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A review by ericjaysonnenscheinwriter2392
Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell
4.0
MOUNTOLIVE, BRILLIANT LANDSCAPES, DARK INTERIORS
Lawrence Durrell is a poet writing prose. MOUNTOLIVE is most vibrant and intriguing when the author is describing a landscape, a storm, a sector of the city--anything that will stay reasonably still and allow him to both represent and transform it with his verbal virtuosity. Durrell is also adept in foreshadowing scenes of unexpected horror, violence and corruption that are quite striking for their inventiveness. I particularly liked the scene in which Mountolive, the eponymous protagonist, has a rendezvous with Leila the older woman who aroused in him his first passion (but who was also fulfilling his Oedipal feelings toward his own mother—a theme which Durrell barely hints at...one wonders why) only to make a shattering discovery about romance. Another great scene ensues in which our ostensibly worldly diplomat, trying to free himself and recapture his youthful enthusiasm for Egypt, assumes the disguise of an Arab businessman, shows off his impeccable Arabic and scholarship to an Arab fakir, only to fall prey to his own naivite as he is led to an ingeniously conceived reckoning with grotesque terror.
Yet, Durrell's brilliance in personifying elements of weather and his dazzling vocabulary fall short when he describes human motivations and activities. In this area, he is often either facile, comical, or mawkishly grandiloquent. It is as if the eye that captures so well the light of the outdoors becomes over-exposed when describing the interiors of the human mind. When it comes to portraying his characters on the inside, Durrell falls back on metaphorical language that is too imprecise to be persuasive. Describing one emotion in terms of another emotion, etc. can seem an exasperating stalling tactic given what we know about human motivation and behavior. The author seems to investigate his characters' psychology, yet at the same time he digresses from it, as he winds the similes around their thoughts and encases their actions in a silk cocoon of lovely verbiage. (Ironically, his manner of treating his characters mirrors the way in which his Egyptian characters deal with justice.)
At times, all of this dazzling prose in the description of his characters' actions and feelings seems an elaborate cover up. One wonders if Durrell really cared about what human beings think or feel when they arrange their fates or the fates of others. At times, reading through these analogies piled on analogies about emotional states, I found myself muttering, "All right, already. Come out and say what he was truly feeling and what was going on here in this world you created. This is the crux of it, so tell me."
MOUNTOLIVE is a book about "life" or so the author wants us to believe. It is about death, corruption, the ways in which love and romance die, in which people who apparently love and like one another betray each other. On the other hand, it is a tragic structure that often houses a situation comedy. Awful things happen that end in punch lines.
However, it would be mean-spirited and unjust not to give Durrell his due as a writer. MOUNTOLIVE is worth reading for its set pieces. Depictions of locations, ceremonies, strange and exotic customs of people in a distant land are extraordinary in their eloquence and detail. One learns a great deal about Egypt, the Nile delta, the Copts, the complex and delicate relationship of the British Empire and the fledgling Egyptian government, and about the nature of diplomacy, itself.
Unfortunately, the reader learns less about the human heart and mind Durrell insists that he is so eager to explore. Nearly every human action in this novel is a one-liner, surrounded by gravid and diffuse speculations. Not enough happens between the principal characters in the form of activity or even dialogue. One reads that the principal characters were great friends and remarkable individuals, yet the author provides little basis for these claims. Which qualities and actions made them remarkable? How did they meet and become such close friends. What interests did they share? What did they talk about?
Such questions even a neighborhood gossip must answer to keep your interest and credulity. Yet, after 900+ pages (I read JUSTINE and BALTHAZAR before) these fundamental facts remain conundrums. It comes down to that infuriating line, “I guess you had to be there.” The most significant actions come to the reader after the fact...in the same way that deaths took place off-stage in the Greek tragedy. Meanwhile, anecdotes (the love affair between a surgeon and a woman without a nose comes to mind) are gratuitous sideshows that demonstrate the author's penchant for the grotesque.
In conclusion, I am glad that I read MOUNTOLIVE, but I remember liking JUSTINE and BALTHAZAR more--maybe because when I read those previous volumes in the ALEXANDRIA QUARTET, I expected less in a novel than I do now. Exoticism, titillation, a premonitory sense of human corruption and evil were enough to sustain my interest as a youth entering "the real world." Durrell was a brilliant writer, but like every writer, he had his sensitivities and blind spots, his particular sources of inspiration and insight, those subjects he wrote best and cared most about. Read Durrell to take a journey to an exotic place. For a journey into the human mind I would book another author.
Lawrence Durrell is a poet writing prose. MOUNTOLIVE is most vibrant and intriguing when the author is describing a landscape, a storm, a sector of the city--anything that will stay reasonably still and allow him to both represent and transform it with his verbal virtuosity. Durrell is also adept in foreshadowing scenes of unexpected horror, violence and corruption that are quite striking for their inventiveness. I particularly liked the scene in which Mountolive, the eponymous protagonist, has a rendezvous with Leila the older woman who aroused in him his first passion (but who was also fulfilling his Oedipal feelings toward his own mother—a theme which Durrell barely hints at...one wonders why) only to make a shattering discovery about romance. Another great scene ensues in which our ostensibly worldly diplomat, trying to free himself and recapture his youthful enthusiasm for Egypt, assumes the disguise of an Arab businessman, shows off his impeccable Arabic and scholarship to an Arab fakir, only to fall prey to his own naivite as he is led to an ingeniously conceived reckoning with grotesque terror.
Yet, Durrell's brilliance in personifying elements of weather and his dazzling vocabulary fall short when he describes human motivations and activities. In this area, he is often either facile, comical, or mawkishly grandiloquent. It is as if the eye that captures so well the light of the outdoors becomes over-exposed when describing the interiors of the human mind. When it comes to portraying his characters on the inside, Durrell falls back on metaphorical language that is too imprecise to be persuasive. Describing one emotion in terms of another emotion, etc. can seem an exasperating stalling tactic given what we know about human motivation and behavior. The author seems to investigate his characters' psychology, yet at the same time he digresses from it, as he winds the similes around their thoughts and encases their actions in a silk cocoon of lovely verbiage. (Ironically, his manner of treating his characters mirrors the way in which his Egyptian characters deal with justice.)
At times, all of this dazzling prose in the description of his characters' actions and feelings seems an elaborate cover up. One wonders if Durrell really cared about what human beings think or feel when they arrange their fates or the fates of others. At times, reading through these analogies piled on analogies about emotional states, I found myself muttering, "All right, already. Come out and say what he was truly feeling and what was going on here in this world you created. This is the crux of it, so tell me."
MOUNTOLIVE is a book about "life" or so the author wants us to believe. It is about death, corruption, the ways in which love and romance die, in which people who apparently love and like one another betray each other. On the other hand, it is a tragic structure that often houses a situation comedy. Awful things happen that end in punch lines.
However, it would be mean-spirited and unjust not to give Durrell his due as a writer. MOUNTOLIVE is worth reading for its set pieces. Depictions of locations, ceremonies, strange and exotic customs of people in a distant land are extraordinary in their eloquence and detail. One learns a great deal about Egypt, the Nile delta, the Copts, the complex and delicate relationship of the British Empire and the fledgling Egyptian government, and about the nature of diplomacy, itself.
Unfortunately, the reader learns less about the human heart and mind Durrell insists that he is so eager to explore. Nearly every human action in this novel is a one-liner, surrounded by gravid and diffuse speculations. Not enough happens between the principal characters in the form of activity or even dialogue. One reads that the principal characters were great friends and remarkable individuals, yet the author provides little basis for these claims. Which qualities and actions made them remarkable? How did they meet and become such close friends. What interests did they share? What did they talk about?
Such questions even a neighborhood gossip must answer to keep your interest and credulity. Yet, after 900+ pages (I read JUSTINE and BALTHAZAR before) these fundamental facts remain conundrums. It comes down to that infuriating line, “I guess you had to be there.” The most significant actions come to the reader after the fact...in the same way that deaths took place off-stage in the Greek tragedy. Meanwhile, anecdotes (the love affair between a surgeon and a woman without a nose comes to mind) are gratuitous sideshows that demonstrate the author's penchant for the grotesque.
In conclusion, I am glad that I read MOUNTOLIVE, but I remember liking JUSTINE and BALTHAZAR more--maybe because when I read those previous volumes in the ALEXANDRIA QUARTET, I expected less in a novel than I do now. Exoticism, titillation, a premonitory sense of human corruption and evil were enough to sustain my interest as a youth entering "the real world." Durrell was a brilliant writer, but like every writer, he had his sensitivities and blind spots, his particular sources of inspiration and insight, those subjects he wrote best and cared most about. Read Durrell to take a journey to an exotic place. For a journey into the human mind I would book another author.