A day without murder; reviews of Chekhov and David Lodge's Author, Author

To quote from my own writing on crimespace,

Crime fiction is such a pleasure, the psychology of this sometimes troubles me (but I know I can quit whenever I want to).

So today I prove that I really can quit whenever I want to. Today is a day for other types of fiction.

First, a quick hit: I began reading Chekhov's collected short stories* the other night and was immediately hooked by Chameleon. Chekhov only needed three pages to create and define an entire world, using a dog bite as the device. Utterly brilliant, highly recommended. (My kids, age 12 and 14, didn't get it when I read it to them- let's blame it on the presentation).

*Anton Chekhov's Short Stories, the critical edition, W. W. Norton, 1979, NY.

Two significant books from favorite authors of mine are Author, Author by David Lodge and To The Hermitage (TTH) by Malcolm Bradbury. They both treat their subjects in detail, though TTH is a bit heavier going at times. TTH seems to dwarf Author, Author, though it is only 117 pages longer, with a count of 498 (and somewhat denser type). These reviews are more than my usual impressionistic overviews (or less, let me know!) in that I have referred to the texts to check facts. Note: TTH will be reserved for a later post given the length of the text below.

Author, Author is the fictionalized story of Henry James, who looks back from his deathbed (d. January 2, 1916) on the last 30 years of his life as a prolific writer. David Lodge takes little liberty with history and we learn a great deal about the relationships between James and his friends. Seem like a sleeper? Not on your life. There are many thoroughly captivating aspects to the book, not the least of which is the story of how James struggled to be a success and never quite made it. While geniuses who were never appreciated during their lifetime are nothing new, it was a shock to me that James was considered almost a failure by his own family, who looked to Henry's brother, William, for their shining star.

We learn from Author, Author about the financial struggles that James endured, about his playwriting (which was unknown to me- I must have gone to the wrong schools), and about his friendships. The financial difficulties should not be downplayed- one of the greatest writers in the history of the English language sold few volumes of most books and was forced constantly to think up new, attempted, money-making ventures. James was very aware of how his reputation had not ascended relative to others', in discord with the quality of his work. This should be a lesson to us all (fill in your own portentous thought here).

In an episode that made him proud of his best friend yet caused him secret pain, Henry James was even overshadowed by that friend, Gerald Du Maurier, a cartoonist for Punch and rather an accidental novelist of significantly and admittedly lesser talent, who happened to write the immensely popular novel for which the term "bestseller" was coined. Du Maurier's book, Trilby, was so successful on both sides of the Atlantic that it became a stage show and introduced new words to common usage in addition to "bestseller", namely "Svengali" (the character created by Du Maurier) and "trilby" itself (a type of hat that really came from the stage show, where it was worn by central character Trilby O'Farrell, the tone-deaf model who became a wonderful singer under the spell of the hypnotist, Svengali). Trilby may no longer be in common use, but I certainly knew it was a hat, and, at least up to my generation, Svengali was a well-known character and character type, even if his origins were obscure to many. Du Maurier was somewhat sheepish about his success, at least with his friend James. Unfortunately, we see good evidence that the celebrity accompanying Trilby ruined Du Maurier's health and led to his premature demise.

The stereotypically-prejudiced description of the Jewish hypnotist, Svengali, as an evil opportunist should not go unmentioned.

There is much to learn in Author, Author about the other friendships of Henry James, and about his persona, which was restrained and constrained by the behavior of gentlemen, at least as James perceived it should be. He was of course American, but this may have been hard to believe given his adoption of upper-class English habits.

Part of the additional fascination that Author, Author held for me came from the links to the familiar and all the way up to my own lifetime: namely George's granddaughter, novelist Daphne Du Maurier (see Rebecca, The Birds, Don't Look Now, and more, both the books and films: Daphne Du Maurier), and also to the tragic story of George's four doomed grandsons who were adopted by J. M. Barrie and who inspired his play, Peter Pan (see: J. M. Barrie).

© James K. Bashkin, 2007

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David Lodge and Malcom Bradbury

Via Mark Vernon’s philosophy and life blog, I found the great article describing some of David Lodge’s interactions with his contemporary, colleague and friend, Malcolm Bradbury. This sheds some nice light on the two authors and I’m citing it to accompany my previous posts on Bradbury and Lodge.

Technorati Tags:david lodge, malcolm bradbury, mark vernon, philosophy and life, fiction, u.k.
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All posts have been updated- more links and text

Please note that I have copy edited all posts, improved content and added promised links (along with new-found links). Thanks for all the continued feedback. I guess blogs don't really work this way, so I'll have to start getting it right the first time, but given the state of things, there will be a few more global updates. The Skull Mantra (Eliot Pattison) and The Murder Room (P. D. James) and Nick Hornby's reviews remain the only work that has received long(ish) treatment, with text added on Robert Wilson, Philip Kerr, David Lodge and Lawrence Durrell, among others.

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A quick listing of authors to check out (or devour completely)

John le Carré is still a major force- Absolute Friends, for example, is required reading, and A Perfect Spy is terrific. His "post-classical period" books do not disappoint, and his "classical period" of Cold War writing is unparalleled. The thing is, when the world changed, he noticed. How many world leader's can you say that about?

Do you ever wonder what would you be like if you happened to be born in a different country, say one dominated by a different religion or political philosophy? This is a question for readers.

Alan Furst. Alan Furst. Some books are connected more than others (some aren't "connected" at all)- reading in sequence is advised. He is a man who refuses to bend to the demands of the central office in Hollywood when it comes to clean and neat endings. Hat's off to him.


Dust off some Graham Greene every now and then. I found the New Yorker review of his authorized autobiography to be hilarious, though one does feel sorry for its author. Be sure to watch The Third Man, also, which perhaps the #1 film of all time- its screenplay was written by Greene.

Lawrence Durrell is someone whose writing I spent a lot of time with in the 70's and 80's. I met him at Blackwell's in Oxford. Read it all, the poems, the novels, non-fiction. Tunc has a scene of stunning betrayal in it that really took my breath away, and I can still remember every bit of it, 30 years later. Oddly enough, I still haven't finished the sequel, Nunquam. With "Larry", the whole is sometimes less than the sum of the parts, but the parts, all of those wonderful sentences and paragraphs, are to die for.

Michael Connelly. Just read them all if you like crime fiction.

Faye Kellerman. Read them all, too. Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus nail the bad guys wherever they go. Lot's of great information about mixed marriages, conversion, marital compromise, and Judaism. Preferably, read them in the order published.

Richard Russo: Empire Falls, The Risk Pool and Nobody's Fool are examples of the best fiction around. Straight Man is a departure in style, and it is so funny that I laughed out loud constantly while enjoying it.

Malcolm Bradbury. Rates of Exchange is another book for belly laughs, though it helps to have a sense of England, Europe and European languages (you don't have to speak them, just make sure you've read an article or two on them). Is that really true, from "though" on? Let me know! There may be some Bradbury fiction I haven't read, but I can't think of it, so I'll be working up a number of mini-reviews.

David Lodge. I read Changing Places in 1977 just after moving from California to England (for 5 years). Perfect timing (I also read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis at the time). Though I was a little young to be Professor Morris Zapp in the flesh, there were parallels between 1969 and 1977 (I arrived to protests about the Shah of Iran by masked Iranian students). Some of the bits about figuring out life in England were contemporaneous for me any the book character I was reading about. I guess some of Lodge's fiction (Nice Work?) went on television in the U.K., which means I don't know what (what to tell me?), except it parallels the opera singing vs. dancing pectorals on X's got Talent, X being America or England (I don't really know the formal names of these shows, so bear with me or bring me up to date, please). I hope he made a good living off it. I think I've read all of his fiction, too, except I couldn't take Ginger, You're Barmy, so that's a lot of reviewing to do.

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