Review: "This Side of Paradise" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Oh, boy, did I get in trouble with this one.

I was hanging out at the BF's apartment all this long weekend, and since he's deep in grad school hell, we spent most of the weekend with our books in our respective corners, ignoring each other. I read "The Book of Salt," "Slaughterhouse-Five," half of "The Hobbit," and today's book,  "This Side of Paradise" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920).

I blazed through it in a day and a half, tossed it to the side, and announced, "That was a stupid ending. All that happened was--" Except I didn't end my statement with two hyphens. I kept going. And the BF was pissed.

"I wanted to read that," he said quietly, turning away from me like an angry cat. "I haven't read it yet and I didn't want to know what happened."

Cardinal rule of responsible reading: don't give away the damn ending.

It was his book, too. I read his book and spoiled the ending for him. That's like showing up at someone's house, eating all their food, wiping your mouth on the cat, and bailing without even helping do the dishes. Or wash the cat.

How was the book itself? Prrreeettttyyy good, but not great. I can't deny that Fitzgerald has talent, and the fact that he wrote "This Side of Paradise" when he was but a tender lad of twenty-three is astounding. The book is about a young man named Amory Blaine, and tells of his birth and upbringing, his prep school days, his college days, and the few years follow college. We learn about his friends and lovers, the books he reads, and his search for himself.

Fitzgerald drew me into this story like Edith Wharton does. They both write so piercingly about the American upper-class, explaining hugely complex, labyrinthine social structures and morays with brevity and humor. I was fascinated by Fitzgerald's description of Princeton College life in the 1910s: the mad scramble for popularity and the inner social circle; the complete lack of regard for actual scholarship (boys who studied too hard were "grinds" and never popular or important); and the way these uber-privileged white men exercise their privilege and get ready to rule the country. There's also this really weird bit in the middle where Amory meets the devil--like, the actual Devil, Lord of Hell, First Among the Fallen, etc.--and then it's never mentioned again. Ever. You have to admire that kind of audacity.

However, you can tell that this book was written by a twenty-three-year-old. It's padded, pretentious, and attaches far too much importance to the types of feelings and events that for children are all-encompassing and catastophic, but for adults are merely the vagaries and bullshittiness of life that you learn to shrug off as you get older. I think there's a lot of value in an actual twenty-three-year-old writing about the emotional life of twenty-three-year-olds, because at least he's being honest, and this book is nothing but painfully honest. But Jesus, kid, so some girl dumped you for a richer man, you'll get over it (and hi, obvious inspiration for "The Great Gatsby," didn't expect to see you here!).

Also, there's a lot of bad teenage poetry in this book. Painfully bad teenage poetry, with rhymes and everything. I skipped over most of it, because the poetry doesn't advance the plot at all and is written in this leftover Victorian style that clearly hasn't felt the influence of Modernism yet. This makes it tonally at odds with the rest of the rather Modernist novel, in addition to being boring and irrelevant to the story.

Also also, casual racism, sprinkled here and there throughout, and on Big Island Rachel's Books, racism knocks you down at least one letter grade.

"This Side of Paradise" by F. Scott Fitzgerald: C.

Recommended for fans of the writer who are devouring his repertoire. All others should just re-read "The Great Gatsby."

Review: "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier

Now we're cooking with gas.

"Rebecca" was published in 1938 to great critical and popular acclaim and it's considered a modern classic according to the tattered cover of the copy I found on someone's door stoop here in Brooklyn. That's right, this is a stoop find, and wow is it a good one! I didn't realize that it was written so recently. I only know it from clips of the Alfred Hitchcock movie (1940), and that footage led me to believe that "Rebecca" was a Gothic romance from the time of "Wuthering Heights."

The book is definitely a Gothic romance in plot and tone, but it's set in England in the 1930s, so while much of the setting is relatively modern--car travel and telephones are heavily featured--the characters themselves and their attitudes toward each other are holdovers from the Victorian era. There's a lot of interesting juxtaposition between the modern and the ancient in "Rebecca," embodied most strongly in the two mistresses of Manderley.

Rebecca de Winter was the first wife of Maxim de Winter, master of the famous estate and mansion Manderley. I think Maxim must be titled in some way because of the paternalistic way he talks about the people of the nearby town and countryside, and the way those peripheral characters talk about him, but you never learn what his exact title is. Rebecca herself probably has a title, too, because much is made of her good breeding and upbringing. Suffice to say that both Maxim and Rebecca are of the same landed gentry class.

The second Mrs. de Winter (and the narrator), whose first name we never learn, isn't landed gentry. At the beginning of the book, she's actually more of a maid, running errands for an obnoxious American in Monte Carlo. She meets and falls in love with Maxim there. Even though she's only known him for two weeks, and she's twenty years younger than him, AND they're at opposite ends of the social spectrum, she says yes to his marriage proposal and they bum around Italy for a while. Like ya do.

At this point, Rebecca has been dead for almost a year from a well-publicized boating accident, and the narrator is more than a little nervous about stepping into her role as mistress of the fabulous Manderley. Mrs. de Winter doesn't know how to command a staff of servants and she has no experience in socializing with people in the upper class, so she's already at a disadvantage. To make matters worse, Rebecca was apparently a joy and a pleasure to all who came across her, and everywhere she turns, the shy and diffident Mrs. de Winter finds herself compared to the glamorous Rebecca and coming up short. There are even some individuals lurking in the sidelines who miss Rebecca so terribly that they're actively plotting against Mrs. de Winter and her fledgling marriage to Maxim.

"Rebecca" isn't a ghost story in the traditional sense because there are no specters or ghouls, no doors blowing shut mysteriously or cold drafts from unexplained sources. Rebecca herself is most assuredly dead throughout the entire book. But she was such a mighty presence in life that Mrs. de Winter and Maxim feel haunted by her, by the memories that their servants and friends have of her, and by the house and grounds she decorated and designed. In a way, "Rebecca" is a more effective ghost story than one with an actual ghost in it because it is so realistic. It illustrates on how people live on after they die, in their physical possessions and in  hearts and minds of their social circle, and how difficult it is to bury the past when evidence of it is all around you.

But "Rebecca" is also a bit of a murder mystery, right down to the scene at the end where the detective gathers the players together in the library to go over the evidence and decide whodunit. But du Maurier turns this convention on its head as well, because we already know whodunit and why, and all of the characters do, too. It's a suspenseful scene where everyone is just waiting to see if the evidence will add up to the horrid truth or reinforce the comfortable lie.

"Rebecca" is a murder mystery without any mystery, and a ghost story without any ghost. It's a meditation on the encroachment of the modern world into the traditional one, and also questions just how wonderful "tradition" actually is. Does good breeding and a sparkling wit mean that one is a good person? Can someone still be good if they perform terrible deeds? What is the price of good appearances and a stiff upper lip?

"Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier: A.

Recommended for anyone who likes a good ghost story, a Gothic romance, or the movie "Gosford Park." The movie isn't considered one of Hitchcock's best, though, so I'd avoid it unless you're really into Hitchcock.

Review: "The Woman Reader" by Belinda Jack

In an unprecedented turn of events, it took me three weeks to finish this book. I'm a fast reader who likes to brag about reading at least two books a week, and I was humbled by Belinda Jack's "The Woman Reader." I don't know if it's because the book was non-fiction, dry, written at a graduate-school level, or some combination of the three, but it did not go down easy.

I would have given up on it all together if it wasn't for the subject matter.  I've been going around to my friends describing it as a history of women and literacy, but that's not entirely accurate. It's not about women writers, though they appear throughout the book; and it's not about rates of female literacy in various societies, though those statistics pop up. "The Woman Reader" is, quite literally, about women reading: what they read, how they read, and many extensive analyses of the moral panics and societal attitudes that surround the issue of women reading, from the nascent days of written language to the birth of electronic publishing.

This is the most difficult book I've read since college. If you had to look up the word "nascent," you might have the same complaints I have. It's full of history, dates, big words, and bigger ideas, and it's written in a very dry and straightforward style that doesn't flow that well to a reader like me, who rarely reads non-fiction and hasn't encountered academic writing in several years.

So why did I torture myself for three weeks slogging through this beast? Because "The Woman Reader" is an enormously rewarding and satisfying book, and not just because you get to remember all your SAT words. In a sea of pop-psychology and pseudo-sociology books  that purport to explain complex phenomena in a breezy finished-in-one-plane-ride format (looking at you, Caitlin Moran's "How to be a woman"), "The Woman Reader" tackles a huge subject with the gravity and depth it deserves and never wavers from its assumption of the reader's intelligence. This book knew just where to stroke me. I do so love to be recognized for my intellect.

The book follows a basic format: during this time period, in this society, we know that women were reading this or that, based on this documentation, and we know that the society reacted to their reading in this manner, based on this other documentation. Short answer: women read, and it bothers folks. Throughout Western history, a cloud of anxiety has surrounded the woman reader because her reading promotes an inner life and an inner reality that society can't touch or regulate. Therefore, society tries to restrict her reading to "appropriate" subject matter that reinforces the status quo.

And I hope you like British history, because that's what you're getting! Belinda Jack starts off in Mesopotamia, which is fine because it's the birthplace of writing, and then she touches briefly on the happenings before the rise of the Roman empire, which is also fine because not a lot of people were literate before then. But after that, she focuses almost exclusively on readers in Christian Europe, mentioning the literary accomplishments of the Muslim world only tangentially, and the literary traditions of Judaism and the Far East not at all. After the chapter on reading done in monasteries and nunneries in Europe, she focuses in even tighter on reading in England and stays there until the end of the book.

The Anglo-centric approach of "The Woman Reader" was often infuriating, especially when Jack rushes through Japanese or Chinese literature in a single page and devotes entire chapters to the differences between what British women were reading in the 1500s and what they were reading in the 1700s. I understand that Jack, being a British woman, has greater access to historical documents from her own country and a greater understanding of her own culture. But Japan produced the world's first novel, "The Tale of Genji" by Lady Murasaki Shikibu. There isn't exactly a dearth of analytical material on "The Tale of Genji" or the society and woman that produced it.

A more glaring oversight was Jack's lack of analysis of "The Peony Pavilion," a Chinese play written by Tang Xianzu. "The Peony Pavilion" is right in that sweet spot of women and reading that this book is about: controversial and censored since it's first performance in 1598, it's ignited societal fears about women's rebellion against authority for hundreds of years. And again, there's no lack of material about the play and it's history. 

Why the exclusion? Did "The Peony Pavilion" and "The Tale of Genji" represent too much of a departure from the neat linear history Jack was presenting with her focus on Britain? Did she feel she couldn't include an analysis of these works without an extensive exploration of the societies that produced them? Does she have later volumes of "The Woman Reader" planned that focus on non-Western women's reading? 

I guess what bothers me most about her Anglo-centrism is the same thing that bother me about "The Happiness Project": it's the implied universality of the subject matter. A book called "The Woman Reader" that ignores non-Western or even non-British women readers for a good chunk of its running time is basically saying that the normal woman reader is a Western Christian woman. I'm not going to lie: "The Woman Reader" is a bit racist.

As a reader more aware, if not more familiar, with non-Western traditions of literature in reading, this distracted me from my overall reading experience. Jack was giving me a lot of information, but she was also leaving a lot out. I hope she will do follow-up volumes to this one, because the subject matter is near and dear to me. I'm a reader. In terms of the way I see myself, the list goes 1) human being, 2) female, and 3) reader. I spend more time reading and more time thinking about the things I read than anything else. If I wasn't allowed to read--if I lived in a society that took my books away from me and limited my access to reading material--I sincerely believe I'd go insane. "The Woman Reader" is the first book I've ever read that put my experiences as a reader in a historical context, so I don't want to be too down on what she accomplished, which is a considerable feat of scholarly criticism and analysis.

Still--kinda racist. So final grade: C+.