Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Faber and Faber (2001), Paperback
Library's review
De som is groter dan de delen in The Alexandria Quartet, maar elk deel op zich hangt met opzichtig klamme handjes aan de kapstok van het geheel. Een aantal personages, meer dan de vier van de titels, cirkelt om elkaar heen in een broeierig Alexandrië, een verraderlijke stad waar alle invloeden,
Het boek/de boeken zijn eigenlijk volstrekt onevenwichtig, en hoewel ze elkaar versterken en hier en daar wel eens uitgroeien tot een kakofonie van verhalen, anekdotes en levensgeschiedenissen, geldt dat niet voor alle (delen van alle) boeken in gelijke mate. Het ontbreekt Durrell ook aan de bruutheid van een Miller, of de directheid van een Hemingway. Durrell doet bovendien een groot aantal van zijn personages schromelijk tekort, - hij gunt ze geen weerwoord, schrijft ze af, sleurt ze uit de spotlights, draait hun motivaties om, ... het is het intentionele literaire spel dat speelt met de vooroordelen en de verwachtingen van de lezer, maar na de eerste verrassing (halverwege het tweede boek) en eenmaal Durrell zijn punt gemaakt heeft is de lol er snel af (tot halverwege het derde boek; het vierde boek voegt weinig toe).
Een legendarisch personage is de schrijver Pursewarden - een schrijver die letterlijk groter dan het leven zelf is.
Show More
religies en tijdslijnen samenkomen, en waar ook de liefde zich niet onbetuigd laat. Verschillende invalshoeken, verschillende waarheden, verschillende standpunten, ... liefdesroman (soms op het boeketreeksige af), politieke commentaar met een zweem good old British sportmanship er doorheen, life imitating art imitating life imitating ..., literaire kritieken op post-Victoriaanse moralisten, lofbetuigingen aan D.H. Lawrence, een hint Afrikaanse jazzinvloeden, T.E. Lawrence en James Bond in de woestijn, Blue Lagoon-klefheid, ... Het boek/de boeken zijn eigenlijk volstrekt onevenwichtig, en hoewel ze elkaar versterken en hier en daar wel eens uitgroeien tot een kakofonie van verhalen, anekdotes en levensgeschiedenissen, geldt dat niet voor alle (delen van alle) boeken in gelijke mate. Het ontbreekt Durrell ook aan de bruutheid van een Miller, of de directheid van een Hemingway. Durrell doet bovendien een groot aantal van zijn personages schromelijk tekort, - hij gunt ze geen weerwoord, schrijft ze af, sleurt ze uit de spotlights, draait hun motivaties om, ... het is het intentionele literaire spel dat speelt met de vooroordelen en de verwachtingen van de lezer, maar na de eerste verrassing (halverwege het tweede boek) en eenmaal Durrell zijn punt gemaakt heeft is de lol er snel af (tot halverwege het derde boek; het vierde boek voegt weinig toe).
Een legendarisch personage is de schrijver Pursewarden - een schrijver die letterlijk groter dan het leven zelf is.
Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member Poquette
Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea — the four novels that constitute The Alexandria Quartet — are famous for Durrell’s florid prose and unique four-tiered structure, which the author spoke of as his “four-decker,” but it is unlike other multi-volume fiction of note. Rather than
It is a truism that two witnesses to an event inevitably see and report different facts. This notion seems to be at the foundation of Durrell’s concept and he even drops clues to his approach here and there. Notably towards the beginning of Justine we read the following:
I remember her sitting before the multiple mirrors at the dressmaker’s being fitted for a shark-skin costume, and saying: “Look! Five different pictures of the same subject. Now if I wrote I would try for a multi-dimensional effect in character, a sort of prism-sightedness. Why should not people show more than one profile at a time?”
Is this not a metaphor for the entire tetralogy?
The multiple points of view are presented variously through extended “quotations” from letters, diaries and novels of various characters. This is a clever way to shift point of view without actually employing an omniscient narrator. While Durrell’s people and places are interesting, aided in large part by an endless succession of new revelations that keep one turning pages, the question arises as to whether these books could have been published today. Modernism disrespects narrative to some extent, and modern readers are thought to prefer that action be carried forward by dialogue. And so it is somewhat ironic that it is the deeply textured nature of Durrell’s long narrations that make the characters — including the city of Alexandria itself — so vivid, memorable and even haunting for the reader.
Durrell is reported to have said that The Alexandria Quartet is an exploration of the varieties of love — the many ways individuals of all sexes join together, explore each other and in the end come to know themselves. Right at the outset of Justine, Durrell sets the table: “. . . there are more than five sexes and . . . the sexual provender which lies to hand is staggering in its variety and profusion.” He never directly defines exactly what those five sexes are, yet one begins to get the picture as the novels progress.
But the subtext is the city of Alexandria itself as temptress, betrayer, comforter and tormentor. Durrell’s characterization of the city is subtle enough that one comes away with a sense of longing for that time and place which flamed bright for a brief moment and then all too soon was gone.
When these novels were first published during the 1950s, Durrell’s entire approach was considered ground-breaking. The novelty of The Alexandria Quartet has never quite worn off, and yet while there are many Durrell enthusiasts about, his star does not seem to shine as brightly as it once did, perhaps because his prodigious knowledge and love of language requires the reader to command an uncommonly large vocabulary in both English and French, and also because the deep narrative style has been out of fashion since about the time Durrell was laboring over these volumes. While Durrell is not on my list of favorite writers per se, this tetralogy continues to exert an almost nostalgic appeal, despite the fact of never having been to Alexandria. My first reading was way back in the 1960s, but the second time around was like experiencing it all over again for the first time.
Show More
following a linear progression, as such works tend to do, The Quartet, in the first three novels which are set mostly in pre-WWII Alexandria, explores intricate interrelationships of certain Alexandria denizens in an iterative fashion in which the many layers of personality are unearthed and explored through varied points of view of different characters. It is only with the fourth volume that time moves forward beyond the war that caused a major upheaval even in Egypt. During its course— after most of the characters encountered in the previous novels have gone their separate ways — Clea ties up many loose ends. It is a truism that two witnesses to an event inevitably see and report different facts. This notion seems to be at the foundation of Durrell’s concept and he even drops clues to his approach here and there. Notably towards the beginning of Justine we read the following:
I remember her sitting before the multiple mirrors at the dressmaker’s being fitted for a shark-skin costume, and saying: “Look! Five different pictures of the same subject. Now if I wrote I would try for a multi-dimensional effect in character, a sort of prism-sightedness. Why should not people show more than one profile at a time?”
Is this not a metaphor for the entire tetralogy?
The multiple points of view are presented variously through extended “quotations” from letters, diaries and novels of various characters. This is a clever way to shift point of view without actually employing an omniscient narrator. While Durrell’s people and places are interesting, aided in large part by an endless succession of new revelations that keep one turning pages, the question arises as to whether these books could have been published today. Modernism disrespects narrative to some extent, and modern readers are thought to prefer that action be carried forward by dialogue. And so it is somewhat ironic that it is the deeply textured nature of Durrell’s long narrations that make the characters — including the city of Alexandria itself — so vivid, memorable and even haunting for the reader.
Durrell is reported to have said that The Alexandria Quartet is an exploration of the varieties of love — the many ways individuals of all sexes join together, explore each other and in the end come to know themselves. Right at the outset of Justine, Durrell sets the table: “. . . there are more than five sexes and . . . the sexual provender which lies to hand is staggering in its variety and profusion.” He never directly defines exactly what those five sexes are, yet one begins to get the picture as the novels progress.
But the subtext is the city of Alexandria itself as temptress, betrayer, comforter and tormentor. Durrell’s characterization of the city is subtle enough that one comes away with a sense of longing for that time and place which flamed bright for a brief moment and then all too soon was gone.
When these novels were first published during the 1950s, Durrell’s entire approach was considered ground-breaking. The novelty of The Alexandria Quartet has never quite worn off, and yet while there are many Durrell enthusiasts about, his star does not seem to shine as brightly as it once did, perhaps because his prodigious knowledge and love of language requires the reader to command an uncommonly large vocabulary in both English and French, and also because the deep narrative style has been out of fashion since about the time Durrell was laboring over these volumes. While Durrell is not on my list of favorite writers per se, this tetralogy continues to exert an almost nostalgic appeal, despite the fact of never having been to Alexandria. My first reading was way back in the 1960s, but the second time around was like experiencing it all over again for the first time.
Show Less
LibraryThing member bolokovsky
Lawrence Durrell
Alexandria Quartet
Lawrence George Durrell (1912 – 1990) was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer.
His most famous work the Alexandria Quartet a tetralogy of novels was published between 1957-1960.
A critical and commercial success, the books present
As Durrell explains in his preface to Balthazar, the four novels are an exploration of relativity and the notions of continuum and subject-object relation, with modern love as the subject. The Quartet offers the same sequence of events to us through several points of view, allowing individual perspectives to change over time.
The four novels are: Justine(1957)Balthazar(1958)Mountolive (1958)Clea(1960)
The novels, given their dense complexity, were written (compelled by pressing money worries) in an extraordinary short space of time.
Justine took about four months, Balthazar six weeks, Mountolive was completed in two months and Clea, in just seven weeks.
Although Durrell was born a decade earlier than his near contemporaries, John Wain, Kingsley Amis, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, and John Osborne, his sequence of novels was published at roughly the same time as, ‘Take a Girl Like You’: Amis (1957) ‘Room at the Top’: Braine (1957) ‘Look Back In Anger’: Osborne (1956) ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’: Sillitoe (1958).
His ‘high art’ aesthetic makes no concessions on the reader, but the demands it makes are rewarded with writing which is both sensuous and superbly evocative of the ‘Spirit of Place’, Alexandria.
The city, that the poet Cavafy knew so well, (his unnamed presence pervades the novels, and several of his poems are featured in the text) is conjured up in all it’s extravagant sensuality.
Durrell’s characters are fabulous birds of paradise, brilliantly placed in the exotic setting of Alexandria; the comparison with the collection of dowdy sparrows, that inhabit the work of his peers, and whose actions take place in London, Nottingham and Bradford, is invidious.
It is impossible to understand Durrell without seeing him as he saw himself; a European. As he explains in the Paris Review Interview of 1959, his heroes were Lawrence, Richard Aldington, Robert Graves, Norman Douglas and T.S.Eliot; all considered themselves as Europeans first, and only then as British citizens.
Compare that to the parochial outlook enshrined in the next generation of British writers, the so called ‘Angry Young Men’; eschewing any form of glamour and the exotic and reveling in the dull and depressing, they epitomized everything that Durrell characterized ‘The English Death’. As he explained, ‘English life is really like an autopsy. It is so, so dreary.’
It has been pointed out that alongside the central character of Darley (who seems to represent Durrell), and who narrates three of the books, at least three other important figures in the Quartet are writers. Of these the most controversial is the novelist Pursewarden. His portrayal, as the high priest of aestheticism, scattering aphorisms and philosophical and artistic pronouncements whenever he appears, borders on caricature, and at times it is difficult to accept that his pretensions are meant to be taken seriously; nonetheless he, along side the cross-dressing rogue Scobie, and the alluring Jewess Justine (ref. to de Sade) remain wonderfully memorable characters.
Durrell’s prose used throughout the series of novels, describing the sexual couplings and political intrigues; the evocation of the streets and cafe’s of Alexandria; the atmosphere of it’s surrounding countryside, the sea, islands and the Mareotic Lake, is startling visual, ornate and intricately worked.
Particularly in the first novel, Justine, Durrell allows his poetic sensibilities to flow unrestrained and saturate the text with beautiful imagery, that has an almost febrile intensity.
The highly ornate and sensuous narrative voice which Durrell used drew much critical attention. George Steiner described the Quartet's style as "complex aural music" in which "light seems to play across the surface of the words in a brilliant tracery." The "baroque" style was not to everyone's taste though; Martin Green complained that "a steady diet of [Durrell's] sentences ... makes one feel one is sickening for a bad cold."
Durrell himself is critical of his ornate style. In answer to the question posed in ‘The Paris Review’, ‘that his prose seems so highly worked. Does it just come out like that?’ he replied. ‘It’s too juicy. Perhaps I need a few money terrors and things to make it a bit clearer - less lush. I always feel I am overwriting. I am conscious of the fact that it is one of my major difficulties. It comes of indecision when you are not sure of your target.....For instance, a lot of poems of my middle period got too corpulent.’
Despite this self-critical attitude, Durrell rightfully takes his place with such supreme modern prose stylists as Nabokov, Updike, Martin Amis and John Banville. Each of whom has their detractors; criticized as favouring style over substance, and with the additional accusation of being too elitist and esoteric. Nevertheless to the appreciative connoisseur the Alexandria Quartet presents a great artist at work using the full palette of his genius, and creating an intoxicating mixture of sensual imagery and unforgettable characters.
Alexandria Quartet
Lawrence George Durrell (1912 – 1990) was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer.
His most famous work the Alexandria Quartet a tetralogy of novels was published between 1957-1960.
A critical and commercial success, the books present
Show More
four perspectives on a single set of events and characters in Alexandria, Egypt, before and during World War II.As Durrell explains in his preface to Balthazar, the four novels are an exploration of relativity and the notions of continuum and subject-object relation, with modern love as the subject. The Quartet offers the same sequence of events to us through several points of view, allowing individual perspectives to change over time.
The four novels are: Justine(1957)Balthazar(1958)Mountolive (1958)Clea(1960)
The novels, given their dense complexity, were written (compelled by pressing money worries) in an extraordinary short space of time.
Justine took about four months, Balthazar six weeks, Mountolive was completed in two months and Clea, in just seven weeks.
Although Durrell was born a decade earlier than his near contemporaries, John Wain, Kingsley Amis, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, and John Osborne, his sequence of novels was published at roughly the same time as, ‘Take a Girl Like You’: Amis (1957) ‘Room at the Top’: Braine (1957) ‘Look Back In Anger’: Osborne (1956) ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’: Sillitoe (1958).
His ‘high art’ aesthetic makes no concessions on the reader, but the demands it makes are rewarded with writing which is both sensuous and superbly evocative of the ‘Spirit of Place’, Alexandria.
The city, that the poet Cavafy knew so well, (his unnamed presence pervades the novels, and several of his poems are featured in the text) is conjured up in all it’s extravagant sensuality.
Durrell’s characters are fabulous birds of paradise, brilliantly placed in the exotic setting of Alexandria; the comparison with the collection of dowdy sparrows, that inhabit the work of his peers, and whose actions take place in London, Nottingham and Bradford, is invidious.
It is impossible to understand Durrell without seeing him as he saw himself; a European. As he explains in the Paris Review Interview of 1959, his heroes were Lawrence, Richard Aldington, Robert Graves, Norman Douglas and T.S.Eliot; all considered themselves as Europeans first, and only then as British citizens.
Compare that to the parochial outlook enshrined in the next generation of British writers, the so called ‘Angry Young Men’; eschewing any form of glamour and the exotic and reveling in the dull and depressing, they epitomized everything that Durrell characterized ‘The English Death’. As he explained, ‘English life is really like an autopsy. It is so, so dreary.’
It has been pointed out that alongside the central character of Darley (who seems to represent Durrell), and who narrates three of the books, at least three other important figures in the Quartet are writers. Of these the most controversial is the novelist Pursewarden. His portrayal, as the high priest of aestheticism, scattering aphorisms and philosophical and artistic pronouncements whenever he appears, borders on caricature, and at times it is difficult to accept that his pretensions are meant to be taken seriously; nonetheless he, along side the cross-dressing rogue Scobie, and the alluring Jewess Justine (ref. to de Sade) remain wonderfully memorable characters.
Durrell’s prose used throughout the series of novels, describing the sexual couplings and political intrigues; the evocation of the streets and cafe’s of Alexandria; the atmosphere of it’s surrounding countryside, the sea, islands and the Mareotic Lake, is startling visual, ornate and intricately worked.
Particularly in the first novel, Justine, Durrell allows his poetic sensibilities to flow unrestrained and saturate the text with beautiful imagery, that has an almost febrile intensity.
The highly ornate and sensuous narrative voice which Durrell used drew much critical attention. George Steiner described the Quartet's style as "complex aural music" in which "light seems to play across the surface of the words in a brilliant tracery." The "baroque" style was not to everyone's taste though; Martin Green complained that "a steady diet of [Durrell's] sentences ... makes one feel one is sickening for a bad cold."
Durrell himself is critical of his ornate style. In answer to the question posed in ‘The Paris Review’, ‘that his prose seems so highly worked. Does it just come out like that?’ he replied. ‘It’s too juicy. Perhaps I need a few money terrors and things to make it a bit clearer - less lush. I always feel I am overwriting. I am conscious of the fact that it is one of my major difficulties. It comes of indecision when you are not sure of your target.....For instance, a lot of poems of my middle period got too corpulent.’
Despite this self-critical attitude, Durrell rightfully takes his place with such supreme modern prose stylists as Nabokov, Updike, Martin Amis and John Banville. Each of whom has their detractors; criticized as favouring style over substance, and with the additional accusation of being too elitist and esoteric. Nevertheless to the appreciative connoisseur the Alexandria Quartet presents a great artist at work using the full palette of his genius, and creating an intoxicating mixture of sensual imagery and unforgettable characters.
Show Less
LibraryThing member KeithMiller
With its non-linear structure, sensuous prose, and cast of characters buffeted and beleaguered by love, this tetralogy is one of the masterworks of the twentieth century, and remains the finest work of literature to emerge from Alexandria.
Durrell jotted notes toward his "Alexandria novel" in the
Justine investigates its characters by laying down scenes and moments with little concern for chronology; instead, like a mosaic, the pieces link up to form a whole. This broken, cluttered style echoes the love lives of the characters, who are continually floundering within relationships: deceitful, forlorn, exhausted, cynical. Justine, the central character, is based on Eve, to whom the book is dedicated, and it is her portrait that emerges most fully, though there are no caricatures in the Quartet. The prose is miraculous, the metaphors always fresh, ideas and images crushed together to form an angular beauty.
Eve left Durrell before he had finished Justine, but he shortly thereafter met Claude Vincendon, who had grown up in Alexandria. Inspired by her love and memories, he completed Justine, and conceived the idea of a series of books "using the same people in different combinations." Balthazar is the equal of Justine in its imagery and investigation of character; of the tetralogy, these two are closest in spirit. Mountolive, more traditional in its storytelling, relates the love affair between David Mountolive, a British civil servant, and Leila, a married Copt. Clea, an homage to Claude, and dedicated to her, moves forward in time. Darley, the narrator of Justine, returns to Alexandria after the war, where he falls in love with Clea Montis, and they reminisce about their acquaintances. Less successful than the previous three in some ways, it nevertheless contains some vivid scenes, and the writing remains delicious.
Justine was an instant critical and popular success upon its publication. The Quartet cemented Durrell's reputation and made him a perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize.
Durrell jotted notes toward his "Alexandria novel" in the
Show More
tower of the Ambron Villa, but began writing Justine, which he initially called his "Book of the Dead," in Cyprus in 1953. Soon after their arrival in Cyprus, Eve Cohen, Durrell's second wife, became depressed, then psychotic. Durrell had her confined in a hospital in Germany, and brought his mother to Cyprus to help him with Sappho, his daughter with Eve. Rising at four-thirty am, he wrote in longhand so as not to wake Sappho, before leaving to start teaching at seven. He typed out his week's work on weekends. In a letter to Henry Miller, he noted "never have I worked under such adverse conditions," but commented also: "I have never felt in better writing form."Justine investigates its characters by laying down scenes and moments with little concern for chronology; instead, like a mosaic, the pieces link up to form a whole. This broken, cluttered style echoes the love lives of the characters, who are continually floundering within relationships: deceitful, forlorn, exhausted, cynical. Justine, the central character, is based on Eve, to whom the book is dedicated, and it is her portrait that emerges most fully, though there are no caricatures in the Quartet. The prose is miraculous, the metaphors always fresh, ideas and images crushed together to form an angular beauty.
Eve left Durrell before he had finished Justine, but he shortly thereafter met Claude Vincendon, who had grown up in Alexandria. Inspired by her love and memories, he completed Justine, and conceived the idea of a series of books "using the same people in different combinations." Balthazar is the equal of Justine in its imagery and investigation of character; of the tetralogy, these two are closest in spirit. Mountolive, more traditional in its storytelling, relates the love affair between David Mountolive, a British civil servant, and Leila, a married Copt. Clea, an homage to Claude, and dedicated to her, moves forward in time. Darley, the narrator of Justine, returns to Alexandria after the war, where he falls in love with Clea Montis, and they reminisce about their acquaintances. Less successful than the previous three in some ways, it nevertheless contains some vivid scenes, and the writing remains delicious.
Justine was an instant critical and popular success upon its publication. The Quartet cemented Durrell's reputation and made him a perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize.
Show Less
LibraryThing member girlsgonechild
Three of the most remarkable books PERIOD. No one can write like Durrell. His language is remarkable, every word has meaning. Like poetry, it sings. I was especially awed by Justine (book one of The Alexandria Quartet.) Durrell is one of the great writers of all time and seldom studied. It's a
Show More
shame for his talent is, in my opinion, unprecedented. Show Less
LibraryThing member hbergander
The same love affairs and sexual relationships seen from four perspectives at the break point between Orient and Occident, accompanied by the tremendous upheaval of World War II.
LibraryThing member dmarsh451
I think this is where I gained an interest in urban planning.
LibraryThing member Scribble.Orca
Being a serial book-adulterer I have fallen into and wandered out of love with an amoral number of books - but I remain forever in thrall to the Alexandria Quartet.
Of course, I may change my mind in ten years. Let's just wait and see.
Of course, I may change my mind in ten years. Let's just wait and see.
LibraryThing member psutto
Didn't get beyond page 50 - it failed to engage me
LibraryThing member David_David_Katzman
Well. This was far from being "among the greatest works of English literature in the twentieth century" as claimed by the so-called Modern Library (whoever they are). It was unique, challenging and bizarre as well as, at times, inconsistent (dare I say flawed?). And yet somehow in the flaws is a
Here's how it went for me: beautiful, poetic writing...followed by casual racism...then brilliant artistic insights...then ugly amoral behavior...then cultural revelations...then awkward construction...then imaginative atmospheric metaphors capturing a sense of place and time...then postmodern literary devices....etc etc. This book is such an odd duck that it certainly does achieve something quite unique in English literature, I do agree with that. I can almost compare it, in a way, to Infinite Jest, not in content or style but in the innate inconsistency that defies categorization. The awkwardness at times felt as though the author was "showing his work," (and a writer is the main character). So is it "post modern" or is it not? It's ambiguous, sprawling, beastly, occasionally boring. It's not one thing. It's four books that meander through a continuous storyline in diverse ways.
One of the oddities is the perspective changes. Book One, Justine, is told from the first person perspective of the writer Darley. Book Two, Balthazar is also told by Darley, however it completely alters the understanding we have about the characters from Book One. It straddles this odd border between metafiction and fiction because it features a partial retelling of the events from Book One. I would subtitle it, "The Misperceptions of Darley." The premise is that Darley gave the manuscript of Book One (it's implied but never quite stated that Durrell's actual Book One is Darley's manuscript) to this other character Balthazar, who then "corrects" all of Darley's misperceptions. Much like an editor might use Comments in Microsoft Word to make revision suggestions to an authors draft. Book Two reveals that there was so much behind the scenes that Darley didn't understand, it completely repositions (a new perspective), the characters from Book One. One of the repeated themes of the book is that we really never understand each other (what makes up a "self" is highly questionable as well), and over and over in the series, new facets of individuals and motives and previously unrevealed actions causes us to reevaluate the characters many times over. Couple that with changes that happen to them over time, it highly destabilizes the concept of "identity."
Book Three, Mountolive, throws another wrench into the consistency of the story in that it is told from a third person perspective, a close god's-eye view from inside some of the characters featured in Books One and Two. This was a strange shift that was not particularly justified by Durrell and presents details that Darley never could have known (authorial invention?). One might hypothesize that it represents a book "written by Darley," as if the character wrote Book 3...however, this premise is again never directly stated, so I found the shift awkward.
The fourth book, Clea, returns us to Darley's first person perspective much as in Books One and Two. Again, new aspects to the characters are revealed or have evolved. We never really knew them and they are constantly in a state of flux, just as quantum particles and the universe are.
Most impressive throughout The Alexandria Quartet is the nearly baroque poetic language. Durrell is quite masterful and insightful when he allows his characters to be. There are, in fact, TWO writers as characters in the book and Durrell manages to make them both talented, artistic and eloquent and yet utterly distinct. Very skillful, subtle writing.
The racism is absolutely disturbing, without question. It would seem likely that, being true to British expats living in Egypt before and just after World War II, the characters are going to be infused with racialist views. But the casual use of racist epithets to describe black music and black musicians is disturbing, not to mention the exotic portrayal of Egyptians. Exoticism in its own way is something that betrays a level of racism that has been written about by various cultural critics; it portrays races as "other" and incomprehensible. If Durrell were weaving this into his story for a thematic reason, giving him the benefit of intentionality, it would likely be to point out that we are ALL exotic and incomprehensible to each other. Durrell certainly never sugarcoats the brutality or prejudice of his characters and makes no obvious judgement upon them. He presents the occurrences rather neutrally or amorally. This is dicey indeed. Does it matter what he the author thought? Or is it more important how we now reflect on this series published in the late 1950s? It's jarring to read such casually used language, as if it's just an everyday thing. Yet I think it was rather valuable, in an odd way, because it put me in the mindset of how Trump spoke about immigrants "infesting" this country or, like Roseann Barr tossing off her racist tweets. This is casual conversation for many Americans. It might have been a very small aspect of this book to Durrell, but it had a big effect on me as a reader today. Racist beliefs are just an assumed, automatic and off-hand aspect of the worldview of so many individuals that changing it will require a lot of significant social change. Of course right now, we are going in the opposite direction with the mainstreaming of racism.
Without a doubt, this is an unusual and powerful work but not one I can particularly recommend. I would think those with patience for the unfolding of a story who appreciate off-kilter experimental works that live in an undefinable quantum state of wtf...then yes, perhaps this is for you. Strangely enough, I've heard this described by some as a "romance." It seemed more an anti-romance to me.
Show More
level of honesty not found in so many books that smoothly portray "reality" with details intended to seduce the reader into believing. That trickery of perception.Here's how it went for me: beautiful, poetic writing...followed by casual racism...then brilliant artistic insights...then ugly amoral behavior...then cultural revelations...then awkward construction...then imaginative atmospheric metaphors capturing a sense of place and time...then postmodern literary devices....etc etc. This book is such an odd duck that it certainly does achieve something quite unique in English literature, I do agree with that. I can almost compare it, in a way, to Infinite Jest, not in content or style but in the innate inconsistency that defies categorization. The awkwardness at times felt as though the author was "showing his work," (and a writer is the main character). So is it "post modern" or is it not? It's ambiguous, sprawling, beastly, occasionally boring. It's not one thing. It's four books that meander through a continuous storyline in diverse ways.
One of the oddities is the perspective changes. Book One, Justine, is told from the first person perspective of the writer Darley. Book Two, Balthazar is also told by Darley, however it completely alters the understanding we have about the characters from Book One. It straddles this odd border between metafiction and fiction because it features a partial retelling of the events from Book One. I would subtitle it, "The Misperceptions of Darley." The premise is that Darley gave the manuscript of Book One (it's implied but never quite stated that Durrell's actual Book One is Darley's manuscript) to this other character Balthazar, who then "corrects" all of Darley's misperceptions. Much like an editor might use Comments in Microsoft Word to make revision suggestions to an authors draft. Book Two reveals that there was so much behind the scenes that Darley didn't understand, it completely repositions (a new perspective), the characters from Book One. One of the repeated themes of the book is that we really never understand each other (what makes up a "self" is highly questionable as well), and over and over in the series, new facets of individuals and motives and previously unrevealed actions causes us to reevaluate the characters many times over. Couple that with changes that happen to them over time, it highly destabilizes the concept of "identity."
Book Three, Mountolive, throws another wrench into the consistency of the story in that it is told from a third person perspective, a close god's-eye view from inside some of the characters featured in Books One and Two. This was a strange shift that was not particularly justified by Durrell and presents details that Darley never could have known (authorial invention?). One might hypothesize that it represents a book "written by Darley," as if the character wrote Book 3...however, this premise is again never directly stated, so I found the shift awkward.
The fourth book, Clea, returns us to Darley's first person perspective much as in Books One and Two. Again, new aspects to the characters are revealed or have evolved. We never really knew them and they are constantly in a state of flux, just as quantum particles and the universe are.
Most impressive throughout The Alexandria Quartet is the nearly baroque poetic language. Durrell is quite masterful and insightful when he allows his characters to be. There are, in fact, TWO writers as characters in the book and Durrell manages to make them both talented, artistic and eloquent and yet utterly distinct. Very skillful, subtle writing.
The racism is absolutely disturbing, without question. It would seem likely that, being true to British expats living in Egypt before and just after World War II, the characters are going to be infused with racialist views. But the casual use of racist epithets to describe black music and black musicians is disturbing, not to mention the exotic portrayal of Egyptians. Exoticism in its own way is something that betrays a level of racism that has been written about by various cultural critics; it portrays races as "other" and incomprehensible. If Durrell were weaving this into his story for a thematic reason, giving him the benefit of intentionality, it would likely be to point out that we are ALL exotic and incomprehensible to each other. Durrell certainly never sugarcoats the brutality or prejudice of his characters and makes no obvious judgement upon them. He presents the occurrences rather neutrally or amorally. This is dicey indeed. Does it matter what he the author thought? Or is it more important how we now reflect on this series published in the late 1950s? It's jarring to read such casually used language, as if it's just an everyday thing. Yet I think it was rather valuable, in an odd way, because it put me in the mindset of how Trump spoke about immigrants "infesting" this country or, like Roseann Barr tossing off her racist tweets. This is casual conversation for many Americans. It might have been a very small aspect of this book to Durrell, but it had a big effect on me as a reader today. Racist beliefs are just an assumed, automatic and off-hand aspect of the worldview of so many individuals that changing it will require a lot of significant social change. Of course right now, we are going in the opposite direction with the mainstreaming of racism.
Without a doubt, this is an unusual and powerful work but not one I can particularly recommend. I would think those with patience for the unfolding of a story who appreciate off-kilter experimental works that live in an undefinable quantum state of wtf...then yes, perhaps this is for you. Strangely enough, I've heard this described by some as a "romance." It seemed more an anti-romance to me.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jonfaith
I realized then the truth about all love: that it is an absolute which takes all or forfeits all. The other feelings, compassion, tenderness and so on, exist only on the periphery and belong on the constructions of society and habit.
My gratitude for M.J. Nicholls remains at the fore of this
We begin at the End. The End, mind you, only of an Affair. There is something greasy and squeamish about this, much like Greene's masterpiece. Bendrix and Darley deserve each other, but before one can Blitz the Casbah, the threads separate and the emphasis chugs along at a different angle, involving other souls. Some dead, others despairing. There is a dank musk of incest here. This theme finds a bizarre counterpoint throughout.
The novel Balthazar takes the premise of Justine -- foreigners behaving badly in the ancient city -- and extrapolates it with an unknown resonance. A History worthy of Foucault is forming midway through the second novel. Darley/Durrell is establishing a "great interlinear" a hypertext with contradicting testimony interspersed in his own account.
Montolive is my favorite of the set and a likely zenith for Durrell's ambition. The title character is a diplomat whose own troubled passion vibrates the relations of all the other characters, even as War looms on the horizon. The poems of Cavafy haunt the crackling descriptions of the feverish Egypt of the 1930s. This is a lost city buried under Islamic nationalism and a modern legacy of defeat and corruption.
The Quartet clambers to halt in Clea, by far the weakest novel of the series. The necessary throes of Darley and Clea felt so contrived that I have trouble even thinking calmly about it now. What does remain placid is my memories of the book as object. I bought a hardcovered boxed set of the Quartet 20 years ago and attempted several times to find purchase in its opening pages. This was to avail. Last fall while hobbling about on a sore knee in Berlin, I went with my wife to an English Language second hand book shop just off of Karl Marx Allee. It is more pathetic than romantic to see an American limping about abroad with his hands full of snobby novels. Thus I am guilty.
My gratitude for M.J. Nicholls remains at the fore of this
Show More
celebration. It wasn't he that steered me to this massive work. I am honestly unable to gather any of MJNs inferences in the direction of Durrell. It was more Nicholls' esprit, that laudable expansion on what we talk about when we review books on GR. Nietzsche started this ball rolling, waxing loudly that there are not facts, but only interpretations. This leads us gleaming into the vortex of Durrell's 4D (apologies to Sherman and Peabody) tetralogy, one name, one face, one book for each dimension in that dotty quantum way.We begin at the End. The End, mind you, only of an Affair. There is something greasy and squeamish about this, much like Greene's masterpiece. Bendrix and Darley deserve each other, but before one can Blitz the Casbah, the threads separate and the emphasis chugs along at a different angle, involving other souls. Some dead, others despairing. There is a dank musk of incest here. This theme finds a bizarre counterpoint throughout.
The novel Balthazar takes the premise of Justine -- foreigners behaving badly in the ancient city -- and extrapolates it with an unknown resonance. A History worthy of Foucault is forming midway through the second novel. Darley/Durrell is establishing a "great interlinear" a hypertext with contradicting testimony interspersed in his own account.
Montolive is my favorite of the set and a likely zenith for Durrell's ambition. The title character is a diplomat whose own troubled passion vibrates the relations of all the other characters, even as War looms on the horizon. The poems of Cavafy haunt the crackling descriptions of the feverish Egypt of the 1930s. This is a lost city buried under Islamic nationalism and a modern legacy of defeat and corruption.
The Quartet clambers to halt in Clea, by far the weakest novel of the series. The necessary throes of Darley and Clea felt so contrived that I have trouble even thinking calmly about it now. What does remain placid is my memories of the book as object. I bought a hardcovered boxed set of the Quartet 20 years ago and attempted several times to find purchase in its opening pages. This was to avail. Last fall while hobbling about on a sore knee in Berlin, I went with my wife to an English Language second hand book shop just off of Karl Marx Allee. It is more pathetic than romantic to see an American limping about abroad with his hands full of snobby novels. Thus I am guilty.
Show Less
LibraryThing member charlie68
It's a long haul, at 800 plus pages, but surprisingly worth it. Hard to classify, not really a romance or historical fiction, it is about the four characters that name the four sections, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea and how their lives intersect. The novel manages to convey the city of
Show More
Alexandria very well and all its historical connections to the past. Show Less
LibraryThing member linepainter
1960s racism & sexism was overwhelming, but every time I thought about putting it down, there would be another gorgeous desert or hunting scene.
Subjects
Awards
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1957 (Justine)
1958 (Balthazar)
1958 (Mountolive)
1960 (Clea)
1968 (1-vol. ed.)
Physical description
884 p.; 19 cm
ISBN
0571086098 / 9780571086092