“Pere Goriot” by Honoré de Balzac

This classic piece was my introduction to Balzac. This canny Frenchman is a close and knowing observer of human nature. The hopes, desperation, greed, and cynicism so rampant every day in our world, are fully on display here.

The tale is told through the viewpoint of Rastignac, a 21-year-old law student and newcomer to Paris. Rastignac's ambitions are the common ones, to be rich, fashionable, and carefree, and to take a mistress. These ambitions shift over the course of the story. He becomes enamored of Pere Goriot, understanding what a virtuous man he is. Balzac shows us the destructiveness of 19th-century Paris society: Goriot's two worldly daughters waste his means over time and leave him impoverished. Goriot himself, however, is as much a supporter of worldly amibitions as anyone, but it bankrupts him and at length, at least indirectly, kills him.

Here is post-Napoleon Paris, described closely if not lovingly by Balzac. This author's fame as a canny observer of human nature and human folly is richly deserved. If you haven't yet taken up Balzac, this is an outstanding place to start. Go for it!

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"Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson is an all-time classic author, and this book is rightfully held in the front rank of the Stevenson canon. It is often cited as a classic of young adult literature, and it clearly works as such, superbly so. But I would like to cite Mr. Stevenson's sophisticated and subtle portayal of his characters. The motivations are shaded, knowing, understandable, and realistic. We have the evolving, by turns treacherous and ingratiating, journey of Long John Silver. We have the captain of the vessel, and while not as subtle a character, certainly has his depths. And of course, the classic first-person Jim Hawkins, whose courage and resourcefulness are really the entree in this delicious meal.

There are some works which seem to carry all in the genre after it. This is one of those. In the words of Jorge Luis Borges: "I like antique maps, hourglasses, 18th-century type styles, the origins of words, the smell of coffee, and the prose of Stevenson." Amen.

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"Sister Carrie" by Theodore Dreiser

Buddha teaches that the suffering we experience in life comes from desire. "Sister Carrie" expresses and reinforces this truth with such singleness of purpose that it becomes ponderous, a drag. This book holds its place in the American canon because it broke shocking new ground of realism in portraying the callous disregard with which some men treat impressionable young women. The book also casts its unblinking eye on our material culture and its concomitant status-seeking.

But principally and without question, Dreiser gives us the emptiness of our daily urges, the self-defeating nature of vanity, and pages and pages of glittering emptiness. The long, slow decay of Hurstwood, the man who forces Carrie to join him when he leaves Chicago on the lam, takes up the lion's share of the book's second half and grinds the reader under its ever-burgeoning weight. There is something unrealistic and difficult to accept about Hurstwood's undoing.

Dreiser is unblinking and pioneering, but also plodding and didactic. It reveals a great deal about the time it represents and the audience it addresses, but it seems clear to me that there are more pleasant and efficient ways of learning about these things.

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"Far from the Madding Crowd" by Thomas Hardy

In "Far from the Madding Crowd" we have Thomas Hardy's 1874 breakthrough publication. This was my introduction to Hardy, and I expected certain aspects of his work, and didn't expect others. For one, I didn't expect the humor that I encountered in early character descriptions, but I was not surprised by the power and depth of the story. Hardy's reputation had preceded him to that extent.

"Far from the Madding Crowd" recounts the tribulations of the young and beautiful - and tragically vain - Bathsheba Everdene, and the three men who love her. Or the two men who loved her, and the rake who married her, or perhaps most accurately, the rake who married her, the inexperienced man who loved her to distraction, and the one faithful stalwart who stood by her through all. For Bathsheba is the most beautiful of women, and men become entranced with her and offer marriage pretty regularly here. The force of the story flows from Bathsheba's initial vanity, her tragic and ill-advised coquetry and first marriage, and how her self-absorption leads to mental breakdown and manslaughter. Hardy presents the plot in a straightforward way, and handles Bathsheba's evolution very skilfully and realistically. The chief characters are fully-realized, memorable creatures. Oak, her constant and ultimate protector, middle-aged Boldwood, driven to distraction by latecoming first love, and the reprobate Sergeant Troy, the tragic first husband, all ring truly; we believe them and understand their motivations. I found the rabble of farm workers to bear no such distinction.

I'm going to reserve judgment on whether this is where to start with Hardy. Plot-wise and resolution-wise, I was gratified by how this book ends. There is a tragic force in this narrative, and I understand it's something Hardy produced regularly. This book ends on a hopeful, life-affirming note, which by reputation, Hardy does not always employ. I'm glad I completed the exercise, but a little sorry that's what it felt like.

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"Seasoned Timber" by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

This bittersweet, vivid book recounts a high school headmaster's falling in love at age 44 (the titular "seasoned timber"). The object of his admiration, a teacher 20 years his junior, does not know of the gentleman's feelings, and settles instead on another, alas.

I want to compliment the author, Dorothy Canfield Fisher (she of the eponymous children's book award), on the ice skating image. Our hero (I'm sorry, I don't have the character's name noted) teaches the students to ice skate in this New England town. This consists in large part of convincing them to let their caution go and speed up - the greater the speed the greater the ease, and the surer the balance. This is in a nutshell what our protaganist must learn about love; these lessons, however, are late coming, and mostly ineffective.

Also worth noting are the lovely poetic flights our hero's imagination takes - these are the most effective and affecting "deep in love" passages in memory. They occur and recur throughout the book, and they are one of the chief delights.

"Seasoned Timber" flies generally under the radar, and that's a shame. If you want to take a flight among the human heart's desires, poetically and compassionately drawn, pick up this book. I think the author deserves not to be so obscure.

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"Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather

Willa Cather fictionalizes the lives a pair of French catholic priests who go to the newly-formed New Mexico territory to spread the faith in a harsh, half-pagan world. The plot is episodic and the descriptions of the landscape capture the stark loneliness of the desert Southwest.

Archbishop Latour endures numerous hardships just establishing his diocese, including the simple physical difficulties of operating in this emerging territory, and the intrasigence of the established Spanish clergy.

This book is held in reverence by many, as Cather's most-studied work, but I don't find it equal to "O Pioneers!" Its only uniting feature is the person of the archbishop. He conquers all, and lives to retire and tend his gardens. Honestly, I didn't find much of anything deeper than that.

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"Hadji Murad" by Leo Tolstoy

This is my first immersion in Tolstoy. This is novella-length, and tells the true story of a Chechen leader who goes over to the Russian side and assists Nicholas II conquer the Caucasus in 1852. Tolstoy's focus, I believe, is to bring out the pointlessness of war, and the horrific, wasteful-on-a-grand scale Czarist policies of the time.

By reputation, I understand Russian translates well into English, but this edition of this story is not a good example. I wouldn't say it's stilted, but it is quite stiff in places.

There are interesting descriptions of the broad landscapes, and the broad designs of the rapacious Russian royalty. I doubt this is high in the Tolstoy canon. It probably doesn't deserve to be.

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"Evelina" by Frances Burney

I read "Evelina" because of Miss Burney's supposed influence on Jane Austen. I found a comedy of manners, all right, but the comedy was pedestrian, the motivations nothing like those in Austen, the characterizations quite lacking when compared to Austen's.

I know it does no favor to compare something to Austen, but given the context, I make free to do so. Burney's humor is a one-note plink to Austen's rich and concordant arpeggio.

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"Dr. Wortle's School" by Anthony Trollope

My one exposure to Trollope, and I came away quite impressed. The story deals not so much with the titular doctor's school, but with the doctor himself. Dr. Wortle is a clergyman who runs a well-thought-of school, but who finds himself in difficulty because he refuses to turn his back on some tenants of his, Mr. and Mrs. Peacocke.

As full of integrity as he is of himself, Dr. Wortle does the right thing almost for the wrong reasons; it is difficult to like or even admire him by story's end, so prickly is Trollope's protrayal. But Dr. Wortle is proved out in the end, and in the (paraphrased) words of his detested acquaintance, Dr. Puddicombe, "He admires the doctor for protecting Mrs. Peacocke, because while it was wrong for a clergyman to do so under the circumstances, but right, morally and charitably."

I was impressed with Trollope's conception and handling of our proud and prickly Dr. Wortle. Especially convincing are the public disputes into which he flung himself and those of his acquaintance.

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