Joe Turner's Come and Gone - August Wilson

August Wilson (1945-2005)

I'm not the hugest fan of August Wilson's work. I think his plays oversimplify the issue of the African American diaspora and try to distill a comprehensive subject into issues of racism and discrimination. His characters are often one dimensional, reminiscent of the made for TV series "Roots," out of the jungle operating on primitive animalistic impulses and a moral code of survival of the fittest.

While William Dean Howells believes we all have personal responsibility for our actions, not just for our own benefit but for the foundation of society, Wilson's characters haven't quite figured out where they fit into a society that until recently bought and sold them like chattel and continues to keep them in a form of purgatory where the only responsibility they can have is to survive. Although by 1911, when this play takes place slavery is technically illegal, Joe Turner has captured Herald Loomis making him and the other black men and women he's captured work for 7 years on his plantation in order to earn their freedom.

When Loomis finally does earn his freedom 7 years later and returns to his home his wife is missing and only his small daughter remains. Loomis begins a 4 year search for his wife that brings him to a boardinghouse owned by Seth and Bertha Holly. Upon arrival, Loomis strikes the Holly's as being somewhat crazy and a little scary, but after negotiating rent he becomes one of the many boarders and joins a motley cast of characters.

We first meet Jeremy, one of the other boarders, coming back to the boardinghouse after an evening spent in the city jail. When asked how he ended up in the jail he says a couple of officers asked him what he was doing and finding out that it was payday and that he and a compatriot were planning on splitting a pint, decided to preemptively arrest him. There is a collective sigh, and Bertha says "Leave the boy alone Seth. You know they do that. Figure there's too many people out on the street they take some of them off. You know that."

So our first impression is that obviously Jeremy is just another casualty in an irrevocably flawed system. But as the play progresses and he's willing to jump into bed with the first and next attractive broad he sees, his moral aptitude comes into question and we decide that maybe he could have done something to deserve a night in the slammer. He's seems hopeful and passionate at first, but after he's wooing the second unattached woman boarder, while already having lured another woman to share his room...he definitely begins to fall under the reprobate category.

Is society responsible for the degenerative system of morals for the African American? While Howells characters are too nervous to even consider marrying a divorced woman and instead pine secretly away for the rest of their dreary lives, Wilson's characters don't even discuss marriage. Rather they discuss the difference between jumping into bed with a woman vs. "grabbing a hold of a woman."

"Now you take a fellow go out there, grab hold to a woman and think he got something 'cause she sweet and soft to the touch. All right...Touching's part of life...But when you grab hold to a woman, you got something there. You got a hold world there. You got a way of life kicking up under your hand. That woman can take and make you feel like something. I ain't talking about in the way of jumping off into bed together and rolling around with each other. Anybody can do that. When you grab hold to that woman and look at the whole thing and see what you got....why, she can take and make something out of you."

After listening to this provocative lecture, a woman enters looking for a room and Jeremy decides to skip the grabbing hold to part and get straight to the jumping into bed part.

A Modern Instance - William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells (1837-1920)

A Modern Instance was Howells first major novel, published in 1882, and beginning a prolific career that would span over 22 years.

His thesis is an exploration of causality. "The effects follow their causes. In some sort they chose misery for themselves - we make our own hell in this life and the next..."

Unlike The Rise of Silas Lapham, which jumps right into the story pulling the reader into the caverns of Lapham's inner sanctum, A Modern Instance, comparatively has a bit of a rough start. The beginning pages of description had almost a House of Seven Gables feel to it...and I have basically no idea what that book was about because I kept getting lost in rooms filled with clutter, each item needing an endless individual description.

Finally we meet Bartley Hubbard, taking some liberties with Marcia Gaylord, after both have come in from a long ride through the snowy dusk. Bartley, besides being the most loathsome character I have come across in early realist literature, is also a bit of a flirt. And when I say a bit of a flirt, I mean an unabashed, avaricious, entitled pig.

As he makes his departure, he kisses Marcia, an act I'm assuming bordered on a level of promiscuity in the 1880's. Marcia, filled with and evening of flattery and romance heads up to her room encountering her father on the stairs, who has observed the shameful performance below and asks if they are engaged. Marcia, filled with shame runs to her room to wallow in the grief only uncertainty of requited love can bring.

The next evening when Bartley makes his appearance for another "sleigh ride" Marcia quickly proposes, remedying the immediate problem and throwing herself headlong into a far greater abyss. Although seemingly requited (Although I'm sure Bartley just wanted to get into her pants) Marcia carries the weight of their love. "The spectacle of a love affair in which the woman gives more of her heart than the man gives of his is so pitiable that we are apt to attribute a kind of merit to her (umm...nope) as if it were a voluntary self-sacrifice for her to love more than her share."

I'm not sure I entirely agree with Howells on the above point, but it certainly makes for a pitiable heroine and within 2 minutes of Marcia's proposal Bartley is off flirting with Hannah Morrison,and  a new, scarier character trait of Marcia's is revealed. She is a tinder box of self-engulfing jealousy, needing only the slightest provocation to erupt into soul crippling flames. 

So our hero is a rakish lout and our heroine is a proud, jealous, equally entitled adolescent. "She's proud, and when a proud girl makes a fool of herself about a fellow, it's a matter of life and death with her. She can't help herself. She lets go of everything."

This does not bode well.

The first few hundred pages felt like being time warped back into all the things I miss most about high school. (And by miss I mean not miss.) The 4 popular guys (it was a small high school) strutting themselves off like Peafowl, flirting with anyone with two legs and certain preferred anatomy. It was somewhat sickening to watch in high school and it was pretty painful to sit through 200 pages of.

Bartely, knows he's good looking, smart and has the sense of ability and immortality only the young and semi privileged can truly know. Although he was an orphan, because of his good looks aptitude for learning, he was petted and taken care of better than if he had been raised by his parents.

Marcia is also a beauty, but her looks are somewhat diminished my the fact that she's stark raving mad.    She only has eyes for Bartley, and despite his constant abuse and endless flirtations, she manages to take on the responsibility for his actions apologizing quickly for driving him to do whatever base and reprobate thing he comes up with next.

Yet - as a realist, Howells believes we all have personal responsibility for our actions. And although Marcia eventually begins to realize the disfigured relationship her marriage has become, her self realization doesn't bring forth pity but rather a strange type of loathing. She is purposefully naive - buttressing her naivete about her so that she might continue to live in a dream. A dream where she is loved. A dream where Bartely is everything she proselytized him to be. A dream where despite disagreements, commitment is stronger than the emotions of love.

Eventually the hell they build for themselves spills into the lives of those around them. And the reader is left to ponder the ethics and morality of contemporary civilization.

The Rise of Silas Lapham - William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells (1837-1920)

Perhaps one of Howells most widely recognized novels, The Rise of Silas Lapham takes place after the Civil War when great fortunes were being made and lost in a blink of an eye. Our protagonists must face the quandary of business and moral ethics as they try to maneuver themselves into the insular moneyed class of Beacon Hill.

The Rise of Silas Lapham, published in 1885, predates Dreiser's An American Tragedy and Lewis' Arrowsmith by 40 years and retains the hope that the American dream, while being elusive does not have to result in dissolution. As an early example of American Realism, Howells is concerned with the grit and reality of everyday life. The nooks and crannies of the self made man and the tangibility of the pain and heartache that comes with living.

 Like many of his counter parts in the American Dream genre, Silas Lapham is a self made man. Through a lot of hard work, perseverance and a little luck, Lapham has created a veritable empire for his family with so much wealth they don't know what to do with it, assured that it would take multiple lifetimes to spend it all and though they spend freely, they still manage to live unpretentiously.

We meet Lapham sitting behind his desk being interviewed about his successful paint business, which he is not afraid or too modest to boast about whenever the opportunity presents itself. Through a quick narrative of his early life, we learn that although being somewhat uncouth and unable to drop the backwoods vernacular, Lapham is an honorable man, one that pursues family, honor and virtue above the importance of wealth.

He has two daughters, Irene and Penelope, both of which although raised accustomed to a certain level of luxury are dramatically removed from the nomenclature of old wealth and the customs of the wealthy. While Irene is the insipid beauty of the family, Penelope is the one with a certain level of wit and charm, always joking and more well read then the average non-cultivated person.

Being well read is obviously very important to Howells and literary jokes and references pepper the novel throughout. At one point Howells inserts what I presume to be his own opinion: "I don't suppose we who have the habit of reading, and at least a nodding acquaintance with literature, can imagine the bestial darkness of the great mass of people - even people whose hours are rich and whose linen is purple and fine." Howells asserts that "we must read or we must be barbarians." And I completely agree with him.

As the Laphams are slowly allowed to trespass into society, I found my heart in my throat, agonizing over whether they would emerge victorious or as complete and utter fools. With no other family from the American Dream genre have I found myself so attached, hoping for their success. And because they are an uncouth, backwoods family with values beyond a pecuniary measure, their wealth does not have the ability to corrupt them. They ultimately emerge the victors and in a way the spoils they win are a continued solidarity and the ability to stand firm in their moral fortitude.

The Rise of Silas Lapham has a bittersweet ending. The characters are all admirable and the reader is left with the hope that despite circumstances one can be happy when surrounded by family and given the ability to work.

How German Is It? - Walter Abish

Walter Abish (1931)

How German Is It attempts to come to terms with what it means to be German post 1945; it describes the quest a nation must face in sorting out its identity; a generation of national bastards seeking the face of their father and understanding the responsibility, even those born after the war have for their own historical context.  A Germany coming to terms with the growing threat of the Red Army and attempting to understand how the past happened in order to avoid a similar future.

Written in 1980, through dreamlike post-modern prose, Abish covers this question from many different angles. From the point of view of the Hargenaus, a once respected and admired family, whose patriarch was shot in 1944 as a traitor. Or criminal? The two Hargenaus brothers must confront their own past and discover where and how they fit into a historical context.

The older brother Helmuth is an architect living in Brumholdstein, a posh new town, built over the remains of what used to be Durst, one of Germany's many concentration camps. Now all that remains of Durst is a small abandoned train station and rusty tracks that lead in both directions to nowhere. Helmuth designs sleek modern buildings for the New Germany, they cover up a depressing history and present a new and exciting future, a chance to move beyond the confines of the past. His buildings represent the miraculous rebirth of Germany and its new sense of satisfaction and completion. Its love of clean lines and efficiency.

Helmuth has designed a house for Egon and Gisela that has made the cover of the lasted edition of Treue. They are represented as members of a flourishing German society. "And what - one may ask - could be more spontaneously joyous, more filled with expectation and promise."  Yet under the facade, these two people represent a different sort of Germany. One where the husband must define and redefine what it means to be a German man, constantly seeking his identity and his sense of worth which he assumes must come from his desirability.  After the photo shoot, he runs away with the photographer Rita, while Gisela cowers in a corner unsure of how she can keep her husband interested, seeking endlessly a sense of stability.

Rita, as a photographer, tries to capture the Germany behind the facade. She is constantly seeking out the mundane and banal - hoping that new observation of a previously unobserved moment could provide a sense of revelation. Who are we between the cracks? Where are we behind the disinfected history? She attempts to make the familiar strange and unfamiliar simply by looking at it from a new perspective, by reaching into the familiar and making the unseen seen again.

A mass grave is discovered under Brumholdstein, which could only possibly be filled with victims from the concentration camp...but is this something a new Germany can admit? Is this a past they can acknowledge happened? And while the younger generation assumes the mass grave is filled with German heroes shot down by the Russians, the older generation debates the benefits of telling them the truth. Rita, in her ceaseless quest for documentation, sneaks behind the crew removing the bodies and photographs a pile of skeletons that have been removed from the mass grave. Then a shot of a single railroad boxcar on a siding nest to an unloading platform. What is she doing? Trying to leave the viewer with a bad taste in his mouth? Or searching out a past that has generated the everyday lives they must all come to terms with.

Brumholdstein is a metaphor for the rest of the country struggling to answer the question "what is being? what is thought? What is existence?"  Everything about this city is familiar, "But then, the intent to begin with was not to design or construct a city that would strike anyone, inhabitant or visitor, as unfamiliar."  What does it mean to be intrinsically German? How does one comprehend the nature of that "German restlessness and that intrinsic German striving for order and for tranquility as well as for perfection?" What is this sense of being that at its roots cannot be divorced from the German passion for exactitude and abstraction. Is there's a universal history? Were they merely replicating a period of disaster that is simply part of the human narrative...using only a slightly more efficient and precise method?

As Helmuth manages to tear the photographs from Rita's hands and begins ripping them up he is consciously performing the role of protector, we don't have to remember the past because it does not define us. You can extract the qualities of the German people that, yes perhaps in excess have the tendency toward the barbaric, but when they are distilled in the correct formula they leave a people striving for greatness and order, able to accomplish the unimaginable. If everyone could just have a new perspective how different could everything be? How different could everything have been?

Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin

Alexander Pushkin (1799 - 1837)

Eugene Onegin is a story about the pain of only realizing you love someone after you've lost them, the disillusionment that comes with aging and the agony of "loves melting dreams."

The poem begins by way of introduction to Eugene Onegin, a privileged and consequently bored, entitled young man, too intelligent and witty for his own good. He holds himself in very high regard and has little time to waste on the normal banality of ever day life. He is well read and therefore a composite of all his favorite characters, chameleon-like and unpredictable.

He inherits his uncle's property and in so doing meets Vladimir Lensky, a young poet and dreamer and finally for Onegin a soul mate and comrade-in-arms. "Between them every topic started reflection or provoked dispute: treatise of nations long departed, and good and ill and learning's fruit."

While Onegin is bored by the predictability of life, Lensky sees the world though the eyes of a dreamer, continuously fascinated by what he beholds. In particular Olga, the daughter of a neighboring family that he has grown up with and "he had loved a love that never is know today - only a soul that raves with poetry can ever be damned to feel it." Olga is the "roundest face that you've ever set eyes on!" A pretty girl, exactly like a Van Dyck Madonna." And he is hopelessly, endlessly in love.

Olga's elder sister, the heroine of the poem, Tatyana, although lacking her sister's beauty and incapacitatingly shy, is an independent, avid reader and dreamer. Rather than role playing motherhood at an early age with dolls like the other girls, instead Tatyana "loved dawn, and waiting for the sky to blush." She reads romances in all her free time, curled up in a corner, submerged in Richardson or Rousseau.

Lensky spends his evenings dining of "jam and speeches" at Olga and Tatyana's house, he finally convinces Onegin to go along with him, only to observe that Onegin's boredom had plunged to new depths.

After the visit, the neighbors begin to gossip that Tatyana has finally found herself a man, "there was general furtive chatter and jokes and spiteful gossip ran.." much to the chagrin of Onegin, who has kept  himself purposefully aloof from Tatyana, whom he deems young, passionate and naive.

Despite the gossip and chatter, Tatyana finds herself falling hopelessly, irretrievably in love with Onegin, and despite her air of indifference her soul had been waiting for someone, and Onegin begins to embody all the heroes of her favorite romances. She has "found her dreams, her secret fire, the fruit of her heart's desire." She sees in Onegin the self-sacrificing hero with a soul of sympathy and grace.

Tatyana, after much agonizing, decides to write Onegin a letter, exposing her heart and her love, leaving her open and vulnerable...she sends it and waits for a reply. As she continues to wait...and wait, unwilling to accept rejection, she traces his name in the condensation of her bedroom window, inscribing his name over and over again in her heart.

Finally, after a few days pass, Lensky and Onegin arrive and Tatyana, overcome with dread flees to the riverside and waits for Onegin to find her and give his response. When his finds her, he begins a passive aggressive response, belittling her love and saying he loves her like a brother - but... and then wanders off to pursue his pilgrimage of boredom.

Tatyana, devastated retires to her room to hide in literature and watch the summer languidly stretch into autumn and then winter. While Onegin lives a hermetic life of solitude, sprawled in front of the hearth, reading his own books that are of course not romances but something much more serious.

Eventually, Lensky persuades Onegin to come out of hiding and be a guest at what he promises will be a small gathering of friends and family to celebrate Tatyana's name day. Onegin, after much persuasion, agrees to the invitation, only to find upon his arrival at the party that it is a much larger affair than he assumed, and annoyed and spiteful at being misled by Lensky decides to teach him a lesson by endlessly flirting with the oblivious Olga, two weeks before Olga and Lensky are to be married. As Onegin dances with Olga, the crowd is speechless, Tatyana is hurt and Lensky is overcome with jealousy. He asks Olga for the next dance, and she flippantly tells him she must turn him down, having promised all her dances to Onegin.

As the party ends and the guests depart, Tatyana makes her way to her room, heavy with rejection, she must purge all traces of love from her heart, while Lensky challenges Onegin to a duel the following morning...

I feel like I lived through this poem in high school. Onegin is the typical guy that thinks he's smarter than everyone else and consequently no matter how hard you try you can never be interesting enough, smart enough, profound enough. While you pour yourself into books to become a smarter, better read person worthy of his interest and admiration, he looks passed you and comments on how beautiful your sister is...He's the type of jerk that all young, passionate girls fall for and because they can never successfully cut him out of their heart they can never truly gain the upper hand. Although the tables turn and Tatyana does gain the upper hand...for her and the "fat general" it's an upper hand filled with regrets and sorrow and mortared together with the steadfastness and faithfulness to her fate.

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Dating from the early 18th century BC, the Gilgamesh epic is one of the oldest known pieces of writing in existence. Throughout the poem are concurrent biblical themes, such as the flood, the correspondence Enkidu and the harlot have to Adam and Eve and a token of immortality being snatched away by a snake.

The story follows the friendship between two demigods, Gilgamesh and Enkidu. While Gilgamesh is part god and part man, Enkidu is part animal and part man, he runs with the wild animals and protects them by emptying the traps the hunters set. The hunters complain to Gilgamesh who seeks out Enkidu and wrestles him until both lay panting in the grass, the bonds of friendship forged forever.

They decided to attempt to defeat Humbaba, the guardian of Cedar mountain and emerge victorious, they then kill the Bull of Heaven, incurring the wrath of the gods who decided to sentence Enkidu to death. Gilgamesh spends the rest of the poem searching for a way to bring his friend back to life and ultimately immortality.  He tracks down a survivor of the ancient Mesopotamian flood, Utnapishtim, in his quest for immortality, and Utnapishtim tells him of a plant that grows in the bottom of the sea. Gilgamesh finds the plant and in a moment of euphoria decides to bathe while he wallows in his good fortune, leaving the plant on the shore. While he is swimming a snake slithers by and eats the plant, sheds is skin and slithers off, leaving Gilgamesh to once again confront the futility of life. 

There seems to be a lot of intense character development in this poem. Gilgamesh goes from being a despotic king, demanding the first night with all virginal brides. His people hate him and he seems relatively bored. Then he meets and challenges Enkidu and in a stanza or two they are best friends and decide to choose an adventure that will almost certainly lead  to death. Gilgamesh is transformed into the archetypal friend who seeks honor and prestige in the fame that defeating Humbaba will bring him over a quiet life of tyranny. 

Ultimately this poem is about love, friendship and the inevitability of death. Love, motivates Enkidu to change from wild beast to a man and Gilgamesh through his friendship with Enkidu changes from a tyrant into a hero compelled to seek out immortality. Gilgamesh is ultimately unable to escape mortality and learns that death is inextricably woven into the fabric of creation.

The Government Inspector - Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852)

The Government Inspector is a satirical play first performed in the mid 1830's that dramatized the proclivities of rural Russians and the corrupt bureaucracies of the Russian government and minor officialdom. It was a critique of the Russian government under Tsar Nicholas I, and as such was given a polarizing reception. 

The Play opens with news that an Inspector General will be making an appearance incognito, creating havoc and chaos for the small town assembly. Quickly they begin to try and hide their vices. The Chief of Police is cautiously reproached for taking bribes.   

"There are sins and there are sins. I tell everybody openly that I take bribes, but what kind of bribes? Only wolfhound puppies. That's absolutely another matter!"

They quickly assume that in order for Government Officials to make an appearance, there must be a war brewing with Turkey. As terror grips them, they agree that the best course of action for now will be for the Postmaster to read all outgoing and incoming letters from now on. The Postmaster quickly assures them that he's been doing so for quite some time!

Finally, they discover the official has been living within their midst for the last few weeks, and all hell breaks loose and they frantically try to put things in order. Ducks must be removed from the town square, the sick patients in the hospital must be thinned out and their diseases must be inscribed in Latin above their beds, bribery must be abated for the time being and all drunks must be forced to eat onions and garlic to shroud the scent of vodka on their breath.

"An inspector has come! With a mustache? What sort of mustache?"

Meanwhile, Khlestakov's money has run out and he has been living in abject poverty, begging the kitchen for food each day, while he hides away in his room at a little decrepit inn unable to pay for his room and board. He is forced to subsist on feathery soup and roasts comparable to tree bark. 

The Chief of Police makes his appearance, both under different impressions as to the meaning of the visit. Khlestakov begins to defend his inability to pay his rent, while the Chief of Police defends the butchers, the general productivity of the town and tries to appease him in any way possible.

Khlestakov, quickly realizes their is some misunderstanding and he has been taken for a General of sorts, a role he was born to play. He immediately uses this to his advantage and openly accepts bribes of all sorts as they begin to take him on a tour of the town. 

"From the time I undertook management [at the hospital] - incredible as it may seem to you - all of the patients have been getting well like flies. A patient can hardly enter the hospital before he's cured, not so much by the medications as by the reliability of the management."

Slowly the city officials present themselves and begin to air their grievances, hoping to bribe Khlestakov into making a favorable report. Khlestakov abruptly asks each visitor for a loan of 300 rubles, which each is happy to accommodate except for a few of the poorer officials whom he graciously accepts 75 rubles from.  

As Khlestakov gets ready to depart, fearing his subterfuge may be discovered, he writes a friend of his a letter exposing his fraud and saying it might make good fodder for a story. The Postmaster intercepts the letter and quickly dashes the hopes and dreams of the townspeople who now realize they have been had by an impostor.

Only torture by ingestion of salted herring (a common practice to produce excessive thirst) would be good enough for such a scoundrel.

"You're going to eat salted herring my man!" may be my new favorite threat!

Where I'm Calling From - Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver 1938-1988

Carver's compilation of short stories are told with the detached minimalism of the Dirty Realists, a coterie of writers in the 1970 - 80's that focused on sadness and loss in the everyday lives of ordinary people. Often their characters were lower-middle class or isolated and marginalized, perpetually misunderstood, struggling with the everyday aspects of survival, they embodied Thoreau's ideal of living lives of quiet desperation.

Carver was influenced by James Salter, but unlike Salter who created a world from the everyday moments of a single family, Carver's stories are vignettes into the lives of the American diaspora.

Like his characters, Carver's career was overshadowed by alcoholism, poverty a broken marriage and cancer. His characters often struggle with profound loss and at times are comforted by lonely bakers.

 For a while Carver eked out a living as a janitor, which gave him time during off hours to work on his short stories. He resonates with the down-and-out-blue-collar character, the hardscrabble world of the working poor. While Salter's characters are upper middle class, leisurely sipping their wine and grumbling about lack of identity and the confines of marriage, Carver's characters have no time for wine sipping or a moment to stop and wonder if there could be something else. They are trapped in a world of emptiness and desperation. There are lost dreams and deluded hopes. And yet throughout his short stories are moments of connection. A man traces a cathedral with a blind man. A moment observing and ugly baby play with a peacock fills a couple with happiness and they embark on a new life of their own. A boy catches a fish that only he can appreciate while his family life slowly crumbles around him. A husband searches for meaning in a letter from his wife, slowly tearing apart the writing style and semantics, missing who she is as a person, refusing to listen or acknowledge her accusations as she quietly walks out of the house into a herd of abandoned horses.