The Good Soldier

Wow, was this well done. I almost wrote 'fantastic', but that didn't seem appropriate to the mood of the piece. It is also throughly soul-crushing, of course, but that shouldn't affect your reading plans in favor of it. It really is a must-read, I think.

The book is a thorough condemnation of the principles of Edwardian society and the Victorian society that came before it, made all the more effective by the fact that it comes from the most unlikely source, a timid, quiet American man who has happened to fall into this drama that he never wanted to be a part of. He is a throughly unreliable narrator, telling the tale "as one would to a friend by the fireside," jumping back and forth in time and giving one opinion of a person, place or event, and then remembering something else and adding in details on that later. His own personal feelings on situations also come into play, in the background, affecting his judgement in a really heartbreaking sort of way. I got as interested in the silences of the narrator as his retelling of the tale of the others around him. I think really that /his/ is the "saddest story ever told," or at least on par with the story that he is telling. The unreliable narrator convention works brilliantly here, drawing the reader into the story with a sympathy for the narrator (Mr. Dowell), as well as easily listening to the tale as if they were that friend by the fireside. I will say that it may get a bit confusing for some people, due to its rambling, wandering structure, but honestly, it is worth it in the end. It really makes it all come out beautifully.

One really does end up rooting for characters that in the "conventional" sense, would range from vain to mildly despicable to foolish, if all we got was their most basic actions and story. I don't think I have ever rooted for a man's infidelities that much in a novel. But never unambiguously. He does not allow one's opinion to be that simple on either side. Novels that are "grey" are always the best ones.

Ford Madox Ford was in the thick of the Lost Generation when he wrote this, so his very bleak outlook on life, and disllusionment with society is not an usual attitude to find. He was friends with Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, after all. It was interesting to me to note, however, the parallels between his statements on pre-World War I society and those of the primordialists, who were the primary intellectual advocates for "change", and saw Victorian/Edwardian society as inwardly rotting, full of ennui, stuck in a rut, essentially. Which is what Ford undubitably belives here. However, it is the primordiailst attitude that promoted the crowds' wild reception of World War I, the cheering masses that came out in support of it, despite how easily it could have been avoided. And yet this book supports all those passions that were a part of that movement. I cannot tell if there is some condemnation of himself in there, some self-hatred, for believing this. He asks of his reader at the end of the novel, "Who really is the villain of the piece?" He has his narrator change his opinion on that several times, and mine also changed. I'm still wrestling over it a bit.

Anyway, read it

This book started out really interesting as what looked like a story of swinging couples in England in the early 20th century with humor and pizzaz. However, as I approached and passed the mid-point of this short iconic novel, I got less and less interested in the lives of the protagonists and completely disengaged from the rising death toll. Perhaps I was spoiled by Fitzgerald about these kinds of stories of self-delusion or perhaps his style just wore on me until I was tired of it. Unfortunately, this was less enjoyable a read than I had hoped.

Perhaps it has just poorly aged. I just reread The Sun Also Rises which is a similar story (Cohn heading off with Brett, Mike staying with Jake and Richard with Edna) and similar background (Paris and other European locations in the 20s), but Hemingway's evocation of the Lost Generation just echoes so much stronger for me!

Oh! Propriety!

Nowadays there's a word for Edward Ashburnham. And I don't mean some modern vulgarity, unavailable to the Edwardians, something like emotional fuck-up, appropriate as that may be (or not). No, I'm thinking serial monogamist. The term is new, because the concept is new. At the turn of the 20th century there was monogamy. Or there was promiscuity: casual couplings with seamstresses, milliners, laundresses or the convenient and pliable housemaid. A taboo subject, to be spoken of in hushed tones in polite society. These affairs were of necessity casual, because the women, by succumbing to the blandishments of their suitors, had turned themselves into 'fallen' women, immediately and irretrievably. Business partners, the only question being that of remuneration or pay off when favours were no longer required.

So in an age when women were thought of as either Madonna or Magdalene, in matters of the heart, Edward is a modern man, one who sincerely believes himself in love with the object of his desire. His laughable disconnect with conventional attitudes is portrayed in grotesque mode in his dealings with La Dolciquita, the mistress of the Grand Duke of Nauheim-Schwerin. With a passion that 'had arisen like a fire in dry corn' Ashburnham is ready to declare his undying love after a single night. The Spanish lady's passions however are of the more commercial kind. With all the romanticism of a risk assessment manager, she details for him the precise financial condition (twenty thousand) that might induce her to service him as well as the Duke. Premiums, policy, twenty per cent risk stand in sharp relief to Edward's discovery that 'he was madly, was passionately, was overwhelmingly in love with her.' Poor Edward. Poor noble, heroic, respectable, stupid man, to believe in true love. John Dowell, the narrator, has a word for him. Sentimentalist. A prey to his imagined sentiments.

Serial monogamy, thus the Spanish lady is the first in a series. As one might imagine, the world of 1904 does not see this as a valid lifestyle choice. Nor does his wife truly embrace the situation, but rather tries to manage it, even anticipating his desires, arranging, paying expenses - pimping for him? She is certainly not of the disposition or religious convictions that would allow her to discreetly claim sauce for the goose as well as the gander, nor is divorce even thinkable. And like any society, the decorous world of 1904 exacts a price for aberrant behaviour. The price is high, and cannot be paid in hard currency, and will not be paid by Edward alone. Society must go on, I suppose, and society can only exist if the normal, if the virtuous, and the slightly-deceitful flourish, and if the passionate, the headstrong, and the too-truthful are condemned to suicide and madness.

What I've said so far might make this look like a fairly ornery (melodramatic?) exposé of hypocritical Edwardian sexual mores, the story of an unhappy marriage. Complexity is added by John Dowell, our narrator, being one half of a second couple, who dance an intricate minuet with the Ashburnhams. But what makes this so powerful, so mysterious, so haunting is the method of narration. Ford was a friend of Joseph Conrad. Both of them championed the technique that Ford called progression d'effet: as the story progresses it should move forward faster and faster and with more and more intensity. Well, I can testify to unmitigated success there. The start was slow, and demanded a little back and forth and round about, but from part 2 onwards the pages seemed to turn themselves, and from part 3 I'd have robbed myself of any amount of sleep to finish it.

In my recent review of Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (gad that sounds soooo pretentious) I mused a little on how a first person narrator could be an encumbrance or limitation. But here the opposite is the case: John Dowell's apparently haphazard way of telling this sad story adds layer upon layer. First there is the challenge of working out the chronology of events, then there are those puzzling enigmas whose true significance only becomes apparent much later, and, most engaging of all, there is the much-debated question of how much we can trust John Dowell at all. Is he disingenuous, or deliberately manipulative, or simply ignorant (as he claims)? This may be the saddest story he's ever heard - heard? But he's telling it! - but is he aware how funny he sometimes is? The delicious irony: before La Dolciquita, Edward gave himself a nasty jar when he found himself comforting a weeping nursemaid in a third class railway carriage, and went a little too far in his half-fatherly concern. The result? The Kilsyte Case. Not quite Dreyfus material, but nasty for him all the same. Multiple ironies: he was travelling third class (!) to please Leonora - see I can economise! - and would never even have met a nursemaid in first class; this, the most innocent of his affairs had the gravest of judicial consequences, and the final irony is that his brush with the law did not discourage him from more flirtation, but in fact opened up the country. Oh, and it brought him closer to his wife.

There is more, so much more than the question of marital fidelity: social classes, America and England, deception - ah deception! Dowell's wife! But I won't spoil it for you. Impressions and ideas. Our first impressions of people, how reliable are they? And Dowell disconfirms the first impressions he gives us over and over and over. Ideas, concepts: can we experience a feeling before we know intellectually that such an emotion exists? Can we feel anything that hasn't had a name put to it?

I'm certain that I will read this again, and if I wrote another review after the second reading it would probably be totally different. And again after the third. Is there any higher praise?

Re-read in July 2019: this time it's all the stuff about religion that struck me hardest.

It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me.

شروع داستان: " این غم‌انگیزترین داستانی است که به عمرم شنیده‌ام...

به قول راوی داستان دو تن از مردم نجیب را در این کتاب می‌خوانیم. ادوارد و لئونورا.
سروان ادوارد اش‌برنهام، کارآزموده‌ی خدمت در هند، صاحب ملک،عالی، فوق‌العاده مهربان و امین و ساعی، که به عنوان یک سرباز خوب از وی یاد شده. اما جلوتر که می‌رویم متوجه می‌شویم که راوی با زیرکی قادر به بیان رابطه‌های پنهانی ادوارد است و سادگی و حسن‌نیت لئونورا (همسر راوی) را در جای جای کتاب به رخ می‌کشد. اما به راستی ساده‌لوحی از آن کیست؟ و نهایتا به چه فردی ساده می‌گویند؟
حالا اینکه چرا راوی با این وسواس به بررسی زندگی خانوادگی ادوارد و روابطش با زنان دیگه می‌پردازه، خودش جای تأمل دارد. چرا در افراد جوان رو به میانسال، چرا درسن‌های سی سال به بالا و چرا در افرادی که موقعیت اجتماعی خوبی دارند....

کتاب بسیار جالبی بود درباره‌ی لایه‌های پنهان و شخصیت‌های متفاوت افراد مختلف. اینکه اثرات اعتماد در روابط اولیه با مردم در زندگی اجتماعی و مسائل کاری، ضروری است؟



جزو لیست برترین رمان های انگلیسی گاردین

n  "Αυτή: η πιο θλιβερή ιστορία που έχω ποτέ μου ακούσει – η πιο θλιβερή."n

Είναι η φράση οδοδείκτης με την οποία ο Ford Madox Ford υποδέχεται τους αναγνώστες του σε τούτο το μυθιστόρημα - κομψοτέχνημα που, διόλου άδικα, συγκαταλέγεται στα αριστουργήματα της παγκόσμιας λογοτεχνίας. Είναι η εισαγωγή και το καλωσόρισμα σε ένα κρεσέντο παθών, σε μιαν εξομολόγηση ενοχών, σε ένα δράμα που χτίζεται και κορυφώνεται τελετουργικά: σελίδα τη σελίδα, λέξη τη λέξη, ό,τι πιο μύχιο (μπορεί να) φωλιάζει στην ψυχή των ηρώων του Καλού Στρατιώτη έρχεται όλο και πιο σιμά στο φως. Όχι για να καεί, αλλά για να εξαγνιστεί.

Αυτός, ο μέγας ανατόμος των ανθρώπινων σχέσεων, ο Ford Madox Ford, αφηγείται μια ιστορία πάθους, απιστίας και εγκαρτέρησης. Δύο ευκατάτατα ζευγάρια, οι Αμερικανοί Τζον και Φλόρενς Ντόουελ και οι εγγλέζοι Έντουαρντ και Λεονόρα Άσμπερναμ, απολαμβάνουν τα καλοκαίρια τους στη γερμανική λουτρόπολη του Νάουχαιμ. Ο λόγος της παραμονής τους εκεί είναι πως τόσο η Φλόρενς, όσο και ο Έντουαρντ, ο καλός στρατιώτης του τίτλου, πάσχουν από την καρδιά τους. Φαινομενικά, πρόκειται για τέσσερις ανθρώπους που μοιάζουν να έχουν τις ίδιες προτιμήσεις και επιθυμίες, που δρουν αξεχώριστα σαν ένα σώμα, μια ψυχή. Συναντώνται για πρώτη φορά το 1904 κι ανανεώνουν το ραντεβού τους κάθε καλοκαίρι μέχρι το 1913. Εννέα χρόνια γαλήνης που διακόπτονται βίαια και με πάταγο, σαν κάθε σαθρό οικοδόμημα που ήρθε η ώρα του να καταρρεύσει:

n  "Αν για εννέα χρόνια είχα στην κατοχή μου ένα όμορφο μήλο που ήταν στον πυρήνα του σάπιο, κι ανακάλυψα τη σαπίλα του μονάχα μετά απο εννέα χρόνια κι έξι μήνες μείον τέσσερις ημέρες, δεν θα είναι αληθές να πω ότι για εννέα χρόνια κρατούσα μήλο; Έτσι λοιπόν μπορεί να είναι και με τον Έντουαρντ Άσμπερναμ, με τη Λεονόρα, τη γυναίκα του, και με την καλή μου και άμοιρη Φλόρενς."n

Οι κατά φαινόμενο τέλειοι γάμοι των ηρώων του βιβλίου αποδομούνται καθώς ο Τζον Ντόουελ αφηγείται. Με έναν τρόπο ακανόνιστο, χωρίς συνοχή, που μοιάζει περισσότερο με λαβύρινθο, όσα διαδραματίστηκαν και σημάδεψαν τις σχέσεις των ζευγαριών της ιστορίας μας εξωθούνται στο φως. Όπως συμβαίνει πάντοτε σε κάθε λυπηρή και θλιμμένη ιστορία, ο αφηγητής της πηδάει ακανόνιστα από το παρελθόν στο μέλλον κι από το μέλλον στο παρελθόν. Σημεία που παραλείφθηκαν, αλλά έπρεπε οπωσδήποτε να θιγούν, παρεμβάλλονται κατά τον ρουν της ιστορίας, γιατί ο σκοπός του αφηγητή δεν είναι άλλος παρά να γίνουν γνωστά όλα τα επεισόδια του προσωπικού του δράματος∙ κάθε λεπτομέρεια που οδήγησε στην κορύφωσή του και κάθε υποβόσκον συναίσθημα που έφτασε ο καιρός να εκφραστεί.

Άδολοι έρωτες, ασθμαίνουσες σχέσεις, αποκαμωμένες καρδιές: που φλογίζονται και διψούν για τον έρωτα, που αρνούνται να δουν τι προμηνύει η διασάλευση των αισθήσεων που προκαλεί η παρουσία τρίτων προσώπων στο πλάνο, μεταξύ των οποίων αυτή της Νάνσι Ράφορντ, προστατευόμενης του ζεύγους Άσμπερναμ.

Τι άλλο είναι η ανθρωπότητα παρά ένα μητρώο θλίψεων, αναλοζίγεται ο συγγραφέας και θέτει ξανά και ξανά το ίδιο, αναπόφευκτα αναπάντητο, ερώτημα: n  "Μπορεί να υπάρξει άραγε ένας επίγειος παράδεισος όπου ανάμεσα στο θρόισμα, ανάμεσα στους ψιθύρους των φύλλων των ελιών, να μπορούν οι άνθρωποι να είναι αυτοί που θέλουν και να έχουν ό,τι θέλουν και να γαληνεύουν αμέριμνοι κάτω απ’ τις σκιές και μες τη δροσιά; Ή είναι οι ζωές όλων των ανθρώπων σαν τις ζωές μας, σαν τις ζωές των καλών ανθρώπων; Σαν τις ζωές των Άσμπερναμ και των Ντόουελ και των Ράφορντ –τσακισμένες, θυελλώδεις, αγωνιώδεις και αντιρομαντικές, περίοδοι με σημεία στίξεως, κραυγές, ανημπόριες, θανάτους, αγωνίες; Ποιος διάβολο ξέρει;"n

Επιγραμματικά, όσο πιο λιτά γίνεται να ειπωθεί, ο Καλός Στρατιώτης είναι μυθιστόρημα πολλών λαμπερών αστεριών (έστω πέντε, όσο το πλαφόν της ιστοσελίδας που μας φιλοξενεί)∙ με ιδιαίτερη μνεία στο τέταρτο και τελευταίο κεφάλαιο του βιβλίου που δεν θα μπορούσε να χαρακτηριστεί διαφορετικά παρά ως απλώς μνημειώδες.

The Good Soldier I found to be a difficult book to grasp, at least to begin with. I felt the need to go back over the first 40 pages or so, just to try and accustom myself to it. Things paid of in the end, but it really did require patience; a quiet room, and reading big chunks at a time. The theme is a strong one, that being marriage and adultery, with a narrator who you feel in the dark about, going over the events of two couples, one American, one English, the Ashburnhams, with whom they first meet at a German spa town early in the 1900's, thus they strike up a comfortable friendship. The story is told in a non chronological way, playing around with the memories of time. And there is one thing that struck me that I didn't first realize, the narrator (the American husband) didn't hear the story, he was a participant, and an arrogant one at that.

The two couples would meet abroad for a month every year, and it transpires that one from each couple have been having a clandestine affair. You get the sense everything is drenched in misery, worry and panic the longer it goes on, even a partial happy ending feels false. In fact the very first line reads "This is the saddest story I have ever heard". Love here is most certainly a battlefield, through deception, contradiction, blind ignorance and sheer horror, the reader is taken over a threshold into an unsavoury world of troubling passions. There is an air of unreliability in its fashion, in terms of the narrators voice. As if the beginning wasn't hard enough, he relates his tale jumping around in the middle of flashbacks, this would lead to things feel out of sequence, and leaving gaps that we are supposed to decipher, it's not a long novel but does need to be read nice and slow, even as the full realization of what takes place gradually emerges, it's a story that calls for the attentive reader, but there were rewards as I tried to unpick all the fine details, as the narrator's unfolding interpretation of the passionate emotions manifested here are in very small gestures or brief remarks.

He paints the four portraits exceptionally well, where in turn I felt pity but also disgust at those involved. Edward Ashburnham, the owner of a large estate in England; his wife, Leonora, daughter of impoverished Irish gentry, Florence, heiress to a New England fortune; and Nancy Rufford, Leonora's ward, who has lived with Edward and Leonora from the age of 13. And all at some point are plagued with melancholia and unsteady minds. It is clear as the novel proceeds we learn Edward and Leonora have no idea what intimacy is, and they also have no way of finding out, for one thing, neither read, and Leonora consults priests and nuns for marital advice. Edward consults no one, and there seems to be no structure in his life. Others of his class tell dirty stories, perhaps as a form of sharing information, but these only make Edward uncomfortable. Both the American and English marriages suffer from the emasculation of the husbands, and I think there is an element of unfair failures on behalf of Leonora and Florence, but Ford depicts the husbands more complexly and with a clearer eye.

I have to say on the whole I was very impressed; the psychologies of his characters, the interweaving of memories that are done intentionally, and the sadness that echoes throughout, gets the thumbs up from me. I guess the overwhelming question is this, what do we truly know about the people we are supposed to know inside out?

A gracefully forlorn and beautifully explored novel. 4/5

This is a story of two marriages, a philandering husband, a controlling wife, living lies, keeping up appearances, misusing religion and pursuing happiness in all the wrong places. It is told by an unreliable narrator who scarcely seems to understand the import of the story himself. It is wonderfully constructed, gloriously convoluted, and amazingly misdirected. The narrator tells us, "I have stuck to my idea of being in a country cottage with a silent listener, hearing between the gusts of the wind and amidst the noises of the distant sea, the story as it comes." He bounces back and forth and reveals in increments and as he does, your view of the people and events changes and changes and changes again.

It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me. Indeed, it is beyond them all, because none of them seems to know what they want or what they feel, and the not knowing is a trap with serious consequences.

I liked this book tremendously. Much more than I thought I was going to when I began it. Ford almost does magic, because he makes you shift your perspective and your view and your understanding of the characters until you have flipped your impressions on their heads, but he does it without making you feel cheated or misinformed. And, so it is in life. We often form opinions on too little information. First impressions are often wrong. A small bit of information can make us see everything in a different light. And, placing blame is not always easy.

The title of this novel is very interesting. "The Good Soldier" has nothing to do with the military but refers to someone who is a good member of society, someone who follows the rules. Without giving anything away, I'll just say that the "good soldier" of the title appears to himself (for most of the story) and society to be a man of propriety but this title is purposely misleading and ironic. The subtitle of this book is "A tale of passion." This phrase is more misleading than the title. Ford must have come up with this subtitle with tongue firmly in cheek. This is a tale that hides all passion behind a wall of social propriety. The passion that is alluded to is never explicitly "shown" and it takes our narrator the entire book to get closer to discussing the passions of the characters and their consequences. The truths he wants to tell are not spoken of in his world. So he blunders along trying to tell his story while at the same time not telling it, obfuscating with untruths, asides, part truths, etc.. Dowell gets closer and closer to the truth as we near the end because he does, in fact, want to tell the truth and "out" the other characters

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Kerry Shale. Shale nails the character of John Dowell, narrating him to perfection with little snide laughs here and small guffaws there, so that Dowell is saying one thing and suggesting with a snicker that what he just said isn't really true but is what one of the other characters wants us to believe. I suppose Shale is offering his own interpretation of the character, but that's fine with me. He made the book great fun (at least the first half or so). This was not the saddest story ever told at all, mostly because I didn't care for any of the characters. It is a sad story in the sense that the 4 characters represent the mores of the Victorian age and the ways of dealing with love, marriage and adultery. I think Ford's point, or part of it, is that tragic consequences arise from the need to hide many of one's feelings and actions behind a facade of propriety. That's why Dowell doesn't come right out with the story he wants to tell at the very beginning. But, if he had done do this would have made for a very short story.