All is Vanity
Christina Schwarz

Ah, the struggling writer trying to get published. All is Vanity is one of those books. I actually tend to enjoy this kind of storyline, but wonder to myself while I am reading them whether or not the author will ever be able to write about characters who do something other than try to be writers. I think about Ann Patchett or Margaret Atwood or any other writer who really knows how to create fictional worlds that are more than just embellished autobiography.

Perhaps I am so aware of this kind of writing because it is probably all I would ever be capable of. When I attempted to write fiction it was all very autobiographical. I figured if I made the main character something other than a writer I could get away with it without ever having to admit borrowing heavily from my own life. A popular method for lazy or unimaginative writers. Another parallel between All is Vanity and my own feeble attempts at writing a novel is the fact that Schwarz’s main character is a thirtysomething writer who decides to skip over taking classes, or starting with short stories, or any other activity that might actually help her become a writer. Like I did, she also thinks that it is just a matter of applying yourself. Sit down and write. It will come. Margaret’s delusional goals, however, are different from mine in that she thinks she is going to actually write a great novel with all kinds of layered meaning and profound imagery. I never thought I would even try to do that.

But enough about me. I enjoyed All is Vanity but there is much that annoyed me as well. The basic plotline is that Margaret ends up using long emails from her best friend Letty as the basis for the novel she is writing. She takes whole scenes from her Letty’s life and writes them up as fiction without telling her. What’s worse is that she actually encourages Letty’s profligate behavior in real life to make the “fictional” Lexie more interesting. You can see where this one is going from about a mile away. You know at some point, that Letty is going to find out, blah, blah, blah. Kind of writes itself from that point on. All is Vanity also included lots (and lots) of epistolary material (email) that include a fair amount “quoted” dialogue. Regular readers will know that this is one of my pet peeves. People just don’t write emails that way.

Schwarz does do an amazing job showing through Letty how so many Americans have gotten themselves into such deep financial sh*t. The interesting thing is that Schwarz wrote about it about five years before the housing market meltdown made it impossible for folks to ignore their mountains of debt.

But finally, to show you just what a class act Schwarz is (although it might be her publisher’s fault) I am going to quote, in full, the author blurb inside the back cover of the book:

Christina Schwarz is the author of Drowning Ruth, a bestseller in both hardcover and paperback, which was selected for Oprah’s Book Club and optioned by Wes Craven for Miramax.She lives in New Hampshire.

Wow, where to start with that illuminating biographical sketch? Let me try, this could be translated to:

I sell lots of books, no really, I sell a mother lode of books, the numbers would make you blush, and by the way it might be made into a movie so I will eventually sell even more books. Oh, and I live in New Hampsire (big house, lots of land).

All really is vanity.

Iris Murdoch: As I Knew Her
A.N. Wilson

I’ve only read one other book by A.N. Wilson (his history of London) and didn’t really know much about him. What little I know now I picked up by reading his personal reflection of Iris Murdoch. Early on I took a dislike for Wilson. I am not sure what it was, but there was something about his attitude that annoyed me enough that I had bit of an anti-Wilson chip on my shoulder for the rest of the book.

Partly I was a little confused by the blurb on the front flap of the book: “Fifteen years ago, Iris Murdoch asked A.N. Wilson to be her biographer.” Ooh, sounds portentous. “This book is a tribute to the novelist he knew for thirty years.” Hmm, does that mean he turned her down, or is this book supposed to be that biography? After reading the whole book I still can’t answer that question.

The second thing that kind of rubbed me the wrong way is that Wilson seems to be, or has been, miffed at the two books Murdoch’s husband John Bayley wrote about her descent into dementia. It made me feel like a bit of chump for having been moved by Bayley’s account about the real life struggle of Alzheimer’s disease portrayed in both his books and in the film “Iris”. Wilson seems annoyed either because the film depicted the filth in which the aging couple lived or because it didn’t explain why they lived that way. But after reading the whole book I still can’t answer that question either.

By the end of the book I do understand some of the reasons Wilson is upset that Murdoch became a figurehead for Alzheimer’s awareness. She probably would not want to have been remembered that way. And perhaps it is a little unfeeling toward Murdoch’s legacy that a chair was endowed at Oxford in her name, but not for philosophy or literature but for Alzheimer’s. I am somewhat sympathetic to this point of view. But on the other hand I feel like no one has control over their own legacy and there was perhaps an opportunity for good to come out of her terrible situation. And frankly, I think that a caregiver to someone with Alzheimer’s has as much right to the story as the afflicted. Wilson seemed upset by the frankness with which Bayley tells the story. That it somehow took away Murdoch’s dignity. But I don’t buy that at all. I think Bayley’s books, although at times unflinching in their portrayal of the situation, were never gratuitous or inappropriate in their detail.

In this way Wilson gives the impression early on that Murdoch deserves better. One begins to think that his intent is to buff away all of Bayley’s smudges on Murdoch’s image. Yet there is much in Wilson’s book that does the opposite. He spends a lot of time talking about his mentor Bayley and a fair amount talking about himself. And what he says about Murdoch doesn’t add up to a particularly flattering portrayal. But he seems of two minds. He proclaims her genius now and then and talks about what a wonderful person she was, yet the overwhelming feeling I developed about Murdoch is that I don’t really like her much. And maybe I don’t like her books as much as I thought I did. Maybe the real issue is that Wilson is annoyed with Bayley showing Murdoch in an unflattering light because Bayley essentially beat Wilson, the “official” biographer, to the punch? Or maybe because Bayley sold a lot of books, yet I found Wilson’s for $1 on a “please take these books” cart parked outside the bookstore. You know, the kind of sale cart where the shopkeeper doesn’t even care what impact the weather might be having on the merchandise.

I didn’t hate the book but I also didn’t find it all that interesting. There is some insight into Murdoch’s reading likes and dislikes.

The Lord of the Rings she read and reread, enjoying detailed conversations about it with its author, or with Christopher Tolkien, the author’s son. She loved the Hornblower stories and the Patrick O’Brian sea stories, though she deplored the love interest and felt that Stephen Lefanu’s infatuation with Diana Villiers was soppy stuff which spoilt the excitement of the adventures. At mentions of the works of Olivia Manning, Elizabeth Taylor or Jean Rhys, let alone Penelope Lively or Margaret Drabble, she would merely smile or shake her head. She spoke, always, with love and respect of Elizabeth Bowen, her mentor, and A.S. Byatt, her disciple and interpreter, but she spoke of them as ‘beloved beings’. Bowen herself dissected the novels of contemporaries, read them closely, remembered what she admired about them. IM never spoke in this way about the work of female contemporaries.

I am not sure how enlightening this is about Murdoch’s tastes in fiction. It seems to speak more about what Wilson may not have known despite his 30-year friendship with Murdoch. He also tells us that Bayley loved Barbara Pym and read and re-read her frequently, but he didn’t seem to have much interest in, or praise for, Murdoch’s books.

I finished the book rather bored and unimpressed with Wilson. Unfortunately, I also finished it liking both Murdoch and Bayley less than I did when I started. If that was Wilson’s intent, then job well done. Thankfully it won’t keep me from reading the rest of Murdoch’s novels.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jackson

Always late to jump on the bandwagon, this one has been reviewed a lot in the blogosphere…

During the past month or so, I kept seeing these great Penguin covers on blogs across the Interwebs. I believe Penguin (in the UK at least) is using this general design for a range of modern editions, but the ones I kept seeing were for Shirley Jackson titles. Unfortunately, the copy of We Have Always Lived in the Castle that I stumbled across at a charity shop was an ugly American edition (as opposed to an ugly-American edition). For some reason Penguin thinks that we Americans can’t handle good graphic design. (Of course they may be right, but that is the subject of another post.) Despite its lame cover art (see below), I bought the book anyway. I figured I needed to discover myself what all the Shirley Jackson hubbub was about.

The only thing I knew about this book before I read it, was that it was a bit macabre, something good for Halloween. So I picked it up this weekend to see if I would get scared. At a slim 214 pages, WHALITC does manage to build quite a bit of suspense. I am glad I didn’t read the plot teaser on the back of the book. It wouldn’t have spoiled the book by any means, but not knowing the premise made the narrative all the more suspenseful in the opening chapters. The book opens with Mary Katherine (aka Merricat) Blackwood running errands in the small village near her family’s estate. But it is soon clear that, for Merricat, running errands is more like running a gauntlet. She goes about her business rather skittishly, hoping no one will notice her, plotting her route to have as little contact as possible with the townsfolk. Frankly, it reminded me a bit of when I was in junior high and would plan my day, in and out of school, so as not to come within shouting distance of anyone just waiting to call me a fag. And like my junior high days, Merricat is only partially successful in avoiding the teasing and vituperations cast her direction.

As the story unfolds we learn that Merricat lives an isolated life with her sister Constance and their invalid Uncle Julian. We also learn that Merricat is highly superstitious, burying objects all over their property and silently incanting “magic” words in the hopes of keeping them all safe. It isn’t long before we find out why the Blackwood’s are so isolated from society. Even though the back of the book would tell you, I am not going to. You will have to read it. Even once their secret is out to the reader there is much that is mysterious and just plain weird. The climax is brought about by the appearance of a long lost cousin whose presence threatens to upset the order of things for Merricat and presumably the others. Some things aren’t as they seem, but you wouldn’t be alone if you guessed ahead of time what secret still remained hidden.

At its essence WHALITC is a family drama with quirky characters, lots of dark secrets and denial, and an angry mob thrown in for good measure.

Ugly cover:

Manservant and Maidservant
Ivy Compton-Burnett

Until Simon over at Stuck In A Book had the idea to do an Ivy Compton-Burnett read along I didn’t really know anything about ICB. I had a vague notion that her books were a little quirky and her writing style an acquired taste. But those impressions suggest that I knew more about her than I did. There was even a moment before I got myself into all this when I wondered if ICB was a male with one of those once antiquated unisex names like Evelyn or Leslie. Although I have met my share of male Leslies here in the US, I think you would be hard pressed to find a male Evelyn. Then again, it is just as unusual in Britain. Maybe Evelyn Waugh was the only male Evelyn, ever. But suffice it to say, Ivy was a woman.

I think Simon first brought up the idea in late September but I didn’t get onboard until the middle of October. I wasn’t even entirely sure what a read along was. In the end my curiosity about ICB and the worry that I might be left out of something interesting got the best of me and I ordered my copy of M and M.

I am never a fan of having to write a plot summary, in fact in some ways I don’t like plot summaries full stop. I don’t want to know too much ahead of time. So I am going to let the jacket blurb give you the general idea:

[Manservant and Maidservant] focuses on the household of Horace Lamb, sadist, skinflint, and tyrant, a man whose children fear and hate him and whose wife is planning to elope. But it is when Horace undergoes an altogether unforeseeable change of heart that the real difficulties begin. Is the repentant master a victim along with his sometime slaves? What compensation, or consolation, can there be for the wrongs that have been done?

Horace could be the archetypal villainous parent, the wicked stepmother, if he wasn’t so humorous. The comparison that pops into my head is Basil Fawlty, John Cleese’s brilliant television character, who is a miserable human being, but so funny at the same time. Horace tries his best to make his children’s lives miserable but his interactions with these precocious little ones makes it clear that although he may have control over their daily comfort, he has no control over their hearts and minds.

Lamb’s household staff also play a role in M and M. Much like the fabulous 1970s television series Upstairs Downstairs, there are three parallel storylines in play. The upstairs storyline, the downstairs storyline, and the storyline that comes into being when those two worlds intersect. The relationship between Mrs Selden the cook and her kitchen maid Miriam reminded me a lot of the relationship between Mrs Bridges and Ruby on Upstairs Downstairs. Generally abusive but bordering on affectionate. The butler Bullivant, however, is no Hudson. He seems like he would be more at home in the servant’s hall in Gosford Park than 165 Eaton Place on Upstairs Downstairs.

Manservant and Maidservant is one of those books that I enjoyed, and I understood why I enjoyed it, but would be hard pressed to explain what it all meant. There are some sub-plotlines that seem to have no poinnt and I must admit I don’t fully understand everything that happened in M and M. I think I would need a discussion with others to tease out what it was all about, so I can’t wait to see what the others who participated in the read along have to say. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. The brilliance of the book, I think, is in the humorous writing. Horace receives a letter from his cousin Mortimer:

You told me not to write to you, but I am never so malicious as to take people at their word. It is almost like telling them that they have made their bed and must lie on it.

It is nice of you to miss me so much, when I wronged you under your own roof. But it was not my fault that I had no roof of my own, and had to do things under yours.

ICB is definitely a writer whose work I want to explore further. I am glad that I ordered her other favorite book A House on its Head when I ordered Manservant and Maidservant.

Howards End is on the Landing
Susan Hill

There are many in the book blogosphere who have loved this book. And there are many who thought they would love this book and then were kind of disappointed by it. Although there were moments of unalloyed joy as I read HEIOTL, I think I fall into the disappointed camp of book bloggers. Although, disappointed is probably too strong a word. It is a book about reading and books and cozy chairs and lists. What isn’t to love?

For those that may be reading about this book for the first time, Hill decides to limit her reading for a year to books that she already owns.

Much has been written by bloggers about Hill’s take on bookplates (she is against them) and book blogs (she is sort of against them). While I agree somewhat with Hill’s assessment that bookplates are largely unnecessary I don’t agree that they are for “posers”. Many who love to read, including Hill, not only love the content of books, but also love them as objects. Aesthetically pleasing fetishes that we not only love to read, but we also love to arrange, re-arrange, look at, hold, feel, and smell. Why is it surprising then that lovers of this particular kind of printed beauty might fall in love with an aesthetically pleasing bookplate?

Hill’s thoughts on the Internet (and by extension book bloggers):

The start of the journey also coincided with my decision to curtail my use of the internet, which can have an insidious, corrosive effect. Too much internet usage fragments the brain and dissipates concentration so that after a while, one’s ability to spend long, focused hours immersed in single subject becomes blunted. Information comes pre-digested in small pieces, one grazes on endless ready-meals and snacks of the mind, and the result if malnutrition.

The internet can also have a pernicious influence on reading because it is full of book-related gossip and chatter on which it is fatally easy to waste time that should be spent actually paying close, careful attention to the books themselves…

And since book-related gossip and chatter on the Internet is pernicious and is full of fragmented, small pieces of pre-digested ready-meals, Hill decides to publish 236 pages of fragmented, small pieces of pre-digested book-related gossip and chatter. Give them what they want, make your money, but somehow act like you are above it all. (Reminds me a bit of Jonathan Franzen’s bullshit moment in the Oprah book club. You are decidedly crass, and pedestrian, but I will take your money anyway, if only to teach you all a lesson.)

Some of the more enjoyable aspects of the book for me were all of the tales of encounters with famous authors. Even as a writer herself, I feel like Hill may have had more than her fair share of encounters with great writers of the recent past. Hill comes of literary age in a period and milieu where some of “the greats” were still alive and kicking. Imagine EM Forster dropping a book on your foot!

And then of course there are moments in HEIOTL when Hill writes about some of one’s favorites. Having recently read, and having absolutely loved, On the Black Hill, I was gratified to see Hill give Bruce Chatwin’s amazing work its due. But then there are other sections where she talks about authors unread by me or even unknown to me. Which could be a great thing, opening up new worlds to me, but Hill’s descriptions did little to incite my interest in the authors. There may be one or two I may now feel compelled to hunt down but none jump out at me. (For inspiring introductions to books and authors you never knew you wanted to read, I say check out Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust.)

Perhaps most disappointing to me was that I felt like there was a little bait and switch going on. Hill writes about going on a “year-long voyage through her books”. Yet there was very little to suggest that Hill actually did what she said she was going to do. Or, if she did, she has so distilled her year of reading from home into little snippets of literary musings, that the reader gets no sense of the actual journey. Much of what she writes has the smell of her life of reading and writing, and doesn’t describe a journey, at least not a new journey, at all. HEIOTL gives no sense of time passing, no moments of “it is only January 15th and I am already finding it hard to avoid that new book by X in the shop window” or “as Autumn arrives I am drawn to that copy of X that I stumbled across back in July” or something like that.

It is certainly Hill’s prerogative to favor a more abstracted look at her year-long journey rather than describe the journey itself. But she seems a little scattered and unwilling to commit to one approach over the other. Here and there Hill describes certain books or types of books being in certain rooms of the house. I actually appreciate this part of the narrative, it does suggest a journey and it is detail I find interesting. But as an organizing motif she doesn’t really follow through enough for it to really work. She confuses the issue in the final chapter when she writes about finally making it to the top of the house. “I am taking out far too many books. I need at least another year of reading from home.” Is she suggesting that the climb to the top of the house has been stretched out over a year and now she has reached the last room and won’t have time for all the books she is pulling off the shelves? And are we really to believe that her reading over the year was directed by a systematic and seemingly linear tour through the rooms of her house?

Perhaps Hill, wanting to write a collection of literary musings, decided she needed a clever hook or some kind of framework in order to sell the collection. I have no problem with that, but don’t lure me in with a plot device that I find fascinating only to ignore it once you start waxing rhapsodic about your tastes and experiences. Many of the chapters don’t even attempt to follow any premise other than “I want to talk about this author so I will”. In some parts of the book there is some sense of the chronological aspects of the year-long journey, but the mentions are few and don’t really provide the structure suggested in, or interest created by, the opening chapter. The main body of the book is a sometimes fascinating compilation of book-related thoughts and experiences Hill supposedly had during the year broken down thematically. But where is the journey I was promised?

And did anyone else get the feeling that she did a lot more re-reading than she did discovering new things hiding in her enormous collection of books? I have a vague memory of her opening up a few long ignored volumes. But I never really felt like she had any moments of real discovery. I am not the closest reader in the world so I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed something, but where were the “aha” moments? Her journey of discovery reads more like a description of her daily commute down a well-trodden, and entirely familiar, path.

The more I write about HEIOTL the more I want to read the book she promised, not the book she wrote.