"Wait. What happened to 'Catch-22'?"
Oh, it's a thing. It still exists. In fact it is still sitting on my bookshelf with the other of those 100BYSRBYD. The only reason that I'm moving on to the next book on the list is because I couldn't take the inanity anymore. I spent months trying and months avoiding it by setting parenting magazines and random flyers I received on top of it. Sure enough it kept peeking out from under the stack with an accusing glare. "FINE," I shouted and sat down with it for thirty minutes a day for about a week. At the end of those few days the book magically leapt from my hand, flew across the room and smacked into the wall.
Final Word on "Catch-22": While I'm sure that it has a place in the great works of literature I don't believe that a slot in the top 20 of the top 100 is deserved at ALL. This book is pretty much the novel equivalent of many "Palm d'Or" Winners at the Cannes film festival or, indeed, some of the "Best Film" winners at the Oscars. Often it seems that those films win not because of artistic merit but because it has something perceived as "worthy", a political message or something socially "relevant" to the time. It is in that same manner that I view this novel. It has an audience, sure. The Mary-like deification of prostitutes, the disregard and target abuse of any virtuous character that happens to come along, and the constant Post-Modern message that there is no goodness, there is no virtue, and all your institutions are crap so let's tear them down, violate innocence & goodness, and somehow society will magically hold together since we don't have any constructive ideas; it all coalesced into something I realized wasn't worthy of my time. I've ranted about Post-Modernism before and I realized that just because the fecal matter is being sold at the market doesn't mean I have to purchase it. It's a clever parlor trick devoid of any substance. /rantoff
"Rebecca" on the other hand has been quite a joy to read. I started it less than a week ago and I'm already one-third of the way through it.
WIKA (What I Know About): Essentially the only thing I knew about this novel coming into it was that if I was reading it in public, chances were someone would think I was reading a trashy romance novel as opposed to a literary romance novel. The cover looks as though it is wrapped in scarlet silk, much like rumpled bed sheets, and only the title and author's name besides. It has all the indications of being a Harlequin novel too hot to put something representative of the contents on the cover. Yes, I could have gotten a handsome looking trade paperback edition that would be less scandalous looking...but I would have paid 10$ more for the privilege. Other than that I knew nothing. I hadn't even heard of the opening line, "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" which is supposedly as famous as, "Call me Ishmael". I was ready for a surprise.
The novel begins with something you couldn't get away with in fiction these days; two chapters of tease. The author spends those two chapters making it clear that they occur long after the end of the book. It describes the emotional state of two nameless characters who are trying to move on from some unnamed tragedy that has expelled them from Manderley much like the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden.
The first thing that grabs me about this novel is the author's writing style. I'm going to say it right here and right now...I'm in love with Daphne Du Maurier. I have not "swooned" this much while reading a novel because of spot on word usage to create a mood in a long time. She is absolutely fabulous and this novel is a moment of literary lightning captured for all time.
Describing the Manderley in her dreams she writes: "Nature had come into her own again and, little by, little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers....The beeches with white, naked limbs leant close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church."
In chapter two she begins: "We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and the sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic - now mercifully stilled, thank God - might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion, as it had been before."
In describing the unnamed male companion stuck in this emotional turmoil (also from chapter two): "He will fall to smoking cigarette after cigarette, not bothering to extinguish them, and the glowing stubs will lie around on the ground like petals. He will talk quickly and eagerly about nothing at all, snatching at any subject as a panacea to pain."
Woo! Somebody fan me. I've got the vapors.
It's this combination of excellent language usage and insight into the human condition that makes a good book for me. As we've said all along, a great novel speaks to these common, universal human experiences and sheds light on them. It sets us in the direction of hope and we can glean wisdom along the way, even if it is only the comforting wisdom of, "You are not alone."
In the third chapter we are introduced to Mrs. Van Hopper, who is easily one of my favorite characters in fiction. Not my favorite in the same way Bilbo Bagins, Jane Eyre, or Hamlet is. She is more in line with a Falstaff, or Meriadoc Brandybuck. Not essential for the whole novel, but a delight as they come on and enter the stage.
Mrs. Van Hopper is a bit of a one woman paparazzi. She travels to Monte Carlo every year not to take in the sights and relax. Rather, she goes to find and ingratiate herself to the rich and famous also on vacation there.
"It seemed as though notables must be fed to her, much as invalids are spooned their jelly; and though titles were preferred by her, any face seen in a social paper served as well. Names scattered in a gossip column, authors, artists, actors and their kind, even the mediocre ones, as long as she had learnt of them in print."
The unnamed protagonist is introduced as a sort of hired companion for Mrs. Van Hopper. She was hired for ninety pounds, payable at the end of the season. She is often draw into the games Mrs. Van Hopper plays with the famous. Essentially the old woman runs a scam where she declares that she saw the individual at the wedding of her nephew, produces a picture of the happy couple on their honeymoon, and trusts the fact that famous people attend a ridiculous number of weddings they can't remember and depends on their good manners to treat her like an acquaintance they simply forgot. This nets her no end of favors and invitations to parties and lavish estates.
"There was nothing for it but to sit in my usual place beside Mrs. Van Hopper while she, like a large, complacent spider, spun her wide net of tedium about the stranger's person."
Seriously..."wide net of tedium". My goodness, I'm in love heart palpitations and all.
The following chapters contain the whirlwind romance with the much older and previously married Maxim, aided by Mrs Van Hopper catching a nasty case of influenza, and lends some foreshadowing of future difficulties and a secret buried or, more appropriately, drowned. In the end the two get unexpectedly married, have a honeymoon in Italy, and return to Maxim's home of Manderley.
The introduction to Manderley chapters are quite beautifully written and you get a genuine sense of awkwardness as the protagonist begins her life in someone else's place, and with someone else's things. How strange and otherworldly would it be to sit in a chair beside your husband knowing that its cushion had already had years forming to someone else, that the dog cuddled up to you did so because of a habit formed with someone else, that your bed, desk, bathroom items and all were previously used by another who came before you. She struggles with this throughout. Then she begins to meet people who all judge her against Rebecca, commenting on how different she is from her, wondering if she will uphold the traditions of parties and balls, etc. Everywhere Rebecca is praised and our unnamed heroine begins a slide down into a mental breakdown as she begins to compare herself to Rebecca in her own soul.
I actually look forward to this book with delight every time I sit down to read it. While I know what happens in the end (because I'm like Harry from "When Harry Met Sally") I look forward to the end. It's not a happy ending, but it is certainly in keeping with the tone of the book.
Fun Fact: Daphne Du Maurier was also the author of "Birds" which Alfred Hitchcock based his film "The Birds" on.
Pax,
W
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