Back to the Classics #20

I read this book for the reading challenge Back to the Classics 2022.

Classic by a Woman Writer: Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969) combined elements of realism, modernism and satire within the vehicle of the domestic novel to examine marriage, family concord and discord, and conceptions of domesticity, femininity, and masculinity. I doubt greatly if she considered herself a feminist but she was an individualist through and through. If you want some good, get it from yourself.

Parents and Children - Ivy Compton-Burnett

This 1941 novel examines the closed world of a large land-owning family living in the English countryside sometime in the 30 years before World War I.

The main attraction and challenge is how the author tells the story of family conflict in a difficult style dependent on dialogue. The conversations are made up of words, expressions, and allusions very much from the time in which the story is set. The grammar playfully twists the English language into the most convoluted contortions possible and still remain comprehensible. Skimming ICB does an injustice to both writer and reader; slowing down reveals the distinctive voices of the individual characters.

Another challenge is that this novel opens in a fashion very leisurely and slow. When the reader realizes the characters are two grandparents (Sir Jesse Sullivan, Regan), two parents (Eleanor and Fulbert), nine kids (!), two governesses (Mitford and Pilbeam), two nurse-maids (Hatton and Mullet), a struggling trio of two sisters and a brother, and four neighbors cheekily named the Cranmers, the reader boggles, wondering how ICB is going to make it clear who’s in the room, who’s talking and who’s glancing swiftly at whom.

But somehow ICB does and in an effortless fashion. Miraculous. I had no problem following the dialogues, even in the first reading (I always read ICB’s novels twice), though I readily admit some sentences just bounced off my brain. If nothing else, this can be read as an example of writer setting herself the herculean labor keeping who's doing what clear and pulling it off. Sadly, it is less acerbic and less savagely over-the-top than the novels listed below.

The nine children, naturally, have fallen into three trios, the oldest (Luce 23, Daniel 21, Graham 20), middle (Isabel 15, Venice 13, James 12) and youngest (Honor 10, Gavin 9, Neville 3). Given the presence of so many kids, we read scenes of kiddish humor and play, a first in the six ICB novels I’ve read. For instance, Mullet gravely agrees to tell the youngest ones the corny-sad stories of her family’s fall from affluence to poverty, which are complete fabrications.

Yes, I will give you the last chapter of my childhood … I was often by myself for hours as I had no equal in the house and I preferred my own company to that of inferiors. Well, there I was sitting in my shabby, velvet dress, swinging my feet in their shabby, velvet shoes; my things were good when they came, but I was really rather neglected; and there came a ring at the bell, and my father was in the house. “And what is this?’ he said, when he hastened to my place of refuge. “How comes it that I find my daughter alone and unattended?”

What’s really funny is the kids remember everything she relates – of course - and they ask probing questions to trip her up on the details of her tall tales. Mullet says she owes her ‘being’ to her father and Honor shrewdly suggests that it may be the other way around. Getting fun out of creating and telling stories, Mullet says, “Sometimes I can hardly believe myself in my own early life.”

With the young children there are scenes with a lot of antics and horse-play. But this is ICB, remember. Sure, some frolics are just for fun. Other games express parental love. And others are attempts to insinuate the initiator into a child’s affections. Horseplay, too, has its dark side and not just the usual tears at feeling left out.

ICB also invites us readers to consider family photographs. What do family photographs mean? Do the moments they capture mean everything to survivors, so much that it’s photo albums people grab with the laptop and jewelry when there’s a fire? If a photo could talk, would we dare to listen? Is it wise to trust the feelings and indulge the moods induced by gazing at a photograph? 

Serious fiction can carry examinations of, as in this novel, self-disclosure and styles of parenting, more telling than any other art form. All fiction writers have to decide what to include and what to exclude. Excluding description, exposition, ideology, stereotypes, and other inessentials, ICB means to explore the ambiguities of human experience in families, giving accounts of tyrants bullies, cowards, sneaks so sorry and pathetic the reader can’t help but feeling them just  “… poor wretches creeping over this earth in the shadow of an eternal wrath (The Good Soldier).” Such convoluted problems we face in life and so lamely are our hearts and minds equipped to deal with them. But we push on, determined not to become what we dislike in others.

Other Reviews of ICB Novels: click the title to go to the review

·         Pastors and Masters (1925)

·         Brothers and Sisters (1929)

·         Men and Wives (1931)

·         More Women Than Men (1933)

·         A House and Its Head (1935)

·         Daughters and Sons (1937)

·         A Family and a Fortune (1939)

 

 

Janeite Delight

A Brief Guide to Jane Austen: The Life and Times of the World’s Favourite Author – Charles Jennings

I rarely read articles about or biographies of my favorite writers because I agree with A.S. Byatt that we are not meant to know anything about writers’ lives.

I think that to know writers’ short-comings, style of work, or their awful family and friends is to not care about their short-comings, style of work, or their awful family and friends.

But.

Jane Austen!

E.M. Forster, like many of us, called himself:

a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression, and airs of personal immunity, how ill they sit on the face, say, of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favourite author! I read and re-read, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers.

So at the used book sale I couldn’t help snatching this book up. 

This short overview is divided into four sections: biography, criticism, period and posterity. It provides insights into the life which I knew nothing about, reflections on the works that seemed reasonable, an overview of the Regency  period about which I knew only about bad George,  and a bit on the various adaptations up to the present day, not particularly interesting. Jennings gives space to put the mores and artifacts of the time into perspective. The explanations of dancing and etiquette were interesting; indeed, I had little suspicion Regency politeness was similar to politeness in Heian Japan. Subordinates could unknowingly walk into tank traps just by speaking to superiors who thought themselves above being approached for conversation.

His explanation of economic and social pressures gives a much better understanding of the functioning of the Austen family as what was normal but also in what was exceptional for the period. One feels grateful that the Austen family was rich to support Jane Austen without her having to struggle for food and shelter.

Still the nosy reader who re-reads Miss Austen can’t help but regret those burnt letters – it was weak-minded of the Austens to fret so much over reputation. We thinking people would have been charitable and fair-minded about their content and who gives a damn what the mob thinks?

Lew Archer Short Stories

The Name Is Archer - Ross MacDonald

Ross MacDonald wrote only about a dozen short stories starring his series hero PI Lew Archer. One reason is that MacDonald probably preferred the elbow room that writing novels allows authors. Another may be that the period in which he wrote the stories, 1946 to 1965, coincided with the shrinkage of the market for short fiction in men’s magazines like Argosy. The 1955 collection The Name is Archer is comprised of seven stories: “Find the Woman,” “Gone Girl,” “The Bearded Lady,” “The Suicide,” “Guilt-Edged Blonde,” “The Sinister Habit,” and “Wild Goose Chase.”

“Find the Woman” was MacDonald first piece of detective fiction. Although he dashed it off in only two days in 1946, it won a prize of $400 (about $4,300 in today’s money) and was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.  To my mind, the best story was “The Suicide” because MacDonald shows deft characterization and uses characters and themes he was to explore in later novels, such as youth headed for trouble, miserable families, and past misdeeds haunting the present.  Anthologists, however, have chosen “The Suicide” only twice for now-forgotten collections. They have preferred to collect “Guilt-Edged Blonde” in no less than eleven anthologies – one of which was The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories.  I think it's the most undistinguished story, because it reads like it could have written by a lot of hard-boiled writers of the 1950s.

I liked the fluent prose. MacDonald has a fine sense of place (Southern California) and sketches out characters quickly. He didn’t weigh down sentences with the labored metaphors and similes that we find in the early Archer novels like The Drowning Pool, The Way Some People Die, and Find a Victim.

While I can’t recommend The Name is Archer to readers new to Ross MacDonald, I’m sure that his admirers will get a charge out of reading about Archer just starting to work as a PI in Los Angeles. The seven stories plus a couple more are reprinted in the collection Lew Archer, Private Investigator.

Something about it is So Irresistible

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior - Ori & Rom Brafman

That's an attitude, sir, that calls for the most delicate judgement on both sides. Because, as you know, sir, in the heat of action men are likely to forget where their best interests lie and let their emotions carry them away. (Gutman, The Maltese Falcon)

In this short comprehensible book Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman take a stab at explaining why our irrationality carries us away. By citing various situations, events and research in social and cognitive psychology, the authors demonstrate how irrationally we deal with problems, how we maintain guidelines and courses that have no future, and why at certain moments we literally lose our minds.

Using the example of a 1977 plane crash in Tenerife, caused by one of the most experienced pilots in the world and head of KLM's safety program, the Brafmans explain the effects of fear of loss. The captain of the KLM plane wanted to be punctual at all costs and unfortunately this compulsion not to lose time trumped logical thinking and he initiated takeoff without permission from the tower. The resulting crash killed 583 people.

Another interesting topic taken up by the authors relates to fairness. How we perceive fairness dramatically affects our perception and sways our thinking. For instance, when we find ourselves in a situation when something doesn’t feel fair – not getting a raise at work, bristling at the charge we don’t pull our weight - we might act like kids and silently quit with, “OK, low profile and just enough to do the job.” Such irrationality is usually not the best response.

So, the book is short, its examples are from the real world. It helped me to think and analyze my own actions in terms of fear of loss, value attribution, diagnosis bias, and group think (following the crowd). The tone is chatty and chirpy at times, like a Ted Talk. A picky reader might have qualms about treating complex subjects such as decision-making, the dynamics of group processes, conformism, and the chameleon effect in fewer than 200 pages. Human behavior is so complicated, that in fact we have no easy research-based answers to such complicated phenomena, and well-meaning, deeply-informed experts in various fields are still arguing about the research.

But it’s an example of pop psychology or self-help that is worth reading if a hardcore reader wants to dip their toe into the topics of rationalism, stupidity, errors and ways of conducting life (or business) mindfully.

The Ides of Perry Mason 41

On the 15th of every month, we publish something about Our Fave Lawyer.

Sulu, Bones, and Spock in the Perryverse

Three actors who later starred the 1960s version of the greatest science-fiction[1] TV show of all time put in creditable performances on the greatest TV courtroom drama of all time.

George Takei puts in a persuasive performance as a Japanese-American accountant in The Case of the Blushing Pearls (season 3, 1959). It’s too much to expect Hollywood writers to get every Asian thing right. While “Kimura” could be a Japanese surname, “Kamuri” could not. Calligraphy so inept that even I can tell it’s inept appears on a scroll that shows up in a jewelry shop and a girl’s apartment. Nobu McCarthy plays a stereotypically gentle and submissive Asian female. These infelicities may or may not be balanced by the presence of Asian-Americans at the center of the plot and an extended speaking part for African-American actor Bill Walker, both phenomena as rare as hen’s teeth on TV in 1959.

With his suggestion of nervous energy, nervous intelligence, and nervous goodwill, DeForest Kelley was often cast as a guy on whom we depended not for his nerves of steel but for his heart of gold. True to form, he plays the soft-touch Peter Thorpe in The Case of the Unwelcome Bride (season 5, 1961). He is the hen-pecked husband of Amanda Thorpe, the daughter of successful and intolerant Walter Frazer. Viewers of a certain age who watched Dark Shadows after school in the early 1970s will recognize the scrumptious Diana Millay as Sue Ellen Frazer, wrongly accused of murder though patently guilty of looking petulant in the first degree. Alan Hale Jr. shows up as a dodgy PI, doing almost as good a job as he did as the con-man Texan in The Case of the Bouncing Boomerang.

Leonard Nimoy appears as a cranky crook in The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe (season 6, 1963). With an intentionally bad haircut, squinty eyes, and agitated manner, he acts belligerently with everybody including Perry. Worst, he slaps around his girlfriend. He totally convinces us of his innate rat-nature. But other familiar faces put in solid performances in this one too. Veteran character actor Lurene Tuttle puts in a fine turn as an eccentric old lady and fussy JamesMillhollin shows up as a fussy floorwalker in a department store (remember those?). Finally, most impressively, a grown-up Margaret O’Brien plays the niece of the eccentric old lady. In a running joke, she gets cut off every time she tries to explain somebody’s behavior with Freudian psychology. Plus on the stand she gets to cry and wail, demonstrating yet again what TCM calls “her startling facility for tears.”

 

 

 

 

 

---

[1] Science fiction explores the human condition in situations not of our current world (original Star Trek), while sci-fi is about square-jawed heroes battling aliens and killer robots and driving star cruisers and shit blowing up in non-stop action that makes you feel sick and tired by the time you escape the theater (rebooted Star Trek).

Back to the Classics #19

I read this book for the reading challenge Back to the Classics 2022.

Classic by a BIPOC Author: It's enjoyable to read books by writers that give minimal attention to money, status, power, and other transitory worries in the course of daily life. 

Six Chapters in a Floating Life – Shen Fu

Scholars think this short memoir was written in 1810. The manuscript lost two chapters in the generation  before it was first published in 1877. It has been a favorite among the Chinese and Sinophile foreigners for its subjectivism and individualism. Many readers connect with the writer’s disregard for traditional fussing and fretting that bar the way to serenity. The writer’s awareness of the sadness of life will call to mind The Tale of Genji and Dream of the Red Chamber.

Poor Shen Fu had quite a row to hoe. He never landed a steady and stable job in the Imperial bureaucracy, but depended on his network to land jobs here and there for a couple years at a time. The jobs sound as if they were of the nature of a superior clerk. In an arranged marriage, he married his cousin Yün. But despite constant financial distress and family intrigues, they were very happy together because both loved reading and the simple life. Yün sounds like the perfect wife of an introspective reading guy, making this a touching story of marital love. She died at only 40 years of age, of uncontrolled bleeds. Shen Fu suspects her death was hastened by depression caused the collapse of her plans to obtain a concubine for him. So, be warned: past morality is a different country. 

Just so you know: having a son by a concubine (when the primary wife was unable to) ensured the family line would continue, a family duty that nobody shirked lightly in traditional China. 

The story feels modernist in the sense the chronology is all over the place. The content about flower arranging, poetry and painting, touring gardens and temple hopping on excursions gives a vivid sense of living according to Taoist thought and traditional Chinese ideas about the good life for a Confucian official. Even with no money to speak of and family plotting and scheming, a flourishing life can be lived with no expectations, living fully in the here and now.

Deptford Trilogy #3

Note: The book reviewed below is the last entry in a trilogy, familiar to readers of a certain age, not so much to people born in the Eighties or after. The second book is The Manticore. If Destiny impels somebody to donate it to a used book sale, I will read the first book, Fifth Business. Davies must have liked the trilogy format, since he wrote one (The Salterton) before Deptford and one (The Cornish) after. 

World of Wonders – Robertson Davies

This novel tells the story about how a child kidnapped by a cheap carnie survives abduction, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, lack of education and exploitation amounting to slavery to become a world-famous illusionist.

Davies takes risks concerning the narrative. The illusionist, marvelous but not at all nice, tells his strange story in long monologues. Really long monologues shot with observations from the romanticism of the old time English theater to train travel across Canada in the Thirties. The other narrative device is the copious notes taken by a friend of the illusionist, who reports the commentary of the listeners about the long long monologues.

To balance the talky format, the story is strange enough to keep the reader interested. Davies inserts information about out-of-the-way knowledge and skills that will interest avid readers who like to know a little about a lot of things. All the characters talk in the same fluent, clever way, in mini-TED talks. They hold forth on sundry curious topics, such that the reader wonders if Davies was mining lecture notes or a commonplace book. To name only a couple learned points, references are made to Robert-Houdin’s autobiography and Spengler’s Decline of the West. Doubtless, Davies was a hardcore reader like us.

Davies touches on heady themes, such as truth and the reliability of memory - how people themselves remember what happened, and in what versions the same events were preserved in the memory of other people who witnessed the same events. Ever a moralist, Davies explores the freedom of choice and how strongly external circumstances influence our ethical decisions or avoidance of them. Davies has characters explore the idea that every action counts. That is, every action will help or hurt. Everything we do or don’t makes on an impression on ourselves, on other people, on life itself. So we had better be careful because expiating transgressions may turn out to be more than we can handle.

I don't usually read like a picky pedant, but three factual goofs bugged me. One, apes don’t have tails; one of the carnie characters is an orangutan, a kind of ape; Davies gives the orangutan a tail. Two, the teen years are a time of growth spurts but Davies gives no indication that a growing teenager had increasing trouble fitting into the small space in which he had to work. Three, Davies refers to the “hard, bright light of Northern countries.” Well, in Regina, Saskatchewan, in spring I can only say “I’ll believe you, I’ve never been there” but the summer light is soft and watery in Riga, Helsinki, and St. Petersburg, where I have been in May. Look at paintings by Finnish impressionists, they captured that light.

Dr Basil Willing #8

Through a Glass, Darkly – Helen McCloy

This 1949 mystery starts in familiar cozy way, with shy young art teacher Faustina Crayle living and working in a girl's boarding school that is prim to the point of forbidding. Like good old Rebecca at Manderley, she’s being given poor service on top of the fisheye by the servants. Faustina’s problem is the fallout from multiple witnesses seeing her double here and there on school grounds

You enter a room, a street, a country road. You see a figure ahead of you, solid, three-dimensional, brightly coloured. Moving and obeying all the laws of optics. Its clothing and posture is vaguely familiar. You hurry toward the figure for a closer view. It turns its head and - you are looking at yourself. Or rather a perfect mirror-image of yourself only - there is no mirror. So, you know it is your double. And that frightens you, for tradition tells you that he who sees his own double is about to die...

One professional and social challenge caused by this uncanny phenomenon is that she is fired from her job. One of her fellow teachers, a pretty refugee Austrian named Gisela von Hohenems, urges her fiancé to look into the ‘termination without cause.’ Her fiancé is psychiatrist Dr. Basil Willing, on staff of a famous Big Apple hospital and consultant to the NYC DA.

Since its first publication, this mystery has received much acclaim for its skillful use of a superstitious belief about The Double  as a background for an outstanding mystery plot (see also Dorothy L. Sayers’ “The Image in the Mirror”). McCloy seems to have known a little about a lot of things. She includes informational tidbits about costume designs for the production of the play Medea, changes in kitchens over time in the Western world, and shifts of attitude on the sable vs. mink controversy. Like Edith Wharton, McCloy provides plenty of details about room arrangements, furnishings, furniture and colors of wall paints. Into describing clothes in a big way, McCloy sent me to my thread-bending wife to ask about words like “chiffon” and “taffeta” and “voile.” And McCloy is not showing off or pandering to readers that know stuff – all these details add to the atmosphere of this well-crafted story.

From the early Thirties to the late Seventies, critics and readers respected McCloy for her elegant writing. Even if the reader is dubious about seemingly supernatural elements in a mystery, McCloy’s solution can also appeal to readers who are skeptical about the paranormal. It’s a challenging balance but she manages it through intelligent and graceful writing that is beyond our expectations for a mystery