Sparse prose is sexy.

Sexy.

And that's why I've given it a special shelf on my page, called a buck and change.

Guess what else sparse prose is?

Rare.

That's why I have only seven books on there.

Why? Why are these precious books that fall under 200 pages so rare?

Because writers tend to overwrite everything.

But not Edith Wharton, the queen of sparse prose. And Ms. Wharton, though she may appear stolid in her old black and white portraits, was one sexy lady.

She manages in Ethan Frome to take one anti-hero, one untamed shrew, and one manipulative maiden, and proves, in less than 100 pages, that winter, isolation and poverty do not discriminate.

Wharton is never a sell-out. She gives you foreshadowing, symbolism and metaphors in just the right dosages, and she never wastes your time.

And when one red dish shatters into sharp pieces all over that never-ending landscape of white. . . you can not help but be bewildered at what an exceptional writer can do, especially in succinct and clever prose.

L’INVERNO DEL CUORE


Liam Neeson è Ethan Frome nel film del 1993 diretto da John Madden.

Non era tanto la sua statura, perché quasi tutti gli “indigeni” spiccavano a prima vista tra le razze forestiere più tozze proprio per la loro altezza dinoccolata; era piuttosto quel suo aspetto naturalmente vigoroso, nonostante fosse talmente zoppo che, a ogni passo, sembrava che una catena legata ai piedi lo trattenesse di colpo… Aveva nel volto qualcosa di desolato e di chiuso e appariva così rigido e bianco che lo avevo preso per un vecchio, al punto che, quando mi dissero che non aveva più di cinquantadue anni, rimasi stupito.

Ecco la perfetta descrizione di quello che è stato il suo interprete più convincente, seppure in un film non molto convincente, nonostante il cast. Mi riferisco a Liam Neeson, che mi pare un match ideale.


Joan Allen è la moglie Zeena.

La Wharton si allontana decisamente dall’ambiente che gli è più familiare, quello dell’establishment (parvenu o meno), al quale lei stessa apparteneva. E si allontana dal milieu urbano che di più non si potrebbe: New England, Massachusetts, un paesino immaginario, Starkfield, montagna neve ghiaccio freddo, gente che vive e parla in accordo col luogo, e cioè poche parole, gesti e sentimenti essenziali, duri, perfino aspri.
C’è un narratore senza nome che si deve trattenere a Starkfield per affari: un giorno nota la figura alta e zoppicante di Ethan Frome e chiede in giro chi sia. Ascolta le risposte, ma non ottiene molti racconti dalla gente del villaggio, che, come già detto, sono parchi di parole, gesti, e sentimenti.
Il narratore assume Ethan come guidatore del suo calesse, e così ha modo di saperne di più.
Fine del prologo.
Da qui, siamo di colpo proiettati un quarto di secolo indietro, il racconto da prima persona cambia in terza, e noi lettori diventiamo spettatori della storia di Frome.


Patricia Arquette è Mattie. Qui, Ethan e Mattie sono già innamorati, vorrebbero fuggire insieme, se solo avessero il denaro sufficiente. Lo slittino che Ethan trasporta è elemento essenziale di questo punto del racconto.

Ethan era via da Starkfield per studiare all’università (come dice un paesano al narratore, I migliori se ne vanno). Ma Frome deve ritornare di corsa a casa perché il padre rimane ferito in un incidente di lavoro.
Da quel momento, non si allontana più da Starkfield. Da quel momento vive un quotidiano immutabile, in qualche modo lugubre: sposa Zeena (diminutivo di Zenobia) che si è presa cura dei genitori vecchi e malati di Ethan. Zeena ha anni 35 anni, lui invece 28 – lui è giovane e vigoroso, lei sembra già una vecchia.
Un matrimonio di compensazione, senza amore, nella reciproca rassegnazione, destinati insieme a una vita che ti lega senza corde e ti uccide senza veleni.
Zeena è un’ipocondriaca che lamenta stanchezza e salute cagionevole. Perciò chiama una sua lontana parente, Mattie, ad aiutarla in casa e accudirla.
Mattie è giovane e non ancora piallata da Starkfield.
Tra lei e Ethan man mano si accende una fiammella che va crescendo. Fino a che…


Zeena non è per niente contenta della felicità della nuova coppia, guai in vista.

C’è un forte senso di fato in questo breve romanzo, che è una piccola gemma.
Il fato è sempre primitivo, ancestrale, tanto più in un ambiente rurale ed essenziale come Starkfield.
Parola, il fato, che si tira dietro, invariabilmente, un senso di tragedia greca.
Il fato non può essere benigno, non può compensare, redimere, soddisfare. Il fato punisce.
Punisce anche gli innocenti. Ma tanto, nessuno è innocente.
In questo caso è un fato provvisto di beffarda, direi anche perversa, ironia, che ribalta i ruoli tra i tre personaggi.


Ethan e Mattie due cuori innamorati nel luogo e nella stagione sbagliata.

Because March is women's history month, I made it a point to only read women authors over the course of the month. As the month winds to a close, I have visited many places and cultures, learning about historical events from a female perspective. Yet, to observe women's history month, it would not be complete with paying homage to classic authors. In this regard, I decided to read Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton's tragic novella.

Ethan Frome of Starkfield, Massachusetts has known much tragedy in his life. First his father grew ill, leaving young Frome to move back to care for the family farm. Then his mother grew sick, and a young relation named Zenobia Silver came to live with the Fromes to care for her. Without much of a future besides the farm in his possession, Frome falls for Zenobia, and they marry. Yet, Zenobia is not a country girl, and Frome hopes to sell the farm so that he can move his wife into town.

Tragedy strikes again as now Zenobia grows ill. Frome is unable to sell the farm and is isolated in the country. Zenobia'a relations suggest that a young cousin Mattie Silver come and care for her in the manner that Zenobia had cared for Frome's mother. While Zenobia is ailing and supposedly on her deathbed, Frome starts showing feelings toward Mattie. What ensues for the rest of the novella is his conflicted feelings toward both women, as he considers his future.

Wharton paints a picture of a grim reality for Frome. That the story occurs in winter in a town named Starkfield is no coincidence. Her witticism as she debates whether Frome should honor his wife's feelings or leave her and elope with Mattie are uncanny. Even though Starkfield appears as a depressing town to life in, Wharton's use of language and plot development had me reading to discover the denouement of Frome's sad tale. The fact that she included her usual twist toward the end enhanced the story.

I have only discovered Edith Wharton over this March's women's history month reads, but I find it remarkable that her writing can go from comedy in one story to tragedy in another and still contain a high level of wit. She wrote at a time when the novel was dominated by the middle class, and was one of few upper crust society women to write. That she entered a male profession and eventually won a Pulitzer for her writing, makes her career all the more impressive. Although Ethan Frome is a tragedy, I found the story interesting enough to hold my attention, especially as Wharton inserted her mark at the end. A four star read, I look to read more of Wharton's work in the future.

This story tore my heart out. Quite appropriately, I finished listening to the audiobook on a frosty winter day following a heavy overnight snowfall. Gazing out at the white landscape from my warm and comfortable place, I pondered this strange tale (which took place in another - a fictitious - winter setting) and grasped for some pearl of wisdom or kernel of truth with which to soothe my heart.

Ethan Frome could have been a contemporary of ours. He entered adulthood optimistically -- with a dream, a goal for his life. His desire to become an engineer was a lofty ambition for a young person from a humble family but (like so many young people today) he had the confidence and the courage to venture beyond the security of his childhood home and begin a program of study in an unfamiliar environment.

Apparently Ethan felt comfortable at the college in Worcester, Massachusetts. He seemed to miss the camaraderie of academia when, after his father's injury in a farm accident, he returned home. We are told (in chapter 4) that --

At Worcester, though he had the name of keeping to himself and not being much of a hand at a good time, he had secretly gloried in being clapped on the back and hailed as "Old Ethe" or "Old Stiff"; and the cessation of such familiarities had increased the chill of his return to Starkfield.

It appears that Ethan had intended to postpone, not abandon, his education. He devised for himself a study of sorts (described in chapter 8) furnished sparsely with bookshelves on the wall, a box-sofa, and a kitchen table for a desk.

So what happened? How did a young man with such hopes and such promise become the "bleak and unapproachable", "stiffened and grizzled" "ruin of a man" that we meet at the beginning and encounter again at the end of the story? And why did the author write such a horrendous tale?

Life presented Ethan with some challenges. Who among us has not experienced that? Most people, at some point, face at least one life crisis which threatens to divert us from chasing our dreams, pursuing our goals. Some of us triumph over those challenges; some are defeated by them. Many of us wonder why this is so. Why was Ethan Frome among the defeated? Is this the question at the core of this story?

Perhaps Ethan Frome received more than his fair share (if there can be a "fair" share) of troubles. Crisis piled upon crisis - his father's injury and subsequent squandering of money; his own struggle to run the farm and saw-mill when his heart was not in it; his mother's mental instability and refusal to speak; the oppressive silence of long winter evenings. The result was a desperate existence.

So was Ethan Frome simply the victim of circumstance? Was there truly no way out? Could he not have turned his life around after his mother's death, sold the farm, "cut his losses", and resumed his studies at Worcester? Only a few years had passed since his student days; he was still a young man with a long life ahead of him.

On the night that he and Mattie walked home from the dance in Starkfield (when Ethan was 28), we are told that

Four or five years earlier he had taken a year's course at a technological college at Worcester, ...

For certain, a great deal had happened in those four or five years but surely young Ethan Frome still had options. What is the point of this story? Was it meant to be a morality tale, intended to illustrate some cliché or other? "Truth or deception" perhaps? Should he have lied to Mr. Hale about his request for an advance on the lumber? Or maybe "love or loyalty"? Should he have eloped with Mattie or was he obliged to remain in a loveless marriage?

It seems to me that the story is about something less cerebral, more primal than moral dilemmas. I believe that it speaks about a basic human need - a need which is felt in the gut, not acknowledged by the brain - the need for social interaction. When, after his mother's funeral, Ethan could have decided to sell the farm and be free to pursue his dreams, he chose instead to marry Zeena. Why? Because

... when he [Ethan] saw her [Zeena] preparing to go away, he was seized with an unreasoning dread of being left alone on the farm; and before he knew what he was doing he had asked her to stay there with him. (chapter 4)

In a moment of weakness -- before he knew what he was doing ...

The paragraph continues --

... He had often thought since that it would not have happened if his mother had died in spring instead of winter.

Ethan Frome could simply not see his way beyond the loneliness of winter to a potentially bright future. His dread of loneliness led him to make an impulsive, irrational choice. Out of the same sense of dread, the same fear, he made a split-second decision to go along with Mattie's "crazy" idea -- with disastrous consequences.

Fear can make people do crazy things. Ethan Frome feared loneliness. Although he was an introvert, the basic human need for social interaction drove him to make rash decisions. There were dire consequences and at the end of the story, at the age of 52, he was still lonely.

Una historia desgarradora maravillosamente escrita.

Stuck in Starkfield, New England for the winter, the narrator sets out to discover the life of the mysterious local Ethan Frome who had a tragic accident years prior. After getting little response from fellow locals when asked, the narrator learns of the details when a snowstorm forces them into an overnight stay at the Frome household. Edith Wharton soon whisks us back to the year the tragedy occurred and we begin following Ethan as he walks through Starkfield at night to collect his wife's cousin, Mattie Silver, at a dance she attended in the village church. When he arrives, he is transfixed by the sight of a young woman in a red scarf. It is soon revealed that Mattie is that woman, the object of Ethan's affection who feels similarly for him. Here a tragic love story begins. The atmospheric setting heightens the connection between the pair who allow their shared feelings to hang between them, waiting to be acted upon. They never once consummate their love nor verbalise their passion. They do, however, risk losing it all, including each other. When Zeena, the wife of Ethan, decides Mattie must go, the pair venture on a nostalgia trip taking a sledging adventure they had never undertaken but proposed. The success of this prompts a discussion on suicide. They cannot be together in life, but they can be together in death. They accept their fate as they take their positions in the sledge, locked in a final embrace. However, they wake up.

Jumping forward as we jump back, we find ourselves with the narrator once again as he enters the Frome household. Inside are two frail women: Zeena and the paralysed Mattie, fated to be romantically apart from the man she loves, and Ethan Frome, a jinxed man. My goodness, Edith Wharton knew how to write. At under 150 pages, this should not have worked nor had me so engrossed but it did.

This is one of those novels/novellas that is so cold, barren and bleak that the full beauty of it isn't completely evident until you put the book down and warm back up. Wharton's prose is amazing and her plot is perfection.

'Ethan Frome' is another novella that proves that bigger isn't always better. This book joins a short but very amazing list of short novels that seem to almost acheive literary perfection in under 150 pages: 'Heart of Darkness', 'Of Mice and Men', 'Animal Farm', 'Old Man and the Sea' and 'the Metamorphosis'. Anyway, I've read books well over 600+ pages that have 1/2 as much to say.

“The passion of rebellion had broken out of him again. That which had seemed incredible in the sober light of day had really come to pass, and he was to assist as a helpless spectator at Mattie’s banishment. His manhood was humbled by the part he was compelled to play and by the thought of what Mattie must think of him. Confused impulses struggled in him as he strode along to the village”.

“For a moment, he had the illusion that he was a free man, wooing the girl he meant to marry”.

Such a sad story

Because Edith Wharton was born in 1862 and this novel was written in 1911, I’ve always resisted reading the story fearing that it might contain florid prose and descriptions, which are often mind-numbing for me. Not only did I love it, I was reminded of one of my all time favorite novels, Stoner.

Ethan Frome was a mostly money strapped farmer in a miserable marriage while Stoner was raised by hard-working farm people. Both men were married to wives that were cold hearted, passive-aggressive and cruel.

Zenobia "Zeena" Frome is a hypochondriac but also cunning; and, she uses her obscure ailments to derail Ethan’s love affair with her young and beautiful cousin, Mattie Silver.

Stoner’s wife Edith, also demanding and manipulative, converted Stoner’s den into her art studio in order to deliberately thwart the shared time with his beloved daughter, Grace while he worked and she did her homework.

Ethan Frome and William Stoner were both wonderful characters in literature. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and found the story compelling. But, I adored Stoner. My rating only reflects that this one suffers by comparison...not that it wasn't well-written and absorbing.

"Hey Mrs. Kinetta, are you still inflicting all that horrible Ethan Frome damage on your students?" - John Cusack, Grosse Pointe Blank

If you're looking for a book with an ever-increasing level of misery, this one is hard to beat. Try this test the next time you're with a group of your friends: just mention "Ethan Frome" out loud, and see how many of them groan audibly.

A strong showing for this text on the Top Ten Inanimate Objects in Literature list:

1) the handkerchief in Othello
2) the fruit in Paradise Lost
3) the cookie in Swann's Way
4) the pickledish in Ethan Frome
5) the letter in 'The Purloined Letter'
6) the cigarette in The Origin of the Brunists
7) the painting in Killing Commendatore
8) the manuscript in The Club Dumas
9) the ring in Lord of the Rings
10) the film in Running Dog

A kind of nihilistic version of Romeo and Juliet mixed with the Twilight Zone...truly depressing; but I suspect more true to life than we would want to admit.