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Henry Green. Loving. 1943. 229 pp.

This is another re-read. Henry Green is a favorite of mine. Sorrentino liked him; Ashbery wrote his master's thesis on HG. I've always been more interested in Green than in Greene. There's a hilarious moment in the Paris Review article when Green takes the word "subtlety" and transforms it into "suttee," pretending (or not) to have misunderstood the interviewer. (Of course there's nothing funny about suttee, but the incongruousness is priceless.)

Of Loving itself: it takes place in Ireland during the war, in a house full of restless English servants. The butler has just died, and Charley Raunce is trying to replace him. A little boy strangles a peacock. It's all very wonderful and strange. I remembered very little of it, so it was almost like reading it for the first time.