Re-reads

The Blood of the Lamb – Peter De Vries

The last third of this novel is an emotional experience. Not just for me, but for you too, if you have a heart. Don Wanderhope portrays his daughter Carol and his relationship with her. At age ten she contracts leukemia and, after many remissions and relapses, dies two years later. A child of that age is a golden creature, and De Vries captures her and his responses to her illness. He does it with restraint, understatement. This kind of work would suffer from an outpouring of emotion from the author; the reader must generate those feelings from what is offered. Don does have episodes of anger, but they’re mostly directed at a god who is absent, who offers no help or solace. A child should not go through such an ordeal, should not be so early robbed of life. That she endures it with a simple grace is part of her nature. Is this novel hard to take? Well, yes, but it has value. It must be noted that De Vries wrote it shortly after his own daughter had died of leukemia. Just as the first two thirds cannot rightly be described as autobiographical, the Carol section does not faithfully correspond to De Vries’ life: unlike Don, he was married and had three other children. In Lamb those characters are stripped away, and Don faces things alone. I won’t review the novel as whole; it has its strengths and weaknesses. It’s that last third that matters, to a degree that few works achieve. 5
 
Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
This is a nostalgia piece, written by a man who would die, at age forty-one, six years after it came out; the cause of his death was rampant alcoholism. But in this book he was sixteen and seventeen, a healthy, physically fit and emotionally strong young man on the threshold of life. Despite the success he would later achieve with his plays, I believe that his three years in a Borstal Prison were the high point of his life. Brendan was arrested because he was found in London with a suitcase full of ingredients for explosives. (This was during the years of the violent conflict between England and Ireland over the issue of Irish independence; Brendan was a fervent member of the IRA.) BB isn’t a bitter book. Though there are instances of cruelty, deprivation, violence, those are largely overshadowed by the positive aspects: the comradery, the generosity, the rough kindness. Not just from one boy to another, but from those who run the prison. Some “screws” are brutes, but most are fair-minded, a few even caring souls. And among Brendan’s fellow inmates, there are boys who are dangerous. But, all in all, Borstal was not a bad place, which is to the credit of the British. I don’t believe there are many women who will read this book, but maybe they should; it’s instructive in showing the male psyche, particularly the need for love and the sensitivity to slights. In a way, Brendan was made for prison life: he was tough, stoic, diplomatic. A born leader. And smart. The Catholic schools in Dublin are to be congratulated: they produced a working class boy who was fluent in Latin. BB is an unrestrained outpouring of memories; it’s a spree of words, particularly dialogue. For me this often went on too long. But it’s Behan’s book, his experiences, and they do come alive. Last observation: has any small country produced as many top-notch writers as Ireland? 4
 
Castaway – James Gould Cozzens
A short book, under a hundred pages, with an interesting premise. A man (Mr. Lecky) is locked in a large department store. In the ensuing days nobody else enters the store. What occurred to bring this situation about is never divulged. Lecky is like Robinson Crusoe on his island, though he has at hand, on the many floors of the store, all that he needs to survive. We follow his efforts to get by. But soon a major problem emerges: someone else is in the store (this man is always referred to as “the idiot”). Lecky immediately considers him to be a threat to his life, and sets out to hunt him down and kill him – which, after much bumbling, he succeeds in doing. That accomplished, we get more pages about “getting by.” As I noted: an interesting premise – and Cozzens manages to make it a colossal bore. The problems are twofold. Lecky never takes on human dimensions that I could relate to. I never cared about the guy, never felt close to him. The only feeling he evoked is dislike (with some puzzlement thrown in). The puzzlement stems mainly because Cozzens seems to be making a point about Life, but I never had an inkling of what that was. The ending is supposed to be a revelation, but my only revelation about it – and the book as a whole – was, “What a mistake.” (delete)
 
Night Train – Martin Amis
Though this novel is not on my MMB list, it was sitting on the shelves with other books that are. And I recalled that I had liked it in some way. But this time around I had major problems. For starters, why does an upper-class British author, the son of the famous Kingsley, write a police procedural mystery set in the USA and told in the first person by a tough woman detective named Mike? The research going on behind the scenes to create a sense of authenticity is way too conspicuous. And, BTW, in case you’re wondering, Mike is not a lesbian; she lives with a guy, though she has no on-page interaction with him; he’s just a name. (So does he exist?) Peculiarities abound. But there’s the Biggie, the central element in the plot: a twenty-seven-year old woman, who has absolutely everything going for her, commits suicide (three bullets into her mouth). Why? – this novel is a whydunit. Mike, who had known Jennifer since she was a child, follows the trail of her life searching for the fly in the ointment. I waited for the reason for the suicide to emerge, increasingly impatient (and annoyed). But all leads led to dead ends. Instead Amis served up a heavy dose of verbiage of a deep and cryptic philosophical nature. There’s no “Aha!” moment because Amis had no solution to the premise he constructed. This book is woefully misconceived and leads to nothing but a cop out.

Re-reads

The Big Sky – A. B. Guthrie

In our country’s northwest, in the mid-1800s, there existed a strange breed called mountain men. Guthrie’s considerable achievement is to bring them and their world alive. This panoramic novel rings true, and the truth is often brutal. To survive these men had to be resourceful, courageous, hard. If they were to eat, they must kill. If they were to make the little money they needed (they mostly lived off the land, but certain necessities must be bought), they had to kill beaver and buffalo for the skins and hides. They faced the constant threat of Indians (who are depicted as far from noble), wild animals, the weather – it was a hostile world. Yet it’s the world the mountain men chose, with no personal gain in mind. Populated places were alien to them. That’s not to say they were solitary – they usually traveled in small groups, partly for protection. Boone Caudill, the novel’s main character, makes two friendships that last for many years. Jim Deakins is a philosopher with a humorist’s bent, old Dick Summers is a teller of yarns; both contribute rich, colorful dialogue (Boone uses words sparingly). The Big Sky is a tragedy on several levels. The Native American culture begins its disintegration, the great buffalo herds start to dwindle, the pure and wild land sees the arrival of settlers. But before all that comes to completion, Boone – who’s too hard, too unflinching – will alienate himself forever from the only world he can live in. We understand what makes this deeply flawed man what he becomes, though we shrink from his decisions and actions. When I first read The Big Sky as a teenager I thought it was a great novel. I still do. 5

End of the Road – John Barth

I found the ending of this novel to be very disturbing, and to elicit such a response Barth deserves credit. Mostly the novel resides in the realm of the bizarre. Jacob suffers from an inability to make decisions. A doctor spots him sitting in the same spot, motionless, in a train station on consecutive days, and Jacob enters his therapy (the nameless doctor’s speciality is nihilistic paralysis). Part of Jacob’s therapy leads him to a job at a State Teachers College where he meets another teacher, Joe Morgan, and his wife Rennie. This couple share a marriage based on a highly rigorous dedication to authenticity. All these elements are buried in convoluted intellectual verbiage. And they’re unconvincing. Indecisive Jacob constantly makes decisions, and the authenticity Joe imposes on Rennie (once with a punch on the jaw that knocks her out – simply because she continually apologizes) struck me as insane. At one point Rennie says “I think all our troubles comes from thinking too much and talking too much.” My response was: Exactly! So why did I read the book, why did I get emotionally involved? Partly because for long stretches it was intelligible and inventive, even stimulating. And partly because I grew to care about Rennie. She bears a good deal of responsibility for what befalls her, but if she never met Joe and Jacob she could have led a normal life. Road is early Barth – before he started writing 800 page postmodernistic blockbusters. It’s strong stuff. 4

S. S. San Pedro – James Gould Cozzens

This odd little novel takes place entirely aboard a ship sailing from New York to Argentina. Besides 172 passengers and a full crew, it’s loaded with cargo (cars, cash registers, machine guns, cotton shirts, children’s toys, a million dollars in gold, etc.). We begin in port, where a doctor who has been seeing the captain is about to leave. This doctor, so weird looking as to cause people to recoil, asks for a tour of the ship, and this task is assigned to a senior officer, Anthony Bradell. At one point the doctor makes an offhand remark: “But you do not float quite level, do you?” Bradell will remember these words near the end of the book, when the ship is going through the final agonizing stages of sinking. He will also remember that the doctor, when describing the captain’s condition, says, “People grow old, Mr. Bradell. They break down, they wear out.” This turns out to be true: the captain cannot make decisions, though continuing to demand that he be obeyed. What makes the book odd is the way it’s told. There’s a sense of detachment. With a single exception (and that’s a brief one) we see things only from the perspective of various members of the crew. And though they diligently struggle on, they recognize their inadequacy: the uncaring, devouring sea will have its way. This is early Cozzens – before he, like Barth, expanded his scope. Which was unfortunate. He did his best work when he was short and concise. 4

The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain

What a disappointment! I can forgive myself for once liking this crime novel, for I was probably in my twenties when I first read it, and its serving of sadomasochistic sex and tough guy action must have impressed me. Now it seems fake and ridiculous (Cora’s “Bite me! Bite me!” made me cringe in embarrassment). The occasional musings by Frank of a religious nature are corny (looking in Cora’s eyes “was like being in church”). Not even the plot, involving the murder of Cora’s “greasy” Greek husband, is convincing. Like the attempts to kill him, the book is an ill-conceived mess. Yet on publication in 1934 it was a huge hit with the public and the intelligentsia (well, some of them). It gained praise from big name critics (Edmund Wilson) and writers (Albert Camus). Dorothy Parker claimed it was a love story; how a cynic like her could have found any love on these pages is beyond me. The Modern Library included it in its list of the one hundred greatest novels of the 20th Century; there are many movie versions, and even an opera. Am I missing something? The terse dialogue and minimalistic approach may have been innovative at the time. Yet even with those virtues, the plot drags on when Cain tries to explain things at length. Maybe the harshness of this review stems from the fact that I’ve actually recommended this book to people. 1 (Delete)

The Golden Gate – Vikram Seth
To write a novel entirely in verse is a unique and formidable feat, but for me the feat aspect was too apparent. I was constantly aware of Seth trying to find words that would fit into a rhyme. His search leads him from obscurity (“catholicon” and “fissiparity”) to triteness (the beer is “Schlitz” to go with “it’s” and “pits”). At times the poetry imparts a nice airiness, but more often it has a pedantic quality; also, much of the dialogue seems awkward (“Hey, stop that – oh, it’s Phil – hey, hi . . .”/“Hi, John, I just thought I’d drop by.”) The book is set is San Francisco in the 1980s, and the yuppies who populate it are involved in complicated relationships. How complicated? Phil, divorced with a son, is bisexual; he has an affair with Ed; but religious Ed believes that to act on his physical urges is sinful; Phil winds up marrying Ed’s sister, Liz. I found all this a bit much. Besides arguments in favor of love and sexual freedom (and against war and small-mindedness), we get cats, a Café Trieste and a band called Liquid Sheep. Seth is an accomplished wordsmith, and this book obviously took a lot of effort to pull off. For those who find it to be a delight, I wouldn’t claim that their pleasure is unwarranted. It just wasn’t my cup of cappuccino.

The Indian Lawyer – James Welch
Welch is an American Indian who attended reservation schools; he also served on the Montana State Board of Pardons. Since this novel incorporates both the Indian experience and prison life, I expected something forceful and authentic. What I got was neither. Sylvester Yellow Calf is a successful lawyer who’s being urged to run for Congress. But this muted and conflicted man – a shadowy figure even in a novel about him – is a most unlikely politician, so that story line was unconvincing. As was another, introduced in the first chapter. Sylvester is a member of a board of pardons, and he votes against granting parole to Jack Harwood; Harwood then asks his wife to meet Sylvester and get to know everything she can about him; eventually he asks her to sleep with him (which she’s already done, after meeting Sylvester twice, once in his office, another on a dinner date). Patti Ann is no trampy moll; she’s portrayed as a wife who had stayed faithful to her husband during his seven years in prison. Since there’s no spark in the scenes between her and Sylvester, her tumbling into bed with him is just another example of the author’s failure to provide a basis for the actions and feelings of his characters. People plod along dispiritedly, doing things I didn’t believe in, and when Sylvester and Patti Ann start having love pangs, I had enough.

Ask Me Tomorrow – James Gould Cozzens
This is a watershed novel in which the author of Castaway and The Last Adam shows signs of becoming the author who would write Guard of Honor and By Love Possessed. I liked the first two books, I found the last two unreadable; the same can be said for the differing parts of this novel. The opening fifty pages are very good. Francis, while on a train trip in Italy, meets a young woman. He doesn’t find her attractive, he doesn’t even like her as a person. But he’s bored and has had too much to drink; so, after mostly combative chit chat, he makes her a proposition: “I think we should go to bed.” The woman is hurt; she knows she means nothing to him and, precisely because of that, he has treated her as something cheap. What makes this episode psychologically acute is that Francis recognizes every nuance of his bad behavior. I could believe in this person. I could also believe in his interactions with his employer, Mrs. Cunningham, and her son, whom he tutors. But I couldn’t relate to the Francis who’s in love with somebody named Lorna and who attends parties; though his conflicting emotions are dissected, it’s not done with the directness of the opening scene; all that emerges is a lot of people talking a lot. In these sections the influence of Henry James is apparent (even the prose gets denser and more convoluted). Cozzens would choose to follow in the path of the Master, which is a shame.

Pack My Bag – Henry Green
Green wrote this autobiography (at age thirty-three) because he believed he would die in World War II, and he wanted to take stock of his life. He didn’t write the book for me, or for anybody but himself. This can account for the fact that he reveals very little. I found the nine page Introduction by his son to be more enlightening than all of Pack My Bag (especially if you read between the lines). One barrier keeping the reader at a distance is the prose; it’s like an elaborate musical composition full of twists and turns. It’s the same prose used in Loving and Living, but in those novels the way the words were set down seemed to be an integral part of characters who were bursting with vitality. In this book vitality is the very quality that’s absent. When Green recounts his feelings and experiences, he does it a roundabout way that leeches it of immediacy. As for those he interacts with, not one single person – not mother, father, brothers, friends – attains a solid presence. Nor are there fully-developed scenes; just a myriad of truncated impressions. Much of the book concerns his stay at Eton, and I got a sense of life there, but only a vague one. It’s this vagueness that finally caused me to stop making the effort to follow the stylistic gyrations; I finished the last fifty pages in skimming mode. If you write a book as a private indulgence, and it turns out as constricted as this one, it should stay in your bag.

The Edge of Day - Laurie Lee
This is an autobiographical account of a boy growing up in a village in a west English countryside that was soon to become a victim of progress. Lee was a poet, which can translate into good or bad prose; his is the good kind. I liked the boy, I liked his mother, I liked his sisters – I just flat-out liked the book. It would be a mistake to call it life-affirming, though Lee does evoke sensual pleasures, including something so simple as the blundering movements of bees. But he also presents life’s dark side: callousness, cruelty, death. Lee doesn’t condemn these things; they’re part of the whole package that is man’s lot. It’s a philosophical outlook. It’s a wonderful book. *

Zeno’s Conscience - Italo Svevo (Italian)
This novel explores every thought of Zeno, ad infinitum, and it wore me down; I found myself constantly rereading sentences (due to wandering attention). A psychological novel, well-written, sometimes funny – it’s all those things, but it’s also self-indulgent and tedious.

Augustus Carp Esq. by Himself (Sir Henry Howard Bashford)
Unique, funny, grotesque. An attack on extreme religiosity. The author does well with the first person unreliable narrator, showing him to be what he really is in his own self-adoring words. One problem is the degree of grotesqueness – Carp and his father and friends seem almost unhuman; the author walks a thin line and is best when he stays on the human side. Another mistake is the long scene – by far the longest in the book – involving Mary Moonbeam’s revenge, in which Carp does things that are way out of character. Bashford is most deft with the small episode, and, thankfully, those episodes make up most of the novel.

Vladimir Nabokov - Jane Grayson
The Overlook Illustrated Lives are short biographies filled with photographs. This one covers the events in Nabokov’s life in a competent way, but I didn’t get a sense of what made the man tick or what his relationships were like – not even with his wife. Grayson tries to uncover something about the author’s sexual preferences (little girls?), but she comes up with nothing more than tabloid-variety gossip. This is a good idea for a series, but someone else should have done Nabokov. Someone who, at the very least, could write well.

Children and Others - James Gould Cozzens
These stories were written in the 1930s, so they’re early in Cozzen’s career. This was when he did his best work (Castaway, The Last Adam). He groups the stories into sections – Child’s Play, Away at School, etc. But there’s a common factor throughout – he focuses on the moment when his character learns something significant about life. The prose is beautifully constructed, with care and precision; though at times complex, it’s always reader-friendly. Cozzens was usually a cold writer, so I was surprised at how deep he went emotionally. An outstanding collection, ranking with the best. *