Cherisa’s Comments (group member since Sep 26, 2021)

Cherisa’s comments from the The Obscure Reading Group group.

My library didn’t have it available as a paper copy nor on Libby, but the Kindle version on Amazon was $10 so I sprang for it. Hopefully you have better luck.

Yes Darrin, my wishes to you for a speedy recovery and normalization too. ❤️❤️

Was Michael Snowden’s philanthropic dream so impracticable and tempting and hard? It drove so much of what happened Jane and Kirkwood, and I just have to shake my head to believe they would turn down managing the money to help others. I imagine it was just another way for Gissing to show that even good and educated inhabitants of the lower class were in fact ignorant and unable to overcome their nether world mentality. Given the opportunity, they still can’t climb up, and so deserve their just desserts.

Plateresca wrote: "I don't know or can't remember 'A Just Man' :( Where is this from?..."

Plateresca, it's the opener for Les Miserables, though it's really the section title, and not a specific chapter. I just always loved it (along with Jean Valjean, who of course gets introduced in it).

Plateresca wrote: "I like it that the chapters have names, and I like the names themselves.,..." Me too, Plateresca! I've never been on a chat where someone mentioned that, but chapter title names can be really memorable. "Riddles in the Dark", "The Grand Inquisitor", "A Just Man".... have stayed with me for decades. Not sure that any of Gissing's will rise to that level for me though.

Ken wrote: "she's just a quiet, demure, kind thing once Grandpa arrives. The model of quiet, gentle, unassuming female characters meant to be seen and not heard. So far, at least.

In my mind, then: So far, so stock."

Ken, I agree. Look elsewhere for character development or interest. She's like the cardboard background staying steady against the action to show something is moving.

This comment is about the author's language and omniscience, using a couple of examples from Chapter II. Maybe it's typically Victorian, maybe it's "old, white male" superiority that we've grown sensitive to and repulsed by decades/centuries later. Maybe Gissing wasn't "old" when he wrote this, but the attitude is there in his pages.

It was the hour of the unyoking of men.
This is quite evocative for the opening line of the chapter, when factories and workrooms are disgorging their workers, letting them out to spend a few hours during which they might live for themselves. It almost seems sympathetic, even with the allusion to being mere beasts of burden. Then a few paragraphs later, the author pulls us up short with they (the toilers) do it all without prospect or hope or reward save the permission to eat and sleep and bring into the world other creatures to strive with them for bread.... Is he saying that children of poor workers are "creatures", less-thans of children in the higher classes? These sorts of statements are sprinkled throughout the book. And keep me at a distance.

When we meet Mrs. Hewitt, that poor lodger in the Peckover house who was in dire need of contraception, Gissing gives us this opinion of her for our acceptance: You would have classed her at once with those feeble-willed, weak-minded, yet kindly-disposed women, who are only too ready to meet affliction halfway, and who, if circumstances be calamitous, are more harmful than an enemy to those they hold dear. (Emphasis mine on the "at once.") Say wha?! Yeah, sure, I have a category of women in my human taxonomy filing system exactly like that. You too, right? Worse, WTF does the second part even mean?

Gissing is telling his story and the characters and situations he puts them in engagingly show well how hard life can be. But there is a lot that is off-putting, not in the display of selfishness or meanness (after all, some of the best stories have good villains), but his judgmental interjections, his turgid constructions and "I'm up here, they're down there" creatures or beasts mentality as their creator keeps me separate from his creation. It prevents the deep empathy that the best stories engender.

I’ll too confess. Not only did I start it but I finished it. Holding comments for the discussion and I’ll probably do a quick reread as well during the scheduled periods.

Okay, my library loan came through!

Yay, it’s a Journey party!!

Count me in, Plateresca, that’s the one I was hoping for too. Shooting for April would be perfect.

This will be completely new for me. Gissing never hit my radar, but it sounds somewhat Dickensian.

Ken wrote: "Classical Thinking Caps

I know it's a busy time of year, but in the week between Christmas and New Year's, I'll be sending an all-members request for nominations for our February book.

Remember, ..."

On it, Ken, and thanks for the heads up. Happy holidays!

Ginny wrote: "Cherisa wrote: "I want to try to articulate why the writing feels false and turgid to me right from the start. ..."

Thanks for this. I wondered if it was just me. My husband and I are reading this..."
I tried to keep an open mind, Ginny, and even waited more than a week after I finished to draft my GR review to mull over the story and the writing. I kept going back to the possibility of something like a Humbert Humbert-Nabokov combination where the writer supremely depicts a sociopath trying to persuade you his victim was to blame and (very nearly) pulls it off. But Tan's book did not rise to that level in the least.

Eli, I agree with you the second half is weaker. The setup in Book One made the reader anticipate a lot from the protagonist. But in Book Two, Philip turns out to be merely a collaborator who really only ended up saving himself and his father’s business. And only his father’s sacrifice did that anyway. Philip was saved, wasn’t the savior.

His amends after the war didn’t add up to much either- renovating buildings and providing jobs hardly atones. Coming to terms with bad choices one made 50 years earlier has to be hard, but.then he got those 50 years, whereas no one else around him did, no thanks to his murderous collaboration.

I want to try to articulate why the writing feels false and turgid to me right from the start. These small selections are from chapter 1.

It starts almost right away (p2), when Michiko appears at Philip's door. He says "I had heard her spoken of only once before"... "I felt that this woman had, ever since that moment, been set upon a path that would lead her to the door of my home." Oh, puhleez, one mention more than 50 years ago and we have to believe he gets such an insight.

Things he describes are always superlative or extreme with "always" and "nevers":
p2 "I had never attended any of the society's events"; p3 "the room, to which I never made any changes"; p3 (re the piano) "I always kept it in perfect tune, although it had not been played in many years", again and again. Eternity is a long time and these two terms should be used pretty rarely if one is to be credible, or at least more than a mediocre writer.

Page 11: "I had lived my life, if not to the full then at least almost to the brim. What more could one ask? Rare is the person whose life overflows." What does any of that mean? I read "cheap philosophizing that sounds interesting, until you look a little deeper."

When he and Michiko are sparring (p14), "She was nowhere near my level, but then very few people are." Meanwhile, she's a small, thin old woman, and we are supposed to be impressed with his skill?

Scene after scene, chapter after chapter, has "deep thoughts" and "powerful insights" and throwaway comments that are meant to remind us of his skills, understanding, power or privilege. I was not inclined to be impressed. I see now that I am totally off the wall from the rest of the group. I'm happy if you are enjoying the author's writing style, but I don't get it. SMH.

I understood early on I was going to have to get through this weak writing to get to the story, hoping the plot and place and history will compensate. That's another entry that I might wait to make until we get to Book2.

Update and nota bene:
I am willing to concede that Tan's writing might reflect what he wants us to think of his narrator. Does anyone know his other works and whether it's as embellished or pompous? This is my first title of the author. If this style is specific to Philip, then Tan's a much better writer than my rant gave him credit for, and I will adjust my opinion accordingly.

Much of the first part is what I call "secondhand storytelling" - a character is telling someone else what happened instead of the author creating the story for us. Having two elderly people come together to share their stories at the start sets this stage of course, looking back and sharing their memories. I understand the author is trying to outline Endo-san quickly for us in broad strokes before the real action starts. But this annoys me and I find it weak writing.

Plateresca wrote: "When was the last time? :)"
About 7 or 8 years now. Missing Leo.
What I might reread instead is Resurrection. Much shorter. ;-)

I reread W&P every five years or so for about 25 years, and the last time I said that was probably the last time, but I've been rethinking that decision. ;-)

Haha