It Happened One Night

I’m still working to clear some books from my stacks (so that I can order some new ones!), and last week I picked up The Night in Question, a collection of short stories by Tobias Woolf.

I enjoyed Woolf’s memoir This Boy’s Life, and I really enjoyed his recent novel Old School (no connection to the Will Ferrell movie).  I probably picked up The Night in Question after reading one of those books.

Unfortunately, for me, this book just isn’t up there with the other two.  I didn’t feel a strong connection to the central characters in many of the stories, and most of the stories didn’t stay in my memory for very long after I turned the final page.  (I suppose, though, that following Joyce’s Dubliners probably didn’t help this collection.)

I’m not giving up on Woolf.  But I would recommend This Boy’s Life or Old School for beginners.

 

Don’t Be Scared…

If you’ve always been too intimidated to pick up James Joyce (and let’s face it—Ulysses is one of the most daunting pieces of literature in English), then his collection of short stories, Dubliners, is a great introduction.

In straight-forward (but frequently beautiful) language, Joyce captures small moments in the lives of various Dublin residents at the turn of the twentieth century.  For me, “Eveline” and “The Dead” (the final story, which closes with some powerful observations on life) are the highlights of the collection.

Here are the haunting final paragraphs of “The Dead”:

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

 

Coming of Age during the Civil Rights Era

Within the past few days, I’ve written down the titles of five or six new books that I want to read.  But—since there are stacks of books waiting for me in almost every room of the house—I promised myself that I would read a few books that I already own before buying any new ones.

Toward that end, I chose a dusty copy of Betsey Brown, a novel by Ntozake Shange (author of the groundbreaking and award-winning 1974 play for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf). 

Betsey Brown was published in 1985, but it is set in 1957.  The oldest of four children, Betsey lives in a sprawling house in St. Louis with her father (a physician) and her mother (a social worker).  Betsey’s father takes her to hear some of the early greats in rock and roll (Chuck Berry, Ike and Tina Turner), and every morning he quizzes the children on their knowledge of black history.  Betsey’s mother, though, is worried about her husband’s activism; she is worried, as the schools in St. Louis integrate, about her children’s safety.

This novel has a very episodic feel, almost more like linked short stories than one continuous story.  Some of the episodes are fun (Betsey is swept up by young love), some of the episodes are fascinating (Betsey decides to run away from home to work in a hair salon—which turns out to be a cathouse), some of the episodes are sad (the children grow close to a nanny who is dismissed by their mother), some of the episodes are uplifting (Betsey’s parents, despite disagreements and struggles, still find great passion for one another). 

Not all of the book’s episodes are equally engaging, and the section about the children’s integration into a white school—one of the most publicized elements of the book—isn’t as developed as I would wish.  Still, Betsey Brown nicely captures one girl’s passage into adulthood during a tumultuous time in American history.