Re-reads

Burmese Days – George Orwell

A book written in anger can be exhilarating, which is the case here. Orwell spent five years as a member of the Imperial Police Force in Burma, so his anger is based on personal experience. Mostly he’s angry at the mentality of the British administrators who are in charge of exploiting the considerable wealth of Burma. Most of them are contemptuous toward the native Burmese (the word “nigger” appears with monotonous regularity in their conversation). Yet they are not above using the women for sexual purposes. They’re an unhappy, dissatisfied, lonely group of men, who drink to excess (in some cases to unconsciousness). Flory is the main character, and it’s obvious that he is Orwell. But Orwell is in an attack mode, and Flory is not spared; at the end he is destroyed – violently. Which, I believe, is a misstep. One aspect of the discontent among the British is that most are without wives. When a young British woman arrives Flory falls in love with her. A love without a valid basis, for she is the polar opposite of all he believes in. Yet he convinces himself that she can share his innermost feelings, that they can be soul mates. The proper ending, in my estimation, would be for the two to marry. Flory would soon enough find out what a disastrous mistake he has made. But that may be a track Orwell wasn’t willing to pursue; the plot is already quite complex, teeming with characters and situations, and I think he wanted to cut things short. The prose is utilitarian, but the novel has a potent velocity. If Orwell cared enough to write something, it has value. 4

The Night Visitor – B. Traven

In 2009 I reviewed this collection, and deemed the stories to be “good (or pretty good; none are very good).” The reason I’m reviewing it again is that previously I didn’t reread the long title story. I wrote in the review that I would “let that chilling nightmare remain intact in my memory.” And I cite it as the sole reason why the book is worthy of being on my MMB list. Well, this time around I did reread “The Night Visitor,” and it left me cold. No chills, no nightmarish feelings were evoked. I found the premise to be unconvincing, and the Indian from the past who emerges at night seemed no more than a contrivance. My ho-hum reaction brings up the whole problem in these rereads. At some unknown age I was obviously moved by the story. Why? What changes occurred in me? – for the story has not changed. Which evaluation is valid? I’m not sure. Still, since many rereads do hold up, I have to delete this one.

The Collector – John Fowles

This novel disturbed me as very few do. The first section is told from Frederick Clegg’s POV, in his voice. We see his logic, his justifications, and we also see what he doesn’t: the horror of his actions. This is a warped man, and to be in his mind is chilling. Miranda, the person he “collects” (as he does butterflies) and holds prisoner also emerges. Not through any understanding on Clegg’s part (he can’t even understand himself), but through her responses and actions that he duly records. She wants desperately to live, and fights for her freedom in any way she can devise. That makes up the first section of this 300 page book. The next section is told from Miranda’s POV, through her writing in a sort of diary. This section, for me, was a big drop-off. Actually, we already knew all we needed to know about Miranda. Her thoughts are just not that interesting. A lot of pontificating about what is valuable in life, about art, about an older guy she’s infatuated with (to me he came across as a prig). Truth to tell, I found myself dragging through this section. I can understand Fowles’ dilemma. To have a novel, and not a novella, he had to take the path he took. He just wasn’t able to pull it off. Yet I need to be more charitable to the Miranda who is writing in her diary: she’s young, her ideas are important to her, she tries to keep them alive in captivity. After her death we return to Clegg’s POV. Always justifying. Though he’s a prisoner, in his own distorted mind, he victimizes others. What “grade” do you give a novel in which the first half is a tour de force and the second half mediocre? The strengths are so compelling that they win over the day. I can only deduct one point from a five. 4

Animal Farm – George Orwell

Orwell originally subtitled this novella “A Fairy Story.” I’m glad that was dropped, but I see a parallel between Farm and the work of the Grimm brothers. Their tales were indeed grim, full of cruelty and horrific events – and so is Farm. In this reading I had a gut reaction: I truly detested Napoleon and his toadies and I was appalled by the methodical subjugation of the animals. This reaction on my part was, I believe, Orwell’s intent. By framing his story in an almost childlike way he was able to convey what he couldn’t accomplish in a political essay: his hatred of the Communist regime. What he did in Farm was deceptively simple; he wrote that it was “the only one of my books that I really sweated over.” He had trouble finding a publisher; at the time (1945) England and the USSR were allies against Hitler. But Orwell saw clearly what was going on under Stalin’s iron fist. That was his gift: to see clearly and to find a way to express his feelings. In this instance, the way he chose was perfect. 5

Love Among the Daughters - Elspeth Huxley
I found Huxley’s The Flame Trees of Thika – subtitled “Memories of an African Childhood” – to be quite wonderful, so I got this book of her “Memories of the Twenties in England and America.” In it she observes people with an unflinching eye, but she doesn’t take a critical stance; in a blunt and unladylike way she aims for humor, and achieves it. The England section has a passel of characters (mostly relatives she stays with) who indulge their idiosyncratic tendencies. Aunt Madge is a standout, with her pack of dogs (who fight with each other and make messes in the ramshackle house) and her sulks (she can refuse to speak to her husband for weeks, something Uncle Jack doesn’t object to). Others were hard to sort out; many people are captured vividly, but only briefly. As a result I never established a relationship with them, and when they reappear (and they do keep popping up), I had forgotten what they were like and what their role was. A more substantial problem is that a third of the book is set in America, where Elspeth attends Cornell University for a year; here the approach is anthropological, so different from the immediacy and liveliness of the previous section. I didn’t find five pages describing the rituals of a football game to be exciting reading, and by the time we return to England I was in skimming mode. Huxley (yes, she’s related by marriage to those Huxleys) wrote two dozen books, most of which were nonfiction. And she’s a good writer. But the haphazard construction of Love Among the Daughters works against it. Even that title is unfocused: I had no idea who the daughters were and where love comes into play (love, in fact, is conspicuously absent in relationships). Which brings us back to The Flame Trees of Thika, which is complete unto itself and is the one to read.

The Carreta - B. Traven
Are Traven’s “Jungle Novels” novels? In The Carreta we can go for twenty pages without Andres Ugalde – whose name appears as the first words of the book – playing any role whatsoever. Traven uses this character as a prop through which he can describe (with heavy-handed sarcasm) the exploitation of the Mexican Indians by commercial and political interests. He has Andres become a carretero, the name given to peons who drive carts filled with goods over the mountains. I learned about every aspect of this difficult and dangerous job, right down to the ravenous flies that plagued the yoked oxen. I learned how the patron arranged matters so that workers were bound to him by debt. But by the halfway point (where I abandoned this book) Andres had never emerged as a person I could relate to. Traven was capable of writing novels in which character and plot prevail – The Death Ship and The Bridge in the Jungle attest to that. Possibly the agenda that dominates The Carreta had relevance when he wrote his six jungle books in the 1930s. Though the Mexican Revolution had occurred, the practice of peonage was still prevalent in more remote regions of the country. But that was long ago and far away. In The Octopus Frank Norris made the victims of the railroad monopoly vital and complex humans who still live over a hundred years after the book was written. Traven never achieved this artistic feat.

Spring Torrents - Ivan Turgenev (Russian)
This short novel has Sanin looking back thirty years to the time when he fell in love with Gemma, a beautiful Italian girl. They become engaged, but at that point the wealthy Maria Nikolaevna enters the picture. Whereas Gemma is all simplicity and virtue, Maria is a sophisticated seductress. Sanin is swept away from his true love by this predatory woman who will, he tells us in the coda, “treat him like a lapdog and then discard him.” What follows for him is a “poisoned life, emptied of all meaning.” In betraying and losing Gemma, he lost his chance at happiness. Turgenev is pushing hard to generate sympathy for Sanin (or for himself – the book is considered to be autobiographical); but my predominant feeling was annoyance. After all, this is a late work by someone who’s considered to be a major author. At its best moments, Torrents is mildly diverting. But there’s no depth of characterization. Both women are overdone – extreme types, not real people. Because I didn’t believe in them, I couldn’t believe in Sanin’s feelings for them. Part of the problem is that Turgenev, in 1870, had never heard of the rule of “show, don’t tell.” And he tells in a prose that’s exceedingly gushy; as a result the emotions he’s describing are reduced to silliness. In the sample that follows I invite you to count the overwrought words. Sanin enters Gemma’s room: “No sooner had he crossed the hallowed threshold than all the love which possessed him, its fire, its rapture and its sweet terrors, overwhelmed his whole being and burned within him. He glanced around him with tender adoration, fell at the feet of his beloved . . .”

Bloodshed and Three Novellas - Cynthia Ozick

“A Mercenary” is about Jerzy Kosinski (someone Ozick surely knew), so it interested me. I both admired and was annoyed by the labyrinth approach to narrative and the ornate style; but, since the point Ozick makes about Kosinski was inconclusive, annoyance won out. In “Bloodshed” (the blood being shed is that of Jews) the intricacies of the prose reached Byzantium proportions. “An Education” was simply written, in keeping with the characters, who are simpletons. What was Ozick up to in creating a story about highly-educated dummies? My suspicion is that she was ridiculing people she knew. I read a few pages of the last novella, but it was going to take a lot of effort, which I wasn’t about to expend. Ozick is a writer with a threefold agenda: to show off her verbal skills, to explore the Jewish experience, and to settle scores.

The Night Visitor and Other Stories - B. Traven

I chose not to reread the title novella; I’ll let that chilling nightmare remain intact in my memory. The other stories are good (or pretty good; none are very good). Traven’s characters have an engaging voice, he tells a story well, and he makes a point. His flaws are that he’s heavy-handed and often lets scenes go on too long (though this is part of his rambling, conversational style). He was a man who had a wide variety of life experiences; I believe that the authenticity of “The Cattle Drive” comes from Traven’s having actually been on a cattle drive. I was disappointed with the long final story, “Macario.” It could have been special, but Traven didn’t have a handle on where he was going; its lack of logic became a problem. “The Night Visitor” also lacked logic, but what occurs seemed to be dictated by a cryptic inevitability. That novella is the main reason – and a good one – to take up this collection.

Nineteen Nineteen - John Dos Passos

This social protest novel isn’t locked into one time period because it’s made up of character studies that are universal. Dos Passos was able to capture the essence of a wide spectrum of the American population. He does this by straightforward narration; the reader accompanies people through the events of their lives, and through accretion we come to believe in and understand them. Even a life that’s boring and confusing – as is the case with Eveline – has validity because we’re experiencing what she feels. Dos Passos was especially good with rough, uneducated, aimless young men – in this case Joe Williams. But the story that affected me the most was Daughter’s; seldom does a character created out of words get to me so deeply. I found the Camera Eye, Newsreel, and biography sections, done in an experimental style, to be speed bumps, but they enabled Dos Passos to present a panoramic view of the nation (and also to show how bad things were in this country during the WWI years). For what it accomplishes this novel is above criticism. It’s the second of the USA trilogy. I read the first volume (The 42^nd Parallel) forty years go; I remember thinking highly of it. So why the long wait? *

The Third Miss Symons - F. M. Mayor
The story of a Nobody, from birth to death. Etta is a flawed individual who lives an empty life; she won’t achieve the one thing she wants: to love and be loved. But I wasn’t moved by Etta’s story. This is partly due to the detached, emotionless way Mayor treats her character. This may be a more honest novel than most, in that many lives are lived without others (including the author and reader) caring. The book is short, stark, containing nothing extraneous to the sad procession of years. No descriptions of scenery, no extra words. This is a clinical study, odd and effective, and as such I respect it. But it kept me at a distance.

The White Rose - B. Traven
A political polemic, simplistic and passionate. Traven cared about injustice, and he had insight into how corruption works. But I want fiction with authentic characters and plot, and polemics seldom provide that. This one didn’t, so I stopped reading at the halfway point.

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? - Joyce Carol Oates
The title story is the best, and there are others that are good to very good. But most (there are seventeen) don’t ultimately succeed. I say “ultimately” because Oates has an ability to engage the reader. Her prose is pleasurable, her characters and situations interesting. The failure is in the final product. Oates relies on the quick instinct; she goes where ideas take her, but often they don’t take her anywhere special. Still, she does well with the obsessive mind, the warped and lost souls, and the ugliness these people see in life.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
Book One takes eleven-year-old Francie Nolan through a Saturday. I loved her, and I never stopped for the rest of the novel, even though nothing that followed was as good as the beginning. This story comes direct from the heart, a precious quality that can negate any weaknesses. Smith doesn’t write with a lot of sophistication, but so what? I believed in Francie and her family and the Irish immigrant neighborhood she lived in, and I was glad that I shared her life. *

Fielding Grey - Simon Raven
This book started to repel me. Raven is a good writer – his prose is interesting and fluid, and he moves the action along. The main character was supposed to be unattractive. But I felt I was being manipulated by an author with cheap intentions. The sex, which started out as homosexual and then shifted to heterosexual, became increasingly sordid, and I had enough.

The Treasure of Sierra Madre - B. Traven
Traven takes on big issues and frames them in simple plots, using elemental characters and stripping his prose of any embellishment. In this book he succeeds in making his point: the effects of greed attain an allegorical force. However, there are a few aspects that detract. The dialogue is stilted and scenes go on too long. Lastly, good as this book is, the movie was better; also, from the movie I knew everything that was going to happen, so the power of surprise was missing. (Interestingly, it was Traven who came up with the immortal words “Badges? I don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”)

A Book of Common Prayer - Joan Didion
By the halfway point this novel became a joke, with its pretentiousness and stylistic effects. Didion repeatedly ends a section with a short, deflating sentence, often framing it as a question (though without a question mark), and sometimes lining up a whole bunch of these little sentences. Here are three closing lines: “Unless the delusion was mine.” “As do earthquakes.” “Then why is it in my mind when nothing else is.” Don’t you love it? Also, she writes about sophisticates and their sophisticated sensibilities, but she sprinkles in grotesqueries with a casual attitude – because, don’t you know, real sophisticates have seen it all. The pretentiousness extends to the back cover, where the author stares out, a wide-eyed waif ravaged by the Truths she’s seen.