THE SUFFERINGS OF PRINCE STERNENHOCH BY LADISLAV KLIMA

Only once have I been considered mad by the world at large. Yet it is, perversely, when I felt most sane. I sought advice from the doctor upon the urging of my intimates; and what did he say? Nothing! He cowered before my tears and my reason. I had stopped being able to laugh at life, to find absurd amusement in what Rene Daumal called ‘this monkey cage frenzy.’ My mind’s eye had been squeegeed clean. I saw clearly that a conventional existence was terrifying, painful…impossible. I could no longer continue in the hapless, mindless manner I had become accustomed to. Work, talk, fuck…and repeat. Impossible! The doctor gave me a prescription. I later found out that it was for the kind of drug they give to patients in mental institutions, the most unruly patients, who were, to quote, ‘literally climbing the walls.’ He wanted to sedate me, to dupe me into again accepting what I had renounced, what I felt as though I had transcended.

When looking back on myself during this period, I feel a sort of kinship with the Czech novelist and philosopher Ladislav Klíma. Certainly, no one could accuse the man of having lived conventionally. His personal philosophy, which naturally filtered into his work, manifested itself as a kind of non-conformism, in the rejection of societal norms, such that, for example, he spent his later years shining shoes, drinking heavily, and eating vermin. Moreover, Klíma is said to have destroyed a number of his manuscripts. One might speculate that he did so not because he doubted the quality of what he had produced but because writing and regularly publishing books could be considered a stable career, and therefore ought to be avoided. Yet some of his manuscripts did, of course, survive, including The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch, which is generally thought to be the most important, and best, of Klíma’s work.

“It is necessary to love – to love everything; even what is most revolting. Love is the cruellest, most difficult thing of all.”

The book begins with thirty-three year old Prince Helmut Sternenhoch, wealthy aristocrat, and confidante and favourite of Kaiser ‘Willy’ Wilhelm, taking an interest in Helga, a relatively poor seventeen year old girl. One’s initial impression of the Prince is emphatically a negative one. He calls Helga ‘downright ugly’, for example, and proceeds to enumerate her faults and physical failings: her movements are ‘sluggish’, her hair ‘bulky’, and so on. He was, he states, ‘absolutely ill’ when he first saw her. Indeed, so vicious is some of the criticism that I was concerned at this point that The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch was going to be unpleasantly misogynistic throughout. However, after a few pages one realises that Klíma is poking fun at Helmut, that one is meant to take against him, at least for the time being.

In the first half of the novel, Prince Sternenhoch is portrayed as arrogant and loathsome. He is a man who believes that he is superior by virtue of his position and his wealth, and that, regardless of his own behaviour, he is therefore deserving of the greatest respect. For example, he wishes to marry Helga in order to demonstrate his magnanimity, and, to a lesser extent, to shock and surprise [and amuse] others, including Willy. Making a young girl marry is for him a kind of game, a kind of self-flattery. He even threatens the girl’s father with jail when he does not show him due deference. Klíma further, and most obviously, lampoons the man when it is revealed that he is ‘only 150 centimetres tall’ and ‘toothless, hairless and whiskerless, also a little squint-eyed,’ upon which revelations he opines that ‘even the sun has spots.’

In spite of my initial concerns, Klíma’s novel is refreshingly critical of patriarchy and specifically the abusive treatment of women in relationships. To recap: the Prince is much older than Helga, he is ugly and conceited. Yet he appears to believe that the girl ought to be grateful to him for wanting to marry her. While it is true that he doesn’t himself force her, nor want to force her, there is still an underlying suggestion that Helga does not have any choice in the matter. She must, and she does, become his wife. Indeed, unsurprisingly, she is said to go to the alter ‘like a sacrificial lamb.’ Once married, it becomes clear that Helga finds her husband repulsive. She will not, for example, allow him to have sex with her, going so far as to flee to the stable when he enters her bedroom. This of course causes the Prince some consternation, for he, like many men of his [and perhaps our] time, believes that her body is his by rights of marriage.

If the book were more popular one images that Helga might be held up as a kind of feminist icon. Throughout, she is associated with, and surrounded by, powerful animals, by jaguars and lions and tigers, which of course symbolise her strength. She does not lay down, open her legs, and weakly submit to her husband, but rather she challenges him, ignores him, fights him, and calls him names. Indeed, she could be said to dominate him. Helmut may want to fuck, he may even want a loving relationship, but without her consent, without her approval, he can have neither. There is a chilling scene in the novel that I think best demonstrates the power balance in the relationship, which is when Helga murders the couple’s child [their only fornication took place on their wedding night, when she was still meek] because it looks like the Prince. The young Daemoness demands that the nanny take the blame, and Sternenhoch, who is terrified of her, agrees immediately.

One might have noted the term Daemoness in the preceding paragraph, and it is necessary to explain its significance. For the Prince, Helga is not symbolically a demon, but rather a literal one. She has, it seems, supernatural powers, and they are not, let’s say, God-given. There is, in fact, much in the book that might lead one to describing it as a horror story. Yet, while I found all that a huge amount of fun, I am more interested in what it says about Sternenhoch and subsequently how it relates to one of Klíma’s principle themes, which is the nature of reality. It is clear as one makes one’s way through the book that the Prince is insane, and if it wasn’t then he openly declares it himself numerous times. Therefore, the behaviour of his wife, her demonic or devilish abilities, could be explained as simply a consequence of his madness, as a kind of hallucination.

What Klíma seems to be saying, and it is something that I have said myself many times prior to reading his novel, is that whatever you experience is your reality, that there is no concrete, objective reality, and that trying to convince yourself that there is such a thing is the surest, quickest road to madness. And so, if Sternenhoch sees his wife an an emissary of Satan, then that is what she is. It is no more unbelievable, no more insane, than any other version of ‘reality.’ On this, there is a fascinating discussion between the Prince and his wife, who believes that she is alive, yet dreaming, but who is, as far as he is concerned, quite dead [but haunting him]. Her life after her death is, she states, ‘only my dream, which I have probably been dreaming for only a short time in the forest, although it seems to be lasting an eternity.’ Moreover, to further complicate matters, the Prince wakes in his bed and wonders ‘what if this bed is in heaven? What if I am only dreaming that I have awoken? After all I must be dead, dead…’

There is so much more that I could discuss, specifically Klíma’s ideas about will, and ‘the self as God.’ In the novel, it is Helga – who considers herself all powerful, more powerful than God or the Devil in fact – who embodies this theory, which has much in common with Nietzsche’s Übermensch. As I understand it, the author believed that if you reject conventional moral, societal values, practices, etc, you become your own deity, and this is how he lived his life. However, there are passages in The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch that spell all this out, quite clearly, and, convinced that I really have nothing to add to what Klíma himself wrote, I will let you read about it for yourself rather than go over it in detail here.

What I do want to acknowledge before I conclude is just how readable, how relentlessly entertaining, I found all this to be. It is true that the book is somewhat repetitive, especially in the second half, when it revolves around the Prince’s meetings with the dead Helga, but I was never at any time bored or tempted to put the book down. Indeed, I flew through it at a breakneck, one might say mad, pace. Much of my enthusiasm could be put down to how genuinely funny it is. The Prince’s descent into insanity throws up some wonderful scenes, such as when he caresses his slipper in his lap, believing it to be a cat. My favourite, however, involves the gypsy, Esmerelda Carmen Kuhmist, who gives Sternenhoch a magical nut and convinces him that the best way to deal with his fear of his spooky tormentor is to shout ‘Ghost, jump up my ass!’ whenever he sees her. Which of course he does, repeatedly, hilariously. And so too will I, most likely, if I am ever again at the point of finding existence terrifying, painful….impossible. Life, jump up my ass!

ICE BY ANNA KAVAN

Read it, they intone. Not as a distraction from the chaos but as an explanation. Everywhere you look: bodies crushed under avalanches of snow; hardy men torn apart by a substance as soft as tissue paper; babies blue, and harder than stone, ripping through the air like bullets. I have seen so many things. Awful things. They call it the end of the world. But this is not the end, this is still something. The end will be a relief. The end, the end. I’m fooling myself. There is no end. I am the cockroach. I have survived; I will survive. Soon I will be the only one left. The bitter wind that carries their voices to me will then be mute.

Read it, the cold wind says, and then you will understand. What will I understand? There is no place for that now, for the goal of understanding is progress. And we are going nowhere, not even backwards. The only movement comes from the ice and the snow, that constantly shifting, vertical and horizontal, oppression. An arctic prison, built around a void. They have public readings. For an hour or two they stop killing each other, or digging, and read together; or one reads and the others listen. The book begins, I have been told, ominously. A man is lost, hopelessly lost, and he is almost out of petrol. It is night-time, and this is telling, for isn’t the dark traditionally where danger lurks? The man drives into a petrol station and is issued a warning. A real bad freeze-up is on the way.

Read it, and all will become clear. Yet everything is murky. Who is he? Where has he come from? Where is he going? You are aware that something bad has happened, something irreversible, but details are sketchy. A ‘disaster’ is mentioned, which has ‘obliterated the villages and wrecked the farms.’ Later, it is suggested that there may have been ‘a secret act of aggression by some foreign power.’ A nuclear explosion, perhaps. Confusion, rumour, theory. The truth is you will never know. And what good is knowing anyhow? There is then, and there is now. No one in the book is named; no countries are identified either. Instability, uncertainty dominates. But you must deal in certainties, if you are to stay alive. There is the ice, and there is the girl. And these two things are connected. Of this much you can be sure.

Read it, they chant day and night, although, strictly speaking, there is no night-time anymore. There is no darkness, no rest. There is bright icelight, and no one can put it out. The earth is a giant glittering discoball. The girl. She is, the man admits, an obsession. He is infatuated; he could think only of her. In fact, the man is only really interesting in relation to how he views, treats, and thinks about, her. Throughout the book he is intent on finding her. This is, essentially, the plot: he finds the girl, and then he loses her again. He finds, he loses. He finds, he loses. It should be tedious, but it is oddly moving. And often disturbing. He wants to save her, from the disaster, from the warden.

Read it, for the girl. She is important, of course. She has a body ‘slight as a child’s.’ It is repeatedly emphasised. Her physical immaturity, and vulnerability. She has thin and brittle wrists. She is almost weightless. She is neurotic, fearful, mostly silent. She is emotionally vulnerable too. To be frank, the repetition in the first half of the book seems artless. She is weak; she is otherwordly. You wonder how many times you need to be told. Yet you must remember that we only have access to his words, that this – like a child – is how he sees her. Isn’t it – her childish, delicate appearance – his obsession, not the author’s? The man needs her frailty, in order to justify his need to feel protective of her.

Read it, and perhaps you will make up your own mind. I don’t know. I have little interest in books. I will not yield to their demands. I simply listen and I observe. And I endure, like the cockroach that I am. There is a point in the book when the man speaks of the girl as though she is a dog. I believe that this is significant. He had to win her trust. She comes when she is called. Isn’t it the case, therefore, that he sees himself as the owner, the master, of this timid animal? The relationship between the girl and the man is not based on love, but power. He credits himself with the power to save and also the power to destroy. The girl is destroyed, or hurt, numerous times throughout the novel. By the ice. By a dragon. By the warden. By the man himself, of course. In the first half, she is repeatedly persecuted, killed. She submits to it without resistance.

Read it, and you will agree that it is a novel about systematic abuse, about victims and victimisers. This is why they like it, why it speaks to that gang out there, outside my window. It isn’t the ice, it isn’t the parallels between that and this; Anna Kavan could not see into the future, she did not predict what was going to happen. Not even they believe that. It speaks to their now unleashed desire to crush and maim those who are weaker than they are. If the world is a nightmare, if unreality is reality, then anything is permissible. The girl wasn’t born to be a victim, she was trained, you might say, by her mother, who kept her ‘in a permanent state of frightened subjection.’ And as a victim she needs the man, and the warden, as much as they, as the victimisers, need her; they sustain each other.

Read it, they demand, not once, but repeatedly, until the words become your words. Bearing all this in mind, you understand the man’s actions, his mission, differently; he is not simply searching for the girl, he is stalking her. He is a sadist. He finds her bruises ‘madly attractive.’ He argues that her ‘timidity and fragility seems to invite callousness.’ He derives an ‘indescribable pleasure from seeing her suffer.’ And you, as the reader, feel complicit because you enjoy it too – when the ice overwhelms her, when it entraps her – as these are the moments when Kavan’s writing truly astonishes. It is beautiful only in these moments. Her death: over and over again. I don’t know if that was intentional.

Read it aloud, so that those who are within earshot can also be redeemed. The ice! The ice! Sometimes I feel as though it lives, it breathes, and we are simply performing rituals, and sacrifices, in order to please it. You can draw comparisons between the girl and Kavan herself; both silver-haired, both with mother issues. The author was a heroin addict, and the girl’s appearance is certainly consistent with that. Thin, pale. And the ice, of course, and the snow, which engulfs, and entraps. You might argue that this – the ice – is her addiction; that it is the drug that is destroying her. There is a dragon, remember. A dragon. The level of self pity, and self-obsession, is incredible. To write a novel about one’s own destruction and link it to the fate of the world. No, I find that the most uninteresting theory of all.

Read it, study it, and memorise it. Almost all copies were submerged under the ice. What we have has been rewritten, from one or two master copies. Still, teams of men and women are excavating as I speak, chipping away at the glass that mirrors their toil. An Original is precious. It could buy you life, or death. I prefer the latter. The man is dreaming, terrible dreams; they are a side effect of the drugs he takes. He admits this early on. There is no mystery. The girl is ‘the victim I used in my dreams for my own enjoyment.’ Case closed. There is reality and lucidity; there is unreality and hallucination. The warden with his ‘vicious scowl’, his ‘aura of danger.’ The man and the warden [and her husband] are the same man. The man and the warden and the ice. The black hand. The dragon. All one and the same. Am I spoiling things? Who am I spoiling it for? You all know the book better than I do, for I have never even glanced at a page.

DOCTOR GLAS BY HJALMAR SÖDERBERG

I have a [deserved] reputation for being brutally honest. I lack tact; and good manners too, probably. I will, for example, tell someone if they are boring me. Indeed, there is a guy at work who I will not even allow to speak to me. If I see him opening his mouth I walk away. I’m an arsehole, basically; but I refuse to waste my time, and other people’s, engaged in conversation that isn’t worthwhile, and I refuse to lie about my feelings. Who do these lies benefit exactly? Why are people so petrified of the truth? In any case, I have often wondered how I would react to being in a profession that demanded some level of dishonesty from me, such as a doctor. To work as a GP one must, no matter how tired or irritated or disgusted, feign interest in all your patients’ minor and major ailments, one must give the impression of absolute sympathy at all times…

Tyko Gabriel Glas, the protagonist in Hjalmar Söderberg’s acclaimed Swedish novel, is in just such a situation. It is, I believe, appropriate that Söderberg chose to present his novel in the form of diary entries, because we consider a diary to be someone’s truth, to be the one place that one can be honest, no matter how alarming that truth might be. In his private thoughts, as set down on paper, Glas makes various admissions. He acknowledges, first of all, that he perhaps entered the wrong profession. ‘How can it have come about that of all possible trades, I have chosen the one that suits me least?’ he states. His bedside manner may be faultless, and kind and helpful words always on the tip of his tongue, but, in reality, the image that he presents to his patients, and to the world-at-large, is a false one; he is not who he appears to be; necessarily so, for an honest doctor would be a doctor without visitors.

“A pregnant woman is a frightful object. A new-born child is loathsome. A deathbed rarely makes so horrible an impression as childbirth, that terrible symphony of screams and filth and blood.”

One of Doctor Glas’ regular visitors is the Reverend Gregorius. While Glas fails to feel the expected good-will towards a number of his patients, he reserves a special, intense kind of disdain for the clergyman. Indeed, Gregorius’ introduction into the novel occurs while Glas is trying, unsuccessfully, to hide from him. [‘Impossible to escape!’ he laments]. As the two converse politely, the doctor considers the ‘odious physiognomy, like a nasty fungus,’ and when Gregorius admits to having a bad heart, Glas, in his thoughts, is delighted. In fact, he wishes death upon the parson, so that he might be rid of him ‘once and for all.’ This exchange, which is handled wonderfully by the author, with its mixture of blandishments and bile, occurs very early in the novel; and so one understands, almost from the beginning, that Glas isn’t merely someone who chose a career for which he is unsuited, but is potentially a very dangerous, but certainly emotionally unstable man.

[Georg Rydeberg as Doktor Glas]

This is not, of course, to say that Glas does not have reason to feel antipathy towards Gregorius; he is, in fact, incredibly easy to dislike, at least as filtered through Glas’ lens. The main reason for this is his treatment of his wife, Helga, a woman some years his junior. Early on, Glas assumes the Reverend is ‘plaguing the life’ out of her, and as the novel progresses this proves to be the case. What this plaguing consists of is a relentless desire for sex, [almost] to the point of forcing her. There are plenty of novels – Middlemarch, for example – that deal with an unhealthy and regrettable relationship between an older man and a younger woman, but one must applaud Söderberg for not flinching in the face of the more squeamish questions these kind of unions might raise; which is to say that he directly acknowledges what we all think: that the poor woman must find being mounted by an old codger she doesn’t love deeply unpleasant. That he goes even further than this and touches upon the issue of rape within marriage, an issue that we are still not comfortable with even now, is extraordinary, especially considering that the novel was published in 1905.

In terms of Gregorius, he is shown to be, or the main characters consider him to be, a loathsome hypocrite. The idea being that he gives the impression of being a pious man, and yet he cannot  – even at the risk of his own health, and the obvious resistance from his wife – give up on getting his rocks off; that, in other words, he preaches moderation, understanding, and so on, but is incapable of these things himself. His wife even accuses him of using his religion as justification for his desires,  as though he is manipulating the word of God in order to suit himself. In this way, the heart problem from which he suffers is clearly symbolic. He has a bad heart, we’re repeatedly told, and I don’t think one is meant to take that only literally. Indeed, Glas actually has a dream in which he removes the defective organ.

However, one must not forget, as previously noted, that one only ever gets to see Gregorius as Glas does, and the doctor is, let’s say, not entirely without bias, for he has a not so innocent interest in the man’s wife. So when he is writing about the parson’s ‘grossly indecent behaviour’ one could legitimately see it as little more than jealousy. Moreover, the rest of the information, the juiciest bits in fact, the worst accusations, are provided by Helga Gregorius, and her word shouldn’t be accepted without question either, for who can say that she can be trusted? Certainly, she has a reason to want her husband dead, having mistakenly married him and then started an affair with another man. It is possible, therefore, to see her as something of a cynical manipulator, who plays upon the doctor’s feelings and naivety. Glas is a strange, ‘solitary’ man, who lacks experience with women; he is, in fact, a virgin, who has only ever once held a girl’s hand and touched her breast.

“We know so little about one another. We embrace a shadow and love a dream.”

I have now read Doctor Glas twice, and it is always interesting how one’s perception of a novel can change. The first time, I was aware of sex playing a part in the narrative, but I did not realise just how much it dominates the work.  Of course, there is the central issue of Gregorius’ libido; but sex is actually everywhere, on almost every page: Helga’s affair, her awakening as a woman in the bed of a man she actually desires;  a couple fucking in a graveyard; the multiple abortions that Glas is asked to perform, unwanted pregnancies resulting from grubby, illicit liaisons; the doctor’s frequent dreams of a naked Helga, who he calls a ‘feminine flower,’ and so on. Indeed, in terms of the the latter, one could make a case for Glas’ murderous impulse being caused by extreme sexual frustration. Again, it is Glas’ words, and observations, that we have access to, and so it is he that sees sex in everything, on every corner; and yet he considers himself to be a man who is completely in control of himself, a man who is actually disgusted by sex. ‘So much suffering for so little pleasure,’ is how he describes the act.

I hope that I have given the impression that Doctor Glas is a complex novel. One can see it as progressive, as sympathetically, seriously engaging with a multitude of important, controversial issues, such as the previously mentioned sexual rights [and rape] within marriage and abortion, as well as euthanasia and suicide. Equally, one can enjoy it as a fine example of the ‘unreliable narrator’ genre, with murder and psychosexual drama thrown in for good measure. Regardless, what is certain is that Glas is something of an existentialist anti-hero. By his own admission, he is not tied to conventional morality or duties. When he decides not to help the pregnant women who want him to abort their unborn children he does not do so because he thinks abortion is wrong, but rather out of fear of compromising himself. Likewise, his attitude towards murder is that it is permissible in certain circumstances, when the ‘rotten flesh’ needs to be cut away to preserve the healthy.

THE TIME OF THE DOVES BY MERCE RODOREDA

You should never ignore the signs. In a relationship, I mean. It is easy to tell yourself that you are overreacting, or imagining things, that your doubts are unreasonable or that what you see or feel is insignificant relative to the positives, but you ought to trust your instincts [or your counter-instincts, if your instincts are telling you that things will work out ok with someone who is giving you the impression of being no good]. The reality is that, contrary to what we are repeatedly told, no one ever ‘suddenly flips’, no one’s personality completely changes for the worse with a snap of the fingers; the clues to someone’s future behaviour or attitudes are always there, sometimes subtly disguised perhaps, but there nevertheless.

I was once talking to a friend of mine and she told me about a guy she had been seeing and how he would get aroused when she cried. I’m not making this up. He got an erection…when she cried. And as I listened to this story I was sure that the conclusion would be that she had freaked out and ended the relationship, but no. She thought it was ‘a bit odd’, sure, but it never crossed her mind to stop seeing the man who was made horny by her unhappiness. No doubt some of you will dismiss my example as a one-off, as an extreme or unusual incident that is not representative of anything, that is not applicable to people-in-general. You might say ‘no right thinking person would have given him the benefit of the doubt in those circumstances’, and yet I have heard hundreds of similar anecdotes and stories, often with unpleasant outcomes.

All of which is to say that as I was reading Mercè Rodoreda’s La plaça del diamant [or The Time of the Doves in the best English translation] I was struck by how depressingly familiar, how predictable, the trajectory of Natalia’s and Quimet’s relationship is. In the early stages, one’s impression of Natalia, who narrates the novel, is that she is kind and gentle, but green or naïve, perhaps even weak. The book opens with the young woman attending a party, dressed all in white. I do not think that this is a coincidence. White is, of course, traditionally worn by brides, and in this way the dress is a hint at her forthcoming marriage, but it also says something about her character, in that the colour is representative of virginity, of purity, even innocence. Likewise, Quimet’s name for Natalia, ‘Colometa’ or dove, which he bestows upon her almost immediately, is obviously significant. Doves are regarded as an emblem of peace and love, which is ironic because Quimet delivers little of either of these two things.

“I covered my face with my arms to protect myself from i don’t know what and i let out a hellish scream. A scream I must have been carrying around inside me for many years, so thick it was hard for it to get through my throat, and with that scream a little bit of nothing trickled out of my mouth, like a cockroach made of spit…and that bit of nothing that had lived so long trapped inside me was my youth and it flew off with a scream of I don’t know what…letting go?”

It is worth noting that Quimet is sweating heavily when Natalia first meets him at the party in the plaça del diamant, for this suggests manliness, and, as the sweating is caused by him having been dancing, sensuality too. Moreover, Natalia compares his eyes to those of a monkey, indicating a brutish animality. From the very beginning Quimet dictates to Natalia, informing her that one day she will be his wife. Even giving her a nickname is an attempt to establish ownership; it is a way of making her his. As the couple continue to spend time together these negative signs, or indications, as to his character become more pronounced. He jealously accuses Natalia of taking a walk with her ex-boyfriend [and she, who is innocent, almost comes to believe that she had done so]; he attempts to make her quit her job; he grabs her around the throat. He is, then, quite clearly a possessive, self-centred bully; he is, as we in Yorkshire might say, a wrong ‘un, and Natalia ought to get rid, because life with him will not be happy, but she, of course, does not.

As a result of all this, one cannot help but read The Time of the Doves with a heavy heart, with frustration and a sense of helplessness. It is like watching, from a safe distance, a car skid off the road and into a ditch. However, although on the surface this appears to be a novel about family and responsibility, poverty and suffering, it struck me that it is ultimately about power and control. And, yes, this refers to Quimet’s desire to dominate his wife, to have her, as he himself says, like everything he likes [which results in the ridiculous situation with the doves], but it relates to Natalia also, and her efforts to wrest control of her life back, from her spouse and from the world-at-large. For example, when Quimet’s dove-mania reaches its apex, and he has them moved into the family apartment, Natalia sabotages them, and tries to murder the chicks. Then, later, when the family are starving, she makes the decision to kill her two children and herself.

[La plaça del diamant in Barcelona]

It has been said that The Time of the Doves is a political novel, and, although the action takes place over a period of thirty years, covering Franco’s ascension, the Spanish Civil War, and World War Two, and although all of these things are mentioned in the text, it may still strike one as a strange claim. That is because these events are kept in the background; they are never the primary focus. Natalia appears to do her best to not acknowledge politics, or at least not take a serious interest in it outside of the effect it has upon her day-to-day life; and she certainly does not choose a side, being, for example, neither obviously in favour of the republicans or the revolutionaries.

In order to understand the political nature of the story it is necessary to return to what I was discussing previously: power and control. First of all, to be an ordinary citizen in times of conflict or strife is to be at the mercy of a bunch of madmen who will decide the direction of your life, who are, specifically, fighting in order to have that level of control over you. Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that the novel is set in Barcelona, and that Natalia is Catalan, as was the author. Francisco Franco, who was Head of State from the 1930’s until his death in 1975, was a brutal dictator, and one of his policies was to make Spanish or Castilian the dominant language in Spain. In order to achieve this he made it the official language, and banned the public use of any others, including Catalan. I don’t want to speak for Catalans, but it seems reasonable to suggest that they would have felt as though they could not be themselves, as though they were being forced to be something other than who they were, as though they were being stripped of their identity, and this is similar to how Natalia is portrayed, as someone always constrained, but who is looking to be at ease, to be free like the doves.

DEATH IN MIDSUMMER & OTHER STORIES BY YUKIO MISHIMA

Throughout my life I have written hundreds of short stories; some stretching to thousands of words, and some only a paragraph or two. It’s strange that someone who admits to avoiding short fiction, for the most part, would be so drawn to writing it himself. Although I guess it sums up my personality. In any case, it isn’t that I don’t like short stories but, rather, that I think most of them are poor [including my own, most likely]. The masters of the form – Carver, Chekhov et al – show that at its best it is capable of capturing something of the true, and often banal, profundity of human existence in a way that nothing else can. In my writing, I’m somewhat obsessed with the idea of snapshots or moments, of dropping in on someone’s life for only a few minutes or hours, because when I think about my own life that is how I see it: in moments, not as some detailed, linear narrative.

To the list of ‘masters of the form’ I now want to add Yukio Mishima. I’ve long been an admirer of his writing, but had, until now, never sampled his short fiction. It seems impossible to discuss Mishima without referencing his strange personal life and beliefs [I have done so in all my previous reviews of his work]. I do not want to go over all that again in detail, except to say that on the basis of the title, Death in Midsummer, some other reviews I have come across, and the author’s biography, I found myself surprised by how normal, how free of perversity, and shock value these stories are. They are, in the main, domestic, focusing on relationships, specifically marriage, and children. It is a reminder that no matter how odd certain aspects of someone’s life is or was, it does not account for the whole person; Mishima may have been a fanatic, a fascist, a crazy man, but there was clearly a tender and empathetic side to him, involving a deep understanding of ordinary people, otherwise he would never have been able to write these stories.

Having said all that, the most well-known story in the collection, Patriotism, is as unnerving as anything I have ever read. It features a couple, a lieutenant in the army and his wife, who commit ritual suicide, one by disembowelling himself, and the other by stabbing herself in the throat. For the husband his death is about honour. He does not want to attack a group of rebels, whose cause he believes in, and yet he has been asked to do just that. And so instead of following orders he takes his own life. There is something, for me, attractive about this kind of action, this utter, fatal commitment to one’s principles. When I look around me, I get the impression that honour and integrity are in short supply, that most people these days are only really concerned with themselves and what benefits them, and so while I do not want anyone to meet a gruesome death, I admire Lieutenant Shinji Takeyama nevertheless.

[From Patriotism, a short film directed by Mishima, which is based on the story of the same name]

For any sensitive readers, it is necessary to point out that Mishima does not flinch. In the story, the man’s wife is asked to watch, to bear witness, to the event, and we, as the reader, are put in the same position. So we stay with the lieutenant as he slowly slices open his stomach, as his insides fall out, as he breathes his last breath. It is brilliantly written, but is, still, incredibly unpleasant. Knowing what we know about Mishima [he too committed seppuku], it would be tempting to view Patriotism [especially considering that title] as a form of propaganda, as a kind of love letter to nationalism and ritual suicide. It is undeniably the case that he writes about seppuku in glowing terms. For example, according to Mishima, Shinji “contemplated death with severe brows and firmly closed lips” and “revealed what was perhaps masculine beauty at its most superb.”

However, it is interesting that, while as a standalone story it might be viewed in that way, and considered distasteful, as part of the Death in Midsummer collection it struck me as being primarily about marriage and intimacy, rather than suicide. The two characters have a strong and loving relationship, this is seen not only in the wife agreeing to follow her husband into death [she dies for her husband, not for a cause or principle], but in the way that he asks her to witness his own [which is unusual]. Furthermore, in doing so he trusts that she will follow him, and that she will not attempt to save him once he has commenced the act. In fact, the decision to die provokes even greater intimacy and love between them, and they actually have sex before performing the ritual. If you forget about seppuku for a moment, one can understand the story as an investigation into the idea that mortality gives fresh impetus to life; that they are about to die makes the couple love and cherish and appreciate each other even more.

“Reiko had not kept a diary and was now denied the pleasure of assiduously rereading her record of the happiness of the past few months and consigning each page to the fire as she did so.”

While Patriotism may be the most [in]famous story in this collection – and I did enjoy it, as much as that is possible – it is certainly not the best. That accolade I would give to the title story, which also happens to be the longest. Death in Midsummer begins at the beach, one that is “still unspoiled for sea bathing” and where the sand is “rich and white.” Three children are present with their aunt, while their mother takes a nap back at the hotel. Initially, all seems idyllic, but there is something ominous in the air. First of all, the mother is described as ‘girl-like,” almost suggesting that she ought not to have children yet, a suggestion that is given extra weight by the fact that she is not with them, that she has let them go off with someone else. Even more worrying is the line “it was height of summer and there was anger in the rays of the sun.” Where or at what or who is this anger directed?

You may never get a straightforward answer to that question, but before too long the significance of the title becomes apparent. The aunt and two of the three children die. From this point onwards, Death in Midsummer becomes an investigation into the nature of grief, one that is as honest, as moving, and as beautiful as Tolstoy’s masterpiece The Death of Ivan Ilych. As one would expect, the mother blames herself somewhat, especially as the aunt is not alive to shoulder the burden of blame herself; indeed, she likens telling her husband [who did not go on holiday with the rest of the family] about the accident to having to stand before a judge. I found this entirely believable, regardless of whether anyone is actually to blame [and one could argue that they are not in this instance] it is not unusual to feel as though you are guilty of something when a terrible thing happens near you or around you. There is guilt in living, in avoiding trouble or death. Mishima also touches upon the guilt felt by those who survive a tragedy when they notice that they are moving on, as though such a thing ought to not be possible if you really care. Again, the mother thinks in terms of criminals, and compares herself, in getting on with her life, to someone getting away with a crime.

There are almost too many psychological insights and highlights; every paragraph, every sentence almost, contains some touching observation. Such as when the husband receives the news, and he likens it to having been dismissed from his job. Or when he asks for the news to be repeated, even though he knows it will not change the second time around. Or when the wife admits to feeling as though sorrow ought to come with special privileges. Or when Mishima notes that death is an administrative affair, involving certain expected responses and a lot of organising and planning. Or, finally, when he highlights the poverty of human emotions, whereby one’s response is the same, regardless of whether one person dies or ten. I could indulge myself and write a paragraph about each of these things, but I won’t. What I will say is that, as with Patriotism, in less capable and sensitive hands Death in Midsummer could have been melodramatic, even exploitative. It is to the author’s credit that the heart of the tale is not dead children, but that of a grieving couple surviving, staying together.

There are, of course, other stories, but I will not linger over those. I do, however, want to briefly touch upon Mishima’s subtlety as a writer. At the very beginning of this review I mentioned Raymond Carver. His collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is one of my favourites, and what I most like about it, and the author, is how light his touch was. I sometimes get so tired of reading things where everything is spelled out for you, where the how’s and why’s and what’s are raked over in great detail. Carver didn’t do that, and nor did Mishima here. Indeed, there are two stories that perplexed me until I had put the book down and given them some thought, where what had actually happened wasn’t immediately clear, was ambiguous. I loved having to work a little bit, to engage my mind, to interpret gestures and responses for myself. For example, in Thermos Bottles, Mishima does not outright tell you that the wife had been unfaithful, and yet one thinks that she was because of the way the ‘other man’ talks about the couple’s child, with authority, as though he knows it in a way that he ought not to. I thought that was handled brilliantly, and the same could be said of Three Million Yen. The only one that did not grab my attention was Onnagata, but that perhaps says more about the company it finds itself in than the quality of  the story itself.

EUGENIE GRANDET BY HONORE DE BALZAC

I’ve never met a miser, or certainly not one that could be said to meet the standards of the great 19^th century authors. I have not, so far, come across anyone who, regardless of the size of their fortune, counts every penny, scrimps and saves and hoards. Perhaps it is simply that times have changed. The 21^st century, it strikes me, is about ostentation, about displaying your wealth like peacock feathers. What is the point, we feel, of having money if you don’t spend it, if other people don’t know that you have it? Indeed, even the people who have little often attempt to convince others that they have greater means; they covet and even mimic, as much as possible, the lifestyles of the rich.

This kind of attitude would be completely alien to Monsieur Grandet, Honore de Balzac’s chief miser. Grandet was once a lowly cooper, who made his money through his own ingenuity [although his wife also brought with her a large income]. Yet, as with many people skilled in business, he is not exactly brimming with virtues; indeed, he is crafty and manipulative, affecting a stutter and partial deafness in order to bamboozle competitors and, when asked a difficult question, maintains that he must discuss it with his wife [who in reality is entirely subservient]. Moreover, despite his eye-watering wealth, he would rather the world thought him poor, because that way one is more likely to pick-up bargains and can avoid having to give charity to others [including his newly arrived nephew, Charles]. This is not to say that he is entirely successful in this regard; other misers can nose out one of their kind, and it is said that hours gazing at his huge mound of coins has given his eyes a noticeable yellow, metallic glitter. Balzac, in one of the book’s best metaphors, describes Grandet as something like a cross between a tiger and a snake. The old man, we’re told, is adept at lying in wait for his victim, ready to pounce and kill, and, once he has his prey, opens wide the mouth of his purse to swallow his bounty.

“Grandet unquestionably “had something on his mind,” to use his wife’s expression. There was in him, as in all misers, a persistent craving to play a commercial game with other men and win their money legally. To impose upon other people was to him a sign of power, a perpetual proof that he had won the right to despise those feeble beings who suffer themselves to be preyed upon in this world. Oh! who has ever truly understood the lamb lying peacefully at the feet of God?—touching emblem of all terrestrial victims, myth of their future, suffering and weakness glorified! This lamb it is which the miser fattens, puts in his fold, slaughters, cooks, eats, and then despises. The pasture of misers is compounded of money and disdain.”

However, it should be noted that Grandet is not entirely villainous, or is not grotesquely, exaggeratedly so. Often 19^th century bad guys are without redeeming features, are cartoon figures, but that isn’t really the case here. We are told that the cooper loves his daughter dearly, although he certainly doesn’t spoil her. Furthermore, he was the only landowner prepared to take in and employ the ugly, warty big Nanon. Yes, one could say that is this instance he simply spied an opportunity, and that he has had more than his money’s worth out of her. Yet it is also true that she is genuinely devoted to him as her benefactor, and he treats her with some kindness [he gives her his watch, for example]. Were the old man overly cruel or excessively unpleasant Eugenie Grandet would be a different book, a tragedy; as it is, with Grandet being tight-fisted but recognisably human, it is more of a light, domestic comedy of manners.

The title character begins the book as a naïve, but happy young woman. Grandet hides his wealth from her, and so she has no reason to complain about her situation, about the unglamorous, and often tough, nature of her existence. What Balzac does with Eugenie is very clever. She is a kind, caring and selfless soul, who thinks little of her own comfort, and therefore it takes the arrival of someone who she wants to make happy and comfortable to open her eyes to her father’s attitudes and behaviour. She wants to give her cousin nice things to eat, to arrange his room, to treat him, essentially, as befitting an honoured guest. Of course, all this hugely irritates old Grandet, who charges the girl with wanting to ruin him financially. For the first time, Eugenie notices how unreasonable he is, as he argues over a lump or two of sugar; more significantly, she is exposed to his callousness when he shows his nephew no sympathy in his grief, stating that it is more upsetting to lose a fortune than to lose one’s father. Charles is, in this way, the catalyst for Eugenie’s awakening, he, or rather her love for him, allows her to see her world differently.

“In the pure and monotonous life of young girls there comes a delicious hour when the sun sheds its rays into their soul, when the flowers express their thoughts, when the throbbings of the heart send upward to the brain their fertilizing warmth and melt all thoughts into a vague desire,—day of innocent melancholy and of dulcet joys! When babes begin to see, they smile; when a young girl first perceives the sentiment of nature, she smiles as she smiled when an infant. If light is the first love of life, is not love a light to the heart? The moment to see within the veil of earthly things had come for Eugenie.”

As with nearly all of Balzac’s major works money is the principle theme and primary motivating factor for many of the central characters. Grandet’s obsession with coin is clear, but he is not the only one. The des Grassins and Cruchots are, from the beginning, engaged in trying to win Grandet’s esteem and, in the process, win his daughter – a potentially very rich heiress – and draw her into their family. Even the foppish Charles is not without blemish in this regard; he too, at least initially, sees Eugenie as a way to secure his future following the bankruptcy and death of his father. Balzac, ever the psychologist, makes an interesting point about how, for Eugenie, Charles’ grief in some way obscures his real motives, that she sees in his tears proof of a loving, sensitive soul, not realising that sensitivity in one area does not preclude calculating behaviour in another. What is unusual about Eugenie Grandet, in comparison with the other Balzac novels I have read, is that the money eventually ends up in the best hands, but, this not being Dickens, the outcome is not a happy one, for the person who possesses the multi-millions is the one person in the book who least values it, who least craves it, who is not satisfied in owning it.

[Eugenie Grandet, directed by Mario Soldati, 1946]

I wrote previously that Eugenie Grandet is not a tragedy, but I guess that it is, in a way, because the good do not prosper, they suffer instead. Balzac makes no secret of his admiration for Eugenie, who is the most warmly described and exaggeratedly praised of all his saintly women [and there are quite a few of them throughout La Comedie]. However, for all that, and to my surprise, I did not find her excessively irritating. I think the reason for this is that, unlike Eve in Lost Illusions, she is not absolutely blind to the faults of others, is not essentially a doormat. She is, in fact, rather strong-willed and brave and perceptive, certainly after falling in love. For example, she stands up to her father on more than one occasion, takes a husband on her own terms, and  so on. I must also admit that I found her devotion very touching, and not unbelievable. Yes, there was very little substance to her affair,  and the cynical amongst us might scoff at the idea of holding a candle for someone for seven or more years, but one must remember that it was her first love, and those are incredibly potent, and that Eugenie was not exactly a socialite. Indeed, that is another of the book’s themes: the provincial attitude in comparison with the Parisian attitude, the worldy vs the cloistered.

While Eugenie Grandet lacks the fire and fevered genius of his later novels, it was nice to encounter the good-natured, the less intolerant and judgemental Balzac. Yes, he was, even at this early stage, fond of generalising but the book is mercifully free of the unpleasant comments about women [the old maid stuff in Cousin Bette, for example, where the title character is likened to a savage] or other races [the deplorable anti-semitism in Cousin Pons] that mars some of the work he produced towards the end of his life. Moreover, the focus of Eugenie Grandet, whose action takes place for the most part in one or two rooms of the Grandet house, is much narrower than most notable 19^th century novels, including Balzac’s own Lost Illusions, which I consider to be his masterpiece, giving it a pleasing intimate feel. Indeed, the book has the sweet simplicity, melancholic undertone, and slow place one often encounters in Japanese literature or even Jane Austen [it does, in fact, remind me strongly of her Persuasion]. Personally, I prefer my Balzac strung out on coffee, unrelentingly cynical and melodramatic, but there is space for this sort of thing too, for tenderness and sentimentality and gulping down the odd tear.

UNDER THE VOLCANO BY MALCOLM LOWRY

Was it an achievement to wake up in a dive in El Paso and see the bartender [Carlos?] pulling up the shutters to let in urine-yellow light, which tumbled through the window and fell on the floor, relieving it of its uniform blue-black colour and revealing its true horrifying state? He rather thought it might be. Or perhaps the achievement was to wake up at all. Una cerveza, Señor? Carlos had taken his place behind the bar. [P] yawned, or grimaced. ‘Ah, what? A beer? Sí. Why not, eh?’ Sí? ‘Yes. It’s…’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s…’ His watch had stopped. ‘Say, what time is it?’ Que? ‘Ah, no Ingles? Never mind. Yes, si, un cerv…no, una tequila, por favor.’ Carlos produced a bottle of tequila. Pequeño? ‘No. Grande.’ Carlos poured a large shot. [P] got up from the sofa on which he had slept and joined Carlos at the bar, lowering himself onto a stool with exaggerated care and precision, as though he were disarming a bomb. ‘Cheers!’ he smiled, and drained his glass. ‘Last night…’ he started, but trailed off, for the bartender’s face had suddenly taken on a vibrant, fiery red colour. ‘Here, you’re looking rather red, Carlos. Your skin, I mean. Your head, Carlos, I hate to tell you, is on fire.’ Carlos stood impassive, despite the unmistakable flames rising from his head and hands and arms; indeed, he was so impassive that [P] wondered if it was, in fact, his own eyes that were on fire instead. He was about to give voice to this alternative theory, when the bartender disappeared, or perhaps ducked down to rummage under the bar, before reappearing, sans flames, with a book in his hand. Silently, he placed in front of [P] a worn Penguin paperback, the cover of which featured a horrible laughing skull. ‘Ah, oh, this is for me, is it? Under the Volcano. Gracias. A favourite of mine, I think. Another tequilas, por favor. Grande. It’s rather appropriate, you know – the book, I mean – Cheers! – what with us being in this bar here and it – the book – being about a man who likes a drink – too much, I guess you’d say – a man who, if we’re being honest, Carlos, is an alcoholic. Geoffrey Firmin.’ ¿Tienes un problema con la bebida? [P] could not with any certainty say whether this question had come from Carlos or from somewhere else, the vulture perhaps, for there was a vulture now, sitting at the end of the bar. ‘I regularly come across incredible, inspiring stories about people who have an immense desire to survive, or succeed, or make the most of their time on earth; these are the kind of people who no matter how tough life gets are prepared to stare it down and bring it to heel. I admire these people; I want to make that clear, you know.’ He couldn’t, either, say whether he was actually talking to the vulture or Carlos himself. ‘Yet for every one of that sort, for every fighter, there is another who has meekly fallen by the wayside, and is incapable, or unwilling, to pick themselves up. Like Geoffrey Firmin, I mean.’ The vulture stared at him, blankly, with eyes like well-polished snooker balls. ‘Some people fail rather badly at life, you know. Vida es dura. When I was younger, only when I was younger, mind you, there was a period, following a break up, when I lost myself in London, when I quit my job, took up smoking, drink, and drugs and generally gave the impression of being unlikely to make it through the next twelve months. Now that I have pulled through – I have pulled through, you know – I feel a strange sort of affection for those times, and that me, as though that version of myself is my naughty, errant, unruly son.’ El libro, Señor. ‘Yes, of course.’ [P] heaved a sigh and raised his glass almost in supplication. Grande. ‘Excelente.’ I’ve seen it written numerous times, he thought or spoke, he could no longer tell the difference, that the opening chapter is difficult or hard-going – which is not always the same thing – or simply slow and uninvolving. The general idea is that the book takes some time to warm up, and that the first 50 or so pages may put readers off. I find this more than a little surprising – sorprendente, you know – for I consider the first chapter to be not only the novel’s high-point – which is not to say the rest is poor – but one of the finest opening chapters ever published. Está babeando Señor. ‘Under the Volcano begins with Jacques and Dr. Vigil talking about Ex-British Consul, Geoffrey Firmin, who, we find out, is dead. It has, in fact, been one year to the day since his death.’ Carlos wiped down the bar. Una grande, por favor. ‘Rather than spoiling the rest of the book, or sucking the tension out of the story to follow, this way of approaching things actually increases the tension, draws you in, you know. To know about Firmin’s unhappy demise in advance means that the next 300 pages are imbued with a kind of hopelessness or terrible inevitability.’¿Esto es el buitre, Señor? ‘Moreover, you are impelled to read on, because you want to find out what exactly happened to this apparently tragic figure, why, when it seemed as though he had got what he wanted with the return of his ex-wife, he still could not endure.’ The atmosphere is one of nostalgia, of looking back with tenderness and regret and confusion; it’s extraordinarily powerful stuff, like this tequila, amigo. There is also something eerie about it; Jacques is, as he wanders around the Mexican town where he and Geoffrey and Yvonne lived, chasing a ghost…he sees Firmin everywhere, in almost everything; he hears him in cantinas, and actually ends up with a letter he wrote that…I was reminded of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo, you know. As with that book there is a sense that Jacques is in hell, where strange apparitions – like the drunk man on horseback – and unsettling noises – coming, as I recall, from the mourners – and weird creatures – those birds that look like long insects, remember? – and devilish imagery abound. Jacques’ Mexico is, like a hangover, like hell, a kind of labyrinth, Carlos; there is a sense of walking and not getting anywhere….of going round in circles…and the weather is extreme…or unpredictable… lightning, you know. Por favor. Despierta, Senor! O let him sleep, Carlos. ‘What follows is a day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin. The last day, you know. Geoffrey is…’ Grande? ‘He’s, yes, monumental, you know. Like Ahab, or Lear. Unforgettable; supersized. He is, however, often self-pitying. How do you say, autocompasión? He’s a drunk though, of course. Muy borracho. He’s an extraordinary creation, absolutamente believable….lying to himself and lying to others…hiding tequila – yes, si, grande, por favor – in the garden…swinging abruptly between delusion and clear-sightedness….’ [P] stopped, for he noticed that one of the photographs behind the bar was actually of himself, and appeared to be moving and speaking, albeit silently. ‘Firmin pushes Yvonne, his ex-wife, who has returned, away,’ he continued, looking down, imploringly, at his glass of tequila, ‘pushes her away although he had prayed for her return; because alcoholics, people in general, you know, are proud and stubborn, are, I think, certainly in Geoffrey’s case, often unable to do what is best for themselves. Firmin is hurting himself, punishing himself, out of a kind of guilt, perhaps. You could say, I do say, that Under the Volcano is the most complete, most annihilating, most honest novel ever written about addiction. Hell surrounds the Consul too, by the way; those pariah dogs that follow him? The demons he converses with? We speak metaphorically of demons, you know, as in he had his demons, sí? but these are real demons, or real visions anyway. Life is hell, alcoholism or addiction is hell, I guess is the point; Lowry emphasises this by dropping his characters into what appears to be a genuine hell.’ Sweat showed on [P]’s brow, beads as big as golf balls, as though he had been playing a sport more aerobic than golf. ‘The world, Carlos, the world of Under the Volcano, by which I mean the 1930’s, of course, but our world too, amigo, is seemingly bent of destruction, is perhaps coming to an end, what with the war, Hitler’s war, a world war around the corner, and other wars too, already in progress, civil war in Spain, for example. The world, Carlos, is fucked, just as Geoffrey is fucked; the two mirror each other. That was intentional, of course.’ [P]’s head shuddered and rattled, his stomach leaped and dropped, as though he was undergoing complicated and painful dental surgery while riding a rollercoaster. Estás bien, amigo? Si, es nada. She is weak, the ex-wife; she comes back, after all. No tough love, Carlos; she is almost an enabler. Does she return out of a sense of guilt, as he – the Consul – destroys due to his? Si. A relationship-in-crisis novel of the highest order. Are you married, Carlos? Fumbling, awkward, wanting to say something nice or important or something that will bring a reconciliation, but being unable to. Striving towards each other, but never touching. And Hugh? He is muy interesante. A dilettante: a failed songwriter, seaman, journalist; a would-be hero. What links all three of these people – Hugh, Geoffrey, Yvonne – is a feeling of disappointment, or disillusionment, an awareness of not having got out of life what they wanted or expected. ‘A drink, Carlos, for Christ’s sake. Tequila, por favor!’ The bartender filled [P]’s glass and left the bottle. For the first time he was aware that the bar, apart from Carlos and the vulture, and the vulture, if truth be told, was asleep, was empty. El negocio es malo, Señor. A thin voice through a black cloud. And then: ‘The style, amigo, is possibly most impressive of all. Stream of consciousness, they call it, don’t they? Fishing from Joyce’s stream, usually. Lowry too, I’d say, was handy with a rod, but he did something new, something stunning with what he dredged up, especially in relation to Geoff, because he nails it, the feeling, the mind-set, of being muy borracho, so that you too feel intoxicated while you read…the sudden shifts of perspective and mood…the queasiness…the confusion of not always being sure of who is speaking, or whether the person speaking actually exists or is a hallucination…Geoff falling over in the middle of the road, his train of thought unbroken, so that it – the revelation, also in thought – is sudden and shocking, as though you yourself have fallen. A polluted stream; a diseased consciousness. There’s nothing else like it in literature, amigo.’ [P] felt tears come smarting to his eyes.‘Yes, some of the sentences are disgraceful, some even Faulkner would have rewritten; and, si, it is occasionally overwrought and unsubtle – the rock broken in two is a bit too in your face, you know – but to pick faults, to flaw-find, is a kind of ingratitude, like complaining that your wife has put on her best underwear for you, but forgotten to remove the tag.’ Memories assailed [P], awful memories suddenly leaped at him, like a gang of masked men in a dark alleyway. Go to the doctor’s, Greg had said, just don’t tell him everything. Or was that Carlos speaking? On a bus at 3a.m., travelling back to some girl’s place; both of you weeping heavily; she in sympathy; you…?. ‘Cinematic,’ he continued, in order to drive these unwelcome memories away, ‘it is the most cinematic novel I’ve ever come across, amigo. You see it, rather than read it. When you’re not inside someone’s head it feels as though Lowry is directing you – look here, look there, follow me down this road, around that corner.’ Estás cansado, Señor. Yes, Carlos, si. Una…the bar came up to meet his face, in a non-too-friendly fashion…’…is funny too,‘ he found himself saying, perhaps, ‘muy muy divertido. So many laugh-out-loud lines, like when it is said of the Consul that No one could tell when he was drunk. True he might lie down in the street, if need be, like a gentleman. This, maybe more than anything else, proves what a great writer Lowry was, that he was able to draw humour out of what is such an intense, unhappy subject; because life is funny, you know. Horrible too, obviously, but always humorous, absurd.’¿lloras? [P] could hear a sharp, loud buzzing, that, after a few moments, he realised was the sound of his own body shaking. Symbolism, he tried to say, is rife, on every page…the dying indian, the man in the devil mask, the bull in the arena….and the volcanos…two, like Geoff and Yvonne, but permanent, unlike them; explosive, destructive….’ For the first time he noticed the small copper-coloured scorpion at the bottom of the tequila bottle, encased in liquid amber. Is it dead, he asked himself, or really, really drunk? Muy borracho. Poor thing. He remembered once, at eighteen, drinking a pint of tequila, and nearly dying. He woke up almost twenty-four hours later, still drunk, in a room he didn’t recognise. ‘A masterpiece!’ he shouted, then fell off the bar stool; and the scorpion, through an amber haze, surveyed the scene: is he dead, it asked itself, or really, really drunk? The vulture, awake now, laughed cruelly. ja ja ja ja ja ja.

MIDDLEMARCH BY GEORGE ELIOT

I am not, I must confess, terribly fond of Englishness. I suppose that being English I find it too familiar, and therefore unexciting. Or perhaps it is the case that my tough upbringing worked on me as a kind of aversion therapy, so that everything connected with my homeland strikes me as unappealing. I don’t know. Until I came to think about this review, I had never really sought to thoroughly explain to myself my preference for things foreign, a preference that extends to the women I have been in relationships with, landscapes [I find the English countryside incomparably dreary], art, film, and most other aspects of my private and intellectual life. One consequence of this attitude is that, I now realise, I’m particularly tough on English literature; I make fewer allowances, I let less slide. And so a novel written by an English person has a much steeper mountain to climb to reach the summit of my affections. Of course, some have managed it [Charles Dickens, for example, found the going relatively easy and has become a particular favourite; Jane Austen laboured somewhat, but got there in the end], but they are certainly in the minority up there. The purpose of all of this is to give some perspective to my claim that Middlemarch by George Eliot is not one of the finest English novels [a statement that coming from me would mean very little] but one of the greatest novels, period.

With Emma it was, apparently, Jane Austen’s intention to create a heroine that her readers might not like immediately, or at all. To some extent she was successful in this endeavour, for many appear to find the title character irritating. Yet I have never felt that way about her; she is too energetic and silly to engender any kind of antipathy. However, if George Eliot had ever had, while writing this book, the same aim in mind she absolutely nailed it. In the interests of fairness, one ought to point out that Dorothea Burke is not without positive traits, such as her desire to help the poor, but she is without charm. Indeed, if I were asked to choose a bunch of adjectives to describe someone who I would cross the street to avoid, those pertaining to Eliot’s heroine – pious, self-denying, proud, judgemental – would be high on the list.

For me it is these qualities that inspire her to forgo the more obviously appealing Sir James in favour of the musty Mr. Casaubon. In this respect, I was reminded very much of another strong-willed young woman, Isabel Archer from Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady. Both women, to themselves, justify their strange choices as wanting to be useful or challenged. Dorothea, in fact, likens Casaubon to Locke or Pascal; she thinks him a superior soul who will instruct and lead her, while she will aid him in his work. Yet, as the reader, one can’t help but think that marrying him is a kind of sacrifice, or martyrdom. She prides herself of not valuing frivolous things, and of being able to give them up [like horse riding, or jewels]; she doesn’t admit it to herself, but in picking Casaubon she gives up physical attraction, or at least trades it so that her intellect, her soul, can be, ahem, given a good seeing to instead. But even in this, even in denying herself, one could argue that there is a kind of vanity or egotism, that, just like Isabel, she chooses one, Casaubon, over another, Sir James, in order to show that she knows better, that she can make her own obscure choices, will go against the grain.

That Eliot allows her heroine to get off on the wrong foot, so to speak, with her audience was a brave move. I can imagine some readers clapping the book shut and throwing it away from themselves, in order to be rid of the haughty Miss Brooke. However, if you do persevere I am confident that your attitude will change towards her, or will soften at least. The reconciliation between the reader and Dorothea is most likely to take place during her disastrous marriage to the mummy [as Chettem calls Casaubon]. Before the couple tie the knot one might have been in two minds as to whether it would be a success, because, although the ageing clergyman, who is not in the best health, may strike you as unsuitable for marriage with a young woman, Dorothea’s personality is such that the union does, on the surface, pretty much make sense. Even her Uncle concedes that it is not sheer folly, and that Sir James would not have been a good match; but once Dorothea is alone with her husband she quickly comes to realise that life with him will be a lonely, frustrating, and unhappy one. And Eliot uses the contrast between the husband and the wife to expose aspects of Dorothea’s character previously unknown to the reader, making her much more agreeable.

Edward Casaubon, is, quite rightly, one of the most well-known and cherished characters in English fiction. Of all the people who feature in this vast novel, he was the one I best remembered from my first read, the one I would reference in conversation with others. Yet it was interesting to note during this reread that, while Eliot’s reputation is as a fair-minded author, a creator of finely crafted, sympathetic, flawed but human characters [and it is a deserved reputation], she is fairly relentless in mocking Casaubon, at times reaching Dickensian levels of satire. He is a terminally boring, self-absorbed and passionless man. Eliot makes this clear in numerous ways, but a number of his speeches [one about painting in particular – where he speaks about admiration without ever giving the impression that he feels any himself], and his letter to Dorothea asking for her hand in marriage, are almost painful to read in their formality and dryness.

“MY DEAR MISS BROOKE, — I have your guardian’s permission to address you on a subject than which I have none more at heart. I am not, I trust, mistaken in the recognition of some deeper correspondence than that of date in the fact that a consciousness of need in my own life had arisen contemporaneously with the possibility of my becoming acquainted with you.”

Perhaps the deepest thrust Eliot delivers is in relation to Casaubon’s work, his life’s work, called the Key to all Mythologies. It is an ambitious, comprehensive study that he is, of course, incapable of bringing to completion. He isn’t, then, only self absorbed, monomaniacal, and emotionally limp, but also completely ineffectual. I have known a number of people like this, such as my friend’s father, who left his wife, isolated himself from his friends and family, and then spent the next two decades faffing about with complex computer programmes and photography equipment, never getting within even sniffing distance of achieving anything. Or, to call forth a more famous example, what about Austrian author Robert Musil, a man of questionable temperament apparently, who dedicated the majority of his career to writing The Man Without Qualities, and yet died leaving the work unfinished? Indeed, what Eliot most impressively nailed with Casaubon is a particular kind of male behaviour or psychology or approach to the world. Many men are, to some extent, obsessive, are prone to cutting themselves off and getting lost in their hobbies or projects, be that football, gardening, or whatever. Moreover, a lot of us do not have a sense of our own ridiculousness, of how tedious we can be when we hold forth on these subjects; nor do we understand our own capabilities or limitations. This is especially true of men who are engaged in intellectual pursuits.

I must admit that I had an uncomfortable realisation during the book that there is a very real danger, not that I am a little bit like Casaubon, but that I could go full Casaubon. And you should never go full Casaubon. For example, one of my girlfriend’s once left me because I had stopped paying her attention as I worked my way through Cao Xueqin’s multi-volume Chinese novel, The Story of the Stone [totally worth it though]. Moreover, I once decided that I wanted to be able to name the greatest novel from each major country and spent at least two years engaged in research; and this is without mentioning the years I spent on my own writing projects, including a [never completed, of course] work that was meant to incorporate all of the [hundreds of thousands of] pieces and fragments of prose I have accumulated throughout my life, which I believed would, in toto, result in a bildungsroman for the modern age! Casaubon is, in this way, a warning to people like me. He is the ghost that visits you on Christmas Eve, proposing to show you who you could turn into if you are not careful.

In light of all this, it is not difficult to see why Dorothea suffers so much in the marriage. She thought she was aligning herself with a Locke, but instead got with an old man of no genius; she thought she would share in, and help with, his work, and yet she ends up being little more than an unpaid secretary or unvalued pupil.

“And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.”

Since first reading Middlemarch I have, whenever the subject has arisen, claimed that it is the greatest novel ever written about love and relationships; and I have found, on this occasion, more than enough in the text to back that up. Indeed, while Casaubon and Dorothea are endlessly fascinating, I perhaps enjoyed the Lydgate and Rosamond storyline even more. As with the more famous couple, Eliot’s great skill is in being able to make you see the potential for success in the relationship, while also observing its possible flaws. Despite their age and attractiveness, Lydgate and Rosamond getting together isn’t mindless star-crossed lovers fluff; the coupling is psychologically sound. He thinks that her beauty and grace will enrich his life, which is understandable, and consistent with his personality, while her air of vulnerability, of needing to be looked after, is also consistent with his profession. Likewise, she wants a man who is not a Middlemarcher, who is superior, and Lydgate fits the bill. However, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that a marriage based on such superficialities will likely flounder.

As central as love and marriage are to the narrative, what unites or defines almost all of the couplings formed during the duration of the novel is a sense of eventual disappointment or, more precisely, disillusionment. Indeed, this feeling plays a part in many other aspects of the story, including, for example, Fred Vincy’s dreams and ambitions. In this way, I can’t help but think that, while the name Middlemarch has served the book adequately, the two most appropriate titles were already taken: Great Expectations and Lost Illusions. All of the major characters approach life hopefully, with expectations of success, and yet nearly all find their hopes dashed.

“Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight–that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.”

Again, Dorothea and Casaubon provide an interesting example. As noted, Dorothea finds that marriage is not all she thought it would be. Yet, crucially, she cannot really fault her husband; he did not make false promises, nor did he change upon signing the contract. It is more a case that Dorothea, like most people entering into relationships, took every small example of admirable traits or behaviour during the courtship to be but a taster of the huge amounts of such qualities the person in question would have in store. Likewise, Casaubon is also left disappointed; he imagined Dorothea would ease his strain, would support, rather than question, or make demands of him. To return to Fred Vincy, he considered it a fait accompli that old Featherstone would leave him a sizeable legacy, but things do not work out as he envisaged. In fact, the only people who avoid disappointment are those who never had ideals for living, or great hopes, in the first place, such as Mary Garth. As a consequence, I’m not quite sure what the novel’s message really is. Do not hope? Have small ambitions? Be sensible? Maybe. Or perhaps to speak about a message is to turn down the wrong road. I prefer to believe that Eliot wasn’t interested in pedagogy, that her novel is simply showing you life: in its smallness, its meanness, its disappointments, as well as its joys and its successes.

While there isn’t an out-and-out message, Middlemarch does engage with important issues, such as the women question, as I have anachronistically heard it called. As one progresses through the book one comes to realise that Dorothea could be viewed as a kind of unassuming feminist icon. What defines her character is a desire to be active and useful; she draws plans for poor housing and wants to donate to the local hospital. She may not want equality, or never voices that idea, but she does want to do good, to contribute to society. On the other hand, many of the male characters treat her as ‘a vulnerable little woman’; her uncle, for example, worries about her overtaxing herself, and thinks that too much knowledge is bad for a woman; Sir James Chettam thinks that she ought to have been given stronger guidance [i.e. be told what to do and what not to do] when weighing up Casaubon’s proposal, indicating that he believes her unfit to make this so important decision. It is vital, for me, that Eliot allows Dorothea to be both feminine and strong; she is vulnerable, but no more than anyone else, than any man, and she is emotional. While her decision to marry Casaubon is shown to be a poor one, she at least made it herself and insisted on it in the face of opposition. Through her Eliot explores how difficult it was for women to find a useful place in society, one where she is allowed to be significant and make a difference. Lydgate is a doctor, her uncle dabbles in politics, and so on, but she is expected to be little more than a wife.

In terms of Eliot’s style, she has a fine authorial voice: frequently wise and warm, while also capable of irony and a kind of wry humour. I’ve read elsewhere that some find her omniscient, Godly approach not to their taste, and while there were occasions when she unnecessarily breaks the spell [for example, when she addresses the reader and notes that you may or may not be interested in so-and-so], I found it, generally speaking, not to be a problem. What certainly is worth trumpeting is her ability with metaphors. This is an area that I am particularly interested in, for I think that it is a dying, or dead, art [if you’re going to liken, say, a pale face to milk or ivory then you might as well have not bothered at all]. In fact, most rappers turn out better metaphors that this generation’s acclaimed novelists. Eliot’s, however, are supreme; they are constantly surprising and illuminating [which is the point of a metaphor – to enable you to better understand, or appreciate, the thing that is being described by way of comparison].

Before I conclude, I want to outline some minor criticisms. I said at the beginning of this review that you will probably come to change your mind about Dorothea, that although she seems unlikable at first, I am confident that you will come to like or admire her. Yet one of the failings of the novel, for me, is that her character changes too abruptly, that, more specifically, she loses her illusions regarding Casaubon too suddenly. It is not that Eliot does not provide justification, it is simply that the reasons she gives are not entirely consistent with the character of the Dorothea that we meet in the opening stages of the book. For example, during the marriage Casaubon is shown to be lacking passion, and this dismays his wife. Yet she never indicated a desire for passion prior to the marriage, only intelligence and learning [which he has]. Furthermore, by the end of the book Dorothea has become a kind of Jesus figure; forgiving, full of love and understanding. That’s lovely and all, but it just seems too epic a journey, too big a change, to have undertaken in the course of the novel. Another problem with the book is that Will Ladislaw, who is the closest Eliot comes to a romantic hero, is dull as shit. Seriously, I yawned my way through almost all his bits. In any case, none of that was enough to spoil my enjoyment or to dampen my affection.

Finally, then, if this review seems somewhat confused or poorly structured [I hope it doesn’t but I fear it does], or far too long, that is because I struggled to write and edit it. However, I struggled not because my ideas wouldn’t come, or would not allow themselves to be moulded into coherent sentences and paragraphs, but simply because I had so much I wanted to say, because every time I started to lay down my thoughts and feelings I was aware that there were other fascinating aspects of the novel that I could be engaging with. I felt, as I wrote, always as though I was grappling with something bigger than me,  like a fisherman trying to land a shark. That, for me, is the sign of a truly great book – one that will not politely submit itself to a nicely-formed, perfectly manageable 1000 word review. Oh no, Middlemarch made me drag this this out of myself, all 3000 words of it.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS BY EMILY BRONTE

2015 – I have just returned from a visit to my old neighbourhood, a crumbling council-owned territory in northern England, where I had been tasked with putting in order my grandfather’s estate. Of course, by estate I mean the few rags and personal, but perfectly worthless, objects that my grandfather had accumulated during his long, and scarcely happy, existence. I must return on the morrow, to complete this task.

The day had set in gloomy and cold, and my fingers were stricken, even before venturing outside, with a dull ache the like of which always besets me in winter. So I had no mind to make for that stoney edifice where I had just yesterday spent many none too pleasant hours. Yet the task of sorting through my grandfather’s meagre things would be upon my shoulders some future day, like it or not, so postponement would little benefit me.

I took, of course, a bus, the windows of which were so mired in dirt that I could, for all I knew, have been heading for anywhere. It was only the familiar rattle of stones and rocks rebounding off the side of the bus, which from experience I put down to the arms of local children, that spoke of being near to my intended destination. Much in fear of the bus being turned over, I silently willed my journey to its end. However, upon alighting I felt sorry for having done so, for the cold and gloom were much intensified here, being at the top of a hill.

Inside the dour tenement block, I vainly pushed the button for the elevator, before accepting defeat, as I had done yesterday also. The stairs, which I was forced to confront, were clearly the whim of a madman. Each step was thicker or thinner than the last, so that one climbed them in the fashion of a spider with an injured leg negotiating a half-ruined web. At the top I was met, much to my surprise and chagrin, by Mr Bower, my late grandfather’s immediate neighbour. “Yah fer tah coom ta spayke baht guings uhn, ave ye? Ye’ll wahn ta nuh I’d weger, baht yon granfither an whet tuck place thear,” he said, all of which was quite incomprehensible to me, despite being born and raised in these parts. Before I could enter the key into the lock of my grandfather’s flat, and take my leave of the old man’s hideous visage, he wildly shook his walking stick at me in what I took to be an invitation to enter his abode. Verily, I had no choice but to follow, for I feared for my life lest I refuse.

Inside the old man’s dwelling, I was guided to the living room, and then of a sudden left to my own devices. Not wishing to take a seat uninvited I took note instead of the shelves against the walls, in particular those upon which a few books were stacked. Indeed, I had just taken down a copy of Wuthering Heights, a book I greatly favour, when a young lady entered. Understandably I ventured to suppose she might be Mr Bower’s granddaughter, and so I greeted her accordingly.

“There’s no Miss Bower here,” she replied. “Sit down, sir.”

I sat, rather without pleasure, on the sofa. She took her place opposite. “You’ll have to forgive the old man, he doesn’t see too many faces, and those he does see he appropriates for himself.” The young lady, it turned out, was another neighbour, whom Mr Bower had also appropriated. “He’s gone back out onto the landing. T’will be sometime yet before he returns and frees us. Are you from around here, sir?” I told her that I had been born but not a few doors away. “Ah, a Yorkshireman? You don’t sound it.” I granted her that, but said that no matter how my speech might strike I felt, in my bones, always a Yorkshireman. “It’s a strange part of the world, isn’t it, sir? Gets under your skin.” This I granted also. “What have you in your hand?” At this remark I realised that I had still the book in my possession.

“A book. Wuthering Heights. T’is the old man’s. I was looking at his shelves.”

“A fine Yorkshire book!” She laughed. “Have you read it, sir?”

“More than once,” I confessed. “You have perhaps read it also?”

“Indeed I have. I esteem is just as much as you evidently do yourself, sir.”

“Ah, you like Heathcliff, I imagine.”

“Heathcliff?” she scoffed. “What madness would compel me to like Heathcliff? He’s a brute. A sadist. He hangs dogs; he marries a woman so as to hurt her father; he torments his own son. Heathcliff!”

“I concur, Miss, but for many he is a kind of romantic hero.”

“Nay. Maybe the idea of him is. Maybe what he represents.”

“Which is…”

“A man so in love, or so obsessed with his love, that it drives him mad. Ah, that is a romantic idea, but no woman could like Heathcliff for himself.”

“I’ve often thought that he wasn’t really a man, but half a man.” I ventured, warming to my task. “In a way, he isn’t even a character; for me he simply represents one side of human nature, the wild and passionate side. Edgar Linton, whom Cathy marries, is rationality, is propriety and good-breeding. Together they would make a perfect man. It is why Cathy is so torn, because they speak to different aspects of her own personality.”

“Yes, one might say that Heathcliff is the devil on the shoulder, and Linton the angel,” the bright young lady replied. “Or, if you rather, one is the Appollonian and t’other is the Dionysian. The second Cathy, the daughter of the original, tames, or harnesses her Dionysus [Hareton], in a way her own mother could not, by helping him to read and write and cultivating his softer side, by refining him a little. I think that is Bronte’s ultimate message: that you need both sides, but in moderation, in order to find true happiness.”

“The book is more than just about that, however. Upbringing and parenting, it strikes me, are important themes. None of the children in the book are raised correctly. Some are raised without love and care, and others are too indulged, so that they become either spoilt or roguish. Marriage was obviously under her microscope too. Who marries happily? No one. They all make bad choices, ‘cept the younger Cathy and even she marries badly, and for the wrong reasons, the first time around! I say again, strange that some would have that it’s a love story!”

“Do stop prattling on about love, sir, we have already dealt with that. Besides, it is a love story, just not a conventional one. One might say that the book asks, what is love? And, how ought one behave if one is in love? Heathcliff claims to love Cathy and yet treats her horribly. She claims to love Heathcliff and her husband, yet does right by neither. Her daughter loves and marries Linton out of pity. T’is a complicated business, love. One cannot always identify it with complete assurance, for it often skulks around in the shadows with its playmates, duty and infatuation.”

I must confess that I felt the sharpness of that prattling, but I did not let it deter me. Therefore I continued, “Now that you mention it, Heathcliff’s love for Cathy is the basis for one of my few criticisms of the book. That he is rendered mad by it is undeniable, yet the actual cause of his love escapes me. What I mean by this, if I may explain myself further, is that we are to take Bronte’s word for it that Cathy and Heathcliff have such an incredible bond, that they love each other, but one never witnesses anything between them – there are no passages of great tenderness, or bonding, or sharing – to justify it. We are told they were close as children, but we aren’t privy to that closeness beyond one or two seemingly insignificant episodes.”

“Oh, I rather like that. I like that we don’t see, but have to imagine, instead. If I have a criticism of my own to make t’would be the structure of the thing. That is, to be polite, somewhat awkward.”

“Ah, we are at variance again, Miss. I don’t share your concern. Yes, yes it isn’t elegant, not at all, what with it starting out as Lockwood’s first person narration, which then shifts to Nelly Dean’s, and then shifts twice or thrice more times. I grant that Lockwood telling us what Nelly tells him, which also includes letters from other characters and speeches from other employees, is a creative writing professor’s nightmare, but does any of that trouble one’s enjoyment? That is the important question.”

“Are you saying that when Lockwood, about half of the way into the book, takes over Nelly’s story and, well, stands in for her, using the personal I, even though Nelly herself is no longer present, is not a problem for you, sir?”

“Oh, certainly it is, if I have my academic hat on. But I repeat: did it trouble your enjoyment?”

“Not especially.” She said, folding her hands in her lap, “Well, not at all, no.”

“Well, and so why belabour the point?” I replied, waving the book around. “The structure is messy, of course, no one would deny it, but no book is perfect, all books are flawed. I’m a literary critic, and it is such a miserable thing, Miss. So, away, let us forget all about structure or any other negativity, even my own small criticisms. Wuthering Heights is a page-turner, one fairly romps through it, like one could romp through the the Moors themselves. It is bombastic and thrilling and gothic and gripping and funny…yes, funny too…the opening of the novel…Lockwood’s first visits to the house are hilarious, it’s as though he has stumbled upon the Klopeks from The ‘Burbs. Have you seen The ‘Burbs, Miss? A fine film, featuring Tom Hanks…”

Before my lady could answer Mr Bower entered the room. “Shey nut seyan ahnuthing lake thar,” he grumbled.

“Mr Bower,” I said, rising to my feet. “I must beg your leave. I have much to accomplish next door.”

The man’s ghoulish countenance darkened, and once again he waved his stick in my direction. “Thear thee go? Nay, nowt uh reckon firt tug go.”

“I think he rather likes you,” opined the lady.

“Likes? Why he is the very Devil! Am I never to leave this accursed room?”

“Oh, he will get bored of us soon. Stay and take some tea, sir.  We can continue our interesting discussion.”

“I have nothing more to say, Miss!” I was fairly rattled, I must admit.

“So you have exhausted your opinions on Wuthering Heights. Villette, then?”

“Yes, Villette. A great book. Fine. But, that’s it; there I draw the line. Don’t even think about mentioning The Tenant of Wildfell Hall!“

THE PILGRIM HAWK BY GLENWAY WESCOTT

I was in Sheffield to visit my friend, [P], a rather unusual young man who I had first encountered on the inaugural day of college. I hadn’t seen him for some time, but I had heard from mutual acquaintances that he had become increasingly isolated; that he was refusing nearly all social offers and instead chose to spend most of his time indoors with a newly acquired, and terribly expensive, cat.

[P] opened the front door with evident reluctance, maintaining a position in the shadows, and thrusting forward, in his stead, the pink nose and stern countenance of Pushkin, his white-haired Devon Rex. It was as though this was, in fact, the cat’s house and that he, Pushkin, wasn’t in the mood for visitors.

“What do you think of my friend?” [P] said. And I was unsure if he was asking me or Pushkin.

“Very nice,” I ventured.

“He ought to be, for the price. Come in.”

[P] withdrew the cat, which had been hovering at face-height, from the crack in the door and ushered me into the hall. Then, still holding Pushkin in front of him like a pot belly, he walked with me silently towards the living room, where he and I sat down. The cat, sensing, perhaps, the awkward atmosphere, wriggled wildly in order to free itself from both its master’s grip and the daunting prospect of the forthcoming conversation. [P], however, held on tight, letting the animal exhaust itself, until finally, with mute acceptance, it settled down on his lap.

I was struck, at this moment, by the nature of this relationship, between the man and the cat, and the disparity in their need for each other. [P] evidently needed the animal as some form of comfort, to divert my, and his, attention from what was really happening in the room, as a crutch during the conversation; the cat, however, did not reciprocate his feelings, it lived, as felines are wont to do, purely for itself, and in service to its own interests.

“Have you ever read The Pilgrim Hawk, [P]?” I asked my host in order to break the ice.

“No. What is it?”

“It’s a book. You read vociferously once.”

He waved his hand in the air, as though warding off evil spirits.

“It is only a slim novel,” I persevered.

“Gah, ok, so tell me about it.”

“There isn’t a lot to tell; I believe that is why some find it inconsequential. It is around 100 pages long. Not enough to get your teeth into, for some.”

“So, why are you mentioning it?”

I stared at the cat, whose brow, although I am sure it must have been an illusion, appeared to be furrowed, suggesting the same kind of irritation and impatience evident in my friend’s voice.

“At one time you wrote reviews for a website called Goodreads, do you remember?”

“Of course I do.”

“And you often included a personal anecdote, in order to illustrate your point.”

“Yes, yes. Get on with it.”

“Well, I would, if I were to write a review of The Pilgrim Hawk, include this, this situation right now; you and me and that cat.”

“Whatever for?”

“The situations are by no means the same, of course. There is, as one would anticipate, not a cat but a hawk in Wescott’s novel.”

The cat was, by this time, staring out of the window, with apparent disinterest. And yet its ears twitched, almost imperceptibly, indicating that it was indeed listening.

“And you think this novel is like us, here, now, because it has a hawk in it?”

There was both triumph and confusion in his voice.

“No. Well, the action, such as it is, largely takes place in a living room, so there is that. I guess one could say in this sense it is more like a play, than a novel. There is a couple, the Cullens, who are the guests, and the narrator and a female friend. Mrs Cullen brings a hawk with her.”

“What about the Cullens?”

“Ah, there is a sense of dissatisfaction, perhaps. In the marriage. Mrs Cullen, you could say, uses the hawk as a way of creating distance, as a way of avoiding speaking to her husband directly. She speaks to him through it, if you know what I mean.”

“Is that all?”

There was that note of triumph and confusion again. The cat closed its eyes.

“Yes.”

What I didn’t mention, of course, is that the hawk’s role in the novel was very much like the role played by my friend’s cat that afternoon. The hawk is, for Wescott, multi-functional. It exists as a topic of conversation for the characters; as a spectator, a witness to the uncomfortable events, and almost as a judge; and, ultimately, as a kind of cypher or symbol. The hawk is, in a way, all of the people in the room; it is humanity. Furthermore, it is, for the narrator especially, both a welcome distraction from the tense atmosphere and stilted conversation, and an eerie presence, and source of tension itself.

At this moment the cat began to struggle once again, hoping, one imagines, that he had been forgotten about. My friend, likewise, once more sedated him with vigorous half-strokes, which served, really, as some sort of wrestling hold. I suddenly felt sorry for the defeated animal. The cat, as a lone creature, is, one could say, psychologically, or biologically, stronger than we are, is superior to those of us who need a crutch like a cat, a partner, a friend, or any number of other things. And yet Pushkin’s glum face now betrayed that, at least physically, he did not have the upper hand, and would, so, be forced to suffer the entire afternoon. And I knew just how he felt.