Parade’s End is #57 on the Modern Library list of 100 greatest novels of the 20th Century. Written by Ford Madox Ford I had no idea it was actually THREE books published under this title and over 800 pages long. The three books are Some Do Not…, Parade’s End, and The Last Post. I am about halfway through the second title but thought I would go ahead and share my thoughts on things so far.
I may have come across Ford’s name years before now but it made no impression. He was one of the writers visiting with Gertrude Stein in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (see earlier post) so I at least had a time frame in mind for him. He was part of the “Lost Generation” (the coining of that phrase attributed to Gertrude Stein). The term generally referred to the folks who came of age around World War I. Ford’s tetrology is set in and around World War I and his protagonist is Christopher Tietjens of Groby, an English gentleman and soldier. The subject of this book dovetails nicely with my recent viewing of the 2nd season of Downton Abbey that deals with many of the same themes. A search of IMDB also shows a series called Parade’s End that is currently in production although I’ve not seen anything about it here, so I’m guessing it’s a BBC kind of show. The story is interesting enough that I would watch that series if it became available here, but I’m not sure I’m going to get through the third book. I guess time will tell.
Tietjens is a taciturn but sensitive fellow whose trials and tribulations are foreign to me. Much of this deals with the class structure in England and I think I’ve said before how I really can’t relate to people living their lives by what “is” and “isn’t” done, especially when I have so little respect for the people making those judgement calls.
Ford’s writing is a mixture of good old-fashioned storytelling and stream-of-consciousness ramblings that seemed to come into vogue about this time. Sometimes I could tell what was happening in the narrative and sometimes I was totally lost.
There are frequent exchanges like this:
“…you are—that your views are –immoral. Of course they often puzzle me. And, of course, if you have views that aren’t the same as other people’s, and don’t keep them to yourself, other people will suspect you of immorality.” This upbraiding by his general and godfather, is a result of Tietjens walking along the street with a woman. Let me say that again—he’s walking down the street…with a woman….These people are every bit as foreign as the tribal types in Things Fall Apart (another earlier post).
Tietjens is actually quite a likeable fellow even though I’ve still got no idea what he is about. He “hated no man…fell to wondering why it was that humanity that was next to always agreeable in its units was, as a mass, a phenomenon so hideous.” Tietjens has a wife named Sylvia who is regularly unfaithful to him to the extent there are questions about his son and heir’s paternity. She runs off with one of her men only to ask to come back to Tietjens after several months. He is awfully worried about his wife’s reputation and allows untrue things said about him to go unchallenged. He is brilliant at his work but allows others to take credit for his genius. He has a friend, MacMaster, that he lends money and support to, with no questions or qualms and is subsequently despised by MacMaster’s wife for it. As he thinks at one point “It is, in fact, asking for trouble if you are more altruist than the society that surrounds you” which reminds me of the saying “No good deed goes unpunished” and that is certainly the case with Tietjens.
Valentine Wannop is a suffragist and daughter of one of Tietjens’s father’s oldest friends. Valentine and Tietjens have tons of feelings for each other but nothing ever happens because as the title lets you know, some do and some do not…..There are all the elements here for a really good soap opera and I’m hoping the tv version makes the story a little more accessible for me. The book is the kind you have to constantly get the dictionary out and look words up and then you still don’t know exactly what Ford is getting at. I’m halfway through Parade’s End and it is all about (so far) Tietjen’s service in the war and more problems with the wife. I am liking it better than the first book however. I can’t heartily recommend this but if you are interested in this time period you might want to give it a try.
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