The Portrait of a Lady, James

The Portrait of a  Lady

Henry James

England 1881

“It appeared to Isabel that the unpleasant had been even too absent from her knowledge, for she had gathered from her acquaintance with literature that it was often a source of interest and even instruction.”

            I think I’m the only one who still reads/loves Henry James. Okay, maybe they still teach The Turn of the Screw in undergraduate courses (they did in mine, anyway) but I’ve yet to meet anyone else who loves the lengthier psychological novels as much as I do. I don’t know what it is, exactly. I guess I like the feeling of time travel, the sense that I’m sitting next to an English gentleman overlooking the sloping fields and tailored gardens of a country house, or, in the case of The Portrait, that I’m wandering among the ruins of Rome under the particular gleam of an Italian sun. Of course there’s also the fact of getting into someone else’s head that I like, and James’ psychoanalysis is so expansive. His omniscient narrator explores the mind not only of Isabel (the “Lady” in question), but also of her friends, family, and acquaintances over many years, so that by the end one feels that she understands these people better than they understand themselves. Why do people do the things they do? James wants to know, and so do I.

           

In The Portrait of a Lady James tells the story of Isabel Archer, a young American who travels to England to visit her aunt and uncle, and has her life inexorably altered by the events that happen there. The question under scrutiny, or one of them, at least, is what difference does money make to a young woman’s happiness? Her cousin Ralph, among other men, admires her sense of adventure and originality: “She was intelligent and generous; it was a fine free nature; but what was she going to do with herself? This question was irregular, for with most women one had no occasion to ask it. Most women did with themselves nothing at all; they waited, in attitudes more or less gracefully passive, for a man to come that way and furnish them with a destiny. Isabel’s originality was that she gave one an impression of having intentions of her own.” Realizing, however, that Isabel would not likely be able to fulfill her intentions, given that she was poor, Ralph convinces his dying father to leave the girl a fortune, thereby, he supposes, setting her free from the obligation of finding a husband.

The question now becomes what will make Isabel happy? The results of his social experiment, however, turn out to be not at all what Ralph imagined. Presumably free from the danger of being taken advantage of due to her poverty, Isabel is now “made use of” for her money. It’s a complicated story, the details of which don’t emerge until the end of the novel, but the upshot is that Isabel becomes so focused on not following society’s edicts that she swings in the opposite direction, marrying a poor man in order to set him “free.” The match turns out to be a bad one. Still, there remain plenty of opportunities for Isabel to rearrange her life to better suit her own happiness. She could follow the example of her aunt, Mrs. Touchett, for example, and live apart from her husband for most of the year. She could, the narrator and Isabel’s friends suggest, leave him altogether. She could accept the offers of other suitors who could also take care of her. But Isabel does none of this. It’s almost as if she has acquired a taste for the misery she never knew in her younger life. Suffering, for Isabel, seems to be the sign of a higher nature. It is Isabel’s desire to be free from the scrutiny and expectations of those who wish her well which holds her captive. It is, in essence, her own mind which causes her suffering. In this sense, the tale is as modern and relatable today as it ever was.

One wants Isabel to be a feminist heroine, but James does not allow that wish to be fulfilled. Even with plenty of avenues for escape, Isabel returns to her cruel husband and a life she appears to hate in Rome. So is there no hope for woman, according to James? Are we doomed, not only by societal circumstance, but by our own perverse natures? I don’t think so. In the guise of a secondary character, Isabel’s friend, Henrietta Stackpole, James suggests not. This lady, a traveling journalist, is a mix between Mrs. Touchett who, while completely in control of her own life, is too cold for Isabel’s tastes, and Isabel, who bends to her husband’s every whim. Henrietta is sensible yet caring. And though Isabel is disappointed by her friend’s eventual decision to marry an Englishman, it seems to me the most logical and happy marriage of all. But, of course, logic and happiness does not for a good novel make. And, by extension, perhaps not for the most interesting, or “original,” life, either.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, Smiley

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

Jane Smiley

2005

USA

Way back in August, when I had hours on end to read and think and write in the sunshine, I started this blog. It’s also when I bought Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley. A huge, heavy, hardcover book, it probably cost well more than the $9.50 I paid for it when originally published, though I suspect it was never a bestseller, since the audience interested in reading about novels rather than actually reading novels is probably as large as the group that would recognize the reference in the title (to the poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens). For better or worse, I fit comfortably into both.

Smiley is a prolific novelist, and she does a fine job of writing about writing, too. Perhaps it will surprise you, but some great writers are not very good at talking about writing, while others who are not brilliant writers themselves can come up with incredible insights (a fact which is proven to me again and again in the peer review groups I make my students have). Each chapter explores some aspect of the novel, ranging from “What is a Novel?” to “Morality and the Novel” to “A Novel of Your Own.” I have been reading this book slowly, bit by bit and here and there, ever since August, which might suggest that I haven’t enjoyed it, though quite the opposite is true. Smiley’s analysis is full of insightful tidbits, which, in my opinion, are best savored slowly, preferably with beer.

My favorite chapter was #9, “The Circle of the Novel,” which I expected would be about the novel’s “friends,” and it kind of is, in a way. In this section Smiley plots different types of genres around the face of a clock – romance, travel, history, biography, tale, joke, gossip, diary/letter, confession, polemic, essay, and epic – in order to make the claim that the novel is a particularly unique form in that it samples from all, or at least several, of these different genres at once. Smiley concludes that the novels that strike us as “great” and enduring tend to sample liberally from all of them. I had never thought about it like that before, but now that I do, I have to agree.

What I could have done without in this and most of the other chapters is Smiley’s tendency to provide what seems to me more evidence than is really necessary to support her arguments. Given that the last section of the book offers thoughts and reviews (much like my project here) on the 100 novels she read in one year, I understand her desire to talk at length about them. But since her book is presented as more of a popular text than a scholarly one (to quote Smiley herself in Ch. 9, “Much of a reader’s willingness to suspend disbelief grows out of whether she and the author agree on what category or categories of discourse a text falls into”) it’s my opinion that keeping some of these discussions more theoretical by offering only a modicum of evidence might have been more appropriate. (It certainly would have made for a quicker reading experience).

All in all, though, I seriously appreciated this book. And even though I’m about to dress it back up in its dust jacket and set it on my brand-new, handmade bookshelf, I plan to open it up again and again as I, too, read the books Smiley’s read, and find myself wanting to hear someone else’s smart, thoughtful observations and thoughts about them.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Miller

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Donald Miller

USA

2009

“…we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don’t want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage.”

            The theme this month in my reading life seems to be one of optimism. I suppose that bodes well for a start to the new year, and it is certainly a welcome change from my MA subjects of study (Modernism and African American Lit are two of the things I love most in this world, but I wouldn’t say reading either is a particularly joyful experience). I don’t want to think of myself as inherently pessimistic, but sometimes my mind attacks me and tells me all kinds of terrible things,  like life is meaningless and we all die alone – especially you will die alone, Emily, and not, unfortunately, for a very, very long time. I recently assigned my students to read David Foster Wallace’s Commencement Speech to Kenyon University. In it he says that he understands why people who shoot themselves usually do it in the head; that’s the part that’s plaguing them – the “evil master,” he calls it. (I did not mention to the students that DFW committed suicide himself, later, but one of the more dedicated ones came up after class and expressed her surprise at having found that out. Does that make what he says about controlling your thinking any less valid? I don’t think so. It seems like just more evidence for his claim.) Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I understand Foster Wallace’s point, which is why I’ve become a Buddhist – so that I can learn to control my thinking and not be such a slave to my mental demons. It is also why it is something of a relief to read authors like Glass and Miller who believe that at the bottom of everything there is a fundamental connection between people, that the essence of the world is good not just in some mystical, veiled sense, but right here, now.

            Miller’s book is about what he learned while working with a couple of filmmakers to make a movie out of his memoir. If that makes you think this book is about the craft of writing, you are right. But what’s cool and unique about it is that Miller takes the lessons he learns about how to craft a good story – a good story has “a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it,” “good stories have good scenes” – and applies them to his life, so that the book is interesting not only for writers and artists, but for anyone who wants, as Miller thought-provokingly terms it, to “live a good story.” I do, I do! The only problem, for me, is that I want to write them, too.  

It’s fine to read Miller’s book as a regular person. It’s good to think about how to create more risk and meaning in our lives. But it’s harder to read it as a writer, and think about combining that role with being a person. The lessons Miller learns make me feel anxious and guilty, as well as inspired, because when I read them I find it difficult to control my mind, which is constantly telling me that I’m not doing enough. Not only am I not living a good story, but I’m not writing them, either. I understand that I have done some pretty awesome things, and I have even written a few things that I feel really proud of, but the fact remains that it is never not true that I could be doing more. I could get up earlier. I could stay up later. I could forgo the hangouts or the elaborate lesson plans. I could dedicate myself to my art. Whatever I do is never good enough for me. Is this my story? Miller says you can change your story, choose-you-own-adventure, so to speak. It’s all up to me.

Maybe there is some direction for me in the ending to the book, in the part where he gets to the hope that I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Writing about a bike ride he took across the country, Miller says, “If a story sets our moral compass, my compass had changed from cynicism to hope. I didn’t believe the television pundits anymore. I didn’t believe people were by nature bad or my neighbor was my enemy. The America we see on television and read about in the newspapers isn’t the America we found as we pedaled across the country at fifteen miles per hour. We encountered no fear or tension. Instead, in small towns stitched together by back roads, we found kindness.” So maybe I need to concentrate, too, on turning my moral compass from cynicism to hope, and expect the reception of my private thoughts to be met with kindness and interest, rather than scorn and dismissal. My very smart fiancé always says that life gives you what you expect it to, and in fact I know someone who won the Powerball jackpot. He was already rich before that, and people kept asking him why he was even playing Powerball in the first place. You know what he said? He said that he kept playing because he thought he would win. Playing Powerball would be a lot easier than what I’m trying to do, but it probably wouldn’t make as good of a story.

           

           

The Whole World Over, Glass

The Whole World Over

Julia Glass

2006

USA

“The birds’ migration routes crisscrossed the map like a craze of telephone wires, swooping gracefully from one coast to another. The seemed almost to secure the world, all these well-traveled paths in the sky, the way ribbon or twine secures a precious gift.”

It’s fitting that I bought my copy of The Whole World Over on what amounted to a mini tour of the United States. My fiancé is in the process of interviewing for medical residency programs, and over the Christmas holiday I was lucky enough to be able to accompany him to some of them. On a lovely wander about Tucson, AZ, I picked up this novel, and it became my constant companion through flights to Madison, WI, New York City, and back home to Portland, OR. Even though, at over 500 pages, it’s by no means a short book, I was sad to see it, and my trip, come to an end.

            The novel starts out in the consciousness of baker, mother, and wife Greenie Duquette, who is in some sense the main but by no means the only character. Other chapters allow us into the psyches of Alan, Greenie’s husband, Walter, her friend, and Saga, a young woman with whom Alan builds an unlikely friendship. Amidst the many other appealing personalities populating the novel is the reticent but loveable Fenno McLeod from Glass’s equally excellent first novel, Three Junes. Greenie’s departure from New York City to New Mexico after taking a job as head cook in the governor’s mansion is the event that sets the book in motion, and while the differences between these two worlds are interesting in their own right, what’s really at stake here are the relationships between the characters and, in turn, their relationships with themselves.

            The ultimate pleasure of reading Glass’s novels lies in their richness of detail and the almost magical way she’s able to connect what seem like a million moving parts. The book Greenie reads to her son becomes the name of their dog, who Alan gets from Saga, who meets Walter at an important moment after becoming friends with Fenno… it sounds convoluted, but in Glass’s expert hands the interactions feel completely natural, an accurate depiction of the way things tie together in real life, the whole world over, as they do in the image of migratory bird routes on display in Fenno’s bookstore.

            In addition to exploring the haphazard but important ways we come to know each other, the novel is interested in how we come to know ourselves. Glass’s prose insists that this knowing cannot be separated from our knowledge of others, but the book also questions whether such influences can be detrimentally misleading or confusing. How can you know if what you feel is true? How can you know if you would be the same person you are now if you had not met the people you did? The answers to these questions have consequences, of course, not just for our own self-knowledge, but for how we’re able to maintain and benefit from our relationships with others. Love relationships (hetero and homosexual) are the primary focus here, but family bonds and varying degrees of friendship also get a good amount of stage time.

            The Whole World Over is staunchly realistic in the very best sense of the term: it emphasizes characterization and gives us a great deal of knowledge on both the internal and external forces motivating the characters’ thoughts and actions. The fact that Glass follows not just one, but four characters, adds greater depth to this effect. What’s particularly charming about the book is that though it portrays many unhappy scenarios, the overarching mood of is one of optimism and a belief that even though we are all coming and going, lost in our own internal hells of confusion and uncertainty, connection abounds. We are not alone and isolated at all, but attached to one another in ways we notice every day and in ways only a talented novelist can help us glimpse, and appreciate.

The Hunger Games, Collins

The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins

2008

USA

            Over Christmas break, I read The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, because vacation means you are supposed to consume junk food, in this case in the form of a YA bestselling novel. I sought out this book for my vacation reading because I found the premise of it (which I learned of from friends and by seeing the preview for the upcoming film) intriguing: It’s some unspecified time in the future. The United States has endured a civil war and now the victors – The Capitol – lord it over the 12 surrounding Districts, hoarding food and goods for themselves and keeping the rest of the country in poverty to maintain the status quo. As a yearly reminder that rebellion against the Capitol doesn’t pay, two children between the ages of 12-18 are chosen from each district as "tributes," to compete in the Hunger Games, a fight to the death in which the last child alive “wins.” Of course, there are plenty of surprises to keep those pages turning. I couldn’t put it down and now, two days after finishing the book, all I can think about is buying the next one in the trilogy.

The best part, for me, was the richness and novelty of the descriptions both of the Districts and the Capitol. Anyone with a penchant for fantasy or science fiction knows what I’m talking about – the fancy machines that wash your hair for you, the plethora of food available at the push of the button, and outlandish costumes and fashion trends of the make-believe future and, in contrast, the brutal life in the poorest District, where hunting is illegal and workers must buy back the food and goods they produce at crippling prices. And then, of course, there’s the embedded social commentary.

I don’t know whether she intended it or not, but a lot of what goes on in the world of The Hunger Games might very well be taken as a critique of the issues facing our own society today. The Capitol taking wealth directly from the hands and mouths of the rest of the country seems strongly reminiscent of the claim that the 99% is being oppressed by the 1% in the U.S., which the recent “Occupy” movement has brought to our attention. And some of the discussions between Katniss and Rue, another Hunger Games tribute from a different district, call to mind Marx’s analysis of the worker who, because she lacks ownership or even the ability to purchase the goods and services she produces, becomes alienated from her work and her society. Here is a conversation between Katniss and Rue to explain what I mean: “‘I’d have thought, in District Eleven, you’d have a bit more to eat than us. You know, since you grow the food,’ I say. Rue’s eyes widen. ‘Oh, no, we’re not allowed to eat the crops.’ ‘They arrest you or something?’ I ask. ‘They whip you and make everyone else watch,’ says Rue. ‘The mayor’s very strict about it.’” Of course, we don’t whip people here for stealing or for entering the country illegally, but we do arrest and deport our own food workers on a daily basis, and you can’t tell me there isn’t an element of power and humiliation inherent in that punishment, too.

I could go on and on, making comparisons between the Capitol and the current United States. There’s plenty more to say about it. But in the interest of starting off 2012 with happy thoughts, I’ll end my analysis there.  The good news is that you don’t have to register any of this between the lines stuff to enjoy The Hunger Games. Regardless of your political ideology, you’re sure to feel both sympathy and admiration for Katniss Everdeen and many of her fellow tributes as they navigate the massive, manipulated, and deadly game they have no choice but to play.  

Tropic of Capricorn, Miller

Tropic of Capricorn

Henry Miller

USA

1938

“I will not do this. I will do some other thing! Very good. But can you do nothing at all? Can you stop thinking about doing anything? Can you stop dead, and without thinking, radiate the truth which you know?”

            This book is a strange combination of elements – stream-of-consciousness, dada, spiritual text, and coming-of-age tale. Like Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man it tells an at least partially autobiographical tale of the artist from youth to young-adulthood for the purpose of figuring out how the artist became the way he is, and how he reached his particular understanding of his role. There’s also a similar lack of delineation between one section and the next (one wants paragraphs, chapters, section headings – and is continually denied such comforts). Unlike Portrait, however, Tropic zips between ages and stages, so that the reader has to pay close attention to where Henry is at every moment. No matter how much things change, however, the obsessions of the protagonist remain the same: sex, writing, suffering, and truth.

            It’s easy to get distracted by the portrayal of sex in this novel. It’s not surprising that the book was banned for “obscenity” in the States, and had to be published in France. The large middle section, the womb of the book, if you will, is consumed with images of Miller having sex with everyone from hookers to his wife. I was reminded of Norman Mailer’s alleged misogyny in An American Dream in these sections, and there is at least one episode where the author appears to describe raping a woman as a wonderful experience (for him). Still, I think that the sex is a distraction for us, almost like a trick – an arrow pointing in the wrong direction - though it may have been a path to renewal for the author. What is more interesting is the spiritual aspect of Miller’s ruminations.

            What the author is interested in here is figuring out what is essential and what is true – not merely what happened, or what we, in an everyday sort of way consider to be “true,” but so much more. He claims to want to get to the “thing in itself,” a la Kant. Not “how does one become successful?” but “What is worthwhile?” One thing he claims again and again to absolutely not be worthwhile is the backbone of America, and capitalist culture in general – i.e. “making a living.” Though he holds a few jobs throughout the course of the book, for him making money is worse than beside the point because it gets in the way of the real work of life.

This disconnect between working and actually living life is the central problem, a problem which is perhaps greater for the artist than for any other worker. Miller seems to oscillate between the belief that the artist is the only toiler with any hope of stepping outside the “automated process,” and the concern that even the artist is missing the point – that even expression gets in the way of the true goal, which is silent acceptance. Probably the best example this is Miller’s friend, Grover, who as a young adult suddenly becomes a born-again Christian and hence the most “alive” person Miller has ever met. The difference is not religion, but rather that “if once, like other people, [Grover] had thought it was necessary to get somewhere now he knew that somewhere was anywhere and therefore right here and so why move?” Why indeed? Perhaps we feel we have to because, as Miller seems to realize in Tropic of Capricorn, we are all caught in the wheel of suffering (samsara in Buddhism). In Tropic of Capricorn Miller seems to reach some profound realizations on his own path to enlightenment (/artisthood?). The beauty of the book is that, if one can get past the distraction of the “obscenity,” observing another’s journey can help others along the path, too.