The Present and the Past

I have been wanting to read Ivy Compton-Burnett since reading Virginia Woolf's diaries, in which she wrote that she was kept awake at night by the fact that her own writing was "much inferior to the bitter truth and intense originality of Miss Compton-Burnett."

The Present and the Past has a plot that is almost entirely guided by dialog, forcing the reader to focus on characters and become as intensely involved in personal analysis as they do. Sometimes it feels like roaming through the brain of an obsessive-compulsive, becoming trapped in feedback loops of anxiety and second-guessing oneself. Ultimately, though, this is a book about narcissism, how the way we see ourselves differs greatly from the ways in which we are seen, and how our show more perceptions predictably change after someone has died. If you are more interested in dialog than description, and don't mind becoming immersed in the often agonizing ruminations of ordinary people, you will love this book. show less

This, her first novel after the death of her companion Margaret Jourdain. Compton-Burnett writes her staccato prose, laden with interstitial tone and meaning, mostly dialog frosted with lies--lies in their infinite variety. Her "novels" are really plays, pared down to electric flashes as if crossing gaps, shorting out.
Considered in the large, they are comedy of manners. But these really are "manners," the veneer of class and personal division and aggression. Very English manners, and post-Victorian. Their inevitable stage, the large English country house, looms over the declining gentility.
Look at C-B's children. They often break upon the tight, closed scene with their unexpected flashes of unavoidable truths. In The Present and the show more Past there's a schoolroom of them presided over by Miss Ridley. She corrects the parents, too, walking in a field, who say things like, "Now we must turn towards home." "What is the word supposed to mean?" Miss Ridley corrects the men, too: "Come, come, no more of that."
But here's a three-year old conducting a funeral service for a dead mole: "O dear people we are gathered together. Let us pray. Ashes and ashes. Dust and dust. This our brother. Poor little mole! Until he rise again." "Why, you will make a proper parson, sir."
Then an adult, Cassius, "Miss Bennet, what is your view of this? A child of Toby's age conducting a funeral, with a knowledge that had to be seen to be believed."
"Fancy his doing a thing like that. It is quite natural. It does not mean anything."
The child and brother William, "It is Mr Fabian again, sir, preaching and play-acting together. There is a lot in common."(39-40)
By the end of the novel, Cassius is dying, and also attempting suicide, but perhaps with too few pills, and little Toby is recruited to defend him before the assaults of his family and critics, including two wives, one of whom is called in the Latin, Mater--as is Cassius called Pater.
Oh, it is a drama verging on, surrounded with death, and with vital sparks of intellect and character--or the lack thereof. A very human book, given English peculiarity. I'm tempted to parody H Bloom: Ivy Compton-Burnett and the Invention of the Human (gentry). show less