Back to the Lists: #23 The USA Trilogy

John Dos Passos

The USA Trilogy(1930 - 1936) by John Dos Passos is often referred to as the American version of Ulysses.  Having read both, I can now say with conviction that Passos is much easier to read than Joyce, although at times I was challenged by his narrative choices.

The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936) follow several characters through the years leading up to and including World War I as well as the boom years that followed. The final volume ends in 1930. As with many of the modernist books written during this period, Passos experiments with narrative and time. Each chapter is dedicated to a single character and how they experience these years.

Passos introduces each character with a lengthy personal history providing all the facts the reader needs to understand or recognize each character type. The cast of characters includes labor agitators, socialists, politicians, business men, socialites, a handsome man who twice marries well, journalists, artists, a preacher's daughter, a Texas heiress, a mechanic turned aviator, and an aspiring starlet. Each brings their own cast of characters. And, as time passes, they each pass through each others' spheres - some briefly and others intimately.

Between each rather long chapter, Passos inserts brief chapters entitled the "Camera's Eye" and "Newsreel." The first consists of short stream-of-consciousness passages lacking a defined narrator, punctuation, or immediate relationship to the previous chapter. Instead these passages serve as personal snapshots of the time - much like memories of a distant past. The second of these inserts consists of seemingly random lists of actual headlines and lyrics from popular songs of the time. However,  when compared to the characters' stories, these snippets help to more clearly define actual public sentiment compared to the characters' beliefs. Some of these "Newsreels" are rather humorous while others are tragic - particularly when viewed from the perspective of hindsight.

The narrative style within the USA Trilogy is quite easy to read. The writing is sparse and elegant, but once a character is introduced, you may not see them again for hundreds of pages. For me, this made it a a little difficult to keep everyone sorted. Other than that, I think the book does an excellent job of capturing its time.

I was most interested by the parallels of that time to our own Great Recession. In this work, Passos theorizes that the easy money of the 1920s was one of the direct causes of that historical stock market crash. Passos describes people who were feverishly borrowing money to invest, but once the investments went south and the loans were due, everyone paid the price of greed - whether they were playing the market or not.

Of even more interest, during the years between WWI and the Great Depression, there was a bit of a domestic war brewing between the "Makers and Takers" - except back then the workers were the makers and the bosses, financiers, and bankers who benefited from the labor of others were the takers. It is a bit of revisionism that allows this same argument to adopted and reversed during our recent hard times where the wealthy indignantly assumed the label of makers while labeling workers (and the unemployed) as takers.


Rating: 4 out of 5 bootlegged bottles of whiskey.

And, unless I am misreading the list, this is the last multiple volume entry among the remaining books. From here on out, it will be smooth sailing.

Next up: #22 Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara

From the Lists: #24 Winesburg, Ohio

Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (1919) is often referred to as the first modernist novel. More a short story cycle that a novel, the narrative  breaks free from the standard narrative form of protagonists and antagonists in linear narratives. Rather it is composed of short vignettes focusing on the lives people living in and around a small Midwestern town. The thread that holds the cycle together is young George Willard who works for the local newspaper. Since his job is to talk to the citizens of Winesburg, he becomes the holder of their secrets - both past and present.

While there have been hundreds, if not thousands of books about small town anywhere, what makes this books so memorable is that it bucks the romantic notion that small town life is a Mayberry-esque utopia. Instead, the residents of Winesburg have secrets and personal demons. Sherwood's small town is a place of extreme isolation where the smallest deviation from the norm is exaggerated until it comes to define you.  

Sherwood Anderson

Each story in Winesburg, Ohio focuses on a single resident, their history, and their current circumstances. Most of the stories begin with hopes of youth that are soon replaced with the disappointments of adult life. Whether it is the farmer who seeks divine intervention, the hotel keeper's daughter, the lustful minister, the banker's wife, the lonely music teacher, the soft spoken hermit, or our hero George Willard, the truths on which they base their lives eventually prove to be their downfall. As Sherwood states in the opening chapter: "It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood."

"... Down the middle of the street? Naked?

As if it were not enough that their disappointment in discovering their heartfelt beliefs about themselves were false, add the judging eyes of their neighbors. Whether actual or paranoid delusion, it is the judgement of their peers that acts to amplify the characters' shame and isolation. Imagine Clara and Aunt Bee sitting together over a piece of pie, gossiping about peeping tom ministers, accused pedophiles, pregnant teens, depressed housewives, or young adults dying to leave for the big city? 

People talk of cities as being places that grind you down, where people are dishonest and crime is rampant, But, in the city it is easier to put aside our failures, dust ourselves off, and move on with our lives. Our odd behaviors are not as noticeable in a large crowd. Sheer numbers almost guarantee that no matter how different we are, we will find someone with the same thoughts or beliefs. The city, after all affords us a bit of anonymity. Unlike Winesburg, Ohio, where everyone knows our shame and there are no second chances.

Recommendation
Although my personal experience of growing up in a small town "may" have colored my opinions about the book, it was reminiscent of Spoon River Anthology (1915). The stories are short and the writing is tight, however it does read a bit like an adult bedtime story. The language reminds me of parables or fables where the lesson is always "Do not be too rigid in your thoughts about your life and how it will turn out. It will always be different that imagined. And, whether it is a success of a failure,  others will define you as they wish, regardless of how much effort you make to define yourself." Not a particularly uplifting thought.

Next up: #23 The USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos

From the Lists: #28 Tender Is the Night

With the recent release of Baz Luhrmann's version of The Great Gatsby, (which I really liked - purists can howl and berate me in the comments area about my pedestrian taste in movies), I was eager for another Fitzgerald novel. Like Gatsby, Tender Is the Night (1934) follows another doomed relationship between expats Dick and Nicole Diver.

Dick is a psychiatrist, Nicole was his patient, but is also an obscenely rich heiress. They live the lives of migratory socialites moving from city to city, season to season, home to home. On the surface they are a model couple with a beautiful family and a close circle of friends. As we learn more about their relationship, we see it is built on the shakiest of grounds.

Their life is determined by the cycles of Nicole's breakdowns, recoveries, seeming happiness, manic states, and breakdowns. Dick, always on alert for changes in Nicole's behavior, is also a bit of a cad. I am unsure how I feel about this character. He is charming. Women find him handsome. He has given his life to Nicole's care, yet he can be a surly drunk, enjoys his mostly innocent dalliances with women (loves to be chased, but not very happy when caught), and is sadly unsatisfied in his life's circumstances. Like Sister Carrie (#33) this novel follows the trajectory of one partner's rise as the other partner falls or dissipates into alcohol.

Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald

This novel is also somewhat autobiographical in that it closely mirrors the events of the Fitzgeralds'
lives during this time. Like Dick, Fitzgerald felt his career was a failure and that he was stagnating. He incorporated in the novel his feelings about his parents, who provided much of the inspiration for Dick and Nicole, details of his own marriage, Zelda's mental breakdown, her subsequent stay at a Swiss psychiatric hospital, his affair with actress Lois Moran, and Zelda's affair with the French aviator Edouard Jozan.

For me, I thought the novel's use of flashback was quite ingenious, allowing the reader to build a relationship with the characters before learning all their dirty secrets. The writing style was concise with lovely use of descriptive passages reminiscent of Gatsby. I could feel the sand, the sun, the warm breezes, the sultry evenings, the crispness of the alps, as well as Dick and Nicole's desperation to appear happy and normal to the end.

Sophomoric Moment

While reading Tender Is the Night, I could not help but giggle when "Dick hardened himself for what he knew was coming..." or the inevitable "Dick stiffened..." We never really get out of high school do we? 

From the Lists: #29 The Studs Lonigan Trilogy

Another %$#@! Trilogy! 

It seems like months since I last posted, but with all the family vacation action, work, and International Festival planning, I have been more than a little slack in keeping up with my posts. So, to get back into the swing of sharing, let's have a look at James T Farrells' Studs Lonigan Trilogy [Young Lonigan (1932), The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (1934), and Judgment Day (1935)].

As with every multi-volume entry on the list of 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century, I sighed with weariness when it was time to get started on this one. Luckily, I found an eBook version that included all three volumes - 757 glorious pages!  And, I am not being sarcastic.

The trilogy starts with young William (Studs) Lonigan preparing for his grammar school graduation and ends with his untimely death at the age of 31. The first and last books are somewhat chronological in that they focus on about six months of Stud's life, mostly from his point of view. The middle book, covers the the 15 years in between using short vignettes describing milestones in Studs' life. The writing style for each book is in what I like to refer to as "Screenplay" format - i.e. short chapters with lots of dialog.

Synopsis:

Studs is short in stature, not particularly handsome, and not too intelligent.. He would probably be considered average on most counts - except within his own thoughts. When he looks in the mirror, he sees a tough, handsome guy, who is bound to experience good fortune. In reality, he is short-sighted and prideful, he runs with a bad crowd, makes bad decisions, has no self-awareness, and blames the world for his endless stream of bad luck. He has neither the words nor the capability of communicating his emotions or thoughts, which for the most part are focused on comparing himself to his peers, fighting, and female conquest.

Like the character in Train Spotting, Studs is always going to give up drinking and wild nights. He is strong in his resolve - at least until there is another bottle, another slight to his ego, or another chance at sex. Unlike other literature of this time, the act of sex is neither condemned nor moralized. Instead, Studs' lack of experience and clumsiness in the act, always leaves him unhappy, unsatisfied, and depressed. Of course this feeling is quickly blamed on the woman - who is after all nothing but a slut. Only a slut would give it up so easily.

Sadly, Studs' life never lives up to the dreams of success and ideals of love to which he is constantly comparing his circumstances. He is always jealous of someone more successful than he, yet Studs is incapable of taking control of his own life. He can only take solace in knowing that some of his childhood friends are living lives much worse than his.

By the end of the trilogy, Studs is about 31 years old, still lives at home with his long suffering parents, and he has met an girl he wants to marry. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, he dies trying to do the right thing - albeit his efforts are futile.  

Thoughts on the Trilogy

After the Edwardian novels about romantic betrayal (The Golden Bowl and The Good Soldier) and offended sensibilities, I was pleasantly surprised by the directness of the writing, but rather distressed by the use of racial slurs. With so many different groups of people (Irish, Italians, Hungarians, African Americans, Jews, Germans, etc.) arriving in the USA at the turn of the century, animosities seemed to fester among those whose parents or grandparents had arrived slightly earlier. The members of the second generation immigrants were obviously good Americans. Those who arrived more recently were simply lazy / greedy / slutty / dirty / ignorant and were to blame for Chicago's decline, the destruction of the 58th street neighborhood in which Studs lives, World War I, and the Great Depression..

Coincidental Happenings

This month's classes at the Kadampa Center focus on Death and Rebirth. Coincidentally, the descriptions of Studs' death paralleled the stages of death and dissolution we have been studying (sense of falling, hallucinations, appearance of smoke, bright light, intermediate states, etc.). The reason for studying death is that we are all going to die. We must, therefore, live a good life and be prepared to calmly face our death.

While reading the final volume of this trilogy, I could not help but to relate Studs' life and his untimely death to what we are learning in this module. I found it strangely coincidental that something so random as a book on a list seemed to be guiding me along my spiritual path. Perhaps people with strong spiritual traditions experience this quite often, but it made me feel as if I am finally on the correct path.

Namaste

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! 

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.

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

From the Lists: #36 All the King's Men

Between spring allergies and a cold that has lingered for the best part of two weeks, I have been somewhat off my game lately. The blog topics have been piling up and I have pledged to catch up this week with few rapid-fire entries.

First up, I finished reading #36 on the list of the Best 100 English Novels of the 20^th century:  All the King’s Men (1946) by Robert Penn Warren, which is loosely based on the life of Louisiana Governor Huey Long, nicknamed The Kingfish. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1947.

Back in the day, I had an English professor in a Modernism course who stated: “When the dwarf shows up, you know it’s a southern gothic novel.” In this case, the role of the dwarf is played by an aggressive pock-marked, political insider, who is instrumental in both the rise and fall of a southern politician – think female James Carville. 

For fans of southern gothic political dramas, this book is for you. The settings are draped in Spanish Moss. The language and descriptions drip with a humid fecundity that all native southerners in the United States recognize as summer in the deep South. 

I don’t usually quote long passages in these blog posts, but when I read this, I was so struck by the description that I had to read it again and again:  

“A month from now, in early April, at the time when far away, outside the city, the water hyacinths would be covering every inch of bayou, lagoon, creek, and backwater with a spiritual-mauve to obscene-purple, violent, vulgar, fleshy, solid, throttling mass of bloom over the black water, and the first heartbreaking, misty green, like girlhood dreams, on the old cypresses would have settled down to be leaf and not a damned thing else, and the arm-thick, mud-colored, slime-slick mocassins would heave out of the swamp and try to cross the highway and your front tire hitting one would give a slight bump and make a sound like kerwhush and a tinny thump when he slapped heavily up against the underside of the fender, and the insects would come boiling out of the swamps and day and night the whole air would vibrate with them with a sound like an electric fan, and if it was night the owls back in the swamps would be whoo-ing and moaning like love and death and damnation, or one would sail out of the pitch dark into the rays of your headlights and plunge against the radiator to explode like a ripped feather bolster, and the fields would be deep in that rank, hairy or slick, juicy, sticky grass which the cattle gorge on and never get flesh over their ribs for that grass is in that black soil and no matter how far the roots could ever go, if the roots were God knows how deep, there would never be anything but that black, grease-clotted soil and no stone down there to put calcium into that grass – well, a month from now, in early April, when all those things would be happening beyond the suburbs, the husks of the old houses in the street where Anne Stanton and I were walking would, if it were evening, crack and spill out onto the stoops and into the street all that life which was now sealed up within.”

And, it’s one sentence. Jeeze, I can’t even imagine trying to get that past a teacher, but I can dream of one day creating a sentence with this much power. As is obvious from the excerpt above, this is an atmospheric book as much as it is a political potboiler, complete with illicit love affairs, backroom dealings, corruption, and redemption – but sadly, no dwarves. 

I was immediately pulled in by the style and found myself hoping that the governor would make everything all right and bring down the bad guys. But in truth, there is a little bit of bad in all of us, we just have to learn how to make good things from it. 

I have added the Oscar winning, 1949 film version to my Netflix Queue. I am eager to see how the screenwriters adapted the narrative to film.

Next up: #33 Sister Carrie

From the Lists: #37 The Bridge of San Luis Rey

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) by Thornton Wilder examines faith, the existence of divine intervention, and the lives of five victims lost as a result of an unexpected tragedy.

The novel opens with “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.” The bridge, a local feat of Incan engineering, linked Cuzco with Lima and had lasted 100 years. Adding to the mystery, there was no apparent reason for its collapse. A Franciscan monk, who witnessed the event, believed that if he could discover the facts about the victims’ lives, he could prove whether the tragedy was a result of chance or divine intervention.

The subsequent parts of this very short novel examine the lives of the five victims: A misunderstood member of the Peruvian court and her young servant, a young man in mourning for his recently deceased twin brother, the male valet for Peru’s most acclaimed actress and the actress’s young son.

The novel’s conceit is that the narrator has the benefit of both the monk’s writing as well as the lens of history to clarify portions of the victims’ lives, which may have been misunderstood or misrepresented by those closest to them. For example, the Marquesa de Montemayor is reviled in Lima due to her appearance and penchant for hitting the bottle, yet in time, her letters are revered as some of the most famous literary writings from the period. Through the lens of time, it becomes apparent that all of these victims, except perhaps the children, are a complex mixture of both good and bad qualities – like everyone.

Thornton Wilder from his Yale graduation photo

Besides its brevity, I quite liked this novel. The antiquated and quaint style of storytelling reads as if the book were written in the Victorian age rather than the early 20^th century. The third person narrator proves to be more reliable than the monk – who presumes to be able to know the will of God. And, like Go Tell It On the Mountain, this is another story told in five parts.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 for originality, entertainment, and brevity.

Next up:  #36  All the King’s Men

From the Lists: #39 Go Tell It on the Mountain

Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) by James Baldwin is a semi-autobiographical novel examining the role of the Christian Church in the lives of African-Americans, both as a source of repression and moral hypocrisy and as a source of inspiration and community in the early 20^th century. It also, subtly discusses racism in the United States as experienced by African-Americans in both the South and Harlem following the turn of the century to 1920.

The story is imaginatively told from the perspectives of four characters: John (the protagonist), his Mother Elizabeth, his stepfather Gabriel Grimes, and Gabriel’s sister Florence. The Grimes family unit is in constant crisis due to Gabriel’s inability to forgive himself and his family members for their past sins. Their home and social lives revolve around a storefront, charismatic Christian church where the Lord speaks directly to the faithful, tears are shed in prayer, tongues are spoken, and the members are filled with the holy spirit. 

Well, all members except for John, who at 14, is beginning to question his faith. His crisis of faith comes from his relationship with his stepfather as well a belief that his awakening sexuality is a sign of his sinfulness making him unworthy of God’s love.

The novel is divided into five sections, much like the Pentateuch. The characters are first introduced from John’s 14-year-old perspective. The next three parts occur in the church where the histories of the adults in John’s life are revealed through the prayers they offer during a Saturday night “Tarry” service, a Friday or Saturday night service during which congregants pray and wait for the lord to speak to them directly. I found this video of a tarry service that may give you a better idea of what John was experiencing when the spirit came upon him in the novel’s final scene.

I really quite enjoyed reading this novel. I felt as if I could relate each character with myself or someone I know. The writing was crisp and although the action occurs in space of a few hours, the narrative does not linger on the mundane as do many modernist novels of this time. In this case, every word moves the story and the reader’s understanding forward.

Recommendation: 4 enthusiastically sung hymns out of 5

Next up: The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder

100 Best English Novels of the 20th Century  

 

From the Lists: #43 A Dance to the Music of Time - First Movement

Anthony Powell

There have been several occasions as I work my way through the list of the 100 best English novels of the 20th century in which I have loudly complained of multiple works being listed as a single installment. The Alexandria Quartet and Parade's End, each consisting of four separate novels readily come to mind. However, with that said, #43 A Dance to the Music of Time wins the "Are you serious?" award since a single entry on the list consists of 12 relatively short novels that dip into the life of Nicholas Jenkins during various points between 1914 and 1971.

The books are presented as movements. Therefore, rather than trying to write an all encompassing review of the entire epic, which would probably consist of "12 books! It was just a blur," I think that I will briefly touch upon each novel within a movement, the time in which it occurs, and any other random connections I make while reading them.

The First Movement:
A Question of Upbringing (1951)

We are introduced to middle class Nick and his friends during various stages of their college educations post WWI, as well as Nick's ne'er do well Uncle Giles. His college acquaintances are from all social classes: the rich Stringham, the handsome Templer, and the rather socially awkward (aspergers-y perhaps?) Widmerpool play the central roles. Oddly, other than Uncle Giles, there is very little exposition about Nick's family, while there is quite a bit concerning the families of his friends. As the first novel draws to an end, the group grows apart and comes back together in an unexpected way. The writing is crisp and the characters are interesting. It is a "college days" novel about how friendships evolve over time and in retrospect take on a different meaning.

A Buyer's Market (1952)
We rejoin Nick and his circle of friends in London a few years out of university in the 1920's as they are pursuing both business and romantic interests. This installment begins with Nick perusing an auction of Mr. Deacon's belongings who was a distant and rather eccentric family friend, following his death by somewhat "less than respectable" circumstances. From there, we move with Nick through London's Spring social circuit of balls and lawn parties into the seedier side of London's artistic and politically active communities.

Like Nick's, accidental return to Stingham's orbit and finding himself socializing in the same circles as the awkward Widmerpool, I had an odd little coincidence of my own while reading this installment. During a meditation class in which connections with people in our lives is examined, this passage coincidentally repeated something our teacher wanted us to learn, but without all the commas:

I used to imagine life divided into separate compartments, consisting, for example, of such dual abstractions as pleasure and pain, love and hate, friendship and enmity, and more material classifications like work and play....That illusion - as such a point of view was closely related to another belief: that existence fans out indefinitely into new areas of experience, and that almost every additional acquaintance offers some supplementary world with its own hazards and enchantments. As time goes on, of course, these supposedly different worlds, in fact, draw closer, if not to each other, then to some pattern common to all: so that, at last, diversity between them, if in truth existent, seems to be almost imperceptible except in a few crude and exterior ways.... In other words, nearly all the inhabitants of these outwardly disconnected empires turn out at last to be tenaciously interrelated; love and hate, friendship and enmity too, becoming themselves much less clearly defined, more often than not, showing signs of possessing characteristics that could claim, to say the least, not a little in common.

Here Nick is still a naive observer of his world rather than an active participant. However, he has begun to draw parallels between the friends he admires and some of the less pallatable characteristics of his Uncle Giles.

The Acceptance World (1955)

A pattern is emerging in the series. Each book begins with a meeting between Nick and his Uncle Giles. These meetings have a way of setting the theme for each installment. In The Acceptance World, the time frame has jumped into the early 1930s. Nick has published his first book, has a stable job at a publishing house, has loved and lost and loved again, but is still an observer of his world - only a more mature and slightly more cynical observer. Some plot points from the previous novel, such as the details surrounding that "old queen," Mr. Deacon's death are expanded upon. Also several of the artistic set from the previous novel have moved on to become established in the respectable world, while some of the old Edwardian artistic set cling to former glories and try to remain relevant as the modernist movement takes root.

Characters introduced in the first novel who appeared destined for greatness are now struggling with alcoholism, divorce, and a general discontent, while those seemingly destined for the dust bin have found their way into middle class success. The characters have all grown in unexpected ways. The college loser is moving up, while the privileged are in slow decline. Of the three novels in the first movement, I thought this was the weakest; however, I think it sets the characters up nicely to transition into the coming war years.

I need a break from Nick and his gang. I am jumping ahead to the next book on the list, which is an adventure set in the back woods of Georgia. Is that a banjo I hear in the distance?????

A little snark is required to end this post: Should the list be renamed as the 120 Best English Novels of the 20th Century? I am still feeling as if I have been just a bit bamboozled. And there is another multi-novel entry coming up which will push it to 123 Best novels - hmph! I better get back to it - time is wasting and I am not getting any younger.