The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton
read: 2011
Modern Library #58, Guardian 1000 Novels, Pulitzer Prize

Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of my favorite bloggers, and in the glow of finishing The Age of Innocence, he wrote:

I generally try to avoid honorifics like 'best novel ever' or 'greatest American novel' and so on. But Age of Innocence really is quite incredible, and, at the moment, I consider it the best novel I've ever read.  

Of course, I had to give the book a shot after that.  And after finishing the novel, my immediate reaction was, "holy crap, he's right."  What follows are some reasons why.

1) It's perfectly constructed.  Age of Innocence is a tight story narratively.  It doesn't seem like anyone could change a word in the last half of the book.  It's not exactly a plot-driven book, but the twists and turns of the narrative all ring true.  Everything proceeds the way it has to.  I made the point before that I love novels that leave some pieces missing or unresolved, and while The Age of Innocence doesn't leave any questions unanswered, it still lingers due to the emotional impact of the work.  The last 100 pages especially are wrenching, devastating even, chapter after chapter, page after page, sentence after sentence.  And the epilogue is pitch-perfect, full of hope and optimism, but in a way that renders the rest of the novel all the more tragic.

2) The conflict.  William Faulkner once said that "the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself ... alone can make good writing."  If someone asked for a definition of "the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself," you could hand them this novel.  There are no good guys and bad guys; there is no life-and-death struggle.  What's at stake in The Age of Innocence is not survival or victory, but how much we're willing to sacrifice to be happy, whether one can sacrifice that happiness, what duty and honor and love truly mean, and the choices we make in our lives that bind us.  In short, it's about the human experience and the things that make it matter.

3) The context.  I've complained about some other works that it was hard for me to appreciate their context.  I certainly didn't go into reading The Age of Innocence with a profound knowledge of aristocratic society in New York in the late 19th century.  But even though that setting was critical to the events of the novel, I did not feel my ignorance left me with a disadvantage.  On the contrary, the notes Wharton hit were so universal that through my emotional connection to the characters and their situation, I was able to understand that society so much better.  The oaken strengths and the crushing limitations, the loyalty and the brutality, all of it unfolded vividly during the novel.

The best novel I've ever read?  I couldn't argue against it.

House of Mirth

House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton
read: circa 1999
Modern Library #69, Guardian 1000 Novels

I had to read this for a humanities class my freshman year of college.  The only thing I remember is that one of my friends downloaded a text version, renamed it "Da Crib O' Mirth" and find/replaced many words with their Ebonics equivalents.  We thought that was hilarious back then.

The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger
read: circa 1998
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #64, Guardian 1000 Novels

I never really did the whole rebellion thing.  So I remember reading and liking The Catcher in the Rye, but even at the time it never really resonated with me in the "this perfectly captures my feelings and angst" way it did for so many of my peers.  I was 17 or 18 when I read it, too, so it's not like I read it at 30 and just didn't get it.  I was just never there.

Zuleika Dobson

Zuleika Dobson
by Sir Max Beerbohm
read: 2012
Modern Library #59, Guardian 1000 Novels

A synopsis in song (spoiler alert):

I liked this book; the humor holds up fairly well for being 101 years old.

There's an interesting diversion about halfway through where the narrator explains why he is able to render the story in third-person omniscient.  Short version: the Clio, the Greek Muse of history, becomes jealous of the fiction writers and their ability to relate stories with detail and the internal thoughts and feelings of characters.  Zeus, who has apparently had a thing for Clio for a while, grants her the ability to designate one historian to tell one story one time.  She chooses Beerbohm, and Zuleika Dobson is the result.  You gotta admit, it's pretty creative.

Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon
read: 2010
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels, National Book Award

I guess I don't get it.  Gravity's Rainbow has some great parts - I love the argument Roger Mexico has about  the correlation between Slothrop's sexual conquests and locations of V-2 rocket attack sites and how it it is just a statistical oddity and has no predictive value - but man, it is disjointed.  I think that's probably part of the point, but I'm not a big "the novel as craft" guy.  The Wikipedia page on Gravity's Rainbow states that "The number of episodes in each part carries with it a numerological significance which is in keeping with the use of numerology and Tarot symbolism throughout the novel."  But really, who gives a shit?

I do think I would gain something by re-reading the book, and I enjoy Pynchon's writing style.  I'll save that project for my forties though, maybe.

The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent
by Joseph Conrad
read: 2011
Modern Library #46, Guardian 1000 Novels

I read The Secret Agent around Christmas last year, a bit more recently than Heart of Darkness.  I want to like Conrad more than I do; he plays in the realms of moral ambiguity, which I've been known to appreciate.  The protagonist Verloc exploits his mentally challenged brother-in-law Stevie to commit a terrorist act, but he is caught between forces outside of his control.  The exploitation is odious but stems partially from a moral inability to commit such a horrific act personally.  Ultimately Verloc only wants to run his modest shop and live out a quiet life with his wife.  Conrad portrays the tension between Verloc and his wife less as a result of a failure on the part and either of them and more as a tragic misunderstanding that exists between all people.  There are great themes in the story, complex and universal.

Despite that, The Secret Agent left me a little bit cold.  The characters feel empty.  Part of that is no doubt deliberate on Conrad's part, as he portrays the aloofness that exists even between man and wife, but it makes the moral dilemmas and serious choices the characters have to make less compelling.  Ambiguity is great, but too often when reading The Secret Agent my feelings strayed more to indifference.

Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
read: circa 1997
Modern Library #67, Guardian 1000 Novels

I rarely enjoy movies more than the books on which they are based.  One exception is Apocalypse Now, which is loosely based on Conrad's Heart of Darkness.  Francis Ford Coppola moved Kurtz from colonial Africa to the jungles of Vietnam and turned it into an absurdist statement on the Vietnam War.  I remember really liking the last 20% of this book and have forgotten almost all of the first 80%.  But how can you forget surfing amidst falling shells or "I love the smell of napalm in the morning?"