Of Books and Bicycles

Wow, people. Infinite Jest is a great book, and it’s going on my list of favorite novels ever. I don’t know if it would be on my top 10 or top 20 or top 50 or what, but it’s up there somewhere. Many people on the Infinite Summer forums and other places talk about rereading this book, in some cases many times, and in some cases rereading it pretty much immediately after finishing it for the first time, and while I’m not ready to reread it right away, I think I probably will someday. It’s a book that would reward rereading, without a doubt. And it’s a book worth spending lots of time with.

I appreciated having the Infinite Summer blog and forums available to help me sort out the plot events and to help me remember things I would otherwise have forgotten, but as far as I’m concerned the chief pleasure in this book is not piecing together its intricate structure or following the plot. The book is so enjoyable because of the narrative voice. The trick to enjoying the book for me was not to get caught up in figuring out all the details, and instead to just let it all wash over me. I picked up on the major events, but mostly I came to understand, eventually, that I would be able to figure out enough not to get lost and so I could relax and not worry about details. And not worrying about the details freed me up to enjoy the intelligence, the cleverness, the humor, and the wisdom of that voice. It’s a voice that varies from section to section with each new situation and narrator, but the truth is, it’s mostly the same voice throughout, or maybe more accurately it’s the same sensibility. It’s a similar voice to what Wallace creates in his nonfiction, and if you like that voice, I’m guessing, you’ll like whatever Wallace writes.

I was surprised to find so much wisdom in this book, and so much heart. Before I began reading I thought it was going to be a dry, detached, ironic kind of book, the kind that’s all about thinking and not about feeling. I’ve heard people criticize this book for being cold, and I’m pretty sure we didn’t read the same book, because that’s just not true. The book is incredibly funny, it’s overflowing with linguistic inventiveness, it has so much energy it feels like it’s bursting at the seams, it’s hyperactive and show-offy, its sentences can go on and on, and it has odd quirks like Wallace’s use of the word “like” throughout the whole book pretty much no matter who the narrator is or what the level of formality is. But it also made me tear up, and I cared about the characters, more than I usually care about characters in fact.

So, I’ll try to get more specific. I thought it was wise about how difficult it is to live in one’s own head and how hard it is to communicate genuinely with other people. And it was wise about how easily we get into the habit of running away from everything that is difficult and painful and instead turn to diversions, whether they be drugs or alcohol or sports or sex or endlessly-entertaining movies or whatever. In this novel, it’s mostly drugs and alcohol. And it was wise about just how hard it is to overcome addictions and that overcoming addictions means facing those difficult things we were running from in the first place. And also about the incredible variety of ways people are hurting and hurt and damaged and deformed, so much so that pretty much nobody is whole and perfect, and everybody is trying to recover from something.

So what is the book about? I don’t think I’ll spend much time describing that because what it’s about is just so random and, frankly, doesn’t sound all that interesting. It’s got one set of characters who are students at an elite tennis academy, and another set of characters who are residents of a drug and alcohol addiction halfway house, and another set of characters who are involved in political intrigue. It’s set in our time, roughly, but in a world different from our own, with slightly different technology and wildly different political structures. You’ll recognize the world, but it’s not ours.

I’m afraid that people may be too easily intimidated by this book. Yes, it’s long and challenging, but it’s very readable, and while it does throw a whole bunch of characters and scenes at you right at the beginning and you have to orient yourself a bunch of times to new situations, it does settle down eventually and you begin to sort out who is who and what the main storylines are. I think if you are at all tempted to read this book, you should, and if you aren’t sure, then you might try Wallace’s nonfiction and see if you like that. You might try Wallace’s 2005 graduation speech given to Kenyon College, which I think is really wonderful and which gives you an idea of why I think he’s a wise writer.

And now I’m glad I have more of Wallace’s writing available to read; at this point I’ve only read one novel and one nonfiction collection and a couple things online, so there is much more to look forward to.

I’m SO close to finishing Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone that I will have no trouble finishing it tonight before I drop off to sleep. My mystery book group is discussing the book tomorrow, so I’m finishing it just in time. I believe this will be the third time I’ve read the novel. I think I read it first as a teenager, grabbing it off my dad’s shelf of classics. I read it again sometime in my twenties probably, just for the fun of it. This time around, it was my pick for the book group; we had been talking about the possibility of reading it for a while, so I decided that it was finally time. I think many people in the group had already read it, so it will be a reread for a lot of us. I’m looking forward to hearing what other people thought.

My memories of my previous experiences reading The Moonstone are a little vague (I wasn’t blogging back then and so don’t have a record — alas), but I do recall enjoying the book’s multiple perspectives a lot. In fact, that’s what struck me most strongly during my first reading, and I remember thinking that I wanted to read other books with similar structures and that that structure would probably remain a favorite of mine, which it has. If you haven’t read it, The Moonstone has multiple narrators who pick up the thread of the story when they have something important to contribute. These narrators often respond to each other and disagree with each other. The first two narrators are particularly entertaining, as they are strong characters with amusing quirks who happen to dislike each other severely, and it’s funny when they tell you not to believe a word of what the other says. I also like how these multiple narrators allow you to see many of the characters both inside and outside. We get to hear Gabriel Betteredge, the first narrator, explaining how important Robinson Crusoe is to him, which he does with such enthusiasm we almost come to agree with him and go look for a copy of the novel ourselves, and we also get to see a different character completely bewildered at the fact that Betteredge is pushing Defoe at him as a source of wisdom on par with the Bible. It’s all a lot of fun.

I enjoyed the multiple narrators this time around too, but I noticed Collins’s wonderful sense of humor even more. His characters are just so entertaining. There’s Betteredge with his Crusoe obsession, his digressions, his strong opinions, his dignity combined with his failure to notice or to comment when Franklin Blake treats him rudely. And there’s Miss Clack with her tracts and intrusiveness and insatiable curiousity disguised as piety. The scene when she watches from behind the curtains as Rachel and Godfrey Ablewhite get engaged, watching while pretending not to, is classic comedy.

I’m not entirely sure I want to read this book again; perhaps I’ll change my mind, but I feel right now as though I’ve gotten what I can out of it, and I’d like to move on and read other Wilkie Collins novels. But three good experiences reading any novel is a pretty good record, I think.

Dawn Powell’s 1930 novel Dance Night has me thinking about what it would be like to live in a small town with very little education, very few job opportunities, and only vague ideas about what life is like in other places. The characters in the novel go to the movies regularly, but other than that, the chief source of information they have about the world outside their town comes from traveling salespeople and a dancing master, and the reach of these people is very small. The people who travel the farthest and would therefore have the most information are also the book’s most despicable characters. So everyone else is left with vague dreams and a strong pull to stay right where they are, doing the things their parents did.

Dance Night tells the story of Morry Abbott, a young man who is trying to figure out what he wants to make of his life. He lives with his mother behind the millinery shop she owns where he feels increasingly uncomfortable with the overwhelming femininity of the place. He is trying to find his way into the masculine worlds of the factory and the bar, but his youth and inexperience leave him uncertain and embarrassed. The novel also tells the story of Jen, a 14-year-old who has been abandoned by her mother and taken in by a local family. She feels isolated and alone and misses her younger sister, left behind in an orphanage. She turns to Morry for some companionship, and he is drawn to her, attracted by her hero-worship, but also repelled by her obvious neediness.

What has stayed with me about the book is all the unhappiness and the longing and the misunderstandings that haunt just about every character. Morry doesn’t know what to make of the young women who surround him who make fun of him but also, very confusingly, flirt with him. Morry’s mother is married to a man who is hardly ever home, but who makes her life miserable when he is. She is also desperately in love with the dancing master, who is hardly aware of her presence. The mother’s friend is having an affair. Her assistant torments Morry but also wants to be seen with him. The most important man about town, the one with all the money and property, moves through a series of superficial relationships. No one, it seems, is content, and nobody has much of an idea of what to do about it.

The townspeople do have one outlet — their weekly dance night, which begins with a dancing lesson, followed by the dance itself. Everyone, from old to young, looks forward to these evenings as a time to bring some lightness into their lives, but enjoyable as they are, they are also scenes of sexual competition and jealousy.

And there is also the problem of work. Morry gets a job in the factory and feels proud of himself for a while, but before too long he sees how builders are developing the town, has his own ideas of what kind of houses the town needs, and joins forces with a local architect to try to make his dream houses a reality. He becomes a big man about town himself, making plans and talking them up to the townspeople, shuttling about from person to person trying to make things happen. All this is immensely satisfying for a while, but it’s also precarious and uncertain, and for all Morry knows, it could collapse on him.

Morry senses that his world is changing and that there are opportunities out there — opportunities that could transform his life, if only he could get a proper hold on them. It’s a place where hard work and industry and vision can take him places, but he just can’t quite seem to make things work for him. His friend Jen is also full of dreams; she wants to sing and dance on stage and to live a busy and exciting life in some big city. But the problem, again, is how to make it happen. How can these people escape?

The picture Powell paints of a small town in changing and uncertain times is a grim one, but the portrait seems so real and the characters are so compelling that the book is a fascinating read. It makes me very glad I’m fortunate enough to live in an entirely place and time. Of course, we have our own uncertain times to deal with, but I think for a lot of people, it’s become easier to imagine a way out of claustrophic small towns.

I finished Chandra Prasad’s On Borrowed Wings nearly a month ago, and so the details are beginning to get vague, but I did want to write at least a few words about the book before putting it away. I picked it up in the bookstore because I was in the mood for something easy and fun and comforting, and I remembered the title from Danielle’s very positive review. It served the purpose nicely; it was an entertaining read that was also smart and thought-provoking. It did just what comfort reading should do — comfort, without making me cringe at bad writing.

I was drawn to the book for another reason as well — it takes place in my state, Connecticut, and it’s about undergraduate life at Yale, and I always enjoy reading books about academic life, whether from a student’s or a professor’s perspective. The book also has cross-dressing and lots of feminism — two more points in its favor.

It tells the story of Adele Pietra, a young woman in a small mining town outside New Haven. It’s the 1930s, and life is difficult for the working-class people in Adele’s town, Stony Creek, and it’s particularly difficult for a smart young woman whose best opportunity in life seems to be marriage to someone she barely knows. Adele loves to read and study, but it’s her brother Charles whose education everyone cares about. His mother is helping him prepare to apply to Yale, a possibility that seems like a long-shot, but one his mother has pinned all her hopes on.

All future plans are destroyed, however, when Charlie and his father are killed in a mining accident. Adele and her mother mourn their loss, but when Charlie’s acceptance letter from Yale arrives, it occurs to Adele that she just might be able to seize an opportunity and make something incredible happen. Women were not admitted to Yale at that time, but Adele decides that she’s going to go anyway — by dressing as a man and taking her brother’s place.

And so begins an adventure. Adele has many obstacles standing in her way — not only must she dress and talk and act like a man, but she has little idea how to behave in a setting that is entirely new to her. As a working-class, small-town girl, she has had little exposure to the big city and to the privilege and comfort of life in a prestigious university. The scenes describing Adele’s arrival in New Haven and her first weeks on campus are suspenseful ones, as she has to figure out how to deal with unexpected problems such as the swim test all freshmen are supposed to pass. How can she take a swim test without revealing her secret?

Fortunately, she runs into another new student who is just as bewildered by his new surroundings, and through him, she manages to make a group of friends, and she also does well in her classes and manages to find a job and she even makes friends with a working-class family in the city.

She manages to do pretty well for herself, but the question always remains — how long can she keep her secret?

It’s fun to watch Adele live a life she never expected she could and do things nobody believed a woman should be able to do. Prasad does a good job making this fantasy believable and resolving the suspenseful situation she created. All in all, it’s a satisfying book.

I don’t have nearly enough books, so Hobgoblin and I checked out a library sale yesterday evening, and I came home with five new novels. It’s a good thing I don’t hear about all the library sales in my area, because there must be dozens of them, and if we knew about them, we’d visit them, and then … well, then we’d be in trouble.

Here’s what I got. It was an evening for women’s fiction:

• Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment
• Barbara Pym, A Glass of Blessings
• Elizabeth Von Arnim, The Enchanted April
• Monica Dickens, Joy and Josephine
• Anita Brookner, A Family Romance

But that’s not it. From Bookmooch I recently got or will soon receive these:

• Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
• Jessie Fauset, There is Confusion
• George Gissing, New Grub Street
• Elizabeth George, Payment in Blood

I didn’t particularly enjoy the first Elizabeth George book I read, but enough people said the series gets better and enough people I respect have enjoyed her books that I thought I’d give her another try.

But that’s still not it. Oneworld Classics sent me a copy of Victor Hugo’s The Last Day of a Condemned Man, and I bought Chandra Prasad’s On Borrowed Wings (based on Danielle’s post) and Dawn Powell’s Dance Night (for the Slaves of Golconda) at local bookstores.

Oh, dear. I’m probably going to Manhattan with Hobgoblin this weekend, where we will probably venture into some bookshops, and I’m going on vacation starting next Thursday, during which I will probably visit some bookshops, and then there are a couple more library sales coming up, which I will almost certainly visit. Time to buy some more book shelves?

E.M. Forster’s novel Maurice is an intriguing read, largely because of the time period it was written in and the way it treats its subject matter, homosexual love. Forster wrote it in 1913 and 1914, but he resisted publishing it, and it didn’t appear in print until 1971 after he died. He was worried that people would have a hard time accepting what turns out to be a vexed but positive portrayal of homosexuality.

I’ve also read Forster’s Howards End and Passage to India, and if I’m remembering correctly what those novels were like, this one is more psychological and emotional in its focus. The other novels are psychological as well, but this one emphasizes interior worlds even more than the others, capturing the mind and emotions of a young man as he struggles to figure out the world and his place in it. Maurice is more abstract, taking less time with context and setting, and spending more time describing emotional states.

It tells the story of Maurice Hall, a schoolboy at the beginning of the novel, whose teacher introduces him to sex by drawing pictures in the sand during their last conversation together before Maurice heads off to public school. He dreams two highly symbolic dreams, and finds himself unexpectedly emotional when he learns one of their servants, a young man named George, has left their service. These early experiences haunt him as he moves through public school and then university, trying to understand his complex reactions to his classmates. His most significant relationship at university is with Clive, a young man much more worldly and more intelligent than he is, but one who returns his interest and, soon enough, his love. The novel charts their relationship as the two make their way through Cambridge and then move out into the larger world. The Cambridge scenes are particularly enjoyable to read, as campus life is endlessly interesting, for me at least. Once the characters leave university, their lives become broader, but also much more uncertain, and Maurice is finally made to take stock of who he is and to act upon that knowledge.

I was interested in the way the novel keeps a certain amount of critical distance from Maurice. He is largely a sympathetic character, but at the same time, we see the limits of his intelligence; Clive can talk circles around him, and Maurice is not the best abstract thinker out there. He is also unpleasantly obsessed with class and uncertain about his own status. Here is Forster’s description of him:

In Maurice I tried to create a character who was completely unlike myself or what I supposed myself to be: someone handsome, healthy, bodily attractive, mentally torpid, not a bad businessman and rather a snob. Into this mixture I dropped an ingredient that puzzles him, wakes him up, and finally saves him.

I like the fact that Forster makes his protagonist so obviously flawed, while at the same time showing so much compassion and understanding. It would be easy in a book that explores such a vexed and complicated subject as sexuality, particularly homosexuality in the early part of the twentieth century, to make the protagonist more admirable and heroic and pioneering than this one is. Instead, Maurice is just an average person, flawed in perfectly normal ways and no more heroic than most of us are.