“Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson

“Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson (2013)  544 pages

Here is how “Life After Life” begins.

It is February 11, 1910, and a baby, a girl, is being born at home to the Todd family at Fox Corner near Beaconsfield in England.  The birth goes terribly wrong, because the umbilical cord is twisted around the baby’s neck, and the baby dies.

This would be a very short novel, except our story starts again.

It is February 11, 1910, and a baby, a girl, is being born to the Todd family at Fox Corner.  The umbilical cord is twisted around the baby’s neck.  This time old family doctor, Dr. Fellows, arrives in time to cut the cord, and the baby girl, Ursula, lives on to have more adventures.

So it goes.  “Life After Life” makes us think of all the perilous misadventures that might have occurred and severely affected us or even ended our lives.

A few years ago my family and I took our regular trip up to my parents’ place, and somehow the talk turned to my own birth.  At the dinner table my mother mentioned that I had been born several weeks premature.  She talked about this as though it explained quite a lot about me.  Up until then I had not known about this at all.  I’m still trying to come to terms with this basic fact.

“Life After Life” has the imaginative plot where if our hero Ursula Todd or one of her closest relatives or friends meets a bad end, we can rewind the story and start again.  But this is far from science fiction.  The method used in “Life After Life” may be quite innovative, but it is used for the most traditional of purposes, to create an affectionate portrait of an English family.  Even if you are not from England, this novel will make you feel nostalgic for English family life between the Wars.

The Todds are loving and loveable, strong and spunky, spunky enough to win World War II despite the heavy bombardment.  There is stoic father Hugh, prim mother Sylvie, practical sister Pamela, obnoxious big brother Maurice, adorable quiet brother Teddy, and bumptious baby brother Jimmy. Finally there is of course plucky Ursula Todd who as an adult somehow manages to be both on an English civil defense team rescuing townspeople from bombings and also visiting in Germany to meet Hitler and his girlfriend Eva Braun.  Only Aunt Izzy is a free spirit, and plenty of scorn is heaped on her except for one time when she comes through dramatically for Ursula.

Kate Atkinson is a strong and steady writer.  I discovered her on her first novel “Behind the Scenes at the Museum”, and since then have always been on the lookout for her novels.  She also writes detective novels about former detective Jackson Brodie.  I expect that “Life After Life” will be a strong contender for the Booker prize this year.

As a sidelight, there is an unexpected mention in “Life After Life” of ‘Casaubon’ that made it seem for me that all the endless hours I’ve spent reading novels were worthwhile.

“Life After Life” is of course a tour de force and a crowd pleaser, and if you haven’t already read a dozen other English novels about spunky English families, you will like “Life After Life” even more than I did.

“The Tragedy of Mr. Morn”, A Play by Vladimir Nabokov

“The Tragedy of Mr. Morn”, A Play by Vladimir Nabokov (1924) – 144 pages   Translated by Anastasia Tolstoy and Thomas Karshan

I have been a fan of Vladimir Nabokov for a long time and consider him one of the great novelists of the twentieth century.  My favorites of his work have always been the literary send-up “Pale Fire” and the college novel “Pnin”.  Both of these novels are uproariously funny, and the individual sentences within each novel are nearly perfect.   I’ve also read and enjoyed several of his other works, both those he wrote in Russian and those he wrote in English.  For me “Lolita” is a less entertaining work, because the obsessive situation in the novel is inherently not comedic.

“The Tragedy of Mr. Morn” is a play that Nabokov wrote when he was just 24 years old in 1924.  Nabokov and his family were living in Germany after having escaped the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.  Nabokov’s father had been an official of the liberal progressive government of Alexander Kerensky which had originally ruled Russia after the Tsar abdicated in February, 1917, but was overthrown by the Communist Bolsheviks in October, 1917.   This is another example of a revolution eating its own people.  Later in 1922 Nabokov’s father was murdered in Germany by a Russian monarchist assassin.  After these events Nabokov had a deep distrust of revolutionaries which is quit evident in this play.

“The Tragedy of Mr. Morn” is a lively busy play with several colorful characters, both male and female.  Although I’ve considered Vladimir Nabokov a great Russian novelist, I never saw the connection between him and all the great Russian novelists of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. His writing always seemed far removed from Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Bely, Turgenev, Gogol, etc. This play is the missing link.  The play is deeply Russian beginning with a large dance ball in a Russian villa, then an illicit love affair, proceeding to a duel.  What could be more Russian?  Later we even have a fortune teller reading of a card from the deck which could have sprung directly from Alexander Pushkin.

Even more than Pushkin, William Shakespeare was the guiding force behind this play.  Before writing the play, Nabokov spent a couple of years at Cambridge in England, and he must have immersed himself in Shakespeare. Nabokov got the very movement and spirit of the play from Shakespeare.  The play is written in iambic pentameter, the same rhythmic pattern as Shakespeare’s dramas.  Just as in Shakespeare, there is high drama and low comedy in the interaction of the many characters within the play    I would like to see this play staged in a theater here in the United States today.  It has the theatrical qualities to be a success today.

 I’ve always had one theory about Vladimir Nabokov which frankly may not have any validity whatsoever.  Nabokov’s works written directly in English have always appealed to me more than the ones that have been translated from the Russian.  This might be explained by his maturing as a novelist, but I have a different theory.  Nabokov always assigned his son Dmitri Nabokov to translate each of his Russian books.  I’ve always suspected that Dmitri may not have been the best translator for these works.  “The Tragedy of Mr. Morn” was not translated by Dmitri.  It has an energy and liveliness that is missing from some of the other Russian works in translation.  I would really like to see a new translator start from scratch with one of Nabokov’s Russian novels.  The results could be very interesting.

“A Map of Tulsa” by Benjamin Lytal

“A Map of Tulsa” by Benjamin Lytal  (2013) – 256 pages

Once in a while a novel comes along which is highly lauded by the critics yet falls totally flat for me.  “A Map of Tulsa” by Benjamin Lytal was that kind of novel.

“And when it rose, the morning sun smelled like acorns and dirty jeans.” 

What?!? This must be the first time in recorded history anyone has ever smelled the sun.  Even the language of this novel struck me as pretentious and off-putting, but most of all clumsy.  However to be fair, if you do like the above sentence, you will probably like “A Map of Tulsa”.

The story here wants to be a quirky romance.  However neither of the two main characters, Jim nor Adrienne, is particularly interesting or appealing.  Adrienne is the far-out kooky gal leading our rather straight Jim astray.   As an aspiring poet, Jim wants a more artistic existence.  He is spending the summer in his hometown of Tulsa after returning from his Eastern college.  The year is about 2004; you could call the story ‘the passion of the Millennials’.

The city of Tulsa must also be considered a main character in this novel.    The author fills us in on some of the Big Oil history of Tulsa and waxes poetic about the city.  However most of the scenes in the city are of our couple on the top of  big skyscrapers looking down on the urban landscape or of our couple walking on the deserted streets around the empty office buildings at night.  There are no scenes of Tulsa that project any warmth or color.

“At their roots, the skyscrapers are dumb.”

 For once I agree with the author.

It has been a long time since I’ve encountered dialogue as wooden and stilted as that in “A Map of Tulsa”.  The awkward wording throughout the novel is perhaps the main reason the scenes and the characters come across as murky.

After reading all the enthusiastic reviews of “The Map of Tulsa”, I keep thinking there must be something that I missed.  However I can’t figure out what it is.

Six Reasons to Not Like “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot

“The poem is—in spite of its lack of structural unity—simply one triumph after another . . .” – Edmund Wilson on “The Waste  Land”

 “A pompous parade of erudition” – Louis Untermeyer on “The Waste Land”

A lot of ‘authorities’ on poetry consider “The Waste Land” perhaps the greatest modernist poem.  However it is very easy to dislike this poem.  I ought to know, because I’ve just listened to it six times.

1.  “April is the cruelest month”.  Just as the poem begins to make some semblance of sense, Eliot drives us off the trail of understanding by throwing in un-translated lines in a variety of foreign languages.

                          Frisch weht der Wind

                          Der Heimat zu

                          Mine Irisch kind,

                          Wo weilest du.                          (German)

 

                          Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant,dans le coupole   (French)

 

                          Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina

                          Quando fiam uti chelidon – O swallow swallow

                          Le Prince d’Aquitaine a la tour abolie              (Italian)  

 

                          Shantih shantih shantih                  (Sanskrit)

2. As if the un-translated lines weren’t confusing enough, Eliot then tosses in some lines of pure nonsense gibberish to really throw us off.

                    Twit twit twit

                     Jug jug jug jug jug jug

                     So rudely forc’d

                     Tereu                                               (Nonsense)

 

                     Weialala leia

                     Wallala leialala                          (Nonsense)

3.  Even if after all the un-translated and nonsensical lines, you think you might still salvage some meaning from “The Waste Land”, forget about it. Now Eliot bombards us with obscure erudite allusions to mythical and real figures of the past.  Here are some of the figures he expects us to have a nodding acquaintance with: Philomel, Tiresias, Coriolanus, and, of course, the Fisher King.

4.  Supposedly Eliot was reading “Ulysses” by James Joyce while writing “The Waste Land”.  In fact it is from Joyce that Eliot picked up his indecipherable fragmented style.  James Joyce is also where Eliot picked up that ridiculous dialogue in the poem between a man and a woman who appear to be Irish or English bar patrons.  Thus among all the learned references, we have these two dummies talking who  wouldn’t know their Coriolanus from a hole in the ground.  At least these lines I could figure out.

 ”He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you

To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.

You have them all out Lil, and get a nice set,

He said, I can’t bear to look at you.

And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,

He been in the army four years, he wants a good time,

And if you don’t give it to him, there’s others will, I said.”    

5.  If you translated all the foreign phrases, made sense of all the nonsense lines, and fully understood all the literary allusions, you would still be stuck with the dismal theme of the poem, that the modern world and modern life is a waste land.   “The Waste Land” is T. S. Eliot’s response to the spiritual collapse of his era.. In fact, the better you understood the poem, the bleaker your world view would be.

6.  In one of the more brilliant(?) analyses of the poem, Conrad Aiken, a friend of T. S. Eliot, considered the incoherence of “The Waste Land” a virtue because its subject was incoherence.  Of what other poems can this be said?

After listening to the poem six times, I finally did come to some sort of terms with “The Waste Land”  I decided to not even consider whatever Eliot was trying to get at.  Instead I would just listen to the sound of the fragments.  The poem does sound great; and it is in the sound of the words and phrases where T. S. Eliot excels.

“The Flamethrowers” by Rachel Kushner, a Rising Literary Star

“The Flamethrowers” by Rachel Kushner  (2013) – 383 pages

The difference between good writing and bad writing is really quite simple.  With bad writing, you keep waiting to reach your intended stopping point.  With good writing, you are so captivated that you don’t even notice that you’ve read beyond your stopping point.  There are some writers that you realize early on have the dexterity and steadfastness to tell just about any story and hold your interest. The great strength of Rachel Kushner as a writer is that she can keep your attention.  Many times during “The Flamethrowers” I wanted to read just a few more pages.

The young woman, Reno, who narrates “The Flamethrowers” is not your typical female if there is such a thing.  The story  begins with our twenty-two year old heroine driving her Solo Valera motorcycle to the Bonneville Salt Flats near her hometown Reno, Nevada, in order to try to set the world land speed record for women.   Sandro Valera, grandson of the owner of the Valera Motorcycle Company in Milan, Italy, happens to be her boyfriend.  Both Sandro and our heroine who hereafter has the nickname ‘Reno’ are aspiring artists who live on the scene of the 1970s New York art world.   Later Reno returns to New York and Sandro.

Don’t read “The Flamethrowers”, if you are looking for a heartwarming sentimental family novel to read.  What you get here with “The Flamethrowers” is what its title implies.   These so-called artists of the New York art set are as unrestrained as can be, and with Reno and Sandro we are right in the middle of the social scene.

Much of “The Flamethrowers” takes place in Italy as well as in New York.

Fortunately “The Flamethrowers” is very little about the art, but instead it is about some of the wild eccentric people who made up the art crowd in the Seventies.   Yes, the Seventies were off-the-wall times, and those times are captured well here.   The writing is matter of fact, and that leads the reader to trust even the most outlandish of circumstances.  Kushner does not over-write and doesn’t overplay the emotions of a scene.  Thus you come to rely on her as an honest retailer of events.  Yet at the same time there can be fire in her words.

 “All you can do is involve yourself totally in your own life, your own moment…And when we feel pessimism crouching on our shoulder like a stinking vulture…we banish it, we smother it with optimism. We want, and our want kills doom. That is how we’ll take the future and occupy it like an empty warehouse. It’s an act of love, pure love. It isn’t prophecy. It’s hope.”

 Rachel Kushner is the real thing, a top-of-the-line literary novelist, and I suggest you start reading her soon.

“The Dinner” by Herman Koch

“The Dinner” by Herman Koch  (2013) – 304 pages    Translated by Sam Garrett

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Nothing is more annoying or irritating for a guy than to have a brother who is more successful than you are.  I can vouch for that.  That’s what we have in “The Dinner” by Herman Koch.  Paul Lohman is a failed school teacher while his brother Serge Lohman is a famous Dutch politician.  Serge is so famous that strangers in restaurants come up to him and ask to have their or their kids’ picture taken with him.  Paul, the lesser brother, tells the story here, and his vexation with Serge fairly oozes out of him.

Much of “The Dinner” takes place in a fancy restaurant where Paul and Serge and their wives are having dinner.   Thus we have section headings of “Apperitif”, “Appetizer”, “Main Course”, etc.  Although later the story ranges far from the dinner table, in the early chapters the dinner is an excellent framing device for the story Herman Koch tells.

Just under the surface of this exquisite dinner occasion, there is an act of outrageous nastiness involving these two couples’ children.  Of course it is a good thing to love our children, but is it possible to love our children too much, to the point where we are ready, willing, and able to hurt other people in our children’s defense?  That is one of the questions “The Dinner” asks.  Give Dutch author Herman Koch points for juxtaposing this dinner at an exclusive restaurant with such a miserable act of human cruelty.

I liked “The Dinner” quite a lot, but didn’t like myself much for liking this novel.  The story seemed to give free reign to our lowest basest prejudices.  The novel is like an ugly modern artwork mounted in an expensive hardwood frame, something we have all seen.   We really get inside Paul Lohman’s head in “The Dinner”, and it is not a pretty sight.  His successful brother Serge is a liberal politician for whom Paul has the utmost disdain.  Meanwhile Paul has this nasty racist and misogynist streak although he does love his wife Claire.  I suppose Paul should get some points for expressing his feelings honestly.  And no matter how obnoxious his attitudes are, they are expressive and do have a lot of energy and move things along.

In “The Dinner”,  Herman Koch has etched a plot which will probably stay in my mind forever unfortunately.  Apparently Koch has written six previous novels, and with the success of “The Dinner” all the books will probably get translated within the next few years.

“The Dinner” tells a vivid story which will provoke a strong reaction in you.   How many novels manage to do that?

“Balthazar” – Whither Lawrence Durrell?

“Balthazar” by Lawrence Durrell (1958) – 243 pages

“English life is really like an autopsy.  It is so, so dreary.” – Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Durrell is one of those writers whose reputation as a literary writer could go either way.  It has been over fifty years since he wrote the Alexandria Quartet, a group of novels which take place in Alexandria, Egypt for which he won his most acclaim.  It has been twenty three years since he died.  Even during his lifetime, Durrell was known for his lush over-writing, his luxuriant romantic prose.  One wonders how his novels would go over with today’s readers who have been brought up on sparse realistic prose, matter-of-fact characters, and cut-and-dried plots.

Here is typical Durrell prose.

 “And spring? Ah! There is no spring in the Delta, no sense of refreshment and renewal in things.  One is plunged out of winter into: wax effigy of a summer too hot to breathe.  But here, at least in Alexandria, the sea-breaths save us from the tideless weight of summer nothingness, creeping over the bar among the warships, to flutter the striped awnings of the cafes upon the Grand Corniche.” 

And when it comes to discussing women and sex, his prose gets even more rampant.

“In a sense everything that Clea felt was at this time meaningless to her.  As a prostitute may be unaware that her client is a poet who will immortalize her in a sonnet she will never read, so Justine in pursuing these deeper sexual pleasures was unaware that they could mark Clea for years; enfeeble her in her power to give undivided love – what she was most designed to give by temperament.  Her youth, you see.  Yet the wretched creature meant no harm.  She was simply a victim of that Oriental desire to please…”

Lawrence Durrell was close friends with the writer Henry Miller.  They shared an obsession with sex which came to play in their novels.

The city of Alexandria, Egypt is as much of a character in “Balthazar” as any of the humans.  These novels take place while the British still ruled Egypt.  At that point Alexandria was one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. A Mediterranean seaport, Alexandria, over the centuries from the time Alexander the Great founded the city, had become home to a wide variety of different ethnic groups.   Durrell described it as “a great sprawling jellyfish” of a city.  One wonders about Alexandria today.  In 1973 Egyptian President Nasser forced all foreigners to leave Egypt, and one can only imagine that Alexandria has only gotten even more isolated since then.

Durrell had an interesting colonial background.  He was born in northern India to an English father and an Irish-English mother. When Lawrence was seven, his family moved to England, and he hated it and spent the rest of his life outside the country.  Alexandria was particularly suitable for him.

The Alexandria Quartet was considered a literary classic in its time.  I found that once I cut through the jungle of some of its prose, there is an interesting story and original insights in Balthazar.  However I wonder if the modern reader has the patience and endurance for the over-the-top purple prose.