Monthly Archives: September 2016

Overpaid, Oversexed, and Over Here: A Historical Artifact

29 Thursday Sep 2016

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“It is always impolite to criticize your hosts; it is militarily stupid to criticize your allies.”

This aphorism is merely one of many revealing nuggets in a reprint I ran across of a U.S. War Department pamphlet from 1942, called Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain. Whoever wrote it had a keen wit, a sympathetic but clear-eyed view of the British, and subscribed to more than a couple widely held prejudices of the time. He (I strongly suspect male authorship) had also either intuited or experienced the young American soldier’s propensity to brag, which is why the text continually skewers the notion that the GI is a hero simply for crossing the Atlantic and bailing out his clumsy British cousins.

Courtesy glossophilia.org

Courtesy glossophilia.org

 

The Instructions are meant, then, to caution against blundering into a social or political minefield through lack of empathy or understanding, thereby threatening the Anglo-American alliance, one ill-considered confrontation at a time. Covering everything from food (or lack of it) to the wage disparity between British and American soldiers to explanations of pounds, shillings, and pence, the pamphlet consistently warns against making assumptions based on appearances.

Some observations seem minor, yet are astute and thoughtful at heart, and you can imagine how ignorance might have led to hurtful or humiliating remarks. For instance, we’re told that London has no skyscrapers not because British architects couldn’t design them, but because the city was built on swampland. The shabbiness or disrepair visible in clothing, buildings, or public transportation results not from carelessness or lack of pride but from the way finite resources are funneled to the war effort.

Other observations have to do with manners or misperceptions. Where an American spectator at a ballgame might yell, “Take him out!” at a player who fails to perform to expectations, that’s bad form in Britain. The proper response is “Good try.” (I like that one.) Beer is brewed at below-peacetime strength “but can still make a man’s tongue wag at both ends.” (I like that one too.) Women in uniform aren’t ornaments but worthy contributors: “When you see a girl in khaki or air-force blue with a bit of ribbon on her tunic–remember she didn’t get it for knitting more socks than anyone else in Ipswich.” What’s interesting here, though, is that, from what I’ve read, British men were no more likely than Americans to accord women their due and were probably even less so.

The crucial point, however, is that Instructions for American Servicemen repeatedly emphasizes that the American soldier is there to destroy a common enemy, not to clean up a mess that Britain made. The author acknowledges that Britain lost the first couple of rounds, but so did the United States; and the soldier would do well to “remember how long the British alone held Hitler off without any help from anyone.” Consequently, the populace has taken a beating, having lost sixty thousand deaths to German bombing alone. “There are housewives in aprons and youngsters in knee pants . . . who have lived through more high explosives . . . than many soldiers saw . . . in the last war.”

But to characterize the British as victims would have done them a disservice and encouraged pity instead of sympathy and respect. Rather, the author points to their toughness and worthiness as an ally. The text pays due tribute to the celebrated determination to remain cheerful under fire and further underlines the intent to pay back the enemy for what he’s done. Don’t be fooled by tendencies to be soft-spoken or polite, the pamphlet says: “The English language didn’t spread across the oceans and over the mountains and jungles and swamps of the world because these people were panty-waists.” Such were the mores of 1942, and the assumptions of what it meant to be masculine.

The nitty-gritty, though, comes in a brief section dealing with how to behave among people who have less money than you do. Don’t be flashy, don’t rub it in, and, if you wish to befriend a British soldier, don’t belittle his army or “swipe his girl.” These warnings are downright prescient, for the following years led to a British complaint that their American allies were “oversexed, overpaid, and over here.” No doubt this summation contained a world of stories; how could it have been otherwise?

I’d be curious if the British government ever published a similar pamphlet about their American visitors and, if so, what it said.

Not So Puritanical As That: The House of Hawthorne

26 Monday Sep 2016

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Review: The House of Hawthorne, by Erika Robuck
New American Library, 2015 402 pp. $26

Sophia Peabody has received a most unconventional upbringing for an early nineteenth-century woman, even for one born into Massachusetts intellectual circles. Her poor health has much to do with this. Sophia gets crippling migraines from random noises, commotion, or even by expending effort to concentrate–a pity, because she’s a gifted artist. Yet, on certain days, attempting to draw or paint bring on attacks that leave her bed-ridden. Her mother assumes that Sophy must give up all thought of marrying, because, if childbirth didn’t kill her, the work of keeping home and husband would. Consequently, she must devote her life to art and avoid any excitement other than what may be found in her sketchpad and books–only the appropriate sort, of course.

Fat chance. Sent to the reputedly healthful climate of Cuba with her sister, Mary, also of frail health, Sophy finds heat of more than one kind. Nature feels unleashed, more vividly savage, and the colors and marvels of the landscape stir her sensibilities as an artist and a person beginning to realize that she’d like to widen her experience. Living among the plantation gentry, the family entertains neighbors of their social class, who impress Sophy with their manners and bearing. But the slavery that supports these people and, by extension, her sister and herself, is always close at hand, and the revulsion Sophy feels for it, and the sympathy for the slaves, tells her that Cuba is no place for her. In a way, this comes as a wrench, because she’s formed an attraction for a plantation owner’s son, a shy, modest young man who seems to hate the system as much as she does. Nevertheless, the Peabody sisters return to Massachusetts.

Matthew Brady's photograph of Nathaniel Hawthorne, taken during the 1860s, not long before the author's death (Courtesy Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons)

Matthew Brady’s photograph of Nathaniel Hawthorne, taken during the 1860s, not long before the author’s death (Courtesy Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons)

Enter Nathaniel Hawthorne; talk about a thunderclap. They first meet in the company of Sophy’s sister, Elizabeth, who wants him for herself:

When I enter, Hawthorne’s eyes meet mine, and he rises. By the holy angels, I feel my soul at once aflame and reaching through my breast toward him. I falter, and he is at my arm, leading me to the sofa. I try to ignore the heat–the fire of our first joining–and lean back once I am seated. I tear my eyes from his to look at Elizabeth, and I see a pain in her face that makes me wish I had stayed in my room.

Thus begins a lengthy courtship of two people burning for one another, and I mean, they can’t wait to tear each other’s clothes off–except that they do wait, and for years. The House of Hawthorne is a charming novel, and this section is my favorite. Sophy must outwit her jealous sister and prod her intended to tell his family they’re engaged, something he’s extremely loath to do–and he has his reasons. Nathaniel and she must struggle to restrain passions that are positively transcendental. The future author of The Scarlet Letter tries hard not to be a Puritan and succeeds to a larger extent than his reputation might suggest.

I like the writing, which is simple and direct, much like the narrative itself. Notable characters from the Hawthornes’ literary circles, both in Massachusetts and abroad, play roles–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, and the British poets Browning, for example. But none come fully alive, perhaps because Robuck never grants any more than a thumbnail sketch, generally a familiar one. Emerson is cold and pompous. Thoreau prefers his own company to that of society. Melville is a needy pain in the neck.

As with these characters, Robuck fails to make full use of the themes she introduces. Sophy’s artistic life before and after marriage makes the point, echoed by two characters and the woman herself, that she’s sacrificed to Hawthorne and his career what she might have achieved. It’s not that he discourages her art–far from it–it’s that she doesn’t have the time. But there sits the feminist argument, mentioned and mulled over a little but unfortunately not developed. Likewise, though the Hawthornes discuss slavery and feel deeply about it, especially Sophy, they take no stand, because they oppose war as the means to end it. But this resolution seems unsatisfying, particularly since their siblings, abolitionists all, were mad at them for it, as were, no doubt, their famous friends. I’d have also wanted more thoughtfulness about death, which strikes frequently during the narrative and causes the Hawthornes much grief. Again, they mention it, consider it, and utter a notion or two, but they don’t get down and grapple with it. They save the grappling for each other.

That’s not bad, just less than it could have been. The House of Hawthorne is a nice book, only lighter in impact than it could be.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Bloody Pastures: The Black Snow

19 Monday Sep 2016

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Review: The Black Snow, by Paul Lynch
Little, Brown, 2014. 264 pp. $25

It’s 1945, and the Second World War is in its final, convulsive months, but in county Donegal, Irish country folk have their own violent conflicts to think about. The barn belonging to Barnabas Kane, an up-and-coming farmer, has burned, killing forty-three head of cattle and a handyman, Matthew Peoples. The fires have hardly cooled before the whisperings begin: Barnabas sent Matthew into the barn and was therefore responsible for his death. But no charges have been filed, and no one really knows what happened.

Glengesh Pass, county Donegal, northwest Ireland (Courtesy Jon Sullivan via Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Glengesh Pass, county Donegal, northwest Ireland (Courtesy Jon Sullivan via Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Nevertheless, Baba Peoples, the late man’s crazy widow, believes Barnabas killed her husband, and that the Kanes owe her compensation. She even goes so far as to point out that Eskra, Barnabas’s wife, has brought “foreign ways” to the village; Eskra keeps bees, for example. What else would you expect from a woman born in America? For that matter, villagers hostile to the Kanes–which, by now, is most of them–remind one another that Barnabas came from America too, forgetting that he was born in Donegal, emigrated, and returned with Eskra as his bride. It’s a brilliant stroke on Lynch’s part, showing how quickly superstition and prejudice prevent any reasonable assessment of the tragedy and turn it into an occult act perpetrated by evil, so-called outsiders.

Consequently, Lynch gets remarkably far with a deceptively simple premise, and he’s not done. Not only does Barnabas privately wonder whether he did, in fact, send Matthew to his death, he’s quick to notice who among his neighbors failed to help quell the flames and to suspect that the fire resulted from arson. (A diary kept by his teenaged son, Billy, suggests that Barnabas may be right, though not for the reasons he believes.) True or not, however, his paranoid fantasies mirror what the villagers say about him, and his deep, angry depression makes him both impossible to live with and incapable of repairing the barn–for awhile, anyway. So nobody in The Black Snow gets off lightly, even when they deserve sympathy; the novel explores a complex moral problem, with no easy answers.

I also admire the prose, which, at its best, is poetic.

The plough still in the tapered field, poised with the lean of an animal in the moment before attack, its teeth bared waiting to tear at the neck of the earth, but it sat with a dog’s patience through days of raw cold and then rain and he had not the strength to go back to it.

However, though I like this passage, there are others I find self-consciously ornate. Lynch is much too fond of fragments, and though the one above works, they don’t always. Further, as I read phrases like “the damask of puzzlement on her face,” I’m puzzled too, enough to pull me out of the narrative. Or I read “That rain came with a venomous slant to cut a man wide open,” and I’m stopped again, wondering why Lynch needs venom on top of cutting someone apart.

And that’s the problem with The Black Snow–it’s over the top. Barnabas Kane (Cain?) eventually gets out of bed and rebuilds his barn, putting his faith in a fresh start. However, the setbacks come pretty hard afterward, and though I applaud these instances of “no; and furthermore,” I don’t believe them, especially when it comes to further violence from Billy and, of all people, Eskra. It feels strange to write this, for I’m one to criticize characters granted redemption they haven’t earned. In such cases, I’m tempted to ascribe that to a desire to appease the reader, a goal often (but not always) more common to commercial rather than literary fiction. But with The Black Snow, the most literary novel I could imagine, I find myself criticizing a narrative that refuses to grant redemption to characters who’ve plainly earned it, dealing out further punishment that’s frankly incredible. Go figure.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

The First 1800 Words: A Glimpse of My New Novel

14 Wednesday Sep 2016

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Today, I’m offering a peek at my new historical novel, tentatively titled Curtain, inspired partly by Colm Toíbín’s fine book, Nora Webster. If you care to comment, I’d be happy to know whether what I’ve written here would tempt you to read more.

It’s April 1937, and Jeff Messer has missed the funeral of his closest friend, Broadway playwright Brendan Moore, by staying too long in Europe. Back in New York, Jeff apologizes, but Anna, Brendan’s widow, is too hurt to listen, and she’s furious that her sixteen-year-old daughter, Rosemary, takes Jeff’s side and tortures her at every opportunity. But Rosemary is convinced that her beloved father’s last play is the only thing that stands between the Moores and the relief line, and that Jeff, who directed all of Dad’s hits, must stage this one. However, no one knows that the play evokes a secret from a terrible chapter in Jeff’s life that may even get him killed.
Can these people find it in their hearts to see the others’ pain and grief–and is the play the thing to make it happen?

Chapter One

Anna was out, talking to the lawyer about Dad’s will, and would be gone an hour or two, easy. It was Friday morning, and Rosemary would return to school Monday, wearing this same black dress, most likely. Now was the time, before routine trapped her.
She ventured toward her parents’ bedroom and stopped, as if the heavy, white door, open a crack, were warning her to take care. She’d have to want to widen that passageway, an act of commission.
Rosemary reached toward the cut-glass doorknob, whose facets had used to make her imagine an immense diamond, too big to wear, only to draw back. She pictured faces challenging her in hurt or anger, voices calling her a hypocrite. Not just Anna, but her aunts and uncles, even her friends, anyone whose questions she’d ever rebuffed to protect a secret. This was her parents’ private place. Anna didn’t come into her room without permission, certainly not to snoop when Rosemary wasn’t there. The girl knew that because nothing had ever been disturbed, whether on her desk, in or atop her bureau, or anywhere else. So she’d never trespass the other way. Except that Dad’s legacy was a special case and maybe their best chance to stay off relief. And she, Rosemary, seemed to be the only one to recognize this vital fact. She grasped the doorknob and pushed gently, making sure to note the precise angle the door had made.
The phone rang in the living room. Rosemary ignored it.
Anna had stopped wearing perfume, so the room no longer smelled like lilac. In fact, aside from the ghost of Dad’s Camels, fainter and fainter over time, the only odor came from cabbage cooking upstairs, a scent Rosemary loathed. Cabbage was cheap, so she didn’t hold it against the Bartons, who were struggling, like so many. But she wrinkled her nose just the same, and it struck her: Aren’t we struggling too? No cabbage had shown up yet, but if the rest of 1937 was like the first few months. . . .
She shook her head violently, because she had a job to do, which didn’t include feeling sorry for herself, and stepped into the room. Just crossing that boundary made her hold her breath, as if she expected Anna to leap from the closet and say, “I got you, you little sneak.”
The phone continued to ring. It happened so often these days, like a tired song that repeated the same note over and over until you wanted to scream.
The closet remained closed, and nobody leaped anywhere. Emboldened, Rosemary went further, stood directly beneath the globe light fixture that hung over the foot of the double bed with its pale blue bedspread. The bed she’d been conceived in, most likely.
What a creepy thought. She’d been having thoughts like that recently, imagining her parents creating her. She hoped it didn’t mean she was perverted, wondering about stuff like that. But she couldn’t help it. Had they enjoyed it? Equally? Or had it hurt, for Anna? Something told Rosemary it hadn’t, but still, Anna had never gotten pregnant again. Rosemary would have liked a younger sibling, preferably a brother who’d be sweet and adoring and vulnerable and look up to her. Maybe Anna had wanted another child too. Both she and Dad had come from large families, so having only one child themselves was very different for them. Though the condolence visit from her aunts and uncles had proven having siblings was a hit-and-miss thing. God, what if she’d had a little brother like Uncle Timothy? Disgusting.
The phone stopped ringing, thank God. Now she could think better.
Where did they keep the script? More exactly, where had Dad left it, and had Anna moved it? If she hadn’t moved it, maybe . . .
Dad’s Underwood, covered up like a canary’s empty cage, stood on a table in the corner, out of the way. Tears came. Never again would he tap-tap the keys at the kitchen table, humming and chuckling as he wrote, while a cigarette burned in the ashtray.
Quietly, as if Anna could hear–as if Dad could see and disapprove–she slid open his top dresser drawer and listened carefully for a key in the front door. If Anna caught her, Rosemary could always say she was looking for memories of Dad, and she probably wouldn’t even have to fake her tears, which would silence Anna like a piece of tape over her mouth. But all she saw were Dad’s shirts, laundered, pressed, and folded, like he was about to wear them, his handkerchiefs, and cuff links. His watch. A packet of letters, tied with ribbon. Rosemary reached out, then mentally slapped her hand. She didn’t have time for that, and besides, reading them would really be snooping. She might feel guilty for that, and she didn’t want to do anything she couldn’t excuse. Though Anna had behaved really badly.
In Rosemary’s head, Anna had been Anna, and not Mom, for exactly eighty-three days, and counting. She’d officially rechristened her the night she’d overheard Anna say out loud that Dad was dying, the first Rosemary had heard of it. She’d never been so angry, felt so betrayed. Her mother had tried to keep her ignorant of the most important thing that had ever happened in their family. How could Anna, a woman who prided herself on the straight dope, who preached honesty, honesty, honesty, lie like that? It was a stupid lie, too, the kind that would show itself sooner or later. But that hadn’t stopped Anna, whose round, angelic face and light, blue eyes could fool you, and the eggshell chin that would crack before the mouth ever uttered a falsehood.
But the very next day, Rosemary had gone to Dad and asked him, point-blank. He’d looked at her with the dark eyes that had already started to shrink into his head, like there was nothing left in life for him to see, and said softly, in a voice that had begun to dry up like old leaves, “Yes. How it hurts to leave you and Mom.”
That conversation, only a few words, was the most precious she’d ever had–and Anna, in her role as Mom, had tried to prevent it.
The memory of Dad’s confession brought more tears. Rosemary turned away so that she wouldn’t cry into his top dresser drawer. Dad would forever be Dad, but, in her own mind, the only place that was truly safe, Mom had become Anna. Out loud, Rosemary would give her what she required, but in her head, she was a rebel, a resister. Anna had forfeited the right to her intimate name because she’d done something so hurtful, so ordinary, so goddamned stupid and insensitive. And to top it off, she’d treated Rosemary, who was sixteen already, like a little kid who wouldn’t know how to handle the news.
She slammed the first drawer shut and flung open the second. Anna might catch her, but she wouldn’t be lied to.
The phone began to ring again. Honestly.
But the second drawer proved no more enlightening, nor the third and last. A great weight seemed to want to drag her lungs down past her waist, as if they’d fail, like Dad’s. She struggled for air, caught her breath gratefully. What if he’d locked it up somewhere, maybe in his filing cabinet? She closed the drawer, checked to see whether she’d moved anything, and dove into the closet.
No luck. The cabinet was locked as tight as J. P. Morgan’s bank vault. Nothing on the floor, either, or wedged onto a shelf up top.
Anna’s dresser? Rosemary drew back. Rummaging there would be like slapping the empress’s face before the court. If she had to, she’d do it, but only as a last resort.
Wait. One more place. She dropped to one knee and lifted the bedspread, fighting off visions of her parents coupling. The sight of the boxes, neatly labeled in dark pencil, made her close her eyes and exhale in triumph. Left, Right; Pinch Me, I’m Dreaming; One of Us Is Crazy; Barrel Over Niagara; Marry Soon, and Often; and the others–the whole works, literally. She sneezed, twice–the boxes were dusty–and found the newest, which wasn’t dusty at all. Interchangeable Parts. Hallelujah.
The phone stopped again.
Rosemary looked over her shoulder, as if she hadn’t already broken the law and could redeem herself, should Anna surprise her. But Anna wasn’t there, nor did her key enter the lock. Rosemary slipped the looseleaf binder out, replaced the box and the bedspread, and spent precious seconds deciding exactly how far open to leave the door. Then she raced into the hallway, and grabbed her coat and hat from the rack.
Call first? Yes. She had to be sure. She went to the living room, lifted the receiver quickly, before anyone else could call, and dialed. Some people, like the Bartons upstairs, had given up their phones to save money. If Anna and Rosemary had to do that, this call might be–but Rosemary wouldn’t think of that.
“Hello?” A man’s voice. The wrong man; the greasy roommate, Harvey.
“Hello, Mr. Mandel. This is Rosemary Moore.” She thought she heard a woman’s voice in the background, a complaint.
“Oh. Oh, yes. I’m sorry about your dad.” He rushed his words, breathing hard.
Rosemary shuddered. Poor Jeff, having to live with someone like that. Mr. Mandel was a teacher, no less. He must have called in sick just to–“Thank you. Is Jeff there?”
“No, he’s out. He said he was going to Chas Parker’s office, and then to Max’s.” Out of the way, so Harvey and his lady friend could have privacy. Did Harvey ever leave so that Jeff could . . .?
“Thanks. Good-bye.” She hung up before he could reply and reentered the hallway.
Chas Parker. Jeff was already arranging to direct another play. Rosemary wasn’t a moment too soon.
As she turned the doorknob, she stopped short. Those boxes under the bed were her siblings. They couldn’t adore anybody, and you couldn’t talk to them or play with them or button their coats for them, and they wouldn’t look up to you. But they were Dad’s children, not Anna’s. There was something to be said for that. And maybe she could care for her latest and last sibling, in a way.
The phone started ringing. The other night, when Anna was in a particularly foul mood, she’d suggested that she and Rosemary stand in Sheridan Square, handing out postcards that read: “I knew/didn’t know Brendan/Mr. Moore well, and/but I’m sorry for your loss. I promise not to waste your time and patience by calling/coming over/reciting righteous platitudes. Signed, _________.”
Dad would have been the first to laugh. Rosemary closed the door firmly on the ringing phone.

 

© Larry Zuckerman, 2016

Deadly Silences: The Longest Night

12 Monday Sep 2016

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Review: The Longest Night, by Andria Williams
Random House, 2016. 383 pp. $27

As Chekhov famously observed, a playwright mustn’t put a loaded rifle on stage if he doesn’t plan on having a character fire it. This novel, about a poorly engineered nuclear reactor, obeys the master’s dictum, to good effect. Unfortunately, however, the narrative pulls out that age-old device too many times, using characters as the rifles that you know will go off.

 

Navy personnel learn how to use a prototype of a nuclear-powered submarine in the 1950s (Courtesy Idaho National Laboratory via energy.gov)

Navy personnel learn how to use a prototype of a nuclear-powered submarine in the 1950s (Courtesy Idaho National Laboratory via energy.gov)

It’s 1959, and army Specialist Paul Collier has been assigned to a team in Idaho Falls, Idaho, that operates a nuclear reactor, among the country’s first. In moving his wife, Nat, and two young daughters to this remote town, Paul expects his family to mold their lives to his. He’s the breadwinner, subject to strict Army routine, which, to his mind, means that Nat must tend the kids, manage their home, and make sure that nothing and no one get in his way. To some extent, Nat agrees. It’s the 1950s, before American feminism had coalesced into a recognizable movement; these people, in their early twenties, have never come in contact with a differing outlook; and since their livelihood depends on Paul’s career, his demands seem reasonable, in a way.

However, there’s much more to it, and this is where The Longest Night does best. Paul, a self-willed, emotionally guarded man with a painful past, keeps his own counsel no matter what the cost. He’s not about to tell Nat that the reactor has obvious design flaws that make it unsafe, or that his immediate superiors cover up the problems for fear that the army won’t want to hear about them and will punish the whistleblower. Nor will Paul tell Nat that Master Sergeant Richards, his drunken, lecherous boss, has been hazing him and making sexual remarks about her, all of which Paul must swallow to be a good soldier. For her part, Nat, though more open than her husband, keeps quiet about how lonely she is, having no friends in a remote army town, and how bored to be chained to the house with two young children while Paul drives the car to work. She says nothing, either, about the persecution she suffers from Jeannie Richards, the master sergeant’s wife, a sadist in a beehive hairdo.

Even without reading the entire jacket flap–this one is further evidence that you should always stop after the first paragraph or so–the reader knows that the reactor will go haywire. There’s just too much talk and worry about how unsafe it is, and how nobody really knows how the infernal machine will behave. But to me, the best parts of The Longest Night depend on the tension of what can’t be said. Williams excels at depicting the pain of silence, whether in the social gatherings where Jeannie Richards cuts apart the other army wives or the growing estrangement between Nat and Paul, which seems menacing, even tragic. Two good people deserve each other yet can’t manage to talk.

But having set up this cold war, Williams has to bring matters to a head, which is where The Longest Night falls short. On an excursion with her children, Nat meets Esrom, who bails them out of a sticky situation, and you just know he’ll show up again. Why? Because too much has been made of Nat’s poor driving, and Esrom, born to a ranch, is also an auto mechanic. That tell-tale harbinger would pass muster if Esrom weren’t cardboard–gentler than Paul, sensitive, an excellent listener who amuses Nat’s daughters with tales of coyotes, snakes, and horses, who comes around to clean the gutters without being asked, and predictably falls for Nat but would never, ever say or do anything untoward.

Since Paul’s away on tour in Greenland, the community comes down hard on Nat for flouting the army wife’s code of honor. (How he got to Greenland makes sense, sort of; how Williams brings an antagonist across is path seems too convenient by half.) But in Nat’s mind, she’s done nothing wrong, because she hasn’t cheated on Paul, strictly speaking. Esrom and she just spend time together. She laments that you’re never supposed to admit that you’re bored or feel longing or want anything other than what everyone else has. Williams makes this point well. She brilliantly conveys the small-minded, backbiting world of the army base, with its petty cabals and viciousness. Yet how can Nat, who’s had a rocky sexual history, be surprised at their reaction, which, after all, has some justice to it?

I think Williams has tried to play this tricky situation both ways. She wants Nat to be completely sympathetic and Esrom to be pure, because that puts the community in the worst possible light. But Williams has already made that point, so by portraying Esrom as a total innocent, a portrait that Nat accepts, Williams has put no obstacles in their way. That, in turn, makes The Longest Night entirely too predictable and less genuine than it should be.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

The Man Who Saw It All: Dictator

05 Monday Sep 2016

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Review: Dictator: A Novel, by Robert Harris
Knopf, 2015. 385 pp.

This third book in a trilogy about Marcus Tullius Cicero has much going for it, even as it suffers pitfalls typical of biographical fiction on a grand scale. The subject is certainly worthy. Ancient Rome produced few men whose range of accomplishment rivaled Cicero’s–senator, consul, historian, philosopher, legal advocate, and, not least, the most gifted orator of an age that valued public speaking. What’s more, and perhaps what makes him such a tempting fictional protagonist, he knew everyone who was anybody, as friend, enemy, or (often) both.

Bust of Cicero from the first century CE, Capitoline Museums, Rome (Courtesy glauco92 via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Bust of Cicero from the first century CE, Capitoline Museums, Rome (Courtesy glauco92 via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

As this volume begins, Cicero’s in exile from Rome. That would humiliate anyone but especially a man used to power who believes he has upheld its dearest principles. His marriage, never particularly happy, seems more like a tenuous accommodation than a supportive partnership, while his beloved daughter, Tullia, is suffering her own marital problems. By promising to support Julius Caesar, a political enemy, Cicero regains the right to return to Rome. But as this experienced, adroit politician knows too well, such a bargain brings as many dangers as possibilities, just as he recognizes that Caesar is a man ill accustomed to hearing the word no. In other words, Cicero has little choice.

Therein hangs a tale, and a fine, often familiar one it is–the tense rivalry between Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey), which devolves into civil war; Caesar’s dictatorship; what, thanks to Shakespeare, may be the most infamous assassination in history; and its aftermath. But to read Dictator makes you realize how much Shakespeare compressed, edited, changed, or simply invented. And knowledge of the history in no way dampens appreciation of the book. One reason I admire Harris’s novels is his skill at making tense drama out of well-known events, as with Aquarius Rising (about Pompeii) or, my favorite, An Officer and a Spy (about the Dreyfus Affair). Among other things, that implies a talent for characterizing famous people, and here, they include the two Caesars, Julius and Octavian, as charismatic as they’re cold and calculating.

But that’s not where the narrative comes from. Rather, Dictator unfolds through the eyes of Tiro, Cicero’s secretary, a real historical figure, incidentally. (He invented a system of shorthand to keep up with Cicero’s prolific dictation and coined abbreviations [such as i.e., e.g.] still in use. At first a slave, Tiro was a friend and adviser even before Cicero freed him, and in these pages, his enforced proximity has lent him a keen eye for politics and for his master’s virtues and flaws. Most important, perhaps, he has infinite patience, much needed during Cicero’s rages, such as when the great man chafes at his banishment from Rome:

He should have heeded the example of Socrates, who said that death was preferable to exile. Yes, he should have killed himself! He snatched up a knife from the dining table. He would kill himself! I said nothing. I didn’t take the threat seriously. He couldn’t stand the sight of others’ blood, let alone his own. All his life he had tried to avoid military expeditions, the games, public executions, funerals–anything that might remind him of mortality.

However, Tiro’s narration, witty and ironic as it often is, keeps raising the unspoken question: What about the man telling the story? Who is he, really, aside from being Cicero’s scribe and shadow? Like any devoted chronicler, Tiro puts himself in the background, but this isn’t always satisfying. Harris has him refer to himself as invisible, meaning nondescript, but I’m not buying. Tiro may be the conveniently overlooked witness to great events, but he’s a character too, and deserves more. It’s as if Cicero and the Caesars use up so much oxygen, there isn’t enough to go around, which leaves the minor characters less able to live and breathe. Conversely, though Cicero enjoys being the center of Roman attention, he has his humdrum years, like anybody else, so that Dictator occasionally drags, despite Harris’s prodigious storytelling skills.

The novel offers other pleasures, though, not least a window on Roman politics: endless cabals, corruption, backstabbing (literal and figurative), and reversals, whose participants have long memories and sharp tongues. That Cicero, an intellectual for the ages, would attempt to make sense of this cesspool in which he waded is quite understandable, and his analyses sound as cogent today as they did two thousand years ago. For instance, when he asks, “Must the existence of standing armies and the influx of inconceivable wealth inevitably destroy our democratic system?” you can’t help thinking how prescient the ancient philosopher was. Likewise, when he supposes that a human can only prepare for death by leading a morally good life (essentially by following the golden mean), I find myself having to stop to reflect on that.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.