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Wednesday Widening Gyre
Crossposted from Livejournal
What I've Finished Reading
How Dear is Life - war comes to Europe, Philip joins the local Territorials, suffers embarrassment and shame, and is marched all over France and Belgium. At home, a familiar situation: the number of news sources has exploded, but no one knows what's true and what's false, and hardly anyone has the time to wonder in the first place. There are stories of atrocities in Belgium, fact mixed with half-truth mixed with pure garbage, all luridly illustrated. There are rumors of children poisoned at random by German bakers. The country is choked with information, while over in Europe no one tells the soldiers anything. Nothing very new here if you've read more than one WWI novel, but Philip and his family continue to be interesting and sympathetic.
What I’m Reading Now
So far in Clea: Justine has recounted how Pursewarden cured her of her “neurosis” about being raped as a child by telling her she enjoyed it and probably asked for it, and we have had this wonderful Durrellism:
There's probably a sense in which this is more or less accurate, if you're Not Lawrence Durrell.
There's more to it than that, of course. Our dogged narrator Not Lawrence Durrell has dropped down out of the cloud cover of the past into a mangled, alien, and anxious wartime future. Justine and Nessim's plan to run guns to Palestine has led to them being trapped together under house arrest, and Justine is crackling with boredom and philosophy like a lot of frayed wires. It's very Durrell. My feelings about Durrell are still mixed.
Is anyone going to care about Clea when there is THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO on the same page? Maybe not, but I care about Clea.
In The Count of Monte Cristo, things fall apart; the center cannot hold.
Convinced he's going to die in a duel with Albert, Dantes leaves twenty million francs to Maximilian, with the suggestion that maybe he should marry Haidee (heir to the rest of the gigantic fortune). Of course, Max can't do that because Valentine exists, and to both their credits, they just have a quick talk about it as soon as possible and Dantes doesn't press the issue. Dantes shows up to the duel ready to die. . . only for Albert to apologize! He has learned of Fernand's earlier treachery toward Dantes, and forgives him for seeking revenge! He tells him this in private, then announces that the duel is off! Mercedes, the true hero of this book, must have told him. But now two people know the Count's secret, so maybe it's time to pack it in?
Then Albert and Mercedes decide to leave town and the name of de Morcerf behind. They receive a letter from the Count, enclosing the hundred and fifty louis he had saved up for his marriage when he was Dantes.
Meanwhile, poor Fernand has been waiting all day for the news of his son's duel. He saw Albert come home unscathed; where is the embrace and the account of his triumph? Eventually, hardly knowing why, he shows up at Monte Cristo House to demand an explanation, and gets one:
Fernand doesn't know how to do anything anymore but collapse miserably and run home to his family. In his present state I doubt he could even manage a decent betrayal, if he had anyone left to betray. But no one is left. There's an ordinary hackney cab outside his beautiful house, and he sees Mercedes and his son leaving together with their luggage. He watches them, hoping to see them look back, just for a minute. They don't look back. A moment or two later, he shoots himself. Poor Fernand. :(
Fernand, you could have at least warned your old acquaintance Danglars that Edmond Dantes was back! I doubt Fernand has much concern for Danglars - if anything, it's all his fault, the manipulative jackwipe. If he hadn't manipulated Fernand into getting Dantes thrown in jail, maybe Dantes would have died of some kind of sea disease in a couple of years and he could have married Mercedes with no guilt. Then everything would be the same as it used to be, only safer and better rested. Anyway, he doesn't warn anyone of anything as far as we know.
Meanwhile, Valentine is being poisoned, poor thing. Max goes to Monte Cristo's House to intercede for her, and the latter is dismayed to learn that the woman Max loves is the daughter of Villefort, another snag in his vengeance plan! Dantes, how about you just don't try to poison people at all? Luckily, Noirtier is ALSO the true hero of this book and has been training Valentine's body to resist the poison, by encouraging her (blinking at her) to take small increasing doses of his own medicine. Noirtier is the best.
Next up: a conference between Danglars and his daughter Eugenie! I'm a little behind on Monte Cristo this week due to work, but should catch up again next Wednesday. We're almost to the end of the book! And we're down to the two least sympathetic of Dantes' original antagonists, which may or may not mean anything for how the next few chapters play out.
What I Plan to Read Next
The Golden Notebook? For 99 Novels, and it's already in my house. Probably The Secret Country, which I've been meaning to finish for a while.
What I've Finished Reading
How Dear is Life - war comes to Europe, Philip joins the local Territorials, suffers embarrassment and shame, and is marched all over France and Belgium. At home, a familiar situation: the number of news sources has exploded, but no one knows what's true and what's false, and hardly anyone has the time to wonder in the first place. There are stories of atrocities in Belgium, fact mixed with half-truth mixed with pure garbage, all luridly illustrated. There are rumors of children poisoned at random by German bakers. The country is choked with information, while over in Europe no one tells the soldiers anything. Nothing very new here if you've read more than one WWI novel, but Philip and his family continue to be interesting and sympathetic.
What I’m Reading Now
So far in Clea: Justine has recounted how Pursewarden cured her of her “neurosis” about being raped as a child by telling her she enjoyed it and probably asked for it, and we have had this wonderful Durrellism:
She was, like every woman, everything that the mind of a man (let us define 'man' as a poet perpetually conspiring against himself) – that the mind of man wished to imagine. She was there forever, and she had never existed! Under all these masks there was only another woman, every woman, like a lay figure in a dressmaker's shop, waiting for the poet to clothe her, breathe life into her. In understanding all this for the first time I began to realise with awe the enormous reflexive power of woman – the fecund passivity with which, like the moon, she borrows her second-hand light from the male sun. How could I help but be anything but grateful for such vital information? What did they matter, the lies, deceptions, follies, in comparison to this truth?
There's probably a sense in which this is more or less accurate, if you're Not Lawrence Durrell.
There's more to it than that, of course. Our dogged narrator Not Lawrence Durrell has dropped down out of the cloud cover of the past into a mangled, alien, and anxious wartime future. Justine and Nessim's plan to run guns to Palestine has led to them being trapped together under house arrest, and Justine is crackling with boredom and philosophy like a lot of frayed wires. It's very Durrell. My feelings about Durrell are still mixed.
Is anyone going to care about Clea when there is THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO on the same page? Maybe not, but I care about Clea.
In The Count of Monte Cristo, things fall apart; the center cannot hold.
Convinced he's going to die in a duel with Albert, Dantes leaves twenty million francs to Maximilian, with the suggestion that maybe he should marry Haidee (heir to the rest of the gigantic fortune). Of course, Max can't do that because Valentine exists, and to both their credits, they just have a quick talk about it as soon as possible and Dantes doesn't press the issue. Dantes shows up to the duel ready to die. . . only for Albert to apologize! He has learned of Fernand's earlier treachery toward Dantes, and forgives him for seeking revenge! He tells him this in private, then announces that the duel is off! Mercedes, the true hero of this book, must have told him. But now two people know the Count's secret, so maybe it's time to pack it in?
Then Albert and Mercedes decide to leave town and the name of de Morcerf behind. They receive a letter from the Count, enclosing the hundred and fifty louis he had saved up for his marriage when he was Dantes.
Meanwhile, poor Fernand has been waiting all day for the news of his son's duel. He saw Albert come home unscathed; where is the embrace and the account of his triumph? Eventually, hardly knowing why, he shows up at Monte Cristo House to demand an explanation, and gets one:
"Fernand," cried he, "of my hundred names I need only tell you one to overwhelm you. But you guess it now, do you not? Or rather, you remember it? For notwithstanding all my sorrows and my tortures, I show you today a face which the happiness of revenge makes young again -- a face you must often have seen in your dreams since your marriage with Mercedes, my betrothed!"
Fernand doesn't know how to do anything anymore but collapse miserably and run home to his family. In his present state I doubt he could even manage a decent betrayal, if he had anyone left to betray. But no one is left. There's an ordinary hackney cab outside his beautiful house, and he sees Mercedes and his son leaving together with their luggage. He watches them, hoping to see them look back, just for a minute. They don't look back. A moment or two later, he shoots himself. Poor Fernand. :(
Fernand, you could have at least warned your old acquaintance Danglars that Edmond Dantes was back! I doubt Fernand has much concern for Danglars - if anything, it's all his fault, the manipulative jackwipe. If he hadn't manipulated Fernand into getting Dantes thrown in jail, maybe Dantes would have died of some kind of sea disease in a couple of years and he could have married Mercedes with no guilt. Then everything would be the same as it used to be, only safer and better rested. Anyway, he doesn't warn anyone of anything as far as we know.
Meanwhile, Valentine is being poisoned, poor thing. Max goes to Monte Cristo's House to intercede for her, and the latter is dismayed to learn that the woman Max loves is the daughter of Villefort, another snag in his vengeance plan! Dantes, how about you just don't try to poison people at all? Luckily, Noirtier is ALSO the true hero of this book and has been training Valentine's body to resist the poison, by encouraging her (blinking at her) to take small increasing doses of his own medicine. Noirtier is the best.
Next up: a conference between Danglars and his daughter Eugenie! I'm a little behind on Monte Cristo this week due to work, but should catch up again next Wednesday. We're almost to the end of the book! And we're down to the two least sympathetic of Dantes' original antagonists, which may or may not mean anything for how the next few chapters play out.
What I Plan to Read Next
The Golden Notebook? For 99 Novels, and it's already in my house. Probably The Secret Country, which I've been meaning to finish for a while.