#35 - For Whom The Bell Tolls

So after a 6-month break to mission through Vanity Fair, I got to return to Mr. Ernest Hemingway, with For Whom The Bell Tolls. Coming 11 years after A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway's writing style had definitely shifted from the beige prose I wrote about before. While the language is still dry, the sentences and paragraphs grew longer and more complex, with fewer clipped phrases. There were more digressions and asides, and more attention was paid to the inner monologues of not only Robert Jordan, our protagonist, but also a number of the other soldiers. (Right, plot summary: Robert Jordan is an American professor helping Spanish Communist guerrillas to fight the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War, by blowing up a bridge that is to be important in an upcoming battle. Hilarity ensues.) The broader writing was helped by the use of Old Castilian language for much of the dialogue - translated into English, it read as if they were speaking to each other extremely formally, with thee, thou and doest being scattered across a page. Expletives were also used quite well, with the foul-mouthed soldiers having their words tempered through translation and angry tirades seeming even stronger without the actual words being used. My personal favourite was "I obscenity in the milk of your mother", but that's just because I like how many different options it leaves. But other things were very much the same - the beginning and endings were both crafted to an exact goal, with one building the world and tones and the other bringing the pace down to a final still moment - and I'm glad they were, because in both books, they were beautifully done.

Another thing that remained the same was his treatment of women, and this is where I'm going to have to bring in some outside discussion. This article was posted: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/12/09/in_no_regrets_women_writers_talk_about_what_it_was_like_to_read_literature.html on my news feed, and being a good enlightened modern feminist man, I read and nodded along to the propagation of gender roles and inequality, but something still felt wrong. It specifically called out Hemingway, as well as Kerouac's On The Road, so it had clearly targeted a lot of books that I felt strongly about. So while I read this one, I wanted to try and see how it made me feel - towards women, and everything else. Lots of it was there - the love interest of the book, Maria, only lived to serve Robert, falling head over heels for him and seeming to exist only to let Robert examine his feelings on having a woman close to the battlefield. She wasn't treated as a person, and her rich back story was used as a starting point for more investigation of Robert. Unlike inner monologues from Robert, Anselmo, El Sordo, and more, there was no attempt to have her voice (or the voice of Pilar, the strong-willed older woman) drive the narrative. This was also the case with the creepy romance found in A Farewell to Arms, so I looked at some more of the similarities between the women. They were both women who were damaged by traumatic experiences (a lost husband and sexual abuse), they were both in vulnerable positions near a war front, and they both were obsessed with saying and doing whatever it took to please men that they loved, which they did within the first couple of meetings. Hemingway, very clearly, didn't understand these women - he says as much in A Farewell to Arms - but he was fascinated by them, and so incorporated them into his story as they affected him, as objects that influenced without being seen as equal, and as stories that were told to him by them. To have tried to create some sort of equal narrative between men and women in the book would have detracted from the single most important point of not only Hemingway's, but arguably any writer - to describe the "truth" as they see it, as purely and as clearly as possible. If women today feel excluded from the literary canon, it's because they were excluded. Hemingway didn't understand the women in his life, just as many female writers today don't seem to understand the men in theirs.

I'm already running over my optimal length for one of these, so I'll just skip to the ending - literally. The 43rd and last chapter of the book runs some 40 pages, a sizable chunk of the total length of 471. It runs continuously through the battle, and (SPOILERS aw who gives a crap if you're this far in you've probably read it and if not I've given you more than enough time to click away from the page go on click click away!) as it comes to the finish, I have never felt so immersed, in a cinematic sense, with the scene. It certainly helped that as I read about the horses galloping across the road, and the tearful goodbye, my sister was playing Let It Be on a tiny music box from her stocking. It got even more perfect as the family left the car and walked up to my grandmother's, leaving me sitting in the cold car as I read the last four pages, my body getting chilled as he waited for the end. And as I read about the standoff, I saw my breath hang in the air, listened to the stillness of a Canadian winter, and then closed the book. Dammit Hemingway, you did it again. Merry Christmas 2013, you son of the great whore.

10/10

#34 - Vanity Fair

Right off the bat, let's settle some things. Vanity Fair is a magazine currently in its fifth iteration as a magazine, with 2 British editions and 2 American editions coming before the current American edition, which started in 1983. The 4th iteration, the 2nd American edition, actually merged with and was absorbed by what remains today as Vogue. Before the first magazine was produced, there was this book, Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray. But the origin of all of these Vanity Fairs is the original, a setting in the John Bunyan book Pilgrim's Progress (#44 on my list), in which travelers are distracted by a never-ending festival of all of the worldly enjoyments of life, keeping them from moving further along the moral road. Thackeray's Vanity Fair is set in Napoleonic Britain, providing a very interesting contrast with Tolstoy's War and Peace, approaching from the East. The upper-crust society that Thackeray describes is filled with nepotism, alcoholics, superficiality and hypocrisy, all as part of his scathing social critique on the nobility of the time. With this, Thackeray established himself as one of the most popular writers of the era, matched only by Charles Dickens, whose fame has lasted significantly better.

Speaking of Dickens, this novel suffers from the same tragic flaw as both Dickensian works and War and Peace - it was published in serial form. Now, Tolstoy used the opportunity to expand the world he was writing in to epic proportions, but Thackeray instead used it to recite his favourite moral lectures and toss asides to friends and readers into the main thrust of the story. I've always disliked the style forced by the serial format, but here is the first place where I've truly wondered if it could remove artistic quality from the piece, and I think is does. Vanity Fair could have been one of my top books ever, but it should not be 951 pages (in my Wordsworth Classics edition, published 1992), not even close. With a team of good editors and a machete, this manuscript could have been easily reduced to 400, maybe as low as 250 pages, and the effects would have been so much purer. I'm not advocating Fitzgerald-like wordsmithing, but I am being convinced more and more that every word needs to have a purpose to belong on the page (I know, this is one of my wordiest and sloppiest reviews, but it's been a long semester).

That all said, there was true genius in the book, and that was in the clarity of his character work. The foibles, so important to his satire, were just realistic enough to keep the pressure on the message behind it. The subtitle of Vanity Fair is A Novel Without A Hero, but readers have since argued that that statement is purposefully gendered - implying that the Hero-ine is one of the two main female leads, Amelia Osborne (nee Sedley) or Rebecca "Becky" Crawley (nee Sharp). The pair are wonderful opposites, and both are enviable roles, which may be why there have been half a dozen adaptations of the book. Amelia is sweet and innocent and gentle, while Becky is clever and talented and determined. Becky's skills at satire, seduction and society mask a deeper, almost psychopathic disregard for other people. In fact, some interpretations go so far as to suggest she may have murdered another character in the close of the book. But many of the adaptations go out of their way to justify Becky's actions as a child of poverty whose drive for financial stability is understandable, even laudable. Personally, while I find Becky a compellingly twisted villainess, I wouldn't go as far as describing her as evil - were she born into luxury, she'd be no worse than a Daisy Buchanan. Amelia, on the other hand, I find more challenging. Her naivete and lack of subtext appears as warm and genuine, but in the end is entirely weak, vapid and simply...not worth the time. Dobbin, who longs for her as a "girl-on-pedestal" for much of the book, says as much in one of the book's best passages, of which there were many.

And there were many, and there was plenty of other great stuff too. But because Thackeray had to fill 20 issues of a magazine, he surrounded it with loads of filler, and because of that, what could have been a back-to-back 10/10 is instead receiving a -2 mark for being written in a stupid era/format, giving it:

8/10

#33 - A Farewell to Arms

When it comes to recommending real literature for a guy who doesn't love the subject for itself - who won't sit and gush over the layers of the themes and the structure of the dialogue - there aren't many big names. For women you have your Austens and Brontes and plenty in between. For men, there are a couple of newer ones - Chuck Palahniuk springs to mind - but most of the older books don't immediately spring to mind as "dude lit". Three Musketeers discusses jewelry and clothing an awful lot - Don Quixote has sappy poetic love stories - but hiding just on the verge of modern is the patron saint of manly literature, Ernest Hemingway.

There is no other way to describe Hemingway that doesn't involve his testosterone. He is, by every definition, a bad-ass motherfucker. Dude fought things, had sex with things, grew beards, hunted, drank, gambled, and managed to still appreciate the beauty of things before he stomped on them with his dirty black boots. This generally manliness transferred entirely to his writing - he speaks in short, gruff sentences, describing things simply and callously. It also extends to the dialogue - mono-syllabic discussions on war and religion. For a while, it seemed to me to be a weakness - there were no passionate speeches, or witty banter. Then came a passage right near the end, where Count Greffi plays billiards. On an old man, the wisdom of the short phrase suddenly became clear - the lines were sharp, and the point was made. Hemingway still found the time to be an imagist, but instead of flowery purple prose, it was a dingy beige.

The back of my edition of A Farewell To Arms speaks of a wonderful romance between Tenente Henry and Catherine Barkley. So when I got into their first romantic sections, I had to read the back again. THIS was romantic? Barkley and Henry exchange false <3's as they both use each other as something to lean on - the mood swings on both parties are signs of not only damaged people, but near schizophrenia. For people who have read it, I'm not just referring to the opening closed-eyes kiss. The entire relationship is a series of fantasies, without any real moments between them. In the end, I suppose, that's not the question. If their relationship disturbs me, that's one thing - but is it real, and is it well-written? And again, I have to say yes. The final stream-of-consciousness passage, as he sits and waits for Catherine's labour to end, was written by Hemingway as he waited for his own child to be born. That kind of raw connection to the text is what makes Hemingway's stiff, coarse language work, and work it did. I enjoyed all of it - I wanted to keep reading, I wanted to see Henry go more places, and meet more people. I don't know if A Farewell to Arms will end up being my favourite Hemingway novel, but it was my first, and because of it, it certainly won't be my last. So now joining Don Quixote, On The Road, Ulysses and Crime and Punishment as the 10/10 books on my list is...A Farewell to Arms.

10/10

#32 - The Three Musketeers

It was a dark and stormy night, I am too young to die, and all for one and one for all. These three cliches were all penned by one Alexandre Dumas...pere. You see, there happens to be two Dumas writers in the family, and these Frenchman wasted all of the aliases on their characters, and so had to settle for Sr. and Jr. But while Dumas (fils) was busy scribbling out plays, the elder was creating the modern version of the swashbuckler. Thinking back to the pacing of Don Quixote, I was unsure how I was going to take to a full action novel, but The Three Musketeers blew me away. The rhythm of the text kept me interested - from descriptions of setting to fight scenes to banter and dialogue the reading was thoroughly lively. The result was the most cinematic book I think I can recall - not only could I see why there have been over a half-dozen films (animated and live action), plays and other adaptations, I saw the potential for more. My personal pick would be for a movie version focused on the imprisonment and escape of Lady de Winter - a psychological thriller with a femme fatale. Alas, I am both lazy and incompetent, and so it will never come to be.

Another reason the book translates so well to movie form is the clarity of the characters. Aramis the religious scholar, Porthos the proud glutton, Athos the quiet and moody leader, d'Artagnan the young excitable upstart. All of the lesser characters, from the other nobles and leaders to their servants, are equally well-drawn - but none more so than Lady de Winter. The cat-like villainness steals all of her scenes, all of the time, forever. Dumas managed to write her as powerful, yet still entirely within the confines of the gender views of the time - both the men and the women discuss how the females are the weaker gender, and how surprising it is that a woman could possess such ferocity and strength of character. The comparison to Lady Macbeth is made not once, but twice, however I would easily give the win to de Winter - when given the option, she always tried to take matters into her own hands, often with impressive results.

Impressive results seems to be my overarching opinion of The Three Musketeers. I enjoyed the plot and its twists (though many of them would have to be updated to have any hope of working in a modern sense), the sharply defined characters, and the wordy but lively prose. I find it very hard to suggest anything that could be termed as a weakness, and it was an excellent book to get ready for the summer spree, but I simply didn't have the passion for it that I have for others.

9/10

#31 - War and Peace

First off, War and Peace isn't even necessarily the name. War, certainly. But the Peace could also be World, or The Rest. War and the Rest. War and Everything Else. Everything. Else. Tolstoy argues that War and Peace is not a novel, and I would have to agree with him. Novels have a plot, a central theme, a sense of focus or at least a prescribed direction. What War and Peace does is play with focus - from the tiniest minutiae to the grandest frontiers of Europe - in order to encapsulate, in a mere 1444 pages (in my Penguin Classics, Rosemary Edmonds-translated edition), the entirety of Russia, in mind, body and spirit.

The largest portion of the book ranges from 1805-1812, the Napoleonic Wars. It has over 500 named characters, but centers around a few wealthy noble families - the Rostovs, the Bolkonskys, the Bezuhovs, and the Kuragins - and their lives, both in War, and Peace. There are births, deaths, marriages, affairs, dances, pranks, drinking, farming, shooting, stabbing, talking, yelling, singing, sitting, standing, lying in both word and act, and more. To quote Mark Twain, "Tolstoy carelessly neglects to include a boat race". The only exceptions are sex (none of that naughty stuff) and swearing , which doesn't pop up at all until later on in the depths of the biggest bummer part of the war. I really truly cannot give a plot summary for this book, there is not one to be found. And that's because this book is REAL.

Russian realism had already had me really impressed. Between Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment, the understanding of the human psyche that Tolstoy and Dostoevsky showed was jaw-dropping, and War and Peace raised the bar still further. Every minute detail of action and reaction, of inner dialogues and public repartee was effortlessly perfect. The breadth added to the effect - by the end, the childhood memories of the Rostovs were just as foggy and nostalgic for me as my own were. War and Peace is a novel with big ideas, but a reserved way of showing them. Characters have earth-shaking realizations and epiphanies, their world-view changing dramatically (particularly in Pierre and Andrei, Tolstoy's avatars). But even in these wise and intelligent characters, there are beautiful contradictions. These metaphorical theories are mocked and lampooned just chapters later, showing, in its turn, the ongoing contradictions of men.

One of the reasons that War and Peace shouldn't be called a novel is the multiple branching diatribes that Tolstoy left in it. Religion, from the Masonic lodge to entire schools of metaphysics, are examined by piles upon piles of the characters, culminating in a resoundingly  devout argument that had me engrossed, if not convinced. He was less roundabout with his examination of the Great Man Theory of History, in vogue at the time but absolutely despised by Tolstoy. While I agree firmly that the GMT is too enthusiastic in its hero worship, I didn't need 300 pages and an epilogue to expound upon it.

War and Peace is beyond description. To those who argue that you cannot truly appreciate a work of literature unless it is in the original language, I laugh. True genius in art will transcend, and War and Peace is proof of that. The ONLY, and I mean the only reason why this is not getting a 10 out of 10 and joining my pantheon of heroes is because it was not, as all great Russian things should be, distilled to a purer form.

9/10