John Floyd over on CRIMINAL BRIEF (a website for the mystery short story) told readers about six novels that have stayed with him or became permanent favorites. They weren’t perfect or even the best among the complete works of that author. They hit home--wherever home was or is.
Here are six that have stuck with me over the years.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD--Who doesn’t want to be Atticus Finch? Who doesn’t want to have Atticus Finch for their dad or their lawyer? Atticus is a hero, not without flaws or tribulations, but a Good man. I’ve always found this book in particular to be inspiring, one of those books that achieves what literature is supposed to achieve. It makes me want to be better than I am. The question put to us all--shall we be cowards and choose to be indifferent to suffering and inequality? or shall we have the goodness and the strength to stand against it?
And it made a damned fine movie. Gregory Peck was fabulous, and to think, it was his only Oscar.
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO--In my less than humble opinion, it’s the best revenge novel ever written although THE STARS MY DESTINATION runs it a close second. In this novel, revenge comes as close to justice as it can yet still remains revenge. Unlike the fibrillating Hamlet (y’all can howl now--it’s not my favorite by a long stretch), Edmond Dantès takes action. He takes revenge. The objects of his desire did do him dirty, and they did it for overwhelmingly selfish reasons. They robbed him of his career, his freedom, and his woman--in short, they robbed him of his life, except in the mortal sense. He repays them in kind, yet learns that revenge is its own reward. St. Paul had right. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I will repay.”
Of course, Alexandre Dumas was a genius. He took what amounts to the plot of country-western song and spun it out to 1400 pages. Even more, you want to read every last page. Lesson to the writer: revenge, one of the best plot propellers of all time.
KATHERINE by Anya Seton and DESIRÉE by Annemarie Selinko. I have my grandmother’s copies of both novel. Neither are currently out of print. That should tell us all at least a little something about storytelling.
KATHERINE is about Katherine Swynford, John of Gaunt’s mistress and ultimately third wife. She was the sister-in-law of Geoffrey Chaucer. Her four children by John of Gaunt were the Beauforts, and they are the only royal bastards to be legitimated by the king and parliament. Now, they were specifically barred from the throne, but that didn’t stop Henry Tudor from claiming and winning said throne in 1485 at Bosworth Field. Katherine, Duchess of Lancaster, is buried in Lincoln Cathedral with her Beaufort daughter, Joan, Countess of Westmoreland, at her feet. I went to the cathedral just to visit the tomb.
(Just so you know, the picture in the masthead I took at Bosworth Field in Leicestershire.)
I came to DESIRÉE through the movie with Jean Simmons, Marlon Brando, and Michael Rennie. Desirée Clary becomes engaged to a young Napoleon Bonaparte, who throws her over for Josephine. Desirée almost throws herself into the Seine, but she is saved by Marshall Bernadotte, whom she marries. When her husband accepts election as king of Sweden, she becomes Queen Desiderata. She doesn’t get on with the old Vasa bag/hags and sweeps back to France, where she plays an important role in bringing Napoleon to heel.
For a novel totally wrapped up in the sweep of great power and political history, it’s an intimate story. It’s told in first person; furthermore, it uses the power of a diary. Just goes to show that history is important, personal history most of all.
The last two are THE SAMURAI and SILENCE, both Endō Shūsaku. On the surface, both these novels are about the coming of Christianity, specifically, Roman Catholicism, to Japan. Endō was himself a convert to Roman Catholicism, but it made him an outsider in Japan, where Christians are a tiny percentage of the population. Being in such a position--not unlike Graham Greene in Britain, to whom Endō has been compared--made him ask questions that insiders can’t ask. They don’t have the awareness, or as Sherlock Holmes would say, “You see, but you do not observe”.
At the same time, the particular questions are also universal questions. They are simply asked in the context a turbulent period of Japanese history, not unlike the his childhood years. What is a Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian? What is Christian self-sacrifice and self-abnegation? How can one be Christian, specifically Roman Catholic, and be Japanese? Both novels address the first two questions, SILENCE goes to the one about sacrifice, and THE SAMURAI tackles the last one.
I think Endō came to the conclusion that Christianity, at least in the Catholic form, was incompatible with being Japanese. At the very least, he was ambivalent. I doubt whether anybody is every truly secure in their identity. In literature, insecurity can make for good drama--so long as the author doesn’t shy away from the tough questions. Endō-san did not.
All of these books have read more than once, and I will reread them, probably several times. As THE NEVERENDING STORY makes clear, they are never the same stories twice because I am always a different person each time I come to the stories.