Native Son, by Richard Wright

I read Native Son in college and remember being blown away by Wright's work. Some years later, my son read it and was somewhat less impressed than I had been (as a literary scholar, he tends to approach literature from a different perspective than I). I recently reread the book and find myself landing somewhere between my earlier enthusiasm and my son's critical perspective.

For those who have not read Native Son (or have forgotten the details), it is the story of Bigger Thomas, a 19-year-old African American living on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s. He, his mother, sister, and brother live in one rat-infested room. He spends his days hanging out with friends, drinking, masturbating in movie theaters, fighting, and plotting petty crimes. But a relief agency has arranged a job for him working for the wealthy white Dalton family that fancies itself a benefactor to black people.

He reluctantly goes to the job interview and is hired as a chauffeur. His very first night on the job, he is to drive Mary, the daughter of the family, to a lecture; instead, they pick up her Communist boyfriend Jan, who pressures Bigger to take them to a diner in his neighborhood and to eat at the table with him. Later, they share a bottle of rum with him and all three get somewhat drunk. Bigger finds their friendliness both frightening and infuriating. Upon returning to the family home, he has to help Mary to her room, where he sneaks a kiss from the essentially unconscious Mary. Then her mother (who is blind) enters her room, and Bigger panics, afraid Mary will say something to tell Mrs. Dalton that he is in the room. He puts a pillow over Mary's face to keep her quiet and the inevitable happens.

He disposes of Mary's body and tries to cast suspicion on Jan. Then he gets the idea to ask for ransom and involves his girlfriend in a ransom scheme. He makes a series of ridiculously bad decisions, and his crime is eventually uncovered. He is arrested and held for trial.

The last section of the book covers his time in jail and his trial; through conversations between Bigger and his Communist attorney Max (arranged by Jan) and through Jan's arguments, Wright presents his analysis of the problems of race and class in the United States, describing Bigger's crimes as his desperate attempt to have a meaningful life, a life denied him by the racism, hatred, and discrimination leveled against the working class generally and black Americans in particular. Max provides a stinging critique of white liberals and of America's tolerance for mob violence.

A young James Baldwin wrote disparagingly about Native Son, describing it as reinforcing stereotypes of African Americans, peopled with caricatures rather than characters, and a protest pamphlet masquerading as a novel. To some extent, I agree with these critiques upon my second reading of the novel. The characters are two-dimensional at best, Bigger is a character that few would want to represent their race (or species for that matter), and the last section of the book is essentially a polemic. And yet, I am reminded of my 20-year-old self, who found the book so insightful (okay, I was a bit of a naif, given that it was around 1970 when I read it) and can't help but hope that Native Son might continue to wake up young people to the injustice in our class system and race relations.

Favorite passages:

The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want to with us.

I beg you to recognize human life draped in a form and guise alien to ours, but springing from a soil plowed and sown by our own hands. I ask you to recognize laws and processes flowing from such a condition, understand them, seek to change them.

My Life in Middlemarch, by Rebecca Mead

English-born, New York-based journalist Rebecca Mead read Middlemarch for the first time as a teenager. Since then, she has reread it approximately every five years--safe to say, it is an important book to her. As she entered mid-life, she decided to write a book about the book and her relationship to it. She researched George Eliot's life, reading her diaries and correspondence, visiting places she had lived, and studying what critics and biographers had to say about her life and work. The resulting book is a blend of biography, critical reading of Middlemarch, and memoir.

From the reviews I had read, I expected My Life in Middlemarch to be primarily memoir, but in fact Mead's own life intrudes only occasionally and never for long. I enjoyed learning more about Eliot's unconventional life and the events that, in Mead's view, shaped her fiction. Her analysis of Middlemarch was more affirming than challenging--I wasn't surprised by any particularly wise reading of the book, but I was prompted to think more about some of the ideas embedded in Eliot's work. And I do feel motivated to read some of her other works, which Mead also touches upon.

I read somewhere that Mead hoped her book would be interesting to people who haven't read Middlemarch. I find that somewhat unlikely, although perhaps if they had read other Eliot works, Mead might provide the motivation they need to tackle Middlemarch. Those who have read that tome will, I think, find My Life in Middlemarch a good read.

Favorite passage:
Reading is sometimes thought of as a form of escapism, and it's a common turn of phrase to speak of getting lost in a book. But a book can also be where one finds oneself; and when a reader is grasped and held by a book, reading does not feel like an escape from life so much as it feels like an urgent, crucial dimension of life itself.

What is Novel Conversations reading?

Here's our slate of books for the upcoming months:

August--China Dolls, by Lisa See
September--Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
October--One Book One Broomfield selection
November--One Thousand White Women, by Jim Ferguson
December--sharing favorite books from childhood and/or best book of the year
January--The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Leaving Time, by Jodi Picoult

I find it hard to stop reading authors when I have "been with them" throughout their careers, even when their work has become tired/repetitive/etc. (I can do it, but it's a struggle.) Thus, I spent a good bit of yesterday reading this Jodi Picoult novel, which has many of the features of a standard Picoult novel: multiple narrators, a troubled family, and a current issue. The current issue in this case is the protection of elephants--from poachers in Africa and from zoos and circuses in the United States. The information about elephants is fascinating, especially the descriptions of their grieving, which happens to be the research focus of Alice Metcalf, the mother in the troubled family at the center of the story.

Alice disappeared 10 years ago, at the same time that another keeper at the family's private elephant refuge was killed; her husband has been in a mental hospital since. Their daughter Jenna, now 13, has decided to find her mother--or at least find out what happened to her. She enlists the help of a down-on-her-luck psychic and an alcoholic private investigator who had been a cop on her mother's case. The family story is fairly predictable until Picoult throws in a surprise near the end; normally, I like surprises, but because this one had to do with the woo-woo aspects of the story--in general, not my thing--I was quite unhappy. Once the secret was revealed, I could not help comparing the book to a popular movie of which it is quite derivative (I'm not naming the movie to avoid spoiling the book for others, although you might be able to guess--if so, sorry).

So did I like enough things about this book to say I'll read another Jodi Picoult? Perhaps--as long as it doesn't have a paranormal aspect!

Favorite passage:
In the wild we hear the pulsing, guttural musth rumbles of males--deep and low, puttering, what you might imagine if you drew a bow made of hormones against an instrument of anger.

Re Jane, by Patricia Park

Since I was never a big fan of Jane Eyre, it is perhaps surprising that I have in a fairly short span of time read two novels that are essentially retellings of that story. Half American and half Korean, Jane Re is an orphan who knows little about her parents, except that they disgraced her Korean family. Raised by her Korean aunt and uncle in Flushing, Jane is now a recent college graduate unable to find a job in finance. She is so anxious to get away from her uncle's oppressive household (not to mention his bodega Food, where she is expected to work until she finds a job), she signs on as an au pair in the Mazer-Farley household.

Beth Mazer is a college professor and not the most fun or flexible person around. She has prepared a voluminous "Primer" on the family and their practices that Jane must read in order not to make any mistakes in her care of Devin (like letting her have an Italian ice every day after school--gasp!). Beth takes Jane under her intellectual wing, assigning books for Jane to read and spending hours in her attic office (yes, the reference to the crazy wife is pretty obvious) lecturing Jane on feminist literary theories. Ed Farley is a high school teacher working on his dissertation, assigned one drawer in the refrigerator where he can keep the makings for sandwiches he makes for himself (and soon for Jane) every night after Beth and Devin are in bed.

The inevitable happens: Jane and Ed fall in love and Jane runs away to Korea where she learns the truth about her parents and almost marries a student in her English class. However, she eventually returns to New York, her best friend Nina, and Ed. To avoid spoiling the book, I won't reveal more.

Re Jane is essentially chick lit, but the cross-cultural aspect and the author's humor made it enjoyable nonetheless. The 9/11 element, on the other hand, seemed gratuitous. Still, a good beach read.


Favorite Passage:

I realized that was the internal logic of our family: Tear each other down before we step outside and face public humiliation.

Middlemarch, by George Eliot

I feel quite pleased with myself today as I finished listening to Middlemarch. Adding to my smugness is the fact that an old friend, a retired college English teacher, recently admitted she gave up on Middlemarch because there were too many characters (and the professor requiring the book died in the middle of the semester!). Making me feel slightly less self-satisfied is the fact that my son has been telling me to read the book for probably five years; I've had the book on my Kindle or iPad for that entire time and never read a word--only the availability of an audiobook got my going.

Middlemarch, set in the years from 1829-1832, does indeed have many characters and subplots, but four stories seem to have significance:

• Dorothea Brooke, a bright young woman who chooses to marry an older clergyman because she believes him to be an intellectual whose work she can help with. When, on her wedding trip, she discovers that he has no interest in her help, she is crushed. However, she meets a young man on that same trip, Will Ladislaw, with whom she falls in love; her husband jealously writes in his will that she cannot inherit his property should she marry Will after the husband's death. 
• Tertius Lydgate, a young doctor with dreams of advancing medicine. He marries the beautiful young Rosamund Vincy, but it is not a happy marriage. Nor does his practice go well; caught up in a scandal involving his wife's uncle, he eventually must leave Middlemarch to start over.
• Mary Garth and Fred Vincy are a young couple who love each other; Fred, however, is a ne'er-do-well who seems destined to end up in the church, the apparent sinecure for young men of decent breeding but no wealth or particular talent. Mary, however, says she will not marry him if he enters the church, posing the question: What else can Fred do?
• Nicholas Bulstrode, the afore-mentioned uncle of Rosamund and Fred, is the town banker. Although he puts forth a pious front, he has little empathy for others and has some serious bad behavior in his past. When a man from his past comes to Middlemarch, the resulting scandal has significant ripple effects.

Dorothea's story opens the book and when Eliot suddenly turns to another set of characters with little apparent relation to those who populate Dorothea's world, it is initially confusing--something like acclimating to a Robert Altman film. And, like one of those films, the stories of the diverse characters do eventually intertwine. These stories also reveal different facets of  Eliot's numerous themes; among the most significant of these are the restricted roles of women and the ways in which they respond to those restrictions, the nature of marriage, religion and its functions, the ways in which gossip and social class shape provincial life, and reform in various spheres.

The book is often quite funny, particularly when addressing the question of gender relations. To wit: "And, of course, men know best about everything, except what women know better" and "Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy." 

The third-person omniscient narrator also waxes philosophical with some regularity and many of these passages, which are in essence soliloquies from the author, are worthy of reflection (see Favorite Passages below for some truncated examples). While I could have done with fewer characters and even, perhaps, fewer chapters, I did find Middlemarch well worth the 25+ hours I invested in it (I listened to the Maureen O'Brien version at a slightly accelerated speed). 

Random Notes: The history of Middlemarch is interesting--it started out as two books, one about Dorothea and one about Lydgate. The two eventually were woven into one book that was published in eight parts published over the course of  a year. Published in 1872, the book was a historical novel, a fact often neglected or ignored. 

Favorite passages (too many to note--just a couple samples):

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts--not to hurt others.

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.

 

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, by Joshua Ferris

Paul O'Rourke is a dentist; he lives in Manhattan, loves the Boston Red Sox but resents the new fans who came to the team after their World Series victory in 2004, and is always searching for something that could be "everything." Damaged by his bipolar father's suicide, he longs to be part of a large close-knit family, like those of his one-time girlfriends (one family was Catholic, the other Jewish) but cannot commit to a relationship. He is an atheist prone to "Hitchensian rants" and treats the women who work for him horribly. In short, he's a sad human being.

Then Paul discovers that someone has created a website for his dental practice; his bio on the website includes strange quotations from a source called the Cantaveticles, apparently a sacred text of unknown origin. Soon, someone is posting comments under Dr. O'Rourke's name on a wide variety of websites. The posts claim O'Rourke is a descendent of the Ulms, ancient enemies of the Jews. Paul spends a great deal of his time on his "me machine" (smartphone) trying to figure out who has appropriated his online identity; eventually, he is drawn into a group of people who believe themselves to be descendents of the Ulms and who make a religion of doubt.

The book is an odd combination of funny (sometimes laugh-out-loud funny) and dull. I had read that the book was about identity theft, a topic I find interesting, but that is not how I would characterize it, which may have affected my response. I admit that whatever point Ferris is trying to make eludes me. For that reason and because the tedious parts of the novel (pretty much anything about the Ulms and religion, real or faux) outweighed the humor for me, I would not recommend To Rise Again at a Decent Hour.

Favorite passage

Baseball is the slow creation of something beautiful. it is the almost boringly paced accumulation of what seems slight or incidental into an opera of bracing suspense. . . . it's the drowsy metamorphosis of the dull into the indescribable.  [Somehow I suspect Ferris thinks this would also describe his novel, but the metamorphosis never quite happened for me.]