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janu0303's review against another edition
3.0
Difficult read. Very pedagogical - and that's saying something, since I once plowed through Nabokov's Ada with some fervor. So many threads, all interweaving with remarkable skill - semiotics, sado-erroticism, counter-culture, violence, sex and well...Nietzsche. Of these, I found most interesting the parallel drawn to the obscenity trial of Lawerence's Lady Chatterly's Lover (the book culminates with two full court room trials - one for censorship, and one for divorce).
Truthfully, I think a large part of the book went over my head. It is grandiose, grandiloquent. I would've pegged it as pretentious if I didn't recognize the genius of it in the little that I understood.
Still not sure what to make of this book.
Truthfully, I think a large part of the book went over my head. It is grandiose, grandiloquent. I would've pegged it as pretentious if I didn't recognize the genius of it in the little that I understood.
Still not sure what to make of this book.
batbones's review against another edition
4.0
Byatt continues the quartet of a thoughtful, intellectual variety. The strength of her analysis and the breadth of her consideration of the intellectual trends/swings of the 50s-60s are deeply and charmingly proven to be more than just a way of description. Babel Tower is a survey of ideas prevalent and signature to the times, and also a exploration of a woman's life as it might be lived, caught within the interstices of changing and cementing opinion, both strands artfully woven together and mutually strengthened in a single narrative. The ideas, seeds of thought, free-floating as they are, in the rich chaos of life, anchor and bloom; and life sketched out is usefully, here 'use' meaning both literary and historical value, immersed in the rich, heady, bubbling broth of the visionary and new. Frederica, bibliophile, wordsmith, too clever for her own good perhaps, a woman 'who has done things', is aptly at the centre of this plentiful novel of ideas. In Babel Tower there is a yearning for change, an infectious but also perilous (this is my reading) idealism for new paradigms within which human society and interrelations can be conducted without the seeming shackles and despairs of the present on in which mankind (or those who read mankind as such) finds itself. It is a novel of insurrection, of turnings and consequently of rebellions and challenges of the very definitions by which humans define their humanity, their lives, and their fabric of civilisation. Criticism and theory as they are now understood are only freshly identified - the artist finds himself at the mercy of critical assumptions of psychoanalysis and marxism (some truths, some not?, Byatt is intelligently equivocal here) which run the risk of, on one hand, over-interpreting and twisting his work, and on the other, putting out the fire which so animates it and reducing it to flattened, abstruse, academic babble. There are institutions that also endure: marriage, adultery (the condition of divorce that seems so out-of-date to our modern minds), the desperate, fierce, inexplicable, tender and resisting and clutching, love of a mother for her child despite her admission that she is 'not motherly'.
Unlike the previous books of the quartet, the perspective shifts somewhat toward a narrower cast of characters, some newly introduced within this novel, with mixed effects. Frederica still is the central character, which is good, but Marcus's POV is almost eradicated altogether, which is such a shame since if the novel has a second most interesting character, it would be him and his mathematical dreams of the world. Him, intelligent but colourless, visionary but practically useless, exudes his own mystery and charm, despite the quartet's frequent physical descriptions to the contrary. I had hoped to see more of him following the nerve-wracking events of Virgin and later, Still Life, but the picture he is found in is rather shocking - he seems, for the lack of a better word, normal. There should be more to it, I think, more explaining that needs to be done of how he got from his strange world to such a stifling, uninteresting sense of uneventfulness. It was disappointing to have this expectation unfulfilled.
(On a completely related note John Ottokar and his codependent twin are such creeps and half the book was spent silently pleading with/screaming at Frederica to get as far away from them as she can. Which she did not; that almost destroyed the pleasure of reading. Frederica seems different here, too, and if the sudden predicament of marriage the reader finds her into are cogently explained, her impulsive decision-making founded upon bodily urges are immensely frustrating to read. Oh for someone so clever. More than once I wondered whether this novel was to become one of those nauseating ones about perfectly sensible people making terrible decisions just because they felt like it, and here I cannot quite condone it for such a mode would be a horrible mismatch to Frederica's formidable education. I thoroughly appreciated the thought experiment that was Babbletower, but there was really perhaps too much sex.)
On the other hand, Jude Mason was refreshingly intriguing, scruffily robed as a prophet, with fatalistic views on language. His book sparks off a lawsuit that meanders around and tries to put a chalk circle around muddy definitions of artistic merit and obscenity. A very intelligent and enjoyable section.
Unlike the previous books of the quartet, the perspective shifts somewhat toward a narrower cast of characters, some newly introduced within this novel, with mixed effects. Frederica still is the central character, which is good, but Marcus's POV is almost eradicated altogether, which is such a shame since if the novel has a second most interesting character, it would be him and his mathematical dreams of the world. Him, intelligent but colourless, visionary but practically useless, exudes his own mystery and charm, despite the quartet's frequent physical descriptions to the contrary. I had hoped to see more of him following the nerve-wracking events of Virgin and later, Still Life, but the picture he is found in is rather shocking - he seems, for the lack of a better word, normal. There should be more to it, I think, more explaining that needs to be done of how he got from his strange world to such a stifling, uninteresting sense of uneventfulness. It was disappointing to have this expectation unfulfilled.
(On a completely related note John Ottokar and his codependent twin are such creeps and half the book was spent silently pleading with/screaming at Frederica to get as far away from them as she can. Which she did not; that almost destroyed the pleasure of reading. Frederica seems different here, too, and if the sudden predicament of marriage the reader finds her into are cogently explained, her impulsive decision-making founded upon bodily urges are immensely frustrating to read. Oh for someone so clever. More than once I wondered whether this novel was to become one of those nauseating ones about perfectly sensible people making terrible decisions just because they felt like it, and here I cannot quite condone it for such a mode would be a horrible mismatch to Frederica's formidable education. I thoroughly appreciated the thought experiment that was Babbletower, but there was really perhaps too much sex.)
On the other hand, Jude Mason was refreshingly intriguing, scruffily robed as a prophet, with fatalistic views on language. His book sparks off a lawsuit that meanders around and tries to put a chalk circle around muddy definitions of artistic merit and obscenity. A very intelligent and enjoyable section.
newishpuritan's review against another edition
5.0
One of my favourite books. I reread it regularly.
mepresley's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
While there are parts of the novel that I enjoyed very much, and while I appreciated its experimentation, overall I did not think that it held together or provided any kind of narrative satisfaction. The main story does have a beginning, middle, and end: Frederica is in an abusive marriage, Frederica flees that marriage, and Frederica is granted a divorce--though the finding is actually in favor of her husband's counter-suit--and custody of their son; also, Frederica appears to reconcile with the super-weird John Ottakar. The side-story of the legal case of Babbletower also has its ending: the publisher and Jude lose the original obscenity trial but win on appeal.
However, the various threads reach no conclusion: we see bits and pieces of Frederica's Laminations, but not its conclusion; we hear parts of Agatha's adventure story but not the end; we read large chunks of Babbletower but not the meat of it, and the novel bizarrely ends with the conclusion of Babbletower, clearly far removed from the last segment of the text we were given. I do think Byatt captured the mood of the 1960s and the novel is situated firmly within real socio-historical events from the time period. I enjoyed the various literary allusions as well as the plot of the committee on teaching grammar, but only because I'm an English PhD. I can't imagine these appealing in any way to an average reader. Aside from, perhaps, the pieces of Babbletower, I think the novel could have--and probably should have-- done without basically everything else mentioned here.
It took me a long time to finish this book, compared to how quickly I usually read, and if I wasn't someone who was very committed to finishing books that I start, I would have abandoned this one long before its conclusion. Certainly a much different experience for me that Byatt's Possession, which remains one of my favorite novels.
However, the various threads reach no conclusion: we see bits and pieces of Frederica's Laminations, but not its conclusion; we hear parts of Agatha's adventure story but not the end; we read large chunks of Babbletower but not the meat of it, and the novel bizarrely ends with the conclusion of Babbletower, clearly far removed from the last segment of the text we were given. I do think Byatt captured the mood of the 1960s and the novel is situated firmly within real socio-historical events from the time period. I enjoyed the various literary allusions as well as the plot of the committee on teaching grammar, but only because I'm an English PhD. I can't imagine these appealing in any way to an average reader. Aside from, perhaps, the pieces of Babbletower, I think the novel could have--and probably should have-- done without basically everything else mentioned here.
It took me a long time to finish this book, compared to how quickly I usually read, and if I wasn't someone who was very committed to finishing books that I start, I would have abandoned this one long before its conclusion. Certainly a much different experience for me that Byatt's Possession, which remains one of my favorite novels.
shoshzee's review against another edition
4.0
this is a re-read. I decided to re-read the entire Frederica Quartet.
It's a little over long. I also wonder how many people who got this when it came out who loved Possession, not realizing it was third in a series and not nearly as accessible. (Although that's definitely the appeal for me even if it involves lookng up a fair # of the references I probably missed the first time.
When I read this the first time a major response was that I clearly needed to read Howard's End. Which is something I also re-read recently because I doubt I understood much the first time around.
It's not my favorite of the three (I somehow never got up to a Whistling Woman) and it's over long at points but I love the literary word Frederica thrives in. I also relate a lot more to her being trapped in a marriage where she couldn't be herself.
Also I could feel a glimmer of what it must have been like without no fault divorce and how it had to be for any woman trying to get a divorce where there's such an imbalance of power.
The twin Ottokers reminded me a bit of Murdoch's The Flight From the Enchanter.
Also it felt like we were back in mid-century England. Of course I wouldn't necessarily know how accurate that is not having lived there but Byatt manages to imbue the narrative in such a way that makes me feel I can understand it somehow.
It's a little over long. I also wonder how many people who got this when it came out who loved Possession, not realizing it was third in a series and not nearly as accessible. (Although that's definitely the appeal for me even if it involves lookng up a fair # of the references I probably missed the first time.
When I read this the first time a major response was that I clearly needed to read Howard's End. Which is something I also re-read recently because I doubt I understood much the first time around.
It's not my favorite of the three (I somehow never got up to a Whistling Woman) and it's over long at points but I love the literary word Frederica thrives in. I also relate a lot more to her being trapped in a marriage where she couldn't be herself.
Also I could feel a glimmer of what it must have been like without no fault divorce and how it had to be for any woman trying to get a divorce where there's such an imbalance of power.
The twin Ottokers reminded me a bit of Murdoch's The Flight From the Enchanter.
Also it felt like we were back in mid-century England. Of course I wouldn't necessarily know how accurate that is not having lived there but Byatt manages to imbue the narrative in such a way that makes me feel I can understand it somehow.
siria's review against another edition
5.0
[b: Babel Tower|91688|Babel Tower|A.S. Byatt|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|1063051] is an immensely pleasurable reading experience. Not because it's a particularly cheery book—god, it's not—but because it demands such intensity, such devotion of the reader and repays it all with interest. The intertextuality of it all is such a delight—books within books, Babbletower hidden within [b: Babel Tower|91688|Babel Tower|A.S. Byatt|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|1063051], the stories, the letters, the references to other novels—all giving rise to a level of introspection which feels organic rather than forced. Her characters are all incredibly vivid, even if I don't think I would particularly like to spend much time with any of them—Frederica is a little too much of a woman of her time—and really I do think that [a: A.S. Byatt|1169504|A.S. Byatt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1388376297p2/1169504.jpg] is one of the most intelligent authors working today.
pbandgee's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
paulcowdell's review against another edition
1.0
It came as a genuine surprise to me that an author so self-consciously working on Big Ideas, including (and contained within) The Big Novel, should have laboured at such great length to produce such a staggeringly trivial and inconsequential book.
Part of the problem is that the book is endlessly about writers writing about writing. (It's noticeable that all of the authors she cites/invokes throughout the book's parading of its own intellectual weight contrived to deal with problems of writing in the process of writing about something else). I differ with fans of Literary Fiction over whether this has any merit in and of itself, but Byatt's interminable Serious Ruminations are simultaneously wholly orthodox and staid, banal, and vapidly unresolved. She piles up the evidence, but the higher the pile the less she obviously has to say.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of its abject failure on its own terms is its character as an extremely dull Historical Novel (a genre capable of even greater dullness than Literary Fiction, especially when performed as tediously and perfunctorily as the penultimate chapter here). I think we are supposed to view Frederica's course through the changing thought patterns of the 1960s as revelatory, but Byatt fails because she is never unflinching about the challenges to the previous orthodoxy. When portraying the artistic and moralistic provocateurs of the period (many of whom genuinely were silly and vacuous and legitimately deserving of ridicule) she's all too quick to resort to caricatures even lazier than the figures she's parodying. But before you suggest it, the thinking is so slovenly that these don't constitute acute satires.
More importantly, she does this because she is stacking the deck against these intellectual challenges in a quite transparent way. I was suckered into reading this by a thumbnail portrait of the Marquis de Sade on the dustjacket to the hardback (well, more fool me, so I have to accept total responsibility for the time I have wasted reading it), but the fictional novel that is prosecuted for obscenity in the book - Jude Mason's Babbletower - is entirely fraudulent as any kind of representation of Sade's gauntlet in the face of civilisation. Like every other bit of represented writing here, including Frederica's reluctant and unconvincing experimentation with Burroughs's cut-ups, Babbletower is striving to articulate only the most tiresomely hidebound moralising. Byatt's flirtation with the Moors Murders trial is peripheral and unengaged, as if she wants to make some cheap hostile comment but not really get at its core. So, in a prep-school matronly style, we are told that Brady read Sade, and Babbletower is compared with Sade in court, and that should be enough for anyone, so let's just go back to the storyline of Frederica's divorce, shall we?
Byatt can write, that is clear enough, but why? About 290 pages in I was wondering why I'd bothered. Another dozen pages and I was past halfway, so thought I might as well persist, but there is no fundamental unfolding of thought or argument beyond that point either. At some points, Byatt just gives up and throws 'evidence' together randomly: the trouble is that the reader can thus see how little is actually going on. I was only (!) 15o pages from the end when I learned that this dull rambling comprised only one-quarter of a tetralogy, raising the prospect of another 1800 pages of such self-indulgent and unaware reflection.
At one point Byatt inadvertently sums up the entire project. 'Frederica thinks: there is not enough point to all this, or else I am missing something. It is a thought she is often to have, in those years'. Then having recognised this, why the other 617 pages? Even if they were necessary for Byatt's own satisfaction (although not apparently her clarification), it by no means requires the rest of us to have to wade through them with her.
Part of the problem is that the book is endlessly about writers writing about writing. (It's noticeable that all of the authors she cites/invokes throughout the book's parading of its own intellectual weight contrived to deal with problems of writing in the process of writing about something else). I differ with fans of Literary Fiction over whether this has any merit in and of itself, but Byatt's interminable Serious Ruminations are simultaneously wholly orthodox and staid, banal, and vapidly unresolved. She piles up the evidence, but the higher the pile the less she obviously has to say.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of its abject failure on its own terms is its character as an extremely dull Historical Novel (a genre capable of even greater dullness than Literary Fiction, especially when performed as tediously and perfunctorily as the penultimate chapter here). I think we are supposed to view Frederica's course through the changing thought patterns of the 1960s as revelatory, but Byatt fails because she is never unflinching about the challenges to the previous orthodoxy. When portraying the artistic and moralistic provocateurs of the period (many of whom genuinely were silly and vacuous and legitimately deserving of ridicule) she's all too quick to resort to caricatures even lazier than the figures she's parodying. But before you suggest it, the thinking is so slovenly that these don't constitute acute satires.
More importantly, she does this because she is stacking the deck against these intellectual challenges in a quite transparent way. I was suckered into reading this by a thumbnail portrait of the Marquis de Sade on the dustjacket to the hardback (well, more fool me, so I have to accept total responsibility for the time I have wasted reading it), but the fictional novel that is prosecuted for obscenity in the book - Jude Mason's Babbletower - is entirely fraudulent as any kind of representation of Sade's gauntlet in the face of civilisation. Like every other bit of represented writing here, including Frederica's reluctant and unconvincing experimentation with Burroughs's cut-ups, Babbletower is striving to articulate only the most tiresomely hidebound moralising. Byatt's flirtation with the Moors Murders trial is peripheral and unengaged, as if she wants to make some cheap hostile comment but not really get at its core. So, in a prep-school matronly style, we are told that Brady read Sade, and Babbletower is compared with Sade in court, and that should be enough for anyone, so let's just go back to the storyline of Frederica's divorce, shall we?
Byatt can write, that is clear enough, but why? About 290 pages in I was wondering why I'd bothered. Another dozen pages and I was past halfway, so thought I might as well persist, but there is no fundamental unfolding of thought or argument beyond that point either. At some points, Byatt just gives up and throws 'evidence' together randomly: the trouble is that the reader can thus see how little is actually going on. I was only (!) 15o pages from the end when I learned that this dull rambling comprised only one-quarter of a tetralogy, raising the prospect of another 1800 pages of such self-indulgent and unaware reflection.
At one point Byatt inadvertently sums up the entire project. 'Frederica thinks: there is not enough point to all this, or else I am missing something. It is a thought she is often to have, in those years'. Then having recognised this, why the other 617 pages? Even if they were necessary for Byatt's own satisfaction (although not apparently her clarification), it by no means requires the rest of us to have to wade through them with her.
bookscatsyarn's review against another edition
3.0
For a book that made me want to lie down, and, alternatively, throw up, I ended up liking it a great deal. I did a lot of skimming of the "Babbeltower" sections; it seemed enough to have a general sense of what it was withought going into detail. What was compelling, much like Still Life, were the scenes of domesticity and Frederica's attempts to build a new life for herself and ultimately define and defend her sense of "motherhood." As the mother of a small boy, I think this was probably the right time in my life to read it; I can't imagine finding this compelling in graduate school
jason461's review against another edition
4.0
Longer than it should be, but with more than it's share of good moments.