Doting by Henry Green

Doting Reviews

• 
  Orsodimondo

  MARTEDÌ VIEN DOPO LUNEDÌ
  
  
  Cathleen Mann: Gruppo di scrittori. Henry Green è ritratto al centro.
  
  Che strano scrittore questo Green, senza la ‘e’ finale: poco tradotto, quel poco con scarso o punto successo da noi (ma Alberto Arbasino lo porta in palmo di mano, ed è proprio grazie ai consigli d’Arbasino che io l’ho scoperto, frequentato, apprezzato molto) – all’estero lodato dai colleghi (Auden, Waugh, Bowen, Updike), ma anche lì il successo di pubblico è assai scarso.
  
  
  
  Scrittore obliquo, di non facile interpretazione.
  A cominciare dai suoi titoli, quasi tutti terminanti in ‘ing’, in inglese suffisso del participio presente o del gerundio: Loving, Living, Party Going, Doting, Concluding, perfino Nothing, che però non è né participio né gerundio.
  Forse un suo manierismo, forse per indicare che nei suoi romanzi più che fatti e azioni, ci sono modi di vivere.
  Sembra sempre che parli di niente e che i suoi romanzi siano dense ragnatele di insinuazioni, sulla fragile impalcatura di una conversazione da salotto. Alla larga da qualsiasi penetrazione psicologica.
  
  
  Jean-Honoré Fragonard: Il bacio rubato, 1788. Museo dell’Ermitage di San Pietroburgo.
  
  Guido Almansi mi viene in soccorso con la sua geniale e affascinante teoria: in balistica si deve alzare il tiro per colpire un bersaglio distante – in teatro, e nel romanzo bisogna fare l’opposto, abbassare il tiro, sparare raso terra per raggiungere bersagli che sono molto alti.
  In questo Green è un campione, rimane in superficie, ma è solo un tranello.
  E qui mi viene in soccorso Giorgio Melchiori che sostiene che Green costruisce una struttura perfetta, bella nella sua delicata sequenza di scene, tenuta insieme da un ritmo costante, sicché l’impressione finale è simile a quella di un’opera di Mozart: un edificio musicale costituito di eleganti nonnulla, ma ricco di una forza di penetrazione stranamente patetica.
  Non posso non pensare a Ivy Compton-Burnett.
  
  
  La Sala di Nicola del Palazzo d’Inverno di San Pietroburgo.
  
  
  Anche “Doting-Passioni”, l’ultimo romanzo di Green (1952), è costruito essenzialmente sui dialoghi, in assenza quasi totale di descrizioni, a parte brevi introduzioni al dialogo stesso.
  Conversazioni vuote, di cui Green mi pare campione (anche se non posso far confronti con Pinter che conosco troppo poco, ma si dice che nessuno lo batta).
  Conversazioni che giocano sulle parole, a cominciare da quella del titolo: doting significa perdere la testa, diventare sciocchi per amore, stravedere, essere appassionato, rimbambito d’amor senile.
  
  
  Dean Cornwell, Options,1917.
  
  In “Doting-Passioni” sono in scena sei personaggi del ceto medio-alto.
  All’inizio e alla fine i sei personaggi vengono presentati insieme, mentre per il resto del romanzo i dialoghi offrono tutte le combinazioni possibili tra le varie coppie.
  Questo equilibrio geometrico accentua l’astrazione stilizzata dell’opera. Impressione rafforzata dalla cornice temporale: l’azione, o meglio, il dialogo è compreso all’interno di una vacanza scolastica, tra due feste date una alla partenza e l’altra al ritorno dalle vacanze di un ragazzo, che è solo una comparsa.
  
  I sei intrecciano una classica conversazione à la Green. E quindi, banalità: avventure, infatuazioni, casuali incontri erotici, matrimonio, rispetto delle apparenze, rimpianto della giovinezza...
  
  L’explicit del romanzo è:
  Il giorno dopo andarono tutti avanti allo stesso modo.
  E cioè, martedì vien dopo lunedì, come diceva Virginia Woolf.
  
  
  Illustrazione di Tim Robinson.
• 
  Lisa

  The first novel I read by Henry Green was LOVING.
  
  I instantly had the feeling that I “fell in love with” his writing, and I embarked on a journey to discover all of his nine novels. Now, reading DOTING, his last work, and my eighth Henry Green (wanting to conclude with CONCLUDING made me mix up the chronology of his novels), I realise that the novel LOVING actually initiated my DOTING on Henry Green, while I am now capable of saying, reading DOTING, that I am LOVING his words.
  
  Eh?
  
  Well, trying to make sense of the strange and intricate web of feelings that human beings develop for each other, Henry Green muses on the difference between DOTING and LOVING, and in his last novel DOTING, he is CONCLUDING that there actually is a clear distinction:
  
  “What’s he at now?” Mr Middleton asked.
  “An anthology of love poetry he’s to call ‘Doting’. Don’t you agree it’s a marvellous title?”
  “Well, you know doting, to me, is not loving.”
  “I don’t follow”, she said with a small frown.
  “To my mind love must include adoration of course, but if you just dote on a girl you don’t necessarily go so far as to love her. Loving goes deeper.”
  “Well”, she suggested, “perhaps the same words could mean different things to men and women.”
  “Possibly”, he said. “Perhaps not.”
  
  And Henry Green adds a layer to the depth of love. LOVING, as opposed to DOTING, hurts. It is exclusive and comes with rights and duties and arrangements beyond passion, adoration and attraction. It is sometimes annoying, boring, and frustrating, but the commitment of LOVING makes people endure the negative aspects and continue together, despite pain. The deeper feeling of absolute belonging is bought at the price of familiarity and ownership, which kills DOTING.
  
  Of all Henry Green’s novels, this one hurt most to read. A strange thing to say, considering the fact that other stories describe much more dramatic situations (set during the war, or dealing with death and criminal offences). It is true regardless. This one hurt most. The complete honesty with which he demonstrates the dynamics of a long term marriage is hard to swallow at times. If they are LOVING each other, how can they engage in other affairs, DOTING on the excitement of a new coupling constellation? How can they hurt each other so much?
  
  The answer is in the strange pendulum movement between LOVING and DOTING. The thrill of adoration and sexual attraction wears off in long, stable relationships, and the magic of first encounters cannot be brought back if you sit in front of each other at the dinner table every single day for 18 or 19 years (the couple can’t agree on how long they have been together!).
  
  DOTING and LOVING is like having the cake and eating it. Not possible on a regular basis, but desirable. As love hurts, some characters choose not to engage at all, but to keep on the surface of things, DOTING without LOVING. That doesn’t work out either, as most people, when DOTING on each other, gravitate towards the need to claim exclusive rights and towards LOVING. A person who chooses merely to participate in the relationship puzzle on the surface risks being left alone in the end, surrounded by LOVING, unhappy couples.
  
  If you just look at that surface of course, without digging deeper, there is not much difference between DOTING and LOVING - to the point that a LOVING dialogue between spouses is almost word for word reproduced between DOTING lovers (one of which is married). On a deeper level, however, there is an ocean between those dialogues.
  
  “You can love almost anyone as long as you don’t expect to be happy”, is the CONCLUDING wisdom. Somehow, it is still worth it, Henry Green seems to say, as he lets his characters continue their boring, frustrating, yet LOVING relationships after an interval of highly emotional turmoil in the realm of DOTING.
  
  Few people would be honest enough to speak about the problematic feelings involved in LOVING, and many people mistake DOTING for LOVING. Bliss is when those two words coincide, every once in a while! That is when deep understanding of yourself and another person is possible.
  
  From LOVING to DOTING, I have moved from DOTING to LOVING. It is time for CONCLUDING!
• 
  piperitapitta

  Piccoli crimini coniugali.
  
  Lei
  Lui
  Il figlio diciassettenne di Lei e di Lui
  L'amica diciannovenne di Lei e di Lui
  L'amica dell'amica di Lei e di Lui
  L'amico di vecchia data di Lei e di Lui.
  
  Sei personaggi, mai tutti in scena contemporaneamente (se non nel finale), e solo dialoghi (perlopiù serratissimi) botta e risposta e dal sapore teatrale, permettono alla storia, essenzialmente basata su equivoci e bugie, baci, languide carezze e qualche lacrima furtiva, di svelarsi di battuta in battuta (anche grazie a piccoli colpi di scena e divertenti rivelazioni dalla perfetta geometria narrativa) agli occhi del sempre più incuriosito e divertito lettore.
  Solo due righe, poco più o poco meno, per introdurre il cambio di scena.
  La verità è che tutta la storia, alla quale si assiste, da spettatori, quasi senza prendere mai fiato, divertiti e attenti, è il pretesto per assistere al duello, ora a colpi di fioretto, ora di sciabola, fra Arthur e Diane, Lui e Lei, e alla rappresentazione, a tratti grottesca (ma mai in maniera repellente) di quello che è il loro matrimonio, e degli escamotage, anche sorprendenti, che usano per fronteggiarsi, ravvivarlo, mantenerlo e, talvolta, rianimarlo.
  
  Piacevole scoperta, questo Henry Green, di cui ignorantemente ignoravo tutto, scrittore inglese dei primi anni Cinquanta del Novecento che scopro essere più amato dagli scrittori che dai lettori (e questo, solo in parte, mi conforta riguardo alla mia ignoranza), di cui ringrazio
  @orsodimondo e il suo commento.
  Lo humor e il sarcasmo che contraddistinguono questo testo sono sì fortemente british, e in questo senso penso possa considerarsi il progenitore e forse l'apripista per autori teatrali e non che tanto apprezzo, da Alan Bennett a Michael Frayn passando per Alan Ayckbourn, ma il testo stesso, i sotterfugi e le relazioni, ne fanno materia sempre attuale e universale.
  Da leggere, sghignazzando sotto ai baffi, e poi correre anche a (ri)leggere
  Piccoli crimini coniugali, che ci mostra la (quasi) stessa materia trattata con quel tocco francese e di empatia in più capace di coinvolgere noi mediterranei persino nella sua evoluzione noir.
  
  [Il rispetto] - L'unico modo per conquistarselo è vivere abbastanza a lungo con qualcun altro.
  
  Due interessanti approfondimenti: uno sul
  The New Yorker e l'altro su
  Independent
• 
  Chris

  A unique stylist.i was fascinated by how he could capture that forties world just through dialogue. He make his characters so transparent in their folly yet he doesn't judge them. It's partly because he avoids describing them at all: he just lets them speak.
• 
  Geoff from

  Oh the games people play, with themselves and with others, and how well Henry Green portrays this through practically the sole use of dialogue, following the schemings and evasions of five upper-middle class characters searching for a - on the (often not very) sly - little extra spice in their lives.
  
  Being written mainly in dialogue, the story rattles along at a fair pace, and the characters feel very alive and the story dynamic. With a spare half-a-day, you can soon polish this off, drawn in instantly and entertainingly (although the first page and a half contains the worst of the dialogue, so don't let this deter you), and you'll come out the other end with a satisfied smile and a need to recommend it to others ...
  
  ... as I am doing here. Enjoy!
  
• 
  Lane Pybas

  Five friends become intertwined in a twisted circle of affairs in this short novel written almost completely in dialogue. Green is great at that thing called verisimilitude, and all of the benefits of using dialogue to enhance story telling can be seen in his writing. The novel is broken into short scenes where usually no more than two of the main characters are present. It is interesting to see all of the different character pairings, and how each character speaks and perceives things depending on who they are talking to. The book suffers a bit from the heavy outdated English vernacular, and it sometimes seems like the characters exist in a sort of white space because there is nearly no exposition. I liked it overall, but not as much as Nothing, the other Henry Green I’ve read.
• 
  Daniel Polansky

  Adulterous misbehavior among upper middle-class Londoners in the 1950’s. The dialogue is sharp, and funny, and since it’s almost all dialogue that was how I felt generally about the book, even if the predictable see-saw of the relationships pushed the thing a little too far into straight farce for my taste. Green is really, really talented, and I’m going to keep reading him because I have the sense that neither this nor Loving, which I read last month or whenever, is his best book. Somewhere in the catalog there has to be something a bit more ambitious, I aim to find it.
• 
  Fiona

  In a peculiar way it's always comforting to think that we live in particularly amoral, self-interested times. It gives you hope that life can be different. So reading an early-mid 20th century novel that communicates primarily through excellently written dialogue how people always engineer relationships to their own social advantage and for their own entertainment, with little regard even for those closest to them and even when doing so is emotionally empty, is quite depressing.
  
  
• 
  Abby

  Eh. A group of British people all want to sleep with each other, but it gets COMPLICATED because some of them are MARRIED and some of them are the CHILDREN of their FRIENDS. The novel is done almost entirely in dialogue, which was interesting for the first 20 pages, and then rapidly became dull and two-dimensional. Henry Green might still be a great writer, but I wish this book hadn't been my introduction to him.
• 
  Gina

  Written in late 1940s. An utterly delicious comedy / satire of manners set in post war London. Reads a little like a play, very short chapters each depicting a scene, all in dialogue. ‘Green’s novels reproduce as few do the actual sensations of living’ Elizabeth Bowen. A couple rather bored with their marriage flirt with others. The husband falls for a 19 year old daughter of old friends and what follows is like a restoration comedy with rather more pathos.
• 
  eb

  Like a warm but itchy wool sweater, Henry Green's novels make me squirm. His characters go around and around in circles, misunderstanding each other, baiting each other, scheming to control each other's behavior, and feeling affectionate towards each other. Doting is just like life, in other words, and it's pleasurable, but in a sickening kind of way.
• 
  Rock

  Wow, Doting managed to be one of the more idiosyncratic books I've ever read while remaining in many other ways humdrum. I can't count how many chapters ended with something like, "...and the rest of the evening passed without anything noteworthy occurring." I was also one of the funnier books I've read.
• 
  Dave H

  Light as air, people and the people they want to love them, in the style of Green.
• 
  Guy Brookshire

  As bleak and pale an assessment of monogamy I have ever read. The whole book is written in excellent dialogue. Witty. Depressing. Worthwhile.
• 
  Dan Honeywell

  This book is a lot of fun, a depiction of people trying to have their cake and eat it too. I enjoyed it immensely.
• 
  Kim

  An amusing farce.
• 
  Bruce

  All in dialog a real fast romp of a book, very well done.
• 
  Rick Seery

  hmmm, this and the other 1950s novel, Nothing, by Green are more readily accessible than his earlier, aesthetically more pungent and enigmatic novels, 'Loving' and 'Living.'
  
  Doting and Nothing compliment each other - formally and contextually - both dealing with middle class Londoners approaching a midlife crisis whether they like it or not. In fact, the characters in both novels could be folded into one, and we may not even notice the difference.
  
  The insincerity of our public selves seems to be the overiding theme in Doting, as any complexity seems to arise over following the characters' contradictory words and interactions within a limited social setting, and the sneaking ironies which unbound to catch or catch out... all or almost all in this scenario. For guilt and folly are equally doled out in Doting. Implicitly being caught or hooked is a visual pun the novel makes as the absent teenage schoolboy Peter is off catching salmon in Scotland... as various social follies and deceits catch hooks into those present in the novel's scheming thrust.
• 
  Janet

  enjoyable, a kind of Oscar Wildeish musical chairs romp with heavy duty flirtations going on between various pairings of the main characters. As the reviewers say, virtually all the plot is conveyed through dialogue, without overt commentary on the intentions or motivations of the characters.
• 
  b bb bbbb bbbbbbbb

  Well written dialog, but does get a little tiring after a while. The perspective is mildly cynical: everyone is unkind to each other, it's a big deal and also trivial.
• 
  Dan

  Doting was Henry Green's last of nine novels. His second through seventh novels set high standards. Even today and even judged within the context of Goldsmiths Prize nominees, the best of Green's novels seem startlingly innovative. In reading Doting, I can't help but compare it to Living, Loving, Caught, and Concluding, probably my favorite Henry Greens. But the dialogue, grammar, and story-telling of Doting fail to meet the standards of Green's most original novels.
  
  So what about Doting? Typically for Green, his portrayals of the principal characters in Doting are dispassionate. It's not that Green seems to like or dislike Annabel, Peter, Arthur, Diana, Charles, and Claire. Rather, he simply portrays them, lets them talk, and leaves readers to judge for themselves. It's as if Green himself as an author holds and professes no opinions whatsoever about his characters, their actions, their motives, and their personalities.
  
  As with Nothing, Green's penultimate novel, Doting deals with the idle rich, the almost idle not-so-rich, and the almost idle-want-to-be-rich. Romantic and sexual relationships seem fungible: men and women are tempted, alliances appear temporary, betrayals occur, and, especially in Doting, nobody seems to care very much.
  
  Doting, like Nothing, might be read as a romantic comedy. Both Doting, and Nothing revolve around series of sexual and would-be sexual pairings. But Doting, unlike Nothing, contains little romance. Since Green's characters in Doting reveal themselves only through their actions and their words, we're left to wonder about what's love got to do with it.
  
  In short, Doting seemed least innovative of Green's novels: still interesting, still innovative, but not Henry Green's "fiction at its most novel."