a single green light, minute and far away

Every time I read The Great Gatsby I am struck by the astonishing beauty of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel.
There is nothing else quite like it in American letters. The effortless beauty of Fitzgerald's prose, the densely interwoven patterns of imagery and symbolism. Whatever else Gatsby may be: an elegy, a meditation on the corruption of the American dream, a melacholic dream of an unrecapturable past, Gatsby is a wonder of perfect craft.

Here are a few passages that take the top off my brain...

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away...it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.  No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams.... (2)

He smiled understandingly--much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished--and I was looking at an elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. (48)

A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell. (55)

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and more and the soft rich heap mounted higher--shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavendar and faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily. (92)

That is the last moment in the novel when I can feel any human sympathy for Daisy. I suppose the shirts are just part of Gatsby's offering to the idol he has created in Daisy.

Here's a longish passage, but one that just vibrates with a mythic marriage of prose and idea:

...One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees--he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been stuck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower, and the incarnation was complete.

The Great Gatsby closes with Nick Carraway sprawled out on the beach behind Gatsby's deserted mansion. The last few paragraphs of the novel just make a reader do something drastic, like have the sentences tattooed on her body:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther....And one fine morning---

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

This is my "Reread a classic of your choice" read for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2012 at Sarah Reads Too Much....

The Late, Great, Etta James

Etta James 1938-2012

The first time I heard the voice of Etta James was approximately two lifetimes ago. I had a studio in a warehouse building in Charlestown, Massachusetts, not far from Bunker Hill. I would go there in the evening and on the weekend and just immerse myself in painting-get totally lost. I always had the radio on, and in my trance-like state I usually didn't hear it. But one day I was arrested by the pain, the passion, the fierceness, of a very distinctive voice. Over the years I became something of a fanatic. As a single mom, I spent lots of hours in my vehicle, shuttling my daughters and taking long road trips between South Carolina and Maryland. We used to stack up the Etta James CDs and sing along with every song, capturing every inflection as Etta sang about heartbreak, sugar on the floor, and hearing the church bells ringing (of course, all she could do was cry). There was so much more to Etta James than that single song made famous by a car commercial and later by a movie and an inauguration ball. Today is her funeral, and I pay respects to a gutsy, brave, gorgeous woman who had been the primary voice in the soundtrack of my life.



Top TenTuesday: My Dream of Another Book

Top Ten Authors I Wish Would Write Another Book
I love lists, I love Top Ten Tuesday, and I love The Broke and the Bookish for hosting the very best weekly meme ever.

Here is my list of authors I wish would write another book, in no particular order.

1. Edward P. Jones. Best known for his award-winning novel The Known World, Jones has published two superb story collections:  Lost in the City and All Aunt Hagar's Children. I would love another story collection to look forward to.
2. Robin Black's gorgeous story collection If I Loved You I Would Tell You This left me feeling sad-because it is her only book so far....
3. Jo Scott-Coe is a brilliant, observant, courageous former teacher who dared to write honestly about her experiences, and about the politics and gender issues of teaching. Her only book is Teacher at Point Blank: Confronting Sexuality, Violence, and Secrets in a Suburban School. Please, Ma'm, may I have some more?
4. Simon Van Booy. I fell in love with The Secret Lives of People in Love. I haven't read every title by this writer, but I'd like to know that he will keep spinning his beautiful stories.
5. Joan Leegant. As soon as I finished her novel Wherever You Go I was wishing Joan Leegant had another novel. While I'm waiting, I'll console myself with her short story collection An Hour in Paradise.
6. David Rhodes. Rock Island Line and Driftless are two of my favorite contemporary novels, and I really do wish Rhodes would write another.
7. Keri Hulme is the author of The Bone People, a stunning and disturbing book. I wish she would write another novel.
8. Elizabeth Strout just doesn't write fast enough. Every book she writes is so superb. I especially loved Olive Kitteridge and Abide with Me.
9. John Steinbeck. I know, he wrote a lot of books. But still, I have this residual fear that I will run out of Steinbeck books in my lifetime. I guess I will just have to start rereading if that happens.
10. Cormac McCarthy isn't exactly unproductive. And I haven't even read all of his books. In fact, I've read only two. But after reading Blood Meridian I'm feeling almost idolatrous about this book. Blood Meridian is one of the most nearly perfect books I have ever read, so I wish Cormac McCarthy would write it again-only somehow have it be another book. Oh, you know what I mean!

What author do you wish would write another book?

Review: The Western Lit Survival Kit

The Western Lit Survival Kit: An Irreverent Guide to the Classics, from Homer to Faulkner
Sandra Newman
Gotham Books
paperback, 280 pages
a copy of this book was provided by the publisher through TLC Book Tours

The Western Lit Survival Kit really is irreverent. It is also sneakily erudite, and sometimes funny.

Humor is a funny thing, though. Humor might be the most difficult tone for a writer to pull off, and for this reader, the humor in this guide to the classics didn't always work. I guess I'll just get my reservations out of the way in one paragraph: the author is sometimes appealingly snarky, and sometimes just snarky. Sandra Newman dismisses whole chunks of literature as boring, vastly oversimplifies the category of the Victorian novel.... and she leaves out Trollope entirely. And there's no index! I love indices, and any even semi-scholarly guide should probably had an index.  To her credit, Newman acknowledges that Middlemarch is a very important novel, she gives Shakespeare his own chapter, and her book is both accessible and scholarly (in a sneaky, snarky way).

I'm trying to decide who the ideal reader of The Western Lit Survival Kit is. Someone not really well-read or educated in the liberal arts, but someone who could be tempted to be well-read...someday?

On the one hand, the humor, the tone, and the rating scale (books are rated on a scale of 1-10 in the areas of "importance," "accessibility," and "fun") hint that reading classic literature is daunting but sometimes entertaining. For a reader who unabashedly loves many of the books in the guide, some of Newman's dismisals were irritating, and the humor seemed to be aimed at some other reader. That sounds a bit harsh, but I think the humorous cultural references might make this guide dated in five years.

On the other hand, The Western Lit Survival Kit truly is smart. Newman puts Kipling in his place perfectly, while acknowledging the appeal of "If." She sums up Mark Twain and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn quite nicely. She has the guts to just say that Shakespeare is the greatest writer who ever lived, and she says it with blunt humor. She's right to say that The Great Gatsby is "a profiterole of a novel, gorgeous to look at and filled with delicious whipped cream." And she nearly makes me repent of having taught The Scarlet Letter, which she goes ahead and tells the reader to avoid (reader, don't listen to her).

The Western Lit Survival Kit has brief sections scattered throughout the guide filled with biographies, historical tidbits, and explanations of stuff you didn't know you didn't know. These tidbits were my favorite part of the guide--cool stuff I didn't know. Overall, The Western Lit Survival Kit is smart and useful, but I wouldn't recommend it as a reader's only guide to classic literature. This is a book you might want to have on your shelf, right next to the more serious (boring?) guides, when you want to dip into unfamiliar waters without getting drenched in seriousness and awe.

To see what other reviewers thought of The Western Lit Survival Kit, check out TLC Book Tours. For more about Sandra Newman, go to http://www.sandranewman.org/

The Last Book of the Year

In December of 2009 I began this blog in earnest, and one of my bookish New Year's Resolutions was to read more Trollope. How appropriate, then, that my last book of 2011 was The Duke's Children, by Anthony Trollope. On the next to last day of 2011, I finished the last book in the Palliser series. It only took me four years to read the six titles that make up the Palliser novels (Can You Forgive Her; The Eustace Diamonds; Phineas Finn; Phineas Redux; The Prime Minister; The Duke's Children). That's a total of 4,340 pages--but who's counting?

I felt a little sad when I realized that I had just finished the last of the Palliser novels. I loved the Barsetshire novels, but the Palliser books were my dish. Glencora and Plantagenet Palliser, Madame Max (Marie) Goesler, Phineas Finn: these are characters I came to know over the landscape of six novels, a world entire. Of course, I cheered up once I realized that I can always begin rereading the series this year.

Trollope was an enigma: at times he seemed a stodgy conservative. He was obsessed with the ideal of the English gentleman (a complex idea that he worked out in every novel). While he purportedly disliked feminism, his female characters and their constraints are portrayed with sensitivity, compassion, and liberality. And he had a close friendship with Kate Fields, an American feminist, on whom a character in The Duke's Children was partially modeled. And, most endearingly, he accepted and befriended George Eliot (pen name of Marian Evans). Eliot loved Trollope for his admiration for her common-law husband, George Lewes, and admired Trollope's novels. She even asserted that she might not have attempted the panoramic scope of Middlemarch without  Trollope's example (see Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope).

I like knowing this sort of thing, and I like thinking about how the works of my favorite writers interconnect. Middlemarch is my favorite novel; I've read it three times, (maybe four?) and each time I read the novel the experience is richer. I like to imagine Trollope and Eliot and Lewes sitting down to dinner and discussing life and literature.

Now that I've finshed the last of the Pallisers, it's time to move on to a novel I've been wanting to read for years: The Way We Live Now. Many consider this to be one of Trollope's finest novels, although the entire Palliser series was considered by Trollope himself (and many others) to be Trollope's finest achievement.

What was your last book of 2011, and what will be your first of 2012?

Wolf Hall: Parts V and VI

Without the Wolf Hall Readalong, I'm not sure I would have finished reading this book. And yet, I'm glad I stuck it out. For readers who haven't yet read the novel and still might want to: Major Spoiler Alert.

Now that I've finally finished this novel, I find that there are two more novels planned to complete the story. That makes sense, because the novel ends on a note of incompleteness.

Hilary Mantel's 532 page novel Wolf Hall has as its hero Thomas Cromwell, and as its antagonist Thomas More, a historical figure who has been lionized in the play A Man for All Seaons. In Mantel's revisionist imagining, More is a far from attractive character. Mantel paints a mean-spirited More, unkind to his wife, relentless in his pursuit of heretics or political enemies, responsible for torture and death.

In contrast, Cromwell, of humble birth, a polyglot, is depicted as loyal, kind, compassionate, intelligent, and devoted to his family and his work. The story of Henry VIII, his battle to rid himself of one queen and wed another, and the legal battle to install Henry VIII as the head of the church of England are all told through the consciousness of Cromwell.

Every perception in the novel is filtered through Cromwell's senses, and his canny, intelligent mind. In parts V and VI of the novel, Cromwell draws even closer to both the king and to Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn finally gets her wish and becomes pregnant, weds Henry, and if crowned queen. The coronation is given a sumptuous description:

At every turn on the route there are pageants and living statues, recitations of her virtue and gifts of gold from city coffers, her white falcon emblem crowned and entwined with roses, and blossoms mashed and minced under the treading feet of the stout sixteen, so scent rises like smoke. The route is hung with tapestries and banners, and at the ground beneath the horses' hooves is graveled to prevent slipping,a dn the crowds restrained behind rails in case of riots and crush....So many fountains flowing with wine that it's hard to find one flowing with water.

Anne Boleyn is still an elusive, powerful, secretive character, and the power she holds over Henry is enormous while she is still carrying his possible heir. She gives birth to Elizabeth, who will be queen, but Henry is not pleased. A second pregnancy ends in miscarriage, and Anne's power over Henry waxes and wanes. Her time is almost up. And Jane Seymour has been a flitting presence, noticed by Cromwell.

The unpopularity of Anne (and her mysterious power over some men) is captured in this passage:

They compete to tell stories of how she is not worthy. Or not human. How she is a snake. Or a swan. Una candida cerva. One single white doe, concealed in leaves of silver-gray; shivering, she hides in the trees, waiting for the lover who will turn her back from animal to goddess.

The novel ends with Cromwell having seen More sentenced to death and executed. He sits alone at his desk, and writes these words: Early September. Five days. Wolf Hall.

I will defnitely be reading the next volume, Bring Up the Bodies, to see where Mantel takes the reader next.

Thanks to Natalie at Coffee and a Book Chick for coming up with the readalong-please check out her posts on the readalong, as well as the other participant's thoughts on Wolf Hall.

Wolf Hall Readalong Parts III and IV

Wolf Hall Parts Three and Four: death, intrigue, heresy, subterfuge, spies. Cardinal Wolsey dies (you could say of a broken heart). Thomas Cromwell, the protagonist and unlikely hero of Wolf Hall shows political talent: he allies himself with King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Even as Henry VIII begins to distance himself from the Pope and consolidate politcal and religious power, his former friends and supporters are being tortured for various crimes, some of them religious.

The poet Thomas Wyatt enters the story. A strange anecdote is told of how, as a boy, Wyatt saved his father from being attacked by a pet lioness by diverting the animal's attention to himself. This story resonates, and had me wondering: is the lion in the story Henry (often referred to as a lion) or Anne Boleyn? And is Thomas Cromwell diverting the lion?

Portrait of Cardinal Wolsey

"What was England, Before Wolsey? A little offshore island, poor and cold." (213)

Hans Holbein's Portrait of Thomas Cromwell

"'Your father told us all about the lion. Nowadays, I think back on it, and it doesn't seem to me like a thing I would do. Stand still, in the open, and draw it on.' He pauses. 'More like something you would do, Master Cromwell." (287)


Wolf Hall is filled with violent torture and punishment. Cromwell thinks back to his boyhood, when he witnessed a heretic burned at the stake. Later, he watched as her friends came and gathered her remains-mostly bones.

"By the time the smoke cleared and they could see again, the old woman was well ablaze. The crowd began cheering. They had said it would not take long, but it did take long, or so it seemed to him, before the screaming stopped." (290)

Portrait of Anne Bolyn

"One of those afternoons when I told my king a little, and he told me a lot: how he shakes with desire when he thinks of Anne, how he has tried other women tried them as an expedient to take the edge off lust, so that he can think and talk and act as a reasoning man, but how he has failed with them...A strange admission, but he thinks it justifies him, he thinks it verifies the rightness of his pursuit, for I chase but one hind, he says, one deer timid and wild, and she leads me off the paths that other men have trod, and by myself into the depths of the wood." (298)

The above quotation draws directly on the imagery of the Thomas Wyatt sonnet I quoted in my first post on Wolf Hall. It's one of the lovlier passages in the novel.

Wolf Hall is filled with beautiful prose and resonant images. As I read I feel a sense of forboding, as so many who are close to Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn fall. The tension and almost tedium of the King's desire to be free from his marriage to Katherine is like an overhanging cloud. And I keep remembering that when Henry finally achieved his desire, he was only married to Anne Boleyn for three years before he had her beheaded.

So far I find Hilary Mantel's novel well-written, complex, but hard going at times. This does seem to be the kind of novel best appreciated in retrospect. I'm looking forward to reaching the end-I'm very curious to see how Mantel concludes this novel, and whether I will coming loving it or feeling very "meh."

Check out Natalie's much more thorough review at Coffee and a Book Chick, where you can also find links to other reviews from the readalong.