Stoner by John Williams #1965Club

Everybody was reading Stoner by John Williams about seven years ago, largely because Vintage Books sent a review copy to pretty much everyone in the known universe. According to Kim’s review for the 1965 club, it was also the toast of the book blogging world around 2005, but that was before I joined it. Well, better late than never, I’ve finally read it – and isn’t it brilliant?

I had put it off for ages because all I knew about it was (a) it was set in a university, and (b) it was called Stoner. So perhaps naturally, I’d assumed it was about drug-taking. Mais non – Stoner is, rather, the lead character in this novel that looks at his life from studenthood and though the following decades.

Stoner has left a farming family for the bright lights of university – leaving the agriculture course for the English literature course, once he discovers his deep love for that subject. At the same time, he thinks he may have fallen in love with the beautiful, distant Edith. She gives him little encouragement, but he is beguiled, and they marry.

It is not a successful marriage – but it does produce a daughter, Grace, to whom Stoner is patiently devoted, and whom he almost single-handedly looks after in her infancy.

The trials of an impetuous marriage are one strand of the novel; the other is Stoner’s career as an English lecturer. He is, at first, competent but little more. I loved reading about his transformation into an inspiring teacher:

When he lectured, he now and then found himself so lost in his subject that he became forgetful of his inadequacy, of himself, and even of the students before him. Now and then he became so caught by his enthusiasm that he stuttered, gesticulated, and ignored the lecture notes that usually guided his talks. At first he was disturbed by his outbursts, as if he presumed too familiarly upon his subject, and he apologised to his students; but when they began coming up to him after class, and when in their papers they began to show hints of imagination and the revelation of a tentative love, he was encouraged to do what he had never been taught to do. The love of literature, language, of the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest print – the love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly.

I suspect Williams shared Stoner’s love of literature and of studying it – or, if not, is very good at conveying it. It reminded me of the most glorious moments of revelation I felt while studying. Any writer who can manage to put across the wonder of literature is doing something great in my book.

But things are not so simple here, either. He has friends in the department, but he also makes an enemy – one with long-lasting effects on his personal and professional lives.

Those lives are distinct throughout much of Stoner, not least because his wife has very limited interest in his career. I wondered if this was a fault of the novel, but I suppose it rings true. Many of his find that the traits we have in the workplace do not quite translate outside of it, and perhaps it is accurate that Stoner’s determined enthusiasm in the classroom finds its opposite in his passivity within marriage. He is certainly a rounded and convincing character – so sympathetic, and yet often frustrating.

Above all, Stoner is stunningly written. The prose is somehow beautiful and poetic without ever seeming to stray from everyday language. It is an amazing combination, and I don’t know how he achieves – nor how he makes this gradually unwinding portrait of a man and his environment so compelling to read.

The only significant criticism I have it is that Edith, his wife, is less well drawn. Her character is always a little undeveloped, and her nature changes so often and so violently that she often seems only a foil for the next stage of Stoner’s life. The psychology behind her actions is often explained, but never quite as convincing as the totally believable motivations (good or bad) behind everything Stoner says and does.

But, yes, I can see why this was such a success when reprinted – and I’m thrilled that the 1965 Club meant I finally read it.

I. Compton-Burnett by Charles Burkhart – #1965Club

Ivy Compton-Burnett didn’t publish a book in 1965 – indeed, she didn’t publish one after 1963, except posthumously – but that’s no reason why I can’t find a way to sneak her into the 1965 Club. Because thankfully Charles Burkhart published a book all about her in that year. He seems to have written several books about ICB, and who can blame him, but this one is stridently called I. Compton-Burnett. (Incidentally, he is not the musicologist, so far as I can tell.)

This book is low on pages (about 130), but each is jam-packed with text, so it’s not quite as short as it initially seems. In it, Burkhart attempts an overview of all of ICB’s writing, identifying the main characteristics of it and, fairly often, defending her against prevailing opinion. His expertise in her work is quite dizzying, and it makes for a very satisfying inquiry – even if I did have to skim past quite a bit, having still got nine of her books to read,

The opening is of especial interest for the 1965 Club, as it attempts to set the literary scene. While asking why she is so well-reviewed and so little read, Burkhart also makes a few comments about the state of 1965:

Advertising is one of the typical arts of our age; and since it is a noisy age, there is a sustained shout of superlatives for every new product, whether of the literary imagination or the soap manufacturer. On the dust jackets of their books, all writers are praised; because the ‘soft sell’ has not yet reached the publishing world, the same tired troop (“remarkable”, “powerful”, “stirring”, and so on) are deployed for every first novel about sensitive adolescence, every raw and wriggling specimen of neo-romantic neo-brutalism. The babble of adjectives is sustained at such intensity, especially in America, that it tends to move right out of the range of human hearing. It is charity to suppose that this was the intention.

Every age considers itself frighteningly modern, of course, and these censures have only increased. But what is interesting is his identification of her novels as portraying the ‘eccentric family’, and doing so eccentrically – and seeing how eccentricity is considered by the critics and the masses. It is a very intelligent and well-judged exploration that makes no assumptions.

He goes on to consider the archetypal plots of ICB novels – tyrants, secrets, secrets being revealed, neighbours prying etc. – but is quick to say that they are not all the same, and nor are all the characters or their dialogue amorphous. I have been guilty of saying that her novels are all alike, but Burkhart is correct. Compton-Burnett’s signature is always clear, but the characters are almost always fully-formed, and the dialogue filled with individual traits. They perhaps all have the same unworldly register, but retain their own idiolects nonetheless. As he points out, in disputing the idea that her characters are characterless, the reader is never in any doubt about what any one character thinks about any other. Considering her households are always filled with many people (often around 20), this is extremely impressive. He also quotes Frank Kermode, who describe how conversations progress in ICB’s novels perfectly: “by exploiting in each remark unobvious logical and syntactical implications in the previous one”.

After looking at various themes (religion, ethos, money etc.), the final chapter looks at each novel in turn – assessing their quality, highlighting their successes, and reminding me of which I have or haven’t read.

I. Compton-Burnett is certainly not an introduction to that author – it only really works if you’ve read a substantial number of her novels already, and perhaps is only truly for the person who has read everything ICB wrote. But I loved it. Such an indulgence to read somebody who appreciates ICB as much as I do, and knows her work far more intimately. How I agree with him when he says “in comparison with her writing[,] most other modern writing seems unfinished, its aim diffuse and its style impure”. I’m not sure he answers the question that you might be able to make out in the photo above – Burkhart makes no grand conclusions about ICB’s greatness or the likelihood of her longevity. Judging by the fact that she is completely out of print in the UK (I think), it’s not looking good for her posterity in 2065 – but she has her devoted audience still, and this book would be a welcome addition to any of their libraries.

The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark #1965Club

I hadn’t realised I was quite so close to the end of Muriel Spark’s prolific output – having read The Mandelbaum Gate for the 1965 Club, I’ve now read 19 of her 22 novels. Yep, I like Spark a lot. And one of the things I tend to like about her is how much she packs into a short work. Many of her books are around 200 pages or fewer – whereas The Mandelbaum Gate is just a few pages shy of 400. How would I feel about one of her longest books?

Sometimes, instead of a letter to thank his hostess, Freddy Hamilton would compose a set of formal verses – rondeaux, redoubles, villanelles, rondels, or Sicilian octaves – to express his thanks neatly. It was part of his modest nature to do this. He always felt he had perhaps been boring during his stay, and it was one’s duty in life to be agreeable. Not so much at the time as afterwards, he felt it keenly on his conscience that he had said no word between the soup and the fish when the bright talk began; he felt at fault in retrospect of the cocktail hours when he had contributed nothing but the smile for which he had been renowned in his pram and, in the following fifty years, elsewhere.

That’s the opening paragraph, and we are immediately in Spark territory. Who else would have written that final bit? And who else would start off a novel with a quirky, irrelevant meandering about different forms of poetry. Freddy has something like diplomatic immunity, and crosses back and forth between Israel and Jordan – through the Mandelbaum gate – through which many others cannot pass. (By the way, the gate was named after a man who owned a nearby house, and so it sneaks into #ProjectNames by stealth.)

One of the people who probably should be more cautious about passing through the gate is Barbara Vaughan, a ‘half-Jewish Catholic’ who has followed her archaeologist fiancé out to the Holy Land. As a character points out, you can’t be half-Jewish – as her mother was Jewish, so was she – but Barbara is a keen Catholic who is awaiting confirmation about whether or not her fiancé’s first marriage can be annulled by the church.

And, indeed, something happens to her. In true Spark style, the moment is thrown into conversation casually, sometime after it has happened – before we dart back and forth in time and location. To add to the confusion, Freddy suffers temporary memory loss (perhaps because of sunstroke; perhaps because of something more sinister), and so when he is the ‘future’ section, he can’t remember what we have yet to learn in the ‘past’ section.

If you’ve read much Spark, you’ll be familiar with how she plays fast and loose with narrative conventions, and particularly the idea that things should be relayed in chronological order. In most of her novels, the narrator will throw in prolepsis that reveals, in a darting moment, something that might have been the denouement in the hands of another writer. Well, if she does that in a 200 page novel, she does it doubly so in a 400 page novel. I’m not going to lie – I was often quite confused, but I went with it.

Because what made The Mandelbaum Gate enjoyable is what makes most of her novels enjoyable – the peculiar characters, never quite behaving how you expect. The wry narrative voice that doesn’t trouble to make things too easy for the reader. And delightful turns of phrase. Always expect the unexpected.

It did feel to read something set in Israel and Jordan, and it is very concretely set in a particular time – 1961, to be precise, during the trial of Adolf Eichmann, which makes occasional appearances in the background. The cast of characters goes far beyond Freddy and Barbara, and I was particularly fond of Alexandros, a shopkeeper who has befriended Freddy.

As I said, I didn’t always know what was going on, and the disorientation is at least partly deliberate. And I don’t think The Mandelbaum Gate is quite the same success that her shorter novels can be – but I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I might. I thought Spark’s powers and peculiarities might be spread far too thinly over a longer book – but she sustained them in an admirable, if not quite as perfect, a way.

 

-time

The #1965Club is here!

Six months rolls around quickly, doesn’t it? The #1965club has arrived! This week, Karen and I are asking everybody to read and review books published in 1965. Put your reviews on your blogs, GoodReads, LibraryThing, YouTube, in the comments here, or wherever you like! Pop the link in the comments, and I’ll do a round-up. Together, we can put together a picture of the year.

To whet the appetite, you can hear me talking about the club years on The Book Club Review Podcast – it was lovely to be invited along. Listen here, or via your podcast app of choice.

The Drought by J.G. Ballard

Annabookbel

A Season in the Life of Emmanuel by Marie-Claire Blais

Buried in Print

I. Compton-Burnett by Charles Burkhart

Stuck in a Book

At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie

Booked For Life

Sofia Petrovna by Lydia Chukovskaya

ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

Staircase Wit
She Reads Novels

Helen Keller’s Teacher by Margaret Davidson

Staircase Wit

The Millstone by Margaret Drabble

Book Jotter

The Flight of the Falcon by Daphne du Maurier

Lizzy’s Literary Life

Georgy Girl by Margaret Forster

Finding Time To Write

The Magus by John Fowles

Booked For Life
Typings

Hotel by Arthur Hailey

Dolce Belleza

Dune by Frank Herbert

Becky’s Book Reviews

Frederica by Georgette Heyer

What Me Read

The Young Spaniard by Mary Hocking

HeavenAli

After Julius by Elizabeth Jane Howard

JacquiWine

Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal

A Fiction Habit
Shoshi’s Book Blog

Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Mississippi by Kathryn Kenny

My Reader’s Block

Garden, Ashes by Danilo Kiš

Winstonsdad’s Blog

The Looking-Glass War by John le Carre

Pining for the West

The Lady and the Little Fox Fur by Violette Leduc

Bag Full of Books

A Spaniard in the Works by John Lennon

Briefer than Literal Statement

Acts of Worship by Yukio Mishima

Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

The Lie by Albert Moravio

1st Readings

Accident by Nicholas Mosley

Mr Kaggsy

The River Between by James Ngugi

Typings

Modesty Blaise by Peter O’Donnell

Annabookbel

Lost Empires by J.B. Priestley

Pining for the West

The Blue Flowers by Raymond Queneau

1st Reading’s Blog

Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin

Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

God Bless You, Mr Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut

Booked For Life

Roseanna by Maj Sjowall and Per Walloo

Harriet Devine
Lizzy’s Literary Life

The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith

Karen’s Books and Chocolate

The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark

Stuck in a Book
HeavenAli

Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart

Staircase Wit

Monday Starts on Saturday by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Finding Time To Write

The Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff

She Reads Novels
Pining for the West

The Belting Inheritance by Julian Symons

Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

The Lunatics by Ion Vinea

Finding Time To Write

Stoner by John Williams

Reading Matters
Stuck in a Book

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth by Roger Zelazny

Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings