The Good Soldier (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Ford, Ford Madox

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199585946 ISBN 13: 9780199585946

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2012

Synopsis

The Good Soldier is Ford Madox Ford's masterpiece, a riveting story and one of the most compelling examples of early Modernism: a virtuoso performance of how to use an "unreliable narrator." Wealthy American John Dowell tells what he calls "the saddest story," about a secret affair between his wife and another man that is finally revealed in a crescendo of death and madness. Ford's novel reflects contemporary interests in psychology, sexuality, and the New Woman, and it treats Henry James's "transatlantic theme" with an existential horror comparable to Joseph Conrad's. Its portrayal of the destruction of a civilized elite anticipates the cataclysm of the First World War, which erupted while Ford was finishing the book.

This new edition features an Introduction by Max Saunders, one of the leading Ford scholars, who explores the novel as a key work of Modernism, shedding light on the nature of literary Impressionism and its relationship with the psychological realism of the characters. An appendix includes Ford's crucial essay "On Impressionism," written contemporaneously with the novel, which offers insight into Ford's artistry. This edition also has extensive notes, a chronology of the novel's main events, and an up-to-date bibliography.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

About this title

Review:

First published in 1915, Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier begins, famously and ominously, "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." The book then proceeds to confute this pronouncement at every turn, exposing a world less sad than pathetic, and more shot through with hypocrisy and deceit than its incredulous narrator, John Dowell, cares to imagine. Somewhat forgotten as a classic, The Good Soldier has been called everything from the consummate novelist's novel to one of the greatest English works of the century. And although its narrative hook--the philandering of an otherwise noble man--no longer shocks, its unerring cadences and doleful inevitabilities proclaim an enduring appeal.

Ford's novel revolves around two couples: Edward Ashburnham--the title's soldier--and his capable if off-putting wife, Leonora; and long-transplanted Americans John and Florence Dowell. The foursome's ostensible amiability, on display as they pass parts of a dozen pre-World War I summers together in Germany, conceals the fissures in each marriage. John is miserably mismatched with the garrulous, cuckolding Florence; and Edward, dashing and sentimental, can't refrain from falling in love with women whose charms exceed Leonora's. Predictably, Edward and Florence conduct their affair, an indiscretion only John seems not to notice. After the deaths of the two lovers, and after Leonora explains much of the truth to John, he recounts the events of their four lives with an extended inflection of outrage. From his retrospective perch, his recollections simmer with a bitter skepticism even as he expresses amazement at how much he overlooked.

Dowell's resigned narration is flawlessly conversational--haphazard, sprawling, lusting for sympathy. He exudes self-preservation even as he alternately condemns and lionizes Edward: "If I had had the courage and the virility and possibly also the physique of Edward Ashburnham I should, I fancy, have done much what he did." Stunningly, Edward's adultery comes to seem not merely excusable, but almost sublime. "Perhaps he could not bear to see a woman and not give her the comfort of his physical attractions," John surmises. Ford's novel deserves its reputation if for no other reason than the elegance with which it divulges hidden lives. --Ben Guterson

From the Inside Flap:

Ford Madox Ford wrote The Good Soldier, the book on which his reputation most surely rests, in deliberate emulation of the nineteenth-century French novels he so admired. In this way he was able to explore the theme of sexual betrayal and its poisonous after-effects with a psychological intimacy as yet unknown in the English novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0199585946
• ISBN 13: 9780199585946
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Saunders Max