The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy

The Mayor of Casterbridge

I followed up reading Tess of the d’Urbervilles with The Mayor of Casterbridge. It’s another tragedy, but the key difference here is what the protagonist’s big mistake was. You could chalk Tess’s up to youth and inexperience and a certain amount of sexual harassment. But Michael Henchard–the eponymous mayor–his mistake was unforgivable and inexcusable. On top of this, he’s just as prideful and stubborn as Tess was, but without a lot of justification for his arrogance.

Michael Henchard is a putz. When we meet him, he’s a drunken putz. In a fit of spiteful humor, Henchard holds an auction for his wife and small child. As a hay-trusser, he can’t really support them and, since he only married his wife because of the child (I suspect), he doesn’t love them. Both Henchard and his wife are shocked when a sailor takes him up on his offer. His wife is so angry at Henchard that she actually agrees to go with the sailor.

When Henchard sobers up in the morning and realizes what he’s done, he swears a vow to not drink for 21 years*. Years pass and when we see Henchard again, he’s doing very well for himself. He’s become a grain merchant, rich enough to own a house, and was elected mayor of Casterbridge (based on Dorchester). He never married (because that would be illegal) and he lives in fear that his terrible secret will come out. So when his wife, Susan, and her daughter show up in Casterbridge, you know that things are shortly going to go to hell.

Henchard tries to solve his problems by remarrying his wife, but that’s about the last thing that goes right for him. I can’t help but think that if he had been nicer to people, if he had been willing to take his lumps, he wouldn’t have had such a tragic end. But because of his arrogance and his harsh manner, most of his stratagems backfire on him.

As I’ve read Hardy, I’ve been struck by two things about his writing style. First, the language is elevated, erudite, and full of references to other works. Yet the people he’s writing about are all salt of the earth types. Only a few of the characters–mostly seen briefly–are actually rich or in the upper middle class. Most of them are farmers, day laborers, etc. It would seem absurd. But Hardy manages to pull it off without sounding like he’s mocking these people and their lives. Instead, his language raises up the story.

The second thing I picked up was a certain romanticism about farm life. At times, I would swear that Hardy admires their lives and labors. He is nostalgic about pre-mechanized farming. (There are numerous disparaging references to new machines like threshers and sowers.) I would have thought that Hardy did this because he’d never done hard labor. But his biography in Wikipedia says otherwise. His father was a stonemason. So I have to wonder where the romanticism comes from.

Hardy’s books have given me much to think about. And I’m looking forward to reading more. (Except for Jude the Obscure. I read a summer of that one on Wikipedia and that one looks too grim even more me.)

* You’d think if he was really serious, he would swear to never drink again. But that’s Henchard for you.

Tess of the d’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy

Tess of the d’Urbervilles

I didn’t think I would enjoy Thomas Hardy as much as I did. All I had ever heard about his work before was that it was very, very depressing. But when I read Tess of the d’Urbervilles and then The Mayor of Casterbridge, I realized that what I was reading was real tragedy, in the full literary sense of the word. It wasn’t just bad things happening to people. Both books were about people who made huge mistakes and because of their character flaws, just couldn’t get their lives back together.

The eponymous Tess is really Tess Durbeyfield, a hardworking girl from a family of procrastinators and slackers. At the beginning of the book, her father learns that they are descended from a grand family–the d’Urbervilles. Her father fixates on this idea for the rest of the book. He clearly wants better for his family, but he isn’t about to break the habit of a lifetime and get a real job. After an accident that ruins the family, Tess’s father sends her to a rich relation in order to “claim kin” and get some financial assistance. Tess has her pride and is reluctant to go. But since the accident was her fault and because she’s only solid worker in the family she goes.

Well, folly follows the accident and Tess makes her big mistake. Since the book is well over 100 years old, I don’t mind spoiling it. You all have had plenty of time to read this book. Tess ends up sleeping with the rich relation’s son. The son had an instant attraction to Tess and just would not let up until she gave in. I think she might have resisted him, so I suspect that Alex d’Urberville threatened to stop helping her family if she didn’t give in. Tess ends up pregnant and socially ruined and heads home to make money by doing hard farm labor. Bad luck follows, but Tess is able to make a new start on a dairy farm far away.

Tess manages to find love with a genuinely good man. But her mistake follows her and she isn’t permitted to enjoy her new happiness. At this point, I think we enter the realm of real tragedy. Tess has a stubborn pride, but it’s hard to fault her for it. She only takes charity when she has no other choice. She doesn’t feel above performing even the hardest, dirtiest work as long as it means she can live honestly. (Of course, this doesn’t mean that she goes blabbing about her past to everyone. She keeps her secrets.)

Like Othello, a lot of the misery in the book could have been avoided if all the main characters had had access to a good mediator or counselor and talked it all out. Instead, the characters continue on their trajectories. Tess still hopes for reconciliation with her husband, but she won’t beg. Her husband can’t seem to get past Tess’s history. And Alex d’Urberville…well, there’s no changing that man. Once a lech, always a lech.

But because Hardy draws his characters so clearly and gives them real, believable flaws, you can’t help but sympathize with them (except for Alex–the jerk). You want things to work out for Tess and her husband, Angel Clare. And this makes the ending just that much more tragic and heartbreaking.

This book was an incredible read. I don’t know why Hardy doesn’t get more credit for his books. They are so much more than depressing farm novels. They’re Shakespeare-level tragedies. I don’t know if anyone has done so well since Hardy.

 

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), by Jerome K. Jerome

Three Men in a Boat

My first thought on finishing Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) was, these people managed to conquer a fifth of the globe? It’s a wonder they manage to get downstairs for breakfast. The entirety of the book can best be described as a comedy of errors, with a dollop of absurd hubris ladled over the top. Even though its clear that this book was written to make its contemporaries laugh–and is no doubt making fun of stereotypes that no longer exist (maybe)–it can still get modern readers going. I snorted and chuckled and snickered my way through the whole book.

We meet our protagonists as they sit about one evening comparing their diseases. It’s clear that the only thing wrong with them is laziness, boredom, and a lack of ambition. None of the three men really has any goals beyond avoiding work for as long as humanly possible. Weirdly, this book helped me understand Freud a little better. When you have people of means without any real problems, they will invent things to be wrong. To help with their ennui, the three decide to boat up the Thames from London to Oxford, in the hope that the fresh air and exercise will restore them. Our narrator, Jim, also plans to bring his dog Montmorency–a fox terrier with “more than the usual amount of original sin in him.”

From there, nothing goes right. Not only do they have inclement weather and unhelpful locals to deal with, they also have their own incompetence messing up their plans. In every chapter, at least one thing goes wrong (usually more than one). I’m surprised they didn’t drown on the first day. Our narrator does try to raise the tone every now and then by writing, in the most grandiose terms, about the history of various points of interest or particularly beautiful vista. But something always happens to Jim to interrupt these flights of intellectual fancy–such as steam launches trying to run them down on the river, Montmorency trying to fight all the village dogs at once, all the food ending up in the river, etc. etc.

Three Men in a Boat is a frivolous delight and I mean that in a good way. Sometimes you just need to read something silly.

Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart

Earth Abides

It’s strange to say, but George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides is a curiously hopeful post-apocalyptic novel. It’s also masterfully written, elegant and subtle as it takes you from disaster to survival. I don’t know what I was expecting from this book–probably just a good yarn with some sociology thrown in–but I ended up with a brilliant read.

The book starts with a snake bite. The protagonist, Isherwood “Ish” Williams, is collecting data for this thesis when he is bitten by a rattlesnake. He takes himself back to his cabin to recuperate. The next thing he knows, he’s apparently the last man alive. A newspaper tells him that a particularly virulent disease has killed millions. Lacking anything better to do, Ish travels across the country, meeting a few survivors and observing the changes to the environment. The language is clinical, scientific, modern. The first third of the bottle is about what you’d expect from a post-apocalyptic novel. As Ish takes stock of his new world, you can’t help but think about what will happen when the electricity fails, when the stocked up food will give out, when the few survivors decide to go Mad Max.

Eventually, Ish meets up with a few other survivors that he can band together with. He finds a wife and friends. Slowly, he builds up a community that, for lack of anything better, they call the Tribe. Years zip by. The novel ends up about 40 years after the plague (as far as I can tell). Ish is an old man, cared for by his great-grandchildren. The language by the end of the book is less objective. The science is gone. Ish has given up his ecological and anthropological observations. By the end of the book, when Ish asks if one of his great-grandson is happy, the answer is: “Yes, I am happy. Things are as they are, and I am part of them” (322*).

The change over the course of the book is subtle. At the beginning, as I said, it’s utterly depressing. You can’t help but wonder if, as Ish wonders, if this is it for humanity. Maybe too many people died. Maybe too many skills died out and the survivors won’t last long. But as Ish and the Tribe grow, I started to feel hopeful. Ish fears for the loss of knowledge as all but one of the children show a marked lack of interest the knowledge Ish tries to pass on. He wonders if his little tribe will survive beyond a couple of generations once the canned food runs out. (It’s rather surprising how long it does last.)

What I realized by the end of the book–as Ish does–is that humanity does carry on. The civilization that we know is gone. Ish’s Tribe becomes more tribal as time goes on. Sure, it’s sad that the knowledge of our world is lost, that the big university library will probably rot away with no one to read it. But there are still people. Humanity will go on.

Earth Abides is a terrific read. I’m very glad that I picked it up and I wish that more people would give it a chance. Unlike modern post-apocalyptic novels, this one doesn’t play up the horror. Instead, it’s a sober, philosophical medication on what might happen if humanity had to start over.

__

* Stewart, George R. Earth Abides. New York: Ballantine Books, 2006. Del Ray trade paperback edition.

The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells

The War of the Worlds

It’s fascinating to see an original idea play out in a novel. I suppose that’s one of the advantages of reading older books. In science fiction, it’s particularly interesting. In The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells, you get to see one of the first–if not the first–alien invasion stories. What surprised me most about this book is that, aside from the weaponry, was how contemporary it felt. I’m not sure whether to compliment Wells on his style, or to lament the fact that people haven’t changed much in the last 110-odd years.

The action in The War of the Worlds kicks off right away. There are a few hints from astronomers that something strange is happening on Mars. Then, our narrator, a speculative philosopher, is working one morning when a cylinder from another world crashes into a nearby field. People gather from miles around the see the extraterrestrial ship, curious as monkeys. But things go bad as soon as the hatch opens and the Martians start incinerating people left and right. Things play out much as they do in every disaster story since. People panic. The enemy has overwhelming technology and nothing we seem to do can stop them marching right over us. The fact that the novel mostly takes place in the rural English countryside makes it all the more disturbing.

For most of the book, our narrator wanders around, hiding from the Martians and trying–not very successfully–to get back to his wife. The more I read, the more it became clear that this book is not so much about the plot as it is about the idea of alien invaders. The narrator, like any good philosopher, spends a lot of time thinking about what the invasion means for humanity and what the motivations of the aliens are. If I hadn’t read The Time Machine so recently, I might have missed how the narrator makes use of Darwin’s ideas of evolution and natural selection. In fact, having read The Time Machine, I speculate that evolution really captured Wells’ imagination and that, to a certain extent, Wells is using his characters as mouthpieces to explore the idea much further than biologists would have.

The narrator speculates on the invader’s biology. The creatures seem to be nothing more than mobile brains. They’d don’t speak. They don’t have much as far as bodies are concerned; they have just enough appendages to manipulate objects and to get around. To make them even more horrifying, it turns out that they’re vampires and feed off of the blood of humans and other animals. The narrator suggests that these creatures–like the Eloi and the Morlocks of The Time Machine–are near the end of the evolutionary arc as a species. He thinks that they have nothing left to adapt to. I don’t buy the science of this idea, but it’s an interesting thought experiment. I don’t like it because it presumes that a) there can be an endpoint to evolution and b) there’s an ideal lifeform. If environments are always in flux, organisms can’t stop adapting. Even if environments reach an equilibrium, there’s still natural selection to contend with.

The other thing that bothers me about the science of this novel is the bacteria. This book was published in1898, so I’m not too worried about spoilers at this point. But, if you haven’t read the book and don’t want to know how the story ends, skip down to the next paragraph. By the end of the book, things seem hopeless for humanity. Nothing they do is making a dent in the invading force. What ends up killing off the Martians are terrestrial diseases. The narrator claims that there are no bacteria on Mars. I would argue, in the context of this book, that if a planet can support as complex a critter as these Martians, it can support durable bacteria. But I will accept that the Martians have no resistance to our bacteria, because they haven’t been exposed to them. A more modern alien invasion story might have had the humans come up with a daring plan that took out the aliens. But in The War of the Worlds, without the humble bacteria, the Martians would have one. It’s a little anti-climactic, to be honest. It might just be my American way of looking at things, but I want a hero (preferably composed of more than one cell) and a big fight.

What I really liked about this novel was its originality and its punchy, journalistic style. Aside from the narrator’s musings, the novel is told in a just-the-facts manner that lets you sink easily into this wild story. The narrator provides an on-the-spot perspective that keeps you right in the action. At any moment, the narrator could stumble across some new horror. I’ve read a lot of apocalyptic and end-of-the-world novels and now I realize that all of them owe a debt to H.G. Wells. They follow the pattern he set. First, there are warnings. Then the event happens. There’s a panic and everything seems hopeless, until a hero steps forward or a solution presents itself. Scholars talk about influence, but I’ve never seen it so clearly as when I read The War of the Worlds. Wells casts a long shadow over science fiction and horror.

The War of the Worlds could have been written yesterday; that’s how fresh and original it feels. It’s amazing how long a good novel, a good story, can stick around.

The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells

The Time Machine

H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine is a big story packed into a surprisingly small number of pages. It’s so short that I’m not sure it even qualifies as a novella. It’s not so much that there’s a lot of plot crammed into this story, it’s that there are huge ideas that other writers could spend hundreds of pages exploring.

The story begins with an unnamed Time Traveler talking to a group of friends about the nature of the fourth dimension, Time. The friends are quite willing to listen to him, but they don’t believe that it’s possible to travel through time. A small demonstration doesn’t convince them. Suddenly, it’s a week later. The friends are gathering for dinner when the Time Traveler appears, muddy, bloody, and missing his shoes. All this happens in the first few pages, and then the real story begins. The Time Traveler tells his friends where he’s been for the past week–their time.

The Time Traveler has used his machine to travel far, far into the future, to the year 802,701. When he gets there, he soon realizes that there are no such things as humans anymore. The people he encounters have evolved into indolent, uncurious, and childlike creatures. They don’t build, farm, or do much of anything except indulge in their small pleasures. The Time Traveler turns into a social philosopher, speculating on what might have lead to such a transformation. Though he doesn’t mention him by name, Wells blends Darwin deeply into the Time Traveler’s train of thought. It basically boils down to, with everything provided for, there’s no need to strive.

Shortly thereafter, the Time Traveler is forced to reevaluate everything when he meets the Eloi’s (the childlike people) dark twin, the Morlocks. These subterranean people have turned into violent nocturnal hunters. This time, the Time Traveler theorizes that social classes have become so different that humans diverged, evolutionarily speaking. The Morlocks steal the time machine and, after a horrible forest fire that took the life of the Time Traveler’s Eloi friend, the Time Traveler steals the machine back and goes further and further into the future. He even sees the sun’s death. At last, he goes home to his own time.

The Time Traveler, sure that his friends didn’t take him seriously about his adventure, loads up for another voyage and disappears into time. He is never heard of again.

What affected me most about this book was the Time Traveler’s visit to a museum. Sometime between his time and 802,701 AD, people put a museum together that house exhibits on chemistry, technology, natural history, and more. The museum has clearly been abandoned for a long, long time. The books and organic artifacts have long since rotted away. The metals are brittle. Both the Time Traveler and I felt an ineffable sadness at all that knowledge gone to waste. The Eloi have no curiosity and the Morlocks would just have tried to destroy the rest. There’s no one left who would care.

When the Time Traveler began his theorizing about the Eloi, he seemed optimistic, like it was a good thing that people no longer had to struggle so hard to live–even if it’s made people stupid and childlike. There wouldn’t be any more wars, fighting, pollution, or any of the other downsides of our own civilization. But the price was intelligence, intellectual curiosity, and creativity.

It’s a very curious vision of the far future and, I would think, against the pattern of most science fiction. It’s easy to think of history as an upward trend, progress and science making life better for everyone. Technology will make things better. But the view of future history in The Time Machine turns this interpretation on its head. There is nothing guiding history and people have evolved into something other (technically, two somethings). When the Time Traveler goes even further into the future, there’s nothing left except giant crabs and lichen. It’s a strange and disturbing thought to think of an earth with no humans left on it, the end of human history–maybe even of any sentient beings altogether.

It’s short, but The Time Machine leaves you with a lot to think about.

Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne

Around the World in Eighty Days

After The Count of Monte Cristo, I felt like visiting an old friend. In junior high, I read Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days so many times I wore out a copy. And I’m delighted to find that it’s still a lot of fun after all these years. A quick trip around the world was just what I needed.

Originally published as a newspaper serial in 1873, this book flies right by. The chapters are punchy and, so short, that I kept promising myself one more–and then one more–and just one more before going to sleep. It was so much fun to spend time once again with the phlegmatic Phileas Fogg and the excitable Passepartout. I’m well aware that they’re both stereotypes, but they’re a lot of fun to watch. Nothing ever seems to both Fogg, while Passepartout flips out over every delay and misfortune.

There’s not much to talk about, as the whole point of the book is the trip. Along the way, you get a daring rescue in India, an opium den in Hong Kong, an Indian attack on a train, and a spectacular trip on a steamboat after the coal runs out. Personally, this is my favorite part, when Fogg and his companions travel across Utah and meet a Mormon:

Trains, like time and tide, stop for for no one. The gentleman who uttered the cries was obviously a belated Mormon. He was breathless with running. Happily for him, the station had neither gates nor barriers. He rushed along the track, jumped the read platform of the train, and fell exhausted into one of the seats.

Passepartout, who had been anxiously watching this amateur gymnast, approached him with lively interest, and learned that he had taken flight after an unpleasant domestic scene.

When the Mormon has recovered had recovered his breath, Passepartout ventured to ask him politely how many wives he had; for, from the manner in which he had decamped, it might be though that he had twenty at least.

“One, sir,” replied the Mormon, raising his arms heavenward–”one, and that was enough!”

It’s not often that you get to see your home in classic literature. But when I saw “Wahsatch” and “Tuilla” in the text, I had to smile. I know those names, no matter how oddly spelled.

I read the introduction to the text when I had finished and was a little surprised to find that Verne had never visited any of these places. According to James Hynes, Verne spend most of his time writing in his office. All the evocative sketches of Suez, Bombay, Calcutta, Hong Kong, and the United States were most like made after Verne read descriptions of them from other travelers. While I can’t say that these places spring to three dimensional life when you read about them, these short descriptions have just enough verisimilitude to carry you around the world.

In 1988, Michael Palin (of Monty Python) replicated the trip for the BBC. I’ve been watching it over the last couple of nights. Using trains, buses, and ships, Palin went around the world in 79 days. (He didn’t break Nellie Bly’s record of 72 days.) Actually seeing the places Fogg fictionally visited was a lot of fun. I almost wish that I could pack up and follow in their steps.

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, is the biggest book I’ve ever read. It weighs in at 1456 pages (in the edition I read). Unfortunately, it could have done without 500 or 600 of them. Dumas also makes the mistake of taking us away from Monte Cristo’s perspective for most of the book–but I’ll get back to that in a moment.

The book begins with an introduction to Edmond Dantès, an upright, charming young man about to be married to the girl of his dreams. Shortly after arriving back in Marseilles after a voyage, two men who are jealous of Dantès’ success accuse him of conspiring with the Bonapartists to bring back the exiled Napoleon. It might not have come to anything but for the actions of a third man who, in order to suppress the role of his father in the conspiracy, sentences Dantès to life imprisoned in the Chateau d’If. Dantès escapes 14 years later, after learning languages, science, politics, and more from an Abbé who’s been in prison even longer. This all takes place in the first 450 to 500 pages and it’s a great introduction. You see the transformation from immature man to a hard, bitter one. While the book is third person, Dumas sticks closely to Dantès’ perspective. We get to see his surprise and confusion, and then his slow-burning anger. The Abbé tried to teach Dantès acceptance, but the only thing that Dantès has on his mind is revenge on the three men who sent him to the Chateau d’If.

After a riveting description of the escape, the novel jumps forward in time about ten years. The rest of the book is told from the perspective of other characters. You can sense Dantès’ plan starting to take shape, but it happens so slowly that the revenge is not just cold, it’s glacial. The action doesn’t start to heat up until the last 450 pages or so. At that point, everything falls into place.

What I find interesting about the ending is that Dantès never seems to act against his three enemies directly. He just arranges things to put them in tight positions. In order to extricate themselves, they just make things worse. Danglars–who wrote the letter that sent Dantès to prison–is driven to embezzlement. Mondego–who delivered the letter–is driven to suicide after Dantès arranges things so that Mondego’s past betrayals come to light. And Villefort–the man who sent Dantès to prison–is exposed as an attempted child murder and his wife turns into a poisoner. 450 pages sounds like a lot, but so much happens that it just flies by. To cap it all off, there’s an odd little homily about waiting and hoping at the very end.

The middle of the book, frankly, drags. It takes so long for Dantès to put things in motion that I lost interest for a while. I have no idea why this part wasn’t cut before publication, unless it was intended as filler. It was serialized, but unlike Dickens’ novels, this doesn’t have enough action in the middle to carry readers through. Mid-nineteenth century French readers must have had a lot of patience to see it through.

The last two thirds of the book, I thought, would have been a lot more interesting and meaningful if we had access to Dantès’ inner monologue. I can see why Dumas might have wanted to tell the story of other characters’ perspective. It preserves a sense of mystery. Dantès’ targets must have thought that–after years of good fortune–their luck had suddenly turned. They never learn who’s responsible. Of the three, only Danglars figures it out. But I think this ignorance takes the sting out of the revenge. I would argue that, from Danglar, Mondego, and Villefort’s perspective, it doesn’t count as revenge. I guess I’m of the Inigo Montoya school of thought on this: Before you take your revenge, you let your victim know what they did and how they’re going to pay for it.

And because we watch the action from everyone else, we don’t get experience either Dantès’ satisfaction or regret over his success. He briefly wonders if his revenge went too far, but that’s all we get. It’s like watching a play, but all the action happens in the wings or off stage and we just see characters react to unseen events. This book would have been a lot more satisfying if Dumas had written the book in the first person.

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World

I had no idea that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was such compulsive reading. I picked it up this morning and could hardly put it down. Every page is packed with things to think about. On the one hand, I wanted to race through the book to see what would happen next. And on the other hand, I wanted to slow down and really think about this new world that Huxley created. Near the end of the book, a character compares their society to an iceberg–most of it is below the waterline. This book is like that, too. There’s so much that has to be going on, but the plot skims along on the surface, tempting you to dig for the subtext. There are so many things to talk about, that I made a list of the most important ones before I started to write this, just to make sure that I didn’t leave anything out.

The book begins in a decanting and conditioning–for lack of a better word–factory. Huxley sticks you deep into the horrors right off the bat. At first, things don’t see all that horrible. But for me, well meaning science is one of the scariest things out there. In this world, the whole process of reproduction has been replaced. (The characters would say improved.) Children aren’t so much born anymore as hatched. As they gestate, chemicals and vaccines are introduced at certain points to stunk or foster growth, to inoculate, to develop tolerances to heat or toxins. The stunted kids are destined to do the dirty work as adults. A chosen few become leaders and thinkers. After they “born,” the children are whisked off to some truly terrifying, Skinneresque conditioning.

A long passage describes the conditioning process. As I read it, I though about how awful it would be to never have a genuine, original thought. In their sleep, recordings play. Voices spouts platitudes and catchy rhymes shape how the children think about their place in society, how to be consumers, how to fear solitude. In times of stress, these little homilies come back. One could argue that we are conditioned ourselves, by our parents and our childhood experiences. But we can change our perspectives and habits, with enough effort. Most of the characters in this book can’t do this. The only ones who can are either more intelligent than they were supposed to be, or they were never conditioned in the first place.

Returning to the iceberg metaphor for a moment, another thing that made a deep impression on me was that the experimentation that must have gone on to achieve all this was barely hinted at. But they never talk about the genetic experiments that must have happened. All through the book, the “civilized” characters are so damned proud of their science. Everything is orderly, sterile, with minimal waste. But I have to wonder how many embryos and children were sacrificed along the way to get a system that, for lack of a better word again, works. It’s a very disturbing thought, and it never occurs to any of the characters to think it. And how many people were driven insane, addicted, or were killed during the soma experiments? In order to perfect a drug that is not addictive, is euphoric, and has predictable behavior, how many human guinea pigs did they have to go through?

The big issue of this book, as I see it, is the nature of happiness. What makes people happy? What can make the largest number of people for the longest amount of time? In Brave New World, apparently its all a matter of changing the human. It’s clear that you can’t change the world. So they condition the lower castes (the ones who were poisoned as embryos) to be stupid, to fear learning and beauty, and to never want more than their next dose of soma. The people who struggle the hardest to stay happy are the ones who are granted their full intelligence. In a sense, this book clearly demonstrates that ignorance is bliss after all. But it makes me wonder what it really means to be happy. Does it mean being satisfied with what you have? Does it mean getting what you want? Is it, as Viktor Frankl supposes, different for everyone? I tend to agree with that idea. I think there are as many different ways to be happy as their are people.

Which is probably why we fight so much. We all want different things. Characters in Brave New World refer to devastating wars in the past and governments that collapsed. So to avoid the merest hint of society instability, they changed how people think and feel about happiness. Instead of seeking their own happiness, they settle for their lot in life. It’s a terribly depressing thought.

After the factory and some character introductions, two of the main characters, Bernard and Lenina, take a trip to a reservation in New Mexico. For no adequately explained reason, the world government left certain areas of the world alone. The people who live there are left to their own devices, to live and reproduce and worship as they will. On a more prosaic note, these “savages” provide a point of reference for the reader because they think more like we do. In a Dickens-level coincidence, one of these savages turns out to be the children of “civilized” people. Bernard and Lenina talk John back to England with him, in a repeat of Smith and Rolfe taking Pocahontas back to show off to important people back home. John, who partially learned to read from Shakespeare, provides a strong contrast to civilization.

At the end of the book, John has a long, losing argument with the controller for Western Europe about happiness. John feels so strongly about concepts like freedom and honor and romance that he is utterly incapable arguing their merits when it comes down to it. The controller is able to shut him down at every turn. But then, if you were called on to argue about why people should be allowed to love beauty for its own sake or to be allowed to be noble, would you be able to be coherent about it? Poor John. I agree with him, and I wish he could have made a better showing. Another way of looking at this is that human happiness is an insoluble problem. We can argue about it forever without changing anyone’s mind.

One last note before I wrap up. The civilized characters use the name Ford instead of God. I’m pretty sure they’re calling on Henry Ford, given the assembly lines and mass consumption. They never say for sure, but it’s an odd rock to build a civilization on. I wonder how much Huxley knew about the historical Ford’s ideology, specifically the antisemitism.

I’m really glad I read this book. I know that I’m going to have to read it again (probably more than once) to get everything out of this story. It’s disturbing and profound. I wished that it had gone on longer than it did, so that I could learn more about this deliciously weird world.

David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens

David Copperfield

Summing up Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield is impossible. It’s a whole life crammed into 877 pages. I don’t mean that sarcastically or ironically. When I started reading it on last Sunday, I met Copperfield when he was born. As I read during the week, I watched him grow up. I saw his triumphs and miseries, his loves and his hatreds. I wanted to give him advice and cheer him on. When I finished the book earlier today, it was like saying goodbye to a friend.

I normally don’t read bildungsromans, because unless the character is really interesting, I’m usually more interested in the plot. But this book–while ostensibly about David’s life–is crammed with subplots. But first: David Copperfield himself. David has a sharp sense of humor (another appeal for me), and his engaging voice pulled me right into the story. As I said, we meet David as he is born. The very first part of the book is about his early life, with his sweet mother and faithful nurse, Peggotty. But things start to go wrong for David when his mother remarries. His stepfather is a horrible man who tries to mold his new family and make them “firm.” The first third or so of the book is about David’s trials at a terrible boarding school and then at a bottle factory. Things get so desperate that David runs away to live with his eccentric aunt. The novel then starts to jump through time, and introduces two mysteries: the fate of Little Em’ly and the schemes of Uriah Heep.

You can see the book’s origins as a serial as it’s very episodic. Each chapter skips along to a new event or encounter. Characters like the Micawbers, the Peggottys, Heep, the Wickfields, and David’s relations weave in and out of the story. They’re all fully realized people, though for the most part more attention is paid to their flaws than to their virtues. The Micawbers are a good example of this. They are very entertaining people, loyal to their friends. But for most of the book they are incapable of living within their means. I forgot how many times Mr. Micawber was arrested for his debts and of how many fits Mrs. Micawber threw about her misunderstood husband. Until the very end, when Mr. Micawber manages to get his act together and become a magistrate in Australia, every time David runs into them its pretty much the same story all over again.

Some of these supporting characters are so interesting and entertaining that they threaten to steal the show. The real attraction is supposed to be David. It’s hard to say what’s special about David, now that I come to think about it. At first, he was notable for his naiveté. He couldn’t be trusted with any money that came into his possession, because other characters with less scruples could instantly talk him out of it. It takes a long time for David to get wise to the ways of the world. In spite of the forces against him, David stays a good man. The only people he really hates he has reason to hate. Otherwise he’s upright, but foolish in love.

There is so much going on in this book that schools of English majors could cheerfully pick it apart and find new topics for centuries. You could write about how marriage is portrayed, how virtue is rewarded and vice punished, society in Victorian England, and hundreds of other topics. Each characters could probably inspire whole seminars. This is a rich book. I almost feel bad for reading it in just one week. This is a book that’s meant to be savored.

One theme that reached up and grabbed my attention was the importance of choosing the right mate. There are a lot of good and bad relationships in this book. David himself has both kinds. David’s childhood is essentially ruined by his mother’s choosing the wrong man. David’s first wife had the maturity level of a child. Little Em’ly paired up with a philanderer. Over and over again, Dickens shows his readers what happens when you either don’t take the time to learn your partner’s character or if you listen to the lies of someone who wants to get in your pants.

And then, towards the end, Dickens shows you what can happen if you choose wisely. Incidentally, critics often point to David Copperfield as highly autobiographical. So I can’t help but wonder if we also get to see what Dickens valued in a wife: steadiness, wisdom, and a loving and kind spirit. After reading the Brontes and Austen, where we get the woman’s perspective on courtship and marriage, it’s interesting to see the male perspective. David is as giddy as one of the younger Bennett sisters when young, but it’s heartening to see him mature emotionally and realize that there’s more to a wife than her looks and frivolous charms.

I’m glad I read this book. Up ’till now, the only Dickens I’d read and enjoyed was A Tale of Two Cities–and I loved that book because of the terrific plot and the heroism of Sidney Carton. David Copperfield I liked for the variety. There’s something new and different in each chapter, with plenty to think about afterwards.