Book World

Falling in love with Henry James

Perhaps one has to be of a certain age to fall in love with Henry James.  I have read him before and apart from some of the shorter fiction - The Turn of the Screw, The Europeans - I haven’t really enjoyed the experience.  Indeed, it’s fair to say that I have been maddened by what I perceived (in my modern haste and brash desire to ‘get to the point’) as his circumlocutions and cheese paring of his characters’ sensibilities.  But just as I failed to understand Jane Austen’s irony as a teenager but become a devotee of it in my twenties, so in my forties it seems I am ready to understand and appreciate Henry James’s subtlety, his patience and more than anything, his artistic tact.

 I started reading The Portrait of a Lady because of an article by Colm Toibin in the London Review of Books (which I wrote about here) and an idea I had that Mme Merle could teach me something about a character in my own novel.  Actually, I have now axed that character and instead, Henry James has taught me much more interesting lessons about finding the apt image or metaphor, describing emotional states with insight and specificity and artistry in structuring a narrative, especially his knack of avoiding the big scenes and moving instead to look at their consequences.  

I admired (and took notes) on how perfectly he dealt with Isabel’s marriage.  She has refused an offer from an English nobleman, Lord Warburton, and from her American suitor Caspar Goodwood, both of whom would have made ‘good’ husbands in the sense of being decent, honourable men, but neither of whom she loves.  Isabel is then introduced to the American ex-pat, Gilbert Osmond, a man of no means but exquisite taste and sensibilities.  Isabel projects her own goodness and honesty onto Gilbert and misreads him entirely.  James somewhat laconically tells us she spends three weeks in Gilbert’s company without giving details then moves on to the expected arrival of her cousin Ralph.  In the next chapter Isabel is in a state of agitation awaiting the arrival of a young man.  Of course the reader assumes it is either Gilbert or Ralph and is disconcerted to find that it is Caspar and that in the course of their conversation it is disclosed that Isabel is now engaged to Gilbert.  It’s a masterful sleight of hand to preserve the inward mystery of Isabel’s attraction to Gilbert and to keep the reader out of the detail of any intimacy between them so that James can make an even more audacious leap.   The narrative moves on in time to three years after the marriage and in a conversation between Isabel and Mme Merle which is ostensibly about a husband for Gilbert’s daughter, we find out that Isabel and Gilbert are not happy in their marriage.  Thereafter the detail of why they are not happy and the slow disclosure of Isabel’s disillusion take on the character of a psychological thriller, all made possible because James has deliberately chosen not to tell the reader what has actually happened.  

Part way through, as Isabel realised how she was caught in a web she had not seen, I mentally accused James of cruelty.  But as the book went on and the character of Isabel grew, gained depth and complexity as she faced her situation clear-eyed and bravely, I simply gave in to admiration of his skill in creating a heroine courageous enough to endure the situation and who was wholly good (albeit sometimes misguided) and yet not priggish or unsympathetic.  

My creative writing classes have strongly come down in favour of reading contemporary fiction on the basis that this is the work from which contemporary writers should learn.  No one can write a novel like a Henry James novel nowadays so don’t even try is the message.  But the problem is that I have found little contemporary fiction truly to my taste and some petulant reviews here bear witness to my annoyance at bad writing (constrained sometimes by my awareness of the hypocrisy of criticising when my own efforts are even worse).  My failure to find really good contemporary fiction, something with weight and depth, has, I now realise, left me disillusioned with reading.  The Portrait of a Lady restores my faith.  Books like this are the reason I read.  Here is a novel that treats the reader as being as serious, thoughtful and intelligent about the morality of human relationships as the author is, and where the writer’s skill, his intelligence and insight are equal to the sensitive and complex task he has set himself.  

There was a deep pleasure in reading the book for the first time, knowing it to be the right book at the right time, and being in tune with it, drinking it in, loving Isabel, worrying for her, recoiling in horror at the revelation of Mme Merle’s true position and then weeping at Ralph’s death.

And on a final note, I can say that reading Henry James on the Kindle was a joyful and liberating process for me.  Those pages of solid, unparagraphed text in my paperback version with their slightly too small font size were hard work.  On the Kindle the ability to increase the font size with the added bonus that the amount of text on the screen at any one time looked manageable, even without paragraphs, made the reading experience so much more comfortable.  And I found the reading experience strangely more pure, undistracted by an actual book.  

 

Richard III at The Old Vic

I see quite a lot of theatre in London but last night's performance of Richard III at the Old Vic with Kevin Spacey in the lead role was probably the best thing I have ever seen.  It is also the first time I've been in an audience that rose with one accord to give a standing ovation.  

It always amazes me how actors bring a line from the page to real, quivering life on the stage with just a look, a gesture, the right intonation. Spacey didn't so much speak Shakespeare's lines as actually be them.  It's a long play but it was riveting and purely, absorbingly entertaining and unexpectedly funny.  Spacey's Richard was ironic, sarcastic, outrageously hypocritical and manipulative but also chillingly charismatic and energetic.  And despite such a towering and dominant central figure the women (in what is really a man's world) were equally compelling: the old queen Margaret as a shamanistic doomsayer; Anne physically wooed despite her horror and Elizabeth broken and brought low.  I feel Shakespeare would have liked this production: his characters were given majestic full rein and the staging inventively supported the dramatic action.

I often blanch at the cost of theatre tickets in London and leave some highly praised plays disgruntled at having been sold a pup, but last night restored all my love of theatre.  Films cannot compare with being in the centre stalls, ten rows back from actors of real skill and stature performing that night for that audience.  Magical.

I'm now glancing nervously through my diary wondering how the next performances I have booked  (a revival of Tom Stoppard's Rozencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead and Ralph Fiennes in The Tempest) can possibly compare.  

Practice is the heart of the matter

From John Gardner The Art of Fiction Notes on Craft for Young Writers:

"On reflection we see that the great writer's authority consists of two elements.  The first we may call, loosely, his sane humanness; that is, his trustworthiness as a judge of things, a stability rooted in the sum of those complex qualities of his character and personality (wisdom, generosity, compassion, strength of will) to which we respond as we respond to what is best in our friends, with instant recognition and admiration, saying, 'Yes, you're right, that's how it is!" The second element, or perhaps I should say force, is the writer's absolute trust (not blind faith) in his own aesthetic judgments and instincts, a trust grounded partly in his intelligence and sensitivity - his ability to perceive and understand the world around him - and partly in his experience as a craftsman; that is (by his own harsh standards), his knowledge, drawn from long practice, of what will work and what will not.

What this means in practical terms for the student writer, is that in order to achieve mastery he must read widely and deeply and must write not just carefully but continually, thoughtfully assessing and reassessing what he writes, because practice, for the writer as for the concert pianist, is the heart of the matter."

 

Part two - Half a year of books.

Bringing the year's reading up to date.

Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd.

When I was much younger I read Boyd's The New Confessions and loved it so much that not only did I read Rousseau's Confessions (which Boyd gives a nod to in his title) but I also read every book of Boyd's as it was published.  None gripped me quite as The New Confessions did, although they were all excellent in their own way.  Somehow along the way though my Boyd habit abated. Out of curiosity I picked up Ordinary Thunderstorms at the library, looking, I think, for that elusive animal, the well written, intelligent, readable literary novel.  

Ordinary Thunderstorms ticked four and a half of those five boxes.  It is well written (and by this I mean the prose is not dull, pretentious, a distraction from the subject matter or wincingly tone deaf and on the positive side is well made, fresh and interesting - a pretty high hurdle, I am a picky reader nowadays), is readable and literary (and this word I use loosely and controversially to mean 'non-genre').  

The story is broadly that of a man who stumbles into a murder scene, becomes the main suspect and thereby tangles himself up in a conspiracy, all of which force him to live rough in London and then find an alternate identity.  It's a great plot and well executed.  My only reservation was the conspiracy element: big pharma as the villain.  Again?  If this hasn't become a cliche by now, the idea is at the very least severely fatigued.  But it didn't ruin a good read.

Great House by Nicole Krauss.

Great House by Nicole Krauss is definitely in with a chance of being my book of the year.  It won't be to everyone's tastes: you will need to love being inside the head of at least two introspective, self-absorbed female characters who write; you will also need to be tolerant of interior monologue and an overall atmosphere of loss and anxiety.  If you can manage that then here is a beautifully written book of deep thought and loveliness.  

Theodora by Stella Duffy.

I read this whilst deep in some unproductive writing endeavours of my own and my review here was heavily influenced by my frustration with some elements of the craftsmanship of the writing.  I gather that the novel has now been optioned by HBO.  I suspect it will be better on the screen than the page.

The Privileges by Jonathan Dee.

Another contender for book of the year.  

On a writing course I attended a while ago the tutor declared that there is nothing as boring as reading about money in a novel.  I was astonished.  I love reading about money.  Money, property, inheritance, debt are all motivating factors in of several of my best loved novels: Madame Bovary, anything by Edith Wharton or Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, swathes of Henry James.  So this glimpse into the lives of the super-rich and the murky means by which their money was acquired and what they did with it was fascinating for me.  It was especially well written: half way through I realised that the author had entirely convinced me of the wealth involved without giving me a single description of an opulent interior.  Also, despite their moral dubiousness and their extraordinary lifestyle these were recognisably human characters, not caricatures, each with their own inner lives.  And that is an achievement that is rarer than it should be in contemporary fiction.  And if this doesn't convince you to read the book then at least sample the first chapter: the description of the wedding and family tensions is one of the best things I've read in years.  But not if you think reading about money is dull.

The Journal of Dora Damage by Belinda Starling.

A Victorian woman is forced by her husband's illness to take over their book binding business and then finds herself working for a highly placed ring of pornographers on whom she eventually turns the tables.  

The book was excellent on the detail of London life (although overlong in places) but rather unconvincing in its plot.  Renews my admiration for Jack Maggs.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

Wonderful.  If you haven't read it already, then go now and get a copy.  Inventive and interesting and lovely.  Though not quite personally engaging enough for book of the year.

The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller.

Mystery set in the aftermath of the First World War.  A page turner with a lot of loose plot ends and a serious need of an editor but engaging nevertheless.  An author I have mentally noted to seek out again.

Gillespie and I by Jane Harris.

There is no way to do justice to this novel without giving away a major plot point so you will have to take it on trust from me, without much further explanation, that this is a marvellous novel.  It may look long but it is such an excellent involving read (single woman becomes embroiled with an artist and his family in late nineteenth century Glasgow leading to .... complications) that the pages turn themselves.  And the plot twist that comes about half way through is magnificent.  

The Observations, Jane Harris's first novel was also wonderful.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness.

So, this turned up for me at the library.  Although I had no recollection of doing so, at some point I had clearly ordered it.  How had I heard of it?  No idea.  What was it about?  Finding an old book according to the blurb on the inside flap.  I placed it on my shelf.  Then someone else wanted it from the library and I either had to read it or return it unread.  I read the first few pages.  I discovered that the narrator was a witch.  And then she met a vampire.

I am an out and out literary snob.  I do not read books about vampires or witches.  Not Harry Potter (well, not for a long time) nor Twilight (unreadable boring pap).  

I could not put this book down.

I read 600 pages in two days.  I bought it on my Kindle so I could read anywhere and everywhere without lugging the equivalent weight of two house bricks with me.  I read late at night and I read early in the morning.

And even when I got to the end and found that it was not the end, that it was simply the beginning of a trilogy and that nothing, absolutely nothing, was resolved and that I was left hanging like something on a Christmas tree, I was still happy.

I can't begin to explain how the author made a book about magic compelling and readable but she did.  (Although it obviously helps that she can write good prose.  No story is good enough to withstand bad prose).

So, there we have the year's reading so far.  The usual mixed bag: several duds, a surprise, some discoveries, some old favourites.  Nothing life changing. Yet.  Because of course it is the search for the book that will change my life and explain it all to me that keeps me reading.  Like Captain Ahab, I know it is out there and I am determined to hunt it down.

Half a year of books. Part One

July is here already and it is time for a mini stock take of the reading year so far.  I am tempted to use my nine-words-or-less review plan again but can't be that lazy twice.

The Glamour by Christopher Priest.  

This was a book whose premise was excellent: a collective negative hallucination by the 'normal' population in respect of some people which thus renders them effectively invisible (giving them the 'glamour') and allowing them to lead parallel immoral lives.  The narrator becomes involved with a girl from the 'glamour' and her demonic ex-boyfriend.  This could have been interesting in itself without the additional layering of a plot involving the narrator's amnesia, but sadly, and I do mean sadly as I loved the idea, it never took off.  Something about the style flattened the story, made it dull and then, as a final insult, the writer pulled off the sort of cheap trick ending which, frankly, only Lewis Carroll has successfully got away with.

Surprisingly, I didn't resent starting the year with a dud.  It was a novel off the beaten track of my usual reading and worth taking a chance on.

The Orchard by Drusilla Modjeska.

Well, to start the year with one unenjoyable book may be regarded as a misfortune but to follow it up immediately with another one looks like carelessness.  But careless I was. 

The book consisted of three sections narrated by the same un-named character.  In fact they felt like essays or even non-fiction with their footnotes about real people.  Sebald does this magnificently.  Ms Modjeska less so.  Either I wasn't concentrating or the narrator's role in the stories, and the connection of the stories to each other was somewhat sketchy.  It may well have been me.

The book had a few good passages on the theme of women finding their selves, their voices, their role in the world and there were some interesting sections on the relationship between Stella Bowen, Ford Madox Ford and Jean Rhys (and I now have no recall at all as to what they were doing there) but unfortunately the prose tended towards portentousness, platitudes and abstraction. The section on the boredom of being blind was, alas, all too successful.

The Clerkenwell Tales by Peter Ackroyd.

This is another in what I privately designate as Ackroyd's novelisations of his research for the magisterial London: the Biography, a book I adore and venerate.  The trouble is that as I have read the Biography twice now, the spin off novels seem slightly less satisfying by comparison.  

The Clerkenwell Tales is set in fourteenth century London and is gorgeous with historically accurate detail.  It has a thriller type feel, revolving around a political/religious plot with a nun who is either a prophet or a madwoman at its centre.  As with all Ackroyd's work the writing and detail are meticulous and wonderful but this one just didn't capture my imagination and (whisper it) I felt the mad/religious dichotomy just a bit cliched.

The Fall of Troy by Peter Ackroyd.

Now, The Fall of Troy, by comparison saw Ackroyd at his best again so far as my tastes are concerned. 

The central figure, Obermann, is from the start powerful and charismatic; a romantic obsessed with excavating the ruins of Troy.  In the early stages we, through his new wife Sophia, catch him out in minor lies, exaggerations, and amoral acts which gradually blossom into ruthless monomania and the destruction of anyone or anything that contradicts his belief that the inhabitants of Troy were European not Asiatic.  Obermann sees life through the lens of Homer's epic poetry and takes it and Greek mythology literally and yet remains believable and fascinating. I like a good obsessive and Obermann was a towering genius of the form.

Darkmans by Nicola Barker.

At 848 pages this one looked dauntingly long and yet I breezed through it as a result of the frequent one liners and section breaks which put plenty of white space on each page.  Plus the frequent repetitions made it tempting to skim: why pay attention all the time when you know the same point will be made at least three times in varying permutations and you can catch it later down the page?

The novel has the world's most irritating style (chatty, lengthy interior monologue, interminable free indirect style) and yet slips past pleasantly enough.  With novels of this size, or those with odd narration, it seems to be customary for reviewers to salute the novelist's 'bravura performance' and 'exuberance'.  My inner editor grits her teeth and thinks that they are missing the point. In my limited experience the colloquial interior monologue is pretty much the easiest thing to write and it is always harder to write a short description than to use three adjectives to every noun as Barker does.  Praising length is rather beside the point.  

Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon.

I have a weakness for Victorian sensation novels; Wilkie Collins and his ilk never fail me no matter how preposterous the plot.  Lady Audley's Secret was a delightful example of the genre and an early appearance of the reluctant detective figure.  Bigamy, attempted murder, blackmail, arson, exile to Australia, cupidity, sisterly devotion, unrequited love - it's all here with some light moralising thrown in for good measure.  Entirely irresistible!

Jack Maggs by Peter Carey. 

This was a wonderful example of the best of historical fiction featuring a Dickens-like author who becomes involved with a Magwitch-type returned convict.  Expert plotting, characterisation and evocation of Victorian London.  Highly recommended.

The Captains and the Kings by Jennifer Johnston.

Outstanding.  Longer review here 

By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham.

Another outstanding novel.  Longer review here

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

I remember enjoying Case Histories but then fell out of love with Kate Atkinson's private detective Jackson Brodie. Started Early, Took My Dog re-starts the love affair.  Atkinson is excellent at layering and linking multiple plot lines, at not over explaining things to the reader and at creating detailed believable people who I wanted to spend time with.  A hugely enjoyable novel and I am now hoarding the remaining two Jackson Brodie novels I haven't yet read in order to take them with me on holiday.  Roll on Italy!

So after a shaky start, the first ten novels of the year contained six good reads; a reasonable return on investment.  Glancing down the rest of the list I see that six of the next nine were also enjoyable.  63%.  That figure needs work I feel. 

 

Theodora by Stella Duffy

I like historical fiction but don’t often venture as far back in time as the first millennium, preferring to stay within my 18th/19th century comfort zone. Theodora by  Stella Duffy was an interesting departure for me, not just as a reader, but also as a would be historical writer (my still-struggling-with-it novel is set in the 19th Century).  I should make it clear that what follows is more a note to myself on issues around writing rather than a full review of the book.  Perhaps reading as a writer has taken over from reading as a reader.  I have never read solely for plot but it seems that nowadays I can’t overlook less than excellent writing (even though I can’t produce it myself!) 

Theodora is set in Constantinople around 500 CE and there is no attempt to re-create period speech or style, the book is unashamedly modern in its narrative tone and dialogue.  So here, for example, is Theodora is speaking to her maid: ‘Yeah, right, because you’ve got so much time between screwing the captain and flirting with that fat merchant..’  Or to her friend Sophia: ‘We could go somewhere else, just the two of us, for a meal?’ I admit I find this modern speech somewhat jarring but I accept that it probably represents the modern equivalent, the spirit, of how Theodora spoke in her own time and her own language. 

I was less happy with the colloquial narrative style.  I seem to have developed a thin skin so far as ugly sentences are concerned.  These were really quite painful:

‘A presumably barren ex-dancer, who’d slept with far too many men, not all of them for money, but not many for free, who had found a new life as an anti-Chalcedonian believer at a time when there were even more attacks on that group than before, and who now couldn’t make up her mind if she was hungry for the City or terrified of that hunger, didn’t seem to have a lot going for her in terms of greatness as far as she could see.’

‘As Justin faded from bad to worse health, Justinian needed to immediately step up in every area of governing the Empire.’

In places it feels like something written at speed and not fully edited.  So for example on page 160 we have Severus ‘speaking in many languages and not just the Greek of the church or the Latin of state, using whatever words he could find to make sense to his disparate group.’ Then just four pages later, in her retreat in the mountains Theodora recalls Severus ‘speaking in Syriac as often as any other language, proudly using whatever words were most appropriate to express universal truths, refusing to stick to the Latin the Roman west loved, the Greek the church preferred, choosing instead to use whichever languages his followers understood to make his point clear to them.’  Repetitious?  A little.

And I lay a bet that Ms Duffy writes a daily quota of 500 or 1,000 words.  How do I guess this? On pages 250 to 253 we get three separate sections of background: a day’s work each (after they have been edited down) interesting, connected in content but plunked down without linkage.  I do this sort of thing in my first drafts too but I am surprised to see them turn up in a published novel.

The novel follows Theodora’s life chronologically and large amounts of history and theology are neatly summarised and slipped in without causing indigestion in the reader, but Theodora packed a lot into her life: dancer, mistress to a Governor in Africa, religious convert undergoing visions in the desert, adviser to the Emperor’s heir apparent back in Constantinople, then wife and in the final pages Empress.  I wished for longer with each stage, more expansiveness rather than the hurrying on to the next stage.  The material is so interesting that it could easily take a longer treatment; plus in the shortening, so much is summarised that cries out for dramatisation.  

In terms of structure, the chronological approach can seem episodic - just one thing after another and I found myself wondering whether the narrative could have been tighter, more coherent if we hadn’t followed her every where but had been more selective.  The progression of events is like life, but then life is arbitrary and meaningless.  I want novels to seem like life but to give me a sense of meaning of purpose and for that we need selection and some sort of narrative theme or coherence and I felt Theodora lacked this. 

I felt cheated of the engagement I wanted with the character of Theodora.  Her life was amazingly interesting but there is a certain cartoonish flattening and summarizing of emotions in the narrative that shut me out.  So when she is complaining about the boredom of her convent life and is then told that the henchmen of her powerful ex-lover are searching for her and that her life is in danger we don’t see her responses, instead we get the glib ‘Suddenly, boring looked very attractive.’  There is a barrier between me and the living woman at this point. 

Similarly when she starts sleeping with the woman whose house she is sent to lodge in, we are simply presented with this development, there is no consideration of the different emotional quality of the relationship or its physicality, which one might expect to occur to Theodora who has spent a large portion of her earlier life sleeping with men for money.  The moment does not get enough space in the text to draw us in to Theodora, we are off on the next stage of her adventures.  On the eve of her coronation as Empress she experiences a moment of doubt but quickly shrugs it off ‘And then, not entirely sure if she was making this connection herself because she wanted to see it or because it was truly there, Theodora decided she did have the right to assume the crown.’  This is a pivotal moment: from prostitute to Empress and yet the author gives the impression that she can’t be bothered to explore it fully and darts off to the next scene.

 All of this gives unfair precedence to the negative aspects: let me point out that this is a great story, that there are some really delightful scenes (especially Theodora’s first night with Justinian, the death of Justin and the ending as Theodora comes full circle and re-enters the Hippodrome) and I will most certainly read the sequel.  But I hope that it will be both longer and more tightly edited.

 

 

To Kindle or not to Kindle?

My mind was firmly closed on the subject of e-readers.  I knew where I stood on them: nothing could replace a book so far as I was concerned.  And then in December one of my friends showed me her Kindle.  On one level it was disappointing: grey and ugly, and nothing happened when I touched the screen - I was expected to press buttons the old fashioned way!  But I was impressed with the quality of the screen definition and the lightness of the thing.  And so the idea simmered away in the back of my mind.  Many bloggers and tweeters I follow have them and swear by them.  I keep looking at the Amazon page and hypothetically debating 3G or wi-fi.  I keep nearly buying one.  And yet I keep not buying one.  

But on the horizon comes a home downsizing which will be very welcome but also radical.  My CDs are all digitised; can I contemplate doing the same to my books?  (Actually just typing that sentence has every cell in my body screaming ‘no’!)  And then holidays loom with the always huge pile of hardbacks which I deem indispensable for any period away from the house that exceeds 24 hours.  A Kindle would be a major help on both fronts.  

I could keep all my classics, biographies, poetry and reference books in hard copy and going forward buy contemporary fiction in e form.  After all, this is the stuff which has the highest turnover rate in my life.  My rule is that a book only goes on the shelves if I am convinced that I will want to re-read it.  Only about a quarter of the contemporary fiction I read makes the cut.  Putting these on the Kindle would save space.  Packing holiday reading would be a breeze.

But this is where I start to have doubts.  I know that if I get a Kindle then I will immediately download every public domain classic and hug the plastic incarnation of the complete works of Shakespeare, Dickens, the Brontes, Jane Austen, Trollope and so on, just because I can and because obviously I never know when I might need to re-read Wuthering Heights for the eighth time.  And then instead of choosing 5 contemporary novels from the hundred odd that lie, unread, in my library, I will stuff them all (or as many as I can afford to stockpile) onto the Kindle thinking that it will be good to have lots of choice.  But then when I actually come to read something, rather than getting my book out of my bag on the plane and reading I know I will start half a dozen novels on the Kindle, flick through several classics, decide to read Shakespeare, change my mind, go back to the Orange short list, lose interest, skip to a thriller and then be told to switch off all electrical devices before I have read even half a chapter of anything.  I will be paralysed by choice, constantly undermined by the idea that there is something better elsewhere in the 3,500 books the Kindle can apparently hold than.  

And then there is the loss of the memory of the physical sensation.  This shouldn't be underestimated.  In the future all I will have is a  recollection of holding a Kindle, whereas now I can summon the exact feel of the weight of A Place of Greater Safety on the beach in Mexico, the London Library copy of The Quest for Corvo  on the flight back from Venice,  and the moment I pick up my old Penguin copy of Jane Eyre I am straight back to my sixteen year old self (not always such a good trip that one!)

I think that it is almost inevitable that I will buy one.  And that I will both love it and regret it.  Until then - any wisdom to share dear readers?

 

Like a large, needy reptile

An outstanding essay by Colm Toibin in this week's London Review of Books on The Importance of Aunts (in the 19th-century novel).  Unfortunately it is available online to subscribers only but for this alone the £3.20 cover price is a snip.

The novel, after all, is not a moral fable or parable; it is not our job to like or dislike characters in fiction, or make judgments about their worth, or learn from them how to live. We can do that with real people and, if we like, figures from history. They are for moralists to feast on. A novel is a pattern and it is our job to notice how the textures were woven and the tones put in place. This is not to insist that a character in fiction is merely a verbal construct and bears no relation to the known world. It is rather to suggest that the role of a character in a novel is never simple. A novel isn’t a piece of ethics or sociology. It is a release of certain energies and a dramatisation of how these energies might be controlled and given shape. Characters in fiction are determined by the pattern, and they determine the pattern in turn.

....

The novel, as a form, is unsure whether it is a story, told by a single teller, or a play enacted by a number of actors. It is both static and theatrical in its systems, a sphere in which a single controlling voice operates, or many competing voices. And since the novel is made up not of characters moving across the stage wearing colourful costumes and projecting their voices, but grim black marks on the page, one of the other purposes of aunts is that they allow for dramatic entrances and departures. All through the 19th century, aunts breach the peace and lighten the load. 

And at this point, as I realised I have an aunt-like figure in my own writing, entering a closed world and disturbing the peace, I had a little frisson of recognition.

And then this about Henry James's development of the aunt's role

[he] saw what was possible, that the aunt could be made not simply an enabling figure, or a cruelly comic figure, or a passive figure, but a highly sexualised woman, and thus, within the dynamic of the novel, one capable of darting at will from one guise to another, causing havoc within the narrative confines created for her: she is exciting and subversive, dangerous, potentially explosive.

Comparing the aunts in The Wings of the Dove and Edith Wharton's House of Mirth (one of my personal favourite books) he has this lovely line:

the aunt hovers over the action, darting in and out of the narrative like a large, needy reptile.

I must now go and urgently read Washington Square, Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove.  All of which I sense have a theme that I am trying out in my own work.

And on the themes that writers share, Toibin has this nice comment:

By the time he began The Portrait of a Lady in 1879, James had followed the serialisation of Daniel Deronda. He read the book carefully, disapproved of it, and then took what he needed from it.

 

Beautiful and sad; ordinary and heroic.

Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall  left me requiring a quiet moment of contemplation.  And wonder. And admiration.

Its plot is slight: Peter Harris, middle-aged art dealer, in a companionable but arid marriage to Rebecca falls in love with someone unsuitable, is rebuffed by the love object and resigns himself to carrying on with his 'impossible' old life.  But plot is the very least of what this book has to offer.The writing is exquisite and nuanced: Cunningham is one of those rare writers able to describe clearly a sensation that has been inchoate in some part of your life and which now comes into focus as he places it on the page before you.  

Peter, whose point of view we inhabit for the main stretch of the book, is self aware, almost self-conscious in his analysis of his thoughts and interior life, and the issue he is constantly circling around is that question we all ask ourselves: how shall we make a meaningful life in the dislocated consumer society of the 21st century in the affluent west?  

But of course, 'we' do not all ask ourselves this question and for that reason the book may strike some as too rarefied, too self indulgent; missing the big political angle.  But for me the book was a perfect, gorgeous, precious stone: something that exists in the real world but is almost too good for it, something to marvel at and be uplifted by the beauty of its form.  And the ending, in its resignation, in its clear eyed acceptance of having been duped by dreams of being someone other than one's real self, the final embracing of the ordinariness and yet the extraordinariness of an individual soul is very moving and lovely and almost heroic.

 

What took me so long?

What took me so long to find the work of Jennifer Johnston?  Perhaps she is not fashionable or talked about but, oh, can she write!

The Captains and the Kings is her first novel published in 1972 but without checking the publishing data I wouldn't have guessed this - it has a timeless and yet contemporary feel.  It is a slim volume and understated in tone telling the story of Mr Prendergast alone in a large crumbling house in Ireland after the death of his wife.  He takes comfort in books, the piano and whiskey and resents the intrusive attempts of the local vicar and his wife to cheer him up.  His only companion is the alcoholic gardener Sean who tends the garden Mrs Prendergast created.

Prendergast's slow journey towards death is interrupted by the arrival of a boy, Diarmid, from the village and, entirely believably and without sentimentality, a gruff friendship grows between them. Prendergast is haunted by the death of his elder brother, their mother's clear favourite, in the first world war and scenes from the past interweave themselves into the present.

The charm of the book thus far was the excellent quality of the writing, but just as I was glorying in the prose, the author sneaked a gripping and rather tragic plot in without my quite noticing her sleight of hand, and snapped it shut as neatly and brutally as an animal trap.  

I sat open mouthed with admiration after finishing the book.  My own clumsy attempts at a novel make me appreciate just how hard that sort of effortless looking writing and plotting are.  Really a very, very lovely book and the good news is that there are a good few more and that the London Library has the lot.  And that feels very much like a working definition of 'joy' right now.