The Widower’s Son – Alan Sillitoe

I greatly admired Sillitoe’s first book – Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Also good was his story, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Both those outings dealt with young working class rebels, and were done with authenticity and clarity. Some twenty years later (at age forty-eight) he wrote Son, in which those virtues are present in the beginning – when the son is a boy and a young man – but steadily evaporate. Things first begin to go astray in a thirty-five page battle sequence (Dunkirk), which offers a lesson for writers: never feel you have to use all the information you’ve accumulated through research (Sillitoe never saw combat). Still, the novel doesn’t start to fall apart until the widower’s son comes up in the world (he’s now Colonel William Scorton) and meets and marries Georgina, the beautiful daughter of a Brigadier. Initially William is wildly in love with her, but things deteriorate with this wildly erratic woman, and he’s wildly unhappy. In describing the decades long decline and fall of the relationship, ridiculous scenes occur (how about this one: William dresses himself in his wife’s panties and bra – nothing else – and comes downstairs where a party is taking place; beyond emotional distress, no coherent reason is given for his actions). On top of the contrived characters and situations and the flights of tortured prose, Sillitoe commits the sin of introducing Deep Thoughts about Life. So why did I read the whole thing? (Well, actually I did a lot of skimming and skipping.) Partly with fascination – I kept wondering what terrible choice the author would make next (another bra and panties scene?). To account for how misguided this novel is, I have to turn to the “one subject” theory; he was at his best when writing about the hardscrabble world he grew up in. After he attained status in the literary world (his name appears in various letter collections, such as those of Paul Bowles), he tried to expand his scope and wound up being pretentious.

Exiles – Michael J. Arlen

I used the author’s middle initial because this memoir is mainly about his father, who has the same first name. (I’ll refer to the father as Arlen and the son as Michael.) Arlen was the author of The Green Hat, which was big hit. How big? – he was on the cover of Time magazine in 1927, and the book made him wealthy. But after that novel it was a case of a steady falling off in popularity, and finally he stopped writing. In one sense, this is a portrait of a writer who had lapsed into silence. When Michael knew him he was a muted, melancholy presence. He wanted to be relevant, but he knew it was futile to try. He retained enough money to live well; he had his table at the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel, where he’d lunch every day and talk with people who’d stop by. Some were celebrities – Rex Harrison, John O’Hara, Noel Coward – but mostly they were men-about-New York, smooth operators with whom Arlen had little in common. This book has no grudges to settle: Arlen was a good father who loved and cared for his son, and those feelings were reciprocated. Michael’s mother is a more complex and sometimes difficult presence (her angry outbursts, her drinking). I found the probing of her past to be unseemly; if Michael has questions about her life prior to her marriage – such as her sex life – why air suppositions? His younger sister, who he was fond of, isn’t given much attention. Then there’s Michael himself. I liked him as a child and a teenager, but when he was in his twenties I found him less appealing and not very interesting (especially when he goes into his love life). But, all in all, this is a highly readable book, and when the father is the subject it has resonance. A word about the prose. Michael sometimes – often, actually – utilizes a quirky manner of writing. Examples: “The tie is silk, gray silk. He ties it with great care. The wide end down and over, like this. Then through the loop.” And: “The big desk up against the curtains. The paper laid out for him. The pencils. His favorite pen. The books all around.” These conversational modes and the use of snapshot descriptions are a problem in that they call attention to themselves, and thus amount to an interruption of the narrative flow. Still, it isn’t a deal-breaker. The book kept me entertained through the ordeal of Hurricane Ida, and for that I’m grateful.

Waiting – Ha Jin

Here’s what I liked about this novel. The prose is clear, efficient, without ornamentation; Jin’s sole goal is to tell a story. His two main characters are people I believed in and cared about. These virtues may sound simple, but they aren’t, judging by the fact that so many books never deliver on them. Lin and Manna want to marry, and the title refers to the waiting that they do – for two decades – before they’re able to achieve this goal. The problem is that he already has a wife, and the restrictive world of China in the years of the Cultural Revolution, in which morals are enforced, prevents him from divorcing. The fact that for many years he hasn’t lived with nor shared a bed with his wife makes no difference. And an affair with Manna (something she wants), is off limits to the cautious Lin. So, each year, he files for divorce and has it denied. And he and Manna wait, merely two companions. This situation takes up more then half the book, and it’s quietly engrossing, mainly because of the ramifications. Manna feels her youth pass, while she remains a virgin; she has a fear of becoming an old maid, and resentment sets in. What is wrong – or missing – in Lin which prevents him from getting around, by hook or crook, the societal rules? He’s a kind, gentle, caring man – these attribute initially attract Manna – but he lacks a passionate commitment. When they finally do marry, and are intimate, and have children, Jin doesn’t present us with a happy ending. So much was lost in those years of waiting, and when they’re together so much is disappointing. The novel closes with a surprising – and disturbing – turn of events: Lin is again waiting.

The Plot – Jean Hanff Korelitz

A down-and out-writer appropriates someone else’s sure-fire plot (this person is deceased, and had never used his idea) to produce a novel that brings him enormous success. It shoots to the top of the best seller list and stays there; he gets a movie deal (Steven Spielberg will direct). But then Jacob starts getting anonymous emails and texts that accuse him of being a plagiarist and threatening to expose him. This novel is a mystery in which he tries to discover the identity of the person who knows his secret. I found it interesting, in large part because it deals with the workings of the literary world. Korelitz is an insider in that world – two of her previous novels were best sellers and were made into movies. In her Acknowledgment page she thanks thirty-six people for their help in the writing of The Plot. (Why some of these helpers didn’t warn her about her overuse of italics, parentheses and explanation points – sometimes all in the same sentence! – is an added mystery.) Anyway, things were moving along nicely until the ending, the resolution, the revealing. I got inklings of a Huge Mistake in the offing, and I thought, “She can’t be intending to go there! Not a writer of literary fiction!” Yes, she went there. Korelitz resorts to a tired old gimmick mystery writers constantly use: present someone as completely innocent, and then have them revealed (gasp!) as the guilty party. If I can save only one person the bother of reading this whole novel by giving away the “twist” at the end, I feel I’ve done a good deed. So, here it is: Anna, the woman Jacob meets and marries in the course of the novel (and who is an exemplary wife), turns out to be the person who not only sent the threatening communiques but has murdered all the members of her family (mother, father, daughter, brother). She also murders Jacob.