BOOKS READ FROM 1945, PART THREE

In this and the next post I will discuss books I read from "the other list." It is a list I compose myself based on all sorts of reasons known only to me. Perhaps someday a reader will figure out some of those reasons.

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, Little Brown and Company, 1945, 351 pp
I loved this book. Waugh is renowned for a caustic cynicism about England and English ways. I suppose he did appear that way amidst all the sweet sentimentality of that era's writing. To me, he seems modern and normal. (Am I a cynic?)

Here we have a family with inherited money and secrets. The father married a Roman Catholic and it all had a bad effect on the children. We have Oxford, then later the war. It was eerie to me how closely the story is approximated in Atonement, by Ian McEwan, which I read about a week before I read this novel. Even the setting of Brideshead, a country manor, seemed the same.

The "hero" gets involved with this family, especially a son, who is his best friend for a while, and a daughter, who is his lover for a while. It all ends sadly and even becomes almost irrelevant because of war. The writing is exquisite and I cared deeply about every single character.


The Blood of Others, Simone de Beauvoir, Alfred A Knopf, 1945, 292 pp
Jean Blomart is the son of a successful French businessman, living in comfort. He turns his back on all that, feeling guilty. He becomes a worker, tries to gain benefits for workers and at last becomes part of the Resistance against the Germans during WWII. All along, he never really fits in because he is of the bourgeois class. And always he feels guilt, because no matter what he does, people get hurt and die.

Helene is one of those women that de Beauvoir does so well. Self-centered, impetuous, and all she wants is love. She makes Jean her lover, then gets interested in the Resistance, gets mortally wounded for the cause and dies. Jean has realizations, which after all his existentialist anguish, sound downright Christian. Good story. This is the book that made me decide I did not need to read Jean Paul Sartre, because de Beauvoir is relaying his philosophy in her novels.


Cannery Row, John Steinbeck, The Viking Press, 1945, 181 pp
I also loved this book. I don't know what it is about Steinbeck; he just nails the human condition and finds what is lovable about people.

I was familiar with the setting (Monterey, the canneries, Steinbeck's scientist friend Ed Ricketts) from the biography I am reading. I am following Steinbeck's life as I read his novels. The people in Cannery Row are the dregs and Doc (based on Ed) is their wise man, their philosopher. Here is humor, compassion, insight and a rejection of the "civilized" world with all its stress and pretensions. This book in particular reminded me of certain Billy Bob Thornton movies.

Steinbeck is another author who had bestsellers but the critics hated him, similar to Saroyan. He wasn't a happy man, but he was telling the truth as he saw it and that truth cut through to readers. That gives me hope.


Animal Farm, George Orwell, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1945, 157 pp
I was made to read this book at some point in school. I had no idea what it was about then. Now I know: it is a satire on Russian communism, especially Stalin and it is well done.

The characters are animals on a farm, who revolt against the farmer (the capitalist/ruler.) They play out the whole progression of a revolution until a certain pig becomes the new oppressor.

Somehow, all this rising up of workers and peasants began with the French revolution, at least in Europe. The only successful one really was the American Revolution and we are far from ideal. At some point, I will have to read the thinkers and philosophers behind all that. At this point I see that the hope of freedom and self-determinism remains alive but it is always foiled by the same old dramatizations of oppressor versus oppressed.


Judd Rankin's Daughter, Susan Glaspell, J B Lippincott Company, 1945, 254 pp
This was my least favorite of her books so far. It takes a long time to get going and there are pages and pages of the main character's inner thoughts while not much story happens.

Frances is the daughter of the title. She was raised in the Midwest, now lives on the East coast and is married to a writer. The death of a woman who had been a sort of sweetheart to Frances' father, starts the story. This woman was unusual, full of life and brought light and joy wherever she went.

World War II is going on. Frances' son comes back with a post-traumatic disorder and she does not know how to help him. Eventually, in a bumbling way, she helps everyone, so she carries on for the woman who died. By the end, I was hooked and forgave the author for the bad start.


Great Son, Edna Ferber, Doubleday Doran & Company, 1945, 281 pp
Great Son takes place in Seattle in the 1940s. Four generations of a family who helped make Seattle a city, are trying to understand each other. The family has oddities. One of the sons really came from a different mother than the one who raised him (and this other mother lives close by, is loved by the father still, but it is all kind of not dealt with.) The son is married to an actress who spends most of her time in New York. Their son is somehow wise and tolerant of all this and falls in love with a Jewish German refuge.

Improbable as hell and Ferber's writing is weak as usual. Plus the bombing of Pearl Harbor happens in the middle of a family get-together. But I finally see that this author is trying to understand and explain what makes America the way it is. OK.

BOOKS READ FROM 1949, PART THREE

Here begin reviews of the other books I read from 1949; books that I chose because of the author or because they are still good literature.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, Harcourt Brace and Company, 1949, 314 pp
This is the classic, chilling, effective portrait of life in a totalitarian society. It is all very controlled, no strong emotions are allowed, all is duty to the society. There are continuous wars occuring (how much like today), history has been officially "reinterpreted" and of course not a hint of dissent is permitted.

The main character works as a sort of civil servant. He has memories of the past and in fact is involved in his job as a cog in the wheel of the alteration of history. He has a love affair with a woman who is more subversive that he in her thoughts. (This is the book from which we got such expressions as Big Brother Is Watching You, thought police, double-think, etc.) They are found out, he is busted, tortured and brought back into line.

When I was young, we used to sort of joke about this book. Then 1984 came and went, duly noted but still not taken seriously. I am taking it seriously now. The invasion of privacy, the attempt to control thinking and demand a slavish attitude ("whoever is not with us is against us"), the continuous wars and the sense that there is some overall authority who is running all this without the consent of the people. Especially the carefully edited "news" of what is going on in the world. In Nineteen Eighty Four, the "proles" (meaning the lower class, uneducated, everyday people, whom I think of as the WalMart people) are left alone. This was also true in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. I found myself wondering if somewhere amongst these common people is the spirit that will save us.


The Fires of Spring, James A Michener, Random House Inc, 1949, 436 pp
I read this book back in 1998. It made a big impression on me. I have since gotten the idea that it is not thought of highly by some literary people. I don't care. From the first page, I never wanted to stop reading it. It is the story of the first 26 years of David Harper, a boy raised in a poorhouse near Philadelphia, PA, who grows up to be a writer. He comes across as a true hero.

The book is bursting with life, the characters and David himself are so appealing. It is a coming of age story, a tale of overcoming humble beginnings and I now know that it is fairly autobiographical and now realize that it was highly influenced by Charles Dickens. In fact, it hit me the way David Copperfield hit me. I am still reading Michener with pleasure.


Wise Blood, Flannery O'Conner, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1949, 232 pp
Here is the female Faulkner. I hope she wouldn't mind me calling her that. This is dark stuff, not for the unstable of mind, not for the easily depressed. It is a novel without hope.

The two main characters become what they abhor, especially Haze, a man who meets a terrible end. All the characters are highly disturbed and out of touch with other people. She shows how madness carries on from parents to children because the madness creates very bad parents. Also how overbearing, oppressive, fanatic Christian teaching can create madness, how loneliness can create madness.

I was highly impressed. When the dark side of humanity is portrayed with such powerful writing, we do not need horror novels or movies. It would be good though to have a workable plan to deal with this dark side. It would be fatal to ignore it or pretend it does not exist or let ourselves be lulled into thinking it can be electric shocked, lobotomized or drugged out of us.


Hunter's Horn, Harriette Arnow, Macmillan, 1949, 568 pp
I have read Arnow's most well known book, The Dollmaker, at least twice and will probably read it again when I get to 1954, when it was published. It is one of my favorite books of all time. I hadn't realized that she wrote anything else until I came across this novel in a used bookstore. What a powerful book! What a great writer.

Nunn Balew, a poor white Kentucky farmer, is obsessed with hunting a fox. He cannot win or get ahead as a farmer and has realized this and run out of hope. But he feels that if he can get that fox his life will change and he will somehow be able to build up his farm. He sacrifices the comfort and happiness of his wife and five children to do it. And he actually gets the fox and is able to establish his farm, yet loses the love of his family by not fully communicating to them.

The end of this novel is devastating. I doubt that I will ever forget it.


The Beginning and the End, Naguib Mafouz, Doubleday, 1949, 412 pp
Naguib Mafouz passed away just recently. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 and was one of the first authors to write novels in Arabic. He has written a long string of books which only began to be translated into English in the 1980s.

In this book, an Egyptian family in Cairo falls into poverty after the father dies and they lose his income. They were only barely middle-class when he was alive. The mother stoically keeps the family going and the daughter must go out and earn money as a seamstress, which is a source of dishonor for a woman in 1930s Egypt. Two of the sons finish school and assume positions; one in the ministry of education and the youngest in the military. A third son has always been a reprobate, but he finds income through unsavory connections with crime and drug dealing and is the one who puts up the money to get the other boys started in life.

All of the children have various love interests, but it is the middle son who sacrifices his own wants to help his younger brother and yet finally finds a wife, while all the others lives end in tragedy. The story is a study in the degrading effects of poverty on otherwise fairly normal people. Each one has a character trait that becomes emphasized all out of proportion by circumstances. In that respect, the novel becomes universal rather than only Egyptian.


The Godseeker, Sinclair Lewis, Random House Inc, 1949, 415 pp
This was a fine book and much better than I expected. Aaron Gadd is the son of the dour deacon of a Congregational church in a small New England town in the 1840s. The family also farms. Aaron is raised in an atmosphere of gloom and doom, sin and hell fire, coldness and cruelty. But he is an irrepressible lad, so he leaves home and becomes a successful carpenter in a nearby town. He has friends, he drinks and even has a lover. His upbringing haunts him though and at a Revival he gets the fervor to go out West and become a missionary to the Indians.

The West for Aaron becomes Minnesota and the story becomes a history of the settling of that state, complete with trappers, traders, missionaries, Indians and heavy weather. All of that is good, but the real story is about a young man finding his own beliefs about God, people, love, work and society. Aaron finds in himself a purpose to bring about understanding amongst all races. While he matures and faces the world as it really is, he keeps trying to do his part.

The characters are distinct, the story telling is masterful and the message comes through without much preaching. I don't know why these later novels of his are considered inferior to his early ones because I think they are excellent.

READING FOR MY LIFE: 1940

A couple months ago, I completed reading through my lists of books for the decade 1940-1949; the first stage of MY BIG FAT READING PROJECT (see earlier posts in the archives.) The project consists of reading the top ten bestsellers of each year plus a selected list of other books, with the purpose of getting an understanding of each year as portrayed in books, as well as to see how the literature and events of these years influenced me, my life, my search for truth, enlightenment and understanding about life. I was born in 1947, but I started reading the books of 1940 to get a feel for the times I was born into.

I have already learned more than could have imagined from this reading. I have found out more than I ever knew I didn't know about World War II. I have discovered how earnest and wholesome many people were in the 1940s; that Christianity made for bestsellers back then; that war and the Industrial Revolution, communism and socialism were beginning to erode all those values and to create chaos. It has been a fascinating study made through fiction.

In 1940, my parents were in college, finishing their junior year and starting their senior year. Here is some background on my family:

My ancestors on both sides are all German. My father's great-great-grandfather was born in 1775 in the Duchy of Brunswick, part of the German kingdom called Hanover. His family were farmers and had lived there for centuries. There is possibly some Swedish blood in the family and we certainly have a proportion of blonde-haired, blue-eyed family members. This ancestor of my father was a soldier from the age of 16 and although he was illiterate, he could speak six languages, including German, Dutch, Low German, some English and a little Swedish. He settled in Osnabruck (still in Hanover) and married a tenant farmer's daughter. They had 5 children, three of whom lived. The youngest of these was my father's great-grandfather who was named Balthasar Henry, but was known as Willie.

Willie became a spinner of flax and a tailor, but the cotton that was being imported from America took over from flax and put Willie out of business. In 1837, he sailed with many other German emigrants from the North Sea and arrived in Baltimore, MD on July 4. From there he walked to Pittsburgh, PA in ten days. Although he had intended to go to Cincinnati, OH, he was tired of walking and stayed in Pittsburgh. About six years later, after establishing himself as a tailor and opening his own shop, he married. He was 32 and his new wife was 22. They had three sons and three daughters. The youngest son, born August 3, 1854 and named William was my father's grandfather. He also became a tailor.

William married a preacher's daughter and had nine children, the eighth of which was my grandfather, Ernest August, born in 1892 and a third generation American. He married the daughter of a grocery store owner. Two of his brothers married my grandmother's sisters. Ernest and my grandmother lived in her childhood home at first, a tradition that would continue when my parents married and lived in my father's childhood home until my first sister was about to be born. My dad's parents were church-going Lutherans and heavy drinkers. My grandmother did not learn to drive until around the time I was born and I recall her riding the brake down the many hills of Pittsburgh. My grandfather was an accountant and went to work everyday on the streetcar, as did my father when I was an infant and toddler.

This side of my family had several ministers, some alcoholics and some who went insane. Both of my grandparents were alcoholics and my father probably was too, though he got sober in his late 50s and remained so to the end of his life. My father was highly intelligent, deeply spiritual and totally committed to the family. He died of Alzheimer's leading to pneumonia at the age of 84, but could still sing all the old hymns and Christmas carols as well as harmonize to anyone else's singing.

Less is known about my mother's family. She is still living and in her words, her family never talked about anything. Her ancestors were also German but there is little information that anyone remembers about when they came to this country. Her grandfather Charles, married Mathilda, who came to the United States when she was eight years old. These great-grandparents of mine lived in Fraser, Michigan, near Detroit. My grandfather on this side of the family, also named Charles, was born March 16, 1887. He had two brothers and one sister. At some point the family moved to Port Hope, Michigan, a small town in the thumb district right on Lake Michigan. Grandpa married Emma, one of seven children from a farming family near Port Hope. His sister married Howard Smith, a banker and co-owner of the hardware store in Port Hope. My grandfather eventually took over that hardware store and ran it until the Depression in the 1930s. After their first child was born in 1915, he and my grandmother bought a house on M25, facing Lake Michigan. We visited that house every summer of my childhood.

Grandpa worked all his life but he was at heart a musician, liked to play drums in local bands and to have a good time. He was always frustrated at working jobs that did not use his musical talents. My grandmother was a fearful woman who was terrified of storms, never drove a car and hated the telephone. She was a prolific gardener and an excellent cook but not much fun to be around. She had four children but was often in poor health due to a bad back, though she lived to be 93. My mother was the second child and when she was three years old, was sent to live with Aunt Lydia and Uncle Howard. Grandma was done in by the birth of my mom's sister and Aunt Lydia had lost her only daughter at the age of eight. Mom thought she was going for a week, but she never went back home to live, only to visit on weekends. After the hardware store failed in the Depression, times were tight and my mother used to tell us how she only had two dresses for school. She wore one for a week and the other for the next week. This story was usually told when I would clamor for new clothes. She did not get along well with her aunt, who was a bitter and critical woman, but she loved Uncle Howard, who recovered financially and paid for her college education.

Although my mother was a year older than my father, she skipped one grade during school and my father skipped two, so they both arrived as freshmen at Valparaiso University in Indiana in 1937. This was and still is a Lutheran school and my father was sent there on his parent's money supplemented by a scholarship from a Lutheran insurance company. He wrote for the university paper, drank heavily with fraternity brothers and sang in the choir. My mother majored in music education, studied organ and also sang in the choir, which is where they met.

In 1940, they were not yet a couple. Though the war was raging in Europe, it did not have much effect on college life. Germany took Norway, Denmark, Holland and France that year and were being bombed by England, but the United States was not yet involved. In fact there was quite a lot a sentiment in this country against having anything to do with Europe's troubles. President Roosevelt however was all for getting involved and there was a lot of stirring up about how democracy and the American way of life was at risk. Actually it probably was at that point and still is. By the end of the year, Roosevelt had pushed through Congress lots of money for armaments, started a draft to build up the military, exchanged destroyers with England and got us a bunch of naval bases all around Europe and Africa. He also got re-elected for a third term.

In the literature I read for 1940, there is a preponderance of books about war and the message is clearly that war is not a solution. I was mildly surprised at first to find the writers of fiction to be almost unanimously against war. There is also a strong religious theme in many of these books. God is alive and well in America of 1940. (For the list of books I read, see my post of October 30, 2005.)

Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, won the Pulitzer Prize. There were no Nobel prizes that year due to the war. In those days, those were the only big awards for literature.

In film, Gone With the Wind won Best Picture, Best Director (Victor Fleming) and Best Actress (Vivien Leigh). Goodbye Mr Chips, based on a book by James Hilton, won Best Actor (Robert Donat). Popular songs were: You Are My Sunshine, How High the Moon, When You Wish Upon A Star and Blueberry Hill.

Technological developments that year included the building of the cyclotron at the University of California, which allowed scientists to split atoms; the development of a form of penicillin practical for treating infection; the first combustion chamber for jet engines, the first electron microscope and the first successful helicopter flight. Whether they realized it or not, science was setting the stage for the most destructive war mankind had ever known.

What I see in the literature is a clinging to the old answers such as religion and family with the creeping in of decay, evil and breakdown. While the writers are not pro war, the readers want to be reassured that there is something to fight for and, as always, to be entertained. The people I came from were trying to get an education and better themselves, to rise above farming and blue collar professions, to keep the arts in their lives and to follow their religion. My father wanted to be a teacher and my mother a musician. They loved classical music and were both readers. For thinking men and women and for writers, it was a time of trying to come to terms with war, with struggles for freedom and equality and with finding a way to achieve the goals of mankind without mass killing.

When an individual wants power and is not himself in very good shape, he can go to the not-haves and rile them up and get them to fight for some better future life, because they have nothing to lose. Nor do they have the education or intelligence to see that they are being duped and merely used for the empowerment and enrichment of a few unscrupulous individuals. That has been going on for eons, but in the early 20th century the rise of communism and fascism was happening along with the beginnings of a new era of struggles for equality and independence amongst the downtrodden. I can see influences in the literature that could have led to my interest in the underdog, the unfortunate and the forgotten of the world. Of course, those ideas also came from my Christian upbringing, especially as taught to me by my parents, but I found that the poor, the immigrant, Blacks, Jews, women and basically all the oppressed were in the literature and minds of Americans in 1940.

The voices in these books are distinct even if they are from the same time. Richard Llewellyn is romantic, Christopher Morely ironic, Hemingway is earnest and even optimistic, Sholem Asch is dreary (of course he was also Polish), Kenneth Roberts is a bit stuffy and know-best and Steinbeck is downright spiritual. Yet all the books so far are about the plight of man and his dreams and how he adapts to change. The haves against the have-nots is a common theme as well as war. Also there are the able versus the not able, the trustworthy, hardworking types versus the riffraff, yet among the riffraff are those occasional creatures who are wily, adventurous and actually keep the others in tea and cakes or fight their battles for them.

The theme of change and what happens to those who can't deal with it is a major theme in my life, which I suppose began with the Industrial Revolution. As far as being American goes, I come from people who desired change, to whom the status quo was intolerable, who came to this country with hopes and dreams and who had the incredible work ethic necessary to make it in a new land and culture.

While reading a couple of the more frivolous books, I was thinking about how there was this terrible war going on in Europe, the Germans are just taking over countries and slaughtering people, while Americans are trying to pretend that it isn't happening and has nothing to do with them. They are buying and reading love stories while talking about how bad things are in Europe. It seemed incredible to me, but then I thought about how after 9/11, some award shows got cancelled and the Spider Man movie wasn't released because it had the Twin Towers in it and people were all upset and flying flags on their cars, but in just a few months they were mostly bored with it and the economy was going from bad to worse and really people were worried about money. The best sellers, such as The Nanny Diaries, which was a bunch of gossip about rich people, just kept selling.

I guess war is just unconfrontable. They sure have to do a lot of propaganda and PR and advertising to get people fired up enough to take an actual interest. At least that is what I have seen from reading history. A war is going on, maybe for years and years, but most people still go to work or farm or whatever and try to stay alive like they always do. If the war actually comes through where they live it is damn inconvenient, but life goes on. Babies get born and people have to eat and they always want some entertainment. Maybe there are scarcities and rationing but people make do and get by. Then when the war is over, the soldiers that didn't die come home and are shellshocked or hardened or Agent Oranged, but things go back to normal after a while and there is even usually some kind of economic boom.

When I was in college in the 60s and then after I dropped out and became a hippy, all I knew was that some guys went to Vietnam, some peoples' relatives got killed (no one I actually knew though) and we just protested and helped guys get out of the draft. Meanwhile we were learning macrobiotics and getting high and listening to our favorite music, while there were guys over there dying. I think we didn't feel we had to care about those guys because we knew you could get out of going if you even tried and we thought guys who went were stupid, straight Hawks and had no respect for them. To this day, I have never known personally anyone who fought in Vietnam. My ex-boyfriend enlisted, which we thought was the stupidest thing of all, because it meant you agreed with the war and believed all that hogwash about fighting communism.

It sounds really cold to me now and I wonder how I became such a cynic. I didn't really know much about history or what was really going on in Vietnam or how we got involved. I just knew that I thought war was wrong, that I was a pacifist and I just was not going to participate. I wonder how many people in the 40s felt that way until they got shamed into or excited into taking part in it. I bet there was heavy pressure to be "patriotic" and if you weren't something was weird about you, especially if you were German or Japanese. I wonder how my parents really felt about it.

My parents grew up with parents who had lived through World War I, either safely from here or who had friends and relatives who fought or who fought themselves. My parents were born just as that war ended and by the time they were young man and woman, there was another world war. And I was born just after that one was over. But really it wasn't talked about, it wasn't stressed. It was the space race and learning science to keep up with the Russians and Eisenhower and peace and prosperity; subdivisions and cars and money and getting ahead and cocktail parties. Mostly in my family it was church and giving money to the church and to unfortunate orphans and being good and staying away from disreputable people and being safe.

Maybe it worked. When I was in my 20s there was Vietnam and when I was in my 40s there was Desert Storm and now there is the "war on terror", but no more world wars, at least not yet. Maybe that atom bomb really did scare people enough. Now war is more localized and more covert and done with money and marketing and hostile takeovers. Still the poor get squeezed out and the rich stay rich and the middle class does all the work that isn't grunt work and on we go.

Doing the reading, it was at times extremely weird to be so much in another entire decade. The writers and readers of that time were somewhat obsessed with the coming war, the changes in society and how to make sense of it all, while in today's world we take all that for granted. The themes of independence, preserving a way of life that includes liberty and material plenty but at the same time the concern for the elements of society who are poor, suppressed, etc portray the beginnings of socialism and communism as almost acceptable instead of abhorrent ideas. It did not seem as polarized as it does today, but more like an awakening of consciousness to the whole world situation.

Patriotism and nationalism are concepts that have never done much for me. In fact, I feel a distaste for those ideas because they lead to war, to justifications of war and armaments and to an emphasis on the differences between segments of the human race. I suppose any country has its allies and enemies and has to figure out how to work harmoniously with the allies and how to defend itself against its enemies. But somehow between that decade when I was born and my young adult years, it got very muddled. By the time I went to college, I was against war, racism, imperialism, economic oppression. Of course, I don't think I was in the majority of American thought, but I am so curious to discover how I became so anti-establishment, so enamored of the hippy ideals of the brotherhood of man and so dedicated to ending war on this planet. As I continue this reading adventure, I plan to discover the answers to all that.

THE PRIME OF LIFE

The Prime of Life, Simone de Beauvoir, The World Publishing Company, 1962, 478 pp

CONTINUING MY EXPLORATION OF BEAUVOIR

Beauvoir's second volume of autobiography was first published in France in 1960. She begins with the opening months of her relationship with Jean Paul Sartre. The sense of freedom she enjoys as a graduated student, out of the family home, making her own living and having a lover at last, is palpable.

She describes the details of the life she and Sartre created: their vows to tell each other everything, their decision to grant each other complete freedom (including the freedom to have other lovers), and the setting of life-long goals to be writers who are engaged with the world and making a difference. All of this is as intoxicating as only life can be when you are in your early twenties and meet THE person with whom you are going to share it all.

Bouts of jealousy and insecurity follow swiftly when Sartre DOES indulge in other lovers. Due to the locations of their respective teaching jobs on the far outskirts of Paris, they are forced to be apart much of the time. Beauvoir's newly awakened sexuality takes her by surprise with its intensity.

But hardest of all for Simone are her years of learning to be a writer. She describes in detail the travails of writing and destroying two novels before she completed and sold her first, She Came to Stay.

Just as she finally found a way to sublimate her physical energies by hiking endless miles through mountains and plains as a voracious traveler with Sartre, with other lovers both male and female, and on her own, the war began to impact all of France. She covers the German invasion and occupation followed by the years of deprivation, danger and the Resistance.

During the war she completed her second novel, The Blood of Others, about a Resistance fighter and his struggles to leave behind his bourgeois background. Other than Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise and Arthur Koestler's Scum of the Earth, I had not read much about what WWII was like in France. Because Beauvoir was not Jewish, she escaped that danger, but she makes clear the horror and degradation of having to live under German occupation and of watching politicians and countrymen collaborating with the enemy.

The volume closes with the liberation of Paris bringing a burst of returned freedom and new hope. I enjoyed every page.


(The Prime of Life is out of print but can be found in libraries and from used booksellers.)

TETE A TETE

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Tete A Tete (The Tumultuous Lives & Loves of Simone de Beauvoir & Jean Paul Sartre), Hazel Rowley, HarperCollins Publishers, 2005, 353 pp

I have been abducted! The tale goes like this: Two years ago I read Beauvoir's incredible account of her investigations into womanhood: The Second Sex. I had already read her four novels: She Came to Stay, The Blood of Others, All Men Are Mortal, and The Mandarins. The novels were intriguing but The Second Sex tempered my feminism in ways that changed me forever.

Last month I acquired a copy of a memoir by Claude Lanzmann (The Patagonian Hare) with the agreement that I would review it for BookBrowse. How could I turn this book down after learning that Lanzmann was one of Beauvoir's lovers and in fact had lived with her from 1952 to 1959? Even though she was in an intimate relationship with Jean Paul Sartre from 1929 until his death in 1980, they never lived together.

My only problem was I knew nothing of Lanzmann. I had read Beauvoir's first volume of autobiography, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, but it ends in 1929 just as she first meets Sartre. I knew Beauvoir as a novelist, as a young girl up to her 20th year and as a feminist philosopher but not as a grown woman. It may seem odd to some but for me I could only approach the Lanzmann memoir from the world of Simone de Beauvoir.

I made myself a reading list. I already had Tete A Tete on my own book shelves so that went to the top of the list. Hazel Rowley was an accomplished biographer when she decided to tackle this dual biography. She published Christina Stead: A Biography in 1994, followed by Richard Wright: The Life and Times in 2001. Unlike Deirdre Bair, whose Beauvoir biography was published in 1990 and who had interviewed her subject many times between 1981 and 1986, Rowley worked from Beauvoir and Sartre's letters as well as interviews with their still living lovers and associates. (And isn't it amazing how many viewpoints it takes to encompass these larger than life figures?)

Tete A Tete is fascinating, addictive, and revealing. Rowley says, in the interview at the back of the Harper Perennial paperback edition, that she did not want to write another big fat doorstop of a book on this famous couple. "The answer, I realized, was selectivity. I had to trim my narrative with a sharp razor: sublime detail, but no superfluous detail."

She accomplished her goal beautifully. I tore through pages in which both of these passionate intellectuals came to life as persons with high ideals yet sometimes petty natures, who did their best to live by their ideals as they personified their natures. Beauvoir and Sartre, from the first hours of their relationship, vowed to tell each other everything and kept that vow for over 30 years.

All of Beauvoir's novels are fictionalized accounts of her own affairs: romantic, philosophical, and political. Her memoirs are partial revelations because she chose not to hurt anyone who was still alive when she wrote them. But in their letters, they told all, so that Hazel Rowely could tell us more, not excusing them but giving a picture of two hardworking, prolific public intellectuals who developed their views by living them.

By the end of the book, having been through all the relationships of both, the secrets, the lies, the passion and the heartbreaks, the highs and lows of career, the travel, disillusionment, aging, and death, I was weeping as uncontrollably as Beauvoir often did. But I was still hungry for more. I opened Beauvoir's second volume of memoirs, The Prime of Life and continued to read.


(Tete A Tete is available in hardcover, paperback or eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.
To find it at your nearest Indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

THE NIGHTINGALE

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The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah, St Martin's Press, 2015, 440 pp

 

 

Summary from Goodreads:
In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real--and deadly--consequences.

 

My Review:

Though this novel has been a huge bestseller and nearly everyone in the reading group I read it for was swooning in praise for it, I was underwhelmed. I would call it historical romance and in fact the author has been a romance writer for most of her career.

 

Dislikes: formulaic, somewhat manipulative emotionally, and a bit sketchy on the research.

 

I have read tons of WWII books, including novels that feature what it was like for the women at home. Most of them were better. And the ending? Please.

 

A big part of the story concerns the sister who took part in the resistance. No one has written better about the French resistance than Simone de Beauvoir, both in her 1945 novel The Blood of Others and in the second volume of her memoirs, The Prime of Life. She was there! She lived it personally, romantically with Sartre, and politically.

  

Liked: Because the writing was at approximately YA level, it was a fast read. I would not have wanted to spend any more time than I did (two days) reading this thing.

 

I also give her a nod for portraying the woman side of dealing with the Nazi rule in France.

 

Summary: An OK book for women who don't know much about WWII, particularly in France. All the Light We Cannot See is the better book because the writing is so superior.  

 

 

(The Nightingale is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) 

NIGHTWOODS

Nightwoods, Charles Frazier, Random House Inc, 2011, 259 pp

I love Charles Frazier. Cold Mountain, the novel, was amazing. Forget the movie. Thirteen Moons was under appreciated because Cold Mountain was so huge. He just gets to something in his characters that no one else does in quite the same way. Possibly it is a Southern thing but also it is just purely great writing from a guy who has the soul of a poet. Both of the previous novels were historical (Civil War and Trail of Tears) but I don't think it was from history that he derived his power as a writer but from the depth and breadth of his characterizations and his ability to bring the natural world surrounding those characters so vividly to life. Though Nightwoods takes place in the 1960s, he has lost none of that power.

Lit and Lola: Lit is that kind of soldier who never moves on. World War II and its grueling mix of boredom, discomfort and violence have never been matched since then for Lit, not to mention the quality of the drugs available. Lola is the teen bride and mother who would rather drink, party and fight with her husband than raise babies.

Luce and Lily: The daughters of these two, who were abandoned by their mother and neglected by their father; who grew up destined to be harmed by men.

Such potential caricatures of dysfunctional life take on roles suitable for a parable in the hands of Frazier. When Lily's husband Bud, a character straight out of Flannery O'Connor territory, kills her in cold blood, the state dumps Lily's fraternal twin youngsters on Luce. These kids have obvious signs of abuse, something to which Luce is no stranger. She herself is living practically like a hermit in a rundown former summer lodge as a nominal caretaker, wanting nothing more than to be left alone. When she learns that Bud has been acquitted of the murder, she knows such will not be her destiny.

Charles Frazier takes a good half of the novel setting this up but every few pages he drops in another startling fact. By the time it becomes clear that Bud is the psychopath bent on ruining Luce's entire family, I was so wrought up and unbalanced there was nothing left to do but read on, never knowing who would live and who would die.

The problem then was that Frazier's writing is so fine, it needs to be savored. These people are as unique as all human beings are; not one of them can be wholly admired or detested. The mountains, the weather, the flora, close around the story, as much a part of the tale as any other aspect. And those kids--my goodness.

The question in all of Charles Frazier's novels has to do with how our humanity to others can possibly survive when one insanely evil person can ruin it for everyone around him. Bud was made to go to church as a child, where his natural born criminal instincts left him open to the message that the sacred shedding of blood mattered above all else. The proffered answer in Nightwoods is that shared blood can redeem a lost soul now and then, but not always and not for good.


(Nightwoods is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG

 

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery, Europa Editions, 2006, 325 pp

If you are looking for plot, this is not the book for you. When you reach the end, you realize there was a plot, but it is deeply embedded in this novel of ideas, so you are not much aware of it as it is going by.

The main characters are somewhat artificially created and revealed through their first person musings on events which take place in an elegant Parisian apartment house (called hotel in French.) Both are pretending to be someone each is not while harboring much emotional distress. One is the concierge and one is the precocious daughter of a wealthy family in residence.

Yet somehow this novel has a certain je na sais quoi-very French-startling quality, which must explain why it has been a paperback bestseller for months and months. No less than three of the five reading groups I attend have chosen it this year.

I was reminded of the three Simone de Beauvoir novels I have read (She Came to Stay, The Blood of Others, All Men Are Mortal.) In American literature, a novel of ideas seldom becomes a bestseller, but in France such a style is more common, even when a stirring plot accompanies the philosophy.

If you enjoy ironic social critique, malapert young women, passionate passages about the value of art and literature, with a bit of tragedy and personal growth thrown in, I recommend you read Muriel Barbery's book. At the very least you will start noticing people around you whom you have simply passed by previously.

(The Elegance of the Hedgehog is available in paperback at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) 

THE CHILDREN ACT

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The Children Act, Ian McEwan, Nan A Talese, 2014, 240 pp

I liked this novel more than I expected to. It is about family, marriage, children, religion and the law. The title refers to a bit of English law: "When a court determines any question with respect to...the upbringing of a child...the child's welfare shall be the court's paramount consideration."

This piece of legislation from 1989 is a giant step towards civilization from the climate of British legal views on children in the days when Charles Dickens grew up. I kept finding myself thinking of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield as I read.

But the child in question here is only months away from turning 18. Because he was raised and protected from the world by devout Jehovah's Witnesses, he has a childlike view of life and the world. He is dying of a disease (was it leukemia? I don't recall) and could possibly be saved by a blood transfusion but his parents will not allow it as that would violate their religious beliefs. 

Fiona Maye, a middle aged, childless High Court judge in family court holds the power to decide what has become a legal battle between the parents and the hospital where the boy lies dying. Concurrent with the progression of the case is a horrific problem in Fiona's marriage.

In almost perfect prose with impeccable timing, the drama plays out. Each character is poised on some brink where passions and disappointments in life meet the person's capacity for making good and sensible judgements. Or you could call it an inner battle of maturity meets childishness. 

Of course, no one really ever wins in such battles. Life is not that simple and is in fact messy. Turning 18 or even 60 is no guarantee of maturity. McEwan keeps the reader captive on these brinks he created which makes for an incredibly good read. He does not judge, even while every character makes judgements and thus we see ourselves and others with increased empathy.

I read this for one of my reading groups and we had one of our best discussions ever.

(The Children Act is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

HALF-BLOOD BLUES

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Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan, Serpent's Tail, 2011, 319 pp

Some books I love while I am reading them but promptly forget once I am finished. Others are just so-so while I read but I think back on them with pleasure-usually because they end well. With Half-Blood Blues, it was all love, while reading and when I was finished. Now after several weeks have passed the story is still so vivid, I doubt I will ever forget it.

A group of Black American, White German, and one mixed race German musicians had a successful run as a jazz band in Berlin before World War II. They were decimated as a band by Hitler's ban on jazz after he declared it to be degenerate music made by Negroes and Jews. This novel is the story of what became of the them individually and as a group.

The writing is amazing, calling forth the life styles, the rivalries, the joys of making music, and the feel of jazz itself. Perhaps because I have spent my life surrounded by music and musicians, I fell easily into their triumphs and trials. Musicians are a special breed to me, each one being a unique combination of their artistry and a state of being "the other" to most remaining human beings. 

In this tale, hearts are broken, trust is betrayed, lives are lost, dreams die. I experienced every emotion known to man while reading it. Honestly, I don't know how the author did what she did. Esi Edugyan is one of a kind, just like her characters.

(Half-Blood Blues is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THIRTY SEVEN

Thirty Seven, Peter Stenson, Dzanc Books, 2018, 269 pp

 

Another debut novel from an indie press, sent to me as the February, 2019 Nervous Breakdown Book Club selection. It is a horror novel with an unique twist. Actually I don't know for sure if it is a unique twist because I have read very little in the horror genre. I listened to the interview with Peter Stenson on the Otherppl podcast and decided to try the book, with trepidation.

 

Mason Hues, adopted and abused by his adoptive father, ran away from that home and ended up in a cult called The Survivors. In the telling of his story he is an unreliable narrator due to being in denial about a terrible thing he did when he was 15.

While there is plenty of blood with horrible scenes, the book is also about how cults operate and how their leaders are messed up individuals trying to work out their own issues through the cult they created and through the power that gives them over others.

Though it is extremely well written, plot-wise and character-wise with near perfect language and tone, I don't recommend it for anyone but those who like horror or have a strong drive to understand the phenomenon of cults.

This may turn out to be my gateway to the genre. Perhaps I have grown up enough to be a bit more free of the fairy tales I was raised on about life and love and progress and achievement. Evil is alive and well in the world and it takes a lot of courage to confront that, to live a decent life in the face of it, to be able to find the balance between good and evil. Or to deal with the truth that the concept of good vs evil is just another crappy duality humans have devised to make sense of how random life can be.