Mourning Becomes Electra - Eugene O’Neill
I don’t read many plays, partly because I believe they’re meant to be seen and heard. But I watched a DVD of the 1960 TV production of The Iceman Cometh (all three and a half hours) and was so impressed that I wanted more of O’Neill. His view of the human condition is dark, even oppressive. People do terrible things for which they’re haunted by guilt. It’s a guilt so remorseless that one can’t live with it. O’Neill is an engrossing writer; even when he frames a play as a Greek tragedy, as he does in Electra, his characters and situations are understandable and relevant. The play has melodramatic moments, which make it somewhat dated. Also, there’s too much in the stew pot; people have rapidly shifting emotions and their motivations aren’t always plausible. Still, the passion of the writing prevails. O’Neill had a deeply-held vision of life, and from that vision comes the power of his work.

The Poorhouse Fair - John Updike
This was Updike’s first novel, and I wish an editor had said, Look, John, this could be good if you’d flesh out the characters and situations in your mind more fully – it’s a spindly construction, this book, if you take away the poetry – which you should do. Write your poetry but don’t, please, write poetic prose. I’m talking about this sort of thing: “Near the eclipsed sun a cirrus cloud like a twisted handkerchief was dyed chartreuse; the phenomenon seemed little less eerie for being explicable, as iridescence.” You indulge in precious writing constantly, and you constantly have characters think too deeply. It makes for slow going, John, and I couldn’t read more than half of this. Don’t try to impress the reader with your stylistic skills, your deep insights into the human heart, your sensitivity. Make your writing grounded, solid. You’re talented – I can see that most clearly in your dialogue, where people are allowed to talk naturally. But you’re on the wrong path here. . . . (And so on.) It seems that Updike was never told these things, so off he went on his career, and it wasn’t until the last two Rabbit books that he took my imaginary editor’s advice and produced a pair of great novels.

Three Tales - Gustave Flaubert (French)
“A Simple Heart” is simply wonderful (the parrot at the end is a great touch), but the other two tales are flat and boring (“Herodias” is impenetrably confusing); they’re uninspired and not worth discussing. The story of Felicite, however, seems heartfelt. Flaubert, a complex man, looks at the life of an uneducated servant and sees significance in it. Maybe happiness comes from simplicity: accepting things as they are, finding purpose in a life full of daily tasks, believing in one’s religion. No questioning, no craving. Flaubert tells Felicite’s story without embellishment; we get only her thoughts, feelings and actions. Though I don’t usually quote authors on their work, I’ll make an exception. In a letter Flaubert gave a synopsis of “A Simple Heart” and closed by writing, of this tender story, “I am tender-hearted myself.” Then he added: “Now, surely, no one will accuse me of being inhuman any more. . . .”

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (French)
A brutal novel. It gives off no moral light. Emma Bovary’s adulteries are its focus because they – the transitory intoxication of the senses – are the tawdry focus of her life. But unfaithfulness is merely one manifestation of her corrupt nature. She lies, she manipulates; her profligacy drags her husband and daughter into poverty. As for that daughter, Emma can barely tolerate Berthe’s presence. The novel is full of stifling dissatisfaction, cynicism, disillusionment, despair. The one aspect of Emma that makes her an object of pity is her suffering. She suffers, though not as a victim, and in her final imperious rejection of life there’s a heroic dimension. The characters around her are, in Flaubert’s eyes, merely humans – far from admirable. Pettiness, hypocrisy, selfishness, stupidity are on full display, and the greedy Lheureux attains the lofty status of evil. The one good character is Emma’s husband, Charles; on her deathbed she tells him “You are good,” but his goodness does not touch her; she’s making a cold statement of fact. Soon after her marriage she comes to loath him – a dull man, so mediocre. And such a dupe, ridiculously easy to deceive. Partly he’s a dupe because he deludes himself about Emma’s true nature. Emma lives with delusions too: her romantic and unattainable dreams of glamour and romance (which curdle into bitterness and resentment). At the end of the book Flaubert seems to revel in crushing Emma with hammer blow after hammer blow. Not only is she punished, the innocent suffer too. Charles’s cherished memories of Emma are shattered when he finds love letters from Rodolphe and Leon. Berthe – after her father’s death and in the wake of the financial ruin brought on by her mother – is sent to work in a cotton mill. There’s a perversity in Flaubert’s destructiveness. He wrote, famously, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi.” Could Emma embody all the pernicious and corrupt qualities he found in himself? And could his destruction of her be directed, masochistically, upon himself? At any rate, the novel he created is a work of art. It gives off no moral light, but we’re given a vision of life, and it smoulders. *

Fer-de-Lance - Rex Stout
The narrator of this mystery is Archie Goodwin, and he carries the reader along in his jaunty way. His boss, the redoubtable and massively eccentric Nero Wolfe, considers himself a genius, and I wouldn’t dispute that. Wolfe doesn’t waste words; what he says consistently cuts to the heart of a matter. He’s a private detective, so he uses his brilliant mind to solve crimes. The novel is no more than what it’s intended to be: a whodunit. This isn’t a genre that has much appeal for me; often I’m disappointed in the denouement. Here, too, I was pleasantly surprised. I thought I knew who the murderer was far before the end of the book. I was right, but the twist is how justice – Nero Wolfe’s form of justice, for he orchestrates it – is carried out. The Genius takes the role of God. I believe the punishment he doles out is fitting; but, as Archie points out, it also conveniently absolves the reclusive Wolfe from the odious task of leaving his apartment. “Indeed,” murmurs Wolfe.

Leah, New Hampshire - Thomas Williams
I read most of the stories in this collection many years ago, and three made a lasting impression: “Goose Pond,” “The Buck in Trotevale’s” and “Paranoia.” The last one is a stringing together of incidents that are menacing and violent; it’s strong stuff. There’s a lot of killing on these pages, in the form of hunting and fishing, but these are not outdoorsy tales. The killing of an animal is exactly that – a killing. Williams presents us with men who are drawn to kill, and though it fulfills a need they feel revulsion and remorse. They also have difficulty in understanding and dealing with women, who are often seen as dangerous and domineering. In “Voices” this issue is addressed directly. A man visits his dying mother in a nursing home; while there he makes phone calls to his wife. He realizes that the problems he has with both women stem from his relationship with his mother; his upbringing by this willful, selfish, outrageous woman has turned him into a man without courage. “Voices” succeeds in large part because of its understated approach. Williams, who is clearly the protagonist in these stories, too often succumbs to a pitfall of autobiographical fiction: he overdramatizes himself. Still, this collection is deserving of respect.

Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert (French)
Some readers object to the unattractiveness of the main character, but Frederic is simply presented with his flaws, ones common to us all. Flaubert also truthfully (and ruthlessly) examines a French society rife with hypocrisy. The prose is choppy, it skips about, it understates; I found this style pleasing. The only problems were that Flaubert was writing about actual historical events, and I couldn’t follow them; I became confused with the many characters; and Frederic’s love for Madame Arnoux was effusively romantic (though, in Frederic’s mind it was just that – a grande passion). But this is the story of Frederic’s education, and Flaubert erases all romanticism in the two lines of dialogue that close the book; they constitute one of the great (and startling) endings in literature – and one of the saddest. *

The Circus in the Attic - Robert Penn Warren
The main pleasure to be found in this collection is Warren’s prose. Using thread of a rough and durable material, he creates dense tapestries. However, with most of the stories the hardscrabble Tennessee setting was the strongest element, not the people or plot. The two standout exceptions were “Christmas Gift” and “Prime Leaf.” In the first the character of a boy slowly emerges, in an atmosphere so vividly evoked that the smell of tobacco is pungent. The latter is a fully-worked out tragedy, done simply and moving to its conclusion with inevitability.

Far from the City of Class - Bruce Jay Friedman
These stories are lively and readable, often funny, often coming from an odd, even supernatural perspective. The title story and the two about the mother (“The Trip” and “The Good Time”) were the best. Friedman wrote a novel with his mother as the centerpiece (A Mother’s Kisses) – she’s a great character, and obviously someone for whom he had a lot of complicated emotions. But I didn’t read all the stories because too many lacked luster. And the odd perspectives, when repeated, seemed gimmicky. Still, Friedman is a likable writer.

Perpetual Kin - Pat Kaufman
Very good, though it acted upon me as a depressant. Such miserable people! It makes you wonder about life. Still, the emotions I’m describing are a tribute to the authenticity of the characters. This was a Publish-on-Demand book, which is a shame; some mainstream publishing house should have recognized its virtues. It needs editing, mostly in small matters. But it flows, it engrosses, it has vitality – it succeeds in the major ways. The prose is clear and simple, interesting and flexible. It covers many lives with efficiency; it hits on important moments, distilling these lives in set pieces. The instincts of a real writer are at work, combined with intelligence and an honesty that can hurt. But at times that honesty faltered. This book is autobiographical, and the character who is Kaufman, as she grows into adulthood, is not observed with the mordant rigor that the others were subjected to.