Library of America

Edith Wharton, A journey

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According to Keirsey, Edith Wharton may have b...

Edith Wharton (Presumed Public Domain via Wikipedia)

I am a fan of Edith Wharton and have read around seven of her novels, some of which are part of my personal canon. However, I have only read a couple of her short stories, and she wrote quite a few of those too. In fact, she was a prolific writer. And so, when last week’s Library of America story turned out to be one of hers, I decided to read it.

“A journey” was written, according the brief introductory notes, in the 1890s when Wharton was in her late 20s to early 30s. It was written during the time when she was married – unhappily – to Edward Wharton, from whom she was eventually divorced in 1913. The notes say that three of the stories written during the 1890s explore marital misery, and that the journey in this story “becomes a metaphor for an unhappy marriage”.

That could be so, but let’s get to the story. It describes a train journey in which a young woman is accompanying her terminally ill husband back to their home in the East after having spent some time, under doctor’s orders, in Colorado. The story starts with:

As she lay in her berth, staring at the shadows overhead, the  rush of wheels was in her brain, driving her deeper and deeper into circles of wakeful lucidity. The sleeping car had sunk into its night silence. Through the wet window-pane she watched the sudden lights, the long stretches of hurrying blackness …

The next paragraph briefly chronicles their short marriage and the sudden disparity between them as his health collapses:

a year ago their pulses had beat to one robust measure; both had the same prodigal confidence in an exhaustless future. Now their energies no longer kept step …

And then here is the entire third paragraph:

When they married, she had such arrears of living to make up: her days had been as bare as the white-washed school-room where she forced innutritious facts upon reluctant children. His coming had broken in on the slumber of circumstance, widening the present till it became the encloser of remotest chances. But imperceptibly the horizon narrowed. Life had a grudge against her: she was never to be allowed to spread her wings.

Oh dear … methinks the note-makers at the Library of America are right. It’s not what is said so much as what is not said and how what is said is said. What is not said is anything about true love and empathy (though we are told in the fourth paragraph that “she still loved him of course”). In other words, there is no sense of the looming tragedy of the loss of a soul-mate. As for how it is all said, the language is heavy and gloomy. It’s clearly raining, and there are “shadows” and the “hurrying blackness” (a metaphor, presumably, for his coming death, as well as being a literal description of night). The paragraph describing his appearance in her life and their marriage is not exactly joyful either. The focus here is more on where she’d been, so the language is negative (“arrears”, “slumber”). And even the description of the possibilities opening up to her through marriage – “the encloser of remotest chances” – is not what you’d call expansive. No wonder she thinks life has a “grudge against her”. I would too.

The rest of the story is about a rather self-focused young woman. She goes through the motions of caring for her husband – and occasionally “warm gushes of pity [not “sympathy” or “love”, note!] swept away her instinctive resentment of his condition” – but her thoughts are all for herself. Here is her reaction to being in Colorado:

Nobody knew about her, or cared about her; there was no one to wonder at the good match she had made, or to envy the new dresses  …

This is early Wharton. The hallmarks of her writing style are here – the careful choice of words to convey meaning that may be opposite to what’s expected, the development of character through those words, the build up of atmosphere and tension through a well-sustained tone – but it doesn’t quite have the tightness and singularity of purpose of her later works. We don’t get to understand the young woman well enough to be able to respond to her on anything more than a superficial level. I suspect that Wharton would want us to extend her some sympathy but I think we are more likely to see her as a little pathetic, and we really know almost nothing about the husband (except that he had been “strong, active, gently masterful”) so our reaction to his predicament is more intellectual than emotional.

As the journey proceeds, our heroine is faced with a moral dilemma, but she doesn’t take full responsibility for what is happening: “it seemed to be life that was sweeping her on with headlong inexorable force – sweeping her into darkness and terror”. The story, in fact, takes on some elements of horror fiction but that is not its intent and it doesn’t develop along those lines.

I particularly like Wharton when she tackles the intersection between societal expectations and character. This story has glimmers of that – but it’s not really elaborated. Nonetheless, it’s a good story that grabs you from the start with its oppressive atmosphere and foreboding tone. Even early Wharton, I’ve found, has much to offer her readers.

Edith Wharton
“A journey”
The Library of America
Originally published in a collection in 1899?
Available: Online

Note: Stef at So many books has recently reviewed Hermione Lee‘s biography of Wharton, and Kevin at Interpolations has extensively reviewed some of her novels.

Kate Chopin, Désireé’s baby

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Kate Chopin

Chopin (Public domain, via Wikipedia)

I read Kate Chopin‘s short story “Désireé’s baby” (1893) back in March when Kirsty mentioned it in her comment on my last Chopin post, but I didn’t blog it then. However, when it appeared a couple of weeks ago as a Library of America selection, I felt its time had come. But, what to say? It is, in a word, gut-wrenching.

The first short story to create a lasting impression on me was Guy de Maupassant‘s “The necklace” (1884). It was that short story, really, that launched my enjoyment of short stories. I found them particularly appropriate for my student days when I couldn’t justify reading a novel but wanted some escape from set texts. I was consequently interested to read in the Library of America’s introductory notes to “Désireé’s baby” that Chopin has been compared to such writers as Maupassant and Flaubert. I can see the connection.

“Désireé’s baby” starts off gently – and, more to the point, innocuously:

As the day was pleasant, Madame Valmondé drove over to L’Abri to see Désireé and the baby.

It made her laugh to think of Désireé with a baby. Why, it seemed but yesterday that Désireé was little more than a baby herself…

We then discover that Désireé had been an abandoned baby and brought up by the childless Madame Valmondé and her husband, hence I suppose her name. As this (very) short story unfolds, subtle hints of something not quite idyllic are introduced. A young man of an old wealthy family, Armand Aubigny, falls in love with and insists on marrying the nameless, but now 18-year-old Désireé. He fell in love “the way all the Augibgnys fell in love, as if struck by a pistol shot”. What an odd image to use for love eh?

Then we hear that Aubigny is a strict master of his estate. The home is “sad-looking” with its roof “black like a cowl” and “solemn oaks” growing near it. And, more telling, under his rule “his negroes had forgotten to be gay, as they had been during the old master’s easy-going and indulgent lifetime”. Set against this is Désireé in her “soft white muslins and laces”, so we are not surprised when we read that

Marriage, and the birth of his son, had softened Armand Aubigny’s imperious and exacting nature greatly. This was what made the gentle Désireé so happy, for she loved him desperately. When he frowned she trembled, but loved him. When he smiled, she asked no greater blessing of God. But Armand’s dark, handsome face had not often been disfigured by frowns since the day he fell in love with her.

Now, there is a clue to the dénouement in this excerpt, but if you don’t know the plot I’m not giving it away. All I’ll say is that Chopin’s writing is superb in the way she uses imagery and irony to subtly set the scene and leave the clues so that the conclusion, though shocking, meets Amanda Lohrey’s criteria for endings.

In less than 6 pages, Chopin explores a complex set of themes, including the psychological and social ramifications of young love, old wealth, race and gender, with a clarity that is breath-taking. I’m not surprised that it is a much-anthologised and studied story.

HL Mencken, The nature of liberty

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I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again: I am enjoying being introduced to classic American writers of whom I’ve heard but not read through the Library of America. This week it is HL Mencken, and you can read his satirical piece, “The nature of liberty” (1920), online at LOA. Mencken (1880-1956), according to the brief introductory notes that always accompany these LOA stories, was a highly popular figure in post World War 1 America*. The Library writes that this popularity gave him the freedom to write on subjects that no-one else would: he “supported woman suffrage, promoted African American authors, and championed the contribution of immigrants to American society. He inveighed against censorship, corruption, police brutality, the Ku Klux Klan, and (above all) Prohibition“. Well, I thought, this sounds like an interesting man.

And so, I read “The nature of liberty”. It is essentially a satirical essay on the limits of liberty, on the way the Bill of Rights has been “kneaded and mellowed” through the legislature and judiciary, on the tension between a person’s liberty and the law (aka the state). The example he uses is the use of violence by police. He imagines the story of an innocent citizen who resists arrest and is beaten, then arrested and investigated by the police. He shows how, once that citizen is proven innocent, the citizen’s rights of redress are severely limited because all those involved (police, detective, watchman) acted within the law. There is only one right that the citizen has, he says

…and the courts have jealously guarded it. You have a clear right, guaranteed under the Constitution, to go into a court of equity and apply for a mandamus requiring the Polizei to cease forthwith to expose your portrait in the Rogues’ Gallery among the murderers. This is your inalienable right…

The satire is obvious throughout the essay – but you can see it here, particularly in the use of emotive terms such as “Polizei” and “Rogues’ Gallery”, and legalese such as mandamus. At the beginning of the essay, he ridicules the Civil Libertarians, with whom he patently sympathises, as follows:

…the same fanatics who shake the air with sobs every time the Postmaster-General of the United States bars a periodical from the mails because its ideas do not please him, and every time Russian is deported for reading Karl Marx, and every time a Prohibition enforcement officer murders a bootlegger who resists his levies …

Mencken very effectively shows, in this essay, how “rights” can be so regulated that the ordinary citizen ends up, in effect, with few. Those of us living in the era of “the war against terror” are only too aware of how quickly rights can be eroded in the name of the “common good”, in which the rights of individuals can be overridden in the blink of an eye.

Mencken was a passionate libertarian. He was critical of democracy, seeing it as inherently paradoxical, and of course, as a libertarian, he disliked socialism. And yet, we are social beings who live in groups, and we therefore need to balance individual liberties against the needs of the group. Earlyish in the essay, he comments that the Bill of Rights “specified the rights of a citizen, but it said nothing whatever about his duties”.  This issue of “duties” is mentioned and then dropped. I wonder, for all the satire, what his attitude was to “duties” and the degree to which these “duties” might impinge upon individual freedoms? But that, I think, is a discussion for another day … perhaps via another LOA essay.

*He was apparently also the inspiration for Anita Loos’ Gentlemen prefer blondes!

William James, On some mental effects of the earthquake

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William James

William James (Presumed public domain, via Wikipedia)

There are a couple of reasons why I was intrigued to read this week’s Library of America offering. The most obvious is that it’s by William James. Not only is he a recognised American philosopher and psychologist, but he is also the brother of Henry James, and I have come across him several times in that context. For that reason alone, I was keen to read something by him, albeit a fairly small and very specific piece.

The other main reason, though, is more personal. In 1990, my family and I went to live in Southern California for a few years and, I have to say, there were several fears attached to this decision: guns, pollution, and earthquakes, not to mention the high probability that our kids would be kidnapped from under our noses in the queue for Disneyland! Well, the latter, you may be surprised to know, didn’t happen – and, while we were there during the Rodney King riots, we didn’t really have any run-ins with guns. We did, however, experience pollution. As for earthquakes, it just so happened that we were out of town on vacation for the two biggest that occurred during our time. All we experienced were a couple of tremors. Nonetheless, like all good Californians, we had our earthquake kit ready to go.

After that long introduction, let’s get to James. This essay, titled “On some mental effects of the earthquake” (1906), was written a few days after James and his wife, who were at Stanford University at the time, experienced the big San Francisco earthquake of 1906. He starts the essay with his east coast friend’s farewell statement: “I hope they give you a touch of earthquake while there, so that you may also become acquainted with that Californian institution”. Hmm … what’s that saying? What I’d say is: Be careful what you wish for?

As it turned out, the good people of Stanford were far enough away from the centre to feel the big shake (and quite a lot of damage) but minimal loss of life. James’s first reaction, once he realised what he was experiencing, was:

glee and admiration; glee at the vividness with which such an abstract idea or verbal term as “earthquake” could put on when translated into sensible reality and verified concretely [me: I think this means “at the excitement of experiencing an earthquake” don’t you!?]; and admiration at the way in which the frail little wooden house could hold itself together in spite of such a shaking. I felt no trace of fear; it was pure delight and welcome.

Ever the psychologist philosopher, he then analyses and articulates his early spontaneous non-fearful response. He said he “personified” it as having “animus and intent”, that it was easy to perceive it as “a living agent”. He goes on to say that he now understood how people mythologised catastrophe, that “it was impossible for untutored men to take earthquakes into their minds as anything but supernatural warnings or retributions”.  He also observes that most people slept outside the next few nights, not simply to be safer in case of a recurrence “but also to work off their emotion, and get the full unusualness out of the experience”. That makes sense to me and I rather like his way of articulating it.

In San Francisco proper, though, the situation was different (as we know). There was more devastation, and a lot of death. He managed to get to SF for the day and draws some conclusions from that too. As he says, his business is not with the “material ruin” but “with ‘subjective’ phenomena exclusively”. What he saw were people going about their business:

It was indeed a strange sight to see an entire population in the streets, busy as ants in an uncovered ant-hill scurrying to save their eggs and larvae.

And he is surprised, as were the officials, by the lack of criminal activity, besides petty pilfering. Is this the same now? Anyhow, this is not his main point. Two things, he says, stand out, and they are both “reassuring to human nature”:

  • “the improvisation of order out of chaos”: he notes that there are some people who are natural organisers (“natural order-makers”) and that at times like this they get to work. He suggests that while much of this was “American, much of it Californian” it would have happened in any country in crisis. In  fact, he says that “Like soldiering, it lies always latent in human nature”.
  • “universal equanimity”: he suggests that the expressions of horror and pathos came from elsewhere, but that the people experiencing the crisis just got on with recuperating. He writes that “the cheerfulness, or, at any rate, the steadfastness of tone, was universal. Not a single whine or plaintive word did I hear from the hundred losers whom I spoke to. Instead of that there was a temper of helpfulness beyond the counting”. And again, he suggests “it is easy to glorify this as something characteristically American, or especially Californian…But I like to think that what I write of is a normal and universal trait of human nature”.

I must say that I do like his lack of nationalism in all this, his suggestion that these positive and admirable traits are “human” rather than “American”. We have had many, many catastrophes and disasters since then, and I’d like to think that what James saw in 1906 has held true. But has it? Does more looting and crime go on now (as the media always implies)? Or, do the people on the ground immediately organise to help themselves and each other? Being one who likes to see the good us, I’d like to think so.

Edgar Allan Poe, Hop-Frog

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Edgar Allan poe

Edgar Allan Poe (Presumed Public Domain, via Wikipedia)

I am loving the way Library of America is encouraging me to finally read authors I’ve been meaning to read for a long time. Yes, they are short works, but at least I am getting a sense of these authors – and that’s a start. This week’s offering is Edgar Allan Poe’s “Hop-Frog”. Like the other works I’ve blogged about, you can read it online at the Library of America.

I must admit I only knew of Poe as primarily a writer of Gothic and horror stories, so I was a little surprised to discover that “Hop-Frog” is a satire. It starts with:

I never knew anyone so keenly alive to a joke as the king was. He seemed to live only for joking…

I rather wondered if this was going to be a fairy story, but I quickly realised that it was something quite different. We discover in the first paragraph that the surest road to the king’s favour was to tell jokes, and that the king had 7 ministers who were all accomplished jokers. The king’s jokes, however, do not rely on wit. Rather

He had a special admiration for breadth in a jest, and would often put up with length, for the sake of it. Over niceties wearied him … upon the whole, practical jokes suited his taste far better than verbal ones.

Do you sense the likelihood that a trick is to be played? If so, you’d be right. Without giving too much away, I will say that there are two more characters in this story, the king’s fool, because every king should have one, and a young dancer. Now, the fool is the Hop-Frog of the title. He is a crippled dwarf. Here is Poe’s description of Hop-Frog:

…Hop-Frog [the name given to him by the seven ministers] could only get along by a sort of interjectional gait – something between a leap and a wiggle – a movement that afforded illimitable amusement, and of course consolation, to the king, for (notwithstanding the protuberance of his stomach and a constitutional swelling of his head) the king, by his whole court, was considered a capital figure.

Surprising that, eh? The young dancer is Trippetta, also a dwarf but a well-proportioned one. As the story goes, Hop-Frog is asked by the king to come up with an idea for a costume for him and his ministers to wear to a Masquerade Ball. Before obtaining Hop-Frog’s ideas, however, they torment him by making him drink alcohol, something they knew did not agree with him:

But the king loved practical jokes, and took pleasure in forcing Hop-Frog to drink and (as the king called it) “to be merry”.

As you have probably guessed, the resolution involves a practical joke that rather turns on the king – but, other than telling you that, my lips are sealed. To this extent the story is pretty predictable. What makes it a good story, despite this, is not only the way Poe plots it (because it is perfectly set up), but the satirical language in which it is told. I particularly loved this:

“…Characters, my fine fellow; we need characters – all of us – ha! ha! ” and as this was seriously meant for a joke, his laugh was chorused by the seven.

Not knowing much about Poe, I read this as a satire of power, of the way the powerful can have no qualms about humiliating and belittling those less powerful. And, indeed, the story works very well on this level. However, there is, apparently, the possibility of something else also going on. According to LOA’s brief introductory notes, scholars note the parallel between Hop-Frog and his tormenters, and Poe and his critics. The notes also suggest other parallels with Poe’s life such as his being an orphan, and his problems with alcohol. There is more discussion of these parallels in the Wikipedia article on the story.

All that said, it is, in the end, a revenge story – and a pretty fine one at that. I should read more Poe.

Howard Zinn, Finishing school for pickets

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Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn, 2009 (Courtesy: B-Fest at Athens Indymedia, using CC-BY-SA 2.0, via Wikipedia)

I have been remiss lately with my Library of America reading. Busy-ness has taken its toll, but it just so happened that this week I was (briefly) between books and the LOA offering looked right up my alley, so I decided to read it over breakfast. “Finishing school for pickets” was published in 1960, making it the most recently written of the LOA items I’ve read to date. It was written by Howard Zinn (1922-2010), an American writer, historian, activist and all-round intellectual. You can read the essay yourself, online, at the Library of America site.

However, before I discuss this essay, a little background. In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. She wasn’t the first to take such action but it was this particular occasion which sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott whose aim was to end segregation on the city’s public transport. The battle was finally won in a Supreme Court ruling in late 1956. But, more importantly, it played a pivotal role in the fledgling Civil Rights Movement in the USA. Now, jump a few years and over the border to Atlanta, Georgia, and we are in the time and place of Zinn’s essay.

In 1960, Howard Zinn was chair of the history department at Spelman College, America’s oldest “black college for women” (Wikipedia). This college was well-known as, more or less, “a finishing school” for young black women. They were encouraged to “be nice, be well-mannered and ladylike”, to “not speak loudly” and not “get into trouble”. As Zinn says, “if intellect and talent and social consciousness happened to develop also, they were, to an alarming extent, by-products”. Here is the opening para of the essay:

One quiet afternoon some weeks ago, with the dogwood on Spelman College campus newly bloomed and the grass close-cropped and fragrant, an attractive, tawny-skinned girl crossed the lawn to her dormitory to put a notice on the bulletin board. It read: Young Ladies Who Can Picket Please Sign Below”. (Let’s not worry here about the “attractive, tawny-skinned” descriptor as Zinn’s heart was clearly in the right place).

Zinn goes on to chronicle various subversive actions being undertaken by the “still ‘nice'” but politically aware students. He says: “They are well-mannered, but this is somewhat tempered by a recent declaration that they will use every method short of violence to end segregation”. And so what do they do in the cause of desegregation? They sit in the front (aka white) area of buses; they occupy the white section of the Georgia Legislature’s gallery “in a pioneering show of non-violent resistance”; they show up “at the main Atlanta library in sufficient numbers to worry [my emphasis] the city administration into a decision to admit Negroes there” (what the? the librarian in me asks), and so on. Zinn writes that:

Spelman girls, more sheltered than women at the other colleges, were among the first to leave the island and to begin causing little flurries of alarm in the segregated outside world.

These activities, he says, may have bewildered the conservative matriarchy of Spelman, but they infuriated the “officialdom of the State of Georgia”. However, this did not stop the students of Spelman (and the other colleges of the Atlanta University Center) who continued their campaign even though, as Zinn describes it, many of them came from “the deep South … the Faulknerian small towns of traditional Negro submissiveness”.

It’s a highly readable essay, with light-handed use of various rhetorical devices to progress his argument, but it does not conclude on any great triumphs. After all, in 1960, there was (and, some would say, there still is) a long way to go in the cause of true racial equity. Zinn’s goal was, I assume, to raise some awareness amongst the white readers of The Nation. I can only hope he did so. As for him, he was fired from Spelman in 1963 “for insubordination” (his words), that is, for siding with his students in their fight for desegregation.

Zinn died earlier this year. Not long before he died he said that he would like to be remembered “for introducing a different way of thinking about the world, about war, about human rights, about equality,” and “for getting more people to realize that the power which rests so far in the hands of people with wealth and guns, that the power ultimately rests in people themselves and that they can use it. At certain points in history, they have used it. Black people in the South used it. People in the women’s movement used it. People in the anti-war movement used it. People in other countries who have overthrown tyrannies have used it.” (Wikipedia).

This essay is clearly just one tiny example of how he went about achieving this lifelong passion. I am indebted to the Library of America for making it available to us.

John M. Duncan, A Virginia barbecue

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Now for something different from the Library of America – a little 3-page excerpt, titled “A Virginia Barbecue”, from Scotsman John M. Duncan’s Travels through part of the United States and Canada in 1818 and 1819, which was published in 1823. In it, Duncan describes a barbecue to which he was invited by Bushrod (what a name, eh?) Washington, who was apparently a favourite nephew of (the) George.

Ground oven cooking, Kakadu

The original barbecue: Ground oven cooking in Kakadu National Park (Photographer: Me)

I wanted to read this for a number of reasons: I like to read about food; I like travel writing; I lived in Virgnia for two years; and I wanted to see what he meant by “barbecue”. The thing about “barbecue” is that in my experience Americans mean something different by it than we downunder do. In the brief introductory notes to Duncan’s piece, Library of America informs us that by the middle of the 19th century regional differences were appearing and that “debates about the best meat (pork for the South, beef for Texans), the proper smoke (cool or hot), the best sauce (thick and tomatoey in the Mexican manner or vinegar-steeped with hot peppers in the manner of the Atlantic seaboard), and the appropriate accompaniments were already beginning to rage”. Duncan, however, was a bit early for this debate so he simply describes what he sees:

The meat to be barbecued is split open and pierced with two long slender rods, upon which it is suspended across the mouth of the pits, and turned from side to side till it is thoroughly broiled. The hickory tree gives, it is said, a much stronger heat than coals, and when it is kindled is almost without smoke.

And, anyhow, he is not specifically interested in describing the cooking itself but in conveying the whole experience. From our 21st century point of view, he seems completely unconscious of the disparity between the black workers slaving over the barbecues and the guests (presumably all white) dancing, eating and drinking. This is not totally surprising, given the period, although William Wilberforce, back in England, would have been full throttle on his abolitionist campaign. Here are some of the ways Duncan describes the black workers:

…a whole colony of black servants …

Servants? Or, slaves?

… black men, women and children, were busied with various processes of sylvan cookery…

“Sylvan” is, to me anyhow, a rather poetic word for forest connoting a sense of romantic idyll that is somewhat belied by the reality of the situation.

Leaving the busy negroes at their tasks – a scene by the way which suggested a tolerable idea of an encampment of Indians preparing for a feast after the spoils of the chase.

A more socially or politically aware writer would probably, even at that time, have seen the irony in this comparison, but I don’t think Duncan did. I’m not trying to play politically correct revisionist games here, but rather reflect on how writing like this can convey meaning that was not necessarily intended at the time. Such writing – in the way it documents practices and attitudes – can be a real mine for researchers!

Duncan then describes the dancing – mainly cotillion – and the dining arrangements. I found it a little confusing when he wrote that “few except those who wish to dance choose the first course; watchfulness to anticipate the wants of the ladies, prevent those who sit down with them from accomplishing much themselves”. That is, they don’t get to eat much. Being “too little acquainted with the tactics of a barbecue, and somewhat too well inclined to eat”, he joins this first course. I had to read this a couple of times before I realised (at least I think I’m right) that “first course” actually means “first sitting”. It appears that when the ladies arise, all are expected to “vacate their seats”. The “new levy succeeds” (that is, as I read it, the next sitting) and many of these diners contrive to sit through the next “signal” to rise, thereby managing to get a good feed!

He also describes the drinking but makes it clear that while there was “jollity”, he saw no “intemperance”. He specifically states that this is so for the members of the judiciary, such as Judge Washington, who were present. Duncan makes such a point of this that I wondered whether he “protesteth too much”. I’m guessing though that it’s more a case of having his eye on his market: there was a strong temperance movement in early 19th century Virginia.

This piece is included in an anthology titled American food writing: An anthology with classic recipes. It would be fascinating to read more…

Shirley Jackson, Charles

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Before I start this review, I have a technical question. Does anyone know why advice to bloggers about maximising your site always say not to use something like “here” for a hyperlink but, rather, to add the link to the actual name of what is being linked to? In other words, to make the link so – Shirley Jackson’s Charles – rather than so – Shirley Jackson’s Charles can can be read here? I have done both but I have tended to prefer the “here” approach when I am making a link to the actual text of the item I am reviewing. Otherwise, the chances are – and this has happened – that the blog’s readers miss it because they will not know that the link under the title is the actual story and not just a link to an article about (or a source to buy) the story. My preference is to go for the unambiguous approach – but is there a really BIG reason why I shouldn’t? Enquiring minds – well mine anyhow – would love to know.

Anyhow, on to what will be a brief review of this week’s Library of America story. It’s by – well, if you’ve read the first para you’ll know by now – Shirley Jackson. Another American writer I’ve never heard of! Apparently she is best known for her “tales of psychological horror” (LOA introductory notes) but this one that they’ve presented to us, “Charles”, is an ordinary domestic life story. It was published in Mademoiselle magazine in 1948 and, again according to LOA, “is one of the first of her numerous semi-autobiographical stories of life as a 1940s housewife raising children who sometimes seemed one step outside her ability to control them”.

Well, that certainly seems to the the case in “Charles” because it is clear that the young protagonist of the story has it all over his parents. It’s a nice little story but rather predictable. I’d be surprised if any experienced reader didn’t “get” it some long time before the end. This spoils the story a little – although perhaps Jackson is playing a game with the reader, willing us to see what the parents clearly don’t? Whatever her intentions,  it nicely shows the wiliness of children and the gullibility of many parents. I think though, that to properly assess Ms Jackson, I should read one of her psychological tales rather than this little slice-of-life piece.

Edward Field, WWII (Poem)

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Well, Library of America has surprised again. This week it is a poem (6 pages). I wasn’t expecting that, but as I like to delve into poetry every now and then I was rather pleased. The poem, “WWII” by Edward Field, was first published in 1967 in a collection titled Poets of World War II. According to LOA’s notes, the poem “recounts an actual incident” – and that’s certainly how it reads.

B-17 Bomber plan

B-17 Bomber (Royalty free image from Planes of WW2 website*)

It tells the story of an American bombing mission over Europe in which Field’s plane is damaged by flak and ends up having to ditch in the North Sea on its way back to England. It’s a very matter of fact poem that calmly documents the events, until the moment of ditching when, for a moment, the language becomes more expressive. Here is the beginning of the serious troubles with the plane:

Over the North Sea the third engine gave out
and we dropped low over the water.
The gas gauge read empty but by keeping the nose down
a little gas at the bottom of the tank sloshed forward
and kept our single engine going.

Pretty plainly descriptive. It sounds like they’re in a tight situation but they’ve got everything under control. And then, just nine lines on, that engine’s in trouble and we get:

listened as the engine stopped, a terrible silence,
and we went down into the sea with a crash,
just like hitting a brick wall,
jarring bones, teeth, eyeballs panicky.

Suddenly we get adjectives, a simile and a shift in rhythm, and we are right there with him. He then describes the exit from the plane, the rush for the life rafts which aren’t in a condition to accommodate them all, and the resulting loss of life among the crew. This, though, is not one of those heroic “band of brothers” war poems. It is about survival – our poet is not a coward, but neither does he risk his life to save others. He’s a realist. Soon after the plane ditches, he (the navigator) and the radio operator find themselves still on the plane, with the rafts already pushed off. Their colleagues tell him later that the cords holding the raft to the plane broke. He’s not 100% sure of that:

… but I wouldn’t have blamed them
for cutting them loose, for fear
that by waiting for us the plane would go down
and drag them with it.

Back to plain speaking. And it prepares us for when he too opts for survival – not by any sin of commission but by not engaging in heroics:

I chose to live rather than be a hero, as I still do today,
although at that time I believed in being heroic, in saving the world,
even if, when opportunity knocked,
I instinctively chose survival.

The poem ends – surely this is not a spoiler? can you spoil a poem? – with the idea that “This was a minor accident of war”. Life and death – all in a day’s work!

I liked this poem. It was not what I expected when I started it: it has few of the usual hallmarks of war poetry. There’s no breast-beating patriotism, no histrionics; its tone is neither tragic, nor melancholic, nor heroic. It’s a plainly told story about one man’s experience of one event in war, and its power lies in that and the understated style in which he tells it. Thanks, once again, to the Library of America for presenting me with something a little different.

*B-17 Bombers were flown by Field’s company, the Eighth Airforce. Attribution as requested: “This image comes from Airforce Image Gallery and has been modified and can be found at Planes of World War II page”.

Nathanael West, Business deal

/ Whispering Gums / 9 Comments

This week’s Library of America offering was (or “is” since it’s still this week, but “was” cos I’ve read it – all this tense stuff can be so bothering!) Nathanael West’s Business deal. It’s short, and I’d just finished my novel for bookgroup, so I decided to read it.

I don’t know much about Nathanael West, other than recognising his name, but according to Wikipedia he lived from 1903 to 1940. Another writer who died young – though he wasn’t quite so young as the likes of poor Keats and Stephen Crane, neither of whom even made 30, and he died not of illness but in a car accident. Anyhow, Wikipedia describes West as “author, screenwriter and satirist”. The brief introductory notes accompanying the story say essentially the same thing. These notes suggest that his recognition as a writer comes mainly from his novels, but his money came from his plays. This LOA offering, however, is a short story. It was published in 1933 in a magazine called Americana, which apparently published a lot of satirical writing.

Business deal is about the head of a movie production company, which is rather aptly named “Gargantual Pictures”, planning his next takeovers while at the same time preparing not to pay a very successful young scriptwriter what he’s asking. This is not a subtle story, and neither character is particularly appealing:

The mongoose [the scriptwriter] sat comfortably and waited for the cobra [the company head] to strike again.

Effective image, eh? It is, in fact, a pretty typical negotiation story in which one side holds its ground while the other pulls out all arguments until one of them either capitulates or plays the winning card at just the right moment. I won’t tell which one is which, but if you think of which profession West was you may just work out who wins this particular deal! It’s a humorous if rather predictable story, but it does demonstrate the well-honed skills of a successful satirist. It is worth reading for that.