and acts (in a proper, acceptable manner). He gets immersed in predicaments romantic/sexual and political (involving a corrupt African vying for power in an upcoming election). This was Boyd’s first novel, and its authenticity of place derives from the fact that he grew up in West Africa. This adds to the book’s virtues. So I’m enjoying myself when, at the halfway point, annoyances began to set in. One involves the sex; all the attention to the needs of Morgan’s penis seemed imposed for cheap laughs. And the plot got so complicated that it became unwieldy; by the last third the book’s structure was tottering under the weight. Then totter some more as Boyd simply piled on more complications. Eventually I got to the point where I didn’t want to continue reading. Well, I did, to the unsatisfying and ridiculously chaotic end (in which nothing is resolved). How can I evaluate a novel for which I had initial admiration that soured so completely? Since my negativity was far greater than my pleasure, I have to relegate it to a Delete.

Re-reads

Morte D’Urban – J. F. Powers

A novel about a Catholic priest? Not interested? Well, it’s your loss. I too avoid novels with a religious orientation, but what Powers gives us is a character study of a man, and we only get the nuts and bolts of the religious life. A leaky roof or a faulty heating system at the remote Minnesota retreat house to which Father Urban is assigned get more attention than spiritual matters. This assignment by the Bishop seems punitive; Urban could have been utilized much more usefully. For many years he “operated” from Chicago. He enjoyed the pleasures to be found in a big city – the high-end restaurants, where he could have a cocktail and champagne with his meal (and an expensive cigar afterward). When he traveled, to deliver sermons (he’s a highly gifted speaker, one with the common touch), he stayed at the best hotels. He seems, at first glance, to be a wheeler dealer. A salesman, a promoter who caters to the wealthy, a man with an innate sense of what is the most diplomatic thing to say or do. But when we get to know Urban – and gradually we do – we see someone worthy of respect. He has flaws, but none are serious; in a real sense he’s a man of the clothe, and his wheeling and dealing is directed at getting those wealthy benefactors to contribute financially to the church (with a few perks coming his way). In all his interactions, decency prevails – at times to his detriment. Powers seems to both hold respect for the moral underpinnings of the Church and to lament its pettiness and limitations. Some have labeled this a “comic” novel, which is way off base. Though it’s infused with a deft humor, there’s an unsettling aspect, which emerges fully in the dark ending: Father Urban is promoted to the office of Provincial in the province of Chicago, but it’s too late – several events have occurred that have broken his spirit. In that sense he dies (the “morte” in the title). As for Powers’ prose, it’s lovely, smooth and unobtrusively inventive. 5

The Old Boys – William Trevor

I looked up Trevor at this Jack London site and saw that I’ve reviewed twelve of his books. Twelve! That must be a record. Obviously, I like his subject matter (life’s outcasts) and his no frills approach. Though most of the reviews were lukewarm, and some novels I thought were failures (though I completed them), four were promoted to my MMB list, one of which was The Old Boys. It was his first novel (he disowned a previous one) and it was awarded a prestigious prize. He wrote it at age thirty-six and populated it with people twice that age. Also, his characters attended a British boarding school, which Trevor did not. The life in that type of school has been often portrayed in a highly negative light, as it is in this book. It suited a certain type of boy, but for many (George Orwell being one) it was a horrendous experience The assigning of a new boy to be a fag for an older boy (a servant, who can be punished by beatings) seems to me a sick tradition. A character named Nox was a fag for Jaraby, and develops a deep hatred for the man. Skip sixty years: Mr. Jaraby covets the job of president of the Old Boys Association, Mr. Nox plans to block his election. That’s the core of the plot, but what Trevor gives us is a look into the lives of a half dozen old men. It’s not a pretty sight. Only one of the men – Jaraby – is married, and his arguments with his wife take up a lot of space. As she says at the end, they are like “animals of prey turned in on one another.” All this is entertaining – often funny – but grim. In my reviews of Trevor’s other novels, I appreciated those in which he shows compassion. He shows no compassion here. Not for age, not for relationships. I once had more of a taste for this type of bleakness than I do now. Still, the novel moves along at a fast clip, it’s engrossing. 3

The Tenants of Moonbloom – Edward Lewis Wallant

Lot of problems. For starters – the number of characters. Must be over fifteen. You’d need a scorecard to keep track of them (I soon gave up trying). The prose has an inventiveness which is laid on pretty thick and is somewhat obtrusive. Then there’s the main character, Norman. We’re to believe that this thirty-something man has lived in a sort of cocoon, isolated from feelings and experiences (eg., he’s still a virgin). But no reason for how he got in this state emerges, nor is any convincing one given for his awakening – his “opening up” to emotions. As for plot, Norman is an agent who collects rent on a weekly basis from the tenants in four apartment buildings owned by his rapacious brother. These places range from one that is marginally decent to outright slums. On Norman’s visits we get glimpses of the various characters. I just let them wash over me as a wave of ragged, despairing humanity. All have problems, and most have complaints about something in their living premises, which they want Norman to fix. The pre-awakening Norman listens politely and does nothing. The post-awakening Norman tries to fix everything. Wallant’s obvious purpose is to make a point about life. He has one character say, “Courage, Love, Illusion (or dream, if you will) – he who possesses all three, or two, or at least one of these things wins whatever there is to win, those who lack all three are the failures.” Does Wallant succeed in making this point – through Norman’s awakening? Well, yes, to an extent, though it didn’t get to me emotionally. The novel is unique, and has a cluttered, rampant energy. It’s a work of passion, an abundance (overabundance) of creative fervor. Interestingly, Wallant existed in a world quite unlike that of his characters. He was an art director at a major New York public relations firm and was married, with three children; he lived in the affluent community of Norwalk, Connecticut. Though you could question what he knew of lost, despairing and often lonely souls, it’s clear that something in him responded to them, for they occupy all four of his books. Wallant had his say about life before his came to an abrupt end. He died at age thirty-six of a cerebral aneurysm. Tenants and another novel were published posthumously. 3

Re-reads

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein

As you can see, there’s something odd about the title/author. This “autobiography” wasn’t written by Alice, nor is it about her. She exists only as an appendage to Gertrude Stein. It is about their life together, full of people, activities, travel. The writing is straightforward and makes for fairly pleasant reading. Stein occupied a central place in the Paris scene in the early 1900s, when major changes were taking place in painting and writing. But, as for the many artists and authors who populate these pages, a lot of them famous, we get very little in-depth characterization. For example, Picasso appears quite often, but I don’t know much about the man. Parties, visits, talk – Stein loved these things, and, though we’re told they happen, they don’t come to life. Stein deals in externals, not feelings (and this includes her relationship with Alice). The section of the book that had more of a story line concerns the years of WWI, when she and Alice delivered supplies to French hospitals. My picture of Stein herself is a bit hazy. She seems pleasant, intelligent, opinionated, strong-willed. People seemed to have liked her, liked to be in contact with her mind. She has fall-outs with some, but she writes critically of only one of them: Ernest Hemingway. She uses slang for the first and only time to call him “yellow” – a word whose intent is to be hurtful (he was still alive when the book came out). This from a woman who elsewhere never displays cruelty. It doesn’t reflect well on her (nor do I think Hemingway was yellow, and Stein offers no reason for using that word). In closing: Stein was disappointed that her writing was not appreciated – something she dearly wanted (“One writes for oneself and for strangers but with no adventurous publishers how can one come into contact with those same strangers”). Well, Gertrude, I can answer your question (which doesn’t contain a question mark). Just as you appreciated the new movements in art, which turned away from a depiction of humans – cubism, surrealism, etc. – you also turned to writing which was unfathomable to humans (such as the 1000+ page The Making of Americans). Anyway, in a business in which Who Do You Know matters so much – and you knew everybody of importance – your obscure work did get published (though probably read by very few). You were fortunate to live in a time and place when innovation (however worthless) was valued, and even considered to be genius. When you were accessible, such as in this book, people did read and enjoy you. A pity you turned to “experimental” writing. Experiments are for labs. 3

 

Three Women – Gertrude Stein

The first and last stories (“The Good Anna” and “The Gentle Lena”) were about simple, one-dimensional characters, and their portrayals were done with an effective simplicity. But I found the long story, much longer than the other two put together, to be unreadable. I tried, but had quit on it. For starters – the title: “Melanctha.” Whoever heard of such a name, and how the hell do you pronounce it? She’s referred to as Black, but Stein makes her of mixed race. Probably her white blood, in Stein’s mind, qualified her to be a suitable subject to write about, for her characters who are just plain “niggers” (a word Stein uses) are not worth bothering with. I objected to her portrayal of Blacks; I don’t think Stein knew squat about that race. Melanctha (I’m using copy and paste) is exceedingly complex. She engages in long, long, very long conversations with a Black doctor (also of mixed race). Their discussions, full of repetitions and done with a sort of cadence, is monotonous and pointless. This is self-indulgent writing. I think Stein put words on paper, never revising, letting her genius flow, pure and unadulterated. The Melanctha section of Three Women is an early example of the experimental writing that I referred to in the previous review and which would take over most of Stein’s work. (Delete)

A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway

When I first read this memoir I may have been in a stage when I had a romanticized view of authors and writing – and of Hemingway. That’s long gone. Still, I enjoyed his account of how things were when he was in his twenties, living in Paris with his wife Hadley. Not that I believed much of what I was reading. He’s the hero of the piece, in that he’s always in control, a solid, sensible, all-knowing presence. A man who has little to say while others around him carry on, often foolishly. Feast is a falsification of the past – or, rather, a glamorization. Hemingway was in his late fifties and early sixties when he wrote the book, which was done in stages, and he wasn’t sound mentally and emotionally. So maybe he was indulging in a pleasant fantasy. He often claims that he was poor in the Paris years, and this simply isn’t true. He and Hadley had plenty of money. But poverty fits in with the image of a struggling writer living in a garret. As for the many authors he interacts with, one was Gertrude Stein. If you read my review of her Autobiography you probably wonder if he gets revenge for her comment about his being “yellow.” Not really (he even considers “Melanctha” to be “very good”). His portrayal of her isn’t a positive one – she comes across as dictatorial – and there’s a scene where he overhears her begging in a demeaning way. What I did find cruel was how he treated Scott Fitzgerald. Even if what happened between the two was true, it should not have been written. Maybe jealousy played a role, for Fitzgerald was his competitor as a writer. The book ends in an elegiac way: all that was precious would be destroyed. Hemingway blames it on the rich who invade his and Hadley’s lives. He writes of seeing Hadley waiting for him at a railway station: “I wished that I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.” But he would have an affair that would lead to the end of the marriage. As for Hadley’s presence in the book, it’s scanty. Her name doesn’t appear until page 54 (she’s previously referred to as “my wife”). The Scribner hardcover edition has an insert – a strange one, written by Jane Kramer. It mostly criticizes Hemingway and debunks the “facts” of Feast, often harshly. She calls it “an old man’s book, petty and incontinent.” She finds the sentences “pretentious,” as if “some besotted Hemingway student wrote them” (and then she gives a telling example). She attacks him as a man, especially his treatment of Hadley. So, the question arises, why was this introduction allowed by the lifelong publisher of his books? Hemingway committed suicide before Feast was published. It was edited by his last (fourth) wife, Mary, and there’s some controversy about how much was omitted and altered in her editing. It’s all so sad. 3

The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

Surprisingly, I thought this novel was very good. My surprise is due to the fact that I normally don’t care for EH’s work, and I thought that Sun was on the MMB list because, when I first read it, I was an impressionable teenager. In my review of his letters I wrote that I liked them because they were spontaneous. This novel has the same spontaneity; we don’t see the author laboring to find the one true word. My interest was constant, and I glided along. The first-person narrator, Jake Barnes, is mostly a detached observer. He gets involved, has feelings, but they’re muted. In place of a plot we get episodes, mainly the Fiesta in Spain, where the bullfighting sequence takes place. The novel is saturated with drinking; people are often drunk. The two main characters that Jake interacts with are Brett Ashley and Robert Cohen. Both people are based on real life figures, and both are portrayed unattractively. Cohen’s Jewishness is a factor in his unattractiveness; there’s a definite strain of anti-Semitism in the book (the word “kike” appears too often). As for Lady Brett, she’s no lady. To me, she isn’t. She’s an alcoholic, a beauty in her mid-thirties, and is a user. She uses men as sexual partners, then drops them. She’s not malicious, but she still causes harm. She claims, and probably believes, that she loves Jake, but there can be no sex between them due to a war injury he sustained. Except in regard to her, no reference is made of this loss; Jake seems detached even from that. Still, as noted, he’s an observer, and the descriptions in the book are excellent (I especially liked the fishing episode). The dialogue, of which there’s a lot, is spot on – Hemingway gets the various voices right. Is there a higher meaning in Sun? I don’t see one. It’s just a well-written, entertaining excursion into a world long gone. It was Hemingway’s first – and, many consider, his “greatest” novel. I would amend that by calling it his best novel. He wrote it while still married to Hadley, but it was published after their separation. He dedicates the book to her and to his son. 4

Re-reads

The Blood of the Lamb – Peter De Vries

The last third of this novel is an emotional experience. Not just for me, but for you too, if you have a heart. Don Wanderhope portrays his daughter Carol and his relationship with her. At age ten she contracts leukemia and, after many remissions and relapses, dies two years later. A child of that age is a golden creature, and De Vries captures her and his responses to her illness. He does it with restraint, understatement. This kind of work would suffer from an outpouring of emotion from the author; the reader must generate those feelings from what is offered. Don does have episodes of anger, but they’re mostly directed at a god who is absent, who offers no help or solace. A child should not go through such an ordeal, should not be so early robbed of life. That she endures it with a simple grace is part of her nature. Is this novel hard to take? Well, yes, but it has value. It must be noted that De Vries wrote it shortly after his own daughter had died of leukemia. Just as the first two thirds cannot rightly be described as autobiographical, the Carol section does not faithfully correspond to De Vries’ life: unlike Don, he was married and had three other children. In Lamb those characters are stripped away, and Don faces things alone. I won’t review the novel as whole; it has its strengths and weaknesses. It’s that last third that matters, to a degree that few works achieve. 5
 
Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
This is a nostalgia piece, written by a man who would die, at age forty-one, six years after it came out; the cause of his death was rampant alcoholism. But in this book he was sixteen and seventeen, a healthy, physically fit and emotionally strong young man on the threshold of life. Despite the success he would later achieve with his plays, I believe that his three years in a Borstal Prison were the high point of his life. Brendan was arrested because he was found in London with a suitcase full of ingredients for explosives. (This was during the years of the violent conflict between England and Ireland over the issue of Irish independence; Brendan was a fervent member of the IRA.) BB isn’t a bitter book. Though there are instances of cruelty, deprivation, violence, those are largely overshadowed by the positive aspects: the comradery, the generosity, the rough kindness. Not just from one boy to another, but from those who run the prison. Some “screws” are brutes, but most are fair-minded, a few even caring souls. And among Brendan’s fellow inmates, there are boys who are dangerous. But, all in all, Borstal was not a bad place, which is to the credit of the British. I don’t believe there are many women who will read this book, but maybe they should; it’s instructive in showing the male psyche, particularly the need for love and the sensitivity to slights. In a way, Brendan was made for prison life: he was tough, stoic, diplomatic. A born leader. And smart. The Catholic schools in Dublin are to be congratulated: they produced a working class boy who was fluent in Latin. BB is an unrestrained outpouring of memories; it’s a spree of words, particularly dialogue. For me this often went on too long. But it’s Behan’s book, his experiences, and they do come alive. Last observation: has any small country produced as many top-notch writers as Ireland? 4
 
Castaway – James Gould Cozzens
A short book, under a hundred pages, with an interesting premise. A man (Mr. Lecky) is locked in a large department store. In the ensuing days nobody else enters the store. What occurred to bring this situation about is never divulged. Lecky is like Robinson Crusoe on his island, though he has at hand, on the many floors of the store, all that he needs to survive. We follow his efforts to get by. But soon a major problem emerges: someone else is in the store (this man is always referred to as “the idiot”). Lecky immediately considers him to be a threat to his life, and sets out to hunt him down and kill him – which, after much bumbling, he succeeds in doing. That accomplished, we get more pages about “getting by.” As I noted: an interesting premise – and Cozzens manages to make it a colossal bore. The problems are twofold. Lecky never takes on human dimensions that I could relate to. I never cared about the guy, never felt close to him. The only feeling he evoked is dislike (with some puzzlement thrown in). The puzzlement stems mainly because Cozzens seems to be making a point about Life, but I never had an inkling of what that was. The ending is supposed to be a revelation, but my only revelation about it – and the book as a whole – was, “What a mistake.” (delete)
 
Night Train – Martin Amis
Though this novel is not on my MMB list, it was sitting on the shelves with other books that are. And I recalled that I had liked it in some way. But this time around I had major problems. For starters, why does an upper-class British author, the son of the famous Kingsley, write a police procedural mystery set in the USA and told in the first person by a tough woman detective named Mike? The research going on behind the scenes to create a sense of authenticity is way too conspicuous. And, BTW, in case you’re wondering, Mike is not a lesbian; she lives with a guy, though she has no on-page interaction with him; he’s just a name. (So does he exist?) Peculiarities abound. But there’s the Biggie, the central element in the plot: a twenty-seven-year old woman, who has absolutely everything going for her, commits suicide (three bullets into her mouth). Why? – this novel is a whydunit. Mike, who had known Jennifer since she was a child, follows the trail of her life searching for the fly in the ointment. I waited for the reason for the suicide to emerge, increasingly impatient (and annoyed). But all leads led to dead ends. Instead Amis served up a heavy dose of verbiage of a deep and cryptic philosophical nature. There’s no “Aha!” moment because Amis had no solution to the premise he constructed. This book is woefully misconceived and leads to nothing but a cop out.