Author: Robert A. Parker

Robert A. Parker, a retired writer and editor, currently writes the blog, A Literary Cavalcade, that offers reviews of 20th and 21st century fiction. His past reviews, written over six decades, have been published in six volumes, also called A Literary Cavalcade. His commentaries on cultural subjects have appeared in America, The Critic, Sign, Communication Arts, Americas, Vuelta, and other publications. He has designed, edited, and written 20 volumes that summarize the Parker family’s literary and photographic careers.

Stardust, by Joseph Kanon

Kanon seems always to feature a strong setting, usually Europe, a complicated plot, and interesting European characters. He does it again here, and it again works. This 2009 book begins as a Hollywood novel, however, including even a 20th Century-type train ride with stars, this time heading westward. On arriving in Los Angeles, the hero, Ben Collier, confronts a mysterious death, that of his brother Danny. Danny has jumped or been thrown over a balcony. Ben and Danny are Jews raised in Europe, and Ben moves among both Hollywood’s German exiles, many Jewish, and Hollywood executives, in order to discover any connection they have with his brother, and why his brother died.

And so Stardust makes its initial impression as a Hollywood novel. It goes into deep detail as it presents the strategy, the rivalry, the maneuvering, and the technology behind studio life. We meet Sol Lasner, head of Continental Pictures; Bunny, his right hand man; and Liesl, widow of Danny and a budding star; plus, Osterman, Liesl’s father; and other Germans, like Dieter, Liesl’s uncle, and Kaltenbach. There are also Hal, a film cutter; Rosemary, a young star; Dick Marshall, a proven star; and then actual people in bit roles, like Paulette Goddard, Jack Warner, Alma Mahler, Thomas Mann, and Bertolt Brecht.

Ben has been brought in to Continental to direct a documentary on the German concentration camps, but is soon involved emotionally with Liesl as he searches for the truth about his brother. He moves about the studio offices, the sound stages, the cutting rooms, the preview parties, and confrontations with the press. It is a broad Hollywood setting, with gossip columnists like Polly Marks, as well as reporters, policemen, and FBI agents.

It seems the truth about Danny’s death is very complicated, but Ben slowly focuses on Danny’s involvement with Communists in the U.S. Was he still a Communist here, as he was in Europe when he helped émigrés like Liesl escape, or was he, here, a loyal American? And what are Liesl’s convictions? This is the 1940s, and red-baiting is beginning in the movie industry, led by California Representative Ken Minot. Who in the U.S. is deceiving whom in the search for Communists? Ben needs to know if he is to find the truth about Danny’s death. And what was Danny’s role?

The Communist witch-hunting takes over this novel’s second half, and it culminates in a dramatic hearing, led by Minot, in which Kanon pulls out all the stops. Meanwhile, Ben offers himself as a potential target to learn whom among the Communists killed his brother and why. There is one intriguing scene, as Ben hides in a closet in Minot’s office, seeking evidence, and is discovered—but not revealed. Why he is not betrayed involves more of the complicated motives of these people. On the other hand, the climactic scene with the killer on a sound stage is standard, and the identity of the killer is anti-climactic. But the pleasure of the novel has been in getting this far.

Kanon deliberately leaves one loose end, however. It seems to link the death of Danny with a mutual decision of Ben and Liesl. As if Kanon is not going to succumb to a traditional happy Hollywood ending. I went back to reread a number of pages, and still could not decide Kanon’s true intent.

This is a rich reading experience, as are all Kanon’s novels. In this case, it is his detailed portrait of Hollywood that sets this work apart. It is one of the best portraits I have read because of its range of detail. It is also an expose of the Red witch-hunts there, with a dramatic climax in which Lasner powerfully, but unrealistically in actual life, tells off the witch-hunter.

This work is also a political murder mystery that raises moral and ethical issues, which has brought comparisons to Graham Greene and John LeCarre. I would not rank Kanon at that level, but would place him fairly close behind LeCarre. Like LeCarre, he is also prone to complicated plots that are not easy to follow. Such as the morality of those who collaborate with the Communists to undermine them. And the suggestion that those who do so are actually being used by the Communists. And then there is the treatment of the German émigrés, who have fled one persecution and are now threatened by another. Plus, the complexity is enhanced by the novel’s structural variations. Such as the reversals of Ben’s suspicions regarding Bunny, Danny, and Liesl. And the changing role of the FBI.

Some of the complications that confront Ben help enrich his character. He seems to fall in love with his brother’s wife. Should he? And he agrees to collaborate with Congressman Minot in his pursuit to learn what happened to his brother. Again, should he? Plus, in order to learn the truth, is he justified in offering himself as a target? For if he is killed, will the truth ever be known?

But I continue to go back to this portrait of the film industry, through one small company, Continental. Kanon himself had been the president of two major New York publishers, but has no apparent Hollywood background. Thus, one marvels at what must have been tremendous research. But he obviously learned also from writers he published. Such as that reality comes from small touches. Here, one touch is the presence of Paulette Goddard, always portrayed in a positive light. She is witty and direct, as well as beautiful. Kanon seems truly to have fallen in love with her. And why not? She was always one of my favorites as well.

To sum up, this work will survive mostly because of its portrait of Hollywood. And will interest many because of its exploration behind the scenes of the Communist witch-hunts. For mystery lovers, its double-dealing may be too confusing. The personal story of Ben is more intriguing at the start, as he becomes involved with Liesl and the German émigrés, less so later on when he sets himself up step-by-step as a target. And the exposure of Danny’s killer is inconsequential—except, do we really know who it was?

I am on to more Kanon, expecting more European post-war atmosphere, and more complicated intrigue. (October, 2014)

Joseph and His Brothers, by Thomas Mann

Overview

This has been a difficult read. And yet also quite rewarding. It has been difficult because it is very slow-moving. Perhaps because Mann wanted to make use of his considerable research, and explore how to use it imaginatively. But mainly, I think, because he presumed a familiarity with the story of Joseph. (Which I did not have.) And so, as a result, he concentrated on an interpretation of character and culture. Rather than on what was going to happen next.

So it took me a long time to get through these 1,200+ dense pages. The objective each time was to finish the current chapter, with no temptation to read on to see what would happen next. Mann also imposes himself between the reader and plot interest by discussing how and why he is treating both current and upcoming events as he does. This gives a perspective to the tale, but negates the immediacy that I would prefer.

One does wonder why the subject of Joseph appealed to Mann. He wrote it over more than a decade, from the late 1920s and early 1930s, as Hitler rose to power, until mid-1942, when, after writing other works in different locations, he wrote the final volume entirely in the U.S. It would not seem to be the religious angle that appealed to him, since religion itself does not impose itself on the reader, but rather the adventure of Joseph surviving and flourishing in a foreign country. Thus, it seems more likely that Mann was speculating on his own future. Did he foresee his subsequent exile? (Some also suggest he was conscience-stricken by the events developing in Germany.)

The result, however, is not, to me, as successful a literary work as it might have been. It is successful as a tour de force, as a unique interpretation of the life of this biblical character. But the reader senses more that Mann is following Joseph through his career than that Joseph is controlling his own career. (Mann underscores this when he addresses the reader to discuss how he is reporting Joseph’s life.) Thus, Joseph here is a servant of God rather than an independent person finding his own way in life. And so is lacking my criteria for the independence of a true literary character.

And yet, and yet, this work is a magnificent achievement. Despite my qualms, despite my reservations, I cannot ignore the richness, the scope, the detail of this work. Indeed, it is same scope and detail that slowed down my reading of this work. Perhaps I am too accustomed, too committed, to the modern novel of character and action. I am especially used to a novel that lets the character and action impart the context, rather than, as here, a novel in which the author explores the context and confides to the reader his reasons for treating the characters and the context as he does.

Why did Mann write this novel? Reportedly, he was introduced to the subject when he was asked to write an essay for an exhibit of paintings about Joseph’s life. In any event, what is clear at the end is that Joseph has been on a mission for God. That out of his travails, out of his sacrifice, is to come a world of good for his people. His father Jacob is distraught at the loss of his son, and is angry at a God whom he realized has asked for the sacrifice of other sons, such as Abraham’s. Joseph himself does not lose his faith in God, however, not when he is sold, and not when his is brought to an Egypt that his tradition has taught him is representative of the underworld.

He believes, instead, that he has been saved by God for a reason. So he simply acts as he thinks God would wish him to do so, and seems to wait to learn why God has put him in the position he is in. He does seem to come to understand that reason in the third volume, but this is not stressed enough for me. (It is perhaps a stretch, but is Mann asking why current German history is happening? Certainly, it also turned out for the good.)

For me, the overall telling of this magnificent story moves too much away from literature and toward biblical history. And the ability to identify with either Joseph or Jacob suffers, as does any dramatic tension. Mann deliberately does this. It is obvious. Is it because he is dealing with these biblical events that he presumes everyone knows? Is it because he prefers to be conservative rather than daring in literary terms? The result is that I am impressed with his detailed treatment of these historic events, but I am not convinced by his approach. Since this is a novel, I would much prefer more tension and more emotion.

I would also note that Jacob the father is nearly as important here as his son Joseph, despite the volume’s title. For it begins with Jacob as he creates the family of 12 brothers, and ends with his death and funeral procession. He does not achieve in his life what Joseph does, but he provides the bookends for this tale. Indeed, these details are proper for this story; they provide a context.

So how does one sum up one’s verdict of a work by a master, a work that many consider a masterpiece? In the past, the difficulty of reading Joyce did not hinder my evaluation of Ulysses. My chief problem here was the context, the extensive detail in the geography, the history, and the culture. Enough of this comes across during the actual events. But Mann appeared to want to add something to the story. Why else write it, he perhaps thought, if one did not project an explanatory context?

And what is magnificent, what remains magnificent, is the story. The story of a good man who retains his goodness even when betrayed by his own family, a man who proves himself in a foreign land and yet will not forget his original family, a man who not only forgives that family but thanks God for his entire experience. This is not a religious novel, but God is present here.

The Tales of Jacob (1933)

This work begins with a Prelude that creates the context for the tale to follow. It explores the family history that Joseph inherits, then the origins of man and his story: his original creation, the location of Eden, the Fall, the Great Flood, the Great Tower, the origins of writing and human thought, and the blending of the flesh, the spirit, and the soul of man. It culminates with a plunge into the past, which is, after all, the duty of every novelist.

This first volume is the result of considerable research and a fruitful imagination. But it begins with very little drama. It presents a narrative rather than a dramatization, and it is about Joseph’s father Jacob rather than Joseph himself. One senses Mann to be translating the events and people of the Bible into what he considers to be a modern novel, in order that we understand better our religious heritage. Except, its narrative form is not modern in terms of the 21st century, and is frustrating to the modern reader.

Some might say that this is Mann being Mann. Being very thorough in his portrait of the times and of Joseph’s family before Joseph himself arrives on the scene. Indeed, it takes more than 100 pages for the “tales” of even Jacob to start. There is intrigue, yes, but little drama, until Jacob’s mother finally plots to send Jacob off to give a blessing to his uncle, whom he initially works for. He then falls for, romances, and marries his daughter Rachel.

Or thinks he marries her. But his uncle pulls a fast one on him, just as his mother did on his brother. Is this retribution? By the family? By God? It all works out, but ironically, because Jacob’s children become born of Leah, and other women in the household, but not of the one he loves. Mann here introduces the idea of a jealous God, a developing God, jealous because Jacob has got his own way until then and thinks he deserves it. But I do not find this persuasive. It works literarily, perhaps, in trying to give a characterization to God, but it does not work theologically, since God for me is beyond characterization, being fully developed, eternally existent.

Rachel, meanwhile, is finally allowed to also marry Jacob but she bears him no children for a long while. When, finally, she becomes pregnant, Mann describes the painful childbirth in which her son Joseph is born. This prompts Jacob to negotiate a new contract with his uncle, a contract in which he takes financial revenge by outwitting this man who originally took him in as a poor boy. But his uncle’s own sons resent him becoming rich at the expense of their father, and Jacob decides to flee their potential plot against him. So he heads off with his large family and in a large caravan representing his new wealth. He is returning to his original family, which he no longer believes is seeking revenge for his earlier deception.

This volume concludes with Jacob going on with Joseph and his other children, but not with Rachel, who dies giving birth to another son, Benjamin. It is a name that reveals she knows she will die, and Mann beautifully captures her last moments. Indeed, in Jacob’s adventures since he has left his mother and his family the reader gradually becomes submerged in this biblical tale. One realizes that Mann has convincingly created not only this biblical era but also the people who inhabit it. He identifies with their suffering, their happiness, and their puzzlement at what it all means.

And for me this work finally becomes religious literature, even if not about religion itself. Whereas at one point I was so frustrated by the narrative technique that I was considering pausing between volumes to read other, more modern work, I am now persuaded to go on. I now appreciate as well as admire the research and imagination that has gone into recreating this distant era and these people who represent Jewish tradition, and who offer a prelude to the Christian era.

Here is a sincere work whose purpose is to bring alive this Biblical story that portrays our spiritual antecedents. And while it took awhile to achieve this, I am now committed to it.

Young Joseph (1934)

Joseph is now 17. But, again, Mann needs to set the scene. More narrative, that is. This time to show Joseph’s relationship with his mentor Eliezer, the latter’s background, and his instructions to Joseph about the measuring of time. Mann also reviews Joseph’s relationships with his brothers by Leah. Then he moves back in history to his ancestor Abraham and his changing relationship to God, and then forward to Joseph’s relationship with his true brother Benjamin.

And, all the while, Mann is addressing the reader, letting us in on his analysis of the Bible, and of history. So we are again continually aware that this is one man’s novelistic vision of the history behind our religious heritage. It is frustrating, however, not to get into the story of Joseph, which this volume is all about.

The story appears to begin when Joseph has a dream—of angels raising him to heaven to meet God. Which is followed by Jacob honoring Joseph by giving his son the famous multi-colored garment. Which upsets his brothers, and after a long and subtle discussion created by Mann, they leave their father and Joseph to raise their sheep elsewhere. Joseph soon pursues them out of guilt in another vivid, descriptive passage that again reveals Mann’s deep research and vivid imagination.

Mann also creates a deep philosophical discussion among the ten brothers about the effect of a dreamer, meaning Joseph, on their position in the family. So when Joseph appears it is believable when they immediately attack him, bind him, and toss him into an empty well to die. Fortunately, a passing Ishmaeli caravan saves him, even negotiates to buy him.

When the news reaches Jacob that Joseph has died, even though he has not, Mann extends his creativity as he explores the father’s reaction to the report. First, he discusses whether it is the spoken word or evidence, such as the torn and bloody garment, that is more convincing and/or more merciful. Then he explores, first, Jacob’s denial and acceptance of the report, and then his denial and acceptance of God for having allowed it.

As this second novel concludes, we realize the power of Mann’s imagination, how from the biblical story he has penetrated the hearts and the minds of these biblical characters. We feel their pain, we understand their deception, we accept their humanity. This final chapter, nay this entire volume to date, could have been written only by a mature man who had suffered life’s travails, who had come to understand and accept human nature, the evil that is in man and the good that is also in him, the joy that he feels and the guilt that he feels, the happiness that awaits him and the despair that engulfs him.

This is a slow-moving volume, because it is so penetrating. It is a humanizing of this story of the Bible, so that we may better experience it and so understand it. And it is interesting that Mann wrote this story of the Jews just as the persecution of the Jews was beginning in Germany.

Joseph in Egypt (1936)

Fortunately, this third volume begins with narration rather than exposition. Joseph seeks to earn the respect of the old Master who has purchased him They engage in such discussions as: is he a slave, is he a prisoner, or is he merely accompanying the old man on his way to Egypt to buy goods for resale back home? Joseph does learn that the old man is going to recommend him to be hired by the staff at the Pharaoh’s headquarters, and it seems to be a step Joseph is looking forward to. As is the reader.

However, chapter two is unfortunately back to exposition, not narration. We learn Egypt’s climate, history, and culture, as Joseph travels to the royal city. But even in Thebes, there is considerable description, reflecting more blending of research and imagination. Until finally Joseph meets its palace overseer and is accepted.

At this point, Joseph becomes aware of the self-confidence of his past, his blind assumption of his own worthiness that turned so many people off, including his brothers. He also realizes that he has a mission in Egypt from God.

Mann here steps back to write that there is no historical record of Joseph’s days in Egypt, that he must deduce how Joseph rose in his role with Potiphar, the Pharaoh’s colleague and head of the place guard. He writes that Joseph spent ten years with him, the last three involved in a one-sided affair with Potiphar’s wife, and then three years in prison. For those not familiar with the Bible, this acts as a kind of spoiler, but the reader continues, wishing to know how Mann will create the details.

Dissatisfied with his menial chores, Joseph “ambushes” Potiphar in the palace garden and, in a turning point of his life, so impresses Potiphar that he earns a promotion that will end with him managing the man’s estate. Thus, as time passes, Joseph begins to live the life of an Egyptian and is accepted by them. And over seven years, he becomes a handsome young man. In a long and tender section Mann describes the illness and death of the steward Joseph reports to. Joseph cares for him at the end, and the steward sees that Joseph will become his successor. It is the next turning point.

As Joseph’s eighth year with Potiphar begins, Mann turns his attention to the wife Eni, who famously became infatuated with Joseph. She was not a courtesan, he says; she was frustrated by her relationship with Potiphar because, Mann speculates, he was a eunuch. Aware she was attracted to the young and handsome Joseph, she pleaded with her husband to dismiss him, but he refused. And when the dwarf Dudu detected she was truly besotted, he plotted to involve them with each other, thinking to eventually destroy Joseph. As for Joseph, he was intrigued by his mistress, but kept their relationship businesslike, not personal. Which frustrated Eni.

What is notable here is how Mann treats the sexual tension among these characters. He is very old school. All is innuendo. He spends many pages delving into the internal musings of his characters, into their mental gymnastics, into their own consciences and their speculation about the reactions of others. In Eni’s case, it is that of her husband, the dwarf, and Joseph. There is no physical description here, only long paragraphs of musing. And they are very long, very 19th century musings.

As the years pass, the frustrated Eni first reveals to Joseph her love symbolically, then deliberately offers herself to him. Each time it is not through action but through internal thoughts and dialogue. Mann then describes seven reasons that Joseph remains chaste, such as his loyalty to God, to his master, and to his own father. Finally, when Eni throws himself on him directly, it is again through dialogue.

One wonders at the author’s reserved approach. Is it because of the times in which he writes? Is it because of his own distaste? Is it because he is respectful of the story’s origin in the Bible? Or is it simply German sensibility? In any event, one does not feel the emotion between these two people, such as the desperation of one and the fear of the other. The approach is too dry, too intellectual. To me, this is an example of this work at times being thought out too much. Perhaps the problem is that this is a familiar story, and that Mann sees no point in emphasizing the plot, is only intent on exploring the internal reality of these people.

Potiphar finally learns of his wife’s conduct from the dwarf, while Eni, first, threatens Joseph she will lie to her husband if he will not sleep with her, second, tells her women friends of her desire for Joseph, and, third, asks a witch to cast a spell over Joseph. But when the witch does, Mann curiously draws the curtain on the couple. He will not dramatize this most dramatic of scenes, he says, because Joseph reveals himself as an ass. How he does, however, is unclear to me. In any event, Joseph again refuses her, and she screams for help and has him arrested. Whereupon, Potiphar sends him off to the Pharoah to be punished, but with a plea for mercy. And the volume ends.

It is like the movie serials of yesteryear. The hero is in dire straits, and we cannot wait to read what happens to him next.

If only…. Because this work is as slow-movingly introspective as it can be.

Joseph the Provider (1946)

After a prologue set, it appears, in heaven, presumably because Joseph’s story is a story ordained by God, the final novel begins. Fortuitously, the prison camp Joseph arrives at is under a humane leader. He recognizes Joseph’s skills, and assigns him to similar duties as Joseph had with Potiphar. And soon Joseph is running the prison, just as he ran the household of Potiphar.

Three years later, Joseph’s fortunes change when a new and young Pharaoh, who identifies with religion rather than warfare, takes over. This Pharaoh has a dream about seven cows and seven corn stalks, and he summons Joseph, whom he has heard interprets dreams.

Mann spends a long chapter with Joseph and the young Pharaoh, plus the mother, in conversation. They tell each other stories, then Joseph explains the dreams, and then the three discuss what the Pharaoh should do, in light of Joseph’s interpretation. It is all conversation, no action, over 50 pages, presumably because Mann believes this new turning point in Joseph’s life needs to be justified in literary terms.

Now the volume’s title become clear, as Joseph is given a new administrative role because the Pharaoh has accepted his interpretation that the dream meant that good times would be followed by bad times. And so Joseph see to it that the regime will provide the people of Egypt with their needs, by storing grain as the changing environment brings those hard times. It seems at this point, however, that Mann is more intent on using his research to explain history than he is in writing a novel.

But now arises the drama. Egypt and the surrounding nations are experience a famine, and Joseph gets word that ten of his brothers are coming to buy grain. What should he do? Will they recognize him? Well, they appear, they do not recognize him, and they are told he will sell them grain only if they go back home and bring to him his youngest brother, Benjamin. When they do return with him, Mann intrudes too much for my taste. He compares what the Bible tells about these events to the tale he is telling.

The final chapters return, appropriately, to the personal drama of this family such as when the sons return to their father Jacob, and reveal that Joseph is still alive, and then when their father finally meets Joseph in Egypt. But there is still too much narrative summary about the significance of these events and then descriptions, instead of movement, of what follows.

The ending is quite satisfying, however, as Jacob, knowing he will die shortly, calls Joseph and his brothers to three meetings. In the first says he wants to be buried in what is now Israel, in the second he gives his blessing to Joseph’s two sons, and in the third he gives a farewell blessing or curse to the eleven brothers. And this is followed by a lengthy description of the embalming of his body as a mummy and an extravagant month-long procession in the finest Egyptian tradition to the tomb he desired in Israel. It is a fitting, and even moving, conclusion to these four volumes, as is Joseph’s final message to his brothers. He forgives them, for “God turned it all to good.”

This is the last Mann work I have planned to read. Its intellectual bent is perhaps due to Mann writing it toward the end of his life. Yes, all of Mann is intellectual, but this appears to have been truly written to be a masterpiece, to be a collation of all the recorded knowledge about a subject. I believe Mann succeeded in his own terms, but I still wish this work was a few hundred pages shorter. I might also note that the translation I have read is by H. T. Lowe-Porter, whose language has been criticized as archaic. But I do not think Woods’ supposedly “cleaner” translation would negate my basic criticism. (October, 2014).

Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson

Volume One of the Baroque Cycle (2003). This is an amazing, literate, and intelligent historical novel. It is literate because of its style, even occasional poetic passages, and because of its concerns with the philosophy and morality of its time. It is intelligent because it vividly recreates the culture, the mores, and the history of Europe in the second half of the 17th century.

Its setting centers on London, but also includes Vienna, the cities of central Germany, Paris, Versailles, and major cities of the Netherlands. It covers the end of the brief Catholic monarchy in London, the rival French monarchy, very ambitious under Louis XIV, and the intriguing royal courts in both capitals. And 80 percent of the novel’s characters are persons of history.

Thus, significant, supporting roles are given to Isaac Newton and the German philosopher Leibniz, who contribute to the intellectual history of the era, while other participants are Christopher Wren, Samuel Pepys, John Locke, Robert Hooke, and Christian Huygens. Plus French king Louis XIV who hates the British, and William of Orange as he plots to become King of England.

But this is a work of fiction, even as it is a deep, philosophical, literary exploration of this moment of history. And the main character is the fictional Daniel Waterhouse, who graduates from Cambridge and becomes the secretary of the Royal (Scientific) Society of London, where he meets Newton and the other scientists and intellectuals of the era.

And yet a 916-page novel, almost by definition, requires more than one hero, and after Daniel dominates the first third of the novel we are introduced to Jack Shaftoe, an adventurous Vagabond who has no connection to Waterhouse. And admittedly, this change is confusing. Why has this character been introduced? Well, perhaps it is to expose us to more history, as he encounters Eliza, the book’s heroine, in a tunnel the Turks have built under Vienna to blow up its fortifications. And the second part of the book follows Jack and Eliza as they flee together across central Europe, encountering German intellectuals such as Leibniz, to the Netherlands, where they encounter more scientific and political heroes of history. Whereupon, in final section of the novel, they separate, and in Paris Eliza is made the Countess de la Zeur and dominates the concluding section—along with the return of Daniel Waterhouse.

But to go back to Waterhouse and the start of this novel. We meet him as an elderly man in Massachusetts in 1713. It is an intriguing opening, as he receives a mysterious message from a Princess Caroline, whom we will meet at the end of the novel when, years earlier, she is six-years-old. An old friend Enoch Root from England delivers this message to Daniel, which sends him off on a dangerous sea voyage back to London—a voyage that alternates with Daniel’s early life at Cambridge, where he meets many historic youths who will later ply a major role in science and in history. Indeed, this switching back and forth in time adds confusion, for we do not know if the emphasis of the novel will be on the events of Daniel’s youth, or what he is going back to.

As the second part begins, however, we see where the novel’s divisions lie. It has begun with Daniel’s youth in the 1660s and his Royal Society years the 1670s, when he also experiences the Plague and the Great Fire of London. Now, we continue with Jack Shaftoe’s trek across Europe with Eliza in the 1680s; and then the final third ends in the late 1680s with Daniel Waterhouse’s adventures in London as a Protestant king is restored, and then with Eliza’s adventures as the ambitious French king invades the German states.

The final chapters of this novel are somewhat disappointing, for three reasons. First, the author frequently resorts to long letters that do not dramatize the action but summarize it, no doubt because he needs to cover a lot of ground as he bring us up to date on the history of the times. This is climaxed by an especially long letter from Eliza that summarizes her adventures in giving birth, a private event that has no repercussions, at least in this novel.

And, second, this is followed by an unexploded bomb of a finale, when Daniel’s friends plot to arrange an operation on him for kidney stones. We know he survives, because he is living in Massachusetts many years later; and so this operation has no apparent significance except to offer at the end a cliff-hanger moment that leaves us in false suspense.

And, third, the most frustrating aspect of this novel is that it has no real ending, that it simply leads into the follow-up sequels of The Baroque Cycle. It is particularly frustrating because there is no outcome to the original set-up chapter, of Daniel being called back to England, and to agreeing to risk his life on a sea voyage. What added to my own frustration is that I did not understand, on first reading, the reason for Daniel’s return: as a go-between to help reconcile the dispute between Leibniz and Isaac Newton, and their followers, over the invention of calculus—a dispute that is holding back the development of scientific thought in Europe.

But despite all this, I found this novel to be amazing, mainly because of its vivid historic content. I was continually impressed by the details, all of them so pertinent to the story. Details about the geography, the means of travel, the rural life of the poor, and the contrasting wealth and dirt of the cities. Also details about the rivalry among countries, among monarchs, among cities, among various court factions. And explorations in depth of European culture, with the contrasts among philosophers, scientists, religious leaders, and the different social strata.

The richness of this novel is magnified by the philosophic, religious, and human contrasts it offers. Such contrasts include Protestant vs. Catholic, religion vs. science, England vs. France, power vs. conscience, status quo vs. revolution, free will vs. predestination, fresh ideas vs. conformity, free communication vs. cryptography, tradition vs. innovation, corruption vs. integrity, etc., etc.

Stephenson had to have done a tremendous amount of research, but the real accomplishment was to have the concentration to hold all of it in his memory bank until it was appropriate to use. And then, finally, weaving it naturally into his story, usually through the observations of his characters, although at times in those letters, a method that I became tired of.

There are some memorable scenes in this novel, although the Plague and the Great Fire have more a vivid presence than a dramatic effect. The most memorable scene for me was the rescue by Eliza and friends of William of Orange as he indulges in his usual morning ride along a Netherlands beach. Also vivid is Jack’s rescue of Eliza in the tunnel under Vienna. On the other hand, when Daniel is memorably imprisoned in the Tower of London, his rescue by Jack’s brother Bob seems quite arbitrary and coincidental.

What I do not accept from the critics is any categorizing this work as a science fiction novel, even if it did earn an Arthur C. Clarke Award. Perhaps past Stephenson works were science fiction, but for me this work is completely historic. Yes, a modern sensibility wrote it, which undoubtedly is why I enjoyed it. But this work explores the past, and internally it belongs to the past.

Steven Poole in The Guardian calls Quicksilver a “great fantastical boiling pot of theories about science, money, war and much else, by turns broadly picaresque and microscopically technical, sometimes over-dense and sometimes too sketchy, flawed but unarguably magnificent.” I would agree with everything except the suggestion of fantasy.

I have held this novel on my shelves for a long while, in part hesitating to start a 900-page novel and in part waiting to find the successor novels in the trilogy. Now, I wish I had fond those novels, so much have I enjoyed this one. And also because it leaves so much uncertainty about the future fate of Daniel, Eliza, and Jack.

We leave Jack, for example, as a prisoner in a pirate galley. Has he exited the book completely? One suspects Daniel will become the main protagonist, in part because some critics have seen in this work a commentary on contemporary culture; and at the core of Newton’s and Leibniz’ researches into numbers is the germ of what will become our computer age. And we must remember that his mission is apparently to be to reconcile those two figures. On the other hand, Eliza has become so adept at politics and numbers, perhaps she will emerge as the more significant character, especially because of her continuing emergence as a financial power-broker. In any event, I look forward to continuing this saga. (September, 2014)

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

This 1859 work is not the real Dickens, the classic Dickens. I wanted to return to a classic of my high school days, and I chose this work both because I recalled its strong narrative drive and because I still have an interest in the French Revolution.

But, while this work did not offer what I had expected, I found that from the beginning I was in the hands of a master. Dickens quickly proved himself in the control of his material, and he also exhibited a rich, rewarding style. His famous opening, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” certainly reflects this. Moreover, the initial focus on the English bank, Tellson’s, that does business in France, and the mysterious mission of Jarvis Lorry, a bank manager, both drew me into the novel and introduced the contrasting backgrounds of England and France, as well as a few of the main characters.

And yet as I moved further into the work, I sensed considerable preparatory work, such as the London trial of Darnay and his similar appearance to Sidney Carton enabling him to avoid sentencing. Dickens was also introducing here the power of the mob and the themes of innocence and injustice. Not to forget that the title reflected his wish to create similarities between a civil London society and a different, revolutionary French society.

I could also see him setting up his dramatic finale, especially when Sidney Carton, not a strongly drawn character, one of simple contradictions, swears his love and loyalty to the golden heroine Lucie Manette, whom Charles Darnay also loves. Indeed, for me, Darnay is the more interesting character, as a former French aristocrat who has rejected his cruel, arbitrary ancestors and turned English gentleman.

So slowly, this novel moved from a classic work for me to very rich historical fiction. This was Dickens using all his literary skills, but using them in the interest of his narrative. Most prominent is a resurrection theme, starting with Carton’s continual repetition of “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord,” as he commits himself to saving the life of Darnay. It is a resurrection theme that begins on the opening pages with the message, “recalled to life,” that Lorry sends back to his bank. It is also reflected in the rescue, and then revival, of Dr. Manette, Lucie’s father, as well as Darnay’s triple (London, Paris, and Paris) rescue from an evil fate.

Another prominent theme is sacrifice and redemption. By Sidney Carton, especially. But also Darnay, who has given up his wealth and title for a sense of justice. And just so for Dr. Manette, who sacrificed 18 years of his life. While a corollary suggests the sacrifice of one, Darnay, for the many, and the sacrifice of the many to satisfy the one, such as Madam Defarge.

Antonio Conejos has perceptively written: “The resulting irony is that while Darnay returns to save a common man (in the singular sense), it is the common man (in the collective sense) that will be the death of him…. Predictably the mob cares nothing for his noble ideals, the honorable nature of his trip or the fact that he has renounced his name and chosen to make his own way in England. The crowd must have all aristocratic blood, and Darnay is swiftly imprisoned upon his return….This conflict is the essence of the Tale of Two Cities. On one hand you have grand, ambitions movements, full of generalizations, abstract sentiment and vague rhetoric. On the other you have individuals who…are noble people…because they are sound enough to exercise their own proper judgment.”

Dickens himself wrote that he did not emphasize characterizations when he wrote this novel, that he wished the emphasis to be on the narrative. I would note, however, that his work is most effective when he keeps his characters in the foreground. The work is not nearly as effective, for example, when he leaves his characters in order to narrate certain historic moments, such as the storming of the Bastille. One feels he was writing then out of research then, rather than out of a personal interpretation of an experience.

One character continually cited by critics is Madam Defarge, whom they say outshines the other characters in her determination, her evil, and her characteristic knitting. She does dominate everyone in her scenes, especially her husband who once served Dr. Minette. But for Dickens, she balances the altruistic Sidney Carton, as the author contrasts the evil and the goodness to be found in both London and Parisian societies. Apparently, Dickens was drawn to this subject by the contradictions he saw everywhere in the lives of the wealthy and the poor, the powerful and the weak. And what happens when the poor become powerful and the wealthy become weak.

I would also note that, as dramatic as some of the chapters are, I often found it difficult to remember where the action left off when I returned to the novel. This suggests a lack of continuity, of one development leading inevitably to the next. Not least because this is a very complicated plot, and at times appears to be more the author moving on to a new development.

For example, when Darnay returns to Paris in order to save a colleague who has been arrested. This very arbitrarily sets up the long dramatic finale. There is also Carton fortuitously encountering a British spy, Solomon Pross, and blackmailing him into helping to save Darnay. Finally, there is Dr. Minette’s letter of long ago, found in the ruins of the Bastille. It suddenly appears at an (in)opportune moment, and is quite long for the circumstances under which it was written.

But beyond the narrative momentum, the lack of continuity may also reflect the creation of the novel, which originally appeared as 31 weekly installments. Which was typical of Dickens’ era, and particularly of himself.

To conclude, I should try more of Dickens before reaching any conclusions about him. This is out of his mainstream; it is not the personal story of a youth or of English society. Yet one can see why it was introduced into high school classrooms of the past: its history, its balance of good and evil, its strong narrative drive, and its resurrection theme. (August, 2014)

Papal Sin, by Garry Wills

The Introduction to this 2000 work is marvelous. It should be required reading for all Catholics. It is not concerned with the personal sins of past popes: the sins of power, avarice, and concupiscence. That era has passed, Garry Wills says. What should concern Catholics now is the Church’s defense of its recent institutional acts.

He cites Pope Paul VI, who negated the decision of his commission on birth control, because he was persuaded that the Church could not admit it had been wrong in the past. That such an admission would expose to challenge all its doctrines of the past. Which is self-defeating, he says. For such thinking has driven both the clergy and laity away from the Church. It has led priests who stay in the Church to ignore the doctrinal messages from Rome (such as on contraception, abortion, celibacy), for they are too intelligent to pass on such teaching to the laity, and they know the laity is too intelligent to accept it. “This is a neglected factor in the many discussions of the way vocations to the priesthood have fallen off so drastically in recent years.”

He adds that, “the young, idealistic person, the kind who want to be priests, are just the people for whom matters of honesty with themselves are bound to be most challenging. How can one aspire to a high calling and yet accept low standards for his own truthfulness about what he really believes?”

Wills challenges the idea that “the whole test of Catholicism, the essence of the faith, is submission to the Pope….To maintain an impression that the Popes cannot err, Popes deceive—as if distorting the truth in the present were not a worse thing than mistaking it in the past.”

Wills subtitles his book Structures of Deceit. Because it is not the Popes who are the continuing sources of these decisions, it is the Vatican, it is in the structure of the Church.

Wills says he is not attacking the papacy or its defenders. “My book is a tribute, in part, to he honesty that has led so many priests to keep silent under the burden of deceptiveness called for by their superiors—and it is a plea that the weight be removed.”

What matters here is that this is not a book about the papal sins of history. (He covers that in another book.) This is about the Church today, about its history following World War II. It is not a history to be proud of, and the results can be seen in the empty seminaries, novitiates, and pews.

And its causes can be read in the papacies that followed John XXIII, when the windows were shuttered on the breath of fresh air. Fear drove the Church, as the Curia feared it would lose its influence, the popes feared they would lose their power, and the hierarchy feared change would be an admission that in the past they had been wrong. Meanwhile, the laity feared the Church’s failure to understand both the practical and spiritual issues they faced.

This book is about truth and honesty, about the failure of the Church to meet those criteria. Which is so contradictory for a Church that claims to be descended from the most holy man in history. But it is an organization of men, that is the rationale we hear today, and has been for 2,000 years. Which I can understand regarding the personal conduct of popes and cardinals of the past. But much less so when it comes to spiritual matters being addressed by the institution today.

But what troubles me most of all, and for which I have no answer, is how this Church can have been under the watchful eye of the Holy Spirit throughout its history, and yet conducted itself the way that it has: its defensiveness, its fear of change, its culpable Curia, even its alternation between liberal popes and conservative popes who seem to contradict one another. Perhaps it is more a human institution that we think, particularly if Wills is right and Christ did not make his apostles priests, and their successors did not themselves create new priests for four centuries.

I shall follow here my practice of summarizing a work when I find it both refreshing and convincing. These are ideas that needed to be expressed, and Wills supports them with pertinent quotations from scripture and history. He especially spells out instances in which the Vatican misuses or distorts the meaning of a scriptural passage.

Wills begins his book with the Holocaust.

He cites the 1998 document, We Believe, issued under Pope John Paul II. He says it separated anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism, claiming the former was a scientific matter not under the Church’s jurisdiction and the latter was a human failing not connected to the Church. Actually, he says, both fed on the other. The report also ignored millions of Catholics who supported the Nazis (claiming they were afraid not to), and cited only Church leaders who objected.

Wills makes the interesting point that since the Jew Jesus died for all mankind, his death should not be a source of racial confrontation, and discrimination, but of racial solidarity. He also points out that Vatican II, while it said the Jews of today were blameless for the death of Christ, did not acknowledge a past in which Christians persecuted the Jews. After a bitter dispute in the Council, a compromise omitted this historic fact.

Even before this, in 1938, an ill Pope Pius XI asked the American John LaFarge to draft an encyclical condemning anti-Semitism. But LaFarge felt he had to work through his order, and the Jesuit head and the Vatican Curia sabotaged the encyclical. It never reached light, dying with the Pope.

Instead, the Vatican emphasizes that Catholics were also victims of the Holocaust, an example of the structures of deceit. Wills cites the case of Edith Stein, a Jew who became a Carmelite nun. He tells how the Church dishonestly claimed she was executed not as a Jew but as a Catholic. And made her eligible for sainthood by attributing to her a miracle recovery from drug poisoning, a poisoning that her doctor said resulted in recovery 91 percent of the time.

Wills also exposes false attempts to claim that Pius XII criticized the Holocaust

Wills next tackles the encyclical of Paul VI on birth control. He said it was not about sex, but about authority, about a denial that Church teaching could change. However, he points out that earlier, when the rhythm method was approved, it marked the first time that it “put a sacrosanct mechanics of sex above the motive of the actors, reversing the normal priorities of moral reasoning.” Indeed, the reasoning of St. Augustine.

I have read before Wills’ views on Humanae Vitae. He describes how the Curia and Ottaviani tried and failed to control the Commission, that the final vote was 54-12 in favor. What I did not know was that his encyclical also condemned artificial fertilization, and yet his successor, Pope John Paul, who lived only a month, congratulated the “English baby girl whose conception was produced artificially. As for her parents, I have no right to condemn them….They could even deserve great merit before God.”

How unfortunate that that Pope was succeeded by John Paul II, who immediately and strictly enforced Humanae Vitae. While for Paul it was a matter of authority, for John Paul II, Wells says, it was a matter of authority and sex, that the new Pope considered himself an authority on sex. He cites this Pope’s commitment to the Virgin Mary and her virginity. “He wants to introduce the aura of virginity even into marriage, where concupiscence toward one’s own wife is forbidden.”

On women as priests, John Paul II’s answer, Wills says, was “that the twelve apostles were men so all priests must be men. But all had wives, Wills claims, so could not today’s priests be married. He contrasts the presence of women at key moments in Christ’s life and death, how he cured “unclean” women, associated with prostitutes, and how they were the ones who announced his death. He traces the negative portrait of women and their qualification to subsequent centuries in which men said that they were inferior to men from the moment they were conceived, that they were not clean (they menstruated), and that they were not made in the image of Christ. He concludes: “But not to realize it now, when the evidence is so overwhelming, when the opportunities for redress are available—to perpetuate the wrongs to women as a way of maintaining that the church could not have erred in its treatment of women—that is the modern sin, and it is a papal sin.”

On married priests, Wills cites the letter to the Corinthians, in which Paul says, “Have I not the right to take a Christian wife about with me, like the rest of the apostles and the Lord’s brothers, and Stone (Peter)?” Which Paul VI ignored in his encyclical on married priests in 1967. ”Omission of this most relevant text, just because it is inconveniencing,” Wills says, “is an example of the intellectual dishonesty his book is studying.”

To further separate the priest from worldly life, Wills cites the priest’s need to say the mass, even by himself, the Latin language that few understood, the communion rail that separated the clergy, and the priest alone causing the consecration of the bread and wine. He says that originally what was meant was that the congregations receiving the bread and wine becomes the body and blood of Christ, not that the bread and wine itself does.

Thus, there was resistance at Vatican II to the priest saying mass in the vernacular and turning to face the laity, and to the laity shaking each other’s hands—all took away from the mystical rite of the mass. Which, in turn, challenged the ritual purity of the priest himself, and his need to be celibate. Finally, Wills challenges the “greater availability” to the laity claimed for unmarried priests. He compares it to a married doctor’s availability, a married teacher’s, a married rabbi’s, even a married politician’s, including our president.

Wills cites the decline in the number of vocations, and traces it to the Vatican’s insistence that priests follow its prescriptions regarding contraception, homosexuality, married priests, etc. He contrasts this with the early centuries of the Church, when it was the community, the faithful, who created its own priests and bishops. Indeed, he says there is no scriptural claim that the original 12 apostles were priests, that Rome assumed that prerogative gradually, as political leaders began appointing church leaders and bishops.

After a long presentation of pedophilia, in which he describes how the Church concealed and transferred the perpetrators, and defended its treatment of them, Wills discusses all types of sexual activity by priests: “Whatever one thinks of the morality of any of these acts, such [research] figures are obviously related to the thesis of this book, that the life of the church authorities is lived within structures of multiple deceit.” And: “My point here is not to judge the priests but to return to the dissonance [the gap] between papal claims and lived reality.”

Wills next discusses gay people and the Virgin Mary. Of interest to me was only the matter of Mary’s immaculate conception, that she was conceived without original sin. How, Thomas Aquinas then asked, can she be considered as part of the line of David, all born with original sin, from which line Jesus claims descent? Pius IX ignored such thinking, Wills says, when he proclaimed her Immaculate Conception; it was a power move, he says.

Of great interest is the chapter on abortion. For Wills, it comes down to when the soul is infused into the person. Is it done all at once, or gradually? Is it done when the egg is fertilized, at some point in its development, or when the child is born? Wills points out that we do not baptize a fetus when it miscarriages or is aborted. He seems to conclude that since we do not agree on when the human soul enters the body, that a woman should have the right to control what is happening inside her body. I am not persuaded. While I favor birth control, as Wills does, I cannot accept abortion. My basic belief is that this fetus is a person. If we do not know when it obtains a soul, but agree that it does, I prefer to err on the safe side, at the point the egg is permanently fertilized in the woman’s body, when the being there can become nothing else.

Wills ends stating that “woman have the legal right to decide whether to have an abortion,” but that women still must face “a moral decision-making task that goes deeper than the law.” To make his point, he adds: ”I cannot be certain when personhood begins, any more than Augustine was certain when the soul was infused. But against all those who tell us, with absolute assurance, when human life begins, we should entertain some of his knowledge of our limits.” And he quotes Augustine: “When a thing obscure in itself defeats our capacity, and nothing in Scripture comes to our aid, it is not safe for humans to presume they can pronounce on it.”

Wills offers interesting history on how Pius IX got his Vatican Council I to pass the dogma of papal infallibility. He tells it largely through the viewpoint of Catholic layman Lord Acton, who strenuously opposed it. Highly respected and close to many bishops, Acton quickly lost the respect of the Pope and the Curia, whom he saw as acting dishonestly when they curtailed all debate and steamrollered the process. He remained a Catholic, but the multiple excuses given for condoning dishonorable action, Wills says, “offended him in the church because it should be the friend of truth, not an enemy”

Wills contrasts Lord Acton with John Henry Newman, Acton was aggressive in his opposition, Newman cautious. In the end, Newman accepted the dogma, when he felt the Church as a whole accepted it, not just the Pope, and that when the Pope claimed infallibility he was acting for the Church, not just for himself.

Wills begins his conclusion by addressing a dispute between the apostles Peter and Paul in order to discuss lying and any possible validity.

This has a thematic connection to the rest of this book, because the book itself is charging the Vatican with lying to further its mission. He concludes: “The greatest betrayal is to lie about the truths of religion.” And he compares St. Augustine’s adherence to the truth with the conduct of today’s bishops and popes, such as how the Vatican dealt with the Holocaust, the contraception issue, the celibacy issue, the infallibility issue, the banking scandal, the role of woman, the celibacy issue, the pedophilia scandal, etc.

He finishes: “Christ, Augustine said, is the way to the truth and is the truth….that is why the church lie was the worst lie in his eyes—the falsehood to proclaim the truth. He would have said that the new papal sin, of deception, is worse that the vivider old sins of material greed, proud ambition, or sexual license. It is a spiritual sin, an interior baffling of the Spirit’s access to the soul. It is a cold act, achieved by careful maneuvering and manipulating, a calculated blindness, a shuttering of the mind against the Light.”

In sum, this is a remarkable book, a truth-telling book that in former days would undoubtedly have ended on the Index of Forbidden Books. It not only challenges the Church, it does so effectively. It uses the Church’s own words and its own actions to expose its dishonesty. Moreover, there is context here, to show that the words and actions are not being taken out of context. One hopes, that in the era of Pope Francis, Wills will be inspired to continue his challenge to the Church’s position on a wide gamut of sexual issues, plus further promote the fact that the Church is its people, its faithful, and is not its hierarchy. (July, 2014)

The Golden Bowl, by Henry James

I have been a great fan of Henry James. But for some reason I did not get around to reading The Golden Bowl, written in 1904. Perhaps because I had heard that it was in James’ later style, and was a difficult book.

In any event, I tried reading the novel a few years ago, and could not get past the first 50 pages. They were too dense, and seemed to be going nowhere.

So now, I am trying again. I am up to page 200, and it is difficult going. I am not sure right now if I am going to finish the novel, or give up. I certainly had the same difficulty in reading the first 50 pages. We begin inside the Prince’s head before he marries Maggie, and every sentence seems to have many clauses with multi qualifiers, as James has his hero consider all the possible effects of a particular thought or action. Plus, nothing seems to be happening.

When, finally, the characters begin talking to each other, we leave what has been exposition and interest begins with the interaction of these characters. Finally, the narrative is being dramatized. I have not read or seen any of Henry James’ plays, but I know he turned to playwriting late in his career. I would surmise this was because he liked writing dialogue, and perhaps realized he was good at it. I do know I myself enjoyed his dialogue in his earlier novels.

James follows these interesting dialogues, however, with long pages of more exposition, with some paragraphs lasting more than a page. He does this, I believe, because he has developed a rich knowledge of the contradictions of the mind and of human emotions, and he imparts these contradictions to his characters in order to establish a lifelike richness to his characterizations.

But what he does not realize is that the richness of these contradictions comes between him and his reader, and instead of the dramatic action we seek from his characters we endure endless introspection. His purpose may be admirable: to establish a rich lifelike context, whether of the atmosphere, a person’s thinking, or the ramifications of an action. But in truth, I have found myself skimming over those long paragraphs that freeze the action so that James can probe the complex thinking of these characters—long paragraphs that advance possibilities, but do not advance the story.

The story itself is about two couples. Maggie has married Amerigo, the Prince. Charlotte has married Maggie’s father, Adam Verver. Maggie and Charlotte are longtime girl friends. Charlotte and the Prince were once (this is the 19th century) lovers. Complications ensue among these basically good people. The complications are exasperated by the gossipy Fanny Assingham, who keeps confiding to the reader the ramifications of these relationships, as we listen to her and her husband, Bob, the Colonel.

As we move from Book First, the Prince’s view, to Book Second, the Princesses’ (Maggie’s) view, we learn through Mrs. Assingham the issue that this novel addresses. It is that Maggie has remained close to her father, and is thus withholding her attention from her husband. This appears to result in the Prince renewing his emotional tie to Charlotte, who, in turn, finds herself less attached to her husband, because of Maggies’ caring love of him, her father.

So the issue becomes twofold. Will Maggie realize the reason for the renewed relationship between her husband, the Prince, and Charlotte, and will she trust them? And will her father, Adam Verver, realize that his wife Charlotte is giving her attention to the Prince rather than to him? Finally, how will Maggie and her father react if they discover that her love for her father has reopened that former relationship?

The answers have drawn me into the second half of the novel.

What is initially disappointing is that the first 90 pages of the second half employ what I am calling exposition, which means a narrative of Maggie’s thinking rather than a dramatization of what she is thinking and doing. This raises the question of why James has taken this approach. Yes, it saves space, saves pages, but I think it is because James has so much knowledge of how the mind works that he wants to show its nuances, and thinks that to explore and reveal actions through the mind is the best way to establish the reality of his characters. Whereas, I prefer to reveal character through action, including conversation—rather than through what I would term a more static approach, through the depths of the mind.

Another source of this approach I hesitate to introduce. It is that this is James’ last novel, and that perhaps, perhaps, he has found it difficult to find the concentration to turn a somewhat conceptual concept, his plot, into dramatic action. That he outlined where he wanted the story to go but found it required considerable effort to dramatize where he wanted it to go. And he soon turned to playwriting precisely because he was comfortable with dialogue, and a play does not have the complexity of a novel.

What also may be behind my reaction is that I have not been able to follow the complexity of Maggie’s thinking, or of the Prince’s thinking. There may well be much more to these internal musings than I am aware of, and this master should receive full credit for that subtle treatment. However, given my inability to follow some of these musing has been one reason, I admit, that I have skimmed through those long paragraphs of little action.

On the other hand, there is also the issue of the actual musings of these characters, especially those of Maggie. They are of minor significance in the external lives of these characters. Maggie’s suspicions of the faithfulness of her husband and her best friend arise in her imagination; and her speculations lead to no external action until the end, and then it might be better described as inaction. The subtlety behind her thinking is that she does not wish her father to know her suspicions, for fear it will destroy his marriage, his happiness, as well as her own relationships with both him and her own husband. Thus, she achieves as much as she can by inaction.

What I will grant, however, is that as inconsequential as Maggie’s suspicions are, James knows how to write a scene in which she confronts, first, Fanny Assingham, and then her husband, the Prince, with her suspicions. This may well be the scene that James saw as the turning point of this novel.

The golden bowl of the title also plays a role here, and a very appropriate one. Indeed, it is a symbol of Maggie’s relationship with her father and with Charlotte. For it has a crack. And Fanny Assingham plays a major role in its fate. For Maggie, the issue is why, earlier in the novel, Charlotte was prepared to buy the bowl for the Prince. And the issue for me now is the logic behind how Maggie learns of that earlier encounter in the antique shop, and how she twists it into meaning something significant to her.

Otherwise, this confrontational scene with the vase reminded me of the old, the earlier James, whom I so admired. For it is marvelous dialogue, and truly works as a symbol of Maggie’s psychological fragility.

In passing, I would note that most of the book’s earlier confrontations in dialogue form concern the Assinghams, either between themselves or hers with Maggie; and they clearly exist to explain to the reader the ramifications that so concern Maggie.

The ending begins with final confrontation scenes, in dialogue, between Maggie and Charlotte and then Maggie and her father. It seemed to me to be a perfect ending, with Maggie resolving her situation with each of these people who are important to her. But then we read more than 25 pages of narrative exposition before we get to two more conversations, one again between Maggie and Charlotte that bring a change in all the relationships. It seems to me that James wanted here to give his novel a new twist at the end, but for me it was far from necessary, much less in any way significantly revealing of Maggie. For James, perhaps, it brought a greater sense of completion. On the other hand, I am thinking here of the overall situation, whereas James may have decided that it important that his hero Maggie change from being a person who only reacts to others to one who herself acts on others.

However, I do have to admire the sure, confident technique of the final pages‑—its resolution of the relationship between Maggie and her father and Maggie and her husband. Which, I think, is intended to represent the completeness of Maggie’s portrait. For James keeps us uncertain until these final pages. And even then, those final relationships are elusive to this reader. Yes, Maggie has maneuvered them as she wished, but they have also taken their own initiative in reaching the same conclusion. Indeed, both the Prince and Charlotte agree, in effect, to give up each other. Thus, there is goodness in each of these four characters who have, for various reasons, put themselves into this difficult situation. And for Maggie, what matters is her decision that her loyalty be, first, with her husband, whereas previously it has been with her father.

And yet, it is such a slight obstacle that this novel has resolved. An obstacle that Maggie initially creates in her mind. That is, her view of the relationships among these two couples. Which becomes a greater obstacle when it transforms itself into the tension between her love of her father and her love of her husband. However…it is still an obstacle that lies within their three minds. It does not exist in their external world. Which, in turn, shows us what interested James in this stage of his career: the internal world.

In an introduction, Richard Brett has offered some interesting ideas. He asks: “What is the point of this slight, breathlessly refined action? How does it come to seem both trivial and profound?”

And: “The people are characteristically concerned with the questions of where they are, what do they know, what do others know, what can be said, what can’t be said, what can others say or not say, do or not do” And this certainly captures the narrative exposition that continually turned me off.

He also suggests that the wealthy Maggie wishing to buy a prince for his social ranking and to “buy” Charlotte for her lonely father “may well seem a guiltier thing than the adultery committed against them and which, in any event, they have themselves provoked by the logic of their bargains.”

He continues: “James point, perhaps first, is that no matter what the original appearance of the morality of the Ververs’ bargains, all four characters are mutually implicated in them; all give and all take; and further all are transformed by their interconnectedness.”

In the end, this is a story of love. Of Maggie’s for her father, and of Maggie’s for her husband. Not to forget that between the Prince and Charlotte. Indeed, Maggie realizes, for them all, that giving up one love can be a commitment of love to another. And Brett asks “But how else is love to be conceived…if it is not the allowance to others of as much freedom as one assumes for oneself.”

So what I am evaluating is the effectiveness of this portrayal of love requiring a sacrifice, when that sacrifice is explored too much within the characters’ minds rather than in any external action. Yes, these characters, and most of James’ characters, live through their consciousness more than through their body; but there was too much of that consciousness here for my taste. There was too much subtlety, too much goodness, in the actions of these characters; too much speculating that if I do this to achieve my good end, he or she will do that to achieve their good end.

In sum, this was a novel to struggle through. In part because of its complex style. In part because of its narrative rather than dramatic approach. And in part because the drama is inside these characters rather than, as in most novels, in the physical world. James was obviously drawn here to that internal world, much as Joyce was when he used another format. Perhaps that new knowledge of the mind was an avenue novelists wished to explore at the turn of the 20th century. However, I also wonder whether or not James himself was dissatisfied with this novel. And wonder if that influenced his turning thereafter to the stage. (July, 2014)

The White Stone, by Carlo Coccioli

More than 50 years ago, I was fascinated by Carlo Coccioli’s earlier novel, Manuel the Mexican. I enjoyed it both for its impressionistic style and for its portrayal of the Mexican culture, but mainly for its interesting confluence of the Aztec and Christian religions.

So I sought out a new work, The White Stone, originally published in Paris in 1958. It was about an Italian priest, Ardito Piccardi and his crisis of faith. But I also learned there was a companion novel, Heaven and Earth, about the same priest’s life prior to that described in The White Stone. So I waited to discover that first novel on the remainder shelves. And waited, and waited…and never did find it.

Now, I have finally stopped waiting. I have read The White Stone.

This is the story of what happened to Ardito during World War II. As the book opens, he has just lost his faith because he prayed to God that he be executed to save local peasant youths who have been caught sabotaging a railroad, only to have a German officer pardon the youths without executing Ardito. In somewhat confused thinking, typical perhaps of Coccioli, the Nazi officer has negated Ardito’s faith in God by being the one, rather than God, who has done the pardoning. Sent north to a prison camp in Germany, Ardito meets a second priest, Augustin Nevers, who has lost his faith because he is gay, another familiar theme of the author, who is himself gay.

The two priests have interesting theological discussions while they are prisoners. Ardito does not want his friend to lose his vocation, even though he has lost his own. He tells the priest that he will be judged “not for what you are (a homosexual) but for the way in which you have lived.” And Augustin writes of Ardito: “Yet the man he had become retained the spiritual habits of his former life….What I mean…is that the spirituality of this priest who ceased to believe in God became earthly, changed into flesh, took on human form. [And yet] having lost God had not lost the necessity of him.”

The purpose of their discussions seems to be to deepen Ardito’s character rather than to explore a contrast between the two priests. Thus, Augustin asks. “Why do you impose on me a faith which you have renounced?” And Ardito replies: “I did not renounce my faith. A day came when I found myself emptied of it.”

While a prisoner, Ardito also writes: “God only existed because I thought that I believed in him. I have therefore not destroyed God; I have destroyed only my illusion.” Yet, as this novel demonstrates, he still wishes that he could believe.

And we soon are following only Ardito, as he escapes from the Nazi prison camp and hides in the woods. He has escaped with an unsavory but good-intentioned Croatian, another complex characterization that expands on the novel’s tension between goodness and evil.

Ardito then joins a larger group of escapees, who later claim that he has saved them from the Germans through a “miracle” that he has no memory of. The men pray with him and then, as in a dream he himself has, say he rose a meter off the ground in front of the pursuing German soldiers, which then turned back. Thus, this good priest, who still prays, changes reality, even if he no longer believes in God—and cannot himself believe in this “miracle.”

To back up, the entire story of Ardito is being told by a narrator called, “C.” (the implication is Coccioli) who knew Ardito when he was a youth, and is now seeking to learn Ardito’s fate after the priest was taken away to the German prison camp. This information comes to C. in the form of letters, journals, and diaries written by Ardito and those he encountered, sources that C. has tracked down. Thus, we are learning about Ardito long after the fact, allowing them (and the author) to lend a helpful perspective to his adventures.

In an interlude, Ardito is living in Paris in 1950. He begins by saying: “Before, my religion was a material thing. I had discovered God through Satan. I served God, but I lived in the reality of Satan. He was everything: the flesh and its torments….My religion was too influenced by Satan to be metaphysical.” In Paris, a Mr. Page approaches him. Page introduces the idea of service, and tries to persuade Ardito that he think of himself not as a “free” man, but as “available.” But after many meetings, Ardito has a dream and realizes that Mr. Page is the tempter Satan. And Ardito writes: “I felt linked to Someone whose existence I had denied for many years….I knew, that night, that I could not believe in God, yet I loved him more than ever.”

This is not that interesting an encounter, mainly an exchange of ideas that crystallizes the uncertainty in Ardito’s thinking. It does not advance C.’s search for him. It seems, rather, to be Coccioli’s way of showing the reality of Satan and then Ardito turning a corner, the corner to worldly sainthood. In sum, I am not sure of the necessity of this episode.

Ardito’s final adventure occurs in Mexico, where he encounters a similar situation to his original confinement by the Germans in Italy; he is trying, in this case, to save a single hostage. In Mexico, he is now more mature, and he acts more bravely in a highly dramatic scene in which the author again portrays this hero as a saintly man. Finally, Coccioli rounds off his novel by returning his priest, and those seeking him, to the small town in Italy where his adventures, and this book, began.

Why did the author write this book? Why was he drawn to its theme of a priest searching for God? And of exploring men’s relationship with God? Coccioli was raised a Catholic, but became disillusioned with the Church’s direction (including its position on homosexuality), even though he still believed in the Church’s mission. So I believe he was inspired here to explore his contradictory feelings about the Church. Thus, his hero decides he does not believe in God, even as he acts as a good priest in his dealings with the troubled people he encounters. Coccioli is emphasizing the humanity of all mankind, and that our body cannot be sacrificed at the expense of our soul.

In Mexico, near the end of this novel, Ardito says, “There is a more sensational and more real miracle than a blind man regaining his sight. It is for a man who has lost his faith to regain hope.” That sums up Ardito’s journey in this novel. He wants to believe, is searching for his way back to God. And the title is explained on the last page when it cites a verse from St. John’s Revelations. “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”

One leaves this book sensing that Coccioli, like his hero Ardito, wants to believe, is trying hard to believe, and here allows his character to accept what he cannot. For he keeps writing here about truth, about the contrast and connection between good and evil, about the link between man’s body and his soul. What he has written here is a spiritual mystery, not unlike some of the work of Graham Greene, who also accepted what the Church stood for but could not accept its more specific conduct.

Coccioli himself writes that he has portrayed Ardito “as a man and as perhaps a saint, and as a bridge between heaven and earth.” Indeed, on his website he suggests that this is a true story, that he actually knew Ardito Piccadi in Italy, that the letters and journals are a result of his research, and that he decided to fictionalize the priest’s story based on those resources. I am not sure whether I accept this reality. (Might it just be the author trying to sell the reality of his fiction?) But I would concede that Coccioli may well have experienced a similar situation in which a priest he knew was held hostage (perhaps even killed?) and then let his imagination take wing.

In any event, this is an admirable work for its exploration of faith. It captures the tension between our world of realty and the ideal of faith. It is a tension each person experiences as he balances body and soul, truth and temptation, the saint and sinner within. And it explores this tension in the body and mind of one person, a priest, who belongs to both worlds. It even achieves a believable conclusion, although perhaps one more acceptable to a person of sincere faith.

I do wish I had come across that earlier novel about Ardito’s youth, education, and ordination, but it was not necessary to read that novel in order to appreciate this novel. This work, on the turning point in the priest’s life, is complete in itself.

I am also more interested now in reading additional Coccioli novels. The internal conflict within a man between his imperfect physical body in an imperfect physical world and the perfect ideal of his spiritual life—this is a valid source of literature for me, as Graham Greene, Francois Mauriac, and others have long demonstrated. (July, 2014)

Someone, by Alice McDermott

I should get tired of writing the phrase: This is a beautiful novel. But I cannot, not when it is a beautiful novel. Even if this 2013 work is not structured, as I prefer, chronologically. Even if it is not concerned with story. Even if it is concerned with just one person, its narrator, Marie, from when she is seven years old to when she is enduring the infirmities of old age.

But even more, I believe, this novel is concerned with life. As personified by Marie. Which is probably the reason for the title: Someone. Marie is someone, someone McDermott makes us concerned about. Not for what she is, as much as for what she experiences. Which is life.

Yes, she is plain and nearsighted. And when jilted by a supposed boy friend, she is near despair. ”Who’s going to love me?” she asks. And her kind brother Gabe answers: “Someone. Someone will.” And, yes, this gives the novel its title; but it is meant to do more, I believe. It is meant to give Marie a more generic life, to make her represent more than herself, to make her represent everyone. To make her represent the life that everyone experiences.

And this is why McDermott does not tell Marie’s story directly. Why she jumps around chronologically. We are not to focus on Marie. We are to focus on the life she lives. As representative of the life we all live.

Not that it is easy to get used to a structure in which childhood, adolescence, motherhood, and old age do not appear in sequence. That is, we experience her first heartbreak and her eventual marriage; her brother’s brief stint as a Catholic priest, his loss of his vocation, and his breakdown; her parents’ deaths; her “temporary” ten-year job in a funeral home; life at home with squabbling children; and the changing world of Irish-Americans. Marie labels everyone as fools for thinking anyone cares about us in a world in which we are victims of suffering, injustice, and mortality. But the novel suggests many do care. And the life of fools that we endure is a condition of this life that the novel celebrates.

Because Marie’s story is not told in sequence, we read of her pregnancy before her marriage, of her grown children before she gives birth. As a result, we read to learn not what will happen next to Marie, but to learn how what has already happened grew out of her earlier life. Thus, there is a different kind of suspense, based on a different kind of reader curiosity.

As with life, this novel reaches no conclusion. The ending recalls the opening pages, but what really happens when Marie recalls the death of a childhood friend from a fall on cellar stairs, as she herself climbs down her stairs in the dark? Is it that she has just helped to protect her brother Gabe’s life? And now: “We’ll see what happens next.” Who knows? Just as I was not sure why her beloved brother left the priesthood and later was confined to an asylum. Yes, there were hints and rumors, but, as in life, there are no sure answers; and McDermott offers an anecdote by husband Tom to stress this.

It also happens that Gabe is the most interesting character here, undoubtedly because he changes and yet there is no explanation for those changes. Because of the author’s skill and compassion, however, we feel not frustration as a reader but a greater understanding of Marie’s own concern.

One can only conclude that this uncertainty is part of the ordinary life that the author is depicting here. For that ordinariness is at the heart of this novel. Indeed nothing extraordinary occurs here—nothing besides death, childbirth, madness, and love—that would make Marie’s life different from any other. And the key to conveying that ordinariness is a prose style that is simple, that itself is ordinary, that focuses on the presumably insignificant details, on intimate family scenes, on familiarity with both physical and emotional pain, and, overall, on an empathy for the human condition.

Kevin Spinale sums this up in America. “It is the story of woman’s life—someone named Marie.…Yet, the majority of the story is empty, emphasizing the beauty of the story that is given—how fragile and subtle someone’s life is. How indefinite and ordinary and beautiful anyone’s life can be, if there is someone, anyone with whom one can share it.”

And Roxanna Robinson adds in the Washington Post: “Fear and vulnerability, joy and passion, the capacity for love and pain and grief. Those are common to us all. Those are the things that great novelists explore. And it’s this exploration, made with tenderness, wisdom and caritas, that’s at the heart of Alice McDermott’s masterpiece.”

This is not a novel that required research, or a special knowledge. It simply required a way of life to have been lived, and then to capture it in a simple prose that matches its subject matter. It required a middle-class Catholic life lived among a changing urban society. And an author who understands, identifies with, and sympathizes with that way of life.

Interestingly, this is a novel written out of a Catholic sensibility but not one in which Catholicism plays a major role. Its heroine Marie, indeed, rebels against her faith’s restrictions, just as she does against the conventional wisdom of others, including her parents and her doctors. Even when her brother Gabe leaves the priesthood, it is accepted rather than explored.

In an interview, McDermott calls herself a contrarian. One wonders how much her Catholicism has contributed to that sense of herself. For the Catholic way of life is not only separate from the mainstream of traditional American society, it is also out of the mainstream of the traditional literary world. Catholics, with their own values, look at life differently. And surely this novel looks at an American life differently from most current novels. I refer not to the structure but to the ordinary life shown here in that structure.

To sum up, may this not be the capstone of McDermott’s career. But it could be. For it simplifies a novel down to its basics. It is about one life, and yet about all lives. It focuses on the ordinary, but the ordinary that encompasses all our lives. It is about the limitations to our knowledge of others, rather than the usual omnipotent delineation of others by the author. And it is about writing simply, without the flourishes of an author calling attention to herself. (July, 2014)

Compass Rose, by John Casey

This 2010 work is a beautiful novel, and just my kind of novel. It became so on the very first page, as the key women of the novel attend a boy’s baseball game. Casey was perhaps comfortable with these women because he was so familiar with them, since they are characters we first met in his novel Spartina, which I so enjoyed and which won the National Book Award in 1989.

And I, too, was comfortable, for I encountered here a family group and their neighbors in a small Rhode Island town who regarded the world and each other with the same generosity and sensitivity with which I regard the world myself. Whether or not Casey was raised a Catholic, and even though there is no element of religion here, there is a sense of values that fully matches my own.

A compass rose is a marking on a compass that helps one orient oneself by showing the cardinal (north, south, etc.) and intermediate bearings of the compass. This novel is called Compass Rose, because the fulcrum of the story is a girl named Rose, as she grows from an infant to a woman heading off to college. This Rose is the illegitimate daughter of Dick, the main character of Spartina who is married to May, and Elsie, with whom he had a tempestuous affair in the first novel.

The title is doubly appropriate, because Dick earns his life at sea, where a compass is so necessary, and his daughter Rose is the character who brings together, who helps orient, the lives of everyone in this book.

While this is a continuation of Spartina, one does not need to have read that work to understand or enjoy this novel. It is entirely self-contained. And because it takes place across 18 years, it develops its own reality, its own frame of reference. Indeed, the events here read not like the plot of a novel but like actual life in this small community. It is primarily the story of Elsie and her daughter; of Elsie’s friend Mary who lives with them and sees the importance of Rose getting close to her father; and of May, Dick’s wife, whose acceptance is needed to bring Rose close to her father.

But there are also other important characters, many of whom are involved in a conflict between the long-time residents of South County and a luxury development at Sawtooth Point that wishes to expand by taking over the home of Dick and May, as well as other local property. The developer, Jack Aldrich, is married to Sally, who is Mary’s sister. Jack is the closest to being the villain of this novel, but he is so intent on doing good in his own terms that everyone finds it difficult to dislike him. The fisherman Dick is not a prominent character, since he is often at sea, nor are his sons Charles and Tom. This is the story of the women, and it is told from their point of view.

If the sea was prominent in Spartina, it is the woods, marshes and salt ponds that provide the natural element in this novel, a setting that stands in for the natural evolution of life, growth, decay, and death. These ponds and woods are beautifully described, and are a haven for Elsie who is a local nature warden.

Elsie has been introduced to this natural world by the elderly Miss Perry, her former teacher and another prominent character. Indeed, in her final days, Miss Perry commissions Elsie to become the conscience of the region, much as she herself was, in face of the proposed takeover by the encroaching Sawtooth Point.

There are many developments in this novel. The first is the bringing together of Rose, Elsie, Mary, May, and Dick. The second is the fate of Miss Perry. The third is the departure of Mary from Elsie’s house and her discovery of love. There are also minor dramatic elements, such as when Charles is injured at sea, when Dick ‘s boat sinks and he needs to be rescued, and when Rose earns the role of lead singer in her high school musical. But overall, from early on, hangs the shadow of the Sawtooth takeover of the property of these longtime residents.

Jack Aldridge, who runs Sawtooth, is an interesting character, complex on one level but mainly a shallow foil when compared to the women of the novel. He has an ambitious dream that he convinces himself will enhance the community, and he plots and maneuvers to have his way. Yet one doubts that Casey intends him as a true villain, based on the fate Jack encounters on the final pages. Indeed, those final pages reverberate with the sympathy Casey has for all his characters, and particularly the women.

The novel winds down with, first, Rose’s performance, and the negative reaction of Elsie, who just does not understand that her daughter has the same independence of spirit her mother had when she challenged convention in her affair with Dick. Slowly, Elsie realizes her own frustrations prompted by both the need to share Rose with others and the expansive maneuvering of Sawtooth Point that threatens everyone who matters to her.

Indeed, there is a final gathering of all the characters, as a resolution to the Sawtooth incursion is achieved. Ironically, or realistically, this resolution reflects the inevitability of human as well as natural evolution. It is another way of saying that we are all involved with each other and must bend to each other’s needs.

Dominique Browning, in her beautiful review in the Times, writes: “This bit of a world is complete unto itself, with its own force fields, its own variations on true north, its own way of tilting into alignment. Like the love affair that is the novel’s magnetic pole, Compass Rose gathers its quiet strength from a slow accretion of instants of intimacy, ‘both ferocious, and serene,’ moments that bubble up, collapse, and decompose in the natural order of things, on their way to becoming the history of a place.”

Another reviewer says that this is the second volume of a planned trilogy. Could the final volume revolve around the expansion of Sawtooth Point? I would indeed be interested in a concluding volume, for this work is far superior to anything else by Casey. But we surely cannot wait another 20 years for this 75-year-old author to produce such a work. (June, 2014)

The Untouchable, by John Banville

This 1997 novel is the first Banville I have read, and I now understand why he is so admired. He is a beautiful stylist, with an admirable ability to explore the sensibility of his characters. What is striking also is that he has written here a penetrating novel about a spy, the repercussions of being a spy, with no details about his actual spying.

Banville was clearly inspired by the treachery of Burgess and McLean, and the later exposure of Anthony Blunt, the art historian, as the ”fourth man.” His main character is Victor Maskell, the Blunt character, who narrates this story in his old age, knowing that he has been exposed and that he is soon to die of cancer. His story, this novel, recaptures the complicated gamesmanship of those years as a Russian spy. And he himself is literally untouchable, for not only he does not like to be touched, but on a deeper level he perceives himself to have been untouched by British authorities. And on a still deeper level, he is a stoic, one who remains emotionally aloof from his fellow men. His only commitment is to an ideal, a sense of justice that he has identified with Moscow since his student days at Cambridge.

Victor moves among other men who share either his ideals or the sexual and drunken carousing of the late 1930s. Seemingly on a whim, he enters a pro forma marriage and sires two children, only to be seduced and discover that he is gay. Which ironically deepens his character, as he balances his two hidden lives, that of a spy and that of a homosexual. Except, the novel probes his new sexual life more than his life as a spy. His character is further enriched by a Bluntian dedication to art, for his life ambition has been to head an institution that will collect and train others in understanding art. It is another example, indeed, of his commitment to an ideal that is based on an abstraction of life rather then an emotional commitment to life itself.

It is Banville’s portrayal of the escapades of his friends that sustains the reader’s interest across nearly 400 pages. But interest is further piqued by Victor’s brief adventures. He discovers a painting by Pousin that he values more than his family, since it represents the death of the stoic Seneca. He enjoys a junket to Moscow, where he is disillusioned by the life there—even though he retains his Marxist ideology. He is sent to Boulogne by the British army in 1940, and then escapes at Dunkirk. He retrieves a cache of scandalous photographs from a German castle after World War II to save the royal family from blackmail. He drives his two friends, Boy Bannister and Philip MacLeish (stand-ins for Burgess and Maclean), to the ship that will start their flight to Moscow. And all the while, he parties with Waugh-like friends and searches for gay sex in dark bathrooms.

As the novel opens, we know Victor has been exposed as a spy, and the rest of the book is his explanation of how this came about, how very effective he thought he was, and his rationalization regarding the justice of what he has done. But we slowly grasp that he is an unreliable narrator. He is surprised, for example, that after the war Moscow lets him resign as a spy without repercussions. He does not see that this is because he was not that effective. (The reader also wonders, as a result, how effective Victor is as an interpreter of art and as an art historian—even as he boasts of his art knowledge and as Banville enriches his novel by comparing the deception of reality that is art with the deception involved in espionage.)

There is even a kind of surprise ending, in which Victor is revealed to have been a patsy. For he learns that his best friend is also a spy, and this friend has been manipulating his espionage career. I say kind of a surprise, because we have not penetrated into any of these colorful characters (because narrator Victor himself has not) enough to allow this sudden reversal to have the emotional impact the author likely intended. Indeed, that final scene seems in its way artificially created, down to the gun that is never fired and which Banville acknowledges breaks all the rules of conventional drama.

I must note that Patrick McGrath has written an excellent interpretation of this novel in the New York Times: “Banville has explored the various themes suggested by the study of art: the relationship of painting to the real world, the process of restoration, the distinction between the fake and the authentic, the futility of representation, its complementary pleasures and so on…he has woven these ideas into morally complex stories about violence and passion, guilt and redemption.”

This indeed, reflects the richness of this novel. The original Blunt had the perfect profession to inspire Banville’s insight into a world of artifice, a world of shallow surfaces, of originality, of bravado, and a world of deception and self-deception. Not to forget the world of gay men, who are always living a lie, who continually face the possibility of exposure, and who are always looking back over their shoulder.

The key to Victor’s life is why he is a spy. He is writing a memoir in an attempt to figure it out himself. He intends the memoir for his biographer, who has asked him this question. But he never finds the real answer. Is it because he is Irish, and so hates the British? Is it because he resents his father, a Protestant bishop, and the Soviets preach atheism? Is it because he is a stoic, and so does not identify with his impact on others? Is it because he feels superior to others, and spying allows him to justify this? Is it because he likes the game, much as he likes the game of concealing his homosexuality?

We never know the answer, but this only adds to the mysterious richness of the novel. To sum up, this is a brilliant exploration of the game of spying as told by a narrator who is not nearly as clever as he thinks. Indeed, this is why this work is not filled with his exploits as a spy, because he was indeed ineffectual. Instead, it brilliantly portrays the world he thinks he is deceiving, both his friends and the actual spies who float through his shallow world of drunken parties, back room assignations, and subversive meetings.

This novel surely inspires me to read further Banville novels. He offers that perfect blend, for me, of style and sophistication, of introspection and self-deceit, of story subjugated to character. (June, 2014)