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

Memories of a Catholic Childhood – Mary McCarthy

I first read “Yonder Peasant, Who Is He?” in Cast a Cold Eye, McCarthy’s 1950 short story collection. It reappears as the lead-off story in these memories (which came out seven years later). In it she dissects the mentality that allowed her paternal grandparents to be blithely indifferent to the miserable existence she and her brothers endured after their parents’ death. “Dissects” is the correct word: emotions are presented in a detached, analytical way, and sometimes with a wry humor. This is true even in the next piece, in which she describes the nature of their misery at the hands of the brutish uncle they were sent to live with. Uncle Myers is the only person in the book who comes across as evil. McCarthy isn’t a condemner; she sees people as too complex to be categorized as good or bad. The stories follow her life chronologically; when her well-to-do maternal grandfather takes her to live in Seattle she begins to live in privileged circumstances. She attends school at a Sacred Heart convent; though Catholicism is an influence, early on she becomes a non-believer. My favorite piece in the collection is the final one, “Ask Me No Questions,” in which McCarthy finally tackles (after the woman’s death) her supremely vain maternal grandmother. The smooth and precise prose never flags, but when we move into McCarthy’s mid-teens I got the sense that she was at a loss for material. Actually, these memories are meager; without the supplement of italicized addendum (which I skimmed) the book would come to less than two hundred pages. I can’t say that I grew fond of Mary, but I don’t believe she was asking that of me. Respect for her intelligence would mean more to her, and that I can grant her.

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard – Anatole France (French)

This novel takes the form of a diary of a man in his seventies (and moves into his eighties). Sylvestre Bonnard is a bachelor whose house is filled with books – he lives in a “City of Books.” He has an elderly housekeeper and a cat named Hamilcar, to whom he talks. He is, actually, talking to the reader throughout the novel – a sense of intimacy is established on the first page and never wanes. My acquaintanceship with this unique individual was a most enjoyable one. The novel has a sentimental strain that may be old-fashioned, but it’s appropriate to the character of Bonnard; there are soft-hearted people like him. The first part of the book is devoted to a search for a precious manuscript, but that subject is dropped entirely. The story then concerns itself with the young daughter of a deceased woman whom Bonnard loved in his youth (a love that was unrequited; she married another). Paris is a big city, and how likely would it be for him to cross paths with someone he didn’t even know existed? But I found these “faults” to be irrelevant; the voice dominating the novel kept me out of a fault-finding mood. Jeanne is in need of  help; she’s staying at a school where she’s a charity case and has been relegated to the status and duties of a servant. Bonnard – who has led a sheltered a life among his books – sees for the first time a manifestation of evil in the person of the headmistress. She informs Bonnard that Jeanne must be trained in the struggle of life, and is to learn that she can’t just amuse herself and do what she pleases. His response: “One comes into this world to enjoy what is beautiful and what is good, and to do what one pleases, when the things one wants to do are noble, intelligent and generous.” He rescues Jeanne, and to provide for her dowry he decides to sell his book collection; the books gave him pleasure, but they have no real value. (His “crime” is robbing Jeanne by secreting some volumes aside from the sale.) As for his age and his solitary existence, it’s not in his nature to complain or to harbor regrets about what he doesn’t have. He accepts, and does so with benevolence and humor. The simple act of acceptance is shown to have its rightful place as one of the keys to contentment. Bonnard has reached the age when he has observations to make about Life (such as the one quoted above), and I found wisdom from a man who professes to have no wisdom. That Anatole France was thirty-eight when he created his “old-book man” is remarkable, as is the fact that this was his first novel. Years ago I read his Penguin Island and thought it a wonder, yet I didn’t pursue other works by him. I succumbed to the fact that France (even though he won the Nobel Prize) is out of vogue. Who even talks of this contemporary of Flaubert? Sylvestre Bonnard might say, with a shrug and a smile, thus are the vagaries of fame.

Transparent Things – Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov’s novels can be divided into three categories. Two of the categories are similar in that both have believable characters involved in an intelligible plot; what separates them is that some succeed in telling a good story and some don’t. Generally speaking, the simpler the plot, the more successful the story. The third category consists of works that are unintelligible. Though Lolita has its difficulties, it’s certainly not impenetrable. After that novel, Nabokov was finally freed of money worries and he no longer seemed to care about the reader (and so we get Ada). Transparent Things belongs in the third category; it delves into arcane matters in a prose that often seems like a verbal labyrinth. The characters that occasionally emerge from these encumbrances are unreal and act with a perverse randomness. For all his vast intelligence, why couldn’t Nabokov perceive how boring and foolish this is? At any rate, my long association with him ends here, on this down note: I’ve now read (or attempted to read) all of his novels. I wish I had taken his final two in chronological order. Look at the Harlequins! (the last to be published in his lifetime) would have been a much more fitting goodbye to an author who gave me so much pleasure.

Found, Lost, Found – J. B. Priestley

Priestley was a hugely productive writer – I counted thirty novels in the list of his works, and there were equally long numbers of plays, essays, autobiographies and criticism. This novella was published when he was in his eighties, but it has the feel of something done by a young man. I have a hunch it was a discarded manuscript that the elderly writer discovered in a drawer and found pleasing. Premise: Tom drinks a lot of gin (why he chooses to float through life in a perpetual state of inebriation is not made clear); he and Kate meet and soon (too soon) fall in love. She leaves London for an undisclosed location, challenging Tom to find her; she wants to test his commitment to their relationship. The episodes involved in his search make up the bulk of the novel. They’re played as comic set pieces; trouble is, they’re not funny. I became awfully annoyed with Tom the inventive wit (he likes to make up names for himself such as J. Carlton Mistletoe and Theodore A. Buscastle). So I skipped to the end: he finds her. But the larger question for me is why I’m having such a hard time finding a good book to read. I only review those that I get halfway through, so you don’t know about all the ones (sometimes six in a row) I can’t tolerate for that long. Even having to write about this bit of fluff has put me in a bad mood.

The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro
In this collection Munro is at her near-best, which is formidable. Her perspective is from the tail end of middle-age. Sometimes she looks back at childhood and parents; sometimes she looks ahead at old age. With both these subjects she does her strongest work. (My favorite story, “Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Kidd,” takes place in a nursing home.) The weakest ones, for me, were about women in their late forties who are caught up in fervent sexual relationships. Their desperation and neediness made me uncomfortable; they’re abject before men who consume their entire being. The men are similar: unprepossessing fellows with a knack for attracting women and then dropping them. Disappointment and loss and death are present in many of these stories. But Munro is a chronicler of life, and the stage she’s exploring in this collection is a difficult one.

Solomon Gursky Was Here - Mordecai Richler
I stopped after reading over 300 pages. This is an ambitious novel, and the author has a great deal of talent. But the talent is given too free a rein. So many, many characters, so many, many plot strands! Each done well, but never coalescing into a coherent whole. Everybody and everything is extreme, overly-colorful. A richness on this scale has to be controlled because it wears the reader down – especially when the reason to be reading this stuff becomes more and more tenuous. Here I am at page 300, and I’m in a bog. Then I went into full critical mode: Why so much raunchiness, and why did Richler (a Jew) cook up such a rotten bunch of Jews? This book became offensive to me.

The Company She Keeps - Mary McCarthy
This is supposed to be a novel, but it’s a group of short stories. No engaging or distinct personalities emerge. This is one of McCarthy’s shortcomings. She can be overly analytical, like a scientist examining human specimens (and sometimes dissecting them). Her writing/dissection is done with such thoroughness that it’s tedious to read her when she’s in this mode. When she cared about her characters (not loved them; just cared) – as in The Groves of Academe or A Charmed Life – her intelligence was used to good purpose.

First Love and Other Stories - Samuel Beckett (French)
Recently I tried Murphy again, and again quit after four or five pages. For me, Beckett is unreadable. I get lost in words that are only vaguely connected to a world I can relate to. Every once in a while some situation or image or personality or feeling will come floating along, and I grasp at it (desperately) but it slips away, and I’m again lost.

Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively
A mood of mystery and sadness infuses this novel. By means of flashbacks the author takes us with Claudia through her whole life, and we’re with her at the end of it, in a hospital room, looking at the lights and shadows through the window. The romance at the emotional heart of the story is done well. Lively writes beautiful prose; one is aware of that, and she demands your concentration, but this evocative book flows with grace. *

McKay’s Bees - Thomas McMahon
I liked the businesslike approach, assertive and clear; I liked the diverse characters, I liked the premise of the story. Then it turned stagnant. The characters and the situation were not developed. Instead the author began concentrating more and more on factual material, as if he were writing a text.

The Drinker - Hans Fallada (German)
Proletarian prose, in which Fallada has a character take a drink and quickly descend into a hell of self-destructive alcoholism. Actually, the man is crazy – that’s the only way to account for his deterioration. Drink isn’t the issue. I read that Fallada doesn’t revise; he should have. There’s some vigor to this, but it was unreasonable and melodramatic and sloppy, and I couldn’t finish it. I thought his What Now, Little Man? was very good, but I read that long ago, and now I’m suspicious.

Cast a Cold Eye - Mary McCarthy
These are social dissections, not stories. People are caricatures of a type and exist only to make the author’s points. The observations are often accurate, fresh and amusing, but not vital to me. The prose, too, was difficult; it slowed down this reader, who was already slowing down. The only story that had real life was “Yonder Peasant, Who Is He?”, but in it there was a real character: Poor little Mary McCarthy herself. This one, in which the author’s eye is not cold, was terrific.

Blindness - Henry Green
Written when Green was in his teens, this is a remarkable work for the first half. The author has control over a variety of devices – a journal, letters, interior monologues. Then the book turns to the love interest, first exploring, for a long chapter, a girl’s day, then showing the girl and John together – and the whole thing breaks down. The language becomes stilted (purposely, I think; an authorial effect that doesn’t work), the emotions dubious (how did John get to be the person we are presented with?). All authenticity vanished, and I stopped reading. Green suddenly seemed like the teenager he was.