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Book review

Yellow Dog, by Martin Amis, 2003

There is an undeniable trajectory to Martin Amis’s novels – downward. Not just in quality but in coherence, tone and taste. He peopled his 2003 effort ‘Yellow Dog’ with disgusting grotesques and events that made it hard to stomach. The best I can say about this novel is that it is not as bad as ‘Lionel Asbo’, but from the author of ‘Money’ this is such a fall.amis yellow dog

‘Yellow Dog’ was one of those novels that bitterly divided reviewers when it was first published. If you enjoy critical reviews, you will probably appreciate these more than the novel itself. In an industry where most reviews are by default favourable, this in itself was extraordinary. The Independent gave it both barrels:

Yellow Dog is a strange, sad stew of a novel, so aggressively unpleasant that it would perhaps be best accompanied by an author photograph of Amis flicking Vs at the reader….The fact that Yellow Dog is so bad is not a cause for celebration. Anyone interested in English fiction will be deeply saddened to see one of our country’s greatest talents produce such a purposeless novel

The Times Literary Supplement was more surgical, describing the novel as “not absolutely terrible”.

Tibor Fischer, one of Amis’s contemporaries went even further with this celebrated denunciation:

“It’s like your favourite uncle being caught in a school playground, masturbating”

If you have time you can also read numerous monsterings of the novel on Goodreads, which gives ‘Yellow Dog’ one of the lowest average scores I can remember seeing.

Plotwise the novel is a complete mess. Amis runs several storylines in parallel, tying them together at the end of the novel with a summary neatness that seems insulting, as if he just lost interest and stopped writing. We have an author assaulted in a pub, and acquiring a sexual interest in his daughter as a result; a plane slowly approaching a crash landing; a comet passing near to the earth, and a blackmail plot involving a sex tape and a princess. A tabloid journalist for the Morning Lark buzzes around doing what journalists in comic novels do, making up headlines and being offensive. None of this has any point or purpose. A visit to America to visit a porn studio is a clumsily inserted (forgive the pun) piece of repurposed journalism.

None of these plotlines are particularly interesting, devoid as they are of real characters. In fact, the image that came to mind when reading yet another set piece of absurdity was the adult comic, Viz. Joseph Andrews, the psychotically violent gangster, is surely a thinly disguised Big Vern, Henry 9th, King of England in this parallel universe, is any one of the comic’s thick but dim upper class characters; Clint Smoker is a tabloid journalist with a micro-penis. Like Viz but without the humour, Amis sets out to offend with these caricatures, the sexual violent, incestuous paedophiles that people the pages of ‘Yellow Dog’. The class hatred that seeped from the pages of ‘Lionel Asbo’ is equally obvious here. The working class are amoral, ultra-violent criminals, although in the interests of balance the upper classes don’t come off much better.

What redeemed ‘Money’ from these obvious criticisms was Amis’s ability to craft an elegant metaphor, a skill that seems to have abandoned him here. Here’s an example of a paragraph which is Money would have fizzed with vividness:

“The bright sky was torn by contrails in various stages of dissolution, some, way up, as solid-looking as pipecleaners, others like white stockings, discarded, flung in the air, or light bedding after beauty sleep, others like breakers on an inconceivably distant shore.” (page 289)

Do these images work for you? Do they conjure up thoughts of a bright sky crossed by aircraft trails? I wonder how many readers will still know what a pipecleaner looks like? The ‘light bedding after beauty sleep’ simile works after a fashion, although the beauty sleep addition is pretentious. He’s working hard, and it is not bad writing, it just doesn’t impress in the way ‘Money’ did, and to redeem the other features of the novel it really needed to be magnificent. I’ve chosen one of the more innocuous passages from the novel – dip into any page and there is gratuitous often sexual violence and pretentious philosophising.

This was a 50p charity shop find – I am glad I didn’t pay more.

 

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Book review

Pride and Prejudice in ten key paragraphs (Part 2)

austen 2Chapter 43 This chapter opens with the fateful visit to Pemberley, where Elizabeth is so anxious to avoid accidentally bumping into Darcy that she travels halfway across the country to visit his family home.

Elizabeth, as they drove along, watched for the first appearance of Pemberley Woods with some perturbation; and when at length they turned in at the lodge, her spirits were in a high flutter.

The park was very large, and contained great variety of ground. They entered it in one of its lowest points, and drove for some time through a beautiful wood stretching over a wide extent.

Elizabeth’s mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and admired every remarkable spot and point of view. They gradually ascended for half-a-mile, and then found themselves at the top of a considerable eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye was instantly caught by Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of a valley, into which the road with some abruptness wound. It was a large, handsome stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills; and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They were all of them warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!

Indeed, later (ch. 59) Elizabeth tells Jane, only half joking, and in an attempt to persuade Jane that her acceptance of Darcy is sincere, that it was not until she saw Pemberley that she loved him:

“My dearest sister, now be serious. I want to talk very seriously. Let me know every thing that I am to know, without delay. Will you tell me how long you have loved him?”

“It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.”

We are of course seeing Pemberley through Elizabeth’s admiring eyes. Her language predominantly uses adjectives relating to size and scale:

“very large, great variety, for some time, stretching over a wide extent, a considerable eminence, a large, handsome stone building, standing well on rising ground, swelled into greater”

No wonder that this demonstration of Darcy’s wealth and power has such a profound impact on her feelings, even if only to persuade her to accept what she has thus far been denying.

Chapter 56 – Lady Catherine comes to confront Elizabeth with the rumours of Darcy’s intentions towards her. Rudely she arrives unannounced, and ignores the rest of the family, instead asking her for a private conversation outside.

“Miss Bennet, there seemed to be a prettyish kind of little wilderness on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take a turn in it, if you will favour me with your company”.

Preserving a corner of one’s grounds for a kind of little wilderness was a Regency fashion, one which wildlife enthusiasts of today would approve. But what is interesting is Lady Catherine’s decision to stage her confrontation in this particular part of the garden, diametrically opposite the more formal manicured lawns of Longbourn. This is a gloves-off challenge, a jungle arena where the usual conventions of language and class are deliberately albeit temporarily set aside. This allows Elizabeth to tap into her inner goddess, and give Lady Catherine a furious response when she attempts to bully her into promising to reject any proposal from Darcy.

Chapter 58 The climatic renewal of Mr Darcy’s proposal:

“You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”

Darcy does not directly profess his love, and the narrator does not tell us Elizabeth’s direct response, only that she

“feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand, that her sentiments had undergone so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure, his present assurances.”

The formality and clumsiness of the narrators presentation of the scene is a brilliant touch – it begins the process of pulling away from the couple and respecting their privacy, and recognises that Elizabeth is not at her most articulate at this point, choked up with emotion rather than formality. It is a wonderful end to the story arc, and shows yet again Austen’s genius in presenting this most compelling of romances.

 

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Book review

Pride and Prejudice in ten key paragraphs (part one)

I thought I would take a different approach to writing about this classic to end all classics, by picking out ten key paragraphs from the novel and paying them some careful attention. This analysis assumes a familiarity with the key events and characters of the novel. Incidentally, despite the misleading headline description of this post, I am not suggesting that these are the only ten paragraphs that you need to read to understand P&P – that would be ridiculous. The novel is so rich and rewardingly complex that almost any ten paragraphs plucked at random would be worth studying. But these are ten that jumped out at me on a recent rereading.austen

Chapter 10 – Jane, the eldest of the five Bennet sisters, has paid a visit to nearby Netherfield, in the course of which she has been caught in a rain shower. Walking instead of going in a coach is in itself significant – the Bennet’s have a coach, but it is not available. This helps precisely locate their social status – a one-coach family. Jane inevitably catches a cold, and second daughter Elizabeth has to go to Netherfield to care for her (this time the coach is available). This is just the first of several occasions when fate conspires to bring Elizabeth and Darcy together. Elizabeth is a family guest, but one with a special status, invited to care for her sister but not otherwise part of the party. This makes her a little detached from the others. It is unusual for someone to be a house-guest (i.e. staying overnight) on such a brief acquaintance.

In the evening the company gathers for dinner, followed by witty conversation and music. Elizabeth and Darcy spar; she is aware of his reputation as a gruff, unfriendly character, which was confirmed by his rudeness about her at the recent ball. But her attitudes begin to soften during the course of their conversation:

“Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody; and Darcy had never been so bewitched by a woman as he was by her. He really believed that were it not for the inferiority of her connections he should be in some danger.”

It is interesting to follow Austen’s masterful use of the narrative point of view here. In the first phrase the narrator gives us Elizabeth’s perspective – she is amazed by Darcy’s gallantry, confounding her earlier perception of him as someone gruff and rude. The next phrase is a more general observation about how Elizabeth is usually perceived – as both sweet and arch. We then are given Darcy’s confession – he is bewitched by her. Although we traditionally think of this romance as one in which the characters gradually fall in love, and struggle with their feelings, the reality is quite different – their mutual attraction is apparent from an early point, and from then it is only a question of navigating the various hurdles in their way, not least Darcy’s scruples about Elizabeth’s poorly connected family.

Chapter 15. Mr Collins, heir to Longbourn, the Bennet family home, comes to visit with the explicit intention of engaging himself to one of the Bennet daughters. Two preliminary points before I come to the paragraph in question. Firstly, I suspect ‘Longbourn’ is a little joke, referencing the phrase ‘long borne’, as in long suffered or tolerated. Precisely who is long suffering is another matter – most if not all of the Bennet household would probably lay claim to the phrase. The other more complex point relates to the business of the entail of Longbourn. When Mr Bennet dies the property will be left to his cousin, Mr Collins, not his daughters. This is the infamous ‘entail’.

We are given very little information about this entail – it is presented as an unfortunate fact of life about which little can be done, and Mrs Bennet is mocked for protesting about it and not understanding the details. Commentaries (I am sure correctly) claim that the practice of leaving a property to a single male heir was intended to avoid family wealth and estates being dissipated amongst numerous heirs, or going out of the family entirely through the female line. But that explanation doesn’t really help here – the effect of this will is that the Longbourn estate while preserved in its entirety is going out of the family, to a distant cousin with a different family name. If preserving the integrity of the modest estate is critical (and it is not a grand country house, after all, so the importance of this is less than it would be for Pemberly or Netherfield, for example) then Mr Bennet could simply leave the estate to his eldest daughter. It’s also unclear precisely who has imposed the entail on the estate – some commentaries suggests that the entail is like a long lease or another condition of occupation, imposed by a long-dead ancestor. But that can’t surely be right – can entails persist across the generations in the way this implies? It must be in Mr Bennet’s legal power to change the terms of his will and bequeath his property where he sees fit.

In the end of course the point becomes moot, because both Elizabeth and Jane marry well and into money, and are likely to produce a male heir to inherit Longbourn in any event.

Nevertheless, for now Mr Collins is the heir, and he is seeking to heal family rifts and keep the property in the family by marrying one of the sisters. His fancy alights on Jane, as the eldest, but when told by Mrs Bennet that she is likely to be engaged, his change of heart is swift:

“Mr Collins only had to change from Jane to Elizabeth – and it was soon done – done while Mrs Bennet was stirring the fire.

Affection is as ephemeral as that, a matter of simple choice rather than anything more complex – as long as Elizabeth is young enough to bear an heir, she will do. When she declines his kind offer the change to Charlotte Lucas is made with similar speed and as little disturbance. The casual brutality of his transferable affections here tells us all we need to know about Mr Collins, one of Austen’s great comic monsters.

Chapter 24. Jane and Elizabeth are discussing Charlotte Lucas’s marriage to the insufferable Mr Collins. Jane, as always seeing the positive in any situation, says that Charlotte “may feel something like regard and esteem for our cousin”. Elizabeth’s rejection of this is absolute

“Were I persuaded that Charlotte had any regard for him (Mr Collins) I should only think worse of her understanding than I now do of her heart…Mr Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man….the woman who married him cannot have a proper way of thinking”

Charlotte Lucas’s decision to accept Mr Collins’s proposal is a pragmatic decision, in which affection, regard or esteem plays no part. She needs a husband with a reasonable income and Mr Collins is available. Aged 27, without a significant income of her own, and not being regarded as a beauty, it is hard not to see Charlotte as a portrait of the choices women, not least of course Austen herself, had to make all the time in Regency England. Not everyone was lucky enough to snare themselves an English country gentleman. Despite Elizabeth’s incredulity, the signs are that Charlotte has made a comfortable life for herself in the Rosings rectory.

Mr Collins is indeed a monster, but I don’t think the reader is invited to share Elizabeth’s judgment or condemnation of Charlotte. Charlotte’s decision to settle for Mr Collins plays an important part in the narrative, as it leads Elizabeth to re-evaluate her own attitudes towards her choice of a life partner.

Chapter 28. Elizabeth has gone to Kent to visit her newly married friend, Charlotte Collins nee Lucas. A carriage stops outside the Rectory – it contains Miss Anne de Bourgh, Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s daughter, and her governess. These are two of the numerous almost invisible and silent women that people the background of this novel. While Charlotte speaks to the carriage’s occupants, Elizabeth looks on:

“I like her appearance, said Elizabeth, struck with other ideas. “She looks sickly and cross. Yes, she will do for him very well. She will make him a very proper wife”.

That Anne is intended as Darcy’s wife, by familial arrangement rather than by way of formal engagement, is not something that has publicly discussed with Maria Lucas, so Elizabeth seems to be speaking more to herself than Maria. Darcy pops into Elizabeth’s thoughts at the sight of Anne- she refers to him as “him” here, not by name. The narrator tells us plainly that Elizabeth is in denial – while she says she like’s Anne’s appearance, she is actually “struck by other ideas”. She evaluates Anne, whether she realises it or not, as a competitor, and is pleased that she is not to be feared.

This aside almost certainly goes over the head of Maria Lucas, one of Charlotte’s younger sisters who is Elizabeth’s companion on this visit. Maria Lucas is another of the walk-on parts scattered throughout the novel, and while she is given a few lines of her own, she mainly acts as a foil to the more mature, more intelligent Elizabeth.

Chapter 31. The setting for this scene is a gathering at Rosings, Lady de Bourgh’s home. Elizabeth is playing the piano, and Mr Darcy comes over to observe her play. Archly, Elizabeth says:

“You mean to frighten me, Mr. Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear me? I will not be alarmed though your sister does play so well. There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”

“In all this state” is an ambiguous phrase. It could mean in an agitated state, or it could mean “in all this stateliness”. There is no indication in the text that Darcy is in any kind of a state – leaving the reader to infer either he is showing his emotions, and the narrator has chosen not to describe these, or that he is perfectly composed, but that Elizabeth is teasing him. This is the matter of fact paragraph which precedes this comment:

“Colonel Fitzwilliam reminded Elizabeth of having promised to play to him; and she sat down directly to the instrument. He drew a chair near her. Lady Catherine listened to half a song, and then talked, as before, to her other nephew; till the latter walked away from her, and making with his usual deliberation towards the pianoforte stationed himself so as to command a full view of the fair performer’s countenance. Elizabeth saw what he was doing, and at the first convenient pause, turned to him with an arch smile, and said:..

One of the reasons Elizabeth is so loved by readers, is that she stands up for herself, brilliantly and fiercely against Lady Catherine, but also here when Darcy attempts to put her off her piano playing simply by his presence. We see Elizabeth’s courage rise again when someone foolishly tries to intimidate her.

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Book review

The Shrinking Man, by Richard Matheson, 1956

You may be more familiar with this novel through the film adaptation (pointlessly retitled the Incredible Shrinking Man, as if the shrinking bit was otherwise credible). It tells the story of Scott Carey, caught in one of those freak nuclear accidents that were almost unavoidable in 1950s America. Instead of imbuing him with superpowers, he begins to shrink. Every day he loses one seventh of an inch in height and overall mass. Doctors are unable to halt his inexorable decline.Shrinking Man

Matheson focuses his narrative on the end of Carey’s experience, when he is less than an inch tall, and is trapped in the family cellar, menaced by a Black Widow spider hungry for a snack. A lot of attention is paid to the practical detail of moving around when you are less than an inch tall, finding food, water and safety. In brief moments of calm Carey remembers his slow decline from a strong, six foot two husband and father, through an inverted adolescence, finally being housed in a doll’s house by his towering but ever faithful wife.

The novel cries out to be read as a parable. Carey’s emasculation, as he shrinks in both size and status, leading him to be more and more impotent, is a thoughtful commentary on the role of men in 1950’s American society. He is unable to provide for his family, and he becomes vulnerable first to a drunken paedophile and then teenage bullies. He briefly rediscovers his sexuality by spying on his daughter’s babysitter, who has a convenient propensity to remove her clothing and later has a brief affair with a fairground dwarf.

Size really does matter is the simple interpretation of this text, but to be honest I found the novel much more interesting if read as a commentary on the space race and the Cold War. Despite the seemingly impossible challenges Carey faces, he never gives up, and always ends up on top. He defeats his much larger enemies, and uses good old American pluck to win through. Each day’s shrinkage is another challenge to be confronted and beaten. At the end of the novel, he lies on his back looking up at the stars:

“How beautiful they were, like blue-white diamonds cast across a sky of inky satin. No moonlight illuminated the sky. There was only total darkness, broken by the flaring pin points of the stars. And the nicest thing about them was that they were still the same. He saw them as any man saw them, and that brought a deep contentment to him. Small he might be, but the earth itself was small compared to this.”

Just at this time the USA and the USSR were both planning to launch satellites, and were contemplating the vastness of the challenge in front of them. The space race was a proxy expression of the Cold War. Matheson seems to say here that nuclear weapons will present a challenge for America, but that no matter what is thrown at it, it will survive and go on to conquer. The novel ends on a remarkably positive note in language which anticipates some of the purple prose used by the first astronauts:

“If there were other bursts of radiation, other clouds drifting across seas and continents, would other beings follow me into this vast new world? So close — the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly, I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet — like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God’s silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man’s own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends in man’s conception, not nature’s. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I still exist!

Matheson came up with a superb idea here and has created one of the seminal 1950s science fiction texts (he also wrote ‘I am Legend’). Although the narrative can get bogged down with a “how tiny me climbed the side of the chair to recover some breadcrumbs” level of detail, I wasn’t too distracted by this, and enjoyed the adventure elements of the story.

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Book review

Night Watch, (Discworld 29) by Terry Pratchett, 2002

Night Watch was the 29th novel in Terry Pratchett’s extraordinary life’s work, the Discworld series. nigthwatch

The regular publication of Pratchett’s novels formed part of the background pulse of my life (and I am sure of many others), a predictable and reliable event that one looks forward to, like birthdays or Christmas. Although like all the novels in the series it can be read as a stand alone text, it is not a good entry point for those new to Discworld. This is later Pratchett, more serious, and it assumes a level of knowledge of the characters and their traditions without which  some of the jokes won’t work. An example of this happens when Sam Vimes meets Cut My Own Throat Dibbler. Dibbler is one of the numerous well realised characters who people Discworld and bring it to life. Travelling back in time, Sam meets CMOT when he is just starting out in the pie trade, and accidentally gives him his nickname. This joke doesn’t work if the reader isn’t already familiar with CMOT and his infamous ‘pies with personality.’

‘Night Watch’ is one of the darker novels in the series (although in interviews Pratchett disputed that label). Sam Vimes, commander of the Ankh-Morpork police (the Watch) is pursuing a serial killer, when he is caught in an accidental time warp, and travels back to thirty years earlier when he first joined the Watch. He mentors his younger self, teaching him all the tricks of the trade. The time travelling aspects of the story are handled adeptly, and although as with all time travel stories it won’t stand up to much scrutiny, it is cleverer than most. It is written with love for the characters and the world they live in, not least Sam Vimes the world weary copper, trying to keep the peace and do the job in front of him, struggling with the moral complexities that sometimes presents him with.

Vimes’s time travelling accident happens on the 30th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution of the Twenty-Fifth of May, a small scale over by lunchtime affair in which seven watchmen lost their lives. Each year the battle of Heroes Street is commemorated by those who were there by wearing lilac sprigs in their lapels, and visiting the graves of the fallen. This poignant memory echoes through the novel, as the inevitability of history reasserts itself, despite Sam’s interference with the events of the past. We also meet a much younger Vetinari, an apprentice of the Assassin’s Guild, who goes on to command the City. As a cleverly constructed prequel the novel is really mostly aimed at Discworld fans, rather than new readers. I have huge affection for the whole series, and pretty much everything Pratchett wrote, and his tragic death in 2015 deprived us of one of our great comic writers. But his characters are so vivid and well realised that they live on in our imaginations. In the unlikely event you haven’t discovered Discworld before now, and I know there are huge numbers of fans in the blogging community, then I can’t recommend these novels highly enough. Start at the beginning with ‘The Colour of Magic’, and just enjoy!

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Book review

Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury, 1962

I am trying to work out if this is a Young Adult book or not, and would appreciate any advice anyone can offer. Because if it is I clearly shouldn’t have read it. Only kidding of course – just pointing out that putting labels on novels is sometimes not helpful.

‘Something Wicked This Way Comes‘ (and what a wonderful title by the way) tells the dark, macabre story of Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway, two appropriately nameBradburyd 13 year old small-town American boys, and their visits to ‘Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show’, a distinctly 1950’s American carnival.  Sneaking into the carnival after it closes, they witness the proprietors using a spectral merry-go-round with supernatural powers, specifically the ability to age, or reduce the age of, anyone who rides it. Discovered, they are pursued by the carnival owners and their enslaved exhibits (the Dust Witch, the Skeleton, the Dwarf, and Mr Electrico). The rest of the novel tells the story of their pursuit and their struggles with the malevolent carnival characters.

There are a number of themes here that have gone on to become standard features of gothic horror novels. I can’t be sure to what extent Bradbury  simply developed these traditions, or originated them, but he without doubt had a significant influence on writers such as Stephen King, (who wrote his own coming of age novel, Stand by Me) and Neil Gaiman, both of whom have acknowledged their debt to Bradbury. Characters bewitched into different, powerless, forms appear here, as does the idea of a community that mysteriously reappears every generation, once every thirty years. The novel even has the idea of a library as a supposedly safe space from which a fight-back against the forces of the night can be launched (Buffy, anyone?).

Carnivals are inherently spooky, particularly those with freak-shows. They come to life at night, appear overnight and disappear as quickly. They are not the kind of place you want to get lost in. Bradbury uses this carnival as a potent symbol of sin and evil – “(it) survives living off the poison of the sins we do each other, and the ferment of our most terrible regrets“(chapter 40).

The ‘however’ you have been expecting is now overdue. The element of genuine suspense, the belief that Will and Jim might actually come to harm, is missing. The dust-witch is killed with a smile, and laughter is used to make the night recede. Evil melts away in the face of a chuckle. The freaks and their puppet masters are conquered far too easily. The blurb to this edition quotes a Washington Post review which refers to this text as a “timeless rite of passage” novel. More specifically it is a coming of age story – in the course of the few hours span of the novel, Jim and Will quite literally grow up, taking an inadvertent circuit on the time-travelling merry go round. Which brings us back to the Young Adult question. Evil that is defeated without too much stress, and teenagers growing up – these are classic ingredients of the YA genre. If further proof were needed, the film of the book was made by Disney! But I still liked it.

 

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Book review

Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson, 1748 – Volume 2

Volume 2 of ‘Clarissa’ is extraordinarily like volume 1 – Clarissa’s family send various people to try to persuade her to comply with their wishes, she in reply explains her adamantine opposition to Mr Solmes. Lovelace, the libertine suitor who her family have rejected, lurks in the background, waiting for his opportunity. Every word is recorded faithfully for Miss Howes, Clarissa’s faithful friend, who in return occasionally chips in with some moderately helpful advice. Miss Howes’ suitor Mr Hickman appears briefly, but is dismissed primarily as a nuisance to be dealt with once the main drama is concluded.

It is hard to avoid the suspicion at times that Clarissa is enjoying being the centre of attention, even though the threat she is living under is real enough. She generates vast volumes of letters, often several in one day, but her practical problems of getting these to Miss Howes – there is some clumsy business with a loose brick in the garden wall – are overlooked. Email would have been so convenient to imprisoned young women in the eighteenth century!

With so little ground to cover, and so many pages to fill, Richardson inevitably gets long-winded, as in this extract from letter 43, which for me is also an example of pretty clumsy writing

“If the thing requested be of greater consequence, or even of equal, to the person sought to, and it were, as the old phrase has it, to take a thorn out of one’s friend’s foot to put in into one’s own, something might be said— nay, it would be, I will venture to say, a selfish thing in us to ask a favour of a friend which would subject that friend to the same or equal inconvenience as that from which we wanted to be relieved, the requested would, in this case, teach his friend, by his own selfish example, with much better reason, to deny him, and despise a friendship so merely nominal.”

Moments of actual activity, rather than debate about a daughter’s duties, are rare, and the format Richardson has adopted makes it impossible for him to describe any such action when it does happen other than in retrospect. He increasingly resorts to having people scribble notes as they wait for someone to arrive, and then breathlessly report on what has happened, with the events themselves being the one time the screen goes blank. The constraints of the format occasionally lead to Richardson breaking his own rules – footnotes begin to appear from the anonymous editor of the correspondence, pointing out various contradictions in the characters’ behaviour. Using correspondence allows the author to give us directly and immediately the character’s thoughts and feelings, but the other shortcomings of the form are becoming more obvious as the novel progresses.

Despite being her intimate correspondence, Clarissa rarely tells us what she is really feeling – she instead spends a huge amount of time setting out what she believes she ought to think and feel. Which is why her dream recounted in letter 34, when the prospect of a forced marriage with Solmes seems imminent, is revealing:

‘Methought my brother, my uncle Antony, and Mr. Solmes, had formed a plot to destroy Mr. Lovelace; who discovering it, and believing I had a hand in it, turned all his rage against me. I thought he made them all fly to foreign parts upon it; and afterwards seizing upon me, carried me into a church-yard; and there, notwithstanding, all my prayers and tears, and protestations of innocence, stabbed me to the heart, and then tumbled me into a deep grave ready dug, among two or three half-dissolved carcases; throwing in the dirt and earth upon me with his hands, and trampling it down with his feet.’

There is a real and immediate physicality to this that is absent in the rest of Clarissa’s letters, real violence. Dirt and half-dissolved carcases are not the kind of things young Georgian ladies are meant to dream or talk about. It is tempting to interpret this as a sex dream, with its reference to stabbing and tumbling, and of course one would expect a young woman of this era to be apprehensive about the impending loss of her virginity – “innocence” – on her marriage, but I think the genuine fear here is palpable. For once this is no longer a game for Clarissa – she is slowly beginning to realise that sooner or later she is going to have to leave her warm protective family home with its servants and high garden walls, and have to face the real world in which she will be another man’s possession. No wonder she is terrified.

 

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Book review

Clarissa Harlowe, or the history of a young lady, by Samuel Richardson, 1748

Further subtitled “Comprehending the most Important Concerns of Private Life. And particularly shewing, The Distresses that may attend the Misconduct Both of Parents and Children, In Relation to Marriage“.

The good news is that I have finally finished volume one of ‘Clarissa’.

The bad news – for me – is that I have another eight volumes to go! This is indeed a monster of a novel, running to over 1500 pages. To preserve my sanity I am going to approach it as a series of novels, and may well break it up with lighter reading,

First impressions:

Clarissa is an epistolary novel, where the narrative is progressed through the characters’ correspondence. This has the advantage of showing us their thoughts and feelings, and given the frenzy with which Clarissa and her friends and family write letters, sometimes several in one day, including to members of the same household, gives an immediate reportage feel to the novel. The disadvantage of this format is that without an omniscient narrator there is little in the way of descriptive writing – we are only told what the characters believe to be relevant, which excludes the setting, their appearance, etc.

Clarissa, a rich young lady, is the subject of a fierce battle of will between herself and her family. Her father and other relatives want her to marry Mr Solmes, an even richer young man, who promises to add to the family’s overall wealth and status, and believe it is their right to dispose of their daughter as they see fit. She is valuable property, the more so now her grandfather has recently bequeathed her some money. She is disinclined to accept these arrangements. The family believe her refusal stems from an attachment to an unsuitable young man, Mr Lovelace. She adamantly denies any such attachment, but Richardson skilfully uses the differences between her descriptions of events and those of others to allow the reader to deduce that there may be some truth in their suspicions. An impasse is reached, which is where volume one ends, with the family resorting to ever more forceful attempts to persuade Clarissa to accept Mr Solmes, and she equally forcefully rejecting him.

The bulk of the novel (this volume at least) is formed of letters between Clarissa and her friend, Miss Howe. It is a significant moment when a third voice is introduced, that of Lovelace, who reveals himself as the libertine Clarissa’s family fears him to be. In Letter 35 Lovelace boasts to a friend,

“I will throw myself into my charmer’s presence. I have twice already attempted it in vain. I shall then see what I may depend upon from her favour. If I thought I had no prospect of that, I should be tempted to carry her off. That would be a rape worthy of Jupiter!”

This is one of those sentences that brings the reader up short – is Lovelace really lasciviously anticipating raping Clarissa? My initial reaction was that he might be using the word ‘rape’ in a special, eighteenth century context, a robust form of seduction. The word ‘ravish’ is sometimes used in this way, implying a more complex relationship than a simple assault. But I think that would be letting Lovelace off the hook – he clearly has every intention of having sex with Clarissa, and her consent is of little concern to him. Richardson makes it clear that Lovelace considers having sex with women a form of revenge.

“A rape worthy of Jupiter”.

We are, in this one packed phrase, at the heart of the novel’s sexual politics – Clarissa is a possession, the most prized component of which (in addition to her grandfather’s inheritance) is her sexual attractiveness, and in particular her ability to provide an heir. It is that value which is threatened by the lothario Lovelace, and that which her family imprison her in order to protect. It is another example of the double standards of the time, that Lovelace’s reputation for immoral behaviour is something that can quickly be forgotten when it comes to considering him a potential groom, when set against his considerable fortune and expectations.

Only eight more volumes to go!

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Book review

The Green Man, by Kingsley Amis, 1969

Kingsley Amis spent his whole career not writing a successful follow up to his great first novel,  ‘Lucky Jim’. I loved ‘Lucky Jim’ when I first read it several decades ago, and while the passage of years has eroded that affection somewhat, at the time it lead me to read as much Amis as I could get my hands on. That’s not to say Amis’s later novels were bad – the Booker prize for ‘The Old Devils’, as well as a couple of other shortlisting, attests to that. ‘The Green Man’ stood out at the time as something very different from Amis’ s usual portraits, so when the opportunity to revisit it came up I took it, wondering whether it would be as good, and as strange, as I remembered it?the-green-man

I am glad to say it was. The Green Man of the title is an inn owned and managed, after a fashion, by Maurice Allington, a another thinly disguised Amis self-portrait. The inn dates back to the 14th century, and comes with the usual stories of hauntings and the occult. Strange things start to happen. Allington sees what we are lead to believe are ghosts, although the heroic scale of his alcoholism leaves open the distinct possibility that there are just hallucinations. His elderly father suffers a stroke, which if anything spurs Allington on to even greater peaks of drinking. Nothing seems to dent his self-destructive urges, and on the day of his father’s funeral he pursues an affair with his neighbour, and persuades her to have a ménage à trois with his wife. As with many novels written by middle aged men, his sexual allure is irrestistible, and this plan succeeds, to a point – the orgy happens, but he finds it hard to get involved, and eventually gives in and goes off and has another drink.

Refusing to believe they are simply hallucinations, Maurice somehow finds the time to investigate the hauntings. He uncovers the long lost diaries of Thomas Underhill, a local scholar and former owner of the inn, who he believes to be the identity of the ghost. These diaries reveal that Underhill used the supernatural to seduce and or ravish young girls from the village, and may be the explanation for the current events. The paranormal themes of the novel now take centre stage, as it becomes clear that the ghosts are not simply the product of Maurice’s drinking (even if he is unable persuade anyone else of their authenticity). Underhill emerges from the shadows and persuades Maurice to unearth his nearby grave, in which he finds an ancient silver figurine, which in turn leads to a rather clumsy scheme which will cause the death of Maurice’s teenage daughter. Maurice frustrates this plan at the last minute, in part due to an intervention by another supernatural figure who we are led to understand is a manifestation of God. If this sounds bizarre, it is, although Amis’s undoubted skills as a story teller allow him to carry it off.

The Green Man is traditionally portrayed as a benevolent figure, and Amis’ s idea to transform him into a sinister, lumbering killer is inspired. It is a mark of a confident writer that he can combine genres – the comedy of the drunken, lecherous innkeeper frozen out of his own orgy – with the supernatural Underhill narrative. Allington is ultimately a bit of a tragic albeit resilient figure, and as usual with Amis it is the underwritten women characters who one would like to have seen more of, rather than just playing bit parts as figures of sexual interest. Overall however I was pleased to find this novel still in print, despite Amis being very much an author no longer in vogue, and enjoyed the nostalgic re-read.

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Book review

Moby Dick, or the Whale, by Herman Melville, 1851

I now understand Moby Dick’s reputation for being unreadable. The core of the novel is the well-known whale-hunting adventure, with the obsessive Ahab pursuing the white whale to the ends of the farthest ocean, with the “from hell’s heart I stab at thee”, and all that.  This material would have made an excellent longer short story, a novella perhaps, with the excitement of the pursuit and the psychological portrait of the captain at its heart.zzmoby-dick

However, Melville chose to pad this story out to four or five times its length with an interminable, extraordinary amount of additional information about whales and whaling. It read very much as if he did a lot of background research to his subject and included it all in the novel. Can you imagine ‘Heart of Darkness’ with four hundred additional pages on the ivory trade? Or ‘The Great Gatsby’ with a detailed history of the prohibition movement? I found wading through the chapters on the different types of whale, how they are caught, processed, defined and anatomised really difficult, not least because of the brutality and callousness of the process, and the narrator’s wilful ignorance of the impact of nineteenth century whaling on the whale population.

If you can muscle your way past this issue, or perhaps find an expurgated version, there is plenty of interest elsewhere in the novel. Whaling was a dangerous occupation, and the thought of the small sailing boats setting off to harpoon mighty sperm whales has become an iconic image. I am sure I was not the only reader who at times was cheering on the whales. The opening chapters of the novel, when Ishmael meets Queequeg the cannibal harpooner, are very different in tone from those towards the end, and are surprisingly funny. Their relationship is openly homosexual and comically and euphemistically described. Ishmael advises the reader that it is ““Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.” On their first night together sharing a bed, Ishmael catches sight of the “bald purplish head” of the “purple rascal,” and “shrieks” when Queequeg springs under the covers with his tomahawk. After some “kicking about”, Queequeg begins “feeling” Ishmael; next morning they awake with “Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner…You had almost thought I had been his wife.” That Melville was able to get this past his publisher, and the reading public, probably says more about their racism towards the strange habits of the South Sea islander than it does their tolerance of alternative sexual lifestyles!

Ostensibly the narrator of the novel is Ishmael, but we are told very little of his back story, and even less about him as a character. Increasingly as time passes he fades into the background, to be replaced with a traditional omniscient narrator who can see multiple separate and simultaneous events, is able to tell us what characters are thinking and feeling, and is indistinguishable from Melville himself. Call me Ishmael if you like, but Herman would be more polite.

The climax of the novel, a reward for those who make it that far, is stunning. It shows what a good adventure novel has been struggling to emerge all that time. The white whale is sighted, pursued, harpooned, and – well for once I won’t spoil the ending. Suffice to say it was not the one I was expecting. I am conscious I am being quite philistine here – I really should be exploring the novel’s heavy symbolism, its complex literary allusions, and the multiple literary styles employed. Certainly that’s all there for the reader who wants to explore in more detail and read the text with more care – I was simply glad to make it to the other side. Incidentally, this novel ends the nineteenth century section of my read through of the Guardian’s top 100 novels written in English.

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