Favorite Fiction--2016

Some favorite works of fiction I read during 2016,

FIRST READS

Sarah Orne Jewett:
                  The Country of Pointed Firs
                   --my first reading of her masterpiece.  Why did I take so long to get to it?
                   --this is on my must reread list.

                   A Country Doctor
                   --this one is a bit weaker than the first, but still an excellent read. and better     
                      than 90% of the other works I've read this year.


Joseph Conrad:  Suspense
 --an unfinished novel set in the Napoleonic era.
 --a traveler gets involved with a plot of Napoleon's escape from Elba.

Ray Bradbury:         Farewell Summer

--the sequel to Dandelion Wine.  The tone is different in this one.  The boy resists growing up.

Graham Greene:    The Human Factor
--a spy novel.  The unmasking of a mole in the British secret service, told from the mole's point of view.

Nathaniel Hawthorne:: The Celestial Railroad and Other Stories
--a collection of some of Hawthorne's most well-known short works.
--decided to leave this in the First Reads grouping as there were several short stories that I hadn't read before.


Kazuo Ishiguro:   The Remains of the Day

--a great novel of repression and fear of commitment, set against the backdrop of WWII.   

--his master is a Nazi sympathizer and the butler refuses to go against his master for he  is the master.

REREADS:


Jane Austen:
                   Lady Susan/The Watsons/Sanditon
                   Northanger Abbey
                   Mansfield Park
                   Emma
                   Sense and Sensibility
                   Persuasion
                   Pride and Prejudice

--as always, great reading.  This was my fifth? sixth? who knows how many readings I've had of her works over the years.  They are just as good, if not better, the fifth? time around as the first.

A. Solzhenitsyn:   One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
--the title says it all--one day in a Soviet Union era gulag in Siberia, based loosely on his time there.  I like to pair this one with Dostoyevsky's The House of the Dead, his experiences in a Siberian prison camp during the reign of the Tsars.  Forced to make a choice, I would choose life there under the Tsars.  The treatment was cruel but  much more humane than under the commissars. 


Dostoyevsky:   "The Gambler"
--Dostoyevsky's great novella depicting the downfall of an gambling addict.
--great character study of numerous Russians traveling abroad. sometimes just for travel and sometimes to avoid debt collectors back home.  Comic figures trapped within a tragic story.


Evelyn Waugh:   Brideshead Revisited
--Flashback:  an English army officer finds his unit stationed  on one of the grand   
   estates and recognizes it as the one that had a great influence on him, beginning with
   his stay at Oxford.

--there's a great BBC TV adaptation of the book.  After watching it, I went out and 

   got the book.


Herman Melville:  “Benito Cereno”

--Melville's great novella regarding the slave trade and a very naive American ship captain.


Nikos Kazantzakis:   Freedom or Death

--his powerful novel set in Greece during the time of the Greek war for independence.
--as usual his characters come off the page at you.


Oscar Wilde:   The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray
--This is the first and censored version of Gray's novel.  To be honest, I can not see anything that
   would be more offensive than anything in the published version.  A classic example of changing
    tastes, I will includ this among the rereads for I have read this several times.


There were a number of enjoyable works that I read during the past year, but these are the ones that stand out.  While there  appears to be a large number of first reads, equal to the rereads, one should note that Bradbury, Greene, Hawthorne, and Conrad are all favorites of mine from way back when.  These are works by them that I've never read before.

Only two of the authors in the First Reads Section are new to me:  Kazuo Ishiguro and Sarah Orne Jewett and are now on my reread list.  Coincidentally, I read two books by both.  The other book by by Ishiguro will appear on my Favorite SF novels of 2016 list.


P.S.
Forgot to mention, but if you have questions about any of the authors or books, please ask.  I may not know the answer, but it's worth trying anyway.

Robert Silverberg: Downward to the Earth

Robert Silverberg
Downward to the Earth, Second Edition

Published in 1970, this one somehow escaped me at that time. It's one of his best.  It's the tale of a man, Edmund Gunderson,  who returns to the planet where he was a colonial supervisor when the earth government decided the local species was intelligent. Therefore, the Company (always an evil company here) had to leave the planet.

Gunderson has several reasons for his return. One is that he feels guilty for his mistreatment of the nildoror, the sentient indigenous inhabitants who look a lot like elephants, and there's more to them than their size. Another is his interest in the rumors that the nildoror undergo a rebirth at some time during their life span, and he wishes to find out more about that.  In addition, he also plans on searching for friends of his, one of whom is Seena, whom Gunderson had been in love with.  Another is Kurtz, who also stayed behind.

In order to accomplish these tasks, he must travel alongside a river deep into the heart of the continent where few Earth people have gone, and perhaps into areas where no Earth people have ever gone.  Readers familiar with Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness will recognize a number of elements here.

One of these elements, of course, is the long journey into a jungle that is dark, dangerous, mysterious, and brooding.  A second is that one of the goals is to find Kurtz, which is the major reason for the journey in Heart of Darkness.  A third element involves the mistreatment of the indigenous population by a large corporation.  Another is the depiction of the nildoror which is far more sympathetic than the portrayal of the Earth people.  Yet one more is a scene in Chapter Two which faintly echoes an early scene from Heart of Darkness, and in both, the people have just left the ship (sea and space types) and are heading for the village.

The path widened to become a clearing.  Up ahead, one of the tourist women pointed into the bush; her husband shrugged and shook his head.  When Gunderson reached that place he saw what was bothering them.  Black shapes crouched beneath the trees, and dark figures were moving slowly to and fro.  They were barely visible in the shadows.

Those, we learn, are the Sulidoror.  Just who they are and what they are and what their relationship to the nildoror is remains another mystery Gunderson hopes to solve.

I also see some elements here that remind me of Dante's Divine Comedy, but it may be another example of my penchant for over-reading.  Most others in the discussion group didn't see it, so either it isn't there, or I did an inadequate job of pointing out what I saw.  

Gunderson's trip upriver, although he follows the river, but seldom travels on it, can be broken into three parts.  The first is hell, a hot, steaming jungle, populated by various dangerous beasts--death is everywhere.  I find this to be an echo of Dante's Inferno.

Once Gunderson escapes the jungle, he moves into the highlands which are much safer and the climate is more temperate. It is cooler, misty, with sparse vegetation.  There is little danger there, and it becomes a time for reflection and enlightenment, as he moves closer to the rumored land of rebirth. This suggests Dante's Purgatorio to me.  Gunderson has avoided death in the jungle and now is on his way to his ultimate goal.

The place of rebirth is the peak, the goal of Gunderson's journey, just as Paradiso, or heaven was Dante's goal, as it is for all Christians.  And, just as there is in the Christian tradition, there is the judgement which Gunderson must undergo at the time of rebirth. What one becomes is determined by the life one has led.

This is only a brief summary of the work, and I haven't mentioned anything about Gunderson's meeting with Kurtz nor about Gunderson's lost love who stayed behind with Kurtz.  

 It's a fascinating work, with an interesting introduction by Silverberg and with some very interesting aliens.  Those seeking this book should be careful and get the second edition.  The first edition does not include Silverberg's introduction nor the map of Gunderson's journey.

I definitely need to do a reread on this one.

Joseph Conrad: A SET OF SIX

short stories

"Gaspar Ruiz"
This story takes place in South America during the period when the colonies were struggling with Spain to gain their independence.  While many of the combatants had strong views for maintaining Spanish rule or for gaining their independence, numerous others were drafted or conscripted by either the Royal or by the republican forces.  It was pure chance in many cases which side one ended up with.

Gaspar Ruiz is the son of a poor farmer and had no political views.   A rebel contingent appeared one day, killed the guard dogs, stole some cattle, and persuaded Gasper to join them.  Shortly after he left, a royalist force appeared and finished the destruction of the farm.  In a subsequent battle, Ruiz was captured by the royalists.   He was given a musket and forced to the front of the attacking forces and was given the choice of firing his weapon or of being shot by a royalist officer.

Again he was captured--this time by the rebels.  Declared a traitor, he was sentenced to be shot with a number of others, but covered with the blood of others he manages to play dead.   Wounded, he finds a refuge with local royalists.   Because he feels the rebels treated him unfairly, he becomes an ardent royalist.  

"Gaspar Ruiz" is probably set before the time of Conrad's South American novel, Nostromo, in this story the colonies are fighting for independence while in the novel, countries have their own government but are regularly overthrown by various factions, some little better than bandit gangs.



"The Informer"  is set in the world of Conrad's novels of political espionage The Secret Agent  and Under Western Eyes , the world of anarchists, who are hiding out in England.  In fact, one of the group refers to the Professor who "was engaged in perfecting some new detonators." This could be the same professor in The Secret Agent who supplies Verloc with the bomb that had such tragic consequences for Verloc and his wife Winnie.  That Professor was also known to be obsessed with finding the perfect detonator.

A group of anarchists are located in a house in London on Hermione Street.  The European leadership has come to the conclusion that the Hermione St. group has been infiltrated by an informer.  They decide to gather together some comrades unknown to the Hermione St. group and pretend to be police conducting a raid.  In this way, they hope the informer would reveal himself. 


"The Brute"
This is the only sea tale in the collection.  The Brute of the title is a ship, a monster according to the tales told of it.  The setting is a classic for sea yarns: a small local pub,  on a rain-swept street, with three friends and a stranger in the parlour.  It's the stranger, of course, who provides the tale of the murderous ship, The Apse Family.  It was owned by the firm of Apse & Sons, shipowners.  All of their ships were named after family members. This one, representing the entire family, was to be the biggest and safest ship of the fleet.  Unfortunately, they went overboard and ended up with the biggest, heaviest, and clumsiest ship in their fleet, and murderous too.  During every journey, at least one sailor was killed.  While reading the story, one could almost believe that ship was fully conscious of what it was doing.


"An Anarchist"
This story is a classic example of how a chance encounter can determine the course of one's life.  "An Anarchist" is a story within a story.  The narrator meets the manager of a plantation on an island in a South American river and rents a room in order to conduct his research.  While there the narrator meets Paul, the engineer of the plantation's steam boat.  The manager insists Paul is an anarchist from Spain and has spread the word in the vicinity, thus ensuring Paul can't get work anywhere else.

The narrator's kindly treatment of Paul eventually leads Paul to tell his story.  He is French, not Spanish.  Shortly after serving his term in the French army, he gets a well-paying job as a mechanic.  At a dinner with friends one night, he invites several strangers at a nearby table to join them.  Paul becomes inflamed by their talk of the plight of the working man and drunk, he jumps up shouting "Vive l'anarchie" and "Death to the capitalists."  A riot breaks out and he is arrested, convicted, and sent to prison as an anarchist, a threat to France.  His life has changed irrevocably.

Two interesting characters are developed in this tale:  that of Paul "the anarchist"  and that of the manager of the plantation who is the type of a manager who will turn anyone into an anarchist or anti-capitalist.  Conrad has captured this employee of a large corporation perfectly:  he can justify any cruel act as being for the good of the company profit-and-loss statement, just as government operatives  justify their actions in the name of  "national security."


"The Duel"
"The Duel" is the longest story in the collection--perhaps closer to being a novella in length.  The story covers the events of over twenty years as an officer in the French army challenges another officer to a duel.  It began because of a misunderstanding and continued through the years as various attempts at holding the duel were either prevented by other events or ended unsatisfactorily.  Both officers were generals at the time the issue was finally resolved.  



"Il Conde"
Il conde  (the count), an aged nobleman,  suffering from rheumatism, finds that the climate at Naples is most salubrious for him, but, because of a chance encounter, he finds he must leave.  If he stays, he will be killed, and if he leaves, he will die, probably within a year.  The plot is minimal, barely a story, but the meticulous depiction of the count makes it well worth reading--actually more a portraiture than a story.

   "-- having conversed already in the morning I did not think I was intruding when in the evening, finding the dining-room very full, I proposed to share his little table.  Judging by the quiet urbanity of his consent he did not think so either.  His smile was very attractive.
   He dined in an evening waistcoat and a "smoking" (he called it so) with a black tie.  All this of very good cut, not new--just as these things should be.  He was, morning or evening, very correct in his dress.  I have no doubt that his whole existence had been correct, well ordered and conventional, undisturbed by startling events.  His white hair  brushed upwards off a lofty forehead gave him the air of an idealist, of an imaginative man.  His white moustache, heavy but carefully trimmed and arranged, was not unpleasantly tinted a golden yellow in the middle.  The faint scent of some very good perfume, and of good cigars (that last an odour quite remarkable to come upon in Italy) reached me across the table.  It was in his eyes that his age showed most.  They were a little weary with creased eyelids.  He must have been sixty or a couple of years more.  And he was communicative.  I would not go so far as to call it garrulous--but distinctly communicative."


I can picture him now, and his reactions to later events seem perfectly understandable when considering Conrad's outer and inner portrayal of him.

Overall comment:  Joseph Conrad is probably best known for his novels, but his short stories are just as good.  Highly recommended.

Joseph Conrad: An Outcast of the Islands

Joseph Conrad's An Outcast of the Islands is an excellent example of why we shouldn't  decide  to read a book based on the information given on the back cover.  We are told that "The theme of  An Outcast of the Islands is the enslavement and eventual destruction of a white man marooned by his own people on the shore of an Malayan island."  This reads as though Willems is a victim, rather than the cause of his own destruction.

When the novel opens, Willems is the confidential clerk at Hudig and Co. which was in the business of buying and selling, sometimes legitimate merchandise, and sometimes smuggling firearms, opium, and gunpowder.  He brags openly and frequently of his position for he is "boastfully and inordinately proud" of the confidence the owner of Hudig and C. had in him.  When we are told this in the first chapter, we should expect to see Willems headed for a fall  (as in "Pride goeth .  .  .)  Sadly, he has no idea of how quickly it will come.

"Willems walked on homeward weaving the splendid web of his future.  The road to greatness lay plainly before his eyes, straight and shining, without any obstacle the he could see.  He had stopped off the path of honesty, as he understood it, but he would soon regain it, never to leave it any more!  It was a very small matter.  He would soon put it right again.  Meantime his duty was not to be found out, and he trusted in his skill, in his luck, in his well-established reputation that would disarm suspicion if anybody dare to suspect.  But nobody would dare! True, he was conscious of a slight deterioration.  He had appropriated temporarily some of Hudig's money.  A deplorable necessity.  But he judged himself with the indulgence that should be extended to the weaknesses of genius.   He would make reparation and all would be as before;  nobody would be the loser for it, and he would go on unchecked toward the brilliant goal of his ambition.
Hudig's partner!"

However, a resentful subordinate at Hudig discovers Willems' embezzlement and loses no time in informing on him   Willems is fired and his wife and children immediately desert him.  He now has nothing--no fine position, no family, no glowing future, and no reputation, for who will hire a man who stole from his employer.  But Willems does have a guardian angel, one who saved him once long before.

Captain Tom Lindgard owner of a small trading vessel, once again comes to Willems' rescue.  Many years ago, Captain Lindgard had given the 17 year old Willems a job on his ship, the Flash.  Once aboard the Flash, Willems learned his trade from Captain Lindgard and became his most trusted subordinate.  Eventually he left and joined Hudig and Co., thus leading to his present disastrous situation.

Captain Lindgard takes Willems aboard once again and offers to take him to his secret trading post and let him work there.  Years ago, Lindgard had discovered a way to navigate a river on one of the islands, and once inland he established a trading post in a small community.  Since no one else knew the secret of maneuvering an ocean going vessel on that river,  he alone was able to deal with the inhabitants. Lindgard frequently found himself followed by his competitors, but he always managed to lose them before entering the river mouth.     

Once there, Willems finds that he can't get along with  Almayer, the trading post master.  He also becomes obsessed with Aissa, a young woman in the community.  She seems interested in him, but her interest is that he is a white man and therefore powerful.  In his present position, though, he is not very important.  Desperate,  he succumbs to the promises of one of Capt. Lindgard's competitors and betrays the secret of maneuvering a large ship up the river.  When Lindgard returns, he finds that he has lost control of the trading post and is, in fact, shut out completely.  He is naturally upset, but he is also a practical man.  It's time to move on, for this island and this trading post are not the entire world.

Willems, expecting a considerable financial reward and a place at the side of the competitor, gains neither the financial reward nor the coveted position.  After all, a man who betrayed his employer and also his benefactor and friend is not someone who can be trusted.  So, Willems comes to his end.  If he is a victim, he is the cause of his destruction.

An Outcast of the Islands  is Conrad's second novel and its success convinced him to go on writing.  His first novel, Almayer's Folly, actually takes place chronologically after Outcast, for Almayer is the major character in the first and an important though secondary character in Outcast. It is one of the novels in the "Lindgard trilogy" who, along with Marlow, is one of Conrad's significant recurring characters. Conrad describes Lindgard as follows:

Tom Lindgard was a master, a lover, a servant of the sea.  The sea took him young, fashioned him body and soul; gave him his fierce aspect, his loud voice, his fearless eyes, his stupidly guileless heart.  Generously it gave him his absurd faith in himself, his universal love of creation, his wide indulgence, his contemptuous severity, his straightforward simplicity of motive and honesty of aim.  .  .  .  Tom Lindgard grew rich on the sea and by the sea.  He loved it with the ardent affection of a lover, he made light of it with the assurance of perfect mastery, he feared it with the wise fear of a brave man, and he took liberties with it as a spoiled child might do with a paternal and good-natured ogre.  He was grateful to it,  with the gratitude of an honest heart.  His greatest pride lay in his profound conviction of its faithfulness--in the deep sense of his unerring knowledge of its treachery.

While The Rescue is Conrad's last novel, it is also the first in the Lingard series.  This is the story of Lingard's rescue of a yacht that is briefly mentioned in An Outcast of the Islands.  The chronological sequence of the three novels is, therefore,  The Rescue,  An Outcast of the Islands, and  Almayer's Folly.   An Outcast of the Islands is the only one of the three that I have read, so I've decided to read the series in the proper order.

I find Captain Lindgard an interesting character and also one who would be difficult to get along with daily, or at least I would, considering  his absurd faith in himself, his universal love of creation, his wide indulgence, his contemptuous severity, his straightforward simplicity of motive and honesty of aim.  He is a very paradoxical person. 

Along with the characters Willems and Lindgard and several others I haven't mentioned  (Aissa, who is Lindgard's obsession, and Babalatchi,  the obsequious and politically astute servant, counselor, and, above all, survivor) one of the strengths of the novel is Conrad's descriptions of the island itself--almost dreamlike in effect.  Conrad said in the introduction to one of his novels that  "My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is above all, to make you see."  Conrad's skill in describing the island surely is an excellent example of  how successful he could be.

This is not one of his best novels, but it is an excellent read. There are several well-defined characters and a very strong sense of place.  It doesn't have to be read in conjunction with the other two novels, and  though there are hints of the events of the first chronological novel in the series, they do not play any role in the novel..

Recommended for those who enjoyed exotic settings and an interesting depiction of a man unknowingly on a self-destructive path.

Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford: The Inheritors

Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford: The Inheritors

Conrad and Ford: this has to be one of the strangest collaborations in literary history. Henry James, who knew both, is supposed to have said that the collaboration was like "a bad dream . . . their traditions and their gifts are so dissimilar." At one point, Conrad even rented a farm house owned by Ford. I remember reading somewhere (unfortunately my memory can't come up with specifics) that Conrad had asked someone, perhaps Edward Garnett (who was a close friend of both) to recommend one whom he might work with to improve his English. Conrad's native tongue was Polish, and he later learned French while in the French merchant marine. Ford was recommended; so occurred a strange collaboration that eventually produced two novels and one novella and considerable influence in the writings of both from that point on.

The Inheritors is the first of their collaborations that was published, although Ford had begun work on Romance, which became their second published work. However, Conrad at that time was too busy with Heart of Darkness, so Ford put it aside and began work on "a topical political fantasy" which was eventually called The Inheritors.

The tale is a first person narrative told by Arthur Granger, a struggling young writer who is determined to write literature. However, he struggles to get published and when he is offered a chance to do a number of short political propaganda portraits, he accepts the work, even though he feels it is beneath him. But, in the real world, one needs money. In addition, he, and most importantly, others will see him in print, perhaps making it easier for him to get his serious work in print. One can see his high principles beginning to slip a bit for he now sees himself as part of the real world, that of high stakes politics and business.

He is on his way to do his first "portrait" when he meets a strange young woman who insists she comes from the Fourth Dimension. She and others from the Fourth Dimension have appeared in England with the express purpose of taking control of England and eventually of the world. He goes along with her tale, primarily because he finds her very attractive and eventually falls in love with her.

As Granger travels about, interviewing various important people for his series, he encounters her more often as she begins to insinuate herself in the upper levels of the British ruling class. In fact, she eventually identifies herself as Granger's sister, and besotted as he is, he doesn't deny it. He professes his love for her, but she remains distant, only occasionally meeting him, in order to maintain her control over him. He will be, as she frequently reminds him, useful to her in furthering her plans for domination.

And she is right; she hasn't misjudged her control over him as, at the end, he betrays his friends when he goes along with her plans to bring down the present government. Circumstances had placed him temporarily in control of a politically powerful newspaper, and he does not print an article which would bring all her planning to naught.

[As was pointed out by Anonymous in a comment, I have suffered a mental spasm and reversed the sequence of events. While temporarily in control of the newspaper, Granger allowed an article to be printed which furthered her plans and brought down the government, and incidentally removed his friends from power. ]

Two themes are present in the novel: one is clearly Ford's, for it appears in several of his novels, while the other reminds me of a theme that Conrad brought into a number of his works, but most especially in Heart of Darkness.

In several of Ford's novels, one can easily distinguish the theme of replacement or perhaps displacement of the English ruling class by outsiders. In Ford's tetralogy, Parade's End, set during WWI, Christopher Tietjens, at one point, notes that the ruling classes are doomed and will be replace eventually be technocrats. In The Good Soldier, John Dowell, the American, replaces Edward Ashburnham, the good soldier, at the end, when he takes over Ashburnham's country estate and the care of Ashburnham's ward. This theme of replacement is spelled out very clearly in The Rash Act when an impoverished American takes the place of a wealthy Englishman who has been killed in an auto accident.

In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Kurz is the head of a trading post. He is supposed to make a profit for the Company by bringing in ivory. But, Kurz also is expected, by many, to civilize the natives. This is the White Man's Burden--to bring the joys of civilization to the benighted and savage members of the human race. In various works, Conrad sarcastically brings up this issue and shows that it's really just an excuse to exploit them, that the whites are far more savage than those they are supposedly enlightening.

In The Inheritors, we learn of the Greenland Project, a project which will enlighten and civilize the Esquimaux. While some have called it exploitation, its founder, Duc de Mersch defends it by pointing out its obvious financial importance to the English, not to speak of "the moral aspect of the work--it was unnecessary. Progress, improvement, civilisation, a little less evil in the world--more light! It was our duty not to count the cost of humanising a lower race."

And later, we learn more about the progress of the Greenland Project: "They had taught the natives to use and to value sewing-machines and European costumes. So many hundred of English younger sons had gone to make their fortunes and, incidentally, to enlighten the Esquimaux--so many hundreds of French, of Germans, Greeks, Russians. All these lived and moved in harmony, employed, happy, free labourers, protected by the most rigid laws."

It is ironic that the failure of the supporters to gain backing by the English government that ultimately brings down the government and brings in those backed by Dimensionist faction, aided, of course, by Arthur Granger's betrayal. At the end, Granger is alone. He has betrayed his friends and she tells him that they must go their separate ways now: "you, yours, and I, mine." She no longer has any use for him.

I wouldn't call The Inheritors one of their best novels. It lacks the depth that I've become accustomed to from each of them. The issues are there, but they haven't been explored to any great degree. I suspect that the collaboration process is at fault here. However, I would recommend it for those interested in something different, something not quite Conrad and not quite Ford, but a little bit of both and a little bit of neither.

Joseph Conrad: December 3, 1857--August 3,1924

Joseph Conrad is a remarkable writer; his short stories and novels range from tales of the sea, to tales of spies and espionage, to a massive novel about South American politics. And always, the focus is on character--who are the people in these stories and what are they like? How does their character almost drive them into these situations and what do these situations bring out about them--the best in them? or the worst in them? or sometimes both?


excerpts from the first chapter of Heart of Darkness:

"The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

. . . . .

Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other's yarns--and even convictions. The Lawyer--the best of old fellows--had, because of his many years and many virtue, the only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol.

. . . . .

The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.

. . . . .

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman lighthouse, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway--a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

'And this also,' said Marlow suddenly, 'has been one of the dark places of the earth.'

He was the only one of us who still 'followed the sea.' The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them--the ship, and so is their country--the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine."

. . . . .

'I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago--the other day . . . Light came out of this river since--you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker--may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine--what d'ye call 'em--trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north . . . the very end of the earth . . . and going up this river with stores, or orders or what you like. Sandbanks, marshes, forests, savages--precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, . . . cold, fog , tempests, disease, exile , and death --death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. . .' "


Conrad's point is that the reactions of the Romans nineteen hundred years ago when they first came to England parallel those of the English and Europeans who now go to Africa. It's the perfect prologue to his tale of his river journey into the heart of darkness, at the center of which was a cultured and civilized European.

T. S. Eliot: September 26, 1888--January 4, 1965

T. S. Eliot--poet, playwright, and critic. He is a favorite of mine, and "The Hollow Men" is one of my favorite poems by him. At present, it's hard to see what Eliot's legacy will be, assuming that he isn't forgotten as the decades pass. Will his poetry be remembered and read by both the public and critics, or will he be read mostly by critics and English majors in class? Or perhaps, he will be remembered only by critics who will discuss his criticism in the future, and his poetry will be ignored, except perhaps as examples of poetry from the first half of the 20th century?

My first encounter with Eliot was at an early age, much too young to really appreciate the poem. In fact, it wasn't the poem but only the last stanza that I read, and I didn't know where it came from until years later. It was used as an epigraph for a SF short story, whose title and author I have long since forgotten. It is the epigraph, not the story, that has stayed with me through the decades.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

I read it in the '50s when the Cold War was at its hottest, and nuclear annihilation was one of the most common themes in SF (commonly dismissed as "escapist fiction"). This suggested another way for the world to end, one that was directly contradictory to the prevailing fears of the time--"Not with a bang but a whimper." I found this intriguing, and perhaps hopeful? It was not until perhaps the early '60s in an English Lit class when I discovered the source of the epigraph.


The poem itself has two epigraphs. One, "Mistah Kurtz--he dead" is from Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness. It occurs near the end of the novel, shortly after Kurtz has been taken aboard the river boat that has come upstream to investigate strange and frightening rumors that have circulated about his methods. Kurtz is at the "heart of darkness" or perhaps he himself may be the heart of darkness. Kurtz may have recognized this on his deathbed, when he utters his last words--"The horror...the horror."


Francis Ford Coppola, the director of Apocalypse Now, a film inspired? by Conrad's Heart of Darkness, recognizes the relationship between Eliot's poetry and Conrad's novel. Where Eliot echoes Conrad with the epigraph from Heart of Darkness, Coppola reverses the relationship when he has Kurtz quote several lines from Eliot's poetry in his conversations with Willard, the officer who has come to "terminate him with extreme prejudice."

I think Eliot wishes to tie in his formulation of the death of western civilization during the horrors of World War I with Kurtz, a highly civilized man and a paragon of humanitarian motives, who becomes far more savage than the "savages" he is supposed to be bringing the benefits of civilization to.

The second epigraph, "A penny for the Old Guy," comes from the traditions surrounding Guy Fawkes Day. English children (perhaps this tradition now has passed into oblivion) go about with straw effigies of the 17th century traitor Guy Fawkes and ask for pennies for fireworks which will be set off as the effigy is later hung and burned. Perhaps this is Eliot's brief commentary on the strange relationship between the innocence of children and the savagery of "civilized" law.

THE HOLLOW MEN

Mistah Kurtz--he dead

A penny for the Old Guy

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Any thoughts? Which would be worse--the world ending in a bang or a whimper?

Ford Madox Ford: December 17, 1873 – June 26, 1939

Born on this day in 1873 is one of my favorite novelists, Ford Madox Ford. His novel The Good Soldier is permanently installed in my top ten favorite novels list. His WWI tetralogy Parades End is one that I have read several times and will continue to reread regularly.

His importance or effect on English literature is not limited to the works he himself wrote. The following is a quote from the Wikipedia entry:

"In 1908, he founded The English Review, in which he published Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, John Galsworthy, and William Butler Yeats, and gave debuts to Wyndham Lewis, D. H. Lawrence, and Norman Douglas. In the 1920s, he founded The Transatlantic Review, a journal with great influence on modern literature. Staying with the artistic community in the Latin Quarter of Paris, France, he made friends with James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Jean Rhys, all of whom he would publish (Ford is the model for the character Braddocks in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises). In a later sojourn in the United States, he was involved with Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, Katherine Porter and Robert Lowell (who was then a student). Despite his deep Victorian roots, Ford was always a champion of new literature and literary experimentation."

His collaboration with Joseph Conrad produced two novels, Inheritance, a novel about aliens from another dimension who are gradually taking control of England, and Romance, a swashbuckling novel set mostly in the Caribbean and features pirates, buried treasure, damsels in distress, and last minute rescues. Apparently it was made into a film in 1927 under the title of The Road to Romance, starring Ramon Navarro. Ford and Conrad also collaborated on a shorter work, The Nature of a Crime, a work I believe neither could have written alone. In fact, Conrad later denied having even heard of the work and was convinced of his part in it only when Ford showed him drafts in Conrad's handwriting.

If you haven't read it yet, I would strongly recommend reading at least Ford's The Good Soldier. I would also recommend Parades End and various works by Conrad, including their collaborations.

Under Western Eyes: Conrad's moral dilemma

Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes is one of his three political novels, the others being The Secret Agent and Nostromo. The Secret Agent is based on a real event, an attempt to blow up the observatory at Greenwich, England, while Nostromo takes place during one of many revolutions in a mythical South American country. The focal point for all three is an attempt to eventually overthrow a government.

However, the three are quite different in concept. Nostromo concerns itself with events during an armed insurrection against a government, which is in power as the result of an earlier insurrection which overthrew the previous government and so on.

The Secret Agent, on the other hand, is set in England. A foreign government, which appears to be Russia, attempts to influence the English government to rescind its policy of being a safe haven for those suspected of terrorist acts against other governments. One of the foreign government's tactics is the use of an agent provocateur to encourage the terrorists to become active in England and thereby eliminate England's tolerance of them.

The third novel, Under Western Eyes, is a two part work. Part One is set in Tsarist Russia, while the Second Part takes place in Geneva, Switzerland, less than a decade prior to the Russian Revolution. The first part centers on a common theme found in many works. I'm sure most readers have encountered a story or a film in which one or more characters have been captured by the enemy and are faced with torture or execution unless they provide what information they have about their comrades.

I suspect that most people would argue that the individual should not give the information even though it meant torture or death, or at least hold out as long as possible. And, I think most would agree that this would be the ideal way for the individual to act, while also recognizing how easy it is to hold to this position when one is not in that position. In any case, the preferred behavior would be to withhold any information that would be harmful to one's cause, even if faced with torture or death.

Conrad, however, varies this theme in a way that makes it difficult, for me at least, to decide which is the appropriate action in this situation. The story is set in St. Petersburg, less than a decade before the Russian revolution. Razumov, the main character, is a student at the university in St. Petersburg. Conrad describes him as follows:

"In discussion he was easily swayed by argument and authority. With his younger compatriots he took the attitude of an inscrutable listener, a listener of the kind that hears you out intelligently and then - just changes the subject.

This sort of trick, which may arise either from intellectual insufficiency or from a imperfect trust in one's own convictions, procured for Mr. Razumov a reputation of profundity...By his comrades...Razumov...was looked upon as a strong nature - an altogether trustworthy man. This, in a country where an opinion may be a legal crime visited by death...meant that he was worthy of being trusted with forbidden opinions. He was liked also for his amiability and for his quiet readiness to oblige his comrades even at the cost of personal inconvenience."

It is this misconception of Razumov that leads almost inevitably to the events that follow. Razumov is seen as one who sympathizes with those opposed to the Tsarist regime and can be trusted. In truth, Razumov has no sympathy for the rebels and is simply one who wants to be left alone so he can finish his studies, gain his degree, and obtain a decent position, probably as a civil servant in that same government.

Although not a close friend, Victor Haldin is acquainted with Razumov and considers him an ally in his struggle against the government. Consequently, when Haldin and another assassinate a high ranking government minister, Haldin goes to Razumov's apartment. He asks Razumov to do two things: first is to allow him to stay there for a few hours and secondly, to contact the man who will help Haldin escape and give him information about when and where to meet later that night.

Razumov is appalled. Here is a man who has just killed a high-ranking government official, two servants of that official, and several innocent bystanders who had come to help after the first bomb had exploded and were killed or injured by the second bomb.

He sees only two possible courses of action: help Haldin or turn him in to the authorities, which would most certainly result in Haldin's execution.

Should he help him? This would certainly make him an accomplice in the death of several individuals. But, on the other hand, could he turn in someone he had known and who had come to him expecting his help? It wasn't his cause, but isn't this a betrayal?

Should he turn him in to the authorities? He didn't believe in Haldin's cause, so he wasn't betraying his comrades or the cause. Haldin had appeared on his own and not because Razumov had promised to help him. Razumov hadn't even been aware of the plot.

Haldin had murdered several people, some of whom were not guilty of being part of an oppressive government. Suppose Haldin had killed several people in the course of a robbery. Would that now make it more acceptable to inform the authorities? In both cases, innocent people had died. Was it more acceptable to kill them for a cause than for money?

There is something else to be considered. If Razumov helps Haldin escape and the government finds out, then Razumov will be considered an accomplice in the plot and most likely will be executed for something he not only wasn't involved in but actually was opposed to. On the other hand, if he goes to the government, they might wonder why Haldin came to him in the first place. Even if this doesn't happen, the government now becomes aware of Razumov, something which one definitely would not want to happen, especially if it's an oppressive government.

Razumov certainly seems to be doomed, whatever he does.

Highly recommended.