From the Lists: #30 The Good Soldier

Anticipation and Dread

Having recently completed a Edwardian romance that progressed at the pace of a glacier in winter, I was not terribly thrilled when I saw the book cover for #30, Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier (1915). Then I read the blurb on the back cover stating that this book "has established itself as a masterpiece of literary modernism, taking its place alongside Ulysses and The Waste Land as a ground breaking experimental work."

Having read both the book by James Joyce (#1 on the List of 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century) and studied the poem by T. S. Elliot in college, I began thinking this could be a challenging summer reading project. This edition weighed in at a whopping 400 pages. I began dreading the 10-page-a-day slog through stream of consciousness rambling, but like my journey through Finnegans Wake (#77), I could mark is as a hard-won merit badge for my literary sash, a literary purple heart, if you will.

So, I was not disappointed to discover the book is more William Faulkner than James Joyce and is only 170 pages, with the rest of the edition dedicated to notes about the text and commentary.

Synopsis:

Imagine someone telling you a story. They really only want to tell you the highlights, omitting the particularly tawdry bits, but the longer they talk and the more caught up in the story they become, the more background they must provide for the story to make sense. In some ways this novel reads like a grandparent telling a story. Sometimes the plot moves forward, sometimes it digresses into the background of a character, sometimes the subtlety of the story is eventually revealed after the fact.

For example, in the first chapter you learn there are five main characters and three of them are now dead. The remainder of the novel deals with the events that lead to their deaths and the consequences for the living.

While we modern folks think that the Edwardians were an uptight bunch with their over weaning public displays of morality, it would appear that, like us, they had some difficulty with honesty, faithfulness, lust, love, and money. But, since divorce was expensive, shameful, and public (i.e. the proceedings and testimony were published in the papers), "good" people chose to remain married and simply pretended to be happy in public. Or so our narrator would have us believe.

This is certainly a tawdry tale for such a prudish time. Unlike The Golden Bowl, Ford's narrator does not hesitate to name the dirty deeds these characters characters commit. Although the narrator is probably the best of the bunch, it is difficult to believe that so much could be happening right under his nose without him having some idea that things were not as they seemed. Also, since the story is told in hindsight, it is quite possible that this narrator is shading the story to make himself more the innocent victim. I feel there is more to the story than the narrator states.

Ford Madox Ford: Playboy!

Note About the Author

Ford, himself had some marriage and divorce difficulties of his own.  Apparently he was quite the Byronic figure of his day, having been through a notoriously difficult divorce from his first wife. Some critics suggest that the book is partly autobiographical. Many of the settings in The Good Soldier are locations Ford and his first mistress lived in while he attempted to obtain a German divorce from an English wife who refused to sign the divorce papers dissolving the marriage.




Recommendation: I enjoyed both the narrative and the style. Easy to read, but kept me turning the pages.

Next up: #29 The Studs Lonigan Trilogy by James T. Farrell

Milestone Moment: Not to toot my own horn, but with yesterday's post, this blog has surpassed the 10,000 page views milestone. If I monetized that, I would have made about $1.  Heck Yeah! 

Tomato Pie? For Dessert?

Some of my favorite emails come from the Empire Eats mailing list - particularly when they are announcing a new menu or chef's dinner.

With the abundance of fresh produce available this time of year, chefs can expand their creativity beyond the protein and make the veggies shine. And what vegetable is more representative of summer's bounty than the tomato?

So, I was overjoyed to see that Gravy's next chef's dinner would be dedicated to the celebration of this quintessential summer treat. Even better, the dinner was to served outdoors on the patio. I immediately forwarded the email to my foodie friends, Cathy and Arjay, who immediately accepted the invitation.

The Starter: Gazpacho with Lump Blue Crab Meat.

Tomato and Pole Bean Salad with Pimento Cheese Fritter

Slow Roasted, Glazed Pork Belly with Queen Corn and Heirloom Tomatoes

Herb Roasted Chicken Leg with Tomato Panzanella Salad

Tomato Pie - Yep Tomato Pie

Thoughts on Dinner:
Once again, we lucked out by having friendly table companions with similarly dark senses of humor. No topic was off limits, including roosters, mating dances, and boudoir photo books.

Dinner was slightly delayed by the need to relocate the tables from the patio to the banquet area, but that was a minor inconvenience. The food was all quite tasty. For me, the standout items were the gazpacho, the pimento cheese fritter, the pork belly and the chicken leg, which would suggest that the proteins were still the stars of the show.

We were somewhat surprised by the wine pairings which consisted of 4 whites and a red. The white wines ranged from very sweet to turpentine and yet, when consumed with each dish, the wines took on different characteristics complementing the dishes. Even though we are all fans of red wines, I think that we would give at least 5 thumbs up for these pairings.

Our server seemed a little overwhelmed or intimidated by the sommelier at our table (who brought his own collection of wines). On each course she seemed to miss/forget/overlook at least one of our party for either the wine or food course. I think this was due to the efforts of serving the ladies first, which I think unnecessarily complicates service when there are 20-25 people at a table. On the other hand, we were all having the same thing, so it should have been obvious who did not have what.

Other than the inconsistent service, the dinner was great fun. We are looking forward to our next dining adventure.

For more information:
Gravy Italian-American Kitchen
135 Wilmington Street
Raleigh, NC 27601
(919) 896-8513

Sunshine, Roses, and Rude People

I freely admit that I have a relatively comfortable life, but it is not always sunshine, roses, and classic literature. Occasionally, a rude person will pierce my contented bubble of existence and throw me off balance.

Don't get me wrong, I am no pillar of politeness. I often make jokes about things that may still have an emotional sting (too soon?). I sometimes take a joke too far or make a biting comment that crosses the line of inappropriateness. In the right company, I will gladly join in the race to the lowest common denominator in search of a chuckle. I am also guilty of being coldly polite and a bit dismissive towards talkative servers, salespeople, and chatty neighbors on long flights.

Although I am sure there are other behaviors and instances of impoliteness friends can point out, my point is that I consciously make an effort to impose on other people as little as possible.

With all that said, last week I had two experiences with people who were just plain rude and insensitive.

The first affront to my delicate sensibilities was from a biker who was riding in the middle of a traffic lane during morning rush hour. Since I was not in a hurry and there was a traffic light ahead, I slowed down and followed at an adequate distance. When he moved to the right side of the lane, I passed him on the left - once again providing plenty of space between him and my car. While stopped at the traffic light, someone started yelling in my passenger side car window, "By law, you have to give me two feet!!!!!" I had no idea what he was talking about. I had remained much more than two feet away from him when following and passing him. This outburst sort of bothered me for the rest of the day. After all, if I had done something wrong, the more effective approach would have been to educate me about what I did wrong, not to yell at me inside my car.

After pondering this event for most of the day, it occurred to me that perhaps he was not yelling at me about a moving violation. It is possible that I did not leave him enough room between the left side of my car and the cars parked on that side of the road to continue forward while all the cars were stopped at the traffic light. Since he had been cycling in the middle of the lane and there was no bike lane on this street, it did not occur to me to allow him extra room to make his own lane between the stopped cars.

I later chatted about this incident with an experienced cyclist. He remarked that in this case the cyclist was breaking the rules. They should not be maneuvering through cars stopped in traffic. He suggested that next time something similar occurs, I should simply suggest the cyclist move to Portland.

The second incident has most likely been experienced by everyone - people talking during a movie. I am so averse to this behavior, that I often brave opening weekend crowds to avoid it. My reasoning is that fans who have been anticipating a movie's release are much less likely to stand in line and pay full ticket price only to engage in conversation, chats, arguments,  or provide a running film commentary.  Also, the IMAX theater two blocks from my home charges $14 per ticket. My experience has been that the high ticket price is a great disincentive to being disruptive during a movie.

I had some extra time last Sunday afternoon, so I popped over to the IMAX to catch Pacific Rim. I am a big fan of Guillermo Del Toro's movies, but I was out of town for opening weekend. Based on the running commentary, the couple sitting next to me thought they were enjoying this movie from their own living room. At first, based on the comments, I thought that perhaps one of them was blind and the other was providing descriptions. I was wrong.  They were just enjoying the movie using their outside voices. No matter how many times I glared at them through my 3-D glasses, they continued their conversation. My only choices were to move to a front row or sit with a finger in my ear. I chose the latter.  GRRRRR!   Perhaps the IMAX needs to hire some movie ninjas....

According to Buddhist teachings, it is our reaction to the thoughtlessness of other people that matters. I should thank these people for allowing me to practice patience and compassion. Practice makes perfect, but I am a long, long way from thanking people for their rudeness.

Namaste

From the Lists: #31 Animal Farm

When I initially perused the list of 100 Best English Novels of the 20th Century, I highlighted the books I had previously read. This being one of them. When I completed The Golden Bowl, I was in great need for something a more modern and less introspective (i.e.- an easy read). Therefore I thought why not? Since I originally read this book as teenager, who knows what I will think of it from the other side of my lifeline. I am happy I gave it another go.

George Orwell's Animal Farm (1946) is an allegorical story satirizing the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism. The story begins with the animals complaining of their treatment by humans who use the animals' labor only to enrich themselves. This discontent eventually leads to a revolution against Mr Jones, who owns the farm. Once he and his hired hands are chased off the farm, the animals, led by a prize boar named Napoleon, set up a communal society where ostensibly all animals are equal and will share equally in the work and the harvest. As the years go by, the pigs assume more and more power, segregating themselves from the other animals, ruling by decree, blaming outside forces for bad harvests, and executing all who dissent. By the end of the story, the pigs, like Mr Jones, are enriching themselves by exploiting the labor of the other animals - so much so that they begin taking on the characteristics and behaviors of humans.

Orwell had some difficulty getting this short novel published in the UK and the USA. Mainly because no one wanted to upset our former allies in the fight against Hitler. As the cold war heated up immediately following World War II, there was more of an appetite for this type of satire.

Although written specifically as a satire about the USSR, Animal Farm could just as easily be applied to any of the existing dictatorships around the world. I often thought of North Korea with its food and fuel shortages and impotent saber rattling at the rest of the world. Other dictators who popped to mind: Gaddafi, Hussein, Ahmadinejad,  and Chavez - all cults of personality and bellicosity.

Oddly, I also thought of the extremes of capitalism. We are often told that our free-market economy is the best economic model for ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to make a living and share in the wealth. However, the final scene in the novel, where the pigs are feasting while the underfed animals (under paid workers) peer in through the windows, seemed to hit very close to home. As we all work harder and harder to keep jobs that we are grateful to have, the rich exhort us to work harder to further increase profits. And, like the animals on the farm, very little of those profits go to reward the worker. Instead, they go to enrich the CEO, the board of directors, and share holders who are all feeding at the trough, just like Napoleon and his cadre of pigs.

Don't get me wrong, I love my country and the opportunities it provides. I do, however, find myself looking around and wondering what happened? How did we get to a place where the rules can be changed to benefit one group or business over all others and no one notices? Why are people not paying attention to what our governments and businesses are doing? What will make us lift our heads from our daily grind to see that the promises written on the wall are no longer what we believed them to be? Will we one day wake to see that all the laws have been rewritten, just as all the Animal Farm's commandments were erased and replaced with "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"?

  Next up: #30 The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

From the Lists: #32 The Golden Bowl (Vulgar and Perverse)

What did rich people do before there was radio to keep them entertained? Well, according to Henry James' The Golden Bowl (1904), they spent their time thinking, reflecting, wondering, circumventing questions, conspiring, and teasing out the intentions of others. All of which were done as indirectly as possible to avoid the appearance of "perversion" and "vulgarity."

(Aside: Perversion and vulgarity remind me of Downton Abbey when Lady Mary asserts that if word gets out of the Turkish Ambassador dying in her bedroom, her name would henceforth become "notorious" in London social circles. Today, notoriety pays the bills for many young stars.)  

If the English people were actually as indirect as the characters in this book, it is a wonder they got anything done. These characters, as well as the author's writing style, are so indirect, so filled with commas and clauses, that I am still unsure exactly what happened in this novel. The 12 page introduction by Gore Vidal provides more insight into the action than the book; however, since literary scholarship assumes you have read the the book before you read the paper written about it, I chose to skip the introduction this time to avoid the spoiler. Silly me.

I created a diagram to help explain the relationships between the five main characters.

Based on their behavior, these characters could have been the younger versions of Dynasty characters. Of course, if Dynasty had been written by Henry James, it would have been more Twin Peaks than tawdry evening soap opera.

The book was originally envisioned as a short story or a play. However, it languished for many years as only an idea in James' journal. The Golden Bowl was eventually taken up again by James at the end of his writing career and was the last novel he published. By this time, James was dictating his novels to typists. Perhaps that is the reason it reads a bit like a long-winded lecture - without the jokes. There are seemingly endless chapters of thoughts and feelings and suspicions and what ifs, all punctuated by pervasive perhapses and howevers.

And the dialog is not much help in understanding the action. Due to the societal need to avoid directness at all costs (one would not want to be considered perverse), there are many confusing uses of pronouns for both the characters and the reader.

The dialog is often similar to the following paraphrased example:

"You must know what I am thinking," Maggie said.
"Yes, I think I do, but are you implying..." Mrs Assingham trailed off.
"I am not sure what I imply, but I have been thinking this for several months now."
"And yet?"
"And yet," Maggie responded, feeling vulgar and exposed by her candor.
"I see," Mrs. Assingham nodded, satisfied that her suspicions had been confirmed. 

Candor? What candor? Who are you talking about? What makes it worse is that even the interior dialogs are so perversely vague as to be vulgarly meaningless.

Not being familiar with the other works of Henry James, I am unsure if this book was intended to point out the inanities of British aristocratic / parlor culture of the time, to satirize contemporary novels, or if this is just his normal style. If I wanted to be generous, I would suggest that this novel sits at the pinnacle of this style; it is the Ulysses of late Edwardian writing in which all characters function as both hero and villain, tormentor and tormented, captor and captured.

Or I can just be petty and thank God I got another book off the list.

The Golden Bowl (2000 Merchant Ivory Productions)

I have added the movie to my Netflix queue. Hopefully, the moving pictures will expose the subtleties I obviously missed. (Roger Ebert's Movie Review)

Next up: #31 Animal Farm by George Orwell. I am looking forward to escaping the Ewardians for a bit of barn yard / political satire. Having read this book in high school, I am hoping to find a deeper, richer meaning today.

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The movies may not be better than the books, but....

... they are certainly a more effective use of my time.

Friends and blog readers know that I am working my way through the 100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century.

  
Loyal readers also probably remember my incessant whining about there being 12 books in the Dance to the Music of Time series (see here, here, here, and here). It is strange to think I began this long long journey a year ago and now it has come to a fitting end.

Although I finished reading the series a few months ago, I discovered there was a BBC miniseries from 1997. Of course, I could not resist prolonging the torture, so into the Netfix queue they went and they arrived in my mailbox last week.

It is not Downton Abbey by any measure, but the mini series includes all the important plot lines, edits out the inconsequential characters, and most importantly, in about seven hours you are done. All in all I would say the series is surprisingly good and true to the spirit of the series. It was nice seeing the settings and hearing the banter between the characters.

There was also an unexpected twist in the mini series, or perhaps I was so focused on Nick in the books that I overlooked something subtle. It is not obvious at first, but during the final scenes in the mini series you realize that the entire series is really about Nick's relationship with Widmerpool - all the other characters are just decoration. This is much like the Lord of the Rings movies, which made me realize that Sam is actually the hero. Now I need to spend some time reconsidering the books.

For those thinking of tackling the list and who are not purists, I would recommend saving a year of your life by reading a few of the books in the series (the writing is exquisite) and then finishing up by watching the mini series.

Happy reading!

From the Lists: #33 Sister Carrie

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (1900)

When my friend Bill asked what this book was about, I gave him the Cliff's Notes version of the Cliff's Notes for this novel: A girl leaves her small town in Wisconsin to chase her dreams in Chicago, where she meets a guy, meets another guy, and then meets another guy (I had no idea that Cliff's Notes were actually available on line).

Coincidentally, Carl read this book just before I picked it up. He made a much more eloquent argument in favor of the book pointing out Carrie's modernity for the times and how progressive the author was on the topic of serial cohabitation (one would think he was an English major). All of which is true, and yet this book left me without any feelings for or against it.

I am unsure whether Carrie was actually modern in her outlook or if she simply had opportunities for , food, nice clothes and comfort and took them. For most of the book, she is simply living with one man or another allowing herself to be swept along as they desire. It is not until times get desperate, again, that she takes control of her life. In the space of a few years, she takes up with a lady's man, a married man, and has her eye on an intellectual by the end of the novel - all this by the age of 21.  Regardless of the men who aided and/or impeded her along the way, Carrie eventually discovers her talent and chases her dream to great success.

The subject matter may have been progressive for 1900, but the incessant naval gazing of the characters and the moralizing of the omniscient narrator place the book firmly in the 19th century. The author tells us everything down to the thoughts and feelings of each character. Nothing is left for the reader to imagine or interpret through their own life experiences. As such, I had very little sympathy for any of the characters who rise and fall based on the choices the make and the ones they avoid.

I usually enjoy period pieces such as this, but I think the book would have benefited from some additional editing - or perhaps the problem was that so many people had edited the original manuscript that the author's true voice was lost. Either way I was a bit disappointed. Average and predictable story with average writing. Nothing to recommend it, although I have added the movie to Netflix queue.

Next up: #32 The Golden Bowl by Henry James

For more information on the list, see: 100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century