Books and Beyond - The Classics and Me

Currently reading Middlemarch by George Elliot.  I am almost near the end and I plan to post my thoughts in a week or two about this truly great novel.  I am in awe.  And it got me thinking about the classics in general, what I've learned and which great authors and novels I still want to read

Before I began my blog Reading Matters I had spent decades neglecting the great novels and their authors.  I think that's common for alot of us after we graduate from school.  We rarely visit the classics again.  I was taught Julius Caesar at Msgr Scanlan for example but until I started this blog in 2015 and more importantly began to participate in the Back to the Classics Challenge (hosted by Karen K at Books and Chocolate) it had never occurred to me to read anything else by Shakespeare.  I just felt that as great as he was without a teacher to guide me I wouldn't be able to undersrand his plays.  

But now in this year alone I have read Call of The Wild by Jack London, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway.  I am also currently reading Middlemarch by George Elliot and later this year I will be tackling Macbeth and I am looking forward to it!  And once again thanks to the Classics Challenge in the past four years I have read Laura Ingalls Wilder, Giovanni Boccaccio, Zora Neal Huston, ALbert Camus, Charles Dickens, Anne Bronte, Willa Cather, Anthony Trollope, Herman Hesse etc etc.  

It begs the question does it pay to squeeze so many great novels into four or five year's worth of reading or is it better to read these great books one or two a year throughout the course of your life?  I think reading them in a more spread out manner is preferable.  Because cramming these masterpieces into four years during your later years means that rereading them a decade or two into the future may not be as possible and certain books benefit from a reread.  

Regarding the classics I have read since starting this blog my favorites are:

Middlemarch by George Elliot

New Grubb Street by George Gissing

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hursto

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte 

Bel Ami by Guy deMaupassant 

The Good Earth by Pearl Buck

Belinda by Maria Edgeworth

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell 

Call of The Wild by Jack London

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope

And of the above novels my number one favorite is Middlemarch by George Elliot even though I haven't yet finished the book.  But I am almost finished and unless it falls apart at the end, which I doubt, Middlemarch will rank alongside Pride and Prejudice and Crime and Punishment as my all time favorite novels.  Books like Middlemarch remind us of why we read.

Finally, when do you reach a point where you feel you have checked off enough boxes in terms of the classics so that you can slow down and focus on the great authors you like?  I know I want to read something by Thomas Hardy.  Stendahl, Thackeray.  But there are so many other great writers I may never get around to and that's okay.  Because maybe after you have read enough from the classics' list you can start focusing on your favorite authors from that list.  Time is limited and so if you are a Bronte fan, as I am, better to read Villette by Charlotte Bronte than feel you have to read Homer's The Illiad, unless Homer is who you want to read.

Anyway those are some of my thoughts on the great books.  

Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary

For the 2021 Back to the Classics Category - choose a children's classic I wanted to go with Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary but I got halfway through the book and I wasn't getting into it so I decided to try out Beverly Cleary's Ramona series instead.  I went with Beezsus and Ramona published 1955, the first book in the series, and I am glad I did.  

Beezus  is 9 year old Beatrice Quimbey.  She is a thoughtful and intelligent young girl.  Helps her Mom out with the chores which mainly involves looking after her younger sister Ramona.  It's a full time job because four year old Ramona is a little terror peddling around on her tricycle figuring out new ways to get into mischief.  The kind of little kid who doesn't understand the word no.  

The story begins with  Ramona pestering Beezus to read to her from her favorite book The Little Steam Shovel.  Ramona never tires of having the book read to her and her family is at their wits' end.  Beezus comes up with a solution.  She'll take Ramona to the library to pick out a new book and hopefully take her mind off The Little Steam Shovel.  And best of all Ramona will not be able to get too attached to the new book because it will have to be returned to the library in two weeks.  This works about as well as one might expect with Ramona who loves the new book, Big Steve the Steam Shovel (a sequel) and decides it's not going back to the library.

Beezus and Ramona is not very long.  Six chapters in total each dealing with a different Ramona escapade and I had a smile on my face throughout.  Some might say Ramona is a bit of a brat who will not accept being told she can't have everything her own way but I found her adorable.  She is only four and she very often does get her own way.  I liked Beezus as well, a very patient older sister.

I can see why the Ramona series of children's books has been so popular for decades.  Mothers read it when they were young and gave it to their daughters to read who are now giving it to their daughters.  It's also a good series for girls with little sisters. 

Beverly Cleary passed away this year at age 104.  She started out as a librarian back in the 1940's and was inspired to begin her writing career when a young boy asked her if there were any books "about kids like us".  Today 91 million copies of Beverly Cleary's books have been sold worldwide and she has won multiple awards in the category of children's literature.   I never did get to read Beverly Cleary when I was a kid and so I am grateful to the Classics Challenge for once again giving me the push I needed. 

So Big by Edna Ferber.

"My father was wrong.  He said that life was a great adventure - a fine show.  He said the more things that happen to you the richer you are, even if they're not pleasant things ... Well, it isn't true.  He had brains and charm, and knowledge and he died in a gambling house, shot by looking on at someone else who was to have been killed .. My little So Big... Asleep on a pile of potato sacks because his mother thought that life was a grand adventure Well it's going to be different with him.  I mustn't call him So Big anymore.  He doesn't like it.  Dirk.  That's a fine name Dirk DeLong".

I have been meaning to read Edna Ferber for many years.  She was a very popular writer in her day and many of her bestselling novels were made into successful films, most notably Giant which continues to be shown on Turner Classic Movies.  And so at first I thought I might choose Giant, a big sprawling novel set in the 1950's about a wealthy Texas oil family for the 2021 Back to the Classic's Challenge - choose a classic by a woman author.  

I was hesitant to choose her more critically acclaimed novel So Big (published 1924) which tells the story of a mid-western farm woman because small town/rural fiction has been a hit or a miss for me.  I enjoyed Fidelity by Susan Glaspell for example but My Antonia by Willa Cather set in the Nebraskan prairie I found, despite it's greatness,  rather dull and melancholy.  

But I decided in the end to go with So Big because it's Ms. Ferber's most critically acclaimed novel.  Winner of the 1925 Pulitzer Prize and the number one bestseller n the US in 1924.   And so now having read So Big I can see what all the fuss was about. It's a detailed and fascinating story about what life was like for a woman on her own raising her young son in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America.  You get to experience life on a farm in Illinois during the turn of the last century but also life in Chicago during the Roaring Twenties and as Selina's son Dirk grows into a man he makes choices that differ in how his mother lived her life and the dreams she had for him.  Selina is advised by a friend that you can't live another person's life for them.  They will have to find their own way.  

And so as the book progresses and Dirk makes his own way you are presented with the question of what defines a successful life?   Is it a career that can provide you with the wealth and security you desire as you climb the corporate ladder or is it doing what you love, what you are passionate about, even if it means you may have to struggle. We go on quite a journey with the two main characters, Selina DeLong and her son Dirk (So Big) DeJong and it's a journey I enjoyed taking.  I finished this novel knowing I will be reading more from Edna Ferber and I am really looking forward to it.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Over the years I had been vaguely aware of A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway's memoir about Paris in the 1920's but the book really entered my consciousness in November 2015 after a series of terrorist bombings had taken place in Paris leaving many dead and wounded.  The people of Paris were devastated and a few weeks later I learned that A Moveable Feast had risen to the top of the bestseller list in France.  As someone once said books will be there for you when you need them and the people of Paris in a spirit of solidarity were reading Hemingway's classic ode to their city and finding strength. And so this year I decided to choose A Moveable Feast published in 1964 for the Back to the Classics category - choose a classic by a new author.

A Moveable Feast is a memoir by Ernest Hemingway about his life in the 1920's when he was living in Paris with his first wife Hadley Richardson and their young son. The Hemingways could have lived anywhere in Europe but they chose Paris because at that time it was the gathering place of some of the great writers and painters of the 20th century. 

Ernest and his wife Hadley were poor but Hemingway makes clear it was one of the happiest times in his life. He describes the cafes where he would do his writing, the boulevards he walked down, his trips to the race track which though the book doesn't say so sounds like a bit of an addiction and even more so the wine consumption. 

Hemingway also writes about the people he knew in Paris, his friends and fellow ex-pat writers who would come to be known as The Lost Generation:  Sylvia Beach who ran the legendary Shakespeare and Company Bookstore and of whom Hemingway writes " She was kind, cheerful and interested and loved to make jokes and gossip. No one I ever knew was nicer to me".  

There was Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas who often had the Hemingways and other writers over for dinner to discuss art and literature.  Paris back then was a place where you never knew who you could run into.  James Joyce and his wife Nora, Ezra Pound or T. S. Eliot stopping by one's cafe table to chat. Wyndham Lewis,, Sherwood Anderson and of course the Fitzgeralds who have their own chapter in this memoir.  Hemingway writes that he could already see the effects alcohol was having on Scott and rather harshly puts the blame on Zelda:

"Zelda was jealous of Scott's work and as we got to know them, this fell into a regular pattern.  Scott would resolve not to go on all-night drinking parties and to get some exercise each day and work regularly.  He would start to work and as soon as he was working well Zelda would begin complaining about how bored she was and get him off on another drunken party"

That was the image many had of Zelda Fitzgerald up until Nancy Mitford's ground breaking book Zelda  published in 1970.  But now that image has changed.  There are now allegations that Scott was very contemptuous of Zelda's writing and the more serious charge that he may have lifted portions of Zelda's journals into his own novels.

But I digress.  If Hemingway is harsh towards Zelda he presents Hadley Richardson, his first wife, in very loving terms tinged with regret.  He writes for example of the poverty they endured during those Paris years 

"I knew how severe things had been and how bad things had been.  The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one the poverty bothers ... My wife had never complained once about these things ... I had been stupid when she needed a grey lamb jacket and had loved it once she bought it.  I had been stupid about other things too".

A Moveable Feast is not on the same level as Ernest Hemingway's novels.  His talent was for fiction not memoir.  But I am glad I read this book because it's good to know something about an author before you tackle their great works and in A Moveable Feast and also the recent documentary about his life I learned a great deal about Hemmingway.  He was not the hard liquor, big game hunting, ready to duke it out with his fists caricature I had grown up with.  There was more to the man than that.

Still Life by Louise Penny

When I started hearing a few years ago about Louise Penny's Inspector Armand Gamache mystery series I put off giving the novels a try since I already have enough reading matter.  But the great reviews finally got to me and so I decided to read her first book in the series, Still Life published 2005.  And now, having finished Still Life I can say that the raves from critics and fans are well deserved.  It's an excellent novel and along with Donna Leon and Lawrence Block I now have another favorite mystery series to add to my collection.  

Still Life is set in the present day fictional town of Three Pines, Quebec.  It's a charming village off the beaten path where the residents are smart, civic minded and many have an artistic bent.  There is Ruth Zardo an accomplished poet with an abrasive personality, Olivier and his partner Gabri who run the bed and breakfast in Three Pines, collect antiques and serve delicious food.  Myrna a retired psychologist who runs the bookstore.  Clara and Peter who make a living through their artwork. Ben Hadley and his mother Timmer.  Matthew Croft, his wife Suzanne and their son Phillipe.  These are some of the residents and many have lived in Three Pines all their lives.  They grew up together and don't t bother to lock their doors

But then Jane Neal, the town's elderly retired school teacher ends up dead.  Her body is found in a wooded hunting area, killed with an old fashioned bow and arrow.  At first Chief Inspector Gamache and his colleagues Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir and Agent Yvette Nicol assume it was a hunting accident but as Inspector Gamache tells us "the problem with a bow and arrow is that you have to be too close.  Close enough to see what you're aiming at". And the injury that Jane sustained was a direct hit.

Three Pines is a town in other words with secrets and motives and Jane was also mysterious.  She loved to paint but never showed anyone her artwork.  She was social and a good friend to others but no one had ever seen the inside of her home.  These two aspects of her life remained private.  And then a few days before she died Jane suddenly decided to submit her paintings to the Arts Williamsburg Museum but before the night of the unveiling, she was murdered.

I have always felt that a mystery series rises or falls on the lead detective and Inspector Armande Gamache is smart, observant, compassionate, a good home life.  But he also has a tense relationship with the young agent Yvette Nicol on his squad.  They don't get along and Gamache has serious doubts about her abilities to listen and take orders which will probably be explored in subsequent novels in the series.  And as I understand the series will continue to be set in Three Pines and the villagers we are introduced to in Still Life will carry over and I am glad of that.  There is much more to learn about this little town and its mysteries.

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

For this year's 2021 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a twentieth century classic - I went with Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett published 1929 and to cut to the chase in no way can I recommend this novel.  No plot, no characterization, rival gangs gunning each other down on every other page, what was the author thinking?  

I ask because Dashiell Hammett is a major twentieth century writer.  Along with Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain he pretty much invented hard boiled crime fiction.  Hammett is the author of such classics as The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man and what attracted me to him is that I had read one of his short stories many years ago and it was excellent.  And so maybe the problem with Red Harvest is that it was his first novel.  

I should add at this point that over at Amazon.com, Red Harvest has received 392 reviewers, the majority of which are 4 and 5 stars.  I don't get it but as with The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner, I am probably missing something.  Therefore, I will definitely be reading more from Dashiell Hammett, maybe the Maltese Falcon, and I will put the Red Harvest experience behind me.

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

It occurred to me as I was trying to compose this review that in the past few years I have read three books with the word "Wild" in the title.  Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, Wild by Cheryl Strayed and now The Call of the Wild by Jack London published 1903.  I didn't plan on it. I chose The Call of the Wild for example because it fits this year's Back to the Classics category - choose a classic about an animal.  And yet something drew me to all three of these adventure books in which man, woman and dog go on their separate and dangerous journeys into the harsh wilderness.  

For Chris McCandless of Into the Wild it ends in tragedy.  But for Cheryl Strayed of Wild and Buck the Saint Bernard in The Call of the Wild it is a life changing experience.  Cheryl Strayed finds in herself the strength she went searching for and Buck whose journey into the Yukon is not voluntary nevertheless locates a part of himself he didn't know was in him, his ancient wolf nature.  As to whether the reader will be happy about how Buck changes that's another story.  I myself was not happy but that is not a criticism of the novel which is an amazing piece of literature, well deserving its classic status. It is violent though, "beautiful and savage" as one Amazon reviewer described the book.

And so, The Call of the Wild begins in the late 1890's on a ranch in Santa Clara, California owned by a wealthy judge and his family.  All kinds of animals reside on Judge Miller's property but Buck the family's four year old Saint Bernard/Scottish Shepard is special: 

"Buck was neither house-dog or kennel-dog.  The whole realm was his.  He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge's sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge's daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the Judge's feet before the roaring library fire ... Among the terriers he stalked imperious and Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored for he was king --- king over all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller's place, humans included".

But despite Buck's pampered life danger is heading his way. Gold has been found in the Yukon, a northwest Canadian territory bordering Alaska.  Tens of thousands of prospectors from around the world are heading there to seek their fortune and big strong dogs are in high demand to pull the sleds and transport the goods.  At 140 pounds Buck is just the sort of dog they are looking for and one night he is lured outside, kidnapped by strangers, beaten, forced into a cage and put on a train that will eventually make its way to the Yukon. 

Buck's mistreatment at the hands of cruel masters both on his journey to the Yukon and once he arrives is hard to read.  Once he arrives in the Yukon he becomes part of a team of sled dogs and these dogs are worked to the bone, forced to haul mail and goods weighing hundreds of pounds for hours and hours with very little rest and often not enough food.  It's a violent world that Jack London conveys in The Call of the Wild. And many of the dogs are too soft and gentle and they don't make it. But Buck from the start is a leader who as the book tells us possesses cunning and imagination. He decides he wants to be the lead dog on the team pulling the sled and viciously kills Spitz his rival who has been the lead dog up to then.  And as we go deeper into the novel ts clear that despite the hardships and tough terrain Buck has taken to his new life:

"This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the depths of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of time". 

When the novel ends, Buck is not the same dog we were introduced to at the beginning of the story.  He is a wolf-like creature.  Any resemblance to the domesticated dog who lived contentedly with Judge Miller's family is gone although one could make the case that even back at the ranch in California there was an arrogance about Buck, an aloofness and cunning intelligence that the wild simply brought to the surface.  It's hard to know which version of Buck Jack London approved of or maybe he was just telling the story as accurately as he could of how a dog like Buck would transform himself given the circumstances he was faced with.  Either way, Jack London did a magnificent job with this novel and though no one can really know what dogs are thinking, London's creation of Buck rings quite true.