Learning from Literary Criticism

Title: The World Broke in Two
Subtitle: Virginia Woolf, T.S.Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and the Year That Changed Literature
Author: Bill Goldstein
Publisher: Picador, Henry Holt and Company
Pages: 351 Including Bibliographic Notes, 32 pages of Notes (resources and attributions). The Acknowledgments is a five-page trove of gratitude as well as resources for writers seeking professional support for everything from “book jacket” support, to agent and editor, to foundations, fellowships, and libraries.

A Magical Resource

20^th Century Literature Come Alive

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson

“I inherited [my father’s] love of books and reading, and I grew up surrounded by his vast book collection, which made me feel close to him and continues to, now that so many of his books, all faithfully kept by my mother through many years and her move from our house to an apartment, are mine. My father collected the works of his contemporaries—Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Philip Roth, and others . . . but he had a copy of Thomas Seltzer’s trade edition of the early 20^th century greats I cover in this book. I didn’t realize growing up that we had no Woolf in the house . . . but a visit to my mother’s apartment is also a visit to my father’s library, and there are books behind the books on all the shelves, and I will keep looking.” ~From the” Acknowledgments” of The World Broke In Two.

This anecdote included in Author Bill Goldstein’s Acknowledgment may be a sketch of the kind of reader who will appreciate this book. A more precise list might include readers who appreciate finely researched history and how it affects today’s literary world and, by extension, the world at large, literature majors, and, of course writers of any genre—especially those who seek to apply early 20^th century ground-breaking techniques to their own work.

If I had read this book sometime during my creative writing and English literature classes, I would have had a greater appreciation of the assigned novels and poems and, by having a better understanding of this history of the changes in literature, been better able to assimilate the pre-Proust literature I had read along with the post-Woolf (sometimes labeled post modernism) techniques my teachers were trying to get across to me. To put it more succinctly, I would have been less bored with the blue mixing bowl eliciting memories in Woolf’s The Hours (and more likely to apply what I  now call the “blue-mixing bowl and teacup” technique to my own work. If my clients better understood it, they might be less tempted to stick their internal dialogue into italics!

If, as a reader or writer, you understand the literary term “modernity,” you might neglect (or accept) the conditions—political and personal depredations—that attract authors (and thereby literature) to it and to this book. If you believe writing should be a joy, you may be disillusioned by these stories, essentially the stories of the greatest writers of their time (Woolf, T.S.Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, E. M. Forester and—coincidentally others who influenced them like James Joyce and Proust. If you love a good biography, you might fall in love with it!

Though for some this book may be an uphill climb over the intricacies of the literary world, this is a book that, like the author’s tender anecdote in his “Acknowledgments” quoted above, will not go into the charity giveaways for Salvation Army shoppers but be tucked into the back corners and nooks of those who treasure books and keep the most valuable, the best of the best for future reference. Mine is full of tweaked corners, underlines, and margin notes for future information.

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The reviewer studied English, American, and Russian Literature in college. She was graduated from USC (University of Southern California) and did post graduate work at Arizona State University, Herzen University (St. Petersburg, Russia); Cambridge University, Trinity College (UK); and Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic). Her most recent book of poetry, Imperfect Echoes (http://bit.ly/ImperfectEchoes), was released to accolades from Midwest Book Review. 

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"Remarkable Novel" About Drug Addiction by Down Under Author

Sleep before Evening
By Magdalena Ball
BeWrite Books
2007, ISBN 978-1-904492-96-
$17.99
286 pages

Reviewed by Bob Williams


Sleep Before Evening is a first novel by Magdalena Ball, author of The Art of Assessment and a collection of poetry, Quark Soup. She is also creator and editor of the Web’s premier literary site, The Compulsive Reader.

Mari and her mother Lily form the nucleus of the novel. Mari is a brilliant, but limited, high school student. She has a scholarship to NYU and is an accomplished pianist. Her father faded away from his family early in her life and she has found a substitute in her grandfather, Eric.

Her mother, Lily, has remarried. She is an artist, subject to mood swings that are exhausting to Russ, her husband, and to Mari. Lily in fact drives Russ away by the jealousy that torments her.

Eric has a stroke that is severe enough to leave him unconscious and without brain activity. His doctor recommends the removal of life support. Mari is opposed to this and insists at least that she be made part of the decision respecting her grandfather. Lily and Russ agree to this, but decide without her and Eric is gone before Mari knows what has happened.

In an already difficult home Mari now experiences the extremes of alienation from her mother. Accustomed to visit the city at her pleasure, Mari begins to visit it more frequently. She meets Miles, a young street musician and, cast off and vulnerable, begins a relationship with him. A large part of the book becomes concerned with sex and drugs and – well, not rock and roll exactly – blues.

Ball is very good at showing the shabby musicians that alternate between hopes and disappointments. Miles, the harmonica player, and Cath, the singer, and the other band members lead lives of noisy desperation with a heavy dependence on drugs. In this environment Mari becomes addicted. The needs of her addiction take her from one life-blighting experience to another and she deliberately overdoses as she sits in the rain, abandoned by everyone, under some bushes in a park.

She is found. Doctors save her life and she enters a rehab unit. Reunited with her mother, who draws upon an unsuspected source of maturity, Mari lives through the rigors of rehab. Home once more, she finds that there are still many unresolved problems between her and Lily.

This is a remarkable novel, not one detail of which rings false. The setting is New York City and one of its suburbs and the time is the Reagan years. Ball has achieved the remarkable in recovering this particular time past and the drive of the narrative makes this a compelling and an exciting book.
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About the reviewer: Bob Williams has been collecting books all his life, and has done freelance writing, mostly on classical music. His principal interests are James Joyce, Jane Austen and Homer. His writings, two books and a number of short articles on Joyce, can be accessed at: http://www.grand-teton.com/service/Persons_Places