A little literary thread-weaving: James and Ashbery

Although David Plante's Becoming a Londoner  (our newest third-Wednesday anthology selection, which we first dipped into last night) has, overall, underwhelmed me thus far, I would like to highlight a couple of passages here that do resonate with me quite powerfully.

On both occasions when we discussed John Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror  collection last year, I commented that while the meaning of his poems eludes me more often than not, I have never doubted there was something significant therein.  Not an original observation, I hasten to add, but at least I'm in good company, per this passage from Plante (pp. 105-106; italics are mine):

John Ashbery has sent us a copy of the kind of publication that proliferates, mimeographed typewritten pages stapled together, this with a large black and white photograph of John on the cover, barefoot and walking near a seaside beach with bathers, the text called
"The New Spirit":

I thought that if I could put it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to leave it all out, would be another, and truer way.

Reading, I found that, although I didn't understand what the text was about, I became more and more engaged in the writing, and I was reminded of what John said when he came to supper, that he was trying to write a Jamesian text that left out everything James would have included, character, setting, plot, for the way the Jamesian prose in itself enchants.  Even in reading a James novel it happens that I don't know what is going on but I am sustained by the wonderfully elaborate and always inventive prose.

Plante then quotes Gertrude Stein's discussion of James in her What Is English Literature, which I won't reproduce here but is worth reading.
He then ends with this:

What rises above and floats from John's poetry, it seems to me, is some sense of meaning without my knowing what the meaning is, but the sense engages me enough to make me wonder, that wonder in itself enough to keep me reading.

And speaking/writing of Henry James: My favorite passage so far in Plante's diaries (we've only read the first third of the book) is his description (pp. 132-135) of attending the ceremony where Henry James was added to Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.  (As is his approach throughout the diaries, Plante does not give the date, but it was June 17, 1976.)  In large part because Plante gets out of his own way (and the reader's) and just narrates, it is a lovely tour de force.

Sometimes Less is Just Less

Just got around to looking at Michael LaPointe's trenchant review of Andrew Sean Greer's Less in the June 26 issue of TLS  this year (sorry, behind a paywall). Disparagers of the novel's Pulitzer status will find beaucoup de aid and comfort here. And I have to admit I'm moving toward their camp. I was very interested in "Less's relationships … how they came together and unravelled" but have to admit finally that that's not fully realized in the book (e.g. how abruptly the older lover seems to drop Less after his continued, disappearing affairettes). LaPointe's final paragraph:

Perhaps it’s unfair to hold a novel to the standards of its accolades. But the fact that Less is now being published in the UK with its Pulitzer Prize branded on the cover must invite some resistance. If you’re searching for easily apprehended, low-stakes escapism then this novel might be an appropriate choice, but of a Pulitzer Prize-winner like Less, one desires more.

A link to LaPointe's homepage is in order, in particular to his recent blog post in The New Yorker revisitng James McCourt's 1993 novel Time Remaining (which is unfortunately o.o.p. and expensive.)

"The Men of the Pink Triangle"

Another contribution from our friend Ken Jost:

An acquaintance of mine, Andrew Novak, an associate professor at George Mason who is currently teaching a human rights law course in Germany, posted the following entry on Facebook in regard to the book he is currently reading: The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True, Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps.

Novak describes the book as follows: "The first, and still the best known, testimony by a gay survivor of the Nazi concentration camps translated into English, this harrowing autobiography opened new doors onto the understanding of homosexuality and the Holocaust when it was first published in 1980 by Gay Men's Press. THE MEN WITH THE PINK TRIANGLE has been translated into several languages, with a second edition published in 1994 by Alyson Books. Heger's book also inspired the 1979 play Bent by Martin Sherman which was filmed as the 1997 movie of the same name, directed by Sean Mathias."

The following comment by Novak referring  to Magnus Hirschfeld reminded me that we'd read a book about the latter's work, Robert Beachy's Gay Berlin, back in 2016:

"One of the most fascinating parts of the book for me was actually a note from the translator on page 104. The speaker (a concentration camp survivor recording his story in the 1970s) was calling for homosexual liberation. The translator wrote:

'It is ironic that a man whose testimony makes such a contribution to our history seems to have no knowledge, as late as 1970, of the first phase of the modern homosexual movement led by Magnus Hirschfeld, culminating in the World League for Sexual Reform of the 1920s. The very memory of this had been blotted out by fascism and reaction, and had to be rediscovered by the gay liberation movement of the 1970s.'”

The back story of "The Ox-Bow Incident"

Our friend and colleague Ken Jost has passed the following Hollywood nugget along for general delectation:

The Ox-Bow Incident, Walter Van Tilburg Clark's powerful novel of the American West written in the late 1930s in the shadow of Nazism, has a gay subtext that may be of interest to book group members along with the gay backstory of the film version. The leader of the lynch mob berates his young son as a "sissy" for refusing to participate in the wrongful hangings of the three innocents. The young actor William Eythe was cast as the son in the 1943 film version, which starred Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan. 

According to the IMDB database, Eythe was gay though he was linked to several actresses before forming a long relationship with another young screen actor, Lon McAllister. Eythe died at the young age of 38 in 1957 of acute hepatitis. He also suffered from depression and alcoholism: possible consequences of living a mostly closeted life in Hollywood? By the way, Eythe merits several pages of index entries in one of the book group's titles: William Mann's Behind the Screens. 

A. Less, Job-ified

Less began life as a short story "It's a Summer Day" in The New Yorker (June 19, 2017), which became the third "Italian" chapter in the novel. Pre-dating the short story was an aborted novel that became Less' own rejected fourth novel Swift. This and much more of interest can be found in a concurrent online interview.