Poet Laureate of the South and Far West - T.C. Boyle

T.C. Boyle has become the poet laureate of the Southwest and Far West hard drinking sympathetic but hard luck guys - a rougher version of the kinds of generally childless men who appear in fiction by Carver, Ford, McGuane, but with maybe more of a sense of an abandoned past (East Coast) life. Boyle has an impressive 5-part story, I Walk Between the Raindrops, in the current New Yorker, narrated by a man visiting a totally non-tourist Ariz town (Kingman?) with his wife, visiting her father, a guy living, I think, in a trailer park and whose favorite (only) restaurant is Denny's; the narrator and wife are more urbane that most of the people they meet in this town (as socially marked by drinking preferences, beer and g&T v Zin and Cab. The narrator, in a bar waiting for his wife, is approached by an evidently disturbed woman who won't leave him alone. This strange encounter prompts three memories - each a very short story in its own right, one of a death in a Cal mudslide, another of an unintended insult to a close friend, each a story of unsettled emotions and of hidden danger, and Boyle wraps up by returning to the present and the episode of the strange woman in the bar, who leaves the bar and tries to throw herself on the freight-train tracks. There's no simple or even evident conclusion to this story  - just an exclamation from the narrator something like Jesus save us all! - but Boyle builds a mood of sinister upheaval and effectively delineates the cultural boundaries the separate the two halves of this story and this marriage: Sophisticated life on the Pacific Coast contrasted with desert retirement community and both lives are built on status assumptions (what you're drinking, where you dine, how you speak) and both equally unsettled and vulnerable.

Some notes on Seghers, Dylan, and Pound

Some notes on recent reading: First, on finishing reading Anna Seghers's novel Transit, I read the intro (Campbell) and afterword (Boll) to the NYRB edition, and was surprised to learn that, though the copyright info says the novel was published (in German, Seghers's language) in 1951 the novel was actually published in English (and Spanish) translation in 1944, while Seghers was living in Mexico. She had been imprisoned by the Nazis in the 1930s for her leftist views and fled from Marseille just ahead of the German Occupation, so the experiences she recounts in the novel are first-hand, although she is clearly neither the narrator (a young man) nor the love interest, Marie (who - spoiler! - dies when her ship goes down en route to Mexico). Campbell duly notes the Kafkaesque nature of the scene in Marseille as everyone fights the beauracracy; neither writer, however, explains Seghers's strange reluctance to write much about the Nazis in particular, making the novel much more abstract and dreamlike, a novel about the human condition rather than about a particular, heinous period in world history.

Also been reading from time to time parts of Christopher Ricks's study of Dylan's lyrics and other writers, Dylan's Sense of Sin. Ricks's knowledge about and recall of lyrics from across Dylan's entire career is quite amazing, and he makes some surprising and trenchant comparisons of Dylan's work w/ other great lyric poets from across the corpus. And yet ... I come away each time feeling that this study is more about Ricks than and Dylan, or, rather, that he convinces me that he, Ricks, sees the connections but he doesn't add to my sense of Dylan's genius. In a way, he misses the whole point: Dylan's work is about the development of a sensibility across and entire lifetime of writing, recording, and performing; analyzing individual works, detailed study Dylan's rhymes and slant rhymes for ex., makes Dylan seem less, not more or a genius.

Speaking of: What about Ezra Pound? I've been reading some of his pieces in an anthology, including Canto 81, and do these make any sense to any reader who doesn't have access to a compendium or extensive footnotes explaining the allusions - most of them personal and idiosyncratic - and translating from the Greek (I doubt Pound actually knew Greek, let alone Chinese). Kind of the opposite here from what I just wrote about Dylan: Pound was writing for himself and for future critics who could parse and mine and "genius"; Dylan was, is, writing for an audience, for us.

A novel set in specific time of crisis and about the universal human condition

I won't "give away" the ending of Anna Seghers's novel Transit (1951), although it's by no means a novel of suspense, but suffice it to say that this narrative, which is clearly about a particular time and place - France in the early months of the German Occupation, specifically the city of Marseille, where thousands of migrants are seeking transport to America - but it becomes increasingly apparent over the course of the narrative that the specifics of the setting are less significant and the novel is more about man's fate, to crib a phrase from another French writer. The narrator - I don't think we ever learn his name - is one of the few who wants to stay in or near Marseille; he falls in love and gets involved w/ helping a woman, Marie, attain her exit visa and tickets and plans, at least initially, to accompany her in emigration. (There is an extremely complicated plot twist involving the narrator's assumption of her late husband's identity, which I won't explain in any detail.) What's really striking to me are the many absences in this novel, not only regarding the narrator's past (he escaped from a concentration camp in Germany; we don't know why he was imprisoned, nor why he's so sanguine about remaining in France as the Germans expand control) but also the deracination of the historical events: there are virtually no mentions of Jews seeking escape, there are only a few glancing references to the Nazis, to Hitler, to German iconography (Swastikas), there are no references to ongoing public or news events (we don't know precisely what's happening int he war, the extent of the Occupation and Resistance, the negotiations under way among the Germans and other forces in France) - so the experience of the novel is about fear, flight, survival, and the petty forces of resistance, the nightmarish attempt to get all papers in order and all belongings packed and ready for flight, with constant disruptions and disappointments - a novel set in a specific time of crisis but really about the universal human condition.

What we don't know about the narrator in Seghers's Transit

It strikes me how little we know - and this must be intentional - about the narrator of Anna Seghers's 1951 novel, Transit. He's 27 and of German nationality. He tells us he escaped from a "concentration camp" in Germany in 1937: I didn't know there were such camps at that time, and we are given no clue as to why he was interred. Then - as the novel begins - he escapes from another camp, this time in France, not sure who was holding him there or why. Then he travels through France, just ahead of the German occupying army, so I think this is 1941?, heading to Marseille, where the rest of the novel takes place. In most novels about the Occupation the main characters are either Jewish refugees in France or members of the Resistance. We get no sense, however, of the Transit narrator's history or political views. So this is confusing, and I think deliberately so, as the narrator is meant only in part to be a figure in a historical narrative but also, as noted in previous posts, as a figure in an existential narrative: The many characters seeking exit visas, struggling to evade or avoid their doom, represent in a symbolic manner all people struggling for independence, freedom, and identity in a world made up of bureaucrats, fascists, and despots. The mood (or mode) of this novel could apply just as well to contemporary refugees from the Mideast or Africa, migrants from Latin America, or even - by a stretch - to all of us trying to avoid disaster and find a better life. The narrator is in this sense an "everyman" more than an individual. We don't even know his name.

The dark humor of Seghers's Transit, and a nod to Sartre

As noted in previous posts, Anna Seghers's 1951 novel, Transit, may appear at first as a novel of adventure, following the fortunes of a narrator racing to the Mediterranean coast of France to evade possible capture and deportation (or worse) by German troops. And the first section is "adventurous," but then the narrator reaches Marseille and determines that he wants to stay there. Most of the novel, then, involves his struggle to get his residency permit and his interactions w/ many of the thousands of refugees who have crowded into the city, each seeking an exit visa and the necessary papers (transit visas etc.) to emigrate to America (not just the U.S. but also Cuba, Mexico - any country that will accept them). The novel gradually becomes a dark comedy, as the various characters run through  against the bureaucratic maze and are repeatedly denied the needed documents. Meanwhile, the narrator falls in love w/ a fellow-German, Marie - w/ the complication that he is travelling w/ the papers of her late husband, an author who died in Paris (unbeknownst to Marie, his estranged wife, who has fallen in love w/ a doctor who is trying to get to Mexico). Whew. But parsing the plot is not the point - the novel is not about the plot details but about the sense of life in a community of refugees escaping war; as such, it has resonance today of course, as the mood in the community must be similar to the mood in a community of those in flight from war in the Mideast or of terrorism in Central America - waiting for papers, families divided, struggling w/ little money, considering false documents and any other means of attaining passage to safety. The mood also reminds me of Sartre's No Exit, although in this case a cast of many and not just 3 or 4?) - Seghers is writing of course about a specific period in history but also about  universal mood of capture and suffocation (though she would not endorse the "Hell is other people" doctrine of Sartre). There are also some really funny moments and lines, such as the narrator, yearning to bring Marie to safety, opines that he would be able to prevent her from ever getting involved w/ someone like him. Ha!

Many dimensions to Seghers's Transit - why has it been forgotten?

Anna Seghers's novel Transit (1951) isn't really about plot, but I will give away some plot points here, though honestly most readers will foresee these plot twists: The narrator, a 27-year-old German in Marseille at the outset of German occupation of France, is hoping and trying to get a permit to stay in Marseille (while virtually everyone else in the city seems to be desperately seeking a permit to take a boat to America). In an odd twist of bureaucratic madness, the only way he can get a permit to stay is to get an exit visa (whereas for those hoping to leave, they can get an exit visa only when they get a permit to stay...). The narrator gets the permit to stay (and to leave!) because the Mexican consulate mistakes him for a German author, and they issue the permits in the author's name. So the narrator concocts a weird scheme to give the author's visa to an invalid friend (at the outset of the novel they had escaped a work prison in northern France); to complicate things, the German author's wife is in M seeking him (she does not know that he died in Paris, nor does she know that the narrator has been issued permits in her husband's name) and the narrator hopes to get her out of M on the same visa. Whew. As noted, though, this novel is not about plot but about mood and sense of place. Seghers creates a vivid sense of life in France at the beginning of the German occupation, with thousands of refugees fleeing for their lives and an incredible sense of fear, loss, and disorder as everyone scrambles from one consulate to another in hopes of getting proper documentation - with death breathing down their necks - but this is not only an historical novel. It also feels like an existential novel: The people waiting for exit and fleeing for their lives are in some ways an analog for the human condition: All of us, in a sense, are fleeing from death and seeking some kind of transformation and justification for our being, whether that involves safe transport to a new location (or a new stage of life?), caring for others (the German doctor taking care of the young boy), creating art (the conductor bound for Venezuela, the dead German author and his unfinished ms.), sacrificing one's self for others (the narrator transferring his visa to others), or simply supporting one's self or a family (the narrator's desire to stay in place and work on a farm; the Binnet family getting by in the face of war). There's a lot in this novel, on multiple levels - so why has it been mostly forgotten? Perhaps too much going on, and too baroque a plot - rather than a straightforward, dramatic flight for safety as in for ex. Suite Francaise.

A novel of anxiety about the German occupation of France

Anna Seghers's 1951 novel, Transit, about a 27-year-old man of German birth making his way across France to Marseille as Germany occupies France and cuts off exit possibilities for thousands of refugees, becomes less of an adventure novel than it first seemed. At first, it looked as if the novel would involve daring escapes (at the outset, the narrator escapes at night from a French-run forced-labor camp) and more of a novel about staying in place. The narrator, oddly, decides he wants to stay in Marseille, a city in complete turmoil as thousands of migrants, who have crossed many borders to escape from Europe ahead of German occupation, confront their final barrier to safety in America: the blue Mediterranean and the distant horizon. Their stories are of a bureaucratic nightmare - or dark comedy - as they try to assemble the needed exit and transit visas from various consulates. The narrator, unlike most, wants a residence permit so he can stay in Marseille, perhaps on a farm. Through a complex series of misunderstandings and mishaps, the Mexican consulate believes him to be a German author (the narrator had been entrusted to some of the late author's final papers) and offer him an exit visa - which perversely gives him an extended stay in Marseille so that he can assemble the other needed permits, which he doesn't want. So we see a world in chaos: frightened families trying to leave, families broken apart by war, soldiers leaving and others repatriating to Germany, expecting (foolishly) to be welcomed. The narrator becomes involved in several minor adventures - helping a young boy suffering from asthma by finding him a competent (German) physician - and, most notably, the strange pursuit of a beautiful woman whom he sees at various places in town, always scanning a room as if searching for a missing person in the crowd. Through the narrator we hear many odd tales - a man trying to get a visa for travel to Venezuela where he has a job waiting for him as an orchestra conductor, a German Jew who was in the French Foreign Legion and obviously cannot return to Germany - and we experience almost viscerally the narrator's struggle to get by day to day in crappy housing, with very little money, and with no likelihood of getting the papers he needs either to remain in France or to move onward - a novel of anxiety.

A powerful novel about the German occupation: Transit

At least reading something I'm interested in and care about, Anna Segher's terrific German-language novel about escape from France at the outset of World War II: Transit (1951). I don't know anything about this author, in fact had never heard of her, which, if the novel holds up (I've read about 1/4 of it) makes no sense - and thanks to the great NYRB editions for bringing this work to English-language readers. Seghers's narrator is a young German who had been living in France (I think, the initial actions are not totally clear to me) and held by the Germans and assigned to work duty in one of the shipyards. Along w/ other captive workers he escapes at night and heads for Paris, where he has been befriended before by a French family (the Binnets). He arrives in Paris at about the same time as the German occupying army and of course finds the city in disarray and panic. Eventually, he works his way south to Marseilles, all the while carrying a small suitcase to which he's been entrusted; the suitcase carries an incomplete narrative of a novel by a German author who has committed suicide but left instructions to get the manuscript to his wife, who's in Marseilles and trying for transit to Mexico. Much of action so far, aside from a great story of survival, is about the process of trying to get travel visas and safe passage. The narrator - and thousands of others - finds himself it what today we call a Catch-22, though this novel preceded that war novel by more than a decade: In order to leave Marseilles, you have to show that you have permission to stay (and, it seems, in order to stay you have to show that you have transit to leave). We could also call this system of bureaucratic obstacles "Kafka-esque," which it is - but, unlike Kafka, Seghers is writing historical fiction. The horrors and the tragedies - death, separation, suicide, despair, plus survival - are all the more powerful for being, or at least seeming to be, an accurate account of life in an occupied land. The other work that will come to mind for many readers is the great unfinished novel "Suite Francaise," though that novel focuses on a Jewish family in flight from occupied Paris; the focus here on a young German man is a different perspective on the same picture.

A Zadie Smith story that makes no sense to me

Maybe it's me? Ic must be me. But I just don't get what's going on w/ Zadie Smith's story, Now More Than Ever, in current New Yorker (this following on my absolutely not getting the point of the novel Death in Spring, which some tout as the scariest novel ever written. Maybe my reading comprehension has fallen apart?). Smith's story begins w/ the narrator in a conversation w/ her (younger?) friend, Scout, who's much more Internet-savvy and among the first to notice trends. They engage in some patter about getting your past life in tune w/ your current life, none of which made sense to me. Then the narrative veers off as the narrator and Scout go off to see a classic American film, A Place in the Sun, and Smith gives us an extensive plot summary, and who cares? Then the narrator goes back to her nice, 11th floor river view NYC apartment and we see two email exchanges, w/ a h.s. student who has questions about an article the narrator had published in a philosophy journal - so we learn that she's a philosophy prof, OK big deal, ZSmith does nothing w/ that info. The h.s. student follows up w/ a question about a Hamlet soliloquy (which he quotes at some length - good way to burn up space if paid by the inch) to which the narrator responds something like: Looks like he's having a nervous breakdown. Huh? At the end the story veers toward the surreal, as residents of the apartment building stand at their windows holding signs w/ big arrows pointing toward other residents, and I think they're all pointed toward the narrator's window, not sure - but apparently the other residents are fellow profs but from different departments. Again, huh? In what kind of dream world do NYC professors all live in the same building? And the story ends. For me ZSmith's writing has had a lot of ups and downs; she does and always has had a witty, knowing, conversational style (who doesn't like White Teeth?), but some of her pieces - perhaps esp those set in the U.S.? - seem to misfire, like this piece, that makes no sense to me at all and that I suspect was accepted and published based on name recognition alone.

Couldn't finish reading Death in Spring, sorry

I thought I would finish reading Merce Rodoredo's Death in Spring (1986) - it's only 150 pp. - but finally I could not bring myself to slog through the last 40 or so pages. Your tolerance for this novel will depend on your interest in hearing the narrative line of someone else's nightmare. There's some great imagery throughout, some haunting and rather ghastly ideas (stuffing the mouths of the dead w/ cement, men whose faces have been obliterated, a prisoner encaged for life and ordered to neigh like a horse) but these do not hold up well over even a relatively short narrative span. There needs to be at least some semblance of a plot: a character (the narrator?) need to have some objective, needs to face and overcome (or not) some obstacle. We have to be able to identify w/ at least one of the characters. This novel just meanders, as if MR is spinning the tale as she goes along. I wondered throughout whether this would make a good horror movie; perhaps it would, as it would be scary to see how a team would envision some of the more terrifying moments and concepts of this work, but it would be quite some task: Aside from the need to overhaul the narrative line to give it a shape or an arc, there'd also be the problem of dialog - none of which sounds remotely realistic in any of this novel (long, repetitious harangues about esoterica: Man should be able to choose his death, not only his life, and so forth). This book is an experiment gone awry, a curiosity, worth a look for true fans of horror fiction, but hardly accessible to most readers.

Is Rodoreda's Death in Spring an allegory?

I really don't know what to say about Merce Rodoreda's Death in Spring except to say that it's a nightmare vision of an alternate world - where the dead are filled w/ cement and entombed inside living tree trunks, young men are chose by lot to swim "beneath" the village to ensure that the village is not in danger of being swept away by flood and the men emerge, if they do, w/ obliterated faces, where the village holds a single prisoner, confined to a steel cage, who is ordered to speak only in the form of neighing, to the amusement and delight of the villagers, and so on. I don't know if the novel has a coherent plot - none seems to have emerged in the first 100 pp or so - or if it's improvised, based on dream logic. There is no significant character development - the narrator is a 14-year-old boy whose father dies at the outset and then he wanders around with his stepmother who later becomes his wife and gives birth to their daughter - these are the status facts, but I can't say that any portrait of a character emerges - and, though the book jacket posits that the novel may be an allegorical presentation of life under Franco's fascist rule (Rodoreda was a Spanish/Catalonian writer who died in 1983, and the novel was published posthumously five years later), but that account doesn't feel right to me at all - the setting feels like an isolated village whose inhabitants live by strange customs of their own design, not under the rule of a military dictatorship in any form. You could force the analogy, of course, but I think the power of the novel isn't about transformation of reality but about pure invention and imagination, the evocation of a spirit of unease, terror, and wonder. It's not a horror story by any means, in that the world depicted feels nothing like our own and we can't identify w/ any of the characters, but it's a  queasy, surreal vision of an alternate world - not sustainable in a long novel, but Death in Spring is thankfully pretty short.

Is Death in Spring the scariest novel ever?

The novel Death in Spring (1968?), by the Catalan (Spanish) writer Merce Rodoreda, recently popped up on a list on which people named their choice for most frightening novel (Haunting of Hill House made the list several times, and I would agree); I'm not sure I find Death in Spring frightening, exactly, having reached the 1/3 point, mainly because it is so odd and bizarre in every way that it's almost impossible to identify with the protagonist. This strange novel is in some ways like a frightening dream, a nightmare, and in other like a surrealist vision of life in an alternative universe. The novel begins w/ the narrator - whom we later learn is a boy of about 14 (there is nothing particularly boy-like or distinctive in any way about the narrator's personality or perceptions; as the author is a woman I suspected for the first several brief chapters that the narrator, too, was a woman - ultimately the gender and age don't matter much) who swims across a lake or river, pursued for some reason by a bee, and enters a forest where each tree has an attached ring and medallion (provided by the local blacksmith) and where he watches a man carve out a cross-shaped indentation and then step into the tree. We later learn that the forest is a cemetery of some sort, and the man stepping into the tree is the boy's father. Later in the novel we see more about burial rituals, in which the corpse is filled with cement before implantation into a tree. The village where the boy lives is on a lake, and annually someone has to swim beneath the village to inspect the rocky foundations to ensure that the village won't be washed away in a flood. Those who survive the ordeal emerge with the faces obliterated or entirely erased, and they spend the rest of their lives in isolation from the life of the village, The main activity of the village seems to involve raising horses - who flesh is the main source of diet for the villagers (the slaughterhouse is the largest building in the village) and journeying into a nearby cave the extract some sort of powder that they later mix into a reddish pain that they use to annually paint all of the village buildings. And so it goes - so many strange behaviors and rituals, all of them creepy and vaguely threatening, none making sense in a logical way. As noted, this novel is fascinating - though I'm not sure how long Rodoreda can sustain the mood - and would be more frightening if we had any access to the characters - for ex., if the narrator were recognizable as someone from our world and culture who had wondered into the village or who is being held captive in some manner. As it stands, the novel is strange, even upsetting, but feels far away, like somebody else's nightmare.

The wasted life of Julien Sorel

Editor/translator Bruce Robbins makes a valiant attempt to defend Julien Sorel in his intro to the edition (ebook) I read of Stendahl's The Red and the Black (1830), but, sorry, he misses the point, can't see the forest for the proverbial trees. Yes, Julien is a social climber whose ambition is to rise above the confines of his class (provincial son of a carpenter/sawmill owner) - a metaphor Stendahl develops thru Julien's several uses of a ladder to access the bedroom window of his two mistresses. So, sure, he is potentially a liberal, progressive, or even radical, unwilling to be confined by the conventions and restrictions of his birth and class. But does he have even a moment of thinking about anyone but himself? Does he take any political, social, or military action to break down of social and class barriers prevalent in France (and Europe) post Revolution? He has vague thoughts about the glories of Napoleon, who for a time broke through class barriers and established a short-lived republic in France, but he sees Napoleon's army as a glory of the past, a missed opportunity. He imagines he would have been heroic (much as our liar-in-chief opined that he would have given chase to the school shooter, had he only been present!), but instead does nothing but seduce two women of "higher" social class in his attempt to gain wealth and a title. He even takes part in a right-wing conspiracy with some vague goals of restoring a monarch (as w/ much of Stendahl, some of the plot details are deliberately vague and not really worth parsing - it's not about the details, it's about the character). Robbins rightly notes the Oedipal aspect of Julien's struggles - hatred of father and brother, complete absence of even the mention of a mother, attachment to an older, nurturing, motherly woman - and he also notes the "triangulation" of Julien's love relationships, the beloved becomes more valuable and wanted only when she (or he) is pursed by a third party, a theory developed at great length by one of my former professors, Rene Girard. All true, but that misses the point that Julien is a worthless character, without a thought for others, without commitment to any ideals, aspiring to rise in the church despite complete lack or interest in faith or morals. Julien could be a force for advancing the "careers open to the talented." Instead, he buys into the ideology and structure of a class system, so long as he can rise within that structure. Julien, greatly talented and gifted with looks and charm, is a study in a wasted life.

Julien Sorel's insights as he awaits execution in Red and the Black

Mme de Renal visits Julien Sorel in his prison cell (atop a high tower, a motif that Stendahl developed much further in Charterhouse) and she tells him she has always loved him, and Julien likewise and they spend a long time in each other's arms. So she so easily forgives him for shooting her twice in the back (what a hero!) and takes blame for writing a letter to his father-in-law to be denouncing him (the priest made me do it!). J considers an appeal just so as to have more time to spend w/ Mme de R - but it's still of great importance to him that he go to his execution without showing fear. A few more encounters happen, as his estranged father visits him in the cell and J bestows on him some money - despite the father's horrible mistreatment of his youngest son. J then imagines his father showing off gold pieces and boasting, a thought that leads J to further speculation on his death sentence. Interestingly, he asks to meet w/ 2 other condemned men, men who are condemned for "ordinary" crimes, not for political actions nor for crimes of passion. One of the men tells J his life story - amazingly, Stendahl does not share the story - imagine what Dostoyevsky would have done w/ this scene! - but J begins to reflect that these career criminals are more immoral than the church and political leaders, w/ their bribery and hypocrisy. J in fact loses all faith in the church, as he seems to begin to recognize the class structure in France (and elsewhere), in which men who steal or kill for "need" are considered far beneath those who steal (or kill? for greed, for power. J's ramblings are little incoherent and hard to follow as his execution nears, and his insights are not the most original or inaccessible, but we can see that the prospect of a hanging (or the guillotine), to paraphrase Johnson, has concentrated his mind, made him aware of a social corruption and malaise that should have been apparent to him long ago. BTW, he is completely, even cruelly, dismissive of the mother-to-be of his child, treating her as a pest and annoyance though she has done him nothing but kindness.

Julien Sorel, Antihero

So here we have this so-called hero (of Stendahl's The Red and the Black) who, angered by a letter from her denouncing his character (quite accurately) tracks down his former mistress (wife of his employer and mother of the boys he's tutoring) and shoots her twice in the back during a Mass, and now this character - Julien Sorel (has anyone noted that Sorel is an anagram for Loser?) - goes on trial for his life (odd, in that the  victim recovered, but that's how French justice worked in the early 19th-century). His current girlfriend - soon to be the mother of their child and still madly in love w/ Julien - tries all sorts of bribery and political influence to affect the jury decision, but to no avail - Julien is sentenced to death. He becomes a kind of folk hero, especially w/ women, swooning about his looks and pleading for his acquittal (he admits guilt; his lawyer puts up a spirited defense, though J issues a statement that is nearly idiotic) - as does happen from time to time w/ handsome killers such as Gilmore or the younger Marathon bomber - but J accepts the death sentence w/ equanimity. He wants to go out bold and proud - but proud of what? He has not a moment of remorse, not a moment of reflection about his wasted life and his exploitation of women, and, unless something surprising happens in the final pages, not a moment of grace or redemption. He goes down among the antiheroes of literature - Satan, Iago, Don Juan - but by no means the greatest. His motives are petty and selfish and his death well deserved.

The despicable final actions of Julien Sorel

For those who have not read Stendahl's The Red and the Black (1830) there will be some spoilers in this post, which describes the denouement and the dramatic series of concluding events, which, if memory serves, are based on an actual occurrence at the time. The plot tkaes a major turn when Julien Sorel's beloved, the titled daughter of his employer, Mlle Mathilde de la Mole, becomes pregnant; she tells Julien she must write to her father and explain that she was the one who seduced J, that she accepts him as her husband, and if her father will give them a modest annual income they will leave for Switzerland and never trouble him in the future. M de la Mole is infuriated, screams at Julien - Julien says he will walk in the garden and M de la M can have one of his servants shoot him to death. Of course no shooting happens; the father eventually relents to a degree and says he will supply them w money and he manages to buy Julien as position on the Army as a lieutenant - typical aristocratic arrogance, as J has no military qualifications and he leapt over several men in line for promotion, but no matter. J had always wanted to prove his military valor, so here's his chance (he has no trouble giving up his aspirations to rise in the church hierarchy, and in fact he never had any sort of religious calling). Things seem to be going OK but for some reason M de la Mole wrote to Julien's former employer, I'm not sure why, and that led to his receiving a long letter from the first woman J seduced, Mme Renal, who recounts that J is a seducer and traducer and a social climber of the worst sort - all quite accurate. This letter further infuriates M de la Mole - and J is exposed. So Julien goes back to Mme Renal's town, enters church for a Mass, sits behind Mme Renal, pulls out a pistol and shoots her twice point blank. What a hero, what a tough guy, shooting a woman in the back, in chuch no less. He's immediately arrested, and he prepares to be executed, understanding that he deserves to die - but wait, he learns the Mme Renal survived the attack (on top of everything else, this would-be military hero is a piss-poor shot), so now what? Julien must wrestle w/ his fate and his faith, but if by this point we don't all know that he's a despicable low-life, regardless of his looks, intelligence, or social status (by which I clearly do not mean the "class" unto which he was born - he would have been better off working in his father's saw mill or, as he was not so suited in any event, working as a Latin instructor, leading a normal and productive life).

Julien Sorel's character flaws or lack of character (The Red and the Black)

But then - Julien seems to leave the right-wing conspiracy, which he'd aided as a courier, aside and resume his courtship of Mlle de la Mole. He does so in a comic, or I would say ridiculous, manner: Runs into a Russian prince whom he knows, confesses his love for the aristocratic beauty, and the prince gives him courtship instructions, essentially telling him to profess love to someone else and to "woo" her via letter - he gives Julien 100 or so letters, which J is to copy out and send. This strategy will supposedly win over Mlle by making her jealous. This whole set-up is out of a comedy or opera-buffo, and seems as if it's bound to fail, but strangely it works and J has Mlle de la Mole back in his arms again and, you know what, by this point I don't even care. Once again Julien seems like an insipid character w/ no values other than his own social advancement; he continues to imagine that he's brave and bold, but never shows evidence of this. He imagines he would have been a valiant soldier in Napoleon's army - easy to imagine, hard to have done. He idolizes Napoleon, yet does nothing to advance the cause of a Republic, in fact he does the opposite. Where is this long novel heading?

A right-wing conspiracy and the plot thickens in The Red and the Black

At last the plot picks up about 3/4 of the way through Stendahl's The Red and the Black - I'd had enough by that time of Julien's up and down relationship w/ Mlle de la Mole - and was heartened when his employer (her father) assigned him to a top-secret mission. We get a really great scene of some of the top right-wing leaders in early 19th-century Paris gathering for an all-night conclave to plan, what we gradually learn, is a revolution to reinstall the monarchy (and of course to protect all the "rights" of the aristocracy); the plan involves getting the support of the Church, including from Rome, which will in effect ensure the support of the peasants - a cruel and sinister plot. Julien has to memorize the key points of the secret meeting, ride to London, repeat his lengthy message verbatim to a sympathetic British aristocrat, and return w/ a report regarding English support for this right-wing revolution. Stendahl gives us another great scene as Julien is waylaid at an inn, learns that the authorities have received word about a  courier (him), they break into his room at night, thinking he's drugged to sleep (somehow he has overcome the narcotics) and search his belongings - but let him pass as they find no messages, and he continues on his mission. The long build-up to this right-wing conspiracy was worth it; finally, we will see if Julien can do something courageous - and if so what will that be? Will he be brave enough to enlighten the authorities about the plot, which goes against the grain of his lifelong Republican beliefs? Or were his beliefs just a sham and a fantasy? Will he continue to act in support of M de la Mole and his reactionary cronies. Loyalty to employer, action true to his beliefs, or cowardice and rationales all around? 

Julien Sorel and Malvolio

Julien Sorel's long courtship, if you can call it that, of Mathile de la Mole (Stendahl's The Red and the Black, 1830) finally clicks when Mlle sends him a note asking him to use a ladder to climb to her bedroom window (he used the same means in his seduction of Mme Renal back in the provinces). All well and good, but he begins to suspect that he's the victim of a hoax, that her brother and his aristocratic buddies will be lying in wait to capture him climbing the ladder or to eavesdrop on his professions of love, catching him the act so to speak and humiliating him or worse - definitely causing the Marquis de la Mole to dismiss his private secretary. In short, Julien suspects that he's a Malvolio, being set up by a ne're do well aristocratic brother, his buddies, and some of the servants. It takes a long time for J to realize that in fact Mathile is in love with him - and they finally, and discretely - note Stendahl's funny use of asterisks! - have sex. And then of course Mlle has regrets, she refuses even to look at Julien, she's humiliated, he feels ashamed and rides his horse to exhaustion (nice way to treat and animal, btw), and makes a plan to leave Paris on business for the Marquis (Mathile's father) - but then the Marquis has a new and top-secret assignment for Julien, asking him to sit in on a mysterious business meeting, memorize the goings-on, and deliver a secret report to someone in London, at his great risk. Here the plot finally is getting good: What's the meeting about and what will be the cost to J for taking part? Red and Black is much less of a novel of intrigue that S's later work, Charterhouse of Parma, and much more a study of the personality of an ambitious young man who believes his was born too late for the military glory he deserves - and who as far as I can see as no morals, values, or ideals. If this intrigue about the secret meeting gives J new insight into the perverse beliefs of the French aristocrats, it will add some much-needed energy into the 2nd half of this novel.

Thoughts on Williams and Stevens

Over the past few weeks/months I've been reading from time to time in an anthology of American poetry, particularly looking at some of the poets who I read a lot in college and grad school and have seldom read since then. I may at some point post in more detail about some of these poets and some of their most famous poems, but at this point I have some overall notes and observations. Taking 3 of the great modernist poets: In college I loved W.C. Williams, found his poems open and insightful and inviting, loved his commitment to American landscapes, lingo, and people. Coming back to Williams, the bloom has faded (my bloom, possibly). I think what drew me to WCW was in part the desire to imitate, and his poems were the easiest to imitate, superficially anyway. For every great Red Wheelbarrow or "Saw the Number 5 in Gold" I'm afraid there are plenty of his poems that are just notes - and even so that was an important step in American letters, a step that led on to the Beats and many fine lyric poets throughout the 20th century - couldn't have done it without his laying the course. But to read his poems now? They feel somehow antique. I'm always struck by the oddity that his two most atypical poems - Tract and The Yachts - are the two most often anthologized, so what does that tell us, if anything? Contrast with Wallace Stevens. Yes, I read him in college but in a totally ignorant way, just reading through the verse as if it were prose and emerging totally bewildered and unmoved. Looking back now at some of his longer poems (not the late poems, however -that's a challenge of a different order, and the same could be said of Williams for that matter) I found some pleasure in parsing the most difficult passages in some of the chestnuts that, though I didn't know this, I'd never read carefully enough in my youth. Odd that both Stevens and Williams were poets who lived a complete professional life (today, that's almost unimaginable for a poet!) - and Williams drew often on his experiences as a doctor while Stevens never wrote (at least directly) about his work in the insurance industry. Score one for Williams there - great to se a poet drawing on life and not solely on his facility with language. Whereas Williams lead on to an open and accessible form of poetry, Stevens led on to what I consider the dead end of "language poetry," the kind of stuff that wins prizes and New Yorker publication and nobody gives a damn about. Still, Stevens's best poems merit studious reading - they will pay you back. As to Williams, you probably have to read widely in his work and take it as a whole rather than parse some of the relatively, and intentionally, straightforward gems such as Danse Russe.

Stendhal's cynicism

Getting to the point where you have to say, Really?, is there no character in Stendahl's The Red and the Black who has an iota of morality, responsibility, altruism, or even a momentary thought about values or other people or anything but his or her own advancement in the world? Stendahl is the most cynical or writers, more so than the materialistic Balzac. French intellectuals scoff at the sentimentality of 19th-century British writers - the sentimentality of Dickens, the earnestness of Eliot, the fatalism of Hardy, the gentle narrative asides of Trollope, to name a few so-called faulted writers - but the hard-heartedness and relentless opportunism of Stendahl tops, or bottoms, them all. Why am I reading this novel? I know that the novel comes to a dramatic conclusion and that, at the end, Julien Sorel, the arriviste, reflects on the course of his life, and I'm far enough in that I'll keep reading to see (or to recall - I have read R&B before, many years ago, though little remains in my conscious memory of that first reading) how Stendahl brings the novel around. But at this point, 2/3 of the way through this long novel, I could almost quit: Julien has won the heart, or at least the attention, of the beautiful daughter, Mlle de la Mole, of his employer - she's really interested in him even though, or perhaps because, he is not of her social class, and he sees in her sudden attentions an opportunity continue his social ascension - even though he recognizes her superficiality and egotism and even compares her, unfavorbly, with the honesty and openness of the woman he had an affair with (Mm de Renal) back in the provinces. No good for either can come of this.

Salons in Stendahl and Proust

Stendahl (The Red and the Black, 1830) and Proust (almost a century later) build much of their great novels on encounters and conversations that the hero/protagonist (Julien Sorel/"Marcel") participates in and closely observes in Paris salons. Both writers present characters who aspire to be part of the intellectual/political discussions at these salons, while also sitting back as a contemptuous observer and chronicler. Stendehl's Julien is more of a climber and arriviste, a carpenter's son from the country newly arrived in Paris and clearly a social inferior to those w/ whom he converses - at least until he proves his worthiness (in their view) through his intelligence, acuity, and foolish bravado (getting wounded in a pistol duel to avenge a trivial insult). Proust's Marcel is nearly part of the smartest social set - from a wealthy family and Paris native - but he just barely makes the cut at the Guermantes salon. Proust's salonistes are witty, in a particularly testy and circumspect manner, and artistic; although there is much salon talk of the contemporary Dreyfus case and its implications, particularly for French Jews (such as Proust), the salons are primarily literary and artistic gatherings, with writers, critics, artists, and musicians as the most highly esteemed guests. Stendahl's people are trivial and gossips, by comparison - and they are not fully developed characters with their own secrets and idiosyncrasies, as is for ex the Baron de Charlus, with his loosely kept secret of homosexuality and SM practices. It takes 7 volumes but in the end Marcel recognizes the sordid snobbery of the salons to which he'd once aspired. In Stendahl, Julien recognizes from the start the insipid nature of the salon at the Hotel de la Mole, but he sees his attendance, participation, and acceptance as necessary rungs on the social ladder that he believes he must (is destined to) ascend.

Red and Black: Is there nobody in this novel who cares for anyone but himself?

The second half of Stendahl's Red and the Black brings "hero" Julien Sorel to Paris, where he believes that last he will achieve the fame to which he believes he is destined and entitled. He has left the provinces behind him, w/ a final tryst with Mme de Renal (in a fine, Stendahlian scene he uses a ladder he has "borrowed" from a peasant to climb into Mmes' bedroom window: a whole lot of drama and subterfuge, but their love, on his side, amounts to nothing - just another opportunity for grandiose behavior). He will do fine in Paris, where he will serve as private secretary to the Marquis de la Mole; en rout to his new position he overhears fellow coach-travelers discuss French political gossip at great length, which gives us a window on the world that Julien will inhabit. And as we see from the first dinner parties at the Hotel de la Mole, there's lot of stylish but pointless conversation, and all anyone seems to care about is rank and status. Is there nobody in this novel who has concern for anyone but himself. Nobody with money or power trying to change society or even help the poor or even support the arts? Julien is extremely intelligent, at least when it comes to reading and memorization, but he is unable to see that he is wasting his life and talents, that he will never measure up to the people around him, at least by their measure, because he is the son of a sawmill owner. But he can't see through them; he's too intent on his spurious goals, to attain the greatness of Napoleon without Napoleon's bravery or genius.

Fine fiction selection in current NYer by Lauren Groff

It takes a lot of willing suspension of disbelief, but if you buy in and go along w/ the plot Lauren Groff's story in current NYer (so-called double issue, go figure)is moving and provocative. In essence the story, Beneath the Wave, tells of a family of three swept up by either a tsunami or tidal wave while on vacation, not too far from their home, in an unnamed country: We can't help but think of Thailand, but there are no particular clues to indicate that. In a harrowing second the woman sees her husband swept away and when she emerges half-conscious in a shelter both husband and daughter are missing. She befriends a young child, and the 2 of them eventually leave the shelter and make their way back to the woman's home where she begins a new life, shaving the child's hair and raising the child as a boy. It's almost impossible for me to believe that, in any culture, the woman could get away with this; surely people would know her husband drowned and that the child she's raising is not hers. That said, Groff does a great job giving us a sense of the tenuous hold this woman (I don't think she's ever named) on her reality and on her life, and she builds the story to a heart-breaking moment when someone spots the child and thinks she's/he's her lost niece. It's impossible to know exactly what the child thinks, but she brushes off this inquiry - whether because she truly does not know this woman or her previous life was unhappy or she's so traumatized that she holds on to what she does have. The story opens a lot of questions about family, ethics, and trauma; perhaps it's part of a longer, developing work, though it stands well on its own and, if Groff is to follow these characters further she''s set in motion a strong and mysterious plot.

Julien Sorel and the Liar-in-Chief

My this point - nearly half-way through Stendahl's The Read and the Black (1830) - I have to wonder whether there are any redeeming qualities for the protagonist, Julien Sorel, who has proven himself to be a heartless opportunist who gets by on his extreme intelligence (ability to memorize vast tracts of Latin - whether he understand what he can recite like a parrot and whether he has on social or analytic intelligence is another matter entirely) and exceptional good looks. He comes across the woman w/ whom he'd had a passionate affair under the eyes of her husband (his employer and benefactor), leaving her distraught and ashamed, and he doesn't say a word to her - to give just one example. He's now set on rising to wealth and stature through the church, despite his complete lack of faith and morals. He has no interest in the church aside from its potential as a ladder he can climb (unlike most of the others in the seminary w/ him, he's from a prosperous though untitled family and has developed good manners and social graces). Yes, perhaps by the end of the novel he will be redeemed in some manner - I know there are famous chapters at the end about what he learns as a condemned man - but at this point what most strikes me is his constant fantasy that he is a heroic soldier in the service of Napoleon when he's nothing more that a tutor of Latin and a young man in a seminary doing favors for those who could advance his career and contemptuous of everyone else. In his laments about the few opportunities to serve in the miliarty and the past glories of the Napoleonic age, Julien reminds me of our own current liar-in-chief who puffs up his chest and acts tough when surrounded by bodyguards (typical tyrant behavior) and who boasts of the heroic acts he would have done had he only had the opportunity (e.g., said he'd have gone after the gunman and the Parkland High shooting - tough words from a coward).

More on Julien Sorel's insipid behavior

As his affair with the msyor's wife becomes more apparent to just about everyone in the town except the mayor, Julien (Sorel, Stendahl's Red and the Black) figures out that he has to leave and get on w/ his education in preparation for a career in the church; his departure from his so-called beloved, Mme de Renal, is in my view extremely cold and heartless, and he seems to have put her in the rear-view by the time he arrives in the larger town/city of Besancons, home of the monastery he will join as what I think is called a novitiate (or is that term only for prospective nuns?). IN fact, the very first thing he does is anter a cafe where he immediately begins a flirtation w/ the young barmaid/waitress and fantasizes about getting into a heroic duel w/ her current boyfriend. He then takes up a temporary lodging and flirts w/ the landlady - he's inveterate, hopeless. There's not a moment's thought about the woman he's left behind. Moreover, as he enters them monastery a day or so later he's appalled by the harsh conditions; he engages ina long interrogation with the head of the monastery, who quizzes J about church history and Latin and lays down the rules of the monastery. J has no problem pledging to obey all the rules - even tho he's breaking at least one right at the start by concealing some money and valuables he's carried w/ him. It's painfully obvious that he has neither faith nor calling; he's great at Latin and probably should be thinking about a career in academics, but that would never bring the fame and glory that he imagines will be his if he rises in rank in the church - a vain, privileged, foolish young man.

Julien Sorel's immorality and egotism

Almost caught, as Julien Sorel (The Red and the Black, Stendahl) learns that one of the mayor's many enemies is about to give the mayor, M de Renal) word that his wife has been having an affair w/ Julien, J and Mme de Renal engage in a tedious back and forth about what they should do. Mme d R becomes obsessed w/ the idea that god is punishing her for her adultery by striking her youngest son, Stanislas, with a serious illness. While at first she swears to break off the affair and confess to her husband if only god will relent and bring her son back to heath, over the course of their discussions she switches allegiance and decides she could not bear to give up Julien and doesn't care about the consequences - by the end of the chapter nobody's talking about poor Stanislas as all. Rather, Mme de Renal concocts a complicated plan in which she and J send a fake letter of accusation to M de Renal and she professes her innocence, blaming the letters as a calumny from one of his political rivals. Again, what strikes me here is the complete amorality Julien and the complete selfishness of all of the adults - the children, let alone the husband, are inconsequential - perhaps understandable in some contexts, but when we think of Julien's ambition and his fixation on a career in the church, his insensitivity and egotism is especially disturbing, even despicable.

Julien Sorel's aspirations and those of too many young people today

As Julien Sorel (Red and the Black, 1830( completes his "conquest" of Madame de Renal (Mayor's - and his emplyer's - wife), even though he seems to care little for or about her except for the fact that he has asserted power over someone in a higher social "caste," his interest wanes and he begins thinking more about how he can rise to great social prominence through deeds of glory, a la his hero, Napoleon. His desires and fascination with wealth and rank climax with the visit of some unnamed European monarch to the little town of Verrieres. American readers will, or at least should, blanch in horror at this scene - the entire town practically fulminating about the visit of a king, about which I say who cares? Some goddamn useless figure who commands respect and obedience as a result of his ancestry alone? No, a true Napoleonic hero would recognize the fatuity of devotion to a monarch and would recognize the need for a a democratic government. Sorel is not all that smart, just conniving and grandiose. Whether Standahl shares these view, I don't know, but he does make us see that JS hopes to enter the clergy only to achieve social status. His aspiration - take any path available to achieve rank and wealth and power - has its counterpart today in the thousands of bright young people aspire to careers on the street, accumulating wealth, without any sense of how they could use their talents and their education. Julien has no interest in professing religious values, in a career in the pulpit, or in fact in doing anything to advance his society or to help people, other than himself.

Julien Sorel's character

As the first section of Stendahl's The Red and the Black (1830) unfolds we see that the "hero," Julien Sorel, is a young man with grandiose ideas about his importance and with little sense of morality. He's contemptuous of those in the business world and of those who have prospered through (corrupt) politics, in particular the May of his hometown, Verrieres, who has hired him to be a Latin tutor for his children (an acquisition that shows he's "arrived"). But, while he holds all around him either in contempt or as a possible stepping stone for his advancement, he's nothing but a dreamer and a cavilling young man. He reads - secretly, because his employer is a fervent Royalist - the writings of his hero, Napoleon (I can't think of any contemporary analogy for this hero-worship) - he imagines that his slow courtship of the mayor's wife and comparable to N's military exploits. Similarly, he is preparing to a career in the Church, with not a hint of morality, faith, or propriety. Yes, we feel some sympathy for JS, in particular because we have seen him with his family - his father a crude and conniving owner of a prosperous sawmill, and his brothers a pair of louts who beat JS, a quiet and sensitive soul for no reason. Of course he's want to get out of this way of life - but w/ JS it's all or nothing: He can't imagine taking up the good job offer from his friend to co-manage a wood business and he show no particular devotion to his first job as a tutor. Everything for him is opportunity to escape small-town provincial life and to rise to greatness - but as what? Many young people have grandiose dreams about this success, but few are so contemptuous of those who stand in their way or who might actually help them.

How Red and Black differes from Charterhouse of Parma

Reading Stendahl's Red and Black for maybe the 3rd time, though it's been some time so there's a lot that I don't remember or more accurately not much that I do remember. A few years ago I read his other great work, Charterhouse of Parma, and you can see right off that R&B moves at a different pace. Charterhouse moves forward at a rapid pace, full of adventure and conflict, and that makes sense when we know that Stendahl literally wrote this novel aloud, to a dictationist, as he paced the floor over I think about a month or a little more. It just spilled out of him, it would seem. R&B feels a more crafted and carefully thought through, with the first 8 or so chapters deliberately setting up the background for the lead character, Julien Sorel (we don't meet him till I think the 3rd chapter, in fact): Stendahl first carefully establishes the social milieu of the town - Veriere? - near the Swiss Alps, with the petty class rivalries, the provincial snobbery, and the driving force of money and rank, setting up the culture from which JS will rebel. Julien, son of a wealthy sawmill owner of low social rank, goes to work for the leader of the town, the Mayor, as a tutor for the children - a social acquisition for the mayor, as nobody else in town can afford the luxury of a private tutor. Over time, Julien begins a flirtation w/ the mayor's young and attractive wife, but all the while nursing a contempt for the mayor and his values. He is planning to enter the clergy as a way to advance in rank and wealth (as in Charterhouse, the lead character takes religious orders w/ absolutely no vestige of faith nor any attempt to fulfill his vows, esp re chastity), and he keeps as a secret his reverence for the adventures, military success, and liberal values of his hero, Napoleon (if this were to be discovered he would be fired immediately - it would be like a socialist serving as a tutor and role model w/in the household of an arch-conservative, as were all members of the Mayor's caste at that time). Over time, we will watch the development and unfolding or the personality of this ambitious young man, a modern sensibility in revolt against his culture and background - and a largely unsympathetic character, at least the the outset.

What's happened to Joseph O'Neill?

I really don't know what's happened to Joseph O'Neill. His novel Netherland was one of the best of contemporary American novels, a terrific portrayal of a family and a city under stress (NY in the wake of 9/11),  a great examination of an obscure aspect of life in a diverse NY (a cricket league!), and on top of that a compelling murder mystery: character, plot, setting, ideas, everything. But his recent stories, for ex. The First World, in current New Yorker? No doubt O'Neill has it down when it comes to establishing a voice for a male narrator - wise, self-observant, open to listening to others, confiding - in fact his style reminds me of Richard Ford at his best. But what is this story? It's not even a story! The narrator walking in downtown Manhattan encounters an old friend, who insists that they stop for a few beers, and the friend hits him w/ long lament about the woman who used to care for his kids, now living on the edge of poverty, and nobody, except this guy, does a damn thing to help her. So, yes, we see that wealthy New Yorkers are self-centered and cold, contemptuous, and heartless, but this is really just one long complaint, which even the narrator wants to ditch, and who can blame him? A story needs some kind of shape, some purpose, and this one is just a ramble and is obviously in print in a prominent new collection as well as in the NYer based on reputation and not current achievement. I truly hope O'Neill is just sidetracked at the moment for some reason and that he can again rise up to the level of his finest achievement.