What I Read in February 2012

Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum. Oskar refuses to grow after age three, when he begins to play his toy tin drum. It speaks for him during the rise of Nazism, the war years, and the postwar turmoil of a divided Germany.

Scott Turow, Innocent. I enjoy Turow’s legal thrillers because they hold you with puzzles, not violence. Innocent is one of the thrillers in the series devoted to Rusty Sabich and Sandy Stern, lawyers in Kindle County aka Chicago. It has more plot twists than a pretzel and I could not put it down.

Jaroslav Hasek, The Good Soldier Svejk. I am posting on each part of this book as I complete it. Part I – Behind the Lines. Svejk is in the World War I Austro Hungarian army, but not yet in battle. His struggles are with the military itself. Part II – At the Front. Svejk is not actually at the front, just continuing his long bureaucratically-obstructed journey toward that destination.

Margaret Drabble, The Sea Lady. Two people, a man and a woman, journey back to a place of their childhood. They meet there a third person from that time. A bit heavy on reminiscence and coincidence, but a good read for those of us who are looking back at our own reflections.

Angela Thirkell, The Brandons. Lavinia Brandon is rich widow, fond of her children and a bit silly. Everyone around her finds her absolutely charming, as do I. Just the person to spend a giggly afternoon with in 1939 Bartsetshire.

Sandford Salyer, Marmee: The Mother of Little Women. This rather informally written biography of Louisa May Alcott’s mother tells the story of the Alcott family as Abigail May Alcott (Abba) experienced it.

Edmund White, Fanny: A Fiction. Yes, a fiction. Loosely based on Frances Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans, this book is not quite a novel and not quite a biography either. Mostly true to the historical facts, it invents incidents in Frances Trollope’s life, to no particular point that I could see.

Flannery O’Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge. This collection of nine short stories, published after O’Connor’s death is my first experience with her work. The stories are skillfully wrought and intentionally disturbing.

Angela Thirkell, Before Lunch. Another cheerful muddle in the Bartsetshire series. Breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner are all important. That’s where people meet, talk, misunderstand. Some lovers head down the wrong path, but most matters are resolved before lunch.

Katharine Weber, Objects in Mirror Are Closer than They Appear. Two American women, Harriet and Anne, share an apartment in Geneva. The arrangement is temporary. They were roommates before, but now things have changed. Some objects in the mirror are indeed closer, too close.

Svejk at the Front

Funny thing about Part II of Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Svejk — although entitled “At the Front”, Svejk never gets there. Instead, the simple and innocent (or wily, sly and apparently innocent) Svejk continues to wrestle with many levels of the military bureaucracy. By page 443 in my edition he may be getting ready to go where the fighting is. World War I went on for four years, so he has some time yet.

My edition has a selection of Joseph Lada’s cartoon illustrations for the book published in serial form. Here, the Good Soldier Svejk waits for telephone messages.

He transcribes a telegram.

‘As a result of more detailed it has been permitted or the same can on the other hand none the less be supplemented.’

‘This is all pointless,’ said Vanek, when Svejk was frightfully puzzled by what he had written and read it out aloud three times in succession: ‘Sheer stupidity, although God knows it could be in cipher, but in the company we’re  not equipped to receive cipher. You may throw it away as well.’

‘I think so too,’ said Svejk. ‘If I were to report to the lieutenant that he has as a result of more detailed it has been permitted or the same can on the other hand none the less be supplemented, I think he’d perhaps feel offended.’

Svejk is arrested on so many different charges that I lost count. Here he is brought before Judge Advocate Ruller.

Svejk is unshaven because he has been locked up. Note, please the crucifix.

A volume of legal code lay before him, and a half-consumed glass of tea stood on top of it. On the table on the right stood a crucifix made out of imitation ivory with a dusty Christ, who looked despairingly at the pedestal of his cross, on which there were ashes and cigarette stubs.

Here, Svejk (again, unshaven because  he has been locked up on a different matter) has missed his train and consults with the local citizens.

One of them gives some excellent advice: “Only keep your wits about you and see that you don’t stay long at the front.”

Edmund White, Fanny

The title of Edmund White’s novel is Fanny: A Fiction. Who is Fanny and where is the fiction? We have two Fannies. The popular female name Frances was “Fanny” in the 19th century. In this “fiction” Frances Trollope (Fanny) is supposedly writing a biography of Frances Wright (Fanny). But it’s not really a biography, and it’s not really about Fanny Wright, but Fanny Trollope mostly talking about herself.

Intrigued by tales told about the (real) Frances Trollope’s account of her visit to the early United States, I recently enjoyed her Domestic Manners of the Americans. I followed it up with a real biography, Pamela Neville-Sington’s Fanny Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman. This led me to sample the (real) Frances Trollope’s novel The Widow Barnaby. A good time was had by all. Frances Trollope was resourceful, enterprising, hard working and smart. She led three of her children off to the United States in the 1820s. From this misguided adventure she derived a best-selling book and a subsequent career during which she wrote 35 books in 24 years.

I cannot find this (real) Frances Trollope in White’s Fanny: A Fiction. I find a fussy old woman who comments and then comments on her comments.

Like Byron he laughed at ordinary human limitations — a bit easier to pull off if one is a rich English aristocrat rather than a poor French orphan. [Eliminate nationalities? Illogical?]

Some of her remarks are elaborated by a really irritating editor who fortunately disappears during the second half of the book. While many of the events are historical, White adds characters and incidents to spice up his tale. Fanny is given a very improbable romance in Cincinnati and the two Fannies go off together to newly-independent Haiti. Fanny Wright, the supposed subject of the book comes and goes, a goddess ex machina who never fails to produce disaster. If there was any real affection between the two women, it is not apparent here. Fanny herself (this unreal Fanny, that is) recognizes this at the end of the book.

I am afraid now that my mind is clouding over more and more rapidly and I judge this manuscript to be an unshapely muddle. There is too much spite in it, the best passages must be censored and Fanny herself remains irritatingly elusive.

Her mind is not cloudy — this judgement is entirely correct.

Louisa May Alcott slide shows

I am preparing a course devoted to 19th-century writer Louisa May Alcott, her life and times. I have uploaded two slide shows I will use in the course.

Louisa’s Story

The story of the successful author of Little Women, with pictures of the people and places important in her life. Click here for the slide show.

Little Women

An examination of this popular novel for girls. Click here for the slide show.

I am developing additional slide shows to cover Louisa May Alcott’s many other books, as well as the town of Concord and the fascinating people who lived there in her time.

Look for updates in the Pages section of my blog.

Angela Thirkell: An Appreciation

The Brandons is neither the best nor worst of Angela Thirkell’s many novels set in the literary Barsetshire which Anthony Trollope created, but it will do. After an interruption of several years I have returned to Thirkell with renewed appreciation for what she does. Published in June, 1939, this novel concedes nothing to the threat of war — or much of anything else. Comfortable country people meet, play tennis, serve tea, attend church fetes, and await the death of an unpleasant (but wealthy) elderly aunt.

At the center of the story is Lavinia Brandon, a wealthy and attractive widow. She listens to you sincerely while considering her hat and whether to dye the green georgette for mourning. Still, she is keen to rescue a gentlewomen in distress and arrange a marriage if she can. She is aware of her position and responsibilities. Not to do the right thing can cause trouble in Little Misfit and even as far away as Starveacres.

Mrs. Brandon could never be thankful enough that her husband had died at Cannes and been decently buried in the English cemetery. If he had been buried in Pomfret Madrigal church she would have had to keep his grave and memory decorated with flowers. If she had undertaken this pious duty herself she would certainly have forgotten it and left the flowers, a wet mush of decay, to scandalize the village…. The only alternative Mrs. Brandon could imagine was to have what might be called an all-weather grave, sprinkled with chips from the stone-mason’s yard, or battened down under a granite slab, and to do this to the unconscious Mrs. Brandon would have seemed to his widow a little unkind.

In real life most of us don’t have much use for silly people. In Thirkell country, they are charming and fun and we are secure in an author who makes everything comes out all right in the end.

Svejk behind the Lines

Part I of Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Svejk is entitled Behind the Lines. World War I is about to start. Svejk greets the news that a certain Ferdinand has been killed with a certain lack of reverence. Which Ferdinand? The messenger or the one who collects dog manure?

‘On no, sir, it’s His Imperial Highness, the Archduke Ferdinand, from Konopiste, the fat churchy one.’

‘Jesus Maria!’ exclaimed Svejk. ‘What a grand job! And where did it happen to his Imperial Highness?’

We are only page 4 of this lengthy work and the tone is already set. Svejk speaks his mind. He also tells the truth (usually), drinks (often), and looks innocent (always). Hasek himself had been a soldier, among other occupations, as well as an anarchist and a Bolshevik, but not at the same time. His book, The Good Soldier Svejk, came out piecemeal in the early 1920s in Czechoslovakia and was wildly popular. The structure is that of a picaresque adventure, as Svejk lurches from misfortune to catastrophe and back again. Like Bugs Bunny after the roadrunner, knock him down and he springs up again as full of spirit as ever.

Not wishing to serve in the army because of his rheumatism or because he has been certified an idiot — take your choice — he is considered a malingerer and falls into the hands of the medical bureaucracy. Initially declared insane, Svejk appreciates the benefits of such a status.

When Svejk subsequently described life in the lunatic asylum, he did so in exceptionally eulogistic terms: ‘I don’t know why those loonies get so angry when they’re kept there. You can crawl naked on the floor, howl like a jackal, rage and bite. If anyone did this anywhere on the promenade people would be astonished, but there it’s the most common or garden thing to do. There’s a freedom there which not even Socialists have ever dreamed of.’

After more sufferings, Svejk is assigned as a batman, or assistant, to the Chaplain. Hasek regards religious ceremonies as necessary in war.

Preparations for the slaughter of mankind have always been made in the name of God or some supposed higher being which men have devised and created in their own imagination….

Before the Holy Inquisition burnt its victims, it performed the most solemn religious service — a High Mass with singing.

When criminals are executed, priests always officiate, molesting the delinquents with their presence.

Svejk cheerfully assists with all ceremonies, providing the wine, whether sacramental or not, and the oil, whether consecrated or hempseed from the local paintshop only he can know. The chaplain loses at cards and must pass his useful batman on to a Lt. Lukas. Lukas also appreciates Svejks services until his batman obtains for him a stolen dog. Since the dog belonged to the Colonel and both dog and Colonel recognize each other, Lukas and his batman are sent to the front.

‘The high command recently informed us that there is a great shortage of officers in the 91st regiment because they have all been killed by the Serbs. I give you my word of honour that within three days you will be in the 91st regiment….’

End of Part I. Part II, significantly, is entitled At the Front.

I am reading The Good Soldier Svejk as part of a Tea & Books Challenge. Only 536 pages to go.

Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum

This a big book: long and complex — and written by a Nobel laureate. I find my way in by following the voice of Oskar’s drum. Here he is, hiding under the rostrum at a Nazi Party rally:

And then the grim trumpeting of the young troopers began…. The drum was already in place. Supplely and tenderly I manipulated the sticks, imprinting an artful and joyous waltz rhythm upon it. Conjuring up Vienna and the Danube, I beat more and more loudly until the first and second bass drums of the troopers were drawn to my waltz and the kettledrums of the older boys took up my prelude with varying skill.

Oskar is a contrarion. Rejecting a future as a shop keeper in 1930′s Germany, he refuses to grow after age three, remaining exactly three feet high. Lack of growth is not lack of experience, however, as he lives through the periods of Hitler’s ascendancy, the war, and the hard years of the postwar period.

Now, having reached age 30 and resident in a mental hospital, he tells us his story. He recognizes the problem of creating an effective narrative.

You can begin a story in the middle and create confusion by striking out boldly, backward and forward. You can be modern, put aside all mention of time and distance and, when the whole thing is done, proclaim, or let someone else proclaim, that you have finally, at the last moment, solved the space-time problem. Or you can declare at the very start that it’s impossible to write a novel nowadays….

Oskar does not declare it is impossible, although he tells his story with the requisite amount of confusion, as well as circling back and looking forward. Whether we can believe what he says is an irrelevant question. We being given a shot of magical realism. All around Oskar people love, they betray, they suffer, they die, bombs fall, money is made and lost. It’s all real enough. Equally real is Oskar’s drum and its effect on those who hear it, responding to the drumbeats only a child is free to express.

It was three-year-old Oskar who picked up those drumsticks. I drummed my way back. I drummed up the world as a three-year-old sees it. And the first thing I did to these postwar humans incapable of a real orgy was to put a harness on them…. Soon I had their jaws handing down; they took each other by the hands, turned their toes in, and waited for me…. And I drummed up the wicked black Witch…; I made her rage through the Onion Cellar in all her gigantic coal-black frightfulness…; the ladies and gentlemen wept great round, childlike tears….

It’s not the snare drum or the bass drum or the kettledrum that Oskar plays. It is a child’s tin drum. It is too neat to say that only such a drum can portray the world of Germany during those years. Remember, Oskar deliberately remains a small child. Remember, he is certifiably insane. From a crazy child we hear the truth? Maybe, maybe not, but from the crazy child and his drum we certainly hear a compelling rhythm.

Emile Zola, Germinal

Who said this and when?

I was expecting that–the accusation of starving the people and living by their sweat. How can you talk such folly, you who ought to know the enormous risks which capital runs in industry–in the mines, for example? A well-equipped pit today costs from fifteen hundred thousand francs to two millions; and it is difficult enough to get a moderate interest on the vast sum that is thus swallowed. Nearly half the mining companies in France are bankrupt. Besides, it is stupid to accuse those who succeed of cruelty. When their workers suffer, they suffer themselves. Can you believe that the Company has not as much to lose as you have in the present crisis? It does not govern wages; it obeys competition under pain of ruin. Blame the facts, not the Company.

The speaker is a the owner of a small coal mine in northern France in the 1860′s, a character in Zola’s novel Germinal. He lives comfortably enough, but he is a captive of the system, as are the miners. They are ground down by their lives in a world devoted only to coal. The old minor spits black phlegm:

“It’s coal. I’ve got enough in my carcass to warm me till I die. And it’s five years since I put a foot down below. I stored it up, it seems, without knowing it; it keeps you alive!”

This book is painful to read. Zola’s thorough research provides us with detailed descriptions of mining and the conditions in which the men must work. Each day is a struggle to earn enough to keep bread on the table. During the strike there is no bread and no table either, since everything is sold in the effort to survive.

Tears fell over each object of the poor household which had to go, and the mother was still lamenting that one day she had carried away in her skirt the pink cardboard box, her man’s old present, as one would carry away a child to get rid of it on some doorstep. They were bare; they had only their skins left to sell, so worn-out and injured that no one would have given a farthing for them. They no longer even took the trouble to search, they knew that there was nothing left, that they had come to the end of everything, that they must not hope even for a candle, or a fragment of coal, or a potato, and they were waiting to die, only grieved about the children, and revolted by the useless cruelty that gave the little one a disease before starving it.

Zola shows us a world in which all are trapped. The miners have only a dim understanding of the big picture, but they know it is not right.

The workers could not hold out; the Revolution had only aggravated their wretchedness; only the bourgeois had grown fat since ’89, so greedily that they had not even left the bottom of the plates to lick. Who could say that the workers had had their reasonable share in the extraordinary increase of wealth and comfort during the last hundred years? They had made fun of them by declaring them free. Yes, free to starve, a freedom of which they fully availed themselves.

One of the results, besides the strike, is senseless violence which often destroys what little the workers have or can depend on. The miners’ riot recalls some of the urban riots we have had in this country. At such times, people ask why do they destroy? It only hurts them in the long run. They destroy because they are angry and there is no long run.

Germinal is a powerful book. Zola takes the reader into the lives of the miners and makes you experience their anger and their grief.

What I Read in January 2012

My View While Reading

Two weeks in Florida treated me to more time to read but left me short on computer access to keep up with my posts. This tree was my best view from my reading chair when I lifted my eyes from the page on a sunny afternoon.

H. G. Wells, Tono-Bungay. I begin the new year with this non-science-fiction novel by the author of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. Tono-Bungay is a tonic, a harmless patent medicine for the masses and the basis for a fortune which does do great harm in pre-World War I England.

Ngaio Marsh, Artists in Crime. An Inspector Alleyn mystery in which he meets attractive artist Agatha Troy. I knew, from reading later books in the series, that they marry — but not here, not yet. They meet. They are mutually attracted, he solves the crime. I am confident they will get together sooner or later. Wait for the next book.

Jane Smiley, At Paradise Gate. I am an admirer of Jane Smiley and her deft handling of the problems of (mostly) normal people. An old man, a partner in a long-term, often stressful marriage, lies dying. The daughters and a granddaughter gather. The wife copes.

Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture. This book derives from the “last lecture” delivered by Randy Pausch, while living in his last months with pancreatic cancer.

Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans. Fanny Trollope was the mother of the better-known Anthony Trollope and a successful writer in her own right. In 1827 she took several of her children to seek their fortune in the New World. She was both fascinated and disappointed by the new republic. Her observations, often relieved with a little humor, scandalized us all.

Emile Zola, Germinal. This disturbing novel depicts the lives of coal miners in 1860s France and their unsuccessful strike for better conditions and pay. Free-market capitalism justifies all, then and now.

John LeCarré, A Most Wanted Man. I have long admired John LeCarré and his intricately-plotted spy novels, but I am sorry that I read this one. It left me angry at the abuse of power by all sides in our current War on Terror.

Frances Trollope, The Widow Barnaby. Since Fanny Trollope, best known for her critical Domestic Manners of the Americans, was a best-selling novelist in her day, I thought I would try one. The widow is flirtatious, maritally ambitious, outrageous — and dresses in poor taste. What will she do next! Trollope knew a thing or two about keeping the reader involved.

W. E. B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk. Pioneering sociologist DuBois depicts the situation of Blacks in the South forty years after Emancipation. “Souls” are not just the spiritual souls, but the entire consciousness of a people who, after centuries of slavery, receive little support in the freedom they have gained.

Pamela Neville-Sington, Fanny Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman. Fanny Trollope is best known for her critique of the young United States, Domestic Manners of the Americans. It was her first published book, and she was 53. In the next 24 years she wrote six travel books and 35 novels. They were best sellers in their day. Oh, and she was the mother of Anthony Trollope. This well-written biography tells all.