Death with Interruptions – Jose Saramago (Portuguese)

In Blindness, which Saramago wrote when he was seventy-three, people begin, inexplicably, to go blind. In Death, written thirteen years later, people begin, inexplicitly, to cease dying. This vanquishing of man’s oldest fear may seem a blessing, but it’s not so in this case. Those on the brink of death remain on the brink; they may be comatose, they may be suffering, they may be horribly mangled from a car accident, and they simply live on in that state. In the beginning of the novel Saramago studies the repercussions on families burdened with the care of these living corpses, then he explores the effects on the economy, examining how insurance companies, nursing facilities and funeral homes respond. Next organized crime gets into the act, seizing a hold on the transfer of the should-be-dead across the border to a country where death still reigns. I found all this pretty interesting, and I maneuvered my way through Saramago’s convoluted prose (you have to read it to understand what I’m referring to). The tone he assumes – one of omniscient bemusement – is right. But then he switches gears by introducing death (she refuses to have her name capitalized, and she’s the standard issue skeleton of myth, complete with scythe). Though we’re now in her thoughts, no explanation is given for her ceasing to take her daily toll of lives, and when she resumes she begins to send letters (by magical transference) to all those who will die, informing that they have one week to live. Why she does this also goes without explanation. Then one letter keeps returning to her, and she’s perplexed. A man is defying death! She visits him (as an invisible presence); he’s a cellist with a dog. She revisits him in human form, they fall in love, and wind up in bed. The last sentence: “The following day, no one died.” I closed the book thinking, What a lot of foolishness. As a character, death is a dud, and for a novel in which logic had prevailed for the first third, nothing that occurs afterward is justified (including why the man was able to escape death). The love story was not just unconvincing, it was sappy. Probably age can account for these failings – at eighty-six Saramago (with a Nobel Prize in his resume) kept writing when his creative powers were on the wane. In Blindness he was at his peak; he was able to make the reader relate to characters who experience a harrowing disintegration of societal norms. Read that one, don’t bother with Death.

Stanley and the Women – Kingsley Amis

There are three major female characters in this novel and all, Stanley comes to conclude, are insane. There’s his former wife, who’s implacably oblivious to all but her own needs; there’s the wacky psychiatrist who treats his crazy son; there’s his present wife who, at the end, inflicts a knife wound on herself and blames it on the son. Just to get attention, you see. The son, who makes an appearance on the fourth page (in a section entitled “Onset”), is not really a character because he’s way off his rocker; he remains in that state throughout the book; in the last section, entitled “Prognosis,” the prognosis is not good. Martin Amis, Kingsley’s real life son, described Stanley as “a mean little novel in every sense, sour, spare, and viciously well-organized.” I agree with all but the “well-organized.” For almost the entire novel Stanley’s wife seems to be an ideal mate, so when her advanced degree of insanity is revealed it seemed imposed by the author to suit his agenda; some prior indications of instability should have been provided. The novel is both entertaining and distasteful; it’s as if Amis was trying to be offensive, and it’s his mental state I was left wondering about. Stanley, despite a major drinking problem (the book abounds in double scotches), seems sane, but his conclusion – that all women are mad – is irrational. And for an author to write a novel filled with misogyny, and then dedicate it to his first wife (“To Hilly”), seems to be a cruel jab. It’s interesting to note that Sir Kingsley Amis would end his messy life under her care, living in the house she shared with her third husband.

Transit – Anna Seghers (German)

This novel is set in Marseille just after Nazi forces had invaded France. A nameless narrator (an escapee from a concentration camp) is telling about his efforts to get on a ship leaving Europe. Many others are pursuing the same goal – Marseille offers the only port for exit. But you need a bewildering array of visas, all in proper order, and getting them is a bureaucratic nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions. I was unable to follow the complexities which Seghers describes in detail. Soon I stopped trying; I came to believe that the process was meant to be (as is true with Kafka) incomprehensible. This is a world in which desperate people want life to begin with a transit to another place, but almost all are fated to fail. There are many secondary characters, too many to keep track of, so I just let the scenes in which this or that person took part to exist for the moment. Besides the narrator, only two characters mattered – the woman he falls in love with and her doctor friend, and they stand out. As for that narrator, he’s a slippery fellow, with his many reversals in making decisions. He wants to get out, but without steadfast conviction; at one point, when success comes, he sabotages it. Often he slips into the apathy of doing nothing. Did I understand him? No. As to why I continued reading a book that presented so much that was baffling, I just took enjoyment when it cropped up, which was often enough. The writing flowed, and the atmosphere of a seedy Marseille was nicely evoked. But the novel’s main strength is the emotional mood Seghers creates: the sense of people waiting and wandering in a shadowy limbo.

Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940 –1977

Either Vladimir was super careful as to what he included in his correspondence or (more likely) his son Dmitri, one of the co-editors of this book, wasn’t about to include any letters that would sully his deceased father’s reputation (especially since his mother/Vladimir’s wife was still alive). These suppositions arise because of the one-dimensional portrait that emerges. We get the man as a writer, and little else. And, because he’s writing about his work to those who will (or had) published it, we get a lot of shoptalk. Nabokov emerges as firmly resistant to distortion of his work (he was, for example, very particular about cover illustrations). In his demands he’s often truculent and contentious. Though an artist, he cared a lot about the money end of the business. He got into prolonged feuds, notably with Maurice Girodias, whose Olympia Press first published Lolita. In his comments about some other writers, he could be brutally dismissive (Saul Bellow is a “miserable mediocrity,” no more than an “exhaust puff”). Not that Nabokov wasn’t, at times, generous and kind, but the negatives carry greater force. And, by citing them, I’m making the book seem more interesting than it is. We get far too much about V’s work on a mammoth Pushkin translation; also, his lepidopterist activities take up many pages (I skipped both these sections). He was pedantic, so some issues are nit-picked at length. Lastly, many letters were written by his wife; in his post-Lolita years he was inundated by matters that he delegated Vera to respond to. All in all, this book is a disappointing mishmash. But I was left with some personal observations. Without Lolita, Nabokov would have remained a professor all his life. He was initially wary of the harm the novel might do to his reputation (and his job); thus its first publication by a Paris-based press noted for dealing in salacious material. Of course, what he referred to as a “timebomb” turned out to be a gold mine, and changed his life. Nothing he wrote after it was near the level of that book; some, in my opinion, were flops, including two highly ambitious efforts. Early on Katherine White, editor at The New Yorker, gave him advice which he should have heeded more often than he did: “I think it’s fine to have your style a web, when your web is an ornament, or a beautiful housing, for the context of your text . . . but a web can also be a trap when it gets snarled or becomes too involved, and readers can die like flies in a writer’s style if it is unsuitable for its matter.” I died in the webs of Pale Fire and Ada. In this review I’ve been mainly critical of someone who has given me enormous pleasure; six of his novels are on my “most meaningful” list. So if I were to write a letter to Mr. Nabokov I’d give him my enduring admiration and thanks. And I wouldn’t ask for his autograph.

Hunting the Fairies - Compton Mackenzie

No, it’s not what you’re thinking. Yu-Yu, an American widow of Scottish descent (and inordinately proud of it), visits Scotland with her daughter Deirdre. She hopes to spot the Loch Ness Monster and uncover arcane Celtic lore, but she’s also in quest of fairies and ghosts (which, in her inflamed imagination, abound in every glen in the Highlands). The native Scots are a hard-headed, practical bunch; they’re proud of their history (an intricate and gory one), their traditions and legends, and the Gaelic language (despite the fact that it’s impenetrable even to them). As for fairy music and ghostly apparitions, they indulge their gullible guests. Hugh Cameron of Kilwhillie is stodgy, stolid and somewhat hapless, but he’s endearing. The book is best when dealing with him; it sags when it focuses on the feather-brained pursuits of Yu-Yu and Deirdre. However, when Hugh interacts with the two women the contrast in personalities produces funny results (a plot complication is that Kilwhillie, a fifty-year-old lifelong bachelor, gets the notion of marrying nineteen-year-old Deirdre). This is deadpan humor at its best, though it has Monty Pythonesque undertones.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ - Jose Saramago (Portuguese)

I was curious as to how an original thinker like Saramago would portray the life of Jesus. In the first chapter Joseph has sex with his sixteen-year-old wife. It’s not a union marked by affection but simply an urge fulfilled. The beginning of the book is very down-to-earth (though the supernatural plays a role, with the appearance of a mysterious angel). The novel is at its strongest in its depiction of how people lived at that time in that part of the world. There was much brutality (the Roman crucifixions, the Jewish practice of sacrificing animals). The graphic descriptions of these atrocities aren’t gratuitous; they’re a lament and an indictment. Saramago’s gospel goes counter to the sanctified version in many ways (his Jesus can be harsh and unforgiving; he has sexual relations with Mary Magdalene). Still, the supernatural element that appeared in the beginning grows in importance as Jesus reaches manhood. More angels arrive with cryptic messages; Jesus suddenly, inexplicably has the power to perform miracles; God appears to tell Jesus of the role he is to fulfill on earth (again, in cryptic terms). As this aspect became dominant Saramago stopped giving care to his craft. The book’s structure waffled, events were confusing and took on a hurried air, some scenes involving spiritual matters came across as ludicrous. I have a theory about what undermined this enterprise. Saramago was an avowed atheist, yet he wound up presenting supernatural happenings as if they actually occurred. He was writing counter to his beliefs, and it shows.

Wilderness Tips - Margaret Atwood

Most stories in this collection are nothing more than attitude and posturing. Atwood presents us with mannequins in bizarre costumes strutting down a runway, giving us knowing looks (or evil leers). A prime example is “Wilderness Tips.” Early on I was aware that I had read it before (no doubt in some “best” anthology). But halfway through – when I abandoned it – I had no inkling of where things were headed. What I had recalled at the outset were the weird or outrageous poses that Atwood has her amoral bunch of preposterous stick figures take. The story is tawdry, empty, and, despite its superficial smartness, stupid – there was nothing of substance to remember. The repugnant “Hairball” was just as bad. In three other stories (four I didn’t read) Atwood tries to do what Alice Munro does so well: start with an event that happened early in a character’s life, then follow its effects over many years, ending in the present. For this to work the ending must resonate, and that will occur only if the reader cares about the people; Atwood’s characters remained flat and underdeveloped. Only the eery “Death by Landscape” was a success; it’s shrouded in an inexplicable mystery, one that lingers. I got this collection because Moral Disorder interested me; but Nell was real. I took a look at the author’s biography. Disorder came out when Atwood was sixty-seven (fifteen years after Wilderness). I also discovered that Atwood’s life closely corresponds to Nell’s. That would account for the depth (and evasiveness) of the more recent work, in which Atwood was writing about herself, not stage props.

All the Names - Jose Saramago (Portuguese)
Despite the title, all but one of the characters are nameless. The protagonist is Senhor Jose – no last name. The woman he searches for is “the unknown woman.” There’s “the lady in the ground-floor apartment.” Saramago takes the nameless of the world as his subject. Senhor Jose doesn’t have any heroic qualities; but anybody, explored in depth, becomes exceptional. The plot – a sort of metaphysical mystery – is convoluted (and inconclusive in any concrete sense). Saramago has an innovative style, dense and intricate. At times I felt lost. But throughout the book the same warning is reiterated: when you venture into dark places you must take with you Ariadne’s shining thread. I did find myself emerging, with a feeling of relief, from areas of morass and returning to a world I could comprehend. Though what I comprehended often had a dreamlike aura (such as the graveyard scene, with the shepherd and his silent dog). This novel, written by a 75-year-old man, exists on a borderland between life and death, and death is the dark place from which no shining thread can lead one back.

The Woman Who Walked Into Doors - Roddy Doyle
This was painful to read. Which speaks to how effective Doyle is in letting Paula tell her life’s story. She emerges as a flesh and blood creation – somebody I cared about. It isn’t until page 162 that we’re given more than glimpses of what she went through. The last sixty pages are filled with graphic descriptions of the horrific physical and emotional assault inflicted on Paula – again and again and again – by her husband, Charlo. I was left with a number of disturbing questions, and one bleak conclusion. Why did Paula marry a man who was notorious for being violent and dangerous? When the beatings began (shortly after their marriage, during her first pregnancy), why didn’t she leave Charlo? Why did she endure the abuse for seventeen years? Why did she allow her children to grow up in a house filled with brutality, pain, fear? Why didn’t someone intervene and help her? Was everyone – family, friends, neighbors – blind? The evidence of what was being done to her was on her face. How could the doctors and nurses in the ER, to which Paula was constantly being taken, not have known what was happening? She wanted desperately for one of them to take her aside (away from the lurking, solicitous presence of Charlo) and ask, “How did you really get these injuries, Mrs. Spencer?” No one did. Why? Was Dublin in the 1980s in the Dark Ages? Maybe these questions have answers, ones I can’t comprehend (or accept). But, at any rate, here’s my bleak conclusion. Paula is telling the story after Charlo is dead; she’s carrying on with a difficult life. She can be upbeat, hopeful. But there’s no hope for her. She’s too damaged emotionally. She has a severe drinking problem, one she’s trying to control. She’ll lose the battle. This is a sad and upsetting novel. The burden of it won’t easily be lifted, so reader beware.

Roughing It - Mark Twain
It’s hard to describe what this is, because it’s so many things. Twain set out for the western territories in 1861, when he was in his twenties; he relates what he does and sees in the next seven years. The book is quite long and contains a wealth of material that’s of anthropological and historical interest. I believe in the truth of Twain’s observations and conclusions; he reveals the falsity of much that is commonly believed about the Wild West. For example, there are no quick-draw encounters on the main street between the Good Guy and the Bad Guy. The bad guy shoots his victims in the back. Yet the populace holds these cold-blooded thieves and murderers in high esteem. We have Twain the moralist looking at a lawless society and finding it deplorable. The anger he directs at various injustices is often delivered with humor. In his view of human nature Twain is a cynic along the lines of Voltaire. But he’s thoroughly American – his voice is the colorful, raw, earthy voice of our new country. As for that humor, never have I read anything by him where it was so brilliantly on display; it sometimes skewers but is often simple, innocent fun. It can be found in a unique use (or misuse) of a word, or in a long account in the vernacular (Jim Blaine’s story about his grandfather’s ram is a masterpiece). An irony is that the book is classified as an autobiography; that’s one of the things it is not. Throughout his adventures (or, more often, misadventures) Twain discloses almost no intimate feelings. I found him to be a thoroughly entertaining companion, but I would have liked to get to know him better.

The Boarding-House - William Trevor
Trevor has repeatedly, in his novels and short stories, taken lost souls for his subject. Lonely, odd, sometimes deranged people. Although all are to be pitied, many engage in acts of unkindness (a line from this book: “the solitary man is a bitter man and that bitterness begets cruelty”). Others are vicious, even dangerous. The stage on which their stories are enacted is a circumscribed one; in this novel Mr. Bird, the owner of a boarding house, selects people as tenants precisely because they’re misfits. I see Mr. Bird and William Trevor as one and the same. Both assemble their cast, put them under one roof, and let the eccentricities multiply. Mr Bird’s “Notes on Residents,” with their incisive observations, are part of the narrative; they could be the author’s notes. It’s interesting that Trevor presents Mr. Bird in an ambiguous light. His motives are suspect; there’s something shady in the way he manipulates his residents. I’ve always believed in Trevor’s compassion; I still do, but I wonder if it’s that simple. At any rate, the results are entertaining. The prose is clear and smooth, though it has a dated quality (why would an author, in 1965, constantly use the word “ejaculated” instead of “exclaimed”?). Trevor isn’t the only British novelist who has built excellent (as opposed to gimmicky) novels around weird characters acting weirdly. Other notables are Muriel Spark, Kingsley Amis, Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh. I recently reviewed J. G. Farrell’s Troubles, which is quite like The Boarding-House (Farrell’s eccentrics occupy a hotel). What is it with these Brits? And what is it with me, that I find such books engaging?

Blindness - Jose Saramago (Portuguese)
A visceral novel comes from the guts of an author. This type of book succeeds only if it’s done so artfully that the urgency of emotion is transferred to the reader. Saramago succeeds. I entered the nightmarish world he creates. I experienced the squalor of the asylum where the blind are imprisoned, I felt the elation of the women washing clothes (and themselves) in the downpour on the balcony. But the best example of my involvement is how deeply I wanted the doctor’s wife to commit a murder; when she does, and makes a good (and grisly) job of it, I felt satisfaction. I can’t think of a more heroic female figure in fiction than the doctor’s wife. Saramago delves deep into the sordid and disgusting; but he’s describing the total breakdown of society, and he shows us the results. His scenario made me wonder: How low can man descend, how many trappings of dignity can he lose, and still struggle to survive? In the last chapters the author attempts to find meaning in what he’s created, but he flounders; this is one of those works that defy a summing up. Finally Saramago lets matters trail off in an indeterminate way. Which is the right ending. We get questions, and that’s enough, if the questions are such good ones. *