Control, beauty, distinction

Last night C and I went to an evening showing of Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush. Surprisingly, the theater was packed. Also surprisingly, we were held in total thrall through the entire 88 minutes of the 1925 classic. C and I had each secretly suspected that we would experience at least a few moments of boredom, our viewing habits kicking up against the lack of speak, the black and white antics of an antiquated tramp set against piano music. But how the time flew! It's true what they say. Chaplin’s charm, the sweet comedy of that movie, is as entertaining and inclusive today as ever.

Last night, I also finished reading Willa Cather’s classic, My Antonia, for the first time. The book was published just seven years before Chaplin’s movie was released. Perhaps it was the optimism of the time, but there is something similarly inexhaustible, buoyant, in both. I’m not sure how I escaped reading it but I’m so glad to come to it, however late. I sped through it in a kind of daze over how simple, how gorgeous, Cather’s writing is. Despite that My Antonia is set at the turn of the century and in the prairie-lands of the Midwest, the story is a familiar one about a headstrong, warm-hearted, girl coming of age. The book is a firm reminder that plain writing is powerful, stylish, writing. Cather’s voice is unlike much of what I’ve been reading lately – lots of masterful, self-conscious, writing made resonant by knowledge, by wit. Packed sentences. Cather’s style seems revelatory in that it is so unadorned, so elevated; perhaps an example of what Styron described in a letter to Mailer: akin to poetry. The style clarifies characters and place. It reminded me of this warning from Guy Davenport: “There are authors who, like Thomas Wolfe, drown in their styles; and authors who, like Saroyan, invent brilliant styles with the life span of a dandelion.” He then describes style as conveying control, beauty and distinction. Three better adjectives to describe Cather’s style do not come to mind.

I loved this book more viscerally than David Mitchell’s Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Amis’ House of Meetings, (part of) Mailer’s Deer Park (of which Styron was writing about when he made the comment re poetry, coincidentally enough), and David Foster Wallace’s essay collection, Consider the Lobster (all recently read). But would love, as always, to discuss any differences in opinion.