Alain Robbe Grillet (1922-2008) was a French author, one of the leading figures in the nouveau roman literary movement, and since 2004 member of the Académie française. His best-known novels are Le Voyeur and La Jalousie. Robbe-Grillet also wrote short stories and screenplays, including L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last year at Marienbad). He passed away today at the age of 85.
La plage (The beach) is a story from the collection Instantanés, published in 1962. I'm not aware of any translation of this collection, but an English translation of La plage is available in Penguin Parallel Text: French Short Stories 1
The story is a prime example of the nouveau roman style. Like his best novels, it's full of repetition, and each repetition reveals more details. It's a simple story, about three children walking along the beach (and that's about all there is to the plot). The three children are introduced as about the same height and age, one of them slightly smaller. In the first repetition, we find out they are blond, sunburnt, and also dressed alike: Shorts and shirts. A few pages later, we learn a few new details in the next repetition:
Leurs trois visages halés, plus foncés que les cheveux, se ressemblent. L'expression en est la même: sérieuse, réfléchie, préoccupée peut-être. Leurs traits aussi sont identiques, bien que, visiblement, deux de ces enfants sont des garçons et le troisième une fille. [...] Mais le costume est tout à fait la même: culotte courte et chemisette, l'une et l'autre en grosse toile d'un bleu délavé.
Have you read La plage? Please leave a comment and rate it.
Crime and punishment, English translation by Constance Garnett
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1861) was a Russian novelist. His novels depict life in 19th century urban Russia. His characters are often poor, working class people (unlike Tolstoy's characters, who are usually aristocrats). Dostoevsky is especially strong in character analysis.
In Crime and punishment, Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the slums of St. Petersburg, kills an unscrupulous pawnbroker, apparently to solve his financial problems. The novel deals with the aftermath of this murder, the emotional and mental effects of the crime and its investigation on Raskolnikov.
We get to know Raskolnikov as morose, self-centered, intellectual, proud and haughty, but occasionally also as spontaneous, generous and self-sacrificing. A split personality with more than a hint of madness. As the novel is largely told from his point of view, we cannot help but identify with Raskolnikov, despite his morosity, and despite his murder.
Raskolnikov believes that the law is for ordinary people, but some extraordinary people are above the law, and above the mores and conventions of society. These people are justified to break the law - even to kill - to reach their goals. Raskolnikov likes to compare himself to Napoleon, who had no scruples about the millions of deaths for which he was responsible, and who is not considered to be a criminal. Napoleon would certainly have killed the pawnbroker if it had advanced his own goals.
The murder is justified because Raskolnikov believed himself to be one of the extraordinary people, but also because by the murder he rid the world of an evil.
After the murder Raskolnikov is torn between remorse and guilt, and the believe that the murder is justified. One moment he is paranoid, believes everyone suspects him of the murder, and is ready to give himself up, the next moment he is rational, calculating, convinced he will never be caught because of his superiority. At times, he is acting strange and his friends and family think he is losing his sanity. Because of his feelings of guilt he also begins to doubt whether he is indeed extraordinary, but he never gives up this believe.
Two people cross his path that have a profound influence on Raskolnikov (and on the novel). The first is Sonia, a pious, generous and self-sacrificing young woman who works as a prostitute to support her (step-)family. The other person is Svidrigaïlov, a scoundrel who lives for sensual pleasure, and who sacrifices others for his own pleasures - he had no scruples about raping a 15-year-old girl, and did not care that this girl killed herself afterwards. In a way the cold, calculating, criminal personality of Svidrigaïlov, and the generous, self-sacrificing personality of Sonia represent the two opposing sides of Raskolnikov's split personality.
Raskolnikov is drawn towards Sonia. She is the first one to whom Raskolnikov confesses his crime. Sonia urges him to give himself up, to save his soul and his mental well-being, what he eventually does. When he is convicted to 8 years in a Siberian prison camp, Sonia follows him to Siberia and settles in a neighbouring village.
Raskolnikov's relationship with Svidrigaïlov is complex and enigmatic. He despises Svidrigaïlov, mainly because Svidrigaïlov has in the past tried to elope with Raskolnikov's sister Dounia, against her will and despite his existing marriage. He considers Svidrigaïlov a scoundrel because of his past crimes. On the other hand he is also drawn towards Svidrigaïlov - he looks for him, visits him, talks with him, and he does not know why he does it. Maybe to convince himself that the murder of the old pawnbroker is not on a par with Svidrigaïlov's selfish crimes?
A disappointing epilogue describes how Raskolnikov, after some time in a Siberian prison, finally realizes he loves Sonia, repents of his crime, and accepts he is not extraordinary and not above the law: An unconvincing happy ending stuck unto an already finished story.
Have you read Crime and punishment? Please leave a comment and rate it.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was an American journalist, short story author and novelist. In the 1920s he became part of the American expatriate literary community in Paris (sometimes known as The lost generation). In the 1930s, he became war correspondent in Europe, first during the civil war in Spain (he actively supported the Republicans), and later the second world war.
Hemingway was one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Pulitzer prize in 1953 (for The old man and the sea) and the Nobel prize in 1954.
I read For whom the bell tolls in high school, a long time ago. I think I liked it then, and I still remembered the storyline and the plot, but nothing else. Much later, I read The old man and the see, and (recently) A clean, well-lighted place - both masterpieces. So I started For whom the bell tolls with high expectations.
I was, however, somewhat disappointed by this novel.
It's the story of Robert Jordan, an American fighting in the Spanish civil war, on the republican side, who crossed the enemy lines to blow up a bridge behind the lines, with the help of a local guerrilla band. The operation seems to be doomed from the start, but has to be carried out anyway. The story is told mostly through the thoughts of Robert Jordan, occasionally as a stream of consciousness. Small parts of the book are told through the thoughts of others, which I find rather detracts from the novel. Conversation is often literally translated from the Spanish, with a heavy use of thou, articles before names (the Maria) and expressions like that you should speak - this may be natural conversation in Spanish, but in English it sounds archaic and contrived. I don't understand what Hemingway tried to achieve here.
The conversation in the novel is peppered with swearwords, but these words were consistently replaced with unprintable or obscenity, another narrative device I found annoying. Either print the swearwords or leave them out, but this way the conversation is hard to read and irritating.
An interesting story, a decent plot, and an insider's insight in the war (the story is loosely based on Hemingway's own experiences) make for a good read, but For whom the bell tolls is not the masterpiece I hoped it would be.
William Faulkner (1897-1962) was an American novelist and poet. He is probably the second-most influential Southern author (after Twain). His experimental use of literary devices - in particular stream of consciousness - makes his work often difficult to understand. He won the 1949 Nobel prize for literature.
As I lay dying is the story of the death and final journey of Addie Bundren. After her death her husband and children decide to honour her last wish and bring her to Jefferson, the town where she came from, to bury her there, a journey through Mississippi. As the story unfolds, we discover that several family members have selfish motives for a trip to Jefferson: Addie's husband Anse, for instance, is toothless and wants to go to town to buy false teeth, while their teenage daughter wants to have an abortion before anyone finds out she's pregnant.
Little by little, we get to know the Bundren family and their history, their lack of love and respect for each other, their quarrels and fears, by small revelations of one family member about another family member. The journey is disastrous for all involved, except for the lazy and selfish Anse, who is the only one to realize his goals (and more than his goals!), but at the expense of the others.
The story is narrated by several different people - family members, neighbours, passers-by, even the deceased herself. The numerous changes in narrator (sometimes mid-sentence), the stream of consciousness style of the narration, and the unreliability of the narrators (there is more than a hint of madness in several of them) makes the story sometimes hard to follow. As I lay dying is more challenging than Huckleberry Finn or To kill a mockingbird, and probably needs a second reading to fully appreciate it, but the extra effort needed to read this book is certainly rewarded.
It has been an enjoyable challenge, reading some great literature that provided me with a glimpse of southern life in times go by. Thank you Maggie for hosting this challenge and for supplying the pecans!
Harper Lee (b. 1926) is the first living artist to make an appearance on Masterpieces. She wrote just one novel, To kill a mockingbird. The novel was an instant bestseller and won her the 1961 Pulitzer prize. It was voted "Best novel of the century" by readers of the library journal.
The story is set in Maycomb, a small (fictional) town in Alabama, in the 1930s - some 80 or 90 years after Huckleberry Finn. The black slaves from Huck's time are now black servants, they are often (but not always) referred to as negroes instead of niggers, and the racism is unchanged.
The story is narrated by Scout Finch, the daughter of a local attorney, Atticus Finch. She is looking back to her childhood years - the narration begins when Scout is almost six, and ends three years later. She describes the town, and the bigotry of its white inhabitants, through the eyes of a child, who often does not really understand what is happening.
A large part of the narrative concerns the trial (and aftermath of the trial) of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white girl. Tom is defended by Atticus Finch, and Scout and her brother Jem are bullied by the children of the town because their father defends a black man against a white accuser. Atticus clearly shows at the court hearing that Tom is innocent, but the (all-white) jury nevertheless declares him guilty. "In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins." (ch. 23)
The town Maycomb was a small, old, run-down town in Alabama:
Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County.
The pace in Maycomb is slow, the town and the people are old-fashioned, the people gossip. There are at least three classes (middle class, poor and black). The Finches belong to the middle class. Middle class people help each other in need (e.g. when a fire destroys Miss Maudie's house the whole neighbourhood helps to save her posessions), but are bigoted with respect to the other classes (with a few exceptions, like Atticus Finch or Miss Maudie).
The Ewell family is as low as you can get in Maycomb if you're white:
Maycomb's Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin. The cabin's plank walls were supplemented with sheets of corrugated iron, its roof shingled with tin cans hammered flat, so only its general shape suggested its original design: square, with four tiny rooms opening onto a shotgun hall, the cabin rested uneasily upon four irregular lumps of limestone. Its windows were merely open spaces in the walls, which in the summertime were covered with greasy strips of cheesecloth to keep out the varmints that feastred on Maycomb's refuse.
Noone in Maycomb wants to have anything to do with the Ewells, but when Bob Ewell accuses Tom Robinson of raping his daughter, Tom is arrested and found guilty without any proof - when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins, even if the white man is Bob Ewell.
Mark Twain is the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910). With his novels The adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain became one of the best-known American authors.
Huckleberry Finn starts with a rather severe warning:
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By order of the author
I usually don't look for motive or moral in a novel - I leave that to professional critics - but I will have to take care to avoid looking for a plot.
There is no lack of praise for Mark Twain or Huckleberry Finn: William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature", Huckleberry Finn is often referred to as "the great American novel", and apparently Ernest Hemingway said that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. It's the best book we've had."
WARNING: The rest of this article contains spoilers.
The book is a novel about Huckleberry Finn, a boy who ran away from an abusive father, and Jim, a runaway slave. They find each other on Jackson Island, and island in the Mississippi, and together they float down the Mississippi on a raft, at first towards Cairo (Illinois) from where they can take a steamship north into the free states, but when they find out they must have missed Cairo they continue their journey without a clear goal.
During their journey Huck and Jim become close friends. Huck has to choose between his friendship for Jim and his conscience - he equals helping a slave to escape with stealing property from the slave owner which would condemn Huck to hell. When Jim talks about buying his wife and buying or stealing his children in the future Huck is close to betraying Jim:
Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children—children that belonged to a man I didn't even know; a man that hadn't ever done me no harm.
I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. My conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says to it, "Let up on me—it ain't too late yet—I'll paddle ashore at the first light and tell."
Huck's feelings of friendship win every time, however, and eventually Huck chooses permanently for Jim: "All right, then, I'll GO to hell".
Just when I start to be convinced that Huckleberry Finn is a true masterpiece and the great American novel, the journey on the raft ends, Huck meets the Phelps family - relatives of Tom Sawyer - and Tom Sawyer himself, and a disappointing last quarter of the novel follow. Apparently I'm not the only one to be disappointed by the last part of the book - Hemingway stated:
If you read it, you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating.
The novel, with its constant undertones of racism and slavery, is a clear commentary on 19th century southern mores and society. Even the religion condones slavery (if you help a slave escape you will end up in hell). Twain's southern society is religious, racist and lawless (e.g. the Grangerford-Shepherdson blood feud, the tar-and-feathering of the duke and the dauphin, or the killing by and attempted lynching of Colonel Sherburn), a society where any white criminal is far superior to a "nigger".
Part of the southern reading challenge is to describe a sense of place in the southern novels we read. The place in this book is the Mississippi river - a place where Huck and Jim are essentially themselves, a place of freedom. When they go ashore they have to hide or pretend to be someone else, while floating down the river they are free (though their freedom is lessened somewhat when they are joined by the dauphin and the duke, two con artists). The river is a retreat from the dangers of the south, the place they flee to when they have trouble on the land. But the river also takes them deeper into the south, towards more danger and eventually the capturing of Jim.
You don't read (or watch) Shakespeare for the plots, and you certainly do not read A midsummer night's dream for the plot. If you do you will be as disappointed as Samuel Pepys:
To the King's Theatre, where we saw "Midsummer's Night's Dream", which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life. I saw, I confess, some good dancing and some handsome women, and which was all my pleasure. (Diary, 29 September 1662)
The situation: Boy lovers girl, girl loves boy, second boy loves same girl, second girl loves second boy. Boy and girl elope, second boy chases girl, second girl chases second boy. They all get together in the forest where Oberon (the king of the fairies) and Puck (his assistant) start meddling with their affairs.
In the meantime, a group of labourers seek the quiet of the forest to rehearse a play they want to perform. One of them, Bottom, is used by Puck to help settle some affair between Oberon and his wife Titiana. Puck magically transforms Bottom's head into an asses head (bottom - ass: can you imagine all the clever wordplay in the following sections?).
Because of accidental misapplication of Oberon's weed (that has the same effect as Cupid's arrows) by Puck , both boys suddenly vehemently woo second girl, who obviously didn't expect this and thinks she is being mocked:
O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent
To set against me for your merriment:
If you were civil and knew courtesy,
You would not do me thus much injury.
Can you not hate me, as I know you do,
But you must join in souls to mock me too?
Lots of confusion ensues, causing Puck to utter the most memorable line of the play: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!". (Puck does enjoy all the confusion and bickering that is going on: "And those things do best please me, That befall preposterously.")
Eventually everything is settled, second boy (still under the influence of Oberon's weed) loves second girl, boy marries girl, second boy marries second girl. Everyone is satisfied but confused, and they decide that the events in the forest must have been a dream. And maybe it was but a dream? Puck not only confirms this in the epilogue, but claims the entire play was a dream, dreamt by us:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend.
Acknowledgements:
I discovered the Pepys quote on Enjoying "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Ed Friedlander M.D.
The image is a scan of a programme of a 1961 stage production in Dutch (which I did not see because I did not exist at the time).
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