Demise of a Family

The Promise 

by Damon Galgut

“Apartheid has fallen, see, we die right next to each other now, in intimate proximity. It's just the living part we still have to work out.”   ― Damon Galgut, The Promise

The Promise, Damon Galgut's eighth novel, is set in South Africa. I was impressed with the rich flowing narrative style, reminiscent of Faulkner in my experience. Early in the story I was struck by an allusion to Camus' novel L'Etranger, while at moments I sensed an existential aura, although not nearly as powerful as his previous Booker short-listed novel, In a Strange Room, whose protagonist, a solitary wanderer, exudes the uncertainty often found in existentialist fiction. In The Promise as in Galgut's other literature there are typical references to the complex realm of South African society and politics, particularly apartheid's impact.

 

The narrative follows the Swarts (ironically swart means black in Afrikaans), a white family descended from Dutch pioneers who arrived in South Africa in the seventeenth century. The three Swart children grow up in a world where apartheid, a system that formally separated South Africans based on race, is being phased out. Each of the novel's four parts is centered on the death of one of the Swart family members, tracing the Swarts' deterioration. Among the key aspects that augment this deterioration are divisions among both the family and their black household employees along religious, race, and age differences. Also imperative is the development of the two youngest members of the Swart family, Anton and Amor. While Amor, the youngest is too young to remember some of the darker history of apartheid, Anton is literally driven apart by it both from the family and within his own self-identity.

This book reminded me of Joseph Roth's The Radetzky March in which he used the decline of a family to mirror the the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In a similar way, Galgut's novel with its chronicle of the deaths of members of the Swart family provides a mirror or perhaps a metaphor for the dissolution of the Afrikaners' regime in South Africa. It is  profound in its details and ultimate message. Because of its roving, fluid point of view, The Promise is stylistically similar to some of the best works of literary modernism and holds its own in comparison with the great novels of J. M. Coetzee.  The narrative's deft blending of the Swart family history beside the devolution of the apartheid state in South Africa is presented in a unique and powerful way. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to better understand twentieth century South Africa.

The Odes of Horace

Odes, and Carmen Saeculare 

by Horatius

“Not him with great possessions should you in truth call blest; with better right does he claim the name of happy man who realizes how to make use of the gods' gifts wisely, is skilled to meet harsh poverty and endure, as one who dreads dishonor far more than death; a man like that for friends beloved, or for his country fears not to perish.”   ― Quintus Horatius Flaccus, The Odes of Horace

Horace lived in the last half of the 1st century B.C.E. and wrote some of the greatest lyric poetry in ancient Rome. While the Odes often describe commonplace activities they still allow various interpretations by the reader based on construction, vocabulary and imagery. The activities are often as simple as inviting a friend for a drink or wishing a friend a safe journey. While describing what are often mundane activities they often yield deeper meanings like "remember you are going to die" or "stay in the middle, don't go too far out." The beauty of the poems, even in translation , is undeniable. He often praises famous men, refers to the gods and his muse, while praising his friend and benefactor, Maecenas.

I found reading these poems an antidote to the revulsion that I had while reading the brutality of battles and even daily life in the histories of Livy and Tacitus. Rome during this era was resplendent in artistic beauty. The poetry of Horace is evidence of some of that beauty.

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Poem for Today

 Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown –

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory the mind –

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs

A poem should be equal to:

Not true

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea –

A poem should not mean

But be.

A Reading Memory

 

The Reading Room

"To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.” - Henry David Thoreau

Classical music was playing every evening. It was warm and inviting – a place to relax and read. I do not remember how often I went there, but from the first time I discovered the room I always felt comfortable there. It was an oasis in the midst of a bustling and boundless campus.

Virginia Woolf wrote about “A Room of One's Own” that was necessary for thinking and writing. For my reading I found that all I required was a book, preferably a good one, and a comfortable chair, merely a corner one might call one's own. There were many such corners available within the confines of the expansive campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wisconsin in the late 1960's. First, there was my room, not always my own room for I shared one during my undergraduate years and even during my first year of graduate school. The room usually provided at least one corner, but there was the library, or rather the libraries since there were several libraries available for my use. Each of the libraries offered many corners for reading. However, ultimately the most elegant, inviting, relaxing, and refreshing corner was in The Reading Room at the Memorial Union.

Aeneas Founds Rome

The Aeneid 

by Virgil

“Do the gods light this fire in our hearts or does each man's mad desire become his god?”         ― Virgil, The Aeneid

The Aeneid is an epic poem, detailing Aeneas' journey. The first six books of the Aeneid recount the adventures of Aeneas, the future founder of Rome. The last six books tell of the settlement of the Trojans in Italy and the war with the Italians.

After the fall of Troy, a small group of refugees escaped, and Aeneas became their leader. Several prophecies predicted that this group would settle in Italy and become ancestors of the Romans. They suffer many hardships; similar to those suffered by Odysseus (attacks by the Cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis.) After wandering for years, they arrive in Italy, settling in Latium. Before they are accepted, they have to fight a terrible war against the Latins led by Turnus. After Aeneas slays Turnus, he is free to marry Lavinia, the princess of Latium.

Virgil begins the poem as Aeneas is sailing on the last leg of his journey, destined to take him to Italy. When tremendous storms batter his ships they take refuge on the nearest land.  Aeneas learns that it is here that Queen Dido is constructing Carthage. The Queen falls in love with Aeneas and begs him to tell her the story of the fall of Troy.

Aeneas relates the tale at the request of the Queen. After the fall, the band of exiled men sailed to Delos where the oracle of Apollo predicted that they would found a great nation. He details his adventures up to the present time for the Queen. Dido and Aeneas' love is ill-fated. He must follow the destiny the Gods have made for him. When he leaves grief-stricken Dido commits suicide.

The ships finally arrive in Italy, near Cumae. Aeneas visits the temple of Apollo to consult a prophetess. She appears to him and tells Aeneas of the war he will fight and of his enemies. He asks to descend into Hades, where he meets his father, Anchises. Anchises shows Aeneas his future heirs and the heroes of Rome. The visit to the underworld in the Aeneid parallels a similar visit made by Ulysses (Odysseus) in Homer's Odyssey. 

The Trojans continue on and settle in Latium. Aeneas realizes his prophecy has been fulfilled. A war breaks out and Aeneas is given magical armor by the Gods for protection. Turnus, the leader of Latium's defense, attacks the Trojan camp, and many lives are lost. Turnus announces that the husband of Lavinia will be determined by a duel between Aeneas and himself. Aeneas kills Turnus in battle. The prophecies of the gods have been fulfilled.

The epic by Virgil has inspired great writers ever since his day. Dante knew the story of Ulysses from Ovid who recounts it in his Metamorphoses (like Dante, Ovid suffered the fate of exile and expulsion from the city he loved and died without returning to it). It is this recounting that inspired the tale narrated by Ulysses in Canto 26 of The Inferno. In the twentieth century Hermann Broch began his novel of Virgil's last days, The Death of Virgil, with a similar motif of the ending of a sea-voyage with Virgil lying on his death bed in the entourage of Augustus. Beside Virgil in a small trunk was the manuscript for the Aeneid. And Primo Levi, in his autobiographical Survival in Auschwitz, recounts how he kept himself sane by attempting to reconstruct Ulysses' great speech in the Comedy from memory. These words provided a touchstone of humanity and civilization even that modern version of Dante's hell.

Headmaster for Life

The Rector of Justin 

by Louis Auchincloss

“I was sophisticated enough to know that the written word is no mirror of the writer’s character, that the amateur, though a selfless angel, may show himself a pompous ass, while the professional, a monster of ego, can convince you in a phrase that he has the innocence of a child. I”   ― Louis Auchincloss, The Rector of Justin

This novel is considered by many to be a modern classic. Whether you share that opinion or not, I believe it certainly represents the author's best work in the genre. Through his skillful use of multiple narrators and viewpoints, he underscores the elusive nature of human truth, necessarily subjective in our individual perspectives, yet ultimately existing in reality no matter how difficult to discern. In his narrative he highlights the inevitable moral blindness implicit in much human endeavor.

The narrative presents the life story of Francis Prescott, from his youth as a schoolboy to his death at age 85. As Dr. Francis Prescott, he is the Rector (headmaster) and founder of the exclusive New England Episcopalian boys' school Justin Martyr (a famous prep school). The multiple narrators' attitudes toward their subject range from veneration to hatred, thus providing a depth of character that infuses the book and elucidates effectively the somewhat larger-than-life central character of the Rector. Through the character, actions, and career of Frank Prescott, Auchincloss shows both the benefits and the dangers of such a character; the dangers are perhaps most evident to Prescott himself who, perceiving the true nature of his accomplishment at the end of his life, honestly believes that he has failed in his appointed task.

Louis Auchincloss, himself a Wall Street attorney and a product of Groton, among the most eminent of American preparatory schools, has often used such schools in his fiction to help delineate the background formation of his characters. Never before or since, however, has he so successfully presented the implicit irony, or even absurdity, of the existence in the United States of an educational alternative frankly based on the elitist British public school yet ostensibly dedicated to the ideals of democracy. The book is both well written and compulsively readable, and a fine introduction to this modern author. If you enjoy this novel I would recommend Auchincloss's short stories.

Memoir of a Literary Life

My Salinger Year 

by Joanna Rakoff

“To read Salinger is to engage in an act of such intimacy that it, at times, makes you uncomfortable. In Salinger, characters don't sit around contemplating suicide. They pick up guns and shoot themselves in the head. All through that weekend, even as I ripped through his entire oeuvre, I kept having to put the books down and breathe. He shows us his characters at their most bald, bares their most private thoughts, most telling actions. It's almost too much. Almost.”   ― Joanna Rakoff, My Salinger Year

If you love books, if you ever wanted to write books, if you were ever young and wondered what you should do with your life, this is a memoir for you. Joanna Rakoff, in this her second book, has written an appealing memoir about her first job in Manhattan with a literary agency. Not just any job, but one at the literary agent for J. D. Salinger is her destination. It was there that she entered an old style agency that in the nineties had yet to move into the digital world of computers and email.

Her story is one that balances the relative impoverishment of someone just out of college with the demands of living with her current boyfriend, and a job that is daunting at most of its best times. Her main task is to answer Salinger's fan mail, yet that involves preparing form letters responding to readers' letters and notifying them that Mr. Salinger does not read or respond to fan mail. Somehow she gets the idea that she should abandon the standard template and start responding to some of the more emotional epistles on her own. Needless to say this decision creates a few difficulties for her young career.

The memoir highlights how she handles this new world she has entered and the emotional impact that has on her personal life. The best moments for this reader were when she related her connection with Salinger's prose. Her reactions were not only realistic, but not unlike some of my own reactions to his novels and stories. His is truly a unique voice and his characters, from Holden to Franny & Zooey are iconic. His books demonstrate a love of literature in that is both like other great authors yet very definitely just right for his characters and narratives.

I think that Ms. Rakoff demonstrates a similar love of literature in the best moments of this memoir. While I found some of the personal anecdotes slightly less interesting than her literary adventures, that did not detract significantly from what was a very enjoyable literary memoir.

Imaginary Agonies yet True Sorrows

The Warden 

by Anthony Trollope

“In former times great objects were attained by great work. When evils were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task with grave decorum and laborious argument. An age was occupied in proving a grievance, and philosophical researches were printed in folio pages, which it took a life to write, and an eternity to read. We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows,”  ― Anthony Trollope, The Warden

This is a good novel with which to start your exploration of the world of Anthony Trollope who would go on to write dozens of books over his literary career. The story of The Warden is based very loosely on several ecclesiastical inquiries of Trollope’s era in which the Anglican Church was accused of diverting monies from ancient endowments to the pockets of idle clergymen, thereby stinting the charitable purposes for which the endowments had been intended. Trollope’s novel raises just such an ethical question, then complicates the issue by making the benefiting clergyman, Mr. Harding, the most honest and decent of men. Trollope states his own view of the matter through his narrator when he says, “In this world no good is unalloyed, and . . . there is but little evil that has not in it some seed of what is goodly.”

The themes of church and society in the town of Barchester on display here are complemented by a portrayal of the media and the legal profession that is unflattering, but realistic. Trollope's satire is biting and the story is one that pits the local Warden's (Septimus Harding) sense of justice against that of the church and society. In doing so Trollope demonstrates the way the unintended consequences of our actions have a way of overtaking us and those around us.

This is particularly evident in the actions of the young firebrand John Bold who finds his feelings for Harding's daughter, Eleanor, ultimately win out over his call for social justice. The depiction of the role of the press via the newspaper The Jupiter had resonance with the role that major newspapers and other outlets play in controversies in contemporary America. But it is the institution of the Anglican Church that comes in for the most criticism as its lack of concern for those most in need is on display in spite of the general goodness of Septimus and the Bishop. Overall this is a good introduction to one of the greatest of the Victorian novelists.

Hiding Your Differences

Openly Straight 

by Bill Konigsberg

“It’s hard to be different,” Scarborough said. “And perhaps the best answer is not to tolerate differences, not even to accept them. But to celebrate them. Maybe then those who are different would feel more loved, and less, well, tolerated.”   ― Bill Konigsberg, Openly Straight

This is a different take on the narrative of a gay teenager who goes away from home to a Private Boys Boarding School. Rafe, a high school junior from Boulder, Colorado, has been out and proud since he was in the eighth grade as the novel relates his journey. He's fortunate in that he comes from a loving family and lives in an accepting town, so he's never had to deal with slurs or bullying because of his sexuality. However, he's recently begun to believe that many around him just view him as just a gay person, rather than as a unique individual with many other facets to his character. As a result, when he transfers from a public high school in Boulder to a private boarding school in Massachusetts — an all-boys school, no less – he decides to keep his sexuality hidden from his new peers.

Rafe's plan, predictably, does not turn out as he had hoped. While he realizes that separating himself from his gay identity opens up a new social world for him, he also discovers that repressing such a vital part of himself comes at a cost. In the end, he'll have to navigate the turbulent waters of honesty, truth, desire, and self-awareness – a journey made more difficult by his growing attraction to Ben, one of his classmates.

The characters are lively and current, offering realistic depictions of adolescent relationships, a few truly romantic moments, serious consideration of adolescent issues, and a healthy dose of humor. A unique aspect of the story that I found fascinating was the interaction between Rafe and his writing teacher presented through writing exercises interpolated throughout the narrative. These provided additional details about Rafe's background and his personality; however the highlight of the novel was the reversal by the main character of his role as an out gay and the repercussions for both himself and others that result from his actions. That this was handled in a believable way was what I found to be the best aspect of what might have been just an average story.

Openly Straight, with its convoluted narrative and a complicated finish, is a gripping and profoundly truthful work that you won't want to put down. This is the kind of well-written book that spoils me as a reader. I have less patience with books that do not meet the standard set by this one with its engaging story about coming of age as a gay boy.