posted
I got back to Steinbeck on the rotation and read the "Winter of Our Discontent." I was hot off of the Wayward Bus- which I loved- when I checked out the Winter of Our Discontent. Winter is an uncommonly good novel in form, character, and execution, but it is not as full of life as the Wayward Bus. Winter concerns Ethan Allen Hawley, a man who feels the fall of his once great family. The Hawley's had once owned the entire town, but owing to some bad advise and misplaced trust, the Hawley family lost nearly everything and Ethan works as a clerk in a grocery store he used to own. Everyone he cares for, including his wife and children, voice their disappointment in him in subtle and heartbreaking ways. And indeed, Ethan is disappointed in himself for not making more of his life.
Ethan decides to rob a bank to get the start-up capital he needs to rebuild the Hawley legacy and his own dignity.
The story is carried off wonderfully, but the problem is that Hawley isn't quite a sympathetic enough character for my giving heart to empathize with all his morally suspect decisions. But Steinbeck does here what he does so well, depict the rich lives and pressures of poor people.
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"The Finishing School," by Muriel Spark is about a 28 year old almost writer- kind of like me- who is obessed with one of his 17 year old students because the student, Chris, is writing a very good novel, and is pulling it all off with a very unwriterly confidence.
Muriel Spark is a lovely short novel writer and a horrid long novel storyteller. As this is a short novel, she was in her prime.
posted
Haven't read the book, but I love the phrase! I think it is my favourite start of a play :
"Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York!"
It has a rollingly grandiloquent expression, a pun, and a whole lot of plot exposition, all in one sentence. What more could you want? It's the sort of thing that makes you realise why Shakespeare is still considered a wonderful writer.
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posted
The book is framed by Hawley's plot to rob the bank. The decision is telegraphed on the fourth page. That's not a big deal to me or Hawley because the money is insured. The crimes that surprise and force me (and Hawley) to think are the other more subtle "minor" crimes perpetrated in this novel against people.
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