A Book Blog by Books do Furnish a Room 2013

[Books do furnish a room]

Loving by Henry Green
 

This is the first Henry Green I have read. It is quite a claustrophobic novel; Updike called Green the “saint of the mundane”and indeed, very little of any significance actually happens. It has been compared to Gosford Park and there are some surface similarities (but rather less action). Loving is set in a rambling country house in Ireland during the early years of the Second World War. The Tennant family move between their Irish country seat and their homes in England (primarily London). The servants are mostly English and remain in Ireland whether the family are in residence or not.

Loving revolves around the daily routines of the servants, their petty squabbles, worries, loves, hates and workaday stresses. The war is at a distance, but there are storm clouds on the horizon. There are clouds closer to home relating to some of the local Irish estate workers who may or may not have links to the IRA (also an offstage presence).

Loving is driven by dialogue; it is almost stream of consciousness in dialogue form, spare in its descriptions. The cut short and tight dialogue feels a little like some of the “kitchen sink dramas” of the early 1960s. Green has a great ear for ordinary speech. There are clever comic elements woven in; the corpse of the throttled peacock turning up in odd places, the missing and reappearing ring, the lisping insurance evaluator, the scene with the drunken cook and the mistress, befuddled Miss Burch (who never really grasps what is going on).

Of course, one cannot escape the sense of this being a fairytale, set outside of time. It starts with “Once upon” (a day rather than a time) and ends with “and lived happily ever after”.  Nevertheless the characters are real and realistic, if cut off from the brutalities of war. The entire novel takes place in the house and grounds; those who leave just fall off the end of the world.

This was written in 1945 as the war ended. Green spent the whole war working for the London Fire Brigade and will have seen the height of the blitz and been very much in the centre of some difficult service. Then he writes this, set away from it all in rural Ireland at a time when he was dragging bodies out of burning buildings. Perhaps, like Blake he was looking for a contrast to the “dark satanic mills” of the modern world; but Green insisted on populating it with real and recognisable people.

The ending I found difficult and without the obvious fairytale links it would have been trite. However on the whole it worked and I am interested enough to read more and will read Living next. I think this could be called stream of dialogue rather than stream of consciousness, but I do understand why many writers rate it so highly.

 

8 out of 10

Starting Living by Henry Green

 

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The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

At the end of the day; before I go to sleep, I tend to read something that I would normally avoid. This tends to be a must read bestseller or potboiler. Hence The Book Thief. Looking at the reverential ratings, I feel rather guilty scoring this quite so low. I actually fell like I'm about to disembowel Mary Poppins or some other such desecration.
It was an easy to read novel delivered in bite size chunks: quite a contrast to Proust, McElroy or Gass who are also on my horizons at present. Death as narrator is not a new idea, but Terry Pratchett did it better, this version of death I didn't find convincing at all. There is a good deal of humour in the book and at least I can now swear in German. Some of the children at play scenes were quite convincing and the characters were on the whole engaging. It was good to get a sense of what it may have been like to be on the receiving end of the Allies carpet bombing of German cities.
Apart from that I just didn't find the book convincing, death as a narrator didn't work for me and some of the descriptive passages and use of words were unusual and irritating. You can stick a combination of words together and get away with it if you are a literary genius, but mostly it's not a good idea. What, for instance, does a "breakfast coloured sun" look like? That might work if you're having orange juice, it is less convincing if it's last nights curry or black pudding. There are many examples of such odd descriptions, which, for me detracted from the basic story. Rant over!

5 and a half out of 10

Starting The Cruel Mother by Janet LaPierre

[Nollaig]

Aww sorry you didn't enjoy The Book Thief very much

[Books do furnish a room]

The Book Thief was ok; parts of it just irritated me!!

 

The Centaur by John Updike

An interesting novel which finds meaning in the mundane of everyday life; concerning George Caldwell and his son Peter, a boy in his mid teens. There are strong autobiographical elements. It is set in rural Pennsylvania, where Updike grew up. Updike's father was a schollteacher and like Peter in the book, Updike had psoriasis and loved art. Woven into all this is Greek mythology; hence the title. George is the centaur Chiron and all the other characters are have their mythological equivalents. The autocratic headmaster Zimmerman is Zeus (and has some of Zeus's sexual mores too), but Updike keeps the mythological ties quite understated most of the time.
The real strength of the novel is its analysis of the father/son relationship and how it changes during the teenage years. George is essentially a decent bloke, who is struggling to stay on top of his life and work. He believes he may be dying and feels he is a failure as a teacher and a father. The novel spans three or so days when George and Peter and prevented from returning to their rural home and have to stay in town.
Peter travels that inevitable journey from feeling his father is immortal and knows everything to the awful realisation that he is fallible and mortal; and even more worrying his father is also embarrassing! (I think most of us have been there). The mythological links here become a little tenuous. Chiron is immortal and gives up his mortality to save Prometheus; Peter can be seen as Prometheus, but other critics have argued George is both Chiron and Prometheus and I think this is more likely. The move in the novel is from the idealised immortal father to the mortal embarrassing one and there are some very typical father/teenage son exchanges.
I know Updike has been accused of sexism and of concentrating on marraige and infidelity, but in this book the focus is on men: sons and fathers and Updike does this rather well because it made me think about my relationship with my father.
The writing is accomplished and the description beautiful at times. All in all an enjoyable read.

8 out of 10

Starting Pictures of Fidelman by Bernard Malamud

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Thomas Hardy; A biography revisited by Michael Millgate

Solid and comprehensive biography of Hardy, meticulously researched with great detail and excellent use of sources. I know much more about the details of Hardy's life and opinions; about his two marraiges, his protectiveness about his work; the tension between the poet and the novelist; his love of his native county; the sources of his novels; his daily habits; his friendshipa and enemies and so on. And yet ... something is missing. Good as this biography is, I'm not sure I know Mr Hardy; his essence, if you like, is not quite there. Some biographies leave you feeling you have spent time with the person. Detailed as this was, I didn't come away with that feeling and felt that maybe Millgate knew so much about Hardy that getting it all down on paper was the aim rather than capturing the man himself. I suspect that I will read Claire Tomalin's biography at some point for a contrast.
If you want a detailed and scholarly analysis of Hardy's life and work and you like splendid Victorian photographs this is the book for you; but though I now know I great deal about him, Hardy himself is still a little elusive.

7 out of 10

 

Starting And Still the Music Plays by Graham Stokes

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Living by Henry Green

Now regarded as a modernist classic, this is one of Green's early works. Much has been made of the experimental nature of the novel with its paucity of articles and conjunctives. It is set around the lives of management and workers in an iron foundry in Birmingham. It is dialogue driven and much of it is in dialect. Green being from the area makes a pretty good job of capturing the Brummie accent and I suspect this is the real reason for the lack of articles and conjunctives: it better captures the everyday language of the area.
Two characters in particular stand out. The factory owners son, Dupret, trying to fill his father's shoes and make his mark at the same time as trying to woo an impossibly distant girl; and Lily Gates, keeping house for her father and "grandfather" and their lodger Jim, who all work at the factory. Green captures the everyday tensions of work and leisure, limited money, the risk of being laid off, the pub, the risk of sudden violence (close to the surface) and the aspirations.
The novel contains an excellent description of the way a person withdraws from life in the period before death. Old Mr Dupret takes to his bed for no apparent reason and just stops participating in life. There is nothing obviously wrong with him, but he seems to know his life is over.
Lily's search for love is the most poignant part of the book. The two men who attempt to woo her are typical of the factory workers, clumsy with a very limited view of what women are and should be. Like the older male generation they believe that a woman should keep house and not work. Lily's choice is a grim one. The novel is set just after women got the vote; but Green points out that nothing has changed in reality.
Lily and Dupret make disasterous choices. Dupret decides to run the factory his own way; he lays off most of the older men, those close to pension age and they have nothing left in their lives but the pub and an empty future. Lily leaves with one of the men, who promptly abandons her in a strange city and she returns home ashamed.
A brief novel with a broad scope encompassing class and gender; people behave as you would expect and within thier limitations, each stupid in their own particular way, but splendidly human. There is a touch of Marxian determinism about the structure, but there is a warmth and affection amidst the brutal realism.

8 and a half out of 10

 

Starting Party-going by Henry Green

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Pictures of Fidelman by Bernard Malamud

 

Close to where I live is a very cluttered antiqueshop. It is actually a house and every room is packed to the brim with odds andends. At the back is a room full of second hand books. One wall is coveredfloor to ceiling with old penguin books, many of them first editions. They costbetween £1 and £1.50 each. This book was one of those. If you’re ever in Lincoln it’s worth looking in.

 

This is the first Malamud I’ve read. It is a set of inter-connected stories about Arthur Fidelman, an American who moves to Italy to pursue his desire to be involved in art. It is also allegedly not one of Malamud’s better books and one critic has said that all that Fidelman manages to do in his escapades is to learn “pimping, glass-blowing and sodomy from the Italians”.
 

All the Fidelman stories are chronological with no recurring characters (apart from Fidelman himself and his sister Bessie who isin the background and in America). There are six stories;

 

1. Last Mohican; Fidelman, an American Jew and a failed painter comes to Italy to write a critical study of Giotto. He repeatedly meets a Jew called Susskind who steals his manuscript
2. Still Life; Fidelman moves into a studio with a woman called Annamaria who mistreats him, until he finally discovers she has a “thing” about priest’s robes and dress (he keeps the biretta on!)
3. Naked Nude; Fidelman is working cleaning toilets in a brothel and is held prisoner. He has to make a copy of a Titian to buy his freedom
4. A Pimp’s Revenge; Fidelman is trying to complete a picture of him and his mother. In the meantime he is living with a girl called Esmeralda and acting as her pimp.
5. Portraits of the Artist; Fidelman’s beliefs, reflections and reactions to Art (despite the fact that he really isn’t much good at it. Stream of Consciousness.
6. Glass Blower of Venice; Fidelman moves to Venice and starts an affair with a woman. Her husband, a glass blower discovers them and he and Fidelman start an affair.Fidelman learns glass blowing. He eventually returns to America and works as a glass blower, and has affairs with men and women.

 

They can stand alone and some were originally published separately, but work togetherI can understand why some of the critics didn’t like it and Fidelman is a difficult character to have any empathy with. He uses others without much feeling in his pursuit of art. However there is circularity to it and a sort of redemption at the end. Rome is the Rome of Caligula with decadence and excess, enjoyed by the Jewish Fidelman, in the heart of Catholicism. Fidelman even carves Madonna’s to make some money at one point.

There are clever nods to other authors and good use of tropes. There are serious flaws, but on the whole it was entertaining (sometimes irritating). Malamud’s women are certainly formulaic (mothers and 'ladies of the night'), but the men are equally so. Apart from Beppo the glass blower, the women are on the whole more sympathetic characters as they struggle to cope with an impossible and deluded man (no lessons to learn here then!).

7 out of 10

Starting In a German Pension  by Katherine Mansfield

 

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And Still the Music Plays by Graham Stokes

This is an excellent book on dementia which helps to shed light and common sense into an area where there is much myth and a great deal more poor quality care. Stokes has the great gift of being able to explain complex processes in simple straightforward ways. He does this by using anonymised case examples.
I sometimes forget (as I work with people who have dementia), how frightening it appears from the outside and Stokes explains some of the jargon of the person-centred care approach (Funtional Analysis, Funtional Displacement, malignant social psychology, confabulation, perservation, ABC analysis and executive dysfunction to name a few).
I have always known instinctively that all the behaviours that people with dementia display are explicable and not random or just people being difficult. One example illustrates this. A woman in a care home was continually screaming and shouting whilst sat in the communal lounge (one of the more fiendish inventions of the care sector). She doesn't scream in her own room or in the dining room. The Care Assistants and other residents are becoming frustrated and less tolerant. There is, of course no point telling her to be quiet because almost immediately she has forgotten she has asked to be quiet because of the nature of the disease. Stokes is called in and analyses the situation, looking at why she only screams in the lounge; she does this even when it is empty and therefore it is not other people. Eventually he has a brainwave and removes a pottery cat. The screaming stops instantly. She was morbidly afarid of cats and not able to communicate in any other way than screaming.
Stokes can and does point towards good practice. What he is unable to do is to say how in an era of cuts and austerity with social care budgets shrinking and the numbers of people with demantia increasing, we are going to provide a good standard of care for those in the later stages of dementia (apart from putting it out to tender and awarding the contratc to the lowest bidder!)
This is a good introduction to dementia and person-centred care. Despits its positive approach it may end up depressing you as it hints at the scale and cost of the task of providing good care.

8 out of 10

Starting The lives of the Muses by Francine Prose

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The Cruel Mother by Janet LaPierre

Bought in a charity shop some years ago; part of the virago crime series. A passable crime thriller partly let down by the unfortunate title which has little relation to the plot.
The author uses the old ruse of introducing the main protagonists by giving them a chapter each at the beginning. It's not a bad way of introducing a novel; Trollope used it all the time. However that sort of start usually needs a lengthy novel to sustain it and this is no exception.
It's not a bad plot with a strong, if predictable, set of characters; including a stroppy teenager. There is a touch of deliverance about the kidnap part of the plot and as you would expect the female characters are very strong.
However the ending feels very rushed and the book is too short; a bit frustrating because it could have been very good. I'm afraid it also suffers from comparisons with some of the other books I'm reading (Proust, A Smuggler's Bible by McElroy and Middlesex) all of which are brilliant.

6 out of 10

Starting Cell by Stephen King

[Athena]

I've recently bought Cell so I look forward to read your thoughts on it.

[Books do furnish a room]

Party Going by Henry Green

Stylistically this is similar to the two other Green novels I've just read (Living and Loving). It is breathless dialogue with very little interior monologue, certainly in the modernist tradition. On the surface it is a simple story, but it took Green from 1931 to 1938 to write it.
It is set over 4 hours at a train station. A group of young wealthy socialites meet at a train station to go on holiday to the South of France (this is towards the end of the era of the Bright Young Things). A thick London fog has descended and all trains are stopped. The station begins to fill with people and close contact with the lower and middle classes isn't that attractive, so they take some rooms in the station hotel. They spend most of the novel bickering and flirting. There is also an aunt in tow and she is taken ill and put to bed.
The characters are all pretty vacuous and empty-headed and on the surface it can be seen as a satire on idle rich youth because pretty much nothing happens in the novel. At one level that is true; the characters are in their hotel rooms bickering and looking out of the Windows down on the heaving masses below.
However there is much more going on. At one point there is a description of a picture on the wall of Nero fiddling whilst Rome burns juxtaposed with Max (the main character around whom much revolves) looking out at the crowds below. All the girls seem to be interchangeable, whilst most of the men are just irritants. The girls names are even fluid (Evelyn changes to Evelyna and back). There is also an amorality about it and it does seem as though these rich young people are as amorphous and anonymous as the masses.
Then there is the strange figure who seems to move between the crowds and the group in the hotel, switching accents as he does so and appears to belong in both worlds. There is also the dead pigeon which the aunt picks up and washes before she is taken ill; she carries in wrapped in brown paper.
Green plays with space; familiar space becoming unfamiliar and threatening, members of the group losing and finding each other in the station and occupying the same space at different times before they all move above the familiar space to unfamiliar rooms.The sense of oddness is heightened by the fog  with the faces of the crowd having "pale lozenged faces" (as one critic points out, very like Munch's The Scream). Movement and tension revolve around a hollow centre as the crowd become more threatening and the girls worry about being murdered in the beds by the faceless masses.
Of course you could go along with Frank Kermode and see the whole piece as being laced withthe imagery of Greek mythology revolving round a Hermes figure.
Green is a very clever writer who teases the reader by hding all sorts of little messages and images. I enjoyed this; it pulls the mind in different directions; but the characters are much less sympathetic than in the other two of Green's novels I have read. It was worth the effort though.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

Edited March 15, 2013 by Books do furnish a room

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In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield

An excellent set of short stories; brief with abrupt and unsettling endings and sharp, dry humour. These are early stories by Katherine Mansfield, written when she was barely over 20. She was recuperating from a miscarraige in Germany and from a short unpleasant marraige.
The stories analyse the German middle class and their habits, prejudices and loves. They also look at the more difficult lives of the servants. Mansfield was in the vanguard of the modernist movement acquainted with Virginia Woolf and D H Lawrence and the like.There is a focus on the role of women as wives, mothers, lovers, put upon servants (the wives as well as the servants) and there is a sense of injustice and even rage underneath. Some are very funny, some tragic. One in particular has a jaw dropping ending (The Child-who-was-tired)that stays with you , the horror of it gradually seeping in.
Mansfield was influenced by Chekov and became an increasingly good short story writer brfore her early death. Mansfield referred to these stories as immature as she developed her craft; but they are fresh, sharply humourous and do feel very modern.

8 out of 10

Starting The Man in the High Castle

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Sodom and Gomorrah; vol 4 of In Search of Lost Time by Proust

I don't need to detail the plot it meanders on as beautifully written as ever with the Guermantes and Verdurins being wonderfully silly as ever. The narrator continues to pursue and Albertine and get bored of her. The minor characters stand out in this volume; Charlus, Morel and the members of the salons.
Proust explores homosexuality in some detail; both male and female. Of course the Proust scholars continue to debate the real nature of the narrator's lovers; Albertine, Andree and Gilberte are all feminised forms of male names.
Proust also makes interesting observations and reflections on death, grief and ageing. The narrator lost his grandmother in the previous volume and he continues to feel her loss and dream about her. There is also a moment of revelation when he suddenly sees his mother as his grandmother; time is passing. I don't really feel the need to over analyse at this point because I'm just enjoying the journey; it's like falling into an impressionist painting

9 out of 10

Starting vol 5 The Fugitive

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The Lives of the Muses by Francine Prose

Interesting, fascinating and most of all thought provoking examination of nine muses who inspired famous artists/writers/performers. Francine Prose does a good job of dissecting the artist/muse relationship. She does not do this in a neutral way though; prose is opinionated and sharp in judgement: punches are not pulled. Sometimes I vehemently disagreed with her opinions, sometimes she opens new lines of thought about old subjects, but dull it never was.
The muses Prose picks are a very diverse bunch; some better known than others. I knew little about Charis Weston, slightly more about Suzanna Farrell and some were more familiar. I knew about Lou Andreas-Salome and her relationship with Nietzsche and Rilke; I was less aware of her relationship with Sigmund Freud and even Anna Freud.
There is lots of inspiration as you would expect, some innocence and experience, plenty of sex, intrigue and betrayal; a great deal of oddity (a good deal of it in the chapter about the Dali's)and even a spot of S and M. A small prize if you knew that was Hester Thrale and Dr Johnson (I didn't). Hester was the dominant one and she saved one of Dr Johnson's padlocks as a keepsake. Prose really doesn't like Yoko Ono, but she does make some perceptive comments about the virulent and racist reaction to her. She doesn't like her art (annoying) and especially dislikes her attempts at music. However she does explore whether a man can be a muse and looks at the Lennon/Ono relationship as one where it can be argued that there were two muses and two artists. She has some fun with the difference between a muse and an art-wife; the humour and pathos are both well done.
I learnt a lot and disagreed with a lot and would certainly recommend this.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou

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Cell by Stephen King

I suddenly realised half way through this book that it is really a zombie novel. After a shower I felt better and rationalised that this was occupying my "wouldn't normally read this" slot in my book consumption; sigh of relief.
I must admit that I did enjoy some of King's early novels, but this was so far fetched and ridiculous (Am I really saying "It" wasn't?). The plot is simple. Somehow, someone sends a pulse through the mobile phone system which wipes clean a person's mind and sends them back to basics and they becoming unreasoning killers. Those that survive the bloodbath begin to flock together and develop a sort of telepathy. Meanwhile those that didn't hear the pulse and survived the bloodbath also group together and a struggle for survival begins.
Sometimes books like this are good mindless fun and I do enjoy well written thrillers. King does write well and is a natural storyteller; but there is something insidious at the heart of this. Basically (and this is actually said in the book), when everything is stripped away from men and women; what is left - MURDER. This, quite simply, is the Doctrine of The Fall (not Mark E Smith's rather good Manchester band), as found in the Old Testament. We are born in sin and are wicked at heart; our first instincts being to kill rather than care for each other. That is the problem with this book; that premise. Nature and nurture matter not; we are hard-wired to Murder.
In my more depressive moments I realise we have created an economic system which destroys the weak and poor rather well and we regularly elect governments that play and build on xenophobia and the evils of those who are different. However, in my heart I believe we all have that spark that would rather care for others than destroy them. That's the problem with this book.

3 out of 10

Starting The Bodies left Behind by Jeffrey Deaver

[bobblybear]

Cell certainly wasn't one of my favorites by King. I thought the setup of the story in the beginning was exciting, but then it just trailed into formulaic silliness, that I can't actually recall!

[Books do furnish a room]

Bobbly; "Formulaic Silliness" is a wonderful way of putting it!

 

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

A great novel with great scope, which ticks so many boxes and seems to be so many things.
It is the story of Cal, Callie, Calliope (muse of epic poetry) Stephanides who is intersex, brought up as a girl and following pubery is found to be male. The story is in the genetics. Starting in the Greek community in Turkey in the 1920s and then to Detroit in the 1930s and on to be present day, looking at three generations of one family.
Eugenides covers a good deal of ground, racism, gender identity, religion, the depression, the American Dream, nature or nurture, family life, being an immigrant, incest the list is nearly endless. The book is also packed with references to Greek myths, woven into the fabric of the novel. The Greek community in Detroit was from Eudenides own experience and we move through the 20s and prosperity to bootlegging, post war American Dream, the 1960s and race riots, the Nation of Islam, the counter culture, too may to list.
It's a great ride with moments of humour and tragedy and it's written with great warmth and humanity. The subject matter is sensitive at times, but Eugenides is a skillful writer and there is a sense of participation in the narrative rather than the sense of being a voyeur. Great Stuff!

9 out of 10

Starting Serious Men by Manu Joseph

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The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick

Another entry in the "what if the Axis powers had won the war?" genre. Interesting because of the ideas that are entertained rather then for being believeable (which it isn't). The novel is set in the US which is now divided into a Nazi puppet state in the East (like Vichy France), a neutral buffer state in the middle and a Japanese controlled west coast. The Mediterranean has been drained and Africa turned into a wasteland. The sci-fi element is present with rocket type planes making the journey from Europe to California in about 45 minutes. The Nazis are also beginning to colonise Mars. Hitler is insane and Chancellor Bormann has just died; there is a power struggle between Goebbels and Heydrich. There are also tensions between the Japanese and the Germans.
None of the characters are particularly memorable but they represent the different attitudes in west coast america. The japanese influence is strong and many of the characters guide their lives by I Ching. There is an undercurrent of political intrigue following Bormann's death.
Central to the novel is a book within a book "The Grasshopper" lies heavy" written by Hawthorne Abendsen (The man in the high castle) which portrays an alternative future in which Axis lose the war. The storyline builds towards the high castle at the end.
The dialogue is a little clunky at times and the ideas have more strength than the characters, who fail to carry them. Having said that Dick takes lots of liberties with timelines, history and what might have been and it's all pretty entertaining. The question of whether the novel within the novel or the actual novel is real is left open; possibly both are, amongst many other possible futures.
Roth's take on an alternative future "The Plot Against America" is more subtle and believeable, but this one has more ideas to play with.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Evelyn Waugh; The Loved One

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Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

A short, but by no means easy novel set in Paris (mostly) in the 1930s. It is semi-autobiographical and contains some strong and memorable characters. My edition has two introductions. The first by T S Eliot says that to truly understand Nightwood you have to have a poetic sensibility (Well thsnks for that Tom; if I don't get it that means I am a complete philistine!!!}. After that I really wanted to hate the book but sadly couldn't. The other intro is an achingly heartfelt and passionate recommendation by Jeanette Winterson.
The group of characters is small. Central is Robin Vote who weaves in and out of the lives of the others; chaotic, destructive, childlike and completely lost. Robin marries Baron Felix, who is trying to maintain and old-fashioned and dying sense of nobility. Guido, the son Robin has with him is the apple of his eye and his hope. Nora is Robin's lover; Robin leaves Baron Felix for her. Nora is hopelessly in love with a wraith that slips through her fingers; " I have been loved by something strange and it has forgotten me". Jenny is a four times widow who really does not know what she wants and seems to have lost the ability to desire. She attaches herself to Robin to recapture what she has lost (my interpretation) and Robin leaves Nora. The core and conscince of the novel is Dr Matthew O'Connor; he just pretends to be a doctor and is a transvestite. He is the one people talk to. His speech towards the end of the novel to Nora is a tour de force; Winterson argues it is as good as Molly Bloom's soliloquy in Ulysses.
Nightwood is about love, loss, desolation and anguish; it has force and power and the ending still has the power to shock, even now.
Dylan Thomas rated it as one of the three best prose works a woman (if you duck the back handed compliment will miss you!) and Burroughs thought it was one of the twentieth centuries great books. I think they are right and I suspect there is much I have missed on a first reading. Certainly recommended and the tragedy is almost Shakespearean.

9 out of 10

Starting Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

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The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh

Brief, satirical and rather funny novel about the American funeral industry. Waugh visited California in 1947; he didn't like it, finding the tendency of the "lower orders" to ask personal questions rather irritating. Waugh was a snob and it shows.
It is funny in parts. The love triangle is very amusing; this isn't the intense YA/vampire type. It involves Aimee Thanatogenos, who works at Whispering Glades, a funeral emporium. She does cosmetic work on the corpses. One of her beaus is the wonderfully named Mr Joyboy, a mortician. The other is Dennis Barlow an English "poet" and trickster who works at a crematorium for pets (watch out for the funeral of the parrot). It's all joyfully barmy and Aimee's vacillations are marvellous. The descriptions of the services provided all add to the fun. The satire is directed as much at the British in Hollywood as at the American way of death; all the characters are pretty awful.
There were some notes that grated. When asked what Hogmanay was, Dennis replies "People being sick on the pavement in Glasgow".
I think Nancy Mitford did the subject more effectively, but Waugh is funny, if flimsy

6 out of 10

Starting The Hothouse by the East River by Muriel Spark

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I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou

The first of Angelou's series of autobiographies and a powerful account of growing up and coming of age in 1930s/40s America. In the background and foreground are racism, violence against women and the problem of identity. It is written with clarity and great force; there is no hiding from what you are reading.
It would be superfluous to sum up the book or outline its contents; it should be read. So I will just add a few thoughts and reflections.
Beacuse of the strong brother/sister relationship, it has been compared to The Mill on the Floss. That connection I didn't really see; Maggie and Tom Tulliver's relationship is too fractured and damaged by growing up, in a way that Maya and Bailey's was not.
I understand that this is one of those books that has caused controversy when taught in school's in America. I can understand why that is (though I don't approve); the sexual violence is powerful, but Angelou is a bit of iconoclast and takes a swipe at a number of sacred cows. This is especially the case in relation to religion. Part of Angelou's genius is the way she seamlessly combines comedy, painful memories and tragedy.
When reading this I was reminded of Hartley's memorable quote "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there". There are times in relation to racism when I think (and hope) that is the case. I remember my youth and the casual racism that existed, even on TV. I look at today and see improvement and wonder how much of this is on the surface. Maybe I am a little pessimistic. But I do think we have to treat books like this as living breathing things; not as historical documents about a foreign past.

9 out of 10

Starting Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature

[Books do furnish a room]

A Smuggler's Bible by Joseph McElroy

Reviewing this will not be easy as there is more to it than meets the eye. The title relates to the sort of hollowed out book that smugglers used in the eighteenth century.
It involves David Brooke and his wife Ellen who are on a liner crossing the Atlantic. The narrative is split into eight parts joined together by a bridging narrative which takes place on the boat. The eight parts reflect a different aspect of Brooke’s life. Each of the parts are separate enough for them almost to stand alone as short stories. Thinking about the whole, the best way I can describe it, is to compare it with a quilt or counterpane made up of separate discrete sections. You can look at them individually, but they are sewn together and can be looked at as a greater whole.
Each of the separate parts can be seen as aspects of David’s self; but he is not the main character in any one of them. You see David as he is perceived by a series of others; illuminating different aspects of his personality. In the bridging narrative there is a fellow passenger who talks to David about smuggling and who encourages him to insert himself into the lives of others. This David has done in the eight manuscripts that illustrate his life. This makes the novel unusual. Usually a novel is filtered through a particular main character in a linear sort of way; or one story is told through a variety of perspectives. Here McElroy uses what William Smith Wilson calls a “field model”. Put simply, instead of following a path; you’re in a field with the potential of lots of different interconnections. David’s involvement in some of the stories is often incidental or tangential and he is not the main character in most of them. McElroy focuses on identity; its disintegration and reconstruction (one of many focuses) and it is quite difficult to get a real handle on David Brooke; he seems a little elusive. Some of the minor characters seem much more fleshed out; especially Duke Amerchrome and his son Mike; even Harry Tindall. The point is, you can only get a sense of David by looking at the whole rather than the separate parts.
There are so many different leads to follow; you have the contrast of the narratives (we don’t know how reliable a narrator David is; it is implied he is rather unreliable as he inserts himself into the lives of those around him) being placed inside the “absolute truth” of the Bible. I also got a sense, when looking at David’s relationship with his father Halsey, that there was an element of a prodigal son narrative; there is certainly an exile motif within.
The bridging narrative contains two voices, one of which is detached and seemingly within David; possibly the authorial voice, but also interpreted as godlike (I would also posit possibly the opposite of godlike and to continue the smuggling motif inserting the fallen/human within the Bible). The other interesting point about the voice in the bridging narrative is that it is immanent, rather than transcendent. This suggests that the godlike argument may be problematic. The whole record has also been likened to a black box, as you would find on an aeroplane. However there is an overload of data contained within and the reader is left with several different trails to follow.
Of course McElroy leads clues all over; there is one in particular that is little mentioned. The seventh narrative is made up of letters written to David after he has had some sort of breakdown with an element of amnesia in it. A particular book is mentioned a number of times; Wisdom, Madness and Folly by John Custance. It is an actual book; now little known. Custance tells the story, of what was then called manic depression (now bi-polar). It is a cerebral examination of the condition written over many years and in a variety of states of mind (some of it whilst in hospital recovering from acute phases of illness). Custance talks of the contrast between the “universe of bliss” and the “abyss of isolation”. The contrast is similar to Yin/Yang and to the Nietzschean concept of the Dionysian and Apollonian modes of being. It’s about trying to separate illusion from reality and developing a philosophical response to the illness. I have a vague recollection of skimming it and making some notes in the 80s when studying theology. It may of course be a red herring, but I suspect McElroy places it there for a reason and David’s breakdown reads suspiciously similar to that of Custance.
The whole is a remarkable achievement with a cast of vivid and powerful characters who revolve around the elusive David Brooke. Read it and see what you make of it; it’s an interesting journey. I suspect i have missed a good deal and if it ever becomes a group read I may come back to it.

 

9 out of 10

Starting Heaven's my Destination by Thornton Wilder

 

 

[Books do furnish a room]

The Hothouse by the East River by Muriel Spark

I've never read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but the novels I have read by Muriel Spark have been distinctly odd and this is no exception. It is quite a curiosity.
Paul and Elsa are married and living in a New York apartment facing the East River; it is the early 1970s. Elsa has some form of mental illness and spends much of her time looking out of the window at the river. Her shadow falls the opposite way to everyone else's. She has an analyst (of course) and the couple have two grown up children and are in their 50s. They met during the war when they worked for some secret military intelligence organisation in England. A saleman in a local shoeshop appears to be the image of a German prisoner they had contact with in the war; only he hasn't aged; but he also died in prison.
Other characters begin to turn up who were also with the couple during the war. The evidence builds towards an obvious conclusion with some not unexpected twists. It reminded me a little of No Exit by Sartre and there are clues along the way. Princess Xavier breeds silworms and keeps the mulberry leaves and silkworm eggs under her bosoms to keep them warm. They hatch during a meal and terrify Elsa's analyst as the worms crawl out of her bosom.
There may be links to Spark's own life as she also worked for the sort of organisation portrayed in the book and she also had mental health problems of her own.
The plot is quite claustrophobic (apart from a bizarre foray to Switzerland) and it could easily be a satire on modern urban life, a ghost story, an analysis of the effects of war in later life or a touch of the absurdist. Possibly something of them all. Nevertheless it was an odd and enjoyable novella.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Junky by William S Burroughs

Edited April 19, 2013 by Books do furnish a room

[Books do furnish a room]

Heaven's my Destination by Thornton Wilder

An amusing and not too well known tale of one of literature's innocents; George Marvin Brush. It is set in the depression era of the 1930s. The novel might be said to be picaresque and there is a touch of the tilting at windmills about it (Brush is only a very little like Don Quixote and there is no Sancho Panza).
Brush is a travelling textbook salesman, who has his own particular brand of Christianity, which he tries to share. The novel has been described as a satire on fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity; but I am less sure about that. Brush uses Ghandi's philosophy; not a fundamentalist trait, and the voluntary poverty theory is not typical either. Brush has developed his own particular philosophy by borrowing lots of different elements of belief.
The novel takes place over a year (age 23 to 24 for Brush). Brush has adventures in banks, trains, brothels, courts, guest houses, cafes and shops. He seems to bring out the worst in people. When he withdraws his money from the bank, he refuses to take the interest due, explaining to the bank manager that it is immoral to give interest. He is, at the same time exasperating, delightful and baffling.
The point of the book becomes more obvious when you realise the comparitor for the book is Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress and Christian's journey. I suspect that this would have been more obvious at the time, but Pilgrim's Progress is less well known these days. However, Bunyan is one of the authors I was brought up with (Remember that racy little tome "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners") and there are clear parallels with Brush's journey. The conclusions to be drawn are different, but the meaning is in the journey and the theme of growth. It might appear that Brush has learnt little, but towards the end of the book Brush pays to put a through college. When he meets her, she is reading a book by Darwin; Brush at the beginning of the book would have been appalled by her reading matter and stayed away from her. Like Christian, George has suffered temptation and despair and has grown. It is commentary on the America of the 1930s, but it is also great fun, with an almost deathbed scene, a marraige, a few fights, a small amount of drunkeness and lots of travel.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting the Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse

[Books do furnish a room]

Serious Men by Manu Joseph

Comic and sharply witty novel which has so many targets in its sight that it can be rather confusing. Joseph does however hit many of the targets rather well.
Joseph targets the layering of Indian society; Brahmins and Dalits, education, marital relations, political corruption, particularly deliciously the scientific community and the search for extra-terrestial life (along with the future of physics)and the nature of love.
Ayyan Mani works in administration in a scientific institute where there are great tensions between the entirely Brahmin scientists. Mani exploits these tensions in hilarious ways. Watch out for the daily quotes, they are priceless. Mani also plays games by pretending his son is a genius and feeding him information to back this up. The arrival of an attractive female scientist also creates chaos. Joseph also has fun with SETI and even some of the laws of physics are not entirely immune from his wit.
On the whole this works well; Mani's game playing, the squabbling scientists and sexual tension make a light and amusing mix. There are a few jarring moments and the sheer variety of the satirical targets means that not every single one is a bullseye.
It's not great literature, but it's great fun and reads easily; the satire though is really rather good.

7 out of 10

Starting The Second Coming by John Niven