Martin Stannard (1)

It was a case of literary name-dropping that led me to search out Ford Madox Ford's The Good Solider. Having aged out of copyright restrictions (published in 1915) and having drawn sufficient attention over the years to be able to boast of its own CliffsNotes, The Good Soldier is available on the internet as a free pdf download, which is how I read it.

The story is told in the first person by a self-described “leisure American,” a wealthy man who marries an attractive woman of such delicate nature and precipitous health that the marriage is never consummated. Yet the marriage survives, and the narrator and his wife, whom he takes to calling “poor Florence,” live abroad, attaching themselves in couple-fashion to a former British military officer and his wife. Our narrator describes them as a “model couple”: “He was as devoted as was possible to be without appearing fatuous. So well set up, with such honest blue eyes, such a touch of stupidity, such a warm goodheartedness! And she—so tall, so splendid in the saddle, so fair! Yes, Leonora was extraordinarily fair and so extraordinarily the real thing that she seemed too good to be true.” Yet from the beginning, our narrator has forewarned us that things might not be as they appear: “Some one has said that the death of a mouse from cancer is the whole sack of Rome by the Goths, and I swear to you that the breaking up of our little four-square coterie was such another unthinkable event.”

And that’s the subject matter of Ford’s Good Solider—the events leading up to and immediately following the demise of the relationship between two married couples, all of them in their thirties, whose lives take a number of odd and unanticipated turns that culminate in the “breaking up” of this pair of couple-friends.

Despite a series of tragedies, the action is something of a comedy of errors, kept light by the narrator’s candid humor, typically illustrated by his description of the seeming lack of communication between husband and wife, the couple to whom he and Florence have become so attached: “You cannot be absolutely dumb when you live with a person unless you are an inhabitant of the North of England or the State of Maine.” His is a snobbish, self-indulgent humor.

As I sat down to write this review, I was curious about what else may have been written about it since 1915, what with the CliffsNotes and all. One female reviewer commented about the two primary male protagonists, “They have fully colluded in their emasculation by not knowing how to be men.” Having been myself married a time and a fraction and having reached a certain age, I saw these characters quite differently. I rather think they were baffled by the difference between being men (according to the culture of the times) and being husbands; how different and more complicated the world of marriage from the world of making one’s mark as a man—something that continues to mystify many men to this day.

As I began to wonder how The Good Soldier became a classic, I ran across a review that labels it “one of the few stylistically perfect novels in any language.” And now I puzzle through that. It hasn’t been an enjoyable read, yet I found it difficult to put down. In retrospect, I can see that an ambitious, intricate plot comes quite perfectly together at the end. There are no characters that cause the reader to ask, “Whatever happened to her?” There are no loose ends that cause you to ask, “But how did the dog get from the backyard to the library?” Everything is quite expertly and tidily brought to a conclusion with no missing pieces. I suspect I would enjoy reading this one again, this time at a more leisurely pace, to enjoy the masterful technique of bringing everything so perfectly together.… (altro)

This is an exasperating and troubling biography, though my opinion could be clouded by pre-publication rumor. As Stannard notes in his preface, he was handpicked by Spark to write her biography. This was enough to get the rumor mill going early. A biography of Spark at the request of Spark?! Spark had always been known to be fabulously private, even going so far to write her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae, a monument to pure evasion that touched upon nothing that most readers were probably reading the book for in the first place. Why would *she* invite a biographer into her life? *cue some major control issues*

Stannard also notes that while not holding veto power over him, Spark did hold the power to confirm the title of "Authorized Biography" over the book depending upon how he treated his subject. Here's where the rumor comes in: Spark apparently did withhold the coveted designation of "authorized biography," and then she died. Her literary executrix then took over, also withholding the official imprimatur until she had scrupulously gone over every line of the book in order to "correct" the picture painted of her friend.

If any or all of these rumors are true, it shows in this biography. The text is mushy and imprecise, with many sentences directly contradicting the preceding one. It does indeed read like an account of a woman in which every word has been tinkered with in order to manipulate the subject just so. Parts of Spark's life (presumably the less flattering parts, of which I gather there are many) are scandalously glossed over while Stannard balances this out by spending too much time with dull literary interpretations of the writers peripheral to Spark's career. I don't normally blame the biographer for disliking the subject of his biography, but in this case there is a bit of blame to be meted out to Stannard. Who would write a biography under these circumstances, knowing that the result would be so intellectually dishonest?

Spark's curious readers will continue to wait for the definitive account of her life; this just isn't it.… (altro)