In Youth Is Pleasure, by Denton Welch

In Youth Is Pleasure may or may not be a misleading title.  It's one of the most atmospheric books I've ever read - in fact, it is nearly 100% atmosphere - and In Youth Is Pleasure is one of the most atmospheric book titles I've ever run across, tender and bittersweet as the book itself.  On the other hand, the title might suggest hedonism, an indulgent tour through the pleasures of youth.  In Youth Is Pleasure is anxious, fraught, above all teeming - it contains not a hint of that luxe, calme et volupté which, now that I think of it, might be the hallmark of a somewhat riper age.

In any case, it is the brief tale of a fifteen year old boy - Orvil - on vacation from boarding school.  He's young, weedy, dreamy, a little feminine - the sort of boy who suffers a lot in an all-male boarding school, and doesn't feel much more comfortable in the bosom of his family.  His mother is dead, his father is a gruff, successful businessman who doesn't have much patience for Orvil's odd fancies, and his two brothers are hale and hearty near-adults who find Orvil mystifying. 

You might guess that In Youth Is Pleasure is a sexual awakening - after all, Orvil is the right age for it and that seems to be what young people do on vacation in literary novels (Bonjour Tristesse is an obvious parallel - and, on the film side, so is Fat Girl) - and in a way, that's an accurate statement.  But it's a sexual awakening without any sex. There's no flirting, no fumbling, no one object of his desires.  What we get is Orvil's state of mind - so highly sensitized that the whole world seems to throb and ache around him.  He's alone in a luxurious, bucolic setting and every gravel path, river canoe, and empty ballroom is a blank space he can populate with his odd imaginings.  Like I said before, this is a book that is all atmosphere - there is no story to speak of, no real character development, I don't even think there's a message.  It's pure slice of life - and, as such, it's absolutely brilliant.  I don't think I've read another book that captures so pitch-perfectly the awful, exquisite feeling of being a teenager.

It's a lovely book, easy to read, and the period detail is remarkable as well - early 20th century upper-class England on holiday (as Orvil is driving away from his hated boarding school in his father's big black Daimler: "'I did not need so large a car for my Escape,' he thought, 'but Magic would never niggle, never send a Baby Austin.'")  It's fairly quotable, and Orvil has an occasionally cruel, acid sense of humor which is the only thing that saves him from being a complete sissy (while dining at the hotel, he sits next to an old woman and observes to himself, "On one of her fingers she wore a half-hoop of very large diamonds; the sort of ring that harmonizes with white suites of bedroom furniture, wreaths of composition roses, inset panels of cane-work, silver shoe-horns and button-hooks, and Reynolds's angel faces on the oxidized lids of powder-pots.")  On the other hand, without the forward momentum of a plot or a point, it takes a bit of patience to push through.  I'd put it down, then have to remind myself to pick it back up.  With that caveat, I recommend it highly.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

I had a relationship with Tristram Shandy.  First I fell in love.  We had a lengthy honeymoon period, during which I gushed about it to anybody who would listen.  After the honeymoon ended, we settled into a comfortable companionship.  Then...I have to admit it...things started to go sour.  The same qualities that once dazzled me began to seem tired, I stopped laughing at all its jokes, I no longer looked forward to a future together.  And then I turned the final page and our relationship was over - not a moment too soon.

I'm not sure I have ever started out so enthusiastic about a book, and finished so tepid.  I was ready to clear out a spot on my top ten list - I don't actually have a top ten list, but there are books that would probably be on it if I ever did make one - because it seemed like such a tour de force.  Endlessly imaginative, brilliant, Rabelaisian, absolutely hilarious.  Like a magician pulling rabbits from his hat, or a star quarterback nimbly dodging past all the competition, it's a show of pure virtuosity.

If you don't quite know what Tristram Shandy is - it's an 18th century novel written by Laurence Sterne pretending to be a memoir written by the eponymous Tristram Shandy.  Tristram starts at the beginning - the day of his birth - and it's well past the halfway point in the novel before he's finished being born.  Every time he tries to progress through the story of his life, he's drawn farther into the past.  His uncle Toby was present on his birthday, and in the process of introducing him Tristram gives us his whole life story.  But he can't stick to his digressions either.  Tristram tries to write about Toby and ends up discussing the minutiae of siege warfare (shades of Sebald's Austerlitz there - I'm sure the connection is intentional, and it kind of made me want to reread Austerlitz).

It's great.  It's great, it's done perfectly, and it's fun to read.  It carried me through the first two-thirds of the book in a state of sheer euphoria, and then I crashed.  Partly because a couple of the digressions left me honestly confused (The whole trip to France?  Can someone explain this to me?), but mostly because I started to wonder if the sheer fecundity of the book was a mirage, if Sterne had whipped up a one-trick pony and ridden it a little too long.  I have to admit that once you've figured out his schtick it's kind of predictable.

And the conclusion was pretty unsatisfying.  It just sort of...ends.  The final section seemed like a meandering, tepid fade-out.  And it leaves us with so many unanswered questions.  We never really learn anything about Tristram, beyond a few tantalizing hints.  I could believe that Sterne intentionally leaves the reader unsatisfied...but, well, I was still unsatisfied.

Anyhow, a few of my favorite quotations:

"Have not the wisest men in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself, -- have they not had their Hobby-Horses;--their running horses,--their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets, --their maggots and their butterflies?

"brisk trotting and slow argumentation, like wit and judgment, were two incompatible movements"

"When to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon, that an innocent and an helpless creature shall be sacrificed, 'tis an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with"

"the thin juice of a man's understanding"

"Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as well as working-days, to be shewing the relicks of learning, as monks do the relicks of their saints--without working one--one single miracle with them?"

"The ancient Goths of Germany, who (the learned Cluverius is positive) were first seated in teh country between the Vistula and the Oder, and who afterwards incorporated the Herculi, the Bugians, and some other Vandallick clans to 'em-- had all of them a wise custom of debating every thing of importance to their state, twice, that is,--once drunk, and once sober:-- Drunk---that their councils might not want vigour;-- and sober--that they might not want discretion"

This is a sort of quintessential Shandyism, where the author addresses the reader directly: "To conceive this right,-- call for pen and ink--here's paper ready to your hand.--Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind--as like your mistress as you can--as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you--'tis all one to me"

"That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best--I'm sure it is the most religious--for I begin with writing the first sentence--and trusting to Almighty God for the second"

"I have been the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and though I will not wrong her by saying, She has ever made me feel the weight of any great or signal evil;--yet with all the good temper in the world I affirm it of her, that in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she could get fairly at me, the ungracious duchess has pelted me with a set of as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever small Hero sustained."

The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch

I'm a bit conflicted.  It was a good book.  Really and thoroughly good.  It did many wonderful things; working simple discussions of ideas into the plot; fleshing out these ideas through the actions taking place in the plot; mixing a hint of fantasy and unreality in with a cool, clear view of the world.

However, at some level it didn't pass muster.  The language was adroit, apt, everywhere clear and enjoyable, but lacked a certain sparkle.  It wasn't phenomenal.  Most of all, somehow despite the fact that the book did such a good job of wedding the extraordinary with the banal, the realm of absolute morality with a very familiar day-to-day, I felt that it never quite took flight.  There was something heavily earthbound about it.

Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding

Tom Jones is one of the rare classics that I would recommend to the average reader. Or the above-average reader, maybe - not someone who survives on a diet of John Grisham and Stephanie Meyer (which, though, yeah, the Twilight series is awful...her adult novel, The Host? Pretty interesting), but someone who picks up on buzz about fancy new authors and likes to read the current literary sensation (I am not going to get sidetracked by a rant about how much I hate Zadie Smith or Michael Chabon again, but, suffice to say, they are responsible for my general contempt for current literary sensations, however unwarranted).

I need a new paragraph after all those parentheses. See, I'd recommend Tom Jones to someone who can be spurred to pick up novels that require a little bit of effort to get through, who will be patient with crap because it's the current literary sensation, but still need books to have a strong plot, really need that plot to keep moving, and don't tolerate wacky modern trickery. That kind of above-average reader.

Moving on, before I incriminate myself with any more vaguely insulting commentary. The thing about Tom Jones is that it is fun. It's a light-hearted, delightful, comic novel. At the same time it's wickedly smart, full of intellectual games. I picked it up after Middlemarch and it was the perfect palate cleanser, elegant and fizzy like champagne.

The plot of Tom Jones is pretty simple: the eponymous protagonist, Tom Jones, is a bastard baby adopted by a wealthy squire as an act of charity. The squire, Allworthy, lives up to his name: he's wise, just, and compassionate. He has no children of his own, and raises Tom along with a nephew. He treats both children as equals, though the whole community mocks him for doing so.

The two boys couldn't be more different. Tom is good at heart, but totally lacking in self-control. He gets into fistfights, he's kind of a player, he speaks his mind when it would be wiser to keep quiet. He's a troublemaker, a handful, a scoundrel. While the book is about abandoning youthful folly in favor of maturity and wisdom, the author doesn't spoil the fun of all that misbehavior - the energy and gusto with which Tom throws himself into sin is ultimately to his credit. I was reminded of Rabelais a bit (not surprising since Fielding refers to Rabelais with some reverence in Tom Jones).

Tom has a rival and a true love. The rival is Blifil, the squire's nephew, who couldn't be more different from Tom: he seems like an angel, but is rotten to the core. Blifil resents Tom's popularity with his family, and schemes to remove Tom from his uncle's affections (and, more importantly, his will).

The true love is Sophia, the girl next door. She's the perfect woman, beautiful and good and feminine and rich. Sophia is in love with Tom, but knows her father would never allow her to marry a bastard, no matter how well brought up. She accepts her fate like a dutiful daughter...until she is betrothed to Blifil. Sophia sees Blifil for what he truly is, and she loathes him. She refuses the match, her father puts his foot down, and Sophia decides to run away.

So while all of this is going on - a whole series of madcap adventures, sudden turnabouts, and unlikely coincidences - Fielding inserts little introductory chapters that break up the story, written from the author's perspective. He alternately explains why he's written the book as it is and insists that he's relating a true biography compiled through endless research; he speaks directly to his critics, telling them how he expects them to respond to various events in the novel, and answering the criticisms before they can be made; and he addresses his readers in a teasing, friendly way, sometimes giving instructions on when and how to imagine events that he does not describe.

Here's an example: "As this is one of those deep observations which very few readers can be supposed capable of making themselves, I have thought proper to lend them my assistance; but this is a favour rarely to be expected in the course of my work. Indeed, I shall seldom or never so indulge him, unless in such instances as this, where nothing but the inspiration with which we writers are gifted can possibly enable anyone to make the discovery."

Because of the introductory chapters spliced into the novel, reading Tom Jones was like watching a magician at his act, showily insisting that there is no trick right before performing it, delivering his patter to distract the audience from a sleight of hand. In fact, I started to wonder how the 20th century authors who have staked their reputations on playing with the structure of the novel - cleverly breaking the fourth wall, toying with the possibility of truth in fiction, etc. - could hold their heads up, because apparently it's all been done before. And, just to give a hint about what's next, it's been even more shocking, and disillusioning, to read The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.

The upshot is that I'm kind of in love with the 18th century, and can't wait to find out what else I've been missing out on. Why have I ignored English literature for so long? This stuff is great.

Middlemarch, by George Eliot

I decided it was time for me to read Middlemarch, because I want to work my way through the classics and I was feeling very patient. I didn't expect to enjoy it. I usually don't like books with a lot of plot (I prefer endless digressions or simplicity) and I was sure this sprawling Victorian novel would be chock full of plot. Lots of characters, all doing things.

To my own surprise, I absolutely loved Middlemarch. I thought Eliot's writing was glorious, rich but clean. There was a huge cast of characters, but their stories were simpler than I expected them to be. It had weight, it was satisfying, it clarified thoughts I'd already had and made me rethink others. It was also complete, fully evolved. The book was more contemplative than I expected it to be, and incredibly insightful.

Not surprisingly, Middlemarch was a slow starter. It took a while to set the scene, introduce the dozen or so principal characters, and convince me to invest in their fates. But I think it was a slow starter for another reason as well: the book wasn't about how characters arrived at turning points, but, rather, what happened to them afterwards. Events that often mark the end of a novel - a marriage, a death - take place fairly early on here. It's not about courtship, it's about marriage. Not about committing a crime, but how a crime buried in the past continues to haunt the present.

It was very much a book about what happens after the happily ever after, and the picture Eliot paints is pretty ugly. In some ways, Eliot struck me as a more mature, much much subtler version of Dickens - because I think both authors have acquired a fairly anodyne reputation, which neither deserves.

Middlemarch didn't have the high drama or pandering that you find in Dickens, and Eliot's assessment of human nature is nuanced and sometimes brutal. Yet there is a grace and generosity about the way she writes that prevents the novel from being cynical. Eliot is also pretty quotable - here's one germane to the current subject: "Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have it's consolations."

I recommend Middlemarch wholeheartedly, with the proviso that it requires a committed reader. It's pretty long. It's also the best book that I've ever read that was written by a woman. To my shame - if shame is the right word - up until now the constellation of authors that had most deeply impressed and moved me were all male. It feels pretty good to see that change.

More favorite little snippets:

A woman speaking: "Sorrow comes in so many ways. Two years ago I had no notion of that - I mean of the unexpected way in which trouble comes, and ties our hands, and makes us silent when we long to speak. I used to despise women a little bit for not shaping their lives more, and doing better things. I was very fond of doing as I liked, but I have almost given it up."

"He was at present too ill acquainted with disaster to enter into the pathos of a lot where everything is below the level of tragedy except the passionate egoism of the sufferer."

"It is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired."

"We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us, and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts - not to hurt others."

"it seemed to him as if he were beholding in a magic panorama a future where he himself was sliding into that pleasureless yielding to the small solicitations of circumstance, which is a commoner history of perdition than any single momentous bargain. We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into inspid misdoing and shabby achievement."