| September 28, 1998 Brideshead
Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1946). I don’t know how I
avoided reading this book for so long -- or why -- but I'm so glad I finally read
it. In this story of an English family between the world wars, Waugh presents a
fascinating look at love and loss, at euphoria and disillusionment. The book's
setting -- the world of country estates, London, Oxford -- calls to mind E. M.
Forster’s Maurice, but in other ways this book is markedly different.
Not for Waugh the hopeful discovery of love and the dream of running away to something
better. Somehow, he is more pessimistic than Forster was, more aware of cultural
constraints. His work seems to reflect the mood of the time, the War in Europe, the
changing social realities of Britian in 1946.
Yet at its heart the book is lovely, a mixture of tragedy and comedy
that is both gentle and frank. The characters are memorable and intriguing: Sebastian with
his teddy bear and his narcissistic, fragile grasp on life; his sister Julia with that
same narcissism, tempered by self-awareness. Charles, confused and yearning, living for
the moments when he is called to join Sebastian and his family at Brideshead. Waugh
explores the ways people love each other and damage each other, and the ways they damage
themselves. And he examines how life continues despite human change, and how faith is born
out of ruin. Truly a remarkable book.
Darkness
Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron (1990). This book is a compelling memoir of Styron's struggle with depression,
a surprisingly intimate retelling of a painful passage in his life. He details his
own spiral down into depression, his contemplation of suicide, his treatment and eventual
hospitalization, and his recovery. For many readers, his experiences will seem
hauntingly familiar. For others, perhaps, it will help them to understand.
The book is short -- a mere 84 pages in my edition -- yet it
contains a powerful depiction of the changes depression can make in a mind and a life.
Like no other writer I have encountered, Styron captures the the hopeless
helplessness, the mental confusion and emotional paralysis that are the marks of
depression for so many of its sufferers. Yet the terrors of the subject are tempered
by Styron's humane and honest voice, his sense of humor, and his discussion of recovery.
I would recommend this book to anyone -- its thoughtful exploration of this
difficult subject is most enlightening.
The
Dreyfus Affair by Peter Lefcourt (1992). I first read this book last summer, but the close of this year’s
baseball season brought me back to it a second time. It’s a baseball love story --
the story of two men, their love of the sport, and their love for each other. The
shortstop and the second baseman of a pennant-race team fall in love and set the world of
major league baseball on its ear. This situation is complicated by the fact that the
shortstop is the clean-cut, married-with-children poster-boy for major-league baseball,
and that the two men are caught kissing on a department store surveillance tape that is
then broadcast into the living rooms of America.
Peter Lefcourt tells a sweet, comic story, lacing it together with
an incisive commentary on the nature of fame, the blurred line between public and private,
and what it means to be out in America. He’s writing about public fears and
the meaning of baseball. (And it seems somehow fitting to read the book now,
in the midst of the debates surrounding the latest and largest sex scandal to hit our
television screens.) But mostly the book is a love story, almost overwhelmingly upbeat and
optimistic. And it’s a fast read, a real page-turner; if you pick it up now, you
could have it read before the end of the World Series. |
