tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772386449189930846.post5797564638526599523..comments2024-02-16T00:58:16.069-08:00Comments on The Pulitzer Blog: Entry 5.2: "Early Autumn," by Louis Bromfield (1927)the drewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07777994837659307080noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772386449189930846.post-27814457419609632512010-03-16T06:14:04.127-07:002010-03-16T06:14:04.127-07:00Keep chug chug chugging along! I admire the determ...Keep chug chug chugging along! I admire the determination despite the experience of the past few novels for you. Once a book nose dives to boring or "one dimensional", I have trouble finishing it.Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10484555793750858362noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6772386449189930846.post-59842316614199105262010-03-15T17:44:59.357-07:002010-03-15T17:44:59.357-07:00It seems we part ways a bit on this novel, though ...It seems we part ways a bit on this novel, though I can understand where you're coming from! I thought there was more dimension than you did -- not the young lovers (who really seem to be there as symbols more than anything else), but Aunt Cassie and Sabine I thought got more complex as time went on, and Olivia's opinions of them gradually turned.<br /><br />Your comment about "there has to be a story here somewhere" is, in my experience, really typical of the 1920s novels. Few of them identify a clear objective in the first chapter or two to help you know what to pay attention to, and what not (though the one I'm currently reading, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, manages it). In some ways, I think we're hindered by the Pulitzers picking series novels -- both of the novels you've just read (this and Ambersons) are the second novel in a series (a trilogy for Tarkington....I hear it's a quartet for Bromfield? you even have two of the other novels in that edition, I believe!). Maybe it would be easier to know what counted having read the novel preceding it....not that you (or I) have time for that!<br /><br />I'd say more in an effort to "help you out", as requested, but I'm not sure my liking for Early Autumn is something I can argue. I just _did_ like it -- the symbolism in her "garden seduction" by O'Hara, the way we only slowly learn who John Pentland is over the course of the whole book, how Olivia comes to terms with herself and the family, etc. -- and would have a tough time making the case that the novel "matters". If you have time and haven't read it yet, my review on my blog (and the last post or two preceding it) offers some of my case for the book. But ultimately I wouldn't go to the wall for this book in the way I would for, say, Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence.<br /><br />Good luck finding a new course for the project in the short term! I look forward to seeing you again when you dip back into the first decade. :-)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com