You Are What You Wear as Well as What You Read and Eat

 

Who are we? Or, if one is an author, who exactly is that character I am trying to create?

It's no secret that the attire people wear tends to define them. Think about what royalties and aristocracies wore in comparison to the typical attire of ordinary subjects or peasants -- and how a king could often easily disguise himself simply by exchanging his royal vestments for clothing worn by a commoner.

"Dress for success," used to be a slogan of the American apparel industry, aimed at urging consumers to think that their chances of getting a good job, or perhaps a promotion, depended as much on how they visually presented themselves as on anything else. There was, of course, some truth to it: we are all influenced by what we see and the values we associate with images.

Above left one sees a "new" Michele Obama, making her entrance at Brooklyn's large arena known as the Barclay Center. This was part of her on-going book tour -- a landslide success, by all accounts.

As explained by Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan, Ms Obama appeared, quite out of character it seemed, in a "shimmery yellow shirt dress with a pair of gold, holographic thigh-high boots." The boots, as per the middle photo, were from Balenciaga's 2018 runway show while the dress was shown by the fashion house for 2019.

What's the message here?  According to Givhan, Michele's outfit says the role of First Lady was but a chapter in her life.

"Obama's book tour is the equivalent of a rock concert, so she dressed like a rock star," the Washington Post critic said. "Whether the ensemble is flattering is beside the point."

When Michelle was in the White House, the public wanted "a picture of understandable elegance -- aspirational, but not beyond the average person's wildest dreams." In contrast, the ensemble shown above suggests wants to move on to something else -- "a celebrity, which carries greater value in the broader culture."

You are what you wear.  That's one way to build character. And, after all, Michelle Obama's book is entitled "Becoming."

Should a Work of Art Stand Apart From It's Creator?

In the previous post, I wrote about one aspect of a New York Times interview of black American author Alice Walker, whose most highly regarded book, "The Color Purple," while controversial, is generally considered solidly within the American literary canon -- along with titles such as "To Kill a Mocking Bird" (which I will turn to shortly), "The Great Gatsby" and "Catcher in the Rye." It won Pulitzer and National Book Award prizes in 1983.

The topic of this post is whether one does, or should, think less of "The Color Purple" if one comes to believe that Ms Walker has anti-Semitic leanings.

Or no matter how reprehensible the creator of a work of art may be, should the object -- in this case a work of fiction -- stand on its own once it has been launched into the realm of the public?

Similarly, should one revise one's views on the merits of "To Kill a Mockingbird" in the wake of the publication of "Go Set a Watchman?"

Arguably, "Watchman," written first, but released 55 years later, was turned into the far more morally uplifting "Mockingbird" over a two-year period with the extensive help of an editor looking for something that would be a lot more saleable.

"I was a first-time writer so I did as I was told," Lee said in 2015, explaining the evolution of her first draft, which depicted the key character, Atticus Finch, as a bigot, into "Mockingbird" where the same man was depicted as determined to see that all races were treated the same, in a court of law at any rate.

Did Lee sacrifice the truth (Finch was based in large part on her father) for fame and profit? Or is the truth not what fiction is all about?

The question is particularly pertinent in the case of "Mockingbird" because the novel has been required reading for vast numbers of American schoolchildren over the years since its publication. Is that because it is just a good yarn, or is it because it is viewed as having a message children should absorb? If the latter, should they now be made acquainted with "Watchman" as well?

These are questions I ask friends from time to time and the answers suggest that people want to find reasons to preserve things they personally like, and are far more willing to devalue things they personally don't like.  So far, there does not appear to be a dispassionate single answer.

(I've also written about "Mockingbird" and "Watchman" in earlier posts, which readers can find here and here.)

You Are What You Read As Much As What You Eat

Most readers are probably familiar with the expression "you are what you eat."  It can be taken either literally or figuratively: that the biochemical composition of your body changes on the basis of what you consume (possibly affecting your health), or that your diet reflects your values -- not eating meat because it is wrong to slaughter animals, rather than because it may be unhealthy.

Alternatively, perhaps you are what you read. That, at least is the opinion of one New York Times editor who, not surprisingly, deals with books.

At the moment, The Times is embroiled in a controversy over a recent "By the Book" column in which black American author Alice Walker, who most notably wrote "The Color Purple," is said to have exhibited anti-Semitism. This is because she listed as being on her bookstand a 1995 book by David Icke called "And the Truth Shall Set You Free" that includes material suggesting that a small Jewish elite, contemptuous of the Jewish masses, was responsible for the Holocaust.

Walker, whose only marriage was to a white Jewish lawyer, has been viewed as anti-Semitic on other occasions, in part because she has refused to allow "The Color Purple" to be translated into Hebrew on the grounds that Israel practices a form of apartheid with respect to the Palestinians.

In any event, Pamela Raul, editor of The Times' book review section, said Walker was chosen for an interview because that particular week's section was devoted to poetry and politics.

"She is both a poet and someone known to be very political in her work," Raul said, explaining that The Times does not choose people to interview on the basis of the views that they hold.

"If people espouse beliefs that anyone at The Times finds to be dangerous or immoral, it's important for readers to be aware that they hold those beliefs. The public deserves to know, That's news," the editor said. "The intention of By the Book is to be a portrait of someone through his or her reading life. What people choose to read or not read and what books they find to be influential or meaningful say a lot about who they are."

In other words, you are what you read as much or more than you are what you eat.

It's an interesting idea in part because if one is writing fiction -- and particularly fiction that doesn't rely heavily on plot -- the question of how one builds character is always present.

Why Is This Blog So Unpopular?

In case you hadn't noticed, nothing published on this blog "goes viral." Not remotely! No advertisers plead for space here to promote their products because the audience is so large and thus presumably commercially appealing.

Why is that?  Well, part of the answer might lie in a study Albert-László Barabási, who identifies himself as a data scientist, recently conducted in an attempt to discover what sort of books make the New York Times bestseller list.

He and a colleague analyzed the sales patterns of the 2,468 fiction and 2,025 non-fiction books that made the NYT hardcover bestseller lists over the past decade.

Well, this blog is nominally (and mostly) about fiction so let's start there.  What sells?  In a word, "action," or to put it another way, page-turners.  The top five best-selling categories are thrillers and suspense novels; mystery and detective stories; romance; fantasy, and science fiction.

I rarely write about books or stories that fall into one of those genres. There's nothing wrong with such books and possibly a great deal right about them. They are just not my thing.

I do stray away from fiction from time to time, mainly to write about political and social trends, and books concerned with history, law or political science are the second most popular genre on the non-fiction list. But biography, autobiography and memoir is by far the hottest selling category there, the two data scientists found.

So there you have it.  "Thoughts About Fiction" is one of the quieter backwaters of cyberspace, and rightly so!

Black Male Writers Experiencing "Extraordinary Moment"

Black male writers are experiencing "an extraordinary moment" of mainstream attention in the world of American literature, Ayana Mathis, a best-selling black female novelist, said.

If so, it runs at least somewhat counter to recurring assertions that American publishing is one of the strongest remaining bastions of white male domination in U.S. society.

"The last decade has seen a burgeoning multiplicity in America's literature, with gifted black men writing novels, poems and plays of great import," Mathis said in the Dec. 2, 2018, edition of "T," the New York Times Style Magazine.

Enumerating several top literary awards won by black male authors, Mathis said that "what matters here, what's more striking than the sums exchanged or the awards received is the intense focus on works by African-American men in America's artistic landscape, even as the problems of race and racial violence continue to plague the nation."

Indeed, one reads repeatedly that the attitudes expressed and postures taken by U.S. President Donald Trump have served to encourage White supremacist initiatives.

"Now in 2018, blackness is as lethal to black people as it ever was," Mathis said. "Even as African-American writing currently experiences unprecedented mainstream appeal and critical recognition, the focus on black expression has another, uglier face: a deadly obsession with black bodies."

In addition, some believe anti-Semitism is on the upswing in the U.S. at present as well.

"To be sure, there is much to celebrate, but these recent developments are not without complication," Mathis said, noting that a surge in mainstream attention to blackness and its literature isn't unprecedented in periods of American crisis. And it is possible that at least some "gatekeepers" (presumably liberal white males) expect black males to focus mainly on racism and oppression, she said.

"I wonder if, in the annals of history, this extraordinary period of artistry will find a name, or a unifying sentiment that codifies it as a movement," Mathis said.  Earlier in the article, she had pointed to the Harlem Renaissance that sprung up in the wake of WWI and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Social Change: More on the Rise of Tribalism

I recently wrote a post on the rise of tribalism in the U.S.  Here's a bit more on that topic.

On Nov. 4, the New York Times published in its paper edition a piece by Ginia Bellafante entitled "Is it Safe to be Jewish in New York?"

The story related recent incidents of anti-Semitism and then went on to observe that for several years, expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment have made up the preponderance of hate crime complaints in the city. According to the NY police department, anti-Semitic incidents have accounted for half of all hate crimes this year, or four times as many as against blacks.

Where is this coming from?  Generally speaking, right-wing, non-Jewish whites sympathetic with Nazi policies tend to be the leading suspects based on the history of such incidents in the U.S. over many years.  But that doesn't seem to be the case in NY at present.

If anti-Semitism bypasses consideration as a serious problem in New York, it is to some extent because it refuses to conform to an easy narrative with a single ideological enemy, Belefante wrote.

"During the past 22 months, not one person caught or identified as the aggressor in an ant-Semitic hate crime has been associated with a far right-wing group, Mark Molinari, commanding officer of the Police Department's Hate Crimes task force, told me," the NYT writer said. "I almost wish it was more clear cut," he (Molinari) was quoted as saying. "It's every identity targeting every identity," he told Belefante.

Every identity targeting every identity is mark of increasing tribalism, one could argue.

The Invisible Woman (or Man)

Invisible people are generally associated in the world of fiction with ghost stories or tales making use of what is known as magical realism -- or outright magic.

But in truth, invisibility is common in everyday life and can be written about as part of the Importance of the Ordinary.

Good examples of this can be found in a recent New York Times article entitled "New Women's Groups Focus on Generational Mix."

The article opens with an anecdote about a woman lamenting the difficulties of aging. "She said she felt invisible … generally silenced. Unseen. As if she had nothing to contribute to the world." Other women were said to have then echoed the same feelings.

"These were all women who had college degrees, were married or had a significant other, were well traveled and led very nice lifestyles, but every one of them felt invisible. They didn't feel pretty any longer. No one was looking at them."

So reported Susan Good, a woman who has launched an initiative to combat the affliction.

Among other things, the article mentions a monthly reading series in various major cities where women from multiple generations read short stories and essays loosely centered around a theme. It was founded by novelist Georgia Clark after a conversation during which her mother spoke about "disappearing" in later life.

"She said that as she had gotten older people looked right through her," Ms. Clark told the NYT. "If we're walking down the street together, they'll just look at me, and if she's alone, it's as if she's not there."

This, by the way, is not unique to women.  Older men experience it as well, but they are perhaps more reluctant than women to admit it.

"The dominant culture tells you that when you reach a certain age, you can't be included any more," Devorah Bry, a dance and couples therapist in Nevada City, was quoted as saying.

In truth, advancing age is not the only reason people feel invisible. Marginalization, such as by virtue of mental illness or severe financial setbacks, is another.  That may be a factor behind recent, seemingly inexplicable mass shootings.  Those carrying them out are invisible no more, even if it is only on the way out.

Societal Change: The Rise of Tribalism in the U.S.

As per its title, this blog is focused on fiction, but with one or two exceptions, what I have had to say on that topic has attracted little interest.

This, one could argue, opens the door to other subjects, such as where we are in the wake of Donald Trump's election as President of the United States.

An important factor seems to be that as America's traditional white majority shrinks in size and various categories of non-whites demand seats at the country's various tables of power -- political, social and cultural -- tribalism is on the increase.

This Sunday, the New York Times magazine tackled the topic in its "First Words" column.

For most of the post-war period, and particularly in the wake of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that led to Southern conservatives switching from Democrat to Republican, the country has been pretty evenly divided between the two parties. And until recent years -- according to regular American National Election Studies surveys -- most people were not strikingly dissatisfied with the opposition party.  As a result, disputes were mainly based on policies and compromise was often possible.

More recently -- and particularly since Barack Obama was elected president -- there has been an important change: the percentage of survey respondents expressing extremely negative views of the opposition party has risen dramatically.

"In the post-war era, the coalitions that made up the Democratic and Republican Parties were haphazard and incongruous, bearing little resemblance to the tribes of today," the NYT article says.

More than any other politician -- and perhaps because he wasn't previously a seasoned politician conditioned by what went on  before -- Donald Trump has tapped into this apparent new reality. Among other things, he has clearly determined that his tribe -- very largely white -- wants everything associated with former president Obama overturned or erased. That's not so much because Obama's policies were too far left -- they weren't -- but because Obama's very ascension to the top elected office in the U.S. represented a major real or symbolic shift away from those who traditionally sat at American tables of power. Or at least that seems to be the way in which many who voted for Trump perceived it.

It is tough for partisans to say that in a straight-forward manner.  "Racist" remains a very uncomfortable label. But many can quite comfortably vent their feelings or frustrations by being opposed to immigration, particularly since unlike the past, the vast majority of those seeking to enter the U.S. now do not look like them. With something like 20 million people living illegally in the U.S. already and the possibility of terrorism ever present, many can feel comfortable backing strict border controls and in so doing hopefully slow the country's increasing racial and cultural diversity.

That seems to be where U.S. socio/political realities stand at present.

Virginia Woolf on Fiction, and “Bleak House” in Particular

Man is a list-making animal.  Nothing, it seems, can be properly apprehended, digested, comprehended and then absorbed or rejected until it is first categorized in relation to its peers. 

Thus in her 1929 essay “Phases of Fiction,” Virginia Woolf divides the subject matter up into a list of six categories.  There are The Truth Tellers, The Romantics, The Character-Mongers and Comedians, The Psychologists, The Satirists and The Poets. 

By prevailing standards, this is a modest registry. “Writer’s Digest,” for instance, currently lists 21 genres of fiction. But let’s give Virginia the benefit of the doubt and say she was considering only what might be termed literature as opposed to, say, the broader realm of commercial fiction, the chief purpose of which is profitable entertainment. 

Significantly, in view of the three main books Bill has chosen for our seminar, Woolf focuses on “Bleak House” in the category of Character-Mongers and Comedians, eventually comparing and contrasting it with Jane Austin’s “Pride and Prejudice.” At the end of that section, George Eliot gets some consideration as well. 

The term “comedians” here does not mean authors whose aim is humor. Rather, it refers to authors who write books, in the English tradition, that have happy, or comedic (as opposed to tragic), endings. Such books generally conclude with successful marriages that often served to reinforce prevailing social norms after many trials and tribulations along the way. Woolf’s own second novel, “Night and Day” (her least highly regarded) easily fits within that category. 

But when one is in the mood for characters of extravagant force, one need look no further than “Bleak House,” Woolf maintains. “In Dickens, the character-making power is so prodigious that the very houses and streets and fields are strongly featured in sympathy with the people.” Thus, in “Bleak House,” one perceives a certain location as looking like or characterized by one thing or another because of the attributes of the character that inhabits it as opposed to the reverse. 

Thus, for instance, readers clearly see the chaotic conditions of the house in which poor Caddy Jellyby is brought up not because the place itself is much described, but because of the manner in which Dickens depicts Mrs. Jellyby’s preoccupation with the Borrioboola-Gha peoples of Africa at the expense of her family. 

Dickens works by way of exaggeration, Woolf says. “Who has met anyone who, whatever the day or the occasion, can be trusted to say the same phrase, to repeat the same action? This perpetual repetition has, of course, an enormous power to drive these characters home, to stabilize them.” 

Such characters, Woolf says, naming a few, serve as stationary points in the flow and confusion of the narrative and thereby firm up what she termed the extraordinary intricacy of the plot.

For me personally, the catatonic seizure-prone Mr. Smallweed, episodically shaken back into his senses by his granddaughter Judy, was one such character, albeit more significant to the plot than, say, the king of deportment, Mr. Turveydrop, who Woolf points to as one of the “gargoyles” of Dickens’ composition. 

There are times, Woolf says, when Dickens’ powers of character development pull readers away from his story because of the sentiments they generate.  She points in particular to Mademoiselle Hortense, dismissed from her presence by Lady Deadlock, walking shoeless through the wet grass. “She goes and leaves a strange wake of emotion behind her,” Woolf says. 

Similarly, in “Howards End,” Helen describes Ruth Wilcox walking off into the meadow. “Trail, trail, went her long dress over the sopping grass, and she came back with her hands full of the hay that was cut yesterday.” Another powerfully emotive image. 

But back to “Bleak House” where Woolf cites in the same context Mr. Tukinghorn’s friend (unnamed as I recall). “A man of the same mold and a lawyer, too, who lived the same kind of life until he was seventy-five years old, and then, suddenly conceiving (as it is supposed) an impression that it was too monotonous, gave his gold watch to his hairdresser one summer evening, and walked leisurely home to the Temple [an area between Fleet St. and the River Thames where lawyers lived and had their chambers], and hanged himself.” One can easily imagine Virginia pausing and dwelling on that depiction. 

The most interesting character in “Bleak House” for Woolf is Inspector Bucket. Rather than being static and extreme, he “is made up of contrasts and discrepancies,” she says. 

While at times bombastic, but very able in his official capacity, Bucket is also conscientious and even compassionate, Woolf says. “All these qualities are displayed by turns in the astonishingly vivid account of the drive through the night and the storm, in pursuit of Esther’s mother.” 

Dickens “uses this clear-cut, many-faced figure to sharpen his final scenes and then, letting Inspector Bucket of the detective force disappear, gathers the loose folds of the story into one prodigious armful and makes an end,” Woolf says. 

But while she clearly admires Dickens’ abilities (and, I suspect, greatly enjoyed “Bleak House”) Woolf also finds her literary predecessor lacking in an important respect.  His characters are unconvincing when it comes to intimacy with each other, she says, and thus fail to “interlock.” This, she argues, may be because Dickens’ own heart burned far more with indignation for public wrongs than for private relationships. 

“So it is that we begin to want something smaller, more intense, more intricate,” Woolf says, pointing to Jane Austin and in particular, to “Pride and Prejudice.” 

But back to lists and categories. 

In a previous post, I wrote about Virginia Woolf’s take on “Howards End,” material extracted from an essay in which she discusses all of Forster’s novels except for “Maurice,” which, dealing with homosexuality, was only published after first Woolf and then Forster had died. 

“We look, then as time goes by, for signs that Mr. Forster is committing himself; that he is allying himself to one of the two great camps into which most novelists belong,” Woolf said. 

She identified the two camps as “the preachers and teachers” headed by Tolstoy and Dickens on one hand, and “the pure artists” headed by Austin and Turgenev on the other.

Two categories this time, rather than six. 

Forster, Woolf says, has a strong impulse to belong to both camps at once and that may be one reason he is an author about whom “there is considerably disagreement” and whose gifts are “evasive.” 

He falls into the “pure artist” camp when it comes to “an exquisite prose style, an acute sense of comedy, (and) a power of creating characters in a few strokes which live in an atmosphere of their own.”  But at the same time, Woolf continues, “he is highly conscious of a message” and that tends to put him in with “the preachers and teachers.” 

Her own message: if a writer can’t be properly categorized, he or she can be hard to understand and digest. 

Well, how about Woolf herself?  That’s potentially a big topic since she experimented with different styles, but let’s keep it simple and stick with what Forster had to say about her. 

In his view, there are two categories as well – “The Temple of Art,” a rarified atmosphere within which beauty is pursued for the sake of itself, on one hand, and the real world on the other. 

Woolf’s writing, in Forster’s view, comes perilously close to the former, but in the end thankfully escapes, and in so doing, remains relevant. 

“She has all of the aesthete’s characteristics: selects and manipulates her impressions; is not a great creator of character; enforces patterns on her books; has no great cause at heart. So how did she avoid her appropriate pitfall and remain up in the fresh air where we can hear the sound of the stable boy’s boots, or boats bumping, or Big Ben; where we can taste really new bread, and touch real dahlias?”  

Because, Forster maintains, Woolf liked writing for fun and “in the midst of writing seriously, this other delight would spurt through.” 

“For you cannot enter the Palace of Art, therein to dwell, if you are tempted from time to time to play the fool,” he says.  It is by mixing and managing these two impulses – the serious and mischievousness – in masterly fashion that Woolf succeeds as few other writers can, Forster says. 

This aspect of her gifts is clearly evident, I believe, in “Mrs. Dalloway,” when, for instance she slyly pokes fun at the classes of society represented by Hugh Whitbread and Lady Bruton (that name alone says it all) on one hand, and Doris Kilman on the other. 

If, however, we return to Woolf’s six categories and ask Forster to place her in one of those, it would clearly be the last: The Poets. 

“She was a poet who wanted to write novels,” he says, pointing in particular to “The Waves” a novel often said to be her greatest work if not her most satisfying. “To the Lighthouse” is generally awarded that prize and I would certainly argue that “Mrs. Dalloway” is a very close second.

The Importance of the Ordinary

The Whitney Museum of American Art is about to open a major retrospective on the art of Andy Warhol, probably the world's most well-known practitioner of Pop Art and a man who perhaps most notably brought to life the beauty and aesthetic integrity of the ordinary. Cans of soup, boxes of cleaning pads.

That came to mind when I was reading "The Pastons and Chaucer," the first chapter of Virginia Woolf's collection of essays known as "The Common Reader." About Chaucer, she had the following to say:

"For among writers, there are two kinds: there are the priests who take you by the hand and lead you straight up to the mystery; there are the layman who imbed their doctrines in flesh and blood and make a complete model of the world without excluding the bad or laying stress upon the good. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelly are among the priests; they give us text after text to be hung up on the wall, saying after saying to be laid up on the heart like an amulet against disaster --

                   Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone

                          He prayeth best that loveth best
                          All things both great and small

-- such lines of exhortation and command spring to memory instantly.  But Chaucer lets us go our ways doing the ordinary things with the ordinary people. His morality lies in the way men and women behave to each other."

And, further:

" … the pleasure he gives us is different from the pleasure that other poets give us, because it is more closely connected with what we have ourselves felt or observed. Eating, drinking and fine weather, the May, cocks and hens, millers, old peasant women, flowers -- there is a special stimulus in seeing all these common things …"

Moreover, Woolf says, Chaucer goes on "to mock the pomp and ceremonies of life."

If Chaucer put great stock in ordinary life, so did Woolf, herself.  With the exception of "Orlando," a transgender, time-wharp phantasy said to be a love letter to Vita Sackville-West, all of her novels deal with ordinary people living ordinary lives. So, too, does the vast majority of the writing of James Joyce.

E.M. Forster on Virginia Woolf and Vice Versa

E.M. Forster was a peripheral member of the Bloomsbury group and a friend of Virginia Woolf although not a particularly close one. But they had a lot in common being not just novelists but critics of other writing.  So it is interesting to read what they had to say about each other. Each greatly admired the other, but not without qualifications. 

For instance, in a lecture on Woolf delivered on May 29, 1941, at Cambridge, two months after her death, Forster said that in her writings, Woolf “has no great cause at heart.”  Her works, he argued, are not “about something.”  Rather, as largely a form of poetry, they “are something” and when the poetry is absent, such as is the case with her second novel Night and Day and her penultimate novel The Years, her efforts fail, Forster said. 

Woolf wrote an essay entitled “The Novels of E.M. Forster” that was first published by her husband, Leonard Woolf, in 1942. Virginia may have been reluctant to release it herself,  observing in the first couple of sentences that there are many reasons for hesitating to criticize one’s contemporaries including “the fear of hurting feelings” and “the difficulty of being just.” 

Whereas Forster felt Woolf had “no great cause at heart,” Virginia felt the opposite about him. She depicted Forster as “highly conscious of a message” and said “he believes that a novel must take sides in the human conflict.” 

 “Behind the rainbow of wit and sensibility there is a vision which he is determined we shall see,” she said. But she wasn’t convinced he was successful in getting it across, describing his message as “elusive in nature.”  Forester fails, she argues, to successfully connect his very satisfying depiction of actual things with the larger message he evidently wants them to convey. “We feel something has failed us at the critical moment,” Woolf said. 

Why, Woolf wondered, when Howards End was such a “highly skillful book” and she wanted to declare it a success did she feel it was instead a failure? While elaboration, skill, wisdom, penetration and beauty are all present in the book, “they lack fusion, they lack cohesion, they lack force,” Woolf declared. 

That’s a fairly damning critique for a work often described as Forster’s masterpiece and especially if one is supposed to come away from it with a message. 

But one can view Forster as equally disparaging of Woolf. 

Early in the afore mentioned lecture, Forster depicted Woolf “is not a great creator of character.” And later, he elaborated on that. As a modernist novelist, Woolf strays from the fictional norm in various ways.  Among them, “she does not tell a story or weave a plot, and can she create character?  That is her problem’s center.” 

While her characters worked on the page and seldom seemed unreal, “life eternal she could seldom give; she could seldom so portray a character that it was remembered afterwards on its own account,” Forster said, pointing to Jane Austin’s “Emma” and George Eliot’s “Dorothea Casaubon” as successes on that score. 

Were there any exceptions? “Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay do remain with the reader afterwards, and so perhaps do Rachel from The Voyage Out, and Clarissa Dalloway. For the rest [and there are many], it is impossible to maintain that here is an immortal portrait gallery,” Forster said. 

When one largely dispenses with story and plot, isn’t character what supposedly remains?

Same-Sex Attraction in "Mrs. Dalloway"

Attraction between women was of great interest to Woolf for more than one reason.

“Chloe liked Olivia.”  [What a concept!] 

“Do not start, do not blush, let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women,” Woof says in the fifth section of her landmark essay A Room of One’s Own.

Where did “Chloe liked Olivia” come from?  Woolf tells readers she encountered that astonishing phrase in a book called “Life’s Adventure, or some such title, by Mary Carmichael.” It was a book she at first hadn’t thought much of, based in part on Ms Carmichael’s terse and short-winded writing style, but that she was obliged to reconsider. Why? “For if Chloe likes Olivia and Mary Carmichael knows how to express it, she will light a torch in that vast chamber where nobody has yet been,” Woolf said.

That chamber was in 1928 the life of a woman “unlit by the capricious and colored light of the other sex.”  In other words, a woman defined in her own terms and not in relationship to a man as Woolf believed had been almost exclusively the case in English literature.

Well, Mary Carmichael was a figment of Virginia’s always fertile imagination and as for Chloe and Olivia, about all we are told of them is that they shared a laboratory where they minced liver, apparently for use as a cure for anemia, and that one of them was married with two small children. Woolf may have seen them as no more than friends, but that didn’t matter. This little invention – a woman being viewed independently of a man -- gave her the springboard she needed to examine at considerable length the impoverishment of women in literature.

The situation was so bad, she maintained, that in order to accurately depict what happens when a woman goes into a room, “whole flights of words” would have to be added to the English language.

[What would the English language look like now if James Joyce had been a woman, one wonders?]

But “Chloe liked Olivia” could certainly have implications other than just friendship and that brings me to Mrs. Dalloway.

Early in the book, after Clarissa is back from her morning walk, she climbs up to the little attic bedroom where her husband, Richard, has insisted she sleep undisturbed after her recent illness. This gets her thinking of Richard and how she has disappointed him sexually –initially “on the river beneath the woods at Clieveden” and later at Constantinople, “and again and again.”

In contrast, she has had a tendency to fall in love with women -- first and foremost with Sally Seton when Clarissa was 18 years old and “knew nothing about sex.” Encountering Sally at a party, Clarissa couldn’t take her eyes off her and then, when Sally unexpectedly arrived penniless at the Parry’s door and was somewhat reluctantly taken in, the two very different young women became almost inseparable, talking for hours about how they were going to reform the world – all Sally’s ideas, one is told.

Finally, out on the terrace one evening at Clarissa’s childhood home, Burton, “came the most exquisite moment in her whole life.” Alone with Sally – the others had gone on ahead – Sally picked a flower and kissed Clarissa on the lips. “The whole world might have turned upside down!” But then who should appear to ruin things but Peter Walsh, and her moment of happiness was embittered.

Readers aren’t told whether Sally and Clarissa took matters any further on a subsequent occasion, but from everything one learns about what Clarissa was like at 18, it seems unlikely. And in later years, when Sally married a rich Manchester industrialist, Clarissa wanted nothing to do with her, turning down invitations to visit.

Woolf contrasts this idyllically romantic, same-sex moment (the “laughing girls in their transparent muslins” Clarissa saw on her morning walk may have helped bring to her mind the “white frock” she was wearing when Sally kissed her) with a far darker example of possible same-sex attraction later in the book.

Whereas Clarissa was pursued by the vivacious, free-spirted Sally Seton who, among other things, ran down the hall naked on one occasion at Burton, Clarissa herself and possibly the Dalloway’s 17-year-old daughter Elizabeth, stimulates barely controllable desires within the rather distressing Doris Kilman, who, like a flasher lurking among trees in a public park, dresses in a green mackintosh no matter what the weather.

Miss Kilman, originally engaged by Richard Dalloway to teach his daughter history, in due course brings Elizabeth under her relatively recently acquired religious sway, much to the distress of Clarissa who wonders at one point if her daughter is falling in love with Doris.

Matters come to a head, when Miss Kilman, laughed at by the far more attractive Clarissa, is consumed by jealously and perhaps also lust.

“It is the flesh” she keeps muttering as she takes Elizabeth to a local department store, loses control of herself, buys of all things a petticoat (what was she thinking, Elizabeth wonders as the sales girl thinks Kilman “mad”) and gorges herself on sweets over tea as a possible substitute for another form of physical pleasure. Increasingly uncomfortable, Elizabeth finds her white gloves (as powerful a symbol as Clarissa’s flowers) and flees. Doris implores her in a quivering voice not to forget her, but she knows that Elizabeth, “so beautiful,” is gone.

Woolf, in an especially powerful passage, depicts Elizabeth, obliged out of politeness to have tea with Miss Kilman, as being “like some dumb creature who has been brought up to a gate for an unknown purpose, and stands there longing to gallop away.”  And so she finally did.  “Right away to the end of the field the dumb creature galloped in terror.”

The down side of possible same-sex attraction doesn’t get any darker than that. But the self-possessed Elizabeth, perhaps lucky to be relatively clueless over exactly what was happening, pulls herself together and appears at Clarissa’s party in a pink dress. Yet another powerful symbol, I think.

“Mrs. Dalloway,” like “Ulysses,” is a Saga of the Much-Denigrated Beta Male

“Mrs. Dalloway,” by Virginia Woolf, and “Ulysses,” by James Joyce, are sometimes mentioned in the same breath: they are both novels set in one day. “Ulysses,” published in 1922, came out first – and even earlier if one takes into consideration chapters released individually.

“Mrs. Dalloway” arrived in 1925 and one often hears, particularly from Joyceans, that Woolf copied Joyce in using the one-day format.

Woolf was familiar with “Ulysses,” having begun to read it in serial form and having been asked to publish the entire book through the Hogarth Press, which she operated with her husband, Leonard. That, they concluded, was impractical given the technical capabilities of the press and the length of Joyce’s book. But there are indications they also considered some of the content of “Ulysses” problematic (legally or otherwise), as did other publishers.

Woolf was initially unimpressed with “Ulysses.” At the time she first encountered it, she was much taken with Marcel Proust’s great novel, and, among other things, irritated that she might have to turn her attention away from it. But she revised her views on Joyce as time passed.

In my opinion, “Ulysses” and “Mrs. Dalloway” are similar in a fashion much more interesting than their common time frame: they both deal with a very difficult subject for readers to accept as worthy of consideration – what one might call the “beta male.”

When it comes to men, “alpha males” – men who take command and make things happen – are the chief protagonists of most works of literature and, indeed, almost all forms of public entertainment. They can be good or they can be evil so long as they are confident, assertive and bent on directing the course of events within whatever sphere they are operating. If unsuccessful, they fail in spectacular fashion, often only to get up, dust themselves off and try again – with even greater determination. They don’t just slink away, or fail to try at all.

Readers – woman as well as men in my personal experience – don’t like beta males. “Why do we care about this guy?” they tend of ask, in a plaintive or annoyed tone of voice.

In the post-war era, a good example of the beta male is Nick Jenkins, the chief protagonist of Anthony Powell’s 12-volume cycle of novels known as “A Dance to the Music of Time.” The subsequent BBC miniseries was a disappointment: in trying to keep Jenkins “beta,” he was depicted as far too sappy. Alphas are easy to cast, not so with betas meant to have top billing.

But let’s stick with Joyce and Woolf.

Leopold Bloom exemplifies just about everything an alpha male isn’t. He’s about to be made a cuckold (perhaps for the first time, perhaps not), knows it and does nothing about it – despite the fact that about half of Dublin also knows it is going to happen later in the day in question, or so it seems.

As he goes about his day, Bloom suffers one indignity after another. An ad canvasser for newspapers, he has no luck getting one renewed. And despite being in the publishing business, his name is misspelled – “Boom” – in a news item mentioning his attendance at a funeral. At one point he farts audibly and later masturbates in public. There is a lot more. In fact, the list of Bloom’s shortcomings is virtually endless.

The heroic highpoint of Leopold’s day comes when he stands his ground against the xenophobic, anti-Semitic views of a presumably inebriated man identified only as “the Citizen,” but that’s arguably not saying much. The worst “the Citizen” can do is hurl an empty cookie tin at Bloom as he departs and the object clatters harmlessly on the pavement.

Bloom is far from a man who parts the waters: he just tries to stay afloat. And I have no hesitation in saying that any number of readers have, over the years, wondered why in the world they should spend so much time with him.

In “Mrs. Dalloway,” the chief protagonist is, of course, a woman about whom a great deal can be said, but not here. Her opposite number is clearly Septimus Smith, a casualty of WWI, whose response to mental and emotional instability is meant to be a counterpoint to Clarissa’s struggle to keep her own psychological demons at bay.

While that is an exceptionally important issue for Woolf, and for her novel, it lies apart from what I want to discuss. Rather, I am restricting myself to the more superficial aspect of Clarissa’ life: how it turned out based on who she decided to marry – and the decision was clearly hers.

Here comes the beta male again – and not just one, but two of them. Neither Peter Walsh nor Richard Dalloway is a man of action, a leader, a man who commands deference and makes things happen. Quite the reverse, so why did Clarissa find both attractive, but in different ways?

Let’s start with Walsh, since he appears in the book well before Dalloway. The scion of “a respected Anglo-Indian family which for at least three generations had administered the affairs of a continent,” he himself has done nothing of the sort. Well, not quite: he did manage to invent a plow for his district in India where he has been for the past five years. While out there, his first marriage failed and it now seems he intends to make off with a much younger married woman, probably depriving her of her two children and likely leaving her an impoverished, socially disadvantaged widow at a relatively early age.

In their youth, he and Clarissa discussed, and argued about, things such as Socialism, which Clarissa found greatly stimulating and which she sometimes imagines would have made for an exciting life with Walsh. But on reflection, she notes he never did a thing along the lines of the issues they talked about. Meanwhile, across town, Lady Bruton, Hugh Whitbread (yet another beta male – he had known Prime Ministers, but not taken part in any of the great movements of his time) and Richard Dalloway agree over lunch that Walsh is a man impossible to help because “there was some flaw in his character.” In other words, he is a born loser, a person who almost always manages to make a mess of things.

Walsh can be charming and he knows it: that’s about the beginning and the end of him. In his self-assessments, at best, he thinks of himself as a man who filled his posts adequately and did just respectably; at worst he, too, thinks of himself as a failure, for which, at one point, he blames Clarissa. As he walks though London, about to stalk a young woman for amusement, he acknowledges he will at some point have to ask Richard Dalloway for help in getting a job. Good luck.

Do readers care about Peter Walsh? Should they?

All of which takes us to Clarissa’s husband himself, the man she married for “support” even if Richard believes she didn’t need it. Actually, she does need it, we discover, when she feels Richard has abandoned her by agreeing to lunch with Lady Bruton on the very day of her party.

Far from the sort of alpha-male who makes a conquest of an attractive, sought-after woman by sweeping his rivals aside, Dalloway considers it “a miracle” Clarissa agreed to be his wife and he remains devoted to her despite her episodic inability to respond to him sexually.

In one of the most poignant passages in the book, Clarissa understands that she remains “his Clarissa” when Richard, unable to tell her he loves her in so many words despite his determination to do so, presents her with roses instead. She knows she is cherished.

In Walsh’s eyes (and this seems to be an assessment shared by others), Dalloway, despite being “a thoroughly good sort,” is a bit limited, a bit thick in the head, devoid of imagination or brilliance. Where Walsh deploys charm, Dalloway seems to get by in large part by virtue of possessing “the inexplicable niceness of his type.”

But such characteristics mean Richard is wasted on politics and should have been a country gentleman, out in Norfolk, bandaging wounded dogs.

Clarissa’s husband appears to have gone into politics largely because there is, in the Dalloway family, a tradition of public service. But, we are told, family members weren’t brilliant in any of the positions they held and Richard has remained in that vein: he hasn’t become a government minister and everyone knows he never will become one. On the day of the party, he’s off to a Parliamentary committee meeting, but can’t recall if it is about the Armenians or the Albanians.

Richard initially made so little an impression on Clarissa that she could remember neither his name nor who had brought him to Burton, their family house. She introduced him to everyone there as “Wickham,” prompting Richard to “blurt out” that his name was Dalloway, much to the amusement of Sally Seaton who then relentlessly mocked his discomfort and lack of stature.

One could go on, except that there is an endearing side to Richard, ineffectual as he is in the affairs of the world, that Woolf teases out at some length. As she does, readers begin to understand why Dalloway may be worth their time.

For instance, he has taken pity on the problematic if not downright odious Miss Kilman, allowing her to teach history to the Dalloway’s daughter, Elizabeth. Miss Kilman, who detests Clarissa, in large part as a result of envy, thinks well of Richard. He was “really generous” to her, she believes, and that is a very significant concession on her part.

In Parliament, readers are told Dalloway doggedly championed the downtrodden of society; that he was concerned about police malpractice, wondered what could be done to help female vagrants and thought parks should be for children and that the trash they might generate could be picked up.

When Clarissa’s party finally gets underway, Richard is the only person unable to let poor Ellie Henderson stand there all evening by herself. He makes a point of asking her how she is doing, but before she can respond, none other than Peter Walsh pulls Richard away.

When the Prime Minister arrives, it isn’t clear he says a word to Dalloway – nothing worth recording at any rate – despite the fact that the party is presumably being given to help Richard’s prospects. Clarissa takes the elderly leader around until he disappears into a side room for a tete a tete with alpha-male-wannabe Lady Bruton, after which the PM promptly departs.

Then comes Sir William Bradshaw, the eminent therapist of his day and most definitely an alpha male. But he brings news of the death of Septimus Smith, a development that greatly upsets Clarissa even though she doesn’t know Smith.
Retreating into the same side room used by the PM and Lady Bruton, Clarissa confronts her demons and realizes she couldn’t have gotten through life without Richard, even if he just sat there reading The Times. “It was due to Richard, she had never been so happy.” (One thinks here of Virginia’s marriage to Leonard Woolf.)

And Richard is totally with Clarissa when it comes to her suspicions about Sir William Bradshaw -- in some way “obscurely evil,” she thinks. “Only Richard agreed with her, ‘didn’t like his taste, didn’t like his smell’,” Clarissa notes to herself, eyeing Sir William and his wife at her party.

The assessment is close to the truth, readers discover, when it comes to Bradshaw’s interaction with Clarissa’s psychological alter-ego, Septimus Smith. But to give Sir William his due, he does lobby Richard Dalloway at the party to have Parliament address shell-shock victims.

Lastly, as Clarissa’s party reaches a conclusion, Richard can’t help admiring his daughter, Elizabeth, although he initially doesn’t recognize her in her pink frock. Sensing rather than noticing his gaze, Elizabeth turns away from a young admirer and joins her father, who she adores. There are few things she would rather do, readers have been told earlier, than be alone in the country with her father and the dogs.

Richard hadn’t meant at that moment to tell Elizabeth how proud of her he was, but he could not help telling her so.

Looking on, Sally Seaton, initially so scornful of Dalloway, tells Peter Walsh that Richard has improved. She will go talk to him and say goodbye.

“What does the brain matter compared with the heart?” says Sally, now known as Lady Rosseter, in reference to Richard Dalloway -- just before the book ends.

A Story for the California Fire Season

As I write, the Carr fire in Northern California -- a blaze that at its peak had characteristics that seemed almost apocalyptic -- has diminished, but still remains a significant threat to some communities.

Shruti Swamy, a woman of Indian extraction who says she grew up in the woods of Northern California (but now lives in San Francisco), has a story in the Summer 2018 edition of the Paris Review entitled "A House is a Body." It's about a woman and her sick child living in a region where "rain had not come for months and months."  What has come instead is a fire.

Ben Marcus and "Notes from the Fog"

Ben Marcus is described as a dystopian writer, but he's far from apocalyptic when it comes to the bad news that lies ahead. Rather, Marcus sees the world as a stagnant pool with little to recommend it.

Death is a welcome development, readers learn in "Notes From the Fog," a short story published in the summer 2018 issue of "The Paris Review."  It is also the title of a new book of Marcus short stories scheduled for release next month. Among others, the book includes "Cold Little Bird" and "The Grow-Light Blues" about which I have previously written.

Gbessa, or "She Would Be King," by Wayétu Moore

Myths, some more religious than others, appear to be essential to human existence. They serve to explain the origin of various societies and often are the source of values and behavioral norms. Most have important supernatural elements that elevate such stories above the commonplace and render them seemingly timeless.

Artists, seeking to give their work and thus themselves a transcendent quality, often anchor their efforts in myth. One thinks, for instance, of Richard Wagner basing what he considered his masterpiece – the Ring Cycle operas – in Norse legend. And James Joyce appropriating Homer’s epic to give “Ulysses” a framework and a name that serves to place the book in a more universal context than early 20^th century Dublin.

Then there’s T.S. Eliot who identified Tiresias, a leading prophet in Greek mythology, as the most important voice in his poem “The Waste Land.”

All of which brings me to contemporary American author Wayétu Moore, who has apparently decided that Liberia, her distant homeland, needs a foundation myth that she provides in her debut novel, “She Would Be King.” Scheduled for released in hardcover in September 2018. Moore, in interviews, has described it as “a novel of African magical realism.”

Impressionable Cacao Beans; the Wisdom of Bourbon

"Thoughts About Fiction" -- the title of this blog -- could easily extend well beyond literature.

How about marketing, for instance?

What about this assertion from the folks at Raaka, a maker of what might be called artisanal chocolate bars:

"This chocolate is years in the making. Our bourbon casks have lived multiple lives before we receive and fill them with cacao.  As they age, the young impressionable beans absorb the history and wisdom of the bourbon before them." (my emphasis)

Really?

New Narratives for a New Diversity

The  May 14, 2018, issue of The New Yorker includes a short story by Edwidge Danticat entitled "Without Inspection" that can be viewed as representing a new narrative for a more diverse America.

This country has always been a nation of immigrants (after it was "discovered" by European explorers at any rate), but until relatively recently, the vast majority of the newcomers were Europeans who arrived legally.  Thus, the classic immigration story has long been one of persons, parents or grandparents who arrived from the "old world" at Ellis Island in New York harbor and after various trials and tribulations, often including discrimination, eventually achieved the American Dream, if not for themselves for their offspring.

Tell Me a Story, Mommy

Remember when digital books were all the rage and various companies were rushing to bring out new readers?

Well, no more it seems. Audio books are now where it's at.

That's according to a lengthy article in the Seattle Times entitled "Listen carefully, book lovers: Top authors are skipping print for audio."

Freedom or Just Trying to Live: Differentiating Character

If one is writing stories short on plot, character development is often critical. That raises the issue of character differentiation and how to go about it.

In that vein, here is an interesting quote from a May 14, 2018, New Yorker article on rapper Post Malone.

"Some people are free to live their best lives. Others are just trying to live."

One Older Reader of Young Adult Fiction

I have discussed various aspects of Young Adult (YA) fiction in a number of posts, which readers can find by clicking on the tag “young adult fiction” at the bottom of this submission.  The YA field is interesting in part because it has in recent years been one of the best, if not the best, performing genre for the publishing industry.

List Journalism Is Alive and Well

Literary Hub, an online publication created by the venerable independent publisher Grove Atlantic and the Internet-age publisher Electric Literature, describes itself as “an organizing principle in the service of literary culture, a single, trusted, daily source for all the news, ideas and richness of contemporary literary life.”

Sounds high brow, doesn’t?

Well, Lit Hub, as it is known, is not shy about being low-brow as well – in this case, list journalism. You know the type: 24 ways to entice HIM into bed (your favorite women’s magazine); the 12 best sports bars in … (fill in the name of your city), etc., etc.

Trump as a Character from a James Joyce Novel

President Donald Trump could be a character created by James Joyce based on the way he thinks and communicates.

That’s the view of an unnamed national security expert, as reported by General Michael Hayden, a head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency under former president George W. Bush.

In an interview published in the May 6, 2018, New York Times Sunday Magazine, Hayden was asked what it was like for analysts to brief a president who ignores intelligence with which he disagrees and embraces information that suits his policy needs.

Street Haunting May Shed Light on Clarissa Dalloway

When a certain type of novel is published, readers often wonder, to what extent is it autobiographical? And if the author is or becomes a literary celebrity, entire industries can develop around such questions.

Virginia Woolf, because of her difficult childhood, her episodic mental/emotional instability, her apparently sexually sterile marriage and her unconventional friends, has been the subject of endless inquiries along those lines – facilitated by extensive diaries and letters as well as her fiction, essays and critical works. There’s no shortage of fodder upon which to chew.

What, then, about Clarissa Dalloway? Where did she come from and how does she relate to the author herself? 

"George & Lizzie" (This review gives the story away)

Warning: this review of “George and Lizzie” gives the story away. Please don’t read it until after you have read the book. Contrary views are welcome.

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 If, on a lark, a bet or a dare, or perhaps because nothing else in life much interests her, a girl decides to have sex with all the starters on her high school football team, what can she expect out of life?

That’s 23 boys by the way – 11 on offense, 11 on defense plus the kicker – and one a week, every week until the “Great Game” is won.