God’s Country – Percival Everett

I usually write reviews of all books I make it at least halfway through, but there was an exception. Here’s an excerpt from an essay I wrote about a year ago, entitled Racism in Fiction: “I’m not writing a review of God’s Country — it’s not worth the effort. Everett is a facile writer, and it seemed to me that he tossed off this piece of crude and abusive nonsense with the primary purpose of expressing his feelings toward the white race.” The reason I’m now referencing it is due to the reception Everett’s recent work has gotten. James has received both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. It’s a reworking of Huckleberry Finn, told from the POV of Jim, the slave. Maybe it’s good. Maybe he’s toned down his feelings. But my local library only has digital versions of the book, and I’m not going to read it off a screen. And I’m not going to buy it.

You can read the essay dealing with God’s Country at Racism in Fiction

The Mangan Inheritance – Brian Moore

Moore should get credit for his clear, smooth prose, which carries the reader along effortlessly. I was carried along effortlessly in the first part, when Jamie Mangan was living in New York, married to a woman who had become a star of stage and screen. And who ditches him for a producer. But before her divorce, she gets into a fatal car accident, and Jamie winds up the sole heir to a lot of money. That’s only one inheritance in this novel. The other one (or at least the possibility of one) is discovered by Jamie while staying with his father. He comes across an old daguerreotype and is startled: he could be looking at the image of himself. The man photographed just might be the famous (and famously dissolute) 19^th century Irish poet, James Clarence Mangan. Jamie, in his younger days, had fashioned himself as a poet; that ambition had fizzled, but is now revived: could the poet’s blood of his ancestor flow in his veins? So off he goes to Ireland, to a remote and dismal village where some Mangans live. They’re a ragtag and mysterious group (they seem to be hiding some secret). Jamie is immediately smitten by a teenage vamp, and Moore serves up an explicit sex scene. Which I wished he had spared me. Actually, I had fallen out of sympathy with the proceedings. I had the feeling of being mired down in an Irish bog. I just didn’t care about Jamie’s search. I didn’t care if he was an ancestor of JCM, I didn’t care if he would start writing poetry again. If, indeed, that was where Moore was headed. But I didn’t care where he was headed. 

Open Secrets – Alice Munro

Munro won the Nobel Prize, so learned studies of her work will be coming out. I’m going to make some generalizations about this collection, which was an early mid-career work, and came out just before A Friend of My Youth. I read that book and thought it had three very good stories, but in my review I wrote that most were “baggy, unfocused and too long.” All those problems were endemic in this collection. By “baggy” I’m referring to the many loose ends left hanging about. And too many characters appear but play no real role; they amount to clutter. That’s part of being “unfocused,” a problem that also arises from the way Munro shifts about in time. We go back and forth, we skip over years (decades!). Munro doesn’t focus on a limited scale; it’s as if she wants to write a novel that covers an entire life (which helps to make the stories “too long”). And where are we left at the end? Often in a sort of limbo. The last story in the collection, and the last one I read (I skipped “The Albanian Virgin”) was “Vandals.” It begins with a letter (almost every story has letters, some quite long) and then we go back to when Bea meets Ladner and falls in love. (Is it love?; I guess so.) He’s a strange duck, but interesting. Then we switch to present time, to two other characters, Liza and her husband Warren, both young. Liza lives near the Ladner home (Ladner had died), and Bea writes a letter asking them to check on the house where Ladner (and, later, she) had lived. What Liza does is gleefully and maliciously trash the entire place (initially Warren watches, seemingly unconcerned, but later joins in). They plan to blame the destruction on vandals. Why does Liza do this – act like a maniac? Something seems to have happened between her and Ladner when she was very young. We get gauzy flashback images suggesting that. But what? Molestation? My reaction? – Alice, spit it out. Quit with the vagueness. I don’t need any explicit description, but I do need more than hints. In this collection the most concise story is “The Jack Randa Hotel,” which also has a definite ending. But I can’t say it’s the best, because I didn’t think it was anything special. Is Munro a talented writer? Yes, absolutely – I enjoyed parts, even whole sections, of every story. And some of her stories I’ve read in the past have worked entirely. But none in this collection achieved success, for the reasons I’ve given. In fact, dissatisfaction set in, which is why I skipped “Virgin.” I just had my fill of disorderly storytelling. Final note: I checked Goodreads reviews, and a two star review was brief but, I believe, makes a good summary: “I’m still not quite sure what did and didn’t happen in this book.” Same with me, bro.

A Patchwork Planet – Anne Tyler

I found this novel to be enjoyable and satisfying. Barnaby, the main character, came to life, as did the secondary ones. I pretty much liked everybody (with the exception of a few, but they were jerks). And if there’s a point being made about Life, it’s in Barnaby’s interactions with his clients at Rent-a-Back. That business provides assistance to those who need it – which is, mostly, the elderly. Clean out an attic, get a prescription, move a sofa, fix a leaky faucet. All manner of little and not-so-little jobs and errands. In some cases, he’s just providing human contact (under a flimsy premise). We get a look at old age that is, I believe, accurate and meaningful. Barnaby is invariably patient and caring (though not in a gushy way). He has an innate decency. But why is he, at age thirty, working for meager wages at such a low-level job? Couldn’t an intelligent guy do better? It all has to do with a misspent youth, which he never rises above. He never “gets his act together.” Some might classify him as a loser, but I didn’t. Maybe he found his calling at Rent-a-Back. As for Tyler’s plot, it has its strengths and its weaknesses, but the weaknesses weren’t deal-breakers. That said, I must admit that I felt sorry for what happens to Sophia at the end. She’s the thirty-five-year-old woman Barnaby gets romantically involved with. I don’t believe her mistake in judgement was so bad. But my having this opinion stems from that virtue of the novel I mentioned: I liked the lady. Last note, pertaining to that Goodreads reader who, in reading the Munros stories I reviewed above, was “not quite sure what did and didn’t happen.” Try Tyler. You won’t run into that problem.

Re-reads

Life in the Crystal Palace – Alan Harrington

This is a study of a corporation. An ideal corporation, but, for Harrington (who worked in Public Relations), not a good fit; he was by nature a rebel caught in a labyrinth of benevolent conformity. So he’s critical of the Crystal Palace, though not in an angry, spiteful way. His approach is analytical, and it’s complete – he leaves no stone unturned. Which made for slow going. I was often uninterested, detached. Maybe, when I first read the book, I was employed in a big corporation, or had recently left one. So the book had relevance. Now it lacks that, and is basically a sociological study, so it does not belong on a list of Most Meaningful Books. 2 (delete)

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne – Brian Moore

This is an angry book, and Moore goes on attack in a brutal fashion. No subtleties or niceties here; even the prose is as blunt as a club. He doesn’t spare poor Judith Hearne, the spinster of meager means who, on the first page, moves into a new boarding house. She isn’t portrayed with much sympathy: she’s not very intelligent or insightful and has many minor faults (such as an unwarranted snobbishness). Yet she’s a desperate soul – desperate for love or friendship; she feels herself at the dead end of a life of emotional deprivation, and can’t accept it. Most of those around her are specimens of humanity at its worst – meanness and cruelty and greed are prevalent. The plot centers on Judith’s hopes for a relationship with a man; not the man of her dreams – far from it – but a man anyway, someone who will care for her, care about her. This dream is, of course, shattered. Then, halfway through the book, Judith’s severe drinking problem is introduced. I didn’t quite buy this, especially since we never see her in her wild intoxicated state; I think Moore was using the alcoholism as a means to hurry his character to her end – an end in which she loses even her religious beliefs. Yet, I must say, at that end, on the last page, when Judy (she liked to be called Judy) is in a nursing home (where she will stay), and she begins to gather the few of her precious life possessions around her, I was truly moved. Yes, we try to carry on. Moore’s anger is at the injustice of life, though he also shows his deep enmity for the Catholic religion and the city of Belfast, which is portrayed as a woefully dismal place. A few notes: The original title was simply Judith Hearne, and the book was turned down by ten (some sources say twelve) publishers before it found a home. 4

Mrs. Bridge – Evan S. Connell

The novel is composed of what I’ll call “snapshots” (117 of them).They are often less then a page long, seldom over two, and all have titles (Good-by Alice, Tea Leaves). These snapshots present scenes – of a quiet nature – that cover the life of Mrs. Bridge from early marriage to elderly widowhood. She has all the things that Judith Hearne desired: a husband, three children, a beautiful house (the Bridges are part of the affluent Country Club set in Kansas City). Yet the husband is a workaholic who’s at his office most of the time, and when he’s home there seems to be no relationship between them; he’s tired, taciturn by nature, and is not the type to discuss feelings. As for the children, two of them turn away from her at a very young age. Why? She loves them and is a dutiful mother. Perhaps there’s one thing about her that they rebel against: her beliefs are conventional; she gently disapproves of anything they do that falls outside of propriety. This is, in fact, the one characteristic about Mrs. Bridge that stands out. Propriety rules her life: she never deviates in her thinking from anything that is not “proper.” She also has too much empty time on her hands, with a live-in cook/waitress/maid and a weekly laundress. Though she sometimes thinks of expanding her horizons – reading a good book or attending a class – all these ideas quickly die on the vine. But Connell has not written a harsh portrayal of a woman who is, as he’s stated, based on his own mother. She doesn’t deserve harshness: she hasn’t a mean bone in her body. And, as time goes by, a fleeting darkness begins to pervade her thinking. She considers her life in which each empty day proceeded like the one before. But she cannot change; that same life moves on and on, and there comes a time when moments of depression and even panic set in, a feeling that she is unloved and unwanted. All is not well in her tidy little world. I felt, despite Mrs. Bridge’s limitations, that the people around her – husband and children – failed her. What came across for me in this portrait was a sense of guilt and regret – embedded there by the author. For the son in the novel is one of those who failed her. This is a fine novel, highly readable and artfully done. 5

Mr. Bridge – Evan S. Connell

Strange. In all my other re-reads I recognized that I had been there before. Often I could remember the endings (in the case of Judith Hearne I knew her shoes would appear on the last page “with the little buttons, winking up at her”). But with Mr. Bridge I recognized nothing. Yet I had it listed as one of my Most Meaningful Books, and I had it in my bookcase. My conclusion is that either it never made any impression or, more likely, I had never read it – it’s on the list solely as a companion piece to Mrs. I plowed my way though most of it before calling it quits. It uses the same format as the preceding book, but is much longer. The snapshots are repetitive in presenting character; we keep getting slight variations on the man’s feelings, words and actions (all ultra-conservative). To be fair, it’s a thorough portrait of Mr. Bridge. But I found him to be a bore, nor did I like him. And whereas Mrs. was artfully done, this was a plodding piece of writing (which is, actually, in keeping with the character’s personality). In it Mrs. is merely an insipid presence and the obnoxious son is given far too much attention. Connell wrote this book ten years after Mrs. (which was his first novel). Maybe he felt he needed to complete the family portrait. Maybe he was searching for something to write. But the creative spark wasn’t there – a sad decline by a writer who always had a struggle producing fiction. And sad too because it serves to detract from its predecessor. 2 (delete)

The Confidential Agent – Graham Greene
This is what Greene termed “an entertainment” (as opposed to his “serious” work), so one could expect that he would let up a bit on the gloom and doom. No such luck. Though he put a lot of effort into the prose, the scenes and the characterizations, the plot involves espionage, and here he’s unforgivably sloppy. H. – the confidential agent – is sent to London by his government (which is at war with rebels) to work out a deal for a critical supply of coal. Why they selected such a ninny is, for starters, baffling. H. has very important papers that authorize him to carry out his mission; for sixty pages he’s been guarding these papers with his life. When he leaves for a meeting at the house of the coal supplier, he “put the papers in the breast-pocket of his jacket and wore his overcoat fastened up to the neck. No pickpocket, he was certain, could get at them.” He enters the house, a servant asks “Coat, sir?” and he “let the manservant take his overcoat.” Later, when asked to show his papers, he finds that they’re missing; the servant had lifted them in that briefly described exchange. This feat of legerdemain is preposterous. Also preposterous is a scene in which H. breaks into a vacant apartment; before the police come knocking, he disguises himself (his most notable feature is his “heavy mustache”) by smearing shaving cream over his face. The only razor he finds is a small woman’s, and he goes to the door with that in his hand; the policeman comments on it: “Funny sort of razor you use.” H. says it’s his sister’s, the bobby leaves, and then we have, as with the papers, another magical disappearance: “He cleared the soap away from his mouth: no mustache.” That’s it? With a lady’s razor and with no preliminary clipping with scissors? I may seem to be nitpicking, but it’s incumbent for a writer working in this genre to make things plausible. And it wasn’t just incidentals that are problematic: so are all the villains that pop out of the woodwork. I stopped reading when H. is supposed to change from “The Hunted” (in the first section) to “The Hunter.” I spent a dozen pages with this now-dangerous man, and he was still dithering about.

Late Call – Angus Wilson
You’d think that an author who was knighted for his services to literature would do a better job of structuring a novel. The question of where things are headed arises in the prologue. It needed a revelatory force to warrant its length and intricacy, but when I finally realized who and what it was about it amounted to a mere over-indulgence in narration. Wilson can write well – his disconnected forays, if taken in ten page stretches, were lively enough to keep me reading. Also, in some of those stretches I connected with the main character. Sylvia Calvert is an elderly woman who retires from managing hotels and goes to live with her son and his three grown children; accompanying her is her unruly husband. What undermines Sylvia’s credibility are her inexplicable shifts in mood and attitude; in a space of twenty pages she goes from the depths of depression (immersed in “stunning misery” and “panic horror”) to being upbeat and competent. Such unsubstantiated flip-flopping (and it occurs with other characters) can only originate in the author’s wandering inclinations. Sylvia should be the focus, but Wilson shovels extraneous material into the maw of this novel like a crazed stoker. Secondary characters pop up like jack-in-the-boxes, do something outrageous or semi-insane, and then disappear. There’s a long section in which a mysterious old hunchbacked woman tells her life story to Sylvia (who, like me, is clueless as to its significance). Side-issues abound, such as her son’s efforts to save the town’s Meadow from development; her grandson is flagrantly homosexual (which nobody seems to notice) and one wonders when or if that will be an issue. Finally I concluded that my question of “Where are things going?” doesn’t apply to this haphazard book. At the close Wilson does make an effort to bring some order to the clutter. Sylvia, on one of her walks, saves a little girl’s life and is adopted by a family that immerses her in love; this plot contrivance belonged in a fairy tale. After weathering a series of crises, on the last page a chipper Sylvia contemplates a bright future of independence. A happy ending, unearned. Final note on Late Call: the author tried hard to avoid tags (“Sylvia said”); but, since the many voices aren’t that distinct, it’s often unclear who’s talking. Just another aspect adding to my annoyance.

The Precipice – Ivan Goncharov (Russian)
According to the notes on the back cover, Goncharov (the author of Oblomov) labored over twenty years on The Precipice, and the negative reception it got so embittered him that he never wrote another novel. I’m afraid this review will further his embitterment. The only major character I related to was the aunt, and this was because I admired her diligent concern with the business of running Boris’s estate. When she tries to involve him in his affairs he bluntly refuses; he has no interest in practicalities or material goods (though he lives in high style and never does a lick of work). He thinks of himself as an Artist, and though he has talent as a painter, composer and writer, it’s clear that he’ll never produce anything of substance. Mark, a social outlaw who quotes Proudhon and whose cynicism is all-embracing, refers to Boris as “half a man.” Then there’s the beautiful and mysterious Vera, who Boris falls hopelessly in love with at first sight. She steadfastly refuses to give him a grain of encouragement; all she asks is that he leave her alone. Spying and prying Boris suspects that she has a secret lover. The point at which I quit reading came when her lover’s identity is disclosed: it’s Mark. Of course it’s Mark! She certainly wouldn’t pick someone reasonable to fall in love with. In the first minutes of their encounter she accuses him of being wolfish, malicious and callous. He finds her words amusing. So did I. If he’s all these things, what attracts her to him? The overwrought depiction of tumultuous passions make this novel as dated as a “Perils of Pauline” movie (in which, come to think of it, precipices often plays a role).

The Temptation of Eileen Hughes – Brian Moore
The tension this thriller generates comes not from violence but from psychological forces in opposition. Eileen is a naive young woman who accepts favors, gifts and all-expense-paid trips from her employer and his wife. On an excursion to London she learns what’s behind the generosity: Bernard McAuley reveals his fanatical (though entirely platonic) love for her. Her rejection of him sets off a struggle of wills. While the workings of Bernard’s mind are very odd, they’re also convincing. I believed in his obsession and his sometimes frantic efforts to hold onto someone who wants no part of him. When he says “I will always love you,” these words are both sincere and creepy. His need makes him a pitiable figure; this wealthy, powerful man repeatedly demeans himself in front of Eileen. Despite the temptations (mainly money) dangled before her, Eileen’s determination to shake free never wanes, and as a result she grows into a stronger person. Mona, Bernard’s wife, turns out to be a calculating woman who, in exchange for a life of luxury, acts as an enabler for her husband. There’s a stretch when the book gets mired in plot contrivances (including an ill-conceived scene in which Eileen has her first sexual experience), but in the closing pages Moore rights the ship. Particularly effective is Eileen’s last encounter with Bernard; their meeting needed to have resonance, and it does. There’s a lesson embedded in this short novel: To be under someone else’s power is bad, but so is having power over another person.

Cluny Brown - Margery Sharp

Twenty-year-old Cluny is described by her uncle, with whom she has lived all her life, as being “plain as a boot.” But when we get to know her she displays a buoyancy that’s engaging (she even bounds when she walks). She’s an original, a free spirit without a hint of artifice. In an early chapter a woman the uncle talks to in the park gives him a piece of advice: “I think your niece sounds exceptionally charming. You mustn’t suppress her, you must help her to develop. She may be a really special personality.” This appraisal is right on target; but rather than be developed, Cluny’s adventurous nature is stifled while she’s living with her stodgy uncle. When she’s sent to work as a servant at a country estate new worlds open for her. Sharp recognized that Cluny alone couldn’t carry the novel, so she introduces a half dozen well-drawn characters (and not a villain among them). Love is in the air, romances bloom, including one for Cluny. But the events at the end, though they have an engaging sprightliness, aren’t convincing. I think the author cared so much about her creation that, like a fairy godmother, she simply waved a magic wand and blessed Cluny with an exciting life. I can’t really blame her.

The Feast of Lupercal - Brian Moore

Moore traces the evisceration of Mr. Devine (Dev), a master at a Catholic boy’s school in Belfast. Thirty-seven years old, he’s still a virgin, though fairly content with his drab, solitary life. That life is soon to be in turmoil. He’s in a stall in the school’s men’s room when he overhears a teacher refer to him as an “old woman” with no knowledge of how a fellow could feel about a girl. Dev is stung by these words; when he meets twenty-year-old Una she seems responsive to his tentative advances, and he’s emboldened to pursue her. This awkward “romance” results in disasters raining down upon Dev; at the end he’s in the same situation he was in the beginning, but inside he’s shattered beyond repair. No longer will he accept his lot in life, but never again will he attempt to make intimate contact with a woman. This is a desolate, relentless, grimy book. Though Dev is someone I understood, I wasn’t moved by his emotional destruction because Moore doesn’t make him an appealing person. At Saint Michan’s School the cane rules (the scenes of beatings are appalling), and Dev wields his with gusto; he sees the boys as ugly, vicious lumps. In other ways he’s a mild man, not a bad sort. He rises up to display defiance at the end, but it’s short-lived and too late. Hanging over the characters (like a cane about to descend) is the harsh and repressive Catholicism prevailing in Belfast in the1950s. Moore condemns a society that twists people’s natures into grotesque shapes. I felt that the only response to such a place would be to violently rebel against it or to leave it (which is what the author chose to do).

Night and Silence Who Is Here? - Pamela Hansford Johnson

This novel’s lugubrious and obscure title is inappropriate and its subtitle, “An American Comedy,” is a misrepresentation. The author brings together a group of over-the-top eccentrics at a New England college. But colorful eccentrics behaving oddly aren’t funny per se, not if they have no substance nor a coherent plot to provide a basis for their actions. Things move along with a dogged joie de vivre as Johnson tries, in prose that sparkles too brightly, to make her characters cavort about, to be funny, funny, funny. Forced zaniness never works. As for Who Is Here?, I wasn’t, not for long; I made a quiet exit from a party that was turning out to be a flop.

Thurber Country - James Thurber

Early on Thurber did some excellent work, but at a point in his career everything he wrote – even if it was bad or indifferent – got published by The New Yorker, where he was employed. He got lazy – or at least I attribute the “tossed off” quality of these twenty-five pieces to laziness. Only nine had any merit. In this collection of prose his idiosyncratic drawings, in which he can capture an expression with a minimum of lines, are the high points.

The Damnation of Theron Ware - Harold Frederick
I think that Frederick changed directions. In the wonderful beginning he created an otherworldly atmosphere. I sensed, with exhilaration, an edifice towering, dark and mysterious. But the author never followed up; the task he set for himself may have been too daunting. So he turned to more mundane matters. The intelligence and the subtlety and the big dimensions were narrowed down. Not that what results is bad; this is a good book. But it’s simply about a man following false values and misinterpreting the world and his place in it. The otherworldly becomes ordinary; the mystery and depth are gone. Frederick regains some of those elements at the end, with Theron’s despair. The extent of its destructiveness is arresting, and in the book’s last, ominous image Theron’s far-reaching aspirations rise, threateningly, on our horizon. *

Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift
Published in the early 1700s, this book probably introduced many to the pleasures of reading. It’s imaginative, engrossing, and written in a clear, smooth style. Gulliver is human, real, yet he’s mainly a vehicle through which Swift explores ideas. This is not a novel. It’s a travel journal, but the travel is purely in the imagination and is of a philosophical nature. The first two books (about Lilliput and Brobdingnag) are different from the last two, which are less concerned with entertaining the reader and more a critique of humans and society. *

The Color of Blood - Brian Moore
A literary thriller, but not thrilling. The main character’s escape meanders to no purpose. The bishop is one-dimensional; we’re supposed to like him because he says “Thank you” a lot. The plot is muddied in an effort to hide its lack of substance. The ending, with assassins popping up everywhere, is silly. All this from a writer who’s done some excellent things. His unobtrusive prose is workmanlike, but the workman got a little sloppy, and some joints aren’t flush. I wonder what Moore thought of this. Does a good author knows when he’s written a bad book?

Sir Vidia’s Shadow - Paul Theroux
I found this fascinating, wonderfully done, a treat. I was interested in the subject matter: the lives of writers, their thoughts and feelings, and the apprentice/mentor relationship. Theroux’s prose is smooth, inventive; he’s a real pro. The book is actually a hatchet job, done with restraint – until the very end, when Theroux becomes strident in his dislike for Naipaul, as if he’s releasing feelings that have long festered. This is a psychological study of two men, in which Theroux reveals as much about himself as he does about Naipaul. *