Howatching

As ragweed season drags on, making my lungs unhappier by the day, I've been forced to rest more. What a great consolation reading is in my leaden-lunged state.

Perusing my shelves, I decided it was time to give Susan Howatch's The Rich Are Different a whirl. In the spring I tried another of her pre-Christian books, Penmarric, but found it a bit creepy. I guess one should expect that of a Gothic-style family saga. The Rich Are Different (TRAD) has a sequel called The Sins of the Fathers, which gives an indication of Howatch's growing interest in spiritual things. I'm amazed how often religious topics are touched upon in TRAD, published in 1977 and exploring a man's rise to riches on Wall Street in the teens and twenties.

It's quite fun as an aspiring writer to explore the maturation of another writer's craft. Howatch's characterizations get better and better over the course of her career. I think even she struggled with writing in first person. It can be hard to get inside the head of a person who's really unlike you, but the struggle can be worth it because that character's perspective can be crucial. In TRAD, Howatch provides a rather weak section narrated by a conventional society wife, Sylvia Van Zale, who's wealthy husband cheats on her perpetually. The woman also suffers a long string of miscarriages. Howatch doesn't quite get Sylvia, or doesn't know how to get inside her emotional world. She's just not compelling or believable. By contrast, Howatch does an astonishingly good job with an unloved wife, Rosalind Darrow, in The Wonder Worker. Though I can't quite like Rosalind, I can understand her and sympathize. That's good writing.

I'm about halfway through TRAD, a 658-page tome. I'm curious to see how much more Howatch incorporates Christian ideas and themes. And I'm encouraged that even this writer I admire so much took time to reach her current excellence and improved over time. There's hope even for me.