George Eliot, Middlemarch ****

 Middlemarch is the epitome of what Henry James called a "large, loose, baggy monster": a 900-page 19th-century novel with an expansive number of characters and storylines. I first read it in college at the suggestion of my English professor, who said it was the finest novel of the period. Her recommendation overrode my prejudice against George Eliot, who had annoyed me with the melodramatic ending to The Mill on the Floss, which in my opinion shirked the writer's duty to resolve the central conflicts of the story. 

I re-read Middlemarch now because I found myself telling people that my post-retirement project would be a "Key to All Mythologies," which is a self-deprecating reference to the never-completed work of the ineffectual Mr Casaubon. The fact that no one catches the reference makes it a perfect reflection of Casaubon's work.

The book is too long, with too many subplots unfolding at too leisurely a pace to sustain any narrative drive. Individual scenes, though, are deeply felt and intelligently portrayed. Eliot captures the complexity of interpersonal interactions with great subtlety: characters don't have simple misunderstandings, they interpret each others' actions based on divergent worldviews. The novel is very well constructed, with themes and plot points echoing across storylines: frustrated idealists, questionable marriages, controversial wills, unjust suppositions, mistrusted outsiders, unexpected windfalls.

The prose style is dense in the 19th-century fashion, but with a quotable phrase every fourth or fifth sentence. I feel like Middlemarch has apt quotes most any situation; I wish I had some way to find the appropriate bon mots amidst the wealth of detail!

Of course, men know best about everything, except what women know bettter.

Severity is all very well, but it's a good deal easier when you've got someone to do it for you.

I don't always agree with Henry James (preferring his brother William), but his review of Middlemarch  seems spot on.

Middlemarch is a treasure-house of details, but it is an indifferent whole. ... [Eliot's] novel is a picture -- vast, swarming, deep-colored, crowded with episodes, with vivid images, with lurking master-strokes, with brilliant passages of expression ... [Dorothea's disappointment] is analyzed with extraordinary penetration, but one may say of it, as of most of the situations in the book, that it is treated with too much refinement and too little breadth. It revolves too constantly on the same pivot.

Benn Steil, The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War *** 1/2

After reading Postwar, I wanted to know more about the Marshall Plan, the apparently innovative and uniquely successful approach to European economic recovery. How did it work exactly; for example, what's the deal with counterpart funds? How was the plan developed? Which aspects of its approach were specific to the post-war situation and which could apply today?

As its subtitle makes clear, The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War spends more of its 400 pages on the realpolitik that shaped the plan than on its macroeconomic details. In Steil's telling, the Marshall Plan was the part of Allied postwar strategy that motivated most of Stalin's actions, such as the takeover of Czechoslovakia and the Berlin blockade. The book describes in exhaustive/exhausting detail the politics between the Allies and within the United States. (The chapter about Congressional debate on the Plan is titled "Sausage" :-). The namesake George Marshall plays a surprisingly small role in the drama.

From an economic point of view, the book captures well the fundamental goals of the Plan –– "the speediest possible reactivation of the European economic machine" by "affording them the space to liberalize and integrate their economies –– and the disputed principles behind its implementation, but I wanted more implementation details. There is one measly paragraph about counterpart funds. In fact, the book skips (Reservoir Dogs-style) past implementation of the Plan straight to a retrospective chapter about its "Success?". It ends with a prescient chapter about Russia's views on NATO expansion, proving that its subject is America's whole Cold War containment strategy and not just the Marshall Plan.

The writing style splits the difference between a popular history and an academic treatise. The prologue plunges straight into names-and-dates prose that presumes you're familiar with the background. (Maybe Steil assumes you've read his previous book about the Bretton Woods conference?) The copious footnotes provide literature references and not much else.

Willy Vlautin, The Night Always Comes ****

A selection from the "Local Authors" rack at Powell's Books. Publisher's Weekly called it "a brilliant synthesis of Raymond Carver and Jim Thompson," which means that it combines the character work of dirty realism with the action of noir fiction. This review captures the mood of the novel better than the back-cover summary which suggests it's about the gentrification of Portland. Housing costs are the MacGuffin that set the plot in motion, but the book is really about overcome past mistakes.

Lynette is working three jobs while caring for her developmentally disabled brother. She has saved enough money for the down payment on the rundown house they've been renting, but at the last minute her mother backs out on getting a loan for the rest. Lynette spends a long, increasingly dangerous night trying to collect all the money she can.

For the most part, the story hews to the conventions of paperback thrillers, as does Vlautin's unadorned writing style. What I appreciated, though, was that the characters' motivations were believable and somewhat sophisticated, unlike the windup toys featured in most thrillers. And despite the dark milieu, there's an underlying hopefulness. Lynette's mother gives a compelling speech about how you have to "just look out for yourself and screw everyone else"... but she does it while tenderly tending to her daughter's injured back.