We Came Along with a Hammer

I have to say I was less bothered by the open racism and prudishness of some passages of the book as you seem to have been, D.P., I think because I was willing to let it roll off my back as merely typical of its time. But in way, that sense of it being of its time was one of the oddest things about the book – it felt half-n-half, half 19th century, half 20th.

You get page upon page of stolid, third-person exposition which feels very 19th century, and they yet within this hackneyed frame, details — kids getting braces, condos going up, neon signs, chorus girls, fast cars— that seem terribly 20th century. In a way it gives me a sense of why modernism had to be, how insufficient the old forms were to capture the new century. For instance, reading Poole reminds me strongly of Dorothy Parker, especially certain early sketches she did which appear in her Collected Stories. They were written in the late teens and early twenties, almost exactly the same time as this book, and yet they seem so much more lively, so much more modern. They’re humor pieces, of course, and therefore meant to be light instead of leaden. Moreover, they’re not her best work; Parker’s characteristic witty, conversational style isn’t quite formed yet. But you can feel her groping toward that style, and in the process giving us glimpses of sarcasm and slang and snatches of dialogue which makes her brief character sketches so much more engaging than Poole’s novel — if His Family were a play, the entire cast would fire off about nine lines of soliloquy direct to the audience for every two lines of dialogue exchanged. Ernest Poole is a teller. He tells and it shows.

For instance, let us examine the first paragraph of His Family. (For I picked up the book in my first great burst of enthusiasm for this project, and after reading this paragraph, thought, you know, maybe this ain’t such a hot idea):

“He was thinking of the town he had known. Not of old New York—he had heard of that from old, old men when he himself had still been young and had smiled at their garrulity. He was thinking of a young New York, the mighty throbbing city to which he had come long ago as a lad from the New Hampshire mountains. A place of turbulent thoroughfares, of shouting drivers, hurrying crowds, the crack of whips and the clatter of wheels; an uproarious, thrilling town of enterprise, adventure, youth; a city of pulsing energies, the center of a boundless land; a port of commerce with all the world, of stately ships with snowy sails; a fascinating pleasure town, with throngs of eager travellers hurrying from the ferry boats and rolling off in hansom cabs to the huge hotels on Madison Square. A city where American faces were still to be seen upon all its streets, a cleaner and a kindlier town, with more courtesy in its life, less of the vulgar scramble. A city of houses, separate homes, of quiet streets with rustling trees, with people on the doorsteps upon warm summer evenings and groups of youngsters singing as they came trooping by in the dark. A place of music and romance. At the old opera house downtown, on those dazzling evenings when as a boy he had ushered there for the sake of hearing the music, how the rich joy of being alive, of being young, of being loved, had shone out of women’s eyes. Shimmering satins, dainty gloves and little jewelled slippers, shapely arms and shoulders, vivacious movements, nods and smiles, swift glances, ripples, bursts [2]of laughter, an exciting hum of voices. Then silence, sudden darkness—and music, and the curtain. The great wide curtain slowly rising….”

298 words, 11 sentences. Not good. Not that one should demand the clipped precision of a Hammett or a Hemmingway from everyone, of course. It’s a big world, and it ought to have room for the occasional Henry James. It was just that our man Ernie reminded me a bit of another famous opening paragraph:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

–Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

There’s something about that, everlasting, string, of commas, and semicolons, which makes you feel like, you’re climbing a staircase; only to trip, and land, with a muffled thump, at the top of the landing.

This entry was posted on March 14, 2008 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Ernest Poole, His Family . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.