The Salinger Myth

Two interesting articles on the recently deceased J.D. Salinger.

One at Salon.com
One at NY Times

Salinger was only a recluse in that he shunned the media. Turns out, he didn't live in a cave, but appears to have pursued a life that on the surface was pretty much like the lives of us regular folks.

We often have a stake in the myth of our favorite heroes, be them actors, atheletes, writers or politicians, and those myths are too often sternly defended. The truth is so much better.

An American Tragedy and More Holdups

The goal of finishing the Modern Library is within sight. There are less than 20 left. But of course, life has been intervening. I’m in the middle of a crisis, which doesn’t seem to be the End of the World, which it seemed like last week. But it’s still affecting me and it’s so frustrating.

But in the last day or so, I have been completely in to Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. I know he doesn’t have a reputation as the best writer from a technical perspective, but this plot is excellent. Right now, I DO NOT want to put this book down. I’m about half way through – nine days behind schedule – but I wanted to put down a few thoughts here to tide everyone over until I can post a complete review.

I don’t want to dislike Clyde. We are all products of our environment, for better or for worse, and at first I tried to sympathize with him, particularly in the Hortense situation and the idea that he had to some extent help out his family when, as a teenage boy, he really just wanted to help himself out. I kept thinking back to “Of Human Bondage” and poor Philip in relation to Mildred and I was seeing Clyde in that context – through my “Poor Philip” glasses. All of that began to change when his mother asked him to loan her $50 to help out his sister, whom he dearly loved. He had the $50 in his pocket, which he intended to use to buy Hortense a fur coat. And he lied to his mother and told her he didn’t have the money.

Hortense is obviously a bitch, and sort of a gold digger. She only shows attention to Clyde in order to get material goods out of him, but on the other hand he only gives her material goods because he thinks he’ll get laid. But he doesn’t. He guesses that this is what Hortense is doing, but he persists. In this situation, I almost feel like they are meant for each other. But then there is the accident (nothing good ever comes from teenagers riding in cars together, especially when the car belongs to someone else – Saved By the Bell, anyone?) and Clyde runs away to Chicago where he meets his rich uncle who offers him a job back in Lycurgus, NY.

Now, we think, Clyde is going to turn his life around and make something of himself. He is going to realize how stupid he was in the Hortense situation and watch himself. And at first he does. But once he gets put in charge of a department (really, a sub-department), he soon thereafter picks up with one of his workers. Now, in general, I don’t have problems with that. And it appears at first that Clyde has genuine affections for Roberta, and it felt as if it weren’t for how his relatives would view this relationship, both because (a) she works under Clyde, which is expressly forbidden; and (b) she is clearly just a factory girl, and beneath the station to which Clyde aspires, I would guess that Roberta and Clyde would live happily ever after. But I have come to realize that with Dreiser, nobody lives happily ever after.

Everything is going ok with Clyde and Roberta, in general. But Clyde is a jerk, really. He pressures Roberta – who at heart really appears to be a good girl – into taking their relationship further than she wants, at least without a promise of marriage. And then he discovers Sondra Finchley. Sondra is of the Griffith’s upper crust, and meets Clyde at the one dinner his uncle invites him to. A few months later she sees him walking and picks him up in her car and drives him home. Sondra and some of her friends scheme to invite Clyde to some of their social functions, mostly to get at Gilbert, Clyde’s cousin, who is a jerk too. And of course, Clyde completely falls for Sondra and begins to neglect Roberta in a jerky way. He cancels dates at the last minute, or just doesn’t show up, and then lies about where he was, why he was there, and who he was with. Dreiser shows us Clyde’s inner thoughts about Roberta, which are essentially that she should be happy for him that he’s now got all these great friends and prospects, and who is she to have any claims over him.

Clyde – I really was “rooting” for you, here, but you keep screwing it up!

Roberta: Poor Roberta. She is perhaps a good match for Clyde – or would have been if he didn’t have his eye on being considered a “Griffith.” She perhaps would have been a good match if Clyde deserved anyone decent, which I’m not sure about. He pressures her into deeper relations, and while never actually promising to marry her, he hinted in such a way that Roberta obviously assumed that was what he meant. And he knew that is what she assumed, but let it go. I say that she appears to be a good girl, though sometimes I have paused about this, as Dreiser hints that she believes Clyde is more connected to the Griffiths than he actually is. How much of that belief was tied in with her feelings for him?

And now – Roberta is pregnant.

I know what is going to happen, vaguely – because I know the basic story on which Dreiser based this book. I know where this is going. My natural tendency would be to look up the details on wiki or some such site, but I don’t want to. For once, I am enjoying the suspense.

The Old Wives' Tale

Reasons I thought I was going to dislike Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale:

1. It's called The Old Wives' Tale. Not a very exciting title. Now Lawrence - he knows how to mask a boring book with an exciting title.
2. The author's name is Arnold Bennett. Seems like he would be a model of Edwardian snoozefests.
3. Mr. Bennett is known to not have had any artistic ambitions in writing. He wrote for the money, and because he knew he could do better than others. ("Am I to sit still and see other fellows pocketing two guineas apiece for stories which I can do better myself? Not me. If anyone imagines my sole aim is art for art's sake, they are cruelly deceived.") Pshaw!
4. The novel begins by describing the Five Towns, St. Luke's Square, Bursley, etc. English village life. I'm sensing Lawrence here, or Wessex (even though I like Hardy), and I'm getting bored.
5. And speaking of Lawrence...Bennett's novel centers around two daughters of a shopkeeper. One is very conventional, the other a sprite. Bringing back memories of The Rainbow. Am I asleep here yet?

No - I'm not asleep! To my utter surprise, OWT slowly - but not too slowly - won me over. I... actually... began... to... like... it!

Reasons I ended up liking OWT (despite my readiness to hate it):

1. Mr. Bennett is a decent writer. Even if he was doing it for the money.
2. Unlike Lawrence, Bennett is to the point. He didn't waste my time with page-long paragraphs signifying nothing. There is dialog, and actually has more moments of excitement than I have found is typical for an Edwardian novel. He makes ordinary people interesting.
3. It's actually humorous in some parts. I would give you some examples, but you would say, "Kristin, that's not really funny." But trust me, when you're reading the book, you will chuckle at a few things. Including: Sophia takes out Povey's wrong tooth; the ironic circumstances in which Mr. Baines dies; the reaction to Sophia's poodle.

OWT concerns the Baines family. First Mr. and Mrs. Baines, who are raising their daughters Constance and Sophia. Then Sophia elopes with a loser (as always happens) and Constance marries one of the shop helpers. Mr. and Mrs. Baines die. Constance runs the shop. Her uncle-in-law kills his wife. Constance's husband dies and her son (Cyril) moves to London and generally is unappreciative of his mother's devotion. Sophia and loser husband move to Paris. He abandons her, but through her own pluck and smarts ends up running a successful pension on the Champs Elysee. After running into Cyril's BFF in Paris, she returns home to Bursley where she and Constance live out the rest of their years. Ok, I know that doesn't sound terribly interesting, or even simply not- boring, but I assure you - I, the most easily bored person on the face of the earth - was not bored. In fact, I rather enjoyed it.

Early 20th century England certainly did have its interesting literary circles, and Bennett was at times in the center of it. All circulating together you had Wells, Woolf, *James,* Conrad, Forster, etc. And they all went to each other's parties and made fun of each others spouses. Woolf - representative of a new modernist streak coming up in literature - had a heated public feud with Bennett over what makes a good novel, and whether the other's novels fit that model. Bennett said Woolf, among with other contemporary authors, had not "displayed the potential for mastering the novel." Woolf was equally vocal about her dislike for Bennett's style, calling him and other "materialist" novelists "mundane" and saying that their books could have been written by government workers. (IMO, she was wrong.) This went on for more than a decade. But when Bennett died, Woolf wrote the following in her diary: "Arnold Bennett died last night; which leaves me sadder than I should have supposed...I yet rather wished him to go on abusing me, and me abusing him." She described him as "a lovable genuine man; impeded, somewhat awkward in life; well meaning; ponderous; kindly; coarse; knowing he was coarse; ...glutted with success; wounded in his feelings; ...set upon writing; always taken in; deluded by splendor and success; but naive; an old bore; ...shopkeeper's view of literature; yet with the rudiments, covered over with fat and prosperity and the desire for hideous Empire furniture, of sensibility." I'm not sure if the quip about hideous Empire furniture is to be taken literally or if she is referring to his writing. Either way. I find it all fascinating, this interplay between these authors, and wish that I could go back and be invited to one of their parties. I wish I could be invited to one of their parties more than I wish that I could be invited to Paris c.1920 with Fitzgerald and Hemingway. I wish this even though parties with Woolf and co. would be much stuffier and high-brow and there would probably be less alcohol involved.

Old Wives' Tale is kind of like a turnip. You're dreading it - you know you have to eat it, but you don't want to. You take the smallest bite possible, and lo and behold, it's not as bad as you thought it would be. It's not your favorite food, but you still don't mind eating it. OWT isn't the best novel I've ever read - it won't knock your socks off. And I'm not entirely sure why it deserves to be considered one of the best of the 20th century - though it's definitely an improvement over some of the others. But it wasn't as terrible as I expected it to be. In fact, Old Wives' Tale was not at all what I was expecting. To my surprise, it turned out much better.

I never thought I would be comparing a novel to a turnip and meaning it as a compliment.

Old Wives Tale Quote

Nothing will sharpen the memory, evoke the past, raise the dead, rejuvenate the ageing, and cause both sighs and smiles, like a collection of photographs gathered together during long years of life.

The Ginger Man

I cannot say that I went into reading this book with an open mind. I was expecting not to like it. That expectation was largely based on Doug Shaw's review. And guess what - once again he was right.

Doug sums up the plot of The Ginger Man so succinctly, I will just let him tell it to you:

Okay, okay, quiet down now, I got a joke for you. Stop me if you've heard this one: ...[Sebastian Dangerfield] walks into a bar, right? Gets blind drunk, smashes up some things, goes home, and pawns his woman's stuff to get more money to buy booze. Wait, it gets better. She gets mad, he smacks her, and she leaves eventually. He pawns the rest of her stuff, gets drunk, and finds another woman who has sex with him and falls in love with him...

Wait, it gets better... after this new woman falls in love with him, this guy walks into a bar. Gets blind drunk, smashes up some things, goes home, and pawns this new woman's stuff to get more money to buy booze. She gets mad, he smacks her, and she leaves eventually...

That plot synopsis I just gave you is the entire story of The Ginger Man. That one theme, over and over. And over.

The Nation says that this novel is "a comic masterpiece." The New Yorker called it "a triumph of comic writing." Let me give you some quotes here, and you tell me if you think this is comedic:

[Sebastian] took the child's pillow from under its head and pressed it hard on the screaming mouth.

"I'll kill it, God damn it, I'll kill it, if it doesn't shut up."

AND

[Sebastian's wife]: "That we've been starving. That the baby has rickets. And because you're drinking every penny we get. And this house too and that you slapped and punched me when I was pregnant, threw me out of bed and pushed me down the stairs. That we're in debt, owe hundreds of pounds, the whole loathsome truth."

...He slowly reached out and took the shade off the lamp. He placed it on his little table.

"Are you going to shut up?"

"No."

He took the lamp by the neck and smashed it to pieces on the wall.

"Now shut up."

HOW ABOUT THIS:

[Sebastian:] "Well god damn it, another word out of you and I'll bat you in the bloody face..."...Sebastian's arm whistled through the air. The flat of his palm cracked against the side of her face and Mary sat stunned. He slapped her again. "I'm going to kick the living shit out of you. Do you hear me?"

That's hillarious, isn't it? Jay McInerney - whose book Big City, Bright Lights is on my TBR pile, calls Dangerfield thoroughly charming. Yeah - Dangerfield seems like the type of person you'd really enjoy knowing, doesn't it? I'm not sure on what planet someone would find Dangerfield charming, but it isn't on the planet I live on (or would want to live on).

I don't know that I've run across another literary character that I so thoroughly detested. At first I debated who I disliked more - Sebastian Dangerfield or Rabbit Angstrom. But Dangerfield wins hands down. At least Rabbit, Run wasn't supposed to be funny.

I'll be frank here, as this is pretty much all that I have to say about this novel (which is a waste of paper, if you asked me). Sebastian Dangerfield is an Asshole - with a capital A. A story about an abusive guy who takes all his money (and his wife's money, and his girlfriend's money, and his friend's money, etc.) to get drunk and schmooze women, while his wife and infant daughter virtually starve in a house that is literally falling down is not funny. In fact, I find it incredibly disturbing that anyone would think this is funny, or that such a character is "charming." And if you are someone who thinks this character is charming, or sympathetic, or funny, I'll venture to guess that you're probably an Asshole - with a capital A - too. So there.

Please don't construe this as a softening of any anti-Henry James-ness, but I think that I would rather reread The Ambassadors than have to encounter Sebastian Dangerfield ever again. The only use for my copy of this novel is to give it to Brendan to fart on.

1984

1984 is personal. My reaction to it was purely personal. Obviously I know and understand its links and parallels with the USSR, but I didn't care about any of that. To quote from my 2006 journal entry about this novel:

1984 bothers me....I don’t give a shit about big brother, loss of privacy, the ability to or possibility of altering the past, the social commentary, its relevance to today, etc. I don’t care. What bothers me is the story about Julia.

I was deeply disturbed by the love story here. DEEPLY disturbed. And it all centered around this:

"...Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you - that would be the real betrayal."

I wrote extensively about this in my journal at the time. I read 1984 when I was dating Shawn - about a year and a half into our relationship. Everything was still fairly new, and we were still in the lovey-dovey stage. And I completely felt Winston in this instance - he and Julia know they will be tortured, and that they will give the other up. But no matter what, they would still love each other. That feeling would still be there.

And then there is Room 101 and the rats. And Winston really does betray her, in his own definition of the word. He tells O'Brien - do it to her, not to me. His own self-preservation instinct is stronger than his feelings for Julia. And Julia did the same thing. This FLOORED me. It had me questioning everything: would I do the same thing? Would Shawn? And what did that mean? I was bewildered and confused for days.

I continued in my journal:

...After Winston is arrested and begins to be tortured, all I wondered about was Julia – was she constantly on his mind, there with him, etc. Because I would like to imagine that I would feel him there with me. But then I think about those tortures – being kicked in the back where my discs are bad, or to be beaten, shocked, and it's frightening because maybe it would be so bad that I wouldn’t think or feel anything but my own pain. It’s frightening that someone could take him away from me in that manner. Then there was the scene when they shock his brain to convince him of things, and I became afraid of someone who would remove him from my brain in such a way to make me forget that I love him. But then in the end, with the rats, when he tells them to do it to Julia instead...That was the betrayal – he thought of himself to her detriment. What bothers me is that someone else can force you to that point, and you can believe all you want that it won’t or couldn’t happen, but it can. Until just now, I thought that what bothered me was that someone else could do that to me – someone else could force me to betray him but when I was just writing that, I realized that someone could do that to him as well – he could betray me in the same way, and suddenly, I’m not sure which is more disturbing.

I read a lot, but it's rare when a book truly elicits a reaction, or that really moves me. I'm not talking about feelings of frustration, boredom, and general anger at a book or author (*cough cough* Henry James *cough cough*). I'm not talking about being engrossed in the plot. I'm talking about something that stays with you, and that when I recall it, it brings that emotion back up. I can really enjoy a book: its plot, its language or style, etc., but it's those that are not only reading experiences but emotional experiences as well that I love. I get anxious just remembering my reaction to this novel, and that says a lot. I'm not sure that I could stomach reading it again, but I'm sure that I will some day. 1984 may not be my favorite book, but it certainly was able to bring forth really strong emotions. And THAT makes it a damn good book.

A U.S.A. Resource

I'm currently in about 2/3 of the way through Dos Passos's 1919, the second installment in the USA trilogy. Because I allowed such a huge gap between my reading of the first installment and this one, I am having a hell of a time keeping track of characters and remembering who we know from 42nd Parallel, and how those characters relate and interact with the characters in 1919. I have search high and low, and haven't really been able to find much information about USA, specifically a character list. This is an egregious oversight on the part of book readers/bloggers. But today I stumbled upon this website, which is really excellent.