While I don't attempt to review all the books I read (mostly just restricting reviews to Canadian lit), I had a few thoughts recently I wanted to share.
First, I think I mentioned this briefly in my review of Vanity Fair, but the introductions to Oxford editions are so annoying. They go into all the plot details. Now I realize their audience is upper-level undergraduates and graduate students who may not have the time to read the novels they are expected to discuss in class (and their real competition may be Cliff's Notes), but I still think that an introduction should cover the main themes of a novel and that key plot points should be discussed in an afterward. While I do like their comprehensive notes, going forward I'll just have to remember to skip the intro. Unfortunately, I didn't stop myself in time for Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd and most of the key plot points have been spoiled. As it happens, I read this Hardy novel all the way back in high school, but it is a complete blank. I don't remember any of it, whereas I generally remember at least a bit of what I read in undergrad. However, now it is my turn to drop a few minor SPOILERS
SPOILERS to Hardy
What I definitely didn't remember is that Hardy really gets right to the point with offers of marriage coming right and left. Smollet was fairly action-packed, but Hardy tries to fuse a driving plot with some general comments on human nature, though at a much lower level of reflection than George Eliot, for example. I don't know how I'll feel about his later novels, but honestly Far from the Madding Crowd plays out like a soap opera, and not a particularly convincing one. I was completely unconvinced that Fanny would have so blithely hung around at the wrong church (and thus not married Sergeant Troy and preventing most of the action in Far from the Madding Crowd from happening in the first place). In general, the way Hardy presents people falling in and out of love so quickly seems shallow, and I'm not really feeling much appreciation for this novel, though I'll try to read a few of the later ones to see if my opinion improves. Maybe the fact that I don't rate this very highly now is why it didn't stick after I read it in high school.
SPOILERS off
I am a bit more taken with Julian Barnes' Pulse, which is a fairly recent (2011) collection of short stories. The ones where he is covering contemporary issues are fine, though his historical fiction ("The Limner" and "Harmony") is fairly dire. Four of them are almost anthropological field notes of what was said at various parties held by Phil and Joanna, representing what was upper-most on the mind of upper-middle class Londoners (mostly sex and gardening). The very last one has their somewhat shallow thoughts on the impact of global warming. I don't mean to slate Barnes for this. It is true that most people are doing their very best to avoid thinking of the looming catastrophe and certainly are not changing their individual behaviour* -- and worse are voting for politicians who seem determined to make things worse. Nonetheless, we may well look back in 20-30 years' time and ask how could we just sleepwalk into such a terrible future.
No question most people would like to retreat to 50 years ago when things were simpler, and we didn't have to weigh the carbon impact of our lives and travel. I would certainly not mind going back to the 1980s. Not that some things were very depressing to the politically-minded. I was extremely worried about nuclear war happening, perhaps inadvertently, under Reagan, and then in the early 90s I was fascinated as the anti-apartheid movement took off, as well as the unraveling of Communist rule over Eastern Europe, but I was essentially a bystander to all this history. Things definitely seem to be moving in the wrong direction these days with the rise of right-wing political movements all over the place and the triumph of the aggressively ignorant (Trumpism).
I didn't actually talk all that much about literature with my mother, though I did tell her about some of what I was reading. I would guess that she almost certainly read Mary McCarthy's The Group (and likely Didion's Play It As It Lays). I'm much less sure about McCarthy's Birds of America, but she certainly might have, as it was about her generation. It's basically about a young boy (then teenager) who observes what is going on in America with the rise of Civil Rights, the escalation of conflict in Vietnam and the looming threat of nuclear war. He's an intellectual, who sees the world at a bit of a remove, and I do feel some kinship to him and his worldview, though as I said, I grew up 20+ years later. I'm not quite sure where it is going (I'm about 1/3 in), but this may well make it into my top books of the year. I do hope that my mother discovered this book, as I think she would have liked it.
I suppose that is enough for now. I have quite a few other things yet to do this morning.
* I still take vacations now and then, though fairly rarely, and I do travel by train if possible. That said, I may well take a trip to Europe in a few years, which would largely negate the carbon savings of not owning a car. But people just can't live indefinitely under this forced austerity, asked for by (or increasingly demanded by) environmentalists. And so they over-react and vote in people who tell them that everything is fine and that no sacrifices are needed. Thus we are dooming ourselves and most species on the planet. And you wonder why I wish to go back to the 80s...
No comments:
Post a Comment