I, Claudius

I’ve been reading I, Claudius since some unknown date in January or February. I know that I was reading it at the beginning of March when I saw Elaine Pagels give a talk on the Book of Revelations. She was showing photos of Roman statues in Aphrodisias, Turkey – including one of Claudius. My instantaneous reaction was, “I know him!”

And after that spontaneous outburst in my mind, I realized that “I know him” is an apt description of how I felt while reading I, Claudius. Robert Graves writes in a very conversational style – at times a little too conversational. Claudius begins telling us something, and then in the middle of the story will say, “I’ll come back to this, let me tell you about this other thing first.” I don’t know how much of Claudius’s writings exist today, and I wonder if Graves at all was attempting to imitate the Emperor’s actual style. At times this casualness was annoying, but overall it lent itself to the feeling that it really was a conversation. I felt like Claudius’s pal, his ally (of which he didn’t have many). It was a personal book - Claudius is put down by everybody except a few who figure out he really did know what was up. And they all die. Who can’t feel for a guy like that?

The main problem with IC is keeping track of all of the relationships. There is so much intermarriage and adoption and people with the same name that I don’t imagine there is anyone who could possibly keep track. I wonder how the Romans themselves kept track of it themselves. I created this chart which was very helpful, but should give you a clear idea of how complicated it was.

There were moments in IC when I was genuinely freaked out, almost afraid to turn out my book light. The downfall of Germanicus, for example – the dead babies under the floor and the mysterious message on the wall. But generally, a feeling of fear pervades the entire novel - for Claudius, members of the imperial family, and the masses. Claudius had a physical ailment of some sort, and was often regarded as an idiot. He is wisely advised early on to keep up the ruse…Graves portrays him as a deeply intelligent man, but must play dumb in order to avoid being murdered. Everyone has to watch out…you could have no friends or confidants, as informers were paid well to make up stories and turn people in to the Emperor, who – whether Tiberius or Caligula – rather enjoyed killing his subjects. This was all complicated by the fact that they all seemed mentally ill to some degree or another, and no one was ever sure what was expected of them. I cannot even imagine living in that environment. Well, to some degree I can, but that’s another story entirely.

I have always loved history – I used to watch the History Channel all the time back when they actually showed real, critical historical programming, not the shit that feeds into the Dan Brown fanatics need for conspiracy. And I really have no interest in Ice Road Truckers. But my knowledge about Ancient Rome (and Greece, and really a lot of the Middle Ages up to the Renaissance) is severely lacking. I recognize this, and have most of Will Durant’s Story of Civilization waiting for the day when I finally get around to cracking them open. I could have probably named a few Roman Emperors, given you some plots from Shakespeare’s (and Hollywood’s) interpretations and told you that “Bread and Circuses” was what lead to Rome’s downfall, but that’s about it. So much of the information in IC was new. I knew Imperial Rome was messed up, but I didn’t know it was that messed up. Graves really wet my appetite to learn more about Rome, so perhaps Caesar and Christ will get opened sooner than I anticipated. (But definitely after I finish this damn Modern Library list!)

I wouldn’t call I, Claudius suspenseful, because it doesn’t take long to figure out what is going to happen to everybody, but it was enthralling. I am looking forward to reading the second part of this “autobiography,” Claudius the God. I don’t see how it made it to #14 on the list, as there are novels far better than this farther down on the list. But there it is. Overall, though, it’s a good book.

An American Tragedy

I’ve been slow lately. I’ve been slow in reading and slow in reviewing. There are many reasons for this. Obviously, as I’ve said many times, I have a 6-month old. Along with my regular job and all the other duties of life, I just don’t have that much time. I don’t know if I’m going to get through the Modern Library list this year, but I’m going to do my best and not worry about it.


Now onto An American Tragedy.

In general, I don’t read exciting books. I don’t think about this too often, but every now and then I come across a book that actually is exciting – or, you know, has a real plot, a real climax that the whole novel is working towards – and I realize that I don’t read page turners. Personally, excitement isn’t a quality that I require for a novel to be good or enjoyable, and (for the most part) I wouldn’t say the books that I enjoy that are also lacking in excitement are boring. They just aren’t exciting. An American Tragedy is exciting, and it did make me think – briefly – that perhaps I should pick up some John Grisham novels or something. But then I look at the Calvino books on my shelf and rethink that.

An American Tragedy started out at a slow pace. We first encounter Clyde Griffith as a teenager with his family, who are street preachers in Kansas City. He hates this. He hates the poverty of his family, and the humiliation he feels at having to stand on the corner and sing hymns. Clyde gets a job at a hotel as a bell hop, makes friends with the other bell hops, visits a prostitute and meets Hortense. I described her briefly here. She’s a low-rung gold digger. Clyde is head-over-heals with her, but she couldn’t care less about him – she likes the money he spends on her in his attempts to get her to sleep with him. Hortense keeps leading him on, making him believe that if he just buys her this one item more, she’ll go to bed with him. But she never does.

In the crescendo of their relationship, Hortense asks Clyde to buy her an expensive fur coat. She – again – leads him to believe that if he purchases the coat for her, she will definitely, finally sleep with him. It’s more than he can afford, but he intends to buy it for her anyway.

Up until this point, we know that Clyde is a moron for fawning over Hortense in this manner. You just want to yell at Clyde to give it up. (1) She doesn’t like you; (2) she only wants you to buy her things; (3) she is not going to have sex with you; (4) You are aware of all of this. Find someone who is (1) cheaper; and (2) easier. But no, he is her pathetic lap dog. But it’s at this point that Clyde’s real personality starts to come out. Clyde’s sister, Esta, (who he seemed to have genuine affection for) had run away with a traveling actor who left her (pregnant) in Pittsburgh. Clyde had been giving his mother some money out of his earnings and part of that money had been going to Esta, and Clyde knew this – though his mother thought it was a secret. Esta was about to give birth, and his mother needed $50. As his mother is asking for this, Clyde HAS THE $50 IN HIS POCKET, that he was going to use as a down payment on Hortense’s coat. And what does Clyde do? He lies to his mother – he doesn’t have $50 and he couldn’t get it for her.

I understand that Clyde’s a teenager, and he’s having his first love affair – of sorts – and wants to have a good time. And maybe my perception of this situation is colored by the fact that I now have a son, and can better see the point of view of his mother. She is embarrassed that she has to ask her son for money in the first place. And he knows that the money is going to support his destitute and very-pregnant sister who again he seemed to have real affection for. And he lies flat out about not having the money, and he intends to use this money to buy that whore Hortense a friggin’ fur coat.

A little while later, Clyde and some of his friends go for a ride with a car that does not belong to them – one of the boys “borrowed” it from the owner, and intended to return it before the man knew it was gone. Nothing good could ever come of this scenario. They get late returning and in their haste run over a little girl, then try to escape from the pursuing police and crash the car. Clyde escapes and skips town before the police arrive on the accident scene.

Clyde wanders around a bit and ends up in Chicago, working again as a bell hop in a hotel. One day, he encounters his uncle, whom he never met. Uncle Samuel Griffith owns a successful collar manufacturing business in New York. Clyde approaches Samuel, who ends up offering him a job. Clyde is then on his way to New York.

The Lygurgus Griffiths consist of Mr. and Mrs. Griffith, the privileged, jerky son Gilbert, and a few daughters (I don’t remember if there were two or three – or maybe one – it doesn’t matter). Gilbert essentially runs the factory and is resentful of Clyde from the start. The Gilberts give Clyde the lowest level job they can and then ignore him. Eventually they feel enough duty towards him to invite him to dinner, where he meets some of the Lycurgus young set, including Sondra Finchley, the daughter of another factory owner. The Griffiths promote Clyde, putting him in charge of a sub-department, and soon thereafter meets one of his workers, Roberta. After encountering her one day at a park, they quickly strike up together.

Roberta and Clyde have to keep everything a secret because of a policy against department heads dating employees, but also Clyde is worried that one of the Griffiths will see him with Roberta, just a working class girl, and think twice about him, both socially and professionally. It isn’t long before Clyde starts pressuring Roberta to take the relationship to the next level. When she expresses that she doesn’t want to do that – despite being working class, she is “respectable” in that sense – Clyde becomes a royal ass until Roberta finally gives in.

All is well and good (in a sense), until Sondra Finchley decides – mostly as a joke against Gilbert Griffith – to start inviting Clyde to parties and dinners. Clyde falls head over heals for Sondra – mostly because of her position in Lycurgus society and what a pass into that society would mean for him. Not that he doesn’t like Sondra personally – I just think a lot of his feelings are wrapped up in her social position.

Of course, Clyde starts to be mean to Roberta – cancelling dates with her, ignoring her mostly, except when he wants from her what he couldn’t get from Hortense. He lets Roberta know he’s going out socially with the Griffith crowd, but leaves Sondra out of it. Roberta starts to get down about it and frustrated. Clyde, because he clearly is a sociopath or clinical narcissist gets mad at Roberta for this, believing that she should be happy that he is being adopted, so to speak, by the upper crust.

And then Roberta becomes pregnant. This is when the plot really picks up the pace. Clyde tries to find a way to end the pregnancy. He seeks some drugs to cause her to miscarry, which fail, and he tries to find a doctor to perform an abortion, but fails at that too. Roberta was fine with all of this. But when everything failed, she started to let Clyde know that she expected him to marry her, as he had led her to believe he would do one day anyway.

Clyde DOES NOT want to marry Roberta, because his position with Sondra is pretty good and he expects to be able to marry her within a year. Obviously he cannot have this scandal, or go away or anything. Around this time, he comes across a newspaper article that describes an accident scene: two people (unidentified man and woman) take a boat out onto a lake. The boat overturns, the woman is found drowned, but no trace of the man. Clyde begins to hatch a plot: kill Roberta by drowning her in a lake and then escaping.

I won’t go into all the details now, because they get really intricate. But I probably needn’t tell you that Clyde absolutely botches the whole thing. Like most clinical narcissists (I say “clinical” to distinguish narcissistic personality disorder from the popular terms narcissism meaning people who like to look at themselves in the mirror), he believes he is SOOOO smart in setting this whole thing up, which the local sheriff takes apart in a matter of a hours. Dreiser throws in one other interesting – yet small – twist. In the moment, Clyde cannot act. And then something happens – one of those physical things which leads to an accident that afterwards you cannot quite recall the details of how exactly it happened – and he hits Roberta with his camera. Not deliberately, but not entirely accidentally. And she falls, tipping the boat over, and Clyde with it. She cannot swim, and he decidedly doesn’t try to help. It didn’t happen as he had planned – which was to actively kill her. It was more of an accident – he plotted to kill her, and then it all sort of happens by accident. He is responsible for her death, but not in the exact way he had intended to be.

The whole trial and denouement with the minister was anti-climactic, and made up more than 100 pages. But of course we had to know all that information. Which is something that I thought about throughout the entire novel: it is SO detailed, so intricately plotted. I kept wondering if Dreiser could have left any of it out and still had the novel, and I don’t know what the answer to that question is. Perhaps a more *technically skilled* novelist could have done something different with it, been more nontraditional with it, but if you are going from point A in Clyde’s life to the very end of it, yes – all of it had to be included. Because as with “real” life, every detail matters.

One thing that bothered me was about Roberta and nobody seemed to be able to tell that she was pregnant. She was obviously slight of frame (when they pulled her body out of the water they said she weighed about 100 lbs.) so it should have been obvious – to the dress maker and to the police at least. But it wasn’t until the coroner thought to check that anyone realized she was. I know everyone is different, but I am only a little bit bigger than Roberta’s size (<10 lbs), and by 5 months (how far along Roberta was when she was murdered), it was getting fairly obvious that I had a decent size bump. I didn’t expect everyone to know, but like I said, some people should have guessed by then (like when the pulled her wet body from the lake). What was surprising to me was the nonchalantness with which abortion was approached. We as a culture would be shocked to be told of someone who treated abortion with such flippancy, and yet here it is, almost 100 years ago.

Dreiser’s works, which really are bleak pictures of American life, wouldn’t really be the stuff of scandal – or at least you wouldn’t think so. They seem so “conventional.” But Dreiser was constantly having to make his works suitable for the public, dialing it down to something we could stand. After the publication of An American Tradegy, a publisher – Donald Friede, set up a censorship case, which he lost. He appealed and lost again. From Time Magazine, 1929:

Obscene: Publisher Donald Friede, president of Covici-Friede Corp., formerly of the late Boni & Liveright, was convicted in Boston last week for violation of the Massachusetts statute forbidding distribution of objectionable literature. The book: Author Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. The book's theme: how U. S. conventions and his own limitations caused a young man to murder his sweetheart.

Not Obscene: Publisher Friede (see above) rushed from Boston to Manhattan to appear before a Court of Special Sessions. There his company's novel, The Well of Loneliness by Authoress Radclyffe Hall of England, was being attacked by the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Three judges decided this book was not obscene. The book's theme: Lesbianism.

The confusion inherent in this is humorous. I wonder what the outcome would be today? Which is worse: how US conventions and personal limitations caused a young man to murder his girlfriend, or lesbianism. I think the answer might be lesbianism. Especially the Well of Loneliness kind….you know, not the Tila Tequila kind.

Dreiser also has a reputation of being rather clumsy with his prose, and that definitely shone through much more in this novel than in Sister Carrie, which I read two years ago. I ran across an article by Garrison Keiler about that other novel in which he asked why everyone had gotten so upset about a novel that was so bad. His writing is clunky. Time Magazine called it “a pipe fitter's approach to writing” but in the end, he is able to weave a story together unlike what most of his contemporaries were doing. And though it’s almost laughable that it would be censored, there is still stuff there to surprise, and to shock, and to disturb.

I see a pattern with Dreiser. His characters are often amoral – and though their actions are their “fault,” they are all also the product of their environment. They are the victims as well as the victimizer. He is part Dostoevsky, part Of Human Bondage, part Balzac. Somewhere I read that they are the flip side of the American Dream. Don’t come to Dreiser expecting a happy ending. Even when their characters get everything they want, they are still lacking. But if you want an American Dostoevskian view of the world, Dreiser beckons to you.

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.