Evelyn Waugh's exploration of cause and effect: Unto dust shalt thou return

Dust storm approaching Stratford, Texas, 18 April 1935. Photo: NOAA George E. Marsh Album [Public domain], via Wikimedia.

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of Evelyn Waugh's most famous novels, A Handful of Dust is the story of an aristocrat and his wife and their dissolving marriage during the inter-war years . Like most of Waugh's work, this novel is satirical but it incorporates an element of despair that makes the story less humorous and more - I am struggling for the word here - hopeless? As if no matter what one does, there is no hope.

Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics referred to this hopelessness not as something unfair - Waugh messes with the reader's sense of justice - but as the  logos - the logic that governs the universe, the power of destiny that we have no hope to overcome.

The entry in The Daily Stoic for 30th November provides an analogy of a dog leashed to a moving cart. The dog has freedom of movement to the extent of the tether, but ultimately it will be pulled along at the whim of the moving cart. From this analogy, one can either fight the logic - that is, be pulled along painfully by the cart - or go with the flow and experience the bounded freedom.

This edition of the novel is interesting in that it has extensive notes. Some were superfluous, but others provide context for the various editions of the story. After the conclusion, an alternative ending is provided. 

In many ways, this reminded me of Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon, an unfinished work, but perfect in its incompleteness. The story ends abruptly with Fitzgerald's own death, and the remainder of the novel is pieced together from the author's notes and ideas about how the story would progress. It is truly a glimpse into the mind of a genius.

What I read into the alternative ending is the possibility of outcomes that escape our conscious choices, or better yet how our choices, with the benefit of hindsight, provide alternative endings that we could never have foreseen.

Had the alternative ending been the first ending, I would have been disappointed. It would have been a complete cop-out. But the first ending is tragic, yet somehow improbable.

Waugh travelled to the Untied States and used this experience to produce The Loved One, and in A Handful of Dust he used his experience of travels in South America to inform parts of the story. It is interesting that the novel was constructed around a short story Waugh had written about the protagonist trapped in a remote part of Brazil (I think it was), with the alternative ending replacing the original short story.

In many ways, the novel is incomplete if read in conjunction with the notes and the alternative ending. One gets the feeling that Waugh was indecisive. However, if I had read the novel without the notes and the alternative ending, I would not be having such misgivings.

The way this book is presented provides a glimpse into the mind of Waugh, and it is clear that he is not just a sentimentalist who pokes fun at the last hurrah of the English aristocracy. There are many comparisons with Waugh's satirical stories about the English aristocracy, with Downton Abbey being an updated take on the 1981 television series Brideshead Revisited.

I recall the Earl of Grantham, in the finale of Downton Abbey, saying:

We never know what's coming, of course. Who does? But I'd say, we have a good chance.

Little does he know that the Great Depression is just around the corner. For Tony and Brenda Last (Waugh's protagonists), this period is already in the past, but if Downton foresaw the end for the aristocrats, Brenda and Tony are living on borrowed time. Or as The New York Times reviewer, Anatole Broyard put it, Waugh is commenting on how:

...the English upper classes are leading a rented life.

But Boryard reviews only the story and the characters, perhaps without the assistance of the alternative ending and numerous notes provided in my version of the book. If one were to read only the review, one would think that the story was simply about the demise of the English upper class.

Once, I would have read fiction only as a form of entertainment, and I had a strong preference for non-fiction. Nowadays, I find myself gaining through risk-free experience. I find myself asking of the characters: What are they thinking? Why are they doing this? How did circumstances effect their choices? What can I learn from this telling of others' lives through the author?

My high school self would have laughed at such nonsense, but now I see how my arrogance and ignorance set me up for a long waste of intellectual time. Is it fair to put so much responsibility on Waugh? Well, yes. If one only read Waugh for entertainment, the story is entertaining.

But if one studies the author, reads their work in its entirety (as much as is possible in terms of what has been published), key themes begin to emerge across their oeuvre.

At the risk of over-inflating what I perceive to be Waugh's intentions, I am seeing the theme of choices made by individuals, but not so much as in cause and effect, but in terms of the limits of freedom. Tony Last is presented with two choices and Waugh explores each choice in the context of destiny. No matter what choice Tony makes, he is still dragged by the cart.

Here, too, I see what the first episode of Mad Men explored as the "death wish", or rather, our choices about life and death. Should Tony have made the second choice? If he had, Waugh's satire would have been complete. Yet if Tony went with the choice of the first ending, he rises above the lunacy of his rented life.

To sum up, what I get from this novel is that we are all born with a death sentence. And the choices we make have little effect upon how our story ends. Sure, our vicissitudes may be different, but the power of the choice itself is not about it causing an effect in our story. Our end is already decided (Genesis 3:19):

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

If we live by our principles, we may die sooner but live better. Or we may live longer and kid ourselves that life is just fine. But what I really get from Waugh is that it really doesn't matter. Not the doom and gloom of the nihilist proper, but an acceptance that we are leashed to the cart and our choices are inconsequential. Oh, and the English upper classes were really starting to sweat by the 1930s. Amor fati.

Addendum: Waugh's title is from the second stanza of T.S. Eliot's long poem, The Waste Land, and the notes indicate numerous references to the poem:

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Tsunamic Climax in Korean Novel

Chatting at a well at night. Painting by Hyewon, circa 1805 (late Joseon period). Photo: [Public Domain] via Wikimedia.

No One Writes Back by Eun-Jin Jang

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novel was recommended to me by a friend (who is of Korean descent), after discussing my enjoyment of Han Kang's The Vegetarian. The Library of Korean Literature brings modern Korean novels to an English-reading audience (much like the Japan Library). This novel was translated by Jung Yewon.

The protagonist reminds me of the main character in The Rosie Project, but this is a more serious work. The paragraphs are numbered, and I found the structure to be unusual.

I recall in high school English how we would map the trajectory of a novel's plot, from the build up to the climax and the anti-climax. This novel builds up slowly, and I recall thinking it wasn't very good. The basic story line is a seemingly autistic man in his thirties who has broken up with his girlfriend, quit his job as a postman, and travels randomly from town to town with his late grandfather's seeing-eye dog who is old and blind. 

As he meets people on his journey, the protagonist asks them for their address, he then assigns them a number (he is much better at numbers than names), and sends them a letter during his journey. He meets a woman he wishes to be rid of but he helps her sell her novels on the various subways and they stay in motels as they both travel around. He will end his journey when one of his travelling numbers writes back.

After a while, this becomes a bit tedious, but interesting in that one has to know where it is going. The lead-up to the climax is long and drawn out and in the last few pages, the climax brings a tsunami of emotion that still haunts me. I was stricken with sadness, grief, bliss (in the religious sense), and wonder.

Had I given up on the novel, I would have missed out on a wonderful story, the likes of which I have never read in Anglo literature.

I am pleased that organisations such as Japan Library and the Korean Library of Literature are bringing contemporary works from these countries to English readers. There is a long list of other contemporary Korean novels that I am sure are worth a look.

It is not so much that there is much difference in the lives of Korean towns (indeed, I often thought of similar experiences in places like Hong Kong), but the way the story unfolds. It edges towards suggestive at times, but is never lewd, it is close to grunge but not in a dark, Bukowskian (or even Carverian) way, it touches on poverty, but you never feel the characters lack anything.

The more I think about it, the lead up to the climax is all middle ground. There are no real humps or bumps, it just flows along like a three-year long journey. But when something brings the journey to an end, all is revealed in a matter of pages. 

It is like being lulled into a false sense of security that is suddenly pulled out from under you. Like a flash flood or an unexpected tsunami. This is a powerful story, and the second contemporary Korean novel I have read. There is much to be gained from reading outside of the Anglo-European tradition, and from what I have read so far, Korean literature is fast becoming a new favourite genre for me.

Raymond Carver's Grunge Iceberg

Raymond Carver. Photo by Anthony Easton [CC BY 2.0] via Flickr.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading this collection of short stories had me thinking of two other authors: Hemingway, for his iceberg principle; and Bukowski, for his grunginess. Not like Kerouac, for there is a definite late 1960s/early 1970s feel to the characters and situations, and not quite as grungy as Bukowski, but certainly Hemingway-esque in the way the story doesn't leave you for some time after reading. I think, too, that Carver's work does to the imagination what Hemingway's iceberg principle does, but on steroids.

Hemingway left enough for the imagination, and at times I would read commentary on his work and discover something I had missed. But with Carver, I have read commentaries that envision his stories as they are written. In many, I found my imagination unresolved, wondering what happened next, what was meant, but delightfully bewildered all the same.

I knew little about Carver and chose the book because I like the Vintage Classics series. After reading, I went to The Paris Review and the Poetry Foundation to see what else I could learn about Carver. From his late interviews, he appears rather Stoic (as opposed to stoic) in his philosophy, and humble in that he worked for most of his life and only achieved fame much later.

I was also impressed by his gratitude towards his partner, fellow poet Tess Gallagher, who would read and provide feedback on Carver's work after the fourth draft. Gallagher is now in her mid-70s and has a book of poetry to be released in 2019.

I recall Scott Fitzgerald commenting that nobody wanted to read about poor people, but Carver writes about lower-middle class people who end up realising that they won't ever really get ahead. I could feel the grunge from my 1970s childhood in his stories, even though geographically I was on the other side of the world and so young.

What I like about Carver's work is that it takes me back to a time that is somewhat familiar, and much harder to glorify. Conversely, Hemingway's era was so long ago that it is all new. Carver's era has a touch of sentimentality (for me), but his subjects are such that there is less nostalgia, more "things are different now yet somehow the same".

Carver's subjects are not rags to riches or riches to rags stories; they are people striving to be more than they are and then becoming bankrupt or divorced or alcoholic or just downright strange as they do what they do. There is no real political statement in his work, rather a social commentary, stemming from his own upbringing.

These are wonderful stories and I enjoyed the way Carver makes my imagination work, even to the point of frustration. I also like that there is no way to find out what he really meant - he meant for the reader to reach their own conclusion.

This work would have made my day in high school English. Whenever we were asked what the author meant in a particular work, I would become frustrated with the teacher telling us and say something like "How are we supposed to know that. Did you ask them?" I've heard this same rot from my students! 

But there appears to be an absence of hidden meaning and morality in Carver's work. In his own words, literature is "superior amusement", and maybe with a hint of spirituality. I found the grunginess of the stories frighteningly familiar, as if all of my embarrassing failures in life had been recorded and put into a collection of short stories.

That, I believe is what Carver does best. He captures the lives of ordinary battlers and uses his experiences and the stories he has heard from others as the baseline for a work of fiction, fiction that is true enough to be real but fictional enough not to be true.

If ever there was a genre that combined Hemingway's and Bukowski's styles, then this is it. Apparently, Carver didn't like his style being referred to as "minimalist". I wonder how he would feel about "grunge iceberg"?