Lotte in Weimar - Thomas Mann (German)
The Lotte of this novel is the beloved portrayed fictionally in Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. Now sixty-three, she visits Weimar with the expectation of again meeting the author she had known in her youth. This premise interested me because of the human element. Unfortunately, the human element got lost in complexities. Mann builds the plot around visitors who come to Lotte’s hotel room. They engage in long monologues (one covers over a hundred pages) that deal with the character of Goethe and the essence of genius. Ideas are presented with a rigorous and austere intelligence. Even the prose is lofty; listening to Goethe’s son, Lotte thinks that he speaks in an old-fashioned, artificial and pedantic way; but, since such language is used throughout the book, she could be commenting on Mann’s own style. His insights are perceptive (Goethe is portrayed as a parasite who, in his relations with young Lotte, laid his emotions like a cuckoo-egg in a nest already made and then flew off). But too much undiluted intelligence becomes tiresome; Mann’s weightiness, his refusal to be direct and simple, wore me down. When a chapter begins with the reader plunged into the mind of Goethe (“Alas, that it should vanish!”), I had enough; I had even lost faith that anything of interest would emerge from the long-delayed meeting of Lotte and the Great Man. Actually, I had lost faith in Thomas Mann. His first novel, Buddenbrooks, appeared in 1901; in it he immerses the reader in the stuff of life – weddings and divorces, births and deaths, money matters and gossip. Lotte was written forty years later, while he was living in the United States (in self-imposed exile from Hitler’s Germany). Unlike the twenty-five-year-old who wrote the early masterpiece, age and insularity must have caused Mann to lose contact with the times and with ordinary people. Instead he turned his attention to grand subjects: biblical figures, the Faust legend, geniuses. He also considered the majestic power of Literature to be a legitimate subject for a novel. I’m one of the few left who value great writing, but only when its primary concern is human nature.

Aleck Maury Sportsman – Caroline Gordon
In old age Aleck Maury recalls an episode that occurs early in the book: “I knew suddenly what it was I had lived by, from the time when, as a mere child, I used to go out into the woods at night with a negro man. I remembered it – it must have been when I was about eight – looking up in the black woods into the deep, glowing eyes of the quarry and experiencing a peculiar, transfiguring excitement.” Ever since he had been seeking and finding that excitement – which is, for him, a sense of being fully alive. His solitary quest demands selfish dedication. Though he has feelings for his family, they make inroads on time – precious time! – that could be spent on the water or in the field. The vast majority of these pages are filled with scenes of hunting and fishing; his dog Gy gets more space than his wife and children, and his job as a teacher matters not at all. Since his story is told from the perspective of old age, it’s permeated by an awareness of loss. When young Aleck sees his uncle, who was always first in the field, unable any longer to mount a horse, a sense of foreboding rushes over him. He will suffer the same fate. First a bum leg prevents him from hunting, then he becomes too heavy to easily get around; worse, he feels a lessening of enthusiasm: “Delight . . . I had lived by it for sixty years and now it was gone and might never come again. . . .” This is something he cannot face, and he has no resources to fall back on. Yet at the end he rallies to make a last assertion of his independence – he will live only by his terms. Caroline Gordon had a personal investment in this portrayal, for Aleck Maury is based on her father. She’s present in the book as Sally; but, until the last pages, there’s not one sustained scene between the two. Is she condemning him for his absence from her life? I didn’t get that impression. Rather, she seems to respect the choice he made: few people know what their passion is and follow it so resolutely. Gordon’s stories about him are more artfully done than this novel; the descriptions of hunting and fishing are too detailed (by the way, how did she get to know as much about those subjects as her father?) and time is covered haphazardly, often in leaps and bounds. But those faults are irrelevant. What matters is the author’s complete and effortless empathy. *

Riceyman Steps - Arnold Bennett
The title refers to a place – a slum in London – where Henry Earlforward lives in a dilapidated building which also houses his used bookstore. His servant Elsie and a woman he marries, Violet, make up what is mostly a three character novel. Henry and Violet are perplexing because who they are and how they act aren’t in conformity. I never understood why this eccentric bachelor – a man in his late forties – decides to marry, and why sensible and independent Violet accepts such an odd duck. Whether love (or sex) plays a role in their relationship is left ambiguous. Elsie, on the other hand, presents no complexities: simplicity and goodness and a desire to work define her. An aspect of Henry’s personality that’s developed convincingly is his “soft obstinacy.” I could comprehend why others are dominated by a will so mild and yet so immovably and inhumanly strong. Though it’s Elsie’s nature to be submissive, Violet loses all but remnants of her once-vigorous self-sufficiency. Also convincing is Henry’s fanatical miserliness; despite the considerable fortune he keeps in a safe, he deprives himself and others in the house of food and heat. In one sense this is pathological, but hoarding money – gazing at it, holding the lovely, crisp new notes and gold sovereigns – is Henry’s passion and, as such, gives him pleasure. When he becomes ill he refuses to go to a hospital. It’s not only the expense; he sees it as a place where individuality is crushed, and this is a dreadful prospect for someone of his nature. I consumed this book, fascinated by its amalgam of commonality and perversity. Bennett’s attitude is godlike; he’s both pitying and amused by the emotions and travails of his three characters. It never occurs to them that they’re insignificant cogs in an enigmatic universe; they’re too busy with their share of working it out. Which is called life.

Effi Briest - Theodor Fontane (German)
This novel, written in 1894 by a 75-year-old man, contains elements that I found original and completely successful. What Fontane chooses to omit is critical. An example is the way he presents Effi’s affair; though we’re in her mind for most of the novel, we’re denied access to what transpires between her and Major Crampas. There was intimacy, but of what sort? We’ll never know. Crampas’s last words (which he speaks to Effi’s husband after he’s been mortally wounded by him in a duel) are: “Will you . . .” Will you what? We’re faced with enigmas, but they’re the kind that make you see life as an inexplicable and poignant mystery. Nobody is a villain, nobody is without flaws. No one is consistent. You can question every conclusion or justification any character makes. At the end Effi says that her husband “ . . . was as fine a man as any one can be who doesn’t really love.” But is she mistaken? Did Innstetten, despite his harsh actions after he learned of her infidelity, love Effi? In this tragic story there’s beauty and sentimentality and moments of untrammeled joy. And wisdom too – one doesn’t live to Fontane’s age without coming to some conclusions about life. *

The Big Nickelodeon - Maritta Wolff
In this page turner the author brings together a large cast of characters caught up in a variety of tangled predicaments. Dialogue is one of Wolff’s strengths; each individual comes alive with their own distinct voice. In the first chapter a body is discovered on a California beach; on the last page the identity of the person is revealed. Reading this rich, sprawling novel is more than entertainment. Wolff shows us people striving, often not sure what they’re after, sometimes pursuing the wrong goals. Ultimately they’re hostages to their needs and their natures.

Mockingbird - Walter Tevis
Though reading this book was not at all laborious, the plot and characters are so complex that they defy any tidy summing up. Tevis presents a futuristic world headed toward extinction (not with a bang but a whimper); even biological humans have lost their humanness. Bentley has to slowly discover his; books are the means by which he gains access to feelings which had been drugged and indoctrinated into dormancy. Mary Lou, a rebel who escaped such indoctrination in her youth, is relatively intact. The robot Spofforth was created using the brain of a human as a model; he fleetingly feels – and is disturbed by – random emotions and memories belonging to his donor. In its depiction of a social-engineered world in terminal disarray, the book makes you think. Tevis is less successful in making me feel. He tries to show the evolution of Bentley as he opens up to emotions and learns to love, yet this aspect seemed forced and awkward. In The Man Who Fell to Earth and Queen’s Gambit Tevis convincingly conveyed deep alienation, but in this novel he couldn’t breathe life into scenes of human engagement.

Old Red and Other Stories - Caroline Gordon
There are quite a few successes in this collection. The best are about Aleck Maury. He’s a great character, and I wonder if he was based on Gordon’s father. How else could she have such empathy for an aging sportsman with an elemental need to hunt and fish? In the Maury stories she captures, with a masterful understatement, Aleck’s feelings as the world he loves slips inexorably from his grasp. Her finest achievement is “The Last Day in the Field,” in which she makes this conflict of love and loss palpable. Bittersweet loss is also the theme of “All Lovers Love the Spring”; Gordon follows a woman’s random thoughts, and in doing so a whole life emerges. The weakest – and longest – story is “Emmanuele! Emmanuele!” It’s populated by intellectuals and the plot is intricate; both seem contrived. Gordon was an author with limitations – she had to care deeply about her characters and she had to keep the plot simple. When she stayed in those parameters she was capable of beautiful work.

My Brother - Jamaica Kincaid
Kincaid must be praised for her honesty; she expresses feelings that are “unacceptable” (most notably, hatred for her mother). She returns to the island of Antigua to try to help her brother, who’s dying from AIDS; it’s an unpleasant task, an unpleasant reunion with people and a place that she wanted no part of. She presents her complex and conflicted emotions in an incantatory prose style, a cross between Gertrude Stein (simple and repetitive) and Henry James (she follows a thought through its many convolutions). I originally listened to the book read on tape by the author, and the style worked quite well – better than it did when I read it. In my review of the autobiographical Lucy I was left with questions about what would become of the young protagonist; some of those questions were answered in this book. The answers aren’t pleasant or easy ones. Unlike her brother, Kincaid escaped her mother and the stifling world of Antigua, but only physically. Her life in the United States has the trappings of happiness, but she’s aware of how hard it is to shake off past influences; she worries about the effects her old destructive feelings will have on her present-day relationships. It turns out that her misgivings were well-founded. A look at her biography reveals that she and the man she was married to in My Brother subsequently divorced.

Penhally - Caroline Gordon
This book has strong virtues and stronger flaws. The main virtue is the author’s ability to write well: the narrative voice is smooth and scenes come to life. But taken as a whole – as a chronicle of the fall of the house of Penhally – the novel lacks structure. After an excellent beginning Gordon seems hellbent for a conclusion (one generation is covered in about five pages). The irascible Nicholas, present in the opening section, is a forceful character, but many who follow are indistinguishable from one another. Relationships (cousins, great-grandfathers, slaves belonging to this and that person) got so complicated that I gave up trying to sort everybody out; my reading became inattentive. The ending to this multi-generational saga rings decidedly false; a bullet in the heart is dramatic, but the man Gordon created would never have fired that shot. Last word . . . About the author’s use of ellipses . . . Was she trying to set a world record?

The Incomparable Max - Max Beerbohm
Beerbohm’s writing is the epitome of elegance, carried off effortlessly (though such finely-crafted prose surely took great effort). I don’t read for an author’s style, but this book was an exception. My only quibbles are that the prose occasionally turned from elegant to ornate and some pieces were too learned – way over my head. Also, Beerbohm’s ideal audience is upper-class Brits familiar with the post-Victorian era. I skipped a few essays involving people and matters I knew little or nothing about, and I couldn’t stomach more than five pages of the foolishness in the long last story, “The Happy Hypocrite” (which should be expunged from the record). Yet much is outstanding, particularly the pieces on his brother and on King George the Fourth. In “Diminuendo” he gives the reason why his literary efforts were limited, and all writers will find his thoughts of interest. If you haven’t read the two stories from Seven Men – “Enoch Soames” and “A. V. Laider” – you have a unique treat awaiting you. Max is bracing company, intelligent, original, entertaining and eminently likeable. One feels better after spending time with him, and I can understand why his contemporaries considered him to be “Incomparable.”