Reading Roundup, March 2023
Apr. 8th, 2023 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phantomtomatoI finished my smut4smut fic early this week, leaving me some time to read/watch a bit. The bedside pile has grown too tall to remain tenable, so any progress is good.
I did not finish The Loom of Youth by Alec Waugh. I was disappointed by this! It’s one of the novels I’ve had on my to-read list for a while, so I’d built up the anticipation for a slightly more critical public school novel, especially after reading The Hill with all of its blind praise. Unfortunately, Loom was written by a seventeen-year-old and feels it. The characters are underdeveloped and forgettable, the plot, if it exists, is meandering, and I just could not make myself pick it up again after hitting 50%. All of that controversy over the implication of homosexuality—I wonder, why did this cause a sensation when David Blaize, a year earlier, had not? I suppose it’s down to Blaize treating it as a sin to be overcome rather than a mundane reality of school life, but really, unless something wild happens in the second half, Loom was unimpressive either as a standalone story or a reaction to the wider genre of public school literature. I’ve got one last public school novel to try before giving the genre a break. See you in a few weeks, hopefully, to talk about Feversham’s Fag.
I did finish Maurice by E. M. Forster. I’d gotten about a quarter in, forgotten about it, and then read the remaining three-quarters in two days. It’s extremely readable! And the prose is gorgeous, there are so many clever lines to enjoy. This is one of those books with a whole mythology around it, and not purely of the “popular on tumblr” variety—when I read Christopher and His Kind last year, I got to see Isherwood wax on about Forster’s genius and the special privilege of having been shown the Maurice manuscript. But Isherwood gave me what would prove to be the most useful warning: he said something like, Maurice was good because it so clearly expressed something of Forster’s emotional truth, but it was not good compared to Forster’s other work. Which is probably typically Isherwood, he’s rude (and it’s amusing), but… yeah. He was also correct.
I think what I struggled with most in Maurice is that Maurice is not the type of character that I like. In the end note, Forster acknowledges that Maurice was specifically written as a bit of a dunce. Maurice is also awful to his sisters and mother, who seem like perfectly reasonable people—there’s no sensible justification for why he’s rude and dismissive and mean. Forster’s descriptions of how Maurice feels love, around the midpoint when he’s breaking up with his first boyfriend, almost make me like him. But that’s really just Forster’s prose, not the character himself, and Maurice doesn’t have the personality to ruminate on those feelings in a way that would endear me to him. Bah. This is a real downer part of the late-Victorian/Edwardian era novels I’ve read, unfortunately; the ideal protagonist seems to have been a sort of golden-retriever type of man who thinks relatively little but feels and acts in big, demonstrative ways. It’s just not for me.
However, also true to my experiences of the form, there’s a delightful antagonist in Clive, Maurice’s first love interest/the boyfriend behind that break-up. Clive is fantastic! His internality is precisely the sort of self-denying repression that I fall for every single time. Forster gives us so many wonderful Clive-POV chapters in which to really appreciate his perspective on the love affair, and especially on its breakdown. While Maurice is being nasty to his sister, Clive is telling himself that he’s become normal and is only attracted to women now. It is completely unbelievable, especially when we get the description of his flaccid sex life with his new wife. “They never see each other naked,” we learn, like that’s a normal way for a man attracted to his wife to behave. Clive is that type of neurotic character who lets his fear of action/commitment chase him into hiding, and each sentence drips with justifications for what seems like a deeply unsatisfying life. Yes, yes, you’re doing such a wonderful job of platonically appreciating your friend-slash-former-lover. No, burying yourself in a profession you once disdained doesn’t reek of avoidance and compensation at all. You’re doing so well, love! Keep at!
I adore Clive.
But the final leg of the novel is so occupied with him, and with Maurice getting over him, that it hampers what should be the happy second love affair between Maurice and the working-class Alec. And this specific version of class differences is not my preference at all; Alec gets the literal transcription of an accent treatment, he attempts to extort Maurice for like half of his existence on the page, and the entire start to Maurice/Alec is hokey nonsense. This also all happens in the last third of the book, while Clive is still around because Alec is Clive’s gamekeeper, and the result is a very flat romance between two fairly uninteresting characters. I appreciate that it is a happy ending for a gay couple! It’s just not a romance that I liked, so I am not moved by the happy ending.
And then of course I watched the movie adaptation of Maurice—the original cut, not the one with deleted scenes. I’m not a deleted-scenes sort of person.
The movie had nice costuming and lovely settings, but I didn’t really enjoy it (on its own, separate from the issues I raised with the story above).
Also just, like. Clive didn’t get any POV moments. We hear letters narrated by Maurice and Alec and they get some dialogue adapted from what had been internal thoughts, but Clive is confined to his dialogue lines from the book. I’m sure it was meant to make him more clearly serve as the antagonist and to downplay his romance versus Alec’s, but boo. The movie also sort of implies Maurice and Clive never had sex, when as far as I can tell that is not the intention of the novel.
I did not finish The Loom of Youth by Alec Waugh. I was disappointed by this! It’s one of the novels I’ve had on my to-read list for a while, so I’d built up the anticipation for a slightly more critical public school novel, especially after reading The Hill with all of its blind praise. Unfortunately, Loom was written by a seventeen-year-old and feels it. The characters are underdeveloped and forgettable, the plot, if it exists, is meandering, and I just could not make myself pick it up again after hitting 50%. All of that controversy over the implication of homosexuality—I wonder, why did this cause a sensation when David Blaize, a year earlier, had not? I suppose it’s down to Blaize treating it as a sin to be overcome rather than a mundane reality of school life, but really, unless something wild happens in the second half, Loom was unimpressive either as a standalone story or a reaction to the wider genre of public school literature. I’ve got one last public school novel to try before giving the genre a break. See you in a few weeks, hopefully, to talk about Feversham’s Fag.
I did finish Maurice by E. M. Forster. I’d gotten about a quarter in, forgotten about it, and then read the remaining three-quarters in two days. It’s extremely readable! And the prose is gorgeous, there are so many clever lines to enjoy. This is one of those books with a whole mythology around it, and not purely of the “popular on tumblr” variety—when I read Christopher and His Kind last year, I got to see Isherwood wax on about Forster’s genius and the special privilege of having been shown the Maurice manuscript. But Isherwood gave me what would prove to be the most useful warning: he said something like, Maurice was good because it so clearly expressed something of Forster’s emotional truth, but it was not good compared to Forster’s other work. Which is probably typically Isherwood, he’s rude (and it’s amusing), but… yeah. He was also correct.
I think what I struggled with most in Maurice is that Maurice is not the type of character that I like. In the end note, Forster acknowledges that Maurice was specifically written as a bit of a dunce. Maurice is also awful to his sisters and mother, who seem like perfectly reasonable people—there’s no sensible justification for why he’s rude and dismissive and mean. Forster’s descriptions of how Maurice feels love, around the midpoint when he’s breaking up with his first boyfriend, almost make me like him. But that’s really just Forster’s prose, not the character himself, and Maurice doesn’t have the personality to ruminate on those feelings in a way that would endear me to him. Bah. This is a real downer part of the late-Victorian/Edwardian era novels I’ve read, unfortunately; the ideal protagonist seems to have been a sort of golden-retriever type of man who thinks relatively little but feels and acts in big, demonstrative ways. It’s just not for me.
However, also true to my experiences of the form, there’s a delightful antagonist in Clive, Maurice’s first love interest/the boyfriend behind that break-up. Clive is fantastic! His internality is precisely the sort of self-denying repression that I fall for every single time. Forster gives us so many wonderful Clive-POV chapters in which to really appreciate his perspective on the love affair, and especially on its breakdown. While Maurice is being nasty to his sister, Clive is telling himself that he’s become normal and is only attracted to women now. It is completely unbelievable, especially when we get the description of his flaccid sex life with his new wife. “They never see each other naked,” we learn, like that’s a normal way for a man attracted to his wife to behave. Clive is that type of neurotic character who lets his fear of action/commitment chase him into hiding, and each sentence drips with justifications for what seems like a deeply unsatisfying life. Yes, yes, you’re doing such a wonderful job of platonically appreciating your friend-slash-former-lover. No, burying yourself in a profession you once disdained doesn’t reek of avoidance and compensation at all. You’re doing so well, love! Keep at!
I adore Clive.
But the final leg of the novel is so occupied with him, and with Maurice getting over him, that it hampers what should be the happy second love affair between Maurice and the working-class Alec. And this specific version of class differences is not my preference at all; Alec gets the literal transcription of an accent treatment, he attempts to extort Maurice for like half of his existence on the page, and the entire start to Maurice/Alec is hokey nonsense. This also all happens in the last third of the book, while Clive is still around because Alec is Clive’s gamekeeper, and the result is a very flat romance between two fairly uninteresting characters. I appreciate that it is a happy ending for a gay couple! It’s just not a romance that I liked, so I am not moved by the happy ending.
And then of course I watched the movie adaptation of Maurice—the original cut, not the one with deleted scenes. I’m not a deleted-scenes sort of person.
The movie had nice costuming and lovely settings, but I didn’t really enjoy it (on its own, separate from the issues I raised with the story above).
- The movie adds in a public indecency trial/conviction for a side character so as to explain why Clive withdrew from his relationship with Maurice, which in the book had been explained by the aforementioned “I’m normal now” assertion. I like this much less! I preferred the introspective messiness of Clive deciding for himself that he must fall out of love, because he couldn’t contemplate actually living his adult life in the rejection of social norms that he espoused as a university student. “Remember, homosexuality was illegal” is just such a heavy-handed replacement for that, imo.
- The kissing and the fighting was so stiff and awkward. Uh. I did not expect this, every social media post I’ve seen about this film mentions loving these scenes, but they felt like they were being acted for the stage and I hated it! If the camera is right there with the actors, I don’t need or want big gestures. The result felt unconvincing and took me right out. I think the only bit of affection that I bought was a look that Maurice gives Alec when they’re playing cricket, which was notably not physical contact.
Also just, like. Clive didn’t get any POV moments. We hear letters narrated by Maurice and Alec and they get some dialogue adapted from what had been internal thoughts, but Clive is confined to his dialogue lines from the book. I’m sure it was meant to make him more clearly serve as the antagonist and to downplay his romance versus Alec’s, but boo. The movie also sort of implies Maurice and Clive never had sex, when as far as I can tell that is not the intention of the novel.
no subject
Date: 2023-04-12 03:14 am (UTC)It’s really incredible how Forster can make one feel so deeply about the experience of loving and losing, all while bundling that narrative up in a character who is not compellingly engaging with these thoughts.
I have not read The Longest Journey, but I unexpectedly blew through Fevershame’s Fag tonight and so I’ll pick it up next! Weirdness noted, and if there are any specifics of the weirdness that might be a helpful warning then I’m open to hearing them. Clive-style characters are my favorite, so I will happily chase them where they appear.
I’m a huge fan of introspective, slow-paced films, and I think there’s a version of Maurice which could have done Clive’s book storyline well—but I think that adaptation would have needed to let Clive be the subject, not the object, and it’s reasonable that Merchant and Ivory put their energy into developing Maurice/Alec over that. It isn’t Clive’s story, as much as I want it to be!
Also, I’ll admit I might be bringing too modern a lens to the book discussion of Clive/Maurice (or reading the gaps as though they’re from a Renault novel). I read their final night together in bed, wherein Clive keeps his distance, as one of those fraught farewells showing that Things Have Changed and while once they might have touched or been intimate, now they were strangers. But, again, this might be more “possible to read into the novel” than “Forster’s intention.”
no subject
Date: 2023-04-12 06:53 pm (UTC)I hope you enjoy it! As for potentially helpful warnings—there is a lot of character death, and some ableism (in the context of drawing implicit parallels between physical disability and homosexuality—so the bad ideas are not necessarily endorsed, but they are dwelt upon and it's very much using the ideas of the time). Mostly what I meant by weirdness is that the story is meandering and in some ways doesn't really go anywhere and in some ways that's the point, it's kind of self-absorbed, and there are a lot of more or less obscure philosophical, literary and musical references discussed at some length. Anyway, I'll be interested to hear what you make of it!
I read their final night together in bed, wherein Clive keeps his distance, as one of those fraught farewells showing that Things Have Changed and while once they might have touched or been intimate, now they were strangers.
Yeah, I see—I had thought that Clive stuck to his ideas about Plato, but flipping through the book now there's less of that stuff in the Maurice/Clive bits than I expected, and perhaps I'm remembering the film. There are certainly gaps, and I can understand reading them like a Renault novel :D (Well, Renault's actual Ancient Greek characters who follow Socrates himself don't necessarily carry out his ideas about Platonic love, I suppose...)