At every tenth meeting of my book group, I have a chance to select what we’ll read that month. This, of course, means novels set in California. Because the group has been going for 27 years and has a restriction on repeating authors, California titles have gone from the famous and well regarded to the unnoticed and unknown. But none was so obscure as The Analyst (later reprinted as Lessons in Love and then Young Doctor Elliot). It’s her most available title on the internet, so group members readily found the book. But they didn’t quite know what to make of it. Was it serious? Amusing? Too ineptly written to reveal any quality at all? I should add that I later lent a copy to a friend and she liked the book quite a lot.
The Analyst by Florence Stonebraker. Phoenix Books (1946), 256 pp.
Elliot Wilbur, a psychiatrist known for his work in psychoanalysis, teaches at a college south of San Francisco. He sees himself as a paragon of objectivity, but he treats nearly everyone with disdain and condescension. That’s true especially of his wife, Carol, who’s fed up with Elliot and having an affair with stable worker Jim Bradley. Adding tension to the Wilbur household is randy roomer Mildred Sterns, an ex-WAC in school on the G. I. Bill. Within the following week Elliot will experience changes in his relationships with Carol and Mildred and have encounters with other women he barely knows.
In her previous novels Stonebraker had nearly always told sexy versions of standard romantic stories. In The Analyst she keeps the sexual situations but adopts a more complicated narrative structure. The two main characters embark on separate journeys. While Carol is finding herself, Elliot is proving to the reader (if not himself) what a pompous jerk he really is. Despite his professed expertise in understanding human behavior, he offers no help to the women who come to him with problems. In fact, what one character calls “this psychologist racket” becomes a recurrent target for satire. Stonebraker’s presentation is not entirely satirical, however, as she gives some episodes somber treatment. In what appears to be an innovation for her, the author keeps the story on track by organizing it into five named chapters, each of which describes events on one of successive weekdays. All in all, in spite of some inconsistency of tone and occasional ragged writing, the book ranks as one Stonebraker’s most fully realized novels.
Comments