False Entry A Novel edition by Hortense Calisher Literature Fiction eBooks
Download As PDF : False Entry A Novel edition by Hortense Calisher Literature Fiction eBooks 
In the vein of Eudora Welty and Charles Dickens, Hortense Calisher’s astounding first novel examines a young man’s detachment from the world—and his struggle to rejoin it
Here's the skeleton of the plot: Boy is born in England on Armistice Day in WWI. Boy moves to Alabama at age of ten. Boy has possessed a photographic memory ab ovo. Boy develops a habit - due to aforesaid mental ability - of entering into other people's worlds and then removing himself discreetly. He calls himself at one point, "the perfect unknown." His brilliance wins him a scholarship to a New York University. - It's probably NYU, but could possibly be Columbia. He never states the name of the university. There are various twists and turns: He testifies in a court case against the Klan in Alabama, serves w/ the U.S. Navy in WWII. He becomes independently wealthy. He falls in love with a woman named Ruth. The book ends after a return to England to revisit the gentry that raised him.
But this work is emphatically NOT about plot. What it IS about I'm not quite sure. I am sure that it represents Ms. Calisher's attempt at a work of art - a very cold and austere one at that. But I'm not at all sure she succeeds. The first thing one notices is that she's more than a bit at war with Proust here, but she doesn't win. How can she when she titles chapters so directly from Proust's work? When she tries, for example, to lay down the precept that,"...But this is the world where the sadder of the unities can sometimes be not death but change." in an obviously contra Proust manner, Proust already has this ground covered. For Proust, change is death, death that we simply don't realise. In a particular passage, Proust wonders to himself and the reader which of our "selves" which have already died we picture existing in any "afterlife" - The "self" we were at age 10? 20? 40? 60?
If I were penning a dissertation, I would say that the central motif here is Parmenidean, that is, in societal terms, man's attempt to maintain the status quo, through a photographic or eidetic memory, vs. - as Ms. Calisher puts it - "Two people sexually conscious of one another....Progression in some form it is, in whatever terms for the two are inevitable; the sexual clock, like any other worth contemplation, has no status quo, cannot be turned back." In other words, our boy finally grows up and falls in love, at age 40. What ARE we to do?
I'm grossly simplifying here because I must do so to avoid writing that dissertation. The novel for all its iciness, dryness and the rarefied atmosphere in which it exists, does have its virtuoso passages indeed:
"Those ruminative, interim pauses that fall between men at such times, when the cup is held suspended, the knuckles absently rub the chin, the rain suddenly begins outside the room and is listened to and no one speaks although all hear, or someone says "the rain" and all nod and are silent - these are the most powerful moments in life, when its fathomless current is distinctly heard."
But - to this reader anyway - much of it is lost in the reading of paragraph upon paragraph of crystalline, perfected high art prose. In a sense, it is refreshing to read a book that is so demanding of its readers. Published in 1961, I very much doubt it would find anyone to publish it today. But - all said and done - it lacks joy, sorrow, humour, love, anger etc and forces the reader to a distance so that he/she may regard its perfection. Give me the imperfect any day.
The title: Take it in any of its many different connotations. Ms. Calisher encourages one to do so. The book takes the form of a memoir, and that's the primary sense. But all the others obtain as well. And the author of the memoir, the boy? We're never quite sure of his name, much as the other characters in the book aren't. Let's just call him Pierre. Well, it's what he tells a judge at one point, anyway.
Tags : False Entry: A Novel - Kindle edition by Hortense Calisher. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading False Entry: A Novel.,ebook,Hortense Calisher,False Entry: A Novel,Open Road Media,Fiction,Fiction
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This book has a very interesting concept of the main personality. It is artfully written. But slow and wordy.
It is a very simple matter to discern why I am the first one to even contemplate--most likely---a review of this book. If anything can be called "highbrow" than this book is it, and Ms. Calisher, past president of P.E.N. and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, who passed on earlier this year, expects no less from the reader than she does herself in terms of abstruse, yet precise vocabulary, fluency in Latin, French and German and the ability to follow with Pointillist detail precision descriptions of psychology and class, time and place and the men and women who live, move and have their being in England, New York and Alabama in a very serious mood indeed. The book has not one humorous moment. Need I say that after steadily ploughing through its nearly 500 densely packed pages, I feel as if I've read 2,000? Need I say that all this rather puts a strain on one?
Here's the skeleton of the plot Boy is born in England on Armistice Day in WWI. Boy moves to Alabama at age of ten. Boy has possessed a photographic memory ab ovo. Boy develops a habit - due to aforesaid mental ability - of entering into other people's worlds and then removing himself discreetly. He calls himself at one point, "the perfect unknown." His brilliance wins him a scholarship to a New York University. - It's probably NYU, but could possibly be Columbia. He never states the name of the university. There are various twists and turns He testifies in a court case against the Klan in Alabama, serves w/ the U.S. Navy in WWII. He becomes independently wealthy. He falls in love with a woman named Ruth. The book ends after a return to England to revisit the gentry that raised him.
But this work is emphatically NOT about plot. What it IS about I'm not quite sure. I am sure that it represents Ms. Calisher's attempt at a work of art - a very cold and austere one at that. But I'm not at all sure she succeeds. The first thing one notices is that she's more than a bit at war with Proust here, but she doesn't win. How can she when she titles chapters so directly from Proust's work? When she tries, for example, to lay down the precept that,"...But this is the world where the sadder of the unities can sometimes be not death but change." in an obviously contra Proust manner, Proust already has this ground covered. For Proust, change is death, death that we simply don't realise. In a particular passage, Proust wonders to himself and the reader which of our "selves" which have already died we picture existing in any "afterlife" - The "self" we were at age 10? 20? 40? 60?
If I were penning a dissertation, I would say that the central motif here is Parmenidean, that is, in societal terms, man's attempt to maintain the status quo, through a photographic or eidetic memory, vs. - as Ms. Calisher puts it - "Two people sexually conscious of one another....Progression in some form it is, in whatever terms for the two are inevitable; the sexual clock, like any other worth contemplation, has no status quo, cannot be turned back." In other words, our boy finally grows up and falls in love, at age 40. What ARE we to do?
I'm grossly simplifying here because I must do so to avoid writing that dissertation. The novel for all its iciness, dryness and the rarefied atmosphere in which it exists, does have its virtuoso passages indeed
"Those ruminative, interim pauses that fall between men at such times, when the cup is held suspended, the knuckles absently rub the chin, the rain suddenly begins outside the room and is listened to and no one speaks although all hear, or someone says "the rain" and all nod and are silent - these are the most powerful moments in life, when its fathomless current is distinctly heard."
But - to this reader anyway - much of it is lost in the reading of paragraph upon paragraph of crystalline, perfected high art prose. In a sense, it is refreshing to read a book that is so demanding of its readers. Published in 1961, I very much doubt it would find anyone to publish it today. But - all said and done - it lacks joy, sorrow, humour, love, anger etc and forces the reader to a distance so that he/she may regard its perfection. Give me the imperfect any day.
The title Take it in any of its many different connotations. Ms. Calisher encourages one to do so. The book takes the form of a memoir, and that's the primary sense. But all the others obtain as well. And the author of the memoir, the boy? We're never quite sure of his name, much as the other characters in the book aren't. Let's just call him Pierre. Well, it's what he tells a judge at one point, anyway.
False Entry A Novel edition by Hortense Calisher Literature Fiction eBooks
It is a very simple matter to discern why I am the first one to even contemplate--most likely---a review of this book. If anything can be called "highbrow" than this book is it, and Ms. Calisher, past president of P.E.N. and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, who passed on earlier this year, expects no less from the reader than she does herself in terms of abstruse, yet precise vocabulary, fluency in Latin, French and German and the ability to follow with Pointillist detail precision descriptions of psychology and class, time and place and the men and women who live, move and have their being in England, New York and Alabama in a very serious mood indeed. The book has not one humorous moment. Need I say that after steadily ploughing through its nearly 500 densely packed pages, I feel as if I've read 2,000? Need I say that all this rather puts a strain on one?Here's the skeleton of the plot: Boy is born in England on Armistice Day in WWI. Boy moves to Alabama at age of ten. Boy has possessed a photographic memory ab ovo. Boy develops a habit - due to aforesaid mental ability - of entering into other people's worlds and then removing himself discreetly. He calls himself at one point, "the perfect unknown." His brilliance wins him a scholarship to a New York University. - It's probably NYU, but could possibly be Columbia. He never states the name of the university. There are various twists and turns: He testifies in a court case against the Klan in Alabama, serves w/ the U.S. Navy in WWII. He becomes independently wealthy. He falls in love with a woman named Ruth. The book ends after a return to England to revisit the gentry that raised him.
But this work is emphatically NOT about plot. What it IS about I'm not quite sure. I am sure that it represents Ms. Calisher's attempt at a work of art - a very cold and austere one at that. But I'm not at all sure she succeeds. The first thing one notices is that she's more than a bit at war with Proust here, but she doesn't win. How can she when she titles chapters so directly from Proust's work? When she tries, for example, to lay down the precept that,"...But this is the world where the sadder of the unities can sometimes be not death but change." in an obviously contra Proust manner, Proust already has this ground covered. For Proust, change is death, death that we simply don't realise. In a particular passage, Proust wonders to himself and the reader which of our "selves" which have already died we picture existing in any "afterlife" - The "self" we were at age 10? 20? 40? 60?
If I were penning a dissertation, I would say that the central motif here is Parmenidean, that is, in societal terms, man's attempt to maintain the status quo, through a photographic or eidetic memory, vs. - as Ms. Calisher puts it - "Two people sexually conscious of one another....Progression in some form it is, in whatever terms for the two are inevitable; the sexual clock, like any other worth contemplation, has no status quo, cannot be turned back." In other words, our boy finally grows up and falls in love, at age 40. What ARE we to do?
I'm grossly simplifying here because I must do so to avoid writing that dissertation. The novel for all its iciness, dryness and the rarefied atmosphere in which it exists, does have its virtuoso passages indeed:
"Those ruminative, interim pauses that fall between men at such times, when the cup is held suspended, the knuckles absently rub the chin, the rain suddenly begins outside the room and is listened to and no one speaks although all hear, or someone says "the rain" and all nod and are silent - these are the most powerful moments in life, when its fathomless current is distinctly heard."
But - to this reader anyway - much of it is lost in the reading of paragraph upon paragraph of crystalline, perfected high art prose. In a sense, it is refreshing to read a book that is so demanding of its readers. Published in 1961, I very much doubt it would find anyone to publish it today. But - all said and done - it lacks joy, sorrow, humour, love, anger etc and forces the reader to a distance so that he/she may regard its perfection. Give me the imperfect any day.
The title: Take it in any of its many different connotations. Ms. Calisher encourages one to do so. The book takes the form of a memoir, and that's the primary sense. But all the others obtain as well. And the author of the memoir, the boy? We're never quite sure of his name, much as the other characters in the book aren't. Let's just call him Pierre. Well, it's what he tells a judge at one point, anyway.
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Tags : False Entry: A Novel - Kindle edition by Hortense Calisher. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading False Entry: A Novel.,ebook,Hortense Calisher,False Entry: A Novel,Open Road Media,Fiction,Fiction
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False Entry A Novel edition by Hortense Calisher Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
This book has a very interesting concept of the main personality. It is artfully written. But slow and wordy.
It is a very simple matter to discern why I am the first one to even contemplate--most likely---a review of this book. If anything can be called "highbrow" than this book is it, and Ms. Calisher, past president of P.E.N. and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, who passed on earlier this year, expects no less from the reader than she does herself in terms of abstruse, yet precise vocabulary, fluency in Latin, French and German and the ability to follow with Pointillist detail precision descriptions of psychology and class, time and place and the men and women who live, move and have their being in England, New York and Alabama in a very serious mood indeed. The book has not one humorous moment. Need I say that after steadily ploughing through its nearly 500 densely packed pages, I feel as if I've read 2,000? Need I say that all this rather puts a strain on one?
Here's the skeleton of the plot Boy is born in England on Armistice Day in WWI. Boy moves to Alabama at age of ten. Boy has possessed a photographic memory ab ovo. Boy develops a habit - due to aforesaid mental ability - of entering into other people's worlds and then removing himself discreetly. He calls himself at one point, "the perfect unknown." His brilliance wins him a scholarship to a New York University. - It's probably NYU, but could possibly be Columbia. He never states the name of the university. There are various twists and turns He testifies in a court case against the Klan in Alabama, serves w/ the U.S. Navy in WWII. He becomes independently wealthy. He falls in love with a woman named Ruth. The book ends after a return to England to revisit the gentry that raised him.
But this work is emphatically NOT about plot. What it IS about I'm not quite sure. I am sure that it represents Ms. Calisher's attempt at a work of art - a very cold and austere one at that. But I'm not at all sure she succeeds. The first thing one notices is that she's more than a bit at war with Proust here, but she doesn't win. How can she when she titles chapters so directly from Proust's work? When she tries, for example, to lay down the precept that,"...But this is the world where the sadder of the unities can sometimes be not death but change." in an obviously contra Proust manner, Proust already has this ground covered. For Proust, change is death, death that we simply don't realise. In a particular passage, Proust wonders to himself and the reader which of our "selves" which have already died we picture existing in any "afterlife" - The "self" we were at age 10? 20? 40? 60?
If I were penning a dissertation, I would say that the central motif here is Parmenidean, that is, in societal terms, man's attempt to maintain the status quo, through a photographic or eidetic memory, vs. - as Ms. Calisher puts it - "Two people sexually conscious of one another....Progression in some form it is, in whatever terms for the two are inevitable; the sexual clock, like any other worth contemplation, has no status quo, cannot be turned back." In other words, our boy finally grows up and falls in love, at age 40. What ARE we to do?
I'm grossly simplifying here because I must do so to avoid writing that dissertation. The novel for all its iciness, dryness and the rarefied atmosphere in which it exists, does have its virtuoso passages indeed
"Those ruminative, interim pauses that fall between men at such times, when the cup is held suspended, the knuckles absently rub the chin, the rain suddenly begins outside the room and is listened to and no one speaks although all hear, or someone says "the rain" and all nod and are silent - these are the most powerful moments in life, when its fathomless current is distinctly heard."
But - to this reader anyway - much of it is lost in the reading of paragraph upon paragraph of crystalline, perfected high art prose. In a sense, it is refreshing to read a book that is so demanding of its readers. Published in 1961, I very much doubt it would find anyone to publish it today. But - all said and done - it lacks joy, sorrow, humour, love, anger etc and forces the reader to a distance so that he/she may regard its perfection. Give me the imperfect any day.
The title Take it in any of its many different connotations. Ms. Calisher encourages one to do so. The book takes the form of a memoir, and that's the primary sense. But all the others obtain as well. And the author of the memoir, the boy? We're never quite sure of his name, much as the other characters in the book aren't. Let's just call him Pierre. Well, it's what he tells a judge at one point, anyway.
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