extreme legibility

The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2021

 

This trilogy of memoirs (individually titled Childhood, Youth and Dependency) was originally published in Denmark in the 1960s and 70s and only now translated and published in English.

They are unique and fascinating books, mostly because Tove Ditlevsen is a unique and fascinating person, and an original and captivating writer.  As a small child in an impoverished and emotionally repressed household, she takes a sudden interest in language and poetry, and vows to become a poet, a goal she quickly achieves by augmenting her talent with fierce ambition.  This drive to publish plays havoc with her personal life, and she ends up addicted to painkillers, a debilitating habit she seems unable to break.

All the attention paid to her drug dependency in the last volume causes her to lose all her agency and much of the reader's sympathy, and the world of the books, which heretofore was complex and engaging, loses dimension and becomes much less interesting.  As the sequence of titles suggests, this the rather sad story of fiercely autonomous child who loses her independence as she matures.

 

Faster!  Faster!  by  E. M. Delafield, Harper & Brothers, 1936

 

I bought this book because it was by E. M. Delafield, the author of The Provincial Lady series of books, which I, like so many, enjoyed.  This novel, while interesting, was less accomplished and enjoyable than the PL books, perhaps because its rather ordinary third-person narrator lacks the sparkle and wit of the PL's first-person voice.

The (tragic) heroine* of Faster!  Faster! (I love titles with punctuation marks, especially exclamation points) is a bright, attractive, accomplished, 40-ish English woman of good breeding (there's a family house) but small means (no money to upkeep the mortgaged house).  . Her husband is a sometimes charming but mostly irritable and annoying fellow who is unemployed (it's the Depression and jobs are scarce).  They have three pleasant and intelligent children who they are raising in a modern way, allowing their two daughters and one son to make their own choices (and subsequent mistakes).

What makes this book interesting is that it very directly explores a social dilemma that is common today, but was less prevalent a century ago: Can a woman be equally devoted to and invested in her career and her family?  That challenge is the undoing of our heroine, who, partly because her husband isn't winning any bread but mostly because she's good at it and enjoys it, runs a successful agency in London called Universal Services.  This small agency, which is staffed exclusively with competent and hard-working women,  does all the things no one wants to do themselves (the ultimate women's work): schlepping children to schools and doctors, paying bills and filling out forms, dealing with bureaucracy, translating documents, cleaning up literal and figurative messes, nursing the ill, and burying the dead.

Our heroine runs Universal Services with tireless energy and microscopic attention to detail, and tries to devote equal time and care to her husband and children.  But of course that can't be done, and everyone realizes she is exhausted and must take a rest.  And the reader begins to wonder if her hands-off approach to child-rearing is not a philosophical choice but a desperate coping technique, as her hands are full of work.  And so we observe, along with her family and friends, as she drives herself (quite literally -- a traffic accident) to death.

This strange and tragic conclusion to a book that is often sunny and delightful might seem jarring, bit it is appropriate, for we all know that it is impossible to be  a perfect wife and mother and  have a successful career, unless one has made a bargain with the devil or is Amy Coney Barrett (or both).

 

*Of course I have forgotten her name.

 

The Old Ladies by Hugh Walpole, George H. Doran Co., 1924

 

An interesting and disturbing novel about three old ladies, all poor and alone, who live in three rented rooms on the third floor of an abandoned house in a provincial English city.  Our hero is Mrs. X (already forgotten her name), a genteel widow who has fallen on hard times, and whose son Brand (remember his name!) has disappeared in America.  Our villain is Mrs. Y (forgot her name, too), a fat, lazy, slovenly woman who is both a power-hungry sadist and a lover of brightly-colored and beautiful objects.  Mrs. Z (name forgotten), the third old lady,  moves into the cold, drafty house when she loses all her money to a silver-haired scam artist who tricks her into investing her small fortune with him.  Goodbye small fortune!  Her most precious remaining possession is a piece of golden-red amber given to her by her only friend, which Mrs. Y decides she must have, even if it means scaring poor Mrs. Z to death, which in fact it does.

It's interesting to read a book set entirely in the world of these disenfranchised and desperate elderly women, a type of character not often encountered in fiction, and even more rarely exclusively and in  triplicate, even if their characters are broadly drawn and the action is melodramatic.  Brand, Mrs X's long-lost son, returns to his mother in the nick of time, for at least one happy ending, but the strange and bitter taste of this macabre book lingers.

 

Siam, Or The Woman Who Shot A Man by Lily Tuck, The Overlook Press, 1999

 

Lily Tuck is one of the few contemporary writers I am always excited to read, and Siam is yet another cool, elegant, and intelligent novel about women coping with personal dramas in foreign countries, where the personal and the political artfully merge (or collide).  

This is the story of Claire, a young American woman who travels with James, her government/military contractor  husband, to Thailand in 1966, where he is overseeing the construction of runways in the northern jungles to facilitate the bombing of Viet Nam.  His frequent trips to the north leave Claire alone in Bangkok, in a house with a pool and several not-entirely cooperative servants.  She becomes obsessed with the mysterious disappearance of Jim Thompson, the (real) American man who reinvigorated the Thai silk industry.

The United States' corroding involvement in Southeast Asia is slowly and slyly revealed as Claire's activities and liaisons make her more aware of her own and her country's nefarious presence in the larger world.  As always Tuck writes with stylish aplomb -- her view of the world, even seen through (or slyly around) Claire's rather deluded eyes, is always crystal clear and bracingly complex.  Her writing is assured, sensual, and compelling.  I'd read anything by her.

Albert Spears by Millen Brand, Simon and Schuster, 1947

 

Another interesting and unusual novel by Millen Brand, written with his customary clarity and empathy.  I discovered Brand's first novel, The Outward Room (1937), in a second-hand bookstore and  convinced New York Review Books to republish it, with an afterword written by me, in 2010.  (I also admire his second novel, The Heroes, published in 1939.)

The  eponymous Albert Spears is 66 in 1915, and lives with his invalid and house-bond wife in Jersey City.  (I wonder why Brand gave his hero the same name as  the Nazi war criminal.)  Albert has a son with his long-time mistress, a younger woman in the neighborhood, who he would like to adopt (the son not the mistress).  He runs a carpentry mill and speculates in residential real estate and becomes involved in a local conflagration when a Black family moves into the all-white neighborhood.  Albert befriends the family and attempts to make them feel welcome and safe, but his neighbors are united in their hateful prejudice and do everything they can to force the family to leave (break all their windows, sabotage  their heat and water, send the father to jail).  Albert's son also befriends the family, and fights along with the other Black boys when their gangs clash.

Brand writes from the point of view of both families, from the perspective of the young and elderly of both races, and his creation of many complex and very different characters is admirable.  An interesting and engaging look at race relations, and the power of individuals, in early 20th-century America.

 

 

Alice Neel and Millen Brand (foreground), 1966.

(Photograph by Jonathan Brand)