With Ironweed, William Kennedy completes his three novels of Depression-era Albany, wrapping up this study of time, place, and people with an emotionally gripping Pulitzer Prize-winner (1984) that focuses on those who call themselves “bums,” all of them living apart from society because their dreams have died. Here Francis Phelan, long-absent father of Billy Phelan, returns to Albany for the first time in twenty-two years. A former pro ballplayer, Francis lost his career when he lost part of a finger in a fight. He abandoned his wife Annie and his family when he accidentally dropped and killed his 13-day-old son Gerald, an act for which he still atones. A book so good it will leave you reeling, Ironweed tears at the heart without showing a trace of sentimentality, depicting hard lives lived by down-and-out people, most of whom still possess the redeeming virtues of the more saintly who live “normal” lives. Hard-edged, sometimes violent, and even cruel, it also reveals human kindness, sweetness, and love. (On my list of All-Time Favorites.)
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Focusing on the life of Henry James, Colm Toibin’s The Master goes way beyond the usual “novelization” of someone’s biography. Toibin has done a tremendous amount of research and has obviously read everything James has written, but he has so completely distilled all of this information, that in writing this book, he actually recreates Henry James. James, an American by birth, is a lonely and solitary figure throughout the novel, a man unable to form a committed relationship with anyone, either male or female, sometimes wanting companionship but not closeness, and always needing solitude to work. Through flashbacks, Toibin shows how James’s early upbringing may have been partly responsible for his feelings of isolation. Toibin’s dual focus on James’s life and how it is embodied in his fiction, give a powerful immediacy and sense of verisimilitude to this novel, so strong that one cannot help but feel an emotional connection to James, no matter how remote he may seem otherwise. (On my Favorites List for 2004)
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Vivid and hard-edged, Dancer fuses fact and fiction seamlessly, successfully recreating the essence of a larger-than-life star like Rudolf Nureyev and illuminating the many secret worlds he inhabited. At the same time, Dancer also manages to capture the heart, making an unlikable egomaniac into an understandable human and his rise to stardom a goal the reader both shares and celebrates. His legs were the source of “more violence than grace,” and there was “more intuition in him than intellect, more spirit than knowledge.” In his first brief recital, he was filled with “kinetic fury,” and even when he reached the height of his powers, when much of the world regarded his dance partnership with famed ballerina Margot Fonteyn as both intimate and elegant, his style was also described by others as “ferocious.” Nureyev’s “wild and feral” style of dance meshes perfectly with McCann’s prose. Filled with intriguing characters, ranging from simple Russian peasants to Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams, John Lennon, Truman Capote, Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, and the stars of ballet, the novel is a monument to the power of the creative spirit and a testament to the dangers inherent in a life from which all other controls have been removed. (My favorite novel of 2003)
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Posted in Biography, England, Literary on Jan 14th, 2011
The imagined meeting of Sigmund Freud and Henry James at James’s residence, Lamb House, is the focus of this surprising novel of ideas, which conveys the intellectual ferment in Europe just prior to World War I in a style which is filled with warmth and good humor. Henry James and Sigmund Freud seem human and even fun-loving here, but the novel is no farce. Serious issues involving James’s writing, his style, his subjects, and his repressions all come into play, even as Freud admits to having his own problems trying to reconcile James’s creativity with the “scientific knowledge” which forms the basis of his psychoanalytical principles. Freud’s questions about his research become more acute when James agrees to undergo “short term analysis” during Freud’s stay at Lamb House. (My Favorite novel for 2007)
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Casting a satiric eye on the publishing business, author Elise Blackwell shows the agonies and excitements of several young authors as each tries to find the magic formula for getting a book published, publicized, and sold to the public. Most have been successful with a first novel—at least to the extent that it has been published—and all now have second novels which they are trying to “place” with a publisher. Trying to support themselves with contributions to small literary journals while looking for the “right” connection for their next novel, they must negotiate literary minefields filled with agents, editors, publicists, manuscript “fixers,” sponsors of writing conferences, and influential bookstore chains, all of which affect their sense of mission and, ultimately, their self-worth. Delightful, thought-provoking, and full of rapier-sharp insights into the tenuous connections between writing and publishing, the novel is assured, perceptive, and often hilarious. The glimpses Blackwell provides of the strange, literary world she inhabits are unforgettable. (On my Favorites list for 2007)
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