Re-reads
Quartet in Autumn – Barbara Pym
Authors usually choose to write about interesting people in interesting situations. But this novel follows the “uninteresting” lives of four “uninteresting” people. Two men, two women work together in an office (what they do – something clerical – is not important enough to be even mentioned). They have no contact with one another outside work. They are all elderly, all unmarried (though one is a widower). They lead “nothing” lives in that nothing much happens to them. All these quotation marks are there because this quartet is interesting. Lives are never made up of nothing. Solitary people have dimensions, and their situation, their concerns, though maybe not dramatic, are important. The two events that are crucial are the retirement of the women and the subsequent death of one of them. This upsetting of the long status quo causes ripples. Not waves, but ripples. Pym, who never married, wrote this novel during the fifteen years in which she couldn’t get anything published; one of her characters has had a mastectomy, as did Pym. So, when she wrote Quartet, she was facing end of life concerns. Yet she keeps a distance. She does not push for the reader’s sympathy; the four people have their good and not-so-good points. And there is much quiet humor in the book. It’s an admirable work. This quartet in the autumn of their lives mattered to me.

The Feud – Thomas Berger
A man in a hardware store is asked to get rid of the cigar in his mouth; he responds by saying that it’s unlighted; a dispute ensues. This matter could easily be settled between reasonable men, but reason does not rule in the world Berger creates. As things spiral out of control, we could be witnessing a comedy of very bad behavior. It is funny, and makes for highly enjoyable reading, but I began to see that most of the participants in such behavior are actually not that unlike ordinary people, who keep in check – most of the time – emotions or tendencies that are given free rein by the denizens of the two feuding towns. And aren’t we all guilty of such faults as callousness and greed? Some extreme cases exist, and play a crucial role in the unfolding of events: Reverton has a need to be important, with the aid of his trusty revolver; a cop, Harvey Yelton, gives new dimensions to the word “corrupt”; Junior is vicious to the bone. And then there’s Bernice, a study in sexual and ethical amorality. But Berger includes some quite decent souls, particularly two teenage brothers. One of the boys is Tony, and his infatuation with Eva is especially interesting. Though she has the body of a woman, it turns out that she’s thirteen and has the mentality of a six-year-old; the slow dawning on Tony of her emotional deficiency is handled beautifully (he decides not to run off to Canada with her). A lot is handled beautifully in this novel. I was left feeling I had been given a pessimistic look at human nature, artfully disguised as a romp.

Starting Over – Dan Wakefield
I can’t fathom what I saw of value, at any point of my life, in this chronicle of Phil Potter’s sex life in the swinging 70’s. It’s devoid of the humor it aspires to – all it doles out is smarminess, couched in literary trappings. The women are without moral scruples, and they use the F-word as freely as Potter does. Maybe once I didn’t object to these elements as strongly as I do now, but how could I accept the lack of depth in the characterization of Phil? All there is to him are erections (which Wakefield lovingly describes) and a drinking problem. This novel’s presence on my Most Meaningful Books list is an embarrassment, and it will be removed post haste. Note: Things are now occurring in real time. I just found that it wasn’t on the list. Thank goodness! – I wasn’t an idiot. I had the book in my library (which is supposed to contain only “keepers”), so I assumed it was a MMB. I did have a review posted of another Wakefield book, which I was highly critical of and couldn’t finish. Out of warped sense of duty I did finish this one.

Confidence Africaine – Roger Martin du Gard (French)
Another bungle on my part. I’m supposed to re-read only books that I never reviewed. But, when I was almost done with this story, I found that I had reviewed it (you can find that review under “Roger” in the Labels section). In it I wrote about the ending: “The inner story is hidden, but we sense it lurking in the shadows. On the last page, in the last paragraph, the author goes into those shadows; in this powerful (and artful, passionate) moment I felt, forcefully, the ugliness coiled at the heart of the matter.” Here’s my problem: I’ve reread the ending – that last paragraph – at least seven times and I can’t fathom how it elicited my previous reaction. Its significance just isn’t there for me. What did I miss? (Or was there anything to miss?) Maybe I need to read this whole story over again. Because, as is, it’s interesting and well-written, but it needs that strong ending to raise it above the merely good.

The Postman – Roger Martin du Gard (French)
I thought Roger deserved another look (this outing by him I didn’t review). It’s a short novel in which a postman makes his mail deliveries, and in doing so we get a tour of a French village – one you never want to visit. Everyone is either morally deficient (including the postman, who, for beginners, steams open letters that seem to be of interest) or sad cases. The book reveals all sorts of vices and unhappiness, and its unadorned prose is efficient to the point of excellence (no wasted words: if someone’s appearance is described it serves to establish their character and situation). The kind of acidic approach the author utilizes has its fascination, though one wonders how he got to be so cynical about human nature. In the last dozen pages the detached tone is replaced by the personal musings of secondary characters, which is a misstep. Martin du Gard should have should have stuck with the postman and his wily amorality.
End of re-reads

Endgame – Frank Brady
Those who recognize the name Bobby Fischer probably recall the famous 1972 chess match that took place in Iceland between Fischer and the Russian Boris Spassky. Russia had long held hegemony in the chess world, but Fischer’s victory – he became World Champion – placed America on top. It was a front page event, aided by the fact that Fischer, at age twenty-nine, was quite handsome. He became a celebrity, appearing often on TV. But what kind of person was Bobby Fischer? I sensed that Brady – who knew him – overcame a reluctance to reveal facts about his character that are alienating. I know I was alienated; I came to dislike the man. He was fervently (to use a mild modifier) against Jews – even though both of his parents were Jewish. Also an object of his wrath was America, and when the Twin Towers went down he expressed jubilation. He took every opportunity to vocally (or in writing) espouse the evil of his enemies and the greatness of his heroes. One of those heroes was Adolph Hitler (in Bobby’s thinking the death camps never existed). Besides these odious opinions, on a personal basis he had an overriding sense of entitlement; things had to be his way. He was monumentally selfish, ungrateful, judgmental; if someone who had done many favors for him over the years committed one small act he objected to, that person was dead to him. He can be excused, at least in part, because of his obvious mental illness. This book presents a picture of the obsessive and restricting psychology of a chess genius. When Bobby was seven the game had become his predominant pursuit, which is not conducive to a normal life (he also, as a child, mostly associated with older men). But an aberrant personality does not excuse ugly ideas and callous behavior. Brady often refers to Fischer as the greatest chess player the world has seen. This claim is unsupported. At times he was brilliant, but his record is erratic. He played few major matches (none at all for twenty years), and many ended in draws or losses. Even his victory over Spassky is suspect. With his delays, demands, disruptions, and dramatics Fischer created an atmosphere of chaos in their Iceland match. He thrived on chaos, but how did it effect his opponent? Bobby Fischer died young – age sixty-four – which, Brady points out, is the number of squares on a chess board.

An Academic Question - Barbara Pym

After having years of publication, and with a loyal (though somewhat small) coterie of readers, the swinging seventies engulfed England, and Pym’s type of quiet, humorous novels – mostly about unmarried church ladies – were deemed to be out of date. She experienced fourteen (!) painful years of rejection. But she wrote on, and even tried to make her characters and subjects more in keeping with the times. Question was an abortive effort in that direction – abortive because she wrote two version of it, then abandoned the project altogether. Instead she turned her attention to another novel, one which would be her best: Quartet in Autumn. It was darker than her usual work, and she harbored no hopes that it would find a publisher. But she clearly believed in it. By a serendipitous series of events, Quartet did find a publisher (and was a runner-up for the Booker Prize). Her career was again on track, and some of the novels she wrote during her fallow period were now accepted and enjoyed. The “Pym touch” still had a place in the world. Question, being unfinished, was not part of that initial revival. In her opening Note Hazel Holt writes that she took the two handwritten drafts of the novel and amalgamated them into a coherent whole. Should she have done it? Probably not. Though mildly engaging, marriage and children and an unfaithful husband were not subjects Pym knew firsthand, and the result is a rather tepid, aimless book. When authors decide to drop a project, their wishes should be honored.

The Same Man - David Lebedoff 

The men profiled are two of my favorite authors: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh. I’ve read just about every work of fiction they wrote (nine by Orwell, thirteen by Waugh). This dual biography revealed many facts I didn’t know about Waugh (including why he earned a reputation for cruelty); in the case of Orwell, I had read his Selected Letters, so I was familiar with his personality and his life story. Lebedoff’s prose is smooth, and there’s a gossipy element that was enjoyable (especially in regard to Waugh); but if you aren’t fans of the writers, this book is not for you. As for its title – how could two men be more different? Lebedoff acknowledges that glaring fact, but tries to justify their sameness along sociological grounds: both saw the coming age as a disaster. The last section, in which this premise is belabored, was of little interest to me, and I skimmed. Also, since I appreciated the novels, I wanted a more full discussion of them than I got; since Lebedoff is trying to support his sameness theme, he concentrates on 1984 and Brideshead Revisited, both of which present a bleak view of our present (and future) world. But I consider Brideshead to be Waugh’s weakest novel (a mistake, actually); his best, A Handful of Dust, is mentioned, in passing, three times. Orwell’s non-political work is worth reading; my favorite, Coming Up for Air, is cited once. My advice: try those two.

Pied Piper - Nevil Shute

This isn’t one of Shute’s more inspired outings. Still, he could tell a story, and I stuck around to the end. The plot concerns an elderly Englishman who’s on a fishing trip in France when it’s invaded by German troops; he accepts the responsibility of getting two children to safety in England. The number of children he’s escorting keeps increasing (there’s six by the end), which makes him, I suppose, a pied piper. Midway in his trek (there’s a lot of walking) Mr. Howard is joined by a young French woman who, it turns out, was in love with his son, an RAF pilot killed in the war. The novel was published in 1942, so it must be considered in context: it meant something to the English people at the time. Though Mr. Howard is prohibited by his age to engage in any feats of daring-do, he’s a stiff upper lip type with a firm will. The problem with the novel is that he, and all the other characters, aren’t developed; what they are in the beginning is what they are at the middle and at the end. And the assorted kids didn’t act in a way I found convincing; they accept hardships too complacently. Shute tries to generate feeling for Nicole, the young French woman; she’s likable and resourceful and a good soul – as is Howard – but not much else. The novel seems flat; it needed more complexity in characterization to have resonance. A word about the title. The pied piper of Hamelin lured children, and was an ominous figure bent on revenge. This is certainly not in keeping with the character nor the intent of Mr. Howard.

Vandover and the Brute - Frank Norris

Norris had established a reputation with McTeague and The Octopus, so after his death (at age thirty-two) there was a search for the rumored manuscript of an early novel. Vandover was literally pulled from the ashes of the San Francisco earthquake and fire, and it was published twenty years after Norris had written it. In a Foreword his brother states that it would surely have undergone revision if Frank had been given the opportunity. It needed more than revision – it needed to be re-conceived and rewritten. The novel tells the life story of a privileged man (Harvard, etc.) who has faults: he’s weak-willed, impractical, pleasure-loving, unable to commit to higher goals. But he also has – or so Norris repeatedly tells us – a side to him that’s brutish. But he never shows that Brute in action. Though we’re told that Vandover spends time in houses of ill-repute and associates with low types, we only see him, near the end, engage in a self-destructive gambling binge. Early on he has a sexual relationship with a woman of loose morals; he never forces himself on her, he only does what many young men do. But Vandover will suffer grievously for his shortcomings. In the last half of the book things begin to go downhill, and by the end he’s a financial, physical and emotional wreck. He’s even relegated to episodes in which he’s naked, crawling on all fours, growling like an animal. This doesn’t work artistically, it doesn’t work logically (though, I must admit, it got to me – it was unsettling, even frightening). Now that I’ve criticized the novel, I need to give it some praise. It has life, it moves. And the Vandover I was viewing before his improbable descent was an interesting study. Despite his faults, he was a decent guy, and I liked him. This fact leads me to do some psychoanalyzing of the author. It was Norris who created this sympathetic character. So why was he so brutal toward him? Did he see his own faults in Vandover, and feel the need to exorcize them by punishing a fictional surrogate? There’s another character in the book who’s morally lamentable – lacking in compassion or ethics (qualities that Vandover has). He’s the one who deserves to be punished, but he rises in the eyes of the world. He even has thoughts of rising to the presidency of the country. And who knows – he may get there.

A Hero of Our Time – Mikhail Lermontov (Russian)
A young man wrote this book. A talented young man who would surely outgrow the juvenile posing that mars his portrayal of the reckless, handsome, world-weary hero. Pechorin is highly critical of his many faults, but in a romanticized way. As a result, the probing into his character merely reveals one devil of a dangerous fellow (especially to women). In a long letter from an ex-lover, we see Lermontov’s conceit in full bloom (for he, not Vera, wrote the letter to Pechorin): “One who has loved you once cannot look at other men without a certain disdain, not because you are better than they – oh no! But there is some singular quality in your nature, something particular to you, something proud and mysterious.” In “Princess Mary” (the story which makes up more than half of the book) Pechorin engages in a prolonged and calculated seduction, but when he achieves his goal he kills the love that Mary has for him with the words, “Princess, did you know that I have been laughing at you?” He also kills a rival in a duel. He seems somewhat upset by his destructive actions, but accepts them as inexplicable aspects of his complex nature. Lermotov is credited with introducing psychological insight into fiction (though the novel came out in 1840, it has a modern feel; the prose, in particular, is not at all dated). He may have introduced psychological issues, but others would have to provide the insights. Pechorin is said to be the prototype of the existential man, but I’ve never figured out what that was. This author’s fame rests partly on his early death. Being killed in a duel at age twenty-six is a romantic way to go, and tends to create a legend.

The Touchstone – Edith Wharton
Since Wharton’s was thirty-eight when she wrote her first novel (Touchstone is a mere eighty-two pages long), youth can’t be blamed for how bad it is. The influence of Austen and Henry James is evident in the wordy and convoluted prose: “He had never been more impressed by the kind of absoluteness that lifted her beauty above the transient effects of other women, making the most harmonious face seem an accidental collocation of features.” But the main fault lies in the premise and its repercussions. Glennard has in his possession letters written by Margaret Aubyn, a now-deceased Famous Woman Author. In order to get money to marry Alexa, he sells the letters; they’re published without his identity being revealed; they cause a sensation. I reread the pages that allude to the content of these “shocking” letters; though Wharton keeps it vague, it’s clear they aren’t passionate love letters, nor do they put the woman’s soul on display. But after Glennard marries Alexa, he begin to suffer from guilt about what he’s done. It grows until he’s “tortured” and “anguished.” Initially he tries to conceal his act from Alexa; then he begins to do things to reveal to her the “damnable, accursed” sin he has committed. In the course of this agonizing his feelings toward his wife change: love turns into indifference, then abhorrence sets in. At the same time he begins to moon about the dead author (he sits by her grave, feeling close to her). The ending is full of impassioned verbiage and makes no more sense than any of the nonsense that precedes it. If Wharton had written a comic novel about a madman, she wouldn’t have had to change much. One last note: two references are made to a child. I hunted down these pages. Yes, a nursery and a baby are mentioned. Apparently, in all the hubbub about the letters, the baby got lost.

No Fond Return of Love – Barbara Pym
If you haven’t read any Pym, don’t start with this novel, for you won’t find her virtues on display here. It’s a meandering and purposeless effort, with too many characters and too many strands of plot. Worse, I didn’t believe in the people nor what they did. Since I found reading the book a bit depressing, I wondered about Pym’s state of mind when she wrote it. At times – and this is atypical of her – there are glimmers of cynicism and malice (which, actually, constitute the only interesting moments, because the rest is plodding). In a tacked-on “happy” ending Pym asks us to accept one of the most unconvincing love matches in fiction. I think she knew how lame it was, for she adds a short addenda in which we’re in the mind of a minor character. He hears a taxi but is not quick enough to get to his window to see Aylwin emerge with a bunch of flowers and Dulcie open the door for him. Last lines of the novel: “He took a mauve sugared almond out of a bag and sucked it thoughtfully, wondering what, if anything, he had missed.” He didn’t miss a thing.

Father and Son – Edmund Gosse
In this book, subtitled “A Study of Two Temperaments,” Gosse examines his relationship with his father, beginning with his earliest memories and ending when he leaves home at seventeen. In the mid-1800s Philip Gosse was a noted biologist, but his thoughts and emotions were dominated by his zealous religiosity. He tried to instill his beliefs in his only son; moreover, he convinced himself that the boy was one of the anointed. Initially Edmund tries to fulfill the role his father has in mind for him, but as he matures he begins to harbor doubts about religion; he goes so far as to engage in private acts which test his father’s dogma (he worships a chair and then awaits God’s punishment; none comes). Edmund will go on to lead a worldly life in London; the father is disappointed, but grants him his freedom. The author of the Introduction claims that Father and Son “describes the horrors of a Puritan upbringing.” I wonder if he read the same book I did. We all grow up affected by our parents’ flaws and limitations. Edmund had an odd upbringing, with demands and repressiveness, but he was never mistreated, nor was he unhappy. Though his father was a reserved man not given to displays of affection, Edmund always knew that he was loved. I found much that is almost idyllic in his childhood. Edmund’s mother shared her husband’s religious fervor; but what struck me forcefully was how perfectly matched these two were; the boy grew up in a house where there was contentment based on a deep, quiet affection. His mother dies (cancer); years later Philip remarries, and Edmund’s stepmother is another beneficent presence. This isn’t a lugubrious book; on the contrary, Gosse presents many events in a humorous light. At age ten Edmund is baptized (which, in the sect of the Brethren, is only done to adults who experience a momentous religious awakening). He’s made an exception because, his father reasons to the congregation, in early infancy his son already had “knowledge of the Lord” and had “possessed an insight into the plan of salvation.” After little Edmund’s baptizement, the boy immediately becomes “puffed out with a sense of my own holiness.” He begins to lecture his father, to treat the servants haughtily, and to mock his young friends. In other words, he becomes an insufferable prig.

That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana – Carlo Emilio Gadda (Italian)
Reading this novel was like being in a traffic jam of words; a side road would occasionally open up and I would be able to move along – only, alas, to soon find myself again stuck in congestion. Sentences like this were constantly barring my path: “In a way, a pseudo-justice assumes a legal course, a pseudo-severity, or the pseudo-habilitation of the finger-pointings whose manifest countersigns seem to be both the arrogance of the ill-considered magistrate’s investigation and the cynobalanic excitement of the anticipated sentence.” Adding to the density are phrases in French, German, Latin and Greek; the translator, William Weaver, saw fit not to render these into English. What results is such laborious going that I could only make it halfway through. Yet I quit with regret. On those side roads, when an accessible story emerged (the “awful mess” is a murder), I was impressed by the psychological intricacies, the atmosphere of festering corruption. If this novel were stripped of its excesses and digressions it would be at least a hundred pages shorter; it might be readable, yet it would be violated. Whatever the book is – and I’m not sure what that is – it’s exactly what it was meant to be. I wouldn’t dispute the claim that Gadda was a genius, but one who made no concessions to the reader. And, to me, such insularity is a failing.

Some Tame Gazelle - Barbara Pym
Pym’s first novel could be her tenth. Spinster church ladies are her subject, her prose is smooth and unruffled, the tone she sets is mildly amusing, mildly sad. Two sisters cope with their single state in very different ways. One’s feelings are deep; for thirty years she has faithfully held onto her undeclared love for a married Archdeacon. The other sister flamboyantly toys with love. This contrast between sincerity and superficiality is initially interesting, yet it isn’t developed. Pym seemed to realize this; she introduces odd characters to liven things up, but they only serve as passing distractions. I got into a state where I was lulled; then, in the last fifty or so pages, the absence of variety and depth sometimes made me wonder why I was still reading. Pym deals with loneliness and lovelessness in her typically light way; when she strikes a plangent note, it’s muted. Gentleness prevails, and many people read Pym for just that quality. Only in Quartet in Autumn did she delve into the dark side of the solitary life, and that novel will stand as her greatest accomplishment.

Charlotte’s Web - E. B. White
In this reread the book retained its freshness and charm. This is due, in large part, to the prose, lovely in its simplicity. The animal characters come alive, and their dialogue is pitch perfect (the geese talk like geese should talk). But it’s the rat, Templeton, who steals the show; his unrepentant greed and cynicism provide an antidote to the naive goodness of Wilbur and the wise goodness of Charlotte. The plot revolves around words written in a web, which folks take to be a miracle. Only by deft sidestepping is the author able to avoid any religious connotation. The precious miracle at the heart of this book is life. White closes by writing of the barn: “It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of the swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.”

And Then - Natsume Soseki (Japanese)
This novel is the second of a trilogy. I read – and liked a lot – the first, Sanshiro, and the last, The Gate. Both stayed grounded in the daily lives of the characters; Soseki presented their personalities and their emotions as they coped with circumstances, other people and themselves. But in And Then he takes a radically different approach. He concentrates on the main character’s angst and ennui, his existential despair. When the novel deals with everyday events, it’s good. But I quit reading because I ran into too many boring and pointless stretches. Boring and pointless – that’s usually what results when an author tackles the big questions of life directly. Those questions can’t be made vital or relevant by having somebody ponder about them.

The Housebreaker of Shady Hill - John Cheever

How good was Cheever? Very good as a prose stylist. The problem is that too many stories are infused with yearning. Yearning for beauty, sexual love, youth. The yearning is elusive; it cannot be satisfied. This theme, when repeated, becomes tiresome. In the worst story of the lot, “O Youth and Beauty,” a wife shoots her drunken husband as he sets out to run the hurdles in their living room (he had once been a star athlete). Unfortunately, I wanted a lot of the people in this collection to be put out of their misery. The best story is the shortest and simplest. In “The Worm in the Apple” the residents of Shady Hill closely observe a happy family; they’re waiting (and hoping) to find the worm at the center of their life. It never appears.

Exile and the Kingdom - Albert Camus (French)

Camus was a philosopher who wrote fiction – and did it very well in The Plague and The Fall. But in most of these stories the philosophical aspect takes precedence. The characters and plot (which is what I value in a work of fiction) are of secondary importance to an overriding Idea – one which often remained obscure to me. I was left feeling detached and unsatisfied.

The Psychiatrist and Other Stories - Machado de Assis (Portugese)

Many of these unique stories dwell exclusively in the mind and emotions; some are about people with obsessions. The long title story is an exploration of sanity. Who is sane, who is insane? By framing those questions from an intriguing perspective Machado succeeds in undermining our standard assumptions. The prose (which was translated by different people) is lovely; I felt as if I were being carried along on a strong river current in the night. But because Machado attempted to capture something so elusive, the experience provided by these stories is limited and fragmentary. I can’t categorize this collection – but Machado always defied categorization.

The River - Rumer Godden

Initially I found this book pleasant enough, but I started to get annoyed. Irritated with little Harriet’s contemplating the Big Issues of Life (she’s a budding writer of great talent). Captain John, with his tragic war injuries and his melancholy presence, struck me as right out of a movie (a young Ronald Colman would be good in the role). Then there was the business about Harriet’s brother and the cobra. How could a reader possibly not know, many chapters before it happened, that the boy would be killed by the snake? Not only were Godden’s situations staged in too obvious a way, but her characters were stagy too.

Jane and Prudence - Barbara Pym

Good Pym. She has the ability to involve the reader with her ordinary characters (actually, all people are odd, if one looks at them closely, which this author does). Of the two women, Pym didn’t quite get Prudence; I never believed in her affairs (which weren’t fully explored – how far did she go?). Jane was much more solidly grounded. All the men were vain, selfish and fatuous, and this was unfortunate (come on, Barbara, you can be more fair-minded than that!). Still, no meanness was intended. One of Pym’s strengths was that she knew the sadness and loneliness of life, and how we must cope; she coped by absorbing herself in the harmless occupation of writing quiet, humorous, perceptive novels.

Nostromo - Joseph Conrad
There are aspects of greatness in this book - depth, texture, scope - but for me it was too ponderous to enjoy. Scenes, motivations are weighed down by over-description, over-explication. It’s an adventure novel on one level, but the adventure never gets off the ground. In Conrad’s nature there was an exhausting compulsion to examine everything to the nth degree, and that’s too heavy a burden for a story to carry.

The Pearl - John Steinbeck
The book deals simply with simple matters while actually delving into life’s great questions (what do we value; what should we value?). Once Steinbeck sets his course on this morality tale he refuses to give it a happy ending, which is the honest thing to do. But he slips up on logic (the death at the end, as presented, is improbable). Steinbeck makes humane points about human nature, though sometimes those points have a maudlin quality.

The Great Fortune - Olivia Manning
The author found the key to making this book work in the character of Yaki, a wonderfully colorful and fascinating reprobate. She alternates chapters about him with chapters about Guy and Harriet Pringle. It’s Harriet who supplies the POV, and the sections featuring her are a bit drab. Manning seems reticent – probably because the author is Harriet, and Harriet is mainly concerned about her relationship with her husband. So Manning withholds; the reader has little understanding of the intimate dynamics of this marriage. She’s troubled by Guy’s attitude toward her, but Manning doesn’t show things with much force. In most of the scenes Harriet is with somebody else; Guy makes “appearances.” I don’t see Guy as a flesh and blood person (Yaki I do see!). Still, I like wary Harriet. I like the clear, flat, economical style of writing. The Bucharest setting was wonderful – Manning really captures that place: exotic, corrupt, self-indulgent, garish (as are the people who reside there); I felt the weather, the streets at night. This is part of a trilogy, and I’ll read on. *

Less Than Angels - Barbara Pym
Not great Pym. The problem is too many characters; the important ones get diluted by those who don’t deserve the amount of space given to them. Yet, with a Pym novel, there are virtues you can count on: she treats her reader as she would a friend. She will respect you, she will not offend you. She will be herself, and offer herself to you (in the form of her story and characters) with warmth and humor – and do it gently.

The Red and the Black - Stendhal (French)
I enjoyed the parts where the author looked at society and the church with unbridled contempt. Stendhal can dissect people with ruthless efficiency. I put up with the excesses of feelings – fainting, weeping, etc. – attributing it to a different culture, a different time. But, for a psychological study, what failed was the character of Jean Sorel. Stendhal was so cynical about motivations, so scathing toward hypocrisy, but at the close of the book he seems unable to see what a phony Sorel was. The ending is a series of unlikely, unmotivated, grossly overblown events.

The Hair of Harold Roux - Thomas Williams
I skimmed the last hundred pages. In the beginning I read with high hopes: a novel about a writer, concerned with the creative process, done by a real craftsman. The problem was preciousness. Williams can’t avoid Deep Thoughts. His protagonist is him, Williams, and he treats himself with hushed regard. Even faults are self-congratulatory ones (so dangerous to the ladies!). Don’t write an autobiographical novel if you think too highly of yourself; you’ll wind up looking ridiculous.

Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
It’s pleasant to enter Pym’s world. Her characters are engaging; there’s an ease in her unobtrusive prose; her plots are calm and sensible. She’s a master of understatement. The third person narrator, a plain spinster lady who is involved with the Church, has a penetrating and humorous eye. Pym mixes in worldly characters with ease. There are no hates being bandied about (although some characters suffer from Pym’s careful scrutiny). There’s a gentle acceptance of human foibles.

Ship of Fools - Katherine Anne Porter
A long novel, in very short sections separated by a skipped space. Porter includes a ship’s roster to help the reader keep the many characters straight. The individuals are varied, and I found them all to be complex, interesting and real. I’ve read criticism saying that most of the people are the same at the end of the voyage as they were at the beginning. This didn’t bother me one bit, for Porter’s view of humanity includes just such a static picture: miserable souls will never be freed from their particular forms of misery. Porter is very good with evil; Rick and Rack are frightening in their innate amorality. She also examines prejudice (the novel takes place just before WWII). Another thing critics objected to was her unflattering portrayal of the one Jew on the ship; yet should he be pure when so many others aren’t? Her prose is worthy of study; it combines the best of the elaborate and the simple. Also, the dog, Bebe, is wonderful. *