I found this 2003 novel so dreary and self-absorbed that each time I picked it up again to continue reading I did so as the result of a painful act of will. I continued reading out of interest in how the story would resolve itself, out of inertia, no force intruding to prevent me. The narrator Christian Benediktsson is a man who deserted his family in Iceland some fifteen years before the present time of the novel and who, through a series of errors and misfortunes, improbably ends up working as the personal butler of William Randolph Hearst at San Simeon. Much of the novel is narrated as a series of unmailed letters to Christian’s wife. In them he attempts to explain himself and for a time it seems as if he is seeking her forgiveness. There are also chunks of narrative focused on Christian, and on those around him. The movement in time is between the present and the past as he traces the events that led him to where he is at the time of the novel. We begin with his first meetings with the girl who would become his wife, their marriage and the births of their children, the minor deceptions in which he engages, his affair with a close business associate’s fiancé--deceptions that grow and multiply, until finally he loses control and falls totally.
Christian is full of self-pity and remorse, but more self-pity than remorse. He presents his story as a tragic series of events that he wishes he could undo, and initially he elicits sorrow and pity. Gradually, my attitude towards him changed. He seems to accept that he is responsible for the events that ruined his life, and at points guilt almost maddens him, but more often he seems able to regard himself and his errors from a distance. His first deceptions seem unimportant. Early in his relationship with his wife, he tells her that he graduated from a business school in Copenhagen. He feels inferior to her because he is working class and she is of a higher class, so he lies about business school to bolster his own sense of self. Later he lies to her about her father’s business dealings, then about his reasons for traveling to New York. Ultimately he seems almost to blame her for his lies, as if to suggest that she forced him to tell them. Finally I found him weak and repellent. The point of the story is not to pay homage to the wife he deceived and deserted, not to memorialize the idyllic past and the marriage and the family he betrayed, but instead is to attempt to justify himself.
At the end he has a chance to meet again with his son Einar, whom he hasn’t seen in more than fifteen years, since he was a young boy. Instead of seizing the opportunity, he flees, leaving everything behind once again, explaining to Hearst that it is “too late.” He comes to this conclusion after learning that his wife has been dead for five years, so maybe he believes that since she is dead he doesn’t deserve to be reunited with his family, doesn’t deserve an attempt to reconciliation. But instead I think he uses her death as a convenient excuse. He merely thinks about sending the letters he has written to his wife before he knows she has died—he never really means to send them.
The great problem with the novel is deciding how to read it, how to understand it, what perspective to take towards the narrator and main character Christian Benediktsson. Are we supposed to see him as a weak coward, or as a sensitive, suffering, pathetic soul?
How also are we to view his job with William Randolph Hearst? This is no kind of penance. It affords Christian anonymous security, free from the eyes of those who might recognize him and remind him of his past. He has a secure job of responsibility and authority, one that allows him a significant amount of free time. He is able to hide from the world without suffering, though he is constantly remembering, constantly finding new ways to summon up his own misery.
The novel does not offer a new perspective on Hearst or on his relationship with his mistress Marion Davies, who appears frequently. We see Hearst in his decline at San Simeon, as his empire and fortunes suffer from reversals brought on by the Depression and years of bad decisions and reckless spending. Hearst himself comes across as imperious, silly, and self-absorbed, a larger-than-life version of the narrator. Davies is a neurotic and modestly talented actress who is miserable when Hearst forces her to watch the bad films she has made, trying to convince her that they are good despite the negative reviews. She is trapped and miserable but not sympathetic.
The novel is well written to a fault. The prose is pristine, calculated, poetic, almost flawless. The first sentence: “The cypress rested in its shadow.” The last sentence: “When the horse had disappeared into a hollow, the bird began to sing.” The novel’s prose strains to reflect the tenor of its narrator’s sensitive, suffering, emotional soul. It is cold, pitiless, pointless.
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