A Fave - "David Golder"

Although reading the top 100 contemporary books in order from 100-1 is an exciting idea, I also want to share with you some of my personal favorites.  I recently re-read a collection of Irene Nemirovsky's short stories.  Nemirovsky was born in 1903 living in three wars, the Russian Revolution, World War I, and World War II, only to die in at the Nazi camp Auschwitz of typhus.  Her writings take us into the minds of those people living in these times - the good people, the bad people and those who are extremely confused in the middle.

My favorite of these tales is "David Golder," the story of a man who was born a poor Jew in Russia and became a wealthy stock broker in the early 1900's in the stock market.  He moves his family to France (similarly to how Nemirovsky's father moved her family to France in her childhood) and continues working extremely hard until the day he dies.  The story takes place during the last few years of his life: Golder has become a miserable, unloved, deceitful old man.  His family only asks him for money and "how's business" and his friends don't trust him except to follow his lead in the market.  The conflict taking place in Golder's mind becomes a character in the story: his health begins to fail him (in particular his heart) and when he is emotionally unstable, for example upset about a friend/business parter who committed suicide because Golder would not go into a deal with him, his body acts as a reminder that "good business" is not always "good".

The reader knows almost immediately there will not be a happy ending to this tale of David Golder.  There are a few surprises along the way that make the reader say "AH!" and wonder how they did not see the situation as inevitable.  The moral of the story is clear and speaks volumes: money does not make us happy, love makes us happy.  Having fortunes and "good business" may sound fantastic, but really, without a loving family and supporting friends, we are nothing.  We will die alone.

Tradition

It took me a long time to write this final blog.   I finished the book almost a month ago.  The end of the story was very moving and I did not feel like I could do it justice.  The story was made up of everything a great one should be: life-like suspense, a love story that is not overpowering, a story that is believable but bigger than life,  flawed characters who you love even though you can't stand them.  I highly recommend this story: I put it on my list of best books no one has ever heard of.

Well it happened.  George's father died.  He was a stressed, working man losing all of his money in his investments. At his funeral all George could think about was how modest his family's plot looked compared to the plots of those with "new" money.... how out of control those new citizens in their town were with their spending and how inappropriate they were because they built funeral plots larger than that of the Ambersons.

Then it happened again. George's mother died.  She was meek. She had recently began spending an extraordinary time with Mr. Morgan, Lucy's father.   George ruined the love she shared with this vibrant, life-loving man, because he felt that people were "talking" and that she was behaving inappropriately.   He took her to Paris and she barely made her way back home because he wouldn't "let her" go back to Mr. Morgan.

And it happened again.  Major Amberson, George's grandfather who began it all, died.  He was old and forgetful, and depressed.  As such, he forgot to deed his home to George leaving George desolate with his Aunt Fanny in his care.

Throughout the novel, Mr. Morgan is George's foil.  He is interested in modernizing the world: he invents an automobile and isn't interested in who is "talking" about his affair with George's mother. He is a man of the times.  The opposition of their personalities and beliefs is fully demonstrated in the final moments of George's demise: He is run over by a car while crossing the street in his now dirty, highly populated city.  The type of car built by his nemesis destroys him.  He has lost his family, his fortune and almost his life.

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Come on, let's read!

"Time does really fly, or perhaps it's more like the sky-and smoke--"

"I mean the things that we have and that we think are solid - they're like smoke, and time is like the sky the smoke disappears into. You know how a wreath of smoke goes up from a chimney, and seems all think and black and busy against the sky, as if it were going to do such important things and last forever, and you see it getting thinner and thinner - and then, in such a little while, it isn't there at all; nothing is left but the sky, and the sky keeps on being just the same forever..."

Some thoughtful words from Isabel Amberson. Isabel is the "other woman" in The Magnificent Ambersons.  Isabel, Georgie's mother, is a woman of her time: she is meek, never argues with the men in her life, and gives her son anything he could ask for and more. While the rest of the town views George as spoiled and disdains him, Isabel describes her only son as angelic.

Isabel's monologue not only reminds us that there are many surprises in our lives, she also sets the mood for a coming series of events.  It is becoming evident that the Ambersons' lives as they know it are about to change.  The town that was built by Major Amberson, George's grandfather, is becoming a dreary, crowded, soot-covered city.  Times of elaborate dances and exquisite dress are coming to an end. These busy, seemingly important times will cease to exist.  George, though, seems unaware of the changes surrounding him: his friends no longer worship him and his family structure, along with the architecture they built up around them, is collapsing. Soon, before George realizes it, these things will get thinner and thinner, and then in such a little while, there will be nothing.

Book #100: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

I pulled out my old library card and visited the new library at Salem State College.  It took me several minutes to communicate to the young, texting college student working the front desk exactly what I was looking for, but I was finally directed to head to the basement level of the brand new building (strangely it was just one floor down but I could only access it by a giant elevator).   I found a copy of Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Amerbsons stowed away on a shelf way in the back.

I love this book.

 This 1918 novel takes place in the late 1800s and is a delight. I am about half way through and am realizing that the hero is not going to be the affluent, spoiled-rotten George Amberson as we are led to believe, but the sweet, modest, seemingly-sneaky Lucy Morgan.  Lucy is a stunning beauty who is quietly intelligent and has no problem smiling behind her lover-gifted bouquet while mocking the extreme waste of money and other resources of the times.  Lucy and her father (an inventor who turns a sewing machine into an automobile, and is told "Git a hos! Git a hos!" when he drives it around town) become a refreshing duo in a town of people who dote on the Amberson family.  Between dances at balls and chilly sleigh rides it seems that George and Lucy may fall in love and perhaps she will knock some sense into him.

Book-It

So I decided to do it. I have decided to read all 100 books on the Modern Library's list of great contemporary novels:  Check it out!

Reading has always been one of my favorite things.  From the "Babysitters Club" in elementary school to "The Diary of Anne Frank" in high school and currently anything from Dickens, to Poe, to Sedaris and Rowling - I often wish I could read my days away...  I dream about the characters as if they were old friends and talk about them with my friends as if they were people in our actual lives.

I encourage you to read my thoughts and opinions in this blog and I encourage you to pick up one of these fascinating masterpieces.  Come on, let's read.