Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust

A year ago, Fred and I took a Faulkner class from a professor at DU, and were amazed to discover this incomparable writer whose work we'd never delved into. Over the ensuing months we bought a number of his books, and recently read (aloud, to each other) his Nobel Prize winner, Intruder in the Dust. It's only 158 pages (11 chapters) but length is relative.

Hanging his ruminations on a simple plot, Faulkner discourses on race, the legacy of the Civil War, the unity of Man regardless of attitudes or external circumstances, time, society, and the actions of the relatively powerless to utterly transform a tense situation.

In brief, the story is that a solitary and dignified old Negro, Lucas Beauchamp, whose grandmother was a slave and grandfather her owner, is jailed as the murderer of a poor white man from the up-county woods. Lucas refuses to defend himself by telling what he knows, and a lynch mob quickly forms outside the jail. A pair of sixteen-year old boys - one black, the other (our narrator) white - and an old white woman go out to the churchyard that night where the dead man has been interred, to dig him up to prove that Lucas' pistol did not kill him.

But things are not as they seemed to be, and over the course of a day, night, and the following day, the boy demonstrates courage, persistence and mettle, learning plenty about his fellow humans into the bargain.

In post-World War II Mississippi, some things have changed while many have not. The country people's poverty and racism have scarcely budged in a century, and white men take it as their right to rise up against any black man who dares look them in the eye. At the same time, attitudes among the townsfolk have evolved, to a degree. Yet none of the powerful will take action until the word of a venerable and proper white spinster requires them to.

Faulkner's sentences (some a page and a half long) can hardly be diagrammed - they are thickets into which you follow a route apparently through, but in a meandering way so compounded with digression that by the time the longed-for period arrives, you just have to stop and marvel that you got to the end (but where are you now?). Just a short sample:

"Charley. Go back and finish your breakfast. Paralee isn't feeling well this morning and she doesn't want to be all day getting dinner ready:" then to him - the fond constant familiar face which he had known all his life and therefore could neither have described it so that a stranger could recognise it nor recognise it himself from anyone's description but only brisk calm and even a little inattentive now, the wail a wail only because of the ancient used habit of its verbiage: "You haven't washed your face:" nor even pausing to see if he followed, on up the stairs and into the bathroom, even turning on the tap and putting the soap into his hands and standing with the towel open and waiting, the familiar face wearing the familiar expression of amazement and protest and anxiety and invincible repudiation which it had worn all his life each time he had done anything removing him one more step from infancy, from childhood: when his uncle had given him the Shetland pony someone had taught to take eighteen- and twenty-four-inch jumps and when his father had given him the first actual powder-shooting gun and the afternoon when the groom delivered Highboy in the truck and he got up for the first time and Highboy stood on his hind legs and her scream and the groom's calm voice saying, "Hit him hard over the head when he does that. You dont want him falling over backward on you" but the muscles merely falling into the old expression through inattention and long usage as her voice had merely chosen by inattention and usage the long-worn verbiage of wailing because there was something else in it now - the same thing which had been there in the car that afternoon when she said, "Your arm doesn't hurt at all now does it?" and on the other afternoon when his father came home and found him jumping Highboy over the concrete watertrough in the lot, his mother leaning on the fence watching and his father's fury of relief and anger and his mother's calm voice this time: "Why not? The trough isn't near as tall as that flimsy fence-thing you bought him that isn't even nailed together:" so that even dull for sleep he recognised it and turned his face and hands dripping and cried at her in amazed and incredulous outrage: "You aint going too! You can't go!" then even dull for sleep realising the fatuous naivete of anyone using cant on her on any subject and so playing his last desperate card: "If you go, then I wont! You hear me? I won't go!"
"Dry your face and comb your hair," she said. "Then come on down and drink your coffee."

The Earrings of Madame de...

The exquisite 1953 Max Ophuls film The Earrings of Madame de... follows the trail of a pair of earrings from emblems of superficiality, to symbols of deception, betrayal, and finally of genuine love. The Countess Madame de... (Danielle Darrieux) and her husband the General (Charles Boyer) live in the upper reaches of Paris society, their evenings a round of operas, galas and sumptuous parties. She incurs a gambling debt and cannot bring herself to ask her husband for the money, so she pawns the pair of diamond earrings he gave her as a wedding present. And thus this peripatetic jewelry begins its travels.

On a trip across the Continent, the Countess crosses paths with suave Italian diplomat Baron Donati (Vittorio de Sica), who contrives a carriage collision to meet her. In one long magnificent tracking shot, Ophuls shows the pair waltzing, through 6 costume changes, their relationship deepening from flirtation to fondness to amour, ending the final dance only after a servant is snuffing out the candles and the musicians are packing up.

When she returns to Paris, the General, who could tolerate a harmless affair, observes the pair's strong feelings and sends her away to get over it, but she's restless, moody, torn - in short, she is deeply in love. Daily the Baron sends letters to all the possible places one might find her, and she reads them all and tears up her replies. Those fragments thrown from a train window become a snowstorm of longing...

The General wants his wife back as the coquettish companion of his social calls, but by now she is bedridden, consumed with grief and yearning, violating her part of the pact of a high-ranking couple. The earrings she so readily pawned as her husband's wedding gift, become as a memento from the Baron the objects most precious to her.

Boyer plays magnificently a man accustomed to power, who nevertheless tries to reason with his wife, to draw her back to the life they once shared. De Sica, for his part, shows us how the stirrings of heart disrupt even the smoothest man, making him clumsy, impatient and forgetful of all but his love. And Darrieux's beauty transforms from the glittery surface of a society lady, to an inner beauty revealed by love. A comic touch is provided by the jeweler Remy (Jean Debucourt) who buys and sells the earrings an absurd number of times under changing circumstances.

As the earrings travel in concentric circles inward, from mere tokens of wealth to items of real value, so too does the Countess mature from a careless childlike flirt to a woman of great feeling, transformed utterly by love.

This is one of the most beautiful stirring films ever made. The small screen cannot do justice to the beauty of Ophuls' visuals - ask your local movie-house to show it.

Wolf Hall book review

Hilary Mantel's novel Wolf Hall won the Man Booker Prize in 2009, and no wonder. She weaves together history and the inner life of a self-made man at a pivotal moment in England's history, creating a rich tapestry of the human desires that reordered an era. If you're familiar with Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, a hagiography of Sir Thomas More, this is its verso. More was the brilliant, humble, moral lawyer who as Chancellor chose silence and death rather than defy his king or deny his church, when Henry VIII was casting off his 20-year marriage to Katherine of Aragon in favor of Anne Boleyn, with whom he hoped to produce an heir to his throne. Churchmen, scholars, diplomats and schemers all worked to give Henry what he wanted, while loyalists to the Pope, the French emperor, and Katherine and her parents (Phillip and Isabella of Spain) resisted. Civil war was not out of the question.

Mantel's hero, however, is Thomas Cromwell. In Bolt's play he is a lout whose power stems from blackmail, and whose web reaches far. But in Mantel's intimate characterization, Cromwell, a blacksmith's son, has the instincts of a born politician. Fleeing a violent father, the boy makes himself useful to people in the fabric trade, and living in Europe becomes fluent in many languages. With no illusions about the nobility of man, he applies Machiavellian principles to achieve his aims. He is observant, a good listener, and cultivates a memory system that proves invaluable as he moves into the rarefied worlds of Cardinal Wolsey, whom he serves steadfastly, then Henry, Anne Boleyn and her court, Katherine, churchmen, even More despite their differences. Conversations with friends and foes alike are witty, barbed and productive.

Mantel's great achievement is that for the eight years of the story's focus, 1527 - 1535, we live in Cromwell's skin with him. He never fails to note the fabric worn by those around him, we feel deeply the deaths of his wife and daughters to "the summer sweats", a devastating illness in which a person goes to bed in the morning feeling bad, and is dead by sundown. We see the satisfaction he takes in bringing young men into his large household, guiding them and setting them on productive paths. He also takes in strays: the widow and children of his brother; a pregnant young woman whose abusive husband has abandoned her and their two small children ; a French youth with bloodthirsty inclinations. He buys the loyalty of servants in his enemies' households, to keep track of their doings.
He is the King's adviser because while he is soothing in how he imparts bad news, he doesn't hide the facts. Henry trusts him, and we feel he should, because here is a man who is his loyal subject, who will bend his will and use his connections to get him what he wants.

And perhaps because he is immune to Boleyn's charms, he earns her confidence as well. The aristocracy scorn him for his low origins - though he says very little about his childhood, claiming not to know even what year he was born - but they also fear him: he is a shrewd investor while they squander money they assume they have, and it unnerves them to see in high precincts a man who gained power and position without bloodlines.

Cromwell is depicted as a generous man, loving husband and father, always on the lookout for the welfare of those under his protection. More, on the other hand, oversees the torture of those he regards as heretics, belittles his own wife in her presence, and is as parsimonious as Cromwell is open-handed. Between Bolt's story and Mantel's one must wonder, Who were these titans of reason really?

Review: John Crowley's Four Freedoms

John Crowley explores mind, body, spirit and human society through intriguing individuals. He's unafraid of coincidence, magic, or mystery, every person enmeshed in a life that constricts in some ways but exalts in others.

His 2009 novel Four Freedoms is about World War II America.
"We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way-- everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want . . . everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear . . . anywhere in the world."
--President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Message to Congress, January 6, 1941

Roosevelt's optimistic assertion is not enough to transform the status quo, but in combination with America's shift to a wartime economy and the removal of white men, drafted and sent overseas, from their accustomed dominance, it adds impetus to a sea-change. Marginalized people - cripples, minorities and women - are suddenly wanted, and paid, to step into the vacancies - and so they flower, and thrive, and find fulfillment far outside their accustomed niches.

We follow Prosper Olander, a young man with a twisted spine and useless legs, who journeys from Chicago to an airplane factory in Oklahoma. This factory, the creation of a pair of brothers long fascinated by flight, is a self-contained village: houses and streets, clinics, child care, a newspaper, cafeterias and entertainment - an ideal community dedicated to war materiel. Its round-the-clock workforce have come from all over the country to earn top wages. Most are women, many married to servicemen but others single, excelling at work they've never before been allowed to do.

Crowley's story flows from one character to another, into their lives and thoughts. We learn important moments in their histories, we see how love and loss have blunted them, and we watch as they form alliances then break them. Prosper, though crippled, attracts certain women, and proves a simpatico and able lover, a catalyst who makes them consider a more open future.

This book is primarily about women: Prosper's father left when he was small, his struggling mother fell ill, he grew up with a pair of maiden aunts. Meanwhile, the women he meets are on their own in ways unthinkable just a few years before, their resourcefulness surprising not just to them but to society at large. One is a standout softball pitcher, another a young mother who becomes a highly competent inspector in the factory.

Crowley fully evokes wartime: the way ramped-up military manufacturing ended the Depression; the rationing of food, gasoline, and other resources; the sounds, smells and habits of an era. Changing circumstances shook society into motion: new places, new roles, new confidence. The weakening of the family gave rise to individual success, and like-mindedness trumped blood ties as people sought personal freedom within relationships. By ending the story after V-E Day but before the servicemen come home, he leaves us with a hopeful vision of America's future - along with the realization that in every era greatness is squandered, and we permit or maybe even welcome the fetters of the past.

Roger Ebert, Fare Well

I first encountered Roger Ebert forty years ago at University of Colorado's Conference on World Affairs. He came every year with a movie, and sitting by the stop-action 16 mm projector in the 150-seat theater, he would spend an hour a day over the 5 days of the conference screening the film, stopping the scene every time he or another audience member had an observation to make.

It was a conversation in the dark - no need for shyness - and he shared his deep knowledge and genuine delight in the ways a movie engages us to tell its story. Color, lighting, depth of focus, which direction characters are facing, lines of perspective, use of sound, camera motion or stillness, closeups and long shots, image motifs, rapid cuts or continuity, the ways the director develops themes and uses plot structures -- he, and we, explored and talked about it all.

Some years later, when I lived in the DC area, I was fortunate to attend a similar movie-in-depth, the subject being Citizen Kane.  Again, in the companionship of darkness and our collective love of film, we talked for hours about frame after frame, from Orson Welles' camera angles that included ceilings, to the lengthening table that illustrated in a quick succession of shots the estrangement of Charles Foster Kane and his wife, to the rich palette of his black-and-white creation.

Roger knew so much about this relatively young art form, but he didn't just love high-born films - he loved movies too: Swamp Thing, Fast Times at Ridgemont High - he admired craft and a well-told story, whether the intention was to explore universal themes or just to entertain.

Roger, thank you so much for opening our eyes!

Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler is a guilty pleasure for me - her books are such easy reads that surely something's wrong with them. I started some years ago - the first I really remember is Ladder of Years, about a woman who walks away from her family during a trip to the beach, goes to the next town, and sets herself up: a rented room, a job, a routine. From that distance she communicates with her bewildered husband and children. I liked it because what mom hasn't enjoyed the fantasy of just leaving, pulling the rug from beneath her family's expectations of her? Imagine the family car suddenly having a mind of its own, and instead of schlepping on errands, taking off for parts unknown just for the change.

Then I read Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, and began to know Tyler's milieu - the eccentric (which means off-center) characters who bumble through life trying to be fair, trying to understand a world that fails them, trying to reconcile their own histories with who they think they should be.

Tonight I finished Digging to America, a rumination on what America is, what makes a person American, and the nature of outsiders. Two Korean baby girls arrive on the same flight to Baltimore's airport, each met by her adoptive family. Because the Americans are loud and inclusive, they pull the Iranians into association which becomes friendship. The two extended families are full of ideas about each other, assigning cultural attributes based on peeping through this window onto others' lives. They're often comical, sometimes offensive (and offended), but as their lives intertwine they become just people, close in the way family members are: a source of irritation, but like a grove of bamboo, connected underground.

Tyler's a best-selling author, which suggests that eccentricity is a refuge for many readers: a place to contemplate and make peace with our own oddities, and to come away more tolerant of others' foibles. Much light fiction is escapist: science fiction, spy stories, steampunk, vampires, a school for wizards, mysteries in which we can read at a happy distance about someone else's fatal problems. But she writes another kind of novel: reflective, in which rather than forgetting our own lives in favor of those more glamorous and dangerous, we find the poetry and humor in ourselves. And appreciate ourselves more, as she exalts failings by showing the humanity and compassion that precipitate them. Her characters may not be swashbucklers, but by their own measure they dare, and sometimes succeed. And she is kind: the highest achievement in her books is the growth and recognition of love.

If I were teaching high school English, she'd be on my reading list. Her characters don't outgrow oddity, they learn to flourish within it - surely that would be a comfort to a fifteen-year-old who's pretty sure no one understands.

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

A primary benefit of being in a book group is reading works one would never know of. Such is my experience with Tan Twan Eng's saga The Gift of Rain. This novel explores Malaysia in the years preceding and during WWII, as the Japanese prepare then execute their invasion.
The Gift of Rain is told in two parts. Book 1, set before the war, lays out for us the multicultural milieu primarily of Penang, a small island off the Malay coast opposite Sumatra. In flashback we learn the story of protagonist Philip Hutton, youngest son of a British industrialist by his second wife, a Chinese woman who forsook her family to marry, then died while their child was seven. The youth's two brothers and sister, from their father's first marriage, are estranged from him to varying degrees - like Penang, Philip is an island. When he's about eighteen he meets a Japanese gentleman who practices aikijutsu, an early form of the martial art aikido. Endo-san takes him under his tutelage, where Philip learns Japanese as well. Aikido differs from the other martial arts in its core belief that violence is a result of being out of harmony, and the proper response is not to react with violence but to use the attacker's energy to restore harmony. This ideal is not only at the heart of what Endo-san has to teach his pupil, it also stands as a metaphor for their relationship. Endo-san travels up and down the Malay coast, sometimes with Philip, who unwittingly provides him a great deal of information which later becomes useful to the invading Japanese.

Book 2 is about the war, and where there was much lightness in the first section, now all turns dark. When the Japanese invade China, the rape of Nanking horrifies everyone, and the local Chinese population swells with refugees. Endo-san is regarded with suspicion, as is Philip for spending time with him. Once the Japanese take over Penang, Endo-san openly works for the Imperial Command, and Philip collaborates, translating for them. Most stories featuring collaborators are told from their victims' point of view - it is fascinating to view such actions from the inside, watching a naive young man try to do something he considers honorable (save his family) while enabling atrocities.
Tan Twan Eng's language is often beautiful as he describes the peoples and cities of Malaysia, and the dilemma he explores is a wrenching one. Philip's lack of perception about Endo-san's presence in Penang may annoy some readers - but he's obviously in love with his mentor, and love is famously blind. Though the story delivers him a measure of comeuppance, the very fact of his survival may prove unacceptable to those who have been on the receiving end of that combination of passivity, naivete and fear that mark a collaborator. The road to hell is paved indeed with the best intentions.

The novel explores the questions of fate and past lives. Though Philip rejects the idea of reincarnation, ultimately he falls back on it as some small justification for things he has done. Certainly he suffers, but not as much as those betrayed by his choice to make himself a tool. Ultimately, it is only through the broad view that humans are flawed and deserving of forgiveness, that I am willing to think of Philip with anything but contempt.