I just listened to My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante because it was voted the best book of the 21st century so far by The New York Times. Well, it was #1 on the list voted for by 503 writers, critics, and editors. It was #8 on the list voted for by the NYT’s readers. And it was #11 on a list created by The Guardian. It wasn’t my #1 twenty-first century read, but it might be in my Top Ten. I should create a Top 100 list for the books I’ve read so far this century. Right now, #1 would be The Warmth of Other Suns by Isobel Wilkerson.
Ranking books is ridiculously hard. Even describing my exact feelings about a book is extremely hard. But I can say, My Brilliant Friend is the kind of novel I rate as being the best kind of novel, and those are the ones that feel autobiographical.
We don’t even know who Elena Ferrante is, so there’s no telling if the novel is autobiographical. There is even speculation the author could be a man, but I doubt it. This book reads like the absolute best of women writers. However, it also reads like it describes the author’s own childhood and adolescence. And it feels like it’s about two very real people. Of course, the story could be entirely made up.
When I was young, and an English major in college we used to argue over whether a novel is best understood as a standalone work, or from a larger context of when, where, why, and who wrote it.
Back then, when I was young, I argued that a novel had to be judged as a standalone work.
Now that I am old, I disagree completely with my younger self. Just judging a book by itself is like looking at the tip of an iceberg that floats above the ocean. You also need to consider the rest of the mountain of ice below the waterline to get the complete picture.
Because Ferrante hides her identity, I can’t do that. Without reading several biographies and collections of letters, plus interviews and other works about her writing, I can only react to My Brilliant Friend as a standalone work.
My Brilliant Friend is very readable, compelling, engaging, moving, and sometimes inspiring. It’s told in two sections: Childhood and Adolescence. The narrator tells us that the story is about Raffaella Cerullo, who her friends call Lina, but she calls Lila. The narrator’s name is Elena Greco but is called Lenuccia or Lenù by others in the story. The story is set in Naples in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the first section the girls are eight or nine, and in the second section, they are fourteen to sixteen.
The first section is about how the two girls compete in grade school. Lina is the smartest, and Elena works hard to keep up with her. In the second section, Elena soars ahead academically. She gets to go to middle and high school. Lina does not and stays home to work in her father’s shoe repair shop. Yet, Lina reads on her own and is often far ahead of Elena intellectually and in maturity.
In My Brilliant Friend, the girls read Little Women. It’s so important to them, they reread the book until it falls apart. I have only read Little Women once, but I’ve seen several film adaptations, and I’ve read three biographies and watched one documentary on Louisa May Alcott. Little Women didn’t become impressive to me until I read those biographies.
I don’t think readers can deeply appreciate Little Women until they read a couple of biographies of Louisa May Alcott. I think that will also be true of My Brilliant Friend. Little Women was my mother’s favorite book from childhood. It was a favorite of her mother and sisters, and aunts. I’ve known many women for whom Little Women was something important that crossed generations. But then for hundreds of millions of readers and film goers, the story is good enough by itself. But I’d say, it’s just a wonderful sentimental tale until you get to know Louisa May Alcott.
I think the same could be true about My Brilliant Friend. I don’t know if My Brilliant Friend will be popular like Little Women has been in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. I won’t live long enough to know. It might be.
I wonder why Elena Ferrante hides their identity. I wouldn’t want to be famous either. All that attention would be annoying. But if her novels are just made-up stories, ones with incredibly detailed character development, I think they will only be popular reads. However, to become classics, we need to know a lot more about Elena Ferrante.
On Monday, August 19th, the New York Times ran a guest editorial by James Pogue about Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, entitled “The Senator Warning Democrats of a Crisis Unfolding Beneath Their Noses” which I found intriguing but hard to understand. It appears to suggest that Republicans are going to put limits on neoliberalism. That’s impossible for me to believe.
That’s a rather interesting statement, that the problems we face today aren’t logistical but metaphysical. Pogue then goes to say the subject of Murphy’s speech was “the fall of American neoliberalism.” I’ve read several articles over the last few years that mentioned the same thing. Neoliberalism is a virulent form of capitalism pushed by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It’s an economic philosophy embraced by Republicans, but Bill Clinton went along with it when he got his chance. So did Obama. It was Trump who appeared to put on the breaks Neoliberalism when he was elected, and Biden even followed Trump in some ways. So, some pundits are now suggesting the tide has turned.
But has it? Isn’t prosperity through economic success what Republicans and Democrats both want? Pogue goes on to summarize:
Okay, I understand this. Civilization is collapsing and ultimately capitalism is a Ponzi scheme that will fall apart as the one percent squeezed all the wealth out of the ninety-nine percent. But I assumed we need to fix neoliberal capitalism, not reject it. It’s the only system that creates jobs and freedom. We just needed to make it more equitable and friendly to the environment. I assumed that’s what the Democrats want, but evidently according to this essay it’s not the solution the Republicans want.
Pogue says Murphy defines it as a metaphysical problem that masks a spiritual crisis, one that Donald Trump has tapped into. Trump recognizes this unhappiness and appeals to it. Murphy says Democrats have trouble even admitting that it exists. But where does neoliberalism come in? Trump heads the Republican party, and isn’t that party the guardian angel of neoliberalism?
How can a political party overcome a spiritual crisis and still race full steam ahead with capitalism? Pogue summarizes Murphy’s recognition of the problem that the Democrats need to address:
This makes things even more puzzling. I can understand where Democrats might want to regulate capitalism, making it more socialistic and ecological, but how can Republicans alter their religion to help the dissatisfied?
Murphy brings up Project 2025 but is that really a solution to the spiritual crisis he’s pointing at? Ever since FDR and the New Deal, Republicans have been wanting to undo it, and LBJ’s Great Society too. But wasn’t Neoliberalism a response to the Great Depression? But does Project 2025 offer a solution to Murphy’s problem? Isn’t it just consolidating power. It doesn’t claim to undo neoliberalism. Although, it hopes to rewind our sociological makeup back to the 1920s.
To me, the Republicans want to avoid taxes and regulations so they can make as much money as possible. They want private property protected and they want national security. Neoliberalism gives them all of that, so why would they want to undo it? I don’t think they do.
Lately, I’ve been reading books on the French Revolution and Napoleon. The French Revolution tried to create a democratic society based on Enlightenment ideals. The revolutionaries wanted to get rid of the aristocracy and the church. Napoleon believed democracy would just allow a class of wealthy to replace the aristocracy, and that either would need to keep the church because the church kept the poor from destroying either the aristocracy or the wealthy. Napoleon didn’t care for democracy and felt a hereditary aristocracy was a better system for maintaining order. He reinstated the church.
Aren’t the Republicans wanting to be the new aristocrats, and aren’t they embracing the faithful to protect them? Trump and the Republicans want to consolidate power. Is their promise of law and order going to solve the spiritual crisis that Murphy describes?
If the Republicans win in 2024, roll out their Project 2025 plan, and succeed at killing off the Democratic Party, they aren’t going to solve those spiritual problems Murphy points to. They will deregulate capitalism more, cut taxes for themselves, and go back to distilling American wealth from the ninety-nine percent to the one percent. They might make some Americans happier by legislating behavior, but I’m pretty sure they won’t put the breaks on neoliberalism.
Republicans will face a real revolution, like the one in 18th-century France. And we’ll discover the same problems as the French discovered. Between the fall of the Bastille and the coronation of Napoleon, they tried many kinds of governing theories based on the desires of the different factions of the population. None of them worked.
I believe the spiritual crisis Murphy points to has always been with us. There’s no form of government that makes most of the population satisfied. That the pendulum always swings between hope and the apocalypse but never reaches either. Murphy is saying that Trump and the Republicans are swinging the pendulum towards hope. That might even be true for some, but it doesn’t mean the pendulum will reach a point and make their followers happy.
I don’t think Trump is really offering an alternative to neoliberalism economics, but just appealing to isolationism, xenophobia, racism, and is anti-LGBTQ+.
Would it be cruel of me to point out that Christians have been waiting for the Rapture for over two thousand years. Republicans have been in the desert for forty years waiting to get into the promise land. They feel they are remarkably close. Religion and politicians have been promising to deliver people into the land of milk and honey for two hundred thousand years. We’ve never gotten there yet so why believe it now?
The essay goes on for a great length, but it finally gets down to talking about what the Democrats can do in response. I worry that the Democrats might promise pie-in-the-sky. I think we need to get away from believing political parties will save us.
Democrats and Republicans vilify each other, often to extreme. Each have legitimate complaints and desires.
The whole country needs to rethink what it wants, and not trust either party. I think Trump supporters should expect to be let down. I don’t think either party can solve the spiritual crisis that Murphy describes. We have a polarized political system that is stuck with always leaving half the voters unhappy.
I don’t know if we can fix our system, or even start over with a new one that works. But my gut tells me the present two-party system won’t ever succeed. I doubt a one-party system would either. I’d like to see more democracy, not less. We need to decide everything with referendums but change what a winning majority is from 50% to 66%. We need to move closer to a consensus rather than polarization. I think that might be possible with referendums, but not with political parties. Just study opinion polls. Political parties have succeeded in making minority rule work.
I want the Democrats to win in November, but I don’t expect them to solve the spiritual crisis Murphy describes. I just expect they will provide less turmoil over the next four years. Civilization will continue to head towards collapse. Theoretically, we might avoid that, but not with our present political system.
I also think whether the Democrats or Republicans win, they are just going to slightly modify neoliberal economics. The pandemic taught us that we shouldn’t depend on globalism for vital products, but corporations aren’t going to give up on global markets or moving jobs around the world to where labor is cheap. We’ll deploy some tariffs, but then we’ve always had. But the basic tenet of neoliberalism, that capitalism generates prosperity through unhindered commerce won’t end. Capitalism is destructive to the environment, and unkind to economic losers. By its very nature, capitalism generates inequality. The Americans who are suffering the spiritual crisis Murphy describes won’t be saved.
If we evolved a system based on referendums and larger winning majorities, the political parties would slowly fade away. Philosophers have always worried about democracy leading to mob rule. I’m not sure that would be true if we increased the size of the winning majority. It would force us to cooperate. It’s too easy to create minority rule with a fifty percent winning majority.
Our present situation is due to the wealthy getting what they want. Like Napoleon said, they are the new aristocrats, and they aren’t going to give up their power, privilege, and position. Any political or economic solution to help those suffering from the spiritual crisis that Murphy worries about will have to include the power of the wealthy in their equations.
Before neoliberalism was a period where the rich were taxed more heavily, and we had a larger middle class. I doubt Trump wants to use that solution. Neoliberalism wants to stop anything that gets in the way of the rich making money. I can’t believe anyone believes that any political movement will hinder that.
Murphy is right in that the Democrats don’t deal with the issue. But I don’t believe the Republicans are offering a solution either. I think they’re just lying to get elected. Trump’s isolationist policies will create some jobs, but other policies will do away with more jobs. And if he really deports millions of illegal immigrants it will make a huge dent in the economy. Even then, those policies aren’t altering neoliberialism.
I think Murphy and others have put their finger on the problem, but I don’t see anyone offering a solution that will work. Neoliberalism has made greed almost unstoppable. I say almost, because revolutions and apocalypses do happen.
To solve Murphy’s spiritual crisis, we need a lot more jobs and a lot less inequality. Unfortunately, this era also coincides with artificial intelligence, robots, and increased automation. The dream of capitalism has always been to do away with labor, and technology is getting closer and closer to doing that.
Sometimes you find yourself deep within the rabbit’s hole before you realize you’ve fallen into one.
I wish I had read the biographical entry for Sylvia Townsend Warner in Wikipedia before I read Lolly Willowes. It was her first novel, published in 1926. Warner was born in 1893 in Middlesex, England. She was greatly influenced by her father, a successful scholar, who died in 1916. Lolly Willowes is about Laura Willowes’ life after her father died. The story begins when Laura, called Lolly by her family, is twenty-eight, a spinster, who is forced to live with her brother’s family and take care of his children.
Warner was just five years older than Laura when she wrote Laura’s story, and unmarried. In the second part of the novel, Laura is forty-seven and lives a vastly different life. After Warner wrote Lolly Willowes she became involved with a life-long lesbian relationship. Warner authored many novels, many short story and poetry collections, worked in a munitions factory during WWI, became a communist, traveled to Spain twice during the civil war working with the Red Cross, and had a long productive life in several fields, including writing a biography of T. H. White. She died in 1978 at age 84.
In 1926 Sylvia Townsend Warner imagined it would take Laura twenty years before she could free herself from the roles society defined for her. Warner didn’t wait that long. I finished Lolly Willowes yesterday, and today I read the biographical piece in Wikipedia. It inspired me to order a biography on Warner by Claire Harman.
I bought Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner because the Kindle edition by NYRB (New York Review Books) was on sale for $1.99. NYRB is famous for reprinting forgotten classics. I often buy them when they go on sale, but what really sold me on Lolly Willowes is the blurb claimed it was the very first Book-of-the-Month Club selection. A quick peek at Wikipedia told me the novel was an early feminist classic, an international bestseller when it came out, and it was about witches and Satan. The book’s subtitle, “The Loving Huntsman” refers to the devil.
The NYRB edition is no longer available on Amazon, but since the novel is in the public domain, there are many editions available, including one for forty-nine cents. NYRB’s site still lists four novels by Warner, including Lolly Willowes, which does have a nice introduction by Alison Lurie.
Now, after all that build up, I’m not sure I can recommend this novel. Sometimes, forgotten classics are forgotten for a reason. The first half of this book tells us about Lolly’s upbringing and background. And it’s told rather than shown, meaning it’s a long narrative description. It’s not until Laura’s nieces and nephews grow up and have children of their own, becoming Aunt Lolly to a new generation, that she finally rebels. Laura moves to Great Mop, a small hamlet, to live alone. It’s here where she discovers she wants to become a witch and befriends the Devil.
At the beginning of the story we feel sorry for Lolly because she’s unmarried at twenty-eight. For most of the story we feel sorry for Lolly because for the next two decades she’s trapped as a live in aunt, in a role she doesn’t want. Then at forty-seven she defies everyone to go live on her own. It’s interesting that Warner has Laura gaining her freedom around the time of menopause. I am reminded of the sociological study, Sex and the Seasoned Woman by Gail Sheehy. Sheehy profiled women who felt that after menopause they no longer had to put husband or children first, and were finally free to pursue their own life. This fits with the novel.
Lolly Willowes came out in 1926, three years before Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Late in Lolly Willowes Lolly tells the Devil, “It’s to escape all that–to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others….” Doesn’t that remind you of Woolf’s classic title?
It’s this impassioned speech that Lolly makes to the Devil that finally launches the novel into orbit. It’s a shame that it comes so late in the story. I even wonder if readers would benefit from reading it before starting Lolly Willowes. It might make all the rambling story that comes before it more powerful.
Here is that speech. Don’t read it if you think it will spoil the story. She is addressing the Devil.
“Is it true that you can poke the fire with a stick of dynamite in perfect safety? I used to take my nieces to scientific lectures, and I believe I heard it then. Anyhow, even if it isn’t true of dynamite, it’s true of women. But they know they are dynamite, and long for the concussion that may justify them. Some may get religion, then they’re all right, I expect. But for the others, for so many, what can there be but witchcraft? That strikes them real. Even if other people still find them quite safe and usual, and go on poking with them, they know in their hearts how dangerous, how incalculable, how extraordinary they are. Even if they never do anything with their witchcraft, they know it’s there—ready! Respectable countrywomen keep their grave-clothes in a corner of the chest of drawers, hidden away, and when they want a little comfort they go and look at them, and think that once more, at any rate, they will be worth dressing with care. But the witch keeps her cloak of darkness, her dress embroidered with signs and planets; that’s better worth looking at. And think, Satan, what a compliment you pay her, pursuing her soul, lying in wait for it, following it through all its windings, crafty and patient and secret like a gentleman out killing tigers. Her soul—when no one else would give a look at her body even! And they are all so accustomed, so sure of her! They say: ‘Dear Lolly! What shall we give her for her birthday this year? Perhaps a hot-water bottle. Or what about a nice black lace scarf? Or a new workbox? Her old one is nearly worn out.’ But you say: ‘Come here, my bird! I will give you the dangerous black night to stretch your wings in, and poisonous berries to feed on, and a nest of bones and thorns, perched high up in danger where no one can climb to it.’ That’s why we become witches: to show our scorn of pretending life’s a safe business, to satisfy our passion for adventure. It’s not malice, or wickedness—well, perhaps it is wickedness, for most women love that—but certainly not malice, not wanting to plague cattle and make horrid children spout up pins and—what is it?—‘blight the genial bed.’ Of course, given the power, one may go in for that sort of thing, either in self-defense, or just out of playfulness. But it’s a poor twopenny housewifely kind of witchcraft, black magic is, and white magic is no better. One doesn’t become a witch to run round being harmful, or to run round being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It’s to escape all that—to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread of life a day, the workhouse dietary is scientifically calculated to support life. As for the witches who can only express themselves by pins and bed-blighting, they have been warped into that shape by the dismal lives they’ve led. Think of Miss Carloe! She’s a typical witch, people would say. Really she’s the typical genteel spinster who’s spent herself being useful to people who didn’t want her. If you’d got her younger she’d never be like that.”
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. Lolly Willowes (New York Review Books (Paperback) Book 5) (pp. 149-150). New York Review Books. Kindle Edition.
Even though I bought the Kindle edition, I listened to the audiobook edition because it was part of my Spotify subscription. Hearing this speech came across far more dramatically than I can read it in my head.
I find it fascinating that Sylvia Townsend Warner could be so accepting of Lolly selling her soul to the devil. I must assume it was her way of saying how awful being confined by the traditional woman’s role was to her. Yet, Warner also portrays the Devil as Lolly’s master. Has she not traded one form of servitude for another? The biographical piece in Wikipedia also said that Warner wrote essays against the church.
Lolly Willowes does have a great deal of details about middle class life in England in the late 19th and early 20th century. I’ve always enjoyed those kinds of details about English life. There were many passages that reminded me of D. H. Lawrence. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel the story was consistently told as a singular work of art. And the novel seldom featured dramatic dialog.
Lolly Willowes is not a modern novel even though it came out in 1926. I felt it was closer in style to George Elliot, but Lolly Willowes lacks the depth of Dorothea Brooke, but then Warner’s novel is only five hours on audio, and Middlemarch runs around thirty-five hours.
If you’re into English novels, especially those written by women, then give Lolly Willowes a try. However, if you want a solidly fun book about an English woman on her own, reading Miss Buncle’s Book by D. E. Stevenson, which came out in 1934. It’s interesting how different women can be just seven years later.
I must admit, that the more I read about Sylvia Townsend Warner, the more likely I am to reread Lolly Willowes in the future. Like many books, multiple readings brings out depths missed with just one reading. I may have missed a lot.
Composing an essay makes me clarify my thoughts. We don’t think in sentences and paragraphs, but in vague words and images. It’s hard to write a sentence that says exactly what you mean the first time. The act of constructing a sentence helps us find out what we’re thinking.
Every day I watch videos on YouTube, and it’s become obvious that expressing an idea with both words and pictures can convey an idea more precisely. Have you noticed how infographics are being used more often in print and online?
I find this particularly true with the channel Useful Charts created by Matt Baker. Baker’s three videos explaining the types of atheists struct me as particularly clear and insightful. You should watch the series to see exactly what I mean, but I’m going to point out several things he did I thought were particularly good at making his ideas concrete.
I think the chart at the top of the page makes his point far better than if we were to just listen to the video or read the transcript. Of course, if he had written the information in an outline, it might have worked just as well.
Implicit Atheists – A person who lacks a belief in God
Babies & very young children
Those who have never heard of the concept
Those who are truly undecided
Those who really don’t care
Explicit Atheists – A person who firmly believes God does not exist
Those who have heard the concept, have seriously thought about it, and have concluded that they do not believe
What most people assume an atheist is.
But if you had to choose which form, words without graphics, or words with graphics, which helped you to see Baker’s points the easiest and fastest?
Later, Baker works to prove that people who think being an agnostic is different from being an atheist are wrong. Agnostic refers to a lack of knowledge, while atheist refers to a lack of belief. By Baker’s definition, most agnostics are atheists.
However, as the video progresses, Baker makes a good case that the term atheist isn’t especially useful because it doesn’t convey a worldview. That surprised me. I always tell people I’m an atheist, but Baker is right, the term doesn’t say much. The term atheist only says I’ve rejected the hypothesis that God created reality. It doesn’t say what I believe.
Baker claims that a worldview has three factors, ontology, epistemology, and axiology. From that I see my ontology is naturalism, my epistemology is science and reason, and my axiology is ethics. That particular combination is generally a humanistic worldview.
I should not tell people I’m an atheist but say I’m a humanist. But then, if people don’t understand the definitions Baker is presenting in his video, is that term any more informative? Baker goes into explain humanism and its history and says that humanists are naturalists aligned with science and reason interested in improving the world. That gives me a lot to think about.
The worldview image above is a mini lesson in philosophy, but the whole video is a mini lesson in how to classify your feelings about religion and philosophy.
In part 2 of the series, Baker goes into classifying atheists by personality types. For his dissertation he used the Meyers-Briggs classification system. Glancing through his dissertation, the information seems dense. It would take a bit of work to digest it. I bet the three videos explain his research far easier for most people to understand.
I’m left wondering if I should try to write my blog essays with more infographics. Or even try to write a whole essay in infographics.
Baker’s video on explaining atheists is minor compared to those where he explains larger subjects. Here’s his video on “37 Bible Characters Found Through Archaeology.” Don’t be put off that it’s about The Bible. It’s about how we know things. For example, most of the characters in The Bible that we can connect to history were from the Iron Age. And most of the characters that are considered myths come from the Bronze Age. Seeing that laid out graphically is very impressive.
I highly recommend spending some time watching the videos on Useful Charts. It’s making me rethink how to express ideas and concepts. Baker makes a wonderful video comparing commercial DNA tests people use for genealogy.
I was particularly impressed with his video on the “Western Esotericism Family Tree.” It explains a lot about people I’ve read about over the years.
Why read any book when you can read a terrific book? Yes, but which books are great? Recently, The New York Times asked 503 writers, critics, editors, and other experts on literature what were their favorite ten books published since the year 2000. The editors wanted to know what the best books were published so far in the 21st century. They produced this list (NYT-W). It’s a list of one hundred fiction and nonfiction books that tend to be more literary and serious.
But they also asked the paper’s readers to submit their favorite ten books published since the year 2000. That produced this list (NYT-R). That result seems to lean towards the bestsellers that readers love.
The Guardian back in 2019 created their own list of the best books of the 21st century. This gives a British slant.
Each list ranked the books 1 through 100.
I combined all three lists in a Google spreadsheet and sorted it by the books on the most lists. Eighteen books were on all three lists, and thirty-six titles were on two lists. Those 54 titles are the real standouts. The three lists produced 225 unique titles.
My plan is to start reading all the books on the list, focusing on the ones that were on the most lists first. I’ve marked those I’ve already read.
I want to read and study these books. Eventually, I want to make a list of qualities that go into books that create a universal appeal. Now that I’m getting older, I don’t want to waste time reading mediocre books.
Not only do I want to broaden my taste in reading, but I crave finding books that I’ll remember. I don’t expect to remember much, because I can’t remember much anymore, but I want to read books that I remember something, some little takeaway that I can keep.
Auxiliary Memory 