Muriel Spark

 A friend passed along two books to me by Muriel Spark. I thought they were interesting although stereotypically British.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was the better of the two.  I thought it was surprisingly (since the outcome is know from the beginning) suspenseful. The setting is a girl's private school in Edinburgh where one teacher, Miss Jean Brodie, tries to mold a group of girls into a clique. The main narrator is Sandy, and she "betrays" Miss Jean Brodie to the school administrators. What is interesting is exploring the recollections of each girl about that period of their lives, especially Sandy's. Understanding her motivation is what keeps one reading to the end.

The Only Problem is a darkly humorous story. It is also much less interesting to read than TPOMJB. In its attempts at being funny I found it hard to relate to or take seriously. I didn't feel sympathy for any of the characters as they were all equally bad. Bad in the superficially realized, this is an archetypically-chummy-wealthy-British-man-living-abroad character. This is his best-friend-from-college-chum who wants to help his wife get a divorce. Add lots of improbable events in, without allowing any real emotion or connections to be created and you get the story.
Muriel Spark is a talented writer and TPOMJB reminded me, because of the repetition, of Stein. Although she was writing after Stein, perhaps benefiting from her influence.

A Chess Story

Stefan Zweig published this short story in 1941 as "Schachnovelle." It is set aboard an ocean liner sailing to Buenos Aires. The narrator, whose motivation is curiosity about the chess mind, sets out to entice the famous fellow passenger Czentovic to play a chess game. Czentovic, we are told, is a chess master who lacks both social and intellectual skills, but has an innate talent for chess. Cz's entire life story is revealed to the reader and then the narrator sets out to see Cz at play. This requires strategy but once Cz has been induced to play a game against the narrator and other passengers they lose the game. Then during the second game a mysterious man appears and suggests winning moves they can make. The group of amateurs win. The narrator, intrigued, follows the mystery man. Mystery man relays his story, as follows:

He, Dr. B, was a monarchist banker in Austria when the Nazis arrive. He was imprisoned, and interrogated for months. During this time he started to break down and was desperate for something to focus his mind on so as to withstand the interrogations and remain sane. He, luckily, steals a book of famous chess games from a jailers jacket. He studies this moves, until they are memorized then he makes up new games in his mind. He does this for months and finds it quite useful as a way to focus his mind and retain sanity. Then he decides to play both sides at once, white and black, and his mind  compartmentalizes. He suffers a breakdown, and a fever and finds himself in a hospital. His doctor diagnoses him with a chess mania and suggests he not play again. The doctor also diagnoses him as insane and so he escapes from the Nazis.

Back on the cruise ship Dr. B plays another game against Cz. This time Cz antagonizes Dr. B with slow play and Dr. B starts to regress into "chess madness." The narrator, tells Dr. B to not regress and Dr. B, losing the game exits.

It is a good story, psychologically accurate, and intense (compared to Stein it is dated though). The author Zweig and his wife, Lotte Altmann, committed suicide in February 1942 due to the dismal future prospects.

A little Stein

Gertrude Stein, writing in the first half of the last century, experimented with words, phrases, and sentences. In Three Lives the writing is not so different from the psychological modern style of writing, but Tender Buttons pushes the boundaries of word meanings to an extreme. To me Stein's writing seems less dated, and more contemporary, because elements of her style have come to be used widely.

"Three Lives" consists of three unconnected life portraits, "The Good Anna," "Melanctha," and "The Gentle Lena." "Melanctha" was the most interesting of these and the lengthiest. The woman portrayed is complicated, difficult and ends sadly (as do Anna and Lena). The conversational style is deceptively simple and much information is conveyed by the repetitive language.

"Tender Buttons" is what?

"This cloud does change with the movements of the moon and the narrow the quite narrow suggestion of the building. It does and then when it is settled and no sounds differ then comes the moment when cheerfulness is so assured that there is an occasion" (pg. 298).

I do not claim to understand. It is readable, but pointless, as far as I can understand it. Although, those with a background in literature probably have more interesting things to say about "Tender Buttons" than I do.

"Protodialectical inquiry" into beliefs about Yam Gods

Oblivion consists of eight short stories by David Foster Wallace. Each story is written in a detailed and complex style. Wallace's writing method is unique because he interweaves the main narration with thoughts, other activity, and irrelevant details. Each sentence has to be understood as belonging or not belonging to the main narrative. This requires more effort on the reader's part than most books.

"Another Pioneer" is one of the shorter stories and the one which matches the content and the manner of writing best. The narrator is never identified, but speaks in a polished, academic, and ironic manner about an incident recounted to him by a friend. This incident was the conversation between two men on a plane which the friend overheard. The story that one of the men recounted to the other described a boy in an unspecified village in South America who single-handedly brought about modernizing changes in his village and acted as a prophet. The story itself is not as interesting as is the narrative voice retelling it which is persuasive and manages to engage the reader in the analysis of the second-hand story:

"Structurally, this scene apparently functions as both the climax of the protasis and the as it were engine of the narrative's rising action, because at just this point we are told that the original exemplum splits or diverges here into at least three main epitatic variants" (p. 126).

It is not the story being told that is inherently interesting, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator's voice is pompously analytical and cohesive. This story contrasts with "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" which has a much less structured theme, but whose narrator is psychologically not a model of health.

Though this collection is worth reading the style is lengthy, and verbose. The Onion has an amusing article about how a "girlfriend" stopped reading Wallace's breakup letter at page 20. Though his writing style takes some getting used to, it is arguably more rewarding to read than most books which are written in more a friendly manner.

Light writing about heavy subjects

War Dances, by Sherman Alexie, consists of seven short stories and sixteen poems.

The title story, "War Dances," appears to be an autobiographical musing on mortality, focusing on Alexie's learning that he has a brain tumor and his experience with his father's hospitalizations. The structure of the story is unusual in that it is short (only 34 pages long) and divided into sixteen subsections. Each subsection, "My Kafka Baggage," "Symptoms," "The Symptoms Worsen," "Blankets," etc. is a succinct scene that together, cluster around and build up the story of mortality that Alexie wants to tell.

Though mortality is the subject of several of the stories, the telling is very light and humorous. This is an easy to read summer book.

Blasé in Berlin

The Summer House, Later: A book about the moment before happiness, is a collection of nine short stories by Judith Hermann. Each story can be said to be distinct, but each is unremittingly depressing, full of meaninglessness, and sadness.

In each story when a character does not know what to do/say he/she will invariably light a cigarette. There is much drinking, drug taking, and a little sex, all starkly described. At no point does anyone seem to enjoy themselves.

My favorite story from the collection is “Hunter Tompson Music” which is set in New York rather than Berlin. Hunter, an elderly man, lives in a seedy residential hotel. His greatest pleasure is listening to his classical music collection. When a young woman knocks on his door and introduces herself he is impressed that she can identify the music playing as Bach. This brief interaction is more human contact then Hunter is used to and when a dinner date is made there is a certain suspense to learn the outcome of an event that is sure to be traumatic. “Hunter remembers that he hasn't eaten out for years, that he doesn't know any good restaurants, that he can't tell her anything about the city, that he knows nothing at all.” In the event the dinner does not take place and the attempt to establish a human relationship has ambiguous results. What I particularly like about this story is the sense of pathos Hermann invokes for Hunter.

It is this same lack of pathos, which I dislike about most of the other stories in the book. The characters seem to be too underdeveloped to be either likable or dislikable in much of the book. This might be due, in part, to the translation. Though it is not fair to be too critical of translators, whose task is nearly impossible, this translation leaves the English reader wondering exactly how the book could have been so well-received. The translator is Margot Bettauer Dembo who is a contributor to Words Without Borders. An excellent site for reading literature in translation.

Homeland

"Sometimes you dream of hearing only the beating of your own heart, but this has never been the case. You have never been able to escape the pounding of a thousand other hearts that have outlived yours by thousands of years. And over the years when you have needed us, you have always cried "Krik?" and we have answered "Krak!" and it has shown us that you have not forgotten us."

Edwidge Danticat describes a call and answer storytelling tradition of her Haitian homeland at the conclusion of Krik? Krak! as an interaction between the living and their ancestors.

The first story in the collection, "Children of the Sea," is told through letters from a young man escaping Haiti by boat, and the thoughts of the young woman he left behind. This nameless girl and boy recount the details of what occurs around them, naming individuals while they themselves remain nameless. Though they boy never reaches Miami and the letters are never sent the two remain connected.

The last story, "Caroline's Wedding," is set in New York. It describes the wedding of a Haitian American woman through her sister's eyes. It is a simple story that shows the difficulty of living in multiple cultures. It contrasts the American lifestyle with the poverty and suffering in Haiti, yet somehow the culture of Haiti is realized in color and New York is little described.

The connecting theme for all the stories is "Ville Rose" a small town which is the natal village of many of the individuals in the stories. This linking of the stories makes them seem more like a continuous narrative then they would be which is better, I think, then short story collections with discrete stories. Unsurprisingly, the stories are quite unremittingly sad, despite which they are worth reading.

"Stories of Five Decades"

Hermann Hesse's Stories of Five Decades is a collection of twenty-three short stories originally written between 1899 and 1948. Many of the stories have as their subject a young man's learning about life and love. The town of Gerbersau is the location of many of the stories and is alternately a pleasant, or stultifying environment for the characters.

“The Latin Scholar” is a typical story in this collection. Karl Bauer, a sixteen-year-old student who is boarding in a large town, is at a formative age. Due to the meager portions he is given as a boarder he has taken to filching snacks from the larder and it seems clear that his honest character is in danger of deforming without some moral intervention. Luckily the housekeeper, Babette, becomes aware of Karl's need for both food and guidance and provides both. When Karl falls in love with a maid and must deal with unrequited love he learns more than he has during his academic studies.

“An Evening with Dr. Faust” is a short and humorous story of looking into the future. Dr. Eisenbart and Dr. Faust listen in on the future with the help of a specially modified gramophone. What they hear is both shocking and disturbing to them. Considering that Dr. Faust is such a willing disciple of the devil it is amusing that it is possible to shock him with “evil.”

“Walter Kömpff” is one of the lengthier stories (35pgs.) and follows Walter from cradle to grave. The story begins with a description of Walter's pious mother and shopkeeper father and the deathbed promise extracted from the twelve year old that he would take on the family business. Unfortunately, Walter neither wants to be a shopkeeper, nor has any other career in mind, and spends his life uselessly struggling without knowing what he does want.

The story which I found most appealing was “Tragic.” Johannes an elderly compositor (a typesetter) is meeting with the newspaper's editor-in-chief and when asked, rhetorically, if his work is going well, he launches into a mournful monologue concerning the devolution of grammar. Johannes says, “Just as in Borneo and all those other islands they have extirpated the bird of paradise, the elephant, and the king tiger, they have destroyed and abolished all the lovely sentences, all the inversions, all the delicate play and shading of our dear language” (p. 272). The complaint of Johannes is interesting not only because it is poetic in its form, but also because it shows that linguistic customs are constantly changing. Insisting that a language conforms to outmoded grammar rules is unrewarding, but seemingly unavoidable.

These stories are quite good and well worth reading. Some are too parable-like (“The Island Dream”), but most deal with psychological and emotional growth which are just as relevant now as when the stories were first written.