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

By the Lake – John McGahern

My first reaction, as I was into the opening pages, was: “Who is this guy?” I had never heard of McGahern, but what I was reading was very good. A bit of research told me that in his lifetime (he died in 2006, at age 71) he was acclaimed for his work, but he existed outside the literary in-crowd. As I read on I found this to be a novel of unusual depth. It takes place in a Irish farming village in the mid 1900s and involves everyday matters. The lives of a handful of characters are followed through what seems like a year. It’s all quite interesting – the village and its occupants (many of whom are eccentric) come alive, the activities (bringing in a crop, a cattle sale) have an authenticity (the author lived his early and his last years working on a small farm). The dialogue is outstanding in that each voice is distinctive and conveys the essence of the speaker. The main character, Ruttledge, though mostly an observer, gets involved in the predicaments of others. In his relations with those others he’s always considerate, thoughtful, generous. He’s a man who has obviously made a choice as to how to conduct his life. He also made a choice as to where to live: London or the village? His choice seems to be the right one for him. The village is not an idyllic world – far from it – but there exists a sense of community; people care for one another (even if it is mainly out of curiosity). His friendship with a neighbor, Jamesie, is one that will endure (though Jamesie, on parting, often says “I never liked yous anyhow.”). Ruttledge has no answers to life’s big questions, but those questions exist as an aura – or a mood – which envelopes this novel. One thing that emerges is a sense of mortality. McGahern died of cancer four years after On the Lake came out; possibly he had a diagnosis. Another aspect of the aura concerns the relationship between Ruttledge and his wife, Kate. She exists almost entirely in the words she speaks; though none of these words express love, the sense of a deep love between the two quietly evolved in my mind. Anyway: read this one — it’s a masterful job. *

Paul Cezanne – John Rewald

A good biography, one that relies heavily on letters. Many come from a childhood friend – Emile Zola. That the friendship eventually foundered was unfortunate, but Cezanne was a very difficult man. And, although they broke off relations, they still retained affection for one another. I won’t go into the personality of Cezanne and his art – the book does that. But I found it interesting how schools of thought existed concerning what good painting should be. The Paris Salon dominated in the mid 1800s, but there was a rebellion against its dictates. Rightly so; it was a dull, stagnant art. The Impressionist movement evolved, and was initially vilified. Though some artists (Manet, Renoir, Degas, Monet) gradually attained acceptance, Cezanne wasn’t proclaimed to be a master until old age. And when acceptance finally came, his attitude was this: Once those whose judgements people follow ridiculed me; now people follow the judgements of people who laud me. All followers! Art would continue to change in its attitudes as to what was of value. The trend has been toward a turning away from the human face and form. Cezanne never went in this direction; his portraits are character studies. I wonder what he would say about blocks of color and dribbles of paint and Campbell soup cans. Last note: this book proclaims on the cover that it has “over 100 illustrations,” but almost all are in black and white. To Cezanne color was a primary element of his work. He wouldn’t be pleased.

The Story of Lucy Gault - William Trevor

I’ve reviewed eleven other books by Trevor, and four he’s written are on my Most Meaningful list. Not all of those eleven got good reviews, but I finished them. This one – the shortest, a novella – I only made it halfway through. The prose was good, and so was the beginning, but when Lucy (age eight) runs away and is permanently separated from her mother and father, there were too many pages in which Trevor struggles to make these events plausible. But what bothered me the most was his abandonment of what is going on in Lucy’s mind. He had given us access to that mind, but when dire events occur to her (injury, near starvation, etc.) we learn nothing of what she was experiencing. When she’s found, and recovers (though with a permanent limp), we continue to be excluded; she’s merely presented as a subdued and withdrawn presence. Then Ralph arrives (he drives up to the house by mistake), and love blooms. Suddenly we’re again privy to eighteen-year-old Lucy’s thoughts and feelings, and she seems remarkably stable, sensible, well adjusted. How did she get this way? If it’s her story, as the title proclaims, why the gap between eight and eighteen? And the love happens too quickly, without basis (Ralph lacks much of a personality). I simply wasn’t buying it, so I stopped reading.

Reality and Dreams – Muriel Spark

At age 78 the spark of creativity had died in Dame Muriel. Despite the pretentious title, this is a silly mishmash involving a bunch of characters who all have problems with marital fidelity. The prose is still good – that’s the last to go. I guess the lifelong habit of sitting down to write is hard to break. And when an eminent author issues yet another book, it gets published (no editor is going to say, Muriel, you’ve lost it – don’t embarrass yourself). And it also gets praised by other eminent authors; on the back cover we have blurbs by Updike, Vidal, Byatt. I was only able to plod my way to the halfway point of this very short book. But – let me end this with a reappraisal. I had the belief that I was a fan of Spark’s writing. But I just looked back through my previous reviews of her work (12 in all), and discovered that I was mostly disappointed. Only one – The Driver’s Seat – impressed me. And, before I began reviewing, I greatly admired Momento Mori and The Bachelors. So my positive feelings for Spark rests solely on three novels. But, actually, that’s enough to garner respect. And, as for authors who continue writing when the well is empty (Trevor was another one), they’re responding to a compulsion. They have to write.

Framley Parsonage – Anthony Trollope
Trollope understood his audience. They were the educated upper class of Victorian society, and they had no interest in the brutish lives of those in the lower classes. They wanted to read about lords and ladies, vicars and bishops. They wanted romantic entanglements, money matters and political maneuvering; they wanted virtue and villainy. And since reading was their main form of entertainment (imagine that!) they wanted a story that would go on at length. A bit about the genesis of Framley Parsonage shows how well Trollope gave them all they desired. Thackeray asked him to contribute to Cornhill Magazine, which he was editing. Trollope produced monthly installments of three chapters (the complete book consists of forty-eight). During this run the circulation of the magazine stayed around the 120,000 mark; after the last chapter was completed the sales dropped off sharply. Trollope was highly readable then, and he still is. His enduring strength is his insight into human nature (which hasn’t changed over time). He avoided one-dimensional characters or treacly sentimentalizing. And despite his benevolent attitude, he was a cynic; thus we get observations like this: “If I want to get anything from my old friend Jones, I like to see him shoved up into a high place. But if Jones, even in his high place, can do nothing for me, then his exaltation above my head is an insult and an injury.” And, for a novel populated largely by clerics, Trollope chooses to exclude God; what his religious hierarchy care about are money, position and prestige. If a barb can be gently applied, Trollope was a master at it. He did believe in some things, one being that man and woman weren’t meant to live alone. Marriage was a wonderful institution – if the couple are united by love and respect. Fanny is generous and forgiving toward her errant husband; without her, he would have crumbled. Though I enjoyed my five hundred page stay in Barsetshire, I was more interested in some characters than others. Nathaniel Sowerby has lived for over fifty years indulging in every luxury without doing a lick of work. He’s a manipulator, a man who uses others for financial gain. But he operates so smoothly, with such charm, that he resists being dismissed as a mere scoundrel. I also had strong feelings for Lucy Robarts, a girl that the imperious Lady Lufton condemns as too “insignificant” to be a proper match for her son. But Lucy is very significant – not in beauty or how she carries herself, but in how she thinks and in her actions. Lucy does marry Lord Lufton, with his mother’s blessing. And they lived happily ever after? Trollope seems to imply that things may not be all that rosy.

Chalky – Matthew Vaughan
This resolutely idiosyncratic novel was written by a twentieth century author, but the setting is the Victorian England that Victorian English writers don’t concern themselves with. The opening sentence: “Chalky sat in the corner of the room and chewed his piece of rag while the snake-swallower vomited into a battered bucket over by the bed.” Three-year-old Chalky is abandoned by his prostitute mother and is taken to a Church orphanage whose manager is a sadist and a pederast. When Chalky emerges as a distinct personality he’s a thirteen-year-old who is physically strong, intelligent, and determined; his first act is to bring about the downfall of the manager. The reverend who had taken Chalky to the orphanage sees potential in the boy, and he educates him (how to speak correctly, what books to read, etc.). But though Chalky absorbs, his ideas and personality are set. The most important element in his makeup is his reserve: he’s composed, stoical. He has two sexual encounters in his entire life (described in a detail that would make D. H. blush); they’re releases from his self-imposed repression, but are followed by a resumption of defenses against such release. As a profession, Chalky selects the military; he’s perfectly suited for that life, and he rises in the ranks. When Vaughan stuck to factual episodes, the book flowed, was very readable. But he clutters things up with long, erudite asides about religion, metaphysics, etc. And too many events are contrived. Most significant is the ending, which involves an encounter in Africa with a sect of “snake-men” (yes, more snakes). Chalky’s plan to have his platoon captured and then rescued is just plain dumb. The scene that ensues is as nightmarish as the opening one – purposely so. It exists only so Vaughan can have Chalky relive childhood terrors. This is a novel that fails in some ways, but which is endowed with an inner conviction. Ultimately I cared about Chalky. Or, rather I felt sympathy for the fact of his isolation, and that may have been what Vaughan was aiming for.

The Silence in the Garden – William Trevor
Trevor always approaches his stories from an oblique angle; I’ve come to expect this, and to wait for characters and events to take shape and become meaningful. In this case, I waited to the end, largely in vain. I’ve also long admired his ability to evoke emotions, but with this book I felt little to nothing. So what went wrong? For starters, there were too many characters, some who matter and many who don’t – one’s attention gets diluted. And telling the story in part through a diary doesn’t work when the diary writer has no defined personality. Trevor is good with muted people, but Sarah is almost non-existent. At the heart of the matter there’s a long-ago tragedy that has lasting repercussions; the revealing of what happened is done in such a vague and disjointed way that it had no impact. Characters, too, are handled in a desultory fashion. Villana marries a much older man – there’s a lot about wedding preparations – but we never learn how this oddly-matched couple get along. What we do get are pages devoted to young, illegitimate Tom walking around town. In the final chapter Trevor jumps ahead decades, to when everybody except two players are dead (and unaccounted for). Tom contemplates the downfall of the once-idyllic Carriglas. But since Trevor had never created a sense of the idyll, its downfall had no resonance. The writing is good, there are patches that are stand out, such as John James’ affair with a fat, fifty-ish owner of a boarding-house (he despises himself for his weakness, she’s desperate for his love). And the deeply religious Holy Mullihan is really creepy (“There’s a thing called contamination, Tom.”). But beyond these effective odds and ends, there’s not much life stirring in this garden. One wonders, when an author falls far short of his own standards, if he realizes it. I think Trevor did. What he delivered to his publishers was a very short novel with an aborted ending.

Cheating at Canasta - William Trevor
Two stories are excellent: “The Dressmaker’s Daughter” and “Bravado.” Two others are good, but eight are no more than fair. Those aren’t stats to be proud of (even though the fair ones got published in The New Yorker). Trevor is in his eighties; it may be significant that his weakest stories – somber mood pieces that meander around an idea but never develop into anything of substance – deal with the elderly, while the two excellent ones are about people in their teens. In “Bravado” a young girl is attracted to a boy who has a reckless swagger. But does her admiration spur him on to impress her? When his actions have tragic consequences, a moral question arises for her: must she bear part of the responsibility? The fact that we never anticipate this specter of guilt gives it impact. Guilt is also at the core of “The Dressmaker’s Daughter.” The capacity to feel guilt can be redeeming, but often it’s a burden one must live with – somehow. In these two stories – in which Trevor is at his best – an emotion lingers on long after the final word.

The Girls of Slender Means - Muriel Spark
I almost abandoned this novel thirty pages from the end. It struck me as a thin enterprise in every way. The disjointed snippets seem carelessly patched together, and Spark’s attitude toward her characters is cold, even disdainful. Of the girls living in the May of Tech Club (just after WW II), three stand out. Selina is a sexually adventurous beauty, Jane does what she calls “brain work,” Joanna gives elocution lessons in which she recites poetry and has her students recite it back (the book contains long stretches of poetry and psalms, which the other-worldly Joanna knows by heart). Only Nicholas Farrington interested me (his death is announced on page four, though he appears, quite alive, from start to finish). For him the girls of slender means embody some ideal of young womanhood; his longing for the ineffable kept me reading, and those last thirty pages (which I almost skipped) added dimension to the novel. A bomb – a remnant of the war – goes off in the garden of the Club, starting a fire that traps some girls on the top floor. Nicholas tries, with the firemen, to rescue them; he’s acquainted with the roof of the adjoining building, for he’s been sleeping there with Selina. All the girls escape – except one. We know that Nicholas will, in the indeterminate future, be killed in Haiti, where he was a religious missionary; what caused him to take that path in life is never explained, but it seems somehow connected with the death at the Club. On the last page, in an evocative passage, he gazes at a May of Tech girl as she pins up her hair – an image he will recall “years later, in the country of his death.”

Murder by the Book - Rex Stout
It’s hit or miss with Stout, and this is a solid single. Archie takes center stage, the cast of suspects is manageable, and when Nero Wolfe unveils the identity of the murderer it made sense. I missed an inconsistency that Wolfe spotted, and felt my inadequacy as a private eye. The fact that three people are murdered for an inconsequential reason is no huge deal; Stout isn’t trying to be Dostoevski. The writing – Archie’s voice – is snappy and bright: “She was the kind you look at and think she should take off just one or two pounds, and then you ask where from and end by voting for the status quo.”

The Name of the World - Denis Johnson
Beware of novels with titles like this one. The first-person narrator has a lot of Zen-like thoughts but no vitality. He sleepwalks through a series of episodes that lead nowhere. When we learn that he’s actually mute with grief (his wife and daughter had been killed in a car accident) I didn’t respond because nothing about the guy rang true, including this tragedy. Then, while at the art department of the university where he teaches, Mike blunders onto a “Cannon Performance”: students are watching a young woman “engaged in shaving her lathered mons veneris.” Her name is Flower Cannon. Mike is roused out of his dormancy; he’s even inspired to this lofty thought: he would have loved for his daughter, if she had lived, to have turned out to be like Flower. The plot is headed toward a relationship between the two (Flower pops up wherever Mike goes), but I wanted no part of the impending nonsense, so I bailed out on page 62, which was the halfway point. I hope that my description of the Cannon Performance hasn’t misled you. Even with the sex thrown in, this book is as drab as an old brown suit.

Death in Summer - William Trevor
A third of the way through this novel a shift in emphasis occurs. The key figure in this evolution is Albert, an apparently insignificant young man whose job is to scrub graffiti off subway walls. He first appears as he listens to Pettie, a girl he came to know when they were in the same orphanage. Albert is worried, for he sees signs of distorted thinking on Pettie’s part. She’s been turned down for a job as live-in nanny for a baby whose mother was killed in a road accident. It’s the mother-in-law’s fault, Pettie believes; Thaddeus, the father of the child, wanted her to get the job, they had a bond, Pettie could sense it. . . . Albert tries, gently, to steer her away from this line of thinking. It’s futile; much of what Albert sets out to do is futile. What matters – in the terms Trevor establishes – is that Albert’s goodness makes him someone of major importance. It’s in his nature to worry about people who are life’s lost souls and to act on their behalf. In this novel those who are compassionate take on substance; those who lack that quality are diminished. Mrs Ferry, who at first glance is using an old affair to cadge money from Thaddeus, is not to be dismissed so easily, not when we gain insight into what motivates her. There’s a long section in which we follow Pettie’s thinking; she will kidnap the baby, but she doesn’t do it with malicious intent; her life has been blasted by so much pain that she has found refuge in a world of fantasies. At the end Albert pays a visit to the father. He wants to make Thaddeus understand Pettie, for understanding will lead to forgiveness; it’s important to Albert that the she be forgiven for what she did. There are scads of books aimed at enlightening; but here, in people and situations that are real, is a moving lesson in values. *

Where There’s a Will - Rex Stout
This is the sixth Nero Wolfe mystery I’ve read, and the most disappointing. Too many characters, too complex a plot. Even Wolfe, near the end, admits that he can’t figure out who killed Mr. Hawthorne. If the genius can’t untangle things, how can I feel anything but frustration? Wolfe does wind up solving the case, but the clue that opens the door is gratuitous, flimsy and involves knowledge that only a botanist could possess. Stout also throws a major red herring into the stew pot: one side of Mrs. Hawthorne’s face has been horribly disfigured by an arrow shot by her husband – presumably an accident – and he dies from a gunshot that rips off half his face. Yet this peculiar coincidence turns out to have no significance. Lastly, due to the large cast of characters, we get little of Archie, who merely runs around a lot, and even less of Nero, who merely asks questions. The first two Wolfe novels I read were good; the next three were not so good; this one was a waste of time. I’ll give Stout one more try.

The Grass Is Singing - Doris Lessing
In this novel a marriage is the seedbed for the unfolding of a horror story. It’s not just that Mary and Dick are mismatched, and that poverty and isolation (they’re poor white farmers in South Africa during the time of apartheid) grind them down. Mary, whose mind we spend the most time in, is mentally ill. “Of course I am ill,” she says in the last chapter. “I’ve been ill ever since I can remember. I am ill here” – and she points to her heart. But this is a brief moment of clarity; on the last day of her life she’s overwhelmed by despair. We know the outcome of the story in the opening pages: Mary is dead, murdered by Moses, the houseboy, and Dick is stark raving mad. What follows is a flashback in which Lessing relates in detail the factors that led to the disintegration of these two people. It’s a serious literary work, well-written and engrossing; but the ending, instead of bringing a sense of completion, raises questions – and doubts. Mary had always felt loathing for blacks and had treated them tyrannically; but in the last chapter, as she waits for Moses to kill her, Lessing suggests that the two have been involved sexually. Since the reader hasn’t been made privy to the development of this relationship, the forces compelling these two people to feel and act as they do are inexplicable. Lessing also suggests that Mary was sexually abused as a child; but why raise that issue at the end? And why all this suggesting? The intensity level of the entire book is pitched very high; but intensity can’t serve as a substitute for perception, and immoderation is always suspect. South Africa, with its debilitating climate and morally bankrupt racial attitudes, comes across as a sort of hell. The only singing on these pages is a wail of lamentation.

Miss Gomez and the Brethren - William Trevor
Another gathering of lost souls from Trevor. The problem with this novel involves the central character. Miss Gomez remains inaccessible throughout; she makes radical changes in her thinking and behavior, but the groundwork to support these shifts isn’t there – things just happen. The corporeality she lacks is fully present in Mrs. Tuke; much of the book is concerned with her, which is its saving grace. In many ways she’s a horrid person, but always comprehensible; she tries to escape from what she is and what she does by self-deception, romance novels and gin. Mr. Tuke is another fully-realized character, sad and muted, beaten down by life (and his wife). Mr. Batt, the aged and deaf boarder at the Thistle Downs, moves through a world that he can no longer relate to. These three people mattered to me. The same can’t be said for the ethereal young lovers, Alban and Penelope; they suffer from the same insubstantiality I found in Miss Gomez. The setting – a street in London that’s being demolished – imparts an apocalyptic air to the dramas being played out.

Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky (French)
Nemirovsky experienced firsthand the 1941 German invasion and occupation of France. In this novel she assembles a large cast of characters, from wealthy Parisians to village farmers, and shows them living under conditions of great stress and upheaval. The first section, “Storm in June,” is fast-moving and kaleidoscopic, effectively capturing the chaos and terror as people flee Paris. In the slower-paced second section, “Dolce,” she explores the varied responses of villagers to an established occupation. Both sections are successful, though there’s an unavoidable – and tragic – flaw to this novel: it wasn’t finished, nor was it fully revised. The author, being Jewish, was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died at age forty. She had resided in France since she was sixteen; when the Nazis invaded she wrote with the shadow of the Final Solution hanging over her head and those of her husband and two small children. At the end of the book are appendices with her letters and a notebook, and they make clear that she was aware of the likelihood of her death. Writing this ambitious novel (she projected it, when finished, to be a thousand pages long) may have provided her with an intellectual and emotional respite from her plight and a purpose – beyond survival – to her days. She recognized the faults of her work-in-progress; she even lists them at one point, and closes with the words “In general, not enough simplicity!” She was right; but circumstances prevented her from solving the problems. What she did accomplish is remarkable and, considering its provenance, important. The novel almost went unpublished. Her daughters, ages four and twelve when their mother died, made it through the war (their father was also put to death). They had in their possession the manuscript, written in pencil, the words tiny to conserve paper. When they were adults their attempts to read it failed; too many painful memories were rekindled. But, as old age approached, they knew they must take on the project. So, sixty-four years after Irene Nemirovsky wrote the words that make up Suite Francaise, the world and the people she created come to life. *

The Catfish Man - Jerome Charyn
Jerome Charyn (which is the name of both the author and the novel’s first person narrator) wore me out. I made it two-thirds of the way into this quirky and rambunctious trek through Jerome’s life, but I rebelled when I started a chapter that began: “I didn’t have to dream of that blond boy. The image of Marcos holding him by his ears, that’s what stuck to me. I thought of killing the Phantom, beating him on the head with a shovel while we were out on the bayou, getting the mayor his frogs.” No more, I decided, and the feeling I had was relief. An author gifted with a fertile imagination can’t let it run wild; an author gifted with a mastery of the language can’t let glibness take over. In the long run – if there’s nothing else – the results of such prodigality become trivial and tiresome. What’s most telling is that I never cared about Jerome. When I quit reading I hadn’t an iota of curiosity about what happened to him; he wasn’t a person, just a crazily-colored pinata for Charyn to bang away at.

Selected Stories - V. S. Pritchett
I read only half of the stories; I became convinced that mild enjoyment was all Pritchett had to offer. He’s a prose stylist of note, but most of his effort went into creating sentences that are dense and rich. The stories themselves have limited scope and don’t tackle subjects that matter much. I finished too many with a “So what?” feeling. Only “The Key to My Heart” truly engaged me, mainly because of the appalling and appealing Mrs. Brackett. To experience Pritchett’s talent at its peak, go straight to his memoirs, A Cab at the Door and Midnight Oil.

Other People’s Worlds - William Trevor
Trevor should be given credit for making me respond viscerally to his exploration of the depths. His main character is a charming psychopath named Francis. He sees people as objects he can use to fulfill his needs, and in his wake he leaves a trail of misery. This victimizer was, in his youth, the victim of prolonged sexual abuse; he coped by escaping into his own distorted world. As an adult his actions are responses to compulsive emotions, always carefully hidden behind a smile. To enter his mind is a creepy and disturbing experience. The book focuses on three people who fall under his influence. Doris, with whom he had a child, is similar to Francis in that she distorts reality to suit her illusions, and the scenes of her descent into alcoholism and rage-filled madness are frightening. Their twelve-year-old child is inappropriately named Joy. Julia, a middle-aged widow, is easy prey for Francis. On their wedding night (one without sex) she becomes aware of the ugliness and cruelty that she’s been sheltered from all her life. But Julia, unlike Francis’s other victims, has emotional resources. She realizes that her world – which has been blessed with kindness – can have a purpose: she must rescue Joy. On the last pages she imagines a tranquil scene in which four people are gathered under a tree; one is a child. Yet she sees the scene mistily. Trevor’s life-affirming ending is so nebulous that it’s only a crumb of hope. That’s not enough. If he raises the possibility of Julia rescuing Joy, it needed to be attempted, and to either succeed or fail.

Four Plays - Eugene Ionesco (French)
To do it justice, a play should be seen performed on stage. Despite that, I read these plays (or parts of some), so I’ll dutifully review them. “The Bald Soprano” makes no sense. This was intentional; what goes on is meant to be absurd. I thought it could, if done with brio by actors, be quite funny. “The Lesson” is more structured; things progress in a logical (albeit maniacal) fashion. I liked its wildness and thought it was the best of the four. As for “Jack or the Submission” and “The Chairs,” I made it halfway through each, and my mood had soured. The Theater of the Absurd had a point to make about life, but it was a limited one. Okay, we live in a nonsensical world. But nonsense, if not presented in an intriguing or amusing way, can be boring. In the two plays I abandoned the boredom was stupefying, and no amount of brio could have enlivened them.

The Barbary Light - P. H. Newby
The main characters (a man, his wife, and the woman he’s having an affair with) had the potential to be interesting, but Newby imposes so much baggage on their story – obfuscation, false leads, about-faces, ruminations over matters such as identity – that he detracts from what’s good in the novel. We constantly get dead-end sentences like these: “What mattered was what you did. And how did you know what you did?” The person thinking these thoughts is Owen. I could never get a grip on what his problem was (for one thing, it keeps changing); instead of being enigmatic, he winds up seeming implausible. I also couldn’t understand how two attractive and intelligent women could be deeply in love with him. The flat-as-a-pancake ending, which provides no insight or resolution to all the complexities, suggests that the author was in as much of a quandary as Owen. When Newby uses a straightforward approach, scenes and characters have freshness and vitality. But in this book he thinks too much, to no good purpose.

Three Plays - Harold Pinter
These early Pinter plays feature elements that he would use again and again. In a “A Slight Ache” the three characters (one never speaks a word) act oddly – odd enough to create mystery and an atmosphere of menace. A husband and wife talk to each other but don’t communicate; their disjointed dialogue makes no sense. The play ends with a plot twist that tops all others in its peculiarity. In “The Collection” people communicate, but it’s not clear who’s telling the truth and who’s engaging in elaborate lies (no reason is given for why anyone may be lying); as soon as things seem to be resolved one way or another someone does something to muddy the waters. Pinter includes a liberal sprinkling of menace and an inconclusive ending. In “The Dwarfs” he ramps up the oddity angle to the point where the characters are lunatics; they go into long, senseless monologues filled with violent imagery. So there they are, the three elements which would become Pinter trademarks: oddity, menace and incomprehensibility. Each has appeal for an audience. Oddity fascinates, menace titillates, and not making sense creates the impression that there’s hidden meaning to be unearthed. Did Pinter produce good work using this bag of tricks? Yes, but in these plays it smacks of gimmickry.

Fools of Fortune - William Trevor
The atrocity at the core of this novel is handled with skill. Initially the reader isn’t clear as to what happened, but slowly the facts emerge. More importantly, the human implications grow over time (especially in the way the mother is affected). An act of such destructiveness will never loosen its grip on the victims – it has a life of its own. Trevor is successful with the character of Willie, in a first person narration that makes up the bulk of the book and which covers Willie’s life from boy to young man. But the novel has an unwieldy construction (a common feature of Trevor’s work – one that may have discouraged many readers). Most confusing is that Willie addresses what he’s writing to a “you,” but it takes far too long before we know who “you” is. When she meant something to me I wanted to reread the sections where Willie talks directly to Marianne, but that would mean searching back through the pages. Also, it turns out that we’re reading a letter that was never sent, written by an old man. After the Willie section Marianne becomes the first person narrator. Maybe, in trying to make the voice of a young girl contrast with Willie’s, Trevor overcompensates; she comes across as a bit soppy. Next he presents their child, Imelda, in the third person. Imelda reconstructs the past in her imagination, using scraps of information, but this isn’t convincing; nor is her madness; nor is Willie’s lengthy exile; nor is the idyllic coming together of the lovers in old age. The book sags badly under the weight of too many false turns. I think Trevor felt strongly about this material, and at the end he tried to force his feelings on the reader. That never works.

Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness - Kenzaburo Oe (Japanese)
This book consists of four stories. I couldn’t read more than two pages of the first – it was experimental, very weird, and I hadn’t the energy or inclination to struggle through it. “Prize Stock” was readable and engrossing (and provocative in its depiction of the black airman as an animal – he’s the “prize stock”). It’s raw, gross, primal; when he’s working in this mode Oe hammers at the reader and pitches emotions almost to the point of hysteria (which is what many of his characters feel); but the stridency seemed unwarranted. Two of the other stories concern the event that came to dominate Oe’s life: the birth of his retarded son (call the boy autistic if you wish, but Oe uses much more blunt and cruel terms than “retarded”). Their bizarre premises and awkward plotting make them oddities. I think I’ve read Oe’s masterpiece – A Personal Matter – and I should give up on him.

The Stone Angel - Margaret Laurence
The clarity of the writing of The Stone Angel reinforces my belief that plot obfuscation and stylistic ornamentation are mostly just clutter. Laurence presents Hagar with such honesty and in such depth that she became someone I was emotionally involved with. The novel is framed so that we see an entire life unfold from the perspective of old age (Hagar is ninety). Her determination to be independent – something that she clung to willfully since she was a young girl – is eroded by infirmities; this she cannot abide. Old age is a loss of dignity, a loss of control, a disintegration of body and mind. The petty forms these losses take are shown to be of great importance. How we want to hold onto even our simplest powers! Hagar’s struggle has a nobility; that she loses this struggle is inevitable, but she fights to her last moment. And what of the life behind her? Hagar probably never said, to anyone,“I love you.” Not to her father, her husband, her sons. Much that she did and said was hurtful, critical, harsh. She’s to blame for all the missteps, lost opportunities, and disappointments littering her past. But I could understand her; in her father she had a bad role model, and early on we’re locked into a way of responding to others. During her final weeks she tries to express feelings of compassion (particularly to her beleaguered son), but her attempts are faltering, given grudgingly. She cannot do more, and that’s the tragedy of her life. *

The Boarding-House - William Trevor
Trevor has repeatedly, in his novels and short stories, taken lost souls for his subject. Lonely, odd, sometimes deranged people. Although all are to be pitied, many engage in acts of unkindness (a line from this book: “the solitary man is a bitter man and that bitterness begets cruelty”). Others are vicious, even dangerous. The stage on which their stories are enacted is a circumscribed one; in this novel Mr. Bird, the owner of a boarding house, selects people as tenants precisely because they’re misfits. I see Mr. Bird and William Trevor as one and the same. Both assemble their cast, put them under one roof, and let the eccentricities multiply. Mr Bird’s “Notes on Residents,” with their incisive observations, are part of the narrative; they could be the author’s notes. It’s interesting that Trevor presents Mr. Bird in an ambiguous light. His motives are suspect; there’s something shady in the way he manipulates his residents. I’ve always believed in Trevor’s compassion; I still do, but I wonder if it’s that simple. At any rate, the results are entertaining. The prose is clear and smooth, though it has a dated quality (why would an author, in 1965, constantly use the word “ejaculated” instead of “exclaimed”?). Trevor isn’t the only British novelist who has built excellent (as opposed to gimmicky) novels around weird characters acting weirdly. Other notables are Muriel Spark, Kingsley Amis, Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh. I recently reviewed J. G. Farrell’s Troubles, which is quite like The Boarding-House (Farrell’s eccentrics occupy a hotel). What is it with these Brits? And what is it with me, that I find such books engaging?

Blindness - Jose Saramago (Portuguese)
A visceral novel comes from the guts of an author. This type of book succeeds only if it’s done so artfully that the urgency of emotion is transferred to the reader. Saramago succeeds. I entered the nightmarish world he creates. I experienced the squalor of the asylum where the blind are imprisoned, I felt the elation of the women washing clothes (and themselves) in the downpour on the balcony. But the best example of my involvement is how deeply I wanted the doctor’s wife to commit a murder; when she does, and makes a good (and grisly) job of it, I felt satisfaction. I can’t think of a more heroic female figure in fiction than the doctor’s wife. Saramago delves deep into the sordid and disgusting; but he’s describing the total breakdown of society, and he shows us the results. His scenario made me wonder: How low can man descend, how many trappings of dignity can he lose, and still struggle to survive? In the last chapters the author attempts to find meaning in what he’s created, but he flounders; this is one of those works that defy a summing up. Finally Saramago lets matters trail off in an indeterminate way. Which is the right ending. We get questions, and that’s enough, if the questions are such good ones. *

David Golder - Irene Nemirovsky (French)

Nemirovsky recounts the last days of a man who dedicated his life to the pursuit of money. She doesn’t condemn cold, stony David Golder – he’s the most sympathetic person in a cast of characters composed mostly of leeches, and his physical suffering and fear of death give him a humanity one can relate to. In the grasping world presented here a few people still value simple sensuous pleasures; the chapter that takes us with Joyce and her lover is a needed diversion from the rest of the book, which is dominated by gloom. This gloom eventually becomes monochromatic and overpowering. When the cruelties pile up (such as when Golder’s wife tells him that his daughter, the one bright thing in his life, is not his) the novel loses balance. Negativity (the first word of the book is “No”) is too extreme. And the ending is melodramatic; the author tries to give Golder a hero’s stoicism and to make his last moments evocative. But, whatever its flaws, this is a serious, ambitious novel. That Nemirovsky wrote it when she was twenty-three is beyond impressive.

Mrs. Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel - William Trevor

Most of the people in this book are life’s losers, and many are deluded, but Trevor treats them all with compassion. This is an intricate, strange novel, but it works (e.g., the revelation about the Terrible Thing that happened at the hotel is handled in a way that’s surprising but believable). The characters form a dense tableau of thoughts and spoken words as each pursues his or her way of getting by in the world. They may not be ideal ways, but even the repulsive Morrissey is made comprehensible. And though Ivy Eckdorf is dangerously crazy, her transformation in the last chapter is moving. She finds the only possible way to bring peace and happiness to the suffering residents of O’Neill’s Hotel – and to herself. *

Botchan - Natsume Soseki (Japanese)

This second novel by Soseki was hugely popular in Japan. Though an easy read, it’s superficial, the humor is juvenile, and the main character is a one-dimensional blowhard. It gives no indication of the darkness and depth that would mark Soseki’s later work.

The Call of the Toad - Gunter Grass (German)

A well-written bore. The widow and widower’s cemetery plan is leeched of any interest it might have had by the oblique way in which it’s framed. An author (Grass, I guess) potters around with reams of material the widower has sent him. He reconstructs their story, but his many interjections and digressions slow everything to a toad’s pace. I stopped short of the halfway mark.

The Children of Dynmouth - William Trevor

Timothy is at the center of this book, holding it together with his frightening strangeness. I read with fascination as he doggedly, calmly, irresistibly moves toward fulfilling his delusion. It’s the mechanics of that fulfillment which are too pat. Each person he pursues has a convenient secret that he can exploit; there’s a predictability to events. Also, another character nearly as strong as Timothy would provide a balance; as it is, the rest of the cast serve mainly as his prey. I never understood Timothy, and understanding is Trevor’s strength. I believe that this young man – who is devoid of compassion – was alien to his creator, and Trevor could only convey dread for him.

The Octopus - Frank Norris

This is the first of a trilogy, and it’s clear that Frank Norris set his sights high. Taking on a theme of social importance, he used an enormous canvas and filled it with a large and varied cast of characters. Scenes such as the barn dance are teeming, sweeping panoramas. The prose, though it’s engaging and moves smoothly, is crude, as if hammered out at breakneck speed by a skilled carpenter (as opposed to a literary work composed by an stylist). At times the emotions come across as maudlin. Vanamee, with his mysticism, is a tricky character. Yet it all works. The crudity is a virtue – the novel’s sense of being hammered out in haste gives it momentum. The maudlin quality is acceptable because the emotions depicted are true; we care about the death of Mrs. Hooven and her daughter because the author makes us understand them and their plight. Vanamee’s spirituality is necessary to lift us above the harsh realities that fill most of the novel. What can be overlooked is Norris’s subtlety and intelligence. He doesn’t work in black and white; although greed, in the form of the railroad, is the octopus grasping with all its tentacles, the ranchers don’t wear halos. While reading this novel I was often moved and surprised (most notably by the transformation of Annixter – a great character). The complex, shifting world that Norris created is anchored by simple truths – he placed primary value on love and compassion. The Octopus is a major achievement in American literature. *

The Bystander - Albert Guerard (French)
This is the kind of precarious endeavor in which the slightest misstep will cause all to collapse into absurdity. But Guerard succeeds – the book seems true and frightening. Everything hinges on the first two pages, in which a feeling must be imparted convincingly enough to support all that follows. Mysteriously, this sequence, which is presented simply, succeeds. From this beginning we’re able to make sense of the first person narrator’s delusions, his self-imposed debasement. The fault with the novel lies in fact that the narrator is rather repellent, so being in his mind and sharing his emotions gets to be grueling.

Christmas Party - Karl Wenclas
King calls this a “zeen novel” and it should be fairly judged by that standard. The prose is rough-edged, there’s a simplicity to the people and the scenes. This is not a sophisticated piece of writing. But the objective is to engage the reader, not to tax him. Overall Wenclas succeeds in looking under people’s facades, at their dreams and their needs (mostly for love and a sense of meaning to their lives).

Love’s Cross Currents - Algernon Swinburne
An epistolary novel, with all the limitations of that form. I got sick of the rarified tone, the use of French, the indulgence of people rambling on and on without anything happening. I had no interest in the fragile china dolls that populated this book. So, of course, I happily quit reading it.

Incline Our Hearts - A. N. Wilson
An English novel (very English) about a boy’s coming of age. It’s the first in a projected series, and it suffers from that – there’s a lot of stage setting for events that will follow. Although I enjoyed this I don’t feel any desire to read the rest of the novels.

Lovers of Their Time - William Trevor
Good collection, marked by Trevor’s compassion. Also notable is how he concentrates on old people, although he must have been only in his fifties when he wrote this. Trevor is entertaining and his work has substance. Still, no story was truly outstanding.

Nights at the Alexandra - William Trevor
This is a long short story. It’s nicely done, but unconvincing in one vital respect. A fifty-eight-year-old man is looking back at an incident that happened when he was fifteen. This incident is given much weight – supposedly affecting him for the rest of his life. But although I believed in his boyhood state of mind, and that he was silently dealing with disturbing feelings, too much remained hidden for the long- range effects to stand up.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Spanish)
Garcia Marquez circles around a murder obsessively, around and around, from different angles and perspectives, and at the end we’re there for the knife thrusts. It’s as if a vast cosmic command – unavoidable and terrible – is being obeyed by us poor mortals. The author includes discrepancies in the various accounts of the killing. Most significantly, he leaves a key question unanswered: Did Angela accuse Santiago falsely? Garcia Marquez presents us with an unsolvable mystery, one that takes on dimensions larger than a single murder in an isolated town. *

Ceremony at Lone Tree - Wright Morris
I stopped reading this book with regret but with the conviction that I wasn’t missing anything. For a good span I thought the writing – the unique and quirky Wright Morris style – was wonderful. He’s terrific at character portraits and histories. Then he moved into present action and his style became confusing. Maybe he’s accurately presenting life as it is when he throws things at the reader in a disjointed way. Granted, life is not neat and orderly, but, still, we shouldn’t have to figure out who’s talking and about what. When Morris enters into the thoughts of the characters the confusion increases to the point of frustration. Not only that, he imparts a significance to things that don’t deserve it. What’s the big deal? This thought of mine, on top of all the other difficulties, became fatal.

Laugh Til You Cry - Wolf Mankowitz
An odd little book. In the beginning I was put off by the lack of the amenities of good fiction – such as setting and character. But that’s not what the author is concerned with; this is a philosophical novel, and it’s interesting on that level. Mankowitz found a fresh way to expose human shortcomings. I admired what he was doing until the end, when he softens toward his characters and lets them off the hook.