Theroux, Hemingway and Stendhal

I sometimes wonder if attribution of inspiration is required for authors. Most art derives or is inspired from previous work, and the role of critics is to know that other work enough to goad or at least constrain the temptation and therefore promote originality in a semi-Darwinian sense. The problem is that the greater the corpus the harder it gets, and the Internet may or may not always help since it is also loaded with Everything.

So here is my little contribution.

Stendhal claims to have bought at great expense some family stories from which he derived The Italian Chronicles.  He felt that Italian history was too formalized, censored, under the influence of power to be truthful, and since he had lived in Italy he felt he was in a position to comment on this, so he undertook to translate and interpret some stories that presented the other side of history, the secrets and betrayals that he felt would balance the official stories. His chronicles (although he did not use that word) were presented in the form of short stories, some quite troubling and violent.

I read them recently and the style reminded me of Hemingway. It was direct, unemotional, not flowery in the least and very clear. I went back and read the war-related books "The Charterhouse of Parma" and "The Red and the Black" and found the battle scenes and landscape descriptions to be very similar to the ones in "A Farewell to Arms", in style and theme.

Of course it is not plagiarism or even close. Hemingway went as far as saying publicly that he wanted to beat Stendhal in the ring. The stories were different, it was the tone that was the same.

This brings us to Theroux and his "Stranger At The Palazzo D'Oro". I stumbled upon an excerpt in Granta magazine and then read the full novel later. It is a typical Theroux story (bear with me, there can be such a thing), in that it is beautifully set, beautifully written, but at its core has a very maudlin unsatisfying plot.

I know, it sounds harsh, but that is how I feel.

His protagonist meets a fine-boned countess, completely of another world and he seduces her, fucks her silly, and describes the power games that ensue.

It is titillating in strange ways, confusing in others, cliche in most, and yet it is good writing, because it sounds so real, and there are many unexpected turns, although in the end it does not close or satisfy beyond what a good soap opera can do.

So back to the link with Stendhal. The chronicles have a story that could well be the inspiration for the Theroux tale. It almost seems that like Stendhal, he adapted the plot to his contemporary purposes and then went into the bedroom.

I don't think there is anything false about this. It is just interesting that here are two authors that took something from Stendhal, one took the style and themes, the other just the plot.

There are may ways to mine the classics I guess.