Review: John Cheever's stories Part 1 - A Modern Mad Microscope.

As the maelstrom of marking eases (onset a little earlier this year) and the battle to resist compulsory redundancies has abated for a little I have found a bit more time to read ma books.
It was a bit of a palaver to get the full collection of Cheever stories this year but I finally did. I have devoured the first half which covers the beginning of his short story writing after his dismissal from the army at the end of WW2 and the end of the 1950s.

What Cheever does is present a complete meticulous dissection of the growing wealth of American society and the individuals involved. New York Apartments, the tea-time drinking of Martinis and Old Fashioneds, suburbia (then in its infancy), swimming pools, adultery and city life. But just as with Irvine Welsh's similar approach to working class communities in the East coast and the sub-cultures within it Cheever provides us with startling insights on the nature of human relationships, mortality, love and life really.

He also does explore the poor - in particular elevator operators - very significant in Manhattan, janitors and nannies - serving the wealthy. This is an interesting comparison to his Wapshot novels when only really one part of the Saga could really be said to focus on the New York work/suburb/bourgeouis ennui nexus. Those works' focus are much more older wealth in the States - an earlier generation.

Many parallels with these stories could be drawn with the show Mad Men (have never watched it) which I see has been done a lot online. I have wondered why that show is so popular and I think it is partially to do with why I find the stories so resonant. They deal really with a group of people for who wealth is not a problem (although see the Housebreaker of Shady Hill story - similar to the movie 30 years later Fun with Dick and Jane) in a different way to the "old money" and they throw that into consumerism - of which this era was the first really. And it is one in which many of us now live or are definitely influenced by - property booms, commuting and consumer products.
Thus they are the first really alienated middle class in human society - they work in a different location from their home, in many ways this is reflected in their behaviour when they are literally different people - see Housebreaker, the 548, the Chaste Clarissa, their comforts dont solve their unhappiness - see pretty much every story! And there is a group desperate to enter that class The Pot of Gold, O City of Broken Dreams a move indeed which will be resisted by the incumbants.

As in Mad men the position of women is dubious and I think Cheever is ambiguous over the role of women of whether they are to blame for their partner's boredom or over indulgent of male excesses. See Torch Song and the Trouble of Marcie Flint for this.
Or whether they are the victims of male predatory behaviour - The 548 and the Chaste Clarissa.
Some say that these stories present a misanthropic view of human relationships and indeed some are not for the faint hearted - pardon the pun - but I think when there is a glimpse of genuine happiness and love then it is truly moving.
There are less classical references than in his novels but there are similar mentions of bisexuality and alcholism both of which were a struggle for Cheever. There is also a continual theme of absent or neglectful fathers - not sure how that was reflected in Cheever's own life.
I have also read one set in Italy the Bella Lingua which is very good and reflects his own ex-pat life and a big part of the Wapshot Scandal.
So far I have really enjoyed the Summer Farmer, the Sorrows of Gin and the Housebreaker. But their real brilliance is that a phrase or sentence jumps out from every page sometimes at quite surprising moments. The detail is also depressing but brilliant - the shabby bar by the train station, the faded wealth of Rome.
A break for some other books then ill read the second half. Highly Recommended - gives an insight into the Madmen world that only a novel could do.

At Swim Two Birds review: Experimental Pub Chat?

I started this book to help my daughter who was reading it as part of her uni course and was a bit flummoxed by it. Anyway she gave up on it 20 pages in but for me it has been a relevation.
A complex work I suppose you could call it an “experimental” novel, it was Flann O’Brien’s first work. Having said that , although written in 1939, its structure is similar to the early novel: Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy et al.
There are no real chapters although the words Chapter I cheekily emblazen the first page but are never referred to again. It is episodic and in some ways a patchwork quilt of different work – fragments are drawn from a variety of sources – a circular letter from a dodgy bookmaker, an old poem, encyclopaedia entries, a Western novel. Ostensibly though it is about a waster student in Dublin who lives with his sanctimonious uncle but spends most of his time on the drink or in bed.
He is a writer however, and I think this is right, he is writing a novel about a corrupt writer, Trellis, who rips off his ideas from another writer – of Westerns – and creates a series of characters including some lifted from Irish legend. These characters despise their creators and gang together to torture and destroy Trellis. This is done by another writer an illegitimate child of Trellis – caused by him violating one of the female characters he created!
Thus the work is about the nature of writing, narrative structure and character. There are a couple of passages which may, or may not, be O’Brien’s view of the nature of the novel: “A modern novel should be largely a work of reference”. This makes it sound drier than it is but it is actually very funny.
As well as dealing with the nature of the novel though it explores the Irish character – it juxtaposes the re-telling of ancient Irish myth, Finn MacCool and Sweeney being turned into a bird – with guys having banal drunken chat. For example there is a hilarious argument over the nature of poetry and what is “good”. A poet of doggerel also makes an appearance.
The drunken conversations are particularly good – some within the novel within the novel and some by the student himself. They are out of time I think I have had some of these chats! Can also see why it may not appeal to a 19 year old female undergraduate though.
There is so much more in it as well though. The nature of creating myt h – some of the language telling the sagas from old Ireland is quite beautiful, how to take minutes of boring meetings, the joy of drinking and many comments on Dublin itself. It is difficult though but more accessible than say Becket who deals with similar issues. Although Becket never really engaged with the Irish identity to this extent. There also seems to be quite a casual misogyny as well: there are no female characters of note or if there are they literally are a plot device. Maybe he’s making a point about the male writer.
Glad I read it and a challenge but shows the power and unique things that a novel can do compared to other forms of art. And remember A Pint of Plain is your Only Man!

Not Sidney Poitier - review

An unusual one. A word I had heard a few times but never knew the meaning of until last year was "picaresque" - it means an episodic adventure with an unreliable hero. I think this is one of those.
Using the character who is born (after a two year pregnancy) and named Not Sidney Poitier Everett uses his rites of passage to humorously explore race, class, money and education in modern 21st Century America. And it is very funny in places especially with the understated wit of Not-Sidney. I am not sure it succeeds in everything it is trying to do though.
N-S's mother dies early on in his life and in essence he is adopted by Ted Turner whose company NS has made a fortune from. The portrayal of Turner is surreal (dreams play a big part in the novel) but hilarious a bit like a minor Simpsons character. But Turner flits in and out of the book as NS goes to school, college, home with his girlfriend, gets arrested for being black, escapes, gets arrested again and solves a murder!
I think each chapter is meant to centre around a Sidney Poitier - who NS grows to look more and more like by the end he is indistinguishable - rmovie which is quite a clever device. I spotted the Defiant Ones, Guess who's coming to Dinner, the Heat of the Night, to Sir with Love and er the one about the nuns! All of these took place in the 60s when America was having to deal with race in a central way. Poitier won an Oscar then I guess for many white Americans Poitier was the only interaction with a black person they had. By fast forwarding it 40 years and throwing it up in a crazy refracted way Everett is showing how much or how little has changed through the years. There are some twists the disapproving parents of NS 's girlfriend are light skinned African Americans rather than Tracey and Hepburn. The college he attends is nearly all-black. But the ignorance of racism is still fairly universal.
I also think it is a novel about identity -this is particularly evident in the closing speech. What does a name mean - how does it affect the way people interact with you.? There is also a degree of existentialism in the way Sidney self reflects constantly at his actions - it reminded me a little of Camus - honest!
Along with Turner and Jane Fonda a real person featuring in the novel is the author himself. I am not sure this device works well, at all. I think a few writers have tried it. There is quite a self indulgent bit where he (as character) reflects on the nature of the novel and in particular his most successful work : Erasure. Also his annoyingly obscure lectures are well annoying.
But having said that it is ambitious and at least it tries to do something a little different. So a funny writer with a semi-experimental work that doesn't quite come off.

Sex, Death and Boredom: The Wapshot Scandal Review

Hot on the heels of my first Cheever experience I have now devoured his other Wapshot novel - published almost 10 years later: the Wapshot Scandal.

A sequel? Of sorts: Leander is now dead although a lost chapter from his journal reemerges to give us a reminder of his struggles and demons. His wife also gone, mentioned as an afterthought. The senior materfamilias(? though she's not actually the mother) Honora is still here as are the separate but equally unhappy brothers : Coverly and Moses. Though there is no narrative link really.

I must say the vibe of this book is very different the Chronicle had a turn of the nineteenth century early American Capitalist feel to it - even some earlier periods with modernity only being introduced through the last chapters. This is a mid-twentieth century work in every way: the Nuclear race, suburbia, adultery, consumerism are all dissected with minute accuracy.

I would also say the influence of Cheever's short fiction is more apparent here. Though there is some continuity in character and lightly in plot - the development of a torrid but sad affair, the pursuit of a tax dodger - essentially each chapter reads like a set piece short work in itself. Nothing so wrong with that because what it does do is give minor characters incredible depth in their moment in the sun: Dr Cameron the sinister scientist who is Coverly's boss at a nuclear development site, Emile the young delivery boy who Moses bored and alienated wife takes an interest in.

But above all the writing. The writing is consistently magnificent - I found myself highlighting passages. There is humour throughout and it does in its own way paint an accurate picture of American life at that time. But I think death is the continual theme here. It begins and ends with a death. The last phrase in the work is "nothing at all". All characters are struggling with the fact that one day they will not be here and react to it in different ways.

The classical references are less but there is an interesting portrait of post-war Italy intertwined in the work. Loads of great parts - I particularly enjoyed the disintegration of Coverly's wife Betsey the roots of which were laid in the earlier book. But you could choose any piece - I have to say for its differences I think I preferred this work.
And the Scandal? Difficult to say it could be one of many things but taken apart they look so minor yet heart breakingly major in their consequences.

But let the writing speak for itself:
"The pain in her chest seemed to spread and sharpen in proportion to her stubborn love of the night, and she felt for the first time in her life an unwillingness to leave any of this...."

Now if only Amazon would deliver his collection of short stories.

The Decline and Fall and Fire of ...Review of the Wapshot Chronicle

The next book following Freedom was always going to be difficult but this 1950s American novel was ideal.
Cheever is apparently better known for his short fiction a bit like Chekov. He is also an influence on modern writers like Eggers and Franzen. So a thoughtful Xmas gift.
The novel as title suggests is a family saga. Indeed this New England clan can trace their origins back to the original settlers. But this family has seen better days. In many ways the family parallels the development of American capitalism.
Though the background is given the time setting is the 1920s and 30s. Significantly, i thought, this is never made explicit with no clear references to external events, it is more implicit. Both sons of the family work for the state in some capacity.
The faded glory is encapsulated by the father Leander a sailor trapped on a tourist ferry and his wife who is obsessed with gift shops.
For a novel written in the 50s and set twenty years before it is very frank on sexual issues. Theeldest son iis a Lothario with fairly misogynistic attitudes. The other is struggling with his sexuality - these passages seemed very hearfelt - I am not sure of Cheever's own background
Both marry into relationships that have their own specific style of unhappiness.
As a writer of short fiction each image in the work seems intricately crafted. I like the descriptions of train stations on Sundays. There is also some narrative experimentation with extracts from Leander's journal quite difficult to follow. An excellently written novel with a lot of originality - a lot of emphasis on fire as an image. Set in Massachusetts the Great Boston Fire of the late 19th century is a seminal moment. A book to think about once read.

Spectacular: Review of Freedom by Franzen

“I don’t know how to live” so says Walter at a pivotal moment in Franzen’s work. It’s a fair commentary on life and freedom but I would now say that a central element of anyone’s life should be reading this book.
I was always worried that when Franzen followed the Corrections with such effective and brilliant non-fiction in his memoirs and essays that we would never see a substantial work of fiction from him again. Perhaps he thought he had done all he could in the genre but I was well off the mark.
Focused on a married couple who met at college, Walter and Patty, and thirty years of their lives: it initially starts like a chamber piece of those two rather than the full symphony that the Corrections represented of pre- millennial America. But this is part of the work’s amazing narrative structure.
It starts and finishes with outsiders, neighbours, looking in at the couple and judging them: only a partial picture is revealed. Then it pulls out like a camera shot to reveal the bigger context in which Walter and Patty. This is done using a variety of methods – excerpts of one of the character’s auto-biography, chapters written from the perspective of very different people central to the two of them. It is a powerful method of structure because it has a variety of “unreliable narrators” and you judge others and them as you read. This however get s turned on its head as you read another perspective and you see that your own judgements were misplaced and you think again about how you have looked at them.
A strong character (in every sense) in the work is provided by Richard Katz – Walter’s best friend – an aging Lothario by the end but a young one to start with ! rock star who is both shallow and deep in equal measures. He does not believe he is free but is lead by his groin into most decisions. Perhaps not unsurprisingly there is a long passage in the final chapter regarding the destructive nature of domestic cats on bird-life in the states. Katz has his own appetite for destruction but also building.
For that is another trait of the work – it integrates non-fiction elements throughout on the environment, Iraq, modern music, birds (Franzen’s own obsession) reflective of his recent work. Sometimes this slightly jars as for example when they discuss a method of brutal mining over 10 pages or so which Walter an Envrionmental lawyer has to promote. I also had a sense of work that Franzen had read before writing this work – notably The Shock Doctrine and I think Collapse by Jared Diamond.
Diamond’s seminal work on the collapse of untrammeled human societies throughout history has an introduction with almost identical tensions raised by Walter in his struggle to tackle the immanent environmental disaster of modern capitalism by doing deals with those very capitalist billionaires. Diamond himself made such compromises which he describes. I am not convinced that it is the right thing to do – and neither ultimately is Walter as it in part leads to his unraveling.
But that is only one dimension of the book it is also starkly, brutally at times, intimate unpicking the nature of family, friends, parenting, unhappiness, betrayal and redemption. It does this with insight and power which is pretty unequalled by any other current writer of fiction. When horrible things happen in this work which they do they are almost unreadable because you feel almost personally entwined with them. After one passage I had to stop reading for a couple of days.
I also like the fact that the central section is labeled 2004 – a key year in recent American history. The fairly comfortable re-election of W Bush to the horror of the left, the chaos in Iraq at its height, Fallujah, post- 911 tensions, environmental destruction being re-discovered as a reality – also the year that the disintegration of Walter and Patty’s life comes to a critical point. There are other historical periods outlined – notably the late 70s when Richard, Patty and Walter are at college and a small taste of post-Obama America. In contrast to the Corrections there is very American context to the work – one (fairly humourous) trip to Latin America apart this is an internal work on America.
And of course the title – its power lies in that you keep referring back to it whenever the concept is mentioned in the work. When Patty is dealing with one of her own personal crisis she sees a sign at her daughter’s college: “Use well thy freedom”. Patty and Walter’s son Joey gets involved in a way with the neo-con movement and their bastardised use of the word. Walter’s campaign against human reproduction seeks to limit freedom for the good of all. In a sense, everyone is cursed with their freedom and the sadness is brings.
I am only really scraping the surface here of the work. There is so much humour, observation, very sad and devastating passages that it cannot be replicated. The ending and writing for the last 50 pages and so also needs to be read. It literally is indispensible.

Streams of time - Mrs Dalloway review

My first completed book of my 40s and an appropriately brilliant one. Originally inspired to delve into after watching the Hours earlier this year.
The movie (and novel) bases itself around the themes, structure and indeed the author of Mrs Dalloway. Death, suicide, trauma, marriage and the role of women are a number of the themes which were explored. I later then saw the movie adaptation of this book starring Vanessa Redgrave.

Those cinematic depictions of the book obviously had enough in them to make me want to read it but nothing really prepared me for the unique and groundbreaking nature of the fiction.

Essentially a novel bound by time - over the course of one day (a similar structure used by Joyce) it nominally covers an upper middle class woman preparing for an ornate party in the 1920s. Except it doesnt really - it is a stream of conciousness work of sorts but the consciousness is passed from one character to another like a baton.
One of the brilliant things this book does is write in the way that people actually think so events from long ago pop up alongside inappropriate feelings and banal conversation. It shows that humans are creatures of the present but their mind contains so much background and history. In a sense it reminds me of Becket's fiction which I enjoy but is very difficult as it burrows down to almost the very inner core of what it means to be human. Mrs Dalloway does not go as far as this which makes it easier though not easy to read.
It actually does much more though as it is a contemporary novel of the 20s - it explores women's roles through time. There are significant female characters at all age of life including Clarissa Dalloway in her mid 50s. It examines class, political stagnation and the insidious affect of the war (First World) which had ended a few years before but whose impact society could (and arguably never has) escape. This is personified in the character of Septimus suffering from severe mental illness/shell shock from the trenches whose tragic arc lies in parallel to Clarissa's "privileged" life.
But what I was really struck by was the sense that this is a novel about change and response to that. The late 19th century is constantly compared with the modern era and the endemic social changes - women for example were just about to get the vote. But also in personal life how mortality is a constant burden we must carry as Clarissa says "Oh...in the middle of my party, here's death she thought"!
In some ways similar to Mme Bovary as it depicts the essential shallowness of upper class life it actually is much more.
An amazing piece of work with so much in it and will definitely read more of Ms Woolf.