"The Sense of an Ending," by Julian Barnes

I like fiction about characters of any age, but I do sometimes especially appreciate novels about “grown-ups” in middle age or later, particularly since such novels seem to be much less common than those about youngish characters. Of course this has something to do with my own Baby Boomer generation status. The acclaimed English author Julian Barnes’ new novel, “The Sense of An Ending” (Knopf, 2011), for example, is narrated by Tony Webster, a man in his early sixties. In the first half of the book, Tony looks back on his youth (high school, college, marriage, divorce) and thinks about the meaning of his life and what he has learned. In the second half of the book, he finds that his past is not completely in the past when he is surprised by a call from a lawyer bringing his past into his present. He reconnects with an important romantic partner (although the romance ended badly) from his college days, Veronica, and with a legacy related to one of his long-gone best friends from school. There is upheaval, mystery, misunderstanding, and at the end, a new understanding that finally makes sense of several relationships and entanglements from the past. Although this disentanglement produces a small shock, what I really like about this novel is less the plot than Tony’s meditations on being at this point in his life, and on how the past does and doesn’t affect the present. He goes from his teenaged beliefs that “we knew that we grasped life -- and truth, and morality, and art -- far more clearly than our compromised elders” (p. 12) (and isn’t this what we all thought when we were young?), and “I shall go there, do this, discover that, love her…I shall live as people in novels live…passion and danger, ecstasy and despair (but then more ecstasy) would be in attendance” (p. 102) to his adult statements that “There was a moment in my late twenties when I admitted that my adventurousness had long since petered out. I would never do those things adolescence had dreamt about. Instead, I mowed my lawn, I took holidays, I had my life” (p. 103) and later, “I have achieved a state of peaceableness, even peacefulness” (p. 75). But, as noted earlier -- and this is the part I like -- life has a way of surprising us. Tony in his sixties is surprised by his renewed interest in, and fantasies about, a possible renewed romance and, by extension, a new life. His peace is disturbed, his senses are awakened, he is engaged in a new way. Some version of this happens to most of us, if we are fortunate: we achieve a certain calm as we get older, but we are still surprised by new experiences, new opportunities, new dreams, new relationships. I wrote earlier (e.g., 5/21/11 and 6/20/11) here about some of Barnes’ other excellent books, and this novel confirms my appreciation of this author. Barnes, by the way, won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for “The Sense of an Ending,” and I believe it is well deserved.

"True Confessions: Feminist Professors Tell Stories Out of School"

Those who know me, and/or have read this blog at all regularly, know that I am a feminist from way back, and that feminism, women's lives, and women's issues are all extremely important to me. I am also an academic. So a book titled "True Confessions: Feminist Professors Tell Stories Out of School" (W.W. Norton, 2011) was bound to catch my eye and intrigue me. The fact that the book is edited by a leading feminist literary scholar, Susan Gubar (coauthor of "The Madwoman in the Attic" and coeditor of "The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women"), whose work I have admired (and in the case of the Norton Anthology, taught) for years, was another incentive to read the book. And the fact that it is dedicated to the memory of the late scholar and author Carolyn Heilbrun, whose work I have so greatly esteemed and enjoyed so much (and wrote about here on 7/14/10), was yet another incentive. This book is a collection of essays by leading and pioneering feminist academics in various fields such as literature, history, and education. The essays are divided into two sections; one focuses on "Personal Views" and the other on "Professional Vistas." Of course the two areas -- personal and professional -- often overlap. Because these women were pioneers, they have seen the sweep of changes that have occurred over the years in women's studies and in society. They have both suffered for being pioneers and experienced the excitement of being part of the changes in scholarship and women's lives over the past 40-plus years. Most of the writers are quite candid, even when vividly recalling very painful and even humiliating experiences of being belittled and ignored in academe and elsewhere; remember that many academics (mostly males) for most of history did not see the point of studying women's lives, women's literature, women's history, or women's issues. But these strong women academics persevered. In the course of their stories, we learn not only about feminism in the academy, but also about how it intersects with race, class, religion and other identities. Following the old feminist saying that "The personal is political," we see how these scholars' experiences with their families, their colleagues, and their institutions are all formative and influential. The essays are compelling and mostly very well written. I couldn't get enough of them, and wished the book had been longer. The authors include Nancy K. Miller, Jane Marcus, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Jane Tompkins, Sandra M. Gilbert, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Martha Nussbaum, Lillian Faderman, Hazel Carby, Annette Kolodny, and Nancy Chodorow, and more, all giants in academe and in the fight for equality. I admire them so much, and can't thank them enough for their courage, leadership, scholarship, advocacy, and example.

"Curry, Corduroy and the Call," by Gwendolyn Hiebert Schroth

I have written here (7/28/11 and 9/18/11) about three of the “missionary kid” memoirs I have read, both for their connection to my own “missionary kid” background and for my research; I have just finished reading one such memoir that is probably the closest to my own experience of any I have read, although still of course with important differences. “Curry, Corduroy and the Call” (Outskirts Press, 2011) was written by Gwendolyn Hiebert Schroth, who is the older sister of L., one of my friends and roommates at Kodaikanal (Kodai) School in South India. The author’s family lived nearby where my family lived our second term in India, and she and her sisters attended the same boarding school as my brothers and I did. Although the author was there a bit earlier than I was, many of the names (e.g., of teachers and of places), events, and experiences in her book are very familiar to me. These include descriptions of ayahs, bazaars, the Telegu language, the system of getting water and bathing, snakes and scorpions, parcels from churches back in the U.S., parents’ visits to Kodaikanal for their vacations and their children’s consequent temporary moving out of boarding school, the tiffins in which lunch was then brought to the children at noon for eating on the lawn, driving overloaded cars through streams, the “compounds” we lived on, sleeping porches, trips to Hyderabad, the long train trip to and from Kodai (with a day’s break in Chennai, then called Madras, in the train station waiting room, with side trips to see sights and to eat at what seemed like very “fancy” restaurants to us), and the many hikes we took in Kodai and the surrounding hills, just to name a few. There is a special thrill of recognition when one reads a book -- memoir or fiction -- that gets many of the details of the author’s -- and one’s own -- life right. This is how Schroth’s memoir affected me. And let me add that the book is well written and flows beautifully.

"Foreign Affairs," by Alison Lurie

I have read several of Alison Lurie's novels over the years, and have enjoyed them. She is a very good writer, very erudite, and she writes with a sort of satirical but mostly good-natured humor and a light touch. She often writes about women's lives, and she often writes about academics, both of which characteristics add to her novels' appeal to my taste in fiction. Her books are frequently set on a fictional campus called Corinth, which is clearly modeled on Cornell, where she taught for many years. I have just re-read, after some years, "Foreign Affairs" (Random House, 1984), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and a National Book Award. I thoroughly enjoyed it, not only because of the aforementioned focus on women and academics, but also because it takes place in London, one of my favorite cities. But mostly I enjoyed it because of its compelling plot and characters. Professor Vinnie Miner loves London and feels she is actually an Englishwoman at heart; thus she is thrilled to be beginning a six month research leave there. Vinnie is small and plain, but she feels happy with her group of friends in London, has an active social and cultural life there, and enjoys and is very efficient at doing her research on children's rhymes and folklore. Coincidentally, her young colleague in the Corinth English Department, Professor Fred Turner, is also on a research leave in London. She is not at all close to him, but she makes an effort to be nice to him, and introduces him to some of her friends, including the glamorous film and TV star, Rosemary Radley; soon Fred and Rosemary begin an affair. Meanwhile, to her own surprise, Vinnie becomes involved with a somewhat loud and unrefined but enthusiastic and kind fellow American from Oklahoma whom she met on the plane, Chuck Mumpson. Much intrigue and many twists and turns take place in these two relationships, all set in various interesting London locales. By the time Fred and Vinnie need to return to the United States, both have learned much about themselves and about others.

On Reading and Writing about Fiction from India

Writing here yesterday (12/31/11) about Anita Desai’s new book reminds me of how much fiction by Indian writers, and about India, I have read over the years. This is yet another result of my childhood there. It also reminds me of how for several years -- I believe in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but I could be wrong about the years -- I wrote a column on books by Indian authors and about India; this column was published in the alumni magazine of my school in India, Kodaikanal School, widely known as Kodai. I believe the magazine, and the column, were published twice a year. I loved researching, finding, reading, and writing about the books. There were fewer India-related novels available in the United States back then than there are now, and I didn’t have the benefit of the Internet in finding them. But I kept my eyes open when reading magazines with book reviews and publishers' catalogs, and when visiting bookstores and libraries, and occasionally got recommendations from fellow Kodai alumni and other friends. Each column discussed several books, so the “review” of each book was brief. In a way, that column was an ancestor of this blog... At a certain point, I stopped the column because I was too busy to continue, but I remember being reluctant to give it up. Writing about Desai’s latest book brings me back to that time, as I remember reviewing some of her earlier books in my column: definitely “Fire on the Mountain” and “Clear Light of Day,” and also, I believe, “In Custody.”

On another note: I wish you all a very Happy New Year, and plenty of good reading, in 2012!

"The Artist of Disappearance," by Anita Desai

Anita Desai’s first novel was published in 1963, and I have been reading her books for about four decades. Desai, whose mother was German and whose father was Indian, grew up in India (much of the time in Mussoorie, in the Himalayan mountains, which is, parenthetically, home to Woodstock School, the friendly rival of the school I attended in India, Kodaikanal School). Her novels are beautifully written, carefully observed, insightful, a little bit “triste,” and a pleasure to read. I have just read her latest fiction, “Artist of Disappearance” (Houghton Mifflin, 2011), a collection of three novellas, all set in India. It did not disappoint. The first novella, “The Museum of Final Journeys,” tells of a surprising art collection found in the deteriorating estate of a formerly wealthy family in a small Indian town. The tone is elegiac, evoking the time of the Raj and its remnants. The second novella is titled “Translator, Translated,” and tells of a scholar and frustrated writer languishing in a minor woman’s college where she teaches Victorian British literature. But reading a collection of short stories by an Oriya woman writer inspires her, and she translates and publishes the novel in English. Oriya was the language of the translator’s mother, and she finds herself inspired and coming alive as she reads and translates this fiction. Unfortunately, this triumph is the high point of her life, as she overreaches and infuses too much of herself into translating the author’s next book. (As a side note: Oriya is the language of one of the places we lived in India, and my parents spoke it quite well at one point; we children spoke a little as well; it is one of four languages that we learned at least a little bit of.) The final novella, “The Artist of Disappearance,” is the sad story of a man whose parents neglected him as a child, and whose only consolation was the beauty of nature in Mussoorie, where they lived. After a few years at college and with extended family in Bombay, and after his parents die, he returns to Mussoorie and lives in the family home as a kind of recluse; he continues there even after most of the house burns down. His happiness is interrupted by the intrusion of a heedless group of young documentary makers, but in the end -- thanks to a faithful servant, and despite a big loss -- he is able to continue his life in private and in communion with nature. These three novellas are all stories of disappointment, of loss, of mourning, and yes, of disappearance. Yet there is tribute to, and honoring of, what was present and vital in the lives of the characters at least for a while: history, art, intellectual and artistic achievement, nature, and solitude. One wonders if Desai feels that India itself has lost some of these -- at least in their past forms -- forever…

"The Stranger's Child," by Alan Hollinghurst

I very much liked Alan Hollinghurst's 2005 Man Booker Prize-winning book, "The Line of Beauty," his breakthrough novel (he had written several earlier novels, most notably his first, "The Swimming-Pool Library"). So I looked forward to reading his new novel, "The Stranger's Child" (Knopf, 2011). It did not pull me in immediately, as "The Line of Beauty" did, and at times I put it aside for a few days at a time. I believe this is because it takes place over a century and several generations of families, friends, and biographers, making the forward movement of the novel less easy and accessible. At times I had to remind myself of the complicated interlocking relationships of the various characters over various time periods. But in the end, I definitely liked the book, and found it impressive and worth reading. The central character, although we only know him for a very short time, is Cecil Valance, the Rupert Brooke-like poet who lived large and then died in World War I. He was a vivid, charming character who was gay, or possibly bisexual, and more or less closeted, although everyone knew that many members of the Oxbridge literary set were gay. Before he went to war, he wrote a poem in his lover's young sister's autograph book, a poem and event that sent reverberations through the decades after. This young woman, Daphne, considered herself Cecil's fiance, and the poem became an iconic one, one that most English people learned in school and could quote, although critics deemed it second-rate. After his death, Daphne is defined for the rest of her life, despite three marriages, the first to Cecil's brother Dudley, who was also gay or bisexual, by her short but famous connection to Cecil. There are too many characters and too many events in the novel to list here, but much of the second half of the novel is seen through the eyes of Paul Bryant, a working-class aspiring literary man, also gay, who becomes entangled with Cecil's descendants and eventually writes a biography of the poet that causes some controversy. "The Stranger's Child" is suffused with literary history, gay history, English history, British (mostly) upper-class life, intriguing characters, a few secrets, and many closely observed conversations and scenes. Readers also are reminded of how each generation is inexorably influenced by its predecessors, and of how hard it is to escape one's past, whether one wants to or not. I finished the novel feeling I had had a privileged and rewarding inside look at a certain sort of life in several overlapping worlds.