Category Archives: 20th century Literature

100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, Book review, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, 1955

‘Lolita’ is not an easy book to review. Perhaps more than any other novel that I have reviewed on this blog thus far, ‘Lolita’ comes with a burden of critical responses that make it hard to see the novel for itself. It is an elusive text at the best of times, with its classically flawed narrator, constantly challenging the reader to ask whether Humbert’s words can be taken at face value, as they rarely can. ‘Lolita’ has lost none of its power to shock, even after the passage of more than fifty years since it was published, possibly gaining even more potency as our awareness of child sexual abuse has increased.

So I think I ought to start on safe ground, with a summary of the events and characters of the novel itself. The narrative is told as a recollection of events by the narrator, Humbert Humbert. An introductory chapter purporting to be by the book’s editor, but in fact forming part of the narrative, sets the scene – this is Humbert’s jail-cell confession, written shortly before his death. As with Nabokov’s earlier work, ‘Pale Fire’ there is a significant and palpable gap between the narrator’s view of events, and that of the reader’s, and it is navigating that gap that makes reading ‘Lolita’ both challenging and rewarding.
Humbert is a predatory paedophile, who after a period of grooming establishes a sexual relationship with his orphaned step-daughter, Dolores. It is significant that her name is not Lolita – this is a label given her by Humbert, as part of his attempt to erase her individuality and to control her. It is representative, if you will, of his abuse.
Nabokov set himself a huge challenge here – how to portray a monster through his own eyes, without utterly repulsing the reader. And make no mistake, Humbert is repellent. His abuse of Dolores is charted with euphemisms which do little to disguise the nature of the abuse. Some reviewers and critics (and to be clear, this is not an academic work, so I am not going to provide references to support this claim – assume when I write things like this I simply mean “stuff I have read on the Internet”) fall for Humbert’s version of events, and portray Dolores as the under-age predator, sexually precocious beyond her years, and responsible for seducing poor, vulnerable Humbert. The term ‘Lolita’ has over the years been used generically in this manner, which is a pity, because it should mean “victim”. Indeed, in most popular culture representations of Lolita she is portrayed in Humbert’s terms – sexually precocious, mature, even provocative. I even read one review online which suggested that ultimately the great achievement of this novel is that it makes the reader “fall in love” with Humbert, and that it is a love story. I recognise I am taking a very moral tone here, but part of the reason for keeping this blog in the first place was to chart my authentic reactions to what I read.
What might be interesting would be to give Lolita back her voice. Not as an imaginative exercise, but simply to look at what she says, as recorded by Humbert, but without his commentary. In the first part of the novel Lolita is only glimpsed, and is almost completely silent. When she is collected from camp by Humbert following her mother’s death, she has a few lines, but these are mainly every day observances. Of her thoughts on her abuse we have scarcely half a dozen lines, including (and to be clear, this is not an exhaustive list of her comments, but I think quite representative):

Before Humbert begins to rape her:

“Don’t drool on me. You dirty man” (130)

“Look, let’s cut out the kissing game”

“Lay off , will you”

And after the attacks begin:

“You revolting creature. I was a daisy-fresh girl, and look what you’ve done to me? I ought to call the police and tell that you raped me. Oh you dirty, dirty old man.” (159)

“Can you remember, you know….the hotel where you raped me”.

“An ominous hysterical note rang through her silly words. Presently, making a sizzling sound with her lips, she started complaining of pains, said she could not sit, said I had torn something inside her” (159)

While you could expect Humbert to do everything possible to avoid this self implication, Nabokov has him implicate himself time and again. He is fully aware that he has no defence to his actions, and that Lolita is far from a willing accomplice, nor partially responsible for the crimes, as some commentators (see above) would have it. Apart from her age, and the significant age gap between them, he is a twice married man, and her step-parent, in loco parentis. He bribes her with clothes and treats, and finally pays her per sexual transaction. He threatens her with entry into the care system if she reports his attacks. He attempts to render her unconscious with sleeping pills in order to facilitate his attacks. None of this is consensual, even were consent to be possible.

“Eventually she lived up to her I.Q. by finding a safer hiding place, which I never discovered, but by that time I had brought prices down drastically by having her earn the hard and nauseous way permission to participate in the school’s theatrical programme. (209) With this clear illustration that even delusional Humbert realises his attacks are nauseating, can critics still describe this as a love affair? (I have found one reference to the magazine ‘vanity Fair’ describing ‘Lolita’ as “the only convincing love story of our century”.)

“She had entered my world, umber and black Humberland, with rash curiosity; she surveyed it with a shrug of amused distaste; and it seemed to me now that she was ready to turn away from it with something akin to plain repulsion. Never did she vibrate under my touch, and a strident ‘what d’you think you are doing?’ was all I got for my pains. To wonderland I had to offer, my fool preferred the corniest movies, the most cloying fudge. To think that between a Hamburger and a Humburger, she would – invariably, with icy precision – plump for the former” (Nabokov, 166).

Some kind of normality settles on their existence as Humbert and Dolores restlessly criss-cross the country, always on the move to prevent her from making any friends or appealing to anyone for help. But Humbert lets slip that Dolores never comes to terms with the tragedy of her situation, her captivity:

“I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night – every night, every night – the moment I feigned sleep”. (199)

Is this the behaviour of a young women enjoying the company of her older lover, (as Humbert would love it to be, but cannot persuade himself it is) or that of a deeply traumatised hostage?

‘Lolita’ is an extraordinary novel, written in a complex, allusive and elusive style which almost demands a re-reading. Its subject matter makes it hard to read at points, and I found myself immune to the charms of the monster that is Humbert Humbert. You have to admire Nabokov’s bravery in tackling what remains a taboo subject, and doing so by rejecting an easy stereotypes. In looking for a key to understanding this novel, a fruitless search I know, I keep coming back to the author’s post-script, where he describes the germ of the novel. A newspaper story told of an experiment where a chimpanzee was taught to draw, and eventually drew the bars of its cage. We can ignore the reality of the chimp’s life, but when given the ability to communicate it is the thing it draws. Lolita was caged, imprisoned by Humbert, and deprived of a voice, and we can catch glimpses of the horror of her situation all the more vividly because we see them through the soft-tinted lens of Humbert’s perspective.
 
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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, American literature, Animal stories, Book review, Jack London, The Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild – Jack London – 1903

‘The Call of the Wild’ follows the adventures of Buck, a St Bernard/Collie cross. Buck is stolen from his Californian home, and sold to fuel the need for sled dogs in the Yukon as part of the 1880s gold rush. Buck goes from being a relatively pampered pet to being a possession, to be used and treated as a commodity, beaten close to death, worked even closer. London was a socialist and had first hand experience of the privations of the Yukon and the brutal treatment of animals, but I couldn’t avoid thinking that the story is more than just about dogs. 

Aren’t there clear parallels between the way Buck is broken and abused, and the treatment of slaves in America? I’m not suggesting the novel is a metaphor or parable – it could just be a story “about dogs” (I often check the Amazon reviews on books I am planning to write about, to get a feeling for the overall response, and see if there’s anything significant I have missed. One reviewer for ‘The Call of the Wild’ claims to have been disgusted upon finding out that the novel was “about dogs”, which I have to say I found wonderfully dumb) – but London’s political background suggests that his sympathy for the literal underdog extended beyond animals.

Buck is trafficked together with other captured and bought slaves, sorry dogs, to the Yukon, where he is savagely beaten until the fight goes out of him. He learns his new role chained to the straps of a sled. He is given bare rations, and slowly finds a place in the pecking order amongst the team. Once his job is done he is casually discarded, bought at a discount because he is no longer needed, and once again placed in chains. He finally finds an owner who treats him with love, but this relationship ends brutally, and Buck surrenders to the primal instincts he has been fighting for some time, and gives in to the ‘call of the wild’, becoming leader of a wolf pack.

This is not a story for animal lovers, or at least not those with any trace of sentimentality. Dogs die throughout the book, often killed by Buck himself, but also in a wide variety of other manners. Dogs are portrayed as fierce animals, following instincts derived from their days as man’s earliest companion, when the world was much darker and more dangerous. The novel of course anthropomorphises Buck, giving him human feelings and thoughts, and an understanding of the world far beyond what any pet would ever actually have, but he remains an animal, killing when he has to, and following his instincts – well, almost all his instincts – London understandably doesn’t goes down that road!

At just over 100 pages long this is a short adventure story that can be read in an afternoon or less. The Yukon is captured realistically through Buck’s eyes, and there is a wide cast of characters – I particularly enjoyed the stupid family who ignore the advice of experienced trappers and disappear through a hole in the ice, as we knew they would. The novel is carried forward at a frenetic pace, and the exercise of seeing the world through an animal’s eyes is well done. But at the end of the day this is just an adventure story, and I suspect London wrote books other than ‘Call’ more appropriate for adult readers. Whether I will seek them out is another matter.

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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, Book review, Books made into films, Clockwork orange

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, 1961

clockwork‘A Clockwork Orange’ is narrated by the main character, Alex, a teenage boy in a near future but very recognisable society. Alex leads a gang of ultra-violent thugs, who every evening rape, murder, steal, and commit crimes with impunity. Alex really enjoys this aspect of his life, and the casual nature with which he describes his crimes is chilling. This effect is compounded by several other features of the novel – his age, his love of classical music (which poses the question how could one love music and yet be a monster) – but principally through the use of nadsat, an invented teenage slang. Burgess had noticed that teenagers adopt a specialist argot to confirm membership of their tightly knit group (which of course is the whole point of slang) and writes almost exclusively in this language. Alex can speak conventional English, and does so when the occasion requires (when he is pretending to be civilised, usually in furtherance of a crime) but his language of choice is nadsat. Just to give a flavour of this:

“There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days”.

Don’t let the apparent impenetrability of the language put you off – most words can be understood from their context – droogs here being gang-members for example – and even where the exact meaning is not immediately apparent, the overall meaning is usually very clear. The use of an alternative language reinforces the sense of alienation Alex and his droogs feel for the oppressive society they live in.

Burgess tackles several big themes in this novel. Violence and the degeneration of society – Burgess looks at the gang culture of post-war Britain, and anticipates it getting more prevalent and extreme. Free will is another central theme – once imprisoned, Alex is treated, brainwashed, so that any attempt at violence makes him feel immediately unwell, reducing him to a clockwork orange i.e. something apparently natural, but not so). In an aside, it is mentioned that the Government needs this treatment to be effective, to create more prison space for an anticipated influx of political prisoners. Language is also central to the novel, not only to express Alex’s alienation, but also that of his peer group – teenagers literally talk a different language from their parents; Burgess also notes that some ten year old girls that Alex picks up and brutalises speak a different argot – so each group is developing its own language. Burgess isn’t critical of this – he seems to accept it as inevitable, and while nadsat may not be the language of Shakespeare, it is creative and very expressive, both in its adoption of new terms (I particularly like the term “horrorshow” for “extremely”) and rhetorical phrases such as “Oh my brothers”.

Burgess undoubtedly wrote better books than ‘A Clockwork Orange’ – I have written here previously about my love for the Enderby novels for example – but none made a bigger impact, either at the time of publication, or more infamously with Kubrick’s film adaptation. The principal accusation is that the novel (and the film) glamorised and celebrated violence. There are certainly aspects of the novel that could justify that claim. The language used to describe violence reflects Alex’s enjoyment of the same:

“And, my brothers, it was real satisfaction to me to waltz-left two three, right two three-and carve left cheeky and right cheeky, so that like two curtains of blood seemed to pour out at the same time, one on either side of his fat filthy oily snout in the winter starlight”

The novel ends with Alex recognising that he is growing up, and there might be a future for him in settling down, getting a normal job, and raising a family. It is a strange, downbeat note on which to end, and apparently this final chapter was omitted from the American version, and the film adaptation. While the novel positively fizzes with ideas it is not, however, didactic – I doubt if anyone ever had their ideas or lives changed by it. I recognise that this may not have been Burgess’s intention – he once described the novel as “a sort of tract, even a sermon, on the importance of the power of choice” – but if it is, it is an unconvincing one. Would we really prefer pre-treatment Alex in his raping, murdering, ultra-violent glory to compliance, obedient post-treatment Alex? Yes, the loss of freedom of choice is painful, but so is the lawlessness and anarchy Alex creates when free. That of course is an entirely academic debate – the Ludovico treatment is fictional – so it is hard to get too exercised by the issue. Instead, the film generated a more pressing debate on whether portraying violence in a glamorous way can incite it. The relationship between film violence and criminality is not actually raised in the book – Alex not once attempts to justify his behaviour by reference to anything he has watched – in fact his cultural interests are completely high-brow.

Given a choice between more time in the bleak, post-war urban landscapes of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and the wit and erudition of Enderby, and I choose the lonesome poet every time.

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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, A Single Man, Book review, Christopher Isherwood, gay literature

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood, 1964

‘A Single Man’ is a portrait of a single day in the life of George, a lonely, late middle-aged Englishman living in Santa Monica and teaching at a university in LA. George is gay. Thus far, thus autobiographical. George has in the recent past lost his lover, Jim, in a car accident, and is slowly coming to terms with his loss. We follow him and his internal monologue through the course of a day as he gets up, drives to work, presents a lecture to a very diverse group of students, and then goes to the gym, all the while narrating his progress, and simply holding it together. One gets the impression of a man on the edge, terrified of growing old and being alone, conscious of the need to keep his sexuality, still taboo in America at this time, secret, but equally being struck by lust several times during the course of the day. He needs to grieve, but is unable to do so – indeed, he has told his neighbours that his ‘friend’, Jim, has simply moved away, rather than acknowledging his death and having to respond to their condolences.

This was brave stuff for a novel in the 1960’s. Homosexuality was illegal and while attitudes across America varied widely, and still do, Isherwood references some of the struggles gay men faced. (Remarkably, while gay marriage is not legal in the USA, “as of April 2014, 17 states either had not repealed their laws against sexual activity among consenting adults, or had not revised them to accurately reflect their true scope. Often, State laws were drafted to encompass other forms of sexual conduct such as bestiality, and no attempt has been made to separate them. Fourteen states’ statutes purport to ban all forms of sodomy regardless of the participants’ genders. Four states specifically target their statutes at same-sex relations only”) (With thanks to the wonderful Wikipedia, which knows all).
George is, in his grief, alienated from his environment. His students are “the male and female raw material which is fed daily into this factory” (ie the university) (page 32). He only really comes to life when sexually aroused, by the lithesome tennis players he sees, or when exercising in the gym next to a desirable if dangerously young man.  

There are some difficult scenes where Isherwood/George describes his disgust with the female body, including his dying ‘friend’, Doris, previously a short-term lover of his partner, Jim. He remembers her as:

“that big, arrogant animal of a girl…With that body which sprawled stark naked, gaping wide in shameless demand…gross insucking vulva, sly ruthless greedy flesh, in all the bloom and gloss and arrogant resilience of youth…I am Doris…I am Bitch-Mother nature.” (75)

There is plenty more in this vein. You could read this as George hitting out in his grief at someone who tried to steal his partner from him, but the visceral nature of the description reveals a nastier strain of misogyny. Heterosexuals generally get quite a hard time – children are described as appearing “litter after litter” (9) and even ‘Children at play’ traffic signs are seen as sinister. This is the interior narrative of a bitter sad, single man. His anger and resentment of the heterosexual families that encroach on his bohemian community is understandable, but nonetheless unpleasant.

George’s day, and the novel, concludes with a wild, improbable and drunken midnight swim, and finally with a heart attack, a gloomy, hopeless ending to a sad and bitter life. ‘A Single Man’ is an important landmark in gay literature, and is economically, sparsely written, but it has a sadness which made me quite glad to be leaving this world. Isherwood’s earlier novels may have been less polished that this, but they had an optimism and hope missing here.
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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, American literature, Booker Prizewinner, Kurt Vonnegut, Second World War, Slaughterhouse 5

Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut, 1969

I’ve written elsewhere on the mysterious process that is re-reading a novel. The experience ranges from a comforting stroll down memory lane, to the more common “I know I have read this, but for the life of me can’t remember a single thing about it”. Slaughterhouse 5 was for me definitely a re-read, and I had a dim recollection of the main elements of the plot, if you can call it that, but the primary experience was as close to a new read as makes no difference.

‘Slaughterhouse 5’ is a strange novel. It follows the life and times of time traveller, World War 2 survivor, and alien kidnapee, Billy Pilgrim. Billy experiences time as a continuum, and travels from point to point across it freely, making this an exceptionally fractured novel. “It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.”Breaking that down into a “what happened” narrative requires the imposition of a more formal, chronological time scheme and would be misleading; there is a collection of events spread across time that is revealed to us, the reader, but only a limited attempt to present this in any sort of order. In a classic post modernist manner, Vonnegut explains “There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”   On reflection, however, I think I may have overstated the impact of the fractured time scheme on the narrative flow of the novel – there is underneath all this jumping around in time nevertheless a reasonably steady progress of the central narrative, from Billy’s capture as a prisoner of war, his transport across Europe to Dresden, to the final horror of the fire-bombing.

 

There’s also an incongruous comic book silliness to much of the novel – at one point Billy is captured by aliens and displayed in a zoo, for example. However, the seriousness is never far away, giving the reader an unsettling experience of stepping from genre to genre in the space of a few lines.

The title of the novel refers to the refuge Vonnegut used to survive the Dresden firebombing of 1945. He unequivocally portrays this as an horrifying act of violence, but doesn’t take sides – the reader is left to draw their own conclusions about the morality of the raids. He quotes the figure of 135,000 deaths in the raid, which was accepted, to a point, at the time, but is now know to be a politically motivated exaggeration of what was nevertheless a massacre. Had the Allies lost the war the Dresden raids would undoubtedly have been treated as war crimes. Some of the horror of this event is shown, but it is mainly mitigated by insistence of the philosophy at the heart of the book, that bad things are best not dwelt upon, as they are always going to have happened; far better to focus on the good. This is best summarised in the fatalistic chant of the novel, “So it goes”.

 

As a classic post modern meta-narrative, Slaughterhouse 5 is as much about the process of writing a novel as the events described. As is now quite common, but at the time was much more original, the book contains its own review:
“There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”
Which is as good as a summary as I am going to find. One footnote – this novel contains a passing reference to “The Red Badge of Courage”, another American novel about war, and also one of the top 100 Guardian novels. So it goes.

 

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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, Booker Prizewinner, Crime, In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, 1966

Read in Abacus edition.

This non-fiction novel (Capote’s term for it) describes the murder of the Clutter family, a mid-Western American family, and the subsequent arrest, conviction, and execution of their killers, Hickock and Smith.

It’s a banal and senseless murder, and despite the meticulous way it is reconstructed by Capote he never really gets close to explaining why the killing took place. The motive is one sense is quite simple – theft, and an attempt to cover their tracks – no witnesses – but it takes a certain deranged quality to murder four helpless people ‘in cold blood’, and it is that aspect of the killings that remains elusive. Towards the end of the book Capote hints at the possibility that Smith, the actual killer of all four family members, was triggered to commit the killings by some resemblance between the first of the family to die, the father, Herb, and an authority figure in his (Smith’s) past, but the idea is only mentioned in passing and is not followed through.

A non-fiction novel is arguably a contradiction in terms – novels are by their nature works of imagination. Of course many novels take as their starting point something factual, either in the public domain or the author’s personal lives, so in one sense Capote simply takes this idea and develops it. But the reader is left uncertain as to what extent the description of events – including detailed conversations, and accounts of the characters’ thought processes – are ‘as imagined’ by Capote, and which are based upon interviews with the participants and other research. The novel is sub-titled ‘A true account of a multiple murder and its consequences’, and in a short acknowledgements section Capote claims “All the material in this book not derived from my own observation is either taken from official records or is the result of interviews with the persons directly concerned, more often than not numerous interviews conducted over a considerable period of time”. But apart from this acknowledgement, Capote erases any trace of himself from this novel – there is never any mention of “when I spoke to him” or “later he told me that…”. In reality this invisibility is misleading – his presence would have had some impact, particularly long after the crime when the appeals process was coming to a conclusion. The ‘support’ of a celebrity writer would have had an impact, and of course people more cynical than me have pointed out that Capote had an interest in the final execution of Smith and Hickock, giving him the ending his novel needed.

My instinct is that wherever possible Capote stuck to the facts, as they could be verified. The killing is banal and there is no attempt to sensationalise it – in some ways quite the opposite, because Hickock’s sexual perversions are glossed over, the executions when they finally come, is over in three or four pages, and while the murders are described in detail, this is done with as much sensitivity as possible in the circumstances. Capote tells the story of the killings murders themselves through Smith’s confession – had the murders been described by anyone else the terror of the victim’s would have been unavoidable, but because he was simply unable to share any real empathy with them it is (slightly) easier to bear.

Without wishing to labour the point, I find the form of this novel uncomfortable. Documentary recreations of crimes, where the known events are supported by evidence of one form or another (‘according to a witness statement’, ‘in evidence, Smith said’, the coroner’s report said, etc.) allow the reader to judge for themselves the extent to which this the report is accurate. Similarly, imaginative recreations where the author attempts to step into the shoes of the characters and capture what it must have felt like to be present and involved in the crime, are another legitimate form. But this is a halfway house between these two forms, where some of the scenes are fictional (Dewey, the lead investigator, is shown at the end of the novel meeting one of Nancy Clutter’s friends at her grave – he subsequently denied that ever happened) and others likely to be based upon conversations and interviews with the participants where their accuracy can never be tested. If the end result gave us an insight into crimes of this kind then the effort could perhaps be justified – but eventually all we learn is the banality of evil.

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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, Book review, First World War, Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford, 1915

This novel has an utterly misleading title. Ford claimed ‘The Good Soldier’ was his publisher’s idea, as an alternative to ‘The Saddest Story’, which may not have caught the public mood, but the commercial appeal of a novel published in 1915 about a ‘good soldier’ must have been hard to resist. Why not go the whole distance and call it “Brits beat the Hun”? It would have had as much relevance.

My main reaction while reading, and on completing, this novel, was one of irritation. The fallible narrator may have been innovative for its time (was it really?) and the fractured timescale may even have seemed daring, but 100 years on these features cannot disguise the novel’s many weaknesses. The characters are spoilt, deluded, and ignorant, yet we are invited to admire them despite their manifold flaws. The narrative lacks pace and interest, and the language plods.

To take a step back, this novel tells the “saddest story” of two couples who meet on vacation in Germany. The Dowell’s are wealthy Americans on what develops into a long-extended honeymoon – having married without her parent’s permission, Florence develops a spontaneous heart condition as soon as she boards her transAtlantic liner, a condition that conveniently means she is unable ot consumate her marriage without the exercise putting her life at risk. Her husband, our narrator, relates this all with a straight face, seemingly unaware that he has been duped. They meet the soldier of the title, Edward Ashburnham, and his wife Leonara. Edward’s occupation is incidental of the events of the novel; he seems to have one of those Army positions that involve minimal amounts of soldiering. He is wealthy, but profilgate, a drinker, gambler, and womaniser. His wife detests him, but is forbidden by her Catholic faith from divorcing him, so instead devotes herself to torturing him. Deeply unhappy, Edward and Florence eventually separately kill themselves. The narrator insists to the bitter end that Edward is a good man, but the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming.

This novel is about these two unhappy marriages. At the heart of their unhappiness is, inevitably, sex. Ford is unable to address this issue directly, so he employs a wide range of euphemisms to hint at the issue:

“It was the ship’s doctor who discreetly suggested to me that I had better refrain from manifestations of affection. (83)

“I must never enter her room without knocking, or her poor little heart might flutter away to its doom” (84)

“It will give you some idea of the extraordinary naiveté of Edward Ashburnham that, at the time of his marriage and for perhaps a couple of years after, he did not really know how children are produced” (136)

“he passed the night in her bed”. (147)

“From the moment of his unfaithfulness….she never acted the part of wife to Edward.” (163)

“Watching Edward more intently and with more straining of ears that that which a cat bestows upon a bird overhead, she was aware of the progress of his passion….She was aware of it from the way in which his eyes returned to doors and gateways; she knew from his tranquilities when he had received satisfactions.” (163)
I particularly like the last of these – note the plural ‘satisfactions’.  Our narrator seems unperturbed by his wife’s machinations to avoid sex with him, hinting that this is because he may discover that she is not a virgin, and later in the novel accepts her infidelity without complaint. He is a deeply unappealing character, and is rewarded at the end of the novel with another ‘partner’ he is unable to sleep with.
‘The Good Soldier is in many ways a transitional novel, bridging the gap between the Victorian novels where sex was never mentioned, and anticipating Lawrence and the other authors who finally shrug off this constraint. He is also a modernist in his style. He adopts a very conversational style, attempting to mimic the way Dowling may have written a personal narrative were he to have existed. He anticipates any criticism of this style by explaining it thus:
“I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way, so that it may be difficult for anyone to find their path through what may be sort of a maze. …I console myself with thinking that this is a real story, and that, after all, real stories are probably told best in the way a person would tell hem. They will then seem most real” (167). Apart from being rambling, Ford obviously also though that repetition was key to this conversational style. (If he is right, conversations with him would have been pretty dull!) Time and again Dowling repeats himself without variation, as for example here:
“I should marry Nancy if her reason were ever sufficiently restored to let her appreciate the meaning of the Anglican marriage service. But it is probable that her reason will never be sufficiently restored to let her appreciate the meaning of the Anglican marriage service” (212). The difference between bad writing, and deliberately bad writing to convey character is of course important, but over the course of a whole novel the point is lost. The novel also uses the technique of telling the reader the eventual fate of the characters early on, rather than leading up to this, a technique which strangely seemed quite new when Muriel Spark used it in the “Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” fifty years later, but which here simply seems confused.
One last thought: there’s very little humour in this novel, but one line did stand out, when the narrator comments on Edward’s soldiering:
“Edward ought, I suppose, to have gone to the Transvaal. It would have done him a great deal of good to get killed”. (156/7)

 

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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, Book review, Booker Prizewinner, Disgrace, J M Coetzee

Disgrace, by J M Coetzee, 1999

Disgrace follows the downfall and disgrace of David Lurie, a lecturer in Communications at Cape Town University. He is 52 and twice divorced. His job at the university has recently been redefined, prefiguring some of the significant changes in South African society that form the backdrop to and context of this novel. Lurie has a brief affair with one of his students. The descriptions of the sex between them are carefully constructed to make it clear that this is an abusive relationship. They are shown from Lurie’s perspective, but even he, delusional about his attractiveness though he is, can still understand that what he does with Melanie, his student, is wrong. He sees her as “A child! No more than a child” (20). All the descriptions of Melanie emphasise her youth and immaturity, and her passivity towards a man old enough to be her grandfather. The descriptions of their sex, even though filtered through Lurie’s distorted perspective,  makes it utterly unambiguous that her consent is either not given, or given under pressure and protest:
“She is too surprised to resist the intruder who thrusts himself upon her… “No, not now!, she says, struggling” (20/21).
Lurie may fool himself that he is being a sexual adventure – “I’m going to invite you to do something reckless” (16) but the reader is left in no doubt that this is a sexual assault:
“She does not resist. All she does is avert herself; avert her lips, avert her eyes. She lets him lay her out on the bed and undress her… little shivers of cold run through her. Not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core. As though she had decided to go slack, die within herself”. (Interesting use of the phrase “lay her out” as opposed to “lay her” for example, with the suggestion of her being like a corpse, laid out by an undertaker.
As soon as the ‘relationship’ is exposed, an unrepentant Lurie is sacked. He goes to live in the South African countryside with his daughter, Lucy, who runs a small holding a dog kennel with the assistance of Petrus, a worker on her property. Petrus’s status changes during the course of the novel. South African was still in transition at this point, moving slowly away from being the country of apartheid where white people held all the positions of responsibility and own much of the land. This transition is embodied by the changes in the relationship between Lucy and Petrus. He starts the novel as her employee (“I am the gardener and the dog-man” (65) but by the end he is a landowner and has proposed a form of arranged marriage with Lucy, which she seems minded to accept, as a form of protection.
The dark centre of the novel is a disturbing and distressing attack on the Lurie family, where Lucy is raped by 3 black men during a home invasion. Her father is shamed by his inability to protect his daughter, and puzzled by her passive acceptance of what has happened to her. She refuses to report the rape, and appears to accept as inevitable that it will happen again, and that there is nothing she can do about it. Her father urges her to leave the smallholding, but she refuses. Coetzee doesn’t offer any simple explanations for this puzzling refusal. Lurie speculates that her response is an example of ‘white guilt’, where the sins of the apartheid era are expiated by the subsequent suffering of the white community: ‘

 

“But why did they hate me so? I had never set eyes on them.’
‘It was history speaking through them…A history of wrong. Think of it that way, if it helps. It may have seemed personal, but it wasn’t”.
The reader is invited to draw parallels between Lurie’s behaviour towards his students and the mixed race prostitutes he frequents at the start of the novel, and the subsequent rape of his daughter.

 

I get that. The parallels are pretty unavoidable and frankly heavy-handed. White people in apartheid South Africa (and of course elsewhere) abused black people, and the response of the black men who rape Ellen, while not excused, have to be seen in that historical context. That, anyway, has been the typical reading of the novel in most reviews and analysis. (For example, the London Review of Books review summarises this question thus:’ Lucy decides not to press charges, believing that this rape, in the South African context, is not ‘a public matter’. In the face of irresistible historical change – the collapse of a corrupt order – the claims of the individual are necessarily of secondary importance, even irrelevant. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n20/elizabeth-lowry/like-a-dog)

 

But I am not buying that, not for one minute. Rape is rape, irrespective of race, and in creating a female character who appears to accept that being raped is the price she has to pay for retaining her home, Coetzee comes perilously close to suggesting that some forms of sexual assault can be understood if not condoned. There is no place for white people in South Africa unless they can come to terms with the retribution that is coming their way, Coetzee seems to imply when he puts these words into Lucy’s mouth:  

 

“What if rape is ‘the price one has to pay for staying on? Perhaps that is how they look at it; perhaps that is how I should look at it too. They see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live here without paying? Perhaps that is what they tell themselves.

 

This is not a didactic novel, far from it, but I have not found in any reviews any other explanation of Lucy’s response. But she is not a cardboard cut-out, allegorically representing white rule in South Africa; she is a strongly realised character, whose response to her attack is upsettingly realistic in all other respects.

 

There are two other important themes running through the novel which I ought to mention. Firstly, there is the question of human attitudes towards animals. Lurie volunteers in an animal shelter, in which his main role is in helping euthanize the unwanted dogs and cats brought into the refuge, and then disposing of their bodies. Coetzee suggests that a value of a society can be judged by the way it treats its pets; Lurie redeems himself by treating the dogs kindly, including respecting their bodies when they come to be incinerated. This echoes an earlier comment by Lucy when she foresees herself stripped of any status and value in South African society, “like a dog”. By this point in the novel we have come to treat sceptically anything Lurie says, so when he argues that “as for animals, by all means let us be kind to them. But let us not lose perspective. We are of a different order of creation from animals. Not higher necessarily, just different. So if we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we feel guilty or fear retribution” (74).

 

This is not just an argument about how people treat animals, of course – the phrase “different order of creation” was used by those who sought to justify slavery and apartheid.  In a final, deeply pessimistic scene, Lurie sacrifices a dog who he had formed an attachment to through an apparent shared enjoyment of music. It is not by accident that the cover illustration of most editions of this novel feature a picture of a dog.

 

The other less successful theme is Lurie’s plan to write about Byron, more specifically a light opera about Byron’s sexual adventures in Italy. He plans to orchestrate this using the banjo, which is obviously intended as a way of illustrating the absurd gap between his view of the world and reality. It sets up some uncomfortable contrasts between Lurie’s meditations of 19th century romantic womanising, and his own delusional view of himself.

 

I can admire the skill involved in constructing ‘Disgrace’. The carefully ambiguous title probably merits a separate blog entry all of its own, given the multiple things that are considered or treated as disgraces in this novel. But the central characters are unlikeable – Lurie in particular is something of a narcissistic monster (his reaction when told his daughter is pregnant is to consider the impact this will have on his sex life: “What pretty girl can he expect to be wooed into bed with a grandfather”) (217) or under-developed. Lucy is real enough, but trapped inside Lurie’s perspective we never get close to understanding what makes her tick.  There’s one ultimate test I always apply when evaluating a novel – would I read something else by this author? And my response here would be as of now, no, although I reserve the right to change my mind!
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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, Book review, Classics, Empire, Kim, Rudyard Kipling

Kim, by Rudyard Kipling, 1901

Many of the classic novels I have been reading in recent weeks have been reasonably familiar to me. often this is through film or television adaptations, or from having read versions or parts of the novel decades ago. ‘Kim’ is an exception to that general rule – although I had heard of the novel, I had no prior knowledge of the plot or characters. I am sure it has been adapted as a film at some point, but not I suspect with any great success.

Kipling is notorious as a jingoistic supporter of Empire, and as this novel is set in 19th Century India, one would have expected the white men to be the heroes, and the Indian characters to be (negative) stereotypes or caricatures. In the event, nothing could be further from the truth. The novel follows the adventures of a young orphan – Kim – who is born of Irish parents, but who grows up assimilated into Indian culture, and who identifies as an Indian (when he first wears white men’s trousers, for example, he finds them uncomfortable and can’t understand why anyone would wear them). He is a classic street rat, surviving on his wits. He meets a Tibetan monk on a pilgrimage, and quickly strikes up a friendship which is the heart of the novel. They journey around India in a fairly leisurely fashion. India is shown in all its magnificent complexity, which many different races, religions and castes. The occupying English forces are also not portrayed simplistically as either all good or bad – they include a range of well developed characters, some of whom are benevolent, others less so. But there is not a hint of jingoism anywhere in the novel. Kipling quite obviously had a deep affinity with India, and while his portrait of the country is not rose-tinted, at the same time he demonstrates an understanding of the peoples, traditions and cultures that you would never have anticipated from someone with his reputation as a defender of Empire. Occupation is not a benevolent force for good in India – neither is it the opposite – it simply is part of the experience of the citizens of the country.

In the course of his journeys, Kim’s parenthood is revealed, and he is given an ‘English’ education. Because of his knowledge of India and its culture, as well as a natural quick wit, he is prepared for a career as a spy, a player in the ‘Great Game’. We are introduced to some of the other spies, all native Indians risking their lives to ensure intelligence is fed to the occupying English. Towards the end of the novel, as Kim’s spiritual journey reaches its anti-climax, this espionage sub-plot also comes to a slightly comic conclusion, as two foreign spies (French and Russian, in an unlikely alliance) are humiliated because of their lack of respect for and knowledge of Indian culture.

Given the period in which it was written, this is a surprisingly enlightened novel. But was it any good? Perhaps there is a reason why the novel is not in the first tier of classics, not part of the cultural zeitgeist. Because the answer is not really. It was a struggle to complete. Much of the action is conveyed through dialogue, and Kipling uses innumerable terms deriving from the Raj which are sometimes translated, but often not (in the particular edition at least (Wordsworth Classics) – I can imagine that there are other versions with more comprehensive footnotes that would have clarified some of these terms). So it was at points not easy to follow the plot. Kim is an endearing character, and his supporting cast are reasonably well developed, but overall I never fully engaged with the novel, and would probably not have finished it were it not for a streak of stubbornness. I can see why, when choosing a Kipling novel to adapt, Disney chose ‘The Jungle Book’, not ‘Kim’!

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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, Book review, Classics, Martin Amis, Money, Suicide

Money – a suicide note – Martin Amis – 1980

‘Money’ was written in the early 1980’s, and published in 1984. This was the highpoint of Thatcherism, greed is good, and ‘Money’ represents one of the high artistic points of that period.

This isn’t saying much, because while everyone else in the Arts at the time was pointing out with different degrees of vehemence that greed is not that good, ‘Money’ is far less didactic. Money is undoubtedly a corrupting influence, but absence of money is worse. John Self, the semi-autobiographical narrator of ‘Money’ is a whoring, alcoholic, masturbating monster, roaring around London and New York, ignorant of the chaos he leaves in his wake. He reads 1984, and sees himself as one of the Thought Police. He is involved in a very confused way in the casting and production of a film based upon an idea of his, but this is largely immaterial, simply providing a backdrop to the relentlessness of Self’s hedonistic orgy. There are some wildly excessive moments of hilarity, such as when he goes to a club one night. He is totally unaware of the chaos he causes, and of course is, as in most of the novel, extremely drunk:
There was a white-haired old robot at the desk, and we shot the breeze for a while as he checked me out on the intercom. I told him a joke. How does it go now? There’s this farmer who keeps his wife locked up in the – Wait, let’s start again,…Anyway we had a good laugh over this joke when I’d finished or abandoned it, and I was told where to go. Then I got lost for a bit. I went into a room where a lot of people in evening dress were sitting at square tables playing cards or backgammon. I left quickly and knocked over a lamp by the door.  The lamp should never have been there in the first place, with its plinth sticking out like that. For a while I thrashed around in some kind of cupboard, but fought my way out in the end.  Skipping down the stairs again, I fell heavily on my back. It didn’t hurt that much, funnily enough.”

 

This was quite an extraordinary read. It is not for the easily offended – John Self is an equal opportunities offender, hitting out (in some cases literally) at women, minorities, gays, and the disabled. It is also over-long – once the pattern of transatlantic excess is established it doesn’t need repeating quite so often. And don’t read this novel for the characterisation, plotting, or dramatic incident either. While the fourth wall is broken quite regularly, with ‘Martin Amis’ making several appearances, this is not really a post-modern novel either – in many ways it is quite traditional, with a heavily broadcast ‘twist’ at the end, for what it is worth, long after the reader has stopped caring what is going to happen to John or any of the other minor characters.

 

What made this novel stand out to me was Amis’s wonderful use of language. It’s not just metaphor, although these are exceptional, with sometimes four or five on one sentence. But the quality of the writing is quite poetical. Take this description of the sky for instance:

 

“when the sky is as grey as this – impeccably grey, a denial, really of the very concept of colour – and the stooped millions lift their heads, it’s hard to tell the air from the impurities in our human eyes, as if the sinking climbing paisley curlicues of grit were part of the element itself, rain, spores, tears, film, dirt. Perhaps, at such moments, the sky is no more then the sum of the dirt that lives in our human eyes.”

 

When I first started to sketch out this review I struggled to find a novel to compare this to. Then it dawned on me that the closest writing style is the first person narrative style that characterises gonzo journalism, which the Internet defines as

 

“an energetic first-person participatory writing style in which the author is a protagonist, and it draws its power from a combination of social critique and self-satire…Gonzo journalism involves an approach to accuracy that involves the reporting of personal experiences and emotions, in contrast to traditional journalism, which favours a detached style and relies on facts or quotations that can be verified by third parties. Gonzo journalism disregards the strictly-edited product favoured by newspaper media and strives for a more personal approach; the personality of a piece is as important as the event the piece is on. Use of sarcasm, humour, exaggeration, and profanity is common.”

 

Which summarises ‘Money’ very nicely thank you. So arguably the best way to read this novel as a piece of reportage from the frontline of the 1980’s class war. Amis remains very much on my list of authors that can write well, but can also produce some absolute stinkers, but this was in many ways a redemptive experience.
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