The Build-Up

The Stecher Trilogy #3

by William Carlos Williams

The Build-up , Volume 3 of the Stecher Trilogy , picks up the thread of White Mule and In the Money . Although all of the novels deal with the triumphant rise of an immigrant family in the early 1900s, The Build-up is more concerned with the overwhelming drive and ambition of Joe Stecher's wife, Gurlie. After years of hard work, careful planning (and his wife's badgering) Joe's printing business is providing his family with a comfortable income. As soon as her financial goal is realized, Gurlie focuses her attention on another area. Her phenomenal energy is soon earning her all unassailable position as a social leader in a small New Jersey suburb. Her achievement is not without its heartache, however. This story is told with all the gentle humor and exacting detail that mark Williams's prose works.

Genres: Fiction

338 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine. Williams "worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician," wrote biographer Linda Wagner-Martin. During his long lifetime, Williams excelled both as a poet and a physician.

Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, poems, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations, and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in New York City with friends—writers and artists like the avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. He became involved in the Imagist movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Later in his life, Williams toured the United States giving poetry readings and lectures.

In May 1963, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962) and the Gold Medal for Poetry of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Poetry Society of America continues to honor William Carlos Williams by presenting an annual award in his name for the best book of poetry published by a small, non-profit or university press.

Williams' house in Rutherford is now on the National Register of Historic Places. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2009.

Reviews

[Mariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

After her friend left and waved good-bye to her as she ran off down the street, Flossie stood at the window for a long time. As she looked, the rain began again to come down hard. It was like being at the bottom of the sea. One looked up through the water and- there was a green light. You could see the other fishes swimming around. Terrible ones, sometimes, with big eyes and long tails. Did you ever see a fish like a girl, with hair in twin braids? And one with blue eyes. Papa had read her the story of the princess who was a mermaid- in a book of fairy tales. The good fairy had promised her that she could walk.

Once upon a time Flossie would tell about once upon a time to the rag dolls she made for herself, all lined up in a line on the window. Do you remember when her uncle gave her the big doll just to see her grin her crooked grin? She never liked that doll. You couldn't play with it or it would break. Flossie grows up. She doesn't fight with her sister for precious alone time in the bathroom any longer. She isn't afraid of her mother anymore. Well, not as much. Flossie will always be a daddy's girl and she marries the man who was in love with her sister. When the doctor slash poet walks into the story (more like sits on a stoop) a part of me went "Oh fuck". I was afraid Williams would pull that stunt again like in White Mule when a doctor appears to makes a speech to espouse his views and the moral of the story. He didn't need to do that. It came a little close to it in In the Money when the doctor gives them the brochure about the life of a baby's first year in life, for that matter. I'm still a little crushed that went down that road, to be honest. He didn't need to. We were both too good for that sort of thing. The Build-Up is the third in the Stetcher trilogy. Part one White Mule and the sequel is In the Money. In the Money is the book. The heart of the series, the near perfection. It doesn't matter because I loved it like I lived it and knew them. It is all in that book.

Flossie is a daddy's girl and she grows up into a husband's girl. I lose Flossie when she she doesn't have to check the pulse again. Are you still living?

Williams doesn't tell what the characters look like until the third book. I didn't realize how much it meant to me that he allowed the look at them without it until it is skinny legs this, the beautiful head of blonde hair that, skinny legs, fit legs, beautiful little girl, she's not beautiful as she is, pretty, skinny, fit, skinny. I wonder why it was so important what the legs of the little girls looked like. It is important to them, something to grow into, and that was enough. When Flossie sees her Aunt always as "Fat Auntie" this I knew what they'd see. What does it look like when there's more than that? When I am told that Gurlie never listens to anyone that is when I know what she looks like. Their mother, Gurlie, has strong legs. Legs to stand on. She is proud of her body. She is unfavorably compared to other women a lot. Sometimes it is gently teasing, others disappointing. I knew what she looked like to him then.

Gurlie used to work until she found a husband to work for her. She hails from generations of over the seas in ships to plunder. I noticed in the books that they credit their personality to previous generations. They did the same in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! I can carve up bones with the fury of a hundred years scorned. Flossie feels comforted by these generational ties and grateful to not be bound by them. She says she does, sitting in the kitchen. One girl will look more like their German father, another will favor their Norwegian mother. It depends on who you are asking, though, which it is and which fairy land they remember. They will feel they belong more to another parent, or will to not be as seen by them. I don't know what America means to them. They grow up without me.

If White Mule was about the pain of being born, of having to be alive not belonging to anyone or anything, and herded past into a world that doesn't care about you. If In the Money was about being resilient. They could all be about the American dream. I have felt more and more that to be universal one has to be specific. It means more to share something personal about yourself, to let in the possibility of relating to another person. It isn't "I know you, I know how you feel" but "I could know you, I could feel what you feel". These books have the deeply personal and resonating life blood beating dreaming thinking bones. There are also times when a statement is made. Gurlie has pushed her husband Joe into a career to make them more money. Let's move again. No, not that house. That neighborhood. This life. They are immigrants and many people they know are immigrants. The series is set in the early 1900's when immigration laws in the USA were changing. I recall reading once that there was a stop gap some time around the first world war. It was easier if you had relatives who already lived there. Both the Norwegians and Germans moved as families (Joe has a missing brother). Immigrants were looking down on the latest refugees. Our dream, not yours. Gurlie will make a speech to her desired upper class friends about what it means to work and to hope for something better. We are no different, no better. Her husband has his doubts that Gurlie wants or values anything more than getting something for nothing. I didn't know Joe in The Build-Up. I see a man who wants to throw their ugly maid onto the streets. Gurlie won't let this happen and it was her insistence on hiring fellow immigrants and helping them assimilate into culture throughout the books that spoke to me about her than any pretty speech she makes. A hard woman, yes, and not a one dimensional one. I was continually impressed that Williams demonstrated Gurlie's pushing at the restrictions of society on her gender when she is angry with her husband any time (many times) someone tells her that she is lucky to have him, not good enough to have him. This ultimately meant a great deal more to me than the water girl Flossie grows up to be under her future husband's whims. There is no mistake the books favor of Flossie and I knew more when Gurlie is won over and when she resists to blanket they say this is right. That they read like an easy breezy aside (perhaps I Capture the Castle when Cassandra is proposed to by Simon who passionately loves her sister) disappointed me after the valuable intimacy of In the Money. Where do they go? I liked to see Joe through more than his pretty speeches about what American values and hard work meant to him. I suspect he scorned his less hardworking family than anything else, as Gurlie was afraid of her own family's poverty. None of them always walked the talk or talked the walk. But he seems to fade to the background and when he is left behind by the family for a six month sojourn to Europe I am hardly surprised. All of the trilogy are about reconciling you in a world that doesn't stop for you.

Eldest daugher Lottie doesn't want anyone to know what she is thinking. She doesn't think so much as know all of the time that her family doesn't really love her. They love her when Flossie asks their father if they should really send Lottie back to the music conservatory in Leipzig to get rid of her. That settles that, then. This is wrong, I say this is wrong about other books. I don't know how others can't see it is wrong. No one can possess you by knowing what you are thinking. There is so much inside of a head, inside a soul, that you cannot sacrifice by living as people to people. When Lottie is not present in the first two books I was saddened that she is passed by. Here she is precious more than a shallow teenage girl twit (with skinny legs). What happens to those who don't really belong to their family? Is the answer to find a man to follow as Flossie looked up to the men in her life? If they say they'll have you does that make you belong? I hope that wasn't why the series was quite more deeply involved with Flossie than anyone else. She was not the only person who had to survive on not enough love. I didn't love her more than I loved the others. The symbolic all people American dream doesn't work for me this way. They are not saved. They endure. That's what felt true to me, anyway.

(Side note, I was so confused about Lottie's age. In the second book she seems a toddler and Flossie an infant. She is five when Flossie is born in White Mule. She is three years older than the seven year old Flossie and then she is thirteen when Flossie is still seven. I'm not so sure about that.)

It hardly seems important when the coveted baby boy of White Mule is born. Paul isn't present much other than to be doled out Norwegian farms that will probably perish in World War II. He makes his parents happy and I can't see him at all. What is the dream to have a son all about? If he didn't have to make his way in the world alone what will be different for him than it was for the lonely girls? If Flossie hadn't so openly worshipped her father and agreed with all that he said would she have gone on to live life without love, as Lottie does? I didn't care if they were pretty. I never care if people are pretty and I care so much less if people in books are pretty. Why do little girls who aren't real have to be pretty for, anyway? Why was it so important that Flossie was appealing? What do you have to do to earn love? Do you have to say yes to Charlie the doctor slash poet who could will himself to love you? Or maybe kinda love you. Something like love. Well, something like human feeling. They were so damned happy to have a boy too. Not that shit again. It is so lonely that that is what matters in this life. Why do people have to fit some thing that other people want to be worthy of love? I missed when time wasn't move along. We go to Norway now. Two years pass and it is back from Germany. Another year and boys are interesting. Parties and parties and ten years of happy times. Back to Germany. Marriage, baby, a new house. A new house, a new house. I missed when time was slow and they were poor and if they didn't love each other they were specific and I knew them. I miss that. I don't like damned montages. I like the book but I liked it much, much less than the first two.

It was great when Gurlie finds those witty and undertones of nasty valentines poems to send to the neighbors she doesn't like. When she gets one about how her nose is always in the air she is so offended. The nerve! I liked stuff like that. I don't want to be told what they are like. Williams knew what to do and then he didn't always know he knew that he knew what to do it.

[Daniel Grenier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conclusion convaincante, quoique un peu éparpillée (mais c'est ce qui fait la beauté de l'écriture romanesque de Williams, avec ses sauts dans le temps et ses personnages secondaires qui passent soudain à l'avant-plan), à une trilogie que je suis très content d'avoir lue.

C'est grâce au hasard, et à quelqu'un qui a décidé, sur plusieurs mois, de se départir de ces ouvrages et de les placer dans la cabane à livres sur le chemin que j'emprunte chaque matin pour aller à la garderie. Je les ai tous trouvés les uns après les autres, au rythme de ma lecture:

Ah, tiens, White Mule, je le prends.

Ah, ben, v'là la suite, In the Money, je le prends.

Ben, là, le troisième tome, The Build-Up. Pas le choix. Je le prends.

Merci, donc, à cette personne qui a décidé que William Carlos Williams n'avait plus sa place dans sa bibliothèque. Il en a une dans la mienne.

[Mat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as strong as the two previous books in the Stecher trilogy, nonetheless Williams once again paints a powerful portrait of a Norwegian family's rise to success. In the previous book Joe Stecher managed to climb the ladder so to speak in order to get into the money, which he did and this book continues tracing his seemingly unstoppable ascent to the top but it is more about his wife Gurlie and her obsessive drive to expand their social circle and look for and buy or even build better and bigger houses for the family. This book reminded me of something my mother used to say, "behind every great man is a great woman" and without Gurlie, Joe certainly would not have gone as far as he did but at the same time she is such a control freak that it just drives everyone in the Stecher household nuts, including the reader who felt like a fly on the wall of William Carlos Williams' studio as he read this.

Now that the Stecher's financial success is fairly solid and they are 'on clover', Gurlie's relentless urge and thirst for more builds and builds (hence the title of the book) drawing everyone into a hysterical vortex in which she sweeps up everything in her path once she has her sights set on something. Now that she has got what she wants by turning her husband into success, she realises that it is not enough. She must become an influential member of the community.

I must say I had a sore spot for Lottie. She was easily my personal favourite in this trilogy. Oh Lottie. How similar our childhoods were in some ways. She was the frustrated artist whose efforts to be who she wanted to be were stifled by traditional, conservative family expectations and a basic denigration held towards artists, which is still, amazingly, quite prevalent even today in the 21st Century. But Lottie is a gifted pianist and it was just a matter of time before she went her own way.

So why the 3-star rating? Unlike the previous two books, this book veered off into too many directions I felt - which is not a problem per se, if done skilfully. I felt that either Williams was less focused while writing this or he was simply starting to run out of ideas or inspiration for the story. Not sure which but this book certainly felt like it was written just to give the Stechers some sort of closure. While in the previous two instalments, Williams managed to build this beautiful inner momentum through each book, that just made the reader feel at the conclusion of each chapter, 'just one more chapter! just one more chapter! then I'll go to bed', a certain 'pulse' of the book which you could almost feel if you put your fingers on the page (like you were feeling a wrist) , I felt that sorely lacking in this final book of the trilogy.

All things said, it is still very well written and I am coming to the conclusion that Williams is an absolutely brilliant prose writer, in fact he ranks up there in my top 5 easily.

I look forward to reading Voyage to Pagany (another novel of his), The Farmers' Daughters (a collection of short stories) but especially In The American Grain, which many say is Williams' best. Might just have to add it to my summer 2015 reading list.

[Siobhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as the first 2 in the Stecher Trilogy.