| Title | : | Nothing |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1564782603 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781564782601 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 203 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1950 |
Nothing Reviews
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So, I thought I’d give you NOTHING but the basic plot this time.
Well, a middle-aged widow invites her lover and her old friends, including her ex-lover, to her son’s 21st birthday. The son uses the opportunity and announces his wish to marry his mother’s ex-lover’s daughter. Plans are made, but they all come to NOTHING, and in the end, the mother marries her ex-lover while their children break up. That’s it. NOTHING else. Easy and straightforward. Oh, but one of the characters disagrees.
“NOTHING’s easy”, she said. “Oh, NOTHING’s ever easy”, she repeated.”
And of course she is right. There is so much subtext in the plot, I hardly know where to start. Usually, the characters indicate a major secret, a disturbing feeling or a serious problem by claiming there is NOTHING to worry about. One man actually dies of an injury that was “absolutely NOTHING at all”, and the worst verbal fights break out over NOTHING.
And that is a universal truth if there ever was one. As a mother, I know there is trouble upstairs when I hear a sudden, loud noise, and the unanimous triple answer to my question what happened:
“NOTHING, mum!”
Or:
“What did you do in school today?”
“NOTHING!” (That is the parental cue to investigate!)
“What happened at the party?”
“NOTHING!”
NOTHING is so full of meaning, it is almost equivalent to an emergency call. When I am deeply engaged in private thoughts, and disinclined to share them, my family instinctively senses it as well.
“What’s on your mind, Lisa?”
“Oh, NOTHING at all”, I usually reply.
Life is defined just as much by what we don’t do as by what we do, and one of the main characters in the novel cheerfully admits that his solution to most problems is doing NOTHING:
“Then what did you do?” Liz demanded.
“Why NOTHING of course”, Mr Pomfret cried. “That is the whole beauty of us, we never can seem to do anything.”
When I thought Henry Green had developed the whole concept of the negative aspects of “nothingness” in life, with NOTHING left to explore, he goes ahead and creates an unusual happy end, with the absolutely adoring closing lines of the happy lover who falls asleep in blissful harmony, wanting NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING at all. When Shakespeare wrote his play “Much Ado About Nothing”, he knew full well that NOTHING contains the world, and that there is really, truly NOTHING we could possibly fuss more about. There’s NOTHING like it in life.
So I was quite surprised to find out that NOTHING is the most optimistic Green novel I have read so far. But then again, NOTHING should really surprise me in Green’s world. Still Doting before Concluding. -
Less Than Earnest
‘It’s a damnable thing when a chap can only see his mistress on Sunday afternoons, don’t you think my dear? Pressures of work don’t you know? And even then she might decide to visit her mother. Then the chap would have to visit Jane instead. Damned inconvenient isn’t it my dear? Oh look, there’s Jane now. Is that Richard she’s with? I didn’t know Richard’s wife was out of town. She looks well doesn’t she? I do love you so terribly dearest. It’s not too late for you to find someone and have children you know. Oh, waiter! Shall we pay the bill and go to bed my dear?’
A paraphrase but you get the idea: upper middle class English sexual mores are somewhat disconcerting in Nothing. And this is years before the Beatles first LP. Brighton is merely lewd with adultery rather than gay. Servants with pre-war discretion are disappearing but obsequious restaurant staff are still available even if champagne is in short supply.
The children of the professional and ministerial classes are rebelling against their parents, of course. But it is the parental lack of morality and hypocrisy that they find objectionable. Perhaps the children will start a conservative backlash that in turn might provoke free love hippiedom in the subsequent generation. In Nothing nothing seems impossible. The social structure and its customs are Edwardian, or possibly even Regency, but things are fluid in post-war down-at-heel England. All the more reason to whistle in the dark.
Green always has a unique literary ‘thing’ in each novel. In Nothing it seems to be the clipped, disjointed cadence of well-to-do conversation. Talking with each other, however intimately, allows - no, demands - continuous observation of the immediate social environment and the interjection of interesting titbits of gossip, history, or valuations as a sort of seasoning to personal confidences and confessions. Green can bring a whole dining room into a little chat between a man and his mistress without ever describing the place or its inhabitants. The effect is vibratory rather than visual as various frequencies blend to make the harmony of the scene.
The young people talk like their parents but in order to disapprove of them: “‘That’s where the whole difference lies,’ he said ‘between our generations. Their whole lot is absolutely unbridled.’” It’s like the British 90’s comedy Absolutely Fabulous - the children actually parent the adults, who are more or less feckless. “... That generation’s absolutely crazy,” says the son of one philandering woman, in a tone that is used by the school girl, Saffron, in Ab Fab to identical effect. The parents pay absolutely no attention to the conversation of their children except to worry about its incomprehensibility.
Both parents and children seem to be acting according to a script by Freud. Sexual objectives permeate their relationships. Oedipal mothers, Electra-like daughters, married siblings, and several Olympian love triangles form Green’s plot. A particularly English brand of sexual currency is in circulation. There is desire - the men’s adolescently orgasmic, the women’s blatantly economic - but no passion. Calculation not hormones drives the action. The men have more of the latter; the women excel at the former. The children are counters, understandably confused and forced into a sort of prudishness by the adult machinations, “... because they’re like rabbits about sex.”
The naive children put their parents sexual neuroses down to economic rather than psychic trauma: “... one has to be sorry for parents. They had such a lot of money once and we’ve never seen what that was.” Poor things. Green also makes economics the conscious cause of the children’s concerns as well. The only jobs are those with the socialist State. It’s not like the good old days, whenever they were, when private enterprise provided variety and opportunity for the young and aspiring. Tory politics is never far from Green’s narratives.
There is a set-pieceness to Nothing with its coincidences and stage-asides that has charm but for me little substance other than as documentation of a culture in transition. All in all, it’s easier to visualize Green’s characters in Victorian rather than Second Elizabethan dress, high starched collars and crinolines. The situation and structure is that of an Oscar Wilde play, updated to 1948 levels of liberality: The Importance of Being Less Than Earnest, perhaps. -
A thousand little nothings, which make up a few big somethings; which in the end make up a life.
It is interesting to have an ear to the door of those who gossip, and chatter, and make rivers of small talk: I've listened in, myself, a thousand times: in restaurants, while waiting to be served, and you're an elbow's angle from the next table; queuing at the bank, the supermarket, the theatre; sitting at a reception area in doctors' offices and hospital waiting rooms. It's amazing to me what escapes into the world, unwittingly or not.
Nothing is really said, at least nothing of any importance, and still you walk away with the measure of someone's life: you know who is getting divorced and who is reconciling; who had foot surgery and who had heart surgery; who won the charity lottery and who hates Brussels sprouts: it's all there for the listening. And though you'll likely never see these people again, still they've left their mark on your life, and it informs how you look at things, even if it's to agree, or disagree, mentally, on the value of Brussels sprouts.
I always thought that this stream of talk would make a fascinating novel, in and of itself. It would be engrossing to gather all the unrelated nothings to see what the day would reveal.
In similar fashion, Henry Green did just that: recorded the (fictional) lives of an era, and with an ear to the door let it all spill out. While the focus is narrower, (we don't have just random thoughts from strangers, but thoughts from an interconnected small circle of friends and family members) in the end, it amounts to much the same thing: each pursues his/her own agenda, distinct from the "noise" that is all around them. Through these nothing conversations, we begin to build the scope of their lives into a crystallized moment in time.
Henry Green has a dexterous hand with dialogue: everything is so immediately imaginable and compelling. I could have continued listening in quite happily, as he deciphers and untangles the plot for us. There aren't any big surprises, but the journey is fun, and has more than a handful of laugh out loud moments with humour so subtle and yet so sparkling.
3.5 🌟 certainly, and a pinch to grow an inch, as the saying once went.
*While I read another edition, I was having trouble recording a review on it: like an endless game of wack-a-mole, the little critter would scutter away every time I tried to save my review. So here I am. I am satisfied that I read nothing, and that nothing has been reviewed.* -
Decades before Rachel Cusk was born, Henry Green wrote his novels with an annihilated perspective. Yes, Henry Green. Let’s take Nothing, Henry Green’s wonderful eighth and penultimate novel as an example.
Viewed in terms of plot, Nothing is the most conventional of the eight Green novels that I’ve read: it begins sensibly with a logical temporal start point and wraps up satisfyingly with a logical end. I’ve found this to be unusual among Green’s novels, which are often launched midway in events, midway in conversations, and midway in relationships, and often stop with little resolved and little clarity. But Nothing starts with a helpful overview of the main characters and ends with the three major romantic relationships clarified. Between Nothing’s start and end, the reader is treated to Green’s wonderful dialogue, humor, and occasionally idiosyncratic grammar.
So what’s an annihilated perspective have to do with Henry Green’s novels in general and Nothing in particular? Nothing is like a prism: readers will discover different and varied facets in Nothing. It’s up to each reader to decide which facet or facets reflect the essence of Nothing, and Green provides the reader with minimal direction if any direction as to which facets he championed. Hold Nothing up to the light from one perspective, and it’s a po-mo rom-com (Meike, if you’re reading this, that’s for you). Hold it up to the light differently, and it’s about the degradation of post-World War II British middle class lifestyle and finances. Yes, hold it up to the yet again, and it’s about the persistence of youthful romantic love in middle age. Oh, you’re holding it up the light one more time?: it’s about the self-absorption and even unintended cruelty of parents with their children. You the reader choose which perspective to adopt, because Henry Green keeps his cards close to his chest and lets readers choose their own cards.
What about annihilated perspective and Green’s characters in Nothing? As in Party Going, Green’s third novel, the characters in Nothing may seem trivial, or at least more trivial than Green’s working class characters in Living, Caught, and Loving. But take as an example John Pomfret, the forty-five year old widower who arguably is Nothing’s main character. Loving father to Mary?; yes, the reader could see that in the prism. Snob, obsessed with the tailoring of his prospective son-in-law’s suits and the width of his hat brim? Devoted and romantic suitor of Jane Weatherby? Or conniving schemer, willing to sacrifice his daughter’s happiness to his own? Again, the reader chooses which perspective to adopt, because Henry Green keeps his cards close to his chest and lets readers choose their own cards.
Setting aside annihilated perspective, new readers of Henry Green may find Nothing more approachable than his other novels. As mentioned above, Nothing has an easily discernible plot structure, much more discernible than, say, Caught, Loving, and Party Going. Nothing consists mostly of dialog. But unlike Living, Nothing contains enough non-dialog pointers to keep the reader oriented as to what’s occurring. Nothing contains little of the wonderfully idiosyncratic grammar and accents that made Living and Caught so unique and special and occasionally so confusing. -
Not always, but sometimes, it's good to start a review or article by saying something vaguely sacrilegious. How about this? On diving into Nothing by Henry Green, I immediately was reminded of the TV series Seinfeld, a show explicitly about nothing, not nothing in the Sartrean sense, but nothing in the sense of "well, this is all very funny...how excited we become about...nothing."
The other analogue that occurred to me, because Green's Nothing is largely exquisitely wrought dialogue, is the William Gaddis novel, JR, also mostly dialogue.
I am discussing here, then, the core of comedy: a touching bit of virtuosity whose outcome obviously is of little importance. Who cares if Jane Weatherby and John Pomfret succeed in derailing their children's wedding? Who cares if instead Jane and John reignite a long dormant romance and become the pair that march down the aisle...or to the registrar's window?
Well, we care to the extent that the project involves more and more plates spinning on more and more broomsticks, defying our belief that such an enterprise can be brought to a sound, witty conclusion. There, in a nutshell, is the aesthetic challenge...just getting through what you've started against all odds...extrapolating the fizzy, gossipy, inconsequential narrative premise into one devilishly penetrating scene after another such that ultimately a wholeness is achieved and it is a pleasant sort of sighing nothing.
Beyond that, Green's quick scenes of statement and riposte are rich with characterization, psychological insight, plotting, counter-plotting, and dry merriment. There's a character throughout, we'll just use his first name, Richard, who is never really described (not physically, not professionally, not in his home or office or amongst his relatives or neighbors), and yet is astoundingly effective at negating any and all histrionics thrown at him. He may be in his 40s, a reasonable guess, but he portrays himself somewhere around 110, out of play, not involved, not impressed, not inclined. Richard seems to have been born in a three-piece tweed suit, shipped through Eton (we don't know that) and Oxford (we don't know that) and ended up just where he needs to be to serve as a foil to the mad little passions of young and old. He is complete in the sense that William Gass has suggested all fictional characters are complete: if all the author tells us is that X has a red, bulbous nose, then that's what we get: a figment of fancy we, the readers, are expected to sketch out as we will. We feel we would know that red, bulbous nose anywhere...and the head and body attached to said nose.
Well, I liked Seinfeld and JR, and Nothing is so immensely unpretentious and silly that it's difficult not to like it, too. I give it four stars because the writing is so alive, not because the story is so compelling. Clearly, it's not. -
I'm gonna call bullshit on Henry Green. Well, maybe not on Henry himself, but on John Updike and the others of his ilk responsible for that buzz around Henry and his 9 short novels that led me to believe I had finally stumbled across the Rosetta Stones of postmodern fiction. A writer's writer's writer. (Someone actually said that; I bought it.) Lyrical, dazzling gems. Stylistically innovative, like no other. Henry Green was a rich British kid who wrote his first book, Blindness, at 21, and followed up with several more in fairly rapid succession before ceasing to write altogether. Intrigued, expecting revelation, missing pieces falling into place, a deeper understanding of this whole writing / expression of being alive thing, I ordered two great looking Penguin omnibuses online when I struck out at the local used bookstores. When the books arrived-- they looked so good, and felt good, and smelled amazing-- I started in with a number called Nothing. Hmm. Privileged white folks deliberating an impending marriage by talking about nothing. A few twists but generally awkward and clunky. Maybe it was me? I persevered. There was a serious lack of commas, which could be mistaken for style, sure, and tons of dialog tags, most of them different and painful, as dialog tags are. ('He ejaculated' wasn't one of them but they came pretty close.) I realized I couldn't tell the difference between one character and the other and didn't care. The book eventually began to bug me almost as much as Fitzgerald's. I concluded that Henry Green wasn't such a good writer, and that by 40 he realized it and gave up. Just gotta get that online buzz killed now, and so I'm doing my part.
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I mainly bought this because it's a Hogarth Press edition, and I thought it would be cool to own one of them. And also I've vaguely wanted to read Green's Back ever since I studied an extract of it back in high school, and this is the closest I've been able to get without expending any particular effort.
But this was a lot of fun. Interesting narrative style, funny, interesting characters, interesting plot, great ending. -
Of the Henry Green novels I've read, Nothing is my least favorite. I think the word I want is mannered. The novel is essentially a situation I think mannered and predictable. It's a novel made up almost entirely of dialogue I think mannered and stilted. I do appreciate that these characters aren't honest with each other, or even with themselves. They talk at each other knowing every sly deflection and innuendo is understood for what it is. I grew weary of the thin, half-hearted veils we're supposed to see through.
The situation is that years ago John Pomfret and Jane Weatherby had an extended and ardent affair. Now, after years and after World War II and after their respective divorces, the children of their marriages, Philip and Mary, have fallen in love and want to marry. The problem is the possibility that they may be half siblings. Presumably only Jane knows for sure. All the conversation and set pieces of the novel work at revealing and resolving situation and problem. It's easy to see where it's going.
And maybe that's at the heart of my lack of enthusiasm for Nothing, that I've been saturated in the idea of incest. This summer I've seen stage productions of Tracy Letts's August: Osage County and Sam Shepard's Fool for Love. Both have as central elements romances among characters who're revealed to be brother and sister. At odds with these 2 savage American plays which break our heart is Green's trippingly light novel of Downton Abbey-speak between people who're, comparatively, rather shallow and less morally responsible.
The word shallow isn't mine. It's used by Francine Prose in her "Introduction" to the novel. She later qualifies it, but for me the word wouldn't go away. Prose also suggests that this penultimate novel of Green's made of dialogue (followed by Doting which, I understand, is equally talky) is his working his way to the point where the author disappears into the conversation of his characters. I suggest they have lots less to say than he did. -
reread 8/2/12
utterly and unabashedly charming and delightful. years after having an affair that almost ruined their respective marriages, jane weatherby and john pomfret are reunited when their children decide to get married despite questions regarding their possible kinship and the fact that they have almost no money to their name. afraid that mary pomfret and philip weatherby are destined for the working-class, jane and john attempt to stall the development of the wedding plans by having endlessly witty conversations about, well, nothing. this gives jane -- a shrewd, resourceful widow -- the opportunity to embark on a scheme to lure john away from his current love interest. as the plot advances through discussions filled with misdirections and omissions, green demonstrates that there is nothing like the spoken word to conceal one's true intentions, yet at the same time reveal everything. -
"Don't you find your own children... so remote?" -- Something is slightly askew in this oedipal drama about the nihilism of getting what just you want.
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A comedy of manners set in austere post-war London among a wealthy set of friends facing the challenges of aging, living well on an ever tighter budget, and trying to accommodate themselves to the different lifestyle of the new generation.
Long ago, John and Jane had an affair which nearly ended their respective marriages. Now widow and widower, they are brought back together when their son and daughter decide to marry.
The novel is 90 percent dialogue, precisely capturing class and period with comic undertones. This is interspersed with intensely poetic descriptions of interior settings—highly modernist in style. A unique combination—somewhat affected, but also very affectionate towards the blinkered, selfish perspectives of the main characters.
I enjoyed Green’s “Loving” more, for its even more likable and perhaps more complicated characters (those in “Nothing” seem like caricatures at times). But I do prefer “Nothing” to the grammatical experimentation of “Living”. -
Henry Green is endlessly praised by the likes of John Updike as a somewhat overlooked master. Though he is noted for a particularly elegant and distinguished prose style, this book is almost entirely dialog with only a few rapturous descriptive passages. His view of people (at least people in mid-20th century England) is a bit cynical; the characters in this book go from a graceless youth where the principal sentiment seems to be embarrassment about their parents who in turn epitomize a pompous and self-involved middle age (with lots of sex, which also embarrasses the late adolescent children). It is quite funny at times however.
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Green is a thrilling prose writer. I read him for his sentences, and for his wild musical dialogue. Nothing is made up almost entirely of conversation. Green’s project here was to absent himself as much as possible, and let his characters take over – there’s almost no narrative to orient the reader. Everything is subtext, and you just pick things up as you go from what the characters say to one another. Green’s novels are unusual in that the writing is uncommonly fresh and light and things move along at a fast clip, and yet it remains challenging because of its form and style. You have to pay attention, and pick up on the tidbits that are dropped all the time. It’s lush, colorful, vibrant, delightfully eccentric. The rare moments where Green provides description rival the very best of Woolf’s gorgeous prose. And his dialogue has no peer, in my experience.
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my favourite Green novel yet. if a novel is essentially its prose, and prose is essentially its diction, then Henry Green might be one of the most underrated English novelists. wonderful inverse marriage comedy
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3/5 for the plot, which turns out to be annoying, not the writing, which as usual is technical, brilliant and technically brilliant, stunning - how? how did he even think of it? But the plot is the oldest in the world (a complete bitch manipulates everyone around her - bitch is actually the only word, and only a woman can be a bitch because only a woman has the intelligence to manipulate, by conversation and social signals, everyone around her - some women can, but no men - i say this as a woman with autism who's been shat on multiple times over by such women: men don't have the social intelligence level, say 30% of women do, and some of those are bitches (to be a bitch, you need to be successful - there are no socially stupid bitches as there are no weakling champion wrestlers)
NB anyone who reads someone like HG and goes 'nobody learns anything, there's no crying and no learning, everyone's boring, they just talk, nobody achieves anything' there are books about the outside and books about the inside and there is HG, who shows you the inside by showing you nothing but the outside, but with no 'reveals' hardly at all, incredible. It's a book about the inside: there is nothing wrong with wanting romance, action or 'learning', but this is not a book about the outside: this is a novel, pur et dur, not a picaresque (snark about the change La Princesse de Cleves and Jane Austen wrought upon fiction under one name which transformed it into fiction under another name).
PS i started with Doting, which i suggest for anyone thinking of tackling HG, as stuff happens, it's written in his best style - up there with Living and Loving - and you'll have those two still awaiting you, especially Living, his hardest to read and his masterpiece. Doting is easier, both to enjoy and to read, whereas Nothing is hard to read (which is good in HG terms - it's his incredible pure hard surface of dialogue that's the vicious pleasure) but crap in plot/enjoyment terms - more for the HG fan than the newbie. I found rereading paid great dividends, i have memory problems and it does get boring so i had to reread ten or twenty pages several times, and enjoyed it more, got more out of it, than the first time -
"Have you heard about Penelope?" he enquired when he came back. He laughed in rather a wild manner."
"No."
"she can't let go of her arm now."
Really quite nice with a fair amount of oddness tucked in--economic angst (quite reminiscent of present-day America), fears of incest, gradual loss of body parts, unfashionable hats--not the usual stuff of Green, with possible exception of the economic angst.
This has some of Green's best writing, and quite witty, in a story that almost seems like there is nothing there.
"It's very dangerous to lose a limb when you're married," he announced. "Two limbs are almost always fatal. So watch out." -
A light story about romantic relationships in mid-20th century London. The main characters are from families that are quickly losing their wealth, but things haven't yet gotten so bad that they've really had to change their ways. When the children of two parents who had an affair long ago announce their intention to marry, the characters are set on course of forward motion as they deal with the impending marriage. Great dialogue, although it took me a little while to get into the British cadence.
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A book written (almost) entirely in dialogue: sounds like just the kind of thing I'd like. Also: don't mind a bit of nattering among the upper classes. But these people; dear god; so narrow and bleak. It was just too harsh for me.
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Henry Green is the master.
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While the prose is interesting the title really captures it. I didn't couldn't finish it because there was nothing there.
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Read this back in grad school, even wrote a paper on it, though I can't recall the story (or my literary criticism--ha!). Will read again and then review.
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Edward St. Auben's more decorous forefather. Too decorous. All that insight into character, adds up to...nothing? A pleasant read for fans of Pym, Brookner et al. Dostoevsky it ain't.
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Not as aesthetic as the other Henry Greens I've had the good fortune to read.
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A comedy of manners that went on a little long for its storyline. The character's voices do not seem at all distinct from one another although their banter and self-inflicted dramas are still entertaining. This could have benefited from being chopped down to a short story. Even though its only 200 hundred pages long, it was becoming a little tedious by the end.
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I'm sorry to say I abandoned this book. I found the prose haphazard (forgive me) and the lede a bit too buried to hold my attention. At some point I'll look at some earlier Henry Green in hopes that this book is an anomaly.
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"'I see,' she said in an unseeing voice"
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讀後心得：為人父母別太機車
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after using up all my renews on this library book, while only making it halfway through (and people this is not a long book), i decided to call it quits. if i were smarter i might have liked this more, but i'm not, so i didn't.
