Cross Creek - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The town of Cross Creek is located in north central Florida, deep in “scrub country.” In 1928 Rawlings moved into a rundown farmhouse and set about trying to make the surrounding orange grove a paying proposition. Something in this world – one far from the comforts of civilization she had known – fulfilled her; it was loving care that compelled her to dedicate so much effort in describing it. What’s remarkable is the completeness of her description; it encompasses the land, plants, animals, insects, people. She establishes a personal connection to her subjects; if it’s snakes, we get to know how Rawlings felt in her encounters with them; if it’s okra, she gives her recipe for preparing it; if a freeze is threatening the orange crop, we get an account of how they kept fat pine fires burning throughout the night. As for the people she lived among, she applies her considerable novelistic skills to bring them to life; both blacks and whites are involved in incidents, acts, conversation. There’s no sugar-coating applied to them, and the author’s attitude toward blacks may not meet the current requirements for correctness. But she feels respect to all who deserve it. In most of the book Rawlings doesn’t try to dispense wisdom, but some of her observations stand out. She believed that no people can be relegated to the status of inconsequential; in fact, the opposite is true: “The rich, the well-favored, the well-situated are surrounded by a confusing protective mass of extraneous and irrelevant matter that tends to hide the substance beneath. The poor, the unfortunate, have been put through the sieve and stand nakedly for what they are.” The personality of Rawlings emerges: she was a tough, down-to-earth lady; she could be compassionate, she could be hard. She and I share little in common, and the place she captures with such authenticity is not one that I wanted to live in – it’s too primitive for me. But for Rawlings it was the place on earth where she felt she belonged, and she immersed herself in that world – and wrote about it in this memorable book. *

Under Western Eyes - Joseph Conrad

This novel – which hinges on a political assassination in Czarist Russia – was completed about six years before the Bolshevik Revolution, so it had relevance at the time of its publication. Conrad concerns himself primarily with the role played by Razumov, a young student. One of the assassins – a fellow student – seeks refuge in Razumov’s room. Razumov makes an effort to help him escape, but when that attempt fails he turns Haldin over to the police. These early events were engaging, but as the novel progresses Conrad’s ponderous probing of Razumov’s tortured psyche – which goes on at length and repetitively – suffocate his character under the weight of verbiage. He didn’t give the man room to breathe. It’s interesting that two characters for whom the author has contempt – and who are treated superficially, as stereotypes – have a vitality that Razumov lacks. Conrad’s passion and seriousness of purpose are virtues, but in his hands they often became a liability. He didn’t realize a simple fact: reading a novel shouldn’t become burdensome.

The Letters of Jean Rhys

In these letters there was no reluctance by Jean Rhys to express emotions, and most of what is on display for 300 pages is her unhappiness. Or, to put it more forcefully, her misery. Though misery makes for interesting reading, repetition of woes tends to dilute their force and can get tiresome (something Rhys was aware of; but she couldn’t stop herself). Another dominant element in these letters is Rhys’ struggle to get Wide Sargossa Sea into proper shape. The struggle was a long and grueling one; in a letter from 1945 she states that she has a novel “half-finished.” In her last letter, written twenty-one years later, she finally feels that Sea is complete. Seldom is the effort by a novelist to produce something of value been more vividly chronicled. My main problem with this book concerns what’s been omitted. It opens with a letter Rhys wrote in 1931, when she was forty-one; it ends with one written in 1966, just seven months before Sea was published. One of the two people who did the selecting and editing (and who was a recipient of many letters) was Francis Wyndham. In her Introduction she writes that she couldn’t get her hands on letters Jean wrote before 1931. I find this hard to believe – at that time Rhys was being published and was a figure on the literary scene in Paris; when the letters in this book begin she had sunk into obscurity. Worse – much worse – there are no letters after the immediate success of Sea. Wyndham states that these letters aren’t of much interest. This I flat out don’t believe. How could a woman so expressive of her feelings suddenly become a reticent bore? She surely continued writing to her daughter and to Wyndham – how did those relationships go? Was she able to able to financially help her daughter – something she repeatedly regretted not being able to do? Most of all, how did acclaim, awards, sales, etc. affect her? Did she find some degree of happiness? And was she able, finally, to find a pleasant place to live? (A warm one – the last words she writes in the last letter of this book are “It’s so cold.”) Since matters that I wanted to know about are omitted, I consider this collection to be a disappointment. Last bit of advice: If you haven’t read Sea – and you should – do it before you read these letters. Rhys wasn’t one of those writers who believe that you “shouldn’t talk about it.” She talks about it at length.

 

Novels, Tales, Journeys - Alexander Pushkin (Russian)

I read a few short pieces in this collection of Pushkin’s occasional “descent into prose” (his words). I found them pleasing, so I turned to the novels. The Queen of Spades revolves around an unscrupulous character’s efforts to get a magical formula that would enable him to identify three cards in a row – and thus garner a fortune. The imperious old countess who holds the secret (and appears near the end as a ghost) was the only character that captured my interest. The story struck me as a dalliance on the part of Pushkin – a feeling that was reinforced by the slapdash Conclusion that wraps things up. But I liked the simple, clear, direct prose – though Pushkin has an imposing reputation, he’s very easy to read. So I moved on to The Captain’s Daughter. More to my taste, as there were no supernatural happenings. It’s set in a remote region of Russia beset by rebel uprisings, and involves military matters; there’s a love story, but it’s weak because the girl isn’t fully developed. Dubrovsky is the longest and the least known of the three, but I found it to be the most enjoyable. Revenge for injustice drives the plot, and the love aspect is more convincing because the woman is given room to grow. What stuck me about the last two novels is that they read like boys’ adventure yarns. I think that if Pushkin had lived longer – he was killed in a duel at age thirty-seven – he would have become more serious about his prose and we may have gotten a major work.

After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie – Jean Rhys
The meager plot has Rhys’ waif-like heroine wandering around Paris and London, trying to scrounge money from former or new lovers. She has no inner resources except a waning survival instinct; she fears the day (not too far off) when age will erode her looks. She’s very cynical about life and bitter about people (I wonder how many times a character is described as “cold-eyed”). Again and again we get observations like this: “People are such beasts, such mean beasts. They’ll let you die for want of a decent word, and then they’ll lick the feet of anybody they can get anything out of.” I must be one of the mean beasts, because I didn’t have much sympathy for Julia. I wondered why men got involved with such a mentally off-balance and rage-filled individual, and why they continued to fork over money (though usually with the caveat that no more will be forthcoming). I suspect that early on Rhys was given bad advice about her writing. In Quartet and Mackenzie (her first and second novels) her prose is clipped to the barren bones, but the minimalism comes across as an affectation. And when Rhys concentrates on her own unhappiness the only mood she conveys is a stifling glumness; that mood remains intact even when she enters the minds of other characters. Her third novel, Voyage in the Dark, was better because it was more expansive, with different locales and a supporting cast that added color and verve. Thirty years later Wide Sargasso Sea came out, and in that work she got it all right. Last word on Mackenzie: it seems pretentious to divide a less than two hundred page book into three parts (Part III is thirteen pages long). That’s another thing Rhys should have been warned about: pretentiousness.

Honey in the Horn – H. L. Davis
After finishing a section of this book I often thought “How did this guy get so good?” By “section” I mean a stretch of one to three pages in which Davis describes a place or person or event. The place is Oregon in the early 1900s, the people are settlers looking for ways to get by, and the events concern the various ways that most fail to reach that goal. It’s a raw and often treacherous country, full of characters of all stripes (most of them nefarious in some way), and it’s rendered with an earthy and unsentimental authenticity. I have great respect for Twain’s Roughing It, and I think Davis was every bit as good a writer of prose as Twain (and as funny). But unlike Twain’s account of his travels, Davis wrote a novel, and plotting and long-term character development weren’t in his arsenal of strengths. We follow the misadventures of a young man named Clay, but he never attains much substance, and his relationship with Luce is so vague that I couldn’t understand how they felt about one another. A weakness that would be fatal to another book doesn’t detract a whole lot from Honey because Clay’s wanderings are a means by which Davis moves to those vigorous and pungent anecdotes he excelled at. He writes about a garrulous people, most of whom are isolated. “Loneliness is supposed to make people reserved and taciturn, but it didn’t work that way with them . . . What solitude had lost them was the habit, not of talking, but of listening.” Take Mrs. Yarbrow, “who raised bees in the fireweed slashings on Upper Thief Creek. She was so enslaved by the habit of unbosoming herself before strangers that she deliberately worked into a lawsuit regularly every year so she could explain to the jury, from the witness stand, what a hard life she led, and how worthless her last four husbands had been, and how much trouble her children had given her to raise, and how her roof leaked and her cow had run off with a stray bull and her bees swarmed when they weren’t supposed to and stung her when she went after them, and how her female disorders (which she described in minute detail) gave her hell all the time and no doctor in the country had been able to do them a lick of good.” When it came out in 1935 the novel was appreciated: it was reviewed by the likes of Mencken and it won the Pulitzer Prize. As for my question regarding how Davis got so good, Honey was his first novel, written when he was forty-two, so he had a store of life experiences and the ability (unlike Mrs. Yarbro) to listen. He also was diligent about staying away from any publishing or literary establishment. He declined to go to New York to pick up the Pulitzer because he didn’t want to be a “subject for exhibit.” Which is exactly what one of his cantankerous and idiosyncratic characters might say.

The Inspector General – Nikolai Gogol (Russian)
After I finished this play (in a translation by Constance Garnett) I read the chapter in Vladimir Nabokov’s biography of Gogol devoted to The Government Inspector. He considers it to be one of Gogol’s three masterpieces (the others being Dead Souls and “The Overcoat”). He goes on and on about how it was misunderstood; he even rejects Gogol’s explanation of his intent. But if you rail about misinterpretations, isn’t it necessary to say what it’s really about? Nabokov buries his point in obscure verbosity (something about “the mimetic capacities of the physical phenomena produced by almost intangible particles of recreated life”). I have a more down-to-earth opinion (for Gogol was a down-to-earth writer). When he wrote Inspector Gogol wasn’t the isolated oddball he may have become later in his life; he was a worldly and very observant man. He sets up a mistake in identity, and then lets the characters (every one of them) display a wide array of commonplace vices and weaknesses. The play is about people acting badly, and Gogol makes it a lively, high-spirited romp. Along the way he ridicules the human tendency to grovel before power. If someone is considered to be of importance he’s treated as (and is considered to be) a noble creature; those who are unimportant are treated like dirt. That’s how the world works, both in Russia in 1836 and here, today. The most revealing moment comes at the end, after it’s learned that the inspector was an imposter. A letter from him is intercepted and is read aloud; in it he mocks each of the assembled townsfolk. The Mayor goes into a frenzy: “It’s not enough to be made a laughingstock – there will come some scribbler, some inkslinger, and will put you in a comedy. That’s what’s mortifying! He won’t spare your rank and your calling, and everyone will laugh and clap.” Then he turns on the audience: “What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourselves.” *

Voyage in the Dark - Jean Rhys
In my reviews of Quartet and Sleep It Off, Lady I concluded that Rhys (an autobiographical writer) wasn’t able to capture who she was as a young woman. In this novel she succeeds – and I understand why the task was daunting. When the book opens Anna has left her childhood home in the West Indies and is working as a chorus girl in England. The job is far from glamorous. Anna can’t adapt to the people or climate (both seem cold and alien). She has an affair with a wealthy married man; she’s in love with him, but he abruptly breaks off their relationship. Other men follow, she drinks too much; things go steadily downhill. A sordid story, but the Anna that emerges arouses sympathy; she’s trapped in an emotionally predatory world. To a large degree her problems have their roots in her early years in the West Indies; she arrived in England damaged, full of diffuse fears. She’s depressed, directionless, needy; her most important need is for someone to love and care for her. Yet the men she comes into contact are only willing to give her money (which she takes without compunction). The other people in her life – mainly chorus girls and landladies – are a mixed lot of distinct and colorful individuals. The book isn’t dreary or static, even though Anna is often in a deep funk. I found the use of stream of consciousness to be less successful than the direct narrative and dialogue. Maybe these impressionistic forays are an attempt to show Anna groping her way in the dark. As for her reaching a place of light – I didn’t see much hope for her.

The Book of My Life - Jerome Cardan (Latin)
Written in the late sixteenth century, this book attracted me because it was described as one of the first psychological autobiographies. Yet Cardan is not insightful, nor is he able to tell about the events in his life in an interesting or coherent way. He isn’t likeable or believable; he comes across as a deluded and boring old man. I began to skip parts, then I skimmed the book. Cardan was a noted mathematician and doctor, proud of his powers of logic, but – even for the times – he seemed overly influenced by the supernatural; his life story is full of superstitions, premonitions, guardian angels, et cetera, et cetera.

Thieves Like Us - Edward Anderson
Crime and love in conflict. Though in many ways this novel belongs in the noir genre, it’s deceptively complex. It’s also moving. I wanted Bowie to do the right thing. He loves Keechie and she loves him – Anderson succeeds in making that relationship, which we follow from their first meeting, convincing. Yet Bowie is a thief at heart; he’s unable to let go of that life. I was disappointed with the ending, in which he makes bad choices – stupid, fatal ones. Initially I thought that Anderson blew it (actually, he did, to a degree – the events are improbable). But on reflection I realized that I was mainly disappointed in Bowie. He’s the one who blew any chances for peace and happiness, and he dragged Keechie down with him.

Successful Love - Delmore Schwartz
Unsuccessful stories. Schwartz starts out with a bizarre premise, then tries to say something meaningful. But the bizarre was gimmicky, the meaning wasn’t there. After reading four stories, I called it quits.

Two for the Road - Wright Morris
Wright Morris was a prose stylist. In his books that’s what matters. It’s an interesting prose, but twisty and demanding. If your mind wanders you miss the connections that move the plot along. It’s like working a difficult but accessible crossword puzzle, and there’s pleasure in seeing the blanks fill in, the crossing words combine. But it can also get tiresome. In the final analysis, are the plot and characters worth the labor of grappling with the prose? Often not. Morris seems to write from compulsion, addicted to his puzzle. I think creating the pages of words gave him much pleasure, and he wrote when there was no purpose to do so. Characters come across as fleshed-out props, plots are spindly. The first of the novellas (Man and Boy) adds up to less than the second (In Orbit).

Futility - William Gerhardie (Russian)
Like in a Chekhov play, nothing much happens in this novel, but amusingly. Also, as with Chekhov, behind the charm is melancholy. Life is there, sparkling and vital, but the main character can only sense it, just outside his grasp, with an ache of loss. The problem with an excellent book like this is that it’s faithful to its title. Gerhardie tries to put activity, color, movement into the plot, but sometimes the effort flags, and we’re in a deep limbo where sadness is pervasive.

Liars in Love - Richard Yates
I couldn’t read these stories in the morning because the characters’ unhappiness was too much to start the day with. This is, in a way, a tribute to Yates. He presses on the spot where hollowness and insecurity and illusions and loneliness are. He does this repeatedly, in various guises; in a Yates’ story we know what the outcome of a relationship will be. Still . . . These stories literally ache. We poor humans! The collection has two masterpieces, “Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired” and “Regards at Home.” They’re clearly autobiographical, as are, I suspect, all the stories (which are good to very good). A lacerating honesty like his is rare and therefore valuable. *

Sleep It Off, Lady - Jean Rhys
This collection follows Rhys’ life, and the early, childhood stories, when the girl hungers for sensual experience, are strong. The closing stories, with Rhys old and alone, are very powerful – frighteningly so. However, the middle stories are flat, evasive, lacking personality (as was the case with Quartet). Rhys cannot put down on paper who she was as a young woman. Throughout all the stages of her life there’s a fear of age, of losing the power to attract. When she faces it, it is terrible. This aspect gives the collection a cumulative power. The last three stories are unflinching – “Who Knows What’s Up in the Attic,” “Sleep It Off, Lady” and a two page story called “I Used to Live Here Once,” in which Rhys transforms herself, in the last sentence, into a ghost.

And Quiet Flows the Don - Mikhail Sholokov (Russian)
This book could have been great. For the first third, when it concentrated on the lives of the Cossacks, the characterizations had intensity, were exotic and fascinating. Shokolov intertwined nature with human life, creating an epic quality. The love affair between Gregor and Aksinia was compelling, primal. Gregor was presented as a person who, at times, aroused condemnation; yet he’s so human, and his virtues come unheralded to the reader’s senses, that we enter into an understanding. Then Shokolov (and I believe this was due to the Communist regime he published under, another black mark of Stalin’s legacy) moved into war, revolution, etc. The book turned into a polemic, a history lesson, with a cast of new, wooden characters. I read on – mainly because I hoped for a return, at the end, to the people and the world I had cared so much about. It never happened.

Jerusalem the Golden - Margaret Drabble
Clara isn’t engaged in a religious pursuit; she wants to be part of the golden world of London sophisticates. She’s calculating and manipulative in achieving her goal, but when you understand someone – and Drabble succeeds in making Clara and her motivations comprehensible – you’re inclined to be forgiving. An interesting work, invigorating in its intelligence, but I finished it with the unsatisfying feeling that Clara’s story was meant to be continued.

Quartet - Jean Rhys
Books can’t be monochromatic; this one is unrelievedly gray. The main character had a fragile appeal, but her constant state of misery (about which she does nothing) and her incomprehensible love for Heidler caused me to lose interest in her plight (if a character loves someone, the author must give the reader a reason for it). In this book Rhys strikes arty poses intended to convey the futility of it all.

The Man Who Was Thursday - G. K. Chesterton
I felt hoodwinked by a lot of nice stage effects into reading a religious tract that disguised itself as a boy’s adventure story. I resent the time I spent on it.