Love For Books

Bonjour Tristesse: Sex, domestic darkness and isolated scenery

The long trawl through my back catalogue of classic works of fiction led me most recently to Bonjour Tristesse, the most famous novella by Francoise Sagan.

As soon as I began reading, I knew that Sagan’s style was right up my street. The story is very simple: a young woman, her father and his lover leave Paris for a summer holiday and struggle with the ups and downs of their relationships.

That sounds very domestic and unchallenging, but Sagan delivers it beautifully and in such a way that the content feels extremely important. That’s one of the richest things about classic French literature – the ideas have gravity even if the language used to present them is pure and uncomplicated.

Sagan’s work even reminds me of the work of Bataille and other authors who flirted with surrealism with varying degrees of commitment. At the same time, it exudes a similar darkness and broodiness evident in Sylvia Plath, amongst others.

This is a true classic if you like perfectly rendered prose that can be read as lightly or as profoundly as you wish and especially if you like relationship drama, confessional first person narrative and isolated scenery.

A classic and heartbreaking work from Charles Jackson

It seems that many of the books I’ve read of late have been tales of self-destructiveness and drunkenness and none more so than Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend.

This book reads like a confessional narration in spite of its third person perspective thanks to the way the author is capable of getting into his protagonist’s sensitive, chaotic and self-torturing psyche. Jackson does this with such deftness that it makes Don Birnam’s plight all the more heartbreaking.

The humour that finds its way into this squalid story also makes the whole thing more touching – partly because it adds to the realism of the subject matter and lends weight to the themes of pity and shame that drive this human tragedy.

The book is arguably about the attitude of self-destruction that comes as a consequence of being sweet, intelligent and generous, but of expecting too much of oneself and failing to deliver. It’s a truly fantastic read.

Henry Miller on calmer confessional form

Henry Miller is considered one of the most important American writers of the last century and his reputation rests largely on famous works like Tropic of Cancer and its follow-up Tropic of Capricorn.

His unrelenting, shameless and confessional style has been the subject of great controversy and praise over the years, but his novella Quiet Days in Clichy sees him on more tranquil form.

This story could never be described as a rant in the manner of the Tropics, but it nevertheless demonstrates Miller’s deftness in confessional narratives that take in the seedier aspects of the city – in particular, as in Tropic of Cancer, Paris.

The story revolves around two artists and their sordid lives in one of Paris’s less desirable districts, among whores and madmen and constantly on the breadline. This is familiar ground with Miller, but for some reason Clichy feels very different – perhaps for its calmer and more measured approach.

One of the lesser known masterpieces of William Faulkner

Although it isn’t one of his more famous novels in the league of As I Lay Dying or The Sound and the Fury, Wild Palms is nevertheless one of Faulkner’s masterpieces.

The book details two stories alongside one another – the first of a couple on the run from the real world in the name of flawed romance and the second of an institutionalised prisoner’s struggle to return to a world of familiarity after ‘escaping’ during a flood and rescuing a pregnant woman.

The narrative is less complicated than some of Faulkner’s more famous works, but it still examines life’s larger questions, including love, responsibility, humanity and what goes on in the hearts and minds of the ordinary folk in America’s Deep South.

For many, Wild Palms acts as a good introduction to Faulkner’s back catalogue if tackling them in chronological order is too daunting a task.