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Selected essays of an Epicurean
Reactions to the written word can be extraordinarily diverse and startling. I have been taken aback by replies to e-mails I have sent, for instance. Critical evaluations of literature often tell you more about the critic than the text. Judgements about irony, sarcasm, sentimentality and so forth are quite subjective. I find that one’s reactions to a piece can alter, according to time, place and mood, or, even more intriguing, one can hold two different feelings about a writer simultaneously.
I was interested to note in Anthony Head’s excellent introduction that the poet John Wain judged one of L. Powys’s books to be the ‘corniest’ book he had ever read. I can empathise with that reaction, and had a streak of that judgement as I read some of the essays collected in the book. L. Powys tries hard to tug the heart strings, and waxes eloquent in a florid, almost Euphuistic style at times. One could easily parody and satirise his writing.
However, more strongly, I felt a personal closeness to the experiences of the author and the views he expresses. For one, he lived in Africa for five years, somewhat paralleling my own decade or so living in Zambia in my childhood. He also has an abiding love of the culture and nature of the English countryside, which I share, though bowing to his much greater knowledge and experience. His reverse Pilgrim’s progress away from what he sees as the syrupy delusions of conventional Christianity, has many points of contact with my own philosophical journey. The debilitating and serious disease he suffered from finds a kinship in my heart, given my own medical problems. Lastly, his love of Laurence Sterne’s ‘Tristram Shandy’ and of the beauty of the stars are big recommendations for me too.
Head has made a judicious selection, covering many topics and the broad sweep of his life, in Dorset, the USA, East Africa and Switzerland; only one of which I have read before – ‘Bat’s Head’. The first essay ‘A struggle for life’ introduces us to the central tragedy of his life, his contraction of pulmonary tuberculosis, diagnosed when he was only 25 years old. This damaged the rest of his life, eventually killing him, but did not hold him back from enjoying his time on earth to the full. This essay is written in an unsentimental and un-self-pitying way, that is admirable.
The four essays on aspects of his life in Africa are vivid, but reveal a colonial callousness. He shoots leopard and hippo without any compunction, all the more surprising given his otherwise tender nature, and the later essays ‘Christian Fingers’ and ‘Barbarians’, in which he criticises hunting and cruelty to animals.
His time in America seemed to have sparked little creative writing, though he mentions a striking image of him sleeping on the roof of buildings in New York, looking up at the night sky, and waking covered with light snow.
The philosophical essays appealed particularly, though I find his attitude to religion inconsistent and unstable. He often refers to God, admires aspects of Christian culture and expresses sentiments close to conventional religious opinions, yet he professes himself an atheist at other points. In the essay ‘The Epicurean Vision’, he declares his adherence to a joyful, sturdy enjoyment of the simple physical pleasures of life. He criticises ‘Christians at prayer’ as ‘obsequious’, ‘sycophantic’ and ‘craven, unhealthy, neurotic’. Strong words! He dislikes the creed of the church in trying to discredit life upon earth, with all its talk of absurd Trinities, fables about ascensions, dead men rising from the grave and a focus on a mythical heaven. Powys follows the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, wanting us to look at the world we live in now, to make the best of it, with unfaltering loyalty to our senses. He urges us to “enjoy our hour of sunshine”.
Powys’s philosophy of life is expressed even more eloquently in ‘The Aebi Wood’. He stared at this green wood for many hours from the balcony of his sanatorium in Switzerland, and is came to symbolise the immediacy of the physical life and world we inhabit. He writes “Make no doubt of it, it is matter that matters. In all else there is mirage, man himself, for all his vaunts, being but a cheap and accidental phantom of cleaver clay. There may well be other dimensions, but in so far as we allow the suspicion of their existence to dim our worship of what is, we suffer ourselves to be entangled in a cloud-net of folly. Our paradise, our hells, are here and now, we shall see no other.”
His most powerful chapter is ‘Reflections of a Dying Man’. Somebody suffering from worsening Tuberculosis, with no cure in sight, has a right to record such reflections, I don’t find this passage ‘corny’. It is unblinking and objective, rejecting easy solutions, recognising mankind is blessed with self-knowledge “on a rainbow planet that is tumbling through a physical universe of inconceivable dimensions”. He preaches joy in what we have, and an admirable stoicism: “It is by the rarest chance that we have ever lived, and does it then become us to grudge when the hour arrives for us to walk the way of all nature? Surely to look at the sunlight for the last time should rather be an occasion for the trembling of our marrow bones with gratitude.”
Showing posts with label Britain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Britain. Show all posts
Sunday, 30 January 2011
A week in December, by Sebastian Faulks
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Fiction or reality?
Sebastian Faulks has written a novel covering one week in December 2007, set in London. It following the intertwining lives of a handful of characters, and aims to be a state of the nation novel, in the tradition of Disraeli, Gaskell and Dickens. It is up-to-date, with descriptions of second worlds on the internet, ‘reality’ TV programmes and sickeningly rich financiers (though what’s new there?).
The story opens with a hostess drawing up her guest list, which introduces us to some of the main characters. The bombardment of names and details is hard for the reader to digest. I had to turn back and reread the first eight pages to absorb who was who, and what they did. The novel is almost ends with the actual dinner party, which neatly brings some of the characters together in conflict, lust and other interactions. I noticed that one person on the guest list, a schoolteacher called Radley Graves, was not mentioned at the dinner, which may be an error and a missed opportunity on the part of the author.
The final pages are devoted to the climax of one drama: a Muslim boy who jettisons his backpack of bomb fuses in the Thames, and visits his girlfriend instead. The final scene is of the evil hedge fund manager, John Veals, who stands at the window of his office, on the verge of his scheme’s success, and laughs.
The parallel is clear for the reader to draw: Veals does ignite his bomb; his financial bomb. He has obtained insider information about a bank, and set up a series of massive positions for his hedge fund, with the aim of making much money, and helping to topple the bank in the process. Since the book was published in 2010, the reader knows about the fall of RBS, HBOS etcetera in the financial crisis, and so the conclusion to the story does not need to be told explicitly.
One part of my brain was saying that Faulks is naïve and does not know how things work, or at least paints too unrealistic a black-and-white picture of hedge funds. Yet just after reading this book, I have had occasion to study some examples of ‘rogue traders’ and ‘rogue fund managers’, and have been reading about insider trading cases at hedge funds such as Galleon and Moore Capital, and dubious actions at Gartmore and Henderson Asset Management. Suddenly I did a mental flip, and perceived Faulk’s portrait of John Veals in the novel as deadly accurate.
Veals, the hedge fund manager, lacks an emotional centre and a moral compass. His family is a train wreck, with his wife lonely and semi-alcoholic, while his son gets hooked on drugs in his bedroom upstairs. Hassan, the would-be bomber is a parallel life, whose parents are also unaware of how far their son has slipped down a dangerous slope – though they talk and debate with their son far more.
The withering satire on many other types in British society is accurate and wincingly painful, whether it is a cynical literary critic, or a foreign footballer, or his girlfriend earning money from pornography on the side, or an aspiring politician’s wife. The layers of the satire become somewhat painful to read and depressing. It is a bitter book.
There are some redeeming features, though they curiously point to the redeeming power of literature. A modest girl, who drives Circle Line trains, likes to read books. An underemployed Barrister is similarly a sympathetic character with a wide knowledge of books. He has the intellectual curiosity to read the Koran, and criticises it as being simply full of assertions. This appears to me to be Faulks’ own voice attacking Islam, together with the story of the corruption of the young Hassan. As far as I know, Faulks has avoided a Fatwa.
Fiction or reality?
Sebastian Faulks has written a novel covering one week in December 2007, set in London. It following the intertwining lives of a handful of characters, and aims to be a state of the nation novel, in the tradition of Disraeli, Gaskell and Dickens. It is up-to-date, with descriptions of second worlds on the internet, ‘reality’ TV programmes and sickeningly rich financiers (though what’s new there?).
The story opens with a hostess drawing up her guest list, which introduces us to some of the main characters. The bombardment of names and details is hard for the reader to digest. I had to turn back and reread the first eight pages to absorb who was who, and what they did. The novel is almost ends with the actual dinner party, which neatly brings some of the characters together in conflict, lust and other interactions. I noticed that one person on the guest list, a schoolteacher called Radley Graves, was not mentioned at the dinner, which may be an error and a missed opportunity on the part of the author.
The final pages are devoted to the climax of one drama: a Muslim boy who jettisons his backpack of bomb fuses in the Thames, and visits his girlfriend instead. The final scene is of the evil hedge fund manager, John Veals, who stands at the window of his office, on the verge of his scheme’s success, and laughs.
The parallel is clear for the reader to draw: Veals does ignite his bomb; his financial bomb. He has obtained insider information about a bank, and set up a series of massive positions for his hedge fund, with the aim of making much money, and helping to topple the bank in the process. Since the book was published in 2010, the reader knows about the fall of RBS, HBOS etcetera in the financial crisis, and so the conclusion to the story does not need to be told explicitly.
One part of my brain was saying that Faulks is naïve and does not know how things work, or at least paints too unrealistic a black-and-white picture of hedge funds. Yet just after reading this book, I have had occasion to study some examples of ‘rogue traders’ and ‘rogue fund managers’, and have been reading about insider trading cases at hedge funds such as Galleon and Moore Capital, and dubious actions at Gartmore and Henderson Asset Management. Suddenly I did a mental flip, and perceived Faulk’s portrait of John Veals in the novel as deadly accurate.
Veals, the hedge fund manager, lacks an emotional centre and a moral compass. His family is a train wreck, with his wife lonely and semi-alcoholic, while his son gets hooked on drugs in his bedroom upstairs. Hassan, the would-be bomber is a parallel life, whose parents are also unaware of how far their son has slipped down a dangerous slope – though they talk and debate with their son far more.
The withering satire on many other types in British society is accurate and wincingly painful, whether it is a cynical literary critic, or a foreign footballer, or his girlfriend earning money from pornography on the side, or an aspiring politician’s wife. The layers of the satire become somewhat painful to read and depressing. It is a bitter book.
There are some redeeming features, though they curiously point to the redeeming power of literature. A modest girl, who drives Circle Line trains, likes to read books. An underemployed Barrister is similarly a sympathetic character with a wide knowledge of books. He has the intellectual curiosity to read the Koran, and criticises it as being simply full of assertions. This appears to me to be Faulks’ own voice attacking Islam, together with the story of the corruption of the young Hassan. As far as I know, Faulks has avoided a Fatwa.
A Hollow Crown, by Helen Hollick
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Historical fiction is a tricky business. It can illuminate history better than a conventional ‘history’ book, but what in the text is fact, and what is fiction?
Helen Hollick has conscientiously stuck to what are perceived to be the facts. She has used every scrap of information from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the ‘Encomium Emmae Reginae’ and other authors to create a large novel, on the life of Emma, wife and queen to both King Ethelraed and King Knut. This covers the period 1002 to 1042, a time of extraordinary drama in English history, when the Danes conquered and ruled the country.
I was drawn through the book rapidly, probably due to my interest in and knowledge of this period of history. Hollick makes sense of history, filling in the gaps, as a novelist is entitled to do. She takes the story line that Emma hated and despised her first husband, Ethelraed (famously known as the ‘Unready’), and loved Knut deeply. That imposes a black and white simplicity on what was probably a more complex and miserable reality. But it makes sense of many of her actions later, in ignoring and abandoning her progeny by Ethelraed, and her stout support of her son by Knut, Harthacnut.
Her attention to detail and willingness to interpret the facts for a good story penetrates the whole book, down to small details. For instance, she spots the oddity of the fact that the body of Saint Aelfheah was transported across the Thames on a boat, rather than across London Bridge. She neatly explains this as popular opposition to the loss of their Saint (who was being translated to Canterbury), leading to an angry mob blocking the road over the bridge.
But in a novel, do you need to squeeze in very drop of detail available from historical documents? There are too many characters to keep track of, and get to know. Hence the book sprawls over 856 pages. Too long for most people, I would imagine. I think the author and her editors could have profitably cut down the character and page count to a more punchy, succinct text. Something like 600 pages would still have given a sense of saga-like length and depth.
There is a paucity of information in history about Knut’s reign, after he established his regime on a firm footing. (The main reason why the English accepted Danish rule was for the prospect of peace, which was delivered.) Here Hollick has the opposite problem of filling in a gap. She interpolates a detailed imaginary account of Emma climbing the cliffs of Robin Hood Bay, with her baby son, when cut off by the rising tide. This is based on such a real life event by her own Grandmother. I have no objection to this interpolation, and think it a charming thing that an author can insert something from their own family history into a novel. But it is quite out of keeping with the rest of the book – a sort of refreshing interlude.
Actually I don’t buy the historical truth that Emma ‘loved’ Knut. But who can tell? A book like this reminded me that much of conventional histories of the period are vitually novelistic interpretations of tantalisingly few scraps of information. Even the records themselves are deeply suspect as to their veracity and balance. They are evidently peppered with fiction themselves. Alfred burning the cakes is a wonderful story. So is the story of Knut ordering the tide to turn back. An example of how a historian of Anglo-Saxon England has to inject huge amounts of supposition into their work is ‘Emma’, by Isabella Strachan, which I reviewed a couple of years ago.
I felt satisfied to read ingenious and coherent novelistic interpretations of history in Hollick’s book, and felt it was time well spent. Also I confess to feeling disappointment. This is for a personal reason. I have felt for some time that this period offered many dramatic events worthy of a novel. This idea formed as far back as 1992, but my study and writing has been limited and fitful. Publishing in 2004, Hollick has knocked me out of the ring. Congratulations to her for a good job overall.
Historical fiction is a tricky business. It can illuminate history better than a conventional ‘history’ book, but what in the text is fact, and what is fiction?
Helen Hollick has conscientiously stuck to what are perceived to be the facts. She has used every scrap of information from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the ‘Encomium Emmae Reginae’ and other authors to create a large novel, on the life of Emma, wife and queen to both King Ethelraed and King Knut. This covers the period 1002 to 1042, a time of extraordinary drama in English history, when the Danes conquered and ruled the country.
I was drawn through the book rapidly, probably due to my interest in and knowledge of this period of history. Hollick makes sense of history, filling in the gaps, as a novelist is entitled to do. She takes the story line that Emma hated and despised her first husband, Ethelraed (famously known as the ‘Unready’), and loved Knut deeply. That imposes a black and white simplicity on what was probably a more complex and miserable reality. But it makes sense of many of her actions later, in ignoring and abandoning her progeny by Ethelraed, and her stout support of her son by Knut, Harthacnut.
Her attention to detail and willingness to interpret the facts for a good story penetrates the whole book, down to small details. For instance, she spots the oddity of the fact that the body of Saint Aelfheah was transported across the Thames on a boat, rather than across London Bridge. She neatly explains this as popular opposition to the loss of their Saint (who was being translated to Canterbury), leading to an angry mob blocking the road over the bridge.
But in a novel, do you need to squeeze in very drop of detail available from historical documents? There are too many characters to keep track of, and get to know. Hence the book sprawls over 856 pages. Too long for most people, I would imagine. I think the author and her editors could have profitably cut down the character and page count to a more punchy, succinct text. Something like 600 pages would still have given a sense of saga-like length and depth.
There is a paucity of information in history about Knut’s reign, after he established his regime on a firm footing. (The main reason why the English accepted Danish rule was for the prospect of peace, which was delivered.) Here Hollick has the opposite problem of filling in a gap. She interpolates a detailed imaginary account of Emma climbing the cliffs of Robin Hood Bay, with her baby son, when cut off by the rising tide. This is based on such a real life event by her own Grandmother. I have no objection to this interpolation, and think it a charming thing that an author can insert something from their own family history into a novel. But it is quite out of keeping with the rest of the book – a sort of refreshing interlude.
Actually I don’t buy the historical truth that Emma ‘loved’ Knut. But who can tell? A book like this reminded me that much of conventional histories of the period are vitually novelistic interpretations of tantalisingly few scraps of information. Even the records themselves are deeply suspect as to their veracity and balance. They are evidently peppered with fiction themselves. Alfred burning the cakes is a wonderful story. So is the story of Knut ordering the tide to turn back. An example of how a historian of Anglo-Saxon England has to inject huge amounts of supposition into their work is ‘Emma’, by Isabella Strachan, which I reviewed a couple of years ago.
I felt satisfied to read ingenious and coherent novelistic interpretations of history in Hollick’s book, and felt it was time well spent. Also I confess to feeling disappointment. This is for a personal reason. I have felt for some time that this period offered many dramatic events worthy of a novel. This idea formed as far back as 1992, but my study and writing has been limited and fitful. Publishing in 2004, Hollick has knocked me out of the ring. Congratulations to her for a good job overall.
The General, by C.S. Forester
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I bought this Penguin paperback as a schoolboy for 4 shillings, and read it as an indictment of the British military leadership in the First World War. This dusty, yellowed book was taken off the shelves again immediately after a visit to Ypres this year in May, and this time I perceived it as more balanced and understanding of the character Curzon, who is ‘The General’.
The visit to Ypres included the Memorial Museum at Zonnebeke, which vividly conveyed the history of the battle in great detail, and included an ‘experience’ of a British bunker in the basement. I started to grasp the geography and events. It was amazing to learn that 200 tonnes of armaments are still dug up every year in Belgium, needing disposal. We drove to Passendale in ten minutes, using the sat-nav, in our air-conditioned car, and back to Tyne Cot cemetery. The soldiers in the battle of third Ypres took five months to slog to the top of the Passendale ridge, where only a pile of rubble remained. At Tyne Cot there were 35,000 names of soldiers completely lost in the mud and explosions. I found the landscape to have a spooky feeling to it. Wind rippling the long grass sent a chill down my spine, as if ghosts were caressing the tortured ground.
Having re-read this book, I think Forester was genuinely trying to understand the mind-set of the officers in the British army. He is very good at describing and analysing the small things that turn a battle and make a decisive difference to history. He also does this in ‘The ship, ‘The gun’ and ‘Brown on Resolution’. For instance here he shows how Curzon was promoted after getting lost down a gully in a Boer War battle which fortuitously brought him out behind the enemy lines, enabling the battle of Volkslaagte to be won.
In the First World War he shows how Curzon was again lucky to be promoted rapidly, through small chance events and decisions. There is an air of grim satire about some of the unforeseen consequences, but he is simply reflecting the role of chance and chaos in war and human affairs. The General’s rigid frame of thinking leads to tragic losses of life for his men, for he is not one to give up and retreat or admit defeat. Forester fairly conveys his honour, his patriotism and his courage, but always within a fatally limited world view. In the end, the General is a failure, even if society does not recognise him as a failure.
This book is a useful resource to understand the First World War’s Western front. It is accurate and fair, though it remains a product of its time (published in 1936), when people were questioning the achievements of the British military. The view of that war as a tragic series of blunders reached its satirical apogee in the 1960s. Since then historians have developed revisionist interpretations that recognise it was not all futile, and was a truly difficult situation for all the leaders concerned, grapping with new destructive technology. Novelists and many ordinary people remain fascinated by the whole tragedy.
I bought this Penguin paperback as a schoolboy for 4 shillings, and read it as an indictment of the British military leadership in the First World War. This dusty, yellowed book was taken off the shelves again immediately after a visit to Ypres this year in May, and this time I perceived it as more balanced and understanding of the character Curzon, who is ‘The General’.
The visit to Ypres included the Memorial Museum at Zonnebeke, which vividly conveyed the history of the battle in great detail, and included an ‘experience’ of a British bunker in the basement. I started to grasp the geography and events. It was amazing to learn that 200 tonnes of armaments are still dug up every year in Belgium, needing disposal. We drove to Passendale in ten minutes, using the sat-nav, in our air-conditioned car, and back to Tyne Cot cemetery. The soldiers in the battle of third Ypres took five months to slog to the top of the Passendale ridge, where only a pile of rubble remained. At Tyne Cot there were 35,000 names of soldiers completely lost in the mud and explosions. I found the landscape to have a spooky feeling to it. Wind rippling the long grass sent a chill down my spine, as if ghosts were caressing the tortured ground.
Having re-read this book, I think Forester was genuinely trying to understand the mind-set of the officers in the British army. He is very good at describing and analysing the small things that turn a battle and make a decisive difference to history. He also does this in ‘The ship, ‘The gun’ and ‘Brown on Resolution’. For instance here he shows how Curzon was promoted after getting lost down a gully in a Boer War battle which fortuitously brought him out behind the enemy lines, enabling the battle of Volkslaagte to be won.
In the First World War he shows how Curzon was again lucky to be promoted rapidly, through small chance events and decisions. There is an air of grim satire about some of the unforeseen consequences, but he is simply reflecting the role of chance and chaos in war and human affairs. The General’s rigid frame of thinking leads to tragic losses of life for his men, for he is not one to give up and retreat or admit defeat. Forester fairly conveys his honour, his patriotism and his courage, but always within a fatally limited world view. In the end, the General is a failure, even if society does not recognise him as a failure.
This book is a useful resource to understand the First World War’s Western front. It is accurate and fair, though it remains a product of its time (published in 1936), when people were questioning the achievements of the British military. The view of that war as a tragic series of blunders reached its satirical apogee in the 1960s. Since then historians have developed revisionist interpretations that recognise it was not all futile, and was a truly difficult situation for all the leaders concerned, grapping with new destructive technology. Novelists and many ordinary people remain fascinated by the whole tragedy.
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