Sunday, July 25, 2010

Week 4: The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald

Poor Gatsby. What a sad tale this is. The story is about Jay Gatsby, but it is also about America at a particular point in history—its emergence from the gloom and despair of war into an era of indulgence and decadence. Indulgence and decadence that Fitzerald, who lived it, critiques as superficial and futile.


The story of Jay Gatsby is narrated by one of the most affable narrators I have encountered. Nick is perhaps the only character of decency in the entire story—and what utmost decency it is. So upright, polite and so honest, he is the perfect conduit through which the story of the much more charismatic Gatsby should be told. In the end, boring but likeable Nick was the only friend Gatsby had.


Nick, a young man in his late 20s, moves to West Egg in New York’s Long Island Sound to get started in the bond business in New York. He moves into a small house surrounded by large ostentatious ones. His next-door-neighbour is Jay Gatsby, 30 yrs old, who holds wild parties that draw huge crowds, most of whom know little about the host. The masses speculate on his character and source of wealth, but no-one really cares. They are simply happy for somewhere to go on Saturday nights. The parties are famous and people drive for miles to attend, usually not leaving until the sun has risen the next morning.


But Gatsby is not interested in the masses who flock to him and his party house. After a life of rough living as a young man, Gatsby became immensely wealthy, mainly through illegal means, such as bootlegging and illegal stockbroking. He built an enormous house in West Egg so he could have a view of the house where Daisy, the love of his life (and Nick’s cousin) lives with her husband Tom and children in East Egg. Gatsby’s short adult life has been building up to the day when he faces Daisy again, after their love affair was cut short upon him being called up to serve in World War I. Daisy is a beautiful and carefree woman. These characteristics along with her wealthy lifestyle attracted the then young and impoverished Gatsby. The parties he now holds, the monstrous house he lives in and the extravagant lifestyle he leads: all are attempts to secure status in Daisy’s eyes.


The love story that at first appeared so poignant and predestined is ultimately paper-thin, as is the veneer of sparkle and glitz surrounding the luxurious but shallow lifestyles of the characters. Daisy represents the moral emptiness of the era. Gatsby is victim of his own tunnel vision and the carelessness of the society which he worked so hard to become a part of. There is little beneath the surface of the roaring 20s in New York and the bonds that connect people in the glitz, glamour and all night-partying are weak and meaningless.


This is a great read! Places and people jumped out of the page at me - I wanted to give Tom a hiding, see Gatsby smile; I could picture Nick's girlfriend's tan and jaunty walk and I could hear Daisy's voice. I know nothing about 'literary devices' or 'narrative arcs', and I have no idea how or by whom certain books are judged as classics, but this is a damn good read.


The link to the Penguin page for The Great Gatsby is here.

Next Week: J.A is reading Therese Raquin by Emile Zola.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Week 3: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was the master of the epigram: short, pithy, wittily-phrased, truisms. Most of these epigrams have been absorbed into pop-culture. His recent “appearance” on The Simpsons is a clear example of this.  The ghostly form of Wilde visits Homer in a dream and spouts such timeless phrases as “Experience is simply the name we give to our mistakes”.

Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is full of similar witty epigrams. Many of these are espoused by Lord Henry Wotton. Lord Henry plays the part of the tempter, a devil-like figure, who shows Dorian Gray a path towards a “new hedonism”, where pleasure is valued above all other pursuits.

Wotton describes his ideology to Gray:

I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream – I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievalism […]. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification.

Gray throws himself into the pursuit of pleasure in all its forms. The effect of this wild hedonism is represented by the novel’s titular metaphor. While outwardly, Gray shows no sign of corruption, or even aging over the course of twenty years of hedonistic living, a picture of Gray, painted by frustrated admirer Basil Hallward, has supernaturally started to age and decay, representing the hidden monster that Gray has truly become.

The painting is imbued with Gray’s inner life because it was created at the same moment that Lord Henry indoctrinated Gray into the cause of new hedonism.

Wilde’s novel was considered controversial at the time. So much so, that Wilde felt compelled to add the following preface: “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all”.

Interestingly, I feel that this is a supremely moral book. The corruption and decay represented in the painting of Gray functions as an indictment on his way of life. Although on the surface, it seems to uphold Lord Henry’s ideals, the novel’s conclusion delivers justice and punishment for Gray’s way of life.

A modern day incarnation of Dorian Gray is Patrick Bateman from Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. This is another novel which, on the surface, seems to uphold a particularly amoral way of life, but whose depths reveal a similarly strong indictment of its protagonist’s actions.

However, I’d recommend Wilde’s novel above Ellis’, which should only be read by those willing to stomach its lengthy passages of gruesome violence. The only lengthy passages in need of endurance in Wilde’s text are the lengthy descriptions of the decadence and wealth and conspicuous consumption of Grey’s hedonism. But the rewards are worthwhile. Where else will you read such gems as “[the picture] had taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach him to loathe his own soul?”.


The Penguin Australia page for The Picture of Dorian Gray is here.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Week 2: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Ignatius J. Reilly and his pyloric valve are deeply offended by the modern world. With a masters degree in medieval history (having spent almost as long at university as Jenn and I have), Ignatius is obese, obnoxious, unemployed and still lives at home with his mother in their New Orleans home. He is completely uninterested in finding a job; after all, he claims, he is too physically and emotionally fragile to work. Ignatius spends most of his time in his bedroom in a stained nightshirt drinking Dr Nut, masturbating and occasionally writing about the downfall of modern society. Sometimes he floats out to watch television and to eat his mother out of house and home. Several times a week he catches a taxi to the cinema to watch whatever is showing, hurl abuse at the screen, and consume popcorn by the colossal handful.


In the opening scenes, Ignatius’ elderly mother comes into debt and demands that Ignatius finally seek employment. Finding work is arduous for someone who has difficulty leaving the house before noon. It is particularly arduous for someone who is offended by most people’s ‘worldviews’. An example of his contempt for anyone and everyone is his parting note to Talc, one of his university history lecturers: “Talc: You have been found guilty of misleading and perverting the young. I decree that you be hung by your underdeveloped testicles until dead. ZORRO”


Forced to get a job, Ignatius leaves a trail of devastation in his wake. He burps and rants his way through New Orleans having uproariously disastrous effects on those with whom he comes into contact. As a cleric at Levy Pants, on the surface he injects some warmth and productivity into the business. But actually he is wreaking havoc with business partners and factory workers, who he believes should revolt. As a hotdog vendor, Ignatius cuts a menacing figure in his pirate costume. Even a job as simple as this leads him obliviously into a situation involving shifty figures from the local bar.


The digressions into other characters’ lives, such as those of Mr and Mrs Levy, became tiresome. I found myself wondering when we were going to return to the juicier and much more entertaining Ignatuis. There was, in fact, far too much happening in this story. It became a bit convoluted in the end with all the different stories meeting in a way that was smart, to be sure, but too complicated and busy. Ignatius and his mother were the shining stars in this novel, and the peripheral characters just weren’t engaging enough for me to care about them.


This is a story of hilarity revolving around a pathetic character in pretty depressing surroundings. The hilarity is thus is imbued with a sense of darkness—a gloom whose exact source cannot be identified, but which is made all the more poignant by the fact that the author, John Kennedy Toole, committed suicide in 1969—eleven years before this book was published. Knowing this leaves the reader with a bittersweet aftertaste; such a great read in the context of such tragedy.




Penguin Classics link

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Week 1: Farewell My Lovely (1940) by Raymond Chandler

In his character Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler set the mold for the archetypal “Hard-Boiled” Detective: a hard-drinking, middle-aged, ex-cop with no family or friends, taking cases for money only to find out that each case is more trouble than it’s worth. Often times, the detective simultaneously works on two, seemingly unrelated, cases, only to ultimately discover that the two are inextricably interconnected.

Marlowe meets Moose Malloy in a bar. Moose is “a big man, but not much more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck”. Recently released from jail, Moose is looking for Velma, his lost love. Marlowe takes the case for free, not because he is flushed with cash, but rather, he hasn’t worked in over a month. As Marlowe concedes, “Even a no-charge job was a change".

Two things make Chandler’s novel stand out to me: the setting and the voice of Marlowe, our narrator.

The Hard-Boiled Detective novel is a variation of the traditional “Golden Age” Detective story, like those written by Agatha Christie. The traditional setting of those novels was amid the English aristocracy. One crime would be committed, the detective brought in, and the crime solved by the end. Crime is depicted as a rare occurrence and justice is easy for the detective to meet out.

No so with Chandler’s novels. Instead of English aristocracy, Marlowe investigates crimes committed by both the upper and lower classes alike. Instead of a turn-of-the-century, rural English setting, Marlowe lives in urban, 1940s Los Angeles. Where the golden age detective brings the criminal to justice, as the novel concludes Marlowe concedes that justice is elusive. Where hope delivered at the end of the golden-age story, there is no hope that if Marlowe solves the crime the world will become any safer.

What makes the novel more than a depressing read is the character of Marlowe as he is revealed through his narrative voice. Marlowe’s observations are peppered with clever similes. When describing a pretty girl, Marlowe notes she has "a face you get to like. Pretty, but not so pretty you would have to wear brass knuckles everytime you took it out". Phrases like these are clever shorthanded representations of Marlowe’s character. You learn about Marlowe’s opinion of women and of his own masculinity all within the one sentence.

This novel is an enjoyable read, but one that’s best read in large chunks – when you’re stuck at home on a rainy day. The requisite twists, turns and double-crosses (which are necessary elements of detective stories) are too hard to follow if you’re reading it in bite-sized bits. See it as a banquet novel, not as a snack.

The only problem with reading Chandler’s novels in 2010 is the racism and sexism which was culturally acceptable at the time of writing, but now stands out uncomfortably, (especially when Marlowe uses a now-offensive racial expletive when he first meets Moose Malloy). Apart from those anachronisms, this is a brilliant read, and an enjoyable step back into 1940s Los Angeles, with the witty Philip Marlowe as your tour-guide.


The Penguin Modern Classics page for Farewell My Lovely is here.


Addendum: This week I read Bret Easton Ellis' new novel Imperial Bedrooms. Ellis is one of the authors whose work I analyse in my thesis. While I don't think that his latest novel is a masterpiece by any means, Ellis has mentioned in interviews how much this novel has been influenced by Chandler. Ellis notes that

Nobody expresses the mystery of a despicable moral landscape better than Chandler. Philip Marlowe wants an answer to what's going on but he also wants to protect himself from that knowledge. It's a profound dilemma what we all face: wanting the truth, yet not eanting what comes with it (Sydney Morning Herald, Spectrum. June 26-27 2010).
I couldn't have put it better myself!