If you're reading Suite Francaise, read the appendices as well

For anyone reading Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise, I would say you absolutely must read the appendices, which are as significant and powerful as the novel itself. The appendices consist of, at first, IM's ongoing notes to herself about her overall plan for the novel, which she foresaw as of five sections, carrying through to the end of the Second World War; of course she completed only the first two sections, and even those w/ some lacunae and rough spots. IM's notes to herself cease in 1942, when she was arrested and deported to a detention camp and finally to Auschwitz; we see in these sections her last message home to her husband, Michel Epstein, and then end w/ the abrupt note that she died (I would say "was murdered") at Auschwitz. But her husband never knew her fate; we read his extensive correspondence with IM's publisher and with many officials and friends, trying desperately to learn of her fate and to get her released from prison. through these letters and messages we see the horrors of the Nazi occupation of France and in particular the disgraceful anti-Semitic laws and rules: Jews could not be published, the government could seize their assets (and royalties), anyone sheltering or aiding Jews could be imprisoned, and on it goes. It's sad beyond measure to see Epstein's pathetic attempts to learn of IM's fate and to gain her release, in particular as he tries to make the case that she was anti-Bolshevik (and a practicing Catholic) - as if any of that would matter. Epstein, too, was seized and murdered at Auschwitz. We can see, through these letters and telegrams, why IM herself in SF wrote nothing about the treatment of Jews, nothing about the camps, nothing about Hitler, and in general depicted the occupying forces as a bunch of nice young men who were wished they could get along w/ the villagers, in particular w/ the young women. She either had no sense of what was happening in her world - unlikely - or sailed with the wind to the extent that she was able. She was brave - but only up to a point. And to read of her treatment and her fate makes us mourn the loss of what she could have written, the life she - and millions of others - could have led.

What the great novel Suite Francaise depicts and what it omits

Finished (re)reading the 2nd and final - the completed project was left unfinished in1942 - section, Dolce, in Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise (left unfinished in 1942, published in 2004, English tr 2006). This second section, as the title itself implies, is not as tense and harrowing as the first section, in which we follow several Parisians leaving all their belongings behind as they feel Paris and the German occupation in 1940. The Dolce section focuses on one community under occupation in 1941, the small and fictional village of Bussy, and in particular IM examines the complex feelings of the villagers - hating and fearing the German soldiers, at least at first, but gradually growing to tolerate the occupation and in some cases to build friendships and romances - at great risk of course. IM is great at examining the complexity of emotions, fear, and guilt among this small set of characters - but it's also astonishing how much is left out from this section. We see little or nothing of the collaboration - French villagers forced (sometimes w/ little resistance) to do the dirty work for the occupying forces (the major, central theme in the great French TV series, A French Village), nothing about the rage of the villagers against women who "consort" with the Germans, only the faintest reference to Hitler, no reference to French resistance, and no reference whatsoever to Jews to the concentration camps. These omissions may be because IM (and many others) were unaware of these social forces and movements, many of which became clear to the world at large much later in the war and in its aftermath. It may also be that IM was writing protectively, with the naive hope that maybe she could publish this work in some postwar period of peace. As all readers of this book know, she was sent to her death in Auschwitz in 1942. Did she consider herself "safe," as a longtime French citizen and a nonpracticing Jew? Or were these themes she'd planned for the 4 unwritten sections of SF? The appendices included in all editions of SF may answer these questions, to the extent the can be answered. In any event, SF remains one of the great novels of the war, one of the last to be published personal narratives of that period, and it remains frightening and moving for what IM depicts and, in part, for what she omits.

Advice from Lydia Davis in Essays One

Further reading in Lydia Davis's 2019 collection, Essays One, shows that she's a really funny and brilliant innovative writer - so different from others in what she reads, writes, and thinks (her "stories" tend to be like really short essays or insights, remarkable for their dexterity and wit, but as far as I know she rarely writes to develop character or the arc of a plot over time); she's also a hell of a good translator, particularly from the French (translating Swann's Way is a monumental feat). That said, I'm not sure that her advice to writers, which makes up a large segment of the first half of this long collection, can really help a writer at the outset of his or her career; rather than pieces meant as instructive, they're more like a portrait of an artist: We read them and get great insight into how LD thinks and writes, but as pieces of advice, I don't know. I lot of what she writes about will be obscure or useless to most young writers; for ex., her command to "be curious" - well, sure, but what if you're not? Will this dictum make you so? She has a segment in one of her pedagogic pieces on knowing the difference between Latinate and Vulgite (romance/French and Germanic, if you prefer), but really most young writers or even advanced writers would be puzzled by that advice - though I think she's write, btw! (One of her class assignments was to come up w/ all of the words in English beginning w/ "wr" - starting, I guess, w/ write/writing/writer. Why?) But do love reading her essays, even as I engage in marginal quibbles with some of her observations. She encourages patience, which is great for her kind of work that verges on poetry - but for a serious fiction writer just starting out, I'd encourage the opposite: Write a lot, write every day, get your stories moving, don't wallow and ponder.

Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise stands up well as a great novel and social document

As I select books from my own library while we're voluntarily shut in during the Covid19 crisis, I'm looking at books that I haven't read for at least ten years and that in my mind and memory were great works of fiction, and let's see how they hold up. So a few days ago I started (re)reading Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise (written in 1942, first published in France in 2006, 2009 in English), and through the first section (of a planned 6 sections; she only completed 2), Storm in June, this novel stands up over time as even better than I'd anticipated. In part, my interest in SF comes from our current situation, facing an uncertainty that is throwing our country and the world at large into the unknown. But on reflection it's much easier to be ordered to stay at home than it would be to have to feel one's home; the life of a war refugee, then and today, is terrifying, and IM captures this epochal moment in world history perfectly. The first section of the novel follows 4 (I think) groups of Parisians leaving everything behind and fleeing to what they hope will be safety in southern France as the German army enters Paris. Through their stories, which IM recounts w/ vivid detail, we see a range of human behavior, most of it not so great: the selfishness, the class snobbery, the mindless brutality, the chicanery, the foolish bravado - but at least set off against a few instances of the country folk, overwhelmed by this onrush of refugees, try in some ways to provide comfort and shelter, in particular for wounded French soldiers. IM's view of humanity is bleak and dark, and this is understandable; from what I recall, she was a successful novelist in France, and wrote this book while a refugee in southern France - but her safety didn't last long. You were OK, it seems, in the southern villages and cities unless you were a Jew; IM was Jewish by birth (though not by practice - I think she was a practicing Catholic but I'm not sure). She was deported to Auschwitz where the Nazis murdered her. Decades later, her unfinished ms was discovered and published. My sense on reading the first section is that she would have been a terrific journalist; her ability to convey an entire scene through sharp detail - the emptiness of the Paris streets following the exodus, the fear of attack from overhead by German air power, the crowds in village squares and on the roads, the chaos at rr stations, the constant fear and uncertainty, and even a great chapter from the POV of a cat, and it's not a sweet story about a cute little house pet. So far, it's a terrific novel on every score and particularly worth reading now (though perhaps too unsettling for those looking for more soothing entertainment) in in light of the steady influx of war refugees into Europe.

Story "Out There" in current New Yorkee - no spoilers here - w/ an ambiguous ending

The story Out There, by presumably young and not widely published author Kate Folk, in the current New Yorker, is a bit of a puzzle; I'm pretty sure I get the abrupt conclusion, but she leaves some ambiguity in place, intentionally. I won't give anything away - but - I have to say I could see the conclusion coming from miles away, at least if I'm right about what the last segment means. The story is from the POV of a young woman who has had a lot of bad luck and bad breaks in her life, particularly in relationships; she ventures out for the first time into the "out there" world of on-line matchmaking - at which point Folk throws in a twist that puts us into the future, though maybe not that far into the future: the online-dating world is replete w/ what are known as "blots," robot guys who look exactly like handsome young men and who are programmed to speak and interact, though their actual purpose is eventually to steal all the encrypted info from the woman they're "dating" - in other words a next-dimension step above Siri and Alexa, but aimed at women specifically. Maybe not that different than the risks already in place w/ online dating or of using the Internet, right? The first gen of these blots didn't work so well because the "men" were so "nice" as to be spotted and outed and dumped pretty quickly. The next gen behaves more typically like a young guy, making them even harder for women, like the narrator in this story, to spot and to dump. And it makes it harder for us as readers to interpret the character: a guy who's clumsy w/ personal conversation or a machine programmed to be so? That's as far as I'll go w/ this story/this post, but am wondering how others might interpret the final scene.

More on the question of race in Faulkner's Light in August

The central character in Faulkner's Light in August (1932) is the auspiciously named Joe Christmas; perhaps a million term papers have latched onto the obvious symbolism and called JC a Christ figure - but I think he's anything but that. In effect he's closer to the wandering Jew, the outcast, someone living in the deeply divided society of the segregated South and of uncertain racial ancestry - in fact he has no idea of his parentage (we learn that his late mother was white and that his father worked in a circus - but nothing of his race). JC can pass for white and often does, but at other times he identifies w/ the black community and is himself identified as black - particularly when he becomes the prime suspect in the murder of an older white woman who lives just outside the town (Jefferson, in WF's fictional world) and who has devoted her life to the cause of "Negro" education. Once JC is connected to this crime he is to all the (white) people in town a "nigger." In some ways this show how race as a concept is slippery and elusive and imposed from the outside rather than any innate quality - making the obvious mistreatment of blacks that we see throughout this novel (and not, I believe, atypical for its era) all the more repulsive and cruel. JC never had a chance in life, but once he's identified as a black man he is exiled and doomed; but what about the many others, living in poverty, deprived of education, illiterate for the most part - they never had a chance in the world (this is highlighted when we see late in the novel the near illiteracy as well of "Joe Brown" aka Burch - he had avenues and opportunities open to him and his word is credible, even though he himself is just marginally literate - but he's a white man). There's a sense throughout this novel of an unjust social hierarchy unlikely to change for generations; Faulkner's no proselytizer, but I think the social criticism in this novel has a sharper edge than that in any of his other works. But LiA is hardly a polemic, either; much of its strength comes from the other characters central to the plot: Lena, traveling in search of the father of her to-be-born child, and Byran Bunch, who falls in love w/ Lena; in the beautiful final chapter we see them embarking from Jefferson, and we never know if Lena catches up with the scoundrel who dumped her twice (unlikely) or whether she will fall in love w/ or at least agree to marry the much older sweet and timid Burch (the name-similarity is central to the plot). These sketched in characters, especially Lena, give a sense in the novel of somehow goodness or at least benevolence enduring, carrying on - despite the horrors we see regarding JC's fate; this is a sense familiar throughout WF's work (Sound and Fury - Dilsy, As I Lay Dying) but resented here in an exceptional well-constructed plot and with just enough (well, sometimes too much) of WF's literary flourishes (could do w/out the impenetrable penultimate chapter on the fallen minister, Hightower).

Faulkner and race in Light in August

More than half-way through William Faulkner's 1932 novel, Light in August, surely one of his greatest if not the greatest of his novels, with its clever and intricate plot, its vividly drawn characters, its intelligent use of back story and flashback, and for the most part WF's hypnotic language, which admittedly is sometimes over the top and even obscure (though not nearly so much as it some of his later novels, when the neologisms and complex sentences, I should talk, make some of his later works mannered and impenetrable). I know there have been literally countless books, papers, and dissertations about Faulkner and race; it's hard to imagine taking on this topic w/out analysis of LiA. I've been thinking about race throughout my reading of this novel, and find it still a puzzling and troubled topic in WF's hands. No doubt that he is deeply sympathetic to the rural black population of his Mississippi domain and that he feels the need for exculpation regarding the history of slavery; the main character in this novel, Joe Christmas, is of ambiguous and uncertain race, so he becomes something of a template for the various attitudes toward race, depending in part on whether he's "passing" as white or identified as black. He is among the most sorrowful characters in literature; what chance did he have, raised in an orphanage, taunted for his darkness, eventually adopted by a cruel "religious" family, beaten into submission, making stupid decisions about his fate and fortune. His life changes when he begins a sexual relationship with Miss Burden, a wealthy woman of New England background devoting her life to the "betterment" of southern blacks - so what does it mean that she engages Xmas in rough and brutal and sex? Her condescension toward Xmas and his violent response, though perhaps not "representative" of anyone but themselves, does suggest a certain contempt for would-be reformists and a distrust of rural blacks as brutal and dangerous. There's a sense throughout that, though blacks need and deserve better treatment and opportunity, that the races are best off in separation. Yes, it's easy to look back and criticize WF, or any writer, for not being ahead of his (or her) time, but I can't help but feel that black readers today would find this novel hurtful.

How well Light in August holds up over time - and how it doesn't

With libraries in lockdown, or at least they should be, sadly, I've turned back to my own library, which is pretty substantial and a physical replication of all of the learning of my entire life. Many of my most treasured, and frequently returned-to, books are some from my teenage years, when I first became interested in literature, an interest, passion, vocation that has guided and sustained me throughout my life. I thought it might be time to turn back to some books that I at one time loved but that I've not read or re-considered for 20+ years; some I can only faintly remember and couldn't possibly provide you off the cuff with a plot summary. How well do they hold up? Have they changed? Have I? Has the world? I started out yesterday reading for the 1st time in probably 35 years Faulkner's Light in August, and am pleased to say that from the outset this is still a terrific novel, by most standards: Vivid and fully delineated characters, an engaging plot, a brilliant re-creation of life in a time and place and among a social class not often depicted in literary works, moving, and often funny. The plot involves a pregnant teenager (Lena) who's left her home in Alabama and walked to Mississippi in search of the baby's father, who of course has abandoned her and whom she'll never find; she encounters in Jefferson, Miss., the territorial center of all of WF's novels, a worker (Byron Bunch) in a lumber mill, a man of fastidious habits and deep religious conviction, who falls in love with her. Strange secondary characters loom on the periphery, notably Joe Christmas, who works in the mill and has a side business selling bootleg whiskey, and Hightower, a minister who has been stripped of his title and lives in near isolation. All of this holds up well - even better than I remembered, in fact, as the novel is less "difficult" than it was on first encounter, in part because contemporary fiction can more commodiously handle complex, multi-layered plots: Falkner invented many devices (particularly use of stream-of-consciousness) that today fall on familiar ground. (WF's next novel, Absolum, Absolum!, carried his mannerisms to an extreme and I found, when I tried it about 10 years ago, that it was practically unreadable.) Where LiA doesn't hold up so well is in WF's portrayal of race relations; it's to his credit that he has many powerful black figures in his work, but there seems to be an overall general assumption that accommodates to the racial attitudes of his time and place: the black characters speak in exaggerated dialect and there's a sense that the blacks are willfully less educated - with no real recognition of the barriers and even laws that kept black people "in their place" in that day and age and region. I'll keep an eye on that going forward.

A good New Yorker storty by Enright and another one that feels too close to home right now

Good story, Night Swim, by Anne Enright in last week's New Yorker; seems she's the latest to be fully embraced by the NYer, with a story last week and a long review of her new novel, Actress, in current NYer (review seems to be not much more than a lengthy plot summary, but no matter). The story is straightforward and quirky: a 45ish mom is driving he 8-year-old son to a friend's house for a playdate or maybe a sleepover. The son from the first moment seems odd, and for most of the drive to friend's house plays a "game" w/ mother, asking which she'd prefer among a pair of ghastly alternatives (drink a bowl of lava or drown in a pool of lava, e.g.). On arrival at the friend's house, where she'd never been, the mother/driver recognizes the friend's apt building, which has been converted from a mental hospital where the mother was a patient for a period of time in her 20s. Over the course of the story, she reflects on some of the wildness and risky behavior of her youth, which of course ties into the oddly violent fantasies and queries of her son - so that by the end the story becomes an internal interrogation about youthful recklessness and the difficult responsibilities of parenthood. The story ends a bit abruptly, w/ a mother answering her son's final query (would you rather eat a whole turkey or be inside a whole turkey...); the story seems to cry out for more, at the end, but sometimes that's the best way to end things. Further note: Story in current NYer is by a writer I admired from his early work, Matthew Klam (remembering his NYer debut story about a gathering of young politicos on Martha's Vineyard, if memory serves), but whom I haven't seen in print for a while; this story looks really powerful - about a medical crisis involving pregnant wife, premature delivery, vulnerable infant - but it's just too much for me to read at this time (reminds in a way of the great Lorrie Moore story about a child's - her child's? - kidney cancer).

Crime fiction of the highest order: We, The Accused

It's probably a little too long and at times a little too melodramatic, but Ernest Raymond's 1935 "crime" novel, We, The Accused, has to stand as one of the best in its genre ever. Like its antecedent Crime and Punishment, there is no doubt or ambiguity about who committed the crime - Paul Pessett is as guilty as Raskolnikov - but from that standpoint each novel opens up into a whole world. In both cases, we see every aspect of the killing and of the consequences that follow. WtA is not so profound, psychiatric, and philosophical as C&P , of course, nor is it meant to be; but Raymonds ambitions are high, and he uses the case of Paul Pessett to show us how one criminal act can affect so many people and can imbue an entire culture and society, if only for a moment; we see the crime, the growing suspicion, the pursuit, the apprehension, and the trial (and I will not reveal the ending except to say that it's powerful and fitting), mostly from an omniscient but close third-person POV but also from the perspective of Pessett's beloved Myra, from his parents' standpoint, from the police detectives standpoint, and others. ER states at the outset that this novel is not documentary, nor does he attempt to portray the British justice system at any point in time; he acknowledges many anachronisms, and - rightly - states that his goal was to tell a great story and not let topical details get in the way. That said, few novels, crime or otherwise, are so ambitious and comprehensive and actually scary, and seldom can a novelist build such sympathy for a protagonist who is an admitted killer; the only immediate comparison that comes to mind is Mailer's The Executioner's Song, a much more difficult case in that that killer (Gary Gilmore) was so obviously sadistic and anti-social. Pessett a mild and likable man and an unlikely killer and a man wracked by guilt (though not fear) - yet nothing about this novel feels forced or preposterous (the police procedures of course would be tremendously different today; the media saturation coverage would be likely pretty much the same. Thanks to friend DJC for recommending this mostly forgotten novel. As I've often said, I much prefer a B-level novel that accomplishes all of its goals than a supposed A-level that falls flat on its face. This book is crime fiction of the highest order.

Why We, the Accused, differs from most crime fiction

As I near the end of Ernest Raymond's thoughtful and richly detailed account of a murder and its aftermath, We, the Accused (1935) - in which an otherwise self-effacing 50-year-old private-school teacher in London poisons to death his somewhat older wife so that he can legitimize his affair with a  30-something (though by all accounts not a predatory beauty but a modest and serious young woman) workmate. Sure, this novel could be edited and tightened - Raymond steers away from no detail - and sure it doesn't really rise up to the level of its perhaps inspiration and counterpart, Crime and Punishment, but it's a particularly interesting social document, giving us a great deal of information on the whole process of the British justice system, right through the arrest, imprisonment, trial (and I haven't finished yet but, execution?) which careful character development and scrupulous background, even of the arresting officer and the prosecuting attorney, as well as Dickensian character sketches of most of the other characters, many of whom are merely incidental to the plot. What's particularly of note is that ER brings us through the whole trial scene w/ a feeling of great empathy for the protagonist, Paul Presset, and we expect his exculpation, and want that, even though we know that he's guilty (his paramour learns of this quite late in the game; not sure yet of how she'll be treated by the justice system). Most such novels keep us in doubt about the key facts of the crime, and most involve an innocent man crushed by the impersonal system of justice; not in this case. If you can make it through the needlessly detailed chapters - such as the yard-by-yard account of Presset's run from the law - to the British Coast, then to the Lake District (all of which might do well on film), there's plenty to enjoy in this copious novel, far more detailed and thoughtful than most of its brethren in "crime."