In Touch – Paul Bowles

In my review of The Delicate Prey I wrote that its depiction of acts of extreme cruelty made me think there was something warped in Bowle’s nature. The three novels of his that I read were also dark. Yet in these letters (540 pages of them) no twisted personality emerges. He makes a few remarks that indicate a state of alienation from people and from himself, but he seems quite able to relate to others and to sustain friendships over many years. Of course, his constant wanderings to exotic places and his choosing Tangier as his home are not something most boys born in New York City do. He wasn’t like most boys; he was gifted both as a writer and a composer. But, as regards his writing, his creative resources dried up after a less than a decade of productivity; though he continued to publish odds and ends for much of his long life, it was just for the money. He smoked kif on a daily basis (he claimed that it acted as an anesthetic to dull feelings that he found unbearable), and possibly that dampened the creative spark. He married Jane Auer (Jane Bowles, the writer). I know, from sources other than this book, that he was a homosexual, she was a lesbian. Exclusively? – I can’t say, but I doubt that they had a sex life together. Though he corresponds with just about every gay man in the arts – from Aaron Copeland (an early friend and sponsor) to Tennessee Williams – he says almost nothing about his sex life; on one occasion he writes that it has been “largely imaginary,” and, as for whom he had been in bed with, he states “To answer that, it would be necessary to have known their names.” So what were his feelings toward Jane? He ends his letters to her with “much love” (though “love” is a closing he uses to many people), and signs off with the name “Bupple” (which he uses only for her). Still, there’s little affection on display in the letters themselves. Jane went through a an agonizing sixteen year period of physical and mental deterioration; it’s chronicled pretty thoroughly, and it’s a frightening story. Paul obviously cares, and does what he can to help (which includes spending a lot of money). In order to write this review I’ve had to glean for interesting tidbits, so I’ll close with a Bowles’ quote that indicates the lack of revealing that’s present in his correspondence: “It seems to me that a good letter has to have the smell of the personality of the one who writes it. And I think my eagerness to avoid leaving any such smell is the same, whether it is a letter or a novel or whatever. Don’t risk giving offense with halitosis or B. O. !”

Abigail – Magda Szabo (Hungarian)

In one aspect, this is a Girl-Goes-To-Boarding School novel. The girl is Gina, the school is the ultra-strict Bishop Matula Academy located in a remote part of Hungary. She’s very unhappy about being sent there (early-on she makes an attempt to escape), and at first she alienates the other girls; they retaliate by ostracizing her. Eventually matters are patched up, and they become close. All this is OK, and I found the suffocating religiosity of the school to be interesting, as were the efforts of the girls to garner some enjoyment from their constricted lives. But there’s a whole other issue introduced. WWII is in full swing, and her father, a general, is at odds with the ruling faction; if his opponents could get their hands on his daughter they could blackmail him, so he wants her in the fortress-like school to protect her from danger. This espionage/suspense element is labored and strung-out. After it took precedence I kept on reading only to find out (in print, not in my mind) the solution to the mystery of Abigail. Abigail is a statue, and is able to solve the problems of the girls, either by causing things to happen or by written out advice (or in commands). Of course, Gina knows that a human being is doing these things, and she tries to figure out who it might be. The most unlikely candidate, in Gina’s mind, is one of the teachers, a Mr. Konig, who she considers to be weak and odious. Why she despises this person was not clear to me (and, since it seemed both unfair and uncharitable, it didn’t reflect well on Gina). But, at any rate, as soon as the mystery was posed I knew that Konig was Abigail, and, in the book’s last sentence, my belief was confirmed. This is no spoiler simply because there was no mystery – which reflects the amateurish, clumsy construction on the part of Szabo. Abigail was published as a New York Review Book (as was Transit, reviewed in the previous batch). They seem to have taken on a speciality: foreign writers. This is laudable, but only as long as the works are excellent.  Some books on their list that I’m familiar with belong in that category, but not this one.

The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Arnin

There are three acts to this novel, and the first one was engaging. It has two women who live in dreary London responding to a newspaper ad for the rental of a “small mediaeval castle on the shores of the Mediterranean.” The women – Lottie and Rose – are unhappy with their lives (particularly their married lives). In order to defray expenses they get two others to join them – an older lady named Mrs. Martin and the very beautiful Lady Caroline. None of these women had known each other before this joint venture. The second act is about the arrival and first week of the month’s stay – and this has a charm, because the place is paradise. But paradise alone can’t sustain interest, so Arnin introduces some complications. Lady Caroline and Mrs. Martin aren’t able to give up their past hang-ups, and therefore don’t succumb to the beauty around them. And Lottie and Rose begin to long for their  husbands. Since these men were a major source of their unhappiness, I found this dubious. As I read on much of what was happening was simply manipulation; things got progressively worse until there were no real people in real situations – just an author using her characters as props and moving the scenery around. The last act has three men arriving at the castle – the two husbands and the owner of the place – and here the novel descends into mushy emotionalism. We get a sweepingly happy ending (love conquers all), but one so contrived and false that I found myself reading, with disgruntlement, a woman’s romance. A high quality one, but that’s not saying much. 

An odd occurrence: I discovered, after reading this entire novel and writing the review above, that I had read it before (in May of 2016). I did – especially in the beginning – find it vaguely familiar, but five years isn’t that long ago. Makes me wonder about myself. . . . Anyway, below is the review I did after the first reading. It is much richer and more comprehensive than  the one I did now, in my dotage. I think I’ve become somewhat tired of reading novels that I don’t care for and writing reviews about them. 

The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Arnim

A woman lunching in her London club reads an ad in The Times addressed “To Those who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine.” An Italian castle is to be let for the month of April. Mrs. Wilkins (Lottie) notices another woman staring at the same page. Eventually the two – strangers, both unhappily married and dissatisfied with their lives – decide to take the plunge. To defray expenses, they recruit an elderly widow, cranky and stuck in the past, and a young woman who is so gorgeous that men are mesmerized by her. (Caroline yearns to get away from all the “grabbers” in the world.) In Italy the four women are immersed in the stunning natural beauty. For Lottie it’s transforming: she sees life in an altogether different light (a rose-colored one), and the force of her feelings affects the others. Well into this novel I was caught up by an invigorating sense of escapism. But when men (the two husbands and the owner of the castle) enter the picture, reality set in. At least it did for me; the author tries to keep up the Lottie fantasy that Love can induce a radical change in everybody. I couldn’t accept that Mr. Wilkins will cease to be a tyrant, nor that Caroline would warm up to a grabber like Mr. Briggs. Unlikely complications proliferate, and the gentle humor is replaced by slapstick. What had been quietly uplifting becomes doggedly instructive; to assert the primacy of Love makes it seem simplistic and sappy. When you like a book, then it falls apart, one feels betrayed. So I was in a bad mood when I read the introduction by Cathleen Schine. She raises the possibility that some characters are based on real people from the author’s life: “The Enchanted April’s sweetly ardent Mr. Biggs, owner of the castello, is, in his search for a mothering sort of love, based on Frere.” For one thing, the man’s name is Briggs, and he’s so smitten with young Caroline that he’s hardly able to function; he’s certainly not after any mothering.

Nobody Move – Denis Johnson
On the inside flap of the hardback edition is a ridiculous claim that this novel is “touched by echoes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.” And the blurbs on the back compare Johnson to Twain, Whitman and God (the last by Jonathan Franzen). We get a snippet from a Jim Lewis review in The New York Times – “Good morning and please listen to me: Denis Johnson is a true American artist.” This quote is incomplete; it actually continues with “and Tree of Smoke is a tremendous book.” Lewis was referring to the novel that won a National Book Award, not to Nobody Move. If comparisons are to be made, I found Elmore Leonard’s influence in the fast-moving, sassy, street smart dialogue. Then we descend into the dark and twisted territory staked out by Cormac McCarthy. Maybe DJ was aiming for the type of lucrative movie deals garnered by those two authors. Serve up plenty of sex, vulgarity, violence and – this is important if you want to emulate Cormac – creepiness. There’s an ominous Tall Man who, it turns out, is five foot seven; no reason is given for how he got his name, though something is wrong with him: “He stood under the ceiling light with his hat tipped forward and his face in a shadow and a hooked pinky traveling toward one of his nostrils, if he had nostrils.” We never learn more. Yes, I read the whole thing (it’s very short – a novella, at best – and it was serialized in Playboy, that citadel of good taste). For me this became a study revealing how low the literary world has sunk. Because – Please listen to me – no true American artist would sink so low as to produce a smarmy bit of pandering like Nobody Move. I’ll go straight to the text to prove my point. “I didn’t say I’m killing you,” Juarez told him. “What’s happening is I’m about to cut off your balls. If you die of it, that’s your personal decision.” What Juarez and Gambol are going to do, as Jimmy watches, is to eat his balls (they’ve done this with previous victims). Later there’s an encounter with a wheelchair-bound judge who’s wearing a colostomy bag: “With both her hands she grasped the bag under his armpit and jerked it free and struck him across the face with it, putting half a pirouette behind the blow, and Gambol leapt aside as feces erupted down the man’s neck and chest and behind his back, so that he was wearing it and sitting in it.” Actually, Denis Johnson is wearing it and sitting in it. And so are you, if this kind of stuff appeals to you. To conclude my study I checked out what reviewers at the top publications had to say. I couldn’t find one objection to the book’s ugliness; in fact many found much to praise in Nobody Move. Heaven help us.

Elizabeth and Her German Garden – Elizabeth von Arnim
To my surprise (and it was a pleasant one) this is a subversive book. It pricks and deflates conventional beliefs with a light, graceful touch; all is serene, there’s not an iota of stridency. The opening words are “I love my garden.” What Elizabeth doesn’t love are her fellow human beings. On the final page she strolls the green paths and thinks “It makes one very humble to see one’s self surrounded by such a wealth of beauty and perfection anonymously lavished and to think of the infinite meanness of our own grudging charities, and how displeased we are if they are not promptly and properly appreciated.” The word the author chooses to italicize is significant because nature’s beauty is usually attributed to God. And she uses “we” and “our” in referring to meanness; Elizabeth is as selfish as others. She feels no pity or duty toward the poor; entertaining guests is a chore, and when “great friends” depart she wishes “not to see them again for at least ten years.” One of the book’s many virtues is its humor; characters and episodes are gently slanted to show their comic side. Her husband is referred to only as the Man of Wrath. Though mostly silent (or absent altogether) he occasionally launches into long speeches; some express a misogynistic point of view. “Do you suppose that the intellectual husband, wrestling intellectually with the chaotic yearnings of his intellectual wife, ever achieves the result aimed at?” Of those women of the lower class who get a prompt clout, he says, “I consider they are to be envied rather than not since they are early taught, by the impossibility of argument with marital muscle, the impotence of female endeavor and the blessings of content.” An iconoclast herself, Elizabeth seems to respect (and to be amused by) the opinions that the Man of Wrath devilishly advocates; at any rate, she gives him full rein. Garden was a huge success when it came out in 1898; I think it was passed along by its female audience much as a banned book might be. Women probably admired the author’s freedom – not just to say what she pleases, but her escape from the duties and responsibilities of caring for family and household. Though Elizabeth had three children in rapid succession, these “babies” play a mostly decorative role; a governess does the heavy lifting. For many years the identity of the author was a mystery; in the volume I have (which came out in 1900) there’s a Forward in which it’s attributed to Her Highness Princess Henry of Pless. This Forward also describes Garden as a “gem among the world’s prose poems.” I agree with the gem part, but I didn’t find the language to be poetic. So what is the book – a diary, a memoir, a novel, a journal of musings, an idyll in which nature and solitude are the objects of desire? Actually, it can’t be confined to any category. It’s much like the flowers and plants and trees that, in their season of freedom, run rampant, but do it quietly, and are lovely. *

The Wager – Machado de Assis (Portuguese)
The novel takes the form of a journal kept by Aires, a sixty-three-year-old widower living in Rio de Janeiro. The wager is whether a young widow will marry again. (She does.) I’m giving away the outcome because it doesn’t matter. With the exception of Aires, no character is developed and the plot has no tension. This is a mood piece by a sixty-eight-year-old author who died months after the book was published. Though thoughts of death are pervasive, the mood isn’t dark. Aires/Assis accepts with calm resignation how life works, and he’s only mildly moved by anything, including his own demise. He still retains an interest in human nature and he can still find people to be a source of humor. But the absence of passion gives the novel a muted quality. To Aires the two young people who marry “have the right to live and to love, and to leave the dead and the aged behind with no regrets.” Fidelia must leave the memories of her dead husband behind, and both she and Tristao must leave their aged foster parents behind. There is no tragedy in this.

A Place in Time – Wendell Berry
These are crafted stories, in the sense that a master carpenter can make joints fit flush. I’m not referring just to the prose. Crafting in fiction is about how characters and situations are developed, and how the ending is handled. In “The Requirement” a man is dying; we go over Big’s life, as seen from the memories of a friend. We get to know Big. At the end he asks, from his bed, for the narrator to get his revolver from the closet. It’s what happens after that request that shows Berry’s gift; the ending is unexpected, perfectly right, and moving. In this story, as in many others, Berry imparts a philosophy about life and values. Mostly it blends in with the fabric of the narrative, but at times the philosophical and contemplative aspects are too overt (and belong, properly, in essays). What does consistently work is Berry’s waggish sense of humor. A woman recalls how she and her husband-to-be woke up a preacher to perform the marriage ceremony: “When he asked Grover to promise all those things ‘to death,’ Grover said, ‘Would you go over that a little slower?’ ” The pace throughout this collection is leisurely, which is appropriate for stories that dwell in the past, before mechanical efficiency sped everything up. I found it pleasurable to go back to a simpler time, when work was physically difficult but the fruits of one’s labor were clear to see. Also, people had an intimate connection with nature and animals and tools. Despite all the virtues to be found in this book – rare ones – I felt I was missing a lot. The setting is a small farming community on the banks of the Kentucky River. Kinship is important, but I couldn’t keep the relationships straight. Characters appear in one story, then reappear in another, and I couldn’t remember them as they had been. These are interconnected stories, but I often didn’t get the connections. What I intend to do is go back to the first novel in the series. Because I want to spend more time with the people of Port William.

The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Arnim
A woman lunching in her London club reads an ad in The Times addressed “To Those who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine.” An Italian castle is to be let for the month of April. Mrs. Wilkins (Lottie) notices another woman staring at the same page. Eventually the two – strangers, both unhappily married and dissatisfied with their lives – decide to take the plunge. To defray expenses, they recruit an elderly widow, cranky and stuck in the past, and a young woman who is so gorgeous that men are mesmerized by her. (Caroline yearns to get away from all the “grabbers” in the world.) In Italy the four women are immersed in the stunning natural beauty. For Lottie it’s transforming: she sees life in an altogether different light (a rose-colored one), and the force of her feelings affects the others. Well into this novel I was caught up by an invigorating sense of escapism. But when men (the two husbands and the owner of the castle) enter the picture, reality set in. At least it did for me; the author tries to keep up the Lottie  fantasy that Love can induce a radical change in everybody. I couldn’t accept that Mr. Wilkins will cease to be a tyrant, nor that Caroline would warm up to a grabber like Mr. Briggs. Unlikely complications proliferate, and the gentle humor is replaced by slapstick. What had been quietly uplifting becomes doggedly instructive; to assert the primacy of Love makes it seem simplistic and sappy. When you like a book, then it falls apart, one feels betrayed. So I was in a bad mood when I read the introduction by Cathleen Schine. She raises the possibility that some characters are based on real people from the author’s life: “The Enchanted April’s sweetly ardent Mr. Biggs, owner of the castello, is, in his search for a mothering sort of love, based on Frere.” For one thing, the man’s name is Briggs, and he’s so smitten with young Caroline that he’s hardly able to function; he’s certainly not after any mothering.

The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yiddish)
Over 600 pages of them, and not one of those pages is boring. Though the locale of some stories is pre-Hitler Europe, to read them is to enter a Grimm-like forest where supernatural beings lurk. Did Singer believe in the malignant powers he writes about? All that can be said with certainty is that they fascinated him. Not only do demons and Satan exist, they sometimes narrate a story. These forces intervene in human lives; men and women struggle in their grasp or submit willingly to their bidding. Working from this premise, Singer’s characters confront good and evil, question the existence of god, try to fathom the meaning of life. No beliefs are respected and no answers are provided (least of all by a Jewish religion that’s depicted as a morass of superstition). The pieces that take place in the present (in which Singer plays a role, either an active one or as a listener to a tale told to him by someone else) are less exotic, though they too have an element of other-worldliness. Satan may not appear in New York, but peculiar people and odd occurrences abound. Not all stories fit the mold I’ve described; some stay grounded in reality. Nor was every story to my liking. But always evident is Singer’s intense absorption in human nature and behavior. Because so many of his characters are ruled by aberrant passions, this book gives off a sense of wildness. As an author Singer possessed a unique power, perhaps given to him by one of his demons: the power to compel the reader to enter the dark and tangled forest. *

The Women at the Pump - Knut Hamsun (Norwegian)
“People from the big city have no conception of the scale of things in a small town. They think they can come and take their stand in the marketplace and smile their superior smile; they think they can laugh at the houses and the paving – how often they feel that way!” Thus this book begins. Though the omniscient narrator’s familiar, jaunty tone is sustained throughout, the residents of a fishing village get a thorough examination, and few come out unscathed. This is a comic novel only in the sense that human failings are treated in a bantering way. Of the doctor made resentful by his lack of success: “Nor did he ever attain anything respectable in the line of malice, he had started too late; as an elderly castaway he attained only to a sour dissatisfaction, to bitterness, rancor, petty vindictiveness, slander.” Hamsun uses the village as a microcosm; his universal subject is life. He perceives it to be hard; only the rare individual isn’t twisted or damaged in some way. He respects a man who’s brave, resilient and simple, who confronts life as it is and doesn’t examine it nor whine about it. I use the word “man” because this is a masculine novel; women matter, but the minds Hamsun enters are those of males. As for a plot, many years roll by, things happen in the village, small and momentous, to people of both high and low station; these events are topics of gossip for the women who meet at the pump. In the closing chapters Hamsun seems at a loss as to how to wind things up, and the book loses its momentum. Still, this is another considerable accomplishment from the Norwegian master.

Love - Elizabeth von Arnim
The title, in its simplicity, is misleading; this is a novel filled with conflict. A young man (Christopher, twenty-five) becomes infatuated with an older woman (Catherine). Though flattered and enlivened by his intensity, she makes determined efforts to discourage him. But even when she reveals to him that she’s forty-seven and has a nineteen-year-old daughter, his ardor is not dampened; he continues to insist on marriage; Catherine weakens. Complicating matters is the husband of her daughter. He’s a reverend in his fifties, and though he’s much older than his wife, he and his priggish mother consider Catherine’s relationship with a mere boy to be repugnant. Since he has the power to separate Catherine from her daughter, his uncompromising attitude carries weight. In the midst of these pressures, Catherine marries Christopher. But love doesn’t conquer all; instead it leads her into a desperate struggle. She’s in the last stage before old age sets in, and to combat that dissolution she has elaborate (and expensive) “treatments” to make her appear young; they help, but they also make her look cheap. Catherine loses something precious to her: her dignity. Her formerly quiet life is in emotional turmoil, and though her daughter sticks by her, their harmonious relationship is altered. Love turns out to be a mixed bag. Are the ecstasies (which, on Christopher’s side, become less and less ecstatic) worth the grief? For me the answer is no; reading this book was a painful experience. The author creates a rose-colored aura, not unlike what would be found in a romance novel, yet the roses have thorns.