So in not one but two books I’ve read recently, the novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett have been cited as works that contain the most biting satire, the most ruthless quips, and the most rapid back-and-forth of any in literature. I never thought I would like her work as her name alone suggests her genre is one I like to call “mannered.” I know there’s an actual name for it –– Victorian-ish times, lots of activities take place in parlors, poor families are ashamed because they only have one maid, and jobs are frequently referred to as “posts.” I’ve never been an enormous fan of Edith Wharton & co., so I assumed this wouldn’t be to my liking. But then ICB was mentioned in The Art of Cruelty, which I devoured in less than three hours, and also by my darling John Waters, who speaks of her with a reverence much like mine for him.
“She was English, looked exactly like the illustration on the Old Maid card, never had sex even once, and wrote twenty dark, hilarious, evil little novels between the years 1911 and 1969. Pick any one of them. They’re all pretty much the same. Little actual action, almost no description, and endless pages of hermetically sealed, stylized, sharp, cruel, venomous Edwardian dialogue. ‘Once you pick up a Compton-Burnett,’ Ivy commented about her own books, ‘it’s hard not to put them down.'”
The deal was totally sealed (hermetically?) when I was perusing old posts in this blog (yes, to survey my kingdom) what do I discover/re-discover but LO AND BEHOLD! The novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett are an example of “camp” according to Susan Sontag! Woah. Woah. I had to reach out to Amazon STAT. So now I have begun Parents and Children, and while there are definitely some zingers (“I suppose actions speak louder than words” is met with “I have never found fault with silence”) it is, as the Penguin Modern Classic synopsis says, “less savage in them” than her other books. Boo!
Full report upon completion.
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