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“My House Shall Be Called a House of Prayer”

A more sedate domestic story about two men who go to call on an Irish priest who works with enormous humanism within his parrish. By some accounts, Hodgson was a bit of an iconoclast when it came to religion, but he did not begrudge individuals operating within their faith. The story’s Father Johnson orchestrates an act of charity that saves face for the bereaved.

“Dare 1965: Modern Warfare”

A futuristic political satire of war where the proposed solution to the barbarism of conflict involves statistically chosen numbers of men, based on past battles, literally butchering each other like cattle, with the winner getting to sell the meat harvested from the dead. I’ve already seen several people point out how prescient this reads given Hodgson’s own death in World War 1.

“The Valley of Lost Children”

A parable of faith after the loss of a child. Hodgson describes—first in the vision of someone who appears to be a priest and later in the twilight of the mother—a valley of shadow and a valley of light, the latter being an eternal paradise where those who are children in the eyes of God may frolic. The dialect makes it kind of hard to parse at first, but gives the piece weight.

The Scarlett / Ashley fireworks factory explodes in pretty much the best way imaginable—nothing actually untoward, but with enormous, cataclysmic reverberations through Atlanta and their personal relationships. The revelation of Rhett’s intense feelings and Scarlett’s disdain, due to her sociopathy, makes Rhett such an awesome, sympathetic, tragic figure.

This section details the redemption of Rhett through his daughter, Bonnie, as he starts to see how indulging in Scarlett’s self-destructive impulsivity is harming her children, who are blameless. There is a lot of character development for Rhett, here, whereas Scarlett has stalled out. When she’s comfortable, she is far too conceited.

It’s finally happened! But Scarlett is too fundamentally attached to Ashley to love Rhett and doesn’t realize that Rhett actually loves her. And her childish dreams of rubbing her wealth in everyone’s face, after inadvertently causing the death of her second husband and embarrassing the Atlantan gentility, are destined to blow up in her face.

the book has been slouching toward this moment. Most of the southern surviving males are part of the KKK and the inevitable assault that Scarlett has been flouting finally happens, prompting a retaliatory pair of murders. Bleh. Scarlett is very money smart but the ethical considerations of pretty much EVERYTHING that she does aren’t, well, considered.

the invention of Archie, the uber-southerner misogynist, anti-Unionist, and racist, as the personal bodyguard of at first Scarlett and then the women of Atlanta in general, is something whose realities twist away from being a cool character beat in modern times. Also, the contest of wills between Scarlett and her forever love Ashley continues, with her not realizing how she is destroying him.

at this point the novel is going hard into the justification for the Ku Klux Klan. Scarlett is succeeding at being Atlanta’s first businesswoman, but she is forever dogged by the Catch 22 situations imposed by Mitchell’s victorious “Yankees”. Mitchell’s Reconstrution is analogous to Pynchon’s Zone, a sort of free-for-all where various people live and exploit according to their personal compasses.

the domineering Scarlett gets her man and Frank’s continued unease at the New Woman, a shrewd businessman and far more capable than himself, is a great turn for the story. She didn’t get anything tangible out of her first marriage beyond, well, connections in Atlanta. I was amazed that she bought the mill out from under Frank, though technically as they’re married, it still belongs to both of them…?

there isn’t much relief in the narrative. Whenever Scarlett gets a ray of hope, there is something waiting to beat her back down again, and she is on the edge of falling just a bit farther. She made up her mind to consent to be Rhett’s mistress in order to save Tara, and then he is not in a position to fulfill her proposal given that he’s in prison, potentially to be executed.

This story takes an ugly turn as it slides into Reconstruction. I know that we are slouching toward the justification of the Ku Klux Klan from Will’s talk about southern and northern opportunists and the Freedmen’s Bureau. The return of Ashley and his pining for the Antebellum south, without which he feels he can’t live, advances him from potentially introspective to thoroughly annoying.

life during wartime. Scarlett is working her ass off to try to get the plantation running and finding out that her posh lifestyle was founded on a ton of labor that she had taken for granted. in her state, of course, there is no appreciation for what had been demanded of others to fuel her lifestyle, only a bitterness that her way of life is now past. the second coming of the Yankees is a heartbreaking moment.

these 50 pages mark Melanie’s labor and what this book has been building to: Scarlett has always had someone to bail her out, to return her to that time of teenage fancy. Mitchell cuts off her entire support network, including Rhett in an at that moment uncharacteristic character beat, so that she realizes—with the death of her mother and the decline of her father—that she must rise to adulthood.

yes, this book is up its own ass as to the righteousness of the confederacy. It is a portrayal of the destruction of a way of life with barely a hint of questioning whether the Southern way of life was worthy of preserving. it’s tempting to dismiss what this book wants to say based on how it portrays slavery, but Scarlett’s growing recognition of what she is losing is wildly compelling

the absolute othering of the Union is in full force, here. Also, Scarlett’s desperate appeal to Ashley to get him to disclose just how he feels to her is excellently portrayed. Every bit of her character drips that of a young woman who still thinks vainly and self-centeredly like the Scarlett of the antebellum, clinging on to the belief that at some point, things are going to work out just as she imagines them.

the slow breaking down of Scarlett’s imposed ethics by Rhett is paced just about perfectly. there is also some sort of overlap between Rhett’s rhetorics about making money during the destruction of an empire and the designs of They from Gravity’s Rainbow and their depredations In the Zone.

Scarlet is such a fully-realized character that she is a treasure to read. The sparring between her and Rhett casts off lightning bolts. She doesn’t believe in the sanctity of the Cause. She just wants to be a young woman and party and she can’t go off on Rhett because he knows that she didn’t love Charlie. And these two people who care nothing for The Cause are here in Troy in its imminent destruction.

Scarlett is such a refreshing MC. I know she’s a horrible role model. She goes out of her way to steal the affections of every unmarried man. She is PISSED and in a moment of personal vulnerability decides to marry someone she despises out of revenge and as a defense against gossip. She hates being a mother, hates being confined to the expectations of a widow. She just is.

the emotional story of the piece, beginning with Scarlett’s yearning for Ashley, is beguiling. I have 900 or so pages left to go of this and I know that this sort of modest microcosm, of her plans to marry her crush and male friend, is going to be ruptured. We are also given the background stories of her parents, the Irish immigrant Gerald and his heartbroken by the death of her beaux but persevering wife Ellen.

without dwelling on how this novel is inherently problematic, it’s probably most important to think of it as a Fantasy of the Civil War-era as informed by Mitchell’s imagination as it gathered and filtered all of the embittered experiences expressed to her—a mythology slow-roasted on the ashes of an unjust way of life. it is worthy as an anthropological artifact of the belief in the Lost Cause.

starting off a cycle with Gravity’s Rainbow and then reading Kindred and now settling down with… Gone With the Wind. woof. I hold no illusions as to the contents of this book and Pat Conroy’s intro paints its faults in its racism and romanticism of pre-Civil War American South just as he illustrates just how much this book meant to his mother as a way of reinventing herself out of her own Lost years.

“The Regatta Mystery”

Apparently this was originally a Poirot story. It has the definite feel of one. A jewel goes missing at a dinner party and a young man with romantic aspirations gets the suspicion. Pyne hears an account from the man and then knows exactly who the culprits are; when the man checks back, Pyne has already had them run to ground. Great.

“Problem at Pollensa Bay”

Pyne is abroad still, but this time we are slightly back to his usual deal, even if he was trying desperately not to get involved in the lives of the travelers he came across. This time he is tasked to somehow make peace between a kind but overbearing mother and her son who is ready for dating and, well, marriage. I was wondering if our interloper was Madeline! It made for a fun cameo.

“The Oracle at Delphi”

This time it’s Greece and a very affectionate mother who can’t put up with her son’s boundless enthusiasm for antiquity. This story is a huge cheat. It basically makes sense at the end—why Pyne was acting so out of character—but I was taken in and just as confused as intended I assume when Mr. Thompson came in at the end.

“Death on the Nile”

Before the novel, there was…this completely unrelated short story! Well, it’s still on a boat, and it still involves wealthy people, and it still involves a death. Pyne is an interesting figure as an unwelcome companion on a boat that was booked exclusively, but somehow manages to get drawn into a rather curious love pentangle.