Re-reads

The Professional – W. C. Heinz

This novel follows a boxer’s preparation for a title bout. One of its unique aspects is its accurate depiction of the world of boxing. (You can throw out all those fight movies you’ve seen – they’re totally bogus and ridiculous.) The novel is primarily about three people: Eddie Brown, the boxer; Frank Hughes, a sports writer who’s doing a magazine story on Eddie; and Doc Carroll, Eddie’s trainer and manager. We’re never in Eddie’s mind – we only get to know him by his words and actions – but Frank is the first person narrator, so we’re privy to his thoughts and feelings. We also get to know Doc, because he talks a lot to Frank, and he’s quite open about what he thinks and feels. The locale, for almost the entire book, is a hotel in upstate New York – a secluded place in the off-season. It’s where Eddie, the contender, prepares his body and mind (under the scrupulous guidance of Doc).You’re not interested? That’s a shame, because this is a novel that digs deep into character. It’s conveyed mostly through dialogue – dialogue that ranks with best I’ve ever read. Heinz (a sportswriter; this was his only work of fiction) was a master of clean, clear prose. It’s interesting that the championship bout, which is the goal being pursued with such dedication and determination, takes up only a single page. 5

Heaven’s My Destination – Thornton Wilder

Twenty-three-year-old George Brush is tall, handsome, intelligent – and a man devoted to passing on his moral beliefs. They stem from his study of the Bible (plus some Gandhi and a touch of Marx). It’s not a private affair (though he lives in accordance with the beliefs he advocates); he takes every opportunity to instruct strangers on how to live the proper life, and he will politely correct any transgressors he comes across. He sees this as a duty. The reception he gets can range from disinterest to indignation to physical attacks. George emerges not as a comic character but as a lonely man unable to relate to flawed humanity (which includes, to his despair, women; he very much wants to be married and have a family). His job as a traveling salesman takes him through the Midwest and South during the Great Depression. He’s very successful at selling textbooks to schools because he has perused every volume, and he believes that Caulkin Press puts out the best product of its kind (if he didn’t believe this he wouldn’t have taken the job). You might get the impression that Destination is heavy going, but the opposite is true. It has a jaunty, buoyant quality, and is often quite funny. That said, it offers up ideas. Though George seems to change nobody, is he right in his beliefs? At any rate, I loved the guy, in all his naive sincerity. This is one of those rare books that I think everybody should read, for both the pleasure it gives, and for those ideas. 5

The Deep Sleep – Wright Morris

The way this book is constructed is unique. There are five characters, three women and two men, and the narrative constantly shifts from one to another. It works like this: we’re in one character’s mind, and then someone else enters the room, and we shift to that person’s perspective. Each character has his/her four or five pages (in the third person, with their name as the title of their section) and this shifting goes on for over 300 pages. We get to know each of these people (though the men come across more strongly then the women). Actually, there’s a sixth character, Judge Porter, who is recently deceased; it’s his passing that has brought his daughter and her husband to the house. The Judge emerges in a vague way – a man respected in the community but a stranger in his home (why this is I didn’t fully understand, but it has to do with his wife). I’ve read a lot of Morris’s work, and it seems to me that he loved the act of writing too much, which can result in words that have no real purpose in developing the plot and characters. Sometimes the book rambles without purpose, and I would become uninvolved. But, still, there’s a lot that’s good – and you won’t read anything quite like it, which counts as an achievement. 3

The Cook – Harry Kressing

This novel has been praised as a diabolical masterpiece, and it’s obvious that at some time I must have been one of its fans. My theory about its success is simple: you have to buy into the premise that Conrad (the cook) is all powerful. His manipulative skills are overwhelming, and he handles the wealthy family where he is employed as if they are as malleable as warm putty. By the end his employers have become his servants – literally, uniforms and all – and he rules at the Prominence mansion. On this reading that premise increasingly became unacceptable. Never a hitch, never a misstep as Conrad moves smoothly to his goal? People are simply weak pawns without wills? Really? It’s as easy as that? It all came to seem contrived, and the predictability of events caused a ho-hum feeling to set in. Not helping matters was my objection to the cruelty – notably a repellant scene where Conrad impales another cook’s hand to a tabletop. Its weirdness gives this book a compelling aspect, and it’s written in a nice prose style. But there’s not enough of substance to make it worth your (or my) time. 2 (delete)

The Iron Candlestick - Dimiter Talev (Bulgarian)
On the second page of this epic folktale a hunting dog attacks Stoyan; he kills it with his bare hands. But the dog belongs to Mahmoud Bey, a Turk who holds dictatorial power over the Bulgarians; Stoyan must immediately flee his native village, lest he pay with his life. The young man walks to the town of Prespa where, in the following days, he picks up odd jobs. As he passes a ramshackle house a woman calls out to him; Sultana wants firewood chopped. Since he has nowhere to stay, she allows him to sleep in the barn. Eventually she takes Stoyan as her husband, hoping they will produce children that combine his immense physical strength with her intelligence and determination. He gets work as a coppersmith; after he learns the trade Sultana spurs him on to open his own shop, which becomes successful. My interest flagged when the novel skipped to the next generation and a political angle emerged (in the 1800s the Christian Slavs are controlled by Muslim Turks and the Greek Catholic hierarchy). But their son, Lazar, re-engaged me; most crucial was that I came to believe in his idealism. Though there’s a social protest element (about Slavic independence), Talev never abandons the realm of emotions. His people are exotic yet comprehensible. The most imposing figure is Sultana; near the end, when this imperious woman asserts her aberrant will (with the iron candlestick as the only witness), I read for long stretches with a sense of impending doom. Yet the last chapter is given to two secondary characters; in an unexpected way Talev makes a final statement about art and love. *

The Constant Nymph - Margaret Kennedy
This novel was a bestseller in England and the USA (I consulted our list; it was number two in 1925). A stage play and four (4!) film versions were made of it. Though I could go into its flaws at length, I’d have to say that it deserves the acclaim it received. At age twenty-eight Kennedy came up with a romance that connects in an odd way. It begins when Lewis Dodd visits Albert Sanger at his chalet in the Austrian Alps. Both men – gifted composers and longtime friends – have disdain for the conventions of polite society. Sanger has his “Circus” – seven children and his latest wife – living with him. Nonconformity isn’t glamorized, nor is it condemned. There’s freedom, though it can be messy and mean. The person who emerges as the “constant nymph” of the title is Sanger’s daughter, Teresa, fourteen when we first meet her. What’s constant is her love for Lewis, who’s in his early thirties. Because of her youth, he doesn’t recognize the affection he feels for her as more than brotherly. But Tessa will wait, believing that Lewis will, in time, realize that they share a deeper bond. Kennedy is both assured and haphazard in telling this story. We see those qualities most clearly in the marriage of Lewis and Florence. Neither person would have made the mistake of marrying one another; but they do, and Florence, with her upper class values, could have been stereotyped. Instead the reader is made to sympathize with a good woman who finds herself (to her horror) becoming a shrew. The marriage turns out to be the spark that ignites Lewis and Tessa’s love. But the purity of that love is shadowed by something dark and destructive. Or that’s what I felt; others may not agree. I don’t think Kennedy planned out this novel but wrote it intuitively, and her intuitions pulled her in opposing directions. Since rationality isn’t the guiding force, people will get different impressions from The Constant Nymph. The strength of those impressions is what make it unique.

Theophilus North - Thornton Wilder
Wilder wrote this four years before his death, at age seventy-eight. It’s remarkable that he could be so buoyant at the end of his life. He takes as his subject a young man who moves to Newport, Rhode Island and gets work as a tutor and tennis instructor (at $2 an hour). Though Theophilus’s background mirrors Wilder’s (attended school in China, went to Yale, etc.), this isn’t autobiographical. Wilder couldn’t have played the role his main character does (nobody could). The book is a kind of wish piece; who wouldn’t want to be like the perceptive, resourceful, many-talented Theophilus? Wilder did, so, in fiction, he became him. However much enjoyment he got in writing this (and I believe he got a lot), I lost interest at the halfway point. In each chapter someone has a problem that Theophilus solves, but the dilemmas were simplistic and the solutions too smoothly achieved. Still, there’s an engaging boyishness about this novel. Wilder looked back and indulged in a pleasant fantasy about life. There are worse ways to say goodbye.