Meaning

My last post looked in detail at Act 1 scene 1 of Hamlet, the battlements scene. I tried to show how the dramatist conveys a lot of detail about the scene, about the feelings and thoughts of the characters, with an extraordinary economy, and how in particular he builds a feeling of suspense and dread.

But I wanted to make a clear distinction between this kind of analysis, and the futile attempts you often see to decode from text "What the author really means". This school of thought looks at literature as one big guessing game, where the author hides their intent or meaning within the lines of their book (or play, or poem) and the reader's job is to work through the various clues to piece together what the author is really saying. Sometimes the codes are "easy" to crack - so Godot = God, simple as that. All Beckett meant to say was we are all going to die, but God doesn't exist, and that makes him feel a bit sad. Sometimes the interpretation can be more complicated, and can only be done by reference to the author's other work, personal life, diaries or love affairs.

I am not denying (of course) that authors use symbolism - but these are usually a bit more complex than object A symbolises object or abstract value B. The "find the real meaning" reading of literature is seductive - we all enjoy playing the game, and authors sometimes encourage us to do so. But it is ultimately wrong headed for several reasons:
- It is simplistic, reducing the analysis of literature to a parlour game
- It is boring - once you have worked out that the symbol equals X, what next?
- It is limiting - why should the author have sole authority over what his or her text means? Why can't meaning change over time and with context. What Othello or The Merchant of Venice "meant" in 1600 is unlikely to be immutable. What I think of the opening lines of Act 1 Scene 1 of Hamlet has as much or as little validity as what anyone else thinks, so long as I can justify my reading.

Books aren't simple machines for the conveyance of information. They don't just provide the conduit for thought from the author to the reader. Once written they are free and live or die independently from the authorial intent, whatever that was. A simple example to illustrate the point - the word "fire" changes its meaning depending on its context - the word said as an instruction to a execution squad will have a completely different impact to the word said in alarm when smoke is spotted. Is it always that simple to spot the difference? - of course not.

Can you take this too far? Can an apparently straightforward text such as Animal Farm, with an ostensibly clear set of symbolic meanings, come to be about something other than the Russian Revolution? Well that's completely up to us, the readers. If we find it interesting and useful to read this as a morality tale about, say, the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia or the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, why not? Drama in particular has the room to breathe that novels sometimes lack - staging, editing and production can turn a 17th century play about ancient Rome into a 21st Century political thriller.

So if the purpose of literary criticism or analysis is not to play "find the real meaning", what is it for? Well, just because we abandon as pointless an attempt to understand what the author meant, doesn't mean all texts are meaningless, or all readings are equally valid. Some are simply more interesting and worthwhile than others. We search for meaning, but we understand that the process is not a simple exchange from brain of author to brain of reader. The exchange is informed and changed by context and interpretation. Meaning changes. The first cave paintings might mean to us "Ancient man understood and valued his environment" but who knows, 10,000 years ago they might have been instruction manuals!

I understand and acknowledge that I am only scratching the surface of a highly complex set of issues here, and whether I return to the subject to tease a bit more understanding from it depends on how the mood takes me.

Hamlet - Act 1 Scene 1

I wrote a few weeks back that I would try my hand at some detailed analysis. Here it is - Act 1 scene 1 of Hamlet. Not all of it just the opening few lines. I don't pretend that would I am doing here is original, but I enjoyed it, and that after all is the point of the blog. 

SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle. FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO BERNARDO Who's there? FRANCISCO Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself. BERNARDO Long live the king! FRANCISCO Bernardo? BERNARDO He. FRANCISCO You come most carefully upon your hour. BERNARDO 'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco. FRANCISCO For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart. BERNARDO Have you had quiet guard? FRANCISCO Not a mouse stirring. BERNARDO Well, good night. If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste. FRANCISCO I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who's there? Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS HORATIO Friends to this ground. MARCELLUS And liegemen to the Dane. FRANCISCO Give you good night. MARCELLUS O, farewell, honest soldier: Who hath relieved you? FRANCISCO Bernardo has my place. Give you good night. Exit MARCELLUS Holla! Bernardo! BERNARDO Say, What, is Horatio there? HORATIO A piece of him. BERNARDO Welcome, Horatio: welcome, good Marcellus. MARCELLUS What, has this thing appear'd again to-night? BERNARDO I have seen nothing. MARCELLUS Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy, And will not let belief take hold of him Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us: Therefore I have entreated him along With us to watch the minutes of this night; That if again this apparition come, He may approve our eyes and speak to it. HORATIO Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.

Note the stage direction does not say “Night”. Staging a scene as happening at night would be hard in any event, so the fact it is dark – and cold – has to be conveyed by the actors’ lines. Of course they could just say “Isn’t it dark tonight?” but the method Shakespeare chose to convey this scene does much more. He builds the suspense through the sentries’ nervousness.   As these are military men they do not reveal their anxiety directly, but it nevertheless emerges through the staccato dialogue. Bernardo asks “Who's there?”He is entering the castle ramparts looking for Francisco, to relieve him from his watch, ergo he is not the sentry, yet he is so jumpy that he challenges him – rather than the other way round as you would expect (ie “Who goes there?"). He has a particular reason to be nervous. The person he is approaching is known to him (as we find out in a few lines) so he cannot see him clearly, or at all. So it is dark. Equally Francisco, who is due to be relieved by Bernardo, and should be expecting him, doesn’t say “It’s me” but challenges his challenger – “Answer me”. He appears to be able to see B because he tells him to “stand and unfold”;  ie “stand still, and reveal who you are”. This is an instruction, not a question.  Again, it must be dark to cause all this ambiguity about identity, a theme which repeats very quickly when the ghost of the old king appears, and then often thereafter throughout the play. An alternative, simpler reading is that F is simply doing his job – as the sentry it is for him to challenge B, not the other way round. But it is clear from subsequent lines that F does not immediately recognise B – it is a genuine challenge, not just for the sake of form. F’s reply is a line of blank verse, leaving the “Who’s there?” a truncated section of verse, suggesting a pause between the question and the answer – building the suspense. As a way of identifying oneself this is a curious method – just about anyone could say this, it’s not a password, and doesn’t tell the person addressed who you are. But of course it is ironic – the King just deceased did not live long, nor will his successor. F still can’t see B clearly – have  they been approaching one another, or has B kept still as instructed, and F approached? But he appears to recognise him either by his emerging form, or perhaps his voice.  This is the first use of B’s name – previously he has been (to the audience) soldier/watchman “A”. This comment confirms that F expected B at this time – so why (the audience is invited to ask) was he so uncertain as to who was approaching? Was this just soldierly caution, or something more…? F again speaks in a line of blank verse. So far all the exchanges have been very short – B’s next line is the longest yet. I confess I am uncertain how to read this line. A castle would have clock towers chiming the hour, so F would know that it is now “struck twelve”. The fact he has not heard the chime of midnight might suggest that the sensory deprivation of the scene is intense. Another simpler reading is that this is just a reply to the previous line – I am here because it is 12. This is another line of verse, with F’s name now confirmed. The play’s first much quoted line – the first of many of course. As well as being dark – we now know it is just past midnight - and the soldiers being very nervous, we are told much more here. First, it is bitter cold, which piles on the atmosphere, and second that for some reason, as yet unexplained, F is “sick at heart”.  The lines are gradually lengthening, and the verse is forming with the second line of this sentence being completed by B’s reply, thus linking the two lines aurally despite the apparent disjunction. Instead of asking why, what’s up?, B simply asks “Have things been quiet?” This is a strange response – when someone tells you they are sick at heart, a strong expression, you usually ask why. But of course B knows why, and his question goes straight to the cause of F’s distress. Again the lines lengthen, very gradually.  It is noticeable that one watchman/sentry is replaced by three – again a sign that the passing of midnight means they expect something to happen. B urges F to ask H & M to hurry – but we are not told why. “Who’s there?” Francisco’s turn to ask this, even though he is no longer the sentry on duty. H’s response is less indirect than F’s, and M’s response tells us we are in Denmark.   H and M speak in two halves of a line of verse. F has not introduced or identified himself to H & M; but they can tell he has been relieved from his post. So he must have left it and moved across stage, without saying farewell to B. F tells H & M that he has been relieved by B, and leaves. M calls out to B even though they are both on the same stage – by now we can tell how dark it is, notwithstanding any torches. B calls out to H and once he has replied welcomes both H and M – suggesting he has moved across the stage or they have moved together, and can now see one another. Why “a piece of him”? Perhaps suggesting he has come with his scepticism but without his belief (in ghosts). A jocular reply. We move closer to a revelation of what has been making the guards so nervous, and F sick at heart – a thing which appears. B has seen nothing, but he has only been on watch for a few minutes.  But he only says he has seen nothing, not that nothing has been seen. The mystery slowly unfolds further, and is finally revealed. This thing becomes a “dreaded sight” and finally, an “apparition”. M reveals the thing has been seen “of us” twice before.  The longest lines thus far, introducing the ghost to the audience. But H is not there simply as a witness – and therefore shown to be someone with a certain status (It must be true of H has seen it) but also someone who is educated and level headed enough to engage the apparition and speak to it. He immediately demonstrates his scepticism – it will “not appear”. Of course,  it does.

Collapse - Jared Diamond

Collapse – How Societies Choose to fail or Survive

Jared Diamond (2005)

An amazing book, which may well have finally cured me of my aversion to non-fiction. I am told it has since been made into a TV programme (or series) but not one which I caught.

In brief, this is, as the title suggests, a study of how societies collapse. There are several very detailed case studies, including the Mayan civilisation in Mexico, Easter Island, the Norse settlement in Greenland, and American Indian civilisations. There are contrasted with similar civilisations that have persisted (although the reference to Iceland’s prosperity in comparison with Greenland is a bit of a sick joke post-bankruptcy in 2008/9) despite very challenging environments. The chapter on Easter Island (2) is a particularly interesting part of the book – it is argued compellingly that this extraordinarily mature and complex civilisation committed ecocide. Most of the collapsed civilisations studied here existed in marginal, challenging environments, and the sources of their collapse can be traced back to environmental destruction of one kind or another, whether it be deforestation, salinization of the soil, or soil erosion.

I wrote positively about Diamond’s earlier work, Guns, Germs and Steel in a previous entry. This book could easily have been alternatively sub-titled “Trees, Soil, and Water” given the central role these ingredients play in the survival or otherwise of civilisations. But Diamond’s choice of sub-title here, and especially that verb “choose” is both controversial and illuminating, and I keep coming back to that choice. His central thesis is clear – the survival of societies is not simply a matter of a natural rise and fall over time, but a result of the decisions and choices societies make. That’s not to say those decisions are easy or obvious, but nonetheless with the benefit of hindsight we can see how some societies prosper in almost impossible circumstances – he cites the example of the island of Tikopia in the Pacific which is less than two square miles in area, but on which people have survived for around 3,000 years – while others disappear more or less suddenly.

This is a hugely controversial topic or battleground, and of course Diamond’s cultural and academic perspectives come into play. His analysis of the massacres in Rwanda, attributing them in part to over-population, will be distressing to some, but he arrays a formidable amount of evidence to support his position.

Diamond is usually scrupulous in acknowledging when he is entering a field of potential or actual controversy – he recognises the existing debate, without hesitating to offer his own judgment or perspective. Which makes it all the more surprising that when discussing the use of infanticide as a method of population control, he does so in a quite chillingly dispassionate way, without giving the slightest nod to the possibility that there may be readers who do not accept that this was ever used in the way suggested. I have no doubt he has evidence to support his contention – presumably archaeological – but this is not cited or referenced.  


Diamond is handling some big themes here, so inevitably his work has attracted a fair amount of controversy. He anticipates some of this in his original text (so far as I can tell - the edition I read was a 2011 reprint, and there has been some revision and updating of the text). Firstly, the suggestion that native inhabitants of the Easter Islands and elsewhere could have wilfully destroyed their environment, leaving it uninhabitable, is seen by some as at best counter-intuitive, and worst simply racist. He stands accused of underplaying the role of slave traders and European illnesses in depopulating the island, where, it is claimed, indigenous peoples survived and prospered long after the largest trees were harvested. The counter thesis is that statue carving and erecting did not end with the felling of the largest trees, and the stone masons' tools lie abandoned in the quarry not because people just walked away to participate in the collapse of the culture, but because they were attacked by slave traders.

Another controversy has centred on the puzzling question as to whether the Norse Greenlanders ate fish or not. The evidence of the animal bones in Viking rubbish studied by archaeologists suggested not, but other evidence of Viking bones themselves (and I admit I am not sure how analysing the chemical composition of people's bones can tell you with much confidence how much fish they ate) claims that fish played an increasingly important part in people's diets. This particular debate seems a bit of a non-issue to me and symptomatic of critics wanting to take chunks out of Diamond and taking any opportunity to do so - hence another "missing the point" article elsewhere claming that Australia's agriculture is doing very well thank you very much. 

Diamond's central thesis is actually very simple and in many ways unarguable. Over the course of human history some societies have prospered and survived, and others have collapsed. The survivors have certain characteristics that we can learn from, as do those which collapsed. The main learning point is that we should look after our environment, either by central Government taking the initiative (e.g. on forestry management), international co-operation (e.g. on climate change) or by "bottom-up" change initiated by local people and the choices they make e.g. lowering consumption, recycling. All of these actions will be fairly pointless if we don't do something about population. I think we all know that population is increasing exponentially across the planet, and what we do about that is a subject that wouldn't fit into Diamond's analysis - he touches upon the issue but not in anything like the depth it requires. This is the Green political analysis, and it is well put, but I don't see it as the whole answer, (of course).

Some minor complaints. At times this is a poorly edited, dull and self indulgent book, despite all the fireworks elsewhere. The opening chapter on Montana is a false start - Montana is in one of the most prosperous countries in the world, and this chapter reads as if Diamond is writing a postcard from his holiday home rather than opening an analysis of societal collapse.

Another grumble is on the absence of photographs/plates, which have been removed from this edition, presumably to save money (although £10.99 isn’t cheap for a paperback!) The references to the plates in the text have not been edited out. I found this disproportionately frustrating – each time the author reference to a plate he must have had reason to do so – the image or photograph would have illustrated a point that he doesn’t need to further elaborate. Basically it was just cheap of the publishers.

At the end of what was a bit of a marathon I feel very virtuous, having made it to the end, and what is more I want to know more - I have already followed up with various articles and Wikipedia entries - which is always a good sign.

Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - 1895

My campaign of self improvement and of reading books I should have read a long time ago continues. I have steered clear of Hardy previously largely due to prejudice - his poetry, which formed part of one of my school courses many years ago, felt sentimental and dull, and those of his novels that I had seen adapted for television or cinema were uninspiring pastoral pieces.

Having said that, I had read that Jude had been his last novel followed by a long silence filled only with the previously mentioned poetry. So I knew there was something which had scandalised some elements of late Victorian society, and my interest was pricked. Hardy deals with sexuality in a way that is immensely frustrating to the modern reader - the characters in the novel don't seem to behave in a way recognisable to us, torn as they are between the strict conventions of the period and their own natural impulses. No one has what we would consider a healthy, "normal" attitude towards sex, and I found the scene where Sue forces herself to share a bed with her husband despite her profound disgust for what that implies - so strong that in one scene she junps out of her bedroom window to avoid him - quite disturbing. In some ways even the recognition of these issues, and especially of sex outside of wedlock, was shocking, and would not have featured in novels from just a few decades earlier in the century - no matter how impulsive and headstrong Heathcliff is (for example) he never oversteps this boundary. As such this novel is a bridge between the 19th century novels in which there is little or no suggestion of human sexuality - it was just taboo - and the more frank works of, say, Lawrence a few years later.

Having said that, I suspect that it was not the handling of sexuality that would have been really shocking to the Victorian reader - very little is explicit after all - but the deaths of the children towards the end of the novel, and the characters reactions to them, which really horrifies.


Other than the interest the novel carries in its treatment of these issues, what other features of the novel can recommend it? The description of country life in late Victorian England is well sketched, and the principal character's frustrations with the lack of academic opportunities is of passing interest. Well, not really.


I was hoping that this introduction to Hardy's novels would help me overcome my prejudice and inspire me to explore the rest of his works. Sadly that plan didn't work - Jude was just too dull - but I haven't given up on him yet!

Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson

Earlier in the year, just after the Christmas/New Year break, I read “Treasure Island”, largely out of curiosity to see how close the TV adaptation was to the original. In some respects it was very faithful – for example in the way Silver kills the seaman (Tom) who will not join the mutiny once they land on the island – but in others it made massive changes, the most obvious ones being the death of Trelawney and the loss/abandonment of the treasure. Stevenson tells us almost nothing about what Jim and Co do with the treasure once home – the narrative slams shut once back in the UK, with only a paragraph about how Ben Gunn loses his money in 19 days – but that leaves it to the reader to imagine the high life they lead. One important thing the TV adaptation did reinstate was Silver’s black wife, although they make her a “tart” – possibly editions and adaptations from my childhood edited out references to this character because mixed relationships were frowned upon – just shows how racist the 70s really were. The TV version was careful to avoid all the pirate clichés, but they are there in the book, timbers being shivered, pieces of eight, Jim lad, etc. I guess this is from where they became clichés.

This was a very easy read – the narrative rattles along, with the only passages that drag being the technical/nautical descriptions of sails being unfurled, anchors being weighed and the like. The point of view is well manipulated to keep the reader in the dark as to the location of the treasure, what has happened to the rest of the crew, Silver’s sinister intent, etc.


However, ultimately this remains a children’s/young teenagers’ adventure story, with little to say on the issues of the time, unlike, say, Stevenson’s much darker “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”. I recognise that Treasure Island is, like all texts, open to broader interpretation. The island can be taken to represent (for example) an alternative England where anarchy rules, and the struggle between the pirates and the other crew members could be taken as a comment on the ferocious class struggle rocking late-Victorian England. Islands are a great source of metaphor. But once you have made those connections, what then? I am not convinced that they give you anywhere to go in terms of understanding what was going on in the world, nor reveal subconscious attitudes to class or gender.

The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins - 1868

Books aren’t hailed as classics, and don’t stay in print for 150 years, without good reason. Sometimes the challenge a reader faces is to find that reason. The Moonstone is a good example of this challenge – without it coming so highly recommended by a wide cross section of authors and critics I highly doubt I would have persisted with this Wilkie Collins novel to the end, nor felt so disappointed when I reached that point.

Often described as the original detective story, published in 1868, the eponymous moonstone is a fabled Indian diamond. The diamond is stolen from a temple by a dissolute army officer, and eventually left as a bequest to his niece. On the night she receives it it is stolen, and the primary part of the narrative is an investigation into the theft.

What struck me as remarkable about the story is how so many things don’t happen. A servant commits suicide, and remarkably doesn’t re-emerge months later having faked her death with the aid of accomplices. Who would have seen that one coming? A wily old detective from London is recruited to investigate the theft, after bumbling local constables make a mess of the initial investigation, and he doesn’t solve the mystery. There is no neat, it all make sense solution to the mystery, which is only explained by a combination of people behaving in ways we have been explicitly assured they would not, and some remarkable coincidences of which most mystery writers would be ashamed. I am not telling you too much when I reveal that the theft itself is committed by one of the house guests – shock – acting under the influence of laudanum, which had been administered by a medical acquaintance in a bizarre and to be honest utterly unbelievable “prank”. As the number of house guests is very small, the pool of candidates doesn’t leave the reader guessing for too long.

So what is there in this novel that can justify its status? Let me try. Firstly, the bulk of the narrative is told as a first person record by two of the relatively peripheral characters – a servant at the country house, and a spinster relative of the family. This unusual technique gives the reader more of a fly on the wall perspective – they see a lot of the action without participating in it – but an equally flawed vision – there is much they either don’t see, or don’t understand. The reader is able to decode their misunderstandings and misjudgments fairly easily – this is not a complex narrative in the sense of having to work out what is going on.

The conventions of the country house crime were not entrenched in Collins’s time, and to an extent he establishes many of them here, although as I have said above only to a very limited sense – for example the locked room “mystery” at the end of the novel lasts for a few seconds until the ladder out of the ceiling is spotted!.

Other than these admittedly limited reasons I confess I am struggling to explain the mystery of why this novel is considered a classic.

Dracula - Bram Stoker - 1897

Thrilling and Repulsive - an oxymoron perhaps, but one that neatly summarises the central theme of Dracula. The broad elements of the plot of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel will be familiar to most if not all, but the text is unlikely to have been read by many outside those compelled to do so by college curricula, horror enthusiasts, or, like me, the Kindle-curious.

As a construct the text is highly complex – Stoker aspires to give the reader an up-to-the-minute account of events, but eschews the use of an omnipresent narrator – instead the story is told through a variety of diaries, notes, letters and newspaper articles. The diaries in particular are often presented as being hurriedly written shortly after the events being described. This is a really interesting and original technique – we see events through the eyes of the participants, although it is hard to imagine even the most obtuse of reader not realising what is going on – “He’s a Vampire!” – before the characters. They really need to have things spelt out for them by Van Helsing. Through this flawed and partial perspective, the narrative jumps around both in terms of location and time.

However imposing physically the Count may be, Dracula the character is in many ways a weak opponent – like Sauron or He Who Must Not be Named he doesn’t personally engage in the struggle with the rather Scooby-Doo like gang assembled to fight him, and is far too easily despatched when finally cornered. His inability to walk during the day, to be seen in mirrors, to rest outside his coffin filled with Transylvanian earth, combined with extreme allergies to garlic, crosses, holy water, and peanuts (I may have made the last one up) makes it hard to fear him. The only character he is able to conquer misses multiple opportunities to avoid him (eg closing her bedroom window at night – Doh!).


The cast of characters are noble, brave, and fearless in their pursuit of Dracula – but boy are they dumb! Jonathan Harker sees that Dracula has no reflection in a mirror in just the second chapter of the novel – but lets it pass without much concern or interest, and continues to treat his client as an eccentric European gentleman. Now I appreciate some of the vampire traditions had yet to be firmly entrenched in western consciousness, but how dense do you have to be not to spot that something supernatural is going on there? The long slow reveal of Dracula’s identify would be spoiled by too much emphasis or scrutiny of this episode, and that to Victorian readers the penny would take longer to drop, but still!.
There are some genuinely chilling moments in the novel. A small child is kidnapped and thrown to the three female vampires as a snack. The child’s mother is torn apart by wolves. A mental patient breeds and then eats insects - I am surprised he has not been included in the film adaptations of the text. The ghost ship pulling into Whitby harbour is equally effective.
Finally, and most strikingly, there is so much sex. This isn’t a new observation of course, and I know critics have seen descriptions of every form of sexual behaviour in this text, but the lasciviousness of the characters – compared to what we would normally expect in a late Victoria novel – is genuinely shocking. Although the sex act itself is not explicitly described, little else is left to the imagination. Innuendo stalks every chapter. When Harker first meets the three female vampires in the Count’s castle, he describes their encounter in highly and specifically sexual terms: one of them says “He is young and strong. There are kisses for all of us”. Harker then says "I lay quiet, looking out from under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation….The girl went on her knees and bent over me…There was a deliberate voluptuousness, which was both thrilling and repulsive.” (Chapter 3).  I think you have the heart of the issue there – sex in all its delicious variety was to the Victorians both thrilling and repulsive.  Or take this description of one of the fallen characters being “staked”: 
“Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it [...]. And then the writhing and quivering of the body became less, and the teeth seemed to champ, and the face to quiver. Finally it lay still. The terrible task was over.”
Coitus interruptus indeed.

Something Rotten - Jasper Fforde

Something Rotten is the fourth in Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series. I am a big fan of Fforde - he has a comic inventiveness mixed with erudition that is rare in today's literature. He is hard to categorise - comic fiction certainly, but that is only the start of it. In Thursday Next he has created an original character that you genuinely care about (if not identify with) and her separation from and eventual reunion with her husband is quite touching. So why was I left a bit underwhelmed at the end of this book?

I am pretty sure it is not because his standards are slipping. There are some negative features of a series of novels that are unavoidable - for example we know the principal character will almost certainly survive, no matter what - in this case a bullet to the head is shrugged off in a couple of chapters - so there is little if any tension about the final outcome. As we know what is going to happen, the only interest rests in how we get there, not where we are going. That's not to say that there aren't challenges ahead for Thursday in the rest of the series I am sure.

I think the heart of the problem is in the way I have been reading these books - that is, altogether, without any significant breaks. Imagine if you read all of the Harry Potter series in one go, not over the ten or so years they were published. The impact would have been completely different. The suspense would be seriously diminished, the changes in style and pace would be much more obvious, plot discrepancies would jump out at you, and the point at which Rowling's editors gave up - at the end of "Prisoner" - would be stark. Even knowing that there were seven books in the series, and that it has a definition conclusion, would make the experience different to reading each as it was published (or in my case joining the party at 4 and working back, hurriedly). That experience would be hard but not impossible to create, but I think explains some of my staleness with Fforde. So the simple prescription is a break from this series - the only remaining question is - Where next?

The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne

I have written previously about one of the probably unintended but positive consequences of the Kindle and its free books - namely that it has led me (and I doubt if it is just me) to read things I wouldn't have dreamt of reading previously, and would probably have struggled to got my hands on even had I had the inclination to do so. This is a great example of that happening - I don't remember even having read anything by Jules Verne before my Kindle ownership, despite being well aware of his prominence as the father of science fiction and the general outline of most of his major works eg Round the World in 80 days.

If you were to try to predict what you would find in a 19th century novel called the Mysterious Island I expect you would include dinosaurs/extinct creatures, long lost explorers rediscovered living surprisingly well, gold/lost treasure, and  volcanoes that destroy the island seconds after the last-minute rescue. (Or was that the plot of Alvin and the Chipmunks' recent film ?) Some of these conventions are honoured here, but not at all in the way I expected.

The mysterious island is set in the uncharted waters of the Pacific, and the explorers are escapees from the American Civil War (which at the time of publication (1860's) was just ending), blown off course in their escape balloon. Well it might happen. They go about mastering their environment with an extraordinary efficiency, helped by a particular genius with engineering and a sufficiency of natural materials wherever they look, such that by the end of their second year of captivity they are enjoying virtually every luxury afforded by modern life. Nothing seems too complex or technical to be beyond their grasp. This is the age when man was master of his environment, and where Robinson Crusoe made himself comfortable on his island, these guys turn it into a virtual metropolis, so much so that they don't particularly want to leave.

So apart from the unnatural biodiversity of the island, what is the mystery? At first this is very lightly done - this is no Prospero's Island, haunted by voices. But there are hints that there is more to this island than the castaways think, and these hints steadily accumulate so that by the time of the final "reveal" - and I won't spoil it for you - the resolution is worth the wait, and it was definitely not one I would have predicted. In terms of echoes of modern productions, there is a strong hint here that the writers and producers of the TV series Lost must also have read this novel once upon a time - the unseen hand that guides their time on the island is a common thread between the two works.

Verne clearly was an enthusiastic amateur scientist, and spends a disproportionate amount of time walking the reader through detailed technical explanations of the islanders' various innovations and inventions. Generally I have a rule against skimming sections of text - it is cheating really - but I made a few exceptions here, although far fewer than in "From the Earth to the Moon & Around the Moon" which is weighed down with some fairly obscure and quite possibly nonsensical analysis of the mathematics of space flight. In this novel, one of the earliest about space travel, some comic American gun enthusiasts fire a massive cannon with a manned capsule at the moon. The travellers survive the return journey - they don't actually land on the moon, but "slingshot" round it in a way similar to Apollo 13 many years later - by landing in the ocean.

I am not sure if I will continue with Verne for now, or go in a different direction - perhaps some more non-fiction?

The Long Walk to the Hunger Games

There are some books that contain ideas or images which make an impression on you that is wholly disproportionate to the novel itself. In other words you principally remember not the novel but a scene or an image from it, long after the name or the author has been forgotten. One example from my early twenties was a novella describing a walking competition, entered by children only, where if the contestants slowed below four miles per hour on more than three occasions they are shot dead where they stand. It was a brilliantly realised conceit, shown through the eyes of one of the walkers, and the final scene of the winner driven mad from exhaustion remained vividly with me for years. The background and context – how this barbaric race came into being – is only ever hinted at and is kept deliberately vague. Despite this contextual vagueness the details of the race itself are carefully catalogued.

I had always assumed this story was a science fiction novel that had just made a particular impression on me, for reasons I didn’t investigate. It was a surprise therefore when I came across a collection of Stephen King novels, published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, which included this very story, under the title “The Long Walk.” Re-reading the text I remained impressed with its power and impact.

I have mentioned previously that I enjoy spotting links between novels, and the recent success of the Hunger Games trilogy, the first of which has just been released as a film, prompts me to point out the links between these two works. (I wish I could claim this as an original insight, but sadly once again Google proves me wrong). The “bread and circuses” concept, where the masses are kept simultaneously subjugated and entertained by bloodthirsty gladatorial spectacles, is well established, but these stories share much more: a post apocalyptic setting with fascist rulers combining children and sudden death as a sport. The winners in each story – and there can only be one – are rewarded with whatever they wish for. Once again, as with the Harry Potter/Jane Eyre comparison, I am not suggesting any borrowing went on, and I don’t have a problem even if there was, just that I enjoy spotting links like this. But if I had to chose, and that genuinely is a silly game because I don't, I would say the Long Walk is the more impressive, chilling of the two, not least because there is no hint of romance in the novel, and no hint of a happy ending.

I am Legend - minus the zombies and vampires

Would be a fair way of describing a remarkable novel I read earlier this year called “The Last Man” by Mary Shelley.

One of the unexpected features of the Kindle, not a design feature but an incidental benefit, is how it encourages one to explore novels and texts you would not otherwise think of reading. These are often books long out of print – or if not books that are unlikely to be stocked in your local high street book store. A quick check on Amazon shows me that this novel was last reprinted as a Wordsworth Classic” (a cheap and cheerful publishers) in 2004.

Some – if not most - 19^th century novels have entered our 21^st century consciousness by means of adaptation for television, radio, and not least film (not forgetting records – most of what I knew about Wuthering Heights before I read it I gleaned from Kate Bush!) In that journey they are often adapted almost beyond recognition. But this novel has been long forgotten, as have many of her other novels with the obvious exception of Frankenstein. Even there the novel and the films share little beyond the original concept.

Published in 1826, “The Last Man” is not an easy read. The plot is rambling, the only thread being the death, one by one, of everyone in the book and indeed the world, principally through an unidentified plague, until we are left with the title character, the eponymous Last Man. The central character is troubled and unsympathetic, and the unrelenting death toll makes it hard to identify with any of the characters – we know no matter what they do they are doomed. The book contains a number of thinly described portraits of Shelley’s friend and acquaintances, including her then late husband, and a very gushing portrayal of Lord George Gordon Byron. The novel is set in the late 21^st century, although apart from the date references and some curious flying machines there is little to distinguish the world described from Regency Britain or to justify the description sometimes given for this novel as being an example of early science fiction.

Worth a read? Yes if you are a Shelley fan, definitely if you want to trace the origins of early sci-fi, but otherwise stick to the more regular highways of literature.