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Jim Grimsley

Jim Grimsley

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Flush by Virginia Woolf

Jim Grimsley Posted on April 30, 2022 by Jim GrimsleyApril 30, 2022

I’d never have thought to give a mere three stars to a Virginia Woolf book, or to write about its charming qualities, its cuteness, its rather sentimental portrait of dogs, their owners, and poets with strange ailments who languish in their bedrooms; but there you go. This book was an amusement made delightful by its contrast to the serious-literature quality of nearly everything else I’ve read by Woolf, whom I admire to distraction. What English major could resist the biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog as told by one of the pre-eminent authors of any possible canon of literature? Here is Woolf having, of all things, some fun with her writing. The appeal of this, however, does fade as the book goes on, as Flush jealously guards his mistress from other animals, from suitors, from one suitor in particular; as Flush escapes from the Barrett household with the happy poet couple of Browning and Browning; as Flush adventures in Italy in search of love. It is both a statement of the book’s strengths and weaknesses to state that this alone among Woolf’s work would be suitable, and even recommendable, as a Disney property. An animated story in which Elizabeth becomes the next Disney princess, perhaps, and Flush her faithful dog companion. My tongue is where it ought to be for such a statement, but nevertheless that would be a cartoon worth watching.

The Unbearable Bassington by Saki

Jim Grimsley Posted on April 23, 2022 by Jim GrimsleyApril 23, 2022

I used to read references to Saki in long-ago literature classes and yet never actually read him until lately. This novel is short, acerbic, hilarious, sad, and one of the best reads I’ve had in a while. All those fussy, mannered British characters that you’ve ever wanted to lampoon are roasted with a roaring flame of wit, to the point that I felt as if I should not be enjoying myself so much at the expense of so many people, albeit made-up ones. “Some people are born with a sense of how to clothe themselves, others acquire it, others look as if their clothes had been thrust upon them.” “Hostesses regarded her philosophically as a form of social measles which everyone had to have once.” “The sort of pulpiteer who spanks the vices of his age and lunches with them afterwards.” There is never any hope that the self-centered rake Comus will win the hand of the lovely and wealthy Elaine, nor is there any hope for her in the choice that she does make. Mother and son will never come to understand that they are bound to one another with true feeling until it is, of course, too late. Funny as it is, the book left me with a deep sadness for its central characters, particularly poor doomed and handsome Comus and his mother Francesca who declares that her soul is kept in her parlor among her very fine possessions.

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

Jim Grimsley Posted on April 21, 2022 by Jim GrimsleyApril 21, 2022

When I first encountered Elizabeth Gaskell (Wives and Daughters) I thought that she was one of those writers who ought to get more attention; later I realized my response was indicative of my own ignorance, which is so often the case. Cranford has, after all, been adapted to television with one of the best casts to be found, and I have watched the series almost as often as I have read the book. In her other works, Gaskell is concerned with social problems and issues of her time; in this book she is largely concerned with recording the lives of strong spinsters and widows in a small, old-fashioned community that sees itself as a bulwark against change. The charm of this book is the women whose stories she tells, with such particular attention to their intersections, their spats, their gossip, their mores and customs, and the changes they endure. In this regard, especially when the railroad comes to Cranford, Gaskell’s social analysis merges with her incomparable ability to draw meaning out of what for lack of a better word I would call the ordinary. She is one of those writers who reminds that there are no small lives, no ordinary people, but only the particular and the real. These writings are not intended as stories so much as portraits, “vignettes” as they are often termed, but they are as delightful as they are incisive. (I will forever see Miss Mattie as Judy Dench, Eileen Atkins as Miss Deborah, and Imelda Staunton as Miss Pole. What has that to do with the book? Actors bring their best to material that they love.)

What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez

Jim Grimsley Posted on March 25, 2022 by Jim GrimsleyMarch 25, 2022

This is my first encounter with Nunez and is a remarkable assembly, a meditation about everything, especially the significance of death, and then in the second half something else, the twist of the story. The quiet exit from disease contemplated by the friend is turned into something messy, convoluted, perplexing. My feeling for the authority of the writing grew as I read. There are many ways in which I thought this book was developing but the writer did something different than anything I imagined, all in a precise, contemplative tone that almost mocks itself when the planned death presents itself and life still continues to twist and turn. I am writing carefully so as not to spoil anything because I think this is a book you should encounter without much warning.

The Killing Field by Mary Lee Settle

Jim Grimsley Posted on October 18, 2021 by Jim GrimsleyOctober 19, 2021

This book is the closing volume of the Beulah Quintet, which I see mentioned on Goodreads as Settle’s best known work. The incidents that are narrated in this novel are mentioned in the introductions to all the previous volumes, the shock of something in the past – presumably in Settle’s past – that incited the search for the roots of what she terms American freedom. Let me state that I have admired the first four books in the series especially for the quality of the writing, but have been at times troubled by the content, as I have detailed in posts on volumes one through four. Settle is a remarkable writer of historical works, delving into the characters and depicting them as they were in the era, however uncomfortable that might be for modern readers, given that the books are populated by slaveholders, slaves, First Nations peoples, and a wealth of others. She has an eerie ability to enter into the modes of thinking of her creations, and this is often disconcerting, for she understands that these people of the past are alien to modern readers, but she forges ahead with her work, convinced of its purpose. What has convinced her of this purpose is what she writes about in this last volume of the set. The protagonist of the book is the writer of the Beulah Quintet, and so one is justified in relating her as Settle. So I will not make much distinction between the two in my response. It is utterly disappointing to find that the impetus for this long historical delve is the death of her brother, Johnny, and we are somehow to see his figure as tragic, when he appears to be more or less a wastrel, a drunk, and a dog. Exactly how he gets himself killed is less important than the aftermath of his death, when all his friends (who are of course of the best families in Beulah and environs) mourn him and search for the meaning of his wasted life. In Settles’s vision, Johnny is as much a victim of the past as are all the descendants of slaves, all the poor people who worked in his ancestor’s coal mines – I won’t belabor this as I have nothing to say about the conceit except that it borders on lunacy for me. This book is emptier and less appealing. But I don’t feel that I wasted my time in reading this book, and certainly not in reading its predecessors. What is interesting in it is the theory of the novel, that suddenly we can meet the author of the previous four and read her as a fictional character. There are some vivid episodes throughout the text. But there is a presumption of the importance of the rich and their history – they are the people who matter most, and it is in them we find the core of history. For me, this is a deal-breaker.

The Scapegoat by Mary Lee Settle

Jim Grimsley Posted on September 7, 2021 by Jim GrimsleySeptember 7, 2021
The Scapegoat (Beulah Quintet #4)

The Scapegoat by Mary Lee Settle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is probably the best of the Beulah Quintet in terms of unity and approach, telling the story of one of the heirs to Beulah who grew rich on coal, a quiet and ineffectual man who married sensibly, managed his coal mine with some humanity, but lost himself to the larger coal interests who entered West Virginia during the era of the robber baron capitalists. Mother Jones features in the book, a legendary figure among community organizers. The incident at the center of the book, a mine strike that the coal bosses must crush, is offered in counterpoint with the more private side of the book – deft, exact portraits of the women who are the central characters, much richer and more tangible than the men. Settle has a fine eye on these people and their nuances of attitude and voice are clear as they can be. This is a period of history and a place that I have read little about, and the novel on the whole is satisfying. But I found myself standing outside the story and carping at it nevertheless. The novel constantly pushed me out of immersion by constant shifts in point of view; I am to follow everyone’s story equally, it seems, even though not all the loci of character are equally interesting. The technique here is something between Faulkner and Woolf. It is not the method of the novel that falters for me; it is the fact that the method really exposes the triviality of the people at the center of the story. Settle is not as successful as Woolf at making the objects of everyday appear luminous and singular. And the fact that we move so readily from head to head in the story made me critique each character again and again as though I were being introduced to them over and over again. The story never could build up much momentum. The novel survives its weaknesses, though, and resonates with the pathos of these people and their struggle. The fine writing carries it.

Remembering Babylon by David Malouf

Jim Grimsley Posted on August 24, 2021 by Jim GrimsleyAugust 24, 2021
Remembering Babylon

Remembering Babylon by David Malouf
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel approaches its subject, the return of a white man raised by indigenous Australians to his community of origin, with a succinctness that almost renders the story slight. But the beauty of the prose and the deftness of the Malouf’s choices make the book a surprise. There is a hint of Omensetter’s Luck in the shape of the tale though Malouf is very much clearer in his prose than Gass. For me clarity is a plus. There is a story that emerges, and it has Gemmy at its center, but it ranges afield into the vivid others who surround him, question him, presume to know him, who once shared kinship with him, but who find him strange and dangerous in his return. The story is important, the depiction of the original peoples of Australia, though scant, is pure, though it has elements of the magical other. As if wiser, nearly invisible elves moved amongst the white settlers. There are moments of the fantastical in the effect of these people on Gemmy, in the way their culture has aligned him to different ideas of the world. This part of the book is unerring and really wonderful. For the first half of the novel I felt as thought I had stumbled on a treasure, though Malouf is, of course, well known. But the latter part of the book whimpers and fades. There is an odd choice to have Gemmy simply dissolve out of the book and the passage of time to take the place of the culmination one expects. I admired this as a choice but am sorry that the book did not end in some stronger way.

Know Nothing by Mary Lee Settle

Jim Grimsley Posted on August 24, 2021 by Jim GrimsleyAugust 24, 2021
Know Nothing (Beulah Quintet #3)

Know Nothing by Mary Lee Settle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I took up this book after having attempted to read it once and failing. I have much respect for Mary Lee Settle but, at times, I have very little liking for her work. (And at times I have a very great liking for it, as well, but that is for another day.) As she states in the introductions to most of the Beulah Quintet, it is her purpose to submerge herself in history and to become a creature of the era of which she writes. In the case of Know Nothing, this means inhabiting the mind of slave holders, poor settlers, and sometimes, at least in passing, of enslaved people. While it is impossible to write of this era of history without using the n-word, which is now among the most taboo of all words, the way in which an author conducts herself in the employment of the term and the inhuman purpose that lay behind its application is important. In the case of this novel, the shape of the minds of the white people feels true and harsh to the point that it is almost impossible to read passages of the book. She both represents the holding of people as slaves as a necessity and as a curse but her focus is on the slave owners and those who supported them. The presence of the slaves is almost incidental to the novel. Black people are only seen in their relations to the white people around them and not as people in themselves. This becomes an overwhelming concern when reading this book in 2021. We are still writing and rewriting this history and battling over its implications and consequences to this day. So that the novel itself feels incomplete and unsettled in its approach to the core of the story. The story she is telling is overshadowed and feels almost trivial. The struggle to tell the story becomes the foreground of the novel.

No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe

Jim Grimsley Posted on July 8, 2021 by Jim GrimsleyJuly 8, 2021
No Longer at Ease (The African Trilogy, #2)

No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The title of this novel is curious, encapsulating the pervasive discomfort of the most modern period of Africa in Achebe’s trilogy. Obi Okonkwo, descendant of the protagonist of the first novel, has been sent to England to be educated in the Western manner so that he can join the bureaucracy in Nigeria; the people who sent him are the members of an Igbo social club who have organized to retain their collective identity in their new urban surroundings. They have pooled their money for Obi’s education and look on him as an investment for their own future, a sign that their people can cope with the new order as well as their neighbors have. This is a parallel to Ezeulu sending his own son to be educated in Christian ways in Arrow of God, and in the same way as the earlier novel the end result is not predictable or simple. Obi learns too much in his sojourn in England and is no longer quite of his people when he returns. He joins the civil service but sees its corruption, officials taking bribes at every turn. In fact the book begins with Obi’s arrest and conviction for taking a bribe himself, so that his downfall is already complete at the start, and the novel backtracks to show the disintegration that preceded his crime. He never intends to be dishonest but his moral character is not strong. As is usual with Achebe, the novel does not depict these events in a didactic or heavy-handed manner; we simply witness Obi’s life as though we were perched on his shoulder. The book is skillful but much less engaging than the earlier novels because it is a study of weakness and uncertainty; Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart may be caught up in his own blindness but he has great purpose, bent as it is; and Ezeulu in the second novel is a pillar of surety. Obi, by contrast, has lost his sense of who he is and his trajectory is downward. This kind of novel suffers from Achebe’s detachment. He is meticulous in cataloguing Obi’s small and continuous failures without creating much sense of empathy. In this kind of novel it would be better to offer more of his feelings, his interior, which was never necessary in the earlier books. It is nevertheless a fine book, but not a fine read. But it is a true depiction of what has been implied from the beginning of the cycle by the changes that overtake the Ten Towns and Nigeria through contact with Britain.

Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe

Jim Grimsley Posted on June 24, 2021 by Jim GrimsleyJune 24, 2021
Arrow of God (The African Trilogy, #3)

Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novel follows Things Fall Apart in time sequence and offers a look at a later period of the history of the Ten Towns, after the British have become more established in this region of Africa but before the extreme alterations of the homegrown culture of the Igbo people. Here Achebe tells the story of Ezeulu, whom he refers to in his preface as “that magnificent man,” the priest who carries the god Ulu inside him and who lives as the presence of the god among the Ten Towns. This notion of divinity as being present and tangible within the circle of believers is one of the most fascinating in the novel and in the culture that it describes. In the long ago the Ten Towns performed a powerful magic that brought Ulu into being as their supreme deity, and the story of his creation is part of the tapestry of their tales and history. This idea is a window on the interplay of spirit, world, and cosmos that overlies the people of the towns; there is no contradiction in the notion that a god can be created by his worshipers but nevertheless be a god and partake of eternity. This is simply how the universe works. The culture of the Igbo is beautiful and complicated and belies any notion to the contrary – contradicting Western notions of what is savage or barbarian. The most beautiful moments of the book are the conversations as they veer from tale to proverb to history; the debates among the elders are the most lovely moments. These people share a common knowledge base that makes certain ideas like bedrock – what a father says to a son cannot be a lie, for instance. The final conflict between Ulu and the British unfolds with a deep blindness from both sides. This is a very beautiful novel if you open yourself to the way these people communicate with each other. It defies description; it is not a critique or condemnation; it simply presents events and allows them to unfold.

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