Re-reads

White Noise – Don DeLillo

I can understand how my younger self (how much younger?) was impressed by this novel’s inventiveness and energy and originality. All of those virtues are indeed present. But on this reading I didn’t buy into much of what DeLillo doles out. He tackles Big Issues, but he fails to succeed in saying anything that meant much to me. As for the major issue of Death – fear of it – I was never convinced that the characters were feeling dread. Instead of imparting that emotion, what we get are long stretches of esoteric verbiage. Though seemingly on a high intellectual plane, I found it to be a lot of white noise. And – if DeLillo is so intelligent – how do we account for the book’s silly shootout ending? His considerable talent is used best in the down-to-earth section concerning the evacuation (due to a toxic cloud) of the Gladney family to a Boy Scout camp. And there’s humor in the book, some good portrayals (I especially liked eleven-year-old Denise), plenty of linguistic vitality. But I think my younger self believed that DeLillo was insightful, even profound. Many critics felt this way, as did those on the committee that gives out the National Book Award. DeLillo was also a believer: he would continue on an elevated track rather than a down-to-earth one. I’m giving the book a 3 for its good points, but I’m tempted to drop it to a 2 for the bad ones.

Murder for Profit – Willam Bolitho

I only read the first section – about the murders committed by William Burke – and couldn’t go on (there are five other mass murderers studied). Not that it wasn’t done well – the problem is the reverse: It was done too well. When younger, I must have had a stronger stomach for an examination of brutality. In Edinburgh, Scotland in the mid-1800s there was a need for corpses for scientific study. Body snatchers dug up fresh graves and sold the remains to doctors. Burke hit on an idea: why bother with the digging? Why not just lure people off the teeming streets, kill them and sell the bodies? They had a willing (and generous) buyer in the esteemed Dr. Knox. Burke didn’t act on his own: he had an accomplice in Hare, and the wives of both men were participants. Bolitho examines the psychology of this grisly bunch (particularly Burke), and the manner in which matters progressed from that initial idea to a thriving business (we’ll never know how many victims there were). The setting in of boldness in their actions ultimately led to their downfall. But only Burke faced the gallows. Scottish law allowed Hare and the women to go free. As for Knox – who knew he was receiving the victims of murder – he was too high up socially to be punished (though in the mind of the public he was disgraced, and he lost everything). There’s no explicit gore in this account, but the horror of the acts come across with a disturbing power. The writing is elegant, though often intricately constructed. I found myself rereading a sentence over and over, trying to decipher the meaning. Maybe, when I was younger (and sharper), I didn’t face this difficulty. In the first paragraph of the Burke section Bolitho points out that mass murder has always been a part of history, carried out by leaders as they accumulated wealth and power, built empires. I’m giving this book a 4 because the little I read got to me in a visceral way.

The Vendor of Sweets – R. K. Narayan

Narayan was a storyteller, no small virtue in a novelist. He could engage a reader, carry him along with ease. His prose is smooth – no bumps. But, more importantly, the characters and situation he creates are interesting. Nothing bizarre about either; rather, they’re quite relatable (even though the setting is India, and contains elements foreign to western sensibilities). A widowed man, Jagan, desires peace and contentment, but those goals are undermined by the behavior of his errant son. He’s glad when the boy heads off to America. But Mali returns with a wife (actually it turns out that they aren’t married ) and an idea of making a fortune off a novel-writing machine. He pressures his father to invest a large sum of money in this plan. That the son shows no love or even respect for his father – he sees him merely as a source of funds – stuck me as strange. Was Jagan lacking in some way in how he brought the boy up? We’ll never know the roots of what went wrong in the relationship, but I didn’t find that to be a problem. The indeterminate ending, with Jagan making a drastic life choice that may (or may not) give him the serenity he desires, was also acceptable to me – even right. After all, loose ends prevail in life, and there’s no need to neatly tie them up. At least, that’s the terms that Narayan is able to establish. This novel rates a solid 4.

A Mother in History – Jean Stafford

This is an account of a three day interview Stafford conducted with the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald. After sections appeared in McCall’s magazine, it came out in book form two years after the assassination of President Kennedy. Maybe I read it then. Why did I consider the book worthy? This time around I see absolutely no value in it. It’s a lazy effort, devoid of substance or insight, written merely for an easy buck. Since only one interview was tape recorded, and Stafford recreates (at length) what Mrs. Oswald says, how much is a true transcription of her words? What we get in Stafford’s portrayal is a woman spouting disjointed conspiracy theories. An addled, embattled woman who feels that she – her perceptions regarding her son and what occurred – are being ignored. But let me pose a few questions: Who among you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, acting on his own, with no backing? That Oswald’s claim, after his arrest, that he wouldn’t be a “patsy,” had no basis? That Jack Ruby killed him solely because he was distraught over the death of Kennedy? That the conclusions in the Warren Commission Report are fully valid? Or do you believe that the truth of what happened on that November day in Dallas will never be revealed? Mrs. Oswald had a tough, hardscrabble life. The events involving her son must have been emotionally crushing. My resentment toward Stafford has to do with her attitude toward the woman – who amused and bored her. Her asides are full of sarcasm, ridicule, disdain. Whatever Mrs, Oswald’s faults may be, Stafford’s fault lies in her lack of sympathy, pity, understanding. This is not a fair account of a mother in history. It’s a cruel hatchet job, and thus worthless. (Delete)

Chromos - Felipe Alfau
In the midst of the rampant idiosyncracy of Chromos a traditional novel exists in the form of one that the narrator’s friend, Garcia, is writing. Garcia burdens the narrator (Alfau, obviously) by either reading from the manuscript or giving Alfau sections to read; thus we get, in portions, the story of the rise and fall of the Sandoval family. We have a strange – and funny – phenomena here: Alfau is the one who’s writing Garcia’s novel, and it’s he who considers it to be no more than a tawdry melodrama. In Garcia Alfau may be giving us a portrait of the artist as a dedicated, indefatigable hack. The setting for Chromos is New York City, but the characters are Spanish (“Americaniards”). All are colorful, though Don Pedro (the Moor, Don Pedro el Cruel) is fantastical, an intellectual wind-up toy who seldom wears down, spouting far-out ideas and giving a running commentary on the people and events around him. I was simpatico with what the author was doing until one hundred pages from the end, when the scene switches to a party at El Telescopio (a bar the Americaniards frequent). First Don Pedro launches into an incomprehensible philosophical/scientific discourse, then the narrator gives a learned treatise on music and dance; both seemed interminable. Up to this point Alfau had ignored all the novelistic rules except one: entertain the reader. When he broke that rule – when he let his arcane indulgences run unchecked – my attitude changed. The conclusion of Garcia’s novel, in which the Sandoval family descends to a most lurid end, no longer had its naive appeal. Even the colorfulness of the Americaniards took on artificial hues, as if too much makeup had been applied to create them. Feeling that I did not belong and would not be missed, I made a quiet exit from El Telescopio.

The Catherine Wheel - Jean Stafford
The action takes place at Congreve House, a summer estate in Maine. In Chapter One we’re privy to the thoughts of twelve-year-old Andrew as he broods about his friend Victor, who is ignoring him while he tends to his ailing brother. Andrew wants the brother either to get well and go back to sea or, better still, to die – quickly and horribly. In Chapter Two we switch to the mind of serene Aunt Katherine and find that emotionally she’s like a Catherine wheel (a spinning firework that flings out flares in every direction). Her crisis involves a man she was obsessed with in her youth; he married another, but now he wants her to run off with him to the island of Mangareva (he picked it at random from the globe). Next we get a look at the villagers, who range from highly peculiar to grotesque. At this point I began to wonder if there was an insane asylum nearby with lax security. But, no, Stafford was oblivious to the maniacal aspects of her scenario; only complete earnestness could produce prose like this: “The inseparable mind sang in its bone-cell and she was wheeled outward swiftly and the purblind mind nosed like a mole through splendid mansions of ice-white bone and luminous blood, singing with the music of the spheres.” After reading this sentence I felt quite satiated and called it quits. Though I couldn’t resist a peek at the last few pages to see if Katherine dies when set afire by an aberrant Catherine wheel. She is.

A Tour of the Prairies - Washington Irving
In his Introduction Irving states that he has written a “simple narrative of everyday occurrences” in which he has “nothing wonderful or adventurous to offer.” His down-to-earth approach is one of the virtues of this Tour. He embarks onto the prairies as a member of a large contingent, mostly made up of military rangers. In 1832 Oklahoma was the Wild West, where the buffalo roamed and Pawnees were a dangerous foe. Irving gives a vivid picture of what this country was like before the encroachment of civilization. We get a fresh perspective on the Indians and learn about the pleasures and difficulties of living off the land. I was entertained and informed, but eventually my attitude became one of disapproval. Man must kill for food, certainly, but these men have a blood lust for deer, elk and buffalo (in that order of preference). When a wild horse is sighted it’s pursued with the objective of capturing it, methodically breaking its spirit and reducing it to a pack animal. Man is a scourge upon the land; when Irving departs a camp he looks back and sees “Trees felled and partly hewn in pieces, and scattered in huge fragments . . . smouldering fires, with great morsels of venison and buffalo meat, standing in wooden spits before them, hacked and slashed by the knives of hungry hunters . . . around were strewed the hides, the horns, the antlers and the bones of buffalo and deer, with uncooked joints, and unplucked turkeys, left behind with reckless improvidence and wastefulness . . .” The author is sometimes caught up in the spirit of the hunt, but more often he wishes for the magnificent buffalo and the wild horse to escape, so they may continue their lives on the unbounded freedom of the prairie.

School for Love - Olivia Manning
Wonderful and unique. A little orphan boy, a cat, a spinster he goes to live with in Jerusalem. And other assorted personages, all drawn extremely well. But the triumph is Miss Bohun, who could have been merely the standard villain, but she’s more. She’s more because Olivia Manning cared enough about all her characters to draw them in depth, and that depth has a lot of heart. When done with this book I felt that I was looking ahead at the life journey the boy is about to take. What did he learn, during the time I spent with him? Good or ill? There’s an unsettling ambiguity. *

Boston Adventure - Jean Stafford
I read to the halfway mark of this book (just to get credit for it). I often thought, during those two hundred pages, that the story would break out and become satisfying; I felt it could do so. But enough is enough – it just wasn’t happening. The problems: everything was handled in a turgid way, from scenes to feelings; repetition abounded, not helped by a convoluted Henry James-like prose; the main character’s emotions had a melodramatic edge. Much later Stafford wrote a non-fiction book about Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother called A Mother in History. It’s done with perfect simplicity.

The Heat of the Day - Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen sure knows how to write. Meticulous care is given to scene, mood, texture. But, problem is, all this care translates to laborious going for the reader. Finally I looked at a paragraph and knew I’d have to plow through another inflated demonstration of Miss Bowen’s precious sensibilities. And I wasn’t up to it. I asked myself a question: Do you care about any of her characters? These wooden, lifeless, anemic props? In The Death of the Heart Bowen was also the meticulous craftsman, but that book was infused with the animating spirit of real people.

The Prison - Georges Simenon (French)
I read an interview in which Simenon said that when he sat down to write a novel he had no idea where the plot would go or how it would turn out. This one wound up nowhere. It had an interesting premise, but he did nothing with it. The main character, who’s searching for the answer to why his wife killed her sister, walks around, drinks a lot, agonizes a lot. We wait to find out the Why, but what we learn is a total copout. On the final page Simenon has the character kill himself by crashing his car into a tree. (Sorry for the spoiler, but it really doesn’t matter.)