A Farewell to Arms

Having finished reading a 4th novel by Grazia Deledda , I decided to choose a novel from Dr. Jordan Peterson's list of the Great Novels. On the list are three works by Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea. I have a memory of reading the first two - along with The Sun Also Rises - in the late 1970's. Although I can't recall much of those three novels - it has been more than forty years ago, after all - I didn't feel, at first, that those novels should be included in a "Greatest Novels of all times" list.

Still, Hemingway is on Dr. Peterson's list, so I'd pick up there. Just having finished four wonderful novels from an Italian/Sardinian writer, it seemed appropriate to reread Hemingway's World War I novel (which takes place in Italy) A Farewell to Arms.

I immediately concluded that my memory of having read this novel is, perhaps, a false memory. There is absolutely nothing in the novel that I remember. True, it has been more than 40 years ago, but I first read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment during the same time period, and most of that novel is recognizable when I reread it.

As for A Farewell to Arms, I can understand now why it is on Dr. Peterson's list. I did not, however, find anything about the relationship between Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley worthy of the rest of the novel. I especially did not care for the ending. According to the wikipedia article on the novel,"Hemingway struggled with the ending. By his count, he wrote 39 of them 'before I was satisfied.' However, a 2012 edition of the book included no less than 47 alternate endings".

Unfortunately, I do not have access to that 2012 edition, so I will remain ignorant of those alternate endings.

I've gone on now to read For Whom the Bell Tolls. It is slightly more memorable to me. From there, I will go on to the third Hemingway work on the list, and finally round it out with one that didn't make the cut - The Sun Also Rises - this will be a continuation of my new habit of reading writers in clusters of "fours" - as I have this year with Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Edith Wharton, and Grazia Deledda.

This could very well lead to my rereading Yukio Mishima's tetralogy of novels, The Sea of Fertility later this year.

The Headless Horseman: A Strange Tale of Texas

Of the dozen books I've read so far this year, four were written by the Spanish writer, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and four were written by Edith Wharton .

In Blasco Ibáñez's novel, The Torrent (Entre Naranjos), it's mentioned that the protagonist, Rafael Brull had read the novels of Mayne Reid. Seeing that name, I wanted to learn more about this particular writer. I went on to read Reid's 1853 anti-slavery novel, The Quadroon. Although I enjoyed reading that adventure novel, I did not put any of Reid's other novels in the queue. I wanted to first read some of the novels of Edith Wharton.

In Wharton's autobiography, A Backward Glance she also mentions the writer, Mayne Reid. I saw this as a sign to go ahead and read something else by Reid.

Project Gutenberg has 61 novels written by Mayne Reid available for download. I decided that I would read the novel that had been downloaded most often - The Headless Horseman: A Strange Tale of Texas.

The Headless Horseman was first published as a monthly serial in 1865 and 1866. The action takes place in 1850, after the Mexican/American war and before the American Civil War.

There are quite a few similarities between The Headless Horseman and The Quadroon. The male protagonist in both novels is not American (one is "British", the other Irish). Many of the other main characters are (white-non mixed) French Creole from Louisiana and owners of slaves.

In both novels, there is a male slave named Scipio and a female slave, Chloe. In the The Headless Horseman, Scipio is the husband of Chloe. The two are only minor players in the story. In The Quadroon, Scipio is Chloe's father and both characters are central to the plot. Mayne Reid had spent time in Louisiana prior to the Civil War, and I can't help but think that Scipio and Chloe were names of actual slaves he may have encountered there.

In both novels, the principle antagonist has a financial hold over the family with whom the protagonist is involved. In both, the protagonist is at risk of being lynched.

There is love, betrayal and jealousy in both novels.

In my earlier review of The Quadroon I made note of Reid's giving the slaves a "negro dialect". He had also given the uneducated, white, redneck characters a stereotypical drawl. In The Headless Horseman this use of dialects makes the novel difficult reading in parts. There are the slave dialects, the white Kentucky accent, as well as German, Irish and Spanish accents through out. Translating these accents and dialects in my head makes for slow reading.

All that being said, the The Headless Horseman is filled with action and drama and an interesting read. The novel can be found at Project Gutenberg.

A Backward Glance

For purposes of this review of Edith Wharton's autobiography, A Backward Glance, I'll divide the book into three parts - naturally enough, beginning, middle and end.

This is an arbitrary division on my part, with the beginning and end taking up approximately 20% each, and with the middle taking up the remaining 60%.

In the beginning of the autobiography, Wharton writes on her early life and family background. She was born in New York city to a well to do, established family. She spent a good deal of her early childhood in Europe - mainly Paris and Rome - of which she writes fondly.

I enjoyed this first part, but I found the middle boring. In this middle section, she writes mostly of the people she knew and associated with at fashionable dinners. Although many of the people she writes of in the book may have been well known at the time, now most are forgotten. The two most famous dropped names are Teddy Roosevelt and writer Henry James. Too much of the book, I think, is spent on Henry James.

Unfortunately, although she does occasionally mention some of her work, she does not spend much time explaining her writing process. I would have much rather read how she came to write her novels than read about her dinners with celebrities of her day.

I did enjoy reading the final portion of her autobiography where she writes a good deal about her experiences before and during the First World War. She goes into her war experiences in greater detail in a collection of magazine articles for Scribner's Magazine in 1915, Fighting France; from Dunkerque to Belfort.

I wouldn't recommend this autobiography to the general public who are not familiar with Wharton. I don't believe reading this will bring the casual reader to her novels. There may be some Wharton fans who would find this autobiography entertaining, but as a Wharton fan, I was disappointed.

As a side note, early in the autobiography, Wharton mentions Mayne Reid . I've basically read two novelists this year - Edith Wharton and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez - both of whom mention the adventure writer in a novel. I've read only one of Reids' books -The Quadroon- Seeing his name mentioned in A Backward Glance, I downloaded another of his novels from Project Gutenberg [The Headless Horseman: A Strange Tale of Texas] which I've put in the queue for reading later this month.

Edith Wharton

I first discovered Edith Wharton in December, 2017 when I came upon a mobi file of The Hermit and the Wild Woman, and Other Stories in my computer. I mentioned in that 2017 post that I had no recollection of when (or why) I had originally downloaded this ebook, but upon finding it my files, I was intrigued by the title and had sent the mobi to my Kindle.

After reading the first two short stories in the collection, I knew I'd want to read more by Wharton. Going back to my computer files, I saw that I had also downloaded two other novels by Wharton, The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. As it turned out, these ebooks had sat unread in my pc since December, 2014. I sent these two to my Kindle as well and these three ebooks would be the last books I would read in 2017.

At the time of that December, 2017 post, I had not read the two novels nor had I finished the collection of her short stories, but as I said, I knew at the time I'd be reading more of Wharton's work, of whom, after reading those first two short stories, I compared to Elizabeth von Arnim. Anyone familiar with my "sorryalltheclevernamesaretaken" blog knows that Elizabeth von Arnim is one of my favorite writers and my comparing Wharton to her is high praise.

I did not, however go on to immediately binge read Wharton. At nearly the half-way point of The House of Mirth, Wharton's makes mention of a "bronze box with a miniature of Beatrice Cenci in the lid", and that led me to read more about Beatrice Cenci. I fell into a rabbit hole and forgot about Edith Wharton.

After reading four novels by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez during the first three weeks of this month, I wanted to go in a different direction. It was that decision that led me back to Wharton. I found two of her novels in my ebook collection - Twilight Sleep and The Children. Doing a little investigating, I learned that these two novels are considered part of Wharton's three "Jazz Age novels", the other being Glimpses of the Moon. I've read the three novels, and I'm not at all certain why the three should characterized this way.

Many of the characters in the three novels seem to wander aimlessly thru their life - like many in the post World War I era - I haven't read enough of Wharton's earlier novels to understand the reasoning of setting these three novel apart.

Being published two years after The Age of Innocence, for which she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Literature, I can see Glimpses of the Moon just as easily being bundled with that novel as with the, so-called, "Jazz Age novels".

As I write this, I've begun reading Wharton's 1934 autobiography, A Backward Glance. There are quite a few novels, novellas, and short story collections by Wharton. I'll decide where to go after the autobiography.

January's Book List

As I mentioned in my first blog post for 2021, it's been an annual tradition of mine for ten years, to publish a list of the books I had read the previous year. These lists would be posted onto my sorryalltheclevernamesaretaken blog on January 1st. This year, the list was also posted onto my new blog.

As of this month comes to an end, I'll be adding another dimension. Starting today, I'll be posting, on the last day of the month, a list of the books I've read during the month.

I've written blog posts on a few of these books already this month.

Forever Amber                                           Kathleen Winsor
The Cabin (La barraca)                              Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
The Torrent                                                 Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse      Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
Blood and Sand                                           Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
The Quadroon                                             Mayne Reid
Twilight Sleep                                            Edith Wharton
Caritas in veritate                                       Pope Benedict XVI
The Children                                              Edith Wharton
Glimpses of the Moon                                Edith Wharton

The Quadroon, by Mayne Reid

Finishing Forever Amber on the first day of January, I searched my computer files for another book to read.

I had a file containing ebooks that were set aside to be read in 2018, but had somehow not made their way into the queue. Several of these ebooks were translations of the novels of  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. I transferred a number of the ebooks to my Kindle and began reading The Cabin (La barraca). I went on to read The Torrent (Entre Naranjos), Sangre y arena (Blood and Sand) and reread  Los cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse). 

In The Torrent , Blasco Ibáñez mentions that the protagonist, Rafael Brull had read the novels of James Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid. Not being familiar with Reid, I immediately typed his name into a search engine and came upon a wikipedia page about him.

Mayne Reid (April 4, 1818 – October 22, 1883) was born in Ireland, and lived for a time in the U.S., - even fighting in the American-Mexican War (1846–1848).

The wikipedia article goes on the explain that Reid wrote several action filled, adventure novels along the lines of Robert Louis Stevenson. Reid's novels were an inspiration to Teddy Roosevelt, Arthur Conan Doyle, and obviously, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez.

Reading such high praise of Mayne Reid, I knew I'd want to read at least one of his novels. Project Gutenberg has more than 50 of Reid's novels available for download; I did not know where to begin.

The same wikipedia article lists his anti-slavery novel, The Quadroon as one of his best selling. No better place to start, I thought.

Published in 1853, the story takes place in Louisiana. For reasons unclear to me, the protagonist chooses to go under a false name - Edward Rutherford. Coming from Britain, Rutherford is appalled by the brutality and atrocities inherent in slavery. Rutherford falls in love with a slave named Aurore who is described as a "quadroon". In slave societies, a quadroon was a person with one quarter African and three quarters European ancestry. Rutherford wishes to marry Aurore, but cannot because she is a slave and because of  her African ancestry. The two, of course marry in the end, but not in the State of Louisiana.

The novel does contain quite a lot of action and is surprisingly suspenseful at times. I was a little put off by Reid having the need to describe the flora and fauna of Louisiana in such detail. His foreign born, 19th Century readers may have found the descriptions interesting, but this 21st Century reader thought such descriptions slowed the pace.

In the beginning, I found Reid's "negro dialect" for the slaves off-putting as well. However, Reid also gave his uneducated, white, redneck characters a stereotypical drawl, so I was willing to give him a pass.

All in all, although obviously dated, I give The Quadroon a positive rating.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

I had just finished reading Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor and went looking for another novel to read. Years ago, I had read The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, and was so impressed, I went back to Project Gutenberg to download more ebooks of Blasco Ibáñez's work. I had put the downloaded mobi files into my computer with the intention of reading them right away. Being a bit of a procrastinator, I neglected the file.

I went back to the neglected file the first week of this year and put Blasco Ibáñez' The Cabin (La barraca) in my Kindle, with a few of his novels going into the queue.

After reading The Cabin (La barraca) and The Torrent (Entre Naranjos).I went on to reread The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

First published in 1916, the story revolves around an Argentinian land-owner (millionaire Julio Madariaga) and his two sons-in-law - one a Frenchman (Marcelo Desnoyers), the other German (Karl Hartrott).

Following the death of Madariaga, the two wealthy families move to Europe -Desnoyers to Paris, Hartrott to Germany.

As the two countries go to war, the two families take sides with their new countries.

Blasco Ibáñez' description of German atrocities committed during World War I was mind opening. I had not realized that the German atrocities in WWI were nearly as bad as those committed in the Second World War. No Holocaust, of course, but still astonishing when compared to previous wars in Europe.

The 1918 English translation by Charlotte Brewster Jordan became the best-selling novel in the U.S in 1919. Publishers Weekly hailed it as "a superbly human story told by a genius", a review with which I heartily agree; it is most definitely one of the greatest novels written in the 20th Century.

The novel can be found in a number of formats at Project Gutenberg.

Mayne Reid

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had "rediscovered" the work of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. At the time of that writing, I had just finished reading The Cabin (La barraca) and had begun reading The Torrent (Entre Naranjos). As I write this today, I've begun re-reading Blasco Ibáñez' most famous work, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Although well written, I didn't find the story in The Torrent (Entre Naranjos) to my taste. Star-crossed lovers, unrequited love and Spanish politics are not really my cup of sangria.

Of special interest to me, however was the mention of two American writers that were favorites of the protagonist Rafael Brull - James Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid. Even though I've never read any of his books, James Fenimore Cooper's name is familiar to me. Mayne Reid, on the other hand, was new to me.

Thomas Mayne Reid was a Scots-Irish American novelist who specialized in adventure novels, much like Cooper and Robert Louis Stevenson. Reid was especially popular with boys in Europe and Russia. He was a childhood favorite of Arthur Conan Doyle and an influence on Conan Doyle's writings.

 After reading such high praise, I'm obliged to read at least one of Reid's novels. Project Gutenberg has more than 60 novels written by Mayne Reid available for download. The question remains, where to begin?

The wikipedia article on Reid lists one of his best-selling books as an anti-slavery novel, The Quadroon. That seems like a good place to start. I've downloaded the novel and I've placed it in the queue.

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Between 2014 and 2018, the centennial anniversary years of World War I, I read a number of novels written by writers who had lived through the Great War and were influenced by the tragic events of 1914 - 1918.

One of those books was The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, written by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. I had downloaded the novel from Project Gutenberg and I was so impressed with the novel that after reading it , I went back to website to download whatever I could find by the author that had been translated into English.

It had been my intention at the time to start right away, binge reading Blasco Ibáñez but for reasons which I can't recall now, the novels were set aside in a file and went unread.

When I finished reading Forever Amber , I decided to go through my mobi files in search of something to read. I chose Blasco Ibáñez' The Cabin (La barraca). I'm very glad I did. I couldn't put it down.

The novel was written in 1898; the story takes place in a rural community in Spain. There's no time given in the story, but I'm assuming it's occurring during the same time period.

The protagonist, Batiste and his family are relentlessly harassed and persecuted by his neighbors for something he and the family are not responsible for. The hatred for the family stops - temporarily - after the death of one of Batiste's children.

At the child's funeral, the school master, Don Joaquín gives Batiste his thoughts on the villagers:

"It's life, Mr. Bautista; resignation. We never know God's plans. Often he turns evil into good for his creatures."
And interrupting his string of commonplaces, uttered pompously as though he were in school, he lowered his voice and added, blinking his eyes maliciously:
"Did you notice, Mr. Batiste, all these people? Yesterday they were cursing you and your family; and God knows how many times I have censured them for this wickedness; today they enter your house as though they were entering their own, and overwhelm you with manifestations of affection. Misfortune makes them forget, brings them close to you."
And after a pause, during which he stood with lowered head, he added with conviction, striking his breast:
"Believe me, for I know them well; at bottom they are very good people. Very stupid, certainly. Capable of the most barbarous actions, but with hearts which are moved by misfortune and which make them draw in their claws.... Poor people! Whose fault is it that they were born stupid and that no one tries to help them to overcome it?"
He was silent for some time, and then he added with the fervour of a merchant praising his article:
"What is necessary here is education, much education. Temples of wisdom to spread the light of knowledge over this plain; torches which ... which.... In short, if more youngsters came to my temple, I mean to my school, and if the fathers, instead of getting drunk paid punctually like you, Mr. Bautista, things would be different. And I say nothing more, for I don't like to offend."

Unfortunately, the good will of his neighbors does not last long. Tragedy continues until the end.

Finishing The Cabin, I began reading The Torrent (Entre Naranjos). Where the main characters in The Cabin are poor farmers and peasants, the characters in The Torrent are richer, more well to do. I'm 30% into this novel; in all likelihood, another Blasco Ibáñez novel will follow before I go on to another writer.