Emmeline’s Comments (group member since May 22, 2019)

Emmeline’s comments from the NYRB Classics group.

I'm enjoying so far. Comyns has a tone that shouldn't work for me, as it's a bit quirky, but so far (in two other books and now this one) it does for some reason.

WndyJW wrote: "I bought every Comyn book a few years ago and somehow lost my copy of Skin Chairs. I’m so bummed because I know I wouldn’t loan it to anyone or include it in a book pruning."

Perhaps it will show up. I just found a book I had lost inside my sofa bed!

I can also see how Comyns could be a marmite author. I've read two and liked them, but they often walked a fine line between my liking and hating them.

Sam wrote: "I nominate Driver by Mattia Filice. This is just released from NYRB. 368pp but should read faster being a mix of poetry and prose.

A bracing novel of hybrid pr..."

I'm definitely up for Driver, as you know.

To vary things a bit, I'll nominate The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns, which I think is tangentially related to Cinderella or Ashputtel. If it's anything like the other Comyns books I've read, it will be stylishly written (I've described her style before as "darkly bucolic" and I would also call it light, slightly grotesque, rather beautiful, sad under the surface. Which I think could counteract the excesses of Christmas quite nicely! It's also quite short.

*edited to add, it's related to the Grimms' "The Juniper Tree," not Ashputtel, although I do always mix those two up.

Sam wrote: "Emmeline wrote: "This unfortunately didn't work for me either. Partly for reasons that really only relate to me. I strongly dislike books about writers... I have often thought that one of the reaso..."

Honestly Sam, I've read this comment three times now and it's a lovely example of suddenly being thrown into an alternate reality. I mean, I still have my preferences, but I love your quilt.

But back to the book... I thought it made so many strange choices, especially the length of the realist section compared to the perfunctory nature of the eerie or speculative section.

I shared Wendy's feeling that the scene of the MC first seeing the painting made little sense. So she sees a painting that is a mountain but also a naked woman in ecstasy and concludes:

a) that there is something deeply wrong and revealing about the naked figure (she herself goes into the history of the nude so for me this was unsatisfactory and yes, a trifle prudish)
b) that it is the artist herself depicted because "she wouldn't do that to another woman," (makes no sense; artist presumably didn't think this picture was "wrong," also, artists do lots of bad things to other people.)
c) that the men she was with were suddenly fearsome in some regard. ??? Her old friend and a man in his '90s are a sexual threat because some woman drew herself naked?

I could have bought into this (the wrongness, the threat) if it had gone somewhere... but it doesn't. I didn't even really find much of a link between sexuality and the rest of the plot. Yes, it appears that sex rips the fabric between one reality and another... but is it sex or the island? Because Willy Logan and Helen have had sex before.

I'm not sure if knowing more about Circe would reveal all this to me (men are pigs? But which men... certainly not the ones in this novel, with a possible question mark by Willy).

In this context, I find putting Virginia Woolf in the book gratuitous in the extreme. And also boring. Find someone less expected!

This unfortunately didn't work for me either. Partly for reasons that really only relate to me. I strongly dislike books about writers... I have often thought that one of the reasons literature is losing relevance in the world is because it becomes ever more insular, speaking to a particularly narrow middle class experience, and increasingly not just middle class, but middle class creative. For similar reasons I tend to dislike novels about artists. And I have a particular bugbear about fictional narratives that feature real people doing things they obviously didn't do with ficitional people

So a lot of this is particular to me, but god did this book annoy me.

I'm only 30 pages in but I'm with Wendy so far. It doesn't help that it's so far about a writer and her agent (not a fan) nor that even this part is full of nonsense: "a biography of an unknown woman written by someone whose other books weren't big sellers? I can sell that easily," insinuates Selwyn. "Look at these cute little freestanding houses in Edinburgh. I could probably afford one even though I'm avowedly poor," thinks the narrator later.

I'm going to start this tonight.

Sarah wrote: "I'm reading The Fox in the Attic but in a non-NYRB edition. Does that count!?"

Yes! I'm always horrifying Wendy by reading another edition (to be fair it's usually a bad choice!). I haven't read The Fox in the Attic but I see it's by the author of A High Wind in Jamaica, which is the first NYRB book I ever had, found in a second hand bookshop, and an instant 5-stars, so I'm curious.

Sarah wrote: "hey! i see you're in barcelona -- so am I. You can borrow my copy if you'd like.."

What?! Really? We should have an in-person book chat! (Sorry if that's forward; I will DM like a normal person).

Sarah wrote: "Emmeline wrote: "I wasn't planning to join, just because of book-buying limits and time, but how big a deal is the doll dream here? I am also specifically reading books with/about dolls."

I think ..."

Thanks Sarah. I'll mull over for a day or two, but may need to join you all after all (damn it!). The cost is one thing, but the space is my real source of angst... I must clear some shelf room!

I wasn't planning to join, just because of book-buying limits and time, but how big a deal is the doll dream here? I am also specifically reading books with/about dolls.

Family stories (does it get broader than that?)

Also, in terms of being so well written, I would push back a bit. It's a good novel on a sentence level, and there were some lovely moments at the beginning in particular--describing the parents and Stoner's first moment discovering Shakespeare.

But there are also some failings in my view. Stoner's connection to literature is never really shown again. Potential moments of drama are not made the most of (i.e. the death of Edith's father--the family is left poor or they're not?). There is a distinct lack of believable engagement with domestic life (i.e. the actual nuts and bolts of looking after a baby... they don't tend to sit quietly in an upstairs room until you come home from work to cook dinner).

Interestingly, based on the correspondence, it was Williams's (female) agent who asked him to add more interiority to Edith. He writes back essentially saying he's fixed that, and read over the second half but couldn't find anything else that needed fixing. Sigh.

I agree with you, that it is enough for a well-written novel to present reality as what it is, not requiring characters to be sympathetic.

I think there are a few things adding to my irritation here. First, the rapturous reception of this book. This is of course not the book's fault, but it does make me wonder and despair.

Then there is the author's own belief that he is writing a heroic character. My copy of the book is an anniversary edition that includes Williams's letters with his agent. He describes Stoner as "a kind of a saint!"

Earlier last week I read Long Island, a book I didn't have strong expectations about, but I am struck by how much better and more humane it was. There are moments when you the reader start hating various characters... because they get in the way of the desires of other characters. But Toibín always gives each person their full humanity, and he constantly expands his view to include others' hopes and dreams, complicating the issue. I think this is why I was so incensed with Williams's easy smugness.

Well yes, my complaints are more about content than writing also.

First it's fair to say I've been unenthused to read this for years, despite all the rave (and I mean ALL RAVE) reviews. But I was expecting it to be good and worthy, just perhaps a little dull. And this is how I felt about the first quarter to first third.

And this is where the content woes come in. First, I felt the depiction of Stoner's wife was quite manipulative. Although there is some effort made to explain her past and how she ended up how she is (the definition of damaged goods), this is all dealt with in a chapter or two, and from then on we are encouraged to empathize with Stoner in his loveless marriage--rather than perhaps blame him for pursuing a woman with "basket case" written all over her. Around the halfway point I thought I would like to read the book from Edith's point of view.

My problem with Edith paled in comparison with my reaction to the middle section, where Stoner does his best to have a young disabled graduate student failed for being a bit mediocre. Stoner himself is a bit mediocre, we are told repeatedly, but clearly the hallowed halls of academia should not be polluted by mediocre and disabled people. Indeed, Stoner would rather torpedo his entire career than concede a point. Which conveniently excuses why he has such a lacklustre and mediocre career... it isn't that he doesn't do anything, it's that he's been punished by a woke mob. Honestly, reading this in 2025, I couldn't help but feel that Stoner today would be aligned with certain figures we've all been observing in recent days...

In theory I'm not against passive protagonists, but Stoner takes passivity to an art form. Nothing is ever his fault, and he can't be motivated to save himself, or even to save his daughter. (view spoiler)[When she starts torpedoing her own life through passivity, then turns to alcoholism, he reflects that "he's glad at least she can drink!" (hide spoiler)]

Other people suffer for Stoner's passivity, and actually Stoner himself suffers very little because he can't be motivated to care. Instead it's his wife, daughter, and even his mistress who are inconvenienced. All this would be fine in a novel, if it weren't clear that the author wishes to set Stoner up as a heroic figure.

Just finished. I know this is a near-universally beloved book. so I'll just get straight to it. I hated it.

I'm about a third into this. Very nicely written, and I'm starting to get into it. Sometimes it's hard to read something so universally loved and treat it fairly.

Jayne wrote: "Hi! I am a big fan of the NYRB classics and I have set myself the goal of always-be-reading-one. I had a subscription for a year, but they were piling up unread and I'm not letting myself renew it ..."

Nice ones, Jayne. I tried to read Anniversaries a little at a time a few years ago and sadly gave up. Which isn't to be discouraging! I just struggle with big episodic books.

Recently, apart from our Mavis Gallant group read, I've been reading The White Bear. My favourite Canadian bookseller picked it out for me (well, he picked out the same author's A Fortunate Man but that was another 800-page chunkster and I put my foot down. I've got a bit of a summer deal with my bookseller and let him choose one of my August reads each year. Last year it was the incredible The Lost Steps.

I have only read three of the stories this summer, but I was taking my time on purpose because it is clear I need to savour these stories a little at a time.

The most recent one I read was "The Latehomecomer," and it made me think about Gallant's strengths, and her remove from us, reading in the 21st century, and whether it's that remove that makes her challenging or something else.

The Latehomecomer felt like a very foreign story to me. It was difficult for me to imagine how Gallant, a Canadian living in France, could get into the head of a young German man who has lived out the war as a prisoner and now returns several years too late to a destroyed Berlin. I was honestly curious as to how she even thought of writing a story about this. I think it's one of Gallant's strengths, that she really inhabits foreign consciousnesses in a way that feels less-done-now. And to me it feels like she inhabits these consciousnesses authentically, or at least plausibly. The issues and concerns of this protagonist, and his mother, feel very removed from the things I worry about, I who have not had to live through a world war, been on the losing side, had to consider whether my past actions and beliefs are wiped clean, if my father who was a traitor is now a hero or not... the idea that every day they walk to the street over the tomb of the ex-wife is just chilling, and as a detail I feel it must have been based on something real. It makes me want to read a biography of Gallant, to know what kind of life she actually led, to get all these insights.

In a way, nothing about "The Latehomecomer" feels of the current day (though who knows, the way things are going). It isn't like some classic stories (i.e. John Cheever's "The Swimmer") that are kind of "evergreen" in their describing of timeless problems. The Latehomecomer is incredibly specific, very much about one moment, and not a common moment, I can't believe it was common to get home four years late due to bureaucratic blunders. Yet despite having seemingly very little relevance to my own life, I was transfixed.