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Terms of the Duel

New-Year's resolutions have a pronounced and infamous tendency to fall by the wayside by, say, the 1st of February. Perhaps, however, that is because they are resolved upon, adhered to, and discarded, by solitary individuals. Perhaps what's needed is some good old-fashioned competitive spirit.

The participants:

  1. Ilya Gandelman - desk jockey from 9-5:30, Monday thru Friday. Free time activities include, but are not limited to, writing, reading, watching tv/movies (very selective in this area!), eating Meredith's delicious food, playing with Gizmo, spending time with family and friends.
  2. Meredith Gandelman - also a desk jockey, from 9-6, Monday thru Friday. Free time activities include, but are not limited to, reading, watching tv/movies, cooking/baking for Ilya (and others), snuggling/playing with Gizmo and spending time with family and friends.

The resolutions:

  1. To read more books
  2. To watch less television
  3. To spend less money (by reading library books, and by making our way through unread volumes gathering dust on the shelves)
  4. To spend more quality time together with a shared interest

Therefore, the challenge proposed: who can read the most books in a year? On one side the wife, on the other the husband: who'll get the most volumes under her or his belt before 2015?

The rules:

  1. Books will be chosen independently. Any genre or subject is eligible.
  2. No second thoughts once starting a book. An uncompleted book is not counted, except of course as time lost. We shall have to choose carefully; and if a book seems to be disappointing, best to soldier on through to the end!
  3. A 300-page minimum. However, books briefer than 300 pages may be combined with others to count as one entry in the Duel.

Monday, February 3, 2014

The extemporaneous narrator

Pages read today: 94 for Meredith, 42 for Ilya

I have read now over 100 pages of The Good Soldier, and find it up to that point a light enough and pleasant read. It's about two couples, one English and one American, encountering each other as friendly acquaintances in Europe over a period of about a decade, and the adulterous relationship that develops between the American wife and the English husband. The narrator is the American husband, the cuckold, and the good soldier of the title seems to be the adulterer.

The cuckold is really a rather terrible, and terribly unreliable, narrator, which is, from what I recall hearing in English classes and the like, the area of Mr Ford's primary interest and concentration as a novelist. Thus far his past self, when intersecting with the tale being narrated, has been clueless and inattentive; and as his present self, as the narrator, he seems rather terminally disorganized, forgetful or unknowledgeable, and digressive. I think the most impressive thing about the novel, which otherwise seems rather slight so far, is the way the narrator actually does appear to be speaking extemporaneously about the narrative. I've already mentioned that Ford and my previous novelist, Joseph Conrad, were of sufficiently like mind to collaborate on a handful of their novels (not, apparently, the best of the lot for either writer, but still), but Lord Jim was certainly somewhat difficult to swallow as a story that Marlow just sat down and told off-the-cuff to a symposium of friends and acquaintances. And generally speaking that implausibility seems to be the rule, at least in those encounters with such techniques that I've had in my life heretofore; which I guess makes The Good Soldier exceptional on at least one (so far) count.

 More on this story as it develops.
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