Reading
Basically to finish up my vacation, I'm re-reading a Lew Archer book by Ross Macdonald, The Chill.
One great line: "You see, I know Dolly. She isn't aggressive at all. she's one of the really pro-life people. she doesn't even like to kill a spider."
My question: is this the first (1963) use of the term "pro-life"? It doesn't refer to abortion, but it suggests the whole Francis of Assisi/Albert Schweitzer position "Respect for Life," "harm no living thing unless it is to save your own life." I'll ask the word expert (Walter Clements) at the Globe--probably after checking a few sites.
Another great line:
"[Archer:]...'there's a strong possibility that you'll need a lawyer to-morrow.'
[Alex Kincaid: ]'What for?'
[Archer as narrator]: He was a good boy, but a little slow on the uptake."
Isn't this exactly like a line that Foghorn Leghorn might say? You just have to add the accent: "Mind you, he's a good boy, and all, but a little sl... I said a little slow on the uptake. Follow me?"
I just finished The Quiet American, which I've said before we should all be reading.
This confirmed for me again that Greene does not purely and simply take the side of the Brit against the American--even though the Brit more closely resembles Greene himself. The Brit is truly a decadent European, with little or no hope for the future. It is clear he has conspired with Communists to murder the American. He can tell himself this is to somehow help the Vietnamese--perhaps by bringing the war to an end more quickly. But there is a real possibility that he simply wanted to get his girlfriend back. And he knows it.
There are passages that suggest: better someone with hope for the future who makes mistakes, than someone who has given up.
The American Pyle believes that a Third Force, neither Communist nor colonial, will win the war. He has been assured of this by an author named York Harding. Ah yes-the best and the brightest.
Before that I read the Waugh trilogy on World War II. (Sword of Honour: consisting of Men At Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and Unconditional Surrender). A sad and beautiful "book." In one way the series starts out very gloomy and grey, matching the sadness of protagonist Crouchback, who has been basically alone, doing nothing, since his wife left him 8 years earlier. In some ways Crouchback is "disillusioned" as the war goes on. Some people turn out to be total shits, the Allies are falling over themselves to do favours to Stalin, good men are treated like cannon fodder, etc.
Yet he becomes somewhat more cheerful. This makes sense if you think he is not only busy, doing valuable work as well as he can, but really learning things he didn't know before. I think a false note is struck when he makes a literary comment about Toulouse-Lautrec or someone (p. 146 of the 3rd volume in the edition I have)--the kind of comment Waugh himself might make. Otherwise Crouchback is somewhat different from Waugh.
He's not a writer, as far as we can tell. For a while he is unfortunate in having no wife, and no way to get a divorce; Waugh got a divorce before he was a Catholic, and re-married almost immediately. But Crouchback is someone Waugh could envy: cradle Catholic, able to take certain traditions for granted (and being able to have faith that they will survive somehow). The snob factor: Crouchback is from one of the "old," recusant English Catholic families, like the Marchmains in Brideshead. A real aristocrat, not like one of those arrivistes who got money or title under the Protestants over the last 300 years or so. Breeding so good, very few people even know about it. It's only prudent to be a restrained gentleman about it, because very few people would understand at all if you flaunted it.
Waugh, on the other hand, was descended from Scottish clergymen and civil servants in India. Ouch.
Waugh probably thought of Crouchback as a better man than himself. In some ways he might be the man Waugh could have been if he didn't get drunk every day of his life. (I think the booze was responsible for some of his better, nastier lines). On the other hand, what I care most about with Waugh is the writing. I'm one of those who wish he had written twice or three times as many pages, or books, as he did. It's not that difficult to arrive at the feeling that you've memorized everything. Waugh makes me think of Nietzsche's line that for a real artist, everything but the art is a kind of relaxation or game.
My favourite story about Waugh and the war. Probably on the basis of his trilogy, which shows lots of the absurdity and apparently pointless suffering of war, Joseph Heller asked Waugh if he would write some kind words for dust jackets, etc., on Catch 22.
I can't find it right now, but Waugh is supposed to have written back something like: "I have no idea what made you think I would enjoy a story about the cowardice of American officers."
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