Richard Ford has a well deserved reputation as being one of the major American writers today. I have found his writing lyrically poetical as well as earthy and grounded in the lives of relatively ordinary people - powerfully evoking a culture and the American landscape . I was intrigued therefore to read his latest work called , Canada, and to try to understand his purpose in this case. However one does learn, I think, that this work is about America and being American also . I will now turn to the book and look at some elements of the plot, style, characterisations and apparent purpose.
From the beginning Canada displays elements of an unusual action story. The narrator, Dell Parsons, introduces the reader to his family in the first chapter. He tells us right at the beginning that his parents committed a bank robbery in the Montana region in the the nineteen sixties . This sets himself and his twin sister when they were just fifteen, on a strange life course. The intriguingly narrated story gives plenty of evidence of why this has been the case. For example, Dell warns us in the very first paragraph that he is going to tell us about some murders later thus producing an element of suspense for the reader. The first section of the book (almost half) is about the four members of the family and the circumstances leading up to the parents arrest for the robbery . Following the arrest and gaoling of his parents , Dell is whisked away to Canada by a well-meaning friend of the family in order to keep him from child care authorities in Montana. His twin sister Bernie runs away from home herself to California.
The second part of the book centres on Dell's life in the few years after his escape to Canada to a frontier-like town in Saskatchewan . He is left there at fifteen in the "care" of a hotel owner - a relative of the female family friend who has taken him there from Montana. We learn later she has done this at the request of Dell's mother who is now serving a long gaol sentence. Dell's consequent and sometimes dangerous adventures which find him observing a range of remarkable characters and situations, forms most of the rest of the book. Dell is looking back narrating the story of his past as a contentedly married school teacher in his sixties and as a Canadian citizen. We find that Dell's aim - to live quietly and learn is achieved after he settles in Canada assisted by another benefactor . Throughout all of this , we cant help noting , he is the perfect observer . Dell is telling his story as a now settled sixty year old looking back on these early adventurous years . Overall this is an amazing plot with elements of rite of passage but the strength of the book is with the writing itself.
Ford is above all else a fine writer and observer of humanity. His has the ability to convey vivid word pictures and the flavour of the environment of the story - both human and natural. He achieves this in Canada as he does in his other many works including the Bascombe trilogy, however for me the narration style in this book doesnt work as well as in other works by Ford. I am not sure why- maybe it was just the tone.
On the characterisations in Canada I have no misgivings - they are observed and described to perfection especially Dell's family. I thought the voice in this the first half of the book was the clearest and I found special enjoyment in the young, kind and keen observances of the parents as they jockey around each when planning to undertake the desperate robbery.
One question that kept coming before me with my reading of Canada was about the purpose of this particular story. I dont think it is to tell us about the qualities of Canada as such - only in that it brings out the sense which Americans may have of the safety net on the continent for a country very like their own in many ways and so very close by - something like we might think of New Zealand and like which NZers might think of Australia. It is definitely about memory - perhaps a memory which is a little too good and not quite fallible enough is part of the little problem I have with the story. And possibly there is just too much adventure clouding the observations a bit. Overall I found it a reasonably good read by a superior writer (one of the very best in my view) but not as effective in conveying the essence of being American as in other works of his such as The Sportswriter, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land - these three making up the wonderful Bascombe trilogy which I strongly recommend.
I would be grateful to hear of any other views - including those which may contradict mine.
Faye
"I for Isobel" by Amy Witting
Amy Witting, 1918 - 2001, had written her beautiful little novel of Sydney about young Isobel when she, the author, was a mature woman by any standard . It was published in 1989 when she was 71 years of age. She had her very first story published in The New Yorker in 1965 when she was a 47 years of age and teaching at Cheltenham Girls High School, befriended and encouraged by fellow teacher and established writer, Thea Astley who had admired the story called 'Goodbye, Ady, Goodbye, Joe'.
Anyhow, when I for Isobel was published it was a recognised success and resulted in most of her earlier work of poetry and stories before then being re-published . Her works include the sequel Isobel on the way to the corner shop, several volumes of poetry including a collected poetical works of 1998, short story collections and two other novels.
I for Isobel is structured around five chapters which are each like perfectly crafted short stories bringing to life significant stages and awakenings in the life of Isobel. The whole novel comes together when read through as a rare insightful telling of childhood , family relationships and adolescent experiences with a positive, believable ending.
We first meet Isobel at age nine as she is pondering about and wishing to get a her birthday present (a first) from her parents in the eponymous chapter "The Birthday Present" where they are holidaying at a summer boarding house. Her mother is a jealous, sad woman in an unhappy marriage who uses her often unfair corrections of Isobel, a nine year old, to justify her own unhappy, straightened existence. Isobel's dawning awareness of this as a nine year old is resoundingly stated in this sentence towards the end of this chapter:
"There was not much to cry about, for her mother's intentions were far more violent than her blows. Her hands flapped weakly as if she were fighting against a cage of air"
This book astounds with pictorial and verbal economy in making small scenes such as this so etched, so developmental and real, you can hardly believe it. The story is told from Isobel's point of view but not in the first person. A factor which, I observe, gives a greater weight to the strong dialogue throughout the novel.
The second chapter "False idols and fireballs" tells a wonderful story about Isobel witnessing a fireball - which turned the "welling storm water rosy red" before her eyes. At the end of this chapter Isobel experiences an awareness of adult fear and subterfuge which is so different from her own - but is it?
In the evocatively entitled longer chapter 4, "Glassware and other breakable items", Isobel is starting out on her own in the world of work . She is now a school-leaver aged orphan, and being set up in a boarding house in Sydney and a typing job by a friendly-enough Aunt. The characters in the Boarding House and at the Glass Importers where she is working as a typist are very well sketched and add much colour and delight to the story. Isobel's working experiences as a translator of letters from German at the Glass Importers are often humorous - with dry, ironic observant humour being a feature of the writing in Isobel . It is in this chapter that we see Isobel find her feet a bit in the world of young adulthood. Several great scenes are set in a cafe with a group of Sydney University students who befriend her , and from whom she discovers a whole new world of poetry and literature.
The final chapter 5, entitled "I for Isobel" sees our main character come into her own via a couple of painful experiences including one obsessive , silly behaviour pattern she has set herself - in order, I suppose, to thumb her nose at society and the tough lessons life has given her. In the final sections of the story Isobel comes to a strong self realisation. I found the ending believable because my reading of Isobel's rite of passage, and her analysing of the world around and the experience she was gathering, was that she going to sort things out in her own way .
I cannot recommend this book more highly. Amy Witting brings an awesome intelligence to the telling of her tales in a prose which is spare, poetical and full of rich images. Various suburbs of Sydney feature in the story and it holds up as one of those novels which can be pointed to as 'being about Sydney'. I enjoyed that part of the book very much too - there are many good descriptions of street scenes, public transport and so on.
I for Isobel is a work to savour and bears re-reading several times. As a background note on her personality we know Amy Witting is a pseudonym and this choice, as was said in a biographical note by Yvonne Miels of Flinders University, reflects a long held promise to herself to 'never give up on consciousness' not to be unwitting but to always remain 'witting'. I also recommend for any one enjoying this book to have a quick look at some of the entries on various web sites about her.
For discussion , I would like to ask.
Did you find Isobel a convincing character?
Can you date the settings of the book? I am not sure - I thought the 50s but I havent come across a reference yet.
Do you have a favourite section or incident?
Faye Lawrence
Anyhow, when I for Isobel was published it was a recognised success and resulted in most of her earlier work of poetry and stories before then being re-published . Her works include the sequel Isobel on the way to the corner shop, several volumes of poetry including a collected poetical works of 1998, short story collections and two other novels.
I for Isobel is structured around five chapters which are each like perfectly crafted short stories bringing to life significant stages and awakenings in the life of Isobel. The whole novel comes together when read through as a rare insightful telling of childhood , family relationships and adolescent experiences with a positive, believable ending.
We first meet Isobel at age nine as she is pondering about and wishing to get a her birthday present (a first) from her parents in the eponymous chapter "The Birthday Present" where they are holidaying at a summer boarding house. Her mother is a jealous, sad woman in an unhappy marriage who uses her often unfair corrections of Isobel, a nine year old, to justify her own unhappy, straightened existence. Isobel's dawning awareness of this as a nine year old is resoundingly stated in this sentence towards the end of this chapter:
"There was not much to cry about, for her mother's intentions were far more violent than her blows. Her hands flapped weakly as if she were fighting against a cage of air"
This book astounds with pictorial and verbal economy in making small scenes such as this so etched, so developmental and real, you can hardly believe it. The story is told from Isobel's point of view but not in the first person. A factor which, I observe, gives a greater weight to the strong dialogue throughout the novel.
The second chapter "False idols and fireballs" tells a wonderful story about Isobel witnessing a fireball - which turned the "welling storm water rosy red" before her eyes. At the end of this chapter Isobel experiences an awareness of adult fear and subterfuge which is so different from her own - but is it?
In the evocatively entitled longer chapter 4, "Glassware and other breakable items", Isobel is starting out on her own in the world of work . She is now a school-leaver aged orphan, and being set up in a boarding house in Sydney and a typing job by a friendly-enough Aunt. The characters in the Boarding House and at the Glass Importers where she is working as a typist are very well sketched and add much colour and delight to the story. Isobel's working experiences as a translator of letters from German at the Glass Importers are often humorous - with dry, ironic observant humour being a feature of the writing in Isobel . It is in this chapter that we see Isobel find her feet a bit in the world of young adulthood. Several great scenes are set in a cafe with a group of Sydney University students who befriend her , and from whom she discovers a whole new world of poetry and literature.
The final chapter 5, entitled "I for Isobel" sees our main character come into her own via a couple of painful experiences including one obsessive , silly behaviour pattern she has set herself - in order, I suppose, to thumb her nose at society and the tough lessons life has given her. In the final sections of the story Isobel comes to a strong self realisation. I found the ending believable because my reading of Isobel's rite of passage, and her analysing of the world around and the experience she was gathering, was that she going to sort things out in her own way .
I cannot recommend this book more highly. Amy Witting brings an awesome intelligence to the telling of her tales in a prose which is spare, poetical and full of rich images. Various suburbs of Sydney feature in the story and it holds up as one of those novels which can be pointed to as 'being about Sydney'. I enjoyed that part of the book very much too - there are many good descriptions of street scenes, public transport and so on.
I for Isobel is a work to savour and bears re-reading several times. As a background note on her personality we know Amy Witting is a pseudonym and this choice, as was said in a biographical note by Yvonne Miels of Flinders University, reflects a long held promise to herself to 'never give up on consciousness' not to be unwitting but to always remain 'witting'. I also recommend for any one enjoying this book to have a quick look at some of the entries on various web sites about her.
For discussion , I would like to ask.
Did you find Isobel a convincing character?
Can you date the settings of the book? I am not sure - I thought the 50s but I havent come across a reference yet.
Do you have a favourite section or incident?
Faye Lawrence
The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson
A few months ago The Land of Spices by the Irish novelist Kate O'Brien was featured in this blog. This month our subject is an Australian novel which has some similarities to the Irish one. The Getting of Wisdom, published in 1910 by Henry Handel Richardson (1870-1946, real name Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson) is like the somewhat later Irish novel set in a private girls' school whose pupils largely come from privileged backgrounds. Both novels are set in a period not long before the First World War, and the main student character in both comes from a home where there are financial problems not experienced by many of the other students. (It might also be mentioned that Richardson was rather proud of her Irish descent!)
The differences are nevertheless considerable. The Irish novel has two central figures, whereas The Getting of Wisdom is very much the story of Laura, whose experiences in the novel are to a considerable extent based on Richardson's own as a pupil at Presbyterian Ladies' College Melbourne. For much of the novel Laura is the only school character who is developed to any extent , and throughout the novel, apart from a few cameos, the teachers are all minor figures, or caricatures, like the preposterously formidable 'dragon', Mrs Gurley. Both novels were unpopular with the schools that their authors had attended, but it is far easier to understand the unhappiness of PLC Melbourne. Teachers and pupils at the school almost all seem obsessively snobbish and mean-minded. Until the later chapters it would be difficult to name a sympathetic character.
Much of the book is the story of the bruising encounters between Laura's unsophisticated impulsive, high spirits, and desire to fit in, and her companions' relentless determination to exclude or ostracise here, often on the basis of evidence that her family in not well-to-do that she inadvertently provides. It is comic, because Laura's is often her own worst enemy, but it also fills the reader with a contempt for those around her who are so eager to take offence. In the later chapters of the book, following a summer in the company of her sister when she comes to feel that little though she may fit in at school, she has grown apart from her family at home, Laura does make some friends and win a measure of acceptance. She gains the friendship of the priggish 'M.P.' and her offsider 'Cupid' by cleverly exploiting M.P.'s wish to be a moral arbiter, and later becomes the chosen companion of the school's most beautiful and most privileged student, an older girl called Evelyn. Richardson makes very clear that Laura's infatuation with the older girl has a strong element of the sexual in it, but the reader may perhaps wonder at Evelyn's choosing Laura as her companion.
The title of the book is clearly ironic. The wisdom Laura learns is that of outwardly conforming, and saying what her companions expect of her. One of Richardson's achievements is that despite the autobigraphical element Laura never becomes a heroine whose inner strength and genuine moral superiority set her apart. It is quite clear that Laura objects to snobbery and bullying because she is the victim, not because she dislikes snobbery and bullying per se. The final scene, when Laura, having just walked out the school gates for the last time as a pupil, runs joyfully through a park, is somewhat ambivalent. We must wonder how free she really is.
H.G. Wells is said to have described this book as the best school story he knew. It has been in print almost continuously since 1910, and a new edition, with an introduction by Germaine Greer, is about to appear. It is a splendidly narrated book, vivid, entertaining, and convincing, and impressive in the honesty of its presentation of the flawed but ultimately rather attractive central figure.
The differences are nevertheless considerable. The Irish novel has two central figures, whereas The Getting of Wisdom is very much the story of Laura, whose experiences in the novel are to a considerable extent based on Richardson's own as a pupil at Presbyterian Ladies' College Melbourne. For much of the novel Laura is the only school character who is developed to any extent , and throughout the novel, apart from a few cameos, the teachers are all minor figures, or caricatures, like the preposterously formidable 'dragon', Mrs Gurley. Both novels were unpopular with the schools that their authors had attended, but it is far easier to understand the unhappiness of PLC Melbourne. Teachers and pupils at the school almost all seem obsessively snobbish and mean-minded. Until the later chapters it would be difficult to name a sympathetic character.
Much of the book is the story of the bruising encounters between Laura's unsophisticated impulsive, high spirits, and desire to fit in, and her companions' relentless determination to exclude or ostracise here, often on the basis of evidence that her family in not well-to-do that she inadvertently provides. It is comic, because Laura's is often her own worst enemy, but it also fills the reader with a contempt for those around her who are so eager to take offence. In the later chapters of the book, following a summer in the company of her sister when she comes to feel that little though she may fit in at school, she has grown apart from her family at home, Laura does make some friends and win a measure of acceptance. She gains the friendship of the priggish 'M.P.' and her offsider 'Cupid' by cleverly exploiting M.P.'s wish to be a moral arbiter, and later becomes the chosen companion of the school's most beautiful and most privileged student, an older girl called Evelyn. Richardson makes very clear that Laura's infatuation with the older girl has a strong element of the sexual in it, but the reader may perhaps wonder at Evelyn's choosing Laura as her companion.
The title of the book is clearly ironic. The wisdom Laura learns is that of outwardly conforming, and saying what her companions expect of her. One of Richardson's achievements is that despite the autobigraphical element Laura never becomes a heroine whose inner strength and genuine moral superiority set her apart. It is quite clear that Laura objects to snobbery and bullying because she is the victim, not because she dislikes snobbery and bullying per se. The final scene, when Laura, having just walked out the school gates for the last time as a pupil, runs joyfully through a park, is somewhat ambivalent. We must wonder how free she really is.
H.G. Wells is said to have described this book as the best school story he knew. It has been in print almost continuously since 1910, and a new edition, with an introduction by Germaine Greer, is about to appear. It is a splendidly narrated book, vivid, entertaining, and convincing, and impressive in the honesty of its presentation of the flawed but ultimately rather attractive central figure.
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