Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt
On the opening page McCourt claims that of miserable childhoods (the only ones worth writing about) none can equal the misery of an Irish Catholic childhood: “the poverty, the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father, the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters.” This is a despairing book, filled with death and suffering and filth; only a bitter humor ameliorates the heaviness. A character, in speaking of the English “quality” (those with money), says that they wouldn’t give the likes of him “the steam off their piss.” But even family members are mean and grudging toward one another, and city officials exhibit a callous indifference to the needy. As for Catholicism, all it breeds is a prejudicial hatred. Frank’s memories begin when he’s three, and his main concerns are getting food in his stomach and staying warm; these concerns will hold sway over his entire childhood. One sea change in his attitude occurs, and it involves his father. The boy loves him for his inherent kindness; but when Malachy gets paid for his intermittent periods of work he heads directly to a pub, where he drinks the money away. Meanwhile his wife and children live on the verge of starvation; it comes to the point where Frank finds this unforgivable, and his heart hardens toward the man. McCourt’s depiction of life in Limerick has a sensationalistic aspect, and I sometimes wondered if he was leaning heavily on exaggeration. That I didn’t pause to give my skepticism much attention was due to the book’s entertainment value. Unfortunately, McCourt moves us far past the point where his story should have ended. Most likely an editor saw a gold mine in these ashes and wanted to set things up for a sequel. So we follow Frank into his late teens, skipping years along the way; I found the young man who occupies these pages (in which we’re subjected to his sexual awakening) to be unappealing. And the final scene served to revive my doubts about the memoir’s authenticity. Immediately after Frank arrives in New York he and some companions go to a party where five bored American housewives (their husbands are off hunting) are ready for an orgy. Maybe McCourt was trying to express the freedom he’d find in the new world as compared to that in repressive Ireland. But, whatever, it’s never a good thing for a reader to finish a memoir thinking, “Yeah, right, in your dreams.”

A Hazard of New Fortunes – William Dean Howells
Reading this, I could visualize an author who’s aware of his preeminent position in American letters and is carefully, and with confidence, plying his craft. Trouble is, a reader should never see the author behind the words. For all its expertise in individual scenes, and its good depiction of life in New York in the 1890s, this novel is overpopulated and unfocused. Howell posits an interesting premise: a new literary magazine will take a different approach to submissions: “Look at the way the periodicals are carried on now! Names! names! names! In a country that’s just boiling over with literary and artistic ability of every kind the new fellows have no chance. I don’t believe there are fifty volunteer contributions printed in a year in all the New York magazines. It’s all wrong; it’s suicidal. Every Other Week is going back to the good old anonymous system, the only fair system.” So the “fellows” who don’t have impressive “names” are to be given a chance. But near the end of the book (when I abandoned it) the magazine exists and is doing quite well, yet not one word has been expended regarding its content and quality. Like everything else, Howell introduces a situation and leaves it undeveloped. And his efforts at recreating vernacular became ridiculous. We get ignorant country folk (“Then what are we goun’ to do? She might ’a’ knowed we couldn’t ’a’ come alone, in New York.”), Southerners (“Ah’m so much oblahged. Ah jost know it’s all you’ doing, and it will give papa a chance to toak to some new people.”) and a German (“I ton’t tink we are all cuilty or gorrupt, and efen among the rich there are goodt men.”).

The Moviegoer – Walker Percy
The first person narrator’s voice – the way he thinks, his observations of people – gives this novel a sharply-etched noonday brightness that’s as fresh and and original as it was when I first read it, decades ago. Binx begins by describing his uneventful existence in Gentilly, a suburb of New Orleans. He’s quite happy in a movie, even a bad one: “Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives,” but what he remembers is “the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in Stagecoach, and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in The Third Man.” Binx gets mild pleasure from making money as a stock and bond broker; his affairs are uncomplicated by emotional entanglements. He has carefully structured his life in such a way as to avoid being engulfed by despair (a feeling that he is intimately acquainted with). His cousin Kate does not fare so well; she has no defenses to the onslaught of her emotions. Though Percy suggests the acrid whiff of desolation and emptiness which can creep upon us in the most mundane situations, we never plunge into gloom. What keeps us afloat is the artfulness of the writing: “At last I spy Kate; her stiff little Plymouth comes nosing into my bus stop. There she sits like a bomber pilot, resting on her wheel and looking sideways at the children and not seeing, and she could be I myself, sooty-eyed and nowhere.” *

On Leave – Daniel Anselme (French)
France’s war in Algeria was a quagmire that dragged on for eight years and involved, at its height, a half million young men. In this novel there are no battle scenes, just brief flashbacks – images of a heap of bodies, a burned village. It opens with three soldiers on a train; they have a highly-anticipated week’s leave in Paris. Though we follow Lachaume (a sergeant), he meets up with the other two men. For all of them the leave turns out to be devoid of pleasure. They’re unable to slough off their anger at being asked to fight a war they don’t believe in; they can’t express how they feel to anyone who hasn’t experienced what they have; they know they can’t change things politically. They’re isolated souls in the midst of a city that has turned its back on them. Their only release is in getting drunk. This makes for glum reading, but that mood is the only honest one to convey. The book ends with the men again on a train, this one taking them back to the front. Anselme’s depiction of the state of mind of soldiers in such a situation is one that our Vietnam vets could surely commiserate with.

My Father and Myself - J. R. Ackerley
One problem with this book is that it doesn’t have a subject to focus on. Ackerley admits that he knew little about his father. They were on amiable but emotionally distant terms. What intrigues Ackerley is the possibility that his father, a world-class womanizer, was involved in homosexual relationships as a young man. This can’t be proven, so the question, though raised, is never resolved. As for the “myself” part of the book, Ackerley mostly writes about his unsatisfying homosexual life. In doing so he’s unsparing in detailing his intimate faults. Is such honesty to be lauded? I guess it is, but I wound up having no empathy or sympathy for him. I didn’t want to know about his bad breathe, impotence, etc. I found the vulgarity, presented in an elegant prose, distasteful. Ackerley worked at the BBC for many years, but we have nary a word about that job; instead he tells about cruising bars to pick up sailors. As for his family, we get researched snippets about his father, and some attention is given to his brother and mother (almost nothing about his sister). He doesn’t seem to have much feeling for any of them; his prevailing attitude is one of aversion. What emerges is an unsavory, unhappy man, and I didn’t find the time I spent with J. R. to be pleasant or profitable. Notably, his one true love is a dog.

Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
For Vonnegut an idea was as important as character or plot. This novel raises the question of whether racist views lie latent in all of us. The protagonist is a man who isn’t an anti-Semite but acts like one – and does a great job of it. During WWII, in radio broadcasts from Germany, he inspires hatred for Jews. That he’s actually an agent for the USA was, for me, a false turn in the plot; it provides a justification for Howard’s actions and thus absolves him of guilt. Beyond the thought-provoking idea (which the author backs away from), the book was okay. It weakens at the end: Resi arrives and brings out Vonnegut’s maudlin side (her suicide for love) and Howard’s angst is overdone.

The Marquis of O — - Heinrich von Kleist (German)
Kleist wrote these stories in the early 1800s, and many are set in medieval times. We get romanticism, brutality, swooning, manly tears, frothing at the mouth, fanatical religiosity, the supernatural. Despite these aspects there’s something clinical about Kleist’s writing; this acts as an antidote to the overwrought emotionality. The stories are good, but most are far too long. Length hurts the intriguing premise of “The Marquis of O — .” “Michael Kohlhaas,” in particular, would have been better if cut by a fourth – it could have been a masterpiece. It’s about a need for revenge that sweeps aside any other consideration; this need becomes madness, fueled by the exhilaration of madness.

A Modern Instance - William Dean Howells
Howells had something good going, and then he blew it. I stopped reading the last fifty pages of this four hundred page novel; I didn’t care about the characters anymore. And I had cared a lot about Bartley and Marcia. Though mismatched, they had a symbiotic relationship, and love was one of the elements binding them together. I wanted to know where their differences and dependencies would take them. But Howells introduces problems that cause them to separate; he gives center stage to two prigs who moralize about Right and Wrong (and find Bartley to be a despicable cad). If Howells wanted me to respect these noble pontificators, he failed; I sided with Bartley. He was no more than a flawed human being like you and me and Marcia. Without the anchor of Bartley and Marcia’s relationship, the novel lost its vitality and purpose. Questions arise: Howells had done an excellent job of depicting the bond between these two people, so why did he let it dissolve so easily? And why did he turn the once-handsome Bartley into someone grotesquely fat? He seemed to hate the man.

Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather
A novel about the spiritual life is unusual. This one succeeds with a straightforward, restrained approach. A spiritual calling means something in this book – it’s deserving of respect. To provide needed action and color, Cather includes many hardships, some adventures, much about the Indians and the Mexicans, a few legends. Also, nature plays a big part – the landscape is a character, alive and interacting with the humans who inhabit its deserts and mountains. Overall, the book has a calm, unmoving center, which reflects the rock solid faith of the two fathers.

The Prevalence of Witches - Aubrey Menen
An interesting philosophical novel that peters out by the end. It was mostly ideas, with little in the way of characters or plot. Just a situation. But it was an unusual diversion for a while.

South Wind - Norman Douglas
A unique work by a sophisticated writer. He uses a light touch, humor, he creates colorful characters in an fantastic setting (an island called Nepenthe). Most of the book consists of people talking about life and how it should be lived. Many of the ideas are radical, but Douglas is too intelligent to leave those ideas unsupported. He wants to be provocative, and he does set one to thinking along new lines. Behind the light touch there’s a caustic view of human nature, but in Nepenthe nothing is to be taken seriously (one of the simpler ideas offered up: Life is a lark, enjoy it). Despite the pleasure Douglas provides, this doesn’t succeed fully as a novel because too many characters come and go, too many plot lines are weak, too much of the talk is idle. I left not having felt deeply about anyone. Still, it was a charming party.

The Rise of Silas Lapham - William Dean Howells
A solid, grounded work, and Silas Lapham is a strong character; I cared about his dilemma. In its concern with money and ethical decisions, the novel is old-fashioned, in a good way. Another, not so good, is the awkward romance between Pen and Tom. Also, the last part has the feel of a summary (the pace changes noticeably). The book needed an ending that had impact, but it just trails off vaguely. The solid bricklayer got a bit hasty, or tired, or something. Still, this was a satisfying read.