Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Listened to it. Great for walks & other forms of travel

An audio version has once again (e.g., Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby) helped me to complete a classic that I’d stalled upon in previous attempts. Audible reader Anne Flosnick provided a fine reading of the text. After all, the novel is about nothing in particular and everything.

Mrs. Dalloway is a London matron giving a party one fine June day not long after the end of the Great War (WWI). Starting with this premise, Woolf acts as an eavesdropper on the thoughts—often mundane and full of envy and remorse—of those who encounter or surround Clarissa Dalloway. Despite serving as the title character, Clarrisa Dalloway, does nothing of significance, nor do any of the other characters with one significant exception. And that was the act of a man gone out of his right mind (if I may use that old-fashioned turn of phrase). Thus, the novel is full of activity and lacking in action. It has characters but no actors. I suppose that this is, in part, why it serves as an example of modern fiction. (N.B. Woolf was not on my Modern Fiction (David Morrell) reading list, but this seems like it would have fit.) 

By the end of the novel, we have a sense of the characters, at least of their inner chatter. We live by our own internal monologues (don’t you?), and Woolf captures the monologues of this set of Londoners—at least as far as I could imagine them—brilliantly. If we laid out our thoughts to examine them, I suspect we’d be appalled at what we see. Our daily thoughts and mental images usually won’t have the sex obsession that Freud imagined or the mythic grandeur suggested by Jung. Most are rather like small fish that we reel in thinking we’ve made a great catch when in fact they’re all small-fry, rarely worth examining and embarrassing to discuss.

Woolf captures multiple streams of consciousness without creating the prose challenges laid down by the likes of Joyce or Faulkner. Her prose is clean and efficient, written as a sympathetic reporter. Woolf does not comment upon her characters. She does not impose judgment upon them. She captures them and puts them on display for us. She reveals the streams of consciousness of these individuals who collide and coalesce around this one London lady who’s throwing a party, Mrs. Dalloway.

The Risk Agent by Ridley Pearson

Several years ago at the Iowa City Book Festival, I heard Ridley Pearson speak in the Old Capital. Like many a writer, he started off in another calling, but he couldn’t resist attempting a book. He eventually received recognition (sales), and he's made a career of it. He related that, among other things, he participated in a rock bank (“The Rock Bottom Remainders”) with Stephen King, Amy Tan, and Dave Barry (along with others). But mostly Pearson talked about writing and his book, The Risk Agent. The Risk Agent arose out of a teaching stint in creative writing he did at a college in Shanghai. He reported that you could learn a lot about life in China from the essays of 20 year-olds. 

The Risk Agent centers of two characters, one is a brash, use-your-fists American with a wary eye and a soft heart. He’s brought to China to try to resolve a kidnapping, and his employers match him with a young, American-educated Chinese woman who’s trained as a forensic accountant. The plot gets thick with the Chinese police (local and state security), an American corporation doing business—perhaps some shady business—in China, a rival Chinese corporation, and lots of thugs. The setting is in and around Shanghai. Pearson weaves in many local landmarks and brings in as much local and Chinese culture as he can. For instance, we learn that there’s a Shanghainese language besides the standard Mandarin. (Our American hero, of course, speaks both.)

Pearson’s book is a romp. The plotting is extensive and takes the two protagonists to the tops of Shanghai’s mushrooming glass-box high-rises, into back alleys, and then concludes with a brief trip into the countryside. There’s lots of movement and action here. The characters are tolerably rounded, and we can easily tell the good guys (and gals) from the bad guys. Thus, if you’d like a view contemporary Shanghai and environs with a prototypical American and classy Chinese woman who can throw a punch and remain inscrutable, you can enjoy this book. I listened to it via Audible. I thought it went on too long. The dénouement could have come sooner for me. But if you’re looking for a romp through contemporary China, join the ride.

"The horor, the horror": A Review of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, performed by Kenneth Branagh

Anyone who knows me or reads this blog knows that I'm a big fan of audio books. Other than having a loved one read to you, it's it's the next best thing. Of course, some books are better suited to this mode of enjoyment than others; indeed, some books certainly shouldn't be read aloud. (And most shouldn't be read at all!) However, Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, performed in this instance by Kenneth Branagh, is perhaps best enjoyed in this reading performance. 

About Heart of Darkness:  I first read it for Dave Morrell's Modern Fiction class my senior year in college. He assigned it as the first book, indicating its status at the head of modern fiction. It was quite a read. Shortly after that time, the book acquired some popular fame because Francis Ford Coppola used it as the source text for his film about the Viet Nam war, Apocolypse Now. It's a tale of a man corrupted by what? His greed, his pride, his encounter with a alien land and culture? Well, perhaps all of these. It's a book that bears re-reading for many reasons. 

And as an audio book, Heart of Darkness is perfect for the medium because the book is a tale within a tale. A narrator begins the book as he starts a journey down the River Thames, and then his narrative becomes a recounting of the tale told by Marlow during this same journey. Marlow recounts his journey up a river in the Congo to eventually encounter the man (and the myth) of Kurtz. 

Branagh is an actor of the first order, and his performance of this tale does not disappoint. He delivers his performance with the characterization that brings the tale to life. I have to admit that I have a thing for reading voices that some have for singing voices; while some talk of Callas, Caruso, or Pavaroti as the great voices, I swoon at Geilgud, Olivier, Guinness, Evans (Dame Edith), Burton (ah, Burton!) and younger actors such as Branagh. (My prejudice for the Brits is evident here; not that American actors aren't quite good, but there unaccented voices (to me) can be rather flat out of specifically American contexts. Exceptions, of course, abound.)

In summary, a terrific performance of a terrific book.