Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939)

Una de las obras maestras de la literatura del siglo XX por primera vez traducida al castellano.

Justo antes de que caiga la era eduardiana, en los albores de la I Guerra Mundial, toma lugar esta historia de traición, romance y el horror de las trincheras. En el centro de la narración está la escandalosa separación de Christopher Tietjens, un clásico caballero inglés, conservador y convencional, e impecable súbdito de la corona inglesa, y su esposa Sylvia, una mujer bella, arrogante, contestataria y símbolo de los nuevos tiempos. Christopher ve cómo su matrimonio se desborona mientras Europa es consumida por la tragedia.… (more)

Mr Dowel relates a story of two well off couples. Going backwards and forwards over a nine year period when the couples were enjoying each others company. As a consequence ie a shifting timeline we develop or think we do, of events and characters.
Fords approach is that Dowel is trying to make sense of the story and the relationship between the two couples. The introduction of characters and events are only alluded to but not necessarily developed, they are incomplete. As new information is introduced we have to reajust our previous appraisals.
Fowles initial impression of Edward Ashburton is of an honorable upright man, one you could trust your wife with.
His wife Leonara, whom he has fallen out of love with seems to stand by him thru a series of his affairs. She is actually cold, unsampathic and manituplitive, a singultative, a catholic who takes over both his financial and love affairs.
Dowels wife Florence who seems weak of heart, falls for Edward actually wants to be installed in Edward's manor as his wife but commits suicide. Dowel finally wakes up to her being a flirt and a good actress.
Edward kills himself, Lenore marries another rich man more attuned to her needs and has a baby. Dowell buys the manor and lives with Edward's last victim Nancy who is so disappointed by Edward, she is insane.… (more)

Picked this up knowing nothing about the author or the book, without much optimism, as I expected a load of prudish Victorian/Edwardian sentimentality. Absolutely not what I got. Probably deserves fives stars but it's horrible, shocking and mawkish. The rot that came much much later, in the 1960s, is evident here some 45 years earlier. And it's written much better here. The Good Solider is the sign of a society that had already exhausted itself, even before the Great War. Perhaps the Great War was simply the excuse. Wonderfully crafted and like many such novels is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. You suspect that this is partly because there is more of the author in it than the author understood, certainly this was Graham Green's view, because it was his favourite book (Greene and Ford were both fairly hopeless as men, and I think they viewed literature, as written by men, as a kind of coda of personal failure - I did too, once). Personally, my favourite book is probably Heart of Darkness. It so happens that Ford and Conrad were close friends, and Heart of Darkness is referenced in this work. But whereas Heart of Darkness pits civilisation against savagery, and man against nature, in a largely external way, The Good Soldier deals with internalities, with sex and love and God in Hampshire and abroad. A hopeless and confused book but bloody brilliant as a kind of horror story of quiet, "decent" lives masking agonising spiritual confusion and shocking inhumanity. And naturally everybody's got loads of money, so what the hell are they on about, really. Somewhat less but still interesting because of its treatment of "Anglo" Catholicism as something distinct from its continental equivalent, and its implicit suggestion that it represents some sort of noble maladjustment, an intellectual conceit that was popular amongst British intellectuals of the time - Greene himself as a somewhat later example. A horror story with no supernatural elements.… (more)

Victorian literature might often hint at extramarital affairs and hijinx, but always under the guise of pursuing or seeking true love. Ford Madox Ford bravely struck a new chord in this 1915 novel with his statement that sometimes - if not often - it's just a fling, based on loneliness or the sexual desire. This stripping away of the curtains around the issue didn't land him in censorship waters like James Joyce a few years later, but his novel was branded as "unpleasant" and "dangerous". This for addressing an everyday occurrence in plainer language so that it might be explored on the page.

This novel is also an early example of literary impressionism, a style that we take for granted today. Ford takes a roundabout path to telling his story, providing us with an after-the-fact narrator John Dowell who tends to ramble and gets things out of order. Immediately we know who dies, so that's the hook to exploring why. John contradicts himself on occasion, or says something offhand that startles but then he doesn't address it immediately, and some of his adjectives take on a fresh meeting later. Rather than frustrating, however, it creates a layer of mystery and need-to-know that keeps the pages turning.

John is a significant example of an unreliable narrator, his judgements and feelings about what transpired shifting in several directions. Only the concluding pages provide confirmation where his true sympathy lies, when his actions speak louder than his words. Ford is suggesting through John that sometimes our passions are too much for the artificial constructs of society to contain - our religious moralities, our marriage contracts, our collective sense of decency. That someone who is destroyed when they run counter to these may be too well understood to be considered a villain, given the base desires most of us share; except that this characterization too must to be done, so the rest of us can go on with our orderliness and stability to win whatever happiness remains.… (more)