Tag: American classic novels

The Lottery And Other Stories – Shirley Jackson

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I started the work of American author Shirley Jackson the wrong way round.  My recent introduction to her was via her last novel, published in 1962, “We Have Always Lived In The Castle” which I loved.  Thirteen years earlier this collection of short stories appeared with the title work really establishing her reputation. It is here as the final story alongside 25 others and a poem linked to one of the tales which rounds things off.

Having not read many short story collections for years I have read three in fairly rapid succession; Truman Capote’s festive themed compendium “A Christmas Memory”, bringing together tales of his from throughout his career and Bryan Washington’s award-winning collection of themed stories in “Lot”.  I can’t get out of my head that this format can feel inconsequential and somewhat unimportant compared to a writer’s longer works.  Capote and Washington went a little way to changing my viewpoint on this, but Jackson’s collection, on the whole, doesn’t.

There is no doubt that she can write and is a major American twentieth century literary figure.  The stories are beautifully set up, often they deal with a newcomer whose arrival changes dynamics, often they have a character named Harris in them (not the same character but this is obviously a name the writer liked to use).  In the space of a couple of pages a situation and characters are vividly drawn but too often for me the ending comes without the story feeling fully realised.

Shirley Jackson was a prolific short story writer publishing over 200 and this was early on in her career where she may still be finding her voice to some extent.  She has become famed for tales where a veneer of respectability hides a layer of darkness and this is something which really appeals to me and this was certainly evident in the novel I read but not so fully established with these earlier stories.  It is certainly present in the title piece “The Lottery”.  This is where I experienced the most dread and it had a satisfactory twist and works best as the most complete of the tales here.

A number of the others reminded me of one of USA’s most celebrated short story writers (perhaps now out of fashion) O Henry (1862-1910), naturally with a more contemporary feel, but with his richness of language and scene setting if not with the clever endings which made his name.

I did enjoy these stories, at no point did Shirley Jackson bore me by going on too long but she did regularly leave me wanting a bit more, which now and again is a very good strategy but over the whole collection I must admit to finding it a little frustrating.

The Lottery And Other Stories was first published in 1949.  I read the Penguin Modern Classics  paperback edition.

A Christmas Memory – Truman Capote (Penguin Classics 2020)

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With the reign of my current Book Of The Year “Swan Song” by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott coming to an end I have made good my promise to myself to explore further the writings of her central character, Truman Capote.  Penguin Classics have put out for this festive season a collection of six of his short stories around the theme of Christmas.

I read an early review edition which was without any introduction which I would have really appreciated to put these tales in context.  I’m not sure whether this would be put right in the published version but it seems the stories span from 1945 when Capote was a callow youth of 21 to a tale which is copyrighted 1982 so may not have seen the light until a couple of years before his death, but I guess was probably written much earlier.

Capote writes with a sense of nostalgia which is so appropriate for the festive period and I could see some of these stories ending up in my “read yearly” list.  I don’t know enough about him to know how autobiographical they are (again an introduction would have helped).  The first three feature the narrator’s relationship with an elderly yet almost child-like female cousin, Miss Sook, who the young protagonist adores.  “A Christmas Memory” is a wistful tale of seasonal preparations and their relationship is explored further in “A Thanksgiving Visitor” (okay, not quite Xmas) where her role as care-giver and educator is enhanced.  The young boy spends Christmas with an absent father in “One Christmas.” The least successful story “Master Misery” dates from 1949 and is a more brittle New York tale with a female main character which deals in the importance of dreams and will no doubt have some bearing on his later (1958) novel which confirmed his literary superstar status, “Breakfast At Tiffanys”.

My favourite story is also not especially Christmassy, “Children On Their Birthdays” shows strong characterisation and his plot of a new young female arrival in town is highly involving.  It is also characterisation which is the strong point of “Jug Of Silver” but it is not as fully realised as its predecessor in the book. 

This has really whetted my appetite for more Capote.  I like his style.  He handles the short story format well and I’m even beginning to feel a little more joyous towards the coming festival after reading it.

A Christmas memory was published by Penguin Classics on 5th November 2020. Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the review copy.

We Have Always Lived In The Castle – Shirley Jackson (1962)

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I’ve always been a bit sniffy about the novella.  As recently as June this year in my review of Adam Mars-Jones’ “Box Hill” I said; “My main quibble comes with the novella form.  I end up feeling slightly short-changed”.  Could this be the book which has at last caused a change of heart?  Over 146 pages in the Penguin Classics paperback edition Shirley Jackson creates a superb, unsettling Gothic tale with an unreliable narrator and a series of beautifully written set-pieces which will forge this book forever in this reader’s memory.

I have never read American author Shirley Jackson (1916-65).  I know her career was established by short-stories and short form novels where a surface respectability hid tales of darkness.  In a superb opening we meet 18 year old Mary Katherine Blackwood (known as “Merricat”) negotiating her twice weekly trip into her local village as a kind of board game where her fate may be decided by a roll of the dice.  She perceives great hostility from those she encounters before returning to her sizeable family home now occupied only by her sister and an ailing uncle who do not leave the premises.  The veneer of respectability is tested when neighbours come to take tea in what is almost a parody of a familiar social situation.  We know something is very awry with this family and that the girls’ parents, brother and aunt all died on the same night within this house.  Merricat herself is happy with the unchanged world of isolation which has become the norm the last six years until a cousin comes to visit which makes things fall further out of kilter.

There’s a menace throughout which is stifling but that runs alongside Merricat’s often simplistic observations.  Even though none of the plot twists are surprising we end up with an extraordinary work where the lines between innocence and guilt are blurred, where the narrator continually disturbs and the horror story and fairy tale lay side by side without either becoming more than subtle.  I thoroughly enjoyed this and feel that I have discovered a writer who will continue to resonate strongly with me.  Length-wise it was perfect and I don’t think I have often said that about a novella before.

We Have Always Lived In The Castle was first published in 1962.  I read the 2009 Penguin Classics paperback edition which has an afterword by Joyce Carol Oates.

Another Country – James Baldwin (1963)

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I was reminded of James Baldwin recently when I read Polish set novel “Swimming In The Dark” by Tomasz Jedrowski. Here a copy of Baldwin’s second novel “Giovanni’s Room”, a suppressed text, is glued between the pages of another publication and has a significant part to play. Main character Ludwik also goes on to study Baldwin for his doctorate.

I said at the time I should re-explore this American author’s work. I haven’t read him since my final degree dissertation which was on the search for love in his works. A Classics book order I was doing for work in the library saw me adding this title, and, as a little perk, I decided I should be the first to borrow it.

It’s actually one of Baldwin’s titles I remember least yet in the 30+ years since my first reading it has become acknowledged (well, certainly in the introduction by Colm Toibin) as the “essential American drama of the century.” In fact, I had to dig out that dissertation from the loft (plenty of time for rummaging around up there at the moment) to see how much I referred to this in my work and actually I did quite a fair bit as the search for love is certainly a significant driving-force for these characters.

The most powerful of the characterisations on show here is Rufus, an African-American man who cannot fit into society because of his skin colour and sexuality. Attempting to do so leads to an abusive relationship with Leona a white, Southern woman. It’s not a spoiler to say that surprisingly early on in the novel Baldwin dispatches one of these characters in a suicide jump off George Washington Bridge and the rest of the novel explores their group of friends putting their lives back together.

They are an intense lot. Vivaldo, a white man, begins a relationship with Rufus’ sister; Rufus’ ex-love Eric moves back from a stable relationship with a man in France to the melting pot of New York and infiltrates the partnership of writer Richard and his wife Cass. It’s all very introspective with the characters seeming extremely self-centred which feels like it would have seemed more appropriate in the analytical soul-searching years of the early 1960s than it does today but there is great power and richness in Baldwin’s writing which made this a very welcome rediscovery. Toibin in his introduction compares him to Henry James and I can see where he’s coming from but I find Baldwin far more readable. This remains a very balanced, potent read. I will be fascinated to find out if the works which meant more to me than this when I first read them will continue to resonate as strongly.

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Another Country was first published in 1963. I read the Penguin Modern Classics paperback edition.

Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates (2000)

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Prolific American author Joyce Carol Oates writes across many styles and genres and back in 2000 published what can very easily be seen as her contribution to The Great American Novel. “Great” in that it comes in at 939 pages in the paperback edition and with its concerns of a woman conquering and then being destroyed by that most American of institutions the Hollywood film industry it surely fulfils all the criteria for consideration of being up there amongst the ultimate American epic. For this is the fictionalised story of Marilyn Monroe.

But, perhaps word didn’t get round because this remained under the radar for me really until I was casting around for other fictional biographies having enjoyed my current Book of The Year the Truman Capote led “Swan Song” by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott. I’ve never read Joyce Carol Oates but know that with a writing career spanning well over 50 years and 58 novels that she is one of America’s most significant living writers. “Blonde” was shortlisted for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction but it was beaten by another “Great American Novel” consideration “The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon which breezed into my end of year Top 3 when I read it in 2006.

On paper I was pretty sure I was going to love “Blonde”. Fiction featuring real life characters is something I do have a predilection for . Hollywood always has an appeal in my non-fiction choices (less so with fiction) and the air of tragic glamour which would inevitably permeate this novel was always going to get my attention. I think I was anticipating a kind of literary Jackie Collins! I was, however, daunted by the length. Anything over 600 pages brings me out in a sweat and I knew it would mean giving over at least a couple of weeks to this one work (it took me 19 days to read but I have been busy and struggling to allocate as much time to reading as I wanted).

First things first, this is fiction. I don’t know enough about the life of Marilyn Monroe to ascertain just how much was from the mind of Joyce Carol Oates but it has certainly whetted my appetite for a biography but it would need to be extremely thorough and well-written to match this and I’m not sure that such a work even exists. Oates has an interesting (if inconsistent) way of distancing us from the central character. Men that we do know that she married such as Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller are just referred to as the Ex-Athlete and The Playwright with her adopting the role of the Blond Actress for the duration of their relationship. However, with a long-lasting and somewhat scandalous menage a trois set up with the sons of Charlie Chaplin and Edward G Robinson names are revealed . Some characters are referred to by a single letter, C is Tony Curtis (who here dislikes Marilyn) W is Billy Wilder and H John Huston who both had the (mis?) fortune of directing Monroe in more than one of her movies. I was a little perturbed by this haphazard naming (or not) but it does give the effect of making the reader a spectator to the action rather than feeling part of it, which seeing the theme is the mirage of Hollywood may very well be appropriate.

One aspect which I certainly appreciated was how much the actress tried to put between herself, Norma Jeane and the studio’s creation. I don’t think this was anything I’d really considered before. Norma Jeane was not Marilyn but fame dictated that Marilyn take over in almost a parasitical way which certainly doomed the host.

Of course, the character of MM is always going to draw in the reader just as she drew in a generation of movie-goers. Oates certainly keeps us on our toes with a range of narrative styles and techniques which considering the length of this novel is no bad idea. At times I did feel frustrated and challenged but I also loved it and applaud it as a major achievement and probably one of the best fictional deconstructions of “celebrity” I have read.

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Blonde was published in 2000. I read the Fourth Estate paperback edition.

Auntie Mame- Patrick Dennis (1955)

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In late 1950s America it’s likely that most people would know who Mame was.  This novel was a long-lasting best seller and spawned a highly successful play and film version both starring Rosalind Russell who went some way in the years following to adopting the persona of Mame herself.  Many readers believed Mame Dennis was a real-life person, reinforced by the author placing himself (well, his nom-de-plume) in a leading role in the book.  For a while even the publishing world was fooled by a pre-publication stunt involving correspondence from Auntie Mame threatening legal action to bookshop owners who sold the book.

 The whole thing is fiction.  Mame is the larger-than-life guardian for her orphaned nephew Patrick who is thrust into her New York lifestyle as a boy in the mid 1920s, arriving with his Irish nanny just as a party was in full swing and falls into this new style of upbringing very different from the one he had with his dour, conservative father.  Mame is a woman of the times, favours radical naked education and is unwilling to compromise with the legal stuffed shirts who administers the young Patrick’s trust fund.  In a series of what were initially short stories we move through Patrick’s upbringing to adulthood with the disasters wreaked upon him by his eccentric aunt never too far away.

 It reads like a slightly more edgy, camper American Wodehouse.  It is often laugh out loud funny and the humour is generally sustained throughout.  The author ensures we root for Mame.  She is eccentric but never objectionable.  He leaves this trait to the more conservative characters in the novel who provide a few moments which will have the modern reader squirming.

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 My knowledge of this came from the 1958 Rosalind Russell movie which turns up very infrequently on television.  One time it did I was recovering from a dental operation which had gone wrong and it certainly lifted low spirits.  It is also well known from the Broadway musical which dropped the auntie from its title and became another movie in 1974 starring Lucille Ball, which did okay in its day, despite feeling anachronistic for the mid-70s but is now rarely shown.  I haven’t seen it but I can sing the title song!

 I was reminded that I had bought this attractive looking Penguin reprint paperback and had it sitting on my shelves by Christopher Fowler’s “Book Of Forgotten Authors” which so far has introduced me to Margery Allingham, Georgette Heyer and Edmund Crispin.  Like his most famous character author Patrick Dennis was no stranger to eccentricity.  Born Edward Everett Tanner III his later works included photo illustrations of himself and his friends alongside the text and sold well but he ended up “killing” Patrick Dennis and becoming a butler for the owner of MacDonalds burger joints.  Matteo Codignola puts together some of the pieces known about the author’s life in an illuminating afterword but it is his fictional creation Auntie Mame who is very much the star of the show here.

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Auntie Mame was first published in 1955.  I read the 2010 Penguin Classics paperback edition.   

100 Essential Books – Ladder Of Years – Anne Tyler (Vintage 1995)

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This is only the second Anne Tyler novel I have ever read.  2015’s “A Spool Of Blue Thread” was my introduction to her work and I described it as “a highly readable, high quality work with bags of appeal.”  I reviewed it under my 100 Essential Books thread and it appeared in my end of year Top 10 at number 3.  Although I haven’t read much by her I do know that she is a writer many readers hold dear for her beautifully written tales of American life.  This book confirms this.

“Ladder Of Years” was her 13th novel and appeared in 1995.  There’s a 1982 copyright at the front of the book which suggests it may have been around in some format for a considerable time before that publication.  Like many of Tyler’s novels it features a family living in the Baltimore area.  The most striking thing about it is how calm and quiet it is as a novel which places it at loggerheads with the dramatic decisions characters make but on this occasion this makes it seem all the more effective.

 Forty year old Delia Grinstead is feeling taken for granted, by her husband, a GP who practises from their home, the same house her father ran his surgery from; by her adolescent children and by other family members.  An infatuation with a younger man reaches a dead end and one day on an extended-family annual beach holiday Delia just walks away along the sands and into a new life.

 We’re never totally sure why she does this other than she fancies a change.  There’s no fireworks and little emotional trauma on show as Delia just knuckles down and begins again somewhere new.  It’s beautifully written, the reader knows how selfish Delia’s act is yet still wills her to succeed.

 The title refers to a metaphor used by one of the older characters who employs a playground slide ladder to convey how we climb up through life, with others following close behind leading to the moment when you have to go over the top and commence the slide downwards – there’s no turning back.

 The introduction of a couple of cats into the narrative caused me momentary stress (in case something bad happened to them) but Vernon and George are great cat characters who enrich the lives of those they meet.  As with “A Spool Of Blue Thread” I couldn’t imagine a book which examines the details of American middle-class family life would have much resonance for me, but I was wrong and I’m not yet sure how Tyler has managed with both offerings to really reel me in.  It could be seen as a simple tale of a female mid-life crisis but it is much richer than that implies.  There’s no gimmicks and no real set pieces here.  When there is a dramatic situation – a confrontation at a family event, Delia’s walking out and last- minute wedding jitters, for example, they are pretty much underplayed for their dramatic potential and it really works.  It is just the quality of the writing and the deftness of characterisation that has me hanging on every word, not wanting it to end and that is what makes it a five star read.

 I actually don’t think that us Brits can fully engage in  quite the same way with feeling that we know these characters, their locations and lives in late twentieth century Baltimore anywhere near as much as her American market would and this also adds to the achievement in winning me over.  I did have some reservations about the ending but then life doesn’t always turn out as we expect, so why should it in fiction?

 Structurally, “The Ladder Of Years” is a simpler novel than “A Spool Of Blue Thread” and I think it may just be behind it in the impression it has made on me but without doubt Anne Tyler scores 2 from 2 for me with five star essential reads.  

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I read the 1996 Vintage paperback edition of “Ladder Of Years”.  It was first published in the UK in 1995 by Chatto & Windus.

The Book Of Forgotten Authors – Christopher Fowler (2017) – A Book About Books Review

On By philshanklinIn Books About Books, New Books, Real Life14 Comments

 

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Now, this is just the sort of book to throw out my reading schedule. Novelist Christopher Fowler briefly examines the careers of 99 authors, who either used to be big but have faded from prominence or who deserved to be more popular than they were. It’s a fascinating, highly readable book which is both illuminating and nostalgic. The author has always been a voracious reader and book purchaser and he’s certainly done the groundwork for us here.

Christopher Fowler need not have any real fears of being forgotten, certainly not by me. You wouldn’t know it from this blog as this is probably his first mention in over 400 posts but since I’ve been keeping my own meticulous records of what I’ve been reading (I’ve always done this but lost a book which went back quite a few years), so we’re talking the last 23 years here, he is the author whom I’ve read the largest number of books by.

This book puts the Fowler total up to 15 (+ 1 I’ve read twice in this time) which pushes him further ahead from his nearest competitors , Charles Dickens (12) and Peter Ackroyd (11 + 2 re-reads). I’ve still got plenty of Fowler to discover, a quick tot-up of his books listed inside the front cover suggest 43 publications in total. I did gobble up a number of his horror novels in a short space of time in the mid to late 90’s after discovering “Spanky” (1994), a Faustian tale of a pact with the devil, which I still consider to be his best. In recent years he has concentrated on the Bryant & May detective series. I realise, with a fair amount of shock, that the last of his books I read was the third in this sequence “77 Clocks” and that was 10 years ago now! I haven’t forgotten you, Mr Fowler, honest! (I did last re-read “Spanky” in 2013).

Here the author tackles his findings alphabetically with considerably more than 99 names actually being thrown into the mix as in addition to the potted biographies and commentaries on individuals there’s also sections of forgotten authors linked to themes and genres.

It wasn’t long before I found myself making lists of those I’ve already read (not many and those a long time ago), those whose books I have unread on my shelves (5), those I can get from the library (36), those I can get on Kindle for free (4), for under £1 (8), or at a higher price (8) and those I can buy from Amazon (32). This left just those whose books do not seem readily available (4) or just too collectable for my budget (2). So thanks for all this, Mr Fowler, I’m supposed to be reviewing, not spending my time making lists!
And now I’ve got said lists I’m going to have to use them! So starting with what I have on my shelves already I hope over the coming months to unforget as many authors as possible. So this would include Margery Allingham, (a Golden Age of Crime Fiction writer who appears time and time again on recommended lists), I have a copy of her “Police At The Funeral” to start me off. There’s also Edmund Crispin (I bought a set of his Gervaise Fen novels from “The Book People”), Patrick Dennis (I bought his “Auntie Mame” because I love the Rosalind Russell film version and it’s pretty pricey on DVD), Barbara Pym’s “Excellent Women” (Book People purchase set again) and Edgar Wallace (a mammoth Wordsworth publication of “The Complete Four Just Men” taking up considerable shelf space). I’m adding these to the reading mix over the coming months and will of course be letting you know what I think and then I’ll move onto the others. Christopher Fowler has whetted my appetite so much I want to read them all!

This book would make a great present for bibliophiles – even those who claim to have “read everything” may find some hidden gems. A number of them are names that you’d remember from bookshop visits from your past, but may have never read. It could be time to put this right.

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The Book Of Forgotten Authors was published by Riverrun in October 2017.

The Man Who Loved Children – Christina Stead (Apollo 2016)

On By philshanklinIn New Books7 Comments

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When I heard that Apollo were launching a series of 8 novels under the banner of “the best books you’ve never read” I was most excited about this title.  A weighty tome from 1940 this was the fifth novel of an Australian born writer who used her upbringing placed into an American setting.  I was in the mood for a lengthy family “comic masterpiece” and was further enchanted by the lovely cover illustration, a detail from Norman Rockwell’s “Coming And Going”.  All this led me into thinking this could be the great under-rated American novel.

There is no doubt that it is impressively well written and carried out with great style- but did I enjoy it?  Not really.  The problem is with the main adult characters, the parents.  The titular “man who loved children” Sam Pollit is perhaps one of the most irritating fictional characters I’ve encountered.  He is the biggest child amongst his six offspring.  He torments, bullies and judges in what he considers his “good-natured way”.  He often talks in invented infantile language and has umpteen nicknames for his children.  He is full on from morning to night and the end result for me was neither funny nor endearing.  At one point he goes abroad on an expedition and I breathed a sigh of relief but that only brought wife Henny into sharper focus.  The two rarely speak other than to bicker, using the children against each other.  She is morose, melodramatic, threatens to hurt or kill her children at regular intervals, steals money off her thrifty  young son and is especially vile to her stepdaughter.  I think humour has changed significantly since 1940.

Stepdaughter Louie, the eldest, aged 11 at the start of the novel embodies many of the author’s experiences.  An unsurprisingly sullen child who is put on by everyone and teased and barracked by her parents she comes alive when she develops a crush on her schoolteacher, the only woman to show her any real kindness and it was moments like these which kept me reading.

If you are expecting (as I was) a nostalgic wallow in the lives of a cash-strapped family living near Washington this might not be for you and I think reading groups would find that many would give up because of Sam’s exhausting, continual banter and disturbing philosophies.  If you are looking for something dark and dysfunctional where the humour (still can’t see it myself) is decidedly black then you might join authors such as Jonathan Franzen who praise it highly and others who see comparisons to Mark Twain and Tolstoy, but because of the bitterness which runs throughout I remain unconvinced.

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The Man Who Loved Children was published by Apollo in 2016

100 Essential Books- Rosemary’s Baby- Ira Levin (Corsair 1967)

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As a teenager I read all Ira Levin’s then-published novels in a short space of time.  This was the book that kick-started my Levin frenzy and I was interested to see how well it has stood the test of time.

It has.  By twisting horror story conventions it manages to convince as one of the most successful pieces of horror writing of all time, even though it is mainly frightening by implication.  How does it do this?  Firstly, Rosemary is likeable.  Too often the “victims” in horror writing have some flaw that means we feel a little less sympathy for them when the bad things start happening.  Rosemary may be a little irritating and gullible but comes across as an ordinary girl in love, living in a place she had aspired to and contemplating starting a family.  Secondly, we have a glossy urban setting which feels cool and modern.  A lot of the references throughout the book would have resonated with the 60’s audience who would have seen Guy and Rosemary’s life as both aspirational and stylish.  Midway through Rosemary reinvents herself with a then-so trendy short Vidal Sassoon cut.  (It isn’t entirely successful- the damage to her physical health caused by what is lurking inside her leads to one of her friends to refer to her as “Miss Concentration Camp 1966″).  The darkness of traditional Gothic stories is replaced here with the lights of urban New York, but the darkness is there simmering, like the devilish bun in the oven.

Thirdly, it works due to its length.  Levin was a brilliant story-teller and keeps the story moving throughout with the right balance of plot development and almost trivial asides.  No long-winded build-up here. This is even though at first it seems miles away from a horror, a young couple set up new home and  make new friends, but this actually causes the reader to read very carefully with heightened awareness throughout, hanging on the details.  Levin keeps us all on a tight leash.

There’s great characterisation here.  Rosemary and her actor husband, Guy, trying to push himself ahead of his rivals and also their neighbours Roman and Minnie Castevets who smother the couple in good intentions.  Everyone feels real and that is important as Rosemary’s paranoia sets in .  Who is to be trusted?

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Plot-wise, everyone knows this is a story of modern Satanism both from the book’s fame and the equally excellent 1968 Polanski directed movie. Starring a superbly cast Mia Farrow as Rosemary it follows the dialogue from the book extremely closely.  The plot is slight, but so gripping and even more chilling because of its slightness.  I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading this.  I thought perhaps the world of horror had moved on from this and that it might come across as either dull or plain trashy.  It’s neither.  It is an important horror classic and a perfect example of mid-60’s American paranoia.  Anyone searching for that Great American novel – here is an outside the box contender.

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Rosemary’s Baby was originally published in 1967.  I read the Corsair 2011 edition with an introduction by Chuck Palahniuk.