1930s | this nerding life

The Resolution Project Season Two: For my New Year’s resolution last year (2011), I decided to try and read all one hundred of the novels picked by Time Magazine as the best since their inception in 1923 to the list’s publication in 2005. I got almost halfway through. I’ve decided to bull-headedly push on through and try and finish the challenge, continuing with the same caveat as before: I’ve exempted myself from reading books I’ve already read, leaving eighty-six or so left to go. Some spoilers may lie ahead, so be warned if you’re the type to be bothered by that. It’s not really worth getting that angry about though.

“My mother – together with her sisters in their unmarried days – had always indulged a taste for investigation in the Unseen World, which even the threatened inconveniences of the Stonehurst ‘ghosts’ could not entirely quench. My father, not equally on terms with such hidden forces, was at the same time no less imbued with belief. In short, the ‘ghosts’ were an integral, an essential part of the house; indeed, its salient feature.” (p. 5)

The Elevator Pitch and What I knew going in: Second (sixth, actually) verse, same as the first. If you’ve been following along with my missives from the land of Widmerpool, Jenkins, et al., you’ll know what you’re getting into here. If not, Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume novel about various middle- and upper-class English people, with a time frame spanning from the 1920s all the way up to the beginning of the Second World War (so far). Nick Jenkins, a writer of … something, is ostensibly the main character, and each book chronicles his interactions with various sets of friends and acquaintances, usually with some overarching theme.

Thoughts: Where the last book, Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant, dealt a lot with the world of feuding musicians and composers, this volume had the feeling of clearing the decks somewhat before WWII kicks off. The Kindly Ones, aka. the Furies of Roman mythology, were cthonic vengeance goddesses, who would pursue oathbreakers and the like. A few characters reach the end of their mortal coil in this volume, but the relatively light-hearted world of the Dance does not allow for sinners to suffer too much. I have a feeling that as the war progresses, this’ll change a lot. There’s definitely a feeling of the old guard getting tossed out in favour of the new this time out.

It was interesting to see Jenkins kind of take some initiative this time out, but as far as I can tell it’s only to save his own skin; he spends most of the book trying to secure a commission in the Army, which I feel is probably his way of avoiding the draft and attempting to get posted somewhere less dangerous? I don’t feel a lot of patriotic fervour coming from Jenkins, so I’m assuming he doesn’t want to haul ass and fight the Hun face to face. I guess I’ll find out next book what position he finds for himself.

While reading this latest entry, I began to long for a chart, or a set of family trees, something like that, to keep straight the sheer volume of characters in the saga. I don’t really know why it took me so long to break down and admit I need help keeping everyone straight, but a chart in the style of the ones you find while reading Love and Rockets would be really handy.

Love and Rockets Issue 31 cover, by Jaime Hernandez

Actually, working my way through the L+R I had available to me when I worked at a comic store is probably one of the closest experiences I’ve had to reading A Dance to the Music of Time, except for the fact that I liked it much better. Its scope is as far-reaching, if not more so, and the characters found within are sketched out much better. I guess if I go with this hypothesis, this makes Widmerpool the Penny Century of the Dance world? Wealthy London industrialist Sir Magnus Donners is obviously H.R. Costigan in this scenario, and… No. This way lies madness.

“‘Why should we wish to ruminate on your most secret orgies?’ said Dr. Trelawney. ‘What profit for us to muse on your nights in the lupanar, your diabolical couplings with the brides of debauch, more culpable than those phantasms of the incubi that rack the dreams of young girls, or the libidinous gymnastics of the goat-god whose ice-cold sperm fathers monsters on writhing witches in coven?’” (p.194)

I liked the introduction of Doc Trelawney, a self-styled hedge wizard and cult leader in the style of an Aleister Crawley. There’s always been a bit of flirting around with mysticism in these books, but it was kind of nice to see someone go balls-out in its pursuance this time. There was a big section I skimmed over, though, where Jenkins reads his and his Uncle Giles’ horoscopes and then is amazed by how much they coincide with his own self-image. Dude, they’re written in a vague, yet reassuring, way for that very reason.

Anyway, this marks the halfway point in my reading of the Dance saga, and so far my rating is meh? It is a pretty impressive project, and it’s pretty amazing how Powell’s writing style evolves over the course of the books, but remains similar enough to the others that it’s never too jarring. Over all, I can’t really recommend this book on its own, but wouldn’t exactly warn you off attempting to read the series if it sounds like something you’re into.

“Just as most of the world find it on the whole unusual that anyone should be professionally occupied with the arts, Moreland could never get used to the fact that most people – in this particular case, Templer – lead lives in which the arts play no part whatsoever.” (p.103)

Similar books on the Time 100 list: Well, the other five books, A Question of Upbringing, A Buyer’s Market, The Acceptance World (combined review of the first three here), At Lady Molly’s and Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant are pretty similar considering they’re all the same book. This volume reminded me a little bit of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, with a similar setting at the seaside for some of it, and similar attitude towards women in love.

Total pages read since January 1st 2011: 16964 pp. (2505 this year)

Total books on the Time 100 list read: 60/113, or 53% complete.

Next up on the Resolution Project: A House for Mr. Biswas, (1961) by V.S. Naipaul. Maybe even more for real this time.

Tagged 1930s, A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell, England, non-protagonists, Time 100, World War II

Jun 11 2012

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The Resolution Project Season Two: A Dance to the Music of Time Book Five – Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant (1960)

Musical Accompaniment: The Clash, “Spanish Bombs”

“To hold a friend in the background at a certain stage of a love affair is a technique some men like to employ; a method which spreads, as it were, the emotional load, ameliorating risks of dual conflict between the lovers themselves, although at the same time posing a certain hazard in the undue proximity of a third party unencumbered with emotional responsibilty – and therefore almost always seen to better advantage than the lover himself. (p. 41)

The Elevator Pitch: Here we go again. When we last left our “hero” Nick Jenkins, he’d wondered about potentially getting married, found a girl, and then got married within the span of two hundred words or so of the last novel, At Lady Molly’s. In this volume, Nick tells us the tale of another group of his friends, this time a feuding bunch of composers, music critics and actors who spend their nights drinking at Mortimer’s, and eating and lusting after waitresses at the improbably named Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant. The plot is similar to the four novels that proceeded it in the Dance series; people fall in love with each other, get married, get divorced, and the incomparable Widmerpool puts in an obligatory appearance.

What I knew about this book, its subject and its author going in: See my last post on the subject.

Thoughts: For the most part, this fifth volume in the Dance series was pretty similar to the rest. I do feel, however, that this one introduced a bit more darkness into the world of 1930s London, as the spectre of the Spanish Civil War begins to loom large over the proceedings. I chose The Clash’s “Spanish Bombs” as the musical accompaniment, not only because it’s one of my favorite songs of all time, but also because the lyrics blend a sort of intellectual, writerly group of allusions with the horrible conflict, in much the same way as Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant does. When Joe Strummer mentions that he’s “hearing music from another time”, it’s hard for me not to reconcile that feeling with this volume, which is all about musicians attempting to interact with their surroundings, blithely unaware for the most part of the mechanized horrors that are to come for the entire world.

Powell kicks this one off with a move right out of the Brideshead Revisited playbook: at an indeterminate time in the future (sometime either during or after the London Blitz), Jenkins is exploring the ruins of one of his old haunts, the Mortimer, where he and yet another group of his cronies used to while away the hours. Right from the get go we realize that this set of friends are only going to exist as they are for a brief period of time. The state of play at the end of the book, which includes an illicit affair, a suicide, and the breaking of a few friendships, shouldn’t be too much for the reader to comprehend considering all is literally in ashes in the book’s opening pages.

As per usual, the big picture events of the period are backgrounded in favour of checking in on Jenkins’ old friends and new ones, in this case Charles Stringham, the alcoholic aristocrat fallen from grace, and, for a brief moment, Widmerpool, who literally runs onset and off again. The Spanish Civil War is related to us through Erridge, Lord Warminster, a progressive thinker who is continually busying himself with left-wing politics and projects. He is of course treated with a little bit of derision by his more traditional family, who see his action (which to be fair is somewhat ridiculous considering his being a pacifist and all) as just another phase:

“‘Like big-game hunting in Edwardian days’ said Robert, ‘or going to the Crusades a few years earlier … I hope he doesn’t go and get killed. I shouldn’t think he would, would you?” (p. 66)

I’m hoping that more and more the people in Jenkins’ world are going to realize that history is coming for them, in a big damn way. I’m sure they will, but for now the darkness is still pretty far off.

I’m starting to realize that Jenkins’ non-protagonist status is just how things are going to go in these books. It’s almost a running joke at this point. This time we find out that his wife is very sick, and staying at a nursing home. We find out a little later it’s because she’s had a miscarriage, but for the most part this scene serves instead to characterize his friend Moreland, whose wife is coincidentally also having a tough pregnancy too! And Widmerpool is here as well (because he is contractually obligated to perhaps), getting treated for boils!

So for what could have been a situation rife with drama for the Jenkins household, it really isn’t. His wife Isobel makes a brief appearance, then is relegated to convalescence and get ready for whatever she gets up to in the background of the next book. While I’m normally not really in favour of those sorts of “expand the world of a book by elaborating on what a secondary character was up to” sort of books, but I do feel as if a compelling story could be told about the life of Dance‘s essentially invisible narrator and his wife. As ridiculous as it sounds, you probably could just tell his story, which so far involves multiple love affairs, a marriage, and a miscarriage, and have a decent story come out of it. The main character of this book series could maybe serve to have a book about him and his life specifically. Or maybe you could write a book about Isobel, and how her husband is always out watching important events happen to other people, and she’s got a string of adulterous relationships or she’s depressed or something, I don’t know.

Powell kind of lets us in on his approach to writing about marriages in this volume though, and why it’s so hands-off:

“A future marriage, or a past one, may be investigated and explained in terms of writing about one of its parties, but it is doubtful whether an existing marriage can ever be described directly in the first person and convey a sense of reality. Even those writers who suggest some of the substance of married life best, stylise heavily, losing the subtlety of the relationship at the price of a few accurately recorded, but isolated, aspects.” (p. 97)

Seeing as how I’ve never been married I can’t really say, but this seems legit. He also gives us a brief glimpse into what goes on in Jenkins’ head while he hears everyone else’s sordid details, giving us perhaps some of the only characterization we’re going to get for this guy, and why he does what he does.

“That odd feeling of excitement began to stir within me always provoked by news of other peoples’ adventures in love; accompanied as ever by a sense of sadness, of regret, almost jealousy, inward emotions that express, like nothing else in life, life’s irrational dissatisfactions.” (p. 155)

Similar books on the Time 100 list: Again the previous Dance books (1-3, and 4) would be likely suspects, and as I mentioned before Brideshead Revisited deals with the sort of wartime reminiscence thing pretty well too.

Total pages read since January 1st 2011: 16710 pp. (2251 this year)

Total books on the Time 100 list read: 59/113, or 52% complete.

Next up on the Resolution Project: A House for Mr. Biswas, (1961) by V.S. Naipaul. Maybe for real this time.

Tagged 1930s, A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, England, non-protagonists, socialism, Spanish Civil War

Jun 04 2012

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The Resolution Project Season Two: A Dance to the Music of Time Book Four – At Lady Molly’s (1957)

“There is something overpowering, even a trifle sinister about very large families, the individual members of which often possess in excess the characteristics commonly attributed to ‘only’ children: misanthropy: neurasthenia: an ability to adapt themselves: all the traits held to be the result of a lonely upbringing. The corporate life of large families can be lived with severity, even barbarity, of a kind unknown in smaller related communities: these savageries and distillations of egoism often rendered even less tolerable if sentimentalised outside the family circle.” (p. 31)

The Elevator Pitch: Hooboy, here’s another one that’s simultaneously really easy and really difficult to summarize. A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume megabook by Anthony Powell that looks at the way the lives of four men and their respective worlds revolve around one another over the course of the first few decades of the Twentieth Century. The main character, Nick Jenkins, is a bit of a cypher, in the grand English tradition of non-protagonist protagonists; he’s more of the lens by which we view the world than any real sort of character (I’ll discuss this more below). In this episode, Nick makes friends with Lady Molly Jeavons, a minor aristocrat who is known for having elaborate and strange dinner parties at her house. Also, the perennial font of ridiculousness Kenneth Widmerpool gets engaged and also contracts jaundice.

What I knew about this book, its subject and its author going in: This isn’t my first time at the Dance rodeo. I read the first three novels of the cycle last year, so I was fairly well acquainted with the subject matter. The book’s in the running for one of the longest ever to be written, giving this list project an added masochistic thrill of conquering it in addition to 99 other books. Based on my experience with the first three, I expected this one would have lots of aristocratic types in it, a frisson of 1930s Socialism, a hint of Hitler’s rise in Germany, and a lot of people falling in and out of love with each other. I was not disappointed.

Thoughts: There’s only so much you can say about these books, it’s basically the same thing as reviewing a big book like Infinite Jest chapter by chapter except with less formal experimentalism and tennis jargon. So far, 1/3 of the way done the book, I think it’s … pretty good? At Lady Molly’s is definitely better than the second book, A Buyer’s Market, but not by much.

This one did continue the annoying (to me) trend of having large events happen in Jenkins’ life basically get backgrounded into irrelevance. Seriously, the main character of the book cycle decides to get married, to Isobel Tolland. While you’d think that this is a pretty important character development, it isn’t really, it doesn’t even get a full page of recognition! Here’s one of the two (!) real mentions of this turn of events, wherein a line makes Jenkins irrelevant again!:

“A background of other events largely obscured the steps leading up to my engagement to Isobel Tolland. Of this crisis in my life, I remember chiefly a sense of tremendous inevitability, a feeling that fate was settling its own problems, and too much reflection would be out of place.” (p.203)

Too much reflection? You’re getting married, man! You’re allowed to reflect on your life for more than one paragraph here, it’s perfectly alright!

For those of you who remember my review of Kinglsey Amis’ Lucky Jim, you’ll recall that I compared Dixon, the hero of the piece, to the Canadian comics slacker icon Scott Pilgrim. If I were to pick a character from that universe that would recall Dance‘s Nick Jenkins, it’d be Joey Comeau, the guy who knows everybody and tells Scott about Ramona Flowers. I’m sure he’s a great guy, he certainly knows a lot of cool people, but he’s not the main character of the book. It’s really frustrating for Jenkins to throw you a little bit of info about himself, then go right back into hearing about how other peoples’ lives are dramatic.

This book continues the apparent English tradition of not being able to deal with veterans of the Great War. Just like in The Death of the Heart, At Lady Molly’s features a WWI vet who articulates the huge differences between the generation who fought in the war and those who came after, Lady Molly’s husband Jeavons:

“‘People don’t think the same way any longer,’ he bawled across the table. ‘The war blew the whole bloody thing up, like tossing a Mills bomb into a dug-out. Everything’s changed about all that. Always rather feel sorry for your generation as a matter of fact, not but what we haven’t all lost our- what do you call ‘em- you know- somebody used the word in our house the other night-saying much what I’m saying now? Struck me very forcibly. You know- when you’re soft enough to think things are going to be a damned sight better than they turn out to be. What’s the word?’

‘Illusions?’

“Illusions! That’s the one.’” (p. 178)

So in short, I can’t recommend this book unless you’ve read the three before it, as you’ll be incredibly lost. If you want to read the prior books, this one’s pretty solid though. Here’s a bit I thought was funny about monkeys and people who don’t like them.

“He spoke in a preoccupied, confidential tone, as if Miss Weedon’s reply might make all the difference by its orientation to plans on foot for Maisky’s education (he’s a monkey named after the Soviet Ambassador to England).

‘I don’t care for monkeys,’ said Miss Weedon.

‘Oh, don’t you?’ said Jeavons.

He stood pondering this flat, forthright declaration of anti-simianism on Miss Weedon’s part. The notion that some people might not like monkeys was evidently entirely new to him; surprising, perhaps a trifle displeasing, but at the same time one of those general ideas of which one can easily grasp the general import without being necessarily in agreement. It was a theory that startled by its stark simplicity.’ (p. 168)

Similar books on the Time 100 list: Well obviously the three Dance books that came before this one have some similarities, but I feel as well that The Death of the Heart portrays the same time, social sphere and place in a similarly interesting fashion.

Total pages read since January 1st 2011: 16481 pp. (2022 this year)

Total books on the Time 100 list read: 58/113, or 51% complete.

Next up on the Resolution Project: A House for Mr. Biswas, (1961) by V.S. Naipaul.

Tagged 1930s, A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly's, England, non-protagonists, socialism, The Great War, Time 100

May 12 2012

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The Resolution Project Season Two: The Man Who Loved Children (Part Two)

“Henny, never speaking to him, heard him with fright; but she had given herself up entirely to despair; she said nothing, and it seemed to her that (now that the clouds had rolled away) she saw her husband for the first time: she had married a child whose only talent was an air of engaging helplessness by which he got the protection of certain goodhearted people – Saul Pilgrim, who was penniless, various old Socialists, of small property, and in the dim past, by the same means, her own father.” (p. 325)

Thoughts: So I finally finished this beast. As I mentioned before, I really did not care for this book at all. I will say though, that it got a little bit better, but that is really not saying much. Maybe it’s the Stockholm Syndrome talking, but once the Pollit clan moved out of Washington to “Spa House” in Annapolis, halfway through the book, it started to get marginally better. This is a book that was desperately in need of editing. Look at the quote I pulled above. That is one long sentence there, folks, Frankensteined together with count ‘em, seven commas, two semi-colons, a regular colon, a dash and a pair of brackets. And the whole book is written like this! It’s a nightmare.

I kind of started to compare this book to a movie like Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father in my head, as that too deals with a similarly rising dread throughout. The problem is though, the film takes 95 minutes to tell its terrible story, whereas The Man Who Loved Children is an agonizing 527 pages of overwritten handwringing, philosophizing, babytalking and insulting, delivered to us through a cast of characters who are all completely and totally unbelievable. Had the book been cut down substantially, we wouldn’t have to spend hundreds of pages detailing just how and why mother Henny and father Sam are so goddamn terrible. One or two instances would have been more than enough, as opposed to the relentless cavalcade of misery that is heaped upon the children, and by extension, whatever poor bastard decided he should read this book in a feat of literary masochism.

Jonathan Franzen, who I believe alongside Time 100 list creator Richard Lacayo is the only reason this book has any critical sway right now, tells us in 2010 that the character of Louisa is based on author Christina Stead. This must be the only reason that the character is an accomplished poet/martyr figure, because nothing in Louisa’s background and upbringing would suggest that. She’s a total Mary Sue-type character, an author stand-in and wish fulfillment fantasy. You literally have no choice but to side with her, and by proxy, the author. Note though that she is given substantial physical defects though, so it’s not a classic Mary Sue move. It’s absolutely ludicrous, though, that a twelve year old would be as well-read as Louisa is in the novel. In addition to that, the school scenes, featuring Louisa’s only friend Clare, are absolutely nonsensical and a complete waste of space, and also prove that she’s not getting some sort of amazing schooling to make her this way. It’s pretty unbelievable to me that Louisa and her friends compose an epic poem cycle about their teacher, alongside numerous plays and other pieces. I realize that before TV and video games people were more inventive, but come on now .

So, I get it. Sam Pollit is an absolutely horrifying man. He’s a symbol of the evils of American-style paternalism and science gone unchecked. One of my “favorite” running themes concerns his attitude towards eugenics and social planning; at one point the phrase “if I were a Stalin or Hitler” is dropped, as Stead decides to go so far as to invoke Godwin’s Law on her main character about 50 years early. There must have been a more elegant way of relaying this information to me.

Franzen’s right about how this book should be included in the feminist discourse, though. If only for the fact that it makes The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series seem like a nice place for a little girl to grow up. It’s about as strident an attack on patriarchal society as you’re going to get, although I’d argue that Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook does this in a much more interesting form, with much, much better writing. I am so glad to be done this book, you have no idea.

Similar books on the Time 100 list: If I was to be a real bastard and recommend books like this one to someone, The Golden Notebook for sure. I’m also assuming that people who “enjoy” this one would get something out of Revolutionary Road, although this is me saying this without having read the book yet, just based on the movie. Also, Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret would probably share some thematic similarities, but I kind of feel like a dick for grouping those two together.

Total pages read since January 1st 2011: 16452 pp. (1993 this year)

Total books on the Time 100 list read: 56/113, or 50% complete.

Next up on the Resolution Project: I am going to have to think about this one, it depends on what treasures the library makes available to me.

Tagged 1930s, bad parenting, Christina Stead, Great Depression, modernism, socialism, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Man Who Loved Children, Time 100

Apr 19 2012

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The Resolution Project Season Two: The Man Who Loved Children (Part One)

“Henny daily revealed the hypocrisy of Sam, and Sam found it his painful duty to say that Henny was a born liar. Each of them struggled to keep the children, not to deliver them into the hands of the enemy: but the children were not taking it in at all. Their real feelings were made up of the sensations received in the respective singsongs and treasure hunts.” (p. 33)

The Elevator Pitch: For me, living at the Pollit house would be akin to hell on earth. Sam and Henrietta “Henny” Pollit must rank among the worst couples of all time. They live in Washington D.C. where Sam works in some sort of governmental capacity while Henny attempts to look after his ever-increasing brood of children. She acts like a shrewish harridan, while Sam is a baby-talking buffoon. I hate this book.

What I knew about this book, its subject and its author going in: Nothing at all. I am kind of jealous of those days now.

Thoughts: As I mentioned in my last post, this book is a real motherfucker. It is long, overwritten, and filled with characters I can’t even begin to identify with. The eponymous “Man”, Sam Pollit, is among the most annoying characters it has ever been my misfortune to read about. He shifts wildly between Roosevelt-era Socialist dreamer, to baby-talking manchild, to condescending educated douchebag, almost every other sentence. I get that we’re not supposed to like him as readers, but this is a bit much.

He also brings back another one of my pet peeves, the overuse of accents in fiction. Whereas in something like Call It Sleep, The Berlin Stories or some of the Boston parts of Infinite Jest, accents are used to demonstrate the differences between people, be they immigrants, tourists or members of the underworld, Sam Pollit busts out accents all the time, just because he’s a dick. He pretends that he’s a stereotypical old Jewish guy, or a “cornpone” Southern guy, or someone from Singapore, just to get cheap laughs out of his kids, who essentially worship the ground he walks on. That’s literally the only reason. I’m sure Stead knew that this would happen, that I would hate her main character, so bravo, Stead! You made me hate a guy by making him unbearable to read about. You deserve some sort of award. And so does Sam Pollit, who is able to impress children with “funny” voices. What a champ, you guys.

His wife Henny is probably the closest thing to someone we can empathise with, as her husband has essentially driven her crazy with his wacky antics. The children in the book are so far pretty unbelievable characters. Louie, Sam’s daughter from his previous wife, is prone to reciting bits of poetry and theology, which would be okay if she wasn’t something like 12 years old. How is she able to remember all this stuff? Could it be that she’s only a mouthpiece for the author to attempt to class up her story with? Much like Scarlett’s son in Gone With the Wind, the younger children are written as if Stead had never seen a real human child talk. It reminds me of nothing more than the “Superbaby” stories that would crop up in Action Comics in the ’50s and ’60s. Here he is packing up a super-bindle:

So yeah, so far I don’t really like this book very much. I’m hoping it ends in Grand Guignol-style with a huge bloodbath. To close up today, here’s Henny discussing which is the best way to kill yourself, which is not a great thing to put in a book that seriously makes you consider it:

“There are so many ways to kill yourself, they’re just old-fashioned with their permanganate: do you think I’d take permanganate? I wouldn’t want to burn my insides out and live to tell the tale as well; idiots! It’s simple. I’d drown myself. Why not put your head in a gas oven? They say it doesn’t smell so bad.” (p. 164, this goes on for a long time).

Tagged 1930s, bad parenting, Christina Stead, Great Depression, modernism, socialism, The Man Who Loved Children, Time 100

Feb 09 2012

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The Resolution Project Season Two: The Death of the Heart (1938)

First off, I feel like this is in order, because this book was a chore to get through, and as such delayed my reading project even worse than Skyrim did:

“She had watched life, since she came to London, with a sort of despair – motivated and busy always, always progressing: even people pausing on bridges seemed to pause with a purpose; no bird seemed to pursue a quite aimless flight. The spring of the works seemed unfound only by her: she could not doubt people knew what they were doing – everywhere she met alert cognisant eyes. She could not believe there was not a plan of the whole set-up in every head but her own” (p.72)

The Resolution Project Season Two: For my New Year’s resolution last year (2011), I decided to try and read all one hundred of the novels picked by Time Magazine as the best since their inception in 1923 to the list’s publication in 2005. I got almost halfway through. I’ve decided to bull-headedly push on through and try and finish the challenge, with a caveat: I exempted myself from reading ones I’ve already read, leaving some eighty-six or so left to read. Some spoilers may lie ahead, so be warned if you’re the type to be bothered by that. It’s not really worth getting that angry about though.

The Elevator Pitch: Portia Quayne is an orphan. After flitting about in hotels and shabby flats on the Continent with her mother before her death, Portia has come to London to live with her brother Thomas and his wife Anne. No one really knows what to make of the quiet young girl, whose gormlessness and eager-to-please nature seem to lay bare the veneer of civilization in the 1930s. Portia falls in love with an old friend of Anna’s, Eddie, who works at Thomas’ advertising concern. This adolescent crush sets in motion a series of events that makes everyone feel really bad.

What I knew about this book and its author going in: Absolutely fuck-all. It is apparently a defect in my character and education that not once in working towards my degree in English Literature that the name Elizabeth Bowen and this, her supposed masterpiece ever came up. Now that I’ve rectified the situation, I cannot say that I feel like I was missing out in the slightest.

As I noted above, this book was an absolute beast to work through, and this is solely due to the style it was written in. The back cover calls this a “psychological novel”, which I take to mean it purports to explore the psychological makeup of characters as they move through the world of the book. Which it does. To a fault, I’d say.

Bowen proves herself capable of really beautiful turns of phrase, and really good at examining how people tick, especially when it comes to the female characters in the book, Portia, Anna and Matchett the housekeeper. What I found, in my opinion anyway, fault in, was that the book was narratively not as strong. It shares this distinction with the last book I read on the Time 100 list, Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, which I also had a hell of a time pushing through.

Where Bowen shines is in depicting thumbnail sketches of characters right at the exact moment she turns her eyes towards them. One in particular I found well done was the character of Major Brutt, a military man who vaguely knew Anna before mustering into the service. He’s sort of a boring guy to encounter, as he’s been out of circulation for so long that he has forgotten how to get along in London society, assuming of course he ever really fit in to begin with. One sequence I enjoyed was when Brutt, who has sort of accidentally ingratiated himself into life at 2 Windsor Terrace, mistakenly drops in at the wrong time and has a drink with Thomas instead of Anna. Thomas, who’s not exactly a social butterfly himself, feels like Brutt wants something from him, something like a job or a connection, rather than the basic human company he actually craves. It leads to this excellent summation of men of Brutt’s type:

“All he seemed to have put on the market was (query) experience, that stolid alertness, that pebble-grey direct look that Thomas was finding morally hypnotic. There was, of course, his courage – something now with no context, no function, no outlet, fumbled over, rejected, likely to fetch nothing. Makes of men date, like makes of cars; Major Brutt was a 1914-1918 model: there was now no market for that make. In fact, only his steadfast persistence in living made it a pity he could not be scrapped.” (p.113)

This makes concrete a really unfortunate facet of the world of the 1930s, as well as the world of today. It is especially poignant considering the death of the last known participant in the Great War, Briton Claude Choules, died last year, while the last serviceperson, Florence Green, died only a few days ago (source). Some people unfortunately find their purpose in a specific time and place, and cannot cope with the world after that time and place are no more.

Portia’s kind of in the same boat. While living with her mother, she was itinerant, moving around Europe in a sort of fairy tale of funny people met in hotels and different vistas seen out of the window, a counterpoint to, again, the homeless girls in Housekeeping. When this state of affairs is no longer applicable, she cannot fit in with the upper-middle class London society that Thomas and Anna aspire to. She gets along better with the staff of the house, taking tea with Matchett everyday. So, like Brutt, Portia has a tendency to put people on edge; where he makes younger folks feel a little ashamed at their lack of service, or forces them to imagine the hell he’s been put through in their defence, Portia reminds them of their own innocence long forgotten, and makes them feel ashamed of what they’ve become.

When she meets Eddie, it seems good on paper (joke). Eddie’s a misfit too, he didn’t set the world on fire with his writing (unlike fellow houseguest St. Quentin, who appears to do all right for himself, and is also the catalyst for the climax of the book), nor does he do a great job in advertising. It doesn’t work out between them though. Eddie’s a bit of a man-whore, catting about with Anna at the same time as his so-called romance with her half-sister in law Portia, and holding hands with women he meets in Seale, which I gather is the 1930s equivalent to a dirty bathroom hookup? Anyway, he’s a mess, and he takes Portia’s 16-year old heart and fucks it up, seemingly irrevocably.

So while I can appreciate the amount of detail Bowen is able to put into character study, in my mind anyway, a little of that goes a long way. When that’s the main “driving” force of your novel, though, it starts to wear on me. Narrative-wise, there’s maybe 5 or 6 actual events that happen throughout the year or so the novel takes place in. I can only imagine how long this book would have been in the hands of another writer. Raymond Chandler probably could have told this story in a page or two, and would have had enough room for shots to ring out and a couple of one liners. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that The Death of the Heart, while probably a great novel based on sheer technical brilliance alone, was not for me, in the exact opposite way the something like Blood Meridian wasn’t for me. Give it a try, though, if the subject matter and time period sound interesting to you. Personally, it reaffirmed my enjoyment of historical novels written long after the period has come and gone. I like the insight into London at this time that Bowen brings to the table, but I’d rather it was filtered through the little bit of artifice that “historical” writing brings.

“We all create situations each other can’t live up to, then break our hearts at them because they don’t. One doesn’t have to be in love to be silly, because then one makes a thing about everything.” (p. 315)

Similar books on the Time 100 list: American Pastoral and Are You There God?It’s Me Margaret also examine the state of mind of a preteen/teenage girl, but in radically different ways. If you’re interested in the time period, the Dance to the Music of Time cycle is a look at London right around then. Appointment in Samarra, while it takes place in America, examines the same sort of set I believe that Anna and Thomas would feel a part of, at around the same period in time as well. Finally, I feel like The French Lieutenant’s Woman also explores the psyche of Victorians in the same way this looks at that of the Interwar Period, but in a way I found much more enjoyable to read. It’s something about the distance between author and subject that I enjoy.

Total pages read since January 1st 2011: 14877 pp. (418 this year)

Total books on the Time 100 list read: 52/113, or 46% complete.

Next up on the Resolution Project: I, Claudius, by Robert Graves (1934)

Tagged 1930s, bad parenting, Elizabeth Bowen, England, modernism, review, The Death of the Heart, Time 100, World War I

Nov 22 2011

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The Resolution Project Book Forty: A Handful of Dust (1934)

“But with the exception of her sister’s, opinion was greatly in favour of Brenda’s adventure … It had been an autumn of very sparse and meagre romance; only the most obvious people had parted or come together, and Brenda was filling a want long felt by those whose simple, vicarious pleasure it was to discuss the subject in bed over the telephone.” (p. 54)

The Resolution Project: For my New Year’s resolution this year (that being 2011), I decided to try and read all one hundred of the novels picked by Time Magazine as the best since their inception in 1923 to the list’s publication in 2005. I exempted myself from reading ones I’ve already read, leaving some eighty-six or so to read before the end of this year. Some spoilers may lie ahead, so be warned if you’re the type to be bothered by that.

Tony and Brenda Last are members of the increasingly irrelevant landed aristocracy in 1930s England. Tony is somewhat obsessed with the upkeep of his estate, Hetton House, which he insists must keep its Gothic architecture even in the face of fashion and his own wife’s desires. When John Beaver (a worthless layabout who lives with his mother) is mistakenly invited over for a weekend, events are set into motion that will destroy the marriage of the Lasts and pretty much wreck Tony’s entire existence as he knows it.

First off, sorry about the late post here. In addition to the birthdays of four or five people, -30 degree temperatures making it a pain in the ass to go to the library, Christmas ramping-up at the store and getting ready for Graphic Content’s third outing (also the subject of my next post wouldn’t you know?), I also thought it would be a good idea to buy Skyrim. After all, I made it through Arkham City without missing too much reading time, so what could be the problem?

Frost Trolls. Frost Trolls are very much a problem.

Anyway, I powered through all of these temptations/complications and finished. My technique for Skyrim, by the way, was to not go into the room my Xbox is in, just to entirely disregard its existence for a couple of days. Success! It’s not even like A Handful of Dust is a long book, or tiresome to get through, it’s actually a fantastic read, which made this situation even more unpleasant for me. In fact, I’d be willing to say that I enjoyed it almost as much as I enjoyed the previous entry by Waugh in the list, Brideshead Revisited.

Dust presents us an interpretation of the sanctity of marriage that is only matched on the list so far by Doris Lessing’s apocalyptic The Golden Notebook. When Brenda Last begins her affair with the non-entity known as John Beaver, as the above quote indicates, the situation becomes one of great fun and enjoyment for everyone in civilized society, and no one care a whit about the feelings of her husband, or the well being of their child. Brenda even attempts to set Tony up with a mistress to give him something to do, resulting in hilarious scenes where “Princess” Abdul Akbar attempts to seduce a man who has no idea why she’s even there, much less any interest in her.

This all ends up in Tony having to do the gentlemanly thing and give Brenda a divorce. The only way this can be accomplished, however, is for Tony to be the adulterer, which results in him taking a dance-hall girl (and her eight-year old daughter) to Brighton for scandalous photos to be taken (with the dance-hall girl, I mean, not the kid). I will admit to being a little confused as to why Tony had to be seen as the bad guy for the divorce proceedings, it must have something to do with keeping Brenda’s reputation intact so that she can marry Beaver? The scenes where Tony mingles with the detectives he’s hired to follow himself are pretty funny though.

There were a lot of great pieces to this novel. I really liked the parish priest in Hetton who recites sermons he wrote while stationed off in India and Afghanistan, hoping that no one calls him on this fact. I also liked how everyone knew about this, but didn’t have the heart to tell him, and how the mention of exotic flora and fauna in the priest’s sermons presage Tony’s ultimate retreat from the civilized world. Dust also reaffirms my belief that horses in works of great literature are evil, and will kill children at almost a moment’s notice (see: Gone With the Wind, and I’m sure there’s more coming). I loved the last names everyone had, and I liked John Beaver’s mother a lot. She had the hustle and ambition of a Scarlett O’Hara, and was one of the few characters in the novel who weren’t completely ridiculous. I liked Jock Grant-Menzies, and the brief look at English politics he gives us (it’s completely ineffectual, dull and boring, not to mention incomprehensible).

While I don’t think Dust is quite as good as Brideshead Revisited, it does have a better title, for one, and it feels real with regards to the betrayal of a loved one. I’m continuing my tradition here of not really researching the novels much more than a quick wiki search while reading (apparently there’s a movie of this book?), but you can definitely tell from reading this book that someone hurt Evelyn Waugh very deeply, and he decided to immortalize them in the characters of Brenda Last and John Beaver, possibly as a revenge that would far outlast any of the participants.

Who would I recommend this book to?: People who like seeing the foibles and frailties of the upper crust laid bare. People who liked other entertainments featuring large manor houses, like Gosford Park, and Downton Abbey. People who won’t be crushed by the unflinchingly harsh portrayals of love, marriage and women found in the book.

Total pages read since January 1st: 13829 pp.

Total books on the Time 100 list read: 49/113, or 43% complete.

Next up on the Resolution Project: The Heart of the Matter (1948), by Graham Greene.

Tagged 1930s, A Handful of Dust, bad parenting, England, Evelyn Waugh, non-protagonists, review, Skyrim, Time 100

Nov 11 2011

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The Resolution Project Book Forty-One: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

“Because in some men it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons – throw it to some human being or some human idea. They have to.” (p. 32-33)

John Singer is a deaf-mute man living in a mill town in the American South during the Great Depression. After his friend, a fellow deaf-mute named Antonapoulos is committed to an asylum, Singer somehow becomes the focal point for people in the town to tell all of their sorrows to. They include; Biff Brannon, owner of the New York Cafe and married to a sickly woman; Mick Kelly, a girl from a poor family who is obsessed with one day composing a great symphony; Jake Blount, an alcoholic would-be Communist turned carnival attendant; and Doctor Copeland, an African-American doctor who bemoans the plight of his impoverished people.

This was a pretty solid book, which illustrates the dangers of turning someone you know (or at least think you know) into a sort of Christ-figure who you feel could absolve you of all of your sins. Like many of you, I’d first heard the phrase “the heart is a lonely hunter” from the song by Reba McEntire, who, with the rest of her pop-country ilk, was on the radio any time my father drove somewhere when I was younger. After listening to it again, there isn’t much that the two have in common, other than acknowledging a desperate longing that dwells deep within the bowels of the human soul. For McEntire, this takes the form of a woman seeking out a one-night stand; for McCullers the hunger is more complex.

All of “the people” who talk at Singer (I say at, because you’re never really too sure how much he’s listening, but at least he looks like he is, right?) are basically using him like a psychotherapist performing Freud’s talking cure. Unfortunately, all of their problems are way too big to be solved in this manner, they’ve all got to do with the abject poverty and predation that were omnipresent in the South at this time. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a good companion piece to The Grapes of Wrath in this way, approaching the grand themes of that novel, but in a somehow gentler way. I must say that the Time 100 list is definitely well stocked with tales of Southern tragedy; in fact that’s probably the biggest theme to be found on the list in my reading so far. If the intention of the list’s creators is to make me feel sympathy for Southern people down on their luck, consider that accomplished, I guess, but it’s starting to get a little old to me.

McCullers also has a lot to say about how human beings perceive people, as well as how time erodes the rough edges off of the things we like. Hunter shows us how we put a lot of stock in other people, and how when they don’t meet up to our expectations the results can be devastating. The mute is no exception to this, as we the reader are privy to his own need to expound on the thing he loves, namely the mentally unsound Greek man who was his best friend:

“This was the friend to whom he told all that was in his heart. This was the Antonapoulos who no one knew was wise but him. As the year passed his friend seemed to grow larger in mind, and his face looked out in a very grave and subtle way from the darkness at night.” (p. 204)

That’s all I’ve got to say about this one, really. It was good, but parts of it were a little familiar at this point in the game. Down below, you’ll notice I’ve changed the numbering scheme I’m using for the list. I’ve decided to tackle the entirety of Anthony Powell’s epic A Dance to the Music of Time “dodecahedral masterpiece”, and so the number below reflects that, as well as my having finished the Lord of the Rings books when I was younger. They were okay, but I really have no desire to ever go back to Tolkien ever again. I’ll gladly up my number though

“That is the way they talk when they come to my room. Those words in their heart do not let them rest, so they are always very busy.” (p. 216)

Who would I recommend this book to?: People who want to explore how human beings interact with each other in reality and in our own heads. People who are not sick of reading books about Southerners who are sad.

Total pages read since January 1st: 13604 pp.

Total books on the Time 100 list read: 48/113, or 42% complete.

Next up on the Resolution Project: A Handful of Dust (1934) by Evelyn Waugh

Tagged 1930s, Carson McCullers, Great Depression, Oprah's Book Club, Reba McEntire, review, The American South, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Time 100

Sep 27 2011

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The Resolution Project Book Thirty-Seven: The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

“Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling.” (p. 33)

The Joad family of Salisaw, Oklahoma is in a bind. The owner of the land they sharecrop off of has decided to try factory farming as the Dust Bowl looms over the Midwest, and the Joads are left with nowhere to live. When their boy Tom Joad is released from McAlester Prison for good behaviour off of his homicide stint, the family decides to pack it all up and head West to the fabled land of California, which has been described to them by handbills as a land of plenty, with jobs and land for all who care to take them. But should the family survive the trek in their ancient jalopy, what is to separate them from the hundreds of thousands of other migrants who also have come to the Golden State?

Like The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath is one of those inviolable CLASSICS of literature that without a doubt deserves its spot on the Time 100 list. The book captures a period in time so well, and with such detail and gravitas that it will undoubtedly endure as long as books are read, a cautionary tale of what happens when too much power and influence is centered in the hands of too few. Also like Gatsby, Wrath is one of the books on the list I felt deeply ashamed for not having read before, but also probably don’t have too much to say about. Its influence has been so profound, and the quality of the text so high, that everyone at least knows about it, and won’t glean any sort of insight from my feeble attempts at analysis. So I won’t try too hard on that.

The last book I read, Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep, was difficult for me to get through, partly because of the author’s insistence on keeping the argot of non-English speakers’ language intact, for better or worse. In Wrath, though, while the language of the “Okies” was nowhere near gramatically perfect, it was still accessible in a way that Roth’s text was not. Perhaps the poor sharecroppers’ English reminded me subconsciously of the people who attended my high school in rural Alberta?

One aspect of Wrath that really spoke to me was the way in which Steinbeck would occasionally shift his narrative focus away from the Joad family, giving us a glimpse into the life of another person in the era. He shows us the life of a diner waitress and a used-car salesman, among others. This alleviates a problem I thought I might have with the book going in; while the story of the Joad family is certainly gripping, it could occasionally become too depressing to bear. Shifting focus to someone else gives us time to breathe, while deepening our knowledge of the era. Even the aforementioned car salesman, who could have come off as a minor villain without this focus, is made somewhat understandable to the reader. He, like everyone else, just trying to get by. Steinbeck is more likely to blame the system that has set salesmen at odds with customers more than any individual person.

The author saves his real vitriol for the landowners, the true, though unseen, villains of the piece, and also for tractors (Steinbeck hates himself some goddamn tractors), the most visible tool of encroaching industrialism upon the dying rural society. Some of the best passages in the book are descriptions of tractors “raping the land”, or diatribes on how the owners work, just how things have gotten so bad, and why they fear the little people.

“And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. (p. 249)

I think that remembering things like this are even more important in today’s society than ever, what with Wall Street engineering a housing bubble that has destroyed the global economy and plunged the world into recession yet again. The lessons of the past are always there for us to see, it is only when we either forget about them, or willfully ignore them like the bankers at Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. did, that they come back and bite us all on the ass. I can see why Wrath faced so much political controversy upon its release, it’s because it’s filled with unhappy truths like these. It could easily be seen as a piece of socialist literature, as its critics undoubtedly tagged it, but it’s more humanist than anything else.

“There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates – died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.” (p. 365)

Total pages read since January 1st: 11601 pp.

Total books on the Time 100 list read since January 1st (not including ones read before 2011): 28

Next up on the Resolution Project: Gone With The Wind, by Margaret Mitchell (1936)

Tagged 1930s, California, Great Depression, John Steinbeck, Pulitzer Prize, review, The American Midwest, The Grapes of Wrath, Time 100

Jul 08 2011

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The Resolution Project Book Thirty-Five: Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

“There was a stiffness in him that would be hard to break, but that, nevertheless, would one day surely be broken. As hers had been, and Richard’s — there was no escape for anyone. God was everywhere, terrible, the living God; and so high, the song said, you couldn’t get over Him; so low you couldn’t get under Him; so wide you couldn’t get around Him; but must come in at the door.” (p. 226)

The Resolution Project: For my New Year’s resolution this year (that being 2011), I decided to try and read all one hundred of the novels picked by Time Magazine as the best since their inception in 1923 to the list’s publication in 2005. I exempted myself from reading ones I’ve already read, leaving some eighty-six or so to read before the end of this year. Some spoilers may lie ahead, so be warned if you’re the type to be bothered by that.

John Grimes is a young man growing up in the poverty-stricked Harlem of 1935, continually being told that he is destined to become a man of God. His father, Gabriel, is a tyrant who preaches fire and brimstone every Sunday at the Temple of the Fire Baptized Church. Gabriel makes his son’s life a living hell, so much so that John even daydreams about killing him. One night, when John, Gabriel, John’s mother Elizabeth and his aunt Florence are at the Church, all are caught up in a religious rapture through which the reader learns about their pasts. At the end of this sequence, John undergoes a series of horrific visions and emerges from this ecstasy with a revitalized furor for the Church.

The majority of this book is taken up by the “Prayers of the Saints” scenes in which we learn about the three older peoples’ pasts, and through them learn about how John came to be. I thought the back-stories of the gathered faithful were far more interesting than the framing story about John. It was an interesting way to read a story, almost Rashomon-ish in the way it moved around through time and space, although without that film’s use of unreliable narration. You ended up putting the pieces together as to why Gabriel hated his son, why Gabriel’s sister hates him, etc. So that was kind of fun.

John’s father Gabriel is by far the most interesting character in the book. I liked how he was a complete asshole the entire time, who barely even paid lip service to the ideas of repentance he preaches to his flock. What did begin to wear on me after a while were the sermons. There is a lot of sermonizing and moral lessons and stuff in this book, and it got pretty boring after a while. While I did recognize some of the allusions to Biblical imagery that were to be found in the intertwined stories of Gabriel and his son, I really felt like I was being pounded over the head with it.

It actually put me in mind of Canadian author Timothy Findley’s excellent book Not Wanted on the Voyage, which actually just explored the lives of Noah and his kids (to name an example from Mountain), rather than preaching it at me. Maybe all of this sermonizing wouldn’t have been so boring to me if I were even remotely religious? Who knows. I just know that quotations like the one above, how John’s will must be broken before God, read more to me like dispatches from Room 101 in Nineteen Eighty-Four than any sort of belief system I’d like to adhere to.

I learned later that this book is semi-autobiographical, which explains to a certain extent why the character of John is such a cipher. It’d be difficult to examine yourself at the age of fourteen with anything resembling objectivity, so that’s why Baldwin chose to focus instead on John’s family members. That’s my take on it anyway.

“To ‘come along’ meant that he would change his ways and consent to be the husband she had traveled so far to find. It was he who, unforgivably, taught her that there are people in the world for whom ‘coming along’ is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.” (p100-101).

Total pages read since January 1st: 9268 pp.

Total books on the Time 100 list read since January 1st (not including ones read before 2011): 24

Next up on the Resolution Project: San Diego Comic Con Vacation!

Tagged 1930s, bad parenting, Christianity, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Harlem, James Baldwin, New York City, non-protagonists, racism, review, The American South, Time 100

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Tag Archives: 1930s

The Resolution Project Season Two: A Dance to the Music of Time Book Six – The Kindly Ones (1962)

The Resolution Project Season Two: A Dance to the Music of Time Book Five – Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant (1960)

The Resolution Project Season Two: A Dance to the Music of Time Book Four – At Lady Molly’s (1957)

The Resolution Project Season Two: The Man Who Loved Children (Part Two)

The Resolution Project Season Two: The Man Who Loved Children (Part One)

The Resolution Project Season Two: The Death of the Heart (1938)

The Resolution Project Book Forty: A Handful of Dust (1934)

The Resolution Project Book Forty-One: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

The Resolution Project Book Thirty-Seven: The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

The Resolution Project Book Thirty-Five: Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

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Tag Archives: 1930s

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