Tuesday 30 October 2018
Update
Monday 22 October 2018
This week's menu: October 22nd-27th
Who's ready for another week of incredibly varied literature, encompassing centuries' worth of stories in multiple forms, embodying multiple themes? Week 8 of the Banquet of Books reading challenge is here to broaden your literary horizons! Will eight be great? Here's what's coming up...
The civil rights movement in America, primarily focused within the 1950s and 1960s, catalysed immense change and, like many social developments, brought about a wave of culture. My prime illustration of this will be Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, an evaluation of the racial injustice of African Americans in the early twentieth century which covers black nationalist movements and the links between civil rights movements and Marxism, appraised by TIME Magazine as 'the quintessential American picaresque of the twentieth century'. I write this a few hours after the broadcast of Malorie Blackman's incredible Doctor Who episode; her young adult novel Noughts & Crosses, posing the question 'what if Africans had made Europeans their slaves?' is one of my backup options, should you have read Invisible Man already, as is Harper Lee's highly-regarded To Kill a Mockingbird.
Yes, okay, that title is terrible (my other options were 'subdue or show off' and 'repress or express', just so you know the atrocious thought process that led to that!). On Tuesday, I'll be delving into the 18th-century, examining whether its stereotype of stuffiness really holds true. On the one hand, my alternative reads for today (such as Samuel Richardson's Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded) take a didactic approach to women's conduct and attempt to encourage modesty and virtue. On the other hand, my top pick for today, John Cleland's Fanny Hill, is this blog's first ever raunchy sexfest! I hope you enjoy 'the first original English prose pornography'. Over in backup corner, it's a true Fannyfest today (stop sniggering at the back), as Fanny Burney's Evelina is an alternative option; like Pamela, it opposes Cleland's novel in its advocation of repression.
Who doesn't love the thrill of detective fiction? Aside from their varied casts of characters and furiously-maintained suspense throughout, crime stories pull you in by the brain, urging you to put the pieces together and work out 'whodunnit'. On Wednesday I'll be diving into the genre headfirst and sampling some of Agatha Christies The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; the third appearance of supersleuth Hercule Poirot constitutes the epitome of 1920s 'Golden Age' crime and was voted the best crime novel ever by the British Crime Writers' Association in 2013. If, for whatever reason, the best crime novel ever doesn't appeal to you, feel free to read the genesis of the genre (Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone) or a postmodern example (Kate Atkinson's superb When Will There Be Good News?) and think about what you've done.
The Middle Ages in Britain are generally (but please, if you're a historian don't badger me about this) regarded to have ended with the onset of the Tudor dynasty in 1485, so for Thursday's reading I'll be creeping as late into medieval literature as I dare! It's (hopefully) going to be a fun one, because I'll be sampling A Gest of Robyn Hoode. Yes, you all know the one - men in tights, steal from the rich and give to the poor. Believed to have been written around 1450 and first printed four decades later, this Middle English ballad romanticises its 'Good Outlaw' hero. Alternative options for today, if you've already read Robin Hood or just want something meatier, are Christine de Pizan's The Treasure of the City of Ladies (you can find my thoughts on her other novel The Book of the City of Ladies here) or the slightly flimsy Italian erotic romance The Tale of Two Lovers.
Far from evincing a writer's lack of original ideas, stories based on real events often successfully utilise the verisimilitude of true occurrences to catalyse action, building up layers of atmosphere around the core of a real event. I'll be investigating this phenomenon on Friday with Truman Capote's celebrated work In Cold Blood, so much based on a true story that Capote himself labelled it non-fiction; the bestseller recounts Capote's six-year-long investigation into the criminals who committed a quadruple murder in 1959. One of today's alternative choices is unintentionally based on a true story - despite living half an hour away from serial killer Ed Gein, Robert Bloch was unaware of the similarities between Gein and his antagonist Norman Bates when writing the thriller novel Psycho. You could also read Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave, the immensely moving recount of a slave's life.
Throughout this reading challenge, my visits into other countries have had fairly mixed results, so let's see what Eastern European literature has to offer. My top pick for Saturday's reading is Romanian writer Gabriela Adameşteanu's Wasted Morning, whose seventy-year-old protagonist Vica Delcă is inextricably tied to the 'old Romania' whilst living in its present; the author's use of stream-of-consciousness and realist styles allows for an examination of the country's past and present. Frequently-censored Albanian scribe Ismail Kaldare's The Fall of the Stone City satirises the irrepressible distortion of communist theology. If the heavy stuff doesn't sound like your cup of tea, try out Croatian author Ranko Marinkovic's rewriting of the Cyclops myth. To be honest, all three of my options for today sound really intriguing, so I might end up having a go at a few of these. Hope you enjoy them too!
Let's make this week a good one! I hope you have a wonderful time with these texts - they certainly look like they're going to be a whole lot of fun! - and I'll see you back here towards the tail end of next week to share all my thoughts on them. Will eight be great? See you back here next week for the answer! In the meantime, remember to follow me on Twitter @Banquetofbooks for all the latest updates and notifications on when new posts go up.
Happy reading!
My thoughts on Week 7
As with a few previous weeks of the Banquet of Books reading challenge, Week 7 has been an 'up and down' week. There's been a healthy mixture of confusion, lightheartedness and really good meaty texts to sink my teeth into. I can't say I've enjoyed everything I've read, but I've appreciated it all. Keep reading to find out what I've been up to this week!
***THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR MULTIPLE TEXTS*
It could be argued that Hardy's lack of a consistent voice damages the cohesion of the volume - this can be explained by the fact that the poems, presented chronologically for the most part, span three decades of work - or, more convincingly, that it allows the poet to incorporate a wide range of themes and styles, producing an incredibly innovative collection. This ambiguity continues within individual poems themselves; in Amabel, Hardy's focus seems to be on the degradation of the titular woman's beauty - he 'sighed/That love like ours had died', and notes that 'her gown,/Once rose, now earthen brown.../was like the knell/Of Amabel' - yet an attitude of resignation is adopted in the final stanza which muddies the waters with regard to the extent of the narrator's love, as they decide to 'leave her to her fate'.
The poet is never content with linear explanations, permanently questioning conventions, as in Hap, whose narrator evaluates the mechanisms of sorrow, realising his atheism through his reasoning that if 'a Powerfuller than I/Had willed and meted me the tears I shed', then he would be contented, yet he knows that the 'purblind Doomsters' of fate and chance are to blame for '[unblooming] the best hope ever sown' rather than a transcendent omnipotent being. So, too, does Her Dilemma transform a simple white lie into a fierce rebuke of humans' conditioned desire to be loved; the female speaker has little respect for religion, noting its 'wasted carvings' and the 'dull monotones' of the church's clock, yet still worries for 'her soul' after lying to a dying man that she loves him. At a Bridal again offers a scathing questioning of fate; its narrator sees his beloved wed another man and, 'grieved that lives so matched should mis-compose', believes that if he asked nature why he was not destined to be with the woman, she will answer 'that she does not care'.
Yet, despite all of Hardy's relentless challenges to destiny (which, in all cases, is personified - perhaps reflecting how Hardy is looking for somebody to blame when really there is nobody), it was two of the more simplistic ones that I liked the most. The narrator of Neutral Tones reflects on the love lost as his relationship has flickered out like a dying flame, as Hardy throws pathetic fallacy kindling onto a chilly fire that spits out recollections that 'the smile on your mouth was the deadest thing,/Alive enough to have strength to die' and 'keen lessons that love deceives... have shaped to me your face and the god-curst Sun'. Meanwhile, the titular narrator of She at His Funeral mourns a love that must stay hidden; Hardy questions the notions of class relations and respectability - whilst the mourning woman must stay a 'stranger' due to her 'unchanged... gown of garish dye', she is his 'sweetheart', the one who knows him best of all and whose 'regret consumes like fire', as opposed to the 'sable-sad' mourners whose respect for the traditions of the funeral creates the assumption that they knew him better. Overall, I'm not too enamoured with Thomas Hardy's often dreary subject matter, but concede that he manages to employ a constant atmosphere of curiosity to sew together a volume of inconsistently -themed and -structured poetry; for me, not a particular fan of poetry, therefore, it just tips over past the 'average' line - probably not something I would return to unless I had to, but an enjoyable experience all the same.
As for the cause of the house's 'outrageous behaviour': the author is almost nonchalant in her revelation that Sethe's dead daughter's spirit haunts it. Grandma Baby Suggs, portrayed as unable to 'get interested in leaving life or living it', even reckons that 'not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead negro's grief' and implores her daughter to 'be thankful' that only one of her children is 'raising hell from the other side'. In a novel all about the bonds we make, the baby (later personified as Beloved, after the single-word inscription on her headstone) represents the broken bond trying to re-assert itself within Sethe's life. The reader is offered several hints that Sethe risks repeating her mistake by letting her mother-daughter bond with the now eighteen-year-old Denver fray; the sample I read ended in Denver's fraught confession that '"I can't live here. I don't know where to go or what to do, but I can't live here."' Much like Denver's brothers, she finds this solitary, scared life just too hard to handle. Unlike them, she tells her mother about it - although it may be susceptible to fractures, the mother-daughter relationship between Sethe and Denver is portrayed as intuitive and nurturing. Yet, due to Morrison's effective and concise character sketches, it's instantly understandable that Denver feels conflicted: change.
Throughout the opening chapters, Morrison presents a constant progression of change within the characters' relationships: pre-the beginning of the narrative, five members of the family lived in the house, but Sethe's two sons 'fled at once - the moment the house committed what was for him the one insult not to be borne or witnessed a second time'. The male players out of the way, Morrison can focus on the engagingly written female characters who dominate the story, though the family relationships remain just as turbulent - from Denver's perspective, she witnesses the loss of her two brothers and her grandmother, and becomes wary of Sethe's overly friendly old acquaintance Paul D, who has reemerged into her life, all the while resisting the influence of the baby on these already fraught relationships. Stuck between despising her life where '"nobody speaks to us"' and trusting Paul D, much like the liminal space 'between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead' where Baby Suggs resided, Denver is at a crossroads. No wonder she's able to identify the spiteful ghost as '"rebuked. Lonely and rebuked."' Does Sethe risk losing Denver too, albeit in a less material way than in the case of her other daughter?
The author's use of setting and scale is another curiosity. Clearly, the anthropomorphised house is central to the novel's theme of loneliness, imprisoning its protagonists in a too-tight embrace. All of the action so far is set in the house, relaying one close-knit family's experiences, yet Sethe's mind constantly travels to other places - she thinks about the farm on which she grew up as a child, its 'shameless beauty' that 'made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too', even the 'town full of disgust' on the other side of the door. This allows the author to convey the idea of trapping a roaming spirit within the confines of a single dwelling, to link the restlessness of the mother and her deceased child. So, too, does the initial semblance of loneliness about the household betray its falseness as the plot unfolds: there is a sense of shared ideals within the black community (Baby Suggs disseminating the adage '"if a negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up"'), Baby Suggs feels so intimately connected to her children that she 'claimed she felt each one go the very day and hour', and Sethe and Denver's bond is, I suspect, impenetrable.
To provide narrative colour, Morrison deals in imagery - the house's blood-red pools of light are a perfect example of how the baby's influence spills over into the family's everyday life, whilst Paul D attributes his appearance to '"devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad"' - yet can easily whip aside this blanket of symbolism in order to shock the reader: the boys of Sethe's childhood were 'all in their twenties, minus women, fucking cows, dreaming of rape', whilst the spiteful baby 'picked up Here Boy and slammed him into the wall hard enough to break two of his legs and dislocate his eye'. Morrison's masterful melding of the explicit/implicit also conceals a gradually emerging underlying suspense; we learn quite quickly that the baby's throat was cut, and that Sethe remembers 'pulsating... baby blood that soaked her fingers like oil'. Like guilt?
The early pages of this book are spent creating an emotional battleground, lining up the pieces ready for the player - the spiteful baby ghost - to have her fun. Beloved is a book borne of urgency, coloured by fear and soaked in nostalgia. It is a story of love and relationships which guts the traditional structure of that genre and fills the carcass with spite, loneliness and indecision. A desparate attempt to connect isolation to community, to identify the slave experience with maternal guilt, to recognise love and hatred in their multifarious forms, to reconcile inextricable paradoxes. I think it's brilliant, and I can't wait to read on.
The world in which she lives is highly ordered - everyone has their place, their responsibilities, enforced by the 'patrolling sentries' whose lanterns create 'a flickering monster'. The Colonel, 'the most secret person in the big house', who takes charge when Baldovina's master is away, is so feared that 'everything was measured against fear of [the master's] absence'. In the money-strapped cook, Juan Izquierdo, Lima presents a character who always finds himself bound to return to the established order - he 'began the week with the arrogance of a mulatto from Oriente Province... towards the end of the week, a decline would set in, with endless requests for small amounts'. Whilst not entirely oppressive, the circumstances clearly deny Baldovina many of her freedoms. On the other end of the spectrum, the most powerful character is the Colonel, who comes and goes as he pleases whilst drawing up plans 'for invasions against countries found in neither time nor space... somewhere between eternity and nothingness'. Here is a character who asserts his power just because he can.
In terms of noteworthy quirks within the prose, there is little so far to comment on besides an exceptionally meta lambasting of 'those literal-minded, portly people who read a book overnight as soon as they buy it' and a simile zoomorphising José Cemí's welts as 'animals... that could leap from the bed and crawl across her own shoulders'. Lima's frequent references to other civilisations, much like Sethe's wandering thoughts in Beloved, convey the sense of entrapment engendered by this overly regimented community, allowing the story to tentatively reach out into the wider world beyond its setting. Baldovina 'looked like a sixteenth-century flagellant', the Colonel has 'the same devotion that might have been shown a Coptic priest or an Assyrian huntsman-king' and the Galician servant Zoar picks up the child 'like St. Christopher'. Even the boy's welts exhibit 'hellish redness', and are 'the king's evil... like the red blotches of a royal Poinciana tree'.
Lima's seminal novel gets off to a slow start, balancing brilliant descriptions of welts with pointless references to ancient cultures which add little. Reading it in translation, and only the beginning at that, undoubtedly diminishes its impact, yet I still can't envisage myself enjoying the rest of this book, unless it picks up the pace considerably. I can sympathise with Baldovina's plight, and the mysterious Colonel intrigues me, but the absence of an engaging plot makes this a relatively hard sell.
The trouble with a dystopia is that it all too often seems utopian - at least in the beginning. What could possibly be wrong with 'a sterile, faultless sky'? Wouldn't we all like to be 'unclouded by the insanity of thoughts'? Hmm... enter Yevgeny Zamyatin's We.An epistolary work presented as a series of letters (although the recipient is unclear), complete with examples and extracts purporting to be 'merely a copy, word for word, of what was published this morning in the State newspaper', We rapidly establishes its narrator as a denizen of a futuristic, all-conquering, all-powerful society. The trick is nonchalance - within the creepy anaphoric mantra '"Long live the United State! Long live the Numbers! Long live the Well-Doer!!!'" the narrator's vastly different lexicon, and its ominous capitalisation, is casually evinced. References to the Green Wall and the Two Hundred Years' War quickly create a sense of time and scale which allows Zamyatin to dive into the heart of the plot after speedily setting up the narrative's playground. That the narrator clearly buys into the apparent utopia created around them also enlightens the reader as to their status as part of a completely distinct system: their cheeks burn with pride as they swallow newspaper propaganda relating how 'one thousand years ago your heroic ancestors subjected the whole earth to the power of the United State' (this in itself evidences Zamyatin's grand sense of scale - the Integral spaceship will soon 'rise into the limitless space of the universe' - which likens the United State to other colonial powers from throughout history).
The second method by which Zamyatin establishes the futuristic setting of the novel is his narrator's superiority over our present culture and capability. We are but 'the ancients', the subject of an incredulously written history, our art ('how primitive was the taste of the ancients, since their poets were always inspired by these senseless, formless, stupidly rushing accumulations of vapour! [clouds]') mocked by our all-knowing descendants. They question whether we knew that our lives were 'actually wholesale murder, although slow murder, day by day', stand amazed at our 'prehistoric time when such things as nations, wars, commerce, different discoveries of different Americas' existed, and label our society 'a thundering, many-coloured confusion', 'so incredible, so absurd, that I lost control of myself and laughed aloud'. In the narrator's utter disbelief that such a life as ours could have been lived Zamyatin exerts a covert post-colonial arrogance which instantly engenders in the reader a dislike of the world presented to them.
The restrictive United State operates as a single gestalt, as evidenced by the first-person pronoun that forms the book's title. In this 'remarkable intersection of thoughts' where 'nobody is one, but one of', nobody can do anything without everybody else knowing about it - the perfect conditions to breed a climate of paranoia and disharmony, you would think, but that problem seems to have been sorted out within this system. Everything is ordered and chartered, from 'sexual days' to 'personal hours', when the people of the United State can merrily trot off on their 'supplementary walk'. Of course they view the Official Railroad Guide as 'the greatest of all monuments of ancient literature', representing as it does the order and regimentation which clearly overrides creativity, freedom and individuality in this utopian future. And it makes the citizens feel amazing - the narrator feels as if he had 'won a victory over the old god and the old life'. Evidently, they feel that something was wrong with our current system, and as we begin the book the United State's new regime appears to be the solution. Although perhaps the state suffers from a case of overconfidence? The one issue left to be solved, concedes the narrator, is 'the problem of happiness', but that won't stop them imposing a forced 'mathematically faultless happiness' on the beings of the other planets that they plan to 'subjugate'.
Despite the regimentation of this society, in which free will is seen as the root of misdemeanour and therefore restricted, Zamyatin wryly shows how locking up individuality and only letting it out during specified 'personal hours' is not the way to go: the narrator's hyperbolic ecstasy at the thought of '[integrating] the colossal, universal equation!' and proclamation that 'the United State is... a great divine, precise, wise line, the wisest of lines!' come off as the ramblings of a more verbose Trump. Their reckoning that their joy at the imminent launch of the 'glass, electric, fire-breathing Integral' is akin to 'what a woman probably feels when for the first time she senses within herself the pulse of a tiny, blind, human being' both conveys the extent to which the state's inhabitants are hooked into its beliefs and challenges the whole society by ludicrous comparison - as does the fact that none of its characters are named; instead, their serial numbers identify them.
The book opens an engaging debate into the value of freedom. The narrator attempts to reconcile the ancient concept of liberty with the mechanisms of the United State, noticing that 'the mechanical chisels were dancing to the melody of unheard tarantellas' in a 'mechanical ballet', linking a fluid art form with the oppressive state and its fixed system of living, before they abandon any notion of subscribing to the idea, labelling 'the state of freedom... an unorganised primitive state'. We are actively told that freedom is not in line with modern thinking, a bygone relic - as it has diminished, so has 'the instinct of non-freedom' increased. The State even retrospectively notices it as 'characteristic of human nature from ancient times' and praises 'absolute, ecstatic submission' as a state of being to strive for. Yet, as the sample of the book that I was reading concluded, the narrator breathlessly announced 'Until today everything in life seemed to me clear', intimating that a further level will be added to this ongoing debate.
We is rightly heralded as 'the inspiration for all futuristic dystopia novels', tackling totalitarianism through its satirical undercurrent and its perfectly effective portrayal of a society that has developed to the point of seeming alien. Beginning with a masterful profile of a utopian superstate, Zamyatin sets the pieces on the board, ready to analyse and satirise this society's values. I can't wait to see how he does it.
Along trundle the Middle Ages again, this time dealing the anonymous fairytale-esque Breton lay Sir Orfeo, a reworking of the ancient Greek myth which recounts a woman's abduction into a strange land and the attempts to reclaim her. Written in the medieval French romance style which encompasses the motifs of marital love, optimism and the supernatural within a construction of brevity, simplicity and conversation, the poem mitigates the source material's Hadean darkness in favour of seeing Orpheus' wife Eurydice kidnapped to the mythical Fairyland, and begins with a good twenty lines or so describing the different kinds of lays (poems) that are often read - 'some of war and some of woe/And some of joy and mirth also', etc before introducing the 'noble king' Orfeo.
Orfeo's proficiency as a musician is evidenced throughout - he 'loved the glee of harping' to the point that 'there nothing was/A better harper in no place' and that anybody who listened would think himself 'in one of the joys of Paradise'. His 'queen of excellence' Dame Eurydice lives a relaxed life swanning about in fields with her maidens, until she 'fell on sleep upon the green'; upon waking, she begins to cry out, tear at her limbs and clothes and scratch her face until 'it bled wet', before revealing that she has been ordered to come to Fairyland, a place of 'castles and towers/Rivers, forests, meadows with flowers'. Very quickly, Sir Orfeo cycles through a range of sections, its slow opening giving way to lush pastoral description, the juxtaposition of the 'merry and hot' May setting with the feverish lunacy of Eurydice's actions, the household's trauma when Eurydice is abducted and Orfeo decides that 'never again I will no woman see' and embarks on a hermitage in the wilderness, the surreality of the happy couple meeting again (when Orfeo stumbles on the cave by which Fairyland is entered) but being unable to speak, the awe of the expansive Fairyland and the horror of its corridors of corpses (or so it seems). This speedy turnaround between different settings and moods keeps the poem continually interesting whilst never compromising on the successful creation of these atmospheres.
I worry that the brevity of this review will imply that I haven't enjoyed Sir Orfeo, because I really truly have, immensely. The upshot of its decision not to focus on in-depth characterisation or complexity of plot allows it to tell a rollicking, simple, but exciting, story which I can find no faults in. Reading it in the (annotated) original Middle English, too, was a really enjoyable experience, and the ABAB lilt of the poem ensures its fairytale quality carries through into the very fabric of the poem. All in all, another successful adventure into the literary output of the Middle Ages!
I concluded the week exploring what is, without a doubt, the most fun text I've read as part of the Banquet of Books reading challenge. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, started by Jane Austen and finished off by Seth Grahame-Smith, is deliciously funny, even though its central joke repeats itself all the way through (more on that in a minute). A disclaimer before we start: I haven't actually read Austen's source material; I understand that that might have led me to enjoy the book even further, although it's encouraging that a novice to the original book can still enjoy Grahame-Smith's humorous adaptation in the near-enough knowledge of the style it is pastiching.
Blending the already slightly ludicrous upper-class jollity of Austen with a light-hearted modern tone from the very beginning ('it is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains'), Pride and Prejudice and Zombies literally reads as though the original story has simply had a horde of the undead implanted into it. We're clearly several years into the zombie invasion, to the point of nonchalance - Mr. Bennet's 'morning business' comprises 'dagger sharpening and musket polishing', and, recounting a party, the reader is told that 'apart from the attack, the evening altogether passed off pleasantly for the whole family' - and so Grahame-Smith commences the story with the perfect framework for humour. Notable is the adults' emphasis on secrecy and deception. They lie to each other about their thoughts and feelings, Mr. Bingley brings significantly fewer people to his party than at first reported, and, most significantly, they lie to themselves. This is evidenced in their reluctance to explicitly name the issue, instead settling on euphemisms; 'England's present difficulties' are the 'unfortunate scourge', 'strange plague', 'unmentionables'. No such qualms for the narrator, who frequently refers to 'zombies' and 'the living dead', as do the younger generation - that the narrator sides with the children insinuates the ridiculousness of not acknowledging the zombie plague for what it is. This dysphemistic style carries on in a description of an attack on a party, where 'Mrs. Long struggled to free herself as two female dreadfuls bit into her head, cracking her skull like a walnut, and sending a shower of dark blood spouting as high as the chandeliers'. Although describing a tragic event, the author ensures the comedic atmosphere is kept high by the incongruity of presenting this tragedy in the Austenian style with its associations of lighthearted frivolity. Turning the page to find a Ladybird-style captioned illustration of the attack was the hilarious icing on the cake.
The novel's main source of humour is the melding of Pride and Prejudice and the zombie horror subgenre, embodied in Mrs. Bennet who is keen that her girls are '"as deadly as they are fetching!"', whilst Mr. Darcy is attracted to both 'the beautiful expression of [Elizabeth's] dark eyes, and her uncommon skill with a blade'. A subset of this new regime is an increased emphasis on women to subvert their gender's expectations and, much like the women who were parachuted into men's jobs during wartime, they are propelled into a new way of living, one in which they conceal daggers in their socks and in which the Bennets' daughter Jane is 'a warrior first, and a woman second'. Through this concept, Grahame-Smith can satirise and ridicule the attitudes of the past, writing from a more enlightened time. Whilst Mrs. Bennet sees the new arrival Mr. Bingley as an attractive proposition because of his 'four or five thousand a year', her husband is more concerned about whether he can 'train them in the ways of swordsmanship and musketry' - yes, both of their priorities seem a little ridiculous, but the author's emphasis on the more practical concerns as opposed to the whole outdated system of parents wedding their children by flinging themselves at the nearest rich bachelor remains a pertinent point. This is also seen in Mr. Bennet's assertion that 'none of our girls has much to recommend them; they are all silly and ignorant like their mother, the exception being Lizzy, who has something more of the killer instinct'. So, too, does the ludicrousness of the Austen-era resignation that 'happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance, and it is better to know as little as possible of the defect of the person with whom you are to pass your life' become more prominent within the mad framework of the author's creation. In some ways, the secondary narrative function of the zombie invasion is to act as a defined subversion of both the Victorian writing style and the social conventions associated with it - like Sir Toby Belch and co ripping up the rulebook. Therefore, such an atmosphere of ludicrousness is created that any antiquated ideas referenced within it are going to stick out like a sore thumb.
Perhaps the zombie developments also compound the contemporary Victorian sexism; reacting to women's increased agency, Mr. Bennet can now shirk the idea of getting married and demand that his wife 'leave me to the defence of my estate' (the personal pronouns foregrounding an increased necessity to have something to own, given that women are now asserting themselves more). Again, Grahame-Smith satirises these ideas without saying a word; the zombies' mere presence heightens the incongruity of these misogynistic attitudes. Some Austen hallmarks remain, however, such as the brevity of description - all we are told of Mr. Darcy, for example, is that he possesses a 'fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien' - yet, on the whole, any hangovers from the Victorian era are presented to symbiotically serve the story. These antiquated views contribute to the ludicrousness of the story, and in turn the ludicrousness of the story fuels the reader's perception of them as ludicrous. Speaking of ludicrous, I'm as amazed as you probably are that I've got this much out of what is, in essence, a parody book. Time for the conclusion? I think so too!
Packing the story with humour - and there really are some good jokes ('balls are always a subject which makes a girl energetic' amazed me by being, unbelievably, a paraphrase from Austen) - and engagingly rewriting Austen in a way that makes her palatable for modern or perhaps younger audiences without compromising on the events of the original narrative, the writers of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies are truly onto a winner here. It certainly isn't perfect - a description of Mr. Bennet as 'so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and self-discipline' is our only evidence so far that he embodies any of these qualities; he and his wife are both mere ciphers at this point - but it makes no pretense at being. Rather, this story is intended as light reading, succeeding as a deliciously funny, subversive take on a literary classic. A brilliant way to close out the week!
Apologies for the lateness of this post - I'd been trying to get it done by the end of Sunday, so that I didn't go into next week. As I type this, it's about quarter to one on Monday morning, so I've just missed my deadline, but hey ho, it's probably for the best to have elucidated my thoughts on these texts properly, just slightly later than planned. Either way, it's technically finished by close of play Sunday, so don't hate me, okay?!
Week 7 hasn't been perfect, but it's been another really solid week. The Middle Ages have delighted me again with a mini-odyssey into medieval poetry, Jane Austen (of all people) has got me fighting the urge to snigger on the bus, I've been introduced to a creepy dystopian society that I'll definitely be making a return visit to, and, in Beloved, one of the most mature and beautifully-expressed stories that I've read so far on this blog has revealed itself to me. Well done Week 7, you've done yourself proud.
I'll be back asap to bring you the Week 8 reading list, which I'm finalising now - hopefully tomorrow, but I can't promise that, sorry! We'll again be tackling a wide range of texts, sampling our way through some 20th-century classics from both sides of the Atlantic and getting a little bit saucy (by 18th-century standards, that is!)
In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter @Banquetofbooks for all the latest updates and notifications, and I'll see you back here quite soon for the Week 8 menu!
The book opens an engaging debate into the value of freedom. The narrator attempts to reconcile the ancient concept of liberty with the mechanisms of the United State, noticing that 'the mechanical chisels were dancing to the melody of unheard tarantellas' in a 'mechanical ballet', linking a fluid art form with the oppressive state and its fixed system of living, before they abandon any notion of subscribing to the idea, labelling 'the state of freedom... an unorganised primitive state'. We are actively told that freedom is not in line with modern thinking, a bygone relic - as it has diminished, so has 'the instinct of non-freedom' increased. The State even retrospectively notices it as 'characteristic of human nature from ancient times' and praises 'absolute, ecstatic submission' as a state of being to strive for. Yet, as the sample of the book that I was reading concluded, the narrator breathlessly announced 'Until today everything in life seemed to me clear', intimating that a further level will be added to this ongoing debate.
We is rightly heralded as 'the inspiration for all futuristic dystopia novels', tackling totalitarianism through its satirical undercurrent and its perfectly effective portrayal of a society that has developed to the point of seeming alien. Beginning with a masterful profile of a utopian superstate, Zamyatin sets the pieces on the board, ready to analyse and satirise this society's values. I can't wait to see how he does it.
Orfeo's proficiency as a musician is evidenced throughout - he 'loved the glee of harping' to the point that 'there nothing was/A better harper in no place' and that anybody who listened would think himself 'in one of the joys of Paradise'. His 'queen of excellence' Dame Eurydice lives a relaxed life swanning about in fields with her maidens, until she 'fell on sleep upon the green'; upon waking, she begins to cry out, tear at her limbs and clothes and scratch her face until 'it bled wet', before revealing that she has been ordered to come to Fairyland, a place of 'castles and towers/Rivers, forests, meadows with flowers'. Very quickly, Sir Orfeo cycles through a range of sections, its slow opening giving way to lush pastoral description, the juxtaposition of the 'merry and hot' May setting with the feverish lunacy of Eurydice's actions, the household's trauma when Eurydice is abducted and Orfeo decides that 'never again I will no woman see' and embarks on a hermitage in the wilderness, the surreality of the happy couple meeting again (when Orfeo stumbles on the cave by which Fairyland is entered) but being unable to speak, the awe of the expansive Fairyland and the horror of its corridors of corpses (or so it seems). This speedy turnaround between different settings and moods keeps the poem continually interesting whilst never compromising on the successful creation of these atmospheres.
I worry that the brevity of this review will imply that I haven't enjoyed Sir Orfeo, because I really truly have, immensely. The upshot of its decision not to focus on in-depth characterisation or complexity of plot allows it to tell a rollicking, simple, but exciting, story which I can find no faults in. Reading it in the (annotated) original Middle English, too, was a really enjoyable experience, and the ABAB lilt of the poem ensures its fairytale quality carries through into the very fabric of the poem. All in all, another successful adventure into the literary output of the Middle Ages!
Blending the already slightly ludicrous upper-class jollity of Austen with a light-hearted modern tone from the very beginning ('it is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains'), Pride and Prejudice and Zombies literally reads as though the original story has simply had a horde of the undead implanted into it. We're clearly several years into the zombie invasion, to the point of nonchalance - Mr. Bennet's 'morning business' comprises 'dagger sharpening and musket polishing', and, recounting a party, the reader is told that 'apart from the attack, the evening altogether passed off pleasantly for the whole family' - and so Grahame-Smith commences the story with the perfect framework for humour. Notable is the adults' emphasis on secrecy and deception. They lie to each other about their thoughts and feelings, Mr. Bingley brings significantly fewer people to his party than at first reported, and, most significantly, they lie to themselves. This is evidenced in their reluctance to explicitly name the issue, instead settling on euphemisms; 'England's present difficulties' are the 'unfortunate scourge', 'strange plague', 'unmentionables'. No such qualms for the narrator, who frequently refers to 'zombies' and 'the living dead', as do the younger generation - that the narrator sides with the children insinuates the ridiculousness of not acknowledging the zombie plague for what it is. This dysphemistic style carries on in a description of an attack on a party, where 'Mrs. Long struggled to free herself as two female dreadfuls bit into her head, cracking her skull like a walnut, and sending a shower of dark blood spouting as high as the chandeliers'. Although describing a tragic event, the author ensures the comedic atmosphere is kept high by the incongruity of presenting this tragedy in the Austenian style with its associations of lighthearted frivolity. Turning the page to find a Ladybird-style captioned illustration of the attack was the hilarious icing on the cake.
The novel's main source of humour is the melding of Pride and Prejudice and the zombie horror subgenre, embodied in Mrs. Bennet who is keen that her girls are '"as deadly as they are fetching!"', whilst Mr. Darcy is attracted to both 'the beautiful expression of [Elizabeth's] dark eyes, and her uncommon skill with a blade'. A subset of this new regime is an increased emphasis on women to subvert their gender's expectations and, much like the women who were parachuted into men's jobs during wartime, they are propelled into a new way of living, one in which they conceal daggers in their socks and in which the Bennets' daughter Jane is 'a warrior first, and a woman second'. Through this concept, Grahame-Smith can satirise and ridicule the attitudes of the past, writing from a more enlightened time. Whilst Mrs. Bennet sees the new arrival Mr. Bingley as an attractive proposition because of his 'four or five thousand a year', her husband is more concerned about whether he can 'train them in the ways of swordsmanship and musketry' - yes, both of their priorities seem a little ridiculous, but the author's emphasis on the more practical concerns as opposed to the whole outdated system of parents wedding their children by flinging themselves at the nearest rich bachelor remains a pertinent point. This is also seen in Mr. Bennet's assertion that 'none of our girls has much to recommend them; they are all silly and ignorant like their mother, the exception being Lizzy, who has something more of the killer instinct'. So, too, does the ludicrousness of the Austen-era resignation that 'happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance, and it is better to know as little as possible of the defect of the person with whom you are to pass your life' become more prominent within the mad framework of the author's creation. In some ways, the secondary narrative function of the zombie invasion is to act as a defined subversion of both the Victorian writing style and the social conventions associated with it - like Sir Toby Belch and co ripping up the rulebook. Therefore, such an atmosphere of ludicrousness is created that any antiquated ideas referenced within it are going to stick out like a sore thumb.
Perhaps the zombie developments also compound the contemporary Victorian sexism; reacting to women's increased agency, Mr. Bennet can now shirk the idea of getting married and demand that his wife 'leave me to the defence of my estate' (the personal pronouns foregrounding an increased necessity to have something to own, given that women are now asserting themselves more). Again, Grahame-Smith satirises these ideas without saying a word; the zombies' mere presence heightens the incongruity of these misogynistic attitudes. Some Austen hallmarks remain, however, such as the brevity of description - all we are told of Mr. Darcy, for example, is that he possesses a 'fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien' - yet, on the whole, any hangovers from the Victorian era are presented to symbiotically serve the story. These antiquated views contribute to the ludicrousness of the story, and in turn the ludicrousness of the story fuels the reader's perception of them as ludicrous. Speaking of ludicrous, I'm as amazed as you probably are that I've got this much out of what is, in essence, a parody book. Time for the conclusion? I think so too!
Packing the story with humour - and there really are some good jokes ('balls are always a subject which makes a girl energetic' amazed me by being, unbelievably, a paraphrase from Austen) - and engagingly rewriting Austen in a way that makes her palatable for modern or perhaps younger audiences without compromising on the events of the original narrative, the writers of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies are truly onto a winner here. It certainly isn't perfect - a description of Mr. Bennet as 'so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and self-discipline' is our only evidence so far that he embodies any of these qualities; he and his wife are both mere ciphers at this point - but it makes no pretense at being. Rather, this story is intended as light reading, succeeding as a deliciously funny, subversive take on a literary classic. A brilliant way to close out the week!
Apologies for the lateness of this post - I'd been trying to get it done by the end of Sunday, so that I didn't go into next week. As I type this, it's about quarter to one on Monday morning, so I've just missed my deadline, but hey ho, it's probably for the best to have elucidated my thoughts on these texts properly, just slightly later than planned. Either way, it's technically finished by close of play Sunday, so don't hate me, okay?!
Week 7 hasn't been perfect, but it's been another really solid week. The Middle Ages have delighted me again with a mini-odyssey into medieval poetry, Jane Austen (of all people) has got me fighting the urge to snigger on the bus, I've been introduced to a creepy dystopian society that I'll definitely be making a return visit to, and, in Beloved, one of the most mature and beautifully-expressed stories that I've read so far on this blog has revealed itself to me. Well done Week 7, you've done yourself proud.
I'll be back asap to bring you the Week 8 reading list, which I'm finalising now - hopefully tomorrow, but I can't promise that, sorry! We'll again be tackling a wide range of texts, sampling our way through some 20th-century classics from both sides of the Atlantic and getting a little bit saucy (by 18th-century standards, that is!)
In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter @Banquetofbooks for all the latest updates and notifications, and I'll see you back here quite soon for the Week 8 menu!
Tuesday 9 October 2018
This week's menu: October 9th-14th
Are we ready for another week of incredibly varied literature, encompassing centuries' worth of stories in multiple forms, embodying multiple themes? Week 7 of the Banquet of Books reading challenge is here to broaden your literary horizons, and it starts today! Here's what's coming up...
My experience of the formidable 19th- and 20th- century English realist, novel and poet Thomas Hardy so far has been one of his earlier novels, Under the Greenwood Tree, a somewhat flimsy pastoral romance, so to explore the great man's work further, I'm going to be turning to his poetry, specifically the Wessex Poems and Other Verses, set in the fictional southern English county of Wessex for which he is well-known. Set against the bleak and desolate rural landscape of Dorset, the poems were written over several decades and represented his first foray away from prose when published in 1898. If you've already read it, I've got some of Hardy's best bits in various media - you could read his short story The Three Strangers, or his celebrated novel The Mayor of Casterbridge.
There's something seductive about the idea of a banned book. Who banned it? And what, in particular, so aroused their dislike of it? Banned books may be in some way dissident, riotous or downright shocking - today, I'll be sampling them. My top pick is the American novelist Toni Morrison's Beloved, which has managed to be banned by several American high schools despite winning the 1988 Pulitzer Price; concerned parents argue that the tale, inspired by escaped African-American slave Margaret Garner, is too explicit, a view shared by Republican senator Richard H Black who labelled it "smut". If you're not in the mood for Morrison's work, there's also Radclyffe Hall's lesbian romance The Well of Loneliness, destroyed by the UK government whilst its American publisher was arrested, or George Orwell's dystopian tale Nineteen Eighty-Four, banned by the USSR for 40 years!
Truth be told, I've never really explored the rich and diverse fiction emanating from South and Central America before, so for the third course of this week's literary banquet I'll be diving face-first into Cuban writer José Lezama Lima's only novel Paradiso. It is widely regarded as one of Cuba's first novels, is written in an elaborately baroque, semi-autobiographical style and follows the early stages of José Cemí's life as he struggles with a mystery childhood illness, a family death and his sexuality. Although I won't be reading that far, the later chapters incorporate narrative experiments which gradually link disparate stories to the protagonist's life. My alternate picks are Gabriel García Márquez's landmark novel One Hundred Years of Solitude and Gabriela Mistral's poem Decalogue of the Artist, which lays down 'the ground rules' for being a successful artist!
As with the banned novel, dystopian fiction has a thrilling atmosphere about it that excites the reader's anticipation. Telling tales of dissidents rallying against an often oppressive homogeneous society, these kinds of stories flourish in times of political turmoil or moral conflict. I'll be settling down to the Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin's 1924 novel We, written in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution and describing the totalitarian One State and its enforced harmony as it builds the spaceship Integral to conquer other planets. Exciting stuff! If it's not sounding like something that'll float your boat, why not try Aldous Huxley's seminal 1932 dystopia Brave New World (incidentally, another banned book, this time in India and Ireland!) or, for a more modern twist, Tanith Lee's 1976 novel Don't Bite the Sun, set in an ostensible utopia where teenagers are expected to live hedonistic lives.
Ah, here's this week's obligatory medieval text! I've had better success with the medieval era then I'd ever have imagined before starting this blog, tucking into de Pizan, Spenser and Chaucer like an ancient picnic! (Since the medieval era was so long ago, the sandwiches would be mouldy, but who cares?) Looking to repeat the trick, in comes Sir Orfeo, so old that it's anonymously-written. It reframes the story of the ancient Greek poet and religious figure Orpheus as a king rescuing his wife from the fairy king who has stolen her. Even if it doesn't seem like your kind of thing, there's no escape from medieval poetry! - your back-up reads are Langland's 14th-century allegory Piers Plowman, a precursor to Robin Hood, and 11th-century Georgian (although read the translated version, for God's sake!) epic The Knight in the Panther's Skin.
There seems to be a particular vogue nowadays for adaptations of past literary triumphs - perhaps we're now at a point of collectively taking our breath and looking back on the rich literary history we've amassed, reimagining texts through new prisms and creating hybrids of new and old. My top pick to examine this phenomenon is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (no prizes for guessing the source material!) - credited to Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, this horror-inspired reinterpretation of the original, which Grahame-Smith saw as 'ripe for gore and senseless violence,' was adapted into a 2016 film. If senseless violence isn't your thing, I offer alternatives: Maryse Condé's Windward Heights, a postcolonial rewrite of my favourite book, and the excellently comedic Twitterature by Alexander Aciman & Emmett Rensin, which retells classic literature in 140 characters or fewer!
Apologies for the slightly delayed start to this week - but let's make it a good one! I hope you have a wonderful time with these texts - don't they look a fun bunch? - and I'll be back towards the tail end of next week to share all of my thoughts on them all! In the meantime, remember to follow me on Twitter @Banquetofbooks for all the latest updates and notifications on when new posts go up! Happy reading!
Sunday 7 October 2018
My thoughts on Week 6
Week 6 has been another up and down week, I'm afraid! A real tasty broth of textures and flavours, taking me all the way from Chaucer's Middle English up to last century's antihero psycho-thrillers, some texts more exciting than others, but all offering up something deliciously different to the day before. Here's what I've been getting up to!
***THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR MULTIPLE TEXTS*
Bombastic in its style, announcing its presence with the framing device of the eponymous Knight beginning his narration, the tale quickly roots itself in the upper echelons of a social hierarchy, the product and chronicle of the ruling class; the narrator may laud Theseus' 'chivalry', but this is entirely absent from his arrogant initial supposition that the 'woeful lament' of two ladies he meets in the road must be caused by 'great envy of my honour'. Neither does the heterodiegetic narrator come out of this too perfectly, hypocritical in the extreme as he is, realised by Chaucer's use of paralipsis - whilst his reasoning that 'the remnant of the Tale is long enough' caters to his guest's attention spans and intimates his good companionship and perhaps modesty, the proclamation 'I would have told you fully the manner / How the reign of Femenye was won... / And of the great battle... / And how Ypolita was besieged... (etc. etc.)' draws attention to the very details he is ostensibly truncating, proving him nothing more than a garrulous gossip eager to show off what he knows. Beyond this, given Chaucer's explicit references to the subjectivity of this narrated tale, a reader could also flirt with the possibility of the knight as a wilfully unreliable narrator, aggrandising almost all characters and placing them in an almost obsequiously noble light, from Duke Theseus, 'such a conqueror/That there was no one greater under the sun' to the emphasised beauty of Emily, 'fairer to be seen/Than is the lily upon its green stalk'.
L. D. Benson argues that the tale deviates from the pseudo-classical epic style attempted by Boccaccio, whose Teseida formed its basis; this is seen in its infusion of subversive religious challenge and astrological belief. Not only does Palamon lambaste the '"cruel gods that govern/This world.../Why is mankind more obligated unto you/Than is the sheep that cowers in the sheepfold?/For man is slain exactly like another beast'", but his brother's attempt at consoling him - seeing as his love at first sight for Emily is rendered in terms of physical pain, turning him 'so pale and deadly to look upon' and leaving him 'as though he were stabbed unto the heart' - offers the theory that their imprisonment at Theseus' hands is the result of 'some wicked aspect or disposition/Of Saturn, by some arrangement of the heavenly bodies'. Chaucer also keenly commands setting, structuring the tale to sweep from a bloodstained battlefield to the confined cell of a 'great tower, so thick and strong', through which the lovelorn knights can gaze directly onto the garden with its brightly-hued flowers under the 'bright and clear' sun, this contrast between liberty and imprisonment being reinforced when Arcite is freed from prison on the condition that he never returns, in his eyes dooming him to a worse punishment since, although free, 'nor nevermore shall see his lady'. Translating Boccaccio's tale into the English upper class by an injection of probing philosophy, Chaucer weaves themes of the power of love - a 'necessity' which is also 'a greater law.../Than may be given to any earthly man', as per Arcite - and nobility into an engaging courtly love narrative.
E. M. Forster published five exceptionally-regarded novels throughout his lifetime, leaving his early work Maurice, which he himself had deemed 'publishable - but worth it?', to be posthumously released. Its treatment of the contentious subject matter - homosexual love - verges on nonchalant, presented more clinically than shockingly given that the contemporary social context of its writing would render even any mention of Maurice's 'obscenity' egregious. Forster also appears to swipe at private schools (represented through the 'old-fashioned' headmaster Mr Abrahams who 'cared neither for work nor games, but fed his boys well') and their production of 'healthy but backward' schoolboys, although it's difficult to gauge whether this appearance is a result of the six-decade-long gap between the novel's production and its reception - after all, Forster does opine that 'there is much to be said for apathy in education', and the novel is rooted in the kind of upper-class Cantabrigian pretentiousness from which its author hailed, a land of coachmen and maidservants, where teachers need a pompous 'prelude' to what they're going to say, and where the 'fourteen and three quarters'-year-old boys are 'ignorant little beggars'; Forster exaggerates the overblown grandeur of religious belief when Mr Ducie cries '"God's in his heaven. All's right with the world. Male and female! Ah wonderful!"'.
Whilst death should rarely be thought of favourably, Forster certainly died at just the right time, following the sexy 60s' boom of liberty in love. The benefit of posthumous publication is in allowing the reader to glimpse a bygone age (where 'the mystery of sex' is to be approached 'very simply and kindly', and of course recognised as the activity of 'male and female, created by God') and identify it as alien to their present - in the context of much more enlightened attitudes, the 1970s reader could recognise homophobia's role as a part of this ludicrously stuffy society, and condemn it, learning lessons from the past to become more tolerant in the present. These more enlightened attitudes are represented from the off by Maurice, who privately scolds his teacher as a 'liar, coward' who 'told [him] nothing' about sex, a topic which Maurice pretended not to know anything about. More than simply illuminating the dichotomy between adults' perceptions of teenagers and the truth beneath, Forster here offers the first clues as to Maurice's sexuality; although the author's reasoning that Maurice simply isn't ready for this talk is fairly compelling, Maurice's failure to 'himself relate [the traditional explanation of sex between 'male and female']' foregrounds how it simply doesn't apply to him. And is it that different from heterosexual love anyway? Both are secrets, at least to begin with - Maurice promises his teacher he has heard 'not a word' about sex before and swears not to tell other people, and equally supposes 'some special curse [has] descended on him' when he first dreams about himself in a gay relationship. Yet Maurice gradually grows in the confidence to accept, and enjoy, his sexuality, beginning to 'make a religion of some other boy... he would laugh loudly, talk absurdly and be unable to work'.
As Forster remarks, 'so curious a fabric is the human', a concept he investigates throughout the novel by splitting its characters off into cults - the teachers who believe themselves authorities on everything; the shut-away upper classes in general, represented by Mrs Hall, almost cowardly in her passive content to live in 'a land of facilities, where nothing had to be striven for' and to explain every egregious action away as 'overtiredness'; and, most notably, the schoolboys. There were 'so many boys of [Maurice's] type - they formed the backbone of the school and we cannot notice each vertebra', and with tribes come rituals; Maurice subscribes to these by adhering to a spiteful system of teasing romantic interests - 'other boys sometimes worshipped him, and when he realised this he would shake them off' - and to another of bullying - 'having been bullied as a new boy, he bullied others when they seemed unhappy or weak, not because he was cruel but because it was the proper thing to do'. This highlights how unfair discrimination is just that - unfair, and unnecessary; this is surely a message which would resonate in a society that was just about coming to terms with sexualities which deviated from the norm, further revealing the temporal serendipity of Forster's passing which allowed the publication of the book.
The power of love is a key theme within the novel, presented as having the same effect and representation as heterosexual love despite its different specifics. Even from a young age, Maurice feels something for the servant boy George, evidenced by the 'great mass of sorrow' that overwhelms him when he learns George has left the family. Love is transformative - Maurice daydreams about boys, enjoys a 'dirty little collection' of thoughts about boys, emerges from a dream 'yearning with tenderness and longing to be kind to everyone, because his friend wished it, and... might become more fond of him'. Love is no less powerful than The Knight's Tale, but its power by necessity reveals itself in an entirely different way - how could Maurice express his passions in terms of physical pain, as Palamon did, when he practises the Wildean 'love that dare not speak its name'? Forster tackles homosexual desire introspectively, diving into the lucid power of Maurice's thoughts and dreams to uncover his 'secret life'; indeed, his 'part brutal, part ideal' dreams not only mirror his state of mind as a whole (Forster is confident that 'they will interpret him') - they also intimate that his sexuality is innate, an immutable part of his identity. 'As soon as his body developed he became obscene', yet even before adolescence, he dreamt 'he was playing football against a nondescript whose existence he resented. He made an effort and the nondescript turned into George' - a naked George, that is. That Maurice 'made an effort' to fill the void with George represents how, contrary to the narrator's professional authoritative declarative that Maurice 'became' obscene, he made no conscious effort to be anything other than who he always was. The dream was 'more real than anything he knew' - a prejudiced society may shut people out as it pleases, but Maurice can retreat to dreams to unlock his true identity. The unintended juxtaposition of the pre-war setting and 1970s publication allows Forster's well-written novel to catalyse a change in opinions, revealing that while society may have changed for the better, homosexuality has always been a part of it, innate and uncontrollable, something which should be treated as equal to heterosexual love.
Whilst death should rarely be thought of favourably, Forster certainly died at just the right time, following the sexy 60s' boom of liberty in love. The benefit of posthumous publication is in allowing the reader to glimpse a bygone age (where 'the mystery of sex' is to be approached 'very simply and kindly', and of course recognised as the activity of 'male and female, created by God') and identify it as alien to their present - in the context of much more enlightened attitudes, the 1970s reader could recognise homophobia's role as a part of this ludicrously stuffy society, and condemn it, learning lessons from the past to become more tolerant in the present. These more enlightened attitudes are represented from the off by Maurice, who privately scolds his teacher as a 'liar, coward' who 'told [him] nothing' about sex, a topic which Maurice pretended not to know anything about. More than simply illuminating the dichotomy between adults' perceptions of teenagers and the truth beneath, Forster here offers the first clues as to Maurice's sexuality; although the author's reasoning that Maurice simply isn't ready for this talk is fairly compelling, Maurice's failure to 'himself relate [the traditional explanation of sex between 'male and female']' foregrounds how it simply doesn't apply to him. And is it that different from heterosexual love anyway? Both are secrets, at least to begin with - Maurice promises his teacher he has heard 'not a word' about sex before and swears not to tell other people, and equally supposes 'some special curse [has] descended on him' when he first dreams about himself in a gay relationship. Yet Maurice gradually grows in the confidence to accept, and enjoy, his sexuality, beginning to 'make a religion of some other boy... he would laugh loudly, talk absurdly and be unable to work'.
As Forster remarks, 'so curious a fabric is the human', a concept he investigates throughout the novel by splitting its characters off into cults - the teachers who believe themselves authorities on everything; the shut-away upper classes in general, represented by Mrs Hall, almost cowardly in her passive content to live in 'a land of facilities, where nothing had to be striven for' and to explain every egregious action away as 'overtiredness'; and, most notably, the schoolboys. There were 'so many boys of [Maurice's] type - they formed the backbone of the school and we cannot notice each vertebra', and with tribes come rituals; Maurice subscribes to these by adhering to a spiteful system of teasing romantic interests - 'other boys sometimes worshipped him, and when he realised this he would shake them off' - and to another of bullying - 'having been bullied as a new boy, he bullied others when they seemed unhappy or weak, not because he was cruel but because it was the proper thing to do'. This highlights how unfair discrimination is just that - unfair, and unnecessary; this is surely a message which would resonate in a society that was just about coming to terms with sexualities which deviated from the norm, further revealing the temporal serendipity of Forster's passing which allowed the publication of the book.
The power of love is a key theme within the novel, presented as having the same effect and representation as heterosexual love despite its different specifics. Even from a young age, Maurice feels something for the servant boy George, evidenced by the 'great mass of sorrow' that overwhelms him when he learns George has left the family. Love is transformative - Maurice daydreams about boys, enjoys a 'dirty little collection' of thoughts about boys, emerges from a dream 'yearning with tenderness and longing to be kind to everyone, because his friend wished it, and... might become more fond of him'. Love is no less powerful than The Knight's Tale, but its power by necessity reveals itself in an entirely different way - how could Maurice express his passions in terms of physical pain, as Palamon did, when he practises the Wildean 'love that dare not speak its name'? Forster tackles homosexual desire introspectively, diving into the lucid power of Maurice's thoughts and dreams to uncover his 'secret life'; indeed, his 'part brutal, part ideal' dreams not only mirror his state of mind as a whole (Forster is confident that 'they will interpret him') - they also intimate that his sexuality is innate, an immutable part of his identity. 'As soon as his body developed he became obscene', yet even before adolescence, he dreamt 'he was playing football against a nondescript whose existence he resented. He made an effort and the nondescript turned into George' - a naked George, that is. That Maurice 'made an effort' to fill the void with George represents how, contrary to the narrator's professional authoritative declarative that Maurice 'became' obscene, he made no conscious effort to be anything other than who he always was. The dream was 'more real than anything he knew' - a prejudiced society may shut people out as it pleases, but Maurice can retreat to dreams to unlock his true identity. The unintended juxtaposition of the pre-war setting and 1970s publication allows Forster's well-written novel to catalyse a change in opinions, revealing that while society may have changed for the better, homosexuality has always been a part of it, innate and uncontrollable, something which should be treated as equal to heterosexual love.
Highsmith enjoyed reading around psychological topics, including Cleckley's treatise The Mask of Satiny which introduced the idea of the psychopath as a typically charming, manipulative, narcissistic, self-seeking, anti-social male from a 'non-family' environment. So far, the conman Ripley subscribes to most of these; he is already a fairly highly-developed character, although perhaps his traits adhere too closely to this definition of psychopathy, rather than presenting a more complex character, such as the kleptomaniac Sasha in Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (see week 3 of the reading challenge). He certainly earns antiheroic status, commanding the narrative from the off with his flawed character; he is uncertain (downing a drink 'in a hurry' to evade a pursuer before succumbing to temptation by 'taking a chance and going in for another drink'); materialistic (noticing his acquaintances based on their hair colour - 'the big man with red hair, whose name he always forgot', 'a blonde girl', a man 'greying at the temples' are all identified by him); superior, disparaging Greenleaf's 'pathetic, hungry expression'; and clearly accustomed to the life of a malefactor - the 'friendly, smiling and hopeful' face of Greenleaf 'was more confusing to Tom than if he had focused a gun on him'. Ripley defies an interpretation of himself as 'intelligent, level-headed, scrupulously honest, and very willing to do a favour', allowing Highsmith to represent Ripley as the embodiment of the false appearances that are so easy to put up; even when talking to Greenleaf, his mouth and his brain are saying different things, Highsmith presenting a series of these juxtapositions to further her duplicitous portrayal of Ripley.
Yet an antihero embodies the liminal space between hero and villain, defying dichotomous categorisation of these archetypes - and so Ripley lacks the professionalism of a truly dedicated criminal mastermind, merely carrying out petty confidence scams; he is also charming and confident, 'strolling' to a bar, where he sits '[facing] the door challengingly, yet with a flagrant casualness', and some of his lies both provide amusing insight into his state of mind and represent his commitment to obliging the needs of his listener - although he 'had never seen' Richard's pen-and-ink drawings, 'he could see them now... could see Dickie smiling, holding them up for him to look at, and he could have gone on for several minutes describing details for Mr Greenleaf's delight'. Much of Tom's paranoia seems to stem from the high-functioning mental power that also fuels his imagination and natural sense of resourcefulness - he obsessively counts his scam money to the nearest cent (although 'it amounted to no more than a practical joke'), and immediately sees Greenleaf's offer of moving to Europe as 'a possibility. Something in him had smelt it out and leapt at it even before his brain'.
The obvious flaw in this early passage is that, whilst offering an insightful study into the psyche of a 'bored, god-damned bloody bored, bored, bored!' antihero, I feel as though I know nothing about anybody else - setting, other characters and plot are all a little light in an introduction which sets the ball rolling at the expense of establishing a defined milieu first. Perhaps that's a good thing - I'd have to read the rest of the novel to fully contextualise the relevance of this opening. Who knows whether I will? Tom is a fairly interesting character so far, although given the limited amount of time we all have to read for pleasure, I'm not sure whether this one is worth pursuing further - it just lacks the strong opening and elegance of style that I prefer. Nevertheless, we could all learn from Tom's philosophy - 'something always turned up'. Who can predict what the future will hold?
Saying that, this atmosphere of sheer fun is notably off-limits to half of the population. Dorimant is a notorious offender, flitting like a pollinator from women to women, seeing his current partner as a 'pis aller' (last resort) whilst writing her love letters, all the while lamenting 'what a dull insipid thing is a billet-doux written in cold blood, after the heat of the business is over!', yet every party has a derogatory vocative for the orange-woman, who is 'double-tripe', 'huswife' (since shortened to the offensive 'hussy'), 'cartload of scandal' and an 'insignificant brandy bottle', begging the question of when the jokey atmosphere goes too far. Jacknewitz maintains that this 'dramatic satire illustrates a return to the traditional treatment of women within the process of courtship and love' - that is, as objects to be oppressed - although Dorimant is certainly the main proponent of the sexism. He challenges the orange-woman's promise of 'the best fruit', maintaining it to be 'nasty refuse', and similarly suggests that 'this fine woman [Harriet]... is some awkward, ill-fashioned, country toad' - on top of it all, the fact that he has 'not had the pleasure of making a woman so much as... be sullen... these three days' constitutes 'calm in my affairs'. Given Dorimant's central role as the lord of misrule, could Etherege be criticising his reliance on mischief as possibly slightly over-the-top, as his attitudes are clearly bordering on misogyny? Amusing from the start, whilst providing some sustenance for contemporary feminist critics, The Man of Mode is an enjoyable enough riot that I'm sure I will enjoy the rest off.
There are multiple valid interpretations of exactly what is happening to the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper, and to be honest, I'm not sure which (or which combination) I agree with the most. Certainly, the overriding view at the time of publication, that the narrator is exhibiting an extreme level of consciousness and connectedness with the subliminal world is supported by her incredible presience, as she immediately 'will proudly declare that there is something queer about [the house]'. This rather Romantic view is quickly dismissed by John, who 'laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage'. Ah, bingo. The Yellow Wallpaper, among other things, analogises women's inferiority and oppression within the prison of marriage with the contemporary failure to adequately recognise and treat mental conditions. Drawing on her own experiences of S. Weir Mitchell's inefficient 'resting cure' for anxiety, Gilman crafts a story which isolates the narrator from the world in which she lives. Only three other characters appear, one of which is imaginary, and, by necessity of the nature of the epistolary format, the action all takes place in the narrator's bedroom, separate from the 'DELICIOUS garden' in the 'most beautiful place' that is the environs of the house. Gilman, as Chaucer did in The Knight's Tale, exploits setting to give the perspective of a prisoner looking out onto liberty but not being allowed to partake in it.
The gaoler in all of this? John. The narrator's husband 'does not believe [she is] sick!' and ensures she is 'absolutely forbidden to "work"', effectively trapping her in a cage with her thoughts and spectating at the fight to the death that he has created. John exhibits an unequalled level of influence over the narrator, both physically and mentally; when he says that she is getting better, she feels better, and vice-versa. She initially attempts to 'write for a while in spite of [his instruction]' but soon realises the difficulty of 'having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition'; similarly, her resistance is again stamped out when John fixes her 'such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word' after she insinuates that whilst '"better in body", she is not better in mind'. Rather than actually resting as is claimed, the narrator exhausts herself by '[taking] pains to control [her]self'; here, Gilman illuminates how women's forced subservience has a damaging effect on their mental health, shining the spotlight on an oft-neglected issue at the time. Since there is 'no REASON to suffer', John reckons there is no suffering; Gilman's subtle criticism of this stance foregrounds the necessity for men and women to understand each other's differing modes of communication - logic is all very well and good, but it must be matched by an understanding of traditional feminine intuition. What's wrong with 'giving way to fancy', as John cautions against? Gilman's semantic choices track John's control over his wife (having already made his sister a 'perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper'); she maintains him to be 'very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction', not realising the implications of her words, whilst he patronisingly looks down on her as a '"little girl"', crying '"bless her little heart"', both times employing the diminutive adjective to assert himself over her. Is he simply trying to signify that he is authoritative enough to take care of his wife? Is he trying to metaphorically slap his wife into what he perceives as the real world? Is he seizing the opportunity to assert himself over a frail partner? Or has she been his plaything since the beginning? She becomes repressed beyond belief - her baby is only mentioned once, halfway through, and she begins to feel apologetic for her condition, lamenting her status as 'a comparative burden already'
The narrator's self-expression is a key theme of the novel, and even though she knows writing would 'rest' her and demands 'I MUST say what I feel and think in some way - it is such a relief!', it is stolen from her by John as the story unfolds; this is represented through his forbidding her to write, as he denies her the 'dead paper and a great relief to my mind' provided by her diary; the accelerating pace of the story's climax implies the entries are getting few and far between as the story progresses, so he clearly influences and reduces her ability to express her thoughts - exactly what we'd advise sufferers of mental health conditions to do these days: to share their experience. Interesting to note that the 'dead paper' of the diary not only contrasts with the 'living souls' whom she is forbidden to talk to, but also with the increasingly living wallpaper which so torments her; the narrator spends the rest of her time tracing the patterns in the wallpaper of her room; more than simply demonstrating the amount of time she is forced to spend bedridden, this structural device mirrors her mental deterioration. At first, irregularities on the paper are merely 'lame uncertain curves' which 'plunge off at outrageous angles' on a paper whose 'colour is repellent... a smouldering unclean yellow' - this description intimates a simple clash of tastes - but as the narrator's anxiety consumes her brain, so do her descriptions of the paper gain increasing sentience and viciousness, as it exerts 'a vicious influence', 'lolls like a broken neck', prompts her to realise she 'never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before'. And then the woman appears.
A 'faint figure behind' who 'seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out', the woman in the wallpaper is the exact parallel of the narrator, emphasised when the two become one during the tense climax. Having suffered a pattern which she believes 'slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you', the narrator realises that it not only oppresses her (as does John) but also 'becomes bars! ...The woman behind it is as plain as can be'. As the narrator becomes more and more oppressed by John, the woman becomes clearer and clearer to her, to the point where she 'can see her out of every one of my windows', and as a result our narrator becomes more aware of what she has been subjected to. The final few pages of the story frantically pick up the pace, roaring to a climactic cliffhanger in a way quite unlike any denouement I have ever read before; depending on how they're interpreted, these pages can change a reader's understanding of the entire story they have just read, present themselves as a statement of the narrator's empowerment, finally breaking free of the wallpaper and being able to realise her situation and embark on a mission to heal, or simply act as a harrowing coda to the narrator's experiences. Me, personally? I think it's all of the above.
In the novel, which prioritises introspective characterisation over heavy plot, Woolf captures a family beset by conflict on the Isle of Skye. Much of the novel is told through the characters' thoughts and perceptions of the (minimal) events around them; to properly understand the mechanisms of thought, Woolf would sit listening to herself think for hours on end - through this introspective exploration, the author weaves a complicated system of family dynamics illustrating the complexity of everyday family life. Immediately a wedge is driven between Mr Ramsay, who tells his son James ('the image of stark and uncomprising severity') that they won't be able to go to the lighthouse as he wishes; Mrs Ramsay views this as the 'caustic saying' of an 'odious little man', whilst James wishes for 'an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father's breast and killed him'. From Mr Ramsay's point of view: he takes a sadistic pleasure in 'disillusioning his son and casting ridicule upon his wife'. Mrs Ramsay is the biggest hypocrite of all; whilst bemoaning the 'strife, divisions, difference of opinion, prejudices twisted into the very fibre of being' exhibited by her offspring, she herself criticises them as 'so critical... they talked such nonsense'. The atmosphere of distrust and half-concealed loathing is reciprocated. Meanwhile, the eight children seek privacy and independence in a home environment where they are forced to be together, their bedrooms 'their fastness in a house where there was no other privacy', insinuating their uneasiness around their siblings. Narrowing the focus, the Ramsay daughters Prue, Nancy, Rose confront their mother; they 'sport with infidel ideas which they had brewed for themselves of a life different from hers... there was in all their minds a mute questioning of deference and chivary, of the Bank of England and the Indian Empire'. Put simply, they are feminist in a way alien to Mrs Ramsay, who enjoys playing the stereotypical hostess role - part of the conflict stems from Mrs Ramsay's inviting 'too many people to stay' on the island; she believes 'she had the whole of the other sex under her protection, for reasons she could not explain... something trustful, childlike, reverential'.
One of these lodgers is Mr Tansley, a friend of Mr Ramsay who is disparaged as 'a sarcastic brute' by the children for his competitive streak when it comes to 'Latin verses', and for his conversational desire to have 'turned the whole thing round and made it somehow reflect himself and disparage them'. To Mrs Ramsay, too, he is an 'awful prig - oh yes, an insufferable bore' and a proponent of 'ugly academic jargon' - but then again, she seems annoyed by everyone, reserving hatred for the guests she graciously welcomes; is it because she feels 'all her wit and her bearing and her temper' come from the 'mythical Italian family' from whom she is descended, 'and not the sluggish English' - is she simply dissociated from the entire English way of life? Anyway, Tansley seemed to be about to present a metaphorical spanner in the works at the point where I stopped reading - whilst walking to the bay with its 'great plateful of blue water' and 'hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere', he begins to feel that 'everything he had ever known [has] gone crooked a little'. And what is the cause of this emotional disturbance in so phlegmatic a man? All at once he realises: 'it was this: it was this - she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen'. Suddenly overcome by 'an extraordinary pride' for the first time in his life, Tansley relishes 'walking with a beautiful woman'; whether it'll be acted upon remains to be seen, but it nevertheless complicates the already twisted web of divisions and connections between the characters of these introductory chapters, and promises an introspective study of human nature and relationships. If I can find the time to explore it further and get to the bottom of exactly what it's trying to say, I think I will.
So - a mixed bag, but for the most part, these week's texts have been challenging (perhaps too challenging in Woolf's case!), stimulating and above all, exciting to read. I've tackled Chaucerian knights, antiheros, Restoration romps and broken families. Without meaning to, several themes have (rather eerily, actually) cropped up in multiple texts - imprisonment (Chaucer/Gilman), breakdown of family relationships (Gilman/Woolf), the power of love (Chaucer/Forster), a misogynistic attitude towards women (Etherege/Gilman). All in all, another solid week of texts!
Re next week - the next week of the reading challenge will very likely not be starting on Monday. I'm exceedingly busy at the moment, so it will be incredibly difficult to write the introductory post before Monday. I'll endeavour to get the Week 7 menu to you as soon as possible, and then we can start reading from then and hopefully the whole thing will sort itself out! Until then, you can follow me on Twitter @Banquetofbooks for all kinds of notifications and updates and, whatever you're currently enjoying: happy reading!
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