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Reasons of State

October 5, 2018 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot summary

Reasons of State (1974) first published as El recurso del metodo has a curious history. It was written as the result of a bet between Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel Garcia Marquez – both of them Nobel prizewinners. Marquez produced The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) and Carpentier wrote Reasons of State. Both novels deal with an issue which still blights Latin-America today – political stranglehold by dictatorships. As literary works they owe a great deal to El senor presidente (1946) which was the first novel to deal with this issue, written by the Guatemalan writer Miguel Asturias, an equally distinguished predecessor . The English translation is by Francis Partridge, one of the last survivors of the Bloomsbury Group.

Reasons of State

Reasons of State – commentary

Magical realism

Carpentier is one of the many Latin-American writers who have employed the technique of ‘magical realism’ – a term that he coined himself. This is an approach to fictional narratives that combines traditional realism with elements of fantasy, exaggeration, and the supernatural.

In Reasons of State for instance, the president from his Parisian embassy socialises with other fictional characters such as the distinguished academician, his daughter and his secretary, Peralta. Combined with this fictional world, he is also acquainted with real historical figures such as the Italian fascist and poet Gabriele D’Dannunzio (1863-1938).

There is therefore a close mixture of the fictional with the ‘real’, historical worlds. But he is also connected in the narrative with people such as Elstir (a painter), Vinteuil (a composer), Morel (a violinist) who are fictional characters from Marcel Proust’s great novel Remembrance of Things Past. This brings a second level of fictionality to the narrative – with the subject of one fictional text appearing in another. This is sometimes known as ‘intertextuality’.

For good measure, the president is also personally acquainted with Reynaldo Hahn, the Venezuelan composer who was a close friend of Proust. The narrative therefore switches between a fictional realism of its own making, references to real historical events and people, and the inclusion of elements from a parallel world of cultural aesthetics and history.

Narrative mode

It should be clear from the outset that the narrative is delivered in a mixture of first-person and third-person narrative modes. The novel begins with the president’s thoughts and feelings as his day begins in the Parisian embassy:

I’ve never been able to sleep in a rigid bed with a mattress and bolster. I have to curl up inside a rocking hammock, to be cradled in its corded network. Another swing and a yawn, and with another swing I get my legs out and hunt about with my feet for my slippers which I have lost in the pattern of the Persian carpet.

But gradually this first-person account becomes a third-person presentation of events delivered in conventional manner, as if by an anonymous omniscient narrator. These events are largely concerned with revealing the President’s scandalous and hypocritical behaviour:

“The cunt! The son of a bitch!” yelled the Head of State hurling the cables to the ground. “I’ve not finished reading it,” said the Cholo Mendoza, picking up the papers. The movement had spread to three provinces of the North and threatened the Pacific zone.

Carpentier manages these transitions very skilfully, but this technique does pose some aesthetic problems. There is a blurring and eventually very little distinction between the two modes. The result is that many lengthy passages of narrative, packed with literary, historical, cultural, and philosophical references, have the appearance of representing the president’s point of view.

We now know that many dictators can be culturally sophisticated at the same time as being social barbarians who countenance torture and the savage repression of all criticism. But somehow the range and depth of cultural references attributed to the president never seem persuasive.

There is also the problem (shared with Carpentier’s other novels) of a disruptive volume of material concerned with music and architecture. These are both subjects Carpentier studied as an undergraduate and has written on extensively, but their appearance in Reasons of State constitute what elsewhere would be considered digressions. They are not fundamentally linked to the main themes of the novel.

The main theme

The principal subject of the novel is obviously the life, thought processes, and behaviour of a dictator. The novel traces his desperate attempts the cling to power, his decline, exile, and death. In this sense it follows the tradition established by Miguel Asturias with Mister President (1946) and is similar to The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962) by Carlos Fuentes. All of them have catalogued the disruptive and tyrannical effects of Central American regimes lacking democracy – in Guatemala, Venezuela, and Mexico – though all of them have chosen to write about fictional, imaginary, and un-named countries.

However the underlying theme of Carpentier’s novel (as in many of his other works) is the tension and contradictions between native Latin-American history and the traditional western culture that has arisen out of Europe. Carpentier was born in Switzerland and educated largely in Paris, where he began his literary career in the 1920s. But his family also spent a lot of time in Havana, and he was a founding member of the Cuban Communist Party in 1921.

This is not to suggest that he suffered from ‘divided loyalties’ but to point out his abiding attempts to fuse the two very different cultures he had absorbed. His 1953 novel The Lost Steps deals very explicitly with this theme.

Reasons of State is interesting because he attributes a great deal of this interest in European culture to the President himself. This presents the reader with a certain problem of fictional credibility. We are asked to believe that this cruel and vulgar man is also a connoisseur of fine art, poetry, and opera. He abuses women, he is an alcoholic, an embezzler, and he rules by torture and executions; but we are expected to accept that he is also an enthusiast for classical music, painting and poetry, and a close friend of Reynaldo Hahn.

Readers will make up their own minds if he is a coherent and credible character or not. But there are two further points which might be made about this contradiction or imbalance. First, it might be said that Carpentier is forcing his own cultural enthusiasms into the novel – at all costs. Second, it could be said that despite the president’s unpleasant behaviour, Carpentier is in an an odd sense writing about himself.

It is in this sense that the contradiction between political mis-rule and cultural sophistication (the Latin-America/European divide) is the theme of the novel, as distinct from its overt subject, which is the decline and fall of a dictator.

Reasons of State – study resources

Reasons of State (2013) – Amazon UK

El recurso del metodo (2009) – Amazon UK

Reasons of State (2013) – Amazon US

El recurso del metodo (2009) – Amazon US

Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home (2014) – Kindle

Reasons of State – plot summary

ONE

The president of an un-named Latin-American country wakes up in his Paris residence recalling a visit to a high-class brothel the previous night. He also reflects on his friendship with Gabriele D’Annunzio. There is a visit by a right-wing French academician, offering the president’s daughter Ofelia an introduction to Cosima Wagner. The academician sponges on the president by selling him some ‘rare’ manuscripts. Suddenly an ambassador arrives with news of a military uprising back home. There is an immediate council of war.

TWO

Arms are purchased in the USA with money from concessions ceded to the United Fruit Company. The president and his entourage sail to Havana incognito. Arriving in the home country, the president cracks down on protesting students and workers.

After a day’s military action the president and his entourage shelter from tropical storms in a cave, where they discover pre-Colombian embalmed bodies in urns. Next day they cross the Rio Verde, but the enemy has retreated. The rebel general Galvan is pursued, cornered, and executed.

In Nueva Cordoba the president and his men lay siege to a town which at first capitulates, but when resistance begins the president’s army slaughter the population. He then returns to the capital where a rigged election reaffirms his position. However, he is suffering from a frozen right arm and returns to France for treatment.

THREE

On arrival in Paris he is shunned by all his old contacts. The French press has reported all the atrocities in Nueva Cordoba. Only the reactionary academician shows any sympathy and excuses his ‘excesses’. In exchange for bribes the academician arranges for a press campaign flattering to the President. In the midst of ensuing confusion, the First World War breaks out.

In the lull before fighting begins, the president looks down on Europe and bolsters his flagging confidence with reflections on the profusion of religious Virgin saints in Latin-America. Then news arrives of a treacherous revolt by his minister of war, General Hoffman.

The President prepares for departure with a visit to a brothel. He realises he will have no convincing arguments to offer back home. He decides to attack German culture and promote Latinism in an attempt to curry popular support. His secretary tries to tempt him to remain in Paris, but he has grandiose notions of ‘Destiny’.

FOUR

General Hoffman is deserted by his troops and dies falling into a swamp. The president then goes on holiday to his seaside retreat. News of German atrocities in the war begin to appear, which the president cannot reconcile with the peaceful German colony living in the capital.

The European war brings prosperity to the country. The president decides to establish a national capitol, and architectural contests are held. A huge naked female statue is commissioned, but it turns out to be too big for its setting.

When the Germans torpedo an American ship, it brings the USA into the war. Amidst ridiculous propaganda about the comforts of the trenches, the president despatches troops. The capitol is completed and inaugurated with a lavish banquet, but the celebrations are followed by a bomb attack on the palace. The president immediately orders repressive measures against the university, teachers, students, bookshops, and the working public. The common element is identified as communism, which the president does not understand. But suddenly the European war ends.

There is an elaborate opera season which ends with another bomb attack. A model prison is built. The price of sugar collapses. Banks close. A period of celebratory carnival merges into armed revolt – which is put down with extreme repression, torture, and executions.

FIVE

North American influence grows and Europe is seen as chaotic and backwards. When the New York Times publishes a scathing critique of the country the national press merely responds with tabloid reports of sensational domestic crimes. Holy week is replaced by Santa Claus and a commercial Christmas.

Strikes begin, followed by the appearance of a radical bulletin Liberation. A spate of public misinformation ensues. Everything is blamed on a single trouble-maker – The Student. Someone is arrested and interrogated personally by the president, who cajoles then threatens him. The interview is cut short by an explosion.

The economy collapses and the city deteriorates. Strikes continue in the provinces. The presence of the USA grows. There is a general strike, to which the president responds by machine-gunning closed shops. There is public demand for the abdication of the president. A rumour is spread that the president is dead. People emerge to celebrate, and are slaughtered by troops.

SIX

The following day order collapses completely. US marines land in the North and the president escapes in an ambulance, disguised as a patient. He is given shelter by the provincial US consul. The secretary Peralta deserts to the rebels.
The president waits anxiously to be smuggled away by speedboat to a US ship.

SEVEN

The president arrives back in Paris to find his residence full of modern art and his louche daughter partying. Former contacts are unavailable or dead. He laments the changes in modern life and finds solace only in the brothel.

The Mayorala buys exotic fruits and cooks native dishes in the house, which the president and even Ofelia enjoy. Meanwhile Dr Martinez assumes power back home and promises reforms. The Student meets delegates to an international socialist conference in Paris.

The president grows thinner, time goes by, and he lives in the past, recalling how he cheated the country economically. He begins to confuse past and present, loses the use of his legs, and eventually dies.

Reasons of State – characters

—	the President, head of state, dictator of a central American country
Dr Peralta	his secretary
Ofelia	his spoiled self-indulgent daughter
Ariel	his son, ambassador to the US
Mayorala Elmira	his housekeeper
General Ataulfo Galvan	a rebel leader
Dr Martinez	a professor of philosophy and rebel leader
Colonel Walter Hoffman	the minister for war
Enoch Crowder	the US ambassador
The Student	a figure representing all youthful resistance

More on Alejo Carpentier
More on the novella
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More on short stories

Ripley Under Ground

November 8, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, commentary, further reading, web links

Ripley Under Ground (1977) is the second of Patricia Highsmith’s novels featuring her anti-hero Tom Ripley. He is a young and ambitious American from a poor background who has a taste for art, luxuries, and fine living. He is enterprising and imaginative, likes to takes chances, and is not averse to murdering anybody who gets in his way.

There is a series of five Ripley novels, which have become known collectively as The Ripliad. They are self-contained and can be enjoyed separately – but an acquaintance with their chronological development adds depth to their meaning – particularly the ironic contrasts between Ripley’s refined social tastes and his shocking exploits.

Ripley Under Ground – commentary

Background

Since the events of The Talented Mr Ripley (1970) Tom Ripley has ‘retired’ to live in France, and has married Heloise Plisson. He has three sources of income – all gained illegally. The first is Dickie Greenleaf’s inheritance, which he has appropriated by forging Dickie’s will. The second is a business centred on the creation of fake paintings by an artist Derwatt, who is now dead. The third is a courier service for illegal goods sent to him by an associate Reeves Minot from Hamburg.

Ripley has escaped detection for the murders of Dickie Greenleaf and Freddie Miles, and yet a certain opprobrium attaches itself to his name. He is also supported by regular maintenance payments his wife receives from her father, a millionaire pharmaceutical manufacturer who is sceptical about her marriage to Ripley.

Murder and morality

What makes this and the other Ripley novels interesting is the tension between Ripley as a character and what he does. We know that he is a confidence trickster who is living off other people’s money; that he is prepared to adopt another person’s identity; forge letters; lie to the police; and generally evade detection so that he can go on living a comfortable life.

That is Part One of the down side to his character. But he also has positive characteristics. He likes good food and wine; he takes an interest in art; he is considerate to friends and neighbours; and his taste in fine clothes and furniture is based on a genuine appreciation of their quality – not on any snobbish and nouveau-riche accumulation of status objects.

Part Two of his character however, is problematic. Not only does he break the law in matters of finance and irregular business practices – he actually murders people. This is more difficult to defend.

The only possible defence is aesthetic – an acceptance that Patricia Highsmith is offering an entertaining character study in radical existentialism. She makes her protagonist an intelligent and cultivated character who rationalises his crimes by only murdering ‘unsympathetic’ characters. It also has to be said that some of the murderous situations in which Ripley finds himself can be quite funny – in a macabre, black humour sort of way.

Ripley the Protean

We know from the first of the Ripley novels that he is very skillful at imitating the sound of other people’s voices. In Ripley Under Ground he goes one further and convincingly impersonates someone (Derwatt) who has died a few years previously. He transforms himself twice to pull off this trick – though it has to be said that none of the people before whom he puts on this performance would know what Derwatt originally looked like.

Ripley also identifies very intently with certain other people – usually the underdog. He understands why Bernard Tufts wishes to abandon his role as a Derwatt imitator and return to his own career as a painter. This will bring one element of Ripley’s profitable company Derwatt Ltd to a close, but he sympathises with Bernard’s plight – possibly as a fellow amateur painter himself.

Indeed, he carries this sympathy to extraordinary lengths, because Bernard blames Ripley for bringing him to a personal crisis of identity and twice tries to kill him. He even buries him alive (hence the book’s title) yet Ripley seemingly bears no grudge against him.

Ripley also has multiple identities. He lives an apparently blameless life in a quiet French village; yet he has a corrupt business network that stretches to Hamburg and London. He is quite happy to travel on a forged passport. He is a gentleman to his housekeeper, a devoted husband to his wife, and a secretive mystery to everyone else.

Ripley also flits quite easily between two languages – English and French. (We learn later that he also speaks Italian.) In fact he is something of an amateur linguaphile – and he often wonders what the word for an object is in a number of different languages.

The conclusion

Without doubting for a moment Patricia Highsmith’s skill at plotting, her attention to detail, and her knowledge of the technicalities of crime – the conclusion to Ripley Under Ground does seem to raise a few problems.

The novel ends with Bernard’s suicide and Tom’s cremation of the body. We learn in the next novel Ripley Under Ground that Tom returned to the scene of this gruesome bonfire with Inspector Webster, to be questioned closely about the incident – which the police mistakenly think is the death of Derwatt.

Ripley is able to talk his way out of things as usual. But surely there is something more fundamentally wrong here? It is difficult to believe that failing to report a death (Bernard’s suicidal fall over the cliff) would not be regarded as a crime in most European countries. Even more seriously – the private cremation of an unreported dead body would be a very serious crime indeed.

Ripley does his best to remove evidence for identifying the corpse by shattering the skull and detaching the lower jawbone. At that time (prior to DNA technology) recognition of unidentified bodies was often based on dental records, of which there are none for Derwatt. This is a typical and delicious double plot irony on Highsmith’s part, since it was not Derwatt’s corpse that was cremated, but Bernard’s.

But these macabre details apart, surely Inspector Webster or the Salzburg police would have arrested Ripley for the unofficial cremation of an unidentified corpse in a pubic place?

Highsmith was operating within a literary genre (the crime thriller) that often has less exacting standards of logic and credibility in its narratives than the traditional realist novel of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Yet such is the quality of her writing and the seriousness of her themes that she seems to invite comparisons with this tradition.

The giants of the realist novel didn’t always avoid technical errors in their work. From Wuthering Heights (1847) to Nostromo (1904) there are chronological infelicities and logical flaws in many classic narratives – but they tend to be of a minor nature and not crucial to the outcome of events.

Highsmith plays slightly fast and lose in this respect with the credibility of her narratives. For instance, Ripley’s often-absent wife Heloise, who comes from a very ‘respectable’ family, actually tolerates the fact that her husband is a murderer. She knows Ripley has killed Murchison in their wine cellar – but she remains unconcerned and as peripheral to the narrative as Highsmith requires for a tidy conclusion. This part of the story is simply not credible in realistic terms.

Ripley’s Game – study resources

Ripley Under Ground – Penguin – Amazon UK

Ripley Under Ground – Penguin – Amazon US

Ripley Under Ground – Kindle – Amazon UK

Ripley Under Ground – Kindle – Amazon US

Ripley Complete – Box Set – Amazon UK

Patricia Highsmith

The complete Ripliad

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)

Ripley Under Ground (1970)

Ripley Under Ground (1974)

The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)

Ripley Under Water (1991)

Ripley Under Ground – plot summary

Tom Ripley is living in a large house called Belle Ombre with gardens outside Paris. He is married to Heloise and running a fraudulent art business in London dealing in faked paintings by Bernard Tufts in the style of an artist Derwatt who has died some years ago in Greece. Ripley also acts as an intermediary in shady business transactions with his associate Reeves Minot in Hamburg.

An exhibition of Dewatt’s work is due to open, and one customer is going to challenge the authenticity of a work he has bought. Tom proposes to act the part of Derwatt at the opening of the exhibition.

He dresses in disguise and answers questions from the press. Then the American collector Murchison claims that paintings are being faked. He wants an expert opinion and thinks the gallery’s records of sale should be inspected. Tom invites Murchison to Paris to compare Derwatt paintings.

They have dinner and discuss the pros and cons of forgery. Next day prior to his departure for London, Tom appeals to Murchison’s sporting sense on the issue of forgeries. When Murchison flatly refuses, Tom kills him in his wine cellar.

Tom drives to Orly airport, dumps Murchison’s suitcase and painting, then collects a courier from Reeves. He takes the courier back for dinner and extracts a microfilm hidden in a tube of toothpaste.

Next day he receives a letter announcing the arrival from California of Chris Greenleaf (Dickie’s younger cousin). The he starts burying Murchison’s body in some nearby woods. Next day Chris arrives and the police start asking questions about Murchison, all of which Ripley answers quite convincingly.

Bernard Tufts suddenly arrives and acts strangely. He wants to put an end to the Derwatt forgeries, and wishes to confess his part in the swindle – so as to reclaim his own identity and self-esteem as a serious painter.

Bernard helps Tom to dig up the body, which they dump in a river some distance away. A London police inspector Webster arrives. Tom appears to answer all his questions quite truthfully.

Bernard is depressed and suddenly disappears. Heloise arrives from Greece and discovers a body hanging in the cellar. It turns out to be a dummy, made by Bernard to represent the death of his old self.

Bernard turns up again and wants to stay. That night he tries to kill Tom, who he blames for all his problems. Next day he attacks Tom again and buries him in Murchison’s old grave. Tom manages to escape, but thinks it will be safer to act as if dead.

He orders new fake passports from Reeves in Hamburg, flies to the Greek islands in search of Bernard, but finds nothing. Back in London he makes a final appearance as Derwatt. He confronts Inspector Webster and Mrs Murchison, but answers their queries with half truths. But as Heloise becomes more suspicious he confesses to her that he has killed Murchison.

Tom flies to Salzburg where he spots Bernard in the Mozart museum. When they meet again in a restaurant, Bernard is clearly shocked to find Tom alive. Next day Tom pursues Bernard through the outskirts of town
until Bernard falls over a cliff and dies from the fall. Tom returns to the scene and very laboriously cremates the body.

Tom goes back home where Webster arrives next day. He questions Tom closely about the two (apparent) deaths in Salzburg. But Tom has all the necessary answers, and lives on to feature in two further volumes of The Ripliad.

Ripley Under Ground – characters

Tom Ripley	a young American confidence man
Heloise Plisson	his beautiful and wealthy wife
Bernard Tufts	an amateur painter and forger
Jeff Constant	a photographer and gallery owner
Edmund Banbury	journalist and gallery owner
Thomas Murchison	an American industrialist and art collector
Chris Greenleaf	younger cousin of Dickie Greenleaf
Cynthia Gradnor	Bernard’s disillusioned girlfriend

More Patricia Highsmith
Twentieth century literature
More on short stories

Ripley’s Game

November 6, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, commentary, further reading, web links

Ripley’s Game (1974) is the third in a series of novels by Patricia Highsmith featuring her anti-hero Tom Ripley. He is an ambitious young American who has come from a poor background, but who has a taste for good quality living.

There are five novels in the series, which have become known collectively as The Ripliad. Each one is self-contained and can be enjoyed separately – but a knowledge of their chronological development adds a great deal of depth to their meaning – particularly the ironic contrasts between Ripley’s refined social tastes and his shocking exploits.

Ripley’s Game – commentary

Background

Ripley is living ‘retired’ in a quiet French village near Paris, married to Heloise Plisson. He has three sources of income – all gained illegally. The first is Dickie Greenleaf’s inheritance, which he has appropriated by forging Dickie’s will. The second is the remains of a business Derwatt Ltd centred on an artist Derwatt, who is now dead. The third is a courier service for illegal goods sent to him by an associate Reeves Minot from Hamburg.

He is also subsidised by a monthly allowance paid by Heloise’s millionaire father Ripley spends his time gardening and occasionally painting, studying languages, and enjoying the haut cuisine of his French housekeeper

The main theme

As in the two preceding Ripley novels, the main theme underlying the dramatic main events of the novel is a relationship between Ripley and another male – in this case the Englishman Jonathan Trevanny. Ripley introduces him to Reeves as a potential assassin for no more reason that he insulted him at a party. “Oh, we’ve heard about you” says Jonathan innocently.

Ripley knows that Jonathan has a serious illness, and he knows that he is vulnerable. He wonders prospectively, and correctly, if such a person would be tempted by the prospect of easy money to commit a crime. He is correct: Jonathan accepts the offer.

But having set the snare and inveigled Jonathan into a world of murder and deception, Ripley begins to feel responsible for him. He joins Jonathan on the Mozart Express out of Munich to execute the Mafia murders, and he later invites him to defend Belle Ombre against an attack by Mafia hit men.

The main theme is not simply crime and its non-detection – it is the psychological relationship between two men. They appear to be antagonists or in opposition to each other – but are drawn closer by a perverse sort of logic.

It is significant that Ripley’s wife Heloise is routinely absent when these developments are taking place. His primary attachments in the novels are to Dickie Greenleaf, Bernard Tufts, and Jonathan Trevanny – all men whose deaths he brings about.

Ripley is even correct about Jonathan’s wife Simone – who hates Ripley for the havoc he brings to her family. Simone disapproves of Jonathan’s association with Ripley, who she suspects of being a criminal (which he is). She thinks the money Jonathan gains is tainted with illegaility (which it is). And yet following Jonathan’s death at the end of the novel, she is left with a numbered Swiss bank account containing forty thousand Francs, and when she spits at Tom en passant in the street, he realises that she has decided to stay quiet:

But if Simone hadn’t decided to hang on to the money in Switzerland, she wouldn’t have bothered spitting and he himself would be in prison.

For all Simone’s strong Catholic morality Tom knows she has also bought a new house in Toulouse with this money, and is thus implicated in the overall crime..

Black humour

Many of the features of Ripley’s character and the grand guignol elements of the plot require both a strong stomach and a willingness to share Patricia Highsmith’s sense of black humour.

For instance, having implicated Jonathan Trevanny in the murder plot, Ripley is genuinely concerned about his ‘innocence’ and the delicacy of his sensibility. When the Mafiosa attack Belle Ombre, Ripley invites Jonathan to go into the kitchen so that he doesn’t have to witness his garrotting of the Mafiosi Lippi.

The ending

There is a slightly unsatisfactory dramatisation in the finale of the narrative – and what might be called a ‘false body count’. When four Mafia hit men arrive at Jonathan Trevanny’s house, Ripley kills the first two of them with hammer blows to the head. He then escapes the scene, and the two deaths are later reported in the newspapers as ‘two Italians, also shot’.

We know from the text that no shots were fired at the Mafiosi, so that account is not true. Now it is possible that Patricia Highsmith might be pointing to slipshod newspaper journalism here. But it is inconceivable that police would not know the difference between death by shooting and hammer blows. They would also want to know who had administered the blows – but the whole incident (three deaths in all) is glossed over and left unresolved.

Ripley’s Game – film adaptations

Italian director Liliana Cavani takes a few liberties with the events of the novel for her 2003 screen adaptation. The film opens with a sequence that features Ripley and Reeves defrauding art dealers in Berlin. This is clearly a nod back to the Derwatt episodes of the previous novel Ripley Under Ground (1970). Cavani also transforms Ripley’s house Belle Ombre into a much grander establishment than that described in the novel, and she relocates it to the Veneto region of Italy.

But apart from that the movie is faithful to the original. Film enthusiasts might wish to know that the Italian director left her entire film project unfinished. It was completed by its multi-talented star John Malkovich

Highsmith’s novel was also previously adapted in 1977 as The American Friend by German director Wim Wenders, starring Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz.

Ripley’s Game – study resources

Ripley’s Game – Penguin – Amazon UK

Ripley’s Game – Penguin – Amazon US

Ripley’s Game – Kindle – Amazon UK

Ripley’s Game – Kindle – Amazon US

Ripley’s Game – DVD film – Amazon UK

Ripley’s Game – DVD film – Amazon US

The American Friend – DVD film – Amazon UK

The American Friend – DVD film – Amazon US

Ripley Complete – Box Set – Amazon UK

Ripley's Game

The complete Ripliad

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)

Ripley Under Ground (1970)

Ripley’s Game (1974)

The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)

Ripley Under Water (1991)

Ripley's Game

Patricia Highsmith

Ripley’s Game – plot summary

Gangster Reeves Minot wants Tom Ripley to supply an assassin who will rid him of unwanted Mafia competition in the German gambling business. Tom refuses the job but thinks an innocent neighbour with leukaemia might do it for the money.

Jonathan Trevanny visits his local doctor to check on a rumour that his blood cancer is getting worse. He is reassured, but art shop owner Gauthier will not reveal who gave him the information. We learn that this was Ripley.

Tom writes to Reeves recommending Jonathan as a potential victim. Reeves visits Jonathan and makes his proposition – a huge payout for one piece of work. Jonathan immediately requests further medical tests, which are delayed.

Reeves writes offering to pay full expenses for a specialist in Germany. Jonathan travels to Hamburg where Reeves briefs him on the assassination. Jonathan has the tests and Reeves lays on all the necessary arrangements.

Jonathan collects his results, which are not good. He then goes to the U-Bahn and shoots Bianca the Mafia button man. He is not paid as promised, but goes home relieved.

Reeves produces more money and a numbered Swiss bank account – but he wants another assassination, which Jonathan refuses. Tom visits Jonathan, then tells Reeves to ‘keep trying’.

Jonathan joins Reeves in Munich, has tests, then takes the Mozart Express for Paris. He is joined by Tom, who has begun to feel responsible for Jonathan. Tom uses a garrotte to murder the Mafia boss Marcangelo and one of his bodyguards. Then they throw the bodies off the train. Jonathan stops off in Strasbourg.

The bodyguard is not dead. Back in Villeperce, Tom reassures Jonathan. Reeves’ flat in Hamburg is bombed. Tom buys a harpsichord for Heloise, and Jonathan buys a Chesterfield for Simone., who begins to be suspicious about the money and the connection with Ripley. Then art dealer Gathier is killed in a hit and run accident.

Reeves changes his name and moves to Amsterdam. The Mafia bodyguard is reported dead Simone finds the Swiss bank account and is hostile to Jonathan. Tom receives anonymous phone calls. He fears the Mafia are going to attack him at home. He invites Jonathan to join him – along with a gun.

The Mafiosi arrive. Jonathan kills the first, then Tom interrogates the second before killing him with his own garrotte. Suddenly, Simone arrives, sees the corpses, and is then sent home.

Tom and Jonathan drive south through the night, then set fire to the two bodies in the car. Jonathan then goes into hospital for a blood transfusion, whilst Tom tries to ‘explain’ to a hostile Simone – without success

The two cremated bodies are found, and Simone continues hostilities towards Jonathan. When Tom takes Jonathan home, they are attacked by further Mafia hit men. Tom kills two of them with a hammer. But then two more in a car shoot Jonathan, who dies. Reeves has been tortured by the Mafia and led them to Jonathan’s house. Tom escapes with Reeves and despatches him to Zurich.

Ripley’s Game – characters

Tom Ripley	an American bon viveur living near Paris
Heloise Plisson	his rich young and attractive wife
Reeves Minot	an American gangster based in Hamburg
Jonathan Trevanny	an English picture-framer with leukaemia
Simone Trevanny	his French wife
Vito Marcangelo	a Mafia button man
Vincent Turoli	his Mafia bodyguard

More Patricia Highsmith
Twentieth century literature
More on short stories

Roderick Hudson

December 18, 2015 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, critical commentary, plot, and study resources

Roderick Hudson (1875) was Henry James’s second novel, and the first to bring him a popular success. It initially appeared in twelve monthly issues of the Atlantic Monthly, for which he was paid $100 per instalment. Later in 1879 it was published in three volumes in the UK. This was a common format for full length novels at the time. His first novel had been Watch and Ward published as a serial in 1871, but James virtually disowned the book later in life, and it was not included in the New York edition of his collected works published in 1912.

first three-volume edition

Roderick Hudson – critical commentary

Biography

Henry James’s grandfather was a relatively poor Irish immigrant who though sheer effort and economic enterprise became one of America’s first millionaires, second only to Jacob Astor. Henry James senior (his son) disdained commerce and became a religious philosopher, yet lived on the proceeds of his father’s labours.

This enabled Henry James senior and his family to live in relative luxury, oscillating between Europe and America. His own two sons William and Henry James were raised in a social expectation that they did not have to earn their livings, and both of them dabbled with the idea of becoming artists – before William eventually studied medicine and Henry began supplementing his private income by journalism and writing novels.

There is therefore a strong connection between Henry James’s own experience of a richly privileged lifestyle and that of his characters in Roderick Hudson who move around the European cities of the Grand Tour supported entirely by the wealth of Rowland Mallet, his principal character . Mallet has inherited his wealth from a puritan father, and he appears to be no worse off financially at the end of his two year experiment than he was at the beginning.

Mallet has no ambition at the outset of the novel other than to collect good quality paintings and donate them to an American museum – something for which he is criticised by his cousin Cecilia and by Mary Garland. He later changes this ambition to that of ‘cultivating’ the talent he sees in Roderick Hudson.

The artist

James makes very little attempt to give substance and credibility to Roderick’s efforts as a sculptor. There is no detail of what might be involved in manipulating clay or chiselling marble – and Roderick’s meteoric rise to success in such a short time puts a strain on the reader’s credulity.

We know that James studied painting, and that he spent time amongst expatriate American artists during the time he lived in Rome – but there is no convincing sense of the physical or practical issues involved in being a three dimensional artist, even though we are led to believe that Roderick produces two large-scale figures (Adam and Eve at almost his first attempt.

The significance of this weakness in characterisation is that it reinforces the notion that James was not genuinely interested in developing what might be called ‘a portrait of the artist’, whereas he did pursue his interest in the relationship between the two men to its bitter end.

Location

The geographic dislocations (particularly towards the end of this over-long novel) undermine its coherence. The narrative begins in America, then moves to Rome. But later the action switches from Rome to two locations in Florence, and then finally for no convincing reason to Switzerland.

Since the main focus of interest is on the psychological relationships between the principal characters (Rowland, Roderick, Mary, and Christina) there is no meaningful connection between the drama of their relationships and the locations in which they are acted out.

The key points of the drama are that Christina is threatened with the revelation that Giacosa is her natural father, as a result of which she reluctantly marries the Prince. Because of this, Rodericks’ romantic aspirations and artistic confidence are shattered. These events could take place anywhere, and the only justification for the climax occurring in Switzerland is to give Roderick a mountain cliff from which to fall to his death.

Intertextuality

Intertextuality is a term used to describe one text referring to or alluding to another. This can happen by allusion, pastiche, parody. or direct quotation. James creates a particularly interesting form of intertextuality in Roderick Hudson by creating characters who will appear in more than one of his future novels.

Christina Light first appears in Roderick Hudson as the beautiful but disillusioned offspring of a fairly unscrupulous mother who is trying to locate a rich husband for her daughter. But then she reappears as a major character in the later novel The Princess Casamassima (1885) performing a very different role.

Between the end of Roderick Hudson and the beginning of The Princess Casamassima Christina leaves her husband and takes up the cause of revolutionaries in London. She is accompanied by the same trusty advisor Madame Grandoni who continues to support her and acts as a link between Christina and the hero of the later novel, Hyacinth Robinson. Her husband the Prince Casamassima also reappears in the later novel – in hot pursuit of his wife, seeking a reconciliation – which she refuses to effect.

A smaller example is the character of Gloriani – the rather sceptical and pragmatic sculptor who creates works which will appeal to popular public taste rather than something of lasting value. Gloriani appears in Roderick Hudson as the embodiment of an alternative artistic value to Roderick himself, who wishes to be honest to a higher system of values.

Gloriani also appears in the later novel The Ambassadors (1903) filling a similar role – and commentators have observed that his character is based on the controversial American painter James McNeil Whistler.

Psycho-interpretation

Whilst the two principal male characters appear to be in parallel amorous relationships with the two principal females, Mary and Christina, most readers will have no difficulty in recognising that Roderick and Rowland spend the whole of the novel locked into a very emotional relationship – with each other.

Rowland is the older, more experienced figure, and Roderick being younger, is a character to whom Rowland is very attracted. His initial interest is triggered by the statuette of a young boy that Roderick creates – a youth drinking from a cup. Rowland then pays for Roderick’s two year experiences in Europe, and even gives financial support to his mother Mrs Hudson and her companion Mary Garland. He pays off Roderick’s debts, indulges his every whim, and stays loyal to him right through to the bitter and tragic end, despite the many emotional lover-like spats they generate between themselves.

It is often observed that when two men are in love with the same woman, this is a psychological clue that they are (perhaps unconsciously) attracted to each other. But in Roderick Hudson Rowland and Roderick are not just attracted to one woman, but to two.

At the start of the novel Rowland is intrigued by the plain but intelligent Mary Garland, but it is Roderick who has proposed marriage to her, and been accepted. In the two years of their sojourn in Europe, Rowland is increasingly attracted to the idea of Mary and he feels mildly annoyed with Roderick’s neglect of his duties towards his fianceé.

But when the beautiful and enigmatic Christina Light appears, Roderick’s affections switch completely from one woman to the other. Rowland thinks this might make Mary available, but by far the greater part of his emotional energy is devoted to his pursuit of Roderick.

The submerged theme of homosexuality was probably created unconsciously on Henry James’s part – just as his two fictional characters are not aware of it themselves. But it is a critical stance worth taking to the novel – because of its frequent recurrence in the rest of James’s oeuvre. There are countless other works (particularly the tales) that deal with this theme and its many variations – the fear of marriage (The Path of Duty) the threat of inheritance (Owen Wingrave) and the missed opportunity (The Beast in the Jungle).

The submerged theme could also have a bearing on the rather unsatisfactory conclusion to the novel. Roderick may well be disappointed by Christina’s choosing to marry the Prince [he does not know that her hand has been forced] but his death in what appears to be almost a suicide does not seem persuasive. However, it might be one or even the only way for James to draw to a close the relationship between the two men.

Roderick Hudson – study resources

Roderick Hudson – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Roderick Hudson – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Roderick Hudson – Kindle edition

Roderick Hudson – eBooks at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

The Essential Henry James Collection – Kindle edition (40 works)

The Prefaces of Henry James – Introductions to his tales and novels

Roderick Hudson – Notes on editions (Library of America)

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Roderick Hudson – chapter summaries

I. Rowland Mallet is a rich young American bachelor who is preparing to go to Europe. He visits his cousin Cecilia who chides him about his lack of purpose and ambition. He claims he will collect paintings and donate them to a museum. Cecilia shows him an impressive statuette made by her friend Roderick Hudson.

II. Next day Rowland meets Roderick, who is a young and nervous Virginian. He is working with no enthusiasm in a law office. Rowland feels attracted to him and offers to take him to Rome to become a sculptor.

III. Roderick’s plan is resented by his mother, and Cecilia regrets his going to Rome. Rowland reassures Mrs Hudson of his good intentions and his belief in Roderick’s talent, but Mr Striker and Mary Garland remain sceptical.

IV. Rowland becomes more interested in Mary Garland. At a picnic she chides him for having no occupation.. When they set off for Europe, Roderick suddenly reveals to Rowland that he is engaged to Mary.

V. Three months later Roderick suddenly feels he is a changed man. He is spending money and absorbing impressions at a very fast rate. He is suddenly inspired after seeing a very attractive girl in a garden. He becomes an active participant in Rome’s social life; he completes a statue of Adam then three months later a complementaryEve.

VI. Rowland tries to overcome his feelings for Mary Garland by considering Augusta Blanchard. At a party, Roderick announces boastfully his intention to create great works of Art. The sceptic Gloriani thinks he will not sustain his early promise, and Madame Grandoni warns him against bohemianism. Shortly afterwards, Roderick runs out of inspiration. He stays alone in Switzerland and Germany for the summer, leaving Rowland to visit England.

VII. In England Rowland receives letters from Cecilia and Mary Garland, and from Roderick who is in Baden-Baden, losing money gambling. Rowland pays his debts and they meet in Geneva, where Roderick confesses that he is susceptible to attractive women. Back in Rome Roderick returns to work but feels that inspiration has deserted him. Their fellow American artist Sam Singleton has spent the entire summer in Italy improving his art, and is very happy.

VIII. Roderick and Rowland are visited by the eccentric Mrs Light and her daughter Christina, who is beautiful but disdainful. Roderick offers to make a sculpture of her. Rowland discovers from Madame Grandoni that Mrs Light is an adventuress with a chequered past who is searching for a rich husband for her daughter. When he goes to visit them, he discovers Roderick at work on the sculpture

IX. Roderick wishes to stay in Rome indefinitely, and thinks to send for Mary Garland and his mother to join him there. But meanwhile he is drawing closer to Christina Light. The completed bust of her is a big success. Rowland is sceptical about Christina, and is mildly envious of Roderick’s connection with Mary.

X. Augusta Blanchard introduces Roderick to Mr Leavenworth, a rich American businessman who wishes to commission a statue for his library. Christina complains that her mother is immoral and that she is disgusted by her conspicuous husband-hunting. She quizzes Rowland about Roderick, and he reveals to her that he is engaged to Mary Garland.

XI. Roderick is angry about this revelation and accuses Rowland of trying to control him. The two of them argue about Christina Light. Roderick falls into artistic doldrums and fears that his genius has left him. Rowland tries to encourage him, but to no avail.

XII. They are joined by Mrs Light, Christina, and Prince Casamassima. A picnic is arranged, after which Christina flirts with Roderick, which makes the Prince jealous, because he is in love with her. Giacosa reveals to Rowland that the Prince is very rich and very proud of his family’s name and his title. Mrs Light complains to Rowland about the sacrifices she has made in her ambition for Christina.

XIII. In the Colosseum Rowland overhears Christina reproaching Roderick for being weak and indecisive. Roderick proposes to show off by climbing dangerously to retrieve a flower for her, but is stopped by Rowland. Socially, Roderick makes few friends, he becomes more and more jaded, and slides into bohemian habits.

XIV. Rowland meets Christina in an old church. They discuss Roderick, and Rowland asks her to leave Roderick alone if she has no intention of marrying him. He appeals to her to make a sacrifice as a gesture of generosity and good will. A few days later she claims to have done so.

XV. Rowland writes to Cecilia in despair about the failure of his project with Roderick. He is exasperated by his friend’s mercurial temperament. Leavenworth breaks the news of Christina’s engagement to the Prince. Roderick refuses to complete his commission, and then argues with Rowland and will not accept his advice.

XVI. Rowland escapes alone to Florence, leaving Roderick still occupied with Christina. There he broods on Mary Garland and Roderick’s possible downfall. After a quasi-religious experience he returns to Rome and suggests that Mrs Hudson and Mary Garland should join them there. Roderick finally agrees – but he fails to meet them when they arrive.

XVII. Mary has matured in the two years they have been apart. There is tension between Roderick and his two guests. Next day they meet Christina in St Peter’s, where Roderick reveals that Christina may not be marrying Prince Casamassima after all.

XVIII. Mrs Hudson sits for a newly inspired Roderick in the mornings, leaving Rowland free to show Mary Garland around Rome. They challenge each other regarding art and nationalism, and she begins to take a serious interest in culture. Roderick and Rowland do not discuss the situation in which they find themselves.

XIX. Roderick finishes the sculpture (which is a success) but tells Rowland he is bored by the presence of his mother and Mary Garland. Rowland implores him to leave Rome with Mary at once and repair their relationship, but Roderick wishes to stay for Christina’s wedding. Gloriani thinks Roderick is truly talented. Christina arrives uninvited to Madame Grandoni’s party to inspect Mary Garland.

XX. Mary Garland does not like Christina and is suspicious of her motives. Giacosa pleads with Rowland to help Mrs Light, because Christina has suddenly called off her engagement to the Prince. Roderick has banished his mother and Mary for a week so that he can bask in the pleasure Christina’s news gives him. Mrs Light pleads with Rowland to remonstrate with Christina – but it is Giacosa’s additional supplication that moves him. He speaks to Christina, who tells him that she does not love the Prince..

XXI. Next day Rowland says goodbye to Sam Singleton who is returning to America, then he learns from Madame Gardoni that Christina married the Prince early that morning. They conclude that Giacosa is Christina’s true father, and her mother has used this information to force her hand. Roderick tells his mother and Mary that he is a failure. He also tells his mother about his infatuation with Christina and that he is bankrupt. Rowland arranges for them to leave Rome and stay at a villa in Florence.

XXII. At the villa in Florence the general mood of the party continues to be one of depression. Roderick does no work, and Mary is unhappy. Roderick says he might as well be a failure in America, but Rowland persuades him to stay in Europe for another year.

XXIII. The party leave Italy and travel to Switzerland. Roderick expresses his total despair to Rowland, who wonders if Mary will become available for him. Roderick claims he no longer cares for her, or for anyone else. Rowland makes subtle overtures to Mary, but she rebuffs him.

XXIV. Roderick feels bitter about Christina because he thinks she betrayed him. Sam Singleton turns up and is a model of artistic industry. Rowland meets Christina and the Prince on an excursion. She insists to him that she was sincere about her feelings for Roderick, but was forced into her marriage. She also says she is going to live recklessly.

XXV. Roderick asks Rowland to lend him money to go to Interlaken to meet Christina. She has fired up his desire and his will to live again. When Rowland is hesitant, he asks his mother and Mary, but they have no money. The two men argue about their behaviour and motivation, and Rowland reveals that he has been in love with Mary for two years.

XXVI. Roderick goes off alone into the mountains. There is a ferocious thunderstorm. Next day when he has still not returned, Rowland and Sam Singleton find his dead body at the bottom of a cliff from which he has fallen. The principals later return to America.

Roderick Hudson – principal characters

Rowland Mallet	a rich New England bachelor
Cecilia	his cousin, a young widow
Bessie	her daughter
Roderick Hudson	a young Virginian artist
Mrs Hudson	Roderick’s widowed mother
Miss Mary Garland	a distant cousin
Barnaby Striker	Mrs Hudson’s lawyer
Stephen Hudson	Roderick’s elder brother, killed in the Civil War
Gloriani	a sceptical Franco-American sculptor (who also appears in The Ambassadors)
Sam Singleton	modest young American painter
Miss Augusta Blanchard	a rich and attractive American painter
Madame Grandoni	ugly old German wise woman
Mrs Light	an eccentric dowager American adventuress
Christina Light	her very beautiful daughter (who also appears in The Princess Casamassima
Cavaliere Giuseppe Giacosa	an Italian friend of Mrs Light and father of Christina
Prince Casamassima	an ugly Neapolitan nobleman
Mr Leavenworth	rich American industrialist
Assunta	Christina’s maid

Henry James’s study

Other work 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 on Henry James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Samuel Beckett greatest works

November 10, 2010 by Roy Johnson

major works of prose fiction and drama

Samuel Beckett began writing in the 1930s, and was deeply influenced in his early period by James Joyce, for whom he worked briefly as secretary. He was also influenced by the literary developments of the avant-garde modernist movement and both the existentialist and absurdist tendencies in cultural life which arose just before and intensified after the second world war. However, after Joyce’s death in 1941 he began to develop a style of his own – a style which became more gaunt and sinewy to reflect his increasingly bleak view of life, which is witheringly unsentimental at its most generous and darkly tragic at its most powerful.

His writing became progressively minimalist, yet it is characterised by a lyrical beauty that reveals his deep feeling for the rhythms of speech and the cadences of the written word. He is not afraid to use repetition, assonance, alliteration, and the other common devices of poetry in his prose fiction. Since much of his work is written in the form of both spoken and ‘internal’ monologues, this has made his work a great favourite for actors.

He also combines his bleak, unsparing view of life with a very comical attitude to human frailty – often wrapped up in quasi and cod-philosophic observations. It is a black humour very consonant with the underlying public mood of post-holocaust shock prevalent during the latter half of the twentieth century.

Murphy is Samuel Beckett’s first novel, published in 1938. It was written in English, unlike many of his later works which were written in French then translated into English. It is the story of a work-shy man, wandering adrift in London, who believes that human desire can never be satisfied. He seeks to withdraw from life into a state of what he sees as catatonic bliss. Murphy’s fiancée Celia tries to humanise him by finding him a job working as a nurse in a mental institution, but he sees the insanity of the patients an attractive alternative to his conscious existence from which he cannot escape.

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Watt Beckett’s second novel was written during World War Two (1942-1944), while he was hiding from the Gestapo in Provence in southern France. It was first published in English in 1953 and tells a semi-incoherent story of Watt’s journey to become the manservant of a Mr Knott, and his struggle to understand the house they live in. It’s written with some of Beckett’s characteristically deadpan humour and quasi-philosophic jokes. He also uses deliberately unidiomatic language and pokes fun at contemporary figures and institutions. Watt has previously appeared in editions that are littered with major and minor errors. The new Faber edition offers for the first time a corrected text based on a scholarly appraisal of the manuscripts and their textual history.

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The Trilogy This is the famous trilogy that is generally regarded as the pinnacle of Beckett’s work as an experimental novelist. He was pushing the developments of modernism, existentialism, and absurdism as far as they would go. The three novels follow the bleak logic of Beckett’s move away from movement and life, towards stasis and death. Molloy (1951) is set in an indeterminate place and comprises the inner monologues of Molloy and a private detective called Moran. Both live in a state of semi-absurdity and seem almost to merge into the same person as they lose bodily mobility and end up using crutches. Malone Dies (1951) is the story of an old man who is confined to bed in a hospital or an asylum (he is not sure which). All notions of conventional plot or logical sequences of events are abandoned. The narrative is merely Malone’s obsession with the trivia of his existence, stripped of all physical effects except an exercise book and a pencil that is getting shorter and shorter. The Unnameable (1953) takes these experiments in prose fiction one stage further. It concerns a person with no name who lives under an old tarpaulin sheet. He is not even sure if he is dead or alive – and neither are we.

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The Expelled This collection of four stories or nouvelles represents work which dates from 1945, though they were all published much later, in French and then in English. Full contents: The Expelled, The Calmative, The End, and First Love. All the stories make use of a first-person narrator, and exploit its potential for expressing the frailties of human memory, the inability to distinguish the past from the present, and even a profound doubt concerning the purpose of life itself. The stories document the human condition of an unstoppable progress towards death.

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Beckett in performance

Billie Whitelaw in Not I (1972)

How It Is Published in French in 1961, and in English in 1964, this presents a novel in three parts, written in short paragraphs, which tell of a narrator lying in the dark, in the mud, repeating his life as he hears it uttered – or remembered – by another voice. Told from within, from the dark, the story is tirelessly and intimately explicit about the feelings that pervade his world, but fragmentary and vague about all else therein or beyond. The novel counts for many readers as Beckett’s greatest accomplishment in the prose narrative form. It is also his most challenging work, both stylistically and for the radical pessimism of its vision, which continues the themes of reduced circumstance, of another life before the present, and the self-appraising search for an essential self.

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Company These four last prose fictions span the final decade of Beckett’s life. In the title sytory a solitary listener lying in darkness calls up images from a past life. Ill Seen Ill Said is a meditation on an old woman living out her final days in an isolated cottage, watched over by a dozen mysterious sentinels. In Worstward Ho, a breathless speaker unravels the sense of life, acting out the repeated injunction to ‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ Stirrings Still was published in the Guardian a few months before Beckett’s death in 1989. It is his last prose work and testament. The Faber edition also includes several short prose texts (Heard in the Dark I & II, One Evening, The Way, Ceiling) which represent works in progress or fragments composed around the same time as his final writing.

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Works for Radio Beckett was one of the most original and influential dramatists of the twentieth century, and a writer with an acute ear for the subtleties of sound and rhythm in both speech and writing. Yet the works he created for radio broadcast are relatively unknown. Now these historic BBC broadcasts are commercially available for the first time. A four-CD set covers the period 1957-1976 and comprises the five works created by Beckett specifically for the broadcast medium: All That Fall, Embers, Words and Music, Cascando and Rough for Radio, plus the rarely heard curio, The Old Tune, and the monologue, From an Abandoned Work.

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Complete Dramatic Works This one-volume compendium contains all of Beckett’s dramatic texts written between 1955 and 1984. It includes both the major dramatic works and the shorter and more compressed texts he created for the stage and for radio. Full contents: Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days, All That Fall, Acts Without Words, Krapp’s Last Tape, Roughs for the Theatre, Embers, Roughs for the Radio, Words and Music, Cascando, Play, Film, The Old Tune, Come and Go, Eh Joe, Breath, Not I, That Time, Footfalls, Ghost Trio,…but the clouds…, A Piece of Monologue, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Quad, Catastrophe, Nacht und Traume, What Where.

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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.

Peggy Guggenheim: Mistress of Modernism
Biography of modern art collector who was Beckett’s lover in the 1930s

More on Samuel Beckett
Twentieth century literature
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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.
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More on Samuel Beckett
Twentieth century literature
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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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Strangers on a Train

May 25, 2010 by Roy Johnson

psychology, mystery, and murder

Strangers on a Train was Patricia Highsmith’s first novel. Published in 1950, it was quickly made into a film the following year by Alfred Hitchcock. The film become a classic, and it is this version which has become better known. Unless you are only twelve years old or have been living on Mars for the last few decades, you’ll already know the basic plot outline. Two men meet on a train. Guy has an estranged wife standing in the way of his romance with a wealthy socialite, whilst Bruno has a rich father whom he hates because he refuses to give him an allowance.

Bruno suggests to Guy that they ‘exchange murders’ – removing their respective obstacles to happiness. He argues that nobody will be able to assign motive, because the assailants are unknown to the victims, and nobody will have any reason to think that the two plotters knew each other, because they have never met before. At first the two men appear to be polar opposites. Bruno is a spoiled emotional child, a psychopath, a drunk, and a failure. Guy on the other hand is a cultivated professional, a successful architect with a promising future. But as the novel progresses they slowly become more like each other. Both of them have mother fixations, and both possess a gun. Guy reads Plato and Bruno carries poetry around in his wallet. In fact the whole plot is driven by a series of parallel events, repetitions, and echoes which link the two men.

Bruno is infatuated with Guy, and murders his troublesome estranged wife in an effort to please him. Despite being oppressed by Bruno’s attentions, Guy eventually murders Bruno’s father in an effort to put the ‘pact’ between them at an end. But in fact this draws them even closer to each other.

Those who have seen the film will have to put Hitchcock’s plot (written by Raymond Chandler and Ben Hecht) out of their minds. The original novel (quite apart from the twin murders) has more subtlety and depth, and is also a much darker piece of work. It’s also a curious blending of literary genres. Superficially, it is a crime thriller, but it has rich seams of psychological analysis running through it, as well as meditations on existential philosophy (which was popular at the time the novel was written).

Farley Granger and Robert Walker

Bruno takes a Nietzchean view of the world, seeing himself as some supra-moral being who can float above the pettiness of everyday human beings. Guy on the other hand is racked with guilt and despair, and despite the fact that they appear to go undetected in their plans, Guy in the end feels driven to make a Raskolnikov-like confession of the diabolical plot into which he has allowed himself to be drawn.

The outcome is disastrous for both of them, but the novel offers no comforting moral reassurance. The world it creates is one of ethical ambiguity and free-floating malevolence.

Highsmith is an interesting literary stylist. She has an attractive habit of what might be called narrative ellipsis – leaving out parts of the story for the reader to supply. She is obviously attracted to violence, sexual ambiguity, and the perverse in life. She deliberately courts the grotesque and shocking, and of course she was originally from the American South, famous for its Gothic.

Her characters drink and smoke to excess (as she did) and they are drawn into forming destructive and humiliating relationships (as she was) of a kind we normally associate with Dostoyevski (who was one of her favourite writers). See Hitchcock’s film version of Strangers on a Train by all means: it’s one of his class acts, with lots of witty touches. But for the real thing, do yourself a favour and read Patricia Highsmith’s original novel. It’s a disturbing, often uncomfortable experience – but not one you will easily forget.

Alfred Hitchcock film 1951

Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train, London: Penguin, 1999, pp.256, ISBN 0140037969

Strangers on a Train – study resources

Strangers on a Train – paperback novel – Amazon UK

Strangers on a Train – paperback novel – Amazon US

Strangers on a Train – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Strangers on a Train – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Strangers on a Train – Hitchcock film (DVD) – Amazon UK

Strangers on a Train – Hitchcock film (DVD) – Amazon US

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Twentieth century literature
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Tess of the d’Urbervilles

January 27, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, characters, video, and resource materials

Tess of the d’Urbervilles first appeared in a censored version and serialised form in the British illustrated newspaper The Graphic in 1891. It is probably the most popular of Hardy’s late, great novels. The sub-title is ‘A Pure Woman’, and it is a story which explores the tragic consequences of a young milkmaid who becomes the victim of the men she encounters. First she falls for the spiritual but flawed Angel Clare, and then the physical but limited Alec Durberville takes advantage of her.

This novel has some of the most beautiful and the most harrowing depictions of rural working conditions which reveal Hardy as a passionate advocate for those who work the land. It also has a wonderfully symbolic climax at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. There is poetry in almost every page. This is Hardy at his best.

Thomas Hardy

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – plot summary

Jack Durbeyfield, a poor carter, is stunned to learn that he is the descendent of an ancient noble family, the d’Urbervilles. When his horse is killed in an accident he and his wife send Tess to the d’Urberville mansion, where they hope Mrs. d’Urberville will make Tess’s fortune. In reality, Mrs. d’Urberville is no relation to Tess at all: her husband simply changed his name to d’Urberville after he retired. But Tess does not know this, and when the rakish Alec d’Urberville procures Tess a job tending fowls, Tess feels she has no choice but to accept, since she blames herself for the horse’s death.

She spends several months at this job, resisting Alec’s attempts to seduce her. Finally, Alec takes advantage of her in the woods one night after a fair. Tess returns home to give birth to Alec’s child, which dies soon after it is born. Tess then spends a miserable year at home before deciding to seek work elsewhere. She finally accepts a job as a milkmaid at the Talbothays Dairy.

At Talbothays, Tess enjoys a period of contentment and happiness. She befriends three of her fellow milkmaids – Izz, Retty, and Marian – and meets a man named Angel Clare. They grow closer, and she eventually accepts his proposal of marriage. But she feels she should tell Angel about her past, and writes him a confessional note. She slips it under his door but it slides under the carpet and Angel never sees it.

On their wedding night, Angel and Tess both confess indiscretions. Angel tells Tess about an affair he had with an older woman in London, and Tess tells Angel about her history with Alec. Tess forgives Angel, but Angel cannot forgive Tess. He gives her some money and boards a ship bound for Brazil.

Tess has a difficult time finding work and is forced to take a difficult job at an unpleasant farm. She tries to visit Angel’s family but overhears his brothers discussing Angel’s poor marriage, so she leaves. She hears a wandering preacher speak and is stunned to discover that he is Alec d’Urberville, who has been converted to Christianity by Angel’s father, the Reverend Clare. Alec and Tess are each shaken by their encounter, and Alec begs Tess never to tempt him again. Soon after, however, he asks Tess to marry him.

Tess learns from her sister Liza-Lu that her mother is near death, and Tess is forced to return home to take care of her. Her mother recovers, but her father unexpectedly dies soon after. When the family is evicted from their home, Alec offers help. But Tess refuses to accept, knowing he only wants to obligate her to him again.

Angel Clare returns from Brazil prepared to forgive his wife. He finds Tess in an expensive boardinghouse where he begs her to take him back. Tess tells him he has come too late. She was unable to resist and went back to Alec d’Urberville. Angel leaves in a daze, and, heartbroken to the point of madness, Tess goes upstairs and stabs her lover to death. When the landlady finds Alec’s body, she raises an alarm, but Tess has already fled to find Angel.

They hide out in an empty mansion for a few days, then travel farther. When they come to Stonehenge, Tess goes to sleep, but when morning breaks shortly thereafter, a police search party discovers them. Tess is arrested and sent to jail. Angel and Liza-Lu watch as a black flag is raised over the prison, signaling Tess’s execution.

Study resources

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Kindle eBook

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – a hypertext version

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – eBooks at Gutenberg

The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Tess – film by Roman Polanski – Amazon UK

Thomas Hardy: A Biography – definitive study – Amazon UK

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – 2008 BBC drama on DVD – Amazon UK

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – York Notes (Advanced) – AMazon UK

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Brodies Notes – Amazon UK

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Cliffs Notes – AMazon UK

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – 1998 BBC drama on DVD – Amazon UK

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – audioBook at LibriVox

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Authors in Context – Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Hardy – Amazon UK

Principal characters

Jack Durbeyfield	dissolute head of family, with wife and large family
Joan Durbeyfield	his hardworking wife
Tess Durbeyfield	their eldest daughter
Eliza Louisa Durbeyfield	Tess’s younger sister, who closely resembles her
Angel Clare	bookish third son of a clergyman who becomes Tess’s husband
Alec Stokes-d’Urberville	rakish but later reformed son of estate owners
Richard Crick	owner of Talbothay Farm where Tess meets Angel
Car Darch	former mistress to Alec
Farmer Groby	churlish employer of Tess at Flintcombe-Ash farm
Sorrow	illegitimate child of Tess and Alec, who dies

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – film version

Roman Polanski’s film version of Tess (1979) is beautifully faithful to the original novel and particularly unsparing in its depiction of country life as hard manual work – which chimes sympathetically with the unsentimental views held by Hardy himself.

The centrepiece is an outstanding performance by seventeen year old Natassia Kinski (Klaus Kinski’s daughter) who was Polanski’s lover at the time. She is astoundingly beautiful without seeming to ever realise it, which is exactly one of the causes of Tess’s downfall in the novel.

The film was shot in Brittany rather than England – to get round the extradition laws between the UK and the US from which he has been in exile since 1977, after jumping bail when charged with raping a 14 year old girl.

See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database

Manuscript of The Mayor of Casterbridge

Literary criticism

Beer, Gillian. ‘Descent and Sexual Selection: Women in Narrative. In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, ed. by Scott Elledge. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1991: 446-451.

Bloom, Harold. Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.

Casagrande, Peter J. Tess of the d’Urbervilles: Unorthodox Beauty. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1992.

Laird, J. T. The Shaping of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.

LaValley, Albert J. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

Mills, Sara, ed. Feminist Readings/Feminists Reading. New York: Prentice Hall, 1996.

Parkinson, Michael H. The Rural Novel: Jeremias Gotthelf, Thomas Hardy, C.F. Ramuz. New York: P. Lang, 1984.

Van Ghent, Dorothy. ‘On Tess of the d’Urbervilles’. in The English Novel: Form and Function. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964.

Widdowson, Peter, ed. Tess of the d’Urbervilles: Thomas Hardy. Hampshire: Macmillan, 1993.

Wright, Terence. Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Hampshire: Macmillan Publishers, 1987.

The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy is a good introduction to Hardy criticism. It includes a potted biography of Hardy, an outline of the stories, novels, and poetry, and pointers towards the main critical writings – from the early influential full length study by D.H. Lawrence to critics of the present day. Also includes a thorough bibliography which covers biography, criticism in books and articles, plus pointers towards specialist Hardy journals.
Buy the book here

Hardy’s study (Dorset Museum)

Other works by Thomas Hardy

Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) was the first of Hardy’s novels to apply the name of Wessex to the landscape of south west England, and the first to gain him widespread popularity as a novelist. Heroine and estate-owner Bathsheba Everdene is romantically involved with three very different men. The dashing Sergeant Troy, who is handsome but unreliable; Farmer Boldwood, who is honourable but middle-aged; and man-of-the-soil Gabriel Oak, who is worthy and prepared to bide his time. The conflicts between them and the ensuing drama has lots of plot twists plus a rich picture of rural life.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
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The Return of the Native (1878) It’s often said that this is one of the most Hardyesque of all the novels. There are some stand-out characters: Eustacia Vye, a heroine who patrols the moors looking out for her man through a telescope; Clym Yeobright, a hero who can’t escape his mother’s influence; and Diggory Ven, an itinerant trader who wanders in and out of the story covered in red dye. Improbable coincidences and dramatic ironies abound – and over it all presides the brooding presence of Egdon Heath. But underneath the melodrama, there are profound psychological forces at work. You need to be patient. This is one for Hardy enthusiasts – not beginners. This edition, unlike any other currently available, retains the text of the novel’s first edition, without the later changes that substantially altered Hardy’s original intentions.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

Thomas Hardy – web links

Thomas Hardy at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, book reviews. bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

The Thomas Hardy Collection
The complete novels, stories, and poetry – Kindle eBook single file download for £1.29 at Amazon.

Thomas Hardy at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats.

Thomas Hardy at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, the novels and literary themes, poetry, religious beliefs and influence, biographies and criticism.

The Thomas Hardy Society
Dorset-based site featuring educational activities, a biennial conference, a journal (three times a year) with links to the texts of all the major works.

The Thomas Hardy Association
American-based site with photos and academic resources. Be prepared to search and drill down to reach the more useful materials.

Thomas Hardy on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Thomas Hardy – online literary criticism
Small collection of academic papers and articles ‘favoring signed articles by recognized scholars and articles published in peer-reviewed sources’.

Thomas Hardy’s Wessex
Evolution of Wessex, contemporary reviews, maps, bibliography, links to other web sites, and history.

More on Thomas Hardy
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The Adventures of Augie March

August 8, 2018 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, commentary, further reading

The Adventures of Augie March (1954) was Saul Bellow’s third novel. It was widely regarded as his ‘breakthrough’ work, in that it was not only different from his first two books but was a refreshingly new ‘voice’ in American fiction. That voice was a combination of urban vernacular speech with the sophisticated language of European literary and intellectual discourse. These elements were wrapped up in a freewheeling story that captures the modern city in all its vitality and the existential choices that faced man after the second world war.

The Adventures of Augie March – commentary

The picaresque novel

The Adventures of Augie March can be seen as a modern form of the picaresque novel. The picaro was a rogue or rascal who featured as the hero in many examples of post-Renaissance literature. He was usually of lower-class origins: his fortunes varied rapidly from success to failure and disaster; he skirted the edges of criminality; his adventures usually involved travel; and he recounted his own history in a language which was plain and realistic.

Typical examples of novels in this genre include Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605), Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722), Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), Voltaire’s Candide (1759), and Thomas Mann’s Confessions of Felix Krull (1954).

Picaresque novels rarely have any tightly organised plot. They are constructed from loosely related episodes as the hero encounters a succession of secondary characters who draw him into a series of temptations. These may lead variously to danger, opportunistic self-indulgence, brief periods of triumph, or impoverishment.

Augie’s story certainly fits the stereotype, and he is at pains to stress his very humble origins. His father has deserted the family, his mother is virtually an invalid, and the household is run by an elderly matriarch they call ‘Grandmother’ but who is not actually related to them and seems to have been placed with the family by social workers.

Augie’s younger brother Georgie is mentally retarded, and both poverty and hand-me-down clothes dominate the early chapters of the story. Bellow is quite frank about the real-life origins of his novel:

I remebered a pal of mine whose surname was August – a handsome, breezy, freewheeling kid … His father had deserted the family, his mother was, even to a nine-year-old kid, visibly abnormal, he had a strong and handsome older brother. There was a younger child who was retarded – and they had a granny who ran the show … I decided to describe their lives.

Augie is pulled between his poor origins and the chances for enrichment and social improvement that are placed by chance before him. He comes from the lower echelons of society and keeps being pulled back towards the gutter. However, it is noticeable that no matter how glamorous or tempting the offers of social ease and material prosperity might be, it is his roots in lower-class Jewish Chicago life that keep drawing him back and providing him with a sort of moral and spiritual stability.

It is in this sense that the novel was also a ‘breakthrough’ for Saul Bellow – because in writing it he mapped out elements of fiction and social concern which he was to develop for the rest of his writing life. His principal theme in all the novels and stories produced in the next four and a half decades was that of the Jew in America. His protagonists are immigrants, urban, with a past in Europe and a future they must devise for themselves.

Literary style

Saul Bellow is renowned for his novels which have fast-talking first person narrators. They are stories told by fictional characters who deliver the events of the narrative, an amusing commentary on contemporary society, and quasi-philosophic reflections – all at the same time. He also employs a style of narration which is a fascinating admixture of street language, colloquial expressions, slang, and the vocabulary of intellectual and even philosophic discourse.

What’s more, this narrative voice was consciously developed, and is a reflection of Bellow’s desire to fuse Eurocentric culture absorbed via his higher education with the American demotic in which he had been raised as the son of first-generation immigrants. He describes the exhilaration he felt at inventing a narrative voice that was distinct and new.

What I found was the relief of turning away from mandarin English and putting my own accents into the language My earlier books had been straight and respectable. As if I had to satisfy the demands of H. W. Fowler. But in Augie March I wanted to invent a new sort of American sentence. Something like a fusion of colloquialism and elegance … Street language combined with a high style.

The genesis of the novel

In 1948 Saul Bellow was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to spend time writing in Paris. He took with him the manuscript of a third novel on which he was working. Progress did not go well, so he abandoned the novel and

began writing about an ordinary family he had known years before, mixing with it elements from his own life history:

It poured out of me. I was writing many hours every day. In the next two years I seldom looked into Fowler’s Modern English Usage … It was enormously exhilarating to take liberties with the language … For the first time I felt that the language was mine to do with as I wished.

Like many other writers he created an indelible picture of his home town (Chicago) whilst living abroad – just as Joyce created a memorable literary version of Dublin whilst living in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris. Bellow also mined a rich seam of themes, topics, and incidents that would be expanded into a whole sequence of stories, novellas, and novels that followed The Adventures of Augie March.

He celebrates the sheer heterogeneous nature of Chicago urban life, and does so with a prose style that reflects its overwhelming vitality. Early in the novel Augie befriends fellow street urchin Jimmy Klein and they discover the excitement of city life:

After this it wasn’t hard for Jimmy to induce me to go downtown with him … to ride, if there was nothing better to do, in the City Hall elevator … In the cage we rose and dropped, rubbing elbows with bigshots and operators, commissioners, grabbers, heelers, tipsters, hoodlums, wolves, fixers, plaintiffs, flatfeet, men in Western hats and women in lizard shoes and fur coats, hothouse and arctic drafts mixed up, brute things and airs of sex, evidence of heavy feeding and systematic shaving, of calculations, grief, not-caring, and hopes of tremendous millions in concrete to be poured or whole Mississippis of bootleg whisky and beer.

The Adventures of Augie March – study materials

The Adventures of Augie March – Amazon UK

The Adventures of Augie March – Amazon US

The Adventures of Augie March – Classic Notes

The Adventures of Augie March – Study Guide

Saul Bellow – Essays – Amazon UK

Saul Bellow – Letters – Amazon UK

Cambridge Companion to Saul Bellow – Amazon UK

The Adventures of Augie March – plot summary

I. Augie recalls the poverty of his Chicago childhood. He is raised largely by his matriarchal grandmother. His father has deserted the family, leaving his mother with three sons. His elder brother Simon is very studious, and his younger brother Georgie is mentally retarded.

II. As a young boy Augie delivers newspapers and advertising bills. His aunt Anna wants him to marry her daughter. Her brother, Five Properties, is in search of a wife.

III. Augie’s family are ambitious for him, and are exasperated by his youthful misbehaviour. He works in Woolworth’s basement with his brother. Simon finds him a better job, but he is sacked for incompetence. He plays truant from school and goes to vaudeville shows.

IV. Augie and his friend Jimmy Klein are caught pilfering during their Xmas vacation jobs at a department store. He has a teenage crush on Hilda Novison, an unattractive girl. Georgie is put into a care home, and Grandma Lausch loses her authority in the family.

V. Augie is employed to look after William Einhorn, a crippled grandee in a family real estate business. Although he suffers from paralysis, Einhorn lusts after women and engages in slightly dubious commerce.

VI. Augie still has no real purpose in life. Dingbat manages an amateur heavyweight boxer. The grandmother is transferred to a care home. The commissioner fades away and dies. After the funeral Augie helps Einhorn take stock of his debtors.

VII. The great depression of the late 1920s arrives, and the Einhorn empire collapses. Augie gets a job as a soda jerk and sees his brother Simon become more socially sophisticated. Augie takes part in a petty robbery organised by a poolroom friend. Einhorn reproaches him, but on Augie’s graduation night he takes him out to a whorehouse as a celebratory treat.

VIII. Augie gets a job selling shoes in a department store, then progresses to work in Mr Renling’s luxury sporting goods shop. He escorts Mrs Renling to a holiday resort and falls in love with an attractive fellow guest. The girl rejects him, but he is pursued by her sister, Thea Fenchel.

IX. The Renlings want to adopt Augie, but he rejects their offer and takes a job selling paint. When that fails, he joins a childhood friend smuggling illegal immigrants from Canada. He discovers their car is stolen, and they separate. Augie is reduced to hitch hiking and ends up in jail.

X. On return to Chicago he finds the Grandmother has died, and his mother has been taken in by neighbours. His brother has sold the household furniture, borrowed money from Einhorn, and lost it in a betting syndicate. He has also lost his fiancée to Five Properties. Augie gets a job washing dogs. His Mexican student friend teaches him the art of shoplifting – but Augie reads the books he steals. His brother Simon shows up and announces his semi-arranged marriage.

XI. Augie works as a caretaker’s assistant in a student house and befriends Mimi Villars, a waitress with strong opinions. Simon introduces Augie to his new rich wife-to-be Charlotte Magnus and her all-embracing family. Simon gains money but loses personal integrity.

XII. Simon marries the rich Charlotte and wants Augie to profit from contact with this wealthy family. Augie takes up with Lucy Magnus but does not have marriage in mind. Simon puts more pressure on Augie in his work at the coal yard. Augie’s friend Mimi becomes pregnant by her married and absent lover. Augie helps her to secure an abotion, but he is spotted by a friend of the Magnus family. The family break off his relationship with their daughter Lucy. Augie spends New Year’s Eve in hospital, where Mimi is haemorrhaging.

XIII. Augie gets a job as a trade union organiser and he takes up with a Greek girl. But suddenly Thea Fenchel arrives in pursuit of him. He is sent to deal with an inter-union dispute and is beaten up.

XIV. He escapes, goes to Thea, then stays with her, giving himself up to a sudden passion. She is married, no longer rich, and is en route to Mexico to seek a divorce. She also has eccentric plans to hunt lizards with a trained eagle. His friends warn him against the plan.

XV. They drive to Mexico, recognising that they might have different goals in life. Thea purchases a wild eagle and they begin the laborious and painful process of trying to train it. In Mexico City, Thea has divorce proceedings with a lawyer.

XVI. They travel on to Thea’s old family home. Augie is humane and sentimental about the eagle, whereas Thea wants it to be a savage killer. They socialise with cosmopolitan residents in the town. When they take the eagle to hunt Thea is angry that it will not attack an iguana.

XVII. Augie has a riding accident. His horse is killed and he is badly injured. Thea sells the eagle then starts collecting snakes. She and Augie begin to drift apart, and he takes up gambling. Eventually, they decide to move on.

XVIII. There is a party the night before departure. Augie gets drawn into helping a woman escape her husband who is wanted by the US government. They spend a night together in the mountains. Next day on return he has a heated argument with Thea who is jealous. She breaks with him and leaves for Chilpanzingo.

XIX. Augie goes into an emotional collapse for several days, then convinces himself that he can repair the damage and make a success of a renewed relationship with Thea. He learns that she has gone to Chilpanzingo with Talavera, a former lover. Fuelled by hatred and revenge in mind, he tracks her down and asks for a second chance, but she refuses him.

XX. Augies goes back to Mexico City and is sheltered by a Yugoslav Bolshevik. He is asked to be a bodyguard for the exiled Leon Trotsky, who wants to evade Stalin’s GPU – but the scheme is called off.

XXI. After two years away, Augie returns to Chicago, calling to see his brother Georgie and his mother, who are both in care homes. His brother Simon has become a rich and successful businessman, but is loud and vulgar. Augie works as a research assistant for the eccentric millionaire Robey who wants to write a book about the history of happiness.

XXII. Time passes. Augie becomes a trainee teacher and takes up again with Sophie Geratis, who is now married. He has a quasi-Utopian dream to establish a model school for orphans. War breaks out, but he fails his medical examination. His brother Simon has an attractive mistress Renee. Simon’s wife Charlotte discovers the deception, and Renee becomes pregnant.

XXIII. Augie enlists in the merchant navy. He spends his first weekend leave with Stella Chesney whom he met in Mexico. On the strength of this he thinks he has fallen in love, and the following weekend he asks her to marry him.

XXIV. A week before the wedding, lawyer Mintouchian regales Augie withe stories of adultery, deceit, and lying. One tale of a stolen necklace is about his own lover, Agnes Kuttner.

XXV. On his first naval posting Augie becomes an unofficial confidante to the rest of the crew. His ship is sunk by a submarine. He drifts in a lifeboat with Basteshaw, a carpenter-philosopher who claims he has reproduced life in cell forms. He has deranged and paranoid plans, and overpowers Augie, putting their lives at risk. Eventually they are picked up by a British ship and taken to recover in an Italian hospital.

XXVI. After the war Augie and Stella go to live in Paris where she works in an international film unit. He becomes a travelling salesman, doing illegal deals for Mantouchian. He discovers that Stella had a rich former lover with whom she still has complex and legally dubious dealings.

The Adventures of Augie March – characters

Augie March	the narrator, a poor boy from Chicago
Georgie March	his younger brother who is retarded
Simon March	his elder brother who is studious and becomes rich
Grandma Lausch	a Jewish matriarch
Rebecca March	Augie’s mother, who goes blind
Anna Coblin	Rebecca’s cousin
Hyman Coblin	her generous husband
‘Five Properties’	Anna’s brother
The Commissioner	head of a property company
William Einhorn	his son, who has polio
‘Dingbat’	Einhorn’s half-brother
Arthur Einhorn	William’s son, a university student
Mr Renling	owner of a luxury sporting goods store
Mrs Renling	his wife, who acts as a mother to Augie
Padilla	a poor Mexican student, maths wizard, and book thief
Mimi Villars	a waitress with strong opinions
Charlotte Magnus	Simon’s wife, from a rich family
Sophie Geratis	a Greek chambermaid
Stella Chesney	a would-be actress, later Augie’s wife
Agnes Kuttner	Stella’s rich friend
Mintouchian	a rich Armenian lawyer

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