Why the National Book Award for John Williams's August?

Though it's at times a little difficult to keep the cast of characters straight - w/ their unfamiliar Latinate names, such as Marcus Antonious (or something like that, rather than the more familiar Marc Antony) - made especially so by the back and forth between contemporary (43 BC) documents such as letters among the principals and "historical" documents, in particular a series of letters from 13 BC to the historian Livy presenting various characters' recollection of events - a little brush-up on Roman history will help keep things straight in John Williams's 1972 novel, Augustus - an account of the life and times for Octavious, later Augustus, Caesar, beginning the death of his uncle Julius and following through - in the first third of the novel at least, w/ many political and military machinations and plots to seize power, to form alliances (notably the triumvirate of Augustus, Marc Antony, and Lepidus) and to maintain power. As noted yesterday, it's both a contemporary novel - we can imagine the same kind of power machinations today in Washington yet the events also seem remote and even primitive: brutal hand--to-hand combat among the various Roman factions, a concord of Roman Senators assassinating the ruler who they believe has seized too much power (we haven't gone that far, yet), constant shifting of alliances among the powerful forces and their armies, blatant attempts to buy public support through distribution across the populace of wealth held in the treasury (or even private wealth of the emperors). Though many of the characters will be familiar at least in name to most readers, others are not, and I wonder which ones - particularly among Augustus' confidants - are from JW's imagination. I'm assuming that most or even all of the major events and battles are directly from Roman historians, Livy in particular. This novel must have entailed a lot of research, and I wonder what sent Williams down this course - so different from his earlier works, Stoner in particular. This novel won a National Book Award - as noted yesterday, the award should have gone to Stoner a few years earlier, so this is sort of a make-up; I think the NBA should go to works at least remotely on American themes, but at least in this instance the award recognized a great author who had lived and published in near-obscurity; he didn't much capitalize on this recognition, as A was his last book; I believe fro what I've read that he suffered from severe alcoholism and his writing essentially stopped w/ this novel, although he lived for another 20 years or so.

The strange case of John Williams's Augustus

John Williams's novel Stoner is one of the great, though little-known, American novels from the past 50 years; this book has been "re-discovered" at least twice, and in its latest incarnation led to several articles about Williams, a troubled writer who had a few academic posts but who never became a best-selling author nor did he ever get recognized as among the great living writers - except that one of his novels, Augustus, did win a National Book Award. Many assume this was yet another example of right author, wrong book - finally getting his dues - and a # of the recent articles about Williams note that after Stoner there was a great falling off in his style. This observation and received idea have kept me from reading Augustus - plus I don't especially like historical fiction (this novel as an account of the life and death of Caesar Augustus) nor do I think much of epistolary novels, in that they often fail to fully establish back story and distinction among each of the letter-writers's voice and style. But friend PP, with whom I often agree, recommended that I read Augustus (PP says that from this and Stoner we can agree that Williams was the greatest writer of death scenes; well, Tolstoy was pretty good, too). I started reading A yesterday and after the 1st 20 pp or so I thought I might give up, lost among the unfamiliar names and topical references - but then suddenly A receives the message that Caesar, his uncle, has been assassinated and the novel picks up right there - and we're suddenly in a novel of political intrigue and the education of a young man (A is a teenager, with a few hangers-on, in a mode that recalls Hal in Henry IV) and the novel improves right at that point ans A has to decide on his future, whether to seek his uncle's stature, and if so how to get it in this bloody, violent world. Williams makes it feel real and both strangely contemporary (struggle for political leadership, what to do when the top official abuses his power) and weirdly remote and ancient (a cabal of Senators comes together to stab Caesar to death right in the Forum - almost unimaginable today in any kind of republic or democracy). I don't know if JW can maintain this pace and level of interest, but at this point I'm in for the ride.

Wondering why Victor Serge is not recognized as a major writer

Victor Serge's novel Unforgiving Years (written 1946, published 1971) is a terrific novel start to finish - a fantastic and upsetting depiction of the years of World War II in 4 stages: First, in Paris just before the start of the war as two Russian espionage agents try to "resign" and to escape from Europe ahead of the Stalinist agents who will try to assassinate them; second, in Leningrad during the war, surrounded by German troops and a site of freezing and poverty, which we see through the eyes of a Russian agent/nurse; 3rd, in an unnamed German city in the final days of the war, scene of incredible poverty and danger and a scene of strangely mixed political alliances, heroism, and guilty; finally, Mexico, where the agents of the first chapter have established their redoubt, though they are still being pursued. There's so much in this novel - terrific topical descriptions, lots of intelligent discussion about the war and about espionage and political loyalties. The plot, no doubt, is difficult to follow at times, in part because it's not strictly linear and in part because all of the main characters use multiple names and aliases. But unlike much literary fiction, the plot builds to a conclusion and contains elements of tension and surprise right to the end. I'm not sure if this work, Serge's last, is typical of his (7) novels, but if it is it's amazing that he's so little known today - in large part, I think, because he's difficult to classify (he was born to a Russian-language family in exile, he wrote in French) and in part because his final 3 novels were never published in his lifetime, so that by the time they were published his day had come and gone. This novel is worth anyone's time and attention, and the intro from the translator, Richard Greeman, helps the reader navigate the complex plot of this novel.

More powerful scenes from the last days of WWII in Serge's Unforgiving Years

Section 3 of Victor Serge's novel Unforgiving Years (1947/1971 pub date) continues with its harrowing account of people struggling for survival in an unnamed German city, possibly Berlin?, in the final days of the 2nd World War. It's an unusual perspective, especially for a left-wing activist novelist, but he does build sympathy for many of the German citizens, and who knows what complicity that had during the war? He shows no sympathy, however, for the German army, intent to the end on discipline and corporal punishment. Part of the chapter focuses on some prisoners who expect to be executed, even though the war is likely to end in a matter of days. The most powerful sections concern the frantic life in the make-shift military hospitals, with doctors overwhelmed by the vast number of trauma cases arriving from the ever-approaching front; this section reminded me of the contemporary novel, The Winter Soldier, which was entirely set in a military hospital - very powerful material. In part we follow a character named Alain, who is scrounging for food of any sort - and who ends up breaking into the apartment of the nurse, Brigitte, who was the focus of the first part of this section; Serge's plot is not the easiest to follow, to put it mildly, in particular as most of his major characters have numerous names and aliases (some are involved in espionage) and also because he works in dream-like, vivid, almost hallucinatory patches of prose rather than in a straightforward narrative line or arc. I would recommend for anyone starting on this novel a careful reading of translator Richard Greeman's excellent intro to the NYRB edition. (I rarely read the intro before reading the novel, but this case is an exception to that rule.)

Further accounts of the wartime horrors, esp on the civilian population, in Serge's Unforgiving Years

The third section of Victor Serge's powerful novel Unforgiving Years (written, 1947 published 1971) takes place near the end of World War II in a German city, unnamed but it must be Berlin, just about leveled from the wartime attacks and with virtually all of the people just barely keeping alive, scrounging for food, squatting in the ruins of bombed-out buildings. The central character is Bridgette (not sure if she played any role in the first 2 sections), and through her experience we get a sense of the struggle for survival at the end of the war - with the country still receiving false reports that everything is in control and that the German army was getting ready for its final assault against the Allies. Nobody believes these lies any longer. The key event in this section is the arrival of a soldier who gives B a packet of mostly uncompleted letters that her boyfriend/fiance had written to her from the front. These fragments of letters describe a retreat (from Russia) during which the German forces wiped out any last vestiges of village inhabitants, Jews in particular. She learns from the man to delivered the letters - whom she later takes on as a lover - that her boyfriend was shot to death by a German firing squad as he neared his return to Germany; apparently, the German army wanted no witnesses or testimony about their barbaric cruelty during the retreat. In these 2 middle sections of the novel, we see vivid accounts of the horrors of war as experienced by the civilians in the occupied or nearly destroyed cities; the connection in section 3 to the initial narrative of this novel - the attempt by Russian spies who have turned against Stalin and his atrocities to escape from their would-be assassins and the flee from Europe - is left by the wayside in these sections, but perhaps will be picked up again the final section of this novel.

A New Yorker story that either breaks convention or breaks the rules of narrative

Novelist J. Robert Lennon has a story, The Loop, in current New Yorker that, depending on your viewpoint, is either ground-breaking or rule-breaking. The story begins as a piece right in the vein of realistic, socially conscious fiction: A middle-aged woman is dealing w/ her sorrow and loneliness post-divorce and she signs on as a volunteer for an agency that collects donated furniture and delivers the furniture to people in need in the (small, college-town) community. After the set-up, we follow her on a day of deliveries, which Lennon describes in meticulous detail, so much so that I wondered where this story was heading. It's a social commentary, of course, in particular as we meet some of the more desperate recipients, one of whom is living in squalor. A few odd things happen over the course of the day, however: at least twice (maybe 3 times?) a piece of furniture (a bed frame, a futon) just seems to disappear or, conversely, to just show up. No clear explanation is offered. Hm. Then, after she completes her deliveries she realizes she's in a time loop (see title) and will repeat endlessly the day's deliveries. Huh?? Yes, anything can happen in a piece of literary fiction - including disappearing furniture and an endless time loop. But the author bears some responsibility for establishing a context in which we can believe and accept any of the events that ensue in a story. Read a Murakmi story and you are prepared from the outset to accept disappearing cats and talking birds. Read an Updike story and - you're not. It's one thing, in my view, to write a piece of speculative or supernatural fiction, and grounding the supernatural in a base of realistic fiction is probably a good strategy. That said, does it make any sense to just drop the supernatural into the midst of a realistic narrative? What's the point? Is this woman delusional (it doesn't seem so)? Is the whole story an allegory, i.e., the cycle of wealth and poverty in our culture is a sort of endless loop (this seems to give the author more credit than is due - it's a good observation, but couldn't he make more of this insight?)?  It's one thing for a writer to be unconventional, but it's something else to break with the standard conventions of the unwritten contract between writer and reader: Play be the rules you've established.

One of the best accounts I've read of the ravages of war: Unforgiving Years

Anyone who doubts whether Victor Serge is a major author should just get a copy of Unforgiving Years (from NYRB; written 1946-47, first published posthumously in 1971 in French) and start reading section 2 (of 4), The Flame Beneath the Snow, an account of the journey (during WWI I) into Leningrad, under siege during the war; we follow Soviet agent Darius (?) into Leningrad on a harrowing flight, then a nighttime journey through the city - a place of Bosch-like scenes of death and poverty and brutality and suffering from the Baltic cold. You don't really need a context - you can read this section on its own - and it stands as one of the best accounts I've ever read of the ravages of war. Of course there is a context, which Serge established in the first section, in which Darius appears briefly, bidding farewell to fellow agent D/Sascha/Battisti (he has many aliases), a wanted man who has turned against Stalin and is trying to leave the spy service and leave Europe ahead of Stalin's agents.That section - Secret Agent - ends w/ D and his girlfriend on the water's edge, the foggy city of Le Havre, in search of some sort of transport to America where he hopes to find refuge. That's also a great passage - I don't think I've read a better account of the experience of gazing at the open ocean, a mix of beauty and awe and fear. Yes, Serge's plot can be sometimes obscure and oblique, but we do get the overall message of lives in upheaval because of the war and because of the paranoia and ruthlessness of the Stalinist agents, more concerned with betrayals among their own than w/ the wartime foes.

A major literary figure who's largely unknown: Victor Serge

Seems that, for no clear reason, I've been various incarnations of spy fiction, some more successful than others, and the latest I've started is Victor Serge's Unforgiving Years, from the great NYRB, edited and translated (from French) by Richard Greeman. Serge wrote this work, his final (and 7th) novel in 1946-47, the year he died; he knew this (and his other 2 final novels) would never be published in his lifetime, and he was right - it was first published in 1971. I broke w/ my usual convention, which is to read the "introduction" after reading the novel, as most intros either give away too much of the plot or are hardly comprehensible unless you've read the novel and have some sense of the characters and setting. This novel is an exception: Greeman's intro is really smart and helpful and provides great background and context, especially in that, as RG notes, the plot of the novel is difficult to follow. Serge spent all of his life as a political activist and committed Marxist; he sided with the Trotsky faction and was as a result imprisoned several times by the Stalinist forces, finally gaining freedom and fleeing to Mexico, where he died in complete poverty and obscurity. Over the years, his 7 novels and other writings have been recovered and published and discovered and he is now recognized as a major literary figure - though one not familiar to most readers (me included). The novel itself is in 4 sections or "movements," first set in Paris in (as RG's note clarifies) about 1940 at or just before the start of the war. We follow a secret agent - known as D, or sometimes as Sascha - presumably a Soviet agent in Paris, who is trying to "resign" from his post while knowing that doing so makes him an immediate target. So over the first 70 pp or so we see him execute various stratagems to elude his pursuers while also linking w/ his fellow spy and love interest, Nadine (?), as they plan to escape from France. The writing is terrific and evocative - probably a foundational work for the great contemporary writer of Paris noir, Patrick Modiano, and the various subterfuges that D takes to avoid capture and death seem credible and authentic. Apparently, as RG's intro makes clear, each of the 4 sections is in a different locale, and I think the same characters are part of each section, though the structure is somewhat loose and at times elusive. Still, based on first impressions and first section of the novel, it's well worth staying w/ this sometimes challenging work.

Is Kipling's Kim really the forerunner of the modern spy novel?

A recent NYTBR review of a new biography of Rudyard Kipling mentioned the excellence of his novel Kim, written about 1900 and in Vermont no less!, and cited this work as the forerunner of all contemporary spy fiction, including Le Carre and Fleming. That was enough to pique my interest, so I began reading the novel and have read about 1/3 of it and that's enough: Kim is not a spy novel in any sense that we might recognize the genre today. It's at least in the first third a story of an orphaned boy of about 13, child of English/Irish people in India under the Raj, his late father a military man. He's raised w/out any formal education or significant care or parenting - a wild child of North India, much like some of RK's African characters - who joins a Tibetan Buddhist on a journey to find a sacred river and while en route crosses paths w/ his late father's regiment and they adopt him - and that's as far as I got. As to the spying, Kim overhears a military discussion and later relays the information to some of the British troops who at first disbelieve him; clearly this may in later life become a vocation for Kim, but he doesn't seem wily or devious any significant way - merely a smart kid who can get info because those around him don't recognize his perspicacity - and there's nothing in the first third of the novel to foretell his possible adult career in espionage. He is neither a Bond nor a Smiley. Still, we can see that there's plenty of adventure in this tale - and I'm pretty sure that it was made into a Disney movie or animated feature (or both) - plenty of action and plenty of exoticism. All I can say is go see the movie, as the novel is antiquated and far beyond quaint, full of overwritten passages, clumsy attempt at vernacular dialogue, lots of pasted-on exoticism (references to names, places, sects), all of which make for rough going right from the start. RK is known and today largely ignored because of his colonial, Eurocentric vision; this novel will do nothing to change one's opinion on that score, despite RK's occasional sympathy for the noble character of the Tibetan holy man.

A must-read story from George Saunders in current New Yorker

A must-read story in current New Yorker, Elliot Spencer, by George Saunders. Saunders to me has been among the very best American writers of short fiction since he debuted in the 1990s; I think he made a mis-step w/ his one novel, Lincoln at the Bardo, which seemed to me forced and self-conscious (a chorus of voice surrounding the death of Lincoln's young son); historical fiction was not his metier - though of course this novel won the Booker award, a case of the right-guy, wrong-book phenomenon. This new unusual story from Saunders brings him back to his best writing self - a depiction of a world in which human beings are appropriated in some monstrous way for dark purposes, a re-imagining of human consciousness, a distinct narration from the point of view of a severely disturbed or deluded protagonist. In this story, the eponymous narrator is, as we gradually learn, an adult whose mind and body have been taken over by some sort of set of programmers, who wipe clean his consciousness and memory, re-educate him in the English language, and use him and others as robotic instigators stirring up trouble and violence at political or other demonstrations. This story may remind some readers of Saunders's Semplica Girls story, in which the uber-wealthy purchase women from the 3rd world to use as living lawn ornaments (my post on this story has received more hits than any of the other 3,500 posts on this blog). Saunders's cultural critiques are always like this: strangely disorienting, avoiding ideology and received ideas, told in a language that reflects a damaged and occluded consciousness - at first odd and unsettling and difficult to discern, gradually becoming more clarified and at the same time more unsettling. This story is uniquely his - no other writer has a style or world view that's even close to his - and provides us with what we look for from literary fiction: Make it new, and give us access to the consciousness of another.

Why Happiness, as Such would make a good miniseries

Natalia Ginzburg's short novel from 1973, Happiness, as Such (title in original Italian was Dear Michele; tr. Minna Zallman Proctor) could make a good TV miniseries, and perhaps someone in Italy has done so. It's a story of a family in time of crisis, with a web of complex relationships and dependencies (and idiosyncrasies) and a pretty large cast of characters for a novel this short (160 pp), which actually made surprisingly difficult to read this novel - many times I had to scan through back pages to put a character in context. This difficulty would be alleviated in a film or TV version. In any event, the central relationship of the novel is between the mother and her 20-something son, Michele, a dilettante artist and fringe player on the radical left who makes some really bad, impulsive decisions about his life, leading to dire consequences (which I won't disclose). We also meet the estranged father, on his deathbed, a more successful artist though not in the top tier; we meet a range of siblings plus numerous of Michele's friends, the most important being Mara, who has just given birth to a son who may or may not be Michele's. Mara is the most sorrowful of all the characters, living in poverty and squalor and bounced around from one protector or benefactor to another, whose difficult personality and entitled attitude make her an impossible house guest, crasher, or tenant. For a story so dark, there's also a lot of humor plus some swings at the publishing industry, where pull and predatory behavior determine what gets published and who gets hired. Most of the novel is epistolary, but a few chapters with more conventional narrative help provide context and background that would not sit well in a letter (people don't write to one another to tell what they already know - a purely epistolary novel can't really give us a back story). Of course people don't write letters at all today; in a contemporary setting, the epistolary narrative would have to be abandoned, though that can work, too (see Love and Friendship, the Stillman adaptation of Austen's Lady Susan).

The strange but accessible novel by Natalia Ginzburg: Happiness, As Such

A little too early to judge, but Natalia Ginzburg's 1973 novel Happiness, As Such (the original title in Italian translates as Dear Michele - did NG or her estate OK this change of title?), which is strange by most standards - much of it an epistolary novel but some chapters standard narrative and others almost completely in dialog - but is also accessible (the language is always straightforward and direct, no long digressions or rambling monologues is in so much avant-garde fiction) and the plot is easy enough to follow. Here's the plot such as it is: The setting is contemporary (i.e, ca 1970) Rome, with an anxious mother writing to her son (Michele) who is an artist and activist, living on a shoe-string, and about to relocate to London; his father/her ex is gravely ill, in fact he dies early on in the narrative, and there's much grief about M's failure/refusal to attend his funeral. Meanwhile, M was involving in a relationship with a young woman, Mara, living in extreme poverty, who is mother to a month-old baby. Whose child? That is perhaps an unresolvable question, but Michele takes some minimal responsibility. Mara meanwhile is in desperate need of housing, and some of the plot involves her plight; a few different people put her up, or more accurately put up w/ her, as she's a difficult personality. So all these strands of the plot are out there waving around, and it appears - about 1/3 through this short novel, that it's really a portrait of a time and place and social set on the radical left (Michele is involved in the hiding and disposal of a machine gun) as well as a story of motherhood from the viewpoint of a difficult, demanding mother: The first chapter, most of which is a letter to her son, is a tour de force of wit and eccentricity.

Why I won't read volume 2 of Your Face Tomorrow

Having finished reading volume 1 (Fever and Spear, 2002, Margaret Jull Costa, translator - and it does appear to be a good translation as far as I can tell) of Javier Marais's trilogy, Your Face Tomorrow, I can only say that seldom (never) has such fine writing and sugh fascinating info (about the international espionage business) put to waste by such a lame excuse for a plot. Readers of this blog will know that I'm by no means a Philistine and am interested in experimental writing and narrative risks and innovations and also that I'm open to reading multi-volume works (e.g. Knausgaard, Proust), but this one pushed me to my limit. After a terrific start in which we see how the narrator, a middle-aged, recently divorced/separated Spaniard living in London, gets recruited through a mentor into British intelligence, the qualities expected of an intelligence officer (completely different from the James Bond heroics that Marias gently mocks), and the political background (WWII, the Spanish Civil War) that could drive a man or woman into the espionage business, even when they know that some of their work will cost sometimes-innocent people their lives. All well and good, but Marias makes these points early on and then dwells on them, again and again, so that by the final chapter I felt I could just skim, I'd read all of this before. There are alluring hints of a developing plot - will the narrator, Deza, get involved deeply in a dubious case, will he learn more about turncoats and betrayals in Spain who killed his uncle and who led to his father's imprisonment, will a relationship develop w/ one of the young women working on his team, will he learn something about the woman w/ a dog who seems to be following him (through a rainstorm) as he walks home from the office without a name, as he calls it? No, no, and no. After 380 pp., nothing has actually happened to the narrator - though we sure get a lot of discussion and pontificating, esp. by his Oxford-donnish mentor, Wheeler. But there's nothing at this point that will make me want to read volume 2. I really liked one of Marias's other novels (The Infatuations), so will probably read his next work to appear in English, but am passing on Face Tomorrow volume 2.

Murakami's story Barn Burning and its transformation into a movie

Haruki Murakami's story Barn Burning, in hi 1993 collection, The Elephant Vanishes, is typical of Murakami in many ways and seems an unlikely candidate for adaptation as a feature film though that's what it is, having been made into the film Burning in 2018 and transferred from Japan to South Korea (see my post on Burning under Elliotswatching). Typical of Murakami, characters disappear w/ no clear reason or explanation, characters have unusual obsessions - in this case one of the characters professes to pyromania and obsession w/ burning barns, and is surprised that others don't share this obsession - and a conclusion that's enigmatic. It may not be the best HM story, but it's a good glimpse into his style, both in short stories and novels, which is clearly not for all tastes. The filmmaker, Chang-dong Lee, had some important choices to make and he made some major changes in the story for his adaptation: It's still a story about a love triangle - boy meets girl, girl flies off to Africa for vacation, girl returns w/ new boyfriend, the threesome continue to hang out together, the girl disappears. It's still centered on barn burning (changed to greenhouse burning), with the "new boyfriend" character leading the charge, and with a lot of ambiguity about whether he actually does burn down barns or if he's just taunting the other guy. In the film, however, the narrator - a successful novelist much like Murakami and in fact married w/ children so the friendship seems Platonic though add (we never see the wife/children) - is much younger, inexperienced, a would-be writer who shows no proclivity to actually write, and most important from a family of rural impoverishment, so there's an obvious and immediate jealousy and rivalry with the young man of poor background feeling squashed and inadequate compared w/ the rich new boyfriend. This oppositional dynamic - not at all present in the story, in which the two men seem to be social equals and potential pals - leads the film to a much more dramatic and violent conclusion: Necessary for cinema (though puzzling and a strange and unconvincing ending to Burning) is antithetic to HM's open and ambiguous style. Wondering what he thought of the film: A rich new interpretation and expansion and opening, or an appropriation?

Why I'm getting frustrated with Your Face Tomorrow

I have to say that at this point, nearly finished reading the first volume of Javiar Marias's Your Face Tomorrow, I'm getting frustrated by and disappointed in this novel. What started off w/ so much promise - an intelligent, middle-aged man living in England and recruited initially as a Spanish-language interpreter for British intelligence and who gradually gets more deeply involved with intelligence work, specifically, interviewing potential partners or antagonists, has by page 320 or so not moved much beyond chapter one. JM well established the point that much of the work is drudgery, that it always involves surveillance and mutual suspicion on the part of all parties, that no one single person has knowledge about every facet of any operation, that its difficult even impossible to tell who might be a colleague, a plant, a spy, a threat. All a great setup, but something has to happen, some vestige of a plot, by this point. The chapters I read last night are about the wartime public-relations campaigns urging people not to speak about what they know about war efforts (a similar campaign in the U.S. during WWII was "Loose lips sink ships). The narrator's (Deza's) mentor, Wheeler has saved various posters and flyers about wartime surveillance, and some are reprinted in this book; the key point is that Wheeler thinks these campaigns inevitably fail because - as he explains over many pages - people like to talk. This is a fine insight, and JM expresses it very well through Wheeler's near-monologue - but so far this entire volume has been about threats, atmosphere, an overall sense of dread and paranoia, but nothing really happens, at least in the sense of a traditional plot. Is this enough to keep readers going for two more volumes. Though I will finish reading volume one, the answer is: Not for me. As someone wisely said in a writer's group that I used to belong to: Readers like plot.

More themes introduced in Your Face Tomorrow - Will they ever be resolved?

Nearing the end of  volume one of Javiar Marias's trilogy, Your Face Tomorrow, we encounter a chapter in which the narrator, Deza, believes he's being followed as he walks home from the "unnamed building" through the rainy London streets and parks by a woman w/ a dog. Could be - but if he is being followed, by whom? Could be someone from the British spy office for which Deza works, as they're always checking up on one another; or it could be from an agency from another nation, or perhaps from one of the many people whom the agency as angered either by refusing a request for aid and support or by support for some sort of rival faction. The main point, I think, is that a life in the field of espionage is made up of countless moments of fear and paranoia - or is it exactly paranoia if the fears are well founded? Another element Marias introduces has to do w/ the lives of celebrities and public figures, with Deza's boss at the agency unfurling a long and complex theory that these people fear a violent death because the don't want the arc of their life story to be, in the public mind, forever associated with an unsavory demise: a robbery, shooting, OD, etc. As w/ just about every other plot line introduced so far in this novel, these themes come to no fruition or point of crisis, at least not in this volume; no doubt you have to read all 3 volumes to ties the strands together, if that ever even happens. I may someday read volumes 2 and 3, but not right away. It's a provocative novel that seems like it must be close to reality - the reality of the life of a spy deep in the bureaucracy, the opposite of a James Bond hero - but does it really merit 1,000 pp?

Inside the world of espionage in Marias's Your Face Tomorrrow

As we learn more about the life of what we might call a functionary in the espionage business, the narrator, Jacques Deza, of Javiar Morias's Your Face Tomorrow (vol. 1, 2002) we see that most spy work is akin to drudgery. Deza is part of a team that interviews potential assets and those seeking support from the unnamed agency in an unmarked London building. Sometimes he's one of the people doing the interview; sometimes he's a translator; sometimes he's behind one-way glass observing the interview. In all cases he has to write up a report w/ his conclusions: Can the subject be trusted? Is he lying? Would he break? Will her turn? Is he speaking truth when he says he's about the conduct a coup and he and his allies will succeed? (The title of the novel refers to the difficulty of knowing what the next day will bring - will your ally/friend/compatriot turn against you?) There's no excitement or adventure in these interviews per se, but there's a real feeling of authenticity - w/ high stakes. Deza lets on that, over time, one becomes more bold and firm in observations and conclusions - moving away from the qualifying phrases and words such as "it could be that" or "possibly" or "I think that" while becoming more direct: Assert your conclusions boldly; that's what the bosses, whoever or wherever they might be, seem to want. He also notes that they have no idea ever regarding the results of their interviews and observations, though they assume that many life-or-death decisions may depend upon the results and the interpretation of these interviews. Meanwhile, Deza seems to be building a relationship w/ one of the young women on the team; it would appear that no good can come of this, but we'll see how the plot, such as it is, develops.

Not a spy thriller by any means but a look at the entire system of espionage: Your Face Tomorrow

Javier Marias's three-volume novel, Your Face Tomorrow, really picks up in the 2nd half of vol 1, Fever and Spear, as we see that the narrator, Deza, has been subtly brought into the world of espionage. After the long first section, in which a mentor asked Deza to observe a guest at a dinner party and then engages him in a long discussion about the guest and his date, we understand that this whole observation request was a test, which Deza passed: He's subtle and observant and gives an excellent, detailed report on his observations. In the second half of the volume, the man he observed - Tupra - suggests that maybe he can provide some work for Deza that will pay more than his current shaky job at the BBC. He's invited into an interrogation as a translator - Turpa and another man are interviewing a man who is or seems to be a Venezuelan general, and he's talking to them about getting support and backing for a planned coup. After the interview, Turpa does a lengthy post mortem w/ Deza, though officially Deza's only role is that of translator. But it's another test, which D passes, and we see that he's now part of the world of espionage and international politics. As we've always known about this world, nobody is fully trusted nor fully entrusted with all the information at hand; also, we have known - and we see in action - that everyone is closely observed by someone else, not necessarily someone of superior rank. There are multiple layers of truth (and trust), in a system in which the capture or turning of any one agent couldn't do too much damage, as nobody has complete knowledge. The writing and observations feel authentic and credible; this is not a spy thriller by any means - largely devoid, so far, of action and risk - but it's an insight into a way of life, seen through the eyes or an intelligent man at a point of crisis in his life: marriage breaking up, living in a foreign land, suddenly brought into situations or potentially great risk and peril.

Geting a little frustrated w/ Marias's Your Face Tomorrow vol 1

Finished the first half (Fever) of Javiar Marias's 3-volume novel Your Face Tomorrow (vol. 1, 2002) and remain intrigued but puzzled. Much of this section involves the account by the narrator (Jacques/Jaime Deza) of his father's imprisonment after the Spanish Civil War, betrayed by one of his best friends who jumped over to the side of Franco and of his mother's search for information about her brother who was executed without trial shortly after the war. While these are important aspects of the narrator's family history and his life, it's not clear to me what these incidents have to do w/ his stay at the home of his mentor, Peter Wheeler, and his long night of research into Wheeler's collection on the Spanish war. I can't see that he discovered anything about his family from his research, but maybe I missed something. So far, there are hints and indications that Deza is a spy and is about to undertake an espionage assignment from Wheeler, who is perhaps a master spy with the cover of an academic post at Oxford. But all this is by hint and insinuation; I'm going to keep reading, as maybe more will become clear in the second part (Spear) of this volume, but if not I doubt I'll go forward into volume 2. There's lots of fine writing here and perhaps the rudiments of a plot, but at some point the story line has to get some forward motion.

What's Marias's novel Your FaceTomorrow (vol 1) about?

Yes, I'm still enjoying reading Javiar Marias's Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear, though to be honest I don't (yet?) know what the novel is about. The first 150 pp or so consist of the narrator, Deza, meeting with his Oxford mentor, Peter, who asks him to attend a dinner party he's holding and to report to him all his observations about one of the guests, Tupra. We get a long chapter about the party and a long follow-up conversation between Deza and Peter (can't remember his last name); Peter retires for the night, and Deza, spurred by some comments from Peter, spends the rest of the night, till near dawn I think, doing research on the Spanish (Civil) War (he's a historian, although his academic posting seems to be a cover for some other line of work, probably espionage). He's pursuing a thread of an idea that Peter may have been involved in the post-war execution of Communist/leftists partisans, a series of mass executions obviously carried out by the victorious Franco though, oddly, or maybe not so oddly really, in alliance w/ Stalin. A few quick check of a few facts and topical references show me that Deza's research is based closely on the facts. All of this makes for good reading, on the surface, yet even this far into the novel I can't honestly say what it's about: If this is a spy novel (and there are some sly references to other spy novelists and to Ian Fleming) we have only hints and glimpses. We don't really know who's working for whom or what info either Deza or Peter want to elicit, or why. After all, this whole novel, to this point, may be about nothing more than a dinner party and the host's curiosity about the background of one of his guests (and his guest's date, whom we learn is his ex-wife now making a bid for a reconciliation). But probably not.

A novel not for everyone but a spy novel like none other

Javier Marias's novel Your Face Tomorrow, vol 1: Fever and Spear is by no means a novel for all readers, but I find myself drawn to it and captivated, at least so far (100 pp., aboutt 25%). In essence, it appears to be a spy novel in which part of the mystery is whether it's a spu novel at all. The narrator, a Spaniard (Jaime Deza) from Madrid, living in England and purporting to be some sort of academic although it's totally unclear whether he really is or not, is at the outset in conversation with a much older (80-something) man who seems to be a mentor and perhaps erstwhile professor, Peter Wheeler, a Londoner. Wheeler asks Deza to attend a gathering at his house and keep an eye on one of the guests, Trupa, and report back on all of his observations. At the gathering, another Spaniard, de la Garza (?) attaches himself to the narrator, annoying him throughout the evening and making it nearly impossible for the narrator to carry out his "assignment." On the surface, thus far, it's a novel about a very uncomfortable social gathering with a lot of drinking and flirtation; but there's obviously more to this: Why is Wheeler so interested in Trupa? Who is Trupa? What's the narrator's connection to the two? Who send the other Spaniard to disrupt the narrator's efforts to gain information or insight? Wheeler himself? Some other agent? To this point, I'm interested and curious; the slow development and the many obscurities of these events may put some readers off, but I'm willing, at least to this point, to go along w/ Marias's pace and careful establishment of the premises of this complex, long novel. Like another Marias novel that I liked, The Infatuations, this is a novel that confounds us and draws us in, as it upends literary convention. Is this a spy novel at all?

Marias's signature novel, Your Face Tomorrow, off to a deliberate pace - thoughtful?, or too slow?

No doubt that Javier Marias's signature novel(s) - the trilogy Your Face Tomorrow, which begins with the volume Fever and Spear (2002) - will be a challenge, but one to which I'm willing to accept (at least up to a point!). Marias is hot suddenly - see the current profile in the NYTmagazine, an advance push for his forthcoming novel and a hint that JM may be (over)due for a Nobel Prize - and I've read a some of his previous work, as you can see in the index to this blog; I particularly liked his novel The Infatuations, but was less than taken by some of his other work. Fever and Spear gets off to a slow start, though shows obvious signs of a developing plot and an intelligent narration; the protagonist/narrator, a Spaniard living in England, indicates - but always by indirection, which is Marias's way - that he is involved in some form of espionage, though exactly whom he works for or what he does to gather information, is left, at least at this point (ca 40 pp/10% into the novel) mysterious and uncertain; it's a narration that proceeds by hints and obliquity. We also get some information about the narrator's broken marriage; he tries to communicate by phone w/ his ex or estranged with and to get information about the well-being of their children, but he feels remote from them (they live in Madrid) and guilty about their estrangement. In short, at that point the novel gives promise of becoming a solid adventure/espionage story - though not nearly as accessible and plot driven as, say Le Carre - as well as a story of domestic sorrow and midlife crisis. Marias is working on a vast canvas here - more than a 1,000 pp. over the course of the 3 volumes - so he's in no rush in establishing the arc of his story; whether than pace is too slow and meandering for this sometimes impatient reader is something that I'll figure out over the next few days of reading.

There is no need to read Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea

Yup, Iris Murdoch's interminable The Sea, The Sea is as bad as I feared; I continued reading for a 3rd day, hoping this novel would get off the ground, and as I moved into the 2nd section - History One - it just was more of the same: Desultory reminiscence by the tedious narrator, Charles, about the many love affairs in his life, a completely arbitrary and inexplicable plot development - the first great love of his life who as a teenager completely disappeared and was long presumed dead shows up outside his window, and a story line that's going nowhere. IM makes clear that Charles is telling his life story in the form of a diary, with observations about his past and present life as they occur to him, but without an obvious shape or story arc - and one has to wonder if IM was composing this novel in the same aimless manner. On top of this, Charles is a complete egoist and nasty guy, though famous for his career in theater, and women just keep throwing themselves abjectly before him. No man could get away with creating such a misogynist and morally obtuse character, nor should a woman for that matter. This book was obviously lauded in its time (1978) because of IM's long career, her failure up to that point to win a Booker Prize, and the fact that it was long and therefore seemingly grand and ambitious. There is no need to read this novel.

Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea is looking to be a dreadful novel (tho I'll give it another day's reading)

I'm gonna give it one more day of reading because - well, because it won a Booker Prize (though we know the politics behind that) and because the author was well-known and at the pinnacle of her career and because it received lavish critical praise from Dwight Garner in the NYT (though I often disagree w/ him) and because it's a long (500-page) novel and may take more time than I've given it so far - but at this point (just finished section one, Prehistory, and am about 20 percent along) Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea is a dreadful novel (with a dreadful title as well). Sorry. But the story line, such as it is - elderly, famous playwright/actor/director retires to the remote English coast and takes u writing his memoir in the most desultory fashion imaginable - is going nowhere. The narrator establishes from the outset that he's gonna meander and put down his thoughts and memories as they occur to him, so for the first 100 or so pages we get almost nothing but back story, and none of that presented in a dramatic or dynamic way. This novel is a textbook case of telling, not showing: The narrator (Charles), for example, tells us he has been scarred for life by his first love, then spends many pages telling us how he and she were in love through school and their teenage years, he goes away to acting school, she tells him from afar that she can never marry him, and she disappears from his life, impossible to track her down in any way (he believes she may have died). If Murdoch had made this idyll of young love and heartbreak believable or dynamic in any way we might persist w/ this novel and wonder: Will he find her? What's happened to her? But this just seems to be one of many strands Murdoch spins then drops. By imagining a narrator who just writes "what comes into his head" she has given herself full artistic license to create a novel with no discernible plot or direction and, to me, of little interest. Somehow she seems to have gotten it into her head that a 500-page novel is of greater merit than a 200-pager (on which her reputation was built), and maybe she was right - this novel was a self-announced event - but would anyone read it today? And why am I reading it?

First impressions of Iris Murdoch's Booker-winning novel

Iris Murdoch at last won a Booker Prize in 1978 for her novel The Sea, The Sea. Everyone knows what these prizes represent: a bit of log-rolling, and honorifics for a career rather than for a particular work. That is, the prize often goes to a writer for a lesser, later-career work. In this case, The Sea, etc. despite is ridiculous title, is one of IM's most ambitious works, a jaw-dropping 500 pages (most of her other novels, as far as I know, tend to be 200-page quick reads with a high intellectual gloss). So far I've read about 50 pp of TS,TS and find it quite readable, at least up to this point: A first person account by a just-retired, world-famous theater director (and actor), Shakespeare specialist - bears some resemblance of Olivier but is clearly a pastiche. This man - never married, no children - is writing from a coastal house he's just bought and moved into, an old structure w/ no heat, no hot water, dubious construction quality, nearly two miles up a remote road to the nearest (small) village. Why would anyone settle there? He's clearly hiding from something, but what exactly? He has a strange vision of a sea monster raising its head above the waters - but what this represents, he has no idea (does Murdoch, or does she improvise as she moves along?). So far this is enough to get me intrigued by this character, but I must make 2 notes: First of all, IM is writing like an author who is review-proof and publisher-proof; any editor in his or her right mind presented w/ this ms. would tell the author you have to get this story moving somewhere before p. 50; we've got 50 pp in which nothing happens except that the narrator describes the various challenges or his life on the coast and reflects, without much detail, on his various triumphs and failures in art and in love. Something  may seem to be moving as one of his exes writes to him and says she still loves him deeply. We'll see what happens. Second, no male writer could get away w/ the attitude toward women and the incessant narcissism that his narrator, Charles, unleashes. He's an unlikable guy who's totally full of himself, and if he were an Updike or a Roth or a Mailer character this would fuel the outrage against male sexism and privilege.

A glimpse at a forthcoming novel from Elizabeth Strout

Good news in current New Yorker that Elizabeth Strout is back with a novel/story collection following up on what's probably her best and best-known book, Olive Kitteridge. The current issue includes what's obviously a selection from the forthcoming Kitteridge book, Motherless Child, and it's an excellent piece that stands up well on its own and will obviously be a key element in Strout's continuing development if this character and her environs. As we left off several years back (with an excellent miniseries in between), Olive is in her modest house on the coast of Maine, children off in NY or other places (does she have more than one adult child? I can't recall) and newly involved with a neighbor who's also widowed but seems to be more prosperous and highly educated (a retired Harvard professort) than she. This piece begins w/ Olive anticipating the arrival for a 3-day visit of her son, his wife, their two very young children, and her two young children from a previous marriage. Olive hasn't seen her son for 3 years. So this is a highly fraught visit, sure to be disastrous. Olive's personality is unchanged: She's cranky and a malcontent and finds it difficult to be flexible or accommodating in any way. Story begins w/ her annoyance that her son and crew are late in arriving, and proceeds from there. One example will suffice: the kids and parents are up before she is in the morning; she comes downstairs in robe, and everyone's know of annoyed that she has no food there for breakfast, not even cereal. So who in their right minds, anticipating a three-day visit from a family of 6, doesn't put in some kid-friendly provisions? Who sleeps in while the family of 6 wakes up? Who then drives to the story, comes back w/ 1 box of Cheerios, and then is told they're almost out of milk? So we're completely annoyed w/ her, yet her son seems no prize, either and the kids seem sullen and w/drawn - what a crew. Yet there's something in Strout's portrayal that makes us root for Olive despite her flaws and failings - she's trying hard to make it in a tough world, and she seems to want what all of us do: Only connect. Her husband to be is a bit of a saving grace as well; he obviously sees something in her beyond or beneath her obstreperous front. All told, a fine short story and a window onto a forthcoming novel that's likely to be well received.

Final notes on Henrik Pontoppidan's Lucky Per: Hallberg's defense of the stature of this work

Some final notes on Henrik Pontoppidan's Lucky Per (1904): Garth Risk Hallberg's intro is quite good; in fact, an edited version that appeared online earlier this year is what drew me to this obscure novel. Obviously Hallberg makes the case for this novel as a major work on modern fiction, and I think he's right - it's incredible that it wasn't available in English until this century! Now that it's published in a handsome Everyman edition I would hope more people might read it and might rank it up there w/ other great modern novels that give us a complex and nuanced portrait of a life and of a time and place in history. Hallberg several times references HP's "double vision," and I had not thought of that but there's some truth - largely because he uses a third person narration that, though closely aligned with Per's POV at times steps away from Per so that we see him as other seem him - in particular, regarding his complex relationship with Jakobe, his one-time fiancee. Hallber is also smart in his discussion of Jakobe's family a wealthy, urbane, financiers - a large and prosperous Jewish family in late 19th-century Copenhagen. We see through her eyes some of the discrimination against Jews, but most important, as Hallberg notes, her family is vivid and an integrated part of Danish cultural and business life - quite unlike the only real counterpart of Jewish families in 19th-c literature, Eliot's Daniel Deronda, in which the Jewish families are portrayed with great sympathy but they're really "types" and even exotics, meant to raise a polemical point - good intentions of course, but not as attuned to the actual experiences of Jews living in a world in which they are never fully accepted. The translator, Naomi Lebowitz, does a fine job with the text, which is always clear and even evocative; her :"afterword" was far too academic for me, and I think she could have done much more with the footnotes, which primarily identify characters and personages named in the novel, evern though most have little or no bearing on the plot. This edition could have benefited from notes to guide an English-language reader on Danish nomenclature and on the geography and topology of Copenhagen and Denmark. Still, great to have this novel available and well-distributed in an English-language version.

Why Lucky Per should be a classic novel, and why it hasn't been recognized

There's no doubt in my mind that Henrik Pontoppidan's Lucky Per (1904) would be a classic in world literature had it been written in English, French, of German - but the fact the HP was Danish has pushed this novel into near-obscurity and has made HP's name kind of a standing joke for undeserved Nobel Prizes. It's a great novel, straddling the 2 centuries, and has a chance for a wider readership thanks to the new tr. (Naomi Lebowitz - I may have more to say about her tomorrow after I read her translators afterword) from Everyman library. Yes, the debates in the last section about faith and the various ways of practicing Christianity feel kind of obscure to contemporary readers (though no more so than the philosophical debates in Magic Mountain), and yes the anti-Semitism is troubling (though some of his Jewish characters are fully rounded and sympathetic, notably Jakobe Salomon), and yes the Danish place names can be difficult going for those who don't know the language (but no more so than the Russian names in War and Peace et al.), but altogether this book gives us all we'd want in a major novel - complex and fully rounded characters - particularly the central character - who interact w/ one another and grow,over time, a well-realized socio-historic background, beautiful but not overwhelming passages of description, sharp and credible (for the most part) dialogue, and a moral compass against which to measure the strengths and flaws, deeds and misdeeds of the major characters.

The relevance of Lucky Per to contemporary readers

Nearing the end of Henrik Pontoppidan's monumental novel, Lucky Per, as Per - now broken off from his erstwhile fiancee, Jakobe, and her wealthy Jewish family (the Salomons) - goes back to rural Jutland and puts himself under the sway of the friendly Pastor Blomberg, whose vision of Christianity is something like what today we call "new wave," open, friendly, celebratory - and, in Per's view, probably all too easy. He's look for some version of Xtianity that will be a test and a challenge, though not as cold and strict as this practice of his father. Meanwhile, he proposes to Blomberg's daughter, Inger, and now they're engaged, though not w/out some trepidation, as Per seems forever in need of funds and living on credit. At the other end of the spectrum, Jakobe has moved to German to give birth to her child - a secret she's kept from everyone; the child dies in childbirth, sending J. into a deep depression, from which she gradually emerges when she begins a program to help and support the children of the working-class families in her community: She develops a real commitment to doing good, so who's the real Christian in this novel? She represents another way in which this noel is way ahead of its time, politically, ecologically, culturally. One quite fascinating section for a reader today is a discussion among some cynical, dull-witted workers who say they're not impressed w/ science or progress. Jokingly, they say the phone is a great invention, but why can't we call someone in China? Why can't we see him, and know what he's thinking? And why can't we have transportation that will bring us to America in a few hours - or even to the moon? Hm, well - but to be fair the novel also recognizes and wrestles w/ the harm that progress can bring to the environment, particularly in rural communities. Stylistically, Lucky Per is a novel of the 19th century, but some of its contents and themes are very much in the 20th, or even the 21st.

Salmon Rushdie story The Little King

At one time, for all the wrong reasons, Salman Rushdie was the most famous living author in the world. It's amazing that he survived that time and that he has continued his writing career, though the time of the jihad has left its mark - his material since then has never seemed as vibrant or vital as the stories from his youth. Then again that's true of many writers - a style and milieu established and then eclipsed followed by a descent into mannerism. Reading Rushdi's story The Little King in current New Yorker shows as all that at one time seemed so distinctive and au courant in his style - maximalism to the extreme, over the top satire, comic riffs, never say anything once that could be said twice. Now this style feels like a throwback, which it is. Sadly, it also seems at odds w his material- a satire about a Indian-American dentist, dr smile, ha ha, who developed a powerful opiate , sets up a Corp that Rivas the (unnamed) Sacklers, and eventually comes crashing to the ground for various sexist and illegal practices - hardly material rife for satire. The plot such as it is involves dr smile's brother developing a huge crush on a tv talk show personality; smile assists in his quest to meet her once she becomes addicted to smile's rx - they do meet an the tv star seems just as you'd expect like a spoiled, self-centered addict. One has to wonder whether this whole story is Rushdie's best shit at one of his exes, herself a model and tv personality. Either way, a story that seems way out of touch w issues of today - a misplaced relic from the 70s.

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