I finished V.S. Naipaul’s In a Free State on November 8, 2010.
I was not surprised that Naipaul won the 1971 Booker. In a Free State seemed like a good bet with its treatment of postcolonial issues through both form and content. "Novel" really isn’t the right word for the book, since it presents three separate stories sandwiched by a prologue and epilogue. I take issue with the book jacket claim that “the writer—V.S. Naipaul—speaks for himself” in the prologue and epilogue, but more on that later. Whatever their status, taken together, the five pieces all do present variations on the themes of “loss, fear, and independence” that Naipaul himself has said the book is about.
Naipaul claimed in a 1987 interview with Melvyn Bragg that to “’write about a world which is more shattered and exploding and varied, write about it in fiction, is very difficult,’ more so than writing about ‘ordered societies’ or ‘enclosed societies.’” The formal components here are defiantly separate, the five pieces taking up stories of different characters in a variety of locations and never adding up to a single message or to anything else, for that matter. We see correspondences, but most of those involve misunderstandings, uncertainties and anxieties—the markers, for Naipaul, of postcolonial existence.
In the first story, “One Out of Many,” Santosh, a servant working for an Indian diplomat, travels with his employer from a happy, if meager existence in Bombay to a posting in Washington, DC, which is experiencing significant racial unrest during this period. Largely confined to his employer’s apartment initially, he abandons his job for a freer and somewhat more prosperous life as a cook in an Indian Restaurant, though his story ends far from happily. While Santosh loved his life in Bombay, he comes to see that life as a sort of childhood, in which the security of his lowly position in a known social hierarchy contrasts with the freedom of his life in Washington, with all of its uncertainties, disappointments, and responsibilities. Despite his nostalgia for his old life, he now knows too much to return to it no matter how much pain is involved in moving forward.
And he gets off easy compared to the protagonist of “Tell Me Who to Kill,” a West Indian immigrant in London, who is constantly measuring himself and his culture by former colonial standards. In this story, written in a present tense West Indian dialect, present and past, dream and reality, are blurred. The unnamed narrator works hard to send his younger brother Dayo to London to study aeronautical engineering. Immigrating himself some time later, he continues to work hard for his brother’s success and his own, eventually saving enough money to start his own restaurant. But nothing turns out as planned. Far from a story of immigrant success, this story charts Dayo’s brother’s loss of his identity —and perhaps his sanity--as he cuts himself off from his past, his culture, and any dreams for the future.
The final title story—or novella--is the most overtly political, as two British expatriots—a government official and the wife of a colleague—travel from an African capital back to their safe “compound” in the Southern Collectorate just as tribal warfare has broken out: the country’s president has deposed its king, and the new leader’s men are in the process of hunting the monarch down.
Colonialism and its consequences inform every aspect of this journey. They inform the evolving relationship between Bobby, the gay government official whose sympathy with and respect for Africa and Africans coexist with his coercive “adventures” with young African men, and Linda, whose colonialist perspective underlies an uncomplicated racism and sense of privilege. They also inform this pair’s dealings with the Africans and whites they encounter and the descriptions of the landscape they travel through. Great natural beauty coexists with the crumbling artifacts and institutions of empire. Anxiety and uncertainty inform Bobby and Linda’s trip from beginning to end as they must try to get back to their compound before a curfew imposed in the wake of a violence that grows more severe over time.
While Bobby claims to hate “that book by Conrad,” “In a Free State” gestures toward Heart of Darkness through textual reference (the Congo is literally across the lake from where the characters stay at one point) and through form and content. The journey itself, with the cast of characters Bobby and Linda meet, is reminiscent of Marlow’s river journey. Naipaul’s postcolonial perspective in this story owes much to Conrad’s grim vision.
The prologue and epilogue add other angles to this vision. The book itself provides no evidence that these pieces are “documentary” and narrated by Naipaul himself, so I hesitate to sign on to the book jacket claim that this is him speaking to us directly about his own experience. I’m happy to go with Gillian Dooley, author of V.S. Naipaul: Man and Writer, and label the narrator a “Naipaul-like” figure instead, who simply observes the action in the prologue—in which an old English tramp is mocked and threatened for entertainment by Austrian and Lebanese passengers on a ship bound for Egypt—but who takes action in the epilogue, in which Egyptian children are tortured for entertainment by Italian tourists sightseeing among the tombs of Luxor.
All five pieces suggest the complicated nature of postcolonial existence. All shy away from presenting an ideal colonial or pre-colonial past, even as they suggest the uncertainties and anxieties that have come with “freedom.” Where characters had no responsibilities under colonialism, having the courses of their lives determined by others, postcolonial life means accountability as well as freedom and is often fraught with uncertainty and even danger. Individual heroics, like the actions undertaken by the epilogue narrator on behalf of the Egyptian children, may have no effect or may lead to further disappointment or disaster.
There is, then, no comfort to be found in the disparate worlds and experiences Naipaul presents here, but that’s one of the things I liked most about the book. I admired In a Free State for both its compelling vision and for its refusal, ultimately, to add up.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
1971 short list: Thomas Kilroy, The Big Chapel, Faber & Faber
I finished Thomas Kilroy’s The Big Chapel on November 5, 2010.
This novel is based on a real dispute between a parish priest and his dioceses over control of the national school in a nineteenth-century Irish market town. You can read about the parallels here and here. The events of the novel cover the years 1871 to 1874, with a subsequent chronology that covers the fates of the novel’s characters (and their heirs) through 1920.
The conflict begins when an old parish priest, Father Lannigan stands against the bishop’s (read: Rome’s!) efforts to take over education in the town of Kyle, flouting civil law. Though the priest was the director of schools, they were not religious in nature, with a secular “Master” in charge of instruction. In his role as director, the priest had actually encouraged free thought and inquiry, which the Church saw as a threat. The bishop thus removed him not only from the schools but from the parish, and sought, with the cooperation of a band of town leaders, a Christian Brothers school.
Father Lannigan, the priest, refuses to leave the parish, continuing in his duties with dwindling support among the townspeople as time goes on. In time, the extreme positions taken by both sides tear the town apart, both figuratively and literally, as the conflict turns increasingly violent.
Our perspective on events largely comes through the members of the Master’s family, who are at the heart of the conflict and are ultimately ruined by it. While Master Scully himself decides to remain neutral in a principled show of independence, his sons, Nicholas and Marcus, are among the priest’s most fervent supporters. Nicholas leaves his training for the priesthood to work as Lannigan’s right-hand man. Both he and Marcus view their father’s position as cowardly. A less self-interested perspective is provided by Horace Percy Butler, a member of the local gentry, himself an atheist and amateur scientist, in whose journal various signal events are described.
Since the story is told in retrospect from the outset, we know the ultimate results of the conflict and something about the various characters’ fates by the end of the first chapter. Included among the more tragic by-products of the conflict is the fate of Emerine, a young woman adopted by the Scullys when small, with whom Nicholas is in love, but who is secretly engaged to Marcus. She becomes a sort of family scapecoat as life for the Scullys unravels.
The novel’s focus on the role of the church in Irish life, the difference between nineteenth-century Irish Catholicism, with its folkways and traditions and the more hierarchical and institutionalized Roman Catholicism, trying to extend and consolidate its power, make philosophy and belief both urgent and complex concerns. Father Lannigan himself is a case in point. Devoted to his parishioners, most of whom are poor, trying to supply them with an education that moves beyond obedience to Church doctrine, he allows his ego to get in the way, taking his case to unreasonable extremes as well as to the limits of his own persuasive and intellectual abilities.
I very much enjoyed the philosophical reflection, the back and forth that Kilroy forces the reader into as much as he does the characters. I did think that the novel lost steam after the book’s central confrontation about three-quarters of the way through, and that it pretty much meandered to the end, with the chronology covering the more conclusive events. And I was never quite sure of the point of the Emerine/Marcus/Nicholas plot. It seemed too sensational to be simply part of a fleshing out of the town and its stories. It is part of the Scully family’s utter ruin, but I was left wondering if utter ruin was necessary.
Still, I loved the way Kilroy built this novel—through his use of retrospect, the journal, and that forward-looking chronology and through his use of a specific historical incident to explore the kind of religious controversy that continues to affect Irish life and culture.
I liked the book very much. It was a compelling read.
This novel is based on a real dispute between a parish priest and his dioceses over control of the national school in a nineteenth-century Irish market town. You can read about the parallels here and here. The events of the novel cover the years 1871 to 1874, with a subsequent chronology that covers the fates of the novel’s characters (and their heirs) through 1920.
The conflict begins when an old parish priest, Father Lannigan stands against the bishop’s (read: Rome’s!) efforts to take over education in the town of Kyle, flouting civil law. Though the priest was the director of schools, they were not religious in nature, with a secular “Master” in charge of instruction. In his role as director, the priest had actually encouraged free thought and inquiry, which the Church saw as a threat. The bishop thus removed him not only from the schools but from the parish, and sought, with the cooperation of a band of town leaders, a Christian Brothers school.
Father Lannigan, the priest, refuses to leave the parish, continuing in his duties with dwindling support among the townspeople as time goes on. In time, the extreme positions taken by both sides tear the town apart, both figuratively and literally, as the conflict turns increasingly violent.
Our perspective on events largely comes through the members of the Master’s family, who are at the heart of the conflict and are ultimately ruined by it. While Master Scully himself decides to remain neutral in a principled show of independence, his sons, Nicholas and Marcus, are among the priest’s most fervent supporters. Nicholas leaves his training for the priesthood to work as Lannigan’s right-hand man. Both he and Marcus view their father’s position as cowardly. A less self-interested perspective is provided by Horace Percy Butler, a member of the local gentry, himself an atheist and amateur scientist, in whose journal various signal events are described.
Since the story is told in retrospect from the outset, we know the ultimate results of the conflict and something about the various characters’ fates by the end of the first chapter. Included among the more tragic by-products of the conflict is the fate of Emerine, a young woman adopted by the Scullys when small, with whom Nicholas is in love, but who is secretly engaged to Marcus. She becomes a sort of family scapecoat as life for the Scullys unravels.
The novel’s focus on the role of the church in Irish life, the difference between nineteenth-century Irish Catholicism, with its folkways and traditions and the more hierarchical and institutionalized Roman Catholicism, trying to extend and consolidate its power, make philosophy and belief both urgent and complex concerns. Father Lannigan himself is a case in point. Devoted to his parishioners, most of whom are poor, trying to supply them with an education that moves beyond obedience to Church doctrine, he allows his ego to get in the way, taking his case to unreasonable extremes as well as to the limits of his own persuasive and intellectual abilities.
I very much enjoyed the philosophical reflection, the back and forth that Kilroy forces the reader into as much as he does the characters. I did think that the novel lost steam after the book’s central confrontation about three-quarters of the way through, and that it pretty much meandered to the end, with the chronology covering the more conclusive events. And I was never quite sure of the point of the Emerine/Marcus/Nicholas plot. It seemed too sensational to be simply part of a fleshing out of the town and its stories. It is part of the Scully family’s utter ruin, but I was left wondering if utter ruin was necessary.
Still, I loved the way Kilroy built this novel—through his use of retrospect, the journal, and that forward-looking chronology and through his use of a specific historical incident to explore the kind of religious controversy that continues to affect Irish life and culture.
I liked the book very much. It was a compelling read.
Monday, December 6, 2010
1971 short list: Mordecai Richler, St. Urbain's Horseman, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
I finished Mordecai Richler’s St. Urbain’s Horseman on November 1, 2010.
I love a sprawling realistic novel, but I didn’t find this one the minor masterpiece that its blurb writers did. Covering a period that stretches from World War II to Vietnam, the novel tells the story of Jake Hersh, a Jewish Canadian tv and film director living in London. Cutting back and forth between Jake’s childhood and adolescence on St. Urbain St. in Montreal and his present life in London, we get a vision of contemporary Jewish life very different from the more conservative vision Bernice Ruben portrayed in The Elected Member, with its characters largely isolated in their London ghetto. Jake, his friends and family, while they observe Jewish customs and traditions, are at the same time driven to achieve more mainstream cultural success in Canada and then England. While the worlds and feel of the two novels are very different, some of the same dilemmas inform them. Though he doesn’t go mad, Jake nonetheless feels that he is caught between cultures—that he is too young for older Jewish traditions but too old for free love.
Mostly Jake feels dissatisfied—conflicted and guilty. He feels unsure whether or not he deserves his moderate success and is envious of his more successful peers. He is a conflicted liberal, ready to lecture his friends and family on politics and privilege but, nonetheless, happy to take advantage of the perks his wealth allows him. He is even dissatisfied with his happy marriage. Because he loves and desires his wife, Nancy, he has no need or excuse to have sex with the young girls his Jewish film business friends pursue.
Jake measures himself against his much older cousin Joey Hersh and feels himself a sell-out and coward by comparison. He knows his cousin fought heroically in World War II, stood up to an anti-Semitic French-Canadian mob, but he also knows he is a gambler and a drinker, and comes to find out he is a conman and petty criminal to boot. Yet, still Jake sees Joey as “The Golem,” the Jewish Avenger, whom he comes to believe is tracking Josef Mengele in South America.
The novel does a good job of evoking the times and places it takes up. The Jewish communities in Montreal and London are fully realized, and the characters constantly debate then current events and public figures from the 1940s through the 1960s. Frequent ribald stories and language as well as discussions and descriptions of sex nicely locate the novel in the 60s, though the casual (and seemingly unquestioned) racism, homophobia, and sexism suggest a point of view far from revolutionary. I suppose this point of view might be in keeping with Jake’s position and perspective, but, somehow, I don’t think so.
This is what bothered me about the novel ultimately. I had little sympathy with its vision. Most of the men of the novel are selfish and self-involved, while the women of the novel are ultimately valued according to their desirability or loyalty. When they are strong, that strength takes the form of devotion to men—to a son or husband. Strength without this devotion is somehow suspect, even if it is combined with desirability—as in the case of Jake’s cousin Jenny. And I just got tired of Jake and his woes. I was with bourgeois Uncle Abe, when he smacked Jake for making a scene at his father’s shiva. Or with Jake’s wife Nancy, who responded to his ongoing inability to decide whether or not to pursue a certain directing gig by telling him to just shut up and do it.
Richler does give us a plot to follow through the world he develops. When the book opens Jake finds himself embroiled in a scandal. He is awaiting trial on a series of sexual assault charges against a young German au pair--the result of an ill-advised relationship with Harry Stein, a cunning but unsuccessful sociopath who insinuates himself into Jake’s life by playing on his liberal Jewish guilt. The impending trial adds an element of suspense to Jake’s story—as we wonder whether or not he will lose everything he has, and, more importantly, whether or not he is actually guilty of the charges against him. Since Richler builds the narrative by moving backward and forward in time, gradually filling in what happened to bring Jake and Harry to trial, both questions remain unresolved until nearly the end of the novel.
I’m sure that these questions about Jake’s guilt or innocence are part of what kept me from sympathizing with him and made his constant whining that much more irritating. While I won’t spoil the ending, suffice it to say that Jake doesn’t learn much from his ordeal; he doesn’t change. He only shuts up when the book ends.
Realistic? I suppose. The novel is clearly meant to be both rollicking and outrageous, with its frank displays of sex and desire, but I found its vision dated and not particular funny. The book jacket of the paperback edition I read touts Richler’s deeply compassionate rendering of his characters. This suggests to me that I was to bring a similar compassion to my reading. I like to think I am a very compassionate reader, but I simply lost patience by the end.
I love a sprawling realistic novel, but I didn’t find this one the minor masterpiece that its blurb writers did. Covering a period that stretches from World War II to Vietnam, the novel tells the story of Jake Hersh, a Jewish Canadian tv and film director living in London. Cutting back and forth between Jake’s childhood and adolescence on St. Urbain St. in Montreal and his present life in London, we get a vision of contemporary Jewish life very different from the more conservative vision Bernice Ruben portrayed in The Elected Member, with its characters largely isolated in their London ghetto. Jake, his friends and family, while they observe Jewish customs and traditions, are at the same time driven to achieve more mainstream cultural success in Canada and then England. While the worlds and feel of the two novels are very different, some of the same dilemmas inform them. Though he doesn’t go mad, Jake nonetheless feels that he is caught between cultures—that he is too young for older Jewish traditions but too old for free love.
Mostly Jake feels dissatisfied—conflicted and guilty. He feels unsure whether or not he deserves his moderate success and is envious of his more successful peers. He is a conflicted liberal, ready to lecture his friends and family on politics and privilege but, nonetheless, happy to take advantage of the perks his wealth allows him. He is even dissatisfied with his happy marriage. Because he loves and desires his wife, Nancy, he has no need or excuse to have sex with the young girls his Jewish film business friends pursue.
Jake measures himself against his much older cousin Joey Hersh and feels himself a sell-out and coward by comparison. He knows his cousin fought heroically in World War II, stood up to an anti-Semitic French-Canadian mob, but he also knows he is a gambler and a drinker, and comes to find out he is a conman and petty criminal to boot. Yet, still Jake sees Joey as “The Golem,” the Jewish Avenger, whom he comes to believe is tracking Josef Mengele in South America.
The novel does a good job of evoking the times and places it takes up. The Jewish communities in Montreal and London are fully realized, and the characters constantly debate then current events and public figures from the 1940s through the 1960s. Frequent ribald stories and language as well as discussions and descriptions of sex nicely locate the novel in the 60s, though the casual (and seemingly unquestioned) racism, homophobia, and sexism suggest a point of view far from revolutionary. I suppose this point of view might be in keeping with Jake’s position and perspective, but, somehow, I don’t think so.
This is what bothered me about the novel ultimately. I had little sympathy with its vision. Most of the men of the novel are selfish and self-involved, while the women of the novel are ultimately valued according to their desirability or loyalty. When they are strong, that strength takes the form of devotion to men—to a son or husband. Strength without this devotion is somehow suspect, even if it is combined with desirability—as in the case of Jake’s cousin Jenny. And I just got tired of Jake and his woes. I was with bourgeois Uncle Abe, when he smacked Jake for making a scene at his father’s shiva. Or with Jake’s wife Nancy, who responded to his ongoing inability to decide whether or not to pursue a certain directing gig by telling him to just shut up and do it.
Richler does give us a plot to follow through the world he develops. When the book opens Jake finds himself embroiled in a scandal. He is awaiting trial on a series of sexual assault charges against a young German au pair--the result of an ill-advised relationship with Harry Stein, a cunning but unsuccessful sociopath who insinuates himself into Jake’s life by playing on his liberal Jewish guilt. The impending trial adds an element of suspense to Jake’s story—as we wonder whether or not he will lose everything he has, and, more importantly, whether or not he is actually guilty of the charges against him. Since Richler builds the narrative by moving backward and forward in time, gradually filling in what happened to bring Jake and Harry to trial, both questions remain unresolved until nearly the end of the novel.
I’m sure that these questions about Jake’s guilt or innocence are part of what kept me from sympathizing with him and made his constant whining that much more irritating. While I won’t spoil the ending, suffice it to say that Jake doesn’t learn much from his ordeal; he doesn’t change. He only shuts up when the book ends.
Realistic? I suppose. The novel is clearly meant to be both rollicking and outrageous, with its frank displays of sex and desire, but I found its vision dated and not particular funny. The book jacket of the paperback edition I read touts Richler’s deeply compassionate rendering of his characters. This suggests to me that I was to bring a similar compassion to my reading. I like to think I am a very compassionate reader, but I simply lost patience by the end.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
1971 short list: Derek Robinson, Goshawk Squadron, Heinemann
I finished Derek Robinson’s Goshawk Squadron on October 26, 2010.
Okay, maybe I do like war novels. I didn’t think I did, but this is the second war novel on the Booker list I’ve liked and I can name a handful of others as well. Maybe it’s particular kinds of war novels I don’t like—with lots of strategies and statistics and descriptions of weapons. Or maybe it’s just war movies I don’t like. I’ll have to ponder this.
But Goshawk Squadron was a terrific read, a very involving story about an English squadron flying near the front in WWI France. The novel begins on January 15, 1918, with the arrival of new pilots who will be undergoing flight training before moving quickly to missions against German fighters. While we get to know many of the pilots in the course of the novel, the focus is really on Major Woolley, who at twenty-three is the squadron’s seasoned leader, the “old man.” Woolley is portrayed as a gifted pilot and as something of an animal. His goal is to train his squadron to be as brutal as he is in order to survive. Throughout the novel, idealistic recruits arrive with visions of wartime valor and courage that Woolley sets about squashing. He forbids talk of fairness, calling it a dirty word.
This attitude infects the squadron and the novel. Many pilots die in the course of the book—old hands, new recruits, characters we barely know, those we come to know well. Suddenly they’re gone, their deaths barely mentioned once they’ve become known. No emotion surrounds them; no mourning takes place. The dead pilots’ personal effects are sold or simply taken. Further, in a set piece midway through, several men from the squadron enjoy a night of debauchery at a French restaurant that ends with the restaurant trashed and its owner dead. The men barely give it a second thought, treating the investigation that follows as little more than a nuisance.
We may recoil at this callous behavior, But Robinson wants us to see it in the context of war and to see that Woolley really does have the best interests of his pilots at heart, despite his ruthless methods. The only pilot who seems to concern Woolley, someone called MacKenzie about whom he asks periodically, is clearly from his past. We find out nothing about MacKenzie but his name. Still, we can see that he haunts Woolley, and we imagine that his fate informs Woolley’s brutal training regimen.
Ethics and emotions—humanity itself--, according to Woolley, will get these pilots killed. And it does with greater and greater frequency when higher-ups insist that Woolley send men into battle that he hasn’t had time to train properly. As Allied ground troops are massacred in the trenches and more and more Allied planes go down, necessitating the use of more and greener pilots, emotion, ethics, and even sanity all give way. The mission becomes an exercise in absurdity; the war a senseless slaughter.
While this message comes through loud and clear, the book has no real plot. Robinson builds this story by a series of disconnected scenes. What we see here is what happens day to day, with no transitions. Men fly, drink, die, and other men take their places. Robinson captures the experience of war as well as the black camaraderie of the squadron and their growing sense of futility. Heartless by necessity, Woolley becomes a figure of great pathos--truly an old man at twenty-three--who would forsake his brutal wisdom in the end if he could.
Okay, maybe I do like war novels. I didn’t think I did, but this is the second war novel on the Booker list I’ve liked and I can name a handful of others as well. Maybe it’s particular kinds of war novels I don’t like—with lots of strategies and statistics and descriptions of weapons. Or maybe it’s just war movies I don’t like. I’ll have to ponder this.
But Goshawk Squadron was a terrific read, a very involving story about an English squadron flying near the front in WWI France. The novel begins on January 15, 1918, with the arrival of new pilots who will be undergoing flight training before moving quickly to missions against German fighters. While we get to know many of the pilots in the course of the novel, the focus is really on Major Woolley, who at twenty-three is the squadron’s seasoned leader, the “old man.” Woolley is portrayed as a gifted pilot and as something of an animal. His goal is to train his squadron to be as brutal as he is in order to survive. Throughout the novel, idealistic recruits arrive with visions of wartime valor and courage that Woolley sets about squashing. He forbids talk of fairness, calling it a dirty word.
This attitude infects the squadron and the novel. Many pilots die in the course of the book—old hands, new recruits, characters we barely know, those we come to know well. Suddenly they’re gone, their deaths barely mentioned once they’ve become known. No emotion surrounds them; no mourning takes place. The dead pilots’ personal effects are sold or simply taken. Further, in a set piece midway through, several men from the squadron enjoy a night of debauchery at a French restaurant that ends with the restaurant trashed and its owner dead. The men barely give it a second thought, treating the investigation that follows as little more than a nuisance.
We may recoil at this callous behavior, But Robinson wants us to see it in the context of war and to see that Woolley really does have the best interests of his pilots at heart, despite his ruthless methods. The only pilot who seems to concern Woolley, someone called MacKenzie about whom he asks periodically, is clearly from his past. We find out nothing about MacKenzie but his name. Still, we can see that he haunts Woolley, and we imagine that his fate informs Woolley’s brutal training regimen.
Ethics and emotions—humanity itself--, according to Woolley, will get these pilots killed. And it does with greater and greater frequency when higher-ups insist that Woolley send men into battle that he hasn’t had time to train properly. As Allied ground troops are massacred in the trenches and more and more Allied planes go down, necessitating the use of more and greener pilots, emotion, ethics, and even sanity all give way. The mission becomes an exercise in absurdity; the war a senseless slaughter.
While this message comes through loud and clear, the book has no real plot. Robinson builds this story by a series of disconnected scenes. What we see here is what happens day to day, with no transitions. Men fly, drink, die, and other men take their places. Robinson captures the experience of war as well as the black camaraderie of the squadron and their growing sense of futility. Heartless by necessity, Woolley becomes a figure of great pathos--truly an old man at twenty-three--who would forsake his brutal wisdom in the end if he could.
Friday, December 3, 2010
1971 short list: Doris Lessing, Briefing for a Descent into Hell, Jonathan Cape
I finished Doris Lessing’s Briefing for a Descent into Hell on October 24, 2010.
The title of this book is a perfect set up for a bad review—almost too perfect. And I wish that I could resist the title and say that the book was fabulous, that its harrowing journey into one man’s freaky science-fictiony mental landscape was revelatory and gripping. But I can’t.
Consider this your briefing: I hated this book.
I suppose I could qualify that statement by revealing that I do not, as a rule, like science fiction, so this book wasn’t going to be one of my favorites no matter what.
And maybe the message—that society makes us conform in ways detrimental to ourselves and the common good—is too familiar to me from movies, television, not to mention other fiction, to have much of an impact on me at this point.
But I don’t think so.
I just hated it. And I hated it that I hated it because I didn’t want to hate it. This was another one I was looking forward to, having admired Lessing's short stories.*
Using mental illness as a framework, the novel dumps us into the middle of the psychiatric treatment of an incoherent man, eventually revealed to be classics professor Charles Watkins, delivered to the mental health unit of a London hospital.
As two doctors with different philosophies of care try to treat him, we get roughly 150 pages (half the novel) of an alternative—sleeping or waking (ah, that’s the question)—reality that is big on landscape description and the glories of extraterrestrial community—with some cannibalistic violence thrown in.
If this sounds intriguing and appealing, then I haven’t described it correctly. It just goes on and on and on . . .
By the time we get some context for this vision with information about Charles’s waking (or sleeping!) life from letters from colleagues, friends, and family, along with the doctor’s treatment notes, I didn’t much care. The alternative reality seems to have grown from his experience as the only survivor of two bloody campaigns during World War I. Hence the interest in the extraterrestrial community, supposedly linked to his memories of fighting in Yugoslavia with the partisans. Except, according to a friend familiar with his history, he never fought in Yugoslavia. (In two campaigns, yes, but not in Yugoslavia.) While there is a suggestion, based on letters from veritable strangers to him, that the alternative reality he dreams of is somehow real, or realer than his waking life anyway, this is never confirmed. There’s plenty of metaphor, doubling and mirroring of experience, but nothing is ever certain.
In case we were wondering where to shelve this novel, Lessing gives us some help. Just past the title page, the following information appears: “Category: inner-space fiction ‘for there is never anywhere to go but in.’”
Okay, then. I guess I’ll just stay outside.
*I have to admit here that I haven't read The Golden Notebook. I keep putting it on my British Women Writers syllabus so I get to read it, but then I keep bumping it and its 700+ pages from the syllabus when time gets short and something has to give.
The title of this book is a perfect set up for a bad review—almost too perfect. And I wish that I could resist the title and say that the book was fabulous, that its harrowing journey into one man’s freaky science-fictiony mental landscape was revelatory and gripping. But I can’t.
Consider this your briefing: I hated this book.
I suppose I could qualify that statement by revealing that I do not, as a rule, like science fiction, so this book wasn’t going to be one of my favorites no matter what.
And maybe the message—that society makes us conform in ways detrimental to ourselves and the common good—is too familiar to me from movies, television, not to mention other fiction, to have much of an impact on me at this point.
But I don’t think so.
I just hated it. And I hated it that I hated it because I didn’t want to hate it. This was another one I was looking forward to, having admired Lessing's short stories.*
Using mental illness as a framework, the novel dumps us into the middle of the psychiatric treatment of an incoherent man, eventually revealed to be classics professor Charles Watkins, delivered to the mental health unit of a London hospital.
As two doctors with different philosophies of care try to treat him, we get roughly 150 pages (half the novel) of an alternative—sleeping or waking (ah, that’s the question)—reality that is big on landscape description and the glories of extraterrestrial community—with some cannibalistic violence thrown in.
If this sounds intriguing and appealing, then I haven’t described it correctly. It just goes on and on and on . . .
By the time we get some context for this vision with information about Charles’s waking (or sleeping!) life from letters from colleagues, friends, and family, along with the doctor’s treatment notes, I didn’t much care. The alternative reality seems to have grown from his experience as the only survivor of two bloody campaigns during World War I. Hence the interest in the extraterrestrial community, supposedly linked to his memories of fighting in Yugoslavia with the partisans. Except, according to a friend familiar with his history, he never fought in Yugoslavia. (In two campaigns, yes, but not in Yugoslavia.) While there is a suggestion, based on letters from veritable strangers to him, that the alternative reality he dreams of is somehow real, or realer than his waking life anyway, this is never confirmed. There’s plenty of metaphor, doubling and mirroring of experience, but nothing is ever certain.
In case we were wondering where to shelve this novel, Lessing gives us some help. Just past the title page, the following information appears: “Category: inner-space fiction ‘for there is never anywhere to go but in.’”
Okay, then. I guess I’ll just stay outside.
*I have to admit here that I haven't read The Golden Notebook. I keep putting it on my British Women Writers syllabus so I get to read it, but then I keep bumping it and its 700+ pages from the syllabus when time gets short and something has to give.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
More or less current doings/1971 short list: Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, Chatto & Windus
In late-breaking news: I decided to take last weekend off since I was having family in for Thanksgiving, and we had other big doings around our house. While I felt I didn’t bring my A game to the turkey and stuffing this year, all went smoothly. We had a lovely dinner, featuring many orange foods--butternut squash casserole, candied carrots, sweet potato casserole, mashed turnips, and pumpkin roll. I made the pumpkin roll (my first), and I have to say, it was right tasty. I’m planning to make several more for the next set of holidays. I also did some knitting, some running, made soup, and watched movies and football with my family.
I feel mildly guilty about this mini-vacation. I’m sure it will pass.
Now--back to the books.
I finished Elizabeth Taylor’s Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont on October 20, 2010.
Taylor tells a quiet but moving story about the sober realities of aging in this short novel about a small group of elderly residents at the Claremont Hotel. Mrs. Palfrey, a widow whose life with her husband was largely lived abroad in colonial postings, moves to the Claremont to maintain both a respectable and an affordable independence for herself.
The book makes a pretty convincing case that she and the other residents at the Claremont may just as well have been strapped to ice floes and set out to sea as live out their days here. While camaraderie exists among the hotel residents, their lives are reduced to finding out what’s on the day’s lunch and dinner menus and anticipating infrequent, dutiful visits from family.
The social currency of these visits among the residents creates the circumstances for a plot here. When Mrs. Palfrey falls during a walk, she ends up asking Ludo, the young man who helps her up and gets her home, to impersonate the rude and neglectful grandson who never visits her. She gets to show him off, and he gets free meals—and later, money. Mrs. Palfrey and Ludo strike up a relationship of sorts. Since we see nothing but neglect from the residents’ families and the hotel management, which needs the guaranteed income the residents represent but resents their aged presence, we worry that Ludo’s interest in Mrs. Palfrey is self-serving as well. The fact that he is an impoverished writer, who is translating her character into fiction without her knowledge, does nothing to dispel our fears.
But Taylor neither makes Ludo wholly bad or wholly good. We get to see a fair amount of his life, too, as he camps out at Harrod’s Banking Hall (where it is warm and bright) to write, visits the troublesome selfish mother to whom he is still attached if not quite devoted, and romances a girl who seems barely interested in him. We come to sympathize with him and see that his kindness to Mrs. Palfrey is genuine, even as he uses her for his own purposes.
This pattern extends to life at the hotel in general. The camaraderie among the residents is, by turns, comforting and somewhat depressing, comical and pathetic. Living in a contemporary London beset by long-haired demonstrators and Beatlemania, all of the Claremont residents, in fact, are left to try to manage a dignified end for themselves. Some do; some don’t. Some drink, like Mrs. Burton. Some become cynical and imperious, like Mrs. Arbuthnot. Some rage, like Mr. Osmond, who complains bitterly to all who will listen about the degraded colonial accents of the day’s radio newscasters. And some, like Mrs. Palfrey, do their best to soldier on. As we learn in the novel’s opening pages:
[S]he had always known how to behave. Even as a bride, in strange, alarming conditions in Burma, she had been magnificent, calm—when, for instance, she was rowed across floods to her new home; unruffled on finding it more than damp, with a snake wound round the banisters to greet her. She had straightened her back and given herself a good talking-to, as she had this afternoon on the train.
In spite of long practice, she found that resolution was more difficult these days. When she was young, she had had an image of herself to present to her new husband, whom she admired; then to herself; thirdly to the natives (I am an Englishwoman). Now, no one reflected the image of herself, and it seemed diminished: it had lost two thirds of its erstwhile value (no husband, no natives).
The equation of identity as an external state determined by others is especially meaningful when the others have dwindled in number and personal importance. Yet Mrs. Palfrey does have the inner resources to carry on--even if those resources don’t carry her far. While she has moments when she imagines the possibility of a different life, Taylor makes sure we see such opportunities as romantic notions that have little to do with reality. Neither Ludo nor a sudden marriage proposal can save Mrs. Palfrey from the diminished existence she now leads.
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is no story of post-menopausal empowerment but of the grim realities faced by a woman whose time and way of life has passed. Beginning in January and ending in late-autumn, the book self-consciously avoids the holidays, striking and maintaining a kind of elegiac tone from beginning to end.
I feel mildly guilty about this mini-vacation. I’m sure it will pass.
Now--back to the books.
I finished Elizabeth Taylor’s Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont on October 20, 2010.
Taylor tells a quiet but moving story about the sober realities of aging in this short novel about a small group of elderly residents at the Claremont Hotel. Mrs. Palfrey, a widow whose life with her husband was largely lived abroad in colonial postings, moves to the Claremont to maintain both a respectable and an affordable independence for herself.
The book makes a pretty convincing case that she and the other residents at the Claremont may just as well have been strapped to ice floes and set out to sea as live out their days here. While camaraderie exists among the hotel residents, their lives are reduced to finding out what’s on the day’s lunch and dinner menus and anticipating infrequent, dutiful visits from family.
The social currency of these visits among the residents creates the circumstances for a plot here. When Mrs. Palfrey falls during a walk, she ends up asking Ludo, the young man who helps her up and gets her home, to impersonate the rude and neglectful grandson who never visits her. She gets to show him off, and he gets free meals—and later, money. Mrs. Palfrey and Ludo strike up a relationship of sorts. Since we see nothing but neglect from the residents’ families and the hotel management, which needs the guaranteed income the residents represent but resents their aged presence, we worry that Ludo’s interest in Mrs. Palfrey is self-serving as well. The fact that he is an impoverished writer, who is translating her character into fiction without her knowledge, does nothing to dispel our fears.
But Taylor neither makes Ludo wholly bad or wholly good. We get to see a fair amount of his life, too, as he camps out at Harrod’s Banking Hall (where it is warm and bright) to write, visits the troublesome selfish mother to whom he is still attached if not quite devoted, and romances a girl who seems barely interested in him. We come to sympathize with him and see that his kindness to Mrs. Palfrey is genuine, even as he uses her for his own purposes.
This pattern extends to life at the hotel in general. The camaraderie among the residents is, by turns, comforting and somewhat depressing, comical and pathetic. Living in a contemporary London beset by long-haired demonstrators and Beatlemania, all of the Claremont residents, in fact, are left to try to manage a dignified end for themselves. Some do; some don’t. Some drink, like Mrs. Burton. Some become cynical and imperious, like Mrs. Arbuthnot. Some rage, like Mr. Osmond, who complains bitterly to all who will listen about the degraded colonial accents of the day’s radio newscasters. And some, like Mrs. Palfrey, do their best to soldier on. As we learn in the novel’s opening pages:
In spite of long practice, she found that resolution was more difficult these days. When she was young, she had had an image of herself to present to her new husband, whom she admired; then to herself; thirdly to the natives (I am an Englishwoman). Now, no one reflected the image of herself, and it seemed diminished: it had lost two thirds of its erstwhile value (no husband, no natives).
The equation of identity as an external state determined by others is especially meaningful when the others have dwindled in number and personal importance. Yet Mrs. Palfrey does have the inner resources to carry on--even if those resources don’t carry her far. While she has moments when she imagines the possibility of a different life, Taylor makes sure we see such opportunities as romantic notions that have little to do with reality. Neither Ludo nor a sudden marriage proposal can save Mrs. Palfrey from the diminished existence she now leads.
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is no story of post-menopausal empowerment but of the grim realities faced by a woman whose time and way of life has passed. Beginning in January and ending in late-autumn, the book self-consciously avoids the holidays, striking and maintaining a kind of elegiac tone from beginning to end.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
1970
Short List:
Iris Murdoch, Bruno’s Dream—a dying man’s family and friends forge new relationships with each other in the process of caring for him
A.L. Barker, John Brown’s Body—a dull man becomes obsessed with the somewhat crazy young wife of his upstairs neighbor, who thinks he is an unconvicted murderer
Terence Wheeler, The Conjunction—a change of leadership in India is considered through an administrative power struggle at a college in Northern India during the build-up to the Chinese aggression of the early 60s
William Trevor, Mrs. Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel—a well-known documentary photographer comes to a once grand, now seedy Dublin hotel to record its occupants’ story of sin and redemption
Elizabeth Bowen, Eva Trout—an odd heiress comes of age, confounding her previous caretakers, and over time pursues her own vision of family and home
Winner: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member--the genius son of a family of London Jews must be institutionalized for mental illness arising from drug addiction
Judges:
David Holloway (chair)
Lady Antonia Fraser
Ross Higgins
Richard Hoggart
Dame Rebecca West
Looking over this group of novels, it strikes me that isolation is key to all of them. Characters are isolated by madness, illness, belief; they are isolated individually and often as part of a community that is itself set apart in some way. There are lots of oddballs here, whose eccentricities shade into madness or something nearing it. Four of the six novels feature mentally unstable characters, two of whom end up institutionalized and two of whom end up dead. It’s a pretty bleak group of books, really,—though Murdoch does give us a happy ending for most of the population of Bruno's Dream.
Four of the novels (Murdoch’s, Barker’s, Bowen’s, and Rubens’s) are set in London. Only The Conjunction anchors us in a specific historical moment and overt politics. Though all of the novels are contemporary in the worlds they present, much of what we see and hear is interior, with characters in the grip of an idea or a vision and the results spilling over to affect those around them. And while there is some play with narration and point of view, there is not nearly the level of formal experimentation that we saw in the 1969 short list.
I think I understand why the judges chose Rubens’s The Elected Member as an unexpected portrait of a minority community struggling with issues of cultural integrity and success, but I probably would have given the prize to Trevor for Mrs. Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel. Of all of the novels on the 1970 short list, this one is the one that has stayed with me. The questions that it raises about truth and art are compelling, and while it deals with some issues that have their shock value, Trevor doesn’t quite make them the marquee items that Rubens does. I felt that The Elected Member shoveled on the dysfunction in ways specifically designed to shock so that the portrait that we get of culture clash and the problems of both assimilation and isolation are skewed.
I started poking around looking for info on the judges and their decision-making process and ran across this Guardian quote from Lady Antonia Fraser:
The judging of the 1970 prize was a low-key affair except for the feisty behaviour of Dame Rebecca West, a judge for the second year running. At one point she denounced Margaret Drabble for her novels of domestic life on the grounds that “Anyone can do the washing-up; just get a big bowl and some liquid; so why complain about it?” The novel in question was The Waterfall, which both Richard Hoggart and I admired greatly (and didn’t think was about washing-up). I knew Rebecca West, since she was a friend and neighbour of my parents in Sussex, and was very fond of her; all the same, it occurred to me that she was possibly one of the brilliant old ladies who felt threatened by a brilliant young one in the shape of Maggie Drabble. In the end we were split between William Trevor’s Mrs. Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel and Bernice Rubens’s The Elected Member. I voted for Rubens but today would vote for Trevor. (http://www.dooneyscafe.com/archives/1778)*
I made my choice before reading this excerpt, and I have to admit, I’m pleased to see my judgment confirmed. Interesting to hear that Dame Rebecca is a bit of a bitch. Check out Frank Kermode’s account* of her behavior the previous year.
*While the quotes from Fraser and Kermode are available elsewhere, I must reveal that I cadged them from Jean Baird’s Booker Project blog at dooneyscafe.com. She, too, has undertaken reading all of the short lists and commenting on that year’s choice for winner. Baird started the project (or at least blogging about it) just over a year ago and has gotten to 1982 as of this writing. I like what I’ve read so far and have added Baird to my blogroll.
Iris Murdoch, Bruno’s Dream—a dying man’s family and friends forge new relationships with each other in the process of caring for him
A.L. Barker, John Brown’s Body—a dull man becomes obsessed with the somewhat crazy young wife of his upstairs neighbor, who thinks he is an unconvicted murderer
Terence Wheeler, The Conjunction—a change of leadership in India is considered through an administrative power struggle at a college in Northern India during the build-up to the Chinese aggression of the early 60s
William Trevor, Mrs. Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel—a well-known documentary photographer comes to a once grand, now seedy Dublin hotel to record its occupants’ story of sin and redemption
Elizabeth Bowen, Eva Trout—an odd heiress comes of age, confounding her previous caretakers, and over time pursues her own vision of family and home
Winner: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member--the genius son of a family of London Jews must be institutionalized for mental illness arising from drug addiction
Judges:
David Holloway (chair)
Lady Antonia Fraser
Ross Higgins
Richard Hoggart
Dame Rebecca West
Looking over this group of novels, it strikes me that isolation is key to all of them. Characters are isolated by madness, illness, belief; they are isolated individually and often as part of a community that is itself set apart in some way. There are lots of oddballs here, whose eccentricities shade into madness or something nearing it. Four of the six novels feature mentally unstable characters, two of whom end up institutionalized and two of whom end up dead. It’s a pretty bleak group of books, really,—though Murdoch does give us a happy ending for most of the population of Bruno's Dream.
Four of the novels (Murdoch’s, Barker’s, Bowen’s, and Rubens’s) are set in London. Only The Conjunction anchors us in a specific historical moment and overt politics. Though all of the novels are contemporary in the worlds they present, much of what we see and hear is interior, with characters in the grip of an idea or a vision and the results spilling over to affect those around them. And while there is some play with narration and point of view, there is not nearly the level of formal experimentation that we saw in the 1969 short list.
I think I understand why the judges chose Rubens’s The Elected Member as an unexpected portrait of a minority community struggling with issues of cultural integrity and success, but I probably would have given the prize to Trevor for Mrs. Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel. Of all of the novels on the 1970 short list, this one is the one that has stayed with me. The questions that it raises about truth and art are compelling, and while it deals with some issues that have their shock value, Trevor doesn’t quite make them the marquee items that Rubens does. I felt that The Elected Member shoveled on the dysfunction in ways specifically designed to shock so that the portrait that we get of culture clash and the problems of both assimilation and isolation are skewed.
I started poking around looking for info on the judges and their decision-making process and ran across this Guardian quote from Lady Antonia Fraser:
I made my choice before reading this excerpt, and I have to admit, I’m pleased to see my judgment confirmed. Interesting to hear that Dame Rebecca is a bit of a bitch. Check out Frank Kermode’s account* of her behavior the previous year.
*While the quotes from Fraser and Kermode are available elsewhere, I must reveal that I cadged them from Jean Baird’s Booker Project blog at dooneyscafe.com. She, too, has undertaken reading all of the short lists and commenting on that year’s choice for winner. Baird started the project (or at least blogging about it) just over a year ago and has gotten to 1982 as of this writing. I like what I’ve read so far and have added Baird to my blogroll.
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