Susan Gerstein's Blog - Posts Tagged "thomas-mann"
The Pleasures of Reading Multivolume Books
Some years ago a wise older friend had asked me, during a conversation about Britain's role in the Second World War, if I had read Anthony Powell’s “Dance to the Music of Time”. Not only had I not read it, I informed my friend, but I had never even heard of it. He replied, wistfully: “How I envy you! For you have a glorious experience to look forward to!” Knowing my penchant for plunging into a long, long book, in this instance twelve volumes covering many decades and a multitude of characters, he knew what pleasures awaited me. The friend, a musician, described the twelve volumes, divided into four groups, as if they were music: First, Second, Third and Fourth Movements, forming an intricate puzzle that can be entered, my friend said, at any point, and followed to its circular conclusion. Ultimately I decided to follow the Movements as they were published: chronologically, in numerical order. I still think that is the best way to do it, though I had since known readers who started in the middle, with the – say – Third Movement and met the cast of characters at different stages of their lives. Then the First Movement might appear as a flashback. No matter. You start reading. A panorama of interconnected lives begins to form an intricate web. Over a period of time eras end, wars are fought, children grow up, betray each other, betray their country or fight for it, succeed or succumb. The vastness of the canvas on which this picture is painted seems inexhaustible; for a long time one feels that such an undertaking will never end and one will be able to go on reading about these new, intimate acquaintances forever. – Not true: thousands of pages later it does come to an end, a most bittersweet moment. You entered a world, thoroughly explored it, made it your own – and now you have to let it go. – But perhaps you will be able to re-read it some day, this time with an entirely different perspective since you know where everything and everyone are headed and need not be so concerned with whatt happens next but concentrate more on how and why it happens. The details. I am very grateful that I had the incredible good fortune of my friend’s recommendation, that I took his advice and “Dance to the Music of Time” became my world for an unforgettable period of time. And when, years later, I re-read it, I am not sure if it wasn’t even better the second time around.
There is a long list of books that provides just such an experience. Some of them are emotionally shattering, life-changing ones: you emerge at the end of the fourth, tenth, twentieth volume a different person, if for no other reason, because such a long time had gone by in your own life that change is almost inevitable. When I started reading Thomas Mann’s “Joseph” books, I expected it to be “difficult”, esoteric, an intellectual exercise; after all, biblical times and ancient Egypt as the locale for a very long novel did not signal an emotional experience to come. It turned out to be just that: one of the greatest ones, about the singular love of a parent for a favored child, sibling enmity, unrequited passion – and, of course, the passage of time. – Reading Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past”; Paul Scott’s “The Raj Quartet”, John Le Carre’s “Smiley” books, John Updike’s “Rabbit” books all marked the periods of my life during which I read them.
Numerous friends tried to get me started on Patrick O’Brian’s twenty-volume sea-saga taking place during the Napoleonic wars. In fact when one of these friends had finally talked me into at least trying the first volume (“no, it’s not what you think, it is as much about the people and the period as the sea-battles” said the friend, for I couldn’t imagine why I would want to read about men killing each other aboard ship in 1805), there were only about 16 volumes published. I started reading “Master and Commander”, made the acquaintance of Jack Aubrey, Steven Maturin and was hooked. Superbly written, deeply affecting, funny, sad, it turned out to be hypnotic. Fortunately, while I read the initial volumes, the subsequent ones appeared. O’Brian died months after the final, twentieth volume was completed. The entire work turns out to be one vast novel, a masterpiece.
Then there are George Macdonald Fraser’s “Flashman” books. I came upon them because prior to traveling to China, one of the volumes was included in the syllabus of things to read as preparation for the trip. This seemed a joke initially, since the rest of the reading material consisted of scholarly articles about Chinese history and it was hard to see what Flashman was doing in this august company. The series is based on the dastardly schoolboy Harry Flashman, a character in Thomas Hughes’ “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”, a mid-nineteenth century novel. Fraser, a historian, introduces Flashman in his subsequent career as army officer and general cad who partakes in and witnesses events causing havoc in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Flashman roams the world and gets to the American West, India, Afghanistan, Germany, Madagascar – everywhere. The reason the “Chinese” volume was included in the list of books is that while hilariously funny and tongue-in-cheek, Flashman’s adventures in all the diverse parts of the British Empire are historically correct. After the extremely entertaining and informative “Chinese” volume I decided to read the others, all equally amusing, equally informative. One does not need to read them in sequence, each book is a unique adventure; and yet, if read chronologically, a slow, almost imperceptible change occurs in the outrageous Flashman character and at the end, yet again, one feels as if parting with, if not a friend, at least a phenomenally entertaining acquaintance.
Wonderful times await you with Anthony Trollope’s “Palliser” books, John Galsworthy’s “Forsythe Saga”, Lawrence Durell’s “Alexandria Quartet”. For the young, or young at heart there is Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”, “Harry Potter”, Philipp Pullman’s “His Dark Materials”, Dorothy Dunnet’s “The Lymond Chronicles”. The list is goes on.
At present among the as yet unfinished multivolumes missing the third and final one, Hilary Mantel’s “Cromwell” books promise to join the greats. George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Fire and Ice” hangs in the balance at the moment: it is so vast, its plot is so complicated that with two more volumes still to come (completing the planned seven), all will depend on whether it can arrive at a satisfactory ending. If it does, I believe it will be part of the great fantasy books rivaling Tolkien; if not, possibly a great disappointment. Keeping fingers crossed.
There is a long list of books that provides just such an experience. Some of them are emotionally shattering, life-changing ones: you emerge at the end of the fourth, tenth, twentieth volume a different person, if for no other reason, because such a long time had gone by in your own life that change is almost inevitable. When I started reading Thomas Mann’s “Joseph” books, I expected it to be “difficult”, esoteric, an intellectual exercise; after all, biblical times and ancient Egypt as the locale for a very long novel did not signal an emotional experience to come. It turned out to be just that: one of the greatest ones, about the singular love of a parent for a favored child, sibling enmity, unrequited passion – and, of course, the passage of time. – Reading Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past”; Paul Scott’s “The Raj Quartet”, John Le Carre’s “Smiley” books, John Updike’s “Rabbit” books all marked the periods of my life during which I read them.
Numerous friends tried to get me started on Patrick O’Brian’s twenty-volume sea-saga taking place during the Napoleonic wars. In fact when one of these friends had finally talked me into at least trying the first volume (“no, it’s not what you think, it is as much about the people and the period as the sea-battles” said the friend, for I couldn’t imagine why I would want to read about men killing each other aboard ship in 1805), there were only about 16 volumes published. I started reading “Master and Commander”, made the acquaintance of Jack Aubrey, Steven Maturin and was hooked. Superbly written, deeply affecting, funny, sad, it turned out to be hypnotic. Fortunately, while I read the initial volumes, the subsequent ones appeared. O’Brian died months after the final, twentieth volume was completed. The entire work turns out to be one vast novel, a masterpiece.
Then there are George Macdonald Fraser’s “Flashman” books. I came upon them because prior to traveling to China, one of the volumes was included in the syllabus of things to read as preparation for the trip. This seemed a joke initially, since the rest of the reading material consisted of scholarly articles about Chinese history and it was hard to see what Flashman was doing in this august company. The series is based on the dastardly schoolboy Harry Flashman, a character in Thomas Hughes’ “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”, a mid-nineteenth century novel. Fraser, a historian, introduces Flashman in his subsequent career as army officer and general cad who partakes in and witnesses events causing havoc in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Flashman roams the world and gets to the American West, India, Afghanistan, Germany, Madagascar – everywhere. The reason the “Chinese” volume was included in the list of books is that while hilariously funny and tongue-in-cheek, Flashman’s adventures in all the diverse parts of the British Empire are historically correct. After the extremely entertaining and informative “Chinese” volume I decided to read the others, all equally amusing, equally informative. One does not need to read them in sequence, each book is a unique adventure; and yet, if read chronologically, a slow, almost imperceptible change occurs in the outrageous Flashman character and at the end, yet again, one feels as if parting with, if not a friend, at least a phenomenally entertaining acquaintance.
Wonderful times await you with Anthony Trollope’s “Palliser” books, John Galsworthy’s “Forsythe Saga”, Lawrence Durell’s “Alexandria Quartet”. For the young, or young at heart there is Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”, “Harry Potter”, Philipp Pullman’s “His Dark Materials”, Dorothy Dunnet’s “The Lymond Chronicles”. The list is goes on.
At present among the as yet unfinished multivolumes missing the third and final one, Hilary Mantel’s “Cromwell” books promise to join the greats. George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Fire and Ice” hangs in the balance at the moment: it is so vast, its plot is so complicated that with two more volumes still to come (completing the planned seven), all will depend on whether it can arrive at a satisfactory ending. If it does, I believe it will be part of the great fantasy books rivaling Tolkien; if not, possibly a great disappointment. Keeping fingers crossed.
Rating books in the world of Amazon
How does one rate a book nowadays? How do you compare the great classics to currently published books, many receiving the maximum five stars from the reading public? How to compare Shakespeare to Arthur Miller? Mozart to Gershwin? Does each rate “five stars” or does true genius fall outside the rating system? Does the system based on five stars adequately express degrees of greatness? Or, for that matter, does awarding five stars to Arthur Miller differentiate him sufficiently from, say, Lanford Wilson with three?
I’ve been wondering about this for some time, looking at ratings of both current and classic books. I am talking of reader ratings; the professional reviewers have space and scope enough to explicate their opinion and the very good ones will consider the book under their scrutiny and put it into its proper place in the universe. But in this brave new world where everyone is a critic and has an opportunity, nay, even a “duty” to express an opinion, the distinctions between the great, the good and the indifferent have eroded irreparably.
What brought this to an even sharper focus for me recently was reading Mary Renault’s two books on the Theseus legend, “The King Must Die” and “The Bull From The Sea”. I read them many years ago; they are wonderful books, they stand the test of time and live up to a very high ambition. They transform a legend not only into a lived-in world described in minute detail, but make the phantasmagorical ancient Greek legends come alive in very human terms, the motivations and passions of the era vividly real. The bull ring in Knossos, the abandonment of Ariadne on Naxos, the love of Theseus for the Amazon queen Hyppolita, the irrational passion of Phaedra for her stepson and the tragic consequences that follow are all there, wrenchingly real and yet larger than life. One can well imagine how the legends were born.
And yet. If I award five stars to these books, as I must when I compare them to many others that either lack their ambition or have overweening ambition utterly unfulfilled, then how do I rate Thomas Mann’s “Joseph and His Brothers”? There are hardly enough stars in the firmament to express the greatness of the latter. These four volumes are so far above everything that has ever been attempted in this genre – that of fictionally recreating a legendary-historical world – that awarding them five stars would strike me as ridiculously inadequate. Reading them you are not simply reading a good book; you are enveloped in a parallel world, working for seven hard years with Jacob to obtain Rachel; and then seven again after the trick played on him and receiving Leah instead; the birth of Joseph, the beloved one of all Jacob’s children and the heartrending loss of him; Joseph’s travails in Egypt, in a world described as all too recognizable to us; his role in the household of Potiphar, the tragic passion of Potiphar’s wife that sends Joseph first to the lower depths only to emerge to the heights of power at the right hand of the Pharaoh. You live with them and await excitedly the next development; for the most amazing fact about the Joseph books is that for all its philosophical concepts – the nature of time, the hubris of parental exceptionalism, the destructiveness of irrational passion, the role of chance in human life – it is a page-turner: one can’t wait to find out what happens next, right up to the final chapters that bring the preceding thousands of pages to a deeply satisfying conclusion.
So. What does Mary Renault get? What do Robert Graves’ “I, Claudius”, “Claudius the God” and “Hercules, My Shipmate” get? Indubitably, five stars, if I were to rate them on the various websites. These are wonderful writers, memorable books. But there must be a category above the ordinary where such ratings don’t count, lose all their meaning for one is dealing with universal genius.
I’ve been wondering about this for some time, looking at ratings of both current and classic books. I am talking of reader ratings; the professional reviewers have space and scope enough to explicate their opinion and the very good ones will consider the book under their scrutiny and put it into its proper place in the universe. But in this brave new world where everyone is a critic and has an opportunity, nay, even a “duty” to express an opinion, the distinctions between the great, the good and the indifferent have eroded irreparably.
What brought this to an even sharper focus for me recently was reading Mary Renault’s two books on the Theseus legend, “The King Must Die” and “The Bull From The Sea”. I read them many years ago; they are wonderful books, they stand the test of time and live up to a very high ambition. They transform a legend not only into a lived-in world described in minute detail, but make the phantasmagorical ancient Greek legends come alive in very human terms, the motivations and passions of the era vividly real. The bull ring in Knossos, the abandonment of Ariadne on Naxos, the love of Theseus for the Amazon queen Hyppolita, the irrational passion of Phaedra for her stepson and the tragic consequences that follow are all there, wrenchingly real and yet larger than life. One can well imagine how the legends were born.
And yet. If I award five stars to these books, as I must when I compare them to many others that either lack their ambition or have overweening ambition utterly unfulfilled, then how do I rate Thomas Mann’s “Joseph and His Brothers”? There are hardly enough stars in the firmament to express the greatness of the latter. These four volumes are so far above everything that has ever been attempted in this genre – that of fictionally recreating a legendary-historical world – that awarding them five stars would strike me as ridiculously inadequate. Reading them you are not simply reading a good book; you are enveloped in a parallel world, working for seven hard years with Jacob to obtain Rachel; and then seven again after the trick played on him and receiving Leah instead; the birth of Joseph, the beloved one of all Jacob’s children and the heartrending loss of him; Joseph’s travails in Egypt, in a world described as all too recognizable to us; his role in the household of Potiphar, the tragic passion of Potiphar’s wife that sends Joseph first to the lower depths only to emerge to the heights of power at the right hand of the Pharaoh. You live with them and await excitedly the next development; for the most amazing fact about the Joseph books is that for all its philosophical concepts – the nature of time, the hubris of parental exceptionalism, the destructiveness of irrational passion, the role of chance in human life – it is a page-turner: one can’t wait to find out what happens next, right up to the final chapters that bring the preceding thousands of pages to a deeply satisfying conclusion.
So. What does Mary Renault get? What do Robert Graves’ “I, Claudius”, “Claudius the God” and “Hercules, My Shipmate” get? Indubitably, five stars, if I were to rate them on the various websites. These are wonderful writers, memorable books. But there must be a category above the ordinary where such ratings don’t count, lose all their meaning for one is dealing with universal genius.
