The following are books which were published in 1943 but were not on the top 10 bestseller list:
The Ministry of Fear, Graham Greene, The Viking Press, 1943, 233 pp
This is a complex story set in England during World War II. A man, who is already sad and guilty because he performed a mercy killing on his wife, gets caught up unwittingly in a spy ring. There are many twists and turns until he is free again, but it is a limited freedom.
Greene is addressing the conflicts between personal love and love of country; the effects of war on personal lives and the destructiveness of tyranny. It is well done.
The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Wallace Stegner, Doubleday and Company, Inc; 1943; 611 pp
I really liked this one. Bo Mason is an adventurer and a wild, speculator type who was born too late. All the frontiers were already opened, the booms had all peaked. He was raised by a violent father, so he left home at a young age looking for adventure and big money.
Elsa's Norwegian mother died when Elsa was young. Her father married Elsa's best friend. In disgust, she ran away to her uncle in South Dakota, where she met Bo. They married, had two boys and led a most unusual life. No stability, no respectabiltiy, and really no happiness, but Elsa stuck by Bo. After many failures in business, Bo ended up running liquor during Prohibition. By the end of the book, all of this odd family have lost their dreams and died, except the younger son. After burying the others, he takes on characteristics of each parent and decides to live on using the best of what he got from each.
It is a big, well-written book and I couldn't put it down. The main question here is what does a society do with pioneer types when the frontier is gone?
She Came to Stay, Simone deBeauvoir, The World Publishing Company, 1943, 404 pp
I had planned to read Beingness and Nothingness, by Jean Paul Sartre, since it was published in 1943. In fact, I tried to read it but did not get very far. Too dry, too many words, too convoluted for me. I am just a light weight who can only learn about the world through fiction. Well, not entirely, but anyway I discovered that Simone deBeauvoir, who was Sartre's lover for decades, put his philosophy into her novels. Good. So I am reading her novels.
She Came to Stay is a very strange story about love. Sartre and deBeauvoir believed in free love and did not believe in marriage. This caused many troubles in their relationship and I am pretty sure this novel is autobiographical. There are two women and a man. Francoise and Pierre are lovers (he is a writer and she is a director of plays.) Enter Xaviere, an actress. Francoise tries to love this woman, but Xaviere is quite incapable of love. Pierre also tries to love her. Francoise is continually trying to deal with her jealousy of the other two, so there is lots of emotional turmoil and drinking in French cafes.
But the bottom line is that Xaviere is insane. She is the poison person who disrupts every attempt by Francoise and Pierre to maintain an honest and open relationship. Often trying to love someone who is insane turns love into an obsession, which is what happens here.
The ending is a surprise and I won't give it away, except to say that Francoise is only able to free herself of jealousy by lowering her moral sense. I blame it all on Xaviere.
The Wide Net, Eudora Welty, Harcourt, Brace and Company; 1943; 214 pp
When I first began this reading project, I would read both the O Henry Prize Stories and the Best American Short Stories for each year. But I don't really like reading short stories and reading those volumes became a chore, so I dropped that idea. I did, however, come across a few authors whose novels I have since read. One of those was Eudora Welty. The Wide Net is her first collection of stories and I had read the title story in the 1942 O Henry collection. It is the best short story I have ever read.
A country woman pretends to run away after her husband stays out all night. The husband and his friends look everywhere for her and even drag the river, hence the title of the story. Later in the evening she shows up and has taught her husband a lesson and made him discover how much he loves her. The construction, the characters and the emotion are all perfect. No other story in this volume tops it.
The stories are mostly about young people dealing with love and loneliness and have a dreamy quality mixed in with nature. It is that southern, mystical thing and Welty is unique even within that tradition.
Bound For Glory, Woody Guthrie; EP Dutton & Co, Inc; 1943; 320 pp
This is Woody's classic story and though I've been a folksinger since the 60s, I had never read it. I did read Joe Klein's excellent biography, Woody Guthrie: A Life, several years ago so I knew the story of his life. Woody's account is more sketchy but much better. He is a great writer and has a sense of humor that is part country wisdom and part spiritual hugeness.
I was left wondering why it is that poor people are so much more generous and accepting of others than middleclass and rich people.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Sunday, March 19, 2006
BOOKS READ FROM 1943, PART TWO
Mrs Parkington, Louis Bromfield, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1943, 330 pp
This is much better than the earlier book I read by this author (Wild is the River) and is the #6 bestseller. The time is current but it is also the story of Mrs Parkington's life. At seventeen, she married the very rich industrial baron, Captain Parkington. They led a wild life, but now he is dead and all of her children and grandchildren have turned out badly.
There is a great-granddaughter who is all right, so at 84 years old, Mrs Parkington helps her get a good life set up. She then decides that it is the money that caused all the bad kids, makes a will that gives most of her fortune to help the less fortunate and sets off on a road trip to revisit her roots.
OK, it is hokey, but it was a good story told well.
The Apostle, Sholem Asch, GP Putnam's Sons, 1943, 754 pp
I made it through another one of Asch's books. This was #7 and along with The Robe and The Song of Bernadette, makes a heavy dose of religion and Christianity in the year that the United States entered World War II.
This is the story of Paul and of the very earliest spread of Christianity. The author follows the letters of Paul from the New Testament of the Bible and weaves the story around those letters. The most interesting aspect was Asch's portrayal of the conflicts Paul had with the Jewish high priests when he began converting Gentiles straight to Christianity without requiring them to become Jews first (which involves circumcision and following the dietary laws.) What an odd state of affairs. You can't become a Christian, which we don't approve of, without being a Jew first.
But there was way too much theology and by the end I was completely tired of reading about how glorious it is to suffer and how all the good stuff comes after death.
Hungry Hill, Daphne du Maurier, Doubleday, Doran and Co, Inc; 1943; 402 pp
Here is the #8 bestseller and du Maurier's 11th book. It is the story of four generations of an English family who had a copper mine which started in the 1820s. (The Industrial Revolution is a big fiction topic in the 40s.) It is also a story about progress vs country ways. It was well written and kept me engaged.
I realized that it was the rise of industry which changed life on this planet and led to both world wars as well as wars that are going on today. In the 1940s there was still a concern with the loss of a simpler kind of rural life; a big factor in this book. I got a sense of being in the stream of history as a generation. This was due in large part to du Maurier's skill as a writer.
The Forest and the Fort, Hervey Allen, Farrar & Rinehart, Inc; 1943; 344 pp
The #9 bestseller was great! One of my favorites of the year. Salathiel Albine was the son of a pioneer couple in the 1640s. The father was a blacksmith who fled from his Calvinist minister father in Connecticut with an Irish wife to the wilds of Pennsylvania. Both parents were killed by Indians, who took Salathiel and raised him. At the age of 17 or so, he left the Indians and became the valet of a Swiss captain who was a mercenary serving in the army of King George of England at Fort Pitt.
The British in those days wished to seal off the frontier at Pennsylvania to safeguard British colonists while driving all Indians westward. But many colonists wanted to push west and take more land. So here we have additional background to the Revolutionary War.
The book involves lots of battles, Indian attacks and political intrigue, but what made it so good was that Salathiel Albine is a great hero. There are at least two further books about Albine and the author had planned a series of ten volumes but died before he could write them.
The Song of Bernadette, Franz Werfel
I reviewed this in the 1942 list, when it was #1. In 1943 it stayed on the list but dropped to #10.
This is much better than the earlier book I read by this author (Wild is the River) and is the #6 bestseller. The time is current but it is also the story of Mrs Parkington's life. At seventeen, she married the very rich industrial baron, Captain Parkington. They led a wild life, but now he is dead and all of her children and grandchildren have turned out badly.
There is a great-granddaughter who is all right, so at 84 years old, Mrs Parkington helps her get a good life set up. She then decides that it is the money that caused all the bad kids, makes a will that gives most of her fortune to help the less fortunate and sets off on a road trip to revisit her roots.
OK, it is hokey, but it was a good story told well.
The Apostle, Sholem Asch, GP Putnam's Sons, 1943, 754 pp
I made it through another one of Asch's books. This was #7 and along with The Robe and The Song of Bernadette, makes a heavy dose of religion and Christianity in the year that the United States entered World War II.
This is the story of Paul and of the very earliest spread of Christianity. The author follows the letters of Paul from the New Testament of the Bible and weaves the story around those letters. The most interesting aspect was Asch's portrayal of the conflicts Paul had with the Jewish high priests when he began converting Gentiles straight to Christianity without requiring them to become Jews first (which involves circumcision and following the dietary laws.) What an odd state of affairs. You can't become a Christian, which we don't approve of, without being a Jew first.
But there was way too much theology and by the end I was completely tired of reading about how glorious it is to suffer and how all the good stuff comes after death.
Hungry Hill, Daphne du Maurier, Doubleday, Doran and Co, Inc; 1943; 402 pp
Here is the #8 bestseller and du Maurier's 11th book. It is the story of four generations of an English family who had a copper mine which started in the 1820s. (The Industrial Revolution is a big fiction topic in the 40s.) It is also a story about progress vs country ways. It was well written and kept me engaged.
I realized that it was the rise of industry which changed life on this planet and led to both world wars as well as wars that are going on today. In the 1940s there was still a concern with the loss of a simpler kind of rural life; a big factor in this book. I got a sense of being in the stream of history as a generation. This was due in large part to du Maurier's skill as a writer.
The Forest and the Fort, Hervey Allen, Farrar & Rinehart, Inc; 1943; 344 pp
The #9 bestseller was great! One of my favorites of the year. Salathiel Albine was the son of a pioneer couple in the 1640s. The father was a blacksmith who fled from his Calvinist minister father in Connecticut with an Irish wife to the wilds of Pennsylvania. Both parents were killed by Indians, who took Salathiel and raised him. At the age of 17 or so, he left the Indians and became the valet of a Swiss captain who was a mercenary serving in the army of King George of England at Fort Pitt.
The British in those days wished to seal off the frontier at Pennsylvania to safeguard British colonists while driving all Indians westward. But many colonists wanted to push west and take more land. So here we have additional background to the Revolutionary War.
The book involves lots of battles, Indian attacks and political intrigue, but what made it so good was that Salathiel Albine is a great hero. There are at least two further books about Albine and the author had planned a series of ten volumes but died before he could write them.
The Song of Bernadette, Franz Werfel
I reviewed this in the 1942 list, when it was #1. In 1943 it stayed on the list but dropped to #10.
Saturday, March 18, 2006
BOOKS READ FROM 1943, PART ONE
The Robe, Lloyd C Douglas
I reviewed this in the 1942 section, when it was #7 on the bestseller list. In 1943, it was the #1 book.
The Valley of Decision, Marcia Davenport, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942, 768 pp
The #2 book on the list is a long story covering four generations of a family in Pittsburgh, PA, who owned a steel mill. The main character is Mary Rafferty, a young Irish girl who comes to work as a maid for the Scott family. She and one of the Scott sons fall in love but they never marry because Mary feels their difference in class would be a detriment to any children they would have and therefore to the family. She stays on for years and years as a maid and housekeeper.
The premise of the story is that her determinism and vision keeps the family going and though many changes occur, including the rise of unions, and though sons and daughters are weak or stupid, finally a granddaughter picks up the legacy.
There is lots of patriotism and talk about using steel to help America fight her enemies, which was very timely for 1943. Despite all the foolishness it is a well told story and it mostly happens in the city of my birth and in the industry in which my father worked. As a child I had many tours of steel mills. It is also the most pro-war novel I've read so far in the 1940s.
So Little Time, John P Marquand; Little, Brown and Company; 1943; 595 pp
At #3 we have one of those New Yorker type novels. Philip Wilson came from humble beginnings, married a moneyed young woman and ended up working as a "play doctor." He had been a pilot in World War I and it is now the year before the United States enters World War II.
The title is the theme and Philip is haunted by several things: how he never wrote his own plays; how his wife doesn't really understand him; the fact that his older son may soon be in the army; and that his country may soon be in the war.
The book is probably an accurate depiction of how America was at that time-not wanting the war but watching England and France getting defeated by the Germans. Also, Marquand can really do the kind of dialogue that married couples do and he captures that middle-aged feeling that one is running out of time. He is a good writer.
I was struck by how repressed and conservative those times were. This feeling has been building in me through all of the novels of the 1940s. It was such a different time than it is now.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith, Harper, 1943, 420 pp
The #4 bestseller in 1943 is one of my all-time favorite books. I have read it four times and I will probably read it again someday. It is sentimental and unrealistically idealistic, but I love it. Francie, the main character, is growing up poor in Brooklyn, her father is an Irish drunk and her mother is a charwoman who supports the family. It is Francie who gave me the idea of reading all the fiction in the library from A to Z. I did that for years but never got out of the A's. There must have been fewer books in those days. It is the reading of one book a day on the fire-escape of her tenement building that leads Francie to a job as a proofreader and out of poverty.
What is amazing to me is how different are the things I get out of a book at different readings. When I was younger, I identified with how much Francie loved her father even though he was a loser. As a young mother, I identified with the mother as she let her kids have a cup of coffee with milk everyday, whether they drank it or not, just so they would get the feeling of richness in their bleak world. This time I saw how the fact that reading and education were stressed in that family made it possible for Francie to escape poverty.
The Human Comedy, William Saroyan; Harcourt, Brace & Co; 1943; 192 pp
Saroyan got #5 on the list this time. I was looking forward to this book because I'd heard so much about it. It was alright but not great. Saroyan has something I like: an innocence, a joi de vivre despite all the horrors of life. His characters have a humanity, an ability to grant beingness to others, not found very much in literature. But his writing is a bit off somehow. When he wants to state his philosophy or how he looks at things, he suddenly becomes prosaic and stilted. Perhaps it is his Armenian background.
In The Human Comedy, we are back in that small town in the San Joachim Valley with all its immigrants. There are a mother, three brothers and a sister in this family. The father is dead and one of the brothers is off fighting in World War II. Homer is fourteen and a telegraph delivery boy, learning about life through the joyous and sad telegraphs he has to deliver. It is a more serious book than My Name is Aram and another story about the impact of the war.
I reviewed this in the 1942 section, when it was #7 on the bestseller list. In 1943, it was the #1 book.
The Valley of Decision, Marcia Davenport, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942, 768 pp
The #2 book on the list is a long story covering four generations of a family in Pittsburgh, PA, who owned a steel mill. The main character is Mary Rafferty, a young Irish girl who comes to work as a maid for the Scott family. She and one of the Scott sons fall in love but they never marry because Mary feels their difference in class would be a detriment to any children they would have and therefore to the family. She stays on for years and years as a maid and housekeeper.
The premise of the story is that her determinism and vision keeps the family going and though many changes occur, including the rise of unions, and though sons and daughters are weak or stupid, finally a granddaughter picks up the legacy.
There is lots of patriotism and talk about using steel to help America fight her enemies, which was very timely for 1943. Despite all the foolishness it is a well told story and it mostly happens in the city of my birth and in the industry in which my father worked. As a child I had many tours of steel mills. It is also the most pro-war novel I've read so far in the 1940s.
So Little Time, John P Marquand; Little, Brown and Company; 1943; 595 pp
At #3 we have one of those New Yorker type novels. Philip Wilson came from humble beginnings, married a moneyed young woman and ended up working as a "play doctor." He had been a pilot in World War I and it is now the year before the United States enters World War II.
The title is the theme and Philip is haunted by several things: how he never wrote his own plays; how his wife doesn't really understand him; the fact that his older son may soon be in the army; and that his country may soon be in the war.
The book is probably an accurate depiction of how America was at that time-not wanting the war but watching England and France getting defeated by the Germans. Also, Marquand can really do the kind of dialogue that married couples do and he captures that middle-aged feeling that one is running out of time. He is a good writer.
I was struck by how repressed and conservative those times were. This feeling has been building in me through all of the novels of the 1940s. It was such a different time than it is now.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith, Harper, 1943, 420 pp
The #4 bestseller in 1943 is one of my all-time favorite books. I have read it four times and I will probably read it again someday. It is sentimental and unrealistically idealistic, but I love it. Francie, the main character, is growing up poor in Brooklyn, her father is an Irish drunk and her mother is a charwoman who supports the family. It is Francie who gave me the idea of reading all the fiction in the library from A to Z. I did that for years but never got out of the A's. There must have been fewer books in those days. It is the reading of one book a day on the fire-escape of her tenement building that leads Francie to a job as a proofreader and out of poverty.
What is amazing to me is how different are the things I get out of a book at different readings. When I was younger, I identified with how much Francie loved her father even though he was a loser. As a young mother, I identified with the mother as she let her kids have a cup of coffee with milk everyday, whether they drank it or not, just so they would get the feeling of richness in their bleak world. This time I saw how the fact that reading and education were stressed in that family made it possible for Francie to escape poverty.
The Human Comedy, William Saroyan; Harcourt, Brace & Co; 1943; 192 pp
Saroyan got #5 on the list this time. I was looking forward to this book because I'd heard so much about it. It was alright but not great. Saroyan has something I like: an innocence, a joi de vivre despite all the horrors of life. His characters have a humanity, an ability to grant beingness to others, not found very much in literature. But his writing is a bit off somehow. When he wants to state his philosophy or how he looks at things, he suddenly becomes prosaic and stilted. Perhaps it is his Armenian background.
In The Human Comedy, we are back in that small town in the San Joachim Valley with all its immigrants. There are a mother, three brothers and a sister in this family. The father is dead and one of the brothers is off fighting in World War II. Homer is fourteen and a telegraph delivery boy, learning about life through the joyous and sad telegraphs he has to deliver. It is a more serious book than My Name is Aram and another story about the impact of the war.
Friday, March 17, 2006
LOST HORIZON
Lost Horizon, James Hilton, William Morrow & Company, 1933, 241 pp
Here we have a bit of a classic which was also made into a movie starring Ronald Coleman and Jane Wyatt, and was the first book to be later published in paperback. I read it for one of my reading groups. I have read two other books by James Hilton for the 1940s reading, which you will hear about soon. He has a fascination with amnesia, it seems. I thought I had read Lost Horizon many years ago, but if so, I remembered very little. I did see the movie and perhaps that is what I was recalling.
As a story, the most powerful thing is the place: Shangri-La. Conway (a British foreign service officer), his junior officer, an American and a female missionary land in the Tibetan mountains after their plane appears to have been kidnapped. They are met by a Chinese man who leads them to a monastery hidden in a beautiful valley.
Shangri-La is like a New Age wonderland of the 1930s. No particular religion, no doctrine except that of moderation, no enforced discipline except that no one could ever leave without a guide through the mountains. There is a world class library, good food and drink, hotel quality quarters with modern plumbing and a nearby village complete with willing girls for any man's "needs." Because of the altitude or the local herbs or the lack of hurry and pressure, people age very slowly in Shangri-La, so have about 200 years to study anything they fancy, to pursue a hobby or contemplate existence.
All this appeals to Conway, who is basically a functioning shell-shock victim of World War I. It appeals to me as well and would to anyone who has had too much of the world. There is a head lama whose purpose is to preserve civilization through a predicted holocaust and dark ages, so that it is there for mankind in the future. (There is that same idea I found in The Dream of Scipio.)
Alas, Conway's junior officer wants nothing to do with what he sees as a drug-induced fantasy and a prison. He finally convinces Conway to leave with him, after contracting some porters to lead them out. You are left at the end of the book wondering why Conway agreed to leave and whether he ever made it back.
Like any purported paradise, one wonders if any such thing really exists or if it is just a dream some of us had. Personally, I like to create a paradise as a section of my own life, keep it somehow spiffed up and functioning, share it with people who would understand, while getting on with life.
Here we have a bit of a classic which was also made into a movie starring Ronald Coleman and Jane Wyatt, and was the first book to be later published in paperback. I read it for one of my reading groups. I have read two other books by James Hilton for the 1940s reading, which you will hear about soon. He has a fascination with amnesia, it seems. I thought I had read Lost Horizon many years ago, but if so, I remembered very little. I did see the movie and perhaps that is what I was recalling.
As a story, the most powerful thing is the place: Shangri-La. Conway (a British foreign service officer), his junior officer, an American and a female missionary land in the Tibetan mountains after their plane appears to have been kidnapped. They are met by a Chinese man who leads them to a monastery hidden in a beautiful valley.
Shangri-La is like a New Age wonderland of the 1930s. No particular religion, no doctrine except that of moderation, no enforced discipline except that no one could ever leave without a guide through the mountains. There is a world class library, good food and drink, hotel quality quarters with modern plumbing and a nearby village complete with willing girls for any man's "needs." Because of the altitude or the local herbs or the lack of hurry and pressure, people age very slowly in Shangri-La, so have about 200 years to study anything they fancy, to pursue a hobby or contemplate existence.
All this appeals to Conway, who is basically a functioning shell-shock victim of World War I. It appeals to me as well and would to anyone who has had too much of the world. There is a head lama whose purpose is to preserve civilization through a predicted holocaust and dark ages, so that it is there for mankind in the future. (There is that same idea I found in The Dream of Scipio.)
Alas, Conway's junior officer wants nothing to do with what he sees as a drug-induced fantasy and a prison. He finally convinces Conway to leave with him, after contracting some porters to lead them out. You are left at the end of the book wondering why Conway agreed to leave and whether he ever made it back.
Like any purported paradise, one wonders if any such thing really exists or if it is just a dream some of us had. Personally, I like to create a paradise as a section of my own life, keep it somehow spiffed up and functioning, share it with people who would understand, while getting on with life.
THE KNOW IT ALL
The Know It All, A J Jacobs, Simon & Schuster, 2004, 369pp
I first heard of this book last year when it was being reviewed everywhere, it seemed, and not too favorably. After a particularly snarky review in The New York Times Book Review, Mr Jacobs wrote a letter defending himself. I was so impressed by the letter that I decided to read the book. I really enjoyed it.
Jacobs, at the age of 35, determined to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z. His book is a memoir of the experience, which took him about a year, reading several hours a day while holding down his job as an editor at Esquire Magazine and being a good husband to his wife. Naturally, just the idea of this project appealed to me.
Each chapter is a letter of the alphabet. He comments on some of the entries read, on how the project works in his life and on what he is learning as well as its relationship to him and his life. His career has always been journalism, more precisely pop journalism, so he writes in that breezy, sound-bite style. He is also capable of being hilarious and I laughed out loud hundreds of times while reading.
AJ and his wife have been trying without success to conceive their first child, so that story is in there along with his competitive relationship with his father, his brother-in-law, and a few others to be the smartest person in the world. Then there are his field trips: he checks out Mensa, a group for high IQ people; visits the Britannica headquarters; interviews the MC of Jeopardy; etc.
It is all very entertaining and informative but the best part is his growth as a person and his development of a worldview, which is decidedly a step up from editor at Esquire.
I first heard of this book last year when it was being reviewed everywhere, it seemed, and not too favorably. After a particularly snarky review in The New York Times Book Review, Mr Jacobs wrote a letter defending himself. I was so impressed by the letter that I decided to read the book. I really enjoyed it.
Jacobs, at the age of 35, determined to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z. His book is a memoir of the experience, which took him about a year, reading several hours a day while holding down his job as an editor at Esquire Magazine and being a good husband to his wife. Naturally, just the idea of this project appealed to me.
Each chapter is a letter of the alphabet. He comments on some of the entries read, on how the project works in his life and on what he is learning as well as its relationship to him and his life. His career has always been journalism, more precisely pop journalism, so he writes in that breezy, sound-bite style. He is also capable of being hilarious and I laughed out loud hundreds of times while reading.
AJ and his wife have been trying without success to conceive their first child, so that story is in there along with his competitive relationship with his father, his brother-in-law, and a few others to be the smartest person in the world. Then there are his field trips: he checks out Mensa, a group for high IQ people; visits the Britannica headquarters; interviews the MC of Jeopardy; etc.
It is all very entertaining and informative but the best part is his growth as a person and his development of a worldview, which is decidedly a step up from editor at Esquire.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Lisa See, Random House, Inc, 2005, 253 pp
I have mostly been reading in the 1950s, still trying to finish up that year. Only 6 books to go! But I still get to some current stuff now and then. I have owned this book ever since it first came out last year. Lisa See is the daughter of Carolyn See, who wrote a wonderful book about the writing life, Making A Literary Life, Random House, 2002. I went to Carolyn's book signing in LA and got on her mailing list, which is how I first learned of Snow Flower. Now I have finally read it thanks to one of my reading groups, where it was a pick for March.
It is quite a story concerning women in 19th century China and a secret form of writing created by women and passed on only to women, which allows them to communicate their most intimate thoughts with each other. Lily is a five year old daughter in a fairly poor household when the story begins. Already she knows that she is worthless because she is a girl. The story is told by Lily from the vantage point of an 80 year old woman, who has lived longer than she ever expected to live. She is trying to expunge her guilt over things she did in her life.
Due to several propitious events, the young Lily married well and became the head woman of her husband's village, but she misused her good fortune and her power, deeply hurting the person she loved most in the world: her "old-same" Snow Flower. Lily and Snow Flower met when they were six years old, through the workings of a match maker. An "old-same" or laotong is another girl born on the same day and with similar astrological signs. The idea is that they will be life long friends and the relationship is sometimes the only love these women have, due to their lowly status, their arranged marriages and the customs of the times.
Lily and Snow Flower go through their footbinding at the same time. This was excruciating for me to read about. They are only seven years old (some girls went through this at age six), the binding actually breaks the bones in their feet, and the pain is extreme. I have a seven year old granddaughter and I kept imagining such a thing being done to her.
As the two friends grow, get promised to men, marry and have children, they spend time together during certain holidays and write to each other in the secret language on a fan, which they send back and forth. All the ceremonies and customs and foods were fascinating to learn about. "Catching Cool Breezes" is a euphemism for the hot season when the women sit quietly in their upper room and try to stay cool.
The events of the story and what happens to these two women is truly heartbreaking. For some reason though, the writing did not affect me emotionally, except for the footbinding stuff. My feelings about the book are mixed as a result. The writing is good, in fact very professional, but I should have cried over this tale and never once shed a tear.
I have mostly been reading in the 1950s, still trying to finish up that year. Only 6 books to go! But I still get to some current stuff now and then. I have owned this book ever since it first came out last year. Lisa See is the daughter of Carolyn See, who wrote a wonderful book about the writing life, Making A Literary Life, Random House, 2002. I went to Carolyn's book signing in LA and got on her mailing list, which is how I first learned of Snow Flower. Now I have finally read it thanks to one of my reading groups, where it was a pick for March.
It is quite a story concerning women in 19th century China and a secret form of writing created by women and passed on only to women, which allows them to communicate their most intimate thoughts with each other. Lily is a five year old daughter in a fairly poor household when the story begins. Already she knows that she is worthless because she is a girl. The story is told by Lily from the vantage point of an 80 year old woman, who has lived longer than she ever expected to live. She is trying to expunge her guilt over things she did in her life.
Due to several propitious events, the young Lily married well and became the head woman of her husband's village, but she misused her good fortune and her power, deeply hurting the person she loved most in the world: her "old-same" Snow Flower. Lily and Snow Flower met when they were six years old, through the workings of a match maker. An "old-same" or laotong is another girl born on the same day and with similar astrological signs. The idea is that they will be life long friends and the relationship is sometimes the only love these women have, due to their lowly status, their arranged marriages and the customs of the times.
Lily and Snow Flower go through their footbinding at the same time. This was excruciating for me to read about. They are only seven years old (some girls went through this at age six), the binding actually breaks the bones in their feet, and the pain is extreme. I have a seven year old granddaughter and I kept imagining such a thing being done to her.
As the two friends grow, get promised to men, marry and have children, they spend time together during certain holidays and write to each other in the secret language on a fan, which they send back and forth. All the ceremonies and customs and foods were fascinating to learn about. "Catching Cool Breezes" is a euphemism for the hot season when the women sit quietly in their upper room and try to stay cool.
The events of the story and what happens to these two women is truly heartbreaking. For some reason though, the writing did not affect me emotionally, except for the footbinding stuff. My feelings about the book are mixed as a result. The writing is good, in fact very professional, but I should have cried over this tale and never once shed a tear.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
READING FOR MY LIFE: 1942
As I look back on the reading I did for 1942 and the facts that I collected, it seems to me a bit of a stalled year. I will not be born yet for five years and although the United States is now officially in World War II, it takes almost an entire year for our country to truly mobilize and get our troops "over there" and get our war strategy going. In 1942, the Germans and the Japanese are enjoying most of the victories, while the Allies grimly hang on.
In the bestsellers, we have a saint, a missionary priest in China and the life of Jesus Christ for the religious angle. War is covered in only two but one of those books is about Japan invading China. There is just one truly historical fiction and three about American life so far in the 20th century. In the other books I read, again only two are about war.
In film, "How Green Was My Valley" won Best Picture and Best Director (John Ford); "Sergeant York", a war picture, won Best Actor (Gary Cooper); and "Suspicion", the famous Hitchcock classic, won Best Actress (Joan Fontaine). Popular songs included "White Christmas", "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" and "That Old Black Magic."
However there are signs of changes in the country due to the war. For one thing the munitions makers and the companies making tanks, ships and planes were doing a booming business, even if the owners of these concerns were bellyaching continuously about the income tax. As much as big business wanted to hate FDR, he sure was bringing them plenty of business. In science and technology, there were almost daily advances: Fermi split the atom, the first electronic brain was produced, recording tape was invented, the turbo-prop engine was developed and the first United States jet plane was tested. Also Henry Kaiser, whose Willys Motors made four-wheel-drive vehicles, adapted assembly line techniques to building ships. His 10,000 ton Liberty Ships were coming off the line in just four days.
In American life, the Supreme Court ruled Nevada divorces to be valid; another blow to family life. Japanese people living in California and other western states were rounded up and put into camps, lest they aid a Japanese invasion of US soil. Sugar, gasoline and coffee were now rationed. I understand about the gas, but from what I have read about the coffee that our soldiers had to drink while overseas, I wonder where all the coffee went.
My parents were engaged on July 4, 1942, but would not marry until 1944. They were discouraged from getting married by their parents, who felt you shouldn't get married in war time. This is another example of what a conservative and careful family I come from. When my dad's draft number was about to come up, he enlisted. Of course, he did not go overseas because of his bad vision and flat feet but was stationed in Philadelphia, PA, doing bookkeeping (what else?) and some kind of teaching.
My maternal uncles, Carlton and Jim, were already in the service. Carlton was drafted just after marrying my Aunt Phyllis and sent to the Caribbean. Uncle Jim was in the Navy and stationed in Alaska. Uncle Jerry was working at Ford Motor Company so was exempt because he was vital to the war effort. There were to be no war casualties in my family.
My mom continued teaching in Michigan, as male teachers at her school were being drafted and gas was a problem because of rationing. The teachers would save up their gas coupons and use them to get the sports teams to away games. How American is that? The rationing and her delayed marriage are about all my mom remembers about the impact of the war on her life.
As I was finishing the books, especially King's Row, Norma Ashe and Candle in the Wind, I was struck by how some of the strong interests I have had in life show up here. Mental health was for the first time becoming something doctors studied in the 1910s and 1920s (in Vienna, of course). So by the 1940s it was a hot topic. And amongst the writers was a look back at philosophy for answers to what makes man go to war and commit such atrocities. My parents were very opposed to psychiatry or psychology of any kind when I was growing up, but I was always curious about how the mind works, what makes people do the strange and irrational things they do and whether or not there was a way of curing mental illness.
Overall I am thrilled to be learning all this about the world I was born into this lifetime. Of course, as a child I had no idea and I was raised in a family and a socio-economic bracket where they did not want me to know. They were just glad the war was over. Although I am an anti-war person, I can now understand that once Hitler got going, there was nothing else to do but fight him, because his plans were not constructive and were a threat to freedom and democracy. In the overall history of the United States, it was in the country's destiny to take its place as a world power.
What I don't see is that we have learned very much about how to avert these major breakdowns where evil fascist types go nuts. I wonder how I would feel if I was in my twenties or thirties right now. I think for the average citizen, world events, economics, armed conflicts seem out of our hands. History has shown that while bravery, patriotism, common decency, religion, education and the arts have been effective in the short run, none of these things have been able to prevent war, destruction and suffering on a large scale. And long range planning? Boy, I can see in these novels that that went out somewhere between the first and second world wars. It just didn't seem realistic anymore.
By the time I finished the books for 1942, I started to become a little tired of the 1940s viewpoint. I thought of moving on, figuring that I had gotten what I was looking for from what I had read so far, but I decided to stick to the project. I had decided though that the world is not any worse off now than it ever has been. We seem to be in terrible treacherous times and heading for disaster at a mad rate, but I think that has always been true. It is just easier to see now because of the high-tech capabilities of the media. Everywhere I look on TV, the papers and magazines, it is all about marketing and selling material objects or about making people feel worried and afraid.
So my search for understanding at this point appears to be leading me to more confusion and hopelessness, but I think it is just a progression and I will come out of it with something. 1942 was the first year that the US was in WWII and the world was reeling with the horror of it. At this point, they didn't even know the whole of the horror. When I get to 1945 and the war is over, things will get happier and then we have the delirious 1950s when I was growing up, being prepared for absolutely nothing.
In 1943, I will get into some philosophy (Jean Paul Sartre) and I am reading Will Durant's Story of Philosophy to get some background. In Plato and Socrates, I found the basis for the idealism in Norma Ashe. I don't know that it does any good for me to learn all this stuff, but I am somehow uplifted by the knowledge. I am already so old and I wish I had paid attention or found it meaningful 30 years ago. Well, I didn't and I am learning it now. Hopefully I can do some good with it.
In the bestsellers, we have a saint, a missionary priest in China and the life of Jesus Christ for the religious angle. War is covered in only two but one of those books is about Japan invading China. There is just one truly historical fiction and three about American life so far in the 20th century. In the other books I read, again only two are about war.
In film, "How Green Was My Valley" won Best Picture and Best Director (John Ford); "Sergeant York", a war picture, won Best Actor (Gary Cooper); and "Suspicion", the famous Hitchcock classic, won Best Actress (Joan Fontaine). Popular songs included "White Christmas", "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" and "That Old Black Magic."
However there are signs of changes in the country due to the war. For one thing the munitions makers and the companies making tanks, ships and planes were doing a booming business, even if the owners of these concerns were bellyaching continuously about the income tax. As much as big business wanted to hate FDR, he sure was bringing them plenty of business. In science and technology, there were almost daily advances: Fermi split the atom, the first electronic brain was produced, recording tape was invented, the turbo-prop engine was developed and the first United States jet plane was tested. Also Henry Kaiser, whose Willys Motors made four-wheel-drive vehicles, adapted assembly line techniques to building ships. His 10,000 ton Liberty Ships were coming off the line in just four days.
In American life, the Supreme Court ruled Nevada divorces to be valid; another blow to family life. Japanese people living in California and other western states were rounded up and put into camps, lest they aid a Japanese invasion of US soil. Sugar, gasoline and coffee were now rationed. I understand about the gas, but from what I have read about the coffee that our soldiers had to drink while overseas, I wonder where all the coffee went.
My parents were engaged on July 4, 1942, but would not marry until 1944. They were discouraged from getting married by their parents, who felt you shouldn't get married in war time. This is another example of what a conservative and careful family I come from. When my dad's draft number was about to come up, he enlisted. Of course, he did not go overseas because of his bad vision and flat feet but was stationed in Philadelphia, PA, doing bookkeeping (what else?) and some kind of teaching.
My maternal uncles, Carlton and Jim, were already in the service. Carlton was drafted just after marrying my Aunt Phyllis and sent to the Caribbean. Uncle Jim was in the Navy and stationed in Alaska. Uncle Jerry was working at Ford Motor Company so was exempt because he was vital to the war effort. There were to be no war casualties in my family.
My mom continued teaching in Michigan, as male teachers at her school were being drafted and gas was a problem because of rationing. The teachers would save up their gas coupons and use them to get the sports teams to away games. How American is that? The rationing and her delayed marriage are about all my mom remembers about the impact of the war on her life.
As I was finishing the books, especially King's Row, Norma Ashe and Candle in the Wind, I was struck by how some of the strong interests I have had in life show up here. Mental health was for the first time becoming something doctors studied in the 1910s and 1920s (in Vienna, of course). So by the 1940s it was a hot topic. And amongst the writers was a look back at philosophy for answers to what makes man go to war and commit such atrocities. My parents were very opposed to psychiatry or psychology of any kind when I was growing up, but I was always curious about how the mind works, what makes people do the strange and irrational things they do and whether or not there was a way of curing mental illness.
Overall I am thrilled to be learning all this about the world I was born into this lifetime. Of course, as a child I had no idea and I was raised in a family and a socio-economic bracket where they did not want me to know. They were just glad the war was over. Although I am an anti-war person, I can now understand that once Hitler got going, there was nothing else to do but fight him, because his plans were not constructive and were a threat to freedom and democracy. In the overall history of the United States, it was in the country's destiny to take its place as a world power.
What I don't see is that we have learned very much about how to avert these major breakdowns where evil fascist types go nuts. I wonder how I would feel if I was in my twenties or thirties right now. I think for the average citizen, world events, economics, armed conflicts seem out of our hands. History has shown that while bravery, patriotism, common decency, religion, education and the arts have been effective in the short run, none of these things have been able to prevent war, destruction and suffering on a large scale. And long range planning? Boy, I can see in these novels that that went out somewhere between the first and second world wars. It just didn't seem realistic anymore.
By the time I finished the books for 1942, I started to become a little tired of the 1940s viewpoint. I thought of moving on, figuring that I had gotten what I was looking for from what I had read so far, but I decided to stick to the project. I had decided though that the world is not any worse off now than it ever has been. We seem to be in terrible treacherous times and heading for disaster at a mad rate, but I think that has always been true. It is just easier to see now because of the high-tech capabilities of the media. Everywhere I look on TV, the papers and magazines, it is all about marketing and selling material objects or about making people feel worried and afraid.
So my search for understanding at this point appears to be leading me to more confusion and hopelessness, but I think it is just a progression and I will come out of it with something. 1942 was the first year that the US was in WWII and the world was reeling with the horror of it. At this point, they didn't even know the whole of the horror. When I get to 1945 and the war is over, things will get happier and then we have the delirious 1950s when I was growing up, being prepared for absolutely nothing.
In 1943, I will get into some philosophy (Jean Paul Sartre) and I am reading Will Durant's Story of Philosophy to get some background. In Plato and Socrates, I found the basis for the idealism in Norma Ashe. I don't know that it does any good for me to learn all this stuff, but I am somehow uplifted by the knowledge. I am already so old and I wish I had paid attention or found it meaningful 30 years ago. Well, I didn't and I am learning it now. Hopefully I can do some good with it.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
BOOKS READ FROM 1942, PART FOUR
The High Window, Raymond Chandler, Alfred A Knopf, 1942, 265 pp
This is Chandler's next book after Farewell, My Lovely. It is good but lacking in the tension and danger in the earlier books. It is as if Chandler has become world-weary and just has a job to do as a writer. There is less biting sarcasm and Marlowe drinks less. But it is still a good mystery about a missing coin, a dark family secret and the usual tie-in between the rich and the underworld in Los Angeles.
Dragon's Teeth, Upton Sinclair, The Viking Press, 1942, 631 pp
Here is the third in the Lanny Budd series. Lanny moves on through his life. At the end of the last volume, Lanny had married an heiress named Irma. Dragon's Teeth starts with the birth of their daughter. The book is slow at first but then picks up and is good to the end. It covers the rise of Hitler and his persecution of the Jews; one of the first books I read in the 40s that addresses this subject. Lanny has been a friend of Johannes Robin, a Jew, for many years. The Robin family lives in Germany and real trouble besets them in this book. Lanny finally takes action and gets the whole family out of Germany, almost at the cost of his marriage. So the final section is full of danger, excitement and suspense. This series of books did not continue the fame Sinclair had in the 1930s for his muckraking book, although Dragon's Teeth did go on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1943. Ultimately there will be 10 volumes and it is the best education I've ever had about American and European history in the early 20th century.
Go Down, Moses, William Faulkner, Random House, 1942, 384 pp
This is a collection of related short stories and one novella, all of which take place in Faulkner's invented county. The stories move through time and generations and most of the characters are related, one set on a line of white descendants, one black. But of course the black is mixed with white and even Indian. It is a complex web of relationships: man to woman, white to black, master to slave/free negro.
Much of the book has to do with hunting in an area of shrinking wilderness. In his inimitable way, Faulkner deals with these relationships which also include man's relation to animals and places. He is trying to make sense of a place created by God, peopled by God, but essentially destroyed by people. Somehow, I found this volume the most accessible of all the Faulkner I've read so far.
Now for the prize winners:
Pulitzer Prize:
In This Our Life, Ellen Glasgow, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1941, 467 pp
I was looking forward to this book because I had loved Barren Ground, the earlier book by this author, and this one won the Pulitzer. It turned out to be an OK story but the writing was really bland.
Asa Timberlake is a middle-aged man in a bad marriage with a low paying job and two daughters approaching their twenties. He feels trapped and emasculated because they live off handouts from his wife's rich uncle. The daughters have all kinds of trouble with men. One of them is like Asa and one is selfish like Asa's wife. Much of the book is endless, bad dialogue about it all.
Finally in the end Asa stands up for what he thinks is right and you are left with a bit of hope for him and for the one daughter. The message is that most people are either weak or greedy; that the ones who are a little stronger take care of the weak at the expense of themselves. That would perhaps be a bearable message if the writing were better.
Newbery Medal
Adam of the Road, Elizabeth Janet Gray, The Viking Press, 1942, 317 pp
A very fine book. Adam is the son of Roger the Minstrel in England, 1294. During one year of his life, Adam is traveling on the road with Roger, their horse and their dog Nick, a red spaniel. They meet up with many adversities including losing the horse and Nick. An evil minstrel won the horse off of Roger, who has an unfortunate gambling habit. After riding the horse until he is lame, the evil minstrel then steals the dog.
Adam, in running down his beloved spaniel, gets separated from his father and has more adventures before they are all reunited. Adam is eleven years old and has the attributes of a boy that age but he is also brave and determined: a budding hero.
I thrilled to life on the road and the minstrel's craft, having done some touring myself as a singer/songwriter. I loved this quote, spoken by Roger the Minstrel: "A road's a kind of holy thing. That's why it is a good work to keep a road in repair, like giving alms to the poor or tending the sick. It's open to the sun and wind and rain. It brings all kinds of people and all parts of England together. And it's home to a minstrel, even though he may happen to be sleeping in a castle."
Caldecott Medal
The Little House, Virginia Lee Burton, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, 40 pp
This is the story of a house, which is built in the country by a man who wants it to stay in the family for generations to come. The house enjoys the seasons but wonders what the city is like. Eventually the city grows and encroaches on the country until the little house is surrounded by the city, abandoned and run down.
Finally a great-granddaughter comes along, has the house moved out into the country again, restores it and lives there. The message that the country is better than the city is a nostalgic theme in the 1940s. This is the type of picture book that was read to me as a child and in my 20s I would become a hippy and live in old houses in the country.
This is Chandler's next book after Farewell, My Lovely. It is good but lacking in the tension and danger in the earlier books. It is as if Chandler has become world-weary and just has a job to do as a writer. There is less biting sarcasm and Marlowe drinks less. But it is still a good mystery about a missing coin, a dark family secret and the usual tie-in between the rich and the underworld in Los Angeles.
Dragon's Teeth, Upton Sinclair, The Viking Press, 1942, 631 pp
Here is the third in the Lanny Budd series. Lanny moves on through his life. At the end of the last volume, Lanny had married an heiress named Irma. Dragon's Teeth starts with the birth of their daughter. The book is slow at first but then picks up and is good to the end. It covers the rise of Hitler and his persecution of the Jews; one of the first books I read in the 40s that addresses this subject. Lanny has been a friend of Johannes Robin, a Jew, for many years. The Robin family lives in Germany and real trouble besets them in this book. Lanny finally takes action and gets the whole family out of Germany, almost at the cost of his marriage. So the final section is full of danger, excitement and suspense. This series of books did not continue the fame Sinclair had in the 1930s for his muckraking book, although Dragon's Teeth did go on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1943. Ultimately there will be 10 volumes and it is the best education I've ever had about American and European history in the early 20th century.
Go Down, Moses, William Faulkner, Random House, 1942, 384 pp
This is a collection of related short stories and one novella, all of which take place in Faulkner's invented county. The stories move through time and generations and most of the characters are related, one set on a line of white descendants, one black. But of course the black is mixed with white and even Indian. It is a complex web of relationships: man to woman, white to black, master to slave/free negro.
Much of the book has to do with hunting in an area of shrinking wilderness. In his inimitable way, Faulkner deals with these relationships which also include man's relation to animals and places. He is trying to make sense of a place created by God, peopled by God, but essentially destroyed by people. Somehow, I found this volume the most accessible of all the Faulkner I've read so far.
Now for the prize winners:
Pulitzer Prize:
In This Our Life, Ellen Glasgow, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1941, 467 pp
I was looking forward to this book because I had loved Barren Ground, the earlier book by this author, and this one won the Pulitzer. It turned out to be an OK story but the writing was really bland.
Asa Timberlake is a middle-aged man in a bad marriage with a low paying job and two daughters approaching their twenties. He feels trapped and emasculated because they live off handouts from his wife's rich uncle. The daughters have all kinds of trouble with men. One of them is like Asa and one is selfish like Asa's wife. Much of the book is endless, bad dialogue about it all.
Finally in the end Asa stands up for what he thinks is right and you are left with a bit of hope for him and for the one daughter. The message is that most people are either weak or greedy; that the ones who are a little stronger take care of the weak at the expense of themselves. That would perhaps be a bearable message if the writing were better.
Newbery Medal
Adam of the Road, Elizabeth Janet Gray, The Viking Press, 1942, 317 pp
A very fine book. Adam is the son of Roger the Minstrel in England, 1294. During one year of his life, Adam is traveling on the road with Roger, their horse and their dog Nick, a red spaniel. They meet up with many adversities including losing the horse and Nick. An evil minstrel won the horse off of Roger, who has an unfortunate gambling habit. After riding the horse until he is lame, the evil minstrel then steals the dog.
Adam, in running down his beloved spaniel, gets separated from his father and has more adventures before they are all reunited. Adam is eleven years old and has the attributes of a boy that age but he is also brave and determined: a budding hero.
I thrilled to life on the road and the minstrel's craft, having done some touring myself as a singer/songwriter. I loved this quote, spoken by Roger the Minstrel: "A road's a kind of holy thing. That's why it is a good work to keep a road in repair, like giving alms to the poor or tending the sick. It's open to the sun and wind and rain. It brings all kinds of people and all parts of England together. And it's home to a minstrel, even though he may happen to be sleeping in a castle."
Caldecott Medal
The Little House, Virginia Lee Burton, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, 40 pp
This is the story of a house, which is built in the country by a man who wants it to stay in the family for generations to come. The house enjoys the seasons but wonders what the city is like. Eventually the city grows and encroaches on the country until the little house is surrounded by the city, abandoned and run down.
Finally a great-granddaughter comes along, has the house moved out into the country again, restores it and lives there. The message that the country is better than the city is a nostalgic theme in the 1940s. This is the type of picture book that was read to me as a child and in my 20s I would become a hippy and live in old houses in the country.
Friday, March 03, 2006
BOOKS READ FROM 1942, PART THREE
The following are books I read from 1942 which were not on the bestseller list. I picked them for various reasons and overall liked them more than the bestsellers.
Dust Tracks on a Road, Zora Neale Hustson, JB Lippincott, Inc, 1942, 297 pp
Zora Neale Hurston is the author of Seraph on the Swanee, Their Eyes Were Watching God and many other wonderful novels and stories. In this splendid autobiography, Zora tells of a life of great adventure. There is poverty, triumph, heartbreak and she is a woman who will not be put down. She was black, born to a preacher in Florida. She approaches life with energy and humor. Advantages come her way and she takes them, including education, grants and the support of white people. She uses all that to raise understanding between the black and white races and achieves quite a lot of recognition in the process.
But times change, political moods change, and after the 1940s, she was no longer considered cool. She ended her life in poverty and alone. She did not compromise her reality though. I had several realizations. One is that giving education to someone who has lived a full life already and who really wants to learn is a good thing.
The other is that a creative person creates whether appreciated or not, so I should just go on creating. I loved this book!
The Candle in the Wind, TH White, GP Putnam's Sons, 1942, 122 pp
So we come to the fourth and final book of The Once and Future King. Mordred, Arthur's bastard son, has grown into an evil, bitter man and uses the affair between Guinevere and Lancelot to break up the Round Table and Arthur's peace.
It is very sad, but with White's usual wry humor thrown in. The book becomes the author's attempt to understand mankind and war. Through Arthur, he ponders why an ideal of peace and reason, instead of the use of might, cannot be achieved by mankind. He essentially nails it: old grudges, greed, evil and have against not have. His solution is to have Arthur pass the dream along to a young boy in an effort to keep it alive. It was beautifully done at the end and made me weep and exult at the same time.
The Violent Land, Jorge Amado, Alfred A Knopf, 1942, 333 pp
This author's most well-known books are Dona Flor and the Two Husbands and Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon. He is Brazilian and this book was first translated into English in 1945, but first published in Spanish in 1942, so I read it now.
The Violent Land is the story of the opening of the cacao growing lands in southern Brazil. The times were similar to our frontier days: lots of money being made by a few violent, fearless characters; men flocking in with dreams of riches to be made; whores, negroes, crooked lawyers and crooked politicians. So it is a dramatic, brutal scene and the family drama reminded me of a William Faulkner book.
I was struck by how the story of opening a frontier is the same the world over but with local twists.
The Blue Hills, Elizabeth Goudge, Coward-McCann, 1942, 288 pp
Well she did it again. This author has the ability to totally charm me, give me hope and bring me to a higher view of life. She believes in good, that people are good and that love conquers all. If I am ever down, I should read Goudge.
In the Blue Hills, the story begun in The City of Bells, which she published sometime in the 1930s, is continued. The setting is an English town with a cathedral and close. Henrietta and Hugh are two children being raised by their grandparents. All of Goudge's children have spectacular imaginations, so this story is written as a fairy tale as seen through the eyes of the children. You can see that it is a response to World War II and all the horror, but she doesn't spend any time moaning about all that. She writes from her faith. What more can an artist do?
The Robber Bridegroom, Eudora Welty, Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc, 1942, 185 pp
I read this in a couple hours. It is another fairy tale but set in southern colonial times. The story is a usual love story, but what makes it great is that it is imaginative, amusing and well-written. It is her first novel, though more of a novella. I can see why she attracted so much attention.
Norma Ashe, Susan Glaspell, JB Lippincott Company, 1942, 349 pp
I so liked the book by this author which I read in 1940s list, The Morning Is Near Us, that when I found she had more books, I wanted to read them. I read this in one day, because it was totally gripping. Norma Ashe goes to a small college in North Dakota, which her grandfather helped to found. It is very late 1800s, a time of great optimism in this country. Norma and five others are taken under the wing of a brilliant philosophy professor, who inspires them to pursue knowledge and spread the idea that man can be better and make a better world. Norma is the star pupil among the five.
But within months of graduating and leaving school, she falls in love with a go-getter business- man. He is slightly shady and dies after several years of marriage with Norma, leaving her with two children and a heavy load of debt. So she never fulfills that youthful dream, nor do any of the others from her class at school. Love, economics and hurts from the past influence them all and drag them down.
It gripped me because I have experienced a similar thing. Sometimes I have gone on spiritual retreats and glimpsed eternity and ideals, but after being back in the so-called real world for a while, have found it hard to maintain that vision. I found many books from 1942 to love, but this was one of my favorites.
Dust Tracks on a Road, Zora Neale Hustson, JB Lippincott, Inc, 1942, 297 pp
Zora Neale Hurston is the author of Seraph on the Swanee, Their Eyes Were Watching God and many other wonderful novels and stories. In this splendid autobiography, Zora tells of a life of great adventure. There is poverty, triumph, heartbreak and she is a woman who will not be put down. She was black, born to a preacher in Florida. She approaches life with energy and humor. Advantages come her way and she takes them, including education, grants and the support of white people. She uses all that to raise understanding between the black and white races and achieves quite a lot of recognition in the process.
But times change, political moods change, and after the 1940s, she was no longer considered cool. She ended her life in poverty and alone. She did not compromise her reality though. I had several realizations. One is that giving education to someone who has lived a full life already and who really wants to learn is a good thing.
The other is that a creative person creates whether appreciated or not, so I should just go on creating. I loved this book!
The Candle in the Wind, TH White, GP Putnam's Sons, 1942, 122 pp
So we come to the fourth and final book of The Once and Future King. Mordred, Arthur's bastard son, has grown into an evil, bitter man and uses the affair between Guinevere and Lancelot to break up the Round Table and Arthur's peace.
It is very sad, but with White's usual wry humor thrown in. The book becomes the author's attempt to understand mankind and war. Through Arthur, he ponders why an ideal of peace and reason, instead of the use of might, cannot be achieved by mankind. He essentially nails it: old grudges, greed, evil and have against not have. His solution is to have Arthur pass the dream along to a young boy in an effort to keep it alive. It was beautifully done at the end and made me weep and exult at the same time.
The Violent Land, Jorge Amado, Alfred A Knopf, 1942, 333 pp
This author's most well-known books are Dona Flor and the Two Husbands and Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon. He is Brazilian and this book was first translated into English in 1945, but first published in Spanish in 1942, so I read it now.
The Violent Land is the story of the opening of the cacao growing lands in southern Brazil. The times were similar to our frontier days: lots of money being made by a few violent, fearless characters; men flocking in with dreams of riches to be made; whores, negroes, crooked lawyers and crooked politicians. So it is a dramatic, brutal scene and the family drama reminded me of a William Faulkner book.
I was struck by how the story of opening a frontier is the same the world over but with local twists.
The Blue Hills, Elizabeth Goudge, Coward-McCann, 1942, 288 pp
Well she did it again. This author has the ability to totally charm me, give me hope and bring me to a higher view of life. She believes in good, that people are good and that love conquers all. If I am ever down, I should read Goudge.
In the Blue Hills, the story begun in The City of Bells, which she published sometime in the 1930s, is continued. The setting is an English town with a cathedral and close. Henrietta and Hugh are two children being raised by their grandparents. All of Goudge's children have spectacular imaginations, so this story is written as a fairy tale as seen through the eyes of the children. You can see that it is a response to World War II and all the horror, but she doesn't spend any time moaning about all that. She writes from her faith. What more can an artist do?
The Robber Bridegroom, Eudora Welty, Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc, 1942, 185 pp
I read this in a couple hours. It is another fairy tale but set in southern colonial times. The story is a usual love story, but what makes it great is that it is imaginative, amusing and well-written. It is her first novel, though more of a novella. I can see why she attracted so much attention.
Norma Ashe, Susan Glaspell, JB Lippincott Company, 1942, 349 pp
I so liked the book by this author which I read in 1940s list, The Morning Is Near Us, that when I found she had more books, I wanted to read them. I read this in one day, because it was totally gripping. Norma Ashe goes to a small college in North Dakota, which her grandfather helped to found. It is very late 1800s, a time of great optimism in this country. Norma and five others are taken under the wing of a brilliant philosophy professor, who inspires them to pursue knowledge and spread the idea that man can be better and make a better world. Norma is the star pupil among the five.
But within months of graduating and leaving school, she falls in love with a go-getter business- man. He is slightly shady and dies after several years of marriage with Norma, leaving her with two children and a heavy load of debt. So she never fulfills that youthful dream, nor do any of the others from her class at school. Love, economics and hurts from the past influence them all and drag them down.
It gripped me because I have experienced a similar thing. Sometimes I have gone on spiritual retreats and glimpsed eternity and ideals, but after being back in the so-called real world for a while, have found it hard to maintain that vision. I found many books from 1942 to love, but this was one of my favorites.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
BOOKS READ FROM 1942, PART TWO
Windswept, Mary Ellen Chase
This book was on the 1941 list at #10. This year it was at #6. You can read my comments on it at Books Read From 1941, Part Two, posted on February 18, 2006.
The Robe, Lloyd C Douglas, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, 556 pp
I read this book when I was younger, possibly college age, but only vaguely remembered it. Here it is at #7 on the list for 1942. It is fairly well written but a little too obviously a Christian polemic disguised as an adventure/love story. A Roman soldier comes by the robe that Jesus wore on his way to Calvary and it has an inexplicable power which leads the soldier to become a Christian. At times the story moved well, at other times it dragged and the dialogue was only mediocre.
Similar to other books of this time, it is a call to peace, to goodwill and a picture of the destructive results of power-mad imperialist rulers. For that, I applaud Douglas.
The Sun Is My Undoing, Marguerite Steen.
This one was also on the 1941 list at #4. In 1942 it came in at #8. I wrote about it in Books Read From 1941, Part One on February 18, 2006.
King's Row; Henry Bellamann; Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc; 1940, 674 pp
At #9 on the bestseller list of 1942, this was a big favorite of the year for me. King's Row is a town somewhere in the southern midwest. The book is long, it is completely gripping, the characters are real and get into your head. Parris Mitchell comes of age in the novel. He is raised by his grandmother, an independent, European woman. He becomes a doctor and an early type of psychiatrist, though Bellamann never uses that term. Parris suffers many loses, but has great teachers. He is a loyal friend, an honorable person (what I would call a fine human being) and influences many lives for the better.
Also running through the book is the concept of how a town takes on a life apart from the lives of its individual residents and this group life is powerful, carries its own history and is hard to kill. Parris is one of those heros I have found so often in the literature of the 1940s. I find these characters so admirable and in such short supply in today's world. I wonder if such heros really lived and breathed in those days or were only an ideal found in fiction.
The Keys of the Kingdom, A J Cronin
One last holdover from 1941, this year at #10, down from #1 in 1941. This will be the last year that so many books stayed on the bestseller list from one year until the next, because by the end of the 1940s, the book business was changing along with everything else. You can find my comments on this one in Books Read From 1941, Part One posted on February 18, 2006.
In my next post I will take up several of the other books I read from 1942, though they were not necessarily bestsellers.
This book was on the 1941 list at #10. This year it was at #6. You can read my comments on it at Books Read From 1941, Part Two, posted on February 18, 2006.
The Robe, Lloyd C Douglas, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942, 556 pp
I read this book when I was younger, possibly college age, but only vaguely remembered it. Here it is at #7 on the list for 1942. It is fairly well written but a little too obviously a Christian polemic disguised as an adventure/love story. A Roman soldier comes by the robe that Jesus wore on his way to Calvary and it has an inexplicable power which leads the soldier to become a Christian. At times the story moved well, at other times it dragged and the dialogue was only mediocre.
Similar to other books of this time, it is a call to peace, to goodwill and a picture of the destructive results of power-mad imperialist rulers. For that, I applaud Douglas.
The Sun Is My Undoing, Marguerite Steen.
This one was also on the 1941 list at #4. In 1942 it came in at #8. I wrote about it in Books Read From 1941, Part One on February 18, 2006.
King's Row; Henry Bellamann; Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc; 1940, 674 pp
At #9 on the bestseller list of 1942, this was a big favorite of the year for me. King's Row is a town somewhere in the southern midwest. The book is long, it is completely gripping, the characters are real and get into your head. Parris Mitchell comes of age in the novel. He is raised by his grandmother, an independent, European woman. He becomes a doctor and an early type of psychiatrist, though Bellamann never uses that term. Parris suffers many loses, but has great teachers. He is a loyal friend, an honorable person (what I would call a fine human being) and influences many lives for the better.
Also running through the book is the concept of how a town takes on a life apart from the lives of its individual residents and this group life is powerful, carries its own history and is hard to kill. Parris is one of those heros I have found so often in the literature of the 1940s. I find these characters so admirable and in such short supply in today's world. I wonder if such heros really lived and breathed in those days or were only an ideal found in fiction.
The Keys of the Kingdom, A J Cronin
One last holdover from 1941, this year at #10, down from #1 in 1941. This will be the last year that so many books stayed on the bestseller list from one year until the next, because by the end of the 1940s, the book business was changing along with everything else. You can find my comments on this one in Books Read From 1941, Part One posted on February 18, 2006.
In my next post I will take up several of the other books I read from 1942, though they were not necessarily bestsellers.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
BOOKS READ FROM 1942, PART ONE
The Song of Bernadette, Franz Werfel, The Viking Press, 1042, 575 pp
This book was #1 on the bestseller list for 1942. Bernadette was a common French girl from a small town who saw a vision of a blessed lady. She was happy with her vision because it brought her peace and joy in the midst of a very hard life. But the world got involved, in the form of government officials, the church and the thousands of regular people who believed in her vision. After being hassled for years, Bernadette finally found solace in a convent and a life of service to others. After her death she was canonized as a saint.
This is her very interesting story and is a good and true accounting of how the world at large reacts to miracles. It was also made into a movie and won Jennifer Jones an Oscar for Best Actress in 1944. It is available on VHS and is pretty good, if you like old movies. Of course, the book is better.
The Moon is Down, John Steinbeck, The Viking Press, 1942, 58 pp
This tiny book was #2 on the list. It takes place in an unnamed European town which was conquered by the Nazis. The townspeople put up resistance to the victors and do not lose heart.
I've been reading a biography of Steinbeck as I read through his books (John Steinbeck, Writer, by Jackson J Benson) and from there I learned that Steinbeck and other writers were formed into a group by FDR to do public relations during the war. The name of this group escapes me at the moment. So Steinbeck wrote this book to give Americans hope in case we were invaded. Interestingly, his is the only one that sold well enough to be a bestseller. It is very different from any other Steinbeck I have read, but you can tell it is him writing.
Dragon Seed, Pearl S Buck, The John Day Company, 1942, 378 pp
For some reason, I had avoided reading any Pearl Buck, but this was one of my favorite books from 1942. It was the #3 bestseller. She is a good storyteller with just the right balance of story, description and philosophy. In the book, China is being invaded by Japan and you get what this is like though the experiences of a farming family.
The message is how to resist evil and keep hope alive, how to fight for freedom and it is very moving. She touches on all the usual true values that are at the foundation of civilization. The book gave me a different picture of the Chinese than I had gotten from all those James Clavell books I used to read. Of course, the Japanese are the complete bad guys, which they continued to be all through the second world war.
This book was also made into a movie, but it is ludicrous with Katherine Hepburn as the mother of the Chinese family. Pulease.
And Now Tomorrow, Rachel Field, The Macmillan Company, 1942, 350 pp
Every bestseller list needs a pure romance novel and this was the one for 1942, coming in at #4. Two sisters are born into a rich family of textile mill owners near Boston. They lose both parents and are raised by their spinster aunt. The heroine, who tells the story, gets engaged to Harry, an executive at the mill, then she gets meningitis and goes deaf. Harry proceeds to fall in love with the sister behind the deaf girl's back.
Meanwhile the depression hits, there are unions and strikes and upsets in the rich family over this. A man from the worker side of town comes back as a doctor, cures the deaf sister, she finds out about Harry and in the end is planning to hook up with the doctor. Pretty predictable, slow moving and the heroine was weak.
Drivin' Woman, Elizabeth Pickett.
The only book on these lists so far that I couldn't find. It was #5. Anyone have it?
This book was #1 on the bestseller list for 1942. Bernadette was a common French girl from a small town who saw a vision of a blessed lady. She was happy with her vision because it brought her peace and joy in the midst of a very hard life. But the world got involved, in the form of government officials, the church and the thousands of regular people who believed in her vision. After being hassled for years, Bernadette finally found solace in a convent and a life of service to others. After her death she was canonized as a saint.
This is her very interesting story and is a good and true accounting of how the world at large reacts to miracles. It was also made into a movie and won Jennifer Jones an Oscar for Best Actress in 1944. It is available on VHS and is pretty good, if you like old movies. Of course, the book is better.
The Moon is Down, John Steinbeck, The Viking Press, 1942, 58 pp
This tiny book was #2 on the list. It takes place in an unnamed European town which was conquered by the Nazis. The townspeople put up resistance to the victors and do not lose heart.
I've been reading a biography of Steinbeck as I read through his books (John Steinbeck, Writer, by Jackson J Benson) and from there I learned that Steinbeck and other writers were formed into a group by FDR to do public relations during the war. The name of this group escapes me at the moment. So Steinbeck wrote this book to give Americans hope in case we were invaded. Interestingly, his is the only one that sold well enough to be a bestseller. It is very different from any other Steinbeck I have read, but you can tell it is him writing.
Dragon Seed, Pearl S Buck, The John Day Company, 1942, 378 pp
For some reason, I had avoided reading any Pearl Buck, but this was one of my favorite books from 1942. It was the #3 bestseller. She is a good storyteller with just the right balance of story, description and philosophy. In the book, China is being invaded by Japan and you get what this is like though the experiences of a farming family.
The message is how to resist evil and keep hope alive, how to fight for freedom and it is very moving. She touches on all the usual true values that are at the foundation of civilization. The book gave me a different picture of the Chinese than I had gotten from all those James Clavell books I used to read. Of course, the Japanese are the complete bad guys, which they continued to be all through the second world war.
This book was also made into a movie, but it is ludicrous with Katherine Hepburn as the mother of the Chinese family. Pulease.
And Now Tomorrow, Rachel Field, The Macmillan Company, 1942, 350 pp
Every bestseller list needs a pure romance novel and this was the one for 1942, coming in at #4. Two sisters are born into a rich family of textile mill owners near Boston. They lose both parents and are raised by their spinster aunt. The heroine, who tells the story, gets engaged to Harry, an executive at the mill, then she gets meningitis and goes deaf. Harry proceeds to fall in love with the sister behind the deaf girl's back.
Meanwhile the depression hits, there are unions and strikes and upsets in the rich family over this. A man from the worker side of town comes back as a doctor, cures the deaf sister, she finds out about Harry and in the end is planning to hook up with the doctor. Pretty predictable, slow moving and the heroine was weak.
Drivin' Woman, Elizabeth Pickett.
The only book on these lists so far that I couldn't find. It was #5. Anyone have it?
Thursday, February 23, 2006
THE SWALLOWS OF KABUL
The Swallows of Kabul, Yasmina Khadra, Nan A Talese, 2004, 195 pp.
The author is an Algerian army officer who wrote in French under a female nom de plume to avoid military censorship. The book was first published in France in 2002, which makes it pre-9/11. It is Afghanistan under the Taliban. Life has already been disrupted by Russian communists and the Taliban is no better, perhaps worse. It is a totalitarian religious reign of terror. The women are back under the burqa, although in this country the veils are blue and yellow instead of black, as they are in Iran. The women are the swallows of Kabul.
By following the lives of various people and causing some of them to cross paths, the author creates a picture of the disintegration of a society. It is very bleak. In the end, you are left in complete mystery about the fate of one of the female characters and you are not given any hope for the rest. Whatever position, possessions or happiness anyone had (especially women), has all been taken away along with freedom.
I can't say I really liked the book, but I am glad I read it. Compared to The Kite Runner, this is a personal book on a deeper level, partly because none of the characters leave the country. It made me appreciate anew the abundant freedom of The United States and reminded me of the importance of protecting and preserving that freedom while refraining from abusing it.
(The Swallows of Kabul is available in hardcover, paperback and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find this book at your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)
THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE
I'm inserting a couple current books here before I dive back into the 1940s.
The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby, Believer Books, 2004, 140 pp
This was a totally fun read. My very cool sister-in-law from Seattle sent me a subscription to "The Believer Mag" for Christmas. Along with the first issue came two books; one was a book of interviews with writers which I am still making my way through and the other was this book. It is a collection of columns about reading which Hornby wrote for "The Believer" from September, 2003-November, 2004. (He still writes the column and it continues to be really good.)
Because I love reading about what other readers read and think and because I love Hornby's writing, which makes me smile and laugh out loud, I loved reading this slim volume. (He includes excerpts from several books. I hate excerpts, I don't read them anywhere and I didn't read them here.)
For each column, he lists the books he bought that month and then the books he actually read. He is another person who buys more books than he can possibly read. Then he does a quick bit of comments on each book, how it moved him (or n0t) and how it fit in with the rest of his life at the time. Somehow he manages to be witty, earnest and personal all at once.
I used to write a book column for a local paper where I would comment on all the books I read in a month. The editor (a singularly unimaginative, Rotary Club type) wanted me to scale it down to writing about only one or two books. Since I wasn't getting paid anyway, we parted ways. Well, hah, here is a famous writer doing the same thing in a hip magazine. I guess hip is the operative word here.
The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby, Believer Books, 2004, 140 pp
This was a totally fun read. My very cool sister-in-law from Seattle sent me a subscription to "The Believer Mag" for Christmas. Along with the first issue came two books; one was a book of interviews with writers which I am still making my way through and the other was this book. It is a collection of columns about reading which Hornby wrote for "The Believer" from September, 2003-November, 2004. (He still writes the column and it continues to be really good.)
Because I love reading about what other readers read and think and because I love Hornby's writing, which makes me smile and laugh out loud, I loved reading this slim volume. (He includes excerpts from several books. I hate excerpts, I don't read them anywhere and I didn't read them here.)
For each column, he lists the books he bought that month and then the books he actually read. He is another person who buys more books than he can possibly read. Then he does a quick bit of comments on each book, how it moved him (or n0t) and how it fit in with the rest of his life at the time. Somehow he manages to be witty, earnest and personal all at once.
I used to write a book column for a local paper where I would comment on all the books I read in a month. The editor (a singularly unimaginative, Rotary Club type) wanted me to scale it down to writing about only one or two books. Since I wasn't getting paid anyway, we parted ways. Well, hah, here is a famous writer doing the same thing in a hip magazine. I guess hip is the operative word here.
Monday, February 20, 2006
READING FOR MY LIFE: 1941
This is the second installment of the memoir through reading which I am writing. I have been reading books from all the years and decades of my life, beginning with 1940 as the first year of the decade in which I was born. The first installment can be found in the December archives and was posted on December 4, 2005.
I would call 1941 "the end of the innocence" for America. Sure there were earlier hard times in our country, but memories are short and even the Great Depression no longer had such a grip on the people. Those earlier hard times only made Americans unwilling to get involved in more trouble, but trouble was coming and by the end of 1941 it would come to America.
The books I read for this year were not quite as exciting as the ones from 1940. Possibly I was now more used to the era and the style of writing. World War II or any war is the main topic on the list of books, but also included are themes I found in 1940: love, family and religion. Then there were the historical novels, including China, the beginnings of the abolition movement in England, railroad barons, post Civil War New Orleans, etc.
There was no Pulitzer awarded in 1941 and no Nobel Prize for Literature. In film, "Rebecca: won the Academy Award for Best Picture; "Grapes of Wrath" for Best Director (John Ford); "Philadelphia Story" for Best Actor (James Stewart); and "Kitty Foyle" for Best Actress (Ginger Rogers). The pop songs were "Deep in the Heart of Texas", "Chattanooga Choo-Choo", "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good."
The United States was watching the war in Europe. While most citizens were hoping we would not get involved, our government and industry were busy getting us involved. There were already price freezes by the Office of Price Administration on steel, rubber was rationed so people were careful about their tires, and US Savings Bonds and stamps were being sold to build up money for financing war. FDR was in his third term and knew we would be in the war eventually. He had to tread lightly because American popular opinion wanted nothing to do with it and it was his job to convince the American people that we had to fight to preserve democracy and all that. For the first time, the Supreme Court set a minimum wage for businesses involved in interstate commerce. Most telling was the beginning of the Manhattan Project, formed to research atomic energy.
My parents became a couple in this year, during the last semester of their senior year in college. They were both in the choir at Valparaiso University in Indiana. That spring, while on tour with the choir in southern Indiana, they fell in love amidst the blossoming fruit trees. My mother graduated with a degree in Music Education, while my father received his in Business Administration.
Mom went home to Port Hope, Michigan and got a job as a telephone operator, while she wrote to schools looking for a teaching position. She was hired that summer to teach music at a public school in Grand Blanc, Michigan. In the fall she found a room there in a house full of teachers and went to work. Grand Blanc was a very small town but the school was filled with kids bussed in from the outlying farming areas. During the war, General Motors built a plant there to make tanks, so many people moved into the area and the schools got over-crowded. As the male teachers began to be drafted, the women had to take up the slack. Before she left to get married, my mom was teaching a health class and an English class in addition to teaching music to first, second and third graders as well as junior high students.
My dad went back to Pittsburgh, PA to live at home while he began his career with United States Steel. He got a job as a bookkeeper in an outlying plant and had to commute. He would be a commuter all his working life, but later would live in the suburbs of New Jersey and commute to New York City. The lovers wrote to each other every day and visited when they could. They would meet in Cleveland, OH, each taking the train, or my dad would come to Michigan. His mother wondered why he didn't stick with his girlfriend from highschool, instead courting some girl from "way out west". My mom's aunt, with whom she had lived since the age of three, had planned that my mom would teach and during her summers they would travel. She was bitter and disappointed that my mom planned to marry and later destroyed all the letters my mom had saved from those courtship days with my dad.
In December, 1941, one of the bachelor teachers at the school in Grand Blanc was trying to convince my mother to go on a date, when they heard the news of Pearl Harbor on the radio. Within days, the United States had declared war on Japan, Germany had declared war on the United States and we were at war.
Germany and England were bombing each other to pieces that year and Germany had begun her foolish invasion of Russia. Most Americans were clueless about the extent of horrors being perpetrated by the Germans (the treatment of the Jews, the concentration camps, the reign of terror by the Nazis) and knew even less about the Japanese. The only book I found about all this in 1941 was The Scum of the Earth, by Arthur Koestler, which was a memoir about prison camps in France where Jews, liberal writers and other undesirables were sent in those early years of the war.
While people in Europe were suffering all the fear and inconvenience and losses of war, Americans were trying to go on with daily life, including my parents. But the writers of the time almost unilaterally were opposed to war and saying so and showing in their writing the stupidity, waste and spurious causes of war. While the governments used propaganda to fire up their citizens against the "enemy", they also participated in getting the wars going for foolish and greedy, imperialistic reasons. It was and always is, the regular common citizens who carry out and pay for the actual fighting and killing, while the industrialists make money hand over fist. There are still three and a half years of war to go.
The writing in these books from the 40s is overall better writing than much of the current literature, but it is dense and thick and after reading it for days and days, I would start to feel stuck in that time and those sensibilities. As I read, I found some of my faith in mankind and many of my viewpoints and philosophical ideas being sorely tested. I wondered if reading fiction might be giving me too big a dose of the hardship, sorrow, suffering and loss in life. I felt like Will Durant, who after studying so much history, lost his faith in the Catholic religion.
I began to see the hugeness of the breadth of experience in life and my little American, Protestant upbringing, my 1950s Pollyanna education (which taught that if you are just good, hardworking, kind, not too much into sex or daring adventures, you will be okay and have a happy life) looked to me like a big denial of what life is actually about. All the emphasis on success, money, getting ahead, which is the mantra of the current society, became thin and unreal.
The lure of safety, security through money and possessions, is a strong, mostly uninspected, deeply inculcated thing in our society. I am not saying that I think we should be existential or hopeless, but where is the adventure in all this? Where is the big game; throwing oneself whole hog into life, live or die in the attempt? I just felt fed up with worrying about what people wear, what cars they drive, how big their houses are, who they know, blah, blah, blah.
Reading takes me into so many ways that people live, so many types of experience. I love that and I see that in every area or culture or type of society, you still find all the levels of mood, attack on life, awareness, ethics. I began to wonder what kind of world it would be if everyone just agreed and was nice and worked together for a common purpose. It sounds good sometimes, sounds really boring at other times. I also became aware of what my parents had experienced in that decade before I was born and why they raised us the way they did. They were born just after the first World War, their parents suffered all the economic uncertainty of the Depression, their young adult years were disrupted by war again and they wished for their children to have a calmer, more secure and better life. Possibly we have had a better life or have we spent all these years in a denial of what life is really all about? In 1941 I was not even born yet and I did not seriously begin to question anything until my late teens. I've got a good twenty years of reading ahead of me but I am already beginning to see the currents and moods that led to that questioning.
I would call 1941 "the end of the innocence" for America. Sure there were earlier hard times in our country, but memories are short and even the Great Depression no longer had such a grip on the people. Those earlier hard times only made Americans unwilling to get involved in more trouble, but trouble was coming and by the end of 1941 it would come to America.
The books I read for this year were not quite as exciting as the ones from 1940. Possibly I was now more used to the era and the style of writing. World War II or any war is the main topic on the list of books, but also included are themes I found in 1940: love, family and religion. Then there were the historical novels, including China, the beginnings of the abolition movement in England, railroad barons, post Civil War New Orleans, etc.
There was no Pulitzer awarded in 1941 and no Nobel Prize for Literature. In film, "Rebecca: won the Academy Award for Best Picture; "Grapes of Wrath" for Best Director (John Ford); "Philadelphia Story" for Best Actor (James Stewart); and "Kitty Foyle" for Best Actress (Ginger Rogers). The pop songs were "Deep in the Heart of Texas", "Chattanooga Choo-Choo", "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good."
The United States was watching the war in Europe. While most citizens were hoping we would not get involved, our government and industry were busy getting us involved. There were already price freezes by the Office of Price Administration on steel, rubber was rationed so people were careful about their tires, and US Savings Bonds and stamps were being sold to build up money for financing war. FDR was in his third term and knew we would be in the war eventually. He had to tread lightly because American popular opinion wanted nothing to do with it and it was his job to convince the American people that we had to fight to preserve democracy and all that. For the first time, the Supreme Court set a minimum wage for businesses involved in interstate commerce. Most telling was the beginning of the Manhattan Project, formed to research atomic energy.
My parents became a couple in this year, during the last semester of their senior year in college. They were both in the choir at Valparaiso University in Indiana. That spring, while on tour with the choir in southern Indiana, they fell in love amidst the blossoming fruit trees. My mother graduated with a degree in Music Education, while my father received his in Business Administration.
Mom went home to Port Hope, Michigan and got a job as a telephone operator, while she wrote to schools looking for a teaching position. She was hired that summer to teach music at a public school in Grand Blanc, Michigan. In the fall she found a room there in a house full of teachers and went to work. Grand Blanc was a very small town but the school was filled with kids bussed in from the outlying farming areas. During the war, General Motors built a plant there to make tanks, so many people moved into the area and the schools got over-crowded. As the male teachers began to be drafted, the women had to take up the slack. Before she left to get married, my mom was teaching a health class and an English class in addition to teaching music to first, second and third graders as well as junior high students.
My dad went back to Pittsburgh, PA to live at home while he began his career with United States Steel. He got a job as a bookkeeper in an outlying plant and had to commute. He would be a commuter all his working life, but later would live in the suburbs of New Jersey and commute to New York City. The lovers wrote to each other every day and visited when they could. They would meet in Cleveland, OH, each taking the train, or my dad would come to Michigan. His mother wondered why he didn't stick with his girlfriend from highschool, instead courting some girl from "way out west". My mom's aunt, with whom she had lived since the age of three, had planned that my mom would teach and during her summers they would travel. She was bitter and disappointed that my mom planned to marry and later destroyed all the letters my mom had saved from those courtship days with my dad.
In December, 1941, one of the bachelor teachers at the school in Grand Blanc was trying to convince my mother to go on a date, when they heard the news of Pearl Harbor on the radio. Within days, the United States had declared war on Japan, Germany had declared war on the United States and we were at war.
Germany and England were bombing each other to pieces that year and Germany had begun her foolish invasion of Russia. Most Americans were clueless about the extent of horrors being perpetrated by the Germans (the treatment of the Jews, the concentration camps, the reign of terror by the Nazis) and knew even less about the Japanese. The only book I found about all this in 1941 was The Scum of the Earth, by Arthur Koestler, which was a memoir about prison camps in France where Jews, liberal writers and other undesirables were sent in those early years of the war.
While people in Europe were suffering all the fear and inconvenience and losses of war, Americans were trying to go on with daily life, including my parents. But the writers of the time almost unilaterally were opposed to war and saying so and showing in their writing the stupidity, waste and spurious causes of war. While the governments used propaganda to fire up their citizens against the "enemy", they also participated in getting the wars going for foolish and greedy, imperialistic reasons. It was and always is, the regular common citizens who carry out and pay for the actual fighting and killing, while the industrialists make money hand over fist. There are still three and a half years of war to go.
The writing in these books from the 40s is overall better writing than much of the current literature, but it is dense and thick and after reading it for days and days, I would start to feel stuck in that time and those sensibilities. As I read, I found some of my faith in mankind and many of my viewpoints and philosophical ideas being sorely tested. I wondered if reading fiction might be giving me too big a dose of the hardship, sorrow, suffering and loss in life. I felt like Will Durant, who after studying so much history, lost his faith in the Catholic religion.
I began to see the hugeness of the breadth of experience in life and my little American, Protestant upbringing, my 1950s Pollyanna education (which taught that if you are just good, hardworking, kind, not too much into sex or daring adventures, you will be okay and have a happy life) looked to me like a big denial of what life is actually about. All the emphasis on success, money, getting ahead, which is the mantra of the current society, became thin and unreal.
The lure of safety, security through money and possessions, is a strong, mostly uninspected, deeply inculcated thing in our society. I am not saying that I think we should be existential or hopeless, but where is the adventure in all this? Where is the big game; throwing oneself whole hog into life, live or die in the attempt? I just felt fed up with worrying about what people wear, what cars they drive, how big their houses are, who they know, blah, blah, blah.
Reading takes me into so many ways that people live, so many types of experience. I love that and I see that in every area or culture or type of society, you still find all the levels of mood, attack on life, awareness, ethics. I began to wonder what kind of world it would be if everyone just agreed and was nice and worked together for a common purpose. It sounds good sometimes, sounds really boring at other times. I also became aware of what my parents had experienced in that decade before I was born and why they raised us the way they did. They were born just after the first World War, their parents suffered all the economic uncertainty of the Depression, their young adult years were disrupted by war again and they wished for their children to have a calmer, more secure and better life. Possibly we have had a better life or have we spent all these years in a denial of what life is really all about? In 1941 I was not even born yet and I did not seriously begin to question anything until my late teens. I've got a good twenty years of reading ahead of me but I am already beginning to see the currents and moods that led to that questioning.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
BOOKS READ FROM 1941, PART FOUR
The Illmade Knight, TH White, GP Putnam's Sons, 1941, 200 pp
We come to Book III of The Once and Future King. This is Lancelot's story and was the easiest read so far, though maybe I am getting used to his style. There was not a boring moment. What a different view of Lancelot from Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon.
The Castle on the Hill, Elizabeth Goudge, PF Collier & Son Corporation, 1941
As I mentioned in the 1940 list, this is one of my favorite authors. I have read all of her fiction and her autobiography. This one takes place during World War II. She had only been publishing novels for six years at this point and was just 37 years old. She has such amazing insight into people. Was I that wise and able to perceive at 37? I don't think so.
Miss Brown is the heroine. She is plucky but shy, capable but a dreamer. She assists a young man who is upset by the war. The message of this book is that the way to find happiness is to embrace all of life, confront your demons, be kind and believe in the power of good over evil. The book could well be laughed out of existence in today's world.
Wild is the River, Louis Bromfield, PF Collier & Son Corporation, 1941, 326 pp
Here we are in New Orleans again, the time is post Civil War. The main characters are Yankees and are portrayed as repressed, humorless and dishonest people preying on a conquered city. Tom is a Yankee soldier with a wild, promiscuous streak. The young countess is a Creole woman with a hard controlling heart. Agnes is the young fiancee of Tom, and she comes to New Orleans with her spinster aunt to visit Tom.
Amidst conflicts and rebellions, all these people resort to other relationships. Some find true love, some get what's coming to them and some get away unscathed physically if not emotionally. I found the book annoying and boring by turns. The characters were cardboard, the plot obvious and the author has that irritating way of having a character think or feel one way and then instantly have an opposite thought or feeling, similar to Edna Ferber. Really it was just a silly romantic historical novel of the 40s.
Without Signposts, Kathleen Wallace, GP Putnam's Sons, 1941, 298 pp
This story was an interesting but little known aspect of life for women in England during World War II. Just before England got into the war, people were being evacuated from London into the countryside for safety, especially children and mothers. Tamsin Heywood is a widow with two small children and among the evacuees. She must find housing and schools for the children on little money.
They end up in a boarding house run by Russian emigres from the revolution. It is a similar scene to the one in The Family, which I read in the 1940 list. Genteel poverty and various cultures trying to live together. In the end, everyone finds love including Tamsin. The writing is not great but the happy ending with the underlying potential for loss because of the war is a true portrayal of life at that time, particularly for mothers.
Now we come to the award winning books. There was no Pulitzer Prize winner in 1941.
The Matchlock Gun, Walter D Edmonds, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1941, 50 pp
The Newbery Medal winner is a story of an Indian raid on a family in upstate New York. The 10 year old son fires off an old matchlock gun and saves his mother and sister, while his father has gone off to try to prevent the Indians from getting that close.
Make Way For Ducklings, Robert McCloskey, The Viking Press, 1941, 64 pp
The Caldecott Medal winner features great illustrations and the story of a family of ducks settling in Boston. The way the mother duck wants to keep looking until they find a safe place to raise ducklings reminded me of the beaver story in James Michener's Centennial.
That completes the books I read from 1941 and my plan worked. I am now ready to write up the chapter for my book that corresponds to that year. I should have it posted tomorrow.
We come to Book III of The Once and Future King. This is Lancelot's story and was the easiest read so far, though maybe I am getting used to his style. There was not a boring moment. What a different view of Lancelot from Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon.
The Castle on the Hill, Elizabeth Goudge, PF Collier & Son Corporation, 1941
As I mentioned in the 1940 list, this is one of my favorite authors. I have read all of her fiction and her autobiography. This one takes place during World War II. She had only been publishing novels for six years at this point and was just 37 years old. She has such amazing insight into people. Was I that wise and able to perceive at 37? I don't think so.
Miss Brown is the heroine. She is plucky but shy, capable but a dreamer. She assists a young man who is upset by the war. The message of this book is that the way to find happiness is to embrace all of life, confront your demons, be kind and believe in the power of good over evil. The book could well be laughed out of existence in today's world.
Wild is the River, Louis Bromfield, PF Collier & Son Corporation, 1941, 326 pp
Here we are in New Orleans again, the time is post Civil War. The main characters are Yankees and are portrayed as repressed, humorless and dishonest people preying on a conquered city. Tom is a Yankee soldier with a wild, promiscuous streak. The young countess is a Creole woman with a hard controlling heart. Agnes is the young fiancee of Tom, and she comes to New Orleans with her spinster aunt to visit Tom.
Amidst conflicts and rebellions, all these people resort to other relationships. Some find true love, some get what's coming to them and some get away unscathed physically if not emotionally. I found the book annoying and boring by turns. The characters were cardboard, the plot obvious and the author has that irritating way of having a character think or feel one way and then instantly have an opposite thought or feeling, similar to Edna Ferber. Really it was just a silly romantic historical novel of the 40s.
Without Signposts, Kathleen Wallace, GP Putnam's Sons, 1941, 298 pp
This story was an interesting but little known aspect of life for women in England during World War II. Just before England got into the war, people were being evacuated from London into the countryside for safety, especially children and mothers. Tamsin Heywood is a widow with two small children and among the evacuees. She must find housing and schools for the children on little money.
They end up in a boarding house run by Russian emigres from the revolution. It is a similar scene to the one in The Family, which I read in the 1940 list. Genteel poverty and various cultures trying to live together. In the end, everyone finds love including Tamsin. The writing is not great but the happy ending with the underlying potential for loss because of the war is a true portrayal of life at that time, particularly for mothers.
Now we come to the award winning books. There was no Pulitzer Prize winner in 1941.
The Matchlock Gun, Walter D Edmonds, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1941, 50 pp
The Newbery Medal winner is a story of an Indian raid on a family in upstate New York. The 10 year old son fires off an old matchlock gun and saves his mother and sister, while his father has gone off to try to prevent the Indians from getting that close.
Make Way For Ducklings, Robert McCloskey, The Viking Press, 1941, 64 pp
The Caldecott Medal winner features great illustrations and the story of a family of ducks settling in Boston. The way the mother duck wants to keep looking until they find a safe place to raise ducklings reminded me of the beaver story in James Michener's Centennial.
That completes the books I read from 1941 and my plan worked. I am now ready to write up the chapter for my book that corresponds to that year. I should have it posted tomorrow.
BOOKS READ FROM 1941, PART THREE
The rest of the 1941 list are non-bestseller books, chosen for various reasons.
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler, The Macmillan Company, 1941, 222 pp
This was one of my favorites from 1941 and is a completely intense book about a communist leader who is no longer in favor under Stalin. He has been imprisoned (not for the first time) and undergoes a whole series of "hearings" to convince him to confess to crimes he did not do, for the good of the party. The scene where he is arrested was so moving and touches the reader with that fear of unreasoning authority that I believe all people have buried somewhere deep. The "hearings" portray injustice as it is practiced here on earth with perfect pitch.
The main character has to figure out the ethics of it for himself and to examine his communist beliefs, hopes and dreams, compared to what has become of the revolution as they try to hold onto power. The stable datum for communism is that the end justifies the means. The party is also having trouble getting the masses to understand what communism has done for them. Basically they have a PR problem.
This book will resonate deeply with anyone who has been part of a group or espoused a philosophy that claims to have "answers" for mankind.
The Scum of the Earth, Arthur Koestler, The Macmillan Company, 1941, 287 pp
This one is not fiction but memoir; a harrowing story of prison camps and hiding and running during the early months of World War II. It is one of those stories you never get in the history books they make you read in school.
Basically as the French government continued the ass-kissing of Hitler which led to a German victory over France, all foreigners and especially writers of any left-wing color became suspect and were thrown into French prison camps. Human rights were unknown, red tape and extreme incompetent bureaucracy were rampant. All this was going on as Koestler was writing Darkness at Noon. He is a great writer and he honors many voices of freedom that were permanently silenced, some by their own hand in despair.
It seems to be a law of some kind: when the forces of destruction gain the upper hand, the voices of freedom are not allowed to be heard. But a second law is that they can never be entirely wiped out.
Between Two Worlds, Upton Sinclair, The Viking Press, 1941, 859 pp
This is the second volume in the Lanny Budd series which began in 1940 with World's End. It is very long and gets monotonous at times but it was part of my continuing education on the real story behind our two world wars. This one takes Lanny up to the stock market crash of 1929.
What gets monotonous is the theme of the stupidity of politics between the wars. Also tiresome is Lanny's continuous vacillation between being a wealthy artist or a socialist who works to change the world. He goes through three love affairs, the third being his marriage to a multi-millionaire heiress, largely engineered by his mother and her friends. I suppose that since this is Lanny's true coming of age tale, which is going on during a severe breakdown of the western world, that the story must be told this way. I also suspect it is somewhat autobiographical for Sinclair. The story picks up near the end and at that point I was grateful for the educational aspect of it all, though I still felt it could have been a couple hundred pages shorter.
The Real Life of Sebastion Knight, Vladimir Nabokov, New Directions, 1941, 205pp
I don't really like Nabokov. I read him because it seems that any literary person must know about him and his writings. I feel the same way about Henry James, though thankfully he wrote before 1940, so I don't have to deal with him right now. Anyway, I digress.
I was mystified by this book. It is the story of a writer's life told by his brother after the writer's death. It might be partially autobiographical. Nabokov's first language was Russian; then he learned to write in English. He likes to use big words and literary references. He can really nail people and make them alive, but I am never sure why he writes what he does. I think Russians as a people are mysterious to me and yet I feel a spiritual kinship. I think my Dad had some Russian character in him.
At the end of the book the narrator has a realization: something about how all souls are the same and a living person is a constructed personality that only lasts a lifetime. I agree with this and as far as Nabokov goes, it is a good thing.
A Curtain of Green; Eudora Welty; Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc; 1941; 289 pp
I became interested in Eudora Welty when I learned that one of my favorite singer/songwriters (Kate Campbell) was inspired by Welty's writing. This is her first book and is a collection of short stories. It contains a motley crew of southern small town people. There is violence, insanity and other dark stuff; also a certain nobility of poor people and lots of poverty. She has her own unique voice which is never boring.
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler, The Macmillan Company, 1941, 222 pp
This was one of my favorites from 1941 and is a completely intense book about a communist leader who is no longer in favor under Stalin. He has been imprisoned (not for the first time) and undergoes a whole series of "hearings" to convince him to confess to crimes he did not do, for the good of the party. The scene where he is arrested was so moving and touches the reader with that fear of unreasoning authority that I believe all people have buried somewhere deep. The "hearings" portray injustice as it is practiced here on earth with perfect pitch.
The main character has to figure out the ethics of it for himself and to examine his communist beliefs, hopes and dreams, compared to what has become of the revolution as they try to hold onto power. The stable datum for communism is that the end justifies the means. The party is also having trouble getting the masses to understand what communism has done for them. Basically they have a PR problem.
This book will resonate deeply with anyone who has been part of a group or espoused a philosophy that claims to have "answers" for mankind.
The Scum of the Earth, Arthur Koestler, The Macmillan Company, 1941, 287 pp
This one is not fiction but memoir; a harrowing story of prison camps and hiding and running during the early months of World War II. It is one of those stories you never get in the history books they make you read in school.
Basically as the French government continued the ass-kissing of Hitler which led to a German victory over France, all foreigners and especially writers of any left-wing color became suspect and were thrown into French prison camps. Human rights were unknown, red tape and extreme incompetent bureaucracy were rampant. All this was going on as Koestler was writing Darkness at Noon. He is a great writer and he honors many voices of freedom that were permanently silenced, some by their own hand in despair.
It seems to be a law of some kind: when the forces of destruction gain the upper hand, the voices of freedom are not allowed to be heard. But a second law is that they can never be entirely wiped out.
Between Two Worlds, Upton Sinclair, The Viking Press, 1941, 859 pp
This is the second volume in the Lanny Budd series which began in 1940 with World's End. It is very long and gets monotonous at times but it was part of my continuing education on the real story behind our two world wars. This one takes Lanny up to the stock market crash of 1929.
What gets monotonous is the theme of the stupidity of politics between the wars. Also tiresome is Lanny's continuous vacillation between being a wealthy artist or a socialist who works to change the world. He goes through three love affairs, the third being his marriage to a multi-millionaire heiress, largely engineered by his mother and her friends. I suppose that since this is Lanny's true coming of age tale, which is going on during a severe breakdown of the western world, that the story must be told this way. I also suspect it is somewhat autobiographical for Sinclair. The story picks up near the end and at that point I was grateful for the educational aspect of it all, though I still felt it could have been a couple hundred pages shorter.
The Real Life of Sebastion Knight, Vladimir Nabokov, New Directions, 1941, 205pp
I don't really like Nabokov. I read him because it seems that any literary person must know about him and his writings. I feel the same way about Henry James, though thankfully he wrote before 1940, so I don't have to deal with him right now. Anyway, I digress.
I was mystified by this book. It is the story of a writer's life told by his brother after the writer's death. It might be partially autobiographical. Nabokov's first language was Russian; then he learned to write in English. He likes to use big words and literary references. He can really nail people and make them alive, but I am never sure why he writes what he does. I think Russians as a people are mysterious to me and yet I feel a spiritual kinship. I think my Dad had some Russian character in him.
At the end of the book the narrator has a realization: something about how all souls are the same and a living person is a constructed personality that only lasts a lifetime. I agree with this and as far as Nabokov goes, it is a good thing.
A Curtain of Green; Eudora Welty; Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc; 1941; 289 pp
I became interested in Eudora Welty when I learned that one of my favorite singer/songwriters (Kate Campbell) was inspired by Welty's writing. This is her first book and is a collection of short stories. It contains a motley crew of southern small town people. There is violence, insanity and other dark stuff; also a certain nobility of poor people and lots of poverty. She has her own unique voice which is never boring.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
BOOKS READ FROM 1941, PART TWO
Oliver Wiswell, Kenneth Roberts
This book was #6 in 1941 and #7 in 1940. See my review at BOOKS READ FROM 1940, PART TWO, January 9, 2006.
HM Pulham, Esquire; John P Marquand; Little, Brown and Company; 1941; 432 pp
Marquand won a Pulitzer Prize in 1938 for a book called The Late George Apley, so I suppose that gave him a shot at the bestseller list. This book was the #7 bestseller in 1941. HM Pulham, known as Henry, was raised in a moneyed family in Boston at the end of the 19th century. He was educated in a private prep school and at Harvard and fought in World War I. He is another typical hero of this time; conscientious, conservative, steady and honorable.
After the war, he works in New York City in an advertising firm. He has been shaken up by the war and is trying to find himself. He falls in love with Marvin Myles, a college educated career girl. They are from widely different backgrounds and Henry finds that he cannot fit his lover and his family into the same life, so he goes back to the bosom of his family and marries a girl from that circle of people.
Twenty years later, both Henry and his wife dally with the persons they loved in their youth but realize that they can't go back. I enjoyed reading the book and the author created great tension as you wondered if Henry and his wife would stay together. Ultimately it is a conservative view, though mixed with humor, and stands up for family and class values.
Mr and Mrs Cugat, Isabel Rorick, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940, 211 pp
At #8 we have a light, entertaining, somewhat humorous novel that obviously started out as a series of short stories about the same people. The Cugats are in their late 20s and are upper-middle-class New England people. They are in love. She is a vivacious woman who can't balance a checkbook. He is a conservative banker who excuses his wife's foibles because she is so cute. Ah, if life were still that simple; as if it ever were.
Saratoga Trunk, Edna Ferber; Doubleday, Doran & Company; 1941; 352 pp
Edna Ferber comes in with the #9 bestseller in 1941. I found it to be a silly piece of historical fiction. Clio is the orphan of a Creole courtesan from New Orleans. (As we will see, New Orleans was a hot location for bestsellers in the 1940s.) Clio is a manic-depressive female who hooks up with Clint, a Texas cowboy. They go to Saratoga, NY, home of the racetrack, with the understanding that Clio is looking for a millionaire to marry and Clint is planning to become a big man in horse racing. Naturally they end up getting married and Clint becomes a millionaire in railroads.
The women in this novel are portrayed as conniving, bitchy husband hunters and the men are all uncouth, greed-driven people. Clio and Clint come out winners, but in his old age Clint becomes disillusioned about how he has lived and about the state of business, so he tries to do some good with his money. It is a tired old story though part of the American way.
I am not a big fan of Ferber's writing; it seems forced and artificial to me. She was the Danielle Steele of her generation in my opinion. I have read two of her later books as well and this was my least favorite.
Windswept; Mary Ellen Chase, MacMillan Company, 1941
I read this book back in 1995, before I knew anything about bestsellers in the 1940s. I picked it up at a used bookstore for almost nothing, since the store was going out of business. I totally loved it and here it is at #10 on the list. It is easily one of my favorite books of the year.
Windswept starts out so slowly and dreamily that I was worried, but it grows into a beautiful story. The central character is John Marston. When he is just fourteen, his father buys a piece of property on the coast of Maine, where he plans to build a summer home, but then is killed in a hunting accident. One of John's best friends had fired the shot.
John is now orphaned but inherits the land, which his father had named Windswept. It is the end of the 19th century and John is more strong, steadfast and sensible than you would expect for a boy of fourteen. He decides to go ahead and have the house built in Maine, over much opposition from older folks including family members.
Windswept becomes the Marston family home and many and varied are the characters who make up the Marston clan along with their associates. Their lives are real, rich and honorable. A friend of mine who is a great reader was born and raised in Maine. This is one of her favorite books and she is like a character from the novel. I highly recommend it as an example of what is good and right about Americans.
This book was #6 in 1941 and #7 in 1940. See my review at BOOKS READ FROM 1940, PART TWO, January 9, 2006.
HM Pulham, Esquire; John P Marquand; Little, Brown and Company; 1941; 432 pp
Marquand won a Pulitzer Prize in 1938 for a book called The Late George Apley, so I suppose that gave him a shot at the bestseller list. This book was the #7 bestseller in 1941. HM Pulham, known as Henry, was raised in a moneyed family in Boston at the end of the 19th century. He was educated in a private prep school and at Harvard and fought in World War I. He is another typical hero of this time; conscientious, conservative, steady and honorable.
After the war, he works in New York City in an advertising firm. He has been shaken up by the war and is trying to find himself. He falls in love with Marvin Myles, a college educated career girl. They are from widely different backgrounds and Henry finds that he cannot fit his lover and his family into the same life, so he goes back to the bosom of his family and marries a girl from that circle of people.
Twenty years later, both Henry and his wife dally with the persons they loved in their youth but realize that they can't go back. I enjoyed reading the book and the author created great tension as you wondered if Henry and his wife would stay together. Ultimately it is a conservative view, though mixed with humor, and stands up for family and class values.
Mr and Mrs Cugat, Isabel Rorick, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940, 211 pp
At #8 we have a light, entertaining, somewhat humorous novel that obviously started out as a series of short stories about the same people. The Cugats are in their late 20s and are upper-middle-class New England people. They are in love. She is a vivacious woman who can't balance a checkbook. He is a conservative banker who excuses his wife's foibles because she is so cute. Ah, if life were still that simple; as if it ever were.
Saratoga Trunk, Edna Ferber; Doubleday, Doran & Company; 1941; 352 pp
Edna Ferber comes in with the #9 bestseller in 1941. I found it to be a silly piece of historical fiction. Clio is the orphan of a Creole courtesan from New Orleans. (As we will see, New Orleans was a hot location for bestsellers in the 1940s.) Clio is a manic-depressive female who hooks up with Clint, a Texas cowboy. They go to Saratoga, NY, home of the racetrack, with the understanding that Clio is looking for a millionaire to marry and Clint is planning to become a big man in horse racing. Naturally they end up getting married and Clint becomes a millionaire in railroads.
The women in this novel are portrayed as conniving, bitchy husband hunters and the men are all uncouth, greed-driven people. Clio and Clint come out winners, but in his old age Clint becomes disillusioned about how he has lived and about the state of business, so he tries to do some good with his money. It is a tired old story though part of the American way.
I am not a big fan of Ferber's writing; it seems forced and artificial to me. She was the Danielle Steele of her generation in my opinion. I have read two of her later books as well and this was my least favorite.
Windswept; Mary Ellen Chase, MacMillan Company, 1941
I read this book back in 1995, before I knew anything about bestsellers in the 1940s. I picked it up at a used bookstore for almost nothing, since the store was going out of business. I totally loved it and here it is at #10 on the list. It is easily one of my favorite books of the year.
Windswept starts out so slowly and dreamily that I was worried, but it grows into a beautiful story. The central character is John Marston. When he is just fourteen, his father buys a piece of property on the coast of Maine, where he plans to build a summer home, but then is killed in a hunting accident. One of John's best friends had fired the shot.
John is now orphaned but inherits the land, which his father had named Windswept. It is the end of the 19th century and John is more strong, steadfast and sensible than you would expect for a boy of fourteen. He decides to go ahead and have the house built in Maine, over much opposition from older folks including family members.
Windswept becomes the Marston family home and many and varied are the characters who make up the Marston clan along with their associates. Their lives are real, rich and honorable. A friend of mine who is a great reader was born and raised in Maine. This is one of her favorite books and she is like a character from the novel. I highly recommend it as an example of what is good and right about Americans.
BOOKS READ FROM 1941, PART ONE
The Keys of the Kingdom, AJ Cronin, Little, Brown and Company, 1941, 344 pp This book was #1 on the bestseller list for 1941. Father Francis Chisholm, the main character, is a Catholic priest who spent a couple of decades as a missionary in late 19th and early 20th century China. Part of the book is the story of his early life and how he came to be a priest; a truly Dickensian tale. As a priest, Father Chisholm is a humble, very decent man who never feels successful but who achieved much through hard work and love of people. In the end, war, old age and church politics bring him back to England. He is a renegade in the eyes of church authorities because he has integrity and speaks aloud what is true for him, regardless of how it will affect his position or comfort.
This is a very English book, it is religious and pacifist, sentimental but contains many truths. The writing is excellent, the style is one of conservative storytelling. I enjoyed reading it and found it to be one of the gems of the year.
Random Harvest, James Hilton, Little, Brown and Company, 1941, 327 pp
James Hilton is the author of Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr Chips. I read Lost Horizon many years ago and remember it as a somewhat spiritual story and a very emotional tale. Funnily enough, I will get to revisit it soon since one of my reading groups is reading it.
Random Harvest, at #2 on the 1941 bestseller list, did not strike me as strongly but it is good storytelling. Charles Ranier, son of a prosperous merchant family in England, goes to fight in World War I, is wounded and loses his memory. After a period of trying to put together a new life, he finds out who he was and his memory returns, but in an interesting twist he then loses the memory of his period of amnesia.
By the end of the book he has pieced it all together, with the help of a woman he fell in love with during his amnesia, and there is a happy, romantic ending. Charles is the typical hero of those times. He is upright, hard-working and not quite in the mainstream, though of it. Once again, the novel is against war.
This Above All, Eric Knight, Grosset & Dunlap, 1941, 473 pp
The #3 bestseller in 1941 is another war-time romance. World War II is raging, it is just after Dunkirk and the Germans are beginning to bomb London.
The main characters are Clive and Prudence. Clive is a soldier who grew up in the slums but through many different jobs and plenty of reading, educated himself. He is on leave and meets Prudence, an upper-class girl who is serving in a WAF (Women in the Air Force) camp.
Clive has become disillusioned with war and has turned into a conscientious objector. He is planning to desert when his leave is up. They go on holiday, fall in love and it is all a tragedy from there. The story is extremely well told and like most of the other war books of this time, is basically anti-war. Very enjoyable.
The Sun is My Undoing, Marguerite Steen, The Viking Press, 1941, 1176 pp
It took a long time to read this one; so many pages and such small print. It was #4 on the bestseller list. It is a historical romance with lots of bigger-than-life characters, passion and heartbreak.
Matthew Flood, the main character, is the grandson of a wealthy shipping magnate in Bristol, England, during the 1700s. The wealth was made from slaving and Matthew inherits the fortune. He is a wild, impulsive young man who wins the love of Pallas Burmeister, but fails to win her hand in marriage because she is a strong, independent-minded young woman who is opposed to slavery.
So Matthew sets out on one of his own ships, picks up another fiery woman on the Gold Coast (Sheba: the ultimate proud and passionate Negress) and they head for Barbados and Cuba. Many misadventures follow for Matthew and his offspring. Forty years later, he and Pallas meet up again in Bristol and together push an abolition bill through Parliament.
The most interesting aspect was how slavery was so tied in to the economy in England, due to all the plantations in the various colonies; how prejudice, social conventions and money are what controls this planet; how change comes about often due to a combination of sexual passion, human love and strong-minded individuals who actually have a sense of ethics. At least that is the way it looks in a historical romance novel.
For Whom The Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
I read this in the 1940 section when it came in at #5 on the list. It was also the #5 bestseller in 1941. For my review, see post of January 6, Books Read From 1940 Part One.
This is a very English book, it is religious and pacifist, sentimental but contains many truths. The writing is excellent, the style is one of conservative storytelling. I enjoyed reading it and found it to be one of the gems of the year.
Random Harvest, James Hilton, Little, Brown and Company, 1941, 327 pp
James Hilton is the author of Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr Chips. I read Lost Horizon many years ago and remember it as a somewhat spiritual story and a very emotional tale. Funnily enough, I will get to revisit it soon since one of my reading groups is reading it.
Random Harvest, at #2 on the 1941 bestseller list, did not strike me as strongly but it is good storytelling. Charles Ranier, son of a prosperous merchant family in England, goes to fight in World War I, is wounded and loses his memory. After a period of trying to put together a new life, he finds out who he was and his memory returns, but in an interesting twist he then loses the memory of his period of amnesia.
By the end of the book he has pieced it all together, with the help of a woman he fell in love with during his amnesia, and there is a happy, romantic ending. Charles is the typical hero of those times. He is upright, hard-working and not quite in the mainstream, though of it. Once again, the novel is against war.
This Above All, Eric Knight, Grosset & Dunlap, 1941, 473 pp
The #3 bestseller in 1941 is another war-time romance. World War II is raging, it is just after Dunkirk and the Germans are beginning to bomb London.
The main characters are Clive and Prudence. Clive is a soldier who grew up in the slums but through many different jobs and plenty of reading, educated himself. He is on leave and meets Prudence, an upper-class girl who is serving in a WAF (Women in the Air Force) camp.
Clive has become disillusioned with war and has turned into a conscientious objector. He is planning to desert when his leave is up. They go on holiday, fall in love and it is all a tragedy from there. The story is extremely well told and like most of the other war books of this time, is basically anti-war. Very enjoyable.
The Sun is My Undoing, Marguerite Steen, The Viking Press, 1941, 1176 pp
It took a long time to read this one; so many pages and such small print. It was #4 on the bestseller list. It is a historical romance with lots of bigger-than-life characters, passion and heartbreak.
Matthew Flood, the main character, is the grandson of a wealthy shipping magnate in Bristol, England, during the 1700s. The wealth was made from slaving and Matthew inherits the fortune. He is a wild, impulsive young man who wins the love of Pallas Burmeister, but fails to win her hand in marriage because she is a strong, independent-minded young woman who is opposed to slavery.
So Matthew sets out on one of his own ships, picks up another fiery woman on the Gold Coast (Sheba: the ultimate proud and passionate Negress) and they head for Barbados and Cuba. Many misadventures follow for Matthew and his offspring. Forty years later, he and Pallas meet up again in Bristol and together push an abolition bill through Parliament.
The most interesting aspect was how slavery was so tied in to the economy in England, due to all the plantations in the various colonies; how prejudice, social conventions and money are what controls this planet; how change comes about often due to a combination of sexual passion, human love and strong-minded individuals who actually have a sense of ethics. At least that is the way it looks in a historical romance novel.
For Whom The Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
I read this in the 1940 section when it came in at #5 on the list. It was also the #5 bestseller in 1941. For my review, see post of January 6, Books Read From 1940 Part One.
THE CURRENT FANTASY
As foolishly promised weeks ago, I am working on Chapter 2 of my pre-book, which has the working title of Reading For My Life. (To read Chapter 1, go to the December 2005 archives, then to December 4.)
I've made a couple attempts to pull this chapter together but so far I am not satisfied. Since I read the books for this period about three years ago, it has been hard to really immerse myself in the emotions and thoughts I had at the time. (To learn about the entire project see My Big Fat Reading Project, July 6, 2005; in the July archives.)
In an attempt to break through the writer's block here, I have decided to blog about the books I read in 1941. We will see if it works. Thanks to my readers for being patient with me. Charles Dickens I am not and besides there is no paycheck involved...yet?
I've made a couple attempts to pull this chapter together but so far I am not satisfied. Since I read the books for this period about three years ago, it has been hard to really immerse myself in the emotions and thoughts I had at the time. (To learn about the entire project see My Big Fat Reading Project, July 6, 2005; in the July archives.)
In an attempt to break through the writer's block here, I have decided to blog about the books I read in 1941. We will see if it works. Thanks to my readers for being patient with me. Charles Dickens I am not and besides there is no paycheck involved...yet?
Friday, February 17, 2006
THE DREAM OF SCIPIO
The Dream of Scipio, Iain Pears, Riverhead Books, 2002, 396 pp
I had heard good things about Iain Pears and read rave reviews of this book when it first appeared. It is one of those books that has been on my list of books to read for several years. Browsing through the library one day, I spotted it and checked it out. Then I recommended it for one of my reading groups, they agreed and I had a good reason to spend a weekend reading it.
The Dream of Scipio is historical fiction with the twist of running three different historical periods along together, tied by location, philosophical ideas and a manuscript called "The Dream of Scipio." It was a hard book to get into at first, but once I learned who everyone was and did some map study to get oriented, I got hooked by the philosophical idea: how do you save civilization when the barbarians are invading and destroying it?
The location is Avignon, France. The three periods are the final days of the Roman Empire; the years of the Black Death; and World War II. Each period follows the story of a man who has some kind of philosophical bent and a woman who is loved by the man and complements his life in some way. There is lots of historical intrigue in each period to keep the stories exciting and the "Dream of Scipio" is the thread that keeps turning up to show that civilization did in fact survive and re-surface. Each character feels that he or she has failed in the quest and Pears seems to be saying that they did not.
In the end, I almost loved the book. I don't know of many novelists who are writing these days about such large and deep ideas. I even wrote a letter to the author.
I had heard good things about Iain Pears and read rave reviews of this book when it first appeared. It is one of those books that has been on my list of books to read for several years. Browsing through the library one day, I spotted it and checked it out. Then I recommended it for one of my reading groups, they agreed and I had a good reason to spend a weekend reading it.
The Dream of Scipio is historical fiction with the twist of running three different historical periods along together, tied by location, philosophical ideas and a manuscript called "The Dream of Scipio." It was a hard book to get into at first, but once I learned who everyone was and did some map study to get oriented, I got hooked by the philosophical idea: how do you save civilization when the barbarians are invading and destroying it?
The location is Avignon, France. The three periods are the final days of the Roman Empire; the years of the Black Death; and World War II. Each period follows the story of a man who has some kind of philosophical bent and a woman who is loved by the man and complements his life in some way. There is lots of historical intrigue in each period to keep the stories exciting and the "Dream of Scipio" is the thread that keeps turning up to show that civilization did in fact survive and re-surface. Each character feels that he or she has failed in the quest and Pears seems to be saying that they did not.
In the end, I almost loved the book. I don't know of many novelists who are writing these days about such large and deep ideas. I even wrote a letter to the author.
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