Read, Ramble

Willa Cather, An Acquired Taste

Shortly after graduating from college, I read Willa Cather (1873-1947) for the first time. It was O Pioneers!, one of her more famous novels, and although she wrote with technical mastery, I wondered what the fuss was about. To me, it read like Little House on the Prairie for adults. A few years later I started The Professor’s House, and this one seemed too much absorbed in the mid-life crisis of an old fart I did not much care about.

A couple of Cather short stories appear in an anthology of American literature I’ve been dipping into lately. “Neighbor Rosicky” cannot exactly be called a character study. It is a portrait. The old farmer lives modestly with wife and sons. As his health begins to fail, the story examines the trajectory his life has taken. Thinking of my point of view at age 22, that is probably all I would have taken away from the piece. Callow youth!

Aside from the literary merit of her fluid, rhythmic sentences and paragraphs–a stylistic grace I did actually appreciate years ago–Cather purposefully reveals a story where, at first glance, not much story seems likely. We expect Farmer Rosicky’s life history to be uneventful, because his current circumstances and simple family routines lack punch. Then Cather starts peeling away the layers of his past, and the present takes on the shadings of that lifetime of experience, work, adversity, change, aspiration. How differently we understand the man at the story’s end.

Finding hidden depths in the humdrum, Cather makes a strong case for a reader to cast off superficial or hasty assumptions. Her calm narrative stream, which at another point in my reading life seemed unnecessarily flat, now looks more like steadiness of vision, peacefulness, confidence. My willingness, as an older reader, to turn the pages more slowly may partly explain my newfound appreciation for Cather. I am satisfied to go at a different pace, to adapt to her methods, instead of insisting that her style match my expectations.

Cather received the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for One of Ours, a World War I novel. After reading several historical novels about the period, I am curious about how she presented the subject so soon after the war’s end. To be read.

"Neighbor Rosicky" was published in Cather's 1932 collection, Obscure Destinies.

The Food of France by Waverly Root

The first chapter of Waverly Root's The Food of France establishes quickly the reasons why this 1958 travelogue has become a classic. After warning against stereotyping the complex and varied French character, Root proceeds to generalize about contradictions within the French frame of mind. "If France is universally the country of unfailingly taste, how do you account for French hotel wallpaper? The fact is that France is not only one of the greatest artistic and intellectual countries in the world; it is also one of the most bourgeois countries in the world." French determination to live comfortably results in a national appreciation of good food. He divides French cooking into three regions based on "Butter,  Lard, and Oil." The "lard" or animal-fat regions cook with the fat of pig or goose and include Alsace-Lorraine, influenced by the cooking of Germany. Olive oil dominates Provence. In Corsica and on the Riviera, the oil-based cuisine is more Italian than French. Everywhere else: butter. Root's observations about French people and cooking and land are full of memorable one-liners, but the overall writing style impresses more than his aphorisms. By way of example, read his opening paragraph.

As far back as the records go, the people of the land now known as France have thought of food in terms of its taste more often than in terms of its nutritive qualities. Like the people, the sense of taste may have been somewhat crude in early times, but still it was pampered. The Celts were great users of caraway seeds. The Gauls seemed determined to shock the taste buds by mingling such ingredients as resin, mint, pepper, and honey in a single pungent sauce--which was natural considering some of the dishes then on the menu: heron and dormouse. When the Franks entered Gaul, they adopted the cooking they found there--perhaps because they were a ruder race with no culinary tradition of their own to oppose to the one they found, but more probably because food is a function of the soil, for which reason every country has the food naturally fit for it.

Today we do not think in terms of a "ruder race." Because the book was written in the 1950s, we can expect to find some anachronisms of attitude and usage that give a contemporary reader pause. Still, this writing sample gives a good feel for the rhythm of Root's prose and the spice of his observations. The Food of France is still in print. Julia Child and Avis DeVoto mentioned it in their letters. See this earlier post on the food books they discussed. As my reading continues, I hope to share some highlights from Root's descriptions of each of the regions he visits. First stop, the Touraine, the "heartland of France."

The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville

The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville (Orange Prize, 2001).

The first few chapters of The Idea of Perfection read more like a collection of short stories than a novel. It begins as loosely related character studies set in a small Australian town: Karakarook, New South Wales. As the story develops, three principal figures emerge: an engineer sent to the town to examine a crumbling bridge; a museum representative (and quilter) from Sydney who has come to help the town organize a Pioneer Heritage Museum; and the narcissistic bank manager’s wife, living in Karakarook, but as much of an outsider as the two visitors.

These characters form a socially awkward ensemble. Douglas and Haley fumble toward a romantic bond, while the bank manager's wife, Felicity, plays out her story in proximity to the other two but only bumping up next to them. Their eccentricities and insecurities unite them in the reader’s mind, even though they begin the story as strangers to each other. We are privy to their thoughts, presented as third-person stream of consciousness.

This is a droll narrative. Off-beat characters express their individuality through emphasis on certain words within the internal monologues. Grenville shows emphasis through liberal use of italics. Beginning in the first sentence of the book, she uses italics with a purpose, one might even say with a vengeance. It makes the third-person narration seem more like first person narration when a character’s thoughts are peppered with visually highlighted words.

The main characters often stress the same words repeatedly. After failing at marriage more than once, Haley has come to think of herself as a woman with a dangerous streak. She tries to avoid relationships, even with a stray dog that adopts her. Felicity worries night and day about laugh-lines and frets about the awkwardness of her encounters with the town’s butcher. Douglas is never allowed to forget that he is the other Douglas Cheeseman, the first one being his father, a war hero to whom he will never measure up.

Like fellow Australian and Nobel Prize winner Patrick White, Grenville endows individual words with special contextual significance and then surprises you later by dropping the same word into a different context, bringing forth sharp memories of the scene where the word occurred earlier. Haley argues with a shopkeeper who will not sell her a bucket out of his window display when his regular stock is sold out. She becomes agitated and struggles to keep from losing it right there at the counter. A couple of other times, later in the novel, the word “bucket” appears casually, and we cannot help but remember the big bucket scene. Bucket means tension and frustration for Haley, and it rattles the reader even when innocuously placed. Thus Grenville stresses words without having to resort to italics.

The word games she plays become witty commentary on her characters. These moves also inform the text with contextually defined humor. Giving chosen words idiosyncratic but unmistakable meaning, Grenville borrows tools from poetry.

I liked the characters, but living in a rural area, I also liked the setting in a dusty town out in the Australian bush, far from city people and city ways. In this passage, Haley, from the Sydney museum, is looking out of a window as the sun goes down. “It was another planet out there. The city became merely a dream, or as distant as something you had read about in a book: something you could remember, or not, as you pleased. The country made the city and all its anxieties seem small and silly, and yet when you had been too long in the city, you forgot how the sun moving through its path was a long slow drama, and the way the sky was always there, big and easy-going.”

If a reader does not respond warmly to those few sentences, this would probably be one to skip. I think she is marvelous. Grenville writes precision-crafted literary fiction. Her 2005 book The Secret River, a historical novel about a thief who was transported to Australia from England in the 19th Century, was my introduction to her writing and remains one of my favorite novels of the past ten years.

Now to end, here are a couple of the bird calls to be found throughout the book. In italics, of course.

Cachinka cachinka cachinka tweep.

Cheep CHEEP cheep a whee!

Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune

Tonight's DVD was Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune, a documentary by Kenneth Bowser about the activist singer-songwriter of the Sixties. I cannot remember another film about protest movements of the era that captures nearly so well the relationship between music, creativity and political action. An extraordinary life, a moving tribute. Maybe that's all that needs to be said.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB-BBVQLnxI&feature=related]

Make Do and Mend

A stack of books on the history of fashion just went back to the library. These were oldies that just happened to be on the shelf, nothing terribly exciting or worth sharing here, just plain books about the clothes people wore in the 1930s and '40s. They accompanied some pop social history I've been reading about life in the US and the UK during that period.

One item of interest in the fashion books was this British poster from World War II, when frugal living was encouraged as part of the war effort. Is it possible sewing will make a come-back in the current economy? We Americans are not being asked to make do and mend, since consumer spending is wanted to get the economic engine chugging along again. When a news host talks about increased saving by Americans, it almost sounds like an act of disloyalty has been committed. Americans are not "willing" to spend now, they say.

Making Do and Mending is the current American Way for millions, unaccustomed to the practice.

On a cheerier note, readers of historical fiction who have not yet visited the website of The History Girls, will probably enjoy spending some time there. The bloggers are historical fiction writers talking about various aspects of their craft. While perusing fashion plates, I especially liked this post by H.M. Castor on Tudor dress, "Dressing the Part". Enjoy.

Eudora Welty on the Reader as a Child

Eudora Welty's 1957 essay, "A Sweet Devouring" makes a welcome departure from the dismal daily news. She devotes five pages to memories of intense childhood reading behavior. Her glory days of puerile reading, reading, reading involved not quality so much as quantity. In search of bookish plenty, she came to love series books: The Five Little Peppers, The Green Fairy Book. Then there were the deservedly forgotten Randy books.

"After Randy's Spring there came Randy's Summer, Randy's Fall and Randy's Winter. True, I didn't care very much myself for her spring, but it didn't occur to me that I might not care for her summer, and then her summer didn't prejudice me against her fall, and I still had high hopes as I moved on to her winter. I was disappointed in her whole year, as it turned out, but a thing like that didn't keep me from wanting to read every word of it."

The childish pleasure of her aimless but determined reading brings back childhood memories of books selected at random from the library shelves. I also identify with her battle to enter the adult section, although our librarian was not the dragon she faced. "Does your mother know where you are? You know good and well the fixed rule of the library: 'Nobody is going to come running back here with any book on the same day they took it out'. Get both those things [books] out of here and don't come back till tomorrow."

What a wonderfully willful reader! The essay captures both the innocence and the obstinacy of the child bibliophile. This is my idea of harmless, escapist reading. Now back to the news feed.

The essay appears in Welty's collection, The Eye of the Story (1977).

The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham

The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham (Penguin Books, 2010). You do not need to be a citizen of the United Kingdom, and subject to its laws, to benefit from this short discussion of the rule of law by Thomas Bingham (1933-2010), a judge who served as the Lord Chief Justice and Senior Law Lord of the UK. He writes knowledgeably, simply, and with a palpable commitment to human rights. In addition to learning more about the British legal system and thinking more seriously about what constitutes justice, I took pleasure in Bingham's elegant writing style, the logical presentation and reasoned argument, and his kindly voice.

Bingham is more interested here in the rule of law as a universal principle than in the laws of the UK, but since he takes examples from his area of expertise, he speaks most often about British law when getting down to particulars. Still, American law figures prominently in the discussion, especially when framework, philosophy, and procedure differ from the British system. Because the UK must now comply with the European Convention on Human Rights, Bingham also considers the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The UK brought significant vision to the shaping of the Human Rights Convention, but Parliament also has needed to legislate in order to comply with some requirements of the Convention.

Bingham approaches his subject both historically and topically. His definition of the rule of law mandates certain necessary components of any judicial system that purports to operate according to the rule of law, and many of these are familiar to an American reader. Accessibility of the law. Equality before the law. A fair trial. Civil rights.

Bingham discusses some of the fundamental documents, such as the Magna Carta, that are remembered as milestones in the rule of law. He also looks at the contemporary environment in which legal principles are developing, and his conclusions about the state of the rule of law are mixed.

Some of the legal rights enjoyed by Americans developed first in English law, but Bingham also discusses the points at which the American Bill of Rights diverged from English practice. English common law had established a citizen's right to privacy in his own home. "A man's house is his castle." But Bingham says that Britons today have no legislative protection equivalent to the Fourth Amendment to the American Constitution, which guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."

The European Convention does say, "Everyone has a right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence." Bingham identifies this area of law as one of the most difficult facing the UK. Government agencies collect increasing amounts of data on the citizenry, and the need to balance the legitimate interests of government with the privacy rights of individuals is a problematic area. He suggests that British citizens may be "sleepwalking" into a "surveillance society."

The most striking difference between the UK and American governmental systems is the relative importance of the legislative power and the courts. In the United States, state and federal courts interpret laws passed by legislative assemblies, and the judicial system may invalidate legislation deemed unconstitutional. In the UK, "the Queen in Parliament" is "the supreme law-making authority." The “sovereignty of Parliament” means "that Parliament has, in the United Kingdom, no legislative superior. The courts have no inherent powers to invalidate, strike down, supersede or disregard the provisions of an unambiguous statute duly enacted by the Queen in Parliament, and indeed, an extremely limited power to enquire whether a statute has been duly enacted."

The courts lack power to overturn legislation, and based on the power distribution within the British government, Bingham observes that American-style "checks and balances" do not exist in the political system of the UK. The legislative role of the crown is ceremonial, and the House of Lords can delay legislation but not deny it. "Thus our constitutional settlement has become unbalanced, and the power to restrain legislation favoured by a clear majority of the Commons has become much weakened, even if, exceptionally, such legislation were to infringe the rule of law as I have defined it."

I have emphasized Bingham's discussion of the way justice is achieved within national boundaries, but the rule of law in international relations interests him as well. He takes on the big issues, including the conduct of war, the treatment of prisoners, national security, and government surveillance. In this section, he makes some arguments in opposition to United States geopolitical policy and practice since 2001.

If the question "What is justice and how is it achieved?" interests you, The Rule of Law is an absorbing read. With the London riots this week and the flash mob violence in Philadelphia, the book seems especially relevant to ongoing discussions about the functioning of civil society.

The book won a 2011 Orwell Prize for political writing and was named a book of the year by the Observer, the Financial Times and the New Statesman.

The Orwell Prize website posts the first chapter of The Rule of Law.

Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge

Before the first page of Beryl Bainbridge's novel Every Man for Himself (1996), we know the sad ending. The Titanic sinks. Our knowledge of that fact contributes to a terrible sense of irony throughout the read. The passengers go about their business, trying to advance their careers or social standing, plotting amours, seeking amusements, taking some exercise, exploring the ship, dining, drinking, gambling, dancing, just passing the time. Since we know of the doom in store for many of these characters, their everyday concerns take on a magnified intensity. That disconnect between the future and their present expectations, between our knowing and their innocence, sets up a taut narrative.

The story is told by the nephew of J. Pierpont Morgan, owner of the White Star Line that operates the Titanic. The young man has been working at a lowly job in the design department of the ship builder, since Uncle Morgan, opposed to nepotism, did not exert any influence on his behalf. His recent work gives young Morgan some inside information about the lay-out and engineering of the vessel. He is also a socialite insider, dropping names of Guggenheims, Astors, Rothschilds, and Vanderbilts with ease. The passenger list includes some famous people who appear briefly now and then, but Morgan hangs around with college friends and a new acquaintance, an ambitious tailor. Morgan has his eye on a young beauty, an unattainable ideal woman who makes him feel awkward.

The people onboard ship form an ensemble cast who shift and change with each scene. Servants move in and out. Passengers from the lower decks may wander up out of their assigned areas. The captain and his crew bustle about. The movement of people defines the space, and their diverse activities, their brief snatches of conversation, animate the setting. Bainbridge imagines the experience of being onboard a luxurious, state-of-the-art ocean liner in 1912 and gives the reader a portrait that looks genuine. Contrasting the trivialities of human striving and interaction against the background of the vast and antagonistic ocean, Bainbridge transmits a dark sense of humor. She does not play her sensibility for laughs, more for goosebumps. Still, you do get the feeling that a great cosmic joke is about to be played on the unsuspecting mass of self-absorbed humanity. Creepy, yes. Also brilliant.

I have been reading some fine historical fiction lately, a relief after the amount of the drek that ended in the reject pile. Every Man for Himself had been sitting on the shelf for a while, and then earlier this year Beryl Bainbridge was awarded a posthumous Booker Prize. This special Booker Prize honored Bainbridge, a 5-time shortlisted nominee for the award, who never won in her lifetime. Every Man for Himself was one of the five books that the public voted on last spring. It did win the Whitbread Award for best novel in 1996.

Other Bainbridge novels nominated for the special Booker Prize included The Dressmaker (1973), The Bottle Factory Outing (1974), and An Awfully Big Adventure (1990). The reading public voted Bainbridge's Master Georgie (1998) the winner.

Blues: Son House, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson Play " Walking Blues "

In Deep Blues (1981), Robert Palmer mentions a song performed in distinctive versions by Son House, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters.

Courtesy of the Internet Archive, listen to a 1930 recording of "My Black Mama" by Son House.

I posted the Robert Johnson version, "Walking Blues," a couple of days ago. Listen here.

According to Palmer, in 1941 it was the Muddy Waters version of the song "(actually a loose collection of verses and a guitar part) that musicians sang and played the length and breadth of the Mississippi Delta." Muddy Waters called it "Country Blues."

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCL_LpOlTYA]

Friends in High Places by Donna Leon

American expatriate Donna Leon lives in Venice and has written 20 books. I have just finished my eighth of her Commissario Brunetti series, Friends in High Places. Reading Donna Leon has begun to take on the familiarity of hanging out in a neighborhood bar. I like the place, the people, the atmosphere. Good food, too.

Once again the Venetian police inspector navigates institutional corruption in his search for truth, and with some luck, justice. This story opens with a visit to Brunetti’s home from a building inspector who informs him that construction permits for his apartment cannot be found, meaning his dwelling does not exist in departmental records and may have to be torn down. Such runs the logic of official Venice.

The ambiguity of Brunetti’s housing situation sets the tone for the story. What is real? Who profits? Can a problem be solved honestly through official channels without the influence of powerful friends? Do average citizens have any reason to trust the Venice police? Can anyone be relied upon to do the right thing, or do hidden agendas inexorably define social and business relationships? Then when a body drops, another question arises. Has a crime been committed or not?

In contrast to the complexity and duplicity of Venice society, Brunetti enjoys a solid marriage and happy family life. The delectable meals cooked daily in Paola's kitchen give Guido a sense of well-being and satisfaction. He dotes on his children, characters we often meet at the dinner table. Within Brunetti's network of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, he does count some people he trusts. But city residents, Brunetti included, fall into a web of favors owed and owing, the unofficial currency of daily life.

The procedures of police work, while making a foundation on which to build a plot, are secondary to setting and character. I am completely hooked on the ambiance of Venice, on the Commissario's savvy professional approach, and on his underlying personal warmth. Friends in High Places is a relaxing summer read, highly enjoyable, a new twist on the established pattern. Readers new to Donna Leon might like to start with Acqua Alta, one of her best. The latest Brunetti mystery, Drawing Conclusions, was released in the USA a few months ago. To be read.

Bright's Passage by Josh Ritter

Not a loyal follower of singer-songwriter Josh Ritter’s music, I was unsure what to expect from his debut novel, Bright’s Passage (The Dial Press, 2011). His fans may disagree, but the music did not prepare me for the excellence of this surprising book. A young soldier returns to his West Virginia home after serving in World War I, and when his wife dies, the grieving man sets out across country with his newborn baby, a goat, and a horse that talks to him. Fast-paced, rich in period detail of rural American life, psychologically compelling, and creatively rendered, Bright's Passage became my favorite novel of the summer.

Structurally, the narrative is simple but effective. The setting and time alternate between his home, pre-World-War-I; the trenches of France; and home again in Appalachia, post-war. In Henry Bright’s mind, memory bleeds between locales, blurring boundaries. In France, ominous characters from home inhabit his waking nightmare. Then a protective angel he hallucinates in the war zone follows the discharged soldier back to W. Virginia, taking the form of a talking horse. The soldier perceives war through images intruding from the past, and then he carries the war with him on return home, where no peace awaits him.

The angel should not deter readers who prefer realistic fiction. The imaginary friend permits access to the psychological parameters of a disturbed mind, displacing confusion and emotional suffering into a precise locus. The book will appeal to different readers for different reasons, and if readers of fantasy fiction want to claim the novel as their own, that guarantees a well-deserved wider readership. I did not consider this book to be a fantasy novel. It is historical, literary fiction that uses fantastical elements to heighten psychological realism.

Anyone enduring these unbearable conditions would probably emerge in psychological crisis. Consider Pat Barker’s masterful Regeneration Trilogy, another group of World-War-I novels, focusing, in part, on shell-shocked veterans recovering in a British military hospital. Ritter takes an entirely different approach to the subject, but his short novel compares favorably with Barker’s 600 pages. Despite their different angles of approach, both writers represent soldiers returning from war psychologically damaged.

From the reader's point of view, Bright's suffering is mainly atmospheric. The story moves. Switching from present to past and back again, from home to war zone to cross-country trek through Appalachia, the shifting narrative gives the reader insight into Bright’s swirling thoughts.

Ritter’s writing style relies on an economical crispness, infrequently punctuated by a carefully crafted sentence of poetic beauty. The overall sparseness of language throws into high relief the moments of aesthetic concentration. The rhythmic design of the novel, the assured music-like dynamics of the storytelling, guide the reader beyond the simple tale into an empathy of perception.

We experience Bright's world, not a welcoming place, but immediate and vibrant. Even when Bright's behaviour looks irrational or wrong, we are led to understand the internal logic that motivates him. We experience the "passage" of this lost soul from despair to ... his destination.

After reading the novel, I went back and listened to some of Ritter's music on Spotify. His popularity as a singer-songwriter is understandable, and my reservations probably indicate the generational divide. I listen to him and hear echoes of Springsteen and Paul Simon, not bad models to emulate.

Ritter offers a free download of the first chapter of Bright's Passage at his website. Like a well-constructed song, the opening segment is deceptively simple.