Conspicuous Consumption

  I have concluded my year of reading E.M. Forster with the work that many consider his magnum opus, A Passage to India . It was good in the way that all Forster's fiction is good. The prose is shapely, the characters well-drawn, the humor humorous. Those who like that sort of thing will probably also applaud his philosophizing, but I much prefer the wit. As the title indicates, Forster has stepped outside of England and Europe, and in spite of his being a pre-postcolonial, he does a good job of treating Indian culture and people with respect. He doesn't make them into downtrodden saints or paragons of goodness, but rather allows them to be human. Likewise, he gives us a clear view of how inhuman were the colonialists in the country they administered.  It's hard to say which of Forster's novels I like best, but although I did enjoy Passage,  it is certainly not my favorite of his works. Perhaps that would be  A Room With a View as it's the most humorous of the lot ...

  Somerset Maugham worked in the British Secret Service during World War I. This series of stories about the British agent Ashenden are, therefore, to some extent autobiographical, though Maugham reminds us in his introduction that his experiences have been "rearranged for the purposes of fiction [because] fact is a poor storyteller." Ashenden / Maugham is no James Bond (though one is certain Fleming read these stories). He is diffident, and is not always confident that he doing the right thing in the operations with which he is involved, or that the outcomes he achieves actually make the world a better place. He moves from country to country, but does not live a glamorous life, and it is unclear whether he possesses a gun or would know how to use one if he does. Don't, therefore, open this book in search of a thriller. Rather, read it for the gentle humor and the astute observation of a gallery of human beings. Ashenden was recruited, after all, because he is a writer, a...

        During the second World War my father served on a PT boat that was active in the South Pacific. I once asked him whether, when the war ended, he ever thought about staying in the Philippines or in New Guinea, both of which he had experienced during his service. He said that he had never considered staying, and never in his life did he return to Asia, except once, much later, to Japan to see his son. There are, of course, obvious reasons why someone whose primary experience of a place is war would want to leave that place—that war—as expeditiously as possible. I learned much later that one of the first things my father did upon his return to the States was to burn his uniform. Clearly those years, those places, did not hold happy memories for him. But there are Americans and other foreigners who encounter Asia (all too often as members of a military force) and do elect to stay or to return. Roy Hamric is one of those. Reading his memoir Searching for Hunter S....

   This is the second (of many, I'm sure) Molly Keane novel I've read, and once again we're among decaying Irish aristocracy. The aristocrats on their uppers in Time After Time  are decaying, or perhaps decayed, in more ways than one. The brother and three sisters who share the now dilapidated manor in which they grew up are old and have not escaped the ravages of life and of age: one is deaf, one has a mangled hand, one is missing an eye, and one is an undiagnosed dyslexic and perhaps mentally challenged in other ways. The world they were born into—a functioning, well looked-after big house—is gone. Leda, a Jewish cousin with whom they grew up and who was banished from the house for a relationship (consensual?) with the father, returns. She is blind and wants revenge for having been cast out. She aims to attain this by destroying the working truce—it can't be said that they like each other—the three sisters and their brother have established. Keane's eye is cold, b...

Some years ago I read a couple of novels by Jane Gardam, Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat , and enjoyed them a great deal, but then somehow forgot about her. Recently someone online somewhere (I like the Internet) mentioned a novel by her called The Flight of the Maidens  that sounded good. One reason it sounded appealing is that it seemed like it would be entirely different from László Krasznahorkai's Seiobo There Below.  Don't get me wrong. I am in awe of that novel, certainly the best thing I've read this year and definitely on my short list of all time greats. I felt though, that after the overwhelming experience of reading it, I could use a change. In The Maidens , the story of three girls coming of age in England in the aftermath of World War II, we are reminded of the charms of novels that appeal in quieter ways. This is not to say that it is light reading. The heavy shadow of World War II still darkens these young girls' lives, most clearly is th...

       Just a page or two into the first chapter of  Seiobo There Below , the 2008 novel by László Krasznahorkai I was stunned in a way that reduced me to cliches: the hair on the back of my neck stood up; my breath was taken away; I left my body. These cliches, as is almost never the case, describe my actual experience of reading the beginning of this book: an account of a crane standing in Kyoto's Kamo River waiting for a fish. Every other chapter, every other page, is equally good. The plot—the crane never moves—is not what pulls us along. Krasznahorkai's long, cascading sentences, where only the odd semi-colon provides readers with a place to rest, are what does it. These sentences (no account of his writing fails to mention them) let us see that stillness is as compelling as the frenetic nonsense with which too many novelists (to say nothing of film-makers) concern themselves.  Krasznahorkai employed the same style in earlier, equally brilliant, w...