Early Autumn visited

So I'm about half of the way done with this new book and it is complete opposite of the previous book, Arrowsmith. The language is very emotional and flowery and detailed. There is a little Jane Eyre type mystery in it, as in there is a mad woman living in a wing of the huge house. I have been enjoying this book so far. Today while on the internet I decided to look up the author, Louis Bromfield. I don't know what I was thinking, maybe that the name was Lois, but I thought the author was a woman. According to Wikipedia, Louis Bromfield is a man, which makes since. It has changed the voice of the book for me, the language is now oddly flowery and emotional. For a woman it seems normal, but for a man, maybe a little over the top? I don't know, in any case, I'm enjoying the book.

Arrowsmith Review

Well, I finished it. This was a seriously difficult book for me to read and I'll tell you why (since this is the purpose of the blog!!). I am not interested in medical science to begin with and also I've discovered that I really like character novels, which this is not. Sure it has characters in it and follows one man through his career, but there is no real development of the main character, Martin Arrowsmith. When Martin's wife died I wasn't so sad, in fact I wasn't a hundred percent sure she did die. The book is not only written about science it is written very scientifically, just the facts.

Martin is a doctor who in college has his ideals and is forced to change those ideals several times throughout the book. At one point after he and Leora (his first wife) are married he moves to a small town to be a small town doctor and for a short time lives with his in-laws. This was not what I expected him to do and in fact after a few years does not turn out well for him, so he moves on to work for the Public Health official in Iowa. His boss, Mr. Pickerbaugh, is a politician. He writes silly little poems about health and makes public appearances to promote health. He's a loud, rather silly man and Martin doesn't think too highly of him. Mr. Pickerbaugh ends up being elected to congress and so Martin takes his place and he is more interested in his research than he is in kissing up to the public so again he needs to move on. He moves to Chicago to work in an expensive, "catering to the rich" type medical office and does okay, but he gets sick of the rich people and just wants to research and do his work so he finally ends up in New York working with Dr. Gottlieb (see my previous post) at McGurk Industries where he is able to just do research and is finally truly happy. Through all of this his wife (they are unable to have children) follows him around and supports him better than he deserves, especially since he casually cheats on her (mostly in thought and slightly in action) with Mr. Pickerbaugh's daughter, practically in front of Leora's face. She is truly the example of a supporting wife, but in my opinion she's a little too supportive and needs a little bit more gumption to stand up to Martin and give him a good talking to.

While at McGurk he finds a cure for the plague and goes to an island in the West Indies (his wife follows him there too so she can nurse him if he gets ill) to cure the people there of the plague and conduct his experiments. I actually enjoyed this part of the book. There was a little bit more focus on characters and the sorrows of the plague (kind of sad I enjoyed the sad part the best-- hmmm what does this say about me? Again Martin meets a woman while he's away from his wife (she stayed in another part of the island where it was supposed to be safer) he casually cheats again (mainly kissing and dreaming of her) and then runs to bring his wife with him and finds her dead with the plague. He mourns and kind of ruins his experiments and then returns to New York.

I could go on and on telling the story, but this is how it sums up. He gets married again to the woman he met in the West Indies; she is very wealthy and he finds himself in the world that he has always detested. It is a world where people are more concerned with money and finding favor than they are with the research and science. In the end I really didn't like Martin because of his final decision. In truth I never really did find myself liking him much, but when he decided he needed to work full time and so he left his wife and son to move to a cabin in Vermont with a fellow worker to do research uninterrupted, that was the last straw. A man who writes a note to his wife and says "maybe I'll see my son when he's grown, he can come out and work with me" is truly not a man, he is a coward. Don't get me wrong I'm thankful for the people who have done this kind of research which allows for immunizations for my children and cures people of horrid diseases, but I hope none of them acted so selfishly to do this.

If you choose to read this book I suggest you do it with a medical thesaurus nearby and many hours to devote yourself to reading a scientific tale. All in all, not one of my favorites.

You Can't Judge a Character

If you're looking for a review of Arrowsmith, you'll have to wait a couple of more weeks. This book has been a challenge for me. I really like books where I can identify with the main character or I actually care about the main character, I'm not there yet. I feel like this book is a chore, but we'll get into that more when I review it.

What I want to write about this time is one of the characters in the book. His name is Max Gottlieb and he is a professor of bacteriology at the university Martin Arrowsmith (the main character) attends. Martin has a fascination with Dr. Gottlieb, but through a falling out they separate and go their own ways. The author takes a break from Martin and focuses on Dr. Gottlieb. When I first started to read this chapter I was not at all interested. I pictured Dr. Gottlieb as a dark, bitter, angry man and maybe a little bit dirty and smelly. No one likes him, his home life is not the greatest and yet he deserves it in a way because he doesn't try to get people to like him and he is very harsh and just plain mean. As I followed him through some rough stages in his life - loosing his job, loosing his wife (she passed away), taking a job that questioned his ideals - I began to find myself caring for this character. When he did finally get the job he longed for I celebrated and found myself truly happy that he could find some happiness and satisfaction in his life. He has now made a comeback in the book and is still the cranky, stern man, but I don't mind it as much and I was actually glad to have him back in the story. Have any of you met a character like this in a book? If so, which book and who is the character?