The post at my blogI’m not as enthusiastic about The Pilgrim Hawk as the reviewers I linked to in my post. It’s a well-told story working on several layers, especially when noting the focus of the subtitle (“A Love Story”) is secondary to the more subtle focus on the storyteller. The oh-so-obvious symbolism of the hawk pretty much works, although there are clumsy, heavy-handed uses at times. One of those references plays off the analogy between a captive hawk and a husband. While their natural state is freedom, they can be trained with patience, gentleness, and care. Both accept their captivity because their needs and appetites are provided for easier than if they were free. Both will bate, that is to attempt to fly away from captivity, but the straps that hold them in place will keep them in place. The lengthy discourses on falconry proved interesting despite the heavy-handed analogy, and additional interpretations emerge as the story progresses.The more interesting part of the story comes from the narrator’s reflection of an earlier version of himself. While the story takes place one afternoon in 1928 or 1929 (the narrator can’t remember which), the narration occurs in the early 1940s. By the end of telling the story the narrator realizes he has abstracted all meaning from that afternoon, missing the reality behind the actions. An alternative subtitle could have been “A Portrait of the Artist as a Bitter Young Man (and a Jaded Old One)” as the older narrator analyzes the younger version of himself. As the article in Open Letters Monthly succinctly puts it, “Tower [the narrator] uses the tools of novel writing and undercuts them in the same breath.” His ruminations on love, and what we often mistake for love, could also be applied to life.There’s some fun wordplay at times, such as this example from the second paragraph of the novel, which helps lead into the species Falco peregrinus, pilgrim hawk: “In the twenties it was not unusual to meet foreigners in some country as foreign to them as to you, your peregrination just crossing theirs; and you did your best to know them in an afternoon or so; and perhaps you called that little lightning knowledge, friendship.” And the reader has to wonder how much of the self-reflection of the narrator overlaps with that of the author:I wondered about this. Although I had been a poor boy, on a Wisconsin farm and in a slum in Chicago and in Germany in 1922, I could not recollect any exact sensation of hunger, that is to say, hunger of the stomach. And I thought—as the relatively well-fed do think—of the other human hungers, mental and sentimental and so on. For example, my own undertaking in early manhood to be a literary artist. No one warned me that I really did not have talent enough. Therefore my hope of becoming a very good artist turned bitter, hot and nerve-racking; and it would get worse as I grew older. The unsuccessful artist also ends in an apathy, too proud and vexed to fly again, waiting upon withheld inspiration, bored to death. (pages 21-22)I wasn't captivated by it like others are but the novella is extremely well done. Your mileage may vary.
The Cullens, a boorish, wealthy Irish couple, pay a visit to their friend Alexandra Henry, an American heiress living in France. Rather than bringing a bottle of grocery store wine or a modest floral arrangement, Mrs. Cullen brings her 'pet' hawk Lucy—the hooded, undomesticated, pigeon-eating symbol of the book. Fortunately enough, Alexandra has another guest staying with her named Alwyn Tower (that's a man, not an office complex) to do the play-by-play on all the character psychology, so if the blinking, glow-in-the-dark symbolism of the book escapes your notice, he's the giant, pointing finger that says, 'Hey. Will you look at that?' Even though Tower is mostly cold and supercilious, I'll admit that he can turn a nice phrase here and there—which makes many of his trite insights more digestible than they really have any right to be.The entirety of this very brief novel takes place during this visit and consists (in large part) of Mrs. Cullen's Wild Kingdom-like reportage on the habits of the hawk and the ins and outs of falconry, which—after a brief flirtation with political radicalism—is her latest hobby. Of course, many of these avian behaviors she describes are synonymous in some blindingly metaphorical sense to the workings of her troubled marriage, as well as to the tumultuous relationship between Jean and Eva, two servants in the house. (At one point, the hawk shits on the parquet floor. Ain't that just the way love is?) But it doesn't help that the Cullens are unlikable, and any interest we normally might take in their conjugal health is surpassed by an urgent desire to get away from them.It's hard not to respond to The Pilgrim Hawk with a patronizing attitude and to send it off with a pat on its quaint little head. On the one hand it seems puffed-up and dated—both in style and sensibility—but on the other hand I wasn't bored at all by it. Some of the passages, in fact, had me thinking, 'Wow. This must be a lot better than I think it is.' But it's all in the service of something so banal that it's just not easy to get excited about.
What do You think about The Pilgrim Hawk (2001)?
Michael Cunningham wrote such a glowing introduction that I assumed I would love this book, as I have loved most books published by NYRB. More novella than novel, I thought I would finish The Pilgrim Hawk in no time, but I found myself dragging throught it. The writing is pared down to its essence which made Wescott's most exquisite and pointed lines stand out as in, "Life is more perch," when comparing humans to the falcon which spends more time staring down at the world searching for food than it does soaring and making the dive. But I didn't particularly feel connected to the characters. Some seemed more like shadows than actual people and thought that the same story could have been told with two or three characters rather than the eight in the book. Because of that, I didn't feel the emotion I could have during the drama of the book's end. A worthwhile read, though, as is any author with a particularly distinguishing style.
—Judith Hannan
Their enthusiasm about themselves and all that exactly appertained to them, always overflowing, coolly playing and bubbling over in mild agitation like a fountain, held your attention and mirrored itself in your mind; little by little you began to bubble with it.Maybe because this comes close to my favorite kind of writing, maybe because it is austere, restrained, beautiful even-- I have to hold it to a standard where it fails. What author Wescott is after here is a distillation of the atmosphere of human interaction, a series of moments slashed out of the otherwise banal experience we have of life, a drama of the mundane... Across which, a jolting crash, a narrative spike, occurs in the stillness.All in all, it's doesn't seem too difficult to calibrate the jolt. It is the counterpoint, the fabric of thwarted expectation and misdirected emotion, that it interrupts-- that is so deceptively hard to render. The word 'brittle' comes to mind in describing how Wescott's characters are constructed; the unresolved tension in every figure on the stage is very well done. Olivia Manning's 'School For Love' and Elizabeth Bowen's 'The House In Paris' trade in many of the same sub-narrative contexts. Wescott comes within inches of the bullseye with his Jamesian domestic tonalities, sets his 'jolt' in flight at just the right angle, and yet, misses the target. Following every passage that contains exterior drama, we are drearily weighted down with a virtual logbook-entry of explanation, interior monologue, play-by-play commentary. Sometimes with competing theories thrown in for -- I don't know, for uncertainty's sake ? More often than not, the action is summed too soon, too often a moral is provided for the bit of story that has only just passed in front of the lens. As much as this one is a miss, I'll check into some others of the author's works just to have a look around. Kind of hard to be so close and so far off. Especially when we have these moments ..."Aristocracy had nothing to do with it. It was my own fault: the vodka and cream had done it. Alcohol is the great leveler. Given a stiff drink, the true descendant of princes boasts of it as if it were not true, the multimillionaire feels poor, and Tristan talks to you about Isolde like a pimp, I said to myself. My malice was beginning to keep pace with my companion’s folly."
—J.
As a Minnesotan, I was startled to learn that Glenway Wescott is from my neighboring state of Wisconsin; so, too, is his narrator, who seems to have stayed in Europe since serving in World War I. Startled, because "The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story" (1940) is very European in structure and sentiment. It's a novella about one afternoon in a garden and home in France. The narrator is a keen observer and hyper-self-aware, self-critical thinker, spending the day with his female friend Alex. They have guests: a rich Irish couple driving through Europe in their Daimler out of economy because even a luxury road trip is cheaper than maintaining their estate.The pilgrim hawk, named Lucy, is the focus of the narrator's fascination, and he offers enchanting descriptions of the bird's movements as she perches the Irish woman's gloved hand, pulsing with energy. The action and drama unfolds surprisingly, and bitterly, with the hawk always in the center. This is a fine and subtle story that I look forward to returning to in coming years.
—Iris
