The Tragic Comedians - George Meredith
Meredith’s prose tests one’s intelligence. Can you follow the intricacies of his sentences to the end, or will you lose the strand of thought and find yourself sinking in the bog of your own ignorance? The book’s first sentence – though not as formidable as many – can serve as an example: “An unresisted lady-killer is probably less aware that he roams the pastures in pursuit of a coquette, than is the diligent Arachne that her web is for the devouring lion.” Despite the difficulties, his words are elegantly arranged, and they do lead somewhere. The problem with this novel, taken as a whole, hinges on where we ultimately wind up. Meredith presents us with Alvan, an all-powerful male figure, a brilliant Adonis. He’s also noble: his aim is to raise up the consciousness of the lower classes. This forty-year-old man meets Clotilde, a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl/woman; they fall in love at first sight. Of course it’s no ordinary love but one that scales the Alpine heights. Alvan wants to marry her legally; she begs him to run off with her. The problem, which she perceives and he doesn’t (he believes he can overcome any obstacle), is her brutish parents; they abhor this Jew, this demagogue, and they will do anything to prevent the marriage. The battle lines are drawn halfway through the novel, and though there’s almost no action – just speech, thoughts and feelings – I was interested in who would prevail. But, as I neared the conclusion, what I got were flailing histrionics and preposterous plot twists. My reaction: All that intelligence and then this? In his introduction Meredith asserts that the “fantastical” elements of his story are based on fact; such a man as Alvan existed and “was of a mighty nature.” Nothing, he claims, is invented, including the “lurid catastrophe” at the end. Really? I don’t buy it. It’s Meredith who injected the gargantuan aspects; the characters, as depicted by him, never walked this earth.

Collected Short Stories - Robert Graves
How could the author of the magisterial I, Claudius turn out such fluff? Apparently Graves didn’t take the short form seriously (though he did care about honing his prose, which is inventive and lively). In the introduction he writes that “Pure fiction is beyond my imaginative range.” In keeping with this statement, he’s a participant or an observer in the stories that he categorizes as English and Majorcan (he lived for a time in Majorca). Of these, the best – “A Toast to Ava Gardner” and “Treacle Tart” – rise to the level of pleasant diversions. A third group are set in ancient Rome; I read only one of them and found it to be silly.

John Barleycorn - Jack London
These “Alcoholic Memoirs” have merit beyond their considerable entertainment value. London begins with his early years, but he provides no pleasant boyhood reminiscences. Instead he recounts how, at age thirteen, he worked in a cannery – ten hour days, six days a week, for a dollar a day; he rebelled against this life and also formed his socialistic views, seeing our capitalistic system as a gristmill in which human beings are ground down. More than half the book is devoted to the period from ages fifteen to seventeen, when he became an oyster pirate. He was on the water, free, engaged in high adventure, associating with larger-than-life desperados – men he admired and emulated. Though I didn’t believe London was the swashbuckling figure he depicts himself to be, this section is significant in that it marks the start of his serious drinking. He stresses that he had no physiological inclination for alcohol. He drank only to be accepted by the people he hung around with; outside that social context he didn’t drink because he had no desire to do so. He covers his gold-seeking venture in the Yukon in one page (all he got out of it, he states, was a case of scurvy). He’s sketchy about his rise to success as a writer, and the life he led subsequently is not examined in any depth. It needed to be, because it was when he was seemingly blessed with every advantage – money, a wife and children – that a psychological need for alcohol grew in him. He personifies his problem in an entity he calls John Barleycorn. London’s outlook, once robust and positive, becomes subject to John Barleycorn’s “White Logic,” which sees all beliefs and values as attempts to make a meaningless existence bearable. He became plagued by disillusionment and despair. But London doesn’t treat John Barleycorn for what he is: a self-destructive force inside himself that, for whatever reasons, gained dominance. To make those reasons comprehensible would have required him to reveal much more about intimate personal matters, and this he refuses to do. In the pedantic last chapters London turns social reformer and philosopher. He ends things on a hopeful note, but it’s half-hearted. Crouching in the shadows is John Barleycorn, who will prevail. The author died three years after this memoir was published, at age forty-two. The cause of death was uremic poisoning, a condition aggravated by alcohol.

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel - George Meredith

A Victorian novel done in Meredith’s intricate style – his prose is crafted like delicate metal latticework. The author expects the reader to be as intelligent as he is, which can be demanding. Still, this is interesting as a psychological study. Did the impetuous, foolhardy pride Richard displayed as a boy compel him as a man to go through with a duel he could have avoided? The book has depth and ambiguity, and that’s good. The problem is that the main characters are almost feverish in their emotions (did people in Victorian times really carry on this way?). The minor players stay earthbound, and succeed very well there.

The Finishing School - Muriel Spark

This is a long short story packaged as a novel. The author, nearly ninety, doesn’t have the wicked bite of years ago; her attitude toward her flawed characters is one of mild amusement. Her subject is publishing and the relationships between writers, focusing on their machinations to achieve success. Though cynical (I liked her use of the word “crap” to describe the novel that has long been the mysterious center of attention), this is no New Grub Street. Still, I enjoyed my leisurely stroll with Dame Muriel.

A Personal Matter - Kenzaburo Oe (Japanese)

Dark, passionate, driven, this is a cathartic journey in which Oe succeeds in digging deep into a character (Bird) and at the same time giving us a dilemma worthy of the intensity. The novel moves the reader to turn the page but also compels him to go places emotionally. Oe presents his intimate story in a direct, easy to read style, though the matters he explores are densely tangled, almost too complex to deal with. There’s a lot of sex, much of it distasteful, but it’s an integral part of what Bird experiences. Nothing Oe does is gratuitous; he cared far too much. This novel is raw honesty, but raw honesty is very difficult to convey artfully. Problems with the book? The ending is too abrupt. Maybe Oe couldn’t do justice to the tangle he had created without another fifty pages, and he wasn’t up to that task. Himiko, an extremely appealing, well-drawn female character, is given the short shrift, which I kind of resented (because I cared about her). But I forgive Oe for these shortcomings. He wrote a great novel. *

The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
Most of these stories shouldn’t have been published; they weren’t meant to be. Nabokov was doodling self-indulgently (probably with failed ideas for novels). He displays his intelligence and his verbal acrobatics, but to no purpose. That said, in this huge collection there are about ten stories in which Nabokov is at his masterly best. But how does one find them in this haystack?

Entertaining Strangers - A. R. Gurney
Mildly pleasant humor that ran out of steam. The first person narrator was likable, but the situation (academic politics) couldn’t carry the action. A weak villain didn’t help. At the 150 page point the author was slogging along to get fifty more pages, so that he could call it a novel. I quit befor he did.

The Egoist - George Meredith
A novel of extreme intelligence – almost too much so. It’s difficult to follow Meredith’s convoluted prose and his ideas. However, it’s well worth the effort. Two great characters – Willoughby and Clara – in a struggle: he to retain his sense of superiority and she to break an engagement to a man who has become repugnant to her. Clara is also breaking from the confining mold of the Victorian female – she’s going against society’s edicts as to how a woman should act. Her desperate need, at any cost, to free herself is presented wonderfully; she’s an exhilarating character. The setting for their struggle is a country estate, the cast is limited to a half dozen people (including one of the most appealing and genuine little boys in literature). This framework allows concentration on some basic and important issues. The book is about values, about what really matters in life. The ending, in which the author tries to emphasize the comic confusion, is more confusing than comic and is the novel’s weakest stretch. Also, the man Clara loves is merely a composite of virtues. But Willoughby’s defeat (in which all he can salvage is his reputation in the eyes of the world) is depicted with force. I even felt a bit sorry for him. *