Shirley Hazzard's The Bay of Noon, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, Yehoshua's The Retrospective, and a '64 Dylan interview

Erin Swan’s debut novel, Walk the Vanished Earth (2022), has so much going for it that I hate to be a spoilsport and note that it’s just not the right novel for me; I’m pretty much dedicated to literary fiction in the realist or naturalist mode - and ES does include many long passages in her novel that fit the bill - notably her devastating account of how mental illness (caused by abusive trauma, or so it seems half-way through the novel) can stalk a family. The central character in this novel is a young man, abandoned by his mother at birth, raised in various foster homes and institutions, who age 30 or so reconnects with his mother, who is alone and severely disabled by her illness.This part of the novel stands on its own - harrowing. Swan, however, is nothing if not ambitious - totally admirable, esp for a young novelist - and includes several other narrative lines - one in 19th-century on the Great Plains, and other some 50 years or so into the future, with three people - two men and a preteen woman - living in an outpost on Mars. Yipes! ES does all she can to make these sections credible, and as we read deeper in we see some of the connecting strings that tie the narratives together - but for me the very aspects that make this novel so distinct were for me the biggest drawbacks. That said, writing is so clear and thoughtful, Swan’s imagination in bounteous, and i think this would be a great book for readers interested in speculative fiction and with a high tolerance for vivid accounts of mental illness and anguish. 

Shirley Hazzard’s 1970 novel, The Bay of Noon (great book, lousy title that refers to nothing particular in the narrative) is in outline a pretty straightforward small-cast drama: Adult narrator (Jenny) references back to her life as a 20-something in ca.1957 (the Sputnick/Space Race era) when she was assigned by the U.S. Govt. to be on the staff for a massive report on some issue, not even sure it it’s ever ID’d, with a large team deployed to the still war-ravaged Naples. During her time there she befriends an older Italian couple - she a writer, he a film director - who become the lens through which she sees and absorbs the culture around her; she also has a relationship of some sort - it doesn’t seem to have been sexual, although that could just be the narrator’s demure nature - with a young Canadian man assigned to the same project. Over time she is betrayed by these so-called friends - and then takes up w/ the now jilted man - Gianni - as they start a relationship of their own, until it’s time for her to sail away - to America! - and he drifts off the resume his relationship with the other woman (Giaconda) - followed by a short where-are-they-now epilog. What makes this novel great, however, is not the plot but the wise observations and insights of the narrator, which is to say of SH, who has her own, sometimes quite difficult, way of convey her observances and impressions of everyone and everything around her - the city still in ruins, the beauty of some the seascapes (which the narrator notes from her1970 vantage have been ruined by development). This book does not benefit from a quick reading; rather, you have to pause at almost every sentence to take in what Jenny/SH are saying, seeing, feeling. She captures a time and place like too few contemporary novelists. This novel lacks the humor and irony (or sarcasm) of some of SH’s earlier writing, in particular the novel and stories built on her experiences working at the UN in the ‘50s; but it is in tune w/ some of her short fiction about Americans in Italy in mid-century. I can’t help but think that SH would be much better recognized and more often read today had she set more of her fiction in the U.S. (or London) - the choice of Italian settings in so many of her works does carry a touch of exoticism and a cultural reference point but it’s a point that will feel remote by too many of her potential readership. 

Jean Rhys’s last (?) novel, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) is a bit of a neat trick - one that I really couldn’t get when I first read this novel many years ago - before I’d read Jane Eyre, about which one must know at least the rudiments of the plot of JE (Jane’s beloved from a far “master,” Rochester, lives in a strange old house within which he’s stashed away his delusional and dangerous first wife - who takes her revenge of sorts by setting fire to the mansion). OK, to Rhys’s WSS is an attempt to bring to life the unexamined “mad” wife held captive in the attic: What brought her to this point? To what extent is Rochester complicit in her death, in her madness? All that said, it’s also important to be able to read and appreciate and even enjoy this dark novel without making the JE connection - and JR does a neat job tracing the course of the wife’s - Antoinette’s? - abandonment and decline; the unfeeling narrator (is he named at all?\) of the 2nd half of the novel turns against his young, beautiful, mixed race (?) wife after receiving documents that suggest she is “mad” and any children they have together will suffer from the same or similar madness. This man is as weak and cruel as can be - and a racist to boot. All of our sympathies are with the vulnerable bride. The writing is at times quite beautiful, esp in Rhys’s evocation of the look and feeling of the tropical Windward Island, in its beauty, danger, isolation - in particular the subtle and mean interaction of the proud English landowner and the slave/servant population, on the verge or just past the verge of outright revolt. I would say that JR, probably too heavily under the influence of Faulkner, makes the narrative line unnecessarily difficult to follow - with little clarity about the characters names and with the sequence of events - but as one progresses through the novel the major strands of the plot become more clear: a challenging book, but worth the effort. 

I’m not a huge fan of the annual Archival issue of the New Yorker, but it was strange and informative thread Nat Hentoff’s profile of Bob Dylan published back in 1964 (I was too young to have read that!); Hentoff wrote many smart analyses of popular music and, especially, of jazz (lots of liner notes) - back then I though he too often stated the obvious and I felt a little jealous that his insights, so evident to teenagers, were treated as gospel by so many publications - now I have a better sense of Hentoff’s groundbreaking work, crossing cultural barriers. Anyway, his must have been one of the few extensive profiles of Dylan toward the end of his “folk era.” Without a doubt he had more face time w/ Dylan than any other magazine writer before and perhaps since; Dylan became increasingly guarded over the years, understandably. My takeaway from this profile was that Dylan was impatient to bring his work in a new direction but couldn’t yet quite characterize his inchoate work - the songs, when written and recorded would speak for themselves (so to speak), and Dylan was aware of this. Hentoff got from Dylan the sense that he was moving beyond protest/folk songs and more into social commentary - a much more complex and rich vein for his music. What Hentoff missed was any sense that Dylan was soon to “go electric” and change forever the nature of rock music - from a kind of classical voice - each rock song could in effect be performed by anyone; rock was from a universal voce - to a “romantic” voice: Each song was the personal affirmation of an individual artist. Who could possible foresee where Dylan would go in his career? Who would have bet, in 1964, that Dylan would be a Nobel laureate? We also see from this early profile that Dylan liked, and needed, an entourage for his support, esp in a recording session. Also that Dylan was sincere and generous in his support for righteous causes. And that Dylan could be unhinged and inappropriate at times (the account of his recording session; the priceless account of his speech to a liberal social-action group that had presented him w/ an award) - likely indications of a drinking problem in its early stages. Hentoff was also suckered by Dylan’s exaggerated autobiography; Dylan did not wish to talk about his family - but we know now that his childhood and youth were conventional and that he did not run away from home pretty much every year from age 10 or so.

A.B. Yehoshua’s novel The Retrospective (2011) is far from his best work, although there’s always some value in reading his fiction, which always presents a viewpoint on contemporary life in Israel among a wide social set and in many of his novels, including this one, with lots of insight and opinion on those who work in the arts - writers, actors, musicians, et al. The drawback in this work is that the central figure is a film director toward the end of his career, invited to Spain for the eponymous retrospective on his films - and although I could recognize his un-ease at seeing screenings of his early works it’s really hard to describe effectively a movie that doesn’t and never has existed; the mid- or late-career artist works well as a trope in film - see 8 1/2 - as does the artist/writer at the end of his/her rope - see The Great Beauty - but here I never got a clear sense of the content and context of his movies. More troubling, the ending of the novel is preposterous - too bad because the penultimate section, in which the director drives to a remote family complex near the Gaza border for a final confrontation with the screenwriter with whom he’d had a life-long falling out - a great and beautifully rendered scene - and ABY should have left it there rather than send his director off on a pointless and maddening attempt to re-enact a scene from a Reubens painting. Don’t even ask.