Dickens & Madoff

Anyone who's lived through the era of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and especially the demise of Bernie Madoff will recognize the prescience of Dickens in his portraying the great Mr Merdle, in Little Dorrit - I man recognized as unfashionably wealthy not because of his intelligence, personality, or inheritance but just because everyone believes he's a genius of finance and that "you can't go wrong w Merdle." So by keeping up an active social schedule - managed by his wife, hilariously known as "The Bosom" - and maintaining a sphinx-like silence he attracts money and investors. Dickens does a great job showing the rise of this mania, a tidal wave in which investors across England are putting their money with Merdle, whatever that means I practical terms, so as to share in his wealth and benefit from his acumen - kind of like buying shares in Berkshire Hathaway except that M is no guru of investment. We can see where this is headed - tables turning and ruin for many - w the only questions being: will the Dorrit family return to debtors' prison! And will Merdle somehow walk away from the catastrophe he created?

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Dickens

A long chapter halfway through book 2 of Dickens's Little Dorrit describes an elaborate dinner at which Mr Merdle is host; M is entirely indifferent to all of the social niceties; he is widely celebrated and revered as among the wealthiest people in England , but of course nobody knows the source of his wealth and he doesn't seem to have much of an occupation other than being wealthy. As it turns out the sole purpose of this vast entertainment is to acquire M's blessing for a marriage that will unite his wealth to the political ruling family in England - the Barnacles. This chapter doesn't have the humor or panache of some of D's satirical riffs in book one - such as the description of the Circumlocution Department - but in its way it is far darker and more cynical- the rich get richer, the hard-working entrepreneurs get little, and the poor continue to live their lives in dire and hopeless poverty. Readers will notice how the narrative has entirely left behind the debtors' prison that was central to book one; now we're more focused on the drawing rooms of the wealthy and the stops on the European grand tour. Clearly D's sentiments are on the side of the oppressed poor , but unlike his two previous novels, bleak house and hard times, this novel does not have a specific antagonist. Dickens may have caught some grief for the polemics of HT and set out in LD to create more of a melodrama and a tale of love gone wrong with a background of political and social criticism - the antithesis of HT and the mirror image of BH.

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Family traits and other problems in Book 2 of Little Dorrit

Still trying to get my mind around the complexities of Dickens's Little Dorrit, as the cast of characters continues to grow well into the 2nd Book (1,000+ ibook pp.); he never tires of introducing new characters and playing with their quirks of language and personality, for ex., only this deep into the novel do we learn anything about the character of Mrs. Gowan, whose son has married Pet Meagles. She visits the Meagles family and manages to insult them all with her presuppositions that her son has married down. This visit -and her utter pretensions to wealth (she rides a hired coach, much like taking a cab or an uber today, but pretends that it's her own vehicle - equivalent to a chauffeured limo today). This episode leads up to presume that horrible people like the pretentious artist Gowan come from horrible parents - yet that isn't so, or not always, as we have throughout the counterexample of the protagonist, Arthur Clennam, himself - whose mother is a nasty matriarch. And what about Mr. and Mrs. Meagles, treated in a lightly comical manner, with their emphasis on being "practical" people, with Mr. M's obvious deference Mrs. M, and with the abundant love for favorite daughter, Pet? Well, how could they have accepted and encouraged her marriage to Gowan? And, more important, how could they be so rude and oblivious regarding their adopted daughter, Tattycorum (sp?), who rightly runs away from home? Deep into Book 2 and about 2/3 through the novel, Tatty's character begins to emerge - as we see her under the sway of the stern (but probably emancipated and a forerunner of contemporary feminism and women's rights?) Miss Wade and with some as yet unexplained connection to family that Arthur almost married into (the comically talkative widow whose name I can't remember - I'm just overwhelmed by the # of characters, sorry). In an odd and not quite believable stretch, Arthur follows her, unnoticed, through the streets of London and overhears much of her conversation w/ Miss Wade and with the Frenchman, Blondois?, who has hovered on the perimeter of this narrative - with some dark secret about at least one of the characters - since the first chapter.

Problems with Book 2 of Little Dorrit

Book 2 of Dickens's Little Dorrit introduces yet another major character - Mrs. General, hired by Mr. Dorrit as a tutor for his daughters, teaching hem etiquette and manners supposedly, but obviously a phony and a fraud and a source of comic relief at her expense - teaching the young women to say "prism" and "Pap" because pronouncing p-words makes their faces prettier (Dickens refers to her work as "varnishing") - but she's obviously after Mr. D's newfound riches. We'll see how long he can maintain his new life, attended by a dozen at least servants and traveling through Europe for no particular reason. The problem, however, with Book 2, based on the first several chapters, is the Little (Amy) Dorrit is so relentlessly good and such a doormat for her domineering sister, Fanny, that our interest in her inevitably wanes. And the social commentary, of course, in Book 2 is a dull blade: Whereas Book One focused to a degree on the mistreatment of debtors in particular and all prisoners in general, with some terrific satire on government corruption and obfuscation - The Circumlocution Department - the satire and commentary in Book 2 is just on the extravagant behavior of the nouveaux riches - a pretty easy target and of little direct concern to most readers then and now. That said, it's still Dickens and includes some fine passages, and though we all sense that Dorrit will squander his wealth and though we all know the LD will inevitably marry Arthur Clennam, we're still curious as to how these turns of event will come about.

The strange opening of Book 2 of Little Dorrit

Book 2 of Dickens's Little Dorrit (1855) opens, as did Book 1, in a remote (from London) setting, in this case at a mountain pass in what I think is the French Alps, at some kind of monastery that puts travelers up for the night; the travelers are at first not introduced to us, so the feeling is somewhat unsettling - who are these people (3 groups of travelers, as it happens)?, what's their connection to all that's gone before in this novel?, what brings them here, together? Again, that's much like the opening to Book 1, which introduces a # of characters who play no clear role in the novel until much later. Similarly, Dickens is no doubt the ultimate London chronicler, and LD is in every way a novel about London and its politics, class conflict, prison system, social castes - so why open both sections of then novel in France? But, of course, we know we're traveling with an experienced guide - the unsettling openings serve the purpose of heightening our attention and curiosity. By the end of the long first chapter in Book 2 Dickens discloses - we've figured most of this out already - the names of the 3 groups of travelers: A large contingent of Dorrits (including a new character, a woman who seems to be teh traveling companion of Mr D?); the sorrowful Gowans, with Pet now a year into her doomed marriage and her husband, the phony artist, as obnoxious and disagreeable as ever; and the Frenchman whom we met in Chapter 1 and who appeared briefly at the Clennam home where he seems to be intent on righting some grievous error or crime in the family past. The emotional heart of this chapter concerns a request from Arthur Clennam (the protagonist) to one of the Dorrits - Little (Amy)? - if she ever encounters Pet in her travels, to see if she is happy in her marriage ("If you're traveling in the North Country fair"); Pet assures the inquirer that she is, but that's obviously a cover-up. We expect the narrative to resolve itself soon on London and to give us more direct information as to how the sudden wealth and social stature as changed (and ruined?) the Dorrit family.

Thoughts about the end of Book One of Little Dorrit and what might happen in Book 2

A former colleague used to say his family believed that if all the world's income were distributed evenly it would take about two weeks before the rich would be rich again and the poor would be impoverished. Did Dickens think the same? In one of the weird and in fact impossible narrative twists, so weird and improbable that these twists are sometimes called "Dickensian," CD concludes Book 0ne (at the halfway mark) of Little Dorrit with father Dorrit suddently coming into a huge and unexpected legacy - enough to pay his debts and get him and his family out of the debtors' prison and to begin to live a life of luxury. It takes no time for him to get a beautiful house, liveried servants, a horse and equipage, etc., and to move off to his new life. To his credit, at least he makes a modest distribution to all of the debtors still in prison - though does nothing to really change their lives in any way (he's more interested in his farewell luncheon and in the praise heaped upon him). We suspect that he will be just as crude and stupid and self-centered w/ all his wealth as he was as an imprisoned debtor - completely w/out learning or sympathy from his experiences. I read the book many years ago and have no precise memory of the plot - but I also suspect, following the class-bias of my former colleague's family, that Dorrit will squander his wealth and wind up back where he started. The real question in the 2nd part of LD will be how this sudden wealth - much like a lottery winner's sudden wealth today - will alter Dorrit (if at all) and in particular will alter how people react and behavor toward him, and toward his family - particularly the eponymous Little (Amy) Dorrit. We know that she will never change, but how will she react to the attention soon to be paid to her? It's been obvious from page one that eventually the protagonist, Arthur Clennom, will recognize that he's in love with LD - but will he be too late? Will she be blindsided by a suitor who's really after her money? Will she be pressured by her evil father to marry for rank and wealth and not for love? There's a long way to go in this novel - it's possibly D's longest? - with many strands still loose at the halfway mark.

A story that gets going right away but runs out of gas

New story (I think it's a stand-alone but who knows these days?) from the always provocative and always puzzling Ben Lerner in current New Yorker, Ross Perot and China, gets off to a great start but lacks the sweet follow-through (will inevitably discuss ending of story in this post). I loved the story from and at the outset: a young guy entering the summer before he leaves his Midwest home for college in the East is out at night on a "man-made" lake with his girlfriend (whom he'll be leaving behind - whether because she's younger or not going away to school is not clear). Apparently he's yapping away oblivious, as too-smart young guys are wont to do, when he notices that she's disappeared. After some panicked moments of searching for her and calling her name, he starts up the outboard (some funny moments here as narrator recognizes his basic incompetence w/ machinery, contrasting w/ his many Midwest farm-descendant peers). He brings the boat to dock, clumsily and enters house of girlfriend's stepdad, goes upstairs in dark, takes a piss, gradually realizes: Wrong house (with an attendant shot at how much the lakefront houses resemble each other), sneaks back out, goes searching for his car, at least a half hour, finds it. OK to this point - he's surprised us at moments, made us laugh, kept us on edge. But we also ask along the way: Wouldn't he be in a panic? His girlfriend may have drowned, and he seems oblivious to that. But all is well, as when he starts the car, girlfriend appears from the house. At this point the story loses its momentum and the girlfriend goes off on a long jag about her life and about the interminable speechifying (on topics such as those mentioned in title of story) of her stepfather - an obvious hit at the boyfriend, too, as she apparently abandoned ship to avoid listening to his monologue (and he, like stepdad, was oblivious to his near-captive audience). They kiss, they recognize that at end of summer they'll go their separate ways, end of story. I have to feel that Lerner ran out of gas and didn't manage to bring his own narrative into safe harbor - or out to sea, as the case may be. We never get a sense of a what a crisis the narrator may have just avoided, nor does the ending produce any epiphany of realization or insight. Still, a story worth reading for its strengths - true of other Lerner works as well.

The heartbreak at th heart of Little Dorrit, and a sin to expiate

Two contrasting chapters nearing the mid-point in Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit (1855), as one chapter presents the sad news, to Arthur Clennom (the protagonist) that the woman, Pet (!), whom he is in love with - and whom he tries, comically, to convince himself that he does not love, as he imagines he wouldn't have a chance w/ her - comes to him and tells him she's in love w/ his odious rival: a match that Arthur knows will be horrible for Pet but also that all his hopes are dashed. He should have acted sooner, he should have been forthright, he should have for once taken a risk - and now he's like the singer of a million blues songs (e.g., You Don't Know Me),, a guy who deserved much better (and is likely to find true love, one imagines, somewhere over the next thousand pages). Another chapter harks back to the first chapter, when we meet a nasty guy on the verge of release from a French prison; now, on a typically Dickensian stormy night in London, the Frenchman shows up at the door of Arthur's mother's dingy house, talks his way into an audience w/ the nasty old woman, tries to ingratiate himself w/ her business agent, and hints that he's trying to rectify a great wrong done by the Clennom family, all mysterious to this point to readers - except that we know Arthur has a sense of a family sin that must be expiated, that he must discover and expiate - and we sense that somehow or other this sin and expiation must involve the eponymous Little (Amy) Dorrit, that a sense of guilty (or a need to keep LD close and dependent?) is what led Arthur's mother to take on LD as a seamstress.

A heroic moment in Little Dorrit, and in all of literature

As noted in previous post, a running theme in Dickens's Little Dorrit (1855) concerns characters oblivious to their own nature and their own faults or worse, the prime example being Mr. Dorrit himself, who continues to exploit his daughter (the eponymous Little, aka Amy), who has devoted every minute of her life to caring for the needs of her father and sacrificing her own comforts and potential happiness. In regard to Mr. D., Dickens adopts an unconventional narrative strategy and never says outright that he is a tyrant and a fool; rather, the narrator keeps saying what an honorable and respected man he is, while of course meaning and conveying the precise opposite. In a parallel section of this extreme complex narrative, we see the Meagles family, introduced to us in the mysterious 2nd chapter as they along w/ the protagonist (Arthur Clennom) and others are released from quarantine and continue on a journey from Asia home to England. Here, the narrator is more opaque; Mr. Meagles continues to describe himself and his wife as "practical," and in a sense that's true, from his POV. The strange thing about the M family is that they have 2 daughters: Pet (with whom Clennom has fallen in love, though he cannot admit this even to himself) and Tatticorum (not sure of spelling), whom I think is an adopted daughter and perhaps of mixed race (again not sure, would have to re-read earlier chapter). Meagles's self-delusion is that he treats the two daughters equally and that he has provided a loving and caring home for Tatty. But we see from the outset this she is full of repressed rage - Meagle's is always telling her to "count to 25" to soothe her outbursts. At last, about about 1/3 through this (long!) novel, Tatty refuses to bow down to her ignorant and selfish father; she leaves home, and, once tracked down (to the flat of Mrs. Wade, a mysterious woman who was also in the quarantine and who seems solitary and antisocial) she lets him have it - recounting the many ways in which Pet has been favored and Tatty abused. It's a heroic and political moment in this novel - in fact, in literature - as the oppressed one revolts and punctures the facade of courtliness and generosity that covers up class abuses across English society, then and maybe now. It's also a warning shot: will Little Dorrit ever speak up to her own abusive father?

The vast # of characters in Little Dorrit and what that signifies

Again, I have to note that I'm by no means a Dickens expert and some of these observations about Little Dorrit may be off the mark, but it does seem to me that this novel represents another - a final - step in Dickens's work, in particular regard the structure and the panoply of characters. Yes, of course, many of his early and mid-life novels involve multiple characters, but LD seems to be the first that introduces the characters, initially, as if they're unrelated; it's a challenge for readers (or listeners) to keep the cast of characters strait, and there are sometimes long gaps between the appearances of the characters - for ex., at about the 1/3 mark I'm reading a chapter about a young woman who, hilariously, talks nonstop, w/out commas, as the narrator notes (funny to draw our attention to the text - breaking the 4th wall so to speak) and I had no recollection of who she was or how she fit in (she was the woman whom the protagonist, Arthur Clennom, would have married had he not followed his father into business in China). Note in particular the first three chapters that introduce sets of characters who have yet to play any significant role in the narrative. Dickens is clearly pushing narrative to its limits - I have no idea whether he might have been able to read translations of Russian novels, but the great Russian novelists did so as well, albeit most of them in Dickens's wake) - and it would help to have a cast of characters at the front of the novel (maybe some editions do). The effect - and this is true throughout Dickens - is a peculiar double-vision: Seen in one way, the collection of initially unrelated characters show the complexity and vastness of the human populace; seen another way, the sudden interactions of these characters w/ one another - running into one another unexpectedly on various jaunts and rambles - suggest that London is like a village, where everyone knows everyone else and where you're likely to run into acquaintances every time you go out on the street.

Dickens's rhetorical device in narrating Little Dorrit

I'm by no means an expert on terms of rhetoric, but I think the term "antiphraxis" applies to much of Dickens's work; the term refers to the rhetorical technique of saying one thing to mean its exact opposite. The best-known example comes from Marc Antony's funeral oration in Julius Caesar: "But Brutus is an honorable man,/So are they all honorable men." Dickens's narrators, and especially so in Little Dorrit (1855) adopt a similar point of view toward the characters described, the best example being Dickens's depiction of Mr. Dorrit, Amy/Little D's father and the Father of the Marshalsea (the debtors' prison to which he has been confined for life. Repeatedly, Dickens notes how Dorrit is respected by all in the prison and that he is a wonderful and loving father to his youngest child, LD. But obviously as we read we see immediately that Mr. D is a pompous and irresponsible ass, that the many people whom he thinks love and respect him in the prison believe he's no more than a joke and humbug - and at worst an extortionist to whom they must pay (monetary) tribute, although I suspect that the money that the "forget" and leave behind whenever they visit D is left out of pity (he's far too weak and feckless to be a true prison leader). His behavior toward his daughter is despicable. He makes no effort to arrange for payment of debt and treats the prison as a kind of free public housing, and he has his daughter, whose entire life has been confined by the prison walls, work on the outside to bring in money and to devote her every free minute to tending to his most minute needs. The despicable behavior reaches its nadir when he encourages - without ever stating anything directly - LD to allow the son of the turnkey to "court" her, even though she has made it clear that she has no interest in him in particular and perhaps no interest in marrying anyone. But Mr D sees and opportunity in this liaison and is willfully oblivious of his daughter's feelings. But of course he's a wonderful and honest man, respected by all!

Dickens's treatment of the theme of young love

I am by no means an expert on the work of Dickens, in particular his early novels, but it seems to me that another breakthrough from Dickens in his late-career novel Little Dorrit (1855 - not the 1860s as I'd guessed in an earlier post) is his treatment and depiction of young men in love. I think, from my limited recollection, that there is relatively little about love and courtship in his earlier novels, until the expansive late novels when he depicts mature love relationships in the great Bleak House. LD followed BH by a few years - w/ Hard Times, a Dickens one-off, and his shortest and most polemical novel - and LD is I think the first serious (albeit at times comic) depiction of young love. At about the 25% point, we get a few parallel chapters about the uncertainties and the heartbreak of young courtship: a deftly handled scene in which the protagonist, Arthur Clennom, visits the Meagles home and is obviously swooning over the young daughter, Pet, when a rival shows up, a crude and self-centered man who seems confident that Pet is in love w/ him - and Dickens has some wry observations about how disturbed and upset Arthur would be "if he were in love w/ Pet." We see and feel the painful hesitation of a man who does not know how to express his feelings and speak for himself, possibly letting the potential love of his life slip away (into a terrible marriage). In a parallel chapter, D depicts the young son of the Marshalsea prison "turnkey" who is in love w/ the eponymous Little (aka Amy) Dorrit - and after an awkward conversation w/ her father he follows LD to a bridge where she stands and sadly contemplates the flow of the stream below her, and he asks permission to speak to her and she, in the most polite but firm words imaginable, tells him that he should leave her alone and forget about ever winning her affection; he walks off in deep, perhaps even suicidal, sorrow (he imagines the words that would be engraved on his tombstone). We get in these two chapters all of the pain and missed connections of youth and love - a new turn for Dickens I think, and a theme he would develop further a few years later in what's probably his finest novel, Great Expectations.

Favorite (Living) Writers

For some reason over the past few days more than one person has asked me about my favorite living writers. Gulp - that was a scary question because most of my favorite writers are .... dead. Oddly, the question a few years ago would have produced an immediate response: the three horsemen of course - Roth, Updike, Bellow - and then the two great short story writers Trevor and Munro (who is still living but no longer writing). Could also add to the list Bolano and sebald and Garcia Marquez. But among writers today who rises to that level - which I'll define by a writer whose newest book I will always read? There are a few writers whom I really like and will read many of their new books but they're not "review proof" - that is I'll test the water before plunging in: maybe Beattie and Mcewen and Knausgaard are in this category. There are others whom I used to read each book as it came out but who on late career don't hold the same cachet, they seem to be repeating themselves w diminished effect: Murakami once a favorite falls in this camp. That leaves me w very few must read novelists living and writing today. One who comes to mind: Patrick modiano w his noir novels set in Paris and environs. Is he the only one? I have to think more about this - but perhaps I have outlived the writers who formed my literary taste and milieu. Perhaps we all do.

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New Yorker story

Credit to the New Yorker for recent efforts to publish authors little known to most readers, which I hope will give recognition and a boost to young writers at the outset of their careers. Current NYer story by Camille Bordas, Tje Presentation on Egypt, as an ambitious, sometimes shocking, mostly successful piece that will hold your attention start to finish. I won't give away any of the shocks or surprises but will only note that the first half of the start had me gasp in surprise at a few of the unexpected twists. Bordas splits her narrative in half with the first section focused on a girl, Danielle, 9 and precocious and preparing for the presentation alluded to in the title - and horrifying events ensue. The 2nd half of the story, somewhat less convincingly, looks at D in later life suffering to degree from her childhood trauma and from the pain of withheld family secrets, whose suppression poison the blood it seems. The 2nd section makes this feel a little too much like a story straining to be a novel - but not quite getting there of course. Still this story is among the more inventive from this magazine, without its being tricky or postmodern. No doubt there will be more to come from this author.

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The maturation of Dickens's style in Little Dorrit

I may be wrong but it looks to me as if Charles Dickens is working toward a new (for him), introspective literary style in Little Dorrit; previous novel, Bleak House, went about as far as CD could go in social satire, with its comic and at times tragic vision of "Chancery," the interminable court proceedings and the impenetrable legal machinations that drives people to penury or insanity. In LD he takes the satire to another step, this time focusing on the abuse and corruption in the court system, with particular focus on the Circumlocution Department, whose function is to provide sinecures and to slow or derail every inquiry from the public. Though the office itself its CD's creation, the process still feels contemporary to many who seek information, let alone redress, from public officials and agency. Whereas in BH the characters' confrontation with Chancery leads to several long passages and set pieces on the abusive system, in LD the thoughts of those who get entangled in the issues of the debtors' prison are more personal and more revealing of character, in a way I think unique in CD's work up to this point. One fine set piece occurs (about 25% through the novel) when the protagonist, Arthur Clennum, reflects on why he was correct in declining to declare his love for "Pet" Meagles - he sees himself as unworthy of her, in fact unworthy of the love of any woman - an incredibly sad passage - and then, looking out on the river flowing by, he has what would later be recognized as a kind of epiphany, thinking about the eternal flow of the waters and finding that soothing, but in an unexpected way - the waters, he recognizes, are oblivious to pain. So as he looks out and thinks he indirectly conveys to us his pain and sorrow, which he could never express directly, and it's as close as he can come to an admission that he should have declared his love to Pet, and that his failure to do so at the right moment may have locked him into a sorrow and loss and self-denigration for the rest of his life. Of course we also suspect that he will find redemption and love, most likely with the title character, Little (i.e., Amy) Dorrit - whom at present he sees as too young and declasse for his love interest - but that may change.

A day-in-the-life story from Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff's story, Brawler, in the current New Yorker is perhaps set in Florida, like all of the stories in her most recent collection, though unlike her other recent works this one does not make much of a poiont of setting or locale; from my reading, it looks as if this story could take place in just about any American community (though probably in the South or West). It's really a day-in-the-life story, a study in character and situation, in particular of the title character, actual name Sara. As we meet her she's getting ready for a swim meet, at which she is part of, in fact the star of, the diving team; we see immediately that she arrives late for the meet and that this is typical. We also learn that she's in some kind of trouble in school, where she is being punished (for "brawling" - we never learn more about that except that it establishes her tough demeanor and outlaw behavior) or even educated in a special program for troubled teens - not clear - but we do see that she jumped out of a window to get out of detention and to get to the meet. She's does her dive but is DQ'd because she hit the board on her descent - scratching the back of her neck but (surprisingly) not seriously injured. The we learn about her sorrowful home life - mother chronically ill and malnourished, money is tight, we see her shoplifting 2 frozen dinners to bring home for her and her mother, we see the scorn that others in the community direct toward her, we see her on an emergency visit to the hospital w/ her mother and the dr. being very kind and solicitous though in response she, for some reason, seems to hate him. That's about it - the story is a snapshot of a young woman trapped and in despair; in a way, I'd say it begs for more - we want to know more about her life and fate - but I know it's stupid to ask of a story more than it can give: Sometimes it's good to complete a story and wish there were more to it.

Dickens

There's no doubt that Dickens's account of the Circumlocution Department, in Little Dorrit, is among the highlights not only of D's work but of al British social satire - a direct descendant of Swift and a forerunner of 20th-century dark comedy and social commentary. The idea of a government agency whose sole purpose is to never provide aid or information will ring true painfully for too many supplicants and journalists. The sense of nightmare futility obviously was developed further by Kafka and also anticipates the bureaucratic nightmare depicted in Seghers's Transit. And the humor of course is an early anticipation of such absurdities as Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks. Dickens has here moved beyond his account of Chancery in his previous novel, Bleak House, and has imagined not just a government agency that does its job poorly but one who does its job - preventing public access and information and providing sinecure appointments and do-nothing posts - to perfection .

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Character types in Dickens

Dickens is of course known for his sharp delineation of character; some of his characters are all-good (right now I'm reading Little Dorrit, and the eponymous Amy Dorrit is an example of pure benevloence; Esthe Summerson in Bleak House as well, and some of his male protagonists perhaps such as Copperfield or Pip - others abound) and others are all-bad (Fagin, Mr. Gradgrind if I have the name correct), but his most significant and original characters are those who think they're bad but are actually good (see Great Expectations) and, in particular, those who think they're good but are actually bad - e.g., Mrs Jellybellly (?) in BH, who is devoting her life to the care of children in The Congo while completely oblivious to the needs of her own children, living in neglect and squalor. Mr. Dorrit, Amy/Little D's father, is a perfect example of the "thinks he's good" character: He makes a big today about how he is the "Father of th Marchalsea," which is to say the longest-dwelling member on the London debtors' prison, and does nothing to try to better his life while living off the labor of his younger daughter an in his officious manner extorting "gifts" from those who visit the prison; he acts as if his meeting each visitor and newly arrived prisoner is an act of kindness and benevolence, and that all of these visitors and prisoners find it a great honor to have an audience with the "Father," while in fact he's  just a lazy extortionist who exploits others, his family included. His mild manner and seeming politesse mask, for a time, the essential laziness and greediness of his character. Dickens's sympathies are obviously w/ the prisoners - the debtors' prison was a terrible institution that had already, I believe been abandoned by the time Dickens was writing LD, in the 1860s or so?, but part of Dickens's greatness as a writer is that he is neither servile nor sympathetic to all those exploited and ruined by the corrupt prison system; some of them, such as Mr. Dorrit, are both victims and executioners.

The pleasure of returning to Dickens

It's a pleasure to start (re)reading Dickens's Little Dorrit, one of his late, great novels often paired w/ Bleak House, especially after putting down the pretentious and unreadable Flights. Dickens had to sell books (and readings) to make his living, so he knew he had to grip readers right away and to focus on character, plot, and setting and let others judge whether he was writing great literature or merely (!) great entertainment. It's many many (italicized!) years since I read LD (and was at the time impressed with how great this novel, little known or discussed back in the 1970s) with the wimpy title would turn out to be; since then I've seen the BBC series, which introduced LD to a new generation of readers - and I enjoyed being reminded of the strengths of this novel. Of course any miniseries will have to dispense of much of the material in the novel, and in coming back to LD I was surprised at the first two chapters, both of which take place in a prison yard in Marseilles - I'd completely forgotten that. Even now, I'm not quite sure how the first 2 chapters will fit into the overall plot - though I'm confident that Dickens had something in mind: the first focuses on two prisoners, one somewhat wealthy and commanding and the other penniless; we don't know exactly why they're in prison or what will become of them. The 2nd chapter focuses on a group of about 30 characters held in the prison for a quarantine. M

Why I'm done reading Flights

OK, I've had enough - Olga Tokarczuk's book Flights (2018) contains some amusing and insightful observations about time and space and a few short narrative segments that look at first like interpolated short stories but that just conclude abruptly - and all of this put together may constitute a long narrative (400+ pp) about time, space, distance, and dislocation (each of the 3 "stories" in the first 100 pages is about someone who takes flight - a mother and child who disappear on an island vacation, a ferryboat pilot who sets out to sea w/ a full load of passengers, a Mideastern king or prince who leaves his palace when facing a potential coup and brings with him all of his children) but to me none of these narratives go anywhere and the whole work just feels like an unsorted assortment of observations and fragments. Yes, one could read this book and come away thinking that our world is fragmentary, that our journeys lead us nowhere, etc., but do we need to turn to literature for that insight? On the contrary; in my view we expect literature to help us organize and make sense of our world by providing us access to a consciousness of another (the author, and her or his characters) and by arranging the fragments of our lives into a recognizable, detectable form - not necessarily beginning, middle, and end but at least some semblance of a structure or direction. It may be that I am reading Flights in the wrong way; perhaps it's best as a companion volume that one might turn to from time to time and read the pieces within in whatever order you like - that is, maybe it's not meant to be read straight through beginning to end - and some of OTs observations are amusing and trenchant, but overall this is a work that simply tries the reader's patience. As noted in yesterday's post, this work reads like a writer's notebook, full of potential material none assimilated, organized, or resolved. Maybe things cohere in the next 300 pages of OT's journey - please let me know, because I'm getting off at this station.

How to classify and how to approach the strange new novel Booker International Prize-winning novel

As with much contemporary fiction, European in particular, it's hard to know exactly how to classify or approach the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk's 2018 award-winning (Booker Prize International) novel, Flights. It starts off as what looks to be a conventional bildungsroman, as the narrator introduces herself to us and tells us about her personality quirks - in particular, her fascination w/ "freaks" and various monstrosities, both in legend and in life - and as she embarks on a journey of (I think) unexplained intent. The we shift abruptly - the entire (400+-page) book is made up of short sequences, some no longer than a paragraph none longer than 3-4 pp  - to a story about a man vacationing w/ wife and son(?) on a Mediterranean Island; wife asks him to stop the car; he does so, later steps out to take a piss, and his wife and child are missing; we follow him over the next few days as he reports this situation to the police and along w/ authorities they search for signs of his wife and child - everyone reassuring him that the island is small and they will be found - and eventually their suspicions, and ours, turn to the man himself. OK, but then this narrative abruptly ends w/ no conclusion and no explanation (it does remind me of the film L'aventura) - and then we're back to the narrator and, over the next 40 or so pp we  are reading short essays on travel: the strange culture of airports, an odd encounter w/ a fellow traveler who is writing a book about our gruesome mistreatment of animal life, random thoughts and apercus (e.g., is there  reverse Hisenberg principle that states that we can be absent from 2 different places at the same time?). Overall through the first 70-80 pp of this book, I see it as almost like a writer's notebook - fair enough, but can, should, an author get away w/ publishing her or his raw material w/out any effort to develop this material into a literary form? OT has been compared (on the jacket at least) w/ Sebald, but I don't see the connection there - as Sebald's work his focused on historical narrative and the unearthing of the mysterious, recent past from present-day landscapes and abandoned buildings. A closer comparison might be w/ Lydia Davis, whose extremely short stories come close to poetry, pensees, or even tag lines. The writing is good enough and strange enough (or at least Jennifer Croft's translation is) that I'll read further, but I am hoping (against hope) that the pieces of this disparate work will congeal and interact.

A realistic novel about young adults growinginto maturity

For better or worse, Sally Rooney's new novel, Normal People, maintains a steady course and despite some dramatic outbursts, particularly toward the end, remains a cool and balanced novel, avoiding all or most opportunities for violence, melodrama, and histrionics. For example, toward the end of the novel Marianne's brother, Alan, a minor but menacing figure throughout the narrative, gets in a tiff w/ her for no obvious reason - other than that he's mentally unbalanced - and hurls a beer bottle at her head (she ducks) and later slams a door into her face and breaks her nose. She summons her boyfriend, Connell, to the house and he enter, asks her to leave and then ... tells Alan that if he ever harms her again he'll kill him. Fine - though I expected more than that! Similarly, the funeral of a young suicide, the unknown parentage of Connell, the bitter breakup of Marianne and Alan,and other examples abound - all are underplayed, deliberately. That said, props to Rooney for maintaining her balance throughout; though this is a novel that simmers rather than boils over, on the plus side most readers will find the characters to be true-to-life depictions of young adults growing into a maturity, with particular honesty about sexual exploration. By the end, Marianne recognizes that she is an "ordinary person," having gone through 2 phases: the lonesome and socially outcast teenager to the dramatic, much revered and feared intellectual who constantly chooses the wrong boyfriends, to "just" an intelligent and attractive young woman making her way in the world.The conclusion seems - deliberately? is there a sequel in the works? - open-ended as M and C embark on a new stage in their relationship and in their lives. It's neither a traditional comic conclusion (inclusion in society) nor an "American" conclusion (heading off for the territories though there's a touch of this); rather, perhaps it's an "Irish" conclusion: open, and epiphanic. All told it's a credible and appealing novel in which the narrator is virtually invisible and the characters do all the work, dissecting every nuance of their feelings, longings, and regrets through much discussion and analysis.

Powerful story about art and (the end of) life by John L'Heureux

Powerful and moving story in the current New Yorker - The Escape, by John L'Heureux - made even more so by the knowledge that it's probably his list published - and maybe last composed story; JL'H died a few weeks ago, after an unusual career: In one way an extremely fortunate and successful career as the head of the Stanford writing program - what could be a better academic gig for a writer than that? - but also I imagine much frustration as he had many books published but never seemed to be mentioned front-line among great and influential American writers. He had one book that his publisher - the excellent FSG if I remember - pushed back in the 1980s as a breakout novel, but it never quite broke out. That said, everything I've read by JL'H seems smart and thoughtful, but this one most of all - an astonishingly honest account of an older couple, both retired, as the man struggles with the onset and development of Parkinson's. In his retirement - he was a civil engineer - he takes up painting and finds that he has a talent, but at least initially the talent is mimetic only: He can't understand art that is anything but an attempt at imitating nature, that is, realism. He does nice landscapes and portraits based on photos, but not much more. And then he has an insight into the terror of his illness and begins some paintings that involve huge rock formations threatening to fall or collapse; his son - a poet and academic - recognizes an amazing talent in his father and compliments him, and the man continues to paint until, well, until the end of the story, which I won't give away. In essence, he has moved from are as imitation (of nature) to art as expression, and in doing so finds new life. How much of this story may be personal to JL'H I have no idea, though it does feel in some ways as if his writing mirrors the artistry of his character - that this story is both mimetic and expressive, a grappling with fear, with talent, and with the end of life.

Sally Rooney's strengths and weakness as a novelist

Sally Rooney's novel Normal People (2018) keeps moving along in its fashion as we follow the ups and downs of the relationship between the two young protagonists, Marianne and Connell, as they move from h.s. through college, grad school, each of them maturing, moving on to different partners but constantly drawn back to each other - and much analysis as they discuss every facet of their feelings, emotions, guilt, regret. We see Connell become much more mature and sophisticated as he moves on through college, and we Marianne become much more self-assured, moving from the social outcast to the center of attention and an object of fascination and desire. By about the the half-way point she w/ the completely wrong guy for her, the odious Jamie, rich brat and violent as well, while Connell is with a nice, sweet, devoted medical student, Helen, who seems unfortunately the wrong one for him - he's always going to be drawn toward the more dramatic and volatile Marianne. And so it goes; Rooney is unquestionably a great writer when it comes to exploring the nuances of developing and devolving relationships among young people, her peers it seems - but she's not as strong on nor as interested in plot development. It's as if her novels are at a constant simmer but they never come to a boil - and at some point we yearn for something dramatic, or even melodramatic, to break the spell. (Noting a mistake in yesterday's post: M and C are not living together in their first year in college; they each have their own place of abode, at least for the record.)

Comparing Sally Rooney's two novels

There are many similarities between Sally Rooney's newest novel, Normal People, and her previous novel, Conversations with Friends: Both involve close examination of the course of a romance/sexual liaison, both - as one title indicates - are told largely through extended dialog (I think she would be good at writing for the stage except that...), neither contains - at least so far (not quite half-way through NP) much action in the conventional sense, both set among the intelligentsia and the committed in contemporary Ireland, Dublin mostly. Yet there are differences, too: NP covers a greater span of time, which is to its benefit - we see the relationship between the young man (Connell) and woman (Marianne) evolve and develop over time. The principal characters in NP are more conventional - intelligent college students, she of a leftward bent - as opposed to the artistic set of Conversations. The relationships themselves in NP are far more conventional (as the title wryly hints) than those in Conversations, which involved extramarital and "gay" sex, where as the leads in NP cold be art of a teenage romcom, or so it seems thus far, surprises may await. And the conversations in said novel are often text messages or emails - not so in at least the first half of NP. Altogether, NP is the more accessible novel - though anyone entering either domain has to recognize that SR narrates through extended dialogue that, to me, doesn't feel realistic re the men's voices: the male leads in both of these novels engage in long analyses of their relationship, amorous and sexual, and are extremely attentive to the nuances and feelings of their highly sensitive partners - lots of apologies and mea culpi throughout both novels; there may be guys who think and speak like this, but not many I think. Maybe things are different in Ireland; I was surprised that the young couple was living together in their first year of college/university - an unlikely rush into serious territory by American standards it seems. Also surprised that there's relatively little discussion of politics, given the author's well-known leftists commitments. That said, both novels are really intelligent and they keep you, or at least me, engaged as I want to follow the course of true, or untrue, love, and how it runs for these characters.

Why Sally Rooney is so readable

From the first 60 or so pp it's easy to see why red-hot author Sally Rooney is praised by virtually all critics/reviewers + turns up near the top of teh NYTimes best-seller list, a rare confluence of critical and popualar success, esp for a non-American writer. The narrative line of her current novel, Normal People, is built on a series of sequentially arranged chapters that, it appears, will chronicle the evolution over about 5-8 years of a relationship between a seemingly mismatched young man (Connell) and woman (Marianne). Though the premise is a bit shopworn - the popular guy dating the loner/misfit/intellectual girl who's mostly scorned by his in-crowd friends - she does such a good job delineating their personalities and the stages of their developing relationship, with particular attention to and tenderness about their developing sexual relationship - that you can't help wanting to know more about the two and how their awkward love will evolve and change one or both of them. A nice twist is that Marianne is from a wealthy family and a victim of her late, abusive father; Connell is being raised by a single mom, who in facts works as a laundress for Marianne's family - and he's unsure of his parentage (we can make some guesses). There's a touch here of the rich girl-poor guy relationship in Atonement, but the setting is contemporary and it's obvious that Rooney is writing about territory that she knows well. At about 20% mark of the novel, they are both about to head off to college/university and Connell has a blow-out argument with his highly tolerant mother, who's angry at him for snubbing Marianne while playing up to the expectations of his friends. The Mom is completely correct, another twist on the familiar teen-novel themes of intrusive and obtuse parents.

Which writers require multiple readings, and why?

Reading further in Helen DeWitt's collection of 13 stories, Some Trick, and find her style to be dauntingly intelligent as well as off-putting. Story # 3 in the collection centers on a young man from Iowa whose ambition has been to live in NYC and be part of the art and culture scene. He succeeds, and is swept up in NY life because of his (Iowa-like) skills as a carpenter, plumber, appliance repair guy, and pest exterminator - one person after another brings him in to work on his/her apartment, in return for which he gets a piece of whatever valuable start-up the homeowner is putting together - it appears, by the end, that he is a wealthy NYer. This summary, I have to say, is far more clear and direct than anything in the story, which is full of arcana, particularly about programming, which is another "language" that HD "speaks." In essence, the story is condescending in a weird way: She seems to be mocking the protagonist's cultural eagerness and small-town naivete while also including name checks galore that allows we the readers to feel that we're the ones in the know: For ex., the protagonist has a list of movies that he declined to see until he moved to NYC, as watching these films in at the U of Iowa would be too out of sync w/ the spirit of the films - but of course the list of films reassures us readers that, yeah, we've seen all of these (if not, add them to our list!) so we're on the inside of this cultural bubble. The 4th story int he collection, about a Jewish intellectual asked to read from the OT as part of an Easter service - who takes offense as this invite for some reason. Honestly, I couldn't understand this story at all. HD, w/ her indirect style and he fascination w/ arcana, may require or merit multiple readings - or extremely careful and close reading at the first go. But why should this be so? Joyce, for example, among the most challenging of writers, rewards more than almost any other writer (Proust would be another one) on multiple readings - but there is also a clarity and beauty and insight easily accessible on first reading, esp in the short-story form. Sometimes difficulty or obscurity is the writer's defense against clarity and feeling.

An esoteric author who's developed a follwing: Helen DeWitt

You've got to wonder about an author - Helen DeWitt, in this case - whose jacket blurb boasts of the dozen of so languages that she speaks/knows, in descending order of proficiency. But I guess everything about Dewitt is or is meant to be quirky, unconventional, sometimes unbelievable; I for one am suspicious of her claim of polyglotality and of her claim noted in an online bio that she had 50 uncompleted manuscripts before completing her debut novel, The Last Samurai, which received excellent review. I couldn't land a copy of same so am at least getting a sense of her work through her collection of 11 stories, Some Trick (New Directions). Rea the first two, plus the impenetrable author's preface, and can see where she has developed a following though I'm not sure for how long I can follow. The first story, Brutto, is a send-up of the contemporary art scene (not sure when story was written/publishing; ND not forthcoming w/ that info), a an Italian gallerist poking around in a London studio fixates on an incredibly ugly dress that one of the artists made as a student project years back and wants her to produce another 50 or so for a major exhibit; she feels in has nothing to do w/ her contemporary work but can't turn down the offer for lots of money and potential fame, which the ugly dresses bring to he, eventually. All told it shows the ridiculous follow-the-leader nature of the art business: nobody, least of all the artist, really like the ugly dresses but because of the guy producing the show crowds storm in Milan, NYC, etc. OK, kinda funny, and full of references to real "avant-garde" artists, which you can check out easily via a search engine. The second story, similarly in a way but with a reversal, is about a scholarly author who achieves unexpected success w/ a children's book about robots; a top-level agent tries to take over the sale and promotion of his follow-up book but the scholar resists; he'd rather get less $ and a contract that would allow him to write a book about his passions, such as Bertrand Russell. The story is filled w/ a # of charts of x/y axes about certain points of probability that I in no way understand. Is it her esoterica that has made her reputation, or he bi-coastal sensibility (she's apparently an American by birth who studied at Oxford and now lives who knows where - but her writing includes much British lingo). I'll read a little further before making any lasting judgments.

Symbolism, realism, and some literary counterparts to Bassani's The Heron

What a strange journey Giorgio Bassani's novel The Heron (1968) turns out to be - the novel spanning a day in the life of an Italian landowner in 1947 as he goes off for a day of hunting and, after numerous stops, telephone calls, meals, drinks, pausing for a nap in a hotel owned by a former military (?) colleague and Fascist, a sex-dream, perambulations, several transactions regarding the day's hunting bounty - a large group of ducks plus the eponymous heron, the protagonist, Edgardo, returns home to his family and to his shaky marriage. No spoilers here, but the ending seems suitable and sad. One of the strengths of this novel comes from Bassani's ability to give us the back story of E. through a few light strokes and reminiscences - he stays extremely close to E's consciousness and never imposes an authorial narrative voice. We learn of the troubles in E's family (esp strained relationship w/ his cousin) and his wife (he's thinking of leaving her), we sense something tragic or catastrophic in his life during the war years - a hint that he had to live abroad during the war, and other hints that he may have had to make moral compromises to co-exist w/ the Fascist forces, guilt about his turning back on his Jewish faith in order to hold on to his property and privileges. He's a complex character and of course he will remind readers of Leopold Bloom - and plot echoes Bloom's odyssey in a way, though E covers more territory over the course of his day. The symbol of the heron, a bird shot to death though it will have no other use other than as a taxidermy project, develops in complexity over the course of the novel, as E ponders the fate of the bird killed needlessly in his day of hunting. The novel does feel a little out of date - not stylistically but in regard to many topical references obscure to most English-language readers - and doesn't have the emotional impact of Bassani's most famous novel, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, but it does show that Bassani was a great writer in the Italian-realistic tradition - another point of comparison is the monumental The Leopard, by Lampedusa, which I think Bassani championed, and I think he should be more widely read and recognized today.

The symbolism in Bassani's The Heron

Some of the symbolism in Giorgio Bassani's novel The Heron (1968, William Weaver tr.) is painfully (and intentionally) obvious, notably the eponymous heron, which the protagonist, Edgardo, encounters on the day of bird hunting that drives the narrative through line of this novel; he is w/ an assistant, who joins in the hunting, and who tells him that the heron is not a bird one could eat - would taste "fishy" - but would make a nice trophy stuffed and mounted. The assistant shoots the bird - in fact, Edgardo abstains altogether from shooing - yet, when the day is done, declines the offer of the heron carcass. So Edgardo continues on his "odyssey" with a ck full of wild ducks and the dead heron. He reflects at one point that shooting the heron would be much like shooting himself. OK, so we see that E sees himself as freakish, an outlier, wounded, and vulnerable - his marriage is breaking apart, the peasants on his property are rising up against landowners (as communism is becoming a driving force in post-war Italy - novel set in 1947), he has been forced to hide his Judaism in order to hold onto his property (transferring everything to his Xtian-born wife's name). In fact his entire hunting journey, which he sets about so reluctantly and which entails a near-comic stream of mishaps and delays, is in a sense E's "hunt" for his own identity and place in society. Other symbolic elements, however, are a little more obscure, such as E's strange physical symptoms, his constipation and his urges to defecate, the strange acidic taste he senses on his tongue, his repulsion at the oil sandwich that he brings along on the hunt, his complete inability to plan his day's diet, which at least half-way through the day, and the novel, seems to consist of nothing but coffee. Perhaps he is ill in some undisclosed manner, or perhaps these digestive issues show his repulsion at the decisions he has made in his life in order to survive and prosper - rejected his heritage, exploiting his field workers, perhaps something about his wartime activities (was he aligned w/ the Fascists?) or service.

The meaning of Edgardo's journey in Bassani's The Heron

Now further along in Giorgio Bassani's The Heron (1968, Weaver tr.), it is apparent that the novel in its Joycean manner will comprise a day in the life of the protagonist, Edgardo, as he leaves his comfortable home in the predawn to go into the country for a day of hunting. But he is waylaid numerous times on his journey - starting at home when his wife speaks to him as he's trying to get out and then as he sits w/ his "concierge" for a cup of coffee; later, when he hits the road, he feels an urgent need to defecate so stops in a small town and pays a visit to a hotel, which is run by a fascist who served w/ E during the war (WWII) - and the interruptions of his journey toward the hunting grounds continue, in an almost comic manner (through the course of all these delays we learn much about E's life and about the political state of Italy in the years after the war; the novel is set in 1947). E's journey reminds me in a way of the journey from Stockholm to Lund in Bergman's Wild Strawberries, with the journey, much delayed and waylaid, unfolding the life of the elderly professor on his way to receive a prize. We have to wonder if there's a symbolic or allegorical significance to E's journey: What is he hunting for? When is he in flight from? It's a strange "version" of the pastoral, as he's not going from city to country for the scenic beauty of love of nature; he's heavily armed, and is traveling to the country to shoot and kill for sport. In the background, there was the fascism and anti-Semitism of the war years, which E., a Jew, has endured and survived (through some chicanery), and in the present there is a strong communist force at work in Italy during recovery, with attendant hatred of landowners such as E. I recommend that readers look up an image of the car he is driving, an Aprilia; I'd pictured the car to be a small, cut car of dubious reliability, much like the Fiat 500 that I'd rented in Italy, but in fact the Aprilia looks to be a large, luxury car, something like a Bentley - when changes my image of his driving through the countryside - a natural target for class rage; we understand his fear.