Update from the Halfway Point..."The Adventures of Augie March"

A big 'thank you' shout-out to those of you who confirmed my initial suspicions that Adventures would be slow going. Getting through Chapter 5 alone took me three days. Bellow has a way of hyper-describing every feature of every character and forgetting to throw in a period every now and then to break things up. It made for some long going there.

Once I got past Chapter 5, though, an amazing thing happened. The book got better. A lot better. Bellow's still not using many periods, but at least he's throwing some actual adventures into the plot rather than just serial descriptions of everyone Augie's ever met. I've actually looked forward to picking the book up the last few days, and am beginning to feel some hope that I might actually finish it.

Update...and A Cry for Help

The Adventures of Augie March is so far making me feel like I have the world's worst case of ADHD. I am completely unable to concentrate on this book--the deep, dark, non-distracting hole I needed for Lord Jim wouldn't even help me out with this one. The worst part? Saul Bellow also seems to have ADHD, because Augie March is all over the place plot-wise. Bellow will describe one character for like four pages and then that character completely disappears into the story, never to be mentioned again. Augie runs from job to job, house to house, person to person, and I can't keep anyone straight. The character names of Friedl and Kreindl alone are enough to confuse anyone!!!

Anyone who's made it through this book and has found something redeeming about it...please throw me a life preserver here!!!

#82....Angle of Repose

"There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance, said the Ellen Ward of my dream, that woman I hate and fear. I am sure she meant some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning-together from the vertical which produces the false arch. For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. Only the very lucky discover the keystone."

Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose is a beautiful, triumphant, bittersweet epic that brings together the lives of his main character, Lyman Ward, and his grandparents. Lyman is a historian, confined to a wheelchair by a bone disease and an amputated leg, living in California in the house his grandparents built. His wife has recently left him for someone else, and rather than looking towards a bleak future, or living in the painful present, Lyman chooses to delve into the past by writing a book about his famous grandmother, Susan Burling Ward. Enlisting the help of his caretaker's free-spirited daughter Shelly, he begins to go through the papers and letters his grandmother left behind to piece together her life story and the unusual relationship she had with her husband, Oliver.

Susan Burling is an Easterner, living among the wealthy literati, attending art school. Her life changes on the night she meets Oliver Ward, a quiet, gentle miner from the West. When Susan's love interest, the wealthy Thomas Hudson, marries her best friend Augusta, Susan decides to marry Oliver and move West, having little or no idea of the trials and hardships that will accompany the life of a cultured woman in the uncivilized wilds of California and Idaho. As the trusting Oliver is screwed in business again and again by unscrupulous opportunists, Susan becomes dissatisfied with her life and disappointed in her husband, and turns to her writing and drawing to support her growing family. While pining away for her past life back East, she misses out on the present and pushes those who love her away, until the one day she makes a fatal mistake and causes a tragedy that permanently damages her marriage. As he goes through Susan's papers, Lyman begins to see the parallels between the mistakes his grandparents made and his own life, and in the end, "wonders if I am man enough to be a bigger man than my grandfather."

I cannot say enough good things about this book. Having lived in the San Francisco Bay area for a few years, Stegner's descriptions of the ruggedness of the California, Colorado and Idaho landscapes are dead-on and beautiful. His depictions of marriage as either an intersection of two lives, or two lives that lean against each other but never connect, is profound. The message of forgiveness for past wrongs, never taking anything for granted, and living each day firmly in the present is one that will stay with me for a long time. I was completely brought into the story, hoping against hope that Oliver would find the security and opportunity he was repeatedly denied, and that Susan would learn to accept her situation rather than continue to resist it. Alas, I was disappointed on both fronts.

This was a beautiful story depicting the culture clash between the civilized East and the uncivilized West. Finding out that it was based on the life of a real woman, Mary Hallock Foote, made the story even more compelling. Everyone should read it.

This book also counts towards both of the reading challenges I have set for myself this year...The Chunkster Challenge and the Battle of the Prizes, American Version. Those are on the sidebar if you want to join up too.

Grade: A+

February's ML Literary Dirtbag

After much debate (and about 100 more pages of Angle of Repose) I've chosen Anna Quayne as this month's MLLD. The Death of the Heart kicks off with her whining to her friend about Portia's messy room (hello? Has she ever met any teenagers EVER?), and admitting she's read Portia's diary on the sly and doesn't like what she sees. She kind of has a thing going with Eddie, whether it's against her will or not, because she encourages her husband to hire him at his business to get him out of her hair, and at the end begs her husband NOT to fire Eddie even though he deserves it. She knows exactly the kind of guy Eddie is, yet she lets Portia hang out with him. It made me really glad that she doesn't have kids of her own, and made me hope beyond hope that Portia got the hell out of Dodge after the year was up.

I have about 25 pages left of Angle of Repose, so a review should be forthcoming. :)

February's Nominees for ML Literary Dirtbag Award

Yes, folks, it's about that time. And for the first time since I began Journeys, I am actually having to 'reach' a bit to come up with someone truly deserving of this award this month, which is a nice and welcome change after months of enduring obvious, over-the-top scumbags like Sebastian Dangerfield and Gerald Scales.

Here is what I have so far. Feel free to vote in the poll on the sidebar, or you can email me your candidates too:

1)Anna Quayne from The Death of the Heart: the prim-and-proper, cold-as-ice, sneaky diary-reading guardian of poor Portia Quayne. She probably also had something going on with Eddie. What a great role model.

2)Yvette from A Bend in the River: it sounds like she slept with anyone with a pulse. What a 'ho.

3)Augusta Hudson from Angle of Repose: the supposed best friend of Susan Ward, she is rich, uber-possessive, marries the man Susan loves, and then proceeds to hate the man Susan ultimately marries, leaving Susan constantly torn between her best friend and husband. Way to be supportive, Augusta!!! She grates on my last nerve.

Coming to Theaters....

I was shocked this morning when I went to IMDb.com and discovered that no one has ever made Angle of Repose into a movie. From what I've read (and I'm about 2/3 through the book), this is a story just BEGGING to be taken to the big screen. The scenery alone from A of R would be phenomenal.

Well I did a little more digging and it turns out Angle of Repose is in development as we speak, with Castle Rock Entertainment. Whoooo hooooo!!! No cast list or anything yet, so I was wondering from those of you who've read the book, who your ideal cast list for this one would be.

Update

You know you've been watching the Olympics for too long when curling starts to look like fun.

Angle of Repose is great so far. It's a very easy read. It became even more interesting to me when I discovered today that it is based on the life of a real woman, Mary Hallock Foote, who was a writer and illustrator like Stegner's fictional Susan Burling Ward. Like Susan, Mary was also Eastern born, well bred and very literary, who married a miner and followed him to the wilds of California and Idaho. Her articles and illustrations of her experiences were published in magazines back East; they helped people visualize the unsettled and 'uncivilized' parts of the American West.

Here is a great link to learn more about Mary Hallock Foote, her husband Arthur and their Western life, and see some of her awesome illustrations.

http://www.idahohistory.net/prospector_feb04.pdf