Commonplace Book

'...For the first few moments his strong excitement fronting the curtain, amid a great host of hearts thumping and quivering up in the smaller measures like his own, together with the predisposing belief that this was to be a night of events, stopped his consciousness that all had been thwarted; that there was nothing but plot, plot, counterplot and tangle, disunion, silly subtlety, jealousy, vanity, a direful congregation of antagonistic elements; threads all loose, tongues wagging, pressure here, pressure there, like an uncertain rage in the entrails of the undirected earth, and no master hand on the spot to fuse and point the intense distracted forces.'

from Vittoria by George Meredith (Chapter XVIII)

Commonplace Book

'...Outwardly the Italians conducted themselves with the air of ordinary heedless citizens, in whose bosoms the music set no hell-broth boiling. Patrician and plebeian, they were chiefly boys; though here and there a middle-aged workman cast a look of intelligence upon Carlo and Luciano, when these two passed along the crowd. A gloom of hoarded hatred was visible in the mass of faces, ready to spring fierily. Arms were in the city. With hatred to prompt the blow, with arms to strike, so much dishonour to avenge, we need not wonder that these youths beheld the bit of liberty in prospect magnified by their mighty obfuscating ardour, like a lantern in a fog...'

from Vittoria by George Meredith (Chapter XVII)

Commonplace Book

'...Her face was like a leaf torn from an antique volume; the hereditary features told the story of her days. The face was sallow and fireless; life had faded like a painted cloth upon the imperishable moulding. She had neither fire in her eyes nor colour on her skin. The thin close multitudinous wrinkles ran up accurately ruled from the chin to the forehead's centre, and touched faintly once or twice beyond, as you observe the ocean ripples run in threads confused to smoothness within a space of the grey horizon sky. But the chin was firm, the mouth and nose were firm, the forehead sat calmly above these shows of decay. It was a most noble face; a fortress face; strong and massive, and honourable in ruin, though stripped of every flower.'

from Vittoria by George Meredith (Chapter XVI)

Commonplace Book

'...Was it too extravagant to wonder whether these rubiginous and crumbling walls - on which the cactus's pale jade spikes and angles, the light showing flatly through them, stood set for protection like the equivalent dazzling panes of glass on an English wall - these robust but ancient towers, these turbanned arches, and still more the golden soil itself, the stones, over which the lizards darted like green flames, did not perhaps resent the imposition of a heavy and alien hand; whether the place was not, even now, African and infidel at heart; and if an inborn and clandestine hatred did not still run - just as the old religion, it was said, had persisted, hidden away under the new for several centuries - beneath the astonishing beauty of this surface?'

from The Man Who Lost Himself by Osbert Sitwell

Commonplace Book

'"...He has got your journalistic style, wherein words of six syllables form the relief to words of eight, and hardly one dares to stand by itself. They are like huge boulders across a brook. The meaning, do you see, would run of itself, but you give us these impedimenting big stones to help us over it, while we profess to understand you by implication. For my part, I own, that to me, your parliamentary, illegitimate academic, modern crocodile phraseology, which is formidable in the jaws, impenetrable on the back, can't circumvent a corner, and is enabled to enter a common understanding solely by having a special highway prepared for it, - in short, the writing in your journals is too much for me..."'

from Vittoria by George Meredith (Chapter V)

Commonplace Book

'...a gift for over-sharp sayings in any man is usually the sign that it has been forced upon him, a token of nervous exacerbation caused by constant, wilful and vituperative misunderstanding.'

from The Man Who Lost Himself by Osbert Sitwell

The Folded Leaf by William Maxwell (1945)

I've read a Maxwell back in the mists of time, but now have no recollection of it, so this was like a first discovery. The experience was an intriguing one. The thing that most distinguishes his work is its emphasis on the reader as distanced observer. This happens, though, within a framework which feels quite close to the bone. These things are perhaps contradictory, but the fact that they work is undoubtable. The best way to illustrate this is to say that Maxwell allows the reader to see what happens before knowing why it does in most cases. Moments come when one says "Ah! That's how he was feeling..." in light of such and such an eventuation. At the same time one is kept quite close to a feeling of tension in the air, or some sort of sense of joy or conflict - so much so that the book feels imbued with unspecified emotion. There is much less psychological explication. This is a fascinating technique which mirrors, of course, life itself, where we often only find out what has been happening on an emotional level after events have attained their full pitch. Reverse explication might be a good term for it. I wonder if creative writing schools teach it? I fear it may be beyond their pale. Here, Lymie Peters and Spud Latham (who feel somehow very much modelled from real life, Maxwell himself possibly being Lymie) meet at school in the 1920s and connect. Spud is just moved to Chicago from country Wisconsin, has a pretty independent mind, is a little different. But he is also a good example of an alpha male; into boxing, not obviously communicative and not that self-aware. He is given to bouts of depression and anger, going out into the streets at night to pick fights, not at all clear as to why. Lymie is also different, but because he is skinny, bad at sports, and good at schoolwork in a kind of dreamy way. These two, who both seem slightly damaged, hit it off. But they are not ostracised or too separate, and share a lot of experiences with their more 'usual' classmates. As they move through school and then on into college, we follow as they have influences on each other's families and friends, and each other, coming to a place of easy relation where Lymie is Spud's helper. But there are always some things that would be awkward - and Lymie is quietly very devoted. So when Spud needs money to join a fraternity, Lymie borrows it and gets it to him anonymously, even though it will take Spud away from the rooming house where they board together. Slowly they draw apart. A mutual friend becomes Spud's girlfriend, but maintains her close connection to Lymie, which causes some frowning tension in Spud's cloudy mind. Spud begins to feel jealousy, and their growing apart widens until Spud confides in one of their friends that he has started to "hate" Lymie. The friend, Reinhart, who has often felt that Lymie ought to get out from under Spud's influence, and under this knowledge this becomes critical, finally decides to tell Lymie what Spud has said. Lymie's reaction is a classic example of Maxwell's technique. He looks a little glassy, and shrugs it off. The next thing we find out is that Lymie has tried to commit suicide. The book ends in hospital with Lymie's slow recovery, and a distressing contretemps with his father, who is a distant man who has never really tried to connect on a deeper level with his son. Mr Peters clumsily attempts a connection; Lymie, unused to reading him in any other way than the basic, misunderstands, and hurts him profoundly. There is also a moment where Spud comes to visit him, now aware of Lymie's borrowing the money to help, and, in a singular moment of revelation, kisses him. Whether this is meant as a signification of acknowledged homosexuality, or something quite a bit less sure, I myself am not sure. It feels readable either way, and as usual we don't really know. Another element which graces this book is atmosphere. The fact that all of this uncertainty and mirrored life happens within a context of limpidly depicted houses and flats and a compellingly directed quiet vision of the everyday 20s and 30s means that we have a brilliant combination of touchable reality and ineffable human spirit. A disarmingly potent book.