Friday 4 March 2016
A new start
After some time reviewing my options, I have decided to jump ship to WordPress. I've migrated all my content, and you can find me at https://readingbug2016.wordpress.com/
Thursday 3 March 2016
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson - 1886
Stevenson's 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" is an under-appreciated masterpiece. It's a breathlessly fast paced story where the protagonist, Dr Jekyll, is dead (sorry, spoilers) halfway through the very short novel, and yet Stevenson manages to sustain the excitement until the big 'reveal' at the end. We now know of course that Dr Jekyll is Mr Hyde, but it is still possible to imagine the excitement readers must have experienced on first finding this out, perhaps having worked it out for themselves a few pages earlier.
The novel uses a traditional framing device and a combination of diaries and other documents to provide some distance from the main action. Gabriel Utterson, a lawyer, is told by his cousin about an encounter some months ago, when he witnesses a sinister figure named Edward Hyde and a young girl accidentally bump into one another. Hyde trampled on the girl causing her some undefined harm. In a form of mob justice, Hyde was forced to pay £100 to avoid any scandal. He paid this on the spot fine with a cheque drawn on the account of Dr. Henry Jekyll, an old friend of Utterson. This tale reinforces Utterson's fear that Jekyll is being blackmailed by Hyde - he has recently drawn his will to make Hyde the sole beneficiary in case of his death or disappearance. Jekyll assures Utterson that there is nothing to worry about. Is there a suggestion that the reason Jekyl tolerates and funds Hyde is due to an 'unnatural' sexual relationship between the pair? This would explain the need to pay off witnesses to avoid a scandal, and also fits with the unspecified sins or vices that Jekyll admits to later in the novel when explaining his experiments.
Later, Hyde is implicated when a servant sees him beat a man to death with a heavy cane. Police find half of the cane, which is revealed to be one which Utterson himself gave to Jekyll. There is no trace of Hyde, and for a while Jekyll reverts to his former friendly manner. This cannot last, and soon Jekyll starts refusing to see any visitors. Then a mutual acquaintance of Jekyll and Utterson, Dr Lanyon, dies suddenly of shock. Before his death, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter, with instructions that he should only open it after Jekyll's death or his disappearance. It soon seems as if that time has come, because in the next chapter Jekyll's butler, Poole, visits Utterson and explains that Jekyll has locked himself away in his laboratory for several weeks. They break into the laboratory to find the body of Hyde wearing Jekyll's clothes and apparently dead from suicide.
They also find a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain the entire mystery. The suicide note and accompanying documents reveal that Lanyon's death resulted from the shock of seeing Hyde drinking a serum and, as a result of doing so, turning into Dr. Jekyll. The second letter explains that Jekyll, having previously indulged unstated vices found a way to transform himself and thereby indulge his vices without fear of detection. Unable to control the transformations he resolved to cease becoming Hyde, but it is too late - he is ever more helpless and trapped as the transformations increase in frequency and necessitate ever larger doses of the draught to reverse them. Eventually, one of the chemicals from which he had prepared the draught ran low. His ability to change back from Hyde into Jekyll slowly vanished in consequence. He finally realises that he will soon become Hyde permanently.
I class Jekyll and Hyde, along with Dracula and Frankenstein, as the one of the three great horror novels of the 19th century. I appreciate that places me in the mainstream of critical reaction, but for some reason while the latter two works have been recognised as great works of fiction in their own rights, divorced from the industry of 'inspired by' films, television adaptation and novels they have generated, Jekyll and Hyde remains largely unread. Which is a pity, because it is genuinely scary. Hyde is a monster largely because he is so un-monstrous. The potion which Dr Jekyll discovers allows him to physically separate the good and evil parts of himself, but the Mr Hyde which emerges feels at first to be something quite positive. Outwardly he appears to be a normal man, although anyone seeing him is struck by his profoundly evil character:
“The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but innocent freedom of the soul."
But this younger, lighter, happier personailty comes with a catch:
"I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.”
What I find fascinating about this novel is the way Stevenson brings together in one short story many of the prevailing big themes of the day: that science can unlock dangerous secrets, that people have dual or multiple personalities, and that some of our instincts are animalistic:
Jekyll experiments with splitting himself because he wants to find a way to indulge his appetite for vice with impunity. He releases a beast he cannot control:
"I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.”
These vices are not specified, but sexually transmitted diseases, and their debilitating effect on men's health, were a particular dread of the time. More specifically, the novel lends itself very conveniently to an allegorical reading of the need for homosexual men to live double lives. The Guardian noted in a review of a stage production a few years ago that:
"Even though Stevenson may not have intended leaving them, there are suggestive markers throughout the text: the suspected blackmail of Jekyll by his "young man", his "favourite"; the "very pretty manner of politeness of Sir Danvers Carew" when approached in the street - terms that may have denoted forbidden liaisons to a Victorian readership. The hidden door by which he enters Jekyll's house is the "back way", even "the back passage". It happens that the year of composition, 1885, was the year in which an amendment to an act of parliament made homosexual acts between men a criminal offence."
The novel uses a traditional framing device and a combination of diaries and other documents to provide some distance from the main action. Gabriel Utterson, a lawyer, is told by his cousin about an encounter some months ago, when he witnesses a sinister figure named Edward Hyde and a young girl accidentally bump into one another. Hyde trampled on the girl causing her some undefined harm. In a form of mob justice, Hyde was forced to pay £100 to avoid any scandal. He paid this on the spot fine with a cheque drawn on the account of Dr. Henry Jekyll, an old friend of Utterson. This tale reinforces Utterson's fear that Jekyll is being blackmailed by Hyde - he has recently drawn his will to make Hyde the sole beneficiary in case of his death or disappearance. Jekyll assures Utterson that there is nothing to worry about. Is there a suggestion that the reason Jekyl tolerates and funds Hyde is due to an 'unnatural' sexual relationship between the pair? This would explain the need to pay off witnesses to avoid a scandal, and also fits with the unspecified sins or vices that Jekyll admits to later in the novel when explaining his experiments. Later, Hyde is implicated when a servant sees him beat a man to death with a heavy cane. Police find half of the cane, which is revealed to be one which Utterson himself gave to Jekyll. There is no trace of Hyde, and for a while Jekyll reverts to his former friendly manner. This cannot last, and soon Jekyll starts refusing to see any visitors. Then a mutual acquaintance of Jekyll and Utterson, Dr Lanyon, dies suddenly of shock. Before his death, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter, with instructions that he should only open it after Jekyll's death or his disappearance. It soon seems as if that time has come, because in the next chapter Jekyll's butler, Poole, visits Utterson and explains that Jekyll has locked himself away in his laboratory for several weeks. They break into the laboratory to find the body of Hyde wearing Jekyll's clothes and apparently dead from suicide.
They also find a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain the entire mystery. The suicide note and accompanying documents reveal that Lanyon's death resulted from the shock of seeing Hyde drinking a serum and, as a result of doing so, turning into Dr. Jekyll. The second letter explains that Jekyll, having previously indulged unstated vices found a way to transform himself and thereby indulge his vices without fear of detection. Unable to control the transformations he resolved to cease becoming Hyde, but it is too late - he is ever more helpless and trapped as the transformations increase in frequency and necessitate ever larger doses of the draught to reverse them. Eventually, one of the chemicals from which he had prepared the draught ran low. His ability to change back from Hyde into Jekyll slowly vanished in consequence. He finally realises that he will soon become Hyde permanently.
I class Jekyll and Hyde, along with Dracula and Frankenstein, as the one of the three great horror novels of the 19th century. I appreciate that places me in the mainstream of critical reaction, but for some reason while the latter two works have been recognised as great works of fiction in their own rights, divorced from the industry of 'inspired by' films, television adaptation and novels they have generated, Jekyll and Hyde remains largely unread. Which is a pity, because it is genuinely scary. Hyde is a monster largely because he is so un-monstrous. The potion which Dr Jekyll discovers allows him to physically separate the good and evil parts of himself, but the Mr Hyde which emerges feels at first to be something quite positive. Outwardly he appears to be a normal man, although anyone seeing him is struck by his profoundly evil character:
“The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but innocent freedom of the soul."
But this younger, lighter, happier personailty comes with a catch:
"I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.”
What I find fascinating about this novel is the way Stevenson brings together in one short story many of the prevailing big themes of the day: that science can unlock dangerous secrets, that people have dual or multiple personalities, and that some of our instincts are animalistic:
Jekyll experiments with splitting himself because he wants to find a way to indulge his appetite for vice with impunity. He releases a beast he cannot control:
"I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.”
These vices are not specified, but sexually transmitted diseases, and their debilitating effect on men's health, were a particular dread of the time. More specifically, the novel lends itself very conveniently to an allegorical reading of the need for homosexual men to live double lives. The Guardian noted in a review of a stage production a few years ago that:
"Even though Stevenson may not have intended leaving them, there are suggestive markers throughout the text: the suspected blackmail of Jekyll by his "young man", his "favourite"; the "very pretty manner of politeness of Sir Danvers Carew" when approached in the street - terms that may have denoted forbidden liaisons to a Victorian readership. The hidden door by which he enters Jekyll's house is the "back way", even "the back passage". It happens that the year of composition, 1885, was the year in which an amendment to an act of parliament made homosexual acts between men a criminal offence."
Victorian society was still coming to terms with Darwin's revolutionary idea that men had evolved from animals, and that it was from these origins that some of our animalist instincts could be traced. At the same time ideas around the subconscious were becoming more current, although yet to be formulated clearly by Freud in the twentieth century. Stevenson's formulation of these ideas in 'Dr Jekyll' is arguably one of the earliest description of the divided consciousness:
"It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil."
This is a fascinating, chilling and hugely influential book, horror for grown-ups, Stevenson's best writing for adults.
This is a fascinating, chilling and hugely influential book, horror for grown-ups, Stevenson's best writing for adults.
Sunday 28 February 2016
The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
To be honest, everyone comes across a book from time to time that they struggle to complete, indeed to get started with. The plot never really seems to start, the characters are undefined and un-engaging, and keeping track of who is who and what has happened doesn't really seem worth the effort. But one persists, out of stubbornness more than any expectation that all of a sudden the novel will transform into something more compelling. For me this is a relatively rare occurrence, but Bellow's 'The Adventures of Augie March' was unfortunately one such book.
The novel follows the first few decades of the life of the eponymous hero growing up in Chicago in the 1920's and 30's. The title deliberately echoes the Mark Twain Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn novels of 80 years or so earlier. While Twain's narratives were, superficially at least, quite innocent, Augie March is brought up in a very different world.
So why was this book such a challenge, to the extent that I actually felt a sense of relief when I finished? I identified a number of reasons. Firstly, Bellow's sentence construction is often awkward, almost as if English were not his first language. To offer just two simple examples:
"By dumb concentration and notice-wooing struggle. The only way I could conceive, in my blood-loaded, picturesque amorousness". (138)
"Thus Mrs Renling in her strenuous wand hacked-up way, and the whiteness that came from her compression into her intense purposes.(151)"
The intention, presumably, is to convey the fragmented nature of Augie's internal narration. This works effectively at first, but after a while becomes wearing.
Secondly, the novel has no real plot. We follow Augie as he wanders aimlessly from job to job and relationship to relationship. Each situation involves the introduction of a large cast of characters - even on the penultimate page, more than 500 in, Bellow is still introducing new characters. Events are structured chronologically, but the episodic nature of the narrative means it doesn't flow - I did this, then I did this, then I did something else.
Thirdly, Augie is not an engaging character. He is devoid of any insight into his own motivation - he just wanders through life. His personal attachments to other people are superficial - even his family members are discarded when he loses interest in them. His mother is left in a home for the blind, and he rarely visits her, and his disabled brother is dumped in an institution and he only visits him once in a period of several years. His love life is complicated and unconvincing.
If this was just a series of scenes of urban life in pre-war Chicago, the novel would have had a degree of integrity. But at one point Bellow seems to bore of this theme, and he takes Augie to Mexico to train an eagle to capture lizards. Yes, apparently the best way to catch lizards isn't to trap theme, but to train an eagle to catch them. As a plot device this would be out of place in a Marx brothers film, but it gets worse, because out in Mexico Augie meets Leon Trotsky, on the run from Stalin's secret police. Despite the major world events that occur over the span of the novel, from the end of Prohibition and the Great Depression, Augie barely notices them. Even though he has met Trotsky, his later assassination and death don't merit a mention. The Second World War only intrudes as an interruption to Augie's plans to finally settle down and marry.
So to summarise: no plot, boring characters, clumsy writing - yet Bellow won the Nobel prize for literature! I'm quite happy to admit I must be missing something. I'm going to guess it's one or more of the following:
1. 'The Adventures' conforms strictly to the traditions of the picaresque novel, defined in the Encyclopaedia Britannica as:
"a first-person narrative, relating the adventures of a rogue or low-born adventurer as he drifts from place to place and from one social milieu to another in his effort to survive. In its episodic structure the picaresque novel resembles the long, rambling romances of medieval chivalry, to which it provided the first realistic counterpart. Unlike the idealistic knight-errant hero, however, the picaro is a cynical and amoral rascal who, if given half a chance, would rather live by his wits than by honourable work. The picaro wanders about and has adventures among people from all social classes and professions, often just barely escaping punishment for his own lying, cheating, and stealing. He is a caste-less outsider who feels inwardly unrestrained by prevailing social codes and mores, and he conforms outwardly to them only when it serves his own ends. The picaro’s narrative becomes in effect an ironic or satirical survey of the hypocrisies and corruptions of society, while also offering the reader a rich mine of observations concerning people in low or humble walks of life."
See what I mean? Augie is an Everyman through whose eyes the reader can see his world, but his passage through it leaves few traces. So is 'the Adventures' a modern day American version of the classic picaresque novels such as 'Don Quixote'? I think that is a sustainable interpretation, but I am not convinced.
2. 'The Adventures' also contains numerous classical references. These left me wondering if there were possibly parallels between Augie's adventures and those of the classical characters he refers to, as happens in 'Ulysses'. In the end I just didn't care enough to try and find out.
3. The range and scope of the novel made me wonder whether this was Bellow's application for the 'Great American Novel' competition. This scepticism wasn't helped by the quote from Martin Amis on the back cover claiming "'The Adventures of Augie March' is the Great American Novel. Search no more." There are some explicit references to other candidates in that competition, now closed of course. Does this description of Augie's brother Simon's spending habits ring any bells?:
'From the barbershop we'd go to Field's to by him a dozen or so shirts, imported Italian underclothes or slacks or shoes, all things of which he already had a surplus; he showed me drawers, closets, shelves full, and still kept buying' (224)
I noted down several quotes from this novel during the week or so that it took to complete, but the one I should have listened to was Bellow's advice, in Augie's voice:
"I never blamed myself for throwing aside such things as didn't let themselves be read with fervor, for they left nothing with me anyhow" (206)
This novel didn't let itself be read with fervour, and even though I didn't throw it aside, no-one could surely have blamed me if I had.
The novel follows the first few decades of the life of the eponymous hero growing up in Chicago in the 1920's and 30's. The title deliberately echoes the Mark Twain Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn novels of 80 years or so earlier. While Twain's narratives were, superficially at least, quite innocent, Augie March is brought up in a very different world.
So why was this book such a challenge, to the extent that I actually felt a sense of relief when I finished? I identified a number of reasons. Firstly, Bellow's sentence construction is often awkward, almost as if English were not his first language. To offer just two simple examples:
"By dumb concentration and notice-wooing struggle. The only way I could conceive, in my blood-loaded, picturesque amorousness". (138) "Thus Mrs Renling in her strenuous wand hacked-up way, and the whiteness that came from her compression into her intense purposes.(151)"
The intention, presumably, is to convey the fragmented nature of Augie's internal narration. This works effectively at first, but after a while becomes wearing.
Secondly, the novel has no real plot. We follow Augie as he wanders aimlessly from job to job and relationship to relationship. Each situation involves the introduction of a large cast of characters - even on the penultimate page, more than 500 in, Bellow is still introducing new characters. Events are structured chronologically, but the episodic nature of the narrative means it doesn't flow - I did this, then I did this, then I did something else.
Thirdly, Augie is not an engaging character. He is devoid of any insight into his own motivation - he just wanders through life. His personal attachments to other people are superficial - even his family members are discarded when he loses interest in them. His mother is left in a home for the blind, and he rarely visits her, and his disabled brother is dumped in an institution and he only visits him once in a period of several years. His love life is complicated and unconvincing.
If this was just a series of scenes of urban life in pre-war Chicago, the novel would have had a degree of integrity. But at one point Bellow seems to bore of this theme, and he takes Augie to Mexico to train an eagle to capture lizards. Yes, apparently the best way to catch lizards isn't to trap theme, but to train an eagle to catch them. As a plot device this would be out of place in a Marx brothers film, but it gets worse, because out in Mexico Augie meets Leon Trotsky, on the run from Stalin's secret police. Despite the major world events that occur over the span of the novel, from the end of Prohibition and the Great Depression, Augie barely notices them. Even though he has met Trotsky, his later assassination and death don't merit a mention. The Second World War only intrudes as an interruption to Augie's plans to finally settle down and marry.
So to summarise: no plot, boring characters, clumsy writing - yet Bellow won the Nobel prize for literature! I'm quite happy to admit I must be missing something. I'm going to guess it's one or more of the following:
1. 'The Adventures' conforms strictly to the traditions of the picaresque novel, defined in the Encyclopaedia Britannica as:
"a first-person narrative, relating the adventures of a rogue or low-born adventurer as he drifts from place to place and from one social milieu to another in his effort to survive. In its episodic structure the picaresque novel resembles the long, rambling romances of medieval chivalry, to which it provided the first realistic counterpart. Unlike the idealistic knight-errant hero, however, the picaro is a cynical and amoral rascal who, if given half a chance, would rather live by his wits than by honourable work. The picaro wanders about and has adventures among people from all social classes and professions, often just barely escaping punishment for his own lying, cheating, and stealing. He is a caste-less outsider who feels inwardly unrestrained by prevailing social codes and mores, and he conforms outwardly to them only when it serves his own ends. The picaro’s narrative becomes in effect an ironic or satirical survey of the hypocrisies and corruptions of society, while also offering the reader a rich mine of observations concerning people in low or humble walks of life."
See what I mean? Augie is an Everyman through whose eyes the reader can see his world, but his passage through it leaves few traces. So is 'the Adventures' a modern day American version of the classic picaresque novels such as 'Don Quixote'? I think that is a sustainable interpretation, but I am not convinced.
2. 'The Adventures' also contains numerous classical references. These left me wondering if there were possibly parallels between Augie's adventures and those of the classical characters he refers to, as happens in 'Ulysses'. In the end I just didn't care enough to try and find out.
3. The range and scope of the novel made me wonder whether this was Bellow's application for the 'Great American Novel' competition. This scepticism wasn't helped by the quote from Martin Amis on the back cover claiming "'The Adventures of Augie March' is the Great American Novel. Search no more." There are some explicit references to other candidates in that competition, now closed of course. Does this description of Augie's brother Simon's spending habits ring any bells?:
'From the barbershop we'd go to Field's to by him a dozen or so shirts, imported Italian underclothes or slacks or shoes, all things of which he already had a surplus; he showed me drawers, closets, shelves full, and still kept buying' (224)
I noted down several quotes from this novel during the week or so that it took to complete, but the one I should have listened to was Bellow's advice, in Augie's voice:
"I never blamed myself for throwing aside such things as didn't let themselves be read with fervor, for they left nothing with me anyhow" (206)
This novel didn't let itself be read with fervour, and even though I didn't throw it aside, no-one could surely have blamed me if I had.
Tuesday 23 February 2016
A Month in the Country - J.L.Carr - 1980
'A Month in the Country' is an exquisite novella, short-listed on publication for the Booker prize back in 1980 at a time when they weren't so awkward about word-count (this runs to barely 80 pages), and turned into a film with Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth which has its own, fascinating story . Carr only published a handful of short novels in his life, and is a wrongly neglected novelist - so much so that I am going to put him on my alternative 'Best novels written in English' list.
'A Month in the Country' is narrated by Tom Birkin, and tells of the summer (the pedant in me can't resist pointing out that the events of the novel take place over the course of the whole summer, not just one month - would 'A Summer in the Country' have been a worse title?) of 1920. Back from the horrors of the First World War, Birkin has been commissioned to restore a mural, his rather specialist profession, as part of the whimsical legacy of a local landowner, Miss Adelaide Hebron. He spends his days on the scaffolding within the church, slowly uncovering and restoring the mural depicting Judgment day. His nights are spent in the belfry. The slow, quiet work is in some ways a therapeutic part of his recovery from a bad case of shell shock. He is accompanied by a succession of local figures who come to visit and check on his progress, interested in the curiosity of a visitor to the sleepy Yorkshire village of Oxgodby. He also has a companion of sorts in Charles Moon, employed as part of the same legacy, to try to find the grave of one of Miss Hebron's ancestors, buried outside the churchyard according to legend.
This is one of those deceptive novels where on the surface little happens, but when you look back there is in fact a huge amount of incident, romance, drama, and superbly rich characterisation. Carr captures the wonder of an English summer with wonderful economy - you can almost hear the bees lazily buzzing as Birkin cycles to church, or chats to Moon over another cup of tea.
Ah, those days...for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me. Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed. The long end of summer. Day after day of warm weather, voices calling as night came on and lighted windows pricked the darkness and, at day-break, the murmur of corn and the warm smell of fields ripe for harvest. And being young.
The healing process Birkin goes through as he restores the mural in the eaves of the church has another parallel in the healing the country experiences from the war. Moon, camping in the field next to the church in a dugout reminiscent of the trenches, has his own healing processes to go through. He has quickly identified the location of the grave he has been commissioned to find, but strings out his time in Oxgodby exploring the site of a Saxon basilica. Birkin is slowly engaged in the life of the local community, umpiring cricket matches and even taking a service at a nearby chapel. All the while his understated romance with the vicar's wife is blooming - even though there is little to the relationship beyond a few chaste glances and words. He understands that her marriage is, like his own, mistaken and unhappy, and the climax of the novel is reached when he has the opportunity to reveal his feelings, certain they will be reciprocated. The moment agonisingly passes, and once gone cannot be recaptured.
I've not really even started to unravel the complexity and beauty of this exceptionally well-written, delicately drawn novel. I have never read anything that captures so well the sense of loss:
“We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever - the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass. All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen. But this was something I knew nothing of as I closed the gate and set off across the meadow.”
Wonderful.
'A Month in the Country' is narrated by Tom Birkin, and tells of the summer (the pedant in me can't resist pointing out that the events of the novel take place over the course of the whole summer, not just one month - would 'A Summer in the Country' have been a worse title?) of 1920. Back from the horrors of the First World War, Birkin has been commissioned to restore a mural, his rather specialist profession, as part of the whimsical legacy of a local landowner, Miss Adelaide Hebron. He spends his days on the scaffolding within the church, slowly uncovering and restoring the mural depicting Judgment day. His nights are spent in the belfry. The slow, quiet work is in some ways a therapeutic part of his recovery from a bad case of shell shock. He is accompanied by a succession of local figures who come to visit and check on his progress, interested in the curiosity of a visitor to the sleepy Yorkshire village of Oxgodby. He also has a companion of sorts in Charles Moon, employed as part of the same legacy, to try to find the grave of one of Miss Hebron's ancestors, buried outside the churchyard according to legend.
This is one of those deceptive novels where on the surface little happens, but when you look back there is in fact a huge amount of incident, romance, drama, and superbly rich characterisation. Carr captures the wonder of an English summer with wonderful economy - you can almost hear the bees lazily buzzing as Birkin cycles to church, or chats to Moon over another cup of tea.
Ah, those days...for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me. Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed. The long end of summer. Day after day of warm weather, voices calling as night came on and lighted windows pricked the darkness and, at day-break, the murmur of corn and the warm smell of fields ripe for harvest. And being young.
The healing process Birkin goes through as he restores the mural in the eaves of the church has another parallel in the healing the country experiences from the war. Moon, camping in the field next to the church in a dugout reminiscent of the trenches, has his own healing processes to go through. He has quickly identified the location of the grave he has been commissioned to find, but strings out his time in Oxgodby exploring the site of a Saxon basilica. Birkin is slowly engaged in the life of the local community, umpiring cricket matches and even taking a service at a nearby chapel. All the while his understated romance with the vicar's wife is blooming - even though there is little to the relationship beyond a few chaste glances and words. He understands that her marriage is, like his own, mistaken and unhappy, and the climax of the novel is reached when he has the opportunity to reveal his feelings, certain they will be reciprocated. The moment agonisingly passes, and once gone cannot be recaptured.
I've not really even started to unravel the complexity and beauty of this exceptionally well-written, delicately drawn novel. I have never read anything that captures so well the sense of loss:
“We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever - the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass. All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen. But this was something I knew nothing of as I closed the gate and set off across the meadow.”
Wonderful.
Michael Rosen: Explicit, implied and hidden ideology in children'...
Michael Rosen: Explicit, implied and hidden ideology in children'...: People interested in how 'hidden ideology' works in children's books, might like to look at the chapter on 'Captain Underpan...
Friday 19 February 2016
Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth - 1969
Portnoy's complaint is both a noun and a verb - the book is another first person narrative describing the author's childhood and later life, an autobiography with only the flimsiest attempt at disguise as a novel. Alexander Portnoy complains to his psychiatrist - at quite some length - about his domineering mother, his father crippled by chronic constipation, and the impact this has on his later ability to develop serious relationships with women. This is both his lament and his condition.
Of his mother he writes memorably:
"She was so deeply embedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise. As soon as the last bell sounded I would rush off for home, wondering as I ran if I could possibly make it to our apartment before she succeeded in transforming herself. Invariably she was already in the kitchen by the time I arrived, and setting out the milk and cookies. Instead of causing me to give up my delusions, however, the feat merely intensified my respect for her powers"
As a young boy his relationship with his mother is simply dysfunctional, but when he hits puberty it becomes positively Oedipal. The chapter on the masturbation frenzy he embarks on at this point is a famously sustained portrayal of adolescence, and is quite filthy in some respects. It is hardly surprising given Portnoy's frankness about every aspects of his sexual life and fantasies that the book caused a considerable controversy on publication. Even today it has the power to shock.
As with most first person narratives, the reader is automatically sympathetic to the narrator - we see the world through their eyes, hear their explanations for their conduct, get their side of the story. With such monstrously controlling parents it is hardly surprising that Portnoy rebels, pursuing relationships with non-Jewish girls. He is unarguably a misogynist. He gives his girlfriends unpleasant, objectifying nicknames - the Pumpkin, the Pilgrim, the Monkey - and abandons the latter when she is feeling suicidal. He feels guilty about this, but not guilty enough to do anything about it. Of course he blames his mother for his inability to form grown up relationships with perfectly pleasant young women, (he cites one reason why he leaves 'The Monkey' as her calligraphy!) but his inability to accept any personal responsibility for this begins to chafe after a while - "a Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant" - and you want to tell him to stop whining and grow up.
The novel takes a darker turn in the final chapters when Portnoy goes to Israel. He has a casual sexual encounter with a female soldier, but is impotent. Later in the final pages he meets up with a hitchhiker, and tries to rape her. It is quite satisfying to see her kick his ass. His misogyny seems unrestrained when the travels to Israel, possibly because of his distance from his mother.
In the end, Portnoy is his own, most astute critic. He pleads:
"Spring me from this role I play of the smothered son in the Jewish joke! Because it's beginning to pall a little at thirty-three!”
Of his mother he writes memorably:
"She was so deeply embedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise. As soon as the last bell sounded I would rush off for home, wondering as I ran if I could possibly make it to our apartment before she succeeded in transforming herself. Invariably she was already in the kitchen by the time I arrived, and setting out the milk and cookies. Instead of causing me to give up my delusions, however, the feat merely intensified my respect for her powers"
As a young boy his relationship with his mother is simply dysfunctional, but when he hits puberty it becomes positively Oedipal. The chapter on the masturbation frenzy he embarks on at this point is a famously sustained portrayal of adolescence, and is quite filthy in some respects. It is hardly surprising given Portnoy's frankness about every aspects of his sexual life and fantasies that the book caused a considerable controversy on publication. Even today it has the power to shock.
As with most first person narratives, the reader is automatically sympathetic to the narrator - we see the world through their eyes, hear their explanations for their conduct, get their side of the story. With such monstrously controlling parents it is hardly surprising that Portnoy rebels, pursuing relationships with non-Jewish girls. He is unarguably a misogynist. He gives his girlfriends unpleasant, objectifying nicknames - the Pumpkin, the Pilgrim, the Monkey - and abandons the latter when she is feeling suicidal. He feels guilty about this, but not guilty enough to do anything about it. Of course he blames his mother for his inability to form grown up relationships with perfectly pleasant young women, (he cites one reason why he leaves 'The Monkey' as her calligraphy!) but his inability to accept any personal responsibility for this begins to chafe after a while - "a Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant" - and you want to tell him to stop whining and grow up. The novel takes a darker turn in the final chapters when Portnoy goes to Israel. He has a casual sexual encounter with a female soldier, but is impotent. Later in the final pages he meets up with a hitchhiker, and tries to rape her. It is quite satisfying to see her kick his ass. His misogyny seems unrestrained when the travels to Israel, possibly because of his distance from his mother.
In the end, Portnoy is his own, most astute critic. He pleads:
"Spring me from this role I play of the smothered son in the Jewish joke! Because it's beginning to pall a little at thirty-three!”
Thursday 18 February 2016
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - 1963
"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York".
Is there a better opening line to a novel? It wasn't until towards the end of this book, when the narrator, Esther Greenwood, has electro-convulsive therapy as part of her treatment for severe depression, and submits to it "like a person coolly resigned to execution" (203) that I was able to join the dots - she sees what happens to her as similar to what happened to the Rosenbergs. Note also that "they electrocuted the Rosenbergs" not "the Rosenbergs were electrocuted" - suggesting the existence of a shadowy and malevolent but wholly real external force that can take people's lives. Not only does Esther not know what she is doing in New York, but as the novel develops it becomes apparent that her confusion is much deeper rooted.
Rarely has an opening sentence more brilliantly foreshadowed the events of the novel, while at the same time setting the tone and fixing the events in time and place.
Sadly it is now not possible, if it ever was, to separate any reading of 'The Bell Jar' from one's knowledge of Plath's own life (and death). She committed suicide a few weeks after 'The Bell Jar' was published under a pseudonym. The novel is largely autobiographical, and horribly foreshadows, even predicts, her final days. I don't know whether this extraordinary book is an extended suicide note, or a cry for help - but I do know that I can't remember reading a sadder novel. The ending, where Esther's ECT seems to have been successful, and she finally starts to recover from her illness, is a false dawn all the sadder in the context of Plath's death.
The novel opens with Esther enjoying something of an adventure, on a work-placement with a magazine in New York. She is academically successful, has enjoyed lots of advantages in life, and seems to have the world at her feet. She has not yet mastered the art of developing relationships with men, but is starting to experiment with her new found freedom. There are some aspects of life she finds hard - men consistently try to bully her, particularly when it comes to sex, and while she stands up for herself this is not an aspect of her life she is comfortable with. She doesn't bond easily with the other women in her lodgings, and in the background is the loss of her German father when she was nine (Plath lost her German father when she was eight).
At first she appears to be in control, and the depression that comes to dominate her life is not immediately apparent. However, subconsciously, the signs are already there. Death, murder, suicide, and objects associated with death, constantly crowd her thoughts:
A lumpy bed is "shrouded by a thin white spread" (86); a silver lighter is "in the shape of a bullet." (103), as is Doctor Gordon's pencil "like a slim, silver bullet" (129); a mattress falls across Esther "like a tombstone" (119); a bath tub is "coffin-shaped" (18) and a telephone sits "dumb as a death's head" (17).
The language of death pops uninvited, and unnoticed, into Esther's mind all the time, even when there is no apparent connection with the subject. Death is everywhere:
"My penalty was the long, dead walk from the frosted glass doors of the Amazon" (95)
"Pretend you are drowning'." (103)
"I felt like a hole in the ground" (15)
"At my feet, the city doused its lights in sleep, its buildings blackened, as if for a funeral."(106)
"Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one's ashes, the grey scraps were ferried off" (107)
"A summer calm laid its soothing hand over everything, like death" (109)
"I cracked open a peanut from the ten cent bag I had bought to feed the pigeons, and ate it. It tasted dead, like a bit of old tree bark". (131)
(On her mother's snoring) "The piggish noise irritated me, and for a while it seemed to me that the only way to stop it would be to take the column of skin and sinew from which it rose and twist it to silence between my hands" (119)
Finally, these thoughts cannot be resisted, and the crisis point is reached.
"The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower" (92)
From this point Esther plans to kill herself, and these thoughts dominate her waking hours. She plans her suicide carefully, and her inverted thinking is reflected in the language she uses to discuss these plans:
(Of the Japanese) "They disembowelled themselves when anything went wrong" (132)
"The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of storeys, you might still be alive when you hit the bottom. I thought seven storeys must be a safe distance". (131)
Note the use of the word safe, meaning here to end in certain death, the complete opposite of its usual meaning.
Esther's suicide attempts lead to her being sectioned. She dreads the ECT, even though finally it appears to have helped, if only temporarily. She describes her feelings during psychiatric analysis:
"I had imagined a kind, ugly, intuitive man looking up and saying "Ah!" in an encouraging way, and then I would find words to tell him how I was scared, as if I were being stuffed farther and farther into a black, airless sack with no way out. Then he would lean back in his chair and match the tips of his fingers together in a little steeple and tell me why I couldn't sleep, and why I couldn't read and why I couldn't eat and why everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end." (123/4)
So the father figure she is hoping for fails to appear. Equally, the young men in her life are not substitute fathers, failing to care for her.
This isn't just a book about mental illness and suicide. It's about growing up, about the way men behave towards women, it is about literature, and reading, and writing, and so much more. It is deeply sad, and provides an insight into the thoughts of a suicidal depressive who ultimately can't understand her own illness, just wants it to end. In many ways it is a very difficult, challenging novel, and anyone in a similar position to Plath would fit little comfort in it. My edition carries a quotation from Joyce Carol Oates "A near perfect work of art", and just this once I agree.
Is there a better opening line to a novel? It wasn't until towards the end of this book, when the narrator, Esther Greenwood, has electro-convulsive therapy as part of her treatment for severe depression, and submits to it "like a person coolly resigned to execution" (203) that I was able to join the dots - she sees what happens to her as similar to what happened to the Rosenbergs. Note also that "they electrocuted the Rosenbergs" not "the Rosenbergs were electrocuted" - suggesting the existence of a shadowy and malevolent but wholly real external force that can take people's lives. Not only does Esther not know what she is doing in New York, but as the novel develops it becomes apparent that her confusion is much deeper rooted.
Rarely has an opening sentence more brilliantly foreshadowed the events of the novel, while at the same time setting the tone and fixing the events in time and place.Sadly it is now not possible, if it ever was, to separate any reading of 'The Bell Jar' from one's knowledge of Plath's own life (and death). She committed suicide a few weeks after 'The Bell Jar' was published under a pseudonym. The novel is largely autobiographical, and horribly foreshadows, even predicts, her final days. I don't know whether this extraordinary book is an extended suicide note, or a cry for help - but I do know that I can't remember reading a sadder novel. The ending, where Esther's ECT seems to have been successful, and she finally starts to recover from her illness, is a false dawn all the sadder in the context of Plath's death.
The novel opens with Esther enjoying something of an adventure, on a work-placement with a magazine in New York. She is academically successful, has enjoyed lots of advantages in life, and seems to have the world at her feet. She has not yet mastered the art of developing relationships with men, but is starting to experiment with her new found freedom. There are some aspects of life she finds hard - men consistently try to bully her, particularly when it comes to sex, and while she stands up for herself this is not an aspect of her life she is comfortable with. She doesn't bond easily with the other women in her lodgings, and in the background is the loss of her German father when she was nine (Plath lost her German father when she was eight).
At first she appears to be in control, and the depression that comes to dominate her life is not immediately apparent. However, subconsciously, the signs are already there. Death, murder, suicide, and objects associated with death, constantly crowd her thoughts:
A lumpy bed is "shrouded by a thin white spread" (86); a silver lighter is "in the shape of a bullet." (103), as is Doctor Gordon's pencil "like a slim, silver bullet" (129); a mattress falls across Esther "like a tombstone" (119); a bath tub is "coffin-shaped" (18) and a telephone sits "dumb as a death's head" (17).
The language of death pops uninvited, and unnoticed, into Esther's mind all the time, even when there is no apparent connection with the subject. Death is everywhere:
"My penalty was the long, dead walk from the frosted glass doors of the Amazon" (95)
"Pretend you are drowning'." (103)
"I felt like a hole in the ground" (15)
"At my feet, the city doused its lights in sleep, its buildings blackened, as if for a funeral."(106)
"Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one's ashes, the grey scraps were ferried off" (107)
"A summer calm laid its soothing hand over everything, like death" (109)
"I cracked open a peanut from the ten cent bag I had bought to feed the pigeons, and ate it. It tasted dead, like a bit of old tree bark". (131)
(On her mother's snoring) "The piggish noise irritated me, and for a while it seemed to me that the only way to stop it would be to take the column of skin and sinew from which it rose and twist it to silence between my hands" (119)
Finally, these thoughts cannot be resisted, and the crisis point is reached.
"The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower" (92)
From this point Esther plans to kill herself, and these thoughts dominate her waking hours. She plans her suicide carefully, and her inverted thinking is reflected in the language she uses to discuss these plans:
(Of the Japanese) "They disembowelled themselves when anything went wrong" (132)
"The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of storeys, you might still be alive when you hit the bottom. I thought seven storeys must be a safe distance". (131)
Note the use of the word safe, meaning here to end in certain death, the complete opposite of its usual meaning.
Esther's suicide attempts lead to her being sectioned. She dreads the ECT, even though finally it appears to have helped, if only temporarily. She describes her feelings during psychiatric analysis:
"I had imagined a kind, ugly, intuitive man looking up and saying "Ah!" in an encouraging way, and then I would find words to tell him how I was scared, as if I were being stuffed farther and farther into a black, airless sack with no way out. Then he would lean back in his chair and match the tips of his fingers together in a little steeple and tell me why I couldn't sleep, and why I couldn't read and why I couldn't eat and why everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end." (123/4)So the father figure she is hoping for fails to appear. Equally, the young men in her life are not substitute fathers, failing to care for her.
This isn't just a book about mental illness and suicide. It's about growing up, about the way men behave towards women, it is about literature, and reading, and writing, and so much more. It is deeply sad, and provides an insight into the thoughts of a suicidal depressive who ultimately can't understand her own illness, just wants it to end. In many ways it is a very difficult, challenging novel, and anyone in a similar position to Plath would fit little comfort in it. My edition carries a quotation from Joyce Carol Oates "A near perfect work of art", and just this once I agree.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)