Other People’s Trades - Primo Levi (Italian)
These essays are two or three pages long; many have a scientific subject, for Levi was, at heart, a chemist. What’s here is mostly enjoyable, though Levi sometimes goes over my non-scientific head. I don’t think he should have quit his chemist’s job to become a full-time writer. At the end of this book he admits that he finds nothing compelling to write about, and I couldn’t help but think of his suicide. Still, these pieces are not dark, and some offer up a hard-earned wisdom.
Viper’s Tangle - Francois Mauriac (French)
What we get is a letter a man is writing to his wife, to be read after his death. An interesting (though restrictive) format, but Mauriac uses it to promote his religious beliefs. The book is monotonous, tiresome and murky.
Flying to Nowhere - John Fuller
A concoction of images without form or purpose. Many of these images are bizarre and gross, but they’re rendered in a delicate prose; this mixture induces queasiness. If I hadn’t read good novels by poets, I’d say, after reading this one (or, rather, part of it), that they shouldn’t write them. The faults and difficulties I find in some poetry – particularly obscurity and pretentiousness – are evident even in the book’s title.
The Easter Parade - Richard Yates
Grueling, as is usual with Yates. The book follows the lives of two sisters, from youth to old age, but the narrative is lopsided; at first they’re given equal attention, then Sarah is pretty much abandoned. It becomes Emily’s story (which is one unhappy love affair after another); Sarah appears late in the book as more of a mess than she was when we left her. I found it all depressing, but I had little empathy for the two women; what should have moved me didn’t. Yates is an autobiographical writer, and it’s notable that the strongest episode involves a poet. I saw Yates in this character, observing himself through the eyes of Emily as she loses all love for him. This masochiostic portrayal stands out in a book that sometimes reads like a case study. I think Yates struggled with Parade; even the structure seems cobbled together, as if Yates were trying (and failing) to find the right path. Still, he makes his point again: Life is hard, full of disappointments and failure. This is another one of his tragedies of the commonplace, though he did it best in his first novel, Revolutionary Road.
3 comments:
I finished Easter Parade last night and agree that it is no picnic. Any happiness found for the characters doesn’t last. It is a thread we see over and over in Yates’ writing. And the autobiographical thread is often seen as well. I agree Revolutionary Road is his best (that I’ve read so far and according to many critics), but I find most all of his writing so well done that it pleases me enough to keep going and looking forward to more. The lopsidedness of the book didn’t bother me. In the grand scheme things, it seemed right that it should be that way. Right now I am reading Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and look forward to reading your review when I am finished. I hope there is one.
Because the terrain in this novel is so familiar - New York City and, just as importantly, its surrounding areas - it’s fair to say I had a different experience than a more detached reader would have and the book cut me deeply. It was precisely the New York that my parents grew up in, with all of its pathologies on full display. The book does a good job of illustrating how two of those pathologies - nonstop drinking and smoking - were really enough to derange and derail the lives of ordinary people. I appreciate Yate’s main project of contrasting the life of an educated, independent woman living in the city (Emily) with that of her sister - a traditional housewife living in the country (Sarah). Reading about Emily’s endless series of affairs grows tiresome, which I’m now thinking was the point; her seemingly superior freedom was always laced with uncertainty and the conceit of youth, which looks away from the big picture and does not reflect on how things might end. I must also commend Yates on writing a book so much from the female perspective; I think he made a heroic effort to see the world - specifically that New York World of the mid-20th century - from a woman’s point of view.
For those of us who never sought out New York, but had it imposed on us by growing up in its suburbs, the work of Richard Yates can be painfully familiar and accurate. This is especially the case here since I grew up on Long Island.
Another thing that rang true for me was the character of Peter, possibly the healthiest character in the book. Growing up around so much intoxication and human weakness may well have been the soil that set him on a stable path; the endlessly forgiving man of God, humble and insightful about what brings true fulfillment, he almost embodies the case FOR procreating, since we’ve all probably seen cases of very dysfunctional parents producing surprisingly functional offspring. Like so much of the book, I found the ending as touching as it was painful.
I see that I wrote my review in 2008, so I read the novel long ago.
If a reader has a some emotional connection with the subject matter of a book, it has more meaning than someone who doesn't (if the author gets it "right"). You obviously did think that Yates got it right. He would be pleased.
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