The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion

Although formulaic in concept for early 20th century literature, this book's style separates itself from its peers.

During pre World War I, we meet the British Edward and Leonora Ashburnham and American Florence and John Dowell. As though it was a Fitzgerald novel -- the American couple resides in luxury, in Europe, the woman is talkative but fragile, and there is something brewing among the comrades -- it is definately somethin different. Although the same plot could be used and written by Waugh, Forster or maybe Woolf, it definitely is not their novel.

Unlike Waugh, unlike Fitzgerald or unlike all of the others, this book is light, very light, on dialogue. Instead, it is mostly a narrative by Mr. Dowell about the descent of his wife, of his best friend Edward and his love of life, Nancy Rufford.

Because it is a recantation of events, there are passages which repeat what was just previously read, but somehow the style (disjointed in a manner which narrative story telling would have to be) works. Oh, and how it works majestically as it passes in and out of time and through and around events so that the picture is delivered to you like a focus of a camera lens. This is not a temporal chronological recitation of what happened. The author circles us in and out of what he calls "the Saddest Story. . . because there was no current to draw things along to a swift and inevitable end." And in this sad story, "There is not even a villain in the story . . ." Reeling in and out of the sadness, it is an abstract-like collage, much like what his contemporary artists would depict with paint. This story surreally depicts Ashburnham's demise. And, the demise of those about him.

True to its form, it starts sad and ends sadder. Split into four parts, three parts end with tragic deaths (two in suicide and one perceived to be a suicide) and one ends with the acknowledgment of a failed marriage. Do not expect even one laugh from this novel.

I have not read anything by a living author which mirrors the style of this book. For that reason alone, I would recommend this novel. And, it is a classic - through and through.

I would also recommend getting a copy of Knopf's Everyman's Library edition with the edifying and insightful introduction by Alan Judd and Max Saunders. Much of Ford's life resembles one of the characters. If you get the Knopf edition, you will know why, and a lot more.

Although this is a classic, I found it to be a hard read. I did not like any of the characters. I found the style intriguing, though convoluted. The narrator admits to telling the story in "a very rambling way." He explains, "One remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places . . . ." It is a tale of irony, in which nobody gets what they want: "The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me." It is beyond me, too. Nevertheless, I am glad that I read it.

This is, of course, a modern classic, which means that we're far from the certainities of the classical XIXth. Century novel, as set by , e.g., Balzac or Zola, where an all-seeing narrator tells everything there is to know about both plot & characters;instead we have a completely beffuddled narrator trying to make head or tail of the events he has lived, therefore losing his sense of "order" - of a well-ordered, black on white bourgeois universe - in the process. Of course, some pioneers had already taken this path before, such as the Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis, whose "Dom Casmurro" has certain similarities ( as also a prevading feeling of doubt and confusion) in plot with "The Good Soldier". No wonder, however, that this novel was published in 1915, when all old bourgeois certainities were being actively put to rest.