Favorites of 2019: Books
FICTION
My fiction reading in 2019 was dominated by two authors: George Sand, of whose vast oeuvre I sampled four novels representing different periods in her life, and Samuel Richardson, whose seven-volume Sir Charles Grandison was my summer reading project. I do notice that my alienation from contemporary fiction seems to be growing: books that didn't make the list included Trust Exercise by Susan Choi, Thus Bad Begins by Javier Marias (The Infatuations was one of my Favorites of 2013), and Grand Union by Zadie Smith (her essay collections Changing My Mind and Feel Free both made earlier favorites lists). As you'll see, all of my favorite fiction of 2019 was published in the 18th or 19th centuries. In the order read:
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Marianne, by George Sand, edited and translated by Sîan Miles, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1988; originally published 1876.What's next for us? You, for sure, will produce desolation, while I will produce consolation. . .You make the people who read you sadder. As for me, I would like to make them less sad. Pierre, a shy bachelor approaching middle age, is asked by a former acquaintance to try to arrange a marriage between his artistic son Philippe and a young village woman, Marianne. The sudden appearance of a suitor for Marianne who is young, handsome and rich forces Pierre to recognize his own hopeless love for her. What he doesn't realize is that his inability to express his feelings may inadvertently drive Marianne into the arms of the new arrival. Marianne, though, has her own ideas about whom, or whether, she will marry. Flaubert wrote to Sand, Marianne moved me deeply and two or three times I wept. I recognized myself in the character of Pierre. Certain pages seemed to me fragments of my own memoirs, supposing I had the talent to write them in such a way! How charming, poetic and true to life it all is! La Tour de Percemont [published together with Marianne] pleased me extremely. But Marianne literally enchanted me. . .Anyway, this time I admire you completely and without the least reservation. [2]Marianne inspired me to read backwards through George Sand's work, selecting novels that marked particularly notable relationships in her life: her thinly fictionalized portrait of the pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin in Lucrezia Floriani (1846), of the opera singer and composer Pauline Viardot in Consuelo (1842), and of Sand's early marriage in Indiana (1832); I also read Alfred de Musset's fictionalized version of their grand affair in Confessions of a Child of the Century (1836). For more on Marianne, including its connection to her late-life friendship with Flaubert and the bloody military assault on the Paris Commune, please see George Sand and Gustave Flaubert: Marianne. |
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Sir Charles Grandison, v. 1, by Samuel Richardson, originally published 1753.'Sir Charles Grandison! That is an amazing horrid book, is it not? —I remember Miss Andrews could not get through the first volume.' Isabella Thorpe was not the only one who thought Samuel Richardson's The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753) unreadable. Samuel Johnson, a contemporary of Richardson's, said that "if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself." [4] But Sir Charles Grandison was one of Jane Austen's favorite heroes, and this year I decided to find out why. While over the course of its seven (!) volumes Richardson's narrative becomes increasingly repetitive, suspenseless and moralizing, the first volume is really quite gripping. It introduces us to the smart, witty, generous, wise and beautiful Harriet Byron. Harriet, in London visiting relatives, is abducted from a masquerade ball by an aggressive suitor, Sir Hargrave Pollexfen. He takes her blindfolded and gagged in his carriage, accompanied by armed servants on horseback, galloping down the road from London to his estate in Windsor. There on his isolated estate he plans to forcibly marry Harriet and then rape her. These, no doubt, are the scenes that Isabella Thorpe considers "amazing horrid." But on the narrow road crossing Hounslow Heath outside of Windsor Sir Hargrave's carriage meets another one going the opposite direction, towards London. That carriage belongs to Sir Charles Grandison, who hears a woman cry out. . . The first volume of Sir Charles Grandison displays Richardson's many virtues as a novelist, particularly his ability to create deeply sympathetic female characters and to render events with vivid emotional immediacy. These are clear reasons for Jane Austen's admiration. But as Jane's brother Henry wrote, "Richardson's power of creating, and preserving the consistency of his characters, as particularly exemplified in 'Sir Charles Grandison,' gratified the natural discrimination of her mind, whilst her taste secured her from the errors of his prolix style and tedious narrative." [5] So while Volume 1 is one of my favorite novels of 2019, the prolix style and increasingly tedious narrative of Volumes 2 through 7 are my collective Biggest disappointment of 2019. For more on Sir Charles Grandison and its connections to Austen and her novels, please see Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 1: The abduction. |
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Dangerous Liaisons, by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, translated with an introduction and notes by Helen Constantine, Penguin, 2007; originally published 1782. After seven volumes of Sir Charles' relentless virtue I needed to wallow in some wickedness in the worst way. And where better to find it than in the company of the ruthless libertines the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil? Les Liaisons dangereuses is told in letters mainly between these two former lovers as they plot to debauch the innocent Cécile Volanges and the virtuous Madame de Tourvel; but of course they are also scheming against one another. The novel has lost none of its power to shock and seems only to gain in relevance with the passage of time. It was impossible to read in 2019 without thinking about recent public revelations of women's sexual exploitation by powerful men. Helen Constantine's translation uses a relatively modern vocabulary and is sometimes over-explanatory. The gain in clarity comes at the cost of some 18th-century elegance. I noticed only one misstep, but it was a major one: it changes the meaning of a key moment during Valmont's sexual coercion of Cécile Volanges. Here is Constantine's rendering of the Vicomte's letter to the Marquise after he has surprised Cécile asleep in her bed: As I had not come there for a chat, after calming her initial fears, I took a few liberties. Probably they did not teach her at the convent what different dangers timid innocence may be exposed to, or all she must protect so as not to be taken by surprise. For, bringing all her attention and strength to bear upon defending herself from my kiss, which was just a false attack, everything else was left undefended. How could I not take advantage! So I changed tactics, and immediately took up my position. . .One hand busy restraining [Cécile has tried to reach the bell pull to summon her servants], the other caressing. . ."Her hand": in Constantine's version Cécile withdraws her protective hand from between her legs, suggesting that she is consenting to some degree, or at the very least, remarkably unwary. However, this is a misunderstanding of what is happening that gives this scene a diametrically opposite meaning from the original. It is not, as Constantine has it, Cécile's hand that is wedged between her legs, but Valmont's. Constantine's confusion may have arisen because in French "hand" (whether it belongs to a man or woman) is a feminine noun: la main. Here is the original: Tant de bonne foi méritait récompense, aussi ai-je aussitôt accordé la demande. La main s'est retirée, mais je ne sais par quel hasard je me suis trouvé moi-même à sa place.P. W. K. Stone's 60-year-old translation, which Constantine's replaces in the Penguin Classics series, gets it right: So much good faith deserved its reward, and I immediately granted the request. The hand was withdrawn; but by some extraordinary chance I found that I myself had taken its place."The hand": it is Valmont who is "in position," it is he that guides Cécile's arms around him (so she can't be guarding herself), it is he that has only one hand free, and it is he who is granting the request. The hand withdrawn from between Cécile's legs is his. What this means is that Cécile does not consent, tacitly or otherwise. When she agrees to a kiss she is bargaining with her rapist, who of course simply takes further advantage. Les liaisons dangereuses was the most compelling book I read this year. Not only for its urgent topicality, although the Marquise de Merteuil's account (Letter 81) of the stratagems she has learned to adopt in order to survive in a man's world is as searing today as when it was written. Les liaisons dangereuses is also brilliantly written and plotted. However, I suggest seeking out Stone's translation, which retains a bit more of the flavor of the prose of the period, and in which this key scene is accurately rendered. |
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Orley Farm, by Anthony Trollope, originally published 1861. As ever, what is most interesting about Trollope's writing isn't his Victorian attitudes or the mechanics of his plots (although in this novel, as in the later The Last Chronicle of Barset, he wrings the maximum amount of suspense from the question of the innocence or guilt of a major character). Rather, it is his articulation of observed traits of character. Three examples: Of Joseph Mason, who is planning to bring a criminal action against his stepmother Lady Mason because he is convinced that his father's will, which left Orley Farm to his younger stepbrother Lucius, was forged. There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance; a feeling of having been injured, on which his mind can brood from hour to hour, allowing him to plead his own cause in his own court, within his own heart,—and always to plead it successfully. [7]Of Mr. Furnival, a barrister in late middle age, who takes on Lady Mason's case despite his uncertainty about her innocence because of her elegance, vulnerability and still-youthful beauty. The body dries up and withers away, and the bones grow old, the brain, too, becomes decrepit, as do the sight, the hearing, and the soul. But the heart that is tender once is tender to the last. [8]Of Lucius, Lady Mason's son, who wants to revenge the stain on his mother's reputation resulting from the lawsuit: Life did not come easy to him, and the effort which he was ever making was always visible. All men should ever be making efforts, no doubt; but those efforts should not be conspicuous. [9]Trollope himself recognized that character, rather than plot, was preeminent in his novels. In An Autobiography he wrote, "The plot of Orley Farm is probably the best I have ever made," but "the highest merit which a novel can have consists in perfect delineation of character, rather than in plot." [10] Trollope is right: his novels will continue to be read not because of the cleverness of his plots but because of his insight into character. |
NONFICTION
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Mary Astor's Purple Diary: The Great American Sex Scandal of 1936, written and illustrated by Edward Sorel, Liveright, 2016. Like many people, I know Mary Astor thanks to one role: her indelible performance as the devious Brigid O'Shaughnessy opposite Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941). But, as I learned from Sorel's book, Astor had a screen career that stretched over four decades, from the silents through the mid-1960s. Born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke in Quincy, Illinois in 1906, Mary Astor was a product of the Hollywood studio system. Her story was typical: exploited by ambitious parents, discovered while still a teenager, and chosen as a co-star and sexual partner by a much older and more famous actor (in her case, John Barrymore). In the mid-1930s, unhappily married, Astor made a bid for freedom. Her scandalous "purple diary," discovered by her husband and entered as evidence in a child custody case, detailed her many love affairs and became headline fodder for the newspapers for weeks during the summer of 1936. Sorel tells this story while also recounting his own early struggles as an illustrator, the failure of his first marriage, and meeting the woman who would become his second wife. He discovered the Purple Diary scandal while renovating his New York apartment in the 1960s: stuffed under layers of decaying linoleum were yellowed newspapers from thirty years earlier with screaming headlines: "ASTOR DIARY ECSTACY" [sic]; "G. S. KAUFMAN TRYST BARED." (Yes, that's George S. Kaufman, author of You Can't Take It with You.) Sorel is an engaging narrator (he terms Astor's travails a "screwball tragedy"), his illustrations are vivid, and he is very sympathetic to his not-always-well-behaved subject. The book makes a case for Astor as an underappreciated actress, and it will make you want to watch one (or more) of her many films. I had forgotten that she was in Red Dust (1932), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), The Palm Beach Story (1942), and Meet Me In St. Louis (1944). And, of course, The Maltese Falcon. |
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Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews, by Simon Reynolds, Soft Skull, 2010. Totally Wired is a byproduct of Reynold's earlier Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 (Penguin, 2006). I didn't care much for Rip It Up, starting with its ridiculous periodization of punk (April 1976-October 1977, in case you were wondering), continuing through its narrow categorization or outright exclusion of bands, and ending with nearly 200 pages devoted to "New Pop"—synth-pop outfits that often included former members of punk bands, but were anti-punk in aesthetic: slick, glossy, commercial. Dave Rimmer's book about the New Pop band Culture Club was accurately titled (in terms of their sound, anyway) Like Punk Never Happened. But strangely, the interviews Reynolds conducted as research for Rip It Up end up being far more interesting than the conclusions he drew from them. While Reynolds isn't above asking leading questions of his subjects, the experiences of the people he interviews aren't as neatly pigeonholed as Rip It Up tries to make them seem. Also, as John Robb's Punk Rock: An Oral History proves, the voices of participants (even well after the fact) are much more engaging than journalistic retrospect. There are many expected names with practiced (but entertaining) stories here, including Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), David Byrne (Talking Heads), John Peel (BBC Radio 1 DJ), and Tony Wilson (Factory Records founder). But there are also conversations with the less well known, such as Dennis Bovell (Dub Band leader and producer of The Slits and Linton Kwesi Johnson), Andy Gill (the brilliant guitarist of Gang of Four), Martin Brahmah (guitarist for The Fall), and Paul Haig (lead singer of Josef K.). Looking at the list of interviewees, though, makes starkly apparent that women are woefully underrepresented: only five of the 32 interviews included in the book are of women. To name them: Gina Birch (The Raincoats), Lydia Lunch (Teenage Jesus & the Jerks), Alison Statton (Young Marble Giants), Linder Sterling (Ludus), Ari Up (The Slits). Even if the punk and post-punk scenes often reproduced the sexism of the larger culture, they also opened up a space for women to step onstage or into the studio, and many seized the opportunity. Where are the voices of Gaye Advert (The Adverts), Ros Allen, Bethan Peters, and Julz Sale (Delta 5), Deanna Ashley, Mia Levin and Cecilia Lynch (Frightwig), Adele Bertei (Bush Tetras and The Bloods), Jane Crockford and Kate Korus (Mo-dettes), Ana da Silva (The Raincoats), Penelope Houston (The Avengers), Poison Ivy (The Cramps), Debora Iyall (Romeo Void), Sara Lee (Gang of Four), Marlene Marder and Klaudia Schiff (Kleenex/Liliput), Palmolive (The Slits and The Raincoats), Tessa Pollitt (The Slits), Sue White and Sally Webster (The Mutants), and Lesley Woods (Au Pairs)? Where is Poly Styrene (X-Ray Spex)? Or Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth)? I could go on, but I think it's clear: Totally Wired is enjoyable, but a book of interviews featuring women in punk and post-punk is desperately needed. |
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Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music, by Anna Beer, Oneworld Publications, 2016. Speaking of woeful underrepresentation, in Sounds and Sweet Airs Anna Beer highlights eight women composers, from Francesca Caccini in the early 17th century through Elizabeth Maconchy in the 20th. If you're thinking "Who?" that's precisely Beer's point. Although not all of the composers featured in the book are forgotten women, as the subtitle has it—there are dozens of recordings of works by Barbara Strozzi, Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann currently available, to name just three of Beer's subjects—they are all under-performed and under-recorded with respect to their male counterparts. They also faced far greater barriers to success. Marriage and motherhood meant that women were expected to place needs of spouses and children ahead of their own. When she turned 18 Nannerl Mozart was no longer allowed to tour with her younger brother Wolfgang and was discouraged by her father from composing. Fanny Mendelssohn was lectured by her father: "Music. . .can and must be only an ornament, never the root of your being and action. . .You must. . .prepare more earnestly and eagerly for your real calling, the only calling of a young woman—I mean the state of a housewife." Alma Schindler had composed more than a hundred lieder before becoming the wife of Gustav Mahler; a few months before their marriage he wrote to her: "You have only one profession from now on: to make me happy!. . .The role of 'composer,' the 'worker's' role falls to me, yours is that of loving companion and understanding partner. . .You must give yourself to me unconditionally, shape your future life, in every detail, entirely in accordance with my needs." Beer's book offers fascinating short biographies of women composers who struggled to create despite such obstacles. Its only major flaw is that there are many other deserving subjects that Beer did not have the room to cover in detail in a single volume. Hildegard of Bingen, the Countess of Dia, Amy Beach, Ethel Smyth, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Mary Lou Williams, and many others deserve a sequel. For my full post, please see Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music. |
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Handel in London: The Making of a Genius, by Jane Glover, Pegasus Books, 2018. George Frideric Handel was born in Saxony and as a young man travelled to Italy, but most of the works by which he is known today were written in London. The English capital was, as Jane Glover's subtitle has it, the making of a genius. Glover situates Handel's musical activities within the context of the political upheaval in Britain during the first half of the 18th century: riots, rebellions, and deep antagonisms within the royal family, all of which Handel had to negotiate without a misstep. Powerful aristocratic factions tried to foment rivalries between Handel and other composers, but he never allowed professional conflicts to become personal. His resilience in the face of the failure of two of his opera companies, and his ability to reinvent himself when disaster arrived, are truly remarkable. Glover is a well-known conductor specializing in the music of the Baroque. Her discussions of Handel's operas and oratorios offer insights that come from deep exploration, made accessible for readers (like me) who lack a musicological background. She makes the offstage drama affecting Handel's opera companies and the sometimes knotty politics of Hanoverian Britain admirably clear, but always keeps the focus on Handel's magnificent music. For my full post, including an aria apiece from the opera Rinaldo (his first London triumph) and the oratorio Jephtha (one of his last major works), please see Handel in London: The Making of a Genius. |
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Recognition in Mozart's Operas, by Jessica Waldoff, Oxford University Press, 2006. It's rare that a book transforms my appreciation of a work, but Jessica Waldoff's Recognition in Mozart's Operas helped me hear his early opera La Finta Giardiniera (The Pretend Garden Girl) with new ears. In that opera the Count Belfiore, in a jealous rage, has stabbed his fiancée the Marchesa Violante and left her for dead. She survives, and in the disguise of a servant, "Sandrina," goes to work as a gardener at the mansion of the town's mayor, the Podestà. When the Count arrives at the mansion with his new fiancée, the Podesta's daughter, the stage is set for an abduction, a mad scene, a sleep scene, and lovers getting mixed up in the dark. In the end, Sandrina confesses her true identity and is reunited with her would-be murderer for a happy (?!) ending. But Waldoff connects the libretto's seeming absurdities with the 18th-century culture of sensibility exemplified by the novels of Samuel Richardson. La Finta Giardiniera was a loose adaptation of another opera by composer Niccolò Piccinni and librettist Carlo Goldoni, La buona figliuola (The good daughter), itself an adaptation of Richardson's Pamela. Fainting and going mad were the ways virtuous women expressed profound emotion in novels (true also in Richardson's Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison). By adopting these conventional manifestations of sensibility, Sandrina is paradoxically signalling the truth of her feelings. Although I picked up this volume at a used book sale for its discussions of Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), Don Giovanni (Don Juan), Cosi fan tutte (That's what they all do), and La clemenza di Tito (The mercy of Titus), it was the chapters devoted to an opera I didn't think I liked that wound up being the most memorable. A recording of La Finta Giardiniera conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and starring Edita Gruberova as Sandrina was among my Favorites of 2019: Recordings. |
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Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763, edited by Frederick Pottle, Reprint Society, 1952. In November 1762 the 22-year-old James Boswell came to London from his native Scotland. He and his father were at odds: his father wanted him to become a lawyer, and Boswell wanted to be an Army officer. To gain a military commission without purchasing it outright aristocratic patronage was needed, and Boswell set out, unsuccessfully, to cultivate it. His father gave him an allowance of £200 a year, but for a young man on his own in London and whose habits were not very abstemious this amount did not go far (Boswell was constantly running out of funds before his next installment). And this raises one of the issues with Boswell's journal: Boswell himself is not a particularly attractive figure. He's ambitious for fame but wants to get by on as little actual work as possible. He tries to ingratiate himself with established literary figures, with mixed results. He pursues sex with married women, actresses, and prostitutes, and gets the clap from one of his conquests. He shows up at the first night of a play with a group of friends determined to heckle the actors and get the play cancelled (they failed). He is constantly making resolutions—to drink less, to be more pious, to avoid prostitutes—and then breaking them only days, or hours, afterwards. In short, he's a typical 22-year-old. Except that he grew up to write one of the great biographies in English: The Life of Samuel Johnson. |
Other favorites of 2019:
- The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters, translated by Aimee L. McKenzie, Boni and Liveright, 1921, Sand to Flaubert, 18th and 19th December, 1875. Translation slightly altered. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5115/pg5115-images.html.
- The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters. Flaubert to Sand, Friday evening [14 April?] 1876. Translation slightly altered. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5115/pg5115-images.html
- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, John Murray, 1818 [published December 1817], Vol. I, Ch. VI.
- James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, Oxford University Press, 1965, p. 480.
- Henry Austen, "A Biographical Notice of the Author," Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, John Murray, 1818.
- This sentence is an example of Constantine's tendency to explain too much. The original reads "Les prières me trouvant inexorable, il a fallu passer aux offres." Stone's rendering catches the tone much better: "Entreaties found me inexorable and she was reduced to making offers."
- Anthony Trollope, Orley Farm, Chapman and Hall, 1862, Vol. 1 Ch. VIII.
- Orley Farm, Vol. 1 Ch. XXVI.
- Orley Farm, Vol. 1 Ch. XXVII.
- Trollope, An Autobiography, William Blackwood and Sons, 1883, Ch. IX.
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