Robert Frost (#NationalPoetryMonth, #1936Club)

Neither Out Far Nor In Deep

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.

The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be--
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?

-Robert Frost 

Robert Frost's book A Further Range came out in 1936. 'Neither Out Far Nor In Deep' is from that book. 

In a rather click-bait-y essay 'The Other Frost', Randall Jarrell calls it one of Frost's ten or twelve best poems; he doesn't include the ones you might guess. Is it better than 'The Road Not Taken' or 'Stopping By Woods'? Hmm, I don't know, but I do like it.

Jarrell goes on to say, in a different essay, 'To The Laodiceans':

'It would be hard to find anything more unpleasant to say about people than that last stanza; but Frost doesn't say it unpleasantly--he says it with flat ease, takes everything with something harder than contempt, more passive than acceptance. And isn't there something heroic about the whole business, too--something touching about our absurdity?'

The Poem For A Thursday meme was invented by Jennifer at Holds Upon Happiness; she, too, has a shore poem this week, by Emily Dickinson. Brona has a 1936 poem, Parrots by Rex Ingamells.

 

John P. Marquand's Thank You, Mr. Moto (#1936Club)

 "...but it doesn't matter, does it?"

Tom Nelson is an American living in Beijing; he's a lawyer, and had been on partner track, when, after a dispute, he chucked it all and moved to China. We're told he's gone native; he's become fluent in Chinese, knowledgeable about Chinese art, but with the presumed passiveness of the locals as well.

The novel starts at a party. His friend, decayed aristocrat Prince Tung is there; so is Major Jameson Best, cashiered for unknown reasons from the British army. He meets Eleanor Joyce, an American woman in China for reasons she doesn't disclose, and also Mr. Moto.

That's Nelson's tagline above. Nothing matters to him, until, well, it does. 😉

Major Best asks him to visit him at home when he leaves the party and Nelson agrees. When they meet later, Best tells Nelson he may want a formal introduction to Prince Tung, but is very mysterious about his reasons. Nelson leaves and sees Eleanor Joyce arriving. Later that night Best is murdered. Was Nelson the last person to see Best alive? Was Eleanor Joyce?

It's a pretty rollicking story, with elements of both mystery and spy thriller. At the time the novel is set, Japan is already the dominant power in north China, having taken over Manchuria a couple of years earlier. Mr. Moto is connected to the Japanese occupying forces (not quite yet occupying Beijing) in some sort of unspecified intelligence role. At the time the novel starts what Chinese forces are stationed in Beijing have been called away for reasons no one is quite sure of. But everyone is sure there's a plot afoot. And so there is.

After Earl Derr Biggers, the author of the Charlie Chan mysteries, died in 1933, the Saturday Evening Post was looking for a new series with a sympathetic Asian detective to replace it. Marquand, already established with them, took up their offer, traveled to China on their dime to soak up some local color, and produced Mr. Moto.

This is the second in the series, and the formula is established. An American going to the dogs in Asia--the passive Tom Nelson in this one, the drunk pilot Casey Lee in the first--meets a beautiful woman on a somewhat suspect mission and also Mr. Moto, who is neither enemy exactly nor friend.

Mr. Moto is a stereotype, however well-intentioned, but not quite as much as the Charlie Chan he replaced. He's loyal to his country, competent, polite, honorable, but also realistic, and not given to holding a grudge when he's lost the play. Perfectly capable of killing enemies, though only the ones that deserve it. Various characters defend Japanese imperialism because, well,... everyone else does it--the Brits, the Russians, the Americans--and, of course, that's true. I'm not quite certain how seriously Marquand intends us to take that as a defence, but pretty seriously, I fear. 

That does make it a good 1936 book in its way, representing attitudes of the period. Marquand is also pretty up on the political situation. One of the elements in the plot must be an attempted replay of the provocation of the Mukden Incident of 1931. A formula that would improve cruising ranges and eliminate the need for coaling stations is the MacGuffin of the first novel.

I read a couple of the stories from later in the series years ago, and I don't remember them that fondly, but the first two, at least, are pretty good yarns. 

Thank You, Mr. Moto, is also one of the movies in the series with Peter Lorre (!) as Mr. Moto. That's a rather Peter-Lorre-ish Moto above on the cover of the edition I read. The movie's available on YouTube, so we watched it last night. It's cheesy, but fun, and doesn't have much to do with the novel, except some of the characters having the same names:



This week is the 1936 club. Thanks to Kaggsy and Simon for hosting!

I finished this yesterday while waiting around after I got my coronavirus jab. Yay!

Link back to organizing post.

Stevie Smith's Novel on Yellow Paper (#1936Club)

 "...and how is it do-day, how is it to-day in this year of 1936, how is it to-day?"

Well, that's the question we're here to ask this week, isn't it?

Pompey Casmilus is the private secretary to Sir Phoebus in the publishing business. She's the narrator of the novel. She's well-educated--the book drops into German, French, Italian, Latin, Greek along the way--and she has literary aspirations of her own: she writes poetry. We're given samples. "That bit...is a poem I wrote, the way I wrote that other one I was saying and never got published. That's two off my hands."

We see things in her life; her boyfriends, two main ones, Karl the German that was, and Freddy the London suburbanite that is; her other friends; her relationship with her father, who abandoned the family; her mother, who died while was Pompey was still young; the aunt (the lion Aunt of Hull) who raised her. The WWI veteran who convalesces in her town, with whom she becomes friends; she's twelve at the start of that war. She goes to Germany before Hitler, but just, and is shocked out of her own, much milder, anti-Semitism. 

Pompey is interested in the intellectual currents of those years. Not only is there the situation in Germany, but the advent of sex education, Freudianism. I was particularly amused by her critique of classical scholarship--she dislikes Gilbert Murray's translation of Medea, because she finds it too emotional, insufficiently pure in its tragedy, not 'classical' enough. She prefers Racine's Phedre to Euripides' Hippolytus. At the time there was a growing awareness that the ancient Greeks weren't the icy Spock-ians they were long thought to be; Pompey is in favor of the old order. E. R. Dodds' Greeks and the Irrational (1951) would have just sent her round the bend. 

Correspondingly it's not a plot-driven novel. It's interested in the state of the 'modern' woman, and the back cover asks, '...but must she marry?' And it's true that's a question, but it's not the question; there is no conflict with an epiphany to wrap it all up.

Instead, I say it's a novel of voice. So, let's have some quotes!

"I'm typing this book on yellow paper. It is very yellow paper, and is this very yellow paper because often sometimes I am typing it in my room at my office, and the paper I use for Sir Phoebus's letters is blue paper with his name across the corner 'Sir Phoebus Ullwater, Bt.' and those letters of Sir Phoebus's go out all over the world. And that is why I type yellow, typing for my own pleasure, and not sending it by clerical error to the stockbrokers for a couple of thou. in Tekka Taiping, and not sending it to the Chief of Police with a formal complaint, and not sending it to Great Aunt Agatha asking her to, and asking her to..."

Yes, it really does say often sometimes, and it ends on the ellipsis in the original. 

"But first, Reader, I will give you a word of warning. This is a foot-off-the-ground novel that came by the left hand. And the thoughts come and go and sometimes they do not quite come and I do not pursue them to embarrass them with formality to pursue them into a harsh captivity. And if you are a foot-off-the-ground person I make no bones to say that is how you will write and only how you will write. And if you are a foot-on-the-ground person, this book will be for you a desert of weariness and exasperation. So put it down. Leave it alone."

That comes on page 38 in my New Directions reprint. So the warning is pretty early--but not at the very beginning...

"Astarte, Gave a Party, In Cromarty, Everyone was Rather Hearty."

A poem Pompey makes up spontaneously for Sir Phoebus.

"Harriet is also having troubles with her young man that sweet boy that is so very serious, and very teaching. Harriet is much more intelligent I think because she is not always being so serious. But this boy friend who is called Stephen, he is very serious indeed, and has never grown up out of being an undergraduate."

Anyway, you get the idea. Funny, thoughtful, but perhaps just a bit exasperating? If you've read it, what did you think?

There are several of Stevie Smith's own illustrations in this; the cover art is drawn by her. They're always fun.

I do think I like her poetry better.

It's the 1936 Club hosted by Simon and Kaggsy this week. Thanks to them for hosting!

Pompey Casmilus typing her novel (on yellow paper)

Link to my organizing post.

#1936Club

 

Simon's amusing graphic

Monday is start of Kaggsy and Simon's biannual year reading project; this year it's 1936 we'll be time-traveling to. Immediately after they announced the upcoming year, I created a gigantic list of books I had read, could read, might conceivably read. I've pared down, but still have more candidates than I actually will read:

That's (from top to bottom):

Graham Greene's Journey Without Maps

John P. Marquand's Thank You, Mr. Moto

Noel Coward's Tonight at 8:30 (in a collection with other plays)

Stevie Smith's Novel on Yellow Paper

James T. Farrell's A World I Never Made

Karel Čapek's War With The Newts

The bottom two would be rereads. In fact it would be the fourth (fifth?) time I've read War With The Newts, but that would be OK, it's worth it. I read Čapek's R.U.R. for the 1920 club a year ago, and I've been thinking about rereading War With The Newts since then. I'm unlikely to read them all, but I might! I'm better than halfway through the Stevie Smith currently. There are a few other things that might slip in in their place.

James T. Farrell is likely the obscure one, which makes that particularly tempting. He should be better known. He's a Irish Catholic Chicago novelist (though he later moved to New York in a fit of pique with Chicago.) He died in 1979. A World I Never Made is the first of his Danny O'Neill series, though Farrell is more famous, as much as he is, for his Studs Lonigan novels, which got the Library of America treatment a few years back. They're very good and he really oughtn't be so little-known.

I've read one 1936 novel since I started blogging: Graham Greene's A Gun For Sale. It's reviewed here.

But I definitely will *not* be reading John Maynard Keynes' General Theory, despite having read some Keynes and Keynes-related things recently and the temptation to do so...

Have you read any of these? Which look good to you? Do you have plans for the 1936 club?

What I actually did read (most likely different from above):

1.) Stevie Smith's Novel on Yellow Paper

2.) John P. Marquand's Thank You, Mr. Moto