The Princess Casamassima

It has been almost a month since I've blogged about my Henry James adventure. For my blog post with thoughts about The Bostonians see here.

A few days ago I finished The Princess Casamassima. James wrote the novel very soon after The Bostonians, and I think even began to serialize in American magazines before The Bostonians had finished. Perhaps the most striking thing, to me, about the Princess is how current it seemed. Here is a novel about a would-be suicide assassin sworn to do the deed without question because of vague political feelings that something must be done to change the rigidly cruel social structure in the West. The conspiracy of "socialists" is international in scope. Their goal, apparently, to disrupt the status quo in capitalist western Europe.

Anyway, there are too many resonances with current events to ignore. I'd like to examine a couple before moving on. The first, perhaps less resonant but still present, is the story we are telling ourselves today in the West, and especially in the US, about "Islamic terrorism." There have, of course, recently been attempts in print and film to explore the psychology of suicide bombers and the like. What might lead someone to such a desperate and apparently futile act? In the novel, Hyacinth (the hero and assassin) quickly loses his zeal for the movement well before he is asked the act he has sworn to do. Yet, he maintains his integrity regarding that oath until the very end. And that he does so is completely believable, even inevitable and oddly sympathetic to this reader.

The second resonance is the political environment in which the novel takes place. Set in Victorian England, many of the novel's central characters, actually maybe all except Hyacinth in the latter half, are continually talking about bringing down a system designed to keep the poor poor and to make the rich richer. James seems to be referring to "socialism" and not "nihilism" as other writers at the time were talking about. Sorry, I keep putting socialism, etc., in quotes - James never really completes the portrait of socialism in the novel, I think rightly, as I don't think James intended this to be a political novel, just as The Bostonians was not intended to be political although its characters were swept in political causes. Despite not being a political novel, the context feels incredible so like today's. I was reminded not just of the several administrations in the US before President Obama's, but also of the apparent confusion on the left today about what we are actually struggling for. In the novel, exactly what these characters are trying to do is unclear, even to themselves, other than to bring down capitalism and create a more egalitarian society. None, though, seem to have a very good idea of what that utopia would look like, or they do but change their minds continually. Anyway, the progressive splits of today seem to have analogs in this novel, and in a way, the novel sheds a fair amount of light on how these kinds of splits occur. James seems to say, we are only human after all, and any political ideal that requires personal sacrifice is ripe for hedging and half measures.

The novel itself is brilliant, at least in my view. I have seen recent criticism of the novel that Henry James didn't really know his subject material (the seedy underbelly of London, in particular) and that the novel reflects this. I think, though, James knew his limitations and that writing some sort of Dickensian political book was not his aim. The novel revolves around Hyacinth. After several novels in which his central characters are women (The Bostonians, The Portrait of a Lady, The Europeans, etc., etc.) this is an interesting break for him and he pulls it off well. Hyacinth, to my mind, is a gem: thoughtful, loyal but questioning, loved and reviled, certain of his convictions and then confused, infatuated and later disillusioned. I'm not sure what would satisfy these critics. Perhaps they really want this novel to be political, and like I said, I doubt that was ever James's intention.

Criticism at the time the novel was serialized and published was for the most part positive. Unlike The Bostonians which hit too close to home, American critics seemed to like the novel very much. Even the hard to please British reviewers were impressed (although they got hung up on issues of sexuality celebrating Princess as the first of James's novels to be really "masculine" and therefore potentially "great"). In fact, it is odd (or perhaps enlightened?) that the critics considered the novel "masculine." Ok, it is about political assassination plots and all that which I guess fits the masculine stereotype to some degree, but Hyacinth is hardly "masculine." He is downright effeminate, which is one reason I came to care so much for him. Yes, he becomes infatuated with a woman, the Princess, but he never lets the infatuation get very far and quickly becomes disillusioned with her. She embodies the stereotype of the rich progressive, at least at first. By "rich progressive," I mean well-meaning people who contribute oodles of money and talk well about social issues but don't really give up their comfortable lives or, in their hearts, truly believe that the egalitarian utopia will mean a social step down for them. As the novel progresses, she breaks this stereotype wonderfully. She gives up everything material and is willing to kill (and die) in Hyacinth's place, not out of love for him personally (well, that's somewhere in her head), but mainly because she is committed to the movement.

The narrative style is also very refreshing. It is, compared to Henry James's early novels, rather long, but it flies by. There are very few of those moments in the novel that seemed to happen too frequently (most especially in The Bostonians but even Portrait) when the novel doesn't seem to be going anywhere. In Princess, there is plot and it drives the novel along, even if plot is not James's central concern (he is much more fascinated with his characters, as always, than he is with the "story"). Also, his narration is very transparent, again in stark contrast to The Bostonians, in which the narrator inserts himself continually, and sometimes heavy handedly. At least, I was drawn into the novel from the very beginning and it never left off. In fact, I wanted it to go on, although of course it could not after the events at the end which I won't reveal in case someone out there decides to read this novel for the first time. I hate to ruin endings for people.

I think I will leave it there for now. I could talk quite a bit more about the novel. There are fascinating side characters, and it is also to consider the novel in the political context of the 1880's, when suicide bombings were occurring in London and other European capitals. However, I'll leave that for now.

The Beast Must Die, Distractions

So I dove into The Beast Must Die yesterday after I watched Autumn Sonata. For those not up on their murder mysteries, it's a "Nigel Strangeways" novel by Nicholas Blake written in the late 30's. Actually, Nicholas Blake is a pen name that Cecil Day-Lewis, the late British Poet Laureate, used when writing his detective novels. Anyway, I'm only about halfway in. I'm really enjoying these Nicholas Blake novels. I read Thou Shell of Death. That was very literary, high-brow....

The Beast Must Die, at least the first part, is extraordinary. Can't speak for the rest since I haven't read it yet. Those first 80 pages or so are entries in a diary of a would-be murderer Frank Cairnes. Mr. Cairnes (the character in the novel) is himself a writer of detective novels who writes under the name Felix Lane. With me? It's actually rather ingenious. Like a play within a play or a the movie in Lulu. So Frank, or Felix, is a rather sympathetic kind of guy. He is out for vengeance. His young son was run over in the road before the action in the novel, and Felix, or Frank, is determined to track down the driver who ran down his little boy. There is a bit of meta-commentary going here about the world of novel writing and the act of writing. For Frank, writing Felix's diary as he attempts to find the killer takes the energy he should be devoting to his fiction. Unless you think Frank really should find and kill the driver from the hit-and-run. Somehow, the story involves movie studios, takes us out of the country into London and back out again. Frank is making love, actually Felix is making love to an actress, and he's not quite sure whether the feelings are themselves fiction. See what I mean about the meta-commentary? There's a better to phrase it, I'm sure, but whatever it is, it is fun to jump into. I love this kind of stuff where the lines get blurred, and you seem to see the act of creating fiction happening before your eyes.

All of this is a kind of distraction from my stomach. I think I mentioned it before, but I've been ill since December with some distressing abdominal pain and nausea. I finally see a gastroenterologist tomorrow morning after weeks of waiting. He's supposed to be the best one in San Francisco. Anyway, I hope it was worth the wait. The pain has made work all but impossible. Meetings I'm supposed to attend I have to do over the telephone, other things at the office I have to manage remotely. It's just a mess. And to top it all off, I have had to cancel a business trip to Dublin I was actually looking forward to and may have to cancel a chamber music workshop I'm supposed to take part in. I will be quite unhappy about the chamber music. It's a fun workshop, and I've been assigned the Grosse Fugue of Beethoven, a piece I have revered since I was a teenager. I have never played it before. Sigh. Such is life, I suppose.

Well, back to my Nicholas Blake I think. Next up will be a racy Anne Rice novel before I dive into some more Henry James.

Autumn Sonata

Just watched Autumn Sonata on DVD. What a gem of a movie! Seriously. It's like chamber music transferred to the big screen. In fact, music plays a critical role in the movie.

The movie was made in the late 70's, directed by Ingmar Bergman, and starring Ingrid Bergman (the only time she appeared in one of Ingmar's films) and Liv Ullman. Both actresses give fascinating performances. Most of the movie is one long scene of an argument between mother (Bergman) and daughter (Ullman). The emotional impact of this scene hit me with a wallop. The argument ranges over accusations of neglect and narcissism (the daughter's issues with her mother) versus explanations of brutal honesty on the mother's part about her own feelings of inadequacy as a mother, guilt at ruining her daughters' lives (there is another daughter with a crippling, unnamed illness), and frustration over an artistic career that seemed to go downhill into mediocrity once the mother reached her mid 20's. Anyway, the details aren't important. What is important is the depth and range of emotion these characters explore. At one point, Ullman even seems to comment on this saying that feelings have no limits.

The way the movie is constructed and filmed, too, is just fantastic. Almost the entire movie takes place in one room in a small house, but the movie never feels constrained. Somehow, the light, colors (yellows and oranges mainly), and the film shots, often extreme closeups on the faces of the women, makes this all this work.

Such a gem. So lovely to have stumbled upon it through my Netflix queue.

Oh, and this is how I've been spending my time the last couple of months. Films and books. Since December, my stomach has been in all sorts of trouble. Pain, nausea. I finally see a gastroenterologist this week so I'm hopeful we will get this resolved soon. I've been home bound practically this entire time. Sigh.

Words and Music

So yesterday I briefly mentioned how my reality is submerged in verbiage. Let's put this into a little more perspective.

Since around the time I was seven, books have been a way to escape an unhappy life. God, that sounds self pitying. I suppose it is. Anyway, in the summer of 1980, my father moved our family from South Bend, Indiana, to Carrollton, Texas, to work at his company's headquarters outside Dallas. In South Bend, I had a great time. Almost all my friends were girls (perhaps more on that in a future post), and playing with them, having imaginary tea parties and picnics, etc., was perfectly acceptable. At least no one interfered.

In Carrollton, all that changed. Suddenly, I had no friends. I made new ones slowly. It was socially unacceptable to befriend girls, and it was clearly expected of me that I would participate in the boys' competitive games, mainly soccer, at recess. Well, this did not agree with me at all. In fact, I became an object of ridicule, bullied almost daily. The only validation I got was from my teachers. They seemed to adore me. I was their perfect pupil - polite, on task, always first to complete any assignment. It was the speed at which I worked that ultimately started it all, I think. When I had finished some classroom exercise, I often had a half hour or more to wait until my classmates were done. The teachers would allow me to pull out a book and read if I wanted. Some of them began sending me to the school library for an hour or two every day on my own. I consumed books. I read voraciously. I loved these other worlds, usually fantastic, filled with tales of magic and odd children. I began to want to live in these worlds. I often pretended that I did.

As I got older, the reading continued and the bullying became worse, much more physical. In the seventh grade, things reached their worst. I was openly punched, kicked, spat upon, several times a day. I also began to awaken sexually and was frightened no end when I realized the objects of my desires were other boys. All this pushed me into my escapist worlds all the more. If I didn't have a place to go in my mind, I'm not sure what I would have done, perhaps struck back. But I was too afraid to do that. The only validation I seemed to be getting, still, was from my teachers. I didn't want to disappoint them or lose their affection.

All this is to say that I had a childhood and adolescence perfectly aligned to make me into the voracious reader I am today. Music, too, starting around the age of 12, was a way to escape and also provided a space for me to feel those deep feelings of sadness, grief, loneliness. I started listening to cheap classical music tapes on my parents' stereo system, hooked up with headphones so no one else would hear. After a brief flirtation with Mozart, I dove into Beethoven with my entire soul. My favorite pieces were the funeral march from the Eroica Symphony and the Grosse Fugue (well, really all the late quartets were fascinating to me, but the Fugue most especially). I would weep listening to the Eroica as soon as the march returned after it's brief happy interlude and began its development in which, for me at least, the constraints of the grief imposed at the start of the movement were removed. The music suddenly moves from reserved to extremely emotional. God, how I would cry listening to that exquisite sadness. It perfectly encapsulated my own feelings and gave me a safe way to express them, such as it was. In our family, to express such things openly was not something that was done. However, it was all excused if the music was seen as the cause, and how could my parents fault me for listening to such edifying stuff?

I wonder at a few things. Today, I still carry a novel everywhere I go. I don't understand how people can stand the world without one in their pockets. Also, I find myself apparently not nearly interested in the visual as others seem to be. Yes, I can appreciate a good painting at a museum, but I'm not drawn into it. When I watch a film, the sound is at least as important as what's on the screen. Perhaps if I really allowed myself to see my surroundings, the world I inhabit, it would be too painful. Perhaps.

Well, I feel myself winding down. Time to get on with my day. I think I should examine those episodes in my life when I didn't need the escape. In fact, didn't particularly want it. I'm thinking mainly of the few years after I came out. Another time.

First Time

Thoughts are few and far between in the morning. Groggy. Mind not seeming to function. Why do I feel most verbal as I'm trying to go to sleep? No idea.

Well, I'll give it a try.

I finished The Bostonians a few days ago, and I'm still digesting it. It really got under my skin, nowhere near as engaging as The Rise of Silas Lapham. To think that Silas was so much better received in the US than The Bostonians. While controversy apparently clouded The Bostonians' reception from it's first few serial installments until the present day, people read characters in the novels as critiques of political luminaries of the day, I think what is much more disturbing, and perhaps what caused so much ill will, was that James, as he does so well as we all know, refused to compromise his characters for his readers' comfort. Feminists, well suffragists then, were appalled that Olive and Miss Birdseye were so, well, riddled with human weaknesses and even, at times, pettiness. That Olive is really the heroine of the novel, not Verena as James told his publisher nor Basil, Verena's love interest, doesn't become so obvious until much of the way into the novel. The pain the Olive experiences, her ultimate self-imposed martyrdom at the end, her attempt to change the world in the only way she knows how, these are what gives the book so much oomph, I think. As Mrs. Farrinder points out early in the novel, if Olive cannot or will not speak out for women's rights publicly, she has money so let that be Olive's contribution to the movement. Olive takes this advise to heart, adopts Verena who has the "talent" for public speaking, and systematically molds Verena into the perfect spokeswoman for the suffragist movement.

Basil is a problem. He is disturbing, his ideas so antithetical to Olive's and our own sensibilities. I admit it was difficult for this reader not to hate this supposed romantic lead. That, after Verena inundates him with passionate language about the rights of women and the hope for a better world, he responds by telling Verena that the best place for her is in his kitchen and that her talent for speaking can be accommodated by erecting a dais in the parlor on which she may speak to him, oh, it just feels odious. However, at least he is consistent. He laments the loss of masculinity in the world. That the world has become a treacherous place, in his view, is due to the loss of machismo, or perhaps, men capable of gutsy decisions. Of course, his world view was formed during the South's Reconstruction and feels both the loss of the South's traditional way of life and hatred of the carpet-baggers come to make money off the South's need to rebuild. No wonder he has a dislike for a government and a people that could allow these things to happen. However, even he remembers that there were plantations run by single women, a thought that quickly exits his mind.

Oh, but I could not stand Basil at times. The last scene is almost tame when I think back to those conversations with Verena. Still, he carries Verena away from her parents, from her ward, from her life as a speaker, to come live in his kitchen. I do love the last sentences. As Basil is taking Verena off to her new life:

But though she was glad, he presently discovered that, beneath her hood, she was in tears. It is to be feared that with the union, so far from brilliant, into which she was about to enter, these were not the last she was destined to shed.

So life will not be rosy, and Verena will not acquiesce as far as Basil would like.

Olive meanwhile ascends the platform in Verena's place at Boston's Music Hall. One is left with the impression that she is to be booed, hissed, reviled. She is not the speaker the audience has come to hear. But Olive needs this. She wants to feel loathed. Perhaps she has found another way to contribute to the movement, a way that more closely fits her own impulses. After all, she has never been comfortable having money. She much rather prefers to suffer, to feel the pain that those women less fortunate than her must endure daily. Finally, she gets an extra large dose of that, and a nice little repudiation of her attempt to use Verena just as Verena's father had used her years earlier. She needs to be repudiated. She knew it was wrong. While Verena could have been a great tool for the movement as molded by Olive, Verena would still have been only a tool. Olive is guilty of the crime the men of her time have committed; she has subjugated a woman to do her will. Even if the cause is noble, this crime needs to be addressed.

So no one gets what they want. Well, maybe Olive. Basil and Verena are off to an unhappy marriage. Olive perhaps receives some redemption. At least I hope she finds some peace. I like to think she got up on that rostrum in the Music Hall and gave an address which may have been rejected by her audience but that led to her finding some belief in herself. She doesn't need a Verena. She is incredibly intelligent, and she knows her "material". After all, she educated Verena.

Ok. So my first blog has become a poor piece of literary something or other. Soon, I will examine how language, the written word, seems to have so much more power over me than my own life. Living in my head and all that....