|
Mar 31, 2001
|
[Several redesigns ago this item was a separate page, but now I've merged it into the MediaLog. So there.]
The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion by Ford Madox Ford
In college one of my professors, Mr. Reilly, mentioned The Good Soldier briefly during my 200-level English lit seminar. We were discussing Heart of Darkness, and Mr. Reilly mentioned that Conrad was good friends with Ford, who was well-known in his day but now lost to obscurity. He added that Ford had written a book that was "the exact same story" as Heart of Darkness. When I found the book and read it, I determined that Mr. Reilly was a crazy liar. He was a little embarrassed when I confronted him about it. (Obviously, I wasn't too irritated, though, since I ended up doing my senior thesis on Ford's Parade's End tetralogy.)
Okay, the books do have some similarities in theme -- both explore how little we actually know about anyone else. But in terms of plot and style there's no similarity at all. The Good Soldier is, essentially, a quiet, Masterpiece Theater-type drama of tangled romances and character flaws.
Before I get into some deeply profound and trenchant analysis, I need to do a little PR campaign for this book. Because nobody's read the damn thing. Or heard of it. It turns up on literature lists (I recall it was pretty high up on the highly questionable "100 Greatest Books of the 20th Century" list, for instance) and in critical reviews, but I've never mentioned this book or Ford Madox Ford and gotten anything but a blank look in response. That ain't right.
So, here's my attempt to sell you on reading this thing, if you've never heard of it before.
It's not hard to understand... sorta.
You can more or less figure out the story within the first few pages, so this won't spoil anything. The Good Soldier is narrated by an American named John Dowell. The other main characters are his wife, Florence, and his good friends Leonora and Edward Ashburnham. We quickly learn that Edward and Florence had an affair for many years. And that Edward has a history of similar affairs, some of which end tragically (for the women). It's very simple. And yet, very complicated... I'll get to that further down. The book chronicles the events of these relationships, told in flashback after Florence and Edward are dead, and the story is as much about Dowell's ignorance as anything else.
It's funny.
Nobody talks about this. Is it just me? The first time I read The Good Soldier I was dog-earing pages (shhhh, don't tell the librarians) to mark lines that made me laugh. Now, it's an understated, dry, and dare I say, British, humor, and not intentional on the narrator's part. But here are some examples:
• "I determined with all the obstinacy of a possibly weak nature, if not to make her mine, at least to marry her."
• "Well, I always say that an over-mastering passion is a good excuse for feelings."
• "It was a very black night and the girl was dressed in cream-coloured muslin, that must have glimmered under the tall trees of the dark park like a phosphorescent fish in a cupboard."
• "Edward ought, I suppose, to have gone to the Transvaal. it would have done him a great deal of good to get killed."
A couple of those have a certain Oscar Wilde flavor, now that I look at them. But see: funny. I'm not going to claim that you'll confuse this with Douglas Adams -- the glimpses of humor are usually a contrast to the serious tone. But there is also a certain amount of absurd humor: Maisie Maiden has a heart attack, dies, and falls into her luggage trunk -- which closes upon her "like the jaws of a gigantic alligator."
It's fascinating, from a technical standpoint.
This is where those "the finest French novel in English" remarks go. Maybe this won't interest people who aren't writers of one form or another, but, as I said, the basic plot becomes clear quite early on. In telling the story, however, the narrator jumps back and forth in time, revealing new information, alluding to future events, and explaining his own ignorance. Frankly, I'd love to know how the bastard did it. Did he outline it all systematically, or did he simply figure out the outline, the basic events, and tell the story as it occurred to him, in order to preserve the spontaneous tone? The first line is one of those that turns up on lists of great openings: "This is the saddest story that I have ever heard," a line that becomes a refrain throughout the book. The final line is equally noteworthy, but would be meaningless if quoted out of context; it's a final bucket of cold water dumped on Edward's body.
There are plenty of noteworthy touches. A year before Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man came out, Ford was experimenting with stream of consciousness. One of my favorite sequences is in chapter 3, when a memory of Florence, about to take her morning bath, leads to digression upon digression, which consumes a page and a half before Dowell apologetically concludes, "And it occurs to me that some way back I began a sentence that I have never finished..." And he did, of course, and every time I read it, I have to look back and find the beginning again.
It's just good, damn it.
Nothing to elaborate about here. It's good. It's well written. The issues involved are current -- it's not one of those stories where you keep thinking, "Oh, right; this was the early 1900's; nowadays this wouldn't be a big deal." And although I mentioned "Masterpiece Theater" before, this isn't a book that could ever be adapted that way. For one thing, Dowell's narration, and his stream-of-consciousness style, is essential to the story. For another, there is very little conversation. This isn't a Wharton novel where people sit in drawing rooms and discuss contemporary standards and gossip about who wore an outdated dress to the theater. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The rest of this is aimed at people who have already read The Good Soldier (all five of you). However, it's not a book that can be "spoiled" -- the plot is almost irrelevant since it is in many ways a character study, or a series of character studies. So even if you haven't read it, continuing shouldn't ruin anything for you.
And now, some increasingly random thoughts about the book:
John Dowell is a notoriously unreliable narrator. Apparently there's some debate about this in lit-crit-land. Although frankly, I suspect that English professors ask questions like, "Is Dowell an unreliable narrator?" to see if you actually read the book. Because the answer is, "yes." Since the novel jumps around in time so much, I once tried to list the events in order. Which would have been a reasonable task, except that I used Dowell's dates. August 4, 1904, is one that comes up a lot. It's Florence's 30th birthday. It's the date of the Dowell's and Ashburnham's first dinner together. It's the day of their joint trip to view Luther's Protest. And it's the day that Maisie Maidan dies. Except that all of those things quite clearly did not, could not, have happened the same day. Dowell frequently gives dates or ages to put the events in context, but in fact he just muddles things up more. This is the sort of thing that people do, of course; events become telescoped, or jumbled together.
He also reports about events that no one witnessed. The prime example is his description of Maisie kissing Edward's pillow while alone in his room. Maisie certainly wouldn't mention such a thing to anyone; most of the events one could imagine Florence or Leonora describing to Dowell, but not this -- so what is the reader to think when Dowell describes the scene? Is it what he'd imagine she'd do, based on his impression of her? Is he ascribing a romantic impulse to her in order to make her death more tragic, or contrast her with Florence's manipulation and Leonora's stoicism?
And that's one of the things that makes re-reading the book so interesting for me. Is Dowell trying to mislead the reader intentionally -- paint himself as the naive victim of the story? Or are these the embellishments that any storyteller adds? Or both? The story is, after all, about how people deceive each other, and themselves. And how we refuse to see what should be obvious.
Personally, I don't believe that Dowell is intentionally lying. The story's rambling tone is, as he himself says, meant to imitate the way someone might tell the story to a friend over a few evenings. I suspect he's the sort of person who always screws up jokes, because he left something important out at the beginning. "A guy walks into a bar and asks for a beer. The bartender -- oh, wait, I forgot to mention that the guy is a fireman. Oh, and this takes place in Australia. Let me start over..." And the story is about how little we know others, and also how little we know ourselves -- Dowell's ignorance about his own motives is as important to that theme as his stated observations.
I have no idea how many times I've read The Good Soldier. Certainly a dozen times, probably more. Because the basic story is spelled out early on, because the style is so important to the book, knowing what happens doesn't make it boring to read. I love books like this; I love knowing that if there's nothing to read, I can pick this up again, jump into it, and still find new things to think about.
A final warning
If you do decide to pick up a copy, avoid the Bantam Classic version with an introduction by Jeffrey Meyers. The introduction summarizes the book, which would be fine, except Meyers is completely wrong about one point in his summation. It really irritates me, since it suggests careless reading on Meyers' part. If I wrote an introduction to a book, I'd at least get someone to double-check my references. Sheesh.
And if you do read it, let me know what you thought.
|
|
Mar 26, 2001
|
Over the weekend I read: -
The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai by Earl Mac Rauch. Wow, that was silly. Credit where it's due: giant mega-props to Monty who enabled (in every sense of the word) me to finally track a copy of this book down. My family is forever in his debt. And god bless eBay, too. It turns out that my sister-in-law had read it once upon a time; she implied that the story was told in rather purple prose. Well, yes; that's kind of the point. Sheesh. I don't know how to convey how funny the book is, and I can't quote a sample because as soon as I finished it I had to lend it to my mom. Personally, I loved the footnotes best. -
Billy Bumbry's Year: A Sort Of Novel by Gary Puffer. Another eBay find. Truly we live in a wondrous age. My mother and bother read this when I was in elementary school, and since they enjoyed it, I read it to. I suspect that I re-read it and they didn't, though, since they denied any knowledge of such a book. See, about a year ago some train of thought brought it to mind, and I started looking around in used bookshops for it. At some point I asked my family if they remembered the book. They didn't. But I found it finally, and once I had an actual copy in hand, they confessed that it looked somewhat familiar. I hate it when they try to mess with my mind.
Oh, yeah, the book. It's hard to describe; there's no real plot. If you like Daniel Pinkwater, it's somewhat along the lines of his books. Slightly below-average student, oddball friends, peculiar school, insane adults. There's also a fortune hidden away somewhere in town for whoever can decipher the clues left in a dead millionaire's will. But Billy Bumbry takes no part in the search; it's just background to the other random events. The book is told through Billy's diary entries, school bulletins, clippings from the local newspaper and the school paper, blueprints, sample PSAT questions, report cards, and even a few comic strips. Not a great book, exactly, but it's a fun way to spend an afternoon satisfying your inner freshman. -
And I finally finished Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem.
A book which does not feature a character with the initials "B.B.", unfortunately. I was hoping that would become a trend.
I took a break halfway through this to read a few other things, and finally got back into it last week. Lethem is working his way onto my "I'll read anything by" list of authors, beside Paul Auster and Jonathan Carroll. (Wait, can you be "beside" other people on a list? I guess Lethem should be "under" the others, but then it sounds like they're being ranked. Or else it just sounds dirty.) I think I need to reread this one again, because I always feel that way about mysteries. I like going back and seeing how all the different characters are working on their own tracks, with their own motivations. It's not just a straight-ahead mystery, of course; the narrator/detective has Tourettes, and the book also puts you inside of his compulsions and tics. Which isn't fun, exactly -- I sometimes start thinking in the "style" of what I'm reading, which makes reading Tom Wolfe a dangerous proposition. Anyway, that may be why I needed a break reading Motherless Brooklyn. I don't need to encourage my compulsions.
That's all I'm going to say on those, because I'm still working on my extended write-up on The Good Soldier. It's about half-done, so I hope to have it up before the weekend.
|
|
Mar 15, 2001
|
On Monday I read The Passing of the Technomages, the first of a trilogy meant to answer some lingering questions from Babylon 5 and Crusade. Yes, I read these things, even though this is the kind of fannish behavior I detest. I just want to know if a couple of my theories are right, okay? Anyway, my review is: "Eh." If you never watched Crusade, further comments aren't going to make much sense so I'd skip the rest of this.
The book did explain a good bit of Galen's behavior -- although I went back and watched "The Path of Sorrows" since there's a flashback in it to something that happens in the book. Things weren't completely consistent between the book and the episode, but they're fairly close. My main problem with the book was it's just not the kind of story I normally read; they're all aliens living on their alien world with alien creatures and alien names for everything, and it just starts to read like a parody of itself. You know: "The greeps crawled across the rocks of Spoom," or whatever. When you're making up words to convince me that the characters are alien, but their behavior is completely human, I just get irritated. And then there's all this political infighting among the Technomages, which again, just isn't the kind of thing I find interesting. I skimmed large sections of the book, because I didn't care how the Technomages governed themselves, and what kind of aliens they encountered, and what they all wear, and what their ships look like. If you read a lot of books like that, I suppose it won't bother you.
Second complaint: it's got cliches aplenty. If you can't identify the characters who will betray the Technomages the first time you read about them, you're not paying attention. And then, Galen's past is awfully similar to Bester's. Let's see: his parents died when he was young, grew up withdrawn & antisocial, one male mentor, one love affair that ended badly, making character even more bitter as a result. Anyone want to be that Eilerson had the exact same history? I like these kinds of characters (no surprise there), so that didn't bother me as much as it might other people. But it's still not very creative. I can't help thinking that some people mange to be bitter & skeptical without having some tragic experience in their past. And Isabel has the same problem in the book that she had in the flashback in Crusade -- she's a redrawn Beth March. I'm sorry, but when I see a character who's that good and noble and saintly, I know they're doomed. We all know they're doomed. I don't know why she loved Galen, I don't know exactly why Galen loved her; I'm just told over and over again that they loved each other, and I have to accept it because otherwise their behavior makes no sense. I'm a sucker for tragic love stories, honest (cynics are the biggest saps) and the death scene failed to grab me, because Isabel was a complete cypher.
Oh yeah, and Morden pops up. Which is slightly fun, but surely Morden wasn't the only Shadow operative in the entire universe. It seems a tad unlikely that he manages to be around at every significant event.
It probably wasn't as bad as I'm probably making it sound here. But it wasn't great. Call it a solid C. Let's face it, if you're not a B5 fan, there's no reason for you to read it, and if you are a fan, you probably want to know the story, same as I did, so saying it's not that great won't dissuade you. It won't even dissuade me from reading the next two books when they come out.
I also read two more "Preacher" TPBs recently. And then I found out that "Alamo" (the final volume) isn't out yet. It won't be out until May. Damn & blast. I thought the entire series had been released in paperbacks; that's why I started reading them. This sucks.
|
