Tender by Mark Childress

The story of Elvis’s childhood, with the emphasis not so much on Elvis, as on childhood

Six hundred pages about Elvis Presley. And only his early years. Really?  Won't that be boring? But to my relief, the novel was compelling, easy to read, and poetic. The first 550 pages flew by. And the book is not technically about Elvis, but about a black haired swivel hipped singer from Tupelo named Leroy Kirby. The plot concerns a talented little boy growing up in Tupelo and Memphis, his love of fine clothes and his dreams of stardom. But the true subject of the novel is childhood, and the way a young child encounters the world of nature and the mystifying world of adults. The Elvis hagiography seamlessly fits into the structure of the story of the little boy growing up.

There are many unique fully rounded characters – the sensitive little mamma’s boy, the hardworking mother, the ne’er do well Dad, the puzzle playing Grandma. The scenes were consistently absorbing. The problem for me came in the last section, after Elvis becomes unbelievably famous and beautiful available girls are popping through the window. That plot problem did not hold a lot of interest for me and it felt like we kept rehashing the situation.

The Elvis story had a tragic end, which is only hinted at here. The engine of the story is mainly Luck.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

An obsessed pedophile comically comments on post war America

I almost wrote, This is about a rapist. Lolita is the story of Humbert Humbert, who is sexually obsessed with pre teen girls. Suddenly Fate throws one in his lap (literally). Her name is Dolores, but in his deluded heart, she is his Lolita. He flees with this reluctant step daughter/concubine across American byways and highways. It’s the tale of a sordid seduction and imprisonment and destruction of a 12 year old girl told by a narrator with a superhuman mastery of English prose. Each sentence was like its own novel, very mean and very funny.

I was uncomfortably appalled (though giggling) until the final part, when Humbert’s world starts falling apart, and he allows himself to accept the enormity of his crime. The book takes a turn into tragedy and greatness at the very end. The feeling of sadness, of important things that are broken and never can be fixed, is much stronger than the satirical tone that underlies most of the book. Do I detect here a Russian sense of crime and punishment and atonement?

I don’t know if I felt sympathy for Humbert but at the end I felt I understood him. His plan for Lolita reads like a synopsis of a child molester textbook.   He isolates her, spoils her, makes her helpless.  Humbert is delusional, selfish, impatient. The book is also a meditation on how evil pedophilia (and maybe lust) is, how it demands an object rather than a living person. Humbert puts his lust first. He only destroys her because fate gives her to him. He’s too much of a mild mannered academic to ever abduct her otherwise.

This is part of my Rereading the Classics and ultimately I felt it was a work of genius, though a little cold and sordid. And what’s with all the Hunters? The book is stuffed with allusions and you could spend years trying to figure them all out.

Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

Six members in a book club read the six novels of Jane Austen

This book was delightful to read and worked on many levels. On the surface, it appears to be about a bunch of loveless literary types in Sacramento, clearly Democrats and very politically correct, and their fumblings after romance, but it’s also about how the meanings and themes of the Austen novels bounce off the meanings and themes of this novel.  Maybe it's also about how you should give love a second chance. Finally, the novel is very funny.

In Sacramento, Jocelyn forms the book club and invites her long time friend Sylvia. Long ago, Jocelyn stole Sylvia’s boyfriend (or did Sylvia’s steal Jocelyn’s?). Now Sylvia is about to be divorced from that very same boyfriend, and with that in mind, Jocelyn invites a neatish oddish 40 year bachelor, Grigg, to the book club. Intended for Sylvia? We shall see.

Allegra is Sylvia’s daughter, an accident prone lesbian daredevil who has been unhappy in love. Bernadette, the fifth member, is old and has given up on looks, but seems to have had the most interesting life, with lots and lots of husbands. Prudie, a high school teacher, has the world’s worst mother – and when that mother dies, she is crushed.

The sentences are beautifully written.  The book is narrated in the first person plural, which you don’t often see and which works well.

Also, the discussion questions at the end, which I initially skipped over because I thought they were actual discussion questions, are a hilarious commentary on the novel. As well as American society.

L'Affaire by Diane Johnson

A rich young American woman goes to Europe to acquire some culture.

You would think that in the third of Diane Johnson’s Franco American misunderstanding novels, (all with related sounding titles), the plot or the settings or the characters would start to feel hackneyed or cranked out. But L’Affaire felt fully realized, standing on its own with insights about sudden dot com millionaires, death by avalanche and an exploration of the legal and the emotional side of inheritances. Luckily L’Affaire drops the frenetic plotting of Le Mariage, Johnson's previous book, and proceeds at a statelier pace. The story therefore felt more concentrated and moving.

The plot is presented as frivolous though it’s not frivolous at all. This time we stay pretty much fixed in the mind of Amy Ellen Hawkins, a dot com executive from Palo Alto, California. After collecting her millions, she intends to widen her horizons, get some polish, and learn about things she is deciding could possibly be important. But before she begins her serious education in Paris, she takes time out to ski at a French resort. 

Amy approaches situations in a characteristically American way. She’s nice, she wants to help, she blunders. When a fourteen year old American boy at the ski resort is effectively abandoned after his sister and her elderly husband are injured, Amy gets involved, motivated by the theories of Prince Kropotkin and his Mutual Aid book. She tries to put them into practice. (This trait reminded me of Dorothea in Middlemarch.)

The second plot concerns the victims of the avalanche and the heirs of the husband, a British very rich publishing cad.  He has four children, two legitimate English, one illegitimate French and a legitimate American toddler. He lies in a coma and the geographic location of his death will make a huge impact on the fortunes of his children.  So what is the proper thing to do?  Humorous cross cultural misunderstandings abound.

Diane Johnson’s novels are ostensibly comic, but horrible things happen to the characters, horrible things with no solace. It’s the case here as well. In addition, it’s beautifully written. Among other things, it’s a meditation and an observation on anti Americanism, and, as always, sexual attraction between a man and a woman.

Middlemarch by George Eliot, Part II

Marriages in Middlemarch

Middlemarch is a study of a provincial English town in the 1830’s, at a time before the railroad when people stayed put --  most of them preferring it that way. The society in the novel is viewed through the prism of several marriages, and the progression of those marriages plays a key part in the plot. At the core of the novel is a study of two marriages – the Casaubon’s and the Lydgate’s. Both marriages, which end up crushing the husband and wife’s hopes, are based upon each partner’s mistaken apprehension of what the other will bring –that the other will fulfill them, propel them to their highest possibility. The ideal view of marriage is as a partnership. When times get tough, two are stronger than one. But the four are blinded by immature egoism, and so come to sorrow. What makes the book interesting and what gives the characters depth is that Dorothea and Lydgate accept their mistakes and try to make the best of a bad situation by sacrificing their dearest dreams and apply themselves to figuring the weaker spouse out.

Dorothea and Casaubon – Dorothea imagines herself a handmaiden to genius, and then she realizes her husband is a terrified little man with no intention of letting her get close, poking around his unfinished, indeed, unstarted Key to All Mythologies. She presented herself as a wonderful gift and he doesn’t even understand. But she doesn’t completely lose heart – she resolves to give him what he needs.

Lydgate and Rosamond – Once Lydgate realizes that Rosamond is never going to be supportive, he abandons his dreams of pure research and becomes a gout doctor. I guess that would be sort of like plastic surgeon or dermatologist in Beverly Hills nowadays. He gives up his dreams for his duty.
Mary Garth and Fred Vincy – Fred is a wastrel, but Mary is wise and won’t fall into the same romantic mistake as Dorothea and Lydgate. She doesn’t rush into anything but waits until Fred has swallowed his pride and lowers his expectations (improving his upper class illegible handwriting, for example)and starts making some money.

The Bulstrodes. Bulstrode is the villain but at the end he gets the comfort of a good marriage, because his submissive wife is prepared to suffer with him, and to stand by him and ease his suffering. This is contrasted with his first marriage in which he behaved like a criminal in order to inherit money from his wife.

What’s even more remarkable is that the novel is set at a time when women had not very much legal power and even less economic power. The only power they had was influence over the men in their lives. And it seems to this modern reader that many of the women have a significant amount of influence. However, the plot is bound by those old strictures. Like why doesn’t Dorothea run off to Vegas and get a divorce? And why doesn’t Rosamond go out and get a job so she can have some spending money? You might as well as them to fly.

Middlemarch by George Eliot, Part I

In a small town, egotistical pride blinds people's judgement, leading them to unhappiness

Well, this book took me on a journey. A journey of eventual understanding and education (a bit like the theme of the novel). The other classics I’ve read invaded my imagination quickly, filling my brain with thoughts of the book.  Their stories were all I could think about. Middlemarch was different, very tough going at first, for the first half of the book, actually, as Eliot created this world, family by family, plot point by plot point.  The sentences needed to be savored and intellectually decoded versus the instant rush of emotion in the other classics.  I felt like I was tasked with eating 100 bowls of unsweetened oatmeal.  I was beset by anxiety – oh jeez I have to get through 800 pages! I read only one book at a time and Middlemarch was so offputting that I was reading 3 pages a day which meant 2012 would be devoted to single novel. Uh oh, I thought, you gonna pull the ripcord on Middlemarch? I felt only profound boredom and a cold admiration for the technique – the multiplicity of characters, the plotting, the social analysis, and the variety of scenes and tones. I sensed the message was, They’re all fools every one of them. Dorothea’s a fool, Casaubon’s a fool, Mr. Brooke is a fool, Lydgate is a fool. I got it. THEY ARE ALL FOOLS.

But I gave the book one last shot on a flight from Spokane to Boise to Oakland to Burbank, assisted by Southwest’s terrible red wine. Something happened on that flight. I started to get it. The novel revolved around Dorothea. Her tragedy is the glue holding the scenes together. Because once she realizes she was deluded by her egoism, her foolish idealism, she still tries. She still tries to help. There are no villains here.

It’s a meditation on marriage, of course, and a careful picture of humanity, an observation of society. Dorothea offers Casaubon the beautiful gift of herself, only he’s too afraid and egotistical to accept it. He is afraid of being judged as he is avoiding the fact that his Key to All Mythologies is a folly. Dorothea is the last one to figure that out. Like many stories in the novel, it’s tragic and funny at the same time.

Next week: Marriages in Middlemarch.

Jackson by Max Byrd

A young man attempts to write a life of Andrew Jackson while a pretty young woman flirts with him

I have not read much historical fiction because I am not particularly drawn to it. Doesn’t the author feel constrained in the building of the story? Is historical fiction art? Or is it more like an educational textbook? What is its purpose? To delight? To instruct? My guess is that most people read historical fiction to learn something. The veneer of fiction makes the history part go down as easier, as when you give the child a tablespoon of cod liver oil followed quickly by a tablespoon of M&Ms.

For the most part Jackson is delightful, more fiction than history. The author does this by inventing a few characters who are quirky – whose actions cannot be predicted, unlike the historical characters who cannot deviate from what they did in life. David Chase, the invented young man, has a clear motivation. His actions move the story along-- he is hired to write a life of Andrew Jackson and hopefully find some disgraceful dirt about Andrew Jackson’s wife. David Chase serves as a detective and every novel needs a detective.  

The dialogue and descriptions are light and easy, not didactic. Max Byrd is a skillful writer. But the story had some drawbacks and started to drag. The meat of it, Andrew Jackson’s life, is a Procrustean bed for a plot. The reader has to waste time at the Battle of New Orleans with its fortifications as that was Andrew Jackson’s most significant achievement. However, the Battle of New Orleans and its fortifications are not very dramatic. Also, I’m not sure if in this type of traditional historical fiction we can ever see Andrew Jackson as a living breathing person, he can never be quirky, his actions are always completely predictable. His spine is always ramrod straight, there’s always a steel blue glint in his eye and a tender vulnerable love for his woman in his heart. The interesting thing for me was the fact that Andrew Jackson kept dueling people right and left. I needed to hear more – that sounded wonderfully crazy.

In some ways this novel reminded me of Stations of the Cross – no irreverence allowed and you must hit all the high points. Almost like a James Bond movie. Is all historical fiction like that?