Tag: fiction

GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell

GONE WITH THE WIND is a book both profoundly woke and un-woke.  The un-woke part is very famous.  The main characters are slave owners and slave apologists, and it is fascinating to see how they construct a world in which they can still live with themselves. It’s wild to see people living their daily lives while committing atrocities.  The woke part I rarely see discussed, but for me it’s pretty woke: and that’s the character of Scarlett O’Hara. I can’t think of a book previous to this that has a female character who clearly and explicitly manipulates being female to her advantage.  I also can’t think of an earlier female character who makes her own money and is proud of it.

Also interesting, and I think something you rarely see written about, is the really horribly mean act of keeping someone dangling.  Ashley Wilkes does it to Scarlett O’Hara, and it’s really sad. I think this happens a lot: you enjoy someone else having a crush on you, because you like the attention, so instead of doing the kind thing (making it clear they have no hope, so they can get over you), you keep it going, enjoying the validation, and making them go slowly crazy.  Meanwhile you act all innocent like they are the pathetic one.

OF LOVE AND HUNGER by Julian MacLaren-Ross

In this book we learn all about being a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.  It involves a surprising amount of day-drinking.  The author, Julian McLaren-Ross, was apparently a true bohemian, and had much experience as a door-to-door salesman, and also of day drinking.  This book captures a certain seedy life in the early twentieth century very well, all petty debts, horrible rooming houses, and trying to avoid buying your round.  It is structured around a love affair the salesman has with a colleague’s wife.  He is not that into it, at first, and then gets super, super, into it.  Then she goes off him.  It’s sad, as love affairs that peter out always are, not helped by all the debt.  It has a kind of uplifting side though, in that she encourages him to write, and to think about politics, and to generally better himself.  People roll their eyes about crushes, but I think they can sometimes be powerful engines for growth.  People are always joining the drama club to meet girls, or joining the gym so boys will look at them, and etc.  At least it keeps us going forward, even if it all blows up in the end.

MRS PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT by Elizabeth Taylor

Here is a scarring little book about what is required to survive old age.  It tells the story of an elderly widow, Mrs Palfrey, who moves into a residential hotel.  Some other old people live there also, and I got the impression that some fifty years ago, moving into such a hotel was quite common for older people who did not yet need nursing care.  This is my second book by this author, Elizabeth Taylor, and I am amazed she is not more famous.  She is wonderful at capturing the battles of daily life, and the struggle of keeping yourself in hand.  Here is an older lady while they wait for dinner:

“Well, another Sunday nearly gone,” Mrs Post said quickly, to cover a little fart.  She had presence of mind.

Hanging over the whole book is the loneliness of old age.  I guess it makes sense: the older you get, the more likely you are to outlive the people you love.  I have never seen described in quite so much detail what this is like.  Then there is also of course what is waiting for you: after the hotel, the old age home, if you are lucky, and if not, then death. Here is Mrs Palfrey, answering when someone asks her if she thinks she is an optimistic person:

“Oh I think so.”  She did not explain to him how deeply pessimistic one must be in the first place, to need the sort of optimism she now had at her command.

I’m sorry this is kind of a downer, but there you go. It is at the same time a fairly funny book.  I’m not sure when I’ll recover.

Just as a sidebar, if you’ve ever read the dreadful IN A FREE STATE by VS Naipaul, you should know that  it beat out MRS PALFREY to win the Booker Prize.  This just tells you everything you need to know.  Allow me to remind you of the time when VS Naipaul said he was better than any female writer, even Jane Austen.  Apparently, the 75% male Booker panel of 1971 agreed.  VOM.

LUSTER by Raven Leilani

This started off pretty well, being a story of a young black woman who gets involved with an older white man who is in an open marriage. Here she is, making out with him:

For a moment, I’m sure I’m going to cry, which is not unusual, because I cry often and everywhere, and most especially because of this one Olive Garden commercial.  I excuse myself and run to the bathroom, where I look in the mirror and reassure myself that there are bigger things than the moment I am in.  Gerrymandering.  Genealogy conglomerates selling my cheek swabs to the state. 

She loses her job and then in a not at all believable turn of events is invited by the wife to live with them. We then get into that beloved territory of recent novels, which is the aimless narrator. She hangs about not really looking for a job, doing weird aimless things like taking photographs of their stuff. I gave up with about twenty pages left to go. The book like the narrator where both going nowhere.

DEVOTION by Madeline Stevens

DEVOTION is okay for a beach read, which is lucky, because I read it on a beach. It tells the story of a nanny who becomes obsessed with her employer. It is another of what seems to be an entire new genre on income inequality. Eventually it all blows up when the employer is extremely intoxicated, and her husband and the nanny force her into a threesome. I got the impression we were supposed to think this was some kind of crescendo of obsession, but mostly I just thought it was rape. Like, check it out, you don’t get to have sex with someone who is too drunk to consent, no matter how obssessed you are or how rich they are.

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED BY F Scott Fitzgerald

I have not read this book for about thirty years, and it certainly has changed.  It tells the story of a married couple who spend a lot of money and have a lot of fun.  They claim this is because of some life philosophy they have about living for the day and damning tomorrow.  In fact, it is because they expect a large inheritance. I used to think this was wondefully romantic; now I just think it’s amazing how many philosophies you can come up with if you expect to inherit.

It begins to look as if they will not receive the inheritance, and they descend pretty quickly into drinking too much and cheating, having now boxed themselves into a corner.  Here is the husband, having made the mistake of looking at the alumni magazine of his university (always a mistake when you are feeling low):

He laid down the magazine and thought for a while about these diverse men. . . (In the past) he would as soon become a churchgoer because the prospect of immortality gratified him as he would have considered entering the leather business because the intensity of the competition would have kept him from unhappiness.  But at present he had no such delicate scruples.  This autumn, as his twenty-ninth year began, he was inclined to close his mind to many things, to avoid prying deeply into motives and first causes, and mostly to long passionately for security from the world and from himself. 

Then they sue, and get the inheritance after all; but by then they have already learnt some rough lessons about what happens when you damn tomorrow. I mean on the one hand I feel sorry for him but on the other hand BOO HOO I AM SO SORRY YOU ALMOST DIDN’T GET AN UNFAIR GODDAMN ADVANTAGE. 

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES by Jeffrey Eugenides

I like Jeffrey Eugenides’ MIDDLESEX, and to a lesser degree THE MARRIAGE PLOT, so I was a bit surprised to be so underwhelmed by this one.  

On the surface it seems like it should be interesting, being the story of how five daughters in one family came to all commit suicide.  Somehow however, from this promising material, a very boring book is written. I think part of the problem is the attempt at formal inventiveness in the narrative voice.  The story is told by some undefined ‘we’ who are apparently the neighbourhood boys, who are apparently recounting this story many years later. I just found this dumb.  Also I didn’t really like the heavy emphasis on how inscrutable females are, that inevitably came with it.  No doubt that is what teenage boys really do feel but so does most of western literature, and so it is a bit SNORE.  Probably they had mental health issues or were being abused or something, like Jesus guys it’s not that complicated.  Anyway I did like this sex scene, so I’ll leave you with that.  Don’t say I never do anything for you:

Two beasts lived in the car, one above, snuffling and biting him, and one below, struggling to get out of its damp cage.  Validanlty he did what he could to feed them, placate them, but the sense of his insufficiency grew and after a few minute, with only the words “Gotta get back before bed check,” Lux left him, more dead than alive. 

IN A SUMMER SEASON by Elizabeth Taylor

Here is a story of a suburbia.  A middle-aged woman marries a much younger man after her first husband dies, and . . . Never mind the plot, because as the introduction tells us, the author is ‘bored by narrative. ‘

Usually this kind of thing is RED FLAG for me, but Taylor is such a fine writer she makes it work.  Try this, of the teenage son coming home late:

Tom walked up the drive, treading silently on the grass verge, let himself in quietly and crept upstairs.  The house was night-quiet.  They were all as fast asleep as innkeepers of an afternoon.  They dreamt their innocent, middle-aged dreams and rested their aging bones

And try this, on his mother’s thoughts when this same son rolls his eyes at her:

They condescend, Kat thought.  They behave like people who are trying hard not to be snobbish.. . They are appalled for us that we are middle aged.

Or this, on a son’s reaction to having to talk about his mother:

His fists seemed to be tightened in readiness, lest anyone should find her as absurd as he did . . .

It’s wonderful, sharply observed writing.  Particularly heartbreaking is our occasional insights into the mind of the family cook, who is really quite despairing on her life, but somehow carries on cooking.  Taylor uses the word ‘courageous’ about how she faces some potatoes in a way that made me want to tear up.

I got up in Wikipedia to try and figure out why a writer of this quality is not more famous.  I found no straightforward answer, but I think it is probably down to her being perceived as too mumsy.  She lived an almost incredibly bourgeouis life in the London suburbs, and I guess being the wife and mother of bankers is not as interesting as being an actual banker.  (Side bar, I am sure this was half the problem for Hilary Clinton too.  Fundamentally, people don’t want their mothers to succeed).  In any case, it is interesting to see about her process (thanks to the Atlantic for the information):

She said “I dislike much travel or change of environment and prefer the days … to come round almost the same, week after week.”. . . That steady rhythm allowed for her regular and admirable output—although she began to publish only when she was 34, wrote “slowly and without enjoyment, and think it all out when I am doing the ironing,” and regularly put her work aside to attend to her children and household (!), she produced 12 novels, four story collections, and one children’s book in 30 years

MAYFLIES by Andrew O’Hagan

This book got rave reviews. Myself, I could not see it. It begins as a story of teenage boys going to a concert. I could see that it was well-written, but I found it hard to follow: it was so very, very deep in British culture, in the 1980s, and in men, that it was almost incomprehensible. I suspect the rave reviews come from older men who remember this world?

The second half of the book is about the same group of men, but thirty years on. So I hear: I didn’t get there.