Reading the 20th Century discussion
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A View Of The Harbour
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A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor (June 2023)
I have my copy ready to go. I'm a newbie (newby?) - this will be my first by Elizabeth Taylor.
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I hope to read this. It wasn’t grabbing me 2 months ago, but after Some Tame Gazelle and Uncle Paul I’ll try again.My granddaughter is due any day so these light books are perfect for now.
I read this in September of 2021. My review can be summarized by my ending statement that: " The plot and storytelling here warrant a 3 star rating. However, Taylor’s exquisite writing style and her skill at creating a setting and characters that felt both distinctive and real makes for a pleasant reading experience that compensates some for the unsatisfying storytelling. The novel is worth reading for these positive attributes. My overall rating is 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars."
I failed to relate to either of the two women friends at the heart of the story. Except for the characters in Mrs. Palfrey, I haven't really liked or identified with the characters in the four Taylors I've read. I continue to read her because I find that her writing style, which I consider 'exquisite,' makes for a smooth and rewarding reading experience.
But it's probably my less refined and more common tastes that enable me to consider Taylor's writing to be so elegant. I'm reminded of the references by the characters in the movie Marty about the skills of a then-popular crime writer: "Boy, that Mickey Spillane-he could really write." I could relate to those guys in Marty.
Here's my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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I only skimmed your post as I have yet to start
Really looking forward to discussing this once I get stared. I estimate I'll be reading it in 7-10 days
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That idea of liking or identifying with characters is an interesting one, as I don't think I have to do either to enjoy a book. Taylor writes so many awkward, flawed or even monstrous characters (Angel) and I love watching their lives play out. Your description of of 'distinctive and real' is one I'd agree with at least in the world of her books.
I'll be getting to this soon.
I've started this now and still getting a grip on the various characters. I assume the novelist Beth Cazabon, despite the difference in spelling, is partly referencing Casaubon in Middlemarch, both too absorbed in their work to register the outside world? Although the intro to the NYRB edition makes it clear this is also strongly influenced by 'To the Lighthouse'.I also started reading a little about Taylor herself and realise my assumptions about her were totally wrong. I thought she was a sort of Angela Thirkell - not stylistically - figure, genteel, conservative with a small 'c'. So I was surprised to see she was active in the Communist Party from 1936, even selling the Daily Worker on street corners, until just after WW2 when she transferred her allegiance to the Labour Party in the time when it was still very much a socialist organisation. She was also an outspoken atheist. So now I'm interested in what the political subtext might be in the novel. All of which makes her more appealing, for me anyway. She also worked as a governess apparently and as a Boots librarian - so now I'm picturing her in the background in 'Brief Encounter'.
That's fascinating. Not at all the mental picture I had. Is this your first Taylor too, Alwynne?
I've read Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont which I liked but also found very dispiriting. And I started but abandoned Angel. I think my impression is partly related to how her works are packaged here, the current Virago covers have a distinctly 'middlebrow' air to them. I have the NYRB edition and that gives off a very different vibe, I wonder if she's taken more seriously in America than she is here?
I think she's almost unheard of in the US. The people that read her here do take her seriously as a sophisticated prose stylist, but that's a small group. I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that she's published by NYRB Classics, which would tend to reinforce that view.
It makes sense that she should feature on the NYRB list, her short pieces were routinely published in the New Yorker, I read it was claimed job applicants for the magazine were, at one time, given her stories to edit and failed if they changed anything! I think gender might have had something to do with it, the big writers in postwar Britain were men, but the New Yorker seems to have had a long history of nurturing women writers. I'm forever finding out that women writers who've been side-lined here were championed in its pages. Neel Mukherjee seems to think gender played a part in her reputation:https://www.bostonreview.net/articles...
I certainly take her seriously but I have no idea how Amerlca feels about her as the only Americans I discuss her with are on Goodreads. Also, I've been so tainted by the views of all the Brits on here I don't think I can objectively speak on American views.I consider the Virago covers as more feminine than middlebrow but then again, the femininity could indicate chick-lit, a genre generally thought as middlebrow, or indicate something similar to the works of the Furrowed Middlebrow world which is self-admittedly middlebrow.
I have considered Rumer Godden and Elizabeth Taylor to be more highbrow as compared to the writers of the Furrowed Middlebrow series. Unlike the FW works, their works are more serious and often disturbing. I don't consider their novels to be cozy or comfy or fun.
I think I'm on this subject because I just received my first Furrowed Middlebrow book:
Vittoria Cottage
by D.E. Stevenson
who looks like a prototype of what a furrowed middlebrow author should look like. I really enjoyed all 3 of her Miss Buncle books which were very cozy, comfy and entertaining. I think that she is wonderfully middlebrow despite seeming to have very high brows.In comparison, Barbara Pym's early works all seem middlebrow while her comeback with Quartet in Autumn seemed to be more highbrow; having a more serious theme and not cozy, comfy or fun.
There’s also a tendency in North America to market anything British as genteel, particularly books. I wonder if that has something to do with it too.I’ve always sensed more of a conservative, or at least establishment, strain in British publishing relative to the US. I wonder if that led to Taylor being pigeonholed as middlebrow in the UK while her US reception was different. I also wonder if an American writer like, say, Flannery O’Connor is received differently in the UK vs. the US.
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Thank you, Alwynne, for bringing Taylor's socialist politics to more general attention. And yes, we've ranted before at how misleading those flowery UK covers are.
I love Taylor and one reason is the breadth of her topics: she's certainly not writing the same story repeatedly: see her Angel which we read, or her frightening A Wreath of Roses whose book designer seemed to overlook the 'wreath' in the title!
Taylor is cutting, sharp and has a sometimes cruel sense of humour - she can be quite disconcerting to read if we go in expecting sweetness and comfort.
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I’ve always sensed more of a conservative, or at least establishment, strain in British publishing relative to the US."
Is that still the case on British books and the way they're marketed in the US or is that with older books (up to the C20th)?
I think there is an 'establishment' feel about British publishing with the circulation of relationships between publishers, authors, critics. This, again, is likely to have impacted women who may have been excluded from all those public school/Oxbridge/my club in London circles.
I think Taylor didn't participate in literary circles because of being quiet and possibly a bit shy and also because she was a mother. And her politics possibly might not have fitted. But she was friends with Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Bowen, Pym's Jock Liddell.
There is a biography of her though it seems to have been a bit controversial - seems to be out of print now but was published by one of the founders of Persephone:
The Other Elizabeth Taylor
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I can't speak for anyone else, obviously, but having recently read O'Connor's stories 'A Good Man is Hard to Find' and 'Revelation', I vowed never to read her again. Her brand of hellfire religiosity would never be for me but her vile and horrifically racist and classist Mrs Turpin kind of turned my stomach.
And then I read this from a recent article quoting one of Fo'C's letters:
“You know, I’m an integrationist by principle & a segregationist by taste anyway. I don’t like negroes. They all give me a pain and the more of them I see, the less and less I like them. Particularly the new kind.” Two weeks after that, she told Lee of her aversion to the “philosophizing prophesying pontificating kind.” Ravaged by lupus, she wrote Lee a note to say that she was checking in to the hospital, signing it “Mrs. Turpin.”
I realise there's lots of debate about the story and letter but Fo'C's identification with Mrs Turpin, even if it were jokey, kind of sealed the deal for me. I understand these are important stories on the US school curriculum and I have no idea how they're framed. I realise, of course, something of the culture of the American South but for me she's become a hard no author.
I have exactly the same feelings about Flannery O'Connor having tried to read her in the past and later finding out more about her rather unpleasant views. I wouldn't touch her work with the proverbial bargepole.I get the impression too that Taylor was rather insular partly because she married into a more firmly, middle-class culture and was quite isolated among her husband's fairly conservative friends. Although maybe that suited her personality, the chance to observe but remain distanced?
Interestingly, after raising the issue of gender, the writer this is most reminding me of is Dylan Thomas. I keep thinking of work like 'Under Milkwood' as I'm reading this, something about the portrayal of the harbour community, the rituals, the eccentric characters inhabiting it, and the use of colour. Also keep thinking of David Seabrook's All the Devils Are Here there's something of his sensibility in the undercurrents suggested by Taylor's depiction, the seamier, more salacious and macabre elements - the librarian, Mrs Bracey's jokes, the waxworks etc
Have to say I'm enjoying this so far, although Bertram is definitely a wrong 'un!
Also share your feelings about 'brows' but the newer term 'interwar' doesn't fit, and was more interested in how Taylor's been marketed than the reality of her writing.
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Elizabeth and Ivy by Robert Liddell aka Barbara Pym's (gay?) best friend from Oxford, Jock Liddell. And harking back to the conversation we had on the Pym thread about Ivy Compton-Burnett. I like the idea that Elizabeth Taylor was tapped into this sort of slightly alternative literary network even if she wasn't part of the more obvious literati.
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One of my many issues with these terms is that 'middlebrow' is often taken to mean there's nothing serious about these books.
But I'd say that women like Pym and Fremlin are actually doing something subversive by deconstructing mid-century heterosexual marriage as an institution which exists to prop up masculine egos and subordinate women, however well educated and smart they are.
Pym shows us women often happier living alone or with a female companion. Where we do have marriages, they're often unconventional such as that of Miss Morrow or my beloved Mildred.
Fremlin shows the anxiety, darkness and violence that can exist in the home, overturning that patriarchal ideal of the home as sanctuary and site of domestic bliss presided over by an 'angel in the house'.
These books are *also* fun and both Fremlin and Pym have pointed senses of humour but I think there's far more going on beneath the surface which the label 'middlebrow' erases.
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'Ideal for an artist,' thought Bertram, taking out his sketchbook and running a line across the middle of the page.'
Woolf ends with Lily, the artist, painting a vertical line and then knowing her painting is completed.
I suspect Bertram is going to be a very different character, that 'queasily' when he's first described.
I've not picked up any of Elizabeth Taylor - the summaries just haven't appealed to me.I have read some Flannery O'Connor - mostly her short stories. Saw a recent PBS show on her on American Masters. She's basically Southern Gothic.
Roman Clodia wrote: "I'm immediately struck by the homage to Woolf's lighthouse:'Ideal for an artist,' thought Bertram, taking out his sketchbook and running a line across the middle of the page.'
Woolf ends with L..."
Thanks for that R. C. was wondering if should reread the Woolf - will at some stage anyway - it's ages since I last did, but think I can be lazy and rely on you to point out the links!
That kids in American schools know Flannery O’Conner, but not about the 1921 Tulsa Oklahoma massacre and total destruction of a prosperous Black city tells us all we need to know about why Flannery O’Conner continues to be considered a great American writer. She is great writer, she’s not a great American, or Catholic, or woman. We can skip O’Conner and read Eudora Welty instead. It always saddens me to discover a writer I enjoyed is someone I can read anymore.
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"Back to Harbour: this, again, feels different from her books I've read so far. Love the opening chapter of this desolate post-war village, and the characters. That waxworks feels creepy..."
I agree
A very promising set up which augers well
Looking forward to reading more
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This is on my TBRSoon list.
WndyJW wrote: "This is on my TBRSoon list."Great!
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Or an abbreviation of Victoria? So perhaps a variation on Tori?
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Also some great domestic details - child care, cooking, cleaning, the "daily woman" etc
Overall I'm finding this a pleasant read but, so far, not up there with either The Soul of Kindness or Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (both five star reads). Though better than Angel which was a bit of a slog as I recall.
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Nigeyb wrote: "Interesting how Beth the novelist (perhaps a surrogate ET) is oblivious to what is going on around her? Is this ET making a general observation or identifying something in her own make up?Also so..."
I was wondering that about Beth, that's also why I thought Taylor might be referencing Middlemarch in the surname as Casubon in that spends his time poring over books so doesn't notice what's happening around him, and subsequent developments make it clear there are other similarities!
I couldn't finish 'Angel' but R. C. makes me think I should try it again at some point.
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Of course that's what makes our discussions interesting, precisely because we have differing opinions of individual books while both being Taylor, or Pym, fans.
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I've only read the first chapter but looking forward to seeing Beth as Casubon - such a dried up stick of a man, his marriage to Dorothea always makes me shudder!
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I really feel for Lily Wilson living alone over those creepy waxworks, which I've just found out are of murderers.
Taylor's writing feels more balanced and elegant here than in some of the other books, and she captures atmosphere wonderfully, like the light from the lighthouse moving across darkened bedrooms.
There's quite a claustrophobic feel and I can picture this harbour village with people watching everything, while we have insight into what's going through their heads.
I'm liking this too, just one chapter in.
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On Bertram looking at the painting in the pub:
'... and turned back to the picture again, counting the waves, which were arranged evenly, corrugated, from the lighthouse to the horizon, and were still breaking a little into Chinese white as far out as the eye could see.'
Very Woolfian. I have the feeling there's mention of 'Chinese white' in her To the Lighthouse, and also the emphasis on the waves for her later book. I was even wondering if Taylor had Lily's painting in mind but I can't remember if that had waves or not.
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Or an abbreviation of Victoria? So perhaps a variation on Tori?"
Yes, we learn her full name is Victoria in ch.3 - which you know now!
Reading the 20th Century
Books mentioned in this topic
North and South (other topics)A Room with a View (other topics)
Howards End (other topics)
Barchester Towers (other topics)
Quartet in Autumn (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Katherine Anne Porter (other topics)Eudora Welty (other topics)
Robert Liddell (other topics)
D.E. Stevenson (other topics)
Elizabeth Taylor (other topics)
A View of the Harbour (1947)
by
Elizabeth Taylor
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In the faded coastal village of Newby, everyone looks out for - and in on - each other, and beneath the deceptively sleepy exterior, passions run high. Beautiful divorcee Tory is painfully involved with her neighbour, Robert, while his wife Beth, Tory's best friend, is consumed by the worlds she creates in her novels, oblivious to the relationship developing next door. Their daughter Prudence is aware, however, and is appalled by the treachery she observes. Mrs Bracey, an invalid whose grasp on life is slipping, forever peers from her window, constantly prodding her daughters for news of the outside world. And Lily Wilson, a lonely young widow, is frightened of her own home. Into their lives steps Bertram, a retired naval officer with the unfortunate capacity to inflict lasting damage while trying to do good.