The Gods Arrive

74. The Gods Arriveby Edith Wharton
OPD: 1932
format: 400-page ebook
acquired: September 28 read: Sep 30 – Oct 31 time reading: 14:13, 2.2 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Classic fiction theme: Wharton
locations: then contemporary Spain, France, London, Illinois, Wisconsin and New York
about the author: 1862-1937. Born Edith Newbold Jones on West 23rd Street, New York City. Relocated permanently to France after 1911.

The title comes from a Ralph Waldo Emerson poem, Give All to Love. ( https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50464/give-all-to-love ) The poem is about constant love, staying true to a loved one, while allowing them freedom.

"Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope:"

It's not the sentiment we might expect from Edith show more Wharton. But there were always two sides to her. One was furiously independent, and interested in characters of this bent that went against the cultural grain. The other was fairly conservative and loyal this this culture she was raised in. Personally I'm left with some questions as to what her overall intent was here, with this theme. I don't have a good answer. This was to be Wharton's last completed novel. But not because she was slowing down. Her writing was still pouring out of her pen.

The novel is part 2, a sequel. Part One, [Hudson River Bracketed], follows suburban Illinois born and raised Vance Weston on his track from sterile Illinois to becoming a major New York author. It follows his lessons, inspirations, and personal life and catastrophes, some of his own causing through terrible judgment, some chance. But he was relatable, a sympathetic character. Here we are distant, seeing Vance through his lover, Halo. And we learn Vance is a pretty terrible person, selfish and thoughtless, if not actually ever intending to be bad. Halo was Vance's literary muse in Hudson River Bracketed. Here she is freed from her marriage, links up with the newly widowered Vance. They take off to Europe, except Halo isn't divorced yet. As Vance stumbled through his creative and personal adventures, which are linked, Halo gets neglected. She adjusts herself to tolerate him, following Emerson's poem, and, disturbingly, to serve him.

Halo was Wharton's best character in both books. We lose her to a bad marriage in book one. And, here, we, readers, lose her to this self-centered waveringly productive artist.

The long arc of this story brings us many different elements of this relationship. Wharton has us wondering what Halo should do. And wondering whether Vance is worth it, to her or even to the reading public. We spend time Spain, and different cultural sides of the French Riviera, and Paris and London and, well, some other interesting places and aspects.

I never had trouble reading this. I could read it at night, sleepy and exhausted. It just flows nicely, the paragraphs leading me, they go down easy and I found myself constantly wondering what was next. On the other hand, I didn't reflect on it that much. I wasn't in a rush to pick it up, and didn't exactly look forward to it, although I was never hesitant to pick up. I don't mean it was mental floss, or flippery. I just mean it read well but wasn't doing that much for me overall.

This is probably one for Wharton completists, after you have read Hudson River Bracketed.

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/365030#8665790 show less

_The Gods Arrive_ is a sequel to _Hudson River Bracketed_, and unfortunately, I liked it even less. When it begins, Halo Tarrant has left her husband in order to live with Vance Weston and serve his genius as she tried to serve her husband's lesser talents. Inevitably, this doesn't work out, as Vance can't settle to work anywhere and is ensnared by a previous love, while Halo tries vainly to keep on supporting him.

There's almost none of the excellent depiction of the writing life which saved _Hudson River Bracketed_ for me, and that's a particularly big problem here. In order to believe that self-aware, intelligent Halo is really willing to subject herself to Vance and his career, I would have had to believe that he really is a writing show more genius. There were enough hints of this in the first book to keep me going, but not here. I think it's quite possible that this is what Wharton was actually after, showing this capable, smart woman in thrall to mediocrity instead of genius, but it just didn't work for me. show less

I did not realize that this book was a sequel to Hudson River Bracketed. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I had read that novel first, so I recommend reading them in order.

This is the story of a young self-absorbed writer, Vance Weston, and his older lover, Halo. Her husband has left her, and she in turn leaves the country with Vance -- before the divorce is finalized. The scandal created by this rash behavior creates much of the novel's tension as the lovers move among various social circles.

The novel explores two main subjects: first, how writers do what they do. One wonders how much of Wharton's own experiences as a writer become fodder for Vance's creative process -- with the twist that he is a man, and is therefore freer to show more be a writer, than Wharton herself was in her time. He swings between blithe visits from the Muse and tortured writer's blocks, never able to simply set himself to work because he must, as Halo advises him.

The second topic is that of the male/female dynamic. Halo does all for Vance, while Vance does all for himself. The constant shifts of power and trust between Vance and Halo, Halo and her husband, and Vance and his former flame, keep reminding us of the inequality between men and women. The solution achieved at the end will, I think (hope?) be unsatisfactory to most modern feminist readers. show less