"He Sometimes Said It Was Partly His Own Fault, But He Believed Steadfastly That His Position Had Been Brought About By Other People"

When I got to page 3 of Tobacco Road, I groaned audibly and said to the bf, "I'm going to have a really hard time with this book," and then read the following passage out loud:

"Lov asked Pearl questions, he kicked her, he poured water over her, he threw rocks and sticks at her, and he did everything else he could think of that he thought might make her talk to him. She cried a lot, especially when she was seriously hurt, but Lov did not consider that as conversation. He wanted her to ask him if his back were sore, and when was he going to get his hair cut, and when was it going to rain again. But Pearl would not say anything." 

Less than a minute later when I got to page 7, I said again, "Yeah, I'm going to have a REALLY hard time with this book," and then read the following passage out loud: 

"For the past few weeks, Lov had been thinking about taking some plow-lines and tying Pearl in the bed at night. He had tried everything that he could think of so far, except force, and he was still determined to make her act as he thought a wife should." 

Let me point out that Pearl is a 13-year old girl who was sold by her father as a wife (when she was 12, mind you) to their neighbor down the road in exchange for some quilts, a gallon of cylinder oil, and $7. And so that was just the beginning of the many, many reasons that I absolutely despised Tobacco Road. This was easily my least favorite book that I've ever read. So hats off to you Erskine Caldwell. Of the hundreds of books that I've read in my life, I loathe yours far and above any other one that I've even vaguely disliked. 

The book is about the poor, white Lester family in the 1930s who live outside of Fuller, GA: Jeeter, the father (oh, I'll get to plenty about him in a minute); Ada, the mother whose only concern is making sure she has a fashionable dress to be buried in when she dies; Dude, their teenage son, who I suspect may have been slightly mentally handicapped, however, this is not explicitly stated; Ellie May, their daughter who cannot be married/sold off because of her cleft lip; and the grandmother, who everyone abuses, starves, and is angry with because she hasn't died yet (I'm not making this up folks. I could find you the quote in the book that says exactly that). Not to mention Bessie, the older "preacher" with no nose who comes and decides that "God" has told her to marry Dude (the 16-year-old son).

Jeeter has not been able to farm his land for many years since the tenant farmer left and took his equipment and mules with him. In the meantime, the Lesters have spiraled down into complete and abject poverty. All but the last 2 of their 17 children have been married off and/or abandoned them. They are completely starving and have no way to possibly make any money other than trying to sell loads of blackjack oak in Augusta, but no one wants to buy this type of wood for firewood when pine is much better and equivalent price and they have no way to get it to Augusta. 

Almost sounds like a bunch of folks you could kind of feel sorry for, huh? Well don't. They're all absolutely miserable individuals. Jeeter steals food from his neighbor and doesn't share it with the rest of his starving family until he has eaten his fill and gives them scraps. And then blames it on "God" for making him sinful but then assumes that God forgives him. Just because he felt bad about it, that's why God would forgive him. Jeeter lusts after his own daughter(s) and attempts to sleep with Bessie, his son's new wife. 

Jeeter spends every waking moment of every day lamenting how terrible his life is, talking about his grandiose plans to fix it (somehow plant his field, go sell wood in Augusta, fix his automobile, go see his son a county away, etc, etc), but never does a single thing about it. Nothing. Ever. Everyone tells him that he could get a job in the cotton mills in the nearby towns, but he is too stubborn and says that he was meant to farm land. Aside from the fact that he hasn't farmed land for 7+ years because he's too lazy to (granted, he cannot obtain seed and fertilizer, but he himself repeats many times that he always wants to do it, but just can't seem to actually find the motivation to do anything). So instead he damns his family to starvation and misery. But claims that "God will provide." And perhaps the way I'm saying it may make it sound like many of these things are outside of his control, and are a realistic look at the trials and tribulations of a poor family during the Depression. But the book is clearly written in a manner to show that Jeeter is an "all talk no action" kind of person and the reader is not supposed to have any empathy for him. He continually blames all of his miseries on everyone else and doesn't do anything to change his own circumstances, even though there are ways that he can. 

Once Dude gets married to the older, manipulative preacher (who may have at one point been a prostitute), Bessie spends almost every last dollar of hers to buy a brand new car, and things seem to be looking up! Dude can derive hours of simpleton pleasure by honking the horn of the car, and Jeeter now has a way to haul his wood to Augusta, and also has a way to go visit his other son. But Dude little by little destroys the car (apparently you can't drive over 2 feet tall tree stumps, and cars actually need oil to work...but hey! The horn still works!) and kills a black man in a wagon in the process. But no biggie! Jeeter's response was, "Niggers will get killed. Looks like there ain't no way to stop it." Actually there is. Don't crash into their wagons and kill them. 

The only slightly redeeming character was the grandmother, who never spoke to anyone but still went out of her way to light the fire every night hoping that there would actually be food to cook. But she is eventually run over by Dude in the new car and absolutely no one cares. She drags her injured body a few feet across the yard towards the house before Jeeter finally decides to bury her in a shallow grave out in the field. I wasn't entirely clear if she was actually dead yet when he did this.

I understand that this novel was written in a specific time and era and was intended to capture the lives of poor, rural whites in the 1930s. And that the attitudes about women, blacks, etc were intended to be a reflection of how they were in that time and space. And I also understand that the book makes the reader reflect on his/her own response to how the characters deal with poverty and face his/her own opinions and prejudices against those who have little way to improve their own situation. And I will admit that it did make me uncomfortable to be so unsympathetic to their struggles. But there were no redemptive qualities about any of the characters at all that could make my feelings about this feel invalid (except slightly grandma).

And maybe that was Caldwell's intent. Most reviews of the book indicate that Caldwell wrote this as a serious commentary on poor rural Southerners. But many other reviews point to the work as black humor. And I can see how that there are many scenes that are just too ridiculous to be serious (the daughter with the cleft lip dragging her bare ass across the sand towards the neighbor to get at him and his food, everyone watching as Bessie and Dude get it on in the dilapidated house) but I did not find them funny at all. Apparently the movie version of the book takes the comedic approach and presents it more like a Beverly Hillbillies or Hee Haw kind of spin. Which I also never really found very funny. 

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. And I'm actually annoyed that I spent a week of my life reading it. Thankfully it was short and an easy read. Side note: there was SO much repetition in this book, it probably could have been condensed into 50 pages. A character would not just say the same 4 times in a row but would think the same thing over and over again too. That also contributed to my annoyance while reading. So I'm happy to cross this one off my list and grateful that I don't ever have to read anything by Erskine Caldwell ever again. 

So, rant over. 

Next up, A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes. 

And sadly, I realized last week that I didn't do a very good quality control check on my list of books that I read because I had marked off Slaughterhouse Five as having read it, but I have not. So I am still at the magic number of 227 books left to go. As long as what I'm reading isn't filled with despicable, miserable characters who repeat themselves over and over, I'm pretty sure the next book will be more enjoyable. 

Happy Sunday!

"That Is, Time Travel Is Sort Of An Altered State, So I'm More...Aware When I'm Out There, And It Seems Important, Somehow, And Sometimes I Think That If I Could Just Be That Aware Here And Now, That Things Would Be Perfect"

What is really remarkable about The Time Traveler's Wife, is that it is Audrey Niffenegger's first novel. Because the logistics of trying to write this book seem very daunting to me. I envision large whiteboards with the timeline of Clare (the titular character), the straight timeline of Henry (the time traveler), and then a third crazy timeline of when he time travels to the past or future.

I envision this last whiteboard to have lots and lots of arrows going in every direction. Because there were times when it was hard enough for me to wrap my head around where Henry was coming from and where he was traveling to, the fact that there could be 2 of him in one place, and what was going on with each of the versions of Henry that was important to the story. Fortunately, each chapter (and even many subsections within a chapter) indicated the date and how old Henry and Clare were (or sometimes just how old one of them was if the chapter was only told from one of their perspectives). I think I went back and looked at these dates and ages from previous chapters at least 100 times while reading to match things up. Because there were events that occurred when Henry went into the past that were told early in the book and then events that occurred during the time when Henry left to time travel that were related to what happened in the past that you end up reading about later. Confused yet? Exactly. That's why I was so impressed with the book. 

I also was impressed with the creation of the rules and circumstances around how Henry time travels. It's something that I think could kind of be taken for granted and accepted casually as the reader focuses more on the content of the story between Henry and Clare. But something as simple just the basic concepts around his time traveling is actually the biggest driver of the drama in the book. For example, the fact that he cannot take anything with him including clothes and the inherent problems this causes him, how he can't control where and when he travels to, and not having clothes or money all have a huge impact on him and I would say even affects many facets of who he is. And not just who he is in regards to having to be super fit to run away and fight if he happens to drop into a public place stark naked or having to learn how to pick pockets for money. But these things that Henry has to do for self-preservation while time traveling seem to make him very wild, self-destructive, and reckless when he's in his 20s. So something as simple as the "rules" of Henry's time travel really drives a significant amount of the story. 

I mentioned that I have seen the movie a couple times, and the book was definitely more enjoyable to me. Just because there was just so much more detail in the book that the movie lacked. The movie could have been much longer to try to capture more of the details of Clare and Henry's love, explain the time travel better, and include some other critical parts of the storyline. Side note: there is the strangeness that Henry knows Clare from the time that she is 6 years old which could absolutely be seen as a creepy, pedo turn off to the entire book/movie, but the book does a good job of showing his feelings for her as just being kindly and caring which don't develop into love until Clare is much older. So it didn't even cross my mind as being creepy at all in the book. I think the movie was lacking a little bit in this regard. 

Needless to say, I flew through the 500+ page book in a week, so clearly I was engaged. And I read that Niffenegger is working on a follow-up to this book, which is exciting. This is definitely a world that I would want to be re-immersed in and to read about another story of another character who faces the same set of time traveling circumstances. Once the groundwork is laid, it seems that there are infinite possibilities of how a character would handle his/her time travels. I know I will read it when it comes out. 

And so it's back our regularly scheduled programming. I head back to the reading lists with Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell. I was running low on books in the queue from the lists so I recently went on a book buying spree. There are few things in this world that bring me as much joy as buying books. I don't know what it is, but there's just something about seeing the physical representation of incredible stories just sitting across the room from me waiting to be unlocked that brings me so much happiness and anticipation. So I'm all stocked up and ready to soldier on. I seem to be on a roll lately, finding my reading mojo, and I'm happy as can be about it. Hopefully I don't hit a sour note/book that deters my momentum. So I'm looking at you Tobacco Road, don't let a girl down!

Happy Sunday!

"What It Had To Offer Was A Mild Form Of Sanctuary, An Assurance Of Privacy, And The Protection And The Discretion That Attach Themselves To Blamelessness"

I must admit, I am a bit surprised that Hotel du Lac won the Booker Prize back in 1984. But in a way I can sort of see it. It was probably a book, that when it came out, was well-received and was probably felt to have delivered an interesting portrait of the social and sexual dynamics between women (and to a lesser extent, men). But I don't know if time has been to kind to it. It feels much more typical and not anything that out of the ordinary, and certainly not spectacular. 

Hotel du Lac is the story of Edith Hope (irony in the last name), a romantic novelist, who has sought refuge (although we find out later that it is more of a forced sabbatical) at the Hotel du Lac on the shores of Lake Geneva, which is the type of place where many people come to hide, recover, or seek a simple kind of privacy. It is the end of the season and the hotel is sparsely populated with a few colorful characters - Mme de Bonneuil, a deaf older woman who seems a relic of a much older time, Monica, a gorgeous modelesque woman with an eating disorder and a little dog, Mr Neville, a droll and controlled man and a man who seems accustomed to getting his way, and Mrs and Jennifer Pusey, a very vibrant, extravagant mother and daughter pair who are only too happy to talk incessantly about themselves and flaunt their wealth and penchant for buying clothing. 

The book moves fairly slowly and many of the scenes repeat themselves over and over again - lots of tea and coffee in the salon, dinner at appointed times, and lots of walks. And while this may sound really boring and tedious, Brookner does a nice job of interspersing these standard events with other facets of the story including stories of the other guests as well as Edith's own backstory for her imposed exile to the Hotel du Lac. And the slow pace and redundant events make sense for the character. She's seeking some kind of resolution or atonement for her past sins, event though she doesn't really seem to view them as sins at all, but views them in a vaguely disinterested, impartial manner. And through her interactions with Mr Neville, seems to question whether love is necessary at all and tries to come to terms with the version of herself that she feels she is, the version that everyone tells her she is (which, from Mr Neville, Monica, and the Puseys, is pretty harsh), and the version of herself she has the opportunity to become.

I enjoyed the book very much. While I have a strong fondness for books, movies, and tv shows that take place in large old mansions, apparently I also have a fondness for stories set in old luxurious hotels as well. So I suppose I can expand my repertoire. I think it's just the luxury and formality of it that appeals to me somehow. As a side note, I would LOVE to see this done as a movie. 

So next up, I again take a quick break from the lists to read The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I didn't really have any intention of reading this book, but my sister lent it to me and it is her new bf's favorite book. And when people lend me books, I have to read them right away...I never want to hold onto other people's stuff for longer than I need to. I watched the movie years ago on a flight back from Amsterdam. I was travelling for work in first class (a corporate policy that I was grateful to take advantage of) and have very strong memories of being all reclined in my super reclining seat, with the fancy blanket (you get fancier blankets in first class fyi), fuzzy socks (you get fuzzy socks in first class also), and warm chocolate chip cookies (you get the point about first class by now) and bawling my goddamn eyes out. I'm sure the guy next to me thought I was certifiably insane. And the movie has been on tv here and there for the last week or so and I seem to only catch the last 15 minutes or so, and I still end up bawling like a baby. So I fully expect extreme waterworks once I finish the book.

227 to go. Happy New Year!