Peter Cameron's Blog

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As Luck Would Have It (Jonathan Cape, 1995) and The Whites of Gold (Jonathan Cape, 2001) by Samuel Lock

Someone suggested to me that I might like Samuel Lock's books, based on what he knew of my reading. habits.  I had never heard of Lock, but bought and read two books by the British novelist.  That I can barely remember anything about either one of them (I did read them several months ago) means nothing of course, but I do remember that I found them only mildly engaging and not particularly interesting in either content or style.

Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos (Houghton Mifflin, 1964)

This novel, originally publshed by George H. Doran in 1921, is about American soldiers in WWI.  It follows them through basic training in the United States to several years of miserable battle in France.  Dos Passos' writing is a pleasure to read: his prose is artfully crafted and always interesting and engaging.

After reading this I got three-quarters of the way through Chosen Country, a much later (1951)  Dos Passos novel.  It's an ambitious multi-decade and -generational saga that follows a mid-western family through the first half of the 20th century.  I stopped without finishing it because it didn't seem as authentic or artful as the other Dos Passos books I've read.  It was dull and plodding (with a charmless young woman who is supposed to be insouciantly charming at its center) and seemed surprisingly generic, exhibiting none of the scintillating prose I associate with Dos Passos.

*Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote (Signet, 1948)

[image error]I don't know why I've never read this book -- I've had this old paperback copy of it forever.  I had the idea that I had started it once and hadn't like it, but I don't think that's the case because it is riveting from the first page.  The writing is brilliant: incandescent and inventive and original, and the book is very shrewdly composed and executed.

It's the story of a young boy -- 13 -- who, after his mother dies, moves from New Orleans to a small Southern town to live with his father, who he has never really known.  His father lives with Amy, his second wife, and Randolph, her cousin, in a mouldering mansion in the swampy outskirts of the town.  He rarely sees his father, who spends all his time in bed, his body failing and his mind gone.  He is befriended by Zoo, the Black maid of all work, and Idabel, a tomboy neighbor who he decides to run away with, an aborted misadventure that concludes the book.

Some of the lushly unrestrained and lyrical writing seems indulgent and does not disappear into the story, but most of the writing is thrillingly brilliant, and reading this book was a transporting experience.  It's a small, short book, but its impact -- characters and writing -- is indelible.

John Caldigate by Anthony Trollope (1879)

I enjoyed reading this late Trollope novel.  Excellent, complex characters and a very engaging and suspenseful plot.

[image error]John Caldigate graduates from Cambridge and being estranged from both his father and his family's estate, decides to cash out his inheritance and use his fortune to mine for gold in Australia.  On the two-month-long sea voyage there he meets a charming beautiful woman named Mrs. Smith.  She captivates John with her intelligence and he falls in love with her, despite the warnings of fellow passengers and even the ship's captain, who are all sure she is an untrustworthy adventuress.  Once in Australia they live together as man and wife, although do not officially marry.  But her lust for gold (and brandy) ends their affair, and John returns to England with an even larger fortune.  He reconciles with his father and reclaims his inheritance and marries Harriet Bolton, a young woman he has loved ever since first seeing her before he left England when she was only 16.

But no sooner are they wed and the parents of a baby boy then Mrs. Smith returns to England, claiming that John married her in Australia and that she is the only legitimate Mrs. Caldigate.  The remainder of the book involves the trial for bigamy and the prolonged and difficult restitution of John's good name.  The resolution of John's calamity gets a bit bogged down with details pertaining to judicial bureaucracy, religion, and postage stamps, but this is an excellent Trollope.

Watson's Apology by Beryl Bainbridge (Carroll & Graf, 2011)

[image error]A very engaging and flawlessly executed novel by the masterful Bainbridge based upon a real murder case that occurred in London in 1870. After almost thirty years of marriage the Rev. Watson, a clergyman and headmaster of a small school for boys, violently murders his wife on a Sunday afternoon.

Bainbridge begins the book with the couples awkward and desperate courtship and marriage -- a marriage based upon mutual need and very little affection.  Things only get worse over the years as both Rev. and Mrs. Watson become more solitary and eccentric, slipping slowly and irrevocably into madness.

Bainbridge skips across the years, observing the couple at roughly five year intervals.  Her point of view is cold and analytical -- there's not a trace of warmth or wit in the book and no authorial voice or presence.  A dispassionate book about a crime that arose out of a sick and twisted passion.

*Man of England Now by Frank Sargeson (Caxton Press, 1972)

This book is comprised of three novellas; I read only the first two, both of which were somewhat engaging and readable but quite forgettable.

Frank Sargeson is a (homosexual) New Zealand writer.  The first novella, Man of England Now, is about a young man from Northern England who emigrates to New Zealand shortly after WWI in search of a better life.  He might have stayed in England, as the life he finds in New Zealand is hard and not very rewarding.  The second novella purports to be the diary of a 40ish spinster school teacher who lives with her mother and begins a rather inept and eventually unconsummated liaison with a visiting handsome doctor, who is already married and also has eyes (and hands) for her step-sister.

Some bright, textured writing, but it never seems to rise above the prosaic and familiar.

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*The Body by William Sansom (Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1949)

[image error]William Sansom is a smart, distinguished writer -- his prose is obviously labored over and often (but not always) interesting and impressive.  But this novel, his first,  is not a success -- in fact, it fails rather quickly and consistently.

Henry Bishop lives with his rather dim but pretty wife Madge in one of London's near suburbs.  They are childless, sleep in separate bedrooms, and have been happily but passionlessly married for twenty years (Henry is 45).  One day Henry sees a man spying over the garden wall, watching Madge at her toilette through an open bedroom window.  Henry quickly comes to believe that this man and his. wife are having an affair, and spends the rest of the book trying to catch them in flagrante delicto, with rather tepid and unremarkable results.

To confirm his suspicion, Henry ingratiates himself with all the people who live in the rooming house next door.  They are not a very interesting lot and shed very little light on his wife's amorous affairs.  The only interesting tension I felt in the book concerned Henry's sexuality.  It seems quite clear to me that he is a (very) repressed homosexual, but of course this is only cryptically hinted at: he might like to have an affair with the gent next door himself, and he makes a subtly homoerotic visit to a gymnasium in London where lads in various states of undress are perfecting their physiques.

I might read another book by William Sansom, but I wouldn't put it at the top of my list.

Esmond in India by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (published as R. Prawer Jhabvala), George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1958

I enjoyed reading and admired this early novel of RPJ, set in India -- New Delhi -- in the 1950s, when India is still adjusting to independence from England and the partition of the country.

Esmond is a handsome, charming, intelligent young Englishman in India who has gotten himself disastrously married to a beautiful, indolent, and not-very-bright Indian woman, with whom he has a son.  The plot revolves around two families: the family of Esmond's wife and the family of the Indian man she was engaged to, but jilted in order to marry the glamorous Esmond.  Now the girl's family wants to marry its son, a penniless but altruistic doctor working with poor people in the jungle, to the daughter of the other family, a recent college graduate who is idealistic but is also  seduced by Esmond's golden charm.

With so much attention paid to matrimony and family dynamics, one understands why Jhabvala is often compared to Jane Austen -- they both write about the same kinds of people in the same kind of situations, observed with the same gimlet eye.

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*The Plaster Fabric by Martyn Goff (Putnam, 1957)

This is the second book by Martyn Goff that I have recently read, and I enjoyed it.  Like The Youngest Director, it is about a young gay man in London, probably set in the mid 1950s.

Laurie (Laurence) our mostly unheroic hero, is an artistically talented young man who works as a bookseller in a London bookshop (apparently working in a bookstore was once considered a decent and respectable job, if not career).  He lives by himself in a tiny basement in Chelsea.  During the War he was a member of the RAF.  Now, he works at the store, paints and sketches, and hangs out with Bohemians at the artsy club he belongs to.  His closest friend is a young woman named Sue, who is attending art school.  She is beginning to figure out that the reason their long and intimate friendship has never developed into a romance is because Laurie prefers boys to girls.

As the book begins Laurie meets Tom Beeson, a large, handsome, and sexy Guardsman.  Tom is uneducated and uncultured, but he is a proud and friendly young man who would like to better his circumstances.  Sending a possible patron in Laurie, Tom flirts with him, leading Laurie who, despite a short failed romance with another RAF pilot, has never managed to find a true companion, to believe that Tom might be the one.  But Laurie makes the mistake of introducing Tom to Sue, who quickly pounces on the handsome soldier and is soon married to the man Laurie loves.

The inevitable demise of Tom and Sue's marriage and Laurie's tangential involvement plays out over two years.  A third of the book is set in Florence, where Laurie goes on a disastrous holiday with his employer and companion.  Laurie is a weak, thwarted and mostly unlikeable character and there are many sad and disturbing moments in this book.  Like The Youngest Director, much of the tension and suspense surrounds Laurie's fears of being outed and loosing his job, family, and friends.  He considers his sexuality a natural anomaly that is nevertheless a serious character flaw.  And it seems that, at least in the world of this book, gay men who are upper-class and cultured cannot be sexually compatible, as they all seem to be sexually interested in only rough trade or young boys.  Laurie's older companion, who he lives with for two years, suggests that they continue living together and seek sexual excitement and satisfaction elsewhere.  Laurie, still enthralled with Tom, says no.

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[Fabulous jacket illustration and design by John Minton.]