Native Son by Richard Wright

Holy *&^%$$!!!  

That is my first reaction to this book. I've tried my best to avoid spoilers, but if nothing else, I will say that this is one of the most shocking, horrifying books I've read. I wanted to stop reading it, but I couldn't. I had to find out what was going to happen to Bigger Thomas, who must be one of the most famous train wrecks in literary history, and deservedly so.

A short setup: Bigger Thomas, a young African-American man, is scraping out a miserable existence as a criminal in 1930s Chicago. He lives in a rat-infested one-room tenement with his mother, brother, and sister, and has no job.  On the first day of our novel he is trying to decide whether he should commit an armed robbery, not his first. His mother is pushing him to accept a job to get the family off welfare -- a job as a chauffeur for a wealthy white family, who ironically own the overpriced tenement in which they live. Bigger decides not to commit the robbery and go for the job, so for a few pages it's almost hopeful that he'll break the cycle and lead a better life. Sadly, before he finishes his first day on the new job, Bigger commits a horrible (though possibly accidental) crime that leads to a downward spiral of deceit and crime. Native Son has no chapters, but it's divided into three books: Fear, Flight, and Fate. The first book is largely centered around the development of Bigger's character and his crime. The second book concerns his attempts to escape; and the third is his trial and judgement.

I was really surprised that Bigger was such a horrible character. I won't sugar-coat it, Bigger is really unpleasant. For a protagonist, I could not find one redeeming quality in him.  He is mean, devious, and completely self-centered. Apparently author Richard Wright didn't want to create someone who people could find sympathetic and cry over, then forget about. Believe me, you will not forget about Bigger. But Wright turns the tables and uses Bigger to make some really important and uncomfortable points about racism and race relations. 

This book has been on my to-read list since 2005, when I decided to read the entire Modern Library list of the top 100 novels.  (This brings me to 45 completed on that list, 55 on the Radcliffe Top 100).  There's a lot of debate about what makes something a "best" novel, but I have finally decided that these two lists aren't necessarily the best novels of the 20th century, but really the most important, the most groundbreaking, because most of them have achieved something noteworthy that hadn't been done before. Though I can't really say I liked this novel, I can respect and appreciate its importance in the literary canon. In a way I'm sorry I took so long to read it, but I'm glad that I waited since I was able to discuss it with real people in our February book group meeting. My good friend Amanda at The Zen Leaf is also a member, and you can read her thoughts about Native Son here.

This book is not for everyone -- not for the squeamish or easily offended. It's one of those riveting stories that are just horrible, but the writing is so good I wanted to finish it. I'll admit, the book is very intense and several times I had to put the book down and step away. I did read this book in just a few days, so despite its length (430 pages of text in my paperback edition, plus lots of extra stuff) it's a really fast read.

I can't say it's one of the best books I've ever read -- the third book in particular has some very long speeches in which Wright gets up on his literary soapbox, and I'll admit I skimmed parts of this -- but certainly, it is a book that I will never forget.  I have no desire to read it again, but I'm glad I read it.

Go Tell it On the Mountain by James Baldwin

Go Tell it On the Mountain has probably been on my to-read list since 2005, since I discovered The Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.  (I've now read 48 of them.)  Along with Native Son and The Invisible Man, this novel is one of the classics of African-American fiction.

This is a short book, about 250 pages in most editions.  Basically, this is a semi-autobiographical story based on Baldwin's early life.  It's centered around a day in the life of John Grimes, on his 14th birthday.  It's 1935 and he's growing up in Harlem,  where he lives with his parents, baby sister, and younger brother Royal.  His father Gabriel is a preacher, and everyone thinks he'll grow up in his father's footsteps.  He and his father have a difficult relationship, because his father favors his younger, wilder brother.

The story deals with John's spiritual and sexual awakening, and flashes back to his parents, Gabriel and Elizabeth, and his aunt Florence, and how they moved north from their life of poverty in the Deep South.  It's not overtly about racial conflict, but racism plays a big part in their situation and how it shapes their lives.  There's a lot of religion in the novel, but it's also about family dynamics.

Go Tell it On the Mountain was an easier read for me than Native Son, which has some really unpleasant characters doing horrible things, but I don't think Baldwin was trying to make a big social statement like Richard Wright.  I think it's really just a snapshot, a look into people's lives.  I'm not a religious person, so I'll admit that those parts of the book really didn't speak to me and I ended up skimming them somewhat.  What I was really interested in was the family histories, the role of the female characters, and how hard it was for African-Americans at that time.  The characters are really well-developed and I found them very realistic.

This book was the monthly selection for the library's classic book group, and though not everyone had managed to finish the book, we had a really good discussion about religion and how writers portray it in modern novels versus older book.  I'd still like to read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, though I'm a little intimidated by it, because of the length and the subject matter.

Have any of you read Go Tell it On the Mountain?  How about Invisible Man?

This is the second book I've completed for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2013. 

The Street by Ann Petry

Streets like the one she lived on were no accident. They were the North's lynch mobs, she thought bitterly; the method used to keep Negroes in their place. And she began thinking of Pop unable to get a job; of Jim slowly disintegrating because he, too, couldn't get a job, and of the subsequent wreck of their marriage; of Bub left to his own devices after school. From the time she was born, she had been hemmed into an ever-narrowing space, until now she was very nearly walled in and the wall had been built up brick by brick by eager white hands.

I have often referred to books as Fascinating Trainwrecks -- about people who make one bad decision after another, rushing headlong towards disaster. They are often horrible people, yet so well written that I cannot stop reading (think Anna Karenina, and most of Zola). 

And then we have characters like Lutie Johnson in The Street by Ann Petry. Lutie, a young Black woman in the 1940s, works hard, scrapes, and saves, and does everything she's been taught to do to get ahead in life -- and she just can't catch a break. 

Set in Harlem during WWII, The Street is the story of Lutie Johnson, a young single mother living just trying to make a living for herself and her eight-year-old son, Bub. Bub's father left Lutie after months of her living in Connecticut, working as a cleaner for a rich white family. She only saw Bub and her husband once a month, if that, and sent them all her wages. The separation, and her husband's inability to find a job, was the death toll for their marriage, and Lutie needs to find a new place to live since she can't keep living with her father and his girlfriend, who are a bad influence on young Bub. 

This cover is sooo 1970s.  

The story begins with Lutie examing a dark fifth-floor walkup apartment that she can afford -- with a creepy landlord named Jones. Right away I knew he was trouble, he made me SO uncomfortable. I'd actually started reading this in the summer but Jones gave me such a bad feeling I stopped for several months. I'm glad I got the courage to keep reading about Lutie, because her story is so compelling. 

We learn the back story of her marriage and separation, and how she manages to land a civil service job. But Lutie is desperate to move to a better apartment, in a better neighborhood, away from Jones and some of the other sketchy residents of the building, like the Mrs. Hedges, the Madam on the first floor who watches everyone coming and going, and keeps offering to introduce Lutie to men who would appreciate her friendship, so to speak.

Things finally seem to be looking up for Lutie when she starts singing to herself one night in a crowded bar, where she's gone for a much-needed break and a beer. A good-looking but slightly sketchy-looking man named Boots asks her to audition to sing with his band. Lutie thinks this could be her break, but naturally, things don't work out as she hopes -- the conclusion takes a pretty shocking twist. 

The Street is Lutie's story, but it also interweaves the back stories of Boots, Mrs. Hedges, Jones, and some of the other characters. It's a tragic tale that really couldn't have turned out any other way, and it's not very optimistic for anyone who isn't white. It was published almost eighty years ago, but it feels very contemporary in the writing style, and it's a fast, absorbing read. 

 A 1954 edition

This book had been on my periphery for a few years, but I'd never really heard that much about it or about Ann Petry. It became a bestseller, and The Street was the first book by a Black woman to sell more than a million copies. Nevertheless, there are less than 8,000 ratings for it on Goodreads -- compared to more than 250,000 for Their Eyes Were Watching God and 150,000 for Invisible Man. I don't know why this doesn't get the attention it deserves. Parts of the story must have been shocking when it was published in 1946, but Bigger Thomas in Native Son is worse, an actual trainwreck. Lutie does everything she can to pull herself out of a bad situation, and it still all goes wrong. It was so frustrating to read how she could not catch a break and had so little say in her own situation, by society and by individual people working against her.  

The trouble was with her. She had built up a fantastic structure made from the soft, nebulous cloudy stuff of dreams. There hadn't been a solid, practical brick in it, not even a foundation. She had built it up of air and vapor and moved right in. So of course it had collapsed. It had never existed anywhere but in her own mind. 

The Street is a masterful tale of the unfairness of life for women of color in the mid-century. And for many women just like Lutie, things haven't gotten much better. 

I'm counting this as my BIPOC classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge.

Fascinating Train Wrecks

A few months ago, when I was reading Summer by Edith Wharton, I started comparing it to two of my other favorite Wharton novels, House of Mirth and Ethan Frome.  Both of those novels have characters that I liked, despite their flaws, and I loved both of those books despite the fact that I knew they wouldn't end well.  Both Ethan and House of Mirth's Lily Bart are on downward spirals -- Lily in particular is a real train wreck who makes one bad decision after another; yet, I couldn't stop reading the book. 

I've noticed a lot of my favorite classics have characters like these, which I like to call fascinating train wrecks.  These characters are sometimes unappealing or unlikeable, but somehow, the authors elevate them and their stories in such a way that I have to keep reading.  I've begun to compile a list of my favorites, below. (WARNING! Spoiler alert -- if you haven't read some or any of these books, you may want to skip this posting).

1.  Lily Bart in House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.  The entire novel is one downward spiral of Lily's bad decisions, one after another.  Well, at least she doesn't drag anyone down with her, like so many other characters.

2.  Ethan Frome -- eponymous novel by Edith Wharton.  It's a Wharton novel, so it ends up badly.  However, Ethan really does try to do the right thing.

3.  Madame Bovary, courtesy of Gustave Flaubert.  Wow, she is just trouble.  Like Lily Bart, she makes one bad decision after another.  The trouble with Emma Bovary is that she ruins so many other lives in the process.  A wretched, unlikeable character, yet I found the story fascinating.

4.  Richard Carston in Bleak House.   He is so naive and doggedly determined to get his hands on the Jarndyce fortune, despite the fact that generations of potential heirs have lived and died without seeing a single penny.  He just will not give up!

5.  Kitty in The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham.  She has an affair with a callous diplomat while her husband is posted in Hong Kong.  To punish her, said husband, a doctor specializing in infectious diseases, decides to pack up and take her to a cholera-ridden region of China, where it's likely they will both die.

6. Philip Carey in Of Human Bondage, also by W. Somerset Maugham.  an orphaned boy, born with a clubfoot, marries a woman who makes his life a living hell.  Oh, and it's 600 pages long --  sounds promising, right?  It's wonderful.  I was blown away.   And it's one of the first classics I read for pleasure, and probably one of the first that made me realize that classics don't suck.

7.  Paul Morel in Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence. Not an orphan (hence, the title), but this guy's mother makes his life hell.   I was sure I'd hate it, but it was also surprisingly fascinating.


8.  Rosamund Vincy in Middlemarch by George Eliot -- a supporting character train wreck, but her bad decisions are interesting and help flesh out the fascinating cast of characters.  Another doorstop of a Victorian novel, this was the only book I read for an entire month.  Absolutely worth it.

9.  The Joads in The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.  An entire train wreck family!  I had such fear of Steinbeck, but I loved Travels With Charley so I gave it a shot.  I was so pleasantly surprised at how compelling the story was.

10.  Bigger Thomas in Native Son by Richard Wright. Well, Bigger isn't on a downward spiral, since he pretty much starts at the bottom, an uneducated petty criminal in 1930s Chicago.  As a black man in that era, he can't get much lower, but it is surprising how quickly his life gets worse.  It's an absorbing read, but it's so awful I just wanted to take a shower after reading this.  I'm glad I read it but I really can't say I liked it.

Of course, there are many other literary train wrecks, but some of them I found extremely unlikeable.  Here is a short list of literary train wrecks I couldn't stand:

1.  Anna in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina -- couldn't wait for her final train trip!  It just went on and on. . . and she was such a crappy mother.  An offensive trainwreck, literally.

2.  Ernest in The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler.  A Victorian smear on the hypocrisy of the church.  It went on for waaaaay too long and he was such a doormat that I didn't feel sorry for him in the least, despite his horrible parents and train wreck of a marriage.  However, it was one of my first Victorians so maybe if I read it again I'd appreciate it more.

3.  Tess Durbeyfield in Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles.  Many people love this book.  I felt sorry for Tess but the story dragged on for so long that I lost patience, and by the end I just didn't care.  I think Hardy just stretched out too many scenes about hay making, or milking, or digging up turnips or something.  Maybe pastoral fiction is just not for me.

4.  Clyde Griffiths in An American Tragedy -- to be fair, this book started out really well, with a social climber on a downward spiral.  However, the last third of the book went on and on and on. . . and that pretty much killed it for me.  I found it tragically long, wish Dreiser had had a better editor.

5.  Cathy in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.  Wow, she was a whiner -- I just wanted to smack her upside the head.  And her relationship with Heathcliff was so dysfunctional -- they really deserved each other.  I know many people love this book, but I just can't see the appeal.  Nowhere near as good as Jane Eyre (and I do realize that was written by her sister Charlotte, but I still think of them together).

So -- I'm sure there are some that I've missed.  Any more fascinating train wrecks I can add to my list?  I'd love to hear about some others.

Short vs. Long Books

Lately, I've been beginning to wonder if my brain is shrinking.  Well, not my brain exactly, just my attention span.  It seems like I can't focus on any book longer than 300 pages.  I don't know if it's just a phase, or a summertime thing (though I didn't have any heavy reading in the two classes I took this spring), or just Victorian overload.  But for the past couple of months I've just shied away from anything that looks long or heavy or the least bit challenging.  I keep hearing about how the Internet is causing everyone to have shorter attention spans.  I've been reading Chekhov stories for my upcoming Classics Circuit posting, and I can't even read more than a few of those in one sitting.  I am concerned.

I looked at my Goodreads list of the books I read in 2009, and it includes  some real whoppers:  Bleak House, Nicholas Nickleby, Vanity Fair, Wives and Daughters, David Copperfield, An American Tragedy, The Woman in White.  Plus several long contemporary books, like The Book Thief.  This year so far I've only  read two books longer than 500 pages, Native Son by Richard Wright and American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld.  Both of them were actually really fast reads.  The longest Victorian I've read this year is Oliver Twist, and that's less than 450, and I did a lot of it on audio -- and it was a reread.

I've noticed this years' reading includes a lot of juvenile books (mostly award winners), short stories, and novellas.  Is this just a phase, or should I be worried?  I have a separate tag on Goodreads for Big Fat Books, and more than half of the books on that list are unread -- more than 50!  My own to-read bookshelf has quite a few chunky books, mostly Victorians.  I have several Dickens still unread, and almost a whole shelf full of Trollope.  (Trollope published more than 40 works in his lifetime, so I'm not holding my breath to finish his entire oeuvre. )  And there are all of those Russians waiting to be read -- I haven't even touched Dostoevsky.  I'm not even thinking about Proust, or A Dance to the Music A of Time, which is close to 3000 pages over four volumes.  

It's not as if I've never read any long books.  Some of the longer works I've read include Roots, Gone with the Wind, The Grapes of Wrath, and Anna Karenina. Heck, I've even finished War and Peace.  (Okay, I admit it -- that was for college, and it was basically the entire reading list for my Tolstoy class.  And, um, I never did read the last 50 pages.  In my defense, the actual novel is over, and that's really a sort of afterword.)

So, is it just me?  Is it just a phase, or should I give up and just read graphic novels for the rest of my life?     Maybe I'm just getting myself intimidated, and I should blindly choose something and just stick to it until it's done.  Or else just give up and read long trashy books instead.  One of my online book groups just selected The Brothers Karamazov for the July read.  I've heard it's very good, and a group read might actually behoove me to finish it.  Maybe I should just start Moby Dick, which has more than 100 chapters, which are very short.  Ships! Whaling! Ahab!  What could be more different than being landlocked in Texas during a broiling hot summer?  Depressed Russians and lots of snow, or an insane ship's captain?

Bloggers, help me out.  What big fat books do you recommend for summer?  Alternatively, what's a good fast summer read?  I need suggestions, and encouragement.

Victorian Challenge 2012

Sorry for the double posting, but I accidentally clicked on publish instead of save as a draft.  Oh well.

I didn't mean to sign up for more challenges, but I love the Victorians, how could I resist?  This challenge, hosted by Laura at Laura's Reviews, is pretty easy by my standards:  two to six Victorian novels (or adaptations) are to be read, watched, or listened to.  I have stacks of Victorian novels on the TBR shelves, and quite a few in the DVD cabinet I still haven't watched.  I could easily complete this challenge by watching BBC adaptations alone, but that would be cheating.

According to my Goodreads 2011 list, I read seven Victorian novels this past year (strictly counting anything that was published in Victorian England; I'm not counting authors from any other country, so that means Zola is out).  Here's what I read:

• Reuben Sachs by Amy Levy
• Villette by Charlotte Bronte
• Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

Plus I read half of Daniel Deronda by George Eliot before I got distracted.   So I think I can easily watch, read, or listen to six Victorians next year.  Here's my tentative list:

1.  Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens -- already signed up for a group read for this one.

2.  Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens -- there's going to be a lot of Dickens obsession next year as it's the 200th anniversary of his birth.  Two Dickens doorstoppers in one year would be quite an achievement.

3.  The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy -- I'm hoping to get this on audiobook.  I've heard the version narrated by Alan Rickman is brilliant.

4.  Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope -- I loved Barchester Towers and it's been a whole year since I finished it, so it's time for more Trollope.

5.  The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith -- I've heard this is hilarious.  Plus I'm intrigued to read something by a writer named Weedon. And it's really short, a nice change from most of those Victorian chunksters.

6.  The Odd Women OR New Grub Street by George Gissing -- I've read a lot of good things about Gissing and got both of these last years from Paperback Swap.  I'd like to expand beyond Dickens, Trollope, and Hardy.

Besides these six novels, I own BBC adaptations of The Barchester Chronicles (starring Alan Rickman!), Daniel Deronda, and He Knew He Was Right.  Plus, I know with the Dickens bicentenary there are two new adaptations of Great Expectations coming to TV and theaters.   Maybe I'll even make it to Galveston for Dickens on the Strand next December!