The Commute from Hell

John Cheever has fallen out of favor lately.  Perhaps he’s too much a traditional realist to get much attention these days.  No gimmicks.  No cute tricks. My bet is that the pendulum will swing back and Cheever will once again be appreciated for his literary gifts.  He is best known for his short stories.  No better book to have by your beside than ‘The Stories of John Cheever’, available in paperback.  Pick it up and read a story when you’re in the mood.  You won’t be disappointed.  ‘Goodbye, My Brother’, ‘The Enormous Radio’, and of course ‘The Swimmer’ are among my favorites.

Cheever also wrote five novels.  I recently read ‘Bullet Park’ (1969), a scathing indictment of life in the New York suburbs in the 1960’s.  Cheever sees through the superficial cheer to the underlying despair and desperation.  Alcohol, drug use, hypocritical religiosity, the medical profession, television, and adultery are all revealed here as evidence of the darkness at the center of ‘Father Knows Best’.  As a cultural study the book is indeed very interesting.  As a work of fiction, it’s more of a mixed bag.

I’m not sure that the novel holds together as an entity.  The first two-thirds concern Eliot Nailles, a middle-aged husband and father with a good heart who accepts much of what he sees in good faith and only gradually becomes aware the dangers that surround him and his family.  The last part of the book is narrated by Paul Hammer, a disturbed and sinister man.  Each section contains some wonderful writing, but the mood shift is so pronounced as to make it hard to fit them together in the same short novel.  Almost as if we have several short stories here that have been loosely knit together to make a longer work of fiction.

The last few chapters are suspenseful, and the sense of growing menace is particularly effective against the backdrop of smiley suburbia, but I can’t help but feel that Cheever did much the same in ‘The Swimmer’.  But the short story is a precisely cut gem.  The novel is not nearly so refined.

But I whine.  Cheever is always worth reading.  Maybe sometime I’ll tackle the memoirs.  He kept notebooks through most of his adult life.  It was a difficult life.  He wasn’t an easy person.  But the man could write.

The Multiverse in Literature

Modern neuroscience teaches us that the brain creatively constructs its own optimally useful version of reality from sensory data and the wisdom of experience.  We do our best to make sense of our world, and we necessarily expend considerable energy in convincing ourselves that our vision is accurate and true, no matter what level of self-deception might be required.  Terror is often our reaction if and when we come to understand the artificiality of our personal reality construct; we do sometimes glimpse into other versions of reality, other points of view, other universes.  ‘If that other universe really exists, then mine is not the real reality.  It’s just my reality, and it’s no more or less valid than any other.’  Enriching, fascinating, but very scary.

Hermes, the principal narrator

In ‘The Infinities’ John Banville has managed to make that glimpse enjoyable.  In a story that blends science, traditional storytelling, Greek mythology, and a healthy dose of philosophy, Banville playfully shows us a world that is an unending and confusing mix of coexisting realities.  We see from the point of view of various mortal characters, various gods, and even the family dog.  All viewpoints are telling.  Some have a degree of awareness that other viewpoints exist.  Others don’t.  But all ultimately accept that our world is a carnival-like mix of intent and happenstance, of coherence and randomness, of sense and nonsense.

Banville manages this only with the most deft and whimsical writer’s touch.  The prose isn't contrived or artificial, but rather comes off as natural and easy.  Yes, there are other worlds.  We could probably see into them if we wish, but for the most part we choose not to.  For mortals, death is the most haunting.  That other world, what is it like?  Does it exist?  Is it anything, really?  How can something exist about which I cannot know?

Don't be scared of this book.  It's mostly fun and games.  Fun and games ... a very useful view of life.  Doesn't really pay to take things too seriously.  No way we can truly understand, so let's enjoy what we can and concede our ignorance.  No shame there.  Banville suggests that life might best be understood as a comedy.  Laugh when you can.  Beats the alternative.

No 2011 Pulitzer for Fiction? Really?

Come on.  You’re kidding, right?  The Pulitzer for fiction is for a work by an American author, preferably touching on American themes.  The three-member jury nominated three worthy novels.  The Board then makes the decision that no prize will be awarded.  Their deliberations are private.  We don’t know if they found the three works to be lacking, or if they just couldn’t agree on a winner.  So no prize, period. 

Devalued Currency

The jury was horrified that no prize was awarded.  I haven’t read any of the three nominated books, but they are on my list for the future.  Maybe other works should have been nominated?  Dunno, but the process clearly didn’t work very well this year.

Isn’t serious literature in enough trouble in this country?  The future of the publishing business is in question.  The Pulitzer is one way to boost sales and readership for a serious work.  We complain that so few Americans are reading serious literature for enjoyment and enlightenment. We whine when the Nobel for literature goes to yet another obscure (to us, at least) foreign author and our American authors are snubbed yet again.  (When will they give the Nobel to Philip Roth?  Maybe never.)  But we can’t find an American work of fiction to get the Pulitzer?

Shame on Columbia. 

Bertie Wooster Gone Sour

The fifth and last installment of the Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St. Aubyn has just been publish to great acclaim.  Never read any of them, so I decided to start at the beginning.  'Never Mind' is the first in the series.  An English doctor is living with his American wife and five-year-old son in the south of France.  The doctor has aristocratic credentials.  The wife has money.  Both are raging alcoholics.  The son is a victim in countless many ways.

What a brilliant portrayal of sophistication, intelligence, cruelty, and depravity.  It's both funny and heartbreaking at the same time.  Here are some examples:

About the doctor and his wife:  "At the beginning, there had been talk of using some of her money to start a home for alcoholics.  In a sense they had succeeded."

The doctor about his wife:  " 'I'm not a magician,' said David, 'I couldn't make her amusing, but I did at least keep her quiet.  I was dreading having another talk about the agonies of being rich.  I know so little about them, and she knows so little about anything else.' "

Anne, a secondary character, on the English aristocracy: ". . . she knew that nothing put the English more on edge than a woman having definite opinions, except a woman who went on to defend them.  It was as if every time she played the ace of spades, it was beaten by a small trump.  Trumps could be pieces of gossip, or insincere remarks, or irrelevant puns, or anything that dispelled the possibility of seriousness.  She was tired of the deadly smile on the faces of people whose victory was assured by their silliness."

Some typical cynicism:  "They arrived at the open door of the plane, pale and overdressed, and started to clank their way down a flight of metal stepls, caught between the air crew who pretended to be sorry at their departure and the ground crew who pretended to be pleased by their arrival."

The doctor on his alcoholic wife:  " 'Pink suits her so well, don't you think?' said David to Bridget.  'It matches the colour of her eyes.' "

On funerals:  " 'I'm afraid I don't approve of memorial services,' said David, taking another puff on his cigar.  'Not merely because I cannot imagine anything in most men's lives that deserves to be celebrated, but also because the delay between the funeral and the memorial service is usually so long that, far from rekindling the spirit of a lost friend, it only shows how easily one can live without him.'  ...  'The dead are dead,' he went on, 'and the truth is that one forgets about people when they stop coming to dinner.  There are exceptions, of course - namely, the people one forgets during dinner.' "

A nice line about writing:  "I have written books which I have had to write, but I have not yet written a book which others have to read."

Love this:  "I know you'll think it's very primitive and American of me, but why do people spend the evening with people they've spent the day insulting?'  'So as to have something insulting to say about them tomorrow."

The writing is gorgeous in places.  I was truly impressed.  He really can write.  Will eventually read all five novels.

Jacque-Louis David's 'Death of Marat'

St. Aubyn is just brilliant in portraying the kind of putrification that occurs when the aristocracy become irrelevant.  Over centuries they have acquired wealth, patronized great artistic achievements, cultivated sophistication in countless areas, and pushed the limits of knowledge forward.  But now they are left behind without final resources, without meaningful privilege, and without superiour intelligence.  Nonetheless they cling to their sophistication with a bitterness and cruelty that is both amusing and repulsive.  Leave the most sophisticated food in the fridge too long and it goes rancid.  We can sense its former greatness, but rancid is rancid. Every so often you have to clean out the fridge. 

It's enough to make me sympathize with the worst abuses of the French Revolution.  Perhaps Marat was right.  Off with their heads!

Hindsight 20/20?

The Man Booker Prize

I’d never read Julian Barnes.  When he finally won the Booker Prize last year, ‘The Sense of an Ending’ went on my list.  I’ve no idea about his other works, but this is a special novel.  It’s short, moving, interesting, and troubling. The story is told in the first person by a late middle-aged man who is trying to make sense of his past.  It’s a short work, and while the plot does move forward as we learn more about his life, I think the overall mood and ethos of the book is more important.  The protagonist is trying to come to grips with his failures and shortcomings, and with events that he has never fully understood.  When he was young he was convinced that he was in control, he could make things happen.  Later in life, he realizes that life has happened to him, and he has reacted as best he could.

We feel his melancholy and uncertainty.  It’s a meditation on ageing, memory, and regret.  It’s a convincing, understated, sophisticated portrait of a stage in life when we wonder what was, what could have been, what might have been, what never could have been.  The ending does reveal an important plot element that answers some questions, but the majority of the questions remain unanswered.  We are meant to experience the enigma, the puzzle, the unknowable.

The language is nuanced and sometimes poetic.  Philosophy plays a role here, but never in a pedantic way.  Think of an intelligent educated man in his late fifties sitting by a window in the late afternoon on an autumn day.  He’s had a glass of wine.  He’s thinking …. thinking.  His mind is a little muddled;  he can’t be totally coherent, but he does his best to sort things out.  Some issues he has control over.  Others not so much. 

I am sometimes in such a mood, and I very much appreciate Barnes’s portrayal of how it feels.  This is probably not a book for young people (or at least not for unimaginative young people).   Not sure I would have appreciated it 25 years ago.  But now I get it.  As much as I can.

Glum Alum

It's been about a decade since 'Middlesex', but we finally have a new novel from Jeffrey Eugenides.  'The Marriage Plot' is worth the wait. Unlike 'Middlesex' most of this book takes place in a single year, the year that follows the main characters' graduation (well, two out of three actually graduated) from Brown. There are also some revealing glances back at their college years and childhood. Life isn't so easy for these privileged and smart kids, though the author doesn't simply attribute their difficulties to either their intelligence or their status.  They're just human and struggling to find themselves as adults.  We've all been there.

The novel has a long list of strengths.  The writing is very good, and sometimes downright brilliant.  Descriptions often ring true to an startling extent.  Dialogue is both believable and readable.

I particularly enjoyed the way intellectual life is woven together with real life in very interesting ways. These are smart kids that take their authors and their own thoughts seriously, but not so seriously as to avoid reality.  Literary criticism, philosophy, religion, science, all are active forces in their lives, and as readers we get to witness the interaction. The life of the mind really does matter here.

One of the characters suffers from serious manic depression, and the portrayal of this disease from both that character's point of view and those around him is bracing and convincing, so much so that I'll bet the author has drawn on some first-hand experience.  He did go to Brown.  I wonder how much autobiography is included here in one way or another?

The narrative structure is not straightforward but it is easily understood and interesting.  While the author sticks with third person throughout, the same events are told from different points of view and in different narrative contexts. Well done. Interesting without being overly clever. I would have appreciated more clear division into chunks or chapters.  It does seem unnecessarily 'swimmy' at times, but alas I whine here.

This is one of those coming-of-age books where at the end the characters are finally ready to begin (along the lines of D H Lawrence's 'Sons and Lovers'), so don't expect a neat and tidy wrap up.  Nonetheless at least some issues reach a temporary resolution, and we conclude with a satisfying if vague sense of how the main characters might move forward.  (Hmmm, 'The Sense of an Ending' by Julian Barnes.  I'm reading that now.)

I don't often think of the late 70's / early 80’s as a time with a specific feel, but the author is very successful in evoking that period.  I remember it well.  That's what it felt like. Very different from the 60's and also distinct from the years that followed.

I haven't read 'The Virgin Suicides' (his first novel), but it's now on my must-read list.  'Middlesex' was no fluke.  This is a significant author worth following.  Hope it's not another decade till the next novel appears. From Eugenides I'll take what I can get whenever I can get it.

French: Fried

Le jour de gloire est arrive!

Paul Rudnick's Shouts and Murmurs column ("Vive La France") in the March 26 New Yorker is one of the funniest pieces I've read in a long long time.  One page.  You'll laugh out loud.  Favorite line: " . . . the ultimate French film will be a still photograph of a dead mime."  Well, it's really funny in context.

Rudnick was surely inspired by the recently released and much ballyhooed "Bringing up Bebe" by Pamela Druckerman, which touts the French approach to child rearing and family life.

The New Yorker continues to amaze me with the quality of their stuff.  A weekly, no less.  Some issues are better than others, but nonetheless it's still very impressive.