V.S. Pritchett, The Pritchett Century ***

You see them in your grandmother's house or in model homes that aspire to class up their libraries. Faux-leather-bound books with the names of vaguely remembered authors in gold lettering on the spine: Horace, Trollope, Richardson, Bellow. In its musty pages you find a collection of poems, biographical excerpts, chapters from novels, and essays from defunct periodicals. V.S. Pritchett is a well-respected mid-century author that no one reads anymore, and The Pritchett Century is just this kind of miscellany collection, with short stories, autobiography, literary criticism, and excerpts from novels. The title derives from the fact that Pritchett was born in 1900 and died in 1997.

Pritchett has a clear smooth prose style. He is best known for his stories, many of which get their drama from a narrator slowly coming to realize that his assumptions about another character are wrong. For example, in "When My Girl Comes Home" a woman returns home after the Second World War and her family and friends believe she suffered hardship overseas; they have a hard time adjusting as the real story of her time away contradicts the picture they've had of her.

The autobiographical sections were entertaining, especially his childhood visits to Yorkshire, and it was fun to spot the details that made their way into the stories. His travel pieces and literary criticism seemed insightful, although they were often about places or authors I don't know well.

Overall, The Pritchett Century was a reminder of the many fine authors who once enjoyed a substantial (and deserved) reputation but are drifting out of fashion. Not just Pritchett himself, but also several of the writers he discusses: Walter Scott, Tobias Smollett, George Meredith, Saul Bellow, S.J. Perelman.

Martin Amis, Time's Arrow *** 1/2

Time's Arrow recounts a man's life in reverse, starting at his death in the early 1990s and ending with his birth in the 1920s. The man is a doctor; the narrator is an ill-defined consciousness (with a wide vocabulary) that has access to the doctor's feelings but not his thoughts. The narrator knows the doctor has a secret in his "past" that causes him some anguish, but has to wait until the past arrives to learn what it is.

The backwards time gimmick is fascinating and sometimes comic. At restaurants, the waiter brings a dirty plate to the table, which the diner slowly fills with food taken from his or her mouth; before leaving, they reminisce about the meal by reading the dishes from the menu. The doctor treats patients by introducing injuries, after which the patient timidly knocks on the door before leaving. The less said about using the bathroom the better.

One notable thing about the reverse chronology is that most of the changes are positive. The doctor gets younger and stronger over time, the air gets cleaner, and people are less traumatized after calamities than they were before (i.e. after) them. The story is journey from corruption to innocence.

Things take a serious turn as World War II approaches with the doctor's (somewhat predictable) secret. In reverse, the Holocaust is a miraculous process of conjuring Jewish lives from the air and dust.

I read Time's Arrow immediately after Evelyn did, like a private book club. She really enjoyed the first half, especially for its comic effect and slowly improving world, but felt like she didn't understand the ending. Her major complaint was that Amis never explains who the narrator is or how he ends up associated with the doctor. She waited in vain for that secret to be revealed.

I wasn't as concerned about the nature of the narrator, but I too struggled to understand what Amis was trying to say. He sees most human activity as corrupting, and is saying something about the relationship between morality and cause-and-effect. I appreciated the effect of the reverse perspective and the big ideas that the story makes us ponder, but ultimately I couldn't tell whether Amis' ideas about destiny, morality, and humanity are subtle or muddled.

P.S. This analysis from the Time's Arrow chapter in the book Understanding Martin Amis attempts to answer Evelyn's question about the provenance of the narrator.

William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis *****

Nature's Metropolis is a history of the relationship between Chicago and the rural areas to its west during the nineteenth century. Its primary thesis is that you can't understand one without the other.

No city played a more important role in shaping the landscape and economy of the mid-continent during the second half of the nineteenth century than Chicago. Conversely, one cannot understand the growth of Chicago without understanding its special relationship to the vast region lying to its west. ... The central story of the nineteenth-century West is that of an expanding metropolitan economy creating ever more elaborate and intimate linkages between city and country.

In other words, the nature of the landscape around Chicago shaped its development as a city, and Chicago's development shaped the landscape around it. Wisconsin has dairy farms and Iowa has cornfields because of business decisions made in Chicago.

It sounds like a dry subject perhaps, but I was fascinated by the interplay of natural and social forces, intentional and unexpected consequences, that defined the course of history. Chicago's founders thought their city would be the gateway to the west because of its "natural advantage" of being near the divide between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds, but ultimately its biggest advantage (over St Louis) was that its main Eastern trading partner (New York) wanted its supply lines to be to its north because its main rivals were to its south. There was also the Civil War, which cut St Louis off from its main trading partner New Orleans.

The heart of the book covers the three major commodities that flowed through Chicago: grain, lumber, and meat. In these stories too there are intentional and unexpected consequences. The coming of the railroad had its expected major impact; the invention of the automated grain elevator unexpectedly shifted the entire economy.

My discovery of Nature's Metropolis is an advertisement for the value of used book stores. I came across it at The Book Exchange, a used book store in Ashland Oregon. It seems unlikely I would ever have seen it at any other place.