 |
|
|
|
Reviews of books by some of the hottest writers working today, exclusive author interviews, literary news and criticism.
 |
|
|
|
|
Fill out your email address
to receive our newsletter!
|
|
|
|
|
 Get new reviews the instant they are posted to the site with RSS
What is RSS?
|
|
| Search Box (type in author's last name or one key word) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Joseph Wiesenfarth’s book is an outstanding work of scholarship that teases out all of the fraught complexities and contradictions in this quintic interrelation; and it adds greatly to our understanding of Ford, these four remarkable women and modernism itself.
By Paul Kane
Ford Madox Ford and the Regiment of Women
by Joseph Wiesenfarth
University of Wisconsin Press
August 2005, ISBN: 0299210901, 264 pages
In Ford Madox Ford’s autobiographical writings, he presents himself as a writer and a man of letters, but the women that he lived with during his life are not mentioned at all. This is curious - although it might be thought to express a certain kind of old-world chivalry - for there were many women in Ford’s life: he was a man who liked women perhaps a little too much. Ford Madox Ford and the Regiment of Women is a critical biographical study that examines Ford’s relationships with four women: Violet Hunt, Jean Rhys, Stella Bowen and Janice Biala. What is distinctive about all of these women is that they too were writers (and Stella Bowen was an artist too), and further they did choose to write about Ford in their work. Moreover, each woman’s depiction of Ford differs from the others’, and from Ford’s view of himself (or perhaps: the view that he attempted to present to the world), in interesting and complicated ways. Joseph Wiesenfarth’s book is an outstanding work of scholarship that teases out all of the fraught complexities and contradictions in this quintic interrelation; and it adds greatly to our understanding of Ford, these four remarkable women and modernism itself.
There are valuable discussions of Ford’s prose, poetry and approach to writing. For Ford, the novel was the premiere art form because it allowed a writer to render the texture of other people’s lives, to capture their consciousness. It was a virtual reality device whose purpose was to allow the reader to imaginatively enter other lives, and thereby to live more than one life. This was, for Ford, escapism of the highest possible sort, and if this view seems bang up to date, note one consequence of it: that the reader should be unaware of the writer and of the text as text. Ford had little truck with writers who intervene in their work – such as Fielding – and would have had, one can be sure, little use for postmodernism and its various tricks and treats.
Although Wiesenfarth’s admiration for Ford is apparent, he is even-handed and gives full weight to the writings of the women too. Violet Hunt might be best known to some as one of Henry James’ muckers (sorry: confidantes), and it seems that Ford enlisted in the Great War to escape from her. Whilst she admired Ford as an artist, she had doubts about him a man. In his discussion of her work and career, Wiesenfarth makes the case for at least three of her works as having been unjustly neglected: the memoir The Flurried Years and the two novels White Rose of Weary Leaf (1908) and Their Lives (1916). This latter novel seems especially worthy of greater recognition.
Stella Bowen was the great love of Ford’s life, and he of hers. She comes across here as an impressively mature person, full of compassion for Jean Rhys (whom she calls a “doomed soul”), even though Rhys had an affair with Ford when he was her husband. Here is part of Stella Bowen’s description of Ford (quoted on p.110); it helps one see what she saw in him:
When I got to know him better, I found that every known human quality could be found flourishing in Ford’s makeup, except a respect for logic. His attitude toward science was simple. He just did not believe a word of it! But he could show you two sides simultaneously of any human affair, and the double picture made the subject come alive, and stand out in a third dimensional way that was very exciting. What he did not know about the depths and weaknesses of human nature was not worth knowing. The hidden places of the heart were his especial domain, and when he chose he could put the screw upon your sense of pity or of fear with devastating sureness.
Rhys herself, although driven and damaged, was an extraordinary writer and had some of the qualities that are here ascribed to Ford. She was a victim, but a survivor too and her affair with Ford in 1924 was recounted in Quartet, a novel which is discussed here too. Janice Biala, the inspiration for the love poems in Buckshee, lived with Ford from 1930 until his death in 1939. Again, she was a remarkable person and Ford was blessed in knowing her.
Joseph Wiesenfarth is an erudite, amicable companion, with a nice ironic flourish to his rapier in places, and his book ably passes what Philip Young called the “So what?” test; it is consistently interesting and thought-provoking. There is much to ponder here for admirers and readers of Ford; and this should include everyone. Ford was one of the great modernist writers and his The Good Soldier, the favourite novel of Graham Greene and Julian Barnes (amongst others), is surely among the most perfectly written novels of the twentieth century.
Finally, one should be add that there are thirty colour plates in the book, with most plates being of paintings by Stella Bowen (who depicted Ford on canvas as well as in print), and these add greatly to it.
About the reviewer: Paul Kane lives and works in Manchester, England. He welcomes responses to his reviews and can be contacted at pkane853@yahoo.co.uk
|
|
|
|
|
|
