Category Archives: Books

I wrote earlier about how much I liked Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, and I’d like to try to explain why a little further. I’m generally not a science fiction reader, and that may not change, but I did enjoy this book enough to be open to other recommendations, or perhaps to reading other Ursula Le Guin books (thoughts, anyone??).

Ultimately what did it for me is the personal relationship the novel describes. I’ll always go for the social and personal dynamics in a novel, rather than for its other attractions — in this case, the political dimension Le Guin develops. I can’t really describe the relationship that develops between the two main characters, Genly Ai, the alien visitor on the planet Gethen, and Estraven, a Gethenian political leader, because it would give too much of the story away. But the novel opens with an encounter between these two, and as they meet and interact throughout the novel, their ideas and feelings about each other change in dramatic and satisfying ways. It’s through these two that Le Guin explores most deeply what it’s like to confront “otherness” in someone else and to try and understand that person, in spite of cultural obstacles. There is much they say to each other that the other misinterprets, and it’s a pleasure to watch them realize their mistakes and try to overcome them.

But the political element of the novel is fascinating too; the two countries on the planet Gethen that we hear about, Karhide and Orgoreyn, are going through a transformation, within themselves and in relation to each other. Karhide has modernized itself in many ways but has not yet developed some of the problems our modernized countries on earth experience, such as war or the consequences of the industrial revolution. Its citizens are not nationalistic in their thinking. And yet these things are changing; Karhide finds itself under new leadership that seeks to foster fear and hatred of other peoples and countries in order to consolidate power. Orgoreyn is a much harsher place; it has a system of surveillance and a powerful government reminiscent of fascist states here on earth. Tensions between these two countries are rising.

Into this political situation comes Genly Ai, a representative from the Ekumen, an alliance of planets dedicated to furthering, as Genly puts it:

Material profit. Increase of knowledge. The augmentation of the complexity and intensity of the field of intelligent life. The enrichment of harmony and the greater glory of God. Curiosity. Adventure. Delight.

The members of the Ekumen have left behind many of the problems Karhide and Orgoreyn are only now beginning to face; they do not understand patriotism or nationalism and do not participate in war. The story, then, is about how well Genly fares in his quest to get the countries of Gethen to join the enlightened Ekumen, which can potentially change the course of their development.

So there’s all this going on, which is a pleasure to read, and there’s also an adventure tale of a trek across glaciers that’s incredibly exciting. And there are also sections interspersed between many of the chapters that tell of Gethenian myths, legends, and historical events so you get a sense of the history and culture of the people who inhabit Gethen. And there are the fascinating sex practices and gender dynamics that are so different from those on earth, which I wrote about here.

It took me a little while to get fully involved in the story — I supposed I’m not used to learning about a brand new world as one usually must when reading science fiction — but once I got a little ways into it, I was hooked and didn’t want it to end.

Remember how I was complaining that the opening of Waverley is a bit slow? Well, Walter Scott has read my thoughts and kindly apologized:

I beg pardon, once and for all, of those readers who take up novels merely for amusement, for plaguing them so long with old-fashioned politics, and Whig and Tory, and Hanoverians and Jacobites. The truth is, I cannot promise them that this story shall be intelligible, not to say probable, without it … Those who are contented to remain with me will be occasionally exposed to the dulness inseparable from heavy roads, steep hills, sloughs, and other terrestrial retardations; but, with tolerable horses and a civil driver … I engage to get as soon as possible into a more picturesque and romantic country, if my passengers incline to have some patience with me during my first stages.

Thank you for the warning! I’m not quite to the “picturesque and romantic country” yet, but I’m certain I’ll get there and this novel will be fun — it surely was so popular for a reason. Can you imagine a contemporary author asking for the reader’s patience in this way? Yes, the novel will be dull in places, but bear with me; I promise there’ll be good bits.

Actually, there are good bits even in the introductory chapters; the very first chapter doesn’t begin the story at all but is a discussion of the novel’s title, and if you know me, you’ll know I can’t resist this kind of novelistic navel-gazing. What he’s doing in discussing the title is placing his novel in its context amongst other novels of the period. He found the choice of “Waverley” relatively simple, but his subtitle plagued him for a while. He considered “Waverley, a Tale of Other Days,” but that sounded too Radcliffean; if he had used that subtitle:

… must not every novel-reader have anticipated a castle scarce less than that of Udolpho, of which the eastern wing had long been uninhabited, and the keys either lost, or consigned to the care of some aged butler or housekeeper, whose trembling steps, about the middle of the second volume, were doomed to guide the hero, or heroine, to the ruinous precincts?

He considered “Waverley, a Romance from the German,” but then readers would have expected:

a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and Illuminati, with all their properties of black cowls, caverns, daggers, electrical machines, trap-doors, and dark-lanterns.

“Waverley, A Sentimental Tale” would have meant (this one is particularly good):

a heroine with a profusion of auburn hair, and a harp, the soft solace of her solitary hours, which she fortunately finds always the means of transporting from castle to cottage, although she herself be sometimes obliged to jump out of a two-pair-of-stairs window, and is more than once bewildered on her journey, alone and on foot, without any guide but a blowzy peasant girl, whose jargon she hardly can understand.

And the last one, “Waverley, A Tale of the Times,” which must have involved:

a dashing sketch of the fashionable world, a few anecdotes of private scandal thinly veiled, and if lusciously painted, so much the better.

Sorry for all the quotations, but I find them irresistible. Scott gets away with both establishing what his own work does and doesn’t do, and making fun of the stereotypes of the fiction of his time. What he settles on is “Waverley; or, ‘Tis Sixty Years Since,” a time not so long ago as to be exotic nor so recent as to make people think they are reading a commentary on modern times. Instead, the time period allows him to put the focus on his characters and on their passions, instead of on their context. He wants characters likely to be seen as universal types, and he decides this is the best way to achieve them.

So, yes, after that wonderful opening chapter and with the promise of excitement to come, I’m willing to put up with a little dullness.

I have very mixed feelings about the introduction to my edition of Walter Scott’s Waverley; I’ve read only part of it, as I don’t like to hear an editor’s thoughts on the plot and characters until I’ve finished the novel, but I do like to read about the author’s life and context, so from that section of the introduction, I can quote a bit I found immensely annoying:

Scott’s triumph became a triumph for the form he wrote in. The novel gained a new authority and prestige, and even more important perhaps, a new masculinity. After Scott the novel was no longer in danger of becoming the preserve of the woman writer and the woman reader. Instead it became the appropriate form for writers’ richest and deepest imaginative explorations of human experience.

Yes, it’s the idea that women’s concerns are narrow and small, things that no man need worry about, but men’s concerns are wide and rich and universal. And heaven save us from those ubiquitous women writers and readers who are always threatening to take over everything. What the hell? The introduction was published in 1972, which is not to excuse it because of its relatively early date, but to wonder why Penguin couldn’t bother to get a less sexist editor in all that time.

The editor somewhat redeems himself with his discussion of Scott’s faded reputation. Scott was immensely, hugely popular in his time and was surely one of the most influential novelists of the 19C, so what happened? The editor claims that the 20C’s reaction against Victorianism and especially against Romanticism is to blame. His comparison of Scott and Austen is useful; he describes how his fortunes fell as hers rose:

Where Jane Austen is strong, Scott is weak: her careful sense of form and structure against his slack and slow-moving narrative procedures; her superb control of the complexities of tone against his pedestrian heavy-footedness; her profoundly ironic vision of human nature and human society against his complacent conventionality of attitude; her flexibility of language and style against his stilted, formal rhetoric.

I’ve been trying to imagine a world where Scott is valued more highly than Austen, and I can’t quite do it; it’s very hard for me to see why not everyone in all times and all places would see the genius of Austen and the lesser light of Scott as I do, but maybe that’s just me.  Oh, wait — I haven’t actually read Scott yet.  Mustn’t rush to judgment.

I’ve begun the first few chapters, and … well … they aren’t that good. I found them kind of obscure and hard to follow. But I know things will get improve and I fully expect to enjoy the book. As Sandra has rather wonderfully pointed out, 19C novels don’t tend to begin with a bang.

What a pleasure this book was to read. Many thanks to Emily for giving me a copy for my birthday!

Palace Walk by Naguib Mafouz is a long, sprawling saga about a family in Cairo who finds itself caught up in political turmoil at the end of World War I. The earlier sections of the novel are devoted to describing the family — a father and mother with five children — and its dynamics. As I’ve described before, the father, Al-Sayyid Ahmad, has an extremely tight hold over the rest of the family; he dictates what everyone does and where they go.

This is particularly hard on the women, as Al-Sayyid Ahmad insists they follow extremely strict traditional rules of modesty — the mother, Amina, is not allowed out on the streets at all, except for a very occasional visit to her mother. In one incident when Al-Sayyid Ahmad is away from home for a day, Amina breaks this rule and visits a local temple. It is an act of devotion, but it only lands her in trouble: out on the streets she gets hit by a car and when Al-Sayyid Ahmad discovers her injuries and finds out where she has been, he banishes her from the house. Only after his children and friends beg him to take her back does he allow her to return.

The novel describes the struggles each of the children have with this patriarchal authority; one son wants to marry, but Al-Sayyid Ahmad believes he is not ready and refuses to give permission. A daughter receives a marriage proposal she would gladly accept but the father is angry when he finds out the suitor has caught a glimpse of his daughter’s face through the window.

What the children don’t know, however, is that Al-Sayyid Ahmad spends his nights getting drunk, carousing with friends, and having love affairs. Amina sees his drunkenness every night, but even she doesn’t really know how he spends his time. Al-Sayyid Ahmad believes he is talented enough a person and strong enough a father to keep this double standard going; he is a model father as far as he is concerned, and he sees no need for consistency in his behavior.

As you can probably guess from this set-up, Al-Sayyid Ahmad is in for a world of frustration as his children find ways of doing what they want, in spite of their fear of him. The novel charts the increasing difficulty the father has in controlling them, a difficulty made much worse by increasing political unrest. The later sections of the novel become more political in nature, and tell the story of Egyptian demonstrations against the English occupiers. Violence takes over the city, putting the family and its traditional ways at risk.

The novel is slow-moving in the very best sense — it’s never dull or plodding, but rather rich and detailed about the lives and emotions of its characters. With his omniscient point of view, Mahfouz does a good job giving the reader a glimpse into the minds and emotions of many characters, and he can make us understand and even sympathize with the most unlikeable people. I like the way Mahfouz blends the personal, family story with the political one; I didn’t feel that the family story was told in the service of the political one or vice versa, but that Mahfouz wove the two together, showing how national dramas affect people’s intimate lives, and how the private world reaches out into and shapes the public one.

Fortunately for me, this is the first novel in a trilogy, so I have the pleasure of reading further in the lives of this family.

People told me I could expect to find some interesting gender dynamics in Ursula Le Guin’s novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, and that’s exactly what I’ve found. The story takes place on a planet that is called Gethen by its inhabitants and Winter by everyone else because of its extremely cold climate.

The inhabitants of Gethen have a very different kind of sexuality than humans do, and I’m finding it fascinating. Gethenians are ambisexual, meaning that they are capable of being male or female and they switch between the two. They follow a sexual cycle slightly shorter than a month that begins in a sexually neutral state; towards the end of the cycle they enter what’s called “kemmer,” a period of sexual activity that lasts 4-6 days. During this time if they find a desirable partner also entering kemmer they each take on either male or female characteristics and can have sex. They have no control over which partner is male and which female. Either partner is capable of taking on the female role and therefore either partner can become pregnant.

Kind of interesting, isn’t it? One of the book’s narrators, who is not from Gethen and therefore whose sexuality is like ours, speculates on how these differences in sexuality lead to differences in culture. I’m going to quote a long passage from this section, which I think would be better than if I were to summarize it; speaking of kemmer, the narrator says:

Everything gives way before the recurring torment and festivity of passion. This is easy for us to understand. What is very hard for us to understand is that, four-fifths of the time, these people are not sexually motivated at all. Room is made for sex, plenty of room; but a room, as it were, apart. The society of Gethen, in its daily functioning and in its continuity, is without sex.

Consider: Anyone can turn his hand to anything. This sounds very simple, but its psychological effects are incalculable. The fact that everyone between seventeen and thirty-five or so is liable to be … “tied down to childbearing,” implies that no one is quite so thoroughly “tied down” here as women, elsewhere, are likely to be — psychologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the same risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else.

…

Consider: There is no unconsenting sex, no rape. As with most mammals other than man, coitus can be performed only by mutual invitation and consent; otherwise it is not possible. Seduction certainly is possible, but it must have to be awfully well timed.

Consider: There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive. In fact the whole tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened, or changed, on Winter.

Would you want to live in a world like that? There are other aspects of Gethen that don’t sound so appealing, but I can’t help but like the idea of a world where sex and gender still exist, but without the inequality and violence associated with them.

One challenge this model of gender presents to the author is what to do about pronouns; male or female pronouns aren’t really accurate and neuter ones aren’t either, since Gethenians aren’t neuter at all. Le Guin has her narrators use the male pronoun, and although I don’t really like this — it makes it seem as though Gethen is populated only by men — I’m not sure what I would choose instead. To make up a pronoun?

I’m down to only two books I’m currently reading, and I’m about to finish one of them! I haven’t been in this situation in a long time. The only thing to be done about it is to start a couple new books, at least. Ursula LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness, Walter Scott’s Waverly, and Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia are the ones I’m planning to choose from.

But for now, I want to write a bit about Andrew O’Hagan’s new novel Be Near Me. I thought the novel had a few flaws, but overall it’s beautifully-written, absorbing, and moving. It’s about a Catholic priest, David Anderton, assigned to a small parish in Scotland who finds himself (David often seems passively drawn into things) involved with two teenage kids, Mark and Lisa. Mark and Lisa are wild; they do their best to shock David, but find themselves drawn to him when he isn’t shocked — when they see he wants to spend time with them. The three of them hang out after school and at night, talking and driving places; David takes the teenagers on trips to local landmarks they had never visited; generally, they have a lot of fun, although it’s clear from early on that these relationships are complicated and bound to become more so.

The novel is told in first person, and mixed in with the Mark and Lisa scenes, David tells about his past, his time at school and at Oxford, especially, and the story of falling in love with Conor, a fellow student. These background stories help to fill in David’s character. He doesn’t fit in easily anywhere and says he’s not sure where he belongs; he had an exciting youth, participating in the student protests of the 60s (he’s now in his 50s), but when he became a priest, he turned away from all that and has since lived a very quiet life, serving in parishes in England and only recently in Scotland.

He seems disconnected from himself, and his voice comes across as stoic and a little bit melancholy, as though he knows he has missed out on much but refuses to admit it. His housekeeper Mrs. Poole, with whom he has forged a friendship, tells him has spent his life trying to avoid life, but he refuses to believe this.

So when he meets and befriends Mark and Lisa, it inaugurates something new; he sees in them the youthful energy he no longer has, but he also grasps at the chance to change himself, to be a participant in life, to take risks and do foolish things. This is the most moving part of the book, I think; the longing David has for newness that he finally allows himself to indulge.

But it all goes wrong, inevitably, and David pays dearly for this experience of freedom and abandon.

What I loved best about the book is how richly it describes David’s sense of self and his interiority; it’s a very smart, thoughtful book, rather sad in the way it portrays growing older and taking stock of what one has become, but hopeful about the possibility of change, even in the midst of disaster. I did feel the narrator’s voice was sometimes a little too withholding, a little too reticent, and in these moments, rather than communicating hidden depths, the narrator left me a bit cold. This is the danger of using first person with a character like David, I suppose; his ambivalence about himself can at times make him seem a little blank.

But I only felt this blankness in moments, and mostly the experience of reading this book was a pleasure.

Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White was such an enjoyable book; it’s about 900 pages long, but it felt much shorter. The pages flew by. The excitement and speed doesn’t come from an incredibly complex plot; rather, it comes from the fun of being caught up in a vividly-realized world so very different from our own.

The book is set in London in 1875, and the author takes special delight in describing all that was horrid about the place — the filth, the smells, the poverty, the inequality, the prostitutes, the thieves, the beggars and pickpockets. Maybe there’s something a little wrong about enjoying these things in one’s reading, but still, it is delightful to read about a time not so far back in history that makes a person glad she’s alive today and not then. It makes one think, though — maybe people will one day read historical fiction about our time and wonder how we ever managed to survive when things were obviously so very terrible.

The story revolves around three main characters, William Rackham, head of a perfume industry; Agnes Rackham, his wife; and Sugar, the prostitute William falls in love with. Each character is vividly portrayed. Sugar is very smart and knows how to manipulate weak men such as William; she uses William’s infatuation with her to the fullest extent possible. She’s writing a novel describing her fantasies of revenge against all the men who have abused her in her life. William is insecure and foolish; he wanted a literary life but gave that dream up so he could make money, but he never quite trusts himself or his decisions. He wants to have the perfect home with wife and child and luxury and refinement, but he also wants Sugar for the pleasure and flattery she brings. He wants it all, and he lives in a society that gives him no reason to think he can’t have it.

Agnes, the wife, is one of the most fascinating characters; she’s startlingly ignorant about sex and reproduction, ashamed of her body, and unwilling to acknowledge that she’s given birth to a daughter. She’s the perfect Victorian woman — proper, modest, polite, and ignorant. But she’s also teetering on the brink of insanity. The point is obvious — conventional Victorian womanhood drives women mad — but it’s still a pleasure to see how Faber makes it all work out. Agnes and Sugar fall into the virgin/whore dichotomy, but these roles slip and slide and undermine each other and by the end, both women refuse to be what William — and society — want them to be.

Faber takes pleasure in spelling out just how restrictive the rules of proper society were; I knew something about what it meant to be a high-class Victorian woman, but I was still shocked at the many, many rules. It wasn’t proper for a woman to laugh with her mouth open. She couldn’t acknowledge any bodily function whatsoever. She was supposed to walk in such a way as to deny she has legs; she’s supposed to glide across the floor as though she is an angel. She couldn’t do any physical labor whatsoever, not so much as closing the curtains or putting a log on the fire. She couldn’t acknowledge there was such a thing as prostitution. It’s all this detail that makes historical fiction so much fun, isn’t it?