A Word About Tennyson

Nice beard, Mr. Tennyson

I’ve mentioned Alfred, Lord Tennyson here, here and here. So I thought I’d write a little bit about the man on his birthday—he was born on August 6, 1809. My favorite Tennyson poem (and one of my favorite poems, period) is “Ulysses.” Tennyson wrote it after the death of his best friend, Arthur Hallam. To me, this poem about getting that feeling that the best days are behind you, but pushing forward and realizing that good times can still be had. “Though much is taken, much abides,” he writes… I reread this poem quite a bit.

In grad school, I took a Victorian poetry class that I thought would be incredibly dull but in the end I really liked. We spent a lot of time on Tennyson. Actually, we spent a lot of time discussing his really long poem In Memoriam, which is also about the death of Tennyson’s BFF. And when I say “a lot of time,” I mean we analyzed EVERY stanza of that incredibly long poem. I’ll admit that somewhere along the way I completely lost interest in In Memoriam, and to this day, I have never read the whole thing. But I love the opening lines:
I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.

This, to me, means growing up and maturing—evolving, really. Oh, I can’t forget about “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” The poem is spectacular, but the story behind it is even more intriguing. I think Tennyson is like Shakespeare, in that that a lot of people are familiar with certain lines and passages of his poetry. For example, “’Tis better to have loved and lost/ Than never to have loved at all” (from, you guessed it, In Memoriam). And: “Theirs not to make reply, /Theirs not to reason why, /Theirs but to do and die” (from “The Charge of the Light Brigade”). He was such an amazing poet. Remember, dear readers: “Tis not too late to seek a newer world” (that one’s from “Ulysses”).

The Age of Innocence

Fun bookmark!

Author: Edith Wharton

Category: I first read this about 10 years ago, and it ignited my utter love of and complete devotion to Edith Wharton.

My thoughts: It’s such a treat to read this book again! Edith Wharton won a very well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for writing this, and it’s easy to see why. This book is an absolute gem—a great story told by a master.

The main character of The Age of Innocence is Newland Archer, a product of upper-class late-nineteenth-century New York society. He is engaged to another product of this society, May Welland (Winona Ryder played May in the movie version of The Age of Innocence, and I can’t help but picture her as I read the book, even though May has blonde hair in the novel). However, their little world is disrupted by the arrival of Countess Olenska (what a great name), May’s cousin, who decamped to America to escape an abusive husband in Europe. Newland is at first sort of irritated by her presence, but soon becomes intrigued by her. Because she lived abroad most of her life, Ellen Olenska is different in ways that intrigue Archer. For Ellen, I think, Archer represents stability—which she never had during her nomadic upbringing or in her marriage. They fall for each other—but under some very impossible circumstances. Of course, Newland and Ellen are living at a time when divorce is a gigantic no-no. The whole of society seems to be forcing them apart.

I like how Edith Wharton depicts the slow burn of attraction and love that occurs between Newland and Ellen. The two only kiss a couple of times, but each encounter between them is quietly erotic. The Age of Innocence is mainly told from Newland’s point of view, but the novel, I think, is really about the women. Ellen Olenska and May Welland are very intriguing characters. May has the appearance of a placid milquetoast. She’s called childlike several times in the novel, but Wharton also compares her to Diana quite a few times. Toward the end of the book, a part of May’s personality is shown that suddenly renders her more complicated than her image suggests. Ellen Olenksa, for her part, seems like she’d be fun to hang out with. She is smart, loyal, and possesses a very hard-earned wisdom. She is sort like a tougher version of Isabel Archer. And then there’s Granny Mingott, May and Ellen’s venerable old grandmother who says and does the things that only older people can say and do—and get away with.

Another interesting female character is Medora Manson, Ellen and May’s weird aunt, who, if she existed now, would be some sort of New Age former hippie. I love Edith Wharton’s description of her outfit when Newland meets her: “This lady, who was long, lean and loosely put together, was clad in raiment intricately looped and fringed, with plaids and stripes and bands of plain color disposed in a design to which the clue seemed to missing.” Ha! This made me wonder how Edith Wharton would describe the outfits of hipsters.

I never noticed until now how literary The Age of Innocence is. Wharton mentions poetry by Tennyson (yay!), Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It warmed my little English major heart! I got the urge to dig out my Victorian poetry book from grad school and reread “The Lotus Eaters” and “How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix.” I have to say that although I love Tennyson, I’m not a big fan of “The Lotus Eaters” (neither is May Welland).

I had forgotten how melancholy the last chapter of this novel is. It has a wistful, almost sad tone, but is not maudlin. The last chapter highlights an element that has been prominent character in the entire novel—change. The novel starts in the 1870s and ends and ends about a quarter of a century later. During this time, the elements of change shift the strict mores of New York society, the face of New York itself, and the world outside the insular community in which the characters live.

Great passage: There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe.

Up next: The Shooting Party

A Hope in the Unseen

There's a book in my lap!

Author: Ron Suskind

Category: I first heard about this book two years ago. I filed it away in my mental “to read” list. I recently came across it again, and this time I actually decided to read it.

 My thoughts: This is a wonderful and inspiring book! A Hope in the Unseen is the story of Cedric Jennings, a star student at Washington, D.C.’s troubled Ballou High School. Being the star student makes Cedric a target, and he is pretty much a loner there. Also, Cedric’s father has been locked up for armed robbery and drug dealing for most of Cedric’s life. Cedric and his mother live in a rough neighborhood where drug dealers hang out on every corner. Before his senior year, Cedric participates in a summer program at M.I.T. Then, he is accepted into Brown University. But his journey does not end there. At Brown, he has to negotiate relationships with people who come from very different backgrounds than him, and grapple with knowledge that others have long been exposed to (Cedric had never heard of Ellis Island before he went to Brown). But Cedric, though flawed, is not only a fighter—he’s a survivor.

 The book exposes issues of race and class in the Ivy Leagues, and how lower-income minorities being accepted into and enrolling in Ivy League schools can be something of a double-edged sword. It’s a big victory, for sure, but there are some intangible roadblocks that these students have to overcome in addition to dealing with being away from home and handling with a rigorous courseload. So, Suskind mentions, the dropout rate among minorities is high (I don’t know if this has changed in the 14 years that this book has been published). Cedric absorbs all of this and fights against it.

 Although Cedric makes you want to root for him, sometimes his behavior is frustrating. He had to be a loner to survive his rough-and-tumble high school, but he continues his behavior of solitude at Brown, where people clearly want to get to know him. However, he manages to make a friend, Zayd Dohrn (whose parents are none other than Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, former members of the Weather Underground). Like I said, Cedric is a fighter, which is very admirable. He’s powered by faith, hustle, an iron will…and more than a little stubbornness. Cedric reminded me of Francie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn—she was also a tough, impoverished kid who didn’t let obstacles defeat her (yes, I know that Francie is a fictional character). I’m glad that the story did not end with Cedric’s acceptance to Brown, as if the acceptance itself is a happy ending. It’s important to see the highs and lows of Cedric’s Brown experience.

 A couple of interesting things: Cedric goes to Brown in the fall of 1995, and there’s such a sense of that time in this book. There’s mention of SWV (who are making a comeback!), Smashing Pumpkins, the Million Man March, Jerry Garcia’s death, and the O.J. Simpson verdict. Also, Cedric discusses the Notorious B.I.G. with one of his fellow students, and I recalled, with a slight jolt, that Biggie was very much alive at this point. Also, before the first chapter, Suskind includes a quote from Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” As I’ve mentioned before, I love a good Tennyson allusion (or, in this case, a direct quote). So after seeing that, I knew I’d like this book. Speaking of “Ulysses,” the last line of the poem is “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” This, it seems, is Cedric Jennings’s mission.

 Great passage: He still hears the echo from rutted Southeast Washington and presses through gusts of thankfulness and survivor’s guilt to figure out why he escaped when so many—who are so much like him—did not. As he searches and learns more in classes and discussions about the country’s immigrant past, the phrase “a hope in the unseen” continues to resonate.  

 Up next: Since Cedric reminded me of Francie Nolan, I’m rereading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

More waiting-room reading

Category: This is a bit lengthy. I first read this book in 12th grade AP English. See, our teacher assigned my class this book after we had taken the AP exam. We expected to basically do nothing in AP English after the exam (because part of the point of the class was getting ready for the exam). So we were not at all enthused at being assigned a book after the exam was over and during our final weeks of high school. Most of us changed our minds and came to really love the book once we began to read it.

Fast forward to earlier this year. Where I work, we have interns from a nearby high school. One day, I saw that one of our interns was reading Things Fall Apart, which made me want to reread it.

My thoughts: This is a good novel, but I didn’t like it as much on the second reading, to be honest. Maybe that is because the first reading was one of my first introductions to the African experience of European missionaries and colonization, and that had a deep effect on me at the time. Although I remember the Rwandan genocide in 1994 (which happened when I was in 7th grade), I never realized that it was linked to after-effects of colonization until much later.

The main character of Things Fall Apart is Okonkwo, who is well respected in his Ibo village, Umuofia. After an accident results in tragedy, he’s banished from his village for seven years. During this time, he hears about and is personally affected by European missionaries who have come to set up shop. Much to his chagrin, his own son becomes a convert. Upon his return to the Umuofia, Okonkowo finds things have greatly changed, because of the missionaries and the forms of government they brought with them. And he does not like it one bit.

Chinua Achebe, the author, was born in Nigeria, which became a British colony during Queen Victoria’s reign. Colonization is a pretty big theme here, and it’s an issue that I have strong feelings about. At the end of the story, one of the Europeans, while contemplating writing a book about Africa, ponders naming a chapter, or maybe a “reasonable paragraph” about Okonkwo. As a reader, it’s an upsetting thought—you’ve experienced this rich story about a fully embodied, powerful, but very flawed man and his society and its traditions. And someone thinks about how the story of his life might make a great…paragraph. I like and respect this novel because Chinua Achebe seems to say that stories about the real-life Okonkowos are worth telling. I think, generally, when we think of colonization, we think of Queen Victoria, King Leopold of Belgium, Stanley and Livingstone, even Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Or maybe the after-effects of colonization, as seen in the brutality that happened in Rwanda. But what about the people who were going about their lives, and then became subject to colonization? What about the societies and traditions that were in place before the Europeans determined that theirs were better?

One thing I noticed upon rereading, that I didn’t notice before, is an allusion to a line in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam in Things Fall Apart: Achebe writes about “the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw.” While I love a good Tennyson allusion, it again reminded me of colonization—Tennyson was poet laureate during Queen Victoria’s reign. Speaking of literature, Chinua Achebe also writes about the Ibo tradition of storytelling. People in the story often tell fables to get a point across, which appealed to me because I love storytelling and oral traditions.

Great passage: Yam, the king of crops, was a very exacting king. For three or four moons it demanded hard work and constant attention from cock-crow till the chickens went back to roost.

Up next: A Hope in the Unseen