Category Archives: Book review

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

Supplementary: Hadrian 7th – F Rolfe – 1904 (Part 2)

Fans of obscure words might be interested in this.

In my review of F Rolfe’s Hadrian 7th (1904) I mentioned Rolfe’s predilection for using arcane language. I made a note of just a small selection as examples – see if you recognise any:

  • koprolalian
  • cardinalitial
  • matutinal
  • acolyth
  • prooimion
  • Sbdiaconate
  • yearnest
  • exoletes
  • dicaculous
  • dilacerated
  • pachydermatosity
  • juvence
  • exsequies
  • intagliate
  • curule
  • rascalt
  • fulguration

How did you do? Obviously this exercise is made more difficult by the absence of context, and in any novel about the papacy you would expect a few obscure terms about the Roman Catholic liturgy and rituals. But Rolfe goes completely overboard, rooting out obscure 16th century terms, often adapting them into a form not normally found (so koprolalian would normally be rendered with a c not a k, meaning the obsessive use of scatological language). Others he more simply invents from their Latin and Greek roots – prooimion for example, with which he opens his novel.

The message is clear – Rolfe is more intelligent than the reader, whom he holds in contempt. If my earlier review hadn’t made the point clearly enough, unless you love weird obscure words – DON’T READ IT!! I do so you don’t have to.

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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, Book review, Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, 1925

 

‘Mrs Dalloway’ is Woolf’s modernist masterpiece. Sadly, anything I have to say about it, as is so often the case when reviewing classics, is not now going to be original. If you want to know what happens in the novel Wikipedia is a click away, and the novel’s themes, language, characterisation and structures have been analysed to death over the years. Yet the purpose of this blog is not to break new ground in the field of literary analysis, (or even avoid tired clichés such as “break new ground”), but to record my honest impression of the novel, and leave me sufficient reminders that I did actually read it, once a few years have passed.Mrs Dalloway

‘Mrs Dalloway’ follows Clarissa, the eponymous central character in a single summer’s day as she prepares for a party at her house in Westminster. It is set shortly after the end of the First World War, and the echoes of the war in people’s lives reverberate in the same way that Big Ben echoes throughout the course of the day/novel. ‘Mrs Dalloway’ is daring in its form – it draws a portrait rather than tells a story, and takes point of view narration to places it had not gone before. I have avoided using the term “stream of consciousness” thus far, but no further – but in fact that doesn’t tell the whole story, because as well as showing us the thoughts of her characters in a free form manner, the novel swoops freely from one mind to another as characters pass in the street. Woolf also uses another technique to unsettle the reader, leaving the object of sentences to the last possible moment in many of her sentences. This requires the reader to restart many sentences, once they have ascertained who is thinking or speaking.

The novel is daring in other ways. It introduces homosexual relationships in a coded way – but fairly explicitly nonetheless. It is clear that Clarissa had feelings for a female childhood friend, and fears that her daughter has come under the spell of a very serious lesbian acquaintance. Clarissa’s parallel character, Septimus Warren, avoids sex with his wife, which he finds disgusting, and is unable to come to terms with the loss of his close army friend, Evans.

I’ve described ‘Mrs Dalloway’ earlier as a masterpiece, and I wanted to try to illustrate this, not just with a short summary but a closer look at the novel’s opening paragraph. Here it is:

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning — fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”— was that it? —“I prefer men to cauliflowers”— was that it?

So why is this such exceptional writing? I wanted to pick out a few features. First of all the reader is only given clues as to who the characters are – we can guess that Lucy is a domestic servant – because Mrs Dalloway is doing a chore for her because she is so busy – and that Mr Rumplemayer is a tradesman, because his men are coming to remove the doors from their hinges. But this is very little to go on – and we have no clue (at this point) as to where Boulton is (a childhood country home, we can infer, but not where) or who Peter Walsh is – a family friend or member, past lover. The fact that he is given a full name, unlike Lucy or Mr Rumplemayer, tells us something about his relationship with Clarissa, but so far we know very little about her – she is prosperous enough to own a house where the doors need to be removed to accommodate a party, and has domestic staff, but that is just about it. This is clearly going to be a novel where the reader has to do a lot of work to understand what is going on, who is speaking, what their relationships are to one another, and so on.

This opening paragraph introduces us to Clarissa’s internal monologue, and several of her ways of thinking. This isn’t simply a replay of her thoughts – there is still a narrator here (not the direct reporting of thought as speech, “yes, I said yes, I will yes” but “it had always seemed to her” (rather than “it had always seemed to me”). The narrator is not a translator, simply leaving the reader small clues to follow. Her memories are very visual and sensual – she remembers the squeaking hinges on the French windows – but what starts as a very happy childhood memory – “what a lark, what a plunge” gradually becomes more serious. Look at the adjectives – “fresh” “calm” “stiller”, “chill”, “sharp” and “solemn” – all leading to the feeling “that something awful was about to happen”. She cannot avoid the darkness of her thoughts for long, and even something as pleasant as a summer’s morning leads her inexorably to a darker place. The reader is here introduced to the dark element Clarissa’s character which she will struggle unsuccessfully throughout the novel to escape from.

Clarissa also thinks in metaphor – the morning is fresh “as if issued to children on a beach” and the air is “like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave”. Another theme which is introduced here is the fallibility of memory “Was that it?” is repeated as a refrain.

Just one final thought on sentence structure. Stream of consciousness writing is sometimes thought of as inevitably leading to long cumbersome sentences. You can find these here if you look for them, of course, but there are also incomplete and fractured much shorter sentences – “For Lucy had her work cut out for her” – which accurately reflects the way thoughts will come to us, sometimes in long streams, and at others in short staccato bursts.

I hope I have written enough here to whet your appetite for some Woolf. I know she is not to everyone’s taste – but there are depths here that you could take many readings to explore, extraordinarily thoughtful and sensitive writing that are a pleasure to revisit.

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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, Book review, F R Rolfe, Hadrian the Seventh

Hadrian the Seventh, by F Rolfe, 1904

When undertaking to read my way through (and then blog about) the Guardian 100 best novels in English, I hoped to find some hidden gems, some novels which I had not come across previously, which would then lead me on to discover more works by the author. Sadly that hasn’t happened thus far. But equally there haven’t been any complete stinkers, novels I simply wish I hadn’t bothered to pick up in the first place. Until now. ‘Hadrian VII’ finds whole new ways of being bad, and the fact it found a publisher in the first place, let alone somehow found a place in the Guardian’s list, is a cause for astonishment.Hadrian

The novel is a thinly disguised and infantile personal fantasy. The protagonist, William George Rose, applied to join the priesthood as a young man, and was rejected. No clear explanation is offered for his rejection, but there are sufficient hints relating to his personal life to suggest that inappropriate sexual conduct was suspected. He then spends twenty years in splendid, bitter isolation, nursing his wounds. Although he is the first person narrator, and as such profoundly blind to his own faults, it is clear that some people simply can’t stand him. I normally take great pains to distinguish between the narrator and the author, but given the autobiographical nature of the novel’s setting I am not sure that is possible here. In fact as a reader I felt largely superfluous to the exercise – Rolfe is exorcising his demons, settling scores with anyone who crossed him in his life, and imagining his glorious career in the Church, and I was not needed in that process. The novel is for him, not me. The telling of a story, development of character or any of the other traditional things one looks for in a novel are largely ignored. I get the impression Rolfe would actually have been quite happy if this novel had not been read – it would have just confirmed his persecution complex.

Out of the blue Rose is approached by penitent representatives of the Roman Catholic Church which has collectively come to its senses. He is offered the priesthood, and a few pages of ecclesiastical nonsense later sees him catapulted him into the papacy, becoming Pope Hadrian 7th. There he reforms the church, meddles with international politics, and bests all his remaining enemies, only to succumb to an assassin’s bullet at the novel’s close.

The novel is badly written, with Rolfe/Corvo’s tendency to use obscure religious words (acolyth, matutinal, among many others) and deliberately misspell others (e.g. chymist) particularly irritating. The central character is unlikeable – hugely egocentric, arrogant, and he most unlikely priest or pope you will ever find – he practices astrology and admits to detesting his fellow man. The minor characters are ill-defined, and one who eventually kills Rose for no apparent reason, Jerry Sant, adopts a range of accents throughout the novel. Rose interferes in European politics, encouraging Germany to annex Austria and invade France and Russia. While this latter point might look prescient, speculation of this kind was commonplace at the time, and doesn’t suggest any particular insight by Rolfe. Even Robert McCrum, in choosing the book for his “top 100” list, accepted that this “eccentric and weirdly obsessive” novel is “contrived”, and can only offer as an explanation for his choice that it is “entertaining” and that it sheds light on the author. The latter point is certainly the case – but hardly a recommendation. As for entertaining – I’m afraid not. Arcane catholic dogma, speculative European statecraft, and unfunny, spiteful ‘comic’ portraits of working class characters provide little interest.

It is rare that a novel is bad in unique and interesting ways – if they are that bad they usually fail to find a publisher. That Hadrian 7th remains in print suggests there is something here I am missing. I am quite prepared to accept that the failing is mine, but the author writes so poorly and takes everything so seriously and so tediously that I found locating any wit, erudition or interest not worth the effort. Don’t read it.

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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, American literature, Banned books, Book review, Henry Miller, Tropic of cancer

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, 1934

‘Tropic of Cancer’ was banned in the UK and the USA for almost 30 years. Re-reading it after several decades, I am not surprised – it contains what were for the times explicit descriptions of sexual activity that you cannot find in any other conventional text of the time. Miller’s own description of the novel explained:

“This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art”

ToC

George Orwell was an early defender of Miller, and in his 1940 essay ‘Inside the Whale’ wrote –

“I earnestly counsel anyone who has not done so to read …Tropic of Cancer. With a little ingenuity, or by paying a little over the published price, you can get hold of it, and even if parts of it disgust you, it will stick in your memory.”

He went on to say

“It is also an ‘important’ book, in a sense different from the sense in which that word is generally used. As a rule novels are spoken of as ‘important’ when they are either a ‘terrible indictment’ of something or other or when they introduce some technical innovation. Neither of these applies to Tropic of Cancer. Its importance is merely symptomatic. Here in my opinion is the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past. Even if that is objected to as an overstatement, it will probably be admitted that Miller is a writer out of the ordinary, worth more than a single glance; and after all, he is a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceptor of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses. Symptomatically, that is more significant than the mere fact that five thousand novels are published in England every year and four thousand nine hundred of them are tripe. It is a demonstration of the impossibility of any major literature until the world has shaken itself into its new shape.”

“Whitman among the corpses” – what a phrase! It’s impossible (for me) not to read those words and recognise Orwell’s extraordinary powerful way with words. It was on the basis of this recommendation that I originally read ‘Tropic of Cancer’. My recollection is that I found it much more erotic than on re-reading, so much so that I began to wonder whether the Grove Press (no, me neither) edition I was using was bowdlerised – but apparently not. Memory can play tricks of course, which I suppose is one reason why I am re-reading many of these novels in the first place.

Briefly, ‘Tropic’ is a portrait of the life of an American expatriate down and out in Paris in the 1930s. The character is virtually penniless (or francless) and has a series of adventures, sexual and otherwise, while writing a novel. At times there is a semblance of a narrative, particularly in the novel’s closing scenes when the narrator teaches at a school in Dijon, and subsequently helps a friend escape from a relationship and return to America. It is written in a free form, stream of consciousness style, and Miller holds nothing back – it is scatological and sexually explicit. At times the narrative breaks down almost completely, and the text becomes simply layers of phrases:

“Tania is a fever, too – bright neckties on the Boulevard Montparnasse, dark bathrooms, Porto Sec, Abdullah cigarettes, the adagio sonata Pathetique, aural amplifiers, anecdotal séances, burnt sienna breasts, heavy garters, what time is it, golden pheasants stuffed with chestnuts, taffeta fingers, vaporish twilights turning to ilex, acromelagy, cancer, and delirium…” (page 5)

The first person narrator holds women in contempt – he describes them all routinely using the c-word, and there isn’t a single female character in the novel that isn’t either a prostitute or a sexual victim of one kind or another. Women exist only as objects. He describes female genitals as “that dark, unstitched wound, that sink of abominations” (251) and as an “ugly gash, the wound that never heals” and “this great yawning gulf of nothingness which the creative spirits and mothers of the race carry between their legs” (253). Later in a scene towards the end of the novel, the narrator visits a friend, who has been sleeping with a young woman:

“He came to the door stark naked. It was his night off and there was a c*** in the bed as usual. “Don’t mind her” he says, “she’s asleep. If you need a lay you can take her on. She’s not bad”. He pulls the covers back to show me what she looks like.” (291).

Freud would have a field day with this language and imagery – what psychological or sexual trauma led to Miller’s narrator feeling this way towards women?

Tempted as I am to dismiss this as misogynistic soft porn and move on, I can’t. For one thing, Miller can write;

“I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.”

He is also articulates the millennial nihilism that afflicted many in Europe as war threatened:

“For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off. The world is rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the coup de grace, it needs to be blown to smithereens”

At times the tone is unsettlingly uneven – Miller moves from light comedy, such as the scene where a bidet is used inappropriately, to surrealist, fantastical descriptions, which are the parts of the novel I found the most challenging:

“Standing in the courtyard with a glass eye; only half the world is intelligible. The stones are wet and mossy and in the crevices are black toads. A big door bars the entrance to the cellar; the steps are slippery and soiled with bat dung. The door bulges and sags, the hinges are falling off, but there is an enamelled sign on it, in perfect condition, which says: “Be sure to close the door.” Why close the door? I can’t make it out. I look again at the sign but it is removed; in its place there is a pane of colored glass. I take out my artificial eye, spit on it and polish it with my handkerchief. A woman is sitting on a dais above an immense carven desk; she has a snake around her neck” (and so on – this goes on for a long time!)

Eighty years ago ‘Tropic of Cancer’ was banned because of its portrayal of sex – it is a sign of how we have moved on as a society that what is shocking about the novel today is its sexism, not its sex.

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20th century Literature, American literature, Beloved, Book review, Toni Morrison

Beloved by Toni Morrison, 1987

‘Beloved‘ addresses the issue of slavery in nineteenth century America. It is not an easy read – the novel does not shy away from the horrors of slavery; at the same time it avoids gratuitous descriptions of the physical, sexual and psychological tortures that slaves had to face. When dealing with nightmares such as this experience the author has to walk a tightrope – to deny the magnitude of the crimes against humanity that slavery represents would be wrong, but to simply show horrifically bad things happening to people would be unbearable, and quite possibly exploitative. Morrison manages this balance by giving a voice to the slaves themselves – the story is told through the eyes of the enslaved and the newly freed.beloved

The book tells the story of Sethe and her daughter Denver after their escape from slavery. Their home is haunted by the ghost of Sethe’s daughter. Sethe’s teenage sons have run away from home, and her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, for a long time a stabilising maternal figure in her life, has died. Sethe and her surviving daughter, are haunted by horrific events from their past which are revealed slowly through the course of the novel. In reconstructing the events for a summary of this kind it is convenient to present these events in a ordered, chronological structure, but in the novel itself there is no such order – events are presented in a chaotic, fractured manner with numerous jumps in time and space, representing the chaotic nature of the characters lives, and the difficulty they face in escaping their memories and pasts.

Paul D, one of the slaves from the plantation where Sethe and her family were once enslaved, arrives at her home, moves in, and (briefly) exorcises the ghost. But on the way back from a trip to a carnival, one of the few carefree moments the characters enjoy, they meet an ethereal young woman, calling herself Beloved, who we slowly are led to believe is the reincarnated spirit of Sethe’s murdered baby. Gradually, Paul D is forced out of the home by Beloved. At the heart of the novel is a terrible scene alluded to at several points, but finally shown, where to avoid being re-enslaved Sethe tries to kill her children, although ultimately only killing her eldest daughter, the eponymous Beloved.

Whether Beloved is an actual ghost, or a traumatised escaped slave assuming a role given to her, has diverted some readers, but Morrison quite deliberately leaves this question open, so trying to locate a definitive answer to this question is pointless. She is neither and both.

In ‘Beloved’ Morrison stares into the face of the horror that was slavery, and there are no easy escapes – although the characterisation of white people is carefully nuanced, (they are not all monsters), there is no avoiding that fact that even the ‘kind’ slave owners were guilty of a horrific crime against humanity. Morrison shows the fully diversity of the experience of black and mixed race people – some lead less tortured lives than others, but all are devastated by the experience in different ways, from the slaves who die needlessly in punishment killings and lynchings, to the free mixed race school teacher who cannot avoid the “taint” of her heritage. For too long I have known about the barbarism that was the 19th century slave trade, but avoided reading about the issue – this novel has inspired me to remedy that as soon as possible.

P.S. Just a note about the Virago edition – a really poorly printed version where the ink has bled slightly into the paper, making it all a little fuzzy. Even the cheapest mass produced editions are usually better than that!

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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, American literature, Book review, Harper Lee, TKAM, To Kill a Mockingbird, Uncategorized

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 1960

The subset of people who have read ‘Go Set a Watchman’ but have not read’To Kill a Mockingbird’ must be pretty small, and until this week included me, embarrassed although I am to admit it. Yes, until this week I had not read this the ultimate American classic. I had seen the film, of course, and the stage play, but somehow never got round to the novel, until now. zzzzzzzzzzzzz

I can completely understand why the novel holds its place in the affections of American readers. It captures a lost America, and shows that while its passing is on the whole a good thing, particularly in terms of civil rights, something has been lost as well.

I wanted to address the question as to whether ‘Go Set a Watchman’ has in any way had a negative effect on the reputation of ‘TKAM’. I think this debate is based on a false premise, namely that ‘GSAW’ is a sequel to ‘TKAM’. Certainly it was published later than the original novel, and is set around 20 years later. In the later novel, Atticus is no longer seen through the innocent eyes of a young daughter’s hero-worshipping eyes, but from those of a mature, travelled woman. Of course he is no longer on a pedestal, and a lifetime of living in the deep South has taken its toll on his tolerances. Civil rights had not stood still in that time either, and what was once a liberal position had become reactionary, simply by staying still as the world moved on.

But. I think that it is important to remember that ‘GSAW’ is, in terms of composition, the earlier novel. It is in fact the first draft of ‘TKAM’. Looked at that way, Atticus doesn’t become more reactionary, but more liberal and tolerant as he developed as a character in Lee’s imagination. We also owe thanks to Lee’s editor for this metamorphosis.

There is a charming innocence to ‘TKAM’, achieved in large part through Scout’s narration. She is disarmingly honest, kind, and in the main unspoiled by the prejudices and racism around her. It has still taken its toll, of course – she uses the n-word and other insulting racial epithets freely, and would prefer Atticus to have refused to defend Tom Robinson. Tom’s tragic, off stage death doesn’t seem to trouble her, although neither does Bob Ewell’s at the end of the novel. Lee never seems entirely sure whether the trial at the heart of the novel is her focus, or the story of the agoraphobe Boo Radley which is more prominent at the novel’s opening and close. She manages to weave the two stories together at the death but it is not so much as climax as an end.

I suspect the other primary reason for the novel’s enduring importance is that it contains so many platitudes. Children believe that all the problems of the world can be solved if only people were nice to one another, and that is the principal sentiment of the novel. I started to keep a track of the platitudes, but gave up after a while:

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

“real courage is, instead of … a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”

“Atticus, he was real nice.””Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)… There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
People are nice, once you get to know them. Never give up. Folks are all the same under their skin. This homespun philosophy gets a bit overly saccharine after a while. TKAM is a plea for tolerance, not only for the rights of black people to a fair hearing under the country’s justice system, but also for the traditions of the South. Many white people in the South had felt under attack since before the end of slavery, and Lee also offers these people a voice, less explicitly here than in ‘GSAW’, but unmistakeably nonetheless. Lee explained this is a rare commentary on her own novel once, saying:
“Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that To Kill a Mockingbird spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners.” 
The heritage of all Southerners? Or all white Southerners? The idea that the Southern code of honor and conduct that led to mass lynchings, the KKK, and segregation was worth preserving despite everything is a challenge to the interpretation that this novel is a straightforward advocate for the civil rights cause. There is a risk that we sentimentalise the novel, and see it as a simple anti-racism tract, when the portrayal of the South is more nuanced than that.
I’d love to know if you agree?
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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 19th Century literature, Anthony Trollope, Book review, The Way We Live Now

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, 1875

One of the reasons for keeping this blog is to tackle novels that I would otherwise not even consider attempting. Trollope definitely falls into that category – not only have I never read any of his work before, but I had no intention of doing so. Trollope treated writing as a job, studiously putting in his three hours a day, and eventually produced 47 novels. I find this volume of output oppressive – you could read Trollope for a decade and still be reading.

TWWLNHowever, in recent years Trollope has enjoyed a renaissance, with the two hundredth anniversary of his birth last year not doubt being a factor. He is also, inevitably, a favourite of the Sunday afternoon television adaptation. His inoffensiveness and blandness, large casts and sedate plotlines suit this genre perfectly.

There is a Trollope Society (John Major is one of its Vice Presidents; the President himself is the Bishop of London) which has very smart website. In introducing its subject the site adopts a slightly defensive tone:

“Trollope wrote forty-seven novels – three times as many as Dickens – and many have long preferred Trollope for his subtle delineation of human character and middle class”

So Trollope is a better writer than Dickens because he wrote more? Not the strongest of arguments – an appreciation of quantity over quality would venerate Catherine Cookson over Jane Austen. I could also argue that “subtle delineation” is a tautology – delineation is by definition an act of precision. In any event, Dickens doesn’t need defending by me, but the test is in fact a simple one – can you recall any character from Trollope?

Which brings me to the over 900 pages of the Victorian soap opera that is ‘The Way We Live Now’. The plot is relatively simple for such a long novel – a series of characters attempt to arrange mutually satisfactory marriages, and after a long series of frustrations and rejections, finally most of them are successful. The central character, Auguste Melmotte, a financier, embezzles money, apparently, and when exposed commits suicide. His death precipitates a slightly frenzied tying up of plot lines as Trollope realises that with Melmotte gone, much of the interest of the novel has also expired. The large supporting cast are reasonably well delineated, to be fair, although many of the rich young men who gather at the BearGarden, an early incarnation of the Drones Club, are interchangeable, and the young women seem happy enough to swap one suitor for another as their financial positions change.

As a commentary on the way Victorian society encouraged dishonesty, in romance, finance, and public affairs, the satire is wooden and uninteresting – bad people do bad things, are exposed, and disposed of. Poor people are virtuous and stupid, and only happy when they learn to accept their place in life. It’s hardly surprising given the 100 chapters Trollope had to fill that he finds it necessary to repeat himself endlessly, recycling situations, recapping each time a storyline is revisited, and showing events from different points of view. To cap matters off, there is some deeply unpleasant anti-semitism in the closing chapters of the novel – it could be argued these attitudes are shown in order to expose them, but the only rebuttal offered is that times have changed, and what was once unacceptable is now less abhorrent.TWWLN2

Trollope is comfort food for those who like to think they have an appreciation of literature, but who actually enjoy having their prejudices confirmed. It really isn’t worth your time.

P.S. In an interesting article in the New Yorker last year, entitled “Trollope Trending – Why he’s still the novelist of the way we live now”, Adam Gopnik claimed that “The Way We Live Now” is the Trollope novel for people who don’t like Trollope novels.” Gopnik had a couple of other insights worth mentioning. He describes Trollope as

“not a sentence-by-sentence writer, or even a scene-by-scene writer; really, he is a character-by-character writer.”

He also claimed that

“Amateur readers have taken up Trollope as a cause and a favourite in a way that they have taken up perhaps no other nineteenth-century English novelist except Jane Austen.”

I have no idea if the concept of an amateur reader is intended as a joke – it must be, surely?

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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, Book review, D H Lawrence, The rainbow

The Rainbow by D H Lawrence, 1915

‘The Rainbow’ is an extraordinarily dense, complex novel. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family in rural Nottinghamshire, and contains some remarkable writing. Originally published in 1915 it is incredibly modernist in tone. But it also has, for me, some serious stylistic weaknesses. Of course this will be heresy for any Lawrence adherents, and I recognise it is a matter of personal taste.zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The novel spans a period from the mid-nineteenth century to just after the Boer War at the end of the century. It portrays the relationships of the family set against the background of the industrial revolution. Tom Brangwen, one of several brothers, falls in love with a Polish widow, Lydia. The conflict in Poland from which Lydia is a refugee is mentioned only in passing, and with the later reference to the Boer war is one of the few real world events that intrudes into the lives of the characters. Lydia’s daughter by her first husband, Anna, forms the focus of the second third of the novel. She marries Will Brangwen, a cousin by marriage, and goes on to have a very large family. The last section of the novel follows Will and Anna’s daughter, Ursula, and her relationships with a female teacher (in what today would be an illegal relationship, because Ursula was still a pupil at the time), and then a Polish soldier.

The novel is infused with Christian sentiment and symbolism, and this is expressed most clearly in the novel’s closing lines, from which it also draws its title:

“She saw in the rainbow the earth’s new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven.”

This is a version of Blake’s new Jerusalem, in England’s increasingly dark and unpleasant land, scarred by the impacts of industrialisation.

The portrayal of sex is probably the aspect of his writing for which Lawrence is most well-known. Here he attempts to address the challenge of how to write about sex without using explicit language. Euphemisms are deployed extensively – I particularly liked the phrase “underneath yearnings” (106) and “they loved each other to transport again, passionately and fully” (112). Imagery, particularly of flowers, animals and different forms of heat, flames, and burning is also used throughout the novel to portray sex and sexuality.

“Suddenly, with an incredibly quick, delicate movement, he put his arms around her and drew her to him. It was quick, cleanly done, like a bird that swoops and sinks closer, closer. He was kissing her throat. She turned and looked at him. Her eyes were dark and flowing with fire. His eyes were hard and bright with a fierce purpose and gladness, like a hawk’s. She felt him flying into the dark spaces of her flames, like a brand, like a gleaming hawk”. (Notice the change of tense there by the way – from “he put” to “he was”.)

“Feeling herself lying open, like a flower unsheathed in the sun, insistent and potent with demand…The warmth flowed through her, she felt herself opening, unfolding, asking, as a flower opens in full request under the sun.…When she opened and turned to him…she was as new as a flower that unsheathes itself and stands always ready, waiting, receptive.”  (34)

Later, when Ursula is considering having sex with Skrebensky, Lawrence’s use of the flower as a metaphor for female sexuality becomes more explicit –

“Here she would open her female flower like a flame, in this dimness that was more passionate than light”.

Male sexuality is more directly treated, although again symbolism often takes the place of direct description:

“She went down with him into the warmish cellar, where already in the darkness the little yellow knobs of rhubarb were coming. He held the lantern down to the dark earth. She saw the tiny knob-end of the rhubarb thrusting upwards upon the thick red stem, thrusting itself like a knob of flame through the soft soil.”

Lawrence’s attempts to write about female sexuality are certainly bold. His portrayal of a lesbian relationship in particular would undoubtedly have been shocking to a contemporary audience. Despite his efforts (to write about sex without using explicit language) ‘The Rainbow’ was on publication judged obscene, and banned. It is still to this day shocking that copies of the novel were burned by the authorities in 1915 in scenes that pre-figured the Nazi book burnings of the 1930’s. It is likely that the anti-war sentiments expressed in the novel by Ursula were a contributory factor in the decision to ban the book – airing anti-war arguments in 1915 was a brave move by any standards.

Flowers and flower imagery dominate throughout the novel – daffodils, primroses, snowdrops, bluebells, harebells, jasmine, yellow crocuses, peaflowers, geraniums, Christmas roses, and on and on in profusion. When he gets it right there is a luxuriance to Lawrence’s writing that is almost intoxicating:

“The dim blue-and-gold of a hot, sweet autumn saw the close of the corn harvest. To Ursula it was as if the world had opened its softest pure flower, its chicory flower, its meadow saffron. The sky was blue, and sweet, the yellow leaves down the lane seemed like free, wandering flowers as they chittered round the feet, making a keen, poignant, almost unbearable music to her heart. And the scents of autumn were like a summer madness to her. She fled away from the little, purple-red button chrysanthemums like a frightened dryad, the bright yellow little chrysanthemums smelled so strong, her feet seemed to dither in a drunken dance.” (208)

So what are the negatives? Firstly, there is Lawrence’s propensity for hyperbole. For my taste, ‘The Rainbow’ is massively over-written. Characters hate one another with a passionate intensity, then moments later love one another with an eternal unfulfilled longing. Everything is expressed in sudden absolutes that change just as easily.

“A shiver, a sickness of new birth passed over her, the flame leaped up him, under his skin. She wanted it, this new life from him, with him, yet she must defend herself against it, for it was a destruction” (23)

After a while this gets tiring and tedious. Or as Lawrence would say, his heart achingly rejected it with a passionate urgency that seemed to overwhelm his soul – he hated it and loved it and hated it. And so on.

Secondly, not since the ‘Deathly Hallows’ have I read a book more desperately in need of a good editor. Lawrence uses repetition relentlessly, like a sledge hammer. Nothing is said well enough that it cannot benefit from a second or third repetition. Examples are spread across every page, but for instance see this from pages 180/181:

“In spite of herself the tears surged higher, in spite of her they surged higher. In spite of her, her face broke. …she did not forget, she did not forget, she never forgot”.

As I have written elsewhere, each instance of repetition can in isolation be justified – here the character is repeating these phrases to herself to try to persuade herself not to cry, and once having cried, to remember the wrong done to her. But the cumulative impact of this repetition is oppressive.

Lawrence is an important writer, and his inclusion on the Guardian’s 100 best novels list is certainly justified. But I wish he had had a good editor.

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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, American literature, Book review, Ernest Hemingway, Fiesta, The Sun Also Rises

Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway, 1926

The name of this novel has a complex history – at one stage it was going to be called, among other things, ‘The Lost Generation’ – and this alternative title, together with the epigraph from Ecclesiastes, beginning “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh” provide some useful guides to interpreting this novel. yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Set in the 1920’s in Paris and Spain, the events of the novel are shown from the viewpoint of the central character, Jake Barnes. Barnes recounts what happens in the moment, but he never explains – only context and snatches of conversation provide clues to the characters’ backstories. We can gather, for example, that Barnes was a combatant in the First World War, and that during that conflict he received a wound, physical or psychological, which made him impotent. Barnes is besotted with Lady Brett Ashley, a young woman who is part of the hard-drinking crowd who haunt the bars and clubs of Paris. No-one seems to work – Barnes is ostensibly a reporter for an American paper, but we hardly ever see him do any reporting, and he takes several weeks off without repercussions.

It is reasonable to infer that Barnes’ impotence, combined with his lust for Brett, would torture him, but only glimpses of this are offered to the reader. He compensates for his feelings by assisting Brett in conducting her affairs – for a woman of the 1920’s she is very liberated, and quite guilt free and open about her relationships. In a rare moment of introspection Barnes chastises himself, saying

“Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right.”

The second section of the novel moves to Spain, and a fishing expedition is followed by the fiesta of the title in Pamplona, including the bull run and some of the scenes of bull-fighting for which Hemingway is probably best known. With Barnes’s connivance, Brett seduces the 19 year-old matador, and in a jealous rage one of her recent former lovers beats him (and Barnes) up. The novel ends shortly after the fiesta, with Barnes and Brett spending time together in Madrid, and wondering how their relationship might have developed had he not been afflicted:

“Oh Jake,” Brett said, “We could have had such a damned good time together.”
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me. Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

(The mounted policeman’s raised baton proving a somewhat unnecessary piece of symbolism there I think. )

As an evocation of the fascination of bull-fighting, the scenes towards the end of this novel are unparalleled. If one is already disgusted by bull-fighting there will be nothing here to change ones mind. The portrayal of the hedonism of  Barnes and his group of friends, representatives of a lost generation, reminded me of an expatriate version of ‘Vile Bodies’. Another text worth comparing this novel to is of course Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’. which in a different setting has similar themes. The reader is invited to see this group of characters as resilient survivors of the fracturing of society which is slowly healing, as the sun also rises. xxxxxxxx

But. There are some issues with the novel that I wanted to explore. The first is the use of repetition. At times it is quite oppressive. I know drunk people – and many of the characters are pretty much permanently drunk – repeat themselves a lot. But it’s not much fun to read. Here’s a random example:

“Brett put her hand on my arm. 

“Don’t get drunk, Jake’ she said. ‘You don’t have to’. 

‘How do you know?’

‘Don’t’, she said. ‘You’ll be all right’. 

‘I’m not getting drunk’  I said. ‘I’m just drinking a little wine. I like to drink wine’. 

‘Don’t get drunk’, she said. ‘Jake, don’t get drunk’. 

In context, each repetition is justified and legitimate – here the effect is to emphasise both the drunkenness of the pair, and the lack of real communication between them. But the cumulative effect is somewhat wearing.

Secondly there is Hemingway’s famously sparse style. In Hemingway the quick brown fox never jumps over the lazy dog – the fox jumps over the dog. In theory this should make the novel very simple to read – but avoiding over elaborate description is one thing, and stripping the prose to its bare bones whereby one thing happens, then another thing happens, and so on, combining to deadening effect, is another. As a result although it is only just over 200 pages long this novel took me several days to complete.

Third, Barnes’s group of expatriate friends are an unpleasant bunch. They are openly anti-semitic, and the novel contains several derogatory references to homosexuality. These of course were much more acceptable attitudes than they are today, but the casual use of the n-word in a text only 90 years old isn’t reflected in the novels of many of Hemingway’s contemporaries.

Finally, the elephant in the room (metaphor deliberately mis-chosen) is the topic – bull-fighting. Hemingway glamorises the killing of animals for sport, and while this once may have seemed acceptable, today it leaves a bad taste.

As a postscript, and to be completely honest something of a boast, I spotted a fleeting reference to Marlowe’s ‘The Jew of Malta’ here. On page 66 of the Vintage edition, (which by the way contains an extraordinarily self-indulgent introduction by Colm Toibin which is all about Colm Toibin, and barely mentions the novel it is introducing), Barnes mentions a friend who is a taxidermist. Bill, another friend, replies

“That was in another country…and besides all the animals were dead”. The full quote from Marlowe is:

“Thou hast committed fornication: but that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.”

This so far as I can tell isolated example of wit from Bill is of course a reference to Brett.

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100 Best Novels Guardian list, 20th century Literature, Book review, Booker prize nominee, Irish literature

Amongst Women by John McGahern, 1991

Michael Moran, the patriarch at the heart of this novel, is a depressing misanthropic monster. He abuses his children, terrorises his wife, and attempts (ultimately unsuccessfully) to control every aspect of their lives, all the while ensuring that his interests and comforts are catered for:

“Anything easy and pleasant aroused deep suspicion and people enjoying themselves were usually less inclined to pay attention to others” (61) (others here being Moran himself.)

Amongst womenWhen Moran dies at the end of the novel his family finally experience a sense of relief from his omnipresent oppression. This relief is possibly a false dawn, as his influence continues to linger:

“as they left him under the yew, it was as if each of them in their different ways had become Daddy.”

The novel is set in rural Ireland in the 1950’s or 60’s. The exact date is not specified, but can be inferred from the changes in society affecting Ireland, as well as the ages of the characters in relation to some of the historic events mentioned, specifically  the Irish war of independence. The Moran family in addition to Michael, the father, includes his three daughters, two sons, and their stepmother. We are never told about their mother, who is never referred to or hinted at. Given the veneration by Irish Catholics for the role of mothers in the family, this is surprising.

The novel opens with Moran being cared for by his daughters, who have put their busy lives in Dublin and London on hold. To cheer him up, a thankless task if ever there was one, they decide to recreate ‘Monaghan Day’, a family celebration when Moran’s friend McQuaid used to visit and they would reminisce about the war. Without McQuaid to participate there seems little point in this, and it is really just an excuse for the narrator to tell us in flashback some of Moran’s back story. We are told that he fought as an officer in the Irish Republican Army, and in the Irish Civil War that followed (we are not told on which side Moran fought in the Civil War, but can infer that he was a loyalist). Moran is bitter about the direction Ireland has taken post-independence, and petulantly refuses his soldier’s pension. The main narrative focus of the novel is the teenage years and early twenties of the children, as they grow up and leave home. Moran’s violent outbursts towards his family and his control freakery, often exercised through obsessive repetitions of prayers, gradually drive them all away, although they all, except Luke the eldest, regularly return thereafter to the family home. They are pathetically grateful for any acts or signs of tenderness from their father.

This is all well done – the portrait of an abusive, dysfunctional Irish family is convincing. But is it enjoyable? Hardly. It tells us little we do not already know about this society, which even when this novel was written was fading into the past. It was a time of widespread and institutionalised physical and sexual abuse, unpredictable violence, and the tyranny of men over women. McGahern seems ambivalent about this period, and about his central character, perhaps from a sense of nostalgia about his own past. While well written the novel contains too much repetition for my taste – endless scenes of family prayers and haymaking – and much of the heavy-handed symbolism was sign-posted clumsily. It came as more of a relief than anything else when Moran was finally laid to rest.

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