Book Reviews: Nicholson Baker, Harold MacGrath
Books Considered: The Anthologist, by Nicholson Baker; Half a Rogue, by Harold McGrath
My latest two non-SF novels were published about a century apart. The Anthologist is Nicholson Baker's brand new novel. Half a Rogue, by contrast, was published in 1906, by Harold MacGrath, a best-selling novelist (and an early writer for films) who is all but forgotten today, despite reputedly having originated Boris Karloff's stage name. (Karloff was born William Henry Pratt, and MacGrath's 1920 novel The Drums of Jeopardy, which was filmed twice (in 1923 and 1931), featured a mad scientist named Boris Karlov. However, William Henry Pratt apparently used the name Boris Karloff as early as 1912, so if anything the inspiration for the name in MacGrath's novel may have run the other direction.)
I'll treat the newer and better book first. I should say to begin with that Nicholson Baker is a favorite novelist of mine. His first novel, The Mezzanine, is perhaps my top choice among his works, but I've never been disappointed. (Though I have not read Human Smoke, his most recent nonfiction book, and I probably won't.)
The Anthologist of the title is the first-person narrator, a poet name Paul Chowder, who had some early success (including a Guggenheim), but has fallen on hard times in his career. Chowder has compiled an anthology, called Only Rhyme, a collection of rhymed poetry. However he has become blocked on writing the introduction. Partly out of frustration at his fecklessness in this effort, his long time girlfriend, Roz, has left him.
The book covers a few weeks of his life. (A long time period for a Baker novel -- The Mezzanine took about an hour, Vox however long a phone sex call takes, Room Temperature about 20 minutes.) In his personal life Chowder spends most of his time cat vacuuming -- that is, avoiding writing. He cleans out his office. He mows his lawn. He helps a neighbor put in a floor. And he moons over Roz, even visiting her a few times, especially when he suffers a minor hand injury. He gives a reading. He renews his passport. And he attends a conference in Switzerland.
Around all this he discusses his theories about poetry. Chowder is a strong advocate of rhyme (as his anthology's title suggests). He's also a strong believer that the fundamental rhythm of English poetry is the four beat line of the ballad. Metric theory (iambs and anapests and all) is a distraction. Iambic pentameter is a mistake. Free verse even more so. (Yet he constantly mentions how good some free verse poems are -- and, ironically, he admits that he himself can't rhyme very well.) It's all quite well argued, with excellent examples. Even if you disagree, it's very entertaining. (Assuming you like poetry.)
Aside from those details of plot and theme, the book is just very nicely written. Baker is a wonderful, funny, writer of prose, and a great observer of details. (For instance, he complains about something I've complained about -- the way it is so hard to tell which side is up on a USB connector.) Prose example: talking about what Horace meant when he wrote "carpe diem" -- not exactly "seize the day" but pluck it: "Pluck the cranberry or blueberry of the day tenderly free without damaging it, is what Horace meant -- pick the day, harvest the day, reap the day, mow the day, forage the day. Don't freaking grape the day in your fist like a burger at a fairground and take a big chomping bite out of it. That's not the kind of man Horace was." Not the best, nor most euphonious, passage I could have chosen, but it gives a good sense of the rhythm and light humor and knowledge of the book. Highly recommended.
I can't really highly recommend Half a Rogue. I have a certain interest in old popular fiction. And the book is short (perhaps 80,000 words), and on a brief scan looked like it might turn sexily on a love triangle or quadrangle, so I thought it might be fun. And to be fair, it reads quite breezily, and holds the interest OK. But it's full of cliche, both in the writing and in the characterization. There's some offensive characterizations of ethnic groups, particularly Italians and Irish (no mention of black people) -- I suppose par for the course in popular fiction of that era. There's also a notable classism -- there's a strong sense that we are to be led by "gentleman", though to be sure the main character is the son of a potato farmer, a self-made man -- but still, it's clear, a "gentleman".
Anyway, the novel opens curiously with playwright Richard Warrington approached in a restaurant by a young woman, who it seems cannot pay for her meal, due to a sad story concerning her father's bad habits. Of course he pays for it (the gentleman), and then it turns out she's an actress who can't get a fair hearing, and this her means of proving how talented she is. As it happens, Warrington is looking for a new lead for his latest play, because his current star is insisting on changes to give her a more flattering role, and that would ruin his art. This made me think the story would be set on Broadway at the turn of the century ... but then suddenly we are several years in the future. Katherine Challoner, the actress he had hired in the first chapter, comes to him with news -- she is getting married, and will leave the stage. There is a hint of romantic entanglement in the past between Warrington and Challoner, but nothing came of it (their hearts were not truly engaged). Meantime Warrington is pondering a very flattering letter praising his work -- from an anonymous very young woman. And then his old University friend, the rich businessman John Bennington, visits and asks him to be his best man -- for he will be married soon. Of course it turns out that Bennington is in fact marrying Katherine Challoner ... and (gasp!) Katherine left her gloves with Warrington when she came and told him of her plans to leave the stage and get married.
The wedding of course will be in Bennington and Warrington's common home town, Herculaneum, in upstate New York. (It seems overtly modelled on MacGrath's home town, Syracuse.) The scene shifts quickly there. A few threads are set up. In one, the local social leader, Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene, an odious woman, begins to plot to make sure that the soon to be Katherine Bennington will not be able to upstage her social position -- after all, an actress! In another, Warrington, who comes to stay with his beloved Aunt, who raised him after his father died (his mother have left at his birth), again meets Bennington's much younger sister, Patty, and an attraction quickly blooms. (Warrington, no surprise, soon discovers that it was Patty who had written the anonymous letter of praise that he so treasured.) In a third, Warrington is recruited to run for Mayor, to oppose the entrenched candidate, who is the tool of an odious man named McQuade, who uses his influence to arrange for corruptly awarded city construction contracts. And in the fourth, Bennington's steel mill is threatened with a strike because he employs a non-union engineer, who, even worse, is British, and worse still, is perfecting a labor-saving device.
Naturally all these threads converge. Bennington's association with Warrington means that his business decisions may throw votes to the other guy. McQuade plots to ruin Warrington's reputation, and his eventual tool is to suggest that Warrington and Katherine Challoner had an affair. Patty's love for Warrington is threatened if she too believed that her new sister-in-law (whom she loves) was previously involved with her new paramour. And the same scandal that may affect Warrington's reputation of course also affects Katherine Bennington's -- which plays into Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene's hands.
At times the novel reads a bit like Atlas Shrugged, at least in John Bennington's attitudes. (His response to the strike is to close his business.) But more than that it's a lightly sketched paean to a man who is hardly portrayed as even a tenth of a rogue, let alone half -- instead he's rather implausibly perfect. The romance with Patty is underwhelming, and the "scandal" of his relationship with Katherine has no legs at all for a contemporary reader. Perhaps back in 1906 a woman visiting a man's apartment twice (as far as I can tell) ... a man with whom she had a professional relationship ... would be shocking. For me, I think the novel would have been much better if (as I had assumed at first) Katherine and Richard had been lovers, but realized they didn't love each another enough to live together ... if John and Patty each had to adjust to that fact ... but no. The story of political corruption is somewhat unsatisfactorily resolved as well: Warrington and Bennington, after discovering damning information about McQuade and his tools, are too much the gentlemen to ruin him as he deserves -- they just hope to use the knowledge to neutralize him in future. Hmmmph. Still, as I said, the novel didn't bore me, and there is a sweet closing scene. It never convinces, it's full of cliches, but I can see why MacGrath had readers. After all, he was a far better writer, line by line, than Dan Brown. (Though to give Brown his due, Brown appears to have a much better plotty imagination.)
My latest two non-SF novels were published about a century apart. The Anthologist is Nicholson Baker's brand new novel. Half a Rogue, by contrast, was published in 1906, by Harold MacGrath, a best-selling novelist (and an early writer for films) who is all but forgotten today, despite reputedly having originated Boris Karloff's stage name. (Karloff was born William Henry Pratt, and MacGrath's 1920 novel The Drums of Jeopardy, which was filmed twice (in 1923 and 1931), featured a mad scientist named Boris Karlov. However, William Henry Pratt apparently used the name Boris Karloff as early as 1912, so if anything the inspiration for the name in MacGrath's novel may have run the other direction.)
I'll treat the newer and better book first. I should say to begin with that Nicholson Baker is a favorite novelist of mine. His first novel, The Mezzanine, is perhaps my top choice among his works, but I've never been disappointed. (Though I have not read Human Smoke, his most recent nonfiction book, and I probably won't.)
The Anthologist of the title is the first-person narrator, a poet name Paul Chowder, who had some early success (including a Guggenheim), but has fallen on hard times in his career. Chowder has compiled an anthology, called Only Rhyme, a collection of rhymed poetry. However he has become blocked on writing the introduction. Partly out of frustration at his fecklessness in this effort, his long time girlfriend, Roz, has left him.
The book covers a few weeks of his life. (A long time period for a Baker novel -- The Mezzanine took about an hour, Vox however long a phone sex call takes, Room Temperature about 20 minutes.) In his personal life Chowder spends most of his time cat vacuuming -- that is, avoiding writing. He cleans out his office. He mows his lawn. He helps a neighbor put in a floor. And he moons over Roz, even visiting her a few times, especially when he suffers a minor hand injury. He gives a reading. He renews his passport. And he attends a conference in Switzerland.
Around all this he discusses his theories about poetry. Chowder is a strong advocate of rhyme (as his anthology's title suggests). He's also a strong believer that the fundamental rhythm of English poetry is the four beat line of the ballad. Metric theory (iambs and anapests and all) is a distraction. Iambic pentameter is a mistake. Free verse even more so. (Yet he constantly mentions how good some free verse poems are -- and, ironically, he admits that he himself can't rhyme very well.) It's all quite well argued, with excellent examples. Even if you disagree, it's very entertaining. (Assuming you like poetry.)
Aside from those details of plot and theme, the book is just very nicely written. Baker is a wonderful, funny, writer of prose, and a great observer of details. (For instance, he complains about something I've complained about -- the way it is so hard to tell which side is up on a USB connector.) Prose example: talking about what Horace meant when he wrote "carpe diem" -- not exactly "seize the day" but pluck it: "Pluck the cranberry or blueberry of the day tenderly free without damaging it, is what Horace meant -- pick the day, harvest the day, reap the day, mow the day, forage the day. Don't freaking grape the day in your fist like a burger at a fairground and take a big chomping bite out of it. That's not the kind of man Horace was." Not the best, nor most euphonious, passage I could have chosen, but it gives a good sense of the rhythm and light humor and knowledge of the book. Highly recommended.
I can't really highly recommend Half a Rogue. I have a certain interest in old popular fiction. And the book is short (perhaps 80,000 words), and on a brief scan looked like it might turn sexily on a love triangle or quadrangle, so I thought it might be fun. And to be fair, it reads quite breezily, and holds the interest OK. But it's full of cliche, both in the writing and in the characterization. There's some offensive characterizations of ethnic groups, particularly Italians and Irish (no mention of black people) -- I suppose par for the course in popular fiction of that era. There's also a notable classism -- there's a strong sense that we are to be led by "gentleman", though to be sure the main character is the son of a potato farmer, a self-made man -- but still, it's clear, a "gentleman".
Anyway, the novel opens curiously with playwright Richard Warrington approached in a restaurant by a young woman, who it seems cannot pay for her meal, due to a sad story concerning her father's bad habits. Of course he pays for it (the gentleman), and then it turns out she's an actress who can't get a fair hearing, and this her means of proving how talented she is. As it happens, Warrington is looking for a new lead for his latest play, because his current star is insisting on changes to give her a more flattering role, and that would ruin his art. This made me think the story would be set on Broadway at the turn of the century ... but then suddenly we are several years in the future. Katherine Challoner, the actress he had hired in the first chapter, comes to him with news -- she is getting married, and will leave the stage. There is a hint of romantic entanglement in the past between Warrington and Challoner, but nothing came of it (their hearts were not truly engaged). Meantime Warrington is pondering a very flattering letter praising his work -- from an anonymous very young woman. And then his old University friend, the rich businessman John Bennington, visits and asks him to be his best man -- for he will be married soon. Of course it turns out that Bennington is in fact marrying Katherine Challoner ... and (gasp!) Katherine left her gloves with Warrington when she came and told him of her plans to leave the stage and get married.
The wedding of course will be in Bennington and Warrington's common home town, Herculaneum, in upstate New York. (It seems overtly modelled on MacGrath's home town, Syracuse.) The scene shifts quickly there. A few threads are set up. In one, the local social leader, Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene, an odious woman, begins to plot to make sure that the soon to be Katherine Bennington will not be able to upstage her social position -- after all, an actress! In another, Warrington, who comes to stay with his beloved Aunt, who raised him after his father died (his mother have left at his birth), again meets Bennington's much younger sister, Patty, and an attraction quickly blooms. (Warrington, no surprise, soon discovers that it was Patty who had written the anonymous letter of praise that he so treasured.) In a third, Warrington is recruited to run for Mayor, to oppose the entrenched candidate, who is the tool of an odious man named McQuade, who uses his influence to arrange for corruptly awarded city construction contracts. And in the fourth, Bennington's steel mill is threatened with a strike because he employs a non-union engineer, who, even worse, is British, and worse still, is perfecting a labor-saving device.
Naturally all these threads converge. Bennington's association with Warrington means that his business decisions may throw votes to the other guy. McQuade plots to ruin Warrington's reputation, and his eventual tool is to suggest that Warrington and Katherine Challoner had an affair. Patty's love for Warrington is threatened if she too believed that her new sister-in-law (whom she loves) was previously involved with her new paramour. And the same scandal that may affect Warrington's reputation of course also affects Katherine Bennington's -- which plays into Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene's hands.
At times the novel reads a bit like Atlas Shrugged, at least in John Bennington's attitudes. (His response to the strike is to close his business.) But more than that it's a lightly sketched paean to a man who is hardly portrayed as even a tenth of a rogue, let alone half -- instead he's rather implausibly perfect. The romance with Patty is underwhelming, and the "scandal" of his relationship with Katherine has no legs at all for a contemporary reader. Perhaps back in 1906 a woman visiting a man's apartment twice (as far as I can tell) ... a man with whom she had a professional relationship ... would be shocking. For me, I think the novel would have been much better if (as I had assumed at first) Katherine and Richard had been lovers, but realized they didn't love each another enough to live together ... if John and Patty each had to adjust to that fact ... but no. The story of political corruption is somewhat unsatisfactorily resolved as well: Warrington and Bennington, after discovering damning information about McQuade and his tools, are too much the gentlemen to ruin him as he deserves -- they just hope to use the knowledge to neutralize him in future. Hmmmph. Still, as I said, the novel didn't bore me, and there is a sweet closing scene. It never convinces, it's full of cliches, but I can see why MacGrath had readers. After all, he was a far better writer, line by line, than Dan Brown. (Though to give Brown his due, Brown appears to have a much better plotty imagination.)