Jim Grimsley

Cecilia by Frances Burney
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the most recent reading project I have undertaken, having heard that Jane Austen admired this novel; it is a late 18th century novel about the inevitable young woman of immense virtue, beauty, and wealth, and the extraordinary lengths to which she must go in order to marry as she chooses. Her uncle, who left her a fortune, made the money contingent on her husband taking her surname; the man she comes to love has an obdurate father who will not consider such a possibility. The book is a phenomenally good read in spite of a couple of quirks brought about by the style of fiction written in the era. Burney’s best passages are her comic sequences; the conversational passages that include the tradesmen and lower class folks are wonderful and funny. The funniest sequence is the slapstick-worthy episode surrounding Cecilia’s first attempt to marry her beau in secret. On the way, in secret, to the wedding, she encounters nearly everyone she knows in London. The wedding does not work out, of course; Burney has a heavy-handed touch with plot, throwing up obstacle after obstacle to nearly every move Cecilia makes during the course of the novel. The result is is a potboiler at high steam; occasionally the pot boils over, however. I was forced to skim some of the higher emotional passages where the lovers part forever with long, intense speeches praising one another’s virtue. And the last hundred pages (of nine hundred or more) were almost unendurable as Burney repeats much of what she has already done in terms of overripe speech and plot. She wrings out the last drop of sentiment and melodrama from the conclusion. Nevertheless the novel is worthy and the satirical dialogs (Lady Honoria wins the championship) are acidic. She had a great ear for comic speech, did Burney. One has to wonder if the higher-flown passages of conversation are in any way an accurate depiction of the way people spoke to one another. I am glad to have read the book and might essay another of Burney’s novels in time.

The Scholars by Wu Jingzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book when I was in college and recently picked it up again to reread. No fear that the book would hold up; it’s one of the six great books of Chinese literature, a set of classics that have been taught for generations. There’s really nothing else I’ve read that compares to it in terms of subject or style. This is an hilarious depiction of snobbery, academia, and pretension; also of sincerity, generosity, and humanity. The whole of the Chinese world falls into these pages. Well, that sentence sounds a bit pretentious, since I don’t know the whole of China; but the book is exhaustive and convincing in its depiction of every sort of daily life from the era. The structure of it is intricate and unusual; it’s described as being more like a collection of stories than a novel, but the real structure is more complicated than that. We meet a character, follow his life through a problem, maybe for an extended period of time, and then something happens – often a meal, a drinking session, a feast, a poetry-writing contest – and a new character enters. There is a kind of fadeout of the old episode and then we follow the new character. As though as readers we are meandering through the world ourselves. The world itself is fascinating. In every context there is a means of reinforcing the social hierarchy; at dinner parties, for instance, the guests sit in ranked positions. There are constant discussions of who should bow and who should not. Characters exist in terms of family obligations, friendships, social position, and debts. And food. There is so much food. After three days of reading I’m starved for pork dumplings. This is the kind of writing that Isak Dinesan refers to as “tale” rather than modern story; the inner lives of the characters are absent except for occasional glimpses. The story is driven by events, by the plain outline of what happens, and in this way covers an enormous territory. It falters in the last third in my opinion; the episodes become less certain and more muddled. But it is a magnificent book. This particular edition has gorgeous woodcut illustrations in it depicting the various scenes. A treasure.

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead by Randall Kenan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A phenomenal short story collection by a writer whom I have admired and read with respect and admiration since I first encountered him. Randall Kenan died a couple of days ago, after publishing a new book of stories that I have not read yet. But reviewing this book feels like a way to find some solace in his passing. Randall’s writing was exquisite; the world of his stories is beautiful; the last story in this volume is a transcendent piece of short fiction. He was a child of eastern North Carolina, as I am. As a writer he reminded me of Toni Morrison and Faulkner, though Faulkner is someone of whom I am not so fond any more. Maybe also of Nordan in the way his writing blends reality and extra-reality. He will be greatly missed. But his work will always be with us.

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of the essential books in the world of gender fluidity, published long before the current discussions of transgender issues, carving out a space unique to itself, a pure piece of fury at times, a heartwrenching search for the truth about one person’s self. The range between man and woman is a spectrum, not a pole of opposites. The story that Feinberg tells begins in the 50s and carries itself forward into the ensuing decades as protagonist Jess Goldberg makes her decision to live as a man. The decision proves to be earthshaking. This is the way bars felt in the sixties and later, whether they catered to men or women or the space between. A time when a woman could be “she” and “he” in the same day, switching back and forth as often as conversation or circumstance dictated. (The same was true of men but that’s not what this book is about.) The writing is straight out of the furnace of Feinberg’s being, and there are only a few books I have ever read that accomplish that feat.

Madaline: Love and Survival in Antebellum New Orleans by Dell Upton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is not at all well known but fascinated me when I ran across it, in the course of doing research for a novel about New Orleans. It is the published journal of a woman who lived in the city in the years after she was ruined by marrying a man who already had a wife, unbeknownst to her. She realizes that she is lost to polite society and makes a compromise that she finds liveable: she becomes the mistress of a married man who buys a house for her. She sets about living in her house and creating a life for herself. Gardening, attending church, hearing sermons in which women who live as she does are condemned, but nevertheless continuing to attend church because her beliefs were important to her. Her journaling is readable and moving for its revelation of her quiet courage. She realizes that she has compromised herself but understands that she has little other option. Her love for her protector is marred by his eventual lack of interest. When he breaks off their relationship and attempts to reclaim the house, she sues him to prove that the house was given to her as a gift, wins her lawsuit, and eventually leaves New Orleans to live in California. The whole story is poignant, and her strength of character quietly underlies the diary entries. I give the book four stars because of the importance of this woman’s story. She is a kind of woman who is not often represented in the fiction of the time except in terms of her destruction, her fall. Madaline never accepts that her morality is identifiable with the ostracism which she suffers. Neither does she pretend that she is perfect, or create a victim of herself. She is a study in strength and resilience.