Silvio in El Rosedal

If you have been reading this blog much, you will have noticed that my interest in fiction has generally diminished over the last few years; my inner scientist has been emerging lately. Nevertheless, I am still a closet art appreciator, and when I get tired of rationality, I tend to return to paintings and literature, and, to a lesser extent, music. My opinion of the American arts, as I've said, is generally low, though there are exceptions. I don't think that the fiction here compares favorably to the fiction of Europe; ditto for paintings. If you have been following the news here for the last ten years, you will have seen that the U.S. is a surprisingly crude place. Note that, while I like Carson McCullers, and I liked The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, my current interest in her is mainly biographical. My recent strategy has been to completely avoid fiction, with the exception of László Krasznahorkai, and to occasionally dabble in earlier French and English writers. I'm tired of Michel Houellebecq at this point but haven't completely given up on Krasznahorkai, because I enjoy his intensity occasionally. The one big exception to all this is poetry, because I have gradually realized that I like American poetry, or at least a very small portion of it. It takes an enormous amount of effort from me to find a poem that I like, but there still seem to be a few of them out there that I haven't read. This may be because I dislike the formality and pretentiousness of earlier poetic forms. When I was in college, I instinctively disliked English majors.

So, for a change of pace, I decided to read Silvio in El Rosedal, by Julio Ramón Ribeyro, partly because it was not a large investment of my time. I first heard of Ribeyro from John P. in the early days of this blog. Following that, I read a novel by Ribeyro and some of his short stories. However, what I liked best was the unpublished translations of Ribeyro's diary that John had made. While I generally dislike the short story format, I think that this one is pretty good.

This story is about a man who grew up in Lima, Peru, and ended up owning a large farm in the country. As a child, his mother had encouraged him to learn the violin, but she died young, and his career was at his father's hardware store. When it came time for his father to retire, he wanted to return to Italy, where he had been born, and show off his wealth. But, because World War II was then underway, he had to shelve that idea, and he decided to buy the farm, called El Rosedal, which also accorded with his doctor's recommendation, because of his lung disease. Unfortunately, his father died almost immediately after moving there by choking on a peach pit. Silvio was his only heir and moved in. He was unmarried and in his forties at the time.

On the whole, Silvio is rather lackadaisical about running the farm and primarily leaves it up to the employees. He attempts to socialize with his landowning neighbors by throwing a large party, in which he plays the violin, accompanied by his local violin teacher. Most of his neighbors don't show up, and the ones who do have no interest whatsoever in classical music. So, Silvio leads a rather aimless life, largely in isolation, and his mind wanders into obscure questions. He notices that the rose garden is arranged in a pattern that looks like Morse code, and he translates it as "RES." This obsesses him for some time, and he can never figure out what it might mean.

Then, out of the blue, he receives a letter from his Italian cousin, Rosa Eleonora Settembrini. Rosa's father has died and her husband has left her. She has a fifteen-year-old daughter, Roxana. Rosa asks whether she and Roxana may move in with Silvio. At first, Silvio thinks not, but then he realizes that his cousin's initials are RES, and this changes his mind. If there were a meaning to those letters, it might be that Rosa would move there.

Rosa does move into El Rosedal with Roxana. She turns out to be extremely industrious and takes over the management of the farm, which becomes highly profitable. The neighbors take a renewed interest in the farm, and a large party is held there after a few years. By then, Roxana is of a marriageable age. Silvio is present at the party, but the story ends with him furiously playing his violin without being audible to the others. 

I find this to be a highly nuanced piece of writing, and think that Ribeyro can be quite eloquent. It lacks the density of a novel, but expresses some themes with which I can identify. In a sense, it is about people who have European histories and artistic interests who have ended up in an unsophisticated location in the Americas and feel out of place. This, I think, may apply to Ribeyro, who ended up moving from Peru to Paris. It may also apply to John P., who grew up in the U.S. and moved to France, then Switzerland. In my case, I was born in England, my mother grew up in Greece, and I grew up in the U.S. As I've said, I don't feel completely at home here. I am living alone in the woods, hardly know my neighbors, and in some ways still feel European. So, to a certain degree, I may be similar to Silvio. Of course, not everyone will have these feelings, but writings that describe them can be quite rare.

The Marriage Question: George Eliot's Double Life

This 2023 biography of George Eliot, by Clare Carlisle, was recommended to me by a reader. Reading it was like a walk down memory lane, because I had already covered most of the same material, but in the last century. Even so, I never stopped being a George Eliot admirer, and Carlisle, who is a philosophy professor, does offer some useful insights at the end.

I tend to evolve intellectually, and I have always found George Eliot to be an interesting case study. I came across her when I was about forty, and I was gradually working my way through various fields at the time. By that point, I had already decided that philosophy, particularly as an academic discipline, is mainly a waste of time, and I was taking a shot at literature while also becoming interested in evolutionary biology. Since starting this blog in 2014, I have gradually given up on literature, but I think that Middlemarch may be the one novel that is worth reading. I find it interesting because it successfully represents a local culture at a particular place and time and accurately depicts a variety of its inhabitants, including unvarnished descriptions of human behavior. When it was written, Darwinism was being discussed in London, and Eliot would have been exposed to it through G.H. Lewes and Herbert Spencer. Lewes himself had transitioned from the arts to the sciences and was personally acquainted with Charles Darwin. In addition, though modern psychology didn't exist then, Eliot understood people well. After reading Middlemarch, I eventually came to think of it as an insightful book, unlike most novels, because it provided more than the usual fictional entertainment. While it does contain predictable romantic intrigues and relationship failures, it is of much greater substance than a Jane Austen novel. Unlike some of Eliot's other stories, religion, mysticism and the occult are not at the forefront. At this point in my life, I prefer to view the world through the lens of evolutionary biology, because, if nothing else, it provides you with a way of understanding why things are the way they are now.

Where I think Carlisle does a good job is in showing how difficult it is to know how George Eliot made some of her decisions and whether she regretted any of them. The "double" in the title refers to how and why she paired up with G.H. Lewes and, later, after Lewes had died, with John Cross. I had thought about this before and have some thoughts now. First, I should say that it was largely an accident that she became a writer. Her father happened to retire near Coventry, Eliot happened to still be living at home, and their new neighbors happened to be the Brays. Charles Bray was a progressive ribbon manufacturer, and his home became a salon for progressive intellectuals. He was a follower of Robert Owen, who visited there, along with various London intellectuals. Unlike modern manufacturers, Bray and Owen cared about their workers. Eliot befriended Bray's wife, Cara, and her sister, Sara Hennell. In any case, it seems that Eliot may never have established any connections with London intellectuals if she hadn't lived there, and her life could easily have taken a different course.

In London, though she was recognized as a talented writer, editor and translator, she was not physically attractive and came from an ordinary rural family, so she did not have many suitors. She "dated" Herbert Spencer, but was crushed when he dumped her. That is just as well, because Spencer was cold and would have been unacceptable to her, since she was emotionally needy. The only other prospect to turn up was G.H. Lewes, who, though warm, had several shortcomings. He was short and pockmarked, and was an illegitimate son of a man who had abandoned his mother. Furthermore, his wife had cuckoled him by having four children with his best friend in addition to his three, and he couldn't divorce her under existing law without an embarrassing trial. He was struggling to support his wife and children, and, having generally failed as a playwright and a novelist, he eventually became a science writer – with little formal education. On top of this, he was an avowed atheist, while Eliot had a devout childhood. Nevertheless, the relationship met Eliot's needs, and, after he encouraged her to write fiction, they became extremely wealthy. Lewes was an extroverted man-about-town and did an excellent job as her manager.

The question that comes up is whether he was the sort of man who suited Eliot. From her point of view, I would say no. He was a slightly disrespectable bohemian who drew disparaging comments from his social superiors – to be expected in England. She preferred people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom she had met through Charles Bray. Emerson was a tall, handsome, elegant and religious college graduate, and she was instantly attracted to him. Part of the point of Carlisle's book is that the choice of a partner can be somewhat inscrutable. Because Eliot tended to be conservative and religious, I would say that there was a certain amount of expediency in her pairing up with Lewes. I think that she was quite aware that, from a social standpoint, Lewes was an inappropriate partner for her.

Following this line of reasoning, it makes sense that she married John Cross after Lewes died. She had taken a lot of flak for living with Lewes out of wedlock. Cross was tall and came from a good family. In person, I think that he must have been boring to an intellectual woman like Eliot. My guess is that she had the same social-climbing instinct as many women. There is some evidence of a problem in that he inexplicably dove into the Grand Canal in Venice on their honeymoon, apparently because he was having some sort of breakdown. This was all swept under the rug, and Eliot died a few months later.

I might add that the biography that Cross assembled after Eliot died was so bad that her literary reputation declined for several years. I've read it myself and can see why. On balance, I would have to say that Lewes was a better choice than Cross. If she had been a little more adventurous, she may have found a less burdened partner than Lewes and a more interesting partner than Cross.

Carson McCullers: A Life: IV

I've finished this book, and did actually find it quite interesting. Ordinarily, I have difficulty relating to the thinking process of those who engage in the arts and am more comfortable with "serious" thinkers, however you define that. Possibly, because McCullers was not that distant from me in time and spent much of her life in Nyack, New York, not that far from where I lived, during the last ten years of her life, I have more socio-cultural connection with her than I do with most writers. I'll just sum up the remainder of the book and make a few comments. 

Bébé had recovered and moved back to Nyack, but died in June, 1955, when McCullers was thirty-eight. At that time, McCullers was working on a stage adaptation of The Square Root of Wonderful with Arnold Saint-Subber, who was gay. They developed a very close relationship, but he eventually moved off the project. That story is autobiographical and contains elements of both McCullers and Reeves, but is was a flop as a play on Broadway in 1957. McCullers' health was poor, and she came under the psychiatric care of Mary Mercer, who lived in Nyack, in 1958, when she was working on the novel Clock Without Hands. By this time, McCullers was becoming a regular at hospitals, and she finally received a medical explanation of her condition. It was thought that a strep throat infection during her childhood had led to rheumatic heart fever, which in turn had caused her strokes. There was no evidence that the strokes had caused brain damage. However, she was partially paralyzed on her left side and received corrective surgery. 

Mary Mercer initially did a Freudian analysis of McCullers, but it doesn't seem to have produced any insights. Nevertheless, McCullers chose to keep records of her psychotherapy sessions for possible future use. Mercer became a very close friend and, as an M.D., gradually took charge of her other medical needs. Since McCullers was becoming more physically disabled, she also became more dependent on her African-American housekeeper, Ida Reeder, who had earlier worked for her mother.

In 1959, Isak Dinesen, the author of Out of Africa, one of McCullers' favorite books, visited the U.S. McCullers had an opportunity to meet her and discovered that Dinesen had specifically wanted to meet her, E.E. Cummings, Ernest Hemingway and Marilyn Monroe. She had already met Cummings and McCullers, and Hemingway wasn't available at the time. Since McCullers was acquainted with Monroe, she arranged a lunch at the Nyack house with Dinesen and Monroe, which went well.

In 1961, McCullers finished her first novel since 1946, Clock Without Hands, which became a bestseller and generally received positive reviews. In 1962 and 1963, she worked with Edward Albee on a stage adaptation of The Ballad of the Sad Café. In 1962, she resumed contact with Mary Tucker, her childhood piano teacher. She was invited to the Cheltenham Literature Festival in the U.K. to speak at a symposium on "Sex in Literature" and flew there in September. In 1966, she met John Huston, who was working on the film adaptation of Reflections in a Golden Eye. They hit it off very well, and he invited her to his estate in Ireland. She flew there, on a stretcher, in April, 1967, with Ida to assist her.

At this stage, McCullers was almost a complete invalid. She had undergone several surgeries, including a radical mastectomy, and was scheduled for a leg amputation. After she returned home, she had a massive stroke on her right side on August 15 and died on September 29 at the age of fifty. 

On the surface, this doesn't seem like a happy story, but, actually, McCullers was very happy most of the time. She was quite strong-willed and often got what she wanted. While she could become a major drain on people, she was able to develop a few of the close, intense relationships that she craved. There were elements of selfishness in this, but this particular biography doesn't emphasize that fact. Possibly, her early dynamics with Bébé set the stage for the rest of her life. She was a first child who remained in the limelight, and her siblings could never compete with her. Furthermore, Bébé may have projected her own aspirations onto her, influencing her decision to pursue a life in the arts. She never developed close relationships with her siblings, and there were elements of manipulation throughout her adult life. One of her closest friends, Tennessee Williams, went to great lengths assisting her but remained cautious, because he knew that she could be a bottomless pit of neediness. It seems that her primary desire as an adult may have been to develop a close relationship with an older female – like Bébé – and be bathed in uncritical love. Ironically, men seem to have been more cooperative than women. Reeves and Tennessee supported her more than all of the women except Mary Mercer, who helped her partly in her role as a doctor when she was an invalid. McCullers usually made a good first impression, but many seem to have been able to sense her intense neediness. Truman Capote and Gore Vidal made catty jokes about her behind her back. 

Some of the negatives about McCullers' life don't seem to be her fault. If strep throat as a child led to her illnesses as an adult, she can't be blamed for that. However, a case could be made that she took little responsibility for her health as an adult. The effects of smoking and drinking were not well understood in those days, but generally she seems to have done whatever she preferred regardless. It probably would have been difficult for her to break out of that lifestyle, because her family had a long history of alcoholism. She also would have been better off if she had never developed a relationship with Reeves. Despite his charm, he seems to have been psychologically problematic. He was confused about his sexuality, drank too much and took drugs. He was never able to make viable career decisions and stick with them. Possibly he suffered from PTSD. Not much information is provided about his family background, but it is probably not a coincidence that both of his brothers and his sister also committed suicide. I feel some sympathy for Reeves, because, in certain respects, he was McCullers' principal psychological support during much of her life, and she does not obviously seem to have reciprocated or felt any responsibility for his early demise.

Overall, I found McCullers to be intelligent and creative, and that her life was quite dramatic. Given her background, I think that she was relatively knowledgeable about literature and classical music. She also had fairly good taste, with some qualifications. Where I find her disappointing is that she didn't seem to have much interest in increasing her understanding of the world. For example, when she traveled to Europe she didn't explore the local cultures. Often she would just stay in a hotel room or with literary acquaintances. I don't know if she ever went to a museum. She seemed to focus almost exclusively on vocational activities and making new friends. So I'm ending up with a slightly disappointed, Sapolskyesque feeling: stuff happens.

Carson McCullers: A Life: III

After her 1947 strokes, McCullers increasingly required assistance from others to go about her daily life. She was partially paralyzed on her left side and needed a cane to walk. Thereafter, she was unable to do much physical work and needed someone to help her bathe. She, Reeves and her sister, Rita, all recognized that they had an alcohol problem, and Reeves and Rita joined AA. McCullers didn't join and pretended to decrease her alcohol intake but actually didn't. When in Nyack, her mother generally took care of her. Reeves got another job and an apartment in Greenwich Village, with a walk-up that was too demanding for her. She continued to develop crushes on women and became interested in Jane Bowles, the wife of Paul Bowles, the better-known of the two.

In 1949, McCullers, with encouragement from Tennessee, participated in a stage adaptation of The Member of the Wedding, which became a Broadway hit in 1950. She also became pregnant in 1949 and had a medical abortion. The success of her play and the publication of The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories boosted her literary reputation and income. She became attracted to Elizabeth Bowen, the Anglo-Irish writer, who was a few years older than her. Their writings had nothing in common, but she knew that Bowen had affairs with women. When she visited Bowen in Ireland later in 1950, nothing came of it, and she left for Paris, where she met Reeves. Bowen did have affairs with women but apparently was not attracted to McCullers. I was surprised to learn that later she probably had an affair with Eudora Welty, who was not generally known to engage in such things.

In Paris, McCullers and Reeves drank too much and decided to get more involved with AA. Later in 1950, McCullers met Marty Mann, who had been instrumental in the formation of AA. She was also a lesbian and had a brief affair with McCullers. McCullers at this point was circulating in the highest literary circles and met the English poet, Edith Sitwell, at a party at Tennessee's apartment on East 58th Street in New York City.

In 1951, though Reeves was still drinking too much, he and McCullers traveled to London. Tennessee thought that McCullers needed psychiatric help and found her a psychoanalyst, Kathryn Cohen. Just to show the kind of people that McCullers associated with, here is Dearborn's description of Cohen:

Kathryn was an elegant woman with an interesting past, just the sort who drew Carson. Born in New York City in 1905, before the age of forty she was a successful actress and a performer with the Ziegfeld Follies. She married Dennis Cohen in the late 1930's, and when war broke out, she enrolled at Cambridge to study medicine, graduating with a degree in genetics. Regardless, she became a psychoanalyst with St. George's Hospital, an eminent teaching hospital then located in Hyde Park. She often had affairs with women. The writer Patricia Highsmith was most recently her lover, and Cresset Press [operated by her husband] went on to become the British publisher of Highsmith's psychological thrillers.

Cohen and McCullers did bond. McCullers became a patient at St. George's Hospital, and later was moved to a home in Sussex. But by the end of October, 1951, McCullers abandoned her treatment and moved to the Ritz Hotel in London. Her treatment was a failure according to Cohen. McCullers returned to Nyack.

In January, 1952, McCullers and Reeves sailed to Italy. In May, they drove to Paris. They ended up buying a house in Bachivillers, a small town an hour away. They liked the house, and McCullers loved gardening – especially growing tomatoes. However, she returned briefly to the U.S. because Bébé had had an accident. At that point, McCullers owned the Nyack house and Bébé moved back to Georgia. Shortly after this, McCullers was offered the job of working on a screenplay for a film directed by Vittorio De Sica and produced by David O. Selznick in Rome. She returned to Rome and worked on the screenplay, but Selznick didn't like it and she was fired.

The Diary of Anne Frank was published in the U.S. in 1950, and in 1952 McCullers was approached with an opportunity to write a stage adaptation. She met Anne's father, Otto Frank, in France, and they hit it off well. However, because of her slow work and other factors beyond her control, the play was eventually given to someone else. At her house in Bachivillers, her relationship with Reeves grew worse. He spent most of the time away in Paris. One day early in 1953, he took her out to a cherry tree in their orchard and proposed that they hang themselves together with the ropes that he had provided. She wasn't interested. In July, he proposed a double suicide again, and she immediately flew back to the U.S. by herself, without packing. On November 18, Reeves committed suicide in Paris, with an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol. At that time, McCullers was living in Nyack, and she expressed little reaction to Reeves's death. She spent time with friends in Charleston, South Carolina and then resumed her Yaddo routine.

On my next post I'll wrap up my commentary on this book. It is not pleasant to read, but I do think that it is quite informative. Besides the tragic aspects of McCullers' life, I am finding the discussion of the sexuality of McCullers and her friends surprising. It seems that within the literary milieu of the time, homosexuality was quite common. In the past, I had heard about the men – Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, etc. – but little or nothing about the women. Even today, if you look up Eudora Welty, who has been dead for years, on Wikipedia, there is no reference to that aspect of her relationship with Elizabeth Bowen. Possibly this difference between men and women was that the women felt that they had to hide their behavior in order to avoid damaging their careers. This is why I prefer reading biographies to Wikipedia entries. Many of the descriptions of people that you read in Wikipedia articles are not much better than cleaned-up résumés written by the person discussed. Another question that arises for me is the nature of female sexuality. Obviously McCullers and many of the women in her life had a fluid sense of their sexuality. Terms such as "LGBTQ" may address some of the ambiguity, but, judging from the past, many people were able to get along fine without them. To use McCullers as an example, she may have been "LBQ." How useful is that information?

Carson McCullers: A Life II

McCullers had a poor health history while growing up, and this continued for the remainder of her life. Generally, she had lung problems, and it seems that she had rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease. In 1941, while visiting her family in Columbus, she apparently had a stroke. At that time, Reflections in a Golden Eye was published, and reviewers generally didn't like it much. She recovered and returned to New York, where she met David Diamond, a composer, and took to him immediately. However, Diamond was gay and was actually attracted to Reeves; apparently Diamond and Reeves slept together one night. Shortly after this, McCullers began to attend the Yaddo artists' retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York. Reeves was working elsewhere and began cashing checks addressed to McCullers without telling her. This went on for quite a while and eventually caused her to divorce him. At Yaddo, McCullers socialized wildly and decided that she loved Katherine Anne Porter. Unfortunately, Porter was homophobic and completely rejected her, preferring to spend her time with Eudora Welty, who was also there. After this, she traveled to Columbus to write. In 1942 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and decided to return to Yaddo. In December, she learned that Annemarie Schwarzenbach had died in Switzerland following a bicycle accident, and, predictably, this was extremely upsetting to her. In January, 1943, she moved back to the Brooklyn house. In June, she returned to Yaddo. The Ballad of the Sad Café was published in Harper's Bazaar in August. Reeves joined the Army again and became a lieutenant, serving in Europe; via letters, he attempted to win her back.

On August 1, McCullers' father, Lamar, Sr., who had been in poor health – probably due to alcoholism – died, presumably by suicide. He was fifty-five. At this point, Bébé decided to move closer to McCullers and her other daughter, Rita, who had become an editor at Mademoiselle. In time, she bought a Victorian house in Nyack, New York, north of New York City on the west bank of the Hudson River. Nyack was a slightly trendy location for various people in the arts then. In 1945, at the end of World War II, Reeves returned, injured, from Europe. He attempted to start a new career, and he and McCullers decided to remarry. They lived part-time in the Nyack house. In January, 1946, The Member of the Wedding was published in Harper's Bazaar. It received poor reviews, most notable from Edmund Wilson, the leading literary critic at the time, in the New Yorker. This was devastating to McCullers, and she didn't publish another novel for fifteen years. She made friends with fellow Southerners Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams and vacationed with Tennessee and his boyfriend on Nantucket. In November, 1946, McCullers and Reeves went on an extended trip to France.

In France, they lived luxuriously, and they also traveled to Rome. They had many connections, and McCullers' books were already popular in France. Their social conduct was appalling on some occasions. Besides both of them drinking excessively, Reeves had sex with a daughter of one of their friends. He was also thought to be taking drugs. McCullers had her second stroke in the summer of 1947. Later, she had a kidney infection and a third stroke. They flew back to the U.S. on November 30, and McCullers received medical treatment.

To a reader of this book, McCullers' life following the publication of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter seems to be a disaster-in-progress. In just seven years, she became dissolute, and Reeves was even worse. At this point, I'm not sure how much of this is the result of their psychiatric conditions, how much of it is the result of their inexperience and lack of preparation, and how much of it is the result of a complex literary environment during and after World War II. I think that this was a difficult period for people in the arts to navigate, though others, such as Tennessee Williams, seem to have managed well. It all goes downhill from here for McCullers, but I still like the Southern elements of her fiction, because, even with their limitations, there is a genuine interpersonal warmth between characters that doesn't generally occur elsewhere in American fiction. That was a long time ago, and warmth between characters now seems to be a thing of the past.

I should have two more posts on this book.

Carson McCullers: A Life I

I've started this new biography by Mary V. Dearborn. On the whole, Carson McCullers is not an ideal subject for me, because I'm not terribly excited to read more of her works. However, I do think that she was one of the best American writers of fiction, and if her health had been better and she had lived more than just fifty years, she may have produced more good fiction. For me, this book is turning out to be a further study in the history of American literary fiction. Her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, was published in 1940, when she was twenty-three. That year, she moved to Greenwich Village, and, therefore, McCullers' life intersects with other people I've discussed. Around that time, Carl and Alice Zuckmayer were fleeing Europe with the commencement of World War II, and then, after the war, people like Anatole Broyard and Denise Levertov moved to Greenwich Village. As of 1940, several European literary people were already in New York City. McCullers' life is also an early example of young people descending on New York City in order to become writers, and some of the same patterns are still in place. So far, I am finding Dearborn's writing to be quite good, because she specifically addresses the psychological questions that occur to me, unlike most of the biographers I've been reading.

McCullers, née Lula Carson Smith, was born into a middle-class family in Columbus, Georgia in 1917. Her father was a jeweler, and she had a younger brother and sister. Her mother, who went by the name Bébé, had an interest in the arts, and although their income was modest, her house in some ways resembled a salon. The family also habitually engaged in drinking, which later became one of McCullers' habits. Bébé identified artistic talent in McCullers, who dropped her first name at an early age, and encouraged her to play music. While she was growing up, McCullers generally dressed like a male, though, as far as I've read, she does not seem to have had transgender feelings and was more likely a lesbian. Her behavior during her youth seems to have been primarily asexual. She did turn out to be quite musically talented and considered becoming a composer or a concert pianist. For four years, she received high-quality lessons from Mary Tucker, an extremely proficient teacher who was the wife of an officer at nearby Fort Benning. They attended a Rachmaninoff concert while he was touring in Georgia, and there was talk of McCullers going to the Julliard School on a full scholarship. Then, suddenly, Tucker's husband was transferred to Maryland. McCullers, who had been extremely close to Mary, felt betrayed and began saying that she wanted to be a writer, not a pianist. There is some speculation about the nature of McCullers and Mary's relationship.

While she was growing up, McCullers was an average student and took no interest in the local schools. After she finished high school at the age of seventeen in 1934, she made several solo trips to New York City, and she enrolled in creating writing classes at Columbia, and, later, at New York University. On one of her returns home, she met, through a mutual friend, James Reeves McCullers, Jr., called "Reeves," who was four years older than her and a soldier stationed at Fort Benning. He was a charming and intelligent person who was also interested in the arts, and they developed a strong relationship based on their discussions, though physical attraction did not occur immediately. They married in 1937, when she was twenty and he had been discharged from the army. They moved a few times with Reeves's jobs, and when The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was published, they moved to Greenwich Village.

The novel was an instant hit, and McCullers immediately drew the attention of the American literary community. George Davis, the editor of Harper's Bazaar took an interest in her and soon put her in touch with Erika and Klaus Mann, the children of Thomas Mann. W.H. Auden and Erika Mann were gay, and they had married in order to permit her to escape Germany. Through Erika, McCullers met Annemarie Schwarzenbach, the daughter of a wealthy Swiss businessman, who was a lesbian and dressed like a man. McCullers was instantly smitten with her. That year, both McCullers and Eudora Welty were invited to Bread Loaf, at Middlebury College, and Welty disliked McCullers, perhaps because of her drinking habits. They were also in competition with each other as Southern writers. McCullers met W.H. Auden there. After Bread Loaf, Davis organized a project in which several writers would live together in a rental house in Brooklyn. Before long, McCullers was living there with Davis, Auden, Gypsy Rose Lee, Benjamin Britten and Richard Wright. They lived in separate rooms but ate communally and paid rent. The idea was that they could do their work there, and Reeves was generally left out, staying in the Greenwich Village apartment.

As far as I've read, McCullers has had an unsatisfactory sexual encounter with Schwarzenbach, who then attempts suicide; the latter has psychiatric issues, along with a morphine addiction, and she is hospitalized. As Schwarzenbach points out to McCullers, she is not sophisticated enough to be part of her group. She is nearly ten years older than McCullers, and their backgrounds are completely different. I agree with this assessment, and so does Dearborn. I am not looking forward to the remainder of the book, because it already reminds me of Katherine Mansfield, who was about twenty-nine years older than McCullers and went through a similar experience when she moved to London and attempted to become a writer. For all of Bébé's motherly intentions, she could not have known what McCullers would get into with her artistic encouragement.

Chasing Homer

For a diversion, I read this short novel, which is almost short-story length, by László Krasznahorkai. As with his other writings, it is difficult to make out what he is trying to achieve. I like Krasznahorkai because, while usually obscure, he represents what I think of as the last vestige of the avant-garde, which otherwise was dead by the seventies. This book fills that requirement, not only with his typical frenetic sentences and ambiguity, but with a musical score and illustrations. Of course, as in classic Krasznahorkai, the text itself is enough to baffle most readers, but the music and illustrations are also bizarre.

The story itself concerns the flight of an unidentified individual, presumably male, who is convinced that some unidentified group is devoted to killing him and is actively pursuing him. His strategy is to travel constantly and make spur-of the-moment changes in his travel plans in order to evade them. The story isn't really plausible in the sense that there is no explanation of how he funds his travels, other than by being frugal. The character apparently never sleeps and hardly ever eats. There is no explanation as to why he feels pursued, so the story ends up seeming like an exercise in paranoia and anxiety. In terms of literary precedents, I was reminded of the unfinished Kafka's story, "The Burrow," about a burrowing animal that is obsessed with its safety and is worried about the imminent invasion of its burrow. Kafka wrote that story just before he died from tuberculosis, so one might speculate that Krasznahorkai, himself now sixty-seven, is approaching death. Alternatively, one might surmise that the protagonist is being pursued by a cabal of jealous fiction writers: many must envy his literary success. In the case of Kafka, the paranoia and anxiety in his stories are most likely a reflection of his psychological state. This would explain why he found his works unacceptable and hoped that they would be destroyed upon his death. Krasznahorkai, on the other hand, has adopted this genre as a literary style, and, without more biographical information, it is difficult to tell whether or not his psychological profile matches Kafka's at all. As in some of Krasznahorkai's novels, there is also the possibility that the pursuers are state agents.

At the end of the story, the protagonist travels by ferry to a remote Croatian island, where he overhears a local travel guide attempting to explain to two Japanese tourists the myth of Calypso and Odysseus, from the Odyssey. The suggestion is that the events occurred on that particular island in the Adriatic Sea. Odysseus was held captive, wished to return home to Ithaca, and was eventually released. Finally, the protagonist hikes through the woods to a high point above the sea and observes some divers emerging from an underwater grotto. They notice something dead nearby, suggesting that perhaps the protagonist has fallen to his death. In classic Krasznahorkai style, it turns out to be a large rat, and the protagonist survives.

I am sympathetic with Krasznahorkai because, even though he doesn't fulfill my literary ideals, he is original and challenging, and also a talented writer. I think that he fits poorly within the Western literary canon, but has not made artistic compromises in order to ensure economic success. Probably his writings about isolated and paranoid travelers reflect his poor reception globally, despite having spent time in the U.S., Japan and Germany. Think for a moment what a talented Hungarian writer would experience if he traveled to New York City now and attempted to enter the local literary ecosystem. My impression is that not only do Americans or most Europeans generally not understand art, but that, because of the infiltration of the art world by commercial interests, new art in the traditional sense has been almost nonexistent for decades. If one were a true artist living today, death might be preferable.

Another factor, on which I lack sufficient information to reach a conclusion, is the oppressive feeling that an artist living in Hungary today might feel: conditions were bad through the Soviet era and haven’t improved much since. Thus, Krasznahorkai's writing may be a cry in the dark for artists and intellectuals who are living under oppressive regimes. The latter, unfortunately, now includes the U.S., if you understand the current level of political polarization here and the propaganda that has caused it.

I hesitate to recommend Krasznahorkai to my readers, because I doubt that many of them would share my aesthetic sensibilities. However, if you want to try reading him, I think that "The Last Wolf" would be sufficiently short and accessible and is generally representative of his work.

Absurdist Social Criticism

After reading a long string of nonfiction books, I usually begin to crave some good fiction, and, as you know, I always have trouble finding it. I thought that I would attempt to explain how I came to develop my particular literary taste, because I don't actually know anyone whose taste is the same as mine. I was extremely late to develop any literary preferences and only began to when I was most of the way through college. I was more affected by film, and the film that had the greatest impact on me was Dr. Strangelove (1964); this was followed by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). In the interim, I came across some early Soviet fiction and was impressed by Mikhail Bulgakov in "The Fatal Eggs" and his novel, The Master and Magarita. When I was thirty-six, I read Lorrie Moore's short story, "How to Be an Other Woman" and thought that was good. Later, when I was about forty, I read Middlemarch and thought that it was the best novel I'd ever read. Through these works, I think you can get a sense of what interests me.

Dr. Strangelove, in addition to falling clearly within the absurdist tradition, contains a critique of government, and it finishes with an explicit statement of where its ineptitude can lead. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest features the antics of a funny subversive and the horrific incompetence of a mental hospital. This is probably Jack Nicholson's best performance, which helps, but I think it is a significant fact that the film was directed by Miloš Forman, a Czech. I read the novel, by Ken Kesey, and didn't find it nearly as good. The Master and Margarita is evidence of a talented writer living under a totalitarian regime and making fun of it as a consolation, while weaving in deeper human themes. "How to Be an Other Woman" describes in humorous terms how a woman might come to understand her relationship with a man who is engaged in a series of infidelities, and, as part of the collection, Self-Help, parodies advice books. Compared to the others, Middlemarch seems more like a straightforward novel, but it contains much subtlety, and, because it was written in the English tradition, it skewers English society in ways that some readers may not recognize. While George Eliot always maintains sympathy for her characters, Edward Casaubon is clearly a foolish, self-centered intellectual who wastes time on an implausible grand theory; Rosamond Vincy is a fatuous bourgeois; Nicholas Bulstrode is a pious hypocrite – etc. This novel portrays English society in the Midlands of the 1830's and dissects it, showing both its strengths and its weaknesses, and does this with a delicate touch, while at the same time highlighting the relevant human foibles. The novel was written well before absurdism became a genre, but there is some unobtrusive social criticism. 

What I think you find in these works is astute social observation, and in most of them a critique of the reigning powers. In Dr. Strangelove, the American government, in effect, brings the world to an end. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the hero is lobotomized. In "How to Be an Other Woman," the narrator leaves you with the feeling that male-female relationships are like an infinite regress stacked against the female. In Middlemarch, humanity is seen to exist on a fragile basis over which people have little control, thus, in the end, the central characters, Dorothea Brooke and Will Ladislaw, go on to lead unexceptional lives, in contrast to Dorothea's high aspirations. 

In these works, I generally found close social observation and brainy critiques, and I don't often find comparable ones. Since I wasn't born in the U.S., I have always been skeptical of American ideology, and it is rarely questioned here. The early Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, including Poland, Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, were better environments for the flourishing of intellectual dissidents. Although Czeslaw Milosz's literary works were hardly radical, in his book, The Captive Mind, he outlined the rather intense psychological pressures that intellectuals were forced to endure. Comparatively, American intellectuals have never experienced any duress, and they have lived their lives in obscure corners of this capitalist utopia, hardly making a dissenting peep. Most American novels, as far as I know, consist only of basic storytelling, and, these days, are often about the experiences of groups adapting to the prevailing culture, without questioning it much. The literary atmosphere, rather than being energized by angry dissidents, is mellowed by M.F.A. programs that groom writers for the publishing industry. If a novel were actually interesting, it probably wouldn't be a bestseller.

As far as American fiction is concerned, I'm tired of trying the latest wunderkinds, such as John Kennedy Toole, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, George Saunders and Lauren Groff, but I suppose I'll keep an open mind and attempt to read some future ones. As it is, I think I've wasted enough time on them already. It is ironic that with so much material readily available in the U.S. – a completely corrupt and incompetent president, a seriously dysfunctional federal government, rampant gerrymandering, unaddressed climate change and the botched handling of the coronavirus – writers can't do a better job. 

In recent years, I've been making stabs at Michel Houellebecq and László Krasznahorkai. Houellebecq has some of the characteristics that I like, but he has too many flaws. Foremost, he doesn't write perceptively about people, and his plots are always a little harebrained. The Map and the Territory, when read carefully, is a critique of the art market. However, because Houellebecq's writing is sloppy and his style is deadpan, many readers may not realize this. Submission was obviously the result of Houellebecq's desire to exploit fears that Islamic forces are affecting life in France. As in his other novels, all of the characters lack psychological nuance. It is easy for me to differentiate Houellebecq from works by people whom I think are good. I would guess that, though possessing some talent, he is in this for the money. Krasznahorkai is a better bet, because he hasn't sold out completely in order to make as much money as possible. In his case, he is one of the best writers ever to capture some of the complex psychological aspects of being human. For most readers, he would be too obscure, and they would be unable to appreciate his Kafkaesque qualities. Krasznahorkai's limitations are related to the fact that what he really knows well is Hungary, which, at this point, is hardly representative of most of the developed world. What I find is that he is one of the most psychologically astute writers, and that he, more than any other that I know, understands what it feels like to live in a repressive ideological state, which, frankly, is what the U.S. is, once you understand the nature of capitalist institutions. For this reason, I have chosen to read Krasznahorkai's latest book, Chasing Homer. I thought that his short story, "The Last Wolf," was one of the best I've ever read, so this is worth a try. Of course, Krasznahorkai is virtually unknown in the U.S. For example, Satantango, one of his best-known novels, currently has163 reviews on Amazon.com, whereas Lauren Groff's latest novel, Matrix, has 1171. Apparently, deciding whose fiction to read depends on your social media. Needless to say, I don't and never will have Facebook or Twitter accounts.

Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life II

The second half of the book centers on Mansfield's development of her literary career and the increasing burden of her health conditions. Her short stories were immediately recognized as being of high quality, and she and Murry both attempted to engineer their future literary successes. That involved getting to know Ottoline Morrell and attending events at Garsington, her home outside Oxford. Through this connection with Bloomsbury artists and writers, they came to know Virginia and Leonard Woolf. Virginia took great interest in Mansfield and liked to talk shop with her, because she noticed that her writing lacked Mansfield's vitality and immediacy.

Mansfield was adventurous and traveled alone to Paris in 1915 during World War I. She had a brief affair with Francis Carco, a writer whom she knew through Rhythm. However, she was put off by his insouciance, and they never developed a relationship. Her relationship with Murry continued, and to me it seems to have been strategic for both of them. There was no sign of any real passion between them, and Murry seemed cold compared to Leonard Woolf, who was always doting on Virginia. In 1916, Mansfield, Murry, Lawrence and Frieda shared a house in Cornwall, but it only lasted for a few weeks. Lawrence and Frieda had ridiculous fights, one of which Mansfield chronicled. It is possible that during this period Mansfield caught her tuberculosis from Lawrence. Later that year, Mansfield met Bertrand Russell, who was then in the process of seeking a lover to replace Ottoline. By then, Tomalin thinks, Mansfield had lost interest in sexual escapades, and she never took Russell's bait. Judging from the experiences of Russell's second and third wives, Dora and Peter, that was a good decision. In any case, Russell was not a literary person and already had a reputation for self-centeredness. I wouldn't be surprised if Ottoline warned Mansfield.

It took some time for Mansfield and Murry to marry, because her husband, George Bowden, was away in the U.S., and she couldn't arrange a divorce. They finally married in 1918. After Mansfield developed tubercular symptoms, she typically spent part of the year in Europe, in the south of France or in Switzerland. Her friend, Ida, increasingly took care of her, and Murry was often away. He became the editor of the Athenaeum, a respected literary magazine, and thenceforth had a better income. Mansfield's stories also began to sell well. Thus, their financial situation improved toward the end of her life. One unpleasant episode occurred at this time. The translator, Floryan Sobieniowski, blackmailed her over letters that she had sent him, which probably showed that one of her early stories could be construed as plagiarized from a then-untranslated story by Chekhov. She paid him to get the letters back.  Mansfield died in Avon, France, at an institution operated by Gurdjieff, in 1923.

To sum up how her friends perceived her at the time, here is a description written by Leonard Woolf:

By nature, I think she was gay, cynical, amoral, ribald, witty. When we first knew her, she was extraordinarily amusing. I don't think anyone has ever made me laugh more than she did in those days. She would sit very upright on the edge of a chair or sofa and tell at immense length a kind of saga, of her experiences as an actress or of how and why Koteliansky howled like a dog in the room at the top of a building in Southampton Row. There was not the shadow of a gleam of a smile on her mask of a face, and the extraordinary funniness of the story was increased by the flashes of her astringent wit. I think that in some abstruse way Murry corrupted and perverted and destroyed Katherine both as a person and a writer. She was a very serious writer, but her gifts were those of an intense realist, with a superb sense of ironic humour and fundamental cynicism. She got enmeshed in the sticky sentimentality of Murry and wrote against the grain of her own nature. At the bottom of her mind she knew this, I think, and it enraged her. And that was why she was so often enraged against Murry. To see them together, particularly in their own house in Hampstead, made one acutely uncomfortable, for Katherine seemed to be always irritated with Murry ... Every now and then she would say sotto voce something bitter or biting.

I think this is a rather perceptive observation. Mansfield and Murry weren't really compatible as a couple, and their marriage may primarily have been a convenient vocational strategy for both of them. I don't think that there is any convincing evidence that Mansfield was a lesbian, though she may have had some bisexual tendencies (many women do). Woolf doesn't mention that she had a somewhat masculine mind, which may have put her at odds with Murry, who, comparatively speaking, was passive and inept.

On the whole, I found this biography interesting. However, Tomalin herself is a literary person, and the book is infused with tidbits that would appeal more to literary types than to general readers. These pertain to the wheedling and pretense that go with the establishment of successful literary careers. Certainly, after reading this, few would find the literary life appealing, particularly if they depended on it for their income. It's a pity that Mansfield didn't live another forty years.

Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life I

I'm halfway through this biography by Claire Tomalin. I think that Mansfield, who was born Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp in 1888 in New Zealand, was one of the best writers of her generation, but, with her premature death in 1923 at the age of thirty-four, she never lived up to her potential. Because I am not finding the details of her life particularly interesting, I am looking more at the literary culture and the arts in England during the period, which coincides with the Belle Époque in France. As you might expect, the arts at the time were far better developed in France, but I am rounding out my knowledge of the English side and have been reading about D.H. Lawrence, Ottoline Morrell, Bloomsbury and Bertrand Russell for some time. The broad context for this period is the immense wealth that existed in Europe just before World War I.

Mansfield's parents were nouveaux riches whose parents had moved to New Zealand from Australia, and her father was a successful banker. She was the third of four daughters and also had a younger brother. Compared to her siblings she was independent and rebellious, and I don't think that her mother liked her much. Because of the prestige associated with sending family members to England, the three eldest girls went to London from 1903 to 1906 to study. At the time, Mansfield was considering becoming a cellist or a writer. She met her lifelong friend, Ida Baker, who, despite being of lower intelligence, remained extremely loyal. When the sisters returned to Wellington, Mansfield longed to return to England, and her father allowed her to move there with a small allowance in 1908.

I've read as far as 1914, and it is difficult to see Mansfield's behavior as anything other than disastrous. Within months of arriving in England, she had an affair with Garnet Carrington Trowell, a young musician who worked for a traveling opera company. She became pregnant by Trowell in late 1908, and, since his family disapproved of her, they didn't marry, and she somehow wound up marrying George Bowden, an older Cambridge music scholar whom she hardly knew; she left him on their wedding night before the marriage could be consummated. Mansfield's mother came from New Zealand and took her to Germany, where, apparently, she had a miscarriage. She remained in Germany until 1910 and met Floryan Sobienowski, a Polish translator, who exposed her to Chekov and other writers, and probably infected her with gonorrhea.

Upon her return to England, she had health problems due to the gonorrhea, but made considerable headway in starting a writing career. First she wrote for The New Age, and then for Rhythm, which was edited by John Middleton Murry, who was then an Oxford undergraduate. Rhythm was shut down due to financial problems and was briefly followed by The Blue Review, which also failed. Mansfield and Murry attempted to live in a cottage in the country for her health, but they soon ran out of money and returned to the city. During this period, they met D.H. Lawrence and Frieda Weekley, who were living together while she hadn't yet divorced her husband. Mansfield and Murry had a lot in common with Lawrence and Frieda, since they were poor and interested in writing. While Murry ended up graduating from Oxford and came from a humble background, he was not in the same league as Lawrence or Mansfield as a writer. Mansfield subsequently became a model for Gudrun Brangwen in Women in Love. Although that is not my favorite Lawrence novel (Sons and Lovers), this is an indication of the closeness of the relationship with Lawrence. Mansfield came from a privileged background and didn't even know how to cook, but at the time she was no different from most struggling artists.

According to Tomalin, Mansfield typically took control of her relationships with men, though, at heart, she preferred women and may primarily have been a lesbian. I'm not entirely clear on this currently, but it seems that Mansfield was calculating, at least in the sense of being able to manipulate men who were interested in sex. So far, there hasn't really been enough information provided to sort this out conclusively, and the situation is complicated by the fact that Mansfield is still in the "follies of youth" stage of her life. She has made one bad choice after another, and you can therefore only grant her limited credit for her successes. In her defense, I would say that the self-centeredness of her parents, who took no real interest in her outcome as their offspring, must take some of the blame. They ignored her during a time in her life when they knew that she was likely to make mistakes.

Bouvard and Pécuchet III

I finally got around to finishing the book. After philosophy, Bouvard and Pécuchet become interested in religion. Bouvard, who is more or less an agnostic, doesn't exhibit much enthusiasm for the topic, but Pécuchet becomes a complete fanatic, and Bouvard observes him flagellating himself in private. Pécuchet begins to harass the local priest with theological arguments, but, as in every other episode, his enthusiasm soon dies out. Next, they both become involved with the adoption of two children, Victor and Victorine, whose mother is dead and whose father is a jailed convict. To no avail, they attempt to instruct them, exposing them to many of the works that they have found important, and they employ various educational concepts from sources such as Émile, by Rousseau. Although at first the children seem to respond somewhat positively, Victor becomes violent, as he had been previously, and boils a cat that they give him as a pet, killing it. Victorine is less problematic initially but she soon becomes pregnant by one of the locals. Because of the pregnancy they are later forced to give up the children, whom they hadn't formally adopted. Bouvard eventually agrees to assume financial responsibility for Victorine.

In the meantime, Bouvard and Pécuchet decide that the layout of Chavignolles is improper, and they take it upon themselves to survey the town with the goal of remodeling it, in much the same way that Haussmann redesigned Paris. This would involve tearing down much of the center of town. They engage more in village life, and Bouvard becomes a highlight of the local café, where he debates whomever he meets. Both of them take on a pedagogic role in Chavignolles, and they hold public lectures for its benefit. This precipitates their downfall, unleashing all the grievances that have been building up among the townsfolk. By this point, Flaubert himself had died, and the remainder of the novel is his summary of what he intended to write. Pécuchet's lecture is pedantic and criticizes the local government and administration. Bouvard's lecture is more conventional but also meets with disapproval.

The next day, Bouvard and Pécuchet discuss the lectures at home. Pécuchet takes a gloomy position on the future of mankind: "America will conquer the earth....Widespread boorishness. Everywhere you look will be carousing laborers." Bouvard, on the contrary, believes in progress and thinks that the cultures of Europe and China will converge. He thinks that "philosophy will be religion," with "communion of all people." While they are still talking, the police enter the house and serve them with a warrant for "desecrating religion, disturbing the peace, seditious rhetoric, etc."

After this, Bouvard and Pécuchet give up their studies and revert to their earlier habits. They begin copying documents together at the close of the book. The edition I have includes the Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, written much earlier, and the unfinished Catalogue of Fashionable Ideas. I don't think these add much to the text and may not have been planned to appear with it, though the choice of including them does give the impression that the novel was intended to be facetious.

As a reader, I have mixed feelings about the book. Understandably, the villagers found that Bouvard and Pécuchet were pedantic and dismissive of local practices. What is striking to me is how insensitive the two were to how people reacted to them and how unprepared they were to anticipate ideas that didn't match theirs. There is no evidence that either of them engaged in self-criticism, and that includes their obliviousness to the fact that sometimes the subject under study remained beyond their comprehension. Flaubert seems to be making Bouvard and Pécuchet look like fools, but I did not see signs of a wider, more inclusive view of reality, and this makes it unclear to me what his point was. In the case of Madame Bovary, the novel seems realistic, while highlighting the tragic follies of the protagonist. Sentimental Education is also realistic, but has an autobiographical tone that seems straightforward, without exaggerated characters. Therefore, since Bouvard and Pécuchet seem like aberrations, and the realism is less palpable, I am less confident in assessing Flaubert's objectives. All I can say is that Flaubert may have thought that conscientious study can be a naïve pastime, perhaps because the answers aren't really there. It is possible that Flaubert was making a case for human limitations, even in an era of progress. In this instance, book learning comes across as ineffective. The assessment is further complicated by the fact that the context for the events that occur in the book is well in the past, and this potentially renders some of the satirical intentions that Flaubert seems to have had less clear than they would have been at the time – 140 years ago. Certainly, he establishes that Bouvard and Pécuchet are eccentrics, but, since they themselves never seem to find a path to more intelligible behavior and nowhere does the narrative offer much guidance, the overall effect for the modern reader is somewhat ambiguous. For this reason, I was less impressed with this novel than I was by the other two mentioned and found the going a little tedious at times. On the whole, I think it is best suited to French literary specialists, especially those who have an affinity for Flaubert.

Bouvard and Pécuchet II

I'm not finding this novel exceptionally exciting, though, to some extent, it is satisfying at least in the sense that French culture, in many respects, is vastly superior, despite some weaknesses, to American culture. In comparison, life in the U.S. sometimes seems like a low-budget Western. After geology, Bouvard and Pécuchet take up archaeology and start a museum in the house. Archaeology gradually evolves into history and historical novels, and before long they are trying to write novels. Gradually they become familiar with the citizens of Chavignolles, the town in which they live, and socialize with them. In 1848, their usual lives are disrupted for a period by the overthrow of King Louis Philippe and the beginning of the Second Republic. After this, they lose their zeal for learning and become depressed temporarily. Bouvard begins to court Mme. Bordin, a widow, and Pécuchet, who had been a virgin, has a brief affair with one of the servants and contracts a venereal disease from her. Nothing comes of this, they decide to give up on women, and before long they embark on a new hobby, gymnastics. That doesn't last for long, since Bouvard is fat and, at their age, neither of them is cut out for a lot of exercise. Following this, they take an interest in séances and the occult, and then they move on to philosophy and read Spinoza, Locke and other philosophers. Their relationship with the townspeople is somewhat unclear. One would guess that they are considered eccentric and amateurish, though they are generally accepted. It is probably evident to the locals that Bouvard and Pécuchet are more than a little dilettantish and are putting on airs, though the townspeople themselves are not particularly sophisticated. As far as I've read, there are signs that Bouvard has been imprudent with his money and may face financial difficulties in the future. He has acted a bit like an ordinary, uneducated person who has won the lottery and is spending injudiciously in order to achieve sophistication and worldliness, with the corresponding social status, all of which he is unlikely to attain. However, Bouvard and Pécuchet are not complete fools and seem to absorb much of the material that they study, though their lack of focus makes them seem frivolous. Their main flaw seems to be a lack of awareness of their limitations. Of the two, Bouvard seems more extroverted and worldly, while Pécuchet seems more introverted and inexperienced. They do not fit well into a modern context, because it is now generally accepted that one cannot successfully study as many fields as they do and gain sufficient mastery of each. They are repeating this mistake countless times without changing their behavior. This situation may have been more common in Europe in the late nineteenth century, when social status could be reached with general learning, as part of the process of moving from a lower class to a higher class. However, Flaubert does not accentuate class consciousness. Of course, this all contrasts wildly with current life in most of the world, where it is now possible to be completely crass and ignorant and still attain high social rank simply by being conspicuously wealthy. I will try to finish up the book on my next post. This is sort of a diversion for me, and I generally prefer more serious books. Although I like Flaubert and think that he does a good job portraying his environment realistically, I still don't find fiction to be a particularly effective vehicle for understanding the world. Still, I like this period in this part of the world, and, despite many drawbacks which I probably would have felt if I had lived there, in some respects the quality of life would have been better than what we have now. In particular, we seem to be living in an age of crass materialism while, as Tony Judt argued, we are collectively demonstrating a puzzling incapacity to secure favorable future living conditions for ourselves and our descendants, even when such a process lies well within our reach.

Bouvard and Pécuchet I

I'm in my usual summer lull, in which I don't read much, and have chosen this novel by Gustave Flaubert because, for literature, it is fairly light reading. On the surface, it is simple, about the lives of two middle-aged French copy-clerks who take up various hobbies and, after failing at one, simply move on to another. The tone is that of a farce or comedy, but I am hoping that something more substantial will emerge – it may not. So far, in some respects, it isn't entirely different from Madame Bovary, in the sense that a person's obsessions can be a sign of poor judgment, and, if never examined, can lead to tragedy. I was never sure how sympathetic Flaubert felt toward Emma Bovary as she pursued a life of folly until it did her in. Something of the same mood exists in this book, but, since Flaubert never finished it, dying at the age of fifty-eight, there may be no clear answer. It is possible that, like me, Flaubert noticed the role of stupidity in people's lives, and that he wanted to sum up his thoughts on the topic in a literary fashion. Now as much as at any time in the past, it is easy to identify the blunders that people make and the sometimes-disastrous consequences. However, I'm not counting on that from Flaubert and am just taking the book as I read it. Flaubert did an enormous amount of research for this book, because he wanted to familiarize himself with the subjects that Bouvard and Pécuchet pursued. It is a bit of a challenge to contextualize much of the action, given that most of the books available to someone at that time would have been riddled with inaccuracies. But it is still relatively simple to identify the conspicuous blunders made by the protagonists. 

Bouvard is a widowed bachelor who runs into Pécuchet, a never-married bachelor, one day on the streets of Paris. They discover that they both have a passion for exploring new fields, and when Bouvard inherits a large sum from his deceased father, he and Pécuchet retire in order to pursue their ideal lives. Bouvard buys a manor house and farm in Normandy, near Caen, and farming and gardening become their first hobbies, though they had some experience with gardening in Paris. They rush headlong into the latest techniques that they've read about, and one plan after another backfires. Though they do consult local farmers, their farming experience culminates in a huge fire, apparently caused by spontaneous combustion, which destroys their haystacks. After this, they turn over the farming to a tenant and become interested in medicine. That leads them to try out cures on the locals and eventually brings them into conflict with the town doctor, who threatens to have them arrested for practicing medicine without a license. Their next hobbies become geology and natural history, which result in their causing a landslide while digging for fossils on a coastal bluff. Since Flaubert was a contemporary of Darwin, it is interesting to me that he knew something about evolution and modern geology – yet Bouvard and Pécuchet are unable to persuade a priest that the biblical flood doesn't explain some geological formations. After hearing the priest's arguments, they give up on geology.

I still have seven chapters left and will comment as I go. It occurs to me that Flaubert lived at a time when the phenomenon of the amateur hobbyist was at a peak. As Thomas Piketty has noted, during the late nineteenth century in France and England there was excessive wealth. Hobbyists in England were churning out inventions and scientific ideas at a phenomenal rate, and I assume that the same occurred in France. I am reminded not only of people like Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, but of literary people such as G.H. Lewes. After working as a failed dramatist and novelist, although he lacked the resources to become a full-time hobbyist, Lewes undertook private research in marine biology. It seems likely that Flaubert was acquainted with many such hobbyists, and perhaps, in combination with a personal skepticism regarding scientific progress, he found them to be a good topic for satire. Some reviewers think that Bouvard and Pécuchet represents the first postmodern novel, but I think it is more likely that it is a satirical skewering of some of Flaubert's contemporaries. Even so, Flaubert usually portrays his characters sympathetically.

In any case, Flaubert writes with such precision that he's always a pleasure to read – even in translation. Describing Bouvard and Pécuchet during their brief infatuation with chemistry, he writes:

What a marvel it was to find that human beings were composed of the same substances as minerals. Still, they felt a kind of humiliation at the thought that their persons contained phosphorus like matches, albumen like egg whites, and hydrogen gas like street lamps. 

Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir

When I read book reviews in The New York Times many years ago, I was often impressed by those written by Anatole Broyard. He didn't publish many books during his life, but I recently came across this unfinished memoir, which was published three years after he died in 1990. It includes vignettes of people he knew in 1946 and 1947 in Greenwich Village, during the period in which it became a haven for literary and artistic people following World War II. Besides the vignettes, there is discussion of the formation of Broyard's adult identity, the quality of the interactions he had, particularly with women, and an anecdotal glimpse of American cultural history.

While I was growing up in the suburbs, the Village still had a reputation as a hip place, though by then the Beat movement was mostly dead and folk music was more popular than jazz. Bob Dylan made a name for himself there in the early 1960's, and, as far as I know, the Village has been gentrified since then, with high property values. I haven't been there since 2003, when I visited Tony Judt in his office at NYU on Washington Square. As Broyard tells it, the area was poor after the war, and the dwellings consisted of walk-up tenements with DC electricity, which required humming AC adapters to run modern appliances. Though Broyard's discussion isn't particularly sociological, he describes the unusual circumstances created by the end of the Great Depression and the end of the war. With the GI Bill, millions of people simultaneously had opportunities to direct their lives in ways that hadn't been possible previously. Many of them ended up becoming doctors, lawyers, engineers or accountants, but people in the arts crowd tended to descend on the Village. Anïs Nin lived there, and much of the book concerns Broyard's relationship with Nin's protégé, Sheri Martinelli (under the pseudonym "Donatti"). W.H. Auden was in the neighborhood, as were Delmore Schwartz, Dylan Thomas and many others. As I recall, Denise Levertov moved there in 1948, but she never liked the grunge.

I ought to provide a sample of Broyard's writing, which I think is very good, as good as that of any American writer:

One night in the San Remo Bar Delmore Schwartz invited me to sit in a booth with him. He was with Dwight Macdonald and Clem Greenberg. I was flattered. I knew Delmore because he had accepted for Partisan Review a piece I'd called "Portrait of a Hipster."

They were talking about the primitive: Picasso, D.H. Lawrence, and Hemingway; bullfighting and boxing. I was a bit uneasy, because my piece was about jazz and the attitudes surrounding it, and I didn't want to be typecast as an aficionado of the primitive. I wanted to be a literary man, like them. I felt too primitive myself to be talking about the primitive.

Yet I couldn't help showing off a little. I had noticed in taking strolls with Delmore that he was surprised and even impressed by what I thought were ordinary observations. He seemed to see American life only in the abstract, as a Platonic essence. Sometimes he saw it as vaudeville, but he always saw it through something else. He imposed a form, intellectual or esthetic, on it, as if he couldn't bear to look at it directly.

Like many other New York writers and intellectuals of his generation, Delmore seemed to have read himself right out of American culture. He was a citizen only of literature. His Greenwich Village was part Dostoyevski's Saint Petersburg and part Kafka's Amerika. 

I admired his high abstraction, his ability to think in noninclusive generalizations, but I pitied him too. I thought his was as much a lost generation as Hemingway's and Fitzgerald's—in fact, more lost. While the writers of the twenties had lost only their illusions, Delmore, the typical New York intellectual of the forties, seemed to have lost the world itself. It was as if these men had been blinded by reading. Their heads were so filled with books, fictional characters, and symbols that there was no room for the raw data of actuality. They couldn't see the small, only the large. They still thought of ordinary people as the proletariat, or the masses. 

I wanted to be an intellectual, too, to see life from a great height, yet I didn't want to give up my sense of connection, my intimacy with things. When I read a book, I always kept one eye on the world, like someone watching a clock.

Surprisingly to me, to the extent that there is a main theme to the book, it is Broyard's inability to connect with women, no matter how hard he tried. His writing about Sheri is nonjudgmental, yet her behavior seems bizarre to me, and though I couldn't tolerate someone like her now, Broyard expresses very well the angst that he experienced when he tried to develop a close relationship with her. In the end he broke up with her after she had made a suicide attempt without offering an explanation and after she had had him arrested for taking one of his own possessions from her apartment. As a reader, I was reminded of  Andy Warhol's "Superstars" and got the sense that people like Sheri may have prefigured the movement toward empty celebrity in the arts. Broyard doesn't try to outline Sheri's psychodynamics, but I found it difficult to see her as anything other than mentally ill in a significant sense. Though Broyard mentions in passing that he saw a psychiatrist because it was fashionable, mental illness never comes up as a specific topic in the book, but, in the postscript by Alexandra Broyard, his wife at the time of his death, it becomes evident that he found stability later, after he had moved away from Greenwich Village, raised a family and developed a career. My interpretation is that Broyard was very much a down-to-earth person who was thrown off when he placed himself in the milieu of artistic people with unstable personalities. As the first member of his family to take an interest in the arts or graduate from college, he had placed himself in an environment that took more adjustment than he realized was necessary.

There is a lot of discussion in the book about sex; it is done tastefully and usually is related to Broyard's difficulty connecting with women. This is striking to read now, when women are more often seen as the victims of insensitive, self-centered men. In this case, you can clearly see that, compared to Broyard, Sheri and some of the other women he knew were the ones who were emotionally unavailable and perhaps manipulative. Broyard also remarks how different it was before the sexual revolution and books like Portnoy's Complaint. Relationships between men and women were strained compared to later days, and that was an enduring problem for Broyard in this memoir

The style of writing in the book is elegant and literary, but not so literary as to fit Broyard's description of Delmore Schwartz's style. Though I usually prefer more analytical works, this one makes up for it by capturing Broyard's mental state at the time so well that it is absorbing enough in itself. I think this book would appeal more to men than to women, but those women who are interested in broadening their horizons in understanding men surely could benefit from it. My current position is that the gulf between men and women is unbridgeable, but that education and awareness can still improve relations between the sexes. I may read more of Broyard and comment on that later.

The Monologue/The Woman Destroyed

These are the other two short stories by Simone de Beauvoir in the volume I'm reading. "The Monologue" is not to my taste, because it is written in the stream of consciousness style, which I generally don't like. It describes the point of view of a woman named Murielle, whose life hasn't been going well at all. Her daughter from her first marriage, Sylvie, apparently has died, and she is separated from her second husband, who has custody of their son, Francis. She is living alone in a noisy apartment and ruminating over her life and the people who have wronged her. I found it a little confusing to follow and couldn't see the point of the awkward presentation.

I suppose that this was an experimental attempt by de Beauvoir to emulate other writers, such as William Faulkner, whom I also dislike. For me, stream of consciousness was a literary fad that ran its course without adding much to literature as an art. The only writer whom I've found to have any real facility at it was Katherine Mansfield. It requires a psychological insight beyond the level that most writers possess and otherwise reads like a gimmick. I also oppose stream of consciousness on a philosophical basis, because what occurs in someone's head, mine at least, is mostly nonverbal and can't be simulated accurately with words, sentence fragments or sentences. For me, putting things into words is a process separate from the raw mental activities occurring in my conscious brain at any given moment, and I don't think that portraying those mental activities in a verbal format represents them accurately. Mansfield succeeded better than others only because she had an uncanny ability to divine the inner experiences of others.

Although I like certain aspects of de Beauvoir's writing, I don't think that she had the right attributes to be a great writer. While intellectually aware, she lacked the depth of George Eliot, whose knowledge had originated more organically over many decades through observation, thought and reading rather than through the more artificial protocols of universities and intellectuals. Furthermore, de Beauvoir's prose reads more like essays than creative writing. She had none of Kafka's creative imagination and did not produce sentences as elegant as those of Proust, though she probably surpassed both of them intellectually.

"The Woman Destroyed," the final story and the title of the collection, is a long series of diary entries by Monique, a fortyish upper-middle-class Parisian housewife with two grown daughters and a husband, Maurice, who is a medical researcher. Maurice has been seeing Noëllie, an ambitious young lawyer, and the entire story concerns the effect that this has on Monique. Maurice won't give up Noëllie and doesn't want to give up Monique either. Monique, for her part, wants Maurice to dump Noëllie, but she makes no progress, and by the end of the story he is getting a separate apartment for himself. Most of the discussion concerns what Monique did or didn't do right, speculation on Noëllie's character and support from friends, her children and a psychiatrist. By the end of the story, Monique has lost a lot of weight, is depressed and is heavily medicated.

The writing device of "The Woman Destroyed" is not as psychologically oppressive to me as that of "The Monologue," because it includes dialogue quoted from various people and therefore is not a completely closed monologue. However, Monique's obsessions don't interest me much, and no advice that I would consider practical emerges until the very end, when Monique visits her younger daughter, Lucienne, in New York City:

"You saw our life together," I said. "And indeed you were very critical as far as I was concerned. Don't be afraid of hurting me. Try to explain why your father has stopped loving me."

She smiled rather pityingly. "But, Mama, after fifteen years of marriage it is perfectly natural to stop loving one's wife. It's the other thing that would be astonishing!" 

"There are people who love each other all their lives." 

"They pretend to." 

In the end, Monique remains fixated on Maurice, with no hope on the horizon.

This story seemed realistic to me, because there are many women like Monique who encounter this situation. The only difference I see is that affairs are more likely to be taken in stride in France than in the U.S. In this instance, Maurice had already had several affairs unbeknownst to Monique, and Monique herself had had one affair. Unfortunately, neither Monique nor Maurice seemed interesting to me, and I had to wait for Lucienne to speak up to find a character who appealed to me.

Of the three stories, I would say that "The Woman Destroyed" is the best. Nevertheless, I even found that boring. The impression I have from this book and The Mandarins is that de Beauvoir liked to write about the travails that women face. She seems sympathetic, yet doesn't really offer solutions for aggrieved women. I don't currently plan to delve further into the biographies and autobiographies of de Beauvoir, but the sense I have is that she typically took a stoic position on the hurtful behavior of the men she knew. Here, in The Mandarins and in her memoirs, men behave badly and women get upset, but de Beauvoir is reluctant to criticize them, or, for that matter, provide any discernible lessons. She is good when it comes to accepting facts, but, as far as I can tell, she does nothing to prescribe responsible behavior. In "The Woman Destroyed," the question of whether Maurice's actions and his inability to justify them are acceptable remains open. The Monique-Maurice relationship resembles the Paula-Henri relationship in The Mandarins, and in both cases the men just do what they want to do while the women crack up. There may be no intended message, but de Beauvoir clearly sympathizes with the men. She seems to enjoy deconstructing the bourgeois follies of the women she knew.

The Age of Discretion

I've just read this short story by Simone de Beauvoir. It features a sixtyish couple, André and his wife, their son, Phillipe, Phillipe's wife, Iréne, and André's mother, Manette. The story is a narration by André's wife concerning events at the time of Phillipe's announcement that he has decided to change careers. André is a scientist, still conducting research, and the narrator is a writer. Phillipe suddenly shocks his parents when he informs them that he is not going to pursue an academic career and instead has accepted a high-paying job at the Ministry of Culture, which he obtained with help from Iréne's father.

The narrator goes off the deep end and has unpleasant spats with Phillipe in which she says that she never wants to see him again. She also becomes alienated from André when his reaction isn't as forceful as hers, and she ruminates over what is left for her in life. Initially she seems depressed and sees nothing more than an unsatisfactory relationship with André, old age and death. Her reaction to Phillipe's decision seems extreme to André, and also to me. In her mind, an intellectual career is unquestionably superior to an ordinary well-paid job. André recognizes that Phillipe may not have been cut out for an academic career, whereas his mother sees Phillipe's choice as a moral flaw.

After André leaves for a few days to visit his mother in the country, and the narrator later joins him, they manage to reconcile, and the narrator agrees that she should take a more conciliatory approach with Phillipe. Much of the discussion concerns the differences between youth and old age. André thinks that most scientists are finished by his age, but that his ongoing research is useful nevertheless. The narrator has just published a new book that is receiving a tepid reception, and she worries about her own decline.

At first glance, the narrator's high-mindedness seems puzzling, especially if you're used to living among philistine Americans. Besides that, she is more controlling than most of the mothers I've known. In fact, she exhibits a rather extreme insensitivity regarding which outcome would best suit her son. I can make a little sense of all this by looking at the ways in which French upper-middle-class culture differs from American upper-middle-class culture. The rules are somewhat different for educated French people, who are more likely to be sensitive to social issues than educated Americans, on average. There is also the element in which de Beauvoir may be imposing her idea of existentialism on the narrative. That implies some vague moral imperative that she derived from the writings of Sartre, which, unfortunately, I interpret as nonsense. 

This reminds me very much of The Mandarins, in which de Beauvoir invented Nadine as the imagined daughter she never had. In that context, Anne and Robert were much younger, but Nadine, their daughter, also seemed like an artifice placed there for some specific conceptual message. Because this is only a short story, Phillipe really doesn't get the chance to develop as a credible character, yet I can still see de Beauvoir's mind at work attempting to demonstrate some theory that suits her preferences. In the end, I am left with the idea that I had previously: de Beauvoir is a good thinker and writer, but she was not able to break out from her conceptual history in the cause of creating a truly transformative kind of art. In literature, creative artists have an advantage over intellectuals in the sense that the feelings that one gets from good literature are more durable than ideas, which tend to have more wooden characteristics and eventually rot, as I think existentialism did. In my opinion, the general criticism that ideology diminishes the value of art is valid, because ideology works better in essays, where the intent of the author takes precedence over aesthetic factors. I must also note that de Beauvoir's presumption that the intellectual life is always better than others seems to have blinded her to the shortcomings evident in her milieu. In reading The Mandarins, I got the sense that she thought that their lives were self-evidently superior, and, based on my research, I would beg to differ. Even so, I believe that some aspects of value are to be found in this story. It presents serious elements that are of interest to thoughtful people as they age. In my case, I don't find de Beauvoir particularly enlightening, yet one does not often come across a writer with a brain in these matters. De Beauvoir remains a kind of salve for me, because there are few options available in a country that in so many ways is intellectually dead.

This book has two other stories, and, after I've read them, I'll decide whether or not to comment on them.

Michel Houellebecq

I came across this article by Michel Houellebecq and decided to comment on it in order to take a short break from Jean-Jacques Rousseau; I'll return to Cranston on my next post. At the moment I feel vindicated in preferring essays to fiction, because, in the case of an essay, the author can't attribute ideas to fictional characters, and he or she therefore has less wiggle room. Houellebecq's essay reads almost exactly the same as his novels, and now at least he is taking direct responsibility for positions rather than placing them in the mouths of imaginary characters.

The essay starts out reasonably well, and along the way Houellebecq admits that Donald Trump is a "pretty repulsive" person. He provides what I think is an acceptable short summary of the role the U.S. played during World War II and its actions on the international scene since then. America helped defeat Hitler and prevented the U.S.S.R. from advancing into Western Europe. However, America's international record since then has been dismal, if you only look at Vietnam and Iraq and don't even count Afghanistan or Libya. Houellebecq correctly notes that the quality of U.S. presidents has been amazingly low since World War II. I'm thinking that perhaps Eisenhower wasn't too bad, but all of the rest have been in the mediocre-to-inferior range. Houellebecq scorns American interventionism in a manner understood by many throughout the world, but which receives little negative publicity here. Beyond this point, I think the essay goes downhill.

As a foreign observer of America, I don't think that Houellebecq is fully attuned to the nature or extent of Donald Trump's ignorance. He misattributes Trump's treaty renegotiation strategy and "America first" slogans to a rare sagacity that is beyond the capacities of most politicians. He thinks that Trump's policies, besides getting the U.S. off the backs of other countries, will benefit American workers. At this point in the essay there is an explosion of Houellebecq's ignorance, something that simmers in the background of his novels but never shows itself in the light of day. Trump's trade war is disrupting international economic activities at no benefit to any country. Of particular importance, and contradicting Trump's campaign promises, American farmers are declaring bankruptcy in droves, partly as a result of low commodity prices exacerbated by the trade war. I should also mention that there is no evidence that Trump's policies will increase the number of manufacturing jobs or middle-class incomes in the U.S. To make matters worse, Houellebecq loves Brexit and the disbanding of the EU and NATO, mistakenly thinking that the end of globalization will bring prosperity to ordinary workers. Houellebecq has also bought into the somewhat improbable suggestion that Trump, through shrewd negotiating techniques, will denuclearize North Korea. Oddly, Houellebecq even seems to like Vladimir Putin.

Thanks to this essay, I have a clearer idea of Houellebecq's intellectual deficiencies. He doesn't recognize that, like Donald Trump, he has no understanding of economics. Also, far more important in a novelist, he doesn't realize that Trump's pathology and actual skills are a detriment to his being of service to anyone other than himself. Trump came to prominence by teaming up with criminals and bullying whoever stood in the way of his business interests. He only cares about activities that will benefit him personally. This is evident in everything that he does and has resulted in one of the most incompetent executive branches in American history and the careless and irresponsible violation of the U. S. Constitution. Houellebecq doesn't mention climate change, which is being denied by Trump. He also says nothing about overpopulation or repressive regimes; Trump supports overpopulation by opposing abortions, and his primary solution for asylum-seekers seems to be to let them die on the opposite side of a wall. Houellebecq clearly hasn't done his homework, or he would have known that Trump's tax cut mainly benefits the wealthy and has inflated the budget deficit for future generations. Perhaps Houellebecq's most conspicuous omission is the way in which Trump's right-wing populism echoes the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany during the 1930's.

Just to speculate a little, it may be that, now that Houellebecq has become internationally famous, he has started to follow in the footsteps of his friend, Gérard Depardieu, the tax dodger: Donald Trump may be just the man for nouveau-riche bourgeoisie who can never have enough money to satisfy themselves. I had been thinking about reading Houellebecq's latest novel, Serotonin, but I'm going to give it a pass. Whatever Houellebecq's motives, he is simply too ignorant to be taken seriously. After spending time reading about the French Enlightenment, it is disappointing to see just how far the standards have fallen. In order to qualify as a French intellectual, one once had to know something; today a cursory knowledge of blowjobs seems to be all that is necessary. Houellebecq is the last person anyone would want to consult regarding the problems currently facing the world.

The Garden Party and Other Stories

This volume, which includes several of the later short stories of Katherine Mansfield, has turned out to be better than I expected. Mansfield is unusually strong in the observation of people and in the divining of their thoughts, while also rendering physical details with precise language and an economy of words. I found the opening paragraphs of At the Bay a pleasure to read:

Very early morning. The sun was not yet risen, and the whole of Crescent Bay was hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered hills at the back were smothered. You could not see where they ended and the paddocks and bungalows began. The sandy road was gone and the paddocks and bungalows the other side of it; there were no white dunes covered with reddish grass beyond them; there was nothing to mark which was a beach and where was the sea. A heavy dew had fallen. The grass was blue. Big drops hung on the bushes and just did not fall; the silvery, fluffy toi-toi was limp on its long stalks, and all the marigolds and the pinks in the bungalow gardens were bowed to the earth with wetness. Drenched were the cold fuchsias, round pearls of dew lay on the nasturtium leaves. It looked as though the sea had beaten up softly in the darkness, as though one immense wave had come rippling, rippling – how far? Perhaps if you had waked up in the middle of the night you might have seen a big fish flicking in at the window and gone again...

Ah, aah! sounded the sleepy sea. And from the bush there came the sounds of little streams flowing, quickly, lightly, slipping between the smooth stones, gushing into ferny basins and out again; and there was the splashing of big drops on large leaves, and something else – what was it? – a faint stirring and shaking, the snapping of a twig and then such a silence that it seemed someone was listening.

I think what makes Mansfield especially compelling to me is her talent that realistically combines physical description with the thoughts and feelings of her characters. Most of them are girls or young women, though she throws in a few boys, men and older women. She captures fleeting situations with stunning accuracy. When Mansfield was writing, the short story was going through a metamorphosis. The short stories of the nineteenth century were often quite long, like short novels. In Mansfield's day, very short vignettes became popular. These stories don't have real plots, and most of them are like snapshots of an era. The lengthier ones engage in slightly longer sequences of events, but show no signs of breaking out into narratives that might become novels. I think Mansfield does a much better job showing how her characters are relating to their environments than most writers are capable. Actually, I liked some of the shorter ones best: Miss Brill, Mr. and Mrs. Dove, The Voyage and The Singing Lesson. The title story, The Garden Party, isn't bad; it contains a coming-of-age episode, in which a girl has an unsettling first exposure to class differences.

Mansfield grew up in an upper-middle-class New Zealand family, completed her schooling in England and moved there. Apparently, she led a rather wild and reckless life in England, sleeping with all kinds of people, both men and women, and marrying twice, finally contracting tuberculosis, which killed her in 1923 at the age of thirty-four.  You would never know it from these stories, which seem careful and conservative by current standards. It seems a little odd that someone who felt stifled by bourgeois life in New Zealand, as did Simone de Beauvoir a few years later in France, would dutifully record it with such respect. I suspect that if she had lived longer she would have written more radical things. There is probably no way of knowing whether she might have produced a good novel. However, on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis, I think she is as good as Flaubert or anyone, and certainly better than most of the writers with whom I'm familiar. She probably did not have the intellectual range of George Eliot, but her writing had an elegance that I'm sure George Eliot would admire. I think that Virginia Woolf was rightly jealous. Mansfield expressed herself eloquently without resorting to any of the gimmicks that have become commonplace in contemporary literature.