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Clym Yeobright returns from Paris to the village of his birth, inspired to improve the life of its men and women. But his plans are upset when he falls in love with a beautiful, darkly discontented girl, Eustacia Vye, who longs to escape from her provincial surroundings. ... Read more

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With the delectable wit, unforgettable characters, and challenging themes that have won her a Pulitzer Prize and national bestseller status, Jane Smiley naturally finds a kindred spirit in the author of classics such as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol. As "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels," Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life.

Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his contemporaries: convivial, astute, boundlessly energetic-and lionized. As she makes clear, Dickens not only led the action-packed life of a prolific writer, editor, and family man but, balancing the artistic and the commercial in his work, he also consciously sustained his status as one of the first modern "celebrities."

Charles Dickens offers brilliant interpretations of almost all the major works, an exploration of his narrative techniques and his innovative voice and themes, and a reflection on how his richly varied lower-class cameos sprang from an experience and passion more personal than his public knew. Jane Smiley's own "demon narrative intelligence" (The Boston Globe) touches, too, on controversial details that include Dickens's obsession with money and squabbles with publishers, his unhappy marriage, and the rumors of an affair.

Here is a fresh look at the dazzling personality of a verbal magician and the fascinating times behind the classics we read in school and continue to enjoy today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

A Brief Biography
At just over two hundred pages, it is obvious that Penguin Lives' biography of Charles Dickens (written by Jane Smiley) is not going to be a complete biography.What Smiley set out to do was portray the Dickens that his contemporaries might have known, as well as offer interpretations of his novels and other writings.All in all, "Charles Dickens" is a good introductory look at this writer who claimed a definitive place in the history of the novel.

As the author of some truly weighty and well-respected and well-loved tomes, Dickens has garnered a position in English literature on par with that of Shakespeare.Elements of his life story are well known, such as being taken out of school to work in a factory when he was thirteen, and his struggle to become a success despite the financial follies of his father and siblings.Dickens, while creating vivid lives for his characters (many drawn from real life acquaintances), built a strange life for himself that caused some controversy in his day.When he finally divorced his wife, after she bore him ten children, his relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan was a cause of unwelcome speculation.Despite whispers of scandal and ailing health, Dickens continued to write and perform pieces of his writing until his death.His connection with his audience is one that can never be equalled in today's society.

Jane Smiley does an admirable job highlighting the necessaries of Dickens' life.She does not dwell on his youth or too much of his family troubles, but focuses much time on his wife and unsatisfying marriage, and perhaps too much time on Ellen Ternan at the end.(Mentions of their relationship seem redundant, especially since little is still known about its nature.)I believe Smiley succeeded in her task of depicting the man that his contemporaries would have known and opened up the familiar and unfamiliar works to readers.

Easy Steps for Little Feet
Smiley is a true scholar of Dickens, but this chatty, elementary book is a piece of condescension (or a greedy publisher), and was not immediately useful for my paper.

Terrific Overview
This lively book provides an overview of the literary achievements and personal life of Charles Dickens. For those Amazon.com customers who, like me, don't know how to approach this writer's vast achievements, I provide this advice from Smiley, who is an intelligent, charming, and enthusiastic biographer: "But a newcomer to Dickens can do no better than to begin with a novel-my suggestions are David Copperfield, to be followed by Great Expectations, Dombey and Son, A Tale of Two Cities, and Our Mutual Friend, in that order, light, dark, light, dark, light, a wonderful chiaroscuro of Dickens's most characteristic and accessible work." Bravo for Jane and her fun and concise treatment of an enormous subject!

A succinct yet superb short biography of Charles Dickens
Jane Smiley is a leading contemporary novelist whose insight into the difficult arcane world of writing for profit is helpful in reviewing our greatest English novelist.As self-described Charles Dickens was the "inimitable." Dickens draws a broad stoke as his thousands of characters lie, cheat,[borrow], love, live and [end life] on the canvas of humanity.
As one who has read all the standard biographies of the 19th behemoth of literature that was Dickens I can highly recommend this excellent book.
Smiley provides a sketch of Dickens life including warts and all.Her dissection of the affair the middle aged author engaged in with actress Ellen Ternan was well done in looking at what may have motivated Dickens to break with his wife Catherine and thumb his nose at Victorian respectability.
Dickens is a mixture of good and bad with the humanity and essential goodness of the man on display.
This little book in the excellent Penguin Viking Biography series could be well used in an introductory course on Dickens, the nineteenth century English novel or on the art of literary biography.
Smiley made me smile and laugh as I explored the mind of a genius with this gifted biographer.It is the best biography I have so far read in this series.

Possibly the best of the Penguin Lives
I've read about half the books in the Penguin series and I'd rate this at the top (other favorites are the bios of Leonardo da Vinci and James Joyce).It's only 207 pages long but there is no sense that anything important was left out.I hadn't realized that Dickens was such an astounding character--Ms. Smiley brings him to life with precise detail, through knowledge, and insights that DESERVE to be called insights.She's obviously an excellent writer herself and every page radiates her professionalism. ... Read more

Product Description

Before storms that can destroy his crops in an instant, the farmer stands implacable. To fluctuations in temperature that can deprive his children of their future, the farmer pays no heed. Every day the elements remind him that his future is secure only through constant effort. Like the creepers and crawlers he seeks to eradicate, the farmer toils away in the lush anonymity of his grid of vines, his tradition one of impervious resolve.

Today that tradition of muscular, self-effacing labor is quietly disappearing, as the last of America's independent farmers slowly fade away. When they have gone, what will we have lost? In The Land Was Everything, Victor Davis Hanson, an embattled fifth-generation California grape farmer and passionate, eloquent writer, answers this question by offering a final snapshot of the yeoman, his work, and his wisdom.

Over two centuries ago, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur wrote the bestselling Letters from an American Farmer. It was the first formal expression of what it meant to be American, a celebration of free, land-working men and women as the building blocks of enlightened democracy. Hanson, like Crèvecoeur, begins with the premise that "farmers see things as others do not." He shows that there is worth in the farmer beyond the best price of raisins or apples per pound, beyond his ability to provide fruit out of season, hard, shiny, and round. Why is it, then, that the farmer is so at odds with global culture at the millennium? What makes the farmer so special?

To find the answer Hanson digs deeply within himself. The farmer's value is not to be found in pastoral stereotypes -- myths that farmers are simple and farming serene. It is something more fundamental.

The independent farmer, in his lonely, do-or-die struggle, is tangible proof that there is still a place for heroism in America. In the farmer's unflinching, remorseless realities -- rain and sun, hail and early frost -- lie the best of humanity tested: stoicism, surprising intelligence, and the determination that comes from fighting battles, tractor against vine, that must be replicated a thousand or a hundred thousand times if a farmer is to have even a chance of success. There is, writes Hanson, an "awful knowledge gained from agriculture" and a "measure of brutality that even the most humane farmer cannot escape from or hide." It is this terrible knowledge, these hard-fought battles against man, self, and nature's unseen enemies, that Hanson celebrates.

Today the city, Crèvecoeur's "confined theatre of cupidity," is triumphant. But those who have stuck to a difficult task will see that they have much in common with Hanson's dying farmer. That the land was everything once made America great and democracy strong. Will we still like what we are -- and can we survive as we are -- when the land is nothing?Amazon.com Review
Victor Davis Hanson, a California professor of classical history and a sixth-generation orchard-keeper, revisits an old tradition in American letters, writing social criticism from an agrarian point of view that takes the farmer to be the foundation of any democracy worthy of the name. That Jeffersonian argument is not widely aired these days, apart from the essays of Wendell Berry and a few like-minded nature writers, and it takes on a specifically political force in Hanson's thoughtful, sometimes angry meditations on the decline of farming and the virtuous values that farming once instilled.

The enemies of farming are many, Hanson declares. They number not only drought, insects, fire, and fungi, but also political leaders who are content to watch the fertile countryside be carved into arid seas of look-alike homes, housing consumers who demand factory-issued foods in all seasons. Their demands are met--and, barring disaster, will continue to be met--by corporate agriculture, which, Hanson holds, values appearance over taste and prizes short-term profits over the long-term health of the land. The ascendance of that corporate system of food production means that fewer and fewer small farms can survive, and that agriculture will seem an ever more alien enterprise to the coming generations, conducted far off in the hinterland, "the corporate void where no sane man wishes to live."

This all means, Hanson suggests, that the farmer of old who knew how to fix tractors and fences, how to wage war on predators while shunning the use of poisons, and how to live self-reliantly is a thing of the past. The disappearance of that American archetype is all to the bad. As Hanson writes, "We have lost our agrarian landscape and with it the insurance that there would be an autonomous, outspoken, and critical group of citizens eager to remind us of the current fads and follies of the day." Resounding with righteous fury and good common sense, his book is a call to turn back the clock and set a more civilized table. --Gregory McNamee ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Good but not great
I find the book interesting for about a chapter. Too much 'showing off' Hansen's professororial interests on Crevecouer and the Greeks and Romans. Yes both historical references are fascinating but Hansen needs help with his tone and the very miring way he has about going to prove a point. You can start to predict the next sentence and the way it will end up satisfying the author's conscience. No, the book is not at all eloquent, but it doesn't make up for it with anything genuinely new and insightful either, for instance: on the agricultural dilemmas of our country and how they affect farmers personally. It is a book that blows off steam basically; finds a way to boast about the rough-hewn character of farmers (Not to be taken so literally, but nevertheless he manages to stereotype the farmer though he despises everyone else for doing it.)Wishy washy on his opinions, Hansen can't really whitewash what he thinks: that we are a bunch of suburban immoralists who just learned that the farm meant more than bucolic. Anyone who reads or watches the news or buys food at all knows more than Hansen thinks we do. As an ex-farm child, I find the book a fair tribute, but the personality of it is almost repulsive. We farmers are not superior keepers of wisdom, we are far more humble than Hansen's ilk.The farmers I know, past and present, have more important things to do than debate every issue, write books and books on our sorrows and fawn over our own demise.

I DID NOT AGREE WITH ALL OF IT BUT LIKED IT
This is certainly a wonderfully written book.I cannot agree with all of the author's opinions, nor his historical data, but he does make some good points and the book is well worth the read.It gives a point of view from the farmer's side, always a good thing, but that being said, it must also be noted that the author needs to face reality.I do recommend this one though and will probably read it again myself.A good one to add to your collection.Thank you Mr Hanson.

Hardhitting, true, and very sad
Agrarianism goes down to a hard and dusty death.The realities of growing commodities as a family in California are tough.Hanson does know what he's talking about, contra reader S.M. Stirling, below (I wonder if this fellow even read the book, his comments are so off, not to mention being practically a personal attack on Hanson); he lives the reality of this difficult life while also being a classical scholar.He seems uniquely qualified to illuminate the Greek and Latin roots of agrarianism as the foundation of democracy, and with a lifelong interest in the classics, I found this very interesting; I learned a lot.I highly recommend this book, which I found compelling...

Fertile Food for Thought for The Thinking Human
This is one of those few books that I enjoyed and thought about so much that I bought six copies from Amazon to hand out to friends who I believed would also appreciate Hanson's efforts.It really is that exceptional!The thing most notable about "The Land Is Everything" is how much response it will provoke out of you if are a "thinking type".That doesn't mean you will love or hate it all...you will, however, THINK!Despite the definite order the book is arranged in, you will get a sense that much of it was almost written in streams of thought.Hanson seems to meander on tangents at times and in other places even rants but, this stream is still flowing briskly!He focusses in on "Man versus Nature", "Man versus Man", and "Man versus Self" in the realm of small-scale farming.

Hanson is uniquely qualified to write about the subject of farming and it's effects on character.He is a fifth generation grape farmer in California while also a Professor of Classics at CSU Fresno.The clincher is that he can convey his beliefs to paper with a VENGEANCE!The crux of this book is showing how the decline of self-reliant family farms in America is sapping the core character of what an "American" was in our first 200 years.He passionately describes the life, both good and bad, of the American farmer and gives numerous examples of issues that influence his/her character and culture.The fact that America, up until fairly recently, was predominantly a land of farmers is elaborated on at length.Hanson admires and respects the ways the brutal realities of farming the land force farmers to stay literally rooted in hard work, ethics, and honesty even if it sometimes makes them crazy!He then launches into his assessments of the effects on the gradual loss of this culture on the United States today as it becomes more and more "urban" and "cosmopolitan".

One thing I can almost promise: you WILL have an opinion on this book once you've read it.There will be points that you will agree or disagree with strongly and many others that will fall somewhere in between.The bottom line is that you will definitely feel better for having read it.

Finally, if you have found yourself drawn to understand the heroism and motivation of the New York City fireman who fought and died at the World Trade Center attack on 9/11, I doubly recommend this book.

A FINE WORK - on a tragic subject.
As a graduate student in the university (stumbling along the first steps of academia) while at the same time dragging my small farm roots along, I find Victor Hanson's appraisal and insightful commentary frighteningly realto much of my own experience and upbringing.The Land Was Everything isexceptional and comprehensive in outlining a picture of rural life andideology that most urbanites and farmers alike are not consciously awareof.He writes about the loss of the small farm agrarian but mostly hemourns the loss of characteristics and qualities that come from the farmer,his work, his life, and his toil. To most readers (the growing sea ofconcrete city folk) his words and stories feel alien and distant and sadlythis further proves the author's point.Hanson's unique and diminishingperspective reads as a bitingly honest commentary about where we (as anation) have come from, where we owe our success, the price of our success,and where we're going in this new millenium.Grounded in the fields andorchards of farming and agrarian life, Hanson demonstrates his intellectand skills of observation in the manner of a scholarly writer and thoughagrarian and intellectual often antagonize one another within the writing,he is successful at utilizing them to expose and comment on the other. Ifunderstanding and consciousness about any of this is the reward for theloss of the small American Farmer, then it's all I could ask for as areader who wishes that others would pick up The Land Was Everything, listento its pages, remember the voices of their past, and try to understand thetragedy that has already occurred. ... Read more

Product Description
A riveting new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winner that traverses the intimate landscape of one woman’s life, from the 1880s to World War II.

Margaret Mayfield is nearly an old maid at twenty-seven in post–Civil War Missouri when she marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. He’s the most famous man their small town has ever produced: a naval officer and a brilliant astronomer—a genius who, according to the local paper, has changed the universe. Margaret’s mother calls the match “a piece of luck.”

Margaret is a good girl who has been raised to marry, yet Andrew confounds her expectations from the moment their train leaves for his naval base in faraway California. Soon she comes to understand that his devotion to science leaves precious little room for anything, or anyone, else. When personal tragedies strike and when national crises envelop the country, Margaret stands by her husband. But as World War II approaches, Andrew’s obsessions take a different, darker turn, and Margaret is forced to reconsider the life she has so carefully constructed.

Private Life is a beautiful evocation of a woman’s inner world: of the little girl within the hopeful bride, of the young woman filled with yearning, and of the faithful wife who comes to harbor a dangerous secret. But it is also a heartbreaking portrait of marriage and the mysteries that endure even in lives lived side by side; a wondrously evocative historical panorama; and, above all, a masterly, unforgettable novel from one of our finest storytellers.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

THOUGHTFUL, CONSIDERATE AND JOHNNY-ON-THE-SPOT!
THIS VENDER IS THE MOST CONSIDERATE VENDER I HAVE EVER DEALT WITH THROUGH AMAZON.COM.SPEEDY DELIVERY, GREAT PRICES SENT ME E-MAILS LETTING ME KNOW WHEN TO EXPECT THE PRODUCT--SHE REMINDS ME OF "SMALL TOWN CONCERNS." SINCE I AM FROM A SMALL TOWN, I GREATLY APPRECIATED THE ATTENTION.
... Read more

Product Description
Weekly news and general interest magazine which re-appeared between 2004 and 2007, and was distributed by inclusion inside certain local newspapers across the country. Cover photograph of a rainbow trout being held before it is released ties in with cover headline,"Have I Got A Fish Story For You." ... Read more

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Word count: 6245. ... Read more

Product Description
A riveting new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winner that traverses the intimate landscape of one woman's life, from the 1880s to World War II.Margaret Mayfield is nearly an old maid at twenty-seven in post-Civil War Missouri when she marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. He's the most famous man their small town has ever produced: a naval officer and a brilliant astronomer-a genius who, according to the local paper, has changed the universe. Margaret's mother calls the match "a piece of luck."Margaret is a good girl who has been raised to marry, yet Andrew confounds her expectations from the moment their train leaves for his naval base in faraway California. Soon she comes to understand that his devotion to science leaves precious little room for anything, or anyone, else. When personal tragedies strike and when national crises envelop the country, Margaret stands by her husband. But as World War II approaches, Andrew's obsessions take a different, darker turn, and Margaret is forced to reconsider the life she has so carefully constructed.Private Life is a beautiful evocation of a woman's inner world: of the little girl within the hopeful bride, of the young woman filled with yearning, and of the faithful wife who comes to harbor a dangerous secret. But it is also a heartbreaking portrait of marriage and the mysteries that endure even in lives lived side by side; a wondrously evocative historical panorama; and, above all, a masterly, unforgettable novel from one of our finest storytellers. ... Read more

Product Description
It’s 1954, and Gerard Middleton is a 60-year-old self-proclaimed failure. Worse than that, he's a "a failure with a conscience." As a young man, he was involved in an archaeological dig that turned up a heathen idol in the coffin of a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon bishop, thereby scandalizing a generation. Now, Middleton must confront his estranged children, his alcoholic former mistress, and a nagging sense of failure in order to expose the greatest archaeological hoax of the century.

Built around a set of interwoven subplots involving Middleton’s children — John is a gay, incendiary radio host, whose secretary is the mistress of his brother Robin, a successful businessman — Anglo-Saxon Attitudes includes a dizzying cast of minor characters linked by blood and coincidence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

A Complex Moral Comedy
The cover of the NYRB edition shows a Tenniel illustration to Lewis Carroll, from whom the title is taken. But though Angus Wilson's 1956 novel may be comedy, it is unusually complex and dark, and certainly neither fantasy nor farce. If anything, it is a morality play, with a large cast of characters listed at the start (including sections for those already dead and others only heard offstage). It is a dense and difficult book, with an exposition lasting almost half its length; only at that point does Wilson begin to pull the threads together, though he does so in increasingly satisfying ways.

The book opens with a (fictional) 1912 report from The Times about the excavation of the tomb of a seventh-century bishop at Melpham in East Anglia. Shockingly, the tomb also contained a priapic wooden figure, suggesting the mingling of early Christianity with paganism. Fast forward to the 1950s and to Professor Gerald Middleton, a distinguished historian, resting somewhat on former academic laurels and living on private means. Middleton, who was present at the Melpham discovery as an undergraduate, is now being asked to undertake the editorship of a important series of publications in British medieval history. He is curiously reluctant to accept, for reasons that will turn out to have a lot to do with the moral implications of that original excavation.

The most extended sections of the book deal with the academic world, with bitter rivalries between professors in a manner familiar from the works of C. P. Snow (and later David Lodge). But the abstract moral questions raised by Melpham soon become more personal, as issues resurface that make Middleton question his long-established loyalties. His battles with conscience are reflected in his dysfunctional family too, as we move forward to a Christmas party at the house of his estranged wife (one of Wilson's finer comic creations) and meet his two sons: Robin, a company manager, and John, a social activist and television pundit. In a series of flashbacks, we also learn more about Middleton's more or less open romance with a mistress, and see Robin repeating virtually the same pattern in his own marriage. As the circle of characters widens to include artists, do-gooders of various types, petty crooks, and even a rent boy, so the range of moral issues also increases to a bewildering degree, taking in not only questions of basic human decency, but also social matters specific to the British welfare state in the nineteen-fifties. I feel the moral thrust of the book is weakened by being aimed at too many targets.

Yes, Wilson does pull it all together, but his juggling becomes rather obvious. Yes, he paints on a broad social canvas, but his lower-class characters are less well realized than those from his own circle. His portrayal of the in-bred academic world is fun, but too hermetic for most tastes. All the same, he does create some memorable characters, and offers a time-capsule of an all-too-forgettable time in British life.

Mysterious
There is something mysterious about this book. I don't know if it is the old english nature of the book or what but I really like this book.

John

The essential importance of provenance
An English friend involved in archeology introduced me to the concept of the essential importance of the provenance of an artifact in determining its significance. The artifact must be viewed within the context in which it was found, otherwise it is meaningless. The provenance of an idol, involving a sad practical joke, and deeper Oedipal emotions is the heart of Wilson's novel. This one joke reverberated throughout the English medievalist academic world for 50 years, and one reflects on the old aphorism that the quarrels in academia are so bitter because the stakes are often so trivial. Was it of any significance to anyone that a famous 7th Century bishop might have backslide into apostasy?

Perhaps the provenance of the idol is a useful metaphor for examining English society in the mid-50's.The significant cast of characters, drawn from a broad swath of that society, act out their fates based on their own location within the society. Yet there will always be some upward mobility, as well as some backsliding for the schemers. The relationships between men and women are universally sad, with a dominant driving force being "accommodation."

Wilson is an excellent writer, and it was a delight to read his historical slice of England, wry humor and all.I thought of the early days of the Internet, slow modem connections, the downloading of pictures, pixels at a time, first one rough pass, then another, finally the entire picture comes into sharper focus. Wilson writes in that fashion, a rough pass, a hint of something deeper, and then he returns over the events, and the picture deepens and intensifies.

Such novels are vital for the perspective they bring to the present, how some things truly are new, but mainly, much is repetition of the same human drama, with all its aspirations and flaws.

Discreet Indiscretion
Early on in in "Anglo-Saxon Attitudes," a character is described as having an /affaire/.One wonders if this (1956) is the last time when an English author writing in English would have treated this discreet reference to indiscretion as a foreign word.Is it the concept that the English regarded as alien?Or is it merely a pathetic effort to bury it under a veil of respectability?Or a tacit acknowledgment that the French have more fun?

Whatever the answer, the italics are a delicate way of identifying this entertaining novel as a creature of its times. Indeed the action is dated (and the novel feels) a bit earlier-dating back the Atlee administration, when Britain was still reeling with exhaustion from World War II; when the socialists were busy trying to nationalize British industry, while the the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was busy trying to privatize Iranian oil.

Wilson makes it pretty clear that he intends to write a period piece from the very beginning: there is a cast list, and it runs to nearly two pages.For a novel of just 336 pages (in Penguin), this seems a bit much, and indeed quite a few of them are little more than sketches.

No, more than a period piece: Wilson wants to write a panorama of his time.This is an ambitious undertaking, and would be perilously easy for him to have fallen on his face.He has not quite achieved all he strove for, but perhaps remarkably, he hasn't really fallen on his face either.There isn't a lot of action, but there are some excellent character studies and a few good set pieces.There is some good comedy, but perhaps not quite as much as the author intended. Also of note: this must be about the first mainstream British novel to include explicitly gay characters (and not very nice ones, at that).

For comedy, Wilson is not Evelyn Waugh; for compulsive readability, he isn't quite Graham Greene.On the other hand, he isn't really striving to be either. He's himself: entertaining and rewarding, with nothing(much) for which to apologize.

A farce of outdated manners
There seems to me to be a very good reason why this book was out of print before the New York Review resussitated it: to wit, it's very, very dated.Mr. Burgess must have made his remark about its being "one of the top five novels of the century" back when it was first published.Yes, the plot, such as it is, involves a sort of archeological hoax.But the novel is primarily a farcical comedy regarding the English classes and their uses of language in post WWII England-I think that this must be why Burgess, that linguistic connoiseur took a fancy to it.

It reads like an Austen novel with a bit of Wodehouse thrown in.But, these nuances that this book captures so well no longer exist, even for most of the English.And for Americans, the book must be a rather boring schlep of a novel indeed.How many of them know that when one "drawls" in England, one is taking a supercilious upper-class accent such as the "Oxford drawl"?-It is these minutiae that are so essential in "getting" the book that will leave many readers on either side of the pond in the year 2005 scratching their heads rather than chuckling, I fear.

3 stars for capturing the minutiae.But, essentially, this is a boook of ephemera, focusing on the inflections and manners of a bygone era. ... Read more