books lying around #1
This is my new endeavour trying to catalogue what I’ve been reading (or have finished) recently, and also (more importantly) to jot down these pernicious ideas that keep writhing around in my head when I am trying to get to sleep; the equivalent of an “earworm”, as it were, but for literary analysis.
The two main things I have managed to wrap up this summer season have been The Neopolitan Quartet (Elena Ferrante) and The Secret History (Donna Tartt). No doubt I have been years (decades, even) late to the game, but in my “gap year” of sorts taking a break from the online literature courses I have picked up since 2024 I have been thoroughly enjoying reading something more contemporary, and getting moved by plot and character. The feeling of being swept up in prose is something that hasn’t necessarily always happened with the classics, even though the more I read the more I come to appreciate how woefully underread I am, and I think about how much more I can get out of everything I read if only — if only — I knew that reference, and I can pick up on that intertextuality which seems to be a hidden code between the lines of every good book.
The other thing worth mentioning is that I listened to The Secret History. I never thought I would get into audiobooks, but in this fresh new chapter of my early thirties as I pick up what seemed completely unimaginable for me — running — I have come to appreciate listening to books. I got through Sapiens (which was decent); and The Prisoners of Geography, although that required quite a lot of imagination because it is inherently impracticable to listen to descriptions about borders and lines drawn on a map when one does not have the map actually in front of you; but I found SPQR far too dry, and the problem of listening to hundreds of names that you cannot picture in your head (and which are unattached to physical descriptions or complete narratives, but only anecdotes about great speeches in faraway temples) is that you get lost in the weeds very quickly. Other than Romulus and Remus, and maybe a few names I will faintly think to myself, “Ah, I think I’ve seen that somewhere” if and when I come across down the line, I cannot really tell you what I got from Mary Beard’s calm drawl. Perhaps another reason it couldn’t get into my head was that the matter-of-factness of the subject simply didn’t mesh well with the huffing and jiggling that went on as I plodded my way around the Happy Valley racetrack or perhaps (on good days) the stretch of the Harbour.
So I moved onto The Secret History mostly because I remember seeing this book on tables of bookstores; dark and ominous, and frankly, not particularly enticing. I remember it as a black block with a little gold thing on the front (though I did not know what), and for the longest time I thought it was a book similar to The Secret, which I understood to be some woo-woo self-help book about taking charge of your life and manifestation — and hence not something one would assume to be readable (or enjoyable). But it did occur to me later on that Donna Tartt was the author of The Goldfinch, and so even though I also had not read that it seemed she was the sort of “in between” author who wrote thick, chunky- enough books to qualify as “literary fiction” but who was still palatable for an everyday audience. And so I decided to try The Secret History on audiobook, read by Tart herself; I have to say it was a journey. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I don’t remember falling down so much of rabbit-hole — or shall I say, Bunny-hole — for a book in a long time.
Enough about my life generally, which is very uninteresting; and into the reason why I was quite desperate to set up (for the fiftieth time) some sort of blogging space so I can write down these ideas: undeveloped, nascent, but fun for me:
Comparing The Neopolitan Quartet novels and The Secret History
The importance of place
It seems to me both books (and I will call Ferrante’s quartet of novels a collective “book”, for ease of reference) essentially make the place a secondary character in their respective stories. For Ferrante, the neighbourhood (which I understand to be in Naples) is like a beast lazily stretched in the sun, one eye half-open as it sprawls like a giant expanse, always watching and omnipresent with a throbbing ferocity. The girls’ lives are inextricably tied to the neighbourhood and all its flaws and quirks. The claustrophobia and connectedness explain why Lila, Lenu and everyone else’s lives are the way they are. The darkness of the neighbourhood is both immensely attractive — it draws people back in, as it does with Lila and even Lenu, even as they each try, in their own ways, to flap their wings against the wind; and it is also repugnant in its backward, misogynistic, violent, oppressive ways and the way it crushes spirits and souls. The characters are defined by their opposition and rebellion against the neighbourhood, and I don’t mean only Lila and Lenu, but also their dazzling supporting cast. Alfonso Carrachi fits in the beautiful shop in Chiaia and metamorphises so much he becomes an oddity when he is forced back to the neighbourhood to work alongside Lila. Nino Sarratore is properly brought to focus in Ischia (as is his father), and they exist as figures who have left the neighbourhood because of their apparent intellectualism and cultural kudos. Lenu’s ex-husband and in-laws are by definition outsiders in the neighbourhood. Pietro comes a few times (when he asks for Lenu’s hand; later on when the two girls are born, and they visit and have lunch in Elisa’s house; and presumably later on after they separate, though these occasions are not really fleshed out anymore because he has really exited Lenu’s life), and the Airotas are so proper and superior that they really form an antithesis to the humdrum of everyday Naples. This characterisation works because all of it is in juxtaposition to the neighbourhood and its crumbling buildings. We are introduced to the geography of it earlier on, with the tunnel the girls run through; the dungeon of Don Achille’s house; the cornershop with the telephone — and it then becomes everywhere in the books. I particularly like how the neighbourhood anchors the reader in the first and last books of the series. There is a nice finality to things to have Lenu return to the neighbourhood to live with Lila; for the girls to make up and have a few years of harmonious friction with each other as they pick up the slack of childcare and household management for each other; and later for the shoe to drop when Tina vanishes. Everything of note for the girls happens in the neighbourhood.
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On the other hand in The Secret History, Hampden College and its surrounding Vermont woods are fundamental to Richard Papen’s development (deterioration?) as a person. It is everything that he dreams of because it is the stark opposite to his average life in California (which I think has a touch of irony in it, because one would often think of the West Coast as a place of excitement or self-discovery especially in modern media). But I suppose it is the sort of feeling I got when I first got to Cambridge as an undergraduate: going down beautiful wide stone-slabbed sidewalks and looking up at those limestone buildings with their gothic spires and towering doors, or going to supervisions in warm cluttered rooms with overstuffed sofas. The mystique and grandeur of that setting is the perfect foil to the superficiality of a character like Richard, and indeed his co-conspirators. For one, the setting of Hampden College (I imagine) is truly beautiful. It comes with real substance and history (albeit probably not as much as Cambridge does!) — which juxtaposes with these classics students who are chasing something more illusory and fleeting; the pursuit of beauty without more, and probably (for Richard) the pursuit only of status and wealth and creature comforts, which in his world is blurred with the lives of his classmates who seem to be able to coast by with something as useless and frivolous as a classics degree and who would never have to work a day in their lives. In addition to the college itself the starkness of the Vermont countryside, with its dark woods that give rise to ecstasy and Bacchanal rites and deer-chases; and the steepness of the slopes that drop to the ravine which swallows up Bunny, populated by prowling catamounts and dense ferns — there is almost a tension in nature itself that pulls the protagonists to their downfall. After all, all sorts of things live in the woods and all good stories start amongst towering trees and bushy undergrowths. Witches and fairies for one, and presumably, Greek gods when they deign to grace humans with their presence.
The importance of setting in both books stood out to me because both authors took such care to situate the action, fleshing out details to ground the reader. I suppose that is what realism is.
Self-discovery, growth, and the power of education
Both books also follow the protagonist (Lenu, Richard) through their journeys of self-discovery and growth, which are facilitated by their pursuit of education. Granted, Lenu’s story is a lot more spread-out and the reader follows her from elementary school all the way to her retirement, tracing her steps to high school and then university and beyond against all odds, and we see Richard only for a year of his life — albeit the most tumultuous and dramatic year he is likely to experience, and one where he does not seem to do much studying at all, but at the heart of it both books are about the growth (or demise) of a character because of “education”.
I have touched on that briefly above, but I think part of Tartt’s commentary concerns the meaninglessness of academia, particularly when it is unrooted to learning that builds character or improvement of the self. For all of the Greek philosophy that there is — all the discussion about virtue (arete) and the achievement of human excellence and purpose — our classics students exhibit very little of that. All of them are deeply flawed and quite the contrary of classical models of perfection. They do not live virtuously, and do not enjoy any happiness by so living. To the contrary they are deeply miserable because of their actions, not least because they are not willing to reflect and take accountability. Richard and Charles become addicted to drugs and drink. Francis Abernathy suffers nervous breakdowns and panic attacks (putting aside the fact all of them would be addicts by today’s standards, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if only because of changing times). Henry dies for the group, for Julian, and probably for himself because he has nothing to live for; he had thought experiencing the true loss of self after going through the Bacchanal would be transcendental, but ultimately he is as human as all of us. He is still suspected by the FBI (probably because of how Henry he is, as Francis points out); he loses the most treasured group of friends/sycophants that he had (if he even cared for them, which I do believe he did, in that limited way he could); and even his mentor and inspiration Julian Morrow let him down in a way only human beings can — ah, to be Henry and to realise that Julian was, in fact, only man. The fact these young people go through such a torturous period when they are supposed to be the crème de la crème at Hampden, the hand-picked select few by the enigmatic and secluded Professor Morrow who rubbed shoulders with the literati and (perhaps) gliterrati — is that not the harshest critique about higher education one could lob? That none of these students came out of university being any better; they did not learn anything other than esoteric subjunctives and Greek grammar (which seem to be quite useless other than for communicating urgent secrets in the midst of third parties when discussing plans to cover up murder(s)), but instead get drawn to commit the worst things a human being can do: murder(s), betrayal, self-harm and suicide. Hamlet would be proud!
Lenu equally learns the vacancy of higher education. She lusts after Professor Galiani and her children when she visits their house in high school. They seem so learned, so cultured, so aspirational — but Lila (whilst of course motivated by jealousy and insecurity, and therefore prone to her worst impulses in unleashing a vicious tongue to target exactly where she knows her best friend will hurt most) hits the nail on the head when she exposes them for being empty people. That might be a touch unfair at least for the Galianis, because at least the Professor led what seemed to be a relatively meaningful existence grooming young minds and extricating from the neighbourhood bright young people like Lenu herself (and Nino), and thereby changing their lives completely; Nadia at least at some point stood for something when she took action together with Pasquale, and Armando was a doctor and later journalist — but there is also truth in the fact that many of these people ultimately never do anything. They can talk and talk and talk, but they do not improve anything with their grand ideas. Professor Galiani herself becomes withdrawn for entirely selfish reasons (because she thinks Lenu had a part in stealing Nino away from her daughter). She probably enjoys being idolised by her students, and sees in Lenu someone to groom (though quaere if there is really anything wrong with that, viz., the subjective and selfish motivations of an act existing alongside an objectively beneficial outcome). At the end they are all spectators rather than drivers of change. Even Nadia turns on Pasquale, it appers, to save her own skin. The Airotas too are hypocrites. They are entrenched in their own hierarchical superiority, and even though at first Adele Airota seems almost a perfect model for Lenu — the paragon of sophistication and knowledge, someone who is independent and brilliant, and the matriarch of the influential Airota clan, the reality is that she is deeply flawed too. She sees no problem with her son’s actions essentially suppressing Lenu and her individuality. She supports Lenu’s work only to the extent it does not jeopardise her understanding of the status quo (including the inherently sexist dynamics thereof). She is not afraid to retaliate later on when the young couple fall out — even as Pietro himself is able to reflect and improve, and become a much better partner and father; it is clear Adele is not a girl’s girl! Instead Ferrante shows us it is the less sophisticated, less intellectual bunch — people like Enzo Scanno the grocer’s son, or even Lila, whose brilliance could not be diminished even by the vagaries of life and all the blows that she was dealt (by her father, her brother, her first husband, Bruno Scavo the sausage proprietor; the metaphorical ones by life, by Nino, and so on), who push back and push forward, despite it all. They remain deeply flawed too (I cannot decide if Lila is a “good person” we are meant to like; I suspect not really), but they are made of flesh and blood, and in surviving they seem to stand for what the author suggests is what we should be striving to emulate.
Will sign off now for the time being, but will get back to this!
