A Russian Gentleman by Sergei Aksakov

As far as literary figures go, Sergei Aksakov had an inauspicious beginning but flowered in middle age. Aksakov’s A Family Chronicle first appeared in 1846 in installments in a minor Moscow publication. He (1791-1859) was fifty-six years old by this time, and after a youth spent translating famous works while writing privately, he became a press-censor under Minister of Education, A.S. Shishkov. By 1839, however, Aksakov retired from government service and turned to writing. A Russian Gentleman (A Family Chronicle) was published in book form in 1856, along with A Russian Schoolboy (Recollections). Years of Childhood (The Childhood Years of the Bagrov Grandson) was published in 1858. Aksakov died the following year (1859), but his book Recollections of Gogol was published posthumously. Sergei Aksakov fathered two sons Konstantin and Ivan who were both major figures in the Slavophile movement.

Aksakov’s A Russian Gentleman, is a semi-autobiographical, Russian pastoral  (as are A Russian Schoolboy and The Childhood Years of the Bagrov Grandson), with, for the purposes of the books, the name “Aksakov” becoming “Bagrov.” In the excellent introduction, Edward Crankshaw notes:

“A Russian Gentleman is a classic example of that essentially Russian genre, a factual record faintly disguised as fiction, or a fiction so actual, so apparently inconsequent and uncontrived, that it reads like fact.”

This merging of fact with fiction, of course, brings up many questions, but any auto-biographical work is, by its nature, just one version of events. This idea of a ‘version of events’ becomes very apparent as the book develops, but more of that later.

 The ‘Russian gentleman’ in the title is a thinly disguised version of the author’s grandfather–Stepan Mikhailovich Aksakov, a man, who during the reign of Catherine the Great  made the bold move of selling his inherited lands “in the province of Simbirsk” and moving about 200 miles east in Ufa in the province of Orenburg. The original Aksakov family estate in Simbirsk had been owned solely by the author’s great-great-great-grandfather (don’t think I have too many ‘greats’ there). In A Russian Gentleman, the name Aksakov becomes Bagrov and we are told that over the years, and with each succesive generation, marriageable daughters had been given a “portion” which “took the shape of a certain number of serfs and a certain amount of land.” Consequently, since the land had never been surveyed, by the time Bagrov inherited, various branches of the family–living side by side–squabbled over the land, and   “life under these conditions was intolerable.” And so in the story, Stepan Mikhailovich Bagrov buys 12,000 acres in Ufa and  moves his family and possessions (including his serfs and his livestock) to his newly purchased land. A Russian Gentleman is the story of the move eastwards and the establishment of the new household, the son, young Alexei Stepanich Bagrov’s maturation and his subsequent courtship of Sophia Nikolaevna, their marriage, trials and tribulations, and finally the birth of their son. The significant details of the Aksakov/Bagrov divide seem to be unchanged, but since the author would not have been born at the time of events, most of the story must be heresay, exaggeration or even imagined in a fill-in-the-blank way.

The first part of A Russian Gentleman (Fragment I: Stepan Mikhailovitch Bagrov) is fascinating. The author describes how his grandfather decided to buy land in the Bashkir territory, and that there were stories circulating of how  “whole districts were bought for a song” under somewhat dubious and hardly legal circumstances. Bagrov travels to the region and pays 2500 roubles for 12,000 acres of land, hoping (vainly as it turns out) to avoid lawsuits by acquiring the land through legal documentation. A portion of the novel then describes the move, which is made in stages, the first constructions built and the first crops sowed on the virgin soil. It all sounds like a marvelously bold adventure so fitting for its time.

Fragment II: Mikhail Maximovich Kurolesov is one of  my very favourite sections of the book. This section details the marriage of the grandfather’s cousin, Praskovya Ivanovna Bagrov to the crafty, opportunistic army officer Mikhail Kurolesev. Praskovya is a substantial heiress of several properties and numerous serfs, and Kurolesev, disliked by the author’s grandfather, worms his way into the good graces of Praskovya’s female relatives, and consequently Kurolesev snares his 15-year-old bride.

When the news of the marriage reaches Bagrov, he is furious and has a very low opinion of Praskovya’s new husband: “The man is a knave and rotten all through.” At first the newlyweds are forbidden to visit the Bagrov household, but over time, Bagrov forgives his cousin and her husband and allows them to visit Bagrovo. As the relationship heals and grows, Bagrov revises his opinion of Kurolesev, who is now retired from the army and gives all indications of being a sensitive and sensible landlord. Kurolesev buys property in both Simbirsk (Kurolesovo) and Ufa and another property–a “seat” in which the couple live in the village of Churasovo. As the years pass, Kurolesev travels between these properties and rumours begin to float back about the dissipated lifestyle he leads away from home. These rumours culminate in a letter which details Kurolesev’s scandalous behaviour: unrestrained “evil tendencies,” “drunken revels,” and “monstrous passions.” Praskovya, who up to this point, has very deliberately turned a blind eye to her husband’s behaviour, travels to Parashino, an estate in Ufa, and once there, her deepest fears at confirmed. But Praskovya gets more than she bargained for….

Fragment III: The Marriage of Young Bagrov, Fragment IV: The Young Couple at Ufa, and Fragment V: Life at Ufa concerns the author’s father, his courtship of Sofya Nikolaevna and the beginnings of their married life together. The sections concerning young Bagrov’s sisters and their hostility to their soon-to-be sister-in-law are amusing:

“It is a well-known fact that in the good old days of Empress Catherine–perhaps it is the case still–there was little love lost between a man’s wife and his sisters; and the case was worse when the sisters had only one brother, because his wife must become the sole and undisputed mistress of the household. A great deal of selfishness underlies human nature; it often works without our knowledge, and no one is exempt from it; honourable and kind people, not recognizing selfish motives in themselves, quite honestly attribute their actions to other and more presentable causes; but they deceive themselves and others unintentionally. Where there is no kindness of heart or refinement of manners, selfishness shows itself without any concealment or apology; and so it was with the womenfolk of Stepan Mikhailovich.” 

The sections which describe young Bagrov and his courtship, and the trials and tribulations of Sofya Nikolaevna are not as interesting. I’m going to describe it this way: imagine a puff piece bio written about some celebrity–everything would one-sided, written to flatter the subject, and that’s just what Aksakov does when describing Sofya Nikolaevna–a thinly disguised version of his mother. Here’s a passage describing Sofya Nikolaevna:

“Meanwhile as the engaged couple met more often and together longer, they became more intimate. Sofya Nikolaevna for the first time saw her lover as he really was, and realized for the first time what a heavy task lay before her. She had made no mistake in thinking that he possessed natural intelligence, a very kind heart, strict principles of honour, and perfect integrity in official life, but otherwise she found such a limitation of ideas, such pettiness of interests, such an absence of self-esteem and independence, that her courage and firmness in the execution of her purpose were more than once severely shaken.”

Sofya Nikolaevna, is not exactly considered much of a match. Her mother and stepmother dead and her father, a stroke victim, she’s more or less raising three brothers and two sisters alone with “only twopence to her fortune.” But according to Aksakov’s version, Sofya is throwing herself away on a very poor specimen. This sort of view continues as Sofya is raised to martyrdom and then sainthood.  Interestingly, the introduction mentions that the author’s mother (and of course Sofya is just a very thinly disguised version) was “unable to reconcile herself to the bucolic existence to which she was now called…adored by her son and devouringly possessive of him.” Indeed Aksakov’s relationship with his mother does seem evident through his depiction of the lofty, saintly Sofya Nikolaevna.

Finally while the book is invaluable for its vivid descriptions of Russian daily life, the most interesting part of the book is its depiction of serfs and serf life. Here’s a description of Grandfather Bagrov:

“But my grandfather, while acting in accordance with the spirit of his age, reasoned in a fashion of his own. In his view, to punish a peasant by fines or by forced labour on the estate made the man less substantial and therefore less useful to his owner; and to separate him from his family and banish him to a distant estate was even worse; for a man deprived of his family ties was sure to go downhill. But to have recourse to the police was simply out of the question; that would have been considered the depth of disgrace and shame; every voice in the village would have been raised to mourn for the offender as if he were dead, and he would have considered himself as disgraced and ruined beyond redemption. And it must be said for my grandfather, that he was never severe except when his anger was hot; when the fit had passed away, the offence was forgotten. Advantage was often taken of this; sometimes the offender had time to hide and the storm passed by without hurting anyone. Before long, his people became so satisfactory that none of them gave him any cause to lose his temper.”

Of course, there’s a lot to read there between the lines, and there are passages of serfs (and family) running off to hide to escape physical punishment–although at the same time, the idea appears repeatedly that serfs are  “thieves and shirkers, to a man !”  Another, even uglier view of serfdom in found the behaviour of Kurolesev–a man whose blood lusts include grabbing serf women for orgies and flogging other serfs to death using the slowest most painful instruments. And of course, those who first complain to Kurolesev’s wife are the serfs who are shouted down and silenced for daring to complain about their master. Oddly enough, and rather naively so, the author writes that “forty years later,” Kurolesev’s serfs only had glowing reports of their old master.

On a final note, although Pugachev’s rebellion occurred during this period, details of the rebellion are remarkably absent. Although Pugachev is viewed by the author as part of the overall troubles: “famine, plague, and the rebellion of Pugachev,” there is little else, with the family moving away until “all disturbances passed over and calmed down and were forgotten.” While Pugachev’s rebellion was  a major event, especially in the region, it’s treated as an unpleasant aside, rather like bad weather that inevitably passes. Given all the trouble brought to Pushkin by the subject matter, perhaps the total lack of details was a politic decision by Akashov.

My Oxford World Classics edition is translated by J.D Duff.

How the Light Gets In by M.J. Hyland

While browsing online for books a few weeks ago, I came across M.J. Hyland’s first novel, How The Light Gets In, and I’ll admit that it was one of those instances when I decided to read the novel’s synopsis because I was so attracted to its cover. I’m not a smoker, but there was something about the way in which the cover shows just a partial view of a young woman’s face. Are those freckles or acne in this slightly out-of-focus picture? While the skin suggests youth, the lips suggest stubbornness. The photo offers more than a hint of delinquency, and I was intrigued.

Anyway, whoever made the decision for the cover of How The Light Gets In-…brilliant choice, and it’s one of those great instances when the book’s cover echoes its contents.

In How The Light Gets In, Louise Connor, a 16-year-old Australian girl arrives in America as an exchange student. Louise, who’s also known as Lou, comes from an impoverished home in Sydney. Lou’s parents, Sandra and Mick are unemployed and mainly spend their days eating junk food in front of the television set watching chat shows. The family–which includes Lou’s two teenaged sisters, Erin and Leona, “live squashed together” in a three bedroom flat. Lou takes a very dim view of her home life, her family and her future:

“Erin and her twenty-five year old boyfriend Steve will be at home, fouling my bedroom with dope fumes from their shampoo-bottle bong. Leona will also be there, probably getting drunk and using my mum and dad’s bed ot make a baby with her fiance, Greg, a mechanic, who has eczema on his oil-stained fingers.”

While Lou, who is an intelligent girl, looks down on her family, there’s more than just snobbery involved. She doesn’t identify with her family’s coarse behaviour or their lack of ambition, and she has long-held adoption fantasies. As a result she looks forward to the exchange programme as an opportunity to reinvent herself and possibly as a means to never return. As part of her reinvention, Lou has some self-improvement plans–for example she intends to learn two new words a day. Lou’s plans for re-invention, however, include lies about her life, and these lies begin on the plane trip. Flashbacks of Lou’s family life offer bleak glimpses of her daily existence–poverty and benign neglect suffused with her parents’ odd sense of humour:

“Within a week of one another, both of my sisters lost adult teeth eating hard caramels at the movies. Erin brought her tooth home wrapped in tissue paper. The tooth was wedged in the caramel, bits of melted chocolate like dried blood around the edges, mixed with saliva. My mum said her favourite thing to say (which also happens to be one of my dad’s favourite things to say): ‘You made your bed now lie in it.’

‘But, Mum,’ said Erin, ‘I can’t walk around with a big black hole in my mouth.’

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘You walk around with a big black hole in your head.’

Erin grabbed hold of my hair, kneed me in the stomach and left. I fell to the floor, and as I lay there, I could smell the dirty dishcloth Mum uses to wipe the lino.

‘Enough of that,’ said my dad, re-hooking the strap on his overalls which had come undone without him realising, probably hours earlier.

‘Do yourself up, Mick,’ said my mum.

‘What do you think I’m doing?’ said my dad.’Dancing with a poodle?’

They laughed, and I got up off the stinking floor. My dad gave me a hard slap on the back and grinned at me.

‘Good one,’ he said.”

After arriving in America, Lou goes to live with her host family, The Hardings. The Hardings–mother Margaret, father, Henry and their two teenagers, Bridget and James live in a sprawling new Mcmansion located in a bland, upscale, Chicago suburb. Margaret Harding, a tall, lean and extremely repressed perfectionist works as a bank executive, sings in the choir, and dominates the family with her tight-lipped displeasure. Her husband, Henry, is more human, but since he isn’t allowed to voice a differing point of view and rarely speaks, he remains a sympathetic cipher. The Harding teenagers are appalling, spoiled brats, and while Bridget sets herself up as family spy, James views Lou as a training ground for sexual experience.

As for Lou, at first she’s impressed by the surrounding material possessions of the Hardings. She’s impressed by their Mercedes, the array of food, and the sheer newness of everything they own. But it isn’t long before Lou, a chronic insomniac who drinks to gain confidence, runs foul of the Hardings’ many rules and regulations.

How The Light Gets In is simply a wonderful novel. It examines the falsity of Lou’s situation through the constant conflicts with her host family. Lou has dreamed of another life, and she imagines that she has nothing in common with her blood relatives, and yet transplanted to upper middle-class America, and the sort of life she thinks she wants, she cannot conform to the Hardings’ expectations. But Lou has false expectations too. She thinks that she simply has to relearn her behaviour, and at no point did she calculate the fact that she may not really want to be like the Hardings:

“I have read somewhere that a sheep raised by dogs will eventually learn to chase cars . But how long does it take to learn the tricks of another animal? How long will I need to live with the Hardings before I unlearn the tricks of my own family?” 

Placing Lou with the Hardings is obviously a recipe for disaster, and while the disasters do take place with humourous touches–Margaret’s horror at the cuckoo in her perfect nest, for example, the novel is more concerned about expectations, conformity, and the nature of charity. While Lou likes the idea of fitting in, there’s really no enviable place for her in the Harding family, and she’s soon mouthing new polite ways of existing. But there’s also the Hardings’ expectations. Margaret and Henry are completely out-of-their depth with Lou. Just what were they thinking when they signed up for an exchange student?

In this exploration of class and values, Margaret Harding is motivated by a desire to incorporate Lou into her perfect little world. By accepting a girl from an impoverished family, Margaret expects the gratification of seeing Lou’s awe at the Hardings’ life, and Lou is the child pressing her face against the window, gazing at the sumptuous feast set before her. Lou seems to understand the sort of reactions that Margaret wants, and at first Lou expresses the right level of admiration and longing to belong in the Harding family circle. But Lou is used to her family and their neglectful ways, and even if she’s not ready to really accept that she’s a product of her upbringing, she cannot adjust to some of the gestures Margaret makes.

Is it a sense of pride that causes Lou to lie about her home life or is this all part of her ongoing reinvention of the self? In one scene, Margaret explains the curfew, and Lou lies that she has the same curfew at home. The truth of the matter is that Lou’s parents probably wouldn’t even notice if she went missing for a few days. While she agrees to abide by Margaret’s rules, Lou silently acknowledges:

“In Sydney I stay out until the early hours of the morning playing cards, listening to music and drinking, without ever calling home.”

Lou is a marvellous fictional character. She’s set on a course for disaster, and she realises this as she desperately attempts to establish relationships. As the novel continues, Lou experiences an ever-increasing sense of detachment and displacement. At home, her role was to express disgust at the sisters’ behaviour, but her role in America seems to be to show constant gratitude and awe towards the beneficence of the Hardings. They exist as accoutrements to her idealised life, and she exists as a reflection of their success and affluence. Lou’s inner conflict represents the dichotomy of what we are and what we want to be , and this clash of worlds–the real and the idealised play out in this stunning novel.

The Corpse Wore Pasties by Jonny Porkpie

“So what was this exactly? That you were doin’? Some kinda strip show?” said Officer Brooklyn.

“Some kinda titty show?” echoed Officer Bronx 

I love Hard Case Crime. This is a publisher who’s committed–heart and soul–to reviving long-lost pulp and crime titles, but at the same time, the brains at Hard Case don’t vegetate in the past; many of their titles are new, and this brings me to The Corpse Wore Pasties by Jonny Porkpie.  Just in case you don’t know, the type of pasties we are talking about are those tiny adhesive nipple patches worn by strippers and burlesque dancers (my favourite pasties are sequins with tassels, but I digress). Now there’s a world of difference between strippers and burlesque dancers–just ask the book’s author, Jonny Porkpie, “The Burlesque Mayor of New York.” Stripping…that’s about heavy breathing and dollar bills. Burlesque, well that’s a time tested art form.

Porkpie (who takes his last name from the type of hat he wears) must be a very busy man. In his real life (in other words–anything not inside the pages of his first novel), Porkpie also co-produces Pinchbottom Burlesque with his Missus.– Nasty Canasta. I’d hazard a guess that Porkpie is a really interesting character as he unabashedly places himself in his novel with a generous dollop of self-deprecating humour. To take the piss out of oneself takes a strong, confident personality, and Porkpie does just that, and he does it well with The Corpse Wore Pasties–a light-hearted, entertaining, slick, crime-centred romp through the glamorous world of burlesque:

“I’m not talking baggy-pants comedian. Some have called me a no-pants comedian, but that’s not entirely accurate either. My acts tend towards the humorous, sure, but when push comes to shove, and bump comes to grind, I’m the same sort of burlesque performer that Sally Rand was, or Gypsy Rose Lee–though they had certain assets that I lack. And that particular pair of assets might, to an audience be the ones more likely to inspire lust than laughter.”

The novel opens in an East Village bar with a Dreamland burlesque show, and Porkpie is the host for the evening’s performances, replacing Dreamland’s regular producer and host, LuLu LaRue. This should be an easy gig for Porkpie, but things begin to go wrong when Victoria Vice unexpectedly appears to join the line-up of performers. Victoria is the “rare performer that absolutely nobody liked,” not only is she a first-rate bitch, but she’s a “thief” and a “plagiarist.” And in burlesque, this is “the worst kind of thief you can be.”  Many other burlesque performers have suffered from Victoria’s “creative larceny;” she’s notorious for visiting shows and ripping off acts. So when Victoria appears to join the evening’s line up, the atomsphere in the ad-hoc chaotic, changing room shifts to rage. And before the evening is over, someone ends up dead.

Although there are no lack of suspects, Porkpie manages to top the list, and after a brush with the cops, he decides that as number 1 suspect, he’d better try solving the crime himself. Against the sage advice of his ever-patient wife, Nasty Canasta, Porkpie plunges into the investigation in true noir style. Soon Porkpie is questioning burlesque characters such as:  Brioche a Tete, Cherries Jubilee, Eva Desire, Angelina Blood, and Jillian Knockers. Can it be any wonder that he finds himself “running at top speed across the Brooklyn Bridge, half-naked, in the middle of the night, pursued by all five members of a heavy metal band.”?

I have a weakness for Hard Case titles that blend crime with a large dose of humour (Somebody Owes Me Money, Fifty-to-One), so for my twisted tastes, The Corpse Wore Pasties was a delightful, funny read. I began the book knowing next to nothing about burlesque, and I learned a few things about the biz–including the meaning of the term “sexual misdirection.”  This diverting pulp novel, with its lurid elements added to just a hint of camp, is a great deal of tongue-in-cheek fun (my favourite part is when Porkpie is questioned by the cops). I looked forward to this title for months, and it was exactly what I hoped it would be–an entertaining, behind-the-scenes look at the world of burlesque:

“Look, I don’t want to discourage anyone from buying a ticket, but if you’re going to be one of those men who sits alone, refuses to take off his outerwear even when the air-conditioning is broken, wears dark glasses and leather gloves, doesn’t brush his hair or beard, and keeps trying to catch a glimpse of the girls getting dressed backstage…if you’re going to be one of those guys, maybe a downmarket West Side Highway strip club would be more to your tastes than a night of burlesque. Burlesque is a different monster altogether. It’s more about wit than anything that rhymes with wit; more about cleverness than any other c-word. Burlesque is a matter of brains over boobs… which, I suppose, is the standard arrangement, but you get my point. One creep in the audience working a Show World 1977 vibe could potentially sour the room.”

I sincerely hope that this won’t be a one-shot wonder, and that Porkpie has more novels up his sleeves or perhaps even in his Super Jonny Porkpie outfit….

The Prone Gunman by Jean-Patrick Manchette

“I’d advise against trying to fuck with me.”

After reading, and being delighted with 3 to Kill by Jean-Patrick Manchette, I turned with anticipation to The Prone Gunman. According to the brief biographical information about Manchette at the end of my copy, he “rescued the French crime novel from the grip of stodgy police procedurals–restoring the noir edge by virtue of his post-1968 leftism.” I don’t know enough about Manchette’s contribution to French crime fiction to argue either way, but the “post-1968 leftism” is certainly evident in 3 to Kill. Unfortunately at the present time, only two of Manchette’s novels are available translated in English, so while I only have these two to compare to each other, I can say that The Prone Gunman was not as enjoyable as 3 to Kill.

The Prone Gunman begins with assassin, Martin Terrier, on assignment in Britain to kill a man. With the assignment completed, Terrier returns to France to his spartan Paris apartment. Terrier has decided to retire, and in preparation, he unemotionally and unceremoniously dumps his current girlfriend, Alex. Then he meets with his employer, Cox to collect payment for his last hit. Cox, who knows Martin Terrier as Christian, is a repulsive man, who represents the shadowy ‘Company’ :

Bent over a low openwork white-lacquered table, Cox was eating a copious brunch of eggs, bacon, grilled sausages, thick little pancakes, and maple syrup, accompanied by black coffee.

“I didn’t have time to eat this morning,” he said as Terrier came in. “Not to sleep much either. I had to discuss your case, Christian”

His lips were sticky with syrup; he patted them with a paper napkin and glanced at Terrier with a look of embarrassment. Tall and fleshy, he had a large pink face, a small nose, and a pouty mouth. His short dull-blond hair was impeccably trimmed. He had not taken off his camel’s-hair overcoat.

While Terrier makes it clear that he plans to retire, Cox urges him to remain in the pay of the Company–offering him a sum of 200,000 francs for the next hit. Terrier declines even though Cox hints at creating difficulties. Terrier leaves and then makes a stop at the squalid home of his financial advisor, Faulques, a man who admits that people don’t trust him because he looks “seedy.”

Terrier–a man of few words and mostly violent action–then returns to the area of his youth–Nauzac. In this town, Terrier intends to reconnect with the love of his life, wealthy Anne Freux. He’s spent the last ten years as a mercenary and then as a hit man, methodically accepting assignments, killing people and building a nest egg big enough to impress Anne and her family. And while now, ten years later, Anne is “just as beautiful as he remembered her,” she’s also married. But nothing deters Terrier; he fully expects to be able to persuade Anne away from her foolish husband, Felix.

But just as Terrier settles in with his plans to charm, seduce or steal Anne away, Terrier’s violent past catches up with him, and soon both he and Anne are on the run….

The book  has the feel of a Charles Bronson stone-killer adventure, and I had that feeling almost immediately on page one. Reinforcement for that idea arrived on the next page when Terrier’s intended victim goes into a cinema which is showing “a mediocre American thriller starring Charles Bronson.” At that point, I felt that I was on the right track with the Terrier-Bronson connection–although the fact that the text mentioned that the film was only mediocre should have alerted me for what was ahead.

The Prone Gunman contains scenes of incredible violence, and some of that violence comes with details–bits of brain matter, intestines, and even a candle about to be shoved up a vagina.

The novel’s non-stop action, sparse dialogue, and frequent change of venue give the sense that The Prone Gunman would make an excellent film. A great deal might be lost in a cinematic version of the more interesting 3 to Kill, whereas The Prone Gunman screams for a screenplay. The Prone Gunman was Manchette’s last novel, and its plot–the hitman who wants to retire is fairly standard. Manchette’s hit man, however, never becomes human. There are no soft spots, and it’s impossible to confuse Terrier with an edgy Bronson-style hero. Terrier is first and foremost a killer–a man who tracks down his youthful sweetheart for some insane reason with the determination of a hunter determined to bag the rabbit and bring it home.

In a Bronson film, even though this iconic action hero frequently engaged in questionable moral actions, it was impossible not to get fond of him as he blasted or beat his way through his enemies. There was always a human side to Bronson’s heroes–a vulnerability, and eventually, of course, we realise that there’s a reason for his actions. Manchette’s Terrier, on the other hand, doesn’t become more appealing in time. There is an early instance, for example, when he could show mercy, but doesn’t, and as the novel develops, there are times when he’s a killing machine. Now given the subject, that is expected, but when it comes to the love-of-his-life, Anne, Terrier still evinces that almost programmed state of single-minded moronic drive. After ten years, Anne doesn’t turn out to be exactly what Terrier expected, but she’s objectified by Terrier (just like Alex). What Anne is like and what Anne wants is all beside the point, and soon Terrier is on the run dragging Anne along with him, rather like a suitcase.

In 3 to Kill, Manchette’s hero, Gerfaut is a middle-class businessman who is inadvertently swept up by crime. Forced to go on the run, Gerfaut reverts to his old instincts in his drive to survive. Manchette’s theme–an ordinary man who is derailed by fate–is easy to identify with. Terrier, on the other hand, is a species apart. And while he’s an excellent assassin, beyond that role, he makes mistakes and doesn’t always have good judgement. As things continue to go wrong for Terrier, a streak of black humour makes an appearance in a pathological what-can-g0-wrong-next scenario. Terrier isn’t exactly incompetent, but he has more than one screw loose and that’s deadly when combined with his severely impaired judgement.

On a final note, I can’t help but wonder if Manchette chose the book’s title The Prone Gunman deliberately as a play on words of the phrase: The Lone Gunman. And if that’s a possibility, then that theory would open up all sorts of additional interpretations. Translated by James Brooks

For another viewpoint, read the excellent review here

Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig

Some years ago, I read a magazine article in which the author declared that what the literary world so badly needs is another writer like Dickens–someone whose novels bring social problems to the attention of readers. It’s been years since I read the article, and I really can’t remember the specifics, but the article’s essential idea stayed with me.

I just finished reading Amanda Craig’s novel, Hearts and Minds, and I can’t help but compare the book to Dickens in its scope and its sweeping integrative approach to social ills. While Hearts and Minds is, above all, a novel of social conscience, it also manages to be a wonderful, highly readable tale–mystery, adventure, romance, drama and despair all rolled into a lively commentary on 21st century London.

Craig creates a tremendously ambitious novel of modern London, plagued with crime, illegal immigration, prostitution, and terrorism. And while like Dickens, Craig’s characters collide in moments of amazing coincidence, the Dickens twee is absent. Instead this is 21st century London–a city that survived the Plague, the Great Fire and now terrorism. This is the city to which illegal immigrants flock as they escape from violence, civil war, genocide, starvation, and collapsing civilisations. Unfortunately, while these refugees flee their homes and hope for better lives in London, some face the very same sort of violence they ran from. While a lucky few are employed illegally as au pairs or domestics by the wealthy, others endure subsistence level lives. But these are the fortunate ones. Others vanish into the brothels of London.

Very much like a Victorian multi-plot novel–complete with titled chapters, Hearts and Minds does not follow a single story stream, and instead the book presents a tapestry of characters whose lives are integrated in ways they sometimes don’t understand. Some of the characters connect, and others pass each other silently, unaware of the invisible cords that bind them together. In spite of the large number of characters and the splintered stories, the novel’s many threads are held together with strong authorial control.

Hearts and Minds begins with this passage:

“At night, even in these dead months of the year, the city is never wholly dark. Its shadows twitch with a harsh orange light that glows, as the pulse of electric power courses through its body like dreams. The sour air, breathed in and out by eight million lungs, stained by exhaust pipes and strained through ventilators is never clean, although, after a time, you no longer notice its bitter taste and smell. The dust of ages swirls and falls, staining walls, darkening glass, coating surfaces, clogging lungs. Bricks, leaves, paper, food, bones and skin all decay, reduced to almost invisible specks that accumulate in the eternal dust of London.” 

This passage sets the scene of an ancient yet somehow ageless London, but Craig also includes the idea that the city will survive–even as humans decay and add to its detritus. While London withstands the onslaughts of time, disease, natural disaster and political violence, the city is also plagued with numerous, perhaps insurmountable social problems. In 21st century Britain, millions are packing their suitcases and retiring abroad, overwhelmed teachers are under siege from pupils who are “like a boatload of disgruntled voyagers, off along the dark river of indifference,” and the overworked and underfunded National Health Service is dying a slow, painful death.

While some see only the tourist attractions and the glamorous side of London (“a man in a Victorian policeman’s uniform waits outside the non-existent Sherlock Holmes’s non-existent flat 221B for the delectation of tourists”), this vast city also has a dark underbelly. Neighbourhood brothels manage to maintain a booming business right under the oblivious noses of those who live next door. While some neighbourhoods have decayed, still others have been absorbed and gentrified in the economic boom. London is portrayed as a city with multiple faces and it’s a largely disinterested backdrop to crime. Meanwhile Londoners don’t seem to notice the invisible immigrant population who clean the streets, drive the taxis, and operate the car washes.

One of the novel’s main characters is Polly, a human-rights solicitor, and a single parent with two teenagers, Robbie and Tania. Polly doesn’t know how she would cope with the competing demands in her life if it weren’t for her housekeeper, her “right hand,” Iryna. Polly relies on Iryna completely, and tries not to dwell on the thought that Iryna, a Russian is illegal and works for a pittance–twenty-five hours a week for seventy pounds.

Polly’s world comes crashing down when Iryna disappears. As she discusses the subject with friends and acquaintances, the prevailing attitude seems to be ‘what else did you expect?’ But just as Polly convinces herself that Iryna betrayed her trust, she has reason to suspect that something may be horribly wrong. Iryna, a young, attractive woman, who has a history of being extremely reliable, has vanished, and yet Polly fails to initially contemplate the horrifying possibilities.  Under normal circumstances, Polly would contact the police, but this doesn’t occur to her. If anyone is capable of grasping the problems facing an illegal immigrant, it should be human-rights solicitor Polly. But when Iryna disappears, Polly isn’t alarmed, she’s inconvenienced.

As the novel continues, other characters are introduced: Katie, an American editorial assistant who works at the offices of The Rambler magazine, Ian–an idealistic and dedicated teacher from South Africa, Quentin, the Rambler’s colourful, tyrannical and sexist blast-from-the past editor, Anna–a 15 year-old Ukrainian girl who imagines she’s coming to London to be a maid, and Job–from Zimbabwe who works two jobs in order to send money home to his family. How these people connect is the substance of this marvelous novel.

The feeling that Hearts and Minds is very like an updated Dickens tale is not based solely on the novel’s scope or its quality as a novel of sweeping social conscience. The Dickens connection is also manifested in the character of Job–an educated, sensitive man who comes to Britain complete with notions of the country’s values which are largely garnered from classics of British literature–including… Dickens:

“Job has walked, amazed, round every museum he can find on Sundays, where people from all over the globe wander in to enjoy the most beautiful painting, inventions, buildings. He can’t join a public library, but the cheapness of second- hand paperbacks on stalls and in charity shops almost made him weak. There is an abundance of everything–food dropped half-eaten on the pavement that goes to feed birds or rats–and yet a consciousness of nothing. He thinks of the city conjured for him by Dickens; that foggy, dark place  riddled with crime and yet suffused with kindness and courage. He had been a little disappointed when he arrived to find the soot had been scoured away during the last century, and no horse-drawn carriages. Yet there are still men like Bill Sykes, with their dogs and violence. He sees them right outside his home.”

The novel’s characters are woven into the firm hierarchy of London society–from those who employ illegal immigrants for pitiful wages, to those illegals who are exploited for anonymous sex. Multiple points of view and multiple opinions illustrate opposing values that generally collide on the subject of immigration and illegal labour. At a swank dinner party, for example, one character notes that “we’re sleepwalking into making the poor old British working class completely unemployable,” while another character basically argues that British “workmen” are going to get what they deserve as “they never work hard enough”.

Craig doesn’t fall into the trap of offering solutions, and that’s just as well as I’m not sure there are any. Nonetheless, in Craig’s London, even those buffered by wealth and position cannot imagine that they are free from the taint of illegal immigration, and that’s an uncomfortable thought. I’ll clarify here: Our actions have moral consequences. If you are well off enough to employ an illegal maid to clean your toilets, then you too are implicitly involved with the fallout.  The ‘halycon’ days of British Empire are over, and colonialism has consequences:

“When we invaded placed like Africa and India, we broke down a door, and now we don’t like it that they can come over here, just as we went there. Well tough. It’s not just a question of morality. There is no us and them. There’s just people. We’re all migrants from somewhere.”

The Kindle so far….

My Kindle arrived about a week or so ago, and I’ve been playing with it ever since. I had one moment of frustration (accompanied by some swearing), but apart from that, using the Kindle has been fairly intuitive. It’s actually much easier to use than I expected. Basically if you know how to use a computer, the Kindle should be a piece of cake for you.

I spent the first few days loading the Kindle with free books from Amazon. At this point, I can see using the Kindle mainly for classics. As I mentioned in an earlier post, some of the Balzac I am interested in is not available commercially or only available as pricey, problematic paperbacks, so for me the Kindle fits a very specific use.

Trawling through the free books to download on Amazon was addictive, and I went mad. This is what I have loaded in the Kindle so far:

The Enchanted April—Elizabeth von Armin (free)

The Solitary Summer--Elizabeth von Armin (free)

Works of Jane Austen

Works of Honore de Balzac

Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister–Aphra Behn (free)

Run to Earth–M.E. Braddon (free)

Birds of Prey–M.E. Braddon (free)

Henry Dunbar–M.E. Braddon (free)

London Pride–M.E Braddon (free)

Lady Audley’s Secret–M.E. Braddon (free)

The Golden Calf–M.E. Braddon (free)

Phantom Fortune–M.E. Braddon (free)

Collected works of the Brontes

The Pilgrim’s Progress-Bunyan (free)

Evelina–Burney (free)

Works of Joseph Conrad

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets–Crane (free)

Jack–Alphonse Daudet (free)

The Nabob–Alphonse Daudet (free)

Tartarin on the Alps–Alphonse Daudet (free)

The Immortal–Alphonse Daudet (free)

Femmes d’Artistes–Alphonse Daudet (free)

Tartarin De Tarascon-Alphonse Daudet (free)

The Financier–Dreiser (free)

Sister Carrie–Dreiser (free)

The Titan–Dreiser (free)

Works of Alexander Dumas

Works of E.M. Forster

Castle Rackrent–Edgeworth (free)

The Absentee–Edgeworth (free)

Collection of Edith Wharton

 Collection of Dickens

Collection of Elizabeth Gaskell

Cecilia–Burney (free)

History of Tom Jones–Fielding (free)

The Beautiful and the Damned–Fitzgerald (free)

Tales of the Jazz Age –Fitzgerald (free)

This Side of Paradise–Fitzgerald (free)

Three short Works–Flaubert (free)

Collection of George Eliot

Clarimonde–Gautier (free)

Captain Fracasse–Gautier (free)

The Mummy’s Foot–Gautier (free)

King Candaules–Gautier (free)

The Cross of the Enemy–Gautier (free)

Collection of George Meredith

Collection of George Gissing

Collection of Thomas Hardy

Collection of Henry James

Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner–Hogg (free)

The Iliad–Homer (free)

Odyssey–Homer (free)

A Chance Acquaintance–Howells (free)

Their Wedding Journey–Howells (free)

The Rise of Silas Lapham–Howells (free)

A Modern Instance–Howells (free)

Indian Summer–Howells (free)

The Kentons–Howell (free)

Hazard of New Fortunes–Howells (free)

The Man Who Laughs–Victor Hugo (free)

The Memoirs of Victor Hugo (free)

The History of a Crime–Hugo (free)

Rasselas–Johnson (free)

The Water Babies–Kingsley (free)

The Room in the Dragon Volant–Joseph Le Fanu (free)

The Evil Guest–Joseph Le Fanu (free)

Carmilla–Joseph Le Fanu (free)

Our Mr Wrenn–Sinclair Lewis (free)

Babbitt–Sinclair Lewis (free)

At the Back of the North Wind-MacDonald (free)

The Princess and the Goblin–MacDonald (free)

Communist Manifesto–Marx (free)

Confessions of a Young Man–George Moore (free)

Esther Waters–George Moore (free)

A Mere Accident–George Moore (free)

The Lake–George Moore (free)

Vain Fortune–George Moore (free)

Muslin–George Moore (free)

Mike Fletcher– George Moore (free)

The Untilled Field–George Moore (free)

Memoirs of My Dead Life–George Moore (free)

A Mummer’s Wife –George Moore (free)

Sister Teresa–George Moore (free)

Evelyn Innes–George Moore  (free)

Spring Days–George Moore  (free)

Journal of a Voyage Across the Atlantic–George Moore (free)

The Pit–Frank Norris (free)

The Octopus–Frank Norris (free)

Letty and the Lady Moran–Frank Norris (free)

Vandover and the Brute-Frank Norris (free)

Blix–Frank Norris (free)

The Open Door-Oliphant (free)

The Unspeakable Gentleman–Oliphant (free)

A Journey to Katmandu-Oliphant (free)

The Perpetual Curate–Oliphant (free)

Old Lady Mary-Oliphant (free)

The Doctor’s Family-Oliphant (free)

The Rector–Oliphant (free)

A Little Pilgrim & Other Stories-Oliphant (free)

Phoebe Junior- Oliphant (free)

Clarissa Harlowe & Pamela-Richardson (free)

The Moneychanger-Sinclair (free)

The Metropolis–Sinclair (free)

The Jungle–Sinclair (free)

Collection of Walter Scott

Mount Music-Somerville (free)

The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy–Sterne (free)

Alice Adams-Takington (free)

The Two Vanrevels–Tarkington (free)

The Gentleman from Indiana–Tarkington (free)

The Magnificent Ambersons-Tarkington (free)

The Flirt–Tarkington (free)

Penrod and Penrod and Sam–Booth Tarkington (free)

The Supressed Poems–Tennyson (free)

Idylls of the King–Tennyson (free)

Collection of Thomas Love Peacock

Works of Anthony Trollope

With Zola in England–Vizetelly (free)

My Days of Adventure–Vizetelly (free)

The Castle of Otranto-Walpole (free)

Love and Mr Lewisham-H. G.  Wells (free)

Secret Places of the Heart–H. G Wells (free)

Tono Bungay– H.G Wells (free)

Ann Veronica- H. G. Wells (free)

Collected works of Thackeray

Night and day–Woolf  (free)

The Voyage Out–Woolf (free)

And with all this…I’ve used less than half of the space. Note that I avoided Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Turgenev collections as they are primarily either Garnett or Maude translations. Translations are a consideration. There’s no Kindle version of the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground, for example (although Kindle versions for Anna Karenina and War & Peace are available, but I already have copies of these).  

On the down side:

You can ’sort’ your Kindle content by title, latest downloaded and by author. I chose the latter, but even so some of the items are out-of-order. For example, Wharton is filed under “E” for Edith, and while Fanny Burney’s Evelina is filed under “B” for Burney, Burney’s Cecilia is filed under “F” for Fanny. This is annoying.

I bought a free version of Clarissa and dumped it after seeing how it looked on the screen. It came free in three volumes, but I preferred to pay a tiny amount and get a better version with the hyperlink to the book’s content. This is ultimately why I decided to buy collections too. It’s nice to have an entire file of–let’s say–Trollope, so I can open the file and then select from within the alphabetised file rather than have everything listed individually. After reading some comments on Amazon, I made sure that I bought collections with hyperlinks.

It’s possible to sample a Kindle book before you actually buy it, and this is a nice feature and very simple to use. The free ones cannot be sampled prior to downloading. I did find one short story collection (free) that I was unable to open so I deleted it. I was curious about Alice in Wonderland and after downloading sample chapters of different versions, I discovered that a great many of them came without illustrations, so if you are going to buy Kindle books, it pays to check out the sample chapters before you buy.

Amazon makes a point to say that the voice feature is experimental. This is a understatement. The voice feature for the books I tried was poor. It has a robotic tone, well I expected that, but it simply can’t pronounce words like “marquis” and then the entire delivery is off. The wrong words are emphasized and the sentences broken up at the wrong places. The voice feature really shouldn’t be considered as a buying factor, and if I had bought the Kindle mainly for this feature, I would be disappointed.  The voice feature needs to improve substantially. But if I know Mr. Big  Bezos, he will have his tech. team work on the Kindle voice until it is improved.

Now for the reading part…how easy is it to read? Well, I’m, impressed. I slipped into the start of a Balzac and I didn’t even register that I was using a ‘device’. The Kindle is that good. I’m surprised by that. When I told acquaintances that I’d bought a Kindle, I had a range of reactions from: “what’s a Kindle?” to “nothing beats the print copy in your hands.” Well, I would agree with the latter statement but since many of the Balzac titles I am interested in are NO LONGER IN PRINT, the Kindle is great for me.

Eugenie Grandet by Balzac

I’ve been reading rather a lot of Zola during the past few years, and it occurred to me that I’ve neglected Balzac. There are probably all sorts of arguments that rage for the superiority of one author over the other–Zola’s novels, such as Germinal, and L’Assommoir have that social conscience aspect, for example. And then again Nana is one of literature’s enduring courtesans. While all those considerations are noted, there’s just something about Balzac….

Balzac’s bon vivant spirit tends to seep through in his novels–even when he’s writing about the nasty side of human nature. The man had a lively sense of humour (at least I think he did), and perhaps that is what makes his novels so enjoyable. And so deciding that I’d neglected Balzac lately, I pulled Eugenie Grandet off the shelf.

Eugenie, the heroine of the tale, is the only daughter of Monsieur Grandet. Grandet, who married late in life, is now quite elderly. Grandet worked as a cooper, and after marrying the daughter of a wealthy lumber merchant, he cashed in on the French Revolution by buying “for a song, legally if not legitimately, the finest vineyards in the district, an old abbey and several small farms.”

When the tale begins, the Grandets live  far from Paris in their house in Saumur. No one knows just how wealthy Grandet is these days, but everyone speculates that he must have “a private treasure, a hiding place full of louis, and that every night he indulged in the ineffable joys afforded by the sight of a large mass of gold.”

Grandet is a miser, and like most misers he possesses an almost unearthly ability to manage and make money:

“Monsieur Grandet inspired, then, the deferential esteem that was rightfully owed to a man who never had any debts, who as a skilled cooper and winegrower, could estimate with the precision of an astronomer when he ought to manufacture a thousand barrels for his harvest or only five hundred, who never misjudged a speculation, who always had barrels to sell when a barrel was worth more than its contents, and who could store his vintage in his wine cellars and wait until he could sell it for two hundred francs a cask, when the smaller winegrowers had to sell theirs for a hundred. His famous vintage of 1811, judiciously stored and slowly sold, had brought in over two hundred and forty thousand francs. Financially speaking, there was something of both the tiger and the boa constrictor in Monsieur Grandet: he knew how to conceal himself, lie in wait, watch his prey for a long time and finally leap on it; then he would open the jaws of his purse, gulp down a bellyful of gold and placidly lie down like a snake digesting its prey , impassive, cold, methodical.”

If Grandet has a ‘greatest’ treasure, then it is his only child Eugenie. Since she is an heiress, she is considered a great catch, but in the provinces, there aren’t many eligible men considered worthy of her. There are two rivals for her hand–a judge, Monsieur Cruchot, and 23-year-old Adolphe des Grassins. Both families have their factions, their supporters and their allies, and most of the townspeople take considerable interest in the subject of Eugenie’s possible engagement. In a town where not much happens, everyone eagerly watches for any sign that the Cruchot family is favoured over the des Grassins and vice versa.

Meanwhile “older inhabitants of the region maintained that the Grandets were too shrewd to let the money go outside of the family,” and that Eugenie will most likely be married off to her cousin from Paris, the son of her father’s brother. And then one day that cousin, Charles Grandet, arrives unexpectedly.

Charles Grandet is an elegant, spoiled young fop. This is his first trip into the provinces, and so he travels and dresses to impress and “overawe the entire district with his opulence.” Charles struggles to align the stories of his uncle’s wealth with the reality of a cold, ill-lit, shabby house fashioned more like a fortress (complete with a vicious dog) than the country chateau of a wealthy gentleman. He’s not so much appalled as unable to comprehend how these long-lost relatives live. While Charles stares at the unfashionable Cruchots and the des Grassins through his monocle, Eugenie’s provincial suitors sense a formidable rival. But Eugenie is entranced by her cousin–she’s never seen such elegance, and when Charles’s visit is extended by tragic circumstance, Eugenie struggles to provide him with a few extras–such as a wax candle. For the first time in her life, Eugenie feels the shame of her father’s raging obsession with money, and in time Eugenie’s relationship with Charles leads to a rift between Eugenie and her father….

Old Grandet is a marvellous creation. As is so typical with Balzac characters, Grandet is sharply drawn and detailed in such a way that he comes to life. Balzac shows how Grandet’s miserliness is a character trait that enters into every aspect of his life. He keeps all the food under lock and key, meting out sugar cubes, and in one hilarious scene, Grandet instructs his faithful servant, Nanon to make crow soup. Grandet has even developed a manner to further his business interests, and using selective deafness and periodic stuttering, he simply wears people down.

Grandet’s obdurate obsession with money gradually destroys his relationships with his wife and daughter, and while he’s by no means an evil man, his horrible flaw and ruling characteristic is his avarice. As Professor Milton Crane notes in the novel’s introduction: “For Balzac it was not love but money that made the world go round,” and we certainly see that philosophy freely at work in Eugenie Grandet.

Crane also notes that Balzac conceived of La Comedie Humaine, “the device to describe and analyze all French society” in 1842. Eugenie Grandet was published in 1834 and after creating the idea of La Comedie Humaine, Balzac slotted Eugenie Grandet into the Scenes of Provincial Life section (one of seven sections that comprise La Comedie Humaine. Crane argues that there is “something unavoidably synthetic about Balzac’s scheme, which he endeavoured to superimpose on books that had obviously been written without thought of a Comedie Humaine.” At the same time, Crane acknowledges that Balzac may “have been feeling his way instinctively toward this plan throughout his career.” 

The novel is rife with Balzac’s rich sense of humour, and some of the very best moments take place when Charles first arrives at his uncle’s shabby home. Charles imagines that he’ll impress the locals with his Parisian ways, and he poses “putting his hand in his vest and looking off in the distance to imitate the pose given to Lord Byron by Chantrey.” Everyone except Eugenie and her mother are appalled by Charles for a range of reasons. To Grandet, Charles represents possibly the worst affront to a miser: a spendthrift who doesn’t understand the value of money, and he can’t get his nephew out of the house fast enough. Meanwhile Eugenie’s suitors, sensing a “common enemy” scramble into action, and Eugenie and her mother scrape together items they consider luxuries to offer to Charles. Of course, he doesn’t appreciate these humble offerings one bit, and he fails to grasp the cost to Eugenie.

Grandet’s house could very well feature as one of the novel’s characters. The house is freezing and ill-lit, and its walls yellowed and covered with grime. Grandet’s office is “walled-up” with only one entrance and its windows are covered by iron gratings. The banister is “worm-eaten,” the floors are covered with carpets made of rags, and the bed coverings are full of holes. Charles even begins to wonder if he’s in the right house.

Eugenie Grandet  isn’t the greatest Balzac heroine by any means. She’s acted upon in most instances, and while she maintains dignity and admirable integrity, ultimately she has learned some lessons from her father and some of her final transactions between Eugenie and Charles Grandet are delivered with the sort of cold unemotional delivery that remind me of Catherine in the Henry James novel, Washington Square.

Translated by Lowell Bair.

McTeague by Frank Norris

This 2009 reading of Frank Norris’s McTeague was the third reading for me, and I returned to this American classic novel of Old San Francisco after watching Erich von Stroheim’s 1924 silent film version with its appropriate title: Greed. McTeague is one of my favourite American classics, and it’s a favourite for its dark undertones of lust, violence, murder, sadomasochism, and obsession. No wonder literary critics were outraged when McTeague was published in 1899. On the West Coast, a reviewer for The Argonaut argued that “Norris riots in odors and stenches,” while The New York based monthly journal, The Review of Reviews called McTeague “about the most unpleasant American story that anybody has ventured to write.” Of the liberal amount of invective launched at the novel by literary critics, the latter quote remains my favourite as it is quite true, but that’s the point. Norris’s novel is unrelentingly bleak and grimy, but it’s also wonderful.

The novel’s plot concerns a San Francisco dentist named McTeague. McTeague, the blockish son of an alcoholic miner worked as a car-boy at the Big Dipper mine in Placer County when he left to become the apprentice of a traveling dentist. The dentist is a “charlatan” but McTeague doesn’t understand this, and after watching the dentist pull out teeth for a few years, McTeague sets up his “Dental Parlours” (a rented room where he works and sleeps) in San Francisco’s Polk Street. This is where the novel begins with McTeague spending a typical Sunday in San Francisco: he eats a heavy meal, returns to the Dental Parlours , drinks beer and plays the handful of tunes he knows on his concertina. At “six feet and three inches,” McTeague is a “young giant”:

“McTeague’s mind was as his body, heavy, slow to act, sluggish. Yet there was nothing vicious about the man. Altogether he suggested the draught horse, immensely strong, stupid, docile, obedient.”

McTeague doesn’t stop to think about his life, but he’s considered a success, and since he’s hauled himself up from manual labour at the mine to the professional classes, this is justified. McTeague’s simple life changes when he’s introduced to Trina, a beautifully made, tiny young woman who is brought to McTeague for dental care by her cousin and sweetheart, Marcus, McTeague’s best friend. The problems begin when McTeague, in a fit of lust, kisses Trina while she’s asleep under the effects of ether. McTeague then wants to court and marry Trina, and Marcus, who wasn’t that committed to the relationship anyway, agrees to step aside. McTeague’s slow, methodical and predatory courtship is darted with instances of lust, and at these moments, Trina panics and quails with fear at McTeague’s brutal onslaught.

The plot thickens when Trina buys a lottery ticket that turns out to be the winning number, and so when Mac (as she calls him) and Trina marry, she brings with her a ‘dowry’ of $5,000, and this money becomes the root of their problems. At first, their marriage is satisfactory, but gradually Trina becomes obsessed with money, and then their luck turns sour….

It’s impossible to read McTeague without thinking about and comparing it to Zola’s novel L’Assommoir, published in 1877. L’Assommoir, one of Zola’s greatest novels, and part of the Rougon-Macquart twenty-volume series is the tale of a Parisian laundress named Gervaise. Gervaise’s story is a study of poverty and working-class life tainted with alcoholism. Zola’s naturalistic novels examine the themes of hereditary and environment, and Norris who was heavily influenced by Zola, considered L’Assommoir to be the “prototype of McTeague.” Certainly literary critics made the connection, and as the introduction by Kevin Starr explains, one critic “castigated Norris for reintroducing the corrupting moral vogue of Zolaism” onto American shores.

Both L’Assommoir and McTeague feature main characters who rise from the minionship of the working class to the next level. Gervaise becomes an employer when she opens her laundry shop, and McTeague leaves the physical labour of the mines behind when he becomes a dentist. McTeague never really grasps the idea that he is supposed to go to university and get a diploma–to McTeague, his dental career is eventually stolen from him by forces he cannot understand. Both Gervaise and McTeague’s destruction are engineered and accelerated by alcoholism and jealousy. But it’s where McTeague is different from L’Assommoir that things really become interesting.

While L’Assommoir is concerned with a lack of money, McTeague is about the misuse of money. If Gervaise has money, she spends it, and eventually of course, she spends money she doesn’t have and bankrupts herself in the process. In contrast, in McTeague Trina hordes money and becomes a miser–at one point she even ignores her mother’s request for help. Although she and McTeague are wealthy by late 19th century standards, Trina would rather eat rotting meat than disturb her nest egg. Having money corrupts Trina and McTeague. It’s not their salvation, it’s their nemesis. It’s the acquisition of money, the hording of money that becomes their destruction–compounded by hereditary and environmental factors.

“Trina had always been an economical little body, but it was only since her great winnings in the lottery that she had become especially penurious. No doubt, in her fear lest their good luck should demoralize them and lead to habits of extravagance, she had recoiled too far in the other direction. Never, never, never should a penny of that miraculous fortune be spent; rather it should be added to. It was a nest egg, a monstrous, roc-like nest egg, not so large, however, but that it could be made larger.”

The idea of the corrupting force of money appears throughout McTeague–from the endeavours to extract gold from the Big Dipper mine to the brutality of Zerkow, a neighbourhood junk shop owner who marries his wife, Maria simply because she entertains him with fantastic tales of long-lost gold plate. These stories drive Zerkow to insanity–just as Trina’s horde leads to a sort of madness too. Gold appears throughout the novel–at the mine, in McTeague’s crude dentistry, and at one point in the tale, Trina buys a model of a huge gold tooth to hang outside of Mac’s Dental Parlours. To own and display this gold tooth is a long-held dream of McTeague’s, and it’s one of the last things he refuses to part with–at one point the couple even use it as a table in the squalor of their rented room. Symbolically, even McTeague’s canary spends its sad, trapped little life in a gilt cage.

Norris based McTeague on a real-life crime that took place in San Francisco in 1893. He was a student at Berkeley at the time, and he began to be fascinated by bourgeois and working class life. After failing to get a degree, there followed a period at Harvard, various overseas adventures in South Africa, and then Norris returned to San Francisco and the Big Dipper Mine to recuperate his health. San Francisco is one of those cities that has a great deal of character–just watch Joan Crawford in Sudden Fear or Humphrey Bogart in Dark Passage to get a sense of how characters’ lives are shaped by the city they live in. Norris’s pre-1906 earthquake San Francisco is raw and new but still pulsing with life, and the novel’s characters mesh with their landscape. There’s the colourful street life of Polk Street, Cliff House, Union Street, the Presidio Reservation, the Golden gate, the ferry, the variety show at the Orpheum, and the magnificent views of the Pacific Ocean.

McTeague is not a perfect novel, and parts of the story seem rougher than others. Sections which move away from McTeague and Trina as individual characters and instead convert them into types are poorer than the main narrative. For example at one point, Norris describes Trina’s growing sexual awareness as “The Woman is awakened.” Other sections include Trina’s German relatives speaking broken English–and this sort of dialogue is always a problem for writers. Norris turns it into a phonetic event. Also while Zola’s influence is clear in McTeague, there are two characters–veterinarian Old Grannis and spinster Miss Baker–who could very well have lost their way from a Dickens novel. This dark tale is frequently interrupted with sentimental details of the relationship between the elderly couple. Perhaps Norris intended this romance to provide a counterbalance against the dark destruction of the McTeagues.

McTeague hints at a tremendous talent that is not yet fully developed. Norris was a mere 29 years old when he finished this novel. Tragically, Norris died at the age of 32 from a ruptured appendix and kidney failure in 1902. Coincidentally, Zola died the same year.

Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery

There are times when you know that you are the wrong sort of reader for a book, and in the case of Gourmet Rhapsody, this is one of these instances.

In 2006, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, the second novel from French author and one-time philosophy teacher,  Muriel Barbery became a phenomenal success.  The book hit the top of the French sales charts and was subsequently translated into twenty languages. A film adaptation (Le Herisson) was released in France this summer, and in September 2009 Europa Editions published Gourmet Rhapsody, an earlier book by the same author. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which is a good novel, by the way, is told through alternating viewpoints of the building’s middle-aged concierge and a precocious child. I would have much preferred the novel if it stuck with the concierge, but that’s another story…..

Gourmet Rhapsody has the same sort of format as The Elegance of the Hedgehog–very short chapters told through multiple points of view. The story takes place in a posh Parisian building–the same setting as The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Anyway, in Gourmet Rhapsody one of the building’s residents, “the greatest food critic in the world” Monsieur Pierre Arthens is dying, and he’s been told that he only has 48 hours to live:

“After decades of grub, deluges of wine and alcohol of every sort, after a life spent in butter, cream, sauce, and oil in constant, knowingly orchestrated  and meticulously cajoled success, my trustiest right-hand men, Sir Liver and his associate Stomach, are doing marvellously well and it is my heart  that is giving out. I am dying of cardiac insufficiency. What a bitter pill! So often have I reproached others for a lack of heart in their cuisine, in their art, that never for a moment did I think that I might be the one lacking therein, this heart now betraying me so brutally, with scarcely concealed disdain, so quickly has the blade been sharpened…”

 Bed bound, Arthens is fixated on a single taste. He’s spent his adult life stuffing himself with food and writing about it for a living, but here, facing death, he’s tormented by the idea of a taste that he is unable to put a name to. Arthens believes that “this particular flavour is the first and ultimate truth of [his] entire life,” that it is a “flavour from childhood or adolescence” and that if he can remember the taste and experience it one more time, he will die a happy man. It’s impossible, of course, to read about this dilemma without recalling Proust, and indeed at one point Arthens directly refers to Proust and his famous Madeleines.

The problem is that Arthens cannot remember the taste he longs for, and many of the book’s short chapters are devoted to memories of a life spent with food. Arthens isn’t a very nice man. He’s loathed by competitors and most of his family members while his wife, neglected for a great deal of their married life, adores and worships the man to the point of irrationality. Several of the chapters end with the thought that Arthens should hurry up and die.

The chapters told by Arthens dominate this novella, and pages are spent on his descriptions of various feasts he’s consumed, and he can remember details of extensive menus with terrifying precision:

“Menu. 1982. A Royal of Sea Urchin with Sansho, saddle of  hare, rabbit kidneys and liver with winkles. Buckwheat pancake. 1979: Cod in an agria macaire; violet maco from the Midi; plump Gillardeau oysters and grilled foie gras. Mackeral bouillon laced with leeks. 1989: Thick chunks of turbot cooked in a casserole with aromatic herbs, deglazed with home-made cider. Quarters of Comice pears with cucumber greens. 1996: Pastis of Gauther pigeon with mace, dried fruit and foie gras with radishes. 1988: Madeleines with Tonka beans.”

Other passages linger on the sensation of food in the mouth–the physical sensations of mastication, the explosion of flavour, and “taste buds already subjugated by the virile rigor of [the] meat.” While the author shows great skill in the endless descriptions of food (at one point spending about a page describing the pleasures of eating sashimi), unfortunately I do not relate at all to the subject matter. Most of the descriptions of food were wasted on me as so many things Arthens consumed sounded revolting, and others are, well, unconscionable  (rabbit kidneys and foie gras!).

The novel, however, is not without its humour. Arthens approaches food as many seducers would approach a conquest–each meal is an encounter, full of rituals, and Arthens lingers over every sensation, anticipating flavours as one might anticipate an orgasm. The best part of the book is the memory of a trip to America. I anticipated Arthens being appalled by McDonald’s and I eagerly read the chapter when he went for his first American meal. The author ambushed me with the food critic’s reaction to a gargantuan American breakfast.

For anyone on some sort of diet–either restricted or reducing, Gourmet Rhapsody may be the book that sends you off the wagon. But I’m not that mesmerised by food, and so I remained rather unengaged by the story or its characters. These detailed descriptions of food are wasted on me; I eat rice cakes precisely because they taste like cardboard.

In a Dark Wood by Amanda Craig

I’m not a professional writer, so I don’t know what it feels like to write a novel and agonize over every word, each chapter, and the final product. One thing that I wonder about though is just how much attention some authors put into the first few pages. I’ve noticed that Hard Case Crime  titles, for example tend to be page one attention grabbers. And this brings me to Amanda Craig’s novel In a Dark Wood. The novel successfully grabbed my attention with its opening passages, and from that moment I was committed to the end. This was the first Craig novel for me, so I had no idea what to expect. I don’t want to give away too much of the book’s plot, but I will say that the author led me down the garden path, and I throughly enjoyed every minute of it.

The story is told through the eyes of Benedick Hunter, an unemployed actor who is on the brink of middle age. His wife, successful author Georgina, has taken the children and moved in with her lover. When the book begins, Benedick has sold the family home and is packing to leave. He is engaged in the gruesome, depressing  task of separating his books from those that belong to Georgina. This is a perfect passage that will be fully understood by readers who’ve ever had to break up personal libraries. Books collected over the years represent a life spent together and to separate books into two piles feels like an amputation:

“I was trying to separate my possessions from those of my wife, Georgina. A biography in books, this is why some people scan your shelves, in the manner of a Roman seer gazing at entrails. There were duplicate editions of T.S. Eliot and Shakespeare, of Beckett, Pinter and Joyce. My own copies of Conrad, Dostoevsky, and Waugh jumbled up with her Austen, George Eliot and the Brontes–the male versus the female canon. The plays I had been in, with my parts underlined in lurid orange. Her university texts, with notes scribbled in pencil or biro. Then single volumes, signifying union: paperbacks stained with the oils of lost summers, whose cracked spines still released cascades of fine sand or faded blades of pale grass: hardbacks generously inscribed to mark birthdays or Christmas, passed from one to the other at bedtime as a preliminary to love; bound proofs of new books, battered ghosts of old ones. All of these, left for me to divide and put into boxes. She had taken the children’s books , as she had taken the children. We had been separated now for over a year, and were getting divorced.”

Sifting through the books, Benedick comes across North of Nowhere, one of several books of fairy tales written by his long-deceased mother, Laura. Although most of Laura’s books are now out of print, she has become, in death, a “minor cult figure” and a favourite with academics with a feminist bent. In spite of Laura’s slight celebrity, Benedick knows remarkably little about his mother. She committed suicide when he was a small child, and he has no memories of her whatsoever.

Following the sale of the house, Benedick moves in with Ruth, the mother of one of his long-time childhood friends. Benedick  indulges in days spent in self-pitying mode, and with a good amount of time on his hands, he begins to ask questions about his American mother. Those who knew Laura have only the sketchiest details of her life before she arrived in London. Benedick meets various people who were connected with his mother in some way, and their  memories evoke a different world–the world of 1960s London. But instead of finding answers, Benedick uncovers contrasting, fragmented memories of Laura. Some people loved her and considered her extremely talented; others disliked Laura, and instead of a solid image of Laura emerging, it seems that she was a complex woman no one really understood. Benedick’s father, the bombastic Howard, now remarried, doesn’t want to discuss his long dead wife, and squashes any discussion of the past.

As the novel develops, Benedick gradually unravels. Aggressively pursed by single, desperate women, unable to get another acting role, and pressured by Georgina to take the children, Benedick finds that instead of getting over the divorce, he’s much less able to cope. Turning increasingly to his mother’s stories,which are weaved into the plot,  he feels compelled to uncover the mystery of Laura’s death. 

Bitterly funny in spots, the peevish Benedick (called Dick Hunter by some), is too busy wallowing in self-pity to realise that he has a problem. Everything wrong in his life is someone else’s fault–from his failed auditions, and his feeble attempts at fatherhood,  to his soured marriage–someone else is  always to blame:

“Just before she left me, she had been writing a column about her life, in which I featured largely as a neurotic layabout who spent all our money on absurdities and left her to cope with the ensuing disaster.”

While on one level the book is the tale of one man’s disaster of a life, on another level, Craig effectively creates a subtle, dark,  and slightly twisted modern day fairy tale with Benedick as the unlikely, sometimes nasty protagonist whose quest is to uncover the truth about his mother. But that said, don’t underestimate this excellent novel….

Using the male-point-of-view, Craig very capably creates the world through Benedick’s eyes, and this is rather curious as in many ways Craig’s subject matter reminds me of Fay Weldon. Craig, however, is definitely a post-Weldon author. In A Dark Wood is reminiscent of the best of Weldon but without the between-the-sexes savagery and customary male bashing. While Benedick’s parents, Howard & Laura, could easily slip into the plot of a Weldon novel with its themes of infidelity, feminism, gender inequality, and the battles between the sexes,  Benedick is absolutely a post-Weldon, post-feminist creation– a man who’s overwhelmed by his children and who battles with a sense of failure while shamed by his wife’s success.