Recent reading

[regshoe]

Humbug: A Study in Education by E. M. Delafield (1921). I thought I should take the interesting chance of a Delafield novel I knew nothing about, and chose this one for the intriguing-sounding title. It is what the subtitle says, broadly interpreted—a study of how the upbringing of a young girl in Victwardian England constrains and stifles her character and happiness. It is not as miserable as Consequences or as nasty as The War-Workers, but it's also less effective than either of them. I really liked the family relationships in the early chapters, in which the main character Lily is favoured by their parents over her disabled sister Yvonne and both girls suffer horribly as a result in different ways—it reminded me of The Mill on the Floss as a precise and well-observed study of how awful the internal experience of being a child can be—but I thought the book went astray later on, became less interesting and less focussed, and eventually tried for a triumphant happy ending I felt it hadn't really earned. It strikes me that my favourite books in the 'upbringing of a girl in Victwardian England and how badly it's done' genre—Alas, Poor Lady and The Crowded Street—continue with the main character failing to fulfil the goals of her upbringing by remaining single, and in this one she does make a conventionally-acceptable, unhappy marriage and the book then tries to pull apart the failures it's criticising from within that structure, and perhaps that's part of why it didn't work for me.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles (1959). The edition I read has 'AN AMERICAN CLASSIC' in big letters across the top of the front cover, and what I think is that if Americans so badly want to write CLASSICS then they can jolly well learn to format and punctuate dialogue correctly. Anyway: If you took schooldays-era Raffles and Bunny, only they're the same age, and also they're American, and also it's the Second World War, you would not exactly have something like this book, but you might have something not entirely unlike it. I did not enjoy the book on the whole; a lot of the appeal of boarding-school stories for me is in the cloistered setting, the school as its own closed-off little world, and this book does not have that because the school setting can't be closed-off when the war keeps intruding everywhere, and this is a large part of the point of the book. However (wobbly grammar aside) it is a very good portrayal of a very specific kind of messed-up relationship, and indeed just a little bit gay even though the author apparently didn't mean it that way (?), and also very good at what it's trying to do vis-a-vis the war intruding on everything else in the world. Actually my favourite character was 'Leper' Lepellier, who is not involved in the central homoerotic relationship, but I think he deserves a nice boyfriend and also some more cool snails to make up for everything he has to go through.

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee (1959). Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham was in my last reading post, and it kept reminding me of this (because ale/cider, main character called Rosie, and for some reason the only thing I knew about this book is that it's set in Gloucestershire and Somerset hence reminded me of that), so I decided to read it. Most of it I merely didn't get on with very well—the style favours rich impressionism over descriptive or narrative substance more than I like, and there's neither the perceptive social observation (Flora Thompson <3) nor the likeable narratorial personality that I think make for a good memoir. Also most of the way through the book I was getting a sense that the author was kind of dodgy about women. (If I say as a synecdoche that he uses the word 'voluptuous' too much to sum up what I don't like about Lee's writing, does that make sense?) Anyway, in the penultimate chapter it turns out that he is not slightly dodgy but horrifyingly awful, and I think that's enough books by straight men for me this year at least. If you want to read a beloved classic memoir, please read Flora Thompson instead.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

I love A Separate Peace, but I think it's definitely a book that is likely to disappoint from a boarding school story aspect, just because it is so much about the relationship of the boarding school with the outside world rather than a cloistered garden.

For some reason, a lot of "literary" American books use non-standard dialogue punctuation. Not sure how or why this fad began but it's very annoying.

[regshoe]

Yes, exactly! Very good book, but not what I'm looking for from a boarding school story.

[phantomtomato]

I am very curious about the dialogue punctuation you’re referring to in A Separate Peace! I didn’t notice it on my read, but that may lend credence to osprey_archer’s observation that it’s normalized for some amount of American literature (and thus I’m immune to it).

[regshoe]

Dialogue followed immediately by an independent clause in the same sentence—flipping through for a couple of examples:

“What do you mean, you caused it?” his voice was as steady as his eyes.

“We’ll say I fainted from exertion on the way from chapel,” he looked at me with a phantom’s smile, “and you had to tend me.”

A line of dialogue should either stand alone, in which case you need a new sentence—or dashes to set off an interruption—or be the object of the verb that follows. So these would be correct:

“What do you mean, you caused it?” His voice was as steady as his eyes.

“We’ll say I fainted from exertion on the way from chapel”—he looked at me with a phantom’s smile—“and you had to tend me.”

Or these:

“What do you mean, you caused it?” he said, his voice as steady as his eyes.

“We’ll say I fainted from exertion on the way from chapel,” he said, looking at me with a phantom’s smile, “and you had to tend me.”

I think this is quite common in casual modern writing—I see it a lot in fic—but it's not technically correct, it doesn't make logical sense and it annoys me!

[sovay]

“We’ll say I fainted from exertion on the way from chapel,” he looked at me with a phantom’s smile, “and you had to tend me.”

That one is actually not unusual in literature of the period—I'll try to come up with some citations, but I've seen it in other American fiction of the '30's/'40's/'50's. Not capitalizing the sentence which follows a standalone line of dialogue is just in fact weird.

[regshoe]

I've seen it elsewhere, I think (as well as some variation in how the dashes are placed, if dashes are used), but I maintain that it doesn't make logical sense and should not be considered correct!!

[sovay]

I've seen it elsewhere, I think (as well as some variation in how the dashes are placed, if dashes are used), but I maintain that it doesn't make logical sense and should not be considered correct!!

I was definitely taught to use offset dashes for interjected narration insofar as I was taught English grammar and style. (It is not that it had fallen out of the curriculum by my generation; I had a slightly idiosyncratic education, so that I can diagram a sentence which is at least half a century out of fashion and learned almost everything I know about prosody from Latin and Greek.) Just observing that it may have been considered less incorrect in written American English at the time when A Separate Peace was published. I wonder if it was considered a softer alternative to dashes, or more stream-of-consciousness.

[regshoe]

(I never learnt sentence diagrams! I do think they look cool.) Softer or more stream-of-consciousness would make sense, yeah.

[phantomtomato]

Oh, no, those examples are also obviously wrong to me. I just missed them on my read!

[regshoe]

Oh, sorry for the unnecessary long pedantic explanation, then :D

[luzula]

That would definitely annoy me, too!

[oursin]

If you want EMD almost as depressing as Consequences, try Thank Heaven Fasting aka A Good Man's Love - more young girl in Victwardian England trauma.

There is a class thing going on though I think - haven't read Alas Poor Lady I don't think, but in The Crowded Street, she's middle-class and that does make a difference. In EMD's The Way Things Are Cousin Poor Selina is a horrible warning of the fate Laura has avoided by marrying her dreary husband, and that there are Even Worse Things than dull husbands.

[regshoe]

I am saving Thank Heaven Fasting for when I'm in the mood for some proper EMD misery!

The family in Alas, Poor Lady (which impressed me a lot and which I recommend) are upper middle class, army officers IIRC.

[sovay]

Actually my favourite character was 'Leper' Lepellier, who is not involved in the central homoerotic relationship, but I think he deserves a nice boyfriend and also some more cool snails to make up for everything he has to go through.

+1.

(I had to read A Separate Peace for class in ninth grade and did not enjoy the experience, actually unusual for most of my high school assigned reading.)

[regshoe]

Aww, I'm glad you agree. And yeah, I gather the book is and has been widely assigned as school reading, which strikes me as kind of odd. The copy I read had one of those lists of suggested questions for book club discussions at the back, which managed to avoid mentioning the gay thing entirely.

[sovay]

The copy I read had one of those lists of suggested questions for book club discussions at the back, which managed to avoid mentioning the gay thing entirely.

Don't care if the author didn't think he'd written it in, it's sufficiently close to the surface of the text that it should be discussed in book club if anyone's emotions are to make sense!

[black_bentley]

I read Cider With Rosie at school and loathed it with a passion, I didn't like the narration at all. I'm glad it's not just me!

[regshoe]

Glad you agree too :D

[genarti]

It's very interesting to read your review of A Separate Peace! I had to read it in high school and didn't much like it at the time, but I disliked many of the books I was assigned for English class in high school, and I have very little memory of the details other than a hazy recollection of a midcentury tangled-and-kinda-toxic male friendship of the "weaker personality, at least as self-perceived, hopelessly devoted to careless and/or slightly self-destructive stronger personality" sort. I wonder what I'd think of it now? I have genuinely no idea. Except that your example sentences above both ping me immediately as grammatically wrong, too.

[regshoe]

Yeah, that's about it—I thought it was a very well-done and effective portrayal of that kind of toxic friendship, but not really an enjoyable book.

[rachelmanija]

What happens in the penultimate chapter?

[regshoe]

It's all about him Discovering Girls and Sex as an adolescent, and ends with recounting the time he and a group of other boys planned an attempted gang rape.

[rachelmanija]

HOLY SHIT. I was not expecting that!

[regshoe]

Right?!?

[adore]

Am taking Cider with Rosie off my TBR (I can tell it will enrage me) and pushing Flora Thompson up (which I have a physical copy of!)

[regshoe]

I am glad to have caused this! Hope you enjoy the Thompson :D

[garonne]

If I say as a synecdoche that he uses the word 'voluptuous' too much to sum up what I don't like about Lee's writing, does that make sense?

Urgh, yes, I know just what you mean.

You remind me that I loved the first book of Flora Thompson's trilogy but have not yet sought out copies of the other two. (It's been a few years since I read that first one.)

[regshoe]

The first book is the best IMO, but the others are also very good and very much worth reading! (As is Heatherley, the less closely-related and much less well-known fourth book of the trilogy)