Dawn's Reading Blog

Wide Sargasso Sea is certainly the quickest read of the 100 Best list so far. It’s a short book and reads lightly. It’s supposedly the prequel to Jane Eyre, i.e. how the mad wife in the attic came to be there. If you didn’t know this, you certainly wouldn’t guess. I think all the early parts of the book are well done but the jump to her being “mad” and in the attic is abrupt and largely unsupported. It feels like the author took a nice story that was heading somewhere in its own time and tried to shoe horn it into Jane Eyre.

I’m not a big Hemingway fan, although I do love clean, simple writing. Hemingway’s gets a little too simple, which is why it’s so often lampooned, and A Farewell to Arms is as simple as it comes.

Now, I’d never seen the movie, so the plot and ending were a surprise to me. I think I was expecting something more war-like. Turns out it’s a love story. And a stupid one. I couldn’t believe they were in love at all. They’re so phony with each other. They share no interests. They say nothing and do nothing. Perhaps Hemingway was being ironic and we’re supposed to know it’s just as well she died because there’s no way he’d want to spend more than another month or two with her. She was seriously irritating. And he was faking it to get laid. Right? Or was it romantic and I’m just a cynic?

Does ‘oo wuv me? Am I the cutest? Will we be the bestest blogger and blog reader that ever-wever was? Tell me! Tell me before I have a hissy fit! It’s OK, darling. I do know you love me and I’m OK now, I promise. I’ll never have another hissy fit again until page 2.

What an odd little book. A High Wind in Jamaica is written from a naively savage child’s eye viewpoint. The children are both believable and terrifying while the tone is light, humorous, and deeply irreverent on some fairly serious topics. The kids fall into one catastrophic situation after another, all of which seem mundane to them. Meanwhile they fixate on seemingly minor incidents like the loss of a pet. In the end it mostly comes out all right, but the kids don’t care much one way or another. Except about that pet. Curiouser and curiouser.

The Ginger Man was another one of those 100 Best books that left me cold. It was something like Tropic of Cancer in being a rambling, hard-to-follow account of some young man’s debauchery. Perhaps it would be more appealing if I were a young man. Or a young anything. Instead it leaves me feeling sorry for the characters and hopeful they’ll lead more productive lives in the future. Not that I don’t still have my moments of debauchery but they tend to be moments I regret more than moments I cherish.

The writing style is intentionally chaotic. The author switches between first and third person, past and present. This, while “artistic”, does nothing for me. Then again, a friend was just explaining to me what he gets out of Jackson Pollack–things I’ve never seen or thought of. Perhaps I’d do better with some of these more abstract novels with some guidance. If there’s a foreward to the book I do usually read it. Afterwards. Unfortunately, my edition f The Ginger Man didn’t come with someone’s explanation of what I should be seeing in it.

My last Henry James turns out to be my best Henry James. The Ambassadors is the third of the three James novels on the 100 Best list. Both James and I think it’s his best. Or maybe I’m just getting used to him. Maybe I’ve learned to follow the tortuous comma trail that separates every conceivable sub-phrase into its own isolated but interlinked compartment. Maybe I’ve come to understand the subtext beneath his text, the degree to which words like “marvelous” and “wonderful” are used as camoflage rather than description. Or maybe this James offering is a little less convulted and a lot less obscure. Or maybe I’m just glad to be done with him.

That aside, The Ambassadors, like all his novels, sucks you in at the last whether you want to be sucked or not. He does know how to construct a deviously twisted plot, wherein everyone is both right and wrong and you can’t root for a happy ending because you have no idea what that would be. And as with all his novels, The Ambassadors ends with a fade, not a blackout. The characters amble away from each other, off, not into a sunset, but into real life, i.e. more of the same.

Bye, bye, Mr. James. Here’s to more of the same for you, but not for me.

I didn’t find Tender is the Night all that interesting. It’s the story of a guy falling apart after he has a brief affair with a younger woman. Why exactly that should make him fall apart, I don’t know. He’d been doing OK having an insane wife. You’d think if he can manage that he can swing a simple affair. I guess we’re supposed to come to understand that he was never that solid to begin with, that it was all superficial and hollow.

Anyway, the internet says some of this mirrored F. Scott’s own life which I guess adds a dimension if you care about F. Scott’s own life. Fitzgerald is always an easy read. I had no trouble getting through it; I just can’t imagine remembering it in a few years.

From Here to Eternity was a good epic tale. I got caught up in the characters and enjoyed all bazillion pages of it. And supposedly it’s a great depiction of what being in the army is really like. But I’m not sure it’s a good book. It’s unfocused, with two heroes rather than one, and it skips around from theme to theme.

At the start of the book it’s all about Prewitt and how much he loves bugling and how he can’t bugle because he won’t box. But by the end of the book, neither bugling nor boxing rates more than a passing mention. There is a running theme of Prewitt vs. the army. He supposedly loves the army and yet he’s in constant contention with it. Why he loves the army, or even how he loves the army, is never made clear. We’re simply told he loves the army. If I were him, I’d quit that.

The other lead character, Warden, has a more continuous plot. He falls in love with his CO’s wife and doesn’t want to become an officer. He manages to stick to those two goals of get the girl, don’t get the rank.

The editing in my edition was poor. Some of it I can only assume was intentional. For instance apostrophes were frequently left out. Other mistakes were clearly mistakes. All in all, this was another example of a book that was good but that hardly seems head and shoulders above the rest.

A Handful of Dust is one of those books from the 100 Best list that makes me shrug. It was OK, nothing special. I’m pretty sure I could pick up any random novel at the airport and get something as well written and entertaining, which is to say not much.

At first the book is about a Lady in England who’s bored with her husband and country life and who consequently falls in love with a gentleman of much lower standing. When an accident further upsets her life, she asks for a divorce. The husband still loves her and decides to fight back. So far, so good. Not earth shattering but readable.

Then, for no explicable reason, the husband goes off to the jungle in South America where he eventually ends up captured and presumed dead. We never do hear what happens to the woman who was the star of the first half of the book. Stupid. Implausible. Pointless.

Supposedly it’s satire but apparently I have a different meaning for that word.

The Good Soldier is a good example of why my quest to read the 100 best books of the 20th century (according to The Modern Library) has value. I’d never have read it if it weren’t on the list. First of all, Ford Maddox Ford is a stupid name. Who does that to their child? And secondly, it sounds like it’s about war. Not to say there haven’t ever been any good war books – All’s Quiet on the Western Front comes to mind – but it’s not typically my genre.

Actually, The Good Soldier has no war in it. And it’s amazing. Bizarre, delightful, light yet deep. I’m so glad I read it. I don’t know whether to try something else by him or not. If it were just like The Good Soldier, then I’d be less impressed by The Good Soldier. It would just be his style. But what if I read another of his books and it was also uniquely amazing? Anyway, he’s apparently only really written one other thing and it’s also on the list, so I guess I have no choice.

I can’t belive the last thing I finished was also on the 100 Best list. Shows you how fast this went that I finished it before any “easier” book I had going. It’s the story of two adulterously-entwined couples, told from the point of view of a naive cuckold. Or he might be in denial. You know I don’t analyze these things much. My edition contained no introduction written by a scholar who would know so I have to go by the margin notes whoever owned it before me made. Which reminds me to flip through any book I pick up at the used book store before buying it. I hate margin notes.

This is my second Henry James and I didn’t like The Wings of the Dove any better than I liked the first one (Golden Bowl). James writes narrative with so many commas and qualifications that you need a road map to follow it, e.g:

She felt, consideringly, and with great emotion, but not withstanding her other, deeper, feelings, that she, but not he, might, perhaps, feel the same.

He writes dialogue intentionally to be vague. Apparently this is art. People aren’t always clear and honest. True. But they do tend to actually say things and not just hint at them. Typical Jamesian dialogue:

“You mean?”
“Exactly.”
“I can’t help but feel that she’s . . . “
“Extraordinary?”
“Extraordinary.”
“And so it’s obvious that . . . “
“I know.”

Who? What? Somewhere in all this meandering narrative and dialogue, a plot emerges. It’s helpful to read the synopsis on the back of the book so that you’ll recognize it when you see it. The plot was a little sick – this girl is dying (of what we’ll never know) and she’s extraordinary (because she’s rich, as near as I can figure) and her best friend, who’s also extraordinary (for her ability to read minds and communicate by telepathy apparently) gets her secret fiancee (who takes order by telepathy as long as she ponies up the sex) to make up to the rich, dying girl so they (the two poor lovers) can get her money. What makes it sick is that they’re all so marvelously sure that everyone is marvelous and acting marvelously. I nearly expected them to get away with it and live happily ever after, content with how marvelously they had acted to such an extraordinary girl. I’m glad to say that didn’t happen.

At the very end you find out that perhaps all this hinting and not saying what you mean may have meant something, in that things weren’t as rosy as they were all pretending. Or maybe you don’t find that out. Even when they’re having it out they do it vaguely:

“So then you don’t?”
“I couldn’t.”
“But what about?”
“Exactly.”

I’m sad to say that there’s still one more James to go.

FYI, all examples were made up, but only because I’m too lazy to quote from the actual book. I swear it’s just like that.