Ferrante: Book Three of the Neapolitan Novels

Again, as with the second in the series, I am inhibited from saying much about the third--"Those Who Leave and Those who Stay."
Elena Greco is one who leaves: Lila and many others stay. And the locale we are talking about is the original Neapolitan neighborhood where the wide cast of characters grew up, and where Elena (Lenucci) started her enduring relationship with her "Brilliant Friend." And all I can diplomatically say is that volume three moves us forward about eight to ten years from Elena's graduation from Padua University, during which the complex relationship with Lila is an on-again-off-again saga and still central to the ongoing story. And once you start, you have to keep going. 
The only comment I will allow myself is that, at the end, I thought Elena made a very bad decision. And, of course, that decision is the 'teaser' to leave you panting for the fourth volume...

Kipling: Holmes: Swann: O.J. Simpson

    Just a few comments on what I have been reading recently. 
    On my I-Pad, and during my gym sessions, I have finished "Captains Courageous;" however, after what I saw as an amazingly constructed tale of life on a fishing boat, I felt the book tended to peter out when eventually the long fishing trip ended, the boat returned to port, Harvey's parents were informed of his survival and came by train from California, and we were treated to a rather long bonding scenario between father and son. And as for the chapter on the rail trip from California, which I had read was a "classic" of railway journeys--I thought it was one of the least intriguing or well-written chapters in the book. And another reservation was that Kipling, throughout the book, very much overdid the use of dialect and accents in the dialogue. Perhaps writing fashions have changed in this respect.
     Reverting to Sherlock, I finished "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb," which I thought was one of the sillier stories, and it involved no more of Sherlock's vaunted deductive skill than a guess that a twelve mile trip had been six miles out and six miles back, thus establishing the rough location of the house where the poor engineer had his thumb cut off. Really, a rather weak effort on the part of Conan Doyle. Let's see how the next one works--"The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor."
    I have finished the graphic version of Swann's Way, and once again I strongly recommend it as a beautiful book. The illustrations are superb, and the text--although obviously a fraction of the full version--provides the reader with the elements of the story. Indeed, after reading the condensed version and viewing the illustrations, I think I will dip into Proust a little...after all, haven't we all meant to do so some day, but never have?
    In 1996 Jeffrey Toobin published a book entitled "The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson." I read somewhere recently that this book is forming the basis for a new documentary on the O.J. Simpson trial, and so I got it from the Library. It is fascinating, and it leaves not a shred of doubt that O.J. did indeed kill his wife and Ron Goldman, and that he got off because the defense--Johnny Cochrane--unashamedly played the race card throughout the trial, essentially appealing to the African American women on the jury that the LAPD were out to 'get' O.J. Simpson. The only criticism I have is that we are treated to the life histories of all the major and minor players in considerable detail. However, in defense of Toobin, these potted biographies did say a great deal about the social history of the United States.
    And the third Elena Ferrante book is also proceeding...a little more slowly that the first two...

Kipling: Conan Doyle: Ferrante

    Trolling around in the free I-books for my I-Pad, I came across "Captains Courageous" (yes: the plural is right) by Rudyard Kipling. I downloaded it to my I-pad for my elliptical training sessions, thinking I would like some relief from Holmes and Watson in their series of extremely far-fetched 'adventures' that strain credulity--as did Holmes' deductive powers. Would a snake (the 'speckled band') really crawl down a vertical bell-pull? Can Holmes really recognize the mud on someone's shoes as coming from a particular region of Kent? Et cetera, et cetera...
    But reading the Kipling, I was struck by the vast knowledge that the book displayed of commercial fishing off the north-east coast of the United States and Canada, and what seemed like his intimate knowledge of every part of the sailing schooners from hemp ropes to mizzens to capstans and on and on. As if the novel set out to demonstrate just how much technical knowledge he had. 
    As background,  the story concerns a rich and spoiled boy, Harvey Cheyne, the son of a US multimillionaire,  who was washed into the sea from an ocean liner and was rescued by a fishing boat, where his character is greatly improved by the hard work and discipline of being a ship's boy on a fishing vessel for weeks at sea. 
    As for Kipling's technical knowledge--well, in this day and age, Wikipedia is only a click of a mouse away. Kipling spent four years in Vermont, from 1892 to 1896 and during that time he wrote the Jungle books and some other well-known works, including "Captains Courageous." And lo--here was the explanation of the technical knowledge, in Kipling's own words:

"Now our Dr. James Conland had served in the Gloucester fleet when he was young. One thing leading to another, as happens in this world, I embarked on a little book which was called Captains Courageous. My part was the writing; his the details. This book took us (he rejoicing to escape from the dread respectability of our little town) to the shore-front, and the old T-wharf of Boston Harbour, and to queer meals in sailors’ eating-houses, where he renewed his youth among ex-shipmates or their kin. We assisted hospitable tug-masters to help haul three- and four-stick schooners of Pocahontas coal all round the harbour; we boarded every craft that looked as if she might be useful, and we delighted ourselves to the limit of delight. ... Old tales, too, he dug up, and the lists of dead and gone schooners whom he had loved, and I revelled in profligate abundance of detail—not necessarily for publication but for the joy of it. ...I wanted to see if I could catch and hold something of a rather beautiful localised American atmosphere that was already beginning to fade." 

When the fishing boat had finished its season, and Harvey's parents  (I seem to have minimal control over the size of the font, damn it) had been telegraphed that he was alive, they came by train across the United States from San Francisco, and Kipling used other specialized knowledge to describe the trip.

Kipling recalled:

"When, at the end of my tale, I desired that some of my characters should pass from San Francisco to New York in record time, and wrote to a railway magnate of my acquaintance asking what he himself would do, that most excellent man sent a fully worked-out time-table, with watering halts, changes of engine, mileage, track conditions and climates, so that a corpse could not have gone wrong in the schedule."

The Wikipedia article continues:

"The resulting account, in Chapter 9, of the Cheynes' journey from San Diego to Boston, is a classic of railway literature."

    So I am looking forward to that...

    But, I now have the third Ferrante novel, and I am devouring it voraciously, with an occasional break for a few pages of the the graphic version of Swann's Way--which is fun, although the graphic renderings of the characters in conversations at soiree after soiree do become a bit boring. The first part "Combray'' was much more vividly artistic, as is the third part, "Place Names: The Name."

    

Ferrante:"The Story of a New Name"

    This is the second in the series of the Neapolitan novels of Elena Ferrante, bringing the narrator and Lila, her "brilliant friend," from about the age of sixteen into their early twenties. And the convoluted relationships of the families in the neighborhood continue unabated.
    There is not much I want to say about the novel, as I would only give away or inadvertently hint at what transpires. The narrator's acute introspection continues, with her emotional attachment to her friend waxing and waning, and the friend's life developing in dramatic and contradictory ways.
    But--like the first in the series of the "Neapolitan Novels"--it is an extraordinary achievement, and I can only find the usual clichés--amazing, engrossing, page-turner, etc. etc.
    I have already placed a hold at the library on the third book in the series.
    I might also mention some of my reading of free I-books on my I-pad on the elliptical trainer when I go to the gym most mornings. The I-pad sits nicely on the control panel of the machine, the print can be read easily, and pages are turned with a touch of the finger. I managed to get three-quarters of the way through "The Scarlet Letter, " although it was a struggle. Heavens--the register of the language is set at such a high level, such an exercise in lofty and exaggerated rhetoric---eventually, at about three quarters of the way through, I decided to give up and to read a summary somewhere just to see how it ended. By contrast, the ease and felicity of Hardy's language in another freebie, "Tess of the D'Urbevilles," drew me in with no difficulty, although I fear that no good can come to the poor innocent girl...
    ...so I am also reading some of  "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" as an alternative to reading of Tess's downfall.
   

"Fever at Dawn" by Peter Gardos

       I picked up “Fever at Dawn” more or less accidentally when I was in the public library and looking at the new books. The back cover had in large letters “An International Bestseller,” but the quoted reviews were all from obscure publications: none from the usual sources of quotes—NYTimes or Guardian or Observer.

       And the book and its genesis are rather strange. Reversing the usual order of things, “Fever at Dawn” was first a film, directed by Peter  Gardos, a Hungarian (acute accents on the first ‘e’ and the ‘a.’), and the novel is adapted, written, whatever, on the basis of the film script.

       Peter Gardos’s father was a survivor of the atrocious Belsen concentration camp, as was his mother. Both were shipped to Sweden at the end of the war, where they were in a succession of hospitals and rehabilitation centers. Miklos—Peter Gardos’s father—was suffering from TB and was told he had six months to live. Each dawn he had to check his temperature, and each morning he had a fever, confirming his illness. It is, however, clear from the outset that he couldn’t have died as the narrator is his son, Peter Gardos.

       Miklos, in his hospital, got hold of the names of Hungarian women who had survived the Holocaust and were in Swedish hospitals and rehabilitation centers and sent letters to 117 of them. He eventually started what was essentially a love affair by letter with Lili, whom he eventually married. The novel plots the course of this relationship, narrating the various attempts--unsuccessful and eventually successful--Miklos made to get together with Lili. And after various problems and setbacks, the two are married by a rabbi in Stockholm.

       Part of the impetus for Gardos to memorialize his father’s story came after his father died, when his mother produced the cache of letters exchanged between her and her husband in the period of their hospital treatment and rehabilitation in Sweden. These letters form an integral part of the story, and are often quoted.

       The novel can, I believe, be criticized on a number of grounds. There is little attempt to develop characters in any detail—apart from Miklos. We learn nothing much about Lili, and there is a certain repetitiveness about Miklos’s attempts to travel to see Lili. There is also a sub-plot about an attempt for Lili and Miklos to convert to Catholicism that I found rather strained and far-fetched. But what kept me reading was the interest of the story and the descriptions of how concentration camp survivors had medical treatment and rehabilitation in Sweden. We all know the pictures of the liberation of Belsen and Buchenwald, and I have often wondered how the cadaverous, skeletal survivors fared after the liberation. So that aspect interested me and kept me reading.

       We are not talking great literature here: but I enjoyed the book--it held my attention until the end. It would, I think, appeal to anyone with a holocaust interest. It’s a reasonably quick read—230 small format pages.

Swann's Way; as a GRAPHIC novel? Yes, indeed.

I found this very difficult to believe. There it was in the Library--a
so-called GRAPHIC novel---Swann's Way. I couldn't resist taking it out to investigate.

It is over 220 pages long. Each page has up to a dozen or more beautiful illustrations, with the (adapted) Proust text translated by Arthur Goldhammer. This is such a super book that I want to give credit to all those responsible. The text has been adapted by Stephane Heuet, and he has also done the drawings. The publisher is Liveright Publishing Corporation, a W.W. Norton Division.
The inside front and rear covers have a beautiful schematic map
of Paris. There are several pages devoted to small portraits of 70 of the characters and of the narrator's family; several pages of Glossary; and an interesting introduction by the translator.
It is quite a big book--format about 11 by nine inches: heavy, too.

Let me just quote from the blurb on the inside of the cover:
"Now in what the renowned translator Arthur Goldhammer says 'might be likened to a piano reduction of an orchestral score,' the French illustrator Stephane Heuet re-presents Proust in graphic form for anyone who has always dreamed of reading him but was put off by the sheer magnitude of the undertaking."

The work of illustration that is involved is enormous, and one wonders how the artist and adapter, who must have worked on the book for months, at least, and maybe years, found a publisher. And one wonders too how the publisher could assess what sort of a market existed for such an oddity, especially as one imagines that a book of this quality must represent a sizable investment for the publisher.

Goldhammer also makes the following point: "The ruthless compression required to squeeze Proust's expansive sentences into the confining frames of a graphic novel yields an unexpected benefit: it sheds a revealing light on the book's armature, on the columns, pillars, and arches that support the narrator's resurrected memories as the columns of the church in Combray support the stained glass and tapestries that transport visitors into the past they represent."

If you are in a big bookstore--look for it. It's a revelation.

"Sweet Caress" by William Boyd

William Boyd is on record as wanting his readers to forget that a book is fiction and, rather, believe that it is describing reality. In “Sweet Caress” he has produced a book—complete with faded and dated photographs—that purports to be the autobiography of Amory Clay, a woman in spite of the man’s name, who was born in 1908 and died in 1983. And, yes, he succeeds—you read it like an autobiography. The tale of her life is told in great detail—with the various episodes obviously well researched in the authentic atmosphere and circumstances of each period—as we follow Amory through school and into her brief career as a fashion photographer in London of the ‘twenties; a sojourn taking photographs in Berlin’s night clubs and brothels: working for a fashion magazine in New York; a stint as a war photographer in the closing stages of WW2; marriage and motherhood in Scotland; a return to war photography in Vietnam; and a final excursion to California in the ‘seventies to find a daughter who has married the leader of a hippy commune. As I say, all these different venues and episodes are clothed, as it were, in authentic period detail.

And as Amory’s life progresses, we have a rather ludicrous loss of virginity, one major affair, and an affair within that affair, marriage, and a casual coupling later in life. The account of her life is interspersed with sections of a journal that she is writing in her rather bleak cottage on an island off the western coast of Scotland—drinks with neighbors, visits to the doctor, walks with her dog, worries about her declining health.

William Boyd apparently collects old photographs, buys them at yard sales and in junk shops, and the photos reproduced in the book are from his collection. One is of a man standing on his head watched by a couple of children—and this is Amory’s first memory of her father—standing  on his head. There is a very interesting interview with William Boyd in the London Telegraph. He explains his interest in collecting old photographs and discusses their use in “Sweet Caress.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/william-boyd-sweet-caress-photographs/

As I say, opinions are mixed: a New York Times reviewer, while admiring the attempt, turns thumbs down. The Guardian reviewer was ecstatic. A blurb from a Spectator review says, “Superbly written and desperately moving.”

I enjoyed it. You might give it a try…

Ferrante-Addendum

I suddenly realized that I had not provided the slightest idea what the Ferrante book “My Brilliant Friend was all about. So briefly…

It is a story about two friends, Elena and Lila, the “brilliant friend.” It begins in the 1950s, in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples—a neighborhood of rough, tough streets and often feuding families and fights between adolescent boys. We follow the two girls from childhood, through their schools, their relationships with boys, through adolescence, and they learn to rely on each other as their lives diverge and converge. To quote one review: “They are likewise the embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists, the unforgettable Elena and Lila.”

 

Elena Ferrante "My Brilliant Friend"

“My Brilliant Friend” is the first of Elena Ferrante’s novels of life in Naples. I hesitate to write about it because I expect all you avid readers will have already read the book, and probably the sequels. I have come very late to Elena Ferrante, in some vague way resenting the idea that I would be starting a series. But I am hooked, as I am sure you will be if you start with the first one. Yes, it is a bit confusing sometimes with a very large cast of characters. The three Cerulos, the Greco family, Don Achille, the Solaro family, with Silvio and Marcello…and on and on and on…

The book does begin with a detailed dramatis personae, just to help you out, with descriptions of who characters are and their families and jobs, but you cannot expect to read that through and retain it all. Apart from that criticism, however, the book is a great read, and I am waiting with bated breath for the DC library to send the second book—I am now third in line. That is the disadvantage of downloading books to the I-pad from the DC Library—the waiting lists are very long. I must try to put a hold on the actual book.

Just a few other things have occurred to me about the five books I have been reading. The viewpoint of ‘Mothering Sunday” is that of a woman—but the book is written by a man, Graham Swift. There is speculation that the unknown author “Elena Ferrante,” might also be a man, although the narrator voice is that of a woman. And the final book, “Sweet Caress” by William Boyd also employs a first person female narrator. “A brave failure” would sum up the NYTimes’ review: “A brilliant success”—The Guardian’s. Any views from women on this aspect of novels?

And I just want to add a small footnote to the Jonathan Coe book that has long-lasting repercussions for the characters in “Number 11”—a text  message gets the word “nicest” wrong, and it comes out as “incest.” I thought that was a very neat twist.

"Mothering Sunday" by Graham Swift

“Mothering Sunday” is about a young maidservant’s coming-of-age. A clever orphan named Jane Fairchild--a name given by the orphanage --who is “put into service” at the age of 14 has a prolonged affair with the son of a neighbouring family; makes her way to work in a bookshop in Oxford; and eventually becomes a celebrated author. (In one review it has been speculated that the novel is really a story made up by Jane Fairchild herself in her old age.)

Mothering Sunday—in the book, March 30, 1924—is a day on which girls in service were traditionally given the day off to visit their mothers, and the head of the household in which Jane works gives her a half-a-crown and tells her the day is hers. The family with whom she works and the neighbouring family to which her lover belongs are going to have lunch together, although her lover will not take part but will meet and lunch with the girl he will shortly marry. But a phone call from the lover tells her to come to his house, which will be completely empty of family and domestic staff, so that they can make love in his bed. Which they do, and then he slowly dresses, watched by the naked Jane, and leaves in his car to meet his fiancee. Jane wanders naked around the empty house. The rest you must read.

This is the sort of novel that gets the cliché “a gem” and I would agree with that. It is really a novella. It can almost be read in one sitting. Beautifully written.

It has been published in the U.S. and very well reviewed.

Jonathan Coe's "Number 11"

Jonathan Coe’s “Number 11” is a book that Americans might want to pass on, as it is—in broad terms—a ‘state of the nation’ book, examining in satiric detail a number of developments in British society since about 2003, when the WMD expert David Kelly committed suicide, seemingly in reaction to his possible involvement in the “goosing up” of an intelligence report on Saddam’s ability to land an atomic bomb on Britain--which supposedly helped Blair to take the decision to join Bush in invading Iraq.

          The book opens with two ten year old girls—Alison and Rachel, staying with Rachel’s grandparents when the news of the suicide breaks, and it seems the grandparents have some premonition that “things have changed,” and the future would see deteriorations in trust in government, in politicians, in the elite, in the intelligence services—deteriorations that would be pervasive in British society. I think this dating is a bit overdone, as much of the present cultural and economic state of Britain goes back much further—the rule of Maggie Thatcher comes to mind.

The novel is in five parts: each of which could stand on its own as a novella or a long short story. There are loose connections between each of the parts—characters like Alison and Rachel reappear, as do many of the themes.

The title “Number 11” is the usual way of referring to 11 Downing Street, which is the residence of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer (read Secretary of the Treasury). It is also the number of a bus that runs 24 hours a day on a circular route around Birmingham, and on which one character—too poor to heat her apartment—spends long hours to keep herself warm. And the eastern European wife of some filthy rich financial magnate is driving her contractor crazy getting him to construct a basement of eleven storeys (OED accepts this plural: ‘Word’ does not) in the basement of her Chelsea mansion. Digging out fancy basements with gyms and swimming pools is currently common in wealthier areas in London. And huge $30 million houses stand largely vacant—often owned by foreigners who visit rarely—but represent solid investments as house prices have been rising at about 5 percent a year, and thus a $30 million house, as Coe points out, is earning close to $30,000 a week. Such semi-occupied mansions are all over Kensington, Chelsea and Hampstead.

Satirical swipes are taken at a variety of aspects of British society--the ultra rich, reality television, stand-up comedians, the right wing press, multi-national arms companies, hate posts on social media..the list could go on and on. But there are also much sadder aspects of life that emerge—for example, poverty, food banks, welfare recipients.

I did have serious reservations about the final part of the book, which becomes most mysterious and surrealistic, bringing the reader into the realms of monstrous spiders and vampires and Dracula-like horror. A very strange turn from the realism of the first four parts.

But—a helluva writer, and a fascinating book, and it certainly spoke to many aspects of British life that we observe during our stays in London.

Up-Date and "Noonday" by Pat Barker

Well…it has been a busy summer. We went to what has become a regular summer tenancy in a mews house just north of Kensington High Street and west of St. Mary Abbots Church on Kensington Church Street. Below our rear windows, the children gathered and played each morning in the little park, waiting for St. Mary Abbots School to open, and in the evenings the occasional homeless person took up a sleeping position on one of the benches, leaving his empty beer-can on the grass. Voices carry easily into the house, and so we have heard business deals and family rows being broadcast by people sitting on a bench below the windows yelling into their mobile phones.

We made two trips, for a couple of days each, during our stay in London: one to the stately home of Chatsworth in the Derbyshire Peak District, and one to the Cotswolds for a performance at the Longborough Opera Festival. On both trips we also managed some excellent walks. We also made one day trip to Eastbourne, where we walked nine miles along the spectacular white cliffs of the Seven Sisters and took a bus back to Eastbourne—a pattern we followed after a visit to Brian Martin and Peggy Lou in Oxford, where we walked the Thames Path to Abingdon and took a bus back to our car in Oxford, where the parking fee seemed grotesquely expensive.

          And in mid-July we packed up in London, left heavy cases at a Heathrow hotel and flew to Glasgow for ten days or so in rainy, but beautiful, Scotland, where we met Daniel, my son, and his wife, Karen. The seven or so days we spent together had only a couple of days free of rain; but we did manage a lot of spectacular hiking and saw some wonderfully wild scenery, often made more dramatic by swirling clouds and mist. Dan and Karen--with what seemed like hundreds of other hikers--got to the top of Ben Nevis. We dropped them off at Edinburgh airport, whence they flew to Venice, and we had a few more days in the Trossachs, before taking the car back to Glasgow airport in pouring rain and through a maze of motorways, flying to Heathrow, spending one night at the hotel where we had left our cases, and catching a 7.30am flight to Dulles, where we arrived mid-morning and were home by mid-day on July 26.

But this is supposed to be a book blog, not a family history;  I make this introduction as a way of excusing myself for neglecting the blog for our time in London. And this means that this is going to be a major exercise, covering five books, which probably means that I shall be rather short about them, and maybe that is better than any pretension of deep analysis. (Getting old: not sure if it is “pretenSion” or “pretenTion” but the silky pages of the second volume of my Shorter OED—a pleasure to use rather than the computer—says that the second is simply a variation of the first)

Here are the five in the order I read them:

“Noonday” by Pat Barker

“Number 11” by Jonathan Coe

“Mothering Sunday” by Graham Swift

“My Brilliant Friend” by Elena Ferrante

“Sweet Caress” by William Boyd

At the start, I should say that I enjoyed them all. You will note that four out of the five are by English authors, probably the result of reading reviews (usually glowing) in English newspapers, and we did hear Jonathan Coe discuss his book at the LSE. And, of course, I have read prior novels by each of the English authors, who have great reputations in England, and deservedly so. And my first reading of an Elena Ferrante was a riveting experience and I cannot wait until I can get into Volume Two when it is my turn to download it from the DC Public Library.

For American readers, who have probably already read some of the Pat Barker WW1 novels, one of which dealt in fictional disguise with Siegfried Sassoon’s time in the Craiglockhart Mental Hospital and another with the clinic in which the New Zealand surgeon (whose name eludes me) performed miracles of reconstructive surgery on mutilated faces. Others deal with a group of art students (the novel “Toby’s Room” comes to mind) and in “Noonday” we pick up with these characters at the outbreak of WW2 and during the London Blitz, which--in a way--is the centre-piece of the novel. The characters, painters and an art critic, are Kit Neville, whose face was mutilated in WW1: Elinor Brooke, with her brother Toby’s rather mysterious death in WW1 often on her mind: and Paul Tarrant, limping with a leg wound, married to Elinor, though clearly the relationship is seriously fraying. The narrators are each of these characters—and a fraudulent spiritualist medium called Bertha Mason, whose first person narration I found rather superfluous to those of the main characters, whose interactions and changing relationships are the emotional heat of the novel—although the overarching picture is THE BLITZ, described in both banal and horrifying detail. Clearly, Ms, Barker has done her research, and she is a great writer.

This is, incidentally, her 13^th novel.

I originally intended to publish one blog covering all five books, but I am having difficulties in posting the blogs. There used to be a way of saving a draft, but it seems to have disappeared in what are supposed to be improvements to the site, but which leave the user mystified. So I will publish this one and then pick up the other books in the next four pos