12. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler

Year Published: 1903

Pages: 374

First Sentence: When I was a small boy at the beginning of the century I remember an old man who wore knee-breeches and worsted stockings, and who used to hobble about the street of our village with the help of a stick.

Rating: 1/3 (don't bother)

Review:

The Way of All Flesh is one of the last books left on The List that I had never really heard of prior to starting this project. (Under the Volcano is the very last one, and it's coming up next.)

This book's alternate title, Ernest Pontifex, or the Way of All Flesh, reveals what it's mostly about, i.e. a man named Ernest Pontifex. It begins with telling about Ernest's grandfather and his father, though, and then gets into Ernest's boyhood, young adulthood, and manhood. If you can't tell from how lifelessly I'm writing about this book, I'll come straight to the point and say that I didn't like it much.

For one thing, I Didn't Get It. I haven't bothered to learn much about Samuel Butler and the origin and conception of this novel, other than that it was written in the 19th century and published posthumously in 1903, making it yet another one of The List's cheats in my opinion. But anyway, the other thing I've learned about this book is that it's a critique of Victorian society, values, hypocrisy, whatever. That's perfectly fine and good, except that it also means that the 21st century reader needs more than just the text of the novel to know what's going on as far as some of that goes.

Besides being about the Victorians in general, The Way of All Flesh is also about religion, child abuse, and, in my opinion most of all, Ernest's giant trust fund. The child abuse comes via Ernest's father, who is the Reverend Theobald Pontifex. Theobald is a very harsh master to his three children, especially Ernest, the eldest. He also happens to be a minister in the Anglican church, and Ernest becomes one eventually as well. Before that happens, one of his spinster aunts takes an interest in him and suddenly dies, leaving him the majority of her money, to be held in trust for him until age 28, by our narrator, Mr Overton.

The Way of All Flesh wasn't terrible. It even had a bit of black humour in it here and there. But the reason I gave it a 1/3 instead of a 2/3 is because of that statement I always include in brackets, that is: don't bother. I don't think this book is relevant to 21st century readers. And even as I write that sentence, I'm thinking of ways and reasons to argue with myself about it. After all, deconstructing religion and worship is still a relevant pursuit! The cruelty that can be inflected on a child by a well-meaning but misguided parent still exists!

Here's the thing though: I'm pretty sure both of those themes are explored more effectively in newer works, where they aren't also mixed up with a lot of esoteric references to 18th century religious writers. It's so telling that this old book about a rich man made it to #12 of The List but there was only room for nine women writers' works. On top of the "dated" nature of the book, I also didn't find the characters that memorable or the prose that special.

I think I've just gotten more impatient with The List as I've gotten closer to the final title. Considering that I Didn't Get The Way of All Flesh, it's entirely possible that I missed the point entirely. But I still say don't bother with this one.

- - - - -

The want of fresh air does not seem much to affect the happiness of children in a London alley: the greater part of them sing and play, as though they were on a moor in Scotland. So the absence of a genial mental atmosphere is not commonly recognised by children who have never known it. Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they are unhappy—very unhappy—it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their own sinfulness.

- - - - -

These young ladies had either been so shy that they and Theobald had never amalgamated, or they had been supposed to be clever and had said smart things to him. He did not say smart things himself and did not want other people to say them. Besides they talked about music, and he hated music, or pictures, and he hated pictures, or books, and except the classics he hated books; and then sometimes he was wanted to dance with them, and he did not know how to dance, and did not want to know.

- - - - -

26. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James

Year Published: 1902
Pages: 487
First Sentence: She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him.
Rating: 3/3 (read it!)

Review:
Let's not beat around the bush. I enjoyed The Wings of the Dove far better than Henry James's other two books on The List, The Golden Bowl and The Ambassadors. This felt very much like a return to what I expect of his form, i.e. walls of descriptive text and characters giving each other meaningful looks in various European locales (chiefly London and Venice in this case). I can stop doubting everything that I thought I knew about my feelings on James's work.

The Wings of the Dove is the story of three young people and their various hangers-on. Kate Croy is a young Englishwoman whose father has shamed their family. Merton Densher is an attractive young Englishman who works for a newspaper. Milly Theale is a young American girl whose family has all died, leaving her with an enormous fortune. Kate Croy and Merton Densher are in love, but are in financial straits such that they aren't able to marry with any hope of staying in the society that they're both accustomed to, and thus they keep their engagement secret in hopes of figuring out a solution to their problem.

Enter Milly, who meets Densher in America while he's there writing dispatches or some such thing for his newspaper, and develops a bit of a crush on him. Milly first encounters Kate upon arriving in London, and the two of them become friends. Not good enough friends for Kate to mention the man she loves, but good enough for Milly to reveal to Kate that she is dying of some undefined malady.

It's at this point that things get interesting (about halfway through a tremendously long book, if you're keeping track), because Kate proposes to Densher that he seduce Milly in hopes that he might marry her and inherit her money, for his and Kate's future use.

I know, right!?

After my previous James List books, I took the unusual precaution of reading the introduction to the edition of this book that I got from the library, which was written by someone named Grey Gowrie who I have never heard of before. Anyway, I was prepared to be spoiled by the introduction if it meant that it might illuminate things to the point that I could actually understand what on earth was actually happening in the book. I can't say how much that action may or may not have helped, but like I said, I quite enjoyed this book, so I'll give Grey Gowrie a pat on the back regardless. (I'm not sure the 3/3 is quite deserved, and will once again lament my previous decision not to introduce a 2.5 rating.)

The introduction did reveal a few plot points, but a big part of this book is the journey, and that's impossible to spoil. That is to say, I was as much on the edge of my seat as it's possible to be reading an extremely dense century-old novel. How could Kate dare to propose such a thing to the man she loves? How could he possibly react? Would Milly suddenly get well and throw the whole plan into chaos? What might happen next?! It's rare that a book like this can sustain that level of tension.

As usual, the characters are all excellent. Poor doomed little rich girl Milly is described with so many superlatives in the book already that I couldn't presume to add any. I absolutely believed in Densher and Kate's romance and the sexual chemistry between them, and I'm frankly shocked at how good James was at depicting it. All of this in the kind of prose you might expect from a glacier.

I must say, reading three Henry James novels in one year is a marathon I never plan to repeat. Doubtless I would have liked this novel better if I weren't already exhausted from the previous two.

And finally, if you're curious about the issue of "hanging fire" that I mentioned in The Ambassadors review: the expression "hung fire" appears seven times in this book, and "hanging fire" appears twice, i.e. there's one of these things every 50 pages or so. Tsk tsk.

- - - - -

She tried to be sad so as not to be angry, but it made her angry that she couldn't be sad.

- - - - -

He gave her a long look, and whatever else people who wouldn't let her alone might have wished, for her advancement, his long looks were the thing in the world she could never have enough of. What she felt was that, whatever might happen, she must keep them, must make them most completely her possession; and it was already strange enough that she reasoned, or at all events began to act, as if she might work them in with other and alien things, privately cherish them and yet, as regards the rigour of it, pay no price.

- - - - -

This was her own way of describing a face that, thanks doubtless to rather too much forehead, too much nose and too much mouth, together with too little mere conventional colour and conventional line, was expressive, irregular, exquisite, both for speech and for silence. When Milly smiled it was a public event—when she didn't it was a chapter of history.

- - - - -

27. The Ambassadors by Henry James

Year Published: 1903
Pages: 639
First Sentence: Strether's first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till evening he was not wholly disconcerted.
Rating: 2/3 (meh)

Review:
We come now to the second of three Henry James novels on The List. This one is about a middle-aged man named Lambert Strether. He's a widower of relatively slim means, who is engaged to a fabulously wealthy woman named Mrs. Newsome back in the town of Woollett, Massachusetts, but at the beginning of the novel, he's been sent to Europe to fetch Mrs. Newsome's son from the clutches of a presumably evil woman and bring him back to run the family business. Perhaps unfortunately for Strether, when he finds Mrs. Newsome's son in Paris, the situation is not at all clear cut. Chadwick, more commonly referred to as Chad (yes, really), is not living in some den of iniquity with a beautiful French prostitute, although he is engaging in some kind of relationship with a respectable woman who has had to flee her abusive husband. Strether and his friend Maria Gostrey, who he met upon landing at his English hotel, puzzle through this situation together.

At this point I'm really starting to feel like Henry James is gaslighting me. In my review of The Golden Bowl I was already beginning to doubt that I liked previous works of his that I'd read. But seriously, did I? I'd like to believe that I've never been so pretentious that I'd pretend to enjoy a classic novel, but after reading over 1000 pages of James's work in the last few months I'm questioning everything I thought I knew. I can only imagine that this will get worse when I pick up The Wings of the Dove.

In any case, as for the book at hand, I enjoyed it more than The Golden Bowl. While that novel felt extremely empty, there is actual content in this one. I got a sense of the plot happening in the background somewhere, even though it was obscured by James using about 500% more words than he really needs to, in the form of alternating walls o' text and long dialogues between characters in which no one ever says what they mean, instead communicating everything with dashes and exclamation points and rephrasing questions with the italics used on a different word this time. The one thing you can count on from James' prose is the use of the expression "hung fire" which appears here seven times plus one time as "hang fire." (It also showed up seven times as "hung/hang fire" in The Golden Bowl.) This repetition may seem innocuous in otherwise very long novels, but the fact is that it really jumps out at me as a Saskatchewan resident.

To get back on track, and this is the reason it rated higher than The Golden Bowl, if you wanted to spend a lot of time and energy reading The Ambassadors, I think you could get a lot out of it. I have neither time nor energy nor most importantly patience for this sort of thing, and so I found it more frustrating than anything. I loved many of the characters in this novel. The name "Chad" in a novel written in the early part of the 20th century is inherently hilarious. Mrs. Newsome is a wonderful villain. Strether is an excellent deluded sad sack. Best of all is Maria Gostrey, who I wished could have had her own series of novels in which she travels Europe befriending wealthy people and poking about in their affairs. She's honestly a bit of an aspirational figure for me, and I'm only kidding a little bit about that. The trouble with what James is doing with his prose and his obfuscation is that I didn't feel like I was spending time with the characters, I felt like I was watching them on a tv screen with the volume turned way down.

James throws in a touch more anti-Semitism here for good measure, in case you were wondering. He also, if you'll allow me to be facetious about one of the darkest communities on the internet, may have been the original incel, as evidenced by the name of the young man in the plot, and stuff along these lines:

He reconstructed a possible groping Chad of three or four years before, a Chad who had, after all, simply—for that was the only way to see it—been too vulgar for his privilege. Surely it was a privilege to have been young and happy just there. Well, the best thing Strether knew of him was that he had had such a dream.

If a vaguely dark comic story of a man having a turn-of-the-20th-century midlife crisis sounds appealing to you, and you want to work very hard for it, this novel might be the one for you. If you prefer for reading not to be work, I'd stay away.

- - - - -

He had been wondering a minute ago if the boy weren't a Pagan, and he found himself wondering now if he weren't by chance a gentleman. It didn't in the least, on the spot, spring up helpfully for him that a person couldn't at the same time be both.

- - - - -

"Well, the party responsible is, I suppose, the fate that waits for one, the dark doom that rides. What I mean is that with such elements one can't count. I've but my poor individual, my modest human means. It isn't playing the game to turn on the uncanny. All one's energy goes to facing it, to tracking it. One wants, confound it, don't you see?" he confessed with a queer face—"one wants to enjoy anything so rare. Call it then life"—he puzzled it out—"call it poor dear old life simply that springs the surprise. Nothing alters the fact that the surprise is paralysing, or at any rate engrossing—all, practically, hang it, that one sees, that one can see."

- - - - -

32. The Golden Bowl by Henry James

Year Published: 1904
Pages: 596
First Sentence: The Prince had always liked his London, when it had come to him; he was one of the Modern Romans who find by the Thames a more convincing image of the truth of the ancient state than any they have left by the Tiber.
Rating: 1/3 (don’t bother)

Review:
Henry James has three books on The List, and The Golden Bowl is ranked lowest but still in the top third. (Which, let's just pause for a moment and acknowledge how exciting it is that I'm two thirds of the way through my project!) The other two, The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove are side by side just at the edge of the Top 25. After reading The Golden Bowl, I'm a little bit unsure of how that will go for me.

In some ways I feel like I've read a lot of James prior to picking up this book, although I've actually only read two of his novels (The Bostonians and The Portrait of a Lady) and two of his novellas (The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller). Given who he is as a writer, however, it may only take one book to make you feel like you've read a lot of James, which is to say that he is maybe the most longwinded writer in the entire canon. His reputation precedes him when it comes to that. Also if you just pick up one of his books and flip through it you will see how longwinded he is because you will see all the paragraphs that go on for multiple pages. On the other hand, I’ve enjoyed most of what I read by him previously, with the exception of The Turn of the Screw (an extremely frustrating work, because James is so good and he just falls down on writing a ghost story).

But we're not here to talk about his other work. I think the point I'm trying to make is that James has this reputation for being impenetrable and I never really got that before, but boy I sure do now.

I did some reading about this before writing the review. Was I hallucinating when I enjoyed The Bostonians back in my early twenties? No. The fact is that as James got older, his work got more.. intense. The Bostonians was published almost twenty years before The Golden Bowl. In other words, all three books on The List are late period Henry James and I will need to strap in for some nonsense.

In this case, the nonsense consists of a very simple premise: a father and daughter's spouses start an affair with one another. American-in-London Maggie Verver marries an Italian named Amerigo who is never given a last name but who is implied to have a very good pedigree, such that he can be called a Prince. I imagined to myself that he was a member of the Borgia, although they probably aren't Italian enough. In that case, maybe a Medici. Anyway, Amerigo is basically marrying for money (but likes Maggie well enough). Maggie's father, Adam, is fabulously wealthy. The two of them are close due to the death of Maggie's mother at an early age. For various reasons, Adam Verver ends up marrying a friend of Maggie's named Charlotte Stant, not realizing that she and Amerigo had a romance before Amerigo and Maggie met. The two couples spend a lot of time together. Things go bad.

Sounds good, right? Well, it kind of is. I didn't hate this book. My reading experience was marked by a lot of frustration, though. This is a simple story that another writer could tell with maybe only a third of the pages that James takes. My previous reading made me feel that the whole point of James is to plumb every last thing to its depths, but that's unfortunately not what's happening here. In this case, the characters are so vague in their dialogue and thought that I often wasn't quite sure what was going on. Maggie and her father have three big scenes together: one before his marriage, one after she's discovered their spouses' betrayal, and the third at the end. In the second and third scenes, especially the second, I had literally no idea what transpired between the two of them.

There were two characters in the book that I loved, Fanny Assingham and her husband Bob (I doubt I need to, but I will also point out that Fanny has one of the great names in literary fiction). These two kind of disappear after a certain point, which is a shame, but they serve to provide commentary on the situation at some points. Fanny is a busybody. Here is a little bit of dialogue from a scene between her and Maggie which I hope will illustrate my point:

"Can she?" Fanny Assingham questioned.
"Can’t she?" Maggie returned.
Their eyes, for a minute, intimately met on it; after which the elder woman said: "I mean for seeing him alone."
"So do I," said the Princess.
At which Fanny, for her reasons, couldn't help smiling. "Oh, if it's for that he's staying—!"
"He's staying—I've made it out—to take anything that comes or calls upon him. To take," Maggie went on, "even that." Then she put it as she had at last put it to herself. "He’s staying for high decency."
"Decency?" Mrs. Assingham gravely echoed.
"Decency. If she should try—!"
"well—?" Mrs. Assingham urged.
"Well, I hope—!"
"Hope he'll see her?"

And I mean you're missing a few hundred pages of context from that scene but trust me, it doesn't help. I complained about the dialogue in Green Grass, Running Water (albeit for a different reason), but I'd take that any day over this.

Quick aside to also mention a gross line that James apparently had to throw in about a vendor acting on a rare scruple that is "almost unprecedented in the thrifty children of Israel." Like, get out of here. I didn't even know that the character was Jewish until the appearance of the racial slur!

I wish I could've loved this. I was so looking forward to reading more Henry James. After six hundred pages, though, I feel like I deserve clarity rather than ambiguity. Besides the next two of his books on The List, I'll stick with his earlier work in the future.

- - - - -

"You've seemed these last days—I don't know what: more absent than before, too absent for us merely to go on so. It's all very well, and I perfectly see how beautiful it is, all round; but there comes a day when something snaps, when the full cup, filled to the very brim, begins to flow over. That's what has happened to my need of you—the cup, all day, has been too full to carry. So here I am with it, spilling it over you—and just for the reason that is the reason of my life. After all, I've scarcely to explain that I'm as much in love with you now as the first hour; except that there are some hours—which I know when they come, because they almost frighten me—that show me I'm even more so. They come of themselves—and, ah, they've been coming! After all, after all—!"

- - - - -

NB: This book is one of the entries on my Classics Club list! -M.R.

33. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

Year Published: 1900
Pages: 499
First Sentence: When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, which was checked in the baggage car, a cheap imitation alligator skin satchel holding some minor details of the toilet, a small lunch in a paper box and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money.
Rating: 3/3 (read it!)

Review:
Some books tell you what their premise is on the very first page. Here is what the very first page of Sister Carrie has to say:

When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse.

Theodore Dreiser leaves it up to the reader to determine which of these two things transpire for Carrie.

The year is 1889 when we find Carrie embarking on her journey to Chicago, and the book tells the story of the next ten years of her life. She begins living with her sister, who is married with a baby and lives a life of basic drudgery. Carrie finds a job doing I literally can't remember what involving leather and hours at a sewing machine, because it's the 1880s and the conditions are comparable to what you'd still find today in a sweat shop. Unfortunately she loses this job after a protracted illness and when she gets well her sister's husband threatens to send her back to her hometown if she doesn't find a new job right away. This doesn't seem likely, but fortunately she encounters a young salesman, Charles Drouet, who she met on the train in to the city, and he buys her lunch and then immediately convinces her to move in with him.

Drouet is a fascinating character. He's warm and caring but also he's a travelling salesman who is not particularly faithful to Carrie. She, even at 18, evidently knows that the two of them aren't on the same level intellectually or emotionally but things go along nicely until Drouet introduces Carrie to the manager of a "resort" he frequents, Hannah and Hogg's. (I don't really understand what "resort" means in this context, but I think probably it's somewhere between an English gentlemen's club and a bar?) This manager is a man named George Hurstwood and he is the worst. Drouet is comfortably well-off but Hurstwood is closer to wealthy, which he likes to show off. He has a wife he doesn't like much and a couple of kids who don't think much of him, and pretty soon he decides that he wants Carrie. He starts moving in on her while Drouet is away and convinces her that the two of them should be together.

I'll quit the summary there except to say that Carrie appears in some amateur theatrical production presented by Drouet's Elks hall and discovers that she loves acting, and is very good at it, and there's the stage set for the rest of the novel.

I haven't said much about Carrie herself because she's an amazingly passive character to be at the centre of such an entertaining novel. She only takes action on her own two or three times in the whole book, and then when she has practically no other choice. But I liked her a lot. I liked mostly everyone except Hurstwood, who, as I said, is the worst. Dreiser is very good at character, and Hurstwood is so well-written, that he annoyed me more than anyone since, well, I guess Alex Portnoy in Portnoy's Complaint (I just went through The List to check this, ha!).

Dreiser's a bit long-winded but his chapters are short (and they have titles which, to my dismay, the edition of the book that I read did not include) so the book flew by. It's not profound thematically, but it's a bit more complex than what I quoted at the beginning. There are some issues: Carrie seems to spring into existence on the train and has no connection at all to her family (this is not exactly unrealistic though); Carrie never gets pregnant; Dreiser has shitty opinions about things like suicide and women's affinity for clothes (i.e. women be shoppin). You kind of just have to accept these things and enjoy the story. I certainly did.

- - - - -

How true it is that words are but vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links they are, chaining together great audible feelings and purposes.

- - - - -

We do not make sufficient allowance for the natural elements in our philosophy. Our logic is bare of the voice of the wind. How potent is the answer a pang of hunger makes to the cry, "Be good." How subtle is the influence of a dreary atmosphere.

- - - - -

Lastly, let all men remember that in the main, the world's virtue has never been tested. Wherefore was he good—the heavens rained goodness on the soil that nourished him. Where severe tests have been made, there have been some lamentable failures. Too often we move along ignoring the fact of our own advantages in every criticism we make concerning others. We do this because we are ignorant of the subtleties of life. Be sure that the vileness which you attribute to some object is a mirage. It is a sky illumination of your own lack of understanding—the confusion of your own soul.

- - - - -

NB: This book is one of the entries on my Classics Club list! -M.R.

46. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

Year Published: 1907
Pages: 269
First Sentence: Mr Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law.
Rating: 2/3 (meh)

Review:

So the good news, for my sake, is that I liked The Secret Agent a lot more than Nostromo. The bad news is that The Secret Agent still didn't exactly blow me away.

The Secret Agent is a man named Adolf Verloc. He's a spy for some government—the presence of "Mr Vladimir" implies the Russian government—who lives in London and owns a porn shop. At the beginning of the novel, Verloc visits Mr Vladimir, who urges him to carry out a bombing at the Observatory in Greenwich Park. Verloc doesn't want to do this, but Vladimir threatens his job, so he agrees. I couldn't really follow some of the details in terms of who Verloc was actually spying on, but what ends up happening is that he recruits his wife's mentally disabled brother Stevie to carry the explosives to the observatory, and then everything goes very, very wrong.

Though not as opaque as Heart of Darkness or as relentlessly boring-to-the-point-of-indifference as Nostromo, The Secret Agent did lose me a few times. See my above comment regarding not being able to actually figure out who Verloc was supposed to be spying on. The real strength of the book is the way the perspective shifts from Verloc onto his wife, Winnie. I'm trying to say that the book has a superb climax without giving too much away. If the whole thing had had that level of clarity, I would've enjoyed it a lot more, because the characters were a lot of fun throughout. In fact, while I'm not an expert on portrayals of disability in literature, I'll even say that Conrad's handling of the Stevie character was a lot more sympathetic than I would've expected from a book published in 1907. (Though not especially kind, given Stevie's fate.)

Having read four of Joseph Conrad's books now (where, if not for this project, I probably would've only read one at most), I have to say that I'm convinced it's his style that's the problem. Certainly the content of the books is often action-packed, Conrad just can't seem to convey that action in an exciting way. I hate to pick on him, though, because the man was writing in his third language, which he didn't speak fluently until his twenties. (The other two languages are Polish and French. Conrad the man is much more interesting to me than his books have been.) The prose is often ponderous, and holds the reader at arm's length. That's why it's such a marked improvement when the focus shifts to action in a scene or a character's immediate feelings about something. Basically Joseph Conrad is Not For Me. It's especially frustrating given that I've found his Author's Notes 100% more approachable and readable than the novels.

Anyway, the final comment to make about The Secret Agent is that it seems to have a reputation for being either prescient or modern in terms of its subject matter. And I suppose a person could make that argument, but it's not one that I would make. The paranoia (and the sense of global political instability—or maybe that's just my own paranoia showing) that characterizes the modern world is conspicuously absent from this novel. There's no sense that anything going on in the novel affects anything at all outside of the events depicted directly. I'm willing to grant that maybe, in my struggles with wrestling Conrad's prose into my brain, I simply missed a whole lot of subtext and/or text, but there you have it.

- - - - -

And the two gas jets inside the panes were always turned low, either for economy's sake or for the sake of the customers.
These customers were either very young men, who hung about the window for a time before slipping in suddenly; or men of a more mature age, but looking generally as if they were not in funds. Some of that last kind had the collars of their overcoats turned right up to their moustaches, and traces of mud on the bottom of their nether garments, which had the appearance of being much worn and not very valuable. And the legs inside them did not, as a general rule, seem of much account either. With their hands plunged deep in the side pockets of their coats, they dodged in sideways, one shoulder first, as if afraid to start the bell going.

- - - - -

Born of industrious parents for a life of toil, he had embraced indolence from an impulse as profound as inexplicable and as imperious as the impulse which directs a man's preference for one particular woman in a given thousand.

- - - - -

He had even gone so far as to utter words which true wisdom would have kept back. But Chief Inspector Heat was not very wise—at least not truly so. True wisdom, which is not certain of anything in this world of contradictions, would have prevented him from attaining his present position. It would have alarmed his superiors, and done away with his chances of promotion. His promotion had been very rapid.

- - - - -

47. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

Year Published: 1904
Pages: 532
First Sentence: In the time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the town of Sulaco—the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to its antiquity—had never been commercially anything more important than a coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and indigo.
Rating: 1/3 (don’t bother)

Review:

After the ordeal that was The Rainbow, I imagined that I'd have a better time with Nostromo. I couldn't remember having any major issues with the readability of Lord Jim or Heart of Darkness, plus this is supposedly Joseph Conrad's best book, plus maybe Ridley Scott's a fan? In any case, and perhaps as usual, my assumptions were all wrong. Nostromo is a terrible book.

There are three parts to the book. The first is entirely description and establishing details. This is unfortunate because it goes on for over a hundred pages, at which point I was utterly uninterested in what followed. Throughout my reading of this book, I found it almost impossible to concentrate on, to the point that I was reading the words but not actually taking in any of their meaning. I could read and think about other things at the same time. I've seldom read anything this tedious, including The Rainbow's nonsense, which at least had the advantage of being scandalizing.

Nostromo in this book is a character, not a spaceship. He is admired by all who know him, and is entrusted with absconding with a load of silver from a mine during a rebellion, or some such nonsense. Basically the book is concerned with the question of whether a man who is only good for the sake of his reputation is really a good man. Conrad explores this question in exhaustive detail for about four hundred pages too many and seems to come to the conclusion that the answer to that question is "no."

It's hard to write about this book given how hard it was to read. I can say that the only character who finally came alive for me was one Dr. Monygham, whose role in the story I don't comprehend. However, the account of the torture he suffered in his past was arresting to say the least, although too long to quote for this review. Initially I got some joy from silver mine owner Charles Gould's persistent refrains of "My dear, you seem to forget that I was born here." That was squashed before the end of the first part of the book. None of the other characters are very interesting, or if they are Conrad draws them in the most boring way possible.

Honestly I don't know how this got to be known as Conrad's best work. His other two books that I read were undoubtedly better. This one might have been on par with Heart of Darkness if it were much, much shorter, but I doubt it. I hope that The Secret Agent is better, because it's literally the next book on The List.

- - - - -

It was part of what Decoud would have called his sane materialism that he did not believe in the possibility of friendship between man and woman.
     The one exception he allowed confirmed, he maintained, that absolute rule. Friendship was possible between brother and sister, meaning by friendship the frank unreserve, as before another human being, of thoughts and sensations; all the objectless and necessary sincerity of one's innermost life trying to react upon the profound sympathies of another existence.

- - - - -

67. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Year Published: 1899
Pages: 124
First Sentence: The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest.
Rating: 2/3 (meh)

Review:
I'm just going to say right off the bat that I don't think I got this one, and I'm not sure whether I was going to.  Maybe there was just too much in it that was too specific to its time (and while we're on the topic of time, Heart of Darkness wasn't published during the 20th century no matter how you slice it, making its presence on The List another irritating Board indulgence), but I think a lot of what happened in it was just too subtle for me to be aware of.

That's partly my own fault.  The edition I read came with an introduction over thirty pages long that I didn't read in order to avoid what would almost certainly be a ton of spoilers, though I may revisit it if I don't have to return the book to the library too soon*.  Not only that, it had copious endnotes that I also mostly didn't read, so as not to disrupt the flow of the narrative overmuch.  Finally, this edition included The Congo Diary plus notes on that, which I did read and found somewhat illuminating.

Again I'm left mainly with the impression that Joseph Conrad was a remarkable man.  I didn't know when I read Lord Jim that English wasn't his first language, but the fact that the man had a million adventures, along with learning several languages, and then went on to write a slew of modern classics in one of his non-native languages is just crazy.  I think it's the grimness of his two novels that I've read so far that leave me less interested in him than I was in Jack London, a slightly less remarkable and yet more fascinating and exuberant writer-adventurer character.

To return more specifically to Heart of Darkness, though, it's about a man named Marlow who goes to the (Belgian?!) Congo to take a steamboat down the river and bring back a man named Kurtz.  Here already I'm confused, because my initial impression while reading was that Marlowe was going to the Congo to just drive this steamboat back and forth numerous times without Kurtz as his objective, or any objective at all besides killing some time.  Anyway, this journey to find Kurtz is clearly a symbolic journey for Marlowe as well, but what he finds when he finds Kurtz was a little hard to follow.  Certainly some scary jungle savages and a troubled man, but...

I'm afraid trailing off is about all I can do there.  I suppose Marlowe is forced to see the darkness in himself, but when it comes to what actually happens in the novel and not the symbolism, I found it all a bit baffling.  Certainly some of Conrad's obfuscation is purposeful, but some of it was also due to it being 1899, which just makes things extra confusing.  I don't know what was being inferred about Kurtz and his actions half of the time.

Conrad's prose is mostly excellent and evocative, at least, but he does really hammer on the "heart of darkness" phrase at the climax of the novel, which he maybe shouldn't have (although that might have been something else that I just didn't understand).  I've talked before about how little I know about Africa in general, and I'm left somewhat confused as to the actual geography of this Congo journey of Marlowe's, given that I picture the entirety of the African continent as a savannah and/or desert and/or Madagascar, and have done nowhere near enough to remedy that.  So I had to rely purely on what Conrad said about the lay of the land, and the setting was powerful even though I can't vouch for whether it was accurate or not.

Overall, I have to say that this book didn't blow my mind, hence its meh rating.  But then again it's a super short, quick read that I might even pick up again because of that fact, to possibly decipher a bit more of it.

* I didn't. I save introductions till the end because of their inevitable spoilers when it comes to literary works, but then by the time I'm done the book I usually just want to start something new instead of reading about what I just finished reading.

- - - - -

"Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun..."

- - - - -

I remembered the old doctor,—"It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot." I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.

- - - - -

Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear—or some kind of primitive honour? No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one's soul—than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps too had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield.

- - - - -

69. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Year Published: 1905
Pages: 332
First Sentence: Selden paused in surprise.
Rating: 3/3 (read it!)


Review:
I hardly know where to begin with this one. As much as I grumble about them, most of the other books from The List so far have been possessed of layers and nuance, but I think The House of Mirth is the first one that's made me want to read it all over again immediately to really understand what's going on here, exactly. (And likely it wouldn't've helped.)

Let me try to explain.

Lily Bart is a beautiful young woman falling from brink to brink. She hasn't managed to find a husband yet when the book begins, although she rather quickly manages to draw the interest of an exceedingly boring and rich young man. Just as quickly, she sabotages his interest and ends up asking her friend's husband, Gus Trenor, to help her with making some investments to get some money.

Here I parted ways with my intelligence, because it took me forever to realize that Gus was straight up giving Lily money, rather than using hers or making any investments at all.

In debt to another woman's husband, things go from bad to worse for Lily. By the end of the book, her house is anything but mirthful. The "Selden" who appears in the first sentence is the man she might end up with, if not for his dickishness in her several hours of need. Also probably her pride.

If this sounds uninteresting and basic, it's because I'm doing a bad job of explaining it. Edith Wharton is amazing. Despite a few conspicuous similes (this is barely a complaint), her writing is fantastic. Jamesian* influences are obvious, but I think she might actually be a better writer. Her characters at least are as firmly drawn in about one quarter the number of words that James would use to accomplish the same. Plus it's funny when it's not very tragic.

Lily Bart is the best female protagonist of The List so far, too, with many of the others in a distant second (although I should give honourable mention to Susan Ward from Angle of Repose). Oh my God, though. Piteous and infuriating by turns, I still don't know how I feel about her and her actions over the course of the book.

You guys, I'm flailing here, obviously, and I'm going to blame it either on this book being mind-blowing, or the fact that I'm no longer capable of sleeping past 8:00 am. But I really encourage you to read this book. It's like the tragic version of A Room with a View.

*I know we haven't talked about Henry James yet for The List, but I've read a couple of his books before (The Bostonians and Portrait of a Lady, neither of which merited a spot apparently) and really look forward to the ones that show up in the upper half of The List. He's kind of awesome.

- - - - -

If I could only do over my aunt's drawing-room I know I should be a better woman.

- - - - -

"Deuced bold thing to show herself in that get-up; but, gad, there isn't a break in the lines anywhere, and I suppose she wanted us to know it!"

- - - - -

But the idealist subdued to vulgar necessities must employ vulgar minds to draw the inferences to which he cannot stoop; and it was easier for Lily to let Mrs. Fisher formulate her case than to put it plainly to herself.

- - - - -

78. Kim by Rudyard Kipling

Uncomfortable Plot Summary: Rudyard Kipling's wish fulfillment fantasy.

Year Published: 1901
Pages: 217
First Sentence: He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher—the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum.
Rating: 3/3 (read it!)

Review:
Because I couldn't find Kim in its own volume at the library, I ended up getting it in a book of "The Best Fiction of Rudyard Kipling," which meant that after I was done Kim I finally got to read The Jungle Book, which I'd argue is Kipling's much more famous work. However, reading the two books in such quick succession also meant that I got to see how far superior Kim is, in its story structure especially.

Kim O'Hara is a young Irish boy who has basically gone native in India. His mother died when he was a baby, and his alcoholic father, "a young colour-sergeant of the Mavericks, an Irish regiment," became a railway man, and brought baby Kim with him everywhere. Eventually Kim's father becomes an opium addict, and dies, leaving Kim with some identifying papers and nothing else, so that Kim basically just ends up running wild in the streets of Lahore.

That's where the book opens, with Kim and some other children playing where they shouldn't be, outside of a museum. A strange-looking man appears and Kim is immediately curious about him. It turns out that the man is a Tibetan lama, who left his monastery to search for a legendary "River of the Arrow." Kim latches onto the Lama as his new chela, or disciple, to beg for the lama and help him around the countryside on his search.

The two of them spend some time on the road, until by a strange coincidence, they end up encountering the Mavericks en route to Sanawar. The identifying papers that Kim's father left him are kept in an amulet that Kim wears around his neck, and when these are discovered, the regiment pretty much instantly takes Kim in hand, to finally send him to school and so on. Kim is very unwillingly separated from the lama.

I'll stop there for spoilers' sake, but say that the story really seems to be about the relationship between Kim and the lama and how that relationship illustrates Kim's struggle between the world of the "sahibs" (British colonist types, in this case) and that of the natives. It's this relationship that makes the book extremely readable. Obviously, the lama is a Buddhist, and thus prohibited from developing attachments (or at least I think that's how it works), but he undeniably loves Kim by the end of the book, and Kim has a tremendous amount of love and respect for the lama.

The book also seems to be a love letter to India from Kipling. All of the descriptions are very vivid, and the book is full of really remarkable characters. India isn't quite as much of a blind spot as the entirety of Africa is for me (I've seen Ghandi, after all, hahaha), but every time I encounter it in fiction it seems to be the most complex and bizarre country in the world. Also, it's very clear that the country Kipling is describing here is just the wilder, more old-fashioned version of the India portrayed by Salman Rushdie in Midnight's Children.

I like Kipling's writing. He's very good at describing very unfamiliar settings (for a so-called Western reader, anyway), and his sense of humour is never far away. (I've loved the Just So Stories for a very long time.) Also, he avoids the horribly annoying thing that a lot of writers do when they're giving dialogue to people who speak accented or a vernacular English, where all of the apostrophes and misspellings make that person's dialogue almost unreadable, and insulting too in some cases. Kipling just makes judicious use of some extra letters here and there to get the point across. I know I'm harping about this, but I really hate it when writers do it.

Overall the book is good. It's not one of the best of the 3/3s, because the story is pretty simple, but it's definitely worth a read.

Quotations:
(I didn't find anything particularly quotable in the book, so instead here's a stanza from "The Sons of Martha", one of Kipling's good bad poems that I have a bit of a soft spot for. -M.R.)

They finger death at their gloves' end where they piece and repiece the living wires. 
He rears against the gates they tend: they feed him hungry behind their fires. 
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into his terrible stall, 
And hale him forth like a haltered steer, and goad and turn him till evenfall.

79. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

Uncomfortable Plot Summary: Beethoven and an anonymous Italian's murder provide the impetus for a love story.

Year Published: 1908
Pages: 246
First Sentence: "The Signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all."
Rating: 3/3 (read it!)

Review:
I very nearly gave this book a 2, but the more I've thought about it while getting ready to write this review (while procrastinating on writing this review, actually), the more I realize I really liked the book, and it's sticking with me, especially the very last scene, which I won't tell you about.

Lucy Honeychurch is a young woman travelling in Italy with her cousin, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, who is an old maid (probably around 35 years old or so), as chaperone. The book opens with them lamenting the fact that the rooms they've been given in Florence have no view of the city. A horrendously uncouth old man gallantly offers up the rooms he and his son occupy to the two ladies, which sparks discussion among all the guests at the pension, Miss Bartlett's great dismay, and Lucy's bewilderment. Because, you see, Lucy is basically an innocent country girl and also somewhat strange, still trying to figure out how to deal with the world on her own terms and those of her crazy, repressed society.  (A lady can't say the word "stomach" in a man's presence, for example.)

But my tone is too sarcastic, and my summary is too detailed so far.

The horrendous (actually very sweet) old man is named Mr. Emerson, and his young, sad son is George. The two of them seem to live outside of the social norms, and because the pension is so small, and tourists have such a limited territory, Lucy and her cousin are unable to avoid them after the room debacle (Charlotte is convinced to allow the switching of rooms, somehow). Eventually, Lucy goes out alone on a whim, and ends up witnessing a murder of some random Italian. George happens to be in the vicinity, and escorts Lucy back to the pension. During this walk, they experience a strange sort of tacit bonding, which will bring both of them no end of trouble. Later, on an excursion out of town, George HORROR OF HORRORS kisses Lucy. She and Charlotte flee Florence and go to Rome the next morning.

Back in England several weeks later, Lucy ends up engaged to some terrible dude whose name I haven't bothered to remember. He is clearly the worst possible match for her. And then the Emersons show up again, and...

You can read it to find out how it ends.

(George and Lucy are the names of a couple we met before in The Magnificent Ambersons. That book was written about ten years after this one, though, so I'm not sure if that's supposed to be some sort of weird literary reference or if it's just a coincidence because there were only five names to choose from at the time.)

Lucy is this great mercurial sort of character, who has a tremendous amount of passion and good sense. I think she'd actually make a good friend; I can imagine having really great hangouts with her and Jane Eyre. The Emersons are also really fascinating. As I mentioned before, they're a bit out of step with their time, apostate proto-feminists with socialist tendencies. I'll admit I have a bit of a crush on George.

I think by far the most interesting character, though, is Reverend Beebe. He shows up first at the pension in Florence. He's a youngish Anglican priest who originally met Lucy when she was at school, and who is in Italy for short time before moving to Lucy's, err, area to take up duties there. So he appears again in the English countryside along with the Emersons, as both an ally and antagonist to Lucy. He's portrayed as being a lot more jolly than most priestly types, more open-minded and generally an all-around cool guy. However, as the book progresses, you see that he actually has these really conservative beliefs surrounding vocations and celibacy. (As an aside, I'm not sure if the Church of England has the same notions about vocations as the Catholic Church, but basically Catholics talk about "vocations" as callings to different paths in life, e.g. marriage, the priesthood, religious orders, etc. and that's what I'm talking about here.) Basically, he believes that celibacy is the highest calling, and that nothing else is as good. This reminded me a lot of The Song of Bernadette, where the future St. Bernadette just wants to get married and have babies, and everyone around her says GOOD GOD NO A VISIONARY CANNOT BE DEFILED YOU HAVE TO BECOME A NUN. P.S. read The Song of Bernadette. In Catholicism, all vocations are technically created equal, and as long as you're not doing something evil like fornicating, then you're ok. Supposedly. But essentially what I'm trying to say is that while Rev. Beebe seems really progressive, he's actually just like the rest of the repressed society around him.

The style of the book is very deceptive in that it feels extremely modern. The Emersons seem like the product of a mind from the 70s or 80s, not 1908. So I'm really looking forward to the upcoming books by this author. And actually, before I realized that the book was so old, I was kind of annoyed by yet another modern author putting the spin of modern attitudes onto the past. Oops! There's a lot of hilarity in the book, too, by the way, especially in the descriptions of tourists (who apparently haven't changed at all in a hundred years) and the pretense of the "English colonists" in Florence.

In closing, this book wasn't earth-shattering, but it was beautiful and funny and thought-provoking. It didn't punch me in the gut, but it made me smile. If I initially mistook that reaction for something less than stellar, I've changed my mind now.

Quotations:
Chapter 6: The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them (Yes, this is pretty much the best chapter title ever. -M.R.)

How often Lucy had rehearsed this bow, this interview! But she had always rehearsed them indoors, and with certain accessories, which surely we have a right to assume. Who could foretell that she and George would meet in the rout of a civilization, amidst an army of coats and collars and boots that lay wounded over the sunlit earth? She had imagined a young Mr. Emerson, who might be shy or morbid or indifferent or furtively impudent. She was prepared for all of these. But she had never imagined one who would be happy and greet her with the shout of the morning star.
     Indoors herself, partaking of tea with old Mrs. Butterworth, she reflected that it is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an irruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gestures mean nothing, or mean too much. "I will bow," she had thought. "I will not shake hands with him. That will be just the proper thing." She had bowed--but to whom? To gods, to heroes, to the nonsense of schoolgirls! She had bowed across the rubbish that cumbers the world.

85. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

You guys, I am having issues trying to decide how to order all of these different little details that I give in addition to the reviews. Does anyone have issues with the Uncomfortable Plot Summaries being at the beginning, since they're potentially spoilerful? Should the ratings go at the beginning? Am I worrying too much?! -M.R.

Uncomfortable Plot Summary: A young man commits suicide by Malaysian.

Year Published: 1900
Pages: 417
First Sentence: He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull.
Rating: 2/3 (meh)

Review:
I've been supremely curious about Joseph Conrad for a long time, but I have no idea why, only that it involves a reference to Heart of Darkness in something else I devoured, somewhere along the line.

I'm trying to write some slightly more comprehensive reviews, but unfortunately I'm pressed for time right now, so this time I'll just work through a list of points that I made while reading. Basically, please forgive me if this isn't very coherent.

The summary goes first, though. Jim is the sailor son of an English parson. According to Captain Marlow, who tells most of the story, Jim has the look of the finest sort of English naval man. However, he commits a truly great sin while serving as chief mate on a steamer carrying a vast cargo of pilgrims, which I won't spoil because it's just too good, only to say that it results in the loss of his honour. For some time after he works as a water clerk, and ends up withdrawing from the world to a place called Patusan, all in a struggle to recover that honour.

Like I said, Captain Marlow tells Jim's story. I have to say, I'm not a fan of Conrad's choice here. For one thing, Marlow repeats everything with way too much detail and at way too much length. According to the author's note in the edition I read, a lot of reviewers agreed with me on this when the book was first published. Conrad claims that Marlow's narration can be read aloud in under three hours, which I seriously doubt. I had the same issue with Nelly Dean's narration in Wuthering Heights. Nobody remembers anything this accurately or eloquently.

Things were made even worse because Marlow repeated entire stories within his own, so that it was often really hard to keep track of who was "I" at any given time. I hate having to work that hard when I'm reading something. Elizabeth Kostova did something like this in her novel The Historian, but she was quoting books and letters and things, and best of all, she used different fonts so everything was a lot more clear. Not that I really expect a book published in 1900 to do anything unusual in the way of typography, of course.

Having just read The Call of the Wild, I also couldn't help comparing Joseph Conrad to Jack London. To my knowledge, they're both sort of "adventure novelists," which I have to admit I find extremely romantic. Conrad's Jim is an amazing tragic hero (am I using that label properly?) but once again, I can't help but be more interested in the writer. However, Conrad doesn't show through his writing in Lord Jim to the extent that London does in The Call of the Wild. London is less verbose, and I like that better. Lord Jim has a solid ending but it drags horribly in the middle, partly because I didn't like Marlow, partly because Conrad waxes philosophical way too often. He writes beautifully sometimes, but others he falls victim to this sort of wall of text issue that required me to go back and read several pages several times.

Finally, I'm pretty sure that this is the first time I've ever thought that a book would make a better movie. Apparently one was made, and was terrible, but really I think that it could be awesome if done properly.

Oh, I almost forgot! This is just sort of a passing observation, but Arnold Bennett did it, too, and I wanted to mention it in my review of The Old Wives' Tale, but I forgot. Okay, so there are parts in both books where the characters are speaking French, and it's indicated very subtly by literally translating certain phrases instead of giving the English phrasing. I'm not sure how clear I'm being. For example, the statement, "You are extraordinary—you others," in a place where "vous autres" would be used in French and the English expression would be something along the lines of "you guys." (Alas, I'm not much of a translator.) Bennett actually did a much better job of this than Conrad, who couldn't resist putting the French in anyway.

And that's about everything. The book is a slog, but I highly recommend that you go and see the movie if it ever comes out.

- - - - -

The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations.

- - - - -

A certain readiness to perish is not so very rare, but it is seldom that you meet men whose souls, steeled in the impenetrable armour of resolution, are ready to fight a losing battle to the last, the desire of peace waxes stronger as hope declines, till at last it conquers the very desire of life.

- - - - -

And besides, the last word is not said,—probably shall never be said. Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention? I have given up expecting those last words, whose ring, if they could only be pronounced, would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to say our last word—the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submission, revolt. The heaven and the earth must not be shaken. I suppose—at least by us who know so many truths about either.

- - - - -

87. The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett

Based on a friend's suggestion (thanks Anne!), I'm adding Uncomfortable Plot Summaries to my reviews of the Top 100 novels. Credit for the concept/idea/whatever you call it goes to postmodernbarney. I'm not terribly good at them yet, but I hope to improve as the project progresses. Also, this book is available through the highly awesome Project Gutenburg HERE.-M.R.

Year Published: 1908
Pages: 615

First Sentence: Those two girls, Constance and Sophia Baines, paid no heed to the manifold interest of their situation, of which, indeed, they had never been conscious.

Uncomfortable Plot Summary: Two sisters outlive their usefulness to the patriarchy and then die.

Review:
The Old Wives' Tale is a weighty tome and very pleasant surprise. The edition I read is burdened with an introduction by John Wain, who I've never heard of, which claims that "[i]t is standing proof that a writer of the male sex can write with real perception about the imaginative and emotional lives of women." As you might imagine, I had to raise my eyebrow at a statement like that, made by one man about another man's writing. But despite the reservations that caused, I enjoyed the novel immensely.

It's too huge to summarize, but the premise is extremely simple. Two sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, begin as beautiful young women, live their lives, and then die. (Spoiler brought to you by the table of contents: the last two chapters of the novel are titled "End of Sophia" and "End of Constance.") Constance is older than Sophia by one year; she stays at home in St. Luke's Square in the fictional Potteries town of Bursley (England) married to Samuel Povey, who amicably took over her father's shop. Meanwhile, Sophia elopes with a travelling salesman, Gerald Scales, and they go off to live the high life in Paris.

The style is, I think, quite similar to The Magnificent Ambersons, i.e., a sort of fond mockery. Arnold Bennett, though, is less bitter about the march of progress than Booth Tarkington seemed to be (although the latter was writing a decade or so later, about the United States).

There isn't much in the way of plot, exactly. It's more episodic, and there are lots of nice parallels and contrasts between the sisters' lives, some that you have to look for, and others you don't.

The themes (topics, whatever) are even clear enough that I managed to grasp them: life, aging, death. Three things that every single person has in common, no matter what you might believe it means, or hope will follow. This is something that I know I'm still too young to really appreciate, but age preoccupies me constantly, and this book definitely got me thinking about some things even harder than I did previously. It's also blessedly free of the "death in fiction" issues I had with Ironweed and The Sheltering Sky.

As for the whole "dudes writing about ladies" thing, I'm kind of on the fence. I'm not sure exactly what differences exist between how men and women actually experience life, but I'm not convinced they're that extreme. In fact I think it's more of a stretch for a young woman of 2010 to try to write about an old woman of 1910. I can barely contemplate what it would be like to be mostly dependent and unable to vote, etc etc. (John Wain even admits that his claim is a bit outrageous, and adds that he's gotten his "women friends" to read the book for the past 25 years, "and the suffrage has been overwhelming: it is good; it tells the truth; it sees us as we are." Emphasis mine. Holy loaded term, Batman!)

FYI I tend to think of most books that are explicitly about women as "lady books," having less universal appeal than something with a more evenly distributed cast, but I think this one is an exception.

Quotations:
Samuel had never correctly imagined the matter of its heralding. He had imagined in his early simplicity that one day Constance, blushing, might put her mouth to his ear and whisper—something positive. It had not occurred in the least like that. But things are so obstinately, so incurably unsentimental.

He was adopting the injured magisterial tone of the man who is ridiculously trying to conceal from himself and others that he has recently behaved like an ass.

They tried, in their sympathetic grief, to picture to themselves all that she had been through in her life. Possibly they imagined that they succeeded in this imaginative attempt. But they did not succeed. No one but Constance could realize all that Constance had been through, and all that life had meant to her.

Rating: 3/3 (read it!)

88. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Year Published: 1903
Pages: 137

First sentence: Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.

Review:
So this is the first review of a book that I've already read (excluding Jane Eyre, obviously). My first experience with The Call of the Wild wasn't a very good one. I borrowed it (that time and this one) from my sister's box set of "Children's Classics" (e.g. Black Beauty, The Wind in the Willows, The Secret Garden, White Fang, etc.). Actually I think I bought the set as a gift for her, and I've read all the books, but she hasn't. Anyway, I don't think I was more than 14 years old or so the first time I read this book, and I hated it. As a child and cat person, I couldn't appreciate a book with a dog as the main character, no matter how good the execution.

Which brings us to the present, but first I'll tell you what the book is about. Like I said, the protagonist is a dog. I have a pretty strong suspicion that that that makes the book unique in The List. Buck is a St. Bernard/Shepherd cross living in luxury on some rambling estate in California or somewhere. That is until sturdy dogs like him become a precious commodity to be shipped up north during the Yukon gold rush. So off he goes, and he's brilliant and wonderful, and gradually starts to hear THE CALL OF THE WILD.

Sounds pretty lame.

Isn't!

I was totally ready to hate this book again, but it very pleasantly surprised me (take that, Ironweed!). Though pretty weak in the plot department, that's not at all what the important thing is here. What happens to Buck is what matters. The so-called Call of the Wild is a beckoning to the primitive time before our ancestors tamed his, and it's oddly affecting. And even though I'm still a cat person and believe the one lounging on the rug in front of me right now hears the Call of the Wild at all times and simply ignores it in favour of a life of ease, Jack London somehow convinced me that dogs are capable of being kind of cool sometimes, too. I've also developed an even more urgent desire to go to the Yukon.

To be completely honest, though, the main impression I got from this book had very little to do with the book itself, and is basically that Jack London must've been a fucking cool dude. Someone please direct me to a good biography. This is the first dead author crush I've had since the first and only (so far!) time I read Vonnegut, back in 2006. Seriously though, Jack London: too bad he died before any of my grandparents were even born.

Quotations:
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself—one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.

Rating: 3/3 (read it!)