(no subject)
Just this and that.
1. A GREAT NOVEL AND A BAD ONE
I have read two novels recently. I had heard of Ford Madox Ford's Tietjens trilogy (AKA "Parade's End", but I finally picked up a cheap Signet copy of the first two volumes, "Some do Not..." and "No More Parades." At the same time, I was also reading Allen Drury's novel of American politics in the 50's, "Advise and Consent." The first is mostly brilliant (though flawed) and the second is mostly awful (though it has some good points).
Ford's series is really about something important, the decay of British society which began before the First World War and which the war simply accelerated. The hero, Christopher Tietjens, is a good man who does his level best to truly live up to the Victorian mortal code and Edwardian social conventions. The problem is that nearly everyone else around him simply treats these moral and social laws as regles de jeu, acceptable masks for every form of hypocritical and selfish behavior. Tietjens tries to stay loyal to his awful, adulterous wife, Sylvia, and he tries to be a good soldier, but he tries so hard that he annoys and alienates the hypocrites around him. Ironically, the only one who understands him and accepts him is a young pacifist and suffragette who stands for everything that Tietjens is against. Described like this, "Parade's End" sounds like a simplistic drama of ideas in which the hero is crushed by unfeeling ogres, like the worst of Dos Passos or Sinclair Lewis. At times Ford loads the dice and there is an unpleasant anti-Semitic streak here and there, but what redeems the book and makes it great is Ford's treatment of character. He never forgets that even the bad people are people, individuals with a complex mix of emotions and motives. Tietjens is no saint (though he tries to be one), and he can seem like such a stuffed shirt that you can understand why Sylvia runs away from him. One even feels some sympathy for Sylvia, and indeed for nearly everyone. The ideas are effectively dramatized, not simply stated, and both the ideas and the story rise above narrow political concerns. This is a human and moral drama, and also a credible story of love, war, broken marriage, and the affection between two very different brothers. It should be read by everyone who cares about such things.
Ford was a sensitive, cultured man who knew Conrad and Henry James. Allen Drury was a former newspaperman from Texas. "Advise and Consent" is about the political intrigue surrounding the
nomination of a secretary of state by an American president. That, really, is the best part of the book: Drury was around in Washington for many years, and he understood the mechanics of politics and deal-making in the Senate very well. There is a lot of fascinating, realistic political detail in the novel. On occasion, too, Drury can depict a character convincingly. His treatment of sex and women is more realistic than you might expect. He knows how to make the story move and he is a good plotter. Unfortunately, all these good things are undermined by Drury's artistic shallowness and political bigotry. His bad people are (usually) too obviously bad. He does not understand foreigners and he cannot take them seriously, and the British, French, and Soviet ambassadors in the story are simply flat ethnic cartoons. The Indian ambassador is straight from Peter Sellers. (There are no Blacks in the story, thankfully; I shudder to think what Drury would have made of them.) This is the most obvious instance of a general fault. Most of Drury's people lack the depth and resonance of Ford's characters; you can't picture yourself having a conversation with them. Drury is saturated in the worst Cold War rhetoric of 1954; on the evidence, he seems to have been politically somewhat to the right of Joseph McCarthy. What's worse, he can't dramatize his viewpoint credibly. He has a president of the US (a thinly disguised FDR) nominate a man who is an obvious Pinko; in the real world of that time, of course, no president with an eighth of a brain would have made such a choice. You can write a novel of ideas even from a fascist viewpoint--Celine and Malaparte could, anyway--but you simply cannot ignore reality and psychology as flagrantly as Drury does here.
2. MAKE 'EM LAUGH
Does anybody else but me find the whoop-de-doo over "Bruno" hilariously funny? Come on gang, this is Sacha Baron Cohen we're talking about here. Do you think he cares squat about anybody's sensitivites? Hell, he's made a living and had a lot of fun mocking sensitivity of all sorts. Like Lenny Bruce, he's always trying to find new ways to offend, because that's how he gets the laugh on you and that's how he shows that he's cooler than anybody out there. The minute you get upset and start taking him seriously he's won and showed you up for the square and the stupe that you are. This is Ali G, folks; this is Borat, and King Julian, too. Like Mel Brooks, Cohen never met a stereotype he didn't like. Anyway, he's just following the comedian's First Law: anything for the sake of funny. You'll never catch Cohen apologizing to ANYBODY. Did Groucho? Did W.C. Fields?
1. A GREAT NOVEL AND A BAD ONE
I have read two novels recently. I had heard of Ford Madox Ford's Tietjens trilogy (AKA "Parade's End", but I finally picked up a cheap Signet copy of the first two volumes, "Some do Not..." and "No More Parades." At the same time, I was also reading Allen Drury's novel of American politics in the 50's, "Advise and Consent." The first is mostly brilliant (though flawed) and the second is mostly awful (though it has some good points).
Ford's series is really about something important, the decay of British society which began before the First World War and which the war simply accelerated. The hero, Christopher Tietjens, is a good man who does his level best to truly live up to the Victorian mortal code and Edwardian social conventions. The problem is that nearly everyone else around him simply treats these moral and social laws as regles de jeu, acceptable masks for every form of hypocritical and selfish behavior. Tietjens tries to stay loyal to his awful, adulterous wife, Sylvia, and he tries to be a good soldier, but he tries so hard that he annoys and alienates the hypocrites around him. Ironically, the only one who understands him and accepts him is a young pacifist and suffragette who stands for everything that Tietjens is against. Described like this, "Parade's End" sounds like a simplistic drama of ideas in which the hero is crushed by unfeeling ogres, like the worst of Dos Passos or Sinclair Lewis. At times Ford loads the dice and there is an unpleasant anti-Semitic streak here and there, but what redeems the book and makes it great is Ford's treatment of character. He never forgets that even the bad people are people, individuals with a complex mix of emotions and motives. Tietjens is no saint (though he tries to be one), and he can seem like such a stuffed shirt that you can understand why Sylvia runs away from him. One even feels some sympathy for Sylvia, and indeed for nearly everyone. The ideas are effectively dramatized, not simply stated, and both the ideas and the story rise above narrow political concerns. This is a human and moral drama, and also a credible story of love, war, broken marriage, and the affection between two very different brothers. It should be read by everyone who cares about such things.
Ford was a sensitive, cultured man who knew Conrad and Henry James. Allen Drury was a former newspaperman from Texas. "Advise and Consent" is about the political intrigue surrounding the
nomination of a secretary of state by an American president. That, really, is the best part of the book: Drury was around in Washington for many years, and he understood the mechanics of politics and deal-making in the Senate very well. There is a lot of fascinating, realistic political detail in the novel. On occasion, too, Drury can depict a character convincingly. His treatment of sex and women is more realistic than you might expect. He knows how to make the story move and he is a good plotter. Unfortunately, all these good things are undermined by Drury's artistic shallowness and political bigotry. His bad people are (usually) too obviously bad. He does not understand foreigners and he cannot take them seriously, and the British, French, and Soviet ambassadors in the story are simply flat ethnic cartoons. The Indian ambassador is straight from Peter Sellers. (There are no Blacks in the story, thankfully; I shudder to think what Drury would have made of them.) This is the most obvious instance of a general fault. Most of Drury's people lack the depth and resonance of Ford's characters; you can't picture yourself having a conversation with them. Drury is saturated in the worst Cold War rhetoric of 1954; on the evidence, he seems to have been politically somewhat to the right of Joseph McCarthy. What's worse, he can't dramatize his viewpoint credibly. He has a president of the US (a thinly disguised FDR) nominate a man who is an obvious Pinko; in the real world of that time, of course, no president with an eighth of a brain would have made such a choice. You can write a novel of ideas even from a fascist viewpoint--Celine and Malaparte could, anyway--but you simply cannot ignore reality and psychology as flagrantly as Drury does here.
2. MAKE 'EM LAUGH
Does anybody else but me find the whoop-de-doo over "Bruno" hilariously funny? Come on gang, this is Sacha Baron Cohen we're talking about here. Do you think he cares squat about anybody's sensitivites? Hell, he's made a living and had a lot of fun mocking sensitivity of all sorts. Like Lenny Bruce, he's always trying to find new ways to offend, because that's how he gets the laugh on you and that's how he shows that he's cooler than anybody out there. The minute you get upset and start taking him seriously he's won and showed you up for the square and the stupe that you are. This is Ali G, folks; this is Borat, and King Julian, too. Like Mel Brooks, Cohen never met a stereotype he didn't like. Anyway, he's just following the comedian's First Law: anything for the sake of funny. You'll never catch Cohen apologizing to ANYBODY. Did Groucho? Did W.C. Fields?