“The heart,” he said, “is a dark well; its depth unknown. I have lived eighty years. I am still drawing water.”
“Draw a little for me, Dad.”
I found John Galsworthy’s 1906 book Fraternity
Fraternity itself is a quirky book, something of a satire of upper-middle-class attitudes towards the lower classes in turn-of-the-century England. The plot of the book revolves around the slow-burn relationship between Hilary, the emotionally estranged husband of Bianca, and a young model named Ivy who comes to pose for a portrait Bianca is painting. But the book itself is more concerned with the way that the extended family of which Hilary is a part views “those people” – the truly poor, but also simply the working classes, the less fortunate but not poor (like Ivy), and the riffraff who inhabit the parts of London where decent folk simply aren’t seen.
Galsworthy showcases a dry wit, sprinkling the novel with smart-assed rejoinders and silly names (the pious, loyal butler named Creed; the socialite named Mrs. Talents Smallpeace; the intimidating activist named Mary Daunt), and also treating the upper-class denizens of the book with just a touch of disdain for their snobbery. The story moves along quickly, in part because of copious amounts of dialogue – both real and imagined, as Galsworthy likes to describe facial expressions with quotes that explain what the person might be thinking – and also because of the various minor subplots among the various characters in Hilary and Bianca’s family. It’s a minor work of literature that for whatever reason seems to have been swept aside, perhaps because of the wave of more serious English novels that followed in the 1910s and 1920s.
Hi Keith,
Completely unrelated to this book save only for the same time period, I was wondering, in your goal of reading the great books, if you had read or were planning to read Remembrance of Things Past (or, if you prefer the modern translation, In Search of Lost Time or Forgotten Time or Misplaced Time or whatever they are calling it this year)?
A daunting task for sure, but the first book, Swann’s Way, is certainly one to include in your goal. I actually haven’t read it in years…er, decades come to think of it…but if you like the first page or so you’ll probably like the rest of it. Even though I haven’t re-read it I have perused the new translations and I have to say I think I prefer the romanticism of the Monkcrieff/Kilmartin edition to these newly minted so-called modern translations. I guess that makes me kind of an old fudd, but what the hell, I have an opinion!
I would put this at the top of the list of great books I have read. Kind of a transcendental experience if you can make it all the way through and give yourself over to the author and what he is trying to accomplish.
Randy – I’ve read Swann’s Way and the first part of In the Shadow… (Place-Names: the Place, I believe). I stopped at that point because, as beautiful as some of the language is, I found I was really growing to dislike the narrator, and of course there’s no plot to pull the reader along. I may pick it up again, at least to finish volume 2, but I don’t see myself reading the final five.
Keith
You stopped at the point that the plot starts going! Well, sort of. I think the term “off on a tangent” was invented after reading Proust. When I was reading it (and at some point I fully intend to read it again)I liked to think of it as a big soap-opera as there are literally hundreds of characters all interacting with each other over a long period of time. Part of the joy of the book is how all of these people change both in reality and in the narrator’s memory.
Frankly, if you didn’t like the narrator so far you might really dislike him in some of the later books as he gets rather petulant in regards to sweet Albertine. But if he were such a likeable guy he wouldn’t have anywhere to grow now would he?
Anyway, I wouldn’t think of twisting your arm. You either love the damn thing or not, and most people don’t.
As a side note I am slowly reading the HP books at my 11 year old daughter’s insistence and I have to say in some ways I can see it as being Proustian in the sense that, taken together, the books are very long and they have many characters. That is about as far as I would go in the comparison, however. When I get to the end (on #3 now) I’ll read your review of the last one and let you know what I think.
Best,
Randy