History: first published in 1931, is Virginia Woolf's most experimental novel. It consists of soliloquies spoken by the book's six characters: Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny, and Louis. Also important is Percival, the seventh character, though readers never hear him speak through his own voice. The monologues that span the characters' lives are broken up by nine brief third-person interludes detailing a coastal scene at varying stages in a day from sunrise to sunset.
The novel follows its six narrators from childhood through adulthood. Woolf's novel is concerned with the individual consciousness and the ways in which multiple consciousnesses can weave together. The difficulty of assigning genre to this novel is complicated by the fact that The Waves blurs distinctions between prose and poetry, allowing the novel to flow between six not dissimilar interior monologues. The book similarly breaks down boundaries between people, and Woolf herself wrote in her Diary that the six were not meant to be separate "characters" at all, but rather facets of consciousness illuminating a sense of continuity. Even the name "novel" may not accurately describe the complex form of The Waves. Woolf herself called it not a novel but a "playpoem."
Plot: As the six characters or "voices" alternately speak, Woolf explores concepts of individuality, self, and community. Each character is distinct, yet together they compose a gestalt about a silent central consciousness. Bernard is a story-teller, always seeking some elusive and apt phrase (some critics see Woolf's friend E. M. Forster as an inspiration); Louis is an outsider, who seeks acceptance and success (some critics see aspects of T. S. Eliot, whom Woolf knew well, in Louis); Neville (who may be partially based on another of Woolf's friends, Lytton Strachey) desires love, seeking out a series of men, each of whom become the present object of his transcendent love; Jinny is a socialite, whose Weltanschauung corresponds to her physical, corporeal beauty; Susan flees the city, in preference for the countryside, where she grapples with the thrills and doubts of motherhood; and Rhoda is riddled with self-doubt and anxiety, always rejecting and indicting human compromise, always seeking out solitude (as such, Rhoda echoes Shelley's poem "The Question"; paraphrased: I shall gather my flowers and present them--O! to whom?). Percival (partially based on Woolf's brother, Thoby Stephen) is the god-like but morally flawed hero of the other six, who dies midway through the novel on an imperialist quest in British-dominated colonial India. Although Percival never speaks through a monologue of his own in The Waves, readers learn about him in detail as the other six characters repeatedly describe and reflect on him throughout the book.
Review: I loved the “play-poem” form in which it’s written, where the dialogue and thoughts of each character are almost free verse.
I loved Rhoda’s horror of Math:
Now the terror is beginning. Now taking her lump of chalk she draws figures, six, seven, eight, and then a cross and then a line on the blackboard. What is the answer? The others look; they look with understanding. Louis writes; Susan writes; Neville writes; Jinny writes; even Bernard has now begun to write. But I cannot write. I see only figures. The others are handing in their answers, one by one. “Now it is my turn. But I have no answer. The others are allowed to go. They slam the door. Miss Hudson goes. I am left alone to find an answer. The figures mean nothing now. (p. 21)
I loved Bernard, escaping to Rome after the death of Percival, and writing in his notebook little quotes which he can pull out later from their appropriate alphabetical heading:
These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom. Tahiti becomes possible. Leaning over this parapet I see far out a waste of water. A fin turns. This bare visual impression is unattached to any line of reason, it springs up as one might see the fin of a porpoise on the horizon. Visual impressions often communicate thus briefly statements that we shall in time to come uncover and coax into words. I note under F., therefore, ‘Fin in a waste of waters.’ I, who am perpetually making notes in the margin of my mind for some final statement, make this mark, waiting for some winter’s evening.” (p.189)
I loved the vocabulary, coming across words I don’t often see which hardly ever happens to me when I read authors of today:
-purlieus of the homestead
-oleaginous spots on the linoleum
-All here is false; all is meretricious.
-vinous, amorous light
-encaustic tiles
-breathes stertorously
-the tree was Byron’s tree, lachrymose
-they dive like guillemots
-a purple lady swelling, circumambient
-dancing like a flame, febrile
And, Catullus? The 1st century Roman poet is mentioned no less than five times before page 160 or so.
I loved the reference to waves preceding each chapter, a clue as to what we’ll find within:
The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously. (p.7)
The wind rose. The waves drummed on the shore, like turbaned warriors, like turbaned men with poisoned assegais who, whirling their arms on high, advance upon the feeding flocks, the white sheep. (p. 75)
Like a long wave, like a roll of heavy waters, he went over me, his devastating presence-dragging me open, laying bare the pebbles on the shore of my soul. It was humiliating; I was turned to small stones. (Bernard, p. 89)
Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. The wave breaks. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room.” (Rhoda, p. 107)
The waves broke and spread their waters swiftly over the shore. One after another they massed themselves and fell; the spray tossed itself back with the energy of their fall. The waves were steeped deep-blue save for a pattern of diamond-pointed light on their backs which rippled as the backs of great horses ripple with muscles as they move. The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping. (p. 150)
Now the news of Percival’s death has come upon them, and then we find:
The waves massed themselves, curved their backs and crashed. Up spurted stones and shingle. They swept round the rocks, and the spray, leaping high, spattered the walls of a cave that had been dry before, and left pools inland, where some fish, stranded, lashed its tail as the wave drew back. (p. 166)
The waves no longer visited the further pools or reached the dotted black line which lay irregularly marked upon the beach. The sand was pearl white, smoothed and shining. (p. 182)
Erratically rays of light flashed and wandered, like signals from sunken islands, or darts shot through laurel groves by shameless, laughing boys. But the waves, as they neared the shore, were robbed of light, and fell in one long concussion, like a wall falling, a wall of grey stone, unpierced by any chink of light. (p. 207)
As if there were waves of darkness in the air, darkness moved on, covering houses, hills, trees, as waves of water wash round the sides of some sunken ship. (p. 237)
At the conclusion of the book we find this:
“And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man’s, like Percival’s, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!"
Opening Line: “The sun had not risen.”
Closing Line: “The waves broke on the shore.”
Quotes: See above.
Rating:Good
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
366. The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
History: This book was published in 1987.
Plot: For the first time in her career, Margaret Drabble is writing about a group of friends rather than a single heroine. Liz Headleand, the hostess of the New Year's Eve party, is a psychiatrist married to an electronics executive. Alix Bowen teaches English literature at a psychiatric prison where economic cutbacks threaten the progressive administration. Esther Breuer, an art historian, lives in a rundown neighborhood where the victims of an elusive murderer turn up year after year.
Having found each other as scholarship students at Cambridge, their twenty-odd years of friendship have caused them to resemble each other.
Liz learns that Charles, her husband of 20 years, plans to divorce her and marry a lady with a title. Maybe it is just as well. Now a stuffy television executive, Charles has left the '60s and '70s, his pioneering documentaries and his idealism, not to mention Liz, behind: "A male world, a world of suits and ties and speeches, of meetings and money. Charles had conquered it. First he had mocked it, then he had exposed it, then he had joined it, and now he represented it." But Liz can support herself in the new economic climate: "She is not threatened by cuts in public spending, by the decline of the National Health Service, by the new and growing emphasis on privatization: her income is derived from a judicious blend of public and private practice."
Not so Alix, who watches her part-time jobs topple in a crusade of cost cutting and bears witness to the demoralization of her husband Brian, a true son of the working class who has moved upward through teaching adult-education courses into white-collar unemployment. She muses, "Brian would turn sour. Already he had become unreasonable; later, he would, like everyone else, become sour." Esther too must face straitened circumstances, once the funds for her occasional lectures on art and evening seminars dry up.
These characters struggle with their fates against a crowded background: rising joblessness, the Falklands war, national strikes by steelworkers and miners, inner-city race riots, the appearance of AIDS. What is more, Drabble's heroines can secure scant sanctuary for their domestic lives amid the din of external change. Alix finds the severed head of a former student on the front seat of her battered old Renault; Esther discovers that she has been living for years in an apartment one floor below a mass murderer. Liz, the best insulated of them all by virtue of financial well-being, must still unearth a childhood secret that the past, perhaps mercifully, had hidden from her long ago.
Review: Her book begins with a grand New Year's Eve party, as if to welcome back her readers. The party, with echoes of the balls in Tolstoy, takes place in an opulent cream-and-gold house on Harley Street in London. The conversation is clever and wide-ranging, and the presence of Anthony Keating and Kate Armstrong, characters from earlier novels, has a comforting effect. But before the party is over, a political argument ends in a bloody nose and an overturned houseplant. And as the novel picks up momentum, it becomes plain that The Radiant Way will be anything but a drawing-room entertainment.
In earlier books, particularly The Needle's Eye, Drabble chronicles the shabbiness of England in decline: the failure of businesses, the brutalization of architecture, the diminishing of expectations. In the ironically titled The Radiant Way, which deals with the first half of the 1980s, the situation is even bleaker. What is new here is the way fear and violence have come to replace resignation in English life. Avoiding, for the most part, the easy target of Margaret Thatcher and her party, Drabble describes the influences, big and small, of this ruthless decade on the lives of her characters.
Opening Line: “New Year’s Eve, and the end of a decade.”
Closing Line: “The sun stands still.”
Quotes: "They have pooled their discoveries, have come back from outer regions with samples of leaf, twig, fruit, stone, have turned them over together. They share much. The barriers between them are, they think, quite low."
Rating: Awful, hated it.
Plot: For the first time in her career, Margaret Drabble is writing about a group of friends rather than a single heroine. Liz Headleand, the hostess of the New Year's Eve party, is a psychiatrist married to an electronics executive. Alix Bowen teaches English literature at a psychiatric prison where economic cutbacks threaten the progressive administration. Esther Breuer, an art historian, lives in a rundown neighborhood where the victims of an elusive murderer turn up year after year.
Having found each other as scholarship students at Cambridge, their twenty-odd years of friendship have caused them to resemble each other.
Liz learns that Charles, her husband of 20 years, plans to divorce her and marry a lady with a title. Maybe it is just as well. Now a stuffy television executive, Charles has left the '60s and '70s, his pioneering documentaries and his idealism, not to mention Liz, behind: "A male world, a world of suits and ties and speeches, of meetings and money. Charles had conquered it. First he had mocked it, then he had exposed it, then he had joined it, and now he represented it." But Liz can support herself in the new economic climate: "She is not threatened by cuts in public spending, by the decline of the National Health Service, by the new and growing emphasis on privatization: her income is derived from a judicious blend of public and private practice."
Not so Alix, who watches her part-time jobs topple in a crusade of cost cutting and bears witness to the demoralization of her husband Brian, a true son of the working class who has moved upward through teaching adult-education courses into white-collar unemployment. She muses, "Brian would turn sour. Already he had become unreasonable; later, he would, like everyone else, become sour." Esther too must face straitened circumstances, once the funds for her occasional lectures on art and evening seminars dry up.
These characters struggle with their fates against a crowded background: rising joblessness, the Falklands war, national strikes by steelworkers and miners, inner-city race riots, the appearance of AIDS. What is more, Drabble's heroines can secure scant sanctuary for their domestic lives amid the din of external change. Alix finds the severed head of a former student on the front seat of her battered old Renault; Esther discovers that she has been living for years in an apartment one floor below a mass murderer. Liz, the best insulated of them all by virtue of financial well-being, must still unearth a childhood secret that the past, perhaps mercifully, had hidden from her long ago.
Review: Her book begins with a grand New Year's Eve party, as if to welcome back her readers. The party, with echoes of the balls in Tolstoy, takes place in an opulent cream-and-gold house on Harley Street in London. The conversation is clever and wide-ranging, and the presence of Anthony Keating and Kate Armstrong, characters from earlier novels, has a comforting effect. But before the party is over, a political argument ends in a bloody nose and an overturned houseplant. And as the novel picks up momentum, it becomes plain that The Radiant Way will be anything but a drawing-room entertainment.
In earlier books, particularly The Needle's Eye, Drabble chronicles the shabbiness of England in decline: the failure of businesses, the brutalization of architecture, the diminishing of expectations. In the ironically titled The Radiant Way, which deals with the first half of the 1980s, the situation is even bleaker. What is new here is the way fear and violence have come to replace resignation in English life. Avoiding, for the most part, the easy target of Margaret Thatcher and her party, Drabble describes the influences, big and small, of this ruthless decade on the lives of her characters.
Opening Line: “New Year’s Eve, and the end of a decade.”
Closing Line: “The sun stands still.”
Quotes: "They have pooled their discoveries, have come back from outer regions with samples of leaf, twig, fruit, stone, have turned them over together. They share much. The barriers between them are, they think, quite low."
Rating: Awful, hated it.
365. The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
History: Published in 1868, it is a 19th-century British epistolary novel, generally considered the first detective novel in the English language. The Moonstone was originally serialized in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round. The Moonstone also represented Collins' social opinions by his treatment of the Indians and the servants in the novel.
The Moonstone of the title is a diamond (not to be confused with the semi-precious moonstone gem). It gained its name from its association with the Hindu god of the moon. Originally set in the forehead of a sacred statue of the god at Somnath, and later at Benares, it was said to be protected by hereditary guardians on the orders of Vishnu, and to wax and wane in brilliance along with the light of the moon.
Franklin Blake, the gifted amateur who eventually solves the mystery, is an early example of the gentleman detective. The highly competent Sergeant Cuff, the London policeman called in from Scotland Yard (whom Collins based on the real-life Inspector Jonathan Whicher who solved the Constance Kent murder),[4] is not a member of the gentry, and is unable to break Rachel Verinder's reticence about what Cuff knows to be an inside job. The social difference between Collins' two detectives is nicely shown by their relationships with the Verinder family: Sergeant Cuff befriends Gabriel Betteredge, Lady Verinder's steward (chief servant), whereas Franklin Blake eventually marries Rachel, her daughter.
The Moonstone represents Collins's only complete reprisal of the popular "multi-narration" method that he had previously utilised to great effect in The Woman in White. The technique again works to Collins's credit: the sections by Gabriel Betteredge (steward to the Verinder household) and Miss Clack (a poor relative and religious crank) offer both humour and pathos through their contrast with the testimony of other narrators, at the same time as constructing and advancing the novel's plot.
One of the things that made The Moonstone such a success was its sensationalist depiction of opium addiction. Unbeknownst to his readership, Collins was writing from personal experience. In his later years, Collins grew severely addicted to laudanum and as a result suffered from paranoid delusions, the most notable being his conviction that he was constantly accompanied by a doppelganger he dubbed "Ghost Wilkie".
It was Collins's last great success, coming at the end of an extraordinarily productive period which saw four successive novels become best-sellers. After The Moonstone he wrote novels containing more overt social commentary, which did not achieve the same audience.
Plot: Colonel Herncastle, an unpleasant former soldier, brings the Moonstone back with him from India where he acquired it by theft and murder during the Siege of Seringapatam. Angry at his family, who shun him, he leaves it in his will as a birthday gift to his niece Rachel, thus exposing her to attack by the stone's hereditary guardians, who, legend says, will stop at nothing to retrieve it.
Rachel wears the stone to her birthday party, but that night it disappears from her room. Suspicion falls on three Indian jugglers who have been near the house; on Rosanna Spearman, a maidservant who begins to act oddly and who then drowns herself in a local quicksand; and on Rachel herself, who also behaves suspiciously and is suddenly furious with Franklin Blake, with whom she has previously appeared to be enamored, when he directs attempts to find it. Despite the efforts of Sergeant Cuff, a renowned detective, the house party ends with the mystery unsolved, and the protagonists disperse.
During the ensuing year there are hints that the diamond was removed from the house and may be in a London bank vault, having been pledged as surety to a moneylender. The Indian jugglers are still nearby, watching and waiting. Rachel's mother dies, increasing her grief and isolation, and she first accepts and then rejects a marriage proposal from her cousin Godfrey Ablewhite, a philanthropist who was also present at the birthday dinner and whose father owns the bank near Rachel's old family home. Finally Franklin Blake returns from travelling abroad and determines to solve the mystery. He first discovers that Rosanna Spearman's behaviour was due to her having fallen in love with him. She found evidence (a paint smear on his nightclothes) that convinced her that he was the thief and concealed it in order to save him, confusing the trail of evidence and throwing suspicion on herself. In despair at her inability to make him acknowledge her despite all she had done for him, she committed suicide, leaving behind the smeared gown and a letter he did not receive at the time because of his hasty departure abroad.
Now believing that Rachel suspects him of the theft on Rosanna's evidence, Franklin engineers a meeting and asks her. To his astonishment she tells him she actually saw him steal the diamond and has been protecting his reputation at the cost of her own even though she believes him to be a thief and a hypocrite. Now thoroughly bewildered, he continues his investigations and learns that he was secretly given laudanum during the night of the party (it was given to him by the doctor Mr. Candy who wanted revenge on Franklin for criticizing medicine and who wanted to sleep more easily due to quitting smoking); it appears that this, in addition to his anxiety about Rachel and the diamond and other nervous irritations, caused him to take the diamond in a narcotic trance, in order to move it in a safe place. A re-enactment of the evening's events confirms this, but how the stone ended up in a London bank remains a mystery only solved a year after the birthday party when the stone is redeemed. Franklin and his allies trace the claimant to a seedy waterside inn, only to discover that the Indians have got there first: he is dead and the stone is gone. Under the dead man's disguise is none other than Godfrey Ablewhite, who is found to have embezzled the contents of a trust fund in his care and to have been facing exposure soon after the birthday party. The mystery of what Blake did while in his drugged state is solved - he encountered Ablewhite in the passageway outside Rachel's room and gave the Moonstone to him to be put back in his father's bank, from which it had been withdrawn on the morning of the party to be given to Rachel. Seeing his salvation, Ablewhite pocketed the stone instead, and pledged it as surety for a loan to save himself temporarily from insolvency. When he was murdered, he was on his way to Amsterdam to have the stone cut; it would then have been sold to replenish the plundered trust fund before the beneficiary inherited. Cuff realized all of this independently after being dismissed from the case, but was reluctant to accuse Ablewhite without evidence or an official mandate.
The mystery is solved, Rachel and Franklin marry, and in an epilogue from a traveller the reader learns of the restoration of the Moonstone to the place where it should be, in the forehead of the idol.
Review: The book is widely regarded as the precursor of the modern mystery and suspense novels. The Moonstone is the perfect introduction to the Victorian novel. Written in the day of serialized fiction, when reading was still a primary form of entertainment, The Moonstone is a gem. Full of cliffhangers, written from multiple points of view, it's the tale of a stolen jewel whose original owners will stop at nothing to get it back. In the hands of a lesser author, The Moonstone would be confusing and rambling, but Wilkie Collins so adeptly drew his characters and gave his narrators such distinctive voices that the reader is drawn deeper and deeper into the story, anxious to read on to see what is going to happen. The tale is liberally strewn with clues, but it's the description and the characters who make it so readable. Who could ever forget the ominous and deadly Shivering Sands or Miss Clack's cheerful and relentless distribution of improving 'little tracts'?
Unrequited love, greed, jealousy, hypocrisy; valiant heroes, romantic heroines, exotic villains, comic relief and a mystery to tie them all together-everything we love to read about is present in lavish measures. The Moonstone is a book to curl up with on a winter weekend and get lost in. One of the best of Victorian novels, when a precise turn of phrase was appreciated and families eagerly gathered by the fireside each week to hear the latest installment read aloud, The Moonstone has been in print since 1868 for good reason. It's a great story told by a master storyteller and puts most romantic suspense novels to shame.
Opening Line: “In the first part of ROBINSON CRUSOE, at page one hundred and twenty-nine, you will find it thus written: "Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it."
Closing Line: “So the years pass, and repeat each other; so the same events revolve in the cycles of time. What will be the next adventures of the Moonstone? Who can tell?”
Quotes: “The horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like liquor, and makes me wild."
“Your tears come easy, when you're young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're old, and leaving it.”
Rating: Extremely Tedious.
The Moonstone of the title is a diamond (not to be confused with the semi-precious moonstone gem). It gained its name from its association with the Hindu god of the moon. Originally set in the forehead of a sacred statue of the god at Somnath, and later at Benares, it was said to be protected by hereditary guardians on the orders of Vishnu, and to wax and wane in brilliance along with the light of the moon.
Franklin Blake, the gifted amateur who eventually solves the mystery, is an early example of the gentleman detective. The highly competent Sergeant Cuff, the London policeman called in from Scotland Yard (whom Collins based on the real-life Inspector Jonathan Whicher who solved the Constance Kent murder),[4] is not a member of the gentry, and is unable to break Rachel Verinder's reticence about what Cuff knows to be an inside job. The social difference between Collins' two detectives is nicely shown by their relationships with the Verinder family: Sergeant Cuff befriends Gabriel Betteredge, Lady Verinder's steward (chief servant), whereas Franklin Blake eventually marries Rachel, her daughter.
The Moonstone represents Collins's only complete reprisal of the popular "multi-narration" method that he had previously utilised to great effect in The Woman in White. The technique again works to Collins's credit: the sections by Gabriel Betteredge (steward to the Verinder household) and Miss Clack (a poor relative and religious crank) offer both humour and pathos through their contrast with the testimony of other narrators, at the same time as constructing and advancing the novel's plot.
One of the things that made The Moonstone such a success was its sensationalist depiction of opium addiction. Unbeknownst to his readership, Collins was writing from personal experience. In his later years, Collins grew severely addicted to laudanum and as a result suffered from paranoid delusions, the most notable being his conviction that he was constantly accompanied by a doppelganger he dubbed "Ghost Wilkie".
It was Collins's last great success, coming at the end of an extraordinarily productive period which saw four successive novels become best-sellers. After The Moonstone he wrote novels containing more overt social commentary, which did not achieve the same audience.
Plot: Colonel Herncastle, an unpleasant former soldier, brings the Moonstone back with him from India where he acquired it by theft and murder during the Siege of Seringapatam. Angry at his family, who shun him, he leaves it in his will as a birthday gift to his niece Rachel, thus exposing her to attack by the stone's hereditary guardians, who, legend says, will stop at nothing to retrieve it.
Rachel wears the stone to her birthday party, but that night it disappears from her room. Suspicion falls on three Indian jugglers who have been near the house; on Rosanna Spearman, a maidservant who begins to act oddly and who then drowns herself in a local quicksand; and on Rachel herself, who also behaves suspiciously and is suddenly furious with Franklin Blake, with whom she has previously appeared to be enamored, when he directs attempts to find it. Despite the efforts of Sergeant Cuff, a renowned detective, the house party ends with the mystery unsolved, and the protagonists disperse.
During the ensuing year there are hints that the diamond was removed from the house and may be in a London bank vault, having been pledged as surety to a moneylender. The Indian jugglers are still nearby, watching and waiting. Rachel's mother dies, increasing her grief and isolation, and she first accepts and then rejects a marriage proposal from her cousin Godfrey Ablewhite, a philanthropist who was also present at the birthday dinner and whose father owns the bank near Rachel's old family home. Finally Franklin Blake returns from travelling abroad and determines to solve the mystery. He first discovers that Rosanna Spearman's behaviour was due to her having fallen in love with him. She found evidence (a paint smear on his nightclothes) that convinced her that he was the thief and concealed it in order to save him, confusing the trail of evidence and throwing suspicion on herself. In despair at her inability to make him acknowledge her despite all she had done for him, she committed suicide, leaving behind the smeared gown and a letter he did not receive at the time because of his hasty departure abroad.
Now believing that Rachel suspects him of the theft on Rosanna's evidence, Franklin engineers a meeting and asks her. To his astonishment she tells him she actually saw him steal the diamond and has been protecting his reputation at the cost of her own even though she believes him to be a thief and a hypocrite. Now thoroughly bewildered, he continues his investigations and learns that he was secretly given laudanum during the night of the party (it was given to him by the doctor Mr. Candy who wanted revenge on Franklin for criticizing medicine and who wanted to sleep more easily due to quitting smoking); it appears that this, in addition to his anxiety about Rachel and the diamond and other nervous irritations, caused him to take the diamond in a narcotic trance, in order to move it in a safe place. A re-enactment of the evening's events confirms this, but how the stone ended up in a London bank remains a mystery only solved a year after the birthday party when the stone is redeemed. Franklin and his allies trace the claimant to a seedy waterside inn, only to discover that the Indians have got there first: he is dead and the stone is gone. Under the dead man's disguise is none other than Godfrey Ablewhite, who is found to have embezzled the contents of a trust fund in his care and to have been facing exposure soon after the birthday party. The mystery of what Blake did while in his drugged state is solved - he encountered Ablewhite in the passageway outside Rachel's room and gave the Moonstone to him to be put back in his father's bank, from which it had been withdrawn on the morning of the party to be given to Rachel. Seeing his salvation, Ablewhite pocketed the stone instead, and pledged it as surety for a loan to save himself temporarily from insolvency. When he was murdered, he was on his way to Amsterdam to have the stone cut; it would then have been sold to replenish the plundered trust fund before the beneficiary inherited. Cuff realized all of this independently after being dismissed from the case, but was reluctant to accuse Ablewhite without evidence or an official mandate.
The mystery is solved, Rachel and Franklin marry, and in an epilogue from a traveller the reader learns of the restoration of the Moonstone to the place where it should be, in the forehead of the idol.
Review: The book is widely regarded as the precursor of the modern mystery and suspense novels. The Moonstone is the perfect introduction to the Victorian novel. Written in the day of serialized fiction, when reading was still a primary form of entertainment, The Moonstone is a gem. Full of cliffhangers, written from multiple points of view, it's the tale of a stolen jewel whose original owners will stop at nothing to get it back. In the hands of a lesser author, The Moonstone would be confusing and rambling, but Wilkie Collins so adeptly drew his characters and gave his narrators such distinctive voices that the reader is drawn deeper and deeper into the story, anxious to read on to see what is going to happen. The tale is liberally strewn with clues, but it's the description and the characters who make it so readable. Who could ever forget the ominous and deadly Shivering Sands or Miss Clack's cheerful and relentless distribution of improving 'little tracts'?
Unrequited love, greed, jealousy, hypocrisy; valiant heroes, romantic heroines, exotic villains, comic relief and a mystery to tie them all together-everything we love to read about is present in lavish measures. The Moonstone is a book to curl up with on a winter weekend and get lost in. One of the best of Victorian novels, when a precise turn of phrase was appreciated and families eagerly gathered by the fireside each week to hear the latest installment read aloud, The Moonstone has been in print since 1868 for good reason. It's a great story told by a master storyteller and puts most romantic suspense novels to shame.
Opening Line: “In the first part of ROBINSON CRUSOE, at page one hundred and twenty-nine, you will find it thus written: "Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it."
Closing Line: “So the years pass, and repeat each other; so the same events revolve in the cycles of time. What will be the next adventures of the Moonstone? Who can tell?”
Quotes: “The horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like liquor, and makes me wild."
“Your tears come easy, when you're young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're old, and leaving it.”
Rating: Extremely Tedious.
364. Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
History: Published in 1956.
Plot: Wilhelm is unemployed, impecunious, separated from his wife (who refuses to agree to a divorce), and estranged from his children and his father. He is also stuck with the same immaturity and lack of insight which has brought him to failure. Tommy Wilhelm in Seize the Day is both inspired and burdened by the American myth of success. At the age of twenty, he changes his name from Wilky Adler to Tommy Wilhelm, a name signifying the person he dreams of becoming. He thereby recalls James Gatz, who by calling himself Jay Gatsby thinks he can conjure up the man Daisy Buchanan will find irresistible. Unlike Gatsby, however, Wilhelm has not fled his past; he confronts it daily through his father, who still calls him Wilky. But he remains optimistic, though the distance between the man he is and the man he aspires to be is an endless source of despair.
Wilhelm's financial troubles have more than practical implications. He feels that "everyone was supposed to have money", and his conversations with Dr. Tamkin strengthen his belief that with just a modest amount of will and talent, he could rid himself of financial worry. Tamkin assures Wilhelm that it will be "easy" for him to make much more in the market than the fifteen thousand he needs. Just as Wilhelm believes that he will one day become the person his name represents, so he clings to the hope that easy money awaits him. He assumes that his father would accept him if he had more money. Like Willy Loman, Wilhelm links his self-worth to his financial situation. If it really is easy to have more money than one needs, then financial failure must result from some character flaw.
Having quit his longtime job, left his wife and children, and taken a room in a residential hotel, Wilhelm seems intent on unburdening himself of the attachments and responsibilities that limit his freedom. He shares with Huck Finn the belief that personal autonomy somehow leads to personal fulfillment. But he is far from content when the story begins, sensing that "a huge trouble long presaged but till now formless was due" (p. 4). Wilhelm is bewildered by the fact that he has gone to such lengths to set himself free yet still feels trapped. Images of confinement proliferate. Beneath them is Wilhelm's desperate loneliness. Tamkin's assertion that we are all slaves to our "pretender souls" only further confuses the issue for Wilhelm. Is freedom a state of mind, rather than a description of external conditions? He cannot be sure, just as he can never be sure if Tamkin's pronouncements are revelation or simply a means by which Tamkin gets what he wants.
Review: Tommy Wilhelm is divorced, unemployed, broke, undereducated, self-indulgent, and dependent (on pills and his father, among other things). He lives in a hotel in New York City and wants desperately to put his life in order. Tommy, like all Bellow protagonists, has trouble determining how to cope with the modern world.
One of the symbols of Tommy’s problems, and those of modern society generally, is his relationship with his father. Tommy’s father lives in the same hotel and is disgusted with his son’s weakness. He refuses to give the one thing Tommy wants most--sympathy.
Tommy makes one last grasp for success by investing in the commodities market under the dubious influence of Dr. Tamkin. His money quickly evaporates and with it his hopes.
At this lowest point, however, Tommy has an epiphany. He accidentally happens into a church during a funeral, and, after looking at the body of a man he does not know, breaks into uncontrollable weeping.
Tommy weeps for the man, for himself, and for the human condition. He is transported beyond his own particular problems to a cathartic suffering for all mankind.
Bellow sees the problems of the modern world as essentially matters of the spirit. In a high-pressure, pluralistic, threatening, materialistic world, people must find a way to live and to remain human. Tommy does this by recognizing that human beings, for all their weaknesses--or perhaps because of them--must accept and share one another’s burdens.
Bellow offers this important response to the modern condition in a comic tale that is a contemporary classic, one which later helped win for him the Nobel prize.
Opening Line: “When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less capable than the next fellow.”
Closing Line: “He heard it and sank deeper than sorrow, through torn sobs and cries toward the consummation of his heart’s ultimate need.”
Quotes: "Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That's the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real--the here-and-now. Seize the day."
Rating: Okay
Plot: Wilhelm is unemployed, impecunious, separated from his wife (who refuses to agree to a divorce), and estranged from his children and his father. He is also stuck with the same immaturity and lack of insight which has brought him to failure. Tommy Wilhelm in Seize the Day is both inspired and burdened by the American myth of success. At the age of twenty, he changes his name from Wilky Adler to Tommy Wilhelm, a name signifying the person he dreams of becoming. He thereby recalls James Gatz, who by calling himself Jay Gatsby thinks he can conjure up the man Daisy Buchanan will find irresistible. Unlike Gatsby, however, Wilhelm has not fled his past; he confronts it daily through his father, who still calls him Wilky. But he remains optimistic, though the distance between the man he is and the man he aspires to be is an endless source of despair.
Wilhelm's financial troubles have more than practical implications. He feels that "everyone was supposed to have money", and his conversations with Dr. Tamkin strengthen his belief that with just a modest amount of will and talent, he could rid himself of financial worry. Tamkin assures Wilhelm that it will be "easy" for him to make much more in the market than the fifteen thousand he needs. Just as Wilhelm believes that he will one day become the person his name represents, so he clings to the hope that easy money awaits him. He assumes that his father would accept him if he had more money. Like Willy Loman, Wilhelm links his self-worth to his financial situation. If it really is easy to have more money than one needs, then financial failure must result from some character flaw.
Having quit his longtime job, left his wife and children, and taken a room in a residential hotel, Wilhelm seems intent on unburdening himself of the attachments and responsibilities that limit his freedom. He shares with Huck Finn the belief that personal autonomy somehow leads to personal fulfillment. But he is far from content when the story begins, sensing that "a huge trouble long presaged but till now formless was due" (p. 4). Wilhelm is bewildered by the fact that he has gone to such lengths to set himself free yet still feels trapped. Images of confinement proliferate. Beneath them is Wilhelm's desperate loneliness. Tamkin's assertion that we are all slaves to our "pretender souls" only further confuses the issue for Wilhelm. Is freedom a state of mind, rather than a description of external conditions? He cannot be sure, just as he can never be sure if Tamkin's pronouncements are revelation or simply a means by which Tamkin gets what he wants.
Review: Tommy Wilhelm is divorced, unemployed, broke, undereducated, self-indulgent, and dependent (on pills and his father, among other things). He lives in a hotel in New York City and wants desperately to put his life in order. Tommy, like all Bellow protagonists, has trouble determining how to cope with the modern world.
One of the symbols of Tommy’s problems, and those of modern society generally, is his relationship with his father. Tommy’s father lives in the same hotel and is disgusted with his son’s weakness. He refuses to give the one thing Tommy wants most--sympathy.
Tommy makes one last grasp for success by investing in the commodities market under the dubious influence of Dr. Tamkin. His money quickly evaporates and with it his hopes.
At this lowest point, however, Tommy has an epiphany. He accidentally happens into a church during a funeral, and, after looking at the body of a man he does not know, breaks into uncontrollable weeping.
Tommy weeps for the man, for himself, and for the human condition. He is transported beyond his own particular problems to a cathartic suffering for all mankind.
Bellow sees the problems of the modern world as essentially matters of the spirit. In a high-pressure, pluralistic, threatening, materialistic world, people must find a way to live and to remain human. Tommy does this by recognizing that human beings, for all their weaknesses--or perhaps because of them--must accept and share one another’s burdens.
Bellow offers this important response to the modern condition in a comic tale that is a contemporary classic, one which later helped win for him the Nobel prize.
Opening Line: “When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less capable than the next fellow.”
Closing Line: “He heard it and sank deeper than sorrow, through torn sobs and cries toward the consummation of his heart’s ultimate need.”
Quotes: "Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That's the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real--the here-and-now. Seize the day."
Rating: Okay
Thursday, June 24, 2010
363. A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
History: This book was published in 1955, and is considered to be a turning point in Bowen’s writing career, and is considered negatively in comparison to her other books.
Plot: This is the story of a family, and how the past effects family’s relations. The family resides in Montefort, a crumbling mansion in the countryside that has seen better days. Antonia Montefort, a photographer in her early fifties, the owner of the dilapidated Montefort manor in the south of Ireland. Antonia inherited the manor from Guy Montefort, her cousin, who was killed in action in World War I at the age of twenty. Antonia lives in London but occasionally visits the manor, where she is served by the Danbys: Fred runs the manor farm, and Lilia, his wife, manages the housework in a dilatory way. Antonia, having arranged their marriage, keeps them on the manor out of a sense of responsibility. Guy was engaged to Lilia, and they were deeply in love. When he died in the war, Lilia was left unprepared, depressed, and changed. Antonia, out of guilt (it seems she and Guy had had a sort of affair as well), arranged the marriage. Fred, the illegimate cousin of Guy and Antonia was a ladies man, but fell in love with Lilia, and asked her to marry him under Antonia’s urging. It took Lilia a lot of time to say yes, and her reluctance continues until the present tense, after two children born, she is still very unhappy. Fred continues to have affairs, but remains in love with Lilia and especially with his oldest daughter Jane.
Jane is beautiful, and is just coming out of childhood. Her younger sister Maud is the comic relief of the novel. Jane finds some letters, and a wedding dress in a trunk in the attic. The letters are love letters from Guy, supposedly to Lilia. As the novel progresses, we learn that the recipient could be Antonia (Lilia even knew of the affair), or even another woman.
Jane becomes obsessed with the dead soldier, and Antonia as well has regrets of the past and her effect in them. Fred and Lilia’s crumbling marriage, Lilia’s depression, and the curiosity of Jane and Maud about the past are the subjects of the novel.
In the end, Fred protects Lilia from the letters and this brings them closer. Jane goes out in the world, getting drunk for the first time, and in the end does meet a man.
Review: Antonia Montefort and Lilia Danby primarily, A World of Love culminates in their half-verbalized, partially conscious realization of the true nature of their relationship to each other. The story takes place in the confines of a run-down country estate over the space of a few days.
An uneasy group of relations are living under one roof at Montefort, a decaying manor in the Irish countryside. When twenty-year-old Jane finds in the attic a packet of love letters written years ago by Guy, her mother’s one-time fiance who died in World War I, the discovery has explosive repercussions. It is not clear to whom the letters are addressed, and their appearance begins to lay bare the strange and unspoken connections between the adults now living in the house. Soon, a girl on the brink of womanhood, a mother haunted by love lost, and a ruined matchmaker with her own claim on the dead wage a battle that makes the ghostly Guy as real a presence in Montefort as any of the living.
Opening Line: “The sun rose on a landscape still pale with the heat of the day before.”
Closing Line: “They no sooner looked but they loved.”
Quotes: “For worse or better, they were in each other’s hands. Such a relationship is lifelong.”
Rating: Moderately good.
Plot: This is the story of a family, and how the past effects family’s relations. The family resides in Montefort, a crumbling mansion in the countryside that has seen better days. Antonia Montefort, a photographer in her early fifties, the owner of the dilapidated Montefort manor in the south of Ireland. Antonia inherited the manor from Guy Montefort, her cousin, who was killed in action in World War I at the age of twenty. Antonia lives in London but occasionally visits the manor, where she is served by the Danbys: Fred runs the manor farm, and Lilia, his wife, manages the housework in a dilatory way. Antonia, having arranged their marriage, keeps them on the manor out of a sense of responsibility. Guy was engaged to Lilia, and they were deeply in love. When he died in the war, Lilia was left unprepared, depressed, and changed. Antonia, out of guilt (it seems she and Guy had had a sort of affair as well), arranged the marriage. Fred, the illegimate cousin of Guy and Antonia was a ladies man, but fell in love with Lilia, and asked her to marry him under Antonia’s urging. It took Lilia a lot of time to say yes, and her reluctance continues until the present tense, after two children born, she is still very unhappy. Fred continues to have affairs, but remains in love with Lilia and especially with his oldest daughter Jane.
Jane is beautiful, and is just coming out of childhood. Her younger sister Maud is the comic relief of the novel. Jane finds some letters, and a wedding dress in a trunk in the attic. The letters are love letters from Guy, supposedly to Lilia. As the novel progresses, we learn that the recipient could be Antonia (Lilia even knew of the affair), or even another woman.
Jane becomes obsessed with the dead soldier, and Antonia as well has regrets of the past and her effect in them. Fred and Lilia’s crumbling marriage, Lilia’s depression, and the curiosity of Jane and Maud about the past are the subjects of the novel.
In the end, Fred protects Lilia from the letters and this brings them closer. Jane goes out in the world, getting drunk for the first time, and in the end does meet a man.
Review: Antonia Montefort and Lilia Danby primarily, A World of Love culminates in their half-verbalized, partially conscious realization of the true nature of their relationship to each other. The story takes place in the confines of a run-down country estate over the space of a few days.
An uneasy group of relations are living under one roof at Montefort, a decaying manor in the Irish countryside. When twenty-year-old Jane finds in the attic a packet of love letters written years ago by Guy, her mother’s one-time fiance who died in World War I, the discovery has explosive repercussions. It is not clear to whom the letters are addressed, and their appearance begins to lay bare the strange and unspoken connections between the adults now living in the house. Soon, a girl on the brink of womanhood, a mother haunted by love lost, and a ruined matchmaker with her own claim on the dead wage a battle that makes the ghostly Guy as real a presence in Montefort as any of the living.
Opening Line: “The sun rose on a landscape still pale with the heat of the day before.”
Closing Line: “They no sooner looked but they loved.”
Quotes: “For worse or better, they were in each other’s hands. Such a relationship is lifelong.”
Rating: Moderately good.
362. Therese Raquin – Emile Zola
History: The title of a novel (first published in 1867) and a play (first performed in 1873) by the French writer Émile Zola. The novel was originally published in serial format in the journal L'Artiste and in book format in December of the same year.
Plot: Thérèse Raquin is the daughter of a French captain and an Algerian mother. After the death of her mother, her father brings her to live with her aunt, Madame Raquin, and her sickly son, Camille. Because her son is so ill, Madame Raquin dotes on Camille to the point where he is selfish and spoiled. Camille and Thérèse grow up side-by-side, and Madame Raquin marries them together when Thérèse is 21. Shortly thereafter, Camille decides that the family should move to Paris so he can pursue a career.
Thérèse and Madame Raquin set up shop in the Passage du Pont Neuf to support Camille while he searches for a job. Camille eventually begins working for the Orléans Railroad Company, where he meets up with a childhood friend, Laurent. Laurent visits the Raquins and decides to take up an affair with the lonely Thérèse, mostly because he cannot afford prostitutes anymore. However, this soon turns into a torrid love affair.
Thérèse and Laurent conspire to drown Camille while out on a boat trip. This enables them to marry, but their guilt comes between them. They imagine they see the dead man in their bedroom every night, preventing them from touching each other and quickly driving them insane. Laurent, who is an artist, cannot paint a picture (even a landscape) which does not in some way resemble the dead man. They also have to look after Madame Raquin, who suffered a stroke after Camille's death. Madame Raquin suffers a second stroke and becomes completely paralyzed except for her eyes (as in locked-in syndrome).
During an evening's game of dominoes with friends (an attempt to keep up a facade of normality) she manages to move her finger with an extreme effort of will to trace words on the table: "Thérèse et Laurent ont t..." The complete sentence was intended to be "Thérèse et Laurent ont tué Camille" (Thérèse and Laurent killed Camille). At this point her strength gives out, and the words are interpreted as "Thérèse and Laurent look after me very well".
Eventually, Thérèse and Laurent find life together intolerable and plot to kill each other. At the climax of the novel, the two are about to kill one another when each of them realizes the plans of the other. They each then break down sobbing and reflect upon their miserable lives. After having embraced one last time, they each commit suicide by taking the poison, all in front of the watchful gaze of Madame Raquin.
Review: The story contains quite a bit of symbolism most of which relates to animals. It is also quite scary but at the same time very gripping and interesting. Most of the symbolism is lost in the English translations and so reading the original French is much better.
This novel was described by Zola as an attempt to "forensically examine" the symptoms, physiological and psychological effects and consequences of the exercise of forbidden, adulterous passions on the part of the main protagonists, Therese Raquin and her lover, the feckless, would be artist, Laurent. The background histories of both are presented, as well as their current circumstances (the symptoms), enabling us to understand the motivations for their later actions: namely, adultery and murder, and their consequences: madness and suicide. Although Zola's attempt to portray the situation in a purely scientific, detached manner is unsuccessful (as any such experiment done through the medium of literature must be) the story of the two lovers and their ill-fated affair is a highly engaging one and Zola's considerable skills as a writer are effectively employed in this novel
Opening Line: “At the end of the Rue Guenegaud, coming from the quays, you find the
Arcade of the Pont Neuf, a sort of narrow, dark corridor running from
the Rue Mazarine to the Rue de Seine.”
Closing Line: “And for nearly twelve hours, in fact until the following day
at about noon, Madame Raquin, rigid and mute, contemplated them at her
feet, overwhelming them with her heavy gaze, and unable to sufficiently
gorge her eyes with the hideous sight.”
Quotes: "And Thérèse could not see a single human, not a living creature, among these grotesque and sinister beings with whom she was shut up. At times she would suffer hallucinations, thinking that she was buried in a vault together with mechanical bodies whose heads moved and whose arms and legs waved when their strings were pulled."
Rating: Okay.
Plot: Thérèse Raquin is the daughter of a French captain and an Algerian mother. After the death of her mother, her father brings her to live with her aunt, Madame Raquin, and her sickly son, Camille. Because her son is so ill, Madame Raquin dotes on Camille to the point where he is selfish and spoiled. Camille and Thérèse grow up side-by-side, and Madame Raquin marries them together when Thérèse is 21. Shortly thereafter, Camille decides that the family should move to Paris so he can pursue a career.
Thérèse and Madame Raquin set up shop in the Passage du Pont Neuf to support Camille while he searches for a job. Camille eventually begins working for the Orléans Railroad Company, where he meets up with a childhood friend, Laurent. Laurent visits the Raquins and decides to take up an affair with the lonely Thérèse, mostly because he cannot afford prostitutes anymore. However, this soon turns into a torrid love affair.
Thérèse and Laurent conspire to drown Camille while out on a boat trip. This enables them to marry, but their guilt comes between them. They imagine they see the dead man in their bedroom every night, preventing them from touching each other and quickly driving them insane. Laurent, who is an artist, cannot paint a picture (even a landscape) which does not in some way resemble the dead man. They also have to look after Madame Raquin, who suffered a stroke after Camille's death. Madame Raquin suffers a second stroke and becomes completely paralyzed except for her eyes (as in locked-in syndrome).
During an evening's game of dominoes with friends (an attempt to keep up a facade of normality) she manages to move her finger with an extreme effort of will to trace words on the table: "Thérèse et Laurent ont t..." The complete sentence was intended to be "Thérèse et Laurent ont tué Camille" (Thérèse and Laurent killed Camille). At this point her strength gives out, and the words are interpreted as "Thérèse and Laurent look after me very well".
Eventually, Thérèse and Laurent find life together intolerable and plot to kill each other. At the climax of the novel, the two are about to kill one another when each of them realizes the plans of the other. They each then break down sobbing and reflect upon their miserable lives. After having embraced one last time, they each commit suicide by taking the poison, all in front of the watchful gaze of Madame Raquin.
Review: The story contains quite a bit of symbolism most of which relates to animals. It is also quite scary but at the same time very gripping and interesting. Most of the symbolism is lost in the English translations and so reading the original French is much better.
This novel was described by Zola as an attempt to "forensically examine" the symptoms, physiological and psychological effects and consequences of the exercise of forbidden, adulterous passions on the part of the main protagonists, Therese Raquin and her lover, the feckless, would be artist, Laurent. The background histories of both are presented, as well as their current circumstances (the symptoms), enabling us to understand the motivations for their later actions: namely, adultery and murder, and their consequences: madness and suicide. Although Zola's attempt to portray the situation in a purely scientific, detached manner is unsuccessful (as any such experiment done through the medium of literature must be) the story of the two lovers and their ill-fated affair is a highly engaging one and Zola's considerable skills as a writer are effectively employed in this novel
Opening Line: “At the end of the Rue Guenegaud, coming from the quays, you find the
Arcade of the Pont Neuf, a sort of narrow, dark corridor running from
the Rue Mazarine to the Rue de Seine.”
Closing Line: “And for nearly twelve hours, in fact until the following day
at about noon, Madame Raquin, rigid and mute, contemplated them at her
feet, overwhelming them with her heavy gaze, and unable to sufficiently
gorge her eyes with the hideous sight.”
Quotes: "And Thérèse could not see a single human, not a living creature, among these grotesque and sinister beings with whom she was shut up. At times she would suffer hallucinations, thinking that she was buried in a vault together with mechanical bodies whose heads moved and whose arms and legs waved when their strings were pulled."
Rating: Okay.
361. The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
History: Published in 1917, this novella is notable for its dual narrative structure. The ironic constructions following from the conflict between the 'young' protagonist (who is never named) and the 'old' drive much of the underlying points of the novella, namely the nature of wisdom, experience and maturity.
The novel has often been cited as a metaphor of the First World War, given its timing and references to a long struggle, the importance of camaraderie, etc. This viewpoint may also be reinforced by the knowledge that Conrad's son, Boris, was wounded in the First World War. Others however see the novel as having a strong supernatural influence, referring to various plotlines in the novella such as the 'ghost' of the previous captain potentially cursing the ship, and the madness of first mate Burns. Conrad himself however denied this link in his author's note, claiming that although critics had attempted to show this link, "The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is."
Plot: The story starts with a seaman giving up his position on a steamer because he is bored and wants to go home. He then gets offered the chance of his own captaincy and jumps at the chance. But the boat seems to be under the curse of the previous captain who went mad and tried to send the crew on a suicidal journey. The first mater Burns stood up and questioned the captain who died shortly afterwards. Stranded in calm seas with the crew becoming ill Burns is convinced that the old captain is against them until he comes on deck from his own sick bed and laughs in the face of the storm he believes has been sent to destroy them. The winds pick up and the boat limps into Singapore and then with a fresh crew the narrator and captain heads out to sea again.
Review: The Shadow-Line, in its simple plot and unmediated narrative, is a sharp formal departure from Conrad’s earlier, more celebrated work. In many ways, however, it is also a return: a return to the sea, that testing ground of the soul, and a return to the virtues that arise and flourish in this arena. Virginia Woolf claimed that Conrad’s late work was not suited to his particular genius, that it was too concerned with the domestic sphere: “There are no masts in drawing-rooms; the typhoon does not test the worth of politicians and business men.” The Shadow-Line surely complicates such a rigid division. In it, we can see once again what Woolf calls “the old nobilities and sonorities”; in it, we can see Conrad come home to the homelessness of the sea.
Opening Line: “Only the young have such moments.”
Closing Line: “He exclaimed, flushed up dusky red, gave my hand a hard wrench--and next moment, left alone in the cabin, I listened to him going up the com- panion stairs cautiously, step by step, in mortal fear of starting into sudden anger our common enemy it was his hard fate to carry consciously within his faithful breast.”
Quotes: “It was something big and alive. Not a dog – more like a sheep, rather. But there were no animals in the ship. How could an animal…It was an added and fantastic horror which I could not resist. The hair of my head stirred even as I picked myself up, awfully scared; not as a man is scared while his judgment, his reason still try to resist, but completely, boundlessly, and, as it were, innocently scared – like a little child.”
Rating: Not Good.
The novel has often been cited as a metaphor of the First World War, given its timing and references to a long struggle, the importance of camaraderie, etc. This viewpoint may also be reinforced by the knowledge that Conrad's son, Boris, was wounded in the First World War. Others however see the novel as having a strong supernatural influence, referring to various plotlines in the novella such as the 'ghost' of the previous captain potentially cursing the ship, and the madness of first mate Burns. Conrad himself however denied this link in his author's note, claiming that although critics had attempted to show this link, "The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is."
Plot: The story starts with a seaman giving up his position on a steamer because he is bored and wants to go home. He then gets offered the chance of his own captaincy and jumps at the chance. But the boat seems to be under the curse of the previous captain who went mad and tried to send the crew on a suicidal journey. The first mater Burns stood up and questioned the captain who died shortly afterwards. Stranded in calm seas with the crew becoming ill Burns is convinced that the old captain is against them until he comes on deck from his own sick bed and laughs in the face of the storm he believes has been sent to destroy them. The winds pick up and the boat limps into Singapore and then with a fresh crew the narrator and captain heads out to sea again.
Review: The Shadow-Line, in its simple plot and unmediated narrative, is a sharp formal departure from Conrad’s earlier, more celebrated work. In many ways, however, it is also a return: a return to the sea, that testing ground of the soul, and a return to the virtues that arise and flourish in this arena. Virginia Woolf claimed that Conrad’s late work was not suited to his particular genius, that it was too concerned with the domestic sphere: “There are no masts in drawing-rooms; the typhoon does not test the worth of politicians and business men.” The Shadow-Line surely complicates such a rigid division. In it, we can see once again what Woolf calls “the old nobilities and sonorities”; in it, we can see Conrad come home to the homelessness of the sea.
Opening Line: “Only the young have such moments.”
Closing Line: “He exclaimed, flushed up dusky red, gave my hand a hard wrench--and next moment, left alone in the cabin, I listened to him going up the com- panion stairs cautiously, step by step, in mortal fear of starting into sudden anger our common enemy it was his hard fate to carry consciously within his faithful breast.”
Quotes: “It was something big and alive. Not a dog – more like a sheep, rather. But there were no animals in the ship. How could an animal…It was an added and fantastic horror which I could not resist. The hair of my head stirred even as I picked myself up, awfully scared; not as a man is scared while his judgment, his reason still try to resist, but completely, boundlessly, and, as it were, innocently scared – like a little child.”
Rating: Not Good.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)