Wednesday, May 25, 2016

A La Regenta readalong for July - and really also June - it's a long book - the profound self-pity of egotism aroused by its misfortune

My working theory is that long books make the worst readalong books, yet there has been interest in La Regenta (1885) by Clarín, also known as Leopoldo Alas, one of the gigantic classics of 19th century Spanish literature alongside Fortunato and Jacinta (1886) by Benito Pérez Galdós.  Emilia Pardo Bazán’s The House of Ulloa is also from 1886, but it is a more sensible length.

Alas was a professor of Roman law whose literary output amounted to just two novels and some short stories, while Pérez Galdós was some kind of tapas-powered fiction machine, writing over seventy novels, dozens of them forming a series covering episodes in 19th century Spanish history in what must be pretty thorough detail.  His models are French, Balzac, Hugo, and Dumas.  Alas is I believe closer to Flaubert and Zola, although less conceptual and physical.  Probably not so many loving descriptions of la comida Asturiana.  Just look at that bean stew, la fabada; Zola would give a paragraph to each variety of pork.

The story is of a married woman in a provincial city who is buffeted between a local Don Juan and a priest.  La Regenta is out for a walk on the promenade:

For a moment Ana was a part of this ragged sensuality.  She thought about herself, about her life devoted to sacrifice and to an absolute prohibition of pleasure, and felt the profound self-pity of egotism aroused by its misfortune.  ‘I am poorer than any of these girls.  My maid has her miller who whispers into her ears words which set her face alight; and here I am listening to these guffaws of pleasure which give rise to emotions I have never experienced.’  (194)

Working through that idea ought to fill up a novel, especially when the entire town is pulled in.  La Regenta is famous for having an enormous number of supporting characters.

I was impressed by the review at seraillon – if that post does not make the book sound appealing, nothing will – especially that the first half of the long novel covers only three days.  Intense.

Let’s try a page 99 test.  First non-dialogue line:

As soon as they were in Vetusta the orphan girl suffered ‘a set-back to her convalescence’, according to the family doctor, who was prudent and did not call things by their right names. 

All right, there we have an example of something else mentioned at seraillon, the ironic acidity of the narrator.  “[M]akes… Flaubert and Eça de Queiroz seem almost timid,” says Scott.

The Penguin Classics edition, tr. John Rutherford, I believe the only version in English, is 700 pages, and dense pages, inky.  The endnotes are in tiny print, and in two columns!  Twenty pages a day will need thirty-five days, which would put be right in the middle of July, which is as an accepted fact Spanish Literature Month.  So that is where I am aiming.

I am expecting as many as two other people to read La Regenta with me.  I hope many more enjoy whatever we think to write about it.

This will be what I read in June, when not reading other things.  Perhaps the 1818 edition of Frankenstein – I did not know there was such a difference between editions – for a June readalong suggested by Dolce Bellezza, then later Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale (1908) as organized by seraillon, if I have the fortitude for it after the bulk of La Regenta.

35 comments:

  1. My goodness, that's a stirring challenge. I don't even own a copy. But it's one I've long considered...I might be in, as I go on holiday on 11 June but a heavy book to carry...we'll see. Juan Valera, btw, Pepita Jiménez, is worth a look.

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  2. In June I'll be reading three books for Hungarian Literature Month, and possibly The Once and Future King in tandem with ma femme as well, but I'm in! I may join late, though.

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  3. I'll definitely join in on the comments...it is a remarkable read, and easily became one of my favorite novels when I read it a few years back. I'm so happy to see others reading it!

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  4. I forgot another good reason to read La Regenta which is that Alas's other novel is appearing in a new translation soon, and it is blurbed by Dwight the Common Reader! As is only right.

    Pepita Jiménez is I guess the next most famous 19th c. Spanish novel I haven't read. Good suggestion.

    This book is plenty heavy. Long books require logistics. The good thing is that there is no "late," really, not one that matters.

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  5. Ordered my copy of La R. I studied Pepita at A level (pre-university here in UK). Even did my own translation when at a loose end on gap year. Recently threw it away when decluttering.

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  6. My wife just texted me to say she ordered me a copy!

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  7. I'll endeavor to read La Regenta along with y'all...although I make no promises re: timeliness given that I'll also be rereading Musil's The Man Without Qualities and immersing myself in yet another nearly 900-page doorstopper all at the same time. Still, excited about the prospect of yr readalongsky since I just picked up a critical edition of the novel earlier in the year. Auspicious tidings!

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  8. Wonderful. More readers, more, more!

    Alas + Musil = lotta pages.

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  9. Yes, that was a bit of a fanatical post, but I'm not sorry, thanks.

    I have not read The House of Ulloa, but I thought La Regenta to be of an entirely sensible length. The book zooms along; I have read many novels a fifth its length that were by magnitudes less engrossing (as one commenter to my post asserted, the only disappointment is that there isn't more of the book). And if you're going to join for Bennett too, then I have zero excuse for not reading La Regenta again. And I so want to revisit Frankenstein, so: lotta pages indeed.

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  10. Sign me up for La Regenta AND The Old Wives' Tale. I had never heard of La Regenta before you mentioned it, and I've had Bennett on my TBR list for years. But warn us before you start so I'll be ready...

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  11. Fanaticism in a good cause.

    In a sense, this is the warning. It will take me a month to six weeks to read the novel - and this will be "zooming along" for me. The middle of July is about when I will be ready to write.

    Scott is aiming at the end of July on Bennett. I might miss that - vacation - or might not.

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  12. One of my all-time favorite books. I read Anna Karenina this year and, like most people, was bowled over by it. AK is widely acknowledged as one of the pillars of world literature and one of the very greatest of novels; La Regenta isn't nearly so celebrated. Thinking back to them both, I don't see anything about the Tolstoy that sets it so far above Alas. I wouldn't say that Alas is better than Tolstoy, because when you're dealing with that magnitude of achievement, one thing being better or worse than another means very little. La Regenta is certainly in the same class as Anna Karenina, and is as good as or better than any novel I've read.

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  13. !!! Anna Karenina! High praise. The highest.

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  14. Indeed! I love love love Anna Karenina, and so hold high hopes for La Regenta. 700 pages is nothing in the hands of Tolstoy, perhaps the same will be true of Alas. We shall see.

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  15. I feel that 700 pages of Tolstoy is still a lot of pages.

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    1. Yeah, but, they go quickly. And the time is well spent.

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  16. I don't think of "go quickly" as a plus in literature, I guess, as it is in dentistry and waiting in line.

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    1. "Go quickly" would be a plus for me when it comes to Trollope. Or, Willa Cather's My Antonia.

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  17. One chapter into La Regenta, I am skeptical of "quickly" - this book is dense. Alas can't keep this up, can he?

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    1. I am only six pages in and I heartily concur; this is not Tolstoy. This is a kind of maximalist floribunda prose that makes Michael Chabon look like Ann Beattie. I'm exhausted already with such nuggets as "he [a 13 year-old boy] moved and gesticulated like some cheap brazen barracks siren." And "sometimes a piercing gleam would shoot out from [the priest's eyes]--an unpleasant surprise, like finding a needle in a feather pillow." I feel as if the Spanish deSade has gone upscale without losing a scintilla of loucheness. This is NOT going to be a fast--or easy--read.

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  18. Oh, dear. I'm finishing Frankenstein (wonderful in the 1818 edition!) and then beginning La Regenta. At any rate, we shall have a grand discussion as always.

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  19. The opening letters in the 1818 edition are suspiciously similar to those of 1831. Are bigger changes coming?

    I'd forgotten how much of Percy Shelley is in the polar explorer.

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    1. I wish I remembered the 1831 in greater detail; I'm only 40% of the way through, but a large difference is from where Elizabeth comes. In 1818, she is his cousin; in 1831 she was found by his parents in a cottage in Italy while they were on holiday. Not sure why that's significant, but it is a difference. Surely more differences are to come.

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  20. What a wonderfully fussy change. What difference could that make?

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  21. People are over-promising - first, the second-greatest novel of the 19th century, and now something like a 1,000-page Ronald Firbank novel. I wish! Oh, how I wish.

    Next someone will tell me La Regenta is as intricate as Pale Fire and as metafictional as "Pierre Menard."

    So far it looks to me a lot like Eça de Queiroz, like a blend of The Sin of Padre Amaro and Cousin Basilio.

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    1. I don't wish!
      A "1,000-page Ronald Firbank novel" would be unreadable. Firbank knew when to stop.
      Have you read JR by William Gaddis? An enormous virtuoso novel, almost entirely in unattributed dialogue and all in one "take". Read a few pages and it's one of the funniest and saddest books you could imagine, but the whole thing is as if someone had carved the face of W.C. Fields on Mount Rushmore.

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    2. Every once in a while I am happy to read the unreadable. I am neutral on "unreadable," just as I am on "forward thrust." I have read JR and basically love it.

      Maybe next year we should have an Adalbert Stifter readalong.

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  22. After five strenuous days of slogging through the first 123 pages of La Regenta, I do not know whether I have the stamina to continue. The ponderous backstory, the confusing free indirect discourse set off with quotation marks butting up against actual dialogue, the overripe prose (some of that is fun), and the near total absence of forward thrust makes this a tough call for me. Imagine Anna Karenina beginning with her birth, if you will, and having her marriage occur fully 15% into the novel. "In medias res" may have been Tolstoy's mantra, but it is, alas, not Alas's. I need some convincing to continue; while I wait I will move to something more accessible. There might just be a reason that this novel was not translated into English for almost 100 years after its publication. The back cover promises something like Jude the Obscure, but delivers something less. What, after all, is the ultimate test for pulling the bookmark when you are sixty years old and want to spend the rest of your reading life re-reading the greats and reading the lesser works of great artists? I throw the question open for discussion.

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  23. 123 pages of anything is a fair shot.

    The newer Penguin edition smartly omits any reference to Hardy. How strange; how wrong.

    The quotation marks are pretty odd. Jane Austen does something kind of similar, but not as peculiar as this.

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  24. Chapter 7 and its avena en la Habana joke was the final straw for me. I look forward to your review to see how this farrago, I mean masterpiece, ends.

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  25. "Farrago"! This is the home of the Ubu Roi readalong!

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  26. I, too, had to put this one down after almost 200 pages. I enjoyed certain small sections but for the most part the question of who will be Ana's confessor and why just seemed to circle and circle like water around a drain, and with almost the same level of anticipation. This certainly is not Tolstoy. And I thoroughly enjoyed Eça de Queiroz's The Mais when I read it a few years back--much better writing, in my opinion, than La Regenta.

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  27. La Regenta is more what The Maias would look like if it were Eça's first novel. It is one ambitious first novel.

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  28. It's too bad people are dropping out; the second half of La Regenta really cooks. Some great digressions and set pieces.

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  29. I'm still in. I'm a bit slow, though ... Just finished the first part.

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