Nonsuch Book

more hawthorne

Julia and I share an appreciation of The House of Seven Gables, an affection that was not shared by many of our worthy group co-readers this past week. But undaunted by those yawns and complaints, we have decided to push on together, and read The Blithedale Romance together the first week of November. We will post and discuss beginning on Friday, November 4 and chat through the weekend hopefully. Join us?

Before you decide, I would like to candidly warn you that many think of this book as the weakest Hawthorne link, a dull and plodding exploration of utopian agrarian vision in 19th century America that bears a startling resemblance to a communal living experience of the author, even going so far as to borrow excerpts from his journals. But.... much like The House of the Seven Gables, this book hides so much behind its easily accessible veneer that I welcome all of you to come dig with us. For the humor, for the subtext that is revealing of not just the author but of a key time of transition between restrictive Puritan ethics and an increasingly individualistic culture. That being said, I am assuming it will be just me and Julia, but I could not hope for better company. Surprise me? Sign on to read with us?

your face tomorrow: fever and spear by javier marias

"Gratuitous or motiveless curiosity (which is what afflicts the erudite) turns us into puppets, shakes us up and hurls us about, weakens our will and, worse, divides and disperses us, makes us wish that we had four eyes and two heads or, rather, several existences, each of them with four eyes and two heads."

Protagonist Deza of the many first names makes this observation while ripping through the usually tidy study and extended book collection of his host while the rest of the house sleeps. He is staying the night after a party that was apparently orchestrated to test his suitability for intelligence work. He picks up a book only to discard for another as one idea or fact forges a natural cognitive leap to another, an irresistible leap. He is, as suggested by the quote above, quite at the mercy of a consciousness that flows out of his control, of powers of perception that spring from an unidentified well that appear to exclude an in-depth self-knowledge.

Before reading this, I said that I was interested in the frequent comparisons between this work and Proust, and this quote defines those differences for me in an odd four eyed and two headed kind of way. The sentences of both Proust and Marias might bear a similarity in length but not in precision in any way. Which is not at all a slight aimed at Marias. It is a reflection of two very different protagonists - one whose world is highly scripted and whose personal certainty is a product of occasionally hilarious self-delusion and one whose observations of the unpredictable and sometimes chaotic world around him flow from an unscripted ability and must be coaxed from him. There are other points of comparison, but none as prominent to me. Except the frequent use of the word "languid" by both authors and its numerous variations that suggest a physical barbiturate that does nothing to slow the unease of the mind.

And so the book unfolds like Deza's mind unfolds on the page. There is not so much that really "happens" - Deza is estranged from his family that lives in Spain, he is living in England working in journalism until he is drafted into intelligence work, he is only called upon to deliver his perceptions of people he is asked to observe in that service. That is about it. He is encouraged by his new employer to allow his thoughts to flow freely. "Words distract sometimes, you see, and hearing only the melody, the music, is often fundamental. Now tell me what you think."

Well, I think that this music will either suit you or it won't. How is that for saying nothing? There is a melody to this work that appeals to me, a look into the consciousness of a protagonist that I connected with and flowed right along with it in all its occasionally disjointed reality. And I have interest in following his path to certainty that might flow through the next two volumes of the work. Enjoy the thought that his gift of perception yields certain knowledge in a world that no longer prizes certainty.

"People hate certainty; and that hatred began as a fashion, it was deemed trendy to reject certainties, simpletons put them in the same bag as dogma and doctrine, the dolts (and there were a few intellectuals amongst them too), as if they were synonymous. But the idea has proved a tremendous success, it's taken root with vengeance. Now people hate anything definite or sure, and, consequently, anything that is fixed in time; and that is why people partly detest the past, unless they can manage to contaminate it with their own hesitancy, or infect it with the present's lack of definition, which they try to do all the time. Nowadays people cannot bear to know that something existed; that it existed and in a particular way. What they cannot bear is not so much knowing that, as the mere fact of its existence."

Very much looking forward to more Your Face Tomorrow.

Thanks to Richard for suggesting the group read. Find other opinions at these links:

• Richard at Caravana de Recuerdos
• Nicole at Bibliographing
• C.B. James of Ready When You Are, C.B.
• Amateur Reader of Wuthering Expectations
• Sarah of What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate

doctor zhivago, book two

 

Two weeks ago, Kat responded to my frustration about struggling through the first part of the new translation of Doctor Zhivago by pointing me to an article written by Paternak's niece who is less than pleased with Pevear's and Volokhonsky's treatment of the classic. What I found was an affirmation of what I had seen suggested elsewhere - that perhaps the failing of this translation lies in one of the greatest strengths of other Pevear and Volokhonsky work. It stayed close to the text of the original, resisted the temptation to offer syntax and vocabulary in a manner characteristic of English rather than Russian.

Ann Pasternak Slater suggests that the earlier translation by Max Hayward is actually superior to the new translation, resisting the impulse "to drift unconsciously into the linguistic aura of his original – in this case, to write a kind of Russified English. This is the danger besetting Volokhonsky and Pevear."

On a first reading, one is distracted by locutions that are somehow not quite right – often not strikingly, but continuously and insidiously so. They just don't sound English. The terrorist "was serving at hard labor". "Pavel had gone to bathe in the river and had taken the horses with him for a bath." (Hayward-Harari have "Pavel had gone off to bathe in the river and had taken the horses with him.") He "fell to thinking" ("stood thoughtfully"). "The spouses went rolling off" ("The couple drove off").

Sustained, low-level unease is intensified by un-English word-order. "Yura was pleased that he would again meet Nika." Inversions (ubiquitous in early Conrad) are natural to foreigners speaking English and a mistake in translators. The inversion of subject and verb, aggravated by an invasive parenthesis, is an elementary translator's error. "At the turn there would appear, and after a moment vanish, the seven-mile panorama of Kologrivovo." It is quickly apparent that Volokhonsky-Pevear follow the Russian very closely, without attempting to reconfigure its syntax or vocabulary into a more English form.

This misguided literalism is disastrous in dialogue. "Yes, yes, it's vexing in the highest degree that we didn't see each other yesterday" ("Oh, I wish I'd seen you yesterday").

But then she goes on to question what constitutes a superior translation - literal fidelity or capturing more subtle nuances in the text.

Volokhonsky-Pevear are ruled by the principle of literal fidelity, Hayward-Harari by the imperatives of clarity, elegance and euphony. Take Pasternak's description of a moonlit night rich with suppressed passion. In Hayward-Harari's version it begins:

"An enormous crimson moon rose behind the rooks' nests in the Countess's garden. At first it was the colour of the new brick mill in Zybushino; then it turned yellow like the water-tower at Biryuchi."

The unauthorised, italicised words clarify the implicit chromatic scale of the brightening moon.

Volokhonsky-Pevear have:

"Beyond the crows' nests of the countess's garden appeared a blackish purple moon of monstrous dimensions. At first it looked like the brick steam mill in Zybushino; then it turned yellow like the Biriuchi railway pump house."

One may be more literally correct but that is not the one I necessarily want to read. Bellezza suggested I read the older translation but I did not have the opportunity to pick it up. Wish I had. Because ultimately this was not a novel about politics but a portrait of a simple man, a simple love that presented themselves in difficult times. There is something universally appealing about that, but the language of the new translation did not convey that simplicity. It clunked along in a labored way, dragging its orthopedic shoes through a story that should have danced like the effortless movements of nature that became my favorite parts of the novel. 

So what is most important in a translation for you - literal fidelity or the more subtle, less faithful capturing of nuance even if that requires a slight act of infidelity to the original language? Or a little bit of both if that is possible? What are your favorite translations and what made them work for you?

Many thanks to all who agreed to read with me, and my apologies for being the moaning, complaining host. I struggled mightily. Described the reading as "painful." But made it through. Later on Tuesday, I will add links to other posts, most likely happier and better constructed views of a novel I hope at least a few enjoyed.

• Bellezza at Dolce Bellezza
• Marie at Boston Bibliophile
• softdrink at Fizzy Thoughts
• Jessica at Park Benches and Bookends

doctor zhivago, book one

"I would pretend (metaphorically) to have seen nature and universe themselves not as a picture made or fastened on an immovable wall, but as a sort of painted canvas roof or curtain in the air, incessantly pulled and blown and flapped by a something of an immaterial unknown and unknowable wind." - Boris Pasternak, Letter (in English) to Stephen Spender, August 22, 1959

This quote sits atop the introduction to the new Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, and reflects what I have found to be most appealing about the novel - the often elegant personification of nature amidst occasionally leaden and awkward prose. Like in this early sentence - "When the wind gusted, the leafless acacia bushes thrashed about as if possessed and flattened themselves to the road." Just lovely.

But I came to the introduction after reading Book One. After feeling a little mystified as to what I had gotten myself into with this read, and searching for a salvaging viewpoint. And Pevear assured me that the book speaks for "something else" besides the most frequent assumptions about the work - that it is either "a good, old-fashioned, nineteenth-century historical novel about the Russian revolution, an epic along the lines of War and Peace" or "a moving love story, or the lyrical biography of a poet, setting the sensitive individual against the grim realities of Soviet life." But Pevear's "something else," his argument for the unique qualities of the novel, his assertion that this was a novel of "formal innovation," an "experimental novel," came off a little hollow to me. The reality of the reading experience for me so far is mild boredom and an occasional need to re-read sentences whose meaning do not immediately convey. And scattered discoveries of very pretty turns of phrase.

And I keep thinking of Nabokov's famous dismissal of Pasternak's work."Doctor Zhivago is a sorry thing, clumsy, trite and melodramatic, with stock situations, voluptuous lawyers, unbelieveable girls, romantic robbers and trite coincidences." Now it is true that Doctor Zhivago was eclipsing Lolita in sales, and that Nabokov disagreed with Pasternak's political views so his motivations may have been somewhat askew in letting loose with this condemnation, but I still see some truth in it.

I want to like this book more than I actually do half-way through. Will Book Two change my mind? Hoping the rest of you are enjoying more. Will post links to other opinions later in the day on Tuesday.

• Rachel at Book Snob
• Joan Hunter Dunn at Flowers and Stripes
• Jessica at Park Benches and Bookends
• Marie at Boston Bibliophile
• Bellezza at Dolce Bellezza

nyrb reading week: a month in the country by j. l. carr

A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr has been described to me many times as a perfect little novel. And yet I put off reading it because it sounded like too much I had read before about the wounds of the first world war, the things taken away, etc. Not that novels that take this subject up are suspect or trite or redundant in every circumstance. The post-war crisis of confidence was a pivotal point in history with often heartbreaking results for individuals. But ... well, I could put another from this line off for a little while.

But then on Friday, as I was spending the day in the bookstore, I took a few minutes to read the introduction to the NYRB edition of the novel in which Michael Holroyd discusses the playful, eccentric nature of Carr, and how all manner of tangential thinking comes to rest as a cohesive whole in A Month in the Country, his Booker nominated 1980 work. And then I started reading the book, and found, predictably given this large build-up, a perfect little novel. But not a novel of what the Great War took away, but what the trials of that war revealed, uncovered.

Tom Birkin has returned from the war to find that his wife, chronically unfaithful to him in his absence, has chosen to leave him for another. Birkin has acquired a stutter and a facial tick and suffers from nightmares - the after effects of his war experience. He takes what little remains for him and sets out for the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he has been hired to reveal a medieval mural that has been covered with hundreds of years of whitewash and the like.

As Birkin eyes what might be on that church wall, he thinks, "By nature we are creatures of hope, always ready to be deceived again, caught by the marvel that might be wrapped in the grubbiest brown paper parcel." He could be referring to the art uncovered, himself or any of the others around him in this small town when he refers to what is wrapped in brown paper. The small, fine things that distinguish people that remain unseen to most. Those differences between people at home and people out in the world that Carr is fond of exploring here. And the ways in which art captures a reality sometimes lost in the every day back and forth. The oddity of natural beauty perceived in art and not in nature.

It is a lovely and affecting little book.

Check out more links and fun at the event sponsor sites - A Literary Stew and Coffeespoons.

old school by tobias wolff

My non-structured book group read Old School by Tobias Wolff for our October selection, a quick re-read for me from one of my favorite short story authors. Many refer to this fictional work as "the memoir in the middle," suggesting that this story of an elite boys prep school with an intensely literary bent is actually a thinly veiled companion piece to Wolff's two memoirs - This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. Maybe I don't care. Believe that I have said here before that memoir and fiction share much including narrative arc and lie content. 

The protagonist of the story occupies a marginalized position in his school - at least in his own mind. His lack of wealth or lineage or sufficient waspishness are known only to himself (and presumably the adults as we see later), and yet he proceeds with the lack of confidence worn by those lying through the story untold. As do many here. Theatricality is a theme throughout by which characters play out their individual, self-assigned roles. Their self-chosen lies.

So in trying to discover the truths about themselves, many on campus have become feverishly attached to these writing competitions in which a famous author visit is announced and the students are invited to submit their stories and poems to said author. The award for the best of the offerings is a private audience with the writer after the guest presentation to the assembly of students and staff. And to me, the tales of Robert Frost's and Ayn Rand's visits and the scheduled Ernest Hemingway visit are the most enjoyable parts of the book. Perfect executed depictions of the theatricality, the calculated presence of these famous authors, leaving me wondering if we should assume that the drama the boys embrace is just an act of mimicry of those they admire or writers are all born liars. And I mean that in the nicest way.

What also strikes me about the book is that these sharp, eloquent pages come across as somehow episodic. I can see the short story writer here as many of the sections could be lifted and transformed into independent short pieces. Especially the hilarious Ayn Rand section. Wolff is at his best at darkly funny. If you need a little convincing on that count, pick up a copy of the short story collection Our Story Begins and find the story of the hunters who shoot their friend and transport him to the hospital in the back of a pickup truck in freezing cold weather as they make pit stops for alcoholic beverages. My favorite. Sick. I laughed out loud.

Stop by to see what the others had to say:

• Sarah at What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate
• EL Fay at This Book and I Could Be Friends
• Lizzy Siddal at Lizzy's Literary Life
• Richard at Caravana de Recuerdos
• Emily at Evening All Afternoon

madame bovary, part three

"And what do people think of him now? How do they think of him? As a bald man with a drooping moustache; as the hermit of Croisset, the man who said 'Madame Bovary, c'est moi'; as the incorigible aesthete, the bourgeois bourgeoisophobe? Confident scraps of wisdom, hand-me-down summaries for those in a hurry. Flaubert would hardly have been surprised at the lazy rush to understand." - Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

It is so easy to succumb to those "hand-me-down summaries" of not just Flaubert but of his work in Madame Bovary. I struggled to understand the author's repeated use of the word "languid" throughout the book, but now that I am finished reading, I strangely understand. A weariness, a resignation, a final look in the mirror perhaps not out of vanity but to remind of who we are/were. Flaubert's subtle connections between what we say we are and what we actually are - the trap of the bourgeoisie in that they define themselves through possessions and accolades. How Emma drowned in yards of textiles.

What did Emma look like? Flaubert does not want to reveal the composition of her beauty. Her "bands of hair" that turn out to be black. Her eyes of uncertain color that Julian Barnes dwells upon in Flaubert's Parrot - blue, brown, black - but always of unusual depth. More chasms, more abysses, just other alternatives in which men might submerge temporarily.

In this third part she is recognized in her movements by her shawl, her veil, the material of her dress. When she and Leon remember their first flirtation, he recalls "the arbor of clematis, the dresses she had worn, the furniture in her room, her entire house." Not anything of Emma herself - not her appearance, not her personal traits. She becomes increasingly a sexual object in this final part where the boudoir atmosphere she has created in her life extends to any environment she places herself including the church that arranges itself around her. She has lost control of her own image of herself. It has been appropriated by men.

So easy to condemn her so I am a little confused at the amount of sympathy I feel for her. She is despicable in her shallow, selfish choices. Her love of all the little feminine refinements ultimately rob her daughter of any of those things. But...

Wish that I had more to give this because there is much here but time does not permit tonight. Loved reading along with so many great readers, wish I had had more time to more closely examine the translation, but appreciated the flow of the language as I paged through. It seemed an effortless read at first then turned out to be so much more than that "lazy rush" to conclusions that popularly defines the novel. I have a whole new respect for Flaubert, and a desire to read more by and of him.

Links to other posts will go up late Thursday.

• Anthony at Time's Flow Stemmed
• Audrey at Books As Food
• Shelley at Book Clutter
• Jenn at Picky Girl
• Melissa at The Avid Reader's Musings
• Jessica at Park Benches and Bookends
• Marie at Boston Bibliophile
• Emily at Evening All Afternoon
• Nicole at Bibliographing
• Richard at Caravana de Recuerdos
• Amy at New Century Reading
• Danielle at A Work in Progress (getting started)
• Bellezza at Dolce Bellezza

madame bovary, part two

Abbe Bournisien must have been such a disappointment to Emma. Lost and "filled with tenderness" for the memories of her convent church experiences, "[s]he recalled the great candelabras, which rose, on the altar, higher than the flower-filled vases and the tabernacle with its little columns. She wishes that once again, as in the old days, she could be part of the white veils marked here and there with black by the stiff cowls of the good sisters bending over their prie-dieux; on Sundays, at Mass, when she lifted her head, she would see the sweet face of the Virgin among the bluish eddies of rising incense."

And there stood the cure in his worn and dirty vestments with the "abundant folds of his red chin," "his skin scattered with yellow blotches that disappeared among the coarse hairs of his graying beard. He had just dined and was breathing noisily." His brief conversation with her was not of the transcendence of faith but the mundanity of naughty children and too warm weather. Emma once again seeks the highest solution, the pinnacle, the ideal and is delivered an aesthetically challenged man of "earthly remedies," a religious man that resides in the material needs of those surrounding him before an idealized higher calling. A realist response to her own romanticized yearnings.

The questions and responses of the catechism she hears recited as she trails off from the church address identity - "Are you a Christian?" "Yes, I am a Christian." " What is a Christian?" "A Christian is one who, being baptized...baptized...baptized..." Assigned identity. Accepted through rote. And then the most curious small moment occurs when she arrives home. We see her as three people, three assigned identities - Emma, the young woman and Madame Bovary. This occurs throughout the book but for some reason made a greater impression on me here. Emma as the girl that shoves her approaching baby away from her - petulant and young. Who like a child lies about what she has done. Madame Bovary rushes to pick up Berthe after her fall - the mother that does her duty. And the young woman seems to ponder her position - this is not as things were to be.

I waded through part one thinking that the lies here were all simple ones. Expressions of selfishness, delivered for personal gain. But these layers of assigned identity reveal lies that are permitted to define others in that Emma may not be the most sympathetic of characters - selfish and shallow and defined through material possessions - but part two highlights the fact that she has also been lied to repeatedly. She believed the fairy tales of the convent, the promise of marriage, the promise of great love and passion and maternal affection. I think of a natural literary descendent of Emma, Edna Pontellier, who having no means through which to express her interior life with the male patterned discourse available to her takes her own life. And this only further highlights the devastating emptiness of Madame Bovary as any interior life is only a shadow here as all is determined by a hyper-bourgeois adherence to an external life.

Men are free but women are "thwarted." "Bound." "Sinking in ocean of shadow." Prized for their appearance. "Gasping for love like a carp for water on a kitchen table." Defined by someone else's name. Near the abyss. Constantly being "subjugated." Giving themselves up. Drowning in the depths of eyes that reveal no passageways to a soul. Their emotions disdained. You know where I am going. Because it comes up repeatedly throughout part two. I feel pity but also horror at the thought that the receptive imagination of Emma Bovary so willingly accepts the writing of her own demise. Flaubert the bastard. Just another man that fucked her. Not exactly the best critical analysis. An emotional one. Love the book for itself but the author won't make the cut for the dead guys to dinner list.

One more week of the empty vessel master work. Like last week, I will add the post links in here late on Thursday. And am really looking forward to the conversation again. If you missed the comment thread over at Emily's last week, catch yourself up immediately. Compelling enough to get tweeted by Penguin this week, people! Just love Emily's work. And would like to think she wouldn't invite Gustave to dinner either.

• Anthony at Time's Flow Stemmed
• Emily at Evening All Afternoon
• Richard at Caravana de Recuerdos
• Emily at Seriously Reading
• Marie at Boston Bibliophile
• Buried In Print
• Melissa at The Avid Reader's Musings
• Jeanne at Necromancy Never Pays
• Bellezza at Dolce Bellezza
• Audrey at Books as Food
• Isabella at Magnificent Octopus
• Jenn at Picky Girl
• Shelley at Book Clutter
• Carina at Reading Through Life
• Nicole at Bibliographing
• Amy at New Century Reading

madame bovary, part one

For the first week, just part one, I said. Only 58 pages I said. But since (many) years have passed since the last time I read Madame Bovary, I had forgotten, completely it seems, how much can be contained in 58 pages of Flaubert. Forgot that Emma emerges in the book slowly and that our first perspective is from her future husband. Forgot that Madame Bovary is more than one person here - there is the doctor's mother, his first wife and then Emma, his second wife. And forgot the large number of lies that cushion the line between the romanticized or constructed versions of self and the occasional brutality of Flaubert's realism.

The one memory of Charles that I held all this time was of the books on his shelves with uncut pages. Books as representations of his status as an educated man, a doctor, but books that have remained unexamined. So when I immediately met him as the new boy when I began reading, a young man so without distinction that even his name cannot be heard clearly as it held no weight with the mocking young men of his new school, it all made sense. Charbovari. He will only become the man that bourgeois conventions have constructed as a middle class ideal. For he is of little innate substance.

Similarly, the name Madame Bovary is a position not a person. A middle class wife that craves a respectability that has been externally created and yet ingrained as some authentic expression of self. When the romanticized images of women in books read while in the convent school serve as some sort of middle class guide book, self-help book to the perfectly fulfilled life. Especially loved the excessiveness of the wedding scene when delivered in the spare, precise descriptions of the author. The juxtaposition of overblown bourgeois tastelessness and language that delivers a scathing criticism by simply describing the scene (or would that be by describing it simply?). The wedding as celebration of feminine achievement that quickly becomes represented by a yellowed, dried out bouquet.

And the lies. Who does not lie here (aside from Flaubert)? The marriage of the elder Bovary couple is a lie hidden beneath the handsome father's face and his mother's slavish devotion to appearances. Charles lies to his parents about his studies. Charles and his mother conspire to hide the son's academic failings from his father. Charles enters into an arranged marriage with an aging harpy based upon her lies about her personal fortune. And I could go on. And most likely will. Two weeks of reading and posting will almost certainly yield a mountain of lies, both blatant and less obvious self deceptions.

This is a way of saying a lot and saying nothing. Just tossing initial observations out. With a plan to write a series of smaller posts as I go on. Have not even gotten to the topic of translation. Or the Nabakov Bovary lecture referenced several times in the Introduction here by Lydia Davis. Or the very interesting way in which physical descriptions are different when describing a person's physical characteristics versus their acquired accoutrement.

Looking forward to your posts today. It will be late afternoon before I have a chance to respond to all. I will also post links here so that you can access other posts easily. Thank you to all reading along today!

Also posting:

• Anthony at Time's Flow Stemmed
• Iris at Iris on Books
• Marie at Boston Bibliophile
• Jessica at Park Benches and Bookends
• Jenn at Picky Girl
• Emily at Evening All Afternoon
• SFP at Pages Turned
• Richard at Caravana de Recuerdos
• Bellezza at Dolce Bellezza
• Audrey at Books as Food
• Amy at New Century Reading
• JoAnn at Lakeside Musing
• Shelley at Book Clutter
• Allie at A Literary Odyssey
• Isabella at Magnificent Octopus
• Buried in Print
• Carina at Reading Through Life
• Emily at Seriously Reading

in the american grain by william carlos williams

 

"In these studies I have sought to re-name the things seen, now lost in chaos of borrowed titles, many of them inappropriate, under which the true character lies hid. In letters, in journals, reports of happenings I have recognized new contours suggested by old words so that new names were constituted. Thus, where I have found noteworthy stuff, bits of writing have been copied into the book for the taste of it. Everywhere I have tried to separate out from the original records some flavor of an actual peculiarity the character denoting shape which the unique force has given."

In 1922, traveling with the passport photo seen above, William Carlos Williams, with the help of his wife Flossie, composed the majority of In the American Grain while on a European vacation. At a time when many prominent adherents of high modernism rejected the assumed shallow depths of the American intellect and embraced the life of the expatriate, Williams mined his native waters to expose portraits from which the American identity may be partially defined. Not the stories of history textbooks or even necessarily true stories, but the tales inspired by the characters found in primary sources.

In 250 or so pages, Williams travels brilliantly from Eric the Red all the way to Abraham Lincoln, often replicating the voice or the sensibilities of the subject in such dazzlingly gorgeous language that I laughed to think that this is the poet's prose outing as it often sings like poetry. As mentioned by Rick Moody in the introduction to the latest edition from New Directions, Williams has almost completely suppressed his own voice and simple word choices in order to channel the figures of whom he writes, sparing the reader nothing when it comes to violence, hypocrisy, rigidity and still rejoicing in the passion of these early Americans.

Anyone that has ever read their native country's history in the history books of another country understands more completely what they suspected of the vast subjectivity of popularly accepted views of the past. In that light, Williams' literary treatment of history is no less valid than accepted historical fact. While our history books are often based upon the cult of personality, Williams bases his portraits upon the essence of personality, the difficult realities of character and circumstance that framed outcomes whose smaller preceding moments are subject to interpretation.

The assumption that history is the story of great men whose actions determine reality for faceless masses is also treated in a sharp manner, humorously disregarding the casual villanizing of lesser characters. Especially amusing to me were the descriptions of the feared witches of Salem who were observed sitting on people, keeping people from sleep, and pranking their cattle. Or actually any of the subtly menacing descriptions of the Puritans brought me a mischievous readerly joy.

Also really enjoyed the treatment of location as its own character in the text, hinted at throughout and then stated explicitly in the next to last portrait in the book that features Edgar Allen Poe.

 

"Disarmed, in his poetry the place itself comes through. This is the New World. It is this that it does, as if --

 

It is in this wraithlike quality of his poems, of his five poems, that Poe is most of the very ground, hard to find, as if he walked upon a cushion of light pressed thin beneath our feet, that insulates, satirises - while we lash ourselves up and down in a fury of impotence.

Poe stayed against the thin edge, driven to be heard by the battering racket about him to a distant screaming - the pure essence of his locality."

 

And from the same section, this much-quoted passage points to the timelessness of Williams' instincts as to the American identity. A passage that still resonates today.

 

"[America] has become 'the most lawless country in the civilized world,' a panorama of murders, perversions, a terrific ungoverned strength, excusable only because of the horrid beauty of its machines. To-day it is a generation of gross know-nothingism, of blackened churches where hymns groan like chants from stupefied jungles, a generation universally eager to barter permanent values (the hope of an aristocracy) in return for opportunist material advantages, a generation hating those whom it obeys."

But there is love and admiration in all the voices of dissent. The language is glorious and twisted into the most beautiful designs. A design of American identity not typically offered but stunning in all its complexities and faults. A must-read.

This is this month's selection for our non-structured book group. Summer fun, house guests who should have left earlier than they did, moving, and poor planning will delay some of the posts for this one. :) But this is after all a non-structured book group. Will update links as they appear.

Emily at Evening All Afternoon

Jill at Rhapsody in Books

Sara at Wordy Evidence of the Fact

Amateur Reader at Wuthering Expectations

Sarah at What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate

Victoria at Views From the Page and the Oven