Book review

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, 1843

Or to give it its full title, ‘A Christmas Carol in prose, being a Ghost story of Christmas’.

I challenge you to find a better first line that the one Dickens uses to open ‘A Christmas Carol’:

“Marley was dead: to begin with.”

I love that use of the colon in the middle of this sentence. It works perfectly, giving a long pause before the punchline. This is an author at the top of his page. The reader is compelled to know who Marley is, and why his death seems such a temporary state of affairs.

‘A Christmas Carol’ is a miniature masterpiece, and seems more popular than ever. The reasons for its success aren’t hard to find. Dickens is hardly known for the economy of his writing – he is usually pretty verbose – but when he needs to he can cover a lot of ground very quickly. In less than 100 pages he manages to give us so much. Where to begin?

Well first the novel gives us a vivid, definitive portrait of a miser, to the extent that not only has ‘Scrooge’ become synonymous with the word, but that some of his phrases, such as ‘humbug!’ have also passed into common usage:

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at  Christmas.”

It is easy to forget the impact of the text as a a ghost story. It has some genuinely chilling moment, such as when Scrooge pleads for a chance from the voiceless ghost of Christmas yet to be. Dickens is sometimes not given credit for his skill as a writer, with critical comment focusing on his storytelling and characterisation. But he takes us into Scrooge’s mind, capturing wonderfully his fear and paranoia, such as here when he is searching this rooms for the ghosts Marley has told him will come to visit:
Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall.

Scrooge’s story is not just a portrait, but it is also a story of redemption, which tells us that no-one however troubled or lost is completely beyond hope. Scrooge’s backstory is filled in very lightly, with just a few sketches of his early life during his time with the ghost of Christmas Past, but it is more than enough for us to understand how he has come to be the pathetic sad man he is.

The text also includes some descriptive passages and scenes which have come to define a Victorian Christmas. It is for historians to judge whether Dickens defined many of the traditional features of Christmas that we now treasure, or simply recorded them. But either way there is no doubt that he captures brilliantly some of what we now think of as quintessentially Christmassy elements. As it is nearly Christmas I am going to indulge myself by including below some long excerpts from the text with little by way of annotation or analysis – it quite obviously doesn’t need it. But look out for the wonderful, opulent use of verbs and adjectives, and the way almost everything is personified, from the misanthropic ice to the old bell peeping down from its tower – everything can join in the Christmas celebrations!

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way.The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed.Poulterers’ and grocers’ trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant,with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor’s household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow’s pudding in his garret,while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef”

The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge’s time, or Marley’s, or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys,geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts,cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes,and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see;who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty’s horn, and held it up,high up, to shed its light on Scrooge, as he came peeping round the door.

For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball—better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest—laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops were still half open, and the fruiterers’were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids;there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers’ benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people’s mouths might water gratis as they passed;there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance,ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. 

The Grocers’! oh, the Grocers’! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes,or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day,that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; 

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Book review

The Hobbit, or There and Back again, by J R R Tolkien 1937

It was a pleasure returning to Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’ after a break of several decades (plus the three Peter Jackson films of course). It’s a lovely young person’s novel – the description on the blurb of it being a children’s novel is a little imprecise for my liking, as anyone under the age of approximately 10 may not appreciate the length of the text, or some of the moments of peril and violence. To be honest, I suspect the complete absence of any female characters whatsoever might be off-putting to younger female readers as well. 

The novel famously opens with a description of the habits and domestic life of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit with a family line inclined to most un-hobbit like adventuring. Gandalf the wizard (as opposed to all those other Gandalfs you know) uses Bilbo’s comfortable little home to host a gathering of dwarves setting out on a long-planned quest to recover their family treasure and home from the dragon, Smaug. On Gandalf’s recommendation, Bilbo is recruited as the expedition’s burglar. And so the quest begins the long journey east, past peckish trolls, to the last Homely House in Rivendell, which Tolkien does a wonderful job of making sound so alluring, across and into the Misty Mountains, where  Bilbo finds a certain ring, through Mirkwood, and on to the Lonely Mountain, their final destination.

It is an epic journey, full of wonderful adventures. Tolkien packs a lot into a short book. The final resolution is darker than one expects, as the novel grapples with the reality of the quest, its risks and danger, rather than simply using magic or another narrative trick to resolve the travellers’ problems. There is a very serious consideration of the problem of what to do when your dreams come true, how to be brave when your friends go astray, and how to honour your responsibilities to others. If that makes it sound worth it is anything but. 

The quest format is enduringly popular for good reason, and Tolkien writes with considerable economy – the events of the novel occur at a rapid pace, with little of the self indulgent diversions that marred the films. The one obvious exception to this is the fairly awful poetry that Tolkien seems unable to resist. 

The novel builds brilliantly to the climactic Battle of the Five Armies. Here younger readers’ sense of peril will be put to the test, because while the narrator takes care to reassure us of Bilbo’s eventual fate, some of his fellow adventurers are not so lucky. This is a great introduction to fantasy literature for younger readers, and as the genesis story to the much weightier ‘Lord of the Rings’ it is a good starting point for anyone thinking of pitching into the trilogy. Adult readers will enjoy the quest as well – I know I did. 

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Book review

Black Mischief, by Evelyn Waugh, 1932

In many of my previous reviews I have struggled to respond to texts that either contain offensive language – that use racially insulting terms, that denigrate gay people or women, or otherwise offend my twenty-first century sensibilities. I usually try to draw a distinction between those texts that use offensive language which was in common usage in the period in which the text was written – Huckleberry Finn, for example, with its widespread use of the n-word – and texts that are more broadly offensive, that perpetuate stereotypes or go out of their way to be insulting to racial or other groups. Sometimes I find offensive novels that have not generally been considered in that category – Perfume being the obvious example, which most reviewers found harmless but which I took great exception to. 

In almost all cases however, I have been able to find redeeming features in the text. The novelist may have been reflecting outdated attitudes towards race, gender or sexuality, but they have nevertheless managed to write something worth reading. But that is mainly because I have been careful not to read those books that should be forgotten and which don’t merit a wider readership today. History has edited these novels from our bookshelves. But this is not always the case with authors who have written otherwise well thought of work, such as Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Black Mischief’. Because ‘Black Mischief‘ is an embarrassingly offensive novel. 

The events of ‘Black Mischief‘ take place mainly in the island kingdom of Azania, one of the few independent countries in Africa between the world wars. Waugh’s intention appears overt – he sets out to demonstrate that allowing African peoples to run their own countries is a ludicrous proposition that leads to profound mis-Government, chaos, and conflict. His argument is that Africans simply don’t have the intelligence, judgment or ability to run their own affairs.

Seth, emperor of Azania, inherits his role shortly after graduating from Oxford. He determines to modernise his country, but his ambitions are portrayed as utterly unrealistic – not only does he not understand what modernisation entails, but his efforts are undermined by his people, who have no interest in the modern world, and his officials, who just want to steal anything not nailed down.

Basil Seal, a feckless college friend, journeys to Azania on a whim to escape his debts in London, and is quickly appointed Minister of Modernisation. His sidekick is the Armenian businessman Yokoumian, an equally unpleasant and racist portrait. The small group of Europeans in Azania, diplomats, businessmen and missionaries, do not escape Waugh’s satire – they are all crooks and bored idiots, particularly the British consular staff headed by Sir Samson Courtenay, but there is a venom in the portraits of the Africans in the novel that is missing when the focus turns to the Europeans. 

A pageant to celebrate birth control is used as cover for the launch of a coup against Seth, with the French consul planning to install a puppet Government headed by his senile uncle Achon, who promptly dies at his coronation. In the bloodbath that follows the League of Nations steps in and claims the country as a League of Nations Mandate. The natural order with the white man running matters is restored, and Basil returns to London, where his absence has passed largely unnoticed. 

Many reviewers claim this novel is a satire. I am not sure that is right – what precisely is it satirising? Certainly not colonialism – Azania is not a colony. Modernisation? Perhaps, but it is hard to see what aspects of modernisation are problematic. Or is it modernisation in Africa? Is Waugh telling the reader that modernising Africa is pointless, because they will just use mis-use whatever modern devices or ideas we ‘give’ them (the wires used in the railway’s construction are used as jewellery, for example). The most striking example of this is the poster drawn up to advertise the benefits of birth control, showing one family wealthy and healthy with one child, and another family with many children where life is hard and poor. These posters are misunderstood by the Africans – silly people unable to understand a simple poster – and they think the single child family is the one that is being presented as the one to avoid. 

Life is cheap in Azania – people are killed casually throughout the novel – and cannibalism is widespread. There isn’t a racist stereotype untapped. There isn’t a single positive African character, not even for contrast – they are all either evil, conniving, mercenary, or murderous. Or all four. 

Waugh is not a bad writer, but I can’t help thinking that this novel should be allowed to quietly fade away. It’s not funny, the casual and incessant racism is hard to take, and the ending is callously brutal. For the first time ever I was embarrassed to be seen reading this novel (with the front cover shown above) on public transport, which probably says it all. 

 

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Book review

Life, the Universe, and Everything, by Douglas Adams,


The novels in the Hitchhiker series have a complex publishing history. ‘Life, the Universe and Everything’ (the answer to which is, of course, 42),  was originally an outline for a Doctor Who series, Dr Who and the Krikketmen. For some unknown reason the proposal was rejected by the BBC, and it went on to eventually become the third novel of five in the Hitchhiker trilogy. It’s never been filmed, and did not form part of the radio series, which explains why the novel had a less familiar feel than ‘Hitchhiker‘ and ‘Restaurant‘. 

When I read the first two novels each scene was like revisiting an old friend. I could see jokes coming a long way off, but they were still golden. ‘Life’, by contrast, was a lot less familiar; while I recalled the plot and the overall structure, some of the individual events were unfamiliar, and all the more enjoyable for it.

The question I can never avoid asking when reading a series is ‘When will the quality start to dip?’ When will the author start repeating themselves, or ironically referencing themselves, or even worse in a desperate attempt to avoid repetition start taking the characters into ever more unlikely situations. This last option wasn’t possible for Adams, who had already sent his characters to the restaurant at the end of the universe, and I am pleased to say that the quality of the writing, the originality of the ideas, and the jokes do not suffer by comparison with the earlier novels. Possibly the storyline is stretched a little thinly, and any peril is completely missing – Arthur and co. have been blown up and shot at so many times that we know an utterly unlikely escape route is always bound to turn up at the last minute. Plot armour in other words. But the compensation is in the high quality jokes and ideas, such as the immortal creature who decides to insult everyone in the universe, the explanation as to why the bowl of petunias thought “Not again!”, and the concept of bistromathematics.

The novel picks up where ‘Restaurant’ ends, with Arthur stranded on pre-historic Earth. Ford Prefect, his friend from Betelgeuse, arrives to take him to see the cricket at Lords. The game is interrupted, first by their arrival and then in an even more unlikely development by a squad of white robots, who steal the Ashes. On cue Slartibartfast, award-winning creator of Norwegian fjords, arrives in the starship Bistromath, and asks Ford and Arthur for help in saving the universe.

The Bistromath is more powerful than the Heart of Gold, being powered by the mathematics of Italian restaurants (this is the imagination and creativity of Douglas Adams, and if you don’t like it take a good long look at your life). As they travel, Slartibartfast uses a hologramatic film to explain that he is trying to prevent the robots from collecting the legendary Wikkit Gate, which will unlock the planet Krikket, and unleash galaxy-wide armageddon. It seems a little more plausible when Adams tells the story – not much admittedly.

Picking up Zaphod and Trillian along the way, the team fail miserably in stopping the robots collecting the various pieces of the key or unlock the time lock. Our crew instead hopelessly transport to the planet to attempt to negotiate with the Krikkit people. To their surprise, they find that the people seem to lack any desire to continue the war, and are directed to the robot and spaceship facilities in orbit about the planet. With Zaphod and Marvin’s help, the group is able to infiltrate the facilities. There are some definite Star Wars echoes here – an intrepid band of outcasts and renegades fighting to prevent the end of the world – it is a classic story I suppose. Trillian works out (the reader will have been ahead of her I think) that the Krikkiters have been manipulated into their galaxy-hatred and galaxy-destroying capability, and confronts the mastermind behind the evil plan. No, not the Sith. 

I won’t spoil the ending for you, although as Simon Brett says in the introduction to the Pan edition of the novel, “You don’t read Douglas Adams for the plots any more than you read Raymond Chandler for his”. Which might explain why with my varied reading diet of Chandler and Adams I am probably overdue something a bit more plot driven!

Origins

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Book review

The Lady in the Lake, by Raymond Chandler, 1943

My binge reading of Chandler continues with ‘The Lady in the Lake‘, a title that does two things. It tells us to expect a body to turn up sooner or later in a lake, and hints more obliquely that there may be Arthurian elements to the narrative.

Marlowe takes a case that he would normally avoid – a MisPers (missing person). Crystal Kingsley has run out on her husband, Derace, sending him a telegram saying she was divorcing him and marrying her lover Chris Lavery. But Lavery denied all knowledge of an elopement plan when Derace met him a few days after he received his wife’s letter. Marlowe begins his investigation with a visit to Lavery in Bay City, somewhere Marlowe has had run ins with the local cops before. It’s no surprise therefore that while watching Lavery’s house, Marlowe is threatened local cop Al Degarmo, who accuses him of watching Lavery’s neighbour, Dr. Almore. Almore’s wife had died in suspicious circumstances about a year earlier. Anyone with any experience of detective fiction will jump to the conclusion that Marlowe’s missing persons case and Mrs Almore’s death will, in some way, be connected.

Lavery leads Marlowe nowhere except the run in with the local law enforcement, so he decides to drive up to the Kingsley’s holiday cabin at Little Fawn Lake, where Mrs Kingsley was staying before she went missing. Yes, that’s the lake we were waiting for. Marlowe meets the caretaker, Bill Chess, who in a highly suspicious, red lights flashing coincidence, has just been walked out on by his wife, Muriel. The scene where Marlowe and Chess chat on the boardwalk by the lake, and eventually discover the secret hidden in the water, is a masterpiece of controlled writing:

“The depths cleared again. Something moved in them that was not a board. It rose slowly, with an infinitely careless languor, a long dark twisted something that rolled lazily in the water as it rose. It broke surface casually, lightly, without haste. I saw wool, sodden and black, a leather jerkin blacker than ink, a pair of slacks. I saw shoes and something that bulged nastily between the shoes and the cuffs of the slacks. I saw a wave of dark blond hair straighten out in the water and hold still for a brief instant as if with a calculated effect, and then swirl into a tangle again.” 

Chess is arrested for his wife’s murder, although Marlowe  is sceptical. Marlowe tries not to be distracted by this discovery, although even he begins to wonder why death seems to follow him around: 

It’s only Marlowe, finding another body. He does it rather well by now. Murder-a-day Marlowe, they call him. They have the meat wagon following him around to follow up on the business he finds.

He goes back to interview Lavery again, and it is no surprise to anyone when he finds him shot in his bathroom. Without a solid lead, he picks up the Almore case, and visits Mrs Almore’s parents, who suspect their daughter was murdered. Another run-in with the local police who are trying to prevent Marlowe investigating the Almore case derails this thread of the investigation for now, but there is no time to pause for breath before he receives a call from Derace Kingsley saying that Crystal has telephoned him asking for money to help her leave town. He asks Marlowe to make the pay-off –  by now he just wants rid of his wife, even if she seems the most likely suspect for Lavery’s murder.

Marlowe is never going to give money to help a murder suspect flee the jurisdiction, but when he confronts and accuses her she pulls a gun on him. As they struggle Marlowe is sapped. Some time later he comes round:
“I smelled of gin. Not just casually, as if I had taken four or five drinks of a winter morning to get out of bed on, but as if the Pacific Ocean was pure gin and I had nosedived off the boat deck. The gin was in my hair and eyebrows, on my chin and under my chin. It was on my shirt. I smelled like dead toads.”

Crystal lies strangled to death on the bed, presumably by whoever sapped Marlowe, and with a view to framing him for the murder. Degarmo the Bay City cop, who we have learned was in love with Muriel Chess, arrests Marlowe but quickly accepts he was not responsible for Crystal’s murder. He drives him back to Little Fawn Lake to arrest Kingsley, now chief suspect. There a final confrontation ensues and all the complex threads of the mystery are drawn together in a very satisfying finale. 

I’ve raved enough in recent posts to make it unnecessary to write further about the magnificence of Chandler’s prose. His imagery in particular is to my mind some of the best in modern fiction. Can you find a better simile than this, anywhere?
“She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don’t care much about kittens.” 

His descriptive passages are vivid and his character portraits have a wonderful economy. Here’s Kingsley’s assistant for example – note how the imagery just can’t be kept out of his writing even if he wanted it to:
“She wore a steel gray business suit and under the jacket a dark blue shirt and a man’s tie of lighter shade. The edges of the folded handkerchief in the breast pocket looked sharp enough to slice bread.”

‘The Lady in the Lake’ is not one of Chandler’s most popular or well-known Marlowe novels. It should be; it is classic Chandler, in full control of his material and at the top of his game. Marlowe is cynical but not bitter, hard-boiled but still open to romance. For me Chandler transcends detective fiction, while at the same time defining it. I guess if my reviews haven’t persuaded you of this now then I probably should quit trying, but in case you are in any doubt, give him a try, you won’t regret it. 

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Book review

The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler, 1953

I first read ‘The Long Goodbye‘ around 25 years ago, and returning to it was an absolute pleasure. It is another Marlowe novel, and is (as they all are), a gem. Some novels change over time, but Chandler’s work has a timeless quality. It doesn’t matter what is happening in the outside world, Marlowe will always be there with a smart line and a stiff drink, even if he has just discovered a body and been socked over the head.  ‘The Long Goodbye’ is late Marlowe/Chandler, with a reflective quality that shows that both men have been through a lot, and are beginning to feel their age.chandler

The plot is complex, as you would expect. Marlowe meets a drunk, Terry Lennox, outside a club. Lennox is a lush, married to a rich women who is serially unfaithful to him, and has a mysterious past, testified to by the scars down one side of his face. Marlowe and Lennox become unlikely and occasional drinking friends until Lennox shows up late one night needing a ride to the airport, no questions asked. Marlowe knows he must have very good reasons for this request, but doesn’t ask any awkward questions. He is a good enough detective to know there are only one or two reasons why someone in Lennox’s position would want to fly the country in the middle of the night. So it is no surprise when on his return from the airport, the police confirm that Mrs Lennox has been murdered. Marlowe refuses to co-operate with the police, and is slung in jail for his efforts. But his interrogation is cut short when news arrives that Lennox has committed suicide leaving a confession. Marlowe later receives a letter from Lennox containing a Madison, a $5,000 bill, and some cryptic comments that leave Marlowe with some questions about what has happened.

Chandler’s novels are often built around earlier magazine stories. Knowing this I was expecting a new storyline to be introduced at this point, and it comes when Marlowe is asked by a publisher to work out the dark secrets of one of his (the publisher’s) writers, Roger Wade. Wade is being driven to drink by whatever is troubling him, and when drunk he becomes violent, not least towards his wife. Wade has also gone missing.

Marlowe quickly tracks Wade down to a detox facility in an isolated ranch. Case solved. Inevitably that is not the end of Marlowe’s involvement with the Wades. They try to convince him to work for them as what we would now call Roger’s sober companion, but Marlowe is not interested. Meanwhile, the Lennox ‘case’ refuses to go away, even though there appears nothing left to investigate. Marlowe’s work with the Wades leads other people to conclude that he is still looking into the deaths of Mrs Lennox and her husband. This is a close-knit community where everyone knows everyone else, and there is a suggestion that Wade and Mrs Lennox were lovers . Marlowe is menaced by a mobster friend of Lennox’s, Mendy Menendez, and by Lennox’s ultra-rich father-in-law, to drop the case, even though he tells them repeatedly that he is not investigating it. Slowly, details emerge of the lives of these troubled people. Marlowe learns that Terry Lennox had lived in England, fought in the Second World War, and had been previously married.

Wade starts drinking again, and then apparently commits suicide. Marlowe is suspicious, but because he was alone with Wade at the time of his death it is he that becomes a suspect, although never seriously. In a traditional reveal scene Marlowe walks us through who really killed Mrs Lennox and Wade, and finally what really happened to Terry Lennox.

Chandler’s byzantine plots mean that even though I have read this novel before I was constantly kept guessing as to who killed whom. But as I have said before you shouldn’t read Chandler for the plots, but the wonderful prose:

“When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn’t have one. I didn’t care. I finished the drink and went to bed.” 

This is a melancholy and reflective novel in which the portraits of two serious drinkers, Wade and Lennox, are both considered self-portraits of the author.  Marlowe still takes a punch with the best of them, but it takes him just that little bit longer to come round. He is still a sucker for a pretty face, and when he takes a lover it forms part of the long goodbye of the novel’s title. I can’t rank Chandler’s novels against one another, and they are equally hard to compare to other detective fiction, such is their distinctiveness. All I can say is that if I had a desert island disc decision to make, Chandler would be very near if not at the top of my list. He is one of the language’s great stylists, and if you haven’t read him before, and aren’t offended too easily, I can’t recommend his work highly enough.

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Book review

Comment: Structured or formulaic?

I have been trying to decide whether there is really a difference between a text that is highly structured, such as a sonnet for example, and a text that follows rules of composition that are formulaic. I have a suspicion that the difference may be limited: when we like the text we say it is structured, and we use the term formulaic when we want to be derogatory. However, the suspicion nags – can it really be that simple?

What set me down this track was a binge read of the Sherlock Holmes short stories. I don’t think it is controversial to say that Conan Doyle constructs most of these stories to a tight formula. The reader knows (and finds comfort from the fact) in outline what is going to happen at each stage of the story. Everything will be neatly wrapped up in a couple of thousand words. Some of these structures derive from the medium Conan Doyle was using – the magazine story – while others are self-imposed. They aren’t the rules of the genre, because Conan Doyle was pretty much inventing the genre himself. For me these stories – and there are exceptions of course – feel formulaic, as if the writer is providing the reader with what he assumed they wanted. We know that Conan Doyle eventually came to resent Holmes because of this.

But the rhyme structure of a sonnet is prescribed. The Harry Potter stories follow a rigid formula, but this doesn’t stop them being compelling. So what is the difference between adherence to form and writing within structural constraints? In a formulaic text the author is aware of the clichéd nature of the structures they are using. It is simply easier to allow the text to run along well-worn grooves. In a structured text the forms are there to guide the construction, not to govern it. The author can step outside the lines at any time. To offer some examples: Shakespeare’s most famous line – “To be or not to be, that is the question” – is an eleven syllable line in which the stresses can go almost anywhere we want them to. Anyone watching a Shakespeare play who thinks “What wonderful iambic pentameters” is really missing the point. In school we are taught that a sentence must have an object and a verb. But Charles Dickens opens ‘Bleak House’ with a one-word sentence – “London.” in which the reader is given almost completely free choice in the implied verb. Greater writers break rules. In a formulaic text the structures hold the text together, and without them it would just be a string of sentences. Conan Doyle could and did deconstruct his form – most famously when he killed off Holmes – but for too many of his stories he is on auto-pilot.

I am sure there’s more to this issue than the ground I have covered here – what do you think? I confess I have been tweaking this post for weeks trying to get the ideas straight on paper, and am close to giving up and just posting in the hope that someone might have some more insight on the issue than I have been able to muster!

 

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Book review

Wyrd Sisters (Discworld 6) by Terry Pratchett, 1988

‘Wyrd Sisters’ sees the return of Terry Pratchett’s magnificent three, Granny Weatherwax; Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick, Discworld’s most chaotic coven. The opening of the novel is closely modelled on Pratchett’s source text, Macbeth: King Verence I of Lancre, a small mountainous kingdom high in the Ramtops, is murdered by his cousin, Duke Felmet, and the duke’s homicidal wife. So far so Shakespeare, but from this point the novel WSdeviates somewhat from its source. (For the avoidance of any doubt, this is of course a joke – Macbeth is a source for ‘Wyrd Sisters’ in the same way that Hamlet is a source for the Lion King, i.e. barely).

The king’s son and his crown are smuggled out of the castle and handed to the witches for safekeeping. They foster the child with a troupe of travelling actors, hide the crown in plain sight in a box of props, and settle back to watch destiny take its course. Their confident expectation is that the prince, Tomjon, will grow up, defeat Duke Felmet and take his rightful place as king.

However, this is Discworld, so of course things don’t work out as easily as that. Lancre is a highly magical and very slightly sentient kingdom, and is angry about the way the new King mistreats the land. Reluctantly, the coven casts a spell over the kingdom, freezing it in time for 15 years and allowing Tomjon to grow into a young man and therefore (in theory at least) able to challenge his er…second cousin (uncle would have been better) for the throne. Tomjon is also, as it happens, a highly talented actor…. Continue reading →

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Book review

Lies, Inc, by Philip K Dick

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of books that I have failed to finish in the last few years. Mainly this has been through sheer stubbornness – I can’t imagine any other reason why anyone would work their way through the nine volumes – nine! – of Samuel Richardson ‘Clarissa’, or get beyond the first few pages of F R Rolfe’s hilariously bad ‘Hadrian 7‘. But I didn’t finish, or get beyond halfway, Philip K Dick’s ‘Lies, Inc’.Lies inc

‘Lies, Inc’ was originally a short story, ‘The Unteleported Man’. It’s a perfectly ordinary sci-fi story about the establishment of a space colony. For reasons known only to himself, Dick decided to turn the story into a novel. Instead of expanding the plot, adding characters, etc, he injected (deliberate choice of verb) a long middle section involving a drugs trip. Characters turn into rats, the plot collapses, and frankly it becomes utterly unreadable.

Don’t just take my word for it. I turned to Goodreads to try and find out whether I was missing the point somewhere, and there is a strong consensus that this novel is an utter car crash. One reviewer advised that even PKD completists should avoid it, reserving it only for ‘PKD masochists’.

Continue reading →

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Book review

Supplementary: Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice – a comparison

As I read ‘Sense and Sensibility‘ earlier this month I was struck by the many similarities between the novel and ‘Pride and Prejudice‘. My initial theory was that ‘Sense‘ was an early draft of ‘Pride‘, but that didn’t withstand much research – as Claire @ nerdslikeme.co.uk pointed out in a comment on an earlier post, although ‘Pride‘ was published second it was written first. Nevertheless, ‘Sense‘ is, to me, the junior or lesser work. Components of ‘Sense‘ which work well are even more impressive when portrayed in ‘Pride‘.

Both novels focus on the romantic affairs of a family of women, in which a father figure is to all intents and purposes missing. Mr Bennet is of course alive, but disastrously abdicates any involvement in his daughters’ romances, until in Lydia’s case it is too late. In both novels the families’ inheritance situation is precarious – if Mr Bennet dies the family will have to leave Longbourn; Mr Dashwood’s death leaves his second family in a position where they have to leave their home and take a cottage donated by a charitable family member, taking at the same time a large step down the social ladder.

The events of the novels are each described through the narrative perspective of an older sister. Elinor and Elizabeth are both sensible, mature young women who are embarrassed and scandalised by the conduct of their younger sisters. They are not completely reliable narrators – they withhold information from the reader and perhaps themselves, but their judgment is the one we are invited to trust. In terms of the family dynamics they take the place of their mothers who are portrayed as less intelligent and lacking in mature judgment. Younger teenage sisters are a cause of drama in each household. Marianne nearly engages herself to an unsuitable young man; Lydia does so, and goes further. Willoughby is immature and flirts with Marianne while never seriously contemplating an engagement – his financial affairs and his profligacy means he has to marry well; Wickham is equally focused on marrying for money while having fun as a single man, with little concern for the feelings of the women he dallies with.

Each novel also has a spare sister. Margaret Dashwood plays little or no part in ‘Sense’, in terms of the plot nor as a commentator or observer; Mary Bennet plays arguably a slightly more important  role in Pride, but is easily forgotten amongst the noise generated by her siblings.

Secrets and lies are at the heart of both novels. Much of what occurs in the texts is hidden from the reader. Marianne has no idea why Willoughby leaves Devon so suddenly, nor why he gives her the cold shoulder when they meet in London; all Mr Darcy’s efforts to salvage the situation with Lydia and Wickham is equally hidden from the Bennet family until near the end of the novel. Elinor has to bear the secret of Mr Ferrars’ engagement with Lucy Steele until it is finally broken; at least Elizabeth has someone to share her secrets with in her sister, Jane.

Finally, it all comes down to money. This is the central obsession of both novels. Many conversations revolve around character’s income, their savings, the inheritance they are likely to receive, etc. In ‘Pride’ there is an inflation of expectations – the sums Mrs Bennet talks about as being suitable for her daughters’ prospective and theoretical husbands gradually increase through the course of the novel. The despicable Mr Collins explains to Elizabeth that he is prepared to overlook her relative poverty, and later Mr Darcy makes a similar point, with broadly the same result. The same conversations dominate ‘Sense’; we are never far away from speculation about the worth of an individual in terms of income and savings, and Willoughby’s marriage to an heiress allows other characters scandalised by his behaviour towards Marianne to quickly overcome their scruples.

In comparing the novels I am not of course suggesting that Austen has recycled her material. She famously accepted that her work was narrow in scope, once writing:

“What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour?”

It is her ultimate achievement that she produced such stunning novels with such fine material. Van Gogh painted sunflowers many times, but each painting is unique. In considering ‘Pride‘ the more successful novel, that’s a personal view mainly in relation to how the central romance is portrayed – I enjoy the love story of Elizabeth and Darcy, while Edward and Elinor never really go through the same journey or face the same challenges. What do you think?

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