Hervey Allen--Anthony Adverse (1933)

I finally finished my summer reading, the 1200+ page 1930s publishing phenomenon Anthony Adverse, a few days short of the start of autumn. In this I followed the adventures of the title hero and those connected with him from France to Italy to Cuba to Africa and back to Italy and across the Alps to the Rhineland and Paris and England and back to Paris and Spain and New Orleans and up the Missouri River into the unmapped depths of the American West and down again to Santa Fe and El Paso and Mexico City and finally back again to somewhere in what is now the Southwestern United States spanning the years from approximately 1776 to 1821. Against the backdrop of the ongoing European war, numerous immense fortunes are made, women wooed, slaves captured, sold and owned in massive quantities, and historical figures encountered. All of these various episodes and often the journeys between them are stretched out to a very leisurely length. The reader never feels that he is being forced to leave a scene too soon, even from Paris, nor can he complain that he is being rushed along the highways or oceans to arrive at the next theater of action in an unseemly haste. While the first hundred pages or so were weighed down by somewhat excessive artificiality and the last hundred dragged considerably, across much of the middle parts I was lulled into thinking the book might actually be better than its present reputation, that there might well be an argument for its being literature. Coming to the end and having to take it as a whole however its weaknesses became more readily apparent again. The main problem is that Adverse himself never develops into a particularly interesting or alive character by the standards of higher literature, though the possibility that he might be about to move part of the way there at least has the effect of carrying the reader through much of the narrative. The same is true of almost all of the major fictional characters, especially the women. The most vivid personality in the book is Napoleon, whose appearances are reminiscent of those he made in War and Peace, and other historical personages such as the Lafitte brothers of New Orleans, one of the early Rothschilds and the crowd at the decrepit court of the King of Spain, also make greater impressions than their invented counterparts. Another difficulty is that while enormous amounts of money are made via transatlantic commerce from slaves, sugar, cotton, Mexican silver and the like (often involving complicated transactions and banking terms that I struggled to grasp fully, though this is my peculiar fault), there is not a tremendous amount at stake in these speculations as far as the story goes apart from Anthony and all of his associates getting ever more fabulously rich. I guess part of the idea is to show the daring and nerve out of which great fortunes are born, but in most instances the protagonists are extraordinarily well situated and connected so as to get in on the opportunities that arise.

Claude Rains as Don Luis in the movie version.


Since Hervey Allen is not well known, I will note such scant biographical facts about him as I can find. He was born in Pittsburgh in 1889 and attended the University of Pittsburgh. He fought in World War I. He wrote an autobiography of Edgar Poe (Israfel, 1926) that was well-regarded in its day. After Anthony Adverse, he embarked on a series of novels about colonial America, of which three were published complete and part of a fourth. These sound like a slog to read. He died of a heart attack in 1949. Anthony Adverse sold an estimated 600,000 copies during the 1930s and was beloved by many of its readers. While many of its parts are interesting enough, I find it difficult to detect or commune with the quality that made people feel such affection for it in its time.


My notes on this book are not too extensive. It was very long, and there were several passages I liked but forgot to note and then was not able to find again.


p.97 "Sancho rejoiced as only a Spaniard can at finding himself on the back of a mule." The kind of humor we probably won't see again in our lifetimes.

p.416-17 "A stark naked, young negro boy, not at all embarrassed by a hearty morning erection, opened the gate." Probably needless to say, the black characters are mostly simple-minded, unless they are half-white, and then they are bitter and despise the black part of themselves, and lack the dignity and fierceness we have grown accustomed to seeing such characters usually depicted as having in modern artworks. While Allen failed many sections on the test of racial sensitivity, his description of the structure and organization of a slave ship with attention to telling details is actually one of the most effective in imprinting a vivid sense of the totality of the foulness and wickedness of this practice, to me anyway, that I have come across. It is especially strange to come across in the middle of a book where the hero is a major trafficker of human beings and in which even later on when he has moved to New Orleans he owns hundreds of slaves, which the author shrugs off as being more or less dictated by the conditions of the time and place if one expected to function there as a significant man, which motivation in this kind of book generally trumps human rights, at least until the hero has proven himself able to contend with the most forceful men of his time in the most competitive arenas, after achieving which he can let go of his slaves and other tokens of dominance if he feels the urge. It is long, but I should copy some of the section about the slave ship here, in case anyone else finds it of interest:


"The slaves were taken out by batches of ten in boats and canoes. As they stepped on the deck they were stripped of every rag; of even the smallest article they might still possess. Every bead and the tiniest fetish and charm went overboard. Buckets of water were then dashed over them and they were mercilessly scrubbed...The gangs were now marched forward and their shackles struck from them while they dried off and shivered. Cries and lamentations whether from children or adults were ruthlessly suppressed. The work proceeded with the greatest order and dispatch.


"Every slave was made to wash his mouth out with vinegar. As each approached the hatchway he was seized by a gang of tattooers, thrown over a spare spar and had three white dots tattooed on his back. This was the Gallegos mark which had been substituted for branding with a hot iron...


"The slaves were next separated and led below. Whip in hand the mates and boatswains superintended the stowing of the cargo. The women were stowed on the starboard side of the ship facing forward; the men on the port side facing aft. All lay with their heads in each other's laps and on their right sides as this was supposed to favour the action of the heart. A clear space along the centre of the deck was kept open for the guards and for other necessary passing to and fro.


"Between-decks the ship had been scrupulously cleared of every loose article from stem to stern. Wherever possible even the bulkheads had been removed. Short of pulling up a plank or ripping out one of the ship's timbers from its bolts, there was literally not a single article in the hold of La Fortuna that could serve the slaves as a weapon of any kind...


"In the dark cavern of the ship's hold fell here and there streams of pale daylight down the open hatches, each barred with a heavy iron grating against which a lion might have hurled himself in vain...


"Outbursts, or infractions of sanitary rules, quarrels or lamentations were promptly visited either by the canes of the mess-leaders or by the whips of the overseers...It was an absolute rule that no fire whether for lantern or tobacco could ever be taken below. So their nights were spent in pitch darkness when not even the overseers ventured among them, and their days in deep gloom."

Picture of the author.


p 422--One of Anthony's mentors, the fellow slave trader and Havana bon vivant Carlo Cibo, on how the days are passed there: "Por Dios, you will use three suits a day or more. Today--today in that costume you will do nothing! I shall do nothing. We shall sit here and talk, and drink, and smoke. We shall eat and sleep. What will be accomplished? Much! We shall have lived another day comfortably. No one can do more. Have you ever spent a day like that? I bet you, not. Try it."
p.666--"The bond between him and Anthony was one which, though nowadays rare, once developed in more heroic states of society perhaps the chief moral virtues in man. It was friendship based upon an essential compatibility in manful attitudes and pursuits; in war, hunting, barter, and the frank relaxations and conversations of the camp fire, the tent, and the town."


p.743--Humorous (to me) reference about the 1770s heyday of the Leghorn (Livorno) establishment "The Blue Frog", whether fictitious or not I do not know: "As far away as 'Strawberry Hill' Horace Walpole had learned how to coddle eggs in mulled wine." lol.


p.765--The ineffectual intellectual Toussaint when he realizes he isn't getting the woman he thought he was getting (he has been shouting at her bolted door) shortly before killing himself: "He heard his own voice. For the first time recognized it for something frantic and ridiculous; something which even the stones hurled back. It struck him down. He lay on the steps and writhed while his ego withered." I have to laugh out loud because otherwise the self-recognition of failed and inadequate manhood, especially in a book that is a celebration of exaggerated hyper-manliness, is too painful to contemplate.


p.854--Napoleon to the son of the exiled writer Madame de Stael, when he petitions for her to be allowed to return to France. "I do not want women about who make themselves men, any more than I want men who render themselves effeminate. What use is unusual intellectual attainment in women?...She has a mind; she has too much, perhaps. But it is a mind insubordinate and without curb. She was brought up in the chaos of a crumbling order and a revolution...It would be weak of me to permit it. The greatest curse of nations is weakness of will in the great-magistrate. The next is for him to be funny. The last and most fatal is for him to be serious and to permit others to make him seem funny...Sarcasm is the seed of anarchy."

The edition of the book that I had.


p.866--Some interesting lines about bankers in Paris circa 1801: "Quite distinctly the possessors and manipulators of capital were coming into their heyday. The Revolution which had ideally devoted itself to the 'rights of man' had in reality cleared the way for the unrestricted power of the capitalist...They felt themselves able to say to one another with truth, 'We are coming men.' Their class feeling was that of sharing an increase of power which was being daily conferred upon them by fate. That is one of the most potent feelings that unite men and force them to act together. They felt it strongly; they felt a growing air of triumph and mastery when they met together even informally."


I liked the way the drawn out and very busy last day in Paris was done. It gave brief nods to the possibility of sentiment, but even I have found that in reality last days in a place where has accumulated a decent amount of friends and other acquaintance tend to be a whirlwind of activity, almost a compression of all the time one has spent there, or at least the latest segment of it.


p. 1082--A local resident on the Louisiana Purchase: "If the smart Americans could only be kept out, lower Louisiana under the dons or the French might grow slowly, the only way anything worth while can grow, into a fine, mellow little country. Now we are going to have floods of democrats, oratory, humbug, Protestant anarchy, and the world and man for sale at the river mouth."


There is also a scam to rip off the Indians later on--"We can pay the Indians in banknotes and hold the coins as deposit. No one needs to tell the Indians how to cash the notes...It will be clear, clean profit." I need to get in with friends like this. Or needed to. It's a bit late now.


Befitting the book's contemporary popularity, there was a big budget film adaptation in 1936 starring Frederic March as Anthony, Olivia de Havilland, who seems miscast, as Delores, his aristocratic Spanish love interest, and the great Claude Rains as Anthony's nemesis Don Luis. Popular at the time, it is largely forgotten and rated as mediocre now. Since it is not readily available on any of the movie services I already have and I don't feel like paying $14 or $15 for a DVD of it, I'm probably going to pass on seeing it at this time.

I do love Olivia de Havilland.


Between this and Anna Karenina, I have spent about the last four months reading just two books. While the time in which I read Anna overlapped with a lot of emotional feeling, what with the end of the school and various family milestones and personal distractions that were affecting me, the summer months over which I read Anthony Adverse were fairly tranquil, and there were no outside the book experiences which I equated as being connected with the reading. Probably because it is not a great book compared to the other one, nor does it suggest all kinds of other connections and connotations with one's exterior life.


The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge






1. Secret Life of Walter Mitty (movie)......................................................3,235
2. Life: Season 2 (TV)..............................................................................1.147
3. Maria Augusta von Trapp--The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.......513
4. Peter Robinson--Children of the Revolution...........................................263
5. Ernest Becker--The Denial of Death.......................................................203
6. Paul Allen--Idea Man..............................................................................130
7. Margaret Walker--Jubilee.......................................................................101
8. Art That Changed the World (DK)...........................................................85
9. Safety Last (movie)...................................................................................75
10. Life and Times of Tim: Season 3 (TV)....................................................37
11. Leigh Michaels--The Wedding Affair......................................................20
12. Alps (movie)..............................................................................................9
13. Elizabeth Cadell--Royal Summons............................................................1
14. Peter H. Wilson--Holy Roman Empire 1495-1806:A European Perspective...1
15. Why Him? (movie).....................................................................................1
16. Mabel Esther Allen--Margaret Finds a Future.........................................0
17. Encyclopedia of Painting: Painters and Painting of the World, etc..........0
18. Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation (Speake & Bergin)...0
19. A History of Prison and Confinement in Africa..........................................0
20. The Un-Holy Bible (ed. Jonathan Gee)......................................................0
21. Bloomsbury Publishing Adult Rights Guide 2015......................................0
22. Zeina Karam--Life and Death in Isis..........................................................0




Play-In Round


#22 Karam over #11 Michaels
#12 Alps over #21 Bloomsbury
#13 Cadell over #20 Gee
#14 Wilson over #19 Prison and Confinement in Africa
#18 Encyclopedia of Renaissance over #15 Why Him?
#17 Encyclopedia of Painting over #16 Allen




Round of 16


#1 Secret Life of Walter Mitty over #22 Karam
#2 Life over #18 Encyclopedia of Renaissance


Both of these were entitled to upsets.




#3 Von Trapp over #17 Encyclopedia of Painting
#14 Wilson over #4 Robinson


Robinson is a genre book. Having tried some of these, I consider it established that I generally don't like them.


#5 Becker over #13 Cadell
#6 Allen over #12 Alps
#7 Walker over #10 Life and Times of Tim
#8 Art That Changed the World over #9 Safety Last


Elite 8


#14 Wilson over #1 Secret Life of Walter Mitty
#8 Art That Changed the World over #2 Life
#3 Von Trapp over #7 Walker


The Von Trapp was shorter. In truth the Walker, which looks like a fairly dense 1970s era book about race, is not something I am particularly up for at the moment.


#5 Becker over #6 Allen


In a pinch between books that I think were fairly even lengthwise, the philosopher has a slight edge over the billionaire memoir.




Final Four


#3 Von Trapp over #14 Wilson


The Wilson looks kind of like a school textbook. Also it isn't available at the library.


#5 Becker over #8 Art That Changed the World


Similar scenario to the other semi-final round match-up.


Championship


#3 Von Trapp over #5 Becker




A close call. I was very tempted to go with Becker, but given the disappointments I have had recently with the Challenge books--I couldn't even get through the Robert Heinlein book that won the last time out, much to my surprise, since he is something of a guru among the STEM crowd (obviously my mind is lacking something that would enable me to get him) I wanted something more safely in the vein of what I am likely to enjoy, since at this point in my life, improvement seems to be beyond me.

The winners in real life.