Second Place - Rachel Cusk (Harper, 2021)
An interesting, if not always successful, mediation on art, male privilege and creativity, Second Place is one of those books that’s hard to place. It’s a commentary, a novel of ideas and it seems a little like it’s written as a commentary on a former president, maybe, in the ways it shows how men can, will and do stomp all over women in pursuit of their goals.
Told as a long series of letters from M., a woman who lives out in the countryside, to Jeffers, who we never really meet, Second Place follows one summer when M. invites her favourite painter, L., to stay at her property. See, M. has a second house - the second place of the title - where artists and writers stay in the summer for free and create. M, meanwhile, lives with her second husband Tony, and for this summer, her daughter Justine and her boyfriend Kurt. A few things ensue: a portrait of Tony, for example, but mostly the novel is told in either reflections from M or in conversations between M and L. Not the kind people usually have, but ones that feel like they’re out of a Bergman film or something. Lines like:
“ ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I don’t think I know how to be a woman. I believe that no one ever showed me.’
‘It isn’t a question of showing,’ he said, ‘it’s a question of being permitted.’ “
If I’m being honest, it wasn’t completely successful for me. It was too sparse, not enough actually happened and the dialogue seemed forced. It was interesting enough I never stopped it, but I found myself fighting the urge to skip ahead, to skim. If you’re looking for a commentary on art, gender and the like, may I recommend Jeanne Thornton’s novel Summer Fun?
The Chill - Ross Macdonald (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1963/1996)
Nobody wrote noir quite like Macdonald did. His novels are tightly paced, dark and keep readers on their toes. And, when you dive in for a second time, you find there’s a lot to chew on: ruminations on how power and money corrupt, themes from Greek tragedy and the way Macdoonald keeps Archer’s personal life on the margins; he’s a cypher for these thoughts, a way Macdonald was able to explore them via crime fiction.
The Chill is no exception, and maybe the best one of the bunch I’ve read yet. It starts with a missing bride, who runs off after talking to a stranger on her honeymoon. Soon the bodies start piling up, and the bride is found, albeit much worse for the wear. Before long, the reader is caught up in campus politics, a gangland-style murder in Chicago and a dean who lives with his controlling mother. There’s Freudian aspects to this crime, but it’s themes go all the back to Oedipus, maybe the original detective novel.
Throughout, Macdonald’s prose is spare and sharp; he keeps you on your toes throughout. It’s a long, twisted and complex mystery, but it’s payoff is well worth it, and it’s one of the best of his I’ve read yet.
Robertson Davies - Fifth Business (Penguin Classics, 1970)
An absorbing read, Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business is a remarkable novel and understandably a classic of CanLit. It follows Dunstan Ramsey, nominally a stodgy history teacher at a private school, as he narrates his memoirs on the eve of retirement.
It takes readers from the trenches of World War One to small town Canada to the sprawling growth of Toronto post-world war two, with stops in Europe and South America along the way. He cavorts with millionaires, magicians and saints, and quite maybe the devil, on these trips. It’s a remarkable read.
It’s not simply a memoir, though: it’s a thoughtful examination of religion in modern life and on the concept of sainthood- Ramsey has taken one of his small-town neighbours as a saint and follows the clues throughout the world, eventually running into a Jesuit whom he has wonderful monologues with. Indeed, Davies’ prose is at its best when he’s running wild with these monologues, letting his characters build up a head of steam as they work through their thoughts and emotions.
One guesses this book is considered a classic because it’s gotten the Penguin Classics treatment; a cynic might suggest it’s because of whom owns the rights. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle- this is a very good novel, the first of a trilogy that you can almost see Davies’ setting up as he builds to a blistering and traumatic finish, and it’s more than worthy to stack alongside the other penguins. In other words, it holds its own against, say, Bellow or Updike. Recommended.
The Metaphyical Club - Louis Menand (FSG, 2001)
An interesting, if dense, history of pragmatism and the growth of American thought as exemplified by Holmes, Pierce, James and Dewey (with lots of cameos). It’s an interesting book about the growth of the American university, and about these thinkers, who all come across as interesting (and, in the case of Pierce, not very nice) people.
The parts where they all meet together in the titular club are fascinating: this was a time before the concept of a public intellectual took hold, and the States was a fertile ground for thinkers. Universities were a new-to-America concept and there were often power struggles between the dean and the board of directors, especially when it came to teaching science and evolution.
Still, I found the book a bit of a slog at times, and it was occasionally a little over my head, assuming I was already passingly familiar with some of these people and the philosophy they’d studied to come up with their theories. But generally it held my interest and I learned a little bit about the above mentioned thinkers.
Would’ve appreciated a little more about some of the people mentioned in passing- Learned Hand in particular, since he’s made a few appearances in other books I’ve enjoyed - but overall it’s a good, occasionally compelling history and anyone with an interest in American thinkers and the rise of academia in the states will find a lot to chew on here.
Complete Stories - Jean Stafford (Library of America, 2021)
Complete Stories, the new-ish Library of America volume of Jean Stafford’s short fiction and selected non-fiction, is a good, weighty book, running some 900-plus pages (including endnotes) and collects all of her short stories for the first time. There’s previously been the Pulitzer-winning collection Collected Stories, but this one almost doubles its length, adding a lot to the canon and makes a compelling case for Stafford being one of the major American short story voices of the 1950s and 60s.
Indeed, most of the stories here came out between 1948-68, with a good two dozen in the New Yorker. They’re generally of a type: young kids discovering how the world works, people living in Germany as a student, and occasionally people finding out their imagination has gotten away with them. The best stories here - I’m thinking of “The Interior Castle” in particular - rise to the same level as her peers: Mavis Gallant, JD Salinger, John Cheever. And the duller ones aren’t bad, but seem like lesser attempts at ideas more fully explored elsewhere in this volume.
Like every volume the LOA puts out, it’s supplied with well-researched notes and everything is newly typeset, and for Stafford completists, it’ll provide a season’s worth of enjoyment. Everyone else? There’s definitely a few stories here one will enjoy, but the hefty price tag is a bit of a barrier. Definitely worth checking out from the library, or if you enjoyed Collected Stories and want to dive in a bit deeper.