I Am Charlotte Simmons – Tom Wolfe
Seventy-three-year-old Tom Wolfe goes back to college. His fictional alma mater is prestigious Dupont, which ranks up there with Yale (which Wolfe attended in 1957). Things have changed drastically since he was a student, so Wolfe begins this novel with thanks to the many young insiders who helped him gather information about present-day conditions on campus. Though I wonder how reliable his sources were, they can’t take the blame for this smarmy novel: all blame falls on Wolfe’s shoulders. His trademark white suit, it turns out, hides a bad case of dandruff (probably the only kind of bodily discharge he doesn’t describe in detail). Charlotte Simmons’ first visit to her dorm’s coed bathroom is a grueling example of male vulgarity at its scatological worst. But are males, even college students, that bad? Are the women as sluttish as Wolfe portrays them to be? Do students speak in what is described as Fuck Patois, in which that word is used as every form of speech? Has sex at the collegiate level become an act indulged in randomly and indiscriminately? (“Sex! Sex! It was in the air along with the nitrogen and the oxygen! The whole campus was humid with it! tumid with it! lubricated with it! gorged with it! tingling with it! in a state of around-the-clock arousal with it! Rutrutrutrutrutrutrutrut – ”) A claim might be put forth that Wolfe is making a moral statement about the immorality on today’s campuses; but, if so, his depiction of life at Dupont would have to bear the stamp of authenticity. And authenticity is what this over-heated novel lacks. What we’re getting is an old man’s fantasy (which would account for the many lingering descriptions of “ripped” male anatomy). The prose is hammered out in a makeshift fashion, and the characters are stereotypes or gross exaggerations. Even the virginal Charlotte Simmons, dumped in the middle of this Sodom and Gomorrah, isn’t developed to the point where she garners sympathy; she serves a merely functional role, as a colorless counterpoint to the rest of the students. My rule is that I must read at least half of a book to review it. I quit a third of the way through this novel, but its so mammoth that I’m making an exception. As for why I got that far, I simply fell victim to the fascination that the repellent offers. And, to give Wolfe a crumb of praise, he still writes with a demented vigor.

The Far Country – Nevil Shute
This novel contains elements basic to a successful love story. First and foremost, the characters must be real, for why else would we care about them? Shute’s portrayal of Jennifer Morton is especially strong; she’s multi-dimensional and appealing. When she’s on a trip to Australia she meets Carl Zlinter, and it’s under dire circumstances. An accident had occurred at a mining camp, and she helps him perform two operations, one the severing of a leg, the other cranial surgery. Jennifer is no nurse; she’s pressed into duty because she’s the only person in the vicinity with clean hands. Carl is a lumberman, but in his native Czechoslovakia he had been a doctor; after WWII he migrated to Australia and had to serve two years as a laborer. The men in the camp call him Splinter, and turn to him for medical care (which, by law, he isn’t allowed to do). So Jennifer and Carl are thrown together, working for twelve hours in an intense situation; an intimacy arises. In the following months their feelings for one another deepen; Shute gives us reasons why they fall in love. And they deserve one another’s love: they’re good people with similar values. Beyond some kisses there are no sex scenes, but it’s clear that they’re made of flesh and blood. We’re left believing that these two will make a good life together. This isn’t a great novel, but it’s a satisfying one. Since there are no major complications, it can be said that Shute approaches the subject of love in simple terms. There are other ways to do it. But many attempts fail because the characters aren’t real and reasons for the depth of feeling which merits the word love are never convincingly developed.

Fortune Is a Woman – Winston Graham
I enjoyed a previous work by Graham, so, despite its silly title, I took a chance on this one. It starts out promisingly, but gradually the promise dissipates. The falling off in potential occurs because Graham wants this to be a mystery/suspense novel, along with a love story, and halfway through he begins to manipulate characters and situations to make the book serve those purposes. Things get very complicated, but I didn’t try to follow the twists and turns because the whole endeavor had become an empty fabrication. The love story was flat, the mystery was based on unlikely convolutions, the action scenes were clumsy. In that previous novel by Graham – The Walking Stick – its main character was authentic – painfully so. If, in Fortune, he had focused on Oliver Branwell’s obsession, this wouldn’t have been a love story, nor would it have been a mystery. It would have been a psychological study. But that’s a complex undertaking. Instead an author can take the easy route – and still be commercially successful – by writing something second-rate like Fortune Is a Woman.

The Merciless Ladies – Winston Graham
Two flesh and blood ladies in Paul Stafford’s life are merciless, but Success (or his pursuit of it) can be seen as another. All make unreasonable demands. In the end he winds up a winner; he gets the woman he loves and he achieves lasting importance as an artist. The person who tells Paul’s story is Bill Grant, a friend from boyhood. This character sacrifices much in the interests of Paul (even, possibly, in the up-in-the-air ending, his freedom). He also has feelings for both of the women Paul marries. There’s a hint of something incestuous (though not in a sexual way) in Bill’s dedication – a dedication of which Paul is oblivious. In stiff upper lip fashion Bill withholds his feelings, so we never understand what motivates him. Other than that odd undercurrent, Ladies is a solid, well-constructed, intelligent novel. But I read it because I liked Graham’s The Walking Stick so much, and Ladies isn’t nearly as good. It’s more worldly – there’s an ocean voyage, courtroom scenes, a variety of locales, from posh London clubs to an isolated cottage on the moors – but the intimacy with a character is missing. Nor does the prose have the flow of the earlier work. This book seems the product of a good writer dutifully plying his trade. Deborah in Walking Stick obviously meant more to Graham than anybody in Ladies. With one exception: Paul’s second wife is similar to Deborah in a number of ways. Most striking is that both have a limp caused by a youthful tubercular condition. One of Paul’s merciless ladies – his ex-wife Olive – refers to Holly as a “one-legged, bespectacled creature.” But she has an inherent goodness. Paul was fortunate to get her before Bill does. Some people have all the breaks. And don’t you, deep down, hate them?

Dark Bridwell – Vardis Fisher
Idaho in the late 1800s – a primitive world populated by primitive people. In telling his tale, Fisher’s prose is primitive; if you want sophistication, this is not the book for you. Charley Bridwell takes his wife and their two young boys to live in the most remote plot of land he can find. He believes that civilization (the mining camps he knew all too well) are festering holes of corruption. Charley is a study in contrasts. He’s gives expression to an exceedingly brutish side of his nature in acts of cruelty to animals, and he subjects his sons to vicious beatings. But for his wife he shows unerring devotion; toward her he’s always thoughtful, tender, kind. And though he delights in cheating people, he can show great generosity to those in need. Charley has a carefully worked out philosophy of life; he doesn’t believe in work, in striving to get ahead; he embraces irresponsibility. As time goes by, Lela grows increasingly discontent. She’s oppressed by their isolation: the mountains surrounding them, the roaring river that plummets near their cabin. She was fifteen when Charley married her; he was more than twice her age, and she respected and looked up to him. But when their sons leave home in their mid-teens – out of hatred for their father – she falls into a deep depression. When she rouses herself she goes onto a full-scale rebellion against Charley. She will work, try to get ahead and make a better life for the two children who were born in the cabin; they won’t become savages like Jed and Thiel. For Charley Lela feels two strong emotions simultaneously: love and hate. The most laudatory thing I can say about this novel is that Fisher makes her conflict into a tragedy. At the end all the principals disappear, moving in directions that will never converge. We know what lies in wait for them: Charley will wallow and die in the degradation he despised, Lela will be haunted by her abandonment of a man who loved and needed her.

The Paradise Below the Stairs – Andre Brincourt (French)
Thirteen-year-old Francoise is manipulative and deceitful; he can also be unrepentantly malicious. In his search for a role in life he decides on being a tough guy. But he’s still a boy, and, as events reveal, he’s not ready to become involved in sex. Though authors have explored this issue with girls, in this case the girl is the experienced instigator; at age fourteen Myriam wields the power of her sexuality. The hidden cellar the boys discover at their school would have been a sort of club, but when Myriam becomes its “savage queen” it takes on a perverse purpose. She begins to have two boys enter the room where her bed is. Though Francoise resists Myriam’s efforts to get him to go all the way, he claims to the other boys that he does; he even gets Myriam to promise that she will never tell anyone that they do not “make love.” Basson, older and experienced – he considers himself a man – is the other person who shares Myriam, and he does go all the way with her. The outcome is pregnancy, then a crude attempt at an abortion. The griminess of all this is distasteful, partly because none of the young people elicit sympathy. If Brincourt was trying to portray the illogical turmoil of adolescence, he undermines that purpose by the luridness of his plot. Francoise’s “paradise” is actually a hellish place.

The Walking Stick – Winston Graham
The walking stick is used by Deborah; when she was eleven she contracted polio and was left with a withered leg. At age twenty-six she holds a respected position in a high-end London auction house. She’s fairly content; romantic love has been denied her, but she’s resigned to that fact. And then, at a party, she meets Leigh. . . . This book has elements of a thriller, but it’s primarily a psychological study in which love plays a dominant role. “I love you, Leigh,” are the last words Deborah speaks to the man who brought her out of her shell, broke down her resistance and insecurities, made her feel wanted and valued, gave her sexual pleasure. And then she walks off and does something that will shatter his life and that of others – including her own. For Leigh had made Deborah vulnerable to pain; the corrosive emotions that surface in her are entirely credible. I found her willful destructiveness both exhilarating and poignant. To generate a visceral response in a reader is a goal most sought by all artists. Art is another subject that Graham addresses, for Leigh’s passionate desire is to be a painter. But when he shows his work to an expert he’s dismissed as no more than an illustrator: “They are – pictures, if you know what I mean. They’re no better and no worse than hundreds of others about. But they’re not really – forgive me – paintings, as I understand the word.” Leigh accepts this evaluation; but his dreams have been crushed. And what’s left? As I felt for Deborah, I also felt for Leigh; they both suffer a devastating loss. The mystery element in the novel involves motivations – why a person does something. The truth of the matter always dawned on me before it was fully revealed on the page. This isn’t a criticism; Graham was writing about real people, so the reader was provided with everything he needed to discern how things would go. I even knew what would be on the last page, but that was because it was the only way to end the book. It had the impact of the inevitable. *

The Memorial – Christopher Isherwood
The book is subtitled “Portrait of a Family,” and the approach is to give characters a section in which we get a stream-of-consciousness view of their thoughts and feelings. It’s done lucidly – the prose is good. But we go from one person to another and then to another, and far into the book I was having trouble figuring out who was related to whom, and how they felt about each other. Someone of no apparent significance would make a brief appearance, but later it would turn out that he or she had an important role. And I’d wonder what this person had said and done on page six. To further muddle things the narrative skips back and forth in time. Book One is set in 1928; Book Two in 1920; Book Three 1925. Isherwood made an ambitious attempt to write a novel that, despite its modest length (it’s under three hundred pages), warranted the use of the word “Book.” That struck me as pretentious, as did the structural intricacies. But the most serious shortcoming was that, at age twenty-eight, the author simply didn’t know enough about people; everybody was walking around with a label. When the scene shifted to College, and sensitive Eric and irresponsible Maurice took center stage, I decided, with a sense of relief, that I had enough of this family.

The Soul of Kindness – Elizabeth Taylor
With simplicity and clarity Taylor goes deep into the emotional lives of nine diverse characters. Flora, the lovely centerpiece, has led an unruffled existence; by nature she’s a happy person who wants everyone else to be happy. None of them are, to varying degrees; a few are enveloped in an incurable state of loneliness. Elinor is married to a man who doesn’t care about her: “He could leave me in the morning lying stretched dead on the floor. And if anyone later in the day asked him how I was, he’d say, ‘Fine. Fine. Thank you’; and then he might suddenly remember and say, ‘Well, no, as a matter of fact, she’s dead.’ ” She tells this to Flora’s husband; Richard finds Elinor interesting, but he withdraws his companionship when he sees that it disturbs his wife; he feels a responsibility to keep her face free of concern: “. . . it would surely be his fault if it was altered, if the Botticelli calm were broken, or the appealing gaze veiled.” That calm is broken when Kit (who, since he was a boy, has been in love with Flora) attempts suicide. Flora receives an anonymous letter (it’s from Liz, the only malicious character in the novel) blaming her for what happened. But how is Flora to blame? She does nothing to encourage Kit’s feelings for her. He has dreams of being an actor, and in this she does encourage him, which is a mistake. When he’s ill with the flu she comes to his apartment to tend to him, and she turns to his dreams, which he has wisely discarded: “I know you have this gift.” He feels euphoria at her words, but after she leaves he sees clearly that he has no gift, no glowing future, and he sinks into a deep depression. Flora had acted out of kindness; her only failing is obliviousness to life’s harsh facts. All the others must face those facts; perhaps that’s why they either resent her or feel obligated to protect her (as one protects a child). This novel moves in a straight line, and it ends with no resolutions – it’s likely that some characters will accept compromises, but for others the problems they face are unsolvable. Even Flora’s continuing insularity is not assured. *