The Road - Cormac McCarthy

The main problem with this post-apocalyptic novel is that it’s monotonous. Regarding the action and the feelings of the two characters, what happens on page one is happening (with little variation) on page seventeen, and on page 84, and on page 116 – which is when I suddenly found myself flipping through the remainder of the book. In his depiction of love between a father and son, McCarthy spreads it on too thick; he’s in his true element with menace and cruelty. But since I’m not a fan of horror flicks, I couldn’t appreciate the atrocities committed by the cannibalistic monsters he has roaming the land. Nor was his style of writing to my liking; I’ll close with three examples. The opening sentences: “When he awoke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some glaucoma dimming the world.”  From page 31: “He woke toward the morning with the fire down to coals and walked out to the road. Everything was alight. As if the lost sun was returning at last. The snow orange and quivering.” And here’s a conversation between father and son (each person’s words occupy their own little paragraph): “Is it cold?” “Yes. It’s freezing.” “Do you want to go in?” “I don't know.” “Sure you do.” “Is it okay?” “Come on.” As was the case with Hemingway, McCarthy calls attention to his prose under the guise of simplicity, and I find this annoying and false. 

Sons and Lovers - D. H. Lawrence

Reading Lawrence’s short stories – notably, “The Odour of Chrysanthemums” and “The Rocking-Horse Winner” – made me aware of how good he could be. So I returned to a book that I had abandoned many years ago; I thought that this time around I’d be more sympathetic and patient – and I was. I also found that my preconceptions (garnered from commentary I had read) were baseless. In the first third of this autobiographical novel Lawrence examines the dissolution of his parents’ marriage. To place all the blame on Walter Morel doesn’t do justice to Lawrence’s insight; the Morels were a tragically mismatched couple. But the major misinterpretation is the characterization of Mrs. Morel as a suffocating mother. Though she does look to her children as her reason for being, believing that in their lives hers would find purpose, she isn’t selfish; she wants her sons and daughter to be happy and fulfilled. As for Paul (who is Lawrence), she has no desire to possess him; her hope is that he’ll find a woman who will be good for him. That the two women he’s attracted to are not right for him isn’t something she dreams up; it’s a fact that he’s aware of. His devotion to his mother is not coerced; he gives it of his own free will. The novel weakens considerably in the last third, when Paul is an adult. The intense scrutiny Lawrence devotes to him turns into emotional nitpicking. A law should be passed decreeing that nobody under the age of thirty-five can write anything autobiographical. They don’t have enough separation from their youth to see that what they went through wasn’t that momentous. Lawrence compounds the problem by presuming to enter the minds of the women Paul is involved with, so we not only get too much of conflicted Paul, but the conflicts of others too. It’s convoluted and ponderous; the prose (which in the first part has an unadorned beauty) gets overripe with abstract ideas that must be conveyed. To put it simply, Lawrence thought too much. When he detached himself from himself and didn’t attempt to express inexpressible states of being he could write with an immediacy and power that few authors have been gifted with.

First Snow on Fuji - Yasunari Kawabata (Japanese)

The inconclusiveness of these stories (or at least the five I read) left me asking “What was that about?” and “Why did the author bother to write this?” Only “Nature” was fairly interesting, but it too wanders about in search of a narrative. It’s as if Kawabata lays out pieces of a jigsaw puzzle for the reader; though each piece has a discernible image, they don’t fit together to create an entire picture; not even a clearly defined character or emotion emerges. The author’s preoccupation with sex (wife swapping, gender change, etc.) puts him in step with modern Western sensibilities. As does his dialogue (“Yeah, your nerves are really worn down. Divorce is a tough thing for anyone to have to go through.”). I wondered if that dialogue, which stands in awkward contrast with the rest of the prose, was an accurate rendering into English of what Kawabata wrote. But it doesn’t matter – these glum, constricted stories have little to offer. I was amused only once, and this came in the Introduction, when the translator thanked Joyce Carol Oates for her help. That woman is everywhere.

My Mother’s House/Sido - Colette (French)

Colette wrote these books when she was in her seventies. She looks back at her provincial childhood, and most particularly at her mother. It was a happy childhood, and her mother was a unique person who stirs strong feelings of love and admiration in Colette. These feelings are evoked beautifully in My Mother’s House (by far the stronger of the two books). It’s composed of vignettes that don’t tell a story; they aren’t even chronological. They simply capture moments. Notable is her mother’s embracing of all life – plants, insects, animals, people. She’s able to truly see and appreciate, and we see and appreciate how special her gift is. The descriptions of nature are deeply felt and matter to the story. In the background there’s the shadow of loss. The city was calling to Colette; she will leave the world where she experienced pure happiness. But this is merely suggested in a few sentences; what the author is doing is celebrating a life and a time. In the preface she writes “I have come late to this task. But where could I find a better one for my last?”

Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata (Japanese)

In this novel about love and sex (in their darker aspects) Kawabata concentrates on his main character’s thoughts – to the exclusion of much else. Though the short sentences impart an open, airy feel, reading this is a claustrophobic experience; one is caged in a gloomy and brooding mind. The book lacks a valid ending; there’s no justification for the inconclusive way in which Kawabata drops matters. A big disappointment from the author of The Sound of the Mountain. 

Go Down, Moses - William Faulkner

Faulkner and I have officially parted company. I hold three of his novels in high esteem – Light in August, The Sound and the Fury and Sanctuary – but I won’t be attempting Absalom, Absalom or anything else by him. “Was” (and why would a story have such a title?) is, with its clothes off, merely a juvenile comedy that falls flat. I had to take its clothes off because Faulkner buries the characters, their situations and the setting in bombast. He works at an intensity level that’s set far too high, and his convoluted prose creates a density that’s almost impenetrable. After abandoning “Was” I turned to “The Bear.” Better, if you place primary value on atmospherics. But that aspect hinders any momentum in the plot, and the slow going had me constantly looking to see how much I had left to read (and it was always more than I hoped for). I finally decided that life is too short to bother with a self-indulgent author who turned what should be pleasurable into a task. With relief and no regrets I put the book aside.

Lanterns and Lances - James Thurber

This was Thurber’s last book. He was in his sixties, almost completely blind (he writes of composing sentences in his mind, so he must have dictated them to someone), and, as he states in one of the pieces, he was a victim of “decreasing inventiveness.” It also seems (from references he makes) that he was drinking a lot. The effects of these factors are evident. The prose is nice, and some of the essays and miscellany are mildly humorous, but there’s a meandering quality, an aimless puttering around. Thurber muses at great length about words, and I can’t believe that many readers would find this of interest. But for me these weaknesses elicited sympathy rather than censure. Thurber was trying to write when there was almost nothing left in the tank. One high spot is “The Wings of Henry James.” Thurber gives his personal responses to James’s work, and in doing so he ranges far and wide. Erudite but not scholarly, this is one of the few literary essay that can be described as entertaining. His review of the stage version of “My Fair Lady” is also outstanding, and I was glad that he got so much pleasure from the show.

Disgrace - J. M. Coetzee
I respect this book, though it failed to reach the heights to which it aspired. For over a third I thought it was a great novel. Then it weakened, before recovering some of its power at the close. The lapse occurred after the attack on David and his daughter (a brutal, frightening scene); the action of the plot ceased and the two characters simply circled their situation. When things became static the book exposed itself to scrutiny. The bare style started to seem affected, with its suggestion of great depths of meaning. Also, people began to behave unbelievably – most notable was the daughter’s refusal to act sensibly (and not explaining her actions in any way I could relate to). Coetzee lost my sympathies to a degree, never to fully regain them.

Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham
I never finished this. The overblown writing (the word “agony” is used again and again) and the phoniness of emotions alienated me. There was no valid psychological reason for the relationship between Philip and Mildred – so much so that I became suspicious of the author. (What’s really going on?) Beware of novels with titles like this one’s.

So Long, See You Tomorrow - William Maxwell
As stated by the author, this book was an effort to expunge an ancient guilt. (Fiction as therapy?) It was effective in the first half, when the story was about the boy (Maxwell) and his close friend Cletus. Then comes a wonderful scene when the two, now estranged, pass in a high school hall as if they were strangers. At that point Maxwell takes the wrong path. He delves into the lives of Cletus’s parents, whose actions will be so disastrous to his friend. This exploration of adultery is a gloomy and repetitive stretch. The book becomes a conceit – the author presumes to be absolving guilt by giving Cletus understanding on the pages of this novel (he even presumes to go into the mind of a dog). This should have been a short story about a failed friendship. The ending should have been in that high school hall.

The Sound of the Mountain - Yasunari Kawabata (Japanese)
This is a study of a man contemplating the meaning of his life. Shingo is going through a lot in his old age, and he responds in a troubled, puzzled way. He’s afflicted by disturbing thoughts and dreams. What concerns him most is the relationship of his son with his wife (and his, Shingo’s, attraction to her). Kawabata stays firmly in the quotidian; much attention is given to nature – animals, what’s growing in the ground. The book has a fragmented feel, like a painting composed of many small strokes that, when one steps back, make up a whole picture. And yet the picture is not whole in the sense of being resolved. Kawabata presents the possibility of a resolution on the last page, but turns away from it. Life is not that simple, nor that pleasant. *