Southern Bookman

Farewell, Jan Morris

Jan Morris, whose change from male to female shook international culture in the early 1960s, led a life of extraordinary courage and literary accomplishment.

The acclaimed journalist, historian, travel writer and memoirist died Friday at 94 in a hospital near her home in North Wales, according to media reports.

Born male and named James Morris, she believed from early childhood that she was female. Despite her conviction that she was of the wrong gender, she as James Morris served as an British army intelligence officer in World War II, was a husband and father, and achieved fame as the journalist who broke the story of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay ascending Mount Everest.

James Morris as a London Times reporter accompanied Hillary on his 1953 Everest expedition, leaving before reaching the summit to break the news with a coded message, first transported by a runner. The story ran on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation.

As a reporter for the Guardian, Morris also broke a major story about French involvement in the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis, in which Israel and Egypt went to war over Egyptian leader Gamel Nasser's nationalization of the canal.

The success of Morris' cultural history "Venice" in 1960 allowed him to leave newspaper journalism and write books full-time.

On his trips to the Italian coastal city, he'd begun taking hormones to change to female, completing the transition with an operation in Casablanca in 1972.

Jan Morris' account of the change, "Condundrum," touched off a cultural controversy, including a notorious review by Rebecca West castigating Morris for becoming female.

Morris' act of supreme courage gained increasing acceptance through the years, no longer overshadowing Morris' accomplishments as a writer. Her three-volume history "Pax Britannica" is considered a major work, and her travel writing and essays are acclaimed.

While some critics, following West, see James Morris and Jan Morris as separate writers, with different sensibilities, I consider her career a continuum, showing a unified consciousness. Along with writers like Samuel Johnson, George Eliot, Charles Lamb, Virginia Woolf and others, her work will continue to be read.

 

 

 

 

T.S. Eliot's letters to Emily Hale give unflattering portrait

T.S. Eliot might have found happiness by marrying Emily Hale.

Eliot chose instead a disastrous marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood. But Eliot deeply loved Hale, a passion mainly carried out through letters he obsessively wrote her, beginning in 1930 and ending in acrimony in 1957.

In a major event for Eliot scholars, the poet's 1,1131 letters to Hale deposited at Princeton's Firestone Library were unsealed in January 2020. Hale dismayed Eliot in 1956 when she gave the letters to the library. Under terms of the deal, they were to be sealed until 50 years after her death. She died in 1969, four years after Eliot's death.

Along with online viewing, a selection of the letters edited by John Haffenden will be published next year.

Eliot in a 1960 statement released in January along with the unsealing of the letters sought to justify his decision to marry Haigh-Wood in 1915 rather than Hale, with whom he was in love.

"To her (Haigh-Wood), the marriage brought no happiness...to me,, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.,"  Eliot said. "And it saved me from marrying Emily Hale. Emily Hale would have killed the poet in me; Vivienne nearly was the death of me, but she kept the poet alive."

Paul Keegan in the Oct. 22 London Review of Books gives an exhaustive account of Eliot's relationship with Hale, which Keegan says resumed in earnest in 1930 when Hale visited London and came to tea with Eliot and his wife. Hale and Eliot began a correspondence which grew into a stream of letters from Eliot.

Eliot met with Hale several times before separating from Haigh-Wood, who died in 1947 after several years in a mental hospital. Eliot never divorced Haigh-Wood, forestalling any plans to marry Hale. Although he expressed sexual desire for Hale, their relationship apparently remained platonic.

After Haigh-Wood's death, Eliot again spurned Hale, although they continued to write each other until 1957, when Eliot married his secretary, Valerie Fletcher. Eliot  later claimed that he was no longer in love with Hale. The rejection caused Hale a nervous breakdown.

Another cause of the rejection was Eliot's strict religious beliefs; he was upset at Hale participating in Episcopal Church communion although she was Unitarian, as Keegan relates.

While Eliot's detailed letters to Hale are like an autobiography,  scholars don't have Hale's letters to Eliot. He destroyed them in 1960, perhaps in anger at her Princeton gift.

Or he realized that Hale's letters would give as negative a portrait of him as his letters to her. The letters reveal Eliot as manipulative, self-absorbed and cruel, according to Keegan's article.

Eliot's assertion that Hale would have killed the poet in him was unfounded. Still, had he married her, it's unlikely that he would have written "The Waste Land."

Was that masterpiece worth all of that pain? His letters to Hale detail the cost.

 

 

Luc Sante recalls days on New York City's gritty Lower East Side

Luc Sante delivers vintage Lower East Side nostalgia in "Maybe the People Would Be the Times."

The collection of musical, literary and art reviews, profiles, autobiographical essays and fictional meditations looks back at Sante's days in the gritty New York City neighborhood during the 1970s and 1980s.

Before gentrification conquered the area, it was home to avant garde artists, poets and writers and punk musicians who loved the rank air of freedom on the crime-ridden streets.

While some of the pieces bog down in self-indulgent, meandering prose, Sante gives a fresh take on often covered subjects such as Patti Smith, CBGB, David Wojnarowicz and Rene Ricard.

Sante shines a light on obscure bands, albums and songs. His jazzy, insular language evokes the era's gauzy, dreamy atmosphere.

Nostalgia for the times and the ravaged neighborhood is a flourishing subgenre. Sante's hip writing will be treasured by his dedicated fans. Despite its narrow focus, the book offers pleasures for a wider readership, even at its most experimental.

New books by DeLillo, Amis show writers in decline

I'm tempted to read new books by Don DeLillo and Martin Amis, although my infatuation with both writers died several years ago.

For years, the arrival of a new DeLillo book exhilarated me. But the horrible 2003 novel "Cosmopolis" shattered DeLillo 's spell. His novels ever since, including the Sept. 11 book "Falling Man," read like DeLillo parodying himself.

Amis' memoir, "Experience," is high on my list of all-time favorite books, and his early novels merit the critical acclaim they've received.

But "Yellow Dog" in 2003 and "The Pregnant Widow" in 2010 were two of the worst novels ever published. If written by an unknown author, they would have been rejected.

I did like the verbal energy of the 2012 book "Lionel Asbo, State of England," which many critics panned. But Amis lost control of his narrative.

Now, DeLillo has come out with the 117-page "Silence," which sounds like DeLillo light. An excerpt published in Harper's magazine had dialogue that resembled a bad Saturday Night Live sketch.

While the book was disparaged in the first wave of reviews, DeLillo has recently made some interesting comments in several interviews, including one in Sunday's New York Times magazine. The interviews raised my interest level a bit, but not enough to try to read the book.

Amis' "Inside Story; How to Write" awkwardly blends memoir and fiction, according to the critical consensus so far.

I'm somewhat intrigued by the book because it revisits material from "Experience" such as Amis' friendship with the late Christopher Hitchens, Saul Bellow and Philip Larkin, the close friend of Amis' father, Kingsley Amis.

The book also looks back his youthful affair with an older woman, who might be based on noted biographer Clair Tomalin, who reputedly had a relationship with Amis when they both worked at the New Statesman.

But the mixture of fiction, memoir and writing advice sounds like another self-indulgent exercise by Amis. As with DeLillo, Amis appears a declining writer seeking to cash in on his fame.

Besides, reading books seems more and more futile as American democracy hurtles toward an irrevocable crisis.

 

 

Reading Louise Gluck in a time of troubles

A few years ago I downloaded on my old Nook e-reader Louise Gluck's "Poems 1962-2012."  But I never progressed far into the collection.

Since Gluck won the Nobel Prize for Literature last week, I've been reading a few of her poems everyday.

When she won the award, she made a comment that she didn't want to be a popular poet like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

At least Longfellow wrote a few lines readers remember. While I like some of Gluck's poems, many of them, called "austere" by the Nobel committee, are too solipsistic. If anything, she's anti-poetic with her trite language and ordinary insights.

Poets like Shakespeare, Frost, Stevens, Keats, Eliot and so on are known for memorable speech. I don't find much of that in Gluck's poems.

I grew tired of her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection "Wild Iris," although the title poem was fine. Poem after poem was written from the point of view of flowers, although they all sounded like Louise Gluck. After a while, I had enough of the garden.

Now I've progressed into poems I like better, based on the Odyssey. Still, the poems don't excite my imagination as my favorite ones do.

I'll keep reading through. It's better than watching Amy Coney Barrett, with those weird Republican witch eyes.

M.O. Walsh captures Baton Rouge's affluent subdivisions in "My Sunshine Away"

M.O. Walsh's debut novel "My Sunshine Away" captures Baton Rouge's strange suburban lifestyle.

Walsh understands the fetishization of large homes, manicured lawns and air conditioned comfort in the city's affluent middle-class neighborhoods, covering a deep social anxiety.

A subdued wilderness remains on the edge of the pristine subdivisions, giving children a taste of pioneer adventure. Eruptions of crime and violence sometimes shatter the prevailing bonhomie. There's also a high toll of young people dying in traffic accidents, which Walsh touches upon.

Long overshadowed by New Orleans and its exotic culture, Baton Rouge was known as a staid, blue-collar town, despite the presence of a major university and state government workers. Baton Rouge felt inferior about its cuisine, music (John Fred, Johnny Rivers and Joe Tex notwithstanding) and nightlife.

Tim Parrish's short story collection "Red Stick Men" examined the city's gritty northside neighborhoods near the Exxon Refinery. Walsh looks at Baton Rouge's affluent middle class.

The book''s ungrammatical title, taken from former Gov. Jimmy Davis' "You Are My Sunshine," matches the book's gauzy coming of age story. The unnamed first-person narrator tells about his awkward boyhood growing up on Piney Creek Road in Woodland Hills and his obsessive love for a beautiful girl who lives on the same street. His and the neighborhood's idyllic lifestyle is shattered by the girl's brutal rape.

Along with gripping elements of a crime novel, the book presents a gallery of fascinating characters struggling with the pressures of adolescence, marriage and career changes. The hot and humid Louisiana climate intersects with their lives.

In a brilliant digression, Walsh discusses the shift in New Orleans and Baton Rouge's roles following Hurricane Katrina.

For years New Orleans' stepchild, Baton Rouge took in refugees from the flood-ravaged city 80 miles down the Mississippi River. Walsh amusingly looks at how New Orleans' residents still treated Baton Rouge with condescension. Not so amusing was the transfer of New Orleans' crime to Baton Rouge.

Books about New Orleans have dominated Louisiana literature. As with Stephanie Soileau's  short stories about Lake Charles in her brilliant collection "Last One Out Turn Out the Lights," Walsh demonstrates that the state's other cities possess literary riches.

The director of the University of New Orleans' creative writing department and a graduate of Ole Miss' MFA program, Walsh is receiving national acclaim for his second novel, "The Big Door Prize," about a strange machine changing the fortunes of the mythical Deerfield, La.

"My Sunshine Away" registers the joys, anxieties and tragedies of Baton Rouge's aspiring middle class.

 

 

 

 

J.C. says farewell to Times Literary Supplement's NB column

The Times Literary Supplement's NB column on the back page of each issue is a light dessert at the end of a heavy meal.

For years, a witty and learned writer who called himself J.C. penned the column, presumably named after the Latin term Nota Bene.

J.C. in his Sept. 18 column delivered the melancholy news that it would be his last.

In saying farewell, J.C. revealed that he is James Campbell, the Scottish author of several books including a biography of James Baldwin and a study of Beat writers.

Campbell didn't give a reason for his leaving. NB continues under a different writer with the initials M.C.

A gem of British stylishness, J.C.'s column was like a letter from a brilliant friend. J.C. reported on his "perambulations" to find rare books at quirky bookstores, and gave attention to obscure literary publications such as a quarterly devoted to Victorian novelist George Gissing.

He also carried out jests like the imaginary TLS stylebook for freelancers, giving valuable writing lessons along the way, and satirized literary prizes and academic writing.

Another amusing feature was his contests, such as asking readers for TLS references in literature.

Campbell's exit follows the recent naming of Martin Ivens as TLS' editor to replace Stig Abell, who in a brief period made over the venerable review's layout. With a few typographical glitches and shorter reviews, the literary quality remained high under Abell, who also added book excerpts to the editorial mix, and tightened the letters page.

J.C.'s leaving is the first move of Ivens' first few weeks on the job.

In recent columns, J.C. spoke out against literary censorship stemming from racial and gender sensitivities. He criticized Poetry magazine for firing its editor for publishing a poem that blacks found objectionable. Whether J.C.'s unfashionable opinions led to his ouster has not been reported.

We hope that Campbell's happy perambulations continue, and that his writing again appears in the TLS and other publications.

 

 

Stephanie Soileau lovingly portrays Lake Charles in "Last One Out Shut Off the Lights"

Stephanie Soileau in a recent New York Times op-ed article pleaded for the nation to not forget Lake Charles, La.

In her appeal for her hometown, ravaged by Hurricane Laura in late August, Soileau admitted Lake Charles' failings: the poverty, the ignorance, the racial conflicts, the petrochemical industry's environmental abuses, the poor health, the prevalence of strip malls and fast-food franchises.

But Soileau expressed love for the people of the beset community in southwest Louisiana, their Cajun culture, their family devotion, their hard work and faith.

The writer in her brilliant debut short-story collection, "Last One Out Shut Off the Lights" looks at Lake Charles and its people before Laura's arrival. She shows Lake Charles and its neighboring Calcasieu Parish town of Sulphur already ravaged by the oil industry's decline and the damage of previous hurricanes.

In a recent Bitter Southerner interview with Eleanor Stern, Soileau discussed the intense love Louisianians feel for their native state even after leaving for better jobs and social offerings.

Soileau's stories delve into the lives of those unable to leave the state because of poor education and self-defeating choices.

Several of her characters are teenage mothers overwhelmed by their responsibilities and intrusive families. One comically rejects her duties; another admirably tries to do her best while thwarted by a smothering family and her child's hostility.

The people portrayed in the book seek to hold onto rural traditions of food, family rituals and religion while pummeled by popular culture and economic shifts.

Soileau recognizes the petrochemical industry's benefits; some of her poorly educated male characters attain well-paid middle-class jobs. But they often suffer chronic health conditions.

With memorable characters, mastery of language ranging from the Cajun dialect to high literary style, and comic pathos, Soileau's stories recall those of Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. Like them, Soileau registers the dislocations of unsophisticated people caught between tradition and changing values.

Like other writers have in the past, Soileau looks at her native land from a distant place. Like O'Connor a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Soileau now lives in Chicago, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago.

Soileau doesn't know if she'll continue writing about southern Louisiana, she told Stern in the Bitter Southerner interview. She says she's working on a historical novel about the Cajuns' exile from Nova Scotia and arrival in Louisiana in the 18th century.

In "Camera Obscrua," Soileau's one story in which characters leave Louisiana and struggle to adapt to a new place, the narrator observes "We are watching forgetting. This is what forgetting looks like."

Soileau in her stories shows what remembering looks like.

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Harold Evans

Harold Evans as editor of the Sunday Times in London shook the British establishment with a series of old-fashioned scoops.

Evans, who with his wife, Tina Brown, became a New York City cultural icon after leaving Britain, died Wednesday at age 92 from heart failure.

"My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanishing Times," one of his many books, ranks among the best journalistic memoirs, telling how he rose from modest origins in Manchester, England, to leadership of Britain's most powerful newspaper.

Unlike most establishment British journalists, Evans didn't graduate from Oxford or Cambridge. He first made his mark as the editor of the Northern Echo in Darlington. Several stories at the regional paper that gained national attention fueled his jump to the revered Sunday Times, which he led from 1967-1981.

Under Evans' leadership, the Sunday Times "insight team" uncovered that the morning sickness drug thalidomide taken by pregnant women caused deformities in their babies. The newspaper also revealed that Soviet spy Kim Philby had been a high-ranking British intelligence official.

But the most consequential story for British society was the revelation that British soldiers shot and killed 13 unarmed Irish citizens in Derry, Ireland, in the Bloody Sunday massacre of Jan. 30, 1970. An official investigation claimed that the troops returned fire from the IRA, but Evans' reporters found that the shootings were unprovoked.

Evans was one of the last newspapermen who could perform every skill in putting out a paper: reporting, copy editing, editorial writing, layout, headline writing, photography, cropping a photo. Even in his later prestigious roles,  he remained proud of his ink-stained roots. Several of his books dealt with aspects of newspaper work, including his last book, a primer on grammar and usage.

Unlike with major American newspapers, the Sunday Times and daily Times had separate editors. After right-wing press baron Rupert Murdoch purchased the Times and Sunday Times, Evans was briefly editor of the daily Times. But Murdoch's displeasure at Evans' criticism of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher led to his ouster.

Evans moved to New York City with his younger wife, Tina Brown, who rejuvenated Conde Nast's Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. Her recently published diaries give a view of their life among the New York cultural elite.

While Brown shook up New York's magazine world, Evans found several prestigious positions: editor of U.S. News and World Report, the founding editor of Conde Nast's Traveler magazine, professor at Duke and Yale, and president of Random House, where he published a number of mega-best sellers. In his later years, he was a high-ranking editor at Reuters.

His career paralleled that of another swashbuckling editor, the Washington Post's Ben Bradlee, who also left his first wife for a younger woman journalist, Sally Quinn. Evans and Brown were married at the Long Island home of Bradlee and Quinn.

Evans never lost his passion for the smell and feel of a freshly printed newspaper. A digital screen will never have that romance.

 

Reading John Keats' "To Autumn" on the first day of the season

I usually do my annual reading of John Keats' "To Autumn" later in the season.

But the splendid weather and joy of people basking in the sunshine on Peachtree Road drew me to the poem on fall's first day.

The poem, to me the most perfect in the English language, was written on Sept. 19, 1819, the last flowering of an astonishing creative burst that began in the previous spring.

"To Autumn" possesses supreme musicality when read out loud. Keats' exquisite iambic pentameter and intricate rhymes also display his artistry on the page.

In personifying the season, Keats expresses the romantic ideal. Autumn is seen as a benevolent spirit, displayed in nature's beauty.

As political and social discord rises, the arrival of autumn echoes Keats' message of renewal.

To Autumn

 

By John Keats

 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

   Steady thy laden head across a brook;

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

 

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.