Tag classic literature

Spring Break Book Review #4: The Troll Garden

Dusty Leave a comment

Image result for troll garden signet classic

The Troll Garden

by Willa Cather

 

I found this one at a garage sale, put on by a former literature professor; he gave me a discount on this and the other two or three books I bought, including a nice paperback of Dracula, which I’ve never read all the way through but will be diving into soon.

I’ve never read Willa Cather, though I’ve always been surrounded by copies of O! Pioneers, a classic usually part of American literature classes, though never my own. I got this because I loved the cover, and because I held out hope that it would actually be about a garden full of trolls — I also got a copy of a Kenneth Grahame book of short stories, and if that man can write about moles and toads and badgers who own halls and motor cars, why couldn’t Willa Cather write about gardens full of trolls?

Because Willa Cather wrote about despair, that’s why.

The title actually comes from a cute little ditty:

“We must not look at Goblin men,

We must not buy their fruits;

Who knows upon what soil they fed

Their hungry thirsty roots?”

And the book is related: it is about people’s secret desires, often dark, and generally leading to bad places. These stories are about unrequited love; about poverty and working-class life and how such a daily grind wears away every noble impulse in a person; about how people want what they cannot have, and don’t recognize what they do have, and don’t want it when they do have it. It’s a book about hunger and thirst, and the darkness we turn to in order to feed that hunger and thirst, and what that darkness does to us.

The first story, Flavia and Her Artists, is about a woman who desperately wants to be chic, to run a top-shelf salon, packed with intellectuals and artists and the finest of people. But she doesn’t know how to pick the best types, and ends up with less enchanting guests, who all laugh at her behind their hands, because she herself is superficial and dim-witted, blinded to reality by her dreams of being the ultimate hostess. The story is only saved by her husband: who loves her despite knowing how pathetic she is, and who tries to do his best to protect her and make her happy, even though none of the angsty sophisticates can understand what he sees in someone so gauche.

The second story, The Sculptor’s Funeral, was my favorite: in it a great artist dies and has his body returned to the little crap town in farm country where he was born. The people there are absurd and grotesque, and the men who gather for his wake spend the evening deriding the artist as a weirdo who was clearly a failure because he didn’t stay in town and make money, as his father did, as they all did. But again, the love of one good man redeems the story: a lawyer who was a good friend, a real friend, and who understood the deceased sculptor, reams them all for their vileness. It’s a great speech, one I’d like to say myself to a few people I know.

Then we get to the Unrequited Love section: The Garden Lodge, about a woman who grew up poor, who held herself to a rigid and unbending regimen in order to get out of poverty, who married well and securely, and then — falls in love with an opera singer who stays at her home. She clings desperately to this one bit of irrational passion, but by the end, she returns to her sensible self, and has the garden lodge where she spent time with her singer torn down. A Death in the Desert is a double dose: a woman dying of tuberculosis is pining for the great composer who was her mentor; she lives vicariously through the man’s brother, who looks just like the great composer; and he keeps her company as she dies despite being in love with her himself. She dies without anyone ever being happy.

The Marriage of Phaedra is about an artist’s legacy being spoiled by his widow; A Wagner Matinee is about a woman who gave up both music and joy when she married a homesteader and then spent her life raising their children and caring for his house out on the frontier; and the last, Paul’s Case, is about a young man who dreams of a life of beauty and sophistication, but can’t find his way to it out of his lower-middle-class upbringing, other than through fantasy, which eventually destroys him.

I see glimmers of goodness in every story — Flavia’s good husband; the sculptor’s good friend; the essential goodness of the woman in The Garden Lodge and the almost inhuman humanity of the brother in A Death in the Desert, squashing his own heart, his own identity, in order to stand in for the fantasy of the woman he loves; and so on. The people longing for what they don’t have are not bad, are not at fault for their own desperation and sorrow; I see Cather’s villain as the society that pigeonholes us while showing us a dream we can’t have, telling us we can. Maybe we’re fools for believing it, but there are people who profit from our hopeless fantasizing, and then from our bereavement; they are the bad guys here, not the people who want more. Paul’s Case is not his fault. Not that that makes it better. Poor guy.

It is beautifully written. It is deeply depressing. I can’t tell if it says good things about my appreciation for fine literature that I was able to enjoy the book, or if it says bad things about my increased ability to relate to the desperation and sorrow of the characters. I want to say the first. I’m certainly going to read something more cheerful now — though more fool me, the very next thing I read after this was not cheerful at all. But at least the writing sucked. Hey, stay tuned for that review!

 

An Oldie but a Goodie

Dusty Leave a comment

Front Cover

Castle Rackrent and The Absentee

by Maria Edgeworth

I bought this book at a library book sale really just because it was beautiful. I loved the binding, the endpapers, the fineness of the pages and the print. Reading into the introduction, I found out that Maria Edgeworth was one of the first female novelists, as well as a crusader for education and for Irish rights under English rule; and her novel Castle Rackrent is one of the first historical novels written in English, and is actually considered groundbreaking and influential for some of the choices the author makes – one of the first novels set in Ireland; covering multiple generations of one family, making this a “Big House” novel, with a servant as a narrator; having that servant be biased, describing the family as noble and honorable and beloved even as they act like a pack of crazed, starving weasels, etc. So hey, awesome! I picked a good one.

Then I read it. Okay, it may be groundbreaking and influential, but it’s also terribly annoying. Those people, the Rackrents, really are obnoxious, and so, therefore, is the servant, Honest Thady, who describes them to us, pining for the long-gone days when the lord of the manor would throw enormous parties that he couldn’t afford, passing the debt onto his heirs – you know, the good old days. I was struck particularly by the rather ridiculous refusal of the Rackrent men to actually deal with reality: they spend too much damn money, and when it comes to their debts, they just shake their heads and refuse to discuss such plebeian matters, disgusted that anyone would even think of asking them to honor their obligations – and there’s Honest Thady, saying, “How could they ask my noble master something so callous! How could they ask him to lower his noble visage, to consider their peasant-concerns. We should all just drink to My Lord’s health!” Another thing that struck me: they drink a whole lot of health in this book. There’s one scene when they celebrate the elevation of a new Rackrent heir by drinking his health for the entire evening; I can’t even picture that. Every time they get a new drink, it’s just “To my lord’s health! Wot wot huzzah!” and down the hatch. Then twenty minutes later, “Long life to my Lord Rackrent! Pip pip hullabaloo!” And this, to Honest Thady, at least, is a good evening.

But on the plus side: it has a glossary, which together with the narrative offers some interesting insights into the time and place; and it’s really short.

The majority of the volume is actually taken up by a later book by the same author called The Absentee. That book was much, much better, even without being so innovative and groundbreaking. It’s the story – again, which is a tad annoying for the repetitiveness – of the Clonbronys, an Irish lord who can’t handle thinking about money affairs, and his wife, who also refuses to think about money, but really loves spending it; she is trying to get in good with English society by being the most fashionable and throwing the best parties, and so she has forced her Irish nobleman husband to leave his country estate in Ireland and live in London so she can be one of the girls. Sadly, the people she wants to hang out with – well, they suck. It’s a lot like a two-hundred-year-old version of Mean Girls: they mock Lady Clonbrony’s accent and heritage behind her back (She was born in England, but is from an Irish family and married to an Irishman), they roll their eyes at how hard she’s trying to be cool, which of course prevents her from being cool; they titter at her attempts to be fashionable which are all so yesterday. Meanwhile her husband is running around with an English military man who seems like a lot of fun, but is apparently uncivilized according to Milady, who can’t stand to be in the same room with his gaucherie without getting a case of the vapors. Though his every appearance in the actual novel makes him seem like a perfectly nice man and a very good friend to her husband. I suppose we’re just supposed to know the distinctions made by the upper classes between what’s acceptable and what’s not.

Meanwhile, the son of this couple, Lord Colambre, is just about to come of age and inherit his part of the family estate, and he is in a bit of a pickle. You see, he can’t decide who to marry. Which is, of course, really the only decision that people of this class ever have to make on their own, and so naturally it is fraught with weighty momentousness. This guy has the following options: he could marry his cousin, whom he actually loves, but she doesn’t think of him THAT WAY; he could marry Lady Sophia, who seems the perfect gentlewoman but whose mother is a crass boor; he could marry an extremely wealthy young heiress whom he respects but does not love. What, OH WHAT! Is Lord Colambre to do!

Well first, he goes back to Ireland and visits his father’s estate, and the neighboring estate that is soon to be his. And though this part is probably a little too on the nose in its social critique, I thought it was by far the most interesting, as it gets into people’s real, actual lives, the troubles that the Irish people faced when their lords lived in England and simply demanded money be sent to them so they could buy their fashionable doodads, without worrying about where exactly the money was coming from or how it was hurting the little people to have to come up with it. Lord Colambre finds that there are two important factors: one, having a good agent, or manager, a guy who actually wants people to do well versus one who is corrupt and only interested in maximum profit with minimum cost – a slumlord, in essence; and two, having the lord actually live on the estate, rather than too far away to oversee matters and keep an eye on things. Lord Colambre, who’s actually a pretty good protagonist, determines that he will not be an absentee lord, and that he will convince his father to fire the bad agent he currently has and hire the good one.

All of this comes about, and Colambre even overcomes the most difficult challenge, that of convincing his stubborn and dimwitted mother to give up her dream of being the belle of London society – I call her dimwitted because as she is ripping through her husband’s money, forcing him to squeeze the little people back on the estate for more to cover her debts, all she says about money is, “Well, when I married him he had plenty, and I brought even more into the marriage! So surely there’s no problem! Now order me that ivory-handled backscratcher with the gold trim!” – and just go back to Ireland where they can live within their means and with some shred of dignity. She finally agrees, and the bad agent is driven off so that the good agent can take over. Everything’s great! So hooray! A happy ending!

But wait (gasp): who will Lord Colambre marry?!?!?!?!?!?!? So he gives up on the rich heiress, even though his mother is disappointed that he fails to carry on the family tradition – and apparently the national pastime of the upper class – of marrying money to solve all overspending problems, because he doesn’t love her and a friend of his does (and that’s the guy she marries); and he finds out that the seemingly lovely girl with the crude mother is in fact a bitch, so she’s out too. So now it’s his cousin. But horror of horrors! He found out that – that – oh, I can’t even bear to write the words . . . she was born –out of wedlock! Her mother was NOT BEYOND REPROACH! She was a FALLEN WOMAN! Don’t you understand?!? She had THE SEX WITHOUT THE MARRIAGE! Gasp! Shudder! The vapors! Oh, pardon me while I faint dead away. There are several conversations where Lord Colambre is convinced that he can’t even consider marrying a woman whose mother was of less than perfect morality, as that same nature will surely appear in his bride. And this seems to be a given, which means that alas, his love is off the table as a marriage prospect. But then, through a series of rather absurd coincidences (but what the hell? It’s basically a romance novel, anyway.), it turns out that her parents WERE married, and therefore her blood is not tainted with whorishness – and what’s more, she actually stands to inherit money, and isn’t even his cousin! Huzzah!

So yeah, happy ending all around. And it was cheesy and all, but very sweet. I liked it quite a bit. Pip pip and all that folderol.

Yup. I read it.

Dusty Leave a comment

Go Set a Watchman

by Harper Lee. Duh.

The answers to your questions: it is not as good as To Kill a Mockingbird. You don’t have to read it. That is not to say you shouldn’t, or you won’t enjoy it – I did – but you don’t HAVE to read it.

It is precisely what it is purported to be: the story of Scout Finch, all – or almost all – grown up. It is also a rough draft of sorts of Mockingbird; there are passages that were taken straight from this book and put into that one, some descriptions of Aunt Alexandra, the history of Maycomb’s founding, that sort of thing. It is not the same book, retold at a different time; it is also not the sequel, as there are several small details that do not mesh with Mockingbird — Cousin Francis is Alexandra’s son, not her grandson; the Radley family is missing entirely, but there is a reference to another boogeyman who sneaks out at night and eats cats.

For someone who has never read To Kill a Mockingbird, this would likely be a good, but probably not a great book. This is me theorizing, of course, because I’m a high school English teacher, and I’ve taught Harper Lee’s masterpiece (It gave me a laugh to look inside the front cover and see “Also by Harper Lee:”) and read it a dozen times. I think the reality, the tangible, concrete weight of the characters and their personalities was already in me from Mockingbird, and I’m not sure it would be present for someone who didn’t read that book. This book’s central conflict climaxes with more speechifying, as if Atticus’s closing argument were moved to the final chapters and combined with the conversations about Boo Radley and Jem: more slow buildup and a longer period of talking through it. But the writing is still Harper Lee, and it is still wonderful: there is the same elegant prose, the same remarkable ability to switch from formal to casual, the same ironic humor, the same incisive understanding of the people and history of the South, and it’s still a joy to read. So I would recommend it.

For those who, like me, have read Mockingbird and loved it, you should think carefully. This book is good, but it is not a masterpiece. The wonder of Mockingbird hinges on the choice to make Scout a child. That simplified the story, and enabled Lee to treat race and hate and human nature with innocence and simplicity – through a child’s eyes. The adult Scout – now Jean Louise, an emblematic change – doesn’t have it so easy. She is much more reflective, thinking about what people say and whether they actually meant it or not; trying to decide whether their words and their character are a match to what she remembers of them from the past; trying to decide for herself where she belongs, and what she loves and what she can’t stand. The characters that were simple are now not, particularly – and most tryingly – Atticus. In Mockingbird, Atticus is the perfect father-hero. But now, Scout is older, and in this book, she finishes growing up. And it hurts to see Atticus the way she is forced to see him. It made this book hard to read. And, to tell the truth, so did Lee’s erudite references to Victorian authors and 1950’s historical and cultural icons, several of which I did not understand.

I would absolutely recommend this book as an exercise in the writer’s craft to those who teach Mockingbird, and to those who write themselves and know Lee’s classic. It is fascinating to see the changes between this earlier book and the later one, to see the author’s choices that made that book great, and this one less so.

For those who love Mockingbird for its own sake? If you think you can handle it, I would highly recommend this book to you, too. Because just like Scout, I think we need to grow up, and see our heroes in a more human light. And even though this book is more complex, more troubling, it is the difference between idyllic, idealized childhood and murky, gray-shaded adulthood; and this is still Scout. It’s still Atticus. It’s still Maycomb. It’s still Harper Lee. It was wonderful to go back and see it all again.