phantomtomato

The academic term is over and thus began summer reading. Probably a bit too much, to be honest; it's not as though I haven't had other responsibilities for the past month! But this was overall a really enjoyable crop of books, and I'm excited to get to talk about them.

Jeremy at Crale by Hugh Seymour Walpole

I got the tip to move ahead to this third book in the series from edwardianspinsteraunt, thank you for that! To be very honest, I read this at the beginning of April, but my other April reads got their own posts and so I have lumped this in with the May group.

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The author called out a Talbot Baines Reed book in the foreword (The Cock-House at Fellsgarth), and I tried that as well but DNF’ed around 20% through. I will likely try to return to it later, it was just… straightforwardly a boys’ school adventure, nothing particularly slashy about it. My first Talbot Baines Reed disappointment, and I’m afraid the likely trend of his remaining school novels, judging by the quick skims I gave them. Fifth Form and My Friend Smith might be the only slashy ones.

Idylls of the Queen by Phyllis Ann Karr

This was in an exchange tagset (for an exchange I ultimately didn't join), but I knew I'd seen it discussed on meme and, after Middlemarch and Henry Henry, I wanted something lighter to enjoy. I really enjoyed it! Good choice, past self.

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Persuasion by Jane Austen

I read this alongside yletylyf and at her prompting, which I'm grateful for! I've probably never read Austen before (there's something I owned in high school, but I can't recall what or if I actually read it). I'm glad for the pushing, which helped me realize both that Austen's novels are not as long as I feared, and also that they're a very clear influence on Forster, which I love. I will make an effort to read at least one more this summer, ahead of the Austen Exchange.

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Howards End by E. M. Forster

During my debate about which Forster to read next, I found an old copy of this at a local antiquarian store, and that decided it for me. (I picked up a pretty specialty printing of A Passage to India during a recent trip, so I'll say that the ordering worked out!) I didn't know much about it going in and I wonder how it would have felt if I did—this is a novel I want to revisit in a few years' time, as I expect it offers a great deal to the rereader.

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You know those years when you blink and an entire season has gone by? Here’s some things I read at some point in the second half of the year.

The Harness Room, L. P. Hartley

I like Hartley’s prose. I want to reread The Go-Between, or perhaps watch the 1971 movie. That was such a fascinating book for me because it struck me as incredible queer, but some combination of its mainstream success + the protagonist’s youth seems to have resulted in no one discussing this. (That I can find—correct me if you know something!) But Hartley was gay and it did show up in his work, most notably this last novel which is about a homosexual relationship between a teenage boy and his slightly-older servant. I wanted to read this to see how a man born in the Victorian era, a contemporary of so many other famous queer British authors who usually restricted themselves to homoerotic subtext, wrote a textually gay novel. The foreword in the edition I pirated (I bought the original printing, but that’s not an ebook) calls the prose unlovely, but acknowledges the importance and… frankly, weirdness of someone of Hartley’s generation surviving and continuing to write through and past the era which legalized homosexuality. If nothing else, I really recommend this book as a cultural artifact bridging different eras of expression.

On the plot (full spoilers)

I really loved the main character, Fergus, and his authentic-feeling experience of being a horny teen boy. His attraction to the footman, Fred, is delightful, and I enjoyed the way that they circled one another. It was a slightly more grown version of what I picked up with Leo’s interest in the older men in The Go-Between, and I think Hartley captures youthful attraction extremely well (despite being described as a prude by all of his contemporaries!).

Things not to love: the B-plot with Fergus’s father remarrying a much younger woman, especially the events leading up to the book’s conclusion, where the story introduces doubt (in Fred, in Fergus’ father and step-mother) as to whether Fergus and the step-mother are a better match. From Fergus’ p.o.v. we know this is all untrue, and he’s very gay. But it results in a silly suggestion of blackmail which is reminiscent of Maurice—I disliked it just as much in Maurice—and doesn’t truly resolve because Fergus fucking dies. This shocked me! I wasn’t expecting it at all, and I was devastated. I want a fix-it fic for poor Fergus wherein he’s able to run away with Fred, which they daydream about in the novel. Goodness! I’m such a sucker for a repressed and awkward British boy opening up to the idea of a life outside of his social class and while I didn’t expect that sort of happy ending, I thought we would at worst get separation and regrets.

On additional thing to note was the lack of a solid timeframe—this book could have taken place nearly anywhere from 1930 to 1970, which made it feel a bit dreamlike. A hot summer, a handsome older man, the privacy and eroticism of boxing in an old harness room… I loved the atmosphere.

Tokyo Bablyon, CLAMP

I hadn’t read a manga series in ages, and tbh I’d gotten a weird impression of CLAMP based on some fan chatter (that it would be gore porn), but the main ship was so well-suited to my tastes that I decided to brave it. And I’m so glad that I did! This series is beautifully-drawn and lush with detail. More than that, it’s a gorgeous time-capsule of the early 1990s in Japan, the sort of thing that you read with envy for how amazingly it captures a specific setting. Reading it feels like being there, and that’s the best thing I could say for any work.

On the plot (low spoilers)

I knew going in that there would be a twist, and so I found myself anticipating the foreshadowing and not being very surprised or devastated by the reveal. What I didn’t expect, however, was how much I would enjoy the journey—how rich the social commentary would be in this spirits-and-supernatural case of the week series. If you know me, you know that I love stories of the mundane. Fantasy is a flavor I occasionally put up with because that’s where fandom tends to be. I thought this would be more of the same: high fantasy, but it’s worthwhile for the delightful tension of Seishirou/Subaru, right? No! Actually, Subaru’s life is entirely grounded in newspaper-headline social ills, told through the stories of how specific people are living through them. He reacts not as an ultra-powerful dynastic hero (which he is, especially in the sequel series), but as one person with more kindness than time in his day. His concern for others isn’t unilaterally good; he neglects relationships with his family and friends, taking those for granted as he overextends himself to help strangers. Seishirou’s comparatively cooler approach to helping others is thus tempered by the contrast; he represents the real and earnest need for balance when trying to Do Good in the world. We can tell that these characters are heading for a crisis, but for me at least, the fact that both make sense as ways to approach life means that I have no trouble shipping them together and wanting to see how they might bring out the best in one another, despite everything.

I’ve also read piles of BL manga in an attempt to reproduce what was so great about Tokyo Babylon, but nothing matches the social commentary of the series. It feels like it was written for me.

My Friend Smith, Talbot Baines Reed
One of TBR’s other books, The Fifth Form at St. Dominic’s, holds the title for my all-time favorite boarding school story. I wondered whether Reed could do it again. The short answer is no, not quite, but this was nonetheless enjoyable and I will doubtless try more of his novels in the future.

Nattering

Reed loves a schoolboy who falls into dissolution. Drinking, gambling, debt: all show up here from our protagonist Frederick Batchelor. This is a neat inversion of the St. Dominic’s structure in that we get to see the virtuous boy only from the outside, which has the effect of making his virtuosity seem remote and unattainable. Batchelor really has to work to overcome his baser habits, and we feel the strain of that. This can get a little tiresome because Batchelor makes the same mistakes over and over—he discusses turning a new leaf perhaps three times, which is really too many times to be enjoyable. Believable! But not enjoyable. I wanted to throttle him.

On the ‘made for me’ side of things was that this book is all about class: who has it, who doesn’t, how one’s family can lose it. Smith, the virtuous friend, has a dark family secret that we only learn about halfway through: his father was a convict! He was shipped to Australia to do hard labor! And this is so truly scandalous that when it gets out it nearly costs him his job, and definitely costs him any scrap of respect from his peers (except Batchelor, who knows/worships his virtue).

Their employment is another interesting feature—this isn’t really a boarding school novel, for all that they start off in school. They leave school around 14 and begin working in a clearing house as low-level clerks, where they make some paltry sum each week. Keeping up with the slightly-more-senior clerks (boys in their late teens and early 20s, seemingly) is what drives Batchelor nearly to ruin, and the difference between a boy without family means like Batchelor and a boy with a connection to the firm’s partners (one of the antagonists) is central. I don’t have anything very intelligent to say about this class commentary in the novel, only that it was fascinating to read and the book did a nice job of showing us a range of characters in different circumstances. This doesn’t usually happen in boys’ novels, so I was happy to see it.

Smith and Batchelor are delightfully shippy. Reed gives us multiple instances of them sharing a bed, love declarations, etc. There are two sickbed experiences! Smith gives up his own bed to nurse Batchelor to health! Hell, one could argue that they adopt a son together. It’s absurd and fun. Unfortunately Reed saw fit to furnish Smith with a younger sister and she shows up in the final chapter to suggest an acceptably-heterosexual way to bind these friends as one family. Boo to that.

I purchased a nicely illustrated copy of Eric, or, Little by Little when in London last month, so that’s my next boarding-school read. I’ve read that it’s preachy. Can it be more preachy than The Hill? We’ll find out!

I finished The Fifth Form at St. Dominic’s last month and I loved it. It’s a Victorian boarding school novel and reads as I expected (think: David Blaize, cricket matches and boyish pranks and lines of construes for misbehavior), but the starring boys are much much more fallible and flawed than in Blaize. Our moral compass, Oliver Greenfield, has a terrible temper and acts out physically; our symbol of moral failure, Edward Loman, beats the shit out of Oliver’s younger brother (who is also Loman’s fag). The perspective is split pretty evenly between the two Greenfield brothers and Loman, which is interesting, though I grew a little tired of the younger brother sometimes. He’s only 10 at first. He doesn’t notice as much or provide all that lovely tense friction that we get from the elder Greenfield and Loman.

Greenfield and Loman are extremely shippy. I highlighted all of these moments while I was reading in which the boys interact, fraught with tension over maligned reputations (and all a school boy’s got is his reputation), and I would love to fill those moments in with sordid handjobs instead of pure posturing. This is a dire concept because I don’t know if I have it in me right now to rewrite a smuttier version of this novel purely for my own entertainment. Still, it haunts me. It would be so good.

My favorite detail is definitely the nicknames. The other novels of the genre that I’ve read stick to surnames and full, formal given names, but Fifth Form goes full-out on using nicknames between intimate friends. Oliver is Noll, which is adorable, and Edward is Teddy. I expired on the spot when I first read that. It is precious beyond words. And given that pet names as a symbol of vulnerability or trust is one of my weaknesses, I absolutely need to work it into something. Teddy!

This past week saw me rereading The Great Gatsby, which I remembered as a book I’d read in one sitting as a teenager. I spread it out a bit more, as goes all my reading these days, but it still went quickly. I was not prepared for how much the (era-expected) prejudices would bother me on this go. It’s not like any other 100+ year old work is absent these prejudices, but perhaps they landed harder because I’ve read this book before and managed to forget their specifics. Perhaps it’s more a reflection of my surprise at how many years it’s been since my first read.

Nonetheless, I still love the prose in this. First-person narration is a particular joy for me, and I liked that it was used to emphasize that this was a conscious retelling of events. Nick changes the order of presentation for the reader’s benefit, some events are related purely as narrative rather than more immersive action and dialogue, it really works for me. I’m also more equipped to love the specifics of Nick’s references to the American Middle West in this go round.

I don’t think Nick liked Gatsby very much. That’s a reading I’m still struggling to reconcile—and I’m trying to, I specifically want to understand the appeal of shipping them—but Nick continually insults or is unimpressed by Gatsby’s affect, and only in the briefest moments before Gatsby’s death does Nick seem to attribute anything positive to him. From where would an affection grow? I’m not sure. Perhaps that shared Midwestern heritage, if they can manage not to be trapped forever in New York.

Entries tagged with author: talbot baines reed

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