Two out of three ain't bad

[troisoiseaux]

Finished Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig, which was just, hoo boy. Set in the months leading up to WWI, a 20-something Austro-Hungarian calvary officer, Anton Hofmiller, sticks his foot in his mouth at a party by asking his host's physically disabled daughter to dance, which he responds to in an understandably embarrassed but reasonable manner and learns a valuable lesson about— HA, no, I'm kidding, he massively overcompensates and sets off a chain of events that ends up ruining several lives.

As discussed with osprey_archer in the comments of my last post, I was off-mark when I described Hofmiller as "developing empathy"— I wish I had more time to sort my thoughts, but basically, he is a people-pleaser in a way that is inherently selfish. He seeks to make others happy, but his methods amount to instant gratification— a good metaphor would be that Edith is like "I'm hungry" and he's like "don't worry, dinner will be ready soon! have this cupcake now to tide you over!" and then he realizes that dinner is NOT ready, it's never going to be ready, so he keeps desperately shoving cupcakes at her, and then she gets a stomachache and he's like "I'm going to burn this kitchen to the ground to avoid responsibility for my actions." Also all of his friends are vegan and would disapprove of him using eggs in the cupcakes. Or something. This metaphor has gotten away from me.

I also found it fascinating in terms of being a novel set on the eve of WWI, written on the eve of WWII (it was published in 1939) and in that I vaguely knew that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was, like, a dozen cultures in a trench coat, but it was interesting to see that reflected in Zweig's writing.

Finished The Women of Troy by Pat Barker; a sequel to her Briseis-centric retelling of the Iliad, The Silence of the Girls, this one takes place between the fall of Troy and the Greeks' departure from its shores, where they remain trapped after their victory by the forces of nature and/or the displeasure of the gods. Briseis, now pregnant with Achilles' child and safely married to one of his companions, remains one of the POV characters, navigating her new, fragile, and obviously emotionally fraught privilege while doing her best to help the other captive Trojan women. The other POV characters are Calchas, a seer navigating the politics of the Greek camp, and Pyrrhus, who Barker does not absolve - if anything, she increases his bodycount, by having him murder an enslaved woman when he realizes she saw his fumbled, panicked murder of Priam and knew that the version of it he'd been telling was a lie - but explains, as a teenager struggling to fill the shoes of the legendary father he never knew.

I think I preferred the first novel generally, and have a couple of nits to pick with this one specifically, but it was, like, fine. Interesting to compare to Natalie Haynes' A Thousand Ships.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

The thing with Hofmiller is that he falls into an already-disastrous family dynamic that he clearly doesn't understand until it is much too late. Everyone in Edith's life has been trying to placate her with metaphorical cupcakes, and when Hofmiller shows up with the bigger, better cupcakes of his own regular visits (visits from an army officer! who might be construed as courting Edith!), they do everything in their power to make sure he keeps bringing the cupcakes... until it turns out that Edith wants a whole entire wedding cake and Hofmiller just can't deliver.

Frankly I think her family is kind of hoping to make Edith Hofmiller's problem from now on, but when it comes to it he falls at the last hurdle.

[troisoiseaux]

Yeah, the foreword of my copy really leaned into the "the Kekesfalvas were manipulating him" angle, which— I don't not agree with, although I felt that Kekefalva's motivation was less making Edith someone else's problem than genuinely trying to make his only child happy. Hofmiller might be the bull (a 25-year-old who has just discovered that other people have feelings, but has not yet discovered consequences) in the china shop (the Kekefalvas' lives), but also like, the china shop was already on fire when the bull came smashing in. I'm kind of obsessed with the passage near the end where Hofmiller was like "I FELT LIKE GOD" because he agreed to marry Edith! and everyone was happy! and everyone loved him!

[sovay]

I think I preferred the first novel generally, and have a couple of nits to pick with this one specifically, but it was, like, fine.

Is it actually a retelling of Euripides or just covering much of the same material?

[troisoiseaux]

With the caveat that I had to google the plot of The Trojan Women because I did not know, so I might be missing something— no? I mean, they're both adaptions of the same story, obviously, but it doesn't appear to be a retelling of Euripides specifically.

One aspect of Barker's novel that I preferred over A Thousand Ships - which has a similar narrative focus on the women of Troy after their capture by the Greeks - is that Barker widened her gaze from the fallen royals (Hecuba, Cassandra, Andromache) to explore the stories of women for whom the situation just exchanged one life of slavery for another (original characters, obviously).

[sovay]

no? I mean, they're both adaptions of the same story, obviously, but it doesn't appear to be a retelling of Euripides specifically.

It's just such an iconic title, I was curious.

One aspect of Barker's novel that I preferred over A Thousand Ships - which has a similar narrative focus on the women of Troy after their capture by the Greeks - is that Barker widened her gaze from the fallen royals (Hecuba, Cassandra, Andromache) to explore the stories of women for whom the situation just exchanged one life of slavery for another (original characters, obviously).

I bounced too hard off The Silence of the Girls to pursue Barker's Homeric retellings further, but I am glad she is doing interesting things with them.

[troisoiseaux]

It's just such an iconic title, I was curious.

I am deeply embarrassed to admit that I didn't make the connection until you pointed it out. //facepalm

Barker's novels aren't my favorite in the Female Character-Centric, Trojan War-Adjacent Myth Retelling Literary Universe (FCCTWAMRLU) but they've both been interesting to read in contrast to other adaptions. (The Song of Achilles was of course on my mind a lot when reading the first book.)

[osprey_archer]

Yes, that passage totally sums up Hofmiller's character. He's a people-pleaser with a tragically limited sense of long-term consequences who has never had the chance to please anyone on such a grand scale before, so in the moment of agreeing to marry Edith he's just completely swept up with the joy of being actually IMPORTANT to someone and being able to please not just Edith but the whole Kekesfalva family in such a big way. It completely sweeps away the fact that (1) he has super mixed feelings about marrying Edith, actually, and (2) his fellow officers will think less of him if he marries her, which actually seems MUCH more important to him than his own feelings on the matter. The people-pleaser realizes that he has displeased some people!