The House Of Mirth
The House Of Mirth published in 1905 tells the story of Lily Bart a young woman in society. Though young, Lily is not getting younger and must make a good match soon. Unlike other novels of this type, The House Of Mirth charts not the romances and eventual happy nuptials of Lily but her failures and social decline.
I have had some conversations with my friend Matt over my inability to like novels which feature anti-heroes rather than heroes. Is whether we like our heroes important? Does it mar the story if we do not? Even if the story offers us a glimpse behind the curtains of a different world to our experience as all novels seek to do? The House Of Mirth certainly does this being as it covers the lives of New York Society at the turn of the twentieth century. Is the fact that our characters are thoroughly vile somewhat the point? The House Of Mirth is something of a polemic against those that inhabit that society or better yet an exposure of them. My sympathies ought to have been with Lily Bart, a woman whose father was ruined and is now dead remains in those social circles out of respect for her breeding and almost out of charity. But, she's an anti-heroine, she looks imperiously down her nose at everything, from her aunt and the surroundings she has shared with her to the homes of others. Equally too, she is snobbish in society, dismissing Simon Rosedale, the man who shows most care for her as nothing but a Jew and considers herself quite above Selden's impoverished spinster cousin, again, the friend who shows her most loyalty. Even without the likes of Simon and Gerty, Lily truly ranks herself as much above the rest of her company, though discomforted when unable to match them financially.
So Lily Bart is difficult to like but so too is her circle, Bertha Dorset and Carry Fisher and Judy Trenor. On the one hand these people have these wonderful parties and social lives and are all of course so very attached to one another, and yet beneath the veneer would and do destroy each other without hesitation lest they be destroyed. The men, though seeing the deplorable behaviour of their wives do little or nothing to stand up to it, protecting their good names through terrible injustice. They are ineffectual and spineless, but will seek to take advantage of Lily's vulnerability as and when they can.
Because the book is so depressing, it gave me cause to wonder why on earth it was called The House Of Mirth. A bit of googling reveals it to come from Ecclesiastes: the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. The point being of course is that these women and their husbands by extension are obsessed with money and jewels, and dresses and having money to gamble at bridge and who is marrying whom and who is the leader of "their set", the most popular hostess. In short, they are obsessed with frivolities and are insidious, vapid, fools.
It is difficult to feel for Lily for although she wishes more than anything to be part of that set, she throws away multiple opportunities to get what she wants, and later, to get back what she has lost. And so too, comes across as terribly foolish and ultimately irritating. Because I couldn't like anyone in the story I found it difficult to enjoy the book and trudged through it almost begrudgingly. It's possible I would have abandoned it were it not for the rule that I must finish books on this challenge. From a critical perspective, this novel is probably very interesting a damning indictment of the perilous position of well-bred young women without husbands and of "polite society" of the era. Alternatively, the message seems to say, if you are a woman of no fortune marry no matter how you feel, marry a boring Percy Gryce or someone you find contemptible like Simon Rosedale or find yourself like poor Lily Bart. A warning to strike fear in the hearts of young debutantes to conform to such a world. I doubt Wharton meant the latter but in a way that's the effect. A warped "moral tale".
That said for a book essentially short, I found it an utter nightmare to read, it took me a long time; mainly because I hated the characters so badly and found the whole thing just distasteful. It does have an interesting "point" to make, but I prefer "points" that are made artfully with subtlety, so as they come to you in the midst of your absorption in the story, rather than novels that seem to solely exist in order to make such "points".
I find it difficult to know how to rate this book because I am aware of my own bias against unlikeable leads. I also found it incredibly boring for the first two thirds as I despised their company as characters. Despite this, is it a good portrait of a type of society? Yes. Is it making an interesting point? Yes. But did I enjoy it? No. So how do I rate it then? Probably for enjoyment 3/10 and for merit 7/10. However, having such a complicated reaction to a novel says something for it. Lily Bart, on the other hand, remains completely insufferable.
Showing posts with label Didn't Like. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Didn't Like. Show all posts
Saturday, 9 July 2011
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Book #40 The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
The New York Trilogy
The New York Trilogy isn't a trilogy in the sense that Steig Larsson's Millenium Trilogy is a trilogy or The Lord Of Rings is a trilogy, it's three extended short stories 'City Of Glass', 'Ghosts' and 'The Locked Room'. It's another example of metafiction, which I wasn't expecting, I can't remember who recommended it to me in the first instance or what they said about it. Whilst the use of metafiction is totally unintrusive in 'The Things They Carried', you knew it was there but it didn't effect the story, it is so intrusive in 'The New York Trilogy' that I think it probably counts as an example of 'breaking the fourth wall' or if it doesn't quite technically fit the criteria, it comes very close.
I hate it when authors break the fourth wall, I like to become immersed in the story, the characters, and pretend at least for the duration I read it that I am a visitor to the world about which I am reading. I don't like the authors wagging finger appearing in my face and saying 'this isn't REAL you know, it's just a STORY'. I know that already, I know the difference between fiction and non fiction.
I think one of the central discussion points of the trilogy is on the nature of authorship, and whether the story is more important than its author and the author is essentially irrelevant. In 'City Of Glass' Daniel Quinn is a formerly successful poet who following terrible tragedy now writes mystery stories, churning out one a year under the pseudonym 'William Wilson'. He receives a phonecall in the dead of night looking for a private detective named Paul Auster whom he then impersonates. Essentially all Auster has done here is use his own name as a character name but the effect is nonetheless jarring. A separate character who coincidentally also shares the name Paul Auster appears later on. I didn't like it. In the last story 'The Locked Room' the question of authorship arises again. A man publishes the work of his missing, presumed dead, friend and is asked whether he would consider writing a few more novels under his friends name, the public being none the wiser. I wondered briefly if Paul Auster wasn't a real person and that was part of the point but it seems that he is.
'The Locked Room' is actually quite a good story, but in it he re-uses several character names from 'City Of Glass' including, at one point, Paul Auster, and I just found this approach really very irritating. The characters in The Locked Room are not the ones from City Of Glass either they just have the same names. I think he's trying to make another point with this and that is that the names don't matter only the story. In Ghosts, Auster replaces every character name with a colour, which sounds like a small thing but actually makes it quite hard to read.
I wonder if a lot of reviews at the time praised Auster for playing with formats and BREAKING NEW GROUND, but I found something quite arrogant about it, a tone which suggests he thinks he's a better and more innovative writer than he actually is. The sense that he's writing for the critics, and the literary world at large. The first two stories are genuinely confusing, and I didn't really "take away" much from the book having finished it. I felt quite "so what?" about it.
In the first story Quinn meets a young woman reading one of his mystery novels, when she tells him she's finding it average without knowing he's the author, he leaves, because he is afraid he might punch her in the face. I kind of had the same feeling towards Auster throughout. A disappointment 5/10
The New York Trilogy isn't a trilogy in the sense that Steig Larsson's Millenium Trilogy is a trilogy or The Lord Of Rings is a trilogy, it's three extended short stories 'City Of Glass', 'Ghosts' and 'The Locked Room'. It's another example of metafiction, which I wasn't expecting, I can't remember who recommended it to me in the first instance or what they said about it. Whilst the use of metafiction is totally unintrusive in 'The Things They Carried', you knew it was there but it didn't effect the story, it is so intrusive in 'The New York Trilogy' that I think it probably counts as an example of 'breaking the fourth wall' or if it doesn't quite technically fit the criteria, it comes very close.
I hate it when authors break the fourth wall, I like to become immersed in the story, the characters, and pretend at least for the duration I read it that I am a visitor to the world about which I am reading. I don't like the authors wagging finger appearing in my face and saying 'this isn't REAL you know, it's just a STORY'. I know that already, I know the difference between fiction and non fiction.
I think one of the central discussion points of the trilogy is on the nature of authorship, and whether the story is more important than its author and the author is essentially irrelevant. In 'City Of Glass' Daniel Quinn is a formerly successful poet who following terrible tragedy now writes mystery stories, churning out one a year under the pseudonym 'William Wilson'. He receives a phonecall in the dead of night looking for a private detective named Paul Auster whom he then impersonates. Essentially all Auster has done here is use his own name as a character name but the effect is nonetheless jarring. A separate character who coincidentally also shares the name Paul Auster appears later on. I didn't like it. In the last story 'The Locked Room' the question of authorship arises again. A man publishes the work of his missing, presumed dead, friend and is asked whether he would consider writing a few more novels under his friends name, the public being none the wiser. I wondered briefly if Paul Auster wasn't a real person and that was part of the point but it seems that he is.
'The Locked Room' is actually quite a good story, but in it he re-uses several character names from 'City Of Glass' including, at one point, Paul Auster, and I just found this approach really very irritating. The characters in The Locked Room are not the ones from City Of Glass either they just have the same names. I think he's trying to make another point with this and that is that the names don't matter only the story. In Ghosts, Auster replaces every character name with a colour, which sounds like a small thing but actually makes it quite hard to read.
I wonder if a lot of reviews at the time praised Auster for playing with formats and BREAKING NEW GROUND, but I found something quite arrogant about it, a tone which suggests he thinks he's a better and more innovative writer than he actually is. The sense that he's writing for the critics, and the literary world at large. The first two stories are genuinely confusing, and I didn't really "take away" much from the book having finished it. I felt quite "so what?" about it.
In the first story Quinn meets a young woman reading one of his mystery novels, when she tells him she's finding it average without knowing he's the author, he leaves, because he is afraid he might punch her in the face. I kind of had the same feeling towards Auster throughout. A disappointment 5/10
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Book #29 The Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
The Year Of Magical Thinking
This book for me was a first. I read it and when I had finished I had utterly no idea how on earth to review it, because of the juxtaposition between the sensitive subject matter and my reaction to it. I had a sense that in criticising this book in any way, I was somehow a bad person, but as a review, I still have to be honest about what I thought of it.
The book is Didion's account of the first year following her husbands death, after he suffers a heart attack at home the day before New Years Eve. Throughout the following year their daughter Quintana suffers several episodes of ill health, and in fact also died shortly before the books' publication, though Didion chose not to update her manuscript to reflect this.
Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne were both writers and so I guess I expected something special here, I at least expected her thinking to be magical given the title, her words on the experience of grief to be moving and perhaps inspiring. But...........
It's cold. The whole book, it's very remote and detached. It's short, and repetitive, filled with quotes from other people's work on the nature of grief and lines from other people's poems, which if removed would leave only anecdotes that would be of interest to family members and the same stories repeated more than once.
It is like a collection of jumbled extracts from a diary, there is no cohesive narrative, and it is not what I expected: an insightful poetic reflection on the nature of death and loss, more a list of facts, an essay. It is much more essay than memoir.
It feels terrible to say that a book by a woman about the death of her husband is a bad book, but it is, and she even comes across badly as a person, showing off her contacts and lifestyle. At some point she writes that having when she read the memoir of D.H Lawrence's widow she felt she was morbid and self pitying, and you certainly can't accuse Didion of that.She doesn't even seem to experience the known stages of grief.
When thinking about how I would review this book I found a review on Amazon by A.Ross which said
"No doubt I am being churlish to some degree for criticizing Didion's portrayal of her experience. It's her life, her tragedy, and she certainly has every right to represent it however she would like to. However, placing it in the commercial realm makes it subject to comment, and my own feeling is that its simply not a very good book. That said, there are glimpses here and there of sharp writing and analysis which makes me think I might like one of her past collections of essays. Still, I can't imagine anyone going through the loss of a loved one would find this book helpful or illuminating in any way"
and I cannot help but concur.
You are left with the feeling that if this were the writing of an ordinary widow with an ordinary husband it would never have been printed, and the reason that it was is because Didion and Dunne were respected on the literary scene and those around the literary scene would be interested in their story because of who they were. This genuinely does feel like something of limited interest to friends and family and not something which would resonate with widows and those grieving everywhere, a lesson in how to love, lose and live on.
Not a year of magical thinking, a year of banal repetitive thinking. But I still feel guilty for criticising it given that it's about a man dying etc.. 4/10
This book for me was a first. I read it and when I had finished I had utterly no idea how on earth to review it, because of the juxtaposition between the sensitive subject matter and my reaction to it. I had a sense that in criticising this book in any way, I was somehow a bad person, but as a review, I still have to be honest about what I thought of it.
The book is Didion's account of the first year following her husbands death, after he suffers a heart attack at home the day before New Years Eve. Throughout the following year their daughter Quintana suffers several episodes of ill health, and in fact also died shortly before the books' publication, though Didion chose not to update her manuscript to reflect this.
Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne were both writers and so I guess I expected something special here, I at least expected her thinking to be magical given the title, her words on the experience of grief to be moving and perhaps inspiring. But...........
It's cold. The whole book, it's very remote and detached. It's short, and repetitive, filled with quotes from other people's work on the nature of grief and lines from other people's poems, which if removed would leave only anecdotes that would be of interest to family members and the same stories repeated more than once.
It is like a collection of jumbled extracts from a diary, there is no cohesive narrative, and it is not what I expected: an insightful poetic reflection on the nature of death and loss, more a list of facts, an essay. It is much more essay than memoir.
It feels terrible to say that a book by a woman about the death of her husband is a bad book, but it is, and she even comes across badly as a person, showing off her contacts and lifestyle. At some point she writes that having when she read the memoir of D.H Lawrence's widow she felt she was morbid and self pitying, and you certainly can't accuse Didion of that.She doesn't even seem to experience the known stages of grief.
When thinking about how I would review this book I found a review on Amazon by A.Ross which said
"No doubt I am being churlish to some degree for criticizing Didion's portrayal of her experience. It's her life, her tragedy, and she certainly has every right to represent it however she would like to. However, placing it in the commercial realm makes it subject to comment, and my own feeling is that its simply not a very good book. That said, there are glimpses here and there of sharp writing and analysis which makes me think I might like one of her past collections of essays. Still, I can't imagine anyone going through the loss of a loved one would find this book helpful or illuminating in any way"
and I cannot help but concur.
You are left with the feeling that if this were the writing of an ordinary widow with an ordinary husband it would never have been printed, and the reason that it was is because Didion and Dunne were respected on the literary scene and those around the literary scene would be interested in their story because of who they were. This genuinely does feel like something of limited interest to friends and family and not something which would resonate with widows and those grieving everywhere, a lesson in how to love, lose and live on.
Not a year of magical thinking, a year of banal repetitive thinking. But I still feel guilty for criticising it given that it's about a man dying etc.. 4/10
Sunday, 1 May 2011
Book #28 The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw
The Girl With Glass Feet
So welcome to the first book of May, on the first day of May. I'm sort of glad that this book came along as I had considered that I was giving largely positive reviews to most things I read. A real reviewer for say a broadsheet sort of gets what they're given in terms of books to review, I however am choosing mine. It stands to reason that the books I'm choosing, are getting picked because I think I may like them. Therefore I think it sort of comes as a refreshing change in terms of my blog that I didn't like this much.
It was shortlisted for the Costa in 2009, and Amazon had been foisting it at me in 'Recommended For You' I think based on the fact that I had bought 'The Help' and I was looking for a 'light' book. The Guardian described it as 'Magical'. I do not concur.
It's a magical realism tale, an impossible event couched in real world parameters. Ida Maclaird returns to St Hauda's Land, a fictionalised island I took to be intended as similar to the Scottish Hebrides. Her feet have begun to turn to glass and she seeks to discover a strange man she encountered on a previous visit whom she hopes will help her.
The other main character is Midas Crook, an isolated photographer who begins a friendship with Ida.
The allusion here is obvious, in Greek Mythology Midas turned all he touched to gold, our Midas has a problem with touch and is afraid to touch Ida, not merely in case she may turn to glass. Despite being a rather original idea, a modern twist on an ancient myth, subtle, the allusion isn't.
The mystery of what causes her glass feet is never resolved which I found annoying, and I found many of the behaviours of all characters unrealistic. Why didn't she go to a real doctor? Why didn't she become a victim of a media circus? Why is nearly every character, particularly the male characters, isolated, socially stunted and emotionally disturbed, so they all become overly similar? It's a bit naff.
There is an overarching theme of frustrated love in which no character ultimately gets what they want and most love affairs reach a dead end for various reasons such as unrequited love, death and mental illness. In short, every love story in this book is tragic, morbid and a bit depressing. You aren't swept away on a tide of magical romance.
In all writing, however much you enjoy reading it you often find a sentence or two perhaps a paragraph that for you is a truth. A general truth or a personal truth but a human truth nonetheless.
I particularly enjoyed the following lines :
"It didn't take tragedy or war to derail a man. It took only a memory."
"As if you could terminate love abruptly because the one you loved signed papers with someone else in a church"
"Was there something embryonic between them or had she simply misunderstood him?"
I liked all these quotes and felt the emotional reality of them. The first one particularly resonated with me as I consider myself someone who has experienced the phenomenon of being "derailed by a memory" but had never thought of it in exactly those words before. I liked the phrase.
In spite of a few nice lines however, I did not essentially think much of this book, it was fairly short, and so a quick read which was a blessing considering. I think that this book would disappoint more readers than it would please, approaching expecting one thing and experiencing another. Perhaps I have a heart of stone, but I was not moved, despite assurances from Amazon reviews that I would be.
I would say that this book falls under the "don't read that" of the blog title, but I am going to add a point for the three quotes I liked. 5/10
So welcome to the first book of May, on the first day of May. I'm sort of glad that this book came along as I had considered that I was giving largely positive reviews to most things I read. A real reviewer for say a broadsheet sort of gets what they're given in terms of books to review, I however am choosing mine. It stands to reason that the books I'm choosing, are getting picked because I think I may like them. Therefore I think it sort of comes as a refreshing change in terms of my blog that I didn't like this much.
It was shortlisted for the Costa in 2009, and Amazon had been foisting it at me in 'Recommended For You' I think based on the fact that I had bought 'The Help' and I was looking for a 'light' book. The Guardian described it as 'Magical'. I do not concur.
It's a magical realism tale, an impossible event couched in real world parameters. Ida Maclaird returns to St Hauda's Land, a fictionalised island I took to be intended as similar to the Scottish Hebrides. Her feet have begun to turn to glass and she seeks to discover a strange man she encountered on a previous visit whom she hopes will help her.
The other main character is Midas Crook, an isolated photographer who begins a friendship with Ida.
The allusion here is obvious, in Greek Mythology Midas turned all he touched to gold, our Midas has a problem with touch and is afraid to touch Ida, not merely in case she may turn to glass. Despite being a rather original idea, a modern twist on an ancient myth, subtle, the allusion isn't.
The mystery of what causes her glass feet is never resolved which I found annoying, and I found many of the behaviours of all characters unrealistic. Why didn't she go to a real doctor? Why didn't she become a victim of a media circus? Why is nearly every character, particularly the male characters, isolated, socially stunted and emotionally disturbed, so they all become overly similar? It's a bit naff.
There is an overarching theme of frustrated love in which no character ultimately gets what they want and most love affairs reach a dead end for various reasons such as unrequited love, death and mental illness. In short, every love story in this book is tragic, morbid and a bit depressing. You aren't swept away on a tide of magical romance.
In all writing, however much you enjoy reading it you often find a sentence or two perhaps a paragraph that for you is a truth. A general truth or a personal truth but a human truth nonetheless.
I particularly enjoyed the following lines :
"It didn't take tragedy or war to derail a man. It took only a memory."
"As if you could terminate love abruptly because the one you loved signed papers with someone else in a church"
"Was there something embryonic between them or had she simply misunderstood him?"
I liked all these quotes and felt the emotional reality of them. The first one particularly resonated with me as I consider myself someone who has experienced the phenomenon of being "derailed by a memory" but had never thought of it in exactly those words before. I liked the phrase.
In spite of a few nice lines however, I did not essentially think much of this book, it was fairly short, and so a quick read which was a blessing considering. I think that this book would disappoint more readers than it would please, approaching expecting one thing and experiencing another. Perhaps I have a heart of stone, but I was not moved, despite assurances from Amazon reviews that I would be.
I would say that this book falls under the "don't read that" of the blog title, but I am going to add a point for the three quotes I liked. 5/10
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Book #17 Joe Gould's Secret by Joseph Mitchell
Joe Gould's Secret
This book, a biography not a novel, was recommended by the writer Clare Allan at the same readers event I refer to in my last post. It is now out of print, but can be picked up for a penny plus postage on Amazon.
Mitchell, a writer comes across a homeless man in the Village in New York. Gould who would be described as a tramp or hobo in today's vernacular, is somewhat kindly and exotically described as a Bohemian, after the style of the artists and poets of the era. Gould himself is working on a book, an Oral History reflecting contemporary life in New York through the conversations of its inhabitants. He is celebrated by some of the greats of the day, for example E.E Cummings is a personal friend, but lives a very odd lifestyle subsisting on handouts, black coffee, cigarette butts, fried eggs and ketchup.
I was a little frustrated to discover there were two parts to this book, Joseph Mitchell's original profile for the New Yorker called 'Professor Sea Gull' and then 'Joe Gould's Secret' an expanded biography of Gould, but one which unfortunately and unbeknownst to me repeats some of the same anecdotes from the Professor Sea Gull section which I'd thought was the beginning of the book. I think its still important to read Professor Sea Gull, because the moment Joe Gould's Secret expands from follows the aftermath of the publication of that initial profile.
I had further problems with Joe Gould's Secret. I didn't much care for Gould himself, a man I found to be a conceited bombast, and I didn't much care for his biographer Mitchell either. Although I entirely understand the reasons why Mitchell got fed up with Gould and ultimately found him a nuisance; it must be remembered that Mitchell was the one who tracked Gould down, got involved in his world and used his story for professional gain, not once, but twice.
This book with both the profile and the biography is just 187 pages long, but I found myself page counting calculating how long I had left to go, which is to me, a REALLY BAD SIGN. Although, it's cover and inner page are littered with quotes praising it. Clearly the book has fans, so if you like stories about real life folk, you may like this. I'm afraid I didn't really. 5/10
This book, a biography not a novel, was recommended by the writer Clare Allan at the same readers event I refer to in my last post. It is now out of print, but can be picked up for a penny plus postage on Amazon.
Mitchell, a writer comes across a homeless man in the Village in New York. Gould who would be described as a tramp or hobo in today's vernacular, is somewhat kindly and exotically described as a Bohemian, after the style of the artists and poets of the era. Gould himself is working on a book, an Oral History reflecting contemporary life in New York through the conversations of its inhabitants. He is celebrated by some of the greats of the day, for example E.E Cummings is a personal friend, but lives a very odd lifestyle subsisting on handouts, black coffee, cigarette butts, fried eggs and ketchup.
I was a little frustrated to discover there were two parts to this book, Joseph Mitchell's original profile for the New Yorker called 'Professor Sea Gull' and then 'Joe Gould's Secret' an expanded biography of Gould, but one which unfortunately and unbeknownst to me repeats some of the same anecdotes from the Professor Sea Gull section which I'd thought was the beginning of the book. I think its still important to read Professor Sea Gull, because the moment Joe Gould's Secret expands from follows the aftermath of the publication of that initial profile.
I had further problems with Joe Gould's Secret. I didn't much care for Gould himself, a man I found to be a conceited bombast, and I didn't much care for his biographer Mitchell either. Although I entirely understand the reasons why Mitchell got fed up with Gould and ultimately found him a nuisance; it must be remembered that Mitchell was the one who tracked Gould down, got involved in his world and used his story for professional gain, not once, but twice.
This book with both the profile and the biography is just 187 pages long, but I found myself page counting calculating how long I had left to go, which is to me, a REALLY BAD SIGN. Although, it's cover and inner page are littered with quotes praising it. Clearly the book has fans, so if you like stories about real life folk, you may like this. I'm afraid I didn't really. 5/10
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