The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Source of book: I own this.

Some friends of ours invited my wife and me to join their book club, appropriately entitled the Literary Lush Book Club. Because food and adult beverages are also important to the experience. I previously read (but was unable to attend for) The Master and Margarita, and finally participated in the meeting for The Island of Dr. Moreau. While my music and camping schedule interfere with perfect attendance, I do hope to at least read most of the books this year. In general, they tend to pick books that I would not necessarily have read on my own. The Goldfinch is a good example of that.

The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2014. Honestly, I have always thought of the Pulitzer as something for journalism and non-fiction, and, while those categories are important, there are also prizes for fiction, poetry, drama, and music.

The basic setup of the book is this: 13 year old Theo is visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when a terrorist bomb explodes, killing his mother among others. A dying old man hands him a ring, and points to a small painting, The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius, which Theo puts in his backpack before finding his way out of the building through the rubble. From there, Theo lives briefly with a friend’s family, before his deadbeat dad and new girlfriend whisk him away to Vegas, where is is basically left to his own devices - and those of his new friend Boris, a Ukrainian immigrant who has traveled the world. The two boys get high and into trouble, unsurprisingly. Later, Theo’s dad gets drunk and dies in a car accident, and Theo finds his way back to New York, where he is raised by the business partner of the old man who gave him the ring. I’ll stop there, because there are plenty of crazy plot twists and developments that I would hate to give away.

 The Goldfinch by Frabritius. A pupil of Rembrandt, Fabritius was killed in the Explosion of Delft, when a gunpowder magazine blew, destroying most of the city - and most of Fabritius' paintings as well. A sad loss of artist and art.

In some ways, the book is a coming-of-age story with Theo as the protagonist. But in others, it is a tale of the painting itself. When the book ends, there are a number of questions involving Theo which are left unresolved, while the painting experiences a full resolution.

I would also describe the book as a bit of a modern day Dickens story, in the vein of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. In fact, the first half of the book is chock full of “easter eggs” that Dickens fans such as myself can discover. My wife pointed out the parallels between Pippa and Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop, although Pippa might also be compared to Emily in David Copperfield. There are also a number of references to Harry Potter, leading my wife to note that it looks like there is a generational divide there: from Gen Y onward, Potter will be similar to Shakespeare or Greek Mythology in that it will be a constant source of literary references that the reader will be expected to know. Which means I really need to read the Harry Potter books, apparently.

(I was 20 when the first Harry Potter book came out, so I was too old to read them at the intended age. By the time my kids were old enough, my wife read the books to them, so I just never ended up reading them. That is in addition to the fact that they were considered evil by the Fundie subculture my family was in, so I might have missed them back then. Even now, I think my kids’ love for the books freaks my mom out. Sigh.)

I do have to mention one more allusion which I thought was a nice touch. In order to return the ring, Theo has to find a certain address, and ring a green doorbell. I cannot but conclude that Tartt has given a nod to O Henry, and his delightful tale of adventure and coincidence, “The Green Door,” where a random advertisement leads to unexpected happenings. (That story is one of my favorites by O Henry - and I have read them all.)

Donna Tartt does write well, with many singularly beautiful and evocative descriptions. The book is quite long (962 pages in the paperback edition), but not long in the same way as, say, Tolstoy or Trollope. It does get a bit bogged down occasionally, particularly in the last 100 pages where it waxes philosophical. However, much of it flies by quickly, and few if any details are wasted. In fact, when I reached the end, I was surprised how many early details turned out to be important for either the plot or the character development. Tartt took her time with this book, and as a result, the book feels tightly written.

One of the choices that was interesting was the way that Tartt kept circling back to certain ideas and topics, which I believe to be tied to Theo’s PTSD and resulting obsession with his trauma. He keeps returning to the same thoughts, even as he wishes to move on, and thus Tartt brings us along with him in his spiraling inner life.

I think Tartt was really perceptive in her description of the various professionals tasked with making sure Theo is okay after the bombing. The vast majority of the adults seem rather clueless, and unfortunately, this is all too realistic. (One area I work in is in the Juvenile court system, on cases where children are removed from the custody of their parents due to abuse or neglect. There are lots of well meaning people, but all too often, the things done resemble, as Theo puts it, reading from the “checklist of Things to Say to Troubled Kids.”) What Theo needs more than anything (and that he gets from Hobie) is someone to talk normally with him, and just be a friend. I understand the need (and benefit) of professional help, and so on, but I think this is often an overlooked and underprovided need.

Looking back on my notes, I also jotted down an exchange between Boris (the Artful Dodger of the book) and Theo regarding Boris’ dad.

“He feels bad for leaving me so much alone. He knows is a holiday coming up, and he asked if I could stay at your house.”

“Well, you do all the time anyway.”

“He knows that. That’s why he thanked you. But - I hope you don’t mind - I gave him your wrong address.”

“Why?”

Because - I think maybe you don’t want him rolling up drunk at your house in the middle of the night.” 

Boris’ dad is just one of the picaresque underworldish characters that come into this book. There is a funny line about Horst, the stolen artwork dealer, who keeps chickens in his posh house in Miami - to shoot at. As Boris queries, “What kind of crazy thing is this for these people to keep chickens in Miami?” We might all ask that question.

Another line that made me smile was the term that Theo uses for his fiance Kitsey’s godmother, who swoops in to take over their wedding plans. “Wedding Obergruppenführer.” Yep, that was an official Nazi rank in the SS. And yes, it applies to certain sorts I am rather familiar with from my days playing weddings in a string quartet. (I still do occasionally, but less since having kids.)

There is also a fun scene in Amsterdam - although it could have taken place anywhere, honestly. Those of us who live in California certainly are aware of the little hole-in-the-wall hipster health food restaurant. One is spoofed here - although they really tend to self-parody.

“Food is so awful,” said Boris. “Sprouts and some hard old wheat toast. You would think hot girls go there, but is just old grey-haired women and fat.”

One final line caught my eye. Theo and Boris are having a bit of a philosophical discussion near the end, about the role of fate and/or providence in our lives, and the way seemingly bad things can have unexpected and unintended consequences, some of which are positive.

Theo counters Boris’ optimistic view:

“I believe this goes more to the idea of ‘relentless irony’ than ‘divine providence.’”

“Yes - but why give it a name? Can’t they both be the same thing?”

I’m kind of with Boris on this one.

The Goldfinch is an interesting book. It’s a compelling read, with an interesting story and good writing. It is a bit sordid in a way, with a lot of drug use, some language and violence, but an intentional minimum of sex. Theo pushes away intimacy of all kinds as part of his damaged psyche, and this is part of how the sexuality works. Things are always mentioned obliquely, whether it is his series of non-serious girlfriends as an adult, or what probably took place with Boris when they were teens. Like his trauma, Theo doesn’t want to go there or admit what he feels. But that is part of the point of this book. Theo is damaged, but you still root for him. He makes horrible decisions, but you still want it to come out okay. He will never be who you hope he could be, but he is still human and interesting.

I was not aware of this book before it was nominated as an option for our club, but I am glad I read it. It is definitely worth reading. As with many literary novels, be sure to stay with it for a while, as the slower first pages are there to set the stage. As one of our members memorably put it, he waits to decide if he is going to finish a book until he can see that it is transitioning from the first act to the second. By that point, one knows enough to evaluate whether the book will be worth finishing. I tend to agree with that. (With the caveat that a few “books” are so dreadfully written that you can discard them within a few pages just because of authorial incompetence. But most of those aren’t the sort I would be interested in in the first place.) Once it gets going, The Goldfinch is a combination of thoughtful literary fiction, and fast-paced adventure. Enjoy the action, but savor the lovely and evocative writing, and the thoughtful deeper ideas.

We discussed a lot more than this at book club, but that is a bit beyond the scope of this review. While long, this book did spark a very interesting series of discussions, and it was fun to see what everyone brought to the table.

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

Source of book: I own this, but acquired it after the review was written.
Date originally posted to Facebook: April 14, 2011



***

The full title of this book is The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman – perhaps the worst misnaming of a book ever. The book contains very little of Tristram’s life, and almost none of his opinions, despite Tristram’s best efforts.

Tristram Shandy is rightly considered the first successful modern experimental novel. It contains many of the common devices used regularly by James Joyce and other modernists, including stream of consciousness, a non-linear narrative, seemingly irrelevant digressions, argument between the reader and the narrator, use of blank chapters and similar visual devices, and the use of quotes from other works inserted so as to alter the meaning of the originals. This would seem unremarkable for a novel written after Joyce’s Ulysses. Incredibly, Tristram predates that “revolutionary” work by no less than 150 years. Indeed, it predates what we think of as the golden age of the novel, and perhaps “pre-breaks” rules of writing that were not at that time fully established.

The charms of this book, fortunately, are not merely those of technique. Sterne creates a cast of memorable had endearing characters that are recognizable even in our modern times.

Who was Laurence Sterne? An Irish born clergyman who lived and worked in Yorkshire, published a number of political articles and many sermons before being persuaded to write fiction, and died of consumption after years of ill health. To a certain degree, Sterne is a character in his own book; rather two characters. Tristram Shandy himself, the narrator of the story, is one; and Yorick, the parson is the other. Yorick gets to voice Sterne’s most sarcastic side, while Tristram shares Sterne’s race against death to tell his story.

Thus, Tristram is a comedy that borders on tragedy. The feeling of time slipping away pervades the book, and it really ends before it is finished. Sterne wrote it as a series of publications before it was truly collected in book form. It is likely Sterne never knew how to end it, so he just ended where he did.

In contrast to the Victorian era novel, Sterne indulged a somewhat bawdy sense of humor throughout the book. I was struck both by the fact that he got away with this despite being a clergyman, and also by the fact that bawdy humor is much more funny when it is not explicit.

Notwithstanding the title, the book is really the story of Tristram’s father, Walter Shandy, and Tristram’s Uncle Toby. The secondary characters of Trim, Toby’s servant and onetime subordinate in the army; Dr. Slop, the physician; Mrs. Wadman, the widow out to catch Uncle Toby; and assorted servants and other denizens of the village also make up an important part of the book.

Walter Shandy is a bit too well educated for his own good. He is fond of his own voice, and even fonder of his pet theories. As the narrator puts it, “My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothosis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did…” In every time of stress, such as the sudden death of Tristram’s brother, he resorts to high flown language and rhetoric, taking out of context quotes from the great thinkers of the past. No topic was too petty to argue about, and no untenable position too outrageous to defend on principle. Walter Shandy perhaps missed his calling, as he would have made an amusing, if not particularly skilled lawyer.

Walter Shandy’s theories lead him to believe that poor Tristram is doomed to a sad life based on the accidents that occur between his conception and his adulthood. I refuse to spoil the fun these incidents cause by describing them here, but suffice it to say that Sterne discusses clocks, obstetrical theory, numerology, and accidental circumcisions.

In contrast, Toby is non-confrontational to a fault, and withdraws at the slightest hint of an argument to whistling the tune “Lillibullaro”, a satirical ballad set to the music of Henry Purcell. Toby was injured “in the groin” during a battle, and he and his loyal servant Trim (also wounded in battle) spend their time staging elaborate sieges in their garden, recreating each battle of the ongoing war in detail. This “hobby-horse” of Toby’s is a common thread in many of the events that ensue. 

The Lillibullaro

Tristram, as the narrator, attempts to start with his birth, but finds his story keeps going backwards as he fills in the information he deems necessary to explain the circumstances. Thus, he goes from the birth to the conception to the past history of characters in the parish, and so on. Tristram is not born until a solid one-third of the way through the book, and we hear little about him after that. He is involved in a childhood event, and he later appears in a mad dash across France as he runs from death. This adult episode appears where least expected, and offers an example of Sterne’s skill in stream of consciousness writing. While never writing what he wants to write, Tristram finds himself having to explain his digressions to an imaginary and somewhat hostile reader, assumed to be female. The conversation begins as a formal apology near the beginning of the book, and becomes more and more familiar and heated as the book progresses.

Some particular lines and passages stood out to me as warranting special mention. First is the section in which Dr. Slop, arrived to deliver Tristram, is unable to untie the cords fastening his bag. His attempts to cut them with a penknife lead to a bloody result and the use of colorful language. Walter Shandy, quick with his advice, jumps in with his advice regarding effective swearing. He grabs from his library a book containing a document written by Ernulphus the Bishop (actually a Catholic excommunication), stating,

“I have the greatest veneration in the world for that gentleman, who, in distrust of his own discretion in this point, sat down and composed (that is at his leisure) fit forms of swearing suitable to all cases, from the lowest to the highest provocations which could possibly happen to him,—which forms being well consider’d by him, and such moreover as he could stand to, he kept them ever by him on the chimney piece, within his reach, ready for use.”

The reading of the various curses thus transported from serious judgment of eternal damnation to the mundane business of pain-induced ejaculation is skillfully done – one of several examples of the “repurposing” of other works.

I was also fond of the scene in which the widow Mrs. Wadman is attempting to catch Uncle Toby, and the narrator speculates on the danger of a woman viewing a man in her own dwelling:

“There is nothing in it out of doors and in broad day-light, where a woman

has a power, physically speaking, of viewing a man in more lights than one --but here, for her soul, she can see him in no light without mixing something of her own goods and chattels along withhim ---- till by reiterated acts of such combinations, he gets foisted into her in-

ventory...”

Finally, I will mention a joke likely to be appreciated by lawyers and law students. In order to aid himself and Uncle Toby in their latest battle reenactment, Trim has converted a pair of Walter’s old jack-boots into toy mortars. Walter is mortified: “…they were our great-grandfather’s, brother Toby, -- they were hereditary.” “Then I fear, quoth my uncle Toby, Trim has cut off the entail.—“

 Illustration by the inimitable George Cruikshank

I enjoyed this book thoroughly both for its originality and its memorable characters. Like many of its original readers, I was disappointed that the story came to an end. Give this book a try, and give it the due credit for being far ahead of its time.

The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett

Source of book: An e-book read on three different devices over the last two years. (Palm PDA, Kindle, and Android tablet.) This has been my “read while waiting in court” book.

Eighteenth Century pulp fiction? That might be one way to describe this book. Technically, it is a “Picaresque Novel”. The term comes from a Spanish genre about a picaro, a rogue or rascal. Originally, such a book would be about a low-born person who survives by his wit. Tom Jones would be an English example of the form. Smollett chose to use a higher-born protagonist, and turned his talents toward the satire of society.

Peregrine “Perry” Pickle is rejected by his rather nutty mother, ignored by his weak and diffident father, and is raised by his father’s friend, Hawser Trunnion, a retired naval commodore. Pickle grows up, is educated at Oxford, travels to France, squanders his fortune in debauchery and financial missteps, but is finally redeemed by his suffering and his marriage to the lovely Emilia.

As noted above, this has been a long term project. Since I first purchased a PDA back when they were actually popular, I have kept an e-book or two available for those inevitable times spent waiting in court. This book is pretty long, so it has taken me a while.

There were some strong and some weak points to this book. As I noted in my review of Tristram Shandy, a book which was written around the same time, it was popular to have extended stories within the stories. Unfortunately, these stories are often uninteresting compared to the main work. (In Tristram, the Slawkenbergius tale, which is apparently about church corruption in that time. In Pickle, The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, which is tedious and repetitive at best.) In general, Smollett tends to have a repetitive quality, wherein the same basic themes and events recur, with only minor variations.

There are some great characters (or at least caricatures) in this book, however. Trunnion and his former shipmates Hatchway and Pipes are amusing. I had no idea how many nautical metaphors were possible, but these characters do their best to use them all.

The misanthrope Cadwallader has his moments as well, being the more “modern” voice in the novel, after a fashion.

As a picaro, Pickle must of course indulge in practical jokes. Some of these are better than others. The scenes where he has Cadwallader pretend to be a fortune teller are amusing, and as applicable to twenty-first century credulity as to that of earlier times. Some of the other jokes seem more cruel than amusing. 

 Cadwallader Assumes the Character of a Fortune Teller, c.1805

Thomas Rowlandson

Also part of the genre is the travelogue. As in Tristram, the protagonist travels to France, in the manner of young gentlemen of that era. While Sterne elevates this convention to a poignant metaphor for the brevity of life, Smollett focuses instead on Pickle’s unsuccessful attempts to get laid. He is prevented by an ever increasing absurdity of circumstance. This is funny, for the first few times, but it eventually seems repetitive.

Although this book is historically interesting, it is not the best of its kind. Tristram Shandy is much better, both in its characterization and in its depth of writing.

A word of warning to those who are scandalized by bawdy writing: The Victorian Era was a reaction to the previous century, which contained sexual humor, loose morals, and a certain ribald use of language. There are even fart jokes, although they are told by the Belgians. This is not to say that there are graphic descriptions. In our modern times, we have become more explicit, and as a result, far less amusing.

In all, an alternately interesting and tedious book, with just enough good to keep me reading on through the mediocre.