an English author visits California to discuss the adaptation of his novel and is rather appalled. such a trying experience. what have they done with an English author visits California to discuss the adaptation of his novel and is rather appalled. such a trying experience. what have they done with this place? and why is everyone so casual in their style of dress and in their mode of conversation? these Americans are simply absurd. but the brave little lord makes do. per this gentleman's journal: "We have trained the waiters in the dining-room not to give us iced water and our chauffeur not to ask us questions. There is here the exact opposite of the English custom by which the upper classes are expected to ask personal questions of the lower."* egads, this place sounds barbaric. but the English are justly famous for stiff upper lips, and so an Englishman must soldier on.
the author does find "a deep mine of literary gold in the cemetery of Forest Lawn and the work of the morticians" and proceeds to pen a satiric novel once he returns to the damp and chilly embrace of Mother England. the novel is competently written and scores some light points in its spoofery, particularly when its barbs are aimed at the community of English expats ensconced in Hollywood. the book's worth rises or falls on its reader's willingness to see all Americans as ugly or ignorant or perhaps both. as well as the ability of a reader to find amusement in the wacky suicide of its most sympathetic character, during the novel's closing. unfortunately, this provincial American found that plot twist to be rather tasteless and even worse, distinctly unfunny. this is an occasionally droll novel but also quite a cheap and shallow one. and such pat nihilism. one expects better of the sophisticated English upper crust! I assumed the least I could hope for from such a class-conscious subset of the human race would be... a little class. well, I suppose that is what I found: little class. and little humanity.
I had the day off today and thought, Why not read a romance novel? Why not read two of them? Why not read two romance novels that I figured would neveI had the day off today and thought, Why not read a romance novel? Why not read two of them? Why not read two romance novels that I figured would never be published today? And so I read this one and I also read this one.
This is a romance novel about the relationship between a 19-year-old college student and a 13-year-old kid enrolled at a nearby boarding school. The younger kid is a sporty, self-assured little fellow who is very much into his clothes. The older fellow is an iconoclastic, aimless groomer lover of younger fellows. I mean, he actually self-identifies as a pederast. The two even have a frank conversation about pederasty, although they spend most of their time together taking tea, eating snacks, going on day trips, and taking artistic photos. There is quite a lot about college life and about boarding school life, the monotony and sometimes the fun of it. There is no explicit sex, which was a relief.
The prose is excellent and the dialogue is so convincing, so real. Angus Stewart has a superior ability in conveying longing and making everyday activities feel both banal and mysterious. The book is suffused with melancholy and yet feels light, even casual. After an accident that pulls them apart then brings them back together, the novel ends abruptly, shortly after the day of their planned departure to Europe (financed by the younger lad's understanding guardian!). But it does not end in despair. The relationship runs its course; their lives go on. Overall, I enjoyed this odd, uncomfortable novel. Actually saw myself in the younger kid.
Wild that this book was apparently a bestselling, critically acclaimed novel that was reviewed by serious mainstream journals and whose protagonist was not rejected offhand by those reviewers. Not sure how I feel about that. The late 60s were definitely a different era!
The cover of the e-book is unsurprisingly less erotic:
a bed of roses should have been sweet Felicity's place of repose, herself an English rose, one more delicate than that often hardy breed, but English through and through. a certain kind of English - to the manor born, as they say, but destined to live out her life in a country cottage. alas, poor Felicity! too good for this world, too fragile, too in love with the idea of love, with the idea of a world of beauty; too easily wounded by the thorny realities of both. farewell sweet Felicity, dainty flower, found dead in a muddy ditch.
a manor full of English flowers, last seen Armed with Madness, now finding themselves bereft of weapons altogether. poor little flowers! trapped in their little world.
what can a flower do against encroaching evil, the banality of it? how can a flower halt construction? the taking away of English countrysides, the slow push from callow, selfish men and women with small, small minds and a desire to take and take and take. how can a flower solve the mystery of even one woman's lonely death? a flower bobs with the breeze, turns to the sun, wilts from the lack of it... how can a flower protect its surroundings or save a person from their fate? they are trapped in their English dirt. such flowers can only hope for the best, huddling close to each other and dreaming their flowery little lives away.
four years passed before this strange and often lovely book followed its predecessor, Armed with Madness. that novel's cast of characters has been trimmed, all the better to place in this glassy narrow vessel. Mary Butts' relationship to her characters has changed as well: what were once a flock of chattering, untrustworthy birds have become transformed: those that remain are as perfect flowers in a perfect English garden, frail and exquisite, symbols of all that is good and kind. and yet their scent is not an overly intense one, nor cloying, their goodness and kindness wispy and ineffective but still a pleasure to experience. it is as if all of that noisome thoughtlessness and backstabbing, their preening and posing, were but a stage in their development, a brief stop along their way to adulthood. I far prefer these winsome, sheltered flowers to those troublesome birds.
poor Mary Butts, to the manor born, a writer of prickly talent, a lover of men and women, friend to Jean Cocteau and Ezra Pound, acolyte of Aleister Crowley, a modernist of sublime but wayward talent, now forlornly obscure.
a repulsive obsession with The Question of the Jew, creeping quietly through her story, delicately broached at first, a comment here and there, a slight slight, and then becoming increasingly bold, the Jews a symbol to Butts of all that is coarse and grasping in the world, her anti-Semitism unfolding like a malicious flower of evil. best to stamp out such poisonous blossoms! alas, Mary Butts, such a rare mind and yet one held back by its own smallness, the toxic quality of her prejudice decaying the beauty of her talent.
but talent will out and Mary's talent blooms beautifully from this book, despite the rancid garbage smell wafting from her moronic malice towards the Jewish kind. her delightfully off-kilter way with words, the love of country and cottage, her sharp and peppery dialogue, the palpable distaste for crudity and unkindness, her skittish narrative perfectly matching her high-strung characters, the sentimental but never mawkish love of England. her tenderness when revealing the inner lives of her favorites and the melancholy ruminations of those creations, full of wonder at how little they truly know. the halting, flowing rhythm of her prose. and, as with Armed with Madness, an ending replete with shocking but coolly described violence, coming from a minor character in the preceding work, now a central one in this novel. cruel and careful Boris, an outlier among these flimsy flowers! his violence was quite a refreshing tonic, an exciting exclamation point at the end of a long and winding sentence.
poor Boris, a Russian exile, trapped beyond his means in a bed of English roses, an amoral young man hardened by his life, once a delicate flower himself before the White Russians were driven out by the Red. he is a far more interesting interloper than the American abroad of the first novel. Mary Butts is at her best when spending time with this amusing, brooding, unpredictable, nakedly vulnerable, coldly ambitious, hungry, greedy fellow. the mystery of poor Felicity Taverner's death may never truly be solved, but sweet, heartless Boris will exact his revenge nonetheless.
(view spoiler)[
this is a repost of an old review. in their infinite wisdom, the powers that be here at Goodreads nuked the original review, due to a complaint from a copyright holder of one of the images (found by me on the internet). of course Goodreads staff could have told me which image was a problem and I could have resolved the issue within seconds by removing that image... alas, GR staff apparently didn't have the time for such an interaction, and so the prior review and all of its comments are now gone with the wind. during an unamusing conversation with Goodreads, they let me know which image was the cause of the issue. and so the review above no longer contains the offending image of a daisy spiral that so inflamed the flower-like holder of that image's copyright. (hide spoiler)]...more
the author wrote a book about a detective in San Francisco, a dreaming detective who wishes himself away to Babylon, again and again. again and again the author wrote a book about a detective in San Francisco, a dreaming detective who wishes himself away to Babylon, again and again. again and again in Babylon, he misses his stop and his block and his appointments and the baseball and the whole point of the case he's on. he keeps dreaming of Babylon, dream dream dream, all he does is dream, this soft-boiled detective... this author too. is he writing a book for himself only? for his friends only? for his dreams only? is this his dream of a gumshoe and a dame and some shady characters? I wanted to like this book, so I did. sorta. but it was a bit of a chore to read you, book, like listening to someone recount their dream, I'm glad you were a short dream. a dream about a detective, a dame, a body or two, and mysteries that don't get solved because mysteries never get solved in your dreams. kind of a depressing dream but maybe the dreamer didn't realize that, too busy dreaming.
this part made me smile:
"Ohhhhhhh!" the butler moaned up from the floor.
"You didn't believe me," I said to Nana-dirat. "You said that the butler couldn't have done it, but I knew better and now the swine will pay for his crimes."
I gave him a good kick in the stomach. This caused him to stop concentrating on the pain in his arm and start thinking about his stomach.
Not only was I the most famous detective in Babylon but I was also the most hard-boiled just like a rock. I had no use for lawbreakers and could be very brutal with them.
"Darling," Nana-dirat said. "You're so wonderful, but did you have to kick him in the somach?"
"Yes," I said.
Nana-dirat threw her arms around me and pressed her beautiful body up close to mine. Then she looked up into my cold steel eyes and smiled. "Oh, well," she said. "Nobody's perfect, you big lug."
they were like statues in a garden, the governess realized, frozen figures in an Eden out of time. a place that would soon become very different, verythey were like statues in a garden, the governess realized, frozen figures in an Eden out of time. a place that would soon become very different, very quickly: England before The Great War that changed everything for everyone on that island, including these aristocrats playing "statues in a garden," racing around, laughing, flirting, plotting, and then freezing in a game pose, renaming themselves Temperance and Prudence and Nature - all the things that they were not.
Colegate gets into the heads of these often pretty and always silly creatures, almost all of whom turn out to have rich, nuanced inner selves. don't we all, aristocrat and commoner alike. like the narrator, I often found myself entranced by their predictable but still startling ways. the author is, for the most part, a genius with characterization. I came to understand these at first off-putting but eventually fascinating people. especially the dragon of a grandmother, wandering in the garden at night, thinking of nature, change, and death. Colegate is a seasoned hand with prose and with tone: a lacey style threaded with irony; distance; a sadness in the air, a kind of gathering storm.
one deep flaw, but not quite a fatal one: the wayward adopted son. the author clearly loathed this miserable, vindictive, entirely toxic young man. he's everything that could be wrong in a person born privilege-adjacent. it's unfortunate that nearly all of the storylines centered this repulsive, shallowly-depicted villain. I wanted more depth to his characterization, the story needed it as well. even monsters are not monsters to themselves. when they look in the mirror, such monsters see another human being.
the book is a smooth operator, just like its cool cat of a protagonist, the double agent known as Eberlin. pacing is casual, not in a hurry. the writithe book is a smooth operator, just like its cool cat of a protagonist, the double agent known as Eberlin. pacing is casual, not in a hurry. the writing is proficient on a technical level, carefully descriptive, never effusive, steeped in irony and sometimes disdain, all shades of autumnal brown and wintry blue. but the book is not to be trusted. be careful of it, it has an agenda despite its studied nonchalance. the reader will find rapport with its beyond stylish, easily bored, yet surprisingly empathetic hero, perhaps glossing over the fact that he's also a Soviet assassin with at least two kills on his resume, probably many more. it's easy to sympathize with him, he's humane in his way, and he looks like a saint when comparing him to his psychopathic colleague, a sadistically misogynist James Bond type. you may forget that your sympathies shouldn't lie with a duplicitous killer, but the book hasn't. man that ending, how deflating. I respected the book but didn't love it, not at all. like with most smooth operators, I appreciated the technique, the finesse, the subtlety. but also like most smooth operators, it kinda gave me the creeps and it definitely left me cold....more
Let's go back in time with the esteemed Mary Renault... back to Ancient Greece! Where people thought and battles were fought and women were seldom seeLet's go back in time with the esteemed Mary Renault... back to Ancient Greece! Where people thought and battles were fought and women were seldom seen and men were busy being gay with each other. Renault provides an amiable and sympathetic protagonist, the actor Nikeratos, witness to the palace intrigues of Syracuse in Sicily, acquaintance to lord of philosophy Plato and austere, stoical Dion and wretched idiot King Dionysios the Younger. Although much of the book details Nikeratos' day to day life moving up the ranks of tragic actors, as he travels through various nation-states of ancient Greece and Sicily, those anecdotes are more the context provided than the actual purpose of the story.
This is a novel about ideas and conversation and whether art should reflect baseness or should aim higher and whether philosophy should impact government and what makes a good ruler. It is like Renault wrote this while reflecting upon and then mourning the lack of true intelligence (let alone dignity) in world leaders. Her prose is deliberate, sure of its effects, and subtle with the many points she is making. Renault telegraphs nothing, which is particularly laudable given that this is based on historical figures. Her descriptive powers are also excellent - it was very easy to imagine myself in this setting. Those powers were given a showcase near the end, during the sole sequence where lives may be in danger. Her description of the slaughter of Syracusians at the hands of mercenaries while our hero and a friend think outside of the box in saving themselves was a riveting, tense, and surprising sequence.
If there is a flaw in this otherwise splendid experience, it is the lack of women. That is, outside of our hero's friend Axiothea, a fantastic character: a student of Plato who disguised herself as a lad to enter his school and a person who throws herself into danger to support a good cause. In one amusing scene, Nikeratos is chagrined to learn that the fetching young man he's been drooling over is actually, in the modern parlance, a sporty lesbian. (Been there.) Besides Axiothea, women are basically off-page, which is a disappointment because that mainly leaves out anything to do with the interesting and tragic Arete - Dion's wife and Dionysus II's sister, subject of a painting by Perrin. Still, the book is excellent. A rich experience, carefully paced, deeply characterized, and dense with ideas. Full of philosophy to consider, ways of life to imagine, ways of being to ponder, and dudes who spend their free time banging each other....more
late 60s San Francisco is something else and Lee Mellon is something else again.
sorta close by are little junky jerry-built huts in Big Sur. and froglate 60s San Francisco is something else and Lee Mellon is something else again.
sorta close by are little junky jerry-built huts in Big Sur. and frogs and a gator and weed and hippie chicks along for the ride and that's where our narrator and his redneck friend Lee Mellon eventually land.
Lee Mellon came to San Francisco, failing at life there, but what does failing even mean, really. failing is just a state of mind and no one in this book is failing except maybe that businessman, but no, he's just going sideways, into derangement, maybe that's the best place for him to be.
so anyway, Lee Mellon moves out of San Francisco to Oakland where he fails there again but it's not really failing it's living life the Lee Mellon way, so he up and moves to Big Sur and his friend our narrator soon joins him there. we the readers are just along for the ride, it's their ride all the way, it's a Brautigan ride, so you know that means clouds.
Lee Mellon, who cares if your supposed honorable relative the Confederate General wasn't really real, don't be sad Lee Mellon. good thing Lee Mellon doesn't know how to be sad, at least not for long.
this is a short book but long on whimsy, long on what they call the stream of the conscious or the sharing of thoughts or just lollygagging about, shooting the shit, drinking and smoking weed with people you feel comfortable with. it's short on sadness and it's short on pretension and it's short on not doing what you want to do with your life because it's your life, you should go on and live it, be a cloud. the book is written like Brautigan rolled out of bed, lit up a joint, and half-asleep he dreamed up a book and then all of a sudden it was right there in front of him.
everyone needs a friend like Lee Mellon, it's not like he's a good guy but he's a good friend and he's real interesting and this book is a lot like Lee Mellon. I wonder if he was real, if so I hope everything turned out alright for him. I have a Lee Mellon in my life, his name is Steve, things turned out alright for him, family and fishing trips and everything, good job Steve! we really need to catch up one of these days....more
boy falls for older boy while at boarding school. is it a crush, true love, or the relationship that will come to define him? was he "in the making" aboy falls for older boy while at boarding school. is it a crush, true love, or the relationship that will come to define him? was he "in the making" and then, at the end, finally made, set, his trajectory predetermined? the idea is a dark one.
the imagery is intense; the prose is like honey. very easy to get lost in all of the beautiful sentences, the good kind of lost. a Faulkner kind of lost, with a Jamesian style. the characterization of this boy is so deep and rich, the story must include autobiographical elements.
the first chapter, exploring his world as an often solitary child lost in his thoughts and imagination, finding symbolic meaning in the world around him, was so beautifully written, sensual in its details, and resonant to me on a personal level. later chapters as he finds himself adapting - surprisingly successfully - to his new world outside of his home, at boarding school, were equally resonant. I really saw a lot of myself in this kid. the longest and most important chapter recounts a Halloween party and the moments when the two boys are at their closest. this is one of the most incredibly written sequences I've ever read in any book. layers of meaning meets layers of imagery meets layers of deep characterization. *swoon*
the last few chapters portray the coming apart of their relationship, the boy's fall from grace with the school, his defiance, and then his disinterest in engaging with anything at his school, now that he recognizes this part of his life is over. and yet the last chapter as he leaves this school makes clear his life is far from over. given the time in which this book was written, I really appreciated the assumption that his life will go on, very much changed, but it will still go on, and the boy will continue living in this strange world.
he is no longer in the making, no longer a formless thing reacting to the world, an inchoate shape. he has been made, he has become fully formed: the "patterns of his life were achieved." this is the last sentence; it is a tragedy but also a reality. many of our adult selves were made in our childhood. my wish for this child is that he could move beyond those patterns. but it does not appear as if G.F. Green thought that could be possible.
the psychologist Kazimierz Dąbrowski wrote of "positive disintegration" which is a theory about personality development. it is a potential "third stage" that comes for some, after nature and nurture. a person who strives to understand themselves and the world around them can embrace a temporary form of personality disintegration, where they let go of what they know and what they think they know. if they are truly capable of redevelopment - mainly due to possessing a characteristic that Dąbrowski calls "overexcitability" - then they are open to new inputs, new ideas, new ways of thinking and being. and so a person can remake themselves, they can develop a conscience and an outlook that does not stay chained to nature or nurture. the boy of In the Making experiences this disintegration. it made for the most compelling moments in this book and is why this was a uniquely affecting experience for me.
unfortunately for the boy, his positive disintegration is not a temporary thing. which according to Dąbrowski, is what is key to the development of an open, curious, flexible personality. the disintegration must be temporary and it must be not lead to fixity. the boy's emotionally overexcitable persona indeed disintegrates during this period of openness, but he does not come back from it; all that is left behind is a yearning but essentially loveless pattern that will now be repeated. rather than a new understanding of how life need not be a fixed line. this was instructive and also deeply sad. as are all such fixed states.
the introduction is by Peter Parker. it is a brief but still excellent overview of the author's immaculate prose style, his troubled life, and the writing of this book. it does not explore his suicide in 1977, at the age of 66. it is clear to me, from what I know of his life, that George Frederick Green did not escape the patterns that controlled his own trajectory....more
The Love Pavilion was built by a Chinese merchant in Malaya. Within the Love Pavilion is an antechamber decorated with friezes of dragons, fish, and bThe Love Pavilion was built by a Chinese merchant in Malaya. Within the Love Pavilion is an antechamber decorated with friezes of dragons, fish, and birds; beyond that room is the Golden Room, then the Jade Room, and finally the Scarlet Room. When the Japanese invaded Malaya during World War II, and held it for 3 years, the Chinese merchant was beheaded. His head was displayed on a pole for all of the villagers to see and so be instructed on the new order. During those 3 years of occupation, depending on the whims of the occupying soldiers, villagers were marched to the courtyard of the Love Pavilion and made to kneel there. 42 villagers eventually lost their heads in front of the Chinese merchant's pavilion. The courtyard became known as the Garden of Madness.
The Love Pavilion was written by one of my favorite authors, Paul Scott. It displays many of the virtues that I loved in his Raj Quartet: dense, sometimes hallucinatory prose full of vivid description - of landscapes, places, bodies, faces; characterization that goes deep, so that a certain understanding of his characters is reached, while still leaving them ambiguous, capable of terrible deeds; themes that are concerned with masculinity and femininity and gender roles, the shifting roles of colonizer and colonized, and the metaphysical: what is the nature of the mind, what is the purpose of existence. You know, light stuff.
The Love Pavilion is about Mysticism versus Rationalism. Mysticism is embodied by Brian Saxby, an adventurer always reaching for higher places, less-traveled paths, ways of existence not bound to tradition or by society. Saxby is first mentor to our protagonist, then symbolic father figure, then a person to be hunted; Saxby eventually becomes something very dangerous, murderous, a threat to those who would move on past the now-ended war, an animal in the jungle that must be put down. Rationalism is embodied by every other male character with a speaking part, not including our protagonist. Rationalism is shown at its weakest, most pathetically sentimental, most understandable, in Major Reid: a Good Man, a man's man, father to his troop of soldier boys, guardian of masculine codes, tormented by an inchoate guilt over his ambiguous past failures, a leader who views the slaughter of supposed enemies as a pleasant daytime activity, character-building for his young lions, much like the enjoyment he provides them in the evening: the whores who shall visit and pamper them in the Love Pavilion.
The Love Pavilion's protagonist is Tom Brent, who must find his own way between these two paths. He is a compelling, frustrating, wounded, relatable character. Although perhaps most relatable to... men. This is a man's book in that all women are viewed through a certain lens of condescension by its characters. They exist to please and sometimes irritate men. A man's needs include sexual gratification and it is expected that the Malay women shall provide this on demand. Even relatable Tom feels this, at one point asking his boss Greystone - another Rational Man - if he could have a girl assigned to him during his time working the land, a village girl who can cook his meals, handle his laundry, service his sexual needs at end of day. He asks this as casually as a person would ask for a towel to dry themselves after bathing. Only one man in this novel does not think of women this way: the murderous mystic, Brian Saxby.
The Love Pavilion's love interest is Teena Chang, biracial, mistress of the whores of the Love Pavilion, a whore herself. Teena has two faces that she displays to signal how she will be engaging with her clients: her European mood and her Chinese mood. These faces, these moods, are alternately Rational and Mystical. She puts them on and takes them off as she sees fit. Teena, unlike each and every other male character, recognizes that such moods, such ideas, should not be the sole attribute of any person, they should be adopted as needed, and discarded in the same way. Teena's world is a small one, purposely so; a world that is not concerned with the loftier goals of Mysticism and Rationalism. Of course, Tom falls quickly and deeply in love with Teena. Of course, Teena must die. There is only room for binary thinking in the great big world of men, the men who would create and use the Love Pavilion as they see fit....more
Alberto Moravia was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation and existentialism. Thank yAlberto Moravia was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation and existentialism. Thank you, Wikipedia, for providing that handy summary. The entry on this author continues by saying that Moravia has a "factual, cold, precise style"... uh, you got that one quite wrong, my good friend. The style displayed in this book is breezy, chatty, casual. Stories are told by very human and often relatable voices, despite the multiplicity of perspectives on display. Those perspectives come from lower and working class youth, mainly boys, predators and prey and often both. The book is deceptively fun and easy going down, specifically due to its semi-comic and rather bright tone, despite the many degradations and predations on display. It is that merry tone that I blame for encouraging me to read over 100 pages of this well-written but mainly nihilistic bullshit.
I cannot stand misery porn! Especially when written by such a condescending author. My buddy Wikipedia also notes that the author came from a wealthy, middle-class family, and oh boy that shows up in spades. This is the kind of book that looks at all human beings from a certain class as bugs living in a gutter. No joy, no love, certainly no satisfaction, life is all a big nothing, nada, a void that is looked into and that looks back, laughing at your so-called dreams. It is intended to illustrate something "important" about the proletariat and about the itinerant but all it illustrates is Moravia's complete inability to recognize that happiness and kindness can exist in even the most diminished of lives and his refusal to illustrate that such human lives have more dimensions than his basic two. If you are a middle-class sort who wants to study the world of human insects so that you can feel good about feeling sorry for their pathetic so-called lives, then this is your book. Enjoy!...more
a pleasant and charming trifle, but since I consider little luxuries to be little necessities, spice as important as salt, it is perhaps better to cala pleasant and charming trifle, but since I consider little luxuries to be little necessities, spice as important as salt, it is perhaps better to call this a treasure rather than a trifle. the prose is airy and nonchalant, the narrative unspools in stops & starts like memories, imperfectly formed, and yet not a word is out of place, all of the trivial conversations and amusing anecdotes fit perfectly together. the kind of book that feels like it was a breeze to write but it must have taken no small skill to place all of the parts together just so. little of consequence appears to happen, except of course birth, love, and death. ironic wit and an effortless ease with words go a long way for me, and as with two of my favorite writers, Jack Vance and Georgette Heyer, such things came naturally for Nancy Mitford. what a treat it must have been to have conversations with this author. this belongs on the shelf between The Camomile Lawn and her friend Henry Green's Party Going. it has much of the telling not showing of Mary Wesley's Lawn and rather less of that book's soulfulness and depth; it shares the social milieu of Green's Party but lacks the acidic bite of his misanthropy. the offhand storytelling style of the novel made the deaths at the end - mentioned matter-of-factly and almost in passing - such a startling, shattering experience that those two short paragraphs had me shedding tears from out of nowhere. and they boosted this charmer from a worthy 3 stars to a memorable 4 stars. this is a nimble, amusing, eventually resonant lark of a book....more
Last night, when talking to God again, I posed a question atypical for its lack of fawning, begging, or pleading: "Why do You make such a j
[image]
Last night, when talking to God again, I posed a question atypical for its lack of fawning, begging, or pleading: "Why do You make such a joke of us?" The ceiling throbbed dimly above me, all shadows and cobwebs and barely seen whiteness, only slightly illuminated by the yellow of the streetlights staring blearily through the dusty windows, the tableau of small little shapes embedded in the ceiling could hardly be seen let alone differentiated, these misshapen pimples of paint frozen like a depressed and lackadaisical swarm of sleepy insects covered in cream, or cloud, or whatever color the paint was once named, the little bumps of stucco like small, barely sentient beings whose movements were so slow they didn't appear to move at all. A fitting vision, or at least it felt that way in the moment. Sensing a reply would not soon be forthcoming - so like Him, I thought, resigned - I continued on: "You sprayed Yourself upon this fertile egg Earth and so we were born from this heavenly shower, if that's not too salty a metaphor for You, we motile things moving hither and thither, created by the divine yet living our lives of mundanity, betraying each other, projecting our needs onto each other, hating each other while calling that hate love, hating each other while calling that hate change, hating each other while calling that hate law or freedom or safety, injecting ourselves into each other like You did to this poor Earth who never asked for such parasites infesting her body, infecting each other with ourselves, replicating more of us as is our imperative, or perhaps Your imperative, an imperative to always keep breeding and hating and breeding some more... You created us, but why didn't You just leave us after that? Why stay to laugh, to mock, to create a long-winded joke for which the punch line is not just a shaggy dog, it is a hairy ape, the ape that is man that will never get that it is not just the butt of the joke, it is the head and heart and genitals of the joke as well. Why Lord why? Why not just hit it and quit it, why stay to laugh at what You wrought?" After finishing my appeal, I realized that God had fallen fast asleep while I had rambled on. As He is often prone to do during my more lachrymose musings, sigh. God knows I can sometimes be a bore.
I turned to the typically attractive faun asleep at my side and roused him with an urgent shake. At least he would hear me if He would not. As he was fairly used to this behavior, he woke slowly but with a minimum of grumblings. "What now?" he asked with only faint surliness and the beginnings of an erection. "I have an important question to pose," I said self-importantly. "And put that away please. The question is this: Our existence is depressingly ephemeral as is, must it be made a joke of? Our souls are fragile as is, must they be so aggressively manhandled by the State, by the Media, by the Community, by Old Men, most of all by our oh so humorous Creator and His private little jokes at our expense?" My companion smiled sleepily, his surliness but not his erection now gone, and said: "Oh, so you think we have souls? That's adorable." This was neither the reaction I expected nor the path I wanted to walk on, and certainly not at this late an hour. The fact of our soul's existence must be sacrosanct, sacred, or at least an ironic given, otherwise these jokes of God lack even humor to recommend them. And so I responded: "Of course! Don't you think we have souls? Are you such a godless pagan that your lack of faith has rendered you unable to acknowledge the intangible soul within this all-too tangible bag of skin, bones, hair, muscles, blood, semen, and brain matter?" He replied, horned and horny,
"Ano, máme duši. Ale skládá se z mnoha malých robotů."
And so I experienced another upsetting joke. If you like such jokes, you should read The Farewell Waltz. It is full of them! Eight characters in a comic roundelay, among them a doctor injecting his sperm into hapless women, a little God himself, creating a whole world of people who look like him and think like him, a whole world like him and the seven other characters who live in this angry joke of a novel, a whole world of characters fucking each other and fucking each other over, sometimes dying, sometimes loving, sometimes fooling each other, always fooling themselves, a whole world of insects except of course insects don't do such things.
So William Faulkner made Tennessee Williams his woman who then gave birth to James Purdy. An unusual author and this is an unusual book. The twisted rSo William Faulkner made Tennessee Williams his woman who then gave birth to James Purdy. An unusual author and this is an unusual book. The twisted repressed southern gothic psychodrama is sliced thick, y'all. Normally, I'd be very let's say "excited" about this.
Insane camp that doesn't know it's camp is sometimes the best kind of camp, but sometimes it's not because it can get kinda tiring, you know? The tongue is not in cheek, it has been swallowed. I'm choking on the not-camp because it is a huge pill to swallow without any alleviating humor to make it wash down easier. This book doesn't understand that layers of irony are required to make this bearable. This mother doesn't seem to realize that she's basically a drag queen, a diva of the old camp school, her writer writes her like she's Joan Crawford and Bette Davis rolled into one, all the suffering and the sadism do not a character make, it makes Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. These brothers don't seem to realize that they desperately want to fuck each other, they are either grovelling or lording it over each other in every other scene, muscles rippling and eyes blazing and eyes going blind and so much begging and bodies bleeding and spurting out all sorts of fluids; but they'll never admit attraction, that's a secret the author is keeping to himself and maybe from himself. This father gets the book's title - a mispronunciation of "magnate" by ignorant townfolk - but he gets little else; despite his supposed centralization in the plot, the author's just not too interested in him or his life.
Indeed his death is where the book starts, before the extended flashback that is the bulk of the book takes place. But the lonely magnate/solitary maggot was never where the book's interest lies. Nor is it about that so-called mother. The book is about those monstrous, tormented brothers: a selfish silent screen star, an ostentatiously manly horse-tender, and the moony little bottom who is vapidly obsessed with them both. This is a book that is desperately trying to say something about loneliness and emptiness and family and belonging and I want to know what love is, I want you to show me. But sadly, this book does not appear to actually understand the genus & species homo sapien, let alone the homo sexual. Because it does not recognize queerness; it prefers its closet and writing about so-called straight people. So strange that the book feels so closeted - Purdy was known at the time for writing about gay lives! Maybe trying to write about straight people broke him. The only true enjoyment to be had is the appeal of Purdy's stylized, often hallucinatory prose - wonderfully overripe, on the verge of rotten. House of the Solitary Maggot is bizarre and brazen; sadly, it is also all kinds of terrible to the taste. It wants to be a serious novel, oh so serious and tragic. But instead it is a book where a maid whines about the semen-coated boxers she's to wash and an outraged mother takes those boxers and rubs them in the maid's face because how dare she. It is a book where a character gets their head blown to bits and another character promptly scoops up the eyeballs and eats them because apparently that's what grief looks like.
The problem with the book is that these three siblings aren't parasites, they're trash. Well, that's not exact. Two of them are garbage people, the thThe problem with the book is that these three siblings aren't parasites, they're trash. Well, that's not exact. Two of them are garbage people, the third is a self-denying loser. Parasites only take and these three actually do a lot of giving. Two are symbiotes: a brother who is a writer of catchy tunes and a sister who is a famous stage actress, creepily dependent on each other, both literally giving the world pleasure with their talents. A third sacrifices her entire life to serve others, especially her father. I suppose du Maurier was trying to say that superficial rich artists full of angsty white fragility who don't have healthy relationships with other people are... parasites? Um, no. So many other words can be used. To be kind, I will just say that these three are Sad with a capital S, but certainly not parasitical. Anyway, for such an exact and exacting author, the misuse of that word is strange and disappointing.
Fortunately the book itself is a mainly absorbing experience. du Maurier is a superb writer: her characters dense with inchoate ambitions and inarticulated emotions, her prose all the shades of gray but somehow still entirely vivid, scenes carefully set and dripping with atmosphere and detail, small tragedies and big moments all delivered with subtlety and finesse, and she serves up the whole bitter feast with such marvelously dry detachment. In general, du Maurier does leave me cold - possibly because she has ice running through her veins - but her skills are entirely admirable.
For much of the novel, the narrative switches back and forth in time, portraying the present when the siblings are shattered and ruminative after being called parasites by the husband of one (c'mon, get a grip everyone) and also portraying the past, mainly their lives as the children of two fey artists with rampant egos, growing up all around the world in various luxurious hotels and rentals. These narratives are in alternating chapters. Honestly, I found myself rushing through the chapters set in the present because they were so full of navel-gazing, while the chapters set in the past are dazzlingly vital. What lives these kids had!
Although du Maurier is far from generous with her characters, she paints a picture of a lifestyle that is both completely alien to me and completely real. Their hopes and dreams, the whirlwind of locations, the eccentric characters coming in and out of their world, their relationships with each other and their parents - I wish the whole book was set in this enchanting past. Unfortunately, the more we stayed in the present, the more moralistic the book became, and so it also became rather stultifying. I'm not interested in the grown-up lives of an unloving mother, her brother the self-absorbed twit, and her sister the tedious doormat. That said, the most lively chapter occurs late, when these so-called parasites and their plus ones are invited to a weekend at a country manor, and turn the whole thing into a humiliating debacle for everyone. Old Money should never invite self-centered artistes over for the weekend, hopefully lesson learned. Stay in your lane, Old Money; those types will only mortify everyone's delicate sensibilities, including the staff.
synopsis: three rich kids live their lives and are sad about it....more
a boy can dream, and so he does. he dreams and dreams again. he dreams he is a young man of means, in France between the world wars, living a life of a boy can dream, and so he does. he dreams and dreams again. he dreams he is a young man of means, in France between the world wars, living a life of leisure, a frequent guest in the salon of a certain Frau Anders. ah, my mistake, that is no dream, that is his reality. this moneyed young gent does dream though: dreams of an older woman who wants to control him and who he wants to control, dreams of an older man in a sinister one-piece bathing suit who also wants to control, and debase, and to turn him into a puppet. he dreams these dreams again, and other dreams as well. he makes the interpretation of these dreams his life's trajectory. Question: what happens to a boy who builds his life around obeying his dreams' ambiguous dictates? Answer: the boy becomes nothing much, a hollow shell obsessed with his own navel mind. he thinks a lot. he talks a lot and he walks a lot. he makes friends and loses them. he takes his mistress Frau Anders abroad, and when her neediness bores him, he casually sells her into sexual slavery to some random merchant, where she will be raped, abused, and disfigured. the boy doesn't think on that too much: at least she's out of his life, and now he can go back to pursuing his dreams. spoiler: Frau Anders shall return, repeatedly.
this is a beautifully written, often haunting, always rigorously intellectual book. it left me utterly cold.
ironically, while I enjoy books with a dreamy flavor and I appreciate the occasional dreamscape, I often become very bored very quickly when hearing someone recount their dreams at length (unless that dream features me, of course). and so I became very bored very quickly throughout roughly half of this book - the important half. Sontag was obsessed with the psychology of dreams when she wrote this, and it shows. I am... less obsessed with such things.
ironically, while I am sometimes seen as a sort of intellectual by the people in my life, especially my family, I often become very bored very quickly when surrounded by genuine intellectuals. I remember a recent dinner party with some old friends. the party included me and the wife of another guest, both of us professionals at the top of our careers and reasonably intelligent, in our ways. the other guests were a high-powered trade lobbyist, an international union organizer, and the CEO of a company focusing on cutting edge science. three of the most intelligent people I know. the three of them yammered on tirelessly - about the responsibility of the individual to their society & government and the responsibility of government to the individual & society - in a way that was fascinating but also distancing. intense but also boring. the wife and I exchanged many pointed glances; our attempts to steer the conversation towards other topics consistently failed. The Benefactor reminded me of that endless conversation. it was excitingly intellectual and much of it flew over my head and much of it delved into topics in which I haven't the faintest interest.
I guess, in the end, I'm just not too interested in a boy's dreams. or at least this boy's dreams....more
Colonel: "What's with the untidiness of these supply lines? Is that garbage I see? The disorder-" Johnnie: "FUCK BEING TIDY IT'S EFFECTIVENESS synopsis
Colonel: "What's with the untidiness of these supply lines? Is that garbage I see? The disorder-" Johnnie: "FUCK BEING TIDY IT'S EFFECTIVENESS THAT COUNTS NOW GET OFFA MY BACK!"
Girlfriend: "Johnnie, this is our last time together, I'm so sad to leave, my heart is break-" Johnnie: "FUCK BEING SAD LET'S FUCK!"
The Troops: "We love you Johnnie Sahib, you see us as individuals, you respect us, we-" Johnnie: "FUCKIN 'A I LOVE YOU GUYS RIGHT BACK NOW LET'S PLAY SOME FUCKIN FOOTY!"
Major: "Tut tut Johnnie, please put on a shirt, this is a senior staff meet-" Johnnie: "FUCK WEARIN SHIRTS!"
Lieutenant: "Our part in the war effort is so successful, your men so dedicated to supporting it, how can I step in your shoes during your leave, can you give me some adv-" Johnnie: "FUCK THIS SO-CALLED WAR EFFORT, MEN FOLLOW MEN NOT NO DAMN WAR!"
Major: "We must be better organized, we must follow chain of command, be flexible, be more efficient-" Johnnie: "FUCK YOUR NEW RULES AND FUCK YOU!" [Pause] "NOW FUCKIN FIRE ME!"
★
review
only Paul Scott could turn what is essentially a non-dramatic study of leadership styles and value systems at work, and at war, into something completely riveting to me. this book gave me so much to think about in regards to my relationships with my staff and colleagues present and past, including the often difficult ones who automatically question authority, and with my boss, who I respect but who does not have the same values as me. so many insights here. this is a book of very little action, set as it is in a World War 2 supply outfit (in India) rather than on the frontlines or in command centers. it is a very thoughtful book with a lot of contemplation about why we do things and how we interact with each other and the ways that we work - and how our personalities determine our approach to work. the prose is wonderful, per usual for the author. the depth of characterization is entirely impressive. I love how Scott's mind works and I loved Johnnie and I loved this book....more
French dandy Philippe Julian was an illustrator, art historian, biographer, and occasional writer of fiction. His interests: the morbid, the grotesqueFrench dandy Philippe Julian was an illustrator, art historian, biographer, and occasional writer of fiction. His interests: the morbid, the grotesque, the ornate; homoeroticism, transvestism, sadomasochism; and above all, decadence. And thank you very much Wikipedia for letting me know about all of those sides of him. I would have just left it at "Philippe Julian was super perverted" if it weren't for my good buddy Wikipedia dropping some knowledge on me. And thank you very much Sketchbook for their review of this, which reminded me that I've had this squirreled away for a couple decades, unread. Anyway, it sounds like Julian was a man after my own heart. Although I have yet to mess with transvestism. One of these days...
So yeah this book is what one would call deliciously decadent. It's a dessert dish featured as an entree, followed by more dessert dishes, oh and they are all made of poison. A toxic confection. It is basically a series of stories told to a young Frenchman by a blind Scandinavian beggar in Cairo, recounting that beggar's former life as a bored student abroad who is willingly kidnapped and delivered into a very strange court existing on an Egyptian peninsula. And there he finds that the sex is plentiful (and free!), the days are hot and the nights are cool but um also pretty hot, the men are women, the women are men, the servants are enslaved, the children are for sale, the ruler is one of the last remaining survivors of the Russian aristocracy and her guests are various famous authors & aristocrats & assholes. Eventually, everyone's ridiculous ambitions combined with a ghastly but understandable uprising by those exiled from this court to some awful backyard will cause it all to end in flames, murder, atrocity, and an almost offhand blinding of our poor Nordic stud who should probably have kept his own ambitions in check and escaped long ago with one or more of his girlfriends and some filched royal jewels. Plus the novel features a highly intelligent baboon named Monsieur who is basically the only decent individual in the entire cast.
SPOILER sweet Monsieur survives!
I enjoyed it all well enough. What is it saying? Not much, just appreciate the slow decadent ride. You already know that really really really rich people are capable of doing some really really really fucked up things, and hey the same goes for the middle class people and the poor people as well. Doing really fucked up things to each other is surely a hallmark of the human race.
However I do wish the decadence of the story was matched by equally decadent prose. I kept imagining what someone like Angela Carter could have done with this. Swoon at the thought of all of that overripe prose put in service of such a diabolical narrative! But Julian is an unfortunately dry writer, probably due to his time spent as an historian and biographer. And I don't like my decadence to be served dry, I prefer it overly sauced....more
CHARACTER 1: I'm a clever young man who loves his beer, his whiskey, his best mate, and having boozy vacations with that best mate. La-Di-Da, Ob-La-Di,CHARACTER 1: I'm a clever young man who loves his beer, his whiskey, his best mate, and having boozy vacations with that best mate. La-Di-Da, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, life goes on. As I have nary a thing to do besides sing in the local church choir, and drink, I have taken to telling tall tales, much like my dad. I love to make things up and I love to pull a leg. I will make up a person that I supposedly know, just because, just to string along that bumbling old curate. My best mate and I will create this little old lady, let's make her an eccentric type, dog and parrot and cane and hip-bath et al, and she shall be a niece to a Duke. Together we will give her life.
CHARACTER 1: Who is this monster I have created, that has sprung from my mind like Athena from Zeus' brow? She has arrived at my home village, all of my made-up details now true to life. Alas, she comes to provide hassles and embarrassments; she has come as both my dearest friend and my nemesis. What an ordeal, and what shall all the villagers think. The mind is indeed a terrible thing to taste, I like not it's flavor. And I like not this creation. I think I must destroy the old dear.
CHARACTER 1: Like Frankenstein and his Monster, like any artist and their works, like Frank Baker and his characters, and mayhaps like the Lord and His creations ... I shower both love and anger upon my elderly child, Miss Hargreaves. I am both ruthless and sentimental: she is a cross upon me that will not be borne and yet she is the darling apple of my eye. I change her nature as I see fit; I bend reality as I see fit. I am gatekeeper and keymaster, I am alpha and omega, I am the God of this little life and I shall snuff it out as I please. If my ghost has become flesh, if my figment of imagination has become reality... then I will exorcise that figment, it shall be as a dream that evaporates upon waking.
Loading...
