A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

[Nikki]

Michael, the link to 'Isherwood and the Violet Quill' is very interesting. I especially enjoy anything Edmund White writes.  However, I'll have to print it out and read at my leisure since it's so long.  Really worth reading.

[michaelflanagansf]

Michael, the link to 'Isherwood and the Violet Quill' is very interesting. I especially enjoy anything Edmund White writes.  However, I'll have to print it out and read at my leisure since it's so long.  Really worth reading.

Thanks, Nikki - I thought so as well!

[michaelflanagansf]

Eeek!  Talk about missing the point:

"George is abjectly presented.  Indeed his first scene takes place on the john....George is a natural man, compromised, self-conscious, irritable, but nevertheless keeping up his exercises (and his all too easily aroused hopes) at the gym, telling his little jokes and still heroically on the make....Isherwood's books have all been homosexual in spirit, even campy.  Perhaps the surprising thing is that he has so often been able to be a serious artist at the same time....In 'A Single Man' he writes, as others before him have about America, '("old" in our country of the bland, has become nearly as dirty a word as 'kike' or 'nigger.')'  When you are dealing with fundamental ideas, jauntiness of style may offend against the truth.  It is the satirist and not his object who appears trivial....If 'A Single Man' seems tired, it is also true in feeling.  It is a sad book, with a biological melancholy running through it a sense of relentless reduction, daily diminishment.  From the morning toilet to the evening masturbation--that is its sadly swinging arc"  Elizabeth Hardwick, New York Review of Books, Aug 20, 1964

[Nikki]

Eeek!  Talk about missing the point:

"George is abjectly presented.  Indeed his first scene takes place on the john....George is a natural man, compromised, self-conscious, irritable, but nevertheless keeping up his exercises (and his all too easily aroused hopes) at the gym, telling his little jokes and still heroically on the make....Isherwood's books have all been homosexual in spirit, even campy.  Perhaps the surprising thing is that he has so often been able to be a serious artist at the same time....In 'A Single Man' he writes, as others before him have about America, '("old" in our country of the bland, has become nearly as dirty a word as 'kike' or 'nigger.')'  When you are dealing with fundamental ideas, jauntiness of style may offend against the truth.  It is the satirist and not his object who appears trivial....If 'A Single Man' seems tired, it is also true in feeling.  It is a sad book, with a biological melancholy running through it a sense of relentless reduction, daily diminishment.  From the morning toilet to the evening masturbation--that is its sadly swinging arc"  Elizabeth Hardwick, New York Review of Books, Aug 20, 1964

 Abjectly presented?  Biological melancholy? Sense of relentless reduction? Daily diminshment? Sadly swinging arc?

Is it just me, or is Hardwick obsessed with her own sense of the critic as artiste? Why is it that when some people review a book they simply must throw around words and phrases that obfuscate what they are trying to say.  If I have to read a review 2 or 3 times in order to understand what the reviewer is saying, I'd rather read the book and get on with it.  I believe that, too often, reviewers become caught up in their own psuedo-intellectualism and forget the reader is not interested in some metaphysical/philosophical quest for writer of the year.  Who am I to take umbrage with a NY Review of Books reviewer!  Who indeed?

[michaelflanagansf]

Abjectly presented?  Biological melancholy? Sense of relentless reduction? Daily diminshment? Sadly swinging arc?

Is it just me, or is Hardwick obsessed with her own sense of the critic as artiste? Why is it that when some people review a book they simply must throw around words and phrases that obfuscate what they are trying to say.  If I have to read a review 2 or 3 times in order to understand what the reviewer is saying, I'd rather read the book and get on with it.  I believe that, too often, reviewers become caught up in their own psuedo-intellectualism and forget the reader is not interested in some metaphysical/philosophical quest for writer of the year.  Who am I to take umbrage with a NY Review of Books reviewer!  Who indeed?

Boy, are you spot on - apparently Hardwick was something of an enfant terrible when it came to book reviews.  Here's a bit more about her:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Hardwick_%28writer%29

It's a bit sad when the reviewer is more intent on making the review about them than about the review they're doing, eh?

[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

^^^^

that was the feeling I got when reading her comments.

[garyd]

It's a bit sad when the reviewer is more intent on making the review about them than about the review they're doing, eh?

I think she was pretty cool.  She certainly put the earlier “Algonquin Roundtable” glibness to shame.
She had the balls to take on Gertrude Stein, Cheever, Studs Turkel, Norman Mailer, and even O’Neill.
 She made one think and if one disagreed with her one was forced to put forth a well-honed argument. 
On the other hand, I think she did, at times, use language to intimidate rather than communicate.
 Anyone who uses deracination in a sentence should be held suspect.   

[michaelflanagansf]

I think she was pretty cool.  She certainly put the earlier “Algonquin Roundtable” glibness to shame.
She had the balls to take on Gertrude Stein, Cheever, Studs Turkel, Norman Mailer, and even O’Neill.
 She made one think and if one disagreed with her one was forced to put forth a well-honed argument. 
On the other hand, I think she did, at times, use language to intimidate rather than communicate.
 Anyone who uses deracination in a sentence should be held suspect.   

And what do you think of her review of 'A Single Man'?  She thinks he's irritable, which is something I would think you disagree with, given earlier comments.  Do you think it is a sad book which has 'jauntiness of style may offend against the truth'?

In this review, at least, she does not put forth a well honed argument, in my opinion.

[garyd]

And what do you think of her review of 'A Single Man'?  She thinks he's irritable, which is something I would think you disagree with, given earlier comments.  Do you think it is a sad book which has 'jauntiness of style may offend against the truth'?

In this review, at least, she does not put forth a well honed argument, in my opinion.

LOL, I did not say, I always agreed with her.  I do think the “biological melancholy” is apt.  She simply does not grasp, however, the character or the importance of the work.  
(I think she also has some interesting things to say about O’Neill but, once again, the poetry of the language eludes her.  (“cumbersome, badly hammered nails”, indeed).  

The balance of her ASM review is even more incendiary.

“His is a fairly modest anal disposition,respectable enough, with a finicky, faggoty interest in the looks of things — far from the corruption and splendor of his type in French fiction.”
Compounding the insult, she then added,
 “He is a perverse mixture of arrogance and shyness, suspicion and indifference.”
In short, he’s someone Hardwick is annoyed at being obliged to take seriously;
 an affront to what Isherwood called “the Heterosexual Dictatorship.”

[michaelflanagansf]

The balance of her ASM review is even more incendiary.

“His is a fairly modest anal disposition,respectable enough, with a finicky, faggoty interest in the looks of things — far from the corruption and splendor of his type in French fiction.”
Compounding the insult, she then added,
 “He is a perverse mixture of arrogance and shyness, suspicion and indifference.”
In short, he’s someone Hardwick is annoyed at being obliged to take seriously;
 an affront to what Isherwood called “the Heterosexual Dictatorship.”

Well THAT makes me wonder if Isherwood was talking about her in the quote I posted.  What's very odd (and must have been baffling for Isherwood) is that he doesn't consider the book to be about homosexuality and yet that is what she is objecting to.

[Nikki]

On the other hand, I think she did, at times, use language to intimidate rather than communicate.
 Anyone who uses deracination in a sentence should be held suspect.   

...and anyone who uses language to intimidate is a person who can't communicate.

[Nikki]

I think she was pretty cool.  She certainly put the earlier “Algonquin Roundtable” glibness to shame.
She had the balls to take on Gertrude Stein, Cheever, Studs Turkel, Norman Mailer, and even O’Neill.
 She made one think and if one disagreed with her one was forced to put forth a well-honed argument. 
On the other hand, I think she did, at times, use language to intimidate rather than communicate.
 Anyone who uses deracination in a sentence should be held suspect.   

Gary, is there a link about her and the Algonquin RT?  I find it hard to believe she put them all to shame -- I've always liked them.

[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

Well THAT makes me wonder if Isherwood was talking about her in the quote I posted.  What's very odd (and must have been baffling for Isherwood) is that he doesn't consider the book to be about homosexuality and yet that is what she is objecting to.

well -- Edmund White and I (we are this close!    )  seem to think the book is about homosexuality, but I think the difference is that we don't point it out with subtle derision.

I think it is about homosexuality, as a part of George's life, just as grief is a part of George's life, and his feelings about minorities.

Her observations about the trite beginnings of the day and the masturbation at the end of the day are interesting also, but dismiss what Isherwood is doing with the book.  Those things are in Ulysses as well, now that I think about it.

[garyd]

Gary, is there a link about her and the Algonquin RT? 

Nah, not that I know of.
I obviously should have placed a great big IMO at the end of that sentence.
Hardwick did not even arrive on the scene until a good decade after the "Reign of the Roundtable".
In my opinion, they were funny, clever, perhaps even witty but never so much as to one another.
As a group they never really did much except, perhaps, help out the career of Robert Benchley.
Individually, some were exquisitely talented so no umbrage should be taken.

Hardwick, as far off base as she could be at times, wrote reviews and essays for, jeez, well over sixty years.
From those that I have read, I find her interesting, thought provoking, and "on target" more often than not.

[garyd]

...and anyone who uses language to intimidate is a person who can't communicate.

I suppose it depends upon exactly what one is attempting to communicate.