W. Somerset Maugham is one of those prolific, craggy-faced British writers who seem rather irrelevant and fusty today. No one reads or discusse[image]
W. Somerset Maugham is one of those prolific, craggy-faced British writers who seem rather irrelevant and fusty today. No one reads or discusses him anymore, and I’m sure he’s not taught in schools, although he enjoyed decades of success and wrote many novels, plays, collections of short stories and – a term that perfectly captures his particular era – “belles-lettres.”
(I think his problem was he was writing around the time modernist writing – Joyce, Faulkner – broke through. And his style is definitely not as “innovative,” although in some ways it has aged better.)
That said, I’m glad I picked up this engrossing, compact and well-written novel. It’s “inspired” by the life of post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, whose Tahitian works I of course have seen in galleries and reproductions.
Maugham sets up the novel as if it consists of memories from an unnamed semi-autobiographical figure who’s also a young novelist and playwright. (I think it’s a device he also used in The Razor’s Edge, at least according to the Oscar-winning film version I’ve seen.)
Charles Strickland is a perfectly ordinary, comfortable, middle-class 40-something London stockbroker who one day leaves his wife and children to go to Paris to become a painter. His wife, believing he’s run off with another woman, asks the narrator to locate him in Paris, which he does. But instead of finding a man caught up in a torrid mid-life-crisis affair, he discovers a loathsome, hateful, irritable man living in a garret and learning how to paint. Strickland isn’t the most articulate man, but he believes painting is his calling. He doesn’t care about his wife, or his reputation, or even money, although he needs it to live.
The narrator also meets another artist, the corpulent Dutch immigrant Dirk Stroeve, who is commercially successful but a bit of a fool. A lot of poor Parisian artists sponge off him, including Strickland. Stroeve is one of the few people, however, to recognize Strickland’s genius. And he goes out of his way to help him, including opening up his apartment to the man when he falls ill; he and his wife, Blanche, help restore him to health. Not that Strickland is in any way grateful.
[image]
I appreciated this novel not as a biographical portrait of Gauguin but rather as a ruthless, unromanticized look at the idea of the artist. Should it matter if an artist is brilliant but a complete and utter asshole? Strickland’s calling almost seems religious, and I liked thinking about this theme as well. Maugham wasn’t as experimental as his modern contemporaries, but I found his use of the narrator figure fascinating. And his writing about sex was telling, especially knowing that Maugham was a closeted gay man, which added depth and richness to his depiction of an outsider figure.
Finally, the idea of someone leaving their comfortable job to pursue something more meaningful felt very timely during this moment, which has been dubbed “The Great Resignation.”
I was all set to give the book 5 stars… until I got to the final section, which felt anti-climactic. And warning: there are some racial and cultural epithets that will seem offensive to contemporary eyes and ears. Plus it’s important to keep in mind that, like Gauguin’s Tahiti paintings themselves, this book – especially the final part – is deeply influenced by colonialism.
One interesting note: the title never comes up in the book. Apparently it comes from a review of Maugham’s earlier book, Of Human Bondage. It’s about being “so busy yearning for the moon that [you] never see the sixpence at [your] feet.” That sentiment in itself is a thoughtful statement about art, idealism, ordinary life and commerce.
This is a remarkable novel. I’m definitely going to read more Maugham....more
I know it’s sacrilegious to give less than 4 or 5 stars to a bonafide classic. And honestly, I first read this back in college and remember loving it.I know it’s sacrilegious to give less than 4 or 5 stars to a bonafide classic. And honestly, I first read this back in college and remember loving it. Did I have more patience back then? Was I impressed with James’s dense prose, the novella’s evocative setting and the delightful ambiguity of his narrator?
Perhaps. This time around, I found the book needlessly overwritten and the narrator so obviously psychologically disturbed. As a case study in hysteria, this might be interesting. But I’m afraid I like my horror a tad more nuanced.
James’s book about a governess who looks after two little charges at a creepy old estate in Bly, Essex has been adapted many times. There are countless movies, plays, a recent Netflix TV series, a Benjamin Britten opera. One of my favourite stage versions was performed in one of Toronto’s oldest remaining homes, now a museum, where it was absolutely chilling to follow the actors up creaky staircases investigating strange goings-on.
The book, like many of the era, begins as a story within a story - it’s purportedly a manuscript by the narrator’s sister’s governess. In it, the governess tells us that she lives – she’s narrating the story after the fact (and I suppose went on to teach the narrator’s sister). But there’s no epilogue telling us more. Odd, and a missed opportunity, I think. How did the events in the story affect her in later life?
The tale does have loads of atmosphere. The estate comes into creepy focus. Figures appear on rooftops, near ponds. Scary apparitions pop up in windows. But if you’ve seen even one of the thousands of haunted house movies out there, you’ll be familiar with these tropes.
And often James’s sentences are so dense and full of convoluted phraseology that you have to read them several times to understand what the author’s trying to say. Not exactly page-turning material.
Frankly, I expected a few more turns of the screw....more
Is Undine Spragg the most odious fictional character ever?
I know The Custom of the Country is more than a century old, but Undine Spragg is certainly Is Undine Spragg the most odious fictional character ever?
I know The Custom of the Country is more than a century old, but Undine Spragg is certainly one of the most despicable characters in all of literature. She uses people. She’s vain. She lies. She’s horribly superficial. She treats her child like a pawn. She’s greedy. Long before the term was coined, she was a shop-a-holic. All she cares about is looking fashionable and making her way up society. And once she’s there, she’s bored and wants more.
AND YET!
And yet she keeps on going. She’s tenacious, stubborn. She uses what assets she has (basically her youth and looks) to their full advantage. And wow, can she ever read people, especially men. When she’s down, she figures out a way to get back on top. That’s got to be admirable, right?
And in a way, she’s the product of a consumerist society, one that doesn’t care how you get something as long as you get it.
I’m a huge Wharton fan. I loved The Age Of Innocence and really liked The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome. Watching the highly addictive new HBO series The Gilded Age made me think I should finally read this book, and I was right. There are passages of absolute brilliance, and Wharton seems to have a love-hate relationship with her protagonist as she works her way up from Midwestern nobody to New York society and then graduates to the jet set (steamer set?) and aristocratic circles in Europe.
Apparently Gilded Age creator Julian Fellowes has said The Custom of the Country has inspired his work. There are definitely echoes of Custom in Gilded Age.
I’ll never forget Undine. I think I even like and admire Scarlett O’Hara more, because she at least did what she did for her family. Spragg thinks only of herself. Which, I suppose in this day of self-styled “freedom warriors,” is pretty relevant....more
I was familiar with the TV show based on this series, but I’d never read the books themselves. What a delight!
There’s not much plot in this first bookI was familiar with the TV show based on this series, but I’d never read the books themselves. What a delight!
There’s not much plot in this first book, which isn’t set on the prairie (that’s book #3) but in a little log house in a forest outside Pepin, Wisconsin in the early 1870s. Wilder recounts a year in the life of her family – she’s there in her autobiographical alter ego, bright middle child Laura – and most of it has to do with household and seasonal farm chores, with vignettes about rag dolls, Christmas, dangerous animals, visiting town for the first time, etc.
Wilder was in her 60s when she wrote this, and the clear, effective writing is suffused with a nostalgic but never sentimental air. You get a subtle sense of the differences between her and her more proper and attractive older sister, Mary, and you wonder at the life of their mother, who left what seemed to have been a more genteel upbringing in the east for a challenging, often hard life in the middle of nowhere.
Wilder’s respect for the land and nature – and her love for her family – comes through in every page. And the descriptions of things like churning butter and collecting maple syrup are more vivid than anything you might see on the Food Network.
I’m so impressed I now plan to read the other books in this series....more
First Love is the absorbing, painfully candid account of 16-year-old Vladimir’s young, idealistic passion for his next-door-neighbour, a capricious 21First Love is the absorbing, painfully candid account of 16-year-old Vladimir’s young, idealistic passion for his next-door-neighbour, a capricious 21-year-old named Zinaida, who, alas, is in love with someone else.
I read Turgenev’s Fathers And Sons years ago, and forgot what an elegant and psychologically penetrating writer he was. The Russian author said this was one of his most autobiographical works, and it shows. It’s there in Vladimir’s loathing of Zinaida’s other suitors and his roiling, turbulent emotions. Reading his words, I can practically feel the acne on my skin from my teen years. (Oh youth!)
Zinada is a fascinating figure – there’s more than a touch of Great Expectations’s Estella about her, although that book would come out a year later, in 1861 – and you’re left to interpret her motivations from what we’re given of Vladimir’s (albeit limited) account of her actions.
This slim book – a novella, really – is less shocking than it would have been to a 19th century reader, and it’s pretty easy to figure out who Zinaida’s lover is. But it’s evocative enough to make me want to read more Turgenev, or some of his Russian colleagues. After all, I live in Canada, another cold climate, and winter is coming....more
I don't know how Patricia Highsmith did it. But she got me to root for a psychopathic murderer.
Tom Ripley is a smart, nondescript young man in[image]
I don't know how Patricia Highsmith did it. But she got me to root for a psychopathic murderer.
Tom Ripley is a smart, nondescript young man in his 20s barely scraping by in 1950s Manhattan. When the wealthy father of an acquaintance offers to pay him to go to Italy to convince his aspiring artist son to return to America, Tom can't believe his luck. An all expenses paid trip to Europe? To hang out on beaches, drink cocktails and visit galleries? Si!
Alas, things don't go as planned. The son, Richard (or Dickie) Greenleaf, is happy with his life painting in a sun-drenched village on the Amalfi coast. He's also got a sort of relationship with another ex-pat, Marge Sherwood, and is perfectly content where he is. Soon Tom becomes obsessed with Dickie. He wants his life – the leisure, the trust fund, the nice clothes. Perhaps he even wants Dickie himself.
So some bad things happen. Tom – who's got a gift for impersonation and improvisation – covers them up. But one lie begets another, and another. Soon other bad things happen. And then people start investigating: Marge, Italian police officers, Dickie's father, an American detective...
Can the resourceful Tom not only cover his tracks but stay a step ahead of everyone?
Anyone who's seen the Anthony Minghella movie starring Matt Damon (as Tom), Jude Law (Dickie) and Gwyneth Paltrow (Marge) knows the answer, of course. (The film introduced another major character not in the book.) Also, this is the first of five Ripley books, so you know he survives to go on to other adventures.
But Highsmith is such a good writer that she keeps you constantly on edge. She also fills in Tom's backstory so you sympathize with him. His parents died when he was young, and he was raised by a cold, judgemental aunt. He was never the popular kid, always an outsider. Doesn't he deserve some happiness? True friendship? Love? Who among us hasn't envied – and perhaps resented – the beautiful and privileged one-percent?
What's fascinating to a contemporary reader is how submerged Tom's same-sex desires are. I'm not sure what a typical 1950s reader would have thought, but it's pretty clear that he's in love with Dickie; Highsmith, who wrote the ahead-of-its-time classic lesbian novel Carol under a pen name, depicts both men's private lives in a suggestive, tantalizing way that was probably clear in its implications to queer readers at the time.
It's also amusing to think how a modern-day Tom Ripley would flourish in the digital world. Imagine what he could discover about people through Instagram and Google.
Repressed desires; elegant clothes; lavish European settings (including Rome, the Cote d'Azur, Naples and Venice); shakers full of martinis; plus a murder or two and a generous helping of guilt – what's not to love?
A classic novel that shouldn't be relegated to genre fiction....more
Death in Venice is one of those works of art that is so familiar it seems to have been around forever.
Stuffy middle-aged German writer Gustav von AschDeath in Venice is one of those works of art that is so familiar it seems to have been around forever.
Stuffy middle-aged German writer Gustav von Aschenbach vacations in the Floating City, where he gradually becomes obsessed with a beautiful Polish youth named Tadzio staying at his hotel and eventually succumbs to a mysterious cholera epidemic.
The novella is a curious mixture of allegorical tale, campy melodrama and academic study of the Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy.
Mann's prose is alternately fussy, claustrophobic and hypnotically sensual. There's no clear explanation of what happens. Is Tadzio the angel of death? Does he represent everything the intellectual Aschenbach avoided in his life? Is the scholar simply going through a major midlife crisis, involving coming out? All of the above; none of the above – which makes the story frustrating but also amusingly enigmatic.
I'm looking forward to reading more Mann, especially one of his big novels like The Magic Mountain....more
Was there ever a novelist with a bigger heart than Charles Dickens?
[image]
This is the sixth Dickens book I’ve read (including the novella A ChristWas there ever a novelist with a bigger heart than Charles Dickens?
[image]
This is the sixth Dickens book I’ve read (including the novella A Christmas Carol). And, like most of his other works, it’s expansive, bursting with all manner of incident and life. Some of that life, mind you, goes ON AND ON. And a few scenes about social graces/manners might need explaining to a contemporary reader. But the overall effect, if you ignore the repetition, is absorbing and very satisfying.
Just as we binge-watch the latest Netflix or Hulu series, I can imagine Victorian readers binge-reading the installments of this novel as they were published in the late 1830s.
After his father dies, Nicholas, his sister Kate and their mother are left penniless and at the mercy of the father’s brother, Ralph, a miserly moneylender who’s clearly possibly an early model for Ebenezer Scrooge.
Ralph, who hated his brother, promptly separates the family and does the absolute minimum for his poor relations; he sends Nicholas off to work in Yorkshire as an assistant to the loathsome Wackford Squeers, who runs an abusive sham of a school for boys; he sends Kate and her mother to live in a slum, and arranges for Kate to work for a milliner, Madame Mantalini, and her no-good, hanger-on husband.
Soon Nicholas and Ralph have a huge falling out, and the family is cut off from any financial aid. How will they survive?
What follows is an episodic narrative that includes forays into the theatre world (no doubt drawing on Dickens’s own experiences as an actor), several businesses and shadowy corners of London lowlife. This being a Dickens novel, there are lots of coincidences, some broad caricatures and a heavy social conscience, especially around the plight of the poor and helpless.
Oddly enough, while Nicholas and Kate Nickleby are thinly drawn goody-goody characters, their chattering mother leaps off the page with her humorous conjectures and genteel pronouncements; Ralph and Squeers make fascinating contrasting villains.
Other memorable characters include Ralph’s clerk, Newman Noggs, who takes a shine to the Nicklebys; Lord Frederick Verisopht (say the surname aloud) and Sir Mulberry Hawk, two of Ralph’s slimy business associates; Miss La Creevy, a miniature portrait painter; all of the lively actors involved in the travelling theatre troupe run by Vincent Crummles; John Browdie, a simple but warm-hearted Yorkshireman who might bring to mind Great Expectations’ Joe Gargery.
And then there’s the pathetic, friendless, sad-sack Smike, whom Nicholas meets and befriends at Squeers’ school. He’s one of those idealized, sentimentalized characters found only in Dickens novels.
It’s a little unfair to judge an early Dickens novel (his third, written when he was in his 20s) against his later works, particularly masterpieces like David Copperfield and Great Expectations. These later books were more carefully structured, and I don’t recall sighing and wanting to get through any passages the way I did with this book. (There’s one story-within-a-story set in a tavern that practically stops the novel in its tracks.)
But even though I pretty much knew where the novel was going (I’d seen the two-part stage adaptation years ago), Dickens still made me laugh, cry and gasp at certain passages.
More than most major English novelists except perhaps D.H. Lawrence, Dickens was familiar with poverty and the lower classes, and that gave him lots of knowledge about the human condition, the vanity fair that makes up life, now and nearly 200 years ago....more
“God’s nightgown!”* How can I ever review the behemoth that is Gone With The Wind? Rather than write a traditional review, I’ve decided to organize my“God’s nightgown!”* How can I ever review the behemoth that is Gone With The Wind? Rather than write a traditional review, I’ve decided to organize my thoughts into separate sections.
*One of the many quaint and highly amusing Southernisms used in the book
WHY READ THIS 1,037-PAGE BOOK IN THE FIRST PLACE? I’d seen the film several times, and had always wanted to read the novel, if only to compare the two. Also: it won the Pulitzer Prize – so it had to have literary merit, right? And many people whose tastes I respect on this site love it. Then, while perusing my local library, I saw a brand new hardcover copy of the 75th anniversary edition, and that was my sign. I thought: As God is my witness, now is the time to read it. And read it. And keep on reading it. I renewed it several times. It took me well over a month to get through (albeit during a super busy time at work). But like Scarlett clawing her way back to Tara after the war, I persevered. And I'm so glad I did.
A GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL There’s everything in here. Immigration. Slavery. A brutal war and its aftermath. A moving romance. An examination of ethics and morality. There are big themes like money vs. love, passion vs. friendship, the old world vs. the new. And at its centre is one of the most complex characters in all of literature, Scarlett O’Hara.
OH, SCARLETT She’s vain. Selfish. Petty. Culturally ignorant. She’s a terrible, terrible mother (the film only shows her with one child, Bonnie, but she has two other children from different husbands, and barely pays them any attention). She is deluded about her beloved golden boy Ashley Wilkes (at times the book reads like an Old South take on He’s Just Not That Into You) and doesn’t appreciate Ashley’s wife, Melanie, until the end. BUT: Margaret Mitchell makes us root for her. She’s a survivor. She’s a hard worker. She’s street smart. And ultimately, even though she complains while doing it, she helps her family. She doesn’t care about social niceties or appearances (unless they can help her); they won’t feed and clothe her and her brood. Her eye’s always on the bottom line. And if something’s not working out, she’ll ignore it and think about it tomorrow. She’ll find a solution. What. A. Character.
RHETT Swarthy, muscular, tanned, hairy, interested in fashion, well-travelled, super well-educated even though he was kicked out of West Point, Rhett Butler is a bit of a romance novel wish fulfillment type. And he always seems steps ahead of everyone else. But the dashing, enterprising blockade-runner is one helluva romantic lead. The evolution of his relationship with Scarlett is so carefully and artfully structured that the final 100 pages will make your heart ache. And what Mitchell got away from censors – the love-making on the night of Ashley’s surprise birthday party is pretty much rape – is incredible.
A CAVEAT Reading this book in 2018 is often an uncomfortable experience because of the treatment of the African-American characters. The N-word and the euphemism “darkie” are all over the place. Few of the Black characters are given any agency or dignity, except Scarlett’s Mammy, and even she is often described in animal terms - compared to an old ape. There's a strange disconnect, too. Often the Blacks are described as lazy and loafing. And yet, Mitchell frequently has her characters working "as hard as a field hand." So who was lazy? Worse, in sections that are supposed to be written in some objective third-person narration (they provide lots of fascinating information, to be fair), Mitchell clearly sides with the Confederates. One chapter in particular, 37, was extremely difficult to read; it’s pure propaganda.
THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION As a Canadian, I didn’t have to study the war in school, and what I know about it has been cobbled together from bits and pieces. The way Mitchell interweaves the war into the narrative is incredible. You see it from a macro and micro perspective. I’m very curious now and want to read other books, both fiction and non, about it.
THE MOVIE I plan on rewatching the film in the next month or so, but I wanted the book to settle in first. Here’s what I remember about the differences: Besides leaving out Scarlett’s other two children, we don’t get Archie, an ex-convict taken in by Melanie, who becomes Scarlett’s driver for a time, and Will Benteen, a simple but hard-working man who helps run Tara while Scarlett’s away, but you can see why the filmmakers excluded them. One of the best minor characters is Grandma Fontaine, an embittered old woman whom everyone (including Scarlett) fears. She digs the truth out of Scarlett in a scene that is seared into my brain it’s so powerful. I also don’t recall anything about the Ku Klux Klan, and that Ashley and Scarlett’s second husband, Frank Kennedy, are part of it. Good call, filmmakers! Rhett’s determination that Bonnie be accepted by good society is much more pronounced than it was in the movie. And it’s interesting that Scarlett’s aristocratic mother, Ellen, was in love with someone else but married her husband, Gerald, in the same way that Scarlett, in love with Ashley, did with husbands 1, 2 and 3. That’s not in the movie, but it adds so much texture to the book, and makes you see patterns in human behaviour. (Also: Scarlett’s daughter, Bonnie, has inherited Scarlett’s and Gerald’s stubbornness.) And the book also features a fascinating motif of Scarlett having nightmares that is ingeniously integrated into the climax. That couldn't be done in the movie.
SUMMARY A flawed masterpiece about a flawed character and a flawed country that’s still, in some ways, dealing with the effects of this chapter in its history. The book features one of the most unforgettable characters and romances in the canon. I can’t give it anything less than 5 stars....more
Edwardian-era propriety meets Italian passion with entertaining results in E.M. Forster’s sunny, slight, but ever so charming comedy of manners.
Well-Edwardian-era propriety meets Italian passion with entertaining results in E.M. Forster’s sunny, slight, but ever so charming comedy of manners.
Well-known from the sumptuous Merchant-Ivory adaptation (which I rewatched immediately after finishing the book), the novel tells the story of Lucy Honeychurch, a proper English girl who, while on vacation in Florence with her cousin/chaperone, Miss Bartlett, meets George Emerson, a handsome but odd philosophical soul, who’s travelling with his eccentric, truth-telling father.
All four are staying at the Pension Bertolini, and the others they meet there – the lady novelist Eleanor Lavish, the two older, unmarried sisters (dubbed the Miss Alans), and someone from Lucy’s village, the very accommodating Reverend Arthur Beebe – will cross paths with them later in unexpected ways.
As in the other books by him I’ve read, Forster’s narration is delightfully genial. He’ll remind us, for instance, that we haven’t really spent much time with a particular character, tell us that we know more about Lucy’s actions than she does herself, hint at plot developments to come, and generally treat his characters with a satiric, gently chiding tone. At times that tone can seem trivial; midway through the book I felt it was all just so much upper-middle-class flim flam.
(More quibbles: George’s physical treatment of Lucy, especially in light of today’s sensitivity around consent, seems less romantic than troubling. And I know we’re meant to be at a remove from the authentic Italians in the first half of the book, but I wish we got more than just clichés about tempestuous murderers and horny carriage drivers.)
But there is so much to enjoy in the book: the tart dialogue, the grand themes of love, country vs. city life, fate and coincidence… there’s even a comment on the idea of novels and writers themselves. Lucy’s mother, a fine comic creation, has a preposterous attitude towards female writers that I’m sure Forster, a friend and admirer of Virginia Woolf’s, for one, didn’t share.
I also like that the book’s stuffiest character, Lucy’s fiancé, the pretentious aesthete Cecil Vyse (a whole review could be written on the book’s beautifully suggestive names), comes across with his dignity intact in his later scenes.
If anything, of the main players only the character of George seems the thinnest, which is perhaps why he’s given some intriguing actions in the film (otherwise he might be a cipher). And I like how a significant scene near the end makes us reflect on the nature and motivation of Charlotte.
But above all, I’ll remember this book for its knowing glimpse into the life of a girl discovering her voice, freedom and strength – even in a restrictive society. It’s suggested early in the book that Lucy, a pianist, plays Beethoven in a way that is surprising; if she could apply that same passion to her life it would be quite thrilling to watch.
By the end of the book, we see her begin to do that, and yes, it’s quite something....more
Classics are classics for a reason I was too busy to write a proper review of this last year after I'd finished it, but let me try now. It's Steinbeck'Classics are classics for a reason I was too busy to write a proper review of this last year after I'd finished it, but let me try now. It's Steinbeck's epic look at two families – the Trasks and the Hamiltons – in the Salinas Valley, California setting of his own childhood. (Steinbeck himself is a minor character in the book.)
There are lots of biblical echoes: Cain and Abel; the sins of the father; etc.
What amazed me was how contemporary the book's language and insights felt. This is not some dusty, fusty classic.
I'm not sure about the character of the depraved Cathy, who seems to have been born simply evil. But she's certainly a powerful figure in the book, and the mystery around her drives a big chunk of the book. Also of interest is the character of Lee, the Chinese-American cook, who speaks in a pidgin English (even though he's well-educated) because he says that's a reality the people can accept.
East Of Eden is like a lot of great art; it feels like it's always been around. When you read it, it will resonate deep in your bones as something essential, true and disturbing.
Note: the famous James Dean movie only covers a fraction of the novel. I tried watching it afterwards, but found it overwrought and unduly melodramatic. ...more
A couple of months ago, I picked up To Kill A Mockingbird, a book I last read in high school. What fascinated me about the exercLORD OF THE REREADINGS
A couple of months ago, I picked up To Kill A Mockingbird, a book I last read in high school. What fascinated me about the exercise was how much I remembered and how much I didn’t, what I appreciated as a teen and what I do now.
After that, I began wondering how I would respond to the other books I had to read and analyze as a youth. Hence my rereading of Lord Of The Flies. It’s equally powerful – shocking, even by today’s standards. And it’s all very efficiently done.
Both books are deserved classics. I don’t regret a moment spent rereading either one.
So… perhaps this will become a series. What’s next: Catcher In The Rye? A Separate Peace? Anyhow, on with the review... and keep in mind that if you weren't forced to read this back in school, THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD (or A-HEAD - if you'll excuse the pun).
What do I remember from my first reading? • The set-up, of course. After a plane crashes, a group of English boys finds themselves stranded on an island and, with no adults to guide them, form a kind of society that quickly breaks down, resulting in madness and murder. • The symbols, among them: the conch (for order and civilization, I suppose, since if one holds it one can speak in front of a group); the glasses (or “specs”), which help create fire and, since they belong to the nearsighted, brainy yet mercilessly bullied Piggy, might also represent intelligence. • The idea of monsters, both real and imagined. • I remember being entertained by the nickname Piggy – what a childish thing, but it is memorable and symbolic in its own way. What a smart move on author William Golding’s part to call him that. • The ending. I knew a couple of children died, and that eventually the rest were rescued.
What don’t I remember from that reading? • I’d forgotten that many of the book’s “hunters” were (back in civilian life) members of a choir! • I’d totally forgotten about the young twins, Sam and Eric, whose names are blended by Golding into the very contemporary-sounding name Samneric. • I should have, but didn’t, realize the book took place during some unspecified war.
What do I appreciate now? • The economy and compactness of the book. There’s very little fat in it (besides the fat dripping from the roasted boar). And though there are lots of vivid descriptions of clouds, forests and sun glinting on sand, nothing feels gratuitous. • How beautifully Golding captures children’s behaviour, especially in groups. This was Golding’s first novel, and he knew boys so well. (Perhaps he was raising sons at the time.) • There are lots of characters with Anglo names that sound a lot alike (Ralph, Jack, Roger, Robert, Simon, Henry – something that instantly “dates” it, I suppose), but Golding gradually fills you in on them. It took a while for me to understand Roger’s sadistic nature, for instance. • The theme of bullying, which is as relevant as ever. Is this a fact of nature? Does every species find someone/thing among them to tease and ridicule? Piggy is overweight, unathletic, myopic and has asthma (and another thing I didn’t notice: his speech places him in a slightly lower class than everyone else), but he’s also incredibly smart. He can see things that the charismatic, initial leader Ralph doesn’t, which is why they make a good pair. But the fact that everyone, from the oldest to the youngest, teases him, is very disturbing. • The hallucinatory scenes with Simon (often thought of as the book’s most intuitive character) and the “beast,” which gives the novel its title. I wasn’t prepared for the sheer nightmarish horror of these episodes. No wonder Stephen King was so influenced by this book (he borrowed the novel's “Castle Rock” and uses it regularly as a setting). • The political/social allegory at its centre. How do we make a society work? Is hunting (to feed us) more important than providing shelter or coming up with a way to be rescued? What happens when people don’t pull their weight? • All of this is done so very subtly. There’s a moment when “chief” Ralph is gradually losing his power, and Piggy suggests he blow the conch to form an assembly. And Ralph knows that if he blows the conch and no one comes, it will be irrevocable. Brilliant observation. • The idea of the “beast.” Is the idea of the “other” something intrinsic and primitive? Or do we create monsters as a mere projection of our own fears? • The little visual details, like Ralph pushing the hair out of his face. It’s both a naturalistic detail and one that points out how all the boys are becoming savage (funnily enough, Piggy’s hair doesn’t grow) • I had no idea how exciting the plot got in the last couple of chapters. Golding cranked up the tension to 11. Even though I knew how the book ended, I was still turning every page, heart thumping, hoping Ralph survived being pursued by Jack and his gang.
The few things that didn’t work this time around: • The line “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart…” in the penultimate paragraph of the book seems way too on the nose. I can imagine a million students underlining that with a big "Aha!" • I forgot Piggy used the N-word. Really. It’s there.
***
I recalled a lot more of this book than Mockingbird. Once read, it has the power and heft of something that is so true and essential that it must have always been around. (I’ve felt this way about other literary works, like Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” for instance.)
But, and here’s the weird thing, I think this book is better appreciated as an adult. Younger people are so caught up in the immediacy of every complication. I remember studiously talking about themes before I fully understood them from life. Adults, because we’ve lived through decades, can recognize the patterns of behaviour, the archetypal figures looming behind bullies and visionaries, both in private and public life, that emerge so strikingly in this book.
Finally: why haven’t I read more William Golding?...more
Loading...
