slick scott

 

The slicker was good-looking or clean-looking; he had brains, social brains, that is, and he used all means on the broad path of honesty to get ahead, be popular, admired, and never in trouble. He dressed well, was particularly neat in appearance, and derived his name from the fact that his hair was inevitably worn short, soaked in water or tonic, parted in the middle, and slicked back as the current of fashion dictated. The slickers of that year had adopted tortoise-shell spectacles as badges of their slickerhood, and this made them so easy to recognize that Amory and Rahill never missed one. The slicker seemed distributed through school, always a little wiser and shrewder than his contemporaries, managing some team or other, and keeping his cleverness carefully concealed.

From This Side of Paradise -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

[Pictured:  F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1920s, hair definitely slicked]

the age of desire

Speaking of Edith Wharton, Jennie Fields' The Age of Desire (2012) draws back the heavy velvet drapes of decorum by novelizing aspects of Edith's life and loves.  Wharton, of course, was a fixed member of the upper crust society she portrayed in fiction, thereby using its corseting, restrictive influence as a means of literary liberation.  In The Age of Desire, much of the focus is on Edith's unfulfilling marriage to portly, jovial Teddy Wharton, who was twelve years older and more of a gentleman farmer-type than an aesthete.  Edith and Teddy did get along fairly well at times, but the marriage was strained by a lack of sexual connection.  Edith felt little for her husband romantically and, after a while, Teddy began to turn to other women to fill those needs.

Edith's intellectual and artistic interests were also beyond Teddy's general purview.  When Edith met American journalist Morton Fullerton in Paris, there was a spark of both physical and mental attraction that developed into an intense affair.  Fullerton was younger than then fortyish-Edith and had a bit of a reputation as a player, with both sexes.  Still, Edith seemed to realize that though it would be an overwhelming and troubling relationship, she needed to go through this ring of fire with Fullerton. The characters in her novels, namely Newland Archer in The Age of Innocence and Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, suppressed passions in order to keep within a proper code of social behavior -- Archer remaining in a loveless marriage and Lily eventually succumbing to the permanent oblivion of a chloral hydrate overdose.  Edith was more willing to take the emotional and moral risk of pursuing her own romantic involvement, although interestingly enough, The Age of Innocence was published almost two decades after her affair with Fullerton.

With a framework of Edith's true-life biographical detail and quotes from letters written to Fullerton, The Age of Desire offers a complex and intimate portrait of one of literature's grande dames.  Some may find such intimacy unsettling, while others may be more intrigued by this glimpse of Edith as a living, breathing, yearning, and flawed woman.  The life of Anna Bahlmann, Edith's secretary and confidante, is also part of The Age of Desire; Anna is of another class and tirelessly earnest in her devotion to Edith, and her character is quite compelling.  Furthermore, Fields manages to portray Edith's troubled husband Teddy Wharton in a sympathetic light, though he too is full of flaws and bad impulses.

Some reviewers of The Age of Desire noted instances of dialogue or behavior seeming too modern for the era, but in the larger scope of the novel's purpose, that can be indulged.  The prose itself flows elegantly in a Whartonesque manner, with a resulting view of Edith balancing identities as a woman of her day, a writer, and a human being, and not just a frosty book jacket photograph of one of America's literary greats.  

night at the opera

But they had; they undoubtedly had; for the low-toned comments behind him left no doubt in Archer's mind that the young woman was May Welland's cousin, the cousin always referred to in the family as "poor Ellen Olenska."  Archer knew that she had suddenly arrived from Europe a day or two previously... [a]s for the cause of the commotion, she sat gracefully in her corner of the box, her eyes fixed on the stage, and revealing, as she leaned forward, a little more shoulder and bosom than New York was accustomed to seeing, at least in ladies who had reasons for wishing to pass unnoticed.

From The Age of Innocence -- Edith Wharton

Pictured:  At the Opera --  Thomas Francis Dicksee, R.A.

go holmes go

John Clellon Holmes (1926-1988) was a key member of the Beat Generation's founding circle, having met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg at a party in 1948 and thus beginning decades-long friendships.  Holmes and Kerouac -- both born on March 12th but Kerouac being older by four years -- became creative comrades as well, encouraging each other to observe and write and transform the happenings of their lives into literature.  Holmes' Go was published in 1952, before 1957's more famed On the Road, and though the novels involve many of the same characters in the roman à clef style, the tone of each book is quite different.

While On the Road has a generally more energetic, driven, Beat zeitgeist feeling, with the American post-war landscape rushing by, Go is New York-centric, at times claustrophobically so.  Bars "forlornly gathered the discontented into gaudy islands of warmth and alcohol," and the Manhattan backdrop is urban and landlocked.  Holmes' alter ego in Go is Paul Hobbes, a bright aspiring young writer living with his wife Kathryn.  And here we have another major difference between Go and On the Road -- the emotional and romantic complications of a true marriage.  In On the Road, Sal Paradise's marriage is mentioned as a thing of the past, in the rearview mirror, a vague relationship that's run its course.  Paul Hobbes is both anchored and grounded by his marriage to Kathryn, who works a day job to support him while he writes at home, and who is a strong-willed, passionate woman.  For the most part, Kathryn outrightly disapproves of Paul's "wild" friends and their excessive drinking, smoking, drug use and ambiguous morality, yet she also has a certain fascination for the likes of Gene Pasternak (Kerouac), David Stofsky (Ginsberg), and Hart Kennedy (Neal Cassady), and can't help but be drawn into their world.  She and Paul fight often, adding another claustrophobic element to Go, namely the drunken or sober squabbles in the Hobbes' apartment, but despite all the tension and friction, some sort of earthy magnetism seems to keep them from breaking apart.

In essence, Hobbes stays behind in New York while Pasternak and Kennedy surge westward into the pages of On the Road.  The prose of Go is more measured and dense than Kerouac's flowing narrative, but there are many fine moments and observations in Holmes' earlier novel.  Beyond a deeper perception of some of the female characters, Go gives a sense of this is probably how things really were among the NY Beat social set, warts and all.  Like the cruel, self-destructive tendencies of Bill Agatson (Bill Cannastra), the moody impulses of Pasternak, or the quirky, almost naive brilliance of David Stofsky.  And while On the Road is a definite American literary classic, Go surely should have a prominent place on the Beat bookshelf to add nuance and layers to the story, and for an intriguing variation of the same scene.

This generation may make no bombs; it will probably be asked to drop some, and have some dropped on it, however, and this fact is never far from its mind. It is one of the pressures which created it and will play a large part in what will happen to it. 

"This is The Beat Generation" -- John Clellon Holmes, The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 1952

balzac's feast

Honoré de Balzac died today in 1850 at the age of 51, leaving behind an enduring legacy in French literature.  His life was generally busy with writing and living amid the intrigues of Parisian society, and he loved food.  While working on a book, he kept his appetites in check, eating little and opting instead for pots of coffee to keep his pen moving across the page.  At other times, dining to delicious excess was more his style, with no oyster safe from his appetites.  This is all well-detailed in Anka Muhlstein's Balzac's Omelette:  A Delicious Tour of French Food and Culture with Honoré de Balzac, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter.  If you're a Balzac fan, you already know how food is a frequent backdrop in Balzac's works -- and you've probably already read this book since it was initially published in the U.S. in 2011.  If new to Balzac, the focus on the delights of the table and on 19th century French cuisine -- combined with the captivating character and words of the author himself -- will make Balzac's Omelette a tasty read.

Flicoteaux's restaurant is no banqueting-hall, with its refinements and luxuries; it is a workshop where suitable tools are provided, and everybody gets up and goes as soon as he has finished. The coming and going within are swift. There is no dawdling among the waiters; they are all busy; every one of them is wanted.

The fare is not very varied. The potato is a permanent institution; there might not be a single tuber left in Ireland, and prevailing dearth elsewhere, but you would still find potatoes at Flicoteaux's. Not once in thirty years shall you miss its pale gold (the color beloved of Titian), sprinkled with chopped verdure; the potato enjoys a privilege that women might envy; such as you see it in 1814, so shall you find it in 1840 ... When the whiting and mackerel abound on our shores, they are likewise seen in large numbers at Flicoteaux's; his whole establishment, indeed, is directly affected by the caprices of the season and the vicissitudes of French agriculture.  By eating your dinners at Flicoteaux's you learn a host of things of which the wealthy, the idle, and folk indifferent to the phases of Nature have no suspicion, and the student penned up in the Latin Quarter is kept accurately informed of the state of the weather and good or bad seasons. He knows when it is a good year for peas or French beans, and the kind of salad stuff that is plentiful; when the Great Market is glutted with cabbages, he is at once aware of the fact....

From A Distinguished Provincial at Paris (Lost Illusions) -- Honoré de Balzac

the literary legacy of philomena guinea

I had read one of Mrs. Guinea's books in the town library--the college library didn't stock them for some reason--and it was crammed from beginning to end with long, suspenseful questions:  "Would Evelyn discern that Gladys knew Roger in her past? wondered Hector feverishly" and "How could Donald marry her when he learned of the child Elsie, hidden away with Mrs. Rollmop on the secluded country farm? Griselda demanded of her bleak, moonlit pillow."  These books earned Philomena Guinea, who later told me she had been very stupid at college, millions and millions of dollars.

From The Bell Jar -- Sylvia Plath

Pictured:  Woman Reading -- Kuroda Seiki, circa 1890 (Tokyo National Museum)

mango pain

. . . Aziz turned to topics that could distress no one.  He described the ripening of the mangoes, and how in his boyhood he used to run out in the Rains to a big mango grove belonging to an uncle and gorge there.  "Then back with water streaming over you and perhaps rather a pain inside.  But I did not mind.  All my friends were paining with me.  We have a proverb in Urdu:  'What does unhappiness matter when we are all unhappy together?'  which comes in conveniently after mangoes."

A Passage to India -- E.M. Forster (1924)

Pictured:  Mangoes (detail) -- Francisco Oller, circa 1901

rich shaw, poor shaw

Irwin Shamforoff, better-known as Irwin Shaw, was born on February 27, 1913 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where he most likely did not live in the lap of luxury.  Shaw followed a similar path as other NYC-connected literary men of his generation (J.D. Salinger, Norman Mailer, Herman Wouk):  sons of immigrant families who attended college then served in World War II, with the war experience later providing inspiration for acclaimed fiction and/or film and theater adaptations. 

In Shaw's case, his 1948 novel The Young Lions put him on the literary map, with a later movie version starring Marlon Brando, Dean Martin and Montgomery Clift earning its share of award nominations.  Shaw, who also wrote for radio, theater and film himself, continued to have success on the big and small screen, and while this and particularly Rich Man, Poor Man surely boosted his bank accounts, he did seem to lose some of his purely writerly reputation along the way.  He produced some very well-crafted short stories, however, including "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses" and "The Eighty-Yard Run," the latter of which -- about the downward slide of a 1920s college football hero -- is excerpted here:

That was the high point, Darling thought, fifteen years ago, on an autumn afternoon, twenty years old and far from death, with the air coming easily into his lungs, and the deep feeling inside him that he could do anything, knock over anybody, outrun whatever had to be outrun...[h]e had practiced the wrong thing, perhaps.  He hadn't practiced for 1929 and New York City and a girl who would turn into a woman.

Irwin Shaw died in 1984 in Switzerland.  Unfortunately, the troubled marriage and heavy drinking of "The Eighty-Yard Run" were also reflected in his life beyond the typewriter, but if Shaw's boyhood dream was to be a successful writer, he surely managed that long football pass.

rest in peace miss lee

I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.

To Kill a Mockingbird -- Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 - February 19, 2016) 

dumas and the duel

I had wished the duel to be one with swords; M. Gaillardet insisted it should be with pistols. I have a strong repugnance to that weapon; it seems to me brutal and more that of a highway robber, who attacks a traveller from the shelter of a wood, than that of the honourable combatant defending his life. The thing I dread most in pistol-duelling (but I have only fought twice with this weapon) is unskilfulness, much more than dexterity. Indeed, two or three years before the period in which the events I am relating took place—namely, before 1834—I had had a pistol-duel; I have not spoken of it, not being able to give the name of the man against whom I fought, nor to tell the reasons why I was fighting. In that duel, which took place at seven in the morning in the Bois de Boulogne, in the neighbourhood of Madrid, my adversary and I were placed at twenty paces distance from one another. Lots were drawn as to who should fire first and the advantage fell to my adversary. I planted myself, with pistol loaded, at a distance of twenty paces and I waited for the firing with the muzzle of the barrel of my weapon in the air....

My Memoirs, Vol. VI -- 1832-33 -- Alexandre Dumas (The Macmillan Company, 1909) 

Pictured: Alexandre Dumas circa 1832 (from Wikimedia Commons)

the fountainhead's fascinating semi-sideliners

Today author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, with her major claims to fictional fame being 1943's The Fountainhead and 1957's Atlas Shrugged.  Interpretation of Rand's Objectivist philosophy and subtext can turn controversial -- discourse she probably would have enjoyed --  but it is interesting to note that Rand is rarely pigeonholed as a "female writer" and is generally referred to as just a writer.

For me The Fountainhead made a major impression when I first read it in college, but then some years passed and I started to think that Howard Roark and Dominique Francon were rather extreme and I also started feeling less pitiful contempt for Catherine Halsey and even Peter Keating.  Now I read it and get distracted by all the side characters in the many-peopled plot and wonder about their more detailed backstories.  (And kudos to Rand for making them resonate so vividly, whether she intended to or not.)  Like the weak-willed, porcelain-obsessed Lucius Heyer or wily newspaperman Alvah Scarret, or the misguidedly violent sculptor Steven Mallory.  Or the Chinese student artist who works with Roark at John Erik Snyte's architecture office.  The Chinese student never says a word because minorities don't really factor into The Fountainhead, but this nameless artist with no dialogue is as memorable as some of the novel's more heavy-handed characters.  Snyte has the student on staff to draw up plans for final presentation to clients.  In another scene, the Chinese artist steps aside "diffidently, in silence" when a client is brought into the drafting room by Snyte, then he returns to his desk and keeps on drawing unobtrusively, unacknowledged.  You have to wonder about this Asian man living in New York in the 1920s and his artistic training, and what it was like for him to work at a high-pressure Manhattan architectural firm where no one seemed to ever call him by -- or perhaps no one ever really knew -- his actual name.

And let's not forget Jules Fougler, New York drama critic, his voice "slow, nasal and bored."  Fond of wearing gloves and carrying a cane, he resembles two "sagging circles" set on top of each other in a beautifully tailored suit the color of goose shit or merde d'oie as Fougler describes it.

"Examine my case, if you will [Fougler said]...What achievement is there for a critic in praising a good play?  None whatever.  The critic is then nothing but a kind of glorified messenger boy between author and public.  What's there in that for me?  I'm sick of it. I have a right to wish to impose my own personality upon people.  Otherwise, I shall become frustrated--and I do not believe in frustration."

Do we see Fougler again or is he crucial to the plot?  Not really.  But is it interesting to wonder where he went afterwards and/or if he had Waldorf salad for lunch?  Yes, I kind of think so.

virga vay and allan cedar

Sinclair Lewis' short story "Virga Vay and Allan Cedar" has always seemed just a couple of tweaks away from being something that the Coen Brothers might come up with.  Something between Barton Fink and Fargo, but with less violence.  There's the undertone of dark humor.  There's the Midwestern and specifically Minnesota setting, which puts it in the world of Fargo; there's a meek yet desperate man trapped in a bad situation, and there are bullying, semi-grotesque American caricatures along with a violent conclusion (both Fargo and Barton Fink).  But then like Barton Fink or Fargo, the meek desperate characters are still trapped -- but now things are worse, because they tried to take action.

Timid Virga and Allan are caught up in an adulterous affair, but we have to root for them because they're each married to otherwise lousy spouses.  They can't or won't divorce because apparently in pre-World War II society, a bad marriage was like a prison sentence you just had to endure.  Allan is a dentist and generally tormented by his "fat and vicious" wife Bertha, who works daily to undermine his confidence and mental well-being.  Virga's husband Orlo is the local optician and not as cruel as Bertha, but he still doesn't understand his wife nor does he particularly want to, with his general complaint being that Virga has no gumption and spends too much time daydreaming.  Virga and Allan meet secretly to make "shy, eager love in mossy pastures" or read poetry to each other, or to share banana splits like teenagers at soda fountains in other towns.  When Bertha inherits a bunch of cash and a house in California from a "horrible aunt," she decides that she and Allan will leave the frozen Midwest and that Allan can now suffer in a a sunnier climate.

"It occurred to Allan to murder her, but not to refuse to go along.  Many American males confuse their wives and the policeman on the beat."

Allan's next plan of action is to enjoy a final lovefest with Virga at a St. Paul hotel, and then the two of them will commit suicide to be eternally together. Virga first wonders if they can't just run away someplace, but Allan notes that Bertha has a private detective cousin and that he'll find them no matter where they go.  Allan pretends to attend a dentists' seminar and Virga joins him at the hotel; they take bubble baths and read more poetry and drink whiskey, then decide to end it all by sitting in Allan's car, now rigged up to have the exhaust funnel back in and asphyxiate them.  They start to slip into the happy fog of oblivion but then the windows are shattered and they're dragged out of the car and back to reality.  Bertha and her detective cousin have tailed them.  Allan's jaw gets broken in the life-saving process and Virga's face gets slapped surely more than necessary by Bertha to help her return to consciousness.  Later, Allan finds himself back home recuperating while his wife jeers to their friends how "Ally tried to--you know--with a woman, but he was no good, and he was so ashamed he tried to kill himself."

"Please go away and don't torture me," Allan mutters.

Virga finally gets her divorce from Orlo and ends up working at a 5 & 10 in Des Moines.  She writes several letters to Allan, but Bertha gets to them first and presumably rips them up, throws them in the trash, or reads them aloud in a mocking voice to the ladies in her bridge club.

* * * *

Pictured:  Hotel by a Railroad -- Edward Hopper (1952)

magnificent murakami

Happy birthday to Haruki Murakami (b. January 12, 1949), one of Japan's premier authors and known, read, and loved by many others outside of his native country. Per Wikipedia, Murakami has also done Japanese translations of American writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and J.D. Salinger, and it's always a fine combination of talents when a translator has an intuitive sense of fiction the way Murakami does.  The titles of Murakami's own works tend to be evocatively quirky and memorable, as is the book cover art that graces his novels and memoirs.

He inherited from his mother's stories the fundamental style he used, unaltered, in his own stories: namely, the assumption that fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual. **  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

new year's salinger

[Mrs. Glass] was wearing her usual at-home vesture-what her son Buddy (who was a writer, and consequently, as Kafka, no less, has told us, not a nice man) called her pre-notification-of-death uniform. It consisted mostly of a hoary midnight-blue Japanese kimono. She almost invariably wore it throughout the apartment during the day. With its many occultish-looking folds, it also served as the repository for the paraphernalia of a very heavy cigarette smoker and an amateur handyman; two oversized pockets had been added at the hips, and they usually contained two or three packs of cigarettes, several match folders, a screwdriver, a claw-end hammer, a Boy Scout knife that had once belonged to one of her sons, and an enamel faucet handle or two, plus an assortment of screws, nails, hinges, and ball-bearing casters-all of which tended to make Mrs. Glass chink faintly as she moved about in her large apartment. ~ Franny and Zoey -- J.D. Salinger (b. January 1, 1919 - d. January 27, 2010) 

Pictured:  The Blue Kimono -- William Merrit Chase, 1898