Earlier this evening I enjoyed the satisfaction of coming to the end of a book I enjoyed very much, Dawn Powell's 1948 novel "The Locusts Have No King".

I've posted about this author before; this is the fifth novel of hers I have read, and it impressed me as possibly the best so far. Beneath the sharp observation of literary New York and mid-century Manhattan mores lies a tale full of insight about the relations between men and women. The author provides plenty of amused skepticism about what we tell ourselves and others about our motives and hopes in the ups and downs of love and friendship, but this skepticism never lapses into a shallow cynicism about human nature. Instead, as happens with a comedy at its best, we are left both amused and moved.

Andrew Wheeler had a slightly different but thoughtful take on the book here:
https://antickmusings.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-locusts-have-no-king-by-dawn-powell.html

As Wheeler notes, "The Locusts Have No King" is not a book for everyone; you must have a taste for adult satire that is never coarse but which can sting at times. If you are, or aspire to be, that adult, I would strongly recommend that you hurry along to your library or bookshop now!

#Books #DawnPowell #TheLocustsHaveNoKing #Fiction #Novels #AmericanLiterature #USLiterature #NewYork #LiteratureInEnglish #1940s

One of my greatest pleasures recently has been discovering the writing of Dawn Powell.

I've just finished her 1942 novel "A Time To Be Born", which combines both her first hand understanding of the journalistic and literary New York of her time with a midwesterner's skeptical amusement at metropolitan self advancement and snobbery.

The novel also provides insights into American women's distinctive struggles with ambition, competition, and love in the opening years of the Second World War.

#Books #Fiction #DawnPowell #USLiterature #20thCenturyLiterature #LiteratureInEnglish #Novel

https://marissavivian.substack.com/p/hidden-voices-004-dawn-powell

James Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room" impressed me both for its exploration of love, sex, and sexual identity and for the skill with which the author has the narrative unfold; I was gripped from beginning to end.

Although the protagonist is white, I know that some critics believe that the theme of race is obliquely present by virtue of the salience of various kinds of minority identity throughout the novel.

Quite aside from it being a "good read", I would recommend it to anybody interested in the literary treatment of bisexuality.

Expatriation also figures as an important theme. These words hit home with this migrant:

>> You don't have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back. <<

"Home", of course, can be more than a geographical location.

#Books #GiovannisRoom #JamesBaldwin #Fiction #AmericanLiterature #USLiterature #AfricanAmericanLiterature #QueerFiction #LiteratureInEnglish #Sexuality #Bisexuality #20thCenturyLiterature #1950s #Homosexuality #Gay #Expatriates #Migrants

Orwell's 1936 novel sees Gordon Comstock quit advertisement copywriting to work on his poetry and maintain his integrity in the face of the "money god".

Comstock's rebellion, like that of Winston Smith a decade later, ultimately fails.

In addition to being struck by the parallels between Comstock's life under British capitalism in the 30's and Smith's under Ingsoc in Airstrip One, I was also impressed by Orwell's sharp descriptions of the indignities of genteel poverty.

#Books #KeepTheAspidistraFlying #GeorgeOrwell #BritishLiterature #LiteratureInEnglish #Novels #20thCenturyLiterature

I finished Nabokov's "Pnin" last night.

What a delight it was! Funny, clever, and oddly moving.

I would recommend getting hold of the Everyman's Library edition, as the introduction by David Lodge is both informative and perceptive.

#Books #Pnin #Nabokov #Fiction #Literature #AmericanLiterature #LiteratureInEnglish #20thCenturyLiterature #CampusNovel #DavidLodge

@girlbandgeek

I don't want to flood your inbox, but I did want to thank you again for the Barbara Kingsolver recommendation.

I have just finished "The Bean Trees", which made a delightfully refreshing contrast to the last novel by a US author I read, Elmore Leonard's "Out of Sight"; see my comments on Leonard here: https://c.im/@jemmesedi/115323499218156545

Even though "The Bean Trees" was published 37 years ago in 1988 -- the year that Trump really started Trumping -- I was pleasantly reminded as I read it of how the USA is so much more than the simplistic caricature of a country presented by MAGA. The book conveys a vivid sense of various US places - Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona -- and the diversity of these places' inhabitants. I also found it refreshing to read a novel steeped in progressive values that was without a trace of the graduate seminar room or East/West coast hipsterism. I liked the way that Kingsolver incorporated surprises in the narrative and humour too; I laughed out loud at times. All in all, an enjoyable but also thought provoking read.

I think I'm going to put "The Poisonwood Bible" on my TBR list.

Thanks again - should I be thanking Dawn too?

#BarbaraKingsolver #Books #USLiterature #AmericanLiterature #TheBeanTrees #Fiction #Novels #LiteratureInEnglish

Renata Adler's 1976 novel "Speedboat" enjoys a cult following amongst MFA types.

I'm not an MFA type myself, but I thought I should give it a try.

If you're looking for a gripping story, this is not the book for you. It's virtually plotless, being composed of a series of episodes, observations, and micronarratives in the life of a young NYC based journalist. Certain characters recur, but the chronology is left unclear.

One does get a feel for New York in the seventies as experienced by a fairly privileged young white woman -- Elaine's, rats, vagrants in the apartment house vestibule, no show faculty at the state university,....At times, I found myself laughing at scenes from parties and metropolitan encounters.

I wonder if this would be good novel to study if one wanted to broaden one's understanding of the meaning of literary postmodernism. "Speedboat" exemplifies a formal experimentation distinctive from that of the modernist novel of the the first half of the twentieth century but which is also free of the metafictionality and self reference that often are taken as definitive of the postmodern.

#RenataAdler #Speedboat #USLiterature #Books #Fiction #LiteratureInEnglish

I'd never read any V.S. Naipaul, so I decided to give what is supposed to be his most important work a try.

I didn't love it, even though the writing conveyed the sights, sounds, and smells of twentieth century colonial Trinidad so effectively. I also got more of a feel for the life of the Indian diaspora in the British empire, even though I found the narrative of one member of that diaspora's search for a place of his own amidst career and family troubles less absorbing than I had hoped.

When I had finished, I put "A House for Mr Biswas" aside and felt puzzled. Why does this book enjoy such a stellar reputation?

#Books #VSNaipaul #AHouseForMrBiswas
#LiteratureInEnglish #Trinidad

Alice Munro's "Lives of Girls and Women" impressed me.

Whether one thinks of it as a set of linked short stories or as novel, the book clearly belongs to that line of North American fictions representing slices of small town life of which Sherwood Anderson's "Winesberg Ohio" is a notable early example.

Munro's work includes sharp observations of female friendship, mother daughter relations, and the limits of provincial cultural life. One story depicts a middle aged man engaged in unsolicited sexual display in front of the young female protagonist; this scene is at once utterly grotesque and totally unforgettable.

I'd strongly recommend "Lives of Girls and Women" . Unfortunately, you will almost certainly not be as lucky as me when I picked up my Penguin copy for a dollar!

#Books #ShortStories #AliceMunro #CanadianLiterature #Fiction #NorthAmericanLiterature #LiteratureInEnglish

I recently read Tillie Olsen's 1960 novella "Tell Me a Riddle".

An aging Jewish woman with cancer, her sense of having lost her self through years of tending to others, endless arguments between spouses, poverty, death...it all sounds so bleak, doesn't it?

Yet such is Olsen's sensitivity to the sound of speech, the complex intertwining of resentment and attachment, memories of migration and hope, and sheer emotional honesty that I put down the book feeling revitalised.

Don't approach the book as "just" a piece of women's literature, working class writing, or Jewish literature; it's all of those, and (not "but") from these skeins Olsen weaves a tale for us all.

#USLiterature #AmericanLiterature #LiteratureInEnglish #FeministLiterature #WorkingClassLiterature #TwentiethCenturyLiterature #JewishLiterature #Novella #TillieOlsen #TellMeARiddle