The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1921
         Several years ago I had a conversation with a friend who expressed frustration at not being able to find a good comprehensive list of cutting edge books to read. I mentioned the Pulitzer winners since I have the attention span of a goldfish and did not fully consider his predicament. The winners of the Pulitzer Prize for novels and fiction are (with some exceptions) generally not cutting edge. I do not know exactly how the Pulitzer is awarded (which does kind of seem like something I should have, you know, researched a little bit before posting), but in my mind it is similar to how the Oscars are picked. My general reaction to the Oscar nominees is that there is a movie that should win, and a movie that will win. Usually the movie that I say will win over the one that should is a fine movie, but there is something about it that is just a little too safe. Think A Beautiful Mind over Gosford Park or Gladiator over Traffic. This is one of the reasons I am reading this list in tandem with the Time Magazine List which is a little more...I don't know, is "hip" the right word? It is interesting to think if the Pulitzer committee had decided to go with the rather odd melange of stylistic weirdness that was F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, or the awesome Winesburg, Ohio as opposed to The Age of Innocence what sort of tone the prize would have taken later on. This is right at the beginning of the ex-pat movement, and it seems odd that the Pulitzer would pick an Edith Wharton novel, a move that is the direct polar opposite of hip. This is not as bad as when Crash won Best Picture (that still makes me mad!), but it reveals something of the Pulitzer sensibility.
         Did Edith Wharton ever write a novel with a happy ending? Every single book I've read by her deals with people who have the audacity to make an attempt at happiness and are beaten down by a surprisingly unforgiving universe. In college I had to read Ethan Frome about six times. Do you know what reading Ethan Frome six times does to the psyche? Nothing good, let me assure you. Universe to Ethan: You do not get to be happy. But I won't kill you, I will just force you to live in an unending agony. The Age of Innocence is a little better in terms of the permanence and form of the universe's temperament. The story deals with an up and coming man named Newland Archer who has just become engaged to a young woman named May. His decision to become engaged to May seems to come from the desire to maintain order in his life, and, since we as readers know this is a terrible reason to get married, we know that nothing good will come of this. He becomes acquainted with May's cousin Ellen, an older woman who is escaping from a disastrous marriage from a Polish Count. Ellen is independent in a way that impresses Newland, and when she decides to divorce her husband, Newland and May's family spend a considerable amount of time with her in order to offset societal damage. It is during this time that Newland falls in love with Ellen.
           Wharton wrote very knowing books about characters navigating social circles, and how if one has a goal or desire that exists beyond societal rules, attempting to sate those desires in the open will lead to ruin. On top of that, Wharton seemed to be suggesting that society itself was sick, and in a sick society, she seemed to be asking, how can a healthy love flourish? Characters can be dishonest and duplicitous, but as long as they are discreet, society turns a blind eye. Newland has a desire, and a certain view of himself, and these cannot coexist in the world he has created for himself. Wharton plays a high-wire act towards the end of the novel, as Newland's temptation comes front and center, but the final scenes are as soul-crushingly depressing as any Wharton ever devised.
           My initial attitude towards a book like this usually begins with resistance. Part of this comes from a complete lack of connection with the character's issues. However, with little exception, I do enjoy them. As much as I never want to see Ethan Frome again (ever), I have enjoyed other Wharton novels. I loved The House of Mirth, crazy depressing ending and all. I also think it is interesting to consider this book as Wharton's answer to the Henry James novel Portrait of a Lady, whose central character shares a last name with this novel's protagonist.
           In 1993 director Martin Scorsese (pronounced Score-say-zee) (that's for Sleepy McEat from my Grad program) adapted The Age of Innocence very successfully. Newland Archer was played by the always awesome Daniel Day-Lewis, who brought the self-satisfied arrogance that becomes dashed by a personal crisis that the role needed. May was played by Winona Ryder, an odd choice, but she was fine. Ellen was played by Michelle Pfeiffer at what I guess would be called the height of her career. The film picks up on the subtleties of the novel in a way that does Scorsese credit (I believe he was following Goodfellas, and if I had been an Edith Wharton aficionado when I was 13, I might have been worried that the film would be a disaster)(and really, looking back, doesn't it seem silly that Dances with Wolves beat Goodfellas?).

Coming Soon:

Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go
By Kazuo Ishiguro
Featured on the Time Magazine's Top 100
      I read this book with one of my classes not long ago, and on the test, I wrote a short answer question that was essentially a game of Taboo. I asked them to describe what the book was about without using certain words. That list included a series of words that would ruin the book for potential readers. My goal was for the students to write about subtext, and I hoped that the question would force them to think about issues in the book abstractly. With the stated goal of keeping spoilers to a minimum, I will try to use abstract as a watchword. This is a science fiction novel where, like in all good science fiction, a morality play is given to us, and we as readers are forced to see a universal truth that transcends the fictional storyline. If you are not a fan of science fiction, don't worry too much. The sci-fi elements to this book are very light and non-intrusive. You will not be forced to deal with any aliens, contemplate the nature of space/time, or anything like that.
       The novel opens with the narrator, Kathy, looking back on her time with her two close childhood friends, Ruth and Tommy. We know at the beginning of the novel that both Ruth and Tommy are dead, and that the deaths were fairly recent. The plot of the novel, essentially, is Kathy looking back on her relationship with these friends, and how these relationships shape her understanding of her own life. (Note: Here is where a lesser blogger would start revealing huge plot points. Not I. I first heard of this book at a seminar where an instructor suggested this book for AP reading lists. He then proceeded to give the whole thing away. I can't close Pandora's box for myself, but I'm sure I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if some of the emotional punches hadn't been pulled since I knew what was coming. ) But Kathy is what literature nerds like to call an unreliable narrator. While she doesn't lie, persay, she dances around the truth, or at least the emotional center of her stories. As a reader we have to piece together the nature of her life and career, and where she is now. Kathy is an expert at denial, and she is able to channel the stress and fear and anger that her situation should cause and direct these emotions towards her friends.  But when the novel ends, we as readers, know the truth. Kathy knows it too, but won't admit it to herself, which adds another layer to the tragedy.
           Ishiguro is very good at writing narrators like this. His novel Remains of the Day features a narrator, Stephens the Butler, who seems to be fully aware of himself for only about four sentences of the novel. It should be noted that those four sentences are among the most moving I have ever encountered. This is Ishiguro's great trick. He has a first person narrator describe a world to a reader who quickly understands it far better than the narrator. When that narrator figures out what has happened, we know that it is too late.
          There is a film version of Never Let Me Go that came out in 2010. It was directed by music video auteur Mark Romanek (whose only other film credit that I know of is the odd Psycho retread One Hour Photo which had the gimmick of casting Robin Williams against type) and features Keira Knightly as Ruth. I have not seen it, but I remember it came out to relative indifference. I am curious to see it, but I guess not curious enough to actually see it, since, well, it's been out awhile and goes unwatched. A few of my students saw it, and one said it was good, and another said it was terrible. So I guess it could go either way.
          But the quality of the movie not withstanding, this is a terrific book.

Coming Soon:

The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest Hemingway
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1953
         A few weeks ago a student asked me why all of the good writers kill themselves. At first I really didn't know what to say, since, of course, there are a lot of reasons, all of them deeply personal, why someone would take their own life. I told him (and I don't know if this was the best answer), that it is not true that ALL the good writers kill themselves, or even most, but that people tend to be morbidly curious about the ones who do, since their final act is one that seems to prove the presence of an inner demon that we as readers hope to see and understand in their work. I'm pretty sure this accounts for some of Hemingway's readership. I remember reading a few of his novels when I was in college. At the time I was only vaguely aware of how he died, but when someone brought it up in conversation one day, cementing the reality that he had killed himself, it made a certain amount of grim sense. His novels were populated by incredibly broken people, and even though they tried to hide their damage by living adventurous lives, the manner in which they lost themselves in what they did suggested a severe nihilism.
         This is my roundabout way of saying that this is a pretty bleak book. I guess. Like To Kill a Mockingbird, I barely remember it. I had to read it in high school at some point, and it has faded a little bit. I briefly considered reading it again this week, but that just didn't happen. I already have four books on my night stand that I'm actively going through, and, even as slim as TOMATS is, I'm sure a fifth would have made it collapse. What I do remember is that the story itself is incredibly basic. A man goes out to sea to fish, he catches a giant fish after an incredible battle, and as he brings it back to shore, the fish is eaten by sharks. Now, this is all from memory, so my apologies to Mr. Smith (my 12th grade English teacher) if I screw some of this up. The metaphor of a man alone seems like a safe thing for me to suggest, right? The struggle with the fish, or to achieve, is also a metaphor, to bring something up from the depths of the soul, maybe? Would the sharks be the world, critics, haters? I don't know. I remember that the ending of this novel reminded me of the central character of To Have and Have Not, who ended the novel by saying that "a man doesn't stand a chance." (Or something close to that...I think there may have been a swear word in there somewhere.) That idea seemed to be Hemingway's theme, the main idea that he played variations of his entire career.
           I probably won't ever read this book again, or if I do, it won't be for a long time. While it is not a long or taxing book, it is probably my least favorite Hemingway. When I think about this book winning the Pulitzer, I'm reminded of Martin Scorsese finally winning his Oscar for The Departed. Don't get me wrong, The Departed was a fine movie, but looking back on his career it would have made more sense for him to get it for Goodfellas or Raging Bull. Hemingway had written the books that he would be remembered for (by me anyway) years before he won the Pulitzer. I interpret his winning this as an award for his body of work, and this novel clearly distills the same ideas he had been working with for years.

Coming soon:

The Assistant

The Assistant
By Bernard Malamud
Featured on Time Magazine's Top 100
        Like most people my age, my first experience with Bernard Malamud was the 1984 film version of The Natural. I honestly don't know how many times I have seen this movie, but I would not be surprised if it is a three figure number. For those who have not seen it (for shame), the movie is about a young man, named Roy Hobbs, who has an incredible talent for playing baseball. Hobbs makes a moral transgression, and, the universe being what it is, punishes him. The form of punishment is banishment from baseball for over a decade, and when he returns, older, wiser, and finally ready to prove himself, Hobbs becomes the leader of a fictional major league team. The movie, which stars Robert Redford as Hobbs, is a sort of American take on the King Arthur legend. It has a fairy tale ending (well, as much of a fairy tale ending as can be expected from a baseball movie) which always makes me happy even as I see it as more than just a little contrived.
         Quick aside (to what would seem a very long aside, since really I haven't gotten around to even mentioning the book I'm supposed to be writing about): I have no real idea how large a figure Roy Hobbs is in popular culture, or as part of a larger American myth. However, I clearly recall Charlie Brown on the pitcher's mound in an old Peanuts strip comparing himself to Roy Hobbs (This was before a ball has hit back at him with such dizzying force that it completely disrobed him. Is that something that happens? The physics of Charles Schultz are dubious at best.), which is odd, since I tend to think of the world of Peanuts being rather self-contained(except for the characters pressing need for the world to be insured by Met Life).
         Years ago, on a road trip to some vacation or other, my parents got The Natural as a book on tape. My attention drifted in and out while they listened, but I dimly recalled the ending of the novel being quite different. Last year I read it, and, yes, reading the book is a completely different experience. While in the film, Hobbs sometimes came off as a little slow on the uptake, in the novel, he is a buffoon. Gone are the moments of quiet dignity that Redford brings to the role. In their place, Hobbs is an anxious, self-absorbed everyman who happens to be a very good baseball player. His motivations come from a deep hole in his soul that he needs to fill, and throughout the novel he consumes food with a gusto that often reads as disturbing. But the most shocking moment of the novel is the ending. Barry Levinson, the film's director, turned a novel with a deeply ironic ending into a fairy tale, and reading the closing lines, after seeing this movie what must have been 100 times, was almost like finding out there is no Santa Clause.
           I mention that most people know Malamud through the film version of The Natural, by the way, as a roundabout way of saying that no one really reads Malamud very much anymore. That I know of. There may be Malamud societies out there, big pockets of people who write their observations of The Assistant and The Fixer in the margins of their well-thumbed copies. But I doubt it. Malamud was an important writer, though. He was part of a post-war movement of second and third generation immigrants that became major voices in American fiction. The fact that The Natural was his first novel is significant, since he distills his ideas of America by writing about the national pastime. He was also a major influence on Philip Roth, whose observations of second and third generation immigrants to the United States have been celebrated over his decades-long career. (The character of E.I. Lonoff in Roth's 1979 novel The Ghost Writer was supposedly based on Malamud.)
            So now I guess I should discuss The Assistant. The problem is, I don't have much to say about it. The novel is about a store owner named Morris Bober, a Jewish immigrant who fled Eastern Europe for the promise of America. Bober runs a grocery store that is loosing money in a neighborhood that is falling apart. One day Bober is held up by two robbers, and is gravely injured. Bober opens the store back up, and soon discovers a homeless man living in his basement. The man is Frank Alpine, an Italian American, and Bober hires him to help around the store. Alpine is an odd character. He comes from the west coast, talks about St. Francis, is uncomfortable around Jewish people, steals food and cash from the store, longs for Bober's daughter, and (mild spoiler) was one of the men who robbed the store. The relationship that Frank has with Bober and Bober's daughter, Helen, make up the meat of the story. Frank deals with his guilt, Bober dreads the future when his store will have to close, and Helen worries about falling in love with Frank.
             The Assistant's strength is the sense of hopelessness that runs through the story. Frank is faced with moral dilemma after moral dilemma, and he makes choices that seem hopelessly wrongheaded and do nothing but add to his guilt. Helen, unable to experience life the way she wants to, reads novels about tragedy and redemption in order to feel more alive. But, of course, these tragedies only foreshadow her own doom. It is interesting to think of this novel in comparison to The Natural. Both Hobbs and Alpine are essentially idiots who have no foresight, no plan, and who have deep longings that are always just out of reach. They both exist in worlds where it is difficult to see anything or anyone growing. The Assistant especially is set in a dreary version of New York, where the characters all just seem to mark time, as opposed to pursuing any sort of achievement.
            I hope I have more to say about the other Malamud novel on my list, since I have pretty much blown through all my Malamudian miscellany in this post. But seriously, check out the film version of The Natural. It's pretty great.

Coming Soon: Oh, yeah, I'm writing about Pulitzer winners...