Men Dislike Women by Michael Arlen (1931)

I go on fairly consistently about the under-reading of Arlen, and shall do so again here. Of course, he is an exemplar of the slick, dramatic, deco-perspectived, dashing twenties, as they are conceived in the popular imagination - he is Britain's Fitzgerald...in a way. The racing Deusenberg, the Brooks-bobbed fatal heroine with eyes that one sinks into, the top-hatted gentleman in tow, wryly self-deprecating and of impeccable coolness - could he be a cad? It's all lovely - of course it is. But these leading players are also seamed through with nerves, or a deadness because of a lost love, or a deluded vision of themselves as martyred to.....whatever. That's the first layer of ensubtlement - I'll take the blame for the invented word. Then under this again, we have philosophical drawing out, and not too hampered by the stylishness, either. Arlen is most definitely not silly. And then there are set pieces of psychology attached to the philosophy, where he manages to very concisely draw us into a state of mind, all its weighings and oppositions adding to a revelation which is familiar enough to be recognizable, and yet original enough of exposition to be a concentrated moment of joy. Here he emerges into the thirties with his first novel set anywhere other than Britain. It's the New York of the period just after the financial shock of 1929. His wish to be up-to-date is very evident: a lot of the cultural references are to things of the prior couple of years, like the Cole Porter song What is This Thing Called Love?, the just built skyscaper called the New York Central Building (now the Helmsley), the mention of the young Hemingway as the prophet of the in-crowd, and Barrymore, Chaplin and Keaton as the leading lights of film. The other change here comes with the territory. He utilizes the alteration of scene not only to discuss with some derogation American society and the American character, but also to investigate the reach of crime in NYC. The father and suitor of his wealthy American lead are crims, but in the untouchable way of the times. They're slick, never mention their nefarious activities, are 'prominent businessmen'. They have corrupt police in tow, and speak often in code, or with considerable camouflage. They too have psychological tics, little maimednesses which underscore their reactions. I hope it is needless to say that all these wounds of the mind have an origin only a decade or so back - perhaps emblematically, perhaps more directly. The action here is set off by the arrival on the Berengaria of a young Anglophile Frenchman, Andre Saint-Cloud, along with a Paris-based English friend with whom he has journeyed, Sheila Hepburn. Sheila has had many lovers, and has a reputation in Europe. She is the kind of woman most men fall for pretty well immediately, so has had lots of opportunities. The story eventually revolves around Sheila falling for one of the wealthy businessmen in a way she hasn't before, and he for her. Andre is early enmeshed with a young Long Island heiress (of the aforesaid less than squeaky prominence), Marilyn Fox, who is hopelessly in love with Sheila's conquest. It all becomes desperately tangled, not only of direct emotions, but of self-delusions, undercurrent urges, workarounds of delicate sensibilities. In amongst all this are the egos of the criminal types, playing by sideways allusion, under the surface. And then through it all also are pedestalled ideals, destroyed illusions - the territory of dreams and their danger. The fact that Arlen can marshal all this into a muster which is stripped, elegant and poetic is a tribute to the man. It will be interesting to see what he does in his next steps, as I believe he begins the move away from this home territory, and into crime more pointedly, and to the dystopian. Should be thought-provoking.

Commonplace Book

'I said: "Well, it's scarcely my place to teach a laundryman anything, but how about this? Chastity isn't everything, MacRae. And you've got confounded impudence to insist on it. Galahads like you put such a high value on your respect for women that a poor mortal woman has to be a liar to win you. What business is it of yours that Sheila has had lovers? Do you think an ordinary normal woman of thirty-five is going to live in a stained-glass window because she's one day going to meet a man mean enough to want 'all' of her? You are so selfish, MacRae, that you make me sick."'

from Men Dislike Women by Michael Arlen (Chapter XIX)

The Bible in Spain by George Borrow (1842)

I typified Borrow on summing up his first book as a 'Baby Byron'. He seemed somehow to have the quality of braggadocio, and continent-traversing vigour, which lent that mood. If anything, that feeling has intensified with this book. But the issue of where his heart is has now to take up some of the story. Where Byron was a delighted debunker of convention and flab, Borrow was not. Or rather, Borrow expends his Byronic energy on chasing down evil Papism and 'superstition', while he undertakes the main task recorded here - spreading the good word via selling copies of a Spanish translation of the New Testament. The Catholic system regarded the Bible as a priestly book, which needed the interpretation of the clergy to have its 'true' intentions made clear. Thus the laity were not allowed access, and copies of it were banned. The idea of making a translation into their own language, in order to popularise it even further, was tantamount to sacrilege. To Borrow's 'enlightened' Protestantism, of course, this was not to be countenanced, and his warrior missionary-spirit was thoroughly engaged. He entered Spain in 1837 under the auspices of the Bible Society with an edition, the aim to spread it far and wide. The country he encountered was in a parlous state, riven with vying factions according to whom one supported as monarch, and with national governments and local regimes coming and going with extraordinary regularity. The atmosphere of civil war obtained. So, dangerous political quagmire, religious maelstrom invited - what could go wrong? And much does; the main part of this book is the story of shipments of New Testaments being quarantined through the actions of clergy on petty officials, traipsing through all sorts of country with retainers ranging from the saintly to the satanic, discussion of spiritual and temporal architecture, of nationality through language and custom. But there's no way of avoiding the tone of the great majority of Borrow's extemporizing (it often has that quality): it's jingoistic, prejudiced, and nakedly self-inflating. Races or regionalities are 'known' to have certain negative qualities, both physical and spiritual; these are reflected in their dirty homes, dull minds, evil propensities; the English, exemplified in their soldiers, are somehow all apple-cheeked, beautiful young bucks who couldn't be more admirable, et cetera ad infinitum. It's stupefyingly grim, and belies his superior tone all too readily. And it was 'par for the course' at the time, undoubtedly - it's not special to Borrow. This drabness is counterbalanced to a degree by a modicum of colour in relating adventures battling banditti, rangy discussions with vociferous hotel-keepers, exotic locales illustrated, and some interesting background information on language and customs tucked amongst all the bigotry. The strange mixture in him of warrior evangelist and attenuated mentality is quite a bilious concoction. That this is housed in an unvarnished braggart pretty well does it in.

Commonplace Book

'"I've read," I said recklessly, "that the future of American civilization is in the hands of the mothers. Do you think that is true?"

He said: "They are the best influence we have."

I could see that he believed it and that it made him happy to believe it. It consoled him and it gratified him and it exalted him and it humbled him to believe it. He felt better for believing it. Well, good luck to him. To me it seemed as fat-headed a generalisation as saying that the future of American civilization depended on the growth of banana-eating. But maybe it does. One needs to be a little light in the head to feel at home in this world. So maybe it is the light-headed generalisations that are the truest ones.'

from Men Dislike Women by Michael Arlen (Chapter VIII)

Commonplace Book

'...The fact that I could knock spots off most of her friends at golf and tennis surprised, delighted and encouraged Isabella. She considered this not as a sign of a misspent youth but as a Good Sign. This Good Sign illusion is peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon peoples. If a Frenchman is a world's champion at tennis, as even Frenchmen sometimes are, his compatriots are delighted but are not therefore convinced that he wears wings beneath his tennis shirt. In England and America it is taken for granted that a man whose eye for a ball commands respect must necessarily have more Good in him than the other fellow. Why? But this illusion persists in face of the fact that there is a great deal more humbug, conceit, caddishness and corruption among the well-known sportsmen of the world than among the politicians, whom it is convenient and human to blame for everything.'

from Men Dislike Women by Michael Arlen (Chapter V)

The Far Horizon by Lucas Malet (1906)

The aspects which most mark this one out are in what it's about. The depiction of a male-female friendship, a stumbled-upon one between a cultured retired clerk and a 'resting' young actress, is way off piste in terms of the expected. And the clerk also goes through a religious re-discovery in the midst of it, which seems significant, as it's not a subject Malet has touched upon hitherto. London is presented as the eternal and dirty 'great mother', forming a background to the life of Dominic Iglesias, the clerk, in his little world of a rooming house in a semi-genteel, but slightly grubby, corner of the city. There are various other lodgers, and a landlady and her female best friend, who somehow prefigure 1930s movie-depictions for me; a domain of jokey messing about in a couple of the younger ones, and the dregs of unsatisfied, unfulfilled lives working out tragically in others. Dominic is seen as quite lordly and cool and elegant and successful by comparison, in the way that defined the gentlemanly in that period, even if he has never risen beyond his lowly station. He has a long-established friend, in another house which surrounds Trimmer's Green, whom he has known since his schooldays, but who is lower middle class and looks up to him. The friend, George Lovegrove, lives with his wife Rhoda under the permanent shadowing threat of visits from his sister, Serena. Serena Lovegrove is most conspicuously intended as comic relief. She's thin, nervous, obstinate, class-obsessed, and terribly, terribly mistaken in all the things about which she furiously and waspishly expatiates. Early on, Dominic forms a centre of confusion, as both Serena and Dominic's landlady are under the impression that this somewhat romantic elegant older man might have intentions as far as they are concerned. He is blissfully unaware of their misreadings, the bitchy sessions around Rhoda Lovegrove's tea-table that have veiledly addressed the issue in his absence, and the resulting social distancing and snobbish cooled relations. Dominic's obliviousness can largely be put down to the eruption into his private life of young Poppy St John, real name Poppy Smith. She is an actress, has some less cultured inflections which betray her lower class origins, but is a bit of an original. They meet in a park over her two little snappish dogs, and something clicks between them, despite the disparity of age. She is beautiful in a painted way, and often wears striking clothes. Dominic looks beyond this in his usual enlightened fashion, and sees the person of originality and heart beneath the paintwork and chattels. It becomes clear that she's married and has left her husband, who was cruel to her. It is hinted that she may have 'gentlemen sponsors' who see that she doesn't go without. Despite his reservations about these things, Dominic is fascinated by her, and indeed she by him. She sees in him someone who doesn't operate by the venal standards she has been exposed to, and he forms in her mind a separate place of respect and peace. The revelation that one of the other lodgers in Dominic's rooming house is in fact her husband comes much later, through a tortured process of hints and reverses in the fortunes of their growing, but hesitance-filled relationship. The husband, De Courcy Smith, is a wreck of a man, totally convinced of his own brilliance as a playwright, and utterly frustrated by the world's seeming indifference to it. In the procession of his miseries he has become embittered to the point of paranoid mania. Drinking a lot, savaging viciously even those who may try to help, becoming sly and unprincipled in his devious schemes of furtherment, and in his endless twisting of events to retain his victimhood, he has something of the feel of the addict about him. Dominic has promised financial assistance to him for one last push to get a play off the ground, and has to deal with Smith's insinuations about he and Poppy's relationship and a clumsy attempt at blackmail. Malet's construction of this character had the potential to be a brilliant portrayal of the grotesque misery of the artist unfulfilled, but sadly misses that in pursuing a lesser trajectory. Dominic's change of life to one of retirement and all the stresses of not only that, but what is happening with Poppy, as well as presentiments of oncoming age and mortality, cause in him a piercing self-reflection which results in a re-embracing of his revolutionary Spanish parents' derided religion. No idea if Malet was herself a Catholic convert, but it seems likely from the tenor of her treatment here. This ends with Dominic having left his Trimmer's Green rooming house and returned to the old family home in a quiet street nearby, which happened to be empty. Poppy leaves behind several of her less salubrious connections and returns triumphantly to the stage. De Courcy Smith suicides in abject grief after the play which Dominic has partly financed is laughed off the stage. After having returned to work at the particular request of his old pompous boss, in order to save the company from financial ruin brought on by the pillaging of the boss' wastrel son, Dominic is worn out. His success at that task has come at the expense of much vital energy. The last chapter details his peaceful acceptance of the coming end within the ambit of his newly discovered religion, a last tender meeting with Poppy before she goes off to give her most emotionally resounding performance, and her rushed return to find him dead. Their ambivalent relationship has been brought forward to the point where it is acknowledged that he loves her, but has never included any of the usual trappings of romance. In its pursuit of this subtle picturing, this is an intriguingly different novel. Underlying that depiction is Malet's usual conservative lineation. A good example of what an Edwardian novel can do when it ventures into less obvious climes.

Commonplace Book

'Her eyes held her until the whole reflection swam and faded but for the little universe of her iris. It had been this way sometimes as a little girl; she watched her face until it was neither her face nor another face, but Face, and she had said, neither quite believing it nor caring, "That is me. That is me." This is now, Millie thought, but her face faded around the fulcrum of her eyes, and she seemed to know everything that she was yet to learn; she seemed to see her life laid out in the foreknown pattern of a life, through which she must proceed, attached by the second-hand of days to the flyspeck of herself.'

from Descend Again by Janet Burroway (Chapter XVI)