Reading the texts of Week 8 was a lovely experience - I was cooped up in a little cottage-type arrangement in sunny Northumberland, with just a dog and a book to keep me company! We also went to Barter Books in Alnwick, which is one of my favourite bookshops (yes, I have just suddenly thought that a 'My favourite bookshops' post might be coming your way in the future...) so all in all, it was a great week. As for the actual texts themselves, Week 8 hasn't delivered any complete surprises either way, to be honest, delivering a set of impressive, high-quality reads that thoroughly entertained and interested me.
***THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR MULTIPLE TEXTS*
On Monday, I was examining literature that deals with the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which culminated in the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man was a fairly apt example of the necessity for such an enormous movement, hailed, as it is, as an evaluation of the racial injustice of African Americans. However, within the opening section the thematic spark of the story doesn't yet seem to have erupted into a full blaze; Ellison introduces the eponymous invisible man by first-person narration of his nature (he is 'not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms') and his everyday life, gradually building up layers to the character. From the beginning, the themes of neglect (illustrated by the man's invisibility, which represents African Americans' lack of civil rights and a stake in society) and oppression go hand in hand - the title character's corrective 'No, I am not a spook' implies he is accustomed to unfavourable comparisons and assumptions such as these, and only now that he is guiding the narrative can he delineate who he truly is. And who is he? Somebody who is invisible 'simply because people refuse to see me'.
And there I was, expecting nothing more than a bit of ankle! 'The first English prose pornography' is just that - beginning deceptively simply, trapped within almost Austenian confines and promising to tell the story of a young woman who moves to the city, John Cleland's Fanny Hill doesn't take long to turn smutty. Introduced by a preface promising 'Truth! stark, naked truth' and noting that 'the greatest men... will not scruple adorning their private closets with nudities, though, in compliance with vulgar prejudices, they may not think them decent decorations of the staircase', Liverpool girl Fanny's memoirs are almost unremittingly salacious and detail sexual encounters of all descriptions, as witnessed by the eponymous narrator who unwittingly becomes a London prostitute.
Written by a homodiegetic narrator whose advanced years allow her to comprehend the folly of her naivety, the story tracks 'those scandalous stages of my life' with a tone intensely critical of her 'invincible stupidity' - whilst the teenage Fanny portrayed within the narrative labels Mrs Brown the 'kindest mistress, not to say friend, that the vast world could afford', the narrator's use of the jargon of performance betrays her more enlightened present state, as she identifies Mrs Brown's actions as 'decoys' and 'cues' - befitting of a woman who subjects Fanny to 'a strict examination' with her hungry eyes before speaking to her with 'the greatest demureness'. Equally, whilst she now understands that the path to sinful behaviour begins when a young woman 'begins no longer to look on a man as a creature of prey that will eat her', the motif of feasting reoccurs throughout the novel, with Mrs Brown and one of her clients both looking as though they want to 'devour me with [their] eyes'. Led like a lamb to the slaughter, her youth dictating her naive blindness to the monstrosity of her situation, Fanny enters the metaphorical lion's den, 'pleased with my cage, and blind to the wires', and never have I seen dramatic irony so heightened - even the narrator knows how naive she was! - to the point where we as readers, and Fanny herself, are screaming for this 'simpleton' to escape.
Perhaps this self-effacing attitude is informed by Fanny's general thoughts on her role in society - undeniably, she sees herself as an inferior figure, writing the epistolary story as 'an undeniable proof of my considering your desires as indispensable orders' and recognising men as 'our sovereign judges'. In turn, this inferiority complex could be seen to be dictated by how Fanny (and the other prostitutes) are treated; they are mere objects, 'fresh goods... for the use of [Mrs Brown's] customers, and her own profit', subjected to the 'fiery, eager stare' of clients who want the honour of 'the triumph over [Fanny's] virginity' and likened to victims decked out for sacrifice. I would prefer to think that the nostalgic narrator's solemn spouting of idioms ('it is the character of lust to be impatient') and associating non-consensual sex with sin (reminiscing 'the first ideas of pollution were caught by me that night') insinuate Cleland's disapproval of the mistreatment of sex workers within the novel - whilst the story could be seen as a flimsy work of erotic fiction, it's perhaps more tempting to hope that it was written to encourage social reform in attitudes to sex workers; Cleland either discourages the practice completely, aligning more with the women's conduct literature of the time, or advocates greater tolerance - and either are pleasing interpretations.
Divorced from the security of her friend and guardian Esther, whose 'valiance' defeated 'the schemes laid for me by some of the passengers' on her way to London, the titular character Fanny Hill is catapulted into an unfamiliar world for which she simply isn't prepared. Yes, it would be far-fetched to take Cleland's novel as a didactic work preaching that children should be properly prepared for the world before being flung into it, but the incorporation of a nifty counterargument ascribing the character's maturation from naive and happy child to wiser and sadder woman to the enormous life events she has endured encourages at least a little discussion. To be honest, I'll try anything to elevate Fanny Hill beyond its status as a porn novel; disavowed by Cleland and unpublished for years, the book does have merit in ways additional to its appeal as an early work of eroticism, thanks mainly to Cleland's skilful balancing of youthful innocence and solemn wisdom within its narration - you just have to go under the surface a little to find it.
Analysing one of the most famous crime texts of all time is no easy feat, since Agatha Christie's seminal work The Murder of Roger Ackroyd relies so heavily on the kind of Golden Age crime tropes that have become embroidered onto the fabric of all crime fiction that has followed. Narrated by the King's Abbot village doctor Dr Shepard, the tale begins with the kind of forensic detail, verisimilitude and short declaratives which are now commonplace within detective works, allowing the story to be presented as a case file, albeit (interestingly) one penned by a doctor and not a detective, since Hercule Poirot himself doesn't appear until the third chapter - and in a diminished role at that, merely a minor character in the doctor's narrative. We are quickly and methodically introduced to the situation - 'Mrs Ferrars died on the night of the 16th-17th September-- a Thursday. There was nothing to be done. She had been dead some hours' - before Shepard breaks from this felonious autopsy to interject with his own feelings, revealing himself to be 'considerably upset and worried', whilst his instinct knows 'there were stirring times ahead'. Fair play to Christie for imbuing her narrator with more personality than his dual statuses as a narrator and a doctor would lead the reader to assume; Shepard is at once fairly likeable, a vivid life and sense of professionalism created around him.
To be fair, this is mainly due to the introduction of Shepard's sister Caroline, a force to be reckoned with, who allows Christie to inject a mild dose of humour into proceedings which instantly alleviates her novel beyond the ordinary confines of the crime genre. Caroline is the ultimate gossip, filled with 'great gusto' and 'amazingly expert' at constantly disseminating and collecting information, to the point where Shepard has become accustomed to keeping secrets from her, lest what he says becomes 'common knowledge all over the village within the space of an hour and a half'. With Poirot in retirement growing marrows, Caroline is the substitute sleuth, her refutation of Shepard's diagnosis of 'acute gastritis' as Mr Ferrars' cause of death being founded on the reasoning that '"You've only got to look at her"'. It's tempting to imagine that Christie is quietly satirising would-be detectives or lazy crime writers, who might have believed her work (plotting crime stories in particular) to be an easy job - sending them all up in the form of the well-intentioned but perhaps incompetent Caroline could be a quiet message to her naysayers.
Secrets are a key theme within the book, right from the beginning, establishing a tone of suspense - because why introduce a secret within the narrative if it isn't to be divulged by the end? 'As a professional man', Dr Shepard aims for discretion, but especially so in the presence of his chatterbox sister, from whom he withholds 'all information possible'. Is the implication that Shepard's work denies him true, meaningful communication with his sister, or that Caroline's personality forbids this with her brother? Either way, by depicting one of the strongest bonds (brother and sister) fraying at the edges, Christie contrasts the cosy chocolate-pot setting and populates it with mistrust, the perfect breeding ground for a viral spread of suspicion. Already the seeds are sown - Dr Shepard 'firmly' tells Caroline her ideas are 'nonsense', but that's because he 'secretly agreed with some part, at least, of what she had said'.
On Thursday I was reading all about the famous titular outlaw of A Gest of Robyn Hode; published in the late 15th century but cobbled together long before that, the simply-written ABCB medieval ballad introduces the eponymous 'gode yeman' and relates his dinner with a sad knight who is almost penniless after having to reimburse the agents of the law because his son killed two men.
Throughout the tale, the figure of Robin Hood is presented in a romanticised light; he is 'prude' (proud) to the point that 'so curteyse an outlawe as he was one/Was nevere non founde', surrounds himself with 'gode' friends, and adequately furnishes his sorrowful guest with a horse, servant, new clothes and four hundred pounds. In addition to this, he is almost greedily sociable - despite surrounding himself with his friends Little John, Scarlok and Much, he will not dine 'till that I have som bolde baron,/Or som unkouth gest'. He specially selects these guests, prizing 'a lord or sire/That may pay for the best'. Imagine having a wonderful meal in somebody else's house, only to be told at the end that you have to pay for what you've just eaten! Robin's actions amount to theft (and he is very keen to verify the knight's claim of poverty), but since he is charming and clever in fooling the richest, the lower-class original audience (this ballad was designed to be performed, probably by minstrels) would be persuaded to idolise this 'Good Outlaw'. So, too, is his virtuousness indicated by his devotion to 'Oure dere Lady:/For dout of dydly synne [fear of deadly sin],/Wolde he never do compani harme/That any woman was in', revealing the influence of the Virgin Mary on his decisions in life.
Finally, he gains favour among the lower-class audience by urging 'loke ye do no husbonde [farmer] harme,/That tilleth with his ploughe'; Robin doesn't make it explicit at this point why it is only 'these bisshoppes and these archebishoppes' who should be 'bete [beat] and bynde', although it has been argued that his targeting of religious orders derives from their abuses of authority and practice of usury, where money is lended with extortionate interest. Taking this devotion to restoring equality to the highest degree, Robin is particularly keen to exploit 'the hye sherif of Notyingham'. In this light, it is easy to interpret the poem (a ballad for children, let's not forget!) as a make-believe political fairytale whose lower-class authors vent their fury at a corrupt elite - transcending the limits of ordinary children's literature, A Gest of Robyn Hoode provokes a deep philosophical debate over societal corruption and inequality, with Robin the lower classes' fantastical idol, the charming paragon of virtue who will effect societal change one step at a time. It's not hard to see how it caught on.
My third crime text of the week was perhaps the most intriguing of them all - Truman Capote's celebrated novel In Cold Blood virtually introduced the 'non-fiction novel' genre, presenting a true crime (in this case a 1959 quadruple murder in Kansas) as if it were a normal novel. The author masterly retells 'those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers'. Capote's dutiful research, comprising thousands of pages of interview notes over six years, is evident in the heightened sense of verisimilitude which runs through the story's veins, even extending to an acknowledgement of how 'the local accent is barbed with a prairie twang'.
After introducing the reader to the 'aimless congregation of buildings' where the action takes place, Capote opens the narrative focusing on the victims, the Clutter family. The writing is strikingly efficient, as the author cycles through each family member in turn, from the patriarch Herbert ('always certain of what he wanted from the world', he 'had in large measure obtained it') through to his ailing wife (who is ecstatic to learn that, despite being 'an on-and-off psychiatric patient the last half-dozen years', the doctors have diagnosed the malady to be spinal, rather than mental) and his accomplished daughter Nancy, each time divulging just the right amount of exposition to quickly colour in each character and allow us to form opinions on them, without ever resorting to archetypes. Instantly, for example, Herbert is protective and clings tight to his beliefs (advising his daughter to 'discontinue "seeing so much of Bobby", since he is Roman Catholic and the Clutters Methodist and so 'a parting... must eventually take place'), whilst his unimpeachable daughter fills her free time helping all the girls in the town 'with their cooking, their sewing, or their music lessons - or, as often happened, to confine'. Capote also initiates a tone of pessimism from the begin - Mr Clutter bemoans how '"an inch more of rain and this country would be paradise"' whilst in his house, 'liver-colored carpet intermittently [abolished] the glare of varnished, resounding floors'; even the structure interrupts Herbert's happy reminiscences with the description of his future killer Perry Smith having breakfast across town.
And what a killer. Capote is noted for his sensitive portrayal of Smith in particular, having befriended him when conducting research for the book, and it shows - Smith is perhaps the most relatable, thinking, feeling, human character in the book. A description of his ideal breakfast as 'three aspirin, cold root beer, and a chain of Pall Mall cigarettes' sets the tone, before Capote fires out exposition like tennis balls, each unlocking a new facet of the killer's personality; he 'was no taller than a twelve-year-old child', rarely notices the passage of time, is absolutely fascinated by his own face and knows 'how to look now ominous, now impish, now soulful; a tilt of the head, a twist of the lips, and the corrupt gypsy became the gentle romantic', dreams of holidays abroad and singing in front of an audience, and understands music and poetry in a way that his partner in crime Dick doesn't. He is seen as the almost binary opposite to Herbert: lazy, absent-minded, powerless, sensitive; Capote may have been merely writing down the details he observed in a real person, but the fascinating portrayal of Perry Smith that he gives demands the reader's interest, urges them to become emotionally invested, entices them to want to follow his tale, more effectively than a great deal many other crime books do.
Propelled by Capote's deliciously written epic prose (my favourite example is a description of Holcomb being surrounded by 'the keening hysteria of coyotes, the dry scrape of scuttling tumbleweed, the racing, receding wail of locomotive whistles') and extensively substantiated by a wide research base, In Cold Blood represented a reinvigoration of crime fiction, allowing for effective blending of the fictitious and the factual. It is interesting to examine how Capote adheres to some of the genre's cliches - the 'everything is looking up for the victim' cliche springs to mind, with regards the illness of Bonnie Clutter, and the author's description of the 'haphazard hamlet' of Holcomb and its 'unnamed, unshaded, unpaved' streets so clearly establishes the isolated town as an arena for crime that one might be tempted to consider Capote guilty of a little embellishment - as if to enliven the story and clearly categorise it as a book which is as valid a piece of crime fiction as something entirely fictitious. But hey, surely every reader of crime fiction (in whatever form) is a sucker for the kind of portentous paragraph-ender like 'he headed for home and the day's work, unaware that it would be his last'? Capote may tell us that 'until one morning in mid-November, few Americans... had ever heard of Holcomb', but thanks to his beautifully-constructed account of the tragic Clutter massacre, the world will never forget it.
I finished the week off with another underwhelming text, Gabriela Adameşteanu's Wasted Morning, which tells of the elderly Vica Delcă, devoted to her work in a shop and feeling trapped between the old and new Romania. This is immediately illustrated when the character espouses her hilarious view '"Your husband should know you from the waist down"' and gets a telling-off from her scowling sister-in-law who worries that '"the boy will hear you"'. One gets the sense that Vica will have to learn the art of compromise by the end of the book - yet, compared to In Cold Blood where I can't wait to find out how Perry Smith's character develops, there's nothing in Adameşteanu's characterisation of Vica that's making me care what happens to her.
Another way in which Vica feels confined and constricted is that she is 'cooped up' with 'that mute of a man', something she feels 'would have made anyone want to put an end to their days'. That 'mute' is her husband, whose awkwardness and solitude contrast sharply with her sunny disposition; despite their personalities being binary opposites, her physical confinement with her bedridden husband represents Vica's true predicament - she cannot leave him. The reason isn't exactly given - it's most likely just because they're so elderly that there'd be no point - so they stay together in hatred, she 'mumbling fuck off back to hell where you belong' while he 'drone[s] on to his heart's content', and he believing 'you've got the devil inside you. That's why she's never really cared for him'. Even a reminiscence of the moment they met as nineteen-year-olds doesn't ignite any renewed romantic feelings - simply put, the relationship is dead in the water.
The central premise - as far as there can be said to be one - is simple enough, meaning that for Wasted Morning to pique my interest would require its central characters to be absolute belters. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the situation or the characterisation that entices me to read on - the introduction is fairly solidly written, but completely devoid of a hook. And for that reason, I'm out.
On Monday, I was examining literature that deals with the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which culminated in the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man was a fairly apt example of the necessity for such an enormous movement, hailed, as it is, as an evaluation of the racial injustice of African Americans. However, within the opening section the thematic spark of the story doesn't yet seem to have erupted into a full blaze; Ellison introduces the eponymous invisible man by first-person narration of his nature (he is 'not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms') and his everyday life, gradually building up layers to the character. From the beginning, the themes of neglect (illustrated by the man's invisibility, which represents African Americans' lack of civil rights and a stake in society) and oppression go hand in hand - the title character's corrective 'No, I am not a spook' implies he is accustomed to unfavourable comparisons and assumptions such as these, and only now that he is guiding the narrative can he delineate who he truly is. And who is he? Somebody who is invisible 'simply because people refuse to see me'.
The invisible man likens himself to a 'circus sideshow', but makes it explicit that others' views of him and his true nature are completely dichotomous; Ellison emphasises this through polysyllabic lexis and jargon, when the invisible man reveals his condition is not 'a matter of a biochemical accident to my epidermis'. He also invites the readers to consider the psychological effects of being ignored - although he emphasises 'I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen', suggesting a degree of complacency about his situation, the matter-of-fact manner in which he announces 'you often doubt if you really exist' is chilling in itself and echoes how African Americans pre-Montgomery and pre-civil rights movement really thought there was no end to segregation or inequality. The reader gets the feeling that, suppressed for so long, the invisible man becomes his true garrulous self as soon as he gains the spotlight, elucidating all his feelings, such as the primal 'need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world'. And in this way, Ellison adds an extra layer of heartbreak to this man's experience. A violent description of how the character attacks a man who insults him after bumping into him is portrayed as an emotional release, with the invisible man bathing in the sheer joy brought about because, in his own words, 'Oh yes, I kicked him!' - surely a further indictment of letting minority groups go undervalued and unappreciated.
The opening of Ellison's novel is a mere scene-setter, but it provides a stylishly-written character introduction which effectively subverts all contemporary readers' prejudices against African Americans to underscore how every person thinks and feels the same way, even though some suffer the curse of invisibility. The writer's sometimes chilling use of understatement foregrounds how minorities often are forced to grow accustomed to a life of inferiority and isolation, and his insight into the psychology of the invisible man, so neglected that he actually seems to believe he is invisible, laughing at how 'something in [the man who he attacks]'s thick head had sprung out and beaten him within an inch of his life', preserves in the glass case of fiction the despicable racist attitudes of early 20th-century American society, giving voice to the oppressed to effectively illuminate their woe.
Written by a homodiegetic narrator whose advanced years allow her to comprehend the folly of her naivety, the story tracks 'those scandalous stages of my life' with a tone intensely critical of her 'invincible stupidity' - whilst the teenage Fanny portrayed within the narrative labels Mrs Brown the 'kindest mistress, not to say friend, that the vast world could afford', the narrator's use of the jargon of performance betrays her more enlightened present state, as she identifies Mrs Brown's actions as 'decoys' and 'cues' - befitting of a woman who subjects Fanny to 'a strict examination' with her hungry eyes before speaking to her with 'the greatest demureness'. Equally, whilst she now understands that the path to sinful behaviour begins when a young woman 'begins no longer to look on a man as a creature of prey that will eat her', the motif of feasting reoccurs throughout the novel, with Mrs Brown and one of her clients both looking as though they want to 'devour me with [their] eyes'. Led like a lamb to the slaughter, her youth dictating her naive blindness to the monstrosity of her situation, Fanny enters the metaphorical lion's den, 'pleased with my cage, and blind to the wires', and never have I seen dramatic irony so heightened - even the narrator knows how naive she was! - to the point where we as readers, and Fanny herself, are screaming for this 'simpleton' to escape.
Perhaps this self-effacing attitude is informed by Fanny's general thoughts on her role in society - undeniably, she sees herself as an inferior figure, writing the epistolary story as 'an undeniable proof of my considering your desires as indispensable orders' and recognising men as 'our sovereign judges'. In turn, this inferiority complex could be seen to be dictated by how Fanny (and the other prostitutes) are treated; they are mere objects, 'fresh goods... for the use of [Mrs Brown's] customers, and her own profit', subjected to the 'fiery, eager stare' of clients who want the honour of 'the triumph over [Fanny's] virginity' and likened to victims decked out for sacrifice. I would prefer to think that the nostalgic narrator's solemn spouting of idioms ('it is the character of lust to be impatient') and associating non-consensual sex with sin (reminiscing 'the first ideas of pollution were caught by me that night') insinuate Cleland's disapproval of the mistreatment of sex workers within the novel - whilst the story could be seen as a flimsy work of erotic fiction, it's perhaps more tempting to hope that it was written to encourage social reform in attitudes to sex workers; Cleland either discourages the practice completely, aligning more with the women's conduct literature of the time, or advocates greater tolerance - and either are pleasing interpretations.
Divorced from the security of her friend and guardian Esther, whose 'valiance' defeated 'the schemes laid for me by some of the passengers' on her way to London, the titular character Fanny Hill is catapulted into an unfamiliar world for which she simply isn't prepared. Yes, it would be far-fetched to take Cleland's novel as a didactic work preaching that children should be properly prepared for the world before being flung into it, but the incorporation of a nifty counterargument ascribing the character's maturation from naive and happy child to wiser and sadder woman to the enormous life events she has endured encourages at least a little discussion. To be honest, I'll try anything to elevate Fanny Hill beyond its status as a porn novel; disavowed by Cleland and unpublished for years, the book does have merit in ways additional to its appeal as an early work of eroticism, thanks mainly to Cleland's skilful balancing of youthful innocence and solemn wisdom within its narration - you just have to go under the surface a little to find it.
To be fair, this is mainly due to the introduction of Shepard's sister Caroline, a force to be reckoned with, who allows Christie to inject a mild dose of humour into proceedings which instantly alleviates her novel beyond the ordinary confines of the crime genre. Caroline is the ultimate gossip, filled with 'great gusto' and 'amazingly expert' at constantly disseminating and collecting information, to the point where Shepard has become accustomed to keeping secrets from her, lest what he says becomes 'common knowledge all over the village within the space of an hour and a half'. With Poirot in retirement growing marrows, Caroline is the substitute sleuth, her refutation of Shepard's diagnosis of 'acute gastritis' as Mr Ferrars' cause of death being founded on the reasoning that '"You've only got to look at her"'. It's tempting to imagine that Christie is quietly satirising would-be detectives or lazy crime writers, who might have believed her work (plotting crime stories in particular) to be an easy job - sending them all up in the form of the well-intentioned but perhaps incompetent Caroline could be a quiet message to her naysayers.
Secrets are a key theme within the book, right from the beginning, establishing a tone of suspense - because why introduce a secret within the narrative if it isn't to be divulged by the end? 'As a professional man', Dr Shepard aims for discretion, but especially so in the presence of his chatterbox sister, from whom he withholds 'all information possible'. Is the implication that Shepard's work denies him true, meaningful communication with his sister, or that Caroline's personality forbids this with her brother? Either way, by depicting one of the strongest bonds (brother and sister) fraying at the edges, Christie contrasts the cosy chocolate-pot setting and populates it with mistrust, the perfect breeding ground for a viral spread of suspicion. Already the seeds are sown - Dr Shepard 'firmly' tells Caroline her ideas are 'nonsense', but that's because he 'secretly agreed with some part, at least, of what she had said'.
The portion I sampled concluded with the introduction of our first defined suspect, the housekeeper Miss Russell (another Golden Age cipher), in whose estimations Shepard falls when he tells her he doesn't have the poison curare in his possession, 'so rare as to baffle detection'. Of course, I'm sure we'll find out that rather than seeking the toxin for her own malicious ends, she is merely trying to ascertain whether the suspect she has in mind could have got it from him. Along the way, another will die (Roger Ackroyd isn't yet dead, of course), and suspicion will be cast on Miss Russell. See what I mean about it being difficult to analyse one of the most successful models of the crime genre? So many have copied Christie's formula that it's easier than it is with more arcane models to anticipate the beats of the narrative, its ebb and flow. But hey, this is the crime text, 100% proof, the original, so why not enjoy it for what it is? So far, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd establishes the perfect idyll of King's Abbot, as well as its inhabitants, who all fit W. H. Auden's famous guidelines for suitable crime suspects, and I'd wager that we're about to enjoy Christie playing with the set-up she has masterfully created. I can't wait to see what unfolds.
Throughout the tale, the figure of Robin Hood is presented in a romanticised light; he is 'prude' (proud) to the point that 'so curteyse an outlawe as he was one/Was nevere non founde', surrounds himself with 'gode' friends, and adequately furnishes his sorrowful guest with a horse, servant, new clothes and four hundred pounds. In addition to this, he is almost greedily sociable - despite surrounding himself with his friends Little John, Scarlok and Much, he will not dine 'till that I have som bolde baron,/Or som unkouth gest'. He specially selects these guests, prizing 'a lord or sire/That may pay for the best'. Imagine having a wonderful meal in somebody else's house, only to be told at the end that you have to pay for what you've just eaten! Robin's actions amount to theft (and he is very keen to verify the knight's claim of poverty), but since he is charming and clever in fooling the richest, the lower-class original audience (this ballad was designed to be performed, probably by minstrels) would be persuaded to idolise this 'Good Outlaw'. So, too, is his virtuousness indicated by his devotion to 'Oure dere Lady:/For dout of dydly synne [fear of deadly sin],/Wolde he never do compani harme/That any woman was in', revealing the influence of the Virgin Mary on his decisions in life.
Finally, he gains favour among the lower-class audience by urging 'loke ye do no husbonde [farmer] harme,/That tilleth with his ploughe'; Robin doesn't make it explicit at this point why it is only 'these bisshoppes and these archebishoppes' who should be 'bete [beat] and bynde', although it has been argued that his targeting of religious orders derives from their abuses of authority and practice of usury, where money is lended with extortionate interest. Taking this devotion to restoring equality to the highest degree, Robin is particularly keen to exploit 'the hye sherif of Notyingham'. In this light, it is easy to interpret the poem (a ballad for children, let's not forget!) as a make-believe political fairytale whose lower-class authors vent their fury at a corrupt elite - transcending the limits of ordinary children's literature, A Gest of Robyn Hoode provokes a deep philosophical debate over societal corruption and inequality, with Robin the lower classes' fantastical idol, the charming paragon of virtue who will effect societal change one step at a time. It's not hard to see how it caught on.
After introducing the reader to the 'aimless congregation of buildings' where the action takes place, Capote opens the narrative focusing on the victims, the Clutter family. The writing is strikingly efficient, as the author cycles through each family member in turn, from the patriarch Herbert ('always certain of what he wanted from the world', he 'had in large measure obtained it') through to his ailing wife (who is ecstatic to learn that, despite being 'an on-and-off psychiatric patient the last half-dozen years', the doctors have diagnosed the malady to be spinal, rather than mental) and his accomplished daughter Nancy, each time divulging just the right amount of exposition to quickly colour in each character and allow us to form opinions on them, without ever resorting to archetypes. Instantly, for example, Herbert is protective and clings tight to his beliefs (advising his daughter to 'discontinue "seeing so much of Bobby", since he is Roman Catholic and the Clutters Methodist and so 'a parting... must eventually take place'), whilst his unimpeachable daughter fills her free time helping all the girls in the town 'with their cooking, their sewing, or their music lessons - or, as often happened, to confine'. Capote also initiates a tone of pessimism from the begin - Mr Clutter bemoans how '"an inch more of rain and this country would be paradise"' whilst in his house, 'liver-colored carpet intermittently [abolished] the glare of varnished, resounding floors'; even the structure interrupts Herbert's happy reminiscences with the description of his future killer Perry Smith having breakfast across town.
And what a killer. Capote is noted for his sensitive portrayal of Smith in particular, having befriended him when conducting research for the book, and it shows - Smith is perhaps the most relatable, thinking, feeling, human character in the book. A description of his ideal breakfast as 'three aspirin, cold root beer, and a chain of Pall Mall cigarettes' sets the tone, before Capote fires out exposition like tennis balls, each unlocking a new facet of the killer's personality; he 'was no taller than a twelve-year-old child', rarely notices the passage of time, is absolutely fascinated by his own face and knows 'how to look now ominous, now impish, now soulful; a tilt of the head, a twist of the lips, and the corrupt gypsy became the gentle romantic', dreams of holidays abroad and singing in front of an audience, and understands music and poetry in a way that his partner in crime Dick doesn't. He is seen as the almost binary opposite to Herbert: lazy, absent-minded, powerless, sensitive; Capote may have been merely writing down the details he observed in a real person, but the fascinating portrayal of Perry Smith that he gives demands the reader's interest, urges them to become emotionally invested, entices them to want to follow his tale, more effectively than a great deal many other crime books do.
Propelled by Capote's deliciously written epic prose (my favourite example is a description of Holcomb being surrounded by 'the keening hysteria of coyotes, the dry scrape of scuttling tumbleweed, the racing, receding wail of locomotive whistles') and extensively substantiated by a wide research base, In Cold Blood represented a reinvigoration of crime fiction, allowing for effective blending of the fictitious and the factual. It is interesting to examine how Capote adheres to some of the genre's cliches - the 'everything is looking up for the victim' cliche springs to mind, with regards the illness of Bonnie Clutter, and the author's description of the 'haphazard hamlet' of Holcomb and its 'unnamed, unshaded, unpaved' streets so clearly establishes the isolated town as an arena for crime that one might be tempted to consider Capote guilty of a little embellishment - as if to enliven the story and clearly categorise it as a book which is as valid a piece of crime fiction as something entirely fictitious. But hey, surely every reader of crime fiction (in whatever form) is a sucker for the kind of portentous paragraph-ender like 'he headed for home and the day's work, unaware that it would be his last'? Capote may tell us that 'until one morning in mid-November, few Americans... had ever heard of Holcomb', but thanks to his beautifully-constructed account of the tragic Clutter massacre, the world will never forget it.
Another way in which Vica feels confined and constricted is that she is 'cooped up' with 'that mute of a man', something she feels 'would have made anyone want to put an end to their days'. That 'mute' is her husband, whose awkwardness and solitude contrast sharply with her sunny disposition; despite their personalities being binary opposites, her physical confinement with her bedridden husband represents Vica's true predicament - she cannot leave him. The reason isn't exactly given - it's most likely just because they're so elderly that there'd be no point - so they stay together in hatred, she 'mumbling fuck off back to hell where you belong' while he 'drone[s] on to his heart's content', and he believing 'you've got the devil inside you. That's why she's never really cared for him'. Even a reminiscence of the moment they met as nineteen-year-olds doesn't ignite any renewed romantic feelings - simply put, the relationship is dead in the water.
The central premise - as far as there can be said to be one - is simple enough, meaning that for Wasted Morning to pique my interest would require its central characters to be absolute belters. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the situation or the characterisation that entices me to read on - the introduction is fairly solidly written, but completely devoid of a hook. And for that reason, I'm out.
Yes, it's been a little while - I was intending to get this up last weekend, but I was whisked away on a lovely surprise weekend to Amsterdam 😀, so here we are. As school work gets busier and busier, we might have to move away from a rigid week-on-week-off structure in favour of a 'I'll do what I can when I have time' approach. Nothing too drastic - it just means I'll have more time to properly hone my reviews so they're as fine-tuned as possible by the time they reach you.
Week 8, like many of the previous weeks, hasn't been perfect (bookended, as it was, by two damp squibs), but the meaty middle section was a joy to read, comprising two thrillingly innovatives takes on the crime genre, a multifaceted approach to medieval children's literature and a sordid 1740s shocker that was an absolute hoot to read. Take a bow, Week 8 - not bad, not bad.
I'll be back asap with the Week 9 reading list - I've finalised the books, and I just need to sort all my templates out and construct the post. We'll be exploring six incredibly varied texts from all sorts of backgrounds, taking in a contemporary take on the Gothic (for more on my favourite genre, take a look at this post from last week), a premature celebration, another medieval classic, Canada's finest, and more!
In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter @Banquetofbooks for all the latest updates and notifications, and I'll see you back here soon to kick off Week 9!
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