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Samuel Beckett selected critcism

November 7, 2009 by Roy Johnson

The biography of Beckett by Deirdre Bair [Samuel Beckett, 1975], while not having any particular critical pretensions itself, is a very useful adjunct to this list of Samuel Beckett criticism, containing as it does not only the background, context, composition and publishing details of the work but also a good deal of miscellaneous comment and anecdote from Beckett himself and his friends, in the form of interviews and correspondence. Enoch Brater’s Why Beckett (1989) takes the form of a pictorial biography, with over a hundred (often excellent) black-and-white photographs. There are some good points (and quotes) in the succinct text, too.

These biographical works have now been superseded by James Knowlson’s Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (1996), a work of great insight as well as scholarship by someone who was close to Beckett in his last years.

It is inevitably the case that Beckett features, often centrally, in many works on twentieth-century fiction and drama, where his place as an innovator and explorer of extremes is recognized. The Irish context of his work is also receiving more attention than formerly. See for example Beckett: The Irish Dimension by Mary Junker (1995), and the excellent short accounts of Beckett’s work given in Richard Kearney’s Transitions …, Robert Welch’s Changing States: Transformations in Modern Irish Writing (1993), and Declan Kiberd’s Inventing Ireland (1996).

[Works are listed here in chronological order.]

Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, New York: Doubleday, 1961.

Ruby Cohn, Samuel Beckett: The Comic Gamut, New Brunswick (NJ): Rutgers University Press, 1962.

Frederick J Hoffman, Samuel Beckett: The Language of Self, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1962.

Martin Esslin (ed), Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs (NJ): Prentice-Hall, 1965.

John Fletcher, The Novels of Samuel Beckett, London: Chatto and Windus, 1964.

Raymond Federman, Journey to Chaos: Samuel beckett’s Early Fiction, Berkley (CA): University of California Press, 1965.

The Complete Critical Guide to Samuel Beckett is a good introduction to the man and the writer. Includes a potted biography of Beckett, an outline of the stories, novels, plays, and poetry, and pointers towards the main critical writings – from the 1960s to critics of the present day. Also includes a thorough bibliography which covers biography, criticism in books and articles, plus pointers towards specialist journals. Buy the book here

John Fletcher, Samuel Beckett’s Art, London: Chatto and Windus, 1967.

Ruby Cohn, A Casebook on ‘Waiting for Godot’, New York: Grove Press, 1967.

Ronald Hayman, Samuel Beckett, London: Heinemann, 1968.

Michael Robinson, The Long Sonata of the Dead: A study of Samuel Beckett, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1970.

Raymond Federman and John Fletcher, Samuel Beckett: His Work and His Critics, Berkley (CA): University of California Press, 1970

Melvin J. Friedman (ed) Samuel Beckett Now: Critical Approaches to his Novels, Poetry, and Plays, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Francis Doherty, Samuel Beckett, London: Hutchinson, 1971.

Colin Duckworth, Angels of Darkness: Dramatic Effect in Beckett with Special Reference to Ionesco, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1972.

John Fletcher, Beckett: A Study of his Plays, New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.

Brian Finney, ‘How It Is’: A Study of Samuel Beckett’s Later Fiction, London: Covent Garden Press, 1972.

Al Alvarez, Samuel Beckett, New York: Viking, 1973.

Ruby Cohn, Back to Beckett, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.

Hugh Kenner, A Reader’s Guide to Samuel Beckett, 1973.

H. Porter Abbott, The Fiction of Samuel Beckett, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973.

Ruby Cohn (ed), Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Criticism, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975.

Hannah-Case Copeland, Art and the Artist in the works of Samuel Beckett, Paris: Mouton, 1975.

James Eliopulos, Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Language, The Hague: Mouton, 1975.

Katherine Worth (ed), Beckett the Shape Changer, London: Routledge, 1975.

John Pilling, Samuel Beckett, 1976.

S.E. Gontarski, Beckett’s ‘Happy Days’: A Manuscript Study, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1977.

Beryl Fletcher et al, A Student’s Guide to
The Plays of Samuel Beckett, London: Faber and Faber, 1978.

James Knowlson and John Pilling, Frescoes of the Skull: The Later Prose and Drama of Samuel Beckett, 1979.

Robin J. Davis, Samuel Beckett: Checklist and Index of his Published Works, Stirling: The Library: University of Stirling, 1979.

Samuel Beckett: an illustrated life gives a short account of Beckett’s little-known private life in a book which is packed with rare photographs and shots of his stage productions. The life is quite surprising: a priviledged upbringing, with talented academic prospects which he abandonded for a bohemian life. Fighting with the Maquis during the war. Little artistic success, but lots of relationships with women – and then the big breakthrough with Waiting for Godot. This is a stunning little book. Buy the book here

Barbara R. Gluck, Beckett and Joyce: Friendship and Fiction, Lewisberg (PA): Bucknell University Press, 1979.

Lawrence Graver and Raymond Federman, Samuel beckett: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1979.

Ruby Cohn, Just Play: Beckett’s Theatre, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Helene L. Baldwin, Samuel Beckett’s Real Silence, 1981.

John C. DiPierro, Structures in Beckett’s ‘Watt’, York (SC): French Literature Publications, 1981.

J.E. Dearlove, Accommodating the Chaos: Samuel Beckett’s Nonrelational Art, Durham: Duke University Press, 1982.

Lance St. John Butler, Samuel Beckett and the Meaning of Being: A Study in Ontological Parable, 1984.

Virginia Cooke, Beckett on File, London: Methuen, 1985.

S.E. Gontarski, The Intent of ‘Undoing’ in Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Texts, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.

Enoch Brater (ed), Beckett at 80/Beckett in Context, 1986.

S.E. Gontarski (ed) On Beckett: Essays and Criticism, New York: Grove Press, 1986.

John Calder (ed), As No Other Dare Fail: for Samuel Beckett on his 80th birthday, 1986.

James Knowlson (ed), Samuel Beckett: A Celebration, 1986.

Eoin O’Brien (ed), The Beckett Country: Samuel Beckett’s Ireland, 1986.

Peter Gidal, Understanding Beckett: A Study of Monologue and Gesture in the Work of Samuel Beckett, London: Macmillan, 1986.

Ruby Cohn (ed) Samuel Beckett: ‘Waiting for Godot’: A Casebook, London: Macmillan, 1987.

Enoch Brater, Beyond Minimalism: Beckett’s Late Style in the Theatre, 1987.

James Acheson and Kateryna Arthur (eds), Beckett’s Later Fiction and Drama: Texts for Company, London: Macmillan, 1987.

Alan Warren Friedman et al, Beckett Translating/ Translating Beckett, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1987.

Jane Alison Hale, The Broken Window: Beckett’s Dramatic Perspective, West Lafayette (IN): Purdue University Press, 1987.

Steven Connor, Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory and Text, Oxford: Blackwell, 1988.

Robin J. Davis and Lance St. John Butler (eds) Make Sense Who May: Essays on Samuel Beckett’s Later Works, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988.

Mary A. Doll, Beckett and Myth: An Archetypal Approach, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1988.

Brian Fitch, Beckett and Babel: An Investigation into the Status of the Bilingual Work, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.

Lawrence Graver, Samuel Beckett: ‘Waiting for Godot’, London: Thames and Hudson 1989.

Jonathan Kalb, Beckett in Performance, 1989.

Katherine Worth, ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘Happy Days’, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990.

M.R. Axelrod, The Politics of Style in the Fiction of Balzac, Beckett, and Cortazar, 1992.

Steven Connor, ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘Endgame’, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992.

Anna McMullan, Theatre on Trial: Samuel Beckett’s Later Drama, 1993.

Eyal Amiran, Wandering and Home: Beckett’s Metaphysical Narrative, University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1993.

Paul Davies, The Ideal Real: Beckett’s Fiction and Imagination, Toronto: Associated University Press, 1994.

Christopher Ricks, Beckett’s Dying Words, 1995.

H. Porter Abbott, Beckett Writing Beckett: The Author in the Autograph, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996.

Anthony Cronin, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, London: Harper-Collins, 1996.

James Acheson, Samuel Beckett’s Artistic Theory and Practice: Criticism, Drama, and Early Fiction, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997.

Thomas Coisineau, ‘Waiting for Godot’: Form in Movement, Boston: Twayne, 1990.

Anthony Farrow, Early Beckett: Art and Allusion in ‘More Pricks than Kicks’ and ‘Murphy’, Try (NY): Whitson, 1991.

S.E. Gontarski (ed) The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett, Vol 2: ‘Endgame’, London: Faber and Faber, 1992.

S.E. Gontarski (ed) The Beckett Studies Reader, Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1993.

S.E. Gontarski (ed) The Theatrical Notesbooks of Samuel Beckett, Vol 4: The Shorter Plays, London: Faber and Faber, 1993.

Lois Gordon, The World of Samuel Beckett, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Samuel Beckett – web links

Samuel Beckett at Mantex
Biographical notes, complete bibliography, selected criticism, book reviews, videos, and web links.

Samuel Beckett Online Resources
This is a giant collection of papers, reviews, videos, journals. An old site, but packed with information. It looks very much like a labour of love by an enthusiast.

Samuel Beckett Exhibition at University of Texas
Biograhical notes, manuscripts, mini-essays, a timeline, and illustrations.

The Samuel Beckett Endpage
Performances, illustrated journals, interviews, and conferences

Samuel Beckett at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Some very rare examples of television films of Beckett’s shorter and less well known works. Full technical details of directors, actors, and production.

Samuel Beckett at Literary History.com
Collection of articles on literary criticism, plus reviews.

Echo’s Bones – a newly discovered story

Samuel Beckett – at Wikipedia
Life and career, Works, Collaborators, Legacy, Honours and awards, Selected works, Further reading, Web links.

More on Samuel Beckett
Twentieth century literature
More on biography

Samuel Beckett web links

December 10, 2010 by Roy Johnson

a selection of web-based archives and resources

This short selection of Samuel Beckett web links offers quick connections to resources for further study. It’s not comprehensive, and if you have any ideas for additional resources, please use the ‘Comments’ box below to make your suggestions. Some of the university-based web sites tend to be old-fashioned in terms of design, but they are often rich in terms of the materials they contain.

Samuel Beckett – web links

Samuel Beckett at Mantex
Biographical notes, complete bibliography, selected criticism, book reviews, videos, and web links.

Samuel Beckett Online Resources
This is a giant collection of papers, reviews, videos, journals. An old site, but packed with information. It looks very much like a labour of love by an enthusiast.

Samuel Beckett Exhibition at University of Texas
Biograhical notes, manuscripts, mini-essays, a timeline, and illustrations.

The Samuel Beckett Endpage
Performances, illustrated journals, interviews, and conferences

Samuel Beckett at Literary History.com
Collection of articles on literary criticism, plus reviews.

Echo’s Bones – a newly discovered story

Samuel Beckett – at Wikipedia
Life and career, Works, Collaborators, Legacy, Honours and awards, Selected works, Further reading, Web links.

The Cambridge Companion to Beckett
The world fame of Samuel Beckett is due to a combination of high academic esteem and immense popularity. An innovator in prose fiction to rival Joyce, his plays have been the most influential in modern theatre history. This book provides thirteen introductory essays on every aspect of Beckett’s work, some paying particular attention to his most famous plays (e.g. Waiting for Godot and Endgame) and his prose fictions (the ‘trilogy’ and Murphy). Other essays tackle his radio and television drama, his theatre directing and his poetry, followed by more general issues such as Beckett’s bilingualism and his relationship to the philosophers.
Buy the book here

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Twentieth century literature
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Samuel Beckett: An Illustrated Life

June 16, 2009 by Roy Johnson

short biographical study – with rare archive photos

This short biographical study offers an introduction to Samuel Beckett and his amazingly difficult and rather bohemian life, which was unrelenting devoted to creativity no matter what his circumstances. It’s written by an expert, and presented in a very attractive manner with archive photographs on almost every page. Beckett is a well-known author, but not much is generally known about his personal life. He avoided interviews and shunned publicity – even sending his publisher to collect his Nobel Prize.

This short book isn’t an attempt to deliver a full scale biography (that has already been done by Deirdre Bair, Anthony Cronin, and James Knowlson) but it offers a potted account of his life accompanied by the most original set of photographs that I have ever seen – some from his personal life, and others from stage productions.

Beckett was from a fairly well-to-do family; he had a privileged, well educated upbringing, and by the time he graduated with first class honours from Trinity College Dublin it looked as if a standard academic career was his natural progression route.

But he had won a lectureship at the Ecole Normale Superieure – and during his time in Paris he fell in with fellow Dubliner James Joyce. This experience led him to give up his work as an academic and to embrace the Bohemian life of being a poet, a critic, a translator, and a novelist – from which activities he made no money at all. He lived on allowances from his family until he was middle-aged.

The 1930s passed in a flurry of Bohemianism, occasional publication in obscure magazines, and a fair amount of hardship. He suffered from a number of what seemed to have been psycho-somatic ailments, and even spent some time in psycho-analysis. He also had a rather complex personal life – a wife whom he married for ‘testamentary’ reasons, and overlapping and simultaneous relationships with other women which required ‘timetabling’.

Samuel Beckett’s bookshelves

The war years were a period of hardship and bare survival. He spent time hiding from the Nazis (and fighting with the Maquis) in southern France, then working with the Red Cross. After the war he returned to live in Paris and began to write in French.

The period immediately after the war he called ‘the siege in the room’, where he shut himself away and produced an enormous amount of writing – none of which was immediately published. This period lasted for about four years. And then in the early 1950s he had his first successes – novels published in France, followed by a big breakthrough with Waiting for Godot.

From that point on, his star rose, and yet his work was always surrounded by controversy. People found his writing difficult to understand; theatre directors weren’t sure how to stage his plays; he had different publishers for the three or four genres in which he wrote; and rather like Vladimir Nabokov he spent a lot of time translating his work from one language to another – and sometimes back again.

As he got older his works got shorter, more compressed, and eventually reached the point of silence as he produced mimes and silent films. However, it’s quite possible that his oeuvre will continue to grow, even after his death, because he wrote so much which never got into print. This is a short but very attractive publication that’s worth it just for the photographs.

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Gerry Dukes, Samuel Beckett: an illustrated life, New York: Overlook Press, 2004, pp.161, ISBN 1585676101

More on Samuel Beckett
Twentieth century literature
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Sanctuary

January 30, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Sanctuary was first published in 1903, and is thus only Edith Wharton’s third published fictional work, after the two earlier novellas The Touchstone and The Valley of Decision.

Sanctuary – critical comment

Structure

The structure of the tale is relatively simple – and is closely connected with what seems to be its principal meanings. The narrative is divided into two parts which are connected by the presence in both of Kate Orme-Peyton. In the first part Kate is presented with a moral dilemma. Her fiancé Denis inherits money from his step-brother Arthur by morally underhand means.

Arthur’s wife and child have been disinherited. Denis has known about the existence of Arthur’s wife all along, and yet he has not revealed the fact at the court proceedings. He is prepared to accept the tainted inheritance, even though he is indirectly responsible for the deaths of Arthur’s wife and child – because the wife has taken their lives in despair.

Denis has looked after his step-brother Arthur (just as Dick will look after Paul) – but he has betrayed him nevertheless, by withholding knowledge of the marriage during the court proceedings. He has also tried to buy off the wife and salve his own conscience by offering her money – which she refuses.

Kate is appalled by this behaviour and what she sees as a lack of moral fibre. She suggests to Denis that he has a duty to own up to the truth publicly and that he should forfeit the money. When he refuses to do so, she ceases to love him and puts the marriage on hold.

But she then conceives of her grand sacrificial scheme. She realizes that Denis is likely to marry somebody else and have a child ‘born to an inheritance of secret weakness, a vice of the moral fibre, as it might be born with some hidden physical taint’. Rather than that, she decides to marry Denis and bring up his child under her own protection.

In the second part of the tale she has therefore raised her son Dick in this self-sacrificing manner, and her husband Denis has proved himself a moral wastrel after all by squandering his inheritance. But she now fears a repetition of the same events, which are directly paralleled in the case of Dick and his close friend Paul Darrow. The friend dies, leaving Dick an inheritance of the architectural designs which could win the competition. These designs have even been passed over to Dick quite willingly, and there is a temptress in the sidelines (Clemence Verney) urging him to profit from this morally dubious act.

His mother is anxious that he will succumb to the temptation, but does nothing to directly interfere. In the end we are asked to believe that his mother’s moral influence prevails – though it is stretching credibility when Dick renounces the prospect of marriage to Clemence only twenty-four hours after becoming engaged to her – and at that point the tale takes on a distinct suggestion of nineteenth century melodrama, with a last-minute resolution to the drama.

A Freudian interpretation

Edith Wharton was over forty when she wrote Sanctuary. She had no children of her own, and her marriage to her husband Teddy was less than satisfactory – but it is difficult to find anything in her private life that would explain or throw light on the extraordinary illustration of the Electra complex which this tale reveals.

Kate Orme is radiantly happy with her fiancé at the start of this tale, but then discovering that he is morally flawed, she rapidly falls out of love with him. Nevertheless, she decides to marry him so that he will not marry and father a child with someone else (from whom he is likely to conceal his moral turpitude). Kate reasons to herself that by taking on his ‘sin’ she can prevent it from being passed on unknown to another generation.

In other words, she embarks upon a path of controlling biologically and psychologically the next generation. We do not have an account of the intervening years, but when Dick Peyton emerges as a young architect on Fifth Avenue, presumably twenty-odd years later, the bond between him and his mother is pitched at a very serious emotional level. She has travelled to France and lived with him during his post-graduate studies at the Beaux-Arts. She wishes to control his actions; she disapproves of his fiancée Clemence and they dispute quite openly over the ability to influence him.

Eventually, Dick reverses his actions and allegiances, and allies himself with his mother – knowing that he is sacrificing his success as an architect and his prospective marriage to Clemence. He is resisting the compromising lure of easy success – for morally good (though scarcely credible) reasons – but the decision ties him even more closely to the mother who has had his destiny in mind before he was even born.

We do not know what happens beyond the text, but by the end of the tale Kate Peyton emerges as a successfully controlling mother figure (with good motives) whose feckless husband is dead and who has a somewhat unhealthily close relationship with her son. It is reasonable to see this as an illustration of the Jocasta complex first proposed by Raymond de Saussure in 1920 – which may be described as ‘different degrees of attachment, including domineering but asexual mother love – something perhaps particularly prevalent with an intelligent son and an absent or weak father figure’.

Form

This is a difficult piece of work to place in terms of literary form. The narrative lacks the range and the social depth of even a short novel, and for that reason it is often categorised as a novella – the story of young woman who discovers ‘the moral sewage that surrounds her’ (Houghton Mifflin). But Kate has made this discovery half way through the tale, and spends its second part making what turns out to be a successful act of resistance to it. She does not learn anything new in the second part of the narrative: she merely hopes that her passive moral stance will prevail – which is does. This is not the shape or the structure of events shared by classic novellas.

It also does not have the densely concentrated complexity of a novella, apart from the similarity of the two ‘inheritances’. And given that the events are stretched over the time scale of two generations, it lacks the temporal unity and the compression of events required by the novella form. Yet it is more ‘shaped’ than simply a long story – and might therefore better be classified as a tale – a form sufficiently elastic to accept anything which is squashed into it. However, others might wish to argue that the structural parallels of the two temptations and the continuity of Kate’s presence constitute the case for it being considered a novella.

Sanctuary – study resources

Edith Wharton Stories 1891-1910 – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Stories 1891-1910 – Norton Critical – Amazon US

Sanctuary – eBook format at Project Gutenberg

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Sanctuary – plot synopsis

PART ONE

Part I. Arthur Peyton has died under dubious circumstances after a long illness, leaving his inheritance to his step-brother Denis, who has been engaged to Kate Orme for two months. Denis arrives to see Kate with the news that a woman claiming to be Arthur’s wife has killed herself and her child, having lost an inheritance claim in court against the family, who denied that Arthur was married.

Part II. Kate has lived a protected life and now feels that she is facing the grim realities of the world. But when she expresses her sympathetic understanding of the dead woman’s situation to Denis, he reveals that he knew all along that Arthur was married.

Part III. The woman previously nursed Arthur through his illness, married him, and bore him a child. A lawyer has pursued her claim for inheritance in court, but lost the case. Arthur made over his inheritance to Denis, but no witnesses to this agreement are traceable, and Denis could face jail for misleading the court. Kate feels that Denis is responsible for the deaths of two people and is bitterly disappointed in him.

Part IV. Denis’s mother visits Kate to pleads his case, based upon the supposition that he is honourable and innocent. Kate feels socially pressured, but feels that she must stand by a decision to postpone the marriage.

When her father returns home from business, he reveals to Kate a similar scandal in another remote part of their family. Kate reflects on the element of corruption lurking beneath the polite surface of life. She then persuades herself that she might expiate Denis’s sin by marrying him – so that he does not pass on his tainted inheritance to some other woman’s child.

PART TWO

Part I. A generation later Kate’s son Dick is in an architecture practice on Fifth Avenue. Denis has died long ago, after squandering the inheritance. Kate has devoted herself protectively to her son, who she fears might have inherited his father’s weakness of character. Dick has entered an architecture competition along with his industrious friend Paul Darrow. Dick also wishes to impress a female admirer, Clemence Verney.

Part II. Kate discusses ambition and architecture with Miss Verney at Dick’s office tea party. Then she discusses Miss Verney with the clever but gauche Paul Darrow, who has completed his own competition entry designs. Both of them suspect Miss Verney of being an ambitious social climber.

Part III. Dick has not completed his competition designs, and is running out of time. Darrow falls ill with pneumonia, and Dick hastens to look after him. Kate feels guilty that she has sacrificed everything for her son, when he now appears to shirking his responsibilities to his chosen profession. But then Darrow dies, and it transpires that he has generously left Dick his own competitions designs to use.

Part IV. Dick inherits all Darrow’s effects, and decides his own competition plans are not good enough to submit. His mother protests, and asks to see both sets of designs so that they can judge. But he does not comply with her request, and she fears that all her vigilant protection of him will come to nothing.

Part V. Next day Dick leaves for the office without discussing the matter. Kate fears that his weak character will lead him into the easy temptation of passing off Darrow’s designs as his own. She meets Miss Verney at a concert, where the young woman admits her interest in Dick and her ambition on his behalf. Kate reveals the issue of Darrow’s bequest, but Miss Verney argues that this fully justifies Dick’s appropriation of the designs as his own for the competition.

Part VI. Two days later Dick decides to dine out, but then his business partner Gill calls at the house looking for him. He phones to Miss Verney’s house, and the conversation reveals to Kate that Dick is using Darrow’s sketches to complete his own competition entry. When Dick arrives home, it is to announce his engagement to Clarence Verney.

Part VII. Kate feels that Miss Verney has triumphed over her in the struggle for Dick’s conscience.However, Miss Verney has stipulated that the engagement should not be made public until after the competition result has been announced.

Part VIII. On the eve of the competition judgements Kate goes to the opera, spots Miss Verney, and retreats in defeat. She calls at Dick’s offices on her way home. There he reveals that after a long struggle he has felt his mother’s silent influence prevailing, and has decided to give up the competition – and by implication his engagement to Miss Verney as well.

Video documentary

Principal characters

Kate Orme	a young American woman
Denis Peyton	her fiancé
Mrs Peyton	Denis’s mother, the second Mrs Peyton
Arthur Peyton	Denis’s step-brother
Mr Orme	Kate’s father
Dick Peyton	Kate’s son, an architect
Mr Gill	Dick’s partner in business
Clemence Verney	a young American social climber
Paul Darrow	Dick’s friend, also an architect

Edith Wharton’s 42-room house – The Mount

Other works by Edith Wharton

The Custom of the Country (1913) is Edith Wharton’s satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, recently arrived in New York from the midwest and determined to conquer high society. Glamorous, selfish, mercenary and manipulative, her principal assets are her striking beauty, her tenacity, and her father’s money. With her sights set on an advantageous marriage, Undine pursues her schemes in a world of shifting values, where triumph is swiftly followed by disillusion. This is a study of modern ambition and materialism written a hundred years before its time.
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The House of Mirth (1905) is the story of Lily Bart, who is beautiful, poor, and still unmarried at twenty-nine. In her search for a husband with money and position she betrays her own heart and sows the seeds of the tragedy that finally overwhelms her. The book is a disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of Wharton’s generation. In telling the story of Lily Bart, who must marry to survive, Wharton recasts the age-old themes of family, marriage, and money in ways that transform the traditional novel of manners into an arresting modern document of cultural anthropology.
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Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

The Short Stories of Edith Wharton
This is an old-fashioned but excellently detailed site listing the publication details of all Edith Wharton’s eighty-six short stories – with links to digital versions available free on line.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Edith Wharton at Fantastic Fiction
A compilation which purports to be a complete bibliography, arranged as novels, collections, non-fiction, anthologies, short stories, letters, and commentaries – but is largely links to book-selling sites, which however contain some hidden gems.

Edith Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Edith Wharton – short stories
More on Edith Wharton
More on short stories

Saul Bellow – greatest works

November 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Saul Bellow (1915—2005) was born of Russian-Jewish parents in Canada, but lived most of his life in Chicago, a city which features in many of his novels. His work features characters struggling to understand themselves, and searching for identity in an often irrational world. He has a wonderful ear for the rhythms of modern speech, and he captures city life particularly well. Linguistically, he manages to successfully combine an intellectual-philosophical vocabulary with the language of the street. And his narratives are often very funny. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1976.

Dangling Man (1944) his first novel, is concerned with existential philosophy and the sense of identity which was much in vogue at the time of its publication. It’s an accomplished debut, thoughtful and serious, about a man who does not want to go into the army. This reflects the serious side of Bellow, who repeatedly inspects the human condition. But it doesn’t have much of the rib-tickling bravura of his later work. This is early Bellow flexing his wings. It is perhaps best appreciated after you have read some of his later works.
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The Adventures of Augie March is an ambitious, rambling, almost picaresque novel. Its first half is a moving and seemingly authentic account of a young boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression – which is where Bellow himself was raised. The story then goes off in a free-wheeling account of a series of bizarre jobs and relationships, and he ends up in Mexico. Bellow’s purpose seems to be to question how much compromise is desirable and how much is necessary, and what make us think about which parts of ourselves we want to remain individual. The second half of the novel however is far less coherent and less credible than the first – but some critics think otherwise.
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Seize the Day (1956) is a novella in which you get a sense of Bellow finding his true voice. It’s a light, swift work with dark shadows that looks at the events of one day in the life of Tommy Wilhelm, a fading charmer. He confronts his sense of personal failure and a love-hate relationship with his father. This is his day of reckoning and he is scared. In his 40s, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of havoc. In the course of this one climatic day, he reviews his past mistakes and spiritual malaise. This is a short work which is held together by the sort of concentrated sense of unity which is the hallmark of a good novella. It is now widely regarded as the first of Bellow’s great works.
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Henderson the Rain King (1959) was his first major success. It is a comic character study of American millionaire Gene Henderson, a larger-than-life 55-year-old who has accumulated money, position, and a large family, yet nonetheless feels unfulfilled. The story plots his frustrations with modern life, and his quest for revelation and spiritual enlightenment in Africa, where he fights with a lion, is hailed as a rainmaker, and becomes heir to a kingdom. He meets two tribes, one of which he virtually destroys in an attempt to purify their main water supply of a plague of frogs which goes disastrously wrong. Much of the novel’s humour derives from such antics from Henderson, a character-exaggeration clearly based on Ernest Hemingway (who was a highly regarded writer and public figure at the time).
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Herzog (1964) became highly regarded and a classic almost as soon as it was published. It centres intensely on the life of Moses Herzog, a Jewish intellectual who is driven close to the verge of breakdown by the adultery of his second wife with his close friend. He writes letters to famous people, both living and dead – Spinoza, Nietzsche, Winston Churchill, and the President of the USA – giving them a piece of his mind and asking their advice about how to live. The novel begins with a statement which sets the tone for everything that follows: “If I am going out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog”.
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Humboldt’s Gift (1974) traces the life and memories of writer Charlie Citrine as he reflects on the influence of his boyhood friend and mentor, Humboldt. This character is based loosely upon Delmore Schwartz, the Jewish poet and short story writer whose early promise was never fulfilled. He descended into alcoholism and poverty, and died in a cheap hotel room, creating the modern version of the myth of the ‘doomed poet’. The novel deals with the ‘gift’ for aesthetic appreciation he passes on to his close friend Charlie, the narrator of the novel.
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Ravelstein (2000) is something of a double portrait. Abe Ravelstein, a mega-successful Jewish academic realises that he might be dying. He invites his friend Chick to write an biographical study of him. What we get is a not-so-thinly disguised portrait of the critic Allan Bloom written by a character who has had all the brushes with life which Bellow experienced in his own: near-death illness, late-life divorce, and happiness with a new wife. Since his death, it has become a lot clearer just how much of his own life Bellow put into his fiction.
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Saul Bellow chronology

August 14, 2017 by Roy Johnson

1915. Saul Bellow born Solomon Bellows in Quebec, Canada to immigrant Jewish parents from St Petersburg, Russia.

1918. Family moves to Montreal. Bellow begins religious training and speaks French in the street and Yiddish at home.

1923. Childhood illness. His father is a bootlegger across the Canadian/USA border.

1924. Family moves to Chicago as illegal immigrants into the USA.

1928. Childhood friendship with writer Isaac Rosenfield.

1933. Reads Trotsky and Lenin. Death of his mother from breast cancer. Enrols at University of Chicago.

Saul Bellow chronology

1935. Transfers to Northwestern University, reading literature and anthropology.

1937. Appointed associate editor of the monthly journal The Beacon. Friendship with James T. Farrell. Graduates with BA in anthropology.

1938. Returns to Chicago. Marriage to Anita Goshkin. Working as college teacher in literary studies.

1940. Travels to Mexico to interview Leon Trotsky – arriving on the day of his assassination.

1941. First published story in Partisan Review. A novel accepted but not published. Meets Alfred Kazin and Delmore Schwartz in New York.

1943. Works part time writing for Encyclopedia Britannica.

1944. Dangling Man his first published novel – praised by Edmund Wilson.

1946. Associate professor of literature at the University of Minnesota.

1947. Publication of his second novel, The Victim.

1948. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Moves to live in Paris for two years. Meets European writers and intellectuals. Critical of their political naivete.

1950. Returns to USA and lives in Queens, New York City.

1952. University lectureship as assistant to Delmore Schwartz. Friendship with Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man).

1953. Publication of The Adventures of Augie March to great critical acclaim.

1955. Death of his father, Abram. Second Guggenheim fellowship. Residence in Reno, Nevada for divorce.

1956. Publication of Seize the Day. Marries Sondra Tschachasov. Teaches at Yado writers’ colony. Friendship with John Cheever. Buys house in New York with inheritance from father.

1957. Teaching at University of Minnesota and University of Chicago. Meets John Berryman and Philip Roth.

1959. Publication of Henderson the Rain King which is criticised for his abandonment of urban and Jewish themes.

1960. Founds literary magazine The Noble Savage with his friend Jack Ludwig, who is having an affair with his wife Sondra. Divorce from Sondra.

1961. Teaching at University of Puerto Rico. Marries Susan Glassman.

1962. Honorary degree from Northwestern University. Five year professorship at University of Chicago.

1964. Publication of Herzog which has great critical and commercial success. His play The Last Analysis fails on Broadway.

1966. Further theatrical failures. Separation from his wife Susan.

1968. Publication of Mosby’s Memoirs. Divorce from Susan Glassman.

1969. Publication of Mr Sammler’s Planet.

1972. Honorary degrees from Harvard and Yale Universities. Death of John Berryman.

1973. Six week residency at Rodmell, Sussex, the home of Virginia Woolf.

1974. Marries Alexandra Ionesco Tulcea, a Romanian professor of mathematics.

Saul Bellow chronology

1975. Publication of Humboldt’s Gift. Travels in Israel.

1976. Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for literature.

1977. Protracted legal problems over divorce settlement to Susan Glassman.

1978. Travels to Romania with Alexandra to see her dying mother. Court orders Bellow to pay $500,000 to Susan Glassman.

1982. Publication of The Dean’s December. Death of John Cheever.

1984. Publication of Him with his Foot in his Mouth, a collection of stories.

1985. Death of two brothers and Anita, his first wife.

1987. Publication of More Die of Heartbreak. Travels in Europe with Janis Freedman.

1989. Begins work on two novels, both left unfinished at his death. Publication of A Theft. Marries Janis Freedman. Publication of The Bellarosa Connection.

1990. Begins a study of Latin.

Saul Bellow chronology

1992 His friend Allan Bloom dies of AIDS.

1993. Publication of It All Adds Up, a collection of essays. Leaves University of Chicago after three decades and moves to Boston.

1994. Hospitalised after food poisoning contracted in Caribbean island of San Martin.

1997. Publication of novella, The Actual. Death of former wife Susan.

2000. Publication of Ravelstein, novel based on the life of Allan Bloom.

2005. Bellow dies at his home in Brooklyn, NYC.

Cambridge Companion to Saul Bellow – Amazon UK

Saul Bellow Chronology

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Saul Bellow essays

March 11, 2018 by Roy Johnson

essays, memoirs, cultural history and criticism

Saul Bellow generated a prodigious output as a writer of novels, stories, novellas, travel books, even plays – though these were largely unperformed. But in addition he wrote essays, book reviews, memoirs, lectures, and towards the end of his life he produced lengthy surveys of the culture and politics of American life at the end of the twentieth century.

He published his own selection of non-fiction in It All Adds Up (1994) which was issued whilst he was still alive. There is Simply Too Much to Think About is a collection of book reviews and occasional essays from Partisan Review, Commentary, and The New York Times Book Review. The selection also includes interviews – one of which he conducts with himself.

He takes almost as a recurrent theme the issue that illuminates all of his mature fiction – that he is the son of an eastern European immigrant who has grown up in the United States (and Canada). He feels both passionately attached and occasionally divided by the two cultural traditions these sources of his identity represent.

One the one hand his intellectual roots are in Europe and he is dismayed by what he sees as unbridled Western capitalism. On the other hand he does not wish to be held back by his family’s traditional Judaism, and he relishes the liberty and the free-wheeling culture afforded to him as a successful immigrant.

Stylistically his great strength lies in having the courage to combine fine writing with the language of the street. His mental hinterland is furnished by the Great European Classics, but he is prepared to combine their prose rhythms with the cadences and vocabulary of the inner-city tenement, the Russian bath house, and the interstate highway diner.

He’s at his best with character sketches. A Talk with the Yellow Kid is a marvellous account of the Chicago confidence trickster Joseph ‘Yellow Kid’ Weil, who is like a figure from one of Bellow’s novels. Weil is a man who made millions from rackets, scams, and Ponzi schemes, then lost it all in legitimate business investments.

There are some marvellous bon mots. He observes ‘Hemingway detested tourists – other tourists’. And of film writer Ben Hecht he says ‘He is one of the creators of Spectre of the Rose, a picture I would rather eat ground glass than see again’.

If there’s a weakness in his approach it’s a tendency to discuss large issues in rather abstract terms with lots of generalising. I found myself mentally supplying the concrete examples I wished he had mentioned as evidence to support his arguments.

His survey of ‘Recent Fiction’ (1963) throws up some interesting judgements. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is … ‘A pedestrian work, lacking in colour and passion, in dramatic vision’. And James Baldwin’s Another Country … ‘should perhaps be judged as a document and not a novel. It is hard to believe that Baldwin, with his talents, could himself take it seriously as a piece of fiction’. But for J.D. Salinger he has nothing but praise: ‘a brilliant performer, easily the best’ of modern American writers.

Being a self-confessed humanist and a writer who has enjoyed many invitations to lecture and write on the ‘modern condition’, he has a tendency to repeatedly drift into a lot of social anthropology – a subject he studied at university. And yet he is very sceptical about received opinions and philosophies – even about his former heroes Freud and Marx. However, his social anthropology is put to excellent use when explaining the lack of intellectual culture in New York City or the flight of modern writers into the universities.

And we need to take his critiques seriously, for they are built on an intimate knowledge of the basics. He was reading Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky in the 1930s, and he sees, rather perceptively I believe, that Freudianism is a form of literary criticism, an analysis or close reading of the text of someone’s life. It is certainly not a science, with objective tests, measurements, and repeatable experiments.

He writes with great feeling about the formation of his own cultural history – growing up in Chicago conscious of his Russian family heritage, his sympathies for its revolution, and his identity as a Jew in America. He became a Trotskyist, and even went to interview the revolutionary in Mexican exile, only to arrive on the day of Trotsky’s death at the hands of Stalin’s assassin.

This is an intellectually bracing collection that throws interesting light on the background to Bellow’s greatest works of fiction. It also confirms that most of his novels have distinctly biographical origins for their plots – both from his own life history and those of others.

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Saul Bellow, There Is Simply Too Much to Think About, London: Penguin/Viking, 2015, pp.532, ISBN: 0670016691

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Saul Bellow letters

August 31, 2017 by Roy Johnson

an essay-review of the collected letters

Saul Bellow left behind a sizeable body of fiction , travel writing, and essays on his departure in 2005 – but he was also a prolific correspondent. This huge selection of his letters includes examples from seven decades of his adult life. He writes to friends, fellow writers, academic colleagues, lovers, wives, and even fans.

The earliest letters date from the 1930s when he was a student and a Trotskyist. They deal with political issues arising from the world economic depression, the gathering war in Europe, splits on the Left, and then problems with his first marriage.

His spiritual and intellectual home was Chicago, where he had grown up, but he migrated to New York to pursue his literary ambitions. He earned his living as a teacher and a journalist, and had the usual difficulties getting his early work accepted. There were a couple of false starts before his first novel Dangling Man was published in 1944.

His skills as a writer come into shining prominence when he writes a long and superbly entertaining letter to his literary agent Henry Volkening. It describes several weeks of his ‘exile’ in Europe on a Guggenheim fellowship. He travels between Paris, Geneva, and Marseilles, pursued by a rapacious, opium-smoking socialite vamp, gets drunk with Scott Fitzgerald, and is thrown out of hotels – all of which turns out to be pure fantasy (Fitzgerald having died ten years previously).

The letter dates from around the time that he began writing The Adventures of Augie March, a novel that was to prove his big break-through success in 1953. This free-wheeling approach to narrative invention and verbal exuberance is precisely what established his distinctive voice as a modern novelist.

However, it’s not all fun. Some of the letters make for quite uncomfortable reading. Bellow had friendships with fellow writers which sometimes included elements of rivalry. When differences become apparent he can take a lofty, holier-than-thou tone with correspondents. His childhood friend Isaac Rosenfeld is the object of a spiteful clash over merely teaching in the same university (New York). And he was downright rude to his English publisher, John Lehmann.

If you can find nothing better to say upon reading Augie March than that you all “think very highly of me”, I don’t think I want you to publish it at all … Either you are entirely lacking in taste and judgment, or you are being terribly prudent about the advance. Well, permit me to make it clear once and for all that it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference to me whether you publish the novel or not. You have read two-thirds of it, and I refuse absolutely to send you another page. Return the manuscript to Viking if you don’t want to take the book.

On the other hand he is very loyal to many of his friends – to John Berryman, Philip Roth, Ralph Ellison, and John Cheever in particular. Even to Delmore Schwartz, his early mentor who eventually descended into paranoia and turned against him (and everyone else).

It’s amazing to note how he goes on writing, no matter what the circumstances. Whilst holed up in an isolated shack outside Reno, Nevada (waiting for his first divorce to come through) he was finishing off Seize the Day (1956) and starting work on Henderson the Rain King (1959) at the same time.

In a single year he published Henderson, underwent psycho-analysis, started a magazine (The Noble Savage), and received a huge grant ($16,000) from the Ford Foundation, which he spent on a holiday in Eastern Europe. He also started writing plays – which were not successful when staged – and his second marriage came to an end when his wife Sondra filed for divorce.

Even this cornucopia of events had its further complications. He was devastated by the split from Sondra, but she assured him that there was ‘nobody else’. The truth was that she was having an affair with his friend and co-editor, Jack Ludwig. Bellow took his own revenge for this betrayal in his next novel Herzog (1964).

This use of real lives as the material for fiction became something of a leitmotiv in his work. The letters confirm that he repeatedly used events from his own life and the experiences of others as the basis for what he wrote. It is well known that Humboldt’s Gift (1975) and Ravelstein (2000) featured characters based on his friends Delmore Schwartz and Allan Bloom. Moreover, anyone reading The Dean’s December (1982) cannot fail to conclude that the story is a fictionalised account of his own visit to Bucharest which he made with his Romanian-born third wife.

This list goes on, even into shorter works such as Him with His Foot in his Mouth (1982) which is something of an apology for an insulting remark he made to a colleague years before. Similarly, What Kind of Day Did You Have? (1984) is an account of an illicit affair between his old friend Harold Rosenberg and a woman called Joan Ullman.

Some of the people concerned who recognised the origins of these stories were outraged by Bellow’s unauthorised use of biographical details in this way. Joan Ullman didn’t take kindly to having her personal life used in this way and she published her own account of events. Bellow responded with a literary shrug of the shoulders.

Suddenly in 1966 whilst still married to Susan Glassman, he fell in love with the young and single Margaret Staatz. Not surprisingly, this episode was rapidly followed by Susan’s filing for divorce.

He was an obsessive traveller, even though he often complained of the places he visited. The letters have postmarks from Lake Como, Uganda, London, Tel Aviv, Athens, Puerto Rico, and Belgrade. He was also endlessly critical of Chicago, but regularly went back there.

It’s obvious that he found teaching a necessary evil to pay the bills, yet he continued in a variety of university lectureships even after becoming commercially successful and winning both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature in the same year (1976). However, his multiple marriages were an expensive form of self-indulgence. The final divorce settlement from Susan Glassman left him with a bill for $500,000, plus $200,000 legal costs. Confessing to his own extravagances he says of himself “I’ve always lived like a sort of millionaire without any money”.

There is one rather curious strand to this correspondence – his lengthy exchanges with the English academic (and solicitor) Owen Barfield on the subject of Rudolf Steiner’s ‘anthroposophy’. This was a form of quasi-mystic ‘philosophy’ dealing with the condition of the human soul – the vague and abstract ruminations on which Bellow had padded out Humboldt’s Gift.

It’s a curious part of the correspondence because it is difficult to accept that Bellow took these ideas seriously when they sit so ill-at-ease with the very practical and concrete nature of his perceptions of everyday life. In his most deeply felt writing Bellow is dealing with money and sex; politics and history; gangsters, lawyers, and real estate developers; crime, violence, and shysters of all kinds. Rudolf Steiner’s notions of ‘spiritual science’, ‘esoteric cosmology’, and ‘the second coming of Christ’ simply do not fit convincingly alongside such matters. The letters confirm Bellow’s sincere personal interest in these matters, but they are not at all persuasive when he attempts to embed them in his fiction .

In 1985 his first wife Anita and his two brothers Maurice and Sam died, then his third wife Alexandra divorced him. He faced yet more draining legal costs, but without breaking his stride and at seventy years of age, he simply married his secretary Janis Freedman, who had previously been his student. A decade and a half later at the age of eighty-four he became a father for the fourth time. His eldest son Gregory was at that time fifty-five years old.

In 1994 whilst on holiday in the Caribbean, Bellow contracted a virulent strain of food poisoning that left him unconscious in a coma and on the point of death for four weeks. Recovery was slow and left him with coronary and neurological complications. From this point onwards he felt he was living on borrowed time, and his correspondence reads like a series of medical bulletins. Nevertheless he manages to throw off some thought-provoking cultural observations:

Let me add my name to the list of Freud’s detractors. If he had been purely a scientist he wouldn’t have had nearly so many readers. It was lovers of literature (and not the best kind of those) who made his reputation. His patients were the text and his diagnoses were Lit. Crit. The gift the great nineteenth century [pests] gave us was the gift of metaphor. Marx with the metaphor of class struggle and Freud with the metaphor of the Oedipus complex. Once you had read Marx it took a private revolution to overthrow the metaphor of class warfare – for an entire decade I couldn’t see history in any other light. Freud also subjugated us with powerful metaphors and after a time we couldn’t approach relationships in anything but a Freudian light. Thank God I liberated myself before it was too late.

As the years go on his letters become lengthy apologies for not having written sooner – or not having replied at all. He turns politically towards the right, and the death of one old friend after another makes him (understandably) concerned about his own mortality. Yet he goes on being creatively productive into his eighties. Many people see his last novel Ravelstein (2000) as amongst his finest.

Of course the selection of letters tend to be chosen to show the Famous Author in the best possible light – but Benjamin Taylor’s editorship presents Bellow as cantankerous, considerate, hard-working, vain, ambitious, and engaged – so we have no grounds for complaint. We are presented with The Man in Full.

Saul Bellow Letters – Viking – Amazon US

Benjamin Taylor (ed), Saul Bellow: Letters, New York: Viking, 2010, pp.571, ISBN: 0670022217

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Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster

April 4, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, further reading, plot, and web links

Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster was written in English and first published in The Reporter in 1950. The story then appeared in the single volume collection of Nabokov’s short stories Nabokov’s Dozen (1958).

Vladimir Nabokov

Critical commentary

The term ‘scenes’ in the title should alert readers to the fact that it is not a short story in the conventional sense, but a sketch or the unfinished germ of an idea. Having set up the conceit of a narrative told from the point of view of a conjoined twin, Nabokov does not seem to have known what to do with it. Not only is there no development or elaboration in the point of view, but the chain of events simply comes to an abrupt halt when the two boys are captured by their uncle. The only sense of closure to the narrative is the grim revelation that the brothers remain captives twenty years later.

It is interesting to note that in contrast to all that is known about the telepathic levels of communication that normally exists between twins, Nabokov completely excludes the second brother Lloyd from the narrative. Indeed Floyd’s consciousness is rigorously individualistic, and he even observed that the two brothers do not speak to each other. He distances himself from Lloyd, observing of their dead parent the ‘bliss’ he feels in calling her ‘my mother’. And he mentions a propos their miserable childhood that Lloyd ‘forgot much when he grew up. I have forgotten nothing’.

The story is a typically Nabokovian mixture of pathos and the grotesque, but the Black Sea setting remains quite unconvincing.

Study resources

The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov – Amazon UK

Zembla – the official Vladimir Nabokov web site

The Paris Review – 1967 interview, with jokes and put-downs

First editions in English – Bob Nelson’s collection of photographs

Vladimir Nabokov at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Vladimir Nabokov at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study materials

Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, Princeton University Press, 1990.

Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, Princeton University Press, 1991.

Laurie Clancy, The Novels of Vladimir Nabokov. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984.

Neil Cornwell, Vladimir Nabokov: Writers and their Work, Northcote House, 2008.

Jane Grayson, Vladimir Nabokov: An Illustrated Life, Overlook Press, 2005.

Norman Page, Vladimir Nabokov: Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1997

David Rampton, Vladimir Nabokov: A Critical Study of the Novels. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Michael Wood, The Magician’s Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Plot summary

The story is narrated in the first person by Floyd, one of conjoined twin brothers who are born as a result of their mother being raped. Following her death in childbirth, they grow up on a remote farm somewhere near the Black Sea which is owned by their villainous grandfather.

As children, local villagers are allowed to regard them as a circus-like curiosities, and the grandfather quickly realises he can make money from exhibiting them as such. Floyd naively wonders (exclusively on his own behalf) if normal ‘single’ children have any advantages in life, whilst he and his twin Lloyd are forced into humiliating proximity with each other

The twins grow to the age of twelve, at which point their wellbeing is threatened by another relative – a newly arrived uncle. Floyd dreams of being separated from his brother and escaping to freedom, and when the uncle threatens to tour them as a freak show spectacle, they escape from the farm and head to the nearby seashore. However, the uncle is waiting for them when they arrive. He abducts them, and for the next twenty years they are in his power. It is from this point, at the age of thirty-two, that the story is related.

Other work by Vladimir Nabokov

Pale Fire is a very clever artistic joke. It’s a book in two parts – the first a long poem (quite readable) written by an American poet who we are encouraged to think of as someone like Robert Frost. The second half is a series of footnoted commentaries on the text written by his neighbour, friend, and editor. But as we read on the explanation begins to take over the poem itself, we begin to doubt the reliability – and ultimately the sanity – of the editor, and we end up suspended in a nether-world, half way between life and illusion. It’s a brilliantly funny parody of the scholarly ‘method’ – written around the same time that Nabokov was himself writing an extensive commentary to his translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.
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Pnin is one of his most popular short novels. It deals with the culture clash and catalogue of misunderstandings which occur when a Russian professor of literature arrives on an American university campus. Like many of Nabokov’s novels, the subject matter mirrors his life – but without ever descending into cheap autobiography. This is a witty and tender account of one form of naivete trying to come to terms with another. This particular novel has always been very popular with the general reading public – probably because it does not contain any of the dark and often gruesome humour that pervades much of Nabokov’s other work.
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Collected Stories Nabokov is also a master of the short story form, and like many writers he tried some of his literary experiments there first, before giving them wider reign in his novels. This collection of sixty-five complete stories is drawn from his entire working life. They range from the early meditations on love, loss, and memory, through to the later technical experiments, with unreliable story-tellers and the games of literary hide-and-seek. All of them are characterised by a stunning command of language, rich imagery, and a powerful lyrical inventiveness.
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Scoop

April 26, 2018 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, plot summary, web links

Scoop (1938) was Evelyn Waugh’s fifth published novel. It continues the comic themes he had established with Decline and Fall (1928), Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), and A Handful of Dust (1934). A naive and innocent young man is swept up into events which are beyond his control. He is surrounded by villainy and deception on all sides. Farcical misunderstandings abound, and the workings of the press come in for a great deal of satire.

Scoop – commentary

There are three main targets for Evelyn Waugh’s satire in Scoop – African government, the English upper class, and the profession of journalism.

Like its predecessor Black Mischief, Scoop is largely set in a fictional African country – Ishmaelia. The government is run entirely on a system of nepotism: every official is a member of the same family. Voting is rigged, and ‘the adverse trade balance [is] rectified by an elastic system of bankruptcy law’.

When a quarrel breaks out in the ruling family (leading to civil war) one faction declares that the Ishmaelites are in fact a white race who must ‘purge themselves of the Negro taint’. A military coup takes place, the first result of which is a proclamation abolishing Sundays. The coup is overthrown the following day.

And although there is fun made of native incompetence in running the government, the naivety of its original colonisers is not forgotten:

Various courageous Europeans, in the seventies of the last century, came to Ishmaelia, or near it, furnished with suitable equipment of cuckoo clocks, phonographs, opera hats, draft-treaties and flags of the nations which they had been obliged to leave. They came as missionaries, ambassadors, tradesmen, prospectors, natural scientists. None returned. They were eaten, every one of them; some raw, others stewed and seasoned

Evelyn Waugh worked in journalism for Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express and made journeys to Africa and South America reporting for a number of newspapers. He had satirised the behaviour of journalists in earlier novels, but Scoop mocks the entire profession, from individual reporters to editors and even newspaper owners.

It is the lofty vanity of Lord Copper, owner of the Daily Beast that precipitates the misunderstanding about Boot’s identity in the first place. It also provides the toe-curlingly embarrassing finale when Copper is forced to address his celebration banquet with William Boot’s uncle Theodore, the aged roue, representing the ‘achievements of youth’.

Journalists and the upper class are combined as targets of his satire in a wonderful episode where the foreign editor Mr Salter is forced to visit William Boot at his home in the depths of the West Country. Beyond Taunton he is just as out of his depth as Boot has been in Africa. The family’s home at ‘Boot Magna’ is a parody of upper-class rural existence. It is remote, cold, and unwelcoming, offering superficial consideration with no human warmth. The accommodation is austere, and an extended family of quasi-eccentrics is characterised by each member locked into isolated self-interest.

But the main target for Waugh’s satire is journalists – particularly the English. They cluster together at the Hotel Liberty as if it were a gentleman’s club. None of them do anything active in the way of news gathering; they hardly ever venture outside the confines of the hotel bar; and their main source of information is each other. Yet they all want to claim the kudos for being the first to report important new events – hence the title of the novel.

William Boot is not unlike his historical counterpart Candide – a simple and naive young man confronted by the villany and absurdity that exists outside his sheltered world. He is living in peaceful rural seclusion, happy to be writing his articles on countryside matters. Because of the incompetence of other people he is pulled out of this simple and untroubled life and plunged into an almost farcical situation. He is surrounded by liars, cheats, and frauds; his gullibility is preyed upon by charlatans; and like many naive innocents he falls in love with an unscrupulous vamp.

Katchen is virtually a prostitute who squeezes money out of him at every possible opportunity. She claims to be married, but isn’t. She claims to be German, but is of mongrel Pan-European origin. William is well to be rid of her when she departs in his collapsible canoe.

And at the end of it all, just like Candide, William Boot is happy to simply return home and ‘cultivate his garden’. He eventually rejects the lure of Fleet Street and returns to the profound depths of the West Country and resumes his column Lush Places:

the wagons lumber in the lane under their golden glory of harvested sheaves, maternal rodents pilot their furry brood through the stubble

Scoop – study resources

Scoop – Penguin – Amazon UK

Scoop – Penguin – Amazon US

Scoop – study guide – Amazon UK

Six novels by Evelyn Waugh – Amazon UK

Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited – Amazon UK

Scoop – DVD film – Amazon UK

Evelyn Waugh – by Henry Lamb

Scoop – plot summary

Book I – The Stitch Service

Socialite Mrs Stitch recommends novelist John Boot to Lord Copper of the Daily Beast to cover a political crisis in Ishmaelia. The newspaper’s foreign editor by mistake invites William Boot, who writes a countryside column for the newspaper. William is a naive and hopelessly inexperienced provincial young man.

He is nevertheless engaged and kitted out with ridiculously inappropriate equipment. After obtaining visas from rival consulates he flies to France and catches the train in Paris where he is joined by a dubious and boastful fellow passenger. On a ship from Marseilles he is harrassed by the crude agency journalist Corker who spies on Boot’s telegrams from the Beast and collects tourist junk from the bazaars.

Book II – Stones £20

Ishmaelia is a country theoretically organised on rational liberal principles but is actually dominated by a corrupt family and run incompetently. During a period of political turbulence, journalists from several countries are based at the Hotel Liberty.

When William Boot and Corker arrive their luggage has been lost in transit. The journalists desperately seek information from each other. One cables news of a new Bolshevik envoy simply because he has a false beard – but the man turns out to be a railway ticket collector.

Boot is given information by the British vice-consul, but Corker denies its validity. A special train arrives with their lost luggage and lots more journalists. Boot moves into a pension and meets a married German girl who immediately dupes him out of twenty pounds.

The journalists depart en masse into the interior to visit a city which does not exist. William stays in the capital and falls in love with Katchen, who is not married and is not German. He is sacked from the Beast but the same day sends them some gossip he has picked up from Katchen, who is fleecing him mercilessly.

The British envoy reveals to Boot the mining rights to gold mineral deposits that are the cause of political tensions. He relays this information to the Beast and is re-instated. Katchen’s ‘husband’ appears to recover his gold ore and Katchen herself. They escape in William’s collapsible canoe.

The mysterious Mr Baldwin arrives by parachute and gives Boot lots of detailed political information. The Soviet Union of Islamaelia is proclaimed. Its first act is to abolish Sundays. A counter-revolution occurrs on the same day.

Book III – Banquet

Lord Copper of the Beast recommends Boot for a knighthood – but it is awarded in error to the novelist John Boot, the author of smutty stories.

William returns to great acclaim but turns down public adulation and goes straight back home. Mr Slater is despatched to Boot Magna to sign William to the paper in fear that he will join the rival Daily Brute. Slater is poorly received and pestered by William’s garrulous uncle.

Lord Copper gives a banquet to honour William, but it is his aged uncle Theodore Boot who is mistakenly presented as the hero and commended as the ‘triumph of youth’.

Scoop – main characters

William Boot	a young writer on rural matters
John Courtney Boot	a remote cousin, writer of ‘smutty’ novels
Theodore Boot	William’s elderly uncle, a roue
Lord Copper	owner of the Daily Beast
Mr Salter	obsequious foreign editor of the Beast
Mrs Stitch	well connected society lady
Corker	vulgar agency reporter
Katchen	a mercenary blonde prostitute

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