Well, it’s a new year. What are you reading? I know I said I wasn’t going to write a monthly column this year, but several people have written to request a discussion about one book or another, and it’s hard to resist talking about a great book! So I’ll write a bit and ask you all to send lots of comments, and we’ll have a good conversation about each of these selections, which have all been suggested by members of the Best Books Club. Here it is, the reading list for the first half of 2003 (drum roll please):
January/February: The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
March: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
April: Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
May: Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
June: Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
July: Watership Down, Richard Adams
There are some pretty hefty volumes in this group, but to me there is nothing better than knowing that a good, long tale is waiting by my bedside at night. I only listed books for half the year to give other members an opportunity to make requests, so let me know if there is a book you want everyone to read together.
Now and then I’ll just recommend a wonderful book that doesn’t need an article to go with it. Here is one you will just love: I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. This is a delightful story about a family that rents part of a ruined castle in England, narrated by the eighteen-year-old daughter, who aspires to be a writer. Dodie Smith achieved fame as the author of 101 Dalmations, and this earlier book of hers was recently reprinted. I received it as a gift and loved it, then gave it to my nineteen-year-old daughter who sat up nights until she finished it, and have a list of about six friends I plan to send it to. Let me know what you think of it. Now, on to our first selection of the year.
The Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy was born in 1867 to upper-class British parents. He was raised in luxury, attended the finest schools, studied law and was called to the bar. Feeling rather restless after an unlucky love affair, he decided to travel instead. In 1893 he met the author Joseph Conrad on a South Sea voyage, and decided to give up the law and become a writer. After several unsuccessful attempts, he found his voice with The Man of Property, a novel based largely on his own life experiences. The story of the large, prosperous Forsyte family grew to fill three novels written from 1906 to 1921. In 1932 Forsyte was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, in the words of the committee, “for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga.“
One of the many fascinating things about this work is the subtle change in the author’s attitude toward his protagonist. Soames Forsyte is an avaricious, merciless man who epitomizes the materialistic, grasping side of society that Galsworthy despised. Soames sees everything and everyone as a possible possession or investment. His beautiful wife is his prized trophy; though she despises him, he sees only her value as an asset and cares nothing for her misery or happiness. This struggle between the possessor and the possessed, between those who live only to acquire and those who love beauty, replays itself in the lives of three generations of Forsytes. The author based the character of Soames on his cousin, whose wife actually left him and who eventually married Galsworthy. (This would account for the very sympathetic portrayal of the character of Irene’s second husband in the novel!) I was surprised to read that the pivotal scene, where Soames forces himself upon his wife and earns her undying hatred, is based upon a similar event in his wife’s first marriage.
There is a curious turn in the narrative that only adds to the novel’s greatness, in my opinion, for the villainous Soames becomes a more sympathetic character in the last two installments. Remember that there is a fifteen-year gap in time between the writing of the first novel and the second. In that time Galsworthy grew older, wiser, and like many of us, less critical of his own social group. Though he continues to indict the Forsytes for their skewed priorities, he presents them as more human and vulnerable as time marches forward and their sins are visited upon their children and grandchildren.
Galsworthy’s prose is always searingly accurate and often very funny. Here, for example, is his summation of the opening scene, where the Forsytes gather at an engagement party for June. No one approves of the intended groom, and in fact the marriage never will take place, but the Forsytes are there in “full plumage.”
“When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present; when a Forsyte died – but no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalized persons who resent encroachments on their property.” (4)
This amusing, satirical style melts into moments of great compassion when Galsworthy records the climactic moments of life: the deaths, the crucial moments of decision, the declarations of love and hate. He also has an uncanny ability to capture the voices of children, women, and the very old. Here he invites us into the thoughts of little Jolyon Forsyte (the fourth generation of that name) contemplating his beautiful mother as a boy of nine, and really seeing her for the first time, as children do at about that age. Galsworthy’s gift of restraint is evident here; there is often as much in what he doesn’t say as in what he says:
“While he was eating his jam beneath the oak tree, he noticed things about his mother that he had never seemed to see before, her cheeks for instance were creamy, there were silver threads in her dark goldy hair, her throat had no knob in it like Bella’s, and she went in and out softly. He noticed, too, some little lines running away from the corners of her eyes, and a nice darkness under them. She was ever so beautiful…This new beautifulness of his mother had a kind of particular importance, and he ate less than he had expected to.” (619)
Later authors such as Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence attacked Galsworthy for thoroughly embracing the very values he criticized in his writing. Like Dickens, Austen and Eliot, Galsworthy satirized his surroundings without rejecting them outright. Yet his prodigious talent was employed in worthwhile causes, bringing problems of social injustice to light. His play, Justice, led Winston Churchill to advance prison reform in England. The double standard of justice as applied to the rich and the poor, the evils of the First World War, and the confrontation between master and laborer all found a place in his fiction.
As we watch the lives of the Forsytes unfold, we see the pitfalls of materialism as well as its importance in the social fabric, and are forced to ask ourselves some difficult questions about how much we want and why.
The Forsyte Saga was made into a miniseries thirty years ago and helped bring Public Television into prominence. In 2002 a new adaptation of the novel was again produced as a miniseries on PBS, which has revived interest in this rich, wonderful trilogy. Read the Forsyte Saga and send me your thoughts, along with any requests or recommendations, to [email protected]“>[email protected], or visit our website at www.thebestbooksclub.com and join the discussion.
Comments from Best Books Club members:
Wish List, 2003:
>> I am interested in reviews on the following: Metamorphosis by Kafka, Dracula by Stoker
>> Cry the Beloved Country by Paton. Yellow Raft on Blue Water by Dorris. The Color of Water by McBride. Othello by Shakespeare. Judy
>> I would like to see a discussion on Moby Dick, my favorite, and Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. I would also like to get into a reading/discussion group on Britannica’s Great Books. I know, they are a little formidable. I also like poetry: Keats, Shelley, Byron, and Russia’s poets. Thanks, Dave
>> Samuel Johnson said in Boswell’s LIFE that the FABLE OF THE BEES by Bernard Mandeville “opened my views into real life very much”. I would like to make this book part of my Wish List for 2003. Ruby
>> One of the best books I have ever read is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. I would love to discuss it. Eliza
>> New member here. A few that I would like to see are: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, Watership Down by Richard Adams. Miles
>> I read this book a couple of years ago and it has become my favorite book of all times. It is Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain. Most people have never heard of it and are surprised that Joan of Arc and Mark Twain would exist in the same sentence! But it is a remarkable book. It took Mark Twain 12 years of research and 2 years of writing to produce this book. This is a historical fiction book; but I believe he has his facts straight, even if he did romanticize Joan a bit. I think this would be an interesting book to review for many reasons- First it would help to put who Joan of Arc really was and what her mission was about. Many people know she was burned at the stake, but do not know why. Joan is a wonderful female role model of faith, morality, and commitment to a higher cause. Sharon
