I'm a bit behind on recent events, so let's see if I can catch up over the next few days. Starting with Laura's summary of the last classics reading group from (choke) three weeks ago:

This month's book was "Justine," by

Lawrence Durrell. Opinions ranged from "really loved it" to "really

disliked it," with most people somewhere in between but leaning towards

the negative end. Hale was our "expert" on this book, having read two of

the other three books in the series (and a bit of the third) - she gave

us a better sense of how this book fit in and what the author was trying

to do. (Apparently, the first three books are kind of a "Rashamon"

approach, with each book telling the same events from different

perspectives, and the fourth actually moves through time subsequent to

the first thing.)



Two of the complaints about this book was the lack of real "story" for

most of the book and the confusingly "opaque" narration style. We had a

hard time understanding what the narrator's character saw in the two

women he was involved with and, even more so, what they saw in him. We

discussed Durrell's arcane vocabulary and whether the city of Alexandria

was a prime influence on the characters or not. Several of us had not

finished the book and were encouraged to do so by others who said that

there was a real payoff to it in the last 30-ish pages of this book,

and, even more so, as you continue to read through the series. Many

(most?) people gave Durrell credit for his vivid descriptions, although

many (most?) thought that the descriptions were too abundantly out of

proportion to other elements of the book. We compared Durrell's style to

Proust, Forrester, Hemingway, James, Faulkner, and probably some other

classic authors I can't remember off-hand. Upon reflection just now, I

realize that we barely, if at all, discussed any of the individual

characters (other than to talk a little about who did what)....not much

(if any) of the usual discussion of each of the main characters and

their motivations, etc.....

This type of book is difficult reading group material because it's so hard to tell what the hell is going on most of the time. Fortunately, it's not too long, but it took me twice as long to read it as I thought it would, and in the end I can't really say too much about the characters, plot, etc. While Alexandria is the setting of this story of a rather contrived love quadrangle, it doesn't really factor in much to the background or foreground of the narrative (I thought Jon Courtenay Grimwood used it to better advantage in "Pashazade" that I just re-read recently), but one of Durrell's central ideas seems to be the idea of a city as a stage upon which a particular life story is played out, and how by having certain events in your life take place in specific areas of that city at specific times of the year, it makes the city an integral part of that person's existence and memory, almost an extension of the person himself.



Justine is the sort of book that makes good thesis material, because there's so much going on at different levels simultaneously (never mind the parallel story in the subsequent books). While this book wasn't as obtuse as Faulkner or Proust (it reminded me the most of Ford Maddox Ford's "The Good Soldier"), and contained plenty of mellifluous prose, it's not something I'd rush out and read again, or read the next book in the series. I decided after the discussion was over that the publisher needs to put a large sticker on the cover that says "Warning: This is a 250-page book but is really 500 pages long. Either read it twice or read it half as fast."