This year The New York Times Book Review celebrates 125 years of doing just that which its title suggests. During that time, one may imagine it has made and broken enough writers, made many a reader’s heart beat faster, and some to break – over person or product of passion. Enough books lauded, quickly to be relegated to obscurity; some dismissed – or simply missed – now with a place in the realm of classic; but often simply the right words found at the right time – by reviewer and reviewed alike.
There are probably reasons not to have a NYT subscription, but an interactive pieces like this, which in tracing the years of the Book Review also, by the by, passes review on the changing cultural parade of a whole century plus some years more, and Paral Sehgal’s essay “Reviewing the Book Review”, are not amongst them!
There will surely be much more to look forward to during the year as The Review dives into its archives and appraises its history, and considers its role in the complicated literary and cultural present and in the ensuing years.
With the success of Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half last year (which I wrote about here), it could hardly surprise that Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel would resurface and be talked about again, and therefore appropriate that Bennett be at the centre of this T Book Club event.
Not just about Passing, Brit Bennett also speaks on the person Nella Larsen, beyond the writer, and the complicated paths her life took. After years of obscurity – the NYT famously overlooked her death in 1964 – Larson was rediscovered by feminist academics during the 1970s, and given place amongst the (mostly male) Harlem Renaissance. Interest in Larsen has been sustained through the ensuing years, including what Darryl Pinckney calls a definitive biography in 2006 by George Hutchinson, which he reviewed at The Nation upon publication. I mention the biographical information (via Pinckney and Wiki) only because, it seems to me, the oddness – or, the inconsistencies – of Larson’s life are not dissimilar to those to be discerned in the novel.
Three African American women in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, ca. 1925
But, that is the thing with the unreliable; it titillates, seduces and ultimately leaves –has to leave – some things unresolved. And so it is with the voice of Nella Larsen speaking to us through Irene Redfield. I recall Brit Bennett mentioning Irene’s world to be a rare example of a historical depiction of middle-class Black America, and it is this term “middle-class” that perplexes me; but that is generally so, for its definition is very dependent upon context – in place and in time – and neither being American nor clear on the historical demographics of New York, I may have a different understanding of a socio-economic scale. And so I am left to be wowed at what a middle-class that must have been in Harlem in the 1920s! The Redfieds for instance: doctor, wife; juggling social calendar and committees; entertaining and being entertained by literary luminaries; trips abroad, private schools; upstairs, downstairs; separate bedrooms (which I mention because of the spatial factor – what it says about the relationship between Irene and Brian is another matter!); housemaid, cook. Many of these are attributes I find difficult to relate to the middle-classes – somewhat too uppity, to my mind! Is the Harlem of her novel that in which Nella Larsen lived, the society to which she aspired? Or has she over-imagined both?
Only a few days ago I completed reading, in German translation, Sue Prideaux’s quite wonderful Nietzsche biography I am Dynamite! Explosive is it not, neither in the physically reactive sense nor posing as celebrity exposé, but rather a fabulously choreographed display of fireworks in a night sky – tantalising in sight and sound, a vivid array playing against the dark expanse; up there with a whoosh, brilliant and pointed in the ascent, hanging tenuously in the heavens, then falling fast and with a fizz, fading to nothing…
Should God be dead, nothing beckons from an afterlife thus denied, but neither Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche nor his legacy are nothing.
Like many – or most – I have not read Nietzsche and, like just about as many, those thoughts I have had in passing have been heavily compromised by the association of his person and philosophy with Hitler and Nazis and everything that implies – a false premise it now seems clear to me, neither of his making nor intent. Also, I should say, I have been just as aware of enough voices over the years pleading a case for Nietzsche and seeking to free him from the abuses of history, but these included complex philosophical arguments beyond most (read as: me!), and so one is (again, read as: I am!) left with the baggage of Halbwissen.
Pub. Tim Duggan Books, 2018.
For that reason I don’t dare delve too deep here, but because I enjoyed reading it so much, I must put down some words of recommendation, and insist that Prideaux’s book is absolutely not an academic philosophical treatise, though the philosophy is there for those who wish to look, and only demands an interest in the subject – sympathy for him is assured to follow; for all but the most hardened anti-Nietzchean.
No, not sympathy for the devil, but for a long dead, white man (characteristics seriously out of vogue!) of stellar intellect; an original thinker and non-conformist who struggled with physical and mental disabilities most of his life (the precise nature of which remain unclear), burdened with a despicable family – most especially sister Elisabeth, so instrumental in the perversion of his ideas and work. And charming and funny he could be – I’m sure Prideaux didn’t invent these traits; she found them and relays them on to her readers.
Should God be dead, what is there but to live a life; joyful and rich in experience and pleasures. And these pleasures Nietzsche seeks, in his writing life, in the choices he makes, and the friendships he fosters.
In speaking of these friendships, it is interesting that threesomes seemed to play an important part in Nietzsche’s life – and were always doomed to failure; whether with his mother and sister or in his relationship with Lou Andreas-Salomé and Paul Rée. (How I want to believe Andreas-Salomé could have saved him, but probably not.) But what I found especially fascinating, was the saga (it had to be a saga I suppose!) surrounding Nietzsche’s quite extraordinary friendship with Richard and Cosima Wagner. So wonderfully rendered by Prideaux; to be imagined, the brilliance of this triumvirate and their quest for a Dionysian alternative to the rational Zeitgeist. Alas, short-lived; away from the idyllic Tribschen, and driven by their conceits and obsessions with all things Bayreuth, the Wagners’ anti-Semitic, anti-French, even anti-European sentiments, which had increasingly irritated Nietzsche, are intensified to embrace a virulent German nationalism that was contrary to all the cultural ideals to which the three had once aspired. Conspired. Suffice to say, it becomes clear that the relationship is not going to end well, and it doesn’t.
“The Custom of the Country” by Edith Wharton (1913)
Edith Wharton, if she was ever out of vogue, is now very much ‘in’ again – talked and written about, her stories adapted to screen. Not so long ago I wrote about House of Mirth, and have recently been prompted (see the embedded video) to read her 1913 novel The Custom of the Country; and, unlike the aforesaid and The Age of Innocence both of which I know well, for the first time.
A conversation with Claire Messud about Edith Wharton & “The Custom of the Country”
Written a dozen or so years after House of Mirth, the general contours of The Custom of the Country remain the same – powerful female heroines (are they?) and splendid (or splendidly despicable?) supporting characters; embedded in that particular East Coast milieu of the Gilded Age into which one is either born or gains admittance at great cost, and a graceful exit doomed to fail. But, however overtly similar, it would be wrong to suggest that Wharton is limited in her vision, locked within the same familiar template; for this later novel very well demonstrates how her own path in the ensuing years, culminating in a divorce and self-decreed exile on the other side of the Atlantic, informed her writing life. And despite affinities shared, Wharton’s heroines in these two novels are in opposite trajectories – in House of Mirth, Lily Bart’s once promising outlook is hurtling towards a tragic end, whilst in The Custom of the Country, the irrepressible Undine Spragg is on the ascendant – life as a series of career moves.
Undine is an anti-heroine I would say, a protagonist without virtue – beyond her beauty, feted by some and envied by all – and ruthless in her pursuit of advancement in society; resolute she is for sure, but vacuous and amoral. In a young nation, a hierarchy has already been established – between old money and new, inherited and earned. And though Undine may slip up or miss a step as she ascends the social ladder, when all seems lost, she (unlike Lily Bart) always manages to regain control and live for another day.
The title of the book is not peripheral, and does suggest one of the novel’s main themes – how class structures and behavioral norms operate in different countries. (A Wikipedia entry gives another interpretation, the veracity of which I can not confirm.) Customs are to be adhered to, or challenged, or simply ignored, and Undine successfully adapts each as befits a situation. Abiding to custom, often means deception, improvisation, manipulation; all wiles to which she is adept. Undine marries when she will, and divorces likewise; she keeps company that she shouldn’t for all to see or closeted from the prying eye; when in one place she pines for another, and then another. And that money grows on trees, is for her not an adage, but a wife’s expectation. More generally, there is a way of recognising her actions as a product of the custom of man (and country); as proffered by a Mr. Charles Bowen in a conversation with Mrs. Fairford (Undine’s sister-in-law), which I quote in length because it says so much:
“[…]you say his wife’s extravagance forces him to work too hard; but that’s not what’s wrong. It’s normal for a man to work hard for a woman—what’s abnormal is his not caring to tell her anything about it.”
“…But why? Because it’s against the custom of the country. And whose fault is that? The man’s again—I don’t mean Ralph I mean the genus he belongs to: homo sapiens, Americanus. Why haven’t we taught our women to take an interest in our work? Simply because we don’t take enough interest in THEM […]
“Why does the European woman interest herself so much more in what the men are doing? Because she’s so important to them that they make it worth her while! She’s not a parenthesis, as she is here—she’s in the very middle of the picture. I’m not implying that Ralph isn’t interested in his wife—he’s a passionate, a pathetic exception. But even he has to conform to an environment where all the romantic values are reversed. Where does the real life of most American men lie? In some woman’s drawing-room or in their offices? The answer’s obvious, isn’t it? The emotional centre of gravity’s not the same in the two hemispheres. In the effete societies it’s love, in our new one it’s business…”
The Custom of the Country, Chapter XV, Kindle Edition (location 1856-65)
Born February 18th, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison would have celebrated her 90th birthday today. She won’t be doing that of course, but very many far and wide will give pause for thought this day and raise a glass in her honour, and remember a most remarkable writer and woman.
…The questions [posed in a 2002 lecture] seem wholly relevant : “To what do we pay greatest allegiance? Family, language group, culture, country, gender? Religion, race? And if none of these matter, are we urbane, cosmopolitan, or simply lonely? In other words, how do we decide where we belong? What convinces us that we do?”
In everything Morrison wrote, she offered narratives that revealed the journeys of characters, specific but universal, flawed and imperfect, with a deeply American desire for freedom and adventure. One might say that because her characters were almost exclusively African-American, the quest to be free — in mind, body and spirit — was the consistent adventure. She was also a masterful crafter of windows; when you opened a book of hers, the worlds you entered were so rich with detail, you could feel the molecules around you change as if you’d just taken a long flight and were descending onto the tarmac in a town or city where you’d never been…
Veronica Chambers, The New York Times, Feb. 18 2021
The fine introduction by Veronica Chambers leads on to a selection of works, each accompanied by equally thoughtful text. For those, especially younger people who are encountering Toni Morrison for the first time, perhaps at college or of their own volition, the piece offers some guidance as to where to start, and for us others a reminder to return to Morrison again and again, and find in one of her stories or essays that which we only now “get” with the passing of time and an accumulation of knowledge and experience.
“Tom Stoppard – A Life” by Hermione Lee, pub. Knopf, 2021
I would not necessarily seek out a biography of Tom Stoppard, renowned as he may be and as interesting as his life has been and is (and tragically more so than even he realised for a long time); but when the biographer is Hermione Lee one’s curiosity must be piqued, and for reasons as noted in this very good piece in The New York Times in anticipation of the forthcoming release of Tom Stoppard – A Life in the United States. Firstly, while she has previously brought her craft only to women and secondly, only to the dead; Stoppard doesn’t fit the bill on either of those counts. It should also be said Stoppard pointedly sought out Lee, and not just because she is the best, but because he wanted it to be read – which sort of suggests he may have been thinking of a reader like me.
The NYT piece is about the Stoppard work to be sure, but more generally it is also very enlightening about Hermione Lee’s way of telling a life – ways (pl.) really, because for each she works at adopting a voice particular to that of her subject. The book has actually been out for some time in the UK, and this review in The Guardian is well worth a read.
“Love Letters: Vita and Virginia”, Vintage Classics, 2021
As things will have it, I am deep in Volume Three of Woolf’s diary, and therefore in the period when Virginia’s first tentative interest in Vita is beginning to evolve into something more. And though I have read some of these letters in the past in other collections, brought together and standing alone, this very affordable little tome is a must have!
Be its beginning in a matter of daring or of jest, by mistake or with deliberation, the act of passing, and in respect to racial identity, is not unique to the United States. But, with a relatively young history so defined by slavery and migration, it is the place that has long provided the most fertile ground from which to spring complex narratives of personhood – and to feed a hungry national imagination. And it is within this context, that Brit Bennett’s best-selling novel of last year The Vanishing Half finds its place.
“The Vanishing Half” pub. Random House (2020)
The title hints at where this novel may take the reader. Brit Bennett’s protagonists are the Vigne twins, Desiree and Stella. Twins are oft sought subjects in many branches of scientific research; for reasons that are as obvious as they are many. And most especially so should they be separated at birth; growing up under disparate socio-economic conditions, a nature versus nurture debate would be the consequence. However, as a fictional narrative device, twins with all their particular character attributes have been surprisingly neglected.
Bennett gifts us such a literary pair. Desiree and Stella, are not separated early in their lives, and so not the best fit for scientific experiment; in fact, they grow up together in small town Louisiana of the 1940s and 50s, intimately bound in one another’s shadow and shared experience, both bearing the trauma of witnessing as children the lynching of their father, wanting only to escape the cruel hand dealt to their mother. And, what a peculiar small town this Mallard is! Populated, and most deliberately so, by “coloured” folk determined to get less so as generations pass, and the home-town twins a shining example of do-it-yourself social engineering. A different sort of experiment. (I can’t help but wonder whether such a place as Mallard ever really existed, but it could be an imagined “coloured” – and uppity – version of Zora Neale Hurston’s Florida town of Eatonville in Their Eyes Were Watching God, which was inhabited and governed by Black people, and based on the real Eatonville that was the childhood home of Hurston. To digress: Now that is a novel I love, and must say something about sometime soon!)
Still together as teenagers, and on not much more than a whim, the girls flee their suffocating nest to the city of New Orleans. And, in search of what? Freedom, perhaps. Perhaps, not explicitly that for which their forbears had yearned for and fought for, but some how akin. As alike these light skinned pair physically, so different are they in temperament, but circumstances and chance then determine their fate – and that they will not share, for their ways now part. For the serious, reticent Stella it will mean leaving behind her very self; choosing instead a path paved with deceit, and for Desiree, in youth the so much more adventurous of the two, there will be only some years of adventure – ending badly, and back in Mallard. But both will bring forth a new generation; daughters who must make their own choices, but each burdened with those made by their mothers.
