Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust

I’ve been meaning to read something by Proust for a long time.  His name gets dropped in various writings, literary writings I suppose, as if the name alone is enough to convey a world of meaning.  Like Charles Dickens or Yogi Berra.    “Proustian, you say?  Oh my, I know what you mean!” So annoying.  Finally now, I do have a sense of what that means, and it’s actually a pretty potent image.  Reading a little something by Proust isn’t easy because he never wrote a little anything.  This book was just over six hundred pages, two long chapters and one short one.  It’s Volume I of a six volume work, In Search of Lost Time, known commonly as his masterpiece.  In France he’s something of a national hero, up there with Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Dumas, Balzac, and Sartre, known I suspect, more for the reputation fashioned for him by the serious literary critics, the intelligentsia, than for pleasure or enlightenment enjoyed by a large number of readers.  Proust wrote and published in the decades before and after the turn of the twentieth century,  more than a hundred years ago.  I’d wager fewer people have read a whole book by Proust in all that time than have read a John Grisham book in just the last ten years.  Definitely not mass market material.  

What’s my take?  I’m not really a fan.  I find a lot to respect and admire in his work, but I can’t say I enjoyed it, or that I was enlightened by it, other than that I learned something of what ‘Proustian’ means.  I’m not eager to run out and pick up Volume II.

A word about the plot: there isn’t any.  No, that’s not fair.  There was in fact a plot to the second chapter, “Swann in Love”.  In short Swann fell in love, she dumped him, he got over it.  The first chapter, “Combray” was two hundred sixty pages of the author’s rapturous depictions of his childhood home, its inhabitants, trees, flowers, routines, buildings, steeples gardens, and more flowers, their colors, shapes, fragrances, seasons.  For Proust the real is just a springboard for his imagination which multiplies the length of the narrative through endless flights of fancy.  He goes on for pages about a simple flowering hawthorn tree he encounters on one of his many walks. 

The difficulty of the reading is magnified by Proust’s use of extremely long, complex sentences in which he inserts multiple asides in the form of thoughts set off by dashes or enclosed in parentheses, some of them running on for half a page in which it’s hard not to lose track of the point of the parenthetical insertions, let along the thrust of the sentence itself.  Many times I returned to the beginning of a sentence and re-read, taking pains to not let myself get drawn in to what’s between dashes or parentheses so that I could avoid getting lost in the asides.  I’m tempted to say it’s like the rambling of thoughts when I’m lying in bed unable to fall asleep and they run from one thing to another and another and another until at some point I arrive at some frightening or unpleasant notion and become aware of the aimless wanderings and ask myself ‘How did I get here???’  But Proust is not like that.  Proust’s wanderings are not aimless.  Invariably if I read carefully I’d find that every aside is relevant to the narrative, and every long winded simile, every memory called up in vivid detail, is wonderfully apt to the circumstance.  

I need to offer an example, and would love to select a short one, but that would not be representative of Proust’s style, and besides, I can’t find a short one.  So here is a paragraph from “Combray”, the memory evoked by a taste of tea.  “And as soon as I had recognised the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me, immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had been built out behind it for my parents; and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I used to be sent before lunch, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine.  And as in the game wherein the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little pieces of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch and twist and take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, solid and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the water lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.”  I ask you, reader, to read that again a time or two, and see the richness of the Japanese paper analogy.  It’s a good example, good in its fullness, and good in that it is representative of the way Proust treats memory, time and again.  His recollections are so vivid, so much like a reality, that at times a memory of a place is more important, almost more real, than the present.  It occurs to me how horrid Alzheimer’s would be for a person like Proust for whom memory is so consuming.  

There is a lot of breathless romanticism in the writing, mooning and fluttering over relatively minor events, magnifying them into happenings of great consequence.  Here is an example, when Swann, who has fallen in love with Odette, and even more in love with the glory of being in love, is about to kiss her for the first time.  “And it was Swann who, before she allowed it, as though in spite of herself, to fall upon his lips, held it [her face] back for a moment longer, at a little distance, between his hands.  He had wanted to leave time for his mind to catch up with him, to recognise the dream which it had so long cherished and to assist at its realisation, like a relative invited as a spectator when a prize is given to a child of whom she has been especially fond.  Perhaps, too, he was fixing upon the face of an Odette not yet possessed, nor even kissed by him, which he was seeing for the last time, the comprehensive gaze with which, on the day of his departure, a traveller hopes to bear away with him in memory a landscape he is leaving for ever.”

One final point I’ll make about Proust’s writing: it reveals an obviously broad and extensive education.  He deploys a vast vocabulary, choosing just the right word to convey a particular meaning.  This printing that I have read, of course, was a translation from the original in French, which suggests to me that, notwithstanding the claim one occasionally hears that the English language is the richest there is, the French language is no slouch.  Proust also drops in from time to time a Latin phrase always apropos to the moment in the narrative, never overbearing.  

I’m glad now that I took the time and persevered in reading this book.  At least I’ll get the reference when I hear someone mention the name Marcel Proust.  I’m sure there are useful, or at least interesting, insights to be gained from the other five volumes of Proust’s masterpiece, but I think I’ll move on to try and learn from another author.  To quote the Nowhere Man from Yellow Submarine, 

“Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo!

So little time, so much to know!”

Money, by Martin Amis

After reading London Fields, I was eager to consume more of Martin Amis’s supercharged writing.  I think I got more than I bargained for.  While London Fields inhabited the sleazy underworld of small time theft, cheating, and sex, more suggestive than explicit, Money is filled with pornography, big time cheating, drunkenness, and more pornography.  To be sure, the book isn’t pornographic itself.  It’s more about the debauchery that can be accessed with money.  Obviously, from the title, the book is about money, but mostly about money and sex, and, it could be said, about power in the sense that money is power to access sex.

Now, with that disdainful opening, let me hasten to give credit where credit is due: the writing is absolutely supercharged.  A couple of illustrations.  But first I should set the stage.  John Self, the narrator, is a British director of commercials, an ad man who’s had some success, supposedly specializing in sexiness to sell stuff.  He has connected with a New York producer, Fielding Goodney, who wants him to direct a feature film, a big step up for an ad man.  

There’s a major con going on here and I won’t expose it in case anyone who reads this review decides to go for the book.  In fact there are multiple cons at work.  Not surprising, as the movie business lives in a world of belief, faith, hope, desperate hope, that a movie turns a profit.  Investors, producers, directors, actors all invest money, time, their reputations, their fortunes in the hope that the movie doesn't bomb.  Or get caught up in litigation, as London Fields has.  Starring Billy Bob Thornton and  selected for screening at the Toronto Film Festival back in 2015, it was pulled from the program when the film’s director filed suit against the producers.  Multiple lawsuits later, now late 2017, it’s still stuck.  A disaster for all involved.  Making movies is a risky business, not always the mega-millions machines that get all the press.  After all, no one knew that Star Wars would be an immediate and lasting smash hit leading to an unbelievable series of sequels and prequels and spinoffs and mind-boggling merchandise--until it did.  

Back to Money.  I don‘t recall who wrote the story on which the movie is to be based,  maybe it was John Self, but John and Fielding go about the business of recruiting (conning?) the actors, screenplay writers, investors, extras, and other necessary participants.  Actually Fielding takes care of the investors.  He flashes a lot of money, which serves as irresistible bait.  Success breeds success.  Along the way John Self waterlogs himself with alcohol and pornographic sex (I’m telling you don't read the book for the sex.  It’s about porn without actually being porn).  Plus a boatload of jealousy, infatuation, childhood issues, resentment, violence, you-name-it.  Enough of plot.  It gets complicated and I’m sure I didn’t follow it all.  

But the writing.  Character naming is like Dickens, but more comedic.  Female characters include Selena Street, Happy Jonson, Sunny Wand, Day Lightbrowne, and Butch Beausoleil.  Suggestive, right?  Evocative, almost pornographic.  Here’s an excerpt when John meets Fielding in a bar, to be introduced to Butch Beausoleil.  John is very drunk.  “I took a bit of a toss on a stool-leg and sprinted face-first into a pillar, but stumbled on until I made out my friend Fielding down at the far end.  Dressed in a white tux, he was whispering into the nimbus cast by a miraculously glamorous girl.  She wore a low-cut silk dress in a razzy gray--it rippled like television.  Her ferociously tanned hair hung in solid curves over the vulnerable valves of her throat and its buzzing body-tone.”  Sizzling.

Here’s an irresistible description of London weather.  “You get April, blossom blizzards and sudden sunshafts and swift bruised clouds.  You get May and its chilly light, the sky still writhing with change.  Then June, summer, rain as thin and sour as motorway wheel-squirt, and no sky at all, just no sky at all.  In summer, London is an old man with bad breath.  If you listen, you can hear the sob of weariness catching in his lungs.”  Motorway wheel-squirt?  Where does Amis get such a notion?

One more excerpt, one that dances around the fringes of pornography, but isn't porn itself.  Certainly it isn’t something you’d want your preteen to read, but also not the kind of thing that John Self would find satisfying when trying to pleasure himself.  The scene happens after John has set up a joint checking account with his girlfriend, Selina Street, who has insisted that having her own checkbook would give her dignity and self respect.  “That morning she went to bed in black stockings, tasseled garter belt, satin thong, silk bolero, muslin gloves, belly necklace and gold choker.  I made a real pig of myself, I have to admit.  An hour and a half later she turned to me, with one leg still hooked over the headboard, and said, ‘Do it anywhere, anything.’  Things had unquestioningly improved, what with all this new dignity and self respect about the place.”

The writing is undeniably energetic, vibrant, creative, and often clever.  It’s just so scumbaggy.  The story makes an excellent point about the power of money and what people will do if they believe.  But it’s so smarmy.  Looking back now I don’t feel like the positive teachings of the book were worth the grime.  Does that make me a prig?  Maybe so, but there you have it.  

Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf

This is another step in my journey to fill in major gaps in my reading. The name Virginia Woolf is probably known as much for the Edward Albee play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” as for her own works.  Browsing my favorite bookstore, The Ivy, I came across a section of her books and picked up this one, only later realizing that it was the inspiration for the movie, “The Hours.”  The movie does not follow the plot of Mrs. Dalloway, but features two women who had read and were deeply affected by the book, along with Mrs. Woolf herself.  I figured this out about two thirds of the way through the book.  I kept trying to place events in the book into what I could remember of the movie, which I had seen fifteen years back.  Nothing fit.  Finally I googled the movie, read the summary, and then understood why I wasn’t seeing any connections.

Mrs. Dalloway is not easy reading.  It isn’t long, at just under two hundred pages, and there were not many words I needed to look up.  Tokay, for instance turns out to be a wine from a region of Hungary and Slovakia known as Tokaj.  The expression “come up to the scratch”, apparently common to the time and place of the novel, means to “be good enough” for whatever is called for.  There were other expressions not familiar to me but context generally provided sufficient clues for me to grasp the meaning.

Set in post-WWI London, the story traces one day in the life of an upper crust wife, Clarissa Dalloway, along with numerous other characters who brush up against her life in ways that range from insignificant to profound.  It opens with her purchasing flowers for the party she was having that night, and ends that evening as the party is winding down.  

Much of what the reader gets from the narrative is implied rather than stated.  For instance, the opening sentence reads, “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”  From this and what follows one infers that she is wealthy and would ordinarily have one of her employees get the flowers but for some reason she had chosen to do it herself.  The reader may wonder why.  Is it because there is so much to do to prepare for the party and her servants are busy with other tasks?  Is there something special about this party with respect to the flowers chosen?  Maybe a particular guest with whom she shares a memory about flowers?  Maybe she just wants to get out of the house into the world for a while.  

This speculation I’ve just done is a tiny glimpse at the way Woolf tells the story.  It’s at least ninety percent interior, that is, interior to the mind as opposed to actual events.  Think about how the mind works when uninterrupted.  It flits from one thought to another, maybe settles on one train for a while, catches on a memory that leads elsewhere, then another, then wonders how it got to this point and tries to backtrack, retrace the links to the first thought, and then, “what shall I have for lunch?”  Woolf tells the story through these interior monologues which I found difficult to follow and often required me to re-read to get the meaning.  Her punctuation is complicated too, with lots of commas and semicolons, and absences where it seems some punctuation is called for.  But then how would you punctuate your rambling thoughts?  Even more confusing are moments when two women are together and ‘she’ and ‘her’ appear in numerous thoughts, and it becomes unclear which person is which.  I’m sure that if I re-read the book now in its entirety much would become more clear to me.  

So with all this confusion and difficulty, why bother?  Is there redeeming value that makes it worth the trouble?  My answer is yes.  For one thing there is much beauty in the writing itself.  For example, when Big Ben strikes she writes, “First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.  The leaden circles dissolved in the air.”  For me that conjures the image of a pebble tossed into a still pond, or a drop of water falling from the tip of my oar onto the glassy surface of the river, making a perfect circle that expands ever outward from the center growing fainter until it vanishes.  Her choice of the words “warning”, “irrevocable”, and “leaden” color the thought with a darkness, a sadness, again leading the reader to wonder why.

Beyond its stylistic merits, the story reveals important insights, such as about the resentment between the wealthy and the poor, obscured beneath the polite surface.  For poor, ugly Miss Kilman her hatred is like a pressure cooker, a plain metal pot on the outside but superheated with rage on the inside.  Clarissa feels hatred toward Miss Kilman too but maintains the appearance of serenity.

Septimus Warren Smith is a war veteran who survived physically intact but is shell-shocked, a condition we would now call PTSD.  As his madness grows, his thoughts become more disordered, he sees apparitions, hears noises, a woman morphs into a bird, paranoia sets in, his interior monologue grows increasingly remote from anything in the real world.  It’s a sympathetic treatment of the condition which is needless to say a major concern for returning veterans today, and is still only imperfectly understood.  The nature of the interior monologue of the deranged and struggling Mr. Smith has special credibility because Virginia Woolf herself descended into madness in her later years and at age fifty-nine, committed suicide, as does Septimus Warren Smith.  

The main story line (okay it took me a while to get to it) is the love between Mrs. Dalloway and Peter Walsh.  Long ago they had fallen in love, exciting, turbulent.  They talked, they argued, they fought, but it was when together that they felt most alive.  Clarissa had rejected Peter’s proposal.  Why?  Did she want to hurt him?  Did she allow her head to overrule her heart? Now, decades later, they have lived separate lives, both married, both pretending their lives have been good and satisfying, though it is clear they regret not having been together.  The love still burns but is smothered by the thought, as Paul Simon put it in “Slip-Sliding Away,” “She said a bad day is when I lie in bed and think of things that might have been.”  Regret.  It’s an emotion we’ve all felt at some time or another, maybe about some little thing that we soon forget, or maybe about the biggest decision of our lives.  I think Virginia Woolf has something to say to us all. 

Mrs. Poe, by Lynn Cullen

I picked this up in an independent bookstore in Decatur, GA while my three year old grandson ate an ice cream cone outside.  Edgar Allan Poe is said to have lived his last years in Baltimore, and our football team is called the Ravens, after Poe’s famous poem, so I was curious.  

The first couple of pages grabbed me.  I’ll often read the first sentence or two to test the pull of a story.  This one tugged pretty good; I was on page five before I knew it.  In the first paragraph reference is made to “girls who troll the streets of Corlear’s Hook,” an area of lower Manhattan frequented by sailors on the prowl, revealing the derivation of the term “hooker”.  Interesting.  The next page has a character, an editor named George Pope Morris, boasting that his book on flowers had recently been published by Mr. Harper, referring to the founder of the famed publishing house.  A quick check of Wikipedia revealed that Mr. Morris was also a real person, best known for the poem “Woodman Spare That Tree.”  One of the things I like about historical fiction is that it is informative.  This story is packed with recognizable names from the mid-nineteenth century, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Louisa May Alcott, Samuel Morse, Horace Greeley, and Phineas T. Barnum, all of whom were contemporary with, and acquainted with, Edgar Allan Poe.  

Now we come to the story’s narrator, Frances Sargent Osgood, who we learn was also real, a poet, and who was famous for carrying on an exchange of romantic poems with Poe, which were published in a popular periodical of the day.  It created a bit of a scandal as both Osgood and Poe were married.  Cullen portrays them as madly in love but unable to act on their desire, other than through stolen glances and secrecy, because of their marital obligations.  That sounds like a banal plot device, but Cullen enriches it by presenting a complex picture of their respective situations, and what adult’s situation is not complex?  

Frances is married to a fairly talented and successful artist, a painter of portraits, mostly of wealthy attractive women.  His work takes him away from home and out of touch (no cellphones, no phones at all) to unknown places for unknown periods, leaving Frances with no financial support and the appearance of having been abandoned.  Frances works to make a living off her poetry.  Her wayward husband is handsome and charming, and Frances once loved him, and could again, if he’d just come home.  He is also the father of her two daughters.  

Poe is married to his first cousin, Virginia, more than ten years his junior, strikingly pretty but sickly.  He lives with her and her mother, a common woman not well suited to the stylish and insular drawing rooms of New York City.  Virginia’s poor health is a constant burden for Poe, a burden that is also freighted with guilt from feeling romantic love for Mrs. Osgood.  Then there’s the shortage of money.  Despite the success of “The Raven”, Poe struggles to earn enough money to warm a shabby house in a shabby neighborhood of New York, while trying to keep up appearances for the rich movers and shakers and literati of the city, who make up his paying readership.  

It’s a well rounded story, engagingly told.  The romantic feelings seemed a bit overwrought to me, as in, “The sight of his beautiful fingers, so sensitive, so intelligent, made me want to weep.”  Expressions like ‘Spare me’ and ‘Get over it’ and ‘Suck it up’ occured to me. But Poe lived and wrote in the period of Romanticism, and I feel certain Ms. Cullen wrote in that style on purpose to cause the story to fit more perfectly into its nineteenth century setting.  Well done, Ms. Cullen. 

Thus Bad Begins, by Javier Marias

I am surprised now that, not only have I never read any works by Marias, but I had never even heard of him, never heard his name before.  I was browsing the new fiction table at the Ivy Bookstore, picked this up, read the first page or so, and was grabbed by the language, the depth of insight slipped casually and unexpectedly into otherwise straightforward statements.  The very first sentence contains the following: “...and how brief a life is once it’s over and can be summed up in a few sentences...”  That opening promised a story with memorable insights about ordinary people, which is my kind of story.  

The novel is set in Spain in the time following the death of the dictator, Francisco Franco, in 1975.  The narrator, Juan De Vere, is a twenty-three year old writer, employed as secretary to Eduardo Muriel, a moderately successful film producer.  Beatriz Noguera is Muriel’s wife, early forties, attractive, unhappy.  We don’t learn the source of that unhappiness until near the end of the book, when much else has happened, events that lend color to the story and threaten to become the main thread, but fade into insignificance, “...leaving only ashes in the memory, ashes that crumble at the slightest touch and fly up with the slightest gust of wind...”   Of course the inevitable punch of the story is the narrator’s story, and the reader doesn’t learn how that is until the final chapter, which is a long time to wait (439 pages), and because Marias’s chapters are short, typically only four to six pages, I wondered how it could be wrapped up in such a short space without leaving annoying loose ends.  But it is wrapped up, satisfyingly and gracefully.

The era of the Franco dictatorship casts a long shadow over the events in the novel.  Franco came to power in 1939 following a vicious civil war, and he ruled with a cruel fist for thirty six years until his death in 1975.  I was in my mid-twenties then but don’t remember anything of Franco; my interests in politics must have been filled and overfilled with Vietnam and Watergate.  In my mind I have always thought of Franco in terms of the thirties and forties, and World War II, not anything as recent as the seventies.  

In the story, there were rumors of atrocities committed by, and against, the regime, acts of violence and unequal power relationships, such as a supporter of the regime threatening to denounce an opponent, or even a non-political  bystander, and extracting sexual favors in return for his silence.  In the words of one of these characters, “...nothing gives one more satisfaction than when a girl doesn’t want to do it, but can’t say no.”  

Marias describes the decades following Franco’s death as a time that everyone just wanted to forget, to put it in the distant past, not to be dragged into the present by accusations, recriminations, trials and punishments.  A law, the Spanish 1977 Amnesty Law, passed only two years after Franco’s death, shielded any Franco-era crime from prosecution.  It violates international human rights law, but remains in force to this day.  

This wish to forget shows up in the novel as secrets, memories impinging on current thoughts, and recognition of current events, thoughts, and images as future memories.  On a couple of occasions, the narrator imagines his future self, much older, saying to him, “Remember this experience and note every detail, experience it with me in mind....grasp it firmly, take a long look at this woman and keep that image safe, because later on, I will ask you for it and you will have to offer it to me as consolation.”  Rich, very rich.

It wasn’t easy reading, but not terribly difficult either.  There were few, if any, moments when I had to set it aside and look something up, but several when my curiosity about real events and characters was piqued enough to propel me to do a little research.  It's a thoughtful story, very well crafted, and I can see myself seeking out another of his more than a dozen novels that have been translated into English.  Glad I read it.

The Sandcastle Girls, by Chris Bohjalian

Looking at the cover of this book, I didn’t expect much.  I didn’t even read the blurb on the back, just gauged it by the cover art--a young woman in white standing in a wind-eroded yellowed landscape--and the title.  I sort of expected a coming of age story about some teenage girlfriends during a formative summer.  But my wife had recommended it, and I was on my way to the airport and didn’t have time to be choosy, so I just grabbed it, kissed her, and ran.  The story was actually about the Armenian genocide of 1915 in which some 1.5 million people perished from murder, starvation, or disease.  Oooops.  As they say, never judge a book by its cover.

Most of the story is set in the Syrian city of Aleppo, much in the news these days as the Syrian government commits heinous atrocities against its own citizens in order to stifle dissent.  This city just can’t seem to get a break.  In 1138 it was the site of one of the most destructive earthquakes in all history, killing possibly as many as 230,000.  In 1915 it was the largest city on the hopeless trek from Armenia to Deir-ez Zor, a mid-desert encampment where thousands of women, children, and elderly were starved to death.  The men had already been executed.  

Laura is a modern day (2010) fortyish writer discovering and chronicling the story of her grandparents.  She knows that her grandfather, now dead, was Armenian, and that there were parts of his past that he was unwilling to talk about.  As the 100th anniversary of the genocide is approaching, she is caught by a photograph she sees in a museum.  It shows a woman, emaciated beyond belief, sitting in the dirt against a wall; she is identified as Karine Petrosian.  The same surname as her grandfather's.  Could this have been a relative of hers?  That question propels her to research in museums, archives, her grandparents’ letters, and eventually a journey to Aleppo where the galvanizing photo was taken.  

This is a story of love, of survival, of perseverance, of remembrance.  Armen, Laura's grandfather, is a young Armenian man who has survived the brutal obliteration of his home city by the Turks, and found temporary safety working with a pair of German soldiers in Aleppo.  [The irony of finding refuge from genocide with Germans is never stated by the author, but impossible to miss as a reader.  We are reminded that people--individuals--are all different, and that we all possess innate abilities to do great harm and great good.]. Elizabeth, her grandmother, is a relief worker from Boston, young and naive, but strong in spirit.  Armen and Elizabeth are attracted, fall in love, are separated, and struggle to reunite against the horrific backdrop of both the Armenian catastrophe and World War I.  

The love story is fiction but sadly the backdrop is not.  For a hundred years Armenian descendants have sought to pressure the Turks to own up to the genocide, the intentional and systematic annihilation of a whole people.  The Turks’ response is that shit happens in war, and it is forbidden in Turkey to utter the word ‘genocide’ in connection with the Armenians. 

This is not, in my opinion, a lasting work of literature, destined for any hallowed place.  It is a nicely told story with straightforward narration and unaccented dialogue.  The romance and the connection between generations is treated with warmth and wistfulness, and there is a twist to the story that caused me to catch my breath.  Much more than that, the story opens a window onto a piece of history that seems to be untold or to have been forgotten.  That is the important thing about history: it must not be forgotten.

The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli

It doesn’t feel quite right writing a review of a book that was written five hundred years ago, shortly after the discovery by Columbus of the western hemisphere, and that has been read by millions.  Like my review will be read by more than three people.  Ever.  Call me audacious, here I go.

The Prince is the original self-help book, advising the reader how to wield power so as to gain it and keep it.  The book was addressed to Lorenzo de Medici, son of Piero de Medici, grandson of Lorenzo “the Magnificent” de Medici, all of whom were rulers of Florence.  In his time, late 15th and early 16th centuries, Italy was divided mainly into principalities--Milan, Venice, Florence, Naples, and lesser ones like Pisa, Verona, Bologna, and Sienna.  The Pope, of course, ruled Rome.  The rulers of these places--the princes--tended to change frequently as power shifted from one family to another.  A treatise on how to keep power would be a very useful and welcome gift for a new ruler to receive.

It’s a short book, only eighty-seven pages in the paperback printing I read.  Not really a quick read though, because it has many footnotes that are important to understanding the text.   I used two bookmarks--one for the text and one for the footnotes, which appeared in order at the back of the book.  I also found myself checking Wikipedia for historical references.

From this book comes the popular modern adjective, ‘Machiavellian’, meaning ruthless, doing whatever it takes to hold onto power.  Murder, deceit, manipulation, bribery (both given and taken) are all among the recommended tools.  No holds barred.  Ironically he places great importance on religion; that is, the wise prince must seem to be religious.  He need not be a true believer himself but his subjects must see him as religious, and he must encourage religion as it is the one most powerful weapon in getting people to do what you wish.  Brings to mind some modern politicians who may have studied Machiavelli.  

The second most powerful tool is fear. He devotes several pages to the question of whether it is better to be loved or feared.  You will have rightly guessed that fear is the winner.  Machiavelli reaches the following very reasonable and unassailable conclusion: “Returning to the question, then, of being loved or feared, I conclude that since men love as they themselves determine but fear as their ruler determines, a wise prince must rely upon what he and not others can control.”

The work is a dispassionate set of principles of power, untempered by any sense of morality. Was he a sociopath?  He showed no sign of enjoying cruelty, which is presented as a tool to be used judiciously, to achieve a purpose, not as an end in itself, but not to be shied away from when necessary.  Of the need for cruelty, for which he uses the euphemism ‘injury’, he says, “Injuries must be committed all at once so that, being savored less, they will arouse less resentment.  Benefits, on the other hand, should be  bestowed little by little, so as to be more fully savored.”  Fascinating reading, really.  The temptation to see his principles in use in the modern world is unavoidable.  

As it happens, Sue and I have been watching some ‘made for Netflix’ historical series, including ones on Louis XIV of France, the English Tudors, Kublai Khan, and the Medici's of Florence.  All of them follow the formula: Sex + Violence + a touch of history = Viewers.  The stories hew pretty closely to known, documented people and events, which makes it at least quasi-educational.  The violence is often graphic, but I know how to close my eyes at the right moment.  The sex is graphic too, and I know how to not close my eyes....  

We are currently in the middle of a 40+ episode series on the Borgia family, one of the competitors for dominance in the time of Machiavelli. Rodrigo Borgia even bribed and threatened his way to the papacy, and held that position for eleven years until he died of poisoning.  Very spiritual.  

Machiavelli was an adviser to Rodrigo’s son, Cesare Borgia, who had a tumultuous career, rife with intrigue, bribery, mendacity, and violence, in short, all the tools Machiavelli endorses for use by the ‘wise prince’.  Though Cesare failed to prevail as a stable and secure prince--he died in battle when his troops abandoned him--he figures prominently in The Prince as the kind of ruler whose methods should be emulated by others who wish to rule.  It must be more than coincidence that the ruler he evaluates most favorably is the one he advised.  To be fair, it must have cut both ways; many of the principles Machiavelli presents must have been developed through observation of Cesare Borgia’s actions and the results. 

I must hasten not to overstate the role of Borgia in The Prince.  Machiavelli cites events in ancient Greece, Persia, Rome, Syria, Carthage, etc. in addition to events in then recent history in Europe.  He was clearly an avid student of history and observer of human nature and current events.   

As I read this book about how to succeed as a ruler, it was natural to wonder which, if any, of the principles could be applied on a much less grand stage; that is, as a manager.  For example, he advises, ”It is the nature of men to feel as much bound by the favors they do as by those they receive.”  If a person does me a favor, it sits in that person’s memory as an investment in me, and consequently tilts that person favorably toward me in the future.  As a manager, the more people I can get favors from, the better positioned I am for future success. Useful advice. 

Needless to say, I don’t agree with everything Machiavelli presents as principles.  After all, Cesare Borgia suffered a violent death at the age of 31, and Machiavelli himself had limited success.  But much is worthy of thought and, better yet, discussion.  A business would do well to include such a discussion in its leadership development program.  Glad I read it, wish I’d done so forty years ago.  I might have been king of the world.