Gerhart Hauptmann--The Beaver Coat (1893)

I have been writing about wanting to read more German literature on these blogs for some time, so, finally, here we are. Gerhart Hauptmann was a prolific writer in many forms and the 1912 recipient of the Nobel Prize, though he is mainly famous for his dramas of the 1890s. He is reminiscent to me of Ibsen, though in this country his books are hard to find and his plays rarely if ever performed, while Ibsen and his works remain fairly broadly know. The IWE thought highly of Hauptmann, and called The Beaver Coat "a serious play and a major work of literature." It certainly reads like a serious work of literature. There is a fineness in the dialogue and the construction of scenes, a restraint in the revelation of action, that is bracing enough. I wonder, as I do whenever I come upon such books, why I do not devote a much greater portion of my time, especially now, to reading late 19th century continental authors, who seem to me so invariably sure in their language, their images, their people, their themes. I feel to some extent as if I have come home when encountering one of these books.

The Beaver Coat is not so much difficult to understand as it is easy to be led to different expectations as to where it is going. It is unconventional because the conflicts and the climax and the consequences that the plot would seem to be building towards never materialize, the characters occupying the roles of civic authorities are completely unfocused on what would appear to be the driving dramas of the play and miss them entirely (the beaver coat of the title was stolen from a property owner by a washerwoman for a ragged boatman plying the Spree River near Berlin. The crime is given scant attention by the presiding judge and is unrectified at the end).....


Unfortunately I was not able to finish this post before I went on vacation for about nine days. It seems to me that every year at this time when I go away, my reading schedule is the midst of a string of plays instead of one of the many 1,000 page books this list requires me to read, which would be much more convenient. So I don't remember anything else that I especially wanted to say on the subject of The Beaver Coat. I did not make any notes on it. My edition, which I will talk more about further, includes an introduction by the translator, Horst Frenz, timestamped Indiana University, May, 1951. He notes that Hauptmann "likes to make fun of the law and its ministers...it is almost an obsession with him that policemen and judges are of necessity imbeciles or charlatans." His concluding paragraph reads:


"...Hauptmann does not give a definite conclusion to his conflict. More than once, he has pointed out that true drama has no ending and that a decision is often imposed upon a playwright who finds no clear-cut ending in life, who always sees new variations, new possibilities for breaking off the action. All that is closely connected with Hauptmann's belief that man's inner struggle is more important and more dramatic than the outcome of the struggle, his searching after truth more significant than the truth itself. It is because of this fundamentally new approach to the problem of dramatic structure that the modern English-speaking drama can hardly be imagined without the pioneer work of Gerhart Hauptmann."


I admit in reading this that I thought it carried a lot of characteristically German unnecessary pomposity and grandiosity with it, as if it contained such ideas as have never occurred to anyone who did not pass though a top Gymnasium. The play lingers in my mind to the extent than it does because of the cleanness of the construction and dialogue and because works from the Imperial Germany of 1871-1914 period have a haunted quality about them for me, because of the power and wealth and cultural might of a sudden, freshly created nation/empire in the heart of Europe that was destined to be so short-lived, and whose contemporary influence, so pronounced just a century ago, has shriveled to almost nothing, in my life anyway.

My English copy of this play came in a library bound Rinehart Edition of 3 Hauptmann plays, The Weavers and Hannele also being included, though I don't believe either of these appear on my list. There don't appear to have been many, if any, later editions of this published in the United States. I am well read in the literature published in the Rinehart Editions. Of the specific titles (i.e., not collections) listed in this series, I have read 65 out of 98! For the record, the first five I have not read are The Tatler (Addison and Steele), The Trojan Women (Euripides), The Frogs (Aristophanes), The Menaechni (Plautus), and The Rope (Plautus). Despite the library binding the book is a little wobbly and brittle, but the type and layout, like so many printed series from the immediate postwar years, is ideal for reading.




This is not the only Hauptmann we will encounter on the IWE list, and the wait to become re-acquainted with him will be a brief one.



Challenge Time


This challenge gave us almost nothing to work with.


1. William Kent Krueger--Sulfur Springs............................................344
2. Mo Hayder--Wolf.............................................................................258
3. Rick Perlstein--The Invisible Bridge................................................202
4. Alison Gaylin--If I Die Tonight.........................................................68
5. Joan Wolf--The Counterfeit Marriage.................................................0
6. American Literature to 1900 (ed. Lewis Leary)...................................0
7. Princeton Review--1,027 GRE Practice Questions.............................0
8. T. R. Kenneth--A Room Full of Night..................................................0


Quarterfinals


#1 Krueger over #8 Kenneth


The Kenneth book isn't actually out yet, I don't think. It looks like a genre book, as is the Krueger.


#7 Review over #2 Hayder


I really don't like generic genre novels.


#3 Perlstein over #6 American Literature


Perlstein is a writer of popular histories, which is a genre I actually like. The subject of this book appears to be the transition of the Republican party between the disgrace of the Nixon resignation and the triumph of Ronald Reagan 6 years later, which mirrors almost exactly the first years of my consciousness, though I have no recollection of the Nixon presidency or resignation itself, which happened when I was 4.


#5 Wolf over #4 Gaylin


Wolf's book looks to be a romance novel circa 1980. It qualified for an upset, which I would like to get out of the way here, as I desperately need something readable to win.

Semifinals


#7 Review over #1 Krueger


Did I mention how much I hate genre fiction?


#3 Perlstein over #5 Wolf


Final


#3 Perlstein over #7 Review


This is a big book, clocking in at around 800 pages, but it is really the only choice in this field.

George Farquhar--The Beaux' Stratagem (1707)

After a series of fairly long novels prior to the medium-length Beau Geste, there is now an interlude of four plays, which break down into a couple of pairs in which each set of two could be said to be related in terms of time and place. Farquhar is a name that, through whatever fortunate cause, has survived to some extent even down to our day. The Beaux' Stratagem as literature I would consider on its own an entertaining, but not a great play, though having read at least a dozen plays over the years from this family of literature (Restoration and 18th century English theater) the importance and centrality of this genre in the history of English literature has been strongly impressed on me. And of course as with all plays, seeing a good performance would doubtless enhance the experience of having read the book considerably.

The IWE intro reports that "This was the last play Farquhar wrote; he was sick and in the utmost poverty when he wrote it--for money to pay his creditors--and he died on the night of its third performance." He was around 30 years old at the time of his death. In the 1933 Introduction to the Modern Library edition of Twelve Famous Plays of Restoration and Eighteenth Century--a very useful book to own, as I have had occasion to read nine of the twelve plays in it for the "A" list over the years and at least seven of the entries come up on the IWE list as well--Professor Cecil A. Moore of the University of Minnesota sees Farquhar as a transitional figure between the wits of the Restoration and the broader, more whimsical humor of the 18th century. His final two plays, says the professor, this one and The Recruiting Officer, performed first in 1706, "reveal dramatic genius of a high order." He adds that in Farquhar, "the Muse has now deserted the drawing-room for the country, and that many charmingly fresh types of character have been brought in to replace the endless parade of fops and coquettes." The setting of the play in a provincial inn (in Lichfield) frequented by travelers and coaches and highwaymen does hearken back to Shakespeare a little in bringing the English Midlands back on the stage, though the glories of the countryside and its floral life are absent from Farquhar.

I only took 4 notes on this. I should have written more commentary about my feelings and thoughts as I read it. Perhaps I didn't have any, but that isn't really fair, because the play has a certain charm about it, in part due to its, at this point, real remoteness in time, though the era of Queen Anne was a lively one in English literature, full of vigorous and proud characters, for which I have a more than usual fondness because I think this very interesting period tends to be overlooked now even by people who like Shakespeare or the Romantics or the Victorians.

Act III, Scene III, sample of play's humor:

"Sullen: You're impertinent. Mrs. Sullen: I was ever so, since I became one Flesh with you. Sullen: One Flesh! rather two Carcasses join'd unnaturally together."

Act IV, Scene I The servant Scrub to an impertinent French priest:

"Sir, I won't be sav'd your way--I hate a Priest, I abhor the French, and I defie the Devil--Sir, I'm a bold Briton, and will spill the last drop of my Blood to keep out Popery and Slavery."

In the same scene, Archer critiquing a portrait of the attractive Mrs. Sullen:

"Your Breasts too, presumptuous Man! what! paint Heaven! Apropo, Madam, in the very next picture is Salmoneus, that was struck dead with Lightning, for offering to imitate Jove's Thunder; I hope you serv'd the Painter so, Madam?"

Part of the resolution of the plot comes when the well-born but somewhat broke Aimwell's older brother, who is a Lord,  dies unexpectedly, and the surviving sibling inherits the fortune. While undoubtedly a stroke of good luck for the character, his rather unabashed delight at it comes off as rather strange, given that there was no indication of the dead brother's having been a villain or otherwise bad guy that I can recall.

Here is a link to an old and unfinished post in which I recall a night I spent in the George Hotel in Lichfield which claims to be the same where The Beaux' Stratagem took place, and tell a Farquhar story.  



The Challenge

1. Marcus Zusak--The Book Thief.......................................................................................17,971

2. Dean Koontz--Forever Odd.................................................................................................949

3. The Complete Rhyming Dictionary (ed. Clement Wood)....................................................204

4. Sarah Smarsh--Heartland.....................................................................................................109

5. Shana Norris--The Boyfriend Thief........................................................................................86

6. Real Housewives of New York (season 10--TV show)...........................................................58

7. Daniel Henderson--The Prayer God Loves to Answer...........................................................37

8. Anthony Trollope--Rachel Ray..............................................................................................19

9. Caitlin Kiernan/Kathleen Tierney--Cherry Bomb..................................................................15

10. Dan Hall--Highgate Mums: Overheard Wisdom From the Ladies Who Brunch.................12

11. Laxdaela Saga (trans. Press)..................................................................................................6

12. Dawn French--Me. You. A Diary...........................................................................................6

13. Andrew Sanders--The Short Oxford History of English Literature.......................................4

14. William Harrison Ainsworth--Jack Sheppard.......................................................................3

15. Rev. E. Cobham Brewer--Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction & the Drama, Vol. 1...1

16. The Greek Romances of Helodorus, Longes & Achilles Tatius.............................................0

17. Mary Elizabeth Braddon--Willard's Weird............................................................................0

18. Rev. E. Cobham Brewer--Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction & the Drama, Vol. II...0

19. George Brandes--William Shakespeare: A Critical Study......................................................0

Qualifying Round

#14 Ainsworth over #19 Brandes

I have actually read what is regarded as Ainsworth's best novel, The Tower of London. I don't remember much of it now, but I know I found it readable and even amusing in places at the time.

#15 Brewer over #18 Brewer

This was a tight match, as you can imagine.

#16 Greek Romances over #17 Braddon

I can't find any corroborating evidence that the Braddon book actually exists.

Round of 16

#1 Zusak over #16 Greek Romances

The Greek book is both rare and the three authors make it seem cumbersome. Zusak's qualifying score is one of the highest ever in the history of the Challenge. I even have a copy of this book at my house because my one of my children had to read it in school instead of David Copperfield or whatever early high schoolers used to read. I thought it deserved to escape the 1st round.

#15 Brewer over #2 Koontz

I want no part of Dean Koontz.

#3 Rhyming Dictionary over #14 Ainsworth

Huge score for this dictionary, impressive.

#13 Sanders over #4 Smarsh

#5 Norris over #12 French

#11 Laxdaela over #6 RHONY

#10 Hall over #7 Henderson

#8 Trollope over #9 Kiernan/Tierney

Trollope, whom we have seen so recently, the only IWE author in the field this time.

Elite Eight

#15 Brewer over #1 Zusak

Brewer sitting there with that upset to drop.

#3 Rhyming Dictionary over #13 Sanders

A scrap, but I was swayed by the huge disparity in the qualifying scores.

#5 Norris over #11 Laxdaela

A minor upset.

#10 Hall over #8 Trollope

Trollope a victim of the upset here.

Final Four

#3 Rhyming Dictionary over #15 Brewer

#5 Norris over #10 Hall

Another battle, but Norris escapes again.

Championship

#3 Rhyming Dictionary over #5 Norris

I have no idea whether I will actually try reading this book or not, but I will at least look at it.

February 2019

A List: Jean-Jacques Rousseau--Confessions...........................................9683
B List: George Farquhar--The Beaux' Stratagem.......................................58/73
C List: Will Self--Shark..............................................................................91/464


We read some Rousseau at school, The Social Contract certainly, and some people read Emile. I don't remember whether we read any excerpts of the Confessions or not, though we certainly didn't read the whole thing. When the book back in the mail I was surprised by how big it was, I was imagining it to be about half as long. However, though I have just started it it seems like it is going to be an amiable read, and it's been a while since I've read anything from the genre of 18th-century philosophy, which in its English and French incarnations at least I generally enjoy.


After a series of relatively long novels, Farquhar is the first of 4 consecutive plays coming up the B list. Expect a report of some length soon. Indeed I should have finished this several days ago already but you know...busy with nonsense.


This brings us to the Will Self book. Born in London in 1961, Will Self is the author of 24 books, including 19 works of fiction. He is undeniably a highly intelligent and skilled writer, and I have to admire this to an extent. At the same time I find myself dragging my feet quite a bit when it is time for me to take up his book. For starters, the entire 464 pages appear to be a single paragraph, which seems unnecessarily taxing on the reader to me. There is a Joycean stream of consciousness element to the composition in which the various threads of the story come and go and as my concentration is not that great I frequently get lost for a page or more during these transitions. One of the storylines involves the famous catastrophe/ordeal of the U.S.S. Indianapolis in World War II, and that part is very good. There is a part set in a mental hospital in London that holds my attention somewhat, there is a part involving a sex worker and her young children and Vietnam war protests in 1970-era London that I can just barely follow, and, well, you get the idea. I did genuinely love Ulysses, or many of its various parts and qualities anyway, when I went though it as a 25-year old accompanied by an entire volume of annotations, recollections of the conversations of friends who had recently taken a class on it, and so forth. Perhaps I would not feel the same about it if I took up now without all of these specific associations, though I might, because it still has other associations with a time and an idea of literary culture that I probably would hold in romantic regard anyway. This Will Self book has passages that are like that, that evoke those kinds of feelings, but the structure of it doesn't allow me to leave off and get back in to the story at the point I was before. Every time I take it up it is as if I am starting the whole thing anew, the characters have no solidity for me, certainly no established charm or interest that I wish to explore or draw from. I do feel that I should stick with the book a little longer though.


I need a haircut. I try to go about every six weeks, that is why hair begins to grow overlong on the top and sides.


What accounts for my extreme busyness? Getting an inspection sticker for both of my old cars in January (in my state your birthday dictates when your car registration and inspection are due, and both my wife and I are January babies--January is the worst possible month in this part of the world especially to have to do this) was a complicated and expensive ordeal, though both run well enough that it is worth the expense if I can make it through another year without having to buy a new car, or two of them. Dealing with insurance issues. Various appointments for kids/teenager stuff. I've got one kid doing school online that I have to help a lot. My oldest son got his driver's license. All of these things. And this time of year, the dead of winter, I get very tired, I took a forty-five minute nap today, I never need to do this from April through the Christmas season my energy is pretty good. But this is just late night scribbling for the sake of scribbling... 

Will Self considers the novel to be "absolutely doomed". I would not argue that he is wrong.

Percival Christopher Wren--Beau Geste (1924)

It is frequently observed (and almost as frequently disputed) that men in our time are something quite different from what they were formerly. I tend to be in the camp that believes some fairly drastic changes have occurred, due both to alterations in mode of life as well as biochemical influences. While a fantastical and somewhat out-of-date fiction even by the standards of its own day, Beau Geste, the huge best-seller of the 1920s, is animated nonetheless by infectious qualities of male spiritedness, camaraderie, acceptance of the possibility of death and craving for adventure, and a general attitude of celebration of the possibilities of upper class European manhood. The IWE felt compelled to note that "Wren was by no means a good writer" even as they were championing his book, and it is true that he lacks a smooth style or incisive insights or other literary qualities of that sort, but I found the book to be unique and interesting in many places. Even the construction of it is rather bizarre in that the first 80 pages involve a stereotypically suave and jaunty French officer relating a mysterious escapade in the desert to an old English chum of equal social and military rank, at which point the narrative finally shifts to the Geste brothers, the protagonists of the book, with the two characters who opened the book not seen again except for a few cameo appearances. And even within the brothers' story, the title character Beau, while the leader of the group and possessed of the most heroic qualities, is not really the central figure around whom most of the narrative is centered, that being John, the younger brother, who narrates the entire second portion of the book and whose movements we always remain with even during lengthy periods when Michael, or Beau, is offstage.

But as I said, there is much that is attractively lively in the book, and compared to most of the works on this program, it was a very fast read: it took me about 2 weeks to get through 418 pages, which is a pace I have not approached since before I had children.


At one point I thought I was going to get through this one with very sparse notes but I ended up filling a page with them.


From page 9, a sample sentence:


"And then as I wearily light a wretched cigarette babbling I know not what of a wretched Arab goum--they are always dying of fatigue, these fellows, if they have hurried a few miles--on a dying camel, who cries at the gate that he is from Zinferneuf, and that there is siege and massacre, battle, murder, and sudden death."


I assure you, I would have thought this just as wretched as everyone else does fifteen or twenty years ago.


p. 40 "Duty to my country came before my duty to these fellows, and I must not allow any pity for their probable fate to come between my and my duty as a French officer."


Do we argue so viciously now because we are all strangers pitted one against the other? The camaraderie of class/school/profession, when it takes hold, seems stronger in old books than anything of the sort that we know now.


p. 125 "'I've let Augustus take the blame all this time', she sobbed" "'Didn't notice him taking any,' observed Digby. 'Must be a secret blame-taker, I suppose.'"


When running away to join the French Foreign Legion the narrator raises money for the adventure by going to a Jewish pawnbroker, the portrait of whom is predictably unflattering. The IWE summarizer observed that "among other things" Wren's "effort to render American conversation was ludicrous even for an Englishman" though this was pointedly the only ludicrous rendition of conversation that was pointed out.


p. 155 "'I gotter live, ain't I?' he replied, in a piteous voice, to my cruel look." "Forbearing to observe 'Je ne vois pas la necessite', I laid my stick and gloves on the counter..."

p. 157 "Personally, I would always rather travel first class and miss my meals, than travel third and enjoy three good ones, on a day's journey. Nor is this in the least due to paltry exclusiveness and despicable snobbishness. It is merely that I would rather spend the money on a comfortable seat, a pleasant compartment, and freedom from crowding, than on food with cramped circumstances."


p. 175 "He was of a type of Frenchman that I do not like (there are several of them)..."


This drew an LOL from me.


p. 193 "I liked him less and less as the evening wore on, and I liked him least when he climbed on the zinc-covered counter and sang an absolutely vile song, wholly devoid of humour or of anything else but offence. I am bound to admit, however, that it was very well-received by the audience."


Another chuckle.


p. 197 " A huge greasy creature, grossly fat, filthily dirty in clothes and person, and with a face that was his misfortune, emerged from the cooking-house. he eyed us with sourest contempt."


Wren allows the reader to indulge his natural dislike of ugly, stupid people with terrible personalities.


To put the life of the no longer very well known Wren into some context, he was born in South London in 1875 and lived until 1941. His father was a schoolmaster, and he received a Master's degree from St Catherine's Society, described by Wikipedia as a non-collegiate institution for poorer students. He worked for the Indian Education Service from 1903 to 1917. He was appointed a reserve officer in East Africa for less than a year during the First World War. His supposed service in the French Foreign Legion, out of which experience this book and many of his other top-selling literary productions were thought to have sprung, appears never to have been confirmed. He appears to have begun publishing his adventure novels around 1914. He cut a preternaturally dashing figure in the few photographs of him that are known.

p. 208 "It struck me that community of habits, tastes, customs, and outlook form a stronger bond of sympathy than community of race; and that men of the same social caste and different nationality were much more attracted to each other than men of the same nationality and different caste..." The proto-globalism of the French Foreign Legion.


p.213 "'But why bother about the Americans? They are uncultivated people.' 'We're going to cultivate them,' punned Michael."


p. 234 "We made rapid progress and, after a time, made a point of talking Arabic to each other. It is an easy language to learn,  especially in a country where it is spoken." I have no idea whether this is true or not. In my life I don't know any Anglophones who have learned to speak it. It is of course necessary to the plot that the Geste brothers learn it.


p. 250 Another sample passage of the rip-roaring, swashbuckling variety: "Possibly we were going to take part in some complicated scheme of conquest, extending French dominion to Lake Tchad or Timbuktu. Possibly we were about to invade and conquer Morocco once and for all...We were keen, we were picked men, and nobody went sick or fell out. Had he done so, he would have died an unpleasant death, in which thirst, Arabs, and hyenas would have been involved."


p. 253 "I should have liked to admire him as much as I admired his military skill, and ability as a commander, and I began to understand how soldiers love a good leader when it is possible to do so." Well put, and an important idea to remember.


p. 289 "'Do you swear it by the name of God? By your faith in Christ? By your love of the Blessed Virgin? And by your hope for the intercession of the Holy Saints?' asked Bolidar." "'Not in the least,' replied Michael. 'I merely say it. I have not got a diamond--'Word of an Englishman.'" We had to have something like this get in at some point. It is humorous but not ironic or arch or any of that. I appreciate it.


p. 337 John to Beau when they are the last two men in the fortress alive as it is being besieged. "...it's been a great lark." Beau is an attractive character, but as noted above, not fleshed out or very deep, or even particularly prominent on a page by page basis in the story.

p. 364 "I did my best to make it a real 'Viking's Funeral' for him, just like we used to have at home. Just like he used to want it. My chief regret was that I had no Union Jack to drape over him."


I did make a note around this point asking What is this book about? but I am sure I was overthinking the question because it is about the romance of young male blossoming, adventure, daring, and death, a subject which, in this kind of treatment anyway, does not seem to be of much positive interest to the contemporary gatekeepers of the culture. It is of interest to me, however!


p. 368 "I greatly feared that our deeds of homicide and arson had raised us higher in the estimation of these good men than any number of pious acts and gentle words could ever have done."


I thought it was also noteworthy that it was not treated as terribly important that the high-spirited and eminently sharp and capable Beau should survive the adventure and return home to found a family line and take up a leading role in the affairs of his country. This is the role of his less immediately dynamic brothers, though the whole family was plenty resourceful and insouciant on their own.


Beau Geste has been adapted for numerous major movie and T.V. productions. The first was a silent version in 1926 starring Ronald Colman. My copy of the book was a companion to the release of this film and includes several still photographs from it among its pages. Another major Hollywood version came out in 1939, starring Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, and Robert Preston, with direction by William Wellman. Hollywood did another remake in 1966 without big stars, although future TV legend Telly Savalas appeared as the sadistic commander. It then received an 8-episode BBC treatment in 1982, which appears to be the last attempt at bringing these characters and their times and adventures to the screen. There was also a spoof released in 1977 called The Last Remake of Beau Geste which included Peter Ustinov, James Earl Jones, and Ann-Margret among the cast, which indicates to me that the story was still well-known at that time.

My edition of the book ends with six pages of hype about the 1926 film. One note of interest to me was that a comparison of this production was made to "probably the finest picture ever produced, 'The Big Parade.'" (King Vidor-1925). This was a World War I drama that was a huge hit and is still highly regarded, and while I may have heard of the title, anything else about it has eluded my awareness up to now.


The Challenge


A rather strange and mostly obscure selection of contenders for this book.


1. Nora Roberts--Of Blood and Bone..........................................................................................658
2. Coughlin, Kuhlman & Davis--Shooter: Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper...246
3. Paul Theroux--The Great Railway Bazaar..............................................................................153
4. Frederic S. Durbin--A Green and Ancient Light........................................................................52
5. Alison Green--Ask a Manager...................................................................................................45
6. Rachel Manija Brown & Sherwood Smith--Stranger................................................................32
7. Russell Sullivan--Rocky Marciano: The Rock of His Times......................................................28
8. Allan Abbass--Reaching Through Resistance: Advanced Psychotherapy Techniques.............27
9. Letters Never Meant to be Read, Volume I.................................................................................19
10. Services and Prayers for the Church of England......................................................................4
11. Tia Lee--Vermilion Whispers.....................................................................................................4
12. Calameo--The History of Rome, Part I......................................................................................0
13. Alberto Vasquez-Figueroa--Tuareg...........................................................................................0
14. Joseph Jordania--Tigers, Lions and Humans.............................................................................0
15. Fiona Price--Re-Inventing Liberty..............................................................................................0
16. Samuel W. Duffield--The Latin Hymn-Writers and Their Hymns.............................................0


1st Round


#1 Roberts over #16 Duffield


No library presence for Duffield.


#2 Shooter over #15 Price


Same fate for Price


#3 Theroux over #14 Jordania


I have actually read the Theroux book some years back and even written about it on my home blog. There was a period back in the pre-Challenge days when I would read one of Theroux's travel books every summer, usually while sitting at my children's swimming lessons. I read this one, the sequel trip across Asia 30 years later in which some countries from the earlier trip had to be avoided due to political changes (while others closed off in 1974 were now open), the one going around the perimeter of England, the one about riding the train from Boston straight through to Argentina, the one making a full circuit of the Mediterranean Sea...I enjoyed all of these books.


#4 Durbin over #13 Vasquez-Figueroa
#5 Green over #12 Calameo


There is no point in advancing books that have no evident existence either in libraries or even on Amazon.


#6 Brown/Smith over #11 Lee
#7 Sullivan over #10 Services and Prayers
#8 Abbass over #9 Letters


Neither of the books in the 8-9 game are available in libraries.

Round of 8


#8 Abbass over #1 Roberts


Technically an upset, but I wouldn't have wanted to read the Roberts book anyway.


#2 Shooter over #7 Sullivan


Another upset, albeit a mild one. I don't think a sports-themed book has prevailed in the Challenge yet.


#3 Theroux over #6 Brown/Smith
#4 Durbin over #5 Green


This one was a toss-up, very little to differentiate the two contestants. I was not fired up to read either of these books.


Final Four


#2 Shooter over #8 Abbass
#3 Theroux over #4 Durbin


Championship


#2 Shooter over #3 Theroux


I would have gone with Theroux if I hadn't read it already. I probably should read something about the modern American military anyway.

Author List Volume XVI

John Milton (1608-1674) Paradise Lost (1667) Born: Bread Street, City, London, England (*****9-6-96*****) Buried: St Giles Cripplegate, Fore Street, City, London, England (*****9-8-96*****)  Milton's Cottage, 21 Deanway, Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, England. College: Christ's (Cambridge)


E. M. Forster (1879-1970) A Passage to India (1924) Born: 6 Melcombe Place, Dorset Square, Bloomsbury, England (*****9-1-1996*****) Buried: Ashes Scattered in rose garden, Canley Garden Cemetery and Crematorium, Coventry, Warwickshire, England. College: King's (Cambridge)


Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) Born: 25 Rue du Sauvage, Mulhouse, Alsace, France. Buried: Cimitiere du Montparnasse, 14eme, Paris, France. College: Ecole Polytechnique


Mary Martin (1913-1990) Born: Weatherford, Texas. Buried: Greenwood Cemetery, Weatherford, Texas.


Maude Adams (1872-1953) Born: Salt Lake City, Utah. Buried: Cemetery of the Sisters of the Cenacle, Lake Ronkonkoma, Suffolk, New York. Mountain Top Arboretum, 4 Maude Adams Road, Tannersville, Greene, New York.

John Bunyan (1628-1688) Pilgrim's Progress (1678) Born: Bunyan's End, Elstow, Bedfordshire, England. Buried: Bunhill Fields, Finsbury, London, England (*****9-8-1996*****) John Bunyan Museum, Mill Street, Bedford, Bedfordshire, England. John Bunyan Statue, The Broadway, Bedford, Bedfordshire, England. Moot Hall. Elstow, Bedfordshire, England.

Frank Norris (1870-1902) The Pit (1903) Born: Chicago, Illinois. Buried: Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, Alameda, California. McTeague's Saloon, 1237 Polk Street, San Francisco, California. College: California (Berkeley) 

Albert Camus (1913-1960) The Plague (1947) Born: Drean, Algeria. Buried: Cemetery, Lourmarin, Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, France. College: Algiers

John Millington Synge (1871-1909) The Playboy of the Western World (1907) Born: 2 Newtown Villas, Rathfarnham, Dublin, Ireland. Buried: Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold's Cross, Dublin, Ireland. Teach Synge, Inishmann, Aran Islands, Galway, Ireland. College: Trinity (Dublin)

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) Poe's Stories (1839-45) Born: 176 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts (*****8-25-2007?*****) Buried: Westminster Burial Ground, 515 West Fayette Street, Baltimore, Maryland. Edgar Allan Poe Museum, 1914 East Main Street, Richmond, Virginia. Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, 532 North 7th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (*****4-25-2001?*****). Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, 203 North Amity Street, Baltimore, Maryland. Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, 2640 Grand Concourse, Fordham, Bronx, New York. College: Virginia; Army.

Dubose Heyward (1885-1940) Porgy (1925) Born: Charleston, South Carolina. Buried: St Philip's Episcopal Church Cemetery, Charleston, South Carolina. Cabbage Row, 89-91 Church Street, Charleston, South Carolina.

George Gershwin (1898-1937) Born: 242 Snediker Avenue, Brooklyn, Kings, New York. Buried: Westchester Hills Cemetery, Hastings-on-Hudson, Westchester, New York.

Robert Nathan (1894-1985) Portrait of Jenny (1940) Born: New York, New York. Buried: Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California. College: Harvard.

James Joyce (1882-1941) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922) Born: 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland (*****9-3-1996*****) Buried: Fluntern Cemetery, Zurich, Switzerland. James Joyce Tower & Museum, Sandycove Point, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, Ireland. (*****9-4-1996*****) James Joyce Center, 35 North Great George's Street, Rotunda, Dublin, Ireland. James Joyce Statue, North Earl Street, Dublin, Ireland (*****9-4-1996*****) James Joyce Pub, Pelikanstrasse 8, Zurich, Switzerland. College: University (Dublin).

Leon Feuchtwanger (1884-1958) Power (1926) Born: Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Buried: Woodlawn Cemetery, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, California. College: Munich; Berlin.

Josephus (37-100) Born: Jerusalem, Israel.

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) The Prince (1532) Born: Florence, Tuscany, Italy. Buried: Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence, Tuscany, Italy. Casa di Machiavelli, via Scopeti, San Casciano in Val di Pesa, Tuscany, Italy.

W. K.Barrett (1847-1927) Born: Colston Bassett, Nottinghamshire, England.

Edward VI (1537-1553) Born: Hampton Court Palace, Richmond, Middlesex, London, England. Buried: Westminster Abbey, Westminster, London, England.

Anthony Hope (1863-1933) The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) Born: Clapton, Hackney, London, England. Buried: St Mary and St Nicholas Churchyard, Leatherhead, Surrey, England.

College: Balliol (Oxford)

January 2019

A List: Cardinal Newman--Apologia Pro Vita Sua......................................198/430
B List: Percival Christopher Wren--Beau Geste..........................................248/418
C List: Toni Morrison--The Bluest Eye..........................................................56/216


This is my second Cardinal Newman book. I think that, other than Carlyle, he is the celebrated Victorian writer whose work translates least well to the mentality of our present age. The problem is no doubt as much with me as it is with him. I was expecting a "spiritual biography" in either the ancient or more modern sense of the writer struggling with his sinful or unbelieving nature and encountering God and his Works at a very intense and intimate level. I was not expecting rather in-depth accounts of theological disputes among once prominent but now largely obscure clergymen and scholars stretched out over the course of decades, which is what constitutes the bulk the Apologia to this point. Foolish me. Newman was a serious man, or at least he took his avocation deadly seriously. However the questions that were all-consuming to him are not ones that I care very much about.


One wonders what Newman would think if he could see his old Oxford today.






I will do a longer report on Beau Geste of course when it is finished. I will say that, whatever its defects as literary art, it has a quality of fun and high-spiritedness about it that I like a great deal, and one that is pretty rare. One of the reasons I like the IWE list is that it does seem to have a higher percentage of books of this character than other good-for-you kinds of lists do.


Toni Morrison, whom I have not read before, is one of those writers who seems to have both more extreme supporters and detractors, and to come with more restrictive critical boundaries as far as what is considered acceptable to say about her, and even the tone in which to say it, depending on who you are, or who you think you are, than is usual, which is somewhat unfortunate. This is her first book, and my impression is that it is the most conventional and least disturbing of her works. The style is (to me) not far off from the careful, tight minimalism that was in vogue around that time, and is a good example of it. It is perhaps inevitably to someone from my perspective a sad book, because the lives in it are largely unrelieved by anything that I would find appealing, but I will say that every sentence in it thus far has a certain weight and holds my interest and attention, which is a noteworthy occurrence.

 

Anthony Trollope--Barsetshire Chronicles: The Warden (1855) and Barchester Towers (1857)

Somehow in the course of my more than three decade reading career I had never happened to read anything by Trollope, the favorite Victorian novelist of mildly sardonic middle-aged men throughout the English-speaking world, until now. Of these first two entries in the Barsetshire series, the IWE introduction states that "together they are considered the best work Trollope did." Conventional wisdom seems to further consider Barchester Towers to be the superior of the two, and it is more than twice as long and has naturally many of the same agreeable qualities as its predecessor. However I found that it ran out of steam somewhat in the last one hundred pages, something Trollope himself took two pages out of the narrative to lament at the beginning of Chapter LI:


"These leave-takings in novels are as disagreeable as they are in real life...Promises of two children and superhuman happiness are of no avail, nor assurance of extreme respectability carried to an age far exceeding that usually allotted to mortals...Do I not myself know that I am at this moment in want of a dozen pages, and that I am sick with cudgeling my brains to find them?"


The Warden, in contrast, coming in at just under 200 pages, struck me as a nearly perfectly executed novel. It is humorous and has numerous contrasting and interesting characters, an unusual plot full of constant unexpected twists and ironic turns right up to the very last page. Barchester Towers continues in the same vein for at least its first half, after which it falters somewhat in inventiveness and energy, and becomes on the whole a much more conventional book.


The IWE somewhat oddly singled out Mr. Harding, the 'warden' of the first volume, as "an excellent creation." While a more prominent and rounded character in The Warden than it its sequel, this character's role is really that of the ordinary retiring sort of man who wants to be comfortable and avoid conflict in his life contrasted against a gallery of much more strident and combative personalities. The imperious Dr. Grantly was my personal favorite character, and numerous of the other personages with highly developed egos possessed qualities that contributed to the general merriment of the books (as will be seen in the extensive excerpts below) in a way that Mr. Harding did not.


From the introduction to the Modern Library edition, written by A. Edward Newton of 501 N 19th Street in Philadelphia, the founder of the Trollope Society, on March 1, 1936:


"Men of my age do not laugh much or heartily...they have seen and known too much of the world."


I cannot find now, if it is to be found, the exact age of Mr. A. Edward Newton when he wrote this essay. He does not appear to be less than fifty years of age at least, however. As noted elsewhere the claim made in the quote above is not infrequent among Trollope's contemporary admirers. I myself do not laugh so much, though comparatively I have not seen so much of the world, and seem to know even less. I still like the books, however.


The Warden, Chap. III:


"The bishop did not whistle: we believe that they lose the power of doing so on being consecrated; and that in these days one might as easily meet a corrupt judge as a whistling bishop..."

Looks like Mr. Harding and Eleanor


Chap. V


"Many a man can fight his battle with good courage, but with a doubting conscience. Such was not the case with Dr. Grantly. He did not believe in the Gospel with more assurance than he did in the sacred justice of all ecclesiastical revenues."


Examples of the strain of humor to be found throughout this book.


Chap. VI


"...and Mrs. Goodenough, the red-faced rector's wife, pressing the warden's hand, declared she had never enjoyed herself better; which showed how little pleasure she allowed herself in this world, as she had sat the whole evening through in the same chair without occupation, not speaking, and unspoken to."


Chap. VII


"They say that faint heart never won fair lady; and it is amazing to me how fair ladies are won, so faint are often men's hearts!"


This is England (a romantic country).


Article in the influential newspaper The Jupiter:


"We must express an opinion that nowhere but in the Church of England, and only there among its priests, could such a state of moral indifference be found."


This prompted me to note at this point that "This book is too funny."


Chap. XVIII


"A clergyman generally dislikes to be met in argument by any scriptural quotation; he feels as affronted as a doctor does, when recommended by an old woman to take some favourite dose, or as a lawyer when an unprofessional man attempts to put him down by a quibble."


Mr. Popular Sentiment is a pretty good spoof on Dickens.


Chap. XIX


"If you owe me nothing', and the archdeacon looked as though he thought a great deal were due to him, 'at least you owe so much to my father."


Chap. XX


"And here we must take leave of Archdeacon Grantly. We fear that he is represented in these pages as being worse than he is; but we have had to do with his foibles, and not with his virtues."


Now into the Barchester Towers Chapter II:


"Some few years since, even within the memory of many who are not yet willing to call themselves old, a liberal clergymen was a person not frequently to be met. Sydney Smith was such, and was looked on as little better than an infidel."


Chap. III


"Mrs. Proudie determined that her husband's equipage should not shame her, and things on which Mrs. Proudie resolved, were generally accomplished."

This is the first hit in a search for "anthony trollope sexy"


"It is not my intention to breathe a word against the character of Mrs. Proudie, but still I cannot think that with all her virtues she adds much to her husband's happiness...All hope of defending himself has passed from him; indeed he rarely even attempts self-justification; and is aware that submission produces the nearest approach to peace which his own house can ever attain."


Chap. VI


"There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilised and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons...Let a professor of law or physic find his place in a lecture-room and there pour forth jejune words and useless empty phrases and he will pour them forth to empty benches...A member of Parliament can be coughed down or counted out...But no one can rid himself of the preaching clergyman."


Chap. VII


"Doubting himself was Mr. Harding's weakness. It is not, however, the usual fault of his order."
All of these snippets are things I laughed at within the context of the story. I found this book entertaining and a welcome addition to the universe of the Victorian English novel such as it is constructed in my mind, but I do not have very much to say about it.


"Among these Mr. Quiverful, the rector of Puddingdale, whose wife still continued to present him from year to year with fresh pledges of her love, and so to increase his cares and, it is to be hoped, his happiness equally."


Mr. Quiverful had fourteen children. He belonged to that category of men who was overwhelmed by the results of his fecundity rather than a forceful director of it.


Chap. IX


"The Stanhopes would visit you in your sickness (provided it were not contagious), would bring you oranges, French novels, and the last new bit of scandal, and then hear of your death or your recovery with an equally indifferent composure."


I sometimes wonder whether my own children aren't going the way of the Stanhopes in some areas.


Chap. X


"He felt that if he intended to disapprove, it must be now or never; but he also felt that it could not be now."


Chap. XI


"German professors!' groaned out the chancellor, as though his nervous system had received a shock which nothing but a week of Oxford air could cure."


"I was a Jew once myself', began Bertie."


I laughed for five minutes at this line.


Chap. XIII Too fitting for me to let pass by.


"A man is sufficiently condemned if it can only be shown that either in politics or religion he does not belong to some new school established within the last score of years. He may then regard himself as rubbish and expect to be carted away. A man is nothing now unless he has within him a full appreciation of the new era; an era in which it would seem that neither honesty nor truth is very desirable, but in which success is the only touchstone of merit. We must laugh at everything that is established."

"It is very easy to talk of repentance; but a man has to walk over hot ploughshares before he can complete it; to be skinned alive as was St. Bartholomew; to be stuck full of arrows as was St. Sebastian; to lie broiling on a gridiron like St. Lorenzo!"


Chap XIV This is my favorite passage/quote in the whole book.


"Mr. Harding did not like being called lily-livered, and was rather inclined to resent it. 'I doubt there is any true courage,' said he, 'in squabbling for money." "If honest men did not squabble for money, in this wicked world of ours, the dishonest men would get it all; and I do not see that the cause of virtue would be much  improved."


Chap. XIX


"They habitually looked on the sunny side of the wall, if there was a gleam on either side for them to look at; and, if there was none, they endured the shade with an indifference which, if not stoical, answered the end at which the Stoics aimed."


Chap. XXX (trying to move things along a little)


"How easily would she have forgiven and forgotten the archdeacon's suspicions had she but heard the whole truth from Mr. Arabin. But then where would have been my novel?"


Chap. XXXIII


"In truth, Mrs. Proudie was all but invincible; had she married Petruchio, it may be doubted whether that arch wife-tamer would have been able to keep her legs out of those garments which are presumed by men to be peculiarly unfitted for feminine use."


Chap. XXXV


"The quality, as the upper classes in rural districts are designated by the lower with so much true discrimination, were to eat a breakfast, and the non-quality were to eat a dinner...a subsidiary board was to be spread sub dio for the accommodation of the lower class of yokels..."


Chap. XXXVII


"Wise people, when they are in the wrong, always put themselves right by finding fault with the people against whom they have sinned. Lady De Courcy was a wise woman; and therefore, having treated Miss Thorne very badly by staying away till three o'clock, she assumed the offensive and attacked Mr. Thorne's roads."


Chap. XLIII


"People when they get their income doubled usually think that those through whose instrumentality this little ceremony is performed are right at bottom."


All right, that is enough. Thanks for the memories, Trollope. You don't appear again on the IWE list and the GRE test book seems to ignore you altogether, so it is possible our paths will never cross again, though I hope that by some mechanism they shall.

The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge


Some very weird entries in this Challenge.


1. Jennifer Nielsen--A Night Divided...........................................................245
2. Daniel Pool--What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew............163
3. Robert Gates--A Passion For Leadership................................................136
4. F. Scott Fitzgerald--Short Stories...............................................................68
5. Fyodor Dostoevsky--The Possessed...........................................................56
6. Anthony Trollope--The Last Chronicle of Dorset......................................39
7. Eugene Pogany--In My Brother's Image....................................................30
8. Mary Elizabeth Braddon--Run to Earth......................................................14
9. Will Self--Shark..........................................................................................11
10. The Whole Family: A Novel by Twelve Authors.........................................7
11. Ireland & the British Empire (ed. Kenny)..................................................2
12. The Trollope Critics (ed. Hall)....................................................................1
13. Dr Heinrich Graetze--Influence of Judaism on the Protestant Reformation.0
14. Walter Besant--London...............................................................................0
15. James Peebles--Compulsory Vaccination: A Menace to Personal Liberty..0
16. John Keefe--Exploring Careers in the Sun Belt...........................................0
17. R. D. McMaster--Trollope & the Law..........................................................0
18. Harold Bloom--The Victorian Novel............................................................0


Qualifying Round


#18 Bloom over #15 Peebles


The Peebles book, though doubtless spectacular, is not in wide circulation.


#16 Keefe over #17 McMaster


The unavailability of either book and the lackluster interest I have in McMaster's subject matter allows the higher seed to advance here. \

Round of 16


#1 Nielsen over #18 Bloom


Nielsen is a children's book about the Berlin Wall. I changed my mind after initially giving Bloom a close victory.


#2 Pool over #16 Keefe
#3 Gates over #14 Besant


No library representation for Besant.


#4 Fitzgerald over #13 Graetze
#5 Dostoevsky over #12 The Trollope Critics
#6 Trollope over #11 Ireland and the British Empire
#7 Pogany over #10 The Whole Family
#9 Self over #8 Braddon


Final 8
#9 Self over #1 Nielsen
#2 Pool over #7 Pogany


Pogany is a lot shorter, but it isn't available at my library and it's a Holocaust-themed book. I wimped out on it at the last minute.


#6 Trollope over #3 Gates
#4 Fitzgerald over #5 Dostoevsky


My particular mood at the time of the match, nothing more. Fitzgerald has appeared several times in the tournament without winning.


Final 4


#9 Self over #2 Pool


While the Pool deserves a run, it doesn't deserve a run all the way to the final.


#4 Fitzgerald over #6 Trollope


I didn't want to read the 6th and final book of the Barsetshire Chronicles without having read #s 3, 4 and 5 if I can help it.


Championship
#9 Self over #4 Fitzgerald
Self is a contemporary writer of some repute. A specific edition of Fitzgerald's stories was not denoted for the competition, a complete collection runs upwards of 700 pages, and I often have occasion to read some of his stories in my other systems, so I am going to give the Self book a try.