Literary studies Archives - Page 8 of 77

A Smile of Fortune

June 12, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a harbour tale

A Smile of Fortune is one of Joseph Conrad’s lesser-known long stories. He was essentially a nineteenth century writer who anticipated and then lived into the modernist age of the early twentieth century, helping to shape its spirit of uncertainty, anxiety, and moral ambiguity. Even his own life and works share the contradictions of the era. He is best known as an author of mannish sea tales, yet he only achieved success with a novel set largely on dry land which had a woman as its central character (Flora Barral in Chance).

He is now regarded as a great figure in the tradition of the English novel, yet he was Polish, and English was his third language. He’s also regarded as something of a conservative, yet his political views were scathingly radical (see The Secret Agent).

A Smile of Fortune comes from his mature period (1911) and features the familiar Conradian device of a young sea captain who is confronted by a puzzling ethical dilemma. The first person narrator is a confirmed bachelor given to a philosophic approach to life, but whom Conrad cleverly makes vulnerable to the duplicities of the more experienced people around him.

He arrives at an island in the Indian Ocean to take on a cargo of sugar, but is also given an open invitation by his ship’s owners to do trade with a local merchant.

The trader turns out to have a brother, and the two of them have diametrically opposed characters: one is socially well respected, but is a brute; the other is a social outcast who wishes to ingratiate himself with the unnamed narrator.

For reasons he himself cannot fully understand, the captain opts for the outcast and allows himself to be drawn into his domestic life whilst waiting for his ship to be made ready. The principal attraction for this delay is a mysterious young woman, who might be the trader’s daughter, with whom the young captain becomes romantically obsessed.

The trader meanwhile is encouraging the captain’s attentions, whilst trying to lure him into a speculative commercial venture. It’s as if the young man is being lured and tempted on two fronts – the erotic and the pecuniary.

In typically modernist fashion, this conflict reaches an unexpected and ambiguous resolution which despite the captain’s commercial profit leads to his resigning his commission and heading back home.

Formally, it’s a long short story, rather than a novella such as The Secret Sharer and The Shadow Line with which it is frequently collected. And in terms of achievement, it seems to me to fall between the level of those excellent longer tales and the often embarrassingly bad short stories which Conrad turned out at the height of his commercial success.

It’s a story full of symbols and half-concealed inferences which is crying out for (at least) Freudian analysis, and can certainly be added to the list of lesser-known tales which deserve interpretive attention from anyone who admires Conrad’s achievement.

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Joseph Conrad, A Smile of Fortune, London: Hesperus Press, 2007, pp.79, ISBN 184391428X

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

A Study in Scarlet

August 23, 2018 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, further reading

A Study in Scarlet (1888) marks the first ever appearance in print of Sherlock Holmes, the now world-famous detective. It was Arthur Conan Doyle’s first book to be published – for which he received the meagre sum of £25 for all UK rights. The novel first appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual for 1887 and was then republished as a single volume by Ward Lock & Co in July 1888.

A Study in Scarlet – commentary

Structure

The first part of A Study in Scarlet follows what I have called elsewhere the classic Sherlock Holmes formula. First we are introduced to the racy and enigmatic figure of Holmes himself. He is part-Bohemian, a violin player who relaxes with cocaine, and a freelance consultant detective who outwits Scotland Yard.

Then we are given a demonstration of his amazing powers of observation and clinical analysis. The story is related from the point of view of his colleague Dr John Watson. Next, someone (or a message) arrives at 221B Baker Street with details of a crime that has stumped the police.

Holmes then works out the solution to this problem by a combination of logic, closely observed details, his encyclopedic knowledge of crime, and a process of ratiocination. He then sets out in a series of detective-like escapades to prove that his theory is correct.

It is important to note that the mystery is solved via a process of thinking, the logic of which is usually revealed later. The adventures of pursuing criminals or witnesses are only necessary to prove that his theory is correct.

That is exactly the structure of Part 1 of the narrative of A Study in Scarlet. We are introduced to Holmes; he demonstrates his skills; he is presented with almost a locked-room conundrum – a murdered body in an empty house. He then solves the crime and delivers the culprit in handcuffs.

But in this, his first published work, Conan Doyle was presenting his new hero-sleuth via the form of a novel. This is a literary genre that normally requires more substance than the Sherlock Holmes formula provides. So in Part 2, Conan Doyle switches to what is essentially the ‘back story’ that has led to the crimes being committed.

This switch requires not only a change of location and time – from urban London boroughs to the plains of Utah earlier in the century. It is also a change in narrative mode from John Watson’s first person account to an impersonal third-person history of events. This is done without any subsequent explanation of how these two parts of the narrative are related.

The new topics covered in Part 2 introduce a catastrophic rift in the coherence of A Study in Scarlet, from which the novel never really recovers. We are introduced to scene settings of what was then the American ‘Frontier’ which might have been lifted straight out of a Fenimore Cooper novel. There are lengthy explanations for the strange beliefs and behaviour of the Mormons (the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints). The story-line also includes internal rivalries amongst the religious settlers which will explain later complexities in the plot.

This back story is simply too long-winded and complex, the timescale too regressive, and the introduction of significant new characters too disruptive to produce a satisfying whole. The novel could easily have been rescued by eliminating all the back story of Part 2, and simply following the arrest of Jefferson Hope with the explication Holmes gives in the final chapter of the novel.

It seems that Conan Doyle was aware of this weakness, for at a later date he described his own production as ‘having much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition by Euclid’. Certainly he did not make the same mistake again when introducing Holmes as a character in the novel-length work The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). This work maintains its unity of characters, theme, location, and dramatic continuity.

The explanation

Most stories featuring Sherlock Holmes turn on his ability to interpret small details of evidence overlooked by others – particularly his rivals Lestrade and Gregson of the Yard. He deals with the first set of clues in A Study in Scarlet plausibly enough. The dead body in an empty room and the writing in blood on the wall provide him with clues that the muderer was tall, strong, that the blood was the murderer’s, that poison was involved, and that the word ‘RACHE’ on the wall is German.

These are all typical elements in a Holmes story. But Conan Doyle, perhaps because he was tackling a novel or perhaps because this was Holmes’s first fictional appearance, pushes these analytic processes to a level which strains credulity. We are asked to believe that Holmes can recognise and discriminate amongst the footprints of several people who have walked across a muddy pathway – not once in the same direction, but more than once in both directions.

Jefferson Hope (the murderer), Enoch Drebber (the victim), constable John Rance, and his colleague Murcher all trample across the path leading to the empty house on the night of the murder. But we are asked to believe that Holmes is able to accurately work out the sequence of their comings and goings, as well as similar movements of Hope’s horse-drawn cab.

These analyses are simply not credible – even making allowances for what is essentially a work of popular fiction. Some of the later Holmes stories have similar weaknesses, but they are piled on to an unacceptable degree in A Study in Scarlet. Together with the structural flaw examined above, they render the novel an interesting first attempt or a flawed prototype for the successful shorter fictions that were to follow.

Deduction or induction?

The most amazing thing about Holmes is the manner in which he is able to combine acute observation with an incisive system of reasoning to reach revealing insights and surprisingly deft conclusions. It is a method of ratiocination clearly modelled on Edgar Allen Poe’s detective Auguste Dupin.

Amongst critics there is often disagreement on the question of Holmes’ methods of detection. He observes very small details of a person’s physical appearance or clothing, and from these details arrives at a general understanding of their occupation, their habits, or their recent movements. This method of detection illustrates his acute powers of observation and often reveals his encyclopedic knowledge of arcane topics – such as being able to idetify different brands of cigar from their ashes.

In Watson’s narrative, Doyle sometimes calls Holmes’ method ‘deduction’ and other times ‘analysis’. Watson (and by implication Conan Doyle) is employing the term ‘deduction’ in its everyday sense of seeing a relationship between one thing and another which doesn’t at first seem to be connected to it.

But the method, strictly speaking, is ‘induction’ – a form of reasoning which derives general principles from specific observation. This is also known as ‘bottom up’ reasoning.

Deductive reasoning works the other way round – and is known as ‘top down’ logic. This starts from a general principle then works down to a specific instance. All men are mortal; Socrates was a man; therefore Socrates was mortal. Another term for this process is ‘inference’. This is a minor issue – and many people accept and use the term ‘deduction’ for both forms of reasoning. Holmes eventually explains his method to Watson as one of analytic reasoning:

Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be … There are few people however, who, if you told them the result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically.

A Study in Scarlet – study resources

The best current editions of the Sherlock Holmes novels and stories are those published in the Oxford World’s Classics paperback series. Each volume contains a critical introduction, a note on the text, a bibliography of further reading, a biographical chronology of Conan Doyle, and most importantly a series of explanatory notes giving historical, geographical, and scientific information about details mentioned in the text.

A Study in Scarlet – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

A Study in Scarlet – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

A Study in Scarlet – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

A Study in Scarlet – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Sherlock Holmes – Amazon UK

Complete Works of Conan Doyle – Amazon UK

A Study in Scarlet – plot summary

Part 1

1. Dr John Watson has retired injured from the army. He is introduced to Sherlock Holmes with a view to their sharing lodgings. Holmes is a mercurial character who dabbles in scientific experiments.

2. Holmes has a patchy grasp of general knowledge but a profound understanding of forensic science and anatomy. He has written papers on the philosophy of deduction and works as a freelance consultant detective.

3. Holmes is summoned by letter to assist in an unsolved murder in Brixton. He examines the dead body in an empty room whilst Scotland Yard detectives Lestrade and Gregson theorise about an explanation. There is rivalry between Holmes and the detectives – and between each other.

4. Holmes delivers to Watson a working explanation of the crime, devised from a minute examination of the room and its contents. They interview the policeman who discovered the body, who confirms Holmes’ description of the potential murderer.

5. Holmes advertises for the owner of a woman’s ring found at the crime scene. It is answered by an old woman who then gives them the slip when pursued.

6. The newspapers give a variety of accounts of the crime. Gregson arrives at Baker Street claiming he has arrested the murderer – the son of the murdered man’s landlady. His rival Lestrade arrives to announce the murder of Drebber’s secretary, Stargerson.

7. Lestrade describes tracking down Stargerson and finding him murdered. Holmes claims from the details now established that he has a complete answer to the mystery. He tests this by poisoning a dog. He is challenged by Lestrade and Gregson to reveal his findings, and when a cab driver is summoned, Holmes pronounces him the murderer – Jefferson Hope.

Part 2

1. Many years earlier, John Ferrier and his adopted daughter Lucy are lost in the wilderness of Utah, USA. They are dying of thirst and starvation, but are eventually rescued by a caravan of Mormons.

2. Brigham Young establishes the Church of Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake City. After many years Ferrier becomes a successful and rich farmer. Lucy is courted by Jefferson Hope, a hunter and frontiersman.

3. Brigham Young insists that because she is still single, Lucy should marry one of the Four Elders. Ferrier is given a month to decide.

4. Elders Drebber and Stargerson menace Ferrier with their claims for Lucy. With only two days left, Jefferson Hope arrives and rescues Ferrier and Lucy. They set off for Carson City in Nevada.

5. When Hope goes hunting for food, he returns to find that Ferrier has been killed and Lucy abducted by the Mormons. Returning to Salt Lake City, Hope learns that Stargerson shot Ferrier and Lucy has been forcibly married to Drebber.

When Lucy dies a month later, Hope seizes her wedding ring and begins a long pursuit of Drebber and Stargerson, seeking vengeance.

6. Watson then reports the confession of the captured Hope. He followed the two Elders to London and stalked them as a cab driver. He takes Drebber as a drunken passenger and presents him with a box of pills, some of which are poisoned. Drebber takes one and dies. Hope then goes to Stangerson’s hotel and after a struggle stabs him in the heart.

7. Hope dies in prison. Holmes explains to Watson how he analysed details of the case. Lestrade and Gregson get all the credit for solving the crime.

A Study in Scarlet – characters

Dr John Watson	a retired army medical officer
Sherlock Holmes	a freelance consultant detective
Lestrade	a Scotland Yard detective
Tobias Gregson	a Scotland Yard detective
Enoch Drebber	a Mormon Elder who marries Lucy
Joseph Stargerson	a Mormon Elder, Drebber’s ‘secretary’
Jefferson Hope	an American frontiersman and hunter
John Ferrier	a frontiersman who becomes a rich farmer
Lucy Ferrier	his adopted daughter

More Sherlock Holmes
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

A Summing Up

March 11, 2014 by Roy Johnson

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

A Summing Up is one of a number of short stories by Virginia Woolf set at a party in the Westminster home of Richard and Clarissa Dalloway, the hosts of the central social event in her novel Mrs Dalloway (1925). The story was first published in A Haunted House (1944) and then later reprinted with the collection of stories and sketches Mrs Dalloway’s Party published by the Hogarth Press in London in 1973.

houses in Westminster

A Summing Up – critical commentary

Like all the other stories in the Mrs Dalloway’s Party sequence, this is principally a study in social alienation, egoism, and the life of the imagination. It is yet another example of people interacting politely in what appears on the surface to be a civilized manner, whilst the narrative reveals the emotional and intellectual chasms that separate them.

Bertram Pritchard is an almost comic study of the crashing bore, even though he is ‘an esteemed civil servant and a Companion of the Bath.’

Written down what he said would be incredible — not only was each thing he said in itself insignificant, but there was no connection between the different remarks.

Sasha Latham on the other hand is ‘tall [and] handsome’ but inwardly feels lacking in confidence. Disattending to her fellow guest, she retreats into a series of imaginative speculations concerning the nature and the history of society.

There is no overt criticism of Pritchard, only deeply ironic counterpoint. Sasha Latham even manages to feel sympathetic towards him as she searches through a jumble of memories and sense impressions for some sort of meaningful insight.

And she finds it – very briefly – in the vision of a tree she sees in the garden. She also realises that the revelation might come by accident, and it does as she feels that the human soul ‘is by nature unmated, a widow bird; a bird perched aloft on that tree’ – before the revelation is shattered both by Pritchard guiding her back to what he sees as their social duty in the house, and by the inarticulate shriek she hears from the city that surrounds them.

A Summing Up – study resources

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon US

Monday or Tuesday and Other Stories – Gutenberg.org

Kew Gardens and Other Stories – Hogarth reprint – Amazon UK

Kew Gardens and Other Stories – Hogarth reprint – Amazon US

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf – Kindle edition

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

A Summing Up – story synopsis

Bertram Pritchard and Sasha Latham are guests at an evening party given by Clarissa Dalloway in central London. They stroll together in the small garden in the shadow of Westminster. He is a civil servant and a complete bore: she is uncertain about herself, but the story is articulated largely from her point of view.

Because Bertram Pritchard is a non-stop talker about trivialities, she stops listening to him and thinks instead of how there is now a civilized society where once there were swamps. She admires the courage and the sophistication of other people to succeed in society – even Bertram Pritchard.

They look over the garden wall, and she becomes conscious of the fact that they are in the middle of a busy city. Then they sit and talk to people she doesn’t actually know, and her thoughts drift back to fragments of what she learned at school. She wonders which of her impressions of the world are the most accurate. She has a visionary experience that the human soul is single and unattached. But at that precise moment an inarticulate cry sounds from within the city, and her vision escapes into the night.

A Summing Up – characters

Bertram Pritchard	an ‘esteemed’ civil servant and bore
Mrs Sasha Latham	a guest at the party
Clarissa Dalloway	a society hostess

Other works by Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse (1927) is the second of the twin jewels in the crown of her late experimental phase. It is concerned with the passage of time, the nature of human consciousness, and the process of artistic creativity. Woolf substitutes symbolism and poetic prose for any notion of plot, and the novel is composed as a triptych of three almost static scenes – during the second of which the principal character Mrs Ramsay dies – literally within a parenthesis. The writing is lyrical and philosophical at the same time. Many critics see this as her greatest achievement, and Woolf herself realised that with this book she was taking the novel form into hitherto unknown territory.
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Kew Gardens is a collection of experimental short stories in which Woolf tested out ideas and techniques which she then later incorporated into her novels. After Chekhov, they represent the most important development in the modern short story as a literary form. Incident and narrative are replaced by evocations of mood, poetic imagery, philosophic reflection, and subtleties of composition and structure. The shortest piece, ‘Monday or Tuesday’, is a one-page wonder of compression. This collection is a cornerstone of literary modernism. No other writer – with the possible exception of Nadine Gordimer, has taken the short story as a literary genre as far as this.
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Virginia Woolf is a readable and well illustrated biography by John Lehmann, who at one point worked as her assistant and business partner at the Hogarth Press. It is described by the blurb as ‘A critical biography of Virginia Woolf containing illustrations that are a record of the Bloomsbury Group and the literary and artistic world that surrounded a writer who is immensely popular today’. This is an attractive and very accessible introduction to the subject which has been very popular with readers ever since it was first published..
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Virginia Woolf – web links

Virginia Woolf at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major works, book reviews, studies of the short stories, bibliographies, web links, study resources.

Blogging Woolf
Book reviews, Bloomsbury related issues, links, study resources, news of conferences, exhibitions, and events, regularly updated.

Virginia Woolf at Wikipedia
Full biography, social background, interpretation of her work, fiction and non-fiction publications, photograph albumns, list of biographies, and external web links

Virginia Woolf at Gutenberg
Selected eTexts of her novels and stories in a variety of digital formats.

Woolf Online
An electronic edition and commentary on To the Lighthouse with notes on its composition, revisions, and printing – plus relevant extracts from the diaries, essays, and letters.

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search texts of all the major novels and essays, word by word – locate quotations, references, and individual terms

Orlando – Sally Potter’s film archive
The text and film script, production notes, casting, locations, set designs, publicity photos, video clips, costume designs, and interviews.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury – including Gordon Square, Gower Street, Bedford Square, Tavistock Square, plus links to women’s history web sites.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Bulletins of events, annual lectures, society publications, and extensive links to Woolf and Bloomsbury related web sites

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
Charming sound recording of radio talk given by Virginia Woolf in 1937 – a podcast accompanied by a slideshow of photographs.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephen compiled a photograph album and wrote an epistolary memoir, known as the “Mausoleum Book,” to mourn the death of his wife, Julia, in 1895 – an archive at Smith College – Massachusetts

Virginia Woolf first editions
Hogarth Press book jacket covers of the first editions of Woolf’s novels, essays, and stories – largely designed by her sister, Vanessa Bell.

Virginia Woolf – on video
Biographical studies and documentary videos with comments on Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and the social background of their times.

Virginia Woolf Miscellany
An archive of academic journal essays 2003—2014, featuring news items, book reviews, and full length studies.

More on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf – short stories
Virginia Woolf – greatest works
Virginia Woolf – criticism
Virginia Woolf – life and works

A Theft

August 17, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, web links

A Theft (1987) is one of three stories in the collection Something to Remember Me By. It was originally intended for magazine publication, but was rejected as being too long. Saul Bellow took the unusual step of publishing it as a single volume – directly as a paperback book. The two other stories in the collection are Something to Remember Me By and The Bellarosa Connection.

A Theft – commentary

The main theme

The story (or novella) is largely a character study of Clara Velde – her deep emotional conflicts, erratic behaviour, and her problematic relationships with the people close to her. But the most important feature, which unites all these elements, is the complexity of her feelings for ex-lover Ithiel (Teddy) Regler.

Teddy is an intelligent and impressive figure in his own right, but so far as Clara is concerned he is all men; he is the man; but he has remained beyond her reach, unobtainable. This might explain why she has had so many failed marriages. But she has one tangible link that expresses the bond she feels between them. He has given her an expensive emerald ring that she treasures and provides the story with its central symbol.

When she first loses the ring she feels that her world has come apart. She has three children, a successful career, and a loyal but ineffectual husband, Wilder. But after twenty years she still regards Teddy as her soul mate. The ring is a powerful emblem of what he means to her and the love they once shared (which curiously enough, is not really dramatised, even in her retrospective musings).

The ring is recovered, but then disappears again when it is stolen by the boyfriend of her au pair, a petty crook from Haiti. Clara more-or-less fires the au pair Gina, but then immediately feels guilty about how rashly she has acted. Once again she feels that a cornerstone of her identity has been removed, and she flies to Washington where Teddy gives her the support that she needs.

Gina the au pair recovers the ring from her boyfriend and returns it via Clara’s daughter Lucy, who completes the transaction without question or fuss. Clara is not only relieved, but feels she has learned a valuable lesson about herself from the much younger woman.

‘I do seem to have an idea of who it is that’s in the middle of me. There may not be more than one in a million, more’s the pity, that do have. And my own child possibly one of those.

It is a moment of catharsis that draws the very loose ends of the story together. But for all the moral and existential anxiety that arises from these twin episodes, it is worth noting that the only theft which remains outstanding at the conclusion to the story is Clara’s. When the ring first goes missing, she claims on her insurance policy – sixteen thousand dollars – but does not return the money when the ring turns up again in her bedroom. This particular theft is left unexamined.

Weaknesses

The early part of the story concerns Clara’s incontinent confessions about her private life and loves to her assistant Laura Wong. These confidences are largely about her continued enthusiasm for former lover Teddy Regler. But Ms Wong hardly features at all in the latter part of the story – so she is introduced for no meaningful purpose.

The same is true of the early scenes describing Clara’s meetings with Giangiacomo and Spontini in Italy. The fictional character Giangiacomo is a thinly disguised portrait of the Italian radical Giangiacomo Feltrinelli – best known as the publisher of Boris Pasternack’s Doctor Zhivago. The character is introduced, but then blows himself up whilst trying to dynamite power lines. [This was one interpretation of Feltrinelli’s controversial death in 1972.] There seems very little connection between this slightly larger-than-life character and the main theme of the story.

In the case of Spontini, his significance is reduced to a single incident. When he is driving Clara in his car she threatens to ward off his wandering hands with the red hot element of a dashboard cigarette lighter. She goes on later to make him the third of her four husbands – but he too never emerges again in the story with any significance, and it is difficult to understand why he is named and included.

Saul Bellow is rightly celebrated as a writer who can bring fictional characters alive by carefully observed physical details, idiosyncratic speech patterns, and a Dickensian sense of comic exaggeration. These approaches to fictional entertainment work well in the expansive scope of novels—which Henry James called ‘large loose baggy monsters’. But these vivid but inconsequential characters can unbalance the more restrained and delicate requirements of the short story and the novella.

Bellow gives the impression in A Theft of writing that is lower his usual standard. For instance, there is a glaring technical flaw part way through the narrative. The story is told almost exclusively from Clara’s point of view. Even passages that switch briefly into third person omniscient narrative mode have Clara as a point of focus. But following an argument between Clara and Teddy, the narrative suddenly switches from her point of view to his when he leaves her and checks into a hotel:

He went to the bed and sat on the edge but did not lie down. It was not in the cards for him to sleep that night. The phone rang—it was a mean sound, a thin rattle—and Etta said: “Clara has swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. She called me and I sent the ambulance.”

The only justification for this sudden change of perspective is that it allows the shock of her attempted suicide to be seen from his point of view. After this the story switches back again to Clara to give a brief history of her first three marriages.

A Theft – resources

A Theft – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

A Theft – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

A Saul Bellow bibliography

Saul Bellow – Collected Stories – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Saul; Bellow – Collected Stories – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Saul Bellow (Modern Critical Views) – essays and studies – Amz UK

Saul Bellow (Modern Critical Views) – essays and studies – Amz US

Cambridge Companion to Saul Bellow – Amazon UK

A Theft – plot summary

Clara Velde is a successful fashion advisor with three children living on Park Avenue in New York City. She has been married four times, but is mostly enthusiastic about her former lover Ithiel (Teddy) Regler. She hires a young Viennese girl Gina Wegman as an au pair, and she confides personal concerns to Laura Wong, her design assistant.

She recalls meeting revolutionary Giangiacomo in Italy, and is pursued by Spontini (who later becomes one of her husbands). When Teddy takes a secretary to South America on a business trip, she moves Frenchman Jean-Claude into his apartment. Clara and Teddy are reconciled, but when he does the same again on another foreign trip, Clara tries to commit suicide. She survives, and goes on to a career of serial matrimony.

She marries four times, and Teddy marries three. She loses the expensive ring he once bought her, claims on the insurance, then finds it but does not repay the insurance money.

When Teddy’s third wife leaves him, Clara goes to Washington to offer comfort. On returning to New York she finds the au pair Gina has had a party with her Haitian lover and lots of friends. Clara is suspicious, and when she discovers that her emerald ring is missing she assumes the boyfriend has stolen it. She orders Gina to return it next day – or leave. She feels devastated again by the loss, but then guilty about her peremptory dismissal of Gina.

Clara visits her psychiatrist, then meets Teddy, who recommends a private investigator. Some time later the ring suddenly reappears on her bedside table. Clara thinks Gina has replaced it, and wishes to thank and reward her. She meets Gina who explains that she returned the ring by giving it to Lucy, her daughter.

A Theft – principal characters

Clara Velde	a successful business woman and fashion advisor
Wilder Velde	Clara’s lazy fourth husband
Laura Wong	Clara’s assistant and confidante
Ithiel (Teddy) Regler	a government diplomat, Clara’s former lover
Gina Wegman	a young Viennese au pair girl
Bobby Steinsalz	Teddy’s lawyer
Lucy	Clara’s eldest daughter
Gottschalk	a private investigator
Dr Gladstone	Clara’s psychiatrist
Mike Spontini	an oil tycoon, Clara’s third husband

More on Saul Bellow
More on the novella
More on short stories
Twentieth century literature

A Tragedy of Error

July 25, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

A Tragedy of Error was Henry James’s first published story. It appeared in The Continental Monthly magazine for February 1864 and was never reprinted during James’s lifetime. In fact it was only eventually rediscovered in the 1950s.

A Tragedy of Error – critical commentary

In common with some of James’s very earliest tales, this one is not much more that an elaborated anecdote or a squib – though one with a grimly ironic twist in its dramatic conclusion.

Its principal weakness is the second section where Hortense is in conversation with the boatman who rows her in the harbour. Seeking to create plausibility, James invents a long discussion of the sailor’s poverty in order to provide the motivation for accepting her proposal of a paid crime. The extended nature of this section unbalances the composition of the story.

But the predictable outcome is well plotted, and commendable for the understated manner in which the twenty-one year old James leaves the reader to work out the tragedy that is unfolding. No names are mentioned – but we know that through the well orchestrated sequence of events, it is Hortense’s lover who is murdered, whilst her husband arrives safely home.

Interpretation

It is also worth noting, given what we know of James’s work still to be written, that this is a story of an adulterous woman who is prepared to have her husband murdered. In 1864 this could be accepted as a jeu d’esprit, and the story can still be enjoyed in this way. But taken into the context of James’s work as a whole it demonstrates that his psychologically sceptical attitude to women was present from the outset.

A Tragedy of Error – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon US

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

A Tragedy of Error – plot summary

Part I. Hortense de Bernier receives the sudden news in France that her husband will be joining her the next day on holiday from America. She discusses this embarrassing situation with her lover the Vicomte Louis de Meyrau, who tells her not to worry. But she does worry, and tries to calm her nerves with glassful of brandy

Part II. Later that day, she goes down to the seafront, and after witnessing a sailor bullying his nephew, she employs him to row her across the harbour. On the way she questions him about his work; he explains his poverty; and eventually she employs him to murder her husband when his ship arrives the next day. He sets a very high price on the agreement.

Part III. On reaching home, she receives a note telling her that Louis de Meyrau intends to meet her husband on his ship the next day She is unsure about her lover’s motives, and cannot sleep.

Part IV. Louis de Meyrau meets the ship next day, is told that M. de Bernier has already gone ashore, and asks a boatman to take him to the de Bernier home. When Hortense goes out into the garden of her seafront home, she is met by her husband.

A Tragedy of Error – principal characters

Hortense de Bernier	an adulterous French woman
M. de Bernier	her husband
Vicomte Louis de Meyrau	her lover
Josephine	her maid
Valentine	her cook
—	the boatman

Other works by Henry James

Washington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
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The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
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The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
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Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

More tales by James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Adina

June 22, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

Adina first appeared in Scribner’s Monthly during May—June 1874. This split across two monthly issues may account for the bipartite structure of the tale. Its next appearance in book form was as part of the collection of tales Travelling Companions published in 1919 by Boni and Liveright, New York.

Albano – Giorgione (1477—1510)

Adina – critical commentary

Romance

This tale has many elements of the medieval romance or the fairy tale which James had explored around this time (one thinks of Benvolio written the following year) – the discovered gem, the Italian setting, the young girl’s elopement. In fact James draws attention to this very aspect of the tale during his own narrative:

it ought to be out of a novel – such a thing as love at [first] sight; such a thing as an unspoken dialogue, between a handsome young Italian with a wrong, in a starlit garden, and a fanciful Western maid at a window.

And yet there are elements of structural detailing and thematic unity in the narrative of a kind which James would develop in his later tales which lift it above the ordinary romance. The tales has a deeply embedded narrative logic which lifts it above this plane

Geography

The story starts in Rome, where Scrope and the narrator are based. They ride out into the countryside and encounter Angelo – as it happens, near Albano, which will feature later in the tale. Quite apart from the issue of the topaz, they learn his name, where he lives, and the fact that his uncle is a clergyman. All of these details become important later in the story.

When Mrs Waddington takes fright at the prospect of the famous Roman fever, she decamps with Adina to Albano – which is the region south of Rome which includes the papal retreat – and also L’Arricia, which is where Angelo lives. Even though Scrope has taken advantage of Angelo, they are playing on his home territory.

Angelo thus has ready local access to pay court to Adina, and his own uncle on hand to effect the early morning marriage ceremony. The romance elements are there – but they are backed up by the sort of factual details in the tradition of realistic narrative fiction which was James’s natural milieu. Angelo and Adina even go to live in Rome after the marriage ceremony – which completes the geographic symmetry.

Structure, symbol, and parallels

The most obvious feature in terms of artistic devices is Angelo and his full name – Angelo Beati – ‘blessed angel’ – because he does in the end triumph with the ‘prize’ of Adina, who he says in the end is the more valuable: “she’s worth more than the topaz”.

And when Scrope finally throws the topaz back into its historical origins in the Tiber, he is on the Ponte del Angelo, and we already know that Saint Angelo is the young Italian’s patron saint name.

There is also ironic prefigurement of the story-line in Scrope’s observation:

some knowing person would have got word of the affair, and whispered to the Padre Girolamo that his handsome young nephew had been guided by a miracle to a fortune, and might marry a contessa.

Angelo does exactly that – twice. First he attempts to impress his village girl friend Nietta with the few scudi he has gained – but nothing comes of it, because the reward is not big enough to impress her. But then he succeeds on a much bigger symbolic level by enchanting and marrying Adina.

Psychological reading

This is the story of a pretty, wayward girl who breaks her promise to marry a serious though not good-looking man, and who runs off with a penniless, albeit handsome stranger. She is not dissimilar to the deaf-mute girl in Professor Fargo who suddenly runs off with a complete mountebank and charlatan. Adina is easily swayed – at first attracted to and even engaged to an ‘ugly’ classical scholar. But lured by only smiles, glimpses, and maybe the odd message from her window, she agrees to marry somebody she hardly knows.

Even though James was only just turned thirty at the time of the story’s composition, this is one of many of his works which offers a warning against women in general and marriage in particular. It is a theme which runs through many of the tales and into the ‘late phase’ of his greatest novels.

Adina – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon US

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Adina – plot summary

Part I
The inner narrator and his friend Scrope are in Rome, riding in the countryside, when they encounter Angelo, a handsome young man who has just found an old gemstone in the roots of a lightning-struck tree. Scrope buys it from him at what is obviously a low price. He rationalises his opportunism, but the narrator has reservations about the transaction.

Scrope cleans and polishes the stone,, which turns out to be a golden topaz, the personal intaglio of the Emperor Tiberius. He swears the narrator to secrecy about the discovery, who in turn advises him not to even reveal the matter to a mistress.

When Scrope’s cousin Mrs Waddington arrives in Rome, he falls in love with her step-daughter Adina. Mrs Waddington and the narrator cannot understand why a pretty young girl should fall for an unattractive man such as Scrope. When they all go to Christmas Mass at St Peter’s Scrope and Adina stay out late alone. Next day Scrope reveals that he and Adina are engaged.

The narrator walks out alone next day and meets Angelo, who is eaten up with anger over the topaz and the money, none of which has done him any good. The narrator offers to help him if he can.

Part II
Scrope agrees to meet Angelo, but when they do he refuses to pay any more for the jewel. Adina says she will not wear the topaz because Tiberius was such a cruel emperor. They all meet Angelo in the Borgese gardens. He is composed, but threatens to ‘hurt’ Scrope at some point as revenge for his unfair treatment.

Mrs Waddington and Adina de-camp to Albano The narrator visits them, and on his way back to Rome meets Angelo, who lives nearby. Later he meets Adina alone, praying in a church. She begins to act strangely, and Scrope confesses to the narrator that he is worried about her. When Adina suddenly breaks off her engagement to Scrope, the narrator suspects that she has somehow fallen under the spell of Angelo. He advises Mrs Waddington to leave Albano the very next day. But the following morning a note reveals that Adina has married Angelo and already left with him.

Some time later the narrator goes to see Adina and Angelo who live in Rome. Angelo is radiantly happy, whilst Adina is ‘pale and grave’. But she says she wishes to remain with Angelo and ‘be forgotten’ by her relatives. When the narrator reveals this state of affairs to Scrope as they stroll in the city centre, Scrope throws the golden topaz into the Tiber.

Principal characters

I	the un-named outer-narrator
I	the un-named inner-narrator, his ‘host’
Sam Scrope	their mutual friend, an ugly, cynical classical scholar
Angelo Beati	a handsome young Italian
Mrs Waddington	Scrope’s cousin, a widow
Adina Waddington	her pretty young step-daughter from New England

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant