Pride and Prejudice (book review)

     Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (a school edition published 1958) I like this book very much, and reread it after having seen parts of yet another TV version. This time round I noticed that Lydia’s elopement and seduction by Wickham was a far more serious thing than I had thought. We tend to impose our own values on the past, and have difficulty understanding the depth of feeling surrounding what we no longer see as serious moral lapses. No doubt the past would have the same difficulties with our moral judgments.
     I had also forgotten how much Elizabeth censured herself for her prejudices, and how much his pride had mortified Darcy. It seems to me that in praising Austen for her social comedy critics have often failed to notice how close she comes to tragedy. I suppose that is because marrying and being married seem to be mere domestic concerns, and so a romance of courtship and marriage could not express suitably tragic themes.
     But for most people, marriage is the most important decision in their lives. Our easy divorce doesn’t change this; in fact, it underlines it, for divorce is an admission that one has made a serious mistake. Besides, many of the great and powerful have been destroyed by their unfortunate choices in marriage. And Austria’s history suggests that marriage has more to do with politics than many other, apparently more important, concerns.
     So Austen, although she confined herself to a small canvas, nevertheless treats large themes. Her satire on romantic love doesn’t hide her conviction that marriage is the primary source of both happiness and misery. A good marriage is good not only for the partners but also for their children, and their community; a bad marriage can have devastating effects on everyone, not only the children. The Bennetts did not have the best of marriages, but Mr Bennett’s retreat from his paternal responsibilities magnified the bad effects of his wife’s foolishness. Money is not necessary to a good marriage, but careful stewardship of one’s wealth is. While Austen is fully alive to the benefits of a good income, she also knows that a large income can tempt to extravagance.
     One could continue drawing morals of this kind from the book, but I don’t want to emulate Mary. I enjoyed my brief stay with the Bennetts and their friends, and will likely read this book again. **** (2002)

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954)

     P. G. Wodehouse Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954) Bertie Wooster and Aunt Dahlia get into the usual mix of pickles, some home-made by themselves, some constructed by others. Jeeves once again provides advice and action, and all ends happily. As usual, Bertie gets mixed up with a female who wants to marry him, there is the threat of physical retaliation from the spurned lover, love at first sight, missing necklaces, dark secrets, and so on. Wodehouse’s style as always amuses: he is the master of the twisted cliche and the apt (if often unattributed) quotation. Wonderful stuff. I see by the notes in the book that I bought it in 1979. Left it on the shelf for future pleasure, which it provided. ***

My Uncle Oswald (1979)

     Roald Dahl My Uncle Oswald (1979) I started this book some years ago, and found it again recently while trying to reduce the pile of books in the case by the bed. I won’t finish it. It’s silly and “clever” in the worst sense, like most of Dahl’s work. The plot of the novel is that Uncle Oswald discovers an aphrodisiac, and decides to use it for a spot of blackmail in order to get very, very rich. I think Dahl fancies himself as a writer in the Saki tradition, but he lacks the underlying moral sense of Saki, so that what should be black satire is merely nasty farce. Witty in places, and avoids the grosser kind of pornographic writing – which may not be a virtue. *

A Book of Courtly Cats (1986)

A Gentleman A Book of Courtly Cats (1986) Excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays and poems paired with portraits of cats in the style of Elizabethan miniatures. Not a book so much as an extended greeting card. I think Mum gave this to Marie. It’s a charming object. I recognised most of the quotations; the one I liked best is:
       If I could write the beauty of your eyes
      And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
      The age to come would say, ‘This poet lies;
      Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.’
      So should my papers, yellow’d with their age,
      Be scorn’d, like old men of less truth than tongue.
     And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rage
     And stretched metre of an antique song.
However, I don’t know which sonnet it’s from, so I shall have to read them all over again. Unrated (not a book). But lovely to look at and read. (2002)

Country Vet (1972)

     Denis Farrier Country Vet (1972) The blurb claims this books is in the Herriot vein, but I wouldn’t know. Its publication date suggests an attempt to cash in on vet-lit. Amusing enough, but very light reading. A few rants about the realities of animal life and death are worth keeping in mind when confronted by animal-rights activists, a stupidly sentimental lot without any real knowledge of animals. Farrier relates a few tales about his youth, his student days, his life as an assistant, and his life as an independent practitioner. Sentimental he isn’t, but he is annoyed, to put it mildly, by the mindless shooting of birds. *1/2 (2002)

Five Legs (1969), and a digression on James Joyce

     Graeme Gibson Five Legs (1969) I’ve read bits and pieces of this book for several years. I should say I’ve tried to read this book for many years. It made a splash when it first appeared (my copy is a First Edition), but as it turns out the ripples dissipated very quickly.  It looks like Gibson tries to do a Joycean stream-of-consciousness, but he’s no James Joyce. Not that this is in itself a disability, but it becomes one when you want to write like Joyce. Joyce is overrated in my opinion; Ulysses is barely readable (another book I’ve read at over the years), and Finnegan’s Wake will forever be merely a time- and academy-bound curiosity. No amount of scholarly interpretation will convince me that it’s worth the effort of deciphering the book for myself. Why should I, when the scholars have done such a good job of it?
     A book whose interpreters do a better job of telling the tale than the author did becomes a mere puzzle, and when it comes to puzzles we all have our tastes. I prefer jigsaws and crosswords. If I’m told that Ulysses does in fact trace the ancient legend of the title in a modern life and setting, I’m left wondering why I shouldn’t read the original. Reading Joyce’s book doesn’t dispel that wonder, but at least the digressions and pastiches have a charm apart from Joyce’s Grand Theme. In fact, I think they are more important than the self-conscious imitation of an old Greek tale. Joyce’s earlier work is better, especially the Portrait of the Artist. Perhaps Joyce didn’t trust the stories he had to tell, and felt he had to make them obscure in the telling to demonstrate that they had in fact the significance he ascribed to them. They certainly did, and the technique doesn’t add to that significance. For most readers it detracts, because it interposes itself between the tale and the reader.
     I was unable to discern much of a narrative in Gibson’s book; the central thread seems to concern the narrators’ trouble with women, but just exactly what that trouble is isn’t very clear. It appears to begin with the failure to impregnate his wife. But he is difficult to empathise with, despite Gibson’s obvious attempts to make his anguish palpable. But broken syntax and allusive phrases merely reveal a typically fractured consciousness, not necessarily an interesting mind. As for interesting digressions, there ain’t any.
     Perhaps Gibson thought that an avant-garde technique would lend significance. Perhaps he thought that a common-place mind would be more interesting when its working is exposed. We do have a puzzle here, but as I said above, that’s not enough. The puzzle must be worth solving, for its intellectual difficulty and/or for the solution. I didn’t find the rewards of solving the puzzle on either count sufficient to keep me reading. The stream-of-consciousness becomes an irritating impediment, and the solution (insofar as I’ve understood it) is mere commonplace. No stars. (2002)
     Update 2013: The book is out of print. Amazon offers 6 used copies of Five Legs/Communion. Various online entries report his work promoting Canadian writing, as well as his enthusiasm for bird watching. His Bedside Book of Birds looks like it's worth reading.

Daughters of Passion (1982)

   Julia O’Faolain Daughters of Passion (1982) A collection of short stories, all previously published in magazines. It’s magazine fiction alright, designed to engage interest while waiting to do something else, briefly startling, mildly provoking, witty in places, prurient in places, sentimental. Some of it rises above this level, but none of it’s memorable. O’Faolain writes skilfully, plots well, and draws vivid characters. The faint and not so faint melancholy of her stories reminds me of Mavis Gallant, but Gallant’s stories seem drawn from a deeper well. These stories are clever in the sense that student’s work is clever: one wants to give them a mark. I started this book on our trip to Brownsville last year, and stopped reading it somewhere in Texas. I finished it this morning, and can barely remember the last story. ** (2002)